Микки Спиллейн - The Delta Factor

“Yes.”

“Any opinions?”

Her face took on a straightforward expression then. “Since you don’t want facts, you must know about him.”

I nodded.

“He was a pig,” she said. “I don’t like pigs.”

“How?”

“If he had a choice to be nice or nasty, he’d be rotten.”

“This from personal experience?”

“He couldn’t have enough money to buy me, Morgan. He tried, though. I told him once that I had a couple of friends… real friends… I could talk to them and he’d never be able to say anything again. He knew I wasn’t fooling.”

“What did he pull?”

Her eyes widened blandly and she said, “Morgan, unless you’ve seen real filth, you can’t imagine what kind of a person Gorman Yard could be. Oh, it wasn’t only him. He had to associate with his own kind. They can only stand each other anyway… no one else will have anything to do with them. I saw him with people I knew about. Some I didn’t know, but they had to be like him. I was surprised Old Gussie even let him in her place, but lately, she isn’t as particular as she was. If she ever knew about that creep he used to shack up with she’d flip.”

“What creep?”

“Ever see a lizard stare at you, Morgan?”

I shrugged.

“Garfish do it too. They rise to the top like a small submarine and stare at you with those damn horrible eyes and if you haven’t got a gun to shoot them with they just go back down again and it’s like you had been eaten alive with those eyes.” She took a quick swallow of her drink and balanced the glass on the palm of one hand. “When I was a kid my uncle used to take me fishing. I remember the gars.”

“Who was this guy, Bernice?”

“Beats me. He didn’t poke his head out very often. He was there for a while, then he was gone. I saw him across the airshaft from Lily Temple’s room a couple of times. She was afraid of him too.” She paused, thinking, then said, “He gave you that itchy feeling that he was hooked on H. You know, that trapped-rat sort of thing? Only he wasn’t. I’ve seen too many of them. He didn’t take any trips into never-never land. It looked like he was already there.”

“Maybe they were in business together,” I suggested.

“Not Gorman Yard. He was a loner. I’d say this guy was on the run and Yard was taking advantage of it.”

“Yard was on the run too.”

“Not like this one was. What gets me is that his kind doesn’t get scared easily. I wouldn’t want to mess with him. If he and Yard were working a deal, I didn’t get it. Anyway, he wasn’t there long. Maybe a couple of weeks at the most.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know what Yard bought at the deli. I know when he quit bringing in all those goodies. He was buying for two; then all of a sudden he quit and it was pretty soon after that the cops picked him up and slapped him in the cooler.”

“You mentioned some others,” I said.

“More creeps,” she told me. “That guy was plain looking for trouble. You know, he starts hanging out with some of the shooters Whitey Tass keeps around, angling for an introduction to the big man himself, and he’s damn lucky he got picked up by the fuzz before Whitey got sore. He runs too big an operation in the city to be bugged by a pig like Yard. One day Lou Steubal tried to get an inside track with Whitey, levering him on account of what Whitey did to his sister, and they found Lou in the drink. It looked like Lou got gassed up and fell in, but don’t try to tell me that. Whitey had him tapped out.”

“Nice people.”

“And now you’re asking around. Could I ask why?”

“Sure, you could.”

“But you’re not about to tell me.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Like the man said, Bernice, a little bit of information can be a bad thing.”

She gave me that twisted little grin again and nodded. “You’re right, of course. I don’t really want to know except out of curiosity. But can I guess?”

“If you like.”

Bernice studied her glass, drained half of it and set it on the floor beside the chair. “You lived in the house and Gorman Yard lived there too. He was there first, so I’ll suppose that he left something there, came back to get it and spotted you. Maybe he turned on the heat and got you nailed.

I shook my head and finished my drink.

“Then I’ll suppose this,” she said. “When those Treasury Agents shook Gussie’s place down and found that sailor with a load of H on him, then uncovered your little nest egg in a general search and grabbed you, it was because Yard knew you were there, but blew the whistle on the sailor, hoping to get you running so he could pick up the loot you had hidden.”

“That’s a good suppose if it were true,” I told her.

Her impish eyes twinkled at me. “I was born in that house, Morgan. That place you hid all that cash wasn’t new to me. I used to keep things there when I was a kid. My old man built it to hide the booze from my mother. How did you find it?”

I shrugged and said nothing.

“Well, there weren’t too many places to hide anything in that fleabag. You didn’t have much choice. What gets me is where the rest of it is. Gussie ripped up everything but the foundations looking for it after they got you.”

“Maybe you have an idea.”

“Sure,” she grinned. “You’re not one to keep all your eggs in one basket. The rest of it never was there or I would have found it. I went back and poked around in all my old hiding places too.”

“I hate to have been such a disappointment, kid.”

“You weren’t. It was fun.” She paused, then said, “It’s been an odd conversation, Morgan. Did I say anything important?”

“Possibly,” I told her. “How badly did you want that money?”

“Really, not at all. I do all right.”

“Care to earn a few bucks?”

“How?”

“Think you can find out why Gorman Yard wanted to get close to Whitey Tass?”

“That’s a maybe, Morgan. Those people don’t like to talk much, even to one of their own. I can give it a try, though. I’ve had… dealings with one the last six months.” Then her eyes met mine and locked seriously. “But not for money, Morgan. I’ll do it, but not for money.”

“I don’t like being obligated, baby.”

“Can you like me a little? I’ve never really been liked before.”

“You’ve been loved at one time, sugar.”

“Not love, Morgan. I just want to be liked. I want one real friend who isn’t afraid.”

“I’m scared all the time,” I said.

“But not afraid. That’s why you’re on the outside no matter what they tried to do to you.”

I felt the smile tug at my mouth and threw her a wink. “I like you, kitten. That I really do.”

“Then you know I’m going to keep you here tonight. I don’t want any of the things I… have to do with other people. I just want to be held and liked and to talk about little things, listen to some music, hold hands and maybe fall asleep on your shoulder until the sun comes up. Do you know what I mean, Morgan.”

I got up and walked over to her and ran my fingers through the silken clouds of her hair and looked into the funny, friendly eyes and nodded.

“I know,” I said.

I got out of the cab in front of my hotel and stared at the nearly empty streets of the city that hadn’t struggled back to life yet. A wet mist slicked the streets, and the tops of the buildings were smothered by low-hanging clouds.

When I reached my room I slept until two in the afternoon, then got on the phone to Miami and laid out my program with Art Keefer to get me and Kim out of the country. He thought I was nuts picking the place I wanted to go when a few better ones were another day’s flight further south where a guy could hide out all his life if he wasn’t an Eichmann and had the money to grease a few palms. But I insisted and he went along with me like he always did and told me when and where we’d meet. The second call got me Little Joe Malone, who promised to deliver a few necessary items to a locker in the bus station with the key left downstairs at the desk for me.