Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 02]

Table of Contents

 

 

 

A girl operating alone would have something to be afraid of, especially if she was ready to give up the call house, the street, out-of-town businessmen, and go straight. But Mike Hammer wasn’t worried—he was mad. There’d been one killing, and more rough stuff promised. And Mike promised some of the same:

 

 

 

Here again is Mike Hammer of I, THE JURY fame, a tough, persistent, lusty detective. And Mickey Spillane, an author who writes with a pace and drive that will keep every reader on the edge of his chair. MY GUN IS QUICK is good to the last drop—of blood.

MICKEY SPILLANE

 

MIKE HAMMER, FIRST OF THE LADY-LOVING PRIVATE EYES, IS BACK—in the fastest-paced, sexiest, most brilliantly plotted adventure the great sleuth has ever encountered. Packed with drug ring run-ins, CIA runarounds, smashingly beautiful dames, and a splashily spectacular last-page showdown, it’s action as only Mickey Spillane can deliver it!

TO ALL MY FRIENDS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

COPYRIGHT, 1950, BY E. P. DUTTON, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN BOOKS USA INC.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper or radio broadcast. For information address E. P. Dutton, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 2 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

 

 

All characters and events depicted herein are purely fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, or actual events, is coincidental. —M.S.

SIGNET, SIGNET CLASSIC, MENTOR, ONYX, PLUME, MERIDIAN and NAL BOOKS are published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-17445-6

 

WHEN YOU SIT at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You’re doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else’s experiences. Fun, isn’t it? You read about life on the outside thinking of how maybe you’d like it to happen to you, or at least how you’d like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it’s great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it’s all in books and not in reality at all and that’s that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you’ll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there
are
things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn’t if I were you because you won’t like what you’ll find. Then again, I’m not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren’t nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn’t a Coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren’t those of wild animals but man’s can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you’ll be dead.

At ten minutes after twelve I tied a knot in my case and delivered Herman Gable’s lost manuscript to his apartment. To me, it was nothing more than a sheaf of yellow papers covered with barely legible tracings, but to my client it was worth twenty-five hundred bucks. The old fool had wrapped it up with some old newspapers and sent it down the dumbwaiter with the garbage. He sure was happy to get it back. It took three days to run it down and practically snatch the stuff out of the city incinerator, but when I fingered the package of nice, crisp fifties he handed me I figured it was worth going without all that sleep.

I made him out a receipt and took the elevator downstairs to my heap. As far as I was concerned, that dough would live a peaceful life until I had a good, long nap. After that, maybe, I’d cut loose a little bit. At that hour of the night traffic was light. I cut across town, then headed north to my own private cave in the massive cliff I called home.

But the first time I hit a red light I fell asleep across the wheel and woke up with a dozen horns blasting in my ears. A couple of cars banged bumpers backing up so they could swing around me and I was too damned pooped even to swear back at some of the stuff they called me. The hell with ’em. I pulled the jalopy over to the curb and chilled the engine. Right up the street under the el was an all-night hash joint, and what I needed was a couple mugs of good black java to bring me around.

I don’t know how the place got by the health inspectors, because it stunk. There were two bums down at one end of the counter taking their time about finishing a ten-cent bowl of soup; making the most out of the free crackers and catsup in front of them. Halfway down a drunk concentrated between his plate of eggs and hanging on to the stool to keep from falling off the world. Evidently he was down to his last buck, for all his pockets had been turned inside out to locate the lone bill that was putting a roof on his load.

Until I sat down and looked in the mirror behind the shelves of pie segments, I didn’t notice the fluff sitting off to one side at a table. She had red hair that didn’t come out of a bottle, and looked pretty enough from where I was sitting.

The counterman came up just then and asked, “What’ll it be?” He had a voice like a frog.

“Coffee. Black.”

The fluff noticed me then. She looked up, smiled, tucked her nail tools in a peeling plastic handbag and hipped it in my direction. When she sat down on the stool next to me she nodded toward the counterman and said, “Shorty’s got a heart of steel, mister. Won’t even trust me for a cup of joe until I get a job. Care to finance me to a few vitamins?”

I was too tired to argue the point. “Make it two, feller.” He grabbed another cup disgustedly and filled it, then set the two down on the counter, slopping half of it across the wash-worn linoleum top.

“Listen, Red,” he croaked, “quit using this joint fer an office. First thing I got the cops on my tail. That’s all I need.”

“Be good and toddle off, Shorty. All I want from the gentleman is a cup of coffee. He looks much too tired to play any games tonight.”

“Yeah, scram, Shorty,” I put in. He gave me a nasty look, but since I was as ugly as he was and twice as big, he shuffled off to keep count over the cracker bowl in front of the bums. Then I looked at the redhead.

She wasn’t very pretty after all. She had been once, but there are those things that happen under the skin and are reflected in the eyes and set of the mouth that take all the beauty out of a woman’s face. Yeah, at one time she must have been almost beautiful. That wasn’t too long ago, either. Her clothes were last year’s old look and a little too tight. They showed a lot of leg and a lot of chest; nice white flesh still firm and young, but her face was old with knowledge that never came out of books. I watched her from the corner of my eye when she lifted her cup of coffee. She had delicate hands, long fingers tipped with deep-toned nails perfectly kept. It was the way she held the cup that annoyed me. Instead of being a thick, cracked mug, she gave it a touch of elegance as she balanced it in front of her lips. I thought she was wearing a wedding band until she put the cup down. Then I saw that it was just a ring with a fleur-de-lis design of blue enamel and diamond chips that had turned sideways slightly.

Red turned suddenly and said, “Like me?”

I grinned. “Uh-huh. But, like you said, much too tired to make it matter.”

Her laugh was a tinkle of sound. “Rest easy, mister, I won’t give you a sales talk. There are only certain types interested in what I have to sell.”

“Amateur psychologist?”

“I have to be.”

“And I don’t look the type?”