[Mike Hammer 14] - The Goliath Bone

by Mickey Spillane; Max Alan Collins

  "Right," I said. "So we need to make sure that doesn't happen."

  "Mike Hammer? Peacemaker?"

  I nodded, enjoying the way the neons glowed in the dusk. "Blessed are the peacemakers, doll. And back in the Old West, remember, that's what they called a Colt .45."

  Chapter 5

  It had started to rain.

  Not heavy. Just a penetrating drizzly rain eating at the snow, working to wash away the dull slushy gray and reveal the darker gray of concrete beneath. I turned up the collar of my trench coat against it as I walked from my apartment to the office. Each street corner had its band of unprepared citizens trying to flag down taxis and I bypassed them all.

  New Yorkers are a strange bunch, never prepared for anything. The Trade Centers came down around their ears; now they line up to get a tourist's-eye look where the towers once stood. No tears now. Just bewilderment. They shake their heads, then leave. To most, it was an event. They still haven't put the situation in full perspective. Most of them seem to think it was all over.

  They never seemed to think that maybe it was only the beginning.

  This was the kind of case where Captain Chambers and I spent more time together in my office than his. The morning had barely begun when he came around bearing Danish, but knowing Velda would supply the coffee. He was a tough guy who took it black, but I was a sissy who needed a couple of Sweet'N Lows. Velda made that stuff strong—would have knocked Juan Valdez off his damn mule.

  Pat tossed his fedora on my desk and handed around the Danish and napkins—he'd already made a delivery to Velda in the outer office. He settled in the comfy client's chair and made a face that didn't go with the sweet pastry he was nibbling.

  "Afraid those bullet fragments are a bust, Mike. Lab boys came up with bupkis. I sent the frags on to Washington for a complete analysis, but most likely they'll be American made, standard over-the-counter ammo you can buy anywhere. At close range they can be pretty deadly."

  "The gun came from a dealer in Harlem," I said.

  He paused in mid-bite. "That's a little vague."

  "I can give you more if and when you need it. I'm doing some poking up there that might be more effective than the official variety."

  His eyes narrowed. "Bozo Jackson?"

  I nodded.

  Pat already knew we'd had to move the kids from the Brooklyn apartment to another safe-house. He didn't ask where, and I sure as hell didn't offer it.

  He swallowed and his expression was casual but the gray eyes probing me weren't. "I had a call from my opposite number in Brooklyn Homicide. He says they had a call about gunshots at that apartment building the Hurleys own. Right about the time you would've moved their kiddies."

  "I already told you, Pat, I chased a couple guys with guns out of there."

  "You didn't say shots had been exchanged. You were a little vague about that, too."

  "Some things are on a need-to-know basis, Pat."

  "What, now you're the goddamn government? You didn't happen to wing a guy, did you?"

  "I don't know. My age, eyesight's a little iffy."

  "You're twenty-damn-twenty, pal."

  "You could tell your Brooklyn friend to check the hospital ERs."

  "I don't think so. Their lab boys found arterial blood and brain matter and bone."

  "The Goliath bone?"

  "Cut the comedy, Mike. You need to level with me."

  "Do I? Anything I tell you, you have to report. If you don't, your ass could be in a sling. Haven't we worked enough cases for you to trust me on this?"

  He chewed Danish. He knew I was right. He knew twenty times—hell, fifty times—I'd hidden things from him and the upshot had been the bad guys had gone down. He envied me my freedom like I envied him his resources. We'd been a great team for a lot of years, we'd just never admitted it.

  "We'll leave it at 'need-to-know,'" he said, wiping his hands off with a paper napkin. "After all, the Doctors Hurley and plenty of others at that university have some pretty hot ties to the federal agencies. When you ask questions up there, they smile and give you noncommittal answers, and somehow you know the conversation has been recorded. Then an inquiry comes down from the mayor's office wanting to know what's going on."

  "So you shrug and brush it off."

  "That would seem to be my best option. Officially, this is a foiled subway mugging and a handbag with a couple of .22 holes poked in it. Jenna Hurley didn't have a mark on her, there were no witnesses, and she could have shot those holes in that bag herself, earlier."

