The New Black Mask Quarterly (No 1)

William F. Nolan The Pulpcon Kill

William F. Nolan is an authority on Black Mask magazine. His most recent book, The Black Mask Boys (1985), is what he calls a “historical anthology” — a collection of stories, each of which is preceded by an essay about the writer and his role in the development of what is now called the Black Mask tradition. “The Pulpcon Kill” evolved out of Nolan’s research.

Like his Sam Space novels, about a tough, space-age private eye, “The Pulpcon Kill” pays humorous homage to the past masters of hard-boiled fiction. The story introduces a new private eye, Nick Challis, whose half-brother Bart was the detective in Nolan’s first two mystery novels, Death Is for Losers (1968) and The White-Cad Cross-Up (1969).

William F. Nolan lives in California.

Late. Beyond midnight. A twenty-four-hour Italian joint in the heart of New York. Big party. Mafia kingpin’s birthday. Everybody laughing it up, drinking, singing off key, yelling at each other. The head honcho is Luigi somebody, and he’s really zonked. Chug-a-lugging from a half-empty bottle of vino. Has a Sweet Young Tiling on his lap. She’s stroking his mustache and he’s squeezing one of her boobs.

Outside, a misting rain makes the pavement shine. The street is quiet and dark. But you can see the party going on through the big plate glass window.

Three long, black limos, pebbled with rain, ease around the corner, rolling slow along the street. Their rear windows come whispering down as they near the twenty-four-hour joint and some shit-mean automatic weapons poke out.

The plate glass window explodes into jagged fragments as each limo glides past, cutting loose with enough firepower to win World War II. Total mayhem inside the Italian joint. Bullets cutting up chairs, walls and people. Luigi goes down in slow motion, gouting ketchup from a dozen wounds, the wine bottle splintering in his hand...

I’d had enough. I got up and walked out. For one thing, I figured I’d seen the best part of the picture and, for another, the air conditioning unit was on the fritz and the theater was too damn hot.

It was a lot hotter outside on Ventura. The San Fernando Valley was having a real bitch of a September heat wave, with temperatures over 105, and some sticky humidity had been added to the package. Tropical storm off the Pacific was messing up the L.A. basin and the weather boys said it would last through the weekend.

I was in a bad mood. Muggy, excessive heat makes me tough to get along with. Result: a fight with the pneumatic red-haired flight attendant in Santa Monica. When she kicked me out of her condo I decided to take in the latest Bronson Mafia movie, just to cool off. Now I was hot and irritated. Figured I needed something cold inside me, so I drove down Ventura to Van Nuys, took a hard right up the alley behind the newsstand, and parked right under the “You Won’t Believe It’s Yogurt” sign.

Went inside. Ordered a two-scoop dish of coconut, with crushed chocolate-chip topping. The skinny college kid who worked there asked me how come I always ordered the same topping for my frozen yogurt when there were so many others to choose from. I thought that was a dumb question, so I didn’t answer him.

I sat down at one of the little round butcher block tables and began spooning cold yogurt inside my hot stomach. Very soothing. My mood began to improve.

It was late afternoon and the place was nearly deserted. There was one other customer, a blue-eyed blond wearing shorts (with a particularly nice pair of legs inside them) and a splendidly packed T-shirt that said: WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET. She smiled across the room at me. “Are you Nicholas Challis?”

“Never call me Nicholas,” I said. “Makes me sound like a Romanian prince — and that’s not my image. How come you know who I am?”

“I know a lot more than that,” she said, moving over to sit down at my table. Her no-bra act was terrific.

“What else do you know?”

“That you are thirty-two years of age, your father was Irish and your mother is a Mescalero Apache, and you have been a private detective for two years — since you moved here from San Diego after the death of your wife.”

“Go on,” I told her. “So far you’re scoring 100 percent.”

“You have a half-brother on your father’s side who also works as a private investigator in the Los Angeles area. Your father is deceased, and your mother now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

“Bet you don’t know when I quit biting my nails,” I said.

“Originally, you wanted to be a commercial artist, but you were not talented enough to make it work out financially. Your present office is located in Studio City here in the Valley and you don’t smoke or have any children or pets. Shall I continue?”

“I don’t see any reason to,” I said. “You’ve obviously done a hell of a research job. The question is, why?”

“Let’s go to my place and you’ll find out. How does that sound?” And she gave me another flash of her perfect teeth.

“Sounds like I’m being seduced,” I said. “And I’m always ripe for seduction.” I stood up, leaving my yogurt. “I just hope your T-shirt is telling the truth.”

