I stared at him across the flaming crest of Ada Ven's head.
He had barely moved from where he stood in stunned terror.
He was exactly like a little boy who has done a terrible thing and can't understand why, himself, that he has done it. Can't know.
I couldn't answer that one for him, either.
For a long moment, I held onto Ada Ven, feeling her dead weight pulling against my fingers, as if she wanted me to let her go. Let her slide all the way to the cheap floor to rest forever.
There was no hurry, however.
We had all the time left in the world.
The Gingerbread Man wasn't going anyplace.
His race was ended.
He'd run hard, but he hadn't been able to run far enough.
Somebody should have told him a long time ago that it just couldn't be done to begin with. That when nature stacks the deck, that's it.
Somebody should have told him he was licked before he started.
That you just can't stretch the truth. The facts.
A man who is little more than three feet tall is going to stay that way, come hell or high water or miracles from the laboratory. There are some things they just can't transplant or amend.
Wishing, and murder, cannot make it so. They never could.
The open season on strippers had ended. The Gingerbread Man murder spree was a closed case. The slaughter had come full cycle on a Friday night in the star's dressing room of the Del Rio Club.
Almost where it had all begun.
In the twisted mind of Jellybean Jackson.
In the place where Ada Ven, the greatest stripper of them all, hung up the tools of her trade. And powdered her fabulous figure.
Ada Ven. The number-one nudie. Ada, The Greater. The Great Ven.
Ada from Nevada by way of peeling, by way of revealing.
The one dame who had probably caused all the terrible things to happen. In her own sexy and vulgar way.
But she'd had a lot of help from that outside world which also made a victim out of a very little man with very big ideas. Ideas too big for his britches. Delusions of grandeur disproportionate to his size. The midget who had been short-changed in height.
The midget who had been a very little man who had had a very busy week trying to be a big one. Like all the rest of them.
The man who had killed women who had been taller than himself.
"Jellybean," I said, "help me set her down, will you? We ought to cover her up or something."
He was crying, very openly and very awesomely, as he tottered over to my side.
Just like that little boy again, very sorry for what he had done.
For what he could no longer do: make love to the biggest woman in the world.
In his world, anyway.
THE GINGERBREAD MAN
Saturday, there was a sun in the sky. A great big ball of fire. August heat fairly fried the sidewalks and streets of Manhattan. I didn't venture out too early that day. Melissa Mercer was arriving on a five-fifteen flight from Alabama. I had time to kill. The last memories and headaches of the night before had all merged, fused, and dissolved in a sleep of the dead in my own apartment.
Flatek and Lasky, drawn from the mob scene in the heart of the Del Rio, to the backstage dressing room of Ada Ven, had helped me tidy up the whole package, tie it, and ship it all off to headquarters. Jellybean Jackson had had nothing to say when Ada Ven's body was removed on a stretcher to the waiting ambulance outside the club. The Del Rio would never be the same again. Neither would a lot of other things.
But the murderous midget had a lot to get off his pouter-pigeon chest as he stared down at the limp beauty of the woman he had unintentionally murdered. Neither of us had given a second thought to our own weapons. My forty-five was still on the very cold floor, his wicked switchblade knife gleamed not far from it.
"Oh, no," he moaned in a weird little voice. "Ada—"
"Oh, yes. She's dead, Jellybean. Nothing will bring her back."
"I didn't mean it—I didn't mean it!"
"No, you didn't. But it doesn't change things. Did you mean it about all the others, Jellybean? Those poor naked dames who never did a thing to you. They didn't torture you the way Ada did."
"That's not true!" His head jerked up from the floor, his eyes wild and angry. "They did all right. There wasn't a big broad I can remember who didn't flaunt it at me, wave it in my face. And laugh—they always laughed! They never knew what I had, what I could do—but Ada did, damn her! Ada knew, and for a while there when we were hitched, I was cock of the walk. A real man—and she ended it all by throwing me out. But the rest of them—they had no business waving it in my face, taunting me. The goddamn teasers, sticking it right in a guy's eye and never meaning anything by it—never being real women. You know what I mean, Noon?" His voice took on a desperate wail. "You been around. You know the score. They were nothing but cheap slabs of meat."
"Yeah," I said, picking my forty-five easily from the floor, but not aiming at the ruined little man. "I know everything."
After that, he could only cry some more and weep over Ada Ven.
Yes, nothing could possibly be the same again. Not a thing ever. Like New York strip, for instance. The Gingerbread Man had dealt the whole business a blow that would take time to heal. Perversion had exacted a price that even the most hardened entertainers and patrons didn't want to pay any more. Jellybean Jackson had scared the hell out of a whole world of people. A milieu of money and sex and sensation that now needed a breather from fear. A respite from unholy terror. A holiday from horror, maniac-style.
