The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (37 page)

He turned a little pallid around the fringes. I had him winging now.

“Poor old Duffy,” I said. “He saw you eavesdropping, and you slugged him to keep him from raising a row. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill him – I wouldn’t know about that. But you did kill him. You crushed his temple. Then you took a powder, leaving his body propped against the door. That was the pressure I felt when I shoved it open. The resistance was Duffy’s dead weight. When I bounced him across the hall he was already defunct, although I didn’t suspect it. And in the gloom and dusk I didn’t notice the depression in his skull.”

“Now see here—”

“Having murdered one guy, you were in up to your ears.” I ignored his attempted interruption. “And you saw a chance for a fortune in shakedown dough. You pranced into the room as I dragged Duffy over the threshold. Ronald Barclay wheeled his chair out of the closet at the same instant. I thought he was the one who slugged me senseless, but now I know it must have been you.

“You bashed me. Then you croaked Barclay. He was a defenseless cripple and you cooled him, pilfered his thirty-eight and the diary. You toted his remainders out of the room to make it look as if he’d left under his own steam.”

The punk made a raucous sound.

“Sheepdip,” he said.

“Sure, sheepdip,” I said. “I swallowed it. Because I found an alcove where he’d experimented in making artificial legs, I actually believed he had walked out. I was a fool. I should have realized that was impossible. He dabbled in prosthetics, yes; but everything he made was junk. Useless.

“So anyhow you came back, perhaps thinking you’d killed me as well as Duffy and Barclay. I surprised you by being alive and on my feet, with a gun aimed at you. I’ll give you credit – you played it smart. I had the drop on you, and you made the best of a bad situation. Later you got a nice break when the cops refused to come to the hotel. That forced me to lone-wolf it out to Heinrich’s tepee. It left you alone, gave you time to arrange new plans.”

“Such as?” he blustered.

“Such as moving Duffy’s corpse, hiding it where you had already hidden Barclay’s,” I said. “I doubt you ever made a telephone call to Police Headquarters.”

Ole Brunvig growled: “Right. He didn’t.”

“Okay,” I said to the punk. “With your two victims stashed out of sight, you trailed me from inside. You also cut their phone line. Then, when we separated, you faked a fracas on the upper level, drew me in and thought you bumped me. Now you had a free hand to intercept Heinrich when he came home. You could demand a hundred grand blackmail for a diary that might convict him of a kill fourteen years ago.”

I paused. “The fact that Heinrich offered to buy it makes me think that he
did
gimmick the bomb that croaked a prop man and maimed Barclay. I’m not too sorry you knocked him off. If that had been the only murder you pulled tonight I’d be inclined to say the devil with it. But you cooled Duffy and Barclay, and they didn’t deserve it.”

“Can you prove any of this?”

“I can try,” I said, and ankled to a closet on my left, yanked it open.

Two stiffs fell out. One of them wore a hearing aid. Duffy. The other had one arm and no legs. Barclay.

Winthrop’s hand went into the Gladstone he had been packing. It came up with a nickel-plated .38 fowling piece, the rod he had stolen from Ronald Barclay when he glommed the Fullerton diary.

Long before he could trigger the gat, though, Ole Brunvig cut loose with his service revolver. There were two sharp thunderclap barks, spaced so closely together they sounded almost like one. Winthrop yowled like a banshee and slammed against the wall with ketchup spurting from both shoulders.

Brunvig showed his teeth. “Now he knows what it’s like to be maimed. Look at that bag, Sherlock, and see if you can find the diary.”

I found it. And Peter Warren Winthrop took his shattered shoulders to the gas chamber the following month.

Sometimes I wonder if Marian Heinrich still indulges in star baths. One of these nights I’m going up in the hills to see.

It was a few minutes before five o’clock when Ardis Clinton unlocked the rear door of her apartment, and admitted her lover. He was a cow-eyed young man with a wild mass of curly black hair. He worked as a dishwasher at Joe’s Diner, which was directly across the alley.

They embraced passionately. Her body pressed against the meat cleaver, concealed inside his shirt, and Ardis shivered with delicious anticipation. Very soon now, it would all be over. That stupid ox, her husband, would be dead. He and his stupid cracks – all the dullness and boredom would be gone forever. And with the twenty thousand insurance money, ten thousand dollars double-indemnity . . .

