Mickey Spillane: One Lonely Night

I was sweating and cold at the same time. Maybe it did happen to me over there. Maybe I did have a taste for death. Maybe I liked it too much to taste anything else. Maybe I was twisted and rotted inside. Maybe I would be washed down the sewer with the rest of all the rottenness sometime. What was stopping it from happening now? Why was I me with some kind of lucky charm around my neck that kept me going when I was better off dead?

That's why I parked the car and started walking in the rain. I didn't want to look in that damn mirror any more. So I walked and smoked and climbed to the hump in the bridge where the boats in the river made faces and spoke to me until I had to bury my face in my hands until everything straightened itself out again.

I was a killer. I was a murderer, legalized. I had no reason for living. Yeah, he said that!

The crazy music that had been in my head ever since I came back from those dusks and dawns started again, a low steady beat overshadowed by the screaming of brassier, shriller instruments that hadn't been invented yet. They shouted and pounded a symphony of madness and destruction while I held my hands over my ears and cursed until they stopped. Only the bells were left, a hundred bells that called for me to come closer to the music, and when I wouldn't come they stopped, one by one, all except one deep, persistent bell with a low, resonant voice. It wouldn't give up. It called me to it, and when I opened my eyes I knew the bell was from a channel marker in the river, calling whenever it swayed with the tide.

It was all right once I knew where it came from. At least it was real. That judge, that damn white-headed son-of-a-bitch got me like this. I wasn't so tough after all. It wouldn't have been so bad . . . but maybe he was right. Maybe he was dead right and I'd never be satisfied until I knew the answer myself. If there was an answer.

I don't know how long I stood there. Time was just the ticking of a watch and a blend of sound from the ramp behind me. At some point after the sixth cigarette the cold mist had turned into a fine snow that licked at my face and clung to my coat. At first it melted into damp patches on the steel and concrete, then took hold and extended itself into a coverlet of white.

Now the last shred of reality was gone completely. The girders became giant trees and the bridge an eerie forest populated by whitecapped rubber-tired monsters streaking for the end of the causeway that took them into more friendly surroundings. I leaned back into the shadow of a girder and watched them to get my mind off other things, happy to be part of the peace and quiet of the night.

It came at last, the lessening of tension. The stiffness went out of my fingers and I pulled on a smoke until it caught in my lungs the way I liked it to do. Yeah, I could grin now and watch the faces fade away until they were onto the port and starboard lights of the ships again, and the bell that called me in was only a buoy some place off in the dark.

I ought to get out of it. I ought to take Velda and my office and start up in real estate in some small community where murder and guns and dames didn't happen. Maybe I would, at that. It was wonderful to be able to think straight again. No more crazy mad hatred that tied my insides into knots. No more hunting the scum that stood behind a trigger and shot at the world. That was official police business. The duty of organized law and order. And too slow justice. No more sticks with dirty ends on them either.

That's what the snow and the quiet did for me. It had been a long time since I had felt this good. Maybe the rottenness wasn't there at all and I was a killer only by coincidence. Maybe I didn't like to kill at all.

I stuck another Lucky in my mouth and searched my pockets for matches. Something jerked my head up before I found them and I stood there listening.

The wind blew. The snow hissed to the street. A foghorn sounded. That was all.

I shrugged and tore a match out of the book when I heard it again. A little, annoying sound that didn't belong on the bridge in the peace and quiet. They were soft, irregular sounds that faded when the wind shifted, then came back stronger. Footsteps, muted by the inch or so of snow on the walk.

I would have gotten the butt lit if the feet weren't trying to run with the desperate haste that comes with fatigue. The sound came closer and closer until it was a shadow fifty feet away that turned into a girl wrapped in a coat with a big woolly collar, her hands reaching for the support of a girder and missing.

She fell face down and tried to pull herself up to run again, but she couldn't make it. Her breathing was a long, racking series of sobs that shook her body in a convulsion of despair.

I'd seen fear before, but never like this.

She was only a few steps away and I ran to her, my hands hooking under her arms to lift her to her feet.

Her eyes were like saucers, rimmed with red, overflowing with tears that blurred her pupils. She took one look at me and choked, "Lord . . . no, please!"

"Easy, honey, take it easy," I said. I propped her against the girder and her eyes searched my face through the tears unable to see me clearly. She tried to talk and I stopped her. "No words, kid. There's plenty of time for that later. Just take it easy a minute, nobody's going to hurt you."

As if that stirred something in her mind, her eyes went wide again and she turned her head to stare back down the ramp. I heard it too. Footsteps, only these weren't hurried. They came evenly and softly, as if knowing full well they'd reach their objective in a few seconds.

I felt a snarl ripple across my mouth and my eyes went half shut. Maybe you can smack a dame around all you want and make her life as miserable as hell, but nobody has the right to scare the daylights out of any woman. Not like this.

She trembled so hard I had to put my arm around her shoulder to steady her. I watched her lips trying to speak, the unholy fear spreading into her face as no sound came.

I pulled her away from the girder. "Come on, we'll get this straightened out in a hurry." She was too weak to resist. I held my arm around her and started walking toward the footsteps.

He came out of the wall of white, a short, pudgy guy in a heavy belted ulster. His homburg was set on the side of his head rakishly, and even at this distance I could see the smile on his lips. Both his hands were stuck in his pockets and he walked with a swagger. He wasn't a bit surprised when he saw the two of us. One eyebrow went up a little, but that was all. Oh yes, he had a gun in one pocket.

It was pointing at me.

Nobody had to tell me he was the one. I wouldn't even have to know he had a rod in his hand. The way the kid's body stiffened with the shock of seeing him was enough. My face couldn't have been nice to look at right then, but it didn't bother the guy.

The gun moved in the pocket so I'd know it was a gun.

His voice fitted his body, short and thick. He said, "It is not smart to be a hero. Not smart at all." His thick lips twisted into a smile of mingled satisfaction and conceit. It was so plain in his mind that I could almost hear him speak it. The girl running along, stumbling blindly into the arms of a stranger. Her pleas for help, the guy's ready agreement to protect her, only to look down the barrel of a rod.

It didn't happen like that at all, but that's what he thought. His smile widened and he said harshly, "So now they will find the two of you here tomorrow." His eyes were as cold and as deadly as those of a manta ray.

He was too cocky. All he could see was his own complete mastery of the situation. He should have looked at me a little harder and maybe he would have seen the kind of eyes I had. Maybe he would have known that I was a killer in my own way too, and he would have realized that I knew he was just the type who would go to the trouble of taking the gun out of his pocket instead of ruining a good coat.