Mike Hammer - Masquerade for Murder E-Book

Mickey Spillane

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Mike Hammer, the iconic PI created by hard-boiled crime master Mickey Spillane and written by New York Times bestseller Max Allan Collins, returns in Masquerade for Murder.Hammer is at a high society party when a wealthy and well-respected man, Colby, is hit by a car and badly injured. When all he expected was a night on the town, Mike is hired to find out who was driving the car. His search leads him on a trail of murders, the victims often exhibiting the same kind of strangulation as the cause of death. How are they connected to an accident involving Corby, and why is the man himself acting so strangely?

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

More Mike Hammer from Titan Books

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

Chapter Fourteen

Tip of the Fedora

About the Authors

Mike Hammer Novels

Also Available from Titan Books

MASQUERADE FOR MURDER

A MIKE HAMMER NOVEL

MORE MIKE HAMMER FROM TITAN BOOKS

Lady, Go Die!

Complex 90

King of the Weeds

Kill Me, Darling

Murder Never Knocks

The Will to Kill

Killing Town

The Goliath Bone

Murder, My Love

The Big Bang

Kiss Her Goodbye (February 2021)

MASQUERADEFOR MURDER

A MIKE HAMMER NOVEL

MICKEY SPILLANE

and

MAX ALLAN COLLINS

TITANBOOKS

Masquerade for Murder: A Mike Hammer Novel

Print edition ISBN: 9781785655562

E-book edition ISBN: 9781785655579

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: March 2020

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 © 2020 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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FOR GARY SANDY –

who brought Mike alive on stage

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.”

Working under the death sentence of pancreatic cancer, Mickey had already called me to ask if I would complete his final Mike Hammer novel for him, if that became necessary, which it did—the greatest, if most bittersweet, honor of my career.

Half a dozen substantial Hammer manuscripts of 100 pages or more were found in the “treasure hunt,” conducted by Jane, my wife Barb and me. These five lost Hammer novels spanned Mickey’s career, from the late ’40s through the mid-’60s and on up to (and including) The Goliath Bone, which he was working on at the time of his passing.

The six substantial manuscripts—often with notes, sometimes with roughed-out endings—were the first order of business; these have all been completed. A number of shorter but significant Hammer manuscripts—again, sometimes with notes and rough endings—were also worthy of completion, including the writer’s first attempt at a Hammer yarn (Killing Town, 2018). Some less substantial fragments became short stories, eight of which have been collected in A Long Time Dead, published by Mysterious Press.

This time—as was the case with the previous Hammer novel, Murder, My Love (2019)—I am working chiefly from a synopsis, with only a few tasty morsels of Spillane prose to interweave. As usual, I have done my best to determine when Mickey wrote the material, so that I might set the novel in continuity, to give the book its rightful place in the canon.

The nature of the plot synopsis suggests Masquerade for Murder may have been designed for one of actor Stacy Keach’s Mike Hammer telefilms or episodes of the TV series that ended in 1989 (revived in 1997). I know that Mickey developed several ideas for TV producer Jay Bernstein, and in fact his novel The Killing Man (1989) began that way, until Mickey decided to go the prose route (“It was too good to waste on television,” he told me). Mickey also devised the ending of the otherwise abysmal Bernstein-produced, non-Keach Hammer telefilm, Come Die with Me (1994), a production Spillane disavowed.

This synopsis would appear to have been developed either before or after The Killing Man, putting its action in the late ’80s. I am placing it in the continuity right after that 1989 novel (the text of which places the action in 1988). This presents a Mike Hammer in his late fifties, somewhat younger than the calendar would have him, a mathematical improbability that did not bother Mickey Spillane one bit.

You shouldn’t let it bother you, either.

Max Allan Collins

September 2019

CHAPTER ONE

It wasn’t New York any more, not the old New York. Over on the Main Stem, the lights still blazed as bright as ever and the people were just as many, but that was Tourist Town. Action Street. The Big Beanery.

And when you stood on the corner of Second and 44th, on a chill November night promising winter, and watched five lanes of taxis cruise by heading south in time with the signals, you knew you had kissed off the old New York a long time ago. The Els were down, the cobwebs gone, and even the slop chutes had their faces lifted. The Blue Ribbon restaurant was a memory, fading into history with Broadway pen pushers like Walter Winchell, Earl Wilson and Hy Gardner, whose newspapers were as dead as they were. The hole-in-the-wall joints were done-over and intimate now, the prices high and the lighting low, where the rich married slobs could slip off with some poor sexy broad without causing too much of a stir. Even the junk shops catered to class. Now they had hand-carved ANTIQUES signs over the doors, and brand-new price tags on the same old worthless rummage.

