Free Killer Mine by Mickey Spillane

experience.
    To add to it, I shoved him in the corner and made it quick. I made it loud enough so the bartender would hear it and let it go out on that grapevine that was faster than Western Union and said, “Fat boy… there’s a girl named Paula Lees that you lay off.” I looked over at Loefert and knew he was listening to every word. “If you… or anybody… bothers her I’ll take your ears off. Now I’m not speaking figuratively. I mean take your ears off. One day see Fuchie. Remember him? Remember that goatee he had? Know what his chin looks like now? I did that, fat boy, and the same I’ll do to your ears. Yell all you want and it’ll be like old times in the Tombs with the rubber hose and the hard cell. Think we can’t do it that way now and you aren’t thinking straight.”
    I gave Al Reese one hard shot in the kidneys with my fist to punctuate the argument and all the breath went out of him in a long sigh and Loefert turned eyes of pure hate my way while the others played it cool and just looked away.
    But they got the message.
    Paula Lees got her freedom.
    It was that easy. So far.
    I was a cop coming home to his old turf who didn’t like what he saw and decided to clean it up. I could hit the punks and take care of the unfortunate. Word would go out and maybe talking to them would be easier. Maybe.
    At six I knocked at Marty’s door and heard her run across the room to answer it. She had changed into a skirt and blouse, let her hair down, and the welcome home smile she gave me sent that feeling back into my stomach again. I could smell the coffee and hear chops sizzling in the kitchen and went in licking my lips.
    “Hungry, Joe?” She saw my expression and added, “Don’t answer that,” with an even bigger smile. “Grab a beer out of the fridge. Everything’ll be ready in a minute.”
    Damn, my place was never like this.
    We ate with a peculiar intimacy neither of us wanted to mention, but it hung in the air like a wild perfume. We talked about little things, both of us prolonging the moments we had until it came to an end over coffee. Marty poured a second cup and said, “The boys will kick you out of the club if they know you’ve been consorting with girls.”
    “No more. Most of them are dead.”
    “Strange, isn’t it?” She put the pot back on the stove and sat down. “Time goes so fast. I can remember chasing you and Larry, trying to get into the game… you sending me on stupid errands so I’d get lost or Larry making like he was going to scalp me with that tomahawk…”
    “I was thinking of him before,” I said.
    “You miss him, don’t you?”
    “We were pretty close. We were those kind of brothers.” I shrugged. “Life, kid.”
    “I know.”
    It had to end sooner or later so I said, “Finish your check today?”
    She regretted the sudden switch as much as I did and nodded ruefully, her attitude suddenly professional. “Verbal?”
    “That’ll do.”
    “Murphy had the most to contribute,” she told me. “He has some people inside their ranks and the word is that there is something hot brewing. The top men are pretty disturbed about something and have been doing a lot of traveling between New York and Chicago. Looked like a high-level series of meetings. There is a definite connection with the mob here and upstate… they’re looking out for Gus Wilder, all right, but that factor isn’t of prime importance. It’s something else… and that nobody is talking about.”
    “Still leaves us guessing,” I said.
    “Not quite. Orders that came from one of those meetings directed Loefert, Fater and Steve Lutz into this area. We concentrate on them, and we might find out something.”
    “Those guys don’t break very easily,” I reminded her.
    “Somewhere, they always have a chink in the armor, don’t they?”
    “Always,” I grinned. She was beginning to think like a beat cop now and not a social worker.
    “Then how do we start?”
    “With the first kills. It’s