The Green-Eyed Dick

by J. S. Chapman

  The cat greeted me when I walked through the door. I opened a bottle of table wine and consumed two glasses over leftover meatloaf. Kitty enjoyed the meatloaf but had to make do with plain water. Done with his feast, he perched himself on the kitchen floor, his green eyes staring wide-eyed at me and his tail sweeping over the linoleum tiles like a feather duster. “Sorry, boy,” I said to him. “Wish I had better news, but your mommy isn’t coming back for you.” As if he understood, the kitty darted away.

  When I stepped out of the tub, my hair wrapped in a towel and my body clad in a soft terrycloth robe, I switched on the record player. Perry Como’s latest hit dropped onto the turntable and soothed my frazzled nerves. After refilling the wine glass, I plopped onto the sofa, leaned back, and let my eyes drift shut. The cat leapt into my lap. Light from the table lamp surrounded us in a cone of contentment. I idly stroked him, every so often, bringing the rim of the glass to my lips and taking a sip. Platter after platter dropped onto the turntable. I told myself I didn’t give a damn about my career. I could strike out anywhere, make my mark, and show everybody. Worries dripped away. My eyes drooped close. Cares took a back seat. Kitty began to purr. I began to purr.

  The sun set. Night fell.

  I’d almost fallen asleep when the lights flickered and winked out, plunging the apartment into utter darkness. I let out a yap of alarm. Eddie Fisher’s Oh! My Pa-Pa came to a scratchy stop. After gulping down the rest of the wine, I drummed my heels against the floor. “Mr. Daugherty! The fuses!” Quiet. I shouted again, louder this time. “Mr. Daugherty!” The cat bounded out of my lap and scampered into the bedroom. Barefoot, I padded across the floor and stuck my head into the hallway. The distant glow of streetlight filtering in through the vestibule door penetrated from below.

  One minute later, I pounded down the staircase, the beam of a flashlight leading the way. I halfheartedly called out as I went. “Mr. Daugherty? Mrs. Singer? Mr. Miller? Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?” Nobody was home.

  The basement was like all basements: dusty, dank, and dripping cobwebs. My heart beat like a snare drum. My palms were sweaty. Even with the flashlight punching a hole into the blackness, the cellar felt like a crypt: chilly, clammy, and spooky. I shivered.

  Skittish of bumping into something otherworldly, I blindly waved my free hand before me. In quick succession, I stubbed my toe on an empty milk bottle and bumped into a rocking chair. The milk bottle rolled against something solid and crashed. The rockers clapped against the cement floor, slowed, and stopped. I put a tentative foot forward and stepped on broken glass. The cement walls echoed with my shriek. A cold blast of air whooshed by. I stilled to listen. The silence was absolute. The smarting in my foot escalated. I sucked in a breath, limped to the fuse box, and cranked it open. My hands trembled as I screwed in a fresh fuse. The bare light bulb above my head snapped on. I took in several calming breaths. Be-stilled my pounding heart. And tossed the burnt fuse into a cardboard box with the discards.

  Once I reemerged from the basement, my foot was on fire. A quick examination revealed a gash two inches long, the cut running from the arch, over the ball of my foot, and ending between my middle two toes. Blood gushed at the deepest juncture and oozed at the ends. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I did neither.

  One of my neighbors had propped open the vestibule door. I removed the wedge. The door swung shut, and the lock engaged with a click.

  A plaintive meow tripped its way downstairs.

  I hopped over to the stairway, reached for the handhold, and listened. The meows repeated. Lazy at first, then frantic. Noises accompanied the meowing. Alien noises. My senses went on alert. I climbed, balancing on the side of the injured foot and putting most of my weight on the good foot. The stairs creaked hollowly beneath my footfalls. It was slow going.

  At the second-floor landing, I pinned my ears back. Quiet had returned. The building hushed. A hotrod blasted down the street, radio blaring. Like Doppler radar, it came and went. The meows renewed. The noises returned with them. Shuffling footsteps. Mutterings. Expletives. They came from upstairs. From my apartment.

  I flew up the last two flights, my feet light and swift, pain obliterated by adrenaline. When I reached the top, only slightly out of breath and treading on tiptoe, I approached the open doorway of my apartment and peered inside.

