Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 02] (30 page)

With near reverence I spread the folders apart and saw what was in them. I wasn’t ashamed of Nancy now, I was ashamed of myself for thinking she was after blackmail. There in the trunk was her reason for living, a complete expose of the whole racket, substantiated with pictures, documents, notes that had no meaning at the moment but would when they were studied. There were names and familiar faces. More than just aldermen. More than just manufacturers. Lots more. The lid was coming off City Hall. Park Avenue would feel the impact. But what was more important was the mechanics of the thing, neatly placed in a separate folder, enlarged pictures of books the police and the revenue men would want, definite proof of to whom those books belonged The entire pretty setup.

My ears picked up the sound, a faint metallic snapping. I closed the lid, locked it, then walked back my original path, taking time to fold the carpet over and study it, and satisfied that I had left no trace, closed the door and snapped the padlock in place. From the baseboard around the wall I scooped a handful of dust and blew it at the lock, restoring to it the age my hands had wiped off.

A yellow flood of light wandered up the hall, centered on the stairs and held. I stepped back into a bedroom, stuffing my watch in my pocket so the luminous face would be out of sight.

The light was poking into rooms just as I had done. Feet sounded on the stairs, trying to be careful. Whoever stood behind that light was taking no chances, for it went down on the carpet, scanning it for tracks.

Back there in the room I grinned to myself.

The light came up the stairs throwing the whole corridor into flickering shadows, giving off a hissing noise that meant he carried a naphtha lantern. It came on to the door of the storage room. There was a sigh. He set the lantern on the floor, directing the beam toward the lock, and I heard him working over it with a pick.

He took longer than I did. But he got it open.

When I heard him enter the room I reached for my rod and stood with it in my hand. The racket he made dragging the trunk into the light covered the sound of my feet carrying me to the door. He was too excited to use a pick in the lock; instead he smashed it open and a low chuckle came out of his throat as he pawed through the contents.

I said, “Hello, Mr. Berin-Grotin.”

I should have shot the bastard in the back and kept quiet. He whipped around with unbelievable speed, smashing at the light and shooting at the same time. Before I could pull the trigger a slug hit my chest and spun me out of the doorway. Then another tore into my leg.

“Damn you anyway!” he screamed.

I rolled to one side, the shock of the bullet’s impact numbing me all over. I lay on my face and pulled the trigger again and again, firing into the darkness.

A shot licked back at me and hit the wall over my head, but that brief spurt of flame had death in it. The lantern had overturned, spilling the naphtha over the floor, and it rose in a fierce blaze right in Berin’s face. I saw his eyes, mad eyes, crazy eyes. He was on his hands and knees shoving himself back, momentarily blinded by the light.

I had to fight to get a grip on the gun, bring it back in line. When I pulled the trigger it bucked in my hand and skittered across the floor. But it was enough. The .45 caught him in the hip and knocked him over backward.

Everything was ablaze now, the flames licking to the bedding, running up the walls to the ceilings. A paint can and something in a bottle went up with a dull roar. It was getting hard to feel anything, even the heat. Over in the comer, Berin groaned and pushed himself erect. He saw me then, lying helpless on the floor, and his hand reached out for his gun.

He was going to kill me if it was the last thing he did. He would have if the wall hadn’t blossomed out into a shower of sparks and given way. One of the timbers that had lost the support of rusted nails wavered, and like a giant falling pine tree, crashed into the room and nailed the goddamn killer to the floor under it.

I laughed like a fiend, laughed and laughed even though I knew I was going to die anyway.

“You lost, Berin, you lost! You could have gotten away, but you lost!”

He fought the heavy timber, throwing his hands against the flame of the wood to push it away and I smelt the acrid odor of burning flesh. “Get it off me, Mike! Get it off ... please. You can have anything you want! Get it off me!”

“I can’t.... I can’t even move. Maybe I would if I could, but I can’t even move!”

“Mike....”

