Mickey Spillane - The Big Kill

I picked up my deck of smokes and stuffed them in my pocket. I walked out without closing the door and down past the landlady who still held down her post in the vestibule. She didn't say anything until Mel hobbled to the door, glanced down the stairs and shut it. Then the old biddy humphed and let me out.

The sky had clouded up again, shutting out the stars and there was a damp mist in the air. I called Pat from a candy store down the corner and nobody answered his phone at home, so I tried the office. He was there. I told him to stick around and got back in my car.

Headquarters building was like a beehive without any bees when I got there. A lone squad car stood at the curb and the elevator operator was reading a paper inside his cab. The boys on the night stand had that bored look already and half of them were piddling around trying to keep busy.

I got in the elevator and let him haul me up to Pat's floor. Down the corridor a typewriter was clicking busily and I heard Pat rummaging around the drawers of his file cabinet. When I pushed the door open he said, "Be right with you, Mike."

So I parked and watched him work for five minutes. When he got through at the cabinet I asked him, "How come you're working nights?"

"Don't you read the papers?"

"I didn't come up against any juicy murders."

"Murders, hell. The D.A. has me and everybody else he can scrape together working on that gambling probe."

"What's he struggling so hard for, it isn't an election year for him. Besides, the public's going to gamble anyway."

Pat pulled out his chair and slid into it. "The guy got scruples. He has it in for Ed Teen and his outfit."

"He's not getting Teen," I said.

"Well, he's trying."

"Where do you come in?"

Pat shrugged and reached for a cigarette. "The D.A. tried to break up organized gambling in this town years ago. It flopped like all the other probes flopped... for lack of evidence. He's never made a successful raid on a syndicate establishment since he went after them."

"There's a hole in the boat?"

"A what?"

"A leak."

"Of course. Ed Teen has a pipeline right into the D.A.'s office somehow. That's why the D.A. is after his hide. It's a personal affront to him and he won't stand for it. Since he can't nail Teen down with something, he's conducting an investigation into his past. We know damn well that Teen and Grindle pulled a lot of rough stuff and if we can tie a murder on them they'll be easy to take."

"I bet. Why doesn't he patch that leak?"

Pat did funny things with his mouth. "He's surrounded by men he trusts and I trust and we can't find a single person who's talking out of turn. Everybody's been investigated. We even checked for dictaphones, that's how far we went. It seems impossible, but nevertheless, the leak's here. Hell, the D.A. pulls surprise raids that were cooked up an hour before and by the time he gets there not a soul's around. It's uncanny."

"Uncanny my foot. The D.A. is fooling with guys as smart as he is himself. They've been operating longer too. Look, any chance of breaking away early tonight?"

"With this here?" He pointed toward a pile of papers on his desk. "They all have to be classified, correlated and filed. Nope, not tonight, Mike. I'll be here for another three hours.

Outside the racket of the typewriter stopped and a stubby brunette came in with a wire basket of letters. Right behind her was another brunette, but far from stubby. What the first one didn't have she had everything of and she waved it around in front of you like a flag.

Pat saw my foolish grin and when the stubby one left said, "Miss Scobie, have you met Mike Hammer?"

I got one of those casual glances with a flicker of a smile. "No but I've heard the District Attorney speak of him several times."

"Nothing good, I hope," I said.

"No, nothing good." She laughed at me and finished sorting out the papers on Pat's desk.

"Miss Scobie is one of the D.A.'s secretaries," Pat said. "For a change I have some help around here. He sent over three girls to do the manual labor."

"I'm pretty good at that myself." I think I was leering.

The Scobie babe gave me the full voltage from a pair of deep blue eyes. "I've heard that too."

"You should quit getting things secondhand."

She packed the last of the papers in a new pile and tacked them together with a clip. When she turned around she gave me a look Pat couldn't see but had a whole book written there in her face. "Perhaps I should," she said.

I could feel the skin crawl up my back just from the tone of her voice.

Pat said, "You're a bastard, Mike. You and the women."

"They're necessary." I stared at the door that closed behind her.

His mouth cracked in a grin. "Not Miss Scobie. She knows her way around the block without somebody holding her hand. Doesn't her name mean anything to you?"

"Should it?"

"Not unless you're a society follower. Her family is big stuff down in Texas. The old man had a ranch where he raised horses until they brought oil in. Then he sat back and enjoyed life. He raises racing nags now."

"The Scobie Stables?"

"Uh-huh. Ellen's his daughter. When she was eighteen she and the old boy had a row and she packed up and left. This department job is the first one she ever had. Been here better than fifteen years. She's the gal the track hates to see around. When she makes a bet she collects."

"What the hell's she working for then?"

"Ask her."

"I'm asking you."

Pat grinned again. "The old man disinherited her when she wouldn't marry the son of his friend. He swore she'd never see a penny of his dough, so now she'll only bet when a Scobie horse is running and with what she knows about horses, she's hard to fool. Every time she wins she sends a telegram to the old boy stating the amount and he burns up. Don't ask her to tip you off though. She won't do it."

"Why doesn't the D.A. use her to get an inside track on the wire rooms?"

"He did, but she's too well known now. A feature writer for one of the papers heard about the situation, and gave it a big play in a Sunday supplement a few years ago, so she's useless there."

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. "Texas gal. I like the way they're built."

"Yeah, big." Pat grunted. "A big one gets you every time." His fingers rapped on the desk. "Let's come back to earth, Mike. What's new?"

"Decker."

"That's not new. We're still looking for the driver who ran down his buddy. They found the car, you know."

I sat up straight.

"You didn't miss everything that night. There were two bullet holes in the back. One hit the rear window and the other went through the gas tank. The car was abandoned over in Brooklyn.'

"Stolen heap?"

"Sure, what'd you expect? The slugs came from your gun, the tires matched the imprints in the body and there wasn't a decent fingerprint anywhere."

"Great."

"We'll wrap it up soon. The word's out."

"Great."

Pat scowled at me in disgust. "Hell, you're never satisfied."

I shook a cigarette out and lit up. Pat pushed an ash tray over to me. I said, "Pat, you got holes in your head if you think that this was a plain, simple job. Decker was in hock to a loan shark for a few grand and was being pressured into paying up. The guy was nuts about his kid and they probably told him the kid would catch it if he didn't come across."

"So?"

"Christ, you aren't getting to be a cynic like the rest of the cops, are you? You want things like this to keep on happening? You like murder to dirty up the streets just because some greaseball wants his dirty money! Hell, who's to blame... a poor jerk like Decker or a torpedo who'll carve him up if he doesn't pay up? Answer me that."

"There's a law against loan sharks operating in this state."