E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten
Spillane / Collins Mike Hammer - Dig Two Graves
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80336-462-9
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80336-462-9
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
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.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
CHAPTER ONE
The car came out of nowhere.
Later, no one remembered spotting the nondescript Chevy Nova as it rounded the corner, though it had to’ve been going at a considerable speed for midtown, traffic-clogged Manhattan. And nobody had noticed the vehicle pulling out of a parking place or from the mouth of a parking garage, either.
Yet there it was, bearing down, weaving around other cars, unseen until it was too late and not seen at all by the person in its path. Snow coming down, sidewalks slushy, the street icy, but somehow nothing deterred it.
Five minutes earlier, Velda and I had been waiting out front of the Blue Ribbon Restaurant. The restaurant, in business since 1914, occupied a building that was one of many stretching from the Hudson Theater to Times Square and from 44th to 45th Street. I found the dark-paneled place comforting, the food hearty and the German beer the best. Right now we were under the awning to one side of the entry, getting no guff from the doorman, who knew us well.
Or anyway he used to—though I never left the city, I’d been away for almost seven years. Time was when the name Mike Hammer regularly made the front pages of Manhattan newspapers, particularly tabloids like the News. I was the rogue private cop who preferred settling grudges to taking client money, or so the newshounds claimed. In reality, my reputation had attracted plenty of clients who liked having somebody working for them who was not inclined to be intimidated by rules.
And the news rags just loved running pictures of Velda Sterling, the other private eye in Michael Hammer Investigations, a tall curvy number who packed a .32 in her purse and thirty-eights elsewhere, with a raven-wing page boy on loan from Bettie Page. We were the hottest team in the private security game, my “secretary” and me, till one night when Velda didn’t return from a routine assignment I’d sent her out on.
Then Michael Hammer fell out of the headlines and into the gutter, and his best friend, Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide, suddenly became his worst enemy. How the hell was I to know Pat had carried a torch for Velda? And that he’d blame me for her disappearance and apparent death? Of course, I’d agreed with him, and swapped my office and livelihood for the hobby of puking into sawdust-covered barroom floors.
Now, I’d known Velda was a tough cookie, as hardboiled as those soft curves of hers were not. She’d been a vice cop before I hired her on. What I hadn’t known was the extent of her youthful wartime service with the OSS—and could not have guessed that when I sent her out on that milk run, she would get pulled back in for a long impromptu tour of dangerous duty behind the Iron Curtain.
That duty did not include explaining to me what had become of her. Nor had she informed her mother in Brooklyn. Mildred Sterling, somewhere in her early seventies now, was your Standard Issue little old lady, the widow of a police officer killed in the line of duty whose pension kept her going while she did sewing jobs at home. She was about as sophisticated as a bottle of milk and had been crushed by her daughter’s disappearance.
Oh, Mrs. Sterling didn’t tumble into the gutter, but it hit her hard, and when my secretary/partner showed up alive and in Manhattan a month ago, after I got rid of the Russian team chasing her, Velda had not received a warm welcome from Mom. In fact, this rounded replica of her daughter, a homebody but one with as much spine as her offspring, was furious.
How could Velda have put her through such hell? Yes, the old gal was glad Vel was alive, but now claimed to want nothing to do with her. Her daughter’s behavior had been unforgivable! What did Mrs. Sterling know from Iron Curtains and KGB hit teams and state secrets being smuggled out by hand?
“Mike,” Velda said, her arm in mine, snow drifting across our vision, “I don’t know what to expect. My mother may look sweet as sugar, but she has a temper that doesn’t quit.”
“It’s gonna be fine, doll. You gotta trust me on this one.”
You would not expect it of me, but I have certain diplomatic talents. You have to be able to talk clients out of stupid tasks they want you to perform, particularly if you are a P.I. with the rep of Mike Hammer. I didn’t kill for hire—that was more a sideline with me, no fee attached. So I had to learn to handle people. Convince them, say, that me finding a bunch of dirt on a cheating business partner and sending them to stir would be enough to scratch the get-even itch.
