[Mike Hammer 14] - The Goliath Bone

by Mickey Spillane; Max Alan Collins

  "Kismet—another Broadway show! Well, when I heard the words 'Goliath bone,' I knew at once what fate had in store for me. How could the impresario who made David and Goliath such a benchmark success resist bringing the real giant to Broadway?"

  I shrugged. "Go ahead—stage a revival and ride the coattails of all this publicity. You don't need my clients' permission for that."

  Cooke sat forward, his green eyes glittering. "Mike, have you ever seen the animated life-sized statue of Lincoln at Disney World in Florida?"

  "Sure—Honest Abe walks across the stage, goes through the Gettysburg Address with all the appropriate gestures and expressions until he's got the audience actually believing they're seeing the real person."

  Cooke was nodding emphatically. " Yes! And that represents only an early version of this kind of technology. Hollywood has since developed similar, more advanced animatronics, and parallel technology has been developed to make strides in prosthetics for our Iraq War veterans."

  "Right."

  "Well ... I have the wherewithal to have fabricated an animatronic version of Goliath, using the bone in question to provide scale ... meaning we'll have a Goliath the exact size of the original. We will dress our robotic 'actor' in historically accurate garb of the Philistines, and have him strut across the stage threatening the great army of Israel, just before David makes his appearance ... and at the last moment, right in front of a massive audience, we will display for the first time, the actual bone of the giant Goliath, glistening white ... with death." He laughed and it wasn't exactly insane but it wasn't exactly sane, either. "I promise you, Mike, that the opening-night audience will be shocked completely out of their senses."

  "Into what, Mr. Cooke—pandemonium?"

  "No! No ... but for a few moments in this jaded seen-it-all climate, they'll be swept up in a grand pageant worthy of Cecil B. DeMille at his most outrageous ... and yet knowing that they've witnessed a true vision of history."

  I watched his face closely as I said, "You'd have the place packed with Israeli sympathizers, Muslim zealots, persons ready to act on any scream or shout, and the greatest show on earth would become the biggest disaster in America. If there's a rush for the exits, a mob of people would go down in a heap of dying flesh. Is that what you're looking for, Harold?"

  "Of course not. I mean only to entertain and enlighten. The unusual nature of the presentation would require heightened security measures before, during, and after."

  "Anything goes wrong, Harold, you'll be a showbiz Goliath pelted with lawsuits, not stones."

  He smiled and waved that off. "I may seem to be painting a problematic picture now, Mike, but every detail will be carefully studied and ironed out. Legalities will be satisfied, everything will be handled with proper decorum—history and entertainment presented with a dramatic flourish."

  "And you want to arrange for the use of the Goliath bone for this specific event?"

  "No. I need to own it. One day I may donate it to a major museum, but for the foreseeable future, we'll start with a limited engagement of one week at the highest ticket prices New York has ever seen. Then I'll present the same show in every major city in America and Europe. The final performance of this limited tour will be a Pay-Per-Vue event, followed by a DVD of the live performance, a CD of the new cast recording the score, then a film after that, and ... what would you say to a million dollars, Mike, as just your finder's fee?"

  I knew that was supposed to knock me off my chair, but I didn't blink. "Why, Harold? What could I buy?"

  "Anything you want," he answered politely.

  "But I don't want anything."

  He eased out of the chair, and those expensive threads didn't even need smoothing out.

  Neither did his smile, as he said, "Everybody wants something, Mike....Talk to your clients."

  Chapter 9

  Three days passed in a blur of activity—no violence, but plenty of media attention and financial offers from museums, broadcast and cable networks, even private collectors. I had to post security in the lobby of the Hackard Building and moved in with Velda to avoid the fuss outside my apartment. I went over every offer with the kids each evening at the latest safe-house, the Secure Solutions team doing a great job keeping them safe and sound and off the radar.

  They sat holding hands on a blond wafer-cushioned sofa in another of those bland IKEA-decorated glorified dorm rooms that the security boys maintained, and I pulled up a hard chair to give them the latest offers.

