Микки Спиллейн: The Last Cop Out

When the discussion was over the Frenchman said, “No two descriptions match. No guns match. The methods all taste the same and the target is just us. You’re split down the middle about it being one man or different men. That’s no answer.”

For two weeks Mark Shelby had been thinking the same thing. He tapped his pencil against the table top until he had their attention. “It could be a team trained by one man.”

“Sounds reasonable,” the Frenchman agreed, “but that makes it an organized operation with a higher chain of command. If that were so, by now there would have been a secondary stage going. So far nobody’s moving in at all. You don’t pull off all those hits and let it go at that. Somebody wants something big and something bad.”

“What does Papa Menes say about it?”

Verdun’s voice was quietly deadly. “You like it where you are, Mark?”

Shelby took the push, but not all the way. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Good. Then stay fine. I’m speaking for Papa Menes. Remember it.” He paused and looked the room over again.

“We’re up against an organization. That’s one. They’re damn smart and damn good. That’s two. There’s one hell of a showdown coming up. That’s three.”

When he stopped, Arthur Kevin said, “Who do we look for, Frank?”

“The hit men. They won’t be contract boys, you can bet on that. They’re right inside the organization itself. That’s their weakness. All we need to do is get on top of one of them and he’ll scream his head off. We can backtrack him to the day he was born and no matter who’s pulling this crap, we’ll find them and it’ll be the last time it ever gets tried again.”

Nobody spoke at all.

Frank’s eyes had a reptilian glitter and he smiled. “Everybody scared to ask how?”

There was a general scuffling in the seats and a subdued murmur of disavowal.

“Maybe you don’t get the picture all the way,” the Frenchman said. “They’re picking us off from the top down until they can get to where they can handle us. Believe me, it’ll never happen. So like Papa Menes wants, you stay on the streets and in the open and take your chances on getting hit. You don’t have to make it easy, but you don’t run either. We got the soldiers out covering everybody and even if we lose a few more, we’re going to get somebody sooner or later. That’s it. Meeting’s over.”

That night they lost two more. They weren’t gunned down. They simply took advantage of an option they had prepared for long ago, an unobtrusive exit with a suitcase full of money to a strange little country where the food was lousy, the water worse, but where there was safety in a new identity and total disassociation from a world that meant sudden death if they dared return. In view of the circumstances, it was assumed that they had fallen to the enemy who had added another dimension to its method of operation.

The other meeting three miles farther downtown was reminiscent of kids who were kept after school waiting to be lectured by the principal. There was a sense of uneasiness you could almost feel and the seven persons waiting for Gillian Burke and Bill Long to arrive were still trying to develop statements that wouldn’t make them look like complete fools.

When they finally walked in everybody nodded politely, took their seats at the table with Gill at the far end opposite the district attorney. Gill gave Bill Long a wry smile and took them off the hook. “Let’s start off without any bullshit,” he said.

That got their attention right away. Lederer stifled a cough and the man from the mayor’s office dropped his pen.

“You got yourselves a hot chestnut and nobody knows how to handle it. The computers all came out zero and now you need all that beautiful inside stuff that used to be available for the asking. You guys’ll sure do anything when it gets warm, but I don’t blame you a bit. I’d do the same thing myself.”

“Mr. Burke...” the district attorney started to say.

“Can it, I’m talking,” Gill told him.

The D.A. said nothing.

“Don’t tell me you give a damn about the people who got bumped off. Each one down is one more you can close the files on, but when a bite come out of their organization and they close ranks enough to lean on the right people, you start sweating. So now you want me back in again. Okay, that’s what you want and I’ll come back.”

All the eyes were on him now.

“Conditionally, that is,” Gill continued. “I haven’t told you what I want yet.”

“There weren’t any conditions stipulated, Mr. Burke,” Lederer said.

“Naturally. You’re trying to get everything for nothing. Just don’t forget... you’re the ones doing the asking, so I lay down the ground rules or go home. Take it or leave it.”

“State your conditions,” the district attorney said.

Gill nodded, looked at each one in turn, his face an angular mask of hard competence. “An official position, access to all police files and materials, guaranteed cooperation of any department I choose and no interference from any political faction.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a salary,” Lederer asked insolently.

“Being public-spirited, a dollar a year will do.”

“You expect to take a year to find out who’s behind these murders?”

“Mr. Lederer,” Burke said, “those weren’t murders.”

“Oh?”

“They were killings.”

“What’s the difference?”

Burke’s lips pulled tight across his teeth. “If you don’t know, telling you won’t make you understand at all. Now, you got one minute to give me a yes or no.”

Actually, they had no choice.

Over coffee at the diner in the next block Bill Long threw Gill a begrudging laugh and shook his head. “Pal, you didn’t say it, but you sure made them do it.”

“Do what?”

“Piss up a stick,” he said.

The pair in the anteroom made him the minute he pushed the door open and the big guy tried reaching for his throat while he scrambled for his rod and had his nose smashed wide and flat in a crimson splash so fast he never knew what happened. The other wasn’t so lucky because his gun was showing and Gill Burke broke his arm before almost splitting him open with a single, terrible kick up between the legs. The only sound was their twisted bodies thumping to the floor and the heavy breathing of the beautiful brunette behind the desk. It was all too quick for her to absorb, or to remember to scream and she watched wide-eyed while he picked the guns off the floor and let them dangle with one finger through the trigger guards.

He said, “The man inside?”

The brunette nodded, her breath held so deeply in her chest that her breasts almost burst through the sheer fabric of her dress.

“Push the button,” he told her.

There was so much weight in his tone that she couldn’t help herself. One finger found the button, held it down, and while the automatic lock was clicking he went through the door and shut it behind him.

The Frenchman looked up from the papers on his desk, almost frowned, then relaxed with a smile. “Hello Mr. Burke.” His eyes went down to the guns in Gill’s hands. “Are you planning to shoot me again?”

Gill dropped the guns on his desk, pulled a chair over with the toe of his shoe and sat down. “Not today, Frank. Later maybe.”

Frank Verdun fingered the guns, turning them around so they both pointed at Gill. “My boys aren’t very good, are they?”

“Not hardly.”

He slipped the clips of the two automatics, checked the loads, making sure there was a cartridge in each chamber and put them down again in the same position. “They’ll have to get a refresher course, I guess.”