That’s how I ended up making several phone calls and finally a trip to the little bungalow in Brooklyn to convince Mrs. Sterling that her daughter had no choice—Uncle Sam had wanted her, and the young woman’s wartime training and experience got her called back to service.
“When they draft you,” I told her (over tea and cookies), “you go.”
Mrs. Sterling had a soft spot for me, anyway, so we set up this Summit Meeting at the Blue Ribbon for mother and daughter to smoke the peace pipe. Or anyway eat some knockwurst.
Velda and I had done a little Christmas shopping and planned to watch them light the Rockefeller Tree this evening and maybe take in the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. We set our high-level talk for four p.m., when things would be slow at the restaurant and most pedestrians were either where they were going or hadn’t left to go elsewhere yet. We spotted her right across the street, at the mouth of the crosswalk, Mrs. Sterling, wrapped up in a cloth coat and out-of-date chapeau, lugging an armful of packages. She managed to wave a little gloved hand and her Velda-ish features worked up a slightly embarrassed smile.
Of course I already knew we’d be able to get these two girls back together. Velda wanted nothing more than to return to her mother’s good graces, and what mom doesn’t want her daughter back in her life?
Mrs. Sterling crossed with the light. She was halfway to us when the Chevy hit her. Her packages flew high, like squared-off giant snowflakes, and the nose of the vehicle had caught her in the hip and sent her flying toward us.
Now she was where not long ago I’d been: the gutter.
A sad shapeless shape, unconscious, her face a stunned, slack thing, a silly flowered hat crunched under the front tire of the speeding Chevy, no blood on the cloth coat, just a human being discarded like a crushed paper cup.
“See to her,” I said, but Velda was already on her way to her mother in that cement cradle between curb and street, just a few steps to our left.
Me, I had the .45 automatic out from under my left arm and was on the run, heading after that vehicle with my trench coat flapping and my porkpie fedora flying, charging like a ball carrier with the whole damn opposing team on his tail. I knew it was hopeless, trying to catch a speeding car on foot, but I tried it anyway. At least I could get close enough to read the damn license plate number before he sped out of sight.
But Kismet or God or, shit, maybe just the laws of physics had their way with the son of a bitch. Because he was only half a block away when his ride hit that patch of ice and spun him just enough for his front grille to kiss that lamppost goodbye and he made a pretty good argument for seat belts when he went crashing through his windshield and flying out onto the street so fast he skidded on his face.
When I got to him, I used the toe of my shoe to turn him over. That ride on the cement, puss-down, had turned his features into a shredded scarlet dripping mask with two wide hysterical eyes in it, golf-balling in pain.
I already knew the only accident that had taken place here was him hitting the ice and making an art sculpture out of that lamppost and his vehicle. That car had been aimed at Mrs. Sterling like an arrow.
The shattered glass around him might have been ice if it hadn’t been the bastard’s blood decorating it like Christmas.
I kicked him in the side and he felt it, all right, crying out for the first time, a banshee wail of pain that maybe morphine might’ve cut—but none was handy.
“Who hired this?”
Another kick.
More screaming.
A discordant near harmony of banshee wail from an approaching siren added to the grotesque chorus. Somebody at the Blue Ribbon had called it in immediately, owner George himself probably, and a squad had been close enough to make the call quick.
I kicked the prick again. “Are you Russian, comrade?”
White teeth in the red mask pulled back from damaged lips. “Fuck you!”
Not Russian, then.
I leaned down and shook him by the lapels. “Who sent you, slob? Who the hell sent you?”
But the eyes closed. Funny—only the lids were free from the skidding wounds, pale little pink flesh window shades, but blood from his forehead dripping down soon made the coloration complete.
I checked his neck and his wrist. No pulse. I wiped his blood off my hands onto his shirt—it had been a festive blue and was now more in the holiday spirit with streaks of red—and hurried over to check on Velda and her mom.
Velda was holding back any emotion. She was a pro. The time for tears could come later. Right now this was a situation that needed...
