Микки Спиллейн - The Erection Set

“We’ll talk about my raise later,” Sharon said.

“Oh, boy. I’m broke before I start,” Cable moaned. “Now let’s eat while I still got an appetite.”

Under the table I gave Sharon’s hand a squeeze. My finger felt the funny little ring on hers. When she realized I was touching it she looked at me with a quiet smile and eased her hand away.

She had left the sleek business facade back at the restaurant. The hard maturity, the total awareness the city seems to nurture to a peak was gone now. The velvet claws that could bend the business giants with a single soft silken scratch were sheathed. She had unfastened a golden pin so that her hair could swirl around her face and had changed from the black chiffon into tight little short shorts and an even tighter halter that form-fitted into every crevice and curve of her body. The little girl was back, but the woman was still there and it made me uncomfortable to look at her.

There was that strange something about her. Purpose. Call it purpose. Then again, all females were dedicated to something or other. Sharon saw the way I was looking at her and smiled, a cute little feline smile that made me want to lay my hands on her and squeeze a little bit. But even little felines could bite back and I had just seen her nip two of them.

“What made you pull that off, kitten?”

She crossed the room and turned down the volume on the record player, then brought me my coffee. “I don’t know. Maybe I was just thinking... well, Linton was my home too. It might be nice to see something good happen there again.”

“What do you figure the rental for the site will be?”

Her shrug was a little wistful. “Not all that much, really. What I had in mind was some of the other locations. There are people who can use the money a lot more than the Barrin clan.”

“You’re a sentimental do-gooder,” I told her. “I thought you hated that place?”

“I guess I did. Seeing the beach and my old house... well, a little nostalgia set in. Did I do wrong?”

“How much do you figure the company will drop in the town?”

“They won’t budget less than five million. At least two will go directly into the economy of Linton for housing, subsistence, rentals and all the other details.”

I let out a little laugh. “Those cousins of mine are going to be obligated to take the deal if they want to retain their public-spirited image.”

“You think there’ll be any trouble?” she asked me.

“Trouble, but no difficulty. Not from them, kitten. If there’s any roadblocks they’ll come from another angle.”

“Cross McMillan?”

“That slob won’t cooperate with the Barrins to wipe his own tail,” I said.

Sharon refilled her coffee cup and smiled. “But he’ll cooperate with Walt.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because the handsome young bachelor prince owns a big chunk of McMillan holdings and that cute little-boy smile of his holds a mouthful of tiger teeth. No, Cross won’t buck Walt, and Walt won’t buck me.”

“Nice,” I said.

“Or you, Dog. Walt thinks you’re a real cobra.”

“Oh?”

“I think you are too.” She put her coffee down and came over and sat beside me. “You’re a snake, my friend. You don’t hiss and you don’t rattle. I haven’t decided if you’re a constrictor or venomous. I’m wondering what it would cost me to find out.”

“Some one of these days you’re going to lay your virginity on the line and I’m going to pop it, kid.” I looked at her and let her see a face full of teeth. Getting played with by a slippery, beautiful blonde wasn’t my idea of fun when there wasn’t sand around to make up some friction.

“Keep talking, Dog.”

I handed her my cup and stood up. “Screw you, little girl, I’m not all that moral. I wish I knew your fiancé. I’d slam him on his ass and make him marry you just to take a walking land mine out of circulation. I heard you put down that lover boy... what’s his name?”

“Raul?”

“Yeah. Just don’t give me that garbage. Not again. You got a hot wet body, sugar. I like it. I shouldn’t but I do. No more skinny-dipping like Hunter and old Dubro and no more sacking it in cobwebby houses. I couldn’t take it.”

“Dog,” she said softly.

“What?”

“You love me?”

“Hell no.”

“You bastard.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

I grinned at her and slipped into my coat. “You love me, kid?”

“Certainly,” she said matter-of-factly.

“A terrible affliction I infect all the women with,” I said.

“You really are a bastard, Dog.” She smiled back at me, her teeth white and shiny.

“A cobra, remember?”

Next to the Ormin Hotel, the shattered remains of a row of tenements gaped out at the street, windows smashed, the frames smoke blackened and whole areas of brickwork crumpled in a miniature landslide to the sidewalk. Somehow one building still stood between the ruins and the hotel and a lone figure curled in the shadow of the stoop.

There was no Markham registered, but the clerk remembered the guy with the torn-up face and gave me the room number for a five-dollar bill, then went back to his scratch sheet on a stool behind the counter. The only thing that surprised him was the five. It was four more than he’d usually get for the same information.

His room was on the west side of the third floor at the far end of a corridor lit by two hanging bulbs. I stayed close to the wall trying to be as quiet as possible, reached the door and stood there listening for any sounds inside. All I heard was the rats scratching inside the wall. I waited another minute and tried the knob, letting it twist slowly and gently under my fingers. When the latch was all the way free I pushed the door in gently, waiting to feel the bite of a chain, but it went past the distance a chain would have held it and I didn’t bother waiting anymore. I shoved it open all the way and it clattered back against some barrier and stayed there.

The hammer going back on the .45 was enough for any body to hear. I said, “Markham,” and waited. I could see almost one-half the room in the dull light from the corridor, the dresser and chair with the pants thrown over the back, even one corner of the bed that nestled out of my line of sight. I said, “Markham,” again, then rolled inside in a tight ball, spun on my stomach with the gun ready to cut loose and nothing happened at all.

But I could see Markham. He was on the bed with one arm dangling over the side and there was just enough light to see that his eyes were open. I found the switch on the lamp beside the bed and flipped it on.

My strong-arm friend was out to lunch. Somebody had retired him from the land of the living with a single tiny puncture square in the middle of his forehead halfway between his hairline and the bridge of his nose. There had been no fuss and no mess. There was a half-empty bottle of codeine tablets on the night table and Markham had bought his ticket in the middle of a deep sleep he needed to deaden the pain from his smashed face.

I went over and took a look at the door. The lock was old-fashioned and simple, easy to open with a skeleton key or a pick. There was a chain lock too, but it dangled free because whoever installed it put the catch too close to the edge of the door and there was enough play for it to be opened by reaching in from the outside and flipping it back.

Markham had made too many other people hurt without knowing the bite of pain himself. He forgot that it could make you careless about the things that could get you dead fast.

I went back to the body, felt the clammy skin and lifted the arm that dangled so stiffly, then went out, closed the door and went back downstairs. The clerk looked at me over his scratch sheet and said, “Find him?”