[Mike Hammer 03] - Vengeance Is Mine by Mickey Spillane

occasional woman with clothes too tight giving you a long, steady stare that said she was available cheap. Saloon doors swung open so frequently they seemed like blinking lights. They were crowded, too. The bars were lined with the left-overs of humanity keeping warm over a drink or nursing a steaming bowl of soup.
    It had been a long time since I had made the rounds down here. A cab swung into the curb and a guy in a tux with a redhead on his arm got out laughing. There was a scramble in his direction and the redhead handed out a mess of quarters then threw them all over the sidewalk to laugh all the louder when the dive came.
    The guy thought it was funny too. He did the same thing with a fin, letting it blow out of his hand down the street. Connie said, “See what I mean?”
    I felt like kicking the bastard. “Yeah, I see.”
    We followed the pair with about five feet between us. The guy had a Midwestern drawl and the dame was trying to cover up a Brooklyn accent. She kept squeezing the guy’s arm and giving him the benefit of slow, sidewise glances he seemed to like. Tonight he was playing king, all right.
    They turned into a bar that was the crummiest of the lot on the street. You could smell the stink from outside and hear the mixture of shrill and raucous voices a block away. A sign over the doorway said NEIL’S JOINT.
    The characters were there in force. They had black eyes and missing teeth. They had twitches and fleas and their language was out of the gutter. Two old hags were having a hair-pull over a joker who could hardly hold on to the bar.
    What got me was the characters who watched them. They were even worse. They thought it was a howl. Tourists. Lousy, money-heavy tourists who thought it was a lot of fun to kick somebody else around. I was so damn mad I could hardly speak. A waiter mumbled something and led us to a table in the back room that was packed with more characters. Both kinds.
    Everybody was having a swell time reading the dirty writing on the walls and swapping stories with the other half. The pay off was easy to see. The crowd who lived there were drinking cheap whisky on the house to keep them there while the tourists shelled out through the nose for the same cheap whisky and thought it was worth it.
    It sure was fun. Nuts.
    Connie smiled at a couple of girls she knew and one came over. I didn’t bother to get up when she introduced us. The girl’s name was Kate and she was with a crowd from upstate. She said, “First time you’ve been here, isn’t it, Connie?”
    “First ... and last,” she told her. “It smells.”
    Kate’s laugh sounded like a broken cowbell. “Oh, we’re not going to stay here long. The fellows want to spend some money, so we’re going over to the Inn. Feel like coming along?”
    Connie looked at me. I moved my head just enough so she’d know it was okay by me. “We’ll go, Kate.”
    “Swell, come on over and meet the gang. We’re meeting the rest later on. They wanted to see all the sights including ...” she giggled, “those houses where ... you know.” She giggled again.
    Connie made a mouth and I grunted.
    So we got up and met the gang. If it weren’t that I had Connie with me they would have treated me like mother character too. Just for a minute, maybe, then a few fat guts would have been bounced off the walls. There was Joseph, Andrew, Homer, Martin and Raymond and not a nickname in the pack. They all had soft hands, big diamonds, loud laughs, fat wallets and lovely women. That is, all except Homer. He had his secretary along who wasn’t as pretty as she was ready, willing and able. She was his mistress and made no bones about it.
    I liked her best. So did Connie.
    When I squeezed their hands until they hurt we sat down and had a few drinks and dirty jokes then Andrew got loud about bigger and better times elsewhere. The rest threw in with him and we picked up our marbles and left. Martin gave the waiter a ten-spot he didn’t deserve and he