Kill Her- You'll Like It!

by Michael Avallone

  KILL HER-

  YOU’LL LIKE IT!

  Michael Avallone

  STORY MERCHANT BOOKS

  LOS ANGELES

  2015

  Copyright © 2015 by David and Susan Avallone. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

  http://www.mouseauditorium.tumblr.com

  Story Merchant Books

  400 S. Burnside Avenue #11B

  Los Angeles, California 90036

  http://www.storymerchantbooks.com

  For Patrick O'Connor, Himself, because he understands Noonland and never needs a translation. Or a guide—may all his noons be high ones, too.

  OTHER GREAT ED NOON

  ACTION ADVENTURES

  by Michael Avallone

  SHOOT IT AGAIN, SAM

  THE HORRIBLE MAN

  THE LIVING BOMB

  THE FAT DEATH

  THE FLOWER-COVERED CORPSE

  LONDON BLOODY LONDON

  THE GIRL IN THE COCKPIT

  THE ALARMING CLOCK

  THE TALL DOLORES

  Who was the mad Gingerbread Man who was knifing stripteasers and leaving their corpses with a dread letter "S" on their bared abdomens? Follow flip, engaging Ed Noon, the Manhattan Eye, as he tracks down the weirdest, most horrible maniac who ever terrorized a city of ten million. Sometimes, immortality is only a knife's edge away. Or the distance of lips meeting in a kiss—a Judas kiss.

  The Cast of Characters

  . . . according to their locations

  ED NOON

  the mouse auditorium

  MELISSA MERCER

  Mobile, Alabama

  CAPTAIN MONKS

  Centre Street

  ADA VEN

  the Del Rio Club

  JELLYBEAN JACKSON

  the Hotel Alamo

  HEAVENLY BLUE

  an alley

  CLEO PATRA

  her dressing room

  DIMPLES O'SHAUGHNESSY

  her hotel bed

  GARDENA EDEN

  her parked car

  SATANA

  her bathtub

  FRANKIE

  his basket

  FLATEK AND

  LASKY

  the lobby of the Hotel Alamo

  ELTON LANG, DODIE ROGERS,

  MR. BLAND, MR, TENNING, LARRY,

  MARY

  Nichols' Department Store, New Jersey

  RANCE ROGERS, ALEXANDER PIPPS,

  DON DUNN

  around the lighted stage

  THE GINGERBREAD

  MAN

  cutting up all over the city

  . . . and some of them move to the morgue.

  THE NAKED ADA

  Ada Ven stood framed in the doorway of Suite C. I got a whirlwind, knock-'em-right-in-the-eye preview of flaming red hair, flashing green eyes with yellow glints in each of them, and just about everything else there was to see in Miss Ada Ven.

  She was naked except for a glittering, sequined pastie capping each moon-sized breast; something like a walnut-sized diamond or rhinestone winked out of her navel . . . and a palm leaf no bigger than my hand . . .

  She was a woman, more savage than civilized. More untamed than trained. She looked like she'd soar out of sight any second or come bounding off the walls at me . . . with claws out . . .

  CONTENTS

  MURDER COMES READY TO WEAR

  AND TAKES ITS CLOTHES OFF, TOO

  KNIFE THEM NAKEDLY

  THE GIRL FROM—

  OPEN SEASON ON STRIPPERS

  WHO DAT WHO SAY WHO DAT?

  KILL HER, YOU'LL LIKE IT

  YOU TELL IT, PAL

  THE WORLD WE LOVE IN

  THE GINGERBREAD MAN

  AFTERWORD

  MURDER COMES READY TO WEAR

  Nichols' was a big department store somewhere in the wilds of New Jersey. It sold everything from jeans to lawnmowers to a suburban populace which had fooled itself into thinking it could buy a house, run away from the big city and stop all the worrying about switchblade knives, teeming traffic, and high taxes. The good people who surrounded Nichols' (about a hundred thousand) also seemed to think they could run away from trouble and sudden death. Nichols' had both, in no time at all.

