Микки Спиллейн - The Long Wait

“You see him around, call in, understand?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Okay.” He put the picture back in his pocket.

“Want a drink?”

“Not now. Maybe I’ll come back.” The cop started to go when he saw the redhead. His smile was a dirty twisting of the mouth. “Hello, Ginger.”

The redhead didn’t bother answering. She barely glanced at him and went back to her drink. “Stay off the streets,” he said.

The redhead flushed, but she had a lot of nerve. “You can’t make pay-off dough when you don’t work someplace, copper.”

His smile kind of warped a little before he got out through the door.

I looked at my hand and it was white around the knuckles from squeezing the glass so hard. The bartender saw it too but didn’t say anything. He glanced back at my face and mentally compared it with the wanted circular and the copy showed him. “Your name really George Wilson?” he asked.

I let him keep a fin out of my change. “Could be, friend. Could very well be. Thanks.”

“No trouble. If that dumb dick had eyes for something else except what comes easy he coulda spotted you quick. I ain’t helping him out none.” He leaned forward confidentially. “I been in stir once myself.”

So I got out of there in a hurry before the cop came back for his drink. There wasn’t any sense in giving him a second chance. Nice, I thought, now the door is shut right in my face. They want me by day or night and there will be a price on my head to make it interesting.

Before I went back to the car I ducked around the corner into a drugstore. I got my number, heard it ring about a dozen times before the receiver lifted off the hook, then a hesitant voice said, “Yes?”

“I want your boss, honey.”

The background hum muffled out for a few seconds and I knew she had her hand over the mouthpiece. A minute later she said, “I’ll put her on.”

The next “Yes,” was a little different. Scared.

“Johnny, sugar.”

“Oh.” That was all she said.

“Somebody there? Can you talk?”

“Yes... go ahead, please.” In the background was the grating sound of a man’s voice, but there was no click or dimming out that would indicate an extension being lifted.

I said, “Did the cops come looking for me?”

“Yes... I’m sure...”

“Did they expect to find me alive or dead?”

“Oh,no...”

“Alive?”

“Certainly.”

“Okay, pretty girl, you can tell the copper bedtime stories. I’ll see you again when there’s no watchdog around.”

I hung up slowly and dug in my pockets for a cigarette. So the cops had come looking for a live man and right after that they were on the prowl for a certain George Wilson.

Somebody had talked.

That somebody had to be either Logan or Wendy and they were going to have to talk a lot more when I caught up with them. And since Logan was dead drunk someplace there wasn’t any use looking for him.

Only Wendy was left. Lovely bottle-blonde black-background Wendy.

I sat there on the corner seat of the booth staring at the phone. When I stared a pretty long time I dropped another nickel in the slot and punched out the number the card said to if you wanted the cops.

Then I asked for Captain Lindsey.

At first he didn’t believe me when I told him who I was. I added real quick, “Don’t bother tracing the call, friend. I’ll walk in if you want to see me.”

“I want to see you,” he said. He sounded like a tiger ready to pounce.

“Swell. Then I’ll walk in and see you. Just tell me on thing, Captain.”

The phone was quiet. I could hear him purring. He liked it fine this way. He liked for me to be so damned cocky I’d put my head under the knife without being prodded. “Sure,” he said. “Shoot.”

“How’d you find out?”

“A little birdie told me. Cops have a lot of little birdies flying around. We call ’em stool pigeons but they like to be known as anonymous phone calls. This little birdie called the turn right on the nose.”

“The little birdie got a name, Captain?”

“No, not this one. He was very careful to disguise his voice.”

“He?”

I could feel his frown come over the wire. “It could have been a she. I didn’t ask. You can come on in and talk to me now.”

The laugh trickled out of my chest. “Oh, Captain, not right this minute.”

“Damn you! I...”

“Uh-huh, Captain, I said I’d be in. I didn’t say when. Pretty soon, maybe, but not right this second.”

“You get your ass down here right...”

I hung up on him.

Two minutes later I was back in my car with a ten-second start over the police car that came screaming up the avenue.

It was enough.

When I found enough traffic to cover me I loafed along in line and ran over it in my mind. So far there had been two anonymous phone calls and I was wondering if the same party made them both. I kept trying to bring back the voice who had told me to look for Harlan. It was feminine enough then, but now I couldn’t be sure.

It could have been a he or a she.

Harlan could be a he or a she or an it.

Harlan. Harlan Harlan. Son of a bitch, there was something I should know about her and couldn’t think of. The damn thing was knocking against the inside of my head trying to make me see that it was there sure enough if I’d only use my brain.

It took a long time, then my fingers went cold around the wheel and I saw it. I had seen the name right after I had gotten the phone call and it hadn’t registered. Harlan was a name that had been scrawled across one of the envelopes the D.A. had on his desk the night he died!

My foot touched the brake at the next intersection. I made a U-turn and drove back through town. I stopped at a bar for five minutes and made a phone call, then drove on to a certain street and parked.

I didn’t have to wait long. The sedan came up behind me, a door slammed, then the one on my right was yanked open. I said, “Hello, Lindsey.”

He wasn’t taking any chances. There was a gun in his hand. “Wise guy.”

I was too tired to argue with him. The gun came up when I pulled out my pack of butts and went down hesitantly when I offered him one.

He took it, waiting.

“You can get me any time, Lindsey. I’m not trying to get away.”

It was the tone of my voice that brought his head up. “I’ll get you now. I’m sick of gags. Maybe we don’t have your prints, but George Wilson and Johnny McBride are both wanted for murder. The lawyers’ll have fun with it, but you’ll swing.”

“First wouldn’t you like to find out who killed Minnow?”

An impotent rage choked him. He kept fiddling with the gun trying to decide right there whether he ought to kill me himself or not. “I’d like that.”

So I told him who I was and why I was there, but that was all. He didn’t believe it. I didn’t care whether he did or not. I said, “Stay off my back for a week. Can you do that?”

“Why should I?”

“Because I may be right, that’s why. If you had a decent police force you would find out things yourself. You can’t. You’re just like me. One guy, hoping to come across something, only you’re too blind to look in more than one direction. You’re tied hand and foot by rules and regulations. Your cops make more in shakedowns than salary so they take orders from somebody else. Servo runs the boys who run you so all you can do is hope. Let me have a week. Hell, it isn’t much. One week and if I don’t get what I want you can take me in and let the lawyers have their field day.”

“You’re nuts.” There was indecision in his voice. “Or I’m nuts for listening.”

“I could have gotten away any time, Lindsey,” I reminded him.