The Project Gutenberg eBook of Knock three-one-two, by Fredric Brown
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Title: Knock three-one-two
Author: Fredric Brown
Release Date: June 8, 2023 [eBook #70944]
Language: English
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KNOCK THREE-ONE-TWO ***
KNOCK THREE-ONE-TWO
By FREDRIC BROWN
E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.
New York
_Copyright, © 1959 by_ FREDRIC BROWN
_All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A._
FIRST EDITION
_No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who wishes to quote brief passages in connection
with a review written for inclusion
in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast._
A shortened version of this book appeared
in the June issue of _High Adventure_,
© 1959, under the title of
_Night of the Psycho_.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-10773
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
By Fredric Brown
THE DEAD RINGER
COMPLIMENTS OF A FIEND
HERE COMES A CANDLE
MURDER CAN BE FUN
THE BLOODY MOONLIGHT
THE FABULOUS CLIPJOINT
THE SCREAMING MIMI
NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK
DEATH HAS MANY DOORS
THE FAR CRY
WE ALL KILLED GRANDMA
THE DEEP END
MOSTLY MURDER
HIS NAME WAS DEATH
WHAT MAD UNIVERSE
THE LIGHTS IN THE SKY ARE STARS
ANGELS AND SPACESHIPS
THE WENCH IS DEAD
MARTIANS, GO HOME
THE LENIENT BEAST
ROGUE IN SPACE
THE OFFICE
ONE FOR THE ROAD
THE LATE LAMENTED
KNOCK THREE-ONE-TWO
KNOCK THREE-ONE-TWO
5:00 P.M.
He had a name, but it doesn't matter; call him _the psycho_.
That's what the newspapers and everyone who read them called him now,
since his second murder two months ago. At first he'd been called by
various designations: insane rapist-killer, homicidal maniac, sexual
psychopath, and others. For convenience, for shorthand, it had boiled
down to the psycho. The police called him that too, although they had
been moving heaven and earth to find a better name for him, a name
like Peter Jones or Robert Smith, a name that would let them find and
apprehend him before he killed again. And again.
And now tonight the Need was on him again. The need to rape and kill a
woman.
He stood in the hallway of an apartment building, before a door.
Nervous tension was making him flex and unflex his hands--his
tremendously strong, strangler's hands that had already killed twice
and, if everything went well, were about to kill again. He forced
himself to hold them still. Not that it mattered here and now, with no
one watching him, but it was a habit that had been growing on him and
one that he had to break, lest he forget sometime and do it when people
were watching him and make them wonder about him, about why he did it.
And maybe go on wondering from there; in this city right now just about
everybody was watching his neighbor suspiciously, watching for just
such little signs as that.
He took a deep breath and then raised a hand and knocked on the door. A
light, almost diffident knock, not a peremptory one.
He heard the click of high heels coming to the door. And her voice
called out, "Yes? Who is it?"
He made his voice as soft as his knock had been, and as unfrightening,
just loud enough to carry to her. "Western Union, ma'am. Collect
telegram, from Pittsburgh." Collect, of course, so she couldn't ask
him to slide it under the door. And the "from Pittsburgh" should allay
any suspicion she might have, since that's where her husband had gone
yesterday, on a business trip. She might wonder why he'd wire her
collect--but there could be reasons for that.
He heard the knob turn and tensed himself, ready. Then the door
opened--a few inches, on a chain--and he knew that he had failed. He
threw himself back flat against the wall alongside the door so she
wouldn't get a glimpse of him.
And ran, down the flight of stairs and out to the street. Thank God her
apartment was a back one and didn't have a window on the street from
which she could still get a look at him. Once out the door he forced
himself to walk slowly to his car. He got in and drove away, being
careful not to drive too fast or too slow.
What a hell of a lousy break. He'd checked that apartment three days
ago and there hadn't been a chain bolt on the door then. Her husband
must have put it on for her just before he left on his business trip.
Well, at least he had got away safely.
He was five blocks off and had just turned onto a main traffic artery
when he heard the sound of squad car sirens converging on the building
he had just left.
5:02 P.M.
After his wife had left, Ray Fleck paced the flat in rage and despair.
With rage, at first, predominating. Damn her, damn her, he thought.
What kind of wife would flatly refuse to help her husband when he
was in a jam, a real jam? The bitch, she could give him the money so
easily, and never feel it. All she had to do was cash in that accursed
insurance policy. What did she need it for? A policy on _herself_. And
it had a cash surrender value of over three thousand dollars--maybe
almost four thousand by now; several payments had been made since
they'd last argued about it.
Or she could at least borrow against it, and all he needed was five
hundred bucks. Four hundred and eighty, to be exact, but he'd made it
a round figure. But no, that damned policy of hers was sacrosanct; she
wouldn't even borrow against it. Sacrosanct for what, for God's sake?
Sure it was her savings, her stake, and she'd taken it out herself,
had started saving that way, before they were married. But now that
she _was_ married and had a husband to support her, why should she
feel she needed a stake? Unless she was planning to leave him, or
thinking that she might decide to do so--that was possible. They had
had some pretty bitter quarrels, the past two years out of the three
they'd been married. But she'd fought to keep that policy even during
the first year, and they'd been pretty happy at first. He'd been in a
lucky streak, riding high, and they'd both been in love. Women love you
when you're in the chips. When it comes to money, women are a one-way
street. You can spend it on them, but try to get some of it back. Just
try.
Besides, some of the money in that policy was his, rightfully his.
Hadn't he, for most of that first year, given her money to pay the
premiums on it? Under protest, of course; he'd tried to talk her out of
wanting to keep on carrying it. "Honey," he'd said, "what do we want
a policy on _you_ for? I don't want you to die, and if you should die
I don't want ten grand out of it." But she'd had an answer for that.
Women always have an answer.
"Ray, darling," she'd said, "I'd agree with you if this were just an
insurance policy--but it isn't. It's a ten-year endowment policy, and
that's a way of saving. A good way. I've carried it for over four years
now and in less than another six years we'll have ten thousand dollars
in cash. Won't that be nice?"
"Yeah, but it's a long time away--and those are damn high premiums. Why
short ourselves now to have money when we're old? What good will ten
thousand do us then?"
She laughed. "We won't exactly be old in six years. I'll be twenty-nine
and you'll be thirty-five. As to what we can use it for--a house, if
we haven't already bought one by then. It doesn't have to be big or
expensive, but I want us to have a home of our own someday; I don't
want to live in furnished flats the rest of my life. Or if we already
have our own home by then, maybe it would be enough to let you start
in business for yourself; you've said you would like to, if you had
capital."
That had made sense to him. Not the part about "a home of our own";
he was a city dweller and wouldn't live in a house in the suburbs if
somebody gave him one, but he could talk her out of that idea when the
time came.
But with ten thousand capital, all at once, he _could_ do himself a
lot of good. He was a liquor salesman and seldom made less than a
hundred a week in commissions: he averaged considerably higher than
that. He worked for J. & B. Liquor Distributors, and he had a good
following among taverns and liquor stores all over the city. And he had
at least some contacts with salesmen for wholesalers and distillers;
they knew he was a good salesman. If he could set himself up as an
independent distributor, make a profit on what he sold instead of just
a commission, he'd be on his way toward making big money instead of
peanuts. But it would be a long, slow pull. He'd need capital, all
right.
He'd made only one more effort. "But wouldn't it be better to put that
much money in the bank instead? Then if there was an emergency, we
could get at it easier."
But Ruth had shaken her head firmly. "We _could_ put money in the bank,
but you know you wouldn't, most weeks. Having regular premiums to meet
will _make_ us save. And if an emergency comes up we can borrow against
the policy--and get the money the same day, since the company has an
office here. But, Ray, I'd do it only for a real emergency--an accident
or serious illness, an operation, something like that. Not to let you
bet heavily on a horse race because you've got a hot tip, or to let you
pay off a gambling debt if you run in the hole." Well, she'd warned him.
But he'd given in, and had given her money to keep up the premiums for
a while, ten or eleven monthly premiums. Then he'd run into a streak
of bad luck instead of good and had told her he couldn't give her the
money; he just didn't have it.
She'd taken it calmly. "All right, Ray. But I'm _not_ going to cash in
that policy. I'll take a job, part time anyway, and make enough to pay
the premiums myself. More than that, I hope."
And she had taken a job, and had worked ever since. He hadn't objected.
Why should he? If the damn policy meant that much to her, why shouldn't
she earn the money to keep it up? And, for that matter, to kick in on
household expenses or at least to buy her own clothes? Why should he
have to earn everything for both of them and let her do nothing?
She'd held several jobs. Checker at a supermarket, ticket seller at
a movie. Currently, and for the past eight or nine months, she was
working an evening shift as a waitress in a Greek restaurant. Thirty
hours a week, from five-thirty to eleven-thirty five nights a week.
Usually when he was home at this time he drove her to work--and
sometimes when he was doing nothing important around eleven-thirty,
picked her up after her work. But this afternoon he'd had to leave his
car at a garage to have some work done on it (that would be another
damn bill on top of everything else) so the question hadn't arisen.
Just as well, since they'd quarreled so bitterly. They'd probably have
kept on quarreling in the car, and it would have done him no good. He
recognized by now that he'd lost the argument; she was adamant and
she'd stay that way. She hadn't believed him when he'd told her he was
in physical danger.
Well, he didn't really believe that himself. Joe Amico was tough but he
wasn't a gangster, and he wasn't going to risk having anybody killed
for four hundred and eighty bucks.
True, he might go to the length of having someone beat up a little
if he thought the guy was welshing on him, didn't even _intend_ to
pay off. But Joe knew him better than that. He'd owed Joe before and
had always paid off--although never anything like almost five hundred
bucks; _how_ had it ever run that high? Joe knew he had a good job and
was good for the money eventually.
All he needed was a lucky streak, and he was due for one. Overdue
for one. At poker, maybe, if the horses kept running badly for him.
Sometimes when the horses ran badly the cards ran well for him. And
vice versa.
There was a poker game tonight that might do the trick, if he had or
could raise enough of a stake to sit in on it. Yes, this was Thursday
night, and Harry Brambaugh always had a Thursday night poker game at
his place. From eleven o'clock on, sometimes well into the next day.
But--
Although he knew approximately how much money he had, he took out his
wallet and counted it. Twenty-eight bucks, twenty-eight lousy bucks.
Not enough to sit in on a game at Harry's. He ought to have a hundred
to start with to buck that game, not a stake that could go in the first
pot he got into beyond the ante. But if he could raise a hundred--well,
a lucky streak could easily run it to enough to let him pay off Joe
Amico and maybe some left over.
Raising a hundred didn't sound nearly as impossible as raising four
hundred and eighty. Even if he had to borrow ten bucks apiece from ten
guys. With all evening to do it in.
The phone rang. He picked it up and said "Ray Fleck."
And then recognized the voice that said "Hi, Ray," and wished he'd let
the phone ring. It was Joe Amico.
He said, "Listen, Joe, I haven't been able to do anything yet--but I'm
working on it. I'll raise it somehow, pretty soon. I'm sorry, but you
know I'm good for it."
"I know you're good for it. You'd better be. But I want you to drop in
and see me this evening."
"Sure, Joe, if you want me to. I'm coming downtown anyway. But it won't
do any good. I'm flat."
"Flat or not, you come in. I'll be here till ten. Any time between now
and then. Got me?"
"Okay, Joe. I'll see you."
He sighed as he put down the phone. Well, he was going downtown anyway;
that had been the truth. And probably Joe was going to give him an
ultimatum, a time limit. And it would be an unpleasant interview but
at least he'd know the worst. He'd know how long he had to raise the
money. Or whether Joe would take it in weekly payments if he simply
couldn't raise it any other way. He'd hate that; he'd hate it like
hell. Because, for a hell of a long time, it would leave him no surplus
to do any betting with. And his luck was due to change; it _had_ to
change.
He strolled to the front window and stood looking down at the street,
wondering whether he should go downtown now and eat whenever he got
hungry, or save himself money by rustling something to eat here before
he left. Since Ruth had to leave for work at five he had to fend for
himself or eat out the five evenings she worked, but he didn't mind
that; sometimes he even enjoyed cooking simple things for himself, and
of course she did the cleaning up and dishwashing the next morning.
Aside from that he was glad she worked an evening shift; in fact, he'd
talked her into doing it. He was out almost every evening himself;
he'd explained to her that it was his best time for selling. And that
was partly true. Some of his bar owner customers delegated the duller
daytime hours to a bartender who wasn't authorized to do any buying and
themselves took over the bar, with or without the help of a bartender
or two, during the evening hours. Even tonight he should probably make
a business call or two, although he didn't feel in the mood to do it.
Just downtown bars, of course, since he wouldn't have his car till
tomorrow. Yes, he could see Harry Webber and Chuck Connolly; they were
both due to be called on.
Brakes squealed in the street below and his eyes swiveled toward the
source of the sound, the nearby corner. It was a near accident. A
kid, a boy about ten, had run across the street right in front of an
oncoming car and the driver had slammed on his brakes and skidded, had
managed to stop with only inches to spare. A close thing, a very close
thing. But the kid ran on and the driver must have been the more shaken
up of the two; he sat there almost a minute before starting up the car
again.
Accidents can happen, even though this one didn't. And unbidden a
thought rose in Ray Fleck's mind. What if an accident should happen to
Ruth, on her way to work right now or on her way home tonight? Not that
she'd run in front of a car like that crazy kid had, but pedestrians
can be hit even when they're not at fault. By a drunken driver or a
driver who loses control of his car. Sometimes cars even ran up onto a
sidewalk and--
Oh, the chances of anything like that happening, of Ruth being killed,
were a million to one against. Pretty poor odds--but good God, wouldn't
it be a perfect answer to his problem, to all his problems, if it
_should_ happen? As beneficiary of her policy he'd have ten thousand
dollars, ten whole grand, all at once. What he owed Amico would be
peanuts; he'd still have nine and a half grand. It would be enough; he
could make the break right away. He'd no longer be Ray Fleck, liquor
salesman, but Ray Fleck, Distributor. And on the way to a real income.
Funny he'd never thought seriously about the possibility of his ever
collecting that ten grand as a beneficiary. Maybe because Ruth was such
a healthy girl; she hadn't been sick a day in the three years of their
marriage. But even a healthy person can have an accident.
Or--He pushed that thought aside. He was no angel and he'd done a lot
of dishonest things in his life, but he wasn't a murderer. Even if he
was he'd never get away with it. If a woman is killed her husband is
always the prime suspect, even if he hasn't any insurance on her.
Forget it, he told himself, and forgot it. Abruptly he made up his mind
not to stick around the flat until he got hungry enough to eat here, to
save a buck. What was a buck in the jam he was in? And the sooner he
got downtown the more chances he'd have to raise a stake to get in that
poker game with, at eleven. The game that was the only chance he knew
of to win any real money tonight. The game he _had_ to get into.
He left the flat, walked down the two flights of stairs and out to the
street. He was lucky; a taxi was going by and he flagged it and got in.
Downtown was only a short cab ride, half a buck plus tip, and he hated
waiting for buses. "Main and Willis," he told the driver. "Drop me off
at the northwest corner."
That was the corner where Benny had his newsstand and his first stop
would be to pick up a Racing Form. Not that he'd be placing any bets
tonight--or tomorrow unless he won really big at poker, but he always
liked to study the Form anyway and do his handicapping. Besides Benny
always--when he remembered; Benny's memory wasn't too good--held out
a Form for him and if Benny had, he didn't want to leave him stuck
with it. Poor Benny. Crazy Benny, some people called him; but Ray
didn't think he was really crazy, just a little lacking upstairs, prone
to forgetting things. And sometimes (Ray had heard, although he'd
never run into this himself) to remembering things that hadn't really
happened. But he ran the newsstand all right and never made a mistake
in making change.
He paid off the taxi and strolled to the wooden enclosure from which
Benny sold his papers. "Hi, Benny," he said. "Remember to hold a Form
for me?"
"Sure, Mr. Fleck. I _always_ remember to." And this time Benny really
had remembered. He reached behind him and took a copy of the Racing
Form down from a shelf at the back of the stand. Ray put down the coins
to pay for it and picked it up, started to fold it as he turned, then
had a sudden thought and turned back. Since he was going to have to
raise his poker stake by borrowing a little each from as many friends
as he could put the bite on, why not start here and now by seeing if
Benny was good for a sawbuck? He'd never borrowed anything from Benny
before, but what was to lose trying.
"Benny," he said. "I'm a little short on dough, wonder if you could
lend me ten bucks. Just till Saturday, day after tomorrow, when I get
my commission check."
Benny's big moon face didn't show any surprise. He said, "Why--why,
I guess I can, Mr. Fleck." He took from under the counter the cigar
box in which he kept bills--coins he kept in a change dispenser on
his belt--and opened it. There were quite a few bills in it and for
a second Ray considered whether he should ask if Benny could make it
twenty instead; then he saw that all of the bills he could see were
singles and maybe all of them were. In fact apparently all of them
were because Benny didn't fish through them to look for a ten or two
fives; he started counting out ten singles, one at a time, with the
slow carefulness with which he always counted money or made change.
He handed the ten bills over and Ray stuffed them into his wallet.
"Thanks, Benny."
"Mr. Fleck. I just thought uh somethin'. You'll have to mail that money
to me. I won't be here Saturday."
"Sure. Taking a vacation, huh? You better give me an address."
"You wont need no address, Mr. Fleck. I mean, you'll know from the
papers. I been thinkin' it over all day and made up my mind. I'm goin'
to give myself up to the p'lice, before I do anything more. Soon as I
close up the stand tonight."
"What are you talking about, Benny? Before you do any more what?"
"You been readin' in the papers about this sex psycho--" He pronounced
the _ch_ as in checkers. "Psycho--whatever it is?"
"Psychopath. What about him?"
"I'm him, Mr. Fleck. I killed them two women."
Ray Fleck put his head back and laughed heartily. "Benny, you're cr--I
mean, get that idea out of your head. You didn't kill those women. _I
know._ You wouldn't hurt a rabbit, Benny."
He started chuckling as he turned and walked away.
Feeling a little ashamed of himself, too, for having laughed in Benny's
face. But he hadn't really been laughing _at_ Benny at all, although
he'd never be able to explain that to poor Benny. He'd been laughing
at the crazy fact, the ridiculous fact, that Benny had chosen to make
his confession to the one and only person in the entire city--outside
of the psychopathic killer himself--who could know and did know,
immediately and certainly, that Benny, no matter how crazy he might be,
was _not_ the killer.
5:20 P.M.
George Mikos surveyed his domain, his restaurant, and found it good.
Everything was set up and ready for the dinner hour. No customers at
the moment, except for one man having coffee at the counter, but they'd
start coming in soon. Only one waitress on duty at the moment, but Ruth
Fleck would be coming in ten minutes, and he knew he could count on her
getting there; Ruth was dependable.
He turned and went through the swinging door back to the kitchen,
ducking his head a little as he did so. He was a big man, six feet two
inches tall, and that doorway was an inch or so too short for him. When
he'd first bought the restaurant he'd intended to have the doorway made
higher but he hadn't got around to it and by now he was so used to
ducking that it was completely automatic; he didn't even know he did it.
The cook was scraping the top of the range, but looked around as he
heard George come through the door. "Everything under control?" George
asked him. "Sure, George," the cook said.
"Fine. I'll be in my office a while. Give a yell for me if and when I
might be needed, either back here or up front."
He went into the room, a fair-sized room, off the kitchen that served
him as an office. He left the door ajar. The kitchen and restaurant
noises, the banging of pots and the clatter of dishes and such,
wouldn't bother him; he was conditioned to concentrate away from them.
He was also conditioned to hear them and evaluate them subconsciously.
To know, especially from the frequency with which waitresses called
back orders, when things were getting busy enough so his help might be
needed, even if the cook did not, as he suggested, give a yell for him.
He sat down at the oak typewriter desk. The typewriter was already
raised into typing position. There was a sheet of paper in it, blank
except for a numeral 3 at the top; it was to be the third page of a
letter he'd started early in the afternoon.
Before resuming the letter he picked up the two pages of it he'd
already written and reread them rapidly.
Dear Perry:
It was wonderful to hear from you again after lo, these many years
(almost ten of them, isn't it?) since we roomed together at college.
I'm so glad you happened to run into Walt, that he was able to give
you my address.
Congratulations on having gone on to a Ps.D. And on having opened
your own office as a consulting psychologist--in New York and on
Park Avenue, no less; it must be really a happy hunting ground and
if you're not coining money already you will be soon.
No, I have not continued my formal education. Nor do I intend to,
any more. By now I yam what I yam, a Goddam Greek who runs a
restaurant. But I read a lot, study some; I'm not letting my mind
stagnate completely. I try to keep up with things. For instance I
subscribe to and read the _Journal of Psychology_, even though--I
realize now--I'll never be more than a layman in that field. And
although about half of my reading is escape reading, the other half
isn't; I read classics too. My knowledge of and taste in literature
is far ahead of what it used to be in our college days.
As for keeping in shape, I go to a gym two, sometimes three,
mornings a week. I still go in for Graeco-Roman wrestling, when I
can find an opponent, and I haven't found one here who can take me
at it.
You want a description of my restaurant, what it's called,
everything about it. _Everything_ about it would be a large order
and wouldn't interest you unless you think you might start one of
your own, and I doubt if you have that in mind. But I'll give you
a rough idea.
First, it's called _Mikos'_; I don't go in for fancy names and have
no intention of trying to hide the fact that a Greek runs it. It's
small--but not tiny. Between counter and tables it will seat thirty
people, and during rush hours, usually does seat that many or almost
that many.
It'll never make a Duncan Hines's rating, but neither will anyone
ever call it a Greasy Spoon; it's clean. Our forte is good food at
reasonable prices.
I employ an average of ten people. Not that many all at once, of
course; they work varying shifts, since we're open from 7 A.M. till
11:30 P.M.
I myself come in at about 11 A.M., before the lunch hour, and stay
until closing time. That sounds a long working day--twelve and a
half hours--but don't let it fool you because I actually work only
about half of the time. There's a fair-sized room off the kitchen
which I've converted into a combination office and den. I do my
bookkeeping here, write checks for bills and salaries, type menus,
all that sort of thing--but that doesn't take over an average of
four hours a day.
Another two or three hours a day I spend in the kitchen or up front,
helping out wherever needed. Some days more than that if someone
fails to show up and we're short handed. But other days things go
smoothly and I'm not needed at all. Call it an average of two hours
a day.
So you see my actual working day is about six hours; the rest of the
time I'm around, in case of emergency or to solve problems if any
arise, but in general my time is my own. I read or study or think.
If for any reason I'm short on sleep I take naps. Or I write
letters, as I'm doing now.
And so much for the restaurant, except for the most important thing
about it: it makes money. More than I, as a bachelor with relatively
simple tastes, can spend. I've been investing in land just outside
the city limits to the west, and as the city is growing in that
direction, and rapidly, the land is equally rapidly appreciating in
value. So, within another five years--but I'm beginning to sound as
though I'm bragging and I'll stop. Suffice it to say there is no
wolf at my door.
You ask me how my love life is doing. Probably your question was
facetious, but I'm going to give it an honest answer.
That was where the second page of the letter had ended. George Mikos
turned to the typewriter to go on and then decided, before starting
page 3 to take a look to make sure Ruth Fleck had shown up; it was just
five-thirty, her starting time.
He went to the door and opened it wider, and had to look no farther.
She was just about to pass it, coming from the closet where the
employees hung their coats.
"Hello, Ruth," he said. And then, "Ruth, you've been crying. Is
something wrong? Is there anything I can do? Can you come in and talk a
moment?"
She hesitated. "I--There _is_ something I'd like to ask you about,
George. But please not now. Later, after the dinner rush, I'll be
calmer and much more sensible."
She went on, without giving him a chance to say anything more, through
the swinging door into the restaurant. George watched until it had
swung shut behind her. Then he pushed his own door partly shut again
and went back to the desk. This time he started typing.
Now, and for the first time in my life, at least since late
adolescence, I am in love, deeply in love, and with a woman with
whom I have not had an affair and with whom I don't want or intend
to have an affair, even if I could. At least I have found the right
woman for me and I want everything or nothing. I want to marry
the girl.
There is a fly in the ointment; the fly is the husband she already
has. I am trying to convince her to divorce him and to marry me.
Offhand, this may sound reprehensible, but I do not think that it
is, really. Her husband is, if I may change my entomological
metaphor, a louse.
He is a liquor salesman; that's nothing against him, but there is
plenty else that is. He is a compulsive, congenital gambler, mostly
on the horses; he's the type of horse player who does his own
handicapping and thinks he can beat the game, which of course he
can't. He probably earns at least a hundred a week but spends, or
rather loses, at least half of that gambling, for which reason his
wife has to work--and works for me as a waitress. Most of the time
he's broke and in debt, living on his next week's commission check.
I don't think he's brutal to Ruth (that's her name; his is Ray
Fleck) physically. I almost wish he were, because I think that if
he ever struck her she would leave him, which, of course, is what
I want to happen.
I know quite a bit about him, including the fact that he is at least
occasionally unfaithful to her--which in itself justifies to me my
breaking up their marriage if I can.
No, I didn't tell Ruth anything about what I heard. I was afraid
that, whether or not those reports would decide her to divorce
Fleck, she'd be angry at me for having had the presumption to tell
her. Besides for all I know she may already know or at least suspect
that Fleck cheats on her. Wives, I am told, can usually tell. What's
the opinion of a consulting psychologist on that?
But that's not what I really want to ask you about. It's about
something that doesn't concern me personally.
We have among us here a rapist-killer, obviously a psychotic, who
has already raped and killed two women. Raped and killed in that
sequence; he is not a necrophile. His first rape-killing was about
four months ago, his second two months ago. The interval between two
crimes is hardly sufficient to establish a time interval. But if it
does, if it takes him about two months to build up pressure to make
him kill again, then he is about due to strike a third time. His
method--
But wait. Before I give the details, such as they are, I'll tell you
where I come in, and where you come in. The captain in charge of our
homicide department is a friend of mine. He is understandably a very
worried guy. He's been under pressure from the chief of police, the
police commissioner, the newspapers and the public to get friend
psychopath. He may get demoted if he doesn't. And he hasn't a single
clue or lead.
He knows, of course, that I majored in psychology and every time we
see one another he heckles me to make deductions about the killer.
Or even guesses. I've made a few, but I'm afraid that, whether they
are correct or not, they're not very helpful on the practical level
of police work.
Maybe you can do better. You've studied a lot more abnormal
psychology than I have. Anyway, I'm going to toss you the few known
facts about our psycho and ask if you can make any suggestions that
I haven't already made. I'll pass them on to the captain. If you can
come up with anything at all helpful, it may save a life, or several
lives. Here goes:
Both victims were young housewives. Both were attractive. Each was
home alone (home was a house in one case, an apartment in the other)
at the time of the attack. In one case the husband was out of town
on business, in the other working a swing shift at an airplane parts
factory.
In neither case was there any sign of forcible entry; the woman
herself must have admitted him or at least opened the door for him.
Both women were knocked unconscious with a blow to the chin, then
carried to a bed; their clothes were torn off them and they were
raped, then strangled to death. Still, from the lack of anything
indicating a struggle, unconscious from the knockout. (Don't ask me
how the autopsies could prove or even indicate that the rape
preceded the strangling but my friend tells me that the medical
examiner is absolutely certain, so I'm willing to take his word for
it.)
Both crimes occurred in the evening. We happen to know the exact
time of one of them, ten o'clock. This was the one who lived in an
apartment. The couple who lived in the apartment under hers heard a
thud at that hour; they're certain of the time because the husband
was just switching channels on the television to get their favorite
ten o'clock program. Knowing that their upstairs neighbor was home
alone they looked at one another, each wondering whether she might
have had a fall and need help. But before either spoke to the other
they heard footsteps moving around and decided she was all right,
that she'd either dropped something fairly heavy or had a fall that
hadn't hurt her.
That was the first of the two murders. We don't know the time of the
second one so accurately. The woman's body wasn't found until early
the next afternoon when her husband returned from his business trip.
After so many hours the M. E. could only say that death had occurred
late the previous evening, probably between nine o'clock and
midnight.
We know him to be a man of considerable strength, not only from the
steam behind the knockout blows he struck but from the way in which
he ripped the clothes from his victims after carrying them to a bed.
One of the women was wearing a quilted house coat that zipped open
about halfway down the front; he tore it the rest of the way, and
quilted material does not tear easily.
From the speed and accuracy with which he struck the police theorize
that he may be or may have been a boxer. Also, from his strength,
they believe he is more likely to be a laborer than a white collar
worker. I'll go along with both of these deductions as possibilities
or probabilities and not as certainties. A man with no boxing
experience but with good coordination and a little luck could have
struck those blows. And if he has a good mind (except for its warp)
and/or a good education he'd certainly be doing something better
than manual labor.
So much for the physical side, and to the mental. First, I do not
believe he is a moron. He must have cased those jobs and known that
the woman would be alone at the time he came. Otherwise he had
incredible luck--and I refuse to credit the incredible. Also, he
left no fingerprints at the scene of either crime; he either wore
gloves or avoided touching any surface that would take them. A moron
wouldn't think of fingerprints.
But to a more important point, the nature of his psychosis. I have
a theory; I hope you'll be able to expand on it if you agree or to
offer a better one if you disagree.
I believe that he fears women to a psychotic degree, and hates them
because he fears them. Call him a womanophobe. And because of his
fear of women he is self-conscious in the presence of one to the
point of complete impotence, even if the woman is willing; only with
an unconscious woman can he find an outlet for his sex drive. His
reason for killing women after he has used them can be sheer
psychopathic hatred, flaring to highest pitch with or immediately
after the orgasm. Or it can be caution; a dead woman can't describe
him or identify him. My guess is that his reason for killing is a
mixture of both those reasons.
If this description of his psychosis is correct it is almost certain
that he is a bachelor. I use the "almost" because he may have been
married once; an early very bad marriage might have been the
starting point of his psychosis. But, whether once married or not
I'd say it's certain that he is not currently living with a woman.
And I'd say that it's probable that, if he has any choice of
occupations, he's working at a job that brings him into as little
contact with women as possible. And living at a Y.M.C.A., a men-only
hotel or--if he makes enough money--in a bachelor apartment.
Those are only probabilities, though. He may be smart enough, and
actor enough, to have perfectly normal business and social contacts
with women. If that's true he's going to be a lot harder to catch.
Speaking of how smart he is, we'll have a strong indication of that
if and when he attempts a third crime. If he tries the same _modus
operandi_ he used the first two times he'll show himself to be much
more stupid than I think he is. Because that method simply won't
work a third time.
The women of this city are scared, have been scared ever since the
second crime. Women alone in a house or flat simply don't open the
door, even by day, until and unless they're damned sure who's on
the other side of it. Chain bolts have been selling so fast that
the hardware stores keep reordering by air express and still can't
quite keep up with the demand. And from the number of speakeasy-type
peepholes that have been made in doors you'd think we were back in
the days of Prohibition again.
