The Big Showdown Read online

  Also by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

  Kill Me, Darling

  Murder Never Knocks

  King of the Weeds

  Complex 90

  Mickey Spillane’s From the Files of . . . Mike Hammer

  Lady, Go Die!

  The Consummata

  Kiss Her Goodbye

  The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s

  Mike Hammer Vol. 3: Encore for Murder

  The Big Bang

  The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s

  Mike Hammer Vol. 2: The Little Death

  The Goliath Bone

  Dead Street

  The Legend of Caleb York

  MICKEY SPILLANE AND MAX ALLAN COLLINS

  The BIG SHOWDOWN

  A CALEB YORK WESTERN

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  CALEB YORK, JOHN WAYNE, AND MICKEY SPILLANE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  About the Authors

  Copyright Page

  For my old pard,

  Ed Gorman,

  master of the noir Western

  “All the screen cowboys (before me) behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.”

  —John Wayne

  CALEB YORK, JOHN WAYNE, AND MICKEY SPILLANE

  In the mid- to late 1950s, Mickey Spillane took a break from writing novels about his famous detective character, Mike Hammer, and tried any number of other things.

  Some of this was man’s-man-style wish-fulfillment—racing stock cars, deep-sea diving, getting shot out of a cannon (with the Clyde Beatty Circus, where he was also a trampoline artist). Other endeavors were an extension of his position as the most popular fiction writer of his time—writing a Hammer comic strip, recording a Hammer record album, and appearing on TV (spoofing himself on The Milton Berle Show, for example).

  Spillane was also heavily involved with various film and TV projects, including writing a live-action episode of the Suspense TV show, developing projects for Berle and another famous Mickey (Rooney), and writing non-Hammer screenplays in several genres. He even developed an anthology series with Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, wherein he would be the Hitchcock-style host; but the Mike Hammer series TV producers complained and the show never came to fruition.

  In addition, Mickey wrote and directed his own short Hammer film (apparently lost), showcasing his choice for the role by way of his New Jersey cop friend, Jack Stang, a decorated Marine veteran of World War II. Appearing with Stang were legendary comedian Jonathan Winters and Bettye Ackerman, later the female lead on TV’s Ben Casey.

  The Hammer “test film” project—written up in several magazines of the day—reflected Mickey’s dissatisfaction with what producer Victor Saville was doing with the Spillane properties the esteemed British director/producer was bringing to the screen. While appreciation for the 1953 3-D film version of I, the Jury has grown among film noir afficionados, and Robert Aldrich’s 1955 adaptation of Kiss Me, Deadly is now considered a classic, Spillane at the time was frustrated at being frozen out of the film-making process by Saville. Mickey wanted a hand in the writing and the casting, while Saville made promises that were never kept, just “handling” the famous blue-collar writer.

  Actor John Wayne and his producing partner, Robert Fellows, were friends of Mickey’s, and decided to give the frustrated Mike Hammer creator a chance to show what he and Jack Stang could do, by casting them in the circus picture Ring of Fear (1954). Mickey played himself, a famous mystery writer, and Stang played an implied Hammer. Two things backfired, but in a good way.

  First, Mickey blew Stang off the screen. The tough but affable Mickey, a natural before the camera, was clearly the Mike Hammer character come to life, while Stang remained in the background, big, looming, but making little impact. Second, producer Wayne was unhappy with the footage being shot and asked Mickey to rewrite the picture into more of a suspense movie and not just a backstage-at-the circus piece. Director William Wellman was brought in to shoot the new Spillane-scripted footage. On an earlier occasion, Mickey and Wayne were at a rough-cut screening of another Wellman picture, and the famed director was having problems with a key scene.

  Wayne said, “Mickey knows what’s wrong with it. Tell him, Mickey.”

  And Spillane told “Wild Bill” Wellman how to restructure the footage, giving the great director editing advice that was gratefully embraced.

  As for Ring of Fear (available on DVD), Mickey declined any screen credit for his rewrite, or for that matter payment. So producer Wayne had a white Jaguar convertible, which he’d seen Mickey admiring in a Los Angeles showroom, delivered to the writer’s home in Newburgh, New York, the little sports car wrapped in a red ribbon, with a card signed, “Thanks—Duke.”

  The John Wayne/Mickey Spillane friendship included the writer being invited to occasional screenings for his input, whenever the mystery writer happened to be out in Hollywood. But it also extended, on one memorable occasion, to Mickey’s services as a screenwriter.

  The existing correspondence in Mickey’s files from Wayne doesn’t make it clear which man initiated the Western project. At the very least Wayne expressed his enthusiasm for a Spillane-written Western. Mickey told me that The Saga of Cali York (as it was originally titled) was intended for Wayne himself, and had been commissioned by the actor; but it’s also possible that Wayne might have handed York off to Randolph Scott, Glenn Ford, or Robert Mitchum, who starred in various Wayne-produced films of the era, or some other appropriate star.

  About the time Mickey would have turned in his screenplay, Wayne’s production company was suffering financial woes due to the out-of-control budget—exacerbated by later box-office disappointment—of The Alamo (1960). While Wayne’s company Batjac eventually recovered, the superstar for a time had to make pictures for other producers and various studios, to dig himself out of the hole his pet project had dug.