It wasn’t. What I saw I did not get, nor was I going to from what she told me once we were inside her Malibu pad. All I got was her name: Charlene Vickers. The surf was doing its usual in-and-out number on the beach outside her picture window and Charlene was standing there looking at the afternoon ocean when she informed me that I had not been brought here for a romantic interlude.

“This is strictly business, Mr. Challis,” she said. “I represent someone who urgently requires your services. He asked me to bring you here.”

“I was hoping you were a P.I. groupie eager to partake of my sun-bronzed flesh,” I said. “Instead, you want to put me to work. Doing what?”

“I’ll let my employer tell you that.”

“And who’s your employer?”

“Frank Morrison. He’s due here in exactly—” She checked a tiny gold pearl watch on her left wrist, “seven minutes.”

“Great,” I said. “I love split-second timing.” I joined her at the window. The ocean was dead calm, with a few white sails edging the horizon. Clear day, no fog. “Just what is it that you do for Mr. Morrison? I mean, besides fetching lust-crazed private detectives to Malibu. Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“I’m his live-in secretary,” she said. “And you can make anything you want out of that.” She said it coldly. In fact, she hadn’t smiled since we’d arrived here. Once she’d dropped her yogurt act, she was just what she said, strictly business. Which depressed hell out of me. She looked like the Raintree Shampoo Girl and talked like Walter Mondale.

A car pulled into the gravel drive in front of the beach house. White 1955 T-Bird. In classic condition. Guy got out. Silver-gray crewcut. Not tall, but beefy. Wide chest and shoulders. Wearing a red-checked sport coat and matching slacks. Colorful.

He walked in and shook my hand, giving the bones a real workout. “I’m Frank Morrison,” he said.

“No, you’re not.” I gave him a level stare. “You’re Mickey Spillane.”

He grinned at me. “Okay, so my full name is Frank Morrison Spillane — but I try to keep a low profile.”

“Sure,” I nodded. “By doing coast-to-coast beer commercials and playing your own character, Mike Hammer, in the movies.”

“Guilty on the commercials, but I only played Hammer once, and that was back in the early sixties.”

“I watch a lot of late night TV,” I said.

Spillane walked over to Charlene, gave her a kiss on the cheek. Fatherly. Maybe she was his secretary.

“Get us a couple beers, doll.”

She got two cans out of the fridge, gave me one. Spillane tabbed his open, took a long swig. Charlene poured herself some orange juice and we all sat down.

“I drink too much of this stuff,” he said. “Gives you a big gut when you get older. And I’m no spring chicken.” He belched. “But I work out, sweat it off.”

“I’d like to get to the point,” I said. “Why did you have me brought here?”

“Simple. To nail a creep who’s been doing a number on me. He wants to shut off my juice.”

“You talk like a comic strip,” I told him.

“Hah!” Spillane chuckled. “That’s where I got my start — with the comics. Used to write Captain America and Plastic Man. In the forties. Hammer came right out of that period. I wrote him as ‘Mike Danger, Private Eye.’ Planned to star him in his own comic book. But then I changed my mind and wrote him into I, The Jury as Mike Hammer. Did that first novel in just nine days. I write fast. And I’m not out to win the Pulitzer, I’m in it for the bucks.” He scowled at me. “Anything wrong with that?”

I put up a hand. “Hey, I’m on your side.”

He grinned. “I didn’t mean to sound off — but I’ve taken a lot of hard raps for my stuff. From the critics. I don’t know what the hell they expect! I write books and people buy ’em. It’s just that simple.”

“You say somebody’s been after you? Threatening you?”

“More than just threats,” Spillane said. He got up with his beer, began pacing the room. His heels rang on the polished hardwood floor. “About a month ago I came down here to film a commercial. From Big Sur, where I have a cabin. When I got here this was waiting for me.”

The handwritten letter he handed over was addressed: To a Thief.

You have stolen from me. Through Kathleen, I know that all sins are punished. If not in this lifetime, then in the next. You will suffer bad karma for what you have done. I am here to serve cosmic justice. It is time for you to leave your present body, and I shall hasten your departure. Sum up your affairs. You have little time remaining.

And it was signed: John D. Carroll.

“You know the guy?” I asked Spillane, handing the letter back to him.

“Only John Carroll I ever knew was a film actor,” he told me. “Used to work for the old Republic Studios in those sword-and-tit flicks. Haven’t seen him for years. John’s probably dead by now. But I know one thing. That’s not his handwriting.”

“A good chance the name’s a phony,” I said.