“We’re going to be so happy, Tony,” she whispered. “You’ll have your own place, a real swank little restaurant with what they call one of those intimate bars. And you’ll just manage it, just kind of saunter around in a dress suit, and—”

“And we’ll live happily ever after,” Tony said. “Just me and you, baby, walking down life’s highway together.”

Ardis let out a gasp. She shoved him away from her, glaring up into his handsome empty face. “Don’t!” she snapped. “Don’t say things like that! I’ve told you and told you not to do it, and if I have to tell you again. I’ll—!”

“But what’d I say?” he protested. “I didn’t say nothin’.”

“Well . . .” She got control of herself, forcing a smile. “Never mind, darling. You haven’t had any opportunities and we’ve never really had a chance to know each other, so – so never mind. Things will be different after we’re married.” She patted his cheek, kissed him again. “You got away from the diner, all right? No one saw you leave?”

“Huh-uh. I already took the stuff up to the steam-table for Joe, and the waitress was up front too, y’know, filling the sugar bowls and the salt and pepper shakers like she always does just before dinner. And—”

“Good. Now, suppose someone comes back to the kitchen and finds out you’re not there. What’s your story going to be?”

“Well . . . I was out in the alley dumping some garbage. I mean—” he corrected himself hastily, “maybe I was. Or maybe I was down in the basement, getting some supplies. Or maybe I was in the john – the lavatory, I mean – or—”

“Fine,” Ardis said approvingly. “You don’t say where you were, so they can’t prove you weren’t there. You just don’t remember where you were, understand, darling? You might have been any number of places.”

Tony nodded. Looking over her shoulder into the bedroom, he frowned worriedly. “Why’d you do that now, honey? I know this has got to look like a robbery. But tearin’ up the room now, before he gets here—”

“There won’t be time afterwards. Don’t worry, Tony. I’ll keep the door closed.”

“But he might open it and look in. And if he sees all them dresser drawers dumped around, and—”

“He won’t. He won’t look into the bedroom. I know exactly what he’ll do, exactly what he’ll say, the same things that he’s always done and said ever since we’ve been married. All the stupid, maddening, dull, tiresome—!” She broke off abruptly, conscious that her voice was rising. “Well, forget it,” she said, forcing another smile. “He won’t give us any trouble.”

“Whatever you say,” Tony nodded docilely. “If you say so, that’s the way it is, Ardis.”

“But there’ll be trouble – from the cops. I know I’ve already warned you about it, darling. But it’ll be pretty bad, worse than anything you’ve ever gone through. They won’t have any proof, but they’re bound to be suspicious, and if you ever start talking, admitting anything—”

“I won’t. They won’t get anything out of me.”

“You’re sure? They’ll try to trick you. They’ll probably tell you that I’ve confessed. They may even slap you around. So if you’re not absolutely sure . . .”

“They won’t get anything out of me,” he repeated stolidly. “I won’t talk.”

And studying him, Ardis knew that he wouldn’t.

She led the way down the hall to the bathroom. He parted the shower curtains, and stepped into the tub. Drawing a pair of gloves from his pocket, he pulled them onto his hands. Awkwardly, he fumbled the meat cleaver from beneath his shirt.

“Ardis. Uh – look, honey.”

“Yes?”

“Do I have to hit you? Couldn’t I just maybe give you a little shove, or—”

“No, darling,” she said gently. “You have to hit me. This is supposed to be a robbery. If you killed my husband without doing anything to me, well, you know how it would look.”

“But I never hit no woman – any woman – before. I might hit you too hard, and—”

“Tony!”

“Well, all right,” he said sullenly. “I don’t like it, but all right.”

Ardis murmured soothing endearments. Then, brushing his lips quickly with her own, she returned to the living room. It was a quarter after five, exactly five minutes – but
exactly
– until her husband, Bill, would come home. Closing the bedroom door, she lay down on the lounge. He negligee fell open, and she left it that way, grinning meanly as she studied the curving length of her thighs.

Give the dope a treat for a change, she thought. Let him get one last good look before he gets his
.

Her expression changed. Wearily, resentfully, she pulled the material of the negligee over her legs. Because, of course, Bill would never notice. She could wear a ring in her nose, paint a bull’s eye around her navel, and he’d never notice.

