Kiss Her Goodbye (31 page)

Her expression was quizzical. "Benefit of the doubt, Mike—the benefit of the doubt for what?"

"I don't have any hard proof that you are anything but a pawn in this. I think it's likely that you were directly involved, but the police—and the D.E.A. and the I.R.S., not to mention Immigration—will be moving in soon enough to sort it out. So my opinion is beside the point."

Her forehead tensed, her dark eyes bore into me. "I
assure
you, Mike, I knew
nothing
of Jaynor and Anthony's scheme...."

"I don't remember mentioning their scheme. Whether you know it or not, you touring your act, opening all the new Club 52 locations, was the conduit through which Little Tony and the Colombian cartel planned to move their coke and other fun powders. You have your own Lear jet, and you go back home between gigs—meaning separate shipments for each club opening. You travel with a band that isn't a band at all—they are drug mules and bodyguards who mime playing instruments while you sing to a canned track. Yet you travel with all sorts of gear, instruments in flight cases, hard-shell drum cases, trunks of electrical this and electronic that—none of it needed. And probably not functional, gutted, to make room for packing fat packets of what the D.E.A. likes to call controlled substances."

She had been holding the cocktail glass, without taking a single sip, and now she set it down, hard. It sloshed and spilled a little.

"Mike, just because the new Club 52 locales will not come to pass, that does not mean I cannot still tour your America—I am the number-one star in South America and have a big record contract here, and I do the TV and..." She leaned across and her mouth was a moist red invitation. "...and if you keep your suspicions to yourself, you could take Anthony's place, in my business ... and in my heart."

"Yeah, well, tempting as that is, and I do dig those long legs of yours, I have to say any tour you mount is gonna get looked at very hard by that alphabet soup of government agencies I mentioned."

I finished the rye and ginger and thanked her for it. She was still behind the bar when I walked back toward the coffee table where my hat waited. I glanced back and saw her reach under the bar for something, something she tucked behind her, and the mirror gave me just enough of a silver metallic flash to know it was a nickel revolver.

She came around from behind the bar slowly, smiling just a little, almost as catlike as Velda, and said, "What can I do to convince you not to make trouble for Chrome, Mike?"

I shook my head. "This is all you get. Just a little head start. See, I do kind of blame you, in part anyway, for the Mathes kid's death. She admired you, trusted you, and you got her involved in playing messenger in a very dangerous game."

She took two measured steps my way. Her red-nailed toes in the white shoes were all but buried in the plush ivory carpeting. Her eyes were wide and a weird excitement glittered there. Something about our confrontation had excited her—sexually. Or was that just an act?

"I do not mean, ever, to do Ginnie no harm," she said. The double negative was unintentionally telling. "...In fact I mean only to do very
good
by her."

"How about Joseph Fidello?" I asked. "Him I
know
you meant to do harm. In fact, he's the odd murder out, isn't he? You're the third murderer.
You
killed Fidello, Chrome, trying to find that uncut stone. Well, that stone is on its way now to help bring your Nazi cohorts some good old-fashioned Old Testament justice. About time Basil's gems funded something positive."

Her expression was of astonished confusion. "Why should you care about Fidello?
He
is the one who kill that stupid girl. You might have kill him yourself, had you the chance!"

"Yeah, probably. It's a matter of motivation. I would have taken him out for the low-life murderer he was. You were just removing somebody who might cause you trouble. Somebody who knew just a little too much about you and Ginnie ... and that uncut gem."

Her mouth and eyes promised unknown pleasures. The sexual heat was damn near shimmering off her—
she liked this.

"I am a very famous woman in my country, Mike. I can return to my home, where I am a very,
very
rich woman. We can go there together and leave your ugly city and your so very stupid and selfish country behind. There would be nothing bad, nothing criminal in our life together, the whole foolish scheme of Alex and Tony, it would be as if it never happen."

"It
did
happen. And an old man with a great heart was murdered because of it."

"Not by me ... not by
me.
..."

"But maybe you're not just a pawn," I said. "Maybe
you're
the top man in the Colombian cartel."

She overplayed her quizzical expression.

You'd have to call my smile a sneer. "Tell me, Chrome—how was it two gay men were so attracted to you? Is there something under that gown you're hiding from me?"

Her smile held no sneer at all; it was the whitest thing in this white room, radiant and self-possessed. "Was I born a
man,
Mike? Or maybe...
both
the man and the woman? An extra chromosome—is that the little joke of my name, Mike?"

"I was thinking maybe a surgeon had more to do with you than God."

"Or the devil? So old-fashioned are you, Mike. Such ancient notions of sexuality."

"I get by."

"You cannot deny you enjoyed me, Mike. I was on my knees before you—remember?" A graceful hand with tapering fingers gestured toward the lovely body. "All of us, Mike, even
you,
we have our female side, and our male. Men like Tony ... like Sal ... you killed Sal, did you not, Mike?"

"I killed him."

Something nasty flashed through her dark eyes. "Chrome, she was one woman they could accept. And I could accept their love
like
a man ... you understand?"

"Spare me the diagrams."

She prowled toward me, one hand still casually behind her, and with the other she undid the rope at her waist and the dressing gown dropped in a silken puddle at her red-nailed feet and exposed her golden goddess form with thrusting breasts and narrow waist and flaring hips that flowed into the long, long legs, as muscular as a man's. But nothing else about her suggested anything but woman, as beautiful a specimen of the sex as I had ever seen.

The mouth was as wet and red and lush as ever, the dark eyes hooded, chin up, a red-nailed hand cupping a perfect breast—too perfect.

"Mike ... Mike. I am a sexual being—you said it yourself."

She was almost in my arms and that hand was coming ever so surreptitiously from behind her back to blow me a .38-caliber kiss....

"No, Mike, I am
all
woman. I was born a woman."

My .45 came up and the tongue of flame from its muzzle licked her belly where the bullet had punched a new hole.

As she staggered on those magnificent legs, Chrome's eyes were wide and wild, and before they filmed over, and she could go down in an ungainly pile to stain that soft, thick white carpet scarlet, I got one last shot in, not from the .45.

"Die any way you like," I said.

MICKEY SPILLANE and MAX ALLAN COLLINS collaborated on numerous projects, including twelve anthologies, two films, and the
Mike Danger
comic-book series.

Spillane was the best-selling American mystery writer of the twentieth century. He introduced Mike Hammer in
I, the Jury
(1947), which sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries that soon followed. The controversial P.I. has been the subject of a radio show, comic strip, and two television series; numerous gritty movies have been made from Spillane novels, notably director Robert Aldrich's seminal film noir,
Kiss Me, Deadly
(1955), and
The Girl Hunters
(1963), in which the writer played his famous hero.

Collins has earned an unprecedented sixteen Private Eye Writers of America Shamus nominations, winning for
True Detective
(1983) and
Stolen Away
(1993) in his Nathan Heller series, which includes the recent
Bye Bye, Baby.
His graphic novel
Road to Perdition
is the basis of the Academy Award—winning film. A filmmaker in the Midwest, he has had half a dozen feature screenplays produced, including
The Last Lullaby
(2008), based on his innovative Quarry series.

Both Spillane (who died in 2006) and Collins received the Private Eye Writers life achievement award, the Eye.