[Mike Hammer 14] - The Goliath Bone

by Mickey Spillane; Max Alan Collins

  I sighed, leaned back in my chair. "You kids were targets tonight. But after we get this package delivered to your parents, the heat may come off."

  Velda said, "It's not you two that they want—it's the Goliath bone."

  Matthew brightened. "So we're in the clear?"

  "Hard to say," I admitted. "My guess is your late educated driver back in the Valley of Elah reported you to his buddies ... buddies who eventually killed his ass. Now you two are entangled in an international situation, in the shadow of two towers that aren't there anymore. You two, and Goliath."

  "Damn," Matthew said softly. He gazed at me earnestly. "This is ... big, isn't it?"

  "If the contents of this plain-brown-wrapper package are real? Gigantic."

  "Like Goliath," Velda said.

  Her eyes had clouded up and she sat there half-lidded, letting the facts go through her mind. They were the same things I was thinking. Out of the blue came a world crashing down. The corners were beginning to crumble and we were all racing to prop it up, but the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune were coming at an unsuspecting populace from strange angles, and nobody knew which way to duck. The anthrax scare had quickly followed the first attacks, white powder delivered in envelopes. Courtesy of idiots or enemies? Nobody knew. The world situation bred copycats, and now we were faced with a ten-foot giant from another time.

  In the quiet of the night, we all heard the elevator reach our floor and the door snick open and shut automatically. The footsteps on the tiles in the corridor were determinedly audible, marching, not creeping, coming our way.

  Jenna seemed alarmed, but before Velda even got out of her chair, Matthew said, "You mentioned that the police were coming here, didn't you, Mr. Hammer?"

  I grinned. "I like the way you stay on top of things, son. That'll be Captain Chambers right now."

  "Captain Chambers?"

  "Of Homicide."

  Velda was up and had the door open before Pat could knock. The big rangy guy in the rumpled off-the-rack suit looked ten years younger than he was, which didn't mean he looked young. His eyes, not surprisingly, went to the ungainly oversized brown-paper package on my desk. But he said nothing about it.

  He politely took off his hat, nodded to Velda and me, and let his eyes drift to the kids. I made the introductions, Pat flipping out his police shield so they could see it, and the city's most decorated detective pulled up another client's chair and eased down on i t.

  The gray eyes glanced at me knowingly. "Having kind of a long day for a guy your age, aren't you, Mike?"

  "Hell, buddy, they're all long in this game."

  "Not in mine. Not anymore." An eyebrow lifted. "You got me up out of bed."

  "Tough. We left a dead man in that subway station. He won't be getting up again, period."

  "Oh I know. I just came from there, touched bases with the squad before coming to the source. Seems the guy wasn't murdered, Mike—he fell. Losing your touch?"

  I said nothing. The gray eyes never left me.

  "Or maybe you aren't. The slug caught the guy's rod in firing position and mashed the action so that his shot never went off." He let a slow grin play around his mouth. "You do that, Mike?"

  I didn't deny it. "Velda can take a statement from me and I can sign it right now, if that'll make you sleep better when you climb back in your jammies."

  He pretended he didn't think that was funny. "Oh, we'll get around to your statement, Mike." Then he grunted a gruff laugh. "But don't sweat it. Calling it in immediately took the curse off, and you not knowing whether or not the guy had a partner with him explains hustling these two out of there."

  "You have learned a thing or two over the years."

  "The media may see it different. They may pick up on you being the rescuing agent here and do a piece about your exploits back in the old shoot-'em-up days. You always did make for good press."

  "Getting good publicity never hurts, Pat."

  "What do you need it for? You and I are both facing imminent retirement."

  "Speak for yourself."

  "You really think attracting attention makes sense when you're coming up against an organized mob like this?"

  "Mob hell, Pat. John Gotti's dead now. Sammy the Bull's back in the slammer. Who's that leave to play footsie with?"

  Pat's grin wasn't attractive. "This is a new kind of mob, Mike. The kind that might have been out of your league even before you qualified for the senior discount. That kid you killed—make that helped to kill himself—he's enjoying himself right now."