“In my game you get a lot of crazy mail,” declared Spillane. “I ignored the letter, forgot about it. Two days later the phone rings and this wacko is on the line. ‘I’m the man you robbed,’ he says. ‘Retribution is at hand.’ And he hangs up.”

“Is that all he said?”

“Yeah. Didn’t bother to tell me what I’d robbed him of.”

“You have any idea what he could be talking about?”

“Not a clue. But wackos don’t need to make sense.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothin’ is what I did. But then, two days later, he calls again. And this time he says just one word: ‘Tomorrow.’ And hangs up.”

“So?”

“So I didn’t go out the next day. Stayed at my hotel. I own a .45 and I kept it out and ready. But nothing happened all day and I figured it was an empty threat.” He took a final swig from the can, squeezed it double with one hand, tossed it into a wastebasket.

“Want another?” asked Charlene.

“Yeah,” said Spillane. “How about you, Nick?”

“I’m fine. Got half the can left.”

“Okay, so around eleven o’clock I drive down to an all-night market for a six-pack and just as I’m about to park on the lot somebody lets go with a pumpgun. Blamo! Took out the left side window. But I’d seen a flash of metal from the dark side of the building just before he’d fired. I ducked and floored the pedal. Really hot-assed it outa there!”

“Did you report it to the cops?”

“No, I just got the hell back to Big Sur. Then, this month, with more commercials pegged, I had Charlie here rent me this Malibu joint. So now I’m worried that this wacko will make another try for me.”

“Have you heard from him this trip?”

“Not yet. But I expect to.”

“I still don’t see why you haven’t called in some law.”

“If I went to the cops on this they’d just tell me to wait till he takes another crack at me, then give ’em a ring. I could be stiffed by then! Also, I don’t need any publicity right now. Like I said, outside of the commercials, I keep a low profile.”

“You just might get your low profile blown away by Johnny-boy’s popgun,” I told him.

He squinted at me, gripping my left shoulder. “Look, I want you to find this psycho sonofabitch. I’ll pay whatever it costs.”

“Why me? There’s a pisspot full of private investigators in L.A. with reps better than mine.”

“Your brother recommended you,” said Spillane. “Hell, Bart and I go way back. I wanted him to handle it, but he says he’s leaving the detective game. Gettin’ too old for blonds and bullets.”

“Well, I can believe it about the bullets,” I said.

“Speaking of bullets...” Spillane gave me a hard look. “Do you pack heat?”

“When I have to,” I said. “But I don’t play it the way Bart does. He’s the family gunslinger. Enjoys shooting people. I try to avoid doing that.”

“Then you don’t carry a piece?”

“Not on me, no.”

“I make it you’ll need one when you find this guy.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Spillane leaned forward to give me a flash of the .45 holstered under his left armpit.

I whistled. “Impressive.”

“And I know how to use it.”

“Obviously you’re a lot tougher than I am,” I said. “How come you don’t go after this wacko yourself, with your big .45? Play Mike Hammer for real?”

“Hey, listen Buster, don’t kid yourself — when I was younger I did my share of mixing it up with the bad guys.” He was well into his second beer and pacing again, talking as he paced. “Even worked with the FBI to break a narco ring. That was a mean job, and I got the scars to prove it.”

“So why hire me?”

“I’m like your brother. Gettin’ too old for the rough stuff. Hell, I’ll be sixty-seven next year. I need younger muscle.”

He walked over to a desk, did some quick scribbling, and handed me a check. I looked at the sum, whistled again. It was a fat check.

“This should cover you for awhile. When you want more, give a yell. Money’s no problem.”

“I’ll need that letter,” I said. “It’s the only thing I’ve got to work with.”

He handed it over and we said our good-byes.

Charlene even smiled at me as I walked out the door.

First thing I did was run a computer trace on all of the John Carrolls in the L.A. area. Just in case the name might be legit. I found six John D. Carrolls, but there wasn’t a psycho in the lot. Which proved that the would-be killer was using a phony name.

But sometimes you get lucky.

The creep’s letter talked a lot about past lives — and it mentioned a “Kathleen.” She could possibly be somebody who did regressions... guided people back into past lives.

It was a long shot, because Kathleen might have turned out to be the guy’s wife or mother or girlfriend, even his sister. But my gut said no, that she was someone who did this kind of thing for a living. A long shot, like I said, but I played it out.

And got lucky.

I contacted a professor I knew at UCLA who was into paranormal research and right away he brightened when I asked him if he’d ever heard of anybody named Kathleen who was into the past-life bag.

