The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [9]
“He’s had them.”
“Fist marks are recent. Other bruises made by some blunt instrument. One rib—”
“Shoes,” I interrupted. “I got stomped.”
“Typical alcoholic condition,” he continued. “From all external signs I’d say he isn’t too far from total. You know how they are.”
“Damn it,” I said, “quit talking about me in the third person.”
Pat grunted something under his breath and turned to Larry. “Any suggestions?”
“What can you do with them?” the doctor laughed. “They hit the road again as soon as you let them out of your sight. Like him—you buy him new clothes and as soon as he’s near a swap shop he’ll turn them in on rags with cash to boot and pitch a big one. They go back harder than ever once they’re off awhile.”
“Meanwhile I can cool him for a day.”
“Sure. He’s okay now. Depends upon personal supervision.”
Pat let out a terse laugh. “I don’t care what he does when I let him loose. I want him sober for one hour. I need him.”
When I glanced up I saw the doctor looking at Pat strangely, then me. “Wait a minute. This is that guy you were telling me about one time?”
Pat nodded. “That’s right.”
“I thought you were friends.”
“We were at one time, but nobody’s friends with a damn drunken bum. He’s nothing but a lousy lush and I’d as soon throw his can in the tank as I would any other lush. Being friends once doesn’t mean anything to me. Friends can wear out pretty fast sometimes. He wore out. Now he’s part of a job. For old times’ sake I throw in a few favors on the side but they’re strictly for old times’ sake and only happen once. Just once. After that he stays bum and I stay cop. I catch him out of line and he’s had it.”
Larry laughed gently and patted him on the shoulder. Pat’s face was all tight in a mean grimace and it was a way I had never seen him before. “Relax,” Larry told him. “Don’t you get wound up.”
“So I hate slobs,” he said.
“You want a prescription too? There are economy-sized bottles of tranquilizers nowadays.”
Pat sucked in his breath and a grin pulled at his mouth. “That’s all I need is a problem.” He waved a thumb at me. “Like him.”
Larry looked down at me like he would at any specimen. “He doesn’t look like a problem type. He probably plain likes the sauce.”
“No, he’s got a problem, right?”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Tell the man what your problem is, Mikey boy.”
Larry said, “Pat—”
He shoved his hand away from his arm. “No, go ahead and tell him, Mike. I’d like to hear it again myself.”
“You son of a bitch,” I said.
He smiled then. His teeth were shiny and white under tight lips and the two steps he took toward me were stiff-kneed. “I told you what I’d do if you got big-mouthed again.”
For once I was ready. I wasn’t able to get up, so I kicked him right smack in the crotch and once in the mouth when he started to fold up and I would have gotten one more in if the damn doctor hadn’t laid me out with a single swipe of his bag that almost took my head off.
It was an hour before either one of us was any good, but from now on I wasn’t going to get another chance to lay Pat up with a sucker trick. He was waiting for me to try it and if I did he’d have my guts all over the floor.
The doctor had gone and come, getting his own prescriptions filled. I got two pills and a shot. Pat had a fistful of aspirins, but he needed a couple of leeches along the side of his face where he was all black and blue.
But yet he sat there with the disgust and sarcasm still on his face whenever he looked at me and once more he said, “You didn’t tell the doctor your problem, Mike.”
I just looked at him.
Larry waved his hand for him to cut it out and finished repacking his kit.
Pat wasn’t going to let it alone, though. He said, “Mike lost his girl. A real nice kid. They were going to get married.”
That great big place in my chest started to open up again, a huge hole that could grow until there was nothing left of me, only that huge hole. “Shut up, Pat.”
“He likes to think she ran off, but he knows all the time she’s dead. He sent her out on too hot a job and she never came back, right, Mikey