Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 13] by Black Alley Page A

face and they closed the show down with big smiles.
    It was great to be back.
     
    I showered unhurriedly, letting the hot water from the needle spray massage fresh life back into me. When I dried off I climbed into fresh underwear and opened the closet door to a rack of suits cleaned and pressed, shoes shined and laid out on the floor rack, shirts and ties in the right places and a new trench coat with a wintery lining still zipped in. All I could think of was that my secretary really knew how to take care of a guy. Then, for a few seconds I just froze, wondering if I could stand all that attention, then thought, what the heck, we both have to give in a little.
    Velda never knew where I kept my guns in a built-in hidden compartment inside the closet and they were just as I had left them. The Gold Cup .45 and the Colt Combat Commander lay wrapped side by side, four full clips of ammo ready to go. All the accessories were waiting, but it wasn’t gun time anymore. That hurting place in my gut told me that. I picked up a loaded clip with chrome-cast .45s and slipped it into my pocket. It wasn’t much, but I felt a little more normal with some weight on that side.
    But who was I kidding? Carrying slugs without a gun was like wearing a yachting hat without having a boat. Ah, hell, I thought, I felt better so I did it anyway.
    Outside, it was cool enough for the trench coat, but without the lining. Florida had gotten me spoiled. For a few minutes I stood in front of the building and watched the traffic go by. It was only six-thirty and the traffic flow seemed normal. I turned right, walking toward the corner where the angled window of a dress shop did a mirror reflection of what was behind me.
    Nobody was there at all. I flagged down a cab and gave Velda’s address.
    A half hour before I had taken the pill dosage on Frank Morgan’s list. The day had been hectic enough that I felt like I could use the two little pink ones he suggested for the purpose. The only trouble was, he didn’t tell me to stay home afterward. Whatever those little buggers were, they were giving me a funny feeling. I called Velda from the lobby of her building and she came down within two minutes, a big, luscious woman who could turn any man’s head and give every woman a touch of envy. She didn’t have that touch of youthful naïveté any longer. She wore sheer full-bloomed womanhood like a cape, her eyes that same deep brown, reflecting an intelligence that was beautifully female.
    We didn’t kiss. She simply hooked her arm under mine and gave me a squeeze that said a lot of things, a muscular, sensual gesture that made me go all shaky. “Cut that out,” I said softly.
    “I didn’t do anything,” she answered.
    “The heck you didn’t.”
    Her smile had a provocative touch to it. “Boy,” she told me, “are you going to be easy to please.”
    There’s no answering a newly engaged woman who’s filled with gut-churning love. A man can’t seem to respond to that kind of emotion, so I just opened the door to the cab that drove up to the canopy, helped her in and told the cabbie to take us to Le Cirque.
    Velda moved closer to me and said, “We’re going fancy tonight, aren’t we?”
    “Don’t get too used to it, kitten.”
    In ten minutes we were on Sixty-fifth Street and joined the early dinner crowd edging up to the door. Out of habit I took one last look around before we went in, just in time to see two men stepping out of a black limousine, one on each side, speaking to others who hadn’t emerged yet. Both guys were in their early forties, well dressed and styled with class. They were loaded with money and welcome at any place in town, but these two bums worked the legitimate side of Lorenzo Ponti’s business in Manhattan. They had come over the line from the old muscle days when they were young hoods and into an area well protected by professional business personnel and all the legal machinery that money could buy. One was Howie