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CONTENTS

IDENTITY UNKNOWN by JONATHAN CRAIG

THE GIRL BEHIND THE HEDGE by MICKEY SPILLANE

CARRERA'S WOMAN by ED McBAIN writing as RICHARD MARSTEN

BUTCHER by RICHARD S. PRATHER

LOOK DEATH IN THE EYE by LAWRENCE BLOCK

ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON by GIL BREWER

FRAME by FRANK KANE

DOUBLE by BRUNO FISCHER

AS I LIE DEAD by FLETCHER FLORA

NOIR MASTER SERIES

* * * *

MASTER OF NOIR: VOLUME 1

Published by

Wonder Publishing Group Books,

a division of Wonder Audiobooks LLC

Northville, MI 48167

Compilation (C)2010 Wonder Publishing Group,

a division of Wonder Audiobooks LLC

ISBN: 978-1-61013-049-3

FIRST PUBLICATIONS

IDENTITY UNKNOWN by JONATHAN CRAIG was first published in Manhunt, August 1954.

THE GIRL BEHIND THE HEDGE by MICKEY SPILLANE was first published in Manhunt, October 1953.

CARRERA'S WOMAN by ED McBAIN writing as RICHARD MARSTEN was first published in Manhunt, Febuary 1953.

BUTCHER by RICHARD S. PRATHER was first published in Manhunt, June 1954.

LOOK DEATH IN THE EYE by LAWRENCE BLOCK was first published in Saturn Web Detective Story Magazine, April 1959.

ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON by GIL BREWER was first published in Manhunt, January 1957.

FRAME by FRANK KANE was first published in Manhunt, December 1954.

DOUBLE by BRUNO FISCHER was first published in Manhunt, June 1954.

AS I LIE DEAD by FLETCHER FLORA was first published in Manhunt, Febuary 1953.

All rights reserved

IDENTITY UNKNOWN by JONATHAN CRAIG

The cheap furnished room in the brownstone where the girl had been murdered was so cramped that it was hard for Walt and the assistant M.E. and me to keep out of each other's way. The photographer and the other techs had finished half an hour ago and gone back to the station house. I'd put a patrolman at either end of the third-floor corridor to keep the crowd back. From the noise that came up both the front and back stairs, it seemed that half of New York's west side must be down there.

The building super was talking to the two ambulance attendants in the hallway just outside the door. He was beginning to rub on my nerves. The M.E. had stripped the girl, of course, and the super was trying his damnedest to get a clear gander at her.

"Relax, Jacobson,” I told him. “You've seen young girls before. Wait for us down the hall."

He gave me a hard look, but he moved away.

The M.E. pulled the sheet up over the girl's body. “That's it,” he said.

I motioned for the ambulance attendants to take her away. When the body was gone, and I'd shut the door, the M.E. sat down on the side of the bed and lit a cigar.

"She had a lot of living left to her,” he said. “She was about eighteen, I'd say. No older.” He shook his head. “Damn shame."

"You find anything besides those lumps on her jaw?” I asked.

"Not a thing, Dave. I won't know for sure till I post her, of course, but right now I'd say the cause of death was a fractured skull."

"Those bumps didn't look so bad though,” Walt said dubiously.

"That doesn't mean much,” the M.E. said. “When a person's hit hard enough on the chin, the force of the blow is transmitted to the point where the jaw hinges on the skull. That causes a fracture, and a lot of times it's fatal. The brain's a semi-solid, Walt, and it doesn't take much to damage it, or even tear it away from the skull altogether."

I nodded. “The skin wasn't broken, so the murder weapon was probably somebody's fist. And besides, if the killer had used a club or something, say, he'd have hit her almost anyplace else but on the jaw."

The M.E. took a deep drag on his cigar. “How'd you boys make out?"

"No good,” I said.

"No identification at all?"

"Not a bit."

"That's odd."

"Yeah,” Walt said. “The only clothes in the room were the ones she had on. Nothing in the closet, not even a suitcase. And nothing in the dresser. No letters. No anything. She must have used this room for something else besides living in it. We did find a purse, but there wasn't any identification in it. If she had any identification at all, then it must have been in a wallet, and somebody took it along with him."

"You're sure she wasn't attacked, Doc?” I asked.

"I can't be positive until I get her downtown, Dave. But I'd say no. There's no evidence of that at all. Her lipstick was a little smeared, you noticed, so she'd probably been kissing somebody. But I don't think there was anything more than that."

"I've got a hunch this is going to be one of the tough ones,” Walt said. “It just smells tough, if you know what I mean."

The M.E. got up and walked to the door. “Well, the sooner I get started on the autopsy, the sooner I'll know whether I can give you any more help."

Walt went over to the open window and sat down on the sill. “You got any ideas, Dave?” he asked.

"Just the shoes,” I said.

"The shoes? What about them?"

"The rest of her clothes are going to be hard to trace,” I said. “They're nice enough, but they're just like a million other garments. They aren't expensive, and all they've got in the way of labels is the manufacturer's name. They could have been bought in any of a thousand places, all over the country. But the shoes are something else again. They're Jules Courtney shoes, and that makes them just about the most expensive shoes she could buy."

"So?"

"They can be traced. The Jules Courtney outfit stamps all their shoes, not only with their trade name but with the name and address of the retailer to whom they're shipped. This girl's shoes were bought at a store in Atlanta, Georgia, Walt."

"Fine. Nothing like an out-of-town corpse on your hands."

I moved toward the door. “Let's take another crack at that super."

We left a patrolman in the murder room and took the super down to his living quarters in the basement.

He was middle-aged, surly, and about half drunk. “I told you guys I don't know nothing about the girl,” he said. “She come in looking for a room last Friday. She paid me a week in advance, and that's all I see of her."

"You told us before that you didn't know her name,” I said. “How come? You had to sign a receipt for the rent, didn't you, Jacobson?"

"Receipt? Hell no, I don't sign no receipts. It's too much trouble. If people don't like the way I run this house, then they can go live someplace else."

"She didn't even tell you her name?"

"I told you once. No. She asked me for a receipt, and I said no dice—so what'd I care what her name was?"

The wall behind Jacobson's bed was covered with photographs torn from magazines and newspapers. Nothing but girls. Some in bathing suits and some nude. Walt walked over to look at them.

"Kind of like the ladies, eh, Jacobson?” Walt said.

"All right, so I like girls. Who doesn't, for God's sake?"

"We've talked with the other people on the third floor,” I said. “Nobody knew the girl at all. Nobody had seen her. They'd never even heard her in there. She have any company, so far as you know?"

He shook his head. “As long as the tenants don't bust up the furniture, I don't ask no questions. I don't spy on them. I just plain don't give a damn what they do. Maybe she had company, maybe she didn't; I don't know."

"You mean to say you had a girl living in your house almost a week, but you never saw her but once, and never heard any of the other tenants say anything about her?"

"That's right. How many times do I have to tell you?"

"How about when you took towels and linen up there?"

"Towels and linen ain't due till tomorrow."

"Where were you last night?"

He moistened his lips, staring at me. “You got nothing on me, copper."

"Answer the question,” I said.

"You going to take me down?"

"I'll damn well take you down if you don't open up."

"I ain't saying till I have to."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The people I was with—well, I don't want to cause no trouble."

"How would you cause them trouble?"

"If their husbands knew I'd been with them, there'd be trouble."

"These are two married women, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Two of them, Jacobson?"

"Yeah."

"Come on,” I said. “We're going down to the station house."

"Now, wait a minute. You can't—"

"I'm tired of fooling with you. On your feet."

He chewed at his lower lip a moment, glaring at me balefully. “All right. What the hell. I was in the first floor rear with Mrs. Cressy and Mrs. Austin. Their husbands work at night, up in Queens someplace. I was there all night."

The M.E. had told us the girl had been murdered about midnight, give or take an hour either way.

"Listen,” Jacobson said, “if Cressy and Austin find out I was up there, they'll—"

"We're just interested in where you were,” I told him. “If your story holds up, that's as far as we take it."

"I never left the room,” he said. “There's a bathroom goes with their place, so I didn't even—"

"Those two couples live together?"

"Yeah. They share the same apartment."

"We'll check,” I said. “And meantime, Jacobson, don't run off anywhere."

"Don't worry,” he said. “I got nothing to hide—except I sure as hell hope you won't tell—"

"It's a little late to fret about that,” I told him. “Come on, Walt."

We checked with Mrs. Cressy and Mrs. Austin. They said Jacobson had been in their apartment until a little after five o'clock that morning. Both of them were sure he hadn't left the apartment, even for a moment. That canceled out the super, at least for the time being. Neither Mr. Cressy nor Mr. Austin was home, and their wives told us the men often stopped at bars after they got off work, and that sometimes they didn't get home until around noon. Both were very anxious that we not tell their husbands they'd entertained Jacobson.

We talked to as many of the other tenants as we could find, and then I left Walt to round up the others while I went over to check with the Missing Persons Bureau and send a wire to the Chief of Police at Atlanta. There wasn't much I could do with the wire. I concentrated on giving the best physical description I could of the girl, mentioned the Jules Courtney shoes, their size, color, style, and the name of the store where they had been bought.

There had been nineteen women reported missing in New York during the last twenty-four hours, I found. I skimmed through the sheaf of flimsies and discarded all but two of them as soon as I glanced at the data on their sex and color. Either of the two remaining reports could have fitted the murdered girl. It happens that way sometimes, though not often. I went back to the heading of the one on top and read it through again more slowly.

There wasn't much in it to help me decide.

POLICE DEPARTMENT

City of New York

REPORT OF MISSING PERSON

Surname: Olsen; First Name: Thelma; Initials: G.

Nativity: Norway; Sex: F; Age: 17; Color: W

Address; Last Seen At:

418 W. 74th, Mnhtn. Leaving home address

Date and Time Seen; Probably Destination:

5/3/54 Unknown

Cause of Absence; Date and Time Reported

Unknown 5/4/54 6:20 A.M.

I went clown the PHYSICAL (NOTE PECULIARITIES) column. Everything checked. There were no peculiarities. But the CLOTHING column told me that Thelma Olsen had been wearing a blue cotton dress with small red figures, high heeled shoes, no coat or jacket. The murdered girl's dress had been blue, but it had been silk jersey, not cotton, and there had been no figures. In itself, that didn't mean too much. Descriptions of women's clothing, especially if they're made by a man, can be pretty far off. We'd had plenty of cases where men couldn't remember whether women were wearing dresses, or skirts and sweaters. Women, on the other hand, are seldom wrong about clothing, and they can usually give an extremely accurate description of it, even after a lapse of months, or even years.

I read down to the space for REMARKS:

Girl is on probation on possession of narcotics charge (marijuana), no other arrests or convictions. Looks much older than true age. Once, when fifteen, passed as eighteen and toured country with dance orchestra. Father has long record of D&D arrests, four short-term sentences.

The report had been filed by telephone with the MPB by the girl's father.

When I read the second report, I discovered I'd missed something. The girl fitted the description, all right, but her weight was given as 145 pounds. The murdered girl had been, at the most, about 115. There was the possibility of error, but it looked as if Thelma Olsen was my best bet.

Before I left the Missing Persons Bureau, I called the assistant M.E.

"Nothing much, Dave,” he said. “She hadn't been attacked. That's for sure. And she did die of a fractured skull, as I thought. We found a dental poultice in her mouth, tucked down between a lower left molar and her cheek."

"Look like she'd been to a dentist recently?"

"No. There's an abrasion on the gum, and she probably was troubled with it from time to time."

"Doesn't seem to be much point in checking dentists, then."

"I'm afraid not. She's never had any restorations or extractions. This dental poultice acts as a counterirritant. They're sometimes pretty effective."

"You know the brand?"

"I'd guess offhand it's a Feldham poultice."

"Yeah. I've used them myself. Anything else?"

"We found some blue fibers in the finger nail scrapings. There's enough of them to match up under a comparison microscope with any blue material you happen to come up with."

"How about her dress?” I asked. “That was blue."

"Not the same kind of fiber, Dave. We've already checked. Not even the same shade.” He paused. “That's about all, so far, I guess."

"Thanks,” I said. “I'll check with you a little later."

I phoned the lieutenant commanding my squad and asked him to detail some men to talk to people in the neighborhood of the brownstone where the girl had been murdered. I made sure all of them would have copies of her photograph, which had already been developed and printed in the lab, and told the lieutenant about the dental poultice. He said he'd detail a detective to check all the drugstores in the neighborhood.

I hung up, and then dialed the Bureau of Criminal Identification to see if I could expedite the check on her prints. They'd just finished. The girl had never been printed, at least in New York. A copy of her print card would go to the F.B.I. in Washington, D.C., of course, but we couldn't count on a reply today, and possibly not before tomorrow morning.

I was just debating whether it might not be a good idea to knock off for lunch, when the answer came in on my wire to the Chief of Police at Atlanta.

POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEW YORK CITY, EIGHTEENTH PRECINCT, DETECTIVE SQUAD, HOMICIDE, ATTENTION DETECTIVE-SERGEANT DAVE EMORY—RE YOUR QUERY THIS DATE STOP ONLY MISSING PERSON ANSWERING DESCRIPTION IS LOUISE ANN JOHNSON STOP ESCAPED POLICE CUSTODY MONDAY LAST WHILE BEING TRANSFERRED FROM TRAIN TO POLICE VAN STOP LOUISE HAS TWO INCH SCAR RIGHT FOREARM AND PARTIAL DENTURE WITH RIGHT UPPER INCISOR CANINE BICUSPID AND MOLAR STOP ADVISE IF THIS TRUE OF SUBJECT GIRL STOP ONLY ONE OUTLET JULES COURTNEY SHOES HERE STOP THEY NOW CHECKING RECORDS AND SALESPEOPLE TO DETERMINE IDENTITY PURCHASER OF SHOES DESCRIBED YOUR WIRE STOP WILL ADVISE SOONEST STOP

Louise Ann Johnson's partial dental plate ruled her out, and I wired the Chief at Atlanta to that effect.

I had a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then I went back to the precinct, checked out a car, and drove over to 418 West 74th Street to talk to Thelma Olsen's father.

I asked him first for a photograph of Thelma, and he brought out a muddy snapshot of a girl in shorts and a halter, holding a tennis racket. The photo had apparently been taken around noon. The eyes were deeply shadowed by the eyebrows and the shadow of the nose extended down beneath the lower lip. You could tell that she had good features, and was probably very pretty, but that was about it. She might or might not be the girl whose skull someone had fractured.

"How long ago was this taken?” I asked.

"About two years ago."

"You haven't got anything more recent?"

"No."

"Look, Mr. Olsen, your daughter was a professional singer. You sure there aren't some better pictures of her around here? Publicity shots, or maybe a composite?"

"No. She had an apartment of her own, until she got arrested. They made her move back here, but she didn't bring any of her stuff with her. Nothing but clothes, that is."

"You know where this apartment is?"

"She'd never tell me. She said she was going back there, as soon as her probation was over.” He paused. “She didn't want me showing up around there, I guess."

"She have an agent?"

"Yeah. Let's see ... “ He thought a moment. “Guy named Tyner, down in the Brill Building."

I went down to Tyner's office, took one fast look at the nine by twelve glossy he showed me, and knew I was no further along than I'd been when I first picked up Thelma Olsen's missing-person report. I thanked Tyner and went back downstairs to the cruiser. Later on I found that Thelma had been picked up at a reefer pad over a curio shop in Greenwich Village. It seems one of her personal enemies, another girl, had seen Thelma go there, knew she was on probation, and saw an opportunity for personal vengeance by tipping off Thelma's probation officer.

I drove back to the brownstone. Walt Nelson, my partner, hadn't found out a thing. He'd talked to the rest of the tenants, but no one had even seen the girl, let alone known anything about her. Or so they said. Walt had had to call a few people in from their jobs, and the hard time they'd given him had left him a little bitter.

"Funny thing,” he said, “but the very ones that yell the loudest when you ask them for help are the same jokers that yell the loudest for help when their own toes get stepped on. I never saw it fail."

We left a patrolman staked out in the murder room, and started back to the precinct. Neither of us said much on the way. I knew Walt was probably thinking the same thing I was—that we'd shot an entire day on the case, without turning up anything whatever. The first hours after a murder are the most important ones for a detective, and a lot of them had already gone by. You can usually tell, in those first few hours, just how the case will go. And this one was going nowhere. Our score was exactly zero, and it was beginning to look as if it might stay that way for a long time.

And then, when we walked into the squad room, the picture changed completely. We hadn't been there more than a minute when I got a phone call from the morgue. It was from Johnny Morton, who had been on his job a long time.

"Listen, Dave,” he said. “I'm calling from a pay phone in the hall. There's a kid in my office, see, and he wants to look at that girl you guys are working on. He hasn't got a permit, and he's acting funnier than hell. He isn't drunk, but he kind of acts that way; I mean, like maybe he isn't sure just what's going on. He won't say who he is, or why he wants to see the body. I stalled him by saying I had to leave the office to check with somebody else on letting him in without a permit. But he isn't going to stay put long, Dave. You'd better get a move on."

We got a move on. The boy was still in Johnny's office. He was a nice looking kid, tall, and very thin. We took him out to the cruiser to talk to him. I could see what Johnny had meant about his acting funny. The kid was so scared he couldn't think straight.

I climbed into the back seat with him while Walt got into the front, and then I said, “All right, son. What's your name?"

"I knew this would happen,” he said. His voice was shaky, as if it wouldn't take much to get him bawling.

"What's your name?” I asked again.

"Ted,” he said. “Ted Wimmer."

"Why'd you want to look at that girl, Ted?"

"I—I read about it in the newspapers, and I—I just had to see her again, that's all."

"Did you kill her, Ted?"

"No! God, no, mister!"

"What was your interest in her?"

"She—well, we were going together. I—"

"What's her name?"

"Grace Knight.” He seemed to be pulling himself together. “But she didn't like Grace. She made me call her Judy."

"How long did you know her?"

He frowned thoughtfully; then, “From the first part of February. I met her right after she got to New York."

"Where was she from? Atlanta?"

"Atlanta?” he repeated. “No. She was from Nebraska. From Omaha."

"You sure about that?"

He nodded. “That's about all she ever talked about. She liked it here in New York, but she kept talking about Omaha. She was pretty homesick, I guess."

"She ever mention being in Atlanta?"

"No. This was the first time she ever left her home town."

I studied his face a moment. “When was the last time you saw her, Ted?"

"Yesterday afternoon. We went to a movie."

"You didn't see her last night?"

"No."

"Where were you around midnight last night?"

He hesitated. “I—I was just walking around the streets."

I didn't say anything.

"I don't know where I walked, exactly. I just felt like walking. I guess I must have walked nine or ten miles altogether."

"What time did you get home?"

"About one."

"Just walking around, eh, Ted?"

"I know how it looks, officer, but—"

"We'll take that up a little later,” I said. “Now here's the way it is, Ted. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear from us. Understand? You tell the truth, and tell all of it, and you'll be okay."

He nodded, swallowing hard a couple of times.

"All right,” I said. “Now tell us this. Who do you think might have killed her?"

"That bastard she started running around with,” he said.

"What's his name?"

"I don't know. Honest to God, I don't. I just know she started fooling around with somebody else. She wouldn't tell me his name or anything else about him. I guess maybe she was afraid I'd beat him up.” He reflected a moment. “And I would have, too."

"She must have dropped something about him, Ted. Think again."

"Well ... she did say once that he really knew his way around. She said he was always getting things for her at half price; things like that."

"Like what, for instance?"

"Oh, you know ... clothes and stuff."

"You ever in her room, Ted?"

"Her room? Not a chance. That hotel she lived in won't let men past the front door."

"Hotel?"

"Yeah. That girl's hotel over on the east side."

"She wasn't killed at any hotel, Ted."

"I know that. The paper said where she was killed. The way I figure it, this guy and Judy rented that room just so they could use it once in a while.” His voice was starting to break again.

He could be right, I knew. And if the rest of his story was true, then he probably was right. It would explain why we hadn't found anything in the furnished room but the girl herself. If she and this other guy were using it for a trysting place, she wouldn't be likely to keep anything there.

We talked to Ted for another twenty minutes, but we didn't get anything more. When he started getting rattled and panicky again, we took him down to the precinct. We left him in a material witness room, with a police matron to keep him company, and went down to the corner for a cup of coffee.

We sat there, drinking coffee and mulling things over, and suddenly I got a flash. I pushed the coffee cup back and stood up.

"What goes?” Walt asked.

"We do,” I said. “Out to Long Island."

"What's out there?"

"The Jules Courtney shoe factory. I've got an idea that'll bug me to death till I check it."

"All right, so let me in on it. I work for the same people you do, you know."

I told him about it on the way out to the factory. I'd been thinking about the dead girl's expensive shoes off and on ever since we'd come on the case, and talking with Ted Wimmer had triggered something in my mind.

"It was those shoes that threw us,” I told Walt. “They were stamped with the name of a store in Atlanta, Georgia, and so we naturally assumed they'd been bought there. That's where we were wrong."

"Yeah? How so?"

"Because those shoes could have been bought right at the factory. It should have hit us before, damn it."

Give."

"All right. When a shoe company with a reputation like Jules Courtney's makes up an order for a retailer, they stamp his name and address on their product, but before those shoes are shipped, they're checked and double-checked for the tiniest flaw. If a knife slipped a fraction of an inch somewhere, or there's a stitch out of place, they put those shoes aside."

"So?"

"They won't ship shoes with flaws, but they're still perfectly good shoes, so they mark the price down to the actual cost of manufacturer and put them up for sale to their employees."

Walt grinned and pressed down on the gas pedal a little harder.

We got to the Jules Courtney factory about ten minutes before closing time. We talked to the office manager, and then to a records clerk. The clerk was very efficient. Five minutes after we'd given her the size, style and other data in connection with the dead girl's shoes, she was back with a signed receipt. They had been sold to one Ernest Coleman, an employee on the fourth floor.

It was past closing time when we got to the right floor and the right department. Everyone had left except one of the floor foremen.

"It wouldn't have done you any good if you had come earlier,” he told us. “Ernie Coleman didn't come to work today."

We went back to the office, got Coleman's home address from the office manager, and left the building.

Coleman lived in a railroad apartment just off Third Avenue. He was about twenty-five, about average height, and very muscular. He was wearing a stained T-shirt and a pair of overall pants. When he stood back to let us in, I caught the smell of whiskey. But he didn't look drunk; he just looked sick. He didn't seem surprised to see us. I got the impression he was even relieved.

He told us his mother and father were out for a while, and then he sat down on the old-fashioned davenport and stared at us. Walt and I sat down in chairs facing him. For a long time none of us said anything.

Then I said, “There'll be finger prints, Walt."

"Yes,” Walt said. “There'll be finger prints. And of course Ernie here wasn't home last night, Dave."

"That's right,” I said. “And then there's the blue fibers under her nails, Walt."

Walt got up and moved through the apartment, trying all the closet doors. Ernest Coleman and I sat there and stared at each other. After a while Walt came back with a blue sleeveless sweater. He sat down again and ran his finger tips across the material. “Yes,” he said. “There were blue fibers under her nails. The boys in the lab can put them under the comparison microscope with some of these fibers, and know right away, eh, Dave?"

A full minute went by, and then another.

Finally Ernest Coleman took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and gently rubbed the knuckles of his right fist with the palm of his left hand.

"She fell for me,” he said softly. “She was as dumb as they come. I—I thought she'd get round heels for me ... but she didn't.” He was silent a moment. “I got her to rent that room for us, and when she did I thought I had a good setup. But she ... she was crazy ... “

Walt started to say something, but I caught his eye and shook my head. He frowned and compressed his lips.

"She—she just wasn't right somehow,” Ernest Coleman said. “She'd let me kiss her, and that's all. I know she was burning up half the time, but she'd never ... she'd never ... “

I nodded. “Exactly what happened, Ernie?"

The sound of my voice seemed to startle him. He moistened his lips. “Last night it got so bad I couldn't stand it any more. I tried to, but she wouldn't—and all at once I just saw red and I hit her. She started to scream, and all I could think of was that she was going to get me in trouble. I don't know—I didn't mean to kill her. I just wanted to stop her from screaming. I just meant to knock her out."

I glanced at Walt. He shrugged and shook his head.

"And then, Ernie ... ?” I asked. “When I found out she was dead, I lost my head. I thought I'd have to get away. I took all the stuff that might identify her and beat it. I thought the longer it took the cops to find out who she was, the more time I'd have to get away. But after a while I knew I'd have a better chance if I didn't run away. I—I didn't think you could tie me to her."

I got up and walked to the telephone to call the precinct and tell them to let the other boy go.

When I'd finished my call, Ernie Coleman said, “Can we wait just a few minutes, till my folks get here? I—I want to tell them what happened.” He looked down at his right hand, with the faintly bruised knuckles. “It'll be easier for them, if they hear it from me."

I nodded. “All right, Ernie.” I went back to my chair and sat down to wait.

[Back to Table of Contents]

THE GIRL BEHIND THE HEDGE by MICKEY SPILLANE

The stocky man handed his coat and hat to the attendant and went through the foyer to the main lounge of the club. He stood in the doorway for a scant second, but in that time his eyes had seen all that was to be seen; the chess game beside the windows, the foursome at cards and the lone man at the rear of the room sipping a drink.

He crossed between the tables, nodding briefly to the card players, and went directly to the back of the room. The other man looked up from his drink with a smile. “Afternoon, Inspector. Sit down. Drink?"

"Hello, Dunc. Same as you're drinking."

Almost languidly, the fellow made a motion with his hand. The waiter nodded and left. The inspector settled himself in his chair with a sigh. He was a big man, heavy without being given to fat. Only his high shoes proclaimed him for what he was. When he looked at Chester Duncan he grimaced inwardly, envying him his poise and manner, yet not willing to trade him for anything.

Here, he thought smugly, is a man who should have everything yet has nothing. True, he has money and position, but the finest of all things, a family life, was denied him. And with a brood of five in all stages of growth at home, the inspector felt that he had achieved his purpose in life.

The drink came and the inspector took his, sipping it gratefully. When he put it down he said, “I came to thank you for that, er ... tip. You know, that was the first time I've ever played the market."

"Glad to do it,” Duncan said. His hands played with the glass, rolling it around in his palms. He eyebrows shot up suddenly, as though he was amused at something. “I suppose you heard all the ugly rumors."

A flush reddened the inspector's face. “In an offhand way, yes. Some of them were downright ugly.” He sipped his drink again and tapped a cigarette on the side table. “You know,” he said. “If Walter Harrison's death hadn't been so definitely a suicide, you might be standing an investigation right now."

Duncan smiled slowly. “Come now, Inspector. The market didn't budge until after his death, you know."

"True enough. But rumor has it that you engineered it in some manner.” He paused long enough to study Duncan's face. “Tell me, did you?"

"Why should I incriminate myself?"

"It's over and done with. Harrison leaped to his death from the window of a hotel room. The door was locked and there was no possible way anyone could have gotten in that room to give him a push. No, we're quite satisfied that it was suicide, and everybody that ever came in contact with Harrison agrees that he did the world a favor when he died. However, there's still some speculation about you having a hand in things."

"Tell me, Inspector, do you really think I had the courage or the brains to oppose a man like Harrison, and force him to kill himself?"

The inspector frowned, then nodded. “As a matter of fact, yes. You did profit by his death."

"So did you,” Duncan laughed.

"Ummmm."

"Though it's nothing to be ashamed about,” Duncan added. “When Harrison died the financial world naturally expected that the stocks he financed were no good and tried to unload. It so happened that I was one of the few who knew they were as good as gold and bought while I could. And, of course, I passed the word on to my friends. Somebody had might as well profit by the death of a ... a rat."

Through the haze of the smoke Inspector Early saw his face tighten around the mouth. He scowled again, leaning forward in his chair. “Duncan, we've been friends quite a while. I'm just cop enough to be curious and I'm thinking that our late Walter Harrison was cursing you just before he died."

Duncan twirled his glass around. “I've no doubt of it,” he said. His eyes met the inspector's. “Would you really like to hear about it?"

"Not if it means your confessing to murder. If that has to happen I'd much rather you spoke directly to the DA."

"Oh, it's nothing like that at all. No, not a bit, Inspector. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't do a thing that would impair either my honor or reputation. You see, Walter Harrison went to his death through his own greediness."

The inspector settled back in his chair. The waiter came with drinks to replace the empties and the two men toasted each other silently.

"Some of this you probably know already, Inspector,” Duncan said....

"Nevertheless, I'll start at the beginning and tell you everything that happened. Walter Harrison and I met in law school. We were both young and not too studious. We had one thing in common and only one. Both of us were the products of wealthy parents who tried their best to spoil their children. Since we were the only ones who could afford certain—er—pleasures, we naturally gravitated to each other, though when I think back, even at that time, there was little true friendship involved.

It so happened that I had a flair for my studies whereas Walter didn't give a damn. At examination time, I had to carry him. It seemed like a big joke at the time, but actually I was doing all the work while he was having his fling around town. Nor was I the only one he imposed upon in such a way. Many students, impressed with having his friendship, gladly took over his papers. Walter could charm the devil himself if he had to.

And quite often he had to. Many's the time he's talked his way out of spending a week end in jail for some minor offense—and I've even seen him twist the dean around his little finger, so to speak. Oh, but I remained his loyal friend. I shared everything I had with him, including my women, and even thought it amusing when I went out on a date and met him, only to have him take my girl home.

In the last year of school the crash came. It meant little to me because my father had seen it coming and got out with his fortune increased. Walter's father tried to stick it out and went under. He was one of the ones who killed himself that day.

Walter was quite stricken, of course. He was in a blue funk and got stinking drunk. We had quite a talk and he was for quitting school at once, but I talked him into accepting the money from me and graduating. Come to think of it, he never did pay me back that money. However, it really doesn't matter.

After we left school I went into business with my father and took over the firm when he died. It was that same month that Walter showed up. He stopped in for a visit, and wound up with a position, though at no time did he deceive me as to the real intent of his visit. He got what he came after and in a way it was a good thing for me. Walter was a shrewd businessman.

