Mickey Spillane - Survival... ZERO!

"Where?"

He gulped and tried to look straight at me. "Take ... this sheet off, huh?"

I hated to waste the time, but I couldn't afford to put up with a stubborn idiot. I undid the knots Tower had twisted the ends into and yanked the wet cloth away and he stumbled out of his chair and reached for the coat Towers had left and pulled it tightly around him, still shivering.

"Where?" I repeated.

"Carmine said he seen him at the Stanton Hotel. They're on the same floor."

"He describe him?"

"Tall. Skinny. Like kind of a mean character. He ain't there all the time, but he hangs onto his pad."

"What else?"

"Always the red vest. Never took it off. Like it was lucky or something." I started to leave, then: "Mister ..."

"Yeah?"

"You got a quarter? I'm flat."

I tossed five bucks on the chair. "Unwrap the idiot there and you can both blow your minds. Someday take a look in a mirror and see what's happening to you."

I picked up a cruising cab on Eighth Avenue and gave him the address of the Stanton. Before the turn of the century it had been an exclusive, well-appointed establishment catering to the wealthy idler who wanted privacy for his extramarital affairs, but time and changes in neighborhood patterns had turned it into a way station for transients and a semipermament pad for those living on the fringes of society.

A fifteen-truck Army convoy was blocking traffic, white-helmeted M.P.'s diverting cars west, and the driver-cut left, swearing at all the nonsense. "Like the damn war, y’know? You'd think we was being invaded. The way traffic is already they could hold them damn maneuvers someplace else."

"Maybe they hate the mayor," I said.

He growled in answer, swerved violently around a timid woman driver who was taking up a lane and a half and yanked the cab through a slot and made a right on Tenth Avenue. I looked at my watch. Five after ten. An hour and a half since the slaughter uptown. Enough time for Beaver to collect his gear and make another run.

I didn't wait for change. I threw a bill on the seat beside the driver and got out without bothering to close the door. Fingers of rain clawed at my face, wind-whipping the drenching spray around my legs. Inside the lobby of the Stanton clusters of men trying to look busy were staying away from the night. A uniformed patrolman, a walkie-talkie slung over his shoulder, finished checking the groups and pushed through the doors, looked up at the sky in disgust, then lowered his head against the wind and turned west.

I went in, cut across the lobby to the desk where a bored clerk with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth was doing a crossword puzzle on the counter.

He didn't bother looking up. "No rooms," he said.

I flipped the puzzle to the floor and knocked the cigarette from his mouth with a backhanded swipe and his head snapped up with a mean snarl and he had his hand all cocked to swing when he saw my face and faded. "You got bad manners, friend."

"If you're looking for trouble ..."

"I am trouble, kiddo." I let him look at me for another few seconds, then he dropped his eyes and wiped his mouth, not liking what he saw. I reached in my pocket for the photos of Beaver. There were two left. Someplace I had left one, but it didn't matter now.

The clerk had seen cards like those before, but cops carried them, and I got the eyes again because he had figured me first for one thing, now he was trying to make me for another and it didn't jell. I put the card on the counter facing him. "Recognize him?"

He didn't want to talk, but he didn't want to know what would happen if he didn't, either. Finally he nodded. "Room 417."

"There now?"

"Came in earlier. His face was swollen and he was all bloodied up. What'd he do?"

"Nothing that would interest you."

"Listen, Mac ... we're trying to stay clean. This guy never gave us no fuss so why are you guys ..."

I grabbed his arm. "What guys?"

"There was another one before. Another cop. He wanted him too."

"Cop?"

"Sure. He had one of these mug cards."

Pat might have made it. One of his squad just might have gotten a lead and run it down. Enough of them had copies of the photos and one way or another Beaver could be nailed.

"You see them come out?" I asked him. "Naw. I don't watch them bums. You think I ain't got nothin' better to do?"

"Yeah, I don't think you have. Just one more thing ... stay off that phone."

A swamper in filthy coveralls was oiling down the wooden steps, so I pushed the button beside the elevators instead of walking up. The ancient machinery creaked and whined, finally groaning to a halt. The door slid open and two drunks were arguing over a bottle until one behind them pushed through with a muttered curse, almost knocking them down. He looked familiar, but I had seen too many lineups with these characters playing lead roles, so any of them could be familiar. The other two guys that pushed their way through were Vance Solito and Jimmy Healey, a pair of the Marbletop bunch who ran floating crap games on the side. I shoved the two drunks out to do their arguing and punched the button for the fourth floor.

Outside 417 I stopped and put my ear to the door. No sound at all. I slid the .45 out, thumbed the hammer back and rapped hard, twice. Nobody answered and I did it again with the same result. Then I tried the knob. The door was locked, but with the kind of lock it only took a minute to open. When I had the latch released I stepped aside and shoved it open and stared into the darkness that was intermittently lit by the reflected glow from a blinking light on the street below.

I waited, listening, then stepped around the door opening inside, flipped the light switch on and hit the floor. Nothing happened. I stood up, put the .45 back and closed the door. Nothing was going to happen.

Beaver was lying spread-eagled on the floor wallowing in his own blood, as dead as he ever was going to be, his stomach slit open and a vicious hole in his chest where a knife thrust had laid open muscle and bone before it carved into his heart. There were other carefully planned cuts and slices too, but Beaver had never made a sound through the tape that covered his mouth. His face was lumpy, bruised from earlier blows, with nasty charred and blistered hollows pockmarking his neck from deliberate cigarette burns.

But this was different. Woody had taken care of the first assault, but he hadn't gotten around to killing him and when the break came Beaver had dumped himself out of his chair, broken loose and gone through the window while all the action was going on. But this was different.

No, this was the same. It had happened before to Lippy Sullivan.

I took my time and read all the signs. It finally made sense when I thought it out. Beaver's break wasn't as clean as he had figured. He had been tailed to his safe place, hurting bad and terrified as hell. And when the killer finally reached him he couldn't run again. He was supposed to talk. He was tied up, his mouth taped while the killer told him what he wanted and what he was going to do to him if he didn't talk and just to prove his point the killer made his initial slashes that would insure his talking.

Except Beaver didn't talk. He fainted. There were more of those nicely placed slices, delivered purposely so the pain would bring Mm out of the faint. But Beaver didn't come out of it . . . there had been too much before it and he lay there mute and 'unconscious until the killer couldn't wait any more and made sure he'd never talk to anybody else either. And when he was done killing he had torn the room apart, piece by piece, bit by bit.

I followed the search pattern looking for anything that might have been missed, fingering through the torn bedding, reaching into places somebody already had reached into, feeling outside around the window ledges, going through the contents of the single dresser whose drawers were stacked, empty, along one wall.