Микки Спиллейн - The Last Cop Out

Burke’s eyes barely flicked up at him. “I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute.”

The tap of Lederer’s pencil went on for ten seconds before he said, “You two know something I ought to know?”

“Not really, Bob. It’s pure speculation.”

The D.A. got up and scooped his papers into his attaché case. “You’d better hope something happens.”

When he left, Bill Long leaned back in his chair, his hands folded behind his head. “When is it going to happen, Gill?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to go fuck yourself, buddy?”

“As many as you want. I’m too damn curious to see how you work it to get insulted. I really want to see how you kill the old man. I want to see how you react, how it affects you.”

“You ought to know, Bill. How did Shelby’s death affect you?”

“Ah, that wasn’t my kill, friend. That was yours, all yours. It was my finger on the trigger, but your mind that pulled it.”

Burke stood up and slipped into his coat. “Bill, I hope that brain of yours is good enough to snap back when you really know the answers.”

The party on Long Island had gotten more boisterous with every network news flash. From the time of Mark Shelby’s death to the daily recapitulation of events, the wine and booze had flowed freely throughout the house, celebrating the sole ownership of Papa Menes’ empire. The guards outside had to wait their turn to indulge, and their replacements brought out enough refreshment to hold them over until they, too, were relieved again.

It had been a long time since Papa had been drunk. Artie Meeker had started too early and was snoring away beside the stupid redhead he picked up in Brooklyn and Remy was dragged away by the two broads who took care of the office work.

Not that Papa minded. He was alone again with Louise and the champagne had gotten to them both and Louise was giving him a rubdown with those agile fingers of hers and he could feel the sensation all the way down to his balls. The communiques from his legal advisers assured him that all was well and as long as he wasn’t available to accept a subpoena there was nothing much that could happen to him. His men on the outside had already squelched a couple of the Philadelphia outfit who were talking big and Moss Pitkin from St. Louis stopped the raid he was making on the dry cleaning joints there when he had his head banged around for him. By now everybody knew the old man meant business, knew his business and they were happy to sit back and let him run things.

Louise giggled when her fingers made Papa squirm and she got her hands under his shoulders and pushed. “Roll over, Papa.”

“No... keep doing what you were. I like that.”

“I’ll make it better for you,” she teased. “I can’t do it while you’re lying on your stomach.”

Papa let out one of his chuckles, amazed at how the blonde twist could get to him. His pecker had been hard so many times it was starting to ache and here it was coming up again and he couldn’t fight it back because whatever she did was new and different and worth any ache he might feel. Her naked body was slithering all over him, warm and throbbing, lubricated by the sweat of her unique exertions. Her teeth nipped at his neck and her tongue probed his ear, making his shoulder muscles twitch and gooseflesh stand out over his seamed skin.

“Come on, roll over,” she said again.

This time he was fully prepared and let her flip him onto his back and was pleased when Louise let out one of the funny gasps when she saw him in the full glory of manhood. He didn’t know that the gasp was really a suppressed laugh and she pounced on it too quickly for him to even speculate on it.

She stopped when she felt the signs and he tried to push her back. “Keep going,” he told her. Damn it to hell, don’t quit now. Just...”

“I’m boss now,” she reminded him lightly. “If you like my specialties, you let me do things my way.”

He kept his eyes closed tightly. “Yeah, okay, sure. But hurry up.”

“Oh, no, this is one time we don’t hurry at all because it’s going to be the biggest and best of all. It’s something so very extraordinary I have to build up to it step by step, otherwise you’d never appreciate it.”

This time his eyes opened, bright with anticipation. “What’re you gonna do? You tell me.”

“Lay back, relax, and I’ll show you, big daddy. I just promise you one thing... you’ll never forget it.”

For the first time since he was a little kid, Papa Menes took an order from a woman and did what he was told. He lay back and relaxed, wondering what surprise she had waiting for him.

There wasn’t much to see from the miniature terrace outside Burke’s living room windows unless you understood the raw, primitive nature of the real New York. There was nothing aesthetic about black tarred rooftops with their ugly slanted doorwells gouged into their tops. TV antennas stood barren and angular, reminiscent of a denuded forest held together by stands of soot-dirtied clotheslines.

Here and there patches of green showed where somebody who still had a feeling for soil had tried to grow things, and empty beach chairs were bright splotches of color waiting for those who sought the sun that managed to penetrate the smog.

Even the smell was visible, rising on the heat waves from the streets below, driven upward by the artificial thermals, dancing to the heartbeat of blaring horns and heavy rumble of traffic. Darkness was coming on and when the lights winked out in the towering office buildings uptown, they blinked on again in the high rise apartments and lower silhouettes of the renovated town houses and tenements closer by.

Jet traffic made a mockery of the free sky, creating artificial clouds with their contrails and an illusion of space with their pulsating red and green false stars. Only the emerging moon was real and they had even contaminated that.

Burke said, “Let’s go back inside,” and closed the sliding doors behind them.

For a minute Helen looked back while he made fresh drinks for them, her mind spinning like a centrifuge, trying to throw out the fragments of unreality so there would be some core of true substance left.

How long had she known him? It seemed like a lifetime, but it had only been a little while. And how long had she known the others? She had been exposed to death and destruction since she had been born, had associated with the good and the evil from birth to maturity... so she should be able to make an evaluation herself.

Yet she was part of it all, was there enmeshed in the violence and all she could hear were those deadly words of accusation that Bill Long spoke that made him, if the words were true, the most frightening human being who ever lived.

“Unless there was justification.”

She spun around, her breath caught in her throat. “What?”

“I know what you were thinking,” Burke told her. He handed her the glass and she took it. Her hand was trembling.

“I’m sorry.”

“He made pretty good sense.”

“Gill, I’m going to ask you something. Will you answer me truthfully?”

“That’s a silly question if you think I’ve been lying to you.”

“Have you?”

“No. Do you think I have?”

“No.”

He sipped at his drink. “Good, then ask it.”

“Did you arrange for... or did you even know Mark Shelby would be there?” She watched his face closely.

There was no explanation. He simply said, “Nope,” and she believed him. Nothing in the world could make her disbelieve after the way he said it.

“Don’t you want to ask me some other questions?” he queried.

Helen shook her head. “No, I don’t think I do.” She got a strange look in her eyes. “Frankly, I don’t think I want to know one way or the other. Not now, anyway.”