By Hook or By Crook

by Gorman, Ed

  I let myself out of the house and walked home at a quick pace, bracing against the sharp wind that was now making tree branches bend and dance. Chilled to the bone, I went directly to bed. I confess I could not fall asleep. My mental image of my grandmother’s stiffening body inside her elevator kept me from restful slumber. But then as I allowed myself to imagine finally getting my hands on all her money, my frame of mind improved and from dawn til eight o’clock I enjoyed a refreshing slumber.

  But then as I began to prepare breakfast, several possibilities occurred to me. Suppose Grandma’s face is frozen into a frightened mask? Would that make anyone suspicious? Worse yet, suppose for some reason the recording had not automatically turned off!

  My original plan had been to await Ica’s phone call, the one that would convey the sad news that Grandma had been trapped in the elevator and must have had a heart attack. At the frightening possibility that the recording just might be still playing, I leaped up from the breakfast table, threw on some clothes and rushed over, arriving as Ica was opening the front door. To my vast relief there was no sound from the recorder.

  The morning was overcast, which meant that the vestibule was dark. As Ica greeted me she tried to turn on the light. Then she frowned. “My God, there must have been another power failure.” She turned and made a beeline for the stairs to Grandma’s bedroom. I, on the other hand, raced down to the basement and threw the master switch on the panel. The whirr of the elevator rewarded me. I rushed up the stairs and was there when Ica yanked open the elevator door.

  Grandma was on the floor wrapped in her mink lap robe. She opened her eyes and blinked up at us. With the fur wrapped around her head, the strands of fur resting on her cheek, for all the world she had the face of a cat. Her mouth pursed in and out as though she was sipping milk.

  “Grandma...” My voice failed. With Ica’s help, she was struggling to her feet, her hands on the floor, her back arched to help regain her balance.

  “Eerr ... Eerr...,” she sighed. Or was she saying “purrrr ... purrrr?”

  “Eerrr, that’s the best sleep I’ve had in years,” Grandma said contentedly.

  “Weren’t you frightened trapped in there?” Ica asked incredulously.

  “Oh, no, I was tired and I just made the best of it. I tried calling but there was no one to hear me. I decided not to waste my voice.”

  The record had been playing. I had heard it myself.

  Grandma was eyeing me. “You look terrible,” she said, “I don’t want you worrying about me. Don’t you know I’ll live to be one hundred? That’s my promise to you. So I was stuck in the elevator. The carpet is thick. I laid down and was nice and warm under the robe. In my dreams I was hearing this faint purring sound like water lapping against the shore.”

  Afraid I would give myself away, I stumbled downstairs and grabbed my recorder from the table, then realized that in my haste I had knocked a small object off the table. I bent down and picked it up. It was a hearing aid. I started to lay it down and saw there was another one on the table.

  Ica was coming down the stairs. “How long has Grandma been wearing hearing aids?” I demanded.

  “They’re just what I’m coming for. She leaves them on that table every night. She’s so vain that I guess she didn’t tell you that her hearing has been going steadily down hill and she’s practically deaf now. She’s been studying lip reading and is quite good at it. Haven’t you noticed the way she always looks at your lips when you’re talking? She finally got the hearing aids but only uses them for television in the evening and always leaves them right here.”

  “She can’t hear?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “Only a few sounds, deep ones, nothing shrill.”

  That happened five years ago. Of course I immediately destroyed the tape but in my sleep I hear it playing over and over. It doesn’t frighten me. Instead it keeps me company. I don’t know why. There’s something else that’s a little strange. I cannot look at my grandmother’s face without seeing the face of a cat. That’s because of those little whiskers on her cheeks and lips, the odd pursing movement of her mouth, the narrow intense eyes that are always focused on my lips. Also, her bedchamber of choice is now the elevator where, for naps and at night, she curls on the carpeted floor wrapped in her mink lap robe. Her breathing has even taken on a purring sound.

