The Second Mystery Megapack

by Ron Goulart

  “You’re no Marine!” I sneered at him. “Come on, mix it!”

  Smitty shook himself, blinked his pale eyes, and dived at me.

  With one hand I clamped down on his knife wrist, and with the other I crossed hard to the mouth. Blood spattered.

  Smitty whimpered. Yeah, whimpered. This cold-blooded little killer didn’t like being pushed around by a jock ten pounds under his own weight.

  I slammed home a couple of hard rights. The stiletto clinked on the floor. A left straightened him up. Another right put him away for keeps.

  I sucked in a breath of that swell new air I seemed to be breathing, and turned.

  Chipman was up and snarling like a mad dog while he fumbled in a desk drawer. He swung around with a little black automatic.

  I saw his face twisted with the thoughts that were in him, and I knew I was going to get it, but I rushed him anyway—charged at him feeling like a giant inside.

  A gun shot crashed, stunned my ears, but I didn’t feel hurt. I kept going, wondering if it didn’t hurt to be shot like this.

  Then I saw Chipman drop his gun and crumple to the floor.

  I stopped. What had happened?

  “You okay, Shorty?” a familiar voice said.

  The house dick stood in the doorway, a whiff of cordite spilling from the business end of his gun.

  I stared at him. “These guys swiped some diamonds,” I began.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he cut in. “I heard the whole thing. I followed you to the door and listened outside.”

  So I sat down in a chair and what do you think? Right beside me was all that food messed around on the floor. Lamb chops, and potatoes with cheese melted all over them and everything.

  I’d had a hard time making the weight. The smell of that food hit me, and I passed out.

  * * * *

  When I came to, the house dick was pouring brandy into me. “Get away from me with those calories,” I said, shoving him. “I got a race to ride tomorrow!”

  The old zip and zest was back in life. I knew the thundering hoofs of a twelve-horse field was going to sound like music to me.

  The dick was talking.

  I shook my head. “Huh?”

  He repeated, “I said—how’d ya know the guy had mickeyed the Marine and swapped clothes so’s he could get into the movie dame’s suite?”

  I walked past Chipman, who now sat groaning in a chair and nursing a bloody shoulder, and pulled back the mickeyed man’s undershirt.

  “Whew!” whewed the house dick. “Yellow as gold!”

  “It’s the atabrin they take for malaria in the tropics,” I explained. “I work at Naval Hospital. You see a lot of Marines like this when they first come back.”

  “It was the yellow belly that upset the deal then,” the house dick chuckled.

  “Yeah,” I grinned. “The yellowbelly!”

  My eyes met Van Chipman’s, and Chipman’s dropped first.

  CASH, by Arlette Lees

  Women! They were nothing but a game to Cash. Three months of pouring on the charm and Carly was in the bag. They’d done it all nice and legal and quiet: preacher, ring, cozy out-of-the-way wedding chapel. He was looking forward to tomorrow when everything she owned was going into both of their names: stocks, bonds, bank accounts.

  Carly was rich and beautiful. Too bad for her that she wasn’t overly bright. If she was, she’d smell him out as the fleet-footed grifter he’d always been. By the time she was onto his game she’d be cleaned out and he’d be a thousand miles away, licking his chops and counting his take.

  He showered, shaved and put on the open-necked blue shirt that showed a subtle shadowing of chest hair. A strand or two of bling around his neck, a splash of Ax and he’d be ready to hit his next mark, the gorgeous Greta. But, he’d better be careful. Greta was sharper than Carly and he couldn’t afford any missteps. Her ailing banker father was almost ready to kick the bucket. Then he’d be rolling in dough, her dough if he played his cards right.

  A clever man could marry an endless succession of women, if he kept on the move, used a phone book full of aliases and didn’t bother with the inconvenience of divorce. As long as one wife didn’t find out about the other…and that hadn’t happened yet…he could run the same scan from here to kingdom come.

  Cash smoothed back his head of black hair, allowing one renegade curl to fall casually over his forehead, like that cool actor on the old Hawaii Five-O. You handsome dog, he thought as he checked his image in the mirror one last time. He smiled his crooked smile. He had a hard job, but somebody had to do it.