  "I never thought about this being about money," Matthew said, shaking his head.

  Jenna sighed and said, "All we've ever wanted is to follow in Mom and Dad's footsteps."

  I grinned at her and then him. "That's all you ever wanted?"

  They both blushed. That's what I liked about them: They were smart, they were in a jam, plenty educated and sophisticated, too, with their worldwide travel. But they still had a youthful innocence in an era where those qualities were in short supply.

  "Well, of course, Mr. Hammer," Matthew said, "all we really want is each other. To be together."

  "Our dream is do what our parents do," Jenna said. "Work side by side. Teaming up to do something positive in what's turning out to be a pretty terrible world."

  I shrugged. "Well, you've made a major find. You stumbled on to something that the most highly trained, experienced archaeologists could only dream of. It puts you in a position to have a nice big payday that will set you two up for the kind of life you're dreaming about."

  They exchanged looks and smiles. Then Matthew asked, "Which offer should we take?"

  "More and more are coming in. But I'm probably going to recommend Harold Cooke's."

  "Has he set a figure?"

  "He's set a different one each day, and I've sent him packing. But I can about guarantee he'll come up with the highest figure, and we can take the political edge off this thing by choosing him. Like the man says, 'No business like show business.'"

  My cell phone vibrated in my pocket and I checked to see who was calling: Pat Chambers.

  "What's up, buddy?"

  "Where are you right now, Mike?"

  "With the Hurley kids, at the latest safe-house."

  "Look ... something bad's happened. You may want to keep this from them until you get a handle on it."

  "A handle on what, Pat?"

  "George Hurley is dead. Get over here now."

  I took the address, which was in the Village, gave nothing away to the kids before I left, and in under half an hour I was sharing an alley with Pat, assorted crime-scene analysts, several uniformed men, and the corpse of Matthew Hurley's father, which lay sprawled just beyond a Dumpster. At almost ten o'clock on an overcast night, spillage from neons didn't cut it and some arc lights on stands were required to put the dead man in the spotlight.

  There'd been rain earlier, so the alley was damp with more than blood. Really wasn't much blood, though—the hole under George's chin had been left by a bullet that had gone in at an angle up through his brain and out the crown of his skull. I didn't need the crime-scene boys to tell me the shot had come from up close—the powder burns told that tale. I also didn't need their help to know he'd fallen where he'd been shot. The splattered abstract painting from an artist working in brain and bone matter hung on the brick wall by way of explanation.

  "What the hell was he doing in this alley?" I asked Pat.

  "There's a Starbucks on the corner," Pat said.

  "There's a Starbucks on every corner."

  The captain of Homicide nodded vaguely in the direction of the Hurley apartment. "It's the closest one to the victim's residence. His wife tells us he was supposed to meet her there. She waited for him half an hour and was just getting worried when she heard the sirens."

  "Who found the body?"

  "A couple of gay guys who live a block over. This is a shortcut home they often take."

  "They for real?"

  "Seem to be. I questioned them thoroughly, checked their
IDs. This is a hit, Mike. Nothing taken. Dr. Hurley had over two hundred in cash on him and a Rolex, and he still does."

  I shook my head. "This is no hit."

  Pat frowned. "Are you kidding?"

  "Whoever shot Hurley knew him well enough to lure him to an alley for a meeting and poke a gun under his chin."

  With an irritated smirk, Pat said, "Not necessarily, Mike. A guy could've stuck a gun in Hurley's back on the sidewalk, marched back here, and plugged him."

  "Facing him?"

  Pat shrugged. "Kept the gore off the shooter, didn't it?"

  "Any shell casings or slugs found?"

  "No. Possibly retrieved by the shooter." He lifted both eyebrows. "Like a hit man might."

  I knelt over the body. Pointed toward the entry wound. "I won't claim it's scientific, but I'd say he was plugged with a .22."

  "You don't mind if I wait for the forensics report?"

  "Hell, no. Be my guest." I stood. "Where is Mrs. Hurley? You send her home?"

  He shook his head. "I sent one of my men with her back down to that Starbucks. She said she didn't want to go back to the apartment alone."

