The Girl Hunters

  Mickey Spillane

  The Girl Hunters

  CHAPTER 1

  They found me in the gutter. The night was the only thing I had left and not much of it at that. I heard the car stop, the doors open and shut and the two voices talking. A pair of arms jerked me to my feet and held me there.

  “Drunk,” the cop said.

  The other one turned me around into the light. “He don’t smell bad. That cut on his head didn’t come from a fall either.”

  “Mugged?”

  “Maybe.”

  I didn’t give a damn which way they called it. They were both wrong anyhow. Two hours ago I was drunk. Not now. Two hours ago I was a roaring lion. Then the bottle sailed across the room. No lion left now.

  Now was a time when I wasn’t anything. Nothing was left inside except the feeling a ship must have when it’s torpedoed, sinks and hits bottom.

  A hand twisted into my chin and lifted my face up. “Ah, the guy’s a bum. Somebody messed him up a little bit.”

  “You’ll never make sergeant, son. That’s a hundred-buck suit and it fits too good to be anything but his own. The dirt is fresh, not worn on.”

  “Okay, Daddy, let’s check his wallet, see who he is and run him in.”

  The cop with the deep voice chuckled, patted me down and came up with my wallet. “Empty,” he said.

  Hell, there had been two bills in it when I started out. It must have been a pretty good night. Two hundred bucks’ worth of night.

  I heard the cop whistle between his teeth. “We got ourselves a real fish.”

  “Society boy? He don’t look so good for a society boy. Not with his face. He’s been splashed.”

  “Uh-uh. Michael Hammer, it says here on the card. He’s a private jingle who gets around.”

  “So he gets tossed in the can and he won’t get around so much.”

  The arm under mine hoisted me a little straighter and steered me toward the car. My feet moved; lumps on the end of a string that swung like pendulums.

  “You’re only joking,” the cop said. “There are certain people who wouldn’t like you to make such noises with your mouth.”

  “Like who?”

  “Captain Chambers.”

  It was the other cop’s turn to whistle.

  “I told you this jingle was a fish,” my pal said. “Go buzz the station. Ask what we should do with him. And use a phone—we don’t want this on the air.”

  The cop grunted something and left. I felt hands easing me into the squad car, then shoving me upright against the seat. The hands went down and dragged my feet in, propping them against the floorboard. The door shut and the one on the other side opened. A heavy body climbed in under the wheel and a tendril of smoke drifted across my face. It made me feel a little sick.

  The other cop came back and got in beside me. “The captain wants us to take him up to his house,” he said. “He told me thanks.”

  “Good enough. A favor to a captain is like money in the bank, I always say.”

  “Then how come you ain’t wearing plainclothes?”

  “Maybe I’m not the type, son. I’ll leave it to you young guys.”

  The car started up. I tried to open my eyes but it took too much effort and I let them stay closed.

  You can stay dead only so long. Where first there was nothing, the pieces all come drifting back together like a movie of an exploding shell run in reverse. The fragments come back slowly, grating together as they seek a matching part and painfully jar into place. You’re whole again, finally, but the scars and the worn places are all there to remind you that once you were dead. There’s life once more and, with it, a dull pain that pulsates at regular intervals, a light that’s too bright to look into and sound that’s more than you can stand. The flesh is weak and crawly, slack from the disuse that is the death, sensitive with the agonizing fire that is life. There’s memory that makes you want to crawl back into the void but the life is too vital to let you go.

  The terrible shattered feeling was inside me, the pieces having a hard time trying to come together. My throat was still raw and cottony; constricted, somehow, from the tensed-up muscles at the back of my neck.

  When I looked up Pat was holding out his cigarettes to me. “Smoke?”

  I shook my head.

  His voice had a callous edge to it when he said, “You quit?”

  “Yeah.”

  I felt his shrug. “When?”

  “When I ran out of loot. Now knock it off.”

  “You had loot enough to drink with.” His voice had a real dirty tone now.

  There are times when you can’t take anything at all, no jokes, no rubs—nothing. Like the man said, you want nothing from nobody never. I propped my hands on the arms of the chair and pushed myself to my feet. The inside of my thighs quivered with the effort.

  “Pat—I don’t know what the hell you’re pulling. I don’t give a damn either. Whatever it is, I don’t appreciate it. Just keep off my back, old buddy.”

  A flat expression drifted across his face before the hardness came back. “We stopped being buddies a long time ago, Mike.”

  “Good. Let’s keep it like that. Now where the hell’s my clothes?”

  He spit a stream of smoke at my face and if I didn’t have to hold the back of the chair to stand up I would have belted him one. “In the garbage,” he said. “It’s where you belong too but this time you’re lucky.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  I got another faceful of smoke and choked on it.

  “You used to look a lot bigger to me, Mike. Once I couldn’t have taken you. But now you call me things like that and I’ll belt you silly.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I said.

  I saw it coming but couldn’t move, a blurred white open-handed smash that took me right off my feet into the chair that turned over and left me in a sprawled lump against the wall. There was no pain to it, just a taut sickness in the belly that turned into a wrenching dry heave that tasted of blood from the cut inside my mouth. I could feel myself twitching spasmodically with every contraction of my stomach and when it was over I lay there with relief so great I thought I was dead.

