BLACK ALLEY.

Mickey Spillane.

This is for Max Allan Collins, who prowled the BLACK ALLEYS with d.i.c.k Tracy. Now he has to do it by himself.

1.

THE PHONE RANG.

It was a thing that had been sitting here, black and quiet like a holstered gun, unlisted, unknown to anybody, used only for local outgoing calls, and when it was triggered it had the soft, muted sound of a silenced automatic. The first ring was a warning round. The second time would be death calling.

Eight months ago I had come to Florida to die. The two bullets I had caught in the firefight under the West Side Drive had churned into bodily areas that weren't made to be violated like that and the blood that had spilled out of me was just too much, so the others, the walking wounded and the repairable, were taken care of first by the few medics who got to the battleground early. The dead and dying were pushed aside or isolated in the section of no return.

The temperature was six below zero and it kept me from dying on the spot because the blood coagulated and clotted in ugly smears of cloth and skin and the pain hadn't started yet, so when the little fat guy who saw my eyes open and still bright pulled me away from the carnage he was almost in the shock I was going into. n.o.body would listen to him. He was a drunk. I was nearly dead.

Sometimes the body responds to a stimulus that can't be explained. He got me upright. I walked woodenly, dyingly. I was sat in an old car. The fat man rolled down the windows. The blood stayed frozen. My hands were numb and I couldn't feel my feet. Idly, I wondered what frostbite was like. Breathing was a thing that was happening, but at a pace that said it could slow, then stop at any time. A dull, squeezing sensation of pain was beginning to gnaw on my insides and I knew that eventually, and very soon, it would grow into a terrible, devastating animal with an awful hunger and I would be eaten alive by it.

I wanted to scream, but nothing would come out.

Every minute it got worse.

Then there was nothing, but I didn't know that.

When the light came back it was soft and the things in it were a little blurry, fuzzy and shadowy, so I closed my eyes and opened them again after a few moments and the things began to take recognizable shape. There were hands and arms, then a face I didn't know, an old face with white hair whose countenance was frowning and concerned, whose hands were busy doing things to my body and by the feel and the smell I knew were changing the bandages.

He saw me looking at him and said, "Don't talk."

I had been around too long to be overly curious about this BIG NOW that had happened to me. I knew it was bad. I didn't talk. He read my answer in my eyes and nodded.

When he finished with the bandage he pulled the sheet up over my chest and fingered his gla.s.ses down on his nose so that our eyes met directly. "I'll ask you questions," he said. "Don't try to answer them. Just blink once for yes and twice for no. Can you do that?"

For a moment I let it sink in, then I blinked once.

"Do you know what happened to you?"

I blinked again.

He pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "You should be dead, you know." There was no answer to that.

The eerie swirling in my eyesight cleared up, and I saw the little fat man, only he wasn't the same little fat man that had dragged me from dull red-smeared concrete where sirens and screams blended into a death opera beyond imagination.

"For the past fifteen days you've been here."

I just looked at him. He was in white now, jacket, pants, and he had a stethoscope hung from his neck. He knew what I was thinking.

"I used to be a doctor." He frowned again and pinched his nose tighter. "Wrong word," he said. "I still am a doctor. I was never kicked out of the profession. I just left. I got drunk and left. Period. I couldn't stand the c.r.a.p."

There were no blinks to tell him what I wanted to know. Yes and No just wouldn't do it so all I could do was stare and hope he could read what was back there.

He did.

"Where I was, n.o.body cared. The ideals of youth went down the drain during internship. Man, did they go down the drain." He took a deep breath and grimaced. "For thirty years I went into the system. Man, I got rich." He leaned forward, closer to my face. "Do I look rich to you?"

This time I blinked twice. No.

Somehow, the circuitry of my mind began functioning and I was hoping that I wasn't being smothered by some kind of a nutcase who wanted to play a game of you die on his own fiddle. I tried to move my arms and they moved. My fingers wiggled, my shoulders were free. There were no restraints. But the bonds were still there. Total weakness still had me; restraints or not, there was little I could do.