  He still had five thousand dollars in his wallet, money from the aging widow who was waiting for him in Tulsa. He snickered. It was going to be a long wait. He’d used only what he’d had to spend in order to bag Greta and hoped it wouldn’t take much more. A man had to be thrifty in this economy.

  Carly was already in bed glued to American Idol. She looked up absently as he tried to slip unnoticed out the door of their luxury condo. He could say “ours” now that they’d tied the knot. He liked the way the word rolled around him his head like a billiard ball. “Ours.”

  “You’re forgetting your wallet, darling,” she cooed from an acre of satin comforters. “You left it on the kitchen counter. You’ve become so absent-minded.” He smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. You get preoccupied and you start slipping up. As he reached for his wallet that nasty toy poodle of hers almost bit his fingers off.

  “Now, now Tiffany!” she scolded. “We’ll have none of that.”

  God, how he hated that pampered little rodent. He was already planning its mysterious disappearance.

  He slipped the wallet into the pocket with the red velvet ring box that held the big blue diamond that Carly had never laid eyes on. She pulled him down to the bed for a kiss. He had to admit she was a delicious babe. Golden hair. Flawless skin as creamy as white chocolate. But, he wasn’t in the game for love or sex or any of the usual distractions. He kept things simple. He was strictly a money man.

  She planted a soft kiss on his lips. Gullible piece of fluff. Tiffany snapped and he jerked away.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she said. “He used to be such a good judge of character.” She looked up at him with those startling blue eyes. “Sweetheart?”

  Good lord, what now? He was never going to get out of here. His antiperspirant was already letting him down.

  “Angel, I’ve got to meet a client. If I can close this deal, we can spend a whole month in Florida soaking up the sun and living on nachos and Margaritas.”

  He could tell from the look on her face that she had something on her mind, if that as possible.

  “Please don’t be mad,” she pouted, “but I went shopping this afternoon and the Porsche is out of gas. I pulled into the carport on fumes.” He could swear the dog was gloating.

  Cash felt like blowing his stack, shaking her by the hair, slapping her around. He’d certainly had enough practice, but he was determined not to blow this gig so he sucked it up and smiled. He had to be patient a while longer, but all this patience was about to give him an aneurism.

  Carly reached for her purse and dangled her keys to the Ford station wagon. The station wagon! Next to the Porsche it was a junkyard on wheels. What did she think he was, a house husband with three kids and a cocker spaniel? This was the car the housekeeper borrowed when her clunker wouldn’t start. Fine impression he was going to make.

  “It’s okay,” she smiled sweetly. “I know you’ll take good care of it.”

  He took a deep breath. Holding in his temper in was giving him acid stomach.

  Cash glanced at his watch. He was running dangerously late for his dinner date. If he took the time to siphon gas out of her station wagon, Greta would be breathing fire by the time he got there and his whole plan would be in shambles.

  He jingled the keys into his pocket and headed out the door. He’d tell Greta the Porsche was in for a tune-up and he’d borrowed his cousin
’s wheels. He didn’t actually have a cousin. In fact, he’d left everyone in his family down some long-forgotten road so many years ago he could no longer remember exactly what they looked like…a dad with whiskey on his breath…a mother with a bad cigarette cough. They were probably six feet under by now.

  Greta took one look at the Ford, lifted a discerning eyebrow and said they’d take her Lincoln instead. Not a very auspicious start to the evening. Greta was as darkly exotic as Carly was golden, with shiny long black hair and brown eyes deep enough to drown in. He left the wagon parked outside her luxury high-rise. He was off to a shaky start, but wait until she saw the ring. It was a rock the size of a watermelon. He scored it from wife number three, or was it four? It had been on a dozen fingers since then, but he’d always managed to get it back before he’d skipped town.

  He almost laughed out loud when Greta decided on the Fireside Lounge. He’d met both her and Carly there on the same night, Carly at happy hour, Greta later in the evening after he’d dropped Carly back at her place.