  "I have my car. I can drive her there. Stay with her if need be."

  "Knock yourself out."

  Soon I'd ushered a red-eyed, shell-shocked Charlene Hurley from the coffee shop to my car, and other than telling her how sorry I was, no words were exchanged until I pulled in at a space courtesy of a hydrant in front of her apartment building.

  She was holding her dark raincoat's lapels tight to her throat and staring into the water-reflective street where lights glowed and puddles glistened.

  "We were just trying to get away," she said.

  "Away?"

  She nodded. The short near-white curls framed a lovely face nearly as pale as her hair. Again, a resemblance nagged me, but I couldn't make the connection. Didn't matter.

  "You must be experiencing it lately, Mike—all these media, cameras, reporters..."

  "Yeah. The fishbowl effect."

  "Last few days, we've both been sneaking away, out the back of the building, one at a time, then meeting somewhere. A little Italian place yesterday evening. That Starbucks tonight. Only ... George slipped out an hour before me. He said he had to talk to someone."

  "Who?"

  "He didn't say. He seemed rather ... secretive, for George. We don't keep much from each other."

  I touched her shoulder. "Is there someone I can call? You have relatives in town?"

  "Just my children. But I don't even know where they are." She turned to me with eyes as wide as they were red, and her voice mingled indignation and alarm. "Do they even know about this?"

  "I didn't tell them. No one else could or would have."

  She swallowed and looked away, staring at the black shiny street again. "Oh my God. Matthew loved his father so. We ... Matt and I have never been close, Mike. Maybe this horrible thing can ... can bring us together."

  "Good things can come out of bad things." I wish I could have done better, but that was all I had. "Listen, I can bring them over tonight. I can make that arrangement, and get you protection, too."

  Suddenly she clutched my hand and leaned toward me. Her face was very close to mine, so close her perfume tickled my nostrils. It, too, was familiar, a scent I couldn't quite place.

  "Could you, Mike? Could you tell them, and ... bring them to me?"

  I dropped her off—she insisted that she didn't need me to walk her up—and drove back to the safe house, where Velda was waiting for me with the kids.

  I walked Matthew and Jenna back to the sofa and had Velda sit with them as I took the same chair and I told them. There was nothing special about it. Just hard facts delivered as softly as possible. Jenna cried in Matthew's arms but the boy didn't shed a tear—his face was frozen, eyes unblinkingly staring at me. Through me.

  Velda's beautiful dark eyes, somber with compassion, spoke to me: Oh, Mike, these poor kids ... these poor kids...

  Fifteen minutes later, the boy was walking his sister toward the door as we escorted them. "We're taking the guard with us, right?"

  "Right. You'll have three guys from Secure Solutions watching you and your mother tonight. Nothing to worry about."

  Matthew swallowed and nodded. "Mr. Hammer?"

  "Yeah, Matt?"

  "All that stuff I read about you ... you being a killer. A sort of ... urban vigilante, they used to call you. That was a long time ago, though, right?"

  "It was a while ago."

  "So I don't suppose you could do me a favor...?"

  "Just ask, son."

  Now the tears came; they didn't fall, just welled. "Find whoever killed my father. And kill them ... kill them ... Mike? Make it awful."

  "Count on it," I said.

  I filled Velda in on the way to her apartment building. By the time we got to her floor, we were both beat, and I could tell she was feeling blue. We'd really taken these kids under our wing, and there was something new about it for us, something damn near parental.

  Velda ran her hand along the upper edge of her door, where she had placed a strand of hair. When she glanced at me, I knew somebody had been inside before us.

  I eased the .45 out of the shoulder holster, jacked a shell into the chamber, and thumbed the hammer back. I watched as Velda slid the key into a well-oiled lock and worked it without making a sound. Then I eased her behind me, turned the knob, pushed the door open, and threw my coat jacket inside.

  There was no answering blast of bullets, no light popping of silenced guns, just blackness—so I reached in and flipped the hallway light switch on and moved in slow, the carpeted floor muffling my footsteps. Behind me Velda had her own .38 cocked and ready, and she wasn't even breathing hard.

