The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

She comes all the way into the room. She has something under her arm, a flat red package. The string’s broken on the package and the paper disarranged. I can see the cover of a children’s book.

I say: “Well, Prince, I must be going.”

Mamie Kelly blocks the way to the door. She says, “Stick around, young fellow. Something I want to ask you.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “I’ll run over to your store after a while. I’ve got to report at my office.”

She shakes her big head. “No.” She takes the book from under her arm and says, “Look, Pete!” and slams it over the prince’s head. He goes down to the floor and stays there.

“Get up, you dirty rat!” Mamie Kelly yells.

The prince begins to whine. He sounds like a dog that has been whipped. Big Mamie reaches down and twists one of her meat hooks in the back of his purple dressing gown. She picks him up and tosses him into an easy chair. Man Mountain Dean couldn’t have done it easier.

All of a sudden I think of something. Tony Druhar, the Serbian I’d found dead — with his face turned around to his spine...

Maybe you think I don’t feel funny. A three-hundred-pound woman, all muscle and bone. My skin gets hot and cold and begins to crawl. What the hell, a man — you could belt him in the jaw, butt him in the stomach or kick him where it’ll do the most good. But a woman — can you do those things to a woman?

The prince is as big as me, if not bigger. Yet Mamie Kelly handles him as if he was a baby. She turns to me and says, “So you think you’re smart, sending me this book?”

“Me?” I say.

“None of that, now! Delia Harker’s a cousin of mine. I never got a package before. When you came in there with your phoney stuff she got me on the telephone. I saw you from across the street fooling around with that damn pin game.”

“Mamie!” yelps the Prince suddenly. “You... you are W. C. Roberts?”

“Of course I am. How the hell you suppose I got all the money to set you up in this swell hotel? You think I made it in that lousy store I run on Sedgwick for a blind?”

The prince is about ready to faint. I’m not far from it, myself. I’m concentrating on the door, wondering if I can get to it and out, before she can head me off.

Mamie Kelly says, “I give you all that dough, buy you the fancy clothes and what do you do in return? You spend the money on blond floozies, and try to muscle in on my racket. You think I don’t know about Druhar?”

“Druhar?” the prince gasps.

“Yes, Druhar, the punk. He was starving, and I gave him a job at the store. He had to nose around, and then try to sell me out to you. Well, he got what he deserved.”

“You killed him?”

“Like that!” she makes a motion with her two hands like wringing out a wet dishrag.

I take a deep breath and make a dash for the door.

I don’t get to it. Mamie takes a quick step to one side and falls against me. She knocks me spinning and before I can get up, she swoops down on me and grabs my left arm. She twists it behind my back in a hammerlock.

I yell and heave up, trying to turn a forward somersault. A bunch of nickels fall on the floor. And then—

I yelled to high heaven. She breaks my arm. The big, fat murderess! The bones grate in my elbow and I yell bloody murder.

I guess that saves my life. After all, it’s a hotel and she doesn’t want a flock of cops busting in. She lets go of my arm to grab my neck. I have just enough strength left to roll away.

She comes after me again, her big face twisted in a snarl. I can’t see her eyes at all, they’re buried in the fat of her cheeks. I’m so scared of her that I go a little crazy. I kick a chair in her way and she knocks it aside with one punch of her fist.

I try for the door again. She heads me off. I back away and step on some of the nickels that’ve spilled from my pocket.

And then I know what to do. It’s my only chance. Two minutes more in this room with the amazon — and I’d wind up like Tony Druhar. Only more broken bones.

My left arm is hanging limp at my side and I’m dizzy with the pain of it. But there’s nothing wrong with my right arm. I rip open my coat with my right hand, shrug out of the right side of it and reach over to slide it down my left shoulder.

Mamie makes a noise like a female gorilla and starts for me. I jump back and find myself against the wall. But I’ve got the coat in my hand now, the coat with about five pounds of nickels in the pockets. A half-pound of them in the toe of a sock would have made a dandy black-jack.

She comes at me and I swing the coat with all that’s left in me. The noise she makes when she hits the floor reminds me of the time I got drunk at a dance and fell into the bass drum.

Prince Pete thinks this is a good time to make his getaway, but I beat him to the door and swing the weighted coat in his face.