You kill ten guys and one of them is bound to come back. He doesn’t know how dead he is. He runs after you and grabs your gun. You better wake up. If your brain waited this long to talk to your hand a cigarette would burn right through your fingers. That’s too long. I feel like I just smoked a deck of cigarettes and forgot to blow out the smoke. Stupid idiots. I hate the rain. I hate people like that. They don’t know how wet the rain can get. If I shut my eyes I feel like I’m back in Indiana. Then I open them and I want to take the next guy I see and rip the ribs right out of his chest. I want to take this crowd an d mash it together like a sack of potatoes. I put his head where his wallet used to be.
“The noise was so loud I didn’t know if the bullet hit me or not!”
“It didn’t but you might wish it had.”
“Thanks. A real friend will always tell you after it’s too late to do anything.”
I couldn’t let them see me get sick. What I wasn’t saying was making my stomach pitch. I got back in the car before I opened my mouth. The gun bucked back like she did. She didn’t have room for any pockets. There was a party of bullets going on inside her shirt. Where are the men with their sleeves rolled up and their knuckles split open? They ripped the stuffing out of my mattress but they didn’t touch the sheets on my bed.
There are only so many ways a woman can get undressed. I thought I’d seen them all
John Zorn, Spillane, 1987
Lyrics by Arto Lindsay (1986)
John Lurie (voice of Mike Hammer)
Robert Quine (voice of Mike Hammer’s conscience)