“Kathleen Jenks,” he said. “She’s done several hundred regressions. A very dedicated woman. And quite friendly. You’ll like Kathleen.”

I nodded. “Where can I find her?”

“She works out of her apartment,” he told me, looking up the address. It was on Harbor Boulevard in Oxnard Shores, which is up the Ventura Freeway a few miles beyond L.A. County.

I drove there after phoning for an appointment. Told her I wanted to find out who I’d been in my last life.

It was dark by the time I arrived.

A tall, rail-thin character was just leaving her place. He gave me a long stare as we passed. Something about the way his eyes looked told me I’d be seeing him again.

I thumbed the buzzer and Kathleen Jenks opened the door of her townhouse unit. One of four apartments in the building. She shook my hand, smiled, and asked me to take off my shoes. “It’s a house rule.”

I followed her inside, carrying my shoes. My bright Irish-green socks made me feel a little silly.

Kathleen was slim and small-boned, with hazel eyes and dark waist-length hair that streamed thickly down her back. In her thirties, I guessed. Wore a long burgundy gown and had a kind of melodic voice, low-pitched and compelling.

She told me she’d been regressing people since 1974, and that she tape-recorded every regression. That interested me a lot.

“Was the guy I passed coming in here one of your clients?”

“That was Sam,” she said. “I’ve regressed him several times. Quiet sort of fellow. But with a fascinating background. He was one of Napoleon’s generals, you know. Died at Waterloo.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

She smiled indulgently. “Death is never a thing to be sorry about; it’s something to look forward to. It allows us to enter the next house in our universal cosmic journey.”

“I never thought of it that way,” I admitted.

Her apartment was jammed with books and seashells and mirrors and colored rocks and oil paintings and stained-glass globes. In the middle of it all was a huddled puffball of white fur with slitted black eyes.

“Her name is Shanti,” said Kathleen, scooping up the cat. “It means ‘peace’ in Sanskrit. Say hello to the gentleman, Shanti.”

The cat hissed at me.

“She’s very tense around males. I’ll put her in the kitchen. She won’t bother us there.” Kathleen moved toward the kitchen. “Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down?”

“Huh?”

“That’s how I conduct my regressions,” she said. “With the subject lying down. There’s a couch up there in the loft. Use that. I’ll join you in a moment.”

I climbed up to the loft, found the couch, and eased onto my back. She turned the lights off downstairs and came up carrying a hooded kerosene lamp and a notebook. “I use this to provide enough light for my notes,” she told me.

She sat down cross-legged on a velvet pillow next to the couch, placing the lamp on the floor. I could smell the faint odor of kerosene. Then she switched on a tape recorder and arranged the open notebook in her lap.

“Would you prefer some white noise?” she asked.

I said “Huh?” again.

“A machine I can turn on. It blocks out the street noises. Some people are bothered by street noises.”

“No, you can skip that. I’m fine.”

“Well, then, are you ready?” she asked.

“I gotta warn you,” I said. “I’m a tough subject to hypnotize.”

“I don’t hypnotize people. I try to induce an aura of inner peace, a kind of light trance state. Just close your eyes and allow my voice to guide you.”

And she began to speak in a lilting flow, telling me how to relax the muscles in each section of my body. Then: “Imagine that you are in a small boat, on your back, under a serene blue sky, drifting endlessly down a wide stream. The sun is on the water, and the day is very peaceful. Your muscles are totally relaxed and your mind is open to the cosmic power of the water, carrying you back... back... back... through time itself, into another state of life, into...”

“It’s no good,” I said, sitting up abruptly. “I have to be straight with you. I’m not here to take a boat trip into yesterday. I came here to get some info. In order to prevent a murder.”

She gave me a penetrating look: “Are you with the police?”

“No, I’m a private investigator. I think you have vital information I need. On one of your subjects.”

She switched off the recorder, stood up calmly. “Maybe we’d better go back downstairs.”

“Yeah, maybe we’d better.”

Like I said, sometimes you get lucky and this turned out to be one of my lucky nights. Yes, she did know a John D. Carroll. He’d told her he worked in a specialty shop, some kind of nostalgia place where they sell old pulp magazines and movie posters. She didn’t know where the shop was located or where Carroll lived. He’d never given her an address or a phone number; he always called her for appointments. He’d come in several months ago for a past-life regression and they’d had maybe half a dozen sessions since then.

“But in all of them, he refused to be regressed beyond his last lifetime,” she told me. “Most people who come to me want to reach back into as many of their past lives as possible. But John was fixated on this one prior life. He kept wanting me to explore more aspects of it. So I did.”

