by Isaac Asimov
Letter from Herman Skolnick to Elsa Wiggins, The Helping Hand Mission, Bay City, California:
I have heard many good things about the work you’ve been doing, and am writing to you because I urgently need your help. Please tell me (% General Delivery, Bay City): is there a Life After Death?
Letter from Elsa Wiggins to Herman Skolnick:
Thank you, brother, for your expression of faith in the community service which we at The Helping Hand Mission are so unselfishly performing in offering Hope for the lost, the intemperate, and the mis-directed among us. From your letter, we know that you too are one of those lost souls — but we cannot begin to offer you the proper guidance through correspondence. Won’t you come in and see us?
(Our free lunch is served every day at noon; dinner at six p.m. Soup and coffee available at all hours. Liquor and tobacco prohibited. Donations always welcome, large or small.)
Letter from Herman Skolnick to Miss Dorinda, % the Miss Dorinda Answers column. Bay City Express, Bay City, California:
I am desperate to know the answer to this question: is there a Life After Death? No one seems willing to help me. Please, please, won’t you tell me the answer (my address is % General Delivery, Bay City).
Letter from Miss Dorinda to Herman Skolnick:
I detected a genuine note of soulful desperation in your recent letter, Mr. Skolnick, and so I’m rushing this reply to you right away (we do have to be careful, you know, since many misguided individuals seem to take great pleasure in playing cruel and heartless practical jokes on selfless servants of the human condition such as myself).
The question of whether or not there is Life After Death is one which has bothered every profound person at one time or another during the course of his life. But to some questions, Mr. Skolnick, there are simply no answers. Can it be you seek guidance in this matter because of some crushing personal crisis? Such as a storm on the bittersweet sea of matrimony? If so, perhaps my new book, Miss Dorinda Answers: Crises in Marriage, which was recently published by Nabob Press at $6.95, might contain valuable insights.
I cannot help you otherwise, Mr. Skolnick, unless you confide in me the reasons for your desperate need to know if there is a Life After Death. But I do want to help you, very much, and if you will write to me again, outlining the nature of your personal crisis, I will do everything in my power to re-establish emotional harmony in your life.
Letter from Herman Skolnick to Doctor Franklin Powers, % The Magazine of Psychic Phenomenon, New York City:
I have perruzed your recent column in The Magazine of Psychic Phenomenon, in which you offered to respond to any questions from readers on topics of profound significance. I have such a question. Doctor, and I must have the answer as soon as possible. My address is % General Delivery, Bay City, California, and I assure you that I am asking your help with all the earnestness I possess. Help me! I am desperate!
Is there a Life After Death?
Letter from Doctor Franklin Powers to Herman Skolnick:
Thank you for your recent inquiry, Mr. Skolnick.
Ordinarily, I would not undertake to set forth such an opinion as you request; however, I do have definite feelings on the subject, being, if I may modestly say so, an eminently qualified authority on spiritual matters through my close association with Madame Zelda and other recognized mediums. Simply stated, my opinion then is thus: yes, Mr. Skolnick, there is a Life After Death — although even my dear departed aunt, with whom I have had several illuminating conversations through Madame Zelda, is unable to tell me its exact nature.
I hope you will find this response to be of some use, and I would like to hear from you again should you feel inclined. Just why do you wish so desperately to know if there is a Life After Death?
Suicide note found near the body of Herman Skolnick:
I have feared for my sanity for some time now, and cannot face the prospect of another tomorrow. I would have drunk the ratsbane preparation long ago if I had not been disturbed about the question of Life After Death. I have now obtained sufficient proof, however, that there is a Life After Death and thus the final obstacle to the taking of my own life has been removed. I am sorry for all the trouble and inconvenience my death will cause my fiancée, my acquaintances, and of course the police, but I must selfishly think of myself at this moment. I simply cannot go on any longer.
