Dr. Cassel remained seated, looking up at me with a tiny, nasty smile and cold hard dark eyes. “And do you imagine, Ms. Tree, that any of that will be easy to prove?”
“Possibly not,” I admitted. “You are the master manipulator—probably protecting yourself with layer after layer, although the Holly Jackson and no-tell motel links are there, all right. Still, even connecting you to the Muertas may prove difficult.”
His manner brusque, business-like, Dr. Cassel said, “I think you should go. Your time is long since up.”
“But, hey,” I said cheerfully, “I’m gonna give it my best shot—making sure your future is one of police inquiries, civil suits, malpractice hearings, newspaper exposés....Oh, and, uh, cancel my next appointment, would you?”
“With pleasure.”
I turned away and headed toward the door.
And I could hear the desk drawer opening—was he reaching for his appointment book, to record that cancellation? I thought not.
When I whirled, gun from coat pocket already in hand, I could see the little automatic in his fingers coming up from the drawer.
But the dark eye of the nine millimeter already had him stared down.
His expression was stunned, his jaw damn near scraping the desktop.
“See how much you’ve taught me, Doc?...Pushed your buttons pretty good.”
Panicking, he tried to raise the automatic, but he didn’t have near the time, and I fired once, the nine mil’s report thundering in the small office, rattling furniture and windows, and he looked at me for a moment, seemingly with three dark eyes—the entry wound in his forehead was perfectly spaced between his two orbs below—though I don’t really think he saw me in those frozen moments before he flopped, dead, onto the desk.
“Actually,” I said to the corpse, “that was my best shot.”
I slipped the gun into my purse—I don’t like the lumpy look it gives to the slimming lines of the dark trenchcoat—and got out my cell. I speed-dialed Rafe Valer.
“I’m in Cassel’s office,” I said.
“Is he...are you...was it...?”
“Self-defense? You bet your ass.”
*
Lt. Valer saw to it that my time at the scene was limited, and within two hours I was driving in fast-moving traffic in my late husband’s Jag, heading to the hospital to sit with Roger, and make him feel better with my report.
Dan would be there, too, and afterward we’d head to Gino’s for deep dish. Some good guys may need their heads shrunk after killing a bad guy, but me, I like to get my stomach filled.
My God, Chicago was beautiful at night, all that high-rise geometry and electricity unleashed, and the lake wasn’t half bad, either....
Somebody said, “Pretty good for a girl.”
I glanced over in the rider’s seat and Mike was grinning at me. Sharp as hell in a black leather jacket and black t-shirt and black jeans. Alive and well and giving me a proud, loving smile.
“So I did all right?”
“All right?” Mike shivered. “Lady, sometimes you scare me....”
I laughed.
And I’m sure any other driver gliding by, who saw me, all alone in my Jaguar, laughing my ass off, would have taken me for crazy.
ABOUT “MS. TREE”
An Afterword
by Max Allan Collins
This is the first prose novel about female private detective Michael Tree, but numerous graphic novels precede it, all written by me and drawn by Ms. Tree’s co-creator, cartoonist Terry Beatty.
The “Ms. Tree” feature began in 1980 when the independent comics scene was just getting started, and one of its pioneers, editor/publisher Dean Mullaney, approached me about doing a serialized tough detective story for Eclipse, a new magazine he was putting together.
The buzz in comics fandom about that magazine was considerable, because Dean was bringing in some of the hottest talent in comic books to try to do something that could hold its head up alongside (and possibly above) anything the big boys, Marvel and DC Comics, were doing.
I was surprised to be asked to participate, frankly, because I had never written comic books. But I’d been writing the “Dick Tracy” syndicated comic strip since late 1977; and my take on that classic crime strip had attracted attention. I’d attempted to return the venerable strip to its hardboiled roots, with as much gunplay as I could get away with, and reviving classic Chester Gould villains in the context of contemporary themes—human cloning, video piracy, computer viruses.
Mullaney was part of the generation of comics fans-turned-professionals who revered “Tracy,” and I got a lot of positive reaction from this group—eventually I even got to do Batman for a year, because of the high regard in which some comics pros held my work on “Tracy.”
Also, Dean had seen a little strip I was then doing with cartoonist Terry Beatty, called “The Mike Mist Minute Mist-eries,” part of a weekly page of comics Terry and I self-syndicated for a year or so to smalltown papers and advertising “shoppers.” This was a great idea that made us not much money at all, but one of our clients, The Chicago Reader, had picked up our “Comics Page” just to run “Mike Mist,” taking advantage of my “Tracy” connection, the strip being a Chicago institution.
Anyway, seeing and liking “Mike Mist” primed Dean for allowing me to use Terry—who also had zero comic book credits—as the artist in a magazine otherwise filled with stars and even superstars.
On his initial phone call, Dean asked me if I had any ideas for a new private detective character. Immediately I pitched “Ms. Tree,” because I’d been thinking for a long time about doing a switch on Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and his secretary Velda.
The central notion was that the tough private eye and his loyal secretary, his unrequited love for years and years, would finally get married, only for the P.I. to be murdered on their wedding night, leaving the secretary to take over the detective agency and step into her late husband’s shoulder holster. The private eye’s murder would be the former secretary’s first case.
Though clearly patterned on Hammer and Velda, this notion was generally true of many if not most classic (and not so classic) private eyes, who always seemed to have beautiful secretaries who loved them, for all the good it did.
Of course, what separated Spillane’s Velda from the rest was that she was a licensed P.I. herself, packed a gun in her purse, and was almost as tough as Mike Hammer, despite needing to be rescued by him now and then.
Due to my corrupting influence, Terry was a stone Spillane fan, too, and we looked at the obscure but wonderful “Mike Hammer” comic strip from the early ’50s and used, as a stepping off point, the way Spillane crony Ed Robbins had drawn Velda. But even without cartoonist Robbins to light the way, Spillane’s description had been fairly exact—Velda was a big beautiful brunette who wore a pageboy hairdo.