Микки Спиллейн - Together We Kill

“You haven’t got long to live, Marcel.”

“So! You did catch my name.” He looked at the guy beside him. “You see?”

The one he addressed twitched nervously. Mistakes could be fatal in his business.

“Still,” Andre said with a humorless smile, “like you, I am still alive, but my chances of survival are better. Now, shall we proceed?”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

“We shall see. First, what did you tell the government police?”

Sweat ran into my eyes and started to burn. I played it cagey and gave him facts. He would know them anyway. “They know Stacy was killed because he was trying to get information back about the nuclear warhead on the ship.”

“What ship?”

“You call it Banana. ”

Marcel nodded slowly. “Good. You are telling the truth. Where is that ship going?”

“I don’t know.”

He reached out and jammed the clip up between my legs and the teeth bit into me. I started to yell when he said, “The switch, please,” and the yell rose into a wild scream that didn’t sound like my own voice at all. When it stopped, the sweat poured down my face and my whole body jerked spasmodically for a moment before the pain came.

Marcel let me taste it fully, let me realize that it was only that of a second’s duration, let me imagine what it would be like if it had continued longer. “Who are Verdo and Cristy, Mr. Fallon?”

I shook my head. I saw his nod toward the one at the switch and I tried to tell him that I didn’t know anything — but my tongue seemed to bloat suddenly at the incredible sweep of pain that came over me like a tidal wave of liquid fire.

When I tried to talk, my lips couldn’t form the words and my chest heaved convulsively. The sticky warmth of blood trickled down my wrists and ankles from where the ropes bit in when I strained against them. The sheer terror of knowing that there was nothing I could say turned my brain into a mad thing.

“You will have a minute to speculate, Fallon. Time to recover, time to reconsider, then we will begin again.”

My mind raced with something to tell him. Verdo and Cristy, Verdo and Cristy. They alone could break me loose from this. Who the hell were they? Who? WHO!

“Very well, Fallon, once again, who are Verdo and Cristy?”

He was ready to nod again. Then I had it. I had Verdo and Cristy. Not who, what!

And I was going to tell him. The hell with them all. He could have it.

The blast from Sharon Ortiz’ gun caught the guy at the switch full in the face. His head came apart in pieces, and before they could hit the floor she nailed the other one in the chest. He fell into Andre Marcel enough to ruin his aim and tumble him to the floor on one knee. I could see his expression as he looked up at her, the almost simpering grin of an idiot not knowing what to do yet knowing too what was coming. He started to make an imploring gesture when Sharon smiled back at him and almost casually pulled the trigger of the .38.

The first bullet hit Marcel in the stomach and he grabbed his gut as he doubled over. He looked up imploringly, holding his hand out, and the next one went through his palm into his chest. It slammed him back into the table where he coughed once and said something foul in Spanish. Then Sharon took deliberate aim and planted one right between the horns.

Very gently, she removed the clips attached to me. Then wiped the sweat from my face with her scarf. “You have not been hurt, señor. They had a long way to go before you were hurt.”

“Get me loose,” I breathed.

“First I must look at you.”

“Damn you.”

“Why, señor? I remember you looking at me like so not long ago. Can you imagine the things I could do to you now?”

I didn’t answer her.

Then she smiled. “But they would not be unpleasant,” she said.

In spite of what had just happened, I felt some crazy things go through my mind. “Stop it.”

Deliberately, she did something, then grinned again and reached in the pocket of her coat and pulled out a small knife. It took only a second to cut me loose. My clothes were in the corner on a chair and I dressed while she watched, never without that damn smile. She didn’t know it yet, but for this she was going to get fixed. Soon and good.

I said, “How long were you outside?”

“Long enough to know you wouldn’t tell them anything, señor. ”

She didn’t know, I thought. She was wrong, but she didn’t know.

Sharon changed then. The smile faded and a look of serious concern crossed her eyes. “I know whose side you are on now, señor .”

The shadows dancing across her face gave a different life to her beauty. Her hair was a deep midnight glow, her lips lushly ruby, the Irish and Spanish in her trying to come out at the same time. I felt the firm swell of her breasts brush against my forearm and I ran my hand up her shoulder. Beneath her suit coat, she was warm and a muscle under my fingers trembled.

“How did you find me, Sharon?”

“By following Andre Marcel. He is so smart as to be stupid sometimes. He does not realize that our organization is also efficient. We are small, perhaps, but necessarily efficient. I knew he would keep contact with you. You are the key, señor, to all that we have.”

“I know what the score is now, honey,” I said. “The whole deal. I know about the ship you called Banana. ”

“And where it is going?”

“Not yet.”

Stark disappointment flooded her face.

“In a little while, kid, just a few minutes more. Look, where are we?”

“On a wharf in the south end.”

“There’s a phone nearby?”

“I know where one is.”

“Good, let’s find it.”

I got Charlie Traub out of bed and asked him if Tucker had ever taped any of his plane-to-tower conversations.

He said, “Sure, whenever he wanted a permanent record the tower operators would cut in a tape. Why?”

“Back in the old days, Verdo and Cristy were wire recording devices we could call while in flight on photo-recon missions if we spotted something in a hurry and didn’t have time to jot it down. It was a squadron deal our own intelligence officer installed. Tuck still used the system, but with tape. You have a recorder handy?”

“One in the tower.”

“Okay, put me on that extension and get up there. Get out the tapes of Tuck’s last day. He may have called in, and if it was an automatic setup the tower operator never knew what was on there and just filed the thing.”

When he made the exchange of extensions, I held on and got the rest of the information from Sharon. They had definite information on the removal of the warheads and the installation in the ship, but Castro’s security was so tight that’s all they had. A top agent named Manuel Alvada was to come out with Tucker with documented evidence of the switch, but the plane had been sabotaged by Andre Marcel’s men. Gonzales was a technician who had stayed on in Cuba deliberately with intent to buck Castro and the know-how to get inside their major operations. When he defected they knew why and waited for him to show up in the States, Marcel preceding him there. The one thing he didn’t know, however, was where the ship was headed.

Charlie came on then.

“Ready on the tapes.”

“Roll it.”

I heard Tuck’s voice then, the drone of the engine in the background. Very calmly he stated his position and the fact that he was flying out an anti-Castro agent with the story of Banana. He was taking no chances. In the event something happened before he could land he wanted the statement on record even if it wasn’t documented.