Mickey Spillane - The Big Kill

So damn many little things and none of them added up. Some place between a tenement slum that had belonged to Decker and Toady's dismal swamp castle a killer was whistling his way along the street while I sat trying to figure out what a finger nudging my mind meant.

Lord, I was tired. The smoke in the car stung my eyes and I had to open the window to let it out. What I needed was a long, natural sleep without anything at all to think and dream about, but up there in the man-built cliffs of steel and stone was Marsha and she said she'd wait for me. The back of my head started to hurt again and even the thought of maybe sleeping with somebody who had been a movie star didn't make it go away.

But I went up.

And she was still waiting, too.

Marsha said, "You're late, Mike."

"I know, I'm sorry." She picked the hat out of my hand and waited while I peeled off my coat. When she had them stowed in the closet she hooked her arm under mine and took me inside.

There were drinks all set up and waiting beside a bowl that had held ice but was now all water. The tall red candles had been lit, burned down a few inches, then had been blown out.

"I thought you would have been here earlier. For supper perhaps."

She handed me a cigarette from a long narrow box and followed it with a lighter. When I had my lungs full of smoke I leaned back with my head pillowed against the chair and looked at her close up. She had on a light green dress that swirled up her body, over her shoulder and came down again to a thin leather belt at her waist. The swelling around her eye had gone down and in the soft light of the room the slight purple looked good.

I watched her a second and grinned. "Now I'm nearly sorry I didn't. You're nice to look at, kitten."

"Just half?"

"No. All this time. From top to bottom too."

Her eyes burned softly under long lashes. "I like it when you say it, Mike. You're used to saying it too, aren't you?"

"Only to beautiful women."

"And you've seen plenty of them." The laugh was in her voice now.

I said, "You've got the wrong slant, kid. Pretty is what you mean. Pretty and beautiful are two different things. Only a few women are pretty, but even one who's not so hot to look at can be beautiful. A lot of guys make mistakes when they turn down a beautiful woman for one who's just pretty.

Her eyebrows went up in the slightest show of surprise, letting the fires of her irises leap into plain view. "I didn't know you were a philosopher, Mike."

"There're a lot of things you don't know about me."

She uncurled from the chair and picked up the glasses from the table. "Should I?"

"Uh-huh. They're all bad." I got that look again, the one with the smile around the edges, then she brought in some fresh ice from the kitchen and made a pair of highballs. The one she gave me went down cold and easy, nestling there at the bottom of my stomach with a pleasant, creeping kind of warmth that tiptoed silently throughout my body until it was the nicest thing in the world to just sit there with my eyes half shut and listen to the rain drum against the windows.

Marsha's hand went to the switch on the record payer, flooding the room with the soft tones of the "Blue Danube." She filled the glasses again, then drifted to the floor at my feet, laying her head back against my knees. "Nice?" she asked me.

"Wonderful. I'm right in the mood to enjoy it."

"You still..."

"That's right. Still." I closed my eyes all the way for a minute.

"Sometimes I think I'm standing still too. It's never been like this before."

Her hand found mine and pulled it down to her cheek. I thought I felt her lips brush my fingers, but I wasn't sure. "Do you have the boy yet?"

"Yeah, he's in good hands. Tomorrow or maybe the next day they'll come for him. He'll be all right."

"I wish there was something I could do. Are you sure there isn't? Could I keep him for you?"

"He'd be too much for you. Hell, he's only a little over a year old. I have a nurse for him. She's old, but reliable."

"Then let me take him out for a walk or something. I really do want to help, Mike, honest."

I ran my fingers through the sheen of her hair and across the soft lines of her face. This time I knew it when her lips parted in a kiss on my palm.

"I wish you could, Marsha. I need help. I need something. This whole thing is getting away from me."

"Would it help to tell me about it?"

"Maybe."

"Then tell me."

So I told her. I sat there staring at the ceiling with Marsha on the floor and her head on my knees and I told her about it. I lined up everything from beginning to end and tried to put them together in the right order.

When you strung them out like that it didn't take long to tell. They made a nice neat pile of facts, one on top of the other, but there was nothing there to hold them together. One little push scattered them all over the place. Before I finished my jaws ached from holding my teeth together so tightly.

"Being so mad won't help you think," Marsha said.

"I gotta be mad. Goddamn, you can't go at a thing like this unless you are mad. I never knew much about kids, but when I held the Decker boy in my hands I could see why a guy would give his insides to keep his kid alive. Right there is the thing that screws everything up. Decker knew he was going to die and didn't try to do a single thing about it. Three days before, he knew it was going to happen too. He got all, his affairs put right and waited. God knows what he thought about in those three days."

"It couldn't have been nice."

"Oh, I don't know. I don't get it at all." I rubbed my face disgustedly. "Decker and Hooker tie in with Toady Link and he ties in with Grindle and Teen and it was one of Grindle's boys who shot Decker. There's a connection there if you want to look for one."

"I'm sorry, Mike."

"You don't have to be."

"But I am. In a way it started with me. I keep thinking of the boy."

"It would have been the same if Decker had broken into the other apartment. The guy knew he was going to die... but why? Whether or not he got what he was after he was still planning to die!"

Marsha lifted her face and turned around "Couldn't it have been... a precaution? Perhaps he was planning to run out with the money. In that case he would know there was a possibility that they, might catch up with him. As it was, it turned out to be the same thing. He knew they'd never believe his story about the wrong apartment so he ran anyway, bringing about the same results.".

My eyes felt hot and heavy. "It's crazy as hell. It's a mess no matter how I look at it, but someplace there's an answer and it's lost in my head. I keep trying to work it loose and it won't come. Every time I stop to think about it I can feel it sitting here and if the damn thing was human it would laugh at me. Now I can't even think any more."

"Tired, darling?"

"Yeah."

I looked at her and she looked at me and we were both thinking the same thing. Then her head dropped slowly and her smile had a touch of sadness in it.

"I'm a fool, aren't I?" she said.

"You're no fool, Marsha."

"Mike... have you ever been in love?"

I didn't know how to answer that so I just nodded.

"Was it nice?"

"I thought so." I was hoping she wouldn't ask me any more. Even after five years it hurt to think about it.

"Are you... now?" Her voice was low, almost inaudible. I caught the brief flicker of her eyes as she glanced at my face.

I shrugged. I didn't know what to tell her.

She smiled at her hands and I smiled with her. "That's good," she laughed. Her eyes went bright and happy and she tossed her head so that her hair fell in a glittering dark halo around her shoulders. "I had tonight all planned. I was going to be a fool anyway and make you want me so that you'd keep wanting me."