Mickey Spillane - Survival... ZERO!

"What a bastard you are."

"How come everybody says that to me?"

"Because you are. I can even tell what you're thinking."

I looked at her and waited.

She said, "You're getting kicks out of it, too, sitting there naked and horny, watching me suffer, knowing damn well there's going to be a next time and when that happens it's going to be something incredible."

"You called me, remember?"

"And I'll call you again." She let her teeth show in another brilliant smile. "I don't care if you are a bastard. I wish you didn't know so much about women, though. Tell me one thing, Mike ..."

"What?"

"You could have stopped it all by having a casual drink with me and turning the conversation into more normal avenues. Why didn't you?"

I finished my drink, studied the empty glass a moment then put it on the floor. "It's been a rough few days, sugar. I lost a friend, got shot at, clobbered, interrogated by ... oh hell. You were a welcome relief, a lift to the old ego. You have to get up to bat before you know if you can hit or not."

"Now you're going to make me get dressed and send me home," Renée said.

I felt a laugh rumble out of my chest. "Roger, doll. So hate me. You'll always wonder what it would have been like."

Her glass went down to the floor too and her laugh had a throaty tinkle to it. "I'll find out. Cultivating you may take longer than I thought. You may turn out to be the biggest challenge of all."

"Not tonight."

"I know. But since you've been such a bastard, will you do something for me?"

"Maybe."

She pushed herself out of the chair slowly, all naked, smooth skin radiating warmth and desire, little pulse beats throbbing erotically in the lush valleys. She reached out, took my hand and encouraged me to my feet until flesh met flesh, insinuating themselves together in a way that only flesh can.

"Kiss me," Renée said. After the briefest pause. "Hard."

I climbed out of bed and stood in front of the window watching the thin patter of rain dribble down the dust-caked glass. The morning crowds were at their desks inside their offices and the shoppers hadn't started out yet. Two blocks away a fire siren howled and a hook and ladder flashed through the intersection, an emergency truck right behind it. Damn games, I thought. I lost a night; I started out for Woody Ballinger and almost wound up doing bedroom gymnastics. I wiped my face with my hand, feeling the stubble of a beard under my fingers, then grinned at my reflection in the window pane. Hell, I needed the break. Even near-sex could be good therapy. "Buddy," I said out loud, "maybe you still got it, maybe you haven't, but either way they think you have and want some of it."

Okay, so a guy needs an ego boost occasionally.

I switched on the television, dialed in to a news station and went to the bathroom to shave and clean up. I was putting a new blade in the razor when I heard the announcer talk about a shooting during an attempted robbery on West Forty-sixth Street, one that was broken up by a civic-minded passerby.

Thanks, Pat, I said mentally.

While I shaved there was news about the troop movements going into critical areas of the state, sections where power stations and reservoirs were located, their training missions all highly secretive. Results of the operations would be analyzed and announced within two weeks.

Two weeks. That's how much time they knew they had. Success meant announcement. Failure meant destruction.

There would be no need for an announcement then. Somehow I still couldn't get excited about it. I wondered what the city would look like if the project failed. New York without smog because the factories and incinerators had no one to operate them. No noise except the wind and the rain until trees grew back through the pavement, then there would be leaves to rustle. Abandoned vehicles would rot and blow away as dust, finally blending with the soil again. Even bones would eventually decompose until the remnants of the race were gone completely, their grave markers concrete and steel tombstones hundreds of feet high, the caretakers of the cemetery only the microscopic organisms that wiped them out. Hell, it didn't sound so bad at all if you could manage to stick around somehow and enjoy it.

A commercial interrupted the broadcast, then the announcer came back with news of a sudden major-power meeting of the United Nations. A possible summit meeting at the White House was hinted at. The dove factions were screaming because our unexpected military maneuvers might trigger the same thing in hostile quarters. The hawks were applauding our gestures at preparedness. Everything was going just right. Eddie Dandy's bomb was demolished in the light of the blinding publicity that seared the unsuspecting eyes of the public.

And all I wanted to do was find me a pickpocket. Plus a couple of guys who had tried to knock me off.

I finished my shower, got dressed, made a phone call, then went down to the cabstand on the corner. Eddie Dandy met me for coffee in a basement counter joint on Fifty-third, glad to get away from the usual haunts where he was bugged about his supposed TV goof. He was sitting there staring at himself in the polished stainless steel side of the bread box, his face drawn, hair mussed, in a suit that looked like it had been slept in. Somehow, he seemed older and thinner and when I sat down he just nodded and waved to the counterman for another coffee.

"You look like hell," I said.

"So should you." His eyes made a ferret-like movement at mine, then went back to staring again.

I spilled some milk and sugar into my coffee and stirred it. "I got other things to think about."

"You're not married and got kids, that's why," he said.

"That bad?"

"Worse. Nothing's turned up. You know how they're faking it?" He didn't let me answer. "They've planted decoy containers in all shapes and sizes that are supposed

to be explosive charges. Everybody's out on a search, Army, Navy, C.D. units, even the Scouts. They're hoping somebody will turn up something that isn't a decoy and they'll have a starting place. Or a stopping place."

I grabbed a doughnut and broke it in two, dunking the big end in my coffee. "That bad?"

"Oh, cool, Mike, cool. How the hell do you do it?"

"I don't. I just don't worry about it. They got thousands of people doing the legwork on that one. Me, I have my own problems."

"Like getting shot at in Lippy's apartment."

"You get around, friend."

"There was a news leak out of Kansas City and Pat had me in again. I heard him talking about it to the guy with the squeaky voice from the D.A.'s office. All I did was put two and two together. What happened?"

"Nothing." I gave him the details of the episode and watched him shrug it off. Nothing was as big as what he was sitting on right then.

"Maybe you got the right attitude after all," Eddie finally said. He sipped his coffee and turned around. I knew his curiosity would get the better of him. "When you going to ask me something you don't know?"

I stuffed the rest of the doughnut in my mouth, wiped the jelly off my fingers and grinned at him. "Woody Ballinger," I said.

"Come on, Mike." His voice sounded disgusted with me.

"Two months ago you did that crime special on TV," I reminded him. "Part of the expose touched his operation."

"So what? I made him a typical example of hoods the law doesn't seem to tap out, always with enough loot to hire good lawyers to find the loopholes. He hides everything behind legitimate businesses and goes on bilking the public. You saw the show."

"I'm interested in what you didn't say, friend. You researched the subject. You got some pretty weird contacts too. You were fighting a time element in the presentation and the network didn't want to fight any libel suits, even from Woody."