In Terry’s heart there was an icy, pervading fear. He felt spiritually naked and more than a little stupid… Eight months of servile degradation in the house of a louse, and nothing to show for it, in the end, but the final degradation of an ugly death.… In the end, they’d trailed him to his last contact as easily as trailing a kid from a jam pot.… By the exercise of tremendous effort, he managed to keep his voice casual, just a little bored.
“You think so? Just for having a couple beers with all these strippers?”
Sulla laid a soft hand on his arm. The hand was perfectly smooth, except for a tuft of long black hairs about an inch above the base of the little finger. The fingers dug gently into the muscle of Terry’s arm.
“It’s not the strippers. It’s not the beer. And it’s too late to play it innocent, Terence. You been the fair-haired boy. You been the baby brother who got all the breaks without working for them. You should’ve taken care of yourself.”
His first reaction was one of vast relief.
He’d been tailed, all right, but not because he was suspected of high treason. It was because of Liza. Because the great Guy Sebastian had an average, gray little soul like any average citizen—and was simply jealous.
Terry wanted to laugh.
The desire ended abruptly with his consciousness of hard steel digging into his ribs. Even with a layer of cloth over it, the steel was recognizable as the snout of a gun. He remembered with sudden renewal of the cold wash of fear that treason and philandering would come, in this case, to the same end. Either would come, in some quiet place, to the same ugly death. And worst of all, maybe, Terence Pope would not be at the Municipal Terminal at midnight, where he was supposed to be.
Out of the near past, repeating themselves in his mind, were words he remembered vividly: “I’d never do you any harm if I could help it. I’d never do it, Terry.” And, in another voice: “Don’t louse it up, Terry. Not for any woman.”
Bright red lips curled back off white, protuberant teeth.
“Let’s go, Terence. Just nice and quiet, like a good boy.”
CHAPTER 3
He lay on a hard bed in the bedroom of a two-room apartment in an old brick house on the lower south side of town. It had been light in the room when he came, but now it had been dark for a long time. There was no exit from the room, other than the one out through the living room, unless he wanted to jump three stories into a brick-paved court. There was a small bathroom off the bedroom, but there was no exit from the bathroom, either.
Through the partially open door to the living room, weak yellow light sliced a wedge from the darkness. Out in the living room, tilted against the wall by the hall door, the liquid-eyed man with bright red lips whose name was Sulla sat in a straight chair and cleaned his nails with a shiv. A gun lay handy in his lap. His nails didn’t really need cleaning, but apparently he liked the nice, cold feel of the shiv in his hands.
Terry couldn’t actually see Sulla from the bed, but he knew he was doing these things because he had been doing them steadily for hours. He didn’t seem to tire from his position on the hard, straight chair. No doubt his fat hips and buttocks were adequate cushioning, making him impervious to discomfort in the area.
After a while, Terry got up from the bed and swept an arm in circles above his head in the darkness until his hand contacted a hanging string. He pulled the string, and a 60-watt bulb came to feeble life near the ceiling. Moving to the open door, he looked across the living room to the tilted Sulla. Red lips parted wetly over gleaming teeth. The shiv held still, arrested in its useless work.
“It’s eleven o’clock,” Terry said. “This going to be a formal execution, maybe? Death at dawn and all that stuff?”
Sulla shook with silent laughter, his belly bouncing above the handy gun.
“Nothing so nice, Terence, boy. You don’t rate any ceremony. Like I said, the boss is busy, and he wants to see you before you go. I think maybe he wants to see that you don’t go too fast. I think maybe he wants to see that you stay around awhile to enjoy things.”
Terry turned back out of the doorway and crossed the bedroom to the bath. Above the lavatory, a bulb was screwed into a tarnished brass socket projecting from the wall. He pulled the short chain hanging from the socket, heard the crackle of a faulty connection, saw a brief flurry of sparks preceding the diffusion of light. Looking at the reflection of his face for a moment in the mirror, he wondered what was in it to make a gal like Liza go off the deep end. He tried immediately to close his mind to the thought, because the thought of Liza was now an added burden of pain for which he had no heart.
