by Jerry eBooks
I went downstairs and I heard you call, “So now you’re going back to Elise?” Your voice sounded a bit frantic, but I didn’t answer. Is that when you decided, Ruth? Or was it when you heard me leave the house? Anyway, you found the gun in my drawer and you must have used it pretty quick, before those pills began to work. Ruth, I just don’t see how you could do a thing like that to me. . . .
WELL, as I was saying, I told Lieutenant Winter all this. All except the part about the sleeping tablets. He has that despicable, prying type of mind, but he didn’t get that out of me. It was still suicide, wasn’t it? You shot yourself. That suited me fine.
I thought that would end it. I thought they’d let me go, but Winter kept after me. “Connor, you say you came back to the house this morning for some clothes. I’d like to hear about that.”
I shrugged. “I intended moving out, that’s all. Sure, I was surprised to see a cop staked out there; it’s the first I knew anything had happened. He told me my wife was dead. I came right down to the mortuary with him.”
“Those were my orders,” Winter nodded. “We weren’t quite sure of you yet, and I wanted to watch your reaction.” He leaned forward. “When I mentioned the .45, you seemed surprised. Why? Didn’t you know it was a gun that did it? How did you think it happened?”
“I don’t know! I never thought she’d do it. Especially with a gun. Poison, sleeping tablets—that’s usually a woman’s way, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed, Connor. That’s why I followed a hunch. There was only one set of prints on that gun. We took your wife’s prints and compared them. They don’t match. Conclusion: it couldn’t have been suicide.”
Well, Ruth, I just couldn’t believe it. And when a man came in from the lab, and reported that the prints matched up with mine, I knew they had me. They had me for a murder I didn’t really commit. Naturally my prints were all over the gun. But where were yours? You handled it last!
I guess you really hated me, Ruth.
Well, they knew they had me, but they began throwing more questions anyway.
“You’ve admitted you quarreled! Is that why you killed her, because of this other woman?”
“I tell you it was suicide! Sure, it was partly my fault she did it. I feel bad!”
Well, they kept at me and kept at me, and it got pretty bad. But they didn’t break me down. Finally Winter said, “Connor, you may as well confess. We’ve got the prints, but we’ve got another clincher, too. Nine out of ten times a suicide will leave a note. Especially women. We looked for a note, and we found one, all right. Only it wasn’t a suicide note.”
Then they showed me the note, Ruth, that they found in your bureau drawer.
It was clever, Ruth. I admit that. Dating it a month back. Saying you were afraid of me, that I had threatened your life several times, and if anything like this should happen . . . Ruth, how could you lie like that? How could you do that to me? But I remember the funny look in your eyes, and I guess you really meant it when you said I’d never have Elise. . . .
Ruth, I’ve finally figured it all out. The part about the prints, I mean. It was very simple after all. I remember you were wearing that thin nightgown thing. You must have handled the gun very carefully, using the lower hem of the nightgown. I guess that’s how you did it.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. They’ve put me in here. Winter has all the evidence he needs, but I think he’s still determined to get that confession.
Ruth, I guess I’m afraid of him.
I just thought I’d write it all down and let you know, about the sleeping pills and the rest of it. Winter must never know, but it’s all right if I tell you, isn’t it? Isn’t it? You always understood about these things. I’ll have to hurry now. I have my tie and belt. I’ve tested them, and they’re strong enough. The window in here is pretty high. If I can just get the belt around the middle bar, I think that’ll do fine.
I can’t help thinking about Winter; he’s so sure he’s going to get that confession! It’ll be a good joke on him, won’t it? Well, so long, Ruth, I’ll be seeing you. As ever,
Jim.
FERRY TO A FUNERAL
James Blish
It was guns against oily rags, but the shoe-shine man knew how to use his weapons, too!
THE BIG door slid aside and the mob poured out onto the planks for the five-thirty boat. The men who wanted seats in the starboard cabin, where they could smoke, were in the lead. They ran on their heels, their bodies tilted back, bouncing up and down, like dolls. They were always good for a laugh.
