Read Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 13] for Free Online Page B

what a con artist you are,” he told me.
    I grinned at him and got up myself.
    “What’re you doing tomorrow, Mike?”
    “I’ll be at the office. Why?”
    “Maybe I’ll stop by. We need to do some talking. Sometimes I get to be like you and have one of those feelings that give me a chill.”
    “Not you, Pat,” I said sarcastically.
    “Yeah, me, and this is one of them. This time a dead man doesn’t put you against the world all by yourself. I’m involved in this too. It’s an open NYPD homicide, but there are some angles to it that put a color on it that isn’t in the spectrum.”
    “Like what?” I demanded softly.
    “Like you, pal,” he said, “like you. If I didn’t know you were still one of the walking wounded we’d be talking downtown, but you’re getting a break. I’ll see you tomorrow in your office. Now get your tail home and try sleeping. You’re going to need it. And tell Velda to cool it.”
     
    An odd excitement was building in me as I walked toward my office door. The entire floor had been refurbished, pastel-painted and softened with a thick carpet. Nothing had chunks taken out of it and all the glass in the area was whole. My lease still had another year to run, but it wasn’t the kind of place I’d pick for the work I was in. The excitement wasn’t about the office at all. It was because Velda would be there.
    I pushed open the door and there she was behind her desk, chin propped in her hands, watching me. I said, “Am I supposed to say good afternoon or kiss you?”
    “You can do whatever you like.” I got that impish grin again.
    “No, I can’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’d get arrested,” I told her.
    She gave me an insolent moue and pointed at my private quarters. “The arresting officer is in there.”
    But I went over and kissed the top of her head before I went in. Pat Chambers was comfortably folded into my nice big office chair, his feet up on a half-opened desk drawer, drinking one of my cold Miller Lite beers like he owned the place.
    “I hope that wasn’t the last one, Pat.”
    “Velda slipped in two fresh six-packs. Some doll you got there, pal. Congratulations.”
    “She told you?”
    “Are you kidding?” Pat said. “All you have to do is look at her face.” He paused and shook his head. “Trouble is, the way she’s built it’s hard to get to her face.” He took another pull from the can and nodded at the small refrigerator. “Going to join me?”
    “You might have found me,” I said, “but you didn’t pull my medical records. All that good stuff is just for looking at right now.”
    “Why have you got it on ice?”
    “It’s for the clients,” I told him.
    “Oh. You going to tell me how you did with Dooley?”
    I pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down.
    “He practically died in my arms, Pat. Didn’t he have anybody else?”
    “You know Dooley. He always was a loner. I wondered why he didn’t call for me.”
    I let a few seconds pass, then: “You really want to know?”
    He set the beer down on my blotter and squinted at me. “Sure I do!” he said. “Hell, after all we went through together you’d think—”
    “Pat . . . Dooley thought you were too soft.”
    “For what?”
    “To do what has to be done,” I said.
    I sat there and studied my friend. Pat Chambers, a captain in the homicide division. Still young, but almost of retirement age. Smart, streetwise, college educated, superbly trained in the nuances of detection. Tough, but not killing tough . His conscience was still finely honed and that’s what Dooley had meant. There was no way now that I could tell him what Dooley had told me.
    Pat picked up the beer can and emptied it in two swallows. There was nothing else in the wastebasket under the desk so it made a clanking sound when it hit bottom. “He wanted you to nail the guy who shot him,” he said flatly.
    “Something like that,” I replied.
    “There’s a lot of street talk over who wiped out Azi Ponti,