Mickey Spillane - Kiss Her Goodbye

I said, "Who was she, Pat?"

He made one of those little noncommittal gestures. "You said it yourself—Virginia Mathes."

"Pat..."

"She was nobody."

" Nobody's nobody."

" She was," he told me. "Six years ago, she made a stab at entertaining in a club and got printed as part of our licensing requirement. We ran her through Social Security, got her address and where she worked. She was a waitress at Ollie Joe's Steak House for two years, was well liked, had nothing against her in our files, just walked out of Ollie Joe's last night and got herself killed."

"Just like that."

"You were there, Mike."

"Ollie Joe's sure as hell isn't in that neighborhood. But you've already been to Ollie Joe's, haven't you, Pat? And found out something else, too?"

Ten seconds dragged by; we were just two gawkers on the street watching a film crew. Finally he looked at me.

"Mike, I didn't find out a damned thing."

" What didn't you find out?"

I knew he was going to tell me. He ran it around his brain a couple of times, but we had been together too many times on too many things for too goddamn long.

"Before she left," he said with a sigh, "a guy came in and—according to the cashier—seemed to know her. He had a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. She was a little more attentive to this patron than usual, but since there weren't many customers there, the cashier didn't think anything about it. The girl liked to gab, I guess."

"What time was this?"

"Just before she punched out. She signed her paycheck at the desk, picked up her cash, and left."

"How much cash?"

"Thirty-five bucks. Her big money was in tips. The cashier said something seemed to be on her mind when she left."

"What about the patron she got friendly with?"

He pitched his gum in the gutter. "He waited maybe two minutes, then he went out too."

"Like maybe she was about to date this customer...?"

"Maybe. And according to the cashier, that was unusual. Ginnie—that's what they called her—never did that."

I gave him the slow grin. "You haven't scratched on Ginnie Mathes's door yet, have you?"

Pat rubbed his hand over his hair, then took a deep breath of polluted air. "I didn't want to spoil your fun, buddy. Here."

He slid the manila envelope out from under his arm.

"What's this?"

"Doolan stuff. All copies, and you can keep 'em— and keep 'em confidential."

"Sure."

His gray eyes studied me like I was a fingerprint under a microscope. "You going to his apartment now?"

I nodded. "Right from here."

"Thought maybe you'd hit the Mathes girl's pad first. You're a busy guy for a retired detective—two suspicious deaths to look into, and not back a day."

"You said that before."

"Did I?" He slipped a hand into his suitcoat pocket and brought out a key paper-clipped to one of his cards. "This is for the police padlock on Doolan's door. We have a light cover on the place, so if anybody tries to stop you, give them my card. If I'm not in the office, my guys will confirm things."

I nodded my thanks. "Pat, you're welcome to come along. That'd make it official."

"Since when did you want anything official? Anyway, Mike—what's to see? I told you we picked that place apart. No, this is all yours, my friend. I want you to be totally satisfied with the answers. What I don't want is for you to get a bug up your ass, and go prowling for something that's not there."

I looked at the key like I was imagining things. "You're fine with this?"

"I'm fine with this. For once we have a commissioner who likes your style. Why, I'll never know, but he okayed this bit of action. At least I got my ass covered this time."

"If Doolan's suicide is so open-and-shut, why bother?"

His grin was an odd mingling of amusement, frustration, and maybe affection. "Mike, you're one of those weird Irishers, the kind they say carries little people in his pocket. You've always had a nose for murder, and you've always been able to smell out the bizarre posing as the routine."

"Thanks."

"On the other hand? Sometimes I think when something's going down, and you're riding along, white becomes black, wrong becomes right, and the whole works gets turned upside the hell down."

"My track record isn't all bad, kiddo."

"I know, and that's what shakes me up. This Doolan deal is suicide, all right. But I want there to be no doubts. I figure if you're satisfied, anybody would be satisfied."

"I hope I am, Pat." I meant it, too. "I'm not looking for trouble."

"Not looking for trouble—do you expect me to believe that? Do you really have yourself believing that?"

I said nothing.

He put a hand on my shoulder. "Listen, Mike—on this Mathes thing? I do need to come along. I'll be free in a couple of hours. You call me before you go over there."

"If Doolan is a straight-up suicide," I said, "and the Mathes kid is a run-of-the-mill mugging turned fatal ... why sweat letting me look into it, Pat? What have you got to lose?"

"With you around, Mike? Just my badge. Or maybe my sanity."

I didn't argue the point, just assured Pat I'd call him before I checked the Mathes girl's pad, then grabbed a cab, and gave the driver Doolan's address.

BACK IN THE LATE nineteen-thirties, this neighborhood had been fashionable enough to attract those who had survived the Depression in style. But that bunch moved outward and upward during the Second World War years, and new generations changed the face of it as the growing pains of the city wrenched neighborhoods apart and then rebuilt them all over.

For twenty years, it had been livable again, a strangely quiet area hoping it wouldn't be noticed. And Doolan had lived there through all the changes, fifty-two years' worth, the last ten as a widower.

I went up the sandstone steps and pushed the street door open. The vestibule was tiny, the four mailboxes on the left, old-fashioned ornamented brass rectangles with no jimmy marks scarring their surfaces. All had yellow lottery announcements in them.

I tried the inner door and that was open, too. When it snicked shut behind me, all the street sounds were magically gone and I could feel the loneliness of the place. No sounds at all drifted down the staircase that led to the upper apartments, no cooking smells, not even the feel of life that should be there.

But there were occupants in those flats, all right—the old and unseen, whose very quietness had an awareness to it.

And somehow they were watching me.

Damn, I felt like an idiot letting a thought like that put a tingle at the back of my neck. A couple of years ago, this would have been just another building on another street.

I walked down the corridor to Doolan's apartment door, read the police notice stapled to the panel, then hefted the padlock that held the door shut. Below it, pieces of wood had been ripped out by the force of the kick that smashed the door open.

I keyed the padlock, took it out of the hasp, and pushed the door. It swung open with a small squeak from a twisted hinge, and I stepped into Doolan's life and flipped the light switch on.

There was nothing spectacular about his quarters. I had been there often enough in the old days, and nothing seemed to have changed—the furnishings were nice quality and very functional, everything seeming to belong exactly where it was, as if a decorator had arranged it all and the resident hadn't changed things around to suit himself.

But that's the way Doolan had been, one of those neat freaks. He would have been teed off to see the way the cops had left it, print powder taking the shine off wood finishes, cigarette butts in a pair of Wedgewood ashtrays that were meant for eye appeal only, chairs out of line, cabinet drawers not completely shut.