“And what was he?” I asked. “In this other life.”

“An author,” she said. “He wrote thriller stories for the popular magazines of the period. Apparently he was quite successful at it, at least in the early years of his career into the 1940s.”

“Did he write under another name — or did he use John D. Carroll?”

“That’s all on the tapes. I don’t recall the name he wrote under.”

“I’d like to borrow those tapes. They could provide the information I need to run him down.”

She stared at me; her eyes were cool. “I’m sorry, Mr. Challis, but these sessions are confidential. I never allow subject tapes to leave my possession.”

“I can make it worthwhile,” I said. “My client will pay whatever you ask.”

“It’s not a question of money, it’s the principle. In a way, I am in the position of a priest in the confessional. I do not violate a subject’s confidence.”

“Look,” I said firmly. “This guy is obviously insane. He’s already made one attempt on the life of my client and he’s sure to make another. You let me have those tapes and you’ll be saving a man’s life.”

She thought about that for a long silent moment. Then she walked over to a tall bookcase on the back wall and ran her finger along a line of boxed tapes. Took out three, handed them to me.

“These are reel-to-reel,” she said. “My player is broken at the moment or you could listen to them here. Have you a reel-to-reel machine?”

I nodded. “Got one in my office.”

“Normally, I’d never do this,” she said. “But in a case of potential homicide...” Her voice trailed off.

“Believe me, you’re doing the right thing,” I assured her. “Can you tell me what Carroll looks like? You never said.”

“Medium height and build. Thinning brown hair. Has a scar on his left cheek from a childhood accident.”

“Age?”

“Well, he was born into his present body in 1959 — which puts him in his mid-twenties.”

“Does he have another appointment set with you?”

“No. I haven’t heard from him for quite some time now.”

I stepped to the door, opened it. A drift of cold night air reminded me we were near the ocean. “You may have saved a man’s life. I thank you for all your help.”

“You’re quite welcome, Mr. Challis.” There was a twinkle in her eyes. “But there are two important things you seem to have forgotten.”

“Name them.”

“Your shoes,” she said.

I got back in my Honda and headed along Harbor toward the freeway. It was quiet, with no other cars on this section of the boulevard. A light rain began to patter against the window. I flipped on the wipers and reduced speed. No use taking chances. A thin drizzle like this can make the road damned slick.

Then I saw headlights coming up fast behind me. Really fast. Had to be a road nut, driving at this rate in the rain. But my gut told me who it was.

John D. Carroll.

Maybe he’d spotted me coming out of Spillane’s place in Malibu. At any rate, he’d followed me to Kathleen’s and was closing in fast. To kill me.

Or was I getting paranoid? Could just be a coked-up high school kid out to impress his date with some hot-shot driving. But the blast that took out the Honda’s rear window told me it was Carroll.

Damn! My gun was in the office in Studio City. A million miles away.

Whatever he was driving, I figured I sure couldn’t outrun him in a three-year-old Honda Civic with lousy rear shocks.

So what could I do? It would have to be something he wouldn’t expect. I braked hard, sliding the Honda around into a full U-turn on the slick pavement, and headed right for him.

His lights filled my vision, two flaring circles of white fire, blinding me. I shaded my eyes from the glare with one hand, thinking, boyo, this is one hell of a gamble. I was counting on him to chicken out and swerve, maybe turn over in the wet, giving me the advantage.

But he didn’t chicken out.

I was right on top of him.

We hit.

Not head-on. I wouldn’t be telling about it if we’d hit head-on. We sideswiped each other in a grinding crush of metal, each of us caroming off to opposite sides of the boulevard.

I was okay. Not hurt, just shaken a little. I got the door open, climbed out fast, keeping low. My goal was the dark area between two apartment buildings fronting the boulevard. I had to get some cover and I had to get it quick.

As I ran, in a kind of half-crouch, I felt moisture on my forehead and upper lip. Not rain... sweat. My muscles twitched, anticipating a pumpgun charge between the shoulder blades, blowing my flesh apart. But that was in my mind. The guy didn’t fire at me.

He had more important things to do.

From the darkness between buildings, I turned to see him getting the three tapes from the seat of my Honda... a medium-built guy in a long coat with what looked like a Winchester pump cradled under his left arm. I eased back into the shadows as he looked toward me. I could feel his eyes burning at me.

Then he got back in his car, a light tan Chevy, and motored away into the night.

But not before I was able to read his license number.

