The Killing Man

by Mickey Spillane

  Under the right arm were two bills from a Las Vegas hotel and a used airline ticket. I could see the name on one bill and the ticket. It was Richard Smiley.

  I draped a tissue around the phone, dialed 0, and when the operator came on told her I couldn’t see without my glasses and gave her Pat’s office number. He had just gotten in and I was about to ruin his whole day for him.

  “Yeah, Mike. Now what’s happened at this time of day?”

  “Somebody’s polished off Smiley.”

  “What?”

  “I’m at the garage now.”

  “Shit. You stay right there and damn it, don’t touch anything.”

  “Come off it, pal. All I’ve done was dial 0 on the phone.”

  “You alone?”

  “Totally. Whoever did this had time to get away. The blood is congealing enough to make him dead for at least an hour. Consider that an unofficial opinion.”

  “You sure it’s Smiley?”

  “His papers indicate it.” Before he could ask I said, “They were lying on the desk.”

  “Okay,” he told me, “hang in there. We’ll be right down.”

  I cradled the phone and looked around. I had probably five minutes before a squad car got there, and if there was anything to know I wanted it firsthand.

  For a few seconds I studied the way the body was positioned, as if he had been doing something on the desk. The blow had come down at an angle, carefully placed and forcefully delivered. The killer had been in close, standing there until the right moment, then he came down with the weapon on Smiley’s bald skull and demolished him with one terrible whack. The Stilson wrench was simply dropped beside the body and the killer walked out. He didn’t even have to bring his own bludgeon. There were enough wrenches, crowbars and lengths of pipe in the office to handle the matter.

  Whoever the killer was, Smiley had known him. Had a predawn meeting been set for a payoff? It sure looked that way. Smiley could have had the money in his hands, counting it, probably the way he had before. No reason to be apprehensive. It was a regular business deal and he was just making sure he got what was coming to him. And he got that, for sure. The killer simply retrieved the money and walked out into a lonely night that didn’t even have street people to watch him go.

  As professional kills go, it was a nice clean one. Just a big bang on the head and it was over. No fancy work, no revenge or bloody messages like the one in my office. Smiley still had all his fingers.

  The first squad car got there in four minutes. I held up my ID for the two uniforms to see, but the driver recognized me and nodded. “You call this in?”

  “Yeah. The body’s in the back office. I left everything clean. All I touched was the phone under a Kleenex and the light switch with my elbow.”

  The officer took out his pad while the other one went inside. “Let’s get the paperwork done first.”

  “Sure.” I gave him all the personal information he needed, detailed my entry, the discovery of the body and subsequent events. As I was finishing, two more squad cars pulled in with an unmarked sedan right behind them. Pat was at the wheel, his face tight and drawn, and when Candace Amory and her boss got out, I could see why.

  Pat told them to stay right there until the investigation was completed inside, spotted me and came right over. “Mike, what is this penchant you have for being around dead bodies? To hear the DA sound off you’re a walking menace.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Given time, you will, you will. And that’s from the mouth of our eminent district attorney. Now what happened?”

  I gave it to him the same way I did to the first cop on the scene.

  “And you came down here on a hunch?”

  I shrugged.

  “We had a surveillance unit on Smiley’s house last night. He never went home.”

  “If he came in on the red-eye he could have come right here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was one of those greedy bastards who wanted his money as fast as he could get it. The office was as good a place as any for a payoff and the time was right.”

  The police photographers arrived and went inside. Pat looked at his watch and said, “You stay put.”

  “Where can I go?”

  “Go talk to the wheels over there,” he said.

  “Pat ... how come the DA isn’t giving you a hassle right now? He usually likes to be right underfoot.”

  “I think the Iceberg Lady has a leash on him,” Pat said sourly.

  No introductions were necessary. The district attorney and I had met before, and if ever there was an adversarial situation, it was the one between us. He had come up out of the ranks and was in his first term of office, and to him, people like me were legislative errors in licensing who had no business in police work. He was the type who disapproved of using informers or sting techniques or anything that might open a legal case to any type of defense.

  I said, “Hell of a way to start the day.”

  “You seem to have a knack for this sort of thing,” he told me. “Care to recite the details again?”

  I said no and went through the routine.

  He took it all in, filing away every detail mentally. “You have a strange position here.”

  “You’d better believe it, counselor. I’m a principal, a finder of bodies, an authorized investigator and if the reporters get here soon, source material for a good story.”

  Another car drove up and parked in the middle of the street. The medical examiner got out and walked past me. With an amused smile he said, “You again, eh?”

  I nodded. “Some people have all the luck.”

  Candace was watching the exchange closely and waited until the ME had gone inside. “I think we have things to talk about, Mr. Hammer.” She didn’t use my first name this time.

  “I’m sure we have.”

  Pat called to the pair of them and waved them inside. He pushed his hat back and wiped his face with his hand. “I guess you got the picture,” he said to me.

  “Unless your guys turn up something else.”

  “Smiley wouldn’t keep records of anything like this going down, but someplace there’s a paper trail.”

