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

and now he wanted to challenge the old bull. He knew that the longer nothing happened the less chance he had to win and an expectant anxiety showed in the lines around his mouth. He looked just like Drago and Patterson at Le Cirque.
    I played the old bull’s part perfectly. I said, “Your buddies left my calling card on their table. I took it back.”
    His eye twitched, so he wasn’t as cool as he thought he was. “Oh?”
    Real Harvard-like, I thought. “Tell them I’m saving it, Ugo.”
    His eyes flicked to see if anyone was listening. “I’ll do that.”
    The old bull said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
    “Dooley worked for my father.”
    “I know that.” I got a frown again, strangely concerned this time.
    “And how do you know him?”
    “We were in the army together. So was that cop over there.” Ugo didn’t have to look. He knew who I meant. Pat was looking right at us. He got that twitch again and I knew the young buck had lost the confrontation. But there would be another time and the young buck would get stronger and the old bull would be aging out of the picture. He hoped.
    At the display table, I got a close look at Dooley’s encapsulation. It was a dulled metallic urn, modestly decorated at the top and bottom with a plaque in the middle engraved with gold lettering.
    His name, age and birthplace were at the top, then under it a brief history that gave his GI serial numbers in eight digits and a record of his service aboard the U.S. destroyer Latille . Nothing about his army time at all. Hell, both Pat and I knew Dooley had come from someplace else he wouldn’t speak about before he was attached to our outfit. Now we knew. He had served in, then ducked out of the U.S. Navy. The son of a gun probably got seasick and called it quits, but was patriotic enough to get right back into the mess with another combat unit.
    The funeral director for Richmond’s sidled up next to me and asked, “Can I see you a moment, Mr. Hammer?”
    I nodded and followed him to the far side of the room. He stood there primly, wondering how to explain the situation. “When Mr. Dooley purchased our . . . accommodations, he asked that you see to his . . . remains.”
    “Be glad to,” I told him. “What did he want done with them?”
    “He said he had a son named Marvin and wanted you to find him and deliver his ashes in the urn to the boy.”
    “I never knew about a kid.”
    “Apparently he had one he never mentioned.”
    “Well,” I said to him, “if that’s what he wanted, that’s what he gets. I sure owe him that much.”
    He looked at his watch. Half the crowd had signed the register and already left. The others would be out in a few minutes. “I’ll box the urn for you and you can pick it up in my office.”
    The three of us left the parlor with Dooley in my arms, packed in a box like a specimen of some kind. Pat wanted to know what I was going to do with him and I told him there was a private repository for jars of dead people in Queens. You paid a lifetime fee and visitors could come see your remains in a niche on a concrete wall. Pat wanted to split the fee with me because of our past relationship, so I agreed and took Dooley home with me.
     
    Women are strange people. They are inbred nesters, ready to make a home the minute they have the chance, cleaning and changing and stirring up dirt where none was at all. Velda was doing this right now. Not physically, but with her mind and eyes. Mine was a bachelor’s apartment. You knew a man lived here. It was expensive, but it had no frills. The decorations had a masculine nature, all in good taste. But Male. Now that was being softened with feminine overtones. She had been here often enough, but now it was different.
    When the inspection was finished she said almost casually, “When are you planning to marry me, Mike?”
    “You in a hurry?”
    “Like you couldn’t believe.”
    “Then help me to finish this Dooley affair,” I said. She sat down