Free The Day of the Guns by Mickey Spillane Page A

his eyes were white with the murderous horror of the moment. I shot through the window of the car and saw the driver slam up against the window and watched the car swerve into the others across the street and stand churning a moment before it stalled and the yelling from the windows started.
    You never run. You walk. Nobody pays any attention when you walk near the scene of a killing. They only get civic when you run and not always then, except that they give descriptions. I took my time about lifting the guy’s wallet before easing off down the block and by the time I heard the first siren I was already in a cab headed back toward Times Square and when I reached the Big Intersection I tapped the driver on the shoulder, handed him a buck and told him to let me out.
    Down in the subway station I went into the men’s room, went through the wallet and found thirty-two bucks in small bills stuffed in the money folder and not a card, scrap of paper or anything else. I was almost ready to toss it when I saw it was one of those secret-pocket types with a hidden compartment. I got my finger under the flap of leather, slipped it out and there was a brand-new thousand-dollar bill. I fingered it out, stuck it with the rest in my pocket, went out and tossed the wallet down between the tracks when nobody was watching and went up to the next level where the Coke machine was and had one.

Chapter 9
    At nine P.M. I put a credit-card call through to London and, after a ten-minute wait, got Peter Johnson in our office there. He operated out of a fashionable haberdashery shop near Piccadilly Circus with a crew of four and after a four-month lay-off since the Berlin affair he was glad to get back on an assignment.
    So far, he hadn’t come up with anything on the Caine family outside of what Wally had given me, but was going to dig into the deceased Vernon and Diana Caine to see if there was any possibility of blackmail tactics being used against the Caines because of them. To date his research had been pretty thorough with no tangible results, so he wasn’t especially hopeful about going back into the war years to find something new.
    He did have one interesting piece of news though. In the general backtracking of Rondine Lund he had contacted a former maqui officer who said he had heard that the beautiful Rondine made two successful escapes from her captors at the war’s end, and although he wasn’t certain, he heard later she had been recaptured and shot. At that time she had been caught in a round up of Nazi collaborators when justice had been swift, burial quick and no reference made of identity after the act.
    It wouldn’t have been hard for Rondine to switch identities with some sucker. There were ways of working it. I had done it myself once. An unsuspecting woman gives the name of Rondine Lund and before she knows what’s happening to her it’s over. Exit Rondine, Enter Edith Caine.
    I told Johnson to stay with it until I called and hung up.
    The next call was through a relay and took five minutes before Martin Grady answered. As usual, he simply picked up the phone and held it without speaking, waiting for the caller to make the first move.
    “Tiger here,” I said.
    “Is this necessary?” He had the cool, polished voice of a diplomat, but behind it was all the raw power of the man he was.
    “Yes,” I said. “I need to draw on all the resources. I.A.T.S. and the rest are looking for Vidor Churis. I want him first. He’s in this area.”
    “Time element?”
    “Now. This is a Class One.”
    “I’ll have Newark call. Where can you be reached?”
    “Tomorrow at exactly six P.M. I’ll be at this number.” I read it off to him. “It’s a pay station in the Eighth Avenue subway.”
    I heard the click as the phone went dead, cradled the receiver and stepped out of the booth. In a few minutes from now the power of money would be doing what the power of great government organizations could not. Word would go out on a name