Mickey Spillane - The Tough Guys

Mickey Spillane

The Tough Guys

KICK IT OR KILL!

An old switcher engine pulled the two-car train from the junction at Richfield over the 12-mile spur into Lake Rappaho. At the right time the ride could have been fun because the cars were leftovers from another era, but now it was a damn nuisance. Coal dust had powdered everything, settling into the mohair seats like sand and hanging in the air so you could taste it. Summer was two months gone and the mountains and valleys outside were funneling down cold Canadian air. There was no heat in the car.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have minded, but now the chill made my whole side ache again under the bandage and I was calling myself an idiot for listening to that doctor and his wild ideas about me having to take a complete rest. I could have holed up just as well in New York, but instead I fell for the fresh air routine and took his advice about this place.

Lake Rappaho was the end of the line. A single limp sack of mail and a half dozen packages came off the baggage car as I stepped down from the last one.

On the other side of the platform, a black '58 Chevy with a hand-painted TAXI on its door stood empty. I saw the driver, all right. He and a wizened old stationmaster were in the office peering at me like I was a stray moose in church. But that's mountain country for you. When you're out of season and not expected, everybody goes into a G.I. hemorrhage.

I waved my thumb at the taxi, picked up my old B-4 bag and the mailing tube I kept my split bamboo rod in, walked across the station to the car, threw my gear in the back seat, then got in front for the drive into Pinewood. It was another five minutes before the driver came out.

He opened the door on the other side. "Afternoon. You going to Pinewood?"

"Anyplace else to go?"

He shook his head. "Not for fifty miles, I guess."

"Then let's go there."

He slid under the wheel and kicked the motor over. In backing around the corner of the station he made a pretense of seeing my duffel in the back. "You going fishing?"

"That's the general idea."

"No fishing now, you know. Wrong season."

"It's still open, isn't it?"

He nodded. "For the rest of the month. But there's no fish."

"Shut up," I said.

It was a four-mile trip into the fading sun to Pinewood and he didn't say anything again, but every foot of the way his hands were white around the wheel.

Pinewood had a permanent population of 2,500. It lay where the valley widened on one end of Lake Rappaho, a mile and a half long and four blocks wide. The summer cabins and homes on the outskirts were long closed and what activity there was centered around the main crossroads.

The Pines Hotel stood on the corner, a three-story white-frame building whose second-story porch overhung the entire width of the sidewalk.

I paid the cabby, grabbed my luggage and went inside.

The two big guys bordering the door waited until I had crossed the lobby and was at the desk. Then they came up and watched while I signed the register. The heavy one took my card from the clip and looked at it.

"Mister Kelly Smith, New York City," he said. "That's a big place for a whole address."

"Sure is." The clerk edged up from his desk with a small, fixed smile divided between the other two and me.

"I'll be here two weeks," I told him. "I want a room upstairs away from the sun and take it out in advance." I pushed a hundred dollar bill across the desk and waited.

"Like if somebody wanted to find you in New York . . ." the big guy started to say.

I snatched the card from his fingers. "Then you look in the phone book. I'm listed," I said. I was feeling the old edge come back.

"Smith is a common name . . ."

"I'm the only Kelly Smith."

He tried to stare me down, but I wasn't playing any games. So instead he reached out and picked up my C note and looked at it carefully. "Haven't seen one of these in a long time."

I took that away from him too. "The way you're going you'll never see one," I said.

The clerk smiled, his eyes frightened, took the bill, and gave me $16 back. He handed me a room key. "Two-nineteen, on the corner."

The big guy touched me on the shoulder. "You're pretty fresh."

I grinned at him. "And you're a lousy cop. Now just get off my back or start conducting a decent investigation. If it'll make you happy, I'll be glad to drop by your office, give you a full B.G., let you take my prints, and play Dragnet all you want. But first I want to get cleaned up and get something to eat."

He suddenly developed a nervous mouth. "Supposing you do that. You do just that, huh?"

"Yeah," I said. "Later maybe," and watched him go out.

When the door closed the clerk said. "That was Captain Cox and his sergeant, Hal Vance."

"They always pull that act on tourists?"

"Well, no . . . no, of course not."

"How many are in the department here."

"The police? Oh . . . six, I think."

"That's two too many. They pull that stunt on me again while I'm here and I'll burn somebody's tail for them."

Behind me, a voice with a cold, throaty quality said, "I don't know whether I want you here or not."

I glanced at the clerk. "Nice place you run here. Who is she?"

"The owner." He nodded to a hand-carved plaque on his desk. It read, Miss Dari Dahl, Prop.

She was a big one, all right, full breasted and lovely with loose sun-bleached hair touching wide shoulders and smooth, tanned skin.

"You haven't any choice, honey. I got a receipt for two weeks. Now smile. A lovely mouse like you ought to be smiling all the time."

She smiled. Very prettily. Her mouth was lush like I knew it would be and she hip-tilted toward me deliberately. Only her eyes weren't smiling. She said, "Drop dead, you creep," and brushed by me.

There was something familiar about her name. The clerk gave me the answer. "It was her sister who killed herself in New York last year. Flori Dahl. She went out a window of the New Century Building."

I remembered it then. It made headlines when she landed on a parked U.N. car and almost killed a European delegate about to drive off with a notorious call girl. The tabloids spilled the bit before the hush needles went in.

"Tough," I said, "only she oughtn't to let it bug her like that."

I had supper in White's restaurant. I had a table in the corner where I could see the locals filter in to the bar up front. The few who ate were older couples and when they were done I was alone. But everybody knew where I was. They looked at me often enough. Not direct, friendly glances, but scared things that were touched with some hidden anger.

My waitress came over with a bill. I said softly, "Sugar . . . what the hell's the matter with this town?"

She was scared, too. "Sir?" was all she could manage.

I walked up to the bar.

At 8 o'clock, Captain Cox and Sergeant Vance came in and tried to make like they weren't watching me. Fifteen minutes later, Dari Dahl came in. When she finally saw me her eyes became veiled with contempt, then she turned away and that was that.

I was ready to go when the door opened again. You could feel the freeze. Talk suddenly quieted down. The two guys in tweedy coats closed the door behind them and walked up to the bar with studied casualness. Their clothes were just the right kind, but on the wrong people because they weren't Madison Avenuers at all. One was Nat Paley and the bigger guy you called Lennie Weaver when you wanted to stay friends, but, if you had a yen for dying quick, you gave him the Pigface tab Margie Provetsky hung on him years ago.

I felt that crazy feeling come all over me and I wanted to grin, but for now I kept it in. I pushed my stool back and that's as far as I got. The little guy who stormed in was no more than 20, but he had an empty milk bottle in one hand and he mouthed a string of curses as he came at Paley and Weaver.