Mickey Spillane - [Mike Hammer 02] by My Gun Is Quick

fine,” I said. “It’s something to work on ... a place to start. You don’t have to worry because I won’t bring you into it. Sit tight around here and I’ll call you from time to time. There are still things you probably know that I don’t, but I can’t tell what they are yet.”
    Lola came up from her seat slowly and slid her arms around my waist. She laid her head on my shoulder and nuzzled her face into my neck. “Be careful, Mike, please be careful.”
    I tilted her chin up and grinned at her. “I’m always careful, sugar. Don’t worry about me.”
    “I can’t help it. Maybe I ought to have my head examined, but I’m crazy about you.”
    She stopped me before I could speak by putting her forefinger on my lips. “Not a word, Mike. Let me do the liking. I’m no good and I know it. I’m not going to mess into your life a bit so you can let me go on liking you if I please. No obligations, Mr. Hammer, I’ll just sit on the side lines and throw kisses your way, and wherever you are you’ll always know that where I am is a girl you’ll always have to yourself. You’re a nice guy, you big lug. If I had the sense to lead a normal life you’d never get away from me.”
    This time I shut her up. Her body was a warm thing in my hands and I pressed her close to me, feeling tremors of excitement run across her back. Her lips were full and ripe, and whatever she had been was cleansed and there was no past for a brief instant. When I kissed her her mouth was like a flame that fluttered from a feeble glow into a fiery torch.
    I had to shove her away roughly before everything else was forgotten. We stood there, two feet apart, and my voice didn’t want to come. When it did I said, “Save it for me, Lola, just me.”
    “Just you, Mike,” she repeated.
    She was still there in the middle of the room, tall and beautiful, her breasts alternately rising and falling with a craving neither of us could afford, when I went out the door.
     
    The Zero Zero Club was a cellar joint off Sixth Avenue that buried itself among the maze of other night spots with nothing more than two aughts done in red neon to proclaim its location. But it was doing a lively business. It had atmosphere; plenty of it ... that’s why they called it the Zero Zero. Both visibility and ceiling were wiped out with cigar smoke.
    Down the stairs a cauliflower-eared gent played doorman with a nod, a grunt and an open palm. I gave him a quarter so he wouldn’t remember me as a piker. The clock on the wall read eleven-fifteen and the place was packed. It wasn’t a cheap crowd because half of them were in evening clothes. Unlike most joints, there was no tinsel or chromium. The bar was an old solid mahogany job set along one wall and the tables were grouped around a dance floor that actually had room for dancing. The orchestra was set into a niche that could double as a stage for the floor show if necessary.
    The faces around me weren’t those of New Yorkers. At least those of the men. Most could be spotted as out-of-towners looking for a good time. You could tell those who had their wives along. They sat at the bar and tables sipping drinks with one eye on the wife and the other on the stray babes, wondering why they had been talked into taking the little woman along.
    Yeah, the atmosphere was great, what you could see of it. The Zero Zero Club took you right back to the saloons of a Western mining camp and the patrons loved it. Scattered throughout the crowd were half a dozen hostesses that saw to it that everyone had a good time. I got a table back in one corner that was partially screened by a group of potted plants and waited. When the waiter came over I ordered a highball, got it and waited some more.
    Five minutes later a vat-dyed blonde hostess saw me there and undulated over to my table.
    She gave me a big smile from too-red lips and said, “Having fun?”
    “Not so much.”
    I leaned over and pulled out a chair for her. She looked around