So Nude, So Dead

by Ed McBain

  “It’s about the murder of Eileen Chalmers.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s all? Just a small oh?”

  “What do you want me to say? The girl is dead.”

  “Sure. And you killed her.”

  “What?” Babs snorted contemptuously. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I was, Babs. No more now, though. I’m thinking straight for the first time in three days.”

  “Why would I kill Eileen? She was my friend.” She drew in on the cigarette again. “This is absurd, Ray.”

  “Not so absurd. Eileen was your friend, true. But Sanders was your business partner.”

  “Business?” A surprised look crossed her face, leaving her brows high on her forehead. “Really, Ray—”

  “It took me a while to figure it. You, Sanders, and Massine. The triumvirate. Sanders picked up the stuff on his little jaunts, and you and Massine distributed it. It was really simple. When the Kramer band went on the road, Charlie pushed the stuff. You did the same thing with the Lewis combo, all over the country. Nationwide distribution. A wonderful setup.”

  “What stuff are you referring to?”

  “Cut it, Babs. I’m on to you, don’t you see? I know all about it now, so we can stop kidding each other.”

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “All right,” Ray said tiredly. “We’ll do it the hard way. I’ll explain it. I’ll explain it all. Then you’ll know I’m not bluffing. Then we can call the police.”

  “You’d better explain,” she said. She put out her cigarette, lighted another one.

  “The heroin. Sanders supplied, you and Charlie distributed. That was fine—until you decided you wanted more from Sanders than a simple business partner. You wanted Sanders, period. That might have worked, too. He liked you and he dated you, and he probably slept with you.”

  “You’re getting insulting,” Babs said.

  “Still playing the great lady. You didn’t feel so ladylike when you found out Sanders was seeing Eileen, did you? I can imagine the jealous fit you threw when you learned about her coming baby. That must have really given you a laugh. It was so amusing that you decided to kill Eileen, get her out of the way so that you’d have a clear path with Sanders. No second fiddle for Barbara Cole. All or nothing at all.”

  Babs was silent now. She puffed meditatively on her cigarette, watching Ray as he spoke.

  “I should have tumbled when I saw this place. Your clothes, the whole layout, all smelled of money. More money than any band vocalist ever made. But narcotics is a lucrative business. That should have tipped me. It didn’t. I’m slow, I guess. I didn’t catch on.

  “And then you gave me another tip, a tip that should have blown the whole thing sky-high. But I was considering a few nice things you did that morning, and the full meaning didn’t hit me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your note. A full band rehearsal, you said. You said you had to be there. The first time I met Kramer, he was having a rehearsal. I asked him where his vocalist was, and he told me she never rehearsed with the band. It didn’t click when I read your note. I was too busy concentrating on the last part of it, the part that asked me to wait for you, the part that said you’d have something for me. You probably meant your body, and you were right in thinking I’d wait around for that. It could have meant heroin, though I doubt if you planned it that way, and I’d sure as hell wait for that, too. Either way, you wanted to make sure I’d be there when the cops arrived. That’s why you pressed my suit, or had it pressed, and washed my shirt. You were putting me in a nice frame of mind, to make sure I’d stay there and get nabbed by the cops.”

  “That’s silly. I could have turned you in at any time. Why should I have sneaked around about it?”

  “That puzzled me, too. I wondered why you hadn’t turned me in before. But then I realized that the cops showed up only after I told you I thought Eileen had been killed for the heroin. You knew then that I knew about the missing horse. Before that you weren’t sure.

  “You see, I kept wondering why anyone would bother to kill Eileen. If they wanted the heroin, all they had to do was take it. Eileen and I were both higher than the moon. I figured then that whoever’d killed her had wanted her dead besides wanting the heroin. I thought this was Sanders until just a little while ago. He had every reason to kill her, being the father of her unborn child, and wanting to get her out of his hair. But Sanders didn’t know the horse was gone until he read about it in the papers. If he’d killed Eileen and lifted the heroin, he wouldn’t have had me beaten to find out where it was.

