Free The Last Cop Out by Mickey Spillane Page A

heard of the guy and the card was only used once. We’re checking up on the reference he used when he applied for credit but not hoping for much luck.”
    “That took a lot of preparation, buddy.”
    “Nothing more than you’d expect from a pro, Gill.”
    “A little more,” Burke said. “The usual contract boys don’t like any kind of paperwork, you know that.”
    “Yeah, so this smells a little more businesslike. Either a high-price deal or an organizational endeavor. At least we got a toehold now. Somebody’s going to recognize that photo sooner or later and we’ll get our first break. The lab’s got their specialists working on that negative and if there’s anything that can be brought out, they’ll do it.”
    “Anything from the air terminal?”
    “One big blank, that’s what.” He looked at Gill’s face and scowled. “What’s so damn funny?”
    “The whole bit could be a decoy. He could have even known about that camera. If he was a good pro he could have switched clothes and slapped on a disguise in the men’s room and taken it from there.”
    “Maybe, but that camera had only been there a week.”
    “Then you got your toehold.”
    “We have a better angle, or haven’t you talked to the D.A. yet?”
    “He doesn’t offer me anything at all.”
    “Stanley Holland,” Bill Long told him, “was a very well-kept secret. Now that we know who he was we’re putting the picture together. His activities were known only to a few of the higher-ups in the syndicate and whatever bunch got inside their little plan had to be an extremely well-financed, well-informed group. The L.A. police are really hammering at it and we ought to be getting a break any time.”
    “Good luck,” Gill said.
    “Yeah,” Long muttered. He put the picture back in his pocket and held a match to his cigarette. “Now what have you got?”
    “Nothing concrete yet. Maybe by Wednesday I’ll toss something out at the meeting.”
    “You’d better. There’s a little shit-assed columnist who’s got a mad-on at everybody in uniform who smelled out your participation in this thing?”
    “Meyer Davis?”
    “The same.”
    Gill chuckled in his throat. “He didn’t like that boot in the tail I gave him for the job he did on Joyce Carroll. He nearly loused up my whole case.”
    “Well, he’s sniffing around and he’s got that whole pinko paper behind him.”
    “Another kick in the behind can straighten him out.”
    “You lay off that shit.”
    “Sure, boss.”
    “Quit that shit too.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Come on, Gill.”
    Burke laughed at him. “Okay. See you Wednesday.”

5
     

     
    Calling Willie Armstrong “Junior” was as diminutive as calling Mister Ruth “Babe.” He was a span over six feet, weighed two hundred thirty pounds and could talk like the college graduate which he was or drop into the dialect of a Georgia cotton farmer which his father had been. His teeth were a dazzling white in the blackness of his face, framed in a huge smile as he greeted Gill Burke at the door of his apartment on Lenox Avenue in Harlem.
    “You sure got your nerve coming up here, white boy,” he said.
    Gill gripped his hand and squeezed just as hard. “None of you cats ever give anybody trouble in the morning. You’re all too happy.”
    “We’re tigers, man.”
    “Only when the sun goes down. How’s Cammie?”
    “Great, man. She started making the grits and red eye gravy soon as you called.”
    “I wanted sausages and pancakes, Junior.”
    “All on one plate, buddy. Just like the old days. Remember Looney Mooney, that cook we had in basic training?”
    “Old take-care-of-the-troops Looney Mooney,” Gill said.
    “Right on, friend. Cammie’s cakes makes his look sad, like sad.”
    “Then let’s eat.”
    Over breakfast the three of them recounted the days from when they had seen so much hell together, through their occasional reunions to the present. Junior Armstrong had opened a neighborhood discount house,