  They ordered up a storm: shrimp cocktail, wilted spinach salad, rare prime rib, expensive French wine. Over Grande Marnier and cherries jubilee he popped the question and she said, yes, yes, yes, and bubbled like a school girl.

  The ring blazed like a bonfire on Greta’s delicate finger. He leaned across the table, kissed her red lips and hugged her the best he could manage with the small table between them. Her white diamond earring felt like an ice cube against his cheek and he could smell the hint of light lemony perfume on her long, graceful neck. April, she told him would be the perfect month for a wedding. It was her favorite time of the year with light spring showers and lilacs in bloom. April. Only a few short months away. The smell of victory was thick in the air.

  Just like when he got too excited as a kid, he had to make an emergency pit stop. The check arrived and he left his credit card on the table so Greta could take care of it. She suggested they go back to her place and get romantic. Oh well, it was all in a day’s work. He didn’t mind leaving the credit card. This way he didn’t have to dip into the ‘real’ money. No one would ever make the connection between the fictitious name on the card and the real him, although there were times when he couldn’t quite remember who the real him was.

  He resisted the urge to strut, consumed as he was with fantasies of community property rights and joint bank accounts. Her daddy had a yacht and a vacation home in the Bahamas. He could see himself kicked back in the shade of a veranda, sipping a mint julep without a care in the world. He decided right then and there that this was a relationship with long-term shelf life. He was finally going to settle down.

  When he returned to the table, Greta had gone to powder her nose, her velvet gloves folded on the embossed linen tablecloth, her black sequined purse sitting next to her wine goblet where any passing crook could make off with it.

  Twenty precious minutes passed before he discovered that the purse was full of Kleenex and the Lincoln was gone from the parking lot. His heart clenched in his chest. What the hell was going on? Dames! You never knew from one moment to the next what they were going to do, yet Greta was so stable, so rational. Her father! That had to be it. A medical emergency. He never expected to get this lucky.

  The waiter stood over him waving the check, tapping his foot. No, the lady had not paid. She’d dashed out of the establishment like her dress was on fire. Was he right then? A family crisis? Even so, he’d feel a lot better if the diamond ring were in his pocket instead of on his finger.

  The waiter cleared his throat. “Sir, the check.”

  Annoyed at having to dip into his ‘real’ money, Cash pulled out his wallet, irritation in his every gesture. He flipped open the bill compartment. Empty! That was impossible! The wallet hadn’t left his pocket all evening.

  The waiter snorted with disgust and went to get the manager.

  Sweat prickled in Cash’s armpits and ran down his ribs like spiders. Now, the manager was walking toward his table looking none too friendly. Panic stricken, Cash bolted from the restaurant like a common criminal. Normally, he could talk himself out of any fix, but tonight he was off his game.

  Three blocks from the restaurant he stopped running, his heart thundering in his chest. Shit! He was too old for this crap, felt like he was going to have a heart attack, and just when everything was going so well.

  Now what?

  He found a pay phone and fished for his last dime. He called home and it rang and rang. Damn! Carly had turned off the ringer again. Then he remembered that the Porsche was out of gas, so she couldn’t pick him up anyway.

  When he hung up, the phone swallowed his last quarter. He beat the machine with the mouthpiece, stopping only when he crushed his thumb nail and let out a yelp. Desperate, he found himself pacing outside a liquor store. He hated this part of town with its cheap dives, pool halls and adult bookstores. Reminded him of the neighborhood he’d run away from when he was a hungry kid.

  He was at his wit’s end until he bumped into a good Samaritan named Blooper, who drank whiskey out of a paper bag, and gave him a lift in an old pickup that smelled like marijuana smoke and sweaty dogs.

  When they pulled up to the high-rise there was no sign of the Lincoln. He pushed Greta’s buzzer a hundred times and got no response. In desperation, he kicked the security door until he felt his toe snap. Back in the street, the Ford sat low to the ground on four slashed tires.

  Shit like this was supposed to happen to other people. It’s like the world had turned upside down. A sick swirling in the pit of his stomach told him his diamond ring was probably in another state by now, along with the exotic, erotic, black-haired Greta. He doubled over in pain and threw up next to the car.

