Understudy for Death

by Charles Willeford

  Contents

  Cover

  Acclaim for the Work of Charles Willeford!

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Acclaim for the Work of CHARLES WILLEFORD!

  “No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford.”

  —Elmore Leonard

  “Extraordinarily winning…Pure pleasure…Mr. Willeford never puts a foot wrong.”

  —The New Yorker

  “If you are looking for a master’s insight into the humid decadence of South Florida and its polyglot tribes, nobody does that as well as Mr. Willeford.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Willeford builds up enormous tension—you are compelled to keep reading.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Absolutely brilliant in every regard.”

  —Stanley Ellin

  “Bone-deep satire…terrific.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A marvelous read.”

  —Harry Crews

  “A top-notch crime novel…both tough and funny.”

  —Washington Post

  “Lean and hard and brand-new.”

  —Donald E. Westlake

  “A tempo so relentless, words practically fly off the page.”

  —The Village Voice

  “A tawdry, compelling read.”

  —Cashiers du Cinemart

  “Willeford has a marvelously deadpan way with losers on both sides of the law.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A pitilessly hilarious dissection of the American male psyche.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Spare, laconic, unflinching.”

  —Jonathan Lethem

  “Bridging the gap between classic and contemporary hard-boiled is the giant figure of Charles Willeford.”

  —TimeOut UK

  “The unlikely father of Miami crime fiction.”

  —The Atlantic Monthly

  “Nobody writes like Charles Willeford…He is an original— funny and weird and wonderful.”

  —James Crumley

  Mel looked past my shoulder across the room, raised his chin. “That’s Mrs. Chatham, the blonde talking to Mrs. Barnes.”

  Turning on the stool, I spotted her easily. Mrs. Chatham was wearing a red-silk cocktail gown that looked as if it had been sewn onto her body. Her face and shoulders were evenly tanned, and her long tawny hair was like a mane down her back.

  “She’s a real beauty, Mel.”

  “Now she is, but not for long. She’s a lush, Richard. In about one minute she’ll be over at the bar asking for a double-martini.”

  “That’s no indication that she’s a lush. Maybe she just likes gin.”

  “There’s worse lushes around here, I got to give her that,” Mel confided darkly…

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  JOYLAND by Stephen King

  THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

  THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH by Ariel S. Winter

  ODDS ON by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange

  BRAINQUAKE by Samuel Fuller

  EASY DEATH by Daniel Boyd

  THIEVES FALL OUT by Gore Vidal

  SO NUDE, SO DEAD by Ed McBain

  THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES by Lawrence Block

  QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  PIMP by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  SOHO SINS by Richard Vine

  THE KNIFE SLIPPED by Erle Stanley Gardner

  SNATCH by Gregory Mcdonald

  HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER by Donald E. Westlake

  THE LAST STAND by Mickey Spillane

  UNDERSTUDY

  for DEATH

  by Charles Willeford

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-134)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: July 2018

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London SE1 0UP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  Copyright © 1961 by Charles Willeford

  Cover painting copyright © 2018 by Paul Mann

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print edition ISBN 978-1-78565-698-9

  E-book ISBN 978-1-78565-690-3

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  For Bill Bittner

  in

  this dilemma

  …what can a

  woman do?

  VLAKE SPRINGS, city, Florida; altitude 18 feet, on the Florida East Coast Railroad; with airline service. The city is a southern Florida distributing point for agricultural and dairy products. Manufactures include sports clothing, electronics accessories, pharmaceuticals and tiles. Lake Springs, for which the city was named, is noted for its opaque waters, and is a popular attraction for tourists. There is an alligator farm, a zoo (animals indigenous to Florida only) and a Seminole Indian museum. Incorporated in 1906; it has a commission-manager form of government. Pop. (1950) 37,611.

  THE DIXIE-WAY ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA, Page 387, Vol. XXV. Volume I, 25¢; each succeeding Volume 99¢—sold exclusively at your friendly Dixie-Way Supermarket. (Advt.)

  Chapter One

  A well-to-do Lake Springs matron, Mrs. Marion C. Huneker, 30, after leaving a farewell note addressed to her husband, Mr. Jack L. Huneker, 36, president of the local Huneker Concrete Block & Ornamental Iron Co., fatally shot her two small children and herself last night.

  Mrs. Huneker died without regaining consciousness in the ambulance on the way to the hospital from the self-inflicted head wound from her husband’s .22 cal. Colt Woodsman semi-automatic pistol. Mr. Huneker had purchased the pistol a month ago, he said, to shoot rats that were increasing at his storage sheds at 3409 Melvin Rd. A sales slip found on the dresser in Mrs. Huneker’s death bedroom revealed that the suicidal-bent matron had purchased a box of .22 long rifle shells from the Outdoor Sporting Equipment Store yesterday morning. The pistol was discovered by Detective Charles G. Riddell, in charge of the investigation, beneath the bedside table near the dead woman’s right, outstretched hand.

