The Spitting Image

by Michael Avallone

  They looked at me like I had just walked into their lives. Like I had just met them for the first time. I have that effect on people too.

  “What do you mean by that?” They both said the same thing at different times but it very nearly came out as a chorus.

  “June,” I said. “If you were a triplet and your twin sisters were going to split a fortune on their twenty-first birthday, what’s the first thing you’d do to put your claim in? Especially since nobody’s known you were alive to begin with?”

  She hooked a shoulder at me.

  “I dunno. Guess I’d go see my twins and introduce myself.” She giggled.

  April frowned thoughtfully. “No. That’s too abrupt. Too quick. It would shake things up. I think I’d look up a lawyer first.”

  “Good girl,” I congratulated her. “But a small correction. You’d look up the family lawyer. And it wouldn’t be too hard to find out who manipulated such a famous estate as the Wexler estate.”

  “That sounds logical,” June admitted. “Yeah, I guess I’d do just that.”

  “Sure you would,” I said. “So you go to Randall Crandall. And he being a crook in addition, what do you think happens then? I’ll tell you what happens. He breaks your heart by telling you all about a crazy codicil where only one living Wexler gets all the loot. He sends all your hopes and dreams floating away like old garbage out to sea. And the lovely world you built up for yourself that was lined with mink and lousy with dollar signs and dozens of dream men fighting for your diamond-encrusted fingers goes up in smoke. It just doesn’t exist any more.”

  April stirred. “I’m beginning to see how she must have felt,” she said in a low voice.

  “Sure you do. And so did Crandall. So he worked on her, showed her how easy it was. What did two sisters mean that you had never really known, that you hadn’t been kids together with? What were they really but two other women not worth saving? Two dames who stood between you and two million clams. According to everything you had ever read about them, not worth saving at all. So that was the hard part. Getting her to feel like a killer. Once that hurdle was cleared, they were off winging with their little plot. Randy must have been just waiting for something like this to come along. That codicil must have given him many a sleepless night. It was just too much of an invitation to murder.”

  “God, Ed.” June shivered. “You make it sound so cold-blooded.”

  “I can’t add a thing to it that isn’t there already. A few attempts on your life, June, were in dead-earnest. They were playing for keeps. They missed because they were amateurs at the fine art of murder. You were both slated for the cemetery but May-What’s-Her-Name would fill the vacant slot that one of you left behind. The one remaining twin. The one who collected all the dough. Only it would be her. May. April and June would be dead. Only one death would be known. That is, made public. A simple accident or something like an overdose of sleeping pills.”

  I took a deep breath. My head still felt woozy.

  “But something happened. June threw a monkey wrench into the whole works. She ran to a private detective because her chauffeur got overamorous and the near-hits on her life were beginning to bother her.”

  June looked confused. I explained it to her.

  “As unofficial as I am, I am a cop. So help me. And a cop knew about the sundry tries on your life. Something that should never have leaked out. Because it made April suspect and even if May killed you and April—since she was going to inherit the two million as one of you—naturally all the suspicion would go with it. And May didn’t want that. But you forced her hand. And Crandall’s. So they killed Anton who was getting in their hair anyhow by asking for a bigger cut on the whole deal. And at the same time they planted another try on your life. Only this was bogus. Strictly bogus. And it piled more evidence against April.”

  “But what good was that if, as you say—” April shook her head. “May was making it worse for herself then. Assuming she killed June and disposed of me, although I hate to even think of either eventuality, she would be worse off in my place.”

  I smiled. “Not necessarily. Crandall, for all his shortcomings, was positively Einstein on that one. You see, he had to come out with that wicked codicil sooner or later. So he seemed like a hero when he revealed it to you in front of a police lieutenant at your home. The perfect lawyer protecting his client. And June does have a reputation for other things besides flightiness. Anton could have been killed by an unknown jealous lover and we all could have been wrong about the phony attempt on her life. It could have just looked that way. Of course—”

  Their expressions prompted me without words.

