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

showed us to the door.
    Connie didn’t know the way so we just followed. The girls did all the steering. Twice we had to step around drunks and once we moved into the gutter to get out of the way of a street brawl. They should have stayed in the gutter where they belonged. I was so hopping mad I could hardly speak and Connie rubbed her cheek against my shoulder in sympathy.
    The Bowery Inn was off the main line. It was a squalid place with half-boarded-up windows, fly-specked beer signs and an outward appearance of something long ago gone to seed.
    That was from the outside. The first thing you noticed when you went in was the smell. It wasn’t. It smelled like a bar should smell. The tables and the bar were as deliberately aged with worm holes and cigarette bums as the characters were phony. Maybe the others couldn’t see it, but I could.
    Connie grimaced, “So this is The Inn I’ve heard so much about.”
    I could hardly hear her over the racket. Everybody was running forward to greet everybody else and the dames sounded like a bunch of pigs at a trough. The fat bellies stood back and beamed. When the racket eased off to a steady clamor everybody checked their coats and hats with a one-eyed bag behind a booth who had a spittoon on the counter to collect the tips.
    While Connie was helloing a couple of gaunt things from her office I sidled over to the bar for a shot and a beer. I needed it bad. Besides, it gave me a chance to look around. Down at the back of the room was a narrow single door that hung from one hinge and had a calendar tacked to it that flapped every time it opened.
    It flapped pretty often because there was an unending stream of traffic coming and going through that door and the only characters inside there had on evening gowns and tuxes with all the spangles.
    Connie looked around for me, saw me spilling down the chaser and walked over. “This is only the front, Mike. Let’s go in where the fun is. That’s what they say, anyway.”
    “Roger, baby. I need fun pretty bad.”
    I took her arm and joined the tail end of the procession that was heading for the door on one hinge and the calendar.
    We had quite a surprise. Quite a surprise. The calendar door was only the first. It led into a room with warped walls and had to close before the other door would open. The one hinge was only a phony. There were two on the inside frame nicely concealed. The room was a soundproof connection between the back room and the bar and it was some joint, believe me.
    Plenty of thousands went into the making of the place and there were plenty of thousands in the wallets that sat at the fancy chrome-trimmed bar or in the plushlined seats along the wall. The lights were down low and a spot was centered on a completely naked woman doing a strip tease in reverse. It was nothing when she was bare, but it was something to watch her get dressed. When she finished she stepped out of the spot and sat down next to a skinny bald-headed gent who was in one hell of a dither having a dame alongside him he had just seen in the raw. The guy called for champagne.
    Everybody whooped it up.
    Now I saw why the place was a popular hangout. The walls were solid blocks of photographs, models by the hundreds in every stage of dress and undress. Some were originals, some were cut from magazines. All were signed with some kind of love to a guy named Clyde.
    Connie and I tipped our glasses together and I let my eyes drift to the pictures. “You up there?”
    “Could be. Want to look around?”
    “No. I like you better sitting where I can see you personally.”
    A band came out and took their places behind the stand. Homer excused himself and came around the table to Connie and asked her to dance. That left me playing kneeses with his mistress until she looked at the floor anxiously and practically asked me to take her out there.
    I’m not much for dancing, but she made up for it. She danced close enough to almost get behind me and had a hell of