Mickey Spillane - Kiss Her Goodbye

"I've been working on something complicated," I said. "But I couldn't get anywhere, because I was operating from a faulty premise."

She frowned, as if my English was too dense for her to wade through, though she didn't ask for clarification.

"I was looking at four murders—Bill Doolan, Ginnie Mathes, Dulcie Thorpe, and Joseph Fidello—and then last night, a fifth, Anthony Tretriano. This is further complicated by the Mathes girl's murder rising out of a mugging, which involved the theft of a valuable gemstone."

The widening of her eyes was almost imperceptible. Her chin went up a little, too.

"Wrongly, I assumed one killer was behind it all," I said. "I didn't stop to think that in a criminal enterprise, motives for murder are cheap, and motivations among those involved often run counter."

She cocked her head and one side of her hair fell like a silver curtain. "You are saying ... there were two murderers?"

"Three." I sat forward. "Alex Jaynor, the politician, staged the suicide of Bill Doolan. He also tried to run me down in a car, which makes the death of Dulcie Thorpe a homicide, too. And the police are running ballistics on Jaynor's rifle, which should tie him to the sniper shooting of Anthony Tretriano."

"They will arrest him?"

"No. Jaynor was found dead about an hour ago on the sidewalk outside the old apartment building where Doolan lived."

She frowned. "How did he die?"

"Slow and painfully. That bother you? He did kill your friend Anthony."

"He was more than a friend—my Anthony." She swallowed. Rose slowly, a queen from her throne, those legs seemingly endless, only one hidden by the glistening silver fabric. "I would like a drink. May I serve you?"

"Sure. Rye and ginger. Rocks."

Chrome moved to the padded white leather bar off to the right. She got behind it and poured herself a martini from an already made pitcher.

I leaned against the other side of the bar as she built my drink.

"If you're wondering why I'm here," I said, "it's as a sort of courtesy."

"I had hoped you were here, Mike, because there was a ... spark? A spark between us, that first night at 52?"

"You're a handsome woman. And you've done nothing to cause me harm that I'm aware of. So I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt."

With the bar still between us, I could see my reflection in the mirrors over the row of bottles.

Her expression was quizzical. "Benefit of the doubt, Mike—the benefit of the doubt for what?"

"I don't have any hard proof that you are anything but a pawn in this. I think it's likely that you were directly involved, but the police—and the D.E.A. and the I.R.S., not to mention Immigration—will be moving in soon enough to sort it out. So my opinion is beside the point."

Her forehead tensed, her dark eyes bore into me. "I assure you, Mike, I knew nothing of Jaynor and Anthony's scheme...."

"I don't remember mentioning their scheme. Whether you know it or not, you touring your act, opening all the new Club 52 locations, was the conduit through which Little Tony and the Colombian cartel planned to move their coke and other fun powders. You have your own Lear jet, and you go back home between gigs—meaning separate shipments for each club opening. You travel with a band that isn't a band at all—they are drug mules and bodyguards who mime playing instruments while you sing to a canned track. Yet you travel with all sorts of gear, instruments in flight cases, hard-shell drum cases, trunks of electrical this and electronic that—none of it needed. And probably not functional, gutted, to make room for packing fat packets of what the D.E.A. likes to call controlled substances."

She had been holding the cocktail glass, without taking a single sip, and now she set it down, hard. It sloshed and spilled a little.

"Mike, just because the new Club 52 locales will not come to pass, that does not mean I cannot still tour your America—I am the number-one star in South America and have a big record contract here, and I do the TV and..." She leaned across and her mouth was a moist red invitation. "...and if you keep your suspicions to yourself, you could take Anthony's place, in my business ... and in my heart."

"Yeah, well, tempting as that is, and I do dig those long legs of yours, I have to say any tour you mount is gonna get looked at very hard by that alphabet soup of government agencies I mentioned."

I finished the rye and ginger and thanked her for it. She was still behind the bar when I walked back toward the coffee table where my hat waited. I glanced back and saw her reach under the bar for something, something she tucked behind her, and the mirror gave me just enough of a silver metallic flash to know it was a nickel revolver.

She came around from behind the bar slowly, smiling just a little, almost as catlike as Velda, and said, "What can I do to convince you not to make trouble for Chrome, Mike?"

I shook my head. "This is all you get. Just a little head start. See, I do kind of blame you, in part anyway, for the Mathes kid's death. She admired you, trusted you, and you got her involved in playing messenger in a very dangerous game."

She took two measured steps my way. Her red-nailed toes in the white shoes were all but buried in the plush ivory carpeting. Her eyes were wide and a weird excitement glittered there. Something about our confrontation had excited her—sexually. Or was that just an act?

"I do not mean, ever, to do Ginnie no harm," she said. The double negative was unintentionally telling. "...In fact I mean only to do very good by her."

"How about Joseph Fidello?" I asked. "Him I know you meant to do harm. In fact, he's the odd murder out, isn't he? You're the third murderer. You killed Fidello, Chrome, trying to find that uncut stone. Well, that stone is on its way now to help bring your Nazi cohorts some good old-fashioned Old Testament justice. About time Basil's gems funded something positive."

Her expression was of astonished confusion. "Why should you care about Fidello? He is the one who kill that stupid girl. You might have kill him yourself, had you the chance!"

"Yeah, probably. It's a matter of motivation. I would have taken him out for the low-life murderer he was. You were just removing somebody who might cause you trouble. Somebody who knew just a little too much about you and Ginnie ... and that uncut gem."

Her mouth and eyes promised unknown pleasures. The sexual heat was damn near shimmering off her— she liked this.

"I am a very famous woman in my country, Mike. I can return to my home, where I am a very, very rich woman. We can go there together and leave your ugly city and your so very stupid and selfish country behind. There would be nothing bad, nothing criminal in our life together, the whole foolish scheme of Alex and Tony, it would be as if it never happen."

"It did happen. And an old man with a great heart was murdered because of it."

"Not by me ... not by me. ..."

"But maybe you're not just a pawn," I said. "Maybe you're the top man in the Colombian cartel."

She overplayed her quizzical expression.

You'd have to call my smile a sneer. "Tell me, Chrome—how was it two gay men were so attracted to you? Is there something under that gown you're hiding from me?"

Her smile held no sneer at all; it was the whitest thing in this white room, radiant and self-possessed. "Was I born a man, Mike? Or maybe... both the man and the woman? An extra chromosome—is that the little joke of my name, Mike?"

"I was thinking maybe a surgeon had more to do with you than God."

"Or the devil? So old-fashioned are you, Mike. Such ancient notions of sexuality."