Mickey Spillane - Kiss Her Goodbye

I shot Leisure Suit in the left eye, which got a surprised expression out of the right one, and before the big guy tumbled to the floor of the little receiving area, I dumped the don on the threshold of the elevator, to keep the door from closing, stranding the car, and bent down to grab the grease gun from limp fingers. I had it in my left hand and the .45 in my right as I moved into the club room.

It appeared empty. Abandoned. I checked behind the long bar and a bartender and waiter were crouched there. The waiter thrust a .38 snout my way, and I shot him between the eyes, not that tough at close range. The bartender, unarmed, had his hands up—he was about fifty and balding and was crying, looking away Apparently just a bartender. He'd pissed himself, you could see it and smell it.

Keeping his eyes off me, so as not to see his own death or maybe to tell me he wouldn't be able to I.D. my ass, he was begging for his life and I told him to shut the fuck up.

"I know there are ways out of here," I said. "Any from this room?"

"No! No. Please... please don't...."

" Where then?"

A finger pointed at the ceiling. "The end suite upstairs—parking lot side. The fake fireplace swings open, there's stairs down to the cellar."

"How do you get out of the cellar?"

"I don't know!"

Shit.

I could hear a lot of hustling and hollering above me. I had no desire to go back upstairs. Maybe I could go out the front way just as easy. Back out in the reception area, I checked the late Leisure Suit—he had a pair of thirty-round magazines for the M3 in a jacket pocket. I collected these and shoved a fresh one in. I would have rather had a Thompson than an M3, but at least the thing was light. Even with ammo in, it was only ten pounds.

When I went down the stairs, two punks in muscle shirts with handguns and dumb expressions were coming up. I panned the grease gun across and wiped the stupidity off their faces and the guns tumbled from dead fingers and they served no further purpose now other than giving me obstacles to step around. Halfway down, the room presented itself, and there was more of the young crowd down there, a confused, excited swarm with guns in hand—I counted twelve, and mixed in were half a dozen older Bonetti hitters, who were jockeying for position, so many bodies down there that they were in danger of shooting each other. Bullets were flying around me, chewing up the wooden stairs and the banisters, and a couple thunked into the bulletproof vest, hurting like hell, like Marciano was working over my midsection, but I passed the grease gun across the sea of faces and turned them scarlet and screaming then moved the spitting, smoking snout in a half circle, chewing up not just flesh but the green felt of the pool tables and shattering the jukebox glass and punching holes in the pop machines and tearing the wooden booths apart, pausing only briefly to toss the empty clip and jam the second one in and give them more, even more, and I was in the jungle again, sweating in the steam with my Thompson chopping up exotic plants and hacking limbs off trees and snipers as screaming Japanese tried to swim through the sky only to belly flop on the ground, and somebody was laughing, and it was me.

The grease gun was empty.

And I had no more clips. I got out the .45 but down below was nothing but silence and the smell of cordite and bodies flung haphazardly in various awkward postures of death with the pools and smears and streaks of blood glimmering under fluorescent lighting that had taken not a single hit.

Nobody was alive down there, or if they were, they were faking it well enough to deserve a pass. Still, something told me not to go out that front door. That was where reinforcements had entered, and more would be waiting.

So I went back up the stairs, slamming a fresh clip into the .45, and nobody was waiting in the second-floor reception area, nobody alive anyway. I took the fire stairs up and came into an empty hallway. I moved slowly down the carpeted pathway, waiting for somebody to pop out of the doors to the suites on either side, like a real-life Hogan's Alley.

But nobody did.

The door to the suite at the far end was locked. I shot the knob off and shouldered in, sweeping the .45 around a living room decorated tacky bachelor pad—style. The fake fireplace was already ajar. Somebody had used it as an exit.

I went down the narrow, unlighted stairs with the .45 ready. When I found myself in the cellar, where a lot of empty boxes were piled up, I heard somebody whimpering. A small, pale figure was huddled in a corner, hugging its legs, trying to turn into a mouse. It was a girl in panties and no bra, maybe twenty, with a lot of makeup that had run with tears, and lots of permed blonde hair.

"Please don't kill me," she said, her raccoon eyes pleading. Basement dirt smudged her slender little shape like bruises.

Somebody's mistress or hooker of the day or whatever. Poor kid. Like Ginnie Mathes or Dulcie Thorpe, she was just another victim of thoughtless, selfish assholes. I didn't want to be one of them.

"Shush, baby," I said, putting my coat around her shoulders. "It's all right. Nobody's gonna hurt you. I'm a cop."

Not a complete lie.

I helped her to her feet and she hugged me.

"Do you know the way out of here?" I asked.

She swallowed and nodded and pointed. Beyond some stacked boxes, an arched doorway opened onto a brick tunnel, an escape route for the Bonettis in case something bad went down. Hadn't been much help today. It was just big enough for the kid and me to go holding hands as we moved down. My other hand held the .45, though.

The tunnel came out in another basement, which had steps up to old-fashioned storm-cellar doors leading onto a gravel parking lot. A padlock had a key waiting in it for quick escapes, and I used it. We were half a block down from the Y and S Club, standing under an overcast sky on a spring afternoon that had turned chilly.

She gazed up at me, got her first real good look at my face. I assume there were streaks and spatters of blood on it, and even under the best of conditions, that mug wouldn't instill much confidence in any sane human. Her eyes, which were big and blue, saucered, and her mouth made an O, and she ran away from me on bare feet, the sport jacket slipping off her shoulders onto the gravel.

I picked up the jacket, put it on over the now-holstered .45, and started walking. I was maybe twelve blocks from Cummings's office, where I could hole up. The sky growled at me and I couldn't blame it. A lot of men had died this afternoon, some very young, as young as they'd been stupid. I felt nothing for them. I had given old man Bonetti a chance to make peace and he chose war.

Bad choice.

If the family had been crippled by the shoot-out on the pier a year ago, it was decimated now. Over. History.

I limped off, the two hits I'd taken on the bulletproof vest burning, making each breath I took a clutching, clawing thing. One of the hits had punched very near that hot spot under my ribs, turning bad into worse.

But I was still alive, and when the rain began to fall, I welcomed it. It would wash off the blood and save me the trouble.

SOMEHOW I GOT UP the stairs to the little landing outside the ancient office, the weathered wood under my shoes wheezing as bad as me. I worked the key in the lock, stepped inside, didn't bother hitting the light switch. I got out of the wet sport jacket and let it drop to the old wood-slat floor like a sodden little corpse.

With some effort—the painful places from where bullets had pounded the bulletproof vest were prodding me like sadistic children with a helpless pet—I climbed out of the speed rig and flung it somewhere, retaining the .45, which I tossed onto the old leather couch.