Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 13] Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Captain Chambers and the doctor do a dance together.”
    “What’s the tune?” I asked him.
    He laughed again. “Screw the DA’s office. It’s a great number.”
    I turned the knob, went in and closed the door behind me.
    The place was a death room, all right. It hung heavy in the air. Light came from the instrument panel behind the bed, the glow a pale orange yellow. You could smell the death. Not really, but you knew you could if you tried.
    When my eyes adjusted to the gloom I saw the mound under the sheet and knew that was where Dooley was. Quietly, I walked over and stood beside the bed, looking down on something with a hole in it that let life leak out. His breathing was shallow but even, the pain of the gunshot being buried under the weight of narcotics.
    While I was trying to figure out a way to waken him he seemed to sense he was not alone and with an effort his eyes opened, strayed vacantly a moment, then centered on me. “You made it, huh?”
    “Sure, for you, Dooley. Why didn’t you get Pat?”
    “He’s not a snake like you are.”
    “Come on—” I started to say, but he cut me off with a shake of his head.
    “Mike . . . you’re a mean slob. You’re . . . nasty. You do the damndest things anybody . . . ever heard about. Pat’s not like you.”
    “He’s a cop, Marcos.”
    The smile was real, but forced. “You always called me Marcos . . .”
    “I know. When I was teed off at you.”
    “You . . . teed off at me . . . now?”
    “Pal, after taking those slugs myself, I haven’t got enough left to get sore at anything. Right now I’m a pussycat.”
    “But you’re sort of thinking . . . why I had to see you.”
    “Sort of.”
    “Uh-huh.” He coughed lightly and his face twitched with pain. My eyes were almost fully adjusted to the gloom now and could see him clearly. The years hadn’t been good to him at all and the final indignity of getting shot had drained him completely.
    A full minute passed before the pain was gone, but now there was a clock ticking behind his eyes. I knew it and he knew it. Each tick took him closer to the end. He strained to see me again, finally found my eyes. “Mike . . . remember Don Angelo?”
    I thought he was drifting back along memory lane. Don Angelo had been dead for twenty years. At the age of ninety-some he had died in peace in his Brooklyn apartment, surrounded by his real family. His other family was a hundredfold larger, spread out over the East Coast domain the don called his own.
    “Sure, Dooley. What about him?”
    His expression looked strained and there was shame in his eyes. There was a long pause before he said, “I worked for him, Mike.”
    It was hard to believe. “You, Dooley?”
    “I wasn’t lucky . . . like you and Pat. Don Angelo . . . found out . . . about me being in Army Intelligence. He had work for me.”
    “Dooley,” I asked him, “what kind of work would you do for the mob? You were no gunhand. You never messed around in illegal business.”
    He held his hand up again and I stopped talking. “It was . . . a different . . . kind of business.” My silent nod asked him a question and he answered it. “Do you know . . . what the yearly take . . . of the . . .” He groped for the words and said, “associated mobs . . . adds up to?”
    “Internal Revenue Service collects statistics like that.”
    “And . . . ?”
    “It’s a pile of loot,” I said.
    “Mike,” he said very solemnly, “you haven’t got the slightest idea.”
    “What are you getting at, Dooley?”
    His chest rose under the sheet while he took several deep breaths, his eyes closing until whatever spasm it was had calmed down. When he looked up his mouth worked a bit before the words came out.
    “It was back before all the trouble, Mike. Remember when the young guys tried to take over . . . the family business?”
    “But they didn’t make it, Dooley.”
    “No . . . not then.” He sucked in another big lungful of air. “But it made the dons