Mink Is for a Minx

by editor Leo Margulies

  “Never mind,” said Egan. “I think we’re getting close. Come fast and fall in behind me about Monument Street. Over and out.”

  At St. Paul and Monument he saw by the rearview mirror that the Buick had come up and was following about two blocks back.

  Heisman, apparently satisfied that he was not being followed, turned west off St. Paul Street, crossed Howard in the heart of the downtown shopping and theatrical district, turned into Saratoga, then went left off Saratoga on to Green Street.

  He parked two stores down from the Lattman Jewelry Store, a large, flashy emporium that specialized in selling jewelry on time at high interest rates to not too prosperous customers.

  The area, although downtown, was a bit seedy. Not far from brightly-lighted Howard Street, it was dark and deserted at 4:45 a.m.

  Egan drove slowly past Green Street and saw Heisman parked near the jewelry store. He kept on going and parked on Saratoga, out of sight of Heisman. A chill fall wind keened down the dark, empty street.

  The tan Buick passed him, went around the block, and came back up to park on Saratoga, just across Green Street from the Chevie, and also out of Heisman’s sight.

  The Elite Bakery truck turned into Green Street off Fayette. O’Konski parked across the street from Heisman and walked over to join the latter in the front seat of the Mercury. Coming into Green off Fayette, he had not seen the Buick and the Chevie parked on opposite corners of Saratoga and Green.

  In a few minutes Byers’ black Plymouth appeared, also turning into Green from Fayette. A block behind it the telephone company truck went on past Green Street, turned the corner, and headed for Saratoga Street. It parked behind the Buick. All the walkie-talkies were open.

  “This is it,” Egan said. “Con, do your stuff!”

  Detective Con McClure, dressed and smelling like a bum, took a pint of cheap whiskey from the Buick’s glove compartment, spattered some over his clothes, and, bottle in hand, staggered towards Green Street.

  He saw Byers, acting as a lookout, walking slowly up towards Saratoga Street, and Visconti, also a lookout, standing in a doorway near Fayette Street. Heisman, carrying the attache case, O’Konski, cradling a small cylinder of acetylene gas in his arms, and Mahaffey, one of the stolen Colt .38’s in hand, were walking rapidly towards the entrance to the jewelry store.

  In a few seconds Byers would reach the corner of Green and Saratoga, see the three police cars, get suspicious, and give the alarm.

  McClure, waving his bottle, staggered towards him, shouting: “Have a lil drink, fren!”

  Byers stopped, put his hand in his pocket, then drew it out empty. He called to the men in the jewelry store doorway: “Just a goddam drunk. Nothing to worry about.”

  McClure gripped Byers by the coat lapel. “Jus’ one won’t hurt, fren’. S’my birthday!”

  Byers laughed good-naturedly. “Okay,” he said. “Gimme the damn bottle.”

  Out of the corner of his eyes McClure saw Heisman take a small black box out of the attache case, hold it up to the lock, adjust a dial, and—clink. Out fell a newly-made key.

  Heisman picked it up, unlocked the door, and he and O’Konski went in. Mahaffey, gun in hand, nervously watched Byers and the “bum.”

  “Get rid of him!” he growled.

  “Go sleep it off in some alley,” said Byers, shaking himself loose from McClure’s grasp.

  McClure hurled the whiskey bottle to the pavement, where it smashed with the sound of a firecracker.

  That was the signal they’d been waiting for. The six detectives erupted from their cars, guns in hand, and raced around the corner towards the jewelry store.

  The “bum” yanked out his gun, but Mahaffey’s shot caught him in the right hip and he went down. As he fell he fired and hit Mahaffey in the groin. Mahaffey dropped his gun and sank slowly to the pavement, his hands clutching the wound.

  Byers got off one shot that sang by Egan’s ear. Egan’s own bullet hit him in the neck and Byers flopped to the sidewalk like a stranded fish, the blood gurgling through the hole in his throat, and running across the sidewalk into the gutter.

  Visconti was far enough away to make a run for the Elite Bakery truck. He got it started and raced for Saratoga Street, trying to hit Steve Kohnstamm, who was running across the street towards the jewelry store. Steve dove out of the way, breaking his wrist as he fell. His own gun clattered to the pavement.

