Микки Спиллейн - The Erection Set

“Certainly. You know the mortality rate in this business. It’s always the ones on the way up who knock off the ones on the way out.”

“Then why bother setting me up?”

“An old man needs a glimpse of the past to refresh his memories, occasionally. At my age, that’s all you have to live on. I’m just sorry I won’t be there to see it happen. It should be a bloody mess. Maybe if you had run me down a little sooner I would have called the odds pretty even, but you’ve slowed up, buddy. The reflexes are still there, but the old computer doesn’t send the messages out fast enough. They put old dogs to sleep, son. You’re ready for the pound.”

“Can I have one last bark?” I asked him.

Ferris nodded. “Maybe even a growl.”

“Thanks a bunch. Where’s the stuff?”

“In an old panel truck out back. Don’t bother asking me how I got it through or how I’m going to get back. One day they can read it all in my memoirs.” He reached in his pocket, took out an ignition key and tossed it to me. “Like you used to say, it’s your ball now, kid.”

It nested in the shadows of the building, an old Dodge panel job with crumpled fenders and doors you had to wrench open. A tattered army blanket covered the holes in the seat cushions and there was no window on the driver’s side. The ignition key unlocked the doors in the back and when I swung them open the sealed walnut coffin gave off a dull sheen in the light of my match. Sharon sucked in her breath with an audible gasp, her hands clasped tight around my arm. I pushed her loose, climbed inside and broke the seal on the lid. Her face was a pale white oval with brighter spots where her eyes were, watching me look in the satin-padded box.

“Dog...” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“The biggest corpse in the world, baby. There’s enough heroin here to overdose every addict in New York.” I shut the lid and climbed out of the truck.

“Dog...” she said again. “Heroin?”

“Big H.”

“Yours?”

“All mine. Bundles of millions of dollars and it’s all mine.”

I didn’t have to see her face to know the disgust was there. The loathing was there too when she asked, “What are you going to do with it?”

“Sell it, kid,” I told her.

This time she didn’t touch me. She took a small step away and became part of the shadows. Very calmly, she said, “I think I hate you, Dog.”

“That’s good, because you wouldn’t understand the purchase price of the stuff.”

“I understand, all right. I should have listened to you sooner. The world would be a lot better off without people like you.”

“Then stick around and see it happen.”

“I intend to, Dog. It’s what you wanted me to do anyway, wasn’t it?”

My guts knotted up inside me, but I had to get it out. “Yes.” I looked around for Ferris, waiting to hear his sardonic little chuckle.

But Ferris had disappeared back into the past and had left me alone with his terrible present.

You don’t maintain a posture of dignity when you’re staring down the ugly muzzle of a .45 automatic. Not when you know the history of the guy behind the blued steel and thought that he had been eliminated hours ago. Not when you’re in a pair of striped shorts and nothing else, with skinny legs that couldn’t hold still and a lovely blonde woman who had brand-new case-hardened eyes watching you out of mild curiosity and total disdain.

I said, “Just one more time, friend, or Weller-Fabray loses your services permanently. You know the new contact number and you know where he’s at.”

“Please... Mr. Kelly, you know what will happen if I tell you where...”

I grinned that same old nasty grin and he saw my hand tighten around the gun butt. “I know what will happen if you don’t.”

It wasn’t much of a choice. If he told me, at least he had an hour’s head start.

So he told me and I coldcocked him for a long sleep with the Colt.

I put the gun away and let my expression fade back where it came from and went back to the truck with Sharon. I looked at my watch. We still had another hour before sunrise. It was the time of day when New York City was in its postorgasmic trance, buried in its smog-choked dreams, the hour between those going and those coming. The rain was trying hard, but there would never be enough of it to clean the stains from its steel-and-concrete skin. I turned the truck and cut across town to a gas station where I had one phone call to make, filled the tank, grabbed two coffees from the dispenser and got back in the cab again.

When Sharon took the steaming cup I handed her she said, “Would you really have killed him, Dog?”

I shoved the gear lever in low and let the clutch out. “He wouldn’t have been the first.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

“He thought so,” I told her.

A long time ago Freeport had been a lazy little village on Long Island, a short pleasure jaunt down the Sunrise Highway from the big zoo of Fun City. But that was a long time ago before progress had set in, with miscalculated planning and the population explosion to guide it. Now it was just another choked-up town with bumper-to-bumper parked cars walling it in, demanding to be called a suburb, struggling against the ebb and flow of traffic and charge accounts.

I found the street and I found the number of the pale yellow house that was the last on the block and coasted into the driveway with the lights off.

Off in the east the dull glow of a false dawn was backlighting the mist that shrouded the coastline. Inside the yellow house Chet Linden would be sleeping quietly, secure in the knowledge that the order was given, the order had been carried out, and the age of electronic engineering was the big wall no enemy could breech.

Sharon watched me while I breeched his ramparts with a pair of cute little gimmicks, bypassing the circuits in a way that would make him put knots on the heads of the so-called experts later on. She stood by quietly while I slid in the window, deactivated the secondary alarm on the door and she walked in with those steely eyes enjoying the moment... eyes of an animal lover waiting to see the bull kill the matador.

He woke up when he felt the cold end of the rod under his chin and heard me say. “Lights, honey.”

The overhead fixture snapped on and Chet came awake with an incredible expression of hate at himself because he had failed and didn’t bother to move toward the gun I snaked out from under his pillow and just lay still until I found the sawed-off bayonet beside his leg in arm’s reach.

“You made a gross mistake, Chet. I told you to lay off. I even told you what would happen if you didn’t.”

He was watching the gun in my hand. He saw the hammer lying all the way back and the hole in the end looked as big as the tunnel to hell.

“You’re sharp, Dog. What happened to Blackie and the others?”

“Guess.”

“So you finally turned the corner,” he stated.

“Get up and get dressed.”

He looked over at Sharon.

“She’s seen bare-assed guys before.”

“I have to get dressed to get killed?”

“You always told me I had class.”

“There’s always the end of the line for people like us, isn’t there?”

“Always.”

“Sorry about that, Dog.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“Oh, not for me. For you. I hate to see you turn that corner.” He kicked his feet out from under the covers and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Sharon again. “And you’re the one,” he said. “Do you know about him... all about him?”

“I do now,” Sharon said.

“I see.” He let his eyes slide up to mine. “You destroy everybody, don’t you?”