If he had ever noticed, just once paid her a pretty compliment . . .

If he had ever done anything different, ever said or done anything different at all – even the teensiest little bit . . .

But he hadn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. So what else could she do but what she was doing? She could get a divorce, sure, but that was all she’d get. No money; nothing with which to build a new life. Nothing to make up for those fifteen years of slowly being driven mad.

It’s his own fault, she thought bitterly. I can’t take any more. If I had to put up with him for just one more night, even one more hour . . . !

She heard heavy footsteps in the hallway. Then, a key turned in the doorlatch, and Bill came in. He was a master machinist, a solidly built man of about forty-five. The old-fashioned gold-rimmed glasses on his pudgy nose gave him a look of owlish solemnity.

“Well,” he said, setting down his lunch bucket. “Another day, another dollar.”

Ardis grimaced. He plodded across to the lounge, stooped, and gave her a half-hearted peck on the cheek.

“Long time no see,” he said. “What we havin’ for supper?”

Ardis gritted her teeth. It shouldn’t matter, now; in a few minutes it would all be over. Yet somehow it
did
matter. He was as maddening to her as he had ever been.

“Bill . . .” She managed a seductive smile, slowly drawing the negligee apart. “How do I look, Bill?”

“Okay,” he yawned. “Got a little hole in your drawers, though. What’d you say we was havin’ for supper?”

“Slop,” she said. “Garbage. Trash salad with dirt dressing.”

“Sounds good. We got any hot water?”

Ardis sucked in her breath. She let it out again in a kind of infuriated moan. “Of course, we’ve got hot water! Don’t we always have? Well, don’t we? Why do you have to ask every night?”

“So what’s to get excited about?” he shrugged. “Well, guess I’ll go splash the chassis.”

He plodded off down the hall. Ardis heard the bathroom door open, and close. She got up, stood waiting by the telephone. The door banged open again, and Tony came racing up the hall.

He had washed off the cleaver. While he hastily tucked it back inside his shirt, Ardis dialed the operator. “Help,” she cried weakly. “Help . . . police . . . murder!”

She let the receiver drop to the floor, spoke to Tony in a whisper. “He’s dead? You’re sure of it?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure I’m sure. What do you think?”

“All right. Now, there’s just one more thing . . .”

“I can’t, Ardis. I don’t want to. I—”

“Hit me,” she commanded, and thrust out her chin. “Tony, I said to hit me!”

He hit her. A thousand stars blazed through her brain, and disappeared. And she crumpled silently to the floor.

. . . When she regained consciousness, she was lying on the lounge. A heavy-set man, a detective obviously, was seated at her side, and a white-jacketed young man with a stethoscope draped around his neck hovered nearby.

She had never felt better in her life. Even the lower part of her face, where Tony had smashed her, was surprisingly free of pain. Still, because it was what she should do, she moaned softly; spoke in a weak, hazy voice.

“Where am I?” she said. “What happened?”

“Lieutenant Powers,” the detective said. “Suppose you tell me what happened, Mrs Clinton.”

“I . . . I don’t remember. I mean, well, my husband had just come home, and gone back to the bathroom. And there was a knock on the door, and I supposed it was the paper-boy or someone like that. So—”

“You opened the door and he rushed in and slugged you, right? Then what happened?”

“Well, then he rushed into the bedroom and started searching it. Yanking out the dresser drawers, and—”

“What was he searching for, Mrs Clinton? You don’t have any considerable amount of money around, do you? Or any jewelry aside from what you’re wearing? And it wasn’t your husband’s payday, was it?”

“Well, no. But—”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was crazy. All I know is what he did.”

“I see. He must have made quite a racket, seems to me. How come your husband didn’t hear it?”

“He couldn’t have. He had the shower running, and—”

She caught herself, fear constricting her throat. Lieutenant Powers grinned grimly.

“Missed a bet, huh, Mrs Clinton?”

“I – I don’t know what you’re—”

“Come off of it! The bathtub’s dry as an oven. The shower was never turned on, and you know why it wasn’t. Because there was a guy standing inside of it.”

“B-but – but I don’t know anything. I was unconscious, and—”

“Then, how do you know what happened? How do you know this guy went into the bedroom and started tearing it apart? And how did you make that telephone call?”