A Long Time Dead: A Mike Hammer Casebook

For Michaela Hamilton

the other Mike

Contents

Introduction: The Long and Short of It

The Big Switch

Fallout

A Long Time Dead

Grave Matter

So Long, Chief

A Dangerous Cat

It’s in the Book

Skin

About the Authors

INTRODUCTION:

The Long and the Short of It

That this is the first Mike Hammer short story collection—and possibly the last—may surprise some casual readers. The more knowledgeable mystery fans among you will be aware that Mickey Spillane did not write many short stories about his famous private eye—arguably, not any.

The only Hammer short stories published in Mickey’s lifetime were The Night I Died and The Duke Alexander. The first appeared in the anthology Private Eyes (Signet, 1998), co-edited by Mickey and myself, and was my uncredited adaptation of an unproduced radio script from the 1950s.

The second was essentially a comical screen treatment written for Mickey Rooney (a fairly unlikely Mike Hammer!), and a modern, tongue-in-cheek retelling of one of the taller Mickey’s favorite novels, The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. Mickey was a big fan of such swashbucklers, citing The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas as his favorite—not surprisingly, since the tough ending of a lovely femme fatale’s execution prefigures I, the Jury by a century or so.

Both stories are collected in Byline: Mickey Spillane (Crippen & Landru, 2004), co-edited by my friend Lynn Myers and me, with Mickey’s blessing. Also in that collection—which primarily gathers non-fiction Spillane material—are two faux Hammer short stories: in-house condensations by Playboy of his last two Hammer novels, The Killing Man (1989) and Black Alley (1997).

The absence of Mike Hammer short stories in Spillane’s body of work may seem puzzling, particularly in view not only of the character’s popularity but the writer’s enthusiasm for shorter-form fiction. Mickey told me on several occasions that he preferred writing novelettes to novels, considering 20,000 words the ideal length for his kind of story. He grew up an enthusiast of short stories in Black Mask and other detective/crime pulps, and was a big fan of Carroll John Daly’s short fiction about proto-Hammer Race Williams. Of Dashiell Hammett’s detectives, Spillane preferred the Continental Op to Sam Spade and Nick Charles, having read the Op stories in Black Mask and elsewhere. Not surprisingly, the rough, tough Red Harvest (which had been serialized in Black Mask) was Spillane’s favorite among Hammett’s novels.

It’s well-known that Spillane was a comic book scripter prior to becoming the Twentieth Century’s bestselling American mystery writer. Not so well-known is that Spillane alternated scripting comics with writing filler short stories that were a necessity for comic books to meet certain postal regulations. The earliest known prose examples of Spillane’s work are the pre–WWII one-page short shorts that he did for Timely, which of course became Marvel. (Among the famous characters Mickey scripted there were Captain America and Sub-Mariner.)

In the long wait between Hammer novels—Kiss Me, Deadly (1952) and The Girl Hunters (1962)—Spillane bided his time, writing short stories for Black Mask’s successor, Manhunt, and novelettes for men’s adventure magazines, such as Cavalier, Male, and Saga. In the mid-’60s, when he began writing novels again, Spillane continued doing occasional novelettes for the men’s adventure market. Works by such a hugely bestselling author (a term he disliked, preferring to be called a writer) for such relatively low-end venues may seem unlikely, but these periodicals were helmed by Mickey’s pre-war comic-book editors and publishers. Loyalty ran deep with Mickey.

My friendship with Mickey lasted over several decades, growing from my adolescent fan letters to a joint Bouchercon appearance (in Milwaukee in 1981), and eventually to collaborations on mystery anthologies, comic books, and several films (Mickey was also my son Nathan’s godfather). Getting to know a hero is a dangerous thing, but Mickey was never a disappointment to me. Though he had toughness in him, he was a gentle, generous, even sweet man—as Stacy Keach has said, A pussycat.