  Both of us swept the apartment. It was empty. Whoever had been there had made a careful search, but Velda could tell an intruder had gone through her belongings. She pulled open the drawer in the table next to her bed and lifted out a holstered .25 automatic, shook it partway out of the leather sleeve, and showed it to me.

  I asked, "Fingerprints?"

  "No. But my fingerprints are smudged, probably by somebody else's latex gloves." She shoved the .25 back into its home, placed it in back the drawer, which she slid shut.

  I stood with hands on hips, surveying the scene. "Well, I guess we know what they were looking for."

  "And I guess we know they didn't find it, since it isn't here."

  We did another sweep, this time for indications of planted electronics, and when we were done she made coffee—decaf, so we wouldn't be up half the night—and we sat together on her sofa like the old married couple we should have been by now.

  I sighed. "Now we know how the discoverers of King Tut's tomb felt."

  "Curse and all," she said wryly. For a long moment she studied my face. "Only this deal is a lot bigger, isn't it? Than King Tut."

  "The political end of it sure is."

  "How long a fuse, Mike?"

  "A damn short one. So many devious minds after Goliath's bone, and they can all buy almost anything they want and if cash won't get it, strange armies of soldiers descend with their warped thoughts, prepared to do anything to get into paradise, where their personal harems of virgins are on call."

  Velda let a little grin crease her mouth. "You're not envious, are you?"

  "Just one of you is all I could take."

  The little chuckle she let out was almost silent. "And now we're about to get married." She shifted that lovely frame and sat on her legs and ran her arm along the sofa behind me. "Now that Vegas is out, maybe we should settle for City Hall. That license we got last year is still good. You even passed the blood test."

  "First there's another blood test I need to take."

  "What's that?"

  "You heard the promise I made that kid."

  She tilted her head. "Should be enough, just dealing with a bunch of Islamic nutjobs—but it isn't."

  "No it isn't. There's a killer out th
ere, Velda. A smart one. As deadly as any we've ever come up against. Been keeping track? Know what the box score is? Never mind the guy who took the header in the subway, or the bastard I lobotomized out that window. Skip the jumper across from the university center. Harlem alone we have three kills. Now George Hurley."

  "Why was Hurley killed?"

  "To make his wife and kids cooperate and give up the bone, maybe."

  She arched a dark eyebrow. "Did that shooter holed up in Harlem make a trip to the Village tonight?"

  "I'll talk to Bozo Jackson tomorrow, kid, and find out. But that guy Leon with the Israeli consulate had it right—might be better if those kids had never dug up old Goliath. I'm thinking that big bully needs to be put down once and for all."

  She shook her head and the black tresses shimmered. "Politicians, terrorists, historians, entrepreneurs, all ganging up on you—you really think they'll let that happen?"

  "They have no choice, doll. Decision'll be mine. Ours."

  "Not the kids'?"

  " They'll have their say. We'll make sure they come out of this with everything they need."

  She shrugged and black locks bounced. "You're up against adversaries who have no shortage of weapons, Mike."

  "Yeah," I said. "And me with just my little old .45 ... Of course, I'm a better shot."

  That made her laugh a little. The movement of her arm was very subtle, very slow but very deliberate. She reached around, let her fingers feel for the switch on the lamp beside her and clicked it off. The darkness was soft and warm, like a cottony blanket in a cool room, with only the soft glow from the outside creeping in through the windows to gradually bring shape to the objects around us.

  "Mike..." Velda's voice was a gentle whisper. "Do me a favor."

  "What, doll?"

  "Take off your gun."

  We got to the office late the next morning, about nine. The camera crews and newshounds had given up on me, and I would be able to pull the Secure Solutions guard off before long. The media had a hungry mouth but was a fickle eater, and the Goliath bone's news cycle was over—for the moment, anyway.

  I was feeling for my keys when Velda got hers out of her purse and went to put it in the lock. She rubbed her thumb along the metal and frowned. "Mike..."