  Blooper was still there, leaning casually against his truck, rolling a doobie, spilling most of the bud onto the asphalt. He looked up.

  “Need a ride somewhere else, bub?” he said.

  * * * *

  It was pitch black out with no moon on the rise. As lousy as he felt it was a comfort to see the golden lamplight spilling from the condo window. It was nice to know that even if he didn’t give a hill of beans about Carly, she’d greet him with open arms. He might even put up with that yapping rodent another week or two.

  He slipped his key in the lock, wondering what cover story to concoct about the missing car. In a pinch he always came up with something. The condo was both quiet and empty. Carly was nowhere to be seen. The satiny bed was stripped and every personal item had been removed from the rooms. The drawers, shelves, closets and medicine cabinet were empty and every surface wiped clean of fingerprints. It was as if Carly had never set foot in the place, as if she’d never existed. He sniffed the air. What was that light, lemony scent? Where had he smelled that before? Then he noticed the note taped to the wall above the bed: You Can Keep The Ford.

  The Porsche! Cash ran down the stairs and limped to the carport. The parking slot was empty. A small patch of transmission fluid shone wetly in the greenish glow from the street lamp. When he rousted the grumbling condo manager from his sleep, Cash’s hair was a mess and he looked like a raving lunatic. There was no Carly Chase in his record book and never had been. Condo 405 where he and Carly had been staying was owned by a couple who’d been vacationing in Europe for the last three months. Then the old goat accused him of being on drugs and threatened to call security.

  Cash stood in the empty parking lot immobilized by shock and disbelief. For the first time since he was a kid, he didn’t know where to turn. Everything he’d worked so hard for was gone…the money…the diamond…the Porsche.

  In a flash of indignation he had the fleeting impulse to call the cops. Then again, he was embarrassed at having been taken. Besides, it would have been a little complicated to explain. What if the officer started asking questions? What if he discovered his real name or traced him back to all of those complaining wives?

  His best bet was to make his way back to Tulsa. He turned his empty pockets inside out. He’d
put through a call to the widow, provided she’d let him reverse the charge.

  SEAS OF MISUNDERSTANDING, by Ray Cummings

  There were three of us in the beginning. We drifted together, not because of any sympathy of character or taste, nor even on account of that subtle attraction for which opposites are proverbially noted—though I doubt if three men of more varied characteristics could have been got together—but solely because of the similarity of position in which fate had chosen to place us. For to the best of our knowledge, none of us had a relative in the world.

  Jim O’Mara was Irish, loquaciously enthusiastic on any and every subject optimistic under every circumstance—a blond young giant both good-natured and quick-tempered. Bogden Walenitsky, on the other hand, was of a Polish near-noble family whose relatives had been systematically hanged, shot and routed out of existence—a slight, dark youth, silent and morose for the most part, and a nihilist at heart.

  For myself I am just an average American, blessed neither by good looks nor great wealth.

  Jim christened us the “Islands.”

  We had been meeting more or less casually at a little cosmopolitan table d’hôte where we could quarrel as much as we pleased so long as we stopped short of actual violence, and the question of forming a defensive and offensive alliance had come up.

  “’Tis a good idea, boys,” said Jim. “And we’ll call ourselves the ‘Islands.’ Emerson or some other literary lad says we are all ‘islands shouting to each other across seas of misunderstanding.’ It’s islands we are, all right—bleak and bare desert islands without kith, kin, or pig to bless ourselves—glory be for that—and as to the ‘seas of misunderstanding,’ sure it’s oceans and oceans of it and nothing else we have all the time.”

  So the Islands we became, and for several months things drifted along pleasantly enough; then—we fell in love. Individually and collectively we fell in love—and of course, with the same girl.

  She was the sister of Jack Broughton, an artist acquaintance of ours; and we met her first at the little restaurant where we all dined. Jack’s studio became very popular with us after that; though it was several weeks before we would admit, even to each other, that Valarie was its chief charm.