  “We’ll never really know who May would eventually kill. But it’s a cinch the remaining one would never have been a known murder. She would have just disappeared. And there would be May with all that dough fooling everybody as either April Wexler or June Wexler. I guess it depended on which one of you she thought it would be easier to impersonate.”

  June got excited. “Say, that must be right. That’s why they hijacked us both off to that crummy factory! She said so herself. Did she tell you that too, April? About wanting to look us both over, see us up close—”

  “No, June. I got the impression she was a little crazy about it all.” April looked at me appealingly. “I sort of felt, Ed, that she wanted the satisfaction of us knowing where our death was coming from. So we’d know first who was killing us. And just why. Know what I mean?”

  “I certainly do, honey.” I was glad she smiled when I called her that. I hadn’t had time to concentrate on how I felt about her. Believe me, I was going to find the time real soon.

  “I came in around the middle,” I went on, lighting up cigarettes for all of us. “An irritating private cop who stuck his nose in and had to be disposed of. But I was lucky. And Crandall and May were unlucky.”

  “You’re too smart to be true,” April said. I looked at her sharply to see if it was a crack. But it wasn’t. She had been sincere when she said it.

  “No. They were unlucky. Because June ran to see me in the beginning. Because Crandall hired such poor operators as a kid called Bill Murdock and two hopheads like Doggie and Bull. But mostly because a pair of cops named Hadley and Sanderson paid me a social call while April was in the process of being privately snatched by Doggie and Bull. That was really the worst luck of all.”

  The twins duplicated amazement.

  “Bear with me. It’s confusing, I must admit. But you see the cops weren’t supposed to know about that. Because one twin was supposedly burning away in the family manse, the other had an airtight alibi. She was elsewhere.”

  “But Ed,” one of them whispered. “You said—”

  “I know what I said. But that reminds me. Before I forget. I owe you gals some money.” I pulled open the center desk drawer and took out a leather brief case, bank-teller size. I took out some things and laid them on the desk. “You both gave me one hundred bucks apiece to solve this thing. And I haven’t. Tomorrow’s your twenty-first birthday. And your third twin is still on the loose. Still out to get you both. So here’s your money back, ladies. Your check, April. Still uncashed. Your C note, June. Still intact. If you’ll wait a second, I’ll draw up a return receipt.”

  I wrote out a note saying that I had returned two retainers (two hundred dollars’ worth) to the Misses April and June Wexler. I really started something. The girls rushed at me protesting how wonderful I’d been, that if it wasn’t for me, etcetera, etcetera. But I smiled them down and insisted.

  “Look, I’m not fit for hammering nails for at least a week. I’m dropping out of this mess. It’s Monks’ case officially. Cheer up, the police department will protect you. But I can’t take dough I didn’t earn. And neither of you are leaving here until you sign this receipt. Hell, give the dough to the Cancer Fund. It’s okay by me.”

  April came around the desk, dew in her eyes.

  “You wonderful guy—” she whispered huskily. She took the pen
from me, squeezed my hand, and bent to sign. She dashed it off in a crisp, smart hand. I looked at her signature, relieved.

  “Okay, June,” I said.

  “Oh, Ed. You’re being a jerk. You earned the money.” She smiled playfully, her red mouth a luscious apple that was mine for the biting.

  “No dice, lover. Sign it.”

  She turned away disgustedly. She still looked pretty good.

  “But, Ed. This is silly. What’s a hundred bucks—?”

  “Sign it.”

  “Oh, Ed. You’re not making—”

  “Don’t you want to sign it—May?”

  Something happened to her.

  Something happened to April.

  Something happened to me.

  April screamed, her tapered hand flying up to her mouth for the most surprised moment of her life.

  My hand came up out of the desk drawer with a .45 in it. But the fire had ruined the skin of my gun hand. The flaking skin and burned-away areas of my trigger finger stuck and glued to the cold steel. And the .45 spun off my palm and dangled deskward for the briefest second.

