She circled the living room, pulled back the drapes and peered out at the city. The sky was gray this morning. She’d been in such a fog, she hadn’t even noticed what kind of day it was until now. She could see a vague, milky brightness where the sun was trying to break through the clouds. A few snowflakes were drifting down again. There hadn’t been much snow this winter, and the few sizable storms had given way to brief thaws. The streets were clear.
She walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge. Nothing remarkable there. Somebody would have to clean it out, though. Carter wasn’t coming back. Nothing much in the cupboard. A few cans of soup, some veggies, packages of pasta. Carter liked elbow macaroni, that was his favorite. Had been his favorite, Dorothy reminded herself.
She put her purse on the counter and removed her little Nikon. She could remember when a camera like this would have cost her a week’s salary. Now they practically gave them away in boxes of breakfast cereal.
All right. She’d been putting it off but the moment was here. She crossed the living room again and stood at the bedroom doorway. She remembered the first time she’d crossed that threshold with Carter. It wasn’t the first time they’d been to bed together. That had been at her place. In the very bed where she’d found his body.
She flashed back on that moment. Had she even looked at his face? He’d been lying on his back, wearing a pair of her panties and almost wearing one of her bras. She could see the knife sticking out of his chest, could remember exactly what it had felt like, grasping the handle, feeling the slippery blood, tugging at it until she’d got it out of his chest.
But had she even seen his face? Were his eyes open or closed? Did he have a look of surprise, or had he been in agony when he died?
She felt herself getting dizzy.
She half-leaned, half-fell against the bedroom door. It swung open and she staggered into the room. She could smell something in the air. A faint odor of cigar smoke, and a cheap, young-girl perfume mixed with harsh female musk.
She felt her knees turning to jelly as she stumbled toward the bed. This was impossible. Impossible. Another comforter, another shape, another tent.
This couldn’t be real. This was some kind of mad, psychotic flashback.
She leaned against the bed, her knees against the side of the bed, the Nikon in her left hand; with her right hand she pulled back the comforter.
Another body. Another kitchen knife. Another pair of red panties. Another lacy red brassiere.
Marianne the bimbo.
Her head was whirling, blackness descending over her, her ears ringing. She felt herself falling into a bottomless pit. She’d never fainted in her life and now she had a fleeting moment of self-awareness in which she thought, this is what fainting is.
She thought, it was like passing out drunk.
Just one look at you, my heart grows tipsy in me.
Warm flesh against her face. She opened her eyes, let out a brief scream, pushed against, against what? Against Marianne the bimbo? Flesh still warm but not like a living person. And her face was wet; she touched her cheek, slippery, brought her hand away, red.
She tried to stand up, found herself on her knees beside the bed, unable to rise.
She heard a door open and turned. The bathroom door. Carter’s bathroom. For a crazed moment she remembered that she’d kept a toothbrush there to use when she stayed over with Carter.
You and you alone bring out the gypsy in me.
He was standing in the doorway. Not Carter. Who the hell was he? Hound’s tooth jacket. Thick glasses. Bifocal line. The loser from Mildred’s.
For a few seconds they stared at each other, Dorothy and the hapless pick-up artist, a frozen tableau. She remembered his newspaper. It was The Detroit Free Press. If Carter wouldn’t go to Detroit, then Detroit would come to Carter.
He lunged for the bed, reached for the knife sticking out of Marianne the bimbo. Dorothy hit the button on the Nikon and the little camera flashed in the man’s face. He threw his hands up and tumbled backwards across the bed. Dorothy whirled and ran for the doorway, stumbled across the living room.
Before she could reach the doorway the door swung open and two figures entered.
She recognized them.
Behind her she heard an incoherent male sound, something between a grunt and a roar. She tried to turn and see who was coming but her momentum made her tumble over backwards. She landed on her rump, the Nikon still clutched against her shoulder.
The man in the hound’s tooth jacket had a bloody knife in his hand and he was coming at her. She fired the camera at him again, heard a crash from behind her, saw a startled look on the man’s face, heard another crash and saw red spots appearing on his jacket. She snapped another frame and watched him tumble to the carpet and lie still.