  "Yeah? Doing what?"

  "Hanging out with forty virgins in the afterlife. Get my drift?"

  I got it.

  Pat's eyes lowered and fixed upon the wrapped package sitting like an abstract centerpiece on my desk. The heavy butcher's paper that was used for wrapping had been worn in spots, and there were dirty smears where hands had held it tightly for a long time. The heavy cord that tied it had come loose in places and had been hurriedly retied.

  It sat there, a thing completely out of place in that office, shaped so that nobody could say positively what lurked beneath that wrapping.

  A man was dead in the subway station. But I didn't kill him—his fall did. All I did was shoot a rod out of his hand when he was about to commit murder. He'd been after something ... and it wasn't money.

  "Okay," Pat said. "I'll bite. What's in the package?"

  This was addressed to Matthew, who didn't look at Jenna this time, nor did she look at him. But his hand was grasping hers now, and that told its own story.

  Matthew Hurley said simply, "A bone."

  Pat frowned as he studied the strangely shaped parcel.

  "No rag," I said to him. "No hank of hair, either."

  He frowned at me impatiently. Then to Matthew he said, "Pretty big bone, isn't it?"

  "Yes, sir. Pretty big."

  I said, "Maybe they have a big dog. Pit bull, maybe."

  Pat glared at me. "They have a pit bull, all right." Then to the kids: "What is it ... an artifact of some kind?"

  The two bobbed their heads.

  "An old one?"

  Again they bobbed their heads.

  I loved to watch cops play Twenty Questions.

  "How old?"

  The boy said, "We don't know yet."

  I could think of a hundred better questions to ask, but Pat was the pit bull now and couldn't let it alone. "A hundred years?" When nobody answered, he upped the ante. "A thousand?"

  "More," Matthew said. "We were ... delivering it."

  Of course Pat should have asked them where they were delivering it to, but his one-track mind wouldn't let up. "Okay, so you have an ancient artifact." The old hardness came into his tone. "You mind showing it to me? Or do we have to go downtown, like they say on TV?"

  I said, "I don't think they say that on TV anymore, Pat."

  "Shut up, Mike. How about it, kids?"

  "It shouldn't be opened until we deliver it," Matthew said, petulance in his tone.

  Jenna touched his arm. "It'll be a bone here as well as it is down there. If Captain Chambers wants to see it, why not? Open it, Matt."

  "No! We promised!"

  "Hold it!" I raised a traffic-cop palm. I let ten seconds go by, then swiveled half a turn in my seat. "Who does it belong to?"

  The kids exchanged startled glances. Then Matthew said, "Right now it's ours."

  "Then if you don't want to unwrap that birthday present," I said, "my good friend here can't make you."

  Pat was watching me close. "Right now it's yours," he said to them. "Whose was it?"

  Matthew flicked another glance Jenna's way, then asked, "How do you mean that?"

  "Did somebody own it before you?"

  This time Jenna offered an answer. "It's a little difficult to explain..."

  I said, "It wasn't stolen, Pat."

  Jenna said, "It did belong to somebody else, once."

  Pat's eyes flared. "Then you did steal it?"

  "
No," Jenna insisted. "We found it. At an approved dig."

  "Nothing illegal about it," Matthew put in defensively.

  Pat's eyes narrowed. "What is it, a fossil you kids unearthed? You think it's valuable?"

  The two glanced at each other again, with a kind of little-kid-ashamed look that brought Pat forward on the edge of his chair.

  "That thing isn't...human, is it?" Pat's eyes were anything but narrow now.

  With a bare nod, Matthew affirmed it.

  "Well"—Pat was flustered—"who did it used to belong to?"

  This time Matthew simply shrugged and answered, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  But his stepsister clutched his arm and said, "Tell him. You better tell him, Matt."

  In the silence, the office clock was making audible clicks, louder than it had ever made before.

  Finally Pat said tightly, "Yes, Matt. Tell me."

  His tone flat, Matthew said, "Goliath."

  What passed felt like a minute and I was starting to wonder how long Pat could stretch it out when he finally asked, "Goliath who?"

  "I never caught the last name," Matthew said sourly.

