Mickey Spillane - Kiss Her Goodbye

In an office suite paneled in what we used to call a masculine fashion, the severe young woman behind the desk regarded me with no apparent curiosity whatever. She had dark-rimmed glasses and light brown hair pinned back, but it didn't do any good—she was still attractive.

In a neutral tone that made me long for the day when the girls guarding the gates had flirted with me, she asked, "May I help you?"

I worked on whether to ask for Ms. Marshall or Angela, and settled for the latter.

The familiarity of that shot her eyebrows straight up. "Do you have an appointment with the assistant D.A.?"

"More like a date." I slipped a hip on the edge of her desk and relished the astonished reaction. "I'm surprised, too. It's been a long time since a classy doll like Ms. Marshall wanted to date me this early in the day. But, hell, she was the one who made it."

This was all a little too much for the receptionist, whose eyes behind the lenses were doing a cartoon pop. She punched a button on her intercom and said, "Ms. Marshall, I think you had better come out here right away."

The strained tone of her voice—which implied her next step was to buzz security—got an immediate response.

There Angela Marshall was, in another power suit (charcoal gray today, skirt not slacks), with a cold, chiseled beauty Rodin might have envied, if he'd worked in synthetics.

At first her expression displayed that open challenge that seemed to be her standard setting, then she recognized me and the dark eyes flared.

"Hi, beautiful," I said. "What's shaking?"

Well, she was. And it wasn't bad to see. She had all gears going, and held the door open so I could step inside her private office.

Maybe she had seen too many movies. The way she strode around the desk, the regal manner she assumed in sitting down, her posture as she leaned on an elbow to study this walking-talking exhibit from the Male Chauvinist Museum—it all seemed too deliberately scripted, a scene carefully broken down into shots and angles, and she was director and star.

"What is your name, detective." It wasn't even a question.

"Hammer. Michael."

"Your grade?"

"I made it halfway through the twelfth." Before I enlisted in the army.

"If you made the force, then you must have a G.E.D." She didn't even look up from her notes. "You are a detective?"

"Right. And I have a junior college degree, too. Took some night classes."

"Well, good for you. And now as to your rank—what is your grade, Detective Hammer?"

This time I gave it a long double beat, and when she finally raised her eyes, I stopped screwing with her and said, " Private detective, kid. A plain old-fashioned private eye, licensed in the state of New York with a ticket to carry a gun, and free to buddy around with all sorts of people, including Captain Chambers. I'm even allowed to call a public servant an asshole if he—or she—decides to behave like one."

She may have been a whiz in the courtroom and a political star on the rise, but she'd never make it as a poker player. From her expression, I knew exactly what her next line would be, and beat her to the punch again.

"And don't give me any garbage," I said, pawing the air, "about having my license revoked. That takes cause, not clout, and anyway, I can go a hell of a lot higher up than you can. I've taken more bad guys off the street, one way or another, than any ten plain-clothes coppers in this sorry-ass city."

" Mike Hammer ... you're Mike Hammer."

"Right. You start hassling me, little girl, and I'll call in some favors that'll get you squashed right down to handling juvie beefs."

This time she took the long beat. "Michael Hammer. Yes, I remember you now."

"What do you remember?"

"What I've read. What I've heard. I feel I know you already."

Everybody was saying that lately.

"So what do you know about me, Ms. Marshall?"

"That you're nasty. Most unpleasant. And very tough."

"That's a pretty good summary. Anything else?"

"Yes. I understand for a long time there was an office pool about which of us on the D.A.'s staff would break one of your fancy self-defense pleas."

"You in on that pool?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Hammer. They stopped doing that. It's before my time."

"Ouch. Now that we've got insulting each other out of the way, how about some breakfast? All I've had is coffee."

From the way the receptionist looked at me on the way out, I knew she had kept the intercom key down all the while. I winked at her, put my hand under her boss's arm, and steered the great lady into the hall.

On the elevator, Ms. Marshall gave me a sharp look and said, "You are such an unregenerate macho bastard."

But she squeezed my hand when she said it.

A taxi took us over to Cohen's Deli, not as famous as the Stage but cheaper, plus they had a Mike Hammer mile-high sandwich on the menu board—pastrami, corned beef, Swiss cheese, American cheese, cole slaw, and Russian dressing. If anybody asked why it was named after Mike Hammer, the waiter would say, "It'll kill you just as fast."

Unaware of my sandwich fame, she went in ahead of me like she owned the joint, but her eyes went back to mine when squat, mustached Herman—in white shirt, black bow tie, and black trousers—said, "Ah, Mr. Mike! You're back in town!"

"Hi, Herm."

"And who is your beautiful young lady?"

"This is Angela Marshall."

"Ah, yes. Our lovely assistant district attorney."

He guided us to a window booth.

Watching him go, she muttered, "Was he putting me down?"

"Never," I told her. "Your beauty simply overwhelms him."

"Bullshit."

"He knew who you are, didn't he?" I said. We were across from each other in the booth.

"Did you hear him say your beautiful young lady? And that slight emphasis on assistant? "

"Don't worry, kid, you're such a pain in the ass, you're bound to be top dog someday."

"Damn, I hate men," she said.

Looking at the menu, I asked, "Do you?"

She looked at her menu, too. "Not really."

Breakfast with a real doll can be damn exciting. They're awake, showered, and manicured, and all the weapons are pointed right at whatever chump is dumb enough to be sitting across from them. To such dolls, the guy on the other end of the fork is a big, ripe plum ready for the plucking, because that world of economic dominance he dwells in, and whatever male aggression he possesses, are overshadowed by the two most basic hungers.

Just to annoy her, I ordered an enormous breakfast—lox, onion and eggs omelet, hash browns, and pancakes on the side—saying nothing while she daintily dined on a single cream-cheese bagel and coffee. I cleaned my plate with the last of the kind of great buttered hard roll you can only get in New York, burped politely, and sat back waiting like Henry the Eighth to be served my second cup of coffee.

"You're disgusting," she said with her big brown eyes cold and unblinking, her arms folded on the impressive shelf of her breasts.

"And you dig it, don't you?"

She tried not to smile. "Love it."

"Then how come everybody thinks you're such a queen bitch?"

"Because I am." For a brief second I got one of those eye flashes again, that dare that was such a great part of her.

"Balls," I said.

Her smile curled into another challenge. "That's the opening line of a famous poem," she said.

"Oh, I know. One of my favorites."

"Really? Then finish it."

"It's blank verse and loses a little off the page."

"Does it now?"

"It does. 'Balls!' cried the queen. 'If I had to, I could be king.' 'Balls!' cried the prince. 'I have two, but I'm still not king!' And the king only laughed, not because he wanted to ... but because he had two. " I took a sip of the coffee. "It's all semantics, baby."