Mickey Spillane - Dead Street

“And so you told them about what you had for sale.”

“Yeah! Of course. Wouldn’t you?”

I let that pass. “And they were interested?”

“Not for themselves, but they got in touch with people who were. I guess that box of plutonium or whatever the hell it is, it’s something people have been looking for, for years.”

“Yeah. Only the safe was empty.”

His shook his head, eyes wild again. “Shooter, I checked that baby. I opened that safe and there it was, wrapped up in blankets just like when the heisters stuck it in there. Twenty years ago!”

“So you were double-crossed.”

“Not by the Saudis. You were there, Shooter. You saw how that went down. Somebody else got to that stash between the last time I checked it and when I opened up the safe for my buyers.”

“Who?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I didn’t advertise this thing. Only a handful of higher-ups in the mob knew about the atomic heist, and of course everybody but Orbach got killed when they kidnapped your Bettie.”

I leaned close. “They’re still looking for her, Bucky. Why?”

“Not for what was in that safe, Shooter! No way. But they could still be afraid of those files. Those floppy discs.”

“Why, after all this time?”

“Some guys Orbach implicated are still alive. That was one hell of an insurance policy, Shooter — names, dates, places. Man, even now, there’d be hell to pay with the coppers and the feds.”

I heard something behind me.

Davy Ross was peeking in.

He said to Bucky, “A public defender’s on the way, Mr. Mohler.”

“Thanks, Sergeant.” Bucky looked at me with eyes that were afraid to blink. “Are we cool, Shooter? Did I give you what you need?”

“I need one other thing.”

“What, Shooter?”

I leaned in and whispered; this was nothing Davy needed to hear.

“When this is over, assuming you don’t wind up in a federal pen somewhere, and you see me coming? I need you to go the other way as fast as your new kneecap will allow.”

He swallowed. “I’ve had better best friends.”

“No you haven’t. I saved your life six times today.”

He squinted at me. “Six?”

“Once in that cellar, and five times in this room when I talked myself out of killing you.”

Chapter Eleven

We were sitting at the kitchen table in number 820 on Kenneth Avenue in Sunset Lodge — my one-and-a-half story digs, where Bettie had moved in at Joe Pender’s suggestion and with Darris Kinder’s approval. Tacos was sleeping on a braided rug nearby, next to his dog dishes. The greyhound had made the next-door transition just fine, if his snoring was any indicator.

It was mid-evening and I had made the coffee and served up Bettie and Kinder their cups while I also served up the events of the day before, and the story that Bucky Mohler had told me. I didn’t dole it out — Bettie seemed able to take it all in as fast as it came. She sat with her hands cradling the coffee cup and the hazel eyes stared into nothing and everything.

“After I talked to Bucky,” I said, seated next to Bettie and across from Kinder, “I spent three long hours with the feds.”

“Which flavor?” Kinder asked.

“All 57 varieties — the top guy was Homeland Security, but FBI was part of it, another was NSA, and a character who just had to be CIA.”

Kinder shrugged. “This does have its foreign implications. What was their take on all this?”

“Their ‘take,’ ” I said with half a smile, “was that I had done more than enough, and they would take it from here.”

The captain/manager frowned. “Take what from where?”

“Every aspect of the affair relating to the ‘missing materiel’ — that’s they what called it. They didn’t confirm or deny the nuclear aspect.”

“Where does that leave us?”

But what Kinder meant was: where does that leave Bettie?

“It leaves us,” I said, “with a big old shoe to drop. A big very old shoe.”

Bettie had said nothing through my report. She hadn’t nodded or done anything to indicate these new facts jogged her memory further. Somehow I felt they had — somehow I felt that behind her pretty placid face the wheels were turning. Maybe even spinning.

“You mean the organized crime aspects,” Kinder said. “Garrison Properties and Romero Suede and ice cream trucks. You know, one of those trucks, specially rigged, looking innocent as hell, could have hauled that atomic cube down here.”

“If they did,” I said, “the feds consider that their business.” I sipped my own coffee and shrugged. “I gave them everything, Darris — Garrison and Suede and ice cream on a stick. They’re probably mounting an operation right now.”

“If so, I haven’t heard about it.”

“We’re just the small fry who handed them everything on a platter. But the contents of that old safe don’t concern me anymore.”

“What does?”

“That shoe. That old shoe.”

“That hasn’t dropped yet.”

“Right.”

Kinder’s eyes were slits. “And what shoe would that be, Jack?”

And Bettie spoke.

“The floppy discs,” she said.

We looked at her. She looked at me. Only the unblinking emptiness of the lovely eyes indicated she wasn’t seeing me. And yet she always saw me....

“I made copies of those discs for you, Jack,” she said calmly.

I sat forward. “Bennie Orbach’s insurance policy, you mean? Chapter and verse on the five New York crime families circa twenty years ago....”

She looked away from me, into the past. “Yes. I wasn’t just working for Credentials. I had a responsibility to the government, the federal government.”

The words were coming steadily but slowly. I tried to help: “You were an expert on computer viruses. You were one of a number of experts, peppered around the country at small computer outfits, helping out the government.”

Her eyes opened wider. “Yes. Trying to help avoid and contain near-catastrophic situations.”

The officialese mirrored the words of her boss at Credentials.

A funny little smile twisted her lush lips. “I remember, Jack, you used to say, ‘Cops hate coincidences.’ But it was a coincidence, Jack, a complete coincidence that that man Orbach chose Credentials to safeguard his data.”

“Do you remember what that data was, Bettie?”

“Just as you said — chapter and verse on the five New York crime families, with an emphasis on the branch he worked for. He pretended to be a writer, a journalist, this man... this Orbach. He claimed much of the material was speculative. And yet he left instructions for the files to go to specific parties in the event of his death by violence or otherwise suspicious circumstances.”

I moved my chair closer to hers and slipped an arm around her shoulder. “Do you remember, Bettie? Do you remember where the floppy discs are?”

“I do. Back in New York.”

They would be.

She was saying, “We’ll have to go there for them. I want to go, too, Jack. I don’t want you leaving me behind again — I don’t think I could stand it.”

“You’ll go. We’ll go.”

“As long... as long as we come back here. Because Sunset Lodge is our home.”

Kinder had been taking it all in. “Should we call ahead? To your pal Sgt. Ross, maybe? The phones are clean — I saw to it this place was swept for bugs just today.”

“No,” I said. “This doesn’t go anywhere past this table, okay, Darris? Nobody but Bettie, me and you need to know those discs still exist.”

I locked eyes with Darris, my expression telling him what my words couldn’t risk in front of Bettie: that if the bad guys knew those floppies were around, they’d be on us like fire ants at a picnic.