Mike Hammer--King of the Weeds Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Co-Author’s Note

  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

  About the Authors

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  Lady, Go Die!

  Complex 90

  King of the Weeds: A Mike Hammer Novel

  Print edition ISBN: 9780857684677

  E-book edition ISBN: 9780857689542

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: May 2014

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

  Copyright © 2014 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  In memory of

  the screen’s first Mike Hammer,

  BIFF ELLIOT

  (1923–2012)

  CO-AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Shortly before his death in 2006, Mickey Spillane told his wife Jane, “When I’m gone, there’s going to be a treasure hunt around here. Take everything you find and give it to Max—he’ll know what to do.”

  Half a dozen substantial Mike Hammer manuscripts were found in the “treasure hunt,” often accompanied by plot notes, rough outlines and even drafts of final chapters. These lost Hammer novels spanned Mickey’s career, from the late ’40s through the mid-’60s and on up to The Goliath Bone, which he was working on at the time of his passing.

  Mickey conceived King of the Weeds as the final Mike Hammer, and a sequel to Black Alley (1996), the last Hammer published during his lifetime. He set it aside after 9/11 to respond to that attack in The Goliath Bone (2008). The time frame here is the late ’90s, with Mike in his mid-sixties; realistically, he should be around ten years older, but readers will just have to live with that—Mickey did.

  It has been my great honor to complete these six substantial Mike Hammer manuscripts, and my love and thanks go to both Mickey and Jane Spillane. A familiarity with Black Alley, incidentally, is not a requirement here.

  M.A.C.

  CHAPTER ONE

  When you suddenly realize you’re about to be killed, all your mind does is tell you that you were dumb. You had the experience, you had the physical abilities, you had the animal instincts.

  But you were dumb.

  Maybe you had played the game too long. Maybe that last round of injuries had left a deeper wound than you thought.

  The little man in the tailored navy blue suit, a raincoat draped over his right arm, was waiting on my floor when the elevator opened and I stepped out. He never raised his head to look at me, the brim of his pale blue hat even with my nose. He smelled faintly of too-strong aftershave. I thought nothing of it, but did wonder why that raincoat was dry on a rainy morning like this.

  So I got off and began to walk away, knowing—just a stupid fraction of a second later than I should have—that he was a killer and I was the target, and I jerked my head around to see the face of the bastard who would take me down. He was just inside the elevator, his foot holding the door open while he aimed the silenced gun at me from six feet away, the weapon emerging for a good look at me from under that draped raincoat, and both of us knew there was no hope for me at all, because it was six-thirty in the morning and no one but me would be on the eighth floor this early.

  Reflex action worked before thought, and while he fired I was dropping and turning, clawing for a gun that wasn’t there any more, but my movement didn’t spoil his aim. Both shots pounded into my chest right at the heart region and I hit the carpet with my breath hissing through my teeth as the killer got on the elevator, his back to me, and the door snicked shut.

  I fought to get air into my lungs, but the double stunning blow was like a paralyzing hand trying to squeeze the life right out of me. I let my torso twist a little and the motion allowed other muscles to take over and I was able to breathe, barely. In ten seconds I tried again and sucked down a bit more air. Rushing things wouldn’t help. Nobody was going to see me lumped down on the new carpet. Thirty years ago, hell twenty, I’d have realized his bullets hadn’t killed me and sucked up the pain and headed for the stairs to chase him down, my .45 in my fist.

  What I did today was stay floored a good ten minutes until I was breathing almost normally, then somehow got my feet under me and stood unsteadily up.

  There were two cigarette-burn holes in my damp trenchcoat as I stumbled to my office and opened the door that read MICHAEL HAMMER INVESTIGATIONS. Only when I had locked it behind me did I reach inside the flap of my coat and yank out the paperback dictionary my secretary Velda had asked me to pick up for her at Coliseum Books. I had stuck it in my inside coat pocket on the elevator when I’d reached in my pants for my keys. Two twenty-two caliber holes were punched into the volume and never wholly penetrated the two and a half inches of paper.

  Mister Webster had saved my life, and as I stumbled to a chair, dropping my trenchcoat and suitcoat and unbuttoning my shirt clumsily, I thanked whatever kismet had made Velda dissatisfied with her word processor’s dictionary on the new computer that replaced her old typewriter. Still, there was one hell of a black-and-blue blossom blooming on my chest.

  Soon I heard Velda’s key in the lock, and when she closed the door and turned, her body snapped into momentary rigidity, her eyes wide with the shock of seeing me sitting where I shouldn’t be, turned toward her in the visitor’s chair at her desk, my shirt wide open, the bruise on my chest like a bull’s-eye in a target.

