Mike Hammer - Baby, It's Murder (eBook)

MICKEY SPILLANE, Max Allan Collins (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
304 Seiten
TITAN BOOKS (Verlag)
978-1-80336-460-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Mike Hammer's deadly final adventure challenges everything we knew about the enduring noir detective in this gripping finale with a shocking twist. The concluding Hammer novel begins with a 21st-century funeral before flashing back to summer, 1973. Nine years after the events of Dig Two Graves, Hammer takes another unlikely vacation - this time on Long Island to help look after his partner Velda Sterling's seventeen-year-old sibling, Mikki. Mikki must deal with the attention of two boys vying for her affection - Hammer preferring the good kid from a wealthy family over the long-haired doper with an Easy Rider vibe. When Mikki gets hooked on heroin, Hammer - filled with contempt for dope dealers - goes on a rampage. He will find those behind the drug racket and teach them what shooting up is all about. But a final resolution awaits him in the future at that funeral...

Mickey Spillane is the legendary crime writer credited with igniting the explosion of paperback publishing after World War II as a result of the unprecedented success of his Mike Hammer novels, feeding the public's appetite for sexy, violent, straight-talking crime stories. He also starred as Mike Hammer in The Girl Hunters. Mickey Spillane died at the age of 88 in 2006.

Textauszug

CHAPTER TWO

Eight-oh-eight, the two-office suite on the eighth floor of the Hackard Building in Manhattan, had never been anything fancy, not even after the old structure had been remodeled from head to toe. A dame that old never looks any better after the surgeon’s knife, but at least MICHAEL HAMMER INVESTIGATIONS didn’t look any older than your random Gabor sister.

The outer office was larger than my inner one, with a couch against the right side wall as you came in, a few reception chairs, and a little table for coffee and snacks opposite. The big wooden desk opposite the entry, serving as the barrier to my inner sanctum, bore a few personal items – a framed family photo, a vase usually adorned by a few flowers but just an empty vessel currently, a blotter, pen-and-pencil cup, and a modern IBM Selectric that seemed wrong for an ancient chunk of wood that was damn near as scarred up as yours truly. This in a room whose stingy array of windows included Venetian blinds making ’40s crime-movie patterns on the walls.

Still, this was a modest space even if right now it seemed cavernously empty. The coffee maker was just this cold cylinder of steel, the only fragrance touching the air an unpleasant chemical one courtesy of the Hackard janitorial staff. Morning sunlight floated with dust motes and, just a week since she left, a fine coating of the stuff reminded the man who paid the rent here that he’d never run a dust-cloth across anything in the place ever. Only she had.

She.

Velda.

That was a picture of her there on the desk – her desk – but its presence did not represent an out-of-control ego, though she looked typically lovely in the photo, all that raven hair in its style-defying page boy and the big, slightly Asian-looking brown eyes, those full red-lipsticked lips any movie goddess might envy. No, this was a family portrait – Velda, her matronly mother Mildred, and her sister Mikki, just an adolescent here but a young woman now. A beauty who one day might rival her older sister.

This outer office, which dwarfed my inner one, had never seemed particularly large to me. No need. A private detective’s office doesn’t get much walk-in trade; it doesn’t need to echo a doctor’s reception area, even if the customers also have afflictions that need attention. Now, however, it seemed a vast hollow shell, so empty without the woman who guarded my gate.

Seated behind her desk, I absorbed the emptiness. My eyes traveled to the little coffee-and-snacks table, and like a ghost shimmering into solidity, there she was. Not her, of course. But the memory of her, not long ago.

“You’ll be fine without me,” Velda said. “If this lasts longer than a few weeks, you can get a temp in.”

“Temps don’t pack cute little automatics in their purse,” I’d said.

She turned with two cups of coffee in hand and strolled over with that liquid grace of hers on full display. What she did with a pale silk blouse, black pencil skirt and kitten heels must’ve been illegal in some states. Surely a female couldn’t get away with going around packing concealed weapons like those – broad shoulders, full breasts, narrow waist and swell of swell hips – not without landing in the clink somewhere or other, anyway. Just those long muscular legs alone, hiding under the innocuous black fabric, could get a strip joint closed down for obscenity.

But there was nothing obscene about this beauty. Not a damn thing. Angels can wear anything they please, and look any way they like. Michelangelo used to draw them stark naked, just not this sinfully lovely.

Suddenly we were in my inner office and the desk I was behind was my own, the spareness of the room broken only by a few framed wall photos of the occasional illustrious client, an operator’s license, and a sharp-shooter award here and there. She sat with half of her hips slung on the edge of my desk and handed me the cup of coffee.

“Hope that’s enough sugar and cream,” Velda said, as if she hadn’t made the mix a thousand times. “I know what a big sissy you are.”

“Don’t spoil me,” I said, “right when you’re cutting me loose.”

She looked down on me. Even seated, she was tall. “I’m not cutting you loose. This is just for now.”

“We could hire somebody to stay with your sister,” I said. I sipped. Her coffee was always perfect. “I’m willing to pay the freight.”

That babe could frown without creasing a damn thing. “It’s not just Mikki, though I’d hate to think what I might’ve got myself into, the way kids have a mind of their own these days. It’s Mom. That broken hip is going to take time to heal.”

