Lady, Go Die! by Mickey Spillane

pad.
    I went on: “Rumor around Sidon is that he’s a little guy in the bigger scheme of things... but in a small town, a little guy can be pretty goddamn big.”
    Pat raised a hand for me to hold it a minute, got on the phone, spoke a few words, and before he had even lowered his hand, he passed the note to a uniformed cop who scrambled in, took it, and scrambled back out.
    “You realize, Mike, that I can’t get too deep in this thing. If it had started here in the city, I could pull strings to work with youout there in Sidon. But unless some developments carry it back to Manhattan, you’re going to have to do most of the work yourself.”
    “I know,” I said through a yawn. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”
    “Oh, you’re a one-man cleaning crew now, I suppose?”
    I patted the holstered rod under my arm. “Just me and my broom.”
    Pat gave me a disgusted smirk. “Then you certainly don’t need my help.”
    “But I do. Anyway, there is a tie-up with the city. Most of the clientele at Sharron Wesley’s gambling house are almost certainly New York City residents. Those kind of big spenders don’t limit themselves to one or two shindigs on the weekend. They’ll do plenty during the week, too.”
    “Granted.”
    “So if you hear of the vice boys pulling any raids on joints around town, try to find out if any of their high-roller arrests had at any time been patrons of Sharron’s shed. How’s that?”
    He was rocking again. “Fair enough. I’ll do what I can.” An eyebrow went up. “Now, how about the potshot taken at you? You’re sure it was Dekkert?”
    I laughed long and loud. “Natch, chum. Who else but? That punk is laying for me.”
    “What are you going to do about it?”
    I shrugged. “Make him sweat. Then when I get ready, I’m going to take him down. All the way. As much for what he’s put poor Poochie through as for the shot he sent in my direction.”
    Pat looked at me very seriously and spread his hands on the desk. “How can you be so sure it was Dekkert?”
    “Why shouldn’t I be?”
    He shook his head slowly. “You could be treading on some mighty sensitive toes here, Mike. After all, you have got yourself a reputation and not a nice one at that. You stand up in front of the wrong judge with one of your self-defense ploys...”
    “That’s pleas , Pat.”
    “...and you’re going to take a long, hard fall. Say what you will about Dekkert—and I’ll say the same and worse—but he is a cop.”
    I blew a half-hearted Bronx cheer.
    “Suppose,” Pat went on, “the murderer knew of your antagonism for Dekkert, and used that to remove you both? If Dekkert is not the murderer... and there’s no reason to think he is anything but a bent small-town cop with a grudge against you... then the real murderer could kill you, and suspicion would be thrown on Dekkert. The real killer could take a shot at you and miss, safely knowing you’d go after Dekkert without looking around for anyone else.”
    I gave that one some thought. That adding-machine mind of Pat’s again had come up with an analysis that certainly sounded logical enough. But hell, who else but Dekkert would make a sucker play like that? So far I hadn’t garnered anything around Sidon that was worthwhile shooting me over, just some nosing around.
    Pat knew enough to let me sit there and mull it over for a while.
    Then he said, “After the body was discovered, did the police get over to Sharron Wesley’s place very fast?”
    “No. I drove up there immediately. Took fifteen minutes or so getting there, and I fooled around for at least half an hour. After that I was at Poochie’s maybe fifteen minutes before the shot was fired at me, then I carried him back to my car. In allthat time there was no sign of the gendarmes.”
    “Unless the guy that shot at you was one—like Dekkert, for example.”
    “Roger, pal. Now you’re seeing things from my point of view. To me it looks like the local boys didn’t bother going