  He let me get up by myself and half fall into the chair. When I could focus again, I said, “Thanks, buddy. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Pat shrugged noncommittally and held out a glass. “Water. It’ll settle your stomach.”

  “Drop dead.”

  He put the glass down on an end table as the bell rang. When he came back he threw a box down on the sofa and pointed to it. “New clothes. Get dressed.”

  “I don’t have any new clothes.”

  “You have now. You can pay me later.”

  “I’ll pay you up the guzukus later.”

  He walked over, seemingly balancing on the balls of his feet. Very quietly he said, “You can get yourself another belt in the kisser without trying hard, mister.”

  I couldn’t let it go. I tried to swing coming up out of the chair and like the last time I could see it coming but couldn’t get out of the way. All I heard was a meaty smash that had a familiar sound to it and my stomach tried to heave again but it was too late. The beautiful black had come again.

  My jaws hurt. My neck hurt. My whole side felt like it was coming out. But most of all my jaws hurt. Each tooth was an independent source of silent agony while the pain in my head seemed to center just behind each ear. My tongue was too thick to talk and when I got my eyes open I had to squint them shut again to make out the checkerboard pattern of the ceiling.

  When the fuzziness went away I sat up, trying to remember what happened. I was on the couch this time, dressed in a navy blue suit. The shirt was clean and white, the top button open and the black knitted tie hangi
ng down loose. Even the shoes were new and in the open part of my mind it was like the simple wonder of a child discovering the new and strange world of the ants when he turns over a rock.

  “You awake?”

  I looked up and Pat was standing in the archway, another guy behind him carrying a small black bag.

  When I didn’t answer Pat said, “Take a look at him, Larry.”

  The one he spoke to pulled a stethoscope from his pocket and hung it around his neck. Then everything started coming back again. I said, “I’m all right. You don’t hit that hard.”

  “I wasn’t half trying, wise guy.”

  “Then why the medic?”

  “General principles. This is Larry Snyder. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “So what?” The doc had the stethoscope against my chest but I couldn’t stop him even if I had wanted to. The examination was quick, but pretty thorough. When he finished he stood up and pulled out a prescription pad.

  Pat asked, “Well?”

  “He’s been around. Fairly well marked out. Fist fights, couple of bullet scars—”

  “He’s had them.”

  “Fist marks are recent. Other bruises made by some blunt instrument. One rib—”

  “Shoes,” I interrupted. “I got stomped.”

  “Typical alcoholic condition,” he continued. “From all external signs I’d say he isn’t too far from total. You know how they are.”

  “Damn it,” I said, “quit talking about me in the third person.”

  Pat grunted something under his breath and turned to Larry. “Any suggestions?”

  “What can you do with them?” the doctor laughed. “They hit the road again as soon as you let them out of your sight. Like him—you buy him new clothes and as soon as he’s near a swap shop he’ll turn them in on rags with cash to boot and pitch a big one. They go back harder than ever once they’re off awhile.”

  “Meanwhile I can cool him for a day.”

  “Sure. He’s okay now. Depends upon personal supervision.”

  Pat let out a terse laugh. “I don’t care what he does when I let him loose. I want him sober for one hour. I need him.”

  When I glanced up I saw the doctor looking at Pat strangely, then me. “Wait a minute. This is that guy you were telling me about one time?”

  Pat nodded. “That’s right.”

  “I thought you were friends.”

  “We were at one time, but nobody’s friends with a damn drunken bum. He’s nothing but a lousy lush and I’d as soon throw his can in the tank as I would any other lush. Being friends once doesn’t mean anything to me. Friends can wear out pretty fast sometimes. He wore out. Now he’s part of a job. For old times’ sake I throw in a few favors on the side but they’re strictly for old times’ sake and only happen once. Just once. After that he stays bum and I stay cop. I catch him out of line and he’s had it.”

  Larry laughed gently and patted him on the shoulder. Pat’s face was all tight in a mean grimace and it was a way I had never seen him before. “Relax,” Larry told him. “Don’t you get wound up.”

  “So I hate slobs,” he said.

  “You want a prescription too? There are economy-sized bottles of tranquilizers nowadays.”

  Pat sucked in his breath and a grin pulled at his mouth. “That’s all I need is a problem.” He waved a thumb at me. “Like him.”

  Larry looked down at me like he would at any specimen. “He doesn’t look like a problem type. He probably plain likes the sauce.”

  “No, he’s got a problem, right?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Tell the man what your problem is, Mikey boy.”

  Larry said, “Pat—”

  He shoved his hand away from his arm. “No, go ahead and tell him, Mike. I’d like to hear it again myself.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I said.

  He smiled then. His teeth were shiny and white under tight lips and the two steps he took toward me were stiff-kneed. “I told you what I’d do if you got big-mouthed again.”

  For once I was ready. I wasn’t able to get up, so I kicked him right smack in the crotch and once in the mouth when he started to fold up and I would have gotten one more in if the damn doctor hadn’t laid me out with a single swipe of his bag that almost took my head off.