  I made sure nobody could overhear me and said, “There might be something better than that.”

  He watched me out of the corner of his eye. “Like what?”

  “If the first killer, Penta, was the one who made the appointment to make sure I was in the office, then I may have his voice on tape.”

  “Where is it?”

  I took the cassette out of my pocket and handed it to him.

  “Who else knows about it?”

  “Just Velda.”

  He stuck the tape in his jacket pocket. “I’m going to keep this in my own department for a while.”

  The way he said it, I knew something was irritating him. Before I could ask him what it was, I saw Jason McIntyre sidling past on the other side of the street, his eyes wide with curiosity, but his actions reflecting the nervousness he couldn’t hide. I said, “There’s a guy who can identify the body, Pat.”

  “Where?”

  I pointed Jason out and Pat called a patrolman over and told him to pick him up. The old guy almost fainted with fright when the cop took his arm, but he went along, was taken inside and came out a minute later shaking, his face a ghastly white. But he had made the ID. It was Richard Smiley, all right. Jason went to the curb and puked.

  Candace and her boss came out together. He seemed to be a little glassy-eyed, but she was taking it right in stride. For a moment she looked toward me, but two trucks, remote TV units from rival networks, were coming down the street, swerved in hard and disgorged their crews with military precision. In seconds they had targeted on Candace, switched to her boss, sought out other high-priority subjects while one cameraman was trying to edge inside the building.

  “How are you going to call this shot when you’re on camera, Pat?”

  “Us
ual. The investigation continues, we have a suspect, we expect an arrest shortly.”

  “Motive?”

  “Apparent robbery will do for now. His wallet was open, empty and lying on his lap. A crumpled ten-spot was on the floor as if the killer had dropped it pulling the money out of his wallet.”

  “Think it’ll stick?” I asked him.

  “No reason why not. He’d just come back from a good day at the track, he was alone, somebody knew he’d be loaded and jumped him. Smiley might have been squirrelly to come in at that hour of the morning but that’s the way he always was.”

  “If they buy it,” I said, “the heat’ll come off for a couple more days.”

  “But what’s your explanation, Mike?”

  I grinned at him and he frowned. “All I have to do is make a statement to the police. Speculation isn’t my game.”

  Without us seeing her, Candace had come around the back and said, “But if you speculated, Mr. Hammer, what would you say?”

  Pat said, “Go ahead and tell her.”

  I reached out and straightened the lapels of her jacket. “I’d say somebody just didn’t want old Smiley in a position to identify him or his pals.” I paused for a second before adding, “And that’s pure speculation.”

  “Captain?” she queried.

  “Miss Amory, speculation is what no cop does out loud. When the statements are made, the reports are in and I’ve analyzed the lot, an official announcement will be made.”

  She gave both of us a very speculative look, nodded, then walked away.

  “Mike, old buddy,” Pat said, “that broad’s got a look in her eye like she wants to clean your plow.”

  “That’s a career woman’s defense mechanism,” I told him. “Balls.”

  “She’ll get them too if you don’t watch out,” he said.

  “You want me to stick around or not?”

  “Where you going?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t leave town.”

  6

  Every building seems to have a forgotten corner to it that isn’t good for anything at all. They are places that just sit there, empty offices with no natural light, their walls always vibrating from the elevator next to them. They smell musty and look dismal so nobody wants to occupy them. Then somebody comes along and sees that spot and to that person it becomes prime territory because it means quiet solitude where the work is intensely mental and a domain is established.

  I knocked on the door, opened it and said hello to Ray Wilson. “Do you know that nobody knows where you work in this building? They kept telling me it was downstairs somewhere.”

  He waved for me to come in. “My own personal dungeon.” He kicked a chair over to me. “Have a seat. Be right with you.”

  I sat down, taking in the rows of filing cabinets around me. There was an odd hum in the room, then muted voices spoke and I saw the scanner on a table in the rear. Ray was monitoring the calls to the prowl cars. Next to his desk was a new-model computer, the viewer lined with figures. There were other machines farther down, not new, but evidently competent for the work load they handled.

  Ray slammed a cabinet drawer shut and walked to his desk. He perched on the corner and fired up a cigarette. “I’ve been wondering when you’d show up. Pat said you’d be in sooner or later.”

  “Now why would he do that?”

  “Because I have fairly immediate access to material it would take you a month to uncover.”

  “Like what?” He had me interested now.

  “Like the finger mutilation in your office. What does it mean?” he asked.

  “It’s twice as many as he took off the US agent in England.”

  The cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth. “How the hell did you find out about that?”

  “Intelligence,” I said. “Who else lost their fingers?”

  He slid off the desk, walked around and sat in the old wooden swivel chair. “You’re treading on dangerous ground, Mike.”

  “Ray ... you got curious too. You have all the machines going for you, all the authority you need and most likely a few good connections thrown in to make things go smoothly. You could get into Interpol, Scotland Yard or the French Sûreté and as long as it’s criminal activity you’re after and not political, you can tap their sources. So who else lost their fingers, Ray?”