Flatek and Lasky, who proved to be a big stolid giant of a cop, took the midget away in their unmarked sedan and I went home. I never did find out what Alexander Pipps, Rance Rogers, and Donn Dunn were really like. I just plain didn't care. The Del Rio had nothing to offer me now that Ada Ven was DOA and Jellybean Jackson was the newest murderer in jail in little old New York. He was the district attorney's headache now, not mine. Though I supposed I was going to have to give testimony when his trial came up, the same way I was due back in New Jersey to testify in the Dodie Rogers mess at Nichols'. I still thought Dodie and Ada had had an awful lot in common besides the fact that they wore lipstick and tight dresses. I was one bushed investigator when I crawled back to my Central Park West eyrie to flake out. But I wasn't really able to do that until I had another heart-to-heart phone chat with Captain Michael Monks. Flatek thought it would be a good idea and I did, too. Smart man, Flatek. He knew it took honey to soothe old police bears.
Even as I talked to Monks over a wall phone from the rear of the Del Rio, giving him everything, I couldn't get the memory of tiny Jellybean Jackson bawling his eyes out, as he knelt and rocked over Ada Ven's silent corpse, out of my mind. A weird scene, all in all.
It cost me a lot of nickels to give Monks the entire load of details but I did, anyway. When I'd finished, he gave me his usual congratulations, half-gruff, half-incredulous as always, and grunted his typical grunt. The one that always says how-the-hell-do-you-do-it?
In my head, faint and lingering strains of "The Hucklebuck" thumped, mingled with pictures and images of Ada Ven twirling and bumping and grinding. I groaned and it must have come out of me. Monks jumped on the noise, suddenly suspicious. Like a sniffing dog.
"What's the matter? You okay? You sound peculiar, Ed."
"I'll live. It's my old World War II scar. You know, the one I got when they dropped me on my head out of the top bunk—"
"Cut it out," he growled. "I know these blood baths aren't fun and it must have cost you some brown hair when the little guy came jumping out of that trunk with his knife. But forget it. I know you. You'll live. You always do no matter how much you bleed in private."
"Yeah," I agreed, that tired. "He must have got to Cleo Patra the same way. Hiding in her trunk. Nearest I can figure he was checking on Ada and me and just wanted to see how much I did know. Well, he found out and that was it. Let me go hom
e now, will you? I'm beat."
"Sure. You come down here Monday and make a statement, will you? It can wait until then. I suppose you'll be busy tomorrow."
"Check. Melissa's coming home. Thank God."
"Ah," he rumbled, "get married, will you, and chuck all this stuff? You're good, too damn good, but your luck can't last forever. I don't want to see you in the morgue, Ed. Even the best boys wind up there sooner or later and—"
I laughed into the transmitter, interrupting him.
"Well, thanks for the bundle of good cheer, Captain. You really know how to make a guy happy, you know that?"
"Ah, go to bed," he commanded, giving up again as he always did. "But about that letter 'S'—do you really think that's it?"
"Yeah. I really think that's it. 'S' for Shorty. 'S' for Squirt. 'S' for Shrimp. Can you imagine—just ask yourself—how many times the poor little guy must have heard that since the day he was born?"
"Sure, I'll buy that. For now. 'Night, Ed. And thanks, again."
"See you Monday, Michael."
When his voice was gone and I caught myself staring at the dead phone, I replaced the receiver alongside the box. The air was heavy.
Those were all the educated guesses I had in me as to why a demented, jealous little guy would scribble an "S" on the bared bellies of so many dead women. Nobody ever did find out why Jellybean Jackson had. He never confessed to the reason; maybe he never knew why himself.
Anyway, I went home to bed, trying to keep "The Hucklebuck" out of my ears and Ada Ven's twirling, luscious body out of my eyes.
They wouldn't go away.
Maybe, they never would.
Actually, the one concrete thing I could think of in the cab on the way home was Frankie, Jellybean Jackson's cute little French poodle. There was no one now to take care of him. And he was probably sleeping or pattering around in Suite C at the Alamo waiting for the folks to come home. Big Ada and Little Jellybean. His human family of two.
Frankie the dog. Who also had contributed to the rat race in his own animal way. For it must have been Frankie who had screwed up the lighting system in the suite that day when his master staged the fiasco on the threshold with a mysterious intruder.
There was no other explanation for that, either.
None at all. Ada hadn't done it and Jellybean couldn't have.
So that mystery had to remain with Frankie and the world of Con Ed. Neither of whom could talk to me.
I don't talk to dogs or the Establishment.
Not the same language, anyway.
Late Saturday afternoon, I was at the big windows in the Kennedy Terminal, watching the streamlined silver birds come in and go out into the wild blue yonder. Flight 17 was due in at 5:15 P.M. It was right on time, settling down like a mammoth homing pigeon on one of the endless concrete runways. I met Melissa Mercer right at the gangway entrance feeding into the massive building. She looked like money from home.
We melded like two fireflies colliding after dusk.
"Hey," she laughed in that low unforgettable voice of hers. "You missed me. I can tell."
"You can tell the world."