  I about choked on my bite of Danish. "Why in hell would she do that?"

  "Somebody might think she and her brother staged this to build up publicity for the Goliath bone. They come as close to owning the damn thing as anybody."

  "Nobody here wants publicity, Pat. Who'd be dumb enough to think those kids hired that subway shooter and—what, set the whole thing up?"

  "Stranger things have happened."

  "No they haven't. Not even in this town. And they'd say I was in on it, I suppose? Called in by the Hurley kids to plug that guy and make their story look good?"

  "You could be accused of that."

  I talked with my mouth full, just to stick it to him. "I've been accused of lots of things, pal. Nobody's made any of it stick. You want the NYPD to be constructive? Get ready for the shit to hit the fan when the media gets hold of this Goliath-bone story."

  "I don't follow you."

  "The damn thing might be the match that touches off the next major blast."

  He made another face, pawed the air. "Like where? The Rose Bowl's been played, the Olympic Games are over, Disney World and Hollywood are heavy on alert status, and everyone stays glued to twenty-four—hour news for current information so they won't be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  I used a napkin on my sticky fingers. "Yeah, right. Color codes. Every time some damn politician drops the ball and wants the public's eyes off him, the color code goes up magically. How dumb do they think we are?"

  "Well, you're pretty damn dumb if you think al-Qaeda can pull an impromptu 9/11. Those fanatics take a lot of time to set up a major scene of destruction and, believe me, our guys have everything covered."

  "Horseshit," I said. "Right now I could orchestrate a disaster and set it up in a couple of days."

  "Come on, Mike. Now you do sound dumb."

  "Do I?" I stared at him a few seconds, then grinned.

  Pat's eyes got cold as he tried to sort out the possibilities. "Okay ... so you have that kind of evil mind. I'll give you that. But who'd finance it?"

  "Minimum layout," I stated offhandedly.

  "How big a crew?"

  "Two," I told him.

  "Small-time, then..."

  "No. Major destruction. Millions of people affected."

  Pat rarely swore, but this time he made an exception. "Fuck you, Mike. You're all talk."

  I said nothing. He knew I was a lot of things, but all talk wasn't one of them.

  Then he said, "Care to tell me how you'd do it?"

  I nodded again. "One man in a truck loaded with cheap explosive—fertilizer-based, like the Oklahoma bombing—drives onto the middle of a major bridge, fakes a flat, pulls over, gets out, and a following car picks him up and they exit the scene. A timer sets off the bomb a couple minutes later, and down comes Choose-your-bridge."

  "Which bridge would you suggest?"

  "How about the George Washington right here in the town so nice they blew it up twice? Or the Golden Gate, maybe? Neither one is a military target, but either one sure would raise hell with lines of communication nationally, and the publicity would satisfy all those unwashed masses overseas who hate the United States on general principle."

  For a few seconds, we sat there quietly. Then Pat said, "You've been thinking about more than just knocking down a bridge, haven't you?"

  When I didn't answer right away, he went on, "That bone is bugging you, isn't it?"

  "Yeah," I admitt
ed. "There was enough hate in this world already without that damn thing turning up."

  Pat's eyes got a little cool, and for a few seconds he studied me. His fingers made silent little taps on the desktop. He took a couple of sips from his coffee cup, then put it down.

  "Pal," he told me, "you are a goddamn troublemaker. Always have been. Here I am, almost ready to retire and there you sit, finally ready to marry that beautiful dame ... and yet you take time out to play with a big can of deadly worms again."

  "Velda!"

  She appeared in the doorway to the outer office, a long-stemmed vision in a trim gray suit. "Yes, Mike?"

  "Captain Chambers called you a 'dame' again. Is that sexist, or ... what's that other term?"

  "Anachronistic, Mike." The lush lips formed a glowing smile. "But I like it. Coming from Pat, it's always a compliment."

  Pat glanced back at her. "You deserve better than this bum, Velda."

  "They don't come better than that bum, Pat." And she was gone.

