Микки Спиллейн - The Long Wait

So instead of all the words I had stored up I said, “Any chance of seeing the report of the investigation?”

Gardiner reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope of official documents with COPY printed across the face of them. Everything he had told me was there in black and white all signed and stamped with an official seal. When I looked them over I handed them back with a nod. “Okay,” I told them. “I’ll pull in my horns.”

Gardiner saw us to the door personally. The housekeeper handed Logan his hat and we went back down the path to the car. The poor guy looked pretty upset and it didn’t help his face any. He climbed behind the wheel, made a U-turn and picked his way back to town. When he got on the edge of the lights he said, “Where do you want to go?”

“Get my car back first. Take me over to the garage.”

“Then where?”

“Someplace you can’t go, chum.”

“A dame?”

“Natch.”

“That’ll probably keep you out of trouble more than anything else I can think of.”

“It will?”

“As long as you don’t marry one.” Logan sounded too damned sour.

He wheeled the car over to the garage, waited until I had paid the bill, then waved me over. “If you want me for anything I’ll probably be at the Circus Bar. I hope you don’t want me for anything. I’m going to get stinking drunk and I want to do it alone and without having you in my hair, understand?”

“You’re the one who’s got woman trouble.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay, okay.” I started to go back to the Ford then remembered something. “You know anything or anybody by the name of Harlan?”

“No. Is it important?”

“It could be. How about finding out? It may be a woman.”

“I’ll find out,” he said. I watched him roll up the window then pull away. When his taillight had turned off down the street I climbed in my heap, went about a hundred yards to the first diner I came to, parked, had something to eat, then found a phone booth around by the men’s room.

The operator took my number, rang and the velvet voice said hello.

“Johnny, Venus. I’ve been wondering how you staged a disappearing act last night.”

The voice kept its velvety tone, but that was all. “I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid it will have to be some other time.”

“No, you don’t understand. This is Johnny. You remember.”

“If you care to I’ll be glad to make arrangements later in the week.”

It finally came to me, I said, “Trouble, kid?”

“Yes, that’s right.” There was no hesitation at all in her answer.

“Bad trouble.”

She even made it sound good. “Certainly.”

“Cops?”

“No... no, of course not.”

“Hang on, Venus. Give me five minutes. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

I slid the phone back in its cradle, slapped a bill on the counter to pay for my meal and got out of there in a hurry. For a change I was lucky. Traffic was light enough for me to edge by on the outside lane and there weren’t any stop lights to hold me up. I cut across town at an angle, picked up the road I was looking for and came out on the street I wanted. It must have been too early for the customers because the cars weren’t bumper to bumper along the curb. I counted four on the one side and two on the other, then picked a spot behind a new Buick and killed the engine.

The house was completely dark. Not that it was any different that way because more than half the others were showing blank spaces where the windows were. But somebody had to be home. A short stocky girl came out of a place that was still lit up and walked toward me. She was whistling under her breath until she saw me then stopped. Her smile was as friendly as it was professional. “Looking for somebody special, stranger?”

“Sort of. What happened to everything? The last time I was here everything was lit up.”

The smile flashed again. “Please, it’s supper time. Everybody has to eat, you know, even us.”

“Oh.”

“Give you a ride to town if you want. You can come back with me later.”

“No... thanks anyway. I’ll stick around.”

She shrugged and crossed over to a small coupé. I watched her drive away before going up the walk to the house. I didn’t even bother checking around the place first. I didn’t give a damn if somebody was standing right inside the front door and in a way I was hoping somebody would be. I tried the knob and it didn’t turn so I gave the window alongside it a tentative shove. That didn’t budge either. But it did when I slid a knife blade between the crosspieces and pushed the lock open.

I couldn’t see a damn thing. Oh, I heard them all right, but I couldn’t see anything so I had to stand there until I could. Then things began to take shape and I walked across the room to the stairs where I could hear them fine, even the muffled sobbing of a woman and a sharp, ratty voice of a man. I heard them better at the top of the landing, and outside the room that opened off the end of the hall I could even make out their words.

When I kicked open the room I could see them too. Both of them.

Servo and Eddie Packman. And Venus.

She lay across a couch crying into her hands while Eddie tried to prop her up so he could slap her again. Servo was watching with a wise sneer twisting his mouth up on one side.

If he hadn’t tried to go for something he had in his pocket he might have ducked the first wild swing I let loose. It caught him right on the mouth and the remains of his teeth tore jagged holes through his lips into my fingers and he went into the wall with a sickening smash and lay there. Eddie was a kill-mad face looking at the blood on my hand and the wild expression I wore. A whole mouthful of yellow teeth bared in a crazy grimace and he did the same thing he had done the night before.

He came right for me and in that one second I saw two things... Eddie was just the right size to fit those impressions on the roof top where somebody had tried to turn me inside out with a slug and the other thing was a nasty switch-blade knife in his hand held the way a pro holds it, low and with the blade up ready to make one final swipe across a stomach or throat.

You don’t use your hands against a blade. You don’t kick or punch or rush cold steel. You do things and wonder later how you knew those things but don’t really care because they worked.

I had the pillow off the couch between my fingers and let him come. He was too mad to see what I was going to do until it happened. When the knife whipped out I went into it, caught the blade in the pillow and tore the damn thing out of his hand.

He tried to run. Sure, he made a good try, but he ran into my foot and fell face down on the floor and I jumped on his back. His mouth was bubbling out a scream when I pulled his arm up over his head and broke it with a snap that was the loudest thing I ever heard.

Maybe it was just my imagination, because just as it popped Venus let out a short, hoarse sound and something laid my scalp open again.

This time it was better than the other two times. There were flowers in the air and my head was on a soft warm pillow that was a leg attached to a face that had the red imprints of a hand on one side, but a mighty pretty face just the same. A lot of black hair tumbled down where I could reach up and feel it and when Venus saw I was still alive she smiled and bent down and kissed me.

“He hit you.”

“Hard, too.”

“He used the ash tray. I tried to yell, but he didn’t give me a chance.”

“What did he look like?”

“He didn’t have any teeth and his mouth looked like he was eating an apple.”

“Eddie...?”

Venus gave me a grin of sheer pleasure. “You broke his arm. He was still screaming when Lenny dragged him out. He wanted to kill you and was cursing Lenny out because he thought he had already done the job.”