Statement of the Foreman of the Jury at the Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Herman Skolnick:
In view of the statements of investigating officers and of the strange nature of the correspondence found in the deceased’s possession, we the jury of this inquest are of uniform agreement that Herman Skolnick was mentally disturbed and died by his own hand.
Letter from Robert Claverly to Miss Francine Allard, Bay City:
I realize this is a poor time to attempt to re-establish our once deeply-meaningful relationship, Francie, but you know how I feel about you. I’ll be here and waiting whenever you need me. Perhaps, once time has begun to heal your grief and shock at the death of your fiancé, Herman Skolnick, and you have had the opportunity to carefully perruze our relationship in your mind, you will realize that I am and always have been the only man who could ever make you truly happy, and that I stand ready to do anything — anything at all — so that we might always be together...
Perfect Pigeon
by Carroll Mayers
At first I didn’t favor the idea. I mean, all the odds have to be on your side for a successful bank hit. But Frankie kept pressing me. Like: “It’ll be a piece of cake, Joe.”
“You’ve checked them all?” I asked.
“Every bank in the city. Security Savings is our best bet.”
“Because of one character.” I made it a statement, not a question.
“Exactly,” Frankie said. “I’ve been practically in his pocket for a week. He’s Casper Milquetoast in person.”
“Even a worm can turn.”
“Not this worm. I know him, I tell you.”
You’ve read accounts in the papers where a lone bandit tries to heist a bank by passing the teller a note threatening bodily harm, or maybe death, if he or she doesn’t give with a jackpot of cash. Sometimes the bandit scores. Usually he doesn’t. Usually the teller is only momentarily taken aback, then manages either to cry out or press an alarm button. Perhaps both. Whatever, it’s a fiasco for the heister.
Frankie had in mind the note-passing gambit. The thing was, he had a refinement. He meant to be particular about the teller he passed that note to.
I couldn’t fault Frankie’s basic reasoning. If he could tab a teller, male or female, a real Nervous Nellie who’d be too scared, too paralyzed, to take any physical action other than complete compliance, Frankie would be home free — “a piece of cake.”
That was where Frankie’s “survey” came in. Checking the personnel (first by general appearance, then by discreet, in-depth, after-work surveillance) of every bank in the city, Frankie had come up with the perfect pigeon.
One Homer Jennings.
Homer was a teller at Security Savings, and the exact type Frankie wanted. Why Homer hadn’t been put out to pasture long ago was a mystery. Certainly crowding mandatory retirement, Homer had a physique like Twiggy’s and eyesight comparable to Mr. Magoo’s. A lifetime bachelor, he lived alone behind triple-bolted doors and seldom went out after dark. More important, he frequently wrote letters to the newspapers deploring “crime in the streets.”
Unbelievable? Not really. And he was definitely our man.
However, I still wasn’t completely sold. “There’s an alarm at Security Savings, isn’t there?”
“Sure. A button on the floor at each teller’s station.”
“And you’re saying Homer will be so terrified he’ll simply freeze, do nothing but hand over the money? Won’t even shift one foot to that button?”
“He won’t risk it, Joe. He’ll be scared witless, believe me.”
It sounded good the way Frankie spelled it out.
Also, I’d be going along just for the ride, so to speak. Because I wouldn’t be in the bank at the moment of truth. I’d be outside, behind the wheel of a souped-up jalopy, ready to do my specialty as a crack wheel-man. Which was why Frankie had latched onto me in the first place.
I finally agreed. “Okay, deal me in,” I told him. “You’ve got a gun to flash along with that note?”
He grinned. “I’ll pick up a plastic model at the five-and-dime. With Homer that’ll be enough.”
But Frankie didn’t stop with Homer. For three days before our hit he diligently checked traffic in the bank, determining busy and slack periods. He settled on one-thirty in the afternoon, after the luncheon rush and before the closing surge. He also surveyed the traffic on the streets at that hour and set up my best route to take off when he scooted out with the cash.
So there it was. A real easy score, right?
