Masters of Noir: Volume One

by Ed McBain

  "And?"

  "She says you didn't touch her. But I don't know. Something screwy about this. The way you sometimes act I wouldn't put it past you to ... “ He sighed. “What gets into you every now and then, Gus?"

  "She says I didn't touch her,” I reminded him gently.

  "Lucky for you she does. You're a good man, Gus, the best I've got, but I'm getting fed up with some of your stunts.” He picked up his nailfile. “Did you hear about Lou's witness?"

  "Yeah. Holly Laird said Ambler dropped her off at her house and drove away. Now we find out they were sitting outside in his car at least half an hour. I've been telling you she lied, and this proves it. They talked and talked and then she stabbed him."

  "There's something else. This knocks hell out of the alibis of the others in the cast."

  "I see what you mean."

  "Like this,” the Skipper said. “Holly and Ambler left the theater twenty minutes before the play ended. The curtain came down at eleven-twelve. It's no more than five minutes from the theater to where they were sitting in the car. Burnett went there and saw them together. He was crazy jealous. He had a knife."

  I nodded. “And she lied about how long she was in the car with Ambler because she was covering up for Burnett. So it was either one of them."

  The Skipper was a cautious guy. “Not necessarily, but it's worth thinking about."

  "Either one,” I said, drawing smoke into my lungs.

  7.

  In spite of my badge, they refused to give me a free ticket at the box office of the Empire Theater, so I had to buy one, charging it to expenses. I wasn't stingy with the city's money; I got me a seat in the third row orchestra.

  Before the curtain rose, somebody came out and announced that Bill Burnett's part would be played by an understudy. He didn't mention that Burnett couldn't show up because he was in jail.

  The play was one of these grim dramas about people suffering from the weather and each other in New England. Holly Laird had her golden hair piled up on top of her head and wore a gingham dress that was cut so as not to hide her figure—the figure I'd seen a lot of this morning. And she could act. I wasn't much for the theater, but I could tell an actress when I saw one. She was so good and, along with her talent, so easy to look at, that she wouldn't need an angel to persuade a director to give her leading roles.

  I began to have a doubt, but only a small one.

  I knew she wasn't going to be in the last scene, which was the third scene of the second act. Just before the second scene ended, I went backstage. My badge was good for something after all; it got me past the doorman.

  I caught Holly Laird as she was on the way to the iron stairs running up to the dressing rooms. “Just a minute, miss,” I said.

  If ever a girl looked hate at a man, she did. So what? Why should I care what a golden-haired bitch felt about me?

  "We know you were sitting in the car with Ambler for half an hour or more,” I told her.

  She took time to think it over, trying to make up her mind if she could get away with denying it. “We were talking,” she said.

  "That's not what you said yesterday and this morning."

  "I didn't think it was important. We were discussing plays to do later in the season. He was interested in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, and I became quite excited at the prospect of playing Eliza Doolittle."

  "You sure that's what excited you, miss?” I drawled, striking a match.

  She took a step backward and gripped the banister of the iron stairs. “Why are you persecuting us?” she said.

  "I've got a job to do, miss. I do it."

  Behind me a voice said, “My God, the demon detective again!” George Hoge came up to us, intense eyes and dangling cigaret and all. “Haven't you done enough damage, depriving me of my male lead?"

  "Get used to it,” I said. “Maybe you'll be losing your female lead too."

  Holly uttered a cry and dashed up the stairs.

  "Cops!” Hoge said, spitting the word.

  There was nothing to be gained by answering him. I went outside.

  The parking lot back of the theater was empty of people. The play wasn't over yet; they were still inside. I moved between two rows of cars toward mine at the far end, and I didn't see him or hear him. My first warning was a terrific weight slamming down on the back of my neck, and then it was too late to do anything about it.

