The Death Dealers

by Mickey Spillane

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  The Mann’s Back,

  playing it low and deadly in a last-chance game of international espionage.

  Tiger Mann,

  America’s superspy, outwits an ace Soviet agent, foils a plot to kill a king, and takes the ruby from the navel of a restless Arabian dancer. All for the good of his country. No one but Mann and his ultrasecret organization could handle such a hazardous mission. No one but Spillane could write such a roaring hell-raiser of a thriller.

  “Trench-coated Tiger Mann, easily America’s hardest-boiled security agent.”

  —The Saturday Review

  “Machine gun pace ... good writing ... fascinating tale.”

  —Charlotte Observer

  “It is unfair to apply rules to Spillane, who observes only one: that the story must keep you reading.”

  —New York Times

  “There’s a kind of power about Mickey Spillane that no other writer can imitate.”

  —Miami Herald

  Copyright © 1965 by Mickey Spillane

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast. For information address E. P. Dutton, Inc., 2 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

  Published by arrangement with E. P. Dutton, Inc.

  SIGNET TRADEMARK_REG. U.S. BAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA-REGISTRADA HECHO EN CHICAGO. U.S.A.

  SIGNET, SIGNET CLASSIC, MENTOR, PLUME, MERIDIAN AND NAL BOOKS are published by New American Library, 1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019

  FIRST SIGNET PRINTING, MARCH, 1966

  eISBN : 978-1-101-17454-8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  TO

  Jack McKenna and Dorrie

  WHO WERE THERE AT THE BEGINNING.

  chapter 1

  Someplace along the midway of New York they call Broadway I had picked up a tail. I felt it when I crossed Forty-ninth Street and was sure of it by the time I reached Forty-sixth. It wasn’t that I had spotted anyone. All you could call it was a feeling, but I knew. There had been too many years with too many tails and too many times when I had been behind the other one not to appreciate the crawling sensation that felt like your back was bare to a cold wind.

  But why? I had no destination, no assignment. It was just a walk through the city at night. And I wasn’t alone. A few hundred people went in either direction between each city block ... and one of them wanted me.

  Without turning around I tried to spot the shadow in the angular store windows and the glass plates over the ads in the theater fronts. Whoever was there had to know I was just drifting so I was able to stop and look over the displays without seeming out of line, at the same time trying to tag the right one.

  It wasn’t any use. Either I was wrong or there was a pro on the other end. Pedestrian traffic stayed fluid and everyone else pausing at other windows seemed legitimate enough. I eased on down the street, turned right at Forty-fourth until I reached Shubert Alley, then cut over into the areaway between the buildings at a slow walk until I knew I was out of sight, then sprinted past the couples in front of me, ducked into one of the outside phone booths and hugged the phone with the door open so the light would be off, and waited.

  I spotted the tail then.

  She came into the alley at a normal pace, apparently headed toward the theater, seemed to frown when she didn’t see me, and involuntarily quickened her steps to get to the other end before I was out of sight. When I reached out of the phone booth and flipped her in beside me her face seemed to crack with fright and she almost got a scream started. Then she felt the gun in her ribs and closed her mouth.

  We looked real cozy in there—just two people making a joint conversation, one beat-up retread who was a hotshot when the war was on and one beautiful little blonde who looked like she had just stepped out of a chorus line and the gun in her handbag was only to keep the wolves from the stage door. I grinned at her, my mouth tight and dry across my teeth, snapped open the top of her bag and took the flat little Beretta out and dropped it in my pocket.

  “Okay, honey,” I said, “let’s have it.”

  She only had a second to make it good because I could read any lie she told me and there were too damn many people looking for a piece of my hide to give me any compunctions about crippling somebody if I had to, even if it was a pretty little doll like this one.

  There was a strange lilting to her voice when she said, “You are Tiger ... Tiger Mann?”

  “You know that already, kitten. Now who are you?”

  “Lily Tornay.”

  I squeezed her arm and saw her eyes go wet with the pain. “Do better.”

  “Must we ... talk here?”

  “It’s as good as anyplace. I don’t like being a target.”

  “Please ...” The word came out with a sob.

  “Okay, where?” I said.

  She looked up at me with big, dark eyes strangely unafraid now. “Wherever you wish.”

  “How well do you know me?”

  “I have been told about you,” she said.

  “Then you know what will happen if you get cute”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t break away. Walk nice and slow and stay beside me. Get funny and what I do to you will make it look like you fainted and when I have you alone you’ll talk up a storm.”

  She nodded, saying nothing. I edged her out of the booth, shoved my .45 back in the holster and let her feel my fingers bite into her arm above her elbow. Not too far away my friends from the circus were packed into a hotel by the Garden. The show was on now and we could use Phil’s room for a couple of hours or whatever it took to see what the little lady had bottled up inside her.