The scare has had an odd incidental effect on our economy. Normally,
in a city this size, there are several hundred house-to-house
salesmen and canvassers working. Here and now there are none. For
the past two months, since the second rape-killing, they have been
able to gain entry into such a small percentage of homes that they
simply can't make a living. They've all had to move on elsewhere to
greener pastures or switch to some other occupation. Even big
outfits like Fuller and Watkins have closed their local
offices--temporarily, they hope. And not only salesmen are affected,
but mailmen--if they have a C.O.D. or a registered letter that must
be signed for--bill collectors, deliverymen, meter readers,
collectors for charity drives, what have you.
It's amazing what strange effect two crimes by a....
George Mikos paused to think out the rest of the sentence and in the
pause heard his cook's voice. "Hey, George, better come out and give a
hand."
"Coming," he called back. And came.
6:15 P.M.
He wasn't hungry, but Ray Fleck decided that he'd better eat. He'd
slept late and had only coffee for breakfast, and only a light lunch.
And this evening he'd had two drinks already in his quest for money to
get him into the poker game; like as not he'd have to take at least a
dozen more in the course of the evening, and if he wanted to be able to
play good poker he'd damn well better lay a foundation of food under
that dozen drinks.
The bad thing about the two drinks he'd already had was that he'd
taken them in vain. Worse than in vain because instead of helping him
raise money they'd cost him the ten bucks he'd borrowed from Benny
and had put his slender capital back where it had been before. He'd
seen through the window of the Palace Bar that Dick Johnson was there;
Dick was usually a soft touch and he went inside and bellied up the
bar beside Dick. He tried to buy him a drink, but Dick beat him to it
by signaling the bartender with two upraised fingers, so Ray waited
until he'd had a chance to buy back before he put on the bite, for
twenty. And, because he'd genuinely forgotten, he was startled when
Dick reminded him that he already owed him ten dollars from three
weeks before. "My God," Ray said, "I clean forgot. Why the hell didn't
you remind me sooner?" And then, because it was the only way out, he
laughed and made a joke of it, pulled a ten out of his wallet and
handed it to Dick. "Now we're all even; let's start over. Can you lend
me twenty, just till Saturday?" He'd still come out ten ahead, he
thought. But Dick Johnson had shaken his head. "Sorry, Ray-boy, I'm
short this week myself. Need all I've got, and this ten comes in handy
too." And there went the ten he'd just got from Benny.
He stopped at the corner of Fourth and Main, the middle of downtown, to
make up his mind where to eat. Feratti's seemed like a good bet; they
put out good dinners for two-fifty--unless you ordered steak or lobster
or something fancy--and he wouldn't be tempted, as he might be in some
of the other good restaurants, to waste some of his drinking capacity
on a cocktail or two before dining; Feratti's didn't have a liquor
license. He turned on Fourth and headed for Feratti's.
And, as he walked, found himself thinking about Benny again. He never
should have laughed like that at Benny. Especially now that he'd
learned Benny was good for a sawbuck in an emergency once in a while.
Of course maybe he was worrying about nothing; maybe Benny's feelings
hadn't been hurt at all. But if he passed Benny's stand again this
evening he ought to stop, buy a paper as an excuse, and see how Benny
acted. If Benny was mad or had been hurt, he'd know easily and now,
the same evening, would be the time to square things. And he wasn't
a salesman for nothing; he could convince Benny that he hadn't been
laughing at _him_ but at a joke he'd just thought of, and tell Benny a
joke. Some simple joke that even a moron couldn't help getting.
And then, if he could figure out a way to do it, try to talk Benny out
of going to the cops to give himself up as the psychopathic killer. Not
that the cops would really believe Benny, but they might keep him out
of circulation for a while and maybe work him over a bit for details,
until they were sure.
Because the cops couldn't eliminate Benny as readily and surely as he,
Ray Fleck, could. The cops didn't know what the psycho looked like,
and he did. At least enough to be positive that he didn't look even
remotely like Benny.
It had been about two months ago, the night of the second
murder--although he hadn't known that until the next day. It had been
somewhere around ten o'clock in the evening. And it had happened in the
nineteen hundred block on Eastgate. Howie Borden lived at 1912 Eastgate
and Ray had agreed to pick him up around ten that evening; Howie was
going to take him to a stag party at Howie's lodge, and Ray was to
provide the transportation since Howie had a badly sprained right wrist
and couldn't drive.
He'd got there just about ten and had parked in front of Howie's house
and beeped the horn. Howie had raised a window and called out, "Be
about five minutes yet. Come on in." But he'd called back that he'd
wait in the car. He didn't want to go in because Howie's wife might be
around, and she always made him feel uncomfortable.
Since he knew that five minutes might easily mean fifteen or twenty, he
turned out his car lights for the wait. He was sitting there staring at
nothing through the windshield a few minutes later when he saw the man.
The man came through the gate in the fence in front of a house on the
other side of the street and three or four houses away. Ray noticed the
man at all for only two reasons. One was the fact that in an otherwise
completely static vista the eye is drawn to the only moving object.
The other was the fact that as the man stood there just outside the
gate he looked both ways and while he did so his hands at his sides
were flexing and unflexing, as though they were cramped from gripping
something very tightly and for quite a while. The gesture an oarsman
might make when he unclamps his hand from the oars after rowing a mile
or so, or a lumberjack when he lets go his ax to rest his hands after a
bout of chopping. Or that a strangler might make--But Ray Fleck didn't
think of that at the time. The man went the other way and was out of
sight and out of mind by the time Howie came out and got in the car.
It wasn't until late the following afternoon, when he read the
mid-afternoon edition of the evening paper, that he knew he had seen
the murderer leaving the scene of his second crime. The address was
1917 Eastgate, on the opposite side of the street from Howie Borden's,
and about three houses away in the direction in which Fleck's car had
been facing. If the address had left any doubt in his mind that the
house was the one he'd seen the man leaving, the doubt was dispelled by
a picture of the house's exterior that was published with the story.
It showed a three-foot iron fence in front; the house the man had left
had been the only house on that side of the short block that had been
fenced in. And that flexing and unflexing of the hands....
Give him credit. He considered going to the police to tell them what he
had seen, considered it seriously. He was home and alone at the time,
as Ruth had just left for work, so he had all the time to think that he
wanted. He paced the apartment for all of twenty minutes before coming
to a decision. The decision was negative on three counts.
First, he couldn't give them a description that would really mean
anything and he couldn't--or he was fairly sure he couldn't--identify
the man if he ever saw him again. He'd seen him at a distance of about
a hundred feet and in pretty dim light; the nearest street light had
been behind Fleck's car, farther from the man than Fleck had been.
His impression had been of a man of average height and average
build--or maybe a little heavier than that. It could have been his
own description, except--Except what? Thinking back, he decided that,
although their weight was probably about the same, the man had been
a bit narrower in the waist, a bit broader in the shoulders. But he
could have been wrong even about that, the nearest to a positive point
he could think of; after all he was trying to describe a vague and
illusive memory, something he'd hardly noticed at the time. He thought
the man had worn a dark suit and a dark hat, but he wasn't sure of
those things either. The face had been a white blur in the instant it
was turned toward him, before the man had turned and walked the other
way.
What good could a description like that do the cops? It could fit a
hundred thousand guys. It could eliminate a few, sure--teenage kids,
skinny guys or fat ones, runts or six-footers. Yes, it would eliminate
a few who might otherwise be suspects. Benny, for instance; Benny was
well over six feet, well over two hundred pounds.
But would the cops _believe_ that his impression, his memory, was
as vague as all that? He doubted it. Having nothing to lose, they'd
operate on the theory that he might have got a better look than he
remembered, that if he saw the man again his memory might come back and
let him make a positive identification.
And he knew what that meant--line-ups. They'd expect him to attend the
line-up every morning for God knows how long. Could they force him to?
Maybe not, but they could be damned unpleasant about it, maybe make
trouble for him, if he tried to refuse. Maybe they could even hold
him, for a while anyway until a lawyer could get him out of it, as a
material witness.
But even that wasn't the worst thing against taking his story, such
as it was, to the police. Even if the police tried to keep it under
wraps there was always a chance some damn reporter would get hold of
the story and print it. Complete with his name and address. And how'd
you like to have a crazy killer know who you were and think, however
wrongly, that you knew him by sight and could put the finger on him the
first time you saw him?
The cops would try to protect him, sure. But what if the killer was
smarter than the cops? He had been, so far. And how _long_ would the
cops be able to keep up a twenty-four-hour guard duty on him, and
wouldn't it mess his personal and private life to hell and back while
they did?
So Ray Fleck had sensibly kept his mouth shut about what he'd seen
that night. He'd even almost forgotten about it himself; he was
thinking about it this evening only because of that ridiculous would-be
confession of Benny's. Crazy Benny might be, but the sex killer, no.
At Feratti's he took his favorite table. It was a small one against one
side of the room but a light fixture in the wall right above it made it
the best lighted table, and he needed good light to read the fine print
and hieroglyphics of a Racing Form. He took his out of his pocket and
unfolded it, turning first to the Aqueduct results for yesterday. He
swore under his breath when he saw that Black Fox had won in the fifth
and had paid ten to one for a win ticket. Black Fox was a horse he'd
been following and had figured was due to win. If he'd had twenty-five
bucks on the nag it would have made him more than half what he owed
Amico and would have taken the pressure off. Damn Joe for having cut
off his credit; otherwise he'd probably have made that bet, phoned it
in. He glanced over results of the other races but with less interest;
none of them were races he'd have bet anyway. He'd handicapped some
of them but he'd have had to play the favorite in each if he played at
all, and he almost never played favorites. You didn't win enough money
to matter if they came in and they could always fool you and run out
of the money. Really long shots weren't good either. The way to cash
in on handicapping is to find a horse that pays better than the real
odds against it, say a horse quoted at five or six to one but with one
chance out of three or four of coming in. Then was the time to get the
bank roll down, when the odds were in your favor.
He heard the deferential clearing of a throat and looked up; Sam, the
waiter who always served this table, was standing there with a menu in
his hand. "'Scuse me, Mist' Fleck. You wanna order now? Or shall I come
back when you've had more time to figger them ponies?"
"I'll order now, Sam. Won't need a menu. Bring me the Special Sirloin."
"Yes, suh, Mist' Fleck. Medjum rare, like allus. An' Ah'll tell th'
chef to pick out a nice big one."
Ray Fleck frowned as the waiter ambled off. He hadn't really intended
to order a steak. But it didn't matter much. He'd be able to eat it;
he was always able to eat. And it was probably better at that to get a
good meal under his belt while he was at it.
He killed time with his Racing Form--not that he was going to do any
betting tonight and probably not tomorrow, but a horse player has
to stay in touch whether he's betting or not--until Sam brought his
dinner. Then he gladly put the Form back in his pocket and dived in.
Just ordering a steak and waiting for it had made him hungry, and he
ate heartily. And rapidly, wolfing the steak as fast as he could cut it
into bites. Ruth always kidded him about how fast he ate, but he could
never see any use in dawdling over food.
And then, replete, he took a cigar from his pocket, unwrapped and
lighted it. He sighed with a satisfaction as he inhaled the rich smoke.
The evening stretched ahead of him, a pleasant evening now, an exciting
evening. True, he had to see Joe Amico, and that would be unpleasant,
and a bit embarrassing. But he could handle Joe all right, no sweat at
all.
And, true, he had to spend part of the evening raising money for a
poker stake, but that ought to be easy; he knew hundreds of people;
he'd run into dozens of them during the course of the evening. And once
he had a stake, he was going to be lucky in the game. He had more than
a hunch. He felt sure of it.
He caught Sam's eye and lifted a finger, a signal for Sam to bring over
the check. Sam brought it over and put it face down in front of him.
But he didn't have to turn it over; he knew a sirloin steak was four
bucks and this one had been well worth it. He counted out four singles
from his wallet and then, the fifth one in his hand, hesitated. Sam
liked to gamble. "Double or nothing on the tip, Sam?"
Sam's teeth flashed, white in black. "Sho', Mist' Fleck. How? You want
flip a coin and me call it?"
Suddenly Ray Fleck had a better idea. He didn't mind Sam winning, but
if he did win it would be two bucks cash tonight. And cash tonight was
more important than something he could pay off the next time he ate in
Feratti's. He said, "Got a better idea, Sam. I'll give you _two_ tips.
One of 'em's on a beetle named Birthday Boy in the fourth at Aqueduct
tomorrow. Oughta pay about six to one, but I dope it he's got a better
chance than that of winning. Want me to make book on him for you for a
buck?"
Sam laughed. "Birthday Boy! Man, that's a real hunch bet, fo' me.
Tomorra's my birthday, Mist' Fleck. Sho. An' I'm goin' to try to put
some more dough down on him aftah wuk tonight. You said fourth race,
Aqueduct?"
"That's it. Say, I'm seeing my bookie tonight. Want me to put down your
bet for you? Might as well save you the trouble."
"That'd be fine, suh. Ah might miss the man Ah mostly bet with." Sam
pulled wadded bills out of his pocket. Straightened out they proved to
be a five and a half dozen ones. He handed the five to Ray Fleck. "Sho
'preciate yo puttin' this down fo' me, Mist' Fleck. Thanks muchly."
"Don't mention it, Sam. Glad to." And of course he was glad, because
it put him five bucks ahead. Unless, of course, Birthday Boy won, but
that was something he wouldn't have to worry about until tomorrow. Not
even tomorrow, come to think of it; if the nag did come in he'd owe
Sam about thirty bucks but he wouldn't have to drop into Feratti's
right away to pay off. He could wait till next week, after his next pay
check. Sam wouldn't come looking for him.
After Sam had left he put the money in his wallet and, while he had it
open, counted what was there. He was a little surprised to find out it
was exactly what he'd left home with no more and no less, twenty-eight
bucks.
Then he figured, and that was right. He'd got ten from Benny but had
had to give the same amount to Dick Johnson. The five he'd just got
from Sam covered his taxi fare and his dinner. He'd bought the Racing
Form and had paid for a couple of drinks, but he must have had enough
change to cover those things.
Well, he was still even. But damn it, he'd have to keep his mind on
raising more, and damn fast. By rights he should have at least a
hundred to sit in on that poker game. Fifty was rock bottom; he could
hardly go around with less than that. Even with fifty, he'd have to
count on winning some early pots or he'd go broke before he hit his
stride and got really started.
Good God, wasn't there _someone_ who could and would lend him a sizable
chunk of cash, say a hundred, in one chunk without his having to try to
chisel it out five or ten bucks at a time?
There _had_ to be. With all the friends he had....
Ruth now. She was not only being selfish as hell, but she was being
penny wise and pound foolish. If she'd only cash in that ridiculous,
horribly expensive endowment policy and turn over the money to him so
he'd be on his feet again, she wouldn't have to work. He could and
would support her. If she'd only borrow five hundred against it, she'd
take him off the spot. And damn it, wasn't anything she had half his
anyway? Sure it was. This was a community property state.
Damn her, if he divorced her everything they owned would be split down
the line and he'd get half of it. But he didn't have any grounds for
divorce. He sometimes suspected that damned Greek she worked for of
being soft on her--but he doubted that Ruth had ever encouraged him or
had anything to do with him. And even if she had, how could he prove
it? He couldn't afford to put private detectives on her, not now.
Someday maybe. And even if he tried now and succeeded, a divorce took
time. And cost money; it might even cost more than he'd get out of any
property settlement.
Damn the stubborn bitch, he thought; when she gets an idea in her
head....
But there must be someone besides Ruth who could help him. And who
would.
Suddenly he remembered a short story he'd read once, a long time ago.
He wasn't much of a reader, outside of newspapers and the Racing Form,
but once--before he had met Ruth--a girl he'd been going with had given
him as a present a book called _Great Short Stories of the World_.
And not long after that he'd been home sick for a week with a case of
bronchitis and had read most of the stories in the book and had even
enjoyed some of them. One of them--he couldn't remember the title--had
been by a Frenchman, Maupassant or somebody. It had been about a man
who'd been in a bad financial jam. He'd needed money in a hurry and had
gone to his wife, in whose name he'd put a lot of his property, and had
asked her for money; she'd turned him down flat. In despair he'd gone
to his mistress for help--and she'd given him back all the jewelry he'd
given her, and he'd been saved.
Why not? Dolly wasn't exactly his mistress but she was the next thing
to one. And while he hadn't given her any jewelry to speak of, except a
wrist watch once, he'd given her, times when he'd been flush, plenty of
other valuable presents. Hundreds of dollars' worth over the year and a
half he'd known her. Of course she didn't love him; he knew that. But
she liked him a lot and she was understanding. Wouldn't she lend him a
hundred bucks if he asked her? Suddenly he felt sure that she would.
Especially if he gave her a profit motive by telling her that if she
lent him a hundred now he'd give her back a hundred and twenty-five in
a week or two. And a hundred bucks tonight would sure be worth more
than that some other time, when he was solvent again.
Sure, Dolly would do it. If not because of Cupid, then out of cupidity.
Ray Fleck grinned to himself. Maybe there was something to reading
great literature after all. If he hadn't read that story he might never
have thought of Dolly Mason as a source of money. If only she was home,
and alone, so he could see her this evening....
Well, he could find that out right away. He got up and got his hat
first so he could leave right after the call, and then went to the
phone booth. He dialed Eastgate 6-6606, Dolly's number--and a very easy
one to remember. When the phone rang a dozen times or so he frowned,
realizing that it wasn't going to be answered.
Then he thought to look at his wrist watch and realized why. Dolly was
out somewhere eating dinner at this time. Her apartment had a kitchen
but she never kept food in it; she always ate out. Alone, if there
wasn't anyone to take her out. She never cooked, either for herself or
for company.
He hung up and got his dime back, then left the booth. On his way out
he passed Sam turning in some money at the cashier's desk and said,
"Happy birthday, Sam. Hope your hunch hits."
Sam said, "Thanks muchly, Mist' Fleck. Ah hopes we both hits."
7:25 P.M.
It was dark outside now, and the blackness pressed against the
windowpanes of the restaurant. Funny, Ruth Fleck thought, how black
that blackness looked, because if you went outside through the door the
sidewalk wasn't really dark at all. It was lighted by a street lamp not
far away and by the lights of the restaurant itself shining through
the big front windows. But from inside it looked like a solid wall of
darkness.
Things were quiet now; the early dinner rush was over. There were four
people still eating at one of the tables, a couple had just come in and
were studying the menu at another, but both tables were in Margie's
territory. At this time of evening, with two waitresses on, Ruth had
only the counter--there were three people eating at it but they had all
been served--and the two tables nearest the back end of the counter.
In a few minutes there'd be only one waitress on; Ruth took off from
seven-thirty to eight, to eat and rest. When she came back on Margie
left for the day and Ruth took care of things alone the rest of the
evening. Usually she could handle things quite easily alone. Mikos'
Restaurant was a family type restaurant on the main street of a suburb;
its customers were people of the type who ate their dinners relatively
early and business after eight wasn't too heavy. Sometimes there was a
flurry between ten and eleven--people dropping in on their way home
from movies--and George came on and helped her.
She looked at her customers at the counter. One was just finishing
and she walked down the counter to him. "Dessert, sir?" He was a
clean-looking, well-dressed young man with blue eyes and dark curly
hair. He looked up at her. "Thanks, no. I'd like some more coffee,
though."
And, while she was pouring it, "I beg your pardon, hope you won't think
I'm fresh, but I heard the other waitress call you Ruth. May I ask the
rest of your name? Mine's Will Brubaker."
Here comes a pass, Ruth thought. But she didn't really mind; it
happened about once an evening and she'd probably have wondered if it
hadn't happened--have wondered whether she was losing her appeal and
attractiveness. Of course there was always George Mikos to convince her
that she wasn't. George was a rock.
And this young man was nice, shy; he'd had to work up his courage
to take the first step of asking her name. She smiled at him. "Ruth
Fleck," she said. "Mrs. Ruth Fleck." She didn't embarrass him by
emphasizing the _Mrs._ but it was clear enough.
"Oh," he said. "I'm sorry."
"For what? It's my fault, not yours. I keep my rings in my purse while
on duty because I don't like to work with them on. So you couldn't have
known I was married." She took out her pad of checks and a pencil. "I'm
going back into the kitchen now to eat my own dinner. I'd better give
you your check."
"Sure. Uh--shall I pay it now?"
"Oh, no. The other waitress will take care of you at the register." She
smiled again, a little mischievously this time. "Her name is Margie
Weber and she's single."
He grinned and said "Thanks." He should have, Ruth thought. Margie
was a very cute little redhead, much prettier, Ruth thought, than she
herself was. And occasionally Margie did let customers make dates with
her if they were nice enough; she might well think this one was nice
enough.
The clock on the wall now said seven-thirty. Ruth caught Margie's eye
and pointed toward the back of the restaurant to show that she was
taking off. Margie nodded.
Ruth went back into the kitchen and through it to the closet-dressing
room where the waitresses put their coats and those who didn't wear
their uniforms to and from work (Ruth did) changed into them. She
looked into the full-length mirror on one wall and liked what she saw
there. She was tall for a woman; in high heels she was only an inch
shorter than Ray, who was five feet ten. But she was slender and had a
nice figure. The tiny waitress cap enhanced rather than hid her golden
hair. Her eyes were deep blue. The only fault she could find was in her
face; it was a square, honest face, attractive but not beautiful, with
high cheekbones almost like an Indian's. The mouth was perhaps a trifle
too wide, but the better for that when she smiled.
Right now, though, she wasn't smiling and her face looked tired. Well,
it had a right to be; she'd cleaned the house thoroughly today, quite
a bit of work to undertake before coming on for an evening shift
that kept her on her feet almost all the time. That and the quarrel
with Ray; quarrels always left her physically as well as emotionally
exhausted.
But her eyes no longer showed that she'd been crying; two hours of work
had taken care of that. Her nose was a little shiny though and she
powdered it lightly, turned and looked over her shoulder to make sure
her slip didn't show, and then went out into the kitchen again.
Tex, the cook, was taking advantage of a hiatus in order to scrape the
big range. He nodded to her. "Some nice little club steaks, Ruth. Shall
I fry one for you?" She shook her head. "Thanks no, Tex. I'll just help
myself to something." She took a plate and went with it to the steam
table, helped herself to a stuffed bell pepper, a small helping each of
beets and peas, and took it to the table in the corner. It felt good to
sit down and get off her feet.
She heard George Mikos come out of his office and walk up behind her.
He said, "That isn't much of a meal for a healthy wench, Ruth."
She looked up at him over her shoulder. "I'm just not hungry. I'm going
to have to make myself eat this much. I guess I don't feel very well."
"Want to take the rest of the evening off? I can handle things easily.
Or maybe Margie would want to get in a little overtime."
"Oh, no, George. I'm not sick. Just a little tired." She smiled up
at him. "I'll get my second wind soon." She wasn't exaggerating; it
happened every evening when she'd done quite a bit of housework. She'd
be tired for the first few hours of the evening and then get a second
wind and feel fine the rest of the time.
"All right," he said. "When you're through eating don't forget you
wanted to talk to me about something."
He walked away and she could tell by the sound of his footsteps that
he went through the swinging doors to the front of the restaurant. She
noticed for the hundredth time how lightly he walked for so big a man.
She wondered if he was a good dancer and decided he probably was; most
men who are light on their feet are. Ray hated dancing and she'd danced
only a few times since she'd been married.
Ray took her out about once a month, on one of her evenings off, never
to a show and never to dance. Even if they went to a night club where
there was dancing between floor shows. Ray's idea of an evening out
with her was to sit at a booth in a tavern or, if he was flush, at
a table in a night club, to drink and talk. To talk, that is, if he
ran into friends of his whom he could get to sit in the booth or at
the table with them, as generally happened. If they were alone he was
generally quiet and moody as though taking her out was a duty and he
resented the loss of an evening that it entailed. And in either case
they generally got home earlier than he himself would have come home
had he been without her.
She supposed she might as well admit it--to herself; her marriage with
Ray had been, thus far at least, a failure. But she also had to admit
that it was partly her fault; she should have known him longer--and got
to know him better. She had known, of course, that he enjoyed gambling,
but she had no objection in principle to gambling, as long as it was
in moderation. Her father, whom she had loved deeply, had gambled all
his life and had been a wonderful man. She just hadn't known Ray well
enough to know that with him gambling wasn't a mild vice, as it had
been with her father, but was an obsession, the most important thing in
his life. He was addicted to it as some even more unfortunate people
become addicted to morphine or heroin. He had neither the will nor the
will power to stop, and she felt sorry for him.
She wondered sometimes if Ray realized by now that their marriage had
been a worse mistake for him, in all probability, than it had been
for her. His mistake had been not in marrying her in particular; she
was probably as tolerant a wife as he could have found. It had been
in marrying at all. He had been made to be a bachelor. (Spoiled by a
doting mother? He never talked about his early life and all she knew
about his parents was that they were dead, as were her own.) He wasn't
made for married life, for domesticity. He didn't want a home of his
own; he'd have been happier living in a hotel, as he had lived before
marriage, even than living in a rented flat. She wondered if he'd ever
thought of their getting a divorce; he'd never mentioned one, not even
late this afternoon when they'd had their worst quarrel to date. Or had
that been because he still hoped that she might relent and either cash
in or borrow against that policy to give him the money he wanted?
She'd finished eating and got up and put her plate, knife and fork with
the dirty dishes. The kitchen clock showed her that only ten minutes of
her lunch period had gone by, and George was still up front.
It was uncomfortably hot in the kitchen. The door to the alley was open
and the light outside was on. She went through it and a step to one
side to stand there for a breath of cool, fresh air. Well, cool air,
anyway; the row of garbage cans to the other side of the door kept it
from being too fresh.
There were quiet footsteps again, and then George stood beside her. He
said, "You shouldn't be out here in the alley, alone."
"It's safe, George. It's right under a light and right outside the
door. I'd have plenty of time to get back inside if I saw or heard
anyone coming from either direction."
"I suppose so," he said. "I guess I worry too much. But did you read
the editorials in both of yesterday's papers?"
"No, I didn't. Something about the--the psycho?"
"Yes, and it was something that needed to be written. In fact, the
police suggested to the editors of both papers that it _be_ written,
and my friend, the captain in charge of homicide, talked it over with
me before he made the suggestion to them. I've got a copy of one of
the editorials--and the other says approximately the same thing--in my
office if you'd care to read it. Or I can tell you what it says, if
you'd prefer."
Ruth said, "I think I'd as soon you tell me, if you don't mind. I
suppose it warns women to stay out of dark alleys."
"Among other things, yes. You see, Ruth, a criminal--whether sane or
psychotic--does tend to repeat the pattern of a crime. The _modus
operandi_. But unless he's a moron he'll vary the pattern if and when
his _modus operandi_ becomes impossible, for any reason, for him to
repeat.
"And that's exactly what our psychotic killer is going to find himself
up against if and when he decides to commit another crime. We don't
know what kind of a gimmick he used to get his first two victims to
open their doors for him, but whatever it was it's not likely to work
for him again. Every woman in the city is scared and has been since the
second crime, since it's looked as though he may be starting a series
of such crimes."
"I see," Ruth said. "And the police think he'll try a
different--uh--_modus operandi_ the next time?"
"They do. He'll almost have to, to succeed. Just what he'll try, they
don't know, of course. He might slug a woman on the street and drag or
carry her into an alley or an areaway. He might break into her place
while she's away and be there waiting for her when she comes home and
lets herself in. Those are the two main possibilities, but there are
others. The point is, a woman can't consider herself safe just because
she keeps the door bolted whenever her husband is out. Not that she
should neglect that precaution, either. He may try his former method
several times, and vary it only if he finds out that it doesn't work.
You _do_ have a chain bolt, don't you?"
"Not a chain bolt, just an ordinary one. I've been using it since the
scare started. Ray doesn't like it much, having to wake me up to let
him in when he gets home after I do, but he goes along with it."
"I hope you make sure it's Ray before you unbolt the door."
"Oh yes. And not just by recognizing his voice. We have a code. It's--"
"Don't tell me." He interrupted almost sharply. "I mean if you have a
recognition code, that's good, but you shouldn't tell _anybody_ what
it is. Ruth, you said at five-thirty there was something you wanted to
talk to me about. Shall we talk here, or go into my office?"
"I guess we can go inside. I'm cooled off now."
He followed her through the kitchen and into his sanctum, leaving, as
always, the door a little ajar. He motioned her to the comfortable
reading chair, then turned the chair at the desk around to face her
and sat down. He said, "I hope it's not bad news, Ruth. That you're
thinking about leaving or anything like that."
"No, nothing like that, George. Do you know a man named Joe Amico? He's
a bookie."
George frowned. "I know him slightly. And know a little about him. He's
not small time but not quite big time either, somewhere in between. He
operates from an apartment on Willis. I don't know whether or not he
lives there too. What do you want to know about him?"
"Ray has gone in debt to him, betting, and can't pay off. About five
hundred dollars, he says. He wants me to cash in or at least borrow
against my insurance policy--the one I told you about--and give him
the money to pay off Amico. He says if he doesn't pay Amico will have
him beaten up badly, maybe even killed. I--I didn't quite believe him
and I said no. But what if I'm wrong? I'd never forgive myself if
something _did_ happen to Ray, something bad, because I wouldn't give
him the money. What do you think?"
George Mikos shook his head slowly. "It's a bluff. I don't know whether
Ray was trying to bluff you or Amico was trying to bluff him, but Amico
isn't going to risk everything he's got by going in for violence, over
an amount like five hundred dollars.
"He's a fairly slimy character, I'd say--a half-pint who wouldn't weigh
over a hundred pounds soaking wet who has an inferiority complex over
his size and tries to act like a Little Caesar to make up for it--but
he's also a smart operator who has a good thing and knows it. He pays
protection, and gets it, but the police aren't going to let him get
away with beating up people, let alone rubbing them out. Besides, he's
more interested in getting his five hundred dollars than in fixing
things so he can't get it."
Ruth sighed audibly with relief. But she couldn't quite believe it.
"You mean Ray could just not pay him and nothing would happen?"
"Not quite that. He'd make trouble, I imagine. But not in the way of
physical violence. He could get Ray marked lousy with all the other
gamblers so they wouldn't have anything to do with him. He might even
manage to make him lose his job; Amico has connections. But he'd do
that only as a last resort--he'd much rather get his money even if he
had to take it so much every week, and he couldn't very well do that if
he lost Ray's job for him. No, Ruth, I don't think you have anything to
worry about. Nor has your husband, except that he's going to have to
get along with less spending money--or gambling money--for a while."
Ruth Fleck stood up. "Thanks, George, thanks an awful lot. I--I was
horribly worried that I'd done the wrong thing, but what you told me is
exactly what I hoped you'd say. Thanks a million."
"Sit down again, Ruth. It isn't eight o'clock yet, is it?"
"I'm afraid it is--almost. And I don't want to make Margie have to stay
overtime. Maybe we can talk again later."
