Микки Спиллейн: The Long Wait

Then another voice that quavered slightly. “I should have killed him. Honest to God, I tried. I hope the bastard dies.”

Somebody else was there too. “Not me. I hope he lives. I’ll work him over like he’s never been worked over before, so help me!”

I wanted to answer that and couldn’t. My head was shrieking with the pain in it and I felt my legs pulling up in a tight knot. I waited until it passed and made my eyes open. I was on a metal bed in a room that was filled with people. Everything else was white and the air had a sharp, pungent odor.

There was Lindsey with a lump on his jaw and Tucker still faintly recognizable through a maze of bandages and two other men in dark suits, a flat-faced girl in a white uniform talking to two more white uniforms with stethoscopes around their necks. The last two were looking at a set of films and they were nodding.

When they reached a decision one said, “Concussion. Should have been a fracture. I don’t know how he got away with it.”

“That’s nice,” I said, and everybody looked at me. I was popular again.

Things were quiet too long. Lindsey smiled when he shouldn’t have smiled. He came over and sat on the edge of the bed like an old friend and smiled some more. “Ever hear of Dillinger, Johnny? He went to a lot of trouble getting his fingertips cut off too. It didn’t work. You’re a little smarter than Dillinger... or you had a better job done. We can’t make them out yet, but they’ll come through. Up in Washington they have ways of doing those things, and if there’s so much as an eighth of an inch of ridging left they can prove it if it matches up. You got a little time yet, kid. With Dillinger they had Bertillon measurements and photographs and we don’t have anything like that on you. It’s a cute setup if ever I saw one... everyone and his brother knows you and we can’t prove it.”

Tucker made a loud noise behind his bandages. “Hell, you ain’t letting him get away with it, are you?”

There was no mirth in Lindsey’s laugh. “He’s not getting away with anything. Not one goddamn thing. The only way he can get out of this town is dead. Walk around, Johnny. Go see all your friends. Have yourself some fun because you don’t have much time to do it in.”

I thought Tucker was going to make a try for me right then. He would have if Lindsey hadn’t put his arm up to stop him. His eyes under the gauze were red little marbles that tried to do what his hands couldn’t do. “Damn it, we gotta hold him! Lindsey, if you let him...”

“Shut up. We can’t do a thing right now. If I try to book him a lawyer’ll have him out in five minutes.” He turned back to me. “Just stay in town. Remember that. I’ll be one step behind you all the way.”

Hell, I had to get in my two cents worth. It wouldn’t be any fun if I couldn’t sound off when I felt like it. “You remember something too. Every time you put your hands on me I’ll knock you on your goddamn ass like I did before and that goes for your stooge as well.”

Somebody choked a little.

Somebody swore.

The doctor told them to go and the nurse closed the door. He pointed to the closet. “You can get dressed and go if you want to. My advice is to say here awhile. There’s nothing wrong with you some rest won’t cure, though I don’t know how you got away with it.”

“I’ll go,” I told him.

“Okay with me. Be sure to take it easy.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that I reached up and felt the back of my head. ”What about the bandage?”

“Four stitches in your scalp. Come back in a week and I’ll take ’em out for you.”

“You’re giving me a long time to live,” I said.

The doctor grinned at me.

I got dressed and went downstairs to the window where they took a twenty and gave me back five. My legs were wobbly and my head throbbed, but a good sniff of the night air put me back together a little.

It was pitch black and the stars were under cover. A worried guy sweating out a maternity call was pacing back and forth the ramp outside the door. He looked up hopefully when I opened it, saw me and went back to pacing. I walked down the ramp, turned onto the sidewalk and headed for the lights that marked the center of town.

Behind me the glowing tip of a cigarette traced an arc through the air, splattered out in the grass that bordered the gutter and a pair of heavy feet began to match my stride.

The vigil had begun. Lindsey was behind me all the way.

Metaphorically speaking, that is. The guy wasn’t Lindsey, but he was all cop. I was beginning to think that they didn’t have any little cops in this town. The one behind me was a barrel on legs weaving from side to side. He was such a good cop that it took me nearly two blocks to shake him.

When I got to town I stopped at a drugstore and climbed into the phone booth. I dialed the hotel and asked for Jack. When I had him I said. “This is McBride. You remember that barber who worked on me today?”

“Sure. Name’s Looth. We call him Looth Tooth. Why?”

“Just curious. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. By the way, where you calling from, Mr. McBride?”

“A phone booth.”

“Oh?” He sounded surprised.

“Why?”

“You see the papers tonight?”

“Hell no. I just got out of the hospital. I had my head examined.”

“Well, you oughta see ’em.”

He hung up before I could ask any more questions. I picked up a paper at the front of the store and I saw what he meant. It was quite an item. In fact, the whole front page was scrambled because the story that was supposed to go in had been yanked at the last minute. All that was left was a one-column squib squeezed in by an irate compositor who had to work overtime. The heading was: Police Hold Murder Suspect.Under it the item read, “Held in the five-year-old slaying of former District Attorney Robert Minnow was John McBride, tentatively identified by police as a former resident of Lyncastle who fled following the shooting of the District Attorney during the sensational gambling probe of his era. McBride was released after questioning and Captain Lindsey of the Lyncastle Police refused to comment. Since the grand jury returned a murder-guilt verdict against the original McBride, this was the first suspect held in the affair.”

And that, dear children, is all. Nobody knew from nothing. I was a story that didn’t happen... yet. Somebody had done a lot of pretty string-pulling in the police lab. I grinned until my mouth ached, remembered what I came after and went back to the phone directory and rummaged through it until I found what I wanted.

Looth Tooth was listed, but he wasn’t home. Somebody told me the name of a bar where I could find him. I paid a hackie a buck to take me there and when I walked in Looth Tooth had himself an audience of eager listeners and he was telling them in details that never happened how he practically caught McBride all by himself.

He was doing great until I got into the crowd. I stood there and looked at him until something got stuck in his throat and he couldn’t breathe. He believed everything I told him with my eyes, then Looth Tooth was something with pale blue lips and eyes that rolled up in his head, dropping to the floor in a dead faint.

I had one beer and left just as they were carrying Looth Tooth out the door. Everybody agreed that it was a pity he didn’t get to finish his story.

Tomorrow I’d go down for a shave and ask him to finish it for me personally. He was going to be one barber who’d never go peddling his lip to the police again.

But it was still tonight and I had things to do. The hackie who brought me was still outside and I told him to take me to the railroad station. From where we were we had to go straight up the main drag of town so I had a chance to see what it looked like during business hours.