Read Online The Last Cop Out by Mickey Spillane - Free Book Online

it, now they can’t put it together at all unless some outfit is just lining us up for an all-out war and trying to take out the generals before they commit the soldiers.”
    “Don’t be silly. That’s impossible.”
    “There’s another bit that they’re considering.”
    Shelby studied his glass, tasted the wine and put it down again. “What’s that?”
    “The United States Government might have decided to take on an internal diversion for publicity purposes to cover up all the other crap that’s going on.”
    “Frank, you’re nuts. Who the hell they going to use ... the CIA?”
    “Consider it a possibility.”
    “They got the FBI. They’re bad enough. Right now they use any excuse to go across state lines and their damn director doesn’t even give a shit for constitutional rights. Only we have our people there too and there haven’t been any directives out to nail us.”
    Frank Verdun swirled the wine in his glass and sniffed the edge. If Shelby didn’t know better he would have thought he was a constant habitué of the more gracious Paris bistros.
    Mark said, “Why should they? It’s even better this way. Let somebody else pick us apart and go in after the pieces. No, Frank, it isn’t the FBI and it isn’t the CIA. I wish it were, because we’d know who we were dealing with and how to take care of it, but what’s happening is pure insanity. Nobody’s made a fucking move yet.”
    Verdun nodded, conceded the point. “They will, you know. They have to. You don’t go through all the trouble they went through without finally making a move. Nobody does anything for nothing and so far it’s been their game.” He stopped twirling the wine around in his glass, finished it and slid the ornate crystal to one side. “It’s really simple, you know.”
    “I don’t know,” Shelby said.
    “What’s the most important thing in the world?” the Frenchman asked. He was hunched over his arms and his eyes were a bright electric blue as they stared at Mark.
    Shelby would have said something else, but he knew what the Frenchman wanted to hear and said, “Money.”
    The curl in his lip the Frenchman didn’t ordinarily show appeared now. He had inherited his mouth from his mother, had a plastic surgeon take out the birth scar, but there were times when the defect was evident despite the operation. His mind was like a tumescent sore about to burst.
    “Somebody is after our treasury,” he said.
    Mark Shelby wasn’t about to lance his throbbing boil. “Reasonable,” he agreed. “There’s nothing as important as money.” For a moment he thought he saw a flicker in the Frenchman’s eyes about to dispute the point, but didn’t press it.
    Abruptly, Frank Verdun said, “What about this shithead Burke?”
    “I heard he was back.”
    “You know he’s working for the D.A.’s office?”
    “I heard.”
    “So what about it?”
    “You saw Papa’s orders,” Shelby told him. “Lay off the cops. What the hell could he do anyway? They got twenty-five thousand cops in this city. One more’s going to matter?”
    “He’s a specialist.”
    “Screw him.”
    “He was after you, Mark.”
    Shelby let a smile touch his mouth that turned into a laugh. “So he got screwed and we can screw him again. Come on, Frank, you terrified of one stinking ex-blue-coat just because the D.A.’s office is grabbing at straws?”
    “No,” the Frenchman said, “I’m not.” He sat back in his booth and waved the waitress in the black miniskirt over. “Are you?” he asked.
     
    Papa Menes had sent his driver into Miami to get a big Rand-McNally map of the United States. Artie Meeker had thumbtacked it on the wall as the old man directed and circled the areas he indicated. He leaned back against the wall thinking of the beautiful whore he had met and didn’t have time to service and waited for Papa Menes to finish thinking.
    The old man said, “Draw a dotted line toward Phoenix, Artie.”
    He had no idea where Phoenix was,