Don't Look Behind You by Mickey Spillane

my old friend.
    “Well…” Hy started. He paused and stared into his thoughts, flicking off further expensive, illegal ash from his cigar. “…it’s a little thing, but there might be one item of interest. Of possible pertinence. But I don’t see the connection to you, Mike.”
    “Let me be the judge,” I said.
    The columnist grunted a laugh. “Why not? You’ve been the jury often enough.”
    That made Velda smile.
    He sipped a little bourbon. “I know this oldtime PR guy… well,
knew
him, he’s dead now… who was working on the story of his life. We went way back, and he used to feed me items, so… Anyway, last year, before the
Trib
closed its doors, he called wanting to have lunch with me. I said great, love to, talk old times and so on. In a way I hated it, though, because I’d have to lie to him about what a fine idea writing a book on his life story was. Either that, or break it to him that he was just another nobody who nobody heard of, who thinks his life mattered. I mean, how do you break it to a guy who fought his way across Europe that Audie Murphy beat him to it? Like people were out there just waiting with bated breath to read the life story of somebody they never heard of.”
    As Hy paused for another sip of bourbon, Velda asked, “And was that the case with your old friend?”
    He shook his head. “Not at all. I couldn’t have been wronger. This was a guy who spent forty years in the trenches of the New York show business scene, and he knew where all the bodies were buried, and who put them there. Everything from abortions to homosexuality to… mob ties. I warned him there could be legal repercussions, or
worse
… but he said at his age, he didn’t give a damn. Anyway, he was going to back up his memories with some hard research, to make sure the lawyers wouldn’t be scared off and a publisher would take it on.”
    I asked, “Did he know Borensen back when?”
    Hy shrugged, made a face, tamped more ash. “That’s what makes this a little thin, Mike. I don’t know for sure, but he would almost
have
to have known Borensen, and certainly knew
of
him. And with something as damning as drug dealing in his past, and mob money laundering ever since, Borensen would
flip
if he found out Dick was writing a tell-all.”
    I leaned forward. “
Dick?
That wouldn’t be Dick Blazen, would it?”
    “Right. Did you know the guy, Mike?”
    I put out my Lucky. “No, but a friend of mine did.”
    Velda asked, “‘
Did
’? Past tense?”
    “Very damn past,” I said to her. “That’s the regular customer who got run down in front of Billy Batson’s newsstand last month.”
    I filled in some blanks for him on the incident—all Hy knew was that Blazen had been hit by a car—including Billy getting a good look at the driver but having no success identifying him, despite numerous line-ups at HQ and going through countless mug books.
    Hy rested his cigar in the ashtray and leaned on an elbow. He was peering over the glasses again. “Are you thinking Borensen may have hired a contract killer to remove Dick Blazen? A hit-and-run for hire?”
    “Why not?”
    My phone caller of the night before had made a point of saying many of his contract kills had been passed off as accidents.
    I continued, “On the other hand, maybe Borensen pulled that one off himself.”
    “If so,” Velda said, “all we have to do is show Billy a picture of our client.”
    Hy said, “Easier said than done. One of the things Dick asked me to help him with was finding pics of various lesser-known but key people he was mentioning in his book. He already had art on many of them, but Borensen was on a short list that Dick needed help with. I checked the
Trib
photo morgue and came up a goose egg. I called around to the other papers and nobody else had anything on the guy either.”
    Velda asked, “Isn’t that unusual? Borensen was an actor on stage and television—several decades ago admittedly—but he’s a well-known