Mickey Spillane - My Gun Is Quick

"How many more to go?"

"Days and days worth, Mike. It will take a long time, I'm afraid."

"We have to try it."

"Uh-huh. Don't worry, I'll keep at it. Incidentally, in three of the places that happened to be located fairly close to each other, someone else had been looking for a camera."

My cup stopped half-way to my mouth. "Who?"

"A man. I pretended that it might have been a friend of mine who was shopping for me and got one clerk to remember that the fellow had wanted a commercial camera for taking street pictures. Apparently the kind I was after. He didn't look any over; just asked, then left.."

It was a hell of a thought, me letting Lola run head on into something like that. "It may be a coincidence. He may have shopped just those three places. I don't like it."

"I'm not afraid, Mike. He..."

"If it wasn't a coincidence he might shop the other places and find that you were ahead of him. If he guessed what you were doing he could wait up for you. I still don't like it."

She became grim then, letting a shadow of her former hardness cloud her face for an instant. "Like you said, Mike, I'm a big girl. I've been around long enough to stand any guy off if he pulls something on the street. A knee can do a guy a lot of damage in the right places, and if that doesn't work, well... one scream will bring a lot of heroes around to take care of any one guy no matter how tough he is."

I had to laugh at that. "O.K., O.K., you'll get by. After that speech I'll even be afraid to kiss you good night."

"Mike, with you I'm as powerless as a kitten and as speechless as a giraffe. Please kiss me good night, huh?"

"I'll think about it. First, we have work to do."

"What kind, I hope... ?"

"Look at pictures. I have a batch of pics Nancy had tucked away. They're pictures and I paid for them, so I'll look at them."

We cleared the mess off the table and I went in for the box. I took them out of the box and piled half in front of Lola and half in front of me. When we took our seats I said, "Give every one a going-over. They may mean something, they may not. They weren't where they should have been, that's why I'm thinking there might be something special in the lot."

Lola nodded and picked a snapshot from the top of her pile. I did the same. At first I took in every detail, looking for things out of the ordinary, but the pictures followed such a set pattern that my inspection grew casual and hurried. Faces and more faces. Smiles, startled expressions, deliberate poses. One entire group taken from the same spot on Broadway, always the same background.

In two of them the man in the picture tried to shield his face. The camera was fast enough to stop the motion, but the finger on the shutter trigger was too slow to prevent him getting his hand in the way. I went to put one back on the discard pile, looking at it again carefully and put it aside instead. The portion of the face that showed looked familiar.

Lola said, "Mike...

She had her lip between her teeth and was fingering a snap. She turned it around and showed it to me, a lovely young girl smiling at a middle-aged man who was frowning at the camera. My eyes asked the question. "She was one of the girls, Mike. We... went on dates together."

"The guy?"

"I don't know."

I took the snap and laid it face down with the other. Five minutes later Lola found another. The girl was a poetic creature, about thirty, with the statuesque lines of a mannequin. The guy she was with could have been a standin for a blimp. He was short and fat, in clothes that tried to make him look tall and thin and only made him look shorter and fatter.

"She's another one, Lola?"

"Yes. She didn't last long in New York. She played it smart and married one of the suckers. I remember the man, too. He runs a gambling joint uptown. Some sort of a small-time politician, too. He used to call for her in an official car."

It was coming now. Little reasons that explained the why. Little things that would be big things before long. My pile was growing nicely. Maybe every picture on the table had a meaning I couldn't see. Maybe most were just camouflage to discourage hasty searchers.

I turned the snap over, and lightly pencilled on the back near the bottom was "See S-5." There was more to it than the picture, evidently.

Could it be nothing more than an office memo... or did Nancy have a private file of her own?

My breath started coming in quick, hot gasps. It was like seeing a half-finished picture and recognizing what it would be like when it was finished. If this was an indication... I pulled the remaining photos closer and went to work on them.

The next one came out of my deal. I got it because I was lucky and I was hating some people so damn hard that their faces drew an automatic response. The picture was that of a young couple, no more than twenty. They smiled into the camera with a smile that was youth with the world in its pocket and a life to be led. But they're weren't important.

It was the background that was important. The faces in the background. One was that of my client, his hand on the knob of a door, a cane swinging jauntily over his arm. Behind him was Feeney Last in a chauffeur's uniform, closing the door of the car. It wasn't just Feeney, it was the expression on his face. It was a leer of hateful triumph, a leer of expectancy as he eyed a guy in a sports outfit that had been about to step past him.

The guy was pop-eyed with fear, his jaw hanging slack, and even at that moment he had started to draw back as he saw Feeney.

He should have been scared. The guy's name was Russ Bowen and he was found shot full of holes not long after the picture was taken.

I could feel the skin pulling tight around my temples and my lips drew back from my teeth. Lola said something, but I didn't hear her. She grabbed my hand, made me look at her. "What is it. What is it, Mike? Please... don't look that way!"

I shoved the picture in front of her and pointed to the little scene in the background. "This guy's dead, Lola. The other guy is Feeney Last."

Her eyes came up slowly, unbelievingly. She shook her head. "Not Feeney... it can't be, Mike."

"Don't tell me, kid. That's Feeney Last. It was taken when he worked for Mr. Berin. I couldn't miss that greaseball in a million years "

She stared at me hard. Her eyes drifted back to the picture and she shook her head again. "His name is Miller. Paul Miller. He--he's one of the men who supplies girls to... the houses."

"What?"

"That's right. One of the kids pointed him out to me some time ago. He used to work the West Coast, picking them up there and sending them East to the syndicate. I'm positive that's him!"

Nice going, Feeney, I thought, very nice going. Keep a respectable job as a cover-up for the other things. Good heavens, if Berin-Grotin in all his insufferable pride ever knew that, he would have had Feeney hanging by the thumbs! I looked at the snap again, saw my client unaware of the little scene behind him, completely the man-about-town bent on an afternoon of mild pleasure. It was a good shot, this one. I could see the lettering on the door there. BAR ENTRANCE, ALBINO CLUB, it read. Apparently Mr. Berin's favorite haunt. He'd have his cup of good cheer while five feet away a murder was in progress.

"Do you know the other guy?"

"Yes. He ran some houses. They found him shot, didn't they?"

"That's right. Murdered. This thing goes back a long way."

Lola closed her eyes and dropped her head forward. Her face was relaxed in sadness. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. "There's something on the back, Mike."

It was another symbol. This one said "See T-9-20." If that dash stood for "to," it meant eleven pages of something was connected with this. The details of the Russ Bowen murder maybe? Could there be a possibility that the redhead had come up with something covering that murder? Ye gods, if that were true, no wonder Feeney was on her neck. How many angles could there be to this thing?