Shortly before his passing in 2006, Mickey called me and said he was concerned that he would not be able to finish the Mike Hammer novel he was working on, The Goliath Bone. He asked if I would finish it for him, if that became necessary. I of course said that I would, and was honored to be asked. A few days later, Mickey told his wife Jane to round up everything from his three offices around their South Carolina home, and give it all to Max—he’ll know what to do.

That of course was an even greater honor. Mickey had predicted a treasure hunt, and Jane and my wife Barb and I gathered manuscript after manuscript from those offices. The amount of unpublished material in Mickey’s files was and is staggering. After we’d gathered everything, Jane, Barb and I sat around the big dining room table at the Spillane home with tall stacks of pages in front of us, a literary feast. We would go through our individual piles and occasionally someone would cry out, "Here’s a Hammer!" Anything Mickey wrote about Hammer was the gold of this treasure hunt.

We found six Hammer novels in progress, dating back to 1947 and up to a few years before Mickey’s death, and a number of shorter but significant manuscripts from which Hammer novels could be developed. In addition, there were three film scripts—one of which is now the western novel, The Legend of Caleb York (2015, Kensington)—and two non-Hammer novels, Dead Street (2007, Hard Case Crime) and The Consummata (2011, Hard Case Crime).

Why did Mickey leave so many unpublished, unfinished manuscripts behind? There’s no one answer to that. For one thing, Mickey was an enthusiastic writer who would put something aside if he got another, potentially better idea. He was working on King of the Weeds (which I finished for 2014 publication) when the Twin Towers came down in 2001. Almost immediately he set King of the Weeds aside and turned to the NYC terrorist plot of The Goliath Bone.

Many of the Hammer manuscripts appear to have been set aside because of Mickey’s concern that his church, the conservative Jehovah’s Witnesses, would object to their content. In that regard, some of the manuscripts end right after a steamy sex scene. The Big Bang (completed by me for 2010 publication) appears to have been set aside when he missed a deadline and substituted an early, unpublished Hammer novel (The Twisted Thing, 1966 but written around 1947) . . . and he never returned to The Big Bang, though he often spoke of its shocking ending as a particular favorite.

In addition, Mickey was famous for defining inspiration as the urgent need for money. This tongue-in-cheek quip had some truth in it—during the eighteen-year period he was pulling down big bucks appearing in self-spoofing Miller Lite commercials, he wrote very little. But when Hurricane Hugo destroyed his home in 1989, he quickly wrote The Killing Man, the first Mike Hammer novel in almost twenty years.

In addition to the manuscripts that were well under way, we treasure hunters found a number of shorter Hammer manuscripts. These, from the very start, struck me as possible Hammer short stories. Mickey had a real way of setting a story up clearly in just a chapter or even a few pages. Knowing his work as I do, I felt confident I could take these stories in either the same direction he would have or one that he’d have approved.

This book collects the short stories I’ve developed from these shorter unfinished Hammer manuscripts. They have been published for the most part by Andrew Gulli in the Strand Magazine, starting in 2008—thank you, Andrew! The publisher of this book, Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Bookshop, published my favorite of these stories, "It’s in the Book," in their series of individually published bibliomystery stories. Dutton, where Mike Hammer began with I, the Jury, published the novelette Skin as an ebook (this collection marks the story’s first print publication).

Several of these stories have been honored. In 2014, So Long Chief was Edgar-nominated and won both the PWA Shamus and the IAMTW Scribe. The Big Switch was selected for the Best Crime and Mystery Stories of 2009 anthology, and A Long Time Dead was nominated for the CWA Dagger, a Thriller Award, and the Shamus, and was selected for Otto Penzler’s anthology, Best American Mystery Stories of 2011.

With one exception, I have arranged these stories in chronological order. My approach in completing these short stories—and the novels—is to try to determine when Mickey began them and stay true to that. Hammer is a character who grows and shifts as the years pass, and the same is true of his creator. In addition to style and character aspects, there is always internal evidence—if Mike and Velda dine at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant, it’s pre-1976 (the restaurant defunct by that time), especially if Hammer is drinking Pabst not Miller Lite, since that’s the year those famous commercials began.