  And May whirled. May hissed like a snake. May all of a sudden with my P 38 in her hand. May who was just like April. Like June.

  But not like either of them.

  Her eyes were black coals burning and her red tongue darted over her white teeth. Fantastically white now in her red rimmed mouth.

  The bore of the P 38 never looked bigger.

  She took a step toward us both. The desk stopped her.

  And her mouth worked and her tongue licked and blasphemy poured through the ugly opening her lips made.

  “You bastard you—you bastard—!”

  She was a spitting image. Spitting.

  TWENTY-THREE

  She stopped cursing and suddenly the only sound in the whole office was her breathing. Her breathing like an animal. May Wexler. The triplet nobody had ever known about. The image that was really a spitting one.

  Something about her standing there like that changed the whole aspect of the room. The mouse auditorium had become a snake pit.

  She was breathing like an animal. Short, hard, fast. It was a deadly breathing. An unnatural breathing.

  April stood rooted, stood staring, her rounded, dumbfounded eyes watching May and not believing anything she was seeing. Anything she was hearing.

  May stood before us panting, her mouth still working, her breasts heaving. She wasn’t June any more. Or April either. Or anything even remotely resembling a beautiful girl.

  She was something out of hell. She was venom solidified, evil cast into human flesh, hatred consolidated. A woman turned to stone. Not human.

  I spread my useless fingers fan-wise on the desk. My .45 was a terrible distance away from me, as large as life against the green of the blotter in the desk pad. It might have measured only eight inches with a ruler but the .45 might just as well have been in the next room. Or nonexistent. I’d never reach it in time to do anything about May. I was practically staring down the bore of the P 38 in her hand. The black hole was far from pretty.

  And she knew it too. I could see in her eyes she knew it.

  I tried hard to smile but my brain just couldn’t get by the unalterable fact that she had us. Good and proper.

  She stopped panting. She took a step near us. Just one. But April shrank back as if she were the Devil himself impersonating a woman. I couldn’t exactly blame her.

  “Smart aren’t you, Noon? You tumbled to everything. But you’re not smart any more. You’re nearly dead besides.”

  That kind of talk I can understand. I felt my head clear again and the demons that her attitude had conjured up went away in a burst of smoke. The image of a June gone completely haywire had disappeared. This was May now, as I well knew.

  “Sister, you’ll never know how everybody’s stupidity made what could have been the biggest problem case I ever worked on, a snap. Crandall was an amateur. And you were one too. I kinda figured you’d held back on your forgery lessons. Too bad. But then you never were sure which twin you were going to fill in for. That was foolish too. That was something you and Crandall should have worked out a long time ago.

  “Like that chandelier gag and Daredevil Danny with his car-smashing routine. Haphazard gimmicks like that might have saved you a lot of grief if they had worked. But they didn’t because they were haphazard.”

  “Smart!” she hissed again. “You could be surprised, Noon, at what this amateur is working out for you right now. You and my sweet sister here.”

  “Let me guess.” I was trying for time since it was all I had left. “But you tipped your mitt during my little spiel. You see, May, the snatching of April could only mean one thing. Since it was a private affair, it meant that April was going to be the unknown murder. That you and Randy had finally set your sights on June as the easier twin to imitate. Because June’s disappearance was known to the cops because the house burned down. It wouldn’t be too hard for you to reappear later as her with a cock-and-bull yarn that would add up. And when you spoke up a moment ago as June and agreed with my phony conjecture that May had told you all that, I knew you for the third twin. The signature stuff was just the clincher. Fact is, I got awfully suspicious back at the factory when I found you with no gasoline on you like it should have been. Especially since the room was soaked with the stuff. April and June’s doors were just too close to each other for both of you not to have been saturated by our old friend Doggie. And while we’re on the subject—”

  April suddenly screamed. “Where’s June? What have you done with my sister?”

  May laughed, still looking at me. It wasn’t a nice sound.