Turning, he stood leaning against the lavatory and looking at the old-fashioned water heater at the foot of the bathtub. He let his eyes drift up and along a string clothesline that someone had stretched back and forth between the walls above the tub. After a minute, he knelt beside the heater and turned the tap on the gas ring, which emitted a soft hissing and an acrid odor.
He closed the tap and went back into the bedroom. Stripping the bed of a dirty sheet, he carried the sheet into the bathroom and began tearing it into strips. Some of the strips he stuffed into the cracks around the frame of the small window above the tub.
Removing the string, he tied one end to the end of the chain hanging from the old socket above the lavatory. And then he turned on the gas full force under the heater and went out, quickly threading the string through the keyhole of the door and closing the door behind him. The remainder of the strips he stuffed in the crack around the door.
Sitting on the bed, he waited fifteen minutes, checking the time by the watch on his wrist. When the time had passed, he was beginning to smell, in spite of the stuffing, the faint odor of gas. Getting up, he took the mattress from the bed and dropped it against the living room wall. He returned, taking the loose end of the string, and went over to the wall. He lay down between the wall and the mattress, then, saying something like a prayer, he pulled the string.
There was a great, cushioned puff, as if the air itself had flown apart into its elements, and the bathroom door was suddenly hanging by one hinge. The concussion rolled against Terry like a hard wave, plastering him to the wall, and he fought to gather and retain his senses in a siege of silence which seemed, after the explosion, vast and eternal. Actually, it lasted a few seconds only, and then the flabby but feline Sulla was coming through the door in a crouch, gun ready.
Pushing out from the wall, using the hard edge of his hand like a hatchet, Terry hacked down viciously into the fatty base of Sulla’s neck. The gun clattered to the floor, and the fat hood sagged to his knees. Crowding the advantage, Terry got a handful of oily hair and jerked back until the round, olive face was parallel to the ceiling at the end of spinal tension.
Then, using the heel of his hand, he smashed down and skullward upon Sulla’s nose. He felt the bones splinter, forced back and upward toward the brain, and he let Sulla twist slowly off his knees and flop. If the hood was not dead, death would be soon, and Terry, without checking, retrieved the gun from the floor and went out.
Below, on a dark, narrow street illuminated inadequately in spots by old lamps, he turned toward the heart of the city and began to walk. Time seemed to move faster, flowing past him with a rush, so after a few minutes he began to trot to keep up. Ten minutes later, on a broader, brighter thoroughfare, he found a cruising cab and crawled in. It was then twenty minutes to twelve.
“Municipal Air Terminal,” he said. “You win a bonus if we’re there by midnight.”
* * * *
By flouting a couple of red lights, the cabbie won the bonus. Terry made it a fin, and when he went through the wide glass doors of the main terminal entrance into the high, light waiting room, it was just thirty seconds before the hour. An amplified voice was announcing the arrival of the flight that carried the courier. Passengers would enter through gate six, the voice said.
Terry found the gate and saw, beyond it, leaning indolently against the wall, the thin m
an in the loose cord suit. His eyes moved over Terry indifferently. Lazily, he shook a cigarette from a pack and struck fire from a gopher.
Turning away, Terry moved to a magazine stand and bought a newspaper. He stood leaning against the counter with the paper unfolded before him. Now and then he looked up at the thin, indolent figure beyond the gate.
Passengers were emerging from the gate. A fat woman wearing silver fox, walking stiffly. A long-legged looker with red hair, eyes lighting like lamps as a young guy broke forward to meet her. A heavy man with jowls looking important in imported tweeds. And then the one. A man of medium height, carrying a brown cowhide bag. He had a thin black mustache, and he walked with a slight limp in his left leg. He turned right toward a wall of public lockers. Behind him, the thin man in cords dropped his cigarette on the floor and moved in lazy pursuit. Another man, nondescript, separated from the group outside the gate and moved in time with the thin man, parallel and a little to the rear.