The first three stories here—The Big Switch, Fallout, and A Long Time Dead—take place in the 1960s. So Long, Chief and Dangerous Cat are 1970s stories. It’s in the Book is a 1980s-era piece, and Skin is a tale set in the late 1990s. These obviously span much of the length of Mike Hammer’s career.

Grave Matter takes place in the early 1950s, filling that in further; but I did not want to lead with that story as it’s the only one here I wrote largely by myself.

In 1994, Mickey Spillane and I created a science-fiction variation on his Mike Danger for comic books. Mickey developed the character just before World War Two, and attempted to market it after the war, without success. In 1947, he decided to change Danger to Hammer and I, the Jury was the result.

Meanwhile, back in the future (the ’90s), the comic book company (Big Entertainment) asked Mickey and me to develop a prose short story, which they never got around to using. Mickey had approved this story and gave me notes, but the writing was mine. In 2010, when Charlaine Harris invited me to do a horror-tinged mystery story for the MWA anthology, Crimes by Moonlight, Grave Matter came to mind. I changed Danger back to Hammer, and it was published under the joint Spillane/Collins byline.

So I present that particularly pulpy yarn as a change of pace, between the ’60s and ’70s tales, and as a glimpse at the first prose Hammer story I ever undertook.

Because these are stories from material Mickey did not complete, they occasionally foreshadow novels where the writer followed up on the same basic idea. Both Fallout and Dangerous Cat prefigure the Hammer novel, Murder Never Knocks (2016), in the setup of multiple attacks on the private eye’s life. The two stories also, of course, resemble each other in that fashion, though they and the novel are distinctly different. A Long Time Dead similarly prefigures The Killing Man and yet is a story wholly apart.

I still plan to do a number of non-Hammer short stories, from materials in Mickey’s files, and there’s a possibility some of the non-Hammer fragments may lend themselves to more Mike. But this volume represents every Hammer short story developed from the shorter unfinished Spillane manuscripts that feature his famous character.

My thanks to MysteriousPress.com and Otto Penzler, who has been a key player in keeping the Spillane flame burning, starting with publishing the first three posthumous Hammer novels as well as the short story, It’s in the Book, and the collection you’re about to read.

Max Allan Collins

December 2015

The Big Switch

They were going to kill Dopey Dilldocks at midnight the day after tomorrow.

He had shot and wiped out a local narcotics pusher because the guy had passed Dopey a packet of heroin that had been stepped on so many times, it wouldn’t take the pain out of a pinprick. The pusher deserved it. Society said Dopey Dilldocks deserved it, too. The jury agreed and the judge laid on the death sentence. All the usual delays had been exhausted, and the law-and-order governor sure as hell wouldn’t reprieve a lowlife druggie like Dopey, so the little schmoe’s time to fly out of this earthly coop was now.

Nobody was ever going to notice his passing. He was just another jailhouse number—five feet seven inches tall with seven digits stamped on his shirt. On the records his name was Donald Dilbert, but along the path laid out by snorting lines of the happy white stuff, it had gotten shortened and twisted into Dopey Dilldocks.

A week ago his lawyer, a court-assigned one, had written me to say that Mister Dilbert had requested that I be a witness to his execution. And it seemed Dopey also wondered if I might stop in, ASAP, and have a final chat with him before the big switch got thrown.

In the inner office of my P.I. agency in downtown Manhattan, I handed the letter to Velda, my secretary and right-hand man, if a doll with all that raven hair and a mountain road’s worth of curves could be so described. I was sitting there playing with the envelope absently while she read its contents.When she was done, she frowned and passed the sheet back to me. Donald Dilbert … You mean that funny little guy who—

The same, I said. The one they called Mr. Nobody, and worse.

She frowned in mild confusion. Mike—he was only a messenger boy. He didn’t even work for anybody important, did he?

Probably the biggest was Billy Whistler, that photographer over on Sixth Avenue. Hell, I got Dopey that job because the little guy didn’t mind running errands at night.

You know what he did over there?

Sure. Took proofs of the late-night photo shoots over to the magazine office.

