Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

“The factory lists only three hundred produced. I doubt if more than six are in this country. An advertiser in a gun magazine has been offering three grand for a model the past year and hasn’t had any offers yet.”

“And the bullets?”

“Crocker was the only one who had them. If that ballistics cop hadn’t checked by my shop with the spent slug I never would have known about it, but I spotted that special alloy as soon as I saw it. I even ran a spectro test to be sure. I told the cop I couldn’t help him and I’ll be damned if I know of anybody who can. They were hitting all the gunsmiths and I wised up Crocker to fake them out and started running down that lead right away.”

“Tell me again,” the Frenchman said.

“Sure.” He lit a cigarette and sat back with the butt dangling from his lips, making it bob as he spoke. “Crocker had one box of those shells in his shop since the end of the war. This guy came in and bought six of them at a buck apiece. Crocker tried to talk to him about the gun, but all he said was that he had had it for a long time and the way crime was going up, he thought he ought to put some bullets in it. He remembered him, all right, a tall guy who needed a haircut, had on an old raincoat and wore eyeglasses. The thing that got Crocker though, was that he didn’t look old enough to be having a gun after the last war.”

“I see.”

Schmidt grinned, puffing on the cigarette. The Frenchman wished those damned foreigners would use their hand when they smoke. “There’s something even better,” Schmidt said.

“He had a bandage on his left forearm that came off while he was looking at the slugs. Under it was a scab that covered a fresh tattoo.”

Verdun’s eyes went bright. “He get a look at it?”

“No, but it was about the size of a quarter and could have been a star. He wasn’t sure.”

“That’s good enough,” the Frenchman told him. “You’ll be getting a check in the mail.”

Schmidt left and Verdun sat down at the phone. It was better than good enough. There weren’t that many tattoo parlors around and they’d be able to cover every one of them from coast to coast within twenty-four hours. He picked up the receiver, got his party and issued the instructions. The wheels of the great machine ground into action.

It was hot, humid, the damned air conditioner in the sedan wasn’t working right, and Papa Menes was aggravated at having to go to Homestead to get tied in on a conference call with the big board where he had to listen and talk instead of being able to see people face to face and challenge expressions that could reveal motives and desires. He reached the coin booth five minutes before the prescribed time and went in and made believe he was making a call, his finger on the receiver cradle so nobody could tie up the line.

The call lasted twenty-five minutes, during which time he learned where the shaky areas were with the new generation of punks, who, sensing the disruption of the organization, had disregarded the respect they should have shown, put away the fear they should have known, and had begun edging in where they didn’t belong. No one group had shown its hand yet, but it was beginning to take off its glove to operate more sensitively. The board wasn’t at all pleased with the New York affair. The loss of Leon Bray and the infinite amount of information he had had at his command was immeasurable and they hoped Mark Shelby would be able to duplicate everything with the help of Papa Menes and their hope was tantamount to an imperial order of a tyrant ruler with only one penalty for failure.

Papa Menes assured them Shelby would have no difficulty. He was, after all, their own protégé, with a remarkable memory, and although he never kept any incriminating records, he would have sufficient coded notes to work from. He, Papa Menes, would see to it. Meanwhile, the whole thing might break wide open faster than they realized since the Frenchman was personally conducting a search for the person who could point the way.

When he hung up he spat out something dirty at the phone wishing the bastards at the conference table could hear it. Fucking pigs, he thought. The New York operation accounted for as much as all the rest put together and he had run it efficiently for more years than most of them had lived and here they were laying the threat on him. Those cocksuckers wanted to try him out and they were going to get a mouthful bigger than they could handle. Ten years ago he had seen it coming when they gave him that birthday party in Chicago and he had prepared for it. He had his own people right inside their most protected places and they still didn’t know about it. Let it come to a showdown and they’d know what a gang war was really like.

It’s just too bad, he thought, that he didn’t let Joey Grif fire a bazooka rocket right into that damn room while he was on the phone with them. Joey was right across the street on the top floor of a building just two stories lower than the one where the conferences were held in supposed safety, but the angle of elevation had already been carefully calibrated and Joey sure wanted to shoot that bazooka.

Papa Menes smiled at the thought and felt better. He was still in control and could prove it with one call to Joey at the right time. They were pretty close to Miami and he wondered if they ought to go into the city and look up a couple of girls. That last one had been pretty damn good. On second thought, he wasn’t all that young any more and had to ration his hard-ons. He’d hate to get all mentally aroused and only have a limp dick frustrate him. Yeah, he’d wait another day or two then really stuff it to that broad. She really liked it up the ass and when they liked it, he liked it better too.

He told Artie Meeker to take him home.

“You thought fast, Helen,” Gill told her.

“I had to. I was pretty sure somebody had already reached him and I didn’t want him putting it to me. Right now he thinks he has a loyal company girl working for him.”

“Has he?”

“As long as they pay my salary I keep the legitimate workings of Boyer-Reston confidential. Nobody has subpoenaed me or has me on a witness stand.”

“That’s the way it should be.”

“But I don’t have to live with them.”

“You don’t have to stay there either,” Gill said.

“Don’t be funny. What could I offer anybody else in the way of references?”

“Guess you have a point there. Any action in the office right now?”

“Not the kind you would expect. Mr. Verdun came in long enough to get something out of the safe and left. He didn’t say when he’d be back. He had no calls and no visitors since. All we’ve been doing is sending out invoices and taking orders.” She paused, her eyes worried. “Gill... what’s happening?”

“You read the papers.”

“Is it... really like that?”

“People keep saying there is no Mafia. No such thing as organized crime either.” Burke let a wry grin play around his mouth and took a long pull on his cigarette. “I wonder why all the biggies have their armies out while they stay in the bunkers. They’ve been chewing up the phone lines trying to find out which one of them is doing the pushing and all the alliances are being strengthened. They have couriers and spies strung out from one coast to another and you can damn well bet there is one hell of a price for the brains behind the revolt.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“You can never tell. They’ll probably close their ranks on an individual basis until they know for sure what’s going on. Otherwise they’ll just hole up somewhere while their pros tackle the job. Nothing different from any other revolutionary tactic.”

“But the police... they’re protecting them. The papers said...”