Mickey Spillane - The Girl Hunters

Art said, "One thing, Mike."

"What?"

"Your problem."

"No trouble. It's over. I was standing here cleaning my gun and it all was like snapping my fingers. It was simple. If I had thought of it right away Dewey and Dennis Wallace and Alex Bird would still be alive. It was tragically simple. I could have found out where Velda was days ago."

"Mike--"

"I'll see you, Art. The rest of The Dragon has yet to fall."

"What?" He didn't understand me.

"Tooth and Nail. I just got Tooth--Nail is more subtle."

"We're going to need a statement."

"You'll get it."

"How will--"

I interrupted him with, "I'll call you."

Chapter 13

At daylight the rain stopped and the music of sunlight played off the trees and grass at dawn. The mountains glittered and shone and steamed a little, and as the sun rose the sheen stopped and the colors came through. I ate at an all-night drive-in, parking between the semis out front. I sat through half a dozen cups of coffee before paying the bill and going out to the day, ignoring the funny looks of the carhop.

I stopped again awhile by the Ashokan Reservoir and did nothing but look at the water and try to bring seven years into focus. It was a long time, that. You change in seven years.

You change in seven days too, I thought.

I was a bum Pat had dragged into a hospital to look at a dying man. Pat didn't know it, but I was almost as dead as the one on the bed. It depends on where you die. My dying had been almost done. The drying up, the withering, had taken place. Everything was gone except hopelessness and that is the almost death of living.

Remember, Velda, when we were big together? You must have remembered or you would never have asked for me. And all these years I had spent trying to forget you while you were trying to remember me.

I got up slowly and brushed off my pants, then walked back across the field to the car. During the night I had gotten it all muddy driving aimlessly on the back roads, but I didn't think Laura would mind.

The sun had climbed high until it was almost directly overhead. When you sit and think time can go by awfully fast. I turned the key, pulled out on the road and headed toward the mountains.

When I drove up, Laura heard me coming and ran out to meet me. She came into my arms with a rush of pure delight and did nothing for a few seconds except hold her arms around me, then she looked again, stepped back and said, "Mike--your face!"

"Trouble, baby. I told you I was trouble."

For the first time I noticed my clothes. My coat swung open and there was blood down my jacket and shirt and a jagged tear that was clotted with more blood at my side.

Her eyes went wide, not believing what she saw. "Mike! You're--you're all--"

"Shot down, kid. Rough night."

She shook her head. "It's not funny. I'm going to call a doctor!"

I took her hand. "No, you're not. It isn't that bad."

"Mike--"

"Favor, kitten. Let me lie in the sun like an old dog, okay? I don't want a damn medic. I'll heal. It's happened before. I just want to be left alone in the sun."

"Oh, Mike, you stubborn fool."

"Anybody home?" I asked her.

"No, you always pick an off day for the servants." She smiled again now. "You're clever and I'm glad."

I nodded. For some reason my side had started to ache and it was getting hard to breathe. There were other places that had pain areas all their own and they weren't going to get better. It had only just started. I said, "I'm tired."

So we went out back to the pool. She helped me off with my clothes and once more I put the trunks on, then eased down into a plastic contour chair and let the sun warm me. There were blue marks from my shoulders down and where the rib was broken a welt had raised, an angry red that arched from front to back. Laura found antiseptic and cleaned out the furrow where the two shots had grazed me and I thought back to the moment of getting them, realizing how lucky I was because the big jerk was too impatient, just like I had been, taking too much pleasure out of something that should have been strictly business.

I slept for a while. I felt the sun travel across my body from one side to the other, then I awoke abruptly because events had compacted themselves into my thoughts and I knew that there was still that one thing more to do.

Laura said, "You were talking in your sleep, Mike."

She had changed back into that black bikini and it was wet like her skin so she must have just come from the water. The tight band of black at her loins had rolled down some from the swim and fitted tightly into the crevasses of her body. The top half was like an artist's brush stroke, a quick motion of impatience at a critical sex-conscious world that concealed by reason of design only. She was more nearly naked dressed than nude.

How lovely.

Large, flowing thighs. Full, round calves. They blended into a softly concave stomach and emerged, higher, into proud, outthrust breasts. Her face and hair were a composite halo reaching for the perfection of beauty and she was smiling.

Lovely.

"What did I say, Laura?"

She stopped smiling then. "You were talking about dragons."

I nodded. "Today, I'm St. George."

"Mike--"

"Sit down, baby."

"Can we talk again?"

"Yes, we'll talk."

"Would you mind if I got dressed first? It's getting chilly out here now. You ought to get dressed yourself."

She was right. The sun was a thick red now, hanging just over the crest of a mountain. While one side was a blaze of green, the other was in the deep purple of the shadow.

I held out my hand and she helped me up, and together we walked around the pool to the bathhouse, touching each other, feeling the warmth of skin against skin, the motion of muscle against muscle. At the door she turned and I took her in my arms. "Back to back?" she said.

"Like prudes," I told her.

Her eyes grew soft and her lips wet her tongue. Slowly, with an insistent hunger, her mouth turned up to mine and I took it, tasting her again, knowing her, feeling the surge of desire go through me and through her too.

I let her go reluctantly and she went inside with me behind her. The setting sun threw long orange rays through the window, so there was no need of the overhead light. She went into the shower and turned on a soft drizzle while I got dressed slowly, aching and hurting as I pulled on my clothes.

She called out, "When will it all be over, Mike?"

"Today," I said quietly.

"Today?"

I heard her stop soaping herself in the shower. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"You were dreaming about dragons," she called out.

"About how they die, honey. They die hard. This one will die especially hard. You know, you wouldn't believe how things come about. Things that were planted long ago suddenly bear fruit now. Like what I told you. Remember all I told you about Velda?"

"Yes, Mike, I do."

"I had to revise and add to the story, Laura."

"Really?" She turned the shower off and stood there behind me soaping herself down, the sound of it so nice and natural I wanted to turn around and watch. I knew what she'd look like darkly beautiful, blondely beautiful, the sun having turned all of her hair white.

I said, "Pat was right and I was right. Your jewels did come into it. They were like Mrs. Civac's jewels and the fact that Richie Cole was a jewel smuggler."

"Oh?" That was all she said.

"They were all devices. Decoys. Red herrings. How would you like to hear the rest of what I think?"

"All right, Mike."

She didn't see me, but I nodded. "In the government are certain key men. Their importance is apparent to critical eyes long before it is to the public. Your husband was like that. It was evident that he was going to be a top dog one day and the kind of top dog our Red enemy could hardly afford to have up there.