An hour later I was unlocking my office door in Studio City. I moved to the empty water cooler next to my desk and lifted the dusty belltop. Reached inside. Took out my Browning .380, checked the clip, then stuffed the automatic into my belt. One of these days I’d buy a holster. Or borrow one from Bart. Maybe he’d leave me his when he retired.

Then I walked back to the Honda, which was like me — battered but still operational — and drove out to the psycho’s pad.

I’d gotten Dear John’s address from a cop I knew. He ran the plate number for me. The Chevy was registered to one Franklin Elster Edwards. And he was clean. No wants, no warrants. Lived on Sunset Crest, up in the twisty hills above Mulholland Drive.

Edwards was obviously John D. Carroll’s real name. Or else he’d stolen the car, which was unlikely since it wasn’t listed on the hot sheet.

Mr. Edwards was not home when I got there. Driveway empty. No lights on inside. Everything churchyard quiet. I popped a rear lock and walked in, the .380 ready in my hand. Just in case.

The house was deserted. Nice little one-story’ joint, with dark Spanish furniture and lots of rugs. I poked around, opening drawers, checking things out. Didn’t know what I was looking for, exactly. Until I found it.

A poem. On top of his desk in the den. And in the same handwriting as the letter he’d sent Spillane.

I phoned Spillane at the number he’d given me. Wasn’t his Malibu place; it was the Marmont Hotel near the airport.

He answered on the first ring: Yeah?

“It’s me. Challis. I’ve got a poem I want you to hear.”

“Poem? You gone nuts?”

“This one is special. The wacko wrote it.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“In a phone booth at a drugstore below Mulholland. I just left the guy’s house. Wasn’t home, so I had some time to look around.”

“You got a name to give me?”

“Franklin Elster Edwards. Ring any bells?”

“Nope. What’s been happening? How did you manage to find—”

I cut in. “Look, Mickey, I’ll fill in all the details when I see you. But right now I think you’d better hear what this poem has to say.”

“Okay, okay, so read the damn thing to me.”

I did that. “What do you make of it?”

“Jeez.” There was relief in his voice. “Takes a helluva load off my mind.”

“How so?”

“Well, the ‘thief’ is me, natch. When he says I’ll die near the woods’ he means at my cabin in Big Sur. I live close to a wooded area. And the part about the ‘Eye is watching’ means you.”

“Why me?”

“He figures I’ll be taking you with me as my bodyguard when I leave L.A. He plans to snuff me at the cabin, with you, the private eye, ‘watching.’ Simple.”

“Meaning he won’t try to make another hit in this area.”

“That’s it. He’s gonna wait until I go back to Big Sur.”

“Which you won’t do.”

“Damn right, I won’t. Not till we drop a net over this guy. But I’m telling you, Nick, it’s a load off my mind. I’ve been sleeping with a gun under my pillow.”

“Our friend has no way of knowing we’ve scanned his little poem,” I said. “Probably wrote it to amuse himself. I left it right where I found it, on his desk. So now it’s just a matter of rounding him up.”

“Can you do that, or do you want the cops in on it?”

“At this point, I think we need some law. I hope to keep you out of it. At least for now. I can charge him with attempted murder. He tried to gun me tonight.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t home?”

“It was earlier. You’ll hear the whole scam when we get together. Right now, I’d better get the cops onto this guy.”

“Will you do one more thing for me first?” asked Spillane. “I’m a little worried about Charlie.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Maybe nothing. But I’ve been phoning her out at Malibu. No answer. I figure that maybe she—”

“Christ!” I yelled. “That’s where he went after our little road encounter!”

And before Mickey could say anything more I slammed down the phone, jumped into the Honda and headed hell-bent for Malibu.

When I drove slowly past the house along Pacific Coast Highway I couldn’t see any lights inside. But I was getting only a partial view from the road. Still it was enough to concern me.

I parked on the dirt shoulder, avoiding the half-circle of crushed gravel that angled from the highway down to the front of the house. If the creep was there I didn’t want to announce my arrival.

The tan Chevy wasn’t anywhere in sight, but that could mean he was playing it as cautiously as I was. I came in from the patio, gripping the .380 so tightly my fingers were cramping. Nerves. You never get used to being shot at, and it had already happened to me once that night. A Winchester pump is a mean piece of iron; blows a hole in you wide enough to see the stars through.

I could smell the ocean, like a big wet animal nuzzling the beach. The night breeze off the water had a sharp edge to it.