  Phil met me on the street under the marquee, handed me his key with a grin and a few words of wisdom in rapid Mexican and went back to work. Lily Tornay and I took the elevator upstairs to the sixth floor, walked inside and I locked the door behind me.

  Then I took the gun out and stood there watching her with it cocked in my hand. I had seen man traps before.

  Very deliberately, with the tips of her fingers, she opened her bag, pulled out a wallet and laid it open in her palm.

  “Throw it to me,” I said.

  She tossed it, then sat down with her hands folded in her lap. I snapped it open and looked at the two cards under their plastic covers. One had been issued by our State Department. The other by Interpol. And the names and identification matched.

  “You can check my handwriting or thumbprints if you care to,” she told me.

  I tossed the wallet back on the bed beside her. “Those things can be forged.”

  “I’m glad you’re careful.”

  “That’s why I’m still alive.”

  Lily Tornay looked at the phone on the nightstand meaningfully. “You know where to call. An agent can be here to identify me in ten minutes.”

  “I don’t need any help, sugar. Where did you pick me up?”

  “Outside your hotel.”

  “Why didn’t you make contact there?”

  “I wanted to be sure we wouldn’t be seen. I followed you. I was going to make the contact in a different manner.” She paused a moment, looking at me carefully. “How did you know I was
there?”

  “I could feel you.”

  She nodded then. “Yes. I know what you mean.”

  “Okay, Lily, you’ve made the contact. What are you after?”

  “You. I was told to find you.”

  “By whom?”

  “Teddy Tedesco.”

  I brought the gun up and leveled it at her head. “You’re lying, kid. Teddy’s dead. He caught it over a month ago.”

  “That’s what he wanted everyone to think. The dead man carried his ID and the body was too mangled to make an identification positive. They accepted what they saw and he was free to continue with his work.”

  I let my words out very slowly. “What work?”

  Lily shook her head, a frown darkening her eyes. “He didn’t say. He told me you would know what to do.”

  “Knock it off, baby.” “I’m

  “Tiger ...” She stood up defiantly, staring me down. “I’m an authorized agent for Interpol cleared by your own State Department. We know of you and your association with Martin Grady and his ... business associates. These men may be big enough and wealthy enough to operate an efficient civilian spy system that can buy or create political coups or life or death or whatever they want in the guise of patriotism, but too often they have interfered with the machinery of proper governments. There are things happening in this world that are bigger than any wealthy idealists or whatever they are and the outcome is not going to be according to their direction. They have men like you working for them, wild, intelligent, ruthless men who carry out their orders who are sometimes capable of wrecking the whole system with one reckless act.”

  “Maybe it needs wrecking.”

  “Not ... by you people.”

  “Lily ... you’re getting away from your point,” I said. “Teddy Tedesco.”

  I caught her with that. She sucked in her breath impatiently, tightened her mouth, and let her eyes roam over me before she spoke again. “He is in a position to cause an incident that can lead to nuclear war.”

  “How about that,” I said.

  Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “You ... don’t care?”

  “Baby, I don’t give a hoot in hell. Where is he?”

  “Selachin. It’s a small kingdom in the Saudi Arabian area.”

  “Who sent you here?”

  “Interpol.”

  “That isn’t a political organization.”

  “Death is their business. Your friend was responsible for several.”

  “Then nail him.”

  “We can’t. He has disappeared.”

  “Tough,” I said.

  She wouldn’t buy my tone. There was a hard, fanatical set to her face as she fought to control herself. “Unfortunately, we must make the best of the situation. Tedesco is on what you people call an assignment that can cause war.”

  “That’s his business, not mine.”

  “But it is your business now, Tiger Mann. It was your friend Tedesco who managed things so we had no choice. He took me at gunpoint and told me I was to find you and say one word. We knew enough about his intentions so that when he carried them out to a certain extent we were past the point of no return and our hand was forced. So I found you.”

  My hand was tight on the gun now. One wrong word and she was going to be dead on the spot. “Say it, Lily.”

  “Skyline.”

  I eased the hammer down on the .45, held it at half-cock and snugged it back in the holster.

  Skyline. A coded word that had meaning to four people only, a death-word you passed on when you lost control. Whatever Teddy had was too big to handle alone and he wasn’t going to make it himself. He was going to die before he could complete his mission and needed a backup hand at once. It was hot enough to break his cover and jeopardize me, hot enough to go to any extreme to pass on the word for an assist, even to exposing our organization.

  You know the meaning of death in this business. You can make it happen and when it comes your turn you’re ready to accept it. You know the odds and the meaning of an assignment or you’re not part of the group at all. You don’t call for help outside your own control unit unless the situation is so critical your own death is relatively unimportant in view of what could happen to the free world. To give a Skyline signal meant that it had already happened.

