Thanks to Chloe Tzang and the The 2021 “Hammered: an Ode to Mickey Spillane” Author Challengestrong> for inspiring me to send Pete Spector out for another go with the bad guys. Pete lacks Mike Hammer’s feral masculinity and comes up short in the body count, but then I’m a mere shadow of Mickey Spillane. I hope Pete’s story meets Chloe’s intent. It’s in Loving Wives because that’s where the first Pete Spector story was.
SQUATTING IN A cardboard box used to deliver a refrigerator was a lousy way to spend a cloudy morning in LA. But there I was, on a fire escape outside a vacant Rosslyn Hotel room. The box gave me cover so I could watch the back door of the hotel kitchen across the access drive between hotel wings.
The hotel was paying me to watch the door because expensive cuts of meat seemed to be walking out of the cooler—more were missing than they were serving. Hotels don’t take kindly to those kind of losses. The hotel’s manager of food services, Denny Searle, was my contact. He’d arranged for the vacant room behind the cardboard box.
Searle and I disliked each other from the get-go. He tried to look the part of Manager with his Hart Schaffner Marx suit, but his jowls, greasy tie, and saggy belly shouted Food Services. It was obvious that as far as he was concerned, I was nothing but an overpaid snoop. As far as I was concerned he was ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. About the third time he tried to tell me how to do my job I wanted to tell him to shove it, but the hotel was paying me well enough to put up with him.
This was my second day in the box. Nothing out of the ordinary happened the day before. I was glad the room behind me was vacant. I could crawl in the window every few hours and dump the coffee can I was using to get rid of the coffee and Coke I drank to stay awake and grab a few drags of a Lucky. Moving around also seemed to help the bellyache that started last night.
It’s almost impossible to describe the day-to-day excitement a of a PI’s life.
A pre-war Leica was slung around my neck in case I saw anything worth remembering. I couldn’t afford such a good camera, but the client who claimed he couldn’t pay me for finding his wife in bed with her boss couldn’t wait to give the Leica to me when I explained—in great detail— why my home-grown collection agency was so successful.
A little before 10:00, an old Ford pickup with two guys in it pulled up outside the kitchen’s back door and honked twice. A minute later, the door opened and a guy in cook’s whites backed out carrying a hunk of meat under each arm (found out later it was two whole prime ribs). As he turned and walked down the steps toward the pickup, a milk truck turned into the alleyway.
I picked up the Leica to start shooting and watched the whole thing unravel through the viewfinder. The cook and the milk truck got to the pickup about the same time. The milk truck stopped just past the pickup and two guys in cheap suits jumped out. Each carried a sawed-off shotgun.
Shooting so fast they must have been slamfiring, they pumped two rounds into the cook and four into the pickup, then jumped back in the milk truck and took off. Six shots. Must’ve been amateurs, they didn’t even take the plugs out.
I shoved the Leica in my jacket pocket and ran down the fire escape to the truck. Six rounds of double-aught buck at that range were plenty. It was hard to tell the prime rib from what was left of the cook, the pickup cab was filled with bloody chunks and pieces. I took a few more pics, then went inside the kitchen to call Lt. Dan Wilkes at LAPD.
Searle stormed into the kitchen while I was dialing. “What the hell happened out there? I thought I heard shots!”
“No shit, Sherlock, they weren’t backfires. Your cook and a couple of his buddies got turned into hamburger while he was trying to give them a couple of hunks of beef.” Somebody answered the phone at the cop shop just as Searle started to say some more. I held up my hand for him to be quiet. He didn’t like that and I didn’t care.
“Yeah, this is Pete Spector. I’m a Private Investigator. There’s been a shooting at the Rosslyn Hotel, three guys are dead. I need to speak to Lt. Dan Wilkes.”
I had to argue with the desk sergeant (or whoever answered the phone) for a couple of minutes before they transferred the call to Wilkes. I needed to tell him what happened, not just any old cop, because we went way back. I wouldn’t have to convince Wilkes that I was just a professional observer, and he wouldn’t have to convince me to tell him everything as truthfully and accurately as possible.
Wilkes came on the line, but before I had a chance to say anything Searle’s temper got the best of him. “I don’t give a good goddam about Burge or his pals. He’s queer as a three-dollar bill, but he’s a helluva good line cook so I keep him on. The cops can try to catch whoever knocked off those guys, but we don’t need you anymore. Now gimme the fucking phone.”
When he tried to grab the phone, I slammed his hand down on the stainless-steel counter and smashed the back with the handset as hard as I could. Doing it felt so good I bashed it again and heard some of the bones crack. He screeched and squealed like a pig caught by a hind leg.
“Be with you in a minute, Wilkes, gotta take care of a little matter here.” I didn’t bother to put my hand over the phone.
“Next time you try to grab something from me, Mac, I’ll break your goddamn arm. Maybe both of ’em. Get smart for a change and go somewhere else until I finish talking with the cops. Or maybe you want I should lose my temper?” He tried to stare me down, then walked away cursing and holding his wrecked hand. I’d made an enemy and I still didn’t care.
“Yeah, Wilkes, we got a situation down here at the Rosslyn. Three guys shot up with double-aught buck. Don’t need an ambulance, just the meat wagon and a bunch of gunny sacks.” I told him about being hired to watch the kitchen back door, where I’d staked it out, and how the shooting happened. Until I finished, his only response was to ask me once to slow down so he could take notes. That and a couple of wise-ass cracks about how I probably whiled away the hours in the refrigerator box. I told him to shove it, there’s no hair on the palm of my hands.
“You know the drill, Spector. Stick around ’til I get there with the crime scene boys and the ME.” He showed up with the ever-present chewed-up, unlit cigar jammed in the corner of his mouth. I went through the scenario again in more detail, this time pointing to visual aids. After we finished, I wound the film back in the cassette and gave it to him.
“Those’ll give you a good idea of how it came down, but don’t think they’ll help much. Had to be a stolen milk truck. I was a good hundred feet away and no telephoto lens, so their faces’ll be pretty small.” Wilkes was still happy to take the film, and agreed to give me a set of prints and ID the dead cook as soon as he knew. He didn’t even bother to tell me not to leave town.
I didn’t feel like going to my office after that. No need to let anyone know, I didn’t have a full-time secretary. My first one left last year after a couple of East Coast mobsters grabbed her and her daughter in my office, planning to rape and murder them. The two mugs were shot dead by some rival mobsters who managed to disappear without being seen. I was disappointed, but not surprised when she left a few days later for parts unknown.
