Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 02] by My Gun Is Quick Page A

matter what’s wrong with it, you pull it out and it’s all over. That’s the way death usually is; after that people can talk all they want, they even do things for dead joes that they wouldn’t do for the living. Death is nice and clean and antiseptic. It ends all trouble. Someone gathers up your belongings; says a word of praise, and that’s it. But the redhead’s was a messy death. There was something unclean about it, like a wound that has healed over on top, concealing an ugly, festering sore brewing a deadly poison that will kill again.
    When the butt burned down to my fingers I started the car and shoved off, threading my way across town to the address Cobbie had given me. New York had its sinkholes, too, and the number of this one placed it smack in the middle of the slime. It was a one-way street of rats’ nests with the river at one end and a saloon on each corner, peopled with men and women that had the flat, vacant look of defeat stamped on their faces.
    I checked the numbers and found the one I wanted, but all it was was a number, because the house was gone. Unless you can call a frame-gutted skeleton of masonry a house. The doorway yawned open like a leper’s mouth and each window had its scar tissue of peeling paint.
    The end of the trail. I swore and kicked at the curb.
    A kid about ten looked at me and said, “Some jerk t’rew a match out the winder inta the garbage coupla weeks ago. Most of the dames got killed.”
    These kids knew too much for their age nowadays. I needed a drink bad this time. The joint on the left was closer, so I went in and stood at the bar making tight fists with my hands until the nails cut into my palms. Now this, I kept thinking, now this! Did every corner to this have a blank wall I couldn’t hurdle? The bartender didn’t ask... he shoved a glass and a bottle under my nose and drew a chaser from the beer tap, then made change from my buck. When I had the second he put all the change in the register, then came back and waited.
    “One more?”
    I shook my head. “Just beer this time. Where’s your phone?”
    “Over in the corner.” He jerked his head toward the end of the bar while he pulled the beer. I went down to the booth and dropped a nickel in, then dialed Pat at his home.
    This time I had a little luck because he answered. I said, “This is Mike, chum. Need a favor done. There was a fire in one of the bawdyhouses down the street here and I want to know if there has been an investigation made. Can you check it?”
    “Guess so, Mike. What’s the number?” I gave it to him and grunted when he checked it back to me. “Hang up while I call and I’ll buzz you back. Give me your number there.”
    He got that, too, and I hung up. I went down and got my beer, then went back to the seat in the phone booth and sat there sipping the stuff slowly. The minute it rang I snatched it off the hook.
    “Mike?”
    “Yeah.”
    “The fire happened twelve days ago. A complete investigation was made because the place had been condemned for occupancy a month before and nothing had been done about it. The fire started accidentally and the guy who flipped the lit match out the window is still in the hospital recovering. Apparently, he was the only one who got out alive. The flames blocked the front door and the rear was littered with junk so as to be impassable.
    “Three girls perished on the roof, two in the rooms and two jumped to their deaths before the firemen could get the nets up. Destruction was complete because the floors caved in completely.”
    Pat didn’t give me a chance to thank him. Before I could say a word his voice thinned out and had an edge to it. “Give me what you know, Mike. You aren’t there out of curiosity and if you’re still thinking in terms of murder I want a trade. And right now, too.”
    “Okay, sharp guy,” I laughed. “I’m still trying to find out who the redhead was. I met a guy who knew where she had worked before she free-lanced and