Mike Hammer - Kill Me, Darling E-Book

Mickey Spillane

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Mike Hammer's partner Velda has walked out on him, and Mike is just surfacing from a four-month bender. But then Pat Chambers reveals that Velda is in Florida, the moll of gangster and drug runner Nolly Quinn. Hammer hits the road and drives to Miami. But can he find Velda in time? And what is the connection between a murdered vice cop in Manhattan, and Velda turning gun moll?

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Mike Hammer

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

A Tip of the Porkpie

About the Authors

Also Available from Titan Books

MORE MIKE HAMMER FROM TITAN BOOKS

Lady, Go Die!

Complex 90

King of the Weeds

Kill Me, Darling: A Mike Hammer Novel

Print edition ISBN: 9781783291380

E-book edition ISBN: 9781783291410

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: March 2015

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 © 2015 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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In memory of

HAROLD COOKE

who rode the moonshine roads with Mickey

CO-AUTHOR’S NOTE

Shortly before his death, Mike Hammer’s creator Mickey Spillane paid me an incredible honor. He asked me to complete the Hammer novel that was currently in progress—The Goliath Bone—and then instructed his wife Jane to gather all of the other unfinished, unpublished material and give it to me: “Max will know what to do.” He described what would follow as a “treasure hunt,” as these manuscripts spanned his entire career from the late ’40s until his passing in 2006.

The manuscripts were substantial—usually 100 pages or more, with plot and character notes and sometimes roughed-out final chapters. Most of the books had been announced by Mickey’s publisher at various times from the 1950s through the ’90s. As a Spillane/Hammer fan since my early teens, I am delighted to finally see these long-promised books lined up on a shelf next to the thirteen Hammer novels published by Mickey in his lifetime.

In addition to the substantial novel manuscripts mentioned above, a number of shorter Mike Hammer manuscripts were uncovered in the treasure hunt conducted by Jane Spillane, my wife Barb and me, ranging over three offices in Mickey’s South Carolina home. Some of these were fragments of a few pages, primarily the openings of never-written novels or stories; these I have been gradually turning into short stories with an eventual collection in mind. Others were more substantial if less so than the six novel manuscripts. Although they vary in particulars, these shorter but still significant unfinished manuscripts are essentially the opening chapters of novels, sometimes with character and plot notes (and, in one case, a draft of the ending).

I am setting out to complete at least three of these significant Hammer novels-in-progress, and Kill Me, Darling is the first. The novel is of particular interest because it is an early, variant version of Hammer’s 1962 “comeback” novel, The Girl Hunters, in which Mike discovers that Velda—missing and thought dead for seven years—has been behind the Iron Curtain on dangerous CIA business. (The posthumous Complex 90 is a sequel to that novel.)

Mickey’s manuscript of Kill Me, Darling begins with the opening pages of The Girl Hunters, in which a drunken Hammer is dragged by cops (“They found me in the gutter”) to the home of Captain Pat Chambers. At that point, the manuscript goes in an entirely different direction, as you will see. Internal evidence indicates Kill Me, Darling was begun as a follow-up to Kiss Me, Deadly, likely around 1953 or ’54, the time frame I’ve used for the narrative.

Rather than reuse the first few pages of The Girl Hunters, I have based the opening of Kill Me, Darling on another Spillane fragment from the same era that covered similar territory.

Many readers have asked me if I will ever write my own Mike Hammer novel. The answer is that there is no need: Mickey left behind so much wonderful unpublished material that I am privileged to continue our collaboration.

M.A.C.

CHAPTER ONE

It was quiet and dark and half-past three in the morning. The winos and the dipsos were happy things all nestled together in their doorways, and on the streets an occasional taxi would cruise by, slowing down for subway exits and still-open gin mills.

What noise was left over from the night before had been dampened by the belly rumblings of thunder over the river and a wet heat had crowded in above the city like a hand dipped in slime.

Sometimes a sudden momentary brilliance would light the sky, and down on earth below all the trouble would stand out in quick stark relief, long enough to be seen, not long enough to be perceived, much less remembered.

And when I reached the end of the block, near the river, all the trouble left in the world seemed to belong to me alone. I was walking slow but not steady—too much booze for that. But at least I looked like myself again, trenchcoat collars up and hat brim down. Both garments clean over a rumpled, soiled, torn suit that was the uniform of the barfly I’d become.

I hadn’t even heard about the mugging turned murder till a week after it happened. I hadn’t been much for following the papers since Velda walked out, and the kind of slop chutes I frequented couldn’t afford TVs up over the counter. So it took another drunk to say, “Didn’t you used to know that cop?”

“What cop? I know lots of damn cops.”

“Manley? Wade Manley?”

“What about him?”

“Somebody killed him last week.”

The sand was still there on the sidewalk, spread out in a wide circle. Sand scuffed and dirty now, paraded through by kids and bypassed by their elders. Sand that still had its abrasive quality but also the discoloration of old rust.

Only it wasn’t rust. It was blood. Or anyway it had been. Now it was just a substance decomposed to its chemical make-up. Not so long ago it had been bright red and completely alive and the one who had carried it in his veins and had it pumping through his heart had been as big and as prominent as the stain he had left by way of remembrance.