His rise in the financial world was slightly less than meteoric. He was much too astute to remain in anyone's employ for long, and with the Street talking about Harrison, the Boy Wonder of Wall Street, in every other breath, it was inevitable that he open up his own office. In a sense, we became competitors after that, but always friends.

Pardon me, Inspector, let's say that I was his friend, he never was mine. His ruthlessness was appalling at times, but even then he managed to charm his victims into accepting their lot with a smile. I for one know that he managed the market to make himself a cool million on a deal that left me gasping. More than once he almost cut the bottom out of my business, yet he was always in with a grin and a big hello the next day as if it had been only a tennis match he had won.

If you've followed his rise then you're familiar with the social side of his life. Walter cut quite a swath for himself. Twice, he was almost killed by irate husbands, and if he had been, no jury on earth would have convicted his murderer. There was the time a young girl killed herself rather than let her parents know that she had been having an affair with Walter and had been trapped. He was very generous about it. He offered her money to travel, her choice of doctors and anything she wanted ... except his name for her child. No, he wasn't ready to give his name away then. That came a few weeks later.

I was engaged to be married at the time. Adrianne was a girl I had loved from the moment I saw her and there aren't words enough to tell how happy I was when she said she'd marry me. We spent most of our waking hours poring over plans for the future. We even selected a site for our house out on the Island and began construction. We were timing the wedding to coincide with the completion of the house and if ever I was a man living in a dream world, it was then. My happiness was complete, as was Adrianne's, or so I thought. Fortune seemed to favor me with more than one smile at the time. For some reason my own career took a sudden spurt and whatever I touched turned to gold, and in no time the Street had taken to following me rather than Walter Harrison. Without realizing it, I turned several deals that had him on his knees, though I doubt if many ever realized it. Walter would never give up the amazing front he affected.

At this point Duncan paused to study his glass, his eyes narrowing. Inspector Early remained motionless, waiting for him to go on.

"Walter came to see me,” Duncan said. “It was a day I shall never forget. I had a dinner engagement with Adrianne and invited him along. Now I know that what he did was done out of sheer spite, nothing else. At first I believed that it was my fault, or hers, never giving Walter a thought....

Forgive me if I pass over the details lightly, Inspector. They aren't very pleasant to recall. I had to sit there and watch Adrianne captivated by this charming rat to the point where I was merely a decoration in the chair opposite her. I had to see him join us day after day, night after night, then hear the rumors that they were seeing each other without me, then discover for myself that she was in love with him.

Yes, it was quite an experience. I had the idea of killing them both, then killing myself. When I saw that that could never solve the problem I gave it up.

Adrianne came to me one night. She sat and told me how much she hated to hurt me, but she had fallen in love with Walter Harrison and wanted to marry him. What else was there to do? Naturally, I acted the part of a good loser and called off the engagement. They didn't wait long. A week later they were married and I was the laughing stock of the Street.

Perhaps time might have cured everything if things hadn't turned out the way they did. It wasn't very long afterwards that I learned of a break in their marriage. Word came that Adrianne had changed and I knew for a fact that Walter was far from being true to her.

You see, now I realized the truth. Walter never loved her. He never loved anybody but himself. He married Adrianne because he wanted to hurt me more than anything else in the world. He hated me because I had something he lacked ... happiness. It was something he searched after desperately himself and always found just out of reach.

In December of that year Adrianne took sick. She wasted away for a month and died. In the final moments she called for me, asking me to forgive her; this much I learned from a servant of hers. Walter, by the way, was enjoying himself at a party when she died. He came home for the funeral and took off immediately for a sojourn in Florida with some attractive showgirl.

God, how I hated that man! I used to dream of killing him! Do you know, if ever my mind drifted from the work I was doing I always pictured myself standing over his corpse with a knife in my hand, laughing my head off.

Every so often I would get word of Walter's various escapades, and they seemed to follow a definite pattern. I made it my business to learn more about him and before long I realized that Walter was almost frenzied in his search to find a woman he could really love. Since he was a fabulously wealthy man he was always suspicious of a woman wanting him more than his wealth, and this very suspicion always was the thing that drove a woman away from him.

It may seem strange to you, but regardless of my attitude, I saw him quite regularly. And equally strange, he never realized that I hated him so. He realized, of course, that he was far from popular in any quarter, but he never suspected me of anything else save a stupid idea of friendship. But having learned my lesson the hard way, he never got the chance to impose upon me again, though he never really had need to.

It was a curious thing, the solution I saw to my problem. It had been there all the time, I was aware of it being there, yet using the circumstances never occurred to me until the day I was sitting on my veranda reading a memo from my office manager. The note stated that Walter had pulled another coup in the market and had the Street rocking on its heels. It was one of those times when any variation in Wall Street reflected the economy of the country, and what he did was undermine the entire economic structure of the United States. It was with the greatest effort that we got back to normal without toppling, but in doing so a lot of places had to close up. Walter Harrison, however, had doubled the wealth he could never hope to spend, anyway.

As I said, I was sitting there reading the note when I saw her behind the window in the house across the way. The sun was streaming in, reflecting the gold in her hair, making a picture of beauty so exquisite as to be unbelievable. A servant came and brought her a tray, and as she sat down to lunch I lost sight of her behind the hedges and the thought came to me of how simple it would all be.

I met Walter for lunch the next day. He was quite exuberant over his latest adventure, treating it like a joke.

I said, “Say, you've never been out to my place on the Island, have you?"

He laughed, and I noticed a little guilt in his eyes. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I would have dropped in if you hadn't built the place for Adrianne. After all ... “

"Don't be ridiculous, Walter. What's done is done. Look, until things get back to normal, how about staying with me a few days. You need a rest after your little deal."

"Fine, Duncan, fine! Anytime you say."

"All right, I'll pick you up tonight."

We had quite a ride out, stopping at a few places for drinks and hashing over the old days at school. At any other time I might have laughed, but all those reminiscences had taken on an unpleasant air. When we reached the house I had a few friends in to meet the fabulous Walter Harrison, left him accepting their plaudits and went to bed.

We had breakfast on the veranda. Walter ate with relish, breathing deeply of the sea air with animal-like pleasure. At exactly nine o'clock the sunlight flashed off the windows of the house behind mine as the servant threw them open to the morning breeze.

Then she was there. I waved and she waved back. Walter's head turned to look and I heard his breath catch in his throat. She was lovely, her hair a golden cascade that tumbled around her shoulders. Her blouse was a radiant white that enhanced the swell of her breasts, a gleaming contrast to the smooth tanned flesh of her shoulders.

Walter looked like a man in a dream. “Lord, she's lovely!” he said. “Who is she, Dunc?"

I sipped my coffee. “A neighbor,” I said lightly.

"Do you ... do you think I could get to meet her?"

"Perhaps. She's quite young and just a little bit shy and it would be better to have her see me with you a few times before introductions are in order."

He sounded hoarse. His face had taken on an avid, hungry look. “Anything you say, but I have to meet her.” He turned around with a grin. “By golly, I'll stay here until I do, too!"

We laughed over that and went back to our cigarettes, but every so often I caught him glancing back toward the hedge with that desperate expression creasing his face.

Being familiar with her schedule, I knew that we wouldn't see her again that day, but Walter knew nothing of this. He tried to keep away from the subject, yet it persisted in coming back. Finally he said, “Incidentally, just who is she?"

"Her name is Evelyn Vaughn. Comes from quite a well-to-do family."

"She here alone?"

"No, besides the servants she has a nurse and a doctor in attendance. She hasn't been quite well."

"Hell, she looks the picture of health."

"Oh, she is now,” I agreed. I walked over and turned on the television and we watched the fights. For the sixth time a call came in for Walter, but his reply was the same. He wasn't going back to New York. I felt the anticipation in his voice, knowing why he was staying, and had to concentrate on the screen to keep from smiling.

Evelyn was there the next day and the next. Walter had taken to waving when I did and when she waved back his face seemed to light up until it looked almost boyish. The sun had tanned him nicely and he pranced around like a colt, especially when she could see him. He pestered me with questions and received evasive answers. Somehow he got the idea that his importance warranted a visit from the house across the way. When I told him that to Evelyn neither wealth nor position meant a thing he looked at me sharply to see if I was telling the truth. To have become what he was he had to be a good reader of faces and he knew that it was the truth beyond the shadow of a doubt.

So I sat there day after day watching Walter Harrison fall helplessly in love with a woman he hadn't met yet. He fell in love with the way she waved until each movement of her hand seemed to be for him alone. He fell in love with the luxuriant beauty of her body, letting his eyes follow her as she walked to the water from the house, aching to be close to her. She would turn sometimes and see us watching, and wave.

At night he would stand by the window not hearing what I said because he was watching her windows, hoping for just one glimpse of her, and often I would hear him repeating her name slowly, letting it roll off his tongue like a precious thing.

It couldn't go on that way. I knew it and he knew it. She had just come up from the beach and the water glistened on her skin. She laughed at something the woman said who was with her and shook her head back so that her hair flowed down her back.

Walter shouted and waved and she laughed again, waving back. The wind brought her voice to him and Walter stood there, his breath hot in my face. “Look here, Duncan, I'm going over and meet her. I can't stand this waiting. Good Lord, what does a guy have to go through to meet a woman?"

"You've never had any trouble before, have you?"

"Never like this!” he said. “Usually they're dropping at my feet. I haven't changed, have I? There's nothing repulsive about me, is there?"

I wanted to tell the truth, but I laughed instead. “You're the same as ever. It wouldn't surprise me if she was dying to meet you, too. I can tell you this ... she's never been outside as much as since you've been here."

His eyes lit up boyishly. “Really, Dunc. Do you think so?"

"I think so. I can assure you of this, too. If she does seem to like you it's certainly for yourself alone."

As crudely as the barb was placed, it went home. Walter never so much as glanced at me. He was lost in thought for a long time, then: “I'm going over there now, Duncan. I'm crazy about that girl. By God, I'll marry her if it's the last thing I do."

"Don't spoil it, Walter. Tomorrow, I promise you. I'll go over with you."

His eagerness was pathetic. I don't think he slept a wink that night. Long before breakfast he was waiting for me on the veranda. We ate in silence, each minute an eternity for him. He turned repeatedly to look over the hedge and I caught a flash of worry when she didn't appear.

Tight little lines had appeared at the corner of his eyes and he said, “Where is she, Dunc? She should be there by now, shouldn't she?"

"I don't know,” I said. “It does seem strange. Just a moment.” I rang the bell on the table and my housekeeper came to the door. “Have you seen the Vaughns, Martha?” I asked her.

She nodded sagely. “Oh, yes, sir. They left very early this morning to go back to the city."

Walter turned to me. “Hell!"

"Well, she'll be back,” I assured him.

"Damn it, Dunc, that isn't the point!” He stood up and threw his napkin on the seat. “Can't you realize that I'm in love with the girl? I can't wait for her to get back!"

His face flushed with frustration. There was no anger, only the crazy hunger for the woman. I held back my smile. It happened. It happened the way I planned for it to happen. Walter Harrison had fallen so deeply in love, so truly in love that he couldn't control himself. I might have felt sorry for him at that moment if I hadn't asked him, “Walter, as I told you, I know very little about her. Supposing she is already married."

He answered my question with a nasty grimace. “Then she'll get a divorce if I have to break the guy in pieces. I'll break anything that stands in my way, Duncan. I'm going to have her if it's the last thing I do!"

He stalked off to his room. Later I heard the car roar down the road. I let myself laugh then.

I went back to New York and was there a week when my contacts told me of Walter's fruitless search. He used every means at his disposal, but he couldn't locate the girl. I gave him seven days, exactly seven days. You see, that seventh day was the anniversary of the date I introduced him to Adrianne. I'll never forget it. Wherever Walter is now, neither will he.

When I called him I was amazed at the change in his voice. He sounded weak and lost. We exchanged the usual formalities; then I said, “Walter, have you found Evelyn yet?"

He took a long time to answer. “No, she's disappeared completely."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that,” I said.

He didn't get it at first. It was almost too much to hope for. “You ... mean you know where she is?"

"Exactly."

"Where? Please, Dunc ... where is she?” In a split second he became a vital being again. He was bursting with life and energy, demanding that I tell him.

I laughed and told him to let me get a word in and I would. The silence was ominous then. “She's not very far from here, Walter, in a small hotel right off Fifth Avenue.” I gave him the address and had hardly finished when I heard his phone slam against the desk. He was in such a hurry he hadn't bothered to hang up....

Duncan stopped and drained his glass, then stared at it remorsefully. The inspector coughed lightly to attract his attention, his curiosity prompting him to speak. “He found her?” he asked eagerly.

"Oh yes, he found her. He burst right in over all protests, expecting to sweep her off her feet."

This time the inspector fidgeted nervously. “Well, go on."

Duncan motioned for the waiter and lifted a fresh glass in a toast. The Inspector did the same. Duncan smiled gently. “When she saw him she laughed and waved. Walter Harrison died an hour later ... from a window in the same hotel."

It was too much for the inspector. He leaned forward in his chair, his forehead knotted in a frown. “But what happened? Who was she? Damn it, Duncan ... “

Duncan took a deep breath, then gulped the drink down.

"Evelyn Vaughn was a hopeless imbecile,” he said.

"She had the beauty of a goddess and the mentality of a two-year-old. They kept her well tended and dressed so she wouldn't be an object of curiosity. But the only habit she ever learned was to wave bye-bye.... “

[Back to Table of Contents]

CARRERA'S WOMAN by ED McBAIN writing as RICHARD MARSTEN

We were just about even. The Mexican sky hung over our heads like a pale blue circus tent. We crouched behind the rocks, and we each held .45's in our fists. We were high in the Sierra Madres, and the rocks were jagged and sharp; high outcroppings untouched by erosive waters. Between us was a stretch of pebble-strewn flatland and a solid wall of hatred that seemed alive in the heat of the sun.

We were just about even, but not quite.

The guy behind the other .45 had ten thousand dollars that belonged to me. I had something that belonged to him, his woman.

She lay beside me now, flat on her belly. She was slim and browned from the sun, a colorful print skirt curving over the smooth roundness of her body. Her legs were long and sleek where the skirt ended. I held her wrist tightly, her arm twisted into a V behind her back. She had stopped struggling now, and she lay peacefully, her head twisted away from me, her hair looking like black, untamed weeds against the ground.

"Carrera!” I shouted.

"I hear you, senor," he answered. His voice was fat, fat the way he was. I thought of his paunch, and I thought of the ten G's in the money belt, pressed tight against his sweaty flesh. My money. I'd worked hard for that money. I'd sweated in the Tampico oil fields for more than three years, socking it away a little at a time, letting it pile up for the day I could kiss Mexico goodbye.

"Look, Carrera,” I said, “I'm giving you one last chance."

"Save your breath, senor," he called back.

"You'd better save yours, you bastard,” I shouted. “You'd better save it because pretty soon you're not going to have any."

"Perhaps,” he answered. I couldn't see him because his head was pulled down below the rocks. But I knew he was grinning, and I wanted to strangle him for it.

'I want that ten thousand,” I shouted.

He laughed aloud this time, and my fingers tightened involuntarily around the girl's wrist. “Ah, but that is where the difficulty lies,” he said. “I want it, too."

"Look, Carrera, I'm through playing around,” I told him. “If you're not out of there in five minutes, I'm going to put a hole in your sweetie's head.” I paused, wondering if he'd heard me. “You got that, Carrera? Five minutes."

He waited again before answering, and then his voice drifted across the flatland. “You had better shoot her now, senor. You are not getting this money."

The girl began laughing, a throaty laugh that started somewhere down in her chest and bubbled up onto her lips.

"Shut up!” I told her. I let her wrist go for a second and slapped her on the behind, hard, the palm of my hand smarting. I grabbed her wrist again, and bent her arm up behind her.

She was still laughing.

"What's so damn funny?” I asked her.

"You will never outwait Carrera,” she said. Her voice was as low and as deep as her laugh. “Carrera is a very patient man."

"I can be patient, too, sister,” I said. “I patiently saved that ten thousand bucks for three years, and no tin horn crook is going to step in and swipe it."

"You underestimate Carrera,” she said.

"No, baby, I've got Carrera pegged to a tee. He's a small-time punk. Back in the States, he'd be shaking pennies out of gum machines. He probably steals tortillas from blind old ladies down here."

"You underestimate him,” she repeated.

I shook my head. “No, baby, this is Carrera's big killing—or so he thinks. That ten thousand is his key to the big time. Only it belongs to me, and it's coming back to me."

She rolled over suddenly, pinning my arm under her back. She wore a peasant blouse with a swooping neckline, and a shadowed cleft was deep between her breasts. Her lips were a little too full, almost swollen looking. And her mouth was a little too wide for the narrow oval face. She looked up at me through heavily fringed eyes, smoldering brown, intense with the reflection of the Mexican sky—and with something else.

"If you were smart,” she said, “you would leave. You would pack up and go, my friend, and you wouldn't stop to look back."

"I'm not smart."

"I know. So you'll stay here, and Carrera will kill you. Or I will kill you. Either way, you will be dead, and your money will be gone, anyway.” She paused and a faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “It is better that you lose only your money."

I glanced at my watch. “Carrera has about two minutes, honey."

"And after that?"

"It's up to Carrera,” I said. As if to check, I shouted, “You like your girlfriends dead, Carrera?"

"Ten thousand dollars will buy a lot of girlfriends,” he called back.

I looked down at her. She seemed to be comfortable resting against my arm. I could feel the warm flesh of her back where it pressed against my hand.

"Did you hear your boyfriend?” I asked.

"I heard."

"He doesn't seem to give a damn whether I shoot you or not."

She shrugged, and her sudden motion did things to the front of her blouse. “It is not that,” she whispered. “He simply knows that you will not kill me."

"Don't be too surprised, baby."

She lifted one black brow against her forehead, held it bent there like the crooked wing of a raven in flight. The smile flitted across her face again, was gone almost before it started. “You will not kill me,” she said.

I didn't answer her. I kept staring at my watch until the five minutes were up. I was suddenly sweating all over. My shirt stuck to my back, and I could feel the perspiration trickling down my chest, oozing through the blond hairs that covered it. My brow was beaded with enormous drops of sweat that converged and slid down the side of my nose.

After a long while, she said, “See?"

That was all she said. I looked at her for a few seconds, and then I released her wrist, pulling my arm from under her. I held the .45 on her as I undid my belt. My dungarees were tight around my waist. I'd thrown them on the night I caught them both in my hotel room, Carrera and this wench. Carrera was fast for a fat man, but I'd grabbed his woman, and I'd kept her with me on the chase that led through the streets of Tampico, out past El Higo, Taniajas, Tancanhuitz, Chicontepac—Mexican towns as old as the Aztecs, towns with rutted cart roads that had raised hell with the tires of my ‘46 Olds. Carrera had driven an old Ford. He drove it recklessly, ditching it when we reached the mountains, stumbling forward on foot then, with the girl and me close behind him.

"Roll over,” I told her.

Her eyes opened in mock surprise, then narrowed lewdly.

"Why, senor!"

"Let's not get cute,” I said. I grabbed her shoulder and shoved, and she rolled over, her skirt lifting with the movement, lifting over a soft, browned thigh. She pulled it down quickly, and I grabbed her hands and crossed them behind her back. I wrapped the belt around them tightly, looped it through, and took another turn. She sat up when I was finished, and studied my face carefully.

"My feet, senor. Are you not afraid I will kick you to death?"

She was mocking me, and I was ready to answer when I realized her last statement had been a carefully calculated one. She was trying to shame me into leaving her feet unbound.

I pulled my shirt tails out of the band of my dungarees, and started to unbutton the shirt. I was going to tear it into strips and use these to tie her feet together. I thought of the sun overhead, and I realized how pleasant it would be with a blistering sunburn and that fat pig across the dirt alley with a .45 pointed my way. I buttoned my shirt again and let it hang outside my trousers. Then I sat down across her knees quickly, pinning her legs to the ground. A surprised look crossed her face, and her eyes grew saucer-wide as I took the hem of her skirt in my hands and began tearing.

She tried to kick, so I shoved her back with the heel of my hand, and she sprawled onto her back and lay still while I tore a wide band from the bottom of her skirt. It made the skirt a good deal shorter. Her knees were round and smooth, and her calves were muscular, like a dancer's calves, rippling with a supple, sinuous grace. She looked at me with unmasked hatred in her eyes. She was Carrera's woman, all right, clear to the marrow.

I tore the band of material into narrower strips and reached for her ankles. She kicked out viciously, aiming for my face as I bent over her. I threw one arm across her legs, looped the material under her ankles. I straddled her then, my back to her face, and finished knotting the cloth around her ankles. I did a good job. Not so tight as to stop circulation, but tight enough to prevent any running around. I got up then and lit a cigarette, tucking the heavy Colt into my waistband.

"Now what?” she asked. She was leaning back against the rocks, a loose strand of hair falling over one eye.

"What's your name?"

She didn't answer.

I shrugged. “Suit yourself,” I said.

"My name is Linda,” she said at length.

"Make yourself comfortable, Linda,” I told her. “We're going to be here for quite some time."

I meant that. I still hadn't figured out how I was going to get my money from Carrera, but I knew damn well I was staying here until I did get it. Crossing the open dirt patch would have been suicide. But at the same time, Carrera couldn't cross it either. Not unless he wanted a slug through his fat face. I thought of that, and I began to wish he would try to get across the clearing. Nothing would have pleased me more than to have his nose resting on the sight at the end of my gun muzzle.

Ten thousand bucks! Ten thousand, hard-earned American dollars. How had Carrera found out about it? Had I talked too much? Hell, it was general knowledge that I was putting away a nest egg to take back to the States. Carrera had probably been watching me for a long time, planning his larceny from a distance, waiting until I was ready to shove off for home.

"It's getting dark,” Linda said suddenly.

I lifted my eyes to the sky. The sun was dipping low over the horizon, splashing the sky with brilliant reds and oranges. The peaks of the mountains glowed brilliantly as the dying rays lingered in the crevices and hollows. A crescent moon hung palely against the deepening wash of night, sharing the sky with the sinking sun.

And suddenly it was black. There was no transition, no dusk, no violets or purples. The sun was simply swallowed up, and the stars devoured the sky with hungry white mouths. The moon grinned down like a bigger, lopsided mouth against the blackness, and a stiff breeze worked its way down from the caps of the mountains, spreading cold where there had once been intolerable heat.

Linda shivered, hunching her shoulders together, pressing her elbows against her sides, hugging herself against the cold.

"You'd better get some sleep,” I said.

"And you?"

"With that pig across the way?” I asked. “I'll stay awake, thanks."

She grinned. “Carrera will sleep. You can bet on that."

"I wish I could bet on that. I'd go right over and make sure he never woke up."

"My, my,” she mocked, “such a tough one."

"Hard as nails,” I said, a faint smile starting on my lips.

"You know, I don't even know your name."

"Jeff,” I told her. “Jeff MacCauley."

She rolled over, trying to make herself comfortable. It wasn't easy with her hands and feet bound. She settled for her left side, her arms behind her, her legs together.

"Well,” she said, "buenos noches, Jeff."

I didn't answer. I was watching the rocks across the clearing. Carrera may have planned on sleeping the night, but I wasn't counting on it.

She woke at about two A.M. She pushed herself to a sitting position and stared into the darkness.

"Jeff,” she whispered. There was the faintest trace of an accent in her voice, and she made my name sound like “Jaif."

I pulled the .45 from my waistband and walked over to her.

"What is it?"

"My hands. They're ... I can't feel anything. I think the blood has stopped ... “

I knelt down beside her and reached for her hands. The strap didn't seem too tight. “You'll be all right,” I said.

"But ... but they feel numb. It's like ... like there is nothing below my wrists, Jeff."

Her voice broke, and I wondered if she were telling the truth. Hell, I didn't want the poor kid to suffer. I held the .45 in my right hand and tugged at the strap with my left. I loosened it, and she pulled her hands free and began massaging the wrists.

She breathed deeply, and the moon sent silver beams dancing across her breasts. “Ahhh,” she said, “that's much better."

I kept the .45 pointed at where her navel should be. She looked at the open muzzle and sighed, as if she were being patient with a precocious little boy.

She leaned back on her arms then, tilting her head to the sky, her black hair streaming down her back.

"Oh, it's a beautiful night,” she said.

"Yeah."

"Just look at the moon, Jeff."

I glanced up at the moon, taking my eyes off her for a second. That was all the time she needed.

She sprang with the litheness of a mountain lion, pushing herself up with her bound feet, her fingernails raking down the length of my arm, clawing at my gun hand. I yanked the gun back and she dove at me again, the nails slashing across my face. She threw herself onto my chest, and her hands sought the wrist of my gun hand, tightening there, the nails digging deep into my flesh.

I rolled over, slapping the muzzle of the .45 against her shoulder. She curled up like a caterpillar for a second, nursing her shoulder, and then she exploded again, teeth flashing, nails bared.

I flipped the .45 into my left hand and brought my right back across my chest. I slapped out backhanded, catching her on the side of her face. She fell backwards and then lunged forward again. I slapped her twice more, and she went into the caterpillar routine again, curling up into a soft little ball, her head bent, her chest heaving.

She looked up at me suddenly, her eyes sparking. “You lousy bastard,” she mumbled.

"Sure,” I agreed.

"Hitting a woman!"

This struck me funny somehow, and I began laughing. I saw her eyes flare, and she bit her lip as I laughed louder. She pushed herself up from the ground, murder in her eyes. She hopped forward, and I backed away from her. She kept hopping, her feet close together, the material from her skirt keeping her in check. And then she toppled forward, and she would have kissed the ground if I hadn't caught her in my arms.

She kissed me instead.

Or I kissed her.

It was hard to tell which. She was falling, and I reached for her, and she was suddenly in my arms. I held the .45 in my right hand, and it felt like a cannon pointing out into the darkness. My left arm tightened around her waist and she lifted her head. There was a question in her eyes for a single instant, and then the question seemed to haze over. She closed her eves and lifted her mouth to mine.

There was sweetness in her kiss, and an undercurrent of danger, a pulsing emotion that knifed through me like an electric shock. She pressed against me, and her body was soft and womanly, and I forgot the marks of her nails on my arms and face, forgot that she could be as deadly as a grizzly. She was a kitten now, soft and caressing, and her breath was in my ears, and the movement of her body was quick and urgent. I lifted her, the .45 still in my hand, and carried her to the deep shadows of the rocks.

The stars blinked down in wonder, and the wind sang a high, contented song in the jagged peaks around us.

Sunlight spilled over the twisted ground like molten gold, pushing at the shadows, chasing the night.

She was still in my arms when I woke up. I stared down at her, not wanting to move, afraid to wake her.

And then her eyes popped open suddenly, and a sleepy smile tilted the corners of her mouth.

"Good morning, darling,” she said. Her voice was still lined with sleep, as fuzzy as a caterpillar.

"Hello."

She yawned, stretching her arms over her head in lazy contentment. She took a deep breath and then smiled archly, and I looked deep into her eyes, trying to read whatever emotion was hidden in their brown depths.

"Your boyfriend,” I started.

"Carrera?"

"Yeah."

"He's not my boyfriend."

Her face was serious, so serious that it startled me.

"No?"

"No."

"Well, anyway,” I said, “he's still got my ten thousand."

"I know."

"I want it back."

"I know."

"I want you to help me get it."

She was silent for a long while. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper. “Why?"

"Why? Holy Jesus, that's ten thousand bucks! You know how much work I did to get that dough ... “

"Why not forget it? Why not ... forget it?"

"Sister, you're crazy. You're crazier'n hell."

"Carrera will kill you. I know him. Would you rather be dead without your money ... or would you rather be alive without it? Alive and ... with me?"

I hesitated before answering. “Ten G's is a lot of money, baby."

"I'm a lot of woman,” she answered.

"Yeah."

"Well?"

I shook my head. “If you help me, I can have both. We can do a lot with that money."

She considered this for a moment and then asked, “What do you want me to do?"

"You'll help?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want to set a trap for Carrera."

"What kind of a trap?"

"Will you help?"

She moved closer to me and buried her head against my shoulder. Her voice tingled along my skin. “I'll do whatever you say."

We gave the sun time to get directly overhead, laying our plan as carefully as the foundation of a cathedral. The idea was to get Carrera out into the clearing. Once he was there, I'd either get the money or put a big hole in his fat face. He could take his choice.

Linda and I crouched behind the rocks, our heads close together. The sun bore down ferociously, baking the earth, spreading heat over the surface of the land. The sky was as blue as a sapphire, streaked with spidery white clouds that trailed their delicacy across the wide wash. It was the Mexico of the picture books, bright and clear, warm, alive—and it should have been pulsating with the throb of laughter and music, wine and song, fiesta.

Instead, a funeral was being planned.

Carrera's.

And Mexico, the willing mistress, arched her crooked backbone, thrust up a solid barrier of jagged rock behind which we plotted while the sun watched with a bland, disinterested face. There was a sheer wall behind Carrera, rising like a giant tombstone for some hundred feet, terminating there in a jumble of twisted branches and fallen rock. A few feet from the wall, jutting up like an old man's browned, crooked teeth, was the outcropping behind which Carrera squatted with his. .45—and with my ten G's.

Once Carrera left the protection of that natural fortress, he was in my pocket.

We got to work. My watch read 12:45, and the sun was hot, probably as hot as it would get all day. The sweat spread across the front of my shirt like a muddy ink blot, staining my armpits, rolling down my face in steady streams.

Linda screamed, just the way we'd planned it. The scream tore the heat waves into shreds and clung to the jagged rocks like a tattered piece of cloth.

"Shut up!” I shouted. “Shut your goddamn mouth."

"Jose!” she bellowed, her head turned to Carrera. There was no sound from across the clearing. I kept low behind the rocks, wondering if Carrera was listening, wondering if our little act was having any effect.

"I warned you,” I shouted. “One more word ... “ I cut myself short and yelled, “Hey, what the hell ... hey, cut it out! Let go that gun!"

