[Mike Hammer 14] - The Goliath Bone

by Mickey Spillane; Max Alan Collins

"He'll want a reason, Dick."

  "You listen to what I have to say, Mike, and see if you don't think I got a reason."

  I guess anybody who had a guy waiting at the prison gate with a shiv ready had a good excuse to want a guard on his hospital-room door.

  "Okay, Dick. I'll talk to Pat. Now give me the big why."

  His face got somber. "Mike, you are on a very special, really goddamn bad hit list. Badder than this they don't come. You know that? Anybody clue you in yet?"

  I shrugged. "It's not the first time."

  "No, but it could be the last time."

  "So who wants me?"

  His smile was slight, his eyes narrowed. "You've never been in the joint, have you, Mike?"

  "Only as a visitor."

  "They got groups in there, you know." He saw me frowning and added, "Racial groups, I mean, and political groups. They stay separated. Black power, white Nazis, yellow yakuza. They keep to themselves except when there's trouble. Lots of hate inside, Mike."

  I nodded again, wondering just where he was going.

  He continued, "Remember back in the '60s and '70s, when so many blacks got on board the Muslim train?"

  Again, I didn't answer him with words. He could see the interest in my eyes.

  "To me, Mike, it was always horseshit, some damn fad to set them apart from whitey." He sat up a little in the bed, grimaced, then got settled and his eyes fixed on me, glittering. "But then in come some real believers. Muslims from the other side of the world. Man, these guys were something else. Really put some life in their group. Before long the black Muslims had thrown in with the brown ones, and they were all running the damn show in there. Don't ask how they did it, but they recruited some of the nastiest sons of bitches in the yard. They made laws and rules, and if you broke them, you got the hell beat out of you, if you were lucky, and dead, if you weren't."

  "You ever catch any grief, Dick?"

  "Man, I stayed away from everybody. I worked the prison library, and all I did with my spare time was read. They usually didn't bother with loners like me. A couple of these boys kept talking to me, though—said they could tell I was smart, because I liked books. They said wild things, like how they were going to smite the infidels and rule the world, and all that kind of garbage."

  "You take any of this serious?"

  "After the Trade Towers got knocked down, and that plane dived into the Pentagon, you bet your ass I did. Didn't never join them, though, not even just pretending. A lot of the cons got real interested, but all this holy-war crapola scared the hell out of me. I understand wanting money and power, but killing and dying 'cause of your religion? That's some scary shit, Mike."

  I asked him, "Were these guys American nationals or i'm-migrants?"

  Mallory shifted into a more comfortable position. "A lot of them only spoke one foreign language or another—I think a couple of varieties were goin' down. Others had an accent."

  "From what country, Dick?"

  "Syria, I think. Some were Saudis, though."

  "You didn't bring me here to tell me the Arab Muslims have their own gang groups in prisons now, did you, Dick? Because I knew that already."

  "No. No, this is something else." His voice lowered, as if he were afraid the raspy old coot in the next bed might be a spy. "A while back, one of their foreign lawyers came in to see Ali, the head Muslim inside? And whatever that shyster told him set Ali on fire. He had a big meeting in the yard with all his pet followers and damned if they didn't catch fire, too. I thought we were gonna have a full-scale riot. Jihad on the cell block. Enough to make a guy go straight."

  "What was it about?" I got in.

  Dick was damn near breathless. "It wasn't until one of our own guys got the message, because he could speak their language, too ... and told us that somebody had found ... I swear this is what he said, Mike...'the great bone of Goliath.'"

  "When did you hear this, Dick?"

  "Two days ago. I got out just two days ago. What does it mean, Mike? Is it some kind of code?"

  "No."

  "Are they talking about the same Goliath dude they told us about when we were in Sunday school?"

  "The same."

  "And did two kids find it?"

  "Right. College kids. This you heard inside, Dick?"

  Mallory nodded, twice. "And these kids shipped it back to the States?"

  "Right."

  "And you helped them, Mike? You ... shot one of the Muslim cats? That all for true, Mike?"

