Mickey Spillane - One Lonely Night

There it was again. Just what I wanted to know and I didn't dare ask the question. It was going to take some pretty careful handling. "It's possible," I said tentatively.

He was aghast. "Comrade! It is unthinkable!" He reflected a moment then: "Yet it had to come from somewhere. I simply can't understand it. Everything is so carefully screened, every member so carefully selected that it seems impossible for there to be a leak anywhere. And those filthy warmongers, doing a thing like that . . . so cold-blooded! It is simply incredible. How I wish the party was in power at this moment. Why, the one who did that would be uncovered before the sun could set!"

Gladow cursed through his teeth and pounded a puny, carefully tended fist into his palm. "Don't worry," I said slowly.

It took ten seconds for my words to sink in. Gladow's little eyes narrowed in pleasure like a hog seeing a trough full of slops. The underside of his top lip showed when he smiled. "No, comrade. I won't worry. The party is too clever to let a direct representative's death go unpunished. No, I won't worry because I realize that the punishment that comes will more than equal the crime." He beamed at me fatuously. "I am happy to realize that the higher echelon has sent a man of your capacity, comrade."

I didn't even thank him. I was thinking and this time the words made sense. They made more than sense . . . they made murder! Only death is cold-blooded, and who was dead? Three people. One hadn't been found. One was found and not identified, even by a lousy sketch. The other was dead and identified. He was cold-bloodedly murdered and he was a direct representative of the party and I was the guy looking for his killer.

Good Lord, the insane bastards thought I was an MVD man!

My hands started to shake and I kept them in my pockets. And who was the dead man but Charlie Moffit! My predecessor. A goddamned Commie gestapo man. A hatchetman, a torpedo, a lot of things you want to call him. Lee ought to be proud of his brother, damn proud. All by himself he went out and he knocked off a skunk.

But I was the prize, I was the MVD guy that came to take his place and run the killer down. Oh, brother! No wonder the jerks were afraid of me! No wonder they didn't ask my name! No wonder I was supposed to know it all.

I felt a grin trying to pull my mouth out of shape because so much of it was funny. They thought they were clever as hell and here I was right in the middle of things with an in that couldn't be better. Any good red would give his shirt to be where I was right this minute.

Everything started to come out right then, even the screwy test they put me through. A small-time setup like this was hardly worth the direct attention of a Moscow man unless something was wrong, so I had to prove myself.

Smart? Sure, just like road apples that happen behind horses.

Now I knew and now I could play the game. I could be one of the boys and show them some fun. There were going to be a lot of broken backs around town before I got done.

There was only one catch I could think of. Someplace was another MVD laddie, a real one. I'd have to be careful of him. At least careful that he didn't see me first, because when I met up with that stinkpot I was going to split him right down the middle with a .45!

I had been down too deep in my thoughts to catch the arrival of the party that came in behind me. I heard Gladow extending a welcome that wasn't handed out to just everybody. When I turned around to look I saw one little fat man, one big fat man and a guy who was in the newspapers every so often. His name was General Osilov and he was attached to the Russian Embassy in Washington. The big and little fat men were his aides and they did all the smiling. If anything went on in the head of the bald-headed general it didn't show in his flat, wide face.

Whatever it was Henry Gladow said swung the three heads in my direction. Two swung back again fast leaving only the general staring at me. It was a stare-down that I won. The general coughed without covering his mouth and stuck his hands in the pockets of his suitcoat. None of them seemed anxious to make my acquaintance.

From then on there was a steady flow of traffic in through the door. They came singly and in pairs, spaced about five minutes apart. Before the hour was out the place was packed. It was filled with the kind of people you'd expect to find there and it would hit you that when the cartoonists did a caricature of a pack of shabby reds lurking in the shadow of democracy they did a good job.

A few of them dragged out seats and the meeting was on. I saw Ethel Brighton slide into the last chair in the last row and waited until she was settled before I sat down beside her. She smiled, let that brief look of fear mask her face, then turned her head to the front. When I put my hand over hers I felt it tremble.

Gladow spoke. The aides spoke. Then the general spoke. He pulled his tux jacket down when he rose and glared at the audience. I had to sit there and listen to it. It was propaganda right off the latest Moscow cable and it turned me inside out. I wanted to feel the butt of an M-1 against my shoulder pointing at those bastards up there on the rostrum and feel the pleasant impact as it spit slugs into their guts.

Sure, you can sit down at night and read about the hogwash they hand out. Maybe you're fairly intelligent and can laugh at it. Believe me, it isn't funny. They use the very thing we build up, our own government and our own laws, to undermine the things we want.

It wasn't a very complicated speech the general made. It was plain, bitter poison and they cheered him noiselessly. He was making plain one thing. There were still too many people who didn't go for Communism and not enough who did and he gave a plan of organization that had worked in a dozen countries already. One armed Communist was worth twenty capitalists without guns. It was Hitler all over again. A powerful Communist government already formed would be there to take over when the big upset came, and according to him it was coming soon. Here, and he swept the room with his arm, was one phase of that government ready to go into action.

I didn't hear the rest of it. I sat there fiddling with my fingernails because I was getting ready to bust loose and spoil their plans. If I let any more words go in my ears there was going to be blood on the floor and it wasn't time for that yet. I caught snatches of things that went on, repeated intimations of how the top men were already in the core of the present government eating its vitals out so the upset would be an easy one.

For a long time I sat there working up more hatred than I had ever had at any time and I wasn't conscious of how tightly Ethel Brighton was squeezing my hand. When I looked at her tears were running down her face. That's the kind of thing the general and his party could do to decent people.

I took a long look at him, making sure that I wouldn't forget his face, because some day he'd be passing a dark alley or forget to lock his door when he went to bed. That's when he'd catch it. And I didn't want to get tagged for it either. That would be like getting the chair for squashing a spider.

The meeting ended with handshakes all around. The audience lined up along the walls taking handfuls of booklets and printed sheets to distribute later, then grouped in bunches around the room talking things over in excited murmurs. Henry Gladow and Martin Romberg were up on the rostrum having their own conference. The general said something to Henry and he must have ordered his bodyguard down into the crowd to look for his trench coat or something. Martin Romberg looked hurt. Tough.

While the seats were folded and stacked I lost track of Ethel. I saw her a few minutes later coming from the washroom and she looked a little better. She had a smile for me this time, a big one. I would have made something of it if a pimply-faced kid about twenty didn't come crawling over and tell me that the general wanted to know if I had time to speak to him.