Mickey Spillane - Dead Street

“Who knows? He was a downtowner anyway.”

Suddenly Paddy The Bull’s eyes squinted at me and I asked, “What?”

The old Blue Uptowner said very seriously, “Has he surfaced somewhere?”

“Why, he owe you money?”

“Oh, he paid his tab. He laid a grand on the club with an extra bill thrown in for five hundred. It was a crazy bill, the money itself I mean.”

“Crazy how?”

“Crazy weird, crazy odd. Looked real for sure, but was a lot bigger in size than a regular note. It was pinned to the wall in the club until some old guy offered us six hundred bucks for it and everybody had a great beer party.”

I grunted. “The government stopped printing those large bills back in the twenties, Patrick me boy.”

“No kidding!” Then he asked, “I wonder where he got it from.”

I said, “Beats me,” but a germ of an idea was infecting my brain. I told him so long and went down to the corner to flag down a cab.

When one came along I sat back and dropped another piece into the puzzle. Old Bessie was right. Bucky Mohler was alive. He had something going for him now that could make him the biggest frog in the pond.

And it all had started on the Street that was dying.

It’s nice being a retired cop.

It’s great to have a finely honed reputation too, so that when the desk boys see you go past they think, “He was a tough apple, that one.” They’re glad to let you in on their knowhow because even if it was a little off the base line, they were doing their duty to protect the citizenry like the men in blue did on the hard pavements.

Nothing much that was exciting ever happened in the development office. They okayed repairs and new building, the papers and inquiries handled between bored clerks. Then an old hotshot comes in, gets instant access to the head man’s office and the buzz starts going around.

John Peter Boyle, a grizzled character in an executive’s suit, shook hands with a toothy smile and waved me to a chair. “My phone started to ring the minute you came in, Captain.”

“Just call me Jack. I’m in civvies now.”

He gave me a grin that said he hadn’t always been behind a desk. “Come on, Captain — my pop was in World War Two, but afterward he couldn’t call Eisenhower ‘Ike’ to his face now, could he? So... Captain — what can I do for you?”

“Mr. Boyle, I need a permit to inspect a house that’s up for demolition.”

“Should I ask why?” When I shrugged, he said, “Is this personal?”

“I’m asking as a retired cop.”

He shrugged and his grin widened. “In that case, you got it. Want to give me the details?”

Before I got back to the Street, I made a short stop at my favorite locksmith’s shop on Third Avenue. It had been five years since we’d had any contact, but I didn’t have to spell out any details. The round-faced little old guy looked at my face after we shook hands and knew that this wasn’t a personal visit.

He said, “Okay, Jack, what’s going down this time? Terrorists? Murderers?”

I let him see my grin and said, “I need a key for a Waylord lock. Outside door, oval-shaped key latch, solid brass.”

“That’s a good standard unit. Nothing special. They used a lot of them on the old tenement buildings a long time ago. You any good at picking that thing?”

“Haven’t got the time. Besides, I’m out of practice.”

“No sweat, old friend.”

He went back to his tiny workshop, came back with two new keys and laid them in my palm.

I said, “How much?”

“Jack, I have another hundred of them. The jokers in those old tenements were always losing theirs, and a new key was cheaper than kicking a door down.”

I put the keys in my pocket and winked my thanks at him.

And now I was strictly legal, a permit to secure my entry, a working key to get inside without damaging the property, and a retired cop’s ID in my wallet. Absently, I patted my side where the holster... .45 used to hang. Nothing was there.

But the Glock was in my waistband.

Shadows were angling down the street now, big, long ones because nothing was there to break them up. Bessie’s building was there and her upstairs window was still open, but her elbow pillow was gone. A small corner of a curtain fluttered out, then blew back in again. It was the same curtain that had always been there.

I walked slowly, taking my time, then turned onto Bucky Mohler’s concrete walkway and into the shadow of the old structure. In those old days, when Big Zappo Padrone had built the place, it must have been a lulu. There were scars on the building that said a huge porch had once been there and for a grand space around the building there was openness. Hell, this one domicile could have been the only building on the block.

And, like the Street, it was dead.

Or was it?

I merged right in with the shadows and put the key in the lock. It opened easily. I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Nothing was in the way. My miniature flashlight was enough to lead me through the three floors of the building and illuminate dirt and dust that had collected on old-fashioned furniture and rotted rugs on the floor. It was hard to tell if this place had been empty for ten years or a hundred. Nobody had been here in the last five years of my time at the station house. Once, back there in the wild days of city crime, this must have been one hell of a command post. But no sign of that was left any longer.

Without disturbing anything, I went back down the dust-heavy stairs and stopped halfway down. Bucky Mohler had been here. Where were his footprints? Curious.

At the bottom landing another flight of stairs led into the cellar. These weren’t fancy like the ones above. They were constructed of heavy planking, wider than usual, bulked up with massive timbering. They didn’t even squeak when I went down them. A pair of rats scurried across my path, running from the thin light of my flash. Then I moved the beam across the area.

Except for where I was standing, the entire house was resting on solid earth. There was a coal furnace and electrical boxes next to me, some tools propped against the flatly carved dirt walls. The contractors had most likely laid down the foundation blocks that ran around the house, then just built the rest of the structure up from the dirt. Damn. What kind of building codes did they have then?

Another couple of rats skittered away in the floor debris and I aimed the light down on them. Two pairs of red eyes looked back at me for a couple of seconds, then they broke and ran. I saw in the floor mess what might have been footprints, but nothing I could be certain of.

Something was all out of kilter here. I couldn’t tell what it was, but there were ways to find out. When I turned and went back to the stairs, I looked at the shovel and old pickax that leaned against the wall. The pickax was pretty old and the shovel hadn’t been used much.

Things had taken a strange turn since I’d been here. It wasn’t like the old days when all the crazy details could be laid out before a team of experienced pros and the answers would come back in no time. This business of being retired from the department wasn’t all that hot. I still had irons in the fire, and one of them was taking me back to Sunset Lodge.

Davy Ross took me to LaGuardia Airport, and when I got off in Florida, Darris Kinder was waiting for me with the throaty roar of his hopped-up Sunset Lodge police vehicle telling me where he was. “Miss Brice informed me when you were getting in.”