  I can hardly keep my wits about me as I await my inheritance. I do not have the courage to try to precipitate its arrival again. I live with Grandma now and as time passes, I believe I am beginning to resemble her. The scar on her cheek is directly under her left eye; mine is in the same spot. I have a very light beard and shave infrequently. At times my beard looks just like her whiskers. We have those same narrow green eyes.

  My grandmother loves very warm milk. But then, she pours it into a saucer to cool it before she laps it up. I tried it and now I like it that way too. It’s purr-fect.

  • • •

  MARY HIGGINS CLARK’S books are world-wide bestsellers. In the U.S. alone, her books have sold over eighty million copies. She is the author of twenty-six suspense novels, three collections of short stories, a biographical novel about George Washington, and her memoir, Kitchen Privileges. She is the number one fiction bestselling author in France, where she received the Grand Prix de Literature Policière and The Literary Award at the 1998 Deauville Film Festival. In 2000, she was named by the French Minister of Culture “Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.” She was chosen by Mystery Writers of America as Grand Master of the 2000 Edgar Awards. An annual Mary Higgins Clark Award sponsored by Simon & Schuster, to be given to authors of suspense fiction writing in the Mary Higgins Clark tradition, was launched by Mystery Writers of America during Edgars week in April 2001. She was the 1987 president of Mystery Writers of America and, for many years, served on its board of directors. In May 1988, she was the Chairperson of the International Crime Congress. Her most recent novel is The Shadow of Your Smile.

  THE BIG SWITCH

  A MIKE HAMMER STORY

  By Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

  They were going to kill Dopey Dilldocks at midnight the day after tomorrow.

  He had shot and wiped out a local narcotics pusher because the guy had passed Dopey a packet of heroin that had been stepped on so many times, it wouldn’t take the pain out of a pinprick. The pusher deserved it. Society said Dopey Dilldocks deserved it, too. The jury agreed and the judge laid on the death sentence. All the usual delays had been exhausted, and the law-and-order governor sure as hell wouldn’t reprieve a low-life druggie like Dopey, so the little schmoe’s time to fly out of this earthly coop was now.

  Nobody was ever going to notice his passing. He was just another jailhouse number — five feet seven inches tall with seven digits stamped on his shirt. On the records his name was Donald Dilbert, but along the path laid out by snorting lines of the happy white stuff, it had gotten shortened and twisted into Dopey Dilldocks.

  A week ago his lawyer, a court-assigned one, had written me to say that Mister Dilbert had requested that I be a witness to his execution. And it seemed Dopey also wondered if I might stop in, ASAP, and have a final chat with him before the big switch got thrown.

  In the inner office of my PI agency in downtown Manhattan, I handed the letter to Velda, my secretary and right-hand man, if a doll with all that raven hair and a mountain road’s worth of curves, could be so described. I was sitting there playing with the envelope absently while she read its contents. When she was done, she frowned and passed the sheet back to me. “Donald Dilbert ... You mean that funny little guy who — ”

  “The same,” I said. “The one they called Mr. Nobody, and worse.”

  She frowned in mild confusion. “Mike — he was only a messenger boy. He didn’t even work for anybody important, did he?”

  “Probably the biggest was Billy Whistler, that photographer over on Sixth Avenue. Hell, I got Dopey that job because the little guy didn’t mind running errands at night.”
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  “You know what he did over there?”

  “Sure. Took proofs of the late-night photo shoots over to the magazine office.”

  Velda gave me an inquisitive glance.

  I shook my head. “No dirty Gertie stuff — Whistler deals with advertising agencies handling big-ticket household items — freezers, stoves, air conditioners, that sort of thing. Not paparazzi crap.”

  “Big agencies — so little Dopey was getting large pay?”

  “Hardly. You said it yourself. He’s been around for decades and started a messenger boy and that’s how he wound up.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Not really, Mike.”

  “Huh?”

  “He wound up a killer. He’ll wind up sitting down at midnight.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “And not getting up.”

