Mickey Spillane - The Big Kill

Her hand tightened over mine on the wheel. "We'll find out soon," she told me.

A rain-drenched canopy sagging on its frame braced itself against the storm. Lettered on the side was HARVEY'S. The wind had torn a hole in the top and the doorman in the maroon uniform huddled in the entrance to stay dry. I parked around the corner and locked the car, then dragged my raincoat over the two of us for the run back to the joint.

The doorman said it was a bad night and I agreed with him.

The girl in the cloakroom said the same thing and I agreed with her too.

The headwaiter who was the head bouncer with a carnation didn't say anything. I saw Cookie over at a corner table with another bleach job and let muscles make a path through the crowd for us until we reached him.

Somewhere, Cookie had lost his grin. We went through the introductions and ordered a drink. He looked at me, then at Marsha and I said, "You can talk. She's part of it."

The blonde who looked like a two-bit twist caught my attention. "Don't mind my getup. I can get around better when I act like a floozie. I've been on this thing with Cookie ever since he started."

"Arlene's one of Harry's stenos. We use her once in a while. She's the one who dug up the flame."

"Where is she, Cookie?"

His head made a motion toward the back of the bandstand. "Probably changing. The act goes on again in a few minutes." He was scowling.

The blonde had a single sheet of paper rolled up in her hand. She spread it out and started checking off items with her fingernail.

"Georgia... or Dolly... is forty-eight and looks like it. She was Fallon's girl friend and then his mistress. At one time she was a looker and a good singer, but the years changed all that. After Fallon died she went from one job to another and wound up being a prostitute. We got a line on her through a guy who knows the houses pretty well. She took to the street for a while and spent some time in the workhouse. Right after the war she was picked up on a shoplifting charge and given six months. Not two weeks after she got out she broke into an apartment and was caught at it. She got a couple years that time. She got back in the houses after that to get eating money, broke loose and got this job. She's been here a month."

"You got all that without seeing her?"

The blonde nodded.

"I thought you were going to speak to her, Cookie."

"I was," he said. "I changed my mind."

He was staring across the room to where Ed Teen was sitting talking to four men. Only two of them were lawyers. The other two were big and hard-looking. One chewed on a match-stick and leered at the dames.

My drink slopped over on the table.

Cookie said, "I thought you told me there wouldn't be any rough stuff. "

"I changed my mind too." I had to let go of the glass before I spilled the rest of it. "They see me come in?"

"No."

"They know you or why you're here?"

Cookie's ears went back, startled. "Do, I look like a dope?" His tongue licked his lips nervously. "You think... that's who I been crossing all day."

I was grinning again. Goddamn it, I felt good! "I think so, Cookie," I said.

And while I was saying it the lights turned dim and a blue spot hit the bandstand where a guy in a white tux started to play. A girl with coal-black hair stepped out from behind the curtains and paused dramatically, waiting for a round of applause before going into her number.

I couldn't wait any longer. It was coming to a head too fast. I said, "I'm going back there. Cookie, you get over to the phone and call the police. Ask for Captain Chambers and tell him to get down here as fast as he can move. Tell him why. I don't know what's going to happen, but stick around and you'll get your story."

I could see Cookie's face going white. "Look, Mike, I don't want no part of this. I..."

"You won't get any part of it unless you do as you're told. Get moving."

I started to get up and Marsha said, "I'm going with you, Mike."

All the hate and excitement died away and there was a little piece of time that was all ours. I shook my head. "You can't, kid. This is my party. You're not part of the trouble any more." I leaned over and kissed her. There were tears in her eyes.

"Please, Mike... wait for the police. I don't want you... to be hurt again."

"Nobody's going to hurt me now. Go home and wait for me."

There was something final in her voice. "You won't... come back to me, Mike."

"I promise you," I said. "I'll be back."

A sob tore into her throat and stayed there, crushed against her lips by the back of her hand. Part of it got loose and I didn't want to stay to see the pain in her face.

I nudged the .45 in the holster to kick it free of the leather and tried to see across the room. It was much too dark to see anything. I started back and heard Marsha sob again as Cookie led her to the front. The blonde had disappeared somewhere too.

Chapter Twelve

A curtain covered the arch. It led into a narrow, low-ceilinged alcove with another curtain at the far end. The edges of it overlapped and the bottom turned' up along the floor, successfully cutting out the backstage light that could spoil an effective entrance.

I stepped through and pulled it back to place behind me. The guy tilted back in the chair put his paper down and peered at me over his glasses. "Guests ain't allowed back here, buddy."

I let him see the corner of a sawbuck. "Could be that I'm not a guest."

"Could be." He took the sawbuck and made it vanish. "You look like a fire inspector to me."

"That'll do if anybody asks. Where's Dolly's room?"

"Dolly? That bag? What you want with her?" He took his glasses off and waved them down the hall. "She ain't got no room. Under the stairs is a supply closet and she usually changes in there." The glasses went back on and he squinted through them at me. "She's no good, Mac. Only fills in on an empty spot."

"Don't worry about it."

"I won't." He tilted the chair back again and picked up the paper. His eyes stayed on me curiously, then he shrugged and started reading.

There was a single light hanging from the ceiling halfway down and a red exit bulb over a door at the end. A pair of dressing rooms with doors side by side opened off my right and I could hear the women behind them getting ready for their act. In one of them a man was complaining about the pay and a woman told him to shut up. She said something else and he cracked her one.

The other side was a blank beaverboard wall painted green that ran down to, the iron staircase before meeting a cement-block wall. It must have partitioned off the kitchen from the racket that was going on in back of it.

I found the closet where the guy said it would be. It had a riveted steel door with an oversize latch and SUPPLIES stenciled across the top. I stepped back in the shadows under the staircase and waited.

From far off came the singer's voice rising to the pitch of the piano. Down the hall the guy was still tilted back reading. I knocked on the door.

A muffled voice asked who it was. I knocked again.

This time the door opened a crack. I had my foot in the opening before she could close it. She looked like she was trying hard to scream. I said, "I'm a friend, Georgia."

Stark terror showed in her eyes at the mention of her name. She backed away until the fear reached her legs, then collapsed on a box. I went all the way in and shut the door.

Now the figure from the mist had a face. It wasn't a nice face. Up close it showed every year and experience in the tiny lines that crisscrossed her skin. At one time it had been pretty. Misery and fear had wiped all that out without leaving more than a semblance of a former beauty. She was small and fighting to hold her figure. None of the artifices were any good. The red hair, the overly mascaraed eyes, the tightly corseted waist were too plainly visible. I wondered why the management even bothered with her. Maybe she sang dirty songs. That always made a hit with the customers who were more interested in lyrics than music.