Free The Long Wait by Mickey Spillane Page A

it.”
    â€œYou ought to have an opinion on it, Logan. What is it?”
    I saw his lips come back in a sneer. “I’ve covered murder cases, I’ve seen kids who were raped on the streets, I watched them pull young mangled bodies from the wrecks of cars that had a drunk at the wheel, I’ve had to live under laws set up by a pack of ignorant bastards who take all the cream and throw the rest to the people who vote for them. Now you know what my opinion is.”
    â€œWho runs the town now?”
    â€œBalls.”
    â€œI mean it.”
    â€œWho the hell knows?”
    â€œYou should know, you’re a newspaperman,” I said.
    â€œYeah, I should know, a lot of things. Look, feller, whoever is at the top pulling the strings does it under the nicest cover you ever saw. There’s more money in this town than you can imagine, but it isn’t going down into any books. We’ve had the feds in here and boys from the attorney general’s office trying to get to the bottom of it and they all come up shaking their heads.
    â€œA lot of people try to put it on Servo, but he’s clean. He pays his taxes and stays out of trouble. They try it on the mayor and the city council and what happens? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nobody knows from nothing.”
    He stopped abruptly and looked at me sidewise. “What are you getting at?”
    â€œNothing special.” We were in the center of town by then and slowing down for another light. “Let me out on the corner, Logan.”
    He pulled in to the curb and stopped. I swung out of the car and slammed the door shut. He said, “If you stay alive long enough to find out anything, you can reach me at the office.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAnd I’m going to backtrack over your story, you know.”
    â€œI expected that.”
    â€œWhere can I find you?”
    I laughed at him. “You can’t, pal. I’ll find you. If I’m still alive, that is.”
    I watched him pull away into traffic, then went into a joint and had a beer. The place was called Little Bohemia and had a blue sign in the window. There were slots all around the walls going full blast, an ornate juke box to drown out the sound of more money going into them than was coming out, a sheet-covered roulette wheel and two crap tables in the back and a chrome and plastic bar forming a huge oval in the center of the place.
    Beer was two-bits a throw.
    A sign said something about not serving minors, but I’d like to have a buck for every overpainted chippy in the place who hadn’t seen eighteen yet. Most of them were there for strictly one reason, sipping their drinks until they found a sucker to finance some faster drinking.
    I had my beer and went next door where there was no blue sign in the window. Beer was a dime, but there weren’t any customers, either. The bartender was feeding the relic of a slot machine until he saw me. I said, “Where’d that come from?”
    â€œBoss had it in his cellar ever since Prohibition. What’ll you have?”
    â€œBeer. Where’s the crowd?”
    â€œYou new around here?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œOh. They come in later. They get squeezed outa the other joints or run out of dough. Then we get ’em here.”
    â€œYou ought to get in some slots.”
    â€œYeah, tell that to the boss. He’s one of them rugged individuals, he is.”
    â€œHe won’t play Servo’s game, hey?”
    â€œI thought you was new around here.”
    â€œHell, this town makes the news all over.”
    â€œYeah. Another beer?”
    â€œOne more.” He set it up for me, had one with me, then I asked, “Look, maybe you can help me out. I’m looking for a girl named Vera West. She’s a relative of mine, see? About five years ago she got in some kind of a jam at the bank here in town, then went to the dogs. She used to go around with Servo.”
    The bartender