She sighed happily and her eyes looking up into mine were two warm and wonderful places where my hat and my shoes were always welcome.
Arm in arm, we found our way through the maze of smooth corridors and passageways out to the Buick. I'd finally given up cabs for a while. We were squeezing each other's hands like two kids at the prom. Two kids who had a crush on each other. I could tell the world that, too.
"Do you always wear that when you come meet your girl at the airport?" Playfully, she tapped the small bulge under my left armpit.
"Some habits are hard to break," I confessed. "Like the one I have about you."
"What's that?"
"I want to kiss you and hug you and eat you right here in front of all these people. You look great, Melissa, in spite of what happened. How did it go? The funeral and everything?"
"Sad," she sighed, her eyes matching the word. "But it was for the best, I suppose. Leon was in pain all the time. Never told anybody—you know how it is—Mobile didn't deserve him."
"Yeah. A quiet hero. The best and the toughest kind."
The sun was so low I felt I could reach up and grab it. I opened the car door and Melissa was lost in thought. Her luggage had been nothing. Two small cases. Suddenly, she brightened, looking at me very carefully. Her exquisite face curved in a smile of love.
"And you, rascal. What about you?"
"I'm okay."
"Sure you are. You always will be, too. But that's not what I'm asking. What kind of a week was it for you, Ed?"
I took a last swift glance at the sun, handed her into the car, and walked around to the driver's side. I climbed in. I felt funny.
There was so much to tell her I just didn't know how to begin.
"Well?" she asked again, softly.
"Well, what?"
"What kind of a week was it for you? I sound like a parrot."
I shrugged, started the motor and put the Buick in gear, keeping my foot on the brake. The huge parking area was aglow with the sun.
"A week that was, MM," I said, releasing the brake and moving out of the parking line. Strolling people paused to let me pass.
"Then you'll tell me all about it on the way home," she said.
So I did. With a lot of love and a lot of kisses. And no hate.
The beautiful sun followed us all the way into New York before it disappeared in flaming gold again in the Hudson River. As always.
It looked like a lovely day, after all. And a better night, all around. Come what may, I had my girl back. The kind of woman who would never have stripped for a living. No matter what.
They don't hardly make them that way any more.
AFTERWORD
"So the old lady made a gingerbread man with a smiling mouth," I said, very soberly, as the little boy stared up at me still hanging onto his string which held the bright red balloon captive. "He had raisins for eyes and little candies on his jacket that were supposed to be the buttons. You got that?"
"Sure," the kid nodded very seriously, rubbing at his freckled nose with his free hand. "What kind of candies?"
"Oh, jellybeans, I guess."
"Gee. That's good. Jellybeans would make good buttons."
"You said it. And then she put the gingerbread man in the oven to bake and before you knew it. . . ."
It was Sunday and a gleaming sun rode over Central Park, just in from the avenue, and I'd gone for an early morning jog while Melissa Mercer slept. That was when I ran into George, a little boy with big freckles, a balloon, and all togged out in his going-to-church best. George and I had hit it off immediately and his parents, who had gone to the water fountain for a drink, had let me have some fun with him. George seemed to like stories. And just for nothing maybe, I started telling him the story of the Gingerbread Man. George was all of six but somehow the fable about the running piece of cake was a new one on him. You just never know about kids.
"And then?" George persisted, his balloon forgotten as I got deep into the more interesting parts of the story. And the snapper.
"And then old Gingerbread, well, he just slipped down the fox's nose and—yummmmmm!—the fox swallowed him whole. Just like that." I snapped my fingers and George goggled.
"Gee. That was a mistake then, wasn't it?"
"What was a mistake?"
"Old Gingerbread letting the fox take him for a ride across that river. If I'd a been him I never woulda taken a ride from a fox."
"You're a smart boy, George. You'll go far in this world."
His parents came back, smiling their appreciation that their son had gotten on so well with me and then all three walked off. George said goodbye and marched away with them, but he kept looking back over his shoulder and smiling. Deep down, I felt that lonesome pang that is the sole property of all fatherless men everywhere. It must be.
Little George was just as tall as Jelly
bean Jackson.
The image that gave me almost spoiled the rest of the morning.
Sighing, I took another jog around the block before going back upstairs to awaken my own sleeping beauty. The air was clean and good.
And all the way, that crazy refrain kept dancing around in my head. Run, run, as fast as you can—you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man. . . . Poor Jellybean Jackson's swan song. Serenade for a short man.
George was right. Nobody should ever take a free ride from a fox.
It has to come with strings attached. Unlike the strings on red balloons. That you can hang onto or let go as you please.
I jogged toward the front of the building I live in, thinking about Melissa, thinking about kids, thinking about life itself.
Thinking about everything worth thinking about.
It felt very good just to be alive. And well.
And living in New York City—even.
ENDNOTES
MURDER COMES READY TO WEAR
* modus operandi—method of operation.
Kill Her- You'll Like It! Page 12