Mickey Spillane: I, The Jury

Velda’s eyes were glowing like a couple of hot brands. “Are you serious about that? About the bet, I mean?”

I nodded. “Dead serious. Want to go downstairs with me and take a look?” She grinned and grabbed her coat. I pulled on my battered felt and we left the office, but not before I had taken a second glance at the office address of Charlotte Manning.

Pete, the elevator operator, gave me a toothy grin when we stepped into the car. “Evening, Mr. Hammer,” he said.

I gave him an easy jab in the short ribs and said, “What’s new with you?”

“Nothing much, ’cepting I don’t get to sit down much on the job anymore.” I had to grin. Velda had lost the bet already. That little piece of simple repartee between Pete and myself was a code system we had rigged up years ago. His answer meant that I was going to have company when I left the building. It cost me a fin a week but it was worth it. Pete could spot a flatfoot faster than I can. He should. He had been a pickpocket until a long stretch up the river gave him a turn of mind.

For a change I decided to use the front entrance. I looked around for my tail but there was none to be seen. For a split second my heart leaped into my throat. I was afraid Pete had gotten his signals crossed. Velda was a spotter, too, and the smile she was wearing as we crossed the empty lobby was a thing to see. She clamped onto my arm ready to march me to the nearest justice of the peace.

But when I went through the revolving doors her grin passed as fast as mine appeared. Our tail was walking in front of us. Velda said a word that nice girls don’t usually use, and you see scratched in the cement by some evil-minded guttersnipe.

This one was smart. We never saw where he came from. He walked a lot faster than we did, swinging a newspaper from his hand against his leg. Probably, he spotted us through the windows behind the palm, then seeing what exit we were going to use, walked around the corner and came past us as we left. If we had gone the other way, undoubtedly there was another ready to pick us up.

But this one had forgotten to take his gun off his hip and stow it under his shoulder, and guns make a bump look the size of a pumpkin when you’re used to looking for them.

When I reached the garage he was nowhere to be seen. There were a lot of doors he could have ducked behind. I didn’t waste time looking for him. I backed the car out and Velda crawled in beside me. “Where to now?” she asked.

“The automat, where you’re going to buy me a sandwich.”

Chapter Three

I dumped Velda at her hairdresser’s after we ate, then headed north to Westchester. I hadn’t planned to call on George Kalecki until the following day, but a call to Charlotte’s office dealed that one out. She had left for home, and the wench in the reception room had been instructed not to give her address. I told her I’d call later and left a message that I wanted to see her as soon as possible. I couldn’t get that woman off my mind. Those legs.

Twenty minutes later I was pulling the bell outside a house that must have cost a cool quarter million. A very formal butler clicked the lock and admitted me. “Mr. Kalecki,” I said.

“Who shall I say is calling, sir?”

“Mike Hammer. I’m a private detective.” I flashed my tin on him but he wasn’t impressed.

“I’m rather afraid Mr. Kalecki is indisposed at the moment, sir,” he told me. I recognized a pat standoff when I saw one, but I wasn’t bothered.

“Well, you tell him to un-dispose himself right away and get his tail down here or I’ll go get him. And I’m not kidding, either.”

The butler looked me over carefully and must have decided that I meant what I said. He nodded and took my hat. “Right this way, Mr. Hammer.” He led me to an oversize library and I plunked myself in an armchair and waited for George Kalecki.

He wasn’t long coming. The door banged open and a grey-haired guy a little stouter than his picture revealed came in. He didn’t waste words. “Why did you come in after my man informed you that I was not to be disturbed?”

I lit a butt and blew the smoke at him. “Don’t give me that stuff, chum. You know why I’m here.”

“No doubt. I read the papers. But I’m afraid that I can’t help you. I was home in bed when the murder occurred and I can prove it.”

“Hal Kines came in with you?”

“Yes.”

“Did your servant let you hi?”

“No, I used my own key.”

“Did anyone else beside Hal see you come in?”

“I don’t think so, but his word is good enough.”

I sneered into his face. “Not when the both of you are possible murder suspects, it isn’t.”

Kalecki turned pale when I said that. His mouth worked a little and he looked ready to kill me. “How dare you say that,” he snarled at me. “The police have not made an attempt to connect me with that killing. Jack Williams died hours after I left.”

I took a step forward and gathered a handful of his shirt front in my fist. “Listen to me, you ugly little crook,” I spat in his face, “I’m talking language you can understand. I’m not worried about the cops. If you’re under suspicion it’s to me. I’m the one that counts, because when I find the one that did it, he dies. Even if I can’t prove it, he dies anyway. In fact, I don’t even have to be convinced too strongly. Maybe just a few things will point your way, and when they do I’m going after you. Before I’m done I may shoot up a lot of snotty punks like you, but you can bet that one of them will have been the one I was after, and as for the rest, tough luck. They got their noses a little too dirty.”

Nobody had talked to him like that the past twenty years. He floundered for words but they didn’t come. If he had opened his mouth right then, I would have slammed his teeth down his throat.

Disgusted with the sight of him, I shoved him back toward an end table in time to push myself aside far enough to keep from getting brained. A crockery vase smashed on my shoulder and shattered into a hundred fragments.

I ducked and whirled at the same time. A fist came flying over my head and I blocked it with my left. I didn’t wait. I let fly a wicked punch that landed low then came up with the top of my skull and I rammed the point of a jaw with a shattering impact. Hal Kines hit the floor and lay there motionless.

“Wise guy. A fresh kid that tries to bust me from behind. You’re certainly not training him right, George. Time was when you stood behind a chopper yourself, now you let a college kid do your blasting, and in a houseful of mirrors he tries to sneak up behind me.” He didn’t say anything. He found a chair and slid into it, his eyes narrow slits of hate. If he had a rod right then he would have let me have it. He would have died, too. I’ve had an awful lot of practice sneaking that .45 out from under my arm.

The Kines kid was beginning to stir. I prodded him in the ribs with my toe until he sat up. He was still pretty green around the gills, but not green enough to sneer at me. “You lousy bastard,” he said. “Have to fight dirty, don’t you.”

I reached down and grabbed him under the arm and yanked him to his feet. His eyes bugged. Maybe he thought he was dealing with somebody soft. “Listen, pimple face. Just for the fun of it I ought to slap your fuzzy chin all around this room, but I got things to do. Don’t go playing man when you’re only a boy. You’re pretty big, but I’m three sizes bigger and a hell of a lot tougher and I’ll beat the living daylights out of you if you try anything funny again. Now sit down over there.”

Kines hit the sofa and stayed there. George must have gotten his second wind because he piped up. “Just a moment, Mr. Hammer. This has gone far enough. I am not without influence at city hall. . . .”