The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [193]
I had to make another phone call to trooper headquarters to collect the list of addresses from the statements. Price still hadn’t come in, but evidently he had passed the word to give me any help I needed, for there was no hesitation about handing me the information.
Alice lived west of town in a suburb called Wooster. It was little less than a crossroad off the main highway, but from the size of the mansions that dotted the estates it was a refuge of the wealthy. The town itself boasted a block of storefronts whose windows showed nothing but the best. Above each store was an apartment. The bricks were white, the metalwork bright and new. There was an aura of dignity and pomp in the way they nestled there. Alice lived above the fur shop, two stores from the end.
I parked between a new Ford and a Caddy convertible. There were no lights on in Alice’s apartment, but I didn’t doubt that she’d want to see me. I slid out and went into the tiny foyer and looked at the bell. It was hers. For a good five seconds I held my finger on it, then opened the door and went up the steps. Before I reached the top, Alice, in the last stages of closing her robe, opened the door, sending a shaft of light in my face.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she exclaimed. “You certainly pick an awful time to visit your friends.”
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” I grinned.
“Silly, come on in. Of course I’m glad to see you.”
“I hate to get you up like this.”
“You didn’t. I was lying in bed reading, that’s all.” She paused just inside the door. “This isn’t a professional visit, is it?”
“Hardly. I finally got sick and tired of the whole damn setup and decided to give my mind a rest.”
She shut the door. “Kiss me.”
I pecked her on the nose. “Can’t I even take my hat off?”
“Oooo,” she gasped, “the way you said that!”
I dropped my slicker and hat on a rack by the door and trailed her to the living room. “Have a drink?” she asked me.
I made with three fingers together. “So much, and ginger.”
When she went for the ice I took the place in with a sweep of my head. Swell, strictly swell. It was better than the best Park Avenue apartment I’d ever been in, even if it was above a store. The furniture cost money and the oils on the wall even more. There were books and books, first editions and costly manuscripts. York had done very well by his niece.
Alice came back with two highballs in her hand. “Take one,” she offered. I picked the big one. We toasted silently, she with the devil in her eyes, and drank.
“Good?”
I bobbed my head. “Old stuff, isn’t it?”
“Over twenty years. Uncle Rudy gave it to me.” She put her drink down and turned off the overhead lights, switching on a shaded table lamp instead. From a cabinet she selected an assortment of records and put them in the player. “Atmosphere,” she explained impishly.
I didn’t see why we needed it. When she had the lamp at her back the robe became transparent enough to create its own atmosphere. She was all woman, this one, bigger than I thought. Her carriage was seduction itself and she knew it. The needle came down and soft Oriental music filled the room. I closed my eyes and visualized women in scarlet veils dancing for the sultan. The sultan was me. Alice said something I didn’t catch and left.
When she came back she was wearing the cobwebs. Nothing else.
“You aren’t too tired tonight?”
“Not tonight,” I said.
She sat down beside me. “I think you were faking the last time, and after all my trouble.”
Her skin was soft and velvety-looking under the cobwebs, a vein in her throat pulsed steadily. I let my eyes follow the contours of her shoulders and down her body. Impertinent breasts that mocked my former hesitance, a flat stomach waiting for the touch to set off the fuse, thighs that wanted no part of shielding cloth.
I had difficulty getting it out. “I had to be tired.”
She crossed her legs, the cobwebs parted. “Or crazy,” she added.
I finished the drink off in a hurry and held out