Hot Lead, Cold Justice Read online

  Also by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

  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

  The Big Showdown

  The Bloody Spur

  Last Stage to Hell Junction

  MICKEY SPILLANE AND MAX ALLAN COLLINS

  Hot Lead, Cold Justice

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  An Introduction

  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

  A TIP OF THE STETSON

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Mickey Spillane Publishing LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2019953661

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1679-8

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: June 2020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1680-4 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-1680-9 (ebook)

  In memory of

  JEB ROSEBROOK,

  creator of Junior Bonner

  and a genuine Western hero

  Courage is being scared to death

  but saddling up anyway.

  —John Wayne

  Mickey Spillane and Caleb York

  An Introduction

  For many readers over the age of forty or so, the name Mickey Spillane is almost certainly a familiar one. Baby boomers like myself grew up knowing Spillane as one of the most famous writers of the day, and the best-selling (and most controversial) American mystery writer of all.

  Other readers will likely remember Mickey as the star of a popular and very funny series of Miller Lite beer commercials running from 1973 through 1988 (co-starring Lee Meredith of Producers fame as “the Doll”). And Mickey’s iconic private eye Mike Hammer was memorably portrayed by actor Stacy Keach in various TV series and TV movies as late as 1998.

  I began writing these introductions to the new Caleb York Westerns to share the background of Mickey’s friendship with screen legend John Wayne, and how it led to a screenplay for the Duke that was never produced, but decades later led to a series of successful novels.

  It occurs to me that some younger readers, however, may not be familiar with this last of the major mystery writers of the twentieth century, who “left the building” in July 2006. This is despite the fact that only a handful of writers in the genre—Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler among them—ever achieved such superstar status.

  Spillane’s position is unique—reviled by many mainstream critics, despised and envied by a number of his contemporaries in the very field he revitalized, the creator of Mike Hammer has had an impact not just on mystery and suspense fiction but popular culture in general.

  The success of the reprint editions of his startlingly violent and sexy novels jump-started the paperback original, and his redefinition of the action hero as a tough guy who mercilessly executes villains and who sleeps with beautiful, willing women remains influential to this day (Sin City is graphic novelist Frank Miller’s homage).

  This was something entirely new in mystery fiction, which got him called a fascist by left-leaning critics and a libertine by right-leaning ones. In between were millions of readers who turned Spillane’s first six Hammer novels into the best-selling private eye novels of all time.

  As success raged around him, Mickey Spillane proved himself a showman and a marketing genius; he became as famous as his creation, appearing on book jackets with gun in hand and fedora on head. His image became synonymous with Hammer’s, more so even than any of the actors who portrayed the private eye (for the late 1950s Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer TV series, Darren Mc-Gavin was said to have been cast, in part, because of his physical resemblance to the detective’s creator).

  And, ultimately, Mickey himself appeared as his own famous character in the 1963 film The Girl Hunters. Critics at the time viewed his performance favorably, and today many viewers of the quirky, made-in-England film still do.

  Of course, The Girl Hunters wasn’t Spillane’s first feature film—it wasn’t even his first leading role in one. In 1954, John Wayne hired Spillane to star with Pat O’Brien and lion-tamer Clyde Beatty in Ring of Fear, a film Spillane co-scripted without credit, receiving a white Jaguar as a gift from producer Wayne (the attached card read, “Thanks—Duke”).

  Mike Hammer paved the way for James Bond—Casino Royale is a British variation on Spillane, right down to its last line—and every tough action hero who followed, whether P.I. or cop, lone avenger or government agent, from Shaft to Billy Jack, from Dirty Harry to Jack Bauer. The latest Hammer-style heroes include an unlikely one—the vengeance-driven young woman of the Lisabeth Salander novels—as well as a perhaps more obvious descendent, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher.

  I was lucky enough to know Mickey Spillane and work with him, and was asked by him shortly before his death to complete a number of his unfinished novels, manuscripts covering the entire span of the writer’s career. Thus far I have completed thirteen novels begun by Mickey, ten featuring Mike Hammer, as well as numerous short stories, again working from material Mickey began.

  My friendship with Mickey centered on more than my admiration for him and his work—I became one of the few fellow writers in his life. He had many friends in South Carolina, where he lived for decades, and they ranged from auto mechanics to dentists, handymen to lawyers. But after the passing of his writer pal Dave Ger-rity, I became—on my numerous visits—someone he could talk with about the craft, and business, of writing.

  Early on it became clear that Mickey’s few regrets included not working more in the Western genre. He shared stories about John Wayne and dug out the screenplay about Caleb York for me to read. He talked about the TV series Have Gun—Will Travel, the creation of which he said he had a hand in, though he never took any credit (or, for that matter, legal action). I have no proof to back him up, although I know he was a friend and collaborator of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who worked on Have Gun.

