Mickey Spillane
THE TWISTED THING
To Sid Graedon, who saw the charred edges
CHAPTER 1
The little guy’s face was a bloody mess. Between the puffballs of blue-black flesh that used to be eyelids, the dull gleam of shock-deadened pupils watched Dilwick uncomprehendingly. His lips were swollen things of lacerated skin, with slow trickles of blood making crooked paths from the corners of his mouth through the stubble of a beard to his chin, dripping onto a stained shirt.
Dilwick stood just outside the glare of the lamp, dangling like the Sword of Damocles over the guy’s head. He was sweating too. His shirt clung to the meaty expanse of his back, the collar wilted into wrinkles around his huge neck. He pushed his beefy hand further into the leather glove and swung. The solid smack of his open hand on the little guy’s jaw was nasty. His chair went over backward and his head cracked against the concrete floor of the room like a ripe melon. Dilwick put his hands on his hips and glared down at the caricature that once was human.
“Take him out and clean ’im up. Then get ’im back here.” Two other cops came out of the darkness and righted the chair. One yanked the guy to his feet and dragged him to the door.
Lord, how I hated their guts. Grown men, they were supposed to be. Four of them in there taking turns pounding a confession from a guy who had nothing to say. And I had to watch it.
It was supposed to be a warning to me. Be careful, it said, when you try to withhold information from Dilwick you’re looking for a broken skull. Take a look at this guy for example, then spill what you know and stick around so I, the Great Dilwick, can get at you when I want you.
I worked up a husky mouthful of saliva and spat it as close to his feet as I could. The fat cop spun on his heel and let his lips fold back over his teeth in a sneer. “You gettin’ snotty, Hammer?”
I stayed slouched in my seat. “Any way you call it, Dilwick,” I said insolently. “Just sitting here thinking.”
Big stuff gave me a dirty grimace. “Thinking . . . you?”
“Yeah. Thinking what you’d look like the next day if you tried that stuff on me.”
The two cops dragging the little guy out stopped dead still. The other one washing the bloodstains from the seat quit swishing the brush over the wicker and held his breath. Nobody ever spoke that way to Dilwick. Nobody from the biggest politician in the state to the hardest apple that ever stepped out of a pen. Nobody ever did because Dilwick would cut them up into fine pieces with his bare hands and enjoy it. That was Dilwick, the dirtiest, roughest cop who ever walked a beat or swung a nightstick over a skull. Crude, he was. Crude, hard and dirty and afraid of nothing. He’d sooner draw blood from a face than eat and everybody knew it. That’s why nobody ever spoke to him that way. That is, nobody except me.
Because I’m the same way myself.
Dilwick let out his breath with a rush. The next second he was reaching down for me, but I never gave him the chance to hook his hairy paws in my shirt. I stood up in front of him and sneered in his face. Dilwick was too damn big to be used to meeting guys eye to eye. He liked to look down at them. Not this time.
“What do you think you’ll do?” he snarled.
“Try me and see,” I said.
I saw his shoulder go back and didn’t wait. My knee came up and landed in his groin with a sickening smash. When he doubled over my fist caught him in the mouth and I felt his teeth pop. His face was starting to turn blue by the time he hit the floor. One cop dropped the little guy and went for his gun.
“Cut it, stupid,” I said, “before I blow your goddamn head off. I still got my rod.” He let his hand fall back to his side. I turned and walked out of the room. None of them tried to stop me.
Upstairs I passed the desk sergeant still bent over his paper. He looked up in time to see me and let his hand snake under the desk. Right then I had my own hand six inches from my armpit practically inviting him to call me. Maybe he had a family at home. He brought his hand up on top of the desk where I could see it. I’ve seen eyes like his peering out of a rat hole when there was a cat in the room. He still had enough I AM THE LAW in him to bluster it out.
“Did Dilwick release you?” he demanded.
I snatched the paper from his hand and threw it to the floor, trying to hold my temper. “Dilwick didn’t release me,” I told him. “He’s downstairs vomiting his guts out the same way you’ll be doing if you pull a deal like that again. Dilwick doesn’t want me. He just wanted me to sit in on a cellar séance in legal torture to show me how tough he is. I wasn’t impressed. But get this, I came to Sidon to legally represent a client who used his one phone call on arrest to contact me, not to be intimidated by a fat louse that was kicked off the New York force and bought his way into the cops in this hick town just to use his position for a rake-off.”
The sergeant started to interrupt, licking his loose lips nervously, but I cut him short. “Furthermore, I’m going to give you just one hour to get Billy Parks out of here and back to his house. If you don’t,” and I said it slowly, “I’m going to call the State’s Attorney and drop this affair in his lap. After that I’ll come back here and mash your damn face to a pulp. Understand now? No habeas corpus, no nothing. Just get him out of here.”
For a cop he stunk. His lower lip was trembling with fear. I pushed my hat on the back of my head and stamped out of the station house. My heap was parked across the street and I got in and turned it over. Damn, I was mad.
Billy Parks, just a nice little ex-con trying to go straight, but do you think the law would help him out? Hell no. Let one thing off-color pop up and they drag him in to get his brains kicked out because he had a record. Sure, he put in three semesters in the college on the Hudson, and he wasn’t too anxious to do anything that would put him in his senior year where it took a lifetime to matriculate. Ever since he wrangled that chauffeur’s job from Rudolph York I hadn’t heard from him . . . until now, after York’s little genius of a son had been snatched.
Rain started to spatter against the windshield when I turned into the drive. The headlights picked out the roadway and I followed it up to the house. Every light in the place was on as if the occupants were afraid a dark corner might conceal some unseen terror.
It was a big place, a product of wealth and good engineering, but in spite of its stately appearance and wrought-iron gates, somebody had managed to sneak in, grab the kid and beat it. Hell, the kid was perfect snatch bait. He was more than a son to his father, he was the result of a fourteen-year experiment. Then, that’s what he got for bringing the kid up to be a genius. I bet he’d shell out plenty of his millions to see him safe and sound.
The front door was answered by one of those tailored flunkies who must always count up to fifty before they open up. He gave me a curt nod and allowed me to come in out of the rain anyway.
“I’m Mike Hammer,” I said, handing him a card. “I’d like to see your boss. And right away,” I added.
The flunky barely glanced at the pasteboard. “I’m awfully sorry, sir, but Mr. York is temporarily indisposed.”
When I shoved a cigarette in my mouth and lit it I said, “You tell him it’s about his kid. He’ll un-indispose himself in a hurry.”
I guess I might as well have told him I wanted a ransom payment right then the way he looked at me. I’ve been taken for a lot of things in my life, but this was the first for a snatch artist. He started to stutter, swallowed, then waved his hand in the general direction of the living room. I followed him in.
Have you ever seen a pack of alley cats all set for a midnight brawl when something interrupts them? They spin on a dime with the hair still up their backs and watch the intruder through hostile eye slits as though they were ready to tear him so they could continue their own fight. An intense, watchful stare of mutual hate and fear.