Very professionally, he reached down, wrapped his fingers around my wrist and took my pulse. He didn't look at his watch. He didn't have any. "Before you get too choked up, kiddo, I can do this by heart. I hocked the Rolex years ago," he told me.

I blinked four times to show that I understood.

"You hurt?" he asked.

I tried a shrug with my face.

"At least you don't feel anything too bad, right?"

I blinked.

"Good. So I'll talk and you listen. Maybe I can make a story out of this. It's got a great beginning. I wish I knew the ending. You ready?"

For a long second I wondered, then knew it was a must. I was alive. Why? Once more I blinked.

He ran his hands across his face, gathering his thoughts. They weren't just idle bits and pieces he was trying to put into place. It was like the closing of a bridge across a great river; he was putting the roadway back in line and was about to drive his car across it. What he was about to say was scaring him, but it had to be said or he'd never cross the bridge.

"I walked out of a hospital here in New York and right into a saloon. In less than a month a fine surgeon disintegrated into a total alcoholic with no regrets, no remorse, no aches and pains. My money-hungry family just let me go, took all the a.s.sets and never even bothered to report me to the Missing Persons Bureau. After seven years I was declared legally dead, my wife got a young stud to take her to bed, my kids went to pot, to c.o.ke and to poverty and all this I found out in the newspapers. Great system, isn't it?"

I didn't blink this time either. He wasn't done with the story.

"You feel tired, blink three times and I'll shut up," he said.

I blinked yes.

"The night of the shooting," he told me, "I was in Casey's saloon. A dive. I had been there plenty of times. It was all I could afford. I had one buck and a dime left and was half drunk. That's when the shooting began. You know, I don't even remember running outside. All of a sudden I was there. h.e.l.l, I didn't know what was going on, all those cars and the sirens. Everybody was yelling and every place people were making the dead sounds and I started to get sick to my stomach. When I saw that guy drag you off that wooden case and just drop you there . . . well, whatever I had been came back to me and I pulled you over to my car."

My eyes squinted at him and he nodded. "That buggy was twelve years old. It was all I had left. I stole license plates to keep it current. I took you back here."

This time I let my eyes pa.s.s around the room. I was able to see more clearly now.

Understanding, he said: "Tools of my trade. Some things you can never get rid of." He grinned and looked around the room himself. "Man, this is right out of Gunsmoke. You and old doc, no modern goodies, no big antibiotics, just a booze tranquilizer, a few instruments and a lot of hope." Once more, he got that furrow between his brows. "You should be dead, you know that?"

One quick blink. Yes, I know that. Maybe I still will be.

Almost apologetically, he said, "Everything I could do, I did."

This time I didn't blink at all. I was waiting.

"I was drunk and I had the shakes." He watched me closely, but I didn't respond. No blinks. "It was like something dropped you right into my lap. I was being given another chance. What I did was totally unethical, completely unwise. When I should have taken you to a hospital to receive proper care, I took the responsibility upon myself like a complete fool, and by some happy circ.u.mstance, you survived all the indignities of a medical idiot and stayed alive in spite of what he did."

That stupid blinking was beginning to bother me. It hurt, but I breathed in a little deeper and said in a strange voice, "Would I have lived otherwise?"

His lips pursed and his eyes grew oddly serious. "No," he said. Then added, "You almost went down the black alley. n.o.body comes back from there."

I remembered it then. The street I was on was strange, yet one I knew. A dim light was on either end, but I was in the middle, and something was there in front and behind that I didn't want to face. Right beside me was an opening. It went somewhere. No . . . it went nowhere, but it was a way to escape the street. It looked cool and comfortable, an alley I could be safe in. It was black.

And black had a meaning. It wasn't death. Black didn't represent death no matter what they told you. Grey represented death. Black was the color of ignorance.

