Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

“Don’t you ever quit?” Gill asked him.

“Not on this one. I think I’m going to burn your ass on this one, Gill. I won’t even have to try hard because I know what’s been on your mind since the very beginning. There’s only one guy you’re really after, the top man of the whole schmear... Papa Menes. He’s still alive and still holds the power and even if what’s on those films can indict him he’ll get away before he can be convicted. There are plenty of places he can go and still be head man in the operation. Luciano did it, a few others did it, living out their old age in lush comfort in the old country, still pulling the strings to stay on their ego trips.

“But you can’t let that happen. You started it all rolling and now you have to finish it. Someday, when I have time, I’m going to make a project out of you. I’ll backtrack every move you made. I’ll dig up everybody you ever contracted or used... I’ll have your entire operation detailed down to the last iota and perhaps the civilized world will realize what kind of a terror they harbored.”

Burke gave him a flat grin. “Maybe the uncivilized world will realize it too. The joke would be on you then... if all the crap you’re spouting was true.”

“It’s true enough,” Long smiled back. “The past might be too difficult to prove at the moment, but the future move will be easy because I know it has to happen.”

Annoyance was in Burke’s voice. “What has to happen?”

“You have to kill Papa Menes.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’d be wrong, wouldn’t I?”

“You can still go fuck yourself,” Burke told him.

From across the room Helen was watching them both, something in her eyes vacillating between belief and disbelief.

The big house on Long Island had been built by a New York banker during the two years he had been a multimillionaire. He was the son of a middle European immigrant and had been put to work shining shoes in downtown Manhattan, turning over his entire income to his impoverished parents so they could live in a cold water tenement, existing on day-old bread and inexpensive grocery leftovers. Once a week they had a Sunday treat of tough boiled beef or wrinkled frankfurters and he hated the tentacles of poverty that enveloped him.

But he was a good shoe shiner, with a flair and a flourish, a memory for names of the Wall Street tycoons who enjoyed his streetside show and tipped heavily from their fat wallets. He began to save, then, until he could afford a two-chair cubicle in a narrow space between buildings suitable for nothing else.

With two chairs occupied there was always an interesting conversation above his bowed head and one day he listened carefully at what was being said, took sixty dollars he had accumulated and purchased a few shares of the stock that had been under discussion. That afternoon he had a profit of two thousand, seventy-four dollars.

He kept listening and within a month his bank account totaled over six figures. He kept the shop for another thirty days, sold out to his assistant and spent his time at the ticker tape.

When he had made his third million he sent his parents back to the old country with enough for them to live on, established himself in a fabulous office with an apartment on Riverside Drive and commissioned an architect to build him a tasteless, fortress-like mansion on six acres of waterfront footage on Long Island.

He had shined shoes for twenty-four years. He was then thirty-eight years old, a multimillionaire with a grand estate and ready to marry the most beautiful showgirl on Broadway. The year was nineteen twenty-nine.

When the stock market crash broke the backs of the paper rich, the girl laughed at him and he jumped out of his own office window. The house on Long Island went through six owners before a company that was a personal front for Papa Menes obtained it. It was an address no one knew, a fortified castle no enemy could take and a luscious retreat where Papa could operate from until the heat was off and the lawyers could bring things back together again while they snarled the workings of justice in its own red tape. All he needed was time and he had plenty of money to buy that little commodity.

And having bought it, he was going to use it well with the lovely hunk of flesh he had imported from Miami, his own three-way woman who improved with each session, always having something new and different ready for him until he began to wonder if coming so much would drain him like pulling the plug in the bathtub.

That wild Louise Belhander would tease him until he was ready to blow his mind apart and had the shakes like some palsied old man, then at the right time she would whip herself over into that delicious position on her hands and knees, offering her own lewdness to his and he’d bury himself inside her in a frenzy of passion so exhausting that he’d collapse on top of her and she’d have to roll out from under him and wipe him down with a cold wet rag to revive him.

She had already pocketed a little over five thousand bucks of Papa Menes’ generosity, which was about all she needed to make sure she could get clear of the retribution that mighty possibly come after her final act revenging herself on Frank Verdun. Or his friends.

The nice specialists Captain Bill Long had assigned to locate the whereabouts of Papa Menes had put out feelers all over the city without being able to make contact. The legitimate enterprises owned and operated by the shattered underworld kingdom were all functioning normally so there was an active hand still behind it and that only hand had to be the old man’s.

Legal advisers for the many corporate structures readily admitted having orders transmitted to them, but had no knowledge of the source except that the coded identification was authentic and all they could do was carry out instructions. Across the country, city and state attorneys were working day and night trying to break down the barriers of ownership other attorneys had set up and found themsevles up against a dead wall on every occasion. The other side had bought better men, they had a longer time to prepare for the eventuality and long before any breakthrough could be made, the actual owners could liquidate their holdings and leave without having to face any criminal action.

Downstairs in the lab the microfilms had been cleaned and put on the enlarger with a select audience of viewers from federal officers to local police personnel and within minutes after the final slide was shown, warrants were issued for various persons in thirty-two states in the union. There would have been more, but the rest were dead in the Chicago blast, or wiped out before the open war had started.

Robert Lederer sat at the head of the table opposite Bill Long and Burke looking at the check marks he had made on his list, indications of persons beyond prosecution now. “It’s that damn root you have to watch out for.”

Long scowled at him. “What?”

“You can kill the fruit and cut down the tree, but leave the root in the ground and it can start all over again. So we can hit all their drops and put a dent in the narco trade. We can close some bookies and lock up some prostitutes. What good does it do? With all those legitimate assets bringing in the money one big guy can finance the entire operation in a matter of months... just one guy big enough for the foreign operators or the big locals to fear enough to trust.”

“We’ll knock off Menes yet, Bob. Relax. Take your time.”

“There isn’t any time, damn it. You know that as well as I do.”

“Something...” he glanced at Burke who sat there impassively, “... or somebody will break.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that the old man isn’t long for this world. Right, Gill?”