  She was frowning again. “Messenger boy isn’t exactly big bucks, Mike. How could he afford a narcotics habit?”

  “They say if you’re hooked,” I said, “you’ll find a way.”

  “Maybe by dealing yourself?”

  “Naw. Dopey doesn’t have the brains for it.”

  “What kind of pusher would give a guy like that credit?”

  “Nobody I know,” I admitted. “Something stinks about this.”

  “Coming off in waves. You going to the execution? You thinking of paying him a visit first?” Her voice had a strange tone to it.

  My eyes drifted up from the envelope I was fidgeting with and met hers. We both stared and neither of us blinked. I started to say something and stopped. I reached out and took the letter from her fingertips and it read it again.

  Very simple legalese. The lawyer was simply passing along a request. It was only a job to him. The state would reimburse him for his professional time, which couldn’t have been very much.

  Before I could say anything, Velda told me, “You haven’t done a freebie in a long time.”

  “Kitten...”

  “You could make it a tax deduction, Mike.”

  “Going to an execution?”

  “Giving this thing a quick look. Just a couple of days to you, but to Dopey Dilldocks, it’s the rest of his life.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t need a deduction. What’s gotten into you? The poor slob has been through a trial, he was declared guilty of first-degree murder and now he’s paying the penalty.”

  Very quietly Velda asked, “How do you know it really was first-degree?”

  I shook my head again, this time in exasperation. “There was a squib in the paper.”

  “No,” she said insistently. “Dopey didn’t even rate a ‘squib.’ There was an article on narcotics and what strata of society uses them. It gave a range from high-priced movie stars to little nothings like Donald Dilbert, who’d just been found guilty in his murder trial.”

  “Wasn’t a big article,” I said lamely.

  “No. And Dopey was just a footnote. Still ... you recognized his name, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “And what did you think?”

  “That Dopey had finally come up in the world.”

  “Baloney. You were thinking, how the hell could Dopey Dill-docks plan and execute a first-degree murder — weren’t you?”

  She had me and she knew it. For the few times I had used the schlub to run messages, I had gotten to know him just enough to recognize his limitations. He knew the red light that meant stop was on the top and he wouldn’t cross the street until the bottom one turned green, and that type of mentality didn’t lay out a first-degree kill.

  “So?” she asked.

  The semblance of a grin was starting to twitch at her lips and she took a deep breath. The way she was built, deep breathing should have had a law against it.

  I said, “Just tell me something, doll. You barely know Dopey. You haven’t got the first idea of what this is all about. How come you’re on his side suddenly?”

  “Because I’d give him a couple of bucks to buy me a sandwich for lunch and he’d always bring the change back in the bag. He never stole a cent from me.”

  “What a recommendation,” I said sourly.

  “The best,” she came back at me. “Besides, we need to get out of this office for a while. It’s a beautiful Spring day, the bills are paid, there’s money in the bank, nothing’s on the platter at the moment and — ”

  “And we might pass one of those ‘Medical Examination, Wedding Ceremony, One Day’ places, right?”

  “Could be,” she said. “Anyway, we could use a day trip.”

  “A day trip where?”

  “Someplace quiet upstate.”

  “A little hotel on the river, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  Sing Sing.

  •••

  A looker like Velda could have caused a riot in places that didn’t consist of concrete and cells, and anyway the court-appointed lawyer could only arrange for one visitor. So she sat in the car in a lot outside the massive stone facility, while I sat in a gray-brick room in one of several cubicles with phones and wire-reinforced glass.

  Dopey was a forty-something character who might have been sixty. He had a gray pallor that had been his before he entered the big house, and his runny nose and rheumy eyes spoke of the weed and coke he’d consumed for decades. Smack was never his scene, as his fairly plump frame indicated. His hair, once blond and thick, was white and wispy now, and his face was a chinless, puffy thing.

