by Robert Bloch
“I’m working on my master’s degree in sociology at the university,” he said. “With this job, I can gather material for a study and get paid for it at the same time.”
After that, they had a very interesting chat. Gilbert told her some of his adventures as a cabbie and she related some amusing classroom incidents. It turned out that Gilbert’s nephew had been in her class last year. He had been a delightful child.
What a pleasant way to end a difficult evening, Mildred thought when she paid her fare. She added a generous tip; as a student, Gilbert no doubt needed it. She noted with approval that he waited until she was in her car, had locked the door, started the ignition and switched on the headlights before he pulled away with a wave of farewell.
The PTA was going to use the accident to press the city council to put a chain-link fence around Riverside Park. Five days later, Mildred was peeling the adhesive strips off her blisters and deciding it wouldn’t be necessary to replace them, when her doorbell rang. They looked like a nice professional couple—now, whose parents were they? She thought she’d met at least one of all her students’ parents.
“Ms. Mildred Thorson? Police.” They displayed their badges in unison.
“Won’t you come in? I don’t have any coffee, but I could make some herbal tea,” she offered. “Or there’s orange juice.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, “but please don’t bother.”
“We’d like to ask you some questions about an accident,” the man added.
“I’ll do anything I can to help.”
“Ms. Thorson, were you at the Green Macaw Lounge last Friday evening?”
Mildred smiled. “I teach second grade, you know. It really wouldn’t be suitable for me to frequent such a place.”
“Ms. Thorson, do you own a pale pink dress with a round neck trimmed with lace?” the woman officer asked. “We do have a search warrant.” She pulled a document out of an inside pocket of her jacket.
“Yes, I have a dress like that.”
“Can I ask where you were last Friday evening?” the man inquired.
She smiled archly at him. “Of course you can ask. You also may ask. ‘Can’ has to do with the physical ability to perform an action, while ‘may’ requests permission to do it.”
The plainclothes officers exchanged glances. The man rolled his eyes in a manner Mildred found quite unprofessional. After several moments, the woman spoke again.
“May we. . .that is, we’d like you to come to the police station with us, Ms. Thorson.”
“Why, of course. My students will be fascinated to hear about this. I wonder if it would be possible to arrange a tour? I think it would give them a real feeling for what the police actually do, don’t you?”
As they were going out the door, she thought she heard the man mutter, “A second-grade teacher, for Chrissake. What the hell’s the world coming to?”
Mildred wondered, too. Imagine an officer of the law using such language!
Red Devils
Hugh B. Cave
See Colin.
See Sheldon admiring Colin.
See three other boys, making five altogether, lounging in a nearly new Continental in the parking lot of a Burger Mac on Florida’s east coast.
They are five young sons of Florida east coast wealth, and bored tonight, as usual.
“I read about it in a newspaper clipping my dad’s sister sent from Los Angeles.”
The speaker is the driver, Colin Casserly. He is seventeen, blond, and handsome. He wears chinos with a name on them. He wears a striped sport shirt that cost his parents forty-odd dollars. That is more money than Colin has ever in his life earned by working.
“About these gangs out there,” he concludes, aiming the words at the rearview mirror in which he can see the three youths in the rear.
“But the paper said they’re not gangs of street punks like the ones in New York.” This speaker is Sheldon Smikle, seated at Colin’s side in front. He is Colin’s best friend and most eager ally. He too is seventeen. “What they do—and just for kicks, see, because they don’t need money any more’n we do—what they do is swipe expensive cars and sell ’em. Or break into rich people’s homes for stuff to steal. Or mug people for money and jewelry.”
Colin Casserly now turns on the front seat, hamburger in hand, to grin at the three in the rear. “They have real cool names. We could have one, too.”
“Like, say, the Red Devils,” echoes Sheldon Smikle. “And when we’re on a job, we’d wear red sweats and red ski masks.”
A backseat boy with pimples vaguely protests. “Gee, I dunno, guys. If my folks ever found out I was into a thing like that—”
“What’s to worry about?” Colin sneers. “You think bank presidents know what goes on in the real world?”
“Well, doctors do.” This backseater wags his head in slow motion. “You’d be surprised how much my dad knows.”
“Are you chicken, too?” Colin demands of the third boy in back.
“Well, no!”
“Tell you what.” Colin stuffs the last of his burger into his mouth and swallows it. Wipes mustard off his lips with the back of his hand. Clears his throat. “Tell you what, then. Shel and I will show you tomorrow night.”
The rear-seat three say “Huh?” by letting their mouths silently drop open.
“My folks are throwing a party,” Colin continues. “Their twentieth anniversary. We promised to help out.”
“Help out doing what?” a doubter wants to know.
“I dunno. Serve drinks, most likely. Keep the buffet stocked; my mom’s big for buffets. Anyway, we’ll pick out some guy who don’t know us and wait for him in the condo parking lot.”
“And mug him, Colin?”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, we won’t hurt him. Just shove a gun in his belly button and take his billfold, to show you guys how easy it is. I got that twenty-two automatic I bought in the hock shop a while back, for kicks.”
