Ed McBain (19 page)

"Darling," she murmured.

I gave her another shot with the fish, this time right over her nose. She came into my arms, and there was ecstasy in her eyes, and her breath rushed against my throat. I shoved her away, and I swatted her full on the mouth. She shivered and came to me again. I held her close, and there was the odor of fish and seaweed about her. I inhaled deeply, savoring the taste. My father had been a sea captain.

"They're outside," I said, "all of them. And they're all after me. The whole stinking, dirty, rotten, crawling, filthy, obscene, disgusting mess of them. Me. Dudley Sledge. They've all got guns in their maggoty fists, and murder in their grimy eyes."

"They're rats," she said.

"And all because of you. They want me because I'm helping you."

"There's the money, too," she reminded me.

"Money?" I asked. "You think money means anything to them? You think they came all the way from Washington Heights for a lousy ten million bucks? Don't make me laugh." I laughed.

"What are we going to do, Dudley?"

"Do? Do? I'm going to go out there and cut them down like the unholy rats they are. When I get done, there'll be twenty-six less rats in the world, and the streets will be a cleaner place for our kids to play in."

"Oh, Dudley," she said.

"But first..."

The pulse in her throat began beating wildly. There was a hungry animal look in her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath and ran her hands over her hips, smoothing the apron. I went to her, and cupped her chin in the palm of my left hand.

"Baby," I said.

Then I drew back my right fist and hit her on the mouth. She fell back against the sink, and I followed with a quick chop to the gut, and a fast uppercut to the jaw. She went down on the floor and she rolled around in the fish scales, and I thought of my sea captain father, and my mother who was a nice little lass from New England. And then I didn't think of anything but the blonde in my arms, and the .45 in my fist, and the twenty-six men outside, and the four shares of Consolidated I'd bought that afternoon, and the bet I'd made on the fight with One-Lamp Louie, and the defective brake lining on my Olds, and the bottle of rye in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet back at Dudley Sledge, Investigations.

I enjoyed it.

***

She had come to me less than a week ago.

Giselle, my pretty redheaded secretary, had swiveled into the office and said, "Dud, there's a woman to see you."

"Another one?" I asked.

"She looks distraught."

"Show her in."

She had walked into the office then, and my whole life had changed. I took one look at the blonde hair piled high on her head. My eyes dropped to the clean sweep of her throat, to the figure filling out the green silk dress. When she lifted her green eyes to meet mine, I almost drowned in their fathomless depths. I gripped the desktop and asked, "Yes?"

"Mr. Sledge?"

"Yes."

"My name is Melinda Jones," she said.

"Yes, Miss Jones."

"Oh, please call me Agnes."

"Agnes?"

"Yes. All my friends call me Agnes. I ... I was hoping we could be friends."

"What's your problem, Agnes?" I asked.

"My husband."

"He's giving you trouble?"

"Well, yes, in a way."

"Stepping out on you?"

"Well, no."

"What then?"

"Well, he's dead."

I sighed in relief. "Good," I said. "What's the problem?"

"He left me ten million dollars. Some of his friends think the money belongs to them. It's not fair, really. Just because they were in on the bank job. Percy..."

"Percy?"

"My husband. Percy
did
kill the bank guards, and it was he who crashed through the roadblock, injuring twelve policemen. The money
was
rightfully his."

"Of course," I said. "No doubt about it. And these scum want it?"

"Yes. Oh, Mr. Sledge, I need help so desperately. Please say you'll help me. Please, please. I beg you. I'll do anything, anything."

"Anything?"

Her eyes narrowed, and she wet her lips with a sharp, pink tongue. Her voice dropped to a husky whisper. "Anything," she said.

I belted her over the left eye.

That was the beginning, and now they were all outside, all twenty-six of them, waiting to close in, waiting to drop down like the venomous vultures they were. But they hadn't counted on the .45 in my fist, and they hadn't counted on the slow anger that had been building up inside me, boiling over like a black brew, filling my mind, filling my body, poisoning my liver and my bile, quickening my heart, putting a throb in my appendix, tightening the pectoral muscles on my chest, girding my loins. They hadn't counted on the kill lust that raged through my veins. They hadn't counted on the hammer that kept pounding one word over and over again in my skull: kill, kill,
kill.

They were all outside waiting, and I had to get them. We were inside, and they knew it, so I did the only thing any sensible person would have done under the circumstances.

I set fire to the house.

I piled rags and empty crates and furniture and fish in the basement and then I soaked them with gasoline. I touched a match, and the flames leaped up, lapping at the wooden crossbeams, eating away at the undersides of the first-floor boards.

