One Lonely Night by Mickey Spillane

identified for a murder he didn’t do. Anyway, I told him you had some unusual interest in the whole affair that you didn’t want to speak about, even to me. He quizzed me about you, I told all and now he wants to see you.”
    “I’m to run down anything left behind?”
    “I imagine so. At any rate, you’ll get a fat fee out of it instead of kicking around for free.”
    “I don’t mind. I’m on vacation anyway.”
    “Nuts. Stop handing me the same old thing. Think of something different. I’d give a lot to know what you have on your mind.”
    “You sure would, Pat.” Perhaps it was the way I said it. Pat went into a piece of police steel. The cords in his neck stuck out like little fingers and his lips were just a straight, thin line.
    “I’ve never known you to hang your hat on anything but murder, Mike.”
    “True, ain’t it.” My voice was flat as his.
    “Mike, after the way I’ve been pitching with you, if you get in another smear you’ll be taking me with you.”
    “I won’t get smeared.”
    “Mike, you bastard, you have a murder tucked away somewhere.”
    “Sure, two of ’em. Try again.”
    He let his eyes relax and forced a grin. “If there were any recent kills on the pad I’d go over them one by one and scour your hide until you told me which one it was.”
    “You mean,” I said sarcastically, “that the Finest haven’t got one single unsolved murder on their hands?”
    Pat got red and squirmed. “Not recently.”
    “What about that laddie you hauled out of the drink?”
    He scowled as he remembered. “Oh, that gang job. Body still unidentified and we’re tracking down his dental work. No prints on file.”
    “Think you’ll tag him?”
    “It ought to be easy. That bridgework was unusual. One false tooth was made of stainless steel. Never heard of that before.”
    The bells started in my head again. Bells, drums, the whole damn works. The cigarette dropped out of my fingers and I bent to pick it up, hoping the blood pounding in my veins would pound out the crazy music.
    It did. That maddening blast of silent sound went away. Slowly.
    Maybe Pat never heard of stainless-steel teeth before, but I had.
    I said, “Is Lee expecting me?”
    “I told him you’d be over some time this morning.”
    “Okay.” I stood up and shoved my hat on. “One other thing, what about the guy Oscar bumped?”
    “Charlie Moffit?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Age thirty-four, light skin, dark hair. He had a scar over one eye. During the war he was 4-F. No criminal record and not much known about him. He lived in a room on Ninety-first Street, the same one he’s had for a year. He worked in a pie factory.”
    “Where?”
    “A pie factory,” Pat repeated, “where they make pies. Mother Switcher’s Pie Shoppe. You can find it in the directory.”
    “Was that card all the identification he had on him?”
    “No, he had a driver’s license and a few other things. During the scuffle one pocket of his coat was torn out, but I doubt if he would have carried anything there anyway. Now, Mike, ... why?”
    “The green cards, remember?”
    “Hell, quit worrying about the reds. We have agencies who can handle them.”
    I looked past Pat outside into the morning. “How many Commies are there floating around, Pat?”
    “Couple hundred thousand, I think,” he said.
    “How many men have we got in those agencies you mentioned?”
    “Oh ... maybe a few hundred. What’s that got to do with it?”
    “Nothing ... just that that’s the reason I’m worried.”
    “Forget it. Let me know how you make out with Lee.”
    “Sure.”
    “And Mike ... be discreet as hell about this, will you? Everybody with a press card knows your reputation and if you’re spotted tagging around Lee there might be some questions asked that will be hard to answer.”
    “I’ll wear a disguise,” I said.
    Lee Deamer’s office was on the third floor of a modest building just off Fifth Avenue. There was nothing pretentious about the