Mickey Spillane - The Big Kill

His hands fought with mine to keep me from choking him. "Here! I was... right here! Let go of me!"

"What about your boys... Nocky and that other gorilla?"

"I don't know where they were. I... didn't have anything to do with that! Goddamn, that's what I get for being a sucker! I should've let them work on the bastard. I should've kept his dough and kicked him out!"

"Maybe they did work over somebody. They had Decker's buddy all lined up for a shellacking until he shook 'em off on me. I thought I taught 'em to keep their noses out of trouble, but I guess I didn't teach 'em hard enough. The guy they were going to give the business to died with a bullet in him the same night. I hear tell those boys work for you, and they weren't out after the guy on their own."

"You... you're crazy!"

"Am I? Who put them on Hooker... you?"

"Hooker?" He worked his head into a frown that wouldn't stick.

"Don't play innocent, damn it. You know who I'm talking about. Mel Hooker. The guy who teamed up with Decker to play the nags."

An oversize tongue made a quick pass over his lips. "He... yeah, I know. Hooker. Nocky and him got in a fight. It was when he picked up his dough and cleared out. He was drunk, see? He started shooting off his mouth about how it was all crooked and he talked enough to keep some dough from coming across the board. That's how it was. Nocky tried to throw him out and he nearly brained him."

"So your boy picked him off?"

"No, no. He wouldn't do that. He was plenty mad, that's why he was laying for him. He didn't knock anybody off. I don't go for that. Ask anybody, they'll tell you I don't go for rough stuff."

I gave him a shove to get him away from me. "For a bookie you're a big-hearted son of a bitch. You're one in a million and, brother, you better be telling the truth, because if you aren't you're going to get a lot of that fat sweated off you. Where's these two mugs?"

"How the hell do I know?"

I didn't play with him this time. I backhanded him across the mouth and did it again when he stumbled away and tried to grab the gun on the chair. His big belly shook so hard he swayed off balance and I gave it to him again. Then he just about fell into the chair and with the rod right under his hand he didn't have the guts to make a play for it.

I asked him again. "Where are they, Toady?"

"They... have rooms over the... Rialto Restaurant."

"Names, Pal."

"Nocky... he's Arthur Cole. The other one's Glenn Fisher." He had to squeeze the words out between lips that were no more than a thin red gash in his face. The marks of my fingers were across his cheek, making them puff out even farther. I could tell that he was hoping I'd turn my back, even for a second. The crazy madness in his eyes made them bulge so far his eyelids couldn't cover them.

I turned my back. I did it when I picked up the phone, but there was a mirror right in front of me and I could stand there and watch him hate me while I thumbed through the directory until I found the number listed under "Cole" and dialed it.

The phone rang, all right, but nobody answered it. Then I called the Rialto Restaurant and went through two waiters before the manager came on and told me that the boys didn't live there any more. They had packed their bags about an hour before, climbed into a cab and scrammed. Yeah, they were all paid up and the management was glad to be rid of them.

I hung up and turned around. "They beat it, Toady."

Link just sat.

"Where'd they go?"

His shoulders hunched into a shrug.

"I have a feeling you're going to die pretty soon, Toady," I said. And after I said it I looked at him until it sank all the way in and put his eyes back in place so the eyelids could get over them. I picked up the gun that lay beside him, flipped out the cylinder and punched the shells into my hand. They were .44's with copper-covered noses that could rip a guy in half. I tossed the empty rod back on the chair beside him and walked out of the room.

Somehow the night smelled cleaner after Toady. The rain was a light mist washing the stink of the swamp away. It shaded part of the monstrous castle the ugly frog sat in as though it were ashamed of it. I looked back at the lights and I could see why they were all on. They were the guy's only friends.

When I got back in my car I drove down to the corner, swung around and came back up the street. Before I got as far as the house the Packard came roaring out of the drive and skidded halfway across the road before it straightened out and went tearing off down the street. I had to laugh because Toady wasn't going anyplace at all. Not driving like that he wasn't. Toady was so goddamn mad he had to take it out on something and tonight the car took the beating.

I would have kept right on going myself if he hadn't left the door wide open so that the light made a streaming yellow invitation down the gravel. I jammed on the brakes and left the car sitting, the motor turning over and picked up the invitation.

The house was Toady's attempt at respectability, but it was only an attempt. The upstairs lights were turned on from switches at the foot of the stairs and only one set of prints showed in the dust that lay over the staircase. There were three bedrooms, two baths and a sitting room on the top floor, a full apartment-sized layout on the second and the only places that had been used were one bedroom and a shower stall. Everything else was neat and dormant, with the dust-mop marks last week's cleaning woman had left. Downstairs the kitchen was a mess of dirty dishes and littered newspapers. The pantry was stocked to take care of a hundred people who never came and the only things in the guest closet were Toady's hat and coat that he hadn't bothered to wear when he dashed out.

I rummaged around in the library and the study without touching anything then went down the cellar and had a drink of private stock at his bar. It was a big place with knotty pine walls rimmed with a couple hundred beer steins that were supposed to give it the atmosphere of a beer garden. Off to one side was the poolroom with the balls neatly racked and gathering more dust. He even had a cigarette machine down there. The butts were on the house and all you had to do was yank the lever, so I had a pack of Luckies on Toady too.

There were two other doors that led off the poolroom. One went into the furnace room and I stepped into a goddamned rattrap that nearly took my toes off. The other was a storeroom and I almost backed out of it when the white clothes that shrouded the stockpile of junk took shape. I found the light switch and turned it on. Instead of an overhead going on, a red light blossomed out over a sink on the end of the wall, turning everything a deep crimson.

The place was a darkroom. Or at least it had been. The stuff hadn't been touched since it was stored here. A big professional camera was folded up under wraps with a lot of movie-screen type backdrops and a couple of wrought-iron benches. The processing chemicals and film plates had rotted away on a shelf next to a box that held the gummy remains of tubes of retouching paints. Off in the corner was a screwy machine of some sort that had its seams all carefully dust-proofed with masking tape.

I put the covers back in place and turned the light off. When I closed the door I couldn't help thinking that Toady certainly tried hard to work up a hobby. In a way I couldn't blame him a bit. For friends all that repulsive bastard had was a lot of toys and dust. The louse was rich as sin with nobody to spend his money on.

I left the door open like I found it and climbed in under the wheel of my heap. I sat there feeling a little finger probing at my mind, trying to jar something into it that should already be there and the finger was still probing away when I got back to Manhattan and started down Riverside Drive.