When Ruth got back up front the first thing she noticed was that the
shy young man had left. Either he hadn't had a chance to talk to Margie
or she had turned him down, otherwise--since she'd be getting off work
so soon--he'd have waited around. There was one customer at the counter
but Margie had served him and he was just starting to eat. There were
parties in one of the booths and at two of the tables, but they'd been
served too.
Margie came over and talked a minute and then, cold on the stroke of
eight, went back to change into her street clothes. Since she was so
often picked up at eight for a date Margie never wore her uniform to
and from work, as Ruth did.
Ruth checked the big chromium coffee urn to make sure there was plenty
in it and then went up to the cash register; there was a stool behind
it where she could sit down when there was nothing for her to do. She
sat down and looked out through the window, at nothing.
She did, as she had told George, feel better now, much better. Her
conscience didn't bother her as to whether or not she had done the
right thing in turning Ray down on the money. She'd hated the nagging
thought that she might be getting him into serious trouble, sent to
the hospital or even killed.
But if losing his job was the worst thing that could happen to
him--well, that might be for the better. He was a good salesman
and could easily get another job--selling hardware or groceries or
something safe. With his weaknesses the job he had, making him spend
most of his working time in taverns, was the worst job possible for
him. In another job he might make less money for a while but that would
be all right. Or even if he kept his present job, having gone into debt
over his head from gambling might be a good thing to have happened
to him. If he had to pay Joe Amico off a little at a time out of his
earnings he wouldn't have much left to gamble with and might, during
however long it took him, get out of the habit of gambling so heavily.
That was all she asked; she didn't mind if he kept on betting on the
horses if he made small bets, ones he could afford to lose.
At any rate he was past the limit of his credit now; he'd _have_ to
behave himself for a while. And if, after he'd worked himself out of
the hole this time, he didn't straighten out--
She didn't carry through with the thought consciously, because she
still did love him, at least a little, and she hated the thought of
divorce. But down deep she knew it was something that would have to
happen eventually, unless Ray changed--and down deep she knew that he
would never change. And her insurance policy was an ace in the hole
there; if he should want to contest a divorce she'd have to go to
Nevada to get one--but her policy would cover even that.
George Mikos would be more than glad to finance one for her, but
she'd never let him do that. Nor would she let her growing feeling
for George, her knowledge of how _secure_ it would be to be married
to him, affect her decision. Whether or not she would stay with Ray
depended solely, in all fairness, on Ray himself, whether he overcame
his weakness or let it overcome him.
She wondered what he was doing now, out there in the darkness....
8:03 P.M.
Out there in the darkness--but downtown, where it wasn't dark at
all--Ray Fleck was passing a tavern. It was called Chuck's Chuckhouse,
although it was basically a tavern and served only cold sandwiches in
the way of food, and was run by Chuck Connolly. It was the one business
stop Ray really _should_ make this evening; he was overdue to make a
call there and Chuck always gave him a good order, including half a
dozen to a dozen cases of Ten High, which he used as his bar whisky.
Ray had been distracted by his financial troubles and hadn't worked
very hard that afternoon. He had only a few small orders to turn in
and seeing Chuck tonight would make the difference between having a
good batch of orders to turn in at the office tomorrow or a poor one.
Besides, if he waited too long to call Chuck might possibly change his
bar whisky and order from another outfit. Losing Connolly as a customer
would cut into his income appreciably.
Just the same, tonight, he wanted to be sure the place wasn't crowded
before he went in. It's customary for a liquor salesman to stand a
round of drinks for the house when he walks in to get an order and Ray
Fleck didn't want to get stuck for ten bucks or so for that round.
True, he'd put it on the swindle sheet--and make it a little higher
than it actually was--and get his money back eventually. But that
wouldn't help tonight; he'd spent three bucks since his steak dinner
and hadn't been able to borrow anything so he was down to twenty-five
already and getting seriously worried about that stake. This seemed to
be a hell of a bad night for running into people he could borrow from,
and a ten-buck round would put him down to fifteen dollars.
So he walked past first, turning his head to glance in the window, but
staying on the outside of the sidewalk so Chuck would be unlikely to
see him.
But he was lucky; Chuck was behind the bar and there were only three
men in front of it, so he turned and came back and this time went in.
He could see now that there was also a couple sitting in a booth. That
meant seven drinks, counting one for himself and one for Chuck, but it
still wasn't too bad.
Chuck said, "Hi, stranger. Wondered if you'd deserted me." Ray said,
"Hi, Chuck. Set 'em up, huh? I'm going to use your telephone a minute."
He went on past and to the phone booth at the back and dialed Dolly
Mason's number for the third time this evening. There still wasn't any
answer.
He came back and sat down at the bar, watched while Chuck made drinks.
He made two for the people in the booth first and took them over. He
said, "Compliments of Mr. Fleck there." The couple looked over and
thanked him and Ray nodded to them. He didn't know any of the customers
so he didn't have to talk to them; he was just as glad because he
didn't feel like talking.
Damn Dolly Mason, he thought. Was she going to be out all evening, just
when he needed to see her? The more he thought about it the surer he
felt that Dolly was his only good chance to borrow money in any sizable
chunk this evening. And also that she'd give it to him if he could
connect with her. He'd ask for a hundred; surely she'd have at least
half that much on hand. It made sense, that short story he'd read
once; the Frenchman knew what he was talking about. A wife will turn
you down when a mistress won't. A wife has got you hooked, and knows
it; a mistress is more understanding. Well, he'd keep phoning every
fifteen or twenty minutes until he got her.
Oh, he wasn't the only man in Dolly's life, not by a long shot. He knew
that. But she liked him a lot; he didn't think it was _only_ because
of the presents he gave her that she was so nice to him. If it was
only that, then she was really a wonderful actress; she should be in
Hollywood instead of here.
Dolly was tiny, not over five feet tall, and very slightly on the
plump side, a brunette with olive skin. Just the opposite of Ruth on
all counts; that was probably what had attracted him to her in the
first place. A man likes a change. And she was vivacious while Ruth
was quiet. She liked to drink; Ruth didn't, much. She was frankly
passionate whereas Ruth--well, Ruth hadn't been cold at all when they
were first married but she was tending more and more to become that
way. Of course she said that was his fault, but he had a hunch that
wives always said that.
Connolly was making drinks for the bar now, one screw-driver and two
highballs for the strangers and a highball for Ray; he'd pour his own
drink last, the short straight shot he always took when someone bought
him a drink.
Ray watched him, thinking how easy it would be to borrow ten or twenty
bucks from Connolly, once he'd got his order. But it was the one
principle he'd always stuck to--never borrow money from a customer. His
one virtue, he thought sourly; let them carve it on his tombstone when
he was dead: "He never borrowed money from a customer." Besides, if he
ever did and if J. & B. Distributors ever found out about it he'd lose
his job like a shot. A salesman always had to appear prosperous whether
he was or not.
Connolly passed around the drinks; there were thanks and skoals and
everybody took a sip except Connolly who downed his short straight shot
at a gulp and then looked quizzically at Ray. "Well, I guess you want
an order, huh?"
"Could use one." Ray grinned at him. "And you could use some liquor
by now, I'd guess. Here, let me pay for this round before I forget."
He put a five on the bar and Connolly rang up three-seventy and put
a dollar, a quarter and a nickel on the bar in front of Ray. Ray
jittered; the bar owner didn't sound too friendly. Was he going to say
he'd already given an order to someone else?
"Yep," Connolly said. "I can use some liquor. Don't stay away so long
next time. I'll give you an order, but you better mark it rush so it'll
be delivered tomorrow. I'm damn near out of a few things. Come on down
to the other end of the bar."
He moved that way and Ray picked up his drink--but left his change
where it was--and followed, walking around the three men he'd bought
drinks for. On the way, now that his mind was relieved about the order,
he had a sudden thought. Maybe he could leave here with more money than
he'd come in with at that. Connolly played the ponies, not regularly
but frequently, and they often talked about the races and traded tips
or hunches. If he could talk Connolly into making up his mind about
something for tomorrow, he could say he was going to see Joe Amico
later, which he was, and offer to place the bet. And, of course, keep
it to cover himself, as he'd done with Sam the waiter. It could be a
nasty wallop if it hit, worse than Sam's bet would be, but tomorrow
was another day and it was tonight he was worried about.
But he'd better get business over with first so the other matter would
look casual, so when he sat down across from Connolly at the front end
of the bar he took out an order blank and spread it open on the bar in
front of him, took out his ball point. "Okay, Chuck," he said. "How
many Ten Highs?"
He got a good order, better than he'd expected. Ten cases of the bar
whisky, a case each of gin and vodka, the equivalent of a couple of
mixed cases of Scotch, rye and other brands of bourbon, and some wine.
A mixed case of vermouth, half dry and half sweet, and a few odd
bottles of cordials and liqueurs. It didn't take long; Connolly always
knew exactly what he wanted and the exact quantities and talked almost
as fast as Ray could write it down. And Ray had learned long since not
to try to increase any of the orders Connolly gave him or to try to
sell him anything he didn't ask for.
Connolly was just saying "That's it, Ray," when two more men walked
into the bar. Again strangers to Ray; his friends seemed to be staying
home in droves this evening. Connolly excused himself to serve them and
Ray called after him, "On me, Chuck." That would just about kill the
change out of his five and he hoped no other customers would walk in
till he could get away.
He took the Racing Form from his pocket, spread it open on the bar in
front of him and pretended to be studying it; that would automatically
bring conversation into the right channel when Connolly came back.
It did. He was actually studying, not pretending at all, when he heard
Connolly's voice. "See anything that looks good?"
He looked up. "Sure, Chuck. Blue Belle in the fifth. That's a filly
you've been following, ain't it?"
"Yeah, but she's cost me money doing it, damn her. Hasn't run in the
money last five times out. Used to be a good horse, especially on a
fast track, but I'm beginning to think she's had her day."
"Hell, Chuck, ten to one they've been holding her back. She was running
too well for a while and it shot the hell out of the odds. Now the odds
are good again and I figure she's due. Now's the time to win back, and
maybe get even more than she owes you."
"Maybe you got something there. I ain't seen a Form today. Lemme see
who she's running against."
Ray handed him the Form and pointed out the race so he'd not have to
look for it. He said, "And Aqueduct'll be a fast track tomorrow. No
rain there for two weeks and none in sight."
"Yeah," Connolly said after a minute. "I guess I'll put something down
on her."
"I'll be seeing Amico soon as I leave here," Ray said casually. "Got a
date with him. If you want me to save you calling him I'll put your bet
down for you when I put mine."
"Might as well," Connolly said; he took his wallet out of his hip
pocket and then hesitated. "Wonder whether to put ten on the nose or
fifteen across the board."
An across-the-board bet, Ray thought, would get him five bucks
more--and would cost him less if the horse did win. "I'm playing her
across myself," he said. "Thirty bucks, ten each way. So if she even
runs third I'll break even."
One thing he'd learned long ago: if you give a man a tip on a horse let
him think you're betting at least as much as he is and preferably more.
That way if the horse loses he blames you less, because you've lost
too; you're a fellow sufferer.
This time it paid off even better than he'd expected. Connolly
hesitated only a second and then took a twenty and a ten out of his
wallet, handed them over. "Make mine the same way," he said. "If you
can go thirty I guess I can."
"Good," Ray said. He put the bills into his wallet, holding it with the
open edge toward himself so Connolly wouldn't be able to see how little
had been in it before--a ten and two fives.
He looked at his wrist watch and pretended to be surprised by what he
saw there. "Good God," he said. "A quarter after--and I told Amico I'd
see him at eight. I'd better run. Maybe see you later in the evening,
Chuck. So long."
Outside he took a deep breath of the cool evening air and decided that
he felt swell, and that his luck had turned. Thirty bucks in one crack,
even if he'd had to spend five to get it. And he now had fifty--enough,
if a bare minimum, to get into the big game that would _really_ change
his luck.
And since his luck had changed maybe he'd find Dolly home now if he
called again.
He went into the drugstore on the next corner and dialed her number
in the phone booth. And this time, after seven rings--a lucky
number?--Dolly's voice answered, a bit breathlessly.
8:17 P.M.
Dolly Mason heard the first ring of the phone when she was in the
hallway outside her apartment, returning from dinner with Mack Irby.
Mack was with her and she thought she had a free evening to spend with
him. She ran to the door, fished the key out of her handbag and stuck
it in the lock. It jammed there for several rings of the telephone
inside, till Mack said, "Let me, Doll." He reached around her and
turned the key. Dolly got to the phone just as it finished the seventh
ring. "Hello," she said, a bit breathlessly.
"Hi, Dolly," the phone said to her. "This is Ray. Ray Fletcher."
"Oh. Hi, Ray honey. Long time no see."
"Too long. Can I see you a while tonight? Just for a few minutes?"
"Well--maybe just for a little while. But not right away. 'Bout an hour
from now, huh?"
"An hour? Can't you make it a little earlier than that, Dolly?"
"Well, maybe a little earlier." She looked at her wrist watch. "Nine
o'clock? That's a little over forty minutes."
"Swell. See you at nine. 'Bye now, till then."
The phone clicked before Dolly could say anything more, so she cradled
it.
Mack Irby, who had made himself comfortable in an over-stuffed chair,
looked at her with amusement. "You wouldn't of had to stall the guy,
Doll," he said. "He could of come right away. Me, I chase easy. I'm on
the free list."
"Damn you, Mack honey. You're not _on_ the free list. You _are_ the
free list. And the reason I didn't tell him to come right away is I
didn't want him to come right away."
Dolly didn't mind Mack kidding her about the free list, but that was
because Mack was special; if anyone else had ever said anything like
that, she'd have bawled the hell out of him--and meant it.
Dolly Mason was not a prostitute. She'd never taken money from a man
and never would. She earned her own living, as a beauty operator.
And it was a fairly good living because she owned a one-third
interest in the beauty shop and shared in the profits. Her two-room
apartment--living room and bedroom, with a kitchenette off the
first and a bath off the second--was in a good building in a good
neighborhood. Despite the fact that it was fairly expensive as were
her clothes and her standards of living in other directions, she had a
modest balance in the bank. Her living standards would not, of course,
have been quite so high if she did not accept presents--some of which
she used and some of which she converted into money--from a score of
men, but she would still have lived comfortably. And why shouldn't she
accept presents from men--for doing something she thoroughly enjoyed
and would have done for free if it were not for the fact that there
were men, more men than she could possibly take care of, who would
gladly bring her presents for doing what she most enjoyed.
Dolly Mason had been graduated five years ago from high school in a
small town a hundred miles downstate with a reputation that made it
quite inadvisable for her to stay in that town. If she hadn't had sex
relations with every boy in her class it hadn't been her fault, and
she'd made up the deficit by having slept with quite a number of older
men.
Fortunately for Dolly her father had died just a week after her
graduation, leaving Dolly--since her mother had died years before--the
sole beneficiary of a few thousand dollars in insurance. She had left
town and had come to the city immediately after the funeral. She had
kept her capital mostly intact by working part time while she took a
beauty course, had worked two years as an operator for someone else to
gain experience, and then had used what was left of her capital to buy
her way into a small but profitable suburban beauty shop.
She liked any and all men, but since she had a wide choice of them
she limited her friendships (as she thought of them) to ones who were
reasonably young, reasonably attractive, and reasonably prosperous.
They had to be reasonably generous in giving her presents from time to
time. And, no matter how generous they were, they had to be reasonably
good in bed.
Of all men she liked Mack Irby best. She'd met him when she'd been
working about a year as a beauty operator and about a year before she'd
bought into the shop. She'd thought at first that she was in love with
him and for a few weeks had actually eschewed promiscuity and given
herself only to him. But love, to Dolly, meant only that she enjoyed
sex with Mack more than with anyone else. She'd probably have married
Mack during the first week or so that she'd known him if he'd asked
her, but fortunately he hadn't, for she soon found out that no one man
could possibly keep her happy. Not even Mack, who was more virile than
most men.
So she'd gone back to promiscuity, but since Mack wasn't jealous
she'd kept him as a paramour. It was about this time that she began to
get the idea that, while she was going to keep her amateur standing
by never accepting money, there was no reason why men--other men, not
Mack, that is--shouldn't give her presents in appreciation of her
favors. In fact, Mack had suggested it.
By now, only Mack was on what he called her free list. She expected
presents from him only at Christmas and on her birthday. Not that she
didn't get anything else at all from him. He took her to dinner several
nights a week; most of her other male friends were married and afraid
to take the risk of being seen with her in public. And, because of his
line of work, Mack was able to do her other valuable favors. He was
"in" with the cops and able to fix traffic tickets. Once he'd even
managed to square a drunken driving rap which, since it was a second
offense, would otherwise have carried a mandatory jail sentence. He
had connections through which he could sell for her at a fair price,
certainly more than she herself could have got for them, presents which
were given to her and which she didn't want to keep for herself. And a
few times when a man whom, for one reason or another, she had dropped
from her friendship roster had become troublesome in his efforts to see
her again, Mack had talked to him and Dolly had been bothered no longer.
Mack had been a policeman once, on the vice squad. Now he was a private
detective, a lone operator who, if he was a bit on the shyster side
and did mostly divorce work, stayed nearly enough honest to be on
good terms with the police. Which made him a very valuable friend
and protector for a girl like Dolly, who, although she did nothing
seriously illegal, frequently skated on somewhat thin ice.
"Ray," Mack was saying to her. "That's the guy who's a liquor
salesman, no? The one who brings you a case of whisky once in a while?"
Dolly nodded. "He said he just wanted to stay a little while, Mack
honey. If he means that and doesn't change his mind maybe I can phone
you after he goes and you can come back. Where'll you be?"
"At the office, I guess. I've got some skip-trace reports I might as
well write up. I'll be there a couple of hours. I'll go home after that
if I haven't heard from you. Should hit the pad early tonight anyway."
"Swell," Dolly said. "Mack honey, you make us a couple drinks while I
take a quick shower. I won't be three minutes."
She walked quickly into the bedroom. She undressed quickly, putting
away the clothes she took off since she wouldn't have to dress again
this evening; she could just put on a robe when Mack left.
She wondered if Ray would bring a case of whisky with him tonight;
that was something she was always glad to get. She thought back and
decided that he wouldn't. He'd brought a case last time he'd come.
Dolly didn't expect her friends to bring her a present _every_ time
they came to see her, if they'd brought something fairly valuable the
previous trip. Something like a dozen pair of nylons, dollar forty-nine
variety, anything that cost no more than twenty or twenty-five dollars
(and it had better not cost much less than twenty) was good only for
the time it was brought. Something worth fifty was worth a couple of
visits and so on up the line. Dolly didn't keep books on the presents
brought her but she had a good memory and always knew who was due to
bring something and who wasn't. She didn't have her rules printed and
posted on the inside of her door, as rules and prices are posted inside
hotel room doors, but the men who came to see her soon got the idea
and could figure it the same way Dolly did. No, Ray probably wouldn't
bring anything tonight and she didn't expect him to. A case of whisky,
the brand he'd brought, was worth at least fifty dollars. He would have
paid less, of course, since he'd have been able to get it at wholesale,
but Dolly didn't care about that; it was still worth at least fifty to
her.
She was in the bathroom almost exactly the three minutes she'd
predicted. Two minutes under the shower and one with the bath towel;
she didn't dry herself too thoroughly because Mack liked her with her
skin a trifle moist. And during the minute of toweling she had time to
admire her body in the full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom
door.
Her breasts were especially beautiful, she thought, and why shouldn't
she think so when she knew they drove men crazy. Already their
shell-pink, tip-tilted nipples were hardening in anticipation.
Naked and glowing she walked through the bedroom and into the living
room. Mack was sitting on the sofa; two freshly made highballs, strong
ones, were on the coffee table in front of it.
Naked she ran lightly across the room and sat in his lap, kissed him.
His arms went around her, one of his hands cupping one of her breasts,
a perfect fit.
He pulled back to break the kiss, groaned softly.
"Little bitch," he said. "How can a man enjoy a drink with you like
this. The drinks will have to wait."
He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. She laughed; this
was what she'd wanted, to have to wait for her drink until afterward.
8:24 P.M.
He stood outside a living room window of the little three-room cottage
looking in, watching her. By moving from one side of the window to
the other he could see almost all of the room, and she, even if she
looked toward the window, would not be able to see him. There was a net
curtain inside the window. From the outer darkness he could see through
it clearly into the lighted room, but from where she sat the curtain
would be opaque. He could--except for his Need and his desperate
impatience--stand here as long as he wished to make his plans and
calculate his chances.
He thought they were good. The cottage was on the outskirts of town, in
a neighborhood not very built up as yet. There were only a few houses
in the block.
There was one almost directly across the street but it was dark and
there was no car in the carport alongside it. Obviously either no one
lived there or no one was home.
The nearest house on the right was vacant and had a "For Rent" sign on
it. People were home and lights were on in the nearest house to the
left--but it was well over a hundred yards away and besides either a
radio or television set was turned on quite loudly. He could hear it
from here. Over that volume of sound so close to them would they be
able to hear the sound of a scream? He didn't think so. But it was a
risk he would have to decide to take--or not to take. He'd never be
able to get through the window and get to her to knock her out without
her having time to scream once.
The window at which he stood was at the side of the house and he could
see the inside of the front door--and the chain bolt on it. Probably
just about every house or apartment in town had one now. Well, the
method he'd tried three times had succeeded twice but now he might as
well forget about it.
The danger that was greater than a scream being overheard was in plain
sight on a stand right beside the door. The telephone. Would he be able
to get through the window and to her before she could get to the phone
and finish dialing a number? If she got a call through--even managed
to get an operator and call _help_--he wouldn't have time to have his
way with her. But if by then he was in the room with her, if she'd seen
him, he could still take a few seconds to kill her quickly, so she'd
never describe or identify him, and still, he hoped, be out of the
neighborhood before the police came.
It would all depend on how quickly he could pry that window up and get
into the room.
He weighed the other chances against him. He'd checked the garage
behind the house; the door was open and the car was gone. That meant
that her husband, if she had one, was out and not in the bedroom or
the kitchen. Of course the husband might return too soon, but that
would be too bad for the husband unless he was a heavyweight champion
boxer. He'd hate to have to interrupt himself to do it, but he could
handle any ordinary unarmed man. The only difference would be that
he'd be leaving two corpses behind him this time instead of one. Or
three or more corpses if by any chance a child or children asleep in
the bedroom. He wouldn't mind killing them at all; he hated children
almost as much as he hated women.
His eyes went back to the woman. She was sitting on the sofa, her feet
curled under her, reading a magazine. Well--what was he waiting for?
He took the heavy chisel out of his pocket and put its edge between the
bottom of the window and the sill, then put both hands on the handle
and leaned his full weight against it. It made no appreciable sound;
she hadn't looked up from her magazine. But it was in as far as he
could push it, and was it in far enough?
There was only one way to find out. He threw all his strength into
pushing down on the handle of the chisel, and this time there was
noise--but it was the noise of splintering wood and not the snapping of
the window catch above. He had failed.
She looked up now, and there was fright in her face, but not panic. She
didn't scream. But she ran for the telephone and started dialing.
And there was no chance of getting to her in time now, with a second
try at the window. He ran to the car he had parked a quarter of a
block away. Stupid, he thought; he should have found the telephone
wire outside the house and snapped it. Then he'd have had time to get
in while she struggled with a dead phone. Next time, if he tried this
method again, he'd do that. And he'd have a hammer to use with the
chisel, to drive it far enough in so the catch would snap instead of
the wood splintering.
This time he was six blocks away when he heard the approaching sirens.
But would one of them by any chance stop and investigate a car driving
away from the address to which they'd been called? There wasn't much
traffic out here, and the cops just might get that bright idea. They
weren't in sight yet so he quickly parked at the curb in front of a
house, turned his lights off and lay down across the front seat out of
sight. They wouldn't investigate an apparently empty parked car this
far from their destination.
They didn't. Two of them screamed past him. No more seemed to be
coming, so he started his car and drove back into town, thinking
despairingly that he wouldn't dare make a third attempt tonight after
two unsuccessful ones. He'd have to case and plan his next kill
carefully.
For tonight, he thought, the Need would have to go unsatisfied. He'd
have to settle for the poor consolation of a few drinks to calm his
nerves, and then sleep.
That's what he thought. But then, he had not yet met Ray Fleck.
8:26 P.M.
Ray Fleck's reluctant footsteps stopped on the sidewalk of an apartment
building on Willis Street, just on the edge of the downtown business
district, and he hesitated before entering it, as a man hesitates
before stepping under a cold shower.
This talk with Joe Amico was bound to be an unpleasant one. But Joe
had told him to come, and before ten o'clock, and Joe was mad at him
already and would be madder if he didn't show up. So he'd better get it
over with.
In a way, he thought, it was lucky Dolly Mason had told him not to come
before nine; that gave him time to come here--Joe's apartment was only
three blocks from the drugstore from which he'd phoned Dolly--and still
get to Dolly's in plenty of time. Surely Joe wouldn't want to keep
him more than a few minutes. What was there to say to Joe except to
reassure him that he'd pay the money as soon as he could possibly raise
it?
Yes, it was far better to get the interview with Joe over with now.
That way, if Dolly lent him money, even fifty dollars, he could stay
with her a while, almost two hours, until time to head for the game.
That way he'd at least be sure of keeping his capital intact. And he
knew that if she was free she'd let him stay. For that matter, it might
be just as well for him to stay with Dolly even if she couldn't or
wouldn't lend him money. If he spent the time elsewhere he was at least
as likely to diminish his fifty dollars as to augment it.
He entered the building and saw that the self-service elevator door was
closed and that the indicator above it showed that it was at the fourth
floor and going up. So he didn't wait for it but went to the door that
led to the staircase instead; Joe's apartment was on the third floor
and he'd rather walk two flights than wait.
Going up the stairs his mind went back to Joe. Damn him, he thought,
it was as much Joe's fault as his that he was in this jam; Joe should
have told him how deep in the hole he was getting. He hadn't kept track
and had thought he was in only for maybe a couple of hundred. Until
yesterday when he'd tried to phone in a fifty dollar bet. Big Bill
Monahan, who worked for Joe and who usually answered the phone at the
apartment, had said, "Just a minute, Ray. Joe said he wanted to talk
to you the next time you phoned." And Joe had come on. "Ray-boy, don't
you realize you're in the soup for four-eighty? You'd better pay that
off before you do any more betting." He'd told Joe that he'd stop in,
thinking at first to ask Joe to show him the slips on the bets; from
the names of the horses and the amounts he'd know whether all the bets
were his or not. Maybe Joe or Big Bill had made a mistake. But after
the call he'd tried to remember all the bets he could and had added
them up. They'd come to four hundred and ten dollars and since he was
sure that he hadn't remembered all of the bets, he was willing to take
Joe's word on the total.
But why hadn't Joe called him on it sooner? Twice before Joe had called
him on running into debt, both times when the amount involved was a
couple of hundred. Both times he'd been able to raise the money within
a few days. The first time he'd done it on a signature loan, but that
wouldn't work again because he'd got behind on his payments and had
had a fight with the loan outfit. He'd paid it off eventually but the
damn company had marked him as a poor credit risk. And loan companies
keep one another posted on things like that. He'd found out when he'd
applied for a second loan from another outfit and had been turned down.
He'd raised the money that time by putting up his car for security but
that wouldn't work again either right now. He'd had his present car
only six months and had made only five payments on it. It was financed
over a two-year period and he still owed too much on it for him to
borrow anything against it. He could probably sell it for a few hundred
more than he owed on it but he needed a car to hold down his job.
He pressed the door buzzer and after a moment Big Bill opened the door
a few inches on the chain and looked out through the opening. He said,
"Hi, Ray," and then closed the door momentarily so he could take the
chain off and open it wide. It was a silly system; Ray had kidded Bill
about it once and he'd shrugged and said, "Boss's orders." It was still
silly. Were they afraid of a raid? Amico paid for protection and got
it. He had to take a raid once in a while but he was always tipped off
in advance exactly when one was coming--usually just before a local
election. When a raid came, Amico wouldn't be there nor would there
be any clients. The cops would serve the warrant on Bill Monahan or
whoever was working for Amico at the time, and find and confiscate some
betting slips--phony ones with fake names on them; Amico would have
the real ones. Monahan would appear in court and pay a fine or, if the
police wanted to make a better showing than usual, sit out a short jail
sentence. Amico wouldn't even get his name in the papers, and would
meanwhile be opening up in a new location, already rented in advance,
and spreading the word on his new address and phone number. No raid was
expected tonight or Big Bill wouldn't have let him in; clients never
got caught in one.
Big Bill closed the door behind Ray and said, "Joe's laying down. Had a
headache and took some aspirins."
"Maybe he's asleep," Ray said. "Maybe I better come back some other--"
"No, he wants to see you. Said if he was asleep when you came to wake
him up. Just a minute."
Big Bill crossed the room--a living room furnished like any living room
except for the addition of a desk with two telephones on it--opened the
door of the next room and looked in. He turned back and said, "He's
awake. Go on in."
Ray Fleck went in and, in case he was going to have to take a bawling
out, closed the door behind him. The room was a bedroom and Joe Amico
was lying on the bed but on top of the covers and fully dressed. Ray
had never seen him otherwise; like many small men Joe prided himself on
being dapper. Even on the hottest days of summer he always wore a suit
coat over a white shirt and a necktie and the shirt was always so fresh
and clean that Ray thought he must change shirts at least twice a day
and possibly oftener. The bed was a big one and Joe was so small that
he looked almost like a doll lying there on it.
"Hi, Ray-boy," he said. "Pull a chair around where I can see you from
here. I'm gonna stay flat. This damn headache--"
It was going to be all right, Ray thought; Joe wasn't angry and
wasn't going to get tough about the dough. He pulled a chair around
to the side of the bed and sat down. He remembered that Joe had once
mentioned sinus trouble and asked, "Sinus headache?"
"Yeah. Get 'em every once in a while, in streaks, in series like. One
at the same time every day for about two weeks. They get worse each day
for the first week and taper off during the second. I'm over the hump
this time; this is about the tenth day."
"Can't a doctor do anything for them?"
"Naw, I been to a dozen of 'em. The pills they give me don't help any
more than plain aspirin. And it ain't bad enough for an operation; I
get a streak of headaches only about once a year and I'd rather stand
'em than have a--what do they call it?--sinusotomy. What are you doing
about that money, Ray-boy?"
"Trying to raise it, Joe," Ray said. And then, to give himself some
leeway: "Might take a few days or even a week, but I'll get it."
"What if you can't?"
"Hell, I can--somehow. I've always paid you before, haven't I?"
"Yeah. But what if you can't scare it up this time, in one chunk? I
know how much you make--about how much anyway--and that's quite a piece
of cash for you. Close to a month's income. I shouldn't of let it get
that big but I wasn't keeping track and didn't realize how far into me
you were till Bill called my attention to it yesterday."
"Sure, Joe, it's quite a piece of cash. But don't worry; I'll get it.
And this damn losing streak can't last forever."
"Maybe not, but one can last a hell of a lot longer than yours has.
