The Big Bang
Page 22
This was standard procedure, but what wasn't standard procedure was the assembly off to one side within the brick shed of about a dozen officers in the same caps with badges, only otherwise in denim, the backs of their jackets emblazoned U.S. CUSTOMS SEARCHERS. The denim, I supposed, was for the rough, dirty work of actually having to search ships, including holds and engine rooms. But right now these guys, roughneck-looking for feds, were just milling in smoke-'em-if-you-got-'em mode.
I was milling myself, on the fringes, having moved in close to that shed and the offloading ship, after watching from behind the picket fence where people meeting passengers gathered. Despite all the T-men of various stripes—with something big obviously in the wind, beside the usual dock smells—security was nothing special, as far as getting onto the dock itself was concerned.
That was when I saw him—looking as innocuous as a ceramics mold, Mr. Elmain, the plump little guy whose gray hair had a monk's spot of baldness, wearing an off-white jumpsuit whose back said VILLAGE CERAMICS SHOPPE. Three other guys were with him, in similar jumpsuits, and they didn't look so innocuous—they might have been hoods. Or they might have been teamsters. A rose by any other thorn.
"Mr. Hammer?"
I turned and saw Agent Radley, slender, flint-eyed, and typically impeccable in yet another gray suit, with his dark blue tie flapping like a flag in the breeze. Dawson wasn't with him—probably covering another pier.
"Agent Radley. Kind of a chilly one."
He nodded, skipping the small talk. "What are you doing here?"
"Thought I might find you. Captain Chambers said you fellas were checking every ship in from Marseilles this week. Kind of tedious work."
"We're used to it. How can I help you?"
From where I stood, I could see a Customs officer walking Mr. Elmain toward the open-walled brick shed, glancing at the bill of lading, and affixing it to a clipboard.
Radley was frowning at me. "Mr. Hammer? Why are you here?"
I cleared my throat. "I wanted you to know I got a package from Dr. Harrin."
His eyes and nostrils flared. "What kind of package, Mr. Hammer?"
Now the Customs officer was prying open the lid of a wooden crate while Mr. Elmain looked on with serene innocence. The officer stared in at the carefully stacked and excelsior-packed ceramic molds, each of which was two facing pieces strapped or rubber-banded together, varying in size and shape from as big as a medium pizza to as small as a transistor radio. The officer slipped the rubber band off one about the size of a football, only square, and I was pretty sure that mold was of a standing Santa with a bag of goodies over his shoulder.
Christmas underwrites the rest of our year, Shirley Vought had said.
"Mr. Hammer—what kind of package?"
"Oh, the doc sent me a framed saying—maybe you're aware, he had a bunch of those on his office walls, over at Dorchester Medical College?"
"Actually, no. Why? Is it significant?"
"I don't know. You tell me. It says, 'At the darkest moment comes the light.'"
He shrugged, shook his head. "No. That has no special significance, as far as I can tell."
The Customs officer was having Elmain sign some papers on the clipboard.
Radley sighed, and he looked ten years older than when I'd met him, just days ago.
"I can't tell you how frustrating this case has been, Mr. Hammer. I really hoped that perhaps Dr. Harrin had shared something with you that could have made a difference here. This could be the biggest quantity of heroin ever to hit the streets of this city."
I was watching Elmain as he supervised his three burly assistants while they loaded eight wooden crates about the size of squat coffins, into the back of the Village Ceramics Shoppe van. I wondered if this was the vehicle my pal Russell Frazer used to make his deliveries.
Radley was saying in extreme frustration, "And if this is, as our intelligence indicates, pure, uncut stuff, in the hundreds of pounds? Well, it will hit with incredible impact, the biggest bang we've ever heard or seen. We'll have seen nothing of this magnitude before—it will fund and fuel the Syndicate's expansion into worldwide narcotics trafficking."
If the friends and families of the thousands who died are so consumed by rage for those who sold their loved ones this poisoned poison, they will rise up as one, and they will take down the Mafia.
"Mr. Hammer, do you have any conception of the death, the despair, the destruction that all of this venom would bring upon our streets?"
Elmain was at the wheel as the van rolled away from the pier.
"I can imagine," I said.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins collaborated on numerous projects, including twelve anthologies, three films, and the Mike Danger comic book series.
Spillane (1918—2006) was the best-selling American mystery writer of the twentieth century. He introduced Mike Hammer in I, the Jury (1947), which sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries that soon followed. The controversial P.I. has been the subject of a radio show, a comic strip, and two television series; numerous gritty movies have been made from Spillane novels, notably director Robert Aldrich's seminal film noir, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and The Girl Hunters (1963), with Spillane himself playing Hammer.
Collins has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations, winning twice. His graphic novel Road to Perdition became the Academy Award-winning film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. An independent filmmaker in the Midwest, he has had half a dozen feature screenplays produced. Other credits include the New York Times bestsellers Saving Private Ryan and American Gangster.
Both Spillane and Collins are recipients of the Eye, the Private Eye Writers life achievement award.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Front
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
Chapter Fourteen
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