Vengeance Is Mine

“I’ll be very careful, Ed. Thanks for the warning.”

I went out through the clatter and pounding beat of the presses and found my car. Already the snow had piled up on the hood, pulling a white blind over the windows. I wiped it off and climbed in.

One thing about the city; it was mechanized to the point of perfection. The snow had been coming down for hours now, yet the roads were passable and getting better every minute. What the plows hadn’t packed down the cars did, with big black eyes of manhole covers steaming malevolently on every block.

By the time I reached the arena outside the Glenwood area I could hear the howling and screaming of the mob. The parking space was jammed and overflowed out onto the street. I found an open spot a few hundred yards down the street that was partially protected by a huge oak and rolled in.

I had missed the first bout, but judging from the stumble-bums that were in there now I didn’t miss much. It cost me a buck for a wall seat so far back I could hardly see through the smoke to the ring. Moisture dripped from the cinder-block walls and the seats were nothing more than benches roughed out of used lumber. But the business they did there was terrific.

It was a usual crowd of plain people hungry for entertainment and willing to pay for it. They could do better watching television if they stayed home. I sat near the door and let my eyes become accustomed to the semidarkness. The last few rows were comparatively empty, giving me a fairly full view of what went on in the aisles.

There was a shout from the crowd and one of the pugs in the ring was counted out. A few minutes later he was carted up the aisle and out into the dressing room. Some other gladiators took their places.

By the end of the fourth bout everybody who was going to be there was there. The two welters who had waltzed through the six rounds went past me into the hall behind the wall trailing their managers and seconds. I got up and joined the procession. It led to a large, damp room lined with cheap metal lockers and wooden plank benches with a shower room spilling water all over the floor. The whole place reeked of liniment and sweat. Two heavies with bandaged hands were playing cards on the bench keeping score with spit marks on the floor.

I walked over to one of the cigar-smoking gents in a brown striped suit and nudged him with a thumb. “Where’s Rainey?”

He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth and said, “Inna office, I guess. You gotta boy here tonight?”

“Naw,” I told him. “My boy’s in bed wita cold.”

“Tough. Can’t maka dime that way.”

“Naw.”

He shifted the cigar back bringing an end to that. I went looking for the office that Rainey was inna. I found it down at the end of the hall. A radio was playing inside, tuned to a fight that was going on in the Garden. There must have been another door leading to the office because it slammed and there was a mumble of voices. One started to swear loudly until another told him to shut up. The swearing stopped. The voices mumbled again, the door slammed, then all I heard was the radio blaring.

I stood there a good five minutes and heard the end of the fight. The winner was telling his story of the battle over the air when the radio was switched off. I opened the door and walked in.

Rainey was sitting at a table counting the receipts for the night, stacking the bills in untidy piles and keeping the tally in a small red book. I had my hand on the knob and shut the door as noiselessly as I could. There was a barrel bolt below the knob and I slid it into the hasp.

If Rainey hadn’t been counting out loud he would have heard me come in. As it was, I heard him go into the five thousand mark before I said, “Good crowd, huh?”

Rainey said, “Shut up,” and went on counting. I said, “Rainey.”

His fingers paused over a stack of fives. His head turned in slow motion until he was looking at me over his shoulder. The padding in his coat obscured the lower half of his face and I tried to picture it through the back window of a sedan racing up Thirty-third Street. It didn’t match, but I didn’t care so much either.

Rainey was a guy you could dislike easily. He had one of those faces that looked painted on, a perpetual mixture of hate, fear and toughness blended by a sneer that was a habit. His eyes were cold, merciless marbles hardly visible under thick, fleshy lids.

Rainey was a tough guy.

I leaned against the door jamb with a cigarette hanging from my lips, one hand in my pocket around the grip of the little .25.

Maybe he didn’t think I had a gun there. His lip rolled up into a snarl and he reached under the table.

I rapped the gun against the door jamb and even through the cloth of the coat you could tell that it was just what it was. Rainey started to lose that tough look. “Remember me, Rainey?”

He didn’t say anything.

I took a long shot in the dark. “Sure, you remember me, Rainey. You saw me on Broadway today. I was standing in front of a plate-glass window. You missed.”

His lower lip fell away from his teeth and I could see more of the marbles that he had for eyes. I kept my hand in my pocket while I reached under the table and pulled out a short-nosed .32 that hung there in a clip.

Rainey finally found his voice. “Mike Hammer,” he said, “What the hell got into you?”

I sat on the edge of the table and flipped all the bills to the floor. “Guess.” Rainey looked at the dough then back to me.

The toughness came back in a hurry. “Get out of here before you get tossed out, copper.” He came halfway out of his seat.

I palmed that short-nosed .32 and laid it across his cheek with a crack that split the flesh open. He rocked back into his chair with his mouth hanging, drooling blood and saliva over his chin. I sat there smiling, but nothing was funny.

I said, “Rainey, you’ve forgotten something. You’ve forgotten that I’m not a guy that takes any crap. Not from anybody. You’ve forgotten that I’ve been in business because I stayed alive longer than some guys who didn’t want me that way. You’ve forgotten that I’ve had some punks tougher than you’ll ever be on the end of a gun and I pulled the trigger just to watch their expressions change.”

He was scared, but he tried to bluff it out anyway. He said, “Why don’tcha try it now, Hammer? Maybe it’s different when ya don’t have a license to use a rod. Go ahead, why dont’cha try it?”

He started to laugh at me when I pulled the trigger of the .32 and shot him in the thigh. He said, “My God!” under his breath and grabbed his leg. I raised the muzzle of the gun until he was looking right into the little round hole that was his ticket to hell.

“Dare me some more, Rainey.”

He made some blubbering noises and leaned over the chair to puke on the money that was scattered around his feet. I threw the little gun on the table. “There’s a man named Emil Perry. If

you go near him again I’ll put the next slug right where your shirt meets your pants.”

I shouldn’t have been so damn interested in the sound of my own voice. I should have had the sense to lock the other door. I should’ve done a lot of things and there wouldn’t have been anybody standing behind me saying, “Hold it, brother, just hold it right there.”

A tall skinny guy came around the table and took a long look at Rainey who sat there too sick to speak. The other one held a gun in my back. The skinny one said, “He’s shot! You bastard, you’ll catch it for this.” He straightened up and backhanded me across the mouth nearly knocking me off the table. “You a heist artist? Answer me, damn you!” The hand lashed out into my mouth again and this time I did go off the table.

The guy with the gun brought it down across the back of my neck throwing a spasm of pain shooting through my head and shoulders. He stood in front of me this time, a short pasty-faced guy with the urge to kill written all over him. “I’ll handle this, Artie. These big boys are the kind of meat I like.”