I went back to my apartment instead. I’d moved as soon as I could afford to get out of my former one-room dump. The new place wasn’t part of a big house broken up into so-called apartments, it was in a real-life apartment house. The entryway didn’t stink of stale urine and cigars, it smelled faintly of Pine-Sol. The carpet on the stairs was worn but not threadbare, only one light bulb was burned out. All in all, a first-class joint.
My ground-floor apartment had twice as many rooms as the old place—two—plus its own bathroom with a toilet that usually flushed and a shower. The bedroom was small, the kitchenette was a stretch of counter with a sink and a few cabinets, but there was room for a stove and refrigerator that worked and a small table with two chairs.
I fixed myself a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup—the extent of my cooking skills—and washed it down with a Nehi Orange. I tried not to think how much better a beer would have tasted, then lay down for a nap. It was past 3 o’clock when I woke up. I went out in the hall and dug a copy of yesterday’s Times out of a trash can, and spent the rest of the afternoon reading it and doing the crossword. My belly had started aching again so I didn’t feel like eating anything. I re-read the obits to make sure I wasn’t in them, then went to bed.
Down the block from my new digs were a diner and dry cleaner instead of a hock shop and whorehouse. I grabbed a quick breakfast at the diner, then headed for my office. It was the same three rooms—counting the tiny bathroom—I’d had ever since I opened shop. I’d managed to find enough paying clients since then to replace the broken-down furniture from sidewalk junk piles with half-way decent used pieces from honest-to-God furniture stores.
The secretary’s chair in the outer office almost matched the desk. A couple of guest chairs without any upholstery tears sat against the wall opposite the outside door, the coffee pot worked so well that even I could fix a drinkable cup. The window was dirty but had real curtains.
The inner office still sported my old desk, but I’d fixed and cleaned it up until it looked half-way decent. Two fairly comfortable guest chairs sat in front of it, a presentable couch was pushed against one wall, a couple of pictures of Yosemite and Death Valley decorated the plain walls. The card table and folding chairs I’d called my conference table were gone because I never used them, the coffee table in front of the couch was genuine wood that took a nice polish. The place almost looked like the office of somebody who was more or less successful.
I didn’t always need someone in the office, so when I did I used temps from Kelly Girl. After making a pot of coffee, I’d just leaned back in my chair with my feet on the desk to read the morning Times when the phone rang. I lurched forward and smacked my feet on the floor. Damn! If I’d called for a secretary she could have taken the call.
“Spector Investigations, this is Pete Spector.” A young lady with a sweet voice was on the other end.
—Good morning, Mr. Spector. This is Kathy at the Rosslyn Hotel. If you’ll come by sometime today, the desk clerk will have an envelope for you with your check. You’re also invited to have a complimentary meal in our coffee shop.
Thanking her, I said I’d just had breakfast so would probably be by around noon to take up their offer for a free lunch. I went back to my feet-on-desk perch and managed to get through the Times with no further interruption. Which meant no business, of course, but at least I’d get paid for watching three guys get turned into chopped liver.
I drove to the Rosslyn, picked up my check at the front desk, and enjoyed a nice steak sandwich on the house in the coffee shop. Just as I was about to leave, a fellow walked up to my booth. “Mr. Spector?” I nodded. “Mr. Wolfson, the hotel manager, would like to speak with you in his office, if you have time.”
They’d paid promptly and well for a couple of days’ work, so I said sure. The guy led me behind the check-in counter, down a hall to a private elevator, then up three floors to a sunny corner office that looked down on West Fifth. Sitting behind a desk that made mine look like a matchbook cover, Mr. Wolfson obviously did all right for himself.
He stood and walked around the desk to shake my hand. Firmly, thank God. There’s nothing worse than grabbing a dead fish that sprouted fingernails. “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Mr. Spector. Please have a seat. Something to drink?”
I told him no thanks, I’d just had a very nice lunch that didn’t cost me anything except a tip for the excellent service. The dolly who served me really had done a good job. It didn’t hurt that she was a looker who was good at flirting for tips.
“Let me get right to it, Mr. Spector. I know that you witnessed the carnage outside the kitchen yesterday, and that the perpetrators are as yet unknown. I have heard rumors that the Longshoreman’s union may have had some responsibility for what happened. Have you heard anything to that effect?”
That was news to me. Wilkes hadn’t called yet to ID the dead cook, so I hadn’t had a chance to ask him what he’d learned. He didn’t have to tell me anything, of course, but sometimes we’d keep each other posted about cases we were both interested in. “No, I hadn’t heard anything about that. That’s not to say it’s impossible.”
Wolfson leaned forward, his voice hardening. “That union is full of Communists, Mr. Spector. Chinese Communists killed my brother, and a lot of other good American boys, in Korea. If the union is responsible, I want them held accountable.”
I decided to let him know I didn’t disagree. There was also the possibility that he might be thinking of paying me to find out, and he paid well. “I’ve heard that about Communists in the dockworkers’ union. The ChiComs tried pretty hard to kill me in Korea, Mr. Wolfson, and they killed way too many of my friends. But I killed a lot more of them.”
He leaned back, steepled his fingers, and thought for a bit. “Would you be willing to try to find out if the rumors are true, Mr. Spector? I’d want you to spend full time on it, not work it in between other jobs. I realize that you would have to charge more than your normal rate for an exclusive arrangement.”
This was getting interesting. I didn’t really have anything else cooking, so taking his full-time assignment wouldn’t mean losing any business, at least not right away. Before I could decide how much to bump my rates, he took the play away from me.
“I’m prepared to pay you $150 a day, assuming you’d be on call day and night if necessary, plus any expenses you incur. Would that interest you?”
Would that interest me? That was twice my normal fee. I did my best not to let on that it not only interested me, it made my day, if not my whole month. I put on my best business face, but figured I’d better make sure he was serious. “I think we might be able to work something out, Mr. Wolfson, but the police are already working on the case. What makes you think I can do a better job?”
“I believe you’ll do an honest job, which is more than I can say for the Los Angeles Police Department. The labor unions have far too much power and influence in this city. I don’t believe they would condone a genuine investigation of any union involvement in those murders.”
