The By-Pass Control

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Copyright, ©, 1966 by Mickey Spillane

eISBN : 978-1-101-17456-2

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a article written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast. For information address E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 2 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

 

SIGNET, SIGNET CLASSIC, MENTOR, PLUME, MERIDIAN AND NAL
BOOKS
are published by New American Library,
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First Signet Printing, May, 1967

 

 

The guy was as good as dead and knew it. Crouched there on the floor he looked like a shapeless bundle and only a bloodied face with still-hard bright eyes marked him as a man. His breath came in short, sobbing gasps and he tried to keep his guts in with both hands pressed to his stomach. The knife he had used on me was still within reach in front of him, but he wasn’t thinking of making a try for it. All he could hope for was that I would bleed to death before he would, yet he knew that wouldn’t happen.

And I was on my feet with the cocked .45 in my fist grinning down at him.

I let my eyes leave his for an instant and drift to the partially closed door behind him where there were three dead men strapped to tables in a soundproofed room whose deaths had been horrible things because they wouldn’t talk easily and when they did, died anyway for the pleasure of a butcher.

Two were from a Washington agency. One was my project partner.

Oh, they had talked all right. Vito Salvi knew his work well. Besides a natural aptitude, he had been well trained in Moscow and provided with all the modern luxuries chemical and electronic development could offer torture-induced conversation and he had used them to the ultimate end.

But when it comes his turn to face the big, black thing that lies beyond life, when the butcher is suddenly caught in his own grinder, the maggots show in his eyes and he gives off a livid smell as they crawl out his skin in one last attempt to escape an absolute certainty.

“You’ve had it, buddy,” I said.

He choked a little and blinked away the blood that was streaming into his eyes from the massive slash across his forehead. “No. No ... it is your own law....”

I never stopped grinning and knew what I must look like to him. “I don’t choose to recognize it.”

“You will be ...”

“Prosecuted?” My grin went wider and I leveled the rod, enjoying the moment. “Somebody screwed up your thinking, Vito. An inquiry, that’s all. Three men killed by an enemy agent who has a cash reward on his head from two countries... and I’m just a bystander who happened to bust up the party and caught a little hell of my own. These things don’t get to court and you damn well know it. You found out what two of those men knew and it won’t do you a bit of good and even though the Washington boys hate my guts I’ll walk out with clean hands for being an enterprising and courageous citizen when they hear the story. Your headquarters won’t even know you’re gone until time gets the message across. Then you simply get checked off the rolls.”

“They said...”

“I know. They spilled. You got the works from them and you know it, only you took too long killing them to transmit the information and now it’s too late.”

He still tried. They all try. They have to. “You could... arrest me,” he said.

“Uh-uh. It’s better this way. Then there’s no trouble. It’s all over and done with. The slate is clean, another Red is out of the way and our Kremlin counterparts are as ignorant as before. We’ll be a little more careful the next time too.”

I had the .45 centered right in the middle of his forehead.

Vito Salvi, who was credited with fourteen confirmed kills of our people, didn’t even seem to notice it. The recesses of his mind had dredged up a last possible out and his eyes were fiery marbles tainted with cunning as he said, “I could give you valuable... knowledge. A doctor... put me in the hands of your police. I can tell them many things. My purpose here was ... twofold. It was not only to extract from those two men.... There was another reason... more urgent. Your police would want to know....” “So talk. Vito, I’ll judge its importance.”

The last hope was there, glowing strongly in the agonized contortions of his face. He talked for two minutes and what he said was like another blade, still wet from my own blood, going into my flesh again.

He talked and when he said all there was to be said, I shot him flat between the eyes that slammed his body over in a full roll against the wall where he jerked once before he was still.

Then I picked up the phone and dialed the downtown number of the New York bureau of I.A.T.S. and told them where I was.

 

They interrogated me on the scene—two quietly outraged men who headed the newest and tightest security branch of all the Washington agencies and two hard-looking field men who were curiously expressionless until I described the final killing of Vito Salvi without mentioning his last statement. Only then did they register the slightest sign of satisfaction, knowing damn well that the one who had killed their associates hadn’t died easily. They knew my reputation and it was too big and too real to let someone like Salvi take the big fall the quick way.

They let me finish, then Hal Randolph said, “Typical Tiger Mann trademark.”

I shrugged. “How would you like me to have done it?”

He looked at me closely, following the pattern the way I knew he would, then walked over to the body by the wall and stared at it a few seconds. “Let’s start from the beginning, Mann. Like from where you came into this.”

The others were watching me now and the two field men had black notebooks in their hands. When I spoke they took everything down verbatim in shorthand. “Sure,” I said. “The other dead guy is Doug Hamilton, one of ours. He runs a legitimate private investigation agency out of New York here. • • •

“Legitimate?”

“You can check it fast enough,” I told him. “Martin Grady had him on retainer for three years doing routine security work for Belt-Aire Electronics, a company he owns. Under his government contracts it was required, so ...”

“We’re familiar with Belt-Aire. Where do you come in, Tiger?”

“A week ago Hamilton disappeared. I was on hand, so I got orders to look into it.” I nodded toward the room on the side. “I tracked him here.”

“How?”

“His car was missing. I reported it to the police and they recovered it. Inside was a notebook that had this address listed, among others. It was as simple as that.”

“What others?”

“Simple business addresses. I checked them all out.”

“I see,” Randolph finally mused. “So you came here and walked into—” he waved his hand around the room—“this. Just like that.”

“Not quite. I don’t stick my head into holes. Hamilton could have been involved in anything and I’m too old a pro in this business to take chances. I cased the place from all sides and came down from the roof.”

“Then how did you know what apartment to hit?”

“Somebody spent a lot of time and trouble sealing up one window on the side with brick. They weren’t very neat and left some pieces of material used in soundproofing rooms in the courtyard outside. This place is totally unoccupied like the ones beside it and no bum or scrounger holing up in here is throwing money into renovations like that.”

Both the young guys looked up from their notebooks with a small touch of respect in their faces. One said, “You could have called the police.”

“I didn’t think there was that much time. There weren’t mere than a half dozen lights showing along the entire block and it was doubtful any of those places had phones.”

“Wasn’t it foolish coming in alone?”

I grinned at him then and my mouth hurt from where the cut opened in the corner. “I wasn’t alone,” I told him and pointed to the .45 where they had laid it on the table under a handkerchief.

Hal Randolph turned abruptly, his hands clasped behind his back. He was a big guy, heavy-set, with a florid face that never seemed to lose its mad. He didn’t like me and his pet hate was Martin Grady, but now he was caught in the trap his own bureaucratic secrecy demanded of him. “You recognized Vito Salvi, then, didn’t you?”

I nodded and leaned back in the chair, trying to wipe the taste of blood out of my mouth. “We had met before,” I said, not committing myself any further.

“You knew who he was,” he insisted.

“Sure. So do you. That’s why I killed him. And don’t ask why I didn’t hold him. I was lucky as it was. I had just picked the lock and got into this room when he came out of the other and if you take a good look at that door you’d see it wasn’t going to be forced easily. Inside there was another exit he could have gotten through if he knew I was here. That bastard knew all the tricks of infighting with knives and guns....”