Free The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 by Mickey Spillane

chain.
    “Oscar hasn’t called back,” he said dully. “I don’t know what to do.” He looked first at Pat, then to me. “Are you a policeman, Mr. Hammer?”
    “Just call me Mike. No, I’m not a city cop. I have a Private Operator’s ticket and that’s all.”
    “Mike’s been in on a lot of big stuff, Lee,” Pat cut in. “He knows his way around.”
    “I see.” He was talking to me again. “I suppose Pat told you that so far this whole affair has been kept quiet?” I nodded and he went on. “I hope it can stay that way, though if it must come out, it must. I’m leaving it all to the discretion of Pat here. I—well, I’m really stumped. So much has happened in so short a time I hardly know where I’m at.”
    “Can I hear it from the beginning?” I asked.
    Lee Deamer bobbed his head slowly. “Oscar and I were born in Townley, Nebraska. Although we were twins, we were worlds apart. In my younger days I thought it was because we were just separate personalities, but the truth was ... Oscar was demented. He was a sadistic sort of person, very sly and cunning. He hated me. Yes, he hated me, his own brother. In fact, Oscar seemed to hate everyone. He was in trouble from the moment he ran off from home until he came back, then he found more trouble in our own state. He was finally committed to an institution.
    “Shortly after Oscar was committed I left Nebraska and settled in New York. I did rather well in business and became active in politics. Oscar was more or less forgotten. Then I learned that he had escaped from the institution. I never heard from him again until he called me last week.”
    “That’s all?”
    “What else can there be, Mike? Oscar probably read about me in the papers and trailed me here. He knew what it would mean if I was known to have a brother who wasn’t quite ... well, normal. He made a demand for money and told me he’d have it one way or another.”
    Pat reached for the shaker and filled the glasses again. I held mine out and our eyes met. He answered my question before I could ask it. “Lee was afraid to mention Oscar, even when he was identified as the killer of Maffit. You can understand why, can’t you?”
    “Now I can,” I said.
    “Even the fact that Lee was identified, although wrongly, would have made good copy. However, the cop on the beat brought the witnesses in before they could speak to the papers and the whole thing was such an obvious mistake that nobody dared take the chance of making it public.”
    “Where are the witnesses now?”
    “We have them under surveillance. They’ve been instructed to keep quiet about it. We checked into their backgrounds and found that all of them were upright citizens, plain, ordinary people who were as befuddled as we were about the whole thing. Fortunately, we were able to secure their promise of silence by proving to them where Lee was that night. They don’t understand it, but they were willing to go along with us in the cause of justice.”
    I grunted and pulled on the cigarette. “I don’t like it.”
    Both of them looked at me quickly. “Hell, Pat, you ought to smell the angle as well as I do.”
    “You tell me, Mike.”
    “Oscar served his warning,” I said. “He’ll make another stab at it. You can trap him easily enough and you know it.”
    “That’s right. It leaves one thing wide open, too.”
    “Sure it does. You’ll have another Lee Deamer in print and pictures, this one up for a murder rap which he will skip because he’s nuts.” Lee winced at the word but kept still.
    “That’s why I wanted you here,” Pat told me.
    “Fine. What good am I?”
    The ice rattled against the side of his glass. Pat tried to keep his voice calm. “You aren’t official, Mike. My mind works with the book. I know what I should do and I can’t think of anything else.”
    “You mean you want me to tell you that Oscar should be run down and quietly spirited away?”
    “That’s right.”
    “And I’m the boy