Free Killer Mine by Mickey Spillane Page B

remember? I’m out of my district and I don’t want to make trouble around here.”
    “Screw you, Joe. When you and Larry was kids, you made plenty trouble for everybody. That… that… what you call him?”
    “Chief Crazy Horse,” I said.
    “Yeah him. Nutty Indian. Always wearing them feathers and you want to be a cop. Nobody wanted to play with you, did they?”
    “I always caught the crooks,” I said. I tapped the side of my head. “You had to be smart, even when you were playing.”
    “Now somebody ain’t playing, Joe. They’re going for real.”
    “Well, I’ll see what I can do. Keep it quiet though.” I pushed some change across to him and we finished our beer and left while Fat Mary was still heaping the plates of the customers that were left.
    Getting into René’s old apartment was no trouble. The padlock the landlord had put on opened with a sharp rap from my gun butt and the door swung open. Marta found the light switch and pulled it after making sure the shades were drawn.
    The police had checked the rooms, found nothing, the landlord had made a partial attempt at cleaning it up, emptying the garbage and piling dishes in the sink, so anything of significance would have been destroyed. Like the other apartments, this was typical of a slum section. It was the front half of a partially renovated brownstone building, the flat containing a living room with a battered TV, a pair of worn mohair chairs and a couple of end tables. The bedroom was furnished with a single bed, chair and table. René’s clothes came from a low cost outlet store, all bore the marks of hard usage except for two pairs of expensive shoes that hadn’t been worn at all. The kitchen was a hodgepodge of rickety pieces, the dishes chipped and cracked, the closet over the refrigerator empty. But there had been plenty of groceries in there. The marks showed in the dust where cans had been stacked and a cash register slip caught in a crack was for forty-two dollars. The landlord wasn’t going to leave all that stuff for the next tenant.
    When Marty came back from looking around I asked, “Find anything?”
    “Possibly. Come back in the living room a minute.” She pointed to the floor and indicated a series of scratches that led from one chair to the other. “We know what we’re looking for… so do those mean anything?”
    I got her point. “Somebody dragged that chair up to the other to make a bed?”
    “That’s right. So René did have somebody here.” She looked at me carefully and sat on the arm of the chair. “You see the same picture, don’t you?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Tell it to me.”
    I nodded and started pacing the room. “Nobody who knew better would trust René. It had to be someone who knew him well enough to be able to handle him. René was a sharpie. So let’s say this guy needs a hideout and is prepared to pay. He approaches René who kicks Noisy Stuccio out and takes this guy in. Now René starts sharpshooting. He’s going to try to take this guy for his bundle and sets something up, only he makes a mistake in underestimating his new boarder. The guy gets wise and kills him.
    “That gets us to Noisy Stuccio. People don’t change and Noisy was a mean little punk who never liked to be second rated. He was always in somebody’s business and he would have wanted to know what was going on and somehow he found out who the boarder was. If this guy knew René, then he certainly would have known Noisy. When René was killed Noisy got the score and made his bid for the loot this guy was packing.”
    Marta said, “And wound up the same way.”
    “This guy is a pure psychopath. He’ll kill at the drop of a hat. He’s an old experienced hand with the crazy intuitive values psychos have and can kill without leaving a trace. That’s the most difficult part,” I said. “There doesn’t even have to be a motive. He doesn’t go into wild flight that attracts attention and anybody in his way is simply disposed