Микки Спиллейн - Everybody's Watching Me

maim me the rest of my life. His shoe was hard and pointed, a deadly weight that swung like a gentle pendulum.

I saw it coming and thought there might be a chance even yet but I didn’t have to take it. From the side of the room Helen said, “Don’t move, Johnny. I’ve got a gun in my hand.”

And she had.

The ugly grimace on Johnny’s face turned into a snarl when he knew how stupid he’d been in taking his eyes off her to enjoy what he was doing to me.

“Make him drop it, Helen.”

“You heard the kid, Johnny.”

Johnny dropped the gun. It lay there on the floor and I hooked it with my toe. I picked it up, punched the shells out of the chambers and tossed them under the sofa. The gun followed them.

“Come here, Helen,” I said.

I felt her come up behind me and reached around for the .25 automatic in her hand. For a second Johnny’s face turned pale and when it did I grinned at him.

Then I threw the .25 under the sofa too.

They look funny when you do things like that. Their little brains don’t get it right away and it stuns them or something. I let him get right in the middle of that surprised look before I slammed my fist into his face and felt his teeth rip loose under my knuckles.

Helen went down on her knees for the gun and I yelled for her to let it alone, then Johnny was on me. At least he thought he was on me. I had his arm over my shoulder, laid him into a hip roll and tumbled him easy. I didn’t want too much noise.

I walked up. I took my time. He started to get up and I chopped down on his neck and watched his head bob. I got him twice more in the same place and Johnny simply fell back. His eyes were seeing, his brain thinking and feeling but he couldn’t move. While he lay there, I chopped twice again and Johnny’s face became blotched and swollen while his eyes screamed in agony.

I put him in a cab downstairs. I told the driver he was drunk and fell and gave him a ten spot from Johnny’s own wallet with instructions to take him out to the Hideaway and deliver same to Mr. Renzo. The driver was very sympathetic and took him away.

Then I went back for Helen. She was sitting on the couch waiting for me, the strangeness back in her eyes. She said, “When he finished with you, he would have started on me.”

“I know.”

“Joe, you did pretty good for a kid.”

“I was brought up tough.”

“I’ve seen Johnny take some pretty big guys. He’s awfully strong.”

“You know what I do for a living, Helen? I push a junk car, loaded with iron. There’s competition and pretty soon you learn things. Those iron loaders are strong gees too. If they can tumble you, they lift your pay.”

“You had a gun, Joe,” she reminded me.

And her eyes mellowed into a strange softness that sent chills right through me. They were eyes that called me closer and I couldn’t say no to them. I stood there looking at her, wondering what she saw under the bandages.

“Renzo’s going after us for that,” I said.

“That’s right, Joe.”

“We’ll have to get out of here. You, anyway.”

“Later we’ll think about it.”

“Now, damn it.”

Her face seemed to laugh at me. A curious laugh. A strange laugh. A bewildered laugh. There was a sparkling dance to her eyes she kept half veiled and her mouth parted just a little bit. Her tongue touched the tip of her teeth, withdrew and she said, “Now is for something else, Joe. Now is for a woman going back a long time who sees somebody she could have loved then.”

I looked at her and held my breath. She was so completely beautiful I ached and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. Not yet.

“Now is for you to kiss me, Joe,” she said.

I tasted her.

Chapter 2

I waited until midnight before I left. I looked in her room and saw her bathed in moonlight, her features. softly relaxed into the faintest trace of a smile, a soft, golden halo around her head.

They should take your picture like you are now, Helen, I thought. It wouldn’t need a retoucher and there would never be a man who saw it who would forget it. You’re beautiful, baby. You’re lovely as a woman could ever be and you don’t know it. You’ve had it so rough you can’t think of anything else and thinking of it puts the lines in your face and that chiseled granite in your eyes. But you’ve been around and so have I. There have been dozens of dames I’ve thought things about but not things like I’m thinking now. You don’t care what or who a guy is; just give him part of yourself as a favor and ask for nothing back.

Sorry, Helen, you have to take something back. Or at least keep what you have. For you I’ll let Renzo push me around. For you I’ll let him make me finger a guy. Maybe at the end I’ll have a chance to make a break. Maybe not. At least it’s for you and you’ll know that much. If I stay around, Renzo’ll squeeze you and do it so hard you’ll never be the same. I’ll leave, beautiful. I’m not much. You’re not much either. It was a wonderful day.

I lay the note by the lamp on the night table where she couldn’t miss it. I leaned over and blew a kiss into her hair, then turned and got out of there.

Nobody had to tell me to be careful. I made sure nobody saw me leave the building and double-checked on it when I got to the corner. The trip over the back fences wasn’t easy, but it was quiet and dark and if anybody so much as breathed near me I would have heard it. Then when I stood in the shadows of the store at the intersection I was glad I had made the trip the hard way. Buried between the parked cars along the curb was a police cruiser. There were no markings. Just a trunk aerial and the red glow of a cigarette behind the wheel.

Captain Gerot wasn’t taking any chances. It made me feel a little better. Upstairs there Helen could go on sleeping and always be sure of waking up. I waited a few minutes longer then drifted back into the shadows toward the rooming house.

That’s where they were waiting for me. I knew it a long time before I got there because I had seen them wait for other guys before. Things like that you don’t miss when you live around the factories and near the waterfronts. Things like that you watch and remember so that when it happens to you, it’s no surprise and you figure things out beforehand.

They saw me and as long as I kept on going in the right direction they didn’t say anything. I knew they were where couldn’t see them and even if made a break for it, it wouldn’t do me any good at all.

You get a funny feeling after a while. Like a rabbit walking between rows of guns wondering which one is going to go off. Hoping that if it does you don’t get to see it or feel it. Your stomach seems to get all loose inside you and your heart makes too much noise against your ribs. You try not to, but you sweat and the little muscles in your hands and thighs start to jump and twitch and all the while there’s no sound at all, just a deep, startling silence with a voice that’s there just the same. A statue, laughing with its mouth open. No sound, but you can hear the

--">