  Egan, Clancy, Grissom, and Smyth riddled the windshield; a red flower blossomed in the middle of Visconti’s face. The truck veered crazily, careened towards the sidewalk, and smashed through the display window of a men’s clothing store.

  The sudden burst of noise was now replaced by an eerie silence. The interior of the jewelry store was dark and quiet. Detective Murphy, gun in hand, had gone down an alley to guard the rear door.

  The street looked like a battle scene. Visconti, dead, his face and body full of glass splinters, hung half in and half out of the driver’s seat of the Elite Bakery truck, his blood dripping on the neat window display of men’s white button-down shirts.

  Byers, not dead but dying, lay face down on the sidewalk, the blood still bubbling out of the hole in his throat. Mahaffey lay groaning in front of the jewelry store, his hands over the wound in his groin, blood seeping through them.

  Detective McClure, the wounded “bum”—had half propped himself against a lamp post. Detective Kohnstamm sat on the sidewalk with his feet in the gutter, holding his head down, trying to keep from fainting as his right hand flopped grotesquely at the end of his broken wrist.

  Egan yelled into the dark void of the jewelry store. “You’ve had it, Heisman! Back door’s covered! Throw out those thirty-eights!”

  Silence. Then a .38 was kicked out through the wide-open door, followed by another. O’Konski and Heisman, hands joined behind their necks, came out.

  By now squad cars and ambulances were pouring into the area, and a small crowd had materialized out of nowhere to gape in amazement at the bodies, the blood, the prisoners. Phil Egan phoned Mike Casey, then bustled Heisman and O’Konski, handcuffed together, into the back seat of the Chevie for the ride down to Headquarters. Clancy, gun in hand, sat with them, and Smyth rode up front with Phil.

  Heisman, the brain, was calm but dejected. O’Konski, smothered in gloom, snarled and cursed and refused to talk.

  Heisman, clinically interested in the failure of his ingenious plan, said: “Where did I goof? What tipped you?”

  Egan replied: “Byers, when he left his car out near that Texaco station in Towson. How’d he happen to do that?”

  Heisman gritted his teeth. “The fat, stupid jerk! Our three goons—the Outfit provided them, partly to protect us and partly to make sure we didn’t pull a double cross—had the Plymouth and the Bakery truck that night. Byers was the lookout. After the job, he couldn’t get the Plymouth going right away, so he panicked and jumped in the truck with the others. Next time it won’t—”

  Egan interrupted. “There won’t be a next time, Heisman. You’re going on an extended vacation.”

  Heisman was silent.

  After Heisman and O’Konski had been booked and jailed, Egan wrote out his report. Dawn was beginning to light the eastern sky as he headed the black Chevie towards Muriel’s apartment on Mount Vernon Place. He had promised to come up no matter what time it was, so he did.

  She answered the bell in a revealing black negligee, but it was easy to tell she hadn’t been sleeping. Her eyes were red and tired-looking and the ashtrays were full of lipstick-stained, half-smoked butts.

  Wordlessly they embraced.

  He sank into an easy chair. “I could use a drink,” he said. “Or two or three.”

  She mixed him a stiff bourbon and water, and as he sipped it he told her all about it. “Heisman and O’Konski planned the whole thing when they were in the army together. It was in the army that O’Konski learned to be a baker and Heisman a pharmacist. They learned those trades as a cover. They even got married a
s a cover. Heisman is a genius but he has the heart of a born thief who’d rather steal ten bucks than make a hundred legit.

  “If he patents that key-making thing of his, he’ll pile up a fortune in prison. He took the whole plan to the syndicate boys and they okayed it for a forty percent cut. Byers, Visconti, and Mahaffey were lent to Heisman as muscle, to do the necessary stealing, act as lookouts, and stuff like that. Also to see that Heisman and O’Konski didn’t cross the big boys.

  “We got to them largely through Byers, although your idea about the locksmiths was a big help. Byers is dead. So is Visconti. Mahaffey is shot up and may not make it. Con McClure has a smashed hip and Steve Kohnstamm a broken wrist.”

  “God,” she murmured. “What a night!”