She felt strong hands pulling her to her feet, blinked and saw Officer Galloway. He lifted her and she clung to him. She turned her face and saw Jackie McKibbon bending over the man in the hound’s tooth jacket. She kicked the kitchen knife away, put a couple of fingers on the side of his neck and nodded.
Dorothy leaned away from Galloway. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
Galloway muscled her to the nearby sofa and lowered her as if she were a child. She aimed the Nikon and snapped another exposure of the man in the hound’s tooth jacket.
Now Galloway rumbled away, into the bedroom. A minute later he was back. Jackie McKibbon was doing something with the body on the carpet and Dorothy took another picture. Galloway signaled to Jackie McKibbon and she followed him into the bedroom. A minute later she was back in the living room, sitting with Dorothy.
Now Galloway came walking out of the bedroom shaking his head.
Dorothy looked at the two cops, Galloway and McKibbon. “How did you know?”
“We didn’t, we were just keeping an eye on you, Miss Doe. We did have an eye on Timmy Stander, though.”
Dorothy frowned, puzzled.
“Him.” Jackie McKibbon indicated the man on the floor.
“But—why? What’s the connection?”
“Hanson was buying counterfeit twenties in Detroit, paying for them with good cash and bringing the queer bills back to Chicago. The printing plant is in Windsor. They print U.S. phony there and smuggle it into Detroit for distribution.”
“I don’t get it. Why would anybody swap good money for counterfeit?”
McKibbon laughed. “It wasn’t one for one. Going rate for queer bucks is something like twenty per cent of face value. Anyway”—she ran her fingers through her hair—“anyway, Hanson must have run some kind of double-cross on his customers. I heard of one of these double-crosses where a bad guy tried to buy counterfeit money with counterfeit money. He even got away with it for a little while. Eventually he wound up in Lake Michigan. Whatever Hanson was up to, the Detroit people sent Stander to straighten him out.”
Dorothy was starting to get her bearings again. She peered at the man lying on the floor. “He doesn’t look like an enforcer.”
“No.” Jackie McKibbon nodded. “No fedora, no pencil moustache, no pinstripe suit, right? That’s just the point, Dorothy.”
She touched Dorothy’s hand. “This is some building. Shots fired and nobody says boo. We’ll have to call this in, get people up here.”
Dorothy said, “He must have stolen my bra and panties as a gift for her. I never even missed them. He was crazy about red lace, red lace bras and panties. I had a drawer full of them. I never even missed them.”
Jackie McKibbon smiled. “They are nice.”
“They came from Marshall Fields,” Dorothy told her. She stood up and made her way back to the bedroom. McKibbon tagged along, watching Dorothy’s every move.
She stood over the dresser where she sometimes kept a few changes of clothing, a convenience for those times she’d stayed over with Hanson. She slid the drawer open. It was filled with red lacy underthings. She reached in and picked up a couple of sets of undies.
From behind her she heard McK
ibbon’s hissed exclamation. She saw McKibbon reach past her and pull more underwear aside, exposing the carefully packaged sheaves of twenty-dollar bills.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Lupoff has written sixty volumes of fantasy, mystery, science fiction, horror, and mainstream fiction. His recent books include the collections Killer’s Dozen, Quintet: the Cases of Chase and Delacroix, Before 12:01 and After, The Universal Holmes, and Terrors, Visions, and Dreams. His nine-volume mystery series involving Hobart Lindsey and Marvia Plum was reissued by Wildside Press in 2013.
HANGIN’ WITH IRON MIKE, by Stan Trybulski
1
I had just finished playing hoops and was walking off the asphalt court when Nia came running down the street toward me. Even though she was still up the block I could hear her screaming and crying.
“They killed Arnold,” she sobbed, running into my arms and holding me.
“Who?”
“That big thug Iraq! Him and his crew.”
Nia was my little sister, at thirteen, two years younger than me, and Arnold was our pet pigeon. We didn’t live in the projects but in a three-story building that was better than a tenement. It had clean apartments and the front door had good locks. We could even use the roof and Ma let me raise a pigeon up there. I let Nia name him. She called him Arnold. I didn’t like the name too much but hey, Nia’s my little sister and has the prettiest smile in Brooklyn so the bird was named Arnold.