  It was an hour before either one of us was any good, but from now on I wasn’t going to get another chance to lay Pat up with a sucker trick. He was waiting for me to try it and if I did he’d have my guts all over the floor.

  The doctor had gone and come, getting his own prescriptions filled. I got two pills and a shot. Pat had a fistful of aspirins, but he needed a couple of leeches along the side of his face where he was all black and blue.

  But yet he sat there with the disgust and sarcasm still on his face whenever he looked at me and once more he said, “You didn’t tell the doctor your problem, Mike.”

  I just looked at him.

  Larry waved his hand for him to cut it out and finished repacking his kit.

  Pat wasn’t going to let it alone, though. He said, “Mike lost his girl. A real nice kid. They were going to get married.”

  That great big place in my chest started to open up again, a huge hole that could grow until there was nothing left of me, only that huge hole. “Shut up, Pat.”

  “He likes to think she ran off, but he knows all the time she’s dead. He sent her out on too hot a job and she never came back, right, Mikey boy? She’s dead.”

  “Maybe you’d better forget it, Pat,” Larry told him softly.

  “Why forget it? She was my friend too. She had no business playing guns with hoods. But no, wise guy here sends her out. His secretary. She has a P.I. ticket and a gun, but she’s nothing but a girl and she never comes back. You know where she probably is, Doc? At the bottom of the river someplace, that’s where.”

  And now the hole was all I had left. I was all nothing, a hole that could twist and scorch my mind with such incredible pain that even relief was inconceivable because there was no room for anything except that pain. Out of it all I could feel some movement. I knew I was watching Pat and I could hear his voice but nothing made sense at all.

  His voice was far away saying, “Look at him, Larry. His eyes are all gone. And look at his hand. You know what he’s doing. He’s trying to kill me. He’s going after a gun that isn’t there anymore because he hasn’t got a license to carry one. He lost that and his business and everything else when he shot up the people he thought got Velda. Oh, he knocked off some goodies and got away with it because they were all hoods caught in the middle of an armed robbery. But that was it for our tough boy there. Then what does he do? He cries his soul out into a whiskey bottle. Damn—look at his hand. He’s pointing a gun at me he doesn’t even have anymore and his finger’s pulling the trigger. Damn, he’d kill me right where I sit.”

  Then I lost sight of Pat entirely because my head was going from side to side and the hole was being filled in again from the doctor’s wide-fingered slaps until once more I could see and feel as much as I could in the half life that was left in me.

  This time the doctor had lost his disdainful smirk. He pulled the skin down under my eyes, stared at my pupils, felt my pulse and did things to my earlobe with his fingernail that I could barely feel. He stopped, stood up and turned his back to me. “This guy is shot down, Pat.”

  “It couldn’t’ve happened to a better guy.”

  “I’m not kidding. He’s a case. What do you expect to get out of him?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Because I’d say he couldn’t stay rational. That little exhibition was a beauty. I’d hate to see it if he was pressed further.”

  “Then stick around. I’ll press him good, the punk.”

  “You’re asking for trouble. Somebody like him can go off the deep end anytime. For a minute there I thought he’d flipped. When it happens they don’t come back very easily. What is it you wanted him to do?”

  I was listenin
g now. Not because I wanted to, but because it was something buried too far in my nature to ignore. It was something from away back like a hunger that can’t be ignored.

  Pat said, “I want him to interrogate a prisoner.”

  For a moment there was silence, then: “You can’t be serious.”

  “The hell I’m not. The guy won’t talk to anybody else but him.”

  “Come off it, Pat. You have ways to make a person talk.”

  “Sure, under the right circumstances, but not when they’re in the hospital with doctors and nurses hovering over them.”

  “Oh?”

  “The guy’s been shot. He’s only holding on so he can talk to this slob. The doctors can’t say what keeps him alive except his determination to make this contact.”

  “But—”

  “But nuts, Larry!” His voice started to rise with suppressed rage. “We use any means we can when the chips are down. This guy was shot and we want the one who pulled the trigger. It’s going to be a murder rap any minute and if there’s a lead we’ll damn well get it. I don’t care what it takes to make this punk sober, but that’s the way he’s going to be and I don’t care if the effort kills him, he’s going to do it.”

  “Okay, Pat. It’s your show. Run it. Just remember that there are plenty of ways of killing a guy.”

  I felt Pat’s eyes reach out for me. “For him I don’t give a damn.”

  Somehow I managed a grin and felt around for the words. I couldn’t get a real punch line across, but to me they sounded good enough.

  Just two words.

  CHAPTER 2

  Pat had arranged everything with his usual methodical care. The years hadn’t changed him a bit. The great arranger. Mr. Go, Go, Go himself. I felt the silly grin come back that really had no meaning, and someplace in the back of my mind a clinical voice told me softly that it could be a symptom of incipient hysteria. The grin got sillier and I couldn’t help it.

  Larry and Pat blocked me in on either side, a hand under each arm keeping me upright and forcing me forward. As far as anybody was concerned I was another sick one coming in the emergency entrance and if he looked close enough he could even smell the hundred-proof sickness.