Brownlee’s temples were shining, wet with moisture.
“You’ll never be able to prove it,” he said hoarsely.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Providing nobody knows you left the store. Providing nobody saw you in the vicinity of Miss Arnold’s apartment. Although the cops are pretty thorough. They’ll check and recheck for witnesses. And how about the gun? Did you get rid of it, Brownlee? If it’s hidden here in the apartment, they’ll find it. They know how to take a place apart piece by piece. You won’t—”
That tore it. He knew when the game was lost. He heaved from the table, moving with incredible speed, and lunged frantically through the door.
I took after him. He raced down the corridor and whirled into another room. The door slammed shut as I landed against it. A key turned in the lock.
“Brownlee!” I yelled, banging against it with my fist. Inside a drawer pulled open. I backed up and lunged, striking hard with my shoulder. The wood held, but it sprang the lock.
I tumbled through as the door flew back.
He had the gun out now. I stopped short when I saw it and tried to reverse my field. But it wasn’t revenge he was after. It was escape.
His wild eyes covered the room frantically, like a cornered animal looking for a hole in the woodwork. In just a few seconds he would begin to realize where his escape lay, and then the gun would begin blasting at me.
I didn’t care to wait that long. I threw a long flying tackle at him that brought him down like a broken stick. He tried to bring the gun up, but his jaw collided with my bunched fist, and his hand opened, dropping the gun onto the floor.
His mouth opened, too, wide, and he lay stretched out like a Maltese Cross, as silent as a snuffed out candle.
I stood up, and then looked down at him, relaxed now in unconsciousness. I thought briefly of the agony a trial would cause Eve, and I almost wanted to pick up the gun and save the state an expense.
It took a lot of effort to turn away.
Everybody’s Watching Me
by Mickey Spillane
Vetter! This is the name hiding an unknown face — a name that has young Joe Boyle serving as decoy in a dangerous game of death.
What has happened before: Part III
When young Joe Boyle delivers a note to Mark Renzo, local big-time racketeer, he is beaten unmercifully and tossed into the gutter, with the warning that he’ll be watched until Vetter contacts him again. Vetter is the signature on the note reading, “Cooley is dead. Now, my fine fat louse, I’m going to spill your guts all over your own floor.” With the help of Helen Troy, featured dancer at Renzo’s club, Joe goes to police captain Gerot who tells them Vetter is a mystery man friend of Cooley, and responsible for the death of many hoodlums. But nothing more than that is known about him. Bucky Edwards, Joe’s newspaperman friend, opines that if Vetter doesn’t get Renzo, Renzo will emerge stronger than ever. When Helen and Joe go back to her apartment, they are confronted by Johnny, Renzo’s hired gun, who is ready to beat Joe again as insurance that he will lead them to Vetter. Joe beats him instead and sends him back to Renzo, leaving Helen’s apartment at midnight. He gets picked up by the men of another local racketeer, Phil Carboy, and is taken to the West Side leader’s place. Carboy gives Joe money to finger Vetter when Vetter contacts him again. The plan is a simple one. He will signal Carboy’s men by blowing his nose with a red handkerchief when Vetter appears. They drive Joe back to his room where he gets a visitor from the police, Detective Sergeant Gonzales, who is as anxious to get Vetter as Renzo and Carboy are. Joe leaves later to see Helen, gives her money to leave Renzo, and then tells her how he’s beginning to feel about her. Bucky Edwards tells Joe that maybe Cooley was rubbed for knowing too much about the local gang setup, and Joe heads for the refuge of a movie, where he can sit safely in the darkness and puzzle out his next move.
At eleven-fifteen the feature wound up and I started back outside. In the glass reflection of the lobby door I saw somebody behind me but I didn’t look back. There could have been one more in the crowd that was around the entrance outside. Maybe two. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to me and I didn’t care if they did or not.
I waited for a Main Street bus, took it down about a half mile, got off at the darkened supermarket and started up the road. You get the creeps in places like that. It was an area where some optimist had started a factory and ran it until the swamp crept in. When the footings gave and the walls cracked, they moved out, and now the black skeletons of the buildings were all that were left, with gaping holes for eyes and a mouth that seemed to breathe out a fetid swamp odor. But there were still people there. The dozen or so company houses that were propped against the invading swamp showed dull yellow lights, and the garbage smell of unwanted humanity fought the swamp odor. You could hear them, too, knowing that they watched you from the shadows of their porches. You could feel them stirring in their jungle shacks and catch the pungency of the alcohol they brewed out of anything they could find.
There was a low moan of a train from the south side and its single eye picked out the trestle across the bay and followed it. The freight lumbered up, slowed for the curve that ran through the swamps and I heard the bindle stiffs yelling as they hopped off, looking for the single hard topped road that took them to their quarters for the night.
The circus sign was on the board fence. In the darkness it was nothing but a bleached white square, but when I lit a cigarette I could see the faint orange impressions that used to be supposedly wild animals. The match went out and I lit another, got the smoke fired up and stood there a minute in the dark.
The voice was low. A soft, quiet voice more inaudible than a whisper. “One is back at the corner. There’s another a hundred feet down.”
“I know,” I said.
“You got nerve.”
“Let’s not kid me. I got your message. Sorry I had to cut it short, but a pair of paid-for ears were listening in.”
“Sorry Renzo gave you a hard time.”
“So am I. The others did better by me.”
Somebody coughed down the road and I flattened against the boards away from the white sign. It came again, further away this time and I felt better. I said, “What gives?”
“You had a cop at your place this morning.”
“I spotted him.”
“There’s a regular parade behind you.” A pause, then, “What did you tell them?”
I dragged in on the smoke, watched it curl up against the fence. “I told them he was big. Tough. I didn’t see his face too well. What did you expect me to tell them?”
I had a feeling like he smiled.
“They aren’t happy,” he said.
I grinned too. “Vetter. They hate the name. It scares them.” I pulled on the butt again. “It scares me too when I think of it too much.”
“You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Thanks.”
“Keep playing it smart. You know what they’re after?”