HCC 115 - Borderline

  The bitch, he thought. The stupid little bitch.

  Couldn’t she guess there was only one way to make him happy?

  A FIRE AT NIGHT

  Originally published in the

  June, 1958 issue of MANHUNT

  CHAPTER ONE

  He gazed silently into the flame. The old tenement was burning, and the smoke was rising upward to merge against the blackness of the sky. There were neither stars nor moon in the sky, and the street lights in the neighborhood were dim and spaced far apart. Nothing detracted from the brilliance of the fire. It stood out against the night like a diamond in a pot of bubbling tar. It was a beautiful fire.

  He looked around and smiled. The crowd was growing larger, as everyone in the area thronged together to watch the building burn. They like it, he thought. Everyone likes a fire. They receive pleasure from staring into the flames, watching them dance on the tenement roof. But their pleasure could never match his, for it was his fire. It was the most beautiful fire he had ever set.

  His mind filled with the memory of it. It had been planned to perfection. When the sun dropped behind the tall buildings and the sky grew dark, he had placed the can of kerosene in his car with the rags—plain, non-descript rags that could never be traced to him. And then he had driven to the old tenement. The lock on the cellar door was no problem, and there was no one around to get in the way. The rags were placed, the kerosene was spread, the match was struck, and he was on his way. In seconds the flames were licking at the ancient walls and racing up the staircases.

  The fire had come a long way now. It looked as though the building had a good chance of caving in before the blaze was extinguished. He hoped vaguely that the building would fall. He wanted his fire to win.

  He glanced around again, and was amazed at the size of the crowd. All of them pressed close, watching his fire. He wanted to call to them. He wanted to scream out that it was his fire, that he and he alone had created it. With effort he held himself back. If he cried out it would be the end of it. They would take him away and he would never set another fire.

  Two of the firemen scurried to the tenement with a ladder. He squinted at them, and recognized them—Joe Dakin and Roger Haig. He wanted to call hello to them, but they were too far away to hear him. He didn’t know them well, but he felt as though he did. He saw them quite often.

  He watched Joe and Roger set the ladder against the side of the building. Perhaps there was someone trapped inside. He remembered the other time when a small boy had failed to leave the building in time. He could still hear the screams—loud at first, then softer until they died out to silence. But this time he thought the building had been empty.

  The fire was beautiful! It was warm and soft as a woman. It sang with life and roared with joy. It seemed almost a person, with a mind and a will of its own.

  Joe Dakin started up the ladder. Then there must be someone in the building. Someone had not left in time and was trapped with the fire. That was a shame. If only there were a way for him to warn them! Perhaps next time he could give them a telephone call as soon as the blaze was set.

  Of course, there was even a beauty in trapping someone in the building. A human sacrifice to the fire, an offering to the goddess of Beauty. The pain, the loss of life was unfortunate, but the beauty was compensation. He wondered who might be caught inside.

  Joe Dakin was almost to the top of the ladder. He stopped at a window on the fifth floor and looked inside. The he climbed through.

  Joe is brave, he thought. I hope he isn’t hurt. I hope he saves the person in the building.

  He turned around. There was a little man next to him, a little man in shabby clothes with a sad expression on his face. He reached over and tapped the man on the shoulder.

  “Hey!” he said. “You know who’s in the building?”

  The little man nodded wordlessly.

  “Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Pelton,” said the little man. “Morris Pelton’s mother.”

  He had never heard of Morris Pelton. “Well, Joe’ll get her out. Joe’s a good fireman.”

  The little man shook his head. “Can’t get her out,” he said. “Can’t nobody get her out.”

  He felt irritated. Who was this little jerk to tell him? “What do you mean?” he said. “I tell you Joe’s a helluva fireman. He’ll take care of it.”

  The little man flashed him a superior look. “She’s fat,” he said. “She’s a real big woman. She must weigh two hundred pounds easy. This Joe’s just a little guy. How’s he gonna get her out? Huh?” The little man tossed his head triumphantly and turned away without an answer.