  My legs buckled. I clawed air and fell forward and my hands came to rest on the cindered ground. On hands and knees I started to twist around. The light was dim there at the fringe of the parking field floodlights; I glimpsed a shape, a pair of pants, a foot leaving the ground. I tried to pull away from that oncoming foot, but the blow on the head had made me sluggish. The toe of the shoe caught me in the temple and knocked me over on my side.

  Before I could get my gun out from under my shoulder, he kicked me again, this time flush in the face. Then he faded into the night.

  After a while I heard people coming out of the theater and heading toward their cars. I roused myself. I climbed up off the cinders and staggered to my car and threw myself in.

  Nothing was broken in my face, though I could feel the swelling over my left cheek. Blood trickled down the back of my neck. I sopped it up with my handkerchief. The punk hadn't done a very good job on me.

  But he was in jail, so how could he have done it?

  The cars rolled out of the parking lot. By the time most of them were gone, I felt strong enough to drive. I drove to the city jail.

  Ernie Crull was the turnkey on duty. He grinned at my swollen cheek and discolored temple. “I'd like to see the other guy,” he said. “Where is he—in the hospital?"

  "Not yet,” I said. “How's Bill Burnett keeping?"

  "Left our bed and board an hour ago when his bail was paid."

  "Bail this late at night?"

  "You got influence, you can get a judge to work all hours. He had influence. None other than Mrs. John Ambler. She also put up the bail money."

  I fingered my swollen cheek.

  8.

  Home was a couple of furnished rooms at a second-rate hotel. I'd lived there for seven years, and it had never stopped being a lonesome place.

  The alarm clock on the dresser said one-thirty when I let myself in. I looked at myself in the mirror. In addition to the marks from the two kicks, there were now scratches on my face. The knuckles of both my hands were split open.

  I couldn't remember it clearly, that last hour. I couldn't even remember driving from the city jail to that street, but there I'd been, standing in the shadow of the building in front of which John Ambler had been murdered, and after a while Martha had come up the street, light from a lamppost catching the gold of her hair, and she was hanging onto the arm of her lover, the skinny accountant.

  Was I going nuts? That hadn't been Martha, of course. I'd never see her again. It had been Holly Laird being taken home by Bill Burnett.

  And I'd taught the punk that he couldn't slug and kick me, Gus Taylor, the hard cop, and get away with it.

  Nobody else had been on the street at that late hour. But pretty soon lights went on in windows and people were sticking their heads out because Holly Laird was screaming. She clawed at my face and screamed while Burnett was trying to get up from the sidewalk where I'd knocked him. I brushed her aside and helped him get up and pounded him with both fists till he went down again.

  Then a harness bull had been there, a young squirt I knew but whose name I couldn't think of, and who knew me, and he was saying over and over, “What the hell, Taylor! What the hell!"

  "Get your paws off me,” I said and squirmed away from the harness bull. But I didn't go after Burnett again.

  It had become quiet on the street, though some people had come out of the houses and others had their heads poked out of windows. Holly Laird sat sobbing on the sidewalk with her boy friend's head on her lap.

  I heard myself say to the harness bull, “Look at my face. The punk slugged me and
kicked me in the Empire Theater parking lot."

  Burnett's battered head stirred on the girl's lap. “He's crazy!” he said thickly. “I haven't seen him since"—he swallowed blood—"since early this afternoon."

  "He hates us, officer,” Holly said to the harness bull. “I don't know why."

  I had walked away from them then, my feet shuffling, my shoulders heavier than I could carry. I had gone a block past my car before I had remembered it and turned back for it, and now here I was in the loneliest home a man had ever had.

  I slumped in my armchair, sucking my cracked knuckles.

  Burnett said he hadn't slugged me in the parking field. I believed him. Because if he had slugged me, wouldn't he have admitted it? Lying battered by my fists on the sidewalk and hating my guts, wouldn't he have boasted of it? Would he have denied it after what I'd done to him, and more than that, to the girl he loved?

  All right, but if he hadn't, who had and why?

  After a while I got up from the chair. There was no use going to bed. Tired as I was, I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. I washed my hands and face and left the hotel.

  9.

