The Consummata E-Book

Mickey Spillane

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

"FRIEND, YOU'RE TALKING TO A GUY WITH A PRICE ON HIS HEAD AND THE POLICE AT HIS BACK…"Compared to the $40 million the cops think he stole, seventy-five thousand may not sound like much. But it's all the money in the world to the struggling Cuban exiles of Miami who rescued Morgan the Raider. So when it's snatched by a man the Cubans trusted, Morgan sets out to get it back. A simple favor – but as the bodies pile up...dead men and beautiful women.. .the Raider wonders what kind of Latin hell he's gotten himself into, and just who or what is the mysterious Consummata?Begun by mystery master MICKEY SPILLANE in the late 1960s and completed four decades later by his buddy MAX ALLAN COLLINS (Road to Perdition), The Consummata is the long-awaited follow-up to Spillane's bestseller The Delta Factor -- a breathtaking tale of treachery, sensuality, and violence, showcasing two giants of crime fiction at their pulse-pounding, two-fisted best.

Leseprobe

Raves For the Work of MICKEY SPILLANE and MAX ALLAN COLLINS!

“Authentic narrative drive and almost hypnotic conviction...set Spillane apart from all his imitators.”

—The New York Times

“No one can twist you through a maze with as much intensity and suspense as Max Allan Collins.”

—Clive Cussler

“A superb writer. Spillane is one of this century’s bestselling authors.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Collins never misses a beat...All the stand-up pleasures of dime-store pulp with a beguiling level of complexity.”

—Booklist

“If you are a Spillane fan you will enjoy this one more than anything done before. It is fast-moving, easy reading, and has the greatest shocker of an ending.”

—Albuquerque Tribune

“Max Allan Collins [is] like no other writer.”

—Andrew Vachss

“Spillane’s books...redefined the detective story.”

—Wallace Stroby

“Collins has a gift for creating low-life believable characters [in] a sharply focused action story that keeps the reader guessing till the slam-bang ending. A consummate thriller from one of the new masters of the genre.”

—Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Spillane...presents nothing save visual facts; but he selects only those facts, only those eloquent details, which convey the visual reality of the scene and create a mood of desolate loneliness.”

—Ayn Rand

“There’s a kind of power about Mickey Spillane that no other writer can imitate.”

—Miami Herald

“Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st century Mickey Spillane.”

—This Week

“Need we say more than—the Mick is back.”

—Hammond Times

I sat forward. “What can you tell me about Halaquez?”

The madam was frowning. “That he was a patron here. That he’s a ruthless killer with sadistic tastes that bleed over into his sexual kinks. His needs extend well beyond what we provide here at Mandor.”

“It’s a way to find him. You must know other houses or girls working solo, doing the S & M thing.”

Bunny’s eyes were tight. “I think you will find Mr. Halaquez is banned from all such establishments. But I will give you a list, if you think that may help.”

“It’s a start.”

“The only other thing...but it’s a long shot.”

“Hell. Guys get rich playing long shots. Go.”

Again she chose her words carefully. “There is a rumor...and for now it’s just a rumor...that the Consummata is setting up shop in Miami.”

I blinked. “Who or what is the ‘Consummata’?”

“A very famous dominatrix.”

“From Miami?”

“From nowhere. From everywhere. Her clients, they say, are among the most rich and powerful men. She is a rumor. A wisp of smoke. A legend. If Jaimie Halaquez hears that the Consummata has graced Miami with her presence, he won’t be able to resist...”

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THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE by Max Allan Collins

QUARRY’S EX by Max Allan Collins

TWO FOR THE MONEY by Max Allan Collins

DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins

FIFTY-TO-ONE by Charles Ardai

KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny

THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake

HOUSE DICK by E. Howard Hunt

CASINO MOON by Peter Blauner

FAKE I.D. by Jason Starr

PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker

STOP THIS MAN! by Peter Rabe

LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood

HONEY IN HIS MOUTH by Lester Dent

THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES by Jonny Porkpie

THE VALLEY OF FEAR by A.C. Doyle

MEMORY by Donald E. Westlake

NOBODY’S ANGEL by Jack Clark

MURDER IS MY BUSINESS by Brett Halliday

GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block

The CONSUMMATA

byMickey Spillane

andMax Allan Collins

A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

(HCC-103)

First Hard Case Crime edition: October 2011

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street

London SE1 0UP

in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

Copyright © 2011 by Mickey Spillane Publishing LLC.