2
When I saw the bird lying on the tar paper roof, its neck all twisted and its tiny eyes looking up at nothing I wanted to cry too. But I just stared blankly at the bird. Iraq and two of his buddies were there laughing at the bird and at me. They didn’t care about front door locks; they had scaled the backyard fence and climbed up the fire escape.
“I killed your bird, punk,” Iraq said. “Want to fight me?”
They call him Iraq because that’s where he says his father was killed while in the Army. I know the true story; the one where Iraq’s mother, pregnant with him, called the cops after her babydaddy broke her arm. She had him arrested but he booked before the court date and nobody has seen him since. At least that’s what Ma told me when I asked her about it.
Iraq was a year older than me and heavier and training to become a boxer. I didn’t want to fight him, I wanted to kill him and if I had a nine of my own or even a pipe I would have but I knew that at fifteen I could be tried as an adult for murder and even if I was tried as a juvenile they could send me to Spofford and then to Coxsackie until I was twenty-one. That was six years and who would protect Nia while I was gone? So I just kept staring at the bird and saying nothing.
“See you around, sweet thing,” Iraq said to Nia, rubbing his hand along her arm as he walked by. I wanted to kill him more than ever but I still kept staring at Arnold.
After Iraq and his crew swaggered off, I put my arm around Nia and wiped her tears and promised we would get another pigeon and that she could name that one too.
We buried Arnold in the vacant lot next door but I didn’t bury my hate.
3
I used my allowance to buy another pigeon and some gorilla glue. I gave the pigeon to Nia as a birthday present. I told her that it was all hers and she would have to feed and care for it and she cried and hugged me.
I paid a homeless man five cents each for some beer bottles he had taken from a street corner trash basket and I took them up to the roof of our building. I put a towel on the tar paper and broke the bottles. Then I took the sharpest, most jagged pieces I could find and used the gorilla glue to paste them on the parapet around the top of the fire escape. The glass was dark brown like the brick of the parapet and you couldn’t really see it. I was hoping Iraq and his crew would come back but they never did. That was okay I decided because I knew I would find another way.
4
I went down to the precinct stationhouse. Not to file a complaint against Iraq for killing my bird. I had heard that the Police Athletic League had a boxing program and I wanted to join. The administrative aide at the desk told me it was on Pennsylvania Avenue in Brownsville and told me to ask for Detective McDermott. I went there straight away.
I told McDermott that there was this kid named Iraq in my school who was supposed to be a pretty boxer and that I wanted to learn to box like him. McDermott said that Iraq was a good boxer and that he would be fighting in the Golden Gloves next year, but that he didn’t train with the PAL. I said I didn’t care; I wanted to learn enough to fight in the Golden Gloves too. He said he would teach me how to fight but the rest, the discipline and the heart I had to have. I just nodded and thought of Arnold.
The detective called boxing the sweet science and said I had to study it just like I was in school. I never was much good in school, Nia was the smart one in the family, and we knew she was going to college, going somewhere big in life. No one had ever said that about me. But I listened and I studied. McDermott taught me how to jab and throw a hook and a straight right; showed me how I needed to stick and move.
“This isn’t the street,” he said. “You’re going to meet guys in the ring that are faster than you and hit harder. You won’t be able to use a bat or knife or a gun. You won’t be able to block all their punches.”
So he taught me how to move from side to side, to slip punches and counter, how to roll my head and body away when I was hit to lessen the impact. And all the time he had me moving around the ring, running, skipping rope, building up my wind. I could have taken the subway to the PAL gym but I ran there and back every day instead.
5
When I turned sixteen I got a job in the supermarket. I gave Ma money every week and saved the rest. This was the same year I saw Mike Tyson fight for the first time. Everybody in Brooklyn knew Iron Mike and his rep but us kids were too young to have ever have seen him fight live in the ring. Then they started showing his greatest knockouts on television and I watched them all. He was packing C-4 in both hands. I wanted to be just like him and take Iraq out but I knew that I had to have a special plan, a special program beyond the PAL gym.