That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I think you'd better lay off
any kind of gambling till you're back even again--and that'll give
your luck time to turn maybe. I don't run an installment business but
I'm willing, in your case, to let you pay it off by the week. Say fifty
a week; that'd take you a little less than ten weeks."
Ray winced. "My God, Joe! I can't pay fifty a week--I wouldn't have
enough left to live on. How about twenty-five--if I can't raise the
whole thing, that is."
"Fifty might be rough on you, yeah. How about thirty-five?"
"Okay," Ray said. "Give me a week to see if I can raise the
four-eighty. Then if I can't pay you at least most of it I'll start
forking over thirty-five every payday. A deal?"
"A deal. All right, that's settled. Isn't anything else you wanted to
tell me, is there?"
A little puzzled--what was Joe getting at?--Ray said, "Nothing I can
think of. Except thanks, and I'll do my best to raise the dough without
having to make it in installments. Well, so long."
Crossing the living room on his way out he walked almost jauntily. It
was over with, and it hadn't been half as bad as he'd expected. He had
a full week to raise or win the money and even if he didn't succeed
things wouldn't be too bad. At thirty-five a week it would take a hell
of a long time to pay off four-eighty but it would still leave him
money for small bets and as soon as he started winning he could pyramid.
Monahan went to the door with him and opened it; they said so longs
and then the door closed behind him. But it opened again when he was
halfway to the stairs and Monahan stepped out into the hall and said,
"Come back, Ray. You forgot something."
Forgot something? He hadn't forgotten anything. As he walked back he
was thinking of Joe's "Isn't anything else you wanted to tell me, is
there?" That had been puzzling too. What went on?
He went back. Big Bill held the door open from outside, then followed
him in and closed it. This time there was the sound of the chain.
Joe Amico had come out of the bedroom, and in a hurry, because for the
first time Ray saw him less than completely immaculate; his straight
black hair was mussed from having lain on the bed and he hadn't taken
time to comb it. He was sitting on a corner of the desk, legs dangling,
and he no longer looked like a doll. You could have taken him, though,
for a malevolent little marionette with eyes as cold and hard as
marbles.
He didn't raise his voice but it was as cold and hard as his eyes. "How
long you been making book yourself, Ray-boy." This time the "Ray-boy"
didn't sound like an affectionate nickname; it sounded like a swear
word.
"Wha--" Suddenly in the middle of a word Ray Fleck realized what had
happened, what _must_ have happened. "My God, Joe," he said. "That bet
I took to place with you for Chuck Connolly--he must've phoned you to
change it or something and said I had the money for you. I have, but
_honest_, Joe, I forgot, completely forgot."
"How many other times have you made book yourself on dough somebody
gave you to give me?"
"Never, Joe, honest to God, never." And, in fact, he'd never before
done it, to speak of. A few times, not over half a dozen, he'd taken a
small bet, never over two or five, to give Joe, thinking that he'd be
seeing him or phoning in some bet of his own; then had decided against
laying anything that day himself and hadn't bothered to phone in the
peanut bet. Once one of the horses had won and he'd paid off on it,
twelve-forty on a two-dollar win bet. But never until tonight had he
deliberately held out a bet to raise money.
He was taking his wallet out of his pocket with a hand that he tried
to keep from trembling, opening the wallet to take out the three tens
Connolly had given him. But Joe was saying, "The whole thing, Ray-boy.
The wallet."
His eyes had been looking down at the bills in the wallet, trying to
focus on it to pick out the three bills. He looked up in surprise and
that made it too late. Big Bill jerked the wallet out of his hand and
tossed it to Amico, who held it in his hand, tapping a corner of it on
his knee, not as yet opening it.
He said, "How many bets in here besides Connolly's?"
"None, Joe. Honest to God. I've _never_--"
"Shut up. You stink, Ray-boy. Chuck Connolly didn't call me up to
change his bet; I wouldn't of even known about it if you hadn't told
me. Sam Washburn called me, Sam the waiter at Feratti's. I eat there
often and know him; he almost always takes a buck bet instead of a tip,
and sometimes adds cash of his own.
"So he called just before you came here, said he'd got worried about
his bet on Birthday Boy and wanted to change it a little. Said he gave
you five besides a one tip, all on the horse's nose. Got a little
doubtful about the hunch and wanted to play the six across the board.
And I had a hunch about _you_, Ray-boy--that you've dragged down on me
before by playing bookie on your own. I decided to see if you'd give me
that six bucks. I gave you every break, even asked you, God damn it, if
you had anything else to tell me. Waited till you were clear out the
door before I sent Bill to get you back. And what happens when I get
you back? You know I've got something on you and you pop off on a deal
I wouldn't of known about otherwise. And then stand there with your
bare face hanging out and swear Connolly's is the _only_ bet you ever
dragged down." He held up the wallet. "How many other bets from today
and tonight you still got in here?"
"None, Joe. Honest to God, I--"
"Shut up." Joe Amico opened the wallet and, without taking them out,
checked the bills in it. "Fifty bucks. How much was Connolly's bet, and
on what? Don't bother lying because I'll check with Connolly on it."
"Thirty," Ray said miserably. "Thirty across, on Blue Belle. Fifth,
Aqueduct."
Amico put the wallet down on the desk beside him. "Bill," he said,
"take thirty-six out of that. Make slips on both bets--you heard 'em.
Then give him his wallet and his lousy fourteen bucks change back."
Monahan went around behind the desk.
Ray said, "My God, Joe, I know this looks like I was dragging down on
you on purpose, but--"
"Shut up. From now on don't say a God damn word, till I finish and ask
you if you understand, and then you damn well better say yes. Just yes
and nothing else.
"Somebody else taking bets in my name, dragging down on me, that's
one thing--_the_ one thing I won't stand. Don't matter if it's six
bucks--that's all I knew about for sure at first--or thirty-six or a
million. Or six cents, for that matter.
"We're through, Ray-boy, finished. You come around here with a grand in
cash and want to lay it, I don't take it. I don't deal with chiselers.
"I made you a nice easy deal--four months I'd of took to get all that
four-eighty at thirty-five bucks a week. I meant it and you could
of had the deal, but at the same time I was testing you, to see if
you were going to give me that lousy six bucks. I knew if you ever
dragged down on me you would tonight, on account of you're behind the
eight-ball."
Monahan came around from behind the desk and held out Ray's wallet to
him. Ray took it and put it back into his pocket with a hand that was
shaking badly.
Joe Amico was saying, "Do I have to tell you that deal's off now? You
got a new deal and here it is. I want that money, _all_ of it, by this
time tomorrow night. You got twenty-four hours to raise it. I don't
care how you raise it. Sell your car. Sell your wife. Rob a bank."
"Joe, I _can't_--"
"I said shut up. Bill, if he opens that yakker of his again put a
fist in it. Ray-boy, I almost _hope_ you can't. Because I'll get a
four-eighty kick outa what I'm going to do if you don't."
He looked at his wrist watch. "Just twenty-four hours from right now
I start putting out the word that you're marked lousy, that you're a
cheap crook and a welsher besides. I start with all the tavern and
liquor store owners I know--and I know plenty. Chuck Connolly will be
on top of the list. I tell 'em if they're friends of mine they won't
deal with a rat like you. I'll ask 'em to pass the word to the other
guys in their racket, the ones I don't know. And some of the boys, the
ones I know best and do business with, are going to phone in your boss
and complain about you, about the way you treat 'em, the way you act in
their joints.
"It'll take a little while for the word to get all the way around, but
you'll be lucky, Ray-boy, to make fifty bucks in commissions next week
or to hold your job for two weeks.
"Oh, and you'll never lay another bet, even if you ever get any money
to lay. I do know every other bookie in town and they come right after
the bar owners. And I know who at least some of your friends are, too,
and I spread the word there. By a couple weeks from now you won't be
able to sit in even a penny-ante stud game in a private house.
"Okay, that's it. Now you can talk--one word and it better be yes, and
no more than that. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Ray said. Hopelessly he turned to go; nothing he could possibly
say would help right now, even if he dared to say it.
"Not quite yet," Amico said. "Bill, touch him up a little. Take it easy
and don't mark him. Just something to help him remember."
Ray had sense enough to know that it wouldn't do any good to fight
back; he'd get hurt worse if he did. He stood still and tried to make
himself limp when Big Bill's left hand grabbed a handful of the front
of his coat and shirt, thinking that if he went down from whatever came
first maybe they'd let it go at that.
But what came first was a pair of flat-handed slaps to the face--back
of the hand to one side, palm to the other. Slaps that rocked his head,
stung like hell, and made his ears ring.
Then Big Bill, still holding with his left, pulled his right hand back
and drove a fist like the business end of a battering ram into the pit
of Ray's stomach. The pain was so great that, as his hands went to his
stomach, he tried to double over and would have except for the big hand
still holding his clothes bunched in front of his chest. From somewhere
miles away and through a haze of redness he heard Monahan's voice say,
"Enough, Joe?" and Amico's voice say, "Yeah. Put him in a chair. Don't
put him out in the hall till he can walk. We don't want him laying on
our doorstep."
He was in a chair and nothing was holding him now; he could double over
forward in the chair and he did. He was retching. From somewhere not
quite so far away he heard Amico's voice again. "And don't let him out
till you're sure he won't puke on the hall carpet, either. If he pukes
in here keep him till he's able to clean it up."
He heard a door open and close; Amico had gone back into the bedroom.
He heard a phone ring and then Big Bill's voice answering it and then
saying, "Ten to win on Rawhide in the fourth, twenty to show on Dark
Angel in the seventh. Right, Perry."
He could straighten up now, and he wasn't going to puke. His stomach
still hurt like hell and his cheeks stung and his ears rang, but he
thought he could stand up now. He _had_ to stand up and get out of here
fast. For a moment he couldn't remember why, and then it came to him.
His date with Dolly. She was his only chance now, or the only one he
could think of. Joe Amico had meant every word he'd said.
He raised his arm to look at his wrist watch. Yes, he could still make
it in time if he was lucky in catching a taxi quickly outside. Lucky
that this was Willis Street and taxis were fairly frequent. He put his
hands on the arms of his chair and stood up. Not quite straight; the
pain in his stomach made him bend forward a little at the waist.
"You okay?" Big Bill asked him. His voice was impersonal, neither
friendly nor unfriendly.
"Sure. I got to get out of here. I'm going to be late for a date if I
don't leave now."
"Walk back and forth a few times. When I see you can navigate, okay."
He was a little tottery walking across the room the first time, better
coming back. After a few trips he was walking almost normally, as much
as it hurt him to do so.
Big Bill got up and went to the door and opened it. "Okay, Ray. No hard
feelings?"
"No," Ray said.
As he walked through Big Bill said, "Believe it or not, I pulled my
punch on that poke in the gut." And then, before Ray could answer, not
that there was anything _to_ answer, the door closed behind him and he
heard the chain slide into the slot.
No stairs this time. He went to the shaft of the self-service elevator
and pushed the button. The indicator showed that it was on the top
floor, but it started down. He leaned against the wall opposite the
elevator door to wait for it.
Suddenly he remembered something and reached for his wallet. Amico
had told Monahan to take thirty-six out, but what if Monahan hadn't
put back the change? But Monahan had; the wallet held a ten and some
singles. Fourteen lousy bucks.
He _had_ to get money from Dolly now. And he might as well try for five
hundred while he was at it--what was to lose trying? If he got that
much--and he'd offer _any_ kind of interest to get it--he'd stay out of
the poker session and not risk losing any of it. He'd keep it intact to
be _sure_ of being able to pay Joe tomorrow.
But fifty or a hundred wouldn't do him any good with Joe, so if that
was all he could get, running it up would be his only chance.
_Dolly, Dolly_, he thought, _please, Dolly. Be like the mistress of the
man in the French short story._
The elevator came and the door slid open automatically. He stepped
inside.
A minute later he was at the curb, looking frantically both ways for
a taxi. None was in sight and he ran, doubled over a bit because
his stomach hurt, to the corner, where he'd have a better chance of
flagging one.
8:47 P.M.
See now as through a defective windowpane that lets in light but
distorts the images that the light bears. See now into Benny Knox as
he himself sees out. See a twisted cosmos peopled by phantoms who buy
newspapers as they pass and then are seen no more, except for a few who
come regularly enough to become real for a while and to be remembered
most of the time. Through this pane Benny sees a frightening but
basically simple universe run by a good God of Vengeance when sin is
done.
But first let us see him from the outside, as others see him. Benny
Knox was born thirty-five years ago to a mother who died in bearing
him, her firstborn. His father was a Baptist minister, a fiery
fundamentalist to whom Heaven and Hell were fully as real as Earth. His
father, who never remarried, raised him.
During infancy he seemed perfectly normal and not only seemed but was
perfectly healthy and he was always big for his age. If during the next
years, those of his preschool childhood, signs of retardation began
first to show and then to multiply, his father, who after all had no
standard of comparison, failed to recognize them.
The fact that he was retarded wasn't known until he was entered in the
first grade of school (his father hadn't 'believed in' kindergarten;
all they did there was let children play and Benjamin already knew how
to play). Within a month he had been examined by a school psychologist
and the Reverend Matthew Knox had been called in for conference and
advised to send his son to a special school for subnormal children.
Benny had attended that school for eight years, until he was fourteen.
Then the school's principal had told Benny's father: "I'm afraid we've
done all we can for Benjamin. He has approximately the equivalent of
a third-grade education. Perhaps a little better than that in some
subjects--such as reading and arithmetic. Not so good in some others,
subjects that require memorizing, such as geography or spelling.
"Socially, the picture is neither too good nor too bad. He gets along
reasonably well with people, especially his contemporaries, but
only when circumstances force him to. He greatly prefers solitary
occupations and activities. He seems to daydream; whether or not that
will decrease or increase as he grows older, only time will tell.
"Morally--well, he's almost too good. It's obvious that he had very
strong religious training at home and is--well, almost too literally
convinced of everything he was taught."
The Reverend Matthew Knox had frowned slightly. "What he was taught at
home _was_ literally true," he had said.
"Of course. But, unless tempered with reason, some of the teachings of
Christianity are--ah--hardly survival characteristics in our society.
Or in any society for that matter. Generosity is a virtue, for example,
but it must be practiced with moderation. Recently I happened to learn
of a boy having come to school without his lunch. Not, mind you,
because his parents are poor; they aren't. Just because he forgot
it. Benjamin gave the boy his lunch and went hungry that day. When I
learned of it I talked to him and explained that while it would have
been a good thing for him to share his lunch with the boy he should
not simply have given it away and gone hungry himself. There have been
other such instances but that's the most recent one."
Benny's father had nodded thoughtfully. "I'll talk to him about it," he
said. As a matter of fact, he already had, a great many times. Benny
simply couldn't keep such things as baseball gloves, roller skates
or kite reels, and when something was gone it was always because he
had given it to a poor boy who didn't have one. Several times, when
Benny knew the name of the poor boy and where he lived, the Reverend
Knox had gone and got the article back; never had he encountered any
poverty more real than his own. He had finally solved the problem--and
without crossing Benny's desire to give to the poor--by issuing and
occasionally repeating a flat order to the effect that before he gave
anything of his to a poor boy he should bring the boy home with him; he
would then talk to the boy and decide whether or not the boy was really
poor and needed the article in question worse than Benny did. With rare
exceptions, when Benny had forgotten, this had worked. Apparently none
of the boys who had been taking advantage of Benny had wanted to face
an inquisition at Benny's home first. But apparently Benny had not
known that this edict had extended to school.
"And there is one other thing," the principal was saying, "that
troubles me about Benjamin. I must say that it troubles me _much_ more
than his indiscriminate generosity--for I believe you can train him
out of that without too much difficulty. He has a tendency to confess
to having done things he did not do. His teacher tells me that several
times when some prank or bit of minor vandalism has been committed she
has talked to the class about it and then asked whoever was guilty of
it to raise his hand; each time Benjamin's hand went up. And each time
some minor punishment was meted out to him for what she believed he had
done. Then one day the prank in question happened to be one she knew
positively Benny could not have done, and he still raised his hand. It
was a caricature of the teacher drawn on the blackboard during lunch
hour and it was rather well done for a child's drawing; Benny is very
poor at drawing. The teacher sent Benjamin to me to have a talk.
"His answers to me were vague and confusing. I honestly don't know
whether he knew he was innocent and had some compulsive reason for
offering himself as a scapegoat--perhaps guilt feelings about something
else--or whether he really thought, once the question was put to him,
that he had really done it."
The Reverend Knox was troubled; this was something new to him. True,
whenever he had asked Benny whether or not he had committed some
certain dereliction, the answer had almost always been affirmative,
but he had never questioned the boy unless he was already reasonably
sure Benny was guilty, so the affirmation had never been a surprise.
He asked, "Could Benjamin have been with the boy who made the
drawing--aided and abetted him, as it were--and thus felt that he
shared the guilt and have raised his hand for that reason?"
"No. Once the teacher seriously considered drawing styles, the identity
of the culprit became obvious; only one boy in the class could have
done it. Once the question was put to him directly he confessed--as a
matter of fact he was justifiably a little proud of the drawing--and
admitted that another boy had been with him but it wasn't Benjamin.
Benjamin hadn't even known of the drawing."
"I'll have a talk with him," Benny's father had said.
And he'd had a number of talks with him during the first year or
two Benny was out of school. He'd made a number of tests, too. For
example, if he himself should accidentally break a drinking glass in
the kitchen, later he'd show Benny the broken glass and ask if he had
done it. All too often, for a while, Benny would admit guilt. This
always led to another and longer talk, and finally he felt sure that
he had cured Benny of this fault--and he had, for a long time. Like
the principal, he had never been able to decide whether Benny had
deliberately made a false confession to court punishment or whether
he really thought, when asked, that he had committed the offense in
question.
He had given thought, too, to Benny's being able to make a living
for himself in the world. At first, since Benny was too young for
a full-time job, he had bought him a newspaper route. After a few
mistakes, Benny had done all right on it. It was teaching Benny
responsibility, he thought, and the five or six dollars a week it
brought in helped out immeasurably. After a while the only help he
needed was to be reminded once a month when it was time to make his
collections.
When Benny was sixteen and already bigger than most men his father
decided that it was time to help him find a niche in the world in
the way of a full-time job. The good minister was himself in failing
health and beginning to realize that, by the time of his own death,
Benny's needs must have, not only a means of earning a full livelihood,
but a way of living alone without constant parental care and advice.
The only alternative would be, after his own death, for Benny to be
institutionalized and become a public charge. This was to be avoided if
at all possible. Over the course of the next two years he found Benny a
variety of jobs--in vain. Benny could handle almost any of them, with
constant supervision, but no employer could afford an employee whom he
had to watch all the time. Even at manual labor jobs, although he was
plenty husky enough to handle them, Benny managed to get into trouble.
Set him to digging a ditch and he would dig it into the next county
unless you were there to stop him.
When Benny was eighteen and had never held a full-time job longer than
a few weeks, and few that long, the Reverend Knox learned that he had
only about six months to live. Fortunately, at about the same time, he
chanced to learn that an elderly man who for many years made a living
running a newspaper stand on a busy downtown street corner was about
to retire and wanted to sell his business. Newspapers were the only
thing Benny had ever got along with; if he could run a newspaper route
maybe he could sell newspapers over a counter. In some ways the latter
was even simpler. Every transaction was a simple cash deal instead of
a more complicated monthly collection. Knox had a long talk with the
retiring vendor, and bought the concession. The seller stayed on for a
few days to show Benny what ropes there were. Knox saw the circulation
managers of the two newspapers Benny would handle and the manager of
the distribution agency that supplied him with the items he would
sell; with each of them he arranged to have Benny's bills sent to the
parsonage. There was nothing to it, and Benny got along fine from the
start. Each evening he brought home his receipts for the day and turned
them over to his father, who took care of paying his bills and managed
his money for him, starting him out each day with the amount and
variety of change he'd need to start business at the stand.
There remained only one problem to solve before he could die, and Knox
had had its solution in mind for a long time; he had waited only until
he was sure his son could earn a living. A Mrs. Saddler, a widow and
a good woman, was a member of his congregation and she ran a boarding
house within walking distance of downtown. He went to see her and made
arrangements for Benny to room and board with her, and for her, for a
small but adequate percentage of Benny's earnings, to take over the
management of his affairs.
That, too, had worked out. Each night he brought his money home
to her, as he had to his father. She managed it for him, took out
what she had coming for room and board, gave him an allowance of
spending money--which went for candy and ice cream sodas, his only
dissipation--bought clothes for him when he needed any, and put the
surplus in the bank, part of it in a special checking account against
which she drew for his business expenses, the rest in a savings account
in his name--but which she reminded him of only when some extra expense
or minor emergency necessitated his help in drawing some of it out.
This accomplished, the Reverend Knox had quit fighting the Reaper. He
had given up his ministry and his parsonage, had gone to a hospital and
died.
And all had gone well for fifteen years, until Benny Knox was
thirty-three. On the surface anyway; Mrs. Saddler sometimes wasn't
sure what went on down inside of Benny when occasionally he had dark,
unhappy, brooding spells; she wasn't able to get him to talk about
them although ordinarily he prattled to her freely about anything and
everything. And nothing had ever come of the spells; they'd always worn
off.
Until suddenly at the height of one of them Benny, she subsequently
learned, had gone to the police station one morning and had confessed
to having committed a murder that had been much in the newspapers for
two weeks. It had been, according to how one might look at it, a bad
time or a good time for him to have confessed to that particular crime;
the police had just apprehended the real killer only an hour before;
the news had not yet hit the papers or Benny would have read about it.
Benny did read the newspapers during dull periods at the newsstand--the
parts of them that he was able to understand and make sense of, which
included crime stories and the comic page and not much else.
The police knew who Benny was and what he was; after fifteen years his
downtown newsstand was a landmark and just about everyone in town knew
him by sight. Many policemen knew him well enough to stop and talk a
moment when they were passing his stand. So they brushed Benny off
gently. They asked for his wallet and looked at the identification in
it to see if it had an "in case of accident or illness notify" card
with a name and address and it did. They phoned Mrs. Saddler and, after
talking to her long enough to establish her relationship with Benny,
they explained to her what had happened and asked her to come in and
talk with them, after which she could take Benny back home with her.
Which she did. And she talked to him until he was finally convinced
that he had just imagined what he had tried to tell the police. Or
perhaps he was not completely convinced until he read an afternoon
paper with the story of the capture and confession of the real killer.
Along with many people with higher I.Q.'s than his, Benny believed
implicitly everything he read in print.
The next time Benny Knox confessed to a crime he did not commit, again
a murder, was two years later--a year ago, when Benny was thirty-four.
That time he did not get off so lightly, for several good reasons. The
crime was not yet solved, and it had been a wanton, purposeless killing
that bore all the earmarks of having been committed by a mentally
deranged person. A few days later it turned out to have been committed
by a pair of teenage heroin addicts, but until then Benny had rather
a rough time of it. His story was hard to disprove; it made sense
insofar as it covered all the facts that had appeared in the papers.
Only one thing saved him from being actually charged with the crime
and getting his name and picture in the papers as a murderer--which
would have been very bad for business at the newsstand, even though he
would subsequently have been cleared. Some people would still have been
afraid of him. The thing that had saved Benny had been his choice of
a weapon. The news stories had said only that the man had been beaten
to death with a blunt, heavy weapon. After the autopsy the police knew
that the weapon had been a section of rusty pipe; not only did some of
the wounds clearly indicate its diameter but tiny fragments of rust
had been found embedded in the victim's skull. But they had not given
this particular bit of information to the newspapers, and Benny's
imagination had supplied him with a baseball bat as the blunt heavy
weapon he had used. Moreover, he was unable to remember where he had
obtained it or what he had done with it afterward.
The police, that time, were not so ready and willing to release Benny
Knox. He'd given them a hard time and caused them a lot of work. For
a while they'd seriously considered charging him despite the one
discrepancy in his story. The rest of it made sense and could have
been true. Further, they were convinced that he was, or at least had
been, sincere in thinking he had committed the crime. That made him a
psychopath, and it could be that he was a potentially dangerous one. If
he could imagine himself to have committed a crime possibly someday he
might really commit one.
They held him while Dr. Kranz, an alienist who was a friend of the
police commissioner's and who usually advised the police on borderline
cases like Benny's, talked to him twice and also had a long talk with
Mrs. Saddler, who knew more about Benny's background and history than
anyone else. Dr. Kranz saved Benny.
"Benny Knox," he wrote in his informal report to the commissioner,
"seems to have a mental age of about eight. While it is true that
many adults with that mental age find themselves unable to adjust
to the world and to earn their own way in it, thereby requiring
institutionalization, others do make the adjustment, especially ones
who still have parents or other mentors to guide and help them.
"Mrs. Saddler stands _in loco parentis_ to Knox, and she is a very sane
and sensible woman. With her help, he does all right. Of course she is
about twenty years older than he (that is my guess; I did not ask her
age) and it is statistically probable that she will predecease him, but
even this may not lead to his becoming a public charge. Mrs. Saddler is
aware of the problem and has in mind solving it when the time comes,
in other words, if and when she finds herself getting too old to run
her boarding house any longer. She knows other rooming and boarding
house keepers, some younger than herself, and believes she will have no
difficulty in finding one willing to take over Benny. She says he is
pleasant, tractable and easy to get along with, and his earnings are
sufficient that he will represent a profit and not a burden to whoever
takes care of him. The biggest problem, in fact, will be to find
someone sufficiently honest not to make too much of a profit on him.
"So much for his adjustment to society despite his subnormality and
now to what you've been waiting for me to discuss, his abnormality,
his fantasy of believing that he has committed crimes of which he is
innocent and wishing to be punished for them. From what I can learn he
seems to have been a wonderfully 'good' boy and probably did nothing
that, even in his own mind, merited the punishment he now seeks. I
would say that his guilt feelings were given to him by his father. His
father--who raised Benny alone after his mother died in childbirth--was
a fiery fundamentalist minister. He taught his son what he himself
believed--a good but vengeful God, original sin, a very literal
brimstone Hell, eternal damnation for the sinner. These are very heady
and frightening doctrines even for a person of normal mentality.
"He feels himself guilty of unnameable sins and since he cannot
name them--and thereby obtain punishment and through punishment
forgiveness--he builds the fantasy of having committed a real sin, one
for which he _can_ be punished. A nameable real sin becomes surrogate
for an unnameable one.
"The prognosis? Incurable. He may 'grow out of it' or its symptoms may
become worse or at any rate more frequent.
"Does this mean he should be put in an institution? I personally do not
think so. He will probably again--and possibly again and again--become
a mild thorn in your side by confessing to other crimes. As a matter of
police routine you'll have to check his story out, and thereby run into
a little extra work and expense. But--at his present rate of two years
having elapsed between his last confession and his current one--the
cost of this slight amount of police work once in a while will be a
minute fraction of the cost to society of institutionalizing him and
supporting him for the rest of his life. So my recommendation is that
you give society a break by letting Benny support himself as long as he
can.
"I don't think there's any chance of his becoming dangerously insane. I
can't guarantee that, of course--but neither can I guarantee it in your
case or mine. And I can say for him what I can say for you or me: at
present none of the three of us shows signs or inclination toward any
dangerous aberration.
"I do suggest one precaution, however. Any time he again comes in
with a confession, whether or not it's one you can immediately rule
out without investigation, hold him until I can talk to him again and
determine whether his degree and kind of mental disturbance is at that
time such that I might want to change my recommendation."
That had been a year ago. Now Benny Knox was disturbed again. Not
suddenly, not just tonight; his realization that he was the man who
had murdered the two women, the man the police were looking for, had
come to him gradually over the past week. At first he hadn't been sure,
he couldn't really remember. But that wasn't surprising; from time to
time there were so many things that he couldn't remember. Even now he
couldn't remember _why_ he had killed them--it must have been just
because he was bad, evil. People were born evil and only through God
and Jesus could they become good and even then before they could get
into Heaven they must confess to the evil things they had done and be
punished before they could be forgiven.
He closed his eyes and had a mental picture of his father and his
father was holding out a hand to him and saying, "You've done wrong,
Benjamin. Confess and let them punish you so you can be forgiven, or
I'll never see you again. You'll go to hell and burn forever." His
father's face was really his father's face, for there was a picture
of his father's face on Benny's bureau and he saw it every day and
couldn't forget what his father had looked like. But his father's body
was clad in shimmering robes and seated on a throne. Benny often got
his father in Heaven and his Heavenly Father mixed up and was as likely
to pray to one as to the other.
He said, "Yes, Father, I will," aloud and opened his eyes. They fell
upon his hands lying in front of him on a pile of newspapers. Big,
strong hands. Strangler's hands. Hands that could kill easily, and had
killed.
Footsteps approached and stopped, and he looked up. Officer Hoff stood
there, grinning down at him. "Hi, Benny. Will you take your big paws
off that pile of papers so I can take one?"
Benny lifted his hands and dropped them in his lap, out of sight, and
Officer Hoff took one of the papers and put it under his arm. He didn't
put down a dime, but Benny hadn't expected him to; policemen didn't
have to pay for papers. He didn't know why not, but the man from whom
his father had bought the newsstand had explained to him that policemen
didn't have to pay for little things like newspapers. It was part of
the cost of doing business, he'd explained, whatever that meant. You
didn't charge policemen for their papers and then they liked you and
helped you if you needed help. Well, he needed help now. Maybe Officer
Hoff would want to arrest him right now. Officer Hoff was a nice man.
He said, "Mr. Hoff, I killed them two women. You want to arrest me? Or
should I walk around to the station myself?"
Officer Hoff had quit grinning. He shook his head sadly. "Not again,
Benny. You didn't--"
"I really did, Mr. Hoff. I--choked them to death." Benny held up his
hands, the evidence.
Officer Hoff shook his head again. "Well--I'll radio in from the car.
Maybe they'll want me to bring you in. I'll see. We're pretty busy
tonight."
He walked downstreet to the curb where the squad car was waiting,
another officer at the wheel. He got into the squad car. Benny was
afraid at first that they'd drive off, and then he saw that the squad
car wasn't moving. And after a couple of minutes Officer Hoff got out
of it and came back.
He said, "No, they don't want us to bring you in. Lieutenant
Burton--you know him? Red hair?"
Benny hadn't known the name but when Officer Hoff said, "Red hair,"
he remembered he'd talked a lot with a policeman with red hair, down
at the station. He couldn't remember what they'd talked about, but he
remembered the hair. He nodded.
"Well, he wants to see you. But there isn't any hurry. You can go ahead
and sell the rest of your papers, no use their going to waste. Then you
go to the station and he'll see you."
Benny nodded again. "All right, I'll go round."
"Be sure you do, and don't forget." He shook his head a third time.
"Benny, you didn't kill them dames--we checked you out on it, long ago.
You and a lot of other people. But just the same don't you forget to go
to the station. If you don't go there right after you quit we'll have
to come to the rooming house to get you."
"I won't forget, Mr. Hoff. I'll go there."
Benny sadly watched Officer Hoff get back into the squad car and
watched the squad car drive off.