Across the street from where the hackie dropped me, one place was still open and unchanged—PETE’S CHOPHOUSE, said the neon lettering above dark-tinted windows that glowed with electric beer signs like fireflies in the night. I was meeting Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide, my oldest friend in the world, going back all the way to the army and the kind of war nobody protested. One of his best officers, Lt. Casey Shannon—“the Wall Street Cop,” the News called him—was retiring soon, and this was his send-off.

Diminutive Pete himself met me just inside—he was his own maitre d’, a small jet-black-haired man in his sixties (only his hairdresser knew for sure) wearing a shiny tuxedo and a thick mustache and a puffy face that bore a smile like a duty, but one he didn’t mind. The place was smoky and dark, mirrored walls working to make the joint bigger—one of those male bastions where women were welcome, as long as they came accompanied. Like me, Pete’s was a relic—a supper club clinging desperately to the past.

“Mike!” Pete said, the smile turning real. “Or is it Mr. Hammer now that you’re respectable?”

I grinned at him. “I just killed somebody important for a change.”

I took off my porkpie fedora and Pete helped me out of the trenchcoat and took the hat and handed the works over to the blonde at her window; she was maybe twenty-five but in that low-cut sparkly thing, she looked like fifty-five—1955, that is, and that was fine by me.

“One of these serial killers you read about, huh?” Pete burbled. “Hidin’ in plain sight, in a government job yet! And you flush him out. You got a lotta play in the papers, Mr. Hammer, Mike—like the old days! Your girl Velda, she’s okay? Bastard put her in the hospital, they say.”

“She’s great. That was months ago, Pete. Old news.”

I patted his shoulder and slipped away—I wasn’t here to talk to an aging restauranteur about my latest fifteen minutes of infamy.

The hostess, a stunning redhead in a green evening dress with matching emerald eyes, intercepted me. Though I hadn’t been to Pete’s for a while, I was enough of a regular to know that her first name was Sheila, though by now we were too well-acquainted for me to ask what her last name was.

She was ten curvy pounds the right side of plump and had cherry-red lipsticked lips with a bruised Bardot look that made her smile seem knowing and sly without even trying. Her arm slipped into the crook of mine as she slow-walked me, winding around tables, pausing for bus boys and wait staff.

“Alone tonight, Mike?” She was flirty in that way that you knew would never amount to anything.

“Velda doesn’t like this place.”

Lovely raven-haired Velda was officially my secretary but unofficially my partner in a bunch of ways, with her own P.I. license and a .32 automatic in her purse and my heart tucked under her arm.

The Bardot lips twitched with amusement. “Food not to Velda’s taste?”

“Food very much to her taste. That’s why she doesn’t like it.”

Sheila gave me a kiss of a smile. “Watching her figure?”

“Her and me and every other right-minded man in town. Are you okay, kid?”

“Super. Why?”

“I got X-ray vision. Me and Clark Kent. I can see right through that make-up.”

Her left eye was a little swollen and expertly dabbed with flesh-colored cosmetic.

She frowned just a tad. “Is it that obvious, Mike?”

“Could be I’m a detective. What’s his name? I might have something for him.”

She brought us to a stop and her smile turned into a tragic thing that wouldn’t fool anybody. “No, Mike. Please don’t. Please stay out of it. I’m breaking it off. I promise. I swear.”

I touched her cheek, lightly. “You have any trouble shaking loose, kid, you know where to find me. And it won’t cost you a penny. I enjoy spending time with men who think beating up women is fun.”

She swallowed, nodded, then delivered me to my destination and slipped back to her post.

Pat hadn’t lined up a backroom or anything, just a big corner booth filled with rumpled men in rumpled suits. I shook hands with everybody, then squeezed in next to Pat, who was my age, blond with gray-blue eyes, a trimly muscular build, and a methodical mind.

“We decided,” Pat said, “not to wait for you before we started drinking.”

“Good call,” I said.

There were seven of us, including but not limited to burly, balding Shannon himself; Chris Peters, his slim young current partner on the PD; and Ben Higgins, an already retired skin-and-bones copper who’d been the sidekick before that.

