So Nude, So Dead
Contents
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Acclaim for the Work of ED McBAIN!
“McBain is so good he ought to be arrested.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The best crime writer in the business.”
—Houston Post
“The author delivers the goods: wired action scenes, dialogue that breathes, characters with hearts and characters that eat those hearts, and glints of unforgiving humor…Ed McBain owns this turf.”
—New York Times Book Review
“You’ll be engrossed by McBain’s fast, lean prose.”
—Chicago Tribune
“McBain has a great approach, great attitude, terrific style, strong plots, excellent dialogue, sense of place, and sense of reality.”
—Elmore Leonard
“McBain is a top pro, at the top of his game.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“A virtuoso.”
—London Guardian
“McBain…can stop you dead in your tracks with a line of dialogue.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“I never read Ed McBain without the awful thought that I still have a lot to learn. And when you think you’re catching up, he gets better.”
—Tony Hillerman
“Full of noir touches and snappy dialogue.”
—New York Newsday
“Ed McBain is a national treasure.”
—Mystery News
“Raw and realistic…The bad guys are very bad, and the good guys are better.”
—Detroit Free Press
“A story so sharp you could shave with it.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“McBain is the unquestioned king…Light-years ahead of anyone else in the field.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“As good as it gets…compulsively readable.”
—Seattle Times-Post Intelligencer
“Vintage stuff. The dialogue is sharp, the plotting accomplished, and the prose bears the McBain stamp—uncluttered, unpretentious, ironic.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“If you’re looking for a sure thing, pick this one up.”
—Syracuse Herald-American
“A major contemporary writer…His prose [approaches] a kind of colloquial poetry.”
—William DeAndrea, Encyclopedia Mysteriosa
“The McBain stamp: sharp dialogue and crisp plotting.”
—Miami Herald
“A master storyteller.”
—Washington Times
“McBain keeps you reading and keeps you guessing…The book is a winner.”
—London Sunday Telegraph
“Eileen!” he called, unable to contain himself any longer, wanting to wake her, needing the shot now as a man on a desert desperately needs water. This was life and death. This was the difference between being able to breathe, and dying.
“Eileen! Wake up, wake up. Help me.”
He was shivering now, barely able to keep his body steady. He walked rapidly across the room and stooped over the bed.
“Eileen!” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
He reached down and touched her shoulder gently, his fingers trembling. “Eileen. Eileen, snap out of it.”
He shook her more violently, his lips moving frantically, gulping great gulps of nothing in his throat. “Come on, kid,” he pleaded, “come on now, let’s go, come on.”
With a sudden violent movement, he ripped back the sheet, exposing the length of her body relaxed against the whiteness of the bed. His eyes traveled down to the hollow of her navel.
He noticed the holes then.
They were small holes, just to the right of her navel. They were rimmed with red, and there was a dried river of red across the flatness of her stomach. The redness stretched out beneath her, staining the sheet in gaudy brilliance…
OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS BY ED McBAIN:
THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE
CUT ME IN*
*coming soon
SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:
GETTING OFF
by Lawrence Block
QUARRY’S EX
by Max Allan Collins
THE CONSUMMATA
by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
CHOKE HOLD
by Christa Faust
THE COMEDY IS FINISHED
by Donald E. Westlake
BLOOD ON THE MINK
by Robert Silverberg
FALSE NEGATIVE
by Joseph Koenig
THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH
by Ariel S. Winter
THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS
by James M. Cain
SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT
by Max Allan Collins
WEB OF THE CITY
by Harlan Ellison
JOYLAND
by Stephen King
THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN
by Elissa Wald
ODDS ON
by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange
THE WRONG QUARRY
by Max Allan Collins
BORDERLINE
by Lawrence Block
BRAINQUAKE
by Samuel Fuller
EASY DEATH
by Daniel Boyd
QUARRY’S CHOICE
by Max Allan Collins
THIEVES FALL OUT
by Gore Vidal
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-120)
First Hard Case Crime edition: July 2015
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 0UP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright © 1952, 1953, by Hui Corp. Copyright renewed.
