KISS ME, DEADLY
by
Mickey Spillane
First published in 1952
Chapter One
All I saw was the dame standing there in the glare of the headlights, waving her arms like a huge puppet and the curse I spit out filled the car and my own ears. I wrenched the wheel over, felt the rear end start to slide, brought it out with a splash of power and almost ran up the side of the cliff as the car fishtailed. The brakes bit in, gouging a furrow in the shoulder, then jumped to the pavement and held.
Somehow I had managed a sweeping curve around the babe. For a few seconds she had been living on stolen time because instead of getting out of the way she had tried to stay in the beam of the headlights. I sat there. and let myself shake. The butt that had fallen out of my mouth had burned a hole in the leg of my pants and I flipped it out the window. The stink of burned rubber and brake lining hung in the air like smoke and I was thinking of every damn thing I ever wanted to say to a harebrained woman so I could have it ready when I got my hands on her.
That was as far as I got. She was there in the car beside me, the door slammed shut and she said, 'Thanks, mister.'
Easy, feller, easy. She's a fruitcake. Don't plow her. Not yet. Hold your breath a minute, let it out easy, then maybe bend her over the fender and paddle her tail until she gets some sense in her head. Then boot her the hell out and make her walk the rest of the way home.
I fumbled out another cigarette, but she reached it before I did. For the first time I noticed her hands shaking as hard as mine were. I lit hers, got one out for me and lit that one too. 'How stupid can you get?' I said.
She bit the words off. 'Pretty stupid.'
Behind me the lights of another car were reaching around a curve. Her eyes flicked back momentarily, fear pulling their corners tight. 'You going to sit here all night, mister?'
'I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm thinking of throwing you over that cliff over there.'
The headlights shone in the car through the rear window, bathed the roadway in light then swept on past. In the second that I had a good look at her she was rigid, her face frozen expressionlessly. When only the red dot of the taillight showed in front of us she let out her breath and leaned back against the seat.
In a way she was goodlooking, but her face was more interesting than pretty. Wide-set eyes, large mouth, tawny hair that spilled onto her shoulders like melted butter. The rest of her was wrapped into a tailored trench coat that was belted around her waist and I remembered her standing there in the road like something conjured up too quickly in a dream. A Viking. A damn-fool crazy Viking dame with holes in her head.
I kicked the stalled engine over, crawled through the gears and held on tight to the wheel until my brain started working right. An accident you don't mind. Those you halfway expect when you're holding seventy on a mountain road. But you don't expect a Viking dame to jump out of the dark at you while you're coming around a turn. I opened the window all the way down and drank in some of the air. 'How'd you get up here?'
'What does it look like?'
'Like you got dumped.' I looked at her quickly and saw her tongue snake out over her lips. 'You picked the wrong guy to go out with.'
'I'll know better the next time.'
'Pull a trick like that last one and there won't be any next time. You damn near became a painting on the face of that rockslide.'
'Thanks for the advice,' she said sarcastically, 'I'll be more careful.'
'I don't give a hoot what you do as long as you don't get strained through my radiator.'
She plucked the cigarette from her lips and blew a stream of smoke at the windshield. 'Look, I'm grateful for the ride. I'm sorry I scared hell out of you. But if you don't mind just shut up and take me somewhere or let me out.'
My mouth pulled back in a grin. A dame with nerve like that sure could've made a mess out of a guy before he gave her the boot. 'Okay, girl,' I said, 'now it's my turn to be sorry. It's a hell of a place for anybody to be stranded and I guess I would have done the same thing. Almost. Where do you want to go?'
'Where're you going?'
'New York.'
'All right, I'll go there.'
'It's a big city, kid. Name the spot and I'll take you there.'
Her eyes got cold. The frozen expression came back in her face. 'Make it a subway station. The first one you come to will do.'
Her tone wiped my grin away. I eased the car around another turn and settled down to a straightway, jamming hard on the gas. 'Damn rape-happy dame. You think all guys are the same?'
'I . .
'Shut up.'
I could feel her watching me. I knew when she dropped her eyes in her lap and knew when she looked back at me again. She started to say something and closed her mouth over the words. She turned to stare out of the window into the blackness of the night and one hand wiped her eyes. Let her bawl. Maybe she'd learn how to be a little polite.
Another car was coming up behind us. She saw it first and pressed back into the seat until it was past. It went on down the long incline ahead of us until its taillight merged and disappeared into the maze of neons that were part of the town below.
The tires whined on a turn and the force of it made her lean across the seat until our shoulders touched. She pulled away at the contact, braced herself until the car rocked back to level and edged into the corner. I looked at her, but she was staring out of the window, her face still cold.
I slowed to fifty coming into the town, then to thirty-five and held it. The sign along the road said HANAFIELD, POP. 3600, SPEED LIMIT 25. A quarter mile up the highway a flashing red light winked in our direction and I got on the brakes. There was a police car in the middle of the road and two uniformed cops stood alongside it checking the cars as they came by. The car that had passed us further back was just getting the okay to go on through and the flashlight was waving at me to make a full stop.
Trouble. Like the smoke over a cake of dry ice. You can't smell it but you can see it and watch it boil and seep around things and know that soon something's going to crack and shatter under the force of the horrible contraction. I looked at the dame and she was stiffly immobile, her lips held so tight her teeth showed, a scream held in her throat ready to let go.
I leaned out the car before I reached the cop and took the beam of his flash in the face before he lowered it. 'Trouble, officer?'
His hat was pushed back on his head and a cigarette drooped from his mouth. The gun he wore hung cowboy style, and for effect he draped his hand on its butt. 'Where'd you come from, bud?'
A real cop, this guy. I wondered how much he paid for his appointment. 'Coming down from Albany, officer. What's up?' 'See anybody along the road? Anybody hitchhiking?'
I felt her hand close over mine before I answered him. It closed and squeezed with a sudden warmth and urgency and in a quick movement she had taken my hand in hers and slid it under the trench coat and I felt the bare flesh of her thigh there, smooth and round, and when my fingers stiffened at the touch she thought I was hesitating and with a fluid motion moved her grip up my forearm and pulled my hand against her body where there was no doubting her meaning, then amplified it by squeezing her legs together gently to keep it there.
I said, 'Not a thing, officer. My wife or me have been awake all the way and if anybody was there we sure would know about it. Maybe they came on ahead.'
'Nobody came ahead, bud.'
'Who were you looking for?'
