Mickey Spillane - Kiss Her Goodbye

Half a smile dug a groove in a smooth if gently lined cheek. "I'm aware that Assistant District Attorney Marshall also has her shrewd eye on Anthony Tretriano. And I hear interesting whispers that the D.E.A. and the I.R.S. are about to look into his activities as well. No, Mr. Hammer, I felt I could afford taking you out of the game to enhance my standing. But, as I say ... I failed." He glanced at his watch again. "Can we agree to move on?"

I grunted a laugh. "It's just business, right? Even when your own kid dies, you do all the calculations and decide whether or not to go after the guy responsible. Christ, Alberto—I killed your son. That's the reason to take me out. Not fucking business."

He shrugged. "That's why you are a small businessman, Mike ... and I am, shall we say, a captain of industry. More coffee?"

"No thanks. You up for answering a couple more questions, Alberto?"

"Ask and we'll see."

"What do you know about gems being used for payoff purposes?"

He frowned. Blinked. "Why, nothing."

Was he that good an actor?

"Did you have anything to do with the murder of a seaman named Joseph Fidello?"

He shook his head. "Never heard of him."

"Fidello had his throat cut. A kill with a knife, the same goddamn day that your boy Cerone comes calling on me with a blade."

Leaning on an elbow, he cupped his chin and got a thoughtful look. Something gently mocking danced in his voice. "I wonder how many knifings there are in New York on any given date?"

"Yeah, okay. But what about Ginnie Mathes?"

"What about who?"

I shifted in the chair. "You really aren't part of this, Alberto? There have been four murders—Doolan, the Mathes girl, a hooker named Dulcie Thorpe, and now Joseph Fidello. And none of them are names that mean anything to you?"

His shrug was elaborate. "Only Doolan. The others, no. If you want to know where I stand in this—or rather where I sit —it's on the sidelines, watching Anthony Tretriano's world crumble. His father was a minor player, not a nobody, but a very small somebody. Big Tony owed his loyalty to me. Which means his son owed me the same." His eyes flashed, an edge came to his voice. "But instead, Little Tony became a big shot, went to great lengths to rehabilitate his reputation while behind the scenes he sought to usurp what is rightfully mine."

The lion behind the lamb was revealing itself.

"So," I said, "when Little Tony and his Club 52 scheme go down, you rise back up."

The eyes said shark, too—hard and dark and cold. "Why? Did you really think I was a harmless retiree, Mr. Hammer, ready to move to Florida and clip coupons? You can move back to Florida, if you like. You have my word I won't send anyone to kill you, ever again, as long as you stay out of New York."

"What's the plan, Alberto?"

"Would I just... tell you, Mike?"

"You've told me a lot already. Why not?"

He shrugged. Chuckled. "Why not indeed? Some of us who are written off as over the hill are still very much able to play the game. Don Giraldi. Pierluigi. When Anthony crashes in a cloud of coke dust, we will rise up. Our distribution system is already in place."

"What, Sonata Imports?"

That got his attention, the shark eyes flaring. Then he eased back into his soft-spoken host's role. He glanced at his watch again. "You are remarkably well informed for an outsider, Mike."

"Am I keeping you, Alberto? Got another appointment?"

"No. Not at all. I find your company interesting. Even illuminating."

I studied him. The back of my neck was tingling. "I have an idea, Alberto."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I have an idea that before I got off that elevator, you sent down word to rally the troops. You probably had some of the older fellas sent safely away, and everybody else you advised to arm themselves and get ready. Maybe you even had phone calls made, while you were stalling me up here, to bring in more troops. What kind of army will I be facing when I leave your condo, Alberto? Will they kill me here, or will they put a bag on my head, toss me in a car trunk, and drive me somewhere to make an example out of me?"

Alberto Bonetti couldn't hold back the smile. He couldn't stop that upper lip from pulling back over white teeth, which were no less sharklike for being store-bought.

"Why don't you ask them? " he said and began to laugh, softly.

I saw the two men reflected in the glass of the microwave door—the big guy who'd come up with me on the elevator and another of the club-room attendants, both with revolvers in hand. "Reinforcements have arrived, huh?"

Alberto raised a hand as if in benediction, but actually to pause the pair of gunmen behind me. They had entered through a door into the living room, the soft carpeting cushioning their steps. They weren't right behind me—maybe ten feet....

"Outgunned and outnumbered, Mr. Hammer," Alberto said, and his eyes were hard and his smile was a sneer. All business or not, the old don truly hated me. I could see that now. Maybe vengeance was part of his agenda after all, which at least made him more human.

"Lousy odds," I said.

"Terrible."

"Better than yours."

The .45 came into my hand of its own volition and I blew his brains out all over the reflection of his boys. Fast as it had been, he'd had time to be surprised, and now stared in shock at the ceiling as blood and brains spilled from his shattered skull like awful jelly onto his otherwise spotless kitchen floor.

This I noticed only in a peripheral way as I was busy tipping that table over on its edge and giving myself cover, an action accomplished in the startled second shared by the pair that shooting their boss had bought. From behind the wooden wheel, I ripped off two shots so fast neither man had the chance to react before my .45 slugs took root in their heads and blossomed red. They made as little sound falling to that soft carpet as they had creeping up on me.

I grabbed the dead don by his shirt collar and dragged him down the hall, leaving a sluglike trail of scarlet slime on the tile floor. I had to keep looking fore and aft, fore and aft, because I didn't know whether more guns would come spilling in through the living-room entry, or maybe beat me to the elevator.

And I was almost to the elevator—no key was needed on the boss's end—when I heard the rush of footsteps and the grunt of breath from guys not used to running. Two more of the armed and dangerous club-room waiters came barreling at me from the living room, shooting, but wildly. I dropped their dead boss to the floor and stood sideways, making as narrow a target as possible, and picked them off one at a time. The first one was another head shot and he went back in a tangle of legs leaving a blood-mist cloud, but the other one slipped in his boss's blood trail and was already careening back when the shot meant for his head caught him under the chin, dropping him in a pathetic pile as he clutched his red-spurting throat and bubbled blood. It was an even bet he'd drown on the stuff before the wound killed him.

I grabbed dead Alberto by the shirt collar and held him up like a meat shield as I hit the elevator button. If somebody below, hearing the shit hit the fan, had summoned the elevator, then sent it back up, there could be guns poised in that car to blast me to ribbons.

But the car was empty, and Alberto and I stepped on. Which button should I push? They would expect the ground floor. I hit the second. Firepower would be waiting but not as heavy as downstairs. Holding the late Alberto in front of me, my left fist clutching his collar right behind his shattered head, I was getting blood and other ooze on me, but it couldn't be helped. The elevator wasn't big enough to hide to either side, so I stayed more or less dead center, and when the door slid open, a guy in a green leisure suit with a big mustache and a head of curly hair let rip with a grease gun, a vintage M3, and the bullets bup bup bupped right across and through the dead don and thudded against me, slowed down by the cadaver and just tapping the bulletproof vest.