  The captain of Homicide sat forward in his chair. "What comes next, Mike?" Before I could answer him, he held up his palms for silence. "Don't tell me. You're going to use that damned bone as bait, knock a few bad guys off, and make a point."

  "How could I manage that, Pat? They got that relic under lock and key over at NYU."

  "So thought Brink's before the gang nailed all their money. So said the Brits about those millions of pounds safe in that mail train until those hoods very neatly stalled it out and took off with the cash. Some show."

  "What's your point, Pat?"

  "You can't keep that bone locked up in a university research center. Sooner or later there'll be a surgical strike from some foreign interest, and this country will be tied right into the next big Middle Eastern mess. They got nukes over there now, Mike! Christ, what did you get us all into..."

  "Want to help me steal it, Pat?"

  That hit Pat like a poke in the belly. "Come on, I'm a cop. You think I want to mess up my retirement?" His mouth twisted into a grin but I didn't make any nasty remark. Pat was too square a cop to play dirty.

  I said, "The only hope is to defuse this thing by getting that bone out to the public—the American public."

  "What, a museum display? You don't think some terrorist cell would knock over anything any museum had to offer? Even the Smithsonian? Why don't you just stick the Hope diamond in Macy's window, and hope nobody breaks the glass?"

  "Maybe I will."

  His brow knit and his eyes narrowed. "You got something knocking around inside that empty space between your ears, don't you, buddy?"

  I grinned back at him and nodded again. "That's on a need-to-know basis, too, Pat."

  He sighed, got up, slapped on his hat, and pretended to be mad as he stalked out.

  He never was much of an actor.

  I wandered out into Velda's domain to freshen my coffee and found her seated at her desk opening a modest-sized package. I kissed the back of her neck and she turned her head toward me as she flipped open the top of the cardboard box.

  "Mike, did you order this?"

  She knew what it was and so did I. It had been packaged in its green metal box sometime before 1945 and still had that smell any old Army vet could remember. I put my finger under the latch, pulled it open so the cover flipped back, and there were all those boxes of .45 caliber cartridges that had stopped an insurrection a long time ago and could ream out a terrorist organization right now.

  "Mike, you have to stop ordering this ancient ammo. It's just not safe."

  "Sure it is, kitten. That kind of ordnance lasts a lifetime."

  "This kind of ordnance can end a lifetime. You'll get a misfire or even some unstable old slug that will blow that precious .45 of yours up in your hand."

  "A lot you know about it. Worst thing likely to happen is an explosion that bulges up the barrel."

  Her brow furrowed. "I can think of something worse—any of that happens, and the other guy with a gun blows your head off."

  "What other guy?"

  "The other guy who isn't ordering ancient ammo out of some weird sense of sentimentality!"

  "Are you done, kid? 'Cause I didn't order the stuff. Has it got a return address?"

  "Oh. Well, it came from New Jersey."

  "You already checked on the sender, right?"

  "Sure."

  "And nobody home?"

  "Public housing."

  "Untraceable, right?"

  "Right," she told me. "Maybe it's a fan afraid you're going to run out of ammo."

  "I doubt it," I said, "but I appreciate the sentiment."

  She arched an eyebrow. "Or it could be the kind of 'fan' who rigs a slug to blow up in your face."

  "Velda ... we had that conversation...."

  She returned her attention to the green metal container. "Come on, Mike. This is a message—you know that, don't you?"

  "Sure." I shrugged. "I just wish I knew what it was saying."

  "Maybe they want you to shoot somebody, lover boy. Details to follow."

  "With a cartridge box of .45 s? I could shoot a whole lot of somebodies with that little after-Christmas present. Hell, all I need is one shot per target ... well, maybe two."

  She was shaking her head. "Mike, you're not the randy young PI you used to be."

  "No. I'm the randy old PI of today." I leaned down and kissed the back of her neck again. "This thing is getting a little dicey, isn't it?"

  "Terrorist cells from half a dozen rogue states? The Israeli Mossad interested? What's dicey about that?" Slowly, she turned her head to look up at me. "You scared, Mike?"

  "Not yet. I'm still on the fringes. I haven't put myself in the middle yet."