Cover painting copyright © 2011 by Robert McGinnis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-288-8

E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-598-8

Design direction by Max Phillips

www.maxphillips.net

Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

Printed in the United States of America

Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

For Lynn Myers—

one of Mickey’s

favorite customers

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

CO-AUTHOR’S NOTE

In 1967, with some fanfare, Mickey Spillane’s The Delta Factor—introducing Morgan the Raider as a new series character—enjoyed considerable critical and commercial success. After a disappointing experience producing a Factor film, however, the frustrated Spillane set aside the already-announced second Morgan novel, The Consummata. Twenty years ago, he entrusted the incomplete manuscript to me, saying, “Maybe someday we can do something with this.”

Thanks to Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime, that day is here.

The story is set in the late ’60s, when Mickey began it.

CHAPTER ONE

They were closing in.

There were two up ahead, another pair behind me, and when I reached the corner the trap would snap shut...and only open again inside a maximum security prison where every contrivance devised by experts knowledgeable in the science of incarceration would be utilized to keep me there the rest of my life.

At least I had given them a run for the taxpayers’ money. Still, it was a damn shame this melodrama had to wind up on a side street in Miami with the federal boys having all the advantage, and me with the job I had to do so far from over.

In the reflection of an angled window, I saw a black sedan round the corner behind me and cruise at a walking pace. Modern technology was raising hell with being a fugitive—each two-man team carried an attaché case packed with a communications rig. That kept the pairs fore and aft in touch with the rolling forces as well as other teams that would be blocking off any remaining escape avenues.

It was my own damn fault, but part of the odds I had to face. When you come out into the open, knowing your photo is in every post office, representing a forty-million dollar haul every hood would like to hijack—and that any stool pigeon would like to cash in for big-league brownie points—well, you are really bucking the odds.

I had one thing going for me, anyway—this was a capture operation, not a hit. They’d have orders to go all out bringing me back alive, even risking taking on fire themselves. Your life carries a high premium when they think you’re the only guy who knows where a forty-mil payday got buried.

Just the same, they had minimized any chance of defeat. Federal suits hit the streets with local fuzz playing backup—a power play from the second they’d made me.

When exactly they got me in their sights, I didn’t know—sometime during the last four days—but now all I could do was lead them down a blind alley as far away as possible from those who had covered for me.

My trackers kept their suitcoats unbuttoned to make for easy access under government threads designed to disguise the artillery beneath their arms. But they weren’t as smart as they thought they were. Suits in stifling weather like this? And dark colors, not even going pastel for the season and the locale. Picking out these feds in a Florida crowd was like spotting a turd in a punch bowl.

But all their man- and firepower was unnecessary because I wasn’t even packing a rod. They sure were going all out to get their forty million bucks back.

Forty million I never had in the first place.

Overhead, the summer sun had started to snuggle down into its pocket in the west, leaving the heat of day shimmering off the buildings of a neighborhood where white guys in suits didn’t belong in the first place. Little cream-in-the-coffee Cuban kids ran around like mice, shrieking and yelling in two languages, bare feet slapping the hot pavement.

The little ones were lucky. One way or another, they had made it off Castro’s island with their families and they had freedom now. They were even free to run on the damn sidewalks.

Another half-block and I wouldn’t be free at all.

Behind me, the pair closed the gap and the car had picked up the pace. With their blank pale faces and black sunglasses, they were like robots on a programmed course of action. And they were timing it very nicely. There was a surety about their movements that reflected absolute confidence in their maneuver.

Until I had walked them into Little Havana, they probably figured I hadn’t smelled them out, and that when they took me, the surprise would be complete. Only now they had to know that I knew, and that was not a good thing.

In fact, it put me in a worse place. But when they took me down—and they would take me down, all right—I’d at least have the fun of sitting in an interrogation room chair and letting them know how fast I’d got on to them.

“Glad to help you boys out,” I’d say. “Maybe you can be more on the ball next time. Might want to skip the Brooks Brothers in tropical climes.”

And I would have the small pleasure of making them squirm, while they would have the big pleasure of slamming my ass in solitary confinement.

If I had wanted to throw Penny and Lee to the wolves, I could’ve broken loose; but you don’t do that to friends. I had to put distance between myself and those who’d risked everything to shelter me, and play it out with the odds against me, and if I lost, I lost.

It was as simple as that.

Up ahead a pack of little muchachos let out a howl of bird squeals as they came tumbling around the side of a building, racing toward me with another pack in pursuit, playing one of their crazy kid games. I paused while they flowed around me, then edged myself toward the wall so the second bunch of brats wouldn’t have to use me for an obstacle course.

But suddenly I had become part of their game.

They had me surrounded, with half of the pack pushing and the other half pulling, and somehow under the yelling I could make out a tiny voice whispering, “Go in, señor...go inside, rapidamente!”