"You lousy filthy scum,” Linda shrieked.

"Don't! Don't! For God's sake ... “

I pointed the .45 over my head and fired two quick shots, the thunder echoing among the rocks like the dying beat of a horse's hooves. I screamed as loud as I could, and then I dropped my voice into a trailing moan. I clamped my jaws shut then and allowed silence to cover the land.

It was quiet for a long time.

Linda and I crouched down behind the rocks, waiting, looking at each other, the sweat pouring from our bodies. There was still no sound from the other side of the flatland, and I began to doubt the effectiveness of our plan.

And then, softly, in a whisper that reached across the pebble-strewn clearing and climbed the rock barrier, Carrera called, “Linda?"

I put my finger to my lips.

"Linda?” he called again.

I nodded this time, and she answered, “It's all right, Jose. It's all right."

Carrera was quiet again, and I could picture him behind his rock barrier, his ears strained, his fat face flushed.

"The American?” he called.

"He is dead,” Linda answered.

"Tell him to come over,” I prompted.

She hesitated for a moment and then said, “Come over, Jose. Come."

I waited, my chest heaving, the .45 heavy in my hand.

"Throw out the American's gun,” Carrera said. His voice was cold and calculating. He wasn't buying it. He suspected a trick, and he wanted to make sure I wasn't forcing his woman to play along with me. I bit my lip and stared at the .45.

"Give me the gun,” Linda whispered.

"What for? What good would that ... “

"I'll stand up. When he sees me with the gun, he will no longer suspect. Give it to me."

"Throw out the gun, Linda,” Carrera called again.

"Quick,” she said, “give me the gun."

I hesitated for a moment, and then I passed the gun to her, holding it by the barrel, fitting the stock into her fingers.

She took the gun gently, and then pointed it at my belly. A small smile tilted the corners of her mouth as she stood up. My eyes popped wide in astonishment.

"It's all right now, Jose,” she said. “I've got his gun."

"Bueno," Carrera said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. I'd been suckered, taken like a schoolboy, hook, line, and sinker.

I slammed my right fist into the palm of my left hand.

"So that's the way it is,” I said.

"That's the way it is, senor," she answered. The gun didn't waver. It kept pointing at my belt buckle.

"And it's senor now,” I added. “Last night, it was Jeff."

"Last night was last night,” she said. “Now is now."

Across the clearing, I could hear Carrera scraping his feet against the rocks as he clambered to a standing position. Linda's eyes flicked briefly to the right as she heard the sound, too, and then snapped back.

I studied the gun in her hand, and I listened to the noises Carrera was making as he started across the clearing. I wondered whether I should pull the old “Get-her-Joe!” dodge, or the equally familiar “Who's- that- behind-you?” routine.

I decided against both. Linda was no dummy, and she could hear Carrera coming as well as I could. If anyone were behind her, Carrera would see him. And besides, she knew damn well there was no one but the three of us in those lonely hills. No, it had to be something else.

And it had to be soon.

Carrera was a fat man, but he was covering ground. I glanced over at him, watching him waddle slowly across the long, pebble-strewn flatland. He was bigger than I'd imagined he was, with a flat nose and beady black eyes that squatted like olives on either side of it. He kept coming, with still a hell of a lot of ground to cover, but plodding steadily away at it. Once he got to me, it was goodbye MacCauley, goodbye ten thousand bucks, goodbye world. And I never liked saying goodbye.

I started my play then. I began to sweat because I knew what it meant. Nothing had ever meant so much, and so it had to be good. It had to be damned good.

"I'm surprised, Linda,” I told her. I kept my voice low, a bare whisper that only she could hear. From the corner of my eye, I watched Carrera's progress.

"You should learn to expect surprises, senor," she answered.

"I thought it meant a little more than ... “ I stopped short and shook my head.

She was interested. I could see the way her brows pulled together slightly, a small V appearing between them.

"Never mind,” I finished. “We'll just forget it."

"What is there to forget?” she asked. She wanted me to go on. She tried to keep her voice light, but there was something behind her question, an uncertain probing. Carrera was halfway across the clearing now. I saw the .45 in his pudgy fist and I began to sweat more heavily. I had to hurry.

"There's you to forget,” I said. “You, Linda. You and last night. That's a lot of forgetting to do before I die."

"Stop it,” she said softly.

"And the promise,” I went on. “That'll be the hardest to forget. The promise, Linda, You and me ... and ten thousand bucks. You and me, Linda ... “

"Stop it!"

"You and me without Carrera. Don't you see, Linda?” I pleaded. “Can't you understand what I'm telling you. Isn't it all over my face? What do I have to do to make you ... “

"Jeff, no,” she said. “No, please.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it.

I took a step closer to her. Carrera was no more than fifty feet away now. I could feel the sun on my shoulders and head, could hear the steady crunch of Carrera's feet against the pebbles.

"Look at him, Linda,” I said, my voice a husky whisper. “Take a look at the fat slobbering pig you're doing this for."

"Don't ... “ she said. She kept shaking her head and I could see her eyes beginning to glaze over.

"Take a look! Look at him, go ahead. There's your boyfriend! There's Carrera!"

"He's not my boyfriend,” she said, anguish in her throat.

"Your boyfriend,” I repeated. “Carrera, fat ... “

"My husband,” she said. “My husband, Jeff, my husband."

He was almost on us. I could see his features plainly, could see the sweat dripping off his forehead. I took another step towards Linda.

"Leave him,” I whispered urgently. “Leave him, darling. Leave him, leave him."

She hesitated for a moment, and I saw her lower lip tremble. “Jeff, I ... I ... “

She lowered the .45 for an instant, and that was when I sprang. I didn't bother with preliminaries. I brought back my fist as I leaped and uncocked it as the .45 went off like a skyrocket. I smelled the acrid odor of cordite in my nostrils, and then I felt my fist slam against her jaw. She was screaming when it caught her, but she stopped instantly, crumpling against the ground like a dirty shirt.

Carrera was running now. I couldn't see him as I stooped to pick up the .45, but a man his size couldn't run on pebbles without all Mexico hearing it. I scrambled to my feet, lifting my head over the outcropping.

He fired the minute my head showed, his bullets chipping off rock that scattered like shrapnel, ripping into my face. I covered my eyes with one hand and began firing blindly.

Carrera stopped shooting as soon as I cut loose. I uncovered my face, then, and got him in my sights. He wasn't hard to hit. Something that big never is. I fired two shots that sprouted into big red blossoms across the white cotton shirt he wore. He clutched at the blossoms as if he wanted to pick them for a bouquet, and then he changed his mind and fell flat on his face. The ground seemed to tremble a little—and then it was quiet.

I looked over my shoulder at Linda. She was still sprawled out on the ground, her hair spread out like spilled blackstrap under her head. I climbed over the rocks and walked to where Carrera was decorating the landscape. I rolled him over and unfastened the money belt. Carefully, slowly, I counted the money. It was all there, ten thousand bucks worth. Carrera's eyes stared up at it, still greedy, but they weren't seeing anything any more. I picked up his .45 and tucked it in my waistband. Overhead, like black thunderclouds, the vultures were already beginning their slow spiral. Carrera would be a feast, all right, a real fat feast.

I walked back to the rocks, my .45 cocked in my right hand.

She was just sitting up when I got there. Her knees were raised, and the skirt was pulled back over them, showing the cool whiteness of her thighs. She brushed a black lock of hair away from her face, looking up at me with wide brown eyes.

Her voice caught in her throat. “Carrera?” she asked.

"He's dead,” I said.

"Oh.” The word died almost before it found voice. She stared at the ground for a moment, and then lifted her head again. “Then ... then it's all right ... you and me ... we ... “

I shook my head slowly.

A puzzled look crept into her eyes. She looked at me with confusion all over her face, and the lip began trembling again.

"No, baby,” I said.

"But ... “

"No,” I repeated.

"But, you said ... “

I turned my back on her and started walking down the twisting path, anxious to cover the long distance to the Olds.

"Jeff!” she cried.

I kept walking. Over my shoulder, I said, “You're Carrera's woman, baby. Remember? Go back to him."

I heard the sob that escaped her lips, but I didn't look back. I kept walking, the sun still high, the sky a bright blue except where the vultures hung against it like hungry black dots.

[Back to Table of Contents]

BUTCHER by RICHARD S. PRATHER

If you've been around Los Angeles much, you know that desolate, unlighted strip of highway, Chavez Ravine Road, that stretches from Adobe Street to Elysian Park. It's solitary and lonely enough in the daytime.

Wednesday night about eight P.M. I swung off Adobe Street, headed for Hollywood and home. Things had been slow for over a week at the office of Sheldon Scott, Investigations, so I'd closed up early and spent the afternoon jawing with the guys at City Hall, then stopped off on Adobe for a beer. I was about half a mile down Chavez Ravine Road when I saw the dog.

It was a big, mangy-looking mongrel sniffing a dirty white blob at the road's edge. In my headlights the blob looked like something wrapped in newspaper, part of the paper darkly stained.

I kept on, angling toward Sunset, but that brown-stained paper stuck in my mind. It was a sort of creepy night to begin with; thick clouds were massed overhead blotting out the moon and stars, though it hadn't yet started to rain. Thunder rumbled softly far away and the air was heavy, damp.

When I hit Sunset, the sight and sound of all the cars, instead of making me forget that thing I'd seen, brought it even more clearly into my mind. I turned around and drove back. The dog ran a few steps away and squatted close to the ground when I parked. Leaving the Cad's headlights on I walked to the newspaper-wrapped bundle, looked at the mud smears on it—and at another brown stain. Then I gripped a corner of the paper and unwrapped it from the thing inside.

I didn't know what it was at first. But two minutes later, using the phone in a nearby house, I was talking to my good friend, Phil Samson, Captain of Central Homicide. “Sam, this is Shell. Get somebody out here on Chavez Ravine Road. I think I've found a—a leg."

"Oh, my Christ,” he said. “Another one."

"Yeah.” This was number three. Three murders, parts of three dismembered bodies—three that we knew about. Sam was swearing. I told him where I was and hung up.

There were two others with me in room 42 at City Hall. Samson, a big pink-faced guy with a jaw like a boulder and a black unlighted cigar clamped in his strong teeth; and bald, brush-browed Louis from the Vice Squad. This was in Homicide's lap, but the Vice Squad is interested in murders that show the work of a twisted mind.

We'd been kicking the case around and anyone eavesdropping would have thought there was a little respect for the dead here. They'd have been wrong. In any large police headquarters death becomes, finally, so common that it's treated more casually, more flippantly, than by most people, and here in L.A. Homicide the boys had got to calling this particular killer The Butcher.

Louis, the Vice Squad Lieutenant, poured more coffee into my paper cup and I said to him, “Lou, you're the psychologist. What the hell kind of guy would cut them up?"

He raised a shaggy eyebrow and patted his bald skull. “Two kinds. The practical guy, because it's easier to get rid of an arm or leg than a body; and the nut. The nut likes it, gets a charge. This one's a nut."

"Why not practical?"

"Because the same guy did it. Three times is getting goddamned unpractical. At least it looks like the same guy, right, Sam?"

Samson bit into his black cigar. “So far. They're still working on it.” He grabbed his phone and growled into it for a minute, then hung up. He looked at me. “Young girl again, about eighteen, five-two, hundred-ten pounds, blonde. Jesus.” He banged a big horny fist against his desk top and said, “All that they give me from a leg. Why in hell can't they look in a test tube and come up with her name and who killed her?” He swore. “Same guy. This one had been frozen, too. Cut up while she was frozen stiff."

Louis perched on Sam's desk and leaned toward me. “Add that in, Shell, if you want to know what kind of guy. We get the dregs, chum. And the hell of it is you can't tell it by looking at them. Take a number from one to two million, and that's our boy. Could be you, me, even Harrington Harrington the Fourth. And it always gets worse, like a bug multiplying in the blood. First maybe a pin to stick a woman with, then a rape, then you find a leg.” He shrugged. “They run amuck, but they look O.K.; they run amuck in their minds."

The conversation drifted to the Black Dahlia; to Albert Fish, who killed a little girl, cut her up, and ate her flesh—cooked with carrots and onions and bacon; to some of the things that never hit print and that are difficult to believe even though you know they've happened. When the morning watch came on at midnight I left, and drove home on brightly-lit Sunset.

In the morning, I couldn't get the murder out of my thoughts. I'd dreamed a crawly cold-sweat dream, and awakened with the picture of that severed limb in my mind. Ex-Marine, long-time detective, I'd seen worse things, especially in the war; but even the mass insanity of war didn't seem quite so personal or frightening as a guy who would kill a kid, freeze her, and cut her up.

Just before nine A.M., when I was getting ready to leave for my office, Samson phoned. Some more of the girl had been found. “Thought you'd want to know, Shell,” he said. “Rolled prints off the hand and made identification. Judith Geer."

"Oh, no, Sam. Not one of those sweet little gals."

"Yeah. Sister listed this Judith with Missing Persons two days ago. Thought maybe she'd been hurt, hit by a car or something."

I told him to hang on a minute while I lit a cigarette. The identification had rocked me. I know both of the gals he was talking about. Judith Geer—the dead one—and Norma Geer, her sister, worked at a Carpenter's Drive-In where I'd had innumerable hamburgers and beers, and kidded with both girls a lot; they had shared an apartment on Melrose.

I thought about Judy, little and cute and blonde as sunshine, trotting out to my car and laughing with me over nonsense, and I thought of that ugly unreal thing I'd found last night. I said, “Sam, are you sure? It doesn't seem possible—"

"Hell, yes, we're sure. Look, you knew them pretty well, didn't you?"

"Just to yak with. I know their names, and they know mine, and we had a lot of laughs. That's about all. Jesus, Sam, what kind of a sonofabitch would ... “ I let it die.

He said, “If you know the sister well enough to drop in later you might pick up something we haven't got. You know, you're unofficial, no uniform."

"Yeah. I'm hamburger with onions and two beers. Sure, Sam."

"We want this one, Shell, the worst way. The guy must be clear off now, gone, nuts; Christ knows what he'll do next."

"Uh-huh. You get anything, give me a buzz. I'll see you later."

Nothing happened at the office except the phone rang once. It was a gal with a thready voice asking that I please hurry to her address because tiny saucer-shaped men were on her roof, screeching down the chimney at her. I told her to call 2680 at City Hall: the police psycho detail; they got calls like that every day.

It wasn't funny. When I hung up a shiver ran over my spine again, and I swore, phoned Norma's place on Melrose. Norma said she was glad I'd called and, sure, come on over; she could use some company. She could use a few laughs, she said. She was trying to sound adult, brittle, not frightened. But she was seventeen, and she couldn't quite pull it off.

There weren't any laughs. Norma was scared, shocked; all through with crying for now, and white-faced scared. Tall and slim and blue-eyed, she sat with her legs curled under her in an easy chair. I could tell she was thinking that it might have been her instead of her sister, that maybe it might still be.

I tried to convince Norma that whoever had killed Judy would certainly stay clear of her, and I really opened my mouth and put my foot in it. I'd been thinking about the talk at Homicide last night, and for a moment I must have forgotten who I was talking to.

I said, “Hell, doll, we were talking about The Butcher last night, and it's not ... “

Norma straightened up in her chair, rigid. I could have yanked out my tongue; she might not even know how Judy had been mutilated.

I started to apologize for my choice of words, but Norma interrupted, “It's all right, Shell. It just shocked me when you said butcher, because it made me think of Mr. Hecker."

"Who?"

"Mr. Hecker. He's our ... butcher, where we get our meat."

"This Hecker,” I said slowly, “you know him very well?"

"Just from the market. Oh, he tried to date ... both of us, but naturally we wouldn't have anything to do with him."

"Why ‘naturally,’ honey?"

"He's an old guy—and he's married. Oh, he's sort of an ugly geek, and kind of funny, but we still wouldn't have had anything to do with a chaser like him. He's tried to date other girls around here, too."

"He go out with any that you know about?"

Norma shook her head, frowning. She described Hecker for me and told me his wife worked in the market with him. Finally I told Norma I'd keep in touch and left. Hecker's was only a block and a half down Melrose, so I walked. On the way I picked up a newspaper, just out, at a small store; the Judith Geer murder was on the front page.

Hecker's Market was kind of run down and needed a coat of paint. Inside, the meat case was on my left; shelves along the right wall held hams and canned goods; a couple frozen-food lockers stood before them. There weren't any other customers, and Hecker was behind the glass-fronted meat case. He turned to look at me as I came in.

Hecker was built like an ape. An inch or two shorter than my six-two, he must have weighed 300 pounds, almost 100 pounds more than I, and his enormous wrists were nearly as big as my forearms. He was heavy-featured, with eyes that looked too round, too big, in a pasty-white and red-veined face. When I stopped before the meat display he said, “What you want?” in a deep voice that rumbled in his thick chest.

"Top sirloin,” I said.

He slid open the rear glass of the case and grabbed a steak, flopped it onto a paper on the scales. Behind him was an oversized meat block, pitted and stained; a lot of sawdust was on the floor, and dark stains were around the chopping block. Above the block a green-shaded light hung on a cord from the ceiling.

He slid the wrapped meat to me and I tossed the newspaper on the counter while I got out my wallet. Paying him I said, nodding at the paper, “Hell of a note, huh? That kid?"

I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, “What kid?” I pointed to the story. He picked up the paper and glanced at it. “Yeah.” His fingers left blood-marks on the newsprint.

I heard a noise behind me and looked over my shoulder as a woman walked toward us from the rear of the store. From Norma's description, I recognized her as Hecker's wife. She walked behind the meat counter and stood beside her husband.

Mrs. Hecker was a frail, plain-looking woman, bony and angular, wearing no makeup and with short dark hair matted on her head. She looked almost like a small wizened boy, standing there next to her huge, thickly-muscled husband.

I said to Hecker, “This Judy and her sister shopped here?"

He turned his head slowly to stare at me from the large too-white eyes. “Who'd you say you were?"

"Shell Scott.” I hadn't said.

"What you so gabby for, mister?"

I could feel a warm flush on my face and neck, but I pulled my wallet out again and flipped it open so he could see the photostat of my license.

"Cops,” he rumbled. “Geezus, all the crudding cops."

"Since the girls lived so close, I wondered if you ever noticed anybody hanging around them, following or watching them."

He grinned, showing square, too-short teeth, a film of yellow coloring them. “You didn't want no steak, did you?"

Before I could answer he walked from behind the meat counter and across the floor to the door of a walk-in refrigerator. Keys jangled as he unlocked a big padlock, then slid a heavy bolt back, flipped on a light and went inside; in a moment he came out with what looked like a whole half cow balanced on one of his heavy shoulders. Holding it with one upstretched hand he bolted and locked the door, then carried the beef back to the meat block, carried it effortlessly, big muscles swelling.

He dropped the beef with a sodden thud onto the block, picked up a long wide-bladed knife and conical stone, began sharpening the knife with a whispering grate, grate, grate of steel on stone, ignoring me.

I said, “You didn't answer my question. Might be you could help."

Without looking at me he said, “I don't know nothing about them. They bought meat here is all. Beat it.” The knife moved faster as he sharpened it, then he slid the stone into a metal bracket clamped on the block, ran the keen blade over the meat, sliced easily down to the bone.

I rephrased my question, asked it of Mrs. Hecker. She shook her head wordlessly, looking tired and nervous. In silence Hecker deftly sliced around the bone, put down the knife and picked up a massive cleaver, raised it over his head. He swung it in a swift arc and I heard it crack completely through the bone, bury its edge in the wood beneath. Then he turned and stared fixedly, soberly at me, still in silence. Finally he turned back to the block. I left.

Driving downtown in the Cad there was a tightness between my shoulder blades; all I had was a funny feeling about Hecker, a hunch, no real proof against him. But he had acted damned strange. And I kept seeing that knife rub on stone, hearing the grating sound, hearing the crack of a cleaver slicing bone. I went to Homicide.

Samson had his inevitable cigar going, so naturally there was a horrible smell in his office. I gave him the story of the last hour. “This guy's a bug,” I said to him. “He's non compos whatever, not at all pleasant. He could sure as hell stand a check."

Samson sighed, fumbled in his desk, found some papers and flipped through them. “Robert Hecker, fifty-two years old, married, no kids—he's been checked. Along with a hundred and forty others."

"You mean he's clean?"

"Not clean. Just nothing that looks wrong."

"You got a man on him?"

A slight trace of annoyance flickered over his pink face. “How many men you think we got, Shell? I put men on some other guys that look better and got records that fit this better. I'd like to have a man on all hundred and forty. And it still could be the hundred and forty-first."

"Answer me this, pal: you told me yourself the guy that did the others, and this one, knew what and where and how to do it; that he could be anything from a meat cutter to a brain surgeon.” He nodded. “And they were all three frozen stiff; this guy's got a cold room, a freezing room with beef hanging in it; easy enough to drop the temperature lower than usual if he wanted; he's got frozen-food lockers."

"Yeah. So has every other butcher in town,” Samson growled. “You want to watch the guy, watch him. Get me some more cops. Take the butcher to dinner and show him ink blots."

"Yeah, sure. I'll get you a good cigar."

He blew foul smoke in the air. “O.K., Shell. This guy's got me jumpy, but we'll put him through the wringer, give him a closer look."

I spent a long afternoon at the office. Samson phoned me before he went home for dinner. “No soap on Hecker,” he said. “Nothing yet, anyway. No past record, not even any complaints; far as we can tell he never even went out with any of the girls that live around Melrose there. He tried to date some—but according to the boys that saw his wife, you could hardly blame him for trying."

"I know what they mean. If she were married to anybody but Hecker, she'd look more like a man than her husband."

"We'll go over him some more, but he looks clear."

"Thanks, Sam.” We hung up.

Maybe I was a little off balance about it, but thinking of Hecker still gave me the creeps. When I headed the Cad out Sunset I remembered how carefully locked and bolted that walk-in refrigerator had been. Seemed funny that it would be locked during the daytime, when Hecker was in the market himself. He must be damned careful about his meat. Or something.

I swung over to Melrose and when I got close to Hecker's it looked dark. I doused the Cad's lights, parked at the curb and poked the glove compartment open, fumbled for a ring of keys I keep there. I wanted a look in that big refrigerator.

When I got out of the car I could see that the front door of the market was closed, but a thin strip of light slanted out the window from behind drawn blinds—and I could hear the soft, measured thud of that cleaver. I hesitated, and my right hand went to my shoulder where my gun should have been—only the gun was in my office desk. Then I made up my mind. The sodden chop, chop, persisted inside as I tried the door, found it locked, and selected keys on my ring until one worked. I unlocked the door, eased it open, slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind me.

Light from the green-shaded bulb behind the meat counter spilled down over the bulky shape of Hecker, reached out to touch me here by the door, glanced from the cleaver as Hecker raised it above his head and slammed it down onto the block. He wore only an undershirt covering his huge chest, and perspiration glistened on his hairy shoulders and arms. I moved forward, bent so I'd be out of his line of vision, then straightened until I could see a quarter of beef on the chopping block. Cold sweat beaded my forehead. There was something odd about Hecker's actions, the way he chopped at the meat, and I could hear grunting sounds in his throat. His arm rose and fell rhythmically.

Suddenly he stopped and turned. I thought he'd heard me but he wasn't looking at me, was staring across the room, yards beyond where I stood in partial shadow. I glanced to my right; the door to the walk-in refrigerator was closed, but a red bulb burned above it. He stared fixedly at the refrigerator, seemed strangely agitated.

He turned back to the block, picked up the long knife, the conical stone, and again I heard the grating scraping noise of steel rubbing stone as he sharpened the knife. He slid the stone into its bracket with a crash, sliced at the meat before him on the block.

His back was to me and I bent over, moved toward the refrigerator door. It was closed but unbolted, the padlock hanging open. As quietly as I could I cracked the heavy door. Cold air seeped from it and its inside surface chilled my fingers as I touched it, pulled it out far enough to let my body through. The chopping didn't falter.

I pulled the door shut, turned and looked inside the freezing room, cold swimming over my flesh. In the dim light I could see naked carcasses of beeves hanging from iron hooks. I walked forward, the light throwing eerie shadows on the wall ahead of me. And finally, far in back against the wall, hidden among the suspended meats, I found something that was different.

It was a white and bloodless thing like something made of wax, an artfully fashioned image of a woman—of part of a woman. It was a human slug suspended from a pointed iron hook. Then I saw the matted, clinging hair, and part of it was blonde, blonde as sunshine. This was what was left of Judy.

I became aware of quietness without at first realizing what it meant; and then dimly I heard a door slam out in the market, heard the murmur of voices. Footsteps thudded over the floor toward the refrigerator as my momentary paralysis ended and I whirled around.

The door swung wide and Hecker loomed before me. He yelled aloud as he saw me, then leaped backward so quickly that I almost didn't follow after him in time. He started to swing the door shut before I understood what he meant to do, but I leaped forward, jarred into it a moment before it closed.

I strained against it with all my strength, then suddenly the weight was gone from its other side. The door swung open and I saw Hecker running across the floor toward the meat block, saw him grab the massive cleaver in his right hand, whirl and run back toward me raising the cleaver above his head.

On the far side of the room stood his wife; it was she I had heard come in and speak moments ago. I glanced around for something, anything I could use as a weapon, knowing Hecker could send that cleaver slashing through my skull and brain and neck in one blow of his thickly muscled arm. Hanging from iron rods behind and above me, stretching from wall to wall were several unused hooks, S-curved and double-pointed like those, from which the beeves hung. I grabbed one of them, leaped out of the refrigerator room as Hecker slowed his rush, stopped and stared at me, the cleaver held on a level with his head.

For a second he didn't move, then he walked toward me, not hurrying, just steadily coming closer, holding the cleaver tightly. I let him get six feet from me, then backed away toward the market's rear wall. I took my eyes off Hecker's face for one quick look at his wife, but she stood motionless near the meat case, eyes fixed on us.

The wall, I knew, was close behind me. I stopped. Hecker didn't falter in his slow stride but he raised the cleaver higher, his face almost expressionless.

I moved back and turned sideways until my left elbow brushed against the wall. Holding the hook in my right hand I crossed my arm in front of my body just as he jumped toward me swinging the cleaver down in a blurred arc at my head.

With the wall for leverage I shoved hard, let my body drop toward the floor, slashing my right arm toward his face with all my strength. The cleaver hissed past my head and struck the wood behind me as I felt my hand jar against him, pain ripping through my palm as the second point of the hook dug into it. It ripped across my skin and the hook was jerked from my hand, but as my knees hit the floor I saw where that other point had gone. It had entered Hecker's throat, the curving metal hanging down upon his chest. But it hadn't killed him.

He jerked the cleaver from the wood as I rolled a few feet across the floor and scrambled to my feet, then he jumped toward me, swinging the cleaver downward. I threw my left hand up, clamped my fingers around his huge wrist, but couldn't stop the blow. I slowed it, changed its direction, but felt the cleaver's edge bite into my chest muscles as I slammed my right hand up to grab that dangling hook, to jerk and twist it. His weight hurled me to the floor and the cleaver thudded against the boards as I rolled away, pain burning in my chest. When I got to my feet I swung around, but Hecker was on his hands and knees, coughing horribly, his life draining from his throat.

Then he rolled over and lay on his back, eyes staring upwards, and I saw that he was trying to talk. I went over and listened, and I was damn glad I did, because the thing he told me was the craziest fact in the whole crazy case. He managed only a single sentence before he died, but it was enough to make me realize that he wasn't The Butcher at all....

It took quite a few hours for the medics to patch and bandage me up, and it was late afternoon before Samson, Louis, and I sat in Room 42 again. Sam had just been talking on the phone, and he turned and said, “They've got Hecker's wife in a padded cell."

"I'm not surprised,” I said.

"Me, neither,” Sam said. “She's been raving for hours—drooling about the killings. Well, there's no doubt about your story any more, anyway ... “

I shook my head. “I'm getting old,” I said. “I should have been tipped the minute Norma told me Hecker'd been trying to date every dame in that neighborhood—I should have realized that a sex killer has got to have violence and attack, and wouldn't be trying to date women.” Sam pushed a bottle into my hand, and I took a deep slug of it. I coughed, and went on, “It just never occurred to me that Hecker's wife was the way she was, and Hecker was just looking for some normal, natural outlets. Who the hell would ever figure that Hecker's wife was The Butcher, that she was so dominant that Hecker was under her thumb and cutting up the bodies for her after she did the killings?"

Sam took the bottle out of my hand, and took a deep dip before he answered.

"Nobody'd figure it,” he said. “Nobody'd figure it because it's the kind of fact that just never occurs to people—even people in jobs like ours. A cop's bound to go looking for a man when he's got some sex murders to solve. But it makes just as much sense the other way now that we know the whole story."

He paused, and I guess we all looked a little sick. “Because naturally,” he went on, “it would also be women who were murdered if the sex killer was a female queer ... “

[Back to Table of Contents]

LOOK DEATH IN THE EYE by LAWRENCE BLOCK

She was beautiful.

She was, and she knew that she was—not only by the image in her mirror, the full and petulant mouth and the high cheekbones, the silkiness of the long blond hair and the deep blue color of her eyes. The image in her mirror at home told her she was beautiful, and so did the image she saw now, the image in the mirror in the tavern.

But she didn't need the mirrors. She was made aware of her beauty by the eyes, the eyes of the hungry men, the eyes that she felt rather than saw upon her everywhere she went. She could feel those eyes caressing her body, lingering too long upon her firm ripe breasts and sensuous hips, touching her body with a touch firmer than hands and making her grow warm where they rested. Wherever she went men stared at her, and the intensity of their stares undressed their passions and hungers just as thoroughly as the stares attempted to strip her body.

She sipped at her drink, hardly tasting it but knowing that she had to drink it. It was all part of the game. She was in a bar, and the hungry men were also in the bar, and now their eyes were wandering over her. But for the moment there was nothing for her to do. She had to drink her drink and bide her time, waiting for the men—or one of them, at least—to get up the courage to do more than stare.

