The Long Wait by Mickey Spillane Page B

How?”
    Something happened in her eyes. They started to match her hair. “What’ll you give me if I tell you?”
    â€œWhat do you want?”
    â€œThat’s a silly question.”
    There was no doubt about her eyes. They were simmering coals waiting to be blown into life. They were half shielded by her lids so they looked lazy, but they weren’t. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen eyes like hers either.
    I said. “Lenny’s nuts about you, isn’t he?”
    â€œCertainly.” She dragged the word out. “Lenny’s oversexed too.”
    I pushed up out of the chair. “Excuse me. Be right back.” She didn’t say anything so I walked through the room. It only took a couple minutes to find out what I wanted to find out. On the dresser in the bedroom was a small fortune in diamonds and a slightly smaller fortune in pearls was strung over the tap in the bathroom sink. Her pocketbook was on the telephone stand and there were C notes stuffed in it with a few fins like poor relations guarding the roll.
    No place in the house was there even so much as a pair of lace panties.
    Lenny was so nuts about his little chipmunk that he wasn’t taking any chances on her leaving the nest. The only way he could keep his nymph at home was to garnishee her clothes and I couldn’t think of a better way if I tried.
    When I went back inside she wasn’t in the chair. She was stretched out on the couch with a cigarette in each hand daring me to come over and have a smoke. I took the dare. I reached for the cigarette but I wasn’t watching close enough. She twisted it and touched the hot tip to my hand and laughed when my mouth went tight.
    To her it was fun. A very nice little chipmunk. She and Lenny must have had some great times together.
    â€œYou mentioned something about finding Vera West,” I reminded her.
    â€œVera? Oh ... I did, didn’t I.”
    I said, “Maybe I better ask Lenny like I came here to. When will he be back?”
    She twisted on the couch, doing things that were supposed to make me forget what I came for. “Oh, not for hours and hours,” she grinned.
    Those kind of games I could play too. It was an awful waste, but she was too naked to be exciting. She should have used a curtain or something. Anything. I flipped the lit butt and it landed right on her belly. Her eyes popped open wide and she doubled up with a curse. It was funnier than with the ice cube.
    I laughed once and started off to the door. I looked back in case she was getting ready to throw something. A dame like that can go off the handle pretty hard.
    Hell, she wasn’t even mad. She was grinning and her eyes were brighter than her hair. “I have some mean things I’m going to do to you for that,” she said. The pause between her words slowed me down. “When you come back,” she added softly.
    I pushed the button and waited for the elevator to come back up. My reflection was grinning at me in the black glass window of the door. Nice having a couple of red hots throw themselves at you in the same half hour. Some town, this Lyncastle.
    The super had his apartment in the back of the building. He was short, bald and toothless, but the thousands of ash barrels he had hefted gave him arms like kegs. Before I said anything I held up a ten-spot and let him look at it.
    He liked it.
    He showed me his gums and picked it out of my fingers. “Come on in.”
    When he picked a couple of dirty undershirts off the chairs in the living room he nodded for me to sit down. He squatted across the room from me still playing with the bill. “So you’re nosing for news. Who of? Servo? The whores on the top floor?”
    â€œYou catch on quick, don’t you?”
    â€œNah. Them’s the only two in the place anybody’d pay for news of.”
    â€œWho else has been asking?”
    â€œYou a