There was no light or movement downstairs. The pull drapes were open and I had a clear view of the rooms. No sign of any kind of struggle. And as quiet as the dark side of the moon. Maybe Charlene was asleep upstairs. Maybe I was wrong to be worried. My nerves eased down.

I came in from the porch through the sliding glass door, which was unlatched. The first bad sign. It should have been latched.

I got nervous again.

The stairs were next on the agenda, and I sweated a lot going up. Topside, I heard a muffled whimpering. Like a child having a nightmare.

The door to the main bedroom was ajar when I eased in, crouching, the automatic poised in my hand. I hoped to God I wouldn’t find the psycho waiting for me in the dark.

I didn’t.

Charlene was inside, alone. Tied and gagged on the bed. Wearing a torn pink nightrobe. Behind the gag, she whimpered, her eyes wide and desperate.

I put away my .380 and switched on a bed lamp. Then I moved to free her. “Take it easy, you’re okay now,” I said. Poor kid. I could see she had the shakes.

I stripped the gag from her mouth, cut loose her wrists and ankles. She fell forward across the bed into my arms, sobbing deeply, her whole body shaking.

“He... he was here!” She gasped out the words. “For almost an hour. It was horrible!”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No, but he forced me to... to...”

“Have sex with him? Did the bastard rape you?”

“Not that. He forced me to listen — while he read to me.”

“He what?”

“Read to me.” She was chafing her wrists to restore circulation. “He told me he needed a witness, someone who would testify that his claim was legitimate. About being stolen from.” She drew in a long shuddering breath. “So he read to me, from his stories, to prove his claim.”

“What kind of stories?”

“They were all private eye things. From old pulp magazines. About a crude detective named Race Williams who carried two big .45s and was always shooting someone in the head with them. And beating up people. The guy showed me his byline on each one. He was very proud of his byline being on them.”

“John D. Carroll?”

The lamplight haloed her blond hair as she shook her head. “No, they were all by Carroll John Daly. He said he used John D. Carroll only once — for one story — but that it was a good name to hide behind. He didn’t want the public to know who he was until after Mickey was dead.”

“What, exactly, did he say Mickey had stolen from him?”

She looked at me, eyes intense. “His style... all the violence and the beatings... he swore that Mike Hammer was really Race Williams and that Mickey had made millions by using his detective, and that he had died broke.”

“Died?”

“You know, in his life before this one.”

“Wow,” I said softly.

“He’s convinced that in his new body he has this cosmic duty to avenge his other self — the one who died back in 1958.”

The guy obviously has a lot of rungs missing in his ladder, I said. “Every writer starts with a role model, another writer he likes to read. And Mickey was probably influenced by Daly’s work. But that’s a long way from outright theft.”

“Not to this guy, it isn’t,” she said.

“How was his stuff — the stories he read from?”

A smile bloomed on her face. That special smile. “It was all terrible crap,” she said.

I phoned my cop friend and had him put out an A.P.B. for the wacko. Then I poured Charlene a Scotch rocks, another for me. We were feeling warm and relaxed, knowing it was over, that they’d pick up the guy soon, probably back at his place on Sunset Crest.

“You did a brave thing tonight, Nick,” she told me. “Coming through that bedroom door to help me, not knowing if the creep was still in here with his gun aimed at you. He could have blown you in half.”

“Stupid is what it was, not brave. But when I heard you whimpering I just had to find out if you were okay. I’m just glad he wasn’t still around.”

“That makes two of us,” she said softly, leaning toward me and kissing me on the chin, cheeks, forehead. Little sex kisses. Meant to arouse me.

I was aroused.

We were downstairs, on one of the thick rugs, with a fire going. She looked great in her pink robe by firelight.

I put down my Scotch, reached for her, folding her tightly into my arms. She felt even better than she looked.

“Remember my T-shirt?” she said with a cat’s smile.

“Who could forget it?”

“Well... what you see is what you get.”

And she slipped out of the robe.

Sometimes, being a lust-crazed private detective has its advantages.

We phoned Mickey at the hotel to let him know Charlene was okay, and he said for us to come on over. He was shooting a commercial at the Marmont, and we could all have a long talk after he finished.

“I thought they shot commercials in the daytime,” I said.

“They do, but this one is special. We gotta do it tonight because of the background.”

“Costs more, doesn’t it?”

“A bundle. The crew’s on golden time. But I let my producer worry about cost. I’m just a hired hand. You coming on over?”

“Sure,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

At the Marmont, the desk clerk told us that Mr. Spillane was in the Red Room, “with all those pulpcon freaks.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Pulpcon? What’s that?”