Idly, she turned a few inches on the barstool and glanced at the other customers. Several men were too busy drinking to pay any attention to her; another was busy in a corner booth running his hand up and down the leg of a slightly plump redhead, and it was easy to see that he wouldn't be interested in her, not that night.

But the other three customers were fair game.

She regarded them thoughtfully, one at a time. Closest to her was a young one—no more than twenty-one or twenty-two, she guessed, and hungry the way they are when they're that age. He was short and slim, dressed in a dark suit and wearing a conservative bow tie. She noticed with a little amusement the way he was embarrassed to stare at her but at the same time was unable to keep his eyes off her lush body. Twice his eyes met hers and he flushed guiltily, turning away and nervously flicking the ashes off his cigarette.

And each time the eyes returned to her, hungry and desperate in their hunger. Mr. Dark Suit couldn't keep away from her, she thought, and she wondered if he would be the one for the evening. It was always difficult to predict, always tough to calculate which pair of eyes would get up enough courage to make the pass. It might be Mr. Dark Suit, but she doubted it. He had the hunger, all right, but he probably lacked the experience he'd need for hero.

Mr. Baldy was two stools further from her. She named him easily since his baldness was his outstanding feature in a face that had no other memorable features. His head was bare except for a very thin fringe around the edges and the light from the ceiling shined on it.

Next, of course, she noticed his eyes. They were hungry eyes, too—but hungry in a way that was different from Mr. Dark Suit. Mr. Baldy was a good twenty-five years older, and he was probably used to getting his passes tossed back into his lap. He wanted her, all right; there was no mistaking the intensity of his gaze. But the possibility of a refusal might scare him away.

For a half-second she considered flashing him a smile. No, she decided, that wouldn't be fair. Let them work it out themselves. Let the hungriest assert himself and the others forever hold their peace.

And there was no hurry. It was rather a pleasant feeling to be caressed simultaneously by three pairs of eyes, and though the sensation was hardly a new one, it was one she never tired of.

And the third man. He was seated at the far end of the bar, seated so that he could study her without turning at all. But, strangely, his eyes were not glued to her body the way Mr. Dark Suit's and Mr. Baldy's were. Instead he was relaxing, biding his time, and occasionally letting his eyes wander from his beer glass to her and back to his beer.

He was somewhere in his thirties, with a strong and vaguely handsome face and jet-black hair. Mr. Bright-Eyes, she named him, laughing inwardly at the glow of assurance and confidence in his eyes.

Mr. Bright-Eyes wouldn't be afraid or stumbling about it. At the same time, she wondered whether or not he would care enough to make an approach. He wanted her; that much she knew. But he might need a little shove in the right direction.

A rock-and-roll tune was playing noisily on the jukebox. Not yet, she thought. Wait until everything is just right, with soft music and all the trimmings. Let the eyes stay hungry for a few minutes.

She studied them again, the three of them. Mr. Dark Suit's eyes, she noticed, were brown. Mr. Baldy's eyes were a watery blue, a bit bloodshot and sick-looking. But Mr. Bright-Eyes had, happily, bright blue eyes. They seemed to gleam in his powerful face.

She wondered who it would be. Another night, another pair of eyes—but who would it be tonight? Which eyes were the hungriest? Which eyes wanted her, wanted her enough to hurry up and make a pass?

Mr. Dark Suit finished his drink and signaled the bartender for another. He sipped at it nervously when it arrived, then set it down on the bar and stole another glance at her, drumming his fingers on the bar all the while.

He's so nervous, she thought. If I made the first move he'd come running. But he's scared silly.

Mr. Baldy, his drink forgotten, stared at her quite openly. He didn't seem shy at all, and the watery blue eyes moved up and down her body without the slightest embarrassment.

He can watch, she thought. A looker, but not much for action. What's the matter, Mr. Baldy?

Mr. Bright-Eyes looked up from his beer and saw her studying him. For a moment a shadow of a smile passed over his face; then it was gone, and he was gazing once again into the glass of beer.

Although she wanted to be perfectly fair, she felt herself hoping that it would be Mr. Bright-Eyes. She always played perfectly fair, always went with the first one, but this time she felt a decided preference. There was something about those eyes, something about the way they looked at her so openly....

The rock-and-roll tune came to a noisy finish. She waited on her stool, fluffing her hair into place and taking another short sip of her drink.

The next record was a slow one.

Now, she thought. First she stretched a little, throwing her shoulders back so that her two perfect breasts stood out in bold relief as they pressed against the thin fabric of her blouse. Then she crossed one leg over the other, letting her skirt fall away as she did so and giving Mr. Dark Suit and Mr. Baldy a quick glimpse of milk-white skin.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bright-Eyes couldn't see her legs from where he sat. It was a pity.

Then, with her breasts jutting and her legs crossed, she tossed off the rest of her drink and leaned forward on her stool, hesitating a moment before ordering a refill. This was the crucial moment, the time when one of the three had to be ready for a game of drop-the-handkerchief. Somebody had to pick up the cue.

"Another beer for me, and one more for the lady."

She started, turned her head, and discovered happily that it was Mr. Bright-Eyes. He certainly was smooth, she marveled, the way he was right at her side the minute she was ready for another drink.

A moment later the beer was poured, the drink made, and Mr. Bright-Eyes seated on the stool beside her. She noticed the sad looks in the eyes of Mr. Baldy and Mr. Dark Suit, sad because they realized the chance they had missed.

Too bad, she thought. You had your chances. Why, you had a better chance than Mr. Bright-Eyes, what with looking at my legs and all.

"You're a lovely woman,” Mr. Bright-Eyes was saying, and she was pleased to note that he had a fine manner of speaking, spacing his words nicely and pronouncing all the consonants the way they belonged. Why, that man a few nights ago didn't talk very well at all, mumbling the way he did. Of course it was partly the drinking, but she was glad Mr. Bright-Eyes could speak so clearly and nicely.

But she didn't pay much attention to what he was saying. It wasn't too important, and besides she was far too busy looking into his blue eyes and enjoying the way they traveled so gently over her body. She could feel them on her, and when his gaze traveled down her body and caressed her hips she almost shivered.

He continued to talk to her and she continued to answer him and the jukebox continued to play, but she spent most of her time looking into his eyes and loving the feeling they gave her. He told her his name, which she promptly forgot because Mr. Bright-Eyes suited him so much better, and she told him that her name wasn't especially important, since it really wasn't.

Mr. Bright-Eyes said something about a rose by another name and she laughed politely, but it was his eyes that really held her interest. Even when his hand moved down to rest gently on her thigh, she was more aware of the hunger in his eyes than the gradually more insistent pressure of his hand.

Slowly his hand moved up and down her thigh, gently caressing her flesh, and all the while Mr. Bright-Eyes was talking earnestly, his voice just a little louder than a whisper and his eyes deliciously lustful and hungry.

But it wouldn't do to ignore the hand. Keeping her gaze rooted to Mr. Bright-Eye's face, she gently placed her own hand on top of his. At first he seemed taken aback, thinking that she wished him to remove his hand from her thigh. That, of course, was not what she intended at all.

Reassuringly, she moved his hand over her thigh, pressing it gently and tenderly. She was pleased to notice Mr. Bright-Eyes get an even hungrier gleam in his eyes and begin to breathe a slight bit heavier than before. It was all part of the game, but the game could be very pleasant for her.

"... one of the most exciting women I've ever met,” he was saying, and as he spoke the words his hand closed possessively around her knee. His eyes were glued to her breasts. She knew that they would leave any moment now, that he was almost ready and almost convinced that she would now follow him to the ends of the earth if he were only to ask.

And indeed she would.

"Honey?"

She smiled expectantly.

"Would you like to have the next one up at my place?"

"Of course,” she said.

His bright blue eyes gleamed more than ever. How bright they were! She was actually in love with him now, in love with his eyes and the hunger and beauty in them.

As they stood up, she saw Mr. Baldy shake his head sadly. Mr. Dark Suit's jaw fell slightly and he looked quite awkward, sitting precariously on his stool with his mouth half-open. Then Mr. Bright-Eyes slipped his arm easily around her waist and walked her to the door. She could feel their eyes watching her every step of the way, and it wasn't hard at all to imagine the regret in their eyes—regret mixed with admiration for Mr. Bright-Eye's technique.

He was smooth, all right. So very smooth, and while it was a shame that Mr. Dark Suit and Mr. Baldy were doomed to sadness for the evening, it simply couldn't be helped.

And besides, wasn't there a book about survival of the fittest or something? If they had Mr. Bright-Eyes’ finish they wouldn't be sitting by themselves, with their eyes all afraid and beaten.

It was dark out, and Mr. Bright-Eyes seemed to be in a hurry, and as a consequence they were walking very swiftly toward his apartment. He said something about wasn't it dark out, and she agreed that it was, and his arm tightened around her waist.

She leaned a little against him and rubbed her body against his. Walking as they were and with the night as dark as it was, it was hard for her to see his eyes. Each time when they passed a streetlamp she leaned forward a bit and glanced into his face, as if to reassure herself that his eyes still wanted her as much as they had.

In his apartment everything went very well. He told her how beautiful she was and she thanked him quite modestly, and they went to the bedroom and he took her in his arms and kissed her very expertly.

Then, after she had been expertly kissed, he bent over to remove the spread from the bed. It was at just that moment that she took the knife from her purse and plunged it into his back, right between the shoulder blades. One jab was enough; he crumpled up on the bed and lay very still, without a scream or a moan or any sound at all.

Afterwards, back in her own apartment, she put his eyes in the box with the others.

[Back to Table of Contents]

ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON by GIL BREWER

Dell Harper and his wife Julia left their pew and shoved through the nervously subdued congregation. Everyone somehow held themselves back enough to keep from running and shoving in an effort to get home for dinner, make that show, meet Marge or Suzie, reach the car before Dad. The organ continued to moan softly and the Reverend Holdsby appeared at the hall door, perspiring lightly, a fixed smile on his pale lips.

"Better carry Linda,” Harper said to his wife. “She'll get herself stomped on. And for gosh sakes, get past Holdsby before he nails us about Christian Endeavor, or we'll never get out to the glen."

Julia Harper looked at her husband and scowled, but she said nothing. She grabbed three year old Linda, who at the moment was interested in the choir loft, picked her up, rested her on her hip.

They escaped to the main entrance hall, and headed for the door. Noon sunlight glared on the brick steps.

"There's Tom Martin,” Julia said. She held Linda with one arm, jabbed at her hair with her other hand, and looked as if she wanted to smile.

"Now, for cripes’ sake,” Harper said. “Don't start gabbing."

Julia didn't seem to hear him. Linda said something about, “Wanna fickle do, Mommy! Fickle do naw!"

"All right,” Julia Harper said. “We'll be home in a little while. Then you can."

Martin pinned them in a small bottleneck on the steps. “Only got a minute,” he said. “Nan's waiting in the car. Why don't you folks stop over this afternoon?” He paused, stripping cellophane from a cigar. “We could have some coffee and sandwiches later on—maybe play a few hands of bridge.” He bit off the end of the cigar, spat it across the church steps, and grinned at Julia.

Julia smiled back brightly, glanced at her husband.

Martin snatched the cigar from his mouth and motioned toward Linda. “Bring her along, too—of course."

Harper checked his wrist watch. “Sorry as the deuce, Tom. We planned something else. Thanks, though—for asking."

Julia patted Linda's bottom, frowned, and chewed the edge of her lower lip.

"Oh?” Martin said.

"Little picnic—out to the glen."

Julia spoke suddenly, a shade too loudly. “Why don't you and Nan come along?” She said it to Martin, but she looked at her husband as she spoke.

Martin found a match, looked at it. “No—we can't,” he said. “Feel kind of tired. Just want to lay around, anyways."

"We'd better get moving,” Harper said.

"Maybe next Sunday?” Martin called.

Harper said nothing. Julia turned and flashed another smile back across Linda's shoulder. They moved slowly through the sun-dappled church crowds into the parking area, located their Ford sedan.

"Wow,” Harper said. “Like an oven. Wait'll I roll the windows down."

Julia waited, holding Linda, looking at the bustle of the crowded parking area.

"Come on, will you?” Harper called with a trace of irritation. “You're the one wanted to get out to the God damned glen. We'll no more'n get there, we'll have to come back. Get the lead out. It's my only day off—you know that."

Julia ignored his whining tone, slipped into the front seat with Linda, then allowed the three year old to climb over into the back.

Harper savagely started the engine and backed out, heading for the street. Julia adjusted her pale blue skirt over her round knees, patted the small and wilted corsage of flowers she'd made that morning.

"There's Brady,” Julia said. “He's waving, Dell."

"Oh,” Harper said, flapping his hand without looking. “I'm hungry as a bear. You?"

"I suppose so."

"What the hell's the matter with you?"

"Nothing."

"Something's the matter. I can tell."

Julia said nothing. She looked out the window and closed her eyes.

Linda was bubbling about something in the back seat, her round face mashed against the side window, the fingers of one hand curled into her pale yellow hair.

Harper turned onto Central a bit too speedily, narrowly missing the side of a city bus. A yellow and chrome hot rod roared past them, loaded with young laughing faces. The driver flipped the cut-out on the muffler twice.

"Juvenile delinquents,” Harper said. “My God, look how fast they're goin! They don't give a damn for anybody. The world's crazy—I tell you, it's crazy. Crazy kids. I'd just like to get close enough to one of them sharpies, by God."

"What would you do, Dell?” Julia said, her eyes still closed, facing the window.

"They need a lesson, that's what they need. A good lesson. Somebody show ‘em what for. Drunk, an’ taking dope—like they do.” He lifted one hand from the steering wheel and squeezed it into a fist. “A good lesson—the old-fashioned way."

Julia said nothing. They drove on home.

"Hurry up and change,” Harper said from the bathroom. “What you wearing?"

His wife did not reply.

Something thumped downstairs. “Hope she's not in the God damned lunch,” Harper said. “You got it all packed, didn't you?"

"Yes, Dell."

Harper came into the bedroom. “Guess I'll wear these old suntans."

"Why don't you wear shorts?"

He ignored her, climbing into the tan khaki trousers. He was tall and boney, with reddish-brown hair that was sparse across pink skull. Pale blue eyes regarded the world with suspicion from behind rimless glasses. He buttoned and belted his trousers, yanked a white T-shirt over his head, tucked it in partly, then glanced toward his wife.

"Hurry up God damn it. Will you?"

She stood in front of her closet, running her hands through the racked clothes. They had been married six years. They had both been eighteen at the time of the ceremony, and Dell had just landed the job with the paint supply house—a job which he still held, through two promotions and three raises. They had both been skinny kids at the time of their marriage, striking out for the mysterious something.

Dell hadn't put on much weight since. Julia had. In brief white pants and brassiere, she was a lush and lovely woman. Thick black hair waved and massed across olive-skinned shoulders. Her waist was strikingly slim and firm, her hips sharply curving out and down to long-thighed, smoothly-rounded legs. Her breasts were large and high-peaked. Her face was sometimes piquant, sometimes sad—often both, the dark eyes a shade too thoughtful, the pouting, red-lipped mouth curiously immobile. She was possessed of a strange, almost electric nervousness that kept her forever on the go.

"Well, by gosh, I'm going to be cool!” She snatched something from a hook in the closet. She stepped into a pair of white shorts that were high and tight when she got them fastened. She struck a pose, looked at her husband through half-lidded eyes, and grinned. He lit a cigarette, staring at her. She turned, pulled a thin yellow jersey over her head, glanced at the full length mirror on the back of the door, and said, “Let's go, then."

Harper stomped toward the bedroom door. As he passed her, she touched his arm lightly, smiling up at him, a sudden and emphatic flash of crystal invitation. “Like my shorts, huh? You haven't seen ‘em."

"Fine,” he said, leaving the room, stomping down the hall.

She continued to smile for a moment. Then she forgot the smile and looked at herself in the closet mirror again. Her lips were parted and she breathed heavily, her eyes darker than they had been. There was a kind of viciousness in her fingers as she crimped the edges of the shorts still higher, until they bit into the soft swollen flesh of her thighs. She checked herself from the side, arching her back, yanking the jersey down tightly. “God damn,” she said. "God damn! God damn!"

"We'll have to stop for gas,” Harper said. “Meant to fill her up this morning. Clean forgot. There's a place I know down the road. We'll stop there."

Linda was standing on the back seat, staring out the rear window. She wore a blue playsuit, and was jumping up and down, softly chanting, “Hungy ... hungy ... hungy ... “

"Why don't you give her a sandwich—shut her up?” Harper said. “You made plenty, didn't you?"

"God damn right,” Julia said. “Better if she waits, though."

Harper craned his neck, frowning at her. Then he turned his gaze ahead and said, “There's the station."

Harper pulled the car off the main highway into a small country gas station with two red pumps. He stopped the car by the cement island and climbed out as the stocky, overalled attendant strolled out of the paint-peeled office.

"Fill ‘er up,” Harper said. “Check everything. Battery, water, tires—the works. An’ be sure to wash that windshield. Better catch the rear window, too. All this dust."

The attendant began to whistle.

Julia, sitting in the car, nervously flipped the sun-visor down on her side and arched her back slightly, stretching up so she could see herself in the small mirror. She opened her white-beaded purse, dipped in and brought out a large gold-cased lipstick, and worked on her lips. They were already quite red, but she went over them still more heavily. Finally she sighed, put the lipstick away, folded the visor back with a flip of her hand, and opened her door. She climbed out, glanced at Linda. Linda was occupied watching the cars and trucks whizz by on the main highway.

Harper was discussing oil grades with the attendant. Julia looked around, then wandered over to the map rack on the wall of the office, beside the doorway. Georgia. Florida. Mississippi. South Carolina. North Carolina. Virginia. Delaware. Oregon ... she withdrew the Oregon roadmap from the black metal rack, opened it, her face quite sober.

A gleaming yellow and chrome car, not more than three feet high all around, shot roaring off the highway and slid to a grinding stop on the gravel just off the cement, inside the gas station area. There were five young men in the car. The hood of the engine was off, and chrome and nickel furnishings sparkled with a hard brilliance in the sunlight. It was as clean and sparkling as an expensive china steak platter.

Julia turned, holding the road-map.

The driver of the hot-rod, a tall, broad-shouldered, yellow-haired youth with a violent sunburn, wearing khaki shorts and moccasins, gunned the engine loudly. They all roared with laughter.

The driver shut the engine off, leaped over the side of the car and crouched low and yelled, "Look at that!"

"Va-va-VOOM!"

"Hot rivets!"

"Bite me!"

Shrill whistles soared crazily into the sunlight, cutting through the afternoon with that same hard brilliance the car itself possessed—edged, clean, glasslike.

"Oh—daddio!!"

"Hit me!” one of the boys yelled. “Bash me—sock me—hit me!” He leaped from the car, ran around to where the yellow-haired youth stood and stuck his chin out. “Knock me cold!"

The yellow-haired youth rapped his chin with a big fist, laughing. The other faked a backward stagger, turned fast and looked at Julia, eyes bugging. Then he ran around the side of the car, yelling like an Indian. He reached over the side of the car, came up with a brown pint bottle and gulped from it. He sprawled against the side of the car, gasping.

"I'll never make it now, boys. Never make it now. I seen the light."

Julia turned and tried to fold the roadmap, so she could put it away. It wouldn't fold right. Each time she moved, the round flesh of her hips bunched under the tight shorts. She gave up trying to fold the map and jammed it at the rack, her hands trembling.

"What the hell's going on here?” Harper said, walking toward Julia.

The yellow-haired lad pulled himself erect, then went very loose all over, like a released sack of potatoes, and lurched in an affected stagger toward Julia. He came up close to her, ignoring Harper. He looked Julia up and down beadily, his mouth hanging open. The rest of the young men in the glinting hot-rod vaulted out and formed a pack behind the yellow-haired driver.

"Baby,” he said in a stage whisper. “I can't stand it. Do something before I shoot myself."

The roadmap fell out of the rack. Julia Harper's face and throat had become violently red. She tried to walk away. The yellow-haired youth blocked her path.

Harper shouted, “God damn! Get away! What you doing there?” His voice lowered. “What is this?"

The yellow-haired one turned abruptly, ran over to the others, spoke quickly, and they all formed a straight line across the front of the gas station. They stared at Harper.

"Dress right,” the yellow-haired one snapped. “Dress!"

The line straightened.

Julia hurried to the car, got in and closed her door.

"What the hell's going—?” Harper broke off his question.

He stared at them. They returned his stare. They stood very straight, lips tight, watching him.

The attendant came over to Harper. “Bring you your change,” he said, then went around the line of boys and inside the office.

Harper stood furiously in front of the line, his mouth faintly moving, but saying nothing. The attendant returned and handed Harper some change, then went quickly over to the gas pumps.

"All right, men,” the yellow-haired one said, jumping lightly out in front of the other four. “Atten—shun! Pre-e-e-e-e-sent—arms!"

The yellow-haired leader turned and they all held their arms out toward Harper. Each face was emphatically sober and deeply sincere.

Harper wheeled and stalked stiffly toward the car, jamming the change into his pocket. He turned suddenly toward the stocky attendant.

"What's going on around here?” Harper said, making his lips tight, scowling. “Who are they? What the hell's the idea?"

The attendant glanced at him swiftly, then headed for the office, making it clear that he didn't want to get mixed up in what was brewing.

"You check everything I told you?” Harper called.

The attendant did not reply.

"Hey, you! Did you check everything?"

Linda called, “Hungy ... hungy,” from the rear seat.

The young men still stood at attention with their arms held rigidly out.

"Please, Dell,” Julia said. “Come on—let's go."

Harper said, “I'd like to— “

Angrily, he climbed beneath the wheel of the car, started the engine, and they drove off. As they swung into the highway, a loudly shouted chorus of laughter roared into the early afternoon.

"My God!” Harper said.

Julia Harper stared straight ahead through the windshield, her face strained and slightly pink. Her legs were close together and she held her hands clasped tightly around the white-beaded purse in her lap.

Harper started to speak but there was something in his throat. He tried to clear it away. He gripped the steering wheel very hard, his shoulders rigid.

"That attendant ignored the whole God damned thing,” he said. “He acted like he was scared of those hoodlums."

Julia said nothing.

"Hungy,” Linda said, jumping up and down on the rear seat. “Hungy ... hungy!"

Harper turned sharply to his wife. “I should've—what'd you do? What did you do?"

"How do you mean, Dell?"

"Listen to me. You must've done something. You heard them. My God, I never saw—I felt like really letting them have it. That's the God's truth. I didn't know what to do, I tell you."

Julia drew a deep breath and let it out. “It was nothing, really. They're just kids, Dell. They weren't really mean and they wouldn't really start anything."

"You're right, there. No guts. No guts in the pack of ‘em. Kids."

They drove for a time.

"It was like you could feel it,” Harper said.

Julia had her eyes closed. She opened them. “What?"

"I don't know. Like—something. Like there's no law, no—nothing. Gutless kids—doing a thing like that. What could I do? Tell me that?” He looked at his wife again. “I wish you'd tell me what it was you did, God damn it."

"I didn't do anything. Dell. I just stood there. That's all. I was just standing there, looking at a map. That's all."

They drove for a time.

"I didn't do a thing. Just stood there."

"Yeah. You think I should report them?"

"What could you report?"

"You're right. They're gone now.” He sighed, moved his shoulders around. “They got my goat, I'll tell you that, though. I should've grabbed that one, that ringleader.” He clenched and unclenched his fist on the steering wheel. “Brassy little bastard."

Julia said nothing. She turned on one hip, tugged at her shorts, rested her chin in the cup of her hand, looking out the window. She closed her eyes again.

The sound of a horn blaring came along swiftly behind them, wailing, growing louder with a frightening speed.

"It's them again,” Julia said.

"What?” Harper said. “Who?"

She did not answer. The roar of an engine and the scream of a horn was upon them. It swept past, yellow-bright, screaming laughter, shouting, horn blatting. The yellow hot-rod careened in front of them, then leapt away and was soon out of sight.

Nobody said anything.

Finally, they reached the stone-vaulted entrance to the park in the glen. There was no sign whatever of the yellow car.

"Hungy,” Linda said, and began to cry.

"This is a good spot,” Harper said. “I just don't want to be down there in the main park with all those damned people."

They were on a dirt road that wound high above the park. They had come through pine woods, and were opposite the top of a waterfall. It was a pleasant, completely isolated site, and Harper drew the car in beneath the shade of a young elm and some pines, beside a stone fireplace.

"We should've brought hamburgers,” Julia said, climbing from the car. She stood there a moment and tugged at her shorts with both hands, then opened the rear door and let Linda out. Linda ran toward the stone fireplace and began slapping it with both hands.

"Not so hungry, anyway,” Harper said. Then he said quickly, “I will be, probably. How about waiting awhile, huh? O. K.?"

"I'm starved, Dell—really. Let's eat. If we don't, we'll have trouble on our hands."

He looked at her suddenly.

"I mean, Linda's full of the dickens this afternoon."

Harper brought two blankets from the car, spread them on pine-needled ground. Julia brought the picnic basket and the gallon thermos jug of lemonade.

"You'd better get that stack of newspapers in the trunk,” she said. “All right?"

"Sure."

Harper began to whistle. He returned to the car, flung open the trunk, picked up an armful of pillows, and the small stack of old newspapers. He closed the trunk and returned to the blankets. The sound of the waterfall rose through the afternoon. Sunlight streaked in slim shafts between the branches of trees. Wind sighed softly in the pines.

"It's nice out here,” Harper said. “A few hours away from things—everything. Quiet. I just feel like eating and laying around. Glad we didn't go over to the Martins, aren't you?"

"I thought you weren't hungry."

"Am now."

Julia set out the picnic dinner. Sandwiches. A bowl of potato salad. A cake. A thermos of coffee, and the gallon of lemonade. There were pickles and peanut butter, radishes, celery, apples, oranges, olives—the works. The Harpers always ate heavily when they went on a picnic.

Linda ran, fell and sprawled across the blanket, two chubby hands reaching toward the stack of sandwiches on the waxed paper.

After she was picked up, they sat down on the blanket and began eating.

"What'd you think of old Holdsby's sermon?” Harper asked, around a mouthful of chicken. Julia held a pickle and Linda bit off a small piece, made a face, and spit it out. Julia tossed the small bit that Linda had rejected in among the trees, toward a thick growth of low bushes.

"Oughta use the trash can,” Harper said. “What'd you think of—?"

"I didn't listen,” Julia said. She looked at him, chewing. She swallowed. “He bored me silly today. I don't know. Sometimes—"

"Yeah, I know."

"What'd you think?"

"I dunno,” Harper said, belching lightly.

The distant sound of a car's engine that was being raced filtered up through the woods, the afternoon, above the sound of the waterfall, and seemed to drop like some kind of explosion among them. Neither spoke. Linda was busy with a piece of chocolate cake, her fingers in thick icing.

The sound became louder.

The sound lessened.

Harper seemed to relax.

The sound of the engine increased and abruptly the yellow and chrome car was beside their own, parked, with the shouting young men leaping over the sides, moving toward them.

Harper came halfway to his feet, a chicken sandwich in one hand, chewing, trying to swallow, choking.

The yellow-haired youth walked toward them.

"What you know?” he said. “A picnic. Isn't that nice?"

They all sang in a loud chorus, “We think it's wonderful."

The yellow-haired leader stared at Julia. She was kneeling on the blanket, looking up at him. Harper came all the way to his feet, still chewing, still trying to swallow.

"We want some too,” the four young men behind the yellow-haired one sang. “We want a lit-tul bit of ev-ry—thing. We're hungy!"

"Hungy,” Linda echoed.

"What?” Harper said, managing to swallow.

"Hungy,” they sang. “We hungy, daddio."

Julia did not move, kneeling there on the blanket.

The yellow-haired one came around beside Julia and knelt on one knee and flung his arms wide. His sunburn was very bright. “Will you feed us, you sweet little darling? I wouldn't ask your old man, ‘cause I know he's mean.” He lowered his voice. “But I'd ask you, baby.” He stood up and looked across the blanket at the others. “Wouldn't you ask her?” he called.

"We'd ask that baby anything,” they chorused. “We think she's the nuts."

Harper stood there. He moved toward them, then stopped. “What?” he said. “Get out of here. What are you doing? You hear me?"

"Please,” Julia said to the yellow-haired one. “Go away—leave us alone. Can't you see—?"

"She says can't we see?” the yellow-haired one said. His face had changed. He leered down at her. They all ran over beside her. “She's cra-a-a-azy!” one yelled.

Harper grabbed at a chunky fellow wearing dark blue shorts and an open white shirt. The chunky fellow didn't even look at Harper—he just shoved. Harper reeled violently backwards and fell flat.

"We see you, baby,” they chorused, circling Julia.

"We dig you, too,” the yellow-haired one said.

Linda giggled and pulled at the chunky one's shoe. He reached down and patted her head. A red-haired youth saw him do it, and moved behind Julia and reached down and smoothed her hair. He snarled both hands in her hair and slowly bent her head back, until she was looking up at him. He leaned close to her and licked his lips.

The yellow-haired one knelt on the blanket. “Look,” he said. “Look at all the crazy food.” He unwrapped a sandwich. “Chicken sandwiches.” He smelled of it, tossed it over his shoulder. He grabbed a handful of olives and threw them up into the air. “Olives,” he said. He began to grab everything in sight, one thing at a time, naming it, then throwing it into the air. “Chocolate cake! Zoom! Orange! Ham sandwich! Zoom—zoom! Celery—look at that crazy celery! Peanut butter!” The jar smashed against a tree. They all began grabbing food and throwing it into the air.

Harper moved toward the yellow-haired one with his hands held out, saying words. The youth picked up the thermos of lemonade. It was open. He sniffed at the opening. “Have you had any of this?” he asked Harper.

"I'll get the cops,” Harper said. He shouted, “You hear me? Get out of here and let us alone!"

"Fighting spirit,” one of them said.

"He's a gone cat,” another said.

"Real gone."

"He's dead."

