by Gorman, Ed
“And nobody got tagged for it?”
“No. There were some stranglings on college campuses back then — mostly in the Midwest — and this one got lumped in as one of the likely unsolved murders that went along with the rest.”
“Didn’t they catch that guy?”
“Yeah. He rode Old Sparky in Nebraska. But the Solby College murder, he never copped to.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it?” Pat sat forward. “Mike, do I have to tell you there’s no statute of limitations on murder? That no murder case is truly ever closed til somebody falls? If you have something...”
“I do have something.”
“What, man?”
“A hunch.”
The gray eyes closed. He loved me like a brother, but he could hate me the same way. “Mike ... do I have to give you the speech again?”
“No. I got it memorized. Tell me about Governor LaSalle.”
The eyes snapped open. Pat looked at Velda for help and didn’t get any. “You start with a twenty-year-old murder, chum, and then you ask about ... What do you mean, tell me about Governor LaSalle?”
“He got elected as a law-and-order guy. How’s he doing?”
Pat waved that off. “I stay out of politics.”
“Which is why you been on the force since Jesus was a baby and still aren’t an inspector. What’s the skinny on the Gov?”
His voice grew hushed. “You’ve the heard the stories.”
“Have I?”
“I can’t say anything more.”
“Then you can’t confirm that an Internal Affairs investigation into the Governor’s relationship with a high-end prostitution ring got shut down because of political pressure?”
“No.”
“Can you deny it?”
“No.”
“What can you tell me, buddy?”
He stared at the soft drink like he was trying to will it into a beer. Then, very quietly, he said, “The word is, our esteemed governor is a sex addict. He uses State Patrol Officers as pimps. It’s a lousy stinking disgrace, Mike, but it’s not my bailiwick. Or yours.”
“What about the rumors that he has a little sex shack upstate? A little cabin in the mountains where he meets with female constituents?”
Pat’s grin was pretty sick. “That’s impossible, Mike. Our governor’s a happily married man.”
Then Pat stopped a waitress and asked for a napkin. She gave him one, and Pat scribbled something on it, something fairly detailed. Then he folded the napkin, gave it to me, and slipped out of the booth.
“Get the check, Mike,” he said, and was gone.
Velda frowned over at me curiously. “What is it?”
“Directions.”
• • •
This time I took the drive upstate alone, much to Velda’s displeasure. But she knew not to argue, when I said I had something to do that I didn’t want her part of.
The shade-topped drive dead-ended at a gate, but I pulled over into the woods half a mile before I got there. I was in a black T-shirt and black jeans with the .45 on my hip, not in its usual shoulder sling. The night was cool, the moon was full and high, and ivory touched the leaves with a picture-book beauty. An idyllic spring night, if you weren’t sitting on Death Row waiting for your last tomorrow.
It was a cabin, all right, logs and all, but probably bigger than what Old Abe grew up in — a single floor with maybe four or five rooms. Out front a lanky state trooper was having a smoke. Maybe I was reading in, but he seemed disgusted, whether with himself or his lot in life, who knows?
I spent half an hour making sure that trooper was alone. It seemed possible another trooper or two might be walking the perimeter, but security was limited to that one bored trooper. And that cruiser of his was the only vehicle. I had expected the Governor to have his own wheels, but I’d been wrong.
Positioned behind a nice big rock with trees at my back, I watched for maybe fifteen minutes — close enough that no binoculars were needed — before the Governor himself, in a purple smoking jacket and silk pajamas right out of Hefner’s closet, exited with a petite young woman on his arm. He was tall and white-haired and handsome in a country club way. She was blonde and very curvy, in a blue halter top and matching hot pants. If she was eighteen, I was thirty.
At first I thought she had on a lot of garish make-up, then I got a better look and realized she had a bloody mouth and one of her eyes was puffy and black.
The bastard had been beating her!