It sounded like he meant what he said, so I decided to ask for a week up front. “My usual practice—”
He was way ahead of me. Taking a checkbook out of the desk, he started writing. “This should cover the first two weeks. If you resolve the matter before then, consider it a bonus for a job well done.” He held out the check with a sly look that told me he probably knew my usual rate and upfront payment practice.
“You needn’t check in with me every day, Mr. Spector, just let me know when you learn something interesting. I leave it to you to decide what’s interesting.” He took a business card from a holder on his desk and put it down in front of me. “You can always reach me at this number.”
He stood, letting me know the meeting was over. I picked up his card from the desk, put it and the check in my jacket’s breast pocket, and waited to be led downstairs.
Back in my office, I arranged for the answering service to cover my calls day and night since I wouldn’t be needing a secretary for a couple of weeks. A couple of minutes after wrapping that up, the phone rang. It was Lt. Wilkes.
—You wanted an ID on the dead butcher. Name is Albert Burge, age 42, no priors, shares an apartment with a guy named Albright, Thomas Albright, age 48. No phone, at least no listing.
“Got an address?”
He gave me an address in a rundown part of East LA. It was after 4:00, but I decided to take a chance that Albright was home and willing to answer some questions.
I HAD NO IDEA how much a line cook at the Rosslyn made, but it couldn’t have been much from the looks of the apartment building. It would’ve taken at least a month and a few thousand bucks to bring it all the way up to rundown. I kept looking for red tags as I walked up to the second floor looking for apartment 2C.
I knocked, waited, knocked again, was just about to leave when the door opened a crack. I saw a nose and part of a mouth, but the guy didn’t say anything.
“My name is Peter Spector, I’m a private investigator. I’d like to speak with Mr. Thomas Albright. Can I come in?” It took him a minute or so to decide, then he opened the door, turned and walked away. I went in and closed the door behind me.
The living room was shabby but spotless. The only furniture was a worn-out couch and chair. The clean but curtainless window looked out on a nearby brick wall, a naked light bulb hung from the ceiling. It smelled like faded flowers.
Thomas Albright was a slight fellow, maybe 5-6, with thin features, thinning hair, and a patchy goatee. Still silent, he sat in the chair, so I sat on the couch. We looked at each other for a long minute, then another. I wasn’t interested in us sitting and staring at each other all night, so I asked him how long he’d known Burge. That’s all it took to end the silence. He started sobbing so hard that when he finally spoke, I could barely make it out.
“My whole life. Now it’s all over.” Searle’s crack about Burge being “queer as a three-dollar bill” looked to be on the money. With no warning, my worst childhood memory came roaring back.
Almost 20 years ago, when we still lived in Brownsville, my cousin Jacob was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover Brooklyn cop. Turned out the cop approached him first in the men’s restroom at Lincoln Terrace Park, but such niceties as who made first contact didn’t matter to the Brooklyn PD if queers were involved. Jacob was formally charged so that he’d have a record, but no prosecution was scheduled.
Aunt Sophie was giving me a piano lesson, so I was there the morning a cop brought Jacob home after a night in jail. The cop stood in the hall outside their third-floor walkup and told Uncle Ben why Jacob was arrested. Aunt Sophie and I had come to the door when we heard the shouting, and pretty soon we were all out in the hall. After the cop disappeared down the stairs, Uncle Ben backhanded Jacob. “You’re no son of mine! Get the hell out and never come back!”
Aunt Sophie tried to calm things down, but Uncle Ben ignored her, shouting out his hatred until Jacob ran off. Uncle Ben pushed Aunt Sophie back in the apartment and slammed the door. I followed Jacob as he ran to the back stairway and up two more flights to the roof.
When we got to the rooftop doorway, I froze and watched Jacob run to the edge. He looked back at me and yelled, “Tell Ma I’m sorry and I love her!” Then he jumped. The roof of a streetcar broke his fall enough so that ambulance attendants scraped him off and took him to Brooklyn Hospital.
Aunt Sophie and my parents took turns sitting in his room, refusing to leave even when the nurses and orderlies threatened to call the police. I came whenever I could get away from school and my job delivering the Daily Eagle. Jacob died two days later without ever coming to.
Uncle Ben never set foot in his room. Aunt Sophie moved in with us and divorced him, but divorce in New York in those days wasn’t easy. It took almost three years, plus another four years to pay off the blood-sucking lawyers. By that time we’d moved to Gowanus. My father said it was to get away from the bad memories, but even I could tell that the neighborhood had changed. Crime was getting worse, sometimes it was dangerous for Jews.
It took even longer for my bad dreams to stop. Even today, I can still shut my eyes and hear him shout “Tell Ma I’m sorry and I love her!” and watch him jump.
My father never spoke to his brother Ben again.
Albright corralled his emotions and finally spoke clearly. “Why do you ask? What difference does it make?” I asked myself the same question, and had to admit that it didn’t make a plugged nickel’s worth of difference.
“You’re right, Mr. Albright, it doesn’t matter. Did he have any enemies that you know of?” He didn’t say anything, just gave me a look that said Come on, Mr. Spector, you’re smarter than that. You know that at least a million people in LA alone think the only good queer is a dead queer.
I was wasting my time and making him even more miserable. I tried to get myself off the hook. “Sorry I upset you, Mr. Albright. I just want to make sure that you know both the police and I are determined to find the bastards who did this and bring them to justice.” Feet first, if possible, I added to myself. I also decided that Searle was going to pay for being such an asshole, if only with his job.
“Thank you for caring, Mr. Spector, but that won’t bring Al back. But I do hope you find them.”
I never saw Albright again. I hope he made it okay.
I NEEDED A DRINK after the visit with Albright. I was still off the booze, so I did the next best thing and headed for Laverne’s new place. Bernie’s went belly-up right after New Year’s, so Laverne looked for a new job. She wound up at a place called The Rusty Scupper on North Main in Lincoln Heights.
When we were getting to know each other better last year, she’d jokingly referred to herself as Laverne Porter, of the Pacoima Porters. She wasn’t from Pacoima, of course, nobody in southern California is from southern California. They came here before and during the War, some to the fruit and nut orchards, some to the shipyards and aircraft factories. None of them ever looked back.
Like me, Laverne was an East Coaster. I was from Brooklyn and she was from Weehawken, across the river from Hell’s Kitchen at the other end of the Lincoln Tunnel. Without waiting for me to order, she brought my first Fonytini, her name for the fake martinis she made for me. She’d shake up water and a few ice cubes, then pour the water through a strainer into a martini glass and spear two or three olives. Couldn’t tell it from the real thing without tasting it.
