“Meaning he won’t try to make another hit in this area.”
“That’s it. He’s gonna wait until I go back to Big Sur.”
“Which you won’t do.”
“Damn right, I won’t. Not till we drop a net over this guy. But I’m telling you, Nick, it’s a load off my mind. I’ve been sleeping with a gun under my pillow.”
“Our friend has no way of knowing we’ve scanned his little poem,” I said. “Probably wrote it to amuse himself. I left it right where I found it, on his desk. So now it’s just a matter of rounding him up.”
“Can you do that, or do you want the cops in on it?”
“At this point, I think we need some law. I hope to keep you out of it. At least for now. I can charge him with attempted murder. He tried to gun me tonight.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t home?”
“It was earlier. You’ll hear the whole scam when we get together. Right now, I’d better get the cops onto this guy.”
“Will you do one more thing for me first?” asked Spillane. “I’m a little worried about Charlie.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Maybe nothing. But I’ve been phoning her out at Malibu. No answer. I figure that maybe she—”
“Christ!” I yelled. “That’s where he went after our little road encounter!”
And before Mickey could say anything more I slammed down the phone, jumped into the Honda and headed hell-bent for Malibu.
When I drove slowly past the house along Pacific Coast Highway I couldn’t see any lights inside. But I was getting only a partial view from the road. Still it was enough to concern me.
I parked on the dirt shoulder, avoiding the half-circle of crushed gravel that angled from the highway down to the front of the house. If the creep was there I didn’t want to announce my arrival.
The tan Chevy wasn’t anywhere in sight, but that could mean he was playing it as cautiously as I was. I came in from the patio, gripping the .380 so tightly my fingers were cramping. Nerves. You never get used to being shot at, and it had already happened to me once that night. A Winchester pump is a mean piece of iron; blows a hole in you wide enough to see the stars through.
I could smell the ocean, like a big wet animal nuzzling the beach. The night breeze off the water had a sharp edge to it.
There was no light or movement downstairs. The pull drapes were open and I had a clear view of the rooms. No sign of any kind of struggle. And as quiet as the dark side of the moon. Maybe Charlene was asleep upstairs. Maybe I was wrong to be worried. My nerves eased down.
I came in from the porch through the sliding glass door, which was unlatched. The first bad sign. It should have been latched.
I got nervous again.
The stairs were next on the agenda, and I sweated a lot going up. Topside, I heard a muffled whimpering. Like a child having a nightmare.
The door to the main bedroom was ajar when I eased in, crouching, the automatic poised in my hand. I hoped to God I wouldn’t find the psycho waiting for me in the dark.
I didn’t.
Charlene was inside, alone. Tied and gagged on the bed. Wearing a torn pink nightrobe. Behind the gag, she whimpered, her eyes wide and desperate.
I put away my .380 and switched on a bed lamp. Then I moved to free her. “Take it easy, you’re okay now,” I said. Poor kid. I could see she had the shakes.
I stripped the gag from her mouth, cut loose her wrists and ankles. She fell forward across the bed into my arms, sobbing deeply, her whole body shaking.
“He... he was here!” She gasped out the words. “For almost an hour. It was horrible!”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No, but he forced me to... to...”
“Have sex with him? Did the bastard rape you?”
“Not that. He forced me to listen — while he read to me.”
“He what?”
“Read to me.” She was chafing her wrists to restore circulation. “He told me he needed a witness, someone who would testify that his claim was legitimate. About being stolen from.” She drew in a long shuddering breath. “So he read to me, from his stories, to prove his claim.”
“What kind of stories?”
“They were all private eye things. From old pulp magazines. About a crude detective named Race Williams who carried two big .45s and was always shooting someone in the head with them. And beating up people. The guy showed me his byline on each one. He was very proud of his byline being on them.”
“John D. Carroll?”
The lamplight haloed her blond hair as she shook her head. “No, they were all by Carroll John Daly. He said he used John D. Carroll only once — for one story — but that it was a good name to hide behind. He didn’t want the public to know who he was until after Mickey was dead.”
“What, exactly, did he say Mickey had stolen from him?”
She looked at me, eyes intense. “His style... all the violence and the beatings... he swore that Mike Hammer was really Race Williams and that Mickey had made millions by using his detective, and that he had died broke.”
“Died?”
“You know, in his life before this one.”
“Wow,” I said softly.
“He’s convinced that in his new body he has this cosmic duty to avenge his other self — the one who died back in 1958.”
The guy obviously has a lot of rungs missing in his ladder, I said. “Every writer starts with a role model, another writer he likes to read. And Mickey was probably influenced by Daly’s work. But that’s a long way from outright theft.”
“Not to this guy, it isn’t,” she said.
“How was his stuff — the stories he read from?”
A smile bloomed on her face. That special smile. “It was all terrible crap,” she said.
I phoned my cop friend and had him put out an A.P.B. for the wacko. Then I poured Charlene a Scotch rocks, another for me. We were feeling warm and relaxed, knowing it was over, that they’d pick up the guy soon, probably back at his place on Sunset Crest.
“You did a brave thing tonight, Nick,” she told me. “Coming through that bedroom door to help me, not knowing if the creep was still in here with his gun aimed at you. He could have blown you in half.”
“Stupid is what it was, not brave. But when I heard you whimpering I just had to find out if you were okay. I’m just glad he wasn’t still around.”
“That makes two of us,” she said softly, leaning toward me and kissing me on the chin, cheeks, forehead. Little sex kisses. Meant to arouse me.
I was aroused.
We were downstairs, on one of the thick rugs, with a fire going. She looked great in her pink robe by firelight.
I put down my Scotch, reached for her, folding her tightly into my arms. She felt even better than she looked.
“Remember my T-shirt?” she said with a cat’s smile.
“Who could forget it?”
“Well... what you see is what you get.”
And she slipped out of the robe.
Sometimes, being a lust-crazed private detective has its advantages.
We phoned Mickey at the hotel to let him know Charlene was okay, and he said for us to come on over. He was shooting a commercial at the Marmont, and we could all have a long talk after he finished.
“I thought they shot commercials in the daytime,” I said.
“They do, but this one is special. We gotta do it tonight because of the background.”
“Costs more, doesn’t it?”
“A bundle. The crew’s on golden time. But I let my producer worry about cost. I’m just a hired hand. You coming on over?”