She was carrying not a purse but a wallet — clutched in one hand like the life-line it was, a pro doing business with rough trade like the Gov — and her gracious host gave her a little peck on the check. Then he took her by the arm and passed her to the trooper like a beer they were sharing.
I could hear most of what LaSalle said to his trooper/pimp. “Take Miss So-and-So home, and come pick me up. I want to be back to the mansion by midnight.”
The trooper nodded dutifully, opened the rear of the cruiser like the prostie was a suspect, not a colleague, and then they were off in a crunch of gravel and puff of dust.
There was a back door and opening it with burglar picks took all of twenty seconds. The Gov wasn’t much on security. I came in through a small kitchen, where you could hear a shower on in a nearby bathroom.
That gave me the luxury of getting the lay of the land, but there wasn’t much to see. The front room had a fireplace with a mounted fish over it and a couch and an area to watch TV and a little dining area. I spent most of my time poking around in his office, which had a desk and a few file cabinets, and a comfortable wood-and-cushions chair off by a window. That’s where I was sitting, .45 in hand, when he came in only in his boxer shorts, toweling his white hair.
He looked pudgy and vaguely dissipated, and he didn’t see me at first.
In fact, I had to chime in with, “Good evening, Governor. Got a moment for a taxpayer?”
He dropped the towel like it had turned to flame. He wheeled toward me, his ice-blue eyes wide, though his brow was furrowed. “What the hell ... who the hell...?”
“I’m Mike Hammer,” I said. “Maybe you heard of me.”
Now he recognized me.
“Good God, man,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood. Go ahead. Sit at your desk. Make yourself comfortable. We need to talk.”
His shower must have been hot, because his doughy flesh had a red cast. But the red in his face had nothing to do with needles of water.
“There’s a trooper on his way back here right now,” the Governor said.
“Yeah, but he has to drop your date off first. Tell me, was that shiner and bloody mouth all of it? Or would I find whip marks under that halter top?”
He had gone from startled to indignant in about a second. Now he made a similar trip from indignant to scared. I waved the gun, and he padded over to the desk and got settled in his leather chair.
“What is this,” he said, “a shakedown?”
“You mean, low-life PI stakes out sex-addict governor and tries for a quick kill? Maybe. Your family has money. Your wife’s family has more.”
He sighed. The ice-blue eyes were more ice than blue. “You have a reputation as a hard-ass, Hammer. But I don’t see you as a blackmailer. Who hired you? One of these little chippies? Some little tramp get a little more than she bargained for? Then she should’ve picked another trade.”
“You know, they been talking about you running for president. You really think you can keep a lid on garbage like this?”
He gestured vaguely. “I can reach in my desk drawer and get acheck book, and write you out a nice settlement for your client, and another for you, and we’ll forget this happened. I just want your guarantee there will be no ... future payments.”
I shifted a little. The .45 was more casual in my hand now. “I have a client, all right, Gov. His name is Dopey Dilldocks.”
He frowned. “Your client is a murderer
.”
“No, Gov. You are. My client is an imbecile who thought you might be amused by what he thought was a gag photo taken years ago, involving either you or more likely some college kid with a resemblance to you. But that was no gag — you really strangled that girl. You hadn’t quite got a grip, let’s say, on your habit, your sick little sex hobby.”
The big bare-chested white-haired man leaned forward. “Hammer, that’s nonsense. If this is true, where are these supposed photos?”
“Oh, hell. Your boys cleaned up on that front right after you framed Dopey. You’ve got underworld connections, like so many law-and-order frauds. You can’t maintain a sadistic habit like yours without high friends in low places — you’re tied in with the call girl racket on its uppermost levels, right?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Hammer.”
I stood. I was smiling. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the other end of that smile, but it was a smile.
“Look, Gov — I’m not after blackmail money. All I want is a phone call from the governor.”
He frowned up at me. “What?”
