The Spitting Image

by Michael Avallone

  “Cut the clowning, Randy. I’ll leave you here to fry if you keep on stalling—”

  “Would I stall at a time like this!” He fairly screamed at me. “See for yourself if you don’t believe me—”

  I pushed past him, not waiting to hear any more. I flung a quick glance into the interior of the room. It was another baby-sized room. Windowless, one bed, one chair, nothing else. It was as empty as a theater ten minutes after the midnight show. It was also a dodge.

  Randall Crandall was high-tailing it down the hall, his tall, well-made figure going like sixty.

  I swore. The girls were blocking his way. And he wasn’t acting like he was going to stop and pass the time of day with them.

  I brought the .32 up and swore again. It was too dim for fancy marksmanship and one of the twins would stop anything that didn’t have his name on it.

  I took off after him.

  He bowled on through the girls. April fell back dazed, of no use at all. June tried to throw an arm around him. But it was no use. His head-forward charge sent her flying like a tenpin and he was on by.

  I dropped to one knee and sighted carefully along the barrel. I had a full second’s grace before he made the end of the hall.

  I triggered off, the tiny automatic seeming only to sneeze in my fingers. I ran after the shot.

  The slug must have caught Crandall in the lower part of one leg because he whirled around in a fantastic kind of cakewalk. He staggered out of sight around the corner like a man going through a revolving door.

  I gathered up April and June with my forward momentum. Just as Randall Crandall made one hell of a racket falling down a flight of stairs or something. There was a long, terrible yell that went with it until something cut it off short like a radio station break. Something like landing on something hard.

  I pushed the twins ahead of me, conscious of the heat at my back. April was practically sleepwalking but June was a big help dragging her along.

  We reached the end of the hall. We got a good look at what had shut Randall Crandall up.

  He’d taken a header down a curving iron stairway that led right into the basement of the factory. The place where big out-of-use vats were ringed together like the top view of a box of soda straws.

  The low stairway had catapulted him over a safety hand rail into the very center of one of the huge empties. Like a hole-in-one. Only it wasn’t as nice as it was in golf.

  He was mashed down inside of one big vat like the little bit of applesauce that you sometimes leave on your plate. His face was turned up to us as we took the stairs at a dead run. By the looks of it, he must have landed on it. Or maybe I should say the lack of looks.

  He wasn’t twice as good-looking as Gregory Peck any more. He wasn’t even easy on the eyes.

  April turned her face away and broke down.

  Behind us, the floor upstairs came apart with a split, a hiss, and a fiery bang.

  Downstairs, I forced a door open by going to work on it with a rusty crowbar that was handy.

  I got the girls out in a hurry.

  TWENTY-ONE

  We watched the place burn down. It wasn’t funny. Even from five hundred yards away, it wasn’t something you could laugh at.

  It was a cold, starless October night. Or maybe early morning. I couldn’t tell. It was still plenty dark in spite of the fire. I hadn’t the foggiest idea where we were.

  The building was dying. Dying hard. The flames were snaking out of every broken window. And somewhere inside, Randall Crandall and Doggie were being handed their individual spades by Lucifer himself. But for the grace of another lucifer, that match head, the three of us would have been weenies on a griddle.

  I looked at the girls huddled around me. Fear had made them more alike than ever. Fear and firelight. April’s eyes hadn’t lost their dazed look. And as surprisingly plucky as little June had been, her chin was trembling now. It figured. Shock was setting in.

  The pain in my ankles and hands came back. I winced. I found my cigarettes all crumpled in one pocket. I unearthed one serviceable one, lit it. Shrugging, I tossed the rest of the pack away.

  June was watching me. I sucked in a chestful of smoke and passed her the butt. She seized it eagerly and put it between her red lips. Her eyes were grateful.

  “There was somebody else in there,” I said. April shook her head violently. It was as if my voice had broken a spell.

  “It’s awful,” she whimpered. Her shoulders tried to come apart with a shudder.