“No good, you filthy louse. I’ll die with you. I don’t give a damn any more. I’ll die, but you’ll go too. You never thought it would happen, did you? You had the ring and you thought you’d have time. You didn’t know I killed Feeney and got the ticket from him.

“There was Lola waiting for me. You heard me tell her that on the phone. While you got the drinks you called Feeney and covered up by playing the phonograph for me. He must have walked right in on her. She was expecting me and she got a killer. Sure, you stalled me while Feeney went to my office and broke in. He did a good job of it, too. But he had to go back and kill Lola because she knew the address on the ticket and the camera could have been traced.

“Feeney called you right after he sank his knife in her, but she wasn’t dead and saw him do it. You told Feeney to get out of there and wait for you somewhere. Sure, you wouldn’t want Feeney to get his hands on that stuff. He got out ... just as I came in and Lola put the finger on him. She put the finger on you, too, when she pointed to the phone. Feeney got out, but I was coming in and he stepped back to let me pass and I didn’t see him. I caught him, though. Yeah, you played it cautious right to the end. You took your time about getting here, careful not to attract attention in any way. Did you sneak out of your hotel or just pretend you were up early as usual?”

“Mike, I’m burning!”

His hair smoked, puffed up in a ball of flame and he screamed again. He looked like a killer, being bald like that. The other wall was a sheet of fire now.

“I didn’t get the connection until tonight. It was the ring after all. The ring was very important. I sat there looking at a bottle of whiskey. The label had three feathers spread across the front just like the fancy plaque on your private morgue. I happened to think that the spread of the feathers looked just like a fleur-de-lis pattern, then I got it. The design on the ring was three feathers, battered out enough to make it hard to recognize.”

He fought the timber now, his face contorted in agony. I watched him a second and laughed again.

“The three feathers were part of your family crest, weren’t they? An imitation of royalty. You and your damn pride, you bastard. Nancy Sanford was your own granddaughter. She was going to have a baby and you kicked her out. What did you think of
her
pride? So she turned from one job to another, working under an assumed name. She became a prostitute on the side. She got to know guys like Russ Bowen and his connection with Feeney. Then one day she saw you two together.

“I can imagine what she thought when she realized you were one of them, living your vain life of wealth on money that came from the bodies of the girls, hiding behind the front of respectability. You had it set up nice until she came along. She only had one thing in mind and that was to break the whole racket to pieces.

“Only she had to leave her baggage behind her until she had money to redeem it. Then you got the breaks. Feeney ran across her looking for a piece on the side and saw something. What was it, more pictures? Enough to make you get wise? Did he see the ring and know what it meant?”

Berin rolled from side to side. The timber, out of the flame, wasn’t burning. It lay across his chest smoking. His eyes were on the ceiling watching the plaster crack and fall. The fire that spread, eating at everything it touched. Only on the floor was there an escape from the intense heat. But not for long. Soon the flames would come up from the floor and that would be it. I tried to move, drag myself, but the effort was too great, and all I could do was stare at the man under the timber and be glad to know that I wouldn’t die alone.

I laughed and Berin turned his head. A hot spark lit on his cheek and he didn’t feel it. “Nancy was murdered, wasn’t she?” I said. “It wasn’t planned to work out so nice, but who could tell that a girl who had been clubbed so hard by an expert that her neck was broken, would get up from where she was thrown out of a car and stagger down the street and out into the path of another car.

“You
were Feeney’s alibi the night she was killed. You tailed her, forced her into the car, went into your act and heaved her out-and it all very nicely worked into your normal routine!

“Feeney didn’t usually miss those shots, but he missed on Nancy and he missed on me. I should have known that sooner, too, when Lola told me Nancy had no vices. No, she didn’t drink, but people swore she staggered and assumed she was drunk. I bet you had a big laugh over that.

“Pride. Pride did it to you. In the beginning you were a play-boy and spent all your dough, but your pride wouldn’t let you become a pauper. The smart operators got hold of you and then you fronted for them until you squeezed them out and had the racket all to yourself. You could work the filthiest racket in the world, but your pride wouldn’t let you take back your granddaughter after she made a mistake. Then your pride kept you from letting her interfere with your affairs.”