“You’ve seen the old movies.” I pointed at the fat phone on his desk. “You’re going to call the warden over at Sing Sing, and you are going to tell him that you have reason to believe Donald Dilbert aka Dilldocks is innocent, and you are issuing the prisoner a full pardon.”
“It’s not that easy, Hammer...”
“It’s just that easy. Then you’re calling the Attorney General and inform her that you’ve made that call, and that the pardon is official.”
And that’s what he did. Under the barrel of my .45, but he did it. And he was a good actor, like so many politicians. He didn’t tip it — sounded sincere as hell.
When he’d hung up after his conversation with the Attorney General, he said, “What now?”
I came around behind the desk and stood next to the seated LaSalle. “Now you get a piece of paper out of your desk drawer. I want this in writing.”
His face seemed to relax. “All right, Hammer. If I pardon Dill-docks, this ends here?”
“It will end here.”
He nodded, the ice-blues hooded, his silver hair catching moonlight through the window behind him. He reached in his bottom-right hand drawer and came back with the .22 revolver and he fired it right at me.
The click on the empty cylinder made him blink.
Then my .45 was in his face. “I took the liberty of removing that cartridge, when I had a look around in here. Lot of firearms accidents at home, you know.”
My left hand came around, gripped his right hand clutching the .22, and swung the barrel around until he was looking cross-eyed at it.
“But there’s another slug waiting, Gov,” I said, “should the need arise.”
And my hand over his hand, my finger over his finger, squeezed the trigger. A bullet went in through his open mouth and the inside of his head splattered the window behind him, blotting out the moon.
“Some sons of bitches,” I said to the suicide, “just don’t deserve a reprieve.”
• • •
Co-author’s note: I expanded a fragment in Mickey’s files of what might have been intended as a first chapter into this short story, utilizing his plot notes. M.A. C.
• • •
MICKEY SPILLANE (1918–2006) and Max Allan Collins collaborated on numerous projects, including twelve anthologies, two films, and the Mike Danger comic book series. Spillane was the best-selling American mystery writer of the twentieth century. He introduced Mike Hammer in I, the Jury (1947), which sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries that soon followed. The controversial PI has been the subject of a radio show, comic strip, and two television series; numerous gritty movies have been made from Spillane novels, notably director Robert Aldrich’s seminal film noir, Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Collins has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America Shamus nominations, winning twice. His graphic novel Road to Perdition is the basis of the Academy Award–winning film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, directed by Sam Mendes. An independent filmmaker in the Midwest, he has had half adozen feature screenplays produced. His other credits include the New York Times best sellers, Saving Private Ryan and American Gangster. Both Spillane and Collins received the Private Eye Writers life achievement award, the Eye.
CRAZY LARRY SMELLS BACON
By Greg Bardsley
“Honey,” my mom whispers, “Larry’s got a buck knife.”
Our neighbor Larry lives across the street. On weekends, he tends to his cactus garden in flip-flops and a skin-colored Speedo. And cocoa butter — lots of cocoa butter.
My mom squints through our sheer curtains.
“Honey,” she whispers harder. “Larry’s lost his mind.”
My dad flips through the Chronicle, bifocals on the tip his nose. When it comes to Larry, my dad has heard it all, except for maybe the buck knife.
Larry is heaving the buck knife into his garage door. Every ten seconds or so, a loud thud echoes throughout the deserted neighborhood.
We watch Larry.
He does look good in the Speedo.
My mom sighs. “That poor lady.”
• • •
Crazy Larry lives with his three sons. His boys have big, giant brown eyes that never seem to blink — a trait they inherited from their mom, who moved across town with the girls about four years ago, right about when Larry started making adult comments to his daughters. Sometimes the boys stand over there and look at us with these giant brown eyes, these eyes that don’t blink. They don’t say much.
• • •
Crazy Larry has traveled around the world to design giant power plants. I don’t think he does that anymore — my mom says they made him stop — but he has the memories. From each of his jobs he brought back mementos, including lots of wooden masks from Africa. They’re on his walls, some of them looking angry, some of them with no expression at all. He likes masks, I figure. He’s got so many them over there.