  It was a scorchingly hot Monday in the middle of August when I arrived at the Nichols' Department Store which took up about a block of real estate just off Route 18. You could see it on your way to Atlantic City and points South.

  I eased the Buick onto the concrete plaza surrounding the store, which could have offered landing facilities for a fleet of dirigibles, and parked. I locked my tie tighter about my throat and slid from behind the sticky wheel. A cordon of parked cars and station wagons, emitting steady streams of suburban matrons, all in haircurlers, playsuits and hot pants, with equal hordes of noisy kids in tow, filled the muggy landscape. It was a very hot day.

  There was a shopping mall before me, but Nichols' plate-glass windows dominated the row of shops, stores, and business fronts like a Bloomingdales' set down in the Jersey woods. There were high, clear doors opening easily to let customers in to splurge the weekly paychecks and run up the charge plates. I sidled through the nearest twin doors and found a chrome check-out counter close by. The taffy-blonde at the register, no more than eighteen give or take a summer, eyed me suspiciously, as she doled out change to a wan, fiftyish brunette with a stapled paper bag crowding her arms that had NICHOLS FOR VALUE printed on it in bright red stencil ink. Somewhere in the huge store, a signal bell of some kind chimed melodiously. The brunette, package and all, shouldered past me and disappeared. The blonde kid looked at me, head-on.

  "Mr. Lang in?" I asked, sweeping the interior of the store with one glance, finding orderly rows of counters and aisles, stretching into a salesgirl's infinity. I seemed to be on the Men's department side of the place. The left wall showed something like a thousand hanging suits, coats, sportjackets and the like, as far as my eyes could see.

  The blonde colored slightly. God knows why. "Oh, Mr. Lang? He should be upstairs in his office."

  "Where's the office?"

  She pointed a red fingernail to a side door. There was an EMPLOYEES ONLY placard neatly framed in brass against sea-green paneling. "You can walk right up," she suggested in a low voice that had a New England sound, "but we're supposed to call and tell them. It's regulations."

  I smiled. "Why don't you then? Tell him Ed Noon is here."

  "Noon?" The bloom still showed in her cheeks as if I had cracked wise. "You serious?"

  "Call him, huh?" The drive in from Manhattan had been damp and wearying. An hour on the turnpike had dulled my spirit of repartee. And I hadn't talked to a New Jersey female in years.

  She shrugged, came from behind the counter, and walked to a wall phone set next to the green door. She was a shade too large in the hips, spoiling an otherwise sound figure. She eyed me again over the mouthpiece as she murmured small talk. She hung up quickly and cranked her body around to let me pass. I brushed by her when she said: "Just upstairs and to the left." My shoulder barely touched her full young bosom as I pushed by. But it was enough for her face to flood scarlet. I closed the door behind me, taking just a second to wonder what it was like to be only eighteen and still so curious about the opposite sex. I couldn't remember.

  Mr. Lang's office was just beyond two locker rooms, a cork bulletin board, a chrome water cooler and another partition loaded with Nichols' directives and commands for the personnel. Streamers about shoplifters and bum checks, warnings about the custom
er always being right, and a flock of newspaper ads and mats concerned with dress, suit, slacks, and furnishing sales. It seemed I had arrived on that glorious day when the $29.95 Dacron Polyester tropical suit was going for a mere twenty-two dollars. My mood was yawny as I walked into Mr. Lang's office. I was miles away from home.

  "Mr. Noon?" More New England echoes emerged from the tall, pencil-thin man in a gray blazer sport-coat with matching slacks, who rose from behind a marble-topped desk. His eyes were a dull blue, his hair pale blond, his face free of fuzz of any kind but I didn't for a minute think that he was stupid. The desk held an onyx stand, with beautiful block letters that said: STORE MANAGER. Nichols' was a chain outfit that extended from Alaska to New York and had earned billions for D. D. Nichols, the founding father, who didn't make the billions hiring dopes.