  A burglar was attempting to corral the cat. He was dressed in black slacks, a black turtleneck sweater, black boots, and a wide Panama hat. The floppy brim obscured his face. He reached down, made a grab, and gathered up the ball of hissing fur. When he spun around, his amber eyes lit up. Mildly amused, they angled down at the derringer gripped tightly in my one fist and the flashlight clenched in the other. He froze and considered. Almost immediately, he dismissed the threat with a philosophical shrug. The effeminate gesture gave him way. The intruder wasn’t a man but a woman of indeterminate age, average height, matronly build, wide hips, long nose, and pointy chin.

  “Iris, dear,” Shirley Wickham said, “you shouldn’t leave your door wide open for anybody to just waltz inside.”

  The fuse, the front door, and the timing were designed as distractions. On a Friday night with so many comings and goings, it would have been easy for a thief to slip inside unnoticed, set up a diversion, sneak into my apartment, nab the cat, and escape without detection. Her plan had backfired. “I’ve been gone for two days. You could’ve broken in anytime.”

  “I’m not a second-story burglar.”

  “Just a picklock,” I said, recalling the vestibule door downstairs and the connecting doorway in Crystal’s dayroom. “And a murderer.”

  She jerked at the accusation. And then she smiled. Shirley was bigger and more solid than the woman who usually sat behind the secretarial desk. Her expression was just as cynical but more aloof. Her eyes were remote and her stance aggressive and confrontational. The woman standing before me, I concluded, could kill with blind coldness. She proved it by jolting forward.

  “Uh-uh-uh,” I said, cautioning her with a wave of the derringer.

  She froze. The cat hissed and dug sharp claws through her sweater. Both felines yowled. Freed from the clutch of his former mistress, the kitty escaped and hid beneath the sofa. “Bad Katrina!” Shirley scolded.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said, my voice deflated. “Kitty’s a girl.”

  “Something else you got wrong,” she said. “Evidently.”

  It didn’t take long for me to figure out what else I had gotten wrong. “You talked Monica into putting in the missing cat report.”

  “She’s very gullible. Almost as gullible as you.”

  “How did you know I had her?”

  “Mr. Starr let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.” Turning away, she tried to coax the kitty out from its hiding place, stooping down and calling it pet names. Baby. Sweetie pie. Honey bunches. She was emotionally attached to the thing, but it was a one-sided love affair. The cat refused to budge. Chagrinned, Shirley threw up her hands. One of them held a .38-caliber pistol. “Cat got your tongue, Iris?” Her eyes narrowed with determination. She had a lot to lose, and not just her kitty. It was a standoff. She sucked in a breath and held it for a count of three before stepping sideways.

  I moved in tandem with her, blocking her advance. Since the door was at my back, she’d have to go through me. Or over my dead body. “The Li sisters identified Monica Seagraves as the killer,” I said. “Why bring yourself out in the open?”

  Her eyes rapidly shifted, scheming for a way out. “Because they’re nearsighted and vain and might decide to put on their glasses one day.”

  Anyone who wasn’t personally acquainted with either woman might mistake Shirley and Monica for each other. They looked roughly alike. Both brunettes. One pleasing plump and the other well rounded. Both clotheshorses. And both with a preference for the color black. Standing before me was the real Persia Delight aka Constance Holt of Peoria, Illinois, and the cold-blooded killer of three innocent people. She might have gotten away with murde
r, too, if it hadn’t been for an uncooperative cat.

  “In view of Monica’s unpropitious arrest this afternoon,” she said, “I decided to take a long vacation. My bags are packed. I emptied my bank accounts. Said goodbye to mother. Told her I’d write. Assured her I would send money. I drove as far as the city limits, but I couldn’t leave without Katrina.”

  “How touching,” I said.

  Her grin was as plastic as her heart. “By the time Pennyroyal finds out that he put the wrong woman behind bars, I’ll be ...” She paused and smiled. “... somewhere else.”

  “Byrnes wasn’t digging into the shady practices of the prior administration, was he? He was digging into the shady practices of this administration.”

  Finding perverse pleasure in my remark, she smirked. “And you’re dying to know all the juicy details, aren’t you, Iris?”