I didn’t feel much like laughing. The shoeshine business is usually pretty good on the commuter’s boats, but who the hell likes the shoe-shine business?
I shifted the strap over my shoulder and put the dingy cushion under the other arm. Despite the cushion, my knees hurt. They always did by five. Behind the trotting mob a big trailer truck hooted angrily, and after a while the deck crew got the apron’s vehicle lane cleared and the trailer came aboard. I waited subconsciously for the deck to sink, but it didn’t. The trailer was empty, evidently.
It disappeared in the tunnel and a station wagon and some private cars came on. In the men’s cabin the air was already blue. With my weak lungs I hated to go in there, but that’s where the business was, and I needed the business.
Thank God it wouldn’t go on much longer. You’d be surprised what a man can sock away, just shining shoes at fifteen cents a throw for five years, shuttling back and forth the Upper Bay on Staten Island boats. Of course, unless you were dumb, you didn’t take a job like that by choice. You took it because you were older than the good business liked, and because your lungs wouldn’t let you heave a shovel for honest wages.
And pretty soon, if you were patient and managed to keep from hating the commuters—brother, how would you like spending five years on your knees in front of a commuter? But pretty soon you had a wad, and could skin out for Arizona where the air would let you work at a decent job. You kept your wad in the nice conservative old Wheat Exchange Trust and you counted it every week and breathed patiently at the soup people breathe in New York, and waited.
* * *
The dock hands cast her loose and a rumbling and thrashing took up under her tail. The deck shivered. It was a nice day and I thought about just standing on the upper deck and enjoying the ride. But they wouldn’t allow my blue uniform up there and besides there were fifteen centses waiting for me in the smoke.
I went into the men’s cabin, coughed, and said “Shine. Shinamup. Shine-ear. Shine.”
They all had their Tellys and their Tribs in front of their faces, except for the guys who had Mirrors and Newses. Mirrors and Newses don’t usually want shines.
“Shine. Shinamup. Shine-ear. Shine.
Headlines quivered in the smoke and then a guy with a big, seamed face looked around his Telly, and said, “Boy.”
I put the cushion down in front of him and knelt on it, and took brushes and rags out of my box. I put paste on his shoes and brushed them and then I put the paste bottle down and reached for a rag. The newspaper was right above me. I always get a good look at the bottom half of the nation’s business when I shine shoes.
The bandits struck at the height of mid-morning rush, when the bank loot was jammed with brokers and messengers. The injured teller, Burton C. Dillard, of 3545 Abalone St., the Bronx, told the police of his attempt to trip the bandits.
I stopped shining the shoe and just looked. The little brass ticket over the window next to the one where I passed in my money had always had “Mr. Dillard” over it. I hadn’t liked the guy; he always acted like he owned the bank and I stuck to Mr. Shaver who was polite and knew my name. Of course there were lots of Dillards. I looked farther up.
TWO DEAD, ONE INJURED
IN MID-MORNING ROBBERY
Half Million Snagged
From Wheat Exchange Branch
New York, N.Y., Dec. 2. At least three masked men, one described as speaking “with a Sicilian accent,”
escaped with $504,000 from the Village Branch of the Wheat Exchange Bank this morning. Amid a flurry of shots, which killed two tellers and injured a third.
I squatted on my knees and stared at it until the guy with the seamed face rattled the paper and glared at me. I had just found out that one of the dead men was Mr. Shaver when he said,
“Studyin’ up fer somethin’ ?”
“No,” I said. “Excuse, please.”
“Money you guys make,” he said harshly, “You’d think you’d buy yer own paypas.”
I swallowed and got to work on the other shoe. Old Seamy didn’t give me a tip for hunching on his paper, but I didn’t care. A dime more or less didn’t matter any more.
Bank deposits are insured up to five grand by the federal government, but I knew how long it would take to pay everybody off. My name begins with a T—they’d get to me about next November at the earliest.
