Микки Спиллейн - The Erection Set

“Some wise-ass,” I told him.

“The rough part is this,” Al said. “Alfred and Dennison don’t know about all this machinery. They’re trying to operate on the assumption that the gal cousins have all their stocks and are bugging them to turn over control to them. None of them will buy the attitude... not that they wouldn’t if they could... it’s just that they can’t. It just ain’t there to sell anymore. Al and Dennie own thirty percent of nothing with old Cross McMillan ready to reach in and snatch it all away. He already owns one hell of a block he picked up when the original investors died and if it ever comes to a proxy fight, he can pick up all the marbles.”

“Maybe not.”

“Come on, Dog. The dame cousins of yours dumped everything. Whoever picked it up bought a sucker deal and it’s got to be spread out all over the place. It’s only junk, and who would bother with it anyhow?”

“Oh, you never could tell.”

For a long time, Al looked at me, his eyes tight little beads trying to see inside my mind, and finally they did. “You got it,” Al stated.

“Why not?” I asked him. “Like you said, it was only junk.”

He let me have that long look again. “McMillan is going to kill you.”

I grinned at him.

“He wants everything... Barrin Industries, the Mondo Beach property... the works. He’s going to get even with your grandfather.”

“Fuck McMillan.”

“Not him, Dog. I told you, he’s a vulture. He’s got the money and the power. To him Barrin Industries is only a toy to be played with. That guy plays in international finance. He can buy anything he wants to.”

I took a long drag on the cigarette and snuffed it out in the empty beer can. “Almost everything, Al. Or do you know about that too?”

“You even look at his wife sidewise and you’ll be dead, buddy. Like D-E-A-D.”

“I wasn’t intending to. I just said there were some things you just can’t buy.”

“Dog, you’re nuts. Those two are crazy in love. They always have been.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Maybe there’s an age differential. Not much, but they’re sure as hell in love.”

“I wasn’t talking about that,” I said.

“What them?”

“Nothing that makes any difference right now.”

We sat there rocking a few minutes, looking up Broadway. North of Thirty-fourth Street a gray cloud was beginning to encompass the Empire State Building.

“It’s going to rain.” I said.

For the first time, old Al DeVecchio’s face was a study in consternation. I never had seen him like that before. It was like he had stumbled into somebody else’s foxhole and found it full of shit.

“I never should have answered your letter,” he said.

REFLECTIONS: AL DEVECCHIO

Who the hell is he now? You think you get to know somebody under four long years of war and gunfire and he zeroes out like a pissed-on cigar butt and the guy you knew isn’t there anymore.

“Say, mate, you wanted Spit time, didn’t you?”

“Now?”

“Really, Major, if it wasn’t for this girl... daughter of one of your senators, y’know... sort of asked for me and it’s hands across the ocean and all that sort of crap, y’know? Now, she’s a new Mark Thirteen and never been scratched. Only two milk runs on photo across to the sub pens...”

“She armored?”

“Full up, Major.”

“If I get my ass snarled on this one...”

“Blimey, Major, I got them all prepped. No sorting out to do at all. Beansey, Jerry and Tag are off your wings. Good chaps, those. Twelve kills among them. Relatively new and not like you at all, but remember, dear boy, you wanted to fly the Spit...”

“No time goes on my record?”

“ ’Pon my word, Major. I wouldn’t want to go before Old Snarly for anything. Realize you and the flight surgeon are having it out over those missing missions, but don’t forget, it was that little niece of mine who lifted your records. Good job, what?”

“Yeah, lovely.”

“Too bad you chaps get rotated so soon. It’s really a gorgeous war,” he said. “Tell me, Major, why don’t you want to go home?”

“Long story, my friend, And like you said, it’s a gorgeous war. I always did want Spit time. That crate handle well?”

“You should know, Major. Much better than the Nines. Just remember to find me an empty Mustang on the next Nuremberg run. There’s a farmhouse there occupied by a particularly nasty character who stuck a pitchfork in my buttock when I bailed out on his property. Damned near didn’t escape. If it weren’t for the little beauty across the river who always had been partial to the sons of John Bull I never would have made it. Quite an interesting stay, that was.”

“You Limeys are nuts,” Dog said.

“Determined, you must admit.”

“Sure, to lay an American senator’s daughter.”

“Oh, just trying to improve our relationship with the colonials, Major. Enjoy the Spit, old boy. My batman has everything arranged. Would appreciate it if you could bring her back more or less unscathed. Old Snarly has an eye for details like bullet holes and he knows my new buggy is still a virgin. Unpenetrated, y’know?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, cheerio.”

“Dog,” I asked him, “why the hell do you squeeze In extra missions? You coulda been out long ago. You like all this crazy fighting?”

“Something to be learned,” he told me. “You survive or you don’t. Get the worst of it in now and all the rest will look easy.”

He survived, all right. I wish I could confirm all those rumors that had been seeping out of Europe the past twenty years. But no matter what I heard, they didn’t jell with the Dogeron Kelly I knew. Nice guys just don’t change. And the rumors were all screwed up too. One told of a darkly lethal character who blew the whole postwar black market business to hell and gone when he creamed out the hard operators, using Stateside mob money to disrupt the economy. Nobody wanted to talk about what happened after that. Then there was the other “El Lobo” ... the Wolf ... who tangled with the international financiers and took them for all they were worth. The Dog and The Wolf. There was a sameness there. The difference was that Dog could hardly handle simple mathematics. He never could solve a navigation problem when he had to use a Weems Computer or triangulate a course. If he hadn’t had a pigeon’s instinctive memory for time, distance and direction, he couldn’t have hit the floor with his hat. But he had, and he was always on target and always back again, sometimes leading strays and once a squadron whose numbers failed them. When it came to finance, he couldn’t even make sense out of British money, far less a French franc. If it wasn’t the American dollar it was all play money. The only other rate of exchange he understood was cigarettes and candy bars.

Yet, there was that change. Those damn eyes of his. They watched everything. He moved funny too, always knowing who was behind him and on either side, an odd awareness of where everyone else was and, when they were out of position, he knew and was ready to pounce.

Two Dogs? Three? It was possible. He was here now and I’d see him again. Digging into the dark corners was my game and now I’d really get to the answers. I had to. I was curious: I hoped I’d like what I’d find.

I was afraid I wouldn’t.

I never could figure out why people didn’t like the rain. A dull day, a little wet and it was growl time. Women brooded in tight little apartments tying up the telephones; husbands fidgeted on barstools, dragging out lunch hours into early hangovers; the few on the streets fought for taxicabs whose drivers seemed to take a sadistic satisfaction out of their predicament. Hell, the rain was nice. It cleaned things out. A good rain in New York was the city’s only mouthwash and it gargled happily and rumbled with pleasure as the garbage got spewed out down the drain.