  Another sacrifice, he thought. Joe would be disappointed. He’d want to rescue the woman, but she would die in the fire.

  He looked at the window. Joe should come out soon. He couldn’t save Mrs. Pelton, and in a few seconds he would be coming down the ladder. And then the fire would burn and burn and burn, until the walls of the building crumbled and caved in, and the fire won the battle. The smoke would curl in ribbons from the ashes. It would be wonderful to watch.

  He looked up at the window suddenly. Something was wrong. Joe was there at last, but he had the woman with him. Was he out of his mind?

  The little man had not exaggerated. The woman was big, much larger than Joe. He could barely see Joe behind her, holding her in his arms. Joe couldn’t sling her into a fireman’s carry; she would have broken his back.

  He shuddered. Joe was going to try to carry her down the ladder, to cheat the fire of its victim. He held her as far from his body as he could and reached out a foot gingerly. His foot found the first rung and rested on it.

  He took his other foot from the windowsill and reached out for the next rung. He held tightly to the woman, who was screaming now. Her body shook with each scream, and rolls of fat bounced up and down.

  The damned fool, he thought. How could he expect to haul a fat slob like that down five flights on a ladder? He was a good fireman, but he didn’t have to act like a superman. And the bitch didn’t even know what was going on. She just kept screaming her head off. Joe was risking his neck for her, and she didn’t even appreciate it at all.

  He looked at Joe’s face as the fireman took another halting step. Joe didn’t look good. He had been inside the building too long. The smoke was bothering him.

  Joe took another step and tottered on the ladder. Drop her, he thought. You goddamned fool, let go of her!

  And then he did. The woman slipped suddenly from Joe’s grip, and plummeted downward to the sidewalk. Her scream rose higher and higher as she fell, and then stopped completely. She struck the pavement like a bug smacking against the windshield of a car.

  His whole being filled with relief. Thank God, he thought. It was too bad for the woman, but now Joe would reach the ground safely. But he noticed that Joe seemed to be in trouble. He was still swaying back and forth. He was coughing, too.

  And then, all at once, Joe fell. He left the ladder and began to drop to the earth. His body hovered in the air and floated down like a feather. Then he hit the ground and melted into the pavement.

  At first he could not believe it. Then he glared at the fire. Damn you, he thought. You weren’t satisfied with the old woman. You had to take a fireman too.

  It wasn’t right.

  The fire was evil. This time it had gone too far. Now it would have to suffer for it.

  And then he raised his hose and trained it on the burning hulk of the tenement, punishing the fire.

  STAG PARTY GIRL

  Originally published in the

  February, 1963 issue of MAN’S MAGAZINE

  1

  Harold Merriman pushed his chair back and stood up, drink in hand. “Gentlemen,” he said solemnly, “to all the wives we love so well. May they continue to belong to us body and soul.” He paused theatrically. “And to their husbands—may they never find out!”

  There was scattered laughter, most of it lost in the general hubbub. I had a glass of co
gnac on the table in front of me. I took a sip and looked at Mark Donahue. If he was nervous, it didn’t show. He looked like any man who was getting married in the morning—which is nervous enough, I suppose. He didn’t look like someone threatened with murder.

  Phil Abeles—short, intense, brittle-voiced—stood. He started to read a sheaf of fake telegrams. “Mark,” he intoned, “don’t panic—marriage is the best life for a man. Signed, Tommy Manville…” He read more telegrams. Some funny, some mildly obscene, some dull.

  We were in an upstairs dining room at McGraw’s, a venerable steakhouse in the East Forties. About a dozen of us. There was Mark Donahue, literally getting married in the morning, Sunday, tying the nuptial knot at 10:30. Also Harold Merriman, Phil Abeles, Ray Powell, Joe Conn, Jack Harris and a few others whose names I couldn’t remember, all fellow wage slaves with Donahue at Darcy & Bates, one of Madison Avenue’s rising young ad agencies.