The man with the limp stopped in front of the lockers, setting the cowhide bag on the floor at his feet and digging into a pocket for a coin. Behind him, the thin man and the nondescript man moved in, converging. From his place at the magazine stand, Terry could see the three of them standing suddenly immobile, frozen in a strange and lifeless tableau.
Folding his newspaper, he laid it on the counter and walked swiftly toward them. As he moved, the thin man stooped and picked up the cowhide bag. Passing them, without slowing or speaking, Terry took the bag from the thin man’s hand and went on out a side entrance into a drive that served the parking lot.
A black Oldsmobile was purring at the exit. A man was sitting under the wheel of the Olds. When Terry came out, the man opened the door, stepped out into the drive, and Terry moved into his place, depositing the bag on the seat beside him.
“Luck, Terry,” the man said, and Terry lifted a hand from the wheel in brief acknowledgment, setting the automatic transmission in action with the pressure of his foot on the accelerator.
And now the hard part was supposed to be over. Supposedly all that remained was for the fair-haired boy in the house of Sebastian to carry a cowhide bag full of heroin into a place where he was welcome. The trouble was, the boy’s hair was no longer fair. Terence Pope was no longer welcome in the home of his benefactor…
Behind the wheel, driving steadily within the established speed limits, Terry laughed softly and without humor. For a moment he wondered what had happened to Liza, but it was a thought he didn’t want to face, and he put it away.
In front of the stone, steel and glass brick stack that housed Sebastian’s apartment, he got out, carrying the bag, and went through the entrance quickly into the lush lobby. Sitting on their necks in club chairs, blending with the background, two well-dressed men followed him with their eyes to the bank of elevators. No particular interest was apparent in their attitudes.
The elevator boy, resplendent in scarlet cloth and gold braid, said, “Good evening, Mr. Pope,” and Terry moved to the back of the elevator. He stood with his shoulders touching the steel back of the box, breathing deeply and regularly, fighting for control of his pulse. In his temples, there was a sharp, rhythmic hammering.
On Sebastian’s floor, he went down to the door that opened into the hall of the huge apartment and set the bag on the floor at his feet. For a minute, he stood there listening to the soft whine of the elevator descending in its shaft, and then he took Sulla’s gun from the inside pocket of his coat. Holding the gun in position for a quick chop, he put a thumb on the button beside the door and leaned his weight against it.
When the stony-faced servant opened the door, Terry shifted sideways as Sulla’s gun chopped down. The snout of the gun struck the servant a blow on the forehead, and he spun away, folding up quietly on the asphalt tile. Stooping, Terry picked up the bag and moved past him down the hall to the door of Sebastian’s office.
Standing, listening, he heard beyond the door the hoarse distortion of Sebastian’s voice, and after a while a husky response that was Liza’s. Without waiting longer, he pushed the door open in front of him and stepped into the room, the gun in one hand, the bag hanging from the other.
Across the room, standing behind his big desk, Sebastian turned his head to face him, the bold face beneath the cropped hair settling suddenly into lines of deadly stillness.
To his left and slightly beyond him, standing with one hand resting on the top of a liquor cabinet, Liza Gray sucked breath with a sharp, aspirate whistle. The flesh under one of her eyes had gone black, shading on the cheekbone to dark yellow. Her lips were swollen, and the left line of her jaw was also swollen, showing bruises.
At least, though, she’d been saved for possible repentance and future use.
Sebastian’s voice was soft, reflective. “Well, well. If it isn’t Terry. I wasn’t expecting you, boy. I’ll have to talk to someone about it.”
Terry laughed brutally, amazed at the swift violence of his response to the marks on Liza’s face.
“If you mean Sulla, it won’t do any good. Sulla’s dead. You’re dead, too, in a way, Sebastian. As a big shot, you’re a dead duck.” He swung the bag underhand, sending it in a high arc to land on the surface of the big desk. “This is your property, I think. A guy brought it in tonight from the South.”
Sebastian’s eyes widened, then narrowed. His strong, closed face suddenly cracked open in a wash of stark fear. Then, just as suddenly, the face closed again upon a look of relief, and at that moment Terry heard the flat voice behind him.