Officer Hoff hadn't believed him either. But the policeman with the red
hair would believe him, when Benny told him all about it.
9:00 P.M.
A clock somewhere was striking nine as Ray Fleck got out of the taxi in
front of Dolly Mason's apartment, and he knew that he was on time. He'd
had trouble finding a cab and had thought he was going to be late--not
that a few minutes late would have mattered but if he was very late
Dolly would be annoyed; Dolly got annoyed easily if you were late for a
date with her. Then just at the right moment a cab had pulled in to the
curb right near him to discharge passengers, and he'd caught it.
A turn in his luck? God, he hoped so. _Everything_ had been going wrong
today and tonight, up till then. What had got into him to pop off about
Connolly's thirty-dollar bet when it had been Sam's that Amico had been
talking about! A lousy six bucks, and he _had_ forgotten about it by
then. Connolly's thirty had been the one on his mind. Hell, he thought
disgustedly, he really couldn't blame Amico for not believing that he'd
not been covering bets and dragging down right along, when he'd come up
with a boner like that.
But Jesus, did Joe have to get so tough about it? Twenty-four hours to
raise four hundred and eighty bucks, or else. His face was still sore
from the two flat-handed slaps Monahan had given him and his stomach
still ached from the blow there. But those things would pass, the pain
of them and the humiliation of them. But if he lost his job he was
sunk, really sunk. If he lost his job the way Joe would make him lose
it, under a cloud with the J. & B. Distributors and on the outs with
most of his customers to boot, he'd never get a reference and never get
another job, here or anywhere else, selling liquor.
Many people thought Ray Fleck was a good all-around salesman who could
do well selling almost anything to almost anybody, but Ray knew better;
he'd tried. His first foray into selling had been just after he'd quit
high school about three-fourths of the way through his senior year--he
was failing in several subjects and wasn't going to be graduated
anyway--and it had been a try at selling brushes door to door. He'd
hated it, especially the long hours the company had expected him to
work, and he'd stuck it out less than a week, during which time he'd
earned seven dollars and some odd cents. He'd tried to stay home and
loaf around for a while but finally became fed up with his father
calling him a no-good and with not having any spending money, and he
started to look for work again. During the next seven years he held a
lot of jobs but none of them for very long. All in all he worked about
half of the time, but he got by because his father, a certified public
accountant, had a fairly good income and, after a while, gave up trying
to collect anything from his son in the way of room and board, so all
the money Ray did make went for clothes and entertainment.
The jobs he held were many and varied. Soda jerk, counterman, assistant
shipping clerk, driver of a delivery truck, what have you. He never
held any job longer than a few months; half of them he quit because
the work was too hard or too boring; he was fired from the rest for a
variety of reasons, usually for goofing off. Once, in a bad period,
he was fired for dipping into a till but luckily the employer didn't
prosecute so he didn't have a police record because of it. The job he
had held longest, and had most hated, during that period had been with
the army when he had been drafted at twenty. And he had held that job
only five months instead of the usual period. He had suddenly developed
a violent allergy to wool, and since the army wasn't geared to provide
special uniforms and bedding for him, it had the choice of discharging
him or letting him ride out his hitch in the infirmary. It discharged
him. The allergy had gradually diminished; by now he could wear wool
suits except in very hot weather, but in cold weather he still used
quilts or comforters instead of blankets.
Several of his jobs during that period had been selling jobs; he'd
tried insurance, automobiles, hardware, and a few other things. But he
hadn't lasted at those jobs as long as at others. He could turn on a
pleasing personality and could make people like him, but he lacked the
perseverance and determination necessary to succeed at selling, which
is a lot tougher job than most people think.
Until at the end of the seven years he found himself and found the
one job he both liked and could do well at. It was time that he found
it, for his parents had just died, his mother only a month before his
father, and free room and board were out; he _had_ to keep a job if he
wanted to eat regularly.
And the job he had finally found was a natural for him. He liked
hanging out in taverns. He liked to be able to buy rounds of drinks
and being able, within reason, to put them on an expense account. He
liked the hours. The only part of the job that he considered work was
the calls he had to make at liquor stores and he was willing to do
that chore for the sake of the rest of the job. He liked drinking and
he had an excellent capacity for holding his drinks. The job brought
him into contact with others who, like himself, loved gambling and
enjoyed talking horse racing, dog racing, the odds on a pennant race or
matching coins for drinks. Best of all, the job let him make money--and
make it doing what came naturally.
And now he was going to lose that wonderful job, unless he could raise
four hundred and eighty bucks in twenty-four hours. Joe Amico had meant
every word of what he'd said, and Joe could make his threats good, too.
He wouldn't last a week in his job if Joe started spreading the word
around. He _had_ to raise that money now; it was a matter of desperate
necessity.
He paid off the taxi, and that left him thirteen dollars, thirteen
lousy dollars.
Dolly, he thought, don't fail me now! He'd already decided, in the
taxi, not to start off by asking for any special amount; he'd just tell
her he was in a desperate jam and needed every cent he could possibly
get. Maybe she'd come up with five hundred and take him off the hook
completely. If that happened, he wouldn't risk the poker game at all;
he'd make sure of having the dough for Amico, to save his job. That
came ahead of everything else, now.
Of course she probably wouldn't have five hundred in cash at the
apartment, that would be too much to hope for, but a check would be all
right; he'd have all day tomorrow to cash it. How much could he offer
her for five hundred? To pay her back six hundred within two weeks?
That ought to be enough to tempt her, but hell, he could go even higher
if he had to. After all, he hadn't given her his right name so she
couldn't locate him to heckle him. Not that he wouldn't pay her back as
soon as he could--if she was reasonable, like wanting six for five. If
he had to promise her anything extortionate, like a thousand for five
hundred, then she could whistle for it and it would serve her right for
being greedy.
He hurried up the two flights of stairs and along the corridor, knocked
on Dolly's door.
She opened it, first on the chain, and then when she saw who it was
she said, "Hi, Ray honey. Just a sec," and closed the door a moment to
slide off the chain and open it wide.
He went in and she stepped aside and then closed the door behind him.
The chain went on again. Few women were taking chances these days, even
if a man was with them.
Dolly Mason, he saw, was practically ready for action. Her otherwise
bare little feet were in mules and she wore a thin silk kimono,
brilliant red, with obviously nothing at all--except Dolly--underneath
it. But he was too desperately worried to be interested. Business came
first, right now. Of course if he got enough money from her to end his
worries for tonight, then he could relax and romp.
"Dolly," he blurted, "I'm in a jam, a hell of a jam. Life or death,
almost. I need to borrow some money--just for a week or so. Have you
got any?"
She took a short step back from him; she'd been going toward him to
put her arms around him as she always did when he came in. "Honey, _I_
haven't got any money. Where did you get a wild idea like that?" She
looked toward a handbag lying on an end table by the sofa. "I've got
just eight dollars--and I can't spare any of that because it's got
to last me till payday, three days. Look, I'll show you if you don't
believe me."
She started toward the handbag but he said, "Never mind, I believe you.
I didn't mean that kind of money anyway. And cash doesn't matter. A
check will do because I can cash it tomorrow and that'll be in time,
because tomorrow night's my deadline. And you'll make money on it--not
lose. If you can lend me five hundred I'll give you back six, in two
weeks. That's how God damn important it--"
Suddenly she was laughing. Not a cruel laugh, but an amused one. "Ray
honey, I haven't _got_ a bank account, not even a savings account, let
alone a checking one. I'm sorry if you're in trouble, but what made you
think _I_ had any money? Honest, I haven't."
Ray Fleck took a step backward and dropped onto the sofa, put his
elbows on his knees and his face into his hands. He was beat. He hadn't
realized until this moment how much he'd been counting on Dolly--and
how ridiculous it had been for him to have done so. He didn't know
whether or not Dolly was lying about not having a bank account, but he
knew, and for sure, that even if she had she wasn't going to lend him
any money. Not even fifty bucks that he might manage to run up in the
poker game, let alone the five hundred that it would take to bail him
out of trouble. She didn't trust him that much and it wouldn't do any
good to plead, to offer her a thousand back instead of six hundred.
Even if she had a checking account, she'd never admit now that she'd
been lying and write him a check against it.
"Ray honey, I'm sorry. Honest."
He took his hands away from his face, stared at her dully. "It's all
right, Dolly. I shouldn't have--" He shook his head slowly. He'd
started to say that he'd been a damn fool to expect anything but this,
but there wasn't any point in finishing the sentence. The only thing to
do now was to get going, go some place where he could think, and try
to figure something out. He knew there wasn't an earthly chance that
he could raise the four-eighty tonight, but if he didn't waste time
he might still build back his stake enough to let him sit in tonight's
game. His luck _had_ to change sometime.
"Ray, you do look beat," Dolly said. "Would a drink help? Let me make
you a drink."
He started to say no, and then nodded instead. He really did need a
drink now, and it seemed like ages since he'd had one. It had been at
Connolly's, before that horrible scene at Amico's. "Sure," he said.
"Make it a strong one, huh?"
"One strong drink coming up," Dolly said. She went around the screen
that hid the kitchenette. He heard her taking down glasses from the
little cupboard over the sink.
What an ass he'd been to remember that short story about the mistress
who had given her--
Jewelry? Dolly had jewelry. He didn't know how much of it or how
valuable it was, but it could be worth plenty. Not that she'd give or
lend it to him, of course, but he knew where she kept it, or some of
it. It was in a little hand-tooled leather box on top of the dresser
in the bedroom. He'd never seen down inside it but he'd seen her open
it and put jewelry into it. The last time he'd been here she'd been
wearing long dangling earrings with green stones--emeralds?--and she'd
taken them off the last thing and put them in the box before she'd
thrown herself face down on the bed and rolled over into his waiting
arms.
The jewelry in that little box might be worth plenty. Did he dare?
There wouldn't be time now, even though the bedroom door stood ajar;
it was clear across the living room from him and she'd surely hear him
moving if he tried to go there. He'd have to go to bed with her to get
a chance at the box, but it would be easy then; she always went to the
bathroom for a minute or two immediately after.
Did he dare? Why not? He'd taken chances before, although never quite
in this way, but then he'd never been in this bad a fix before either.
Besides, it wouldn't really be stealing; it would be borrowing without
telling Dolly about it. He'd make it up to her someday, when he was
solvent again. If he couldn't get her back the same jewelry he could
get her other stuff like it.
Thank _God_ he hadn't given her his right name. Fletcher instead of
Fleck was a little close for comfort, but all she knew about him
outside of his right first name was that he was a liquor salesman.
But there were a lot of liquor salesmen in the city--and the police
wouldn't _know_ that he'd given her his right first name, since they
could find out quickly enough that he hadn't given a right last one.
Dolly came back with two drinks, both dark enough to show that she'd
really made them strong.
He took the drink she held out to him and downed half of it at a gulp.
It was strong enough to burn on the way down and it did help, it did
make him feel better.
Dolly sat down on the sofa beside him, not pulling the kimono closed,
and snuggled up against him. "Ray, honey," she said, "there's something
might make you feel even better than a drink."
"A sure cure for everything?" he asked. "Maybe, Dolly. Maybe it would
help. But I got to think a minute first, get something clear in my
mind."
He put his free arm around her, but made no move otherwise. He didn't
want to take her to bed unless he was going to take the gamble of
emptying that jewel box, and if he made a pass or even kissed her he'd
be committing himself. Besides, he knew that if he could get aroused,
and let himself, he wouldn't have the will power not to follow through,
no matter what he decided about the jewels.
But he had to decide quickly. Was the risk too great? Hell, he couldn't
deny there _was_ a risk--why had he told Dolly what his job was? If
he'd kept that under his hat too, it would be safe as houses. But that
would be pretty much of a lead, if the police really worked on it, and
there was no reason why Dolly shouldn't and wouldn't report it to the
police. Of course if she didn't miss it for several days she couldn't
be sure who had taken it, but that was too much to hope for. Probably
she wouldn't miss it tonight but probably when she dressed for work in
the morning she'd go to the box for some piece of jewelry, costume or
real, and that would be it. But it would still take the cops a while to
get to him and if he could get rid of the stuff first--and he thought
he knew where and how to do that--there'd be no proof. It would be
just his word against hers and his reputation was at least as good as
hers--hell, he had friends on the force who would vouch for him. Maybe
his reputation was better; he'd never been in cop trouble, and maybe
Dolly had. And--
He thought of the trouble he'd be in if he didn't raise the money for
Amico, and suddenly made up his mind. He'd take the gamble. That is, if
he _could_.
He took another slug of his drink and then put it down on the end table
and leaned over and kissed Dolly. Her lips parted moistly, but nothing
happened--to him, that is. Then his hand found one of her breasts and
squeezed gently before he bent down and kissed the firm erect nipple of
the other one and ran his tongue around it. He felt something stir in
his loins and knew that everything was going to be all right. He wasn't
worried or scared enough to disgrace himself in bed.
As a matter of fact, everything was better than all right. He found
that the excitement of the risk he was going to take added to rather
than took from his sexual excitement. It didn't last long but while it
lasted it was wonderful; Dolly seemed to think so too.
And when she scampered into the bathroom afterward he walked quickly to
the dresser and emptied the tooled leather box into his hand, walked
back to the bed and put the pieces of jewelry into the left pocket of
his trousers. He'd hardly glanced at it, except to see that there were
about a dozen pieces and that they included the earrings with the green
stones that might be emeralds and that there was also a diamond ring
and a wedding ring.
He was pulling the trousers on when Dolly came out of the bathroom. He
didn't have to pretend to be in a hurry; he was. He told her he had an
important business appointment and was late for it already, and left
the moment he'd finished dressing.
When the chain slid home behind him he breathed a deep sigh of relief.
He'd got away with it, thus far. And just maybe the whole answer to his
problem was in his left trouser pocket. He'd soon know.
9:32 P.M.
Mack Irby stopped his two-finger typing and leaned back in the creaky
swivel chair to light himself a cigarette. This was the only part of
his job that he really hated, making reports. He'd rather tail a wife
for her husband or a husband twelve hours straight than spend the half
hour writing up a report on the activities of the suspected spouse.
Whenever possible he talked a client into settling for verbal reports,
but it wasn't always possible to get a client to agree to that. Some of
them insisted on having words on paper for their money.
His dream was to have enough men under him so he could afford a
stenographer-bookkeeper to take down the reports as dictation--he
wouldn't mind talking them--and to take care of sending out and paying
bills and the rest of the paper work. He wouldn't even insist that his
office help be young and pretty--God, he had all the sex he wanted or
needed with Dolly. He'd settle for anybody who could type.
But it seemed as though even this modest dream was a long way from
coming true. He did all right for himself, one way or another (some of
them not too honest) but strictly as a lone wolf operator. True, he had
connections with other detective outfits that let him farm out work at
times when he had more than he could handle alone, but he'd never had
even one operative working under him full time. He'd never get rich,
but most of the time he thought it was best that way; when you work
alone you can cut corners you wouldn't take the risk of telling someone
else to cut for you. So in all probability the nearest he'd ever have
to office help was what he had already, a telephone answering service.
That was an absolute must, since he spent so little of his working time
actually in the office; he couldn't have operated without it.
He took a deep drag of his cigarette, put it down on the edge of his
desk, already scarred by a hundred cigarette burns, and went back to
his typing. "Subject entered Crillon Bar at 3:15, looked around first,
then went to the bar and ordered a drink. Talked, apparently casually,
to the bartender while he drank it, but kept an eye on the door as
though waiting for someone. At 3:25 the woman already described in
previous report entered. She nodded to him and went to a booth. He
joined her there and ordered drinks for both of them. At 3:47 he--"
The phone rang and he picked it up and said, "Mack Irby speaking."
"Mack." It was Dolly's voice. "Fletcher just left and--"
"All right," he said, interrupting her to save time. "I'll be around,
but I'm going to finish this one report first. I'll be there in about--"
"Wait, Mack. It's not just that. He stole my jewelry, the few things
I had in that leather box on my dresser. Not worth much, but--Do you
think I should call the police and report it? And if I do, maybe you
shouldn't come, maybe you shouldn't be here when they get here. What do
you think?"
"Don't call the cops," he said flatly.
"But why not? Like I said, the stuff isn't worth much, but they might
get it back for me."
"They might, Doll. But I might be able to do even better than that.
Sit tight. This report can wait till tomorrow. I'll be there in five
minutes."
He hung up the phone, got his hat and turned out the lights, locked
the office, and left. Downstairs he got in his car. It was, as any car
used for shadowing should be, inconspicuous--a five-year-old Studebaker
Commander painted gray--but there was a bit of souping-up under the
hood and it was kept in perfect condition; it could go over a hundred
if it had to. He drove the dozen blocks to Dolly's in three minutes
flat. He let himself into the building with the key he carried and it
was exactly the five minutes he had predicted when he rapped lightly
on Dolly's door. He heard her coming and called out, "It's me, Doll,
Mack," to save her the business with the chain.
She let him in. She was still--or again--wearing the red kimono she'd
put on when he'd left at nine, and he wondered if she'd have had sense
enough to have dressed before she called the police, if he had let her
call them. He kissed her, and then firmly disentangled her.
"This is business," he said. "So no monkey-business. I'll sit here and
you sit over there and don't distract me."
"All right, Mack honey. But can't I make us each a drink?"
"No, not--Well, all right. I can be asking questions while you make
'em." He sat down on the sofa and tossed his hat onto the end table.
Dolly went behind the kitchenette's screen and he raised his voice a
little so she could still hear him easily.
"So the family jewels are gone. Point one. Can you be absolutely
positive this Fletcher took them? Obviously you missed them right after
he left, but how long ago do you know for sure they were still in the
box?"
"While you were still here, Mack, just before he came. Remember I had
on those costume earrings--the ones with the green stones--and I took
them off when I undressed. I hate earrings in bed, especially dangly
ones. And I put them in the box on the dresser. The other things were
there then too, or I'd have noticed."
"That makes it sure, all right. How come you missed the stuff so soon
after he left? You weren't starting to get dressed again, were you?"
Dolly came around the screen, again with a glass in each hand and again
the red kimono gaped open all the way down the front. Mack Irby took
his drink from her and then resolutely averted his eyes. "Pull that
damn kimono shut and sit down--over there. Now answer my last question."
Dolly sat down across from him and obediently pulled the top of the
kimono closed. But she crossed her legs and it fell away from them,
quite a lot of Dolly still showed. She said, "No, I wasn't going to get
dressed again. I just--well, I just had a sudden hunch, right after
he left and just before I called you, and I looked around to see if
anything was gone. I looked in my purse first; there wasn't much money
in it but it was still there, and then I looked in the jewelry box and
it was empty and I knew my hunch had been right.
"You see, Mack, he was in an awful hurry and kind of--well, furtive is
the word, I guess, when he left. Almost like he was scared. And besides
that, he's in some kind of a jam over money. What he really came here
for was to try to borrow some from me."
Mack Irby laughed shortly. "He sure didn't know you, Doll. What kind of
money did he want? Did he mention an amount?"
"Five hundred. He offered to pay six back in a week or two. That would
have been fair enough, if I knew him. But I probably don't even know
his right name--and if Ray Fletcher _is_ his right name he could still
be planning to blow town for all I know."
"You played it smart, I'd say. Offering that much interest is
suspicious, and besides, the fact that he swiped your jewelry shows he
ain't very honest. If you'd of lent him the money you'd never of got it
back. Now you said the jewelry wasn't worth much. How much is not much?"
"Well, it was mostly costume stuff. Some of the things maybe cost up
to twenty bucks apiece, but they wouldn't have any resale value. The
wedding ring, worth ten or fifteen--I mean, that's what it would have
cost new, not what he could get for it. And that diamond ring, the one
with the flaw. You remember it."
Mack Irby remembered the ring. One of Dolly's "friends" had given it to
her about a year ago. She'd turned it over to Mack to have appraised
and maybe to sell it for her. It had _looked_ like a good stone and as
though it might weigh almost a carat; they'd thought it might be worth
several hundred dollars. But the appraisal had been disappointing.
Mack's jeweler friend had told him its diameter was deceptive; it was
too shallow, cut too thin. And it had a bad flaw, one you could see
with the naked eye if you looked at just the right angle. Seventy-five
was all he offered for it. And at that price, since it looked to be
worth much more, Dolly had decided to keep it.
Dolly seldom wore rings, but once in a while someone wanted to take her
out of town for a weekend, and if the someone was a free enough spender
she sometimes went. Since they'd be registering as man and wife she
kept a plain wedding ring to wear on such occasions. And she thought
that a diamond ring worn with it would look good and add verisimilitude.
Mack said, "If that's the lot, he won't get more than fifty bucks from
a fence--if a fence would be willing to bother with the stuff at all.
If he needs five hundred, he's in for a disappointment. All right, so
much for the stuff. And now about Fletcher. I think we can take it for
granted the name's a phony, or he wouldn't of risked robbing you."
He thought a moment. "But there's still a possibility. If the jam he's
in is so bad he's figuring on blowing town anyway, the name business
might not worry him. Let's check something."
He walked over to the telephone table and picked up the directory and
opened it. After a minute he said, "There's only one Ray Fletcher
listed, a Ray W. Fletcher, seventy-one sixteen South Kramer. How long
ago did your Ray Fletcher leave here?"
Dolly looked at her wrist watch--and was suddenly glad she'd kept it
on instead of taking it off as she sometimes did. It was a good watch,
worth more than all the items she'd lost put together. She said, "About
fifteen minutes ago."
Mack said, "That address is to hell and gone on the south side. Take
him at least half an hour to get there, so if that Ray Fletcher is home
now we can eliminate him."
He picked up the phone and dialed. A man's voice answered, "Ray
Fletcher speaking," and Mack said, "Sorry, wrong number," and put the
phone down.
He went back to the sofa. "Not our boy; he's home. All right, what do
we know about our boy? He told you he's a liquor salesman and I'd say
that's probably true, account of his bringing you a case of whisky most
of the times he brought you anything. Did he ever mention what outfit
he works for?"
Dolly shook her head.
"The cartons the whisky came in. Were they stamped with the name of a
distributor?"
"I didn't notice if they were. And the last carton got thrown out at
least a month ago. But listen, the whisky was always Belle of Tennessee
brand. Would that help? I mean, do all distributors handle all brands?"
"That might help. It'll pretty well pinpoint him if it's a brand his
outfit has exclusive franchise for. But damn it, I won't be able to
work that angle till tomorrow--and I want to get to him tonight if
I possibly can, while he's still got the stuff on him. We won't be
in such a strong position if he's got rid of it, or even stashed it
somewhere."
He took another sip of his drink. "All right, Doll. Start at the
beginning. Where and how did you meet the guy?"
"He called up one evening and said John Evans--that's a guy I was
seeing once in a while then--had given him my name and phone number and
suggested he give me a ring sometime. Wanted to know if he could drop
up and meet me, and bring some liquor. I wasn't doing anything that
evening and he sounded nice over the phone so I said sure."
"Know how to get in touch with this John Evans?"
"No. I don't know what happened but I haven't seen him in over a year."
"And John Evans was probably a phony name too. Damn it, Doll, this is
a digression but you ought to know the right names of the men you see.
Not for blackmail or anything--I know you don't go in for anything like
that--but just for your own protection. Like tonight. You can do it.
Sooner or later a guy goes in the can and leaves his pants outside and
all you got to do is take a quick gander in his wallet for his right
name and address. And from then on you'll know who he really is.
"But okay, let's get back to Ray Fletcher. Do you think he's married?"
"I'm almost sure. He never took me out anywhere, for one thing, just
came to the apartment. Single guys--I know a few of them--like to
show me around; I'm decorative. And another thing; he never stayed
all night, usually left around twelve or one. And other little
things--yeah, I'm sure he's married."
"Know what kind of a car he drives?"
She shook her head again. "He must drive one, but he never brought it
upstairs with him."
"You sure don't know much about him. All right, physical description.
Don't see how that'll help tonight, but we might as well get it over
with."
"Well, he's about your build, maybe an inch taller."
"Go on."
She giggled. "He's about an inch taller, but you're about an inch
longer, Mack."
He looked at her disgustedly. "A lot of help that is, unless I find him
in a Turkish bath."
Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "Doll, was he wearing tonight a gray
suit, white shirt, blue tie. Sandy hair, no hat?"
"How--? Oh, sure, you must have passed him on your way out. He got here
just a minute after you left."
"Good. Then skip the rest of the description; I'll know him if I see
him again. We passed in the doorway. But damn it, Doll, you haven't
come up with anything yet that will let me find him tonight, and you
gotta. Put down that drink and think hard. As many times as he was up
here he must have said or done _something_ that'd give me a lead. Think
hard."
Dolly Mason closed her eyes and thought hard. After a minute she
said, "He's a horse player. Usually had a Racing Form with him, in his
pocket. At first, until I convinced him I don't bet, he used to give me
tips on horses--and offered to place bets for me if I wanted to take
the tips."
"Keep going."
Dolly's eyes opened wide. "Mack honey, I got something. I think Ray is
his right _first_ name."
"That helps. How do you know?"
"One evening, maybe six months ago, he must of made up his mind
suddenly to make a bet. He used my phone to call some bookie to phone
in the bet. Twenty bucks to win--I don't remember the horse or the
track. He started out by saying 'This is Ray'; no last name but the
bookie must have known him from that."
"Doll, we're getting somewhere. Think hard. Did he call the bookie by
any name?"
"I think he did, but--Yeah, I remember. He said 'This is Ray, Joe,' and
then went on and gave the bet."
Mack said, "I know two bookies named Joe. It couldn't be Joe Renfeld;
he takes only cash bets, no phone business. Runs a cigar store and
books on the side. So it's Joe Amico. I'll know in a minute."
He crossed to the telephone table, looked up a number and dialed it.
When a voice answered he said, "This is Bill? Mack Irby. Is Joe there?
Can I talk to him."
Bill said sure and a minute later Joe's voice said, "Hi, Mack. What can
I do you?"
"Joe, you got a customer named Ray. He's a liquor salesman. Can you
give me the rest of his name?"
"What do you want with him, Mack? Listen, he owes me dough and if
you're going to get him in trouble I'll never collect."
"It's the other way around," Mack said. "He's in trouble all right, but
he'll be in worse trouble if I don't find him right away, tonight. He
stole some jewelry from a client of mine. If I can get to him before
he sells it, there'll be no beef; my client'll settle for getting the
stuff back. If he fences it before I get to him, it'll be too late
for that, see? I can find him tomorrow easy enough--how many liquor
salesmen are there in town named Ray? But that might be too late to
keep him out of jail."
Joe Amico grunted. "Guess you got a point. And I guess I pushed him too
hard. All right, his last name's Fleck. F-l-e-c-k. I don't remember his
address offhand, but it's in the phone book."
"Attaboy, Joe. You wouldn't make a guess which fence he might head for?"
"No, I wouldn't. I know some fences, and so do you, but I don't know
which of 'em, if any, Ray might know or know about."
"Okay, one more thing. Got any idea where I might find him tonight? If
he didn't head home, that is. I'll give his number a ring first."
"Best I could guess is some downtown tavern, almost any of them. He
makes the rounds. Your best bet would be to make 'em too. Will you know
him if you see him, Mack?"
"Yeah. Thanks to hell and back, Joe. So long."
He put down the phone and quickly looked up Ray Fleck in the phone
book. He looked at the address first. Yes, it was close enough. If
Fleck had headed straight for home he'd be there by now. And just maybe
that's what he'd done, if he was scared.
He dialed the number and while it rang a dozen times he held his hand
over the mouthpiece and spoke to Dolly. "Your boy friend is Ray Fleck.
Three-one-two Covington Place. But I guess he didn't head for home." He
cradled the telephone. "So I go looking for him."
Dolly ran over to him, put her arms around his neck and pressed her
body against his.
"Mack honey, do you have to start _right_ away? Would fifteen or twenty
minutes matter?"
Mack Irby laughed. "All right, I don't guess fifteen or twenty minutes
will matter."
The red kimono fell almost completely away as he picked her up and
carried her into the bedroom.
9:59 P.M.
Ray Fleck reached the edge of downtown afoot. He had walked in from
Dolly's, not to save the price of a taxi--what would one lousy buck
have mattered out of the thirteen that was all the cash he had
left?--but simply because he hadn't seen a cruising cab. And by the
time he reached the first place from which he could have phoned for one
he was so near town that he knew he'd get there sooner if he kept on
walking than if he phoned and waited for a cab.
He was still a bit scared at what he had done, but he was also excited.
He didn't know what he had, and it might be anything. Maybe a thousand
dollars' worth of stuff, for all he knew. At least a couple of hundred
dollars' worth, he thought; the diamond ring alone, from the quick
glimpse he got of it, ought to be worth at least that much, even at
a fence's price. And he felt certain that it, at least, was genuine;
people just don't put glass or a rhinestone into that kind of mounting,
like an engagement ring. Or if they do, they use a chunk of glass
or a rhinestone that's bigger and flashier, one that looks like a
three-carat diamond instead of a one-carat one. But the other stuff
could be anything. Oh, probably some of it was costume jewelry, but
if even a few pieces were real, he'd settle happily. And if the green
stones in those earrings were emeralds they'd be worth at least twice
what the diamond was worth. Maybe more. Each of the two stones was at
least twice the size of the diamond, and he thought he remembered
having heard that good emeralds cost just about as much per carat as
diamonds.
Several times he'd been tempted, after he was out of the immediate
neighborhood of the scene of his crime and over the worst of his
initial panic, to stop under a street light and take a look at what he
had, but he resisted the impulse. He didn't know a thing about jewelry
and not even a close examination under a bright light would really tell
him anything. If some of the pieces were marked _14K_ and others _gold
filled_ it would give him a clue but it would tell him nothing about
the stones and the stones were what counted.
He might as well hunt Fats Davis right away and let Fats make the
appraisal. He'd thought of Fats even before he'd lifted Dolly's
jewelry, while he was still making up his mind whether to or not.
He was reasonably sure Fats was a fence. Several people had told him so
and he had no reason not to believe them. He didn't know Fats very well
but he thought Fats knew him well enough to trust him and do business
with him if he did buy and sell hot ice. At any rate, Fats would be
able to make an appraisal for him; Fats, whatever his business was now,
had been a jeweler once. Everybody knew that much about him.
He might have trouble finding Fats because he didn't know his right
first name. He wouldn't be listed in the phone book under _Davis,
Fats_, and there'd probably be a hundred or more Davises in the book,
too many to try phoning down the line.
But Fats hung out around the downtown joints and there was an even
chance he'd run into him if he made the rounds. And if he didn't find
Fats he'd be sure sooner or later to run into someone who knew him well
enough to tell him how to make contact, or who at least would know
Fats's first name.
Jick Walters' place would be the best bet; he'd run into Fats oftener
there than in any other tavern. And Jick at least knew Fats, although
Ray didn't know how well.
He headed for Jick's, but since there were two other taverns he had to
pass on the way, he made a quick stop in each of them. Business was
slow in both; there were only a few customers and none of them people
he knew. But he knew both bartenders and asked them about Fats. One of
them didn't know him at all; the other knew him, but no better than Ray
did and didn't come up with anything helpful, even a first name.