I had time for one quick look around and spotted the first bunch of kids piled up in front of the pair of tails who were trying to pick and claw their way through the mini-mob hanging onto their legs and arms when an adult hand grabbed my shoulder, hauled me through the doorway beside a grocery store, and shoved me into the gloom of a corridor.

The sun outside had been so blinding that the transition threw me into total darkness for a second, but I followed the hand that tugged at my coat, stumbled twice, recovered, then felt myself being guided into a recession in a wall. To call it a closet would be generous.

The voice said, “Stay there. Be quiet, señor.”

Then something was slammed in place—not a door, more like a panel—and I had just enough room to feel like I was in an upright coffin.

Out there somewhere, a woman was screaming in anger, her lung power fantastic. She was the lead instrument in a raucous symphony that included babies bawling, kids yelling, feet pounding, furious voices barking orders in English, and only getting in return a chorus of excited Spanish.

A husky male voice said, “Damnit, you people—shut up! You, lady...cut that yelling, now! Jesus Christ. Lou, will you tell them to speak English, goddamnit!”

A younger, higher-pitched voice rattled out commands in fluent Spanish and answers came from a dozen mouths. The screaming woman took over after a few seconds, demanding in her shrill, distinctive fashion to know who these invaders were.

In the momentary lull, I knew the feds must be flashing their fancy credentials.

In Spanish the woman intoned in a mix of sarcasm and resignation, “So—the militia. Your type, they are here only two ways—when they are not needed, or when they are too late. Where were you, when that crazy gringo came running in here and knocked everybody and everything over? The children, too! Did you see what your madman did to our little ones? Knocking them over like dolls? But, no—of course you don’t see!”

“Ma’am....”

“No, you stop in the street to play games with them. Should we thank you for such attention? You play games, then finally you come pushing in here and make all the noise, and now thebambinos, they will never get to sleep. The customers, they will stay away today because of the crazy white one running through, knocking over things and people! You militia, you are of such great help...”

“Take it easy, señora. Take a breath, and tell us what happened.”

She took the breath. “He ran out through the back. What do you think? If you had been here, you would see!” She paused, perhaps to point the way. “And that is what happened while you were playing games with our children. Now you stand here and waste even more time...”

Somebody swore, then the husky voice again: “Jesus, lady...stand here and listen to your nonsense and we are wasting time...Jack, Roger, go out there through the back, where she indicated. Lou, call the locals to close in around the area. I’ll take Marty and Pete and shake this place down.”

The one called Lou said, “Relax, Bud. Everybody’s converging. We’re on top of this.”

“Are we really? You could fool me.”

“Bud, a bat couldn’t fly out of here now.”

A disgusted grunt. “You must think we’re playing with a kid, Lou. Did you read the damn data? This Morgan character’s a regular Houdini. How do you think he engineered that last escape?”

“This isn’t the last escape.”

“No, it’s a brand-new one.” A deep sigh. “Special Agent in Charge Crowley made it clear—he wants Morgan caught, and turned over. He wants some other agency to hold the damn receipt for Morgan’s body.”

Standing there in total darkness, like a tin soldier in a too-tight toy box, I felt my mouth twist in a grin.

So it was Crowley—the guy who was supposed to have delivered me back into a thirty-year stretch, after I did Uncle Sam that little favor that cut my sentence in half. Or would have, if I hadn’t escaped instead.

The last time I saw Crowley, he had a wild, surprised look, finding himself stretched out on the cabin floor, a look that got even more surprised as I bailed out over the ocean....

Crowley. I’d have to keep him in mind. At the time, he’d struck me as a guy with the bland face of a professional who would kill if necessary and who you couldn’t easily fake out.

A top hand—and he’d have to be, if they’d selected him to take delivery on Morgan the Raider. My mission had been a joint venture of the CIA and FBI and assorted other government alphabet soup, and losing a prisoner this important was not going to help out Crowley’s career path...

Maybe I’d been wrong about the capture priority. Maybe everything was on the line now, and this time Crowley wouldn’t worry too much about taking me alive, forty mil or no forty mil. After all, that receipt just specified my body.

Being alive or dead wasn’t mentioned.

I could only wonder how long I was going to have to play mummy in this sarcophagus. Hours ago I had gotten cramped from remaining immobile and managed to work myself into a half-squat, knees and back jammed against the sides of the enclosure to relieve my aching muscles.

The passage of time I could only figure from the smells. Two times the odors of cooking drifted into my tiny compartment, so I must have been stuffed in there for the rest of the day—thank God I’d emptied my bladder before leaving the safe house this morning.

