Mickey Spillane - My Gun Is Quick

The guy had been standing near the door watching me silently. I heard him grunt a few times, then: "You know something? This place wasn't like this when they moved out."

I stopped what I was doing. "How's that?"

"I came in to see if they left the walls here and all this junk on the floor was stacked in one corner. Looks like somebody kicked it around."

"Yeah?"

He spat on the floor. "Yeah."

"Who ran the business?"

"Forgot his name." He shrugged. "Some character on his uppers. Guess he did pretty good after a while. One day he packs in here with a new convertible, tells me he's moving out and scrams. Never gimme a dime."

"What about the people that worked for him?"

"Hell, they was all out. They came in here that night and raised a stink. What was I supposed to do, pay their wages? I was lucky I tagged the guy, so I got the rent. Never said nothing to nobody, he didn't."

I stuck a match in my mouth and chewed the end off it. When I gave one last quick glance I walked out. "That does it." He shut the door and played with the switch box again, then stepped into the elevator after me and we started down.

"Get what you come for?" he asked.

"I didn't come for anything special. I'm, er, checking on the owner. He owed some money and I have to collect--for films."

"You don't say! Come to think of it, there's some stuff down in the cellar yet. One of the kids what worked there asked me if she could park it there. I let her when she slipped me a buck."

"She?"

"Yeah, a redhead. Nice kid."

He spat through the grill again and it splattered against the wall. "Do you ever read the papers?" I asked him.

"Funnies sometimes. Just the pictures. Broke my glasses four years ago and never got new ones. Why, what's going on?"

"Nothing. Let's see that stuff downstairs."

Before he could suggest it I came across with another five and it went in the pocket with the other. His grin showed teeth that were brown as mud. We passed the main floor and jolted to a stop at the basement. The air was damp and musty, almost like the morgue, but here was the smell of dirt and decay and the constant whirr of rat feet running along the pipes and timbers. There weren't any lights, but the guy had a flashlight stashed in a joint and he threw the beams around the walls. Little beady eyes looked back at me and ran off, to reappear again farther down. I got the creeps.

He didn't seem to mind it at all.

"Down back, I think." He pointed the flash at the floor and we stepped over crates, broken furniture and the kind of trash that accumulates over a span of years. We stopped by a bin and he poked around with a broom handle, scaring up some rats but nothing else. Beyond that was a row of shelves piled to capacity and he knocked the dust off some of the papers with a crack of the stick. Most of them were old bills and receipts, a few dusty ledgers and a wealth of old paper that had been saved up carefully. I opened a couple of boxes to help out. One was full of pencil stubs; the other some hasty sketches of nudes. They weren't very good.

The light got away from me before I could shove them back and the super said, "Think this is it." I held the light while he dragged out a corrugated cardboard box tied with twine. A big SAVE was written across the front in red crayon. He nodded and pursed his mouth, looking for a rat to spit tobacco juice at. He saw one on a pipe and let loose. I heard the rat squeaking all the way to the end, where he fell off and kicked around in some papers. The stuff he chewed must have been poison.

I pulled the twine off and opened the top. Inside was another box tied with lighter cord that broke easily enough. My hand was shaking a little as I bent back the cover and I pulled the light closer.

There were pictures in this one, all neatly sorted in two rows and protected by layers of tissue paper. Both sides of the box were lined with blotters to absorb any moisture, and between each group of shots was an index card bearing the date they were taken.

Perhaps I expected too much. Perhaps it was the thought of the other pictures that were stolen from me, perhaps it was just knowing that pictures fitted in somewhere, but I held my breath expectantly as I lifted them out.

Then I went into all the curse words I knew. All I had was another batch of street photos with smiling couples waving into the camera or doing something foolish. I was so damn mad I would have left them if I hadn't remembered that they cost me five bucks and I might as well get something for my dough. I tucked the box under my arm and went back to the elevator.

When we got to the street floor the super wanted to know if I felt like signing the after-hours book and I scratched J. Johnson in it and left.

At eight-fifteen I called Pat's home. He still hadn't come in, so I tried the office. The switchboard located him and the minute I heard his voice I knew there was trouble. He said, "Mike? Where are you?"

"Not far from your place. Anything new?"

"Yes." His words were clipped. "I want to speak to you. Can you meet me in the Roundtown Grill in ten minutes?"

"I'll be there. What's up?"

"Tell you then. Ten minutes." Someone called to him and he hung up. Ten minutes to the second I reached the Roundtown and threaded my way to the back and found Pat sitting in the last booth. There were lines of worry across his forehead that hadn't been there before, giving him an older look. He forced a grin when he saw me, and waved me to sit down.

Beside him he had a copy of the evening paper and he spread it out on the table. He tapped the headline. "Did you have anything to do with this?"

I shoved a butt in my mouth and fired it. "You know better than that, Pat."

He rolled the paper up into a ball and threw it aside, his mouth twisting into a snarl. "I didn't think so. I had to be sure. It got out some way and loused things up nice."

"How?"

A waiter set two beers down in front of us and Pat polished his off before the guy left and ordered another, quick. "I'm getting squeezed, pal. I'm getting squeezed nice. Do you know how many rotten little jerks there are in this world? There must be millions. Nine-tenths of them live in the city with us. Each rotten little jerk controls a block of votes. Each rotten little jerk wants something done or not done. They make a phone call to somebody who's pretty important and tell him what they want. Pretty soon that person gets a lot of the same kind of phone calls and decides that maybe he'd better do something about it, and the squeeze starts. Word starts drifting up the line to lay off or go slow, and it's the kind of a word that's blocked up with a threat that can be made good.

"Pretty, isn't it? You get hold of something that should be done and you have to lay off." The second beer followed the first and another was on its way. I had never seen Pat so mad before.

"I tried to be a decent cop," he ranted. "I try to stick to the letter of the law and do my duty. I figure the taxpayers have a say in things, but now I begin to wonder. It's coming from all directions--phone calls, hints that travelled too far to trace back, sly reminders that I'm just a cop and nothing but a captain, which doesn't carry too much weight if certain parties feel like doing something about it."

"Get down to cases, Pat."

"The D.A. called Ann Minor's death murder. He's above a fix and well in the public eye, so there's no pressure on him. The murder can be investigated if necessary, but get off the angles. That's the story. Word got out about the book, but not the fact that it's in code."

I tapped the ashes in the tray and squinted at him. "You mean there are a lot of boys mixed up with call-girls and the prostitution racket who don't want their names to get out, don't you?"

"Yes."