Sheldon Smikle frowns at this. “We really don’t wanna hurt anybody, Colin.”
“I said that. We’re just gonna scare him.”
“What if he don’t scare?”
“He will. I got an idea.” Colin directs his grin at the three in back again. “Well, you guys? If we show you how it’s done, will you be ready to join up? Are we gonna be the Five Red Devils?”
It is only natural for them to nod their heads in acquiescence, mumbling. “Well, all right, Colin,” “Okay, Colin,” “Whatever you say, Colin.” After all, he is the one they look to for new ways to make life exciting. He is their Crown Prince of Cool.
“All ri-i-ght, then!” With a grin of triumph he swings around to grab the wheel. The Continental leaves rubber on the Burger Mac blacktop as it roars out to A1A.
See a man and a woman, later that evening, dining in a posh restaurant overlooking the ocean. The woman is beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, slim and happy. The man is neither handsome nor otherwise, taller than she, a few pounds overweight. Not obese, by any means—just enough over the norm to look easygoing and nonviolent. He too is happy.
They are Manon Rowe and Roger Randall. They have known each other two months and feel good about each other.
“Would you, Rog?” Manon reaches across the table to touch the back of his hand. A big hand. This man is a Vietnam vet. “I hate to go without you.”
“You could go with someone they know.” His smile has an imp in it, and talking to people is easy for him because he owns and runs a respected private detective agency.
“Uh-uh.” She shakes her lovely head. “If we don’t go together, I go alone.”
“What’s their names? Maybe I know them.”
“Bradford and Eileen Casserly. Twenty years married tomorrow, and they’re nice, really. He owns Casserly Jewelers.”
“And they live in your condo?”
“Two floors below me.” Manon’s is a two-bedroom penthouse apartment on the fifteenth floor. “You won’t have to do anything much, Rog. Just
be yourself while the women look you over and envy me. What do you think?”
Roger’s brown eyes focus on her face, and he smiles now without the imp. He has known many women in his forty-odd years of living, but never until now one with whom he felt so inclined to try for a permanent relationship. Until a year ago she shared her condo apartment with her mother, whose money had bought it. Mother was dead now of a heart attack.
Manon works as a hygienist with Roger’s dentist. They met when she cleaned his teeth her first day on the job. He can still shut his eyes and see her lovely face hovering over his while he told himself he had to know her better.
“What time shall I pick you up?” he asks her now.
“You mean you’ll go?”
“Of course I’ll go. Whither thou goest. . .” He turns his hand over to clasp hers, and leans toward her. “You’d better get used to having me around, lady.”
They agree that he will call for her the following evening about seven. Still holding hands, they then look out the restaurant window beside them and see a ship passing, so bright with lights it can only be a cruise ship.
“That’s an idea,” Roger Randall says.
“What’s an idea?”
“For a honeymoon. Would you consider me for a husband, to have and frequently hold, if I dangle that as bait?”
“You don’t need to dangle any bait,” she says without hesitation.
“You will, then? You’ll marry me?”
“How about next week, on my day off?”
To push back the panic, Roger squeezed his eyes shut and told himself that it must have happened to hundreds of others before him and could happen to anyone at any time. He’d got drunk, was all. He’d had too much to drink at the Casserlys’ party. Now he was stretched out on his own bed in his own apartment, fully dressed even to shoes, and didn’t know how he had got there.
Try to remember, he ordered himself. You know you picked Manon up at her place in that same building around seven. You know what she looked like: ravishing in a backless white linen dress that showed off her golden tan so much it had you drooling. You know you walked her down two floors to the anniversary celebration where she introduced you to Eileen and Brad Casserly and their guests.
Everything was okay at that point. More than okay, because Manon was so obviously pleased to have you for her escort. You even got to thinking about that talk you had with her in the restaurant, when you looked out the window and saw the cruise ship passing.
God, he felt awful. His head when he moved it felt as though it were full of steel balls that banged against one another, careening off to thud against the inside of his skull. His eyes when he opened them refused to focus on the ceiling and saw everything through a swirl of colors. His whole body ached, and his right hand felt full of pain.
He lifted that arm and looked at the hand, or tried to, and, yes, it seemed to be swollen. The skin was off the knuckles, leaving them red and raw, with blood caked in the hollows between. Must have fallen, he thought. On something solid and rough, like concrete. But where? When?
You were at the party, Randall. With Manon in that stunning dress without a back. Lots of people there. Two kids serving drinks. Eileen Casserly’s famous buffet overflowing a table that filled one whole end of the living room. Music from an expensive stereo. Twenty, thirty people present. Lots of talk. You drank your usual Scotch and water and no more than your usual two or three before it hit you. So why did it hit you so hard?
With the ball bearings clunking inside his skull and the rest of his body hurting like a bad tooth, he shut his eyes and struggled to recall details. When had he first felt he was losing control?
About ten-thirty, he decided. Yes. He could be pretty sure because Manon and he had been talking to some woman and her husband at the buffet table, and the woman had asked the time and he’d said it was about ten-thirty, and she’d said to her husband, “We’ll have to go soon, darling.” And to Manon and himself by way of explanation she had added, “We came up from Miami and Harry just hates I-95 at night, they drive so fast.”
