Mickey Spillane - The Killing Man

The word billion stopped him momentarily. "For that much money," he told me, "I think they would go to far sterner methods to get you out of the way. Where are you now?"

"In Pat's office. I couldn't be safer."

"You realize, of course, that you're vulnerable. Have you seen the tabloid that's on the newsstand?"

"I picked it up on the way home."

"Then anyone who knows of your true connection with Velda can have a secondary target. Have you checked on her yet?"

"No, I was planning to, but-"

"Get in gear, Michael. That girl had better be kept under close cover. The vice president is under security, money can always wait, but don't let that girl get killed. She was your primary reason for getting involved in this to start with, so keep it that way."

"Okay, General, you got it." He hung up with a grunt before I could say good-bye.

Pat was looking at me, washing a couple of aspirins down with a drink of water. He squashed the cup in his fingers and tossed it in a wastebasket. The clock on the wall said it was five minutes after midnight. He said, "It's tomorrow, pal. I think we should talk."

"You feel it too?"

He nodded. "It's all closing in and I'm sitting on my thumbs. It started out as the murder of a nobody and now we're into all kinds of shit. Over in the other corner you're playing footsies with the Ice Lady and leaving me out in the cold. So let's put the pieces together. Sooner or later they are going to be asking me questions about your involvement and how and why I tolerated it and I'd like it all to go down clean and neat so that I'm off the hook and back on pension drive again. Now, let's do it."

Talk. I pushed myself out of the chair and walked to the window. A few drops of rain hit it and inched down the pane, gradually soaking into the New York grime. Talk. Nothing but air and sounds unless it made sense. I turned around and stared at Pat. He had settled down in the desk chair, slowly folding his hands behind his head. He propped his foot on the toolbox and pushed himself back into a leaning position, waiting for me to talk.

When he saw me grin with my teeth tight and my lips pulled back, he started to frown because he knew something had happened. I picked up the phone. I called Candace again and told her to get down here right away. She got all pissed off this time and insisted I tell her why. I said because she wanted to be president, that's why, and she didn't give me any more argument. I went to the coffee maker, poured a stale cup, stirred in enough sweetener so it didn't matter and sat down on the edge of the desk.

Pat was giving me all the time in the world. I picked up a copy of Combat Handguns magazine, October 1988, and read the article titled "The Assassin: Who, When, Where, Why." "Got a later issue?" I asked him.

He shook his head.

I had just started reading the advertisements when Candace came in. She was mad, curious and beautiful, and now Pat took his hands down, leaned forward, waiting to see what I had to say.

"You were on the right track, Pat."

"What?"

"How come you didn't send that toolbox to the property clerk?"

"It's active evidence, that's why." He reached down, picked up the box and set it on the desk.

"Figure it out?"

I got that odd look again. "It didn't belong there. It was a keepsake. His old man made it." He fondled the handle of one of the chisels and put it back again. "You know what's queer here, don't you?"

"Sure," I said. "He had no memory of his past except for the toolbox. They delivered him to his mother's house. He didn't know her, but spotted the box and just took it. He never even said why, except for one word. Mrs. DiCica said he told her 'Papa' and that was all."

"Mike, please," Candace interrupted, "get to the point."

"After he had his brains scrambled, he went to the hospital. His mother picked up his belongings and took them to her house. This toolbox was in his apartment. When he saw it again after his confinement, something registered in his mind. Something had left an impression heavy enough not to have been wiped out."

I dumped the tools out on Pat's desk, looked at each piece carefully, then put them aside. Nothing was wrong with them at all. So it had to be in the box itself. The construction was sturdy, of hand-fitted three-quarter-inch-thick pine boards, the wood delicately carved and polished. The inch-thick dowel rod that ran the length of the box was worn smooth from constant handling in the center, with clever swirls growing deeper toward the ends. The box itself was more than a repository for tools. It was a personal thing whose maker was artisan as well as carpenter.

And the damn thing was all solid wood. No hidden compartments, no secret places that I could see at all.

But you aren't supposed to see secret places. They were made to remain unseen.

I turned the box over and studied the initialed V.D., felt the grooving with my fingertip and probed where it fitted into the sides. Nothing. There wasn't one damn thing out of order.

Pat was getting an exasperated look. There was disgust in his eyes and he pulled his hand across his mouth in an annoyed gesture.

Candace still had some hope. Her eyes never left the box and when I put it back on the desk, finished with the examination, she still couldn't take her eyes off it. She had taken me at my word and saw the presidency sitting there because I had told her I would do it.

Pat said, "I hope this isn't a game, buddy."

I looked down into the empty box trying to think of something to say when I saw something that wasn't there at all. The wood grain of the bottom was typically pine, clear unknotted pine. I turned the box over again and looked at that part, beautifully clear unknotted pine.

But the grain patterns were not identical. Close, but not identical.

There was a famous knot in a rope that nobody could untie until the rough boy took his sword and slashed right through it and that ended that deal.

I picked up the hammer, turned the box over and smashed it into the bottom. I didn't bother to look at how delicately or how cleverly the panel was built into the box . . . I just pulled out the envelope, and three oversize one-hundred-dollar bills from the turn of the century, still redeemable in gold. I handed the bills to Pat and the envelope to Candace.

Pat's face had no expression to it at all. We looked at Candace as she opened the envelope and took out two typed sheets of paper. She glanced at it quickly, her eyes widening abruptly. Then she turned the pages around for us to see.

"It's in code. The whole thing's in code."

I said, "Pat . . . ?"

There was no hesitation. "Let's get Ray Wilson. He can set up the computers and have a go at it."

"Decoding isn't that easy," Candace said.

"Ray can get a few hours in on it before we even get it to the experts in Washington. Send them a copy anyway, but Ray gets first crack at it." He reached for the phone and started to run down Wilson.

"Mike . . ."

"Yeah?"

"You think this is it?"

"What else can it be?"

"If we can locate this cache . . ."

"Don't go getting your hopes up, baby. All you'll get will be the coke. There won't be any line to the buyers or the sellers by now. What you're getting is like digging up a live blockbuster bomb left over from World War II. All it's good for is destruction. You take the potential destructive value away, then everything goes back to square one. The status stays quo. There's no use for the previous owners waiting for the stuff to show up or go on searching for it. It's over."

"But we haven't found it yet," she said.

I could feel my stomach tighten up and I said, "Damn it to hell!"

Pat waved me to stop, but I ignored him and got out of there as fast as I could.