  He lived in a couple of small rooms on the second floor of a small frame house on a street of small houses. The light showing in two of his windows was the only light in the block, so I knew he was still up. Even if he had been sleeping, that wouldn't have stopped me any more than it had this morning when I had visited Holly Laird.

  There were two doors and two vestibules off the open porch. The one on the right had his name over the bell. I was about to press it when the door at the top of the stairs opened. He closed the door and started down, and then by the light of the dim night-bulb he saw me in the vestibule.

  His jaw hung slack. I said, “I want—” That was all I could get out. He turned and scurried back up the stairs.

  I dashed after him. I reached the door as it slammed in my face. He had no time to lock it. I plunged into the apartment and found that he'd turned the lights off.

  It wasn't totally dark. The night-light from the stairs showed shadowy masses of furniture. But showed no movement. I stood inside the door, peering, listening, hearing only my own breath, while my hand groped for the switch which would be beside the door.

  I felt it and snapped it and there was light. I stood at one end of a living room. He wasn't in it, but Celia Ambler was.

  That first look at her told me she was dead and how she had died. She lay sprawled on the floor, and her eyes were open and staring and her tongue showed.

  Ahead of me there were two closed doors. He would be behind one of them, cowering, scared stiff. The only thing I had to worry about was that he would try to escape through the window. I started across the room. When I reached the dead woman, I paused to bend over her, to touch her. The marks of the fingers that had strangled her showed on her tan throat. She was still a little warm, which meant that it had happened a short time ago.

  I straightened up and one of the two doors opened, and he stepped into the room. George Hoge. His pinched face looked like a skeleton's in which two glowing coals had been put in for eye sockets. He had a rifle.

  "Don't make a move for your gun,” he said.

  I should have had my gun in my hand. I should have remembered that it was always a mistake to under-estimate anybody, especially a killer.

  I glanced at the dead woman. “A knife for her husband and your hands for her,” I said. “A rifle for me. You like variety."

  "I should have killed you in the parking field."

  "Sure,” I said. “Kill and keep killing. But where did it get you? It didn't get you Celia."

  "No.” Hoge shivered. “How did you guess?"

  "Don't know if I did. Not all of it, anyway. I got the idea you were the one slugged me tonight. If not Burnett, who then? Well, this afternoon Celia Ambler had kissed me on her terrace. Out in the open where anybody could see. You'd left, but maybe you were still hanging around. Spying from around the side of the house. Maybe spying on her, or maybe wanting to hear what a cop would have to say about her husband's murder."

  "In other words, you knew nothing,” he said.

  "Not too much,” I said. “I'd gotten myself on the wrong track all day. Then a little while ago I thought there had to be another track. I'd learned the kind of dame Celia Ambler was. I'd noticed the way you looked at her this afternoon. I'd been slugged right after you'd seen me in the theater. I came here to talk to you about it.” I looked at the dead woman. “And now I know."

  "I'm going to kill you,” Hoge said.

  I shrugged. “Your other killings didn't do you any good. You figured if you knocked off John Ambler you'd have his wife to yourself. She would come up here now and then to this place of yours and have a time with you, but didn't suspect you were merely one more guy on her string. Right?"

  His rifle wavered. “Tonight she told me. We had a fight because I saw her kissing you. Then she told me there had been others. She was laughing at me."

  "Did she know you'd killed her husband?"

  "No. I told her. I said I'd killed for her, and now she—” He choked on his own voice. “She looked at me with—with utter horror. She started to run out. She was going to the police. I had to stop her. I took her by the throat. I—I—"

  He passed his hand over his face. I'd been waiting for something like that. I lunged at him.

  It was easy. I had the rifle barrel knocked aside before he knew what was happening. I tore it from his hand and scaled it across the room and had my arm back to drive my fist into his face.

  I didn't hit him. I'd done enough hitting for one day.

  10.

  When I entered the hospital room next morning, Holly Laird was sitting beside his bed. Most of Burnett's face was bandaged.