So I stood there and looked down the black alley and didn't step into it. I just melted back into a bubbly froth of anesthesia make-believe and awoke to a blurry fat man's face.

I said, "Am I . . . dying?" My voice was cobwebby, shaky.

Finally, he told me, "That's up to you now." I saw a small smile touch his mouth and he added, "Just don't do it. If you die, you kill me, too. Lousy choice for both of us."

He saw the question in my eyes.

"Why? Man, if you kick it over in my home-made laboratory here I'm right down the drain. A month ago I wouldn't have given a hoot. h.e.l.l, I would have welcomed the big out. Then you go and show up all blown to pieces and I take the challenge and make it real again, suddenly turning into a doctor who pulled off some kind of a modern miracle . . . and if you go, I'm right behind you."

I had to force the words out. "Now you're . . . sober?"

"Permanently."

I was trying to verbalize another thought, but he held up his hand and shook his head at the same time. "No more talking." He reached over to the table beside the bed and picked up a hypodermic needle. He shook some alcohol on a cotton swab, dabbed my arm and gave me a jab. "Just some sleep, no black alley this time."

Somehow my mind had kept a count and I knew four more days had pa.s.sed. In a way I had been fed with the life-sustaining solutions that pa.s.s through tubes into your veins and nourish the body, and the same body had been moved and ma.s.saged so that no muscular deterioration would set in and wet cloths had kept the skin clean.

Then I woke up and there was no fuzziness at all. The soft light of dawn made everything a dull cream color and I was able to breathe without it hurting at all. The door opened and the little fat man was there again. He didn't seem so fat now. There was a drawn look to his face that was an improvement.

I think I grinned at him.

"You feel better?" he asked me.

I made the okay sign with my fingers and blinked yes.

"Cut out the blinking, friend. I think you can try speaking to me. What do you want to know?"

"How much do I owe you?" I said. My voice was there, but deep and raspy.

He dropped his head and let out a grunt. His eyes lifted to mine. "Joking?"

"Sure."

"Otherwise I'd have to tell you that I owed you," he said. After a moment he added, "I still might. If you want to take me to court you'd own my hide."

"Knock it off," I let out softly. "I'm alive."

"I think that was your doing, not mine."

"Don't give me that."

"I have to. Right now you're on the upswing. There's no way you're going to come out of this like you had a broken leg or the mumps or something. You are in a very trepidatious situation." He squinted and ran his hand across his face. "d.a.m.n, what a bedside manner I have. I shouldn't even be talking to you like this."

"Hey . . ."

"You like the rough news?"

I nodded.

"There's nothing I can do for you anymore. If you want to keep functioning you are going to have to get rest so d.a.m.n complete it will drive you crazy." He stopped, wiped his mouth, then continued. "And I mean rest. Doing nothing. Taking it easy. Getting up, napping, going to bed early, just like some little preschool kid. That's the only way your insides are ever going to come together and start working again."

"For how long?"

He let a few seconds pa.s.s, then said, "You'll know."

"Will I ever be the same?"

"You'll know that too when the time comes."

He kept looking at me, not wanting to put his thoughts into words. I got tired of waiting and asked, "What's missing, doc?"

"You just sounded like Bugs Bunny."

"Cut the comedy."

"Sure." He licked his lips and a darkness came into his eyes. "I just found out who you are."

I waited.

"A private investigator." I didn't have to blink on that one. He knew. "Mike Hammer."

"Right. Is that bad?"

"No. Just trouble."

"Why?"

"You are supposed to be dead." He read the expression on my face and said, "Witnesses saw you shot. You were right near the pilings on the wharf. They said you were trying to get up and a.s.sumed you did and fell into the river."

He was trying to get his composure so I kept quiet. When he could speak again he said, "It was a full moon, the tide was going out fast and anything or anybody in the river at the time would have been swept out to sea. There was a search off the docks and at the mouth of the Hudson but nothing was recovered."

"Naturally," I told him.