  As Thanksgiving Day dawned, they drank bourbon and ate some scrambled eggs and finally fell asleep in each other’s arms on the floor in front of the fireplace.

  TRUCK DRIVERS LIKE GIRLS

  by Dorothy Madle

  THE PARTY AT THE O’MEARAS’ nearly new ranch house was just getting a good start when six more guests arrived, people Rod O’Meara worked with. He had forgotten to tell Marian that he had invited them.

  She welcomed them, saw to the disposal of their wraps, then fled to the kitchen. Rod was making six new drinks.

  “I’m sorry, Tiger-cat,” he said. “I mentioned the party days ago and that bunch was committed elsewhere, for some dinner or other. I didn’t think they were coming. You may scratch me, but don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not.” Marian stretched on tiptoe and nipped his ear. He set down the bottle and jigger to put his arms around her.

  “You’re my favorite small blonde. If this weren’t our seventh wedding anniversary, I’d marry you.”

  She opened the door of the liquor cabinet, then checked mentally the cold buffet waiting to be served after midnight.

  “Rod, I allowed for two or three extra people, but not six. And there’s a run on bourbon. Famine and thirst will stalk this house tonight.”

  He lined up the six glasses on a tray. “All right. Go in and circulate. There’s an all-night delicatessen on Oakland and Caldwell, and a superbar beside it. I’ll go and fetch.”

  She took up the tray, then set it down again.

  “No, you go in and make like a host. You know the new people and I don’t. I haven’t even got their names straight. Entertain them and I’ll slip out and get the stuff.” She crossed the hallway to the coat closet and he followed.

  “You’re a pretty thing tonight. Don’t be gone long.”

  “I won’t.”

  Rod held the honey-color beaver coat, her anniversary present, and she slipped into it. The color matched her hair. Her long party earrings picked up flecks of green in her grey eyes.

  “I don’t like you driving alone on a foggy night. Have you had your car checked lately?”

  “It’s running fine.” Marian grinned up at him. “Anyway, you know nothing bad can happen to me on the road. If I stall or anything, a truck driver always appears—pouf!—out of the air or somewhere, and gets me going again.”

  “I don’t believe in your friendly truck drivers. None of them ever helped me.”

  “Naturally not. Truck drivers like girls. ’Bye. I’ll be quick, darling.”

  She turned in the doorway. “You might look in on Midge and Teddy. They were sleeping like fat little angels half an hour ago, but the party noises might waken them.”

  Marian backed her winter-splashed car out of the garage. A random harmony of voices, music, and laughter followed her into the road. The house looked festive, even elegant, with its big windows glowing and the guests’ cars lining half of the block.

  Marian had not really wanted to move to the suburbs, but people kept saying country life was better for children. Now she wasn’t sorry. Entertaining a lot of people at once was fun, and they couldn’t have done it in the city apartment.

  It seemed darker than usual as she drove toward the reddish cloud of bottom-lighted fog that marked the city. She turned on the radio. A jazz quartet was playing cool crystalline improvisations. Nice—but the music broke off.

  “We interrupt to bring you a news bulletin. An attack tonight on Mrs. Doris Clift, twenty-nine, of seven-twelve North Inshore Drive, has led police to believe the psychotic killer who in three weeks has taken the lives of four Chicago women, may now be at large here in Meridian.

  “Like the Chicago victims, Mrs. Clift was struck over the head and strangled. Her car had left the road and veered across a curb, a few country blocks from her home. But her assailant was interrupted by the approach of Frederick T. Sayers, forty-six, of five-eighty Smith Place, who was walking with his two Boxer dogs on leashes. Sayers told police he saw the stalled car as he emerged from beyond a clump of shrubbery, and heard moans. The dogs jerked away from him as a man jumped from the car and ran into the shadows, apparently cutting directly across a lawn. The dogs gave chase but came back to Sayers after the sound of a motor indicated the man had driven away.

  “Sayers got only indistinct glimpses of the man, and he did not see the vehicle. Mrs. Clift, in serious condition at Saint Mary’s Hospital, could not be questioned. Her husband, Anthony Clift, an attorney, told police she was to have joined him and a group of friends at a downtown restaurant. She was in evening dress. One of her jade earrings had been ripped off, tearing an earlobe.