Business was slow at Jick's, too, but at least Jick himself was behind
the bar. He waited till he'd ordered a drink and Jick had made it for
him before he broached the subject.
"Jick, I'm looking for Fats Davis. But I don't know his first name so I
can't find him in the phone book. You know how I can get in touch with
him? It's important."
"Yeah, I know," Jick said.
"How?"
Jick grinned. "Turn right and walk a dozen steps. He's in the end booth
down there."
Ray looked that way. He'd thought the booth was empty, but he realized
now that Fats's head wouldn't show over the top of the partition. Fats
was almost literally a five-by-five. He wasn't more than two inches
over five feet and couldn't have been more than a few inches under five
feet around the waist.
"Swell," Ray said. "What's he drinking? I'll take one over to him."
"Straight shots. But go ahead, Ray. I'll bring his drink over."
"Thanks, Jick." Ray picked up his own drink and strolled back. "Hi,
Fats," he said. "Can I talk to you a minute?"
Fats's little eyes weren't especially cordial when he looked up, but he
nodded, and Ray slid into the other side of the booth, facing the front
of the tavern.
"Want to ask you how much some stuff is worth," Ray said. "And if by
any chance you want to buy it, that'll be swell."
"Got it with you?"
Ray nodded, "But I ordered you a drink when Jick told me you were here.
Let's wait till he's--"
But Jick was already there with a shot and a chaser and put them down
on the table. When Ray had paid him and he'd gone back behind the bar,
Fats asked, "More than one piece?"
"Yeah," Ray said, and reached for his pocket.
But Fats said, "Wait a minute," and took a clean handkerchief from his
pocket, unfolded it and spread it in front of him. "Put it on this," he
said, "so one of us can pick it up in one grab if somebody starts back
this way. You're facing front; slide over to the outer edge of your
seat so you can watch that way."
Ray took the crumpled handkerchief out of his pocket first and then
managed to get hold of all the jewelry at once. He put it in the middle
of Fats's spread handkerchief and then, as Fats had suggested, slid
over to where he could watch toward the front of the tavern. He didn't
think anybody would head back--there were only four other customers in
the place--but it was best to play safe.
But he watched Fats out of a corner of his eye. Fats stirred through
the stuff with a stubby index finger. He picked up one of the earrings
with the green stones first, looked at it closely and then put it down
again. He felt glad things had worked out this way, that Fats hadn't
made him tell what he thought he had to sell. If the earrings were
glass it would have made things embarrassing if he'd told Fats they
were emeralds. And the other way around would have been worse. If he'd
told Fats it was all costume jewelry except the diamond, then Fats
could cheat him all too easily if the stones really were emeralds.
Fats picked up the diamond ring and took a jeweler's loupe from his
pocket. He screwed the loupe into his right eye and studied the diamond
through it. Briefly. Then he put the ring back with the other pieces
and the loupe back in his pocket. He wadded up the handkerchief and
pushed it across to Ray Fleck.
"Put it in your pocket," he said. "It's all junk. What did you think
_I_ could do with it? Keep the handkerchief. Fair trade for the drink."
He picked up his shot and tossed it down, took a short sip from the
water chaser and then wiped his thick lips with the back of his hand.
"My God, Fats," Ray said. "You trying to tell me that isn't even a
diamond in that ring? I know the other stuff is costume jewelry, but--"
He did know it now.
"Sure it's a diamond. _What_ a diamond. Got a flaw in it you could
crawl inside, and it's a cheater cut, thin like a poker chip."
"You mean it's not worth _anything_?"
Fats Davis shrugged. "Maybe fifty bucks, mounting and all. It's not too
bad a mounting."
Ray Fleck was stunned, but he didn't doubt that Fats was telling the
truth. Of course Dolly, smart little bitch that she was, wouldn't
keep anything valuable right on top of her dresser where any man who
visited her could swipe it--as easily as he had. If she owned anything
valuable in the way of jewelry she'd at least keep it out of sight and
probably locked up at that.
Well, anyway, fifty bucks would again put him in shape to sit in on the
poker. He sighed. "Okay, Fats. I'll settle for fifty bucks."
Fats shook his head. "Huh-uh. I don't want it. I said the ring might be
worth that--but I don't mess with peanut stuff. You take as much risk
and don't make anything."
"What risk?" Ray asked. "Damn it, Fats, I didn't steal this stuff. It's
mine." He realized that sounded silly. "My wife's, I mean, but this is
a community property state and that makes it mine too."
"I'll buy that," Fats said. "But does she know you're selling it? There
could still be a beef. She misses it and calls copper, and you got
to go along with her, or confess up. And tell what you did with the
stuff--and that gets my name on the blotter even if they can't hang a
rap on me. Huh-uh, Fleck." He shook his head again. "If the stuff was
worth a couple of grand, I'd take a chance maybe, but not for junk
jewelry."
"Fats, she knows about it, gave it to me to see if I could get anything
out of it when I told her I was in a jam. Listen, the costume pieces
are stuff she was tired of. And she was married before, and the
engagement and wedding rings are from her first marriage--and that's
how come neither of us knew the diamond wasn't as good as it looked. We
never had it appraised or anything."
"Take it to a hock shop if it's a clean deal. They'll give you as much
as I offered on the diamond, and maybe even a little something on the
other junk. Like the wedding band; you'll get old gold value for that,
if nothing more."
"But damn it, Fats. I need the money tonight. The hock shops are
closed."
Fats sighed. "All right, get your wife on the phone and let me talk to
her. If she says she gave you that ring to sell I'll buy it. Otherwise
no dice."
"She's out with friends, damn it. I can't reach her on the phone. But
I'm telling you the truth, Fats."
Fats slid out of the booth and stood up. "Sorry, pal. No dice." He
turned to the front and said, "Oh-oh. Fuzz. Better get that back in
your pocket. I'm getting out of here."
Looking past Fats as he walked to the front, Ray saw that two uniformed
policemen had just come in. One of them he knew, Hoff. The other he
knew by sight as Hoff's partner. A momentary chill went down his spine,
but then he realized they couldn't possibly be looking for him. Not
possibly. Just the same he was relieved when Hoff caught his eye and
waved a hand casually, then stopped at the bar with his partner.
He quickly stuffed the handkerchief with the junk jewelry back in his
pocket and stood up. He wanted to get out of here too, although he
didn't know yet where he was going.
He intended to walk past the two policemen but Hoff stopped him by
turning as he approached and saying, "Hi, Ray. Have a drink." And it
would have looked funny if he'd turned it down.
"Thanks, sure," he said. "How goes it?"
Hoff nodded to Jick and then turned back. "Hell of a night. The
psycho's out. Every squad car we've got is out and they're ordering us
around like crazy. We dropped in for a quickie."
He had to pretend to be interested. "You mean he's killed another
dame."
"No, not yet, but he's on the prowl. Made a try late this afternoon.
Dame alone in a flat on Koenig. Knocked on the door and called out
'Western Union,' and she opened up--but on a chain. When he saw or
heard the chain he ran fast; she didn't get a look at him. She phoned
in, but he was out of the neighborhood by the time we got there."
"Sounds like it was him all right," Ray said. Jick had put a drink in
front of him and he said, "Thanks," and lifted his glass to Hoff.
Hoff said, "And he made another try just a little while ago--or we
think it was him, anyway. Must of decided women weren't opening
doors for him any more. Dame in a cottage out on Autremont heard
someone trying to break in a window and phoned in. Nobody when we got
there--but there were chisel marks on a window, so she wasn't imagining
things."
"That could have been a burglar, couldn't it?"
"Burglars don't break in lighted places with someone inside. He could
of seen her from the window he tried. And the phone too. Quit trying
the window and ran when he saw her dialing."
Hoff's partner leaned around him. "Well, we know now he drives a car,
anyway. She heard it start up while she was still talking over the
phone." He clunked down his glass. "Hoffy, we gotta go. This was a
quickie, remember?"
"Can't I buy you boys one?" Ray Fleck asked.
Hoff said, "Thanks, Ray, but no. We're taking a chance being outa the
squad car this long. If the radio operator calls our number and we
don't answer, we're on the carpet plenty. So long."
They went out. Ray looked at his glass and was surprised to find that
it was empty. Morosely, for lack of a better idea, for lack of any
place else to go or anything else to do, he put money on the bar and
said, "One more, Jick."
Jick picked up the glass. "Anything wrong, Ray? You look kind of--well,
not so good."
"Everything's wonderful," Ray said. "It's a great, wide, wonderful
world."
Except, where was he going to get four hundred and eighty bucks by
tomorrow night?
10:25 P.M.
Benny Knox had left his newsstand early; usually he didn't leave until
eleven o'clock or when he'd sold out on papers, whichever came first.
But tonight at a quarter after ten there'd been only a few papers left
and he'd decided not to wait any longer; he'd waited that long only
because Mr. Hoff had told him to finish out the evening and then go to
the police station to turn himself in. That had disappointed him; he
had hoped that Mr. Hoff and his partner would take him in themselves in
the squad car, with the siren going and the red light flashing. He had
had rides in automobiles only a few times in his life and never one in
a squad car.
Now inside the police station he stood in front of the tall receiving
desk, at which a gray-haired man was busily writing. The man hadn't
looked up yet. That is, he'd looked up when Benny had come in but then
had looked down and started writing again. Benny stood there waiting
and feeling awkward, but he didn't want to interrupt the man. Under
Benny's arm was clutched the cigar box, now with a rubber band around
it, that held his receipts for the day. One thing about the money in
it puzzled him. He'd counted it before he left the stand, because he
always did, and there were about ten dollars less in it than there
should have been. He couldn't figure out what could have happened to
ten dollars--except for a vague recollection of someone laughing at
him; he remembered feeling angry about that but he couldn't remember
who the someone had been or how it connected with the ten dollars.
The gray-haired man at the desk put down his pen but he still didn't
look toward Benny. He picked up the telephone and said into it, "Get me
Burton." And then a few seconds later, "Lieutenant, Benny Knox is here.
Shall I send him on upstairs, or--" And then, "Okay."
He put down the phone and looked at Benny. "The lieutenant wants to
talk to you, in his office." He jerked a thumb. "Down that corridor,
second door on your right."
Benny found the door and knocked on it lightly. He opened it and went
in when a voice called out for him to do so. The lieutenant with the
red hair was back of a desk.
He said, "Sit down, Benny. Officer Hoff radioed in earlier that you
want to confess to two murders. Is that right?"
Benny sat down. "Yes, sir, Lieutenant. I did kill them women, both of
them. I choked 'em to death." He held up the evidence--his hands.
The red-haired lieutenant nodded gravely. "Benny, we'll have to hold
you overnight and Doc Kranz will talk to you tomorrow. What happens
after that depends on what he says. Do you understand?"
Benny nodded. Although he didn't see where a doctor came in, that
didn't matter as long as they were going to put him in jail and punish
him. Then God and his father would forgive him and everything would be
all right.
The lieutenant said, "One thing, Benny. That woman who takes care--that
you stay with. Does she know you were coming here? If not, I'll phone
her to save her worrying when you don't come home tonight."
Benny shook his head, feeling ashamed of not having thought about Mrs.
Saddler. She _would_ worry about him. And wait up. She never went to
bed until he got home.
"Let's see," the lieutenant said, reaching to pull the phone book over
in front of him. "Her name's Saddler, isn't it? And on Fergus Street?"
"I got her number here, sir," Benny said, glad of a chance to be
helpful. He took a card from his pocket and handed it across the desk.
It was an "in case of accident or illness, notify" card with Mrs.
Saddler's name, address, and phone number on it. She'd asked him to
carry it always and once in a while asked him to show it to her so
she'd be sure he hadn't lost it.
"Thanks, Benny." The lieutenant took the card and gave the number on
it to the switchboard operator over the phone. And then he was saying,
"Mrs. Saddler? I'm phoning you about Benny--this is Lieutenant Burton
speaking--so you won't worry when he doesn't get home tonight.
"Yes, he's here and he's just confessed to two murders--the two recent
sex killings--and.... Yes, I know he didn't do them. We're not charging
him with them. But you remember what I explained to you about a year
ago--that if Benny ever confessed to anything again we'd have to hold
him until Dr. Kranz has a chance to talk to.... No, I wouldn't dare
call the doctor tonight; the chief would have my ears if I did....
Sometime tomorrow, and we'll try to get him to make it early enough so
Benny won't lose the whole day if Doc says to.... Oh, no, Mrs. Saddler,
it wouldn't do any good at all for you to come down. We wouldn't be
able to let you see him anyway, tonight. But we'll take good care of
him, and we'll phone you again tomorrow as soon as there's anything to
report. I won't be on duty then, but I'll leave a memo.... All right,
I'll tell him. Goodnight, Mrs. Saddler."
He put the phone down and smiled at Benny. "She said to tell you good
night for her, and for _you_ not to worry. You've got a fine friend
there, Benny."
Benny nodded. He did feel sorry about Mrs. Saddler and that she'd never
see him again unless she visited him in jail. She was like a mother to
him, or the nearest to a mother he'd ever known. Then he remembered
something the lieutenant had said to her.
"But, Lieutenant, sir, you told her I didn't do it. I _did_, honestly,
I remember, I choked them. You got to believe me."
"Just a minute, Benny," the lieutenant said. He picked up the phone
again. "Give me the jail--Wait, don't. Just call them yourself and tell
them to send down a couple of boys to pick up a customer, in my office.
Thanks."
He looked back at Benny. "Now Benny listen. Maybe you're not yet in the
mood to believe _me_, but I'm going to tell you this anyway. I like
you and I hope you get by Doc Kranz again, and I think you'll have a
better chance of doing that if I can get you started thinking straight
tonight. Then maybe tomorrow you'll realize how wrong you were thinking.
"Listen, Benny, we _know_ you didn't commit those murders, and I'll
tell you how we know. After each one of them we checked a hell of a
lot of suspects. Every man who had a record of sex offenses, any kind.
Every known psychopath, everyone known to us to be seriously abnormal
or subnormal mentally. You--uh--"
"I know I'm not very bright, Lieutenant. I don't mind your saying so as
long as you don't laugh at me. I don't like people to laugh at me."
"I'm not laughing, Benny. Listen to me, listen hard. We checked you
on both of them. On one you've got an absolutely solid alibi; you
_couldn't_ have done it. We know just when that one happened, ten
o'clock in the evening. We could rule you out without even leaving
the station, because Hoff remembered it was ten o'clock, within a few
minutes, when he picked up a paper from you at your stand, three miles
or so from where the woman was being killed. Your alibi on the other
murder isn't quite so solid, because we don't know exactly what time it
happened. But we know you were at your stand all evening till eleven
and you got home about twenty after, just the time it takes you to walk
that far. We can't prove you didn't sneak out later, of course--but you
_didn't_, Benny. Whoever killed either one of those women killed both
of them. That's for sure if anything is."
Benny looked and felt miserable. The lieutenant didn't believe him, and
neither had Mr. Hoff. That much at least of the lieutenant's speech had
registered.
He said unhappily. "But I _did_ kill them, both of them. I remember,
Lieutenant. I'm sure."
"You just think you're sure, Benny. Now before you go to sleep tonight
and in the morning after you wake up you think over what I said and
make yourself a little less sure. I--"
The door opened and two men in the uniforms of turnkeys from the city
jail on the upper floors of the building came in. One of them, the tall
one, said, "Package for us, Lieutenant? You through with him?"
The lieutenant sighed. "Yeah, I guess I'm through with him. This is
Benny Knox, boys. He'll be your guest tonight. A disposition order will
come up sometime tomorrow."
"Sure. Just in the tank?"
"Hell, no. Benny never took a drink in his life; don't put him in with
the drunks. You've got cell space, haven't you?"
"Yeah. What's with the cigar box he's got? A time bomb, maybe?"
"It's got money in it," the lieutenant said, "and be sure there's the
same amount when you turn it in."
The tall turnkey grinned. "Why, Lieutenant! Have you frisked him
otherwise?"
"No, Benny wouldn't be carrying a--Oh, I suppose we might as well
protect ourselves by following the routine. He just might get a funny
idea, at that. You take care of it."
"All right, chum," the turnkey said to Benny. "Come on; we'll take care
of you. We'll give you the bridal suite, and you can be making up your
mind whether you want a blonde or a brunette to go with it."
Benny realized that was a joke so he didn't try to answer. He went with
them along two corridors and up several flights in an elevator, then
along another corridor and through a door into an office in which there
was a desk with a young male clerk behind it.
At the desk they asked him for the cigar box; they opened it and the
clerk counted it. When he called out and wrote down the total, it was
the same amount Benny himself had counted it to be just before he'd
left the newsstand. Meanwhile the turnkeys had asked him to empty his
pockets onto the desk and he had. They patted him a few places and
then gave him back what he'd taken out of his pockets except for one
thing, a small penknife he used for cutting the rope around bundles of
papers and for cleaning his fingernails. They asked him to take off his
belt and he did. He wasn't wearing a necktie; he never wore one except
to church. And they didn't take his shoelaces because he was wearing
moccasins. Hard shoes hurt his feet and he always wore moccasins except
on Sunday.
Then they took him down another corridor, through a steel door, past
the barred doors of cells. Then they opened a cell door and the tall
turnkey said, "All right, chum, this is it. Home, sweet home."
Benny went in and they closed the door behind him. The closing door
made a loud clang and someone somewhere yelled out, "Quiet, you
bastards!" And then they went away and left him alone.
The cell was long and narrow, about six feet by fifteen. Enough light
came in from the corridor through the bars so he could see his way
around. There was a double-decker bunk bed--with no one in either the
upper nor the lower--two chairs and, back in the far corner, a commode.
That was all, or it was all that he could see now, in the dimness.
He sighed and took off his suit coat, hung it over the back of one of
the chairs and put his moccasins under the chair.
He started to get into the lower bunk and then remembered that he'd
never slept in a high bed, an upper bunk, in his life and he wondered
if it would feel any different, so he climbed into the upper and
stretched himself out.
The lieutenant had told him there was something he should think about
tonight and he tried to remember what it was. But within seconds, and
before he could remember, he was asleep.
10:45 P.M.
Ray Fleck still stood at the bar in Jick's, where Hoff and his partner
had left him, nursing a drink and moodily making wet circles on the bar
with the bottom of his glass. Twice Jick, who wasn't very busy, had
said something to him but he'd answered briefly and without looking up
so Jick knew he hadn't wanted to talk and had moved along the bar to
someone else.
He was thinking about the poker game that would be starting soon now
and he was blowing hot and cold on the idea of trying to get into it.
There was still one chance that he could: the diamond ring. It was a
strictly cash game, no checks cashed and no borrowing. But he might
be able to make an exception to the borrowing rule if he had security
like that to offer. Sure, he could. He remembered now one night when
Luke Evarts had gone broke and had managed to keep going a while by
borrowing thirty-five bucks from Doc Corwin, putting up as security an
almost new and quite expensive wrist watch. And the diamond ring, damn
it, _looked_ good, looked like it ought to be worth several hundred
dollars, and none of the boys was a jeweler or carried a magnifying
glass. One of them might be willing to lend him a hundred on it, or at
least fifty.
Of course it would be embarrassing as hell to have to go up there
to Harry Brambaugh's flat with no money at all and have to try to
raise money, on whatever security, to get into the game. Much more
embarrassing than going there with a reasonable amount of money and
raising more, as Luke had done with the wrist watch, after losing it.
It would really be embarrassing if he went there and was unable to play
at all, if no one would lend him even fifty on the damn ring.
But that wasn't the important reason why he was beginning to blow cold
on the poker. In as bad a jam as he was in a little embarrassment,
losing a little face, was something he could put up with. If he didn't
raise Amico's money he was going to lose worse than face. He was
beginning to worry about his luck, as far as tonight was concerned.
Everything, but everything, had gone sour on him (he thought; he didn't
know that his real troubles hadn't started yet). Bad luck runs in
streaks and he didn't have the slightest indication that his was going
to change tonight.
And a better idea had come to him, standing there at the bar.
He could go home soon, even now, and be there, sober, when Ruth got
home around midnight. She'd be surprised to see him, after their
quarrel, and maybe even pleased, if she was over her mad.
But whether she was still mad or not he wouldn't let it develop into
a quarrel again. He'd be calm and patient with her, and he'd be
able to explain this time what he'd not been able to explain this
afternoon--exactly what Joe Amico's ultimatum had been, exactly what
Joe's deadline was and what he'd do if the money wasn't given him by
then. She'd listen; he'd _make_ her listen. She was a stubborn bitch
all right and that damned policy was the thing she was most stubborn
about, but she _did_ have common sense. If he could explain to her
and convince her, and he thought he could, that his keeping his job
depended completely on his having five hundred dollars tomorrow, she'd
at least see that her own selfish interests were in this case identical
with his.
Jick Walters was across the bar from him again. He didn't say anything
but he glanced interrogatively at Ray's glass, and Ray saw it was
empty. Ray nodded, and put money on the bar while Jick made him another
drink.
He could do it, he thought. He could talk Ruth into it--if he could
avoid losing his temper and stay calm and reasonable, keep her that
way. And thank God the home office of her insurance company was right
here; they could go to it together any time tomorrow and she'd be
able to get a check while they waited. No sweat at all about Amico's
deadline; he wouldn't wait till evening to get the money to him.
It would work. He wondered why he hadn't thought of it sooner, right
after Amico had read the riot act to him, instead of wasting time
trying first to borrow money from Dolly, and then stealing her junky
jewelry. He'd get rid of that tomorrow, too, if Ruth was reasonable
about the insurance business. He'd mail it back to Dolly--and then call
her up and tell her he'd done so, apologize, and explain. And if she
was reasonable about it and not too mad, he'd even be able to see her
again sometime, when he was solvent again.
But handling Ruth came first. He found himself planning what he'd say
to her, as he'd plan a sales talk. He'd have to eat a little crow,
and make some promises. Not to quit gambling; she'd never believe him
if he promised that, and disbelief would antagonize her. But he would
promise--and sincerely, because he never wanted to get into a jam like
this again--never again to gamble on credit and go in over his head.
He could promise too to pay back the loan against the policy at, say,
twenty-five a week, so the full ten thousand would be coming when the
endowment was due. And even make the payments for a few weeks until
things were on even keel again. He could tell her--
"Beg your pardon, Mr. Fleck. Like to talk to you."
He'd been aware, while thinking, of someone coming up alongside him
at the bar and ordering and getting a drink, and now he turned to
see who it was. He didn't know the guy. Medium height, stocky and
husky-looking, reddish face, and eyes like pale blue marbles.
"You don't know me," the man said. "My name's Mack Irby."
Ray Fleck nodded, not too cordially. "Glad to know you, Mr. Kirby," he
said. "Got to leave in a minute but--what's it about?"
"Irby, not Kirby. Mack Irby--does sound like Kirby when you say both
names together. Look, it's kind of private. End booth back there's
empty, and so's the one next it. Let's go back to the end booth."
Ray frowned. "I said I got just a minute. You can tell me what it's
about right here." The guy might be a damn insurance salesman, for all
he knew. Or more likely a bill collector.
Irby said, "Let's say I want to talk about a friend of yours, Mr.
Fleck. His name's something like yours. It's Ray Fletcher."
Ray Fleck winced. He knew that the wince was visible, even obvious, but
he couldn't help it; the shock had been too great. Here was trouble,
new trouble, just when he'd thought he had figured a safe answer to the
problem of his debt to the bookie. Now this. He had no doubt what it
concerned. At various times in his life and for various reasons he'd
used a name other than his own, but not always the same one; to no one
but Dolly Mason had he ever given his name as Fletcher.
But how had he been found so quickly? The only thing he could think
of was that Dolly must have known all along, or for a long time, what
his real identity was. There'd been times--not tonight--when she'd
been briefly alone with his clothes while he'd gone into the bathroom;
on any of those occasions she could have taken a quick look at
identification in his wallet or papers in his pocket. Just what a girl
like Dolly would do. Why hadn't he thought of....
"Well, Fleck?" There was an edge of impatience in Irby's voice now.
"Want to talk in the back booth, or down at headquarters?"
"The booth," Ray said. His voice didn't come out quite right. But he
picked up his glass and started toward the rear of the tavern. And a
sudden thought came and with it a sudden hope that this wasn't as bad a
jam as he had feared. It wasn't a pinch--at least not yet. The cop--he
_must_ be a cop; he looked and acted like one--hadn't simply pinched
him; he wanted to talk, and in private.
That meant Dolly hadn't simply called the police, given his name and
description and reported the theft. She hadn't wanted the publicity,
for obvious reasons. This Irby must be a friend of hers on the
force--either a plain-clothes cop or a regular cop who was off duty
when she called him. And she'd have told him she didn't want to make
a complaint if she could get her stuff back without making one. Thank
God, he thought, Fats Davis hadn't bought any of the stuff after all,
and he still had it intact, ready to hand back. If he'd sold the ring
for fifty they'd claim it was worth more and there'd still be trouble.
But, he thought as he slid into the booth, he'd let Irby talk first.
He wouldn't make the mistake he'd made with Amico earlier by talking
out of turn, admitting to having dragged down Connolly's thirty-buck
bet when Sam-the-waiter's smaller bet was the only one Amico had known
about. Just conceivably, although he didn't see how, this current deal
didn't even concern the jewelry at all.
Irby slid in across from him, where Fats had sat only half an hour ago.
Irby said, "Keep your hands on top of the table, Fleck. The stuff's in
your left pants pocket--you unconsciously put your hand over it while
you were walking back to make sure it was still there. And I wouldn't
want you to try to get any idea of ditching it here in the booth. I'd
have to take you in right away if you tried that."
It was the jewelry then, all right. And there wasn't any use in his
denying it--or of volunteering any information either. Ray Fleck just
nodded. And kept his hands in sight.
Irby said, "All right, I'll put my cards on the table. Or my card." He
took a card from the breast pocket of his coat and put it down in front
of Ray. _Mack Irby, Private Investigator._ And an address and a phone
number. "Put it in your pocket. You might want to use me sometime to
get you out of a jam. But not _this_ jam; I've already got a client.
And you can guess who it is, without straining yourself."
Ray Fleck nodded again. And to avoid discussion and keep things moving
he put the card into his own breast pocket.
"Meanwhile," Irby said, "don't let the fact that I'm a private
detective and not a cop dazzle you into thinking I can't arrest you,
or that I won't if I have to. I carry a deputy's badge, for one thing.
And if I didn't I can still make a citizen's arrest if I find someone
in the act of committing a crime. And you are; you're in possession of
stolen property. And if you think I can't handle you--" He pulled back
his coat far enough so Ray could see the butt of a flat automatic in a
shoulder holster. "Just don't try to make a run for it."
"I'm not running," Ray said. "But you wouldn't shoot a man for--"
"In the leg I would. Try me and see."
"Look, Irby," Ray said. "You don't want to arrest me or you would have
right away. Dolly just wants her junk back, and I'm willing to give it
back. I've still got it all. So why don't I just give it to you and
call it square. And you can give her my apologies too."
"It's not that simple, Fleck. My client will settle for
restitution--but full restitution, and the way she wants it. You know
how women are. They get tired of clothes and of jewelry and would
rather have new things than old ones. She'd much rather have the cash
value of that jewelry than the stuff itself back, so she could buy new
to replace it. And there's the matter of the fee I'll have to charge
her. I think she should be reimbursed for that, don't you?"
Ray Fleck licked his suddenly dry lips. "Is this a shakedown,
blackmail? If it is, it won't work. I'm broke, flat broke and in debt
already."
"Let's take those points one at a time, Fleck. First, blackmail.
Blackmail is a crime. If you think I'm trying to blackmail you, you
can arrest me. Citizen's arrest. And I'll arrest you for grand larceny
and we'll handcuff ourselves together--I've got cuffs, right in my hip
pocket--and go in to headquarters and accuse each other. I can make my
charge stick, especially if I don't let you get rid of what's in your
pocket, and I assure you I won't let you. Your charge would be your
word against mine, and my word's damned good down there. They'd laugh
at you. Shall we do it that way?"
Ray Fleck put out a hand for his glass but the hand trembled and he put
it down on the table again. "All right, you've got me. But damn it,
you can't get blood out of a turnip. I _am_ broke. I--"
Irby put up a hand to stop him.
"I know quite a bit more about you, Fleck, than I did when I started
looking for you a little less than an hour ago. You weren't in the
first five bars I tried, but the bartender or owner knew you in every
one of them. I know you're married. And I know which outfit you sell
for--J. and B. and that you've been with them for quite a while. Nobody
guessed your income at less than a hundred a week and most thought
more. So, broke at the moment or not, I figure you can raise the money
somehow--and I don't care how you do it--to make adequate restitution
to Miss Mason. And I figure the amount should be a nice even thousand
dollars."
At the expression on Ray's face, Irby raised a hand. "I don't know
whether you've tried to fence the stuff as yet. If you have, you're
aware it won't bring anything like that sum. But don't forget there's
a terrific difference between a fence's price, and a retail jeweler's.
And Miss Mason will be replacing those items at retail; I'd say it will
cost her five hundred dollars, or almost that. Say that half of the
other five hundred is my fee--and I'm sure you'll agree that under the
circumstances that shouldn't come out of Miss Mason's pocket. Call the
other half punitive damages, or payment for the mental anguish Miss
Mason suffered in learning that a friend whom she'd trusted turned out
to be a sneak thief. Break it down any way you like, but that's the
amount it's going to add up to."
Ray Fleck said bitterly, "It _is_ blackmail then. Damn you, Irby, I'm
tempted--"
"To spend six months in jail--and lose your job, your friends, and
probably your wife if she's worth anything to you? Just to save a lousy
grand?"
Irby leaned forward to reach into his left hip pocket and brought out
a pair of handcuffs. "I tried to give you a break," he said, "but if
you'd rather go to jail, let's get it over with."
Ray said miserably, "You win. But--how long will I have to raise it? It
may take me--"
"We'll worry about that later. For tonight, if you want to walk out
of here free, two painless steps are all you got to do. First, write
a check for a thousand dollars made out to Miss Dolly Mason, date it
today." He held up a hand to stop Ray's protest. "Don't tell me you
haven't got a thousand in your account. I'll concede that, or you
wouldn't be broke. I'll tell my client when to cash it. Let me worry
about that."
Ray said sullenly, "I've got a dollar and some cents in the account,
just enough to hold it open. All right. But I've got to get my wallet
out of my hip pocket to get a check." Irby nodded, and he took out his
wallet and took from it one of several blank checks he kept folded in
one of the compartments. Irby offered him a pen, but he shook his head
and took his own from his inside coat pocket, and wrote the check.
"Don't put the pen away," Irby told him. "One more step." He read the
check carefully and put it into his own wallet. Then he took from his
coat pocket a folded sheet of blank paper. He unfolded it and put it
in front of Ray Fleck. "Now a confession. Put the date down and I'll
dictate the rest."
"Confession! My God, you've got the check. Why do you want a confession
too?"
"Think, Fleck. We might have to prove what that check was given for.