  “The way I figure it now, the heroin was just an accident. You came up to Eileen’s room with the express purpose of killing her. You couldn’t have known that she’d stolen the stuff from Sanders that afternoon. But when you found it there, you picked it up, and that gave you more ideas.”

  Babs turned her back to Ray, walked over to a cabinet against the wall and leaned on it, facing him again.

  “Oh, I know you killed Eileen, Babs. You killed Massine, too. It had to be you. In the beginning, Massine was the only person I told about the sixteen ounces, and he was surprised as hell. When I left him, I called you about half an hour later. You weren’t home. I went to see Sanders then, and when I went back to Massine, he was dead. Sanders couldn’t have done it. Massine had contacted someone else, someone he could tell his startling information to. That someone was you. I knew it wasn’t Sanders because I was with him all the while. Does that make sense?”

  “Why should I kill Massine if what you say is true? What possible purpose would that serve?”

  “Simple. This is where your bigger ideas come in. You had sixteen ounces of heroin now—pure heroin, worth a fortune. Sanders didn’t know you had it, and Massine didn’t know, either. With Eileen out of the way, you had smooth sailing from there on in with Sanders. But why split the take three ways? You’d switched to Kramer’s band when the Lewis combo got stalled down in the Ace High. You sure as hell couldn’t distribute on a band that stayed in one place. Eileen was happy to make the change; anything to get away from her husband. All right, there were now two of you on Kramer’s band, you and Massine. Why take Massine into the picture at all? When he told you he knew about the sixteen ounces, you probably told him to stay right where he was, that you’d be right over. You went over, all right, and you put a hole between his eyes.”

  Babs smiled. She turned and opened a drawer in the cabinet. When she faced him again, she was holding a Luger in her hand. A silencer was attached to the muzzle of the gun. He looked at the weapon uncomprehendingly for a moment. He had not suspected he was so close to goading her into action, and yet he was not really surprised by the gun because she had turned and lifted it from the drawer as casually as if she were reaching for silverware.

  “Is that the gun you used?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. Quickly, she slid out the clip. She put the clip on the cabinet behind her and then she held out the gun to Ray. “Here,” she said, “take it.”

  He took the Luger, puzzled. She was back at the cabinet again, opening another drawer, and then turning once more. This time she was holding a candy tin on her open palm, the same tin Eileen had showed him three nights ago in the hotel. His pulse quickened at the sight of it.

  “I was right, then,” he said.

  “Except about one thing. If I’d planned to share this with Sanders, why didn’t I tell him about it?”

  He thought this over, his forehead creasing. “Maybe you planned to cross him, too. How should I know?”

  Babs’s lashes lowered, and a sensuous look crossed her face. “You came along, Ray. You came along, and I didn’t want to share this with anyone but you. That’s why I didn’t tell Sanders I had it. That’s why I let him go on his own wild-goose chase searching for it.”

  “Bull!” Ray shouted. “If you cared so much about me, why’d you tell Sanders where his goons could pick me u
p? That was another tipoff, Babs. I called you just before I went to see Eileen’s doctor. You were the only one who knew where I was. And then suddenly I’m picked up and worked over. Funny how you don’t think of these things at the time. You’re too caught up in the present. I was too busy getting my brains beat out.”

  “I had to do that, Ray,” she said. She had reached into the drawer again, her back to him, and he saw the glint of a metallic object as she placed it on top of the cabinet. “If I hadn’t told Tony where to find you, he’d have suspected me. That would have ruined all my plans. All my plans for you and me, darling.”

  “You didn’t have to tell him anything, Babs. He didn’t know I’d called you.”

  “He was here when you phoned.”

  “Pretty damned convenient, all right.”

  “He was here because he was worried about the loss of the heroin. Do you realize how much that tin is worth, Ray? We’ll be rich! Just you and me. There’s enough here to set us up for life.”

