The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [22]
For a few minutes I just sat there swinging in the chair, recalling the feel and the sound of it. I made a casual inspection of the desk drawers, not remembering what was there, yet enjoying a sense of familiarity with old things. It was an old desk, almost antique, a relic from some solid, conservative corporation that supplied its executives with the best.
When you pulled the top drawer all the way out there was a niche built into the massive framework, and when I felt in the shallow recess the other relic was still there.
Calibre .45, Colt Automatic, U.S. Army model, vintage of 1914. Inside the plastic wrapper it was still oiled, and when I checked the action it was like a thing alive, a deadly thing that had but a single fundamental purpose.
I put it back where it was beside the box of shells, inserted the drawer and slid it shut. The day of the guns was back there seven years ago. Not now.
Now I was one of the nothing people. One mistake and Pat had me, and where I was going, one mistake and they would have me.
Pat. The slob really took off after me. I wondered if Larry had been right when he said Pat had been in love with Velda too.
I nodded absently, because he had changed. And there was more to it, besides. In seven years Pat should have moved up the ladder. By now he should have been an Inspector. Maybe whatever it was he had crawling around in his guts got out of hand and he never made the big try for promotion, or, if he did, he loused up.
The hell with him, I thought. Now he was going wide open to nail a killer and a big one. Whoever killed Richie Cole had killed Senator Knapp in all probability, and in all probability, too, had killed Old Dewey. Well, I was one up on Pat. He’d have another kill in his lap, all right, but only I could connect Dewey and the others.
Which put me in the middle all around.
So okay, Hammer, I said. You’ve been a patsy before. See what you’ll do with this one and do it right. Someplace she’s alive. Alive! But for how long? And where? There are killers loose and she must be on the list.
Absently, I reached for the phone, grinned when I heard the dial tone, then fingered the card the thin man gave me from my pocket and called Peerage Brokers.
He was there waiting and when I asked, “Rickerby?” a switch clicked.
Art answered, “You still have a little more time.”
“I don’t need time. I need now. I think we should talk.”
“Where are you?”
“My own office through courtesy of a friend. The Hackard Building.”
“Stay there. I’ll be up in ten minutes.”
“Sure. Bring me a sandwich.”
“A drink too?”
“None of that. Maybe a couple of Blue Ribbons, but nothing else.”
Without answering, he hung up. I glanced at my wrist, but there was no watch there anymore. Somehow, I vaguely remembered hocking it somewhere and called myself a nut because it was a good Rolex and I probably drank up the loot in half a day. Or got rolled for it.
Damn!
From the window I could see the clock on the Paramount Building and it was twenty past six. The street was slick from the drizzle that had finally started to fall and the crosstown traffic was like a giant worm trying to eat into the belly of the city. I opened the window and got supper smells in ten languages from the restaurants below and for the first time in a long time it smelled good. Then I switched on the desk lamp and sat back again.
Rickerby came in, put a wrapped sandwich and two cans of Blue Ribbon in front of me and sat down with a weary smile. It was a very peculiar smile, not of friendliness, but of anticipation. It was one you didn’t smile back at, but rather waited out.
And I made him wait until