Ten-thirty, then. Yes. Manon and he were talking to the couple from Miami, and he had just finished a drink handed to him about fifteen minutes before by one of the kid bartenders, and was standing there clutching the glass because he felt it was going to explode. Or he was going to explode.
So what happened then, Randall?
You put the glass down on the buffet table, remember. And you shook your head like a dog coming out of the ocean, because the room was spinning and you had to make it stop. The room was changing colors, too. Instead of the expensively furnished apartment you had walked into a while before, it was now like one of those disco joints with psychedelic lights twisting and weaving over the walls. It and the people in it had gone crazy, and you kept shaking your head in a struggle to get things back to normal. And the couple from Miami backed away, staring at you as though they were scared. And Manon put a hand on your arm and said, “What is it, Rog? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” you said.
“Is it the liquor? Have you had too much?”
You looked at the empty glass on the table, the glass that had threatened to explode in your hand, and you said, “I’ve only had three. I don’t get this way on three.”
“Let’s leave, anyway,” she said. “Let’s go up to my place where you can lie down.”
Had they said good night to their host and hostess? Yes, he seemed to remember doing that. And he definitely remembered Manon putting an arm around him and steering him down the interior hall to the elevator because, of course, he was in no condition to climb any stairs. They rode a car up to her floor and went along that to her door, and she opened the door with her key and led him inside and insisted he lie on the sofa in the living room.
“I’m going to make you some coffee,” she said. “Maybe it was only three drinks you had, but those kids could have made them stronger than you’re used to. You know how kids are.”
Funny, but even in her apartment the lights were disco-crazy. You lay there with your eyes shut and tried to blot them out, he thought, but could see them as clearly through your eyelids as when your eyes were wide open. All the time she was making coffee that’s what you thought about, remember? How could you see the lights just the same when you had your eyes squeezed shut?
The coffee did help, though. You sat up and gulped it down, desperately wanting relief from the churning colors and the vertigo and the even worse feeling that your mind was coming apart. Manon sat beside you, holding your hand and stroking it and saying things like “You ought to see a doctor tomorrow, Rog” and “There may be more to this than just a drink too many” and, finally, “Would you like to stay here tonight, darling, instead of trying to go home?”
You said no, home wasn’t that far and you were feeling better already, thanks to the coffee. So she poured you a second coffee and you drank that, and then you left, mumbling apologies for causing so much trouble and being urged by her to see a doctor if you still felt below par in the morning.
“Remember,” she said at the door when she kissed you, “I’m counting on that honeymoon cruise you promised me.”
So you walked to the elevators and pushed a button, and a car came up and you stepped into it. And then. . .what?
The lights had been fading since he drank the coffee, he recalled. Now as the elevator door hummed shut they went out altogether and so did the dome light in the roof of the car. Whatever had hit him after that third drink at the party was happening again. Not in the same way, though. Now instead of being crazy with colors, his world was all dark.
You ought to go back to Manon, he thought. You’re in no shape to drive home. But it was too late. He had already pushed the lobby button, and the elevator was on its way down.
As he lay on the bed remembering it now, he mostly remembered how the darkness had affected his mind. Remember what you decided? You convinced yourself that that wasn’t any ordinary elevator in a b
eachfront condo. It was a cage they put you in after you died, and its destination was hell. That’s why the blackness. Oh God, how black it was! As though some slimy, living monstrosity had oozed from the cage walls and wrapped itself around you, to suck the juices out of you while the cage carried you down.
Down. . .down. . .to hell.
Remember what you did, Randall? You threw yourself against the elevator door and tried to open it. While that damned cage was still descending you tried to force the door open and get out. Of course, you couldn’t. It wasn’t designed to be opened from the inside by the clawing hands of a freaked-out madman. That must be how you skinned these knuckles, though.
Lifting his hands, he stared wide-eyed at his knuckles again. At the hardened blood in the hollows between them. And remembered more.
You could have stopped the elevator by pushing the stop button, he thought. Why, for God’s sake, didn’t you do it? Stopping it at a floor, you could have escaped by pushing another button to open the door. But you didn’t. All you could think of was that you were dead and headed for hell, going down to the fiery furnace for a living cremation. You’d stepped into that elevator on the fifteenth floor, and you acted like a madman the whole way down.
Not to hell but to the lobby. Yes. The car stopped at the lobby. The door opened and you stumbled out.
Then what?
A phone was ringing beside the bed. As he turned on his side to reach for it with his left hand, he saw the watch on his wrist. Its hands stood at seven-twenty. Seven-twenty what? Morning or evening?
“Hello?” he managed, though it came out so feebly he had to lick his lips and repeat it.
“Roger? How are you?”
He wet his lips again. “Hi, hon. All right, I guess.”
“I worried about you going home the way you were. I couldn’t sleep. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I am now.”
“Good, because I’ve got something terrible to tell you. You remember young Colin Casserly, who served drinks at the party?”