Killer Mine by Mickey Spillane Read Free Book Online

the familiar things reestablish themselves. On the side of Carmine’s grocery I ran my hand over the deeply carved initials Larry and I had put there with Doug Kitchen’s and René Mills’ underneath. A dozen layers of paint had not been enough to fill them in. At the school yard where Noisy Stuccio and Hymie Shapiro had sat in the cab of the rubbish truck and accidentally knocked it into gear the long gash still showed in the brick wall.
    All dead now, I thought. We had all scrambled over rooftops together, saved empty deposit bottles for Saturday movies, reenacted those same pictures in the park, turning from cowboys and Indians into soldiers or cops and robbers, depending on what had played. Maybe the pattern had started then. Larry ate up the Indian roles. He even had a headdress and a tomahawk. At nine I was the cop. Noisy, Hymie and René went the George Raft route and fancied themselves hotshot mobsters. Doug Kitchen wanted to be a sailor, only they hardly ever had Navy movies unless they were musical comedies, and Doug felt like he had two left feet all the time.
    And Marta… little Giggie… trailed us around throwing rocks at us because she was a girl and didn’t belong in the game. I grinned and felt the tiny scar at my hairline where she connected one time. She got a boot in the tail for that one and ran home bawling.
    It was one-thirty when I turned the corner and walked toward the spot where Doug Kitchen had died. Down farther, across the street, a pair of drunks argued noisily about nothing; on the stoops here and there couples huddled in the darkness, taking advantage of the only time there was any privacy at all. A few loud voices bellowed from behind closed windows in the upper apartments, sounds that never seemed to change in volume or subject matter. On my side, coming toward me, a late-shift worker ambled along watching his feet until another person stepped out of the shadows, said something that made him hesitate a few seconds before he kept walking, while the other one went back into the shadows.
    He passed me without anything more than a glance while I kept walking to where he had the contact, and when I reached there the girl stepped out of her spot beside the balustrade, handbag swinging, voice deliberately provocative, and said, “In a hurry, mister?”
    “Nope.”
    “I could be company if you want to go somewhere.”
    “Sounds good,” I said. “How much?”
    I sensed her smile, and saw the way she thrust her body out to accentuate her breasts and hips. “Ten’ll get you more than you have a right to expect.”
    “Deal, kid,” I said. Then I took a cigarette out, stuck it between my lips and fired it up. When she saw my face her breath was sucked in so hard she nearly choked. “Hello, Paula,” I said.
    Paula Lees’ face was a pale oval in the yellow light of the match. Her mouth started to quiver, and for a second I thought she was going to make a break for it so I reached out and took her arm. She shook her head and almost whispered, “Please…”
    “You could take a fall, Paula. Soliciting… a vag rap. Maybe eighteen months in detention.”
    She caught the implication of that one word… could. “What… do you want, Mr. Scanlon?”
    “Where’s your place?”
    Paula looked back over her shoulder. “Right here.”
    “Let’s go inside then.”
    The tiny flat was typical of all the others around it, existing within a myriad of smells both human and vegetable. The walls were scratched and dirty, the paper peeling, the plaster cracked, and no attempt at rejuvenation could dent the squalor of the place.
    Her apartment consisted of two rooms and a bathroom someone had made out of a closet, a combination living room and kitchen with an adjoining bedroom. Paula didn’t get the picture straight. She headed for the bedroom immediately and started to undress. She had her blouse and bra off and the zipper down on her skirt when I said, “Put them back on, kid.”
    She jerked her