I’d barely settled when a waitress in a white dress shirt and black skirt delivered me a Canadian Club and ginger. Like I said, I was something of a regular at Pete’s. My preferences were known.

We talked old times. I won’t bore you with it, but Peters loved hearing everything, particularly the tales that showed how dogged and tough Shannon could be, but also the ones that made this older mentor of his seem human, like when the Wall Street Cop was on the receiving end of his former partner Ben Higgins’s practical jokes.

“Hell,” Higgins was saying, “I didn’t even know you could melt Ex-Lax down and make a decent hot fudge sundae out of it. Turns out you can!”

Over everybody else’s laughter, a smirking Shannon said, “It made hot fudge all right, let me tell you.”

Several rounds of drinks went by before we finally ordered. Everybody got the house specialty—bone-in rib-eyes—and the waitress was still getting the particulars, salad dressing, veggies, potato and so on, when a tall, broad-shouldered guy of maybe thirty-five came in, leading two men a decade or so older who seemed vaguely servile yet bore a distinguished quality the younger man somehow lacked.

They were peeling out of their Burberry cashmere trenches, the older men revealing Brooks Brothers suits each worth a week of my rent at the Hackard Building. Shannon—sitting next to Pat—leaned over and said to both of us, “What the hell are they doing in a joint like this?”

Shannon looked something like the old movie actor Pat O’Brien at a similar age, but less hair, wisps of white only. Like that old-time actor, he had a hint of Ireland in his voice—not from once having lived there, but growing up in a home where the parents had, and the brogue had been catching.

That other Pat said, “Don’t let Pete hear you calling his white-tablecloth joint a joint, pal.”

Shannon raised a single hand of surrender. “No, it’s not that. It’s just…that Colby kid is more a Four Seasons type. Or the Union Square Café, when he feels like dressing down.”

I looked sideways at the newcomers, who Pete was handing off to Sheila for seating. “That’s Vincent Colby, huh?”

“In the flesh. And that’s probably a good two-grand worth of fabric and cut.”

Colby was not in mere Brooks Brothers. I made that beautifully assembled charcoal pin-striped affair as Armani, similar to one Velda had tried, unsuccessfully, to get me into.

I’d heard of this handsome young guy. Read about him (profiles in the Sunday Times and New York Magazine). Ivy League school (Harvard Business, wasn’t it?). Prominent in the family brokerage firm (Colby, Daltree & Levine). Eminently eligible bachelor (dating society girls).

I asked Shannon, “Is that kid as upstanding as his rep?”

Shannon was watching as Sheila led Colby across the room, the two Wall Street big shots trailing along like litter bearers.

“Far as I know,” Shannon said. “Like his old man, that ‘kid’ served in the Navy, made Lieutenant.”

“Straight shooter all the way?”

His mouth twitched. “Some youthful indiscretions, I understand. No police record, but under-age records get expunged, particularly if you have connections.” He sipped his highball. “Colby’s guilty, all right—of being a rich Golden Boy, but that’s about it.”

“Far as you know.”

“Far as I know, Mike.”

Sheila was getting them seated in a booth at the bar area, across the dining room. Only Colby didn’t sit down right away. He was standing there chatting with the redhead. She was smiling and trading talk in a friendly way. More of that going-nowhere flirtation? Or something else?

I said, “He sounds too good to be true.”

“That’s been my feeling,” Shannon admitted. “I always felt like he was playing me.”

“Playing you how, Casey?”

He twitched another sneer. “Too friendly. Too cooperative. Patronizing, like he was putting one over.”

“How did you rub shoulders with the lad?”

“I had a couple of investigations that took me to the Colby firm.”

“What kind of investigations?”

He didn’t look at me while we talked. Suddenly it was like pulling teeth. He said, “A secretary there died of an overdose. A low-level employee was the victim of a hit-and-run.”

“Fatal?”

Shannon nodded. “Vaguely suspicious but nothing came of either. Colby was in the lives of both parties. Was helpful to a fault.”

Sheila was lingering, and Colby took her two hands in his and smiled and she smiled back, then peeled away. Could this privileged punk be the guy roughing her up? Maybe somebody needed to put the break in brokerage.

Colby was finally about to sit down, but maybe he felt our eyes on him, because he paused, spotted us, beamed and came over, navigating the sea of tables of diners like the Navy man he was.

He stood before our booth and half-nodded to each of us in turn, but reserved his dazzling white smile for Shannon, who was looking up at the man in Armani with a smile as rumpled as his own decidedly off-the-rack suit.