  “Like the four Chicago women, Mrs. Clift is an attractive blonde.”

  Marian shivered. She raised a hand to slip off her own earrings, but returned it firmly to the wheel. She would not get all jittery because a psycho was partial to youngish blonde women dressed for parties. The announcer’s voice droned on.

  “A crumpled piece of paper found in Mrs. Clift’s car seems to indicate beyond reasonable doubt that her attacker was the Chicago killer. It had been torn in half. Pencilled heavily in black were the words ‘Repent, ye daughters of—’ and parts of scrawls that might represent words in an unknown or secret script. Psychiatrists who examined similar notes left with the Chicago victims said the use of a private language points strongly to a psychotic derangement of severe type.”

  Marian snapped off the radio.

  The highway had seemed strangely empty. Now, nearing the two stores, she realized she had half forgotten how dark and lifeless a city street can look two hours before a winter midnight.

  She parked and ran into the superbar on her thin, glittering heels. Men lined on barstools turned to stare as she took two bottles of bourbon from a shelf, gave the bartender a ten and a five and waited while he put the bottles in a bag and rang up her change.

  In the delicatessen next door she bought hastily, choosing cold meats, a cheese, a long loaf of rye bread. She hurried out, the two bags awkward in her arms, her purse dangling from her wrist. She jammed the bag with the bottles inside the larger one, freeing a hand to open the car door.

  “Damn,” she muttered as a fingernail tip sheared off against a rim of the steering wheel.

  She shoved the unwieldy bag along the seat and slipped in beside it. She should have put the stuff on the floor in back where it would be more stable, she supposed. But depositing it on the seat was quicker, and Marian was tense with impatience to get home, to touch her children’s sleeping heads and to be in her living room with her guests.

  The dark had grown thicker, capsuling the glow of street lights inside their own haloes. Marian took her car keys from their place—deplored by Rod and illegal in their state—above the visor. The car started with the sputter, suggestive of post-nasal drip, which it always developed in damp and chilly weather.

  Fog shortened the flare of her headlights. She left the curb and a truck, parked two car-lengths behind, started up at the same moment. It followed close at her rear, its headlights turned on bright, glaring back from her mirror into her eyes.

  At first Marian felt only a mild annoyance. She kicked her own lights to bright and back to dim, to remind the other driver that he was violating the traff
ic regulations. The truck lights did not respond.

  She shrugged. Marian’s frequent claim that truck drivers were homely knights dedicated to the succor of frail—though adept—women motorists had not been entirely a joke. Often in minor emergencies they had stopped to help. Now, just when her nerves were jangled anyway, she had to encounter a slob of a driver who seemed intent on blinding her.

  But then, you couldn’t expect everyone to conform to an occupational pattern. Look at butchers. Once she had known a nice, sensitive butcher who painted in oils, assiduously avoiding the use of the color red.

  But damn it, why didn’t a policeman flag down this creep and make him dim his lights? She had not seen a policeman, a highway patrolman, or a prowl car since she left home.

  Her annoyance fizzed as she crossed an intersection and the truck stayed with her. She pulled to the curb, slowed almost to a stop, and signalled firmly for the truck to continue on. The truck pulled over too, and remained behind her.

  She pressed the accelerator as hard as she dared in the tunnel of fog. Laboring noisily, the truck speeded up. Marion’s annoyance changed to real anger. Probably it was some juvenile delinquent acting out his hostilities on wheels borrowed from his hard-working Papa.

  She had paid no attention to the truck when it had been parked on the street, and since then the glare had made it indistinguishable. But she knew it was not a very large one, nor a van. She had not seen the driver at all.

  She would turn off Oakland and go out Shore Drive. Perhaps he would tire of his silly sport. If not, there ought to be traffic patrolmen there.

  She turned right, suddenly and without signalling. The truck braked and turned after her. On the cross street she stopped for a barely visible stop sign. The truck stopped and started with her, keeping the distance unchanged. She suppressed a crazy impulse to slam into reverse and ram him with her rear bumper.

  She swerved left into Shore Drive. The truck swerved with her. She blinked, eyes smarting from the mirrored glare. A small stalagmite of fear was edging up inside her anger. Possibly this was not a prankster.