Another year on my knees, shining shoes and breathing soup. I knew I wouldn’t last it out.
I wanted to get a paper and read the rest, but the City of New York doesn’t allow bootblacks to loiter on its boats. I walked on down the line, and even the way I felt I couldn’t get over the habits of five years. I said “Shinamup” and shined some shoes and put the little coins in my pocket.
WHEN I got to the front of the boat I pushed open the door against the wind. The air outside was clear, but I didn’t breathe any better. I wanted to crawl into a nice black hole and cover up my head.
The front end of the trailer was at the mouth of the vehicle tunnel with its big paws under its chin and chocks under the paws. There were two guys high up in the cab, and after a minute I saw that one of them was signalling me. I shifted the strap and went over. I felt sick and tired.
The guy put his feet down on the running board, which made it hard on my back, and I got to work. The other man, the driver, sat with his hands on the wheel and looked straight ahead. He looked funny, as if he hadn’t had enough sleep; he needed a shave and his skin was white under the whiskers, like he was clenching his teeth.
I got to work. At the same time the deck stopped quivering and the breeze died down. The trip was almost over; the captain was swinging her around to come into the St. George slip.
Right away I smelled smoke—cigarette smoke. It didn’t strike me funny at first. Folks are allowed to smoke in the tunnel if they stay in their cars.
But neither of the two guys in the cab was smoking.
The trailer was long, so I knew I couldn’t be smelling the smoke from the car behind it; with the wind blowing toward the stern, I couldn’t even have smelled that poison smog in the men’s cabin out here.
“C’mon, c’mon, quitcher dreamin’,” the guy with the pointy shoes said, “Git it over with, you—”
After that he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either. But I thought plenty. When I was a kid, the other kids used to call me by the same word he’d just used. The Italian kids, that it. My mother was a Sicilano and other kinds of Italians like to think Sicilianos are scum. All of a sudden I was glad of it—otherwise I’d never have recognized that word.
And I remembered that the big trailer hadn’t joggled the boat when it came on. But that didn’t mean there couldn’t be men in.it. Or half a million buck’s worth of bills.
I kept quiet until I’d finished the other shoe, got paid and collected. All the time I had been listening for voices; but I didn’t hear any. Finally the props at the front of the boat began to churn, slowing us up.
I went back into the tunnel. When I got to the end of the trailer I got behind it and stuck my head against the crack at the far side of the tailboard.
“A coupla minutes,” somebody said softly. “Cheest, I’ll be glad when we re rollin’.”
Another voice inside said, “Don’t git yer bowels in an uproar. They ain’t never goin’ to figure this dodge in a million.”
“I still wish I’d stopped that third joker’s mouth—”
That was plenty for me. I ducked down again and looked under the trailer. There were shoes coming down the side of it toward me. Nice, pointy, newly-shined shoes. I scrammed.
“Hey, you—”
I dodged around the pillar that holds the upper part of the engines. The door to the ladder below was partway open and there was a wad of oily waste on the metal. I bent over and scooped it up and beat it for the front of the boat again.
The guy behind me shouted. Up front, the usual mob was out, straining against the ropes, waiting to be let off so they could grab seats on the busses. Commuters never stop running. I’ll bet they even run in bed.
I PUSHED through them. What the hell was I going to do now? It I told a deckhand or one of the mates they wouldn’t dock the boat and there’d be shooting. If I didn’t tell anyone, the big truck would go off with all my dough—and maybe with me, too, if that pair of pointed shiny shoes caught up with me.
I had the wad of waste, and I had matches. The dock authorities on Staten Island were always scared spitless of fire, I knew that. They’d had a big one here in 1946 and now there were always engines and men right on tap.
But there was only one way to pull that trick off without hurting people and I had to be on the upper deck to do it. I shoved my way in against the current of people and started to plough up the stairs. I saw some of them looking at me, mentally taking my number off the big white button on my hat.