Maybe you haven't thought of this yet, but you will: If I let you
walk out of here free what's to prevent you from ditching the stolen
property down the nearest sewer right away--and then, first thing
tomorrow morning, stopping payment on the check? And if she tried
to make trouble your story--you'd think of it--would be you'd given
her the check on a drunken generous impulse and had reconsidered,
especially when you sobered up and realized you didn't have money in
the bank to cover it. Be embarrassing for you to have to tell a story
like that, but how could Dolly disprove it?"
Ray Fleck understood and nodded miserably; his mind _had_ been playing
around with some such idea, although he hadn't worked out the details
yet. He wrote down the date. And what Irby dictated to him after that.
It wasn't long, but it sewed him up completely and left no loopholes.
It even accounted for the fact that restitution was being made by
check instead of return of the jewelry by stating that he had already
disposed of several items of the stolen property. It didn't incriminate
Dolly in any way by implying that he had ever been intimate with her.
He signed it and pushed it across. Irby folded the paper and put it in
his pocket. He said, "Okay, you can have this back when my client has
cashed the check."
Ray Fleck stared miserably down into his glass, not wanting to look at
his tormentor. It was going to take him months, he was thinking, to get
himself out of this, even if Ruth came through and took him off the
hook on his gambling debt.
He heard Irby slide out of the booth. And then, standing outside, Irby
bent over the end of the booth table. "By the way, Fleck," he said,
"you owe Joe Amico some money too. That's only a gambling debt and this
is a larceny rap. This comes first. Understand?"
Startled, Ray looked up, into those light blue marble-like eyes. He
said, "Good God, man, I've got only till tomorrow evening on that. I
can't possibly raise a thousand in a day. It'll take me weeks."
"It better not," Irby said. "This comes ahead of a gambling debt, and
I'm not kidding. If you're paying off Amico tomorrow evening, you're
paying this off sooner. Tomorrow's Friday, and it's not going to wait
over the weekend. Your bank closes at three tomorrow, and Miss Mason
will be there just before then with the check. If it's 'insufficient
funds' the confession and the check both go to the police."
"God, Irby, I can't possibly--"
"You better, and I don't care how. See a loan shark, sell your house,
your car or your wife, anything. Rob a bank for all I care. But this
check will be presented for cashing at your bank at three tomorrow."
He turned and walked away, as casually as though he hadn't left a
desperate man behind him. Ray Fleck reached for his drink. His hand
shook badly but there was so little left in the glass that he didn't
spill any. He drank it at a gulp.
He wanted to get out, away from everybody, to walk the night alone and
try to think, _to think_. But he wanted Irby to have time to get clear
first. He strode to the front of the tavern and stood looking out of
the window. He saw Irby get into a car parked across the street and
drive away.
Then he himself left, and walked. Not even a car to drive in tonight,
he thought, feeling sorry for himself, and as though thinking about
that one little trouble would help him forget his _real_ troubles.
But he didn't dare try to forget them, he realized; he had to find an
answer. If there was an answer.
He saw an open sewer grating at the first corner and for a moment he
was tempted to push the damned jewelry, handkerchief and all, through
it. But the thought came to him that that would be a useless gesture
now. With the written confession in Irby's hands, soon in Dolly's,
having the stuff on him was no additional danger to him now. Besides,
it was worth _something_. If a fence had considered giving him fifty
for the ring, probably a hock shop proprietor would give him at least
that and maybe more tomorrow. And since the police didn't have a list
for checking there'd be no danger selling the ring openly now. No use
throwing fifty bucks or more down the sewer. Maybe _Uncle_ would give
him a few bucks, say five for all of it, for the costume stuff.
He thought again of the ring in connection with the poker game. The
game would be starting by now. But--oh, hell, it was hopeless. He
needed fifteen hundred now, fourteen hundred and eighty to be exact,
and he'd never seen money like that change hands in the game. A few
hundred, never more than five or six, was as much as he'd ever seen
anybody win or lose, and not that much very often. It would have been a
miracle if he'd have got in the game and won enough to pay off Amico.
His only chance, his _only_ chance, now was Ruth and her insurance
policy. (What if she'd get killed by a car on the way home from work
tonight? He'd have the whole ten thousand coming, as her beneficiary,
and his troubles would be gone. Eight and a half thousand left after
paying off one and a half thousand. But things like that never
happened, not when you desperately needed to have them happen.) But
what remotely credible story could he make up when he'd needed only
five hundred late this afternoon? Not that he'd lost another thousand
gambling--if she did believe that, it would make her so mad she'd be
more likely to walk out on him than meekly agree to borrow that much
on the policy for him. And she probably wouldn't believe him to begin
with, and he couldn't blame her; he'd never gambled for stakes like
that before, a grand in one evening. The four-eighty to Amico had been
lost in his bad-luck run over several weeks.
But there had to be _some_ way out. There _had_ to be.
He'd walked two blocks before he decided that walking wasn't doing him
any good. His mind was going in circles, getting nowhere. He could
think better sitting down. And besides, the shock of Mack Irby had
knocked off his slight edge, had knocked all the alcohol out of him.
And he could think better with a slight edge, just a slight one, than
cold sober. He needed a drink and needed it badly.
The Palace Bar was coming up. It was a place he ordinarily didn't like
and seldom drank at, especially since he'd never been able to get the
place on his customer list. It was mostly a workingman's bar, doing a
beer trade. But they did sell whisky, and any port in a storm. Maybe
it would be a better place right now than most because he'd almost
certainly not run into anybody he knew there. And he didn't want to see
anybody he knew.
He played safe by looking into the window first. There were a few men
in the place, mostly down at the far end of the bar, but they were all
strangers. Still better, he didn't even know the bartender. Kowalsky,
who ran the place, wasn't there himself and the bartender must be a new
man he'd put on recently.
Ray Fleck went in and took a stool at the corner of the bar, facing the
back. The bartender came over and he ordered a double, a highball. It
came and he paid for it.
He sipped at it and tried to think, but nothing came, nothing
constructive. He thought, damn Amico; if Amico hadn't put the heat on
him, if Amico hadn't been so tough, he'd still be all right; he'd have
got Amico paid off sooner or later and he wouldn't have been tempted to
steal Dolly's stuff. And damn Dolly and double damn Irby; he hadn't
had time to get to her place yet, but soon they'd be celebrating
his check and confession and laughing at him. And then going to bed
together to celebrate some more. Irby hadn't fooled him by calling his
client _Miss Mason_; he was one of her men all right, and probably her
steady. He wondered how many other shakedown rackets they'd worked
together.
Most of all, damn Ruth. It all had started by her being selfish and
unreasonable this afternoon, refusing him the five hundred he'd needed
then. If she'd been reasonable and sensible then, none of the rest
would have happened, none of it.
Irby had said facetiously "sell your wife." God, if only he _could_
sell her. What a mistake it had been for him ever to have married in
the first place. A sudden thought came to him: that damn Greek she
worked for was soft on her. Maybe--No, it wouldn't work; Mikos wouldn't
lend him money, soft on Ruth or not. Mikos would want him to get into
trouble, bad enough trouble so Ruth would leave him and give Mikos a
free field with her.
But there _had_ to be an answer.
He stared down into his highball, looking for one.
11:16 P.M.
This is the transcript of a conversation that might possibly have
happened. If you believe in such things you'll come to see that it
could have happened. If you do not believe, it doesn't matter.
"He is set up, Sire. Everything is ready when you say the word."
"You're sure he is sufficiently frightened, sufficiently desperate?"
"Yes, Sire."
"Ready for murder? Remember, he has committed every other sin, but he
has not ever thought of murder. Not seriously, that is."
"Only because, Sire, he has known that he could not get away with it.
Now we present him with the perfect opportunity. A chance to kill his
wife in such a way that it cannot possibly be pinned on him. A method
by which, if he alibis himself as he will, will not even cause him to
be suspected."
"We can make sure by adding a little touch or two to what he thinks is
his string of bad luck."
"It is unnecessary, Sire. And it would disturb the timing, which is
very delicate. We would have to rearrange much."
"Very well. We shall follow the original plan. Check time and start the
count-down."
"Four seconds, Sire. Three. Two. One. Now."
"Let him look up from his drink."
In Pete Kowalsky's Palace Bar, Ray Fleck looked up from his drink. And
saw the psychopath.
11:17 P.M.
Avaunt, ye demons, and away with imaginary conversations. Let us to a
very real, if suddenly conceived, plot for murder.
In Pete Kowalsky's Palace Bar, Ray Fleck looked up from his drink, in
which he had found no answer to his problem, and saw the answer walking
toward him.
That is, he saw a man walking toward him from the back end of the
tavern, undoubtedly coming from the john; he must have been in it when
Ray had come in the place a minute or so ago. Ray didn't know the
man, but still he looked vaguely familiar. He was medium in height
and stocky, probably about Ray's own weight except that he had broad
shoulders and a narrow waist, just the opposite of Ray's distribution
of weight. He had a somewhat coarse, brutal face--anyway a face that
looked as though it could look brutal. And dark intense eyes that
looked--well, haunted was probably the best word. For some reason he
couldn't name a cold chill went down Ray Fleck's spine. He'd seen that
man _somewhere_ before. Where?
The man hadn't noticed Ray and obviously didn't know he was being
watched and wondered about. He stopped behind the bar stool that was
the second one down from Ray's and stood there a moment. There was an
almost finished drink on the bar in front of that stool and apparently
he was deciding whether to sit down again and finish it or to go on out
of the tavern.
And in that moment as he stood there Ray knew why the chill had gone
down his spine. For a moment the man's hands, _big_ hands, flexed and
unflexed--and then went rigid as though he'd suddenly realized what he
was doing and had forced himself to stop. Then he slid onto the stool
in front of the drink.
Now Ray knew, suddenly but beyond all doubt, where, when and under what
circumstances he'd seen the man. He knew he was sitting two stools away
from the psychopathic killer who was terrorizing the city. And who,
according to what the squad car cops had told him in Jick's only half
an hour or so ago, was on the prowl tonight and had already tried to
get at two women.
His first thought was to get out of there fast and phone the police
from the drugstore that was still open directly across the street.
And hope the man would still be here when they came. Then he saw
the dangers of that. For tonight--until they'd had time to dig into
background and find evidence--it would be his word against the
psycho's. And the cops would keep him for hours, questioning him--and
bawling the hell out of him for not having reported what he'd seen when
he'd seen it two months ago. They'd make him sound like more of a heel
than a hero for reporting it now. And suppose he phoned in and the cops
didn't get here in time to catch their man they'd be even tougher with
him. And if the deal got in the newspapers the psycho would know there
was someone around who could identify him, and he'd know who. That
would be a hell of a spot to be in. And what did he have to gain? He
had troubles of his own.
And then the second thought came to him, full blown and foolproof. And
he knew he had to do it right away before he lost his nerve. Or before
the man finished his drink and left.
He took the rest of his own drink at a draught and called out, "Hey,
bartender," to the bartender he didn't know. "One more double." And
then casually to the man who sat almost beside him, "Have one with me,
pal?"
The man shook his head. "Thanks. Gotta go."
Ray made his voice sound just a trifle thick and slurred; to play this
convincingly he shouldn't seem cold sober. He said, "One for the road,
then. Look, I won't want you to buy back, won't let you. I'm a liquor
salesman, see, so any drink I buy anybody goes on the 'spense account.
Besides, I hate to drink alone. Hey, bartender, make it two up this
way."
"Okay," the man said. "Guess one more won't hurt me."
Ray pretended to look at his wrist watch. "One's about all I'll have
time for myself. Got to get in an all-night poker game and it's
starting about now. Say, my name's Ray Fleck--don't tell me yours
'cause I'm lousy on names and won't remember it anyway. I'll call you
Bill. You married, Bill?"
The man shook his head. And the bartender came with their drinks. Ray
paid him and left his wallet on top of the bar; he was going to need it
in a minute.
"Well, I am," he said. "Married, I mean. Got the prettiest, sweetest
little wife in town. And you know it worries me--with what's been
happening--to leave her all alone, in a building all by herself, while
I play all-night poker. But hell, a man's got to get out once in a
while, and I think this is my lucky night."
He was thinking: it could be; it could be, if this works.
The man picked up his glass. "Thanks," he said. "Here's how."
"Bumps," Ray said. He took a pull from his own glass.
"Yeah," he said. "All alone in the building, the whole damn building,
that's what worries me a little. We live in a third floor, top floor,
flat over a store, see. And the second floor flat is vacant right now;
people moving in on the first of the month but that's a week yet. And
she's the prettiest--Say, let me show you."
He opened a compartment of his wallet and took out two snapshots of his
wife. He always carried them. Not out of sentiment but because so many
other men carried pictures of their wives or kids or both and he didn't
want to be left out if it came to a photo showing match. Besides, Ruth
_was_ damned pretty. One of the photos was a close-up and made her look
sweet and tender. The other had been snapped at the beach, Ruth in a
bathing suit. She'd probably have been annoyed that he carried that one
and showed it to other men, who usually whistled when they saw it, but
what she didn't know didn't hurt her.
He pushed the pictures over to the man and used the motion as an excuse
to slide over one stool and sit next to him. "That's Ruth," he said.
"Ruth Fleck, if you forgot my name. Ain't she a honey?"
"Sure is."
The man was bent over the photographs on the bar, studying them as
closely as though he were nearsighted. Ray Fleck couldn't see his eyes,
which was perhaps just as well; they might have unnerved him and he
needed every bit of nerve and every bit of acting ability he had, to
put this over.
He asked casually, "Ever eat at a restaurant called Mikos'? Out on
North Broadmoor?"
The man still didn't look up. "Know where it is; I've driven past. But
I never ate there. Why?"
"Just that if you had you might have seen Ruth. She's working there,
just temporarily. Waitress on the evening shift till eleven-thirty,
gets home about midnight."
The man pushed the pictures back. He still didn't look at Ray; now he
was looking at his drink, and put a hand around it, moving the glass in
slow circles. "Good looking, all right. But what you worrying about?
You got a chain bolt on the door, ain't you? Everybody has, somebody
told me."
Suddenly Ray's mouth felt dry, and he knew he was winning. He had to
wait a second to get saliva in his mouth so he could talk naturally.
"Ordinary bolt, not a chain bolt. But she has to open up when I come--"
He broke off and laughed suddenly.
"What the hell, I clean forgot. We got a system, Ruth and me. A code
knock so she knows it's me if I get home after she does. She don't open
the door otherwise. But I haven't had to use it for a few weeks and I
clean forgot about it for the minute."
He took a sip of his drink and put the glass down again. "Imagine
me forgetting, when we picked a code I couldn't forget. Same as our
address. We live at three one two Covington Place, see, three knocks,
then one, and then two. That way I don't have to yell out my name
or anything and anyway somebody else could say 'It's Ray,' so that
wouldn't mean anything. Say, who do you think will be playing in the
series this year?"
The man shrugged. "I don't follow baseball."
"I don't either, much," Ray said. "But I'd sure like to see the Yankees
lose a pennant for once. Spoils baseball, same team winning every year
in one league."
"Yeah," the man said. "I go along on that." He finished his drink and
slid off the stool. "Well, I gotta go. Unless you'll let me buy back."
"Nope. This better be my last, if I'm gonna play poker."
"Okay, then. Thanks."
Ray didn't turn as the man walked behind and past him to the door. But
after the man was outside he turned just slightly and managed to watch
out of the corner of his eye, through the window, without appearing to
be watching. The man crossed the street and went into the drugstore. He
headed for the phone booth and started thumbing through the phone book
that hung on a chain beside it.
Checking up on what Ray had told him by verifying the address in the
phone book? It could be. But then the man looked up another number,
thumbing to another part of the directory, and then entered the phone
booth and closed the door behind him.
What call would he be making, Ray wondered. To Ray's own phone number,
just to verify that no one answered there? That wouldn't prove much.
Calling someone to tell them that he wouldn't be home till later? That
didn't seem too likely; he probably lived alone, and besides he'd had
to look up a number. He'd certainly know the number whereever he lived.
Then Ray realized what call the man would be making. He was checking
Ray's story down the line. First he'd looked up Ray's listing just to
make sure of the address, then he'd looked up Mikos' restaurant and was
now calling it. He'd ask for Ruth Fleck and be told--Ray glanced at
his wrist watch and saw that it was eleven thirty-four--that yes, Ruth
Fleck worked there and had just left to go home. Mikos would still be
there to answer the phone; he knew enough about restaurant routine to
know that Mikos always stayed at least a little while after Ruth left,
to check the cash register, maybe put chairs on tables, do whatever
else had to be done to shut up shop for the night.
He reached out a hand for his drink, and saw that the hand was shaking
so badly from reaction that he put it quickly down on the bar instead.
He had to get himself under control now, and stay that way. He didn't
dare let himself think about what was going to happen to Ruth.
The die was cast now, and there was no way he could call back what he
had done. All that remained was to sit there until he was calm again,
and think things out. He needed an alibi.
Ruth would die any time after midnight. And so, from midnight on, he
had to have a solid, airtight, unbreakable alibi. One with lots of
witnesses. With a ten-thousand-dollar motive for killing his wife, the
police would be utter fools if they didn't at least slightly suspect
him of having done the murder himself, using the psycho's _modus
operandi_--knockout, rape, strangling, in that order--and so his alibi
had to be above suspicion. Already he knew approximately how he was
going to work it, but there were still a few details to think out.
And his nerves. But they'd be all right; they were probably all right
right now. He lifted his hand from the bar and reached for his drink.
It still trembled a little, but not so badly. In a few more minutes
he'd be completely okay.
If he could keep himself from thinking about Ruth.
11:34 P.M.
Ruth Fleck had not yet left the restaurant. George had told her to go
at eleven-thirty, but the last customer, at the counter, had obviously
been within a minute or two of finishing and she'd decided to wait. It
had paid off, too, with a two-bit tip that he probably wouldn't have
left if he'd seen her leave; he wouldn't have known that George would
hold the tip for her and give it to her tomorrow evening.
She'd carried his dishes back and was putting on the light summer coat
over her uniform dress when she heard the phone ring up front. She
didn't hurry because George was up there starting to check the cash
register, and anyway the call was unlikely to be for her. Nobody she
knew would be calling her at this hour except possibly Ray--and if he
looked at his watch before calling he'd think that she'd already left.
But George's voice called out "Ruth. For you." And she called back
"Coming" and hurried a bit.
George was back at the register when she came through the swinging
doors, and the wall phone was off the hook, dangling on its cord. She
went to it and said, "Hello." But no voice answered and after a second
she realized that the faint buzz she heard was a dial tone.
She hung up the phone and looked toward George. "That's funny," she
said. "Nobody on the line. It must have been Ray, but he must have been
cut off. Maybe I should wait around a few more minutes to see if he
tries again."
There was suddenly a peculiar expression on George Mikos' face. He
left the register and came around the counter.
"That wasn't your husband," he said. "He's called often enough for me
to know his voice. This voice was deeper. But I think you better wait a
minute anyway. Sit down."
Ruth was puzzled but she pulled a chair out from under the nearest
table and sat. George sat on one of the counter stools and stared at
her. "Ruth, outside of Ray, do you know anyone at all who might have
any reason at all for calling you at this time?"
Ruth thought, and shook her head slowly. "No," she admitted. "No man,
anyway. Just what did he say? Could he have got the wrong number and
you misunderstood the name he asked for."
"No. And the conversation was so short I can give it to you verbatim.
He said, 'Is Ruth Fleck there?' Incidentally, that's proof, besides the
voice, that it wasn't your husband. The several times he's called when
I've answered he's always said, 'Hi, George. Can I talk to Ruth?' Knows
my voice and calls me by name, and never bothers adding the Fleck to
yours.
"But back to this call. I said, 'She's just about to leave, but she's
still here. Just a minute.' And then I called out to you, and went back
to the register. And that's all."
"He couldn't have misunderstood you and thought you said I'd just left?"
"Pretty unlikely, Ruth. My diction is at least passable, and it was
a good connection. Besides, although my mouth was away from the
mouthpiece when I called you I called loudly enough and was still close
enough that he'd surely have heard that."
He frowned. "Have you had any other mysterious phone calls recently?
Such as answering the phone and having someone hang up when he hears
your voice?" Ruth shook her head. "Or such as wrong numbers? Or a call
from a stranger who could be a phony for all you know, asking what
television program you're watching, or anything like that?"
Ruth shook her head more slowly this time. "No, George. Oh, wrong
numbers once in a while, things like that. But not recently. Not that
I remember right now, anyway. Most calls we get are for Ray, and the
caller always leaves a name or a number or both. Or if they're for me,
they're from someone I know."
"And you've never been followed that you know of? Never had anything
happen to indicate that someone has been checking up on you or asking
questions about you?"
"No. George, you're taking this awfully seriously. I can guess what
you're thinking--but why would the psychopath pick on _me_?"
"For the same reason," George said, "that he picked on those other
women. Doubled in spades, because you're prettier than they were. And
you've got a husband who--What time does Ray usually come home at
night?"
"Usually about ten or fifteen minutes after the taverns close at one
o'clock. I always stay up that long to wait for him. If he isn't home
by--oh, about one twenty--I figure he probably got into a poker game
or something and go to sleep. Then he has to knock loud enough to wake
me--but that's not too hard; I'm a light sleeper."
"That would give the psycho a full hour, from midnight till one, most
nights. Some nights longer, if he's been casing your husband too and
happens to know he's going to be later. Ruth, I don't like that phone
call at all. To be honest about it, it worries the bejesus out of me."
"You're scaring me too, George. I guess you want to, so I'll be
careful. And I will. I told you about the special knock Ray uses when
he gets home late. I wouldn't open the door except to that knock. But
isn't it enough of a precaution?"
"I suppose so, unless Ray's told someone about it. Suppose he got
talking to a friend in a tavern--but with the psycho in hearing
distance--and told him about it. There's plenty of talk about the
psycho, including in taverns. If the subject came up naturally,
mightn't he tell what precaution you and he are using, if he knew and
thought he could trust whoever he was talking to."
"Well--he might mention that we use a code knock. But he surely
wouldn't tell just what the code knock _is_. There'd be no reason for
him to tell that--unless he deliberately wanted to get me murdered. And
he's not that bad, George."
George Mikos sighed. "I suppose you're right there. But don't you see
that, code knock or no, you can be in danger? That you _are_ in danger
if friend psycho is checking up on you and has you on his little list,
even as a possibility?"
"I realize that--but still, if I don't open the door--"
"Wait, I hadn't finished. If he's even intelligent enough to read the
newspapers he knows by now that women alone just aren't opening doors
these days, not unless they have chain bolts on them anyway. He knows
he's going to have to vary his procedure if he's going to succeed
again. And what simpler variation would there be than for him to find
a woman who went home alone, late, and be waiting for her _inside_ her
house or flat when she gets there?
"Let me make a hypothetical case to show you how that could be. Let's
say he picked you out a week ago. Maybe he eats here; maybe you've
talked to him and he got to know your name. Let's say the first night
he followed you home and knows where you live.
"Let's say he's been checking up on you ever since. It wouldn't be hard
for him to learn that you're married, but only you and your husband
live in that flat."
"Only Ray and I live in the whole building right now, George. It's a
small, narrow building, two flats over a hardware store. And the flat
on the second floor, under us, is vacant. I understand it's been rented
for the first, and we'll have neighbors soon, but--"
"That makes it a perfect setup for him, Ruth. Better than he could have
hoped for. He wouldn't have to come in the restaurant here again, or
follow you home again. Let's say he's just been keeping an eye on your
building late evenings and nights since. He's seen you get home about
midnight every night. And he's seen Ray--How long has it been since Ray
has got home early, before a few minutes after one?"
"Not for over a week."
"All right. Then he knows you get home at midnight, and Ray doesn't
get home until after one. Since there are only two of you in the whole
building he wouldn't have to know Ray even by sight to know that the
man who came in an hour or more after you got home is your husband. He
wouldn't have to know a thing about Ray except that he gets home after
one. He probably figures Ray holds a night job somewhere and that's
when he gets off, so he's even surer than he should be that Ray isn't
going to get home earlier. Are you following me, Ruth?"
"I'm getting plenty scared, if that's what you mean."
"So he knows he's got an hour with you there alone, and that's probably
a lot more time than he needs. His attacks are probably as quick as
they are sudden and brutal.
"So all he has to do is break into your flat any time before midnight
and wait for you. Break in or let himself in with a skeleton key or
something. How good is your lock?"
"Just an ordinary one. And of course the bolt isn't thrown inside the
door when no one's there. I guess a skeleton key would get him in."
"He could be there right now waiting for you. And that call for you
here--he could have made it right from your phone, just to assure
himself that you were getting off on time and not working late. He must
have expected me to say that you'd just left, and when I said you were
still here he couldn't think quickly enough of anything unsuspicious to
say to you so he hung up before you got to the phone. And he did learn
that you'll be there soon; I gave him that information gratuitously
when I told him you were still here but just about to leave."
"George, this is--horrible. It's an awful lot to build on one
unexplained phone call but--but it could be. Do you think we should go
to the police?"
He shook his head slowly. "Not tonight. I'm afraid they'd think, as you
suggested, that it's an awful lot to build on one unexplained phone
call. They might think it worth investigating and they might not. In
any case, they'd want to talk to us first, maybe have us come in, and
that would waste a lot of time. And don't forget that if he _is_ there
waiting for you, he isn't going to wait forever. If you're not home
by--oh, say, half past twelve, he'll figure something's gone wrong and
beat it.
"No, I'm going to handle it myself, tonight. I'm going to drive you
home. You're going to give me your key and then wait in the car till I
go up and check your flat. Thoroughly. You go up only when I tell you
it's safe as houses. And then lock yourself in and don't open the door
till your husband uses his trick knock. And bolt the door again after
him. That way you'll be safe for tonight.
"And we'll worry about the police tomorrow--unless by then we've found
some explanation of that phone call--and I'll go right to my homicide
captain friend and lay it in his lap. If he takes this as seriously
as I do you'll be under police protection from then on. I'd call him
tonight but I happen to know he's out of town till tomorrow morning.
And I don't want to mess with any lesser lights. Come on."
He stood up and went to the front door to double check that it was
locked. "My car's out back. We'll go that way."
Ruth had stood but she said, "George--I don't like this. Your going up
there alone, I mean. If he's _there_, he's dangerous. You don't know
how big and strong he may be."
He grinned. "I know how big and strong _I_ am. And clothed in armor of
righteousness at that. Believe me, nothing would make me happier than
finding him."
"But--he might be armed. Do you have a gun?"
"He probably isn't. People who kill with their hands seldom carry other
weapons. But yes, I've got a gun, back in the sanctum. I'll take it
along if only to make you feel easier. And a flashlight to help me find
wall switches and look under beds. Come on."
This time she followed him and waited in the kitchen while he went
briefly into his office. They turned out the rest of the lights and
left.
In the car, which was parked on a vacant lot across the alley, she gave
him the address and directions, since he'd never been there before.
It was only five minutes by car, she thought; she'd be getting home
earlier than usual instead of later. The bus took half an hour because
it was roundabout and she had to transfer once.
She had a thought, as he started. "George, what if Ray came home early
and is there? What are you going to tell him?"
"The truth, what else? And he'll have no cause for suspicion, if
that's what you're worrying about. If I were taking you there for an
assignation I'd hardly leave you in the car and go up alone, would I?
Besides, next to the psycho I'd _like_ to find him there. I'd feel
safer about leaving you. And there's a possibility, just a possibility,
that he could tell us something about that mysterious phone call. For
some reason or another he might have asked or told someone to call
you. And the hanging up _could_ have been a misunderstanding or an
accidental disconnection. Why did you ask? He isn't jealous of me, is
he?"
"I've never given him any cause to be. I mean, I haven't talked about
you too much or anything like that. He knows I think you're nice, and
generous, and a good employer."
"Uh-huh. Do you have any reason for thinking he might come home earlier
than usual tonight? Or, for that matter, later?"
"Well, there could be--either way. I told you about our quarrel this
afternoon because I wouldn't borrow money against the policy for him.
It was pretty bitter. He might deliberately stay out later because
of that, if he's still mad. Or he might come home early or be there
already for the opposite reason, I mean if he's repentant or wants to
apologize. But I doubt that. If he _is_ home early it's more likely to
re-open the argument and have another try at convincing me. Or--This is
Thursday, isn't it?"
"Yes. What's that got to do with it?"
"Only that quite frequently he plays poker Thursday nights, all night
or quite late. But he probably won't play tonight--he didn't have too
much money and I guess it's a pretty steep game, one he wouldn't try to
get into with a few dollars."
"He might have borrowed some. But skip Ray. Tell me something about the
flat I'll be casing in a minute. Has it got a fire escape, could it be
broken into from the outside?"
"No fire escape. There's a front and back door. The back door leads to
stairs that go down to the alley. But it's kept bolted and I never use
it except to take down garbage or trash. I won't do that tonight."
"Nor tomorrow either. You're going to be extra careful in all
directions at least until I've had a talk with my friend in homicide
and see what we can work out with him. How many windows?"
"Five--no, six. Two at the front that look on the street, three along
one side and one kitchen window at the back. But he couldn't get at any
of them without using a long ladder, and I can't picture him taking the
risk of carrying one around."
George said, "Just the same I'm going to see that all windows are
closed and locked when I go up there. It's a coolish night and you can
survive without ventilation for that long. How about access to or from
the roof?"
"There's a trap door, but it's outside the kitchen door; if he came
through it he still wouldn't be inside the flat. Besides, it's kept
fastened on the inside."
"This the right block?"
"Yes. Third building from the next corner, on your right."
She started fishing in her handbag for her key and had it ready for him
by the time the car stopped directly in front.
He got out and closed the door, spoke through the open window. "Don't
leave the car. If he's by any chance watching from somewhere and
approaches the car--if _anyone_ approaches the car--start yelling like
hell, loud enough for me to hear you up there. Not that your yelling
wouldn't make him run in any case."
He left her and Ruth Fleck lighted a cigarette and waited till he came
back. This time he came to her side of the car and opened the door for
her. "False alarm," he said cheerfully. "Not a psycho in sight--and I
checked carefully. Closets, under the bed, anywhere a man could hide."
She got out of the car. "Thanks, George. I can't tell you how much I--"
"Don't try then. And I'm not leaving you this second anyway. Escort
service right to your door, and I want to hear the bolt slide when
you've closed it after you. Here's your key."
He stopped at the door of the flat and didn't try to enter after her.
She turned to face him. "Good night, George. And thanks again, a
million."
"Forget it. But listen a moment. My guess that he might be waiting
here for you was wrong, but I'm still worried and I guess you are too.
Would you feel safer spending the night in a hotel room? You could
write a note for Ray--I'd have had to bring you here to do that in any
case--and then I could drive you on downtown. It might be the safest
thing."
She shook her head. "No, I'll be all right here."
