Free The Consummata by Max Allan Collins, Mickey Spillane Page B

smile was friendly back at me.
    “You’re welcome to stay with us, though I can’t imaginewhy under these circumstances you would want to.”
    But I was already signing in. “Hell, friend, I’ll see worse places tomorrow.”
    “Really?” Just a polite response, but with some curiosity in it, too.
    “Yeah. My business is snatching up crappy blocks of buildings for a song, and then holding them until the government shells out for urban renewal projects. This is the closest lodging to where I want to prowl around.”
    That was enough to get his attention, and explain my unlikely preference for this hotel. He’d remember my cover story, I knew, because I noted his shrewd look as he studied me. Maybe he could be part of the next buying parcel , he was thinking.
    I was almost home free, but a fire inspector—he wore a fireman’s helmet and a plainclothes cop’s business suit— caught the tail end of me checking in, and came over to give me a hard time.
    “You don’t want to be checking in here,” he said. He was big and blond and about fifty, with shaggy eyebrows as out of control as the worst fire he ever investigated.
    “Actually, I do,” I said. “I have business near here tomorrow, and there are plenty of undamaged rooms available, well away from what you fellas are looking into.”
    He said he thought I was nuts, and called over a tall, thin cop he called Homer. They talked about me while I stood there placidly, hoping nobody asked me for the I.D. I didn’t have, and that the .45 in my waistband under the gray sport jacket wasn’t bulging at all.
    Then the fire inspector trotted off to handle something more important, while Homer the cop said in a high, husky voice, “Buddy, this place is liable to be closed officially pretty soon.”
    “Tonight?”
    “No, but by tomorrow maybe.”
    I picked up my empty suitcase and looked at him. “Friend,” I said, “where else is there around here to go right now?”
    “Sir....” His voice was pleasant. Too damn pleasant. “There are plenty of other hotels.”
    “In season and right now, without reservations?”
    “So maybe you’ll have to look around a little.”
    “How much got busted out by the blast?”
    “Quite a bit.”
    “But not in the wing I’m in.” I gave him a big boys-will-beboys grin. “Come on, buddy—during the war I was shacked up with a broad in a London flat, and we never stopped going at it, even when the apartment house took a direct hit.”
    The cop let out a half-grudging grunt of appreciation and said, “Awright—suit yourself, mister. I just wanted to warn you what you might be getting yourself into.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “I’m dead on my feet and need to hit the rack. I probably won’t be around that long.”
    But the cop was already wandering off, forgetting all about me.
    So I sat in the room with the .45 in my lap and looked out the window, watching the reflections of nighttime Miami on the overcast sky, a small section of Miami Beach in the farbackground. Down on the street, the curious still milled and two construction trucks were pulling up to the curb to join the fire wagons. Across from the hotel, local TV mobile units had finished their pictures for the late news show and were packing away their gear.
    I got up and went over to the bed and sat on its edge, put the .45 on the nightstand, picked up the phone, and dialed a number, and when a familiar voice answered, I said, “Hello, Bunny.”
    “Morgan?”
    “That’s right. You sound surprised to hear my voice.”
    Maybe she’d put out another contract on her old friend....
    “How’d you get this number?”
    “I got sharp eyes, kid. I read the dial on your phone on your desk.”
    Her voice was low and tremulous—for a cool customer, she was off her game.
    “God, Morgan,” she said, “I heard what happened.”
    “Who from?”
    “It’s all over the radio and TV.”
    “Ah.”
    She didn’t say anything for a second, then: “I know what you must be