Mickey Spillane - Survival... ZERO!

I said, "Later, kitten. Believe me, I have a damn good reason."

Her hand snuggled back into mine again and I knew it was all right. "What do you want me to do now?" Velda asked.

"Back on the trail. I want that dip. He could still be in the area."

"Even if he knew somebody was out to kill him?"

"There's no better place to hide than right here in the city. If he's any kind of a pro he's been working. If he's moved in on somebody else's turf they'll be the first to dump him. So make your contacts and buy what you have to. Just lay off any hard action. I'll take care of that end."

"How do we clear any messages?"

"Let's use the office. I'll keep the tape recorder on and we can bleep in any cross information." Both of us carried electronic units that could activate the tape in either direction so it wasn't necessary to have someone in the office all the time.

"Where are you going to be, Mike?"

"Seeing what an old enemy is up to."

"Woody Ballinger?"

'"Uh-huh."

"He can't afford to lose any more," Velda said.

"Neither can I, sugar," I said.

"What brings you back to him again?"

All I could think of was Heidi Anders' compact. What she had in it put her life on the line. I said, "Somebody's not after money. Woody used to keep all his business in his head. Maybe he put some of it in his wallet this time. A smart dip could have spotted it and tried a little blackmail."

But first I had to be sure.

They wouldn’t talk to the cops. To a uniform or a badge they were deaf, dumb and blind, but I wasn't department material and they could read it in my face. I was one of them, living on the perimeter of normalcy and the ax I was grinding was a personal one because Lippy had been my friend and they had tried to knock me off too.

The redheaded whore called Skippy who had her crib across the back court from Lippy had seen them come out the window, two guys in dark suits she could tell didn't come from the neighborhood. They had jumped the fence and gone through the alley between her place and the dry cleaner's. No, she didn't see their faces, but the light hit one and she knew he was partially bald, but not too old because he could run too fast. She took the twenty I gave her since the excitement scared off the John she had in the pad and it was too late to turn another trick.

Old lady Gostovitch had seen them go right past her when she was coming in from her nightly bash at the gin mill, but her eyes were bad and she was too bagged to make their faces. All she could tell me was that they were in dark suits, climbed into a car and drove away. When she crunched the bill I handed her in her fist she added one more thing.

Between wheezes she said, "One wore them heel things."

"What heel things?"

"Clickers."

"Clickers?"

"Clickers. Like kids got, y'know?"

"No, I don't."

"Sheee-it, boy. They drag 'em over the floor and scratch everything up. Like dancers got on their shoes, y'know?"

"Metal taps?"

"So I call 'em clickers. Only on his heels. Maybe I don't see so good no more, but I hear. Boy, I hear everything. I even hear the cat pissin'. Thanks for the scratch." She looked down at the bill in her hand. "How much is it?"

"Ten bucks."

"Maybe I'll buy glasses." She looked up and gave me a gummy smile.

I said, "How many?"

"Enough to get slopped. Makes me feel young again, y'know?" She spit on the sidewalk and hunched her shabby coat around her shoulders, her eyes peering at me. "Sure, you know. Boy like you knows too damn much."

When she had shuffled off I started toward the corner, then stopped midblock to watch a convoy of Army trucks

ramble by, escorted by a pair of prowl cars with their flashers on, each giving a low growl of their sirens at the intersections as they went through the red lights. There were four jeeps and thirty-eight trucks, each filled with suddenly activated and annoyed-looking National Guardsmen. It hadn't been since the summer encampments that the city had seen one of these processions. I was wondering what excuse they were going to give the public if the public bothered to ask.

Overhead a cool northeast wind suddenly whistled through the TV antennas on the rooftops and swirled down into the street, picking up dust and papers along the curbs and skittering them along the sidewalks. Hell, I thought, it's going to rain again. Maybe it's better that •way. People don't like to come out in the rain and if they don't they can't ask questions.

Someplace Velda was roaming around the area doing the same thing I was doing only from a different direction and she could do it just as fast. And right now tune was our enemy.

I shoved the bar door open and inched past the uglies with their scrapes, the virgin-hair muttonchops and shoulder-length curls. They were the boys. The girls weren't any better. They smelled better, except the smell was artificial and I wondered if it were to enhance the little they had or cover up what they lacked. One idiot almost started to lip me until I squeezed his arm a little bit, then he whited out and let me go by with a sick grin his old man should have seen if he had chopped him in the mouth ten years ago when there was still hope for him.

Velda had called to say she had canvassed the neighborhood with no results so she was going back into the barnacle she had rented and keep a watch on Lippy's old apartment.

The other call was from Renée Talmage. "Mr. Tape Recorder," she said, "please tell Mr. Hammer that I am going to be waiting ever so impatiently for him in Dewey Wong's restaurant on Fifty-eighth Street, snuggled against the wall close to the window where all those lovely men will know I'm waiting for someone and perhaps not try to pick me up. And Mr. Tape Recorder, tell him that Dewey says he will stay open very late just to make sure Mr. Hammer gets here."

I hung up and looked at my watch. It was one twenty-five. Outside the phone booth the uglies were making time with the idiots. In New York, the uglies are the longhaired idiot guys. The idiots are the short-haired ugly

girls. It isn't easy to tell one from the other. One ugly didn't realize it, but he was kissing another ugly. In a way he was lucky. The idiot he was with was even uglier.

So I said the hell with it and grabbed a cab up to Dewey Wong's and got around the corner of the bar, sat down next to her and told beautiful Janie who was filling in for her old man behind the bar to bring me a rye and ginger.

"Pretty isn't she?" Renée asked.

"A mouth waiting to be kissed," I said.

"Dewey seems pretty capable."

"Ever since he's been colonialized," I told her.

"Colonialize me," Renée said. A little half laugh played around her mouth and her eyes were full of sparkles.

"Now?"

She lifted her glass in a challenge, the big black pupils inside all those gold flecks watching me closely. Carelessly, she said, "Why not?"

I let my hand run up the bare leg that was crossed over the other one until my fingers had the top of her bikini pants under their tips and said, "Ready?"

Her glass went back to the bar top very slowly, every movement deliberate and slow to make sure nobody was watching. Even the smile was unsure of itself. "You're crazy, Mike."

"I could have told you that."

"Take your hand out of my pants."

"I'm not done yet," I said. I took a drink of my highball. Janie grinned and turned away to serve another customer. At least she knew what was happening.

Almost pathetically, Renée said, "Please?"

"You wanted to be colonialized," I told her.

"But not in front of all these people."

"Tough," I said. She felt my fingers curling around that silly little hem they build into bikini pants. I wondered what color they were.