Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

“Maybe you’d know where they were headed too?”

“I might.”

“Burke...”

Gill let his mouth relax in a hard grin. “Stackler worked at a warehouse in Brooklyn that belonged to the old Statto family. It’s been legit for a long time now, but it’s still available for a holding operation if the mob needs it.”

“Supposing Shatzi...”

“Was that bottle with the Frenchman’s belly button still there?”

“On the table. And the dead guy’s button was half...”

“They should have hit them together,” Burke told him. “They probably split up and Stackler missed. Shatzi didn’t. His mistake was trying to mutilate the body. That’s when Ferro probably coldcocked him and got him out of there.”

“Hell, what for? Why not hit him right there?”

“They want to speak to him first, Bill. They’re not about to take any chances.”

“Yeah,” Long said. “You coming?”

“No, not on this one, Bill.”

“Look, Lederer...”

“Screw Lederer. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Then where’re you heading?”

“Right now I’m going home and get my ass out of these wet clothes. After that I may make a few official inquiries and take a few official actions to justify my position on the staff of our great crusader.”

Long gave him one long disgusted look. “You know, I stayed on past my retirement day just to help out. I shoulda said the hell with it.”

Burke waited until he was gone, then tossed a bill on the table and followed him out. For a few minutes he huddled under the canopy until a cruising cab caught his wave, then they got in and Burke gave the driver his address.

Neither he nor Helen said a word until they were inside and while Gill was changing into his other clothes Helen idly flipped on the tape recorder that was built into the base of the phone. An odd voice strained by age came through reciting words that made no sense at all, then a few numbers and finished with a chuckle.

She hit the rewind button and was playing it back again when Gill said, “It’s a code.”

“Important?”

“Could be. Just something I’ve been working on a long time.”

“You’re not going to tell me about it though, are you?”

“Nope.” He finished buttoning his shirt and grinned at her. “Mad?”

Her shoulders made a gentle shrug. “My father did the same thing. He never wanted to worry my mother. Where are we going?”

“To intimidate somebody, sugar, and it isn’t we. It’s just me and I want you to stay right here until I get back.”

“But...”

He walked over and took her by her arms, his fingers kneading her gently. “We got this far, Helen. Let’s stretch it out as far as we can. It’s a lousy business and I can handle it better when I handle it alone.”

“Gill, Gill...” She smiled up at him, her eyes moist. “I love you, Gill. Be careful for me.”

“I’m a pretty good survivalist.”

“The odds are terrible.”

“Not when you can manipulate them,” he told her.

He leaned down, kissed her damp lips and let his fingers drift through her hair. “I won’t be long.”

The strident ringing of the phone interrupted her answer. He picked up the receiver and heard Bill Long’s voice say, “Burke... get your tail over here now. A prowl car will pick you up downstairs.”

“You get Shatzi?”

“We got better than Shatzi, soldier. Now get here before Lederer does so you can get a story ready. None of his boys had this location on the books at all.”

“The beat cop coulda told him.”

“Uh-uh. He’s a new one. The old regular retired out three months back like I should have done. Now get moving.”

“Yeah.” He hung up the phone and grabbed his raincoat. “I’ll have to do the intimidation bit later.”

“You still want me to wait?”

“It’ll help hurry things if I know you are.”

“I’ll be here,” she told him.

The strange part was, he could slip his forefinger as far in the hole as it would go, yet it didn’t hurt at all. There was a tingling sensation around the edges of the wound, something like when your hand falls asleep and down below there was a creeping numbness, but for Shatzi, it was all very pleasant.

He coughed and leaned up against the side of the building a moment to rest. He still had the thing in his hand and he looked at it again, a puckered obscenity indented in a little hill of fat. He frowned, trying to remember what had happened to the other one, but the thought didn’t come and he shrugged it off.

That stupid fat Case and the other guy. They must have thought he was a pushover. He could remember the sudden impact of something against his skull when he was bending over that guy in his room, the one who tried to jump him with a billy. So he was dumb there, but he was smarter when he woke up because he was on the floor in the back of a car and that guy Mack was wanting to kill him right there and Case wouldn’t let him do it. Twice that bastard Mack wanted to see if he’d come around and stuck a knife in his leg, but he didn’t move or let out a groan and when Mack went back to arguing with Case, Shatzi had slipped out the foreign switch blade from his sock and when the car pulled into the alley between the buildings he reached up and almost cut Mack’s head off before sticking the blade into Case’s chest. The slob was so fat he had to slam him three more times before he collapsed and as he did the grisly remains of Mack stirred, the head trying to twist with the shoulders and not quite making it, blood pumping and squirting like somebody squeezing a gory sponge. Then the little gun in his hand spit once and Shatzi felt the tiny fist action a little above his belt on the right side.

It hardly bothered him when he performed his ritual surgery on the two bodies.

Now he had to follow his plan. He had had one, he knew, but it wasn’t easy to remember. He was going to a place out west... a shack in tiny town nobody knew about and he could look at what he had in the bottle and know that once he had been bigger than them all. But he didn’t have the bottle any more. All he had was that sticky thing in his hand. He coughed again and sat down. He could hear police sirens in the distance, but they didn’t mean anything to him at all. He felt the hole in his side again and wiggled his finger there idly. There was a burst of rain that felt cool on his face and he tilted his head upward. Three other faces were looking down at him, but little by little they dulled to pale ovals and he felt himself toppling over.

The four police cruisers and the rain were enough to keep the curious back. Not being a residential area, only a handful bothered to see what the flashing lights were about, but since there wasn’t any apparent action, they kept moving. Only one who knew the diverse uses of the warehouse bothered to make a call that would be relayed to the higher echelon.

Gill Burke walked away from the two bodies in the rubber sheets and waited until the other morgue wagon drove up. A uniformed attendant hopped out of the back still shaking his head. Until now he thought he had seen everything. “What’s with that one?” Gill asked.

“Dead as hell. Took him a while, but he never had a chance. That slug turned his insides into muck. You know what he had in his hand?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Son of a bitch. What’re we supposed to do with it?”

“Guess you sew it back on the right party.”

“Beautiful. Just great.”

He heard Captain Long come up behind him, heard the terse, angry voice of Bob Lederer and spun around to give them both that bold, flat look that was so much a part of him again. Before Lederer could talk, Burke asked, “Got it figured out yet?”