  "How do you feel?"

  I thought about it a moment, then told her, "I'm curious. I never bodyguarded a bone before. It sounds like a Halloween joke, but it's a deadly serious affair with international repercussions. One shooter maybe tries to take out both kids and snag old Goliath's femur in that subway, but before that Jenna gets herself shot at when she and Matt don't even have possession of the damn thing yet ... and indications are that a pro was brought in to pop her."

  "Did Pat put a tracer out on him?"

  "Sure, but that's outside the NYPD's realm. This isn't some standard pro, not some freelance hit man. It's a shooter tied in with al-Qaeda or some other terrorist organization."

  "Mike..."

  "What, doll?"

  "Somebody laid out a lot of bucks to bring in an out-of-town shooter, didn't they? It's not like al-Qaeda doesn't have somebody already in the New York area who could hit those kids."

  I sat on the edge of her desk and looked down at her. "You're right. Go on."

  She was staring into her thoughts, and her words came out careful, deliberate. "He'd be a damn good shooter then, wouldn't he? Good enough to bother importing."

  Velda got up from her chair, unwinding the sensuous way a cat does, twirled halfway around, and looked over her shoulder at me like the pinup girl she could've been.

  But the point she made was pure female PI: "Maybe he didn't want to kill her. Maybe those shots into her handbag were well-aimed. If he was supposed to kill her, he would have aimed for her head."

  This time I beat her to the next step.

  Snapping my fingers, I said, "Those .22s were deliberately altered! A light load with minimum penetration power."

  She was getting herself some coffee. "I don't care what anybody says, Mike. You aren't stupid."

  "Thanks a bunch."

  She strolled back, sipping. Then she asked, "You think that shooting could be some kind of snow job?"

  "Anything is possible. But what for?"

  Velda thought about it briefly, then suggested, "Scare tactics? Put pressure on the parents, Mike?"

  "Now we're back to that damned bone again." I shook my head. "I have to get control of the thing. I can protect that thing better than those college clowns."

  Her expression was a smile that got
stalled somewhere. "Mike, stop—don't go off half-cocked about this. Before you know it, the Feds will weigh in and, until then, the university seems up to the job of—"

  "That's not enough," I cut in. "Too many people already know or can guess where the Goliath bone's being kept, and any place can be broken into. Any faction interested in possessing that thing could power their way into the university, and can make it happen."

  Velda's frown deepened. "Mike—what do you have in mind? And please don't make me sorry for asking."

  I said, "The Hurley kids can be our key to the box that bone's being kept in."

  "What?"

  "Let's call them and we make an appointment to drop by and pick them up and see their folks at the university again."

  Velda didn't know exactly what I was getting at, but she knew not to argue with me in this frame of mind. She did her job and put everything in motion.

  The khaki-clad security team that met us at the NYU research facility door did everything but a cavity search on the four of us. My .45 went into a black canvas bag along with Velda's .38 and a couple of small spray-perfume vials, Matthew dropped in a pocketknife, and Jenna some nail clippers.

  "Entering this building," Matthew said with a weary smile, "is like boarding an airliner for D.C. every single day."

  The guard with the canvas bag disappeared into another room and came back a few minutes later, empty-handed. But not alone—eight more guards in khaki trooped out from who-knew-where and soon all dozen of us were squeezing on that elevator to take the ride down to the corridor of stainless-steel doors.

  Then the jury's worth of us, four strategically surrounded by eight, walked to the gleaming door behind which the remnant of Goliath now resided. We stood in that circle and experienced the tingling sensation as we were photographed and X-rayed or whatever the hell, and when we entered the room, four of the guards came with us, the other four staying on the other side of the closed door.

  Doctors George and Charlene Hurley in their matching lab coats were at work at the same metal table where the Goliath bone had first been displayed like a decorative piece of driftwood, the relic surrounded now by half a dozen lipstick cameras on tiny tripods as if the Lilliputians were making a movie about Gulliver. On a flat- screen computer monitor, one of the images sent by those cameras revealed an angle on the bone overlaid with a measuring grid.