Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

Ollie, Matt Stevenson and Woodie were on the next level where they could command every entranceway and trap any intruder in a crossfire.

On the top landing Lupe and the Cobra were playing cards with a miniature deck because it was always dull duty when they pulled a tour around the castle. They were going to be glad when everything moved out to Long Island all on one floor and walled in with a bar at hand and a cottage available so they could sneak in some broads.

Leon Bray felt very secure, indeed.

He didn’t know that downstairs Jan was covering Lucien with his bloody body, nor that Lucien’s horrified eyes finally knew what it was like to have an incredibly sharp blade drawn across his throat.

Ollie, Matt Stevenson and Woodie never even smelled the gas that touched their lungs with the devastating finger of death. They only knew the fierce spasm that tried to jerk their bodies apart at the same time it reached down their throats with fingers of excruciating pain that grabbed their intestines and pulled them out through their throats. Their weapons made a clatter as they fell to the floor, but not loud enough to alert the others one floor up.

Lupe saw the thing first and since it was nothing like he had ever seen before, just gaped instead of going for his gun, and by the time he thought of it the top of his head blew off when there was a soft plop from the landing. The Cobra almost lived up to his name, spinning with snakelike speed, his body lunging to one side while he tried to identify and aim for his target. The apparition had anticipated him and the second plop took away his gun, hand and all. The third went into his mouth and made a weird painting in blood and brains on the pale green wall behind him.

He took off the gas mask and wiped the sweat from his face, then put it back on again. No reason to take chances. It would be another five minutes before the ventilators cleared the stuff out enough for safety. He looked at his watch, waiting until the time was up, then slid the mask off and stuck it under his belt.

Ten minutes later the intercom on the stand clicked on and Leon Bray said, “The car ready, Lupe?”

“All set,” he said in a voice that matched that of the body on the floor.

The pencil-thin line of light from under the door dimmed, a set of latches clicked and Leon Bray came out, a briefcase under one arm. He used a key to turn one final lock before he turned around, ready to tell his bodyguard to take him home.

He tried to scream, but a vicious backhand chop caught him in the throat and the scream stayed paralyzed in his lungs. He hit the wall, started to slide to the wall, his instinct for survival making him claw the Beretta out of the kidskin shoulder holster he wore. For a moment he thought he had won and felt a flash of triumph deaden the pain in his chest.

It was only the briefest of flashes. The other hand that wrapped around his was too strong and it turned the Beretta in against his sternum and the twisting motion forced his own finger to squeeze off the leaden pellet that penetrated bone and flesh, hit his spine and ricocheted through the aorta.

He knew his keys were being taken from his pocket, but death was too imminent to cause him any concern. The door beside him was unlocked, the three sticks of dynamite carefully positioned and a lit match held to the tip of the length of slow-burning fuse.

Baldie Foreman laid down his cards and said, “Gin.”

Across the table, in the shabby furnished apartment, Vito Bartoldi penciled in the score and tallied it up. “I still got you,” he told his partner. He picked up the cards ready to deal again, then looked at the cheap alarm clock propped on the empty chair. “What’s the matter with them damn fags? They shoulda called by now.”

“You better watch yourself with those two, Vito.”

“What the fuck did the Frenchman have to bring them up here for anyway?”

“They got talent. I wouldn’t wanna mess with them unless I had a chopper in my hands. We had a couple like that in Korea. The pissers usta hold hands in formations and made it in the same sleeping bag. Their Looie never bothered ’em. Damnedest killers I ever saw. Regular butchers and they loved it. Blood got ’em all sexed up. Y’know, they both got decorated.”

“Well they oughta called. They’re ten minutes late.”

“So Bray’s working overtime.”

“Bray’s a fuckin’ machine. He never goes overtime.”

“Then call ’em. That’s what they pay us for. To check.”

Vito threw a nervous glance at the clock again and tossed the cards on the table. He picked up the phone, dialed the building a half block away and heard the phone ring in his ear a dozen times. “No answer,” he said.

“Hang up and try again. Maybe you got a wrong number.”

He held the disconnect bar down, released it and tried again. The results were the same. “Something’s wrong,” he said.

They didn’t waste time trying to think about it. They both jumped up, yanked on their coats as they ran and cut diagonally across the street toward the building that had been so recently renovated. Nobody answered the bell, so Baldie used his key and unlocked the door, hoping it was a mistake and the fags had forgotten the routine.

But the door only opened a few inches. He had to push it the rest of the way because of the bodies that blocked the way and all he could say when he looked at the horror on the floor was “Son of a bitch?” He said it again when they stood on the next landing looking at the inert figures of Ollie, Matt Stevenson and Woodie, who lay there with blank staring eyes and mouths contorted in agony, their hands still clutching their own dead throats. The shattered remains that had once been a paper-thin glass container meant nothing to them and they both crunched the fragments underfoot as they went up to the next level with the automatics in their fists held ready to fire.

They saw the body of Leon Bray too, but it wasn’t the deaths that bothered them as much as what Frank Verdun was going to say. They were still thinking about it when they went into the office, hoping that somebody would be there that they could kill that could make up for their own laxity.

Both of them were so tense that they didn’t recognize the smell of burning powder until they got close to its source and just as Baldie tried to yell for them to get the hell out of there the spark hit the charge and the two hoods dissolved into chunks and shreds of multi-colored material mixed with metal and bits of paper.

Ten minutes later the fire department was hosing down the area and the police were herding the occupants of the other buildings to safe places. The only reporter on the scene happened to have an idea of what the building had been used for. He took off for the nearest phone and called the city desk.

She was about to open the door of the cubicle in the ladies room when she heard the two cleaning women come in and the fat one who worked on her floor say, “... and that Manny of mine should keep his big mouth shut I told him. Because he’s in that fancy Newhope Restaurant and sees her there with somebody he knows is no reason to call her boss.”

When she heard the word “Newhope” Helen Scanlon’s hand froze on the latch. That was where Gill Burke had taken her the night before last.

“So four calls he makes and he still can’t fine the man,” the voice went on. “I keep saying, ‘Manny, mind your own business,’ and he tells me to shut up. His own mother yet he tells to shut up.”

No, Helen thought, he didn’t reach Frank Verdun because he hadn’t been in the office and never gave a number where he could be reached. But he’d be in now because he always got in before everybody else. She waited until they were through changing the paper towels in the racks, gave them a few minutes to be out of sight, then walked down to her office.