  In the weeks before his death, Mickey said to his wife Jane, “Give everything to Max—he’ll know what to do,” referring to his voluminous files of incomplete manuscripts and story ideas. For over a decade, Jane and I have worked diligently to do Mickey’s bidding, and part of that effort has been to see one of his pet projects—Caleb York—brought to light.

  This is the fifth Caleb York novel. The first, The Legen
d of Caleb York, was directly based on Mickey’s screenplay for John Wayne. For the books that have followed, I have drawn from various drafts of that screenplay and notes in the Spillane files.

  As I have mentioned previously, John Wayne’s interest in “The Saga of Cali York” (as it was originally called—I dropped the “Cali” nickname) does not mean that Wayne necessarily intended to play York himself. He might have—it was written around the time when the Duke was playing roles of a similar nature. Caleb York could easily slip into the world of The Searchers or Rio Bravo, for example.

  But Wayne was also a producer, through his Batjac production company, and might well have cast another star of his day as York—after all, he used Randolph Scott, Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, James Arness (his discovery), Kirk Douglas, and even Victor Mature in various Western films he produced.

  So for Hot Lead, Cold Justice I once again encourage you to cast the York part in any way you like—not that Wayne himself is a bad choice at all.

  —Max Allan Collins

  CHAPTER ONE

  Far north of New Mexico—in the territories of Montana, Wyoming, and the black hills of Dakota—the snow started in November, light and cooling after a blazing hell of a summer. But as that snow fell harder and gathered itself deeper, and the temperature dropped to fifty below, livestock was soon starving in the whiplash wind. What stubby, scant grass there was lay hidden beneath drifting snow that would thaw only to freeze and then provide a platform for more snow to pile onto.

  And in early January, when snowfall became a blizzard, the white stuff coating plateaus and filling river bottoms, the cattle began to starve and die by the thousands as their owners—who had not stored away nearly enough hay for such circumstances—stood defenseless against a winter worse than the blazing summer they’d just somehow survived. No spring roundup this year—not after this big die-up, as some wag lost to history put it.But in Trinidad, New Mexico, that killing blizzard the ranchers and town folk were hearing about was a world away, up north. Surely the conflagration of white would never reach as far as their Territory, much less Texas beyond.

  Jonathan P. Tulley, the first snowflakes kissing his grizzled face, paused to stick his tongue out to taste a few.

  At a little after ten p.m., the old desert rat turned deputy—a transition that had included Tulley’s status as town drunk and resident character—was just starting his nightly rounds. As it happened, the stretch of boardwalk down which he patrolled right now was where he once had tucked himself under and away each night. His former home, you might say.

  Now he lived in the adobe-walled jail, sleeping in a cell. Incarceration might well seem a questionable step up, but unlike the prisoners—of which currently there were none—his quarters went unlocked. Since he worked a good share of the night, finding lodgings elsewhere had not been high on his list. Anyway, he preferred the comfy cot of his cell to the stall at the livery stable where for a time he’d worked and slept. That was before Caleb York had come to town, not yet a year ago, and changed everything around for Jonathan P. Tulley.

  No more did the bony, bandy-legged figure wear a frayed BVD shirt and baggy, high-water, canvas trousers. Now, at Sheriff York’s prodding, Tulley was strictly store-bought attired, from his dark flannel shirt to his gray woolen pants, sporting crisp red suspenders and work boots with nary a speck of horse manure top nor bottom. Once a month the town barber (who was also the town mayor) spruced the deputy up, trimming Tulley’s white, wispy hair and combing over the bald spot, the deputy’s beard full but not so damn bushy no more. The only remnant of his prior wardrobe was a shapeless canvas thing that claimed to be a hat.

  He began his rounds with the little barrio across from the sheriff’s office with jail. The low-riding adobe buildings were mostly quiet in the gentle but steady snowfall, hardly a light burning, with the exception of the always lively Cantina de Toro Rojo at the dead end of the shabby smattering of dwellings. He didn’t bother going into the cantina, just peeked in the windows.

  The fat owner, also his own bartender, was polishing unwashed glasses behind the counter while the usual hombre seated in one corner was smoking a cigarette of his own making and playing fancy guitar while a girl twirly danced and tried to attract customers. She was one of the fallen angels who worked on the second floor of the two-story cantina. Now that the Victory Saloon had shut down its brothel business, this was the only place you could buy a little love in Trinidad. The señorita wasn’t getting any real interest from the mix of town people and cowboys mingling with a few local Mexicanos.

  That’s how cold and quiet this night was.

  As he walked along, checking the doors of Trinidad’s various storefronts (Harris Mercantile, Davis Apothecary, Mathers and Sons Hardware), with all but the Victory Saloon closed for business at this hour, Tulley was thinking how it was too bad this snowfall, light as it was, hadn’t arrived in time for an old-fashioned Christmas. How nice that would’ve been for the kiddies, toy soldiers for the boys and pretty dollies for the girls, a tree inside with glass ornaments and tiny candles burning.