  Ray thought of the heroin again, and a shiver ran up his spine. It had been three days, and there were sixteen ounces across the room on the cabinet. What the hell was she doing there, he wondered. Why didn’t she face him?

  “Besides, Ray,” she said softly, turning her head over her shoulder, “I didn’t know he would hurt you. Tony was always gentle. I didn’t know he’d call in any outsiders. I didn’t want you hurt then, and I don’t want you hurt now. If I planned to hurt you, would I have given you my gun? Would I be talking to you like—”

  “You can save it, Babs,” he said. “You’re a murderer, and I’m calling the police.”

  She turned then, and he realized what she’d been doing at the cabinet. She was cooking a fix. Christ, it had been long, too long. Ray stared at the heroin in fascination, the blood rushing through his veins.

  She reached into the open drawer again. When she withdrew her hand, she was holding a hypodermic. Carefully, gingerly, she put the spoon down on the cabinet top.

  “Just a little while longer, Ray,” she said. “Just a little while. I’m going to fix you, honey. I’m going to give you the ride you’ve been dying for. Just a little while, honey.”

  He didn’t say a word. He watched her as she expertly sucked the heroin into the syringe. He saw the white fluid filling the glass cylinder, and he wet his lips. A white-hot flame was licking at his chest now, searing his stomach.

  Heroin, heroin. The old song sang in his ears beneath the steady beat of his blood. Heroin, heroin!

  There was a fix across the room, waiting. After all this time, there was a fix.

  She turned away from the cabinet again, held the needle up to the light. Then she faced him fully, smiling at him, holding the loaded hypo in her right hand.

  He looked at her, his heart beating rapidly. His eyes followed the taper of her arm to the hypo she held in her hand. The needle tip caught little flecks of light, snapped them back into the room.

  “You and me,” she said huskily, “and a fortune in heroin, Ray. Just you and me.”

  She was closer to him now. She held the needle poised in her right hand, and she was breathing heavily.

  “You can have both, Ray, in any order you want them. Me, and the heroin in this syringe.”

  He looked at the hypo again, wet his lips. Babs and the heroin, both.

  She held the needle out and whispered, “Take it, Ray, Take it. Take it. You need it, Ray. Go on, take it.”

  There was something in the voice that irritated him. He’d heard the voice before. It belonged to Phil Ragow, and to Louis, and to Charlie Massine. It belonged to every pusher he’d ever known, the oily coaxing, the gentle insistence, the almost pleading quality.

  “Go on, Ray,” she said, and her voice was soft. “Take the needle.”

  He looked at the needle. He thought of all the other needles he’d ever had, and the sweat broke out on his brow, covered the back of his hands, ran down his back. Three days it had been, three whole days without a shot. How long could you go without a fix? How long could you go before you dropped dead?

  “Do you want me first, Ray? Is that it, baby? Me first, and then the shot. All right, baby. Any way you say. Anything you want.”

  But he hadn’t died. He hadn’t dropped dead. It had been three days without a fix, and he was still alive. Why not another three days? Did it get worse? How much worse could it get? If he had help. Jeannie. Maybe Jeannie.

  “No!” he shouted. “I don’t want it!”

  Babs stared at him incredulously. “What?”

  “I don’t want it. Neither, neither of you. You or the heroin. I’m calling the police, Babs. I don’t want it, do you understand?” He was bellowing now, trying to convince himself as well as Babs. “I don’t want it. God damn it, I don’t want it!”

  Her eyes narrowed against the whiteness of her face. Her skin seemed to have stretched tight over her cheekbones, and her lips skinned back over her teeth.

  “I’m not asking anymore, Ray. You’re taking it whether you want it or not!”

  Her face was an ugly thing as she came slowly forward, the needle poised for a strike, her thumb on the plunger. He wondered how he could have thought she was beautiful, wondered how he could have found anything in her to love. He watched the needle approach him, and he suddenly caught at her arm, swinging her around sharply. Her head snapped back and she dropped the needle. She scrabbled for it on the rug, and he kicked it away with his foot. She crouched on the floor, her eyes flaming hatred, her breast heaving, her nails digging into the carpet.