Wrong. We never racked it up. I managed to wheel clear when the alarm clanged, but Frankie never got out of the bank. An alerted guard’s shot shattered his shoulder.
I have to admit poor Frankie had Homer Jennings pegged one hundred percent. The old gaffer was terrified — so terrified that when Frankie gave him a glimpse of the toy gun to reinforce the note, Homer fainted dead away and his body collapsed on the alarm button, kicking it off just as neatly as if he’d nudged it with his foot.
The Cop Who Loved Flowers
by Henry Slesar
Spring comes resolutely, even to police stations, and once again Captain Don Flammer felt the familiar, pleasant twitching of his senses. Flammer loved the springtime — the green yielding of the earth, the flourishing trees, and most of all, the flowers. He liked being a country cop, and the petunia border around the Haleyville Police Headquarters was his own idea and special project.
But by the time June arrived, it was plain that there was something different about Captain Flammer this spring. Flammer wasn’t himself. He frowned too much; he neglected the garden; he spent too much time indoors. His friends on the force were concerned, but not mystified. They knew Flammer’s trouble: he was still thinking about Mrs. McVey.
It was love of flowers that had introduced them. Mrs. McVey and her husband had moved into the small two-story house on Arden Road, and the woman had waved a magic green wand over the scraggly garden she had inherited. Roses began to climb in wild profusion; massive pink hydrangea bloomed beside the porch; giant pansies, mums, peonies showed their faces; violets and bluebells crept among the rocks; and petunias, more velvety than the Captain’s, invaded the terrace.
One day the Captain had stopped his car and walked red-faced to the fence where Mrs. McVey was training ivy. Flammer was a bachelor, in his forties, and not at ease with women. Mrs. McVey was a few years younger, a bit too thin for prettiness, but with a smile as warming as the sunshine.
“I just wanted to say,” he told her heavily, “that you have the nicest garden in Haleyville.” Then he frowned as if he had just arrested her, and stomped back to his car.
It wasn’t the most auspicious beginning for a friendship, but it was a beginning. Flammer stopped his car in the McVey driveway at least one afternoon a week, and Mrs. McVey made it clear, with smiles, hot tea, and homemade cookies, that she welcomed his visits.
The first time he met Mr. McVey, he didn’t like him. McVey was a sharp-featured man with a mouth that looked as if it were perpetually sucking a lemon. When Flammer spoke to him of flowers, the sour mouth twisted in contempt.
“Joe doesn’t care for the garden,” Mrs. McVey said. “But he knows how much it means to me, especially because he travels so much.”
It wasn’t a romance, of course. Everybody knew that — even the town gossips. Flammer was a cop, and cops were notoriously stolid. And Mrs. McVey wasn’t pretty enough to fit the role.
So nobody in Haleyville gossiped, or giggled behind their backs. Mrs. McVey and the Captain met, week after week, right out in the open where the whole town could see them. But he was in love with her before the autumn came, and she was in love with him; yet they never talked about it.
She did talk about her husband. Little by little, learning to trust Flammer, inspired by her feelings for him, she told him about Joe.
“I’m worried because I think he’s sick,” she said. “Sick in a way no ordinary doctor can tell. There’s such bitterness in him. He grew up expecting so much from life and he got so little.”
“Not so little,” Flammer said bluntly.
“He hates coming home from his trips. He never says that in so many words, but I know. He can’t wait to be off again.”
“Do you think he’s—” Flammer blushed at the question forming in his own mind.
“I don’t accuse him of anything,” Mrs. McVey said. “I never ask him any questions, and he hates to be prodded. There are times when — well, I’m a little afraid of Joe.”
Flammer looked from the porch at the pink hydrangea bush, still full-bloomed at summer’s end, and thought about how much he would enjoy holding Mrs. McVey’s earth-stained hand. Instead, he took a sip of her tea.
On September 19th Mrs. McVey was shot with a .32 revolver. The sound exploded in the night, and woke the neighbors on both sides of the McVey house.