  “Sure it is,” I agreed. “Crandall had a cute idea. The dame must have looked an awful lot like you two. She had to. Or Crandall would never have tried such a dodge.”

  “It’s better than that,” June said in a strange voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A double is nothing. Sure, nobody else would have had to certify her but Randy. We have no family left. And it’s so easy to just go away on a long trip without seeing anybody.” June’s sobriety was a little hard to take. “Randy could have gotten away with having a girl double for one of us. But it’s better than that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s better. What is?” My head hurt.

  June laughed. Her healthy young head rocked on her shoulders.

  “Stop it!” April hissed. “Stop it! How can you laugh like that? That poor girl—what she must have gone through—”

  “Yeah, sure!” June stopped laughing to flare at April. “I don’t care. She tried to kill us both, didn’t she? And she would have too if we didn’t have Ed here on our side.”

  “Randy being such a creep helped more than you’ll ever know,” I said modestly.

  April’s head lowered.

  “—you shouldn’t laugh, June. It isn’t nice—”

  A little more of this and I’d be walking around in circles talking to myself. And my head hurt enough already.

  “Remember me?” I mocked.

  June quieted down. “Ed, this might be a shock. But April and me—we’re not twins. I mean to say—we might be now again. But we weren’t before.”

  Normally I never do. But I snorted. Right out loud.

  “Oh, this is great. Look. I’m half burned to death, I’ve ruined my one and only suit, the office door will cost ten bucks to repair, and I’ve got a king-sized headache. And now you double-talk me. Let up, for Christ’s sake. What are you trying to say?”

  April’s eyes burned up at me. Her chin set defiantly.

  “What June meant is—that girl in there was our sister.”

  “—and she and Randy had fixed the whole thing. Months ago.” June blurted it out. “They were going to kill April and me and then she’d take the place of one of us and inherit the two million and—” The wild words just tumbled out of her. Crazy, rapid, and unbelievably daffy.

  Out in the night, a fire engine howled. Beams of light shot along the highway to the north. And I really had a headache now. My head felt like a boiler room.

  “Hold everything. Stop the music. Let’s get out of here first. My place. Those are cops coming and they ask questions and they detain people. And I couldn’t take that just this minute. I want to chew on what you just gave me. Triplets. Three sisters. Three dead ringers. Three beautiful dead ringers…”

  I cursed. A long, hard curse. And then I did something that surprised even me.

  I passed out.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was a dream. It had to be. Because it was in Technicolor and there was crazy, crashing music like a Broadway musical. And I was sitting in a theater that was a purple nightmare. Purple drapes, purple walls, purple stage, and a purple screen. Deep purple.

  I don’t know how I got there in the first place because I didn’t remember buying a ticket and what would I be doing in a theater when I was working on a case? That’s what had me stumped.

  But then the purple screen lit up and I couldn’t move a muscle. Somehow I was sweating. My shirt felt soaked to the collar.

  Big purple letters appeared. Like a mo
vie coming on with credits and everything. I blinked.

  CHARLES DICKENS’

  immortal classic in Three D

  A TALE OF TWO PRETTIES

  with

  ED NOON

  and the

  FAMOUS WEXLER TWINS

  costumes and settings by Randall Crandall

  That’s all there was to the introduction. Then the first scene flashed on. I blinked again.

  There were April and June rigged out in Bikinis and sunglasses, sporting around on a desert that was strictly out of MGM’s prop department. They were singing a duet. I strained to catch it but the damnedest humming started in my ears. The humming didn’t stop so I turned in my seat and found two people talking away to beat the band. They wouldn’t stop when I asked them the first time. So I pulled out my .45 and shot them both. They were quiet after that and somehow as they toppled out of their purple-backed chairs, their faces were visible for a second. It was Doggie and Bull.

