He released her with one arm and took the gun out of his belt. He lifted it. “For you, honey. For you and your black-haired lover."
The hot blood drained out of her face, and the smoke cleared from her eyes on a bitter wind of fear. She put a palm flat against his chest and tried to push away, but he held her trapped tightly against him with one arm.
"What's the matter with you, Steve? You gone crazy?"
He laughed softly. “Maybe a guy who waits too long develops a lot of peculiar twists you could call crazy. One thing, he gets sensitive. He develops what the skull-shrinkers call ideas of reference. Everything seems to point at him. Everything has significance. Most of all, he doesn't believe in coincidence."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Steve. I swear to God."
"Don't you, honey? I'm talking about your phony insurance dick. I'm talking about your just happening to see him in town. About your just happening to tail him right to the insurance company's offices. About how he just happens to be a tall, sleek guy. Just the kind of guy you'd like to buy with a hunk of fifty grand. But more than anything else, I'm talking about how you don't want me to kill him. Don't you remember me, honey? I'm the guy who killed for you once before. I'm the guy who remembers how you could hardly wait until I got the job done. Since when have you become so sensitive?"
"You are crazy, Steve!” She leaned against him again, letting her lips brush his in the formation of her words. “I'm here, aren't I? Why would I have come, if I'd wanted to double-cross you? All I had wanted to do was stay away."
He laughed again, feeling the soft, wet stirring of her lips, the stronger stirring inside of an almost sickening desire to believe her. “Why? I'll tell you why, honey. Because you're a gal who wouldn't want to spend the rest of her life expecting someone she didn't want to see. Because you knew damn well I'd come back eventually and find you. The only way to prevent that was to come down here to kill me. You and lover-boy."
A violent tremor shook her flesh, and she beat his chest softly with a clenched fist. “No, Steve. It isn't that way. For God's sake, you've got to believe me! Would I have brought the money? Would I have brought it just the way you told me to?"
"Where is it? I told you to bring it here."
"It's in a belt around my waist, Steve. Fifty thousand-dollar bills, minus two for expenses. Let me go, I'll show you."
He released her and stepped back. “All right. Show me."
She lifted her skirt and removed the belt. It was thin, flat, made of water-proof silk. She handed it to him, and he unzipped it and counted the forty-eight crisp pieces of paper. He stuffed the belt and the paper into the front of his shirt, tucking the loose tail into his trousers. Color had returned to her face in bright spots high on the cheek bones. Her breasts rose high and fell and rose again. Her tongue slipped out to dampen her dry lips.
"Now do you believe me? Now can you show a gal how you missed her?"
She came to him, but he held her off by the shoulders, shaking his head. “A guy who's waited as long as I have can wait a little longer. This time we'll do it together, honey. Down by the rocks."
She shrugged angrily, the color burning hotter on her cheeks, and turned away and out the door into the sand. He followed, the gun held loosely at his side. Steps apart, they crossed the beach in thin moonlight and vanished into the cast shadow of the outcropping. Waiting there in darkness that had acquired a penetrating chill, the ancient rock towering above him, he could dimly see her, could smell her, could hear the heavy whisper of her breath pass in and out between her lips, and he prayed to whatever dark gods listen to prayers of ones like him that the black-haired man in the white suit would not come.
But he did. And soon. He came swiftly and silently down the beach, and his gun was already in his hand. When he came abreast, about five yards inland, Steve lifted his .38 and fired. The sound crashed against the rock and was thrown out across the sand at the man who had stopped suddenly, erect, to twist slowly in the direction of his death. The .38 crashed and jumped a second time, and the man stepped back, swayed, and sank to his hands and knees. He remained in that position for a moment, head hanging, and then very slowly, with tremendous effort, he lifted his head until his face was faintly visible in the moonlight, and his voice, distorted by anguish, carried clearly across the sand to the rocks.
"Ella,” he said. “Help me, Ella, for Christ's sake..."
His elbows collapsed, and he lay down soundlessly in the sand, and it was at that moment, exposed by his words, that Ella took a deadly toy from between her breasts and shot Steve in the belly. She shot him three times and ran. He stood frozen in a kind of terrible shock, the .38 fallen to the sand and his arms outspread and his fingers clawing for support at the rock behind him. Watching her run and fall sprawling and rise to run again, he slipped down against the rock, dimly aware of jagged edges tearing at his flesh. He sat for a few seconds in the sand, his chin resting on his chest, then he fell over sideways and lay still.
He lay there and felt the red life run out of him in three thin streams, but he would not die. He was conscious all the time of the silk belt and the crisp paper inside his shirt. With a final deadly tenacity given to him by the certainty of death, he thought only of the money that would bring her back, and he would not die.
He closed his eyes to rest their heavy lids and almost never opened them again, almost missed her coming after all.
But then, prompted by a whisper of sand or a scent or a touch, he forced them open to see her bending over between him and the moon. She moved in a thick swimming mist of darkening red, and he reached up swiftly into the mist with a desperate expenditure of his remaining strength to jerk her down upon his body.
He was never aware of her scream or her frantic threshing and was even denied the last slight satisfaction of feeling the frail bones of her throat break beneath his thumbs.
* * * *
Originally published in Menace, January 1955. Copyright 1983 by the author's Estate; reprinted by permission of the Estate and its agent, Barry N. Malzberg.
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Department: COMING IN MAY 2009
The Fabricator by Jack Ritchie
Evil By Design by Marianne Wilski Strong
Death of a Condo Commando by Elaine Viets
[Back to Table of Contents]
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ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE (ISSN:0002-5224), Vol. 54, No. 4, April 2009. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. Annual subscription $55.90 in the U.S.A. and possessions, $65.90 elsewhere, payable in advance in U.S. funds (GST included in Canada). Subscription orders and correspondence regarding subscriptions should be sent to 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Or, to subscribe, call 1-800-220-7443. Editorial Offices: 475 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. Executive Offices: 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. © 2008 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. The stories in this magazine are all fictitious, and any resemblance between the characters in them and actual persons is completely coincidental. Reproduction or use, in any manner, of editorial or pictorial content without express written permission is prohibited. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Submissions must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. POSTMASTER: Send changes to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to: Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4. GST #R123054108.
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