Idly scanning the customers, I munched the olives and sat there sipping as if it were straight gin. All of a sudden I bent over and yelped when a pain hit my stomach like somebody had slammed in a shiv. The bellyache I’d had for a couple of days was nothing compared to this.
Laverne immediately came down the bar and asked if something was wrong with the drink. I managed to shake my head, but she could tell that something was really wrong. Without asking, she grabbed the phone and called for an ambulance. I tried to object, but it hurt too much to even say anything, let alone wave my arms.
It took a while for the ambulance to get there. I’d managed to get off the bar stool and lie on the floor, which seemed to help a little, but I was shivering with chills and afraid I’d throw up. I don’t remember much about how they got me onto a gurney and into the ambulance, but I’m told I managed to shout vulgar comments about their mothers, medical training, and all-around fitness as human beings.
They took me to LA County, where I was quickly diagnosed with a ruptured appendix and hustled into emergency surgery. I came to in the recovery room and immediately fell in love with the vision in white who assured me that the operation went fine and everything was going to be okay. I had no idea what she was talking about, I just wanted her to keep holding my hand and talking to me.
The next time I opened my eyes, she’d grown a five-o’clock shadow and looked like some exhausted guy who’d been up all night. “You’re a lucky fellow, Mr. Spector. We removed the appendix and cleaned you out before peritonitis had a chance to set in.” I sort of nodded as if I understood and went back to sleep.
“I wish they didn’t keep this wing so cold.” A different nurse was bustling around tucking in my so-called blanket and rearranging the tubes sprouting from my arms and belly. She wasn’t the same angel I’d fallen in love with earlier, but she was another looker. I wondered if the hospital needed help interviewing nurse applicants.
I had to agree with her complaint about the temperature. I hadn’t felt warm since shivering on the bar floor. She gave me some pills, then dimmed the lights and told me that the sooner I went to sleep the sooner I’d start healing. I wasn’t sure I could sleep when I was this cold…
“COLD! JESUS, I’ve never been this cold! I haven’t felt my feet for a couple of days.” I was bitching to Kalapu Maumasi, my loader. Kal was a big guy. He claimed all Samoans were. His folks moved to San Diego right after the War. I called him Kal-El once, but he didn’t read Superman comic books so he didn’t get it.
Kal joined the Corps to shorten his time to get US citizenship. Then Korea happened. He wasn’t sympathetic about my whining, he’d heard it all before. After Samoa and San Diego, his idea of cold was anything below 80. I’d told him that back in ’34 it’d been 13 below in Brooklyn, so as far as he was concerned I had no business complaining about 30 or 35 below.
We were covering the back door of our retreat from Chosin reservoir. There hadn’t been time to properly dig in the Ma Deuce, entrenching tools weren’t much help on ground that’d been frozen for over a month. We made do by scraping up as much dirt and gravel as we could to fill some sandbags, then piled up some of the bigger rocks. Our position was on the military crest, as high as we could get on the hill without breaking the horizon.
We were running low on ammo, so Kal made a couple of trips over the hill to battalion HQ. He humped back half a dozen cans and the latest pogue news and rumors. “We’re gonna pull back a few miles sometime tomorrow and set up on another one of these goddam hills. I told ’em we needed a whole new crew to carry all this shit since our guys got reassigned. They said they’d take care of it, but I’ll believe it when I see it.” Kal didn’t have a lot of faith in rear echelon types, even if they were Marines. He had more news.
“Those poor doggies on the east side of the lake pretty much got wiped out. Guys said it looked like half the goddam Chink army came down on ’em.” He stacked the ammo, then reached inside his parka and handed me a box of C rations,. “Here’s dinner. Probably breakfast, too. Eat it fast before it freezes.”
The other Ma Deuce was about 200 yards west of us. We were covering three .30 caliber M1919s with overlapping fields of fire a hundred yards below us. The .50s were effective a good thousand yards farther than the .30s. The smaller guns took care of the ChiComs we missed. We were making life difficult—and short, in a lot of cases—for the bastards trying to stop us from reaching Hungnam.
The top brass hoped that Hungnam would be our Dunkirk where we’d be snatched out from under the guns of some godawful number of ChiComs. Those poor bastards suffered from the cold even more than we did. We found a lot of them dead in their foxholes with no wounds, either starved or frozen or both. Even though we were way outnumbered, it was still humiliating to run away. We were Marines, goddammit!
Not long after Kal got back with the ammo, it started getting dark and everything went to hell. A few mortar rounds walked up the hill and a lucky shot took out the other Ma Deuce before our counterfire could take them out. Kal was up and running before I could move. He came back in a few minutes carrying three more cans of ammo and shaking his head. “Nobody left.” He didn’t say anything else, just clipped a couple of belts together.
No sooner had he sat back than bugles announced the first attack of the night. I started firing short bursts at the shadowy figures moving toward the base of the hill. They usually came in bunches of 75 or 100, but this time it looked like several hundred with another bunch not far behind.
I kept firing short bursts but stepped up the pace, then started worrying about overheating the barrel. The .30s below us were strafing back and forth, firing almost continuously as the ChiComs got closer. I started firing longer bursts. We’d set the tripod so I couldn’t depress low enough to hit the .30 crews, so the closer the ChiComs got to the .30s the harder it was for me to train on them.
Then I ran out of ammo.
I turned to yell at Kal. “What the hell…” He was slumped on his side, a hole where his left eye used to be. I couldn’t take time to make sure he was dead, I had to reload the Ma Deuce. Just as I yanked the charging lever, two Corsairs swept low over the base of the hill and dropped four tanks of napalm. The rolling fireball stopped the ChiCom attack dead in its tracks. It also incinerated two of the three .30 crews.
I didn’t have time to react to their death. I figured Kal’s parka was big enough to fit over mine, and it was getting colder by the minute. Working fast because his body was already stiffening, I managed to get his parka off 260 pounds of dead weight. I thought about taking his wool sweater, too, but it had to be 20 below already and I didn’t want to take my own parka off long enough to put on the sweater.
I managed to get his parka on over mine, then wrapped his wool muffler over my hat around my chin and ears. I wasn’t warm, but thanks to the workout and added layers I wasn’t quite as cold. My good feelings didn’t last.