  But there were no melodramatics. No wide eyes, no girlish scream. This was a woman, a beautiful woman who could make men decades her junior stop and stare. A woman who was a partner in this business, with her own P.I. ticket and a .22 automatic that had punched other people’s tickets, when need be.

  She tossed her attaché case on her desk like a bored postman delivering the mail and was out of her poncho in another second, standing there in front of me—statuesque, raven-haired, with a shoulder-brushing page boy that thumbed its nose
at changing fashion, and a body that made a silk beige blouse and brown knee-length skirt seem provocative.

  On the fourth finger of her left hand was a two-carat emerald-cut diamond set in gold. We’d been unofficially engaged for decades. Officially so for about a year, like the ring said.

  Her eyes took me in—she knew something was as wrong as it could be, but there was no blood showing anywhere. I was breathing regularly and didn’t seem to be in severe pain.

  Her voice was low and throaty, her tone business-like, but the concern was under there. “So what happened this time, Mike?”

  “I got shot. Twice.” I nodded down at the discoloration on my chest.

  Her eyes followed mine, tightening to see if an entry wound was hiding in all that purple, but not finding one. “I don’t see any new holes.”

  I shook my head. “No. No new holes. But it hurt like a son of a bitch. Like Mike Tyson laid a couple on me.”

  “So did you borrow that fancy lightweight body armor again?” she asked, looming over me.

  “No. You were there to save me, kitten.”

  She blinked. “Remind me.”

  “I was wearing that dictionary you had me pick up.” I pointed to her desktop nearby.

  Then she smiled, nodding, getting it. She picked the book up, opened it until she could see the tail of both .22 slugs, then felt the pair of bulges where the noses had come to rest. She folded down the back cover and thumbed some pages away.

  “They stopped at page six-nineteen,” she said. “If you play the numbers today, make it that one.”

  I had to grin at her, such a cool cookie, but I wondered how she would have reacted if she had tripped over my body coming out the elevator.

  The clock on the far wall said it was five minutes to seven and it wouldn’t be long before the photographers from the magazine outfit down the hall would be coming in.

  So I said to Velda, “Go out by the elevator and see if you can find any shell casings. Ring the elevator up and look in there too.”

  She didn’t ask questions. The game was on now. The first move had been made, a sudden, decisive and explosive move that was supposed to take out a major player, and it hadn’t worked.

  But what game were we playing?

  Velda came back in three minutes, shaking her head, hands empty. “Nothing. No brass on the floor at all and the elevator was clean.”

  “What I expected. He stood just inside the elevator, the rod in his right hand, and it ejected to the right. The casings would have landed on the floor in there, and he retrieved them on the ride down.”

  “Expecting you’d be dead by then.”

  “Oh yeah. He was a real pro, all right. He nailed me with two shots an inch apart while I was falling and twisting and if I hadn’t had your little book under my coat, those slugs would have torn my heart apart worse than any woman ever did.”

  Velda ignored that, but her tongue made a nervous pass across her lips and a small shudder touched her shoulders. Then her eyes narrowed in thought. “Your back was to him, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  She stated, “Pro killers who use a .22 go for head shots.”

  “Generally.”

  “And you couldn’t have been more than three feet away.”

  I shrugged and it hurt some. “More like six. I came out of the elevator too fast. He had to move back a step and re-position. He was moving when I realized what was going down and started to turn. My heart area was a secondary target, and a better one, and he didn’t miss. He saw me hit the deck. Some place he’s licking his lips and counting his money.”

  “Not if he’s the pro you think he was.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mike, think it through. He’d want definite confirmation. So would his contractor.”

  “So you figure… when he finds out he missed… he may try again.”

  “He’s going to try again.”

  I grinned at her. “Still sure you’re up for marrying me?”

  She took a deep breath and picked up my trenchcoat where I dumped it on the floor nearby. Her fingers found the twin holes but were too big to go in them.

  “I guess so,” she said, going over to hang up the coat, “but it would be nice if your hobby wasn’t getting shot.”

  “I’m weaning myself off that, doll.”

  But just her speaking of it brought on the big ache.

  On that cold, cold night, I had come to the piers under West Side Drive to warn Don Lorenzo Ponti that a hit was going down, courtesy of a rival family. I had no great love for the man, in fact had caused him some trouble earlier but thought I might catch the blame if I didn’t give him a heads up.

