***SPOILERS*** It's just when Mike Hammer, Stacey Keach, meets his old friend businessman Cozy Higgens, Rodney Saulsberry, at JFK Airport who's come back from Paris with a suitcase of 3 million worth in diamonds he's gunned down before he leaves the terminal. with Cozy's zombie-like killer, who seems high on uppers, in all the confusion himself later gunned down in return to keep him from talking. Before Hammer can regain his composer or take out and reload his .45 he finds out that the diamonds that the late Cozy Higgins was carrying are found out to be fakes! This leads Mike Hammer as well as the NYPD in trying to find if it was Cozy who switched the hot ice or it was done by someone else during his flight to NYC.
It's also discovered that Cozyy was deep in debt to millioned bookie Anthony Malan, Aharon Ipale, whom the diamonds it's believed were to be delivered to. As it turned out the diamond were somehow switched during customs with the real one substituted with fakes! And also the person whom the diamonds were insured by Peter Brett, Jeff Pomerantz, seems not at all worried about his loss. In that he can now double his money, in if he in fact was responsible for switching the diamonds, where he can have it both ways: The diamonds and insurance money.
****SPOILERS**** Mike Hammer here makes one of his rare bad judgment calls and almost ends up paying for it with his life. The diamonds were switched all right and Cozy was murdered in that if he found out that they were switched he'd know who switched them. It's when Hammer comes to his senses and zeros in on Cozy's killer that all hell brakes looses with the person behind the big switch after murdering his or her accomplice takes off on a helicopter no less leaving Hammer high and dry. That's until he gets hold of the super handgun, the most powerful handgun in the world, that belonged to what the bodyguard of fleeing diamond switcher had on him and blasts away causing the helicopter and everyone in it to crash in flames.
It's also discovered that Cozyy was deep in debt to millioned bookie Anthony Malan, Aharon Ipale, whom the diamonds it's believed were to be delivered to. As it turned out the diamond were somehow switched during customs with the real one substituted with fakes! And also the person whom the diamonds were insured by Peter Brett, Jeff Pomerantz, seems not at all worried about his loss. In that he can now double his money, in if he in fact was responsible for switching the diamonds, where he can have it both ways: The diamonds and insurance money.
****SPOILERS**** Mike Hammer here makes one of his rare bad judgment calls and almost ends up paying for it with his life. The diamonds were switched all right and Cozy was murdered in that if he found out that they were switched he'd know who switched them. It's when Hammer comes to his senses and zeros in on Cozy's killer that all hell brakes looses with the person behind the big switch after murdering his or her accomplice takes off on a helicopter no less leaving Hammer high and dry. That's until he gets hold of the super handgun, the most powerful handgun in the world, that belonged to what the bodyguard of fleeing diamond switcher had on him and blasts away causing the helicopter and everyone in it to crash in flames.