  Mr. Ralph Blaiksee, a salesman at the Outdoor Sporting Equipment Store, in speaking to Detective Riddell confirmed the sale of the shells to Mrs. Huneker.

  “If I had known Mrs. Huneker was going to shoot herself and her two children,” Mr. Blaiksee told Detective Riddell, “I wouldn’t have sold them to her.”

  While Mrs. Huneker was shoot
ing her two children and herself at home, 1406 Lake Shore Drive, in the exclusive residential district of the city, her husband was downtown buying liquor at Ben’s Package Store for a party the couple was scheduled to give this coming Saturday evening. Her husband arrived home at approximately 8:45 P.M. last night.

  Detective Riddell told this reporter that Huneker walked into the house and found his wife unconscious on their double-bed. Due to the small wound beneath her hair left by the small-calibre bullet he did not know that she had shot herself. But when he could not make her regain consciousness he called the emergency number of St. Catherine’s Hospital and ordered an ambulance.

  A moment later he found the suicide note on the bedroom dressing table:

  THE DEATH NOTE

  I cannot stand it any longer. I don’t belong and neither do my children. Television is more important than we are. Everything is nothing.

  Every day the walls move in closer and closer and I am being smothered. My life goes on in the same way no matter how I try. This is the only way I know to change it.

  Although I may not go to Heaven, at least my two babies will go before they have sinned in the eyes of God.

  The note, written with a round firm hand in ball-point pencil on a piece of light gray monogrammed stationery, was signed Marion Casselli; Mrs. Huneker’s maiden name.

  After reading the suicide note the distraught and bewildered husband began a frantic search for his two children.

  He found his daughter, Kathy, 6, beneath her bed where she had evidently tried to hide from her mother. The child was dead.

  Mr. Huneker’s son, Antonio, 8, was not inside the house. The husband continued his search outside and found the boy in a treehouse in the backyard that overlooked the lake. The treehouse had been built a few weeks ago by Antonio and other members of his Cub Scout Pack No. 8. The light of a small pencil flash-light shining in the branches of the tree attracted Mr. Huneker to the treehouse. There was blood on the cross-board steps leading up to the crude structure, and Detective Riddell surmised that the boy was probably shot elsewhere, and then climbed to the tree-house platform to die. When his father found him, Antonio was dead.

  Mr. Huneker could give the police no reason for the murder-suicide. His wife had not shown any signs of despondency, and had been looking forward eagerly to the party they had planned for the weekend.

  The family had eaten dinner early, Mr. Huneker stated, and his wife had been in good spirits during the meal and afterwards. When he left the house after dinner to go downtown, Mrs. Huneker had been singing in the kitchen to herself, he said. Both of his children had been watching their favorite television program, “The Restless Gun.”

  According to neighbors, the late Mrs. Huneker was very active in the community. She was the Den Mother of Cub Scout Pack No. 8, and a member of the Jaycees’ Wives Club, The Beachcomber’s Club, The Lake Shore Home & Garden Club, and on the Flower Arranging Committee of The Beachcomber’s Club. She was enrolled in the Creative Writing class at the Adult Education Center, and was also a member of the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart.

  One neighbor stated that she and Mrs. Huneker had gone to the courthouse a few months back to register for jury duty, but that neither of them had served as yet. The same neighbor said that she had collaborated with Mrs. Huneker on a letter to the City Commission a few weeks ago complaining about the inadequate lighting system along Lake Shore Drive.

  --30--

  Without rereading the copy I gathered the four double-spaced, typed sheets of paper together and took them into the Managing Editor’s office. J.C. Curtis, the Managing Editor of the Lake Springs Morning News and Evening Press (yes, both papers), picked up his soft, crumbly, No. 1 pencil and snatched rudely for the copy.

  I considered this a grievous fault of J.C.’s, but I imagine all M.E.’s are about the same. They can’t read anything without a pencil in their hand. As I stood patiently beside J.C.’s desk I could visualize this little guy in his lonely hotel room, his pencil clutched in his fingers, reading a Gideon Bible—crossing out this word, substituting a better one, scratching through inept sentences, and cutting the long paragraphs down to size. His size.

  J.C. Curtis held the unshakable opinion that no paragraph could possibly be longer than three sentences. And if a sentence happened to be overly long, he delivered a dull, standard lecture about it. I had had several of these.

  The M.E. marked the first paragraph for a two-column, ten-point lead, and flicked in new paragraph angles with his soft pencil as he read. He raised his head and glared at me through the top half of his bifocals with a baffled look of stupefaction on his narrow face.

  “I’ll swear to God, Hudson,” he said impatiently, “I just don’t know about you sometimes. I don’t know whether you write this way to make me sore, or whether you really don’t know any better.”

  “What’s the matter this time?” I said sullenly.

