The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [34]
The funny little guy at the bar said, “That’s fifty I got coming.”
The one who made the bet said, “I told you Pepper knew something.”
The big guy got up and said, “No offense, Mac, it’s my job.”
The owner came over and said, “Like in the old days, hey Mike?”
I said, “You ought to clue your help, Benny Joe.”
“They need training.”
“Not from me.”
“You did lousy tonight. I thought Sugar Boy had you.”
“Not when I got a rod.”
“So who knew? All this time you go clean? I hear even Gary Moss cleaned you one night. You, even. Old, Mike.”
Around the bar the eyes were staring at me curiously, wondering. “They don’t know me, Benny Joe.”
The little fat man shrugged. “Who would? You got skinny. Now how about taking off.”
“Not you, Benny Joe,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’re pushing too.”
“Sure. Tough guys I got all the time. Old tough guys I don’t want. They always got to prove something. So with you I call the cops and you go down. So blow, okay?”
I hadn’t even been looking at him while he talked, but now I took the time to turn around and see the little fat man, a guy I had known for fifteen years, a guy who should have known better, a guy who was on the make since he began breathing but a guy who had to learn the hard way.
So I looked at him, slow, easy, and in his face I could see my own face and I said, “How would you like to get deballed, Benny Joe? You got nobody to stop me. You want to sing tenor for that crib you have keeping house for you?”
Benny Joe almost did what he started out to do. The game was supposed to have ended in the Old West, the making of a reputation by one man taking down a big man. He almost took the .25 out, then he went back to being Benny Joe again and he was caught up in something too big for him. I picked the .25 out of his fingers, emptied it, handed it back and told him, “Don’t die without cause, Benny Joe.”
The funny little guy at the bar with the new fifty said, “You don’t remember me, do you, Mike?”
I shook my head.
“Ten, fifteen years ago—the fire at Carrigan’s?”
Again, I shook my head.
“I was a newspaperman then. Bayliss Henry of the Telegram. Pepper, they call me now. You had that gunfight with Cortez Johnson and his crazy bunch from Red Hook.”
“That was long ago, feller.”
“Papers said it was your first case. You had an assignment from Aliet Insurance.”
“Yeah,” I told him, “I remember the fire. Now I remember you too. I never did get to say thanks. I go through the whole damn war without a scratch and get hit in a lousy heist and almost burn to death. So thanks!”
“My pleasure, Mike. You got me a scoop bonus.”
“Now what’s new?”
“Hell, after what guys like us saw, what else could be new?”
I drank my beer and didn’t say anything.
Bayliss Henry grinned and asked, “What’s with you?”
“What?” I tried to sound pretty bored.
It didn’t take with him at all. “Come on, Big Mike. You’ve always been my favorite news story. Even when I don’t write, I follow the columns. Now you just don’t come busting in this place anymore without a reason. How long were you a bum, Mike?”
“Seven years.”
“Seven years ago you never would have put a gun on Sugar Boy.”
“I didn’t need it then.”
“Now you need it?”
“Now I need it,” I repeated.
Bayliss took a quick glance around. “You got no ticket for that rod, Mike.”
I laughed, and my face froze him. “Neither had Capone. Was he worried?”
The others had left us. The two guys were back at their table by the door watching the rain through the windows, the music from the overlighted juke strangely soft for a change, the conversation a subdued hum above it.
A rainy night can do things like that. It can change the entire course of events. It seems to rearrange time.
I said, “What?”
“Jeez, Mike, why don’t you listen once? I’ve been talking for ten minutes.”
“Sorry, kid.”
“Okay, I know how it is. Just one thing.”
“What?”
“When you gonna ask it?”
I looked at him and took a pull of the beer.
“The big question. The one you came