  I looked back at the screen. Now I could hear the singing. The camera panned in for a close-up and there was April and June again looking naked, looking like the Gold Dust twins, singing a song called, “Kill Me, Sister.” I somehow got the idea that the ditty they were warbling in clear, matching voices sounded a hell of a lot like “Call Me Mister.”

  For some reason this made me mad. I jumped to my feet yelling, “Fraud! Fake! It’s a dirty lie! They aren’t twins! They’re triplets! A pair of phonies—”

  That did it. The screen stopped moving, the girls stopped singing. They stared down at me from the giant purple screen with giant purple faces. Their lavender mouths pouted monstrously. Their purple lips parted. And they kept staring at me all the time.

  By this time everyone in the audience was on his feet looking down at me, yelling for the ushers to throw me out. I could see Monks and Hadley dolled up like first nighters, coming up the aisle toward me dangling enormous silver handcuffs. Light bounced off them hurting my eyes. I could see the cuffs had my name engraved on them in Old English. Ed Noon.

  I was afraid now. I turned to run. But there was Sanderson, James T., resplendent in an usher’s uniform, with a big pail of water waiting for me. The pail had my name on it too.

  I tried to dodge by him but my muscles wouldn’t work. I tried to tell him to stop, tried to tell him that it was gasoline and not water. That I would burn to death if he doused me. But he couldn’t hear me. I screamed but nothing came out.

  Sanderson, James T., drew back one big arm and let the contents of the pail fly at me.

  I tried to duck but nothing happened. And then the fluid hit me and the top of my head blew off in a million tiny fragments.

  I woke up.

  Bright sunlight was bouncing off my face. For a minute I thought I had no head. I could feel the blood inside rushing around with no particular destination in mind. Then something played traffic cop and all the white blood corpuscles and red blood corpuscles broke it up and went home. Piece by piece my head shaped back to normal size. I could feel the separate parts rejoining like some kid’s set of blocks. I waited for peace to reign again. When it felt safe enough to open my eyes, I did.

  “Easy, Ed. How do you feel?”

  The ceiling ran at right angles to my eyes and suddenly the only thing in the world was a black bug marching serenely across it. A corner abruptly ran over to the ceiling and held it up for me while I steadied myself. Then it ran down into a chair, connected with a closet door, leapfrogged over to the old four-drawer file that was the pride and joy of the mouse auditorium.

  The office came into focus. I raised myself stiffly. The worn leather of the office couch let go of my back with a soft push. I stayed that way for I don’t know how long. Feeling every muscle in my body crying out for a rubdown, each blistered inch of my skin aching dully.

  The twins came into view. They must have been standing there all the while. April and June both looking worried. Both looking like any man’s dream of a lifetime.

  I blinked.

  “Ouch,” I said. “For a mug in the shape I’m in, seeing double isn’t exactly prescribed. Break it up.”

  They did. They came around to either side of me. One of them pushed a glass of water in my face. I got it down so fast it worried me. I was feeling pretty rocky.

  “Ed—you all right?” April’s unpainted mouth parted like an angel’s.

  “Dreams I have. Technicolor yet. How did we get here?”

  “Not hard.” June supplied the information. “We remembered what you said about cops. So we dragged you out to the road and got a cab. Wasn’t that a break?”

  I smiled, feeling my lips crack.

  “Regular girl scouts. How long have I been hors de?”

  “Three hours, Ed.” April was still worried. “Are you okay? For sure, that is?”

  I proved I was by creaking to my feet.

  “I’ll live.” I felt all of eighty-five. “Get me a drink will you? No—not water. It’s in the desk.”

  June beat April to it. I could see she was gunning for me again. She was a nympho but I was her type. I had hair on my chest.

  She started to pour but I took the bottle from her, tilted it until the bend in my elbow was nearly permanent, and then put it down on the desk.

  One thing about whisky at a time like that. It puts necessary blood back in you and sets all your reflexes to working again. I felt ninety-five per cent better; the other five would never be the same again anyway.