  "You got it."

  His eyes narrowed into slits and he told me, "They're gonna kill you, Mike. They know all about you and are planning to get you out of the action before they make their next move."

  "Oh?"

  "They're going to get that bone, Mike. It's the most important thing in their lives. It's going back to where it belongs."

  "And they figure they have to kill me first."

  "You don't want to know how many of these Muslim prisoners want to kill your ass, Mike. You got your hands on their bone, baby. Inside the joint a lot of the cons know you—hell, you even helped put some of them there. They told the Arab cons you wouldn't be a pushover ... but those bastards couldn't care less. You were going down, along with whoever was with you, and they, the Muslim gangers? They were on the way up."

  "Like to paradise?"

  "That's how I took it."

  I grinned at him and said, "Those guys are going to be in the pen for a long time, aren't they?"

  Dick thought a second, then nodded.

  "Unless they want to be the cheering section, what can they do?"

  "They believe their people will free them, that's what."

  "You believe that, Dick?"

  "Hell, no. Their people'll let them rot in there. Is there a shortage of crazy-ass Arabs in the world so that you need to bust some out?"

  I changed the subject. "So who knifed you, buddy?"

  He twitched a humorless smirk. "Just some guy, some dark-skinned prick."

  "Black or Arab?"

  "Arab. But he was dressed American."

  "He may be an American. Could you identify him?"

  "Hell, no. I only had a quick look at him. Mostly I just saw the blade—it was long and sharp and flashed in the sunlight."

  "Why did he try to nail you, you think?"

  Dick Mallory closed his eyes for thirty seconds or so, thinking, then opened them abruptly. "That's why I called you, Mike, more than anything. Why I resorted to, like you said, subterfuge. One of the black Muslim fellas inside used to work for me on the outside. This guy knew I was your friend. And here I was getting out."

  "You figure they figured you might warn me."

  "Just like I did, yeah." He shivered. "I spent my last night worried I'd get a shiv between the ribs before I had a chance to see the other side of the walls. I skipped meals. I didn't even take a damn shower. And I got out without getting wasted, all right ... but it didn't take them long to reach me after I got out, did it? Hell, right outside the prison gates. First damn day back on the pavement."

  I stood. "Thanks for this, Dick."

  He gave me a ragged grin. "So we square, Mike? I give you five hundred worth?"

  "Oh, yeah, Dick," I said. "With interest."

  At a quarter to five in the morning, the phone rang. It was a small, muted sound that didn't jar you awake, but was like a small scratching on your back.

  Without waking Velda, who had fallen asleep on the sofa beside me in my apartment, I picked up the receiver and very quietly said,

  "MHI alerted."

  "Got the voice mail, pal," was the answer.

  It was Paul Vernon, my archeologist buddy in Los Angeles, who in a celebrated career had assembled the bones of some of the specimens of dinosaur remains found in the great museums of the world. Right now he was doing some work in the tar pits in Los Angeles for USC.

  I asked him, "You tied up?"

  " Those remains in the tar down there aren't going anywhere—why? Dinosaur turn up in
Manhattan?"

  "Just me. How would you like to work on making duplicates of the most significant find of this new century?"

  "How ... significant?" he asked me softly.

  "You'd never believe it."

  "Try me," he probed.

  "How about all that's left of a certain big lug who died in the Valley of Elah some time ago?"

  The pause just hung there.

  Finally he said, "We talking ... NBA big?"

  "Yeah, if NBA guys were built like NFL linemen."

  "Holy..."

  "Yeah, holy something. Listen, Paul, I need duplications. Can do?"

  "No problem, pal." He paused again, just briefly, then asked, "How quickly?"

  "As fast as possible without compromising the job," I told him. "How soon can you get here to pick up the item?"

  He didn't question my asking him to come cross-country to make the pickup personally.

  "There's planes leaving L.A. for New York all the time," he said casually. "I'll snag the first one. Where do you want me to meet you?"

  "The office," I told him. "Still at the same old stand. Hackard Building, remember?"