“Pulp magazine convention — where all these freak-type collectors meet to swap issues and gas it up about the grand old pulp days. They have a big get-together each fall and this year they picked this hotel for their weirdo shindig.”

Suddenly I turned as green as my socks and pulled the .380 Browning from my belt. “The poem! Mickey was all wrong about the poem!”

“Nick! What’s happened?” Charlene was staring at me, wide-eyed, like the desk clerk.

“You know the poem I quoted to Mickey. I told you about it...”

“Yes, but—”

“Those old magazines were made from woodpulp — and that was what he meant when he said ‘the thief will die near the woods.’ He didn’t mean Big Sur. And when he said ‘while the Eye is watching,’ he meant the camera eye! That psycho’s going to blow Mickey away during the beer commercial!”

And I took off for the Red Room at full gallop.

Franklin E. Edwards, alias John D. Carroll, alias Carroll John Daly, was off to one side of the big convention room, standing behind a red velvet-covered pillar, his Winchester aimed at Mickey, who was holding up a beer can and grinning for the camera when I came through the wide oak-and-brass swing door like a bull into a china shop, knocking six startled pulp collectors flat on their asses.

The place was jammed with addicts poring over piles of flaking yellowed magazines stacked on some two dozen large display tables across the room — but I spotted our boy instantly, dropped to one knee, and squeezed off a round. And another. And another. Missing him with all three shots.

I was nervous.

Edwards swung the pumper in my direction and blew two crystal lamps that were set into the flocked-velvet wall above my head into tiny glittering pieces. Guess he was a little nervous himself.

Then with everybody yelling and stampeding, with tables falling and magazines fluttering, Edwards darted through a side door, me right after him, and sprinted up a short flight of stairs to a freight elevator. I got there just as the sliding door shut, but I could guess where he was headed.

Straight for the hotel roof.

I caught the next elevator and followed him up there, snapping a fresh clip into the Browning.

After I’d ducked out of the elevator and taken a dive behind a large standing air vent, the roof got very, very quiet. In all the Red Room confusion my gun-happy friend had made a clean getaway. Apparently I was the only one to follow him up here.

Which was an unsettling thought.

Here we were, me with my .380 pea-shooter, which suddenly felt very small in my fist, against a killer with a cannon powerful enough to blow away half the building. I’d robbed him of his cosmic destiny, and I knew he was plenty pissed.

Nicky boy, I said to myself, you have royally screwed up. There’s a good chance you are going to leave this hotel with no head.

A mothering big 747 made a lot of noise then, coming in low for its landing approach at LAX, going over us like the wrath of God. The whole roof vibrated.

When things had quieted down again I tried a yell: “Give it up, Edwards! The cops are on the way. Put down that Winchester and come out with your hands in the air where I can see ’em and you won’t get hurt.”

This was prime bull and we both knew it. I wasn’t going to hurt him; he was going to hurt me.

And when the air vent blossomed into sudden shell-burst fragments in front of me I knew I was right. The concussion knocked the .380 out of my hand. It ricocheted across the roof, hitting the psycho’s shoe.

He stood up, into the light, maybe ten feet in front of me, with the round black mouth of that Winchester aimed at my belly. He pumped the weapon, setting it up for the shot.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

There was no place to hide. It was time for me to enter private eye heaven.

Which was when Sam showed. I saw him crawl out of an open glass skylight directly behind the psycho, saw him raise the short-barrel Colt .45 he was packing and cock it.

The psycho spun at the sound. Brought up his gun. But not fast enough.

A round from the Colt took his head apart.

Sam walked over to me.

“I’ve seen you before,” I said. “Earlier tonight. Leaving Kathleen’s apartment.”

“Right,” he said. “I was tailing our friend here. But I lost him out on Harbor Boulevard. That was embarrassing because I’m a pretty fair shadow man. Usually I don’t lose people.”

“How long have you been following him?”

“Ever since the day I spotted that Winchester pump in the back seat of his car. Then there was something about his eyes. Aroused my suspicious nature.”

“You a cop?”

“Nope. I’m an insurance salesman. But I used to be a Pink.”

“A Communist?”

He chuckled. “A Pinkerton detective. Last time I worked that game was in the early twenties back in Frisco. Long time ago.”

“You don’t look that old.”

“I’m not. Not in this life. Ask Kathleen about me sometime. She’ll tell you my story.”

“Who are you?”

“You mean, who was I. That’s more important.”

“Who then?”

“When I was a Pink they called me Sam. I never used my middle name till I became a writer. I mean, who the hell ever heard of a Pink named Dashiell?”