Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

Before Mark could answer him, the old man hung up. Mark grinned at the dead phone, stuck it back in its cradle and felt good because the days of the whip the old man held were past and dead and the whip would be in his hands now. The only annoying part was that he couldn’t figure what the old slob had been talking about. Hell, it was pretty damn plain now who was the instigator of those initial raids on the organization. Only one hand was behind it... an experienced old pro who knew everybody’s move and could hire and train outside guns to carry out every damn detail with only one man to each kill. No wonder they could never put it together. But the original premise that came up at the meeting was correct. Only one hand that trained many. Only one motive... complete takeover of the organization. Government, even the underground one, was being confiscated by a dictator.

And Papa Menes was the only one who could have accomplished it so beautifully. For a second Mark felt the irritation come back again. The dirty old son of a bitch probably even figured his, Mark’s, own reaction and tried to use it against him. Only something went wrong. He was still alive and kicking back from topside.

That was always the trouble with revolutions, Mark thought, some lousy little thing didn’t stay in place, or somebody was late, or somebody decided to take a crap before going to the office and the big scheme never quite came off.

What was the most beautiful of all though, Mark told himself, was that his own plans had gone into operation years and years before Papa Menes had felt his own position jeopardized and decided to do something about it.

The pleasure of the thoughts he had just reviewed was making Mark Shelby horny and he felt himself starting to bulge against his pants. He squirmed so he wouldn’t be so uncomfortable, took a five dollar bill from his roll and when they reached the building he handed it to the driver and told him to keep the change.

He hoped Helga had some crazy innovation ready for him. This had to be a very special night.

A very special night.

When he turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open he knew it was going to be the wildest night of all, because Helga came off the couch in all her nakedly amazing glory, ran at him and jumped in his arms so hard he almost tumbled backward and while he was still struggling to regain his balance her mouth was all over him, her fingers tearing at his clothes and he was fighting to hold her back before she ripped him apart. It was as if she were trying to rape him and the thought shocked his loins into an immediate erection too sensitive to tolerate and he locked his arms around her and carried her into the other room and tossed her into the middle of the king-sized bed.

She bounced back before he could get a single button undone, her fingers clawing, little mewing sounds coming from wet lips that kissed every inch of flesh that became visible as she undressed him.

Finally he stopped resisting the aggressive demands she made and let himself go into a completely passive state, being the recipient of all the things she gorged herself on, lolling in the total splendor of absolute sexual fulfillment. He was asked to give nothing. All she wanted was for him to enjoy, to take, to spend, to rise to the heights of screaming physical pleasure where everything becomes blanked out in those nerve-shattering waves of orgiastic abandonment that left the body spasm-wracked and helpless.

He knew then, why it was called the little death.

His mind was too satiated to wonder what had encouraged the superb performance on her part. He lay spread-eagled on the bed, his formerly stiff member a humorless blob, his eyes slowly closing until he was asleep.

From the doorway, Helga watched him until she was sure he was in the exhausted embrace of sexual fatigue and let herself shiver finally, her body tight with fear and anxiety.

She had thought it was Nils coming in and she had prepared herself for her lover with all the ardor she could muster. Her bath had been scented, her hair had been carefully arranged and the handsome young man with the fluttery hands and falsetto voice had been skillful enough to electrify her mind and body with all the erotic technique he had accumulated over the past four years so that when he had left she was at an emotional peak that only a woman sensitized in the arts of sex could understand or a man so practiced and appreciative in its application could enjoy.

It had all been arranged for Nils and then that stupid lout who paid the bill walked in and she had to waste it all on him.

Draining the bastard wasn’t the hard part. Any five dollar whore could have done that. It was hiding her own fear that tore her insides out and depleted any emotion she thought she owned. Oh, it wasn’t the little gun he always carried. He had money enough on his person to warrant the protection it offered... no different from the jewelry salesman she used to know or that real estate broker from Phoenix she once serviced who only dealt in cash deals.

What scared the hell out of her was that magazine she had picked up with the paper... the special edition rushed out to capitalize on the monstrous things that had happened in Miami and Chicago... the one that carried the candid shot some itinerant photographer, dead now, had taken of the syndicate leaders coming out of a conference in the midtown hotel, and there in the nearby obscure background was the man she had thought to be an innocuous wholesale grocer from Trenton, New Jersey, when, in reality, he was Mark Shelby, suspected head man of the mob.

And Nils’ plane was late. He had been due in an hour ago. The apartment belonged to the naked man on the bed. He could have bought off the doorman so she couldn’t try to alert him. All she could do was play it by ear and hope to hell she wasn’t caught in the middle.

Helga was far from dumb. She had so much time on her hands she had to read everything to occupy the idle hours. She could think and she could speculate. Her past had incorporated enough diverse activities in the area outside the legal concept of normal living so that she could put fact and fiction together and glean a strip of truth that was enough to make brave men quake, and being only a woman, she not only quaked, she went to the bathroom when she didn’t even have to, like a kid watching a horror movie, and evacuated her emotions into a toilet bowl. While she wiped, she considered getting Shelby’s gun and killing him.

That was too risky. Helga wasn’t all that brave, either.

She could wait for Nils and let him kill Shelby.

But Nils wasn’t that brave, either. A great lay, a big talker, a fabulous body, but guts for a shootout he didn’t have.

All she could do was wait and hope some hidden gene inherited from their forebears, a gene with spunk and determination, would show up and between the two of them they could get away from the terror who lay limply on the bed for the moment, and trust that their mutual anxieties and knowledge of cowardice wouldn’t interfere with all those lovely sex games they had planned on playing.

Helga looked at the clock again.

Where the hell was that fucking airplane?

What would she do when it got here?

She could feel it all around her, an invisible force as though someone were stretching the air too tight. There was a tension in the city, in the way people moved, unconsciously nervous. Unreleased energy was back in the night sky again, rumbling with displeasure and spitting intermittent belches of heat light night, waiting and daring anything to trigger it into celestial madness.

Helen Scanlon looked at the two of them, Burke and Captain Long, sensing that something had happened to their friendship, challenging it so that whatever had matured in all the years was balanced on a knife’s edge, and no matter which way it fell, both of them would lose.