The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 (81 page)

My eyes cleared and I pushed myself up on an elbow. There was a loose, empty feeling in my joints. The end was right there ahead of me and nothing I could do about it.

Lily smiled again, the end of the .45 drifting down to my stomach. She laughed at me, knowing I could raise myself to reach for it. My mouth was dry. I wanted a cigarette. It was all I could think about. It was something a guy about to die always got. My fingers found the deck of Luckies, fumbled one loose and got it into my mouth. I could barely feel it laying there on my lips.

“You shouldn’t have killed him,” Lily said again.

I reached for the lighter. It wasn’t going to be long now. I could feel things start to loosen up. My mind was having trouble hearing her. One more shot. It would be quick.

“Mike ...”

I got my eyes open. She was a strong, pungent smell. Very strong. Still lovely though.

“I thought I almost loved you once. More than ... him. But I didn’t Mike. He would take me like I was. He was the one who gave me life, at least, after ... it happened. He was the doctor. I was the patient. I loved him. You would have been disgusted with me. I can see your eyes now, Mike. They would have been revolted.

“He was deadly too, Mike ... but not like you. You’re even worse. You’re the deadly one, but you would have been revolted. Look at me, Mike. How would you like to kiss me now? You wanted to before. Would you like to now? I wanted you to ... you know that, don’t you? I was afraid to even let you touch me. You wanted to kiss me ... so kiss me.”

Her fingers slipped through the belt of the robe, opened it. Her hands parted it slowly ... until I could see what she was really like. I wanted to vomit worse than before. I wanted to let my guts come up and felt my belly retching.

She was a horrible caricature of a human! There was no skin, just a disgusting mass of twisted, puckered flesh from her knees to her neck making a picture of gruesome freakishness that made you want to shut your eyes against it.

The cigarette almost fell out of my mouth. The lighter shook in my hand, but I got it open.

“Fire did it, Mike. Do you think I’m pretty now?”

She laughed and I heard the insanity in it. The gun pressed into my belt as she kneeled forward, bringing the revulsion with her. “You’re going to die now ... but first you can do it. Deadly ... deadly ... kiss me.”

The smile never left her mouth and before it was on me I thumbed the lighter and in the moment of time before the scream blossoms into the wild cry of terror she was a mass of flame tumbling on the floor with the blue flames of alcohol turning the white of her hair into black char and her body convulsing under the agony of it. The flames were teeth that ate, ripping and tearing, into scars of other flames and her voice the shrill sound of death on the loose.

I looked, looked away. The door was closed and maybe I had enough left to make it.

About the Author

A bartender’s son,
Mickey Spillane
was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 9, 1918. An only child who swam and played football as a youth, Spillane got a taste for storytelling by scaring other kids around the campfire. After a truncated college career, Spillane—already selling stories to pulps and slicks under pseudonyms—became a writer in the burgeoning comic-book field, a career cut short by World War II. Spillane, who had learned to fly at air strips as a boy, became an instructor of fighter pilots.

After the war, Spillane converted an unsold comic-book project—“Mike Danger, Private Eye”—into a hard-hitting, sexy novel. The thousand-dollar advance was just what the writer needed to buy materials for a house he wanted to build for himself and his young wife on a patch of land in New Jersey.

The 1948 Signet reprint of his 1947 E.P. Dutton hardcover novel
I, the Jury
sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries that soon followed; all but one featured hard-as-nails PI. Mike Hammer. The Hammer thriller
Kiss Me, Deadly
(1952) was the first private eye novel to make the
New York Times
bestseller list.

Mike Hammer’s creator claims only to write when he needs the money, and in periods of little or no publishing, Spillane has been occupied with other pursuits: flying, traveling with the circus, appearing in motion pictures, and nearly twenty years spoofing himself and Hammer in a lucrative series of Miller Lite beer commercials.

The controversial Hammer has been the subject of a radio show, a comic strip, two television series, and numerous gritty movies, notably director Robert Aldrich’s seminal film noir
Kiss Me Deadly
(1955) and
The Girl Hunters
(1963), starring Spillane as his famous hero.

Spillane has been honored by the Mystery Writers of America with the Grand Master Award, and with the Private Eye Writers of America “Eye” Lifetime Achievement Award; he is also a Shamus Award winner. A major motion picture is in development of the science-fiction revival of his comic book character “Mike Danger” (cocreated by Max Allan Collins). Spillane lives with his wife, Jane, in South Carolina.