"Okay. But one final instruction--and I don't mean not to open the door
except for your husband; you know that. It's this: if you hear anyone
trying to get in either door or at a window, if you even _think_ you
hear anything suspicious, don't waste time phoning the police--you
could be dead by the time they get here. Just open a front window, lean
out and start screaming bloody murder at the top of your lungs, loud
enough to carry six blocks away. He wouldn't follow through on trying
to get in while you're doing that. Okay, good night--and let me hear
that bolt slide."
"Good night, George."
She closed the door and slid the bolt, stood there a moment listening
to his footsteps going down the stairs and thinking how wonderful
he'd been to her and how concerned he'd been about her. And how brave
to have come up here alone when he'd really thought that a dangerous
criminal, a murderer, might be waiting.
When she turned she saw by the clock that it still lacked six minutes
of midnight. Because of the lift, she was home earlier than usual
despite all the talking they'd done and the time George had taken to
search the flat.
She went into the bathroom and started drawing water in the tub. She
was tired, if not sleepy, and a hot bath would be just the thing to
relax her body and her nerves.
11:55 P.M.
Ray Fleck looked at his watch again and saw that it was just time for
him to leave. He'd sat there nursing his drink ever since the psycho
had left--thinking. There couldn't be any possible slip-ups on his
alibi and he'd thought it out and covered every contingency.
The all-night poker game at Harry Brambaugh's was, of course, the basis
of it. But he'd worked things out so that game would alibi him for all
night no matter what happened. Someone in the game might or might not
buy the diamond ring to let him play. And if someone did buy it, he
might still go broke within the first hour, and that would be no good
at all. His alibi had to be for _all_ night, clear up to dawn.
He'd told the psycho, in effect, that an attack on Ruth would be safe
any time after midnight; he couldn't possibly pinpoint it by suggesting
a specific time or even a deadline. And for all Ray knew the guy might
as easily make his call at two or three in the morning as at half past
twelve. Besides, even if he had any way of timing it, he didn't dare
get home too soon after the psycho had left. The minute he got home and
found Ruth dead he'd have to call the police--and if she were freshly
dead they'd still suspect him of having killed her and having done it
in such a way as to throw suspicion on the psycho. He didn't dare find
her until she'd been dead at least a couple of hours, and with him
having a solid alibi for the time at which she'd died.
To be safe he didn't dare get home before five in the morning and six
would be better.
So, since the psycho had left, he'd been planning carefully; he was
going to have an all-night alibi from Harry and whoever else was in the
game, whether or not he could sell the ring and whether or not he went
broke quickly if he did sell it. All it took was the right build-up.
Harry had a downtown apartment, only a block and a half from here. Five
minutes walk and if he left at five of twelve he could establish the
time of his arrival by saying "Cold on the stroke of midnight," when he
walked into the room. That wouldn't sound suspicious or as though he
was trying to establish an alibi because it was a phrase he often used
anyway. So did some of the other boys. It was a quotation from a poem
or something, and it was a cliché that fitted in any time the question
of time came up at or within a minute of midnight.
Second step: The minute he got in he'd tell Harry he felt lousy, had an
upset stomach and a headache. He'd say it would probably wear off, but
did Harry have a Bromo-Seltzer or an Alka-Seltzer around, and maybe a
couple of aspirin tablets too. And Harry would have; Harry had a bad
stomach and headaches himself and was always well stocked with patent
medicines; Harry would give him something and he'd take it. Point made.
Then, at the poker table but before sitting down, he'd explain
apologetically that he was short on cash but had a hell of a bargain in
a diamond ring, if anyone might be interested in buying it, and he'd
pass it around. He'd try to get a hundred, but settle for fifty if
someone wanted it but quibbled about price. Either someone would buy it
or no one would buy it.
If no one bought, well, he'd laid his groundwork, by convincing Harry
he was sick. He'd say he didn't feel up to going home right away, and
would Harry mind if he lay down on the sofa a while first. Harry had
a comfortable sofa right in the living room, the room in which they
played cards. Lying there he'd be in sight of everyone in the game. And
Harry was a nice guy; he certainly wouldn't mind. That sofa had been
used before for similar purposes; once in a while someone got tired in
the middle of a game and wanted to rest a while and then get back in.
So he'd pretend to go to sleep on the sofa--or really go to sleep if he
could. And stay there till the game broke up, which was never before
five o'clock.
Same deal with a minor variation if he sold the ring but lost the money
too soon. His upset stomach and headache would have come back by then;
he'd take more Alka-Seltzer and aspirin and then lie down a while to
give them a chance to work.
It would work. Parts of the story might sound mildly strange to the
police when they questioned him, but there'd be too many witnesses for
them to have any serious doubts. Especially if Milt Corbett was there
as one of the witnesses, as he probably would be; Milt was a prominent
member of the city council and the strength of his word would be as the
strength of ten, to the police.
He left a dollar tip on the bar, to make the bartender remember him;
it wouldn't hurt to be able to extend his alibi backward a bit in case
Ruth died very shortly after midnight, and left.
He'd timed it right; it was midnight on the head when he rang the bell
of Harry Brambaugh's apartment.
Stella, Brambaugh's wife, opened the door. On a chain, of course, but
she opened it the rest of the way when she recognized Ray. He was a
little surprised to see that she was wearing a robe and had her iron
gray hair in pin curlers; usually she stayed dressed and made coffee
and sandwiches about one o'clock, and then went to bed.
"Cold on the stroke of midnight," Ray said. "Game been going on long?"
"Ray, I tried to call you but you weren't home. There isn't any game.
Harry got a telegram while we were eating tonight; his brother is
seriously hurt in a car accident and he had to leave right away, the
first plane. He gave me a list of six men to call up, and I got all of
them except you."
Ray frowned, thinking frantically. "Mrs. Brambaugh, I wonder if you
could give me that list. I know all the boys on it, but not all their
phone numbers. And maybe we can still get a game going, especially if
you'd let me use your phone so I can call them right away."
She shook her head. "I might find the list in the wastebasket, but
it wouldn't work anyway, Ray. Three of them said they wouldn't have
been able to make it tonight anyway. I don't know whether Harry would
have played four-handed or not; he'd probably have postponed it. But
that leaves only two besides yourself, and they've probably got doing
something else by now. Or gone to bed."
His mind went in frantic circles as he walked down the stairs and out
into the night. What now? He could alibi himself by going to any tavern
where he was well known, between now and one o'clock when the tavern
would close. God, oh, God, what could he do? He could go to a hotel,
but what good would that be as an alibi? The clerk could testify when
he checked in and when he checked out, but could he give positive
testimony that he had not sneaked out and back in again sometime during
the night?
Of course if he picked up a woman and took her to a hotel, or to
her own place--He considered that and abandoned it reluctantly. The
testimony of a woman like that would be of only slight value, for
one thing. For another, the chances of his finding such a woman were
slight, especially since he had less than an hour to do it in. There'd
been a recent crackdown and available pickups in bars were currently
few and far between. Outside of bars, he didn't have the faintest
idea where to start looking. He didn't have a little black book of
addresses; for the last few years, his only extramarital adventures had
been those with Dolly, and Dolly--well, he could forget Dolly tonight,
if not forever.
Besides, he was broke. He couldn't have over a few dollars left after
all the drinks, many of them doubles, that he'd been buying.
For a moment he entertained the wild idea of walking in front of a
car, getting himself injured and taken to the hospital. But that
was too risky; he could be killed--or permanently crippled, which
would be almost as bad. Or if for safety he picked a slowly moving
car and just let it knock him down his injuries would probably be so
superficial that a hospital would simply check him over and discharge
him immediately. Could he feign a heart attack? No, it would take the
admitting physician only half a minute with a stethoscope to learn that
his heart was as sound as a preinflation dollar. Acute appendicitis?
Hardly, with his appendix already out and a scar to prove it. Or--no,
damn it, he knew too little about illnesses to be able to get away with
feigning anything. He'd never had a sick day in life, except for that
attack of appendicitis and the time he'd been in the army infirmary on
account of his allergy to wool.
The hospital idea wouldn't work. But what else would be open all night
after the taverns closed?
The answer was so simple that he wondered why he'd sweated thinking
about hotels and hospitals. The jail was open all night. It wouldn't
hurt him to spend a night in the drunk tank, to save his life, and to
pay a ten-buck fine in the morning. Maybe even no fine, just a warning,
for first offense; and what alibi could possibly be better than being
in jail? He wondered why he hadn't thought of it the moment he'd
learned that the poker game was called off.
But he'd better make it good and _really_ get drunk, roaring drunk,
not depend on acting. He looked at his watch. It was only five minutes
after twelve. Fifty-five minutes to go and that was plenty of time, if
he drank straight shots, doubles. He had a hell of a good capacity for
liquor if he took it in highballs and reasonably spaced his drinks--as
he had thus far tonight--but straight whisky always hit him hard and
fast. With the slight edge he already had, five or six straight doubles
would be plenty, if he took them no more than five minutes apart.
Money wouldn't be a problem, even though he had only two bucks, enough
for two doubles, left. Since he'd never done so before, he could borrow
five or ten from almost any bar owner or bartender in town. And even
five, with what he had, would get him seven doubles, more than enough.
He'd been walking without thinking where he was going, but now he
looked to see where he was. Half a block from the Log Cabin, run by
Jerry Dean. It would be as good a place as any. He was known there at
least as well as at any other tavern, and Jerry was at least as likely
to lend him money as anyone else; he'd spent hundreds of dollars in
Jerry's.
Jerry was behind the bar and, Ray was glad to see, so was his son
Shorty Dean, whom Jerry was teaching to be a bartender. Two witnesses
would be better than one--and he might as well establish the time right
away. He put a dollar on the bar and asked for a straight double. Then
while Jerry was pouring it he glanced up at the wall clock. "Hey, your
clock's half an hour off."
Jerry looked up at the clock and then at his own watch. "Seven after
twelve. That's what I got. How about you, Shorty?"
Shorty had five after but said his watch had been running a minute or
two slow a day.
"Then seven after must be right," Ray said. He held his own watch to
his ear. "Hell, mine's stopped. Must have forgot to wind it." He wound
it and pretended to set it. "Say, Jerry, I ran short of cash tonight.
Can you spare a sawbuck, just till tomorrow night?"
"Sure, Ray." Jerry pulled out a wallet. "Can even make it a double-saw,
if you want."
"Swell," Ray said. He left the bill on the bar and tossed off his
double. It tasted like hell to him; he didn't like the taste of raw
whisky. But he ordered another.
Twenty minutes and four drinks later he was feeling high, definitely
high. His tongue was thick and if he stared fixedly at anything or
anybody he found himself seeing double; to keep his eyes focused he had
to move them frequently. And he knew that the full force of the drinks
hadn't hit him yet; fifteen minutes or half an hour more and he'd feel
them a lot worse.
"One more," he said.
"Listen, Ray, you've had plenty. Don't you think you'd better call
it off for tonight?" Jerry sounded genuinely concerned. "Uh--are you
driving?"
"Nope. Car's being worked on. So one more, then I'll call it off. Okay?"
But he sat staring at the one more, and he was realizing that maybe
getting arrested for being drunk wasn't as easy as getting drunk was.
How do you get arrested if there isn't a cop around? Was he going to
have to start trouble or a fight so Jerry would have to call the cops?
He hated trouble, and he hated fights worse, but--
And then the answer came through the door. Officer Hoff and his squad
car partner, the pair he'd talked to earlier in Jick's place, came in.
Hoff said, "Hi, Jerry. Two damn quick quickies. Hi, Ray. How goes it?"
This was his chance. With drunken dignity Ray got off the stool and
started back toward the juke box. He tried to stagger--and found that
he didn't have to try. He almost fell, caught himself with a hand
against the wall, and apparently forgot where he'd been going and came
back to his stool, but stood there behind it, swaying. He reached for
his drink and spilled half of it, got the rest down and dropped the
glass. He swayed back onto the stool--he was exaggerating, acting,
but not much--and sat there glowering at Hoff. "Goddam cop," he said
thickly. "God, how I hate cops."
"Look, Hoffie," Jerry said, conciliatingly, "he's drunk, so don't get
mad. And don't blame me. This hit him sudden like, or I'd of cut him
off sooner. He's been in here only twenty minutes or so, and he acted
cold sober till just now. I'd hate to see him get jugged--Ray's a nice
guy. Could you guys spare time to run him home and get him out of
trouble?"
Hoff said, "Sure, Jerry. Ray's all right. It can happen to any of us."
He downed his shot quickly and then came back and put his hand on Ray's
arm. "Come on, Ray. Time for beddy-bye. Where do you live?"
Ray slid off the stool and jerked away. If only violence was going to
get him arrested, then he might as well get it over with. "Keep your
goddam hands off me. Mind your own damn business." And he started a
roundhouse swing. He didn't really know whether or not he was trying to
make it connect--but it didn't. And then he saw Hoff's fist coming up
in a short sharp uppercut for his own chin--saw it, but not in time to
duck. The lights went out.
He came to, to the sound and motion of a car. Thank God, it had worked;
they were taking him in. He shook his head to clear it a little and
saw that Hoff was sitting beside him in the back seat, the partner was
driving.
Hoff said, "Take it easy, Ray. I can handle you but I don't want to
have to hurt you. And you're not pinched--this time. I got your address
from your wallet--and put your money that was on the bar in it. We're
taking you home to the little wifie."
_Oh, God, Oh, God_, he thought; _this can't be happening. They can't
take me home now. It's only half past twelve or a few minutes later.
It's too early, it's hours too early._
Under an alcoholic haze, part of his mind worked; it scuttled like a
rat trying to get out of a trap. And it found a hole--a dangerous hole,
but still a hole.
He reached into his left pants pocket and pulled out a handkerchief,
unfolded it. As they passed a street light, jewels flashed. "Lookit,
Hoffie," Ray said. "Why I was getting drunk. Stole this. Conscience.
Give m'self up."
Hoff called out, "Hey, Willie. Pull in to the curb and give me the dome
light on."
On the way back downtown, the way toward the police station, Hoff kept
questioning him and he kept ducking. Yeah, he'd stolen the jewels.
Didn't remember who from. Drunk. Needed sleep, let him tell 'em
everything tomorrow when he'd sobered up.
He played drunker than he was and he was thinking that he hadn't really
given anything away. Tomorrow he could deny everything. He could say
he'd found the jewelry, in a handkerchief just as it was, and how could
they prove he hadn't. They'd doubt him, but they couldn't prove a
thing. Dolly and Irby weren't reporting the robbery, now that they had
the check and confession, so there'd be no theft report to match the
stuff. Why then had he told Hoff he'd stolen it? How did he know why?
He was drunk, didn't remember anything after taking a swing at Hoff in
Jerry's place. Some drunken impulse must have made him tell Hoff that,
but he couldn't remember what it was, couldn't even remember having
been in a squad car.
He was safe. They might doubt him, but they couldn't prove a thing,
except the drunk and disorderly charge--and they certainly wouldn't
press even that after they had to tell him that his wife had been
killed during the night, by the psycho. And on that angle, he was even
safer; his alibi was solid from seven minutes after twelve on. From
midnight on, really; Stella Brambaugh could testify she'd talked to
him cold on the stroke of midnight, and just seven minutes away from
Jerry's Log Cabin. Even farther back than that if the dollar tip had
made the bartender at the Palace Bar remember him, and remember what
times he'd been there. But even midnight was safe enough; Ruth didn't
even get home until then.
Hoff said, "Ray, we've got to take you in. Want me to phone your wife
so she'll know where you are?"
"God no," Ray said, and then made his voice calmer. "She won't worry
about me--thinks I'm in an all-night poker game so won't 'spect me home
anyhow."
"Okay. We're going to have to book you on suspicion of theft. Want a
lawyer? He might get you out on bail right away."
"Hell no, Hoffie. Too drunk to do any good if I did get out. Too drunk,
too sleepy. Just book me and jug me, and let me get some sleep."
"If that's the way you want it," Hoff said. The squad car pulled up in
front of the station.
1:01 A.M.
Bare feet tucked under her, Ruth Fleck sat on the sofa in the living
room. After her leisurely bath she'd put on pyjamas and a quilted
housecoat, but no slippers; she liked to go barefoot around the house.
The reading lamp was on and she had a magazine in her lap, opened to
the beginning of a story. But she hadn't started it yet; she was still
thinking about her coming conversation with Ray.
Not about what she was going to say; she'd already decided that,
but about how she was going to say it. She was going to give him an
ultimatum, but to spare his pride as well as to avoid another argument,
she wanted to figure how to word it so it wouldn't sound like an
ultimatum.
She'd thought about it all evening at work and had finally, if a bit
reluctantly, decided to give him the five hundred he needed to pay off
his bookie. George was probably right in saying that Joe Amico wouldn't
have him beaten up, let alone taken for a ride. But still, Ray _was_
in trouble, with that big a debt hanging over him and she should help
him out, this once. She'd agree to go downtown with him tomorrow and
arrange the loan against the policy.
But she was going to attach a condition to it, and she thought she had
every right to do so. He'd have to promise, and mean the promise and
stick to it, to quit gambling on credit--or for heavy stakes, whether
on credit or not. Gambling was in his blood, and she knew it would
be meaningless for her to demand his promise never to gamble again.
He might make such a promise--for the sake of getting the money from
her--but he wouldn't mean it in the slightest and wouldn't keep it for
a single day. She might as well make a clean break with him right now
as to demand a promise like that.
Would she be better off in any case to make a clean break? She pushed
that thought away. She should give him one more chance before she
decided anything like that. And maybe the sweating he was doing right
now about that five-hundred-dollar debt had taught him the lesson he
needed. She'd see.
She'd give him the money--and the ultimatum. Henceforth his gambling
had to be moderate and for cash only, when he could afford it. If
he wanted to make two-dollar bets, or even an occasional five- or
ten-dollar bet, for cash, that was all right. But no more going in over
his head, on credit. Certainly that was a reasonable thing for a wife
to expect.
But if he ever got into trouble like this again--well, again she'd
borrow five hundred against the policy (that would still leave nine
thousand coming, a nice nest egg, when the policy matured in another
five years or so) but she wouldn't give it to Ray to pay off gambling
debts. She'd use it herself for a trip to Reno. That was just about
what such a trip, and a divorce, would cost her. Less than that, of
course, if she could find work there during her waiting period, but
she wouldn't count on that. A lot of women who go there for divorces
must look for work to help out and to occupy their time during the
six weeks--she thought it was six weeks--they had to wait for their
divorces. The labor market might be glutted.
She hoped he wouldn't be late tonight--but no matter how late he might
be, she was going to wait up for him. Morning was a bad time to talk
with him, especially about anything serious. He was always irritable
and grumpy in the morning, likely to fly off the handle over even the
most innocent remark she might make.
She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and thought _Good, he's even
a little earlier than usual_. It was only a few minutes after one; he
couldn't have waited even till the bars closed to start home. Maybe
that was a good sign.
She got off the sofa and went to the door. But, remembering the phone
call and George's warning, she didn't reach for the bolt or the knob
until he knocked.
He knocked. Three knocks, a short pause; one knock, a short pause, then
two knocks.
She threw back the bolt and opened the door.
1:05 A.M.
Silently screaming, Benny Knox awakened from the nightmare.
Occasionally, not too often, he had nightmares but this one was the
worst ever.
It was a hell of a nightmare, quite literally. He'd been in hell, the
very literal hell that his father had talked about so often, either to
him alone or in sermons that Benny had heard. He was stark naked and
standing knee deep in a lake of boiling, bubbling pitch. His feet and
legs hurt horribly.
At the edge of the lake, a few feet away, stood three devils. Bright
red devils with tails and horns and hoofs. Two of them had long
pitchforks and they were jabbing them into Benny's chest and stomach,
to drive him farther and deeper into the boiling lake. His arms were
stuck; he couldn't use them to try to ward off the pitchforks. The
pitchforks hurt badly and he was forced to take a step backward and was
suddenly in the boiling pitch up almost to his waist. The slope was
steep, and with another step or two he'd be completely in the lake.
The other devil, the one in the middle, didn't have a pitchfork. He
was just standing there laughing. And even through his dream Benny
knew that he had heard that exact laugh before and that he'd seen that
devil's face before--but he couldn't remember where or when.
Over the laughter and from somewhere overhead, came a Voice. The voice
of God or the voice of his father; he didn't know which.
"Hell forever, my son, for you have done evil. You can be forgiven only
if you can make _them_ believe you, and be punished on Earth for the
evil you have done."
He tried to scream and answer but his voice was stuck too, like his
arms. Then one of the pitchforks jabbed at his eyes and he had to take
another step backward. He lost his balance and fell. As the boiling
pitch closed over his head, he awoke.
Or had it been just a dream? Might not it have been a vision sent him
by God or by his father in Heaven, to warn him, to instruct him?
He lay there sweating in the upper bunk, and then he remembered what
Mrs. Saddler had told him to do whenever he awakened from a nightmare:
get up and walk, walk till you're wide awake again and the nightmare
goes away.
He climbed down from the upper bunk and walked--as far as he could in
the cell, three paces one way and three back and three paces one way
and three paces back--But the dream, if it had been a dream, stayed
with him, more vivid than any of his memories of anything else that had
happened to him that day or recently.
A sound made him pause in his pacing and look into the lower bunk. The
sound was a snore. He saw that he was no longer alone in the cell;
while he'd slept they'd put someone else there and he was now lying in
the lower bunk. Fully dressed, as Benny was, except for shoes and coat.
Even in the dim light of the cell, the man looked familiar to him.
Benny bent over him.
It was Mister Fleck. That surprised him, but what surprised him a
thousand times more was that it was also the devil in his nightmare
or vision, the devil without a pitchfork, the one who had laughed at
him. The face of Mr. Fleck and of that devil were the same. And he
remembered now why the laugh of that devil had sounded as though he'd
heard it before. It was Mister Fleck's laugh, as Mister Fleck had
laughed at him early in the evening, when he'd told Mister Fleck that
he'd killed those women. The police hadn't _believed_ him, but they
hadn't laughed at him.
And suddenly he knew what he had to do to make the police really
believe him, to make them believe that he'd done evil and must be
punished.
He put his hands on Mister Fleck's shoulders and pulled him up to a
sitting position. "Mister Fleck!" he said.
Mister Fleck's eyes opened and blinked. "Huh?" he said.
Benny was very earnest because this was very serious. "Listen, Mister
Fleck," he said. "I'm sorry, but I got to kill you. I got to kill you
like I killed them women so the police will believe I killed them."
"Huh? Benny--?"
"I want you to know, Mister Fleck, I ain't mad at you. Even if you
laughed at me. It's bad to kill because you're mad and I want you to
know I ain't mad. I just got to kill you. And besides, it won't be evil
for me to kill you to make them believe me. It won't be evil, Mister
Fleck, because you're a devil."
Mister Fleck opened his mouth to say something, or to scream, but
nothing came out because Benny's hands were tight around his throat,
and getting tighter. A minute later they let go, and something limp and
dead fell back on the lower bunk.
Benny Knox went to the door of the cell and grabbed his bars, rattling
the door loudly. Even more loudly he yelled, "Policemen! Policemen!
Come here and see. _Now_ do you believe me? _Now_ will you try to tell
me I never killed nobody?"
This time they believed him.
2:45 A.M.
In his office off the kitchen of the restaurant, George Mikos paced
a while, too keyed up to sit down and type, which was what he'd come
here to do. Finally he sat down at the desk, took the cover off the
typewriter and put fresh paper into it. He began to type:
Dear Perry:
This has been the damnedest night. If you'll forgive the cliché,
hell has been popping right and left.
Yes, this is a new letter and not a continuation of the one I
started to you earlier. Everything has changed so completely that
it would seem silly to go on with that one. But I'll enclose it,
uncompleted, with this, so you'll have the background to understand
what _this_ one is about.
It started a few minutes after eleven-thirty, when I'd just closed
up and was starting to check the register. There was a phone call
and a man's voice--not her husband's--asked for Ruth Fleck. She was
still here, getting ready to leave. I called her to the phone but
there was no one on the line when she got there.
You can deduce what I guessed from that, when she admitted she could
think of no possible reason why any man except her husband should be
calling her at that time of night.
I insisted on driving her home, and I also had her wait in the car
while I went up and searched her flat to make sure there wasn't a
reception committee waiting for her there. (I had told her I was
bringing a gun so she wouldn't worry about me doing this; actually
I don't even own one.) Then I escorted her upstairs, made sure she
bolted herself in, and left.
But I didn't go very far. I was more worried than I let her think
(luckily) and I drove off only in case she'd be watching from a
front window or listening for the sound of my car starting. I
U-turned at the corner and drove back the way I'd come, parked on
the opposite side of the street and a quarter of a block away. I'd
decided to watch the doorway of that building until I saw her
husband come home, no matter how late it might be.
She had a code knock of some kind worked out with her husband so
she'd know it was he when he came home and I'd impressed on her
not to throw the bolt otherwise. But I was still worried about her
for two reasons. First, she was confident Ray wouldn't have done any
talking in bars about that code knock, but I wasn't. Second, while
neither the door to her flat nor the bolt on it were flimsy, neither
were they so strong that a husky, heavy man might not be able to
break in with one good hard lunge. And it turned out I was right
on both of those counts.
At about one o'clock I saw, or thought I saw, Ray Fleck come around
the corner and go into the entrance of the building. But he'd hardly
disappeared and I hadn't yet turned the ignition key in the car when
I did the goddamnedest double take and realized that the man I'd
seen had not been Ray Fleck. He'd been about the same height and
weight, but not the same build; his bulk had been across the
shoulders and he had a narrow waist, whereas Fleck's weight
distribution is just the opposite.
And I was out of the car and running. If my second impression had
been wrong, if it had really been Fleck I'd seen, I was about to
make an awful ass of myself, but I was willing to chance that
rather than to take the opposite chance. When I got to the third
floor I saw the door was closed and not broken down--so I must have
been right about Fleck talking; she'd never have opened the door
except to that special knock. I didn't waste time trying the knob,
which was just as well since the door had been bolted again from
the inside; I threw my weight against the door, so hard that I
still have a sore right shoulder, and the door burst open and I
almost fell into the living room.
He'd heard, of course; he was in the doorway of the bedroom and
rushed me before I got my balance. I managed to turn my head in time
to take a vicious blow on the ear (it's still ringing) instead of
the jaw. I took a couple of steps back to get on balance and then
started to move in on him. I'm a wrestler; I wanted to grapple
instead of trying to slug it out. He cooperated, in a way; he rushed
me, head down for a solar plexus butt, both fists cocked low to
start pumping into my stomach or groin as soon as he connected with
the butt.
He couldn't have pleased me more. I moved just enough aside at the
last split second to let his head graze past my right side and then
I clamped down my arm and had a solid headlock on him. I twisted my
body around and twisted his neck with it. Until there was a quite
audible snap as his neck broke, and the fight was over. It had
probably lasted all of three seconds.
I didn't even bother to check whether or not he was dead; if by any
chance he wasn't, he wasn't going to be dangerous for a long time.
I just dropped him and ran into the bedroom.
Ruth was lying on the bed, unconscious, where he'd no doubt carried
her after knocking her out with a single blow as he came through the
doorway.
But otherwise, I'd got there in time. She hadn't been raped, let
alone strangled. Her jaw was beginning to swell but it didn't look
as though it was broken--and I learned later at the hospital that it
wasn't. She was breathing normally, and her heartbeat was okay.
He'd ripped open the housecoat that she was wearing, and torn the
tops of her pajamas. I put a cover over her partial (and very
beautiful) nakedness and then went to the living room again. I
checked the psychopath to see if he was dead; he was. And then I
used the phone to call for a police ambulance. The guy I got on the
phone annoyingly wanted details, but I told him a woman had been
injured by the psycho and I wanted the ambulance fast and I'd do
all the talking they wanted after she was hospitalized. I told him
they didn't have to worry about the psycho any more; they could send
a meat wagon for him at their leisure. He wasn't going anywhere.
Then I hung up.
And then went back to wait by Ruth, in case she should recover
consciousness before the ambulance came.
But I'd sat there only a few minutes, and hadn't heard any sirens
yet, when the phone rang. I answered it and--
Now hold on to your hat, Perry. Here comes the incredible part.
It was the city jail, wanting Ruth Fleck. When I'd convinced them
that she couldn't come to the phone but I'd take any message, I was
told that I should tell her that her husband was dead. He had been
killed--strangled, mind you--by a man in the same double cell with
him. Fleck had given himself up and was being held on suspicion of
theft. His killer was (or had been) a harmless moron who was being
held overnight because he'd made a false confession of murder. He
was unable to give any coherent account of why he'd killed Fleck; he
talked about laughter, and devils, and the police not believing him.
Although they'd known the man was slightly unbalanced mentally, he'd
always been completely harmless, and they'd thought nothing of
putting another prisoner in the same cell with him.
That was all I could learn; tomorrow I'll see what more I can learn,
and I hope it's something that will make things make sense. I hate
coincidences, and it takes a lot to make me believe in one.
Especially one as extravagant as a man getting himself strangled to
death on the same night his wife would, except for my intervention,
have been strangled to death--and not by the same strangler.
The man at the jail said Ray'd _given himself up_. I can't see him
doing that, on any charge, unless he had some damned good reason for
_wanting_ to be in jail.
Maybe the story will come out somehow, or maybe we'll never know.
Ray Fleck can't tell us his end of it. Nor the psychopath his end.
For that reason only, I'm sorry I killed him. That is, I guess I am.
I might have been able to subdue him without killing him, but it
would have taken time. And besides there was the risk of my losing
the fight. What if he'd been able to get in a lucky punch and knock
me out? He'd have strangled me while I was unconscious--and then
he'd have gone back to Ruth. Neither of us would have been alive
right now. No, I couldn't have taken that chance.
Ruth was still unconscious when we got her to the hospital, and they
gave her a sedative so she'd stay that way a while, or rather so the
unconsciousness would blend into normal sleep.
So I haven't talked to her yet. They told me she should have at
least a few hours of normal sleep, and kicked me out. I can go back
at five A.M.
So I have a couple of hours to kill and that's what I'm doing now,
writing this.
Perry, how'd you like to be my best man? Maybe I'm over-confident,
but I don't think so. I'm almost certain that Ruth will marry me,
now that she's free. I don't know how soon; there'll have to be what
people call a decent interval. And it'll be up to Ruth how long that
is. As far as I'm concerned, I'd marry her tomorrow and start out
our honeymoon by attending Ray Fleck's funeral. She'd hardly go
along with that, but she didn't really love him any more and I'm
hoping she'll think that not over a few months will be long enough.
And I'm serious about the best man business. And if Ruth will accept
my plans, you wouldn't even have to come here to do the job. I've
been thinking for a long time of taking a vacation and a trip to
Europe; I'd probably have done it before now if I hadn't fallen in
love with Ruth and wanted to stick around for that reason. And
combining a European tour with a honeymoon would be combining
pleasure with pleasure. We could be married in New York en route,
so you could stand up for us there, stay a week for a look at New
York if Ruth wants to (and I imagine she will; she's never been
there) and then hop off for Europe.
I feel as though I'm dreaming, and I suppose I am--but it's a dream
that will come true, I know it will.
Your old friend,
George Mikos.
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