At night, Larry turns off the lights and sits on his covered porch facing our house, smoking and drinking. We can’t see him, just the glowing red ember of his tobacco pipe.
I wonder what he’s thinking about there in the dark.
• • •
My mom watches as Larry throws the knife.
“You think I could kill him, John?”
I roll my eyes. My mom loves what-if games.
My dad looks up from the paper. “You could kill him, maybe, but could you get away with it?”
My mom watches as Larry throws the knife again. “I’d get him at night. Just use a gun, then run back over here and hide it. No one would know.”
My dad peers over the Chronicle, grinning. “Yeah? And what am I supposed to say when the cops start asking questions?”
My mom turns and mocks a frown, fists on her hips. “What are you supposed to say?” She pouts. “You’re supposed to say I was with you the whole time.”
My dad tosses the paper aside, beaming, and stands up. “Oh, I am, huh?”
My mom comes to him. “And that’s exactly what you’ll do.” She wraps him up in her arms. “You’re gonna tell them I was with you the whole time.”
My dad kisses her. “You know I could never let Crazy Larry — his violent death or otherwise — get between us.” He kisses her again, a little longer, and they laugh.
I hate it when they kiss in front of me. I roll my eyes, turn and peer through the sheers one last time. Larry has thrown his knife so hard he has to plant a foot on the garage door and yank it out with both hands.
• • •
I’m pretty sure Crazy Larry is sweet on my mom.
When I walk by, he’ll say things like, “Say hi to that mom of yours, okay?”
His eyes twinkle when he talks about her.
My mom says Crazy Larry thinks he’s God’s gift to women, due to his power-plant smarts and Speedo body — and that he couldn’t be more wrong. “They
don’t say ‘tall, dark, and psychotic,’ do they, sweetie? They say, ‘tall, dark, and handsome,’ like your dad.”
One time, in the middle of a Tuesday, Larry trots over to help my mom unload groceries from our car. My mom won’t even look at him. She just stares at the groceries and says, “Oh thank you, Larry, but we’re fine.”
Crazy Larry narrows his eyes as he backs away. “Any time, Judy.” He gives her a long look, from head to toe, like I’m not even there.
“Any time ... any place.”
My mom never looks up.
• • •
My mom always ignores Crazy Larry. Sure, she’ll gossip about him with my dad, and sure she’ll guess what kind of bad things he’s done, even wondering if he’s got buried bodies behind his house. She’ll walk into the kitchen and announce, “Larry’s making flames with a can of WD40.”
But to his face, she’ll ignore him.
“Never reward attention from a crazyman,” she explains.
“Do you think Larry likes you?”
She fails to hide an amused grin. “Maybe,” she allows, “which is even more reason to act like he doesn’t exist.”
“Except when you’re spying on him from the dining room.” She smiles to herself.
• • •
The next day my mom whispers, “Honey, you gotta see this.”
From the other room, the newspaper shuffles.
Larry is wearing his skin-colored Speedo, army boots, and dark sunglasses. He’s got a samurai sword in his hands, and he’s studying his garage door. My mom and I glance at each other and grin.
He heaves the sword, and it sinks deep into the garage door with a loud crack, vibrating hard.
My mom yelps a little too loud.
Larry turns and squints at our house.
“Well,” my mom whispers, and backs away, “time to get dinner going.”
She leaves and I peer through the sheers again. Crazy Larry is staring at me.
• • •
A week later the “Check Engine” light flashes on the dashboard of my mom’s Chevy.
At the dealership, the waiting room is cold, grimy and barren. We sit and wait as the mechanics take turns coming in from the garage to lean against the counter, page through catalogs and stare at my mom. The biggest mechanic, this man with a small forehead and a mouth that hangs open, doesn’t even look at the catalogs; he just stands there and stares, snorting over and over, like he’s trying to get her attention.