The Last Cop Out

Helen Scanlon lay naked on the bed, in total languor. Never, never before had it been like this. The wetness was still there, the satisfied glow in her body that centered directly in the full brunette triangle that was the apex of all her immediate being. Her breasts quivered with delight and a dreamy exhaustion seemed to flow from her fingers.

Gill Burke looked down at her and smiled. She was the first step up the ladder of the Organization and the most pleasurable. The rest of the way would be messier. The bodies to come wouldn’t be live and warm and loving
—
theywould be vicious and bloody and ultimately dead ...

Here’s Mickey Spillane at his most torrid and terrific blockbusting best! Get set for a going-over you’ll never forget! “There’s a kind of power about Spillane that no other writer can imitate.... He’s the master!”

—
The New York Times

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SIGNET TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN - COUNTRIES
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN CHICAGO, U.S.A.

SIGNET, SIGNET CLASSIC, MENTOR, PLUME, MERIDIAN AND NAL BOOKS
are published by New American Library,
1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019

FIRST SIGNET PRINTING, OCTOBER, 1973

eISBN : 978-1-101-17461-6

http://us.penguingroup.com

For the critics, reviewers and unbelievers, I suggest a slow perusal of your newspaper files ....and special attention to a certain police file coded 3D-SSR-02

To the Big Man . . . thanks.

He reached the newsstand at exactly three minutes to eleven, picked up the early edition of tomorrow’s paper, a copy of
TV Guide,
then waited another minute scanning the headlines in the light of the booth before crossing to the other side of the street. The dachshund on the end of the leash clambered over the curb, looked back quizzically, then turned right on command and led the way east on the deserted sidewalk.

It was precisely one minute to eleven. He was totally punctual because the other one was fetishly punctual too and when the dark sedan passed the man and the dog, slipping into the open parking space in front of the old brownstone, it was as if watches had been synchronized hours earlier for this one brief meeting of their hands at the ultimate moment of destiny.

The driver of the car cut the engine, switched off the lights and put the gear lever into park. He locked the right side doors, the left rear one and was feeling for the window handle beside him when he automatically looked up at the pedestrian walking his dog home, the innocuous one he had seen seconds before buying his paper and dismissed because people in New York still walked dogs, bought papers and went home, which an enemy would never do, and almost smiled back when the stranger smiled at him.

Then he felt the ice in his stomach and a horrible dryness in his throat because he knew the face and recognized the curiously strange smile and knew that forty-six years of life was about to come to an end on a dismal little street on the West Side where he had no place being at all. There would be no more luxury penthouse in one of Manhattan’s towers, no more chubby wife nagging at him in broken English, no more backtalk from too-wise teenage kids, no more relishing his life or death power in the far-flung organization. And all because of a stupid blond cunt in a cold water flat who knew how to assuage his sex problems and bring him to that white glow he thought had disappeared forever.

He saw the newspaper in the hand come up and tried to snatch his own gun from his pocket but he was much too late. Victor Petrocinni achieved one final orgasm when a heavy caliber bullet tapped a hole in his forehead and blew his brains all over the front of the car.

The dachshund barely glanced back at the silenced
whup
of the discharge.

Neither the man nor the dog had broken their leisurely stride in their walk to the end of the street.

A month ago twenty-one of them had sat around the long table in the conference room of Boyer-Reston, Inc. This time only seventeen conservatively dressed men of various ages occupied the dark oaken captain chairs. Legal-sized pads and pencils were in front of each, coffee was available from an ornate urn against the wall, but the cups were empty and the pads were blank.

At the head of the table Mark Shelby, whose original name had been Marcus Aurilieus Fabius Shelvan, silently fingered the gold Phi Beta Kappa key that ornamented his watch chain and let his eyes touch each one of the persons lining the table before him, remembering twenty years back when he had first sat at a meeting like this one.

They had been old country faces then, with accented voices, and the garlicky smell still hung over them from the dinner that Peppy had served. Empty wine bottles had doubled as ash trays and he alone did the note keeping because he alone had the skill to transpose two languages into a coherent English to be referred to later. Only a few weeks before he had made his bones, a double kill of Herm and Sal Perigino, the attempted killers of Papa Fats... a little late in life to be put to the test, but then, he had been preselected to obtain the university education to benefit the organization and the murder assignment was more a formality, more a fraternal initiation than anything else.

That other table had been a handmade plank affair in the back room of Peppy’s tavern and he had sat at it many times, working his way ever closer to the head. Now it was he who occupied the big chair and commanded the attention of the various corporate heads who fronted for the new, modern organization, the other society whose fortunes were made from the ills and vices of the Manhattan sector of New York City.

Shelby’s voice and choice of words had a classic courtroom aura but there was no doubting the steel behind each syllable. Since the Perignino affair he had ordered the elimination of some thirty-odd persons whose actions he had found intolerable to organizational activities, personally attending to four of them as a constant reminder that he was still totally capable and as determinedly ruthless as any of his predecessors and worthy of the title he legally enjoyed as well as the sub
rosa
one employed behind his back. They called him
Primus Gladatori,
the First Gladiator, not because of his true given name, but for the way he dispatched his opponents—quickly and with pleasure.

“Last night,” Mark Shelby said, “Vic Petrocinni was killed.” He shuffled the papers in front of him, found the one he wanted and held it down with a forefinger. “For six weeks, on Mondays and Fridays, he went to the same address at the same time for the same purpose. His excuses were all different and he thought he had everybody fooled but he walked right into an ambush because there was somebody he didn’t fool at all. That makes four of our people in one month.” He paused and looked up, his face as frigid as his eyes. “The question now is... why?”

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