Thanks to Chloe Tzang and the
The 2021 "Hammered: an Ode to Mickey Spillane" Author Challenge
for inspiring me to send Pete Spector out for another go with the bad guys. Pete lacks Mike Hammer's feral masculinity and comes up short in the body count, but then I'm a mere shadow of Mickey Spillane. I hope Pete's story meets Chloe's intent. It's in Loving Wives because that's where the first Pete Spector story was.
The P.I. Who Came in From the Cold
— §§ —
SQUATTING IN A cardboard box used to deliver a refrigerator was a lousy way to spend a cloudy morning in LA. But there I was, on a fire escape outside a vacant Rosslyn Hotel room. The box gave me cover so I could watch the back door of the hotel kitchen across the access drive between hotel wings.
The hotel was paying me to watch the door because expensive cuts of meat seemed to be walking out of the cooler—more were missing than they were serving. Hotels don't take kindly to those kind of losses. The hotel's manager of food services, Denny Searle, was my contact. He'd arranged for the vacant room behind the cardboard box.
Searle and I disliked each other from the get-go. He tried to look the part of Manager with his Hart Schaffner Marx suit, but his jowls, greasy tie, and saggy belly shouted Food Services. It was obvious that as far as he was concerned, I was nothing but an overpaid snoop. As far as I was concerned he was ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. About the third time he tried to tell me how to do my job I wanted to tell him to shove it, but the hotel was paying me well enough to put up with him.
This was my second day in the box. Nothing out of the ordinary happened the day before. I was glad the room behind me was vacant. I could crawl in the window every few hours and dump the coffee can I was using to get rid of the coffee and Coke I drank to stay awake and grab a few drags of a Lucky. Moving around also seemed to help the bellyache that started last night.
It's almost impossible to describe the day-to-day excitement a of a P.I.'s life.
A pre-war Leica was slung around my neck in case I saw anything worth remembering. I couldn't afford such a good camera, but the client who claimed he couldn't pay me for finding his wife in bed with her boss couldn't wait to give the Leica to me when I explained—in great detail— why my home-grown collection agency was so successful.
A little before 10:00, an old Ford pickup with two guys in it pulled up outside the kitchen's back door and honked twice. A minute later, the door opened and a guy in cook's whites backed out carrying a hunk of meat under each arm (found out later it was two whole prime ribs). As he turned and walked down the steps toward the pickup, a milk truck turned into the alleyway.
I picked up the Leica to start shooting and watched the whole thing unravel through the viewfinder. The cook and the milk truck got to the pickup about the same time. The milk truck stopped just past the pickup and two guys in cheap suits jumped out. Each carried a sawed-off shotgun.
Shooting so fast they must have been slamfiring, they pumped two rounds into the cook and four into the pickup, then jumped back in the milk truck and took off. Six shots. Must've been amateurs, they didn't even take the plugs out.
I shoved the Leica in my jacket pocket and ran down the fire escape to the truck. Six rounds of double-aught buck at that range were plenty. It was hard to tell the prime rib from what was left of the cook, the pickup cab was filled with bloody chunks and pieces. I took a few more pics, then went inside the kitchen to call Lt. Dan Wilkes at LAPD.
Searle stormed into the kitchen while I was dialing. "What the hell happened out there? I thought I heard shots!"
"No shit, Sherlock, they weren't backfires. Your cook and a couple of his buddies got turned into hamburger while he was trying to give them a couple of hunks of beef." Somebody answered the phone at the cop shop just as Searle started to say some more. I held up my hand for him to be quiet. He didn't like that and I didn't care.
"Yeah, this is Pete Spector. I'm a Private Investigator. There's been a shooting at the Rosslyn Hotel, three guys are dead. I need to speak to Lt. Dan Wilkes."
I had to argue with the desk sergeant (or whoever answered the phone) for a couple of minutes before they transferred the call to Wilkes. I needed to tell him what happened, not just any old cop, because we went way back. I wouldn't have to convince Wilkes that I was just a professional observer, and he wouldn't have to convince me to tell him everything as truthfully and accurately as possible.
Wilkes came on the line, but before I had a chance to say anything Searle's temper got the best of him. "I don't give a good goddam about Burge or his pals. He's queer as a three-dollar bill, but he's a helluva good line cook so I keep him on. The cops can try to catch whoever knocked off those guys, but we don't need you anymore. Now gimme the fucking phone."
When he tried to grab the phone, I slammed his hand down on the stainless-steel counter and smashed the back with the handset as hard as I could. Doing it felt so good I bashed it again and heard some of the bones crack. He screeched and squealed like a pig caught by a hind leg.