  "I want to tell you how sorry I am,” I said.

  They didn't say anything.

  "I've been suspended from the force,” I went on. “There will be a departmental trial. Maybe because I brought the killer in last night they'll go easy on me. Maybe not. I guess I don't care much either way."

  She put her hand on his arm. They remained silent.

  "I had to come here and explain,” I said. “You kids are in love. I was in love too—once. And you look like Martha. Your hair especially. I had to hurt Martha, hurt Martha when I was hurting you, and hurt the guy who loved you because—” I stopped. “It sounds mixed up, but it isn't. Not that I'm trying to make any excuses for myself, but if you two could understand ... “ I stopped, because I could see that I wasn't going to get an answer. Things had gone too far for a few words to fix things. Neither Holly Laird nor Burnett said anything. I could see their hate and feel it. I had to do something to make things right, but there was nothing to do.

  "I'm sorry,” I said again. I went out. Suddenly, I was sick.

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  AS I LIE DEAD by FLETCHER FLORA

  I rolled over in the hot sand and sat up. Down the artificial beach about fifty yards, the old man was coming toward us with a bright towel trailing from one hand. He was wearing swimming trunks, and with every step he took, his big belly bounced like a balloon tied up short on the end of a stick. Dropping the towel on the sand, he turned and waded into the water.

  "The old man's taking a swim,” I said.

  Beside me on the beach, Cousin Cindy grunted. She was stretched out flat on her belly with her head cradled on her arms and her long golden legs spread in a narrow V. Her white lastex trunks curved up high over the swell of her body, and the ends of her brassiere lay unattached on the sand. When she shifted position, raising herself a little on her elbows, my reaction was not cousinly. Not cousinly at all.

  "Hook me in back,” she said.

  I reached over and brought the loose ends of her brassiere together below her shoulder blades, letting my fingers wander off lightly down the buttons of her spine. She sat up, folding the golden legs Indian style and shaking sand from the ends of her golden hair. She was gold all
over in the various shades that gold can take. Even her brown eyes, behind dark glass in white harlequin frames, were flecked with gold.

  Out in the lake, Grandfather was swimming toward the raft that was a small brown square on the blue surface of the water. He was swimming breast stroke, as many old men swim, and the water bulged out ahead of him in smooth, sweeping undulations.

  "The old man's strong as a bull,” I said.

  Cindy didn't answer. She just handed me a bottle with a white label and a white cap and some brown lotion inside. I unscrewed the cap and poured some of the lotion on her shoulders and back, rubbing it in gently with my fingers until it had disappeared and her skin was like golden satin to my touch.

  Looking over her shoulder, past the soft sheen of her hair and out across the glittering blue lake, I saw that Grandfather had reached the raft. He was sitting on the far side, his back to us, legs dangling in the water. He'd made it out there in good time. For an old man, damn good time. He was strong, in spite of his fat belly. It didn't look like he was ever going to die.

  "It's hot,” Cindy said, her voice slow and sleepy like the purring of a kitten, “but it's not as hot as it gets in Acapulco. You ever been in Acapulco, Tony? It's beautiful there. The harbor is almost land-locked, with mountains all around, and the ships come right up against the shore."

  I didn't say anything. My hands moved across her shoulders and down along the soft swells of flat muscle that padded the blades. The perfumes of her hair and the lotion were a strange, exotic blend in my nostrils. Out on the raft, Grandfather still sat with his legs in the water.

  "I was there for two weeks once,” Cindy said. “In Acapulco, I mean. I went with a man from Los Angeles who wanted me to wear red flowers in my hair. He was very romantic, but he was also very fat, and the palms of his hands were always damp. It would be better in Acapulco with you, Tony. Much better."

  My hands reversed direction, moving up again into her hair, cupping it between palms as water is cupped. The raft, out on the lake, rose and dipped on a slight swell. Grandfather rode it easily, still resting.

  "He just sits,” I said bitterly. “He'll be sitting forever."