  My gun hand was slick with sweat. My heart beat at quadruple speed. My brain had become foggy. The pain in my foot was almost unbearable. I shifted my weight and bore down on the laceration. The sharp sting cleared my head, made me alert, and sharpened my wits. The relationship between the mayor and his dedicated secretary, I realized, demonstrated a bond that was more steadfast, more loyal, and more intimate than most office relationships. Whenever the mayor made a public appearance, she was at his side, cheering him on, protecting his interests, and running interference against friends and foes alike.

  She glanced down. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, Iris dear. I trust it’s fatal.”

  She had me at a disadvantage. I raised the stakes. “How long has your love affair with the mayor been going on?”

  “Ah,” she said on a sigh. She was glad the secret was finally out. “His wife never understood him.”

  “That he was a cheat? And a liar?”

  A grin filled with malice and more than a touch of insanity twisted her lips. “People don’t know Jerry Moore the way I do. He’s an extremely honorable man.”

  “Who never made you an honest woman.”

  “A divorce would have been political suicide.” Shirley picked her way around the apartment, applying slinking movements and snaking steps.

  “Making you the long-suffering but understanding mistress.” I tracked her with the Remington, placing my body between her and her only exit to freedom.

  “What went on under the covers wasn’t just about sex.”

  “It never is.”

  “It wasn’t about money, either.” There was something evil about her smirk, something devious and calculating, and something slightly off-kilter. “Jerry relies on me for so many things. What to say. How to act. Whom to invite into his confidence. Whom to ignore. How to screw his political opponents.”

  She maneuvered around the cocktail table. I shifted toward the hall closet but kept my back to the open door.

  “I advised him to make nice with Kirk. To look the other way on pension reform. To support the purchase of those ridiculous gondolas. To grease the palms of the union leaders so he could screw the members later on. To negotiate a sweetheart deal with a new waste management company with ties to the mob. To put in his own man as police chief, a commander known for beating confessions out of his suspects. Byrnes raised a stink with every one of those decisions until Jerry had had it. He asked Dick for his resignation. Dick refused and threatened to go to the papers.”

  Distant sirens punctuated the stillness of the night. Her ears became alert. She twisted her head around. The sirens diminished. She brushed away her alarm. And my heart sank.

  “I had to kill Byrnes. To protect Jerry. Imagine if our relationship had gotten out. I really didn’t care about myself. I would be the ‘other woman’, the mistress. It would be a different story for Jerry. He’d be ruined. Run out of town. People don’t give a damn if their politicians are corrupt, but they do draw the line at sexual impropriety.”

  Under incandescent lighting, her true age materialized in all its wrinkles, lines, and acne-pitted pores. Without the tour de force of pancake makeup and bright red lipstick, she was just an old maid well past her prime. “I’d have to quit my job, of course. Find an obscure position with an insurance company or collection agency. Become a nothing instead of a something. Lose everything.” Her voice turned to mist. Ephemeral. Lost. “Without Jerry, without my job, I wouldn’t be Shirley Wickham anymore. I’d be the woman on the other side: a childless, unloved, lonely spinster.” With wrenching overtones of despair in a minor key, she repeated, “Nothing.”

  I yanked her out of the dark abyss she had entered. “After Byrnes, you killed again.”

  “The girl followed me to the airport.” She shrugged as if the life of a wayward girl were unimportant. “Killing her was the only way out.”

  “Actually, she was following me. She thought I could help her.”

  The contours of her face sharpened. Any prettiness fled. The smile returned, ghoulish and crazed. “Such is life.”

  “And Kirk?”

  “He confided in me. Told me he had photographs of the murderer. Had no idea who was in those pictures. He was quite pleased with himself. He planned to sell them to the highest bidder. I couldn’t chance them getting into the wrong hands, now could I? I made him an offer he couldn’t turn down. He thought it was coming from the mayor. He was alive when I left him, but barely. I threw everything in the river. Camera, photos, negatives. Watching the evidence sink into those muddy waters was like waking up from a nightmare.” Her speech was stilted and bereft of emotion. “I thought I was home free. But when Monica was arrested, I knew it was only a matter of time before Pennyroyal came for me.”

