The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  The Fraziers and the other neighbors who came in all deplored the accident so sincerely, Rhea. “Such a terrible shame,” they said.

  But questions were buzzing in their minds—not about me, but about you, Rhea—questions none of them dared put into words. Finally Marie Frazier worked up the courage to ask, “How did it happen that Rhea was up and dressed, John?”

  “But why shouldn’t she be?” I said, sounding as if I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was implying. “Naturally she had just gotten up to make breakfast for me.”

  “Poor John,” Marie murmured. “You’re so dazed you haven’t even noticed what time it is. Only four o’clock in the morning now, and it happened about two hours ago.”

  I was the perfect picture of an unsuspecting husband, Rhea. Our friends privately wagged their heads. Not that they had any idea themselves of what an evil woman you really had been. But they did puzzle over the circumstances of that tragic little accident—never doubting that it was an accident—and marveled that I apparently could see nothing at all questionable about it.

  It fell to the lot of the minister of our church, Matthew Parker, to break the disillusioning “news” to me.

  “John—Darlene,” he said gently. “I’m sure you must appreciate the fact that in a sudden death of this kind certain doubts inevitably arise and must be cleared away. For your own peace of mind, I feel I must explain the apparent cause for Rhea’s fatal fall. When Marie Frazier and my wife were tidying up Rhea’s room today they found—brace yourself, John—they found a bottle of whiskey hidden on a closet shelf.”

  I did not laugh in his solemn face, Rhea. Nor did I put up a pretense that this of course explained everything. Instead I simply stared at our old friend Matthew Parker and said flatly, “I don’t believe it.”

  He insisted very gravely, “I’m afraid it’s true, John. We can’t help believing that Rhea had a secret addiction to alcohol. That accounts for her fall—she had over-imbibed. Probably she had dressed in order to sneak out for another bottle. I’m sincerely sorry, John, but at least this does clear up certain puzzling details.”

  “Rhea was too sweet, too good,” I said. “I can’t believe it of her. I can’t.”

  “Bless your trusting heart, John,” Matthew Parker said. “At least you may rest assured that the Fraziers and the Parkers won’t breathe a word of this.”

  After he had gone I said to Darlene, “I’ll never believe it. Never let it change your own feeling for your mother, Darlene.”

  She smiled at me. “Mother and I always understood each other.”

  That was the first of Darlene’s disturbing cryptic remarks, Rhea—the first hint of evil forces rising in her as they had risen to claim you. But at that time I was more concerned with other dangers. For example—Jennings.

  He came to the door soon after the minister had left, a small man with sharp, darting eyes and a notebook. I put on a disturbed and puzzled look when he announced he was from police headquarters.

  “The homicide law requires us to look at every case of violent death, including accidents, Mr. Long,” Jennings began. “So this is just routine. Except for one angle. How-come your wife was acquainted with Bruce Dallas?”

  “Bruce Dallas?” I echoed. “Who’s he?”

  Jennings explained to me briefly.

  I kept a puzzled frown on my face. “And what makes you imagine my wife was acquainted like that?”

  Jennings said slowly, “I’ve heard a report on the grapevine that she was seen once or twice with him at a place called the Clover Club.”

  “It’s incredible,” I said. “This man—what’s his name, Dallas?—may have been seen there with a woman resembling my wife, but it couldn’t possibly have been Rhea.”

  He rose, apologizing for having bothered me. I smiled at his back as he left. He had come with a vague suspicion of murder—but the suspicion pointed at Bruce Dallas, not at me. That was his reason, of course, for later jockeying Dallas into your funeral service—to watch his reactions as the flames consumed you.

  So then, Rhea, nothing was left but the ceremonies of cremating you, and after that the tragic little event would begin fading from all our minds.

  It would have done so, Rhea, except for Darlene.

  Every night when I came home from work, dreading the moment as profoundly as I had once welcomed it, you met me. It was becoming such a hair-trigger thing, Rhea, that I was fast reaching the point where I could no longer endure it.

  But what could I do? Order Darlene out of the house?