I could hardly talk over the roar of the flames now. Outside the engines were clanging up the streets and far away voices mingled with crashing of the walls. Only because the fire had to eat its way down had we stayed alive as long as this.

“But it’s all there in that box, mister. You’ll die and your fancy hyphenated name will be lost in the mud and slime that’ll come out of it.”

“It won‘t, goddamn you! It won’t!” Even in pain his eyes grew crafty. “The box will burn and even if it doesn’t they’ll think I was here with you, Mike. Yes, you’re my alibi, and my name
won’t
be lost. Nobody will trace that girl now and the world will never know!”

He was right, too. He was so right that the anger welling up in me drove the numbness out of my leg and the pain from my chest and I pulled myself across the room. I reached the trunk, shoved it, shoved it again, my hands brushing aside the hot embers that fell from the ceiling. Berin saw what I was doing and screamed for me to stop. I grinned at him. He was bald and ugly. He was a killer in hell before he died.

Somehow I got the box on edge and heaved, the effort throwing me back to the floor. But it smashed the window out and fell to the ground and I heard an excited shout and a voice yell, “Somebody is in the room up there!”

The sudden opening of the window created a draft that sucked the flames right out of the wall, sent them blasting into my face. I smelled hair burning and saw the legs of Berin’s pants smolder. His gun was lying right under my hand.

He should never have spoken to me that way, but he did and it gave me strength to go it all the way. I reached for the gun, a.38, and fitted the butt into my hand.

“Look at your employee, Berin. See what I’m going to do? Now listen carefully to what I tell you and think about it hard, because you only have a few minutes left. That tomb of yours won’t be empty. No, the redhead will live there. The girl your pride kicked out. She’ll be in that tomb. And do you know where you’ll be? In potter’s field next to Feeney Last, or what’s left of you. I’ll tell the police what happened. It won’t be the truth, but it’ll fit. I’ll tell them the body up here is that of one of your boys you sent to get me. They’ll never find you even though they’ll never give up looking, and whenever your name is mentioned it will be with a sneer and a dirty memory. The only clean thing will be the redhead. You’ll die the kind of death you feared most ... lost, completely lost. Animals walking over your grave. Not even a marker.”

The horror of it struck him and his mouth worked.

“But I won’t deprive myself of the pleasure of killing you, mister rat. It will make up for the blonde and Lola. I’ll kill you so I can live with myself again. I’ll tell them we fought it out and I killed you. But you’ll know the truth. It hurts, doesn’t it?”

The pain in his eyes wasn’t physical any longer.

“They’ll be up here in a minute. I’ll be waiting for them. I’ll let them take me down and tell them there’s no use going back in again. I’ll let you burn until there isn’t a thing left to identify you.”

A stream of water hit the side of the wall, centered on the window and turned the room into a steaming inferno.

“A ladder will be pushed up here in just a minute now. When it comes I’ll pull the trigger. Think about it, think hard.”

A truck was being run into position. The shouts below grew louder. I crouched into the protection of the same timber that had him pinned down. The ceiling over the corridor outside fell in with a crash, dragging the front wall with it. I heard the crackling and looked up. Directly overhead the ceiling began to buckle, sagging in the middle with flame lancing through the cracks.

I looked at Berin and laughed. He turned his head and stared right into the muzzle of his own gun. Minutes, seconds. Fractions of time. The ceiling was swaying now. The killer’s face was a vile mask of hatred, praying for the ceiling to get us both. He was going to go first if it happened that way.

Something banged against the side of the window and slid over the sill: two prongs with a crossbar between them. A ladder bobbed as someone came up it, covered by the stream of water.

Berin had his mouth open, screaming with all the furies of the gods dethroned, but my laugh was even louder.

He was still screaming when I pulled the trigger.