  “I think they musta framed me, Mike,” he said. He had a midrange voice with a hurt tone like a teenage boy who just got the car keys taken away.

  My hat was on the little counter. I spoke into the phone, looking at his pitiful puss. “And you want me to pry if off of you, Dopey? You might have given me more notice.”

  “I know. I know.” Phone to his ear, shaking his head, he had the demeanor of guy in a confessional. Too bad I wasn’t in the sin-forgiving game.

  “So why now, Dopey?”

  “I just been thinking, Mike. I been going back through my whole life. They say it flashes through your brain, right before you die? But I been going through my life, one crummy photo at a time.”

  I sat forward. “Is that a figure of speech, Dopey? Or are you getting at something?”

  Dopey swallowed thickly. “I never gave nobody no trouble, Mike. I never did crime, not even for my habit. I worked hard. Double shifts. Never made no enemies. I’m a nobody like they used to call me, just a damn inanity.”

  He meant nonentity, but I let it go.

  “So you been thinking,” I said. “What have you been thinking?”

  “I think it all goes back to me sending that photo to LaSalle.”

  “LaSalle? You don’t mean Governor LaSalle?”

  The chinless head bobbed. “About six months ago, I ran across this undeveloped roll of film. It was in a yellow envelope marked Phi U ‘April Fool’s Party.’”

  Where the hell was this going?

  “I remembered that night. Up at Solby College? It was wild. Lots of kids partying — girls with their tops off. Crazy.”

  “When was this?”

  “Twenty years ago — April 1, like I said. I was taking pictures all over the frat house. They was staging stuff — lots of fake murders and suicides and crazy stuff right out of a horror movie.”

  “And you got shots of some of that?”

  Dopey’s head bobbed again. “I was going around campus taking oddball pictures. I even got some ‘peeper’ type shots through a sorority house window, where this girl was undressing — then this guy pretends to strangle her. It was very real looking. Frankly, it scared me silly, it was so real looking.”

  “Is that why you didn’t develop the film?”

  “No, the frat guys never paid me, so I said screw it. But when I ran across that roll of film, I don’t know why, I just remembered how pretty that girl was — the one that played at getting strangled? She had her top off and ... well, I can develop my own pics, you know.”

  “And yo
u did?”

  “I did, Mike. And the guy doing the pretend strangling? He looked just like a young version of Governor LaSalle! So I sent it to him.” I thought my eyes would pop out of my skull. “You what?”

  “Just as a joke. I thought he might get a kick out of it, the resemblance.”

  I squinted at the goofy little guy. “Be straight with me, Dopey — you didn’t try to blackmail him with that, did you?”

  “No! I didn’t think it was really himjust looked like him.” My stomach was tight. “What if it really was him, Dopey? And what if that wasn’t an April Fool’s stunt you snapped?”

  Dopey swallowed again and nodded. “That was what started me thinking, Mike. That’s why I hoped you might come see me.”

  “You told your lawyer about this?”

  “No! How do I know I could trust him? He works for the state, too, don’t he?”

  But he trusted me. This pathetic little doper trusted me to get him out of a jam only an idiot could get into.

  Well, maybe I was an idiot, too. Because I told him I’d look into it, and to keep his trap shut til he heard from me next.

  “When will that be, Mike?”

  “It won’t be next week,” I said, and got my hat and went.

  •••

  Our jaunt upstate didn’t last long. I called Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide from the road and he was waiting at our favorite little deli restaurant, down the block from the Hackard Building. Pat was in a back booth working on a soft drink and some fries. We slid in opposite him.

  The NYPD’s most decorated officer wore a lightweight gray suit that went with the gray eyes that had seen way too much — probably too much of me, if you asked him.

  “Okay,” he said, with no hellos, just a nod to Velda, “what are you getting me into now?”

  “Nothing. You found something?”

  Those weary eyes slitted, and this time his nod was for me. “Twenty years ago, April 2, a coed from Solby College was found strangled, dumped on a country road.”