At first the food smells had been a source of annoyance, thick and spicy enough to be an irritant, making me want to sneeze. Now they were tantalizing tempters because my stomach was flat in its emptiness and what at first had seemed distasteful now seemed potentially delicious.

I had lived with thirst before and knew how to control it. Right now, though, I could use a drink, and it wasn’t water I wanted, but a tall, cold beer in a frosted glass with the suds running down the sides....

For some reason the cramped quarters weren’t as stifling hot as I had expected them to get. The floorboards didn’t join and a coolness seemed to seep upward, musty but easy to live with, like being stuck in an old root cellar.

During the first eight hours, dozens of feet had tramped through the premises, adding to the confusion of voices. Somebody was continually chasing the kids out, trying to mollify the protests of the residents. Twice, agents had stood right outside my cubicle and discussed the search, angry voices muffled but very audible.

“These spics snowed us,” the husky-voiced one called Bud had said. “They were in on it.”

“You think these people arranged Morgan’s escape?”

That was the one called Lou, and I found myself grinning. Bud and Lou. Abbott and Costello. I began picturing them that way.

“That’s what I think,” Bud said.

“How the hell did they manage it?”

“The kids were in on it.”

“Get serious! The kids? They’re too little, too young. They couldn’t organize a burping contest.”

“Those little bastards did it, Lou, I’m telling you.”

“No way, Bud—there wasn’t time to plan.”

“They didn’t plan it, Lou—the grown-ups did.”

“Bud, kids don’t react to orders like that! Not in a matter of seconds. Morgan spotted his tail, took advantage of the situation, used those kids for cover, and somehow got through the cordon.”

“But how did he get through the cordon?”

Who’s on first?

A neighborhood house-to-house search was instituted and the feds went through the routine again. Then I heard a voice that echoed back from the recent past and I felt that grin pull at my mouth again.

Crowley.

The big cheese had taken personal charge and everybody was catching hell. As a matter of policy, they were going to station some people around in case I was still holed up, but their own damn self-assurance in their techniques was going to screw the pooch for them.

“It’s just precautionary,” Crowley said, referring to keeping a minimal presence in the neighborhood. His voice was as bland as my memory of his face. “Morgan’s gone. He knew he was being tailed, and walked us into an area where he had allies and resources, and he’s far, far gone. You all know his dossier—if we want him back, we have to start from scratch.”

So I stayed where I was and listened to the sounds coming back to normal. It would be dark out now, and supper was finished. Faintly, the sounds of a television program came through to me—seemed my saviors watched Johnny Carson, like all good Americans, so I knew it was after eleven o’clock.

I waited.

I changed positions a few times.

And I waited some more.

Then I heard the scratching at the boards in front of my face. I had been in the dark so long my night vision was at its fullest and I saw the section move and slide outward and looked at the funny little guy with the scraggly mustache in the loose light-blue short-sleeve shirt and baggy darker blue pants, standing there trying to peer inside like some fool searching for a missing cat.

He said, “Señor...?”

“I’m here.” After all those hours, my voice was scratchy.

His bandito mustache rose in a big smile. “Ha, I knew you were not going anywhere, señor! But at first I thought you might have lose the conscious...or maybe you were wounded and we did not know, and some terrible thing happen and...”

“Amigo, I’ve never been better. Nothing wounded but my pride.”

A relieved sigh.

Then he pulled the boards back farther. “Come out now, quickly, please. It is all right.”

I shouldered through the opening, watched while he fitted what appeared to be part of the wall back in place. Then he shoved a carton of garbage up against it and I followed him through a grocery storeroom and up a dark flight of stairs, and into more darkness.

After he bolted the door behind us, he flicked on a yellow-shaded lamp beside an ancient radio console. The room was small but not tiny, with adobe-type walls, second-hand furniture and Catholic wall decorations.

Then my host turned to study me, his face bright with pleasure.

His half-bow was almost comic. “Allow me to present myself, señor. I am Pedro Navarro, formerly of Cuba, but now a citizen of your country by choice.”

“I’m Morgan,” I said.

That smile blossomed under the mustache again—somewhat yellow, like the lamp shade. He was a smoker—the smell of cigars was on him. Well, he was Cuban....

We sat on a couch whose springs were too tired to complain, and cold beers were drawn from a cooler, ice cold, sweaty in a good way, and he let me swallow one down before he got me another. I was just nursing that one when he picked up the conversation.

“Señor Morgan, of course I know who you are. The man with but one name. Morgan the Raider, the militia keep calling you. A pirate for our day. But we do not reveal what we know of you in front of the intruders. We think that is more wise.”

Being known at all was something I wanted no part of. Why did a bunch of Cuban exiles know who the hell I was? There were too many possibilities, none of them good.

