Микки Спиллейн - Everybody's Watching Me

that could buy her life I saw floating in the water beside the dock. It was like having a yacht with no fuel aboard.

The police? No, not them. They’d want me. They’d think it was a phoney. That wasn’t the answer. Not Phil Carboy either. He was after the same thing Renzo was.

I started to laugh, it was so damn, pathetically funny. I had it all in my hand and couldn’t turn it around. What the devil does a guy have to do? How many times does he have to kill himself? The answer. It was right there but wouldn’t come through. It wasn’t the same answer I had started with, but a better one.

So I said it all out to myself. Out loud, with words. I started with the night I brought the note to Renzo, the one that promised him Vetter would cut his guts out. I even described their faces to myself when Vetter’s name was mentioned. One name, that’s all it took, and you could see the fear creep in because Vetter was deadly and unknown. He was the shadow that stood there, the one they couldn’t trust, the one they all knew in the society that stayed outside the law. He was a high-priced killer who never missed and always got more than he was paid to take. So deadly they’d give anything to keep him out of town, even to doing the job he was there for. So deadly they could throw me or anybody else to the wolves just to finger him. So damn deadly they put an army on him, yet so deadly he could move behind their lines without any trouble at all.

Vetter.

I cursed the name. I said Helen’s. Vetter wasn’t important any more. Not to me.

The rain lashed at my face as I looked up into it. The things I knew fell into place and I knew what the answer was. I remembered something I didn’t know was there, a sign on the docks by the fishing fleet that said “SEASON LOCKERS.”

Jack Cooley had been smart by playing it simple. He even left me the ransom.

I got up, walked to the corner and waited until a cab came by. I flagged him down, got in and gave the address of the white house where Cooley had lived.

The same guy answered the door. He took the bill from my hand and nodded me in. I said, “Did he leave any old clothes behind at all?”

“Some fishing stuff downstairs. It’s behind the coal bin. You want that?”

“I want that,” I said.

He got up and I followed him. He switched on the cellar light, took me downstairs and across the littered pile of refuse a cellar can collect. When he pointed to the old set of dungarees on the nail in the wall, I went over and felt through the pockets. The key was in the jacket. I said thanks and went back upstairs. The taxi was still waiting. He flipped his butt away when I got in, threw the heap into gear and headed toward the smell of the water.

I had to climb the fence to get on the pier. There wasn’t much to it. The lockers were tall steel affairs, each with somebody’s name scrawled across it in chalk. The number that matched the key didn’t say Cooley, but it didn’t matter any more either. I opened it up and saw the cardboard box that had been jammed in there so hard it had snapped one of the rods in the corner. Just to be sure I pulled one end open, tore through the other box inside and tasted the white powder it held.

Heroin.

They never expected Cooley to do it so simply. He had found a way to grab their load and stashed it without any trouble at all. Friend Jack was good at that sort of thing. Real clever. Walked away with a couple million bucks’ worth of stuff and never lived to convert it. He wasn’t quite smart enough. Not quite as smart as Carboy, Gerot, Renzo…or even a kid who pushed a junk cart. Smart enough to grab the load, but not smart enough to keep on living.

I closed the locker and went back over the fence with the box in my arms. The cabbie found me a phone in a gin mill and waited while I made my calls. The first one got me Gerot’s home number. The second got me Captain Gerot himself, a very annoyed Gerot who had been pulled out of bed.

I said, “Captain, this is Joe Boyle and if you trace this call you’re going to scramble the whole deal.”

So the captain played it smart. “Go ahead,” was all he told me.

“You can have them all. Every one on a platter. You know what I’m talking about?”

“I know.”

“You want it that way?”

“I want you, Joe. Just you.”

“I’ll give you that chance. First you have to take the rest. There won’t be any doubt this time. They won’t be big enough to crawl out of it. There isn’t enough money to buy them out either. You’ll have every one of them cold.”

“I’ll still want you.”

I laughed at him. “I said you’ll get your chance. All you have to do is play it my way. You don’t mind that, do you?”

“Not if I get you, Joe.”

I laughed again. “You’ll need a dozen men. Ones you can trust. Ones who can shoot straight and aren’t afraid of what might come later.”

“I can get them.”

“Have them stand by. It won’t be long. I’ll call again.”

I hung up, stared at the phone a second, then went back outside. The cabbie was working his way through another cigarette. I said, “I need a fast car. Where do I get one?”

“How fast for how much?”

“The limit.”

“I got a friend with a souped-up Ford. Nothing can touch it. It’ll cost you.”

I showed him the thing in my hand. His eyes narrowed at the edges. “Maybe it won’t cost you at that,” he said. He looked at me the same way Helen had, then waved me in.

We made a stop at an out of the way rooming house. I kicked my clothes off and climbed into some fresh stuff, then tossed everything else into a bag and woke up the landlady of the place. I told her to mail it to the post office address on the label and gave her a few bucks for her trouble. She promised me she would, took the bag into her room and I went outside. I felt better in the suit. I patted it down to make sure everything was set. The cabbie shot me a half smile when he saw me and held the door open.

I got the Ford and it didn’t cost me a thing unless I piled it up. The guy grinned when he handed me the keys and made a familiar gesture with his hand. I grinned back. I gave the cabbie his fare with a little extra and got in the Ford with my box. It was almost over.

A mile outside Mark Renzo’s roadhouse I stopped at a gas station and while the attendant filled me up all around, I used his phone. I got Renzo on the first try and said, “This is Joe, fat boy.”

His breath in the phone came louder than the words. “Where are you?”

“Never mind. I’ll be there. Let me talk to Helen.”

I heard him call and then there was Helen. Her voice was tired and all the hope was gone from it. She said, “Joe…”

It was enough. I’d know her voice any time. I said, “Honey…don’t worry about it. You’ll be okay.”

She started to say something else, but Renzo must have grabbed the phone from her. “You got the stuff, kid?”

“I got it.”

“Let’s go, sonny. You know what happens if you

--">