  No, I must stay and cope with it. I must come home every evening to hear your greeting—“Welcome home, Johnny!”—and to find a duplicate of you waiting for me in the kitchen.

  It was getting to be more than my shaken nerves would stand. It was becoming a nightmare, Rhea. But then came even more—the worst thing of all—the proof that your heritage of evil was now claiming Darlene.

  As before, the whole house was silent. For a while I lay listening in a silent torment of tension. Then, almost as in a dream, telling myself that somehow, somehow this insufferable situation must be ended, I rose, opened the door.

  A light had been left burning in Darlene’s closet. Stunned by the repetition of this incident, I reached in to turn it out—and then I saw the bottle.

  Staring at that bottle, I realized it stood hidden at almost the same spot where you had hidden yours. Darlene had been sneaking drinks exactly as you had done, for only a few ounces of whiskey remained in it. Then I turned my stinging eyes to Darlene’s bed.

  Like your bed on that other night of terrifying discovery, it was empty.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PAID IN FULL

  The next evening was also much like another I had had with you, Rhea—casual and commonplace on the surface, while underneath a grim plan was being acted out.

  Darlene and I sat together in the living room, both reading. I could sense the impatience in her and feel her covert glances. At the usual time and in my usual way I said, “I’m turning in now, Darlene. Good night.”

  She answered, “Good night, Johnny; I’ll go up in a minute.”

  I could feel her senses quickening as I went up the stairs. I closed and locked my door and lay on the bed without undressing. Presently I heard Darlene’s sounds on the stairs, then in the room next to mine. Quiet followed.

  Then, just as it had occurred with you, Rhea, I heard a motion of Darlene’s bed as she rose. Next a squeaking sound from the cork of her hidden bottle. A few more moments of quiet followed while she dressed. After that she left her room.

  As soon as she was outside the house, I went into my own plan. Down the stairs and out the front door, I ran along the tree-shaded sidewalk toward the next corner.

  I saw Darlene, halfway down the cross-street, hurrying out of the alley way. She ran to a car waiting nearby. A long convertible, Rhea—the same flashy car that had waited for you!

  I went back into the house almost blindly—resolved that the evil of you, Rhea, as it was living again in the body of Darlene, must be destroyed once and for all.

  I would have it exactly as before. The normal course of incidents would go along this evening just as it had on previous evenings. Darlene and I would be in the living room, reading. I would finally rise and say, “Pretty sleepy. Good night now. Better get some rest yourself.”

  Then I would go into my room.

  Presently Darlene would come up to her room. She would lie down and doze. Making no noise at all, I would then silently go down to the vestibule for the umbrella. I would bring it up, wedge it in place just above the edge of the landing; then go noiselessly back to my bed.

  I would wait to hear Darlene getting up. She would first sneak a drink, slip into a dress, then pad out in her stocking feet. I would follow the slight sound of her every step to the trap at the head of those steep stairs. Then—

  At my first move, however, a small deviation occurred. When I finished reading the evening paper in the living room and sai
d, “Well, I’m going up now, Darlene,” she did not respond as I had expected.

  Instead she said, “I feel sort of jittery for some reason, Johnny. I think I’ll take a little walk, just down to the corner store and back.”

  I asked with concealed grimness, “Want me to come along?”

  “Oh, no,” she said quickly.

  “All right, but hurry back, Darlene.”

  I told myself that the slight delay she was causing would not matter at all. I went up to my room to wait.

  I lay in bed, fully dressed, waiting. It seemed to me that Darlene was taking too long a walk, and then, after I heard her coming back into the house, I felt she was remaining downstairs unusually long. But finally there were noises on the stairs. And presently an early-morning quiet pervaded the whole house.

  I rose, making no sound, and went down the stairs. Coming back with the umbrella, I braced it firmly in the same place that had proved so effective with you, Rhea. Then I returned to my bed to wait for a just wrath to destroy the guilty.

  Soon I heard furtive sounds in the hall. They rustled along the hallway to the top of the stairs.

  Suddenly there was the thump of a foot catching under the barrier and a sharp, long scream from Darlene.

