It was only about an inch high, for a dark shade was unrolled nearly to the bottom. But that had slipped back, maybe half a turn on its roller, allowing this narrow strip of light to escape. Now, with his eyes up close against the sill like they were, it was nearly as good as the whole window being lit up. He could see the whole inside of the room.
There were two people in it, a man and a woman. Buddy would have closed his eyes again and gone right back to sleep—what did he care about watching grown-ups?—except for the funny, sneaky way they were both acting. That made him keep on watching, wondering what they were up to.
The man was asleep on a chair, by a table. He’d been drinking or something. There was a bottle and two glasses on the table in front of him. His head was down on the table, and his hand was in front of his eyes, to protect them from the light.
The woman was moving around on tiptoes, trying not to make any noise. She was carrying the man’s coat in her hands, as if she’d just taken it off the back of the chair, where he’d hung it before he fell asleep. She had a lot of red and white stuff all over her face, but Buddy didn’t think she looked very pretty.
When she reached the far side of the table she stopped, and started to dip her hand in and out of all the pockets of the coat. She kept her back to the man while she was doing it. But Buddy could see her very well from the side.
That was the first sneaky thing he saw that made him keep on watching them. And the second was, he saw the fingers of the man’s hand—the one that was lying in front of his eyes—split open, and the man stole a look through them at what she was doing.
Then, when she turned her head to make sure he was asleep, he quickly closed his fingers together again.
She turned her head the other way again and resumed her searching.
She came up with a big wad of money from the coat, all rolled up tight. She threw the coat aside, bent her head close, and started to count it. Her eyes grew very bright, and Buddy could see her licking her lips while she was doing it.
All of a sudden he held his breath. The man’s arm was starting to crawl along the top of the table toward her, to reach for her and grab her. It moved very slowly, very quietly, like a big thick snake writhing along after somebody, and she never noticed it.
Then, when it was out straight and nearly touching her, the man started to come up off his chair after it and crouch over toward her, and she never heard that either. He was smiling, but it wasn’t a very pleasant smile.
Buddy’s heart was pounding.
He thought, “You better look around, lady!” But she didn’t. She was too busy counting the money.
Suddenly the man jumped and grabbed her. His chair went over flat, and the table nearly did, too, but it recovered and stayed upright. His big hand, the one that had been reaching out all along, caught her around the back of the neck, and held on tight, and he started to shake her from head to foot. His other hand grabbed the wrist that was holding the money. She tried to jam it down the front of her dress, but she wasn’t quick enough; he started to twist her wrist slowly around, to make her let go of it.
She gave a funny little squeak like a mouse, but not very loud; at least it didn’t have much volume when it reached the boy on the fire escape.
“No you don’t!” Buddy heard the man growl. “I figured something like this was coming! You gotta get up pretty early in the morning to put anything like that over on me!”
“Take your hands off me!” she panted. “Let go of me!”
He started to swing her around from side to side.
“You won’t ever try anything like this again, by the time I get through with you!” Buddy heard the man grunt.
All of a sudden she screamed, “Joe! Hurry up in here! I can’t handle him any longer by myself!” But she didn’t scream it out loud—just in a sort of smothered way, as if she didn’t want her words to carry too far.
The door flew open, and a second man showed up. He must have been standing right outside it waiting the whole time, to be able to rush in that fast. He ran up behind the man who was being robbed. The woman held on tight and kept the first man from turning around.
The newcomer waited until the other man’s head was in the right position, and then he locked his own hands together in a double fist, and smashed them down with all his might on the back of the fellow’s neck.
The victim dropped to the floor like a stone and lay there quietly for a minute.
* * *
—
The woman scrambled down and started to pick up all the money that was lying around on the floor.
“Here!” she said, handing it to the second man.
“Hurry up, let’s get out of here!” he snarled. “What’d you have to bungle it up like that for? Why didn’t you fix his drink right?”
“I did, Joe, but it didn’t work on him. He musta seen me do it.”
“Come on!” Joe said, and started for the door. “When he comes to he’ll bring the cops down on us.”
Suddenly the man lying on the floor wrapped his arm tight around Joe’s legs, pinning them together. Joe tripped and fell to the floor. The first man scrambled on top of him before he could get up, held him that way, and the battle started in all over again.
The man they were robbing was the better fighter of the two. He started to swing punches at Joe’s head, while he had him pinned to the floor like that. In another minute he would have knocked Joe out. Even Buddy could tell that. Joe’s arms spread out limply along the floor, and his fists started to open up.
But the woman went running all around the place hunting for something to help him with. Suddenly she threw open a drawer in a bureau and took out something that flashed in the light. Buddy couldn’t see what it was for a minute, she was so fast with it. She darted in close to them and placed it in Joe’s outstretched hand as he lay sprawled beneath the other man.