  Years ago, before his wife died of the yellow fever, when he hadn’t yet left his now motherless daughter with her aunt and lit out, looking for gold and silver that he never quite found, Jonathan P. Tulley had lived a normal life that included such things as Christmas, right down to a little pine tree taken indoors and all decked out. Where he once lived, there’d been Yuletide snow, too. Now there was snow, some anyway, but Christmas was over and gone.

  Not that Christmas had missed Trinidad entirely. There’d been doings at Missionary Baptist and at the Victory Saloon, too (rather different in nature). Some red ribbons and bunting got strung up along Main Street. But lots of folks went by wagon over to Las Vegas, the biggest little town in this part of New Mexico, for celebrating, whether the family variety or the whooping it up kind.

  Next year might be different. By this time next calendar, the Santa Fe Railroad spur would have likely got itself finished up, linking Trinidad to Las Vegas. Trinidad would have grown some by then. Several new businesses were already in—most recent, Maxwell Boots, Saddle, and Harness Depot, a leather-works store down past the new newspaper, the Trinidad Enterprise. More houses were going up every day, seemed like. Hammering and sawing was damn near nonstop. Caleb York called it progress. Tulley never knew progress was so loud before.

  As he walked along the boardwalk—with his shotgun cradled in his arms, which was fitting as he thought of the scattergun as his baby—Tulley found himself suddenly shivering. Then his teeth began to chatter.

  He had realized the night was a mite nippy, but he didn’t own a coat at this juncture—just hadn’t got around to it, and anyway, New Mexico winters were brisk but never bitter, in his experience. Just like the summers around Trinidad never got so hot a man hardly ever noticed he was sweating.

  The general darkness of the night—the blackness of the sky somehow giving off white flakes—was broken only by the glow of the Victory Saloon’s windows. Tulley knew his boss was in that cheery den of iniquity right now, playing cards with the town fathers. The deputy picked up the pace, heading over there.

  It was cold enough tonight that the inner doors of the saloon were shut over the batwing ones that normally welcomed in the weather as well as customers. Tulley got himself through this barrier and into the town’s lone water hole, though before long, as Trinidad’s population increased from three-hundred-some to who-knew-how-many, that would likely change.

  As for the Victory, what with so many ranches around, and thirsty wayfarers passing through, few small-town slopshops had more to offer. The ceilings were high embossed tin with kerosene chandeliers, the walls fancy gold-and-black brocade decorated by saddles and spurs hung up like trophies. The oak bar went on forever, with white-shirt, black-bowtie bartenders ready to slake your thirst from a row of bourbon and rye bottles imported all the way from Denver.

  As for Tulley, he was reformed of such temptation. He came in only for
sarsaparilla or to see Sheriff York, who spent many an off-hour here—mostly for poker and faro, though some said he spent time upstairs with Miss Rita, too. This Tulley did not consider his business.

  Not that he’d have blamed the sheriff. Rita Filley was one fine-looking, dark-eyed specimen of the female species, hair as black as a raven’s wing, piled up on top of her pretty head, her full bosom about half on display in that green-and-black silk gown, waist tiny but hips flaring out. Birthing a child would have come natural to that one, iffen she wasn’t already looking after the dusty cowboys at the bar, each with one foot on the rail and a spittoon nearby to feed.

  Miss Rita—who’d inherited the place from her late sister, Lola, another fine-looking female, but who’d got herself killed by a snake whose rattle Caleb York silenced once and for all—was standing with her arms folded on that natural shelf she carried around with her, looking on with a smile you couldn’t read as she stood peeking at the sheriff’s poker hand.

  Business was slow, no surprise midweek like this. The roulette, chuck-a-luck, and wheel-of-fortune stations were all quiet, the piano silent on its little stage by the teeny dance floor, vacant right now. A few dance hall gals, in their fancy silk and feathers, sat bored. These were not soiled doves, at least not no more. Miss Rita had ended that practice not long after she took over for her dead sister.

  House dealer Yancy Cole, a mustached, fancy-hat riverboat gambler working on dry land now, had a poker game going, too—cowhands and clerks. Next table over, near the stairs up to Miss Rita’s quarters, was where Caleb York sat playing poker with six members of the Citizens Committee: portly, bespectacled Dr. Albert Miller; skinny, pop-eyed druggist Clem Davis; bulky, blond, mustached mercantile man Newt Harris; slight and slicked-up Mayor Jasper Hardy (Tulley’s barber); bald but mutton-chopped Clarence Mathers, hardware store owner; and the new bank president, smallish, white-haired Peter Godfrey, who’d been installed in the position by Raymond L. Parker of Denver, who had holdings in Trinidad.