All rights reserved. Novel originally published as
The Evil Sleep!
by Evan Hunter and reprinted in 1956 as
So Nude, So Dead
by Richard Marsten.
Cover painting copyright © 2015 by Greg Manchess
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-1-78116-606-2
E-book ISBN 978-1-78329-361-2
Design direction by Max Phillips
www.maxphillips.net
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
The new ones, the old ones, they’re all now dedicated to
the love of my life—my wife, Dragica.
Chapter One
There was the jangling, of course. It wouldn’t be morning without the jangling. It was as if someone deliberately gathered up every nerve end in his body and tied them together every night. And in the morning—this morning, every morning—he’d sit up in bed with the ache in his body. It was almost delicious, especially when he knew he had the stuff waiting for him. It was painful too, but painful in a sweet way, almost as if the wanting were too exquisite to bear.
God, he needed a shot.
He sat up in bed, the sheet forming a little tent over his bent knees. He was big in a sinewy, leather-thonged way. His shoulders, bare against the backboard of the bed, were broad and muscular. His hair was almost blond, that light shade of brown that streaks gold in the sun. He wore it cut close to his head on the sides, fuller on top. A widow’s peak cut into his forehead pointed to a straight nose, a firm mouth and jaw. Only his eyes did not fit the rest of his face. They were gray, recessed deeply on either side of his nose, pocketed in shadow.
They pinpointed with light now as he stared around the room. It was a strange one, but that didn’t surprise him. He’d wakened in plenty of strange rooms since he’d been on the stuff. The rooms were all alike, so long as he had a shot waiting. He yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. He was beginning to tremble already.
That was when he noticed the blonde beside him in the bed. Her hair was spread out over the pillow like a golden fan, mist-like, glistening under the rays of the sun that streamed through the open blinds. She was pale, her skin drawn taut over high cheekbones.
He scratched his head. Beneath the jangling that was becoming more insistent in his blood stream, he began to remember. As if to check his memory, he looked down at the girl again.
She had a strong chin, and a neck that swept away from the chin in a smooth, clean line. The sheet reached to just below her breasts. His eyes dropped to her arm, lying over the sheet palm upward.
The marks were there. The marks that looked something like healed burns or old scars. The hundreds of puncture marks, one over the other, blended together into a telltale smear. The addict’s coat of arms. Yes, this was the girl, all right.
He looked down at his own arm, his eyes fastening on the identical marks. Again the revulsion seized him, the knowledge that slapped him in the face whenever he saw the marks, or whenever he looked into his eyes in a mirror. And yet, in spite of the revulsion, there was anticipation as he stared at the needle scars.
Somewhere in this room, there were sixteen ounces of heroin.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, careful not to disturb the girl. Sixteen ounces of heroin! His tongue ran over his lips excitedly, as he thought greedily of the drug. He would wait, yes, he would hold it off until the need grew unbearable. But first he would find it, get it all ready for when he really needed it, when he couldn’t stand it any longer.
He put on his pants, excited now at the thought of teasing himself, pleased because he knew the stuff was waiting for him. And a cold analytical part of his mind told him he was behaving like a fool.
Yes, yes, he knew that, dammit. He knew it.
He shut his mind to the glimpse he’d had of himself. He glanced at the girl on the bed. Man, she was really out. How much of the stuff had they taken last night?
He tightened his belt and began thinking of the events that led to this moment.
He was sitting at a table. Yes, he remembered that quite well. What was the name of the place? Johnny’s? No, he hadn’t been to Johnny’s since
…
Ace High, that was the name. It was late, and she was singing. She sang well, sort of deep and throaty, from way inside her. She wore a long-sleeved blouse and he remembered wondering why she covered her arms
—
the addict looking for another addict, the blind seeking the blind. Christ, how had he gotten into this? What had happened to the guy he used to be? Where had he lost himself?