  Wayne’s now ex-producing partner, Bob Fellows, went on to team up with Mickey on two films, The Girl Hunters (1963) and The Delta Factor (1970), both from Spillane novels. The latter film is minor, but The Girl Hunters (now on DVD and Blu-ray) is significant if for no other reason than Spillane himself played Mike Hammer and co-wrote the screenplay. The persona Mickey presented in The Girl Hunters became the basis of the self-spoofing one he used when appearing in the enormously successful Miller Lite commercials of the 1980s and ’90s (with “doll” Lee Meredith of The Producers fame).

  Over the years, I heard Mickey speak fondly of Wayne, and the Wayne screenplay, any number of times, and while not a man given to expressing regrets, Mickey clearly wished the York project had come to light. The writer often said that Mike Hammer was a modern-day Western hero (“He wore the black hat but he did the right thing”) and Spillane felt a kinship with the Western genre.

  Shortly before his death in 2006, Mickey indicated to his wife, Jan
e, that I should be given his files, and asked to complete various unfinished projects—an amazing honor. This included at least nine Mike Hammer novels in various stages of development, several other unfinished crime novels, and a handful of movie scripts. Of the latter, York jumped out at me.

  The Legend of Caleb York, published in 2015 by Kensington Books, is essentially a novelization of Mickey’s unproduced screenplay. My editor, Michaela Hamilton— long a Spillane fan—has asked me to continue the saga of Caleb York, drawing upon various drafts of the screenplay and notes in Mickey’s files.

  Mickey provided York with a rich back story as a Wells Fargo agent, which I may yet explore; but my wife, Barb (my collaborator on the “Trash ‘n’ Treasures” mysteries), suggested I write a direct sequel that further explores the characters, conflicts, and world Mickey created in his screenplay.

  The Big Showdown is that sequel.

  Again, picturing John Wayne as Caleb York is permitted but not required. I lean a little to Randolph Scott myself. Barb pictures Joel McCrea. And I bet Mickey wasn’t picturing Wayne, either.

  He was likely seeing, in his mind’s eye, a guy named Spillane.

  —Max Allan Collins

  CHAPTER ONE

  Caleb York was getting out of town on the noon stage. Despite his reputation as a deadly gunfighter, York was not being run out of Trinidad, New Mexico, by the sheriff. After all, until very recently, York had been the sheriff here himself, a position he’d held down for six months until a replacement could be found for the previous holder of that office.

  It was the least York could do for the dusty little community, considering he’d killed the man.

  Not that Sheriff Harry Gauge hadn’t needed killing—a petty tyrant seeking to become a cattle baron, a ruthless murderer that the West was well rid of. But removing Gauge from the Trinidad scene, on the heels of a cowpox epidemic, had left the town in something of a topsy-turvy mess. The Trinidad Citizens Committee had asked York to pick up Gauge’s badge, wipe the filth from it, and pin it on. At least for a while.

  This York had done.

  But now he’d found a suitable replacement in his old friend Ben Wade, who’d been a lawman in Kansas and Arizona, working alongside the likes of the Earp brothers and Bat Masterson. Even at fifty-some, Wade was twice the man of most anyone he was likely to come up against.

  Right now York was walking down the boardwalk, its awning shading him from morning sun, mercilessly bright in a clear sky, though the temperature on this dry, lightly breezy September morning was around sixty degrees. He was on his way to the office that had been his till he turned it over to Wade last week.

  Townspeople nodded at York, and he nodded back, casting smiles at the men, tipping his hat to the ladies. He was unaware that many of the latter turned to look at him as he passed, with wistful smiles and the occasional girlish giggle. Even from the older ones.

  York indeed made a fine figure of a man, long of leg, broad of shoulder, firm of jaw, his hair reddish brown, his face clean-shaven, his features pleasant, rawboned, with washed-out blue eyes that peered out a permanent squint. He had settled easily into that vague space between thirty and forty when a man was at his best and, in the case of a Caleb York, his most dangerous. His Colt Single Action Army .44 rode his right thigh at pocket level, the holster tie loose and dangling; his spurs sang an easygoing, jingling song.

  When he’d ridden into town last year, those who didn’t know how to look at a man saw only a dude, and York still dressed in a manner unlike either the cowhands of the surrounding ranches that Trinidad served, or the shopkeepers who did the serving. York considered his somewhat citified attire professional, and it reflected the time he’d spent in big cities like Denver and Tucson.

  But even Trinidad’s few professional men—Doc Miller, the bankers, the lawyers—did not approach the sartorial flair of Caleb York, who wore black as did they, only with touches of style—gray trim on collars and cuffs, gray string tie, twin breast pockets, pearl buttons down his shirt, black cotton pants tucked into hand-tooled black boots, curl-brimmed black hat with cavalry pinch, gray kerchief knotted at the neck.

  But ever since Caleb York had gunned down Gauge and half a dozen of his hardcase deputies, no one in Trinidad had called him “dude.”

  If pressed, he’d have admitted that he would miss this prospering little town of three hundred, and the surrounding ranchers and their families and hands who kept it thriving. Not that there was anything particularly special about the place.