  Skyline. Teddy Tedesco’s assignment had passed into my hands.

  “How long have you been looking for me?”

  “I arrived B.O.A.C. yesterday. The State Department office here in New York passed me to I.A.T.S. and they gave me several probable locations. This evening I narrowed down the area without finding you until your former O.S.S. commander, Colonel Charles Corbinet, reached me with the names of several hotels.”

  “You have a big in, honey. Does I.A.T.S. know what this is all about?”

  “I don’t know. There are some lapses in communications between your agencies, as you well realize.”

  “Bureaucracy, the evil thereof,” I said. “Do you know?”

  “At this point, no. My orders were simply to reach you with the message. Interpol is checking out the situation now. By tomorrow morning I will be notified.”

  “Tomorrow may be too late.” I stood there watching her, debating how far I should go. All it would take for me was one single, lousy mistake and I was on the dead list.

  Remember the old days, Tiger? You were young and fast and strong. Full of piss and vinegar. Now the vinegar is all gone and all that’s left is the piss. If there’s still enough left maybe you could drown somebody in it. Twenty years plus since the chute drops into Germany. Twenty years plus since it had all been fun and one big game. Now you survived because time had let you and all the professional techniques had developed into an instinct that made you raise a gun faster and pull the trigger without question and gave you a subtle insight into the innermost workings of another mind. Describe yourself and it came out killer. Describe yourself and it came out like she said: ruthless. Nice word. You could face down the other pros and know that you could do it sooner and more accurately than they could and the twenty years plus added up to number one on the Commie “A” list ... the Vegolt ... the one they wanted eliminated more than anybody.

  So why expose yourself now, Tiger? The game was almost over. You won your damn letter a long time ago. Money? Sure ... it was big ... you were part of Martin Grady’s team, subsidized by millions that could buy anything under the sun. Almost. Maybe. The other side couldn’t buy you, so it had to be almost.

  A few city blocks away Rondine was waiting for you to call. The wedding date was set and the woman you loved, but almost killed once, was there waiting for you to call.

  Rondine, lovely, lovely Rondine of the auburn hair and beautiful thighs with a flat belly and breasts that made you gasp at first sight and whom no other could touch, she was waiting for you. Rondine of the wet mouth and fierce desires who wanted you and the soft life where you could live and love without the guns and the fat sound of a bullet plowing into soft flesh.

  She was waiting now while you prowled the streets of the city wondering how you were going to tell her that there was no stopping point, no ending to the life you had lived because the original Rondine was just like you.

  Dead now. A Nazi spy and dead somewhere in Europe. Confirmed.

  Rondine, the oldest of the Caine family, whose ancestry dated back to the nobles who forced the hand of King John on the Magna Carta. Rondine, who defected to the Nazis in ’41, was never to live as a Caine again, but simply as Rondine. We had met as enemies and loved with the intensity only enemies can have, but we had loved.

  Or rather, I had. She finally shot me twice to kill me quick so she could save her own precious hide and for twenty years I had searched her out. I thought I had found her and she was inches away from death when I knew it wasn’t Rondine after all, but her youngest sister, Edith Caine. But she was still Rondine to me and I loved this one even more.

  And now she’d have to keep on waiting for me.

  I
said, “Where are you staying?”

  “The Taft.”

  “For how long?”

  “I expect to be recalled in a few days. My assignment ends with reporting my contact with you.”

  “Get back to the hotel and stay put. I’ll check with you in a couple of hours.”

  “I see no reason ...”

  “And I’m not asking. Interpol might be interested in further information. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the gesture.”

  She hesitated, thinking over the possible ramifications, then nodded. “Very well, I’ll be at the Taft.” She held out her hand. “May I have my gun back.”

  I pulled out the Beretta, dumped the shells out of the clip, jacked the one out of the chamber and handed them over separately. Without bothering to reload the piece, she dropped everything into her handbag. “I don’t think there’s any need to be that careful now.”

  “You’re only allowed one mistake in the business, baby. I made mine a long time ago. After a while survival gets to be a matter of habit and routine.”

  “And killing,” she said. “I made a point of looking into your background. Every department seems to have a file on you, though the details seem rather sketchy. There are more suppositions than facts. In one case you apparently were in two places a thousand miles apart at the same time.”

  “I’m a crafty bastard.”

  “You are more than that. You are important because you can be destructive. The power behind you exceeds that of many small governments. One day you are going to be stopped and it will be a beneficial thing. Whoever does it will get many medals, some visible, others in the form of a sigh of relief.”

  I grinned at her, feeling what was behind her words. She didn’t have to say it, but when the type gets wound up it shows around the edges and sometimes it’s fun to make them scratch a little. “You don’t like men, do you?”