Mink Is for a Minx

by editor Leo Margulies

  To his surprise, the dog obviously associated his reappearance with the cessation of pain, and seemed to regard him as a rescuer. It almost battered him to the floor with affectionate attentions. So much the better, Calder told himself. If the dog continued to prove so friendly in public, that fact alone would prevent anyone from suspecting the truth of their relationship.

  Every day for three weeks Calder continued this training. The dog could never know in advance when the whistle would sound, a prelude to ten seconds or more of almost unendurable torture. Long before the time was up Pavlov had been vindicated, since Siegfried no longer even waited for the actual shock, but went into a terrible frenzy the moment he heard a blast. The beast even frothed at the mouth.

  Then, when Calder came in a little later, the animal would greet him in a fit of wild joy and relief. There was no longer any doubt in his mind about the plan’s effectiveness. The timing was a problem, but there was no statute of limitations on that. He could repeat the conditioning until everything clicked.

  As a final step, he tested the effect of distance. Siegfried had no trouble hearing the whistle from two hundred yards away.

  When the Bentons returned from their trip, there was no outward evidence of Siegfried’s unpleasant new reflex. The cord was safely back among the tools. Only the whistle was left, hidden from view deep in Calder’s trouser pocket.

  On the day after their return, Tracy was to visit Los Angeles, a hundred miles from the Laguna Hills development. He usually made the trip twice a month to check over the rental and the occasional resale of Elsie’s city property. An hour before his brother-in-law was supposed to leave, Calder climbed into his own car, a beat-up MG, and set out to lay his trap.

  When Tracy came to the first turn-off on the freeway just west of the town, Calder was waiting on the shoulder. He spotted the big Buick on the inner and fastest lane. There could be no mistaking either the car or the huge dog sharing the front seat with the driver. Calder’s scheme depended upon this habit of Benton’s—taking Siegfried along on the Los Angeles drive.

  Calder immediately entered the stream of traffic, and by skillful maneuvering worked his way up to a place roughly one hundred yards behind the Buick, and in the slowest lane. He felt sorry for the innocent people whose lives would be endangered but there was no other way.

  To Martin Calder, at the moment, they were faceless abstractions. With luck, a big truck might come along where there was no other traffic. There was a fair likelihood that only Benton would die.

  But it wasn’t quite as easy as he’d hoped. Twice Tracy shifted to a slower lane where there was no chance to have a head-on collision, and several times Calder himself had to get into a faster lane in order to keep up with his brother-in-law. The inner stream of traffic was the one. Not a car there was doing under sixty-five, and only a few feet away, without so much as a low divider, was the reverse flow, traveling just as fast in the opposite direction.

  If two of those cars happened to meet head-on, with a combined velocity of a hundred and twenty or so, both drivers would almost certainly be killed.

  At last the right moment arrived. Tracy was back in the high speed lane, doing almost seventy towards the north. And coming up in the next lane, hurtling south at fifty-plus, was a small truck.

  Calder put the silent whistle in his mouth, checked his own position in the slow lane, well out of the imminent crash area, and blew a mighty blast, inaudible to human ears, but certain to reach those of Siegfried.

  In the Buick the great Doberman reacted according to his grim conditioning. At the sound of that ominous keening, which always meant a searing agony at his throat, the dog went wild, thrashing about with all his weight of a hundred and sixty pounds. He was barking, clawing, and even snapping at his own flesh.

  Through some saving remnant of affection for his master, even in that extremity, he did Tracy no direct harm. But the result otherwise was all too predictable. Benton lost control of the speeding car. It swerved into the stream of southbound traffic, meeting the truck head-on in a smashup that literally collapsed the vehicles.

  Both men died instantly, and in the resulting pile up of seven cars, more than a dozen people were injured. Even Calder, on the fringe, escaped only because of his knowledge of what was coming. He slowed and jounced onto the shoulder of the road in time.

