The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [10]
“Maybe you’d better forget it, Pat,” Larry told him softly.
“Why forget it? She was my friend too. She had no business playing guns with hoods. But no, wise guy here sends her out. His secretary. She has a P.I. ticket and a gun, but she’s nothing but a girl and she never comes back. You know where she probably is, Doc? At the bottom of the river someplace, that’s where.”
And now the hole was all I had left. I was all nothing, a hole that could twist and scorch my mind with such incredible pain that even relief was inconceivable because there was no room for anything except that pain. Out of it all I could feel some movement. I knew I was watching Pat and I could hear his voice but nothing made sense at all.
His voice was far away saying, “Look at him, Larry. His eyes are all gone. And look at his hand. You know what he’s doing. He’s trying to kill me. He’s going after a gun that isn’t there anymore because he hasn’t got a license to carry one. He lost that and his business and everything else when he shot up the people he thought got Velda. Oh, he knocked off some goodies and got away with it because they were all hoods caught in the middle of an armed robbery. But that was it for our tough boy there. Then what does he do? He cries his soul out into a whiskey bottle. Damn—look at his hand. He’s pointing a gun at me he doesn’t even have anymore and his finger’s pulling the trigger. Damn, he’d kill me right where I sit.”
Then I lost sight of Pat entirely because my head was going from side to side and the hole was being filled in again from the doctor’s wide-fingered slaps until once more I could see and feel as much as I could in the half life that was left in me.
This time the doctor had lost his disdainful smirk. He pulled the skin down under my eyes, stared at my pupils, felt my pulse and did things to my earlobe with his fingernail that I could barely feel. He stopped, stood up and turned his back to me. “This guy is shot down, Pat.”
“It couldn’t’ve happened to a better guy.”
“I’m not kidding. He’s a case. What do you expect to get out of him?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“Because I’d say he couldn’t stay rational. That little exhibition was a beauty. I’d hate to see it if he was pressed further.”
“Then stick around. I’ll press him good, the punk.”
“You’re asking for trouble. Somebody like him can go off the deep end anytime. For a minute there I thought he’d flipped. When it happens they don’t come back very easily. What is it you wanted him to do?”
I was listening now. Not because I wanted to, but because it was something buried too far in my nature to ignore. It was something from way back like a hunger that can’t be ignored.
Pat said, “I want him to interrogate a prisoner.”
For a moment there was silence, then: “You can’t be serious.”
“The hell I’m not. The guy won’t talk to anybody else but him.”
“Come off it, Pat. You have ways to make a person talk.”
“Sure, under the right circumstances, but not when they’re in the hospital with doctors and nurses hovering over them.”
“Oh?”
“The guy’s been shot. He’s only holding on so he can talk to this slob. The doctors can’t say what keeps him alive except his determination to make this contact.”
“But—”
“But nuts, Larry!” His voice started to rise with suppressed rage. “We use any means we can when the chips are down. This guy was shot and we want the one who pulled the trigger. It’s going to be a murder rap any minute and if there’s a lead we’ll damn well get it. I don’t care what it takes to make this punk sober, but that’s the way he’s going to be and I don’t care if the effort kills him, he’s going to do it.”
“Okay, Pat. It’s your show. Run it. Just remember that there are plenty of ways of killing a guy.”
I felt Pat’s eyes reach out for me. “For him I don’t give a damn.”
Somehow I managed a grin and felt around for the words. I couldn’t get a real punch line across, but to me they sounded good enough.
Just two words.
CHAPTER 2
Pat had arranged everything with his usual methodical care. The years hadn’t changed him a bit. The great