“Don’t move, sonny. Don’t move at all. And just let the gun drop.”
Cursing himself for not taking the time to check the results of a glancing blow, Terry let his fingers relax, felt the comforting touch of the gun slip down and away from them.
Over his shoulder, he saw the blood-smeared stone that was a servant’s face. Almost at the same time, catching the motion in the corner of his eye, he saw Liza reach for the neck of a bottle on the liquor cabinet. Following through, she burned it across the room in a sidearm delivery that really wasn’t half bad for a dame.
Terry dropped, and above him there was a blast of powder, and his head was wet with a bourbon shower. From the floor, he drove up and over the desk at Sebastian, leaving the hood-servant to bourbon and Liza and luck. And in his attack was all the leashed hate that was the product of eight servile months. Under his flailing fists, Sebastian’s face crumpled and altered in a red, wet sheen.
Turning from his completed job, he saw that Liza was in control. Sulla’s gun was in her hand, and the servant was quiet against the wall.
The man was clutching a hand from which blood welled brightly.
Across the space between them, which was really the space between the bad beginning long ago and the good beginning which might now be, Terry said softly, “Liza, baby!”
Her eyes closed on tears, and she said, “Terry, Terry.…”
Outside the room, the hall door banged open, and feet pounded down the asphalt tile.
HELL FOR HANNAH
Originally published in Dime Detective Magazine, August 1953.
Hannah and Ivan were dancing. The music was soft and sultry, the stuff of muted strings, and they moved to its Latin rhythms in a floating intimacy. Her head was back, her eyes were closed, and her lips stirred in a whisper of ecstasy. They were a beautiful pair.
When the music slopped, they returned to their table, and I got up and went over. I bowed to Ivan very politely and said, “May I have the next dance with my wife?” And he stood and returned the bow, also very politely, and said, “But of course, señor.” Then he turned and made another bow to Hannah, and she stood up with us, her face white and her eyes dark with sorrow. The sorrow was there because she didn’t like hurting her husband, but it would have been better for me if she had. It would have been better if she’d sneered nastily and spit in my eye.
The music started again, and she came into my arms, but not very far in. I tried my best, and I t
hink she did, too, but it still wasn’t any good. It was like dancing with a wooden doll.
“I’m sorry, Carey,” she said.
I said, “Don’t be sorry. Be gay.”
“Please don’t be bitter. Don’t hate Ivan and me.”
“Who hates anyone? I love you, honey. I love Ivan, too. He’s a big, beautiful, Mexican god.”
“I tried to lick it, Carey. You know I tried. Remember how I asked you to take me away, back when it first started and there was still time? But you wouldn’t do it because you said there was no use running and you’d have to meet the competition where you found it.”
“Sure, I remember. Big, proud me.”
“I wanted our marriage to last. I wanted it to be forever.”
“Marriage!” I said brightly. A technicality, honey.”
Oh, yes, only a technicality. When the big passion comes, even though it’s late, all the intimate years and all the bright plans are reduced in an instant to the status of a dreary and bothersome technicality. Marriage, then, is a scrap of paper, the somewhat incredible ghost of a relationship that once existed.
We’d been on a kind of second honeymoon…Mexican honeymoon. It was something I’d promised her for a long time. After the novel’s published, I’d said. And now the novel was out, and quite a few people thought it was worth buying, and we had been on the second honeymoon. Everything had been wonderful and terribly intense, and then, all of a sudden, everything had been Ivan. The honeymoon was finished, I was finished, and there was no one but Ivan left in the world for Hannah. For me, there wasn’t even a world left. There was only sun and sand and a clutter of senseless stars.
I looked down at her now, and there was a kind of puzzled, rousing-from-a-dream look in her eyes, and I thought for a moment that the past was alive again and she was coming back my way. Then it was gone, and she was gone, and it was time to give up.
“I’ll go away tomorrow, Carey. Ivan and I. It’ll be easier then. You can forget all about me.”
The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack Page 6