  “Where do you think she is?” she shrilled. Her voice could have been June’s but it wasn’t. Something ugly underscored it.

  “When the hero here made his break, I thought fast. I got down the hall and went into June’s room. She never knew what hit her.” Her lip curled and it sickened me. “How does it feel, detective, to know that while you were freeing me, June was under the bed unconscious? And that she never got out of that burning factory alive?”

  April gurgled hysterically. Her eyes rolled dangerously as she swayed. Only the corner of the desk saved her from falling. She went limp and her mouth made a small, ridiculous, muted “O.”

  It didn’t feel good at all. What May said. It did something to my insides, twisted my heart like a pretzel and set up an awful pounding in my head. I got a swell picture of June coming to in a smoke-filled room, surrounded by fire and helpless and crying. And never getting out alive.

  “Nice going, you bitch.” My teeth were close together as I ground it out.

  She moved closer.

  “The next move is even better. You might have scotched things up a bit, Noon. But I can still make it. You practically wrote the script for me. You and April can still do me an awful lot of good.”

  “Get to it in a hurry. Your face is making me sick.”

  “It’s easy. You made a pass at April. A big pass. She hates men, right? She went for a gun. This one in my hand. And in self-defense, you went for yours. The one on the desk. And you both were pretty good shots. April’s torn clothes and reputation will settle any doubts, I think. And the positions of the bodies will be just right. She’ll be near the couch, half naked, shot through the heart. Since we’ll figure she shot you first, the stomach is a safe bet.”

  She was breathing hard again, her eyes not quite sane. For pupils, I could see dollar signs. Money can do that to people.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s no good. Too screwy. Especially since April is a twin involved in a two-million-dollar will. The police will smell a rat.”

  Her head rocked with scorn.

  “So they’ll smell a rat! But what will they be able to prove? That’s all that counts. In a week I’ll be thousands of miles away.”

  “You left her in there—to die—to burn to death like that—” It wasn’t me talking. It was April coming to
life as slow as death.

  I could see May’s finger tighten on the P 38. Her eyes dilated crazily.

  “Yes!” she hissed. “What was she to me? Nothing but a brainless jerk who stood between me and everything I ever dreamed of having. Everything that was mine.”

  “You’re crazy, sister.” I made her head snap back in my direction with the whip-lashing in my voice.

  “You’ve got nothing now but bad, horrible memories. You’re a murderess now. The worst kind. A killer for money.”

  “Stop it,” she hissed. “Stop it.”

  “What for?” I said sarcastically. “You’re killing me too, aren’t you? For money again. The lousiest reason. Go ahead. Shoot. The idea’s fine. What the hell are you waiting for? I wish you luck. I can see it now on page one. ‘HEIRESS KILLS DETECTIVE SAVING HER HONOR DIES HERSELF.’ It’s terrific—”

  “I said stop it, Noon. Don’t rush things,” she hoarsed. “I’ve got to make sure there isn’t a slip this time—”

  “Take all the time you want, May. Take a year.”

  “I said cut it out.”

  I did.

  But April took up where I left off. April who couldn’t quite get over how June had been allowed to die. April whose hand had slid over the butt of my .45 while I had been keeping May’s attention riveted on me with my big mouth.

  The .45 blasted with the roar of an express train rushing up to an underground station. It kept right on blasting. And above its earthquaking roar, April was screaming and laughing hysterically like a mad woman.

  I pulled to one side as May’s finger jerked and the P 38 spit. Plaster sprang off the wall and before it could even reach the office floor, the .45 had thrown out its entire load of sudden death in one direction.

  I cursed, coming around the desk, running to April. The .45 sagged in her fingers, then dropped to the floor with a dull clang. Her hands went slowly up to her eyes and then her shoulders came apart with big, racking sobs.

  I stopped, not touching her. I walked around her, past the mess on the floor and went to the window. I stared down at the street. A squad car was pulling up and Monks’ burly figure was just getting out.