"He don't like us."

"Shame."

"He looks mean."

"Looks and is, two different things."

"He sure ain't is."

"Man, you're frozen solid."

"Crazy."

"Wait,” the yellow-haired one said. “He wants some lemonade. He hasn't had any."

Three of them grabbed Harper and held him, forced him down to the ground. The yellow-haired one stood above him and poured the lemonade on Harper's face until the thermos gurgled empty. Harper knelt there, gasping, spraying lemonade.

Julia Harper was on her feet now. “Stop it,” she said. She moved quickly toward her husband. “Did you hear me? You boys, stop it—now!"

The red-haired young man grabbed her around the waist, slapped her bare thigh with the flat of his hand. “We got your message, baby,” he said.

Julia tried to pull away from the red-head. He yanked her to him harshly, holding her against him, held her face and kissed her. She fought and struggled violently in his arms, but he held her very tightly, kissing her.

The yellow-haired one watched Harper. The young man scratched his head, watching Harper. Harper knelt on the ground, his hair hanging down, covered with lemon rinds and blobs of unmelted sugar. There were lemon pits in his hair.

"Stop!" Julia said sharply. She gasped.

"She's a bomb,” the one who held her said. “A great big, wonderful bomb, I tell you. Wasn't I right?"

Harper started to get up.

The yellow-haired one said, “You do what you're thinking and I'll smash your head in.” Then he said. “You weren't going to do anything, anyways—were you?"

Harper looked at him, and that was all.

The yellow-haired one said. “My great Jesus Christ. This big man sure scares."

Linda ran around on the blanket, then began to cry.

The yellow-haired one dropped the gallon thermos and called out, “Billy. Take care of the kid. You got the duty."

"Please!" Julia said.

"She told me ‘please',” the redhead said. “Wow!"

Harper stood up, lemonade-drenched. The yellow-haired youth stared at him. Then he stepped over to Harper and shoved him in the direction of Julia and the redhead. Harper stumbled forward and the chunky fellow in the blue shorts brought his foot up and kicked Harper in the face.

Harper fell down and did not move.

"Take care of him,” the yellow-haired one said. “Tie him to a tree. He's faking. Hurry up!"

A tall, lanky boy took Linda by the hand and moved quietly over beside the yellow and chrome hotrod, talking to her. “You going to grow up like your mommy?” he asked. “Tell me the truth, are you?” He paused. “'Cause if you are, I'll stand right here and wait."

Harper came to his feet again. The yellow-haired one turned lithely, stepped up to him and shook his head sadly. Then he set himself with both feet planted flat and wide apart and struck with his right fist so hard Harper flipped and struck the ground like a plank.

"Now, tie him to a tree, like I said."

Two of them took Harper over to the nearest pine, dragging him along the ground. One ran to the chrome and yellow car and returned with a length of rope. They lifted him to a sitting position and tied him to the tree. He stared groggily, moving his lips—watching his wife, Julia.

"Please, little girl,” the one with Linda said. “Tell me the absolute truth now. Don't you fib to me. Are you going to grow them,” he made a gesture with both hands near his chest, “like your mama?"

The other four stood in a circle around Julia.

"Dell!” Julia called. “Dell—do something."

They laughed. “He's faking,” one of them said.

"You've got to stop this,” she said, breathing rapidly. She wasn't crying, but she was close to tears. She stamped her foot. “Go away!” she shouted. “Leave us alone!"

"Oh, crazy!” one of them yelled. “She jiggles!"

"Go ahead and scream your head off,” the yellow-haired one said. “Nobody can hear you, darling. The falls makes too much noise. We know, don't we guys?"

"We know ev—ry—thing,” they chorused.

"'Cause we come to this spot a lot,” the yellow-haired one said.

"What do you want?” Julia said.

"Strip, baby,” the yellow-haired one said. “Just strip, that's all."

"What? Dell—Dell!"

"Run, Julia!” Harper shouted. “For God's sake, run!"

"Strip,” the yellow-haired one said. “Let's see the goodies."

"Are—are you crazy?” Julia said in a whisper. She started backing away from them. They were in a circle around her. One of them knocked his knee against her leg.

"Take your clothes off,” the yellow-haired one said. “Or we'll do it for you. Whichever way you like, honey. We're going to have a picnic, too—'cause we got your message."

"What do you mean?” Julia said.

The yellow-haired one stepped up to her, grabbed the front of her jersey and yanked down on it, ripping it. Then he moved back again.

"Whichever way you want,” he said.

Julia Harper stared at them.

"We like to watch,” one said.

"Run,” her husband said. “Run, Julia—run."

"Well?” the yellow-haired youth said.

Julia Harper looked at them, then slowly lifted her arms and pulled off the jersey. Then she went on just as the yellow-haired youth told her. There was silence now, with only the sound of the waterfall.

Occasionally, Harper heard her cry out. The last of them was over there behind those bushes with her now. Harper had shouted himself hoarse. He still tried to shout off and on. He stared, his eyes sick and gone. He was defeated.

The bushes were not high. Now and again he could see one of their heads come up above the bushes, grimacing. Twice he saw Julia's feet. There was very little noise now. Finally, the fellows came out from behind the bushes, looked at Harper, then walked over to the car. The yellow-haired one, who had been playing with Linda, turned and walked over to Harper. The rest of them came along.

They did not speak. They just looked at him.

"I'll get you,” Harper said. “Don't ever forget that. I'll get you—I'll get you ... “

They formed a straight line in front of Harper and looked down at him soberly and shook their heads in unison. They stood there shaking their heads for a few seconds. Then abruptly, they turned and ran for the yellow and chrome hot-rod, climbed in, and drove off.

Linda came and stood in front of her father and shook her head.

Harper screamed at her. “Stop—stop it!"

She giggled and began running in circles.

"Julia?” he called. “Julia—are you all right?"

He looked up and she had just stepped out from behind the bushes. She had her shorts on and the torn yellow jersey. She moved slowly and she looked pale and sheened with sweat, and as if she might have been crying. Her hair was damp and snarled, and brown pine needles clung in its dark richness. Lipstick was smeared all around her mouth.

"I couldn't do anything,” Harper said. “Don't look at me like that. There was nothing I could do. What could I do against all of them? Untie me—quick."

She untied him, and he saw the blazing anger and disgust in her eyes. She walked to the car and got in and sat there. Harper gathered the blankets, the picnic basket and put them in the car. He avoided the gallon thermos. He put Linda in the back seat, then quickly slid behind the wheel.

"We'll call the cops,” he said. “Soon as we get to town. First phone we see. We'll stop and phone the cops."

Julia began sobbing, staring straight ahead.

He reached toward her, touched her shoulder. “You all right, we'll stop at a hospital—right away."

She spun away from him, turned and looked at him. Then she flipped the sun-visor down and looked at herself in the mirror. She found her white-beaded purse. Her hands were trembling. She took out her lipstick and as she began to outline her mouth in deep red, apparently oblivious to the way it was smeared, sobs broke convulsively from her.

"I couldn't do anything,” Harper was saying. “They knocked the hell out of me, Julia. I couldn't do any—"

"No! No! Of course not!” She threw her purse to one side, tears of anger and frustration streaming down her face. “They—they would've—beat you—"

"You saw how it was."

"Oh, yes. Sure.” She was sobbing without restraint now. “I'm glad you didn't—do anything."

"What?” he said, thoroughly puzzled.

Julia straight-armed the sun visor back into place. “I said, I'm glad you didn't do anything, Dell. Because I liked it, Dell. I liked every minute of it. Every God damned minute of it!"

[Back to Table of Contents]

FRAME by FRANK KANE

The phone on the night table started to ring shrilly, discordantly. Johnny Liddell groaned, cursed softly, dug his head into the pillow, but the noise refused to go away. He opened one eye experimentally, peered at the half lowered shade and noted that it was still dark.

He tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes, but it wouldn't wipe away. The phone kept ringing. Finally, he reached out and lifted the receiver off its hook.

"Yeah?” he growled sleepily.

"This is Laury Lane. Come out here right away. That man of yours is going crazy and—” The voice was drowned out by the flat, ugly bark of a shot. The line went dead.

Liddell was suddenly wide awake. And ice cold. He started to jiggle the cross bar on the phone. “Hello. Hello.” The only answer was the soft click of a phone being hung up at the other end.

Liddell continued to jiggle the cross bar. The metallic voice of the operator cut in: “What number are you calling?"

"I'm not calling a number. Somebody was calling me. We've been cut off. Can you get them back?"

"I must have the number."

Liddell growled deep in his chest. “Never mind, thanks. They'll probably call back.” He tossed the receiver back on its hook, started stuffing his legs into his trousers. He headed for the bathroom, completed the waking-up process by splashing ice cold water into his face, then finished dressing. He shrugged into a shoulder harness, clipped his .45 into place, covering it with a jacket. He was headed for his garage less than ten minutes after the phone had started to ring.

2.

Laury Lane lived in a small colony of two-acre plot estates just outside of Sands Point on Long Island's North Shore. Johnny Liddell headed out Northern Boulevard, making the forty-minute ride in something short of a half hour.

The house itself was set back from the highway and shielded from the road by a row of evergreens. Liddell swung through the stone pillars that supported a rarely-closed iron gate, followed the short winding driveway to the house. There were two other cars parked in front of the garage, on the concrete apron. Liddell left his in front of the house, walked up the two steps to the door.

There were no lights in the hall, but he could see a triangle of yellow light toward the back of the house were it spilled from an open door. He debated the advisibility of walking around back, decided to knock.

Almost immediately the door opened and he could make out the bulky figure of a man silhouetted in the opening.

"I'm Johnny Liddell. I want to see Miss Lane."

The door opened wider. “Come on in.” The man stepped aside, waited until Liddell had entered, fell in behind him. “Straight ahead to the study."

Liddell followed the darkened hallway to the open door. He stopped at the entrance to the room and looked around. Two men looked at him incuriously. One of them, a tall man in a rumpled blue suit and a battered fedora, grunted, “Who's this, Allen?"

"Name's Liddell. Says he wants to see Miss Lane."

"Be my guest,” the man in the rumpled suit grunted. He walked over to where a blanket was draped over a suggestively shaped bulge, pulled it back.

Laury Lane lay on her back, her arm crooked languidly over her head. Her thick blonde hair was a tangle on the thick pile of the rug. Her green eyes were half closed. Her lips, full and inviting, seemed set in a half smile. A hole midway between her full breasts had spilled an ugly red stain on the white silk of her evening gown.

The man in the blue suit watched the scowl ridge Liddell's forehead. He dropped the blanket back over the girl's face. “You say you're Liddell?"

The private detective nodded, dug into his pocket, brought out a pack of cigarettes and held it up for approval. When the lieutenant nodded, he stuck one in the corner of his mouth where it waggled. “I'm Liddell. Who're you?"

The man in the blue suit pinched at his nostrils with thumb and forefinger. “Murray. Lieutenant in homicide out here. Mind telling me what brings you out this way at this hour?"

"Lane was a client. She wanted to see me."

Murray pursed his lips, considered it. He tugged a dog-eared memo book from his hip pocket, jotted down some notes. “So you just drop by at—” He pushed up his sleeve, consulted his wrist watch— “at two o'clock in the morning?” His eyes rolled up from the notebook to Liddell's face. “Keep kind of late office hours, don't you?"

"Something had happened. She called me to get right out here. Something she wanted to talk to me about."

The homicide man wet the point of his pencil on the tip of his tongue. “What was it that couldn't wait?"

Liddell shrugged. “She didn't say."

"Maybe we can tell you,” Murray grunted. He led the way to the french doors that opened onto the back patio. “Put some light out here, Al,” he snapped at one of the other men.

Liddell followed him, stared down at the body of a man, sprawled face down on the patio. He knelt beside the body, lifted the hat off its face, swore under his breath.

"Know him?” Murray wanted to know.

Liddell nodded grimly. “One of my boys. Name's Tate Morrow."

"Have you any idea what he was doing out here, or is it customary with your organization to make late calls on clients?"

"Tate was assigned to Lane. He was bodyguarding her.” He straightened up, brushed the folds out of his knees. “Any idea of what happened?"

Murray grinned humorlessly. “We thought you might have some idea. Busting out here this way."

Liddell shook his head. “No ideas.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette, wrinkled his nose in distaste, dropped the cigarette to the patio floor, ground it out. “Could be that Tate heard the shot that got the blonde, came running, and—"

The homicide man snorted. “Why don't you start levelling? You can see he was headed away from her, not toward her.” He jabbed his hand into his jacket pocket, brought up a small gun, wrapped in a handkerchief. “This was lying right next to her hand. It's got one bullet fired.” His eyes were bleak, unfriendly. “My guess is that the one in his back will match it."

"That's crazy and you know it. Why should Lane shoot the guy who was protecting her? And if she did, who shot her?"

"He did,” Murray snapped. “Show him, Al."

The other detective walked over, spilled the contents of an envelope into the palm of his hand, held them toward Liddell. “Diamonds. We found them right near his hand, where he dropped them when he fell.” Murray turned his back, walked into the den. “That's the way we see it,” he said flatly.

"That's the way you're supposed to see it. It's a set-up, can't you see?” Liddell argued. “You think that babe could get a gun, aim it and bring him down with one shot when she's wearing a .45 slug for a lavaliere?” He caught the homicide man by the arm, swung him around. “That babe was deader than Kelsey the minute that slug tagged her. And my guess is that Tate was dead before that."

Murray caught the private detective's hand, lifted it from his arm. “Why should anybody go to all that trouble?"

"The diamonds,” Liddell snapped.

"And then leave without them?” Murray shook his head. “You're not making sense."

"You're making less. You don't think that handful of little stones is what Tate was guarding, do you? Lane had over $150,000 worth of unset stones. Where are they?"

The homicide lieutenant looked thoughtful, plucked at his lower lip. “That's the first I hear of this. Fill me in."

Liddell found another cigarette, lit it. “Lane was getting ready to retire. Did you know that?"

Murray shook his head, nodded for one of his men to answer a ring at the front door. “I don't know much about the theatrical crowd. All I know I read in the columns. I thought she was a big star?"

Liddell shrugged. “She's had her day. But she's been fading fast for the past couple of years. This year she decided to go back home. She was British, you know."

"Excuse me.” Murray went over to the door to shake hands with a small man carrying a brown instrument case. They carried on a whispered conversation for a few minutes; then the newcomer went over and pulled the blanket back from the dead woman. Murray walked over to where Liddell was standing.

"The medical examiner,” he explained. “So she was going back to Britain. So?"

"She was turning everything she had into cash.” Liddell took the cigarette from between his lips, scowled at the glowing end. “For years she's been collecting diamonds. They're easier to hide, and the Treasury boys can't put them onto an adding machine like they can the contents of a safe deposit box.” He took a last drag on the cigarette, stubbed it out in an ash tray. “She hired us to keep an eye on her until she turned the stones into cash."

Two men from the M.E.'s office brought in a stretcher. Liddell broke off and watched glumly as they transferred the blonde to the stretcher, strapped her on.

"Whoever killed her knew about the stones. So he tried to make it look as though Tate did the job."

"Could be,” Murray agreed.

"You've got other ideas?” Liddell wanted to know.

The homicide man shrugged. “Just ideas, so far. No proof.” He reached over, picked a thread off Liddell's jacket and let it float to the ground. “Suppose your boy here did stop one, but his confederate managed to get away with the bulk of it?” He looked Liddell in the eye. “Who knew about the diamonds?"

Liddell scowled. Hard lines joined his nostrils with the end of his mouth, hard lumps formed on his jaw as he clenched his teeth. “Mike Murphy, Lane's personal manager, for one. It was his idea to hire the agency because the stuff wasn't insured."

"Who else?"

Liddell studied the homicide man's face carefully. “Louis Arms. He was supposed to be the buyer."

"Arms, eh?” Murray raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips. “Anybody else?"

Liddell shrugged angrily. “Not that I know of. Not unless they spread it around."

"Think they were likely to?” Murray sneered.

"No."

The homicide man nodded. “Then that leaves just you and your boy, Liddell.” He jabbed his pencil at the private detective. “But you can undoubtedly tell us where you were all evening?"

"In bed."

"Witnesses?"

"This happened to be my off night. I was in bed alone."

Murray squinted, plucked at his lower lip. “But you got a phone call from the Lane girl and she told you to get right out here?"

Liddell nodded. “That's right."

The homicide man walked over to the desk in the corner of the room, lifted the telephone from its cradle. “We don't have dials out here yet, you know. Pretty small time stuff to a big operator like you, I guess.” He turned his attention to the phone. “Millie? Ed Murray from Homicide. Say, about an hour ago, do you remember a call Laury Lane made to New York? Number was—” He raised his eyebrows at Liddell.

"Homeyer 5-7236,” Liddell grunted.

"Number was Homeyer 5-7236.” He waited a moment, then pursed his lips, looked at Liddell from under lowered lids. “You're sure of that?” He nodded, dropped the receiver on its hook. “There haven't been any calls from this number to a New York number tonight."

"Maybe I got the message by ouija board,” Liddell growled.

"Maybe you didn't get the message."

"Let me get this straight, Murray. You're trying to say that I didn't get a call from Lane, that I came out here to meet Tate and cut up the dame's diamonds. Then what happened to them?"

Murray grinned bleakly. “Maybe this isn't the first time you came out tonight. Maybe you got here right after the shooting, picked up as much of the loot as you could find in the dark, hit back to town, stashed it and then came back to put on this injured innocence act."

"That's how it is, eh?"

Murray nodded. “That's how it is. What are you going to do about it?"

"You mean I've got a choice? I'm going to find the real killer and hand him to you on a silver platter. You don't have to worry, though, I'll label him for you so you'll know him when you fall over him."

"And if I decide to take you in and book you?"

"On what? There's not a judge in the county would hold me on your pipe dream. It's like you said, you haven't got a thing but an idea—a screwy idea. I'll be around if you want to talk to me."

3.

Mike Murphy lived in the Livermore Arms, an expensive pile of mortar and plate glass overlooking the East River at Beekman Place. Johnny Liddell parked his car out front, plowed across the deep pile rug in the ornate lobby to the desk. A white-haired man in an oxford grey suit with a wing collar made a half-hearted attempt to wipe the boredom out of his eyes as Liddell approached, but didn't quite make it. His teeth were too shiny and too even to be real and Liddell had a passing suspicion about the color in his cheeks.

"Can I help you?” His fingers toyed with the triangle of white linen that peeped from his breast pocket.

"Will you ring Mike Murphy's apartment? Tell him Johnny Liddell must see him immediately."

"Certainly, sir.” The white-haired man sat down at a small switchboard, plugged in one of the wires. He licked at his lips before he spoke into the mouthpiece, nodded, then pulled the plug from the board. “It's rather late, but he says he'll see you.” He smoothed the hair over his ears with the flat of his hand. “It's the penthouse."

Liddell nodded, headed for a bank of elevators in the rear of the lobby. He jabbed the button marked Penthouse, chafed at the slow progress the cage made upward. The elevator glided to a smooth stop; the doors slid noiselessly open. Liddell crossed the small hall, pushed the buzzer set at the side of the door three times. There was the stuttering of a latch and the door swung open.

Mike Murphy stood in the middle of the room, a glass in his hand. He was tall, his broad tapering shoulders seeming to balance precariously on the slimness of his waist and hips. He wore his thick, black hair long on the sides, plastered back against his head. On top it was a mass of curls. His mouth was smeared with lipstick; his eyes were slightly off focus. He waved Liddell in.

"Come in, come in.” He called over his shoulder. “You can come on out, honey. It's a friend."

The door to an inner room opened and a long-legged redhead walked out. Her hair had been loosened and fell over her shoulders in a molten cascade. She had on a blue gown that gave ample evidence she wore nothing under it. As she walked, her breasts traced wavering patterns on the shiny silk of the gown. Her eyes were slanted, green. She looked Liddell over, seemed to like what she saw.

"This is Claire Readon, Liddell. Meet a real live private eye, baby."

"You should have come earlier. The party was fun.” Her voice was sultry, disturbing.

Murphy waved toward a small portable bar that showed signs of having had a busy evening. “You'll have to make your own, Liddell. I don't think I could make it across the room."

Liddell walked over to the bar, found some ice cubes in a scotch cooler, dumped them into a glass. He spilled two fingers of bourbon over them, swirled it around the glass. “When's the last time you saw Lane?"

Murphy's features were marred with an annoyed frown. “Tonight, when I took the stuff out to her.” He took a deep swallow from his glass. “How's that kid of yours getting along? That blondie can be fun when she—"

"Tate's dead. So's Lane.” Liddell smelled his glass, took a swallow. It tasted as good as it smelled.

The other man did a slow double take. He blinked his eyes, shook his head. “Dead? How?"

Liddell shrugged. “Murder. The stones are missing. Looks like it was a heist."

"Wait a minute.” Murphy put down the glass, walked across the room and disappeared into what was apparently a bathroom. There was a sound of water running. When he walked out, some of the vagueness in his eyes was gone. “When'd it happen?"

"Near as I can judge, around one. She called me, and I heard the shot. By the time I got out there, the cops were all over the place.” He drained his glass, set it down. “They figure it for an inside job.” He looked over at the redhead. “How many people were in on the deal, Mike?"

Murphy shrugged. “Just me and Laury on our end.” He bit at the cuticle on his nail. “Arms, of course. He was buying the stuff."

"You didn't leak?"

"Me?” Murphy shook his head emphatically. “Hell, I never even mentioned it to Claire. Did I, kid?"

The redhead squirmed into a more comfortable position on the couch that caused the gown to dip breathtakingly at the neckline. “I still don't know what you're talking about.” Her words were softly slurred. “What's more, I don't care. I came to this party for fun, not to talk business."

Murphy ignored her, smoothed some of the wrinkles out of his brow with the tips of his fingers. “This is a hell of a mess. You knew the stuff wasn't insured?” Liddell nodded.

"The police know about the stones?” Murphy asked.

"Yeah."

The big man groaned. “Now it comes. The Feds are going to want to know where the dough came from and why it wasn't declared. What a mess. If she'd only listened to me—"

"I listened to you, Mike. It didn't do me any good—so far,” the redhead said. “I guess I'm not smart like Laury."

"You're something better. You're alive,” Murphy said. He turned back to Liddell. “It looks like Arms."

Liddell freshened his drink, took a sip. “Looks like.” He looked from Murphy to the girl and back. “What time did you get the stuff out to her, Mike?"

"Ten-thirty. Eleven, maybe. I got back here in time to pick Red up at the stage door after the show. She's in the 1954 Revue." He frowned as the redhead held her glass out to Liddell for a refill. “Maybe you better take it easy, baby. The cops may be around asking questions."

The redhead grinned saucily. “Don't give it another thought, Mike. I'm over eighteen.” She accepted the refill and started to work on it, her eyes giving Liddell the full treatment over the rim.

"You got back here, then, maybe at twelve?” Liddell asked.

Murphy considered, nodded. “Just about."

"Didn't leave after that?” Murphy's eyes narrowed. “Say what you mean. Are you asking me if I was anywhere near Lane's place when it happened? You think I was in on it?"

Liddell shook his head. “Look. There were only four or five people who knew Lane had the diamonds tonight. I'm trying to eliminate as I go along. Got any objections?"

Murphy stared at him sullenly. “I don't like it."

"Maybe Tate Morrow don't like being dead. But he is. How about it?"

"I didn't go out all night."

"Can you prove it?"

"If I have to."

"You have to."

The big man glared at him for a moment, dropped his eyes, shrugged. “There were eight or ten others here with us. Three or four of the other babes in the line at the Revue brought their dates up here. The party just broke about a half an hour ago.” He looked over at the redhead. “That right, Claire?"

The redhead nodded solemnly. “We've been here ever since show break. Nobody left the place, not even for a paper."

Liddell drained his glass, set it down. “Okay, that's all I wanted to know.” The phone started to ring. Murphy lumbered across the room to answer it.

The big man talked for a moment, then held his hand over the mouthpiece. “The cops. They want me to go out to identify Laury.” He took his hand from the mouthpiece, talked for a moment and hung up. He wiped the thin film of perspiration off his upper lip, with the side of his hand. “I'm glad you broke the news to me first.” He glanced at his watch. “Anything else you want from me, Liddell? I've got to get out there."

Liddell said, “Just one thing. These stones—any way of identifying them?"

The big man shook his head. “They were all loose. She wanted it that way. Some half-smart chiseler told her they were easier to sell and the Government couldn't trace them.” He picked a cigarette from a container on the coffee table, fitted it to his lips with shaking hands. “That's why Arms was so interested. He was getting a buy at the price he was set to pay and the stuff wasn't even hot."

"Did Arms know that you hired the agency to watch over Lane?"

The pinched look was back in Murphy's eyes. “No. I was afraid to tell him, because I was afraid he'd kick over the deal. He didn't want anybody to know about it. Just Laury and me. And him."

"Mighty convenient."

"What do you mean?"

Liddell grinned humorlessly. “Suppose something happened to Laury and you? Then there'd be nobody to say that Laury ever had $150,000 in unset diamonds, and they wouldn't have cost Arms anything."

Murphy started, the cigarette fell from his slack lips. “You don't think he meant to have us both killed?"

"Why not?” Liddell walked over to where the cigarette lay smouldering on the rug, picked it up and crushed it out. “Maybe the killer thought Tate was you and knocked him off without knowing. Maybe right now Arms thinks he's safe, that the only two people who knew about the deal aren't in any condition to do any talking."

"But when he finds out?” Murphy ran his finger around the inside of his collar as though it had suddenly become tight. He dropped into a chair. “What then?"

"He'll probably try to correct his mistake,” Liddell said. “But, by then, maybe we'll have him in a spot where he won't be able to."

"What are you going to do?"

Liddell picked up his hat, set it on the back of his head. “I'm going out to Arms’ place and have a little talk with him. If I get to him before he finds out you're still alive, I may be able to surprise him into giving himself away."

"You're going out there alone?"

Liddell grinned. “Like to come along?"

The big man shook his head emphatically. “No, thank you."

From the couch came the sound of a soft snore. Liddell walked over, took the empty glass from between the redhead's fingers, threw a knitted cover over her. The girl stirred slightly, purred softly and curled up into a ball on the couch.

4.

Louis Arms operated the Casa Demain, a plush booby trap on the south shore of Long Island. From the outside, it gave no indication of its character, but looked like any large country estate that had been kept up. Shrubs, lawn, trees were all in good condition, only a small brass nameplate affixed to one of the pillars at the gate identifying it as a roadhouse.

Tonight it looked different than it had on the other occasions he had visited it. Without the flattery of a hidden battery of floodlights, it was just a tired old grey-white frame building, sprawling in the darkness. Tonight there were no cars in the parking lot, there was no high-pitched conversation from tuxedoed marks and their evening-dressed companions. Just a tired old grey white building relaxing with its makeup off.

Johnny Liddell left his car under a big tree a hundred yards off the entrance to the Casa. He cut across the shrubbery and headed for the rear of the building where Arms had his private office. He rapped at the door, waited. After a moment, the door opened a crack. “Yeah?” a voice asked.

"I want to see Arms. Tell him it's Johnny Liddell."

The door opened wider; the man stepped aside. “He's expecting you."

Liddell walked in, froze as the snout of a gun jabbed into his ribs. He made no attempt to resist as the man at the door relieved him of his .45, expertly fanned him.

"You know your way to the office,” the man told him.

Liddell walked to the door at the end of the corridor marked Private, waited while the man with him knocked, then pushed the door open.

Louis Arms sprawled comfortably in an armchair. He waved to Liddell as he came into the room. The man with Liddell pushed him into the room, closed the door behind him.

"Hello, Liddell. You made good time.” Louis Arms’ voice was soft, silky with an elusive trace of the Boston Back Bay where he'd gotten his start. He was long and loose-jointed. His sandy hair had receded from his brow to the crown of his head, exposing a freckled pate. He had a ready smile that plowed white furrows in the mahogany of his face. It transformed everything about his expression except his eyes. They were cold, wary.

"Murphy?” Liddell wanted to know.

The man in the chair shrugged. “He's really got the wind up. That ice the broad was selling came from under the carpet. He can't account for it."

"That's his headache,” Liddell growled.

The ready smile was back on Arm's lips. He shook his head. “It's yours. He's going to tell the cops it was all a pipe dream of yours, this story about me buying a lot of undercover ice."

Liddell's eyes went bleak. “And you?"

Arms reached out, snagged a cigarette from a table at his elbow. “I didn't ask you to drag me into it. It's an out and I'm taking it.” He hung the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, touched a match to it. “A cop named Murray called me about an hour ago. I told him the same thing."

"Thanks, pal."

"Look at it my way. I got enough grief without shopping for any. This broad makes me an offer, I take it. I wasn't in the market to get mixed up in any murder rap.” He took the cigarette from between his lips, rolled it between his fingers. “Get it, Liddell? I don't want any part of it."

"What am I supposed to do? Hold the bag? You got the wrong boy, Arms. I lost one of my men in this deal. I don't stand still for that."

The cold smile was still pasted on the lean man's face. “I heard all about how tough you are, Liddell.” The pat smile faded. “Maybe you haven't heard about me. I'm a guy don't like to be played for a patsy. By you or anybody else."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that if there were any diamonds in that place tonight, you got them,” Arms told him bluntly. “Only three people knew about that deal outside of you and your stooge. One of them's dead, the other was with a mob all night and never went near the place—and me,” he hit his chest with the side of his hand, “I know about me. That leaves you, shamus."

"That's what you think, Arms. I told you I wasn't taking this mess lying down. You're right about who knew about it, but you forgot one thing. There's three people I'm sure of—and you're not one of them. The blonde is dead, Murphy's got an iron-clad alibi, and I'm sure about me. In my book, that leaves you.” He jabbed his finger at the man in the chair. “And that's where I'm going to pin it."

The man who had let him into the room caught Liddell by the arm, swung him around. He was an inch or two shorter than Liddell, but what he lacked in height, he more than made up in breadth. His face was expressionless, dead-pan. “The boss don't like guys to raise their voices at him, Liddell.” His voice was flat. “Don't do it again."