But I finally got to what they call the “upper salon.” Pointed-Shoes wasn’t far behind me, but he wasn’t making any noise about it any more. The same mob was up here, waiting to surge up the gangplanks.
The big boat nosed into the slip and slid off the pilings. The deck lurched and everybody two-stepped sideways. Down below the trailer engine fired a couple of times and began to roar.
I shoved forward. The women muttered and the men cussed. When I got out onto the prow one of the mates saw me and started to push through from the other side to give me hell, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t him I was scared of.
I ducked under the rope and ran forward to the front taffrail. The nose of the big Diesel was right under me, and a deck-hand was pulling her chocks out. The boat thudded home in the ship and both the hands up here converged on me.
I got the matches out in a hurry and lit one, then lit the whole rest of the pack. I dropped the blaze into the waste wad.
There was a minute when I thought it wasn’t going to catch.
“Look out!” I yelled. “It’s a bomb!”
Somebody screamed and the whole mob tried to trample backwards over itself. Down below the gates went up and the Diesel snored. The big truck lurched and began to roll.
I hung onto the blazing wad. My hands were blistering but I hung on. The crowd was melting for the back end of the boat and both deck-hands had jumped out onto the upper gangplanks.
When the cab of the trailer got under me I let go and hit the deck. A second later everything went “BRROOM!” and socked me in the head and I went out.
* * *
THERE WERE all kinds of fire sirens going off but I couldn’t tell whether thy were between my ears or outside. I felt as if I’d been hit with a red-hot man-hole cover.
“He’s coming around,” somebody said. “What an eye! He should have been a riveter.”
I opened one eye. I got a worm’s view of two cops and a lot of other people. There was a guy kneeling next to me, unwinding a long roll of gauze.
“The money.” I said. It seared my throat to talk, but I had to know. “Did they—those guys in the truck—”
“Yeah, they had it. Take it easy. You were right above it when their gas tank let go. Lucky you had the deck in between.”
One of the cops grinned. “That was no dumb luck, doc. He figured it that way—the deckhands seen the whole thing.” He looked down at me. I don’t guess a cop ever looked at a bootblack in just that way before. He made me feel like Edgar Hoover.
“The fire—”
“No damage,” the cop said. “You can�
��t strike a match in a ferry slip without getting hit with a hose. Buddy, you got yourself a reward before we even got the posters up!”
Things were beginning to blur out for me again but I felt better just the same. The doc went on unwinding gauze, and something about the way he was kneeling struck me funny.
“You gonna—give me a—shine, doc?” I said, and passed out.
THE END
ONE MAN’S POISON
Curt Hamlin
The dark young man was happy to fill Mr. Petten’s prescription. . . . Poison for two? Gladly!
THE SIGN rather amused Mr. Petten. He thought it clever. He saw it, of course. His eyes were small, deep-set in his fat cheeks like halved grapes pushed into a bowl of lumpy gruel, but those eyes missed very little. It wasn’t the big sign that interested him. That was simply the name—HARITH’S—lettered in tarnished gilt over the door. The other was quite small, a footnote done in black paint at a lower corner of the single display window.
Prescriptions for Difficult Cases Chuckling to himself, he pushed open the door and waddled inside.
The outer room of the place was no more than six-by-eight, empty except for an elderly, straight-backed chair that leaned wearily against one wall. At the back were a grilled window and a narrow doorway with a swinging door. Mr. Petten moved over and peered between the bars of the window. Inside, a dark young man in a white, linen coat was hunched over a table, inking entries into a large ledger. He raised his head as Mr. Petten stared in at him, and nodded pleasantly. “Yes?”
“I’m George Petten,” said Mr. Petten ponderously.
“Petten?” The young man marked his place in the ledger and closed it slowly, his eyes thoughtful. “Petten. Yes. Of course. Petten.” He rose and came through the swinging door, blotting ink-stained fingers with a wad of cotton. “What can I do for you?”