“Too much time. Doll, we can spend weekends out there in your mom’s place. I got nothing against her moving to Long Island. It’s… nice.”

Velda shrugged and a scythe blade of black hair swung. “Maybe it’ll come to that, Mike. For now, I want to be there for Mom and for Mikki. Surely you can understand.”

“I’m a selfish only child. I don’t understand shit.”

She sipped her coffee. “I’m well aware you have a… flaw or two.”

“Name one.”

She laughed and, goddamnit, so did I.

“As long as Mom is in that nursing home,” Velda said, “I should probably be there. Not that I’m really worried about Mikki.”

“Naw, your sis is a good kid.” Straight A student and budding tennis star that she was. “And I doubt your mom will put up with not being home for very long, either. Doll, you know I support you in anything you need to do. Family comes first.”

Velda came around and sat in my lap and my swivel chair took it well, its groan almost like a purr. Arms around my neck, she planted a big sticky kiss on her big ugly boss and, when the clinch was over, lifted my chin with a red-nailed fingertip and said, “That’s gonna have to hold you.”

“Is this that cruel and unusual punishment I hear so much about?”

A shake of her head made the ebony arcs swing. “It’s just the bitter truth. Can you handle it?”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m a tough guy.”

She gave me one more quick kiss. “You’re an old softie.”

“Where you’re concerned, I am.”

“We’ll see each other weekends.”

But we’d missed the last few. Work had kept me away, including the Ray Giles business for the News.

I watched her hip sway out from my inner office to her outer one, and it seemed a little exaggerated, trying too hard, taunting me, and then she closed the door behind her and I woke up.

I didn’t even remember falling asleep on the reception-area couch. But I had. I sat on the edge of the thing and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. I didn’t remember taking off my porkpie hat and trench coat, but there they were, hanging on the coat tree near the door like the skin a snake crawled out of.

There had been that one, long, terrible period… almost seven years… when she’d been secretly called back to duty by the spooks and wound up behind the Iron Curtain on a mission the details of which still hadn’t been wholly shared with me. Abandoned, I behaved like a punk, taking down a few peripheral bad guys, then crawling into one bottle after another.

But Velda came back to me, like no time at all had gone between, and I straightened the hell out and, since then, we had rarely been separated for long. We lived in the same apartment building, not together but “almost” married. She’d spent six months away, some years ago, when her aunt was very ill and needed care. I’d been miserable, not having her around – mail piled up and the office went to crap and I almost got myself killed doing P.I. work without her backing me up.

Fuck it.

On the spur of the moment, I decided: I would close up shop and join her on Long Island. I called Pat and told him.

“Good for you,” Pat said. “You could use an attitude adjustment.”

“I’ll let Nat Drutman know I’m taking an open-ended leave of absence,” I said. Nat owned and managed the Hackard Building. “And I’ll send my referrals to the Smith-Torrence Agency, who’ve covered for me before.”

“This sounds serious. You’re not going to retire on me, are you, Mike?”

“Make up your mind, Pat. You want my attitude adjusted or me to stick around and keep doing your job for you?”

That I delivered lightly, much as the curse he answered it with was.

Then he said, a tiny edge in his voice, “Try not to get in any trouble on Long Island. You have a history there.”

“That was a long time ago, Pat.”

“Everything was a long time ago for us, buddy.”

He clicked off.

* * *

At my apartment I packed a bag and in the parking garage collected the heap, as I referred to my nondescript black Ford with its souped-up engine. It wasn’t the first heap. I bought a used patrol car every five years or so at a police auction, and the practice had stood me well. I considered giving Velda a call, but on the off-chance she might try to talk me out of coming, I just headed out.

The destination was Sidon, eighty miles out on Long Island, a tourist destination, though its off-season population was up to a year-round twenty thousand now. I did, as Pat indicated, have a history in the hamlet, having removed a crooked police chief and cleaned out a crooked gambling casino. Just a couple little side trips on a getaway meant for me to dry out and cool down after the personal trauma of who the killer of my army buddy Jack Williams turned out to be.

I’d thought...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.3.2025
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Schlagworte: A Long Time Dead • Black Alley • Black Mask • classic noir • Complex 90 • Darling • Dashiell Hammet • deadly • Detective Fiction • Farewell My Lovely • Go Die • hardboiled crime • Hardboiled Noir • Killing Town • Kill Me • King of the Weeds • Kiss Her Goodbye • Kiss MeLady • Masquerade for Murder • Mickey Spillane • Murder • Murder Never Knocks • My Gun is Quick • my love • Noir • One Lonely Night • Philip Marlowe • Pi • private eyes • private investigator • Raymond Chandler • Sam Spade • Skin • Survival • The Big Bang • The Big Kill • the big sleep • The Body Lovers • The Girl Hunters • The Goliath Bone • the Jury • The Killing Man • The Long Goodbye • The Maltese Falcon • THE SNAKE • The Twisted Thing • The Will to Kill • Vengeance in Mine • Zero
• ISBN-10: 1-80336-460-2 / 1803364602
• ISBN-13: 978-1-80336-460-5 / 9781803364605