Микки Спиллейн - Together We Kill

“But... I... loved you, Helen.”

“And now you have to die, Mike. I can’t even let you have that few’ minutes to speak to the police when they come... and they will come, you know.”

“I know.”

The knife was in her hand... a long slim little thing that came close slowly. It came up closer... and I couldn’t move out of the way at all.

“Mike... believe something. I really love you, Mike.”

“I know, Helen. So now I die. But don’t count on living too long, Helen. Someplace we might meet again... no matter where it is, you’ll die, too, Helen.”

“It will never happen that way, Mike.” She sighed. “Mike... I’m sorry.”

She thrust the blade.

Die? Yeah, that was the night I died. It wasn’t my skin and bones. No, my flesh had to live even though I didn’t want it to.

But something else had died that night. Something more important than what you see when you look in the mirror.

My thumb found the hammer and pulled it back.

“Really here... Mike?”

“Really here, Helen.”

“Not even a kiss good-bye, Mike?”

“Not even a kiss good-bye. The last one was two years ago. That one will hold me. That was a real kiss. A kiss of death. Remember it, Helen?”

Sure, she remembered it, all right. She came closer, with her arms reaching out for me and I wasn’t supposed to see that same sliver of steel that she had used before.

“I really love you, Mike.”

“And I really love you, Helen.”

And then the only sound you hear is the gunshot, and her cry. And the sound of your own feet, walking down the street at night.

The friendly-looking gentleman in the neat charcoal grey suit was a killer. But like any good predator, his disguise was excellent. To all appearances, he was a moderately successful businessman with offices, perhaps, high in a Manhattan building, where the street fumes and noises didn’t reach.

Offhand, you would guess his age in the late forties, and if asked to describe him, could do little more than say he was, well, average. No, there was nothing suspicious in his walk or talk or behavior and if you had any reason to trust anyone it would be this gentleman. Why, he even looked happy.

And with all of that, his disguise was perfect, simply because it was not an artificial disguise at all. It was real. He did have an office, although not in Manhattan, and he was happy. Rudolph Less was a man well satisfied with life, especially when he was working, and now he was on a job again.

Upstairs was a man he was going to kill and the going price on his demise was to be 10,000 lovely dollars that would go toward supporting his single secret pastime in his converted summer house on the Island. He smiled at the thought, feeling a tiny, vicarious thrill touch his parts. Women, he thought, could be taught... or even forced... to do such wonderful things.

Yes, life was fine. Only the select few knew of his true nature and of his niche in life. Through these few, others could come by his services — and many had.

How many now? Was it 46 times? Or 48? Sometimes it was difficult to recall. Once he had kept track, but as in all other businesses, tabulating inventory became boring. Now it was better simply to look ahead.

It was a good business and of all those engaged in it, he was the best. No doubt of it. (He smiled at the doorman who smiled back, but the smile was only a gesture.) He was thinking of the many times he had read the accounts in the papers of his work. Always, the police were puzzled, or another was taken in custody. He chuckled when he thought of the three who had already died in the chair mistakenly. Wouldn’t that shake up the administration if it ever came out! But they were only punks and the error of their death was really a boon to society, doing earlier what would have happened later anyway.

Things like that only added to his business reputation, though. It had paid off, really it had. He thought again of Theresa of the dark flesh and darker hair who had loved those things he had done to her. She really had. She had done things to him that in his frenzy of wild emotion he couldn’t even recall. He could only remember the terrible pleasure of the experience. Well, he could get Theresa again now.

That’s what being the best meant. They hired him because he never failed. For a brief second his face clouded as if he were angry with himself, then he shook his head dismissing the thought because it couldn’t be.

It was too bad, he thought, that he hadn’t checked further, but experience wasn’t on his side then. He had cleared out too soon. He wasn’t absolutely certain. He smiled again, tentatively. But they had paid him, so everything must have gone all right.

He couldn’t help but think about it and try to recall the details merely to satisfy his desire for perfection. It had been his first contract, and a simple one. A kid called Buddy... he couldn’t remember his last name, but he had a dime-size hole through his right ear that was supposed to be from a stray .45 bullet during the war. Buddy had hijacked seventeen grand from the paymaster to the Jersey City group and rather than remain a laughing stock to their pseudo-dignity, Buddy had to go, but with no apparent connection to the group, of course.

It hadn’t been difficult. Buddy was a talkative guy so he simply engaged him in conversation, walked him close to the water, enjoyed the final moment of conversation by telling Buddy who he was and what he was about to do and while Buddy stood dumfounded, with his mouth open and a light from the opposite shore visible through the hole in his ear, he chest-shot him and watched the body smash back into the water.

If only they had found the remains he could be satisfied. However, the river was running fast, it had been blowing up a storm, and the ocean was close by. Buddy (what was his last name?) never showed up, not even to reclaim the bundle of money he had left behind in his room. At the thought Rudolph Less breathed deeply and smiled, satisfied that his record was perfect. Yes, a good record. Big Tim Sheely of Detroit and the western Senator and Marco Leppert who was a Mafia courier were on that list. He chuckled again. How the Mafia had searched for him! They killed four men thinking they had the right one each time and he was never even suspected. After their last failure it was the Mafia itself who gave him the job of axman to rid the organization of their own killers who blundered.

That job got him Joan, he remembered. Such a woman, such a hungry, hungry woman. She was so big all over. So big, so big. Everything so big. Yes, he would have Joan again too. Perhaps even Theresa and Joan together. Who knew what he could do then. It might be bad for his constitution, but he was in good health yet, he thought wryly. There were still some things to be experienced that he could stand.

He had no need to look at the wall directory before going into the elevator. He was part of the crowd now, seen, yet unnoticed. He coughed gently from the smoke of the cigar in the mouth of the man next to him but said nothing. Instead, he thought suddenly, I’d like to kill him!

Like Lew Smith who stood right in front of him in the back of the darkened theatre and never felt the ice pick slide into his heart. He simply collapsed and they carried him out thinking that he had fainted, and no one saw Rudolph leave at all. Lew smelled of cigar smoke too. And Lew had bought him Francie who would make him sit back and watch while she did the damnedest dance he ever did see until his eyes were bugging out and he could hardly breathe and when by the time she let him get his hands on her he had lost almost all his senses and had to be slapped back to normal. But Francie had smiled then and loved what he had done to her although she pouted a while over his bite marks.