  And he paid his employees peanuts in the Golden Age of Prosperity.

  A man who can get away with that has to be smart. Or miserly.

  "I got here as soon as I could," I said—the customary preamble with a client you have to visit in person.

  Lang looked grateful. "Fine time you made, Mr. Noon. You've no idea how badly we need a good city detective at this moment."

  "Give me an idea." Lang waved me to a chair, demurring as I offered him one of my Camels. "I'm here because Captain Mike Monks, my very good friend, was called by you. That alone brought me. He seemed to think I could help you, but he didn't go into details."

  Lang was positively delighted by that. A beam lit up his face.

  "I knew I could trust the captain. We had the pleasure of meeting in Washington. Summer of '69. He was on vacation and I was manager of number seventeen forty. One of our smaller stores—" His expression clouded. "You were the man for me, the captain said, and that was recommendation enough. He said you were an expert in your own line."

  "I take it this is something you don't want the local dicks to handle? East Brunswick does have a police department, doesn't it?"

  "Exactly. We have fine policemen here in this township, but this has to be unofficial—for the time being, that is. I have my good reasons and I'll explain them to you."

  "Shoot."

  Lang's blue eyes took on a touch of fire.

  "This company is my life. There's a long way for a man to climb if he has the goods. I've made it from the small stores to the bigger ones. This is a big one. Third largest in New Jersey. But I've my eye on the future. So the record I cut out here counts for much if I intend to move up the Nichols' ladder."

  "So?"

  The blue eyes hardened because he knew I wanted to hear more.

  "If there's going to be trouble, Mr. Noon, I have to take care of it. I have to run a good store. My superiors would expect no less."

  "I understand all that, Mr. Lang. Now what's the trouble?"

  "Shrinkage," he said. "In a word."

  "Come again?"

  He smiled, showing tolerance for an outsider. "I'm not referring to what happens to a garment after it's been washed too many times and doesn't stand up to the manufacturer's claims, Mr. Noon."

  "Call me Ed. It will save time."

  "Elton, Ed. Well, you see we have an inventory. An IBM arrangement, in a way. What we call the Semi-Automatic Inventory Control System. You see, nearly every item in this store has a tag. When the item is sold, that accompanying tag is collected and sent on to the IBM setup and replaced. On a one-to-one basis, you see. One sold, one replaced. So, as you can understand, I think, we literally have a record of everything that leaves the store and a nearly foolproof method of keeping track of our inventory."

  "I see," I said, because he had used that expression three times and it annoyed me, for some reason. I drew slowly on my Camel. "That's not what you meant by shrinkage, though."

  "No," he said, his tone much sadder now. "It's not. Shrinkage occurs when we check our records and find that a lot of merchandise is unaccounted for. Either by being marked down—sold for less, that is—or by being charged back to the seller because it is defective in some way. Actually, shrinkage is a waste of profits. Realistically, it means that a lot of merchandise just, well—vanishes. There's no record of it having been sold or disposed of in any way and yet it is missing. Do I make myself clear at all?"

  "Just enough around the edges. Possibility of theft, then?"

  "Definitely. Especially when you hear the amount of loss involved. It's just plain incredible."

  "Tell me."

  He let some of the wind out of his tight sails.

  "Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five thousand dollars."

  I whistled. "In terms of Nichols' and one store, that must be quite a rich neighborhood."

  "Exactly. And when my financial statement is made out—it's a quarterly report—it will behoove me to start looking for another job. Whether it's my fault or not."

  "T'was ever thus," I agreed. "I take it we're getting down to cases now. You must suspect one or more of your employees."

  "Yes," he sighed. "I could blame the customers for part of the amount. Shoplifting, of course. But not twenty-five thousand dollars' worth, can I? It would be impossible. No, it has to be some of the help. Especially since all of them know about the tag system and could get around it somehow. Though I must admit, I don't see how. It's got me losing sleep, Ed—this whole business."