  “This beautiful little gem,” he said mordantly. “ ‘If I had known Mrs. Huneker was going to shoot herself and her two children I wouldn’t have sold them to her.’” He said this with an air of outraged piety, and I had to laugh.

  “That’s exactly what he said,” I grinned.

  “I don’t doubt it, but can’t you see that it makes that poor salesman sound like a damned fool?”

  “He is a damned fool.”

  “You don’t have to prove it to the public. Let them find out for themselves. And besides, the Outdoor Sporting Equipment is an advertiser.” His pencil blackened the offending quote.

  The next line to go was the neighbor’s remark concerning the drafting of a letter to the city commissioners. I didn’t particularly care, but I did wonder why. “Does a letter complaining about poor lighting make a fool out of the neighbor?”

  “This is an obvious lie.” J.C. shrugged. “You were around asking questions, and she saw an opportunity to get in a bad word for the street lights, that’s all. You’re skeptical enough about some things, Hudson, but this is a manifest case of gullibility, and you ought to know better.”

  “That’s the truth, Mr. Curtis. The lighting really could be improved along Lake Shore Drive. The street lights in that section are three and four blocks apart.”

  “In that case, it’s an item for the editorial page, not for a story on suicide. Otherwise, it’ll do. Give the story to Harris and tell him to put a banner on it.”

  I picked up the copy and J.C. said: “And tell Harris to wait another half-hour before he puts it on the wire so Miami won’t have it in time for their first morning editions. Then come back in here, Hudson, I want to talk to you.”

  I relayed J.C.’s message to Harris, Morning News City Editor and Copy Chief, and watched over his hunched shoulder as he read rapidly through the copy. Without even pausing to think for a moment he quickly block-printed a banner head on a narrow strip of white paper, and paper-clipped it to the story.

  Mother Blasts Self, 2 Kids, Blames TV

  The head wasn’t absolutely accurate, but set in 96 point Tempo Heavy, it would sell a lot of newspapers. And it was exactly in line with the paper’s policy to knock television at every opportunity, except when we were ignoring the medium altogether. Neither one of the papers, morning or evening, ran the local television listings, and Lake Springs had two stations. A little nervous—I’d been goofing off quite a bit lately—I drifted back to the M.E.’s office.

  “Shut the door and sit down, Hudson,” J.C. said, rolling his yellow pencil between his palms.

  “Yes, sir.” After I sat down I looked at him, but there wasn’t much to see. J.C. had one of those deadpan faces, and even when he raised his voice in violent anger, which he did once in awhile, his expression rarely changed. A small middle-aged man, he made the word “wizened” his very own. His pale bald head, ridiculously hooked nose and round thick glasses always reminded me of a lifelike, expertly stuffed falcon. Dave Finney, who used my desk in the daytime, and who was my counterpart on the Evening Press, told me on
ce, after a racking J.C. had given him, that our joint Managing Editor resembled Henry Miller with a shrunken head. Dave was wrong, of course. J.C. Curtis was a long way from being an acephalous editor; he had been an editorial writer on the New York Sun for fifteen years before it folded. When that great paper died, the way they do sometimes for no apparent reason, our absentee publisher had hired him as Managing Editor, probably the brightest move the publisher had ever made. I don’t know why he stayed or why he appeared to be content in Lake Springs, but I don’t suppose there was too much difference for the old man between living in a hotel room in New York and living in a hotel room in Florida. Most of his waking hours were spent at the office anyway.

  “What do you think personally about this case, Hudson?” J.C. said at last.

  “I haven’t given it much thought, Mr. Curtis. I was pretty busy, doing a lot of running around out there and all. Just another suicide I suppose.”

  “There’s no such thing as just another suicide. Don’t you think there’s something peculiar about it?”

  “No, sir. There isn’t any funny business here. I talked to Riddell, and he said it’s definitely murder-suicide, no question about it. Jack Huneker’s completely covered—”

  “That isn’t what I mean, Hudson. I know it’s suicide, but why kill two children? Mothers don’t usually do this; it’s more common with the fathers.”

  “It happens all the time.” I smiled. “And besides, she gave her reason in the note she left. She wanted to be sure her children would get into Heaven before they sinned. So she was evidently a religious fanatic.”

  “No,” J.C. shook his head. “She was a Roman Catholic, and they aren’t fanatics.”

  “They aren’t?” I said dubiously. “Not even Father Coughlin?”

  “He didn’t commit suicide. The Roman Catholic Church doesn’t allow suicide. They even have a prohibition on burials, and a lot of after-death malarkey.”

  “I realize it’s unusual,” I admitted. “I don’t know how much dough Mr. Huneker makes, but he’s got a going business with those concrete blocks, especially since they started construction on the retirement village. He’s got two cars, a convertible Impala and a Buick station wagon. They’ve got a beautiful home on the lake, and a private boat dock—”