In the dim starlight I saw movement down the hill. I couldn’t believe it. The dead ChiComs were getting up, blood staining their quilted jackets, and starting to move up the hill again! Racking the charging handle again just to make sure, I fired longer and longer bursts but they’d get back up as soon as I knocked them down. They were getting closer and closer…
Then Kal grabbed my hand. “You took my coat! I’ll freeze!”
“You can’t freeze, you’re dead!” I jerked my hand away and fired another burst, but he grabbed back.
“You took my coat! I thought you were my friend!”
“You were already dead!” I jerked my hand away again. “You were already dead!”
He reached toward me a third time, but this time put his hand on my forehead instead of grabbing mine. It was…warm?
“Mr. Spector! Mr. Spector! Wake up Mr. Spector!” The nurse’s hand felt cool, not warm. “That must have been a terrible dream. You kept saying ‘You were already dead!'”
I was panting like a horse that just ran eight furlongs at Santa Anita. I didn’t trust my voice yet, just nodded and pointed to the glass of water on the bedside table. She put the bent straw in my mouth. I couldn’t remember the last time something tasted so good, or a dolly who looked so angelic. Then I remembered the angel in the recovery room. Maybe my mind was beginning to function again.
“Thank you.” My voice sounded to me like a cross between Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn but she awarded me a smile, so I guess she thought I sounded okay.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Mr. Spector. I was worried when you kept saying ‘You were already dead’ over and over.” I didn’t want to strain what was left of my voice by telling her that I was worried, too, so I just nodded and tried to grin. I think I drooled instead.
Wilkes showed up a few hours later. He wasn’t carrying any flowers, just the morning Times. “Found another way to get your customers to pay while you’re resting, Spector? Sweet racket you got going here.”
“Wonder how much rest you’d get if your appendix exploded, Wilkes.” It was good to be back in familiar ground, trading insults with him.
The nurse figured we weren’t serious. “It didn’t explode, Mr. Spector, it ruptured. If you must persist in giving out unofficial reports of your condition, you should use proper terminology.” She almost managed to keep a straight face.
Wilkes and I both laughed, which I immediately regretted. My belly hurt some all the time, but it hurt like a sonofabitch when I laughed. I didn’t even want to think about coughing or sneezing.
We settled down and the nurse went to check on some other patients. Wilkes ID’d the two stiffs in the pickup, a couple of small-time hoods. After swapping a few more insults, he told me to give him a call if I needed anything. The nurse came back, so I didn’t get a chance to ask him what he meant by anything before he left.
After making sure there would be someone to take care of me for the first week or so, they let me go home a couple of days later. Since Laverne had been in my room whenever her work schedule allowed, they readily accepted that she would move in with me for at least a week. Which she did. Sort of.
“Sort of” because I had no intention of taking a full week off. I called Wolfson the first day I was home to tell him what happened. He told me not to worry about it, but I did, there were too many unanswered questions. After four days of enforced recuperation, I got dressed and left for my office over strenuous (some almost threatening) objections from Laverne.
The elevator was out of order, of course, so I had to use the stairs. It was only one floor, but by the time I got to my office door I felt like I’d climbed the Washington Monument. Using my upgraded coffee-making skills, I made a pot and sat at my desk with the Times. Sure as hell, the phone rang just as I finished page one. I answered with my usual secretarial skills.
—Good morning Mr. Spector, this is Clarence Wolfson. How are you feeling? I’m surprised you’re back in your office so soon.
“You aren’t paying me to lie around wishing my belly didn’t hurt, Mr. Wolfson. In fact, it doesn’t hurt that bad anymore, and I was getting bored.”
—If you really are on the mend, I’d like you to check out something down at the port of Long Beach for me. I’ve heard that something…interesting might happen tonight.
“Where would you hear such a thing, Mr. Wolfson?” I didn’t think there was much chance he’d fess up, but I was curious as hell where he got his info. It makes me nervous when a client seems to know more than I do and won’t let on how he knows.
—I’m not really at liberty to reveal my sources, Mr. Spector, but I have a great deal of confidence in them. Perhaps you should go home and rest in preparation for a night of observation. Let me repeat, observation. I’m not asking you to do anything more than passively attempt to gather information. Call me at the number on my business card if you see anything interesting, regardless of the time.
He went on to describe what he wanted me to do and specifically where to go at the waterfront. I took his advice and went home. Laverne wisely hadn’t stayed after I ignored her objections. I toasted an English muffin, drank a glass of milk with it, and went to bed
LATE THAT NIGHT I drove down to the port of Long Beach, parked behind a darkened warehouse, and walked toward the water. Midnight found me seated on a square of reasonably clean cardboard, leaning against a bollard next to a dumpster on a wharf. I was watching eight semi-trailers that Wolfson had told me were loaded with frozen sides of Argentine beef intended for markets from LA to Bakersfield.
The trailers were angle-parked, leaving a gap of 15′ or so to the wharf edge. The drivers obviously didn’t take any chances of embarrassing themselves by backing one into the drink. The only sound was the drone of the refrigeration units on each trailer and the occasional delivery truck driving by.
I was getting cramped and sore sitting for so long, but didn’t want to risk taking a pain pill and drifting off into la-la land. Couldn’t smoke, of course, but I’d brought a thermos of coffee and could sneak over to the edge and piss in the harbor. Felt good to stretch out the cramps.
Shortly after 2:00 it got interesting. A delivery truck approached the gap at the end opposite me with its lights off. It stopped at the first trailer and someone jumped out. He opened a door in the side of the truck facing the trailer and latched it to the truck body, then walked over to the trailer, unlocked its padlock, and opened the door.
While he was doing all this, a second guy got out of the truck and slid a ramp out of the side door. As soon as the trailer door was open, he lifted the ramp up and slid it into the trailer. Both guys jumped up on the ramp, went into the trailer, and quickly returned hefting a side of beef. They slid it down the ramp into the truck, returned inside the trailer, and hefted another side onto the ramp and into the truck. Skullduggery completed, they jumped down, slid the ramp back into the truck, and secured the trailer.
The truck moved from trailer to trailer and they repeated the process, sometimes only taking one side of beef. In less than 10 minutes they had 13 sides of beef in the truck, closed the side door, and drove off. It was a slick piece of work.
They’d taped butcher paper over the sign painted on the side of the truck, but a side had torn loose. I could read “Stagnaro Bros. Meats and Seafood” and “Hawthorne,” but the street address was still covered. I took out my notebook and wrote that down plus the license number.