As soon as I had saved enough, I bought a heavy bag, a set of free weights and a bench and set them up in the basement. Ma didn’t mind, she was happy to see me not watching TV all night long. I knew I had to work hard. Iraq had stopped Nia on the street one day and told her how good she looked and that she about ready for her first man and that she should start hanging with him. She spit in his face and moved back just as he tried to slap her.
He wiped the spit off his face and laughed an evil laugh. “Bitch, the next time I see you, you’ll do the wiping,” he warned her. Nia came home crying and said she was scared of him but I told her not worry, just stay out of his way for a while and I’ll take care of everything.
I bought a poster of Iron Mike and put it up on the basement wall so I could always see his scowl when I worked out. I decided that if boxing was a science like McDermott said then this was my own personal lab. So after working out at the PAL gym, I would go home and watch DVD’s of Iron Mike. Afterwards, I would go down in the basement and throw left hooks at the heavy bags, imagining where Iraq’s liver and temple and jaw were. One day while watching a sports show on ESPN, I saw an old interview of Iron Mike where he said he was going to drive his opponent’s nose bone up into his brain. I smiled.
6
I asked Nia where I could buy some books and she took me to the Barnes & Noble store downtown on Court Street. It was cool inside and they had a Starbucks café upstairs. So I let Nia get some books and bought her an iced lemonade drink and left her at a little round table with a high bar-type chair in the café while I searched for what I needed. I didn’t know my way around the store so I asked a clerk and he sent me to the sports section. There was a whole collection of books about martial arts and I looked through them until I found the one I wanted. It described in detail how to break someone’s nose with a punch and then drive the broken bone up into the skull by using the heel of your hand. I didn�
�t even have to read it because there was a series of photos that showed me exactly what to do. I studied them very carefully.
When I came back to the café Nia was still reading at the little round table where I had left her. Even with her long kid braids and her thin legs dangling down from the high stool, she looked grown up. I was so proud of her that I wished I could have taken a picture for Ma to keep.
7
As soon as we got home Nia went to her room to do her homework and I went down to the basement and wrapped my hands and hung out with Iron Mike. I saw the photos from the martial arts books in my mind and practiced the punches over and over again. First the left hook to the liver—my money punch—and then what the book said. I swear that once when I looked up at the poster of Iron Mike, he wasn’t scowling, he was smiling. I smiled back.
The Golden Gloves is almost as good as the pros, at least if you make it to the finals. Then you get to fight in the Garden. By the time the tournament rolled around, McDermott said I was ready and he was right. I was going to fight as a novice just like Iraq and I had put on enough pounds and muscle so that we would be in the same weight class. He wasn’t planning on losing and neither was I, so sooner or later we would meet up. I hooked and jabbed my way to the final and Iraq slugged his way to the top as well. McDermott told me I would have to punch more, use my right hand behind my jab and after the left hook if I wanted to beat Iraq.
I just nodded my head and said I won’t let you down. He smiled, never knowing that I was really speaking to Nia.
8
I looked over the ropes at Iraq bouncing down the aisle like he was a champ and I smiled. When he got in the ring he smirked at me. “I’m going break your neck just like I did to your pigeon, punk.”
I just kept smiling.
The fight only lasted one round. I came out jabbing like I always do but Iraq was so damn street anxious to hurt me that he threw a wild right. I slipped it easily and ripped a vicious left hook to his liver. He half bent over, almost paralyzed, and I threw my right and connected. It wasn’t the straight right to the jaw that McDermott had taught me to throw after the hook, it was the downward chopping punch I learned from the martial arts book and it landed on the bridge of Iraq’s nose and right between the eyes. Even with the boxing glove covering my fist, the side of my hand was like a steel bar. I could hear Iraq’s nose bone splinter. I clinched and spun Iraq so the ref was behind him and didn’t have a clear view. I looked right into Iraq’s eyes and smiled. Then I rammed the heel of my hand up against the tip of his nose, sending the shards of broken bone deep into his brain. He shuddered and keeled over.
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 16 Page 6