Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

“You were waiting in the car for me outside. The windows that flank his doorway reflected you and the car perfectly when you stand in the right position, and that’s exactly where Turley was... not behind the counter where he usually transacted business. He was able to spot Corrigan and go into his act with no trouble at all.”

“Damn,” Bill Long said. There was no ice in his voice this time. He could sense the logic behind, the clever reasoning, but what dug into him most of all was the way they had used the beat cop for a gun hand.

“The gun Shelby used was a hot one and it worked out beautifully for him. We traced it to a couple of other ills and there it was, laid out perfectly and everybody fell for it.” He stopped for a minute, then looked at Long again. “Not everybody, though. Corrigan never did like the picture, but he couldn’t deny it. Something had been bothering him all this time and he could never figure out what it was.”

“Oh?”

“I found out what it was,” Gill said.

Long waited. “The fingerprints.”

A frown creased the cop’s forehead. “They were all Proctor’s on that gun.”

“Yeah, too many of them. There was no print at all on the trigger where his forefinger should have been. That print was on the plastic butt grip. Proctor didn’t even know how to handle a gun. He had his entire hand wrapped around the butt.”

“How the hell did we miss...”

“Easy, pal. It was all too easy to look for any roadblocks.”

Long shifted in his seat, his mind working. “If you’re right, we still have Turley.”

“They might have so much heat on him he’d never talk.”

“They can’t even begin to lay heat on him like we can though.”

“Then let’s try it.”

“Okay, you smart son of a bitch. I just hope you’re right.”

“I am. But do me one favor.”

“Name it.”

“I make the initial approach on the guy. He knows me now and I want him to know me better. I want to be the one who loosens him up for the big shove.”

“Listen, Gill, your department...”

Burke was flat and hard when he said it. “I’m the one they did it to, pal. It’s still my department.”

“Your department,” Long finally agreed.

Burke turned the key on and pulled away from the curb. Up ahead another car turned the comer, disgorged a passenger and drove on. Burke parked and cut his lights.

There was no spit left in Mark Shelby’s mouth. The heat of violent rage and fear had dried it up and his lips were like parchment. The broken knuckles in his hand ached as he clamped them around the gun and he could feel something knotting his intestines like a tangled line.

He saw the lone figure get out of the car opposite him and go in the pawnshop and the impatience grew in him like a cancer. For a few minutes he stayed in the shadow of the old panel truck, waiting, but the guy didn’t come out and he looked across the street again. He couldn’t see too clearly through the rain-frosted glass door, but there was something familiar about the way the man stood, the way his shoulders were set and the motion of his hand when he pushed his hat back.

Then he knew who he was and the vomit hit his throat so fast he almost gagged and his eyes began to water as he made his last, mad dash across the empty street with the little gun ready to take out the two monstrous obstacles to all his years of planning and working and when he rammed the door open a hoarse shout grated from his mouth and he saw Turley’s eyes widen with horror and he triggered the automatic into a wicked blast aimed for Burke’s back.

But Burke had seen Turley’s eyes too and dropped with the instinctive agility of a cat and the shot caught Turley flush in the chest and left him dead before he could hit the floor.

He almost had Burke, who was still clawing for the gun at his belt but before he could pull the trigger again he heard the roaring thunder behind him and felt the mighty hammer of a slug drive into his spine and on through his heart and a huge gout of blood spewed through his lips drenching the very spot he fell in.

Outside Helen was screaming her head off and Burke looked up into a pair of eyes so filled with hate he thought Long was going to pick him off right there.

He almost did, but the years of training took hold and he holstered the .38 and waited until Burke got to his feet. “You dirty bastard,” Bill Long said. “You miserable, dirty bastard.”

Burke looked at him, saying nothing.

“You made a patsy out of me. You did the same thing to me that they did to Corrigan. You set it all up and let me play gun for you.”

Burke’s eyes didn’t falter. They were as flat and cold as the cop’s were and his voice was there to match. “You said there weren’t coincidence in this business, Bill. Now you just saw one.”

“No old buddy.” Long’s voice had a tired quality to it now. He sounded old and disappointed. “You’re a bastard, Gill, a rotten, dirty bastard and I had it figured right all along and didn’t know it.”

“Suppose I prove it to you.”

“You can make the try, Gill, but you won’t prove anything to me.” He glanced at him with begrudging admiration. “You’re clever, man. Damn clever.”

“Do I try?”

“Sure. What difference does it make now?”

“Probably none.”

“Then call Lederer and the crew. Get this mess cleaned up and we’ll move.”

Long made a wry face. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

In the doorway, Helen was watching them both with unbelieving eyes, her hand clamped over her mouth to keep from getting sick.

Lederer got there with the medical examiner and stayed while the detectives took everything down and the morgue crew moved out the bodies. The TV crews and the reporters were covering everything and this time Lederer was glad to have them on tap, because he was able to throw them a big one for holding down the news about the murder of Richard Case. Now he could blow everything in one grand gesture and in the back of his mind he could see the upcoming election and almost see his name up there for the Big Seat.

He even had good words for Burke and his admiration for Bill Long’s action was apparent to everyone. Having a witness in Helen Scanlon made it even better and when Burke said he had more to do and would finish the report in the morning, Lederer was more than happy to turn him loose.

In the car, Bill Long chewed on his lip with amazement. “He bought it,” Long said. “They all bought it. They bought the biggest con I ever saw. They bought it and they have to keep it. I even have to back you up on it and I know better.”

“You don’t know anything, Bill.”

Helen squeezed his arm. “Please, Gill.”

“Want me to tell you what I know?” Long asked. There was a near-note of humor in his voice, like that of a man who has seen just too much and had to laugh at anything that was anticlimactic.

“Yeah, Bill. Tell me.”

The captain leaned back in the seat, his head resting easily against the cushion. “Not too long ago, in a certain South American country — and you read about this in all the papers — mobsters were being found dead all over the place. Big hoods, little hoods... sometimes singly and sometimes in bunches. Occasionally they were in the open, other times they were in hiding, but they were carefully tracked down, shot to death and left lying where everybody could see them.

“For a while they thought it was another gang war, but it wasn’t that at all. They finally found out that an execution squad was at work and the only pros that could handle that kind of action were part of the police force.

“Oh, the crime rate sure dropped down to zero and the mobsters got the hell out of that country in one big hurry and maybe the situation was the better off for it, but it left a funny feeling in everybody’s stomach because the more you kill the easier it gets and with a force that big, powerful and deadly, it could turn its talents someplace else when it ran out of punks to gun down.