Mickey Spillane - The Big Bang

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.

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.