  April shook her brunette head.

  “Alcohol is bad for you in your condition. You ought to be more careful. You take too many chances as it is.”

  “You bet I do. Next time a nice little divorce case. Nothing to do with twins that inherit such a filthy thing as money.”

  April’s face clouded.

  “I guess we owe you some explanations. You never did get to see her did you? Our sister—I mean.”

  “You mean May?” I asked.

  June erupted. “She never did tell us, come to think of it. May. That’s good, Ed.”

  “Thank you. Now who’s going to straighten me out on all this? I see by the office clock that it’s nearly nine. And that police lieutenant who hasn’t heard from me since yesterday just might be getting around to missing me. Talk, somebody.”

  April and June exchanged glances. June shrugged and April sighed. I got behind my desk again near the bottle. The heat in my stomach was just beginning to fill out against my ribs and the way April was making herself comfortable on the couch by the window I could see it was going to be a pretty long tale.

  “Come on, April. Shoot. If it’s an after-dinner yarn, I’m ready.”

  “Ed—” she faltered. “Where do I begin?”

  “Oh, April,” June blurted like a disgusted schoolgirl.

  I smiled reassuringly at my favorite brunette.

  “I’ll start you off, April. How come you got a triplet sister that you don’t know about?”

  She brightened.

  “That’s the oddest part of it. Mother died in childbirth. Having us. It’s fantastic, Ed, but—our sister was born when she died after giving birth to June and myself. And the doctor who performed the operation kept her birth a secret. There was only the Wexler twins. He actually stole the third baby Mother had given life to.”

  “Come again?”

  “Oh, I know it’s hard to swallow. We only have her—May’s—word for it. But she did look exactly like us, Ed. It was amazing. Really, it was. You see, the doctor had a daughter of his own who couldn’t have a child. Who never would. And so he took her, the child that belonged to Mother, and his daughter and her husband were too grateful to ever question his story that it was a newborn child left on a doorstep that no one had ever come forth to claim as their own.”

  I shook my head.

  “Even ‘Life Can Be Beautiful’ wouldn’t try to put that one over on their radio audience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They could have adopted a kid without her old ma
n going against all the ethics of his profession and everything that’s supposedly decent in this cockeyed world. No dice. There has to be more to it than that.”

  The way April’s eyes glowed you would have thought she’d just topped my crummy pair with a third ace.

  “That’s it, Ed. There was more. The daughter’s husband was a drunkard, a no-good. A failure. No orphanage would endorse their application for adoption papers. That’s why the doctor did it. His daughter was going out of her mind. He was sure a child, her own child, would give her a new interest in life. A chance to stay alive for the best reason in the world. Motherhood.”

  “The ‘Life Can Be Beautiful’ program and I both apologize,” I said drily. I wet my whistle with another slug from the bottle.

  “Well, that was it.” April sighed. “May grew up never knowing she wasn’t who she thought she was. The doctor consoled himself with the thought that Gus Wexler had everything already and was a poor father to the bargain, as later events proved. Besides that, he had saved his daughter’s marriage. And her happiness.”

  “Continue.”

  “May’s other father died when she was six. And then in her twentieth year, her mother was dying of tuberculosis. And on her deathbed told her everything. The whole story. About the Wexlers. And the inheritance. I think you can fill in the rest, Ed.”

  I drummed the bottle with my fingers.

  “It isn’t hard. You two set a fine example. A pair of high-society featherbrains. Real Park Avenue darlings. June with her fifty fur coats and fool stunts that got her name in the papers more often than Stalin. And you, April. A famous man-hater. Cold and cool and looking to the outside world like a stuck-up snob who wasn’t worth saving. Yeah, I can just see that old gal on her deathbed telling her beautiful young daughter all. Filling her ears about two million bucks’ worth of luxury and easy living that she had a rightful third share in. And now that I’ve said all that, the rest of the sordid little tale of buck fever falls in line.”