The Consummata
Authors: Mickey Spillane,Max Allan Collins
“Authentic narrative drive and almost hypnotic conviction...set Spillane apart from all his imitators.”
—The New York Times
“No one can twist you through a maze with as much intensity and suspense as Max Allan Collins.”
—Clive Cussler
“A superb writer. Spillane is one of this century’s bestselling authors.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Collins never misses a beat...All the stand-up pleasures of dime-store pulp with a beguiling level of complexity.”
—Booklist
“If you are a Spillane fan you will enjoy this one more than anything done before. It is fast-moving, easy reading, and has the greatest shocker of an ending.”
—Albuquerque Tribune
“Max Allan Collins [is] like no other writer.”
—Andrew Vachss
“Spillane’s books...redefined the detective story.”
—Wallace Stroby
“Collins has a gift for creating low-life believable characters [in] a sharply focused action story that keeps the reader guessing till the slam-bang ending. A consummate thriller from one of the new masters of the genre.”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution
“Spillane...presents nothing save visual facts; but he selects only those facts, only those eloquent details, which convey the visual reality of the scene and create a mood of desolate loneliness.”
—Ayn Rand
“There’s a kind of power about Mickey Spillane that no other writer can imitate.”
—Miami Herald
“Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st century Mickey Spillane.”
—This Week
“Need we say more than—the Mick is back.”
—Hammond Times
I sat forward. “What can you tell me about Halaquez?”
The madam was frowning. “That he was a patron here. That he’s a ruthless killer with sadistic tastes that bleed over into his sexual kinks. His needs extend well beyond what we provide here at Mandor.”
“It’s a way to find him. You must know other houses or girls working solo, doing the S & M thing.”
Bunny’s eyes were tight. “I think you will find Mr. Halaquez is banned from all such establishments. But I will give you a list, if you think that may help.”
“It’s a start.”
“The only other thing...but it’s a long shot.”
“Hell. Guys get rich playing long shots. Go.”
Again she chose her words carefully. “There is a rumor...and for now it’s
just
a rumor...that the Consummata is setting up shop in Miami.”
I blinked. “Who or what is the ‘Consummata’?”
“A very famous
dominatrix
.”
“From Miami?”
“From nowhere. From everywhere. Her clients, they say, are among the most rich and powerful men. She is a rumor. A wisp of smoke. A legend. If Jaimie Halaquez hears that the Consummata has graced Miami with her presence, he won’t be able to resist...”
SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:
DEAD STREET
by Mickey Spillane
THE FIRST QUARRY
by Max Allan Collins
THE LAST QUARRY
by Max Allan Collins
QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE
by Max Allan Collins
QUARRY’S EX
by Max Allan Collins
TWO FOR THE MONEY
by Max Allan Collins
DEADLY BELOVED
by Max Allan Collins
FIFTY-TO-ONE
by Charles Ardai
KILLING CASTRO
by Lawrence Block
THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER
by Roger Zelazny
THE CUTIE
by Donald E. Westlake
HOUSE DICK
by E. Howard Hunt
CASINO MOON
by Peter Blauner
FAKE I.D.
by Jason Starr
PASSPORT TO PERIL
by Robert B. Parker
STOP THIS MAN!
by Peter Rabe
LOSERS LIVE LONGER
by Russell Atwood
HONEY IN HIS MOUTH
by Lester Dent
THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES
by Jonny Porkpie
THE VALLEY OF FEAR
by A.C. Doyle
MEMORY
by Donald E. Westlake
NOBODY’S ANGEL
by Jack Clark
MURDER IS MY BUSINESS
by Brett Halliday
GETTING OFF
by Lawrence Block
by
Mickey Spillane
and
Max Allan Collins
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-103)
First Hard Case Crime edition: October 2011
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 0UP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Copyright © 2011 by Mickey Spillane Publishing LLC.