It was some time before the neighbors heard the feeble cries for help that followed the report of the gun, and called the Haleyville police. Captain Flammer never quite forgave the officer on duty that night for not calling him at home when the shooting occurred. He had to wait until morning to learn that Mrs. McVey was dead.
No one on the scene saw anything more in Captain Flammer’s face than the concern of a conscientious policeman. He went about his job with all the necessary detachment. He questioned Mr. McVey and made no comment on his story.
“It was about two in the morning,” McVey said. “Grace woke up and said she thought she heard a noise downstairs. She was always hearing noises, so I told her to go back to sleep. Only she didn’t; she put on a kimono and went down to look for herself. She was right for a change — it was a burglar — and he must have got scared and shot her the minute he saw her... I came out when I heard the noise, and I saw him running away.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like two feet running,” Joe McVey said. “That was all I saw of him. But you can see what he was doing here.”
Flammer looked around — at the living-room debris, the opened drawers, the scattered contents, the flagrant evidence of burglary, so easy to create, or fabricate.
The physical investigation went forward promptly. House and grounds were searched, without result — no meaningful fingerprints or footprints were found, no weapon turned up — indeed, they found no clue of any kind to the murderous burglar of Arden Road. Then they searched for answers to other questions: Was there really a burglar at all? Or had Joe McVey killed his wife?
Captain Flammer conducted his calm inquiry into the case, and nobody knew of his tightened throat, of the painful constriction in his heart, of the hot moisture that burned behind his eyes.
But when he was through, he had discovered nothing to change the verdict at the coroner’s inquest: Death at the hands of person or persons unknown. He didn’t agree with that verdict, but he lacked an iota of proof to change it. He knew who the Unknown Person was; he saw his hateful, sour-mouthed face in his dreams.
Joe McVey disposed of the two-story house less than a month after his wife’s death — sold it at a bargain price to a couple with a grown daughter. Joe McVey then left Haleyville — went to Chicago, some said — and Captain Flammer no longer looked forward to spring, and the coming of the flowers, with joyful expectation.
But spring came again, resolutely as always, and despite the Captain’s mood of sorrow and resentment at his own inadequacy, his senses began to twitch. He began driving out into the countryside. And one day he stopped his car in front of the former McVey house.
The woman who stood on the porch, framed by clumps of blue hydrangea, lifted her arm and waved. If
a heart can somersault, Flammer’s did. He almost said Grace’s name aloud, even after he realized that the woman was only a girl, plumpish, not yet twenty.
“Hello,” she said, looking at the police car in the driveway. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Flammer said dully. “Are the Mitchells at home?”
“No, they’re out. I’m their daughter Angela.” She smiled uncertainly. “You’re not here on anything official, I hope?”
“No,” Flammer said.
“Of course, I know all about this house, about what happened here last year — the murder and everything.” She lowered her voice. “You never caught that burglar, did you?”
“No, we never did.”
“She must have been a very nice woman — Mrs. McVey, I mean. She certainly loved flowers, didn’t she? I don’t think I ever saw a garden as beautiful as this one.”
“Yes,” Captain Flammer said. “She loved flowers very much.”
Sadly, he touched a blue blossom on the hydrangea bush, and started back toward his car. He found that his eyes were filling up, and yet they had seen things clearly.
For suddenly he stopped and said, “Blue?”
The young woman watched him quizzically.
“Blue,” he said again, returning and staring at the flowering hydrangea bush. “It was pink last year — I know it was. And now it’s blue.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hydrangea,” Flammer said. “Do you know about hydrangea?”
“I don’t know a thing about flowers. As long as they’re pretty—”
“They’re pretty when they’re pink,” Flammer said. “But when there’s alum in the soil — or iron — they come up blue. Blue like this.”
“But what’s the difference?” the girl said. “Pink or blue, what difference? So there’s iron in the soil—”