Fifteen minutes after the truck drove off I hoofed it back to my car. It was after 3:00 when I got home, but I called Wolfson per his instructions and gave him the name on the side of the truck and the license number. He yawned and told me to spend the rest of the day in bed. I compromised and didn’t get up until 9:00.
I figured I still owed it to Wolfson and Albright to find out if the longshoremen’s union had anything to do with the Rosslyn massacre. I further figured the best way to find out would be ask their boss, a guy named Harry Bridges. He lived in San Francisco, but came down once or twice a month to ride herd on the Long Beach local.
By early afternoon I had his routine. He always stayed in the same apartment in Long Beach, nothing fancy but who needs fancy for a few nights a month? There was only one bodyguard, who went into the apartment a little before Bridges got there. The guy who drove him from the train station just dropped him off at the curb.
He followed the routine religiously, which made it easy for him to remember but was really bad for security. Making it even easier for mugs like me, his trips were announced the day before in the local union newsletter. A quick check showed that as luck would have it, it was his day to arrive in Long Beach shortly after 5:00.
I WENT TO HIS apartment an hour or so before the bodyguard was due. The lock was nothing special, took me all of half a minute to get in. I waited in the bedroom for the so-called bodyguard. He came in, took off his jacket and tossed it on the couch, then went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I walked up behind him at the sink, shoved the .45 behind his left ear, and threw a choke hold on him.
“I really don’t want to spray your brains all over Mr. Bridges’ nice kitchen, so take the popgun out with just a thumb and finger and put it on the counter.” He stiffened as if he was going to try to break the hold, so I shoved the .45 harder and clamped tighter around his neck. “Don’t even think about it, Mac, unless you got a really good life insurance policy you’re dying to cash in.”
He gingerly took the .38 out of his shoulder holster and laid it on the counter.
“Good boy. Now let’s go in the bedroom and wait for your boss.” I pocketed his revolver and shoved the .45 in his back while we walked back in the bedroom, then angled the door so I could watch the living room.
“Whaddya want Bridges for? He don’t carry any money.”
“I’m not after money, just some information. Everybody plays nice, nobody gets hurt. Quiet now, don’t try to warn him. I wouldn’t like that. Trust me, neither would you.” He stayed as quiet as a preacher caught in a cathouse.
Bridges showed up about half an hour later, right on time. His suit probably cost more than I made the last two or three months. His widow’s peak and longish face with a sour look made him look sort of like Jimmy Stewart with a bad case of hemorrhoids.
I waited until he put his suitcase down and started to take off his jacket. It didn’t look like he was carrying, so I kicked the bedroom door open and shoved the goon across the room. While Bridges was focused on him, I released the magazine from the .45 and palmed it into a jacket pocket. Bridges found his voice. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m the bad boy from Melbourne your mum wouldn’t let you play with back in Kensington.” He wasn’t expecting somebody who knew his boyhood. His eyes went wide, his jaw dropped until he looked like a fish in the bottom of the boat trying to breathe air.
He closed his mouth and drew breath to say something, then seemed to change his mind, turned to the bodyguard, and jabbed a finger toward me. “Why the fuck didn’t you stop this—”
“Whoa, whoa, Bridges, this do-si-do is your fault, not his. You always announce your trip down here in the union newsletter, stay in this apartment, arrive five minutes either side of 5:30. You don’t use professional bodyguards, just assign the job to a union member—only one, even though you should have at least three—and you give him a gun but no bodyguard training. You make it too easy.”
Taking the goon’s .38 from my jacket pocket, I thumbed out the cylinder, shook the rounds onto the floor, and whipped the cylinder back in. It made a helluva clatter when I tossed it in the kitchen, making them both twitch.
It was time to lower everybody’s blood pressure. I turned the .45 butt-up to show there was no magazine. “It wasn’t loaded. I couldn’t have blown your brains out even if you had it coming.” When the mug shook his head in disgust, I tried to ease his mind. “Don’t beat yourself up. I would’ve cold-cocked you, and when you came around youd’ve had a helluva headache.”
I dug a full magazine out of my pocket, slapped it in the .45 and racked a round into the chamber. After setting the safety and tucking it back under my left arm, I waved Bridges toward the couch. “Take a load off. I came to talk, not rassle.” Without waiting for a response, I told the bodyguard to go back in the bedroom and close the door. He looked at his boss. Bridges nodded and he followed my instructions.
Bridges didn’t like being ordered around, but I had the only loaded gun in the room. He sat. Still, he wasn’t about to get all girly about it. “Now who the hell are you and whaddya want?”
“Word is that someone in your union shot up those three guys behind the Rosslyn Hotel a few days ago. Anything to that?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, so get outta here while you can still walk.” His mouth denied it but his eyes said he was lying. Trouble was, I didn’t know whether he was lying about union members doing the shooting, or just that he didn’t know about it.
“You forget, Bridges, I’m the one with a gun and you’re the asshole trying to sell a bill of goods. Let me refresh your memory.” I gave him a quick version of the shooting, then stretched the truth a bit about how many times I heard that ILWU members pulled the triggers.
He thought about it, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I heard something about that…but you hear a lot of things. Most of ’em aren’t true. You still haven’t told me who you are.”
“I’m a private investigator. Here’s something I didn’t hear on or off the street, I saw it night before last.” I told him about watching two guys heist beef from semi trailers parked along the wharf.
He didn’t shrug this time, he was interested, maybe very interested. “Come on, shamus, you saw more than that. You’re holding back. How much beef? Any ideas about who the two were? License plate on the truck? You’re a detective, you didn’t just sit there with your thumb up your ass. Maybe we can make a deal, you know, trade information.”
I had to decide how much to tell him, whether he really would be willing to play Show Me Yours And I’ll Show You Mine. “Not sure how much I can trust a guy named Alfred who calls himself Harry. You quit school and went to sea when you were 16 even though your folks didn’t want you to, you claim you used a mandolin as a lifesaver when one of your ships sank. You were a Wobbly, Congress declared you a commie but for some reason the Supreme Court came to your rescue—
“Where’d you learn so much about me, shamus? I don’t like it when people snoop around my family.”
“Calm down, Bridges, the only place I did any snooping was the LA public library. It’s surprising how much you can learn if you make googly eyes at the research librarian and act like she’s a good-looking doll.”