Liddell looked from the dead-pan face to the gun in the man's fist. “Don't count on the gun too much, Junior. I've seen guys take things like that away from guys and feed it to them."

The dead-pan was disturbed by an upward twist at the corners of the mouth. “You sure talk a rough evening.” He tossed the gun over to where Arms sat. “Maybe you'd like to live it up?"

He gave Liddell no chance to sidestep his lunge. Automatically, the private detective fell away from it, saved himself the full force of the assault. The guard's shoulder caught him in the side, slammed him back against the door. He stumbled to his feet, found his arm in a lock. He struggled to free it, had the sensation of flying through the air. He slammed against the wall and slid to a sitting position. He stayed there for a moment, shook his head to clear away the cobwebs. The chunky guard stood over him, feet braced.

"How do you like the kid's style, shamus?” Arms’ silky voice insinuated itself, seeming far away. “That's judo. Learned it in the Marines."

Liddell braced his feet, slid upright against the wall.

The guard licked at his lips, lunged again. This time, Liddell was waiting. He chopped viciously at the side of the man's neck, heard him gasp. As the guard started to sink, Liddell brought his knee up, caught him in the face, straightened him up. Then he put every ounce of strength behind a right overhand.

The guard's head went back as though it were hinged. Liddell sank his left into his midsection to the cuff, stepped back and let the guard fall face forward. He hit the floor with a thud and didn't move.

"That's barroom brawling.” Liddell wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I learned it in McGowan's Saloon on Third Avenue."

Arms sat in the chair, the snout of the gun pointed at Liddell's midsection. The private detective ignored the gun, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, lit one. He took a deep breath, exhaled through his nostrils.

"Louis isn't going to like you,” the man in the chair grunted. “He learned other things in the Marines. They're much more permanent."

"You're scaring me to death, Arms.” Liddell stepped across the guard's body and walked over to where the night club operator sat. “If you're going to pull that trigger, pull it now. Because I'm walking out of here. And from the minute I do, I'm going to spend every second proving that you killed the Lane broad."

Arms’ face went white under its tan. The finger on the trigger tightened for a moment, then relaxed. He forced the smile back into place. “Don't worry, Liddell. I'm not messing up my rug.” He dropped the gun into his lap. “There are other days and other places. Be smart and don't get under my feet. Or I might have to stamp you flat."

Liddell turned his back on him, walked over to where the guard still lay, breathing noisily. He turned him over, pulled his .45 from the man's jacket pocket and hooked it into his holster. He turned, stared at the man in the chair for a moment. “Okay, Arms. It looks like your pot. Murphy will go along because he don't want the Feds snooping. So you've got aces back to back. But take the advice of an old timer. Don't push your luck too hard on just one pair."

"I've done a little gambling in my time, too, Liddell,” Arms drawled. “I've got a few pet rules of my own. Such as, don't bluff when there's no limit on table stakes."

5.

It was almost light when Johnny Liddell got back to the Livermore Arms. He parked his car around the corner and walked to where he could keep an eye on the entrance.

He was on his third cigarette when a cab skidded to a stop at the curb, and the familiar broad-shouldered bulk of Mike Murphy stepped out onto the sidewalk. While the big man was paying the cabby, Liddell walked over to where he stood.

"It took you a long time, Mike,” Liddell told him softly.

The big man started, turned. “You shouldn't sneak up on people like that, Liddell.” His face was a damp grey in the early morning light. “I've had a bad night."

"Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better."

"Look,” a hard note crept into the big man's voice. “Don't go giving me a hard time. Drop around in the morning, and—"

Liddell pulled his right hand out of his jacket pocket far enough for Murphy to see that it held a gun. “Why put off until tomorrow what can be knocked off tonight?” He flipped his butt at the gutter. “I don't like people walking out and leaving me in the middle, Mike. You and I have some talking to do."

Murphy shrugged resignedly. “Okay, come on up.” He turned his back on the gun, led the way through the lobby toward the penthouse elevator. When the car had started upward, he said, “I guess you've got a right to be sore, but there was nothing else I could do, Liddell."

"What am I supposed to do? Laugh it off like the little good sport I am and stand still for the rap?"

"They can't prove you had any thing to do with it. They think it was the kid. This Tate Morrow guy.” Murphy shrugged. “He's dead. It can't hurt him. You start a stink and a lot of people get hurt. Me, Arms, you, all of us.” The car slid to a stop. Murphy led the way to his apartment and opened the door with a key. “Why not let well enough alone?"

Liddell's smile showed no sign of amusement. “There's a little thing like a reputation to uphold, pal. And another little thing like paying off for your boys. Or wouldn't you understand that?"

"Cut it out. Do you think it feels good for me to have to go see Laury stretched out on a slab in a morgue?” Murphy scaled his hat at a chair, walked over to the bar, poured himself a stiff drink and tossed it off. “But that's no reason why we should foul everybody else up."

"What'd you tell the cops out there?"

Murphy poured some more liquor into his glass. “I denied that I knew anything about any diamonds. I told them that as far as I knew Laury never even heard of Arms.” He drained the glass, set it down. “I told them I didn't know of any connection you had with her."

Liddell showed his teeth in a grim grin. “But when I show them your retainer—"

"It was in cash. One guy's C-notes look pretty much like another's.” Murphy dropped into a chair, raked his fingers through his hair. “I know I'm acting like a heel, Liddell, but that's it."

"Whose idea was this whole thing?"

The man in the chair looked up, chewed on his lower lips. “Arms. It wasn't the police that called when you were here. It was Arms. I had to call him back.” He fumbled through his pockets, came up with a cigarette. “The cops had gotten to him and he denied the whole thing. He told me what would happen to me if I didn't back him up.” His hand shook as he lit the cigarette.

"That's how he knew I was on my way out, eh?"

Murphy nodded. “After you left, I sent Red home in a cab. I got a call from some hick cop named Murray about a half hour after that. I went right out.” He cupped his cigarette in his hand, took a deep drag. “They had her out at the county morgue. I had to identify her."

Liddell scowled down at him. “You're sure nobody but you and Arms was in on this diamond sale? Nobody else? Servants or anybody?"

"Nobody. Arms didn't want a leak. He wouldn't even have let me hire you if he'd known.” He got up, paced the room. “Even if he did do it, I can't spill. They'd have me as an accessory to Lane's tax evasion for one thing. I was her manager and made out all her returns. And besides, Arms probably has an iron-clad alibi and he'd wait it out until the heat was off and get me for it.” He stopped pacing, took a last drag on the cigarette, stubbed it out. “I can't spill."

"Okay,” Liddell growled. “Now at least I know where I stand. But I'm telling you just what I told Arms. I'm going to bust this wide open and I don't care who gets hurt. Someplace along the line, the killer must have made at least one mistake. That's all it takes. Just one."

6.

The morgue was in the basement of the new four-story stone courthouse in Carport. Johnny Liddell wheeled his car into the courthouse parking lot, squeezed it between two whitewashed lines that specified, “For Official Use Only.” He crossed the courtyard, pushed through a revolving door, followed a stencilled arrow that pointed To the Medical Examiner's Office.

The door itself was of frosted glass, bore the legend Medical Examiner's Office with Dr. Harry Mizner in smaller letters under it. Next to it were two huge metal doors on which were lettered simply Morgue.

Johnny Liddell pushed open the frosted glass door and walked into the medical examiner's office. The dank, damp air of the morgue beyond seemed to permeate the room. A painfully thin middle-aged man with a prominent adam's apple looked up from a pile of forms he was filling out. His hair was rumpled; the stub of a cigarette was clenched between his front teeth.

"Dr. Mizner?” Liddell asked.

The thin man shook his head. “I'm his assistant. Can I help you?"

"My name's Liddell. One of my boys was brought in tonight. His name is Tate Morrow. Gunshot."

The thin man scowled, nodded. “Just finished working him up. The doc's in talking with the lieutenant now.” He nodded his head toward the morgue. “You can go in if you like."

Liddell nodded his thanks, headed for the white enamelled door set in the back of the office. As he pushed the door open, a blast of hot, carbolic-laden air enveloped him. At the far end of the room, a small group of men were huddled around one of several white examining tables. Liddell recognized the homicide lieutenant he had encountered in Laury Lane's house earlier in the evening.

Lieutenant Murray showed no signs of enthusiasm as the private detective walked up. He muttered something in a low voice that caused his companion, a short rotund man with a thatch of untidy white hair, to look up.

"You Dr. Mizner?” Liddell addressed the short man.

The medical examiner nodded, studied Liddell curiously. “You were the employer of the dead man?"

Liddell nodded, looked from the M.E. to the homicide man and back. “I thought maybe you might have something to clear the kid. Some evidence that he died before she did or that he didn't fire the gun? Anything that I can hang my hat on."

Dr. Mizner nodded. “We've got plenty for you, my boy. He was dead before that bullet ever hit him.” He nodded to the canvas covered bulge on the table. “Death was caused by a depressed fracture at the base of the skull.” He picked up a sheaf of papers, riffled through it. “The woman didn't kill him, either, from the looks of it. We did a dermal nitrate test soon's we brought her in. Negative."

"Doesn't mean a thing,” Murray growled. “Lots of negative reactions show up even after you do fire a gun."

The M.E. shook his head. “Not in this case. Some guns with a tight breech don't kick back nitrates, but we did a test on this gun. The test showed positive.” He looked over at Liddell. “I've just finished telling the lieutenant that I won't go along with his theory of the killing."

Murray growled deep in his chest, glared at Liddell. “Okay, so you prove to me you're right and I'll admit I was wrong. I've checked both Arms and the girl's manager, Murphy. They both claim your story about a big diamond deal is for the birds. Got a better story that'll stand up?"

Liddell shook his head. “Arms threw the fear of God into Murphy. He got him on the phone right after you checked him. They got together on a story."

"It's your word against theirs. Can you make it stick?"

Liddell tugged at his lower lip with thumb and forefinger. “I don't know. The retainer was paid in cash, and Murphy insisted that it be kept just between Tate himself and me. But he did admit the story in front of a witness."

"Good. Who?"

"His girl. She was at his place when I got there. She's a redhead from the 1954 Revue. Her name's Claire Readon."

Murray tugged his notebook from his pocket, copied the name into it. “Know where she lives?"

Liddell shook his head. “No, but it shouldn't be hard to find out. Joe Gates is the press agent for the show. He knows where all the girls live. Sometimes he has to work up a party at a moment's notice.” Liddell pulled out his wallet, fingered through the cards. “He's at the Edison Hotel. Has a combination office and apartment there.” He consulted his watch. “It's about 5:10 now. We should be able to get him."

"Not we. I'll get him,” Murray growled. He stamped out of the morgue into the M.E.'s office. After a few minutes he was back, his face long.

"Get him?” Liddell wanted to know.

The homicide man nodded. “I got him."

"He tell you where to reach her?"

Murray nodded. “Bellevue morgue. She was killed by a hit-and-run driver about three o'clock this morning."

7.

The Hotel Lowell was on an old stone building on a side street off Seventh Avenue on 47th Street. Its facade was dirty and neglected-looking. Inside, the lobby was dingy, lightless and dusty. A couple of discouraged-looking rubber plants were placed around it in an attempt at decoration, and half a dozen chairs were scattered in strategic places in a futile attempt to make it look cozy.

A gaunt, grey-haired old man with a pince-nez on a sleazy black ribbon stood behind the registration desk, looked askance at Johnny Liddell's unshaven chin, deep lines of fatigue.

"Miss Readon has had an accident. She's not here.” He stopped picking his teeth, sucked at them noisily. “Matter of fact, I hear she's dead."

"How about a room-mate? Understood she shared a room with another girl in the show.” Liddell consulted a pencilled note on the back of an envelope. “Leona Sabell.” He looked up. “She in?"

"Who'd you say you were?” the old man demanded.

"Tell her I'm a detective working on her room-mate's accident.” He interpreted the look of disbelief in the room clerk's eyes. “A private detective. Insurance."

His disbelief washed out, the old man sat down at a neglected looking keyboard, jabbed in a key, talked into the mouthpiece. He tugged out the key and nodded. “She's in 312.” He lost interest in Liddell, went back to an open copy of the Mirror.

A blonde opened the door to 312 in response to his knock. She was wearing a hostess gown that clung closely to a figure he considered worth clinging to. Her thick, glossy blonde hair was caught just above the ears with a bright blue ribbon, then allowed to cascade down over her shoulders.

"You the insurance dick?” She looked him over, stood aside and followed him into the small living room.

"Cozy place you've got here.” Liddell tossed his hat on an end table.

"It's a dump and you know it,” the blonde contradicted him. From close up she looked older than she had in the dim light of the hall. The bright table light mercilessly exposed the fine network of lines under her eyes and the losing fight her makeup was waging with the lines at the sides of her mouth. She looked tired. “You didn't come up here to write the place up for House Beautiful. What's on your mind?"

"Claire."

The blonde's lower lip trembled slightly. “The poor kid. Did they get the one that did it?"

Liddell shook his head.

"What kind of a rat can he be? To hit a kid and let her lay there in the gutter to die like a dog?” she said bitterly.

"I don't think she was hit there.” Liddell picked up two cigarettes from a cup on the coffee table, lit them, and passed one to the girl. “I've had a good look at the place. My guess is she was driven there and dumped."

"Why do you say that?"

Liddell shrugged. “No sign of skid marks, for one thing. For another, when a car plows into somebody, a lot of dirt is dislodged from under the fender. No dirt. In fact, no signs of a hit-and-run."

The blonde stood with the cigarette halfway to her lips. “What are you trying to tell me?"

"I think the kid was murdered. Her body was dumped there in an attempt to make it look like a hit-and-run.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette, let the smoke dribble from his nostrils. “She was crossing from north to south on a one way street, yet the fracture is on the left side of her skull."

"So?"

"The street runs east. If a car tagged her, it would have thrown the right side of her head against the curb."

"Unless it was going the wrong way on the one-way street."

"Unless it was going the wrong way on the one-way street,” he conceded. “But my guess is that there was no car."

"But why should anyone go to all that trouble to kill a kid like Claire? She didn't have an enemy in the world. Everybody was crazy about her."

Liddell watched while the girl crossed the room. The tired lines in her face weren't duplicated in her figure. “You were with her last night. Up at Murph's place?"

The blonde nodded. “Four of the other girls and I."

"What happened?"

"Nothing. Murph picked us up at the stage door after the show. We went up to his place. I left the party about two with the rest of the girls. Claire stayed on."

"She didn't leave the party at all?"

The blonde shook her head. “Nobody did."

"You're sure of that?"

"Positive. It was a pretty good party, but nobody left until it broke.” She took the cigarette from between her lips, studied the carmined end. “Of course, some of the girls and their dates wandered off into other rooms for awhile, but nobody left."

"Claire wander off?"

The blonde caught her full lower lip. “No more than anybody else. They were in Murph's study for awhile."

"Where's that located in relation to the living room?"

"You're blowing up a dry well, mister.” The blonde shook her head. “The study's at the back of the apartment and they would have had to cross the whole living room to get out. I'll swear on anything you want that neither Claire nor Murph left that apartment for even ten minutes."

"How long did Claire know Murph?"

The blonde shrugged. “Six or seven months. She met him at a party over at Lee Stevens’ place. There were a lot of radio people there. Claire thought Murph could help her break into radio."

"Why?"

"He was a big wheel in radio until he took over the Lane dame. I guess he'll go back into it. He has a lot of connections. Claire thought he could help her.” She took a last nervous drag at her cigarette, then crushed it out. “The poor kid. She wanted so much—and the way she had to end up.” She shook her head. “I think you're wrong. There's nobody had any reason to hurt that kid. She never did a thing to a soul."

"Did she ever mention Louis Arms?"

"The hood that runs that joint out on the south shore?"

Liddell nodded.

"Never. I'm sure she didn't know the guy. Why?"

"I don't know. I have a hunch Arms could be the guy who had her killed."

The blonde's jaw dropped. “You're crazy. Why would a big shot like Arms knock off a kid that's hardly got the hayseed out of her ears? This was her first year in town."

"I don't know. Arms doesn't like to leave loose threads hanging around. Maybe Claire was a loose thread.” He reached over, took another cigarette, chain-lit it from the one he held. “She ever mention Laury Lane?"

"Just that Murph was her manager. I don't think she ever met her. Lane was pretty snooty, you know. Didn't mix with chorus girls.” She ridged her forehead, regarded him through narrowed eyes. “How would she be a loose end?"

"I don't know. All I know is that Arms is pretty anxious to keep something pretty quiet. One by one the people who knew about it are waking up dead. Maybe he thought Claire knew about it."

The blonde shook her head. “I never heard her mention the guy's name, and she used to spill the works to me. Like I was her old lady or something.” She continued to shake her head. “I never heard her mention his name."

Liddell got up, walked over, recovered his hat. “Okay, Lee. That's what I wanted to know. Maybe I'll be seeing you around."

The blonde split her soft lips in a grin. “If you don't, it's your fault.” She pulled herself up from the couch, paid no attention to the expanse of thigh the open gown revealed. “Do you have to go?"

Liddell nodded. “Yeah. You see, there are only two people left who know what Arms is so anxious to conceal. I'm going to pay a visit to the other one."

8.

Mike Murphy had aged ten years in ten hours. His hair was rumpled, there were discolored sacs under his eyes and the dark shadow of a beard glinted on his chin as he opened the door to Liddell.

"Liddell! I've been trying to reach you. Did you hear about the redhead?"

Liddell nodded, walked into the apartment, closed the door behind him. “I heard. I'm also convinced it was no hit-and-run."

The big man headed for the bar, found the bourbon bottle empty, settled for some scotch. He tossed it off. “You think it was murder?"

Liddell nodded. “A pretty sloppy murder, at that."

Murphy nodded, paced the room. “Sloppy or neat, the result's the same. The kid's dead.” He stopped, stared at Liddell. “But why? She didn't know a thing. I told you I didn't tell her anything."

"Maybe she overheard or took part in a telephone conversation that made her dangerous."

Murphy licked at his lips. “You—you think when Arms called here? How could he know she was here?"

Liddell walked over to the bar, helped himself to a drink. “I don't mean that call.” He drained his glass, set it down. “The earlier call."

"I don't follow you, Liddell."

"I got a call around one or one-thirty. It was a girl. She said she was Lane. Asked me to get out there right away."

"So?"

Liddell shrugged. “Lieutenant Murray checked the local operator. Lane never made a call to New York that night.” He poured some more liquor into the glass, swirled it around. “Funny, huh?"

"A scream. Sounds like you're making out a case against yourself. Then you didn't get a call?"

"I got the call all right. And it's not me I'm making the case out against."

"Who then?"

"You. That call was made from right here."

The big man's jaw dropped. “You crazy? You said yourself you heard the shot. What are you trying to pull, Liddell?"

Liddell grinned humorlessly. “Shows how dumb I really am. I thought it was a shot.” He looked at Murphy. “That's what I was supposed to think. That way it set the time of the kill and gave some people an alibi."

"Look, Liddell,” Murphy growled. “I can account for every minute of my time. From show break at eleven right through to—"

"Nice big place you've got here,” Liddell cut him off. “Living room, couple of bedrooms. A study, too?"

The big man's eyes narrowed. “Get to the point."

"I'll bet the study's pretty well set up. Ping pong, maybe. Big leather chairs. The works, eh?"

"There a law against being comfortable? What's the furnishing of my study got to do with it?"

"Everything. Once I learned you'd spent years in radio.” Liddell took a swallow from his glass, watched the other man over the rim. “You know how some sound effects men fake the sound of a shot on a live mike, Murph? They smack leather with a ping pong paddle. It makes a better shot than live ammo."

The good looks of the big man had disappeared. His lips straightened out into thin, bloodless lines; hard lumps formed at the sides of his mouth. “Go on."

"You and Claire disappeared into the study for awhile. Some way you got her to make that call, probably told her it was a practical joke. Then you set out to get her drunk. But not drunk enough, because she tumbled to the connection when I popped in here to break the news."

Murphy's hand dipped into his jacket pocket. When it re-appeared, he had a snubnosed .38 in his fist. “But why should I kill Lane? She was my meal ticket. Besides, I was forty minutes away. Forty minutes, Liddell."

"She was already dead when you picked the girls up at the stage door. You didn't have to go out there. All you had to do was try to establish the time it happened. And you almost got away with it."

"That's not what the police think. They've got your boy Tate measured for it, and—"

"No more. They know he was sapped before he was shot in the back. You want to know something else? That gun of Lane's had a faulty breech. It spit back nitrates when it was fired. Lane's hand gave a negative reaction to the paraffin test. Yours won't."

"You haven't given me a reason why I should kill her,” Murphy grated through clenched teeth. “Go on, show me how smart you are."

"If I were smart, I would have tumbled long ago. Those diamonds you were supposed to be buying up for her. They were phonies, weren't they? You knew you had to put up, but it was a cinch either Lane or Arms would spot them. Either way it was curtains. You had to see to it that the diamonds disappeared before the deal went through.” He scowled at the gun in the big man's hand. “I should have known there was something fishy about the deal when you paid the retainer in cash and made such a big deal about nobody knowing Tate was bodyguarding your client."

Murphy nodded. “You're as smart as I thought I was."

"Why'd you kill the redhead, Murph?"

The big man shrugged. “I had to. Anyway, what's the difference after you've killed once?” He wiped his upper lip with the side of his left hand. “She guessed the phone call was intended to set up a phony alibi. She tried to put the shake on me deeper than I was willing to go. I lost my temper and hit her with a bottle.” He licked at his lips with the tip of his tongue. “All I had to do was get her down to my car and dump her some place where it'd look like a hit-and-run. I've carted dames out of here in worse condition. No one paid any attention."

"And now?"

"The last act. You."

Liddell watched the finger whiten on the trigger. “A sucker play. You can't get away with knocking me off. You'll tip the whole story."

The big man shook his head, twisted the bloodless lips into a caricature of a grin. “You wouldn't, I suppose? I'll get away with it. Too bad you won't be here to see it."

"They'll never buy it."

"Why not? You came up here, admitted you followed the redhead home and killed her because she heard you admit to me that you killed Lane. It might sound thin, but you won't be in any condition to contradict it, and—"

The glass filled with liquor left Liddell's hand, streaked for the big man's face. Murphy tried to duck away, started squeezing the trigger. Slugs bit chunks of plaster out of the wall near Liddell's head. Murphy screamed and pawed at his eyes as the raw liquor burned into them. He tried to raise the gun again, but he didn't get it to firing level.

Liddell moved in relentlessly. He hit the big man's wrist with the side of his hand. The gun clattered to the floor from nerveless fingers. Liddell slammed his fist against the side of the man's jaw, sent him reeling backwards. He followed up, backhanded Murphy's head into position, then took the fight out of him with an uppercut to the midsection.

Murphy went down, trying to catch Liddell around the knees. The private detective sidestepped, kicked him in the face, knocked him flat on his back. The big man lay there, moaning, pink-tinged bubbles forming between his lips.

Liddell walked to the big desk against the wall, dialled the number of the Carport Police Department. After a moment, he was connected with Lieutenant Murray in homicide. Briefly, he outlined the story as he knew it.

He could hear the sound of a sharp intake of breath from the other end. Then, after a moment, “Will he sign a statement?” Murray wanted to know.

"I haven't asked him yet,” Liddell said. “I have an idea he will, though."

"Not if he's in his right mind,” the homicide man told him. “It's a pretty flimsy story to juice up an electric chair with."

Liddell grinned. “I've got an extra generator up my sleeve. When I hang up, I'm calling Arms and I'm telling him how Murphy tried to frame him for the Lane kill. Arms is a little sensitive about things like that. I've got an idea Murphy would prefer the law to Arms and his boys."

Murray chuckled. “Maybe he would at that. I'll send a couple of my boys in to pick him up.” There was a click as he broke the connection.

Murphy was moaning his way back to consciousness. Liddell walked over, caught him by the front of his shirt and dragged him to a chair. The agent was no longer dapper. His eyes were watery, the carefully combed hair hung lankly down over his face. He was sick, breathing noisily through a smashed nose.

Liddell buried his fingers in the man's hair, pulled his head back. “Listen carefully, you rat. I've notified both the cops and Arms. I told them what I know—that you tried to frame Arms for this kill. They're both sending a couple of boys for you. You understand?"

Murphy's eyes stopped rolling. He made a visible effort to focus them on the private detective's face. “You—you told Arms?"

Liddell grinned grimly. “Yeah. Take your pick, pal. If you haven't written out a full statement by the time the homicide boys get here, I'll see to it that they go home without you. I'll bet Arms’ torpedoes won't be discouraged that easily."

"Don't throw me to Arms, Liddell.” The pink bubbles formed and burst between his lips. “Get me a pen. I'll make a statement. Get me a pen."

"You're damned right you'll make a statement,” Liddell growled. “Get on your feet."

Murphy looked up at him, licked his lips, stumbled to his feet. He stood there swaying.

"This is for the kid, Murph.” He slammed his fist against the big man's mouth. There was the sound of crunching teeth. The big man went staggering backward and fell across a table.

"You won't be needing teeth where you're going."

[Back to Table of Contents]

DOUBLE by BRUNO FISCHER

The girl woke up gradually. I didn't shake her or say her name. I just stood at the side of the bed looking down at her.

Holly Laird, a smalltime actress, but she could have been Martha seven years ago. That stubborn little chin and that trick of a nose, but mostly the hair.

Hair that lay spread like gold on the pillow.

Actresses slept late. It was close to ten in the morning and the sun was high, streaming in through the east window and touching her face. She brought up an arm as if trying to brush the sunlight away; her other hand pushed down the blanket to her waist. Her breasts were beautiful, and the rose-colored nightgown did hardly anything to cover them.

Martha used to go in for nightgowns like that, fragile and transparent. I remembered how I used to watch Martha asleep beside me—how mornings I would prop myself up on one elbow and never take my eyes off her.

'Three years of marriage and being crazy in love with her, and then Martha had run off with another man—a public accountant, of all things, a skinny guy I could have broken in two with one hand but never got a chance to. And now it was as if I'd gone back through all the years and I was looking at her in bed, and the bitterness seized me, welling up in my throat so I almost choked.

Holly Laird's eyelids fluttered. I'd made no sound; in sleep she must have sensed me standing there. I took a step back from the bed, and suddenly she was staring at me. Her eyes went wider and wider.

I didn't tell her there was no reason to be scared. I wanted her to be scared, to start her off with a taste of shock that would make her plenty jittery.

Then she came all the way awake and her breasts stirred as she let out her breath. “You're the detective,” she said. “The one who asked me most of the questions at the police station yesterday."

"That's right, miss. Gus Taylor. I'm in charge of the case."

I sat down. It was a small apartment—one cramped room and bath and kitchenette. She rented it furnished. I had found out a lot about her.

"But how did you get in?” she said. “I'm sure I locked the door."

"I got in."

She sat up. “Picked the lock or used a passkey, I suppose. You ... ! Even though you're a policeman, you have no right ... “

In the dresser mirror I could see myself sitting with my hands curved over my knees. They were big hands, strong hands. I was proud of their strength. I was a big, hard guy who didn't take anything from anybody, and I was proud of that, too.

"I don't stand on ceremony with murderers,” I said.

"But I told you and told you I didn't kill him."

"Yeah, you told me."

I smiled at her. She glanced down at herself sitting up in bed and she saw how little of her the bodice covered and how the rest of her from the waist up shimmered rosy through the rose-colored nylon. She snatched up the blanket to her throat.

"What do you want?” she demanded.

"You know damn well, miss. The truth. Night before last you pushed a knife into John Ambler's heart."

"No!"

I took out a cigarette and slowly turned it in my fingers. She watched me with blue eyes—the same shade as Martha's. Or Martha's had been a bit lighter. It was hard to remember exactly after so long.

After a silence Holly Laird said tartly, “I'd like to get dressed."

I put a light to my cigarette and didn't move from the chair facing the bed and didn't say anything.

"So it's a form of third degree?” she said. “You're going to sit there and sit there."

"Only till you tell me you killed him."

"You're so sure, aren't you?"

I said, “It figures, miss. Let me tell you how close it figures so you'll know you can't hold out. You're a smalltown girl who got the acting bug. Like thousands of others. You went to New York to set Broadway on its ear. The nearest you got to a stage was when you bought a ticket to a show. But in New York you met John Ambler, who spent a lot of time there because he was backing a play. What they call an angel. You got chummy with him."

"Acquainted, that was all."

"I know how girls who want to get on the stage get acquainted with rich angels. And I know a thing or two about the late John Ambler. He has a good-looking wife, but I hear he likes to play outside the homestead, especially with young actresses. That was why he went in for backing plays on Broadway, and here in his home town he's the big money behind the repertory theater. So he brought you here to Coast City and told the director to give you big parts in the different plays they put on every few weeks."

"I earned every role. I can act."

"Maybe. But there are lots of others can act and don't get leading parts right off, not even in a small-city theater like ours. George Hoge, the director, says Ambler ordered him to use you no matter what. Ambler's the angel, so Hoge had to do it. And if I knew Ambler he kept wanting payment from you. He was that kind of a guy."

"But I'm not that kind of girl."

I laughed harshly in my throat. Nobody could tell me anything about women. I'd been through it; I knew. They were every last one of them like Martha.

"Besides,” Holly said, “everybody in the theater can tell you I'm in love with Bill Burnett. Doesn't that prove I wasn't carrying on an affair with Mr. Ambler?"

"All it proves is you're like the rest of ‘em."

"The rest of who?"

"Two-timing bitches,” I said, and took a drag at the cigarette. “All right, let's see about Burnett. Mostly he took you home after the show. But not the night before last. He's on the stage till the final curtain, but you're through before the last scene. You left with Ambler. Witnesses saw you go."

"I never denied I went with him. I told you yesterday I had a headache. It was killing me; I could hardly remember my lines. I asked George Hoge if I could leave before the curtain call. Mr. Ambler happened to be backstage and heard me and offered to drive me home."