"Be with you in a minute, Wilkes, gotta take care of a little matter here." I didn't bother to put my hand over the phone.
"Next time you try to grab something from me, Mac, I'll break your goddamn arm. Maybe both of 'em. Get smart for a change and go somewhere else until I finish talking with the cops. Or maybe you want I should lose my temper?" He tried to stare me down, then walked away cursing and holding his wrecked hand. I'd made an enemy and I still didn't care.
"Yeah, Wilkes, we got a situation down here at the Rosslyn. Three guys shot up with double-aught buck. Don't need an ambulance, just the meat wagon and a bunch of gunny sacks." I told him about being hired to watch the kitchen back door, where I'd staked it out, and how the shooting happened. Until I finished, his only response was to ask me once to slow down so he could take notes. That and a couple of wise-ass cracks about how I probably whiled away the hours in the refrigerator box. I told him to shove it, there's no hair on the palm of my hands.
"You know the drill, Spector. Stick around 'til I get there with the crime scene boys and the ME." He showed up with the ever-present chewed-up, unlit cigar jammed in the corner of his mouth. I went through the scenario again in more detail, this time pointing to visual aids. After we finished, I wound the film back in the cassette and gave it to him.
"Those'll give you a good idea of how it came down, but don't think they'll help much. Had to be a stolen milk truck. I was a good hundred feet away and no telephoto lens, so their faces'll be pretty small." Wilkes was still happy to take the film, and agreed to give me a set of prints and ID the dead cook as soon as he knew. He didn't even bother to tell me not to leave town.
I didn't feel like going to my office after that. No need to let anyone know, I didn't have a full-time secretary. My first one left last year after a couple of East Coast mobsters grabbed her and her daughter in my office, planning to rape and murder them. The two mugs were shot dead by some rival mobsters who managed to disappear without being seen. I was disappointed, but not surprised when she left a few days later for parts unknown.
I went back to my apartment instead. I'd moved as soon as I could afford to get out of my former one-room dump. The new place wasn't part of a big house broken up into so-called apartments, it was in a real-life apartment house. The entryway didn't stink of stale urine and cigars, it smelled faintly of Pine-Sol. The carpet on the stairs was worn but not threadbare, only one light bulb was burned out. All in all, a first-class joint.
My ground-floor apartment had twice as many rooms as the old place—two—plus its own bathroom with a toilet that usually flushed and a shower. The bedroom was small, the kitchenette was a stretch of counter with a sink and a few cabinets, but there was room for a stove and refrigerator that worked and a small table with two chairs.
I fixed myself a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup—the extent of my cooking skills—and washed it down with a Nehi Orange. I tried not to think how much better a beer would have tasted, then lay down for a nap. It was past 3 o'clock when I woke up. I went out in the hall and dug a copy of yesterday's
Times
out of a trash can, and spent the rest of the afternoon reading it and doing the crossword. My belly had started aching again so I didn't feel like eating anything. I re-read the obits to make sure I wasn't in them, then went to bed.
Down the block from my new digs were a diner and dry cleaner instead of a hock shop and whorehouse. I grabbed a quick breakfast at the diner, then headed for my office. It was the same three rooms—counting the tiny bathroom—I'd had ever since I opened shop. I'd managed to find enough paying clients since then to replace the broken-down furniture from sidewalk junk piles with half-way decent used pieces from honest-to-God furniture stores.
The secretary's chair in the outer office almost matched the desk. A couple of guest chairs without any upholstery tears sat against the wall opposite the outside door, the coffee pot worked so well that even I could fix a drinkable cup. The window was dirty but had real curtains.
The inner office still sported my old desk, but I'd fixed and cleaned it up until it looked half-way decent. Two fairly comfortable guest chairs sat in front of it, a presentable couch was pushed against one wall, a couple of pictures of Yosemite and Death Valley decorated the plain walls. The card table and folding chairs I'd called my conference table were gone because I never used them, the coffee table in front of the couch was genuine wood that took a nice polish. The place almost looked like the office of somebody who was more or less successful.
I didn't always need someone in the office, so when I did I used temps from Kelly Girl. After making a pot of coffee, I'd just leaned back in my chair with my feet on the desk to read the morning
Times
when the phone rang. I lurched forward and smacked my feet on the floor. Damn! If I'd called for a secretary she could have taken the call.
"Spector Investigations, this is Pete Spector." A young lady with a sweet voice was on the other end.