He shook his head. “Nah, I don’t buy it. Those sheilas aren’t dumb. She probably wasn’t a looker and knew it, so—”
“Mox nix, Bridges. You’re right, she was a plain Jane, but wanted real bad to believe I meant it. I even went out and bought her a rose while she was on lunch break. She acted like I’d brought her the moon and stars. If she could’ve found it, she would’ve told me the first time you shagged your first girlfriend.”
“Sounds like I’m not the only asshole here, shamus. Even I wouldn’t treat a sheila like that.” It was my turn to shrug. For a change, he didn’t look like he just sucked a lemon. There might have been even a hint of a smile.
In for a dime, in for a dollar. I told him about the torn butcher paper, Stagnaro Bros. Meat and Seafood, and the Hawthorne street address I couldn’t read. “The license number was…” I took out my notebook, leafed through it to the right page, and read the number. “I couldn’t be sure, but the two mugs looked a lot like the shooters at the Rosslyn.”
Bridges stood and started pacing, then stopped and faced me. “So you’re the guy Wolfson hired to watch the trucks.” He knew Wolfson? And that he’d hired me? Now it was my turn to imitate a dying fish. I’d never get rich playing poker.
“Let’s both sit down, mate, and I’ll tell you what’s going on.” We did and he did.
Wolfson’s brother wasn’t killed in Korea, he didn’t even have a brother. The business manager of the Long Beach local of the ILWU was Wolfe’s cousin. He’d passed along a request from Bridges to hire me to help stop cargo losses. The tip to stake out the loads of beef was a shot in the dark, they thought the beef had already been stolen.
I wasn’t so sure, kept wondering why sometimes they took two sides, sometimes just one. Maybe…
“Who keeps track of loading the trucks?”
Bridges looked puzzled. “Why? What’s that got to do with anything?” I didn’t respond, just waited for him to answer. “Couple of guys. One from the trucking company, he’s got the manifest for each trailer, and a union rep to watch the watcher.”
I thought about that for a bit. “The trucking guy’s job is probably to make damn sure enough sides are loaded in each trailer, but how tough would it be to slip in an extra side or two?”
He connected the dots and came up with the same picture I did. “So all they have to do is make sure the muscle knows how many extra sides are in each trailer. When the shortfall finally shows up, the heist could have happened anywhere along the line and the insurance company covers the loss. Cute.”
The scheme to lift meat might have been cute, but the slaughter at the Rosslyn wasn’t. “What about the three guys who were shotgunned at the Rosslyn Hotel? All over what, 30 to 40 pounds of beef? Doesn’t figure.”
He shrugged again. “Who knows? If the ones who did the shooting are the same ones who stole the beef, maybe they figured too many small-timers were horning in on their racket and they wanted to send a message. What difference does it make now?”
I didn’t want to explain that taking care of the shooters might bring some notion of justice to Thomas Albright. Or to me, for that matter. “None, I guess.”
“If any of them were union brothers, they were acting on their own. The ILWU doesn’t steal or kill. We might play tough sometimes, but we aren’t crooks.”
I wasn’t so sure, but there was no point in arguing. He went on to explain that he got Wolfson involved—he ignored that he got me involved, too—because he wanted to keep the stakeout a secret just in case any union members were involved. Sounded to me like he wasn’t so sure that some of his so-called brothers weren’t crooks.
I left without telling him he should do something about his lousy security.
I NEEDED A DRINK after my chat with Bridges, even if it was just water and olives, so I headed for the Scupper. Laverne was carefully drying glasses, polishing each one so it gleamed like crystal. I tried to figure out why a girl like her wanted anything to do with a mug like me, then shook it off before I started caring too much.
She was pouring my second Fonytini when Wilkes hoisted himself onto the stool next to me. For a change, he took the chewed-up cigar out of his mouth before talking. “Looked like your coupe parked out front. Thought you didn’t drink?”
“I don’t. Taste this.” I held the martini glass out to him. He shook his head.
“No thanks, I don’t swap spit with guys, even pretty boys like you.”
Laverne rolled her eyes, poured the bit left in the shaker into a clean glass, and offered it to him. “No cooties on this one, Champ.” I wanted to let her know Wilkes was an okay guy, that he and I always traded jabs like that. But I liked her “Champ” moniker. Laverne knew how to put a guy in his place.
He looked from the glass to her, then shrugged, took the glass, drained it, and made a face. “Jesus! Is there any gin in that? It tastes like straight water!”
I slapped him on the back. “God, you’re quick, Wilkes! No wonder you’re a detective lieutenant.” I hoped this told Laverne who he was and that he was a friend—well, the nearest thing to a friend I wanted.
She relaxed, took back the glass, and asked him what he’d like to drink. I tried to answer for him. “He looks like a bourbon guy to me.”
Wilkes shook his head. “Nope, grew up in backwoods Wisconsin. We didn’t have mother’s milk, we had beer and bratwurst. Bring me a Lucky.” Laverne didn’t move, just looked him in the eye.
He caught on quick. “Please.”She grabbed a bottle of Lucky Lager from the cooler under the backbar, opened it, and put it on a napkin in front of him. The cigar was still in his hand, not his mouth. “Thanks.” She nodded and walked back down the bar.
I told Laverne to put his beer on my tab and took out a fag. As I flicked open my Zippo, I thought there was room for confusion here. “Hey, Wilkes. Next time you ask for a Lucky, you gotta be more specific. This—” I held up my Lucky Strike, “is a Lucky, and that—” I pointed to his beer, “is a Lucky, too.”
He wasn’t impressed. “Yeah, yeah, ‘It’s Lucky when you live in California.’ I don’t feel very lucky when I pay the blackmail they call income tax. Hmmph!” Then he smirked. “LS/MFT doesn’t stand for ‘Lucky Strike/Means Fine Tobacco,’ you know.” He jammed the soggy cigar back in his mouth.
I grinned. “Of course not. ‘Loose Straps/Mean Floppy Tits.’ Everybody knows that.”
He took the cigar out of his mouth again and leered. “Nope. ‘Let’s Screw/My Finger’s Tired.’ That’s the grown-up version.”
“Grown-up my ass! You two sound like a couple of 12-year-olds!” Neither one of us had noticed Laverne leaning against the backbar. I was embarrassed. To his credit, so was Wilkes. I sputtered some sort of apology, but Wilkes just stubbed his cigar in the ashtray and stood. “Gotta go.” You could almost see a tail between his legs as he hustled out.
