Read Online [Mike Hammer 03] - Vengeance Is Mine by Mickey Spillane - Free Book Online

and the door swung in just a little.
    Sometimes you get just enough warning. Some reflex action shoves you out of the way before you can get your head split open. My hand went up in time to form a cushion for my skull and something smashed down on my knuckles that brought a bubbling yell up out of my throat.
    I kept on going, dove and rolled so that I was on my back with my feet up and staring at the ugly face of an oversize pug who had a billy raised ready to use. He didn’t go for the feet, but he didn’t think fast enough to catch me while I was down.
    I’m no cat, but I got my shoes under me in a hurry. The billy swung at my head while I was still off balance. The guy was too eager. He missed me. I didn’t miss. I was big, he was bigger. I had one bad hand and I didn’t want to spoil the other. I leaned back against the wall and kicked out and up with a slashing toe that nearly tore him in half. He tried to scream. All I heard was a bubbling sound. The billy hit the floor and he doubled over, hands clawing at his groin. This time I measured it right. I took a short half step and kicked that son of a bitch so hard in the face that his teeth came out in my shoe.
    I looked at the billy, picked it up and weighed it. The thing was made for murder. It was too bulky in my pocket so I dropped it in the empty shoulder holster under my arm and grunted at the guy on the floor who was squirming unconsciously in his own blood.
    The room was another of those rooms between rooms. A chair was tilted back against the wall beside the door, the edge of it biting into the soundproofing. Just for kicks I dragged the stupe over to the chair, propped him in it and tilted it back against the wall again. His head was down and you could hardly see the blood. A lot could go on before he’d know about it, I thought.
    When I was satisfied with the arrangement I snapped the lock off the door to accommodate the customers and tried the other door into the back room. This one was open.
    The lights hit me so hard after the semidarkness of the hall that I didn’t see Connie come over. She said, “Where’ve you been, Mike?”
    Her hand hooked in my arm and I gave it an easy squeeze. “I got friends here too.”
    “Who?”
    “Oh, some people you don’t know.”
    She saw the blood on the back of my hand then, the skin of the knuckles peeled back. Her face went a little white. “Mike ... what did you do?”
    I grinned at her. “Caught it on something.”
    She asked another question, one I didn’t hear. I was too busy taking in the layout of the place. It was a gold mine. Over the babble you could hear the click and whir of the roulette wheels, the excited shrieks when they stopped. There were tables for dice, faro spreads, bird cages and all the gams and gadgets that could make a guy want to rip a bill off his roll and try his luck.
    The place was done up like an old-fashioned Western gambling hall, with gaudy murals on every wall. The overhead lights were fashioned from cartwheels and oxen yokes, the hanging brass lanterns almost invisible in the glare of the bright lights inside them. Along one wall was a fifty-foot bar of solid mahogany complete with brass rail, never-used cuspidors and plate-glass mirrors with real bullet holes.
    If ever I had a desire to be surrounded by beauty, I would have found it there. Beauty was commonplace. It was professional. Beauty was there under a lot of make-up and too much skin showing. Beauty was there in models who showed off what they liked to advertise best. It was like looking into the dressing room of the Follies. There was so much of it you tried to see it all once and lost out with your hurry.
    It was incredible as hell.
    I shook my head. Connie smiled, “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
    That was an understatement. “What’s the pitch?”
    “I told you, Mike. It’s a fad. It caught on and spread like the pox. Pretty soon it’ll get around, the place will be jammed and jumpin’, then the whole