Mickey Spillane - The Big Bang

Blood-spattered, still tied to the damn chair, I got onto my back and spread my feet apart as far as the ropes would allow, making them taut, and shot the ropes apart with the .45. Uncle Miltie, Pinky Lee, and Jesus had gone scrambling back toward the tables under a balcony overhang, and Wren had disappeared, I didn't know to where, but I somehow got the ropes and the now-broken chair off me without anybody killing me, and I stayed low as I hustled for the tiki bar. With no shoes on, I sort of skated over the dance floor, but picked up speed on the carpet under the tables with the stacked chairs, whose legs weren't dancing right now, then I dove over the counter and landed on the floor back there, breathing hard.

You're doing fine, I told myself. You're doing fine. But who are you? What was my name? What was my fucking name?

But then the floor began to move—it was rippling, it was breathing, and I looked up and saw a thatched roof and I was in that island village again, hiding in that hut with the steaming jungle and Christ knew how many Japs out there, and I could hear the mocking cries of the birds up in those trees with their bladelike leaves and the rough bark and Christ it was hot, steaming hot, and when the Jap leaned through the window, I screamed at him, a scream as shrill as any jungle bird, but he was a cartoon Jap, you're a sap Mr. Jap in the Popeye cartoons, and I stopped screaming and started laughing as I put a .45 slug in his eye, and when he flopped over the counter, he was the Oriental guy with the Fu Manchu mustache, but he still had his goddamn eye shot out.

Mike Hammer. I'm Mike Hammer.

I got to my feet but stayed in a crouch, and went out through the bartender access and moved under the balcony, opposite where I'd sat for that friendly cup of coffee with the Snowbird. Music was blaring, the Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction," even an old Stan Kenton man like me knew that song, and I was going to get me some satisfaction, all right. I was going to hold on to my marbles and stay focused, even as the Day-Glo colors on the wall pulsed, even as my own movement made rainbow trails, like I was writing my own name in the air with my every motion.

I knew where I was headed. Unless there had been reinforcements, there were three of them left: Wren, Jesus the Marine, and Pinky Lee the stocky shit with the shotgun. I ignored the throbbing wall I moved along, and I stayed very low when I came out at the edge of the dance floor near the steps up onto the platform stage. That weird movie was still flickering and I tried to resist the images, rotting dog, Vogue cover girl, and stormed up those steps and hopped up into the suspended Plexiglas Go-Go Girl booth.

" There he is! " somebody shouted.

Wren was out there in the middle of the dance floor, pointing with a gun in his lacy-cuffed hand, only he was a white bird now except for that hand, a snowbird or a pigeon, but an armed one. He fired at me, but the slug whanged off the Plexiglas. Out from under the balcony at stage right came the Marine, on the run, shooting, and I reached around the side of my three-sided Plexiglas shield and fired at his head but caught him in the throat instead, but that did it, sent him down in a gurgling dance to join the sprawled headless girl who no longer heard the beat.

The guy with the shotgun had made it onto the stage, without my seeing it, and he was getting in close, because with that sawed-off he needed to get in close, and I used all my momentum to swing the cage, and it caught him in the chest and sharply swung up the shotgun, which went off, sheering off the front of his face and leaving him a ghastly wet mask and still alive enough to scream until I leaned out and shattered his skull with a .45 slug and put him out of his misery.

But I lost my balance taking that shot, and dumped myself onto the stage floor, a slug slamming into the bass drum just behind me.

Wren was still out there, in the middle of the dance floor, not a bird but a man now, having taken aim and missed. A railing across the front of the stage blocked my shot at him, and I couldn't risk standing and presenting an easy target, so I fired twice, up at where the mirrored ball was attached to the ceiling, and fired again and finally the thing came down, fast as gravity, and shatter-slammed into the dance floor, not right on top of him, but close and sending shards of glass flying.

I had only one slug left and no clip, so I was counting on that to be the distraction I needed to give me my shot. Then I was on my feet, with the .45 poised to shoot, when I saw him standing with arms outstretched, the revolver limp in his right hand. Then he let the gun slip to the floor and he staggered a step and raised his hand to his neck where the jagged shard of glass was embedded, catching the flashing lights to wink at him and me and no one else, because the rest of them were dead.

When he jerked it from his throat, the blood geysered in a perfect arc that painted a distant tabletop a colorful shimmering red that made a startling psychedelic effect when the pulsing orange and purple lights hit it.

Unless I was just seeing things.

I FOUND MY THINGS. My hat, my coat, my wallet, my shoes, all piled in what had been Jay Wren's office. There was a couch in that office and I would have liked to stretch out and wait and ride this thing out. But at some point, employees would show up to open the Pigeon for business, and despite my unsteady grasp on reality, I somehow knew the club would open at 10:30 P.M., and realized I needed not to be there.

Apparently I remembered to go in the men's room and wash off the blood spatter, because when I got to Velda's, I didn't have any on my face and not even my clothes. She had just got home from the office and was surprised, and relieved, to see me. But she knew at once something was wrong.

"Mike—what...?"

"I came in a cartoon cab."

"You what?"

"I need a bed. You need to stay with me."

She did. Sometimes sitting like a visitor at a patient's hospital bedside, sometimes curled up next to me with all her clothes on. I would wake now and then, with a start, and see her there in the crack of light from the door she'd left ajar on the hall, and that would settle me.

I managed to sleep, and the dreams were colorful and had Woody Woodpecker and Hitler in them, but otherwise no more surreal than usual. I don't remember telling her I'd been slipped acid-laced sugar cubes, but I must have, because she already knew when I finally rolled myself out of the rack.

I figure it was about twelve hours since I'd been dosed, and felt pretty much my normal self, whatever the hell that was. Velda sat down with me in her breakfast nook, around eight A.M., and we had coffee and I was able to eat some scrambled eggs and toast.

After the meal, I told her what had happened.

"I'm not really sure what went down," I said. "I could have imagined most or all of it, after the LSD kicked in."

We were still at the table in the nook, on our second cups of coffee. She said, "Pretty sure Jesus and Pinky Lee weren't there."

"Don't bet on it."

She frowned. "Mike—what do we do about this? Do we bring Pat in?"

I shook my head. "I left no witnesses and if even half of what I remember really went down, I'd make a full-course meal for Assistant D.A. Traynor."

Her frown deepened. "You were using your .45, though. What about ballistics?"

I patted her hand. My kind of girl. "I changed barrels last month, doll, remember? That's not in the police files. Nothing to match. I'll toss this barrel down a sewer and let the rats ride it as a raft."

That got a laugh out of her, tiny, but a laugh. "With your way of looking at things, Mike, it's no wonder you took a bad trip."