Velda gave me an inquisitive glance.

I shook my head. No dirty Gertie stuff—Whistler deals with advertising agencies handling big-ticket household items—freezers, stoves, air conditioners, that sort of thing. Not Paparazzi crap.

Big agencies—so little Dopey was getting large pay?

Hardly. You said it yourself. He’s been around for decades and started a messenger boy and that’s how he wound up.

She arched an eyebrow. Not really, Mike.

Huh?

He wound up a killer. He’ll wind up sitting down at midnight.

Yeah, I nodded. And not getting up.

She was frowning again. Messenger boy isn’t exactly big bucks, Mike. How could he afford a narcotics habit?

They say if you’re hooked, I said, you’ll find a way.

Maybe by dealing yourself?

Naw. Dopey doesn’t have the brains for it.

What kind of pusher would give a guy like that credit?

Nobody I know, I admitted. Something stinks about this.

Coming off in waves. You going to the execution? You thinking of paying him a visit first? Her voice had a strange tone to it.

My eyes drifted up from the envelope I was fidgeting with and met hers. We both stared and neither of us blinked. I started to say something and stopped. I reached out and took the letter from her fingertips and it read it again.

Very simple legalese. The lawyer was simply passing along a request. It was only a job to him. The state would reimburse him for his professional time, which couldn’t have been very much.

Before I could say anything, Velda told me, You haven’t done a freebie in a long time.

Kitten …

You could make it a tax deduction, Mike.

Going to an execution?

Giving this thing a quick look. Just a couple of days to you, but to Dopey Dilldocks, it’s the rest of his life.

I shook my head. I don’t need a deduction. What’s gotten into you? The poor slob has been through a trial, he was declared guilty of first-degree murder and now he’s paying the penalty.

Very quietly Velda asked, "How do you know it really was first-degree?"

I shook my head again, this time in exasperation. There was a squib in the paper.

No, she said insistently. Dopey didn’t even rate a ‘squib.’ There was an article on narcotics and what strata of society uses them. It gave a range from high-priced movie stars to little nothings like Donald Dilbert, who’d just been found guilty in his murder trial.

Wasn’t a big article, I said lamely.

No. And Dopey was just a footnote. Still … you recognized his name, didn’t you?

I nodded.

And what did you think?

That Dopey had finally come up in the world.

Baloney. You were thinking, how the hell could Dopey Dilldocks plan and execute a first-degree murder—weren’t you?

She had me and she knew it. For the few times I had used the schlub to run messages, I had gotten to know him just enough to recognize his limitations. He knew the red light that meant stop was on the top and he wouldn’t cross the street until the bottom one turned green, and that type of mentality didn’t lay out a first-degree kill.

So? she asked.

The semblance of a grin was starting to twitch at her lips and she took a deep breath. The way she was built, deep breathing should have had a law against it.

I said, Just tell me something, doll. You barely know Dopey. You haven’t got the first idea of what this is all about. How come you’re on his side suddenly?

Because I’d give him a couple of bucks to buy me a sandwich for lunch and he’d always bring the change back in the bag. He never stole a cent from me.

What a recommendation, I said sourly.

The best, she came back at me. Besides, we need to get out of this office for a while. It’s a beautiful Spring day, the bills are paid, there’s money in the bank, nothing’s on the platter at the moment and—

And we might pass one of those ‘Medical Examination, Wedding Ceremony, One Day’ places, right?

Could be, she said. Anyway, we could use a day trip.

A day trip where?

Someplace quiet upstate.

A little hotel on the river, you mean?

That’s right.

Sing Sing.

A looker like Velda could have caused a riot in places that didn’t consist of concrete and cells, and anyway the court-appointed lawyer could only arrange for one visitor. So she sat in the car in a lot outside the massive stone facility, while I sat in a gray-brick room in one of several cubicles with phones and wire-reinforced glass.

Dopey was a forty-something character who might have been sixty. He had a gray pallor that had been his before he entered the big house, and his runny nose and rheumy