  Suddenly he stiffened where he sat, his churning stomach tight from a new shock. From the tangle of crumpled, smoking steel, Siegfried had emerged. His muzzle was streaming blood from many cuts, and he limped badly. But by some miracle of tough bone and muscle, the dog was not severely injured. Now, frightened and bewildered, he must have scented a friend nearby, and was seeking him out. The Doberman headed unerringly towards Calder’s car.

  Calder’s mind began to race. It wouldn’t do to be found so close. Who knew what connection the police might be clever enough to make? The damned whistle was still on his person.

  Forgetting the pile-up he had just caused, Calder thought only of himself now. Hurriedly he tooled his MG back on the edge of the freeway, and inched past the nearest stalled car. Several drivers, trapped themselves, yelled at him angrily, but there were no patrol cars on the scene yet, so he made it to the next turn-off.

  Later, on a side road, he flung the whistle into a patch of weeds. What was done, was done; nobody could pin anything on Martin Calder. Elsie would be dependent on him again, and he’d take good care she didn’t meet any more hungry bachelors.

  At the funeral, three days later, Elsie was nearly hysterical in spite of two tranquilizers. Calder managed to look sorrowful, but internally he couldn’t help smiling. Most of the pleasure he felt was at the success of his brilliant stratagem. The rest was due to the ludicrous appearance of Siegfried, held well back from the grave by a friendly neighbor, and looking, with that mass of bandages, like a freakish human on all fours, rather than a dog.

  Standing at the foot of the grave, Calder heard the minister drone on; beside him, Elsie was whimpering again. Now they were lowering the coffin into the deep recess. Soon the whole messy business would be over, and things back to normal at home. His sister was basically shallow; she’d get over her loss easily enough. Control of a quarter of a million dollars was changing hands.

  A jet flew over, drowning out the minister’s final platitude; some of the mourners looked up in annoyance. And at that moment Siegfried went mad again. Yelping, whining, and writhing in an attempt to escape the invisible torment he was expecting, the dog tore free from his leash.

  In the extremity of his fear, he sought comfort where it had always been found after the ordeal of high voltage. He raced to Martin Calder, whimpering, and sprang into the man’s arms. Taken by surprise, off balance at the edge of the open grave, Calder tottered under the sudden impact, then with a choked cry fell backwards into the pit. The loud snap as his neck broke was audible some feet away, even to human ears.

  Everybody was staring at the dog; he was shaking himself, and seemed quite calm again. They could never know how the jet plane, as it hurtled over them at six hundred miles an hour had, at one point in its passage, generated a typical supersonic wave on the frequency of Calder’s whistle.

  THE MARROW OF JUSTICE

  by Hal Ellson

  THE COFFIN WAS A PLAIN ONE, finished in the shop of Carlos Martinez, without frills, stark naked wood of soft pine. Harsh sunlight splintered off it as the men carried it through the miserable street, treading its dust, stones, and the scattered fire of tangerine peels withering in the heat.

  It was a day of flame but, in this land of perpetual sun, not unseasonable. No more than death. The poor in their shacks and crumbling adobes knew its ghastly visits all too frequently. Funerals were commonplace and all of a kind. A plain pine box for the deceased, four men to carry it and a small group of mourners following.

  A vast crowd followed the coffin of Rosa Belmonte, the third young girl in the city to die by violation in a brief period of three months. Half-starved dogs with r
ibs showing, children, toddlers, and beggars amidst the crowd lent it a pseudo air of carnival that was diluted by the sombre faces of adults and a muffled silence under which anger awaited eruption.

  The police felt it, a news photographer sighted it in his camera. Detective Fiala was aware of the same phenomenon, but unconcerned with the crowd as such. His eyes sought only one man—the murderer who, through guilt or morbid disposition, might be lurking here.

  No face riveted his attention till Fiala noticed the limousine, with the crowd breaking round it and the Chief of Police, Jose Santiago. He was sitting beside his chauffeur, face bloated and dark, tinted glasses concealing incongruous blue eyes that resembled twin stones and reflected the basic nature of the man.

  Without the uniform he might be the one I’m looking for, Fiala thought, turning away and moving on with the sullen crowd that refused to acknowledge the naked violence of the sun.