  One end of Main Street—the dust kept down by a layer of sand brought in from the nearby Purgatory River—was home to a white wooden church, the other end a bare-wood livery stable, steeple and high-peaked hayloft mirroring each other. Between them was a typical collection of businesses—hardware store, apothecary, barber, hotel with restaurant, telegraph, saloon, café—false-fronted clapboards and now and then a brick building, like the bank.

  As he neared the livery stable, York felt a twinge—his black-maned, dappled gray gelding was in a stall within that homely structure. The blacksmith, Clem Wiggins, would sell the steed and wire the proceeds to him in San Diego. It might take a while, because the animal was worth a small fortune—less than five hundred would be horse theft. But even twice that couldn’t make up for the loss of a loyal steed like that.

  He doubted he’d even need a horse in San Diego. That would likely be a city where you either walked or hopped an electric streetcar. Where the only horses you saw were attached to buggies or milk wagons. A different world, but a world he needed to learn to live in.

  He was nearing the scarred, bullet-pocked adobe building that wore a high-up sign saying SHERIFF’S OFFICE AND JAIL. Across the way was a handful of smaller adobes, the homes and businesses of the town’s modest Mexican population. He took the few steps up to the wooden porch, sheltered by an awning, and knocked at the rough-wood door, a solid thing that could help make the office a fortress when need be.

  “It’s open!” a deep voice boomed.

  York went in and took off his hat.

  The office was a plank-floored space with two barred windows onto the street, a wood-burning stove, and a rough-hewn table overseen by a wall of wanted posters and a rack of rifles. This was at left; at right was a big dark wooden desk with a chair behind it and a man in the chair.

  Ben Wade was white-haired and white-mustached and wore his white flat-brim, Canadian-creased hat indoors as well as out, probably to hide where he was balding. Wade was a mite touchy about his age, since most gunfighters didn’t live as long as he had. The lawman had a well-fed look that replaced the leanness York had first known in him, when Wade was a deputy marshal in Dodge City.

  Wade, in a light blue shirt and tan cowhide vest, was making a cigarette. “Find a chair, Caleb,” he said.

  York pulled one up and sat down. “Nice to see a geezer like you with such a steady hand.”

  The sheriff licked the paper, finished making the smoke, and fired it up with a kitchen match. Waved it out. “You’re not that young yourself, friend.”

  “No. I’m not. That’s why I’m headed to the big town.”

  Wade shuddered. “Exactly where I don’t want to be. Six years in Denver, working as a hotel house dick. You don’t want to know the horrors I seen.”

  “Pay was good.”

  “Costs plenty living in a big town. You’ll see. But your loss is my gain.”

  York gestured toward a window. “It’s a decent little town, Ben. Your biggest worry is the handful of Gauge’s men who’re still out there. Gunnies pretendin’ they’re ranch hands.”

  He nodded. “You told me such enough times that I’m startin’ to pay attention. But ex-gunnies have to make an honest living, too. Times have changed. Times are changing.”

  “Not that much, Ben, not in Trinidad. Maybe over in Las Vegas, since the train come in. But this little town—could be twenty years ago, and you’d never know it.”

  “Cowboys still get drunk on payday,” Be
n said, with a deep chuckle and nod of agreement, “and kids who read too many dime novels will always try to play gunfighter. And die young like those who went before them.”

  “Old gunfighters who hang on too long, they die, too. Don’t forget that, Ben.”

  “Judas Priest, Caleb,” the sheriff said, letting out blue smoke, leaning forward. “You got in touch with me. You got sudden second thoughts about leavin’ this little slice of heaven? You tryin’ to talk me out of this job? You want this badge, son, you’ll have to rip it off my shirt. Because I am right where I want to be.”

  “How does Hazel feel about it?”

  He flinched, took another deep draw on the smoke. “She’s, uh . . . not happy. She likes her house in Denver. She likes her creature comforts. Our son and his daughters live there, you know.”

  “Hell, I didn’t mean to bust up your happy home.”

  Wade shook his head. “She’ll get over it. One of these days, the stage’ll pull up and she’ll step off. Mark my words. She was beautiful once, but now she’s old and fat like me. She knows I’m the only man on God’s good earth who looks at her with eyes that still see beauty. She’ll show.”

  York twitched half a frown. “I hope you’re right. I don’t need that on my conscience.”

  Wade’s laugh exhaled smoke. “Since when does Caleb York have a conscience? How many men you put down, anyways?”

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  Wade’s mustached grin filled a bunch of his face. “Sure you do, son. Only the crazy ones don’t keep track. You’re hard, but you ain’t crazy. How many?”

  “. . . Twenty-seven.”

  “Countin’ the war?”

  “Not counting the war, Ben. You never really know in war how many you put down.”

  “How do you sleep at night?”

  “Fine.”

  “Bad dreams?”

  “Only if I got a fever.”

  “Good. So I guess I can risk troubling your damn conscience. I got the job I want—this is how I want to spend my last working years. With a badge and a gun and a desk and a chair . . . and a hundred a month. More than that, with my cut of the taxes I collect.”