Mickey Spillane - The Big Bang

I got out the .45, thumbed back the hammer—the click was sharp and loud in the enclosed space. "How would you put it, Doc? It's one possible avenue of treatment."

He seemed not at all fazed by the weapon. He said, "What if I asked you to trust me?"

"What?"

He sat forward, his manner, his tone, both conciliatory and confidential. "What if I told you that I have a... treatment in mind ... that may well break that vicious circle. That my intent here is not to become a criminal 'kingpin,' but to cripple their organization, perhaps even end it."

"How in hell?"

He shook his head. "That's why I must ask you to trust me. The burden of what I have conceived must be mine alone. It's a responsibility, even a guilt, that I alone must bear."

"I'm not following you...."

He frowned. "Well, try. Because it shouldn't be hard for you. How many times have you faced killers down, Mr. Hammer, with that very gun in your hand? How many times have you made some monster stare down its barrel and see death coming out to claim him, or her?"

"Who's counting?"

His smile was razor thin. "For you, such a choice comes naturally. No soul-searching needed. Perhaps few if any sleepless nights." One black eyebrow arched. "But let me ask you this—would you dream of asking anyone else to join you in shouldering the responsibility, the guilt, the burden? Would you ask any other person on earth to squeeze the trigger on that weapon? Or must it be you alone? You, the judge, the jury, the executioner?"

My mouth felt dry.

Not even Velda, I thought.

Finally I said, "I wouldn't ask anybody to take any of it on. Like somebody said once, vengeance is mine."

"Right." His voice took on a quiet urgency. "And I ask you, Mr. Hammer, to believe me when I say that I am on a course of action that I must be allowed to complete. It will avenge my son, oh yes, but it will do so much more. So very much more."

"What are you asking?"

"For one week."

"One week?"

"One week."

"And what then, Doc?"

His shrug spoke volumes. "Then I will answer any question you have for me. Pay whatever price. I will accompany you to the police or the federal people or whomever you like. Or I will stand before you and that gun of yours and allow you to play judge and jury and executioner yet again. Without expectation of pity. With no complaint. One week."

I didn't know what to say.

"Otherwise," he said, and he flicked a finger at the .45, then did a trigger-pulling gesture, "you can get it over with right here. Life has little meaning to me now, other than a desire to carry out my last, my most radical therapy."

I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Maybe he was nuts. Maybe I was nuts. But one thing was certain—I no longer thought the point of all this was for Dr. David Harrin to become top hoodlum in the narcotics racket.

"Shit," I said, and eased the hammer down. "I hate dealing with people smarter than me."

I put the gun away, safety on.

Then I stood and said, "You want a week, Doc? Well, I need a day to think about your week. How's that for a compromise?"

He rose and nodded. "Fair enough."

We shook on it.

"Here," he said, almost gently, as he got my things from the closet, "I'll walk you out."

I shrugged into the trench coat, shoved the hat on my head, and we exited the spartan apartment, which he did not lock behind him.

Soon we were on the front stoop of the building. The rain was over, even the mist gone, though water pooled and glimmered where time had made impressions in the stone steps. The residential street was quiet, the wildness and weirdness of MacDougal Street a block and a half up.

He put a hand on my shoulder, looming over me, a good three inches, anyway. His expression was serene.

"Please understand, Mr. Hammer. I cannot tell you precisely what my intentions are. It's not so much that you might disagree with my approach, and try to stop me—"

"If I did, Doc, I would."

"I know.... It's more that I do not want you to be implicated, because what I have in mind has far-reaching implications, legally and ethically."

"Legalities and ethics, Doc, don't always enter in with me."

His smile turned gentle, almost wistful. "You never know, Mr. Hammer. You never know. Perhaps one day ... you'll see the light." Half turning, he was about to go back in when he added, "Maybe you will see the light."

Which, as fate would have it, was exactly when light washed over his face, headlights, and the serene look was overtaken by wide-eyed alarm, and the doc stepped in front of me, pushing me down, and the night exploded with gunfire and three slugs stitched their way across his sweater, forming black periods that welled into red commas, and his expression was blank-eyed and slack-jawed as he thumped back against the door, and slid down, leaving three smeary trails on the wood.

I was in a crouch when I fired at the vehicle, which had slowed initially but now screamed into the night, and I took the seven steps to the street in two bounds and was out in the slick black pavement firing at the car, a late-model green Buick. The rear windshield shattered and the car swerved over to the left and just missed a parked car to go up over the curb and into the side of a brick building.

A horn blared in loud monotony and I ran almost a block, coat flapping, losing my hat along the way, until I got to the vehicle. The driver was a longhaired kid who had taken one of my .45 slugs in the back of the head, the windshield dripping with gray and red and white material that had exploded out his forehead.

The shorter-haired rider—in T-shirt and jeans, who'd done the shooting—had broken his forearm against the dashboard, on impact, and I could see jutting white bone glistening with decorative red against brown skin. He was a Puerto Rican kid, and was swearing or praying or something, and I'd have spared him if he hadn't gone one-handed scrambling for the nine millimeter that had fallen in his lap. The .45 slug entered his right temple, splattered blood and brains onto the dead driver, and shut off the rider's chatter like a switch.

People were yelling and screaming, but I ignored that and, not even stopping to retrieve my hat, ran back to the brownstone, where a hippie girl up on the stoop was holding Dr. Harrin in her arms like the Pietà, and wailing, "Somebody help him!"

But even if a doctor as good as Harrin had been around, it wouldn't have helped. Nobody had ever found a cure for his condition.

THERE WAS NO ducking it.

No sneaking over to Velda's and avoiding the mess and the time and the trouble, and playing the Little Man Who Wasn't There. Harrin had died next to me, pushing me down to safety, taking three bullets likely intended for me, and maybe that oath he took a long time ago about protecting others from harm had still held some sway over him.

The only thing that went fast was how long it took for Pat Chambers to get there. He beat the lab boys to the scene, and I met him as he climbed from the rider's side of the unmarked that pulled up in the street, siren blaring and cherry top painting the already shell-shocked bystanders a shade of red rivaling the blood they'd been gawking at.

"Man," I said, "that's service."

"Normally," he grumbled, "I'd have left this to the night-tour boys. But I have standing orders that when Mike Hammer's name comes up, I get a call."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

He had a rumpled, got-dressed-in-a-hurry look, and something smudgy red under his ear.

"What's this?" I said, and worked my thumb on the smear. "Looks like Helen DiVay's shade."

He grinned and damn near blushed and said, "Cut it, man. This is serious."