It's in the Book by Mickey Spillane Read Free Book Online

this part of town, where gunshots were commonplace, who needed .22 autos with silencers? The big guy fell back to be framed in the doorway like another work of East Village art, and Flavio took two more steps inside, training his .357 on both of us, as young Nick and I were clustered together.
    Flavio, in his comically high-pitched voice, said, “Is that the book? Give me that goddamned book !”
    â€œTake it,” Nick said, frowning, more disgusted than afraid, and stepped forward, holding out the small, thick volume, blocking me as he did.
    I used that to whip the .45 out from under my shoulder, and I shoved the kid to the floor and rode him down, firing up.
    Flavio may have had a .357, but that’s a card a .45 trumps easy, particularly if you get the first shot off, and even more so if you make it a head shot that cuts off any motor action. What few brains the bastard had got splashed in a shower of bone and blood onto his startled pal’s puss, and the Neanderthal reacted like he’d been hit with a gory pie, giving me the half second I needed to shatter that protruding forehead with a slug and paint an abstract picture on the brick out in that landing, worthy of any East Village gallery.
    Now Nick was scared, taking in the bloody mess on his doorstep. “Jesus, man! What are you going to do?”
    â€œCall a cop. You got a phone?”
    â€œYeah, yeah, call the cops!” He was pointing. “Phone’s over there.”
    I picked the sheepskin-covered book up off the floor. “No—not the cops. A cop.”
    And I called Pat Chambers.
    I didn’t call Sonny Giraldi until I got back to the office around three a.m. I had wanted to get that book into my office safe.
    The heir to the old don’s throne pretended I’d woken him, but I knew damn well he’d been waiting up to hear from his boys. Or maybe some cop in his pocket had already called to say the apartment invasion in the East Village had failed, in which case it was unlikely Sonny would be in the midst of a soothing night’s sleep when I used the private number he’d provided me.
    Cheerfully I asked, “Did you know that your boy Flavio and his slopehead buddy won a free ride to the county morgue tonight?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI sent them there. Just like you sent them to the Burrows kid’s apartment. They’d been following me, hadn’t they? I really must be getting old. Velda caught it, but I didn’t.”
    The radio-announcer voice conveyed words in a tumble. “Hammer, I didn’t send them. They must be working for one of my rivals or something. I played it absolutely straight with you, I swear to God.”
    â€œNo, you didn’t. You wanted me to lead you to the book, and whoever had it needed to die, because they knew what was in it, and I had to die, too, just to keep things tidy. Right? Who would miss an old broken-down PI like me, anyway?”
    â€œBelieve me, Hammer, I—”
    â€œI don’t believe you, Sonny. But you can believe me.”
    Actually, I was about to tell him a whopper, but he’d never know.
    I went on: “This book will go in a safe deposit box in some distant bank and will not come out again until my death. If that death is nice and peaceful, I will leave instructions that the book be burned. If I have an unpleasant going away party, then that book will go to the feds. Understood?”
    â€œUnderstood.”
    â€œAnd the Burrows woman and her son, they’re out of this. Any harm befalls either one, that book comes out of mothballs and into federal hands. Capeesh?”
    â€œCapeesh,” he said glumly.
    â€œThen there’s the matter of my fee.”
    â€œYour fee! What the hell—”
    â€œSonny, I found the book for you. You owe me one-hundred grand.”
    His voice turned thin and nasty. “I heard a lot of bad things about you, Hammer. But I never heard you were a blackmailing