After I apologized a few dozen times, she finally grinned and admitted that after all, she was a bartender, had heard them before and still thought they were pretty funny. Her good mood lasted, so when she asked I went home with her.
I’ve never been good with pillow talk, it’s too easy to give away weaknesses. When she asked again about the Bitch from Burbank, I tried to describe how cold it was, gave her a short version of the retreat from Chosin to Hungnam, and told her that’s why we called ourselves the Chosin Few.
I didn’t want to talk about taking Kal’s parka or how many guys I saw on the retreat wearing two parkas or quilted Chicom jackets under their own parka, and no way would I ever tell her or anybody else about the dream. I did tell her that thinking of my wife helped me survive while Korea tried to freeze my body and soul.
“Her last letter finally caught up with me almost three months after she mailed it. She’d somehow gotten a Reno divorce without me there. I found out later she’d taken up with a Marine pilot, but he shipped out to Korea a month later.”
I wondered if he’d been flying one of the Corsairs in my dream. The part that actually happened.
Laverne and I had agreed several times that we were just good friends with no strings. Even though she didn’t ask when I said it was time to go, I could tell she wanted me to spend the night. I ‘d never taken her to my place, because when we finished screwing around she might not want to leave. I’d have to insist and she’d feel real bad. This way was less painful. I could end it just by leaving.
I drove home in a lousy mood, wishing for the umpteenth time she really meant it when she said no strings.
Two days later, Wolfson called and told me that the cops raided Stagnaro’s. The owner and a guy who worked for him were arrested. The employee finally admitted that he was the driver of the truck that carried the stolen beef. The two who did the heavy lifting weren’t there.
Wolfson warned me that Bridges said the two were ILWU members who’d gone missing and that I should watch my back. I assured him I would. Turned out that wasn’t good enough.
THE NEXT NIGHT I was sitting on my usual stool in the Scupper. Just as Laverne set down my second fake martini, I saw two goons in the mirror come into the bar. Somehow I knew they were the two who did the Rosslyn shooting and heisted the beef. Now they were after me.
I didn’t have much time, but had to warn Laverne. “Keep looking in my eyes. When I say ‘Now’ turn right and duck down behind the bar. Fast.” She paled, but kept eye contact. Just as she mouthed “Okay” the first mug waved the other one to move to our right and went for his gun.
“NOW!”
I dived left, drawing the .45 and thumbing off the safety. While I was falling it barked twice and the first goon went down. I grabbed on to a bar stool to hoist myself up and snapped a desperation shot. Luck was on my side, briefly. It caught the second shooter in the face, but not until he’d fired once.
Just as I stood, I heard a slap sound and a soft “Oh” from Laverne. I looked over in time to see her staggering backwards, blood blooming in the middle of her chest. After a quick glance to make sure the goons weren’t getting back up, I scrambled over the bar. Laverne was lying face up with one leg bent back beneath her, blood pooling around her. I’d seen death enough times to know she probably wasn’t alive when she hit the floor.
Kneeling beside her, I brushed the hair from her face, thumbed her eyes shut, straightened her leg, and tugged down her skirt. It seemed important to do those things. I knelt beside her, raised her in my arms, and held her without moving. My mind was as blank as a wallflower’s dance card.
A couple of uniforms showed up a while later. When they tried to take her from me, I hit their arms away. They stopped, not sure what to do, until a familiar voice said something to them and they backed off. Wilkes knelt down beside me.
“You can let her go, Pete. She’s dead.” I turned toward him but couldn’t focus on his face. “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. It wasn’t your fault. You got the sonofabitch who did it. The other sonofabitch, too. They’re both dead.”
He put his hand on my arm but didn’t try to move it. “Let them take her. They’ll make sure she’s taken care of.” After a moment I gently laid her back down. Two ambulance attendants wheeled her out of the bar. Wilkes and I stood and walked stiffly over to a table.
He took out his notebook. “How’d it happen?” I told him as best I could remember, but had to struggle for details. It was hard to talk. Every so often he’d ask how I was doing. I wanted him to think everything was jake, so I’d say “Fine.” I didn’t want anybody feeling sorry for me, even this cop who came closer to being a friend than anyone else I knew. When he said he didn’t have any more questions, I asked if I could leave. He nodded but told me I might have to answer more questions later.
Death has a smell that’s got nothing to do with blood or decay. It’s a smell of laughs never laughed and dreams never dreamed. I was tired beyond telling of that death smell. As I drove back to my apartment, my mind ran down the list of deaths that’d been too much a part of my life. It started with Laverne, of course, dear Laverne, whose only fault was to care about me. The goon who shot her and his pal, the same ones who shotgunned the hotel butcher and the two small-time crooks.
It didn’t stop there. Last year added the two mugs who’d threatened Lupe and her daughter, the poor schlub whose wife hired me to see whether he’d been cheating, his wife who was also cheating, the guy she’d been cheating with…
I made it back to Burbank with no memory of the trip, lucky that I made it in one piece. As I opened the door to my apartment, I added to the list the dozens of ChiComs who fell to my Ma Deuce. Just as I started to add all the dead ChiComs in my dream who’d got up, the phone rang.
I didn’t feel like talking to anybody and would have let it ring, but figured it was probably Bridges calling to congratulate me for killing those two goons and wanting to gloat about how the ILWU wasn’t so bad after all. I wanted to tell him to go to hell.
“Yeah.”
—Pete?
Hearing her voice hit me so hard I sagged into a kitchen chair. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
—Pete? Are you still there?
“Lupe. How… how’ve you been?”
—Busy, but now we’re back in Los Angeles. Ileana and I are staying with my cousin until I can find a place. I hear you haven’t found a secretary yet. Can I apply for the job?”
She sounded happy, even chipper. I wasn’t ready for this, hadn’t thought about what I’d say. I imagined her in my life again, running the office and making every day brighter. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her, how big a hole she’d left in my life. Then, without warning, my mind started back through its litany of the dead.
I replied without hesitating, afraid I’d change my mind. “No, Lupe. You…you need to stay as far away from me as you can get.” I shut my eyes so tight they hurt. “I’m the Angel of Death.” Before she could respond, I hung up.
Picked up the phone again and made sure there was a dial tone, then put it down crosswise on the cradle so she couldn’t call back. I poured a cup of cold coffee, lit a Lucky, and sat at the kitchen table thinking there had to be a better way to make a living.