"Neat. Ambler happened to be backstage. Happened to drive you home. Happened to get himself murdered while you were in the car with him. How dumb do you think cops are?"

She cowered against the headboard of the bed, but she wasn't anywhere near breaking. Those blue eyes of hers were defiant. She said, “He dropped me off at the house and drove away."

"Drove away?” I caught her up on that. “Then how come in the morning his car was still down there in the street in front of the building and he was slumped over the wheel with a knife wound in his heart? Answer me: how come?"

"I don't know."

"You said he drove away."

"Well, I didn't actually see his car move off. I assumed he left after I got out."

"You assumed!” I pointed the cigarette at her. “He never drove away because he couldn't. The medical examiner says he was stabbed by somebody sitting on his right, beside him in the front seat of his car. No sign of a struggle. It had to be somebody he knew, somebody he was talking to or necking with. Maybe somebody he was kissing when the knife was slipped into his heart. In other words, you."

Her head jerked as if I'd hit her. “But what reason would I have had? You can't find any."

"That's another thing you'll tell me before I'm through with you. Let's try it like this. You really love this pretty-boy actor, Bill Burnett, and you tried to call it quits with Ambler. But Ambler wouldn't play. You're something special in looks; I can say that much for you. He said he'd tell Burnett you'd been sleeping with him. You had to stop him. You stopped him with a knife.” I flicked ashes on the floor. “Yeah, the more I think of that motive, the better I like it."

She stared at me. “You sound as if you're anxious for me to be guilty."

I stopped looking at her. I muttered, “I'm doing my job, that's all,” and rubbed my sweaty hands on my thighs.

2.

This was one of these cases where you had nothing to go on but what you figured out in your head. No clues you could take to the laboratory. Fingerprints in the car were mostly smudges or belonged to people who'd had an excuse for having been in the car—Ambler's, of course, and Mrs. Ambler's and Holly Laird's. As for the knife, the killer had pulled it out and disposed of it where probably we'd never find it. There had been no blood spattered because heart wounds that kill instantly don't bleed to amount to anything.

Nothing but circumstantial evidence, and how did you make it stick without a confession?

"At least,” she said, “let me put on my robe."

Damn her, sitting there so calmly with her golden hair like Martha's rippling down to her shoulders! Calmer than I was.

I stood up. My hands were sweating more and more and I felt them shake.

"You killed him!” I yelled at her. “Admit it, you killed him!"

Holly looked me in the eye. She said quietly, “You've been wrong about everything."

I could make her talk. I'd done it with others. I'd taken tough guys down to the basement room in headquarters and after a while they talked their hearts out. I couldn't do it with her because she was a dame. The Skipper didn't approve much of rough stuff anyway—and she was a dame.

This was my case. I was the detective of record. I'd be goddamned if I'd let a dame get away with murder just because she was a dame.

"You killed him!"

"No.".

My hands went to her. I didn't reach out for her; my hands just went to her. She tried to jerk away and the blanket slipped down a little way and my hand was on a bare shoulder. I felt the smooth, warm skin, and my fingers contracted.

"Say it, bitch! You killed him!"

Sounds trickled past her lips, but she wasn't trying to utter the words I wanted to hear, or any words at all. A scream of pain was building up in her throat. I clamped my other hand over her mouth and kept grinding her shoulder. I have very strong hands; it must have hurt like hell. She clawed at my arms and writhed on the bed and her eyes rolled in their sockets.

"You sat in the car with him and put the knife in him. By God, you'll say it!"

Her heaving torso and her wildly kicking legs pushed the blanket down about her knees. A blur of white skin and rose-colored nightgown thrashed on the bed and I could feel her screaming soundlessly against my hand.

Suddenly I let go of her. I stepped back from the side of the bed, and I was very tired. It didn't make sense. Me, strong as an ox, and this little effort had pooped me.

She was crying. The blanket was over her again and I could see the outlines of her body curled up in a ball and her hand massaging her shoulder.

Tears never bothered me. “Talk,” I said, “if you don't want more of the same."

She gasped, “You've no right. I'll report you."

"I don't think you will, and I'll tell you why.” I took my time relighting my cigarette while she lay sniffling. “You try making a complaint and I'll haul you in for prostitution."

Holly Laird gawked at me as if she couldn't believe I was real.

"Soliciting,” I said. “I came up here to question you and you wanted to do some business. Your price was twenty bucks."

"You—you wouldn't!"

"If you make me, sure I would. I don't have to make the charge stick. All I have to do is take you in and charge you, that's enough. Word would get to your home town, to your folks. People are ready to believe anything about an actress. How'll your folks feel? How'll they be able to face their friends and neighbors? You want that to happen?"

She pushed her face into the pillow. She cried some more. I stood looking down at her.

After a minute she wiped her eyes on the corner of the blanket. “Please, please let me alone."

"Sure, miss,” I said. “Glad to. All you have to do is tell me the truth."

She jumped out of the bed. The blanket trailed after her and then dropped away from her, and she was a white-and-rose form dashing toward the bathroom where she could lock herself in.

I lunged and caught her by her loose golden hair that was like Martha's.

Her head jerked back and she uttered a shrill cry, and she stood there with her head way back, held back by her hair bunched in my hand. “Talk!” I said. She started to whimper like something small and hurt and helpless, and with her head back like that I could see her eyes bulging not so much with pain as with terror.

I don't know why I let her go. Maybe she was at the breaking point and just a little more and she would have broken. Like a slap across the face. I'd learned that a slap, almost more than anything else, makes even the tough ones go to pieces. But my hand fell away from that golden hair.

Outside in the street there were traffic noises, but it was very quiet in the room. That tiredness was in me, going deeper than bone and muscle.

Holly was across the room at the closet. The nightgown clung to her back. She reached in and pulled out a robe. As she was putting it on, the doorbell rang.

She turned then, tying the cord of the robe. Her eyes were dead.

"Remember,” I said, “you don't want me to pull you in for soliciting."

She just looked at me.

3.

The bell rang again. She went to the door and opened it.

In the hall a cheerful voice said, “Morning, sweetheart. Hope we didn't drag you out of bed."

"No. Come in."

Bill Burnett stepped into the apartment. He was what they call the juvenile lead, the love interest in the plays. He had wavy hair and good shoulders and a pretty face.

He wasn't alone. Behind him came George Hoge, the director. He was one of those slim, intense, nervous guys who always had a cigarette on his lip.

They stopped when they saw me. I'd had both of them on the grill yesterday; everybody connected with the theater had been questioned. I nodded to them and they nodded to me.

"Anything up?” Burnett asked.

"A man was murdered the other night,” I said. “Remember?"

"Very funny,” Hoge said sourly.

I rolled the cigarette in my mouth.

They were looking at Holly. She stood barefooted, holding her robe together. She wet her lips and said, “Detective Taylor has been asking me questions.” She turned her face to me without looking at me. “Is there anything else you want of me?"

"Yeah. One thing. You know what it is."

"I told you all I know."

I grinned at her and she cringed. Then I said to the two men, “What's this, a conference or something?"

Hoge answered, the cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth. “I brought the script of our next play.” He tapped the briefcase under his arm. “I want to go over it with Holly and Bill, who will have the leads. A repertory company like ours must always be preparing one play ahead."

"That all you folks have on your mind?” I sneered.

"Of course, it's been rough, losing Mr. Ambler, who has done so much for us, and on top of that you policemen disrupting everything. But the show must go on, you know."

"That so?” I started toward the door and stopped. Burnett had his arm around Holly's waist and she was leaning against him. I said, “I didn't annoy you too much, did I, miss?"

She hesitated, but not long enough for anybody but me to notice it. “No,” she said.

I struck a match. They watched me silently, all three of them. I rolled the flame around the tip of the cigarette and blew out the match and left the apartment.

4.

Five minutes after I was at my desk the Skipper called me on the phone from his office down the hall.

"Why didn't you report in this morning, Gus?"

"I've been out trying to catch me a killer,” I said.

"None of your lip, Gus. I'm having a tough enough time with the Mayor and the Commissioner. Seems they think it's against the law for big-shots like John Ambler to be murdered and want me to do something about it. As if I haven't got the whole department looking for knives and witnesses. Who'd you see?"

"The killer,” I said. “The girl."

"How'd you make out?"

"Not so good. But I will."

"Look, Gus. You may be a bit too—uh—single-minded. We don't know enough at this time to be able to concentrate on one suspect."

"You call her the suspect. I'll call her the killer."

There was a silence on the line. Then the Skipper said, “All right, Gus, keep at it,” and hung up.

I went through the reports of the half a dozen other detectives working along with me on the case. Nothing.

I sat back in the chair and lit a cigarette. When I'd had her by the hair in her apartment, I should have kept the pressure up. A little more pain, a couple of slaps across her damned pretty face, and she might have broken before Burnett and Hoge had arrived. But I'd let her go. I'd let her walk to the closet with that clinging rose nightgown molding every curve of the back of her.

I closed my eyes, remembering how sometimes I would come home from lunch and find Martha not yet dressed, puttering around the house in nothing but a sheer nightgown, with her golden hair unpinned and loose down her back. I would pull her down on my lap and stroke that hair and bury my face in it, and I would push down her nightgown and spread her hair over the fullness of her breasts, making a golden, transparent net over the white, richly curving flesh. But then she would smile and she would say, “Not in the daytime,” and I would say, “What's wrong with the daytime?” and she would say, “I've got to get your lunch,” and wriggle off me, tugging up the straps, and head for the bedroom, her nightgown clinging, her hair flowing, and come out wearing a housecoat. Not in the daytime, and toward the end seldom at night either. Because by then there must have been the accountant, the skinny guy I never suspected, and one evening there had been that note from her saying she would never be back. She never was.

Something snapped. It was a pencil I had been holding between my fingers. I stared at the two pieces and then dropped them into the wastebasket. After a while I went out to lunch.

When I returned, Bill Burnett was waiting for me outside the headquarters building.

He stood against the wall, and when he saw me he came out on the sidewalk to meet me. Both his hands were sunk deep in the pockets of his jacket and there was a fever in his eyes. I could guess what had happened.

"If you ever go near her again,” he said, “I'll kill you."

Burnett's right pocket bulged more than his left, which meant that was where he had it. “What are you talking about?” I said, watching his right hand.

"You beat Holly up, you bastard!"

"She told you I did?"

"I made her. After George Hoge left. I knew something had happened. She'd been crying. She didn't want to tell me. You'd threatened her, frightened her, I don't know how. But I made her tell me,” He took his left hand out of his pocket and put it on my arm. “I'm warning you, I'll kill you!"

Imagine a pretty-faced actor punk trying to throw his weight around with me! I drove my left up to his jaw. It slammed him back against the wall where he'd been waiting for me.

That was a busy street and a couple of women seeing me hit him screamed. They didn't bother me. I leaped after him and rammed my fist into his belly.

I'll say this for the actor—he wasn't soft. Most other men would have gone down after having been socked twice by me. He stayed on his feet, swaying, and his right hand came out of his pocket. I could have beaten him to it with my own gun, but I couldn't be bothered with a punk like that. I swung at his pretty face, and that did it. He slid down along the wall.

His right hand was in sight and empty. But there was a gun in his pocket, as I'd guessed. Hardly more than a toy, a .22 automatic, but at close range it could have done damage.

Burnett wasn't out. Sobbing brokenly, he was trying to get up to his feet. I raked his face with his own gun, slashing a bloody swath down his cheek.

He wasn't so pretty any more.

By then people were all around us. A woman was shrieking, “Stop that man! Stop him!” I tried to explain that I was a cop, but I couldn't be heard. Then three harness bulls poured out of the building. They knew me, of course. I told them the punk had tried to assault me with a gun and let them take charge of him.

Burnett was sitting up, holding his bleeding face. He was able to walk hanging onto two of the harness bulls. I followed them in and had the desk sergeant book him for armed assault. After he was patched up, he was thrown into the can.

If I had any regrets, it was the one I usually felt at a time like this—that the guy I had beaten up hadn't been the accountant who had run off with Martha.

5.

Yesterday John Ambler's wife had been questioned along with a lot of other people, but since then a question or two had come up that hadn't been asked her. Especially about Holly Laird. I drove up to that big fieldstone house on the hill and found her on a side terrace with George Hoge.

She was stretched out on a chaise longue, getting the sun on her body. Since all she had on were a pair of shorts and a skimpy halter, plenty of her body got it. Hoge sat on the grass, a cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth as he talked to her. They both looked up when they saw me appear around the corner of the house.

"Hello, Gus,” Celia Ambler greeted me. She sounded very cheerful considering she'd become a widow so recently.

"You seem to know each other well,” Hoge said, surprised.

"Oh, but we do. Gus and I went to high school together here in Coast City.” She stretched like a kitten, her tanned skin rippling. “I imagine, Gus, you're here strictly in your professional capacity."

"Why else? What's the chance of seeing you alone for a few minutes?"

"George was just about to go.” She threw him a smile. “Weren't you, George?"

His pinched, intense face scowled. “Everywhere today I keep running into this cop. But all right, I'm dismissed.” He got to his feet. “Then it's agreed, Celia. You'll continue to support the theater as generously as John did."

"I said only for the remainder of the season. After that, we'll see.” She turned her head to me. “Poor George is worried about his job."

"That's not so,” he said indignantly. “I can make ten times as much in Hollywood. Any time. But I prefer working in a little theater. It gives one a chance to fully express oneself.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth for the first time since I'd arrived; it was less than an inch long. “How is the case going, officer?"

"We're getting there."

"I hope you do. Thanks for giving me your time, Celia.” He walked off across the terrace.

When he was gone, Celia Ambler sat up. She pulled her halter up a bit, but it didn't do any good. She continued to bulge lushly over it. She was a full-bodied fine-looking woman who, you'd think, would make a man want to stay home more than her husband had.

"More questions, Gus?” she asked.

"A few. When your husband didn't come home night before last, why didn't you report it to the police? Weren't you worried?"

"I didn't know he wasn't home until a policeman came and told me he had been found dead in his car."

"That was around nine in the morning."

"I assumed he was in his room asleep. You see, we had separate bedrooms."

"Uh-huh. There's the penalty of being rich."

"Not necessarily, but in our case that was the way we preferred it."

"You didn't get along, eh?"

"Gus, you're not suspecting me?” She seemed to be amused at the notion.

I didn't tell her I knew who'd killed him. There was no point until I could prove it. I said, “I'm merely trying to get things straight, that's all. What do you know about Holly Laird?"

"She's a competent actress."

"I mean Holly Laird and your husband."

"Oh.” Her fingers trailed along a bare, sun-baked thigh. “I really have no idea. As a matter of fact, I understand that she and Bill Burnett are very much in love with each other."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"I suppose it doesn't, if you want to be cynical. It's no secret that John had a penchant for sweet young girls. Holly would have filled the bill."

"And you didn't care?"

Her tan shoulders shrugged. “John and I had an understanding. We each lived our own life. I didn't question him and he didn't question me.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “Does that shock you, Gus?"

"What's the difference if it shocks me or doesn't? I just want the truth."

"Well, I didn't kill him. In a detached sort of way, I was rather fond of him."

"Yeah. Fond of being the wife of a rich man."

"Why, Gus, I didn't think you cared,” she said brightly. “We haven't seen each other in so many years, and even in high school we never went out together. Don't tell me you've been carrying the torch for me?"

So that was what she was, a teaser, even with a cop she had never known well. Me, I'd never had a thought for her.

I growled, “Don't flatter yourself."

"Shouldn't I?” She got off the chaise longue and ran her hands sensuously over her half-naked body. “Look at me, Gus. Don't you think I have a right to flatter myself?"

"All right, you've got a body."

She was standing close to me; she made me uneasy. “Now about your husband's other girl friends?"

"I can't answer. I told you I hadn't been interested. But you, Gus—do you know I had a crush on you in high school? You didn't give me a tumble. You were the big football hero, so strong, so virile-looking. You still are, you know, only more manly."

And she kissed me.

There under the hot sun, wearing next to nothing, and more likely than not with the servants watching from the house, she pressed herself against me and kissed me.

It was a long time since I'd been kissed like that by any woman. It felt good, to my mouth, to my body, to my hands, but at the same time it made me sick to my stomach. Her husband wasn't dead two days, and here she was. And if he had been alive, she wouldn't have acted any differently. They'd had an understanding, she'd said. And I didn't think she went for me in particular. Almost any man would have done who appealed to her at all.

The bitch! Like Martha. Like Holly Laird. Like every goddamn woman.

I tore her arms from around me and shoved her so hard she fell back against the chaise longue and sat down on it. I said, “I'd like to wring the necks of every one of you,” and strode off without a backward glance at her.

I hadn't any more questions, and those I'd asked hadn't gotten me anywhere. I was shaking all over as I climbed into my car.

6.

Back at headquarters, I learned that Detective Lou Fox had found a witness. He had been assigned to question everybody in Holly Laird's building, in front of which the murder had taken place, and he had come up with a teen-aged girl named Ann Danderman. He left off typing up his report to tell me about it.

"This kid lives a couple of floors below Holly Laird. Seventeen. Real pretty. She was out on a date and the guy brought her home around eleven. Her folks had told her to be home by eleven-thirty, so of course they hung around necking in the doorway for half an hour. There's a street lamp close by and she could see a car parked at the curb and Holly Laird sitting in it with a man. She knew Holly well by sight, being a fan of hers. She didn't know Ambler and didn't see him clearly, but it must have been him."

"Were they making love?"

"You mean Holly and Ambler in the car? The girl says no. Just talking. At eleven-thirty sharp Ann went upstairs. The two in the car were still talking."

"Is that all she saw?"

"It's something. We got them spotted out there from eleven to at least eleven-thirty."

"Does the Skipper know about this?"

"I told him first thing I got back,” Lou Fox said. “By the way, he said send you in as soon as you showed up. He's sore at you."

I went down the hall to the Skipper's office. A captain has an easy life. He was tilted back in his swivel-chair, cleaning his fingernails.

"This time you've gone too far,” he said as soon as I had the door closed behind me. “A dozen witnesses saw you beat up Burnett in the street."

"He had a gun in his pocket. Did you want me to give him a chance to plug me first?"

"They say you slashed him with his gun after you'd taken it away."

"So I got a little excited. Wouldn't you be if somebody was out to shoot you down?"

The Skipper leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. He had a beak like an eagle's and small, dark eyes that could bore right through you. He said, “If somebody slapped around the girl I loved, I think maybe I'd lose my head too and grab a gun and go after the guy."

"What're you talking about?"

"He told me that's what you did this morning to Holly Laird."

"He's nuts.” I drew on my cigar. “Did you ask her?"

The Skipper lost some of his fire and I knew it was all right. “I spoke to her on the phone."

"And?"

"She says you didn't touch her. But I don't know. Something screwy about this. The way you sometimes act I wouldn't put it past you to ... “ He sighed. “What gets into you every now and then, Gus?"

"She says I didn't touch her,” I reminded him gently.

"Lucky for you she does. You're a good man, Gus, the best I've got, but I'm getting fed up with some of your stunts.” He picked up his nailfile. “Did you hear about Lou's witness?"

"Yeah. Holly Laird said Ambler dropped her off at her house and drove away. Now we find out they were sitting outside in his car at least half an hour. I've been telling you she lied, and this proves it. They talked and talked and then she stabbed him."

"There's something else. This knocks hell out of the alibis of the others in the cast."

"I see what you mean."

"Like this,” the Skipper said. “Holly and Ambler left the theater twenty minutes before the play ended. The curtain came down at eleven-twelve. It's no more than five minutes from the theater to where they were sitting in the car. Burnett went there and saw them together. He was crazy jealous. He had a knife."

I nodded. “And she lied about how long she was in the car with Ambler because she was covering up for Burnett. So it was either one of them."

The Skipper was a cautious guy. “Not necessarily, but it's worth thinking about."

"Either one,” I said, drawing smoke into my lungs.

7.

In spite of my badge, they refused to give me a free ticket at the box office of the Empire Theater, so I had to buy one, charging it to expenses. I wasn't stingy with the city's money; I got me a seat in the third row orchestra.

Before the curtain rose, somebody came out and announced that Bill Burnett's part would be played by an understudy. He didn't mention that Burnett couldn't show up because he was in jail.

The play was one of these grim dramas about people suffering from the weather and each other in New England. Holly Laird had her golden hair piled up on top of her head and wore a gingham dress that was cut so as not to hide her figure—the figure I'd seen a lot of this morning. And she could act. I wasn't much for the theater, but I could tell an actress when I saw one. She was so good and, along with her talent, so easy to look at, that she wouldn't need an angel to persuade a director to give her leading roles.

I began to have a doubt, but only a small one.

I knew she wasn't going to be in the last scene, which was the third scene of the second act. Just before the second scene ended, I went backstage. My badge was good for something after all; it got me past the doorman.

I caught Holly Laird as she was on the way to the iron stairs running up to the dressing rooms. “Just a minute, miss,” I said.

If ever a girl looked hate at a man, she did. So what? Why should I care what a golden-haired bitch felt about me?

"We know you were sitting in the car with Ambler for half an hour or more,” I told her.

She took time to think it over, trying to make up her mind if she could get away with denying it. “We were talking,” she said.

"That's not what you said yesterday and this morning."

"I didn't think it was important. We were discussing plays to do later in the season. He was interested in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, and I became quite excited at the prospect of playing Eliza Doolittle."

"You sure that's what excited you, miss?” I drawled, striking a match.

She took a step backward and gripped the banister of the iron stairs. “Why are you persecuting us?” she said.

"I've got a job to do, miss. I do it."

Behind me a voice said, “My God, the demon detective again!” George Hoge came up to us, intense eyes and dangling cigaret and all. “Haven't you done enough damage, depriving me of my male lead?"

"Get used to it,” I said. “Maybe you'll be losing your female lead too."

Holly uttered a cry and dashed up the stairs.

"Cops!” Hoge said, spitting the word.

There was nothing to be gained by answering him. I went outside.

The parking lot back of the theater was empty of people. The play wasn't over yet; they were still inside. I moved between two rows of cars toward mine at the far end, and I didn't see him or hear him. My first warning was a terrific weight slamming down on the back of my neck, and then it was too late to do anything about it.

My legs buckled. I clawed air and fell forward and my hands came to rest on the cindered ground. On hands and knees I started to twist around. The light was dim there at the fringe of the parking field floodlights; I glimpsed a shape, a pair of pants, a foot leaving the ground. I tried to pull away from that oncoming foot, but the blow on the head had made me sluggish. The toe of the shoe caught me in the temple and knocked me over on my side.

Before I could get my gun out from under my shoulder, he kicked me again, this time flush in the face. Then he faded into the night.

After a while I heard people coming out of the theater and heading toward their cars. I roused myself. I climbed up off the cinders and staggered to my car and threw myself in.

Nothing was broken in my face, though I could feel the swelling over my left cheek. Blood trickled down the back of my neck. I sopped it up with my handkerchief. The punk hadn't done a very good job on me.

But he was in jail, so how could he have done it?

The cars rolled out of the parking lot. By the time most of them were gone, I felt strong enough to drive. I drove to the city jail.

Ernie Crull was the turnkey on duty. He grinned at my swollen cheek and discolored temple. “I'd like to see the other guy,” he said. “Where is he—in the hospital?"

"Not yet,” I said. “How's Bill Burnett keeping?"

"Left our bed and board an hour ago when his bail was paid."

"Bail this late at night?"

"You got influence, you can get a judge to work all hours. He had influence. None other than Mrs. John Ambler. She also put up the bail money."

I fingered my swollen cheek.

8.

Home was a couple of furnished rooms at a second-rate hotel. I'd lived there for seven years, and it had never stopped being a lonesome place.

The alarm clock on the dresser said one-thirty when I let myself in. I looked at myself in the mirror. In addition to the marks from the two kicks, there were now scratches on my face. The knuckles of both my hands were split open.

I couldn't remember it clearly, that last hour. I couldn't even remember driving from the city jail to that street, but there I'd been, standing in the shadow of the building in front of which John Ambler had been murdered, and after a while Martha had come up the street, light from a lamppost catching the gold of her hair, and she was hanging onto the arm of her lover, the skinny accountant.

Was I going nuts? That hadn't been Martha, of course. I'd never see her again. It had been Holly Laird being taken home by Bill Burnett.

And I'd taught the punk that he couldn't slug and kick me, Gus Taylor, the hard cop, and get away with it.

Nobody else had been on the street at that late hour. But pretty soon lights went on in windows and people were sticking their heads out because Holly Laird was screaming. She clawed at my face and screamed while Burnett was trying to get up from the sidewalk where I'd knocked him. I brushed her aside and helped him get up and pounded him with both fists till he went down again.

Then a harness bull had been there, a young squirt I knew but whose name I couldn't think of, and who knew me, and he was saying over and over, “What the hell, Taylor! What the hell!"

"Get your paws off me,” I said and squirmed away from the harness bull. But I didn't go after Burnett again.

It had become quiet on the street, though some people had come out of the houses and others had their heads poked out of windows. Holly Laird sat sobbing on the sidewalk with her boy friend's head on her lap.

I heard myself say to the harness bull, “Look at my face. The punk slugged me and kicked me in the Empire Theater parking lot."

Burnett's battered head stirred on the girl's lap. “He's crazy!” he said thickly. “I haven't seen him since"—he swallowed blood—"since early this afternoon."

"He hates us, officer,” Holly said to the harness bull. “I don't know why."

I had walked away from them then, my feet shuffling, my shoulders heavier than I could carry. I had gone a block past my car before I had remembered it and turned back for it, and now here I was in the loneliest home a man had ever had.

I slumped in my armchair, sucking my cracked knuckles.

Burnett said he hadn't slugged me in the parking field. I believed him. Because if he had slugged me, wouldn't he have admitted it? Lying battered by my fists on the sidewalk and hating my guts, wouldn't he have boasted of it? Would he have denied it after what I'd done to him, and more than that, to the girl he loved?

All right, but if he hadn't, who had and why?

After a while I got up from the chair. There was no use going to bed. Tired as I was, I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. I washed my hands and face and left the hotel.

9.

He lived in a couple of small rooms on the second floor of a small frame house on a street of small houses. The light showing in two of his windows was the only light in the block, so I knew he was still up. Even if he had been sleeping, that wouldn't have stopped me any more than it had this morning when I had visited Holly Laird.

There were two doors and two vestibules off the open porch. The one on the right had his name over the bell. I was about to press it when the door at the top of the stairs opened. He closed the door and started down, and then by the light of the dim night-bulb he saw me in the vestibule.

His jaw hung slack. I said, “I want—” That was all I could get out. He turned and scurried back up the stairs.

I dashed after him. I reached the door as it slammed in my face. He had no time to lock it. I plunged into the apartment and found that he'd turned the lights off.

It wasn't totally dark. The night-light from the stairs showed shadowy masses of furniture. But showed no movement. I stood inside the door, peering, listening, hearing only my own breath, while my hand groped for the switch which would be beside the door.

I felt it and snapped it and there was light. I stood at one end of a living room. He wasn't in it, but Celia Ambler was.

That first look at her told me she was dead and how she had died. She lay sprawled on the floor, and her eyes were open and staring and her tongue showed.

Ahead of me there were two closed doors. He would be behind one of them, cowering, scared stiff. The only thing I had to worry about was that he would try to escape through the window. I started across the room. When I reached the dead woman, I paused to bend over her, to touch her. The marks of the fingers that had strangled her showed on her tan throat. She was still a little warm, which meant that it had happened a short time ago.

I straightened up and one of the two doors opened, and he stepped into the room. George Hoge. His pinched face looked like a skeleton's in which two glowing coals had been put in for eye sockets. He had a rifle.

"Don't make a move for your gun,” he said.

I should have had my gun in my hand. I should have remembered that it was always a mistake to under-estimate anybody, especially a killer.

I glanced at the dead woman. “A knife for her husband and your hands for her,” I said. “A rifle for me. You like variety."

"I should have killed you in the parking field."

"Sure,” I said. “Kill and keep killing. But where did it get you? It didn't get you Celia."

"No.” Hoge shivered. “How did you guess?"

"Don't know if I did. Not all of it, anyway. I got the idea you were the one slugged me tonight. If not Burnett, who then? Well, this afternoon Celia Ambler had kissed me on her terrace. Out in the open where anybody could see. You'd left, but maybe you were still hanging around. Spying from around the side of the house. Maybe spying on her, or maybe wanting to hear what a cop would have to say about her husband's murder."

"In other words, you knew nothing,” he said.

"Not too much,” I said. “I'd gotten myself on the wrong track all day. Then a little while ago I thought there had to be another track. I'd learned the kind of dame Celia Ambler was. I'd noticed the way you looked at her this afternoon. I'd been slugged right after you'd seen me in the theater. I came here to talk to you about it.” I looked at the dead woman. “And now I know."

"I'm going to kill you,” Hoge said.

I shrugged. “Your other killings didn't do you any good. You figured if you knocked off John Ambler you'd have his wife to yourself. She would come up here now and then to this place of yours and have a time with you, but didn't suspect you were merely one more guy on her string. Right?"

His rifle wavered. “Tonight she told me. We had a fight because I saw her kissing you. Then she told me there had been others. She was laughing at me."

"Did she know you'd killed her husband?"

"No. I told her. I said I'd killed for her, and now she—” He choked on his own voice. “She looked at me with—with utter horror. She started to run out. She was going to the police. I had to stop her. I took her by the throat. I—I—"

He passed his hand over his face. I'd been waiting for something like that. I lunged at him.

It was easy. I had the rifle barrel knocked aside before he knew what was happening. I tore it from his hand and scaled it across the room and had my arm back to drive my fist into his face.

I didn't hit him. I'd done enough hitting for one day.

10.

When I entered the hospital room next morning, Holly Laird was sitting beside his bed. Most of Burnett's face was bandaged.

"I want to tell you how sorry I am,” I said.

They didn't say anything.

"I've been suspended from the force,” I went on. “There will be a departmental trial. Maybe because I brought the killer in last night they'll go easy on me. Maybe not. I guess I don't care much either way."