  This time he took a deep drag on the butt and held the smoke down while he thought about what I said. He breathed out a thin cloud and looked at me. “I located three before it became political.”

  “Damn.”

  “A French narcotics dealer, low level, but he was skimming from the organization. The fingers were lopped off an hour before a knife stroke killed him. The second was a strange one ... a ten-year-old kid was kidnapped from his home near Rome. The parents were immensely wealthy. The police were ineffectual and they knew they were dealing with a well-organized group of criminals. The ransom was over a million bucks in US currency. Apparently the parents took matters into their own hands, although they never admitted it. But the child was returned to them unharmed, along with a note describing where to find the kidnapper. He was tied to a chair in a barn, five fingers cut off his hand and the pointed end of a pickax slammed through his chest. The rest of the band were located and died in a police shootout.”

  “This guy is a wild man,” I said.

  “Not really.” He lit another butt from the end of the old one and gulped the smoke down again. “This is no nut case. Not so far. Six months after the kidnapping a major art theft took place in Belgium. Two paintings of one of the great masters were stolen from a gallery. They were like the Mona Lisa, no way you can put an accurate cash value on their worth. At any rate, a reward was offered for their return.”

  “No one demanded a ransom price?”

  “Apparently this theft was arranged for a private owner. It never went through. Three weeks after the robbery one painting was delivered to the gallery with a letter telling how the money was to be transferred, then the other painting would be returned. No police were involved, the gallery accepted the terms and delivered the money. The painting was subsequently returned. This time a box accompanied the picture. There were five severed fingers in it. A couple weeks later the stench of a decaying body brought the police to where the corpse was, one hand finger-less, and all the direct evidence to point to him as the thief. Whether they got his sponsor, I don’t know.”

  “And now he’s here,” I said. “But this time he went for ten.”

  “This time he thought it was your hand he was trimming.”

  I shook my head. “That, Ray, is the sticker. There is no way I have any connection with this guy. That note had to be a phony. He was after DiCica to start with and I got snarled in it by accident.”

  “Pat gave me the hypothesis your funny friends figured out. Given DiCica’s background there could be a probability ...”

  “Hell, there’s logic there too, Ray.”

  This time Ray said no. “I don’t buy it. Here this Penta character pulls a kill-crazy murder in your office. What were those other kills like?”

  “Pretty well oiled,” I said. “He knew what he was doing.”

  “But he didn’t instigate the crimes, did he? Somebody sent him out looking for the perps. With the paintings it was the reward that motivated him. The killing was his signature.”

  “Then this guy’s a hit man?”

  “He’s a fucking marvel, that’s what. Someplace along the line my inquiries got shut down like a slammed window. I’ve been waiting to see if there are any repercussions upstairs, but so far this thing just sits. It’s going to take a lot more weight than I got to climb a political wall.”

  “You sure it’s gone that far?”

  “Mike, I’m almost due for forced retirement. This private little police enterprise I’ve built into the department is going to go absolutely flat when I leave unless it captures a little glory from the money people in city government. They don’t even know what they
got here. The age of computers has tied this place in with every country and industry in the world like a pair of naked lovers in bed.”

  “Crazy, man.”

  “I got a feeling about this.”

  “So have I, Ray, so have I. But where do we pick it up from?”

  He had another drag on the cigarette and coughed for half a minute. When he stopped he said, “You killed Penta, Mike. He said so himself.”

  “Enough, Ray. You know how long it’s been since I blew somebody away. I’m sick of that stupid note.”

  “You I believe. It’s this Penta who’s hard to follow.” He sucked on the cigarette again and coughed again. “You’re still the target,” he said.

  “Show me a motive, then I’ll believe it.”

  “You realize that somewhere there is a motive. It may be crazy and it may be out in left field somewheres, but the motive is there. These kills don’t come from somebody who’s blown his top and is walking down the street with a knife in his hand.”

  “So what comes next?”

  “The killer is a real stalker. Something motivates him and he gets the job done. He’s efficient, silent and completely ruthless.”

  “You realize what you’re profiling here, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” Ray said, “a terrorist.”

  “How long ago were those three murders he pulled off?”

  Ray finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray. “I wondered if you’d figure that one out. The last one was twelve years ago.”

  “And you think there have been more since, right?”

  “A killer like that who enjoys his work doesn’t stop. You know what I think?”

  I nodded. “Somebody realized his potential and utilized him for their own ends.”

  “Smart bastard,” he laughed. “When we get into the political situation the shades get drawn. Communication gets cut off. I get the feeling that sooner or later somebody is going to be asking me in for a quiet talk.”

  “You still going to keep at it?”

  He reached for his pack and shook out another butt. “In three weeks I turn in the badge and start on my pension. No way I can leave with a situation like this wide open.” He chuckled and struck a match. “Funny, in a way. I got promoted down to the bottom of the line where I like it best and I want to see the expression on some faces if this opens out to the big glory bust.” He held the match to the butt and sucked on the smoke again, then rattled out a cough.