  “You cheap hophead,” she screamed. “You lousy cheap bastard!”

  All the revulsion he felt for her welled up into his throat. All the horror and degradation of the drug choked him, clouded his eyes with blind rage. He reached down and yanked her to her feet. He looked at her for a brief instant as she kept screaming at him, and then he drove his fist into her face, hard, feeling the bones yield to his knuckles. It was the first time he’d ever hit a woman.

  She collapsed to the floor and he stood over her, panting. Beside her on the floor lay the hypodermic.

  He reached down for it, and his fingers responded to the familiar grip of the tube. His eyes wandered over the heroin, opened in surprise as he read the markings inside the tube.

  There was enough heroin inside that glass cylinder to kill a bull! Far more than the two grains that made up a lethal dose. She was going to fix him, all right. This was to be the big fix, and there would never have been another one for Ray. He looked at the cylinder again, and a smile crossed his face.

  He dropped the hypo to the rug, smashed it beneath his heel. The heroin made a large blot on the rug, spreading beneath his shoe.

  He stared at the shattered syringe, then walked to the phone and dialed the operator.

  “Give me the police,” he said.

  WANT MORE

  McBAIN?

  Read on for a

  long-lost novelette by

  ED McBAIN

  featuring MATT CORDELL,

  the disgraced detective from

  THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE.

  And for another exciting

  novel-length crime story,

  THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE

  is available now from your favorite

  local or online bookseller!

  Die Hard

  The bar was the kind of dimly lit outhouse you find in any rundown neighborhood, except that it was a little more ragged around the edges. There were blue and white streamers crowding the ceiling, arranged in a criss-cross pattern strung up in celebration of some local hero’s return a long time ago. The mirror behind the bar was cracked, and it lifted one half of my face higher than the other. A little to the right of the bar was a door with a sign that cutely said, Little Boys. The odor seeping through the woodwork wasn’t half as cute.

  A few stumblebums were spilled over the tables in the joint like a troupe of marionettes with cut strings. I was the only guy standing besides the bartender,
and if events followed their customary pattern, I wouldn’t be standing long. That’s the beauty of a perpetual bender. You know just when you’ve had all that you can hold, and you go on from there.

  I lifted the shot glass from the bar, and went on from there. When I put the glass down, he was standing by my elbow, a hopeful expression on his face. “Mr. Cordell?” he asked.

  He was a little man with a little voice, one of the many stamped from the mold, one of those subway-strappers. He had a round face with a long nose that tried its damnedest to peer into his mouth. His lips were thin and narrow, and his eyes were carrying luggage, heavy luggage.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m Cordell.”

  He hesitated, looking over his shoulder, and then fastened two pale blue eyes on my face. “I…I understand you’re a private detective,” he said.

  I turned my back to him and studied the empty shot glass. “You understand wrong, mister,” I said.

  “I need help,” he went on, “for my son. My son.”

  “I’m not a detective,” I told him, my voice rising slightly. I signaled for the bartender, and he nodded at me from the other end of the bar. The small man moved closer to me.

  “My son,” he said. “He’s an addict.”

  “That’s too bad,” I told him, my voice tired.

  “I want you to stop them, the ones who made him that way, the ones who keep giving him that…that…filth!”

  “You’re asking me to stop the tide, mister,” I said. “I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. Leave me alone, will you?”

  “Please,” he said. “I…”

  “Look, mister, I’m not interested. Shove off. Blow.”

  His eyes slitted, and for just one moment the small man became a big man, an outraged man. “What kind of person are you, anyway?” he asked. His voice was thin and tight. “I need your help. I come to you for help. I need you, do you understand?”

  The effort seemed to weaken him. He slumped against the bar, pulling a soiled handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiping it across his forehead.