  Sirens sounded once more. Her eyes flew toward the windows. She blinked several times before turning back to me. “You’d be well to let me go.”

  “Never,” I said, making my voice sound brave and resolute when I was anything but courageous. Outwardly, I managed to keep a stiff upper lip. Inwardly, my heart fluttered madly against my chest.

  “In that case, you’ll have one consolation. Detective Pennyroyal will weep at your funeral. By then, I’ll be far, far away.”

  The sirens advanced like a storm of fire and ice.

  “You won’t be able to get far enough away. If Pennyroyal doesn’t track you down, Arezzo will.”

  “Arezzo. Arezzo. What’s he got to do with any of this?” As she crept from one side of the room to the other, she appeared to move in slow motion, the blood-drenched emergency lights switching her on and off inside their pulsating strobes.

  “Everything. Since he’s my godfather.”

  “Holy shit.” Her eyes darted into every corner. She’d become a trapped tiger. And I was her gatekeeper, but without chair and whip.

  Tires screeched to a halt. Car doors banged open. Men shouted. Boots tramped.

  With escape in mind, Shirley reversed direction and inched back toward the sofa. I mirrored her movements. My gun arm felt leaden. My foot screamed for mercy. I forced myself not to blink. I could let her escape, but escape wasn’t on her mind. She wanted to draw blood. My blood.

  Men swarmed into the building. Footsteps pounded up the staircase.

  “Hello,” she said as if awakening from a dream. “I do believe the cavalry has arrived. Too late. The advantage is mine.”

  Advantage, I thought. What advantage? And then I remembered how Pennyroyal had intoned my name as a prime suspect. Shirley could shoot me and claim self-defense. Everyone would breathe a sigh of relief when Monica Seagraves, an innocent victim of mistaken identity, was set free, and Iris Grenadine, the daughter of a mob lawyer, fell from grace.

  I was one bullet away from being a statistic. I had to think fast. And act.

  I smacked the flashlight across the wall switch. The violent jar wrenched the tubular metal from my grip. It clattered onto the floor and rolled away, but it had accomplished its intended purpose. The hall light went out, bringing with it the element of surprise. I flattened myself against the opposite wall and receded into semidarkness.

  The sofa
lamp lit up Shirley like a statue, her whitened face glowing eerily and her eyes blinking into unexpected darkness. “Why did you do that?” Her voice trilled like a songbird. Her gun arm waved back and forth, seeking but not finding.

  With the barrel end of the derringer, I nudged the door. It groaned shut, taking dim hallway lighting with it. I turned the deadbolt, slid the security chain, and once again dropped back into the shadows.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Iris.” Her voice sounded disembodied.

  I crouched like an alley cat, heard a ping, saw a blaze of light, and sensed heat rushing overhead. The .38-caliber bullet drilled a hole into the wall at my back.

  “Shit!” Shirley slipped out of sight.

  I flipped over, sat up, took aim on a rising angle, and shot off one precious bullet. The explosion was deafening. The sofa lamp reeled. The lamp base shattered. The lampshade yawed, tipped over, and crashed to the floor. The light bulb popped, taking the last bit of illumination with it. Darkness reigned.

  Another shot rang out. The hat tree tipped over and crashed at my feet, rocking back and forth over brass hooks until it finally stilled.

  Feet rushed at my door. Fists pounded on the solid walnut. Voices ordered to be let inside. One familiar voice called out my name, his frantic entreaties a sibilant chant that cut the dark with a saw-toothed blade.

  Shirley’s ghostly voice said, “Why did you have to keep snooping around, asking dumb fool questions, sticking your nose where it didn’t belong?”

  “Curious, I guess.”

  Shirley’s profile appeared like a thin crescent moon against a terrifying night. Her gun arm pushed forward, the barrel honing in on its intended target. “You know what they say about curiosity, Iris.” She didn’t have to say ... killed the cat.

  I dove headlong across the floor, the heels of my hands absorbing the brunt of the impact, my knees taking the rest.

  A muzzle flash ripped the darkness apart. The bullet ricocheted off the closet door and spat into the ceiling. Plaster and woodchips sprinkled the floor like rain.