  When I pulled in behind the black limo, I saw no sign at all of an ambush. He stepped off that old cargo ship he’d sneaked home on, and I was getting out of my car as the first shots rang out, and then they came rushing out of the woodwork, with military precision, the Gaetano soldiers, guns and breath smoking in the chill. I’d been too late to do my good deed, and with bullets flying in a war I wanted no part of, I made it back for my car…

  …but the don’s crazy kid Azi saw me, read me as a hostile, and came at me head on, his .357 belching fire and metal and catching me twice in the left side. I went down on my back and half-rolled and then he was on top of me, that big barrel pointing down at my face, but he took a moment to savor the thought of splattering me to hell, and my fist with the .45 swung up and one fat ball-and-cap slug took the top of his head off and ended a nothing life.

  So that made me the big winner, only Azi’s two bullets had churned into me like torpedoes intent on taking down a sub and then my guts were vomiting blood through two new orifices…

  My hand ran down where I had been hit last year. It was healed now, but I’d always know when it was going to rain. I still couldn’t quite take the weight of my .45 snugged down under my arm on that side and had gotten so used to it not being there that I rarely carried it any more. No need, right?

  Right?

  “Mike… Mike! I lost you there for a moment.”

  “I’m here, kitten.”

  “Who was it? Who did this to you?”

  I described the killer as best I could, but it was pretty sketchy, mostly just the natty blue suit and hat and the slightness of him. I hadn’t expected the attack, and his face had been obscured by his hat brim.

  “And I saw very damn little when the slugs were pounding into me,” I said.

  “You’re going soft on me.”

  “One thing—he smelled of aftershave.”

  “What kind?”

  “Beats me. I’m strictly an Old Spice guy. Maybe something foreign. But I’ll know it again if I smell it.” I tapped my nose. “I didn’t make it in this business so long not having a good one of these.”

  She was frowning in thought—that trick of hers that managed it without wrinkling much of anything. “He was here waiting for you.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, how’d your new friend know you’d be here this early?”

  “That’s no secret. I’m always here early.”

  “But it’s not standard business hours for this or any building,” she reminded me. “And our answer machine gives office hours as starting at nine.”

  We liked having some time to deal with paperwork and ongoing casework before seeing any paying customers.

  “So he’s been watching us,” I said.

  “Him or somebody he works with, or for,” she said. “Which I don’t love.”

  “I don’t love it either, knowing that we’ve been under somebody’s gaze and neither one of us picked up on it.”

  She nodded, her dark eyes hard. “Us or any of the Hackard Building lobby staffers. They know by now the kind of attention Mike Hammer can attract.”

  “Well, I don’t attract the attention I used to.”

  She wiggled a finger at the growing bruise, already a rhapsody in sick discoloration. “Really? You’d never guess. What the hell is this abou
t, Mike? What enemies have you… have we… made lately?”

  “Let me mull that,” I said. “Meantime, better call Pat, then make us some coffee.”

  “Woman’s work never being done.”

  “I’m not chauvinistic, I’m wounded.”

  “You’re a wounded chauvinist.”

  Velda did all that, giving Pat the basic facts but asking him to come alone. Soon she and I were seated on the couch in the outer office, waiting for Pat, my feet up on a chair, hers nicely crossed, as we sipped coffee—Dunkin’ Donuts special blend, the best medicine this side of Four Roses.

  “What if this isn’t a new enemy?” I asked. My shirt was still unbuttoned and I occasionally ran my fingers lightly over the massive bruise.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Well, you have your share of old ones. Anyone in particular?”

  I shook my head, but then something came to me. Just conversationally, I asked her, “You see that piece in the News last week? About the Rudy Olaf case getting a fresh look?”

  “Rudy Olaf… why do I know that name? But, no, I didn’t see that piece.”

  I shrugged. “It was a glorified squib. And this goes back to before you were working for me. I’d just gone into business, Pat was walking a beat. This was way, way back, doll. At the beginning.”

  “Mike, you’re talking forty years ago!”

  With a nod, I said, “It was the case that made Pat Chambers. Nobody ever became a captain quicker on the NYPD. Of course, nobody has stayed one longer…”

  She smirked at me. “No captain of homicide ever had a best friend like Mike Hammer as an albatross around his neck, either.”

  “Kitten, that’s unkind. I’ve helped Pat close out all kinds of cases.”

  “Yes, but usually with the working end of your .45.”

  I waved that off. “That was the old days, sugar. But we’re talking about the very old days with Rudy Olaf. He was a kid, like Pat and me… well, he was a little older maybe. He was a combat veteran, European theater. I was in the Pacific, as was Pat. We both lied about our ages to get in, did you know that?”

  “I may have heard that a couple of thousand times. But Rudy Olaf? He may be old news to you, Mike, but he’s new news to me.”