  Next the thudding fall of a body to the very base of the stairs—followed by a terrible silence.

  I sprang up from my bed. Again I saw lights appear in the bedroom windows of the house next door. Just as your scream had done, Rhea, Darlene’s had wakened the Fraziers. This time I did not wait to speak to Marie. She had apparently seen me aroused from a sound sleep by the shriek, so now I let her watch me hurrying from my room in high alarm.

  At the top of the stairs, seeing nothing else so far in the dark, I snatched the umbrella from its place. I ran down the flight hearing groans of mortal pain below. In the vestibule I put the umbrella in the stand with one hand and reached to the wall-switch with the other. The light brought a revelation that struck paralysis into my every fiber.

  The victim of my trap lay huddled, helpless and bleeding at the base of the stairs.

  But it was not Darlene, Rhea. It was Bruce Dallas.

  What followed, Rhea, stays with me like a series of flashes from a nightmare.

  Suddenly I found myself beating at Dallas with my fists, in a wild desire to destroy the last flicker of life in him. He lay limp and lifeless as I hit him, able neither to strike back or to feel the power of my blows. Then I looked up and saw Detective Jennings hurrying in the front door.

  Darlene?

  She was standing on the stair landing above, dressed as I had last seen her, held still by horror, both her hands pressed over her lips to stifle her cries.

  In a moment of unfeeling selflessness, even of wonder, I watched her as she came slowly down the stairs. She moved past the dead body of Bruce Dallas—she seemed not to give me a glance—into the living room, gazing at the shining silver urn on the mantel, and her lips spoke.

  I thought I heard her speaking to you, Rhea. She said, “Now both of them are paid, Mother, for what they did to you.”

  They didn’t bring out the real truth at my trial, Rhea. They tried to prove that I had furiously quarreled with Bruce Dallas, and had deliberately thrown him down the stairs because I had caught him upstairs with Darlene.

  Darlene testified—falsely, for your sake—that she’d known Dallas for some time, but hadn’t told me about it—that it was she who had been seen dancing with him at the Clover Club, and not you. She said that Dallas had had a flat tire down the street a ways that night and had come in and gone upstairs merely to wash his hands. That was when I had found him, had misunderstood and had flown into a rage.

  We know better than this, Rhea, much better. I doubt that they could have convicted me on this story if Jennings, having suspiciously kept an eye on Dallas, hadn’t been waiting outside the house for Dallas to come out again. And then, hearing the scream—

  Darlene?

  I hadn’t dreamed how much Darlene had observed and planned. A deep one, that girl, Rhea, one needing to be watched. When she came here to the death house to visit me I accused her.

  “You knew all along what had really happened to Rhea. Did you notice the umbrella was slightly bent? Did you find that the tip of it had left a scratch in the woodwork at the top of the stairs?”

  She just gazed at me, Rhea, not smiling, not speaking. She was not so much like you anymore. She had stopped using your cosmetics and your perfume; her hair had returned to its own natural tint and her new clothes were her own.

  No, she was not like Rhea at all now. And I could feel her thinking again as she sat there in silence gazing at me through the thick wire screen, Now both of them are paid back, Mother, for what they did to you.

  She went away then, Rhea, and she has not come back since. I am sitting alone here in my cell, waiting for the sentence of death to be executed upon me within an hour, and I have stopped wondering whether Darlene will return to visit me for one last time. In my heart I know she will not come. I’m sure instead that tonight she is at home, alone there—except that she is with you.

