Mickey Spillane - The Big Kill

"Yeah."

"Then you didn't hear much. He keeps his nose clean. The bodyguards are to keep the small-timers moving and not to protect him. As bookies go, the guy's okay. Now how about coming across with something I can sell."

I squashed the butt out and started on another. Cookie's ears were pinned and he leaned across the table with a grin like we were telling dirty stories. I said, "There was a little murder the other night. Then there was another. In the beginning they looked little, but now they're starting to look pretty big. I haven't got a damn thing I can tell you... yet. When it happens you'll get it quick. How's that?"

"Fair enough. Who got killed?"

"A guy named William Decker, Arnold Basil, then the next day Decker's friend Mel Hooker."

"I read about that."

"You'll be reading more about it. Where'll I find this Toady Link?"

Cookie rattled off a couple of addresses where I might pick him up and I let them soak in so I wouldn't forget them. "Just one thing, Mike," he added, "you don't know from nothing, see? Keep me out of it. I stay away from them boys. My racket takes dough but no rough stuff, and when it comes to rods or brass knucks you can count me out. I don't want none, of them hoods after my hide."

"Don't worry," I said. I stood up and threw a fin on the table to cover some of Tolly's champagne.

Cookie's eyebrows went up to his hairline. "You aren't going now, are you? Hell, what about Tolly? She's got a yen for you already and I can't make out with two dames."

"Sure you can. Nothing to it."

"Aw, Mike, what a guy you are, and after I hand you such a sweet dish too."

My mouth twisted into a lopsided smile. "I can get all the dishes I want without having them handed to me. Tell Tolly that maybe I'll look her up someday. She interests me strangely."

He didn't say anything, but he looked disappointed. He sat there wiggling those big ears and I cleared out of the place before the blonde came back and twisted my arm into staying.

Dames.

It was turning into a night just like that first one. The sidewalks and pavements were one big wet splash reflecting the garish lights of the streets and throwing them back at you. I pulled my raincoat out of the back and slipped into it, then climbed behind the wheel.

My watch read a few minutes after nine and it was tonight. Marsha said tonight. But there were other things first and Marsha could wait. It would be all the better for the waiting.

So I got in line behind the other cars and headed uptown. On the edge of the Bronx I turned off and looked for the bar that was one of the addresses Cookie had given me and found it in the middle of the block. I left the engine going while I asked around inside, but neither the bartender nor the manager had seen the eminent Mr. Link so far that night. They obliged with his home address and I thanked them politely even though I already had it.

Toady Link was at home.

Maybe it would be better to say he was occupying his Bronx residence. That's the kind of place it was. All fieldstone and picture windows on a walled-in half-acre of land that would have brought a quarter-million at auction. There were lights on all three floors of the joint and nobody to be seen inside. If it weren't for the new Packard squatting on the drive I would have figured the lights to be burglar protection.

I slid my own heap in at the curb and walked up the gravel to the house and punched the bell. Inside there was a faraway sound of chimes and about a minute later the door opened on a chain and a face looked at me waiting to see what I wanted.

You could see why he was called Toady. It was a big face, bigger around the jowls than it was on top with a pair of protuding eyes that seemed to have trouble staying in their sockets.

I said, "Hello, Toady. Do I get asked in?"

Even his voice was like a damned frog. "What do you want?"

"You maybe."

The frog face cracked into a wide-mouthed smile, a real nasty smile and the chain came off the lock. He had a gun in his hand, a big fat revolver with a hole in the end big enough to get your finger into. "Who the hell are you, bub?"

I took it easy getting my wallet out and flipped it back so he could see the tin. I shouldn't have bothered. His eyes never came off mine at all. I said, "Mike Hammer. Private Investigator, Toady. I think you ought to know me."

"I should?"

"Two of your boys should. They tried to take me."

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

"I'm not. I'm looking for you. About a murder."

The smile got fatter and wider and the hole in the gun looked even bigger when he pointed it at my head. "Get in here," he said.

I did like he said. I stood there in the hall while he locked the door behind me and I could feel the muzzle of that rod about an inch behind my spine. Then he used it to steer me through the foyer into an outsized living room.

That much I didn't mind. But when he lowered the pile of fat he called a body into a chair and left me standing there on the carpet I got a little bit sore. "Let's put the heater away, Toady."

"Let's hear more about this murder first. I don't like people to throw murder in my face, Mr. Investigator. Not even lousy private cops."

Goddamn, that fat face of his was making me madder every second I had to look at it.

"You ever been shot, fat boy?" I asked him.

His face got red up to his hairline.

"I've been shot, fat boy," I said. "Not just once, either. Put that rod away or I'm going to give you a chance to use it. You'll have time to pump out just one slug and if it misses you're going to hear the nastiest noise you ever heard."

I let my hand come up so my fingertips were inside my coat. When he didn't make a move to stop me I knew I had him and he knew it too. Fat boy didn't like the idea of hearing a nasty noise a bit. He let the gun drop on the chair beside him and cursed me with those bug eyes of his for finding out he was as yellow as they come.

It was better that way. Now I liked standing in the middle of the room. I could look down at the fat slob and poke at him with a spear until he told me what I wanted to hear. I said, "Remember William Decker?"

His eyelids closed slowly and opened the same way. His head nodded once, squeezing the fat out under his chin.

"Do you know he's dead?"

"You son of a bitch, don't try tagging me with that!" Now he was a real frog with a real croak.

"He played the ponies, Toady. You were the guy who picked up his bets."

"So what! I pick up a lot of bets."

"I thought you didn't fool around with small-time stuff."

"Balls, he wasn't small-time. He laid 'em big as anybody else. How'd I know how he was operating? Look, you..."

"Shut up and answer questions. You're lucky I'm not a city cop or you'd be doing your talking with a light in your face. Where'd Decker get the dough to lay?"

He relaxed into a sullen frown, his pudgy hands balled into tight fists. "He borrowed it, that's where."

"From Dixie Cooper if you've forgotten." He looked at me and if the name meant anything I couldn't read it in his face. "How much did Decker drop to you?"

"Hell, he went in the hole for a few grand, but don't go trying to prove it. I don't keep books."

"So you killed him."

"Goddamn you!" He came out of the chair and stood there shaking from head to foot. "I gave him that dough back so he could pay off his loan! Understand that? I hate them creeps who can't stand a loss. The guy was ready to pull the Dutch act so I gave him back his dough so's he could pay off."

He stood there staring at me with his eyes hanging out of that livid face of his sucking in his breath with a wheezy rasp. "You're lying, Toady," I said. "You're lying through your teeth." My hands twisted in the lapels of his coat and I pulled him in close so I could spit on him if I felt like it. "Where were you when Decker was killed?"