Then when it swept up high over both their heads a second later, Buddy got a clear view of it. It was a short, sharp knife. Buddy’s eyes nearly came out of his head.
Joe swung it and buried it in the other’s back. Right up to the hilt so you couldn’t even see the blade any more.
The fight stopped cold on the instant, but not the stabbing. Joe wrenched out the knife with a sawing motion from side to side, and swung it again, and buried it again, in a different place this time. The first man wasn’t moving any more, just sort of recoiling from the impact of the stab itself.
Joe wasn’t satisfied even yet. He freed it a second time, with a lot of trouble, and it came up and went back in again. Then both men lay there still, one of them getting his breath, the first man not breathing any more.
Finally Joe rolled the crumpled weight off him, and picked himself up and felt his jaw. Then he and the woman stood there looking down at the body of the other man.
“Is he dead?” Buddy heard her ask in a scared voice.
“Wait a minute. I’ll see.” Joe got down by the man, and put his hand underneath him, where his heart was. Then he pulled it out. Then he pulled the knife out of his back. Then he stood up.
He looked at the woman and shook his head.
“Holy smoke!” she gasped. “We’ve killed him! Joe, what’ll we do?”
She didn’t say it very loud, but it was so quiet in the room now that Buddy could hear everything they said.
Joe grabbed her arm and squeezed it.
“Take it easy. Plenty of people are killed and no one ever finds out who done it. Just don’t lose your head, that’s all. We’ll get by with it.”
He held her until he was sure she was steady, then he let go of her again.
He looked all around the room.
“Gimme some newspapers. I want to keep this stuff from getting on the floor.”
He got down and stuffed them underneath the body on all sides.
Then he
said, “Case the door. See if there’s anyone out there who heard us. Open it slow and careful, now.”
She went over to it on tiptoe, and moved it open just on a crack, and looked out with one eye. Then she opened it a little wider, and stuck her whole head out, and looked in both directions. Then she pulled her head in again, and closed up, and came back to him.
“Not a soul around,” she whispered.
“All right. Now case the window. See if it’s all right out in the back there. Don’t pull up the shade. Just take a squint out the side of it.”
She started to come over to where Buddy’s eyes were staring in, and she grew bigger and bigger every minute, the closer she got. Her head went way up high out of sight, and her waist blotted out the whole room.
Buddy couldn’t move. His body seemed to be paralyzed. The little gap under the shade must have been very small for her not to see it, but he knew in another minute she was going to look right out on top of him, from higher up.
He rolled over flat on his back. It was only a half-roll because he’d been lying on his side until now, and that was about all the moving there was time for him to do.
There was an old blanket over the fire escape rail, hung out to air. He clawed at it and pulled it down on top of him. He only hoped it covered all of him, but there wasn’t much time to tuck it around evenly. About all he could do was hunch himself up and make himself as small as possible, and pray none of him stuck out.
A minute later, even with his head covered, he could tell, by a splash of light that fell across the blanket like a sort of stripe, that she’d tipped the shade back and was staring out from the side of it.
“There’s something white down there,” Buddy heard her say, and he froze all over. He even stopped breathing, for fear his breath would show up against the blanket, make a ripple.
“Oh, I know!” she explained, in relief. “It’s that blanket I left out there yesterday. It must have fallen down. Gee, for a minute I thought it was somebody lying there!”
“Don’t stand there all night,” the man growled.
The stripe of light was blotted out, and Buddy knew she had let the shade go back in place.
He waited a few minutes before he dared to move. Then he worked his head clear of the blanket and looked again.
Even the gap near the sill was gone now. She must have pulled the shade down another notch before she turned away. He couldn’t see them any more, but he could still hear them.
But he didn’t want to. All he wanted to do was get away from there! He knew, though, that if he could hear them, they could hear him just as easily. He had to move slowly. The fire escape was old and rickety; it might creak. He started to stretch out his legs, backward, toward the ladder-steps going down.
Then, when he had them out straight, he started to shove himself backward on the palms of his hands, keeping his head and shoulders down. It was a little bit like swimming the breaststroke on dry land. Or rather on iron slats, which was worse still.
But he could still hear them talking the whole time he was doing it.
“Here’s his identification-papers,” the man said. “Cliff Bristol. Mate on a merchant ship…That’s good…Them guys disappear awfully easy. Not too many questions asked. We want to make sure of getting everything out of his pockets, so they won’t be able to trace who he was.”
The woman said, as if she were almost crying, “Oh, what do we care what his name is. We’ve done it. That’s all that matters. Come on, Joe, let’s get out of here!”
“We don’t have to get out now,” the man said. “Why should we? All we have to do is get him out. Nobody seen him come up here with you. Nobody knows what happened. If we lam out now and leave him here, they’ll be after us in five seconds. If we just stay here like we are, nobody’ll be any the wiser.”