This was my first close look at the guy, and it revealed a male specimen who was almost too handsome, with long eyelashes and dark curly hair worn rather short and wet with product, giving him a Roman Emperor look. But was he Julius Caesar or Caligula? Either way, he sported a tan that said trips to warmer climes were not infrequent or maybe he just used a tanning bed somewhere. At home, maybe.

Colby leaned in and offered his hand to Shannon, who half-stood, as much as possible in the booth anyway, and accepted the proffered paw for a shake, then settled back down.

“So I’m guessing this is a retirement party?” Colby said, his voice mellow and smooth. He could become a TV or radio announcer if being a rich Wall Street heir didn’t work out.

“Pre-retirement,” Shannon said genially. You could never have discerned that the old copper had any suspicions or negative thoughts at all about the guy. Strictly friendly time.

“I recognize both of your partners in crime,” the young man said, showing off those white teeth some more. His nods were more acknowledging this time around. “Sergeant Higgins. Detective Peters.” The teeth and pretty eyes came to me and his smile settled in one cheek. “You’re Mike Hammer, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged.”

Dark eyebrows rose above the long lashes. “That was some case you wrapped up a while back. Caused ripples from here to Europe. Stock market took a dive when those revelations about the CIA being infiltrated made the news.”

I gave him a smile. A little one, not dazzling at all. “That wasn’t my intention. To me he was just a bad guy, a very bad guy, who needed to be dealt with.”

Colby’s smile went damn near pixie-ish. “By which you mean… you shot him. Killed him.”

I shrugged. “He had a gun. A little one. Mine was bigger.”

The smile broadened in genuine amusement. “And here I thought size wasn’t everything.”

“It isn’t. But it doesn’t hurt.”

“If it’s big enough it does.” He sighed, smiled again, no teeth now. “Well, gentlemen, I didn’t mean to intrude. I just wanted to say hello to Casey here. Congratulate him on his retirement.” He turned his eyes on Shannon. “See you later.”

He flipped a casual wave and ambled across the room, graceful in a masculine way. Handsome devil, like Tony Curtis and George Hamilton had a kid. Women were looking at him the way men look at women.

“Why’s he so friendly,” I asked, “to a cop he encountered on a couple of suspicious-death inquiries? First name basis and everything. ‘See you later?’”

Shannon said, “We go to the same gym.”

I frowned. “I thought you went to Bing’s, like me?”

A shrug. “I used to. I switched to the Solstice Fitness Center, few months ago.”

I frowned deeper. “Over on Broadway?”

Shannon nodded.

“Isn’t that a little pricey?”

Bigger shrug. “I got a deal on a membership. Have a personal trainer and everything. Just ’cause I’m retiring doesn’t mean I want to grow a gut.”

He kind of already had grown one, but I didn’t say anything.

Our food came. Crisp cold salad with iceberg lettuce and garlic dressing. The rib-eyes thick and tender, mine blood-rare the way I like it. We shared two orders of Pete’s legendary hash browns with onions, and the chow was such that conversation got mostly sidelined for a while.

I was keeping half an eye on Sheila and not just because she was worth at least that. On two occasions Colby got up and happy accidents let him come back into contact with her. Happily contrived accidents, I figured.

Once when he got up to go to the head, which took him past her station, that gave him an excuse to pause and jaw with her a while, on his way back to the booth.

Another time he joined her at the bar where she was chatting with the white-shirt, black-bowtie bartender, who was another good-looking guy in his late twenties or early thirties, but just maybe lacking the Colby kid’s bank book. The Wall Street heir took her by the arm—not rough at all, and I was watching for that—and walked her over to one side and then they were talking in a serious way.

Not an argument. But not chit-chat or flirtation, either. These two knew each other. The bartender was taking this in, glaring at them as he filled orders. What the hell was that about?

We were having a round of after-dinner highballs as I watched Colby and the hostess discussing something near the bar again, and the bartender maybe resenting it. I wondered if the bartender was just a friend of Sheila’s who maybe knew Colby had been treating her roughly, and was considering stepping in and doing something about it. In which case, hurrah for the bartender.

I said to Shannon, “I thought Colby dated the debutante crowd.”

“He does. Sometimes.”

“Not always?”

“He’s been known to date models.”

“The Vogue variety?”

Shannon sipped his highball. Shook his head. “More like Playboy and Penthouse. He parties at the Tube in Chelsea.”