  "I'm not dumb, kiddo," Pat said, his upper lip curling. "I get the supposed connection. It's an artifact. And I remember the Biblical story of a man called Goliath."

  "Not just a 'story,'" Matthew said.

  "And you're saying"—Pat pointed an accusing finger at the ungainly butcher-wrapped package—"that that's the remains of this historical personage?"

  "Possibly," Matthew said.

  "And somebody walking around today is dead tonight, because of...this?"

  "Possibly," Matthew said again.

  I finally had to break into the conversation. "Pat, there's been an incident, not a murder—"

  Pat cut me off: "An uptight DA could throw a nasty rope around this one, buddy."

  "This is an election year, buddy," I said. "You think our esteemed DA's going to tangle himself up in an accidental death of an Arab stalker with a loaded shooter in his hand, chasing a couple of kids whose parents are top university people? Maybe he'd enjoy having to deal with me being on the scene, stopping the guy, a notorious old-time private eye half the public thinks is already dead? And as icing on the cake, he'll have an atrophied leg of a dead giant to swing around....Should be a fun election cycle."

  Pat knew I was right. He pawed the air. "Come on, Mike. Can it."

  "Sure," I said with a shrug. Velda was watching me from across the room, wondering where this was going. Wondering where I was going...

  That was when I noticed Jenna, half-raising her hand up to wiggle her fingers, like a student in class. It was a tiny gesture, but Pat saw it, too, and looked straight at her. He didn't say anything—he just waited until Jenna got the message from his eyes and finally she blurted, "I was shot at today."

  Matthew moved his chair closer to Jenna's, and slipped a supportive arm around her.

  Pat, sitting forward, said, "But you weren't hit, obviously? Right?"

  "Actually ... I was."

  Everybody else in the room, Matthew included, made a jagged chorus: "What?"

  "Not me! My purse. It hit my purse. But I didn't figure out what had happened, until later."

  I said, "Silenced shot."

  Jenna held up her heavy leather handbag, turned it over to show us where the bullet had hit it, then fished inside until she brought out a metal cosmetic compact with a nickel-sized dent in it.

  Pat reached out and gently took the compact away from her. Just as gently, he rolled it around in his palm, then said, "Most likely a .22 slug."

  I said, "The gun I shot out of that punk's hand was no .22."

  "Right, Mike. It was a nine-millimeter of foreign make. Which means..."

  But he didn't finish the sentence and neither did I, not wanting to tell these already-traumatized kids that the guy I'd stopped on those subway stairs wasn't the only shooter after them.

  Nonetheless, Matthew and Jenna traded terrified expressions, while Velda took a more businesslike approach. "Wouldn't even a .22 slug have torn up that purse a little more," she asked, "or even penetrated it?"

  Meaning Jenna should at least have been wounded.

  Pat reached out and took the handbag from Jenna. "Mind if I take a look?"

  Jenna shook her head.

  Pat withdrew a small metal ring with three keys attached. The teeth on the keys were bent back, and he nodded. "You have anything important in here?" he asked her.

  Jenna shook her head again. "Just the usual junk."

  "Will you tolerate a cop's curiosity and let me poke around in here?"

  Pat was a stickler; he knew without a warrant he needed permission.

  "Go ahead, Captain."

  "Mike, you and Velda witness this." He stood and shook out the contents of the pocketbook onto the desk not far from the brown-wrapped package. Jenna hadn't lied: the typical female junk. But that wasn't what Pat was after.

  From the bottom of the now-emptied purse, Pat's fingers brought up two tiny pieces of metal. One was sharp and copper-colored at its bent tip.

  Pat's eyes caught mine. We had both seen bullet fragments a lot of times before. And we both knew how close this girl had come to buying it.

  "When did this happen?"

  The question was aimed at Jenna, but Matthew answered it. "Just as we were coming out of our hotel today, maybe around four? We were just getting into a cab. The snow was coming down hard. When I went to take Jenna's hand, because it was slippery on the sidewalk, I saw another cab pulling in—"

  Pat snapped, "What kind was it?"

  "Blue or black or something."

  "Not yellow?"

