The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [226]
He tried to bluff it out. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Shut up and lay down on the floor. Over here away from the door.”
I guess he knew what would happen if he didn’t. His face went white right down into his collar and he fell to his knees then stretched out on the floor like he was told. Before he buried his map in the nap of the carpet he threw me one of those “you’llbe-sorry” looks.
Like hell I’d be sorry. I wasn’t born yesterday. I turned the gun around in my hand and got behind the door. I didn’t have long to wait. The knob turned, a gun poked in with a guy behind it looking for a target, a leer of pure sadistic pleasure on his face. When I brought the butt of the .45 across his head the leer turned to amazement as he spilled forward like a sack of wet cement. The skin on his bald dome was split a good three inches from the thong hook on the handle and pulled apart like a gaping mouth. He would be a long time in sleepy town.
“You ought to get that trip fixed in the stairs,” I said to the fancy boy on the floor. “It drops like a trapdoor.”
He looked back at me through eyes that seemed to pulse every time his heart beat. Both his hands were on the floor, palms down, his body rising and falling with his labored breathing. Under a trim moustache his chin fell away a little, quivering like the rest of him. A hairline that had once swept across his forehead now lay like low tide on the back of his head, graying a little, but not much. There was a scar on one lip and his nose had been twisted out of shape not too long ago, but when you looked hard you could still see through the wear of the years.
He was just what I expected. “Hello, Mallory,” I said, “or should I say Nelson?”
I could hardly hear his voice. “W . . . who are you?”
“Don’t play games, sucker. My name is Mike Hammer. You ought to know me. I bumped one of your boys and made a mess of the other awhile back. You should see him now. I caught up with him again. Get up.”
“What . . . are you going . . . to do?” I looked down at the .45. The safety was off and it was the nastiest-looking weapon in existence at that moment. I pointed it at his belly.
“Maybe I’ll shoot you. There.” I indicated his navel with the muzzle.
“If it’s money you want, I can give it to you, Hammer. Please, get the rod off me.”
Mallory was the tough guy. He edged away from me, holding his hands out in a futile attempt to stop a bullet if it should come. He stopped backing when he hit the edge of the desk. “I don’t want any of your dough, Mallory,” I said, “I want you.” I let him look into the barrel again. “I want to hear something you have to say.”
“I . . .”
“Where’s Miss Grange . . . or should I say Rita Cambell?”
He drew his breath in a great swallow and before I could move swung around, grabbed the pen set from the desk and sent the solid onyx base crashing into my face.
Fingers clawed at my throat and we hit the floor with a tangle of arms and legs. I brought my knee up and missed, then swung with the gun. It landed on the side of his neck and gave me a chance to clear my head. I saw where the next punch was going. I brought it up from the floor and smacked him as hard as I could in the mouth. My knuckles pushed back his lips and his front teeth popped like hollow things under the blow.
The bastard spit them right in my face.
He was trying to reach my eyes. I tossed the rod to one side and laughed long and loud. Only for that one moment did he possess any strength at all, just that once when he was raging mad. I got hold of both his arms and pinned them down, then threw him sideways to the floor. His feet kicked out and kicked again until I got behind him. With his back on the floor I straddled his chest and sat on his stomach, both his hands flat against his sides, held there by my legs. He couldn’t yell without choking on his own blood and he knew it, but he kept trying to spit at me nevertheless.
With my open palm I cracked him across the cheek. Right, left, right, left. His head went sideways with each slap, but my other hand always straightened