I said, “Why should you know me, Pedro? I’ve kind of made a point of staying under the radar. Only cops and crooks know who I am...or anyway, that’s what I thought.”

“It is more a matter of knowing of you, Señor Morgan. Until now, none of us have had the pleasure of meeting you. But we are glad to do so now.”

“Why?”

He caught the look in my eyes and smiled again. “Some months ago you did our neighboring country, Nuevo Cadiz, a great service. There you have become a legend. They sing of you in the cantinas, they write your name on the wall.”

“Not restroom walls, I hope.”

He didn’t get the joke and seemed momentarily dismayed. “No, no, you are a hero in that country!”

I had to smirk. “Probably not to everybody.”

“This is true, Señor Morgan. To certain people connected with the former corrupt government, to mention your name to them is to make them ill in the stomach, no? They talk of you in Cuba, too, where the people hope and dream that perhaps one day you might honor them with your presence, your talents, and give those thieves in control...” He paused and spat on the floor with vehemence. “...the taste of death they deserve.”

“I have no business in Cuba, amigo.”

His head nodded in sad agreement. “A man’s business is his own. His choices are his to make. We all know this.”

“Good.”

“But, señor, to Cubans, you are still a symbol. Someone to be admired, even to be...imitated. A great hero makes small heroes out of others, and enough small heroes can be...”

“An army of revolution?”

“Yes. And those heroes, they will arise when the time comes.”

I tried to make sure my smile didn’t seem patronizing. I owed this guy, and his people.

“Friend,” I said, “you’re talking to a man with a price on his head and the police at his back. I’m about as helpful to you right now as a rabid dog. If the federales knew what you did for me? Hell, they’d slap you in the pen so fast your eyes would cross.”

His smile blossomed again, but melancholy now. “Ah, again true. But the people who helped you, who look up to you, they do not care. They brush up against a real hero, and they help this hero, and they feel good about themselves and each other.”

“Yeah, well, whatever works for them.” I swallowed more beer. “How did you work it, Pedro?”

Navarro’s shrug was a masterpiece of understatement. “Heroes are recognized...by police and populace alike. There was one of our people...he was in Nuevo Cadiz, when you staged your small revolution, señor, and when he saw you on the street here he recognized you...knew you at once.”

“A break for me.”

“And he saw those who followed you, too, and when you headed our way, we were called...and called to action. In just a few minutes, several things were planned for coming to your assistance.”

I let out a little laugh. They sure had done a great job on the fly like that.

“You see, we are good Americans, Señor Morgan, but we know that police, those with badges, don’t always work for... what is the phrase? The public interest. And American or not, we are still Cubans. And the hero of Nuevo Cadiz, well ...we have more loyalty to him than to any militia.”

I had to laugh again. “My God, were those kids really in on it from the start?”

“Ah, yes, the children. The police didn’t believe the little ones could be organized like that. They forgot one thing. These muchachos grew up in the knowledge of much injustice. Only because of lessons learned in the streets of Havana are these children here in America with the rest of us.”

Well, Sherlock Holmes had his Baker Street Irregulars. Now Morgan the Raider had his own little Cuban pirates to thank.

I shook my head. “How in the hell do I find a way to say gracias, Pedro? For what you and your people have done?”

That shrug again. “There is no need. You may thank us by not being caught, and by remaining an inspiration to a beaten-down people...and perhaps to keep in your mind that there are such people, and that they need you.”

“They can look up to me if they like. There’s no accounting for taste. But there isn’t much chance of me helping anybody out. A guy in a hole has enough trouble digging himself out.”

“But, señor, people in the premature grave, they...what is the expression? Perhaps they should stick together. It is a thought, no?”

Now it was my turn to shrug. “If it pleases you.”

He stared at me a long moment, then said, “Tell me, Señor Morgan, is it true you stole forty million dollars from your government, and have it hidden in some safe place?”

I chuckled. “That would buy a nice little invasion army, wouldn’t it, Pedro?”

He laughed, too, shook his head, and finally sipped his own beer. “A very nice army, possibly even a successful one...but we are content to raise our own funds through our own efforts.”

“If you’re not asking for a handout, from that forty mil, why do you bring it up?”

“I am a curious man, señor.”

Apparently he hadn’t heard about the cat.

“Sorry, Pedro, I hate to disappoint you. It’s true the... militia...thinks I pulled that job. But I never did. Hope it doesn’t spoil my image, buddy.”

His teeth gleamed brightly under his mustache. “I wouldn’t have believed you, señor, if you told me that you did do this thing.”

“Why not?”

“Señor...surely you know the stories about you, they say you are the robbing hood.”