Микки Спиллейн - Together We Kill

“You talk American real good. Sadie They must have fine schools in Leningrad.”

Her lips twitched. “Westchester, Mr. Terris. And one of the best finish—” She stopped abruptly and all expression faded from her lovely face. “Where is the machine?”

I spread my hands. “You’re slipping your clutch. Blondie. No machine. I told you that.”

Her patience began to break up. “You fool!” she blazed. “You’re actually going to hand us your wife rather than surrender it? You’re as cold-blooded as a snake, Mr. Terris!”

“You can call me Karl,” I said

She stepped back and nodded to the two men behind her. They came forward cautiously, guns ready, circled until they were behind me. I went on looking at the blonde, memorizing every line of her face, the lobes of her cars, the curve of her nostrils, the shape of her eves. Suddenly the muzzle of a gun ground savagely into my back and a hand closed firmly on one of my naked arms. Before I could twist away the needle of a hypodermic lanced into my shoulder, the plunger thudded down and I staggered back.

I stood there panting, still staring at the girl. I could feel my lips curl back in a strained rictus of hatred. A buzzing sound began to crawl into my ears.

“It had better finish me, Sadie,” I said around my thickening tongue. “If I come through this, you’ll feed five generations of worms.”

She was leaning slightly forward, her eyes glittering, the tip of her tongue touching her parted lips, her breathing quick and shallow, watching the drug take hold of me. The gun in her hand was forgotten.

I tried to lift an arm. Somebody had tied an anvil to it. The City Hall was glued to my feet. The room clouded, wavered, then slowly dissolved. I fell face forward into the ruins...

A voice said, “You made two mistakes, Sadie. You let me see your face and you said too much. Just a little too much, but enough.”

It was my voice. I was talking out loud, coming out of it. I opened my eyes and rolled over and looked at the ceiling. Back of my eyes somebody had built a fire and left the ashes.

After a while I tried getting to my feet. It seemed to take a long time, but I finally made it. I stood there holding onto the back of a chair and let my eyes move around the room.

Sunlight was fighting to get in through the half-closed Venetian blinds at the two windows. The man I had shot earlier was still dead on the floor, with a pool of almost black blood under what was left of his head. The vault door stood wide open with its contents scattered. The rest of the room had the look of being worked over by a platoon of Marines armed with bayonets. Upholstery had been ripped to shreds, pictures were torn from the walls, drapes were piled in one corner, bookcases had been cleared ruthlessly.

Anger began to rise inside me. I crossed to the ruins of the small bar in one corner of the room, found a bottle of bourbon and drank a solid slug of the contents. The stuff almost put me back on the floor, but when the first shock passed my brain was working again.

I went up the stairs at a wavering run. The bedroom door stood open and Lodi was gone. The room itself was as much a shambles as the study downstairs, and the rest of the house was no better.

“It’s all right, Lodi,” I muttered. “They won’t dare harm you. They’ll wait a couple of days for me to get good and worried, then they’ll get in touch with me and try to make a deal. Only I’m not going to wait that long.”

In the kitchen I ate toast and drank four cups of scalding black coffee. Then I went back into the study and picked up the phone and called a number in the Lenox Hill section of New York City.

“Eddie? Karl. Now get this. I want all yearbooks for the past ten years put out by all the finishing schools on the East Coast. Have them in your office two hours from now... How the hell do I know? You’ve got an organization; put it to work. As fast as they come in put people to work going through them to pick out every girl who lived in Westchester County at the time she was attending school. The girl I want is around twenty-five or twenty-six, so tell them to keep that in mind. You’ve got two hours, and I don’t want any excuses.”

I slammed down the receiver while he was still talking and looked around for the gun I had dropped on the rug the night before. It was still there, half buried under papers from the vault. I went back upstairs to shave, bathe and dress, then found a shoulder holster for the .45 and slid my suit coat on over it.

I walked out the front door and down the driveway. It was getting on toward ten o’clock and the sun was hot on my shoulders. In the valley a mile down the slope was the nearest highway to New York. Cars and trucks moved along the concrete ribbon, looking like ants on a garden path.

My convertible was where I had left it the day before. I was checking the tires when the sound of an engine coming up the gravel road to the house froze me. I stepped behind the car and unbuttoned my coat and waited.

A grey Plymouth turned into the highway and stopped and a man in his early thirties got out from behind the wheel. There was no one else in the car. He saw me standing there, nodded and started toward me without hurrying. He wasn’t anyone I knew.

When he was about twenty feet away I slid my hand under the left lapel of my jacket and said, “That’s close enough, friend.”

He stopped abruptly and stared at my right arm, a puzzled look on his smooth, not unhandsome face. “I’m afraid I don’t understand this. Are you Mr. Terris?”

“That’s right.”

“I’d like a word with you.”

“Sure,” I said. “What word would you like?”

He smiled crookedly. “I wish you’d take your hand out of there, Mr. Terris. It gives me the feeling you’re about to pull a gun on me.”

“That,” I said, “is the general idea. Just who the hell are you?”

He kept his hands carefully away from his body. “The name is Granger, Mr. Terris. I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Would you like to see my credentials?”

“Not especially,” I said. “What is it you want?”

He laughed shortly. “Well, to put it bluntly — you! It seems there’s a Congressional committee meeting in Washington this afternoon and they want you there. The AEC, to be exact. I was asked to come up and — ah — escort you there.”

I recalled that the blonde had said something about that a few hours earlier. Whatever her pipeline, it certainly was reliable. I shook my head. “Sorry, Mr. Granger. I won’t be able to make it. Another engagement — a rather pressing one. Good-bye.”

He wasn’t smiling now. “Afraid you don’t understand, sir. I have a subpoena calling for your appearance at that hearing.”

“That’s different,” I said. I took my hand from under my coat and walked over to him. “Can I give you some breakfast before we leave?”

Granger eyed me warily. “No, thanks. I’ve had breakfast. We’d better be getting into New York. We’re catching a twelve o’clock plane. I suppose you’ll want to pack a bag.”

“Good idea,” I said and turned and started back to the house with him beside me. We went up on the porch and through the front door. Granger took one look at the wreckage from last night’s activities and his jaw dropped. “What hap—”

That was as far as he got before the edge of my hand caught him sharply on the back of the neck. He folded like a carpenter’s rule, out cold. I caught him before he hit the floor and carried him into the living room. I found some strong cord in the kitchen and bound his hands behind him and his feet to the legs of the couch, careful not to cut off the circulation.

He opened his eyes while I was finishing up. “You’re making a serious mistake, Mr. Terris.”