“But how are you going to do it, Joe? How you going to get him out?”
“I’ll show you. Bring out them two valises of yours, and empty the stuff out of them.”
Buddy was worming his way down the fire escape steps backward now, but his face and chin was still balanced above the landing.
“But he won’t go into one of them, a great big guy like him,” the woman protested.
“He will the way I’ll do it,” the man answered. And then he said, “Go in the bathroom and get me my razor.”
* * *
—
Buddy’s chin went down flat on the landing for a minute, and he felt as if he wanted to throw up. The fire escape creaked a little. But the woman had groaned at that instant and the groan covered the sound of his movement.
“You don’t have to watch,” the man said. “You go outside the door and wait, if you feel that way about it. Come in again if you hear anyone coming.”
Buddy started to move again, spilling salt water from his mouth.
“Hand me all the newspapers we got in here before you go,” he heard the man say. “And bring in that blanket you said was outside the window. That’ll come in handy, too. I’m going to need it for lining.”
Buddy wriggled the rest of the way down, like a snake in reverse. He felt his feet touch bottom on his own landing, outside his own windows. He was safe! But there was something soft clinging to them. He looked, and it was the blanket!
It had gotten tangled around his foot while he was still on the upper landing, and he’d trailed it down with him without noticing it in his excitement.
He kicked it clear of himself, but there was no time to do anything else with it. He squirmed across the sill, and toppled back into his own flat, and left it lying there. An instant later a beam of light doused the fire escape and he heard the window above go up as the woman reached out for the blanket.
Then he heard her whisper in a frightened, bated voice:
“It blew down! I see it. There it is down below. It was right out here a minute ago, and now it’s down below!”
The man must have told her to go after it and bring it up. The light went out. He must have put the light out in the room, so she’d have a chance to climb down and get it without being seen. Buddy could hear the wooden window frame ease the rest of the way up in the dark, then a stealthy scrape on the iron ladder stair.
He pressed himself flat against the wall, under his own sill. He was small enough to fit in there. He saw the white of the blanket flick upward and disappear from sight.
Then he heard her whisper, just as she climbed into her room again.
“That’s funny. There’s not a breath of air stirring either! How did it come to get blown down there?”
Then the window rustled closed, and it was over.
Buddy didn’t get up and walk to his own bed. He couldn’t lift himself that high. He crawled to it on his hands and knees.
He pulled the covers all over him, even past the top of his head, and as hot as the night had seemed only a little while ago, he shook as if it were the middle of December and goose pimples came out all over him.
He was still shaking for a long time after. He could hear something moving around right over him once in awhile, even with the covers over his head, and just picturing what was going on up there would start him shaking all over again.
It took a long time. Then everything became quiet. No more creaks on the ceiling, as if somebody were rocking back and forth, sawing away at something. He was all covered with sweat now.
Then he heard a door open, and someone moved softly down the stairs outside. Past his own door and down to the bottom. Once something scraped a little against the wall, like a valise. He began shaking again, worse than ever.
He didn’t sleep all the rest of the night. Hours later, after it was already light, he heard someone come quietly up the stairs. This time nothing scraped against the walls. Then the door closed above, and after that there were no more sounds.
In a little while his mother
rose from her bed in the next room and got breakfast started and called in to him.
He dressed and dragged himself in to her. When she turned around and saw him she said:
“You don’t look well, Buddy. You feel sick?”
He didn’t want to tell her. He wanted to tell his father.
His father came home from work a few minutes after that, and they sat down to the table together like they did every morning, Buddy to his breakfast and his father to his before-bedtime supper.
He waited till his mother was out of the room, then he whispered:
“Pop, I want to tell you something.”
“Okay, shoot.” His father grinned.
“Pop, there’s a man and woman livin’ over us—”
“Sure, I know that,” his father said, helping himself to some bacon. “I’ve seen them, coming and going.”
Buddy shifted his chair closer and leaned nearer his father’s ear.
“But Pop,” he breathed. “Last night they killed a man up there, and they cut up his body into small pieces, and stuck it into two valises.”
His father stopped chewing. He put down his knife and fork. Then he turned around slowly in his chair and looked at Buddy hard.
“Mary, come in here,” he called out grimly.
Buddy’s mother came to the door and looked in at them.
“He’s at it again,” his father said. “I thought I told you not to let him go to any more of them Saturday movies.”
She gnawed her lip worriedly. “Making things up again?”
“I didn’t make—” Buddy started to protest.
“I wouldn’t even repeat to you the filthy trash he’s just been telling me. It would turn your blood cold.” His father whacked him across the mouth with the back of his hand.
“What’d he say?” his mother asked in a troubled way.
“It’s not fit for you to hear,” his father replied indignantly. But then he went ahead and told her anyway. “He said they done someone in up there, over us, and then chopped him up into small pieces and carted him off in two valises.”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 23