Cover painting copyright © 2011 by Robert McGinnis.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-288-8
E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-598-8
Design direction by Max Phillips
Typeset by Swordsmith Productions
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Printed in the United States of America
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
For Lynn Myers—
one of Mickey’s
favorite customers
CO-AUTHOR’S NOTE
In 1967, with some fanfare, Mickey Spillane’s
The Delta Factor
—introducing Morgan the Raider as a new series character—enjoyed considerable critical and commercial success. After a disappointing experience producing a
Factor
film, however, the frustrated Spillane set aside the already-announced second Morgan novel,
The Consummata
. Twenty years ago, he entrusted the incomplete manuscript to me, saying, “Maybe someday we can do something with this.”
Thanks to Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime, that day is here.
The story is set in the late ’60s, when Mickey began it.
They were closing in.
There were two up ahead, another pair behind me, and when I reached the corner the trap would snap shut...and only open again inside a maximum security prison where every contrivance devised by experts knowledgeable in the science of incarceration would be utilized to keep me there the rest of my life.
At least I had given them a run for the taxpayers’ money. Still, it was a damn shame this melodrama had to wind up on a side street in Miami with the federal boys having all the advantage, and me with the job I had to do so far from over.
In the reflection of an angled window, I saw a black sedan round the corner behind me and cruise at a walking pace. Modern technology was raising hell with being a fugitive—each two-man team carried an attaché case packed with a communications rig. That kept the pairs fore and aft in touch with the rolling forces as well as other teams that would be blocking off any remaining escape avenues.
It was my own damn fault, but part of the odds I had to face. When you come out into the open, knowing your photo is in every post office, representing a forty-million dollar haul every hood would like to hijack—and that any stool pigeon would like to cash in for big-league brownie points—well, you are
really
bucking the odds.
I had one thing going for me, anyway—this was a capture operation, not a hit. They’d have orders to go all out bringing me back alive, even risking taking on fire themselves. Your life carries a high premium when they think you’re the only guy who knows where a forty-mil payday got buried.
Just the same, they had minimized any chance of defeat. Federal suits hit the streets with local fuzz playing backup—a power play from the second they’d made me.
When exactly they got me in their sights, I didn’t know—sometime during the last four days—but now all I could do was lead them down a blind alley as far away as possible from those who had covered for me.
My trackers kept their suitcoats unbuttoned to make for easy access under government threads designed to disguise the artillery beneath their arms. But they weren’t as smart as they thought they were. Suits in stifling weather like this? And dark colors, not even going pastel for the season and the locale. Picking out these feds in a Florida crowd was like spotting a turd in a punch bowl.
But all their man- and firepower was unnecessary because I wasn’t even packing a rod. They sure were going all out to get their forty million bucks back.
Forty million I never had in the first place.
Overhead, the summer sun had started to snuggle down into its pocket in the west, leaving the heat of day shimmering off the buildings of a neighborhood where white guys in suits didn’t belong in the first place. Little cream-in-the-coffee Cuban kids ran around like mice, shrieking
and yelling in two languages, bare feet slapping the hot pavement.
The little ones were lucky. One way or another, they had made it off Castro’s island with their families and they had freedom now. They were even free to run on the damn sidewalks.
Another half-block and I wouldn’t be free at all.
Behind me, the pair closed the gap and the car had picked up the pace. With their blank pale faces and black sunglasses, they were like robots on a programmed course of action. And they were timing it very nicely. There was a surety about their movements that reflected absolute confidence in their maneuver.
Until I had walked them into Little Havana, they probably figured I hadn’t smelled them out, and that when they took me, the surprise would be complete. Only now they had to know that
I
knew, and that was not a good thing.
In fact, it put me in a worse place. But when they took me down—and they
would
take me down, all right—I’d at least have the fun of sitting in an interrogation room chair and letting them know how fast I’d got on to them.
“Glad to help you boys out,” I’d say. “Maybe you can be more on the ball next time. Might want to skip the Brooks Brothers in tropical climes.”
And I would have the small pleasure of making them squirm, while they would have the big pleasure of slamming my ass in solitary confinement.
If I had wanted to throw Penny and Lee to the wolves, I could’ve broken loose; but you don’t do that to friends. I had
to put distance between myself and those who’d risked everything to shelter me, and play it out with the odds against me, and if I lost, I lost.