  "Sure do. By the way, who am I supposed to be?"

  He didn't have to be told he'd need a cover.

  "Make like a messenger, Paul. You'll be handling a package ... a big one."

  Chapter 7

  The day was cold but sunny, the snow dissipated by the rain. My trench coat had the winter lining out as my way of trying to trick winter into an early spring. But my breath still smoked like I hadn't given up that filthy habit half a lifetime ago.

  The Secure Solutions vehicle was parked at the rear doors of the university's research facility, just a plain white Ford van that attracted no attention on the street, but "plain" applied only to its exterior. Its walls were fireproof and bulletproof, and its mechanical attributes would have kept it in competition on a drag strip. The driver and two helpers were armed and under their uniforms were the kind of physiques that came from regular professional workouts in major gyms.

  Dan Rogers said to me, "Mike, what do you need an army tank like this for?"

  "Peace of mind," I told him. "Last week Secure Solutions delivered eighty million dollars' worth of cut diamonds to a major jewelry firm. A hijack attempt came up empty. All the rocks got to their destination."

  Rogers frowned. "Did I read something about that in the papers?"

  "If you mean a story about four diamond thieves getting shot to shit, you probably did."

  The open rear doors of the van that fitted into the dock obscured the operation. The pine box that contained the remains of Goliath slid unnoticed into the truck, the driver nodded at me, and I walked up with Rogers behind me and we both could see the unmarked backup vehicle through the window behind the driver's seat.

  I took the clipboard, signed it below six other signatures of persons who had handled the box in transit, had Rogers sign, and handed the clipboard back.

  The driver, a husky guy about thirty, looked at me curiously and said, "Mike, you sure get us into some oddball situations."

  Rogers asked him, "You know Mr. Hammer?"

  "Sure. Last delivery we made for him was a body in a fifty-five-gallon drum that'd been dumped in the East River."

  "Johnny DeAngelo," I said with a nod. "You should remember him, Dan."

  "Yeah," the driver added. "Our divers found him, and we hauled him out of there. Quite an operation."

  The university security chief was squinting at me like maybe I was a desert oasis. But he said to the driver, "How the hell did you find that drum, son, in all that water?"

  "Oh, Mr. Hammer knew right where to look."

  The driver went back to his work, and Rogers smiled slyly and said to me, "Sounds like there's a story there."

  "That was also in the papers," I reminded him. "How that body was found, and DeAngelo's uncle got nailed for it."

  "That's not the story I meant."

  I heard a horn honk, and my attention went to Velda in the driver's seat of my car, with her fingers clenched at the wheel. She nodded for me to come around and powered down the window, and I leaned in like a carhop.

  "Something glinting on that rooftop, Mike," she said, and the direction her eyes were cast encouraged me to take a seemingly casual glance that way.

  "Binoculars?" I asked, smiling at her like we were just having a friendly chat.

  "Or sniperscope," she said, smiling back but with her dark eyes anything but smiling.

  Rogers betrayed nothing in his posture, but his voice let us know he'd gone into tightly coiled mode. "You want me to round up those Special Forces boys? Or pull some of this Secure Solutions outfit off the line?"

  I straightened and yawned. "I don't think so. You know every building on that block, right? So you can get the two of us up on top of that building?"

  "I can do that."

  I went over to the driver of the van and told him not to pull out yet.

  "But we're ready to go, Mr. Hammer."

  "I need to take care of something first. Wait for my word."

  "You got it."

  I went back to my car where Rogers waited at Velda's rolled-down window. "Let's take a little spin," I said.

  I got in on the passenger side, Rogers climbed in back, and Velda pulled out. New York traffic is never cooperative, so by the time she had dropped us off in the alley behind that building, over five minutes had passed. Since I was the only potential target of value—everybody else on the scene was either loading that truck or working security—no sniper would have any reason to start picking anybody off.

  Not that terrorists were likely to be fussy.

  Still, my guess was we had a watcher on our hands, that we'd find a character with binoculars, checking out that truck and maybe informing somebody by cell phone that something important was getting offloaded at the university research center. Something that required babysitters packing heavy firepower.