  And there was me. Ed London, private cop, the man at the party who didn’t belong. I was just a hired hand. It was my job to get Donahue to the church on time, and alive.

  On Wednesday, Mark Donahue had come to my apartment. He cabbed over on a long lunch hour that coincided with the time I rolled out of bed. We sat in my living room. I was rumpled and ugly in a moth-eaten bathrobe. He was fresh and trim in a Tripler suit and expensive shoes. I drowned my sorrows with coffee while he told me his problems.

  “I think I need a bodyguard,” he said.

  In the storybooks and the movies, I show him the door at this point. I explain belligerently that I don’t do divorce or bodyguard work or handle corporate investigations—that I only rescue stacked blondes and play modern-day Robin Hood. That’s in the storybooks. I don’t play that way. I have an apartment in an East Side brownstone and I eat in good restaurants and drink expensive cognac. If you can pay my fee, friend, you can buy me.

  I asked him what it was all about.

  “I’m getting married Sunday morning,” he said.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” He looked at the floor. “I’m marrying a…a very fine girl. Her name is Lynn Farwell.”

  I waited.

  “There was another girl I…used to see. A model, more or less. Karen Price.”

  “And?”

  “She doesn’t want me to get married.”

  “So?”

  He fumbled for a cigarette. “She’s been calling me,” he said. “I was…well, fairly deeply involved with her. I never planned to marry her. I’m sure she knew that.”

  “But you were sleeping with her?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And now you’re marrying someone else.”

  He sighed at me. “It’s not as though I ruined the girl,” he said. “She’s…well, not a tramp, exactly, but close to it. She’s been around, London.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I’ve been getting phone calls from her. Unpleasant ones, I’m afraid. She’s told me that I’m not going to marry Lynn. That she’ll see me dead first.”

  “And you think she’ll try to kill you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That kind of threat is common, you know. It doesn’t usually lead to murder.”

  He nodded hurriedly. “I know that,” he said. “I’m not terribly afraid she’ll kill me. I just want to make sure she doesn’t throw a monkey wrench into the wedding. Lynn comes from an excellent family. Long Island, society, money. Her parents wouldn’t appreciate a scene.”

  “Probably not.”

  He forced a little laugh. “And there’s always a chance that she really may try to kill me,” he said. “I’d like to avoid that.” I told him it was an understandable desire. “So I want a bodyguard. From now until the wedding. Four days. Will you take the job?”

  I told him my fee ran a hundred a day plus expenses. This didn’t faze him. He gave me $300 for a retainer, and I had a client and he had a bodyguard.

  From then on I stuck to him like perspiration.

  Saturday, a little after noon, he got a phone call. We were playing two-handed pinochle in his living room. He was winning. The phone rang and he answered it. I only heard his end of the conversation. He went a little white and sputtered; then he stood for a long moment with the phone in his hand, and finally slammed the receiver on the hook and turned to me.

  “Karen,” he said, ashen. “She’s going to kill me.”

  I didn’t say anything. I watched the color come back into his face, saw the horror recede. He came up smiling. “I’m not really scared,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” he added. “Maybe it’s her idea of a joke…maybe she’s just being bitchy. But nothing’s going to happen.”

  He didn’t entirely believe it. But I had to give him credit.

  I don’t know who invented the bachelor dinner, or why he bothered. I’ve been to a few of them. Dirty jokes, dirty movies, dirty toasts, a line-up with a local whore—maybe I would appreciate them if I were married. But for a bachelor who makes out there is nothing duller than a bachelor dinner.

  This one was par for the course. The steaks were good and there was a lot to drink, which was definitely on the plus side. The men busy making asses of themselves were not friends of mine, and that was also on the plus side—it kept me from getting embarrassed for them. But the jokes were still unfunny and the voices too drunkenly loud.

  I looked at my watch. “Eleven-thirty,” I said to Donahue. “How much longer do you think this’ll go on?”