  Odds on Death

  Don M. Mankiewicz

  DON M(ARTIN) MANKIEWICZ (1922–) was born in Berlin, Germany, and moved to Los Angeles as a child. He attended Columbia University, studying law, but went into the army and did not graduate. When the first short story he wrote (in an hour, he claims) sold to The New Yorker, he decided to write full-time. Although he wrote numerous short stories and nonfiction for magazines, and three novels, all crime stories, he is best-known as a successful motion picture writer and, to a greater degree, television writer. See How They Run (1951) was his first novel. His second, Trial (1955), was filmed by MGM with Mankiewicz’s screenplay; it starred Glenn Ford and Dorothy McGuire. His final novel was It Only Hurts a Minute (1966). Among his screenwriting credits are I Want to Live! (1958), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, House of Numbers (1957), based on a Jack Finney novel, The Black Bird (1975), Sanctuary of Fear (1979), The Bait (1973), based on a Dorothy Uhnak novel, and The Badge or the Cross (1970). Among the television series he created are Ironside, Marcus Welby, M.D., Sarge, One Step Beyond, Lanigan’s Rabbi (based on the Harry Kemelman novels), and Rosetti and Ryan; he wrote numerous episodes for those and other programs, including Hart to Hart, McMillan & Wife, MacGyver, Star Trek, and Golden Age stalwarts such as Studio One, Playhouse 90, Lux Video Theatre, and Schlitz Playhouse of Stars.

  “Odds on Death” was published in the November 1948 issue.

  Odds on Death

  Don M. Mankiewicz

  Nothing was left to chance on Rocco’s gambling tables. But with the right odds, even a patsy can buck loaded dice and roll a natural.

  NOW THAT YOU MENTION it, chum, it is kind of an odd decoration at that. Not the kind of thing you’d expect to find hanging on the wall back of a bar, particularly in a high-class place like this. Looks like a kid’s cane to you, huh? I guess you’ve led a sheltered life, son. That’s a dice stick. Every house-run crap game in the world has a stickman, and just about every stickman uses a curved stick like that to return the dice to the shooter between rolls. Most of them are a little tricky, too, like that one there. They don’t always return the same dice they pick up—if you get what I mean.

  That stick was given to me by my old man. He’d carried it all over the world with him, like a good mechanic might carry a set of fine end-wrenches or a special pair of calipers that he liked. My dad was a pro, same as I was. He’d handled the sticks at dice tables in Caliente, Reno, Saratoga, Florida, Hot Springs, and even at some of the famous European gambling houses along the Riviera. He had a reputation for honesty that would get him a job with any gambling joint in the world. That may sound a little odd to you, Mac, but a guy who wants to work at a dice table had better be honest, even if his job is switching the dice back and forth so the house doesn’t get hit. What I mean by that is, the boss has to know that his employees a
re all working for him; it’d be awfully easy for a stickman to get tied up with somebody from the outside and make a mistake on purpose with those dice sometime. Once, that is. Never twice.

  I don’t know why I should be telling you the story of my life like this, mister, but you asked about the stick, and I guess you’ll stop me if I’m boring you. Well, when Dad got along in years to the point where it hurt him to stand up all night, he wasn’t like most stickmen. He’d saved his money. And he quit. You know, like those fellows you read about in the insurance ads in the magazines, that go off to some cabin in the mountains and spend all their time fishing. Well, that’s what my old man did; just quit and bought a shack out near Pikes Peak and there, except for a Christmas card every year, I haven’t heard from him since. At the time he quit, we were both working as stickmen at Rocco’s, up the street. You ever been there? Well, don’t bother. If you ever feel like going there for an evening’s pleasure, as the fellow says, just mail Rocco your money. That way you won’t be pushed around and have to smell all the cigar smoke. And you got just as good a chance to win.

  What I mean by that is, Rocco’s joint is just as crooked as he is, which is the same as to say nothing is left to chance. I have an idea that was one of the things that got my old man to quit, Rocco’s being such a crooked house, and him being too old to go traipsing around the country looking for a better job. When he quit, Dad gave me that stick and before he left for the mountains he gave me a quick course in how to operate it. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t do with that stick. The way it worked is this: a fellow would come in and start shooting. At the start of his roll he got a whole basket of Rocco’s dice, every one of them honest, to pick from. Any two dice in the basket that he liked, those were the dice he used. Well, as long as he kept shooting for reasonable stakes, he’d keep those dice. Every time he’d shoot, I’d slide the dice back to him with the stick, and he’d roll them out again. The house would be taking its percentage out of the side bets, the guy would win-a-little-lose-a-little, and everybody would be happy, particularly Rocco and me.