  The building across the way was a hotel. We were in the lower recesses, where the maids, maintenance men, and food-service personnel inhabited their own stark personal world, a maze of featureless cement hallways that Rogers seemed to know like the streets of his hometown. We encountered security staff who knew my guide well, and who saw to it that we had a service elevator to ourselves and a key card that would unlock any door.

  The rooftop had a pool that this time of year was covered with a tarp dotted with clumps of snow that had survived the rain, with an apron of cement free of deck chairs, stored inside somewhere.

  Standing at a galvanized-wire fence with his back to us, our man was small, wearing a hooded black sweatshirt, blue jeans, and running shoes. He was using binoculars, all right. They were in his left hand as he gazed through them down onto the scene of the van loading, but a cell phone was in his right.

  We had to walk around the covered pool to make our way to him, but when he heard us, the tarp still yawned between us. He whirled, eyes wild, though his hands went up immediately, binoculars and cell phone along for the ride.

  "I am tourist!" he yelled. "I am tourist!"

  "Maybe," I said, gesturing with the .45. "But don't you go anywhere..."

  He obeyed as we came around to him. Rogers took the guy's binoculars and cell phone away. He was young, maybe twenty, and the black hair on his face was really just peach fuzz. This boy who hated Western culture was in a hooded Knicks sweatshirt, baggy Levi's, and Nikes.

  "Not going to hurt you," Rogers said, and patted the kid down. "He's clean, Mike."

  "Don't kill me," our prisoner said. "You don't have to kill me!"

  I must have been getting soft, because I damn near felt sorry for the kid. He'd been sold a bill of goods his whole life, and now here he was in the hands of the infidels.

  They might be scraggly. They might be pawns of a hideous religious zealotry. But they weren't stupid. There were thousands of them in this country, and a lot of them were moles. This damned terror campaign had been well
planned out. There was more than one group orchestrating things, and there were always contingency plans and plenty of money available to them.

  I said, "We'll turn him over to Immigration and let them have their fun with him."

  "I'm not afraid to die," he said, changing his tune. But his fuzzy chin was trembling.

  "No?" Rogers said. "'Cause of those virgins waiting for you, right? But if we cut off your wedding tackle, what good will a bunch of virgins do you?"

  The security chief was just razzing the guy, but it hadn't been smart. The kid panicked and shoved Rogers, sending him off the deep end onto that snowy tarp, where he got wrapped up in it, sinking into the empty pool.

  My .45 was in hand but I didn't want to shoot this kid and, anyway, we might find something out from him. But he was in the worst kind of state—scared shitless about what would happen if we hauled him in, and fearless otherwise.

  He came at me screaming, and clawing, and I batted him away with the .45, carving a bright red gash in his dark cheek. His eyes were wild as he prepared another charge, and that's when he saw himself looking down the long dark corridor to nowhere that starts at the end of a .45.

  And froze.

  For a moment I thought he might start to cry.

  "Don't make me do it, kid," I said.

  He heard the mercy in the words but saw the hardness in my eyes. And I guess he didn't want an infidel taking him out, because in a blur of motion, he scrambled and slipped over that wire fence and off the building and fell with a cry that might have been "Alllahhh!" or maybe it was just a terrified scream.

  I heard him hit with a metallic crunch followed by the hysterical bleat of a car alarm and when I got to the wire fence to look down over, I could see him, thirty stories below, splayed across what not long ago had been a mint-condition late-model Thunderbird.

  Rogers made an absurd swimming motion as he crawled across and up the sunken tarp, and I leaned down and held out a hand to pull him from the empty pool.

  "What the hell happened?" he asked.

  "Something terrible."

  "What?"

  "Perfectly good ride got ruined."

  Most people don't understand the complexities of the federal government. In a matter of minutes the Feds can assemble every item of a person and his lifestyle, punch it into computers, and come up with a detailed analysis that would give them an insight into anything they wanted to know.