  "What security conditions do you impose on them?"

  He looked helpless. "Same as anywhere else, I'm sure. Nobody can leave the store with a parcel or package that hasn't a door pass on it. Same way a customer can't get out without a sales-slip or a stapled package. Our employees receive a fifteen-percent discount on any purchases they may care to make. Then myself or Mr. Tenning or Mr. Bland collect all the door passes for that night or day. They are my store managers. Tenning in Women's, Bland in Men's. But, ye Gods, Ed, the most expensive item in the whole store that could be taken out without being obvious can't cost more than twenty dollars—and that's a barbecue table-stand. This twenty-five-thousand-dollar sum is ridiculous, and, for a three-month sales' period, absolutely fantastic."

  That got my eyebrows up. And my interest.

  "Are you telling me right now that you have no idea where the twenty-five grand worth of missing items stems from? What about that tag inventory of yours that's so sure-fire?"

  He was dying right in front of me. It was in his dull blue eyes.

  "Of course, we know. Bland ordered seventy-five Town-Bred all-year-round suits in the spring. Eighty-five-dollar sellers. Now they are all gone and we only have a record of having sold five of them. You see what I mean? Five out of seventy-five!"

  "A lousy batting average. Go on."

  "There's sixteen Top Speed lawnmowers gone from Furnishings. And there, the mud is really thick. No record of a sale. Not a one."

  "There must be more."

  Lang was weary of his own recital by this time.

  "There is. Boy Scouts—that's a small corner in the back of the store where we service all the Boy Scouts in the area—is cleaned out of three hundred of our two-ninety-five knives. Not to mention a shelf full of flashlights. I could go on and on about this. It's completely ridiculous and silly."

  "It must be," I nodded, shaking my head. "But tell me something. Tag system or not, don't the salespeople in those departments remember selling some of those items? They must."

  "I questioned them, of course. And certainly they do. They can remember quite a few sales. But that's the whole nub of the problem. They made the sale, they removed the tag, and that's it—useless to accuse any of them. You see, we employ a lot of part-time help. Different people all the time. Out here in Jersey we have many housewives who can work for us only four hours a day—and that's the story. These women want only a few dollars' extra money for themselves. That's part of the reason why our working personnel always has a big turnover; so many of them come and go. Why Bland alone has had seven different salesmen working in Men's in the last three months, and it's impossible to get full-time people. We
don't pay that kind of money where a married man with a family to support and a house with a mortgage on it can afford to work for us. For part-time housewives looking for pin money and kids still going to high school and college, it's just fine."

  "I know," I winced, pained with his justification of D. D. Nichols' greed. I stared at him across the desk. He seemed like a good egg. "How does this stuff come in—the merchandise. Shipped by truck?"

  "Yes. We have a stockroom to the rear of the store. It very often comes by truck. Larry the stockman signs for everything, enters it in his receiving files, and there it is. We do have some hand deliveries."

  "Is it all stocked in the store proper, where the customers are, or do you keep some of it back there?"

  Lang shook his head. "No, Ed. Mainly it will all go right to the department it belongs to. We really order mostly what we are short of. There are drawers and shelves below the counters in each department to accommodate fresh supplies. But naturally, in the case of, say, lawnmowers, a floor sample is all we need with the remainder kept in the stockroom out back. Larry keeps it all very orderly, I might add."

  "Okay," I said. "You're out twenty-five gees worth of merchandise, you want to find it without going to the law or your own superiors and you want me to help. Where do we go from here?"

  Mr. Lang's pencil-thin figure straightened from a resigned slump. He'd gotten some lead back in his pencil from somewhere.

  "I want you to work here, for as long as it takes. In the Men's Department, as a clothing salesman. I'll pay you a hundred dollars a day and for whatever expenses you may incur."

  I showed him the smile that good retainers can induce.

  "For as long as it takes, Elton?"

  "Longer," Lang said, "if need be."