  Matthew shook his head. "No. Definitely not yellow. Why, what difference does that make?"

  "That was a gypsy cab," Pat told him softly.

  "So?"

  "So they don't usually pick up that far downtown. They'll drop you off, but not pick you up. They have no medallion ... privately owned transportation."

  I said, "That cab could have been a backup to the shooter, or maybe even the source of the shot."

  Both kid's faces turned pale.

  And I hadn't even pointed out that their subway shooter had emerged from another gypsy cab.

  Jenna said, "Why would anybody shoot at us?"

  Pat shrugged. "Maybe you had something somebody wanted."

  Matthew frowned, shaking his head. "But we didn't have anything ... except..."

  "An old bone," Pat finished for him.

  Pat took a cell phone out of his jacket pocket, hit speed dial, then mumbled into the receiver. He got up and paced around the room while muttering into the instrument. Twice he slowed and paused in front of the wrapped package and stared at it absently. Then he paused and gave it a hard stare, as if he were trying to see through the brown paper, seemingly letting all the implications of the affair sink into his mind. Finally he nodded twice at the air and clicked off and pocketed the phone.

  To Matthew and his stepsister, Pat said, "We're keeping this officially quiet for now. No arrests, but I'd appreciate it if you'd all come down to headquarters so we can get the details on paper and verified."

  Velda asked, "No arrests?"

  "No. No Miranda questions. This is all voluntary." He was halfway out when he said, "Meet you down there. You know the address."

  "Pat!"

  He paused.

  " What came up, buddy?"

  Pat half-whispered, as if this were so hot even he shouldn't hear it. "They got a fast ID on the dead guy. That portable fingerprint unit gave a plus on a possible terrorist who's been suspected of being in the country illegally for several years."

  Then Pat was gone, and the office fell deathly silent.

  Finally Matthew, holding his stepsister's hand, asked, "Do we need an attorney, Mr. Hammer?"

  "No," I said. "You need me."

  Three hours later the pertinent details of the "subway affair" were seemingly cleared up. Witnesses h
ad been contacted who corroborated our stories, the time periods before being in the subway station all held tight and the only foul ball was the assassin with the silenced gun. No positive ID was found on him, but in his pocket he had twenty-seven loose cartridges for his foreign-made rod and two dollars and sixty cents.

  Matthew Hurley's wallet contained $116, his stepsister's had $339, and there was some loose change in her jacket pocket.

  So the answer came easy. The impoverished terrorist had spotted a couple of well-heeled kids and went after them. Circumstances seemed to be all in his favor. His prey had headed through heavy snow toward an all-but-deserted subway station, where two small sputs from his rod would lead to a ten-second search of their clothes, and snap! he'd be in business again. Out the exit doors and good-bye.

  Only I was the high overhand beanball pitch in the game. Like they used to say in the Army, "Tough shit, slobbo."

  The pair of bored night-beat reporters who were there took everything down in a laconic manner. One looked up from his pad and said, "How did you get mixed up in this, Mike?"

  We were in the reception area off the bullpen near Pat's private office.

  "Just lucky, I guess."

  "Bullshit," Richie said. The old reporter flipped his pad shut and grinned at me. "You know how many times you've been in a shootout? Aren't you a little long in the tooth for this, Mike?"

  "John Wayne stayed in the saddle till he needed a toupee and a girdle. Me, I got my own hair and a belly harder than a lap dancer's heart. Next question."

  But Richie kept the needle in the same groove. "Nine shoot-outs that I can count since I came on this job. And you'd been at it a while."

  "So I'm not a kid anymore."

  "But you're still a good shooter."

  "I practice."

  "Then how come you didn't knock the guy off this time?"

  "We hadn't been properly introduced."

  Old Richie just shook his head and grinned again. "I hear you're finally getting married."

  "Where'd that come from? Since when is my marital status newsworthy?"

  Richie made a wry face. "You're pretty damn famous, old man. News of you and that long-stemmed beauty of yours finally getting hitched goes around the barn in a hurry. How does that dame stay so hot at her age, anyway? She got a portrait aging in the attic or something?"