  The funeral went off without incident, the police were relieved, Chief Santiago satisfied. His chauffeur returned him to the Municipal Building, the location of police headquarters.

  As he entered his office with Captain Torres, the phone rang. He picked it up, listened, then dismissed Captain Torres with a wave of his hand. Frowning now, he spoke to his caller, Victor Quevedo, mayor of the city and the one who had “made” him. These two were friends of a sort, but the conversation that ensued between them now was strictly business.

  The murder of Rosa Belmonte, with the killer not apprehended, as in both previous murders, had created grave criticism of the police that, in turn, reflected upon Quevedo, exposing him to the machinations of his political enemies. This was the gist of Quevedo’s complaint, along with his sharp demand that Santiago do something and do it fast.

  “Do what?” said Santiago.

  “Get the killer before midnight.”

  Astounded, Santiago hesitated, stuttered inanely, and finally managed to say, “But Victor—”

  Quevedo cut him off sharply. “I am being embarrassed politically and otherwise,” he snapped. “If you wish to continue as Chief of Police, find the killer. Don’t—and you’re finished.”

  Sweating profusely, Santiago dropped the phone and sat back. Slowly with trembling hands he lit a cigarette and dispersed a cloud of smoke. His thoughts were in chaos, dark face swollen to bursting. Slowly the agitation within him receded. Behind his tinted glasses his cold eyes lit up as a face focused in his mind.

  He crushed his cigarette, arose, opened the door, called Captain Torres into the office, and gave him his orders: “Pick up Manuel Domingo for the murder of Rosa Belmonte.”

  Manuel Domingo’s criminal activities were long known to the police—but murder? Captain Torres raised his brows in surprise.

  “Are you sure you have the right man?” he asked.

  “Are you doubting me, or my source of information?” Santiago wanted to know, asserting both the authority of his office and intimating that the phone call he’d received was the “voice” of a reliable informer.

  Captain Torres flushed and retreated to the door. From there he said, “I’ll pick up Manuel Domingo personally.”

  At nine that evening, a black sky threatened the city and the lacy jacarandas stirred to a faint errant wind from the mountains where yellow lightning ignited the empty heavens. Behind the Municipal Building four bars faced the plaza, loud voices broke from each of them.

  Saturday night was just beginning and musicians lolled on the plaza benches, barefoot boys shined shoes, hawked blood-red and dove-white roses on trays of cardboard, like every one else, forgetting Rosa Belmonte.

  It was on this scene that Captain Torres arrived with three of his men after an intensive and fruitless search of all the usual haunts of the criminal Manuel Domingo.

  Captain Torres was convinced that Domingo had fled the city when chance directed his eyes to a bench where two shoeshine boys vied for the privilege of doing the shoes of Detective Fiala.

  Granting them each a shoe, Fiala, who was short and soft-fleshed, with the pallid complexion of a priest, looked up to see the strapping, youthful Captain Torres and his three men confronting him.

  The latter were innocuous fellows, Captain Torres an arrogant whelp, but hardly that now. He needed help and Fiala, whom he despised and who despised him, might provide the information he needed so badly.

  “I am looking for Manuel Domingo,” Torres announced. “Perhaps you happen to know his whereabouts?”

  With a derisive smile, Fiala nodded toward a bar directly across the street. “Manuel Domingo is in there. You’re picking him up?”

  “For the murder of Rosa Belmonte,” Captain Torres replied and turned on his heels.

  Fiala sat where he was. A half minute later Manuel Domingo came through the door of the bar across the street accompanied by Captain Torres and his three men. All five passed through the plaza and entered police headquarters.

  Fiala, who had gone off duty early that day, lit a cigarette and shook his head. No matter what, Manuel Domingo’s fate was sealed, the murder solved. Tomorrow the newspapers would be full of it.