She put her hand on his arm. They remained silent.

"I had to come here and explain,” I said. “You kids are in love. I was in love too—once. And you look like Martha. Your hair especially. I had to hurt Martha, hurt Martha when I was hurting you, and hurt the guy who loved you because—” I stopped. “It sounds mixed up, but it isn't. Not that I'm trying to make any excuses for myself, but if you two could understand ... “ I stopped, because I could see that I wasn't going to get an answer. Things had gone too far for a few words to fix things. Neither Holly Laird nor Burnett said anything. I could see their hate and feel it. I had to do something to make things right, but there was nothing to do.

"I'm sorry,” I said again. I went out. Suddenly, I was sick.

[Back to Table of Contents]

AS I LIE DEAD by FLETCHER FLORA

I rolled over in the hot sand and sat up. Down the artificial beach about fifty yards, the old man was coming toward us with a bright towel trailing from one hand. He was wearing swimming trunks, and with every step he took, his big belly bounced like a balloon tied up short on the end of a stick. Dropping the towel on the sand, he turned and waded into the water.

"The old man's taking a swim,” I said.

Beside me on the beach, Cousin Cindy grunted. She was stretched out flat on her belly with her head cradled on her arms and her long golden legs spread in a narrow V. Her white lastex trunks curved up high over the swell of her body, and the ends of her brassiere lay unattached on the sand. When she shifted position, raising herself a little on her elbows, my reaction was not cousinly. Not cousinly at all.

"Hook me in back,” she said.

I reached over and brought the loose ends of her brassiere together below her shoulder blades, letting my fingers wander off lightly down the buttons of her spine. She sat up, folding the golden legs Indian style and shaking sand from the ends of her golden hair. She was gold all over in the various shades that gold can take. Even her brown eyes, behind dark glass in white harlequin frames, were flecked with gold.

Out in the lake, Grandfather was swimming toward the raft that was a small brown square on the blue surface of the water. He was swimming breast stroke, as many old men swim, and the water bulged out ahead of him in smooth, sweeping undulations.

"The old man's strong as a bull,” I said.

Cindy didn't answer. She just handed me a bottle with a white label and a white cap and some brown lotion inside. I unscrewed the cap and poured some of the lotion on her shoulders and back, rubbing it in gently with my fingers until it had disappeared and her skin was like golden satin to my touch.

Looking over her shoulder, past the soft sheen of her hair and out across the glittering blue lake, I saw that Grandfather had reached the raft. He was sitting on the far side, his back to us, legs dangling in the water. He'd made it out there in good time. For an old man, damn good time. He was strong, in spite of his fat belly. It didn't look like he was ever going to die.

"It's hot,” Cindy said, her voice slow and sleepy like the purring of a kitten, “but it's not as hot as it gets in Acapulco. You ever been in Acapulco, Tony? It's beautiful there. The harbor is almost land-locked, with mountains all around, and the ships come right up against the shore."

I didn't say anything. My hands moved across her shoulders and down along the soft swells of flat muscle that padded the blades. The perfumes of her hair and the lotion were a strange, exotic blend in my nostrils. Out on the raft, Grandfather still sat with his legs in the water.

"I was there for two weeks once,” Cindy said. “In Acapulco, I mean. I went with a man from Los Angeles who wanted me to wear red flowers in my hair. He was very romantic, but he was also very fat, and the palms of his hands were always damp. It would be better in Acapulco with you, Tony. Much better."

My hands reversed direction, moving up again into her hair, cupping it between palms as water is cupped. The raft, out on the lake, rose and dipped on a slight swell. Grandfather rode it easily, still resting.

"He just sits,” I said bitterly. “He'll be sitting forever."

Her head fell back slowly until it was resting on my shoulder, and her golden hair was hanging down my back, and I could look down along the slim arch of her throat into the small valley of shadow under the white band she wore. Behind dark glass, her lids lowered, and she looked dreamily through slits into the brash blue of the sky.

"Acapulco, Tony. You and me and Acapulco. It's hot and beautiful there by the harbor in a ring of mountains, but it wouldn't be good unless you and I were hot and beautiful, too. It wouldn't be good if we were too old, Tony."

"He's strong as a bull,” I said. “He'll live forever."

A shiver rippled her flesh, and the tip of her pink tongue slipped out and around her oiled lips.

"It's a nice day, Tony. A hot, dreamy day with a blue sky and white clouds drifting. If I were old and ugly, I'd like to die on a day like this."

She remained quiet a minute longer, lying against me with her hair splashing down my back, and then she slipped away, rising in the hot sand.

"I want a drink,” she said. “A long, long drink with lots of ice and a sprig of mint. You coming, Tony?"

I stood up too, and we stood looking at each other across the sand of the artificial beach that had cost Grandfather a small fortune.

"I'll be up in a little,” I said. “I think I'll swim out to the raft and back."

Her breasts rose high against the restraint of the white band and descended slowly on a long whisper of air. She wet her lips again. “I'll have your drink waiting,” she said.

I watched her walk away up the beach, her legs moving from the hips with fluid ease, even in the soft sand, and after she was gone, I went down to the water and waded out into it to my waist. The water was cool on my hot skin and seemed to make everything clear and simple in my mind. Swimming with a powerful crawl, I was nearing the raft in almost no time. A few feet from it, treading water, I stopped and looked at Grandfather's motionless back. I wasn't worried about his hearing me. He'd been partially deaf for years and usually wore a little button attached to a battery. After a few seconds, I sank in the water and swam under the raft.

The first time I reached for his ankle, my fingers barely brushed it, and it jerked away. Reaching again, I got my fingers locked around the ankle and lunged down with all the force I could manage in the buoyant water. He came in with a splash, and even under the water I could see his veined eyes bulging with terror as my hands closed around the sagging flesh of his throat.

He was strong. Stronger, even, than I'd thought. His hands clawed at mine, tearing at my grip, and I scissored my legs, kicking up to a higher level so that I could press my weight down upon him from above. My fingers kept digging into his throat, but he put up a hellish threshing, and when I broke water for air, it was all I could do to hold him below the surface. It was a long time before he was quiet and I could let him slip away into the green depths.

There was a fire under my ribs. My arms and legs were throbbing, heavy with the poisonous sediment of fatigue. I wanted to crawl onto the raft and collapse, but I didn't. I lay floating on my back for a minute, breathing deeply and evenly until the fire went out in my lungs, and then I rolled in the water and crawled slowly to shore.

On the white sand where he had dropped it, Grandfather's towel was a bright splash of color. Leaving it lying there, I crossed the beach and went up through a sparse stand of timber to the eight room house we called the lodge.

Cindy was waiting for me on the sun porch. She had removed the dark glasses but was still wearing the two scraps of white lastex. In one hand was a tall glass with ice cubes floating in amber liquid and a green sprig of mint plastered to the glass above the amber. Her eyes were lighted hotly by their golden flecks. Between us, along a vibrant intangible thread of dark understanding, passed the unspoken question and the unspoken answer.

"Tell me more about Acapulco,” I said.

She set the glass with great deliberateness on a glass-topped table and moved over to me. Still with that careful deliberateness, she passed her arms under mine and locked her hands behind my back. There was surprising strength in her. I could feel the hard, hot pressure of her body clear through to my spine. Her lips moved softly against my naked shoulder.

"Was it bad, Tony? Was it very bad?"

"No. Not bad."

"Will anyone guess?"

"I had to choke him pretty hard. There may be bruises. But it won't matter, even if they do get suspicious. It's proof that hurts. All we have to remember is that we were here together all afternoon."

"What do we do now?"

"We have a drink. We wait until dusk. Then we call the sheriff and tell him we're worried about Grandfather. We tell him the old man went swimming and hasn't returned."

"Why the sheriff?"

"I don't know. It seems like the sheriff should be the one to call."

"The will, Tony. Are you sure about the will?"

"Yes, I'm sure. It's all ours, honey. Every stick, stone, stock and penny, share and share alike."

It was only then that she began to tremble. I could feel her silken flesh shivering against mine all the way up and down. Her lips made a little wet spot on my shoulder. Under my fingers, the fastening of her white brassiere was a recalcitrant obstacle, thwarting the relief of my primitive drive. Finally it parted, the white scrap hanging for a moment between us and then slipping away. My hands traced the beautiful concave lines of her sides and moved with restrained, savage urgency.

Her voice was a thin, fierce whisper.

"Tony,” she said. “Tony, Tony, Tony ... “

2

Out on the lake, they were blasting for Grandfather. All day, at intervals, we'd heard the distant, muffled detonations, and every time the hollow sound rolled up through the sparse timber to reverberate through the rooms of the lodge, I could see the bloated body of the old man wavering in terrible suspension in the dark water.

On the sun porch, Cindy stood with her back to me, staring out across the cleared area of the yard to the standing timber. She was wearing a slim black sheath of a dress without shoulders. Beautiful in anything or nothing, in black she was most beautiful of all. She was smoking a cigarette, and when she lifted it to her lips, the smoke rose in a thin, transparent cloud to mingle with the golden haze the light made in her hair.

"It's been a long time,” she said. “Almost an hour."

"What's been almost an hour?"

"Since the last explosion. They've been coming at half-hour intervals."

"Maybe they've raised him."

"Maybe."

She moved a little, lifting the cigarette to her lips again, and the sunlight slipped up her arm and over her shoulder. I went up behind her and trailed my hands down the black sheath to where it flared tautly over firm hips and then back up to her shoulders. I pulled her back against me hard, breathing her hair.

"Nervous, Cindy?"

"No. You?"

"A little. It's the waiting, I guess."

She turned to face me, her arms coming up fiercely around my neck.

"Sorry, Tony? Will you ever be sorry?"

I looked down into the hot, gold-flecked eyes, and I said, “No, I'll never be sorry,” and her cigarette dropped with a small sound to the asphalt tile behind me. Out on the front veranda, there was a loud knocking at the door.

I went in through the living room and on out through the hall to the front door, and there on the veranda stood Aaron Owens, the sheriff of the county. He was a short, fat little man with round cheeks and a bowed mouth, and it crossed my mind that maybe he'd been elected sheriff because the voters thought he was cute. Looking in at me through the screen, he mopped his face with a bright bandana and blew out a wet sigh.

"Hello, Mr. Wren. It's a hot walk up from the lake."

I opened the screen door and told him to come in. “My cousin's on the sun porch. She'll mix you a drink."

We went back to the sun porch, and Cindy put bourbon and soda and ice in a glass and handed it to him. He took the drink eagerly.

"We've been listening to the blasting,” Cindy said. “We haven't heard any now for an hour."

He looked at her over the rim of his glass, his face and voice taking on a studied solemnity.

"We've brought him up. Poor old guy. I came to tell you."

Cindy turned quickly away, looking again out across the yard to the timber, and the little sheriff's eyes made a lingering, appreciative tour of the black sheath.

"He'll be taken right into town,” he said. “Twenty-four hours in the water, you know. Didn't do him any good. We thought you'd prefer it that way."

"Yes,” I said. “Of course."

He lifted his glass again, draining the bourbon and soda off the cubes. He let one of the cubes slip down the glass into his mouth, then spit it back into the glass.

"The coroner'll look him over. Just routine. An old man like that shouldn't swim alone in deep water. Maybe a cramp. Maybe a heart attack. Never can tell with an old man."

"Grandfather was always active,” I said.

He looked wistfully at his empty glass for a minute and then set it down on the glass-topped table.

"Sure. Some old men never want to give up. Ought to know better. Well, time to be running along. Lucky to get him up so soon. Can't tell you how sorry I am."

"Thanks very much,” I said.

I took him back to the front door and watched him cross the veranda and go down across the cleared area into the timber. Turning away, I went back to Cindy.

She was facing me when I came in, black and gold against the bright glass. Her lips were parted, and her breasts rose and fell with a slow, measured cadence.

"Everything's all right, Tony. Everything's going to be all right."

"Sure. They can't touch us, honey."

"He was an old man. We didn't take much of his life away."

"Don't think about that. Don't think about it at all."

"I won't, Tony. I'll just think about the time when we can go away. I'll think of you and me and more money than we can spend in a dozen lifetimes. You and me and the long, hot days under a sky that's bluer than any blue you've ever seen. Oh, Tony.... “

I went over and held her tightly until she whimpered with pain and her eyes were blind with the pleasure of suffering.

"It won't be long, honey. Not long. After the will's probated. After everything's settled."

She snarled her fingers in my hair and pulled my face down to her hungry lips, and it must have been a century later when I became aware of the shrill intrusion of the telephone in the hall behind me.

I went out to answer it, and when I spoke into the transmitter my mind was still swimming in a kind of steaming mist. The voice that answered mine was clear and incisive but very soft. I had to strain to understand.

"Mr. Wren? My name is Evan Lane. I have a lodge across the lake. I see the sheriff's men have quit blasting. Does that mean they've found the old man?"

"Yes,” I said. “They found him."

"Permit me to extend my sympathy.” The country line hummed for a long moment in my ear, and it seemed to me that I could hear, far off at the other end, the soft ghost of a laugh. “Also my congratulations,” the voice said.

A cold wind seemed to come through the wire with the voice. The warm mist inside my skull condensed and fell, leaving my mind chill and gray and very still. Inside my ribs, there was a terrible pain, as if someone had thrust a knife between them.

"I beg your pardon,” I said.

The laugh was unmistakable this time, rising on a light, high note. “I offered my congratulations, Mr. Wren. For getting away with it, I mean."

"I don't understand."

"I think you do. You see, Mr. Wren, you made one small mistake. You made the mistake of acting too soon after your lovely friend had been sun bathing on the beach. A girl like that is an open invitation to a man like me to use his telescope. I have a clear shot from my veranda. Now do you understand, Mr. Wren?"

"What do you want?"

"I think you'll find me a reasonable man. Perhaps we'd better meet and discuss terms."

"Where?"

"Say the barroom of the Lakeshore Inn."

"When?"

"Tonight? At nine?"

"I'll be there,” I said.

I cradled the phone and went back through the living room to the sun porch. Cindy was standing at a liquor cabinet in the corner, moving a swizzle stick in the second of two drinks she'd mixed. She stopped stirring and looked across at me, becoming suddenly very quiet.

"Who was it, Tony?"

"He said his name's Evan Lane. He has a lodge across the lake."

"What did he want?"

"He wants to meet me at the Lakeshore Inn. Tonight."

"Why?"

"He has a habit of watching you on the beach through a telescope. He was watching yesterday. He saw me and the old man in the lake."

She took two stiff steps toward me, her slim body rigid in its black sheath. Bright spots were burning in her cheeks.

"Blackmail?"

"It looks like it."

"What shall we do, Tony? What shall we do?"

"Find out what he's after, first of all. After that, we'll see."

"He'll bleed us, Tony. He'll bleed us white."

"No,” I said. “It won't be like that. It won't be like that at all."

Then she came the rest of the way to me, but her body was cold and rigid in my arms, and it was a long time before it got back the way it was before the telephone rang.

3

The Lakeshore Inn was on an arm of the lake that was almost at a right angle to the main body. In the barroom, they'd tried to make an effect with rafters. After they'd finished, the effect was just rafters, but you felt friendly because they'd tried.

I crawled onto a stool. A clock on the wall behind the bar said five to nine. I looked at my reflection in the mirror below the clock and was a little astonished to see that I didn't look any different from the way I'd looked yesterday or the day before. Same brown hair. Same eyes a little browner. Same face in general.

The bartender said, “Good evening, Mr. Wren,” and cocked an eyebrow to show that he was tuned in.

"The usual,” I said.

He put a couple of cubes in a glass and covered them with White Horse. Down the bar, around the curve to the wall, a heavy man with a bald head was drinking beer. The bartender went down to him and resumed a conversation I'd interrupted. At nine precisely, someone came up behind me and got onto the stool on my left. I looked up into the mirror.

The face I saw went on from where mine stopped. Thin and dark, with a clean, chiseled look, burned mahogany by wind and sun. Above it, black hair was feathered with white around the ears and almost mathematically divided by a single white streak. It was a head to make the ladies itch. The head of a man who might have been a heavy actor but thought he was too good for it. I sat and watched it until the bartender had done his job and gone back to his beer drinker.

"You don't look like a blackmailer,” I said.

An incisive white smile flashed in the shadows of the mirror. “Thanks. You don't look like a murderer, either."

"It's a funny world,” I said.

We drank in silence, two congenial guys, and after a while I said, “You're a little previous. Right now I'm a poor relation. So's Cindy. You know Cindy, don't you? She's the girl you peep at through a telescope. We're just a pair of lovable young parasites, Cindy and I. We won't have any money for blackmailers until the estate's settled."

The smile reappeared in the mirror, growing to a laugh, the soft, substantial embodiment of the ghost on the wire.

"You think I want money? My friend, I have more of the stuff than I can ever use. More, I imagine, than you'll get from Grandfather."

"In that case, what the hell are you after?"

Our eyes came together, locking in the glass, and his, I saw, were darkly swimming with the amused and cynical tolerance that doesn't come from compassion or conviction, but from a kind of amoral indifference to all standards.

"Nothing that need worry you, if you're reasonable. Believe me, I feel no compulsion to see you punished merely for killing a man old enough to die.” He lit a cigarette, doing it neatly with a silver lighter. In the mirror, the light flared up across planes and projections, giving his face for a moment the quality of fancy photography. “I'm a tenacious man, Mr. Wren. I know what I want, and I'll use any available means to get what I want. In the light of yesterday's events, you should be able to understand that."

"You're talking all around it,” I said. “The point, I mean."

The coal of his cigarette glowed brighter and faded. “I'm thinking about the girl. Cindy, I believe you called her."

I guess I'd known all along what was coming. I guess I'd known from the instant I looked into the mirror and saw that thin, patrician face with its ancient eyes. Strangely, there was no anger in me. There was only a cold, clear precision of thought: This time it'll be easy. This time it'll be fun. Not just a job, like it was with the old man.

"You can go to hell,” I said.

His white teeth showed pleasantly. “My friend, you are the one in peril of going to hell. I can send you with a few words."

Killing the White Horse and turning to face him directly for the first time, I said, “You're lousy with dough. You said it yourself. Buy yourself a girl."

I got off the stool to go, and his hand came out to lie lightly on my sleeve.

"Since she's involved in this, it might be smart to let Cindy make the decision. She may not be as ready as you for that trip to hell. In case she isn't, I'll be here until eleven."

"You can stay forever,” I said. “You can stay forever and to hell with you."

I went away without looking at him again, because I was afraid if I looked at him that I couldn't resist ruining his pretty face. Outside, standing by my convertible in front of the Inn, I felt the cool wind come up off the lake and hit me, and all the strength went out of me. My hands began to tremble, and I clutched the edge of the door. After a long time, I got into the convertible and drove back down the lake road to the lodge.

In the drive, I killed the motor and sat quietly under the wheel. Beyond the timber, a cold slice of moon was rising. In the lodge, all lights were out except the one in the room where Cindy slept. Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. Golden, sultry Cindy. The thought of her and Evan Lane brought the hot trembling back into my body, and I gripped the wheel until I was quiet.

I'd kill him, of course. I'd kill him, and it would be a pleasure. It would be the greatest pleasure I'd ever have on earth, except the pleasure that Cindy brought. Thinking of it clearly that way made me feel better, almost uplifted, and I got out of the convertible and went into the lodge and up to the room with the light burning.

Cindy was in bed with a book open, but I could tell she hadn't been reading. I stood leaning against the door, looking across at her, and pretty soon, she said, “I heard you drive up several minutes ago."

"Yes,” I said. “I've been sitting down there thinking. I've been thinking about how to kill a man."

"No, Tony. Not again."

"It's the only way. I've always heard that one murder begets another, and I guess that's the way it is."

"We'll have money, Tony. Lots of money. We can pay."

"Like you said, he'd bleed us. He'd bleed us as long as we lived. Besides, he's got money. He isn't interested in getting any more."

"What does he want?"

"He wants you."

Her eyes dilated, and the breath rattled in her throat. I watched her lips come open and bright color creep under gold, and I thought again of the pleasure of killing Evan Lane.

"What do you mean, Tony?"

"Just what I said, honey. He wants you. The same way I want you. The same way any man who looks at you this side of eighty must want you. He's the guy with the telescope. Remember?"

She came out of the bed in a mist of white nightgown that barely existed, and I went to meet her. Against my shoulder, she said, “What now, Tony? What'll we do?"

"I told you, honey. I'll kill him before the night's over."

"No. We'll find another way, Tony. There is another way."

"There is, honey. The way he wants. Is it the way you want?"

"It'd be better than prison, Tony. Better than the death house."

I dug my fingers into her arms until she gasped with pain.

"Don't say that, Cindy. Don't."

"I'm thinking of us, Tony. You and me and the big dream. Are we going to throw it all away because some louse wants a cheap experience? We can't do that now."

"We won't throw anything away. If he wants an experience, he can die. Dying's the biggest experience of all."

"It'll point. Oh, Tony, can't you see? Two deaths like that, the location of his lodge, all the things together. Together, they'll point right back at us. They'll dig it all out. Besides, maybe he's already on his way to the sheriff."

I shook my head. “No. He's at the Inn waiting for you. He said he'd wait until eleven."

"I'd better go, Tony. I'd better go see him. Maybe we can work it out short of what he really wants."

"No. Not a prayer. If you saw him, you'd know."

"Give me a chance, Tony."

"There isn't any chance."

"I don't want to die, Tony. I don't want you to die. If we have to kill him, let it be later. Let it be when the time's exactly right. Oh, Tony, give me a chance to save us."

Her golden flesh burned through the white mist, but I was suddenly spent and impotent, and I turned and went away to my own room and lay down in the darkness.

After a while, I heard the convertible come to life below my window and move off down the drive.

I kept on lying there in the darkness.

There was no warmth in the sun, and the wind blowing in across the lake was very cold. The timber stood naked against the sky above its fallen leaves.

In her room, Cindy was packing. I went in and closed the door and stood leaning against it.

"Going somewhere, Cindy?"

"Yes. Back to town. Summer's over, and it's getting cold, and it's time to go back."

"Going alone, Cindy?"

"Please, Tony. We've been over it all so often. You know how it is."

"Sure,” I said. “Like you said a long time ago, you're saving us. Two months ago, Cindy. A long time."

She kept going back and forth between the closet and her bag, not looking at me. She was wearing brown velvet pajamas with six inches of golden skin between the pants and the top, and the effect of the brown velvet and the golden skin was a matter of shading that made my heart ache.

"You're going with Evan. Evan, the pretty blackmailer."

"It's for us, Tony. For you and me."

"I know. That's what I keep telling myself. She's making a big sacrifice, I keep telling myself. But now maybe it's time to let Evan Lane start sacrificing. Maybe it's time now to let him make the big sacrifice for us, the same way Grandfather made it."

She stopped halfway to the bag and turned toward me, holding in her hands a scarlet cashmere sweater that was like a great soft splash of blood against the brown velvet.

"He's got us, Tony. However much we hate him, he's got us, and you know it."

"I should've killed him the first night."

"He'll get tired of it pretty soon, Tony. I know he will. Then it'll be you and me again."

"Sure. You and me and Acapulco. You and me and the hot nights."

"It will, Tony. It will."

I went over to her fast and took a handful of her golden hair. I pulled her head back hard until her slender throat was a tight arch and her lips were pulled apart.

"Is that the truth, Cindy?"

"Yes. Oh, yes."

"Say it. Say it's the truth and the whole truth, so help you God."

"It is, Tony. It's the truth and the whole truth, so help me God."

I let go of her hair, and her head came forward and down until her mouth was warm and alive on the base of my neck, and her arms came up around me.

"I love you, Cindy. I've murdered for you, and I'd die for you, and there's no place to go without you but hell."

"It won't be long now, Tony,” she whispered. “Not long now."

Then I went out of her room and downstairs. From a desk in the den behind the living room, I got a .38 calibre revolver and put it in the pocket of my tweed jacket. Outside, I angled down through the naked timber to the artificial beach and turned right along the shore.

The grass around the lake was dying, but it was still long and tough and hard to walk in, and in spite of the chill, the shirt under my jacket was soon wet with sweat. It was a small lake, but it took me well over an hour to walk around it to Evan Lane's lodge.

The lodge sat among the trees. I went up the slope and across the front veranda to the door and knocked, but there was no response. I thought at first that I'd come too late, but when I went around back, I saw his car still in its shed, so I returned to the veranda and sat down on the top step.

From where I sat, I could look at an easterly angle and see the timber growing west of our lodge across the lake. Swinging my eyes a little farther east, I saw more trees, but they were thicker and closer and growing on a kind of little peninsula that jutted out into the water from the end of the lake. I got up and went down to the west end of the veranda, where the angle of vision was sharper, but I still couldn't see anything but the heavy growth of scrub trees on the little peninsula. I went back to the top step and sat down again.

Except for the soft sighing of the trees, there was no sound. Under the pale sun, the lake was quiet. My mind was quiet with the quiet that comes when things are accepted.

Down by the lake, beyond the trees, there was suddenly the faint sound of whistling. The whistling grew louder as it came nearer through the trees, and pretty soon Evan Lane appeared on the slope, dressed in a bright plaid shirt, open at the throat, and corduroy trousers. When he saw me sitting on the step, the whistling broke for a moment and then resumed.

A few steps from the veranda, Lane pulled up, saying, “Well. Mr. Wren. Your neighborliness is appreciated, but it comes a little late. I'm returning to town tonight."

"I know,” I said. “Cindy's home packing."

"Yes? I still have mine to do. I know you'll understand."

"Sure. I'll only stay a minute. I was just sitting here admiring your view. You could improve it, you know, by having the trees cut off that little peninsula. If you had the trees cut down, you could see our place across the lake. You could even see the beach and the raft."

He turned slowly to follow the direction of my gazer and when he turned back, his eyes were alive with that swimming, cynical amusement I had seen in the Inn's barroom.

"Oh, yes. I did say I spotted you from the veranda, didn't I? But, of course, it no longer matters."

"Sure,” I said. “It no longer matters. As far as you're concerned, nothing will ever matter again."

I took the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him, and then I saw what I'd been living to see. I saw the smooth assurance go sick in his eyes and fear come flooding in. When I'd seen that, I'd had everything from him I'd ever want, so I shot him. I shot him where I hated him most. Right in his pretty face. The bullet struck him just under the nose, and he went down like an empty sack.

I sat there a little longer, looking with a kind of cold detachment at the crumpled body, and then I got up and went back down the slope and around the end of the lake. By the time I got back to our side and the beach, the afternoon was almost gone. Crossing the beach toward the timber in front of the lodge, I thought for a moment that I saw Grandfather's bright towel lying on the sand where he'd dropped it over two months ago, but of course the towel wasn't really there at all.

I went up through the timber and into the lodge, and Cindy was in the living room with a glass in her hand. She was still wearing the brown velvet pajamas, and when I looked at her, there was still in my heart, in spite of everything, the pain of my love and the sadness of a great loss.

"It's late, Tony. You've been gone a long time."

"I went around to the other side of the lake,” I said. “I called on Evan Lane."

The glass moved sharply in her hand. “Why, Tony? Why?"

"He wasn't home when I got there,” I said, “and I sat on the veranda until he came. I learned something while I was sitting there, honey. I learned that you can't see our beach or the raft at all from his place. He never used a telescope, as he said he did. He never saw me drown the old man. I kept trying to think how he could have known, and the only thing I could think was that you told him."

I waited a few seconds, and she tried to speak, but no sound could pass through her constricted throat. After a while, I went on talking in a quiet kind of way with no anger in my voice, because there was really no anger in me.

"Yes, honey. You told him. You told him because you were hot for each other, and he could move in with a new kind of blackmail, and there would be nothing I could do about it because he knew I was a murderer. You talked about the big dream. The dream was there, all right, but I was never in it. When the time came, you'd have gone away, all right, but never with me. He was the one, honey. He was the one from the beginning, but first you had to have Grandfather dead. You had to have him dead for his money, because you wanted his money in addition to Evan's. He didn't have the guts to do his own killing. He didn't have the guts, and you didn't have the strength. So you drafted me. Well, the old man's dead now, as you wanted him, and Evan Lane is dead, too. He's lying on the slope in front of his lodge, and he's dead forever."

She tried again to speak, but nothing came from her throat except a dry sob.

"I'm sorry,” I said. “You'll never know how sorry."

I took out the gun, and the glass fell from her hand, and her voice came at last with a hot rush.

"I don't care if he's dead, Tony. Honest to God, I don't. We can still go away together. We can still have the dream."

"Yes,” I said. “We'll go away together, honey. I've got our tickets right here in the gun. One way and a long way."

"No, Tony. For God's sake, no.” I pulled the trigger then, and there was only a little bang that wasn't very loud at all, and a black spot appeared as if by magic in the golden area of skin just below the place where her heart lay hidden. Her legs folded slowly, lowering her to her knees, and she pressed one hand, with the fingers spread, over the black spot. A thin trickle of blood seeped out brightly between two of the fingers. The gold-flecked eyes were wide with shock and terrible supplication.

"Please, Tony. Please, please ... “

Then she lay quietly on the floor, and I turned and walked out onto the veranda. I leaned against the railing, looking off into the timber where night had come, and from one of the trees came the crying of a crazy-voiced loon. I put the barrel of the gun into my mouth until the sharp sight was digging into the roof, and even then, when there was no reasonable alternative, I was a little surprised to realize I was actually going to do it.

THE END

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NOIR MASTER SERIES

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Table of Contents

IDENTITY UNKNOWN by JONATHAN CRAIG

THE GIRL BEHIND THE HEDGE by MICKEY SPILLANE

CARRERA'S WOMAN by ED McBAIN writing as RICHARD MA…

BUTCHER by RICHARD S. PRATHER

LOOK DEATH IN THE EYE by LAWRENCE BLOCK

ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON by GIL BREWER

FRAME by FRANK KANE

DOUBLE by BRUNO FISCHER

AS I LIE DEAD by FLETCHER FLORA

NOIR MASTER SERIES

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