  “Maybe half an hour.”

  “And then ten hours until the wedding. Your ordeal’s just about over, Mark.”

  “And you can relax and spend your fee.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m glad I hired you,” he said. “You haven’t had to do anything, but I’m glad anyway.” He grinned. “I carry life insurance, too. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to die. And you’ve even been good company, Ed. Thanks.”

  I started to search for an appropriate answer. Phil Abeles saved me. He was standing up again, pounding on the table with his fist and shouting for everyone to be quiet. They let him shout for a while, then quieted down.

  “And now the grand finale,” Phil announced wickedly. “The part I know you’ve all been waiting for.”

  “The part Mark’s been waiting for,” someone said lewdly.

  “Mark better watch this,” someone else added. “He has to learn about women so that Lynn isn’t disappointed.”

  More feeble lines, one after the other. Phil Abeles pounded for order again and got it. “Lights,” he shouted.

  The lights went out. The private dining room looked like a blackout in a coal mine.

  “Music!”

  Somewhere, a record player went on. The record was Stripper, played by David Rose’s orchestra.

  “Action!”

  A spotlight illuminated the pair of doors at the far end of the room. The doors opened. Two bored waiters wheeled in a large table on rollers. There was a cardboard cake on top of the table and, obviously, a girl inside the cake. Somebody made a joke about Mark cutting himself a piece. Someone else said they wanted to put a piece of this particular wedding cake under their pillow. “On the pillow would be better,” a voice corrected.

  The two bored waiters wheeled the cake into position and left.

  The doors closed. The spotlight stayed on the cake and the stripper music swelled.

  There were two or three more lame jokes. Then the chatter died. Everyone seemed to be watching the cake. The music grew louder, deeper, fuller. The record stopped suddenly and another—Mendelsohn’s Wedding March—took its place.

  Someone shouted, “Here comes the bride!”

  And she leaped out of the cake like a nymph from the sea.

  She was naked and beautiful. She sprang through the paper cake, arms wide, face filled with a lipstick smile. Her breasts were full and firm and her nipples had been reddened with lipstick.

/>   Then, just as everyone was breathlessly silent, just as her arms spread and her lips parted and her eyes widened slightly, the whole room exploded like Hiroshima. We found out later that it was only a .38. It sounded more like a howitzer.

  She clapped both hands to a spot between her breasts. Blood spurted forth like a flower opening. She gave a small gasp, swayed forward, then dipped backward and fell.

  Lights went on. I raced forward. Her head was touching the floor and her legs were propped on what remained of the paper cake. Her eyes were open. But she was horribly dead.

  And then I heard Mark Donahue next to me, his voice shrill. “Oh, no!” he said. “…It’s Karen, it’s Karen!”

  I felt for a pulse; there was no point to it. There was a bullet in her heart.

  Karen Price was dead.

  2

  Lieutenant Jerry Gunther got the call. He brought a clutch of Homicide men who went around measuring things, studying the position of the body, shooting off a hell of a lot of flashbulbs and taking statements. Jerry piloted me into a corner and started pumping.

  I gave him the whole story, starting with Wednesday and ending with Saturday. He let me go all the way through once, then went over everything two or three times.

  “Your client Donahue doesn’t look too good,” he said.

  “You think he killed the girl?”

  “That’s the way it reads.”

  I shook my head. “Wrong customer.”

  “Why?”

  “Hell, he hired me to keep the girl off his neck. If he was going to shoot a hole in her, why would he want a detective along for company?”

  “To make the alibi stand up, Ed. To make us reason just the way you’re reasoning now. How do you know he was scared of the girl?”

  “Because he said so. But—”

  “But he got a phone call?” Jerry smiled. “For all you know it was a wrong number. Or the call had been staged. You only heard his end of it. Remember?”

  “I saw his face when he took a good look at the dead girl,” I said. “Mark Donahue was one surprised hombre, Jerry. He didn’t know who she was.”