  In disgust, Fiala flicked his cigarette to the gutter and noticed the group of men who’d come from the bar across the street. Anger echoed in their voices; word spread quickly round the plaza: Manuel Domingo had been picked up for the murder of Rosa Belmonte. Manuel Domingo—

  Under the black angry sky a crowd began to converge on police headquarters, but too late to give vent to its feelings, for the brief interrogation of Manuel Domingo was already completed. Guarded by police, he stepped to the sidewalk and was quickly ushered into a waiting car.

  Into a second car stepped Chief of Police Santiago and Captain Torres. With an escort of ten motorcycle policemen, both cars roared off toward the scene of the crime, a spot in the desert several miles from the outskirts of the city.

  The cavalcade soon reached it, the glaring lights of cars and motorcycles focused on a tall yucca beside the road. At its foot Luis Espina, a gatherer of fibre obtained from a small spiny desert plant, had discovered the body of Rosa Belmonte.

  As Manuel Domingo stepped from the car, his face took on a ghastly hue, perhaps because of the lights, perhaps out of fear now that he was at the scene of the crime. Whatever he felt, he said nothing; he appeared dazed.

  A sharp command from Captain Torres sent the policemen into a wide semi-circle, with guns drawn to prevent an attempted escape. That done, Captain Torres walked to the edge of the road with Santiago and Manuel Domingo. There, on orders, he took up position, while the prisoner and Santiago proceeded to the foot of the yucca.

  Once there, Manuel Domingo stopped and stood like a soldier ordered to attention. Headlights impaled him in a glaring cross fire. A sheer wall of black enveloped this luminous area. Now the brief interrogation that Santiago had conducted at headquarters continued. He was seen to gesture; his voice in an unintelligible murmur carried only to Captain Torres.

  Manuel Domingo turned, spoke for the first time since stepping into the car. He was frightened, the terrible black sky threatened, he did not trust Santiago.

  “Get me out of this,” he said, “or else—”

  “Quiet, you fool. This is routine. You’ve been accused.”

  “Who accuses me? Name him.”

  “Shut up and listen.”

  Manuel Domingo came to attention again. His chest heaved, chin lifted, then suddenly he bolted in an attempt to escape. Calmly Santiago fired from the hip.

  Domingo seemed to be running on air, the weight of his body carried him forward, then his legs buckled and he plunged forward to sprawl on the desert floor. Moments later Santiago stood over him and fired another shot as the others closed in.

  The black night enveloped the desolate scene as the cavalcade roared off toward the city. Santiago glanced at the clock on the dashboard and settled back. It was still early, the issue settled. The mayor no longer had reason to be embarrassed.

  As Santiago smiled to himself, Captain Torres tur
ned and said, “Officially, we know now that Manuel Domingo was guilty of murdering Rosa Belmonte, but—”

  “You don’t think he killed the girl?”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did he run?”

  “I told him we couldn’t protect him from the mob, that if he ran, I’d cover him and let him escape because I knew he was innocent.”

  “But you shot him down.”

  Santiago put a cigarette to his lips. “I had no alternative,” he answered, flicking his lighter, and the cavalcade moved on toward the lights of the city.

  In the early morning the body of the murderer Manuel Domingo, naked but for a white sheet that covered the lower half of his body, lay on a long table beneath a tree in a small plaza near the center of the city for all to see and take warning. Flies came with the heat; the light brought crowds.

  All through the day the people of the city filed past the dead man and at dusk he was taken away, mourned by none.

  Here, the matter would have ended, interred along with Manuel Domingo, but for Detective Fiala who knew one thing beyond doubt: Domingo hadn’t killed the girl. With the murderer still at large, on his own time, Fiala conducted an investigation that quickly proved fruitful. That done, he appeared at the Municipal Building, asked to see Mayor Quevedo and was informed that he was at lunch, dining with several men of importance.

  Obtaining the name of the restaurant, Fiala went there, seated himself at a table next to Quevedo’s party, bowed and, in a voice soft enough to elude the ears of the others, said, “If I may have a word. It’s a matter of grave importance which concerns you.”

  Such was his manner that Quevedo quickly nodded. When he and his companions finished dining, he contrived an excuse for remaining behind and sat down at Fiala’s table.