Read Online Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 13] by Black Alley - Free Book Online

on him and picked it up. We detoured past their empty table on the way out. Velda asked, “What did you say to them?”
    “Nothing,” I told her. The .45 slug was still there where I left it. I picked it up and dropped it back into my pocket.
    “I didn’t have to say a thing.”
    She knew what had happened then. All she said to me was, “Damn!”
     
    I had the driver wait while I walked Velda to the apartment. When I gave her a light good night kiss her eyes were asking for more. But I said, “It isn’t going to be easy getting through this engagement, kitten, but let’s keep it cool until we do.”
    “I hope you’re saying that because you’re still weak.”
    I gave her another grin, flipped out Patterson’s .45 and pressed it into her palm. “Sure I am, doll, sure I am,” I said.
    She looked at the slug, smiled and dropped it in her cleavage where it fell into her bra. I suppose.
    By the time I got home I knew it was a lie. The day had washed me out and even pushing the button in the elevator was hard work. The pain in my belly was coming back, sharp jabs of it with each beat of my pulse. When I got inside I started the bathwater going, then got undressed so there would be no waiting period before I got covered by the soothing warmth of the suds.
    I should have listened to Morgan. My body wasn’t fifteen years old anymore. It was injured and hurting bad and all I could do was sweat it out until nature fused with medication and I could reach a normal peak again. Twice, I had to run more hot water into the tub and an hour later the relief started. I sat there for another ten minutes, then eased out and sat under the infrared light in the ceiling until I was dried off.
    Even thinking about what could have happened at Le Cirque gave me the jumps. Either of those guys could have cleaned my plow if they had gotten past my reputation. Luckily, all they could see was that single .45 slug. If I had a bullet, then I had a gun. If I had a gun, then I sure would have used it if those clowns had made a move. That was real positive thinking for them. For me it was stupid. I looked at my face in the mirror over the sink. It was pretty haggard looking. I said, “No more, Mikey boy. Quit being a wise guy.”

4
    VELDA WAS ALREADY AT THE OFFICE when Pat and I walked in. It was ten after nine, a breakfast of coffee and hard rolls was ready for us, then we would see Marcos Dooley off at the funeral parlor. I asked Pat about the flowers and he said, “Dooley left orders. No flowers. He said it reminded him of a funeral.”
    “Since when did he think ahead, Pat?”
    “He’d changed in the last few years. I found out from the director at Richmond’s that he had paid for his own ceremonies in advance, delivered his own urn for his ashes . . .”
    “Ashes! Come on, Pat, he hated fire, you know that.”
    “The war is past, Mike. He probably got over that phobia. So he opted for cremation. Besides, where the hell can they bury you in the city anymore?”
    Getting turned back to pure dust again wasn’t my idea of Dooley’s mentality. Watching him the time we got trapped in a burning building with no way out made me realize how much he hated the kind of fire that could char you to shriveled, roasted meat. Somehow he’d opened a hole in the wall with a grenade, squeezed out and blasted the four enemy infantrymen who had cornered us and we had gotten back to our company without any trouble. It was months after that when Pat and I saw the rippled burn scars on his back while we were showering that it all made sense.
    At her desk, Velda was dunking a bagel into her coffee cup. Pat walked over, saw the gimmick she had laid out on her blotter and mumbled around his hard roll, “What’s that?”
    “The latest in telephone bugs,” she told him.
    “Who’d give you guys an order to tap a phone?” We were good buddies, but he was still a cop.
    For a minute we let him stew in it, then I said, “Nobody, pal. That was laid on