Melinda was close to me. I cupped her chin in one hand, and then tapped her lightly with the 45, just bruising her. We listened to the flames crackling in the basement, and I whispered, "That fish smells good." And then all hell broke loose, just the way I had planned it. They stormed the house, twenty-six strong. I threw open the front door and I stood there with the .45 in my mitt, and I shouted, "Come on, you rats. Come and get it!" Three men appeared on the walk and I fired low, and I fired fast. The first man took two in the stomach, and he bent over and died. The second man took two in the stomach, and he bent over and died, too. I hit the third man in the chest, and I swore as he died peacefully.

"Agnes," I yelled, "there's a submachine gun in the closet. Get it! And bring the hand grenades and the mortar shells."

"Yes, Dud," she murmured.

I kept firing. Three down, four down, five down. I reloaded, and they kept coming up the walk and I kept cutting them down. And then Melinda came back with the ammunition. I gathered up a batch of hand grenades, stuck four of them in my mouth, and pulled the pins. I grabbed two in each hand and lobbed them out on the walk and six more of the rats were blown to their reward. I watched the bodies come down to the pavement, and I took a quick count of arms and legs. It had been seven of the rats.

"Seven and five is thirteen," I told Melinda. "That leaves eleven more."

Melinda did some quick arithmetic. "Twelve more," she said.

I cut loose with the submachine gun. Kill, kill, my brain screamed. I swung it back and forth over the lawn, and they dropped like flies. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Nine more to go. Seventeen, eighteen, and they kept dying, and the blood ran red on the grass, and the flames licked at my back. They all ran for cover, and there was nothing to cut down, so I concentrated on a clump of weeds near the barn, shooting fast bursts into it. Pretty soon there were no more weeds, and the barn was a skeleton against the deepening dusk. I grabbed a mortar and tossed it into the yard, just for kicks. Pretty soon, there was no more barn. Behind me, I heard Melinda scream. I whirled. Her clothes were aflame, and I seized her roughly and threw her to the floor. I almost lost my mind, and I almost forgot all about the nine guys still out there. I tore myself away from her, and I ran into the yard with two mortar shells in my mouth, the submachine gun in my right hand, and the .45 in my left. I shook my head, and the mortar shells flew, and three more of the rats were dead and gone. I fired a burst with the machine gun, and another two dropped. There were four or five left now, and I picked them off one by one with the .45. The yard ran red with blood, and the bodies lay like twisted sticks. I sighed heavily and walked back to the house because the worst part still lay ahead of me.

I found her in the bedroom.

She had taken a quick sponge bath, and her body gleamed like dull ivory in the gathering darkness.

"All right, Agnes," I said. "It's all over."

"What do you mean, Dud?"

"The whole mess, Agnes. Everything, from start to finish. A big hoax. A big plot to sucker Dudley Sledge. Well, no one suckers Sledge. No one."

"I don't know what you mean, Dud."

"You don't know, huh? You don't know what I mean? I mean the phony story about the bank job, and the ten million dollars your husband left you."

"He did leave it to me, Dudley."

"No, Agnes. That was all a lie. Every bit of it. I'm only sorry I had to kill twenty-six bird-watchers before I realized the truth."

"You're wrong, Dudley," she said. "Dead wrong."

"No, baby. I'm right, and that's the pity of it because I love you, and I know what I have to do now."

"Dudley..." she started.

"No, Agnes. Don't try to sway me. I know you stole that ten million from the Washington Avenue Bird Watchers Society. You invented that other story because you wanted someone with a gun, someone who would keep them away from you. Well, twenty-six people have paid ... and now one more has to pay."

She clipped two earrings to her delicate ears, snapped a bracelet onto her wrist, dabbed some lipstick onto her wide mouth. She was fully dressed now, dressed the way she'd been that first time in my office, the first time I'd slugged her, the time I knew I was hopelessly in love with her.

She took a step toward me, and I raised the .45.

"Kiss me, Dudley," she said.

I kissed her, all right. I shot her right in the stomach.

She fell to the floor, a look of incredible ecstasy in her eyes, and when I turned around I realized she wasn't reaching for the mortar shell on the table behind me. Nor was she reaching for the submachine gun that rested in a corner near the table. She was reaching for the ten million bucks.

There were tears in my eyes.

"I guess that's the least I can do for you, Agnes," I said. "It was what you wanted, even in death."

So I took the ten million bucks, and I bought a case of Irish whiskey.

The four cop stories that follow were all published in
Manhunt.
The first three were published in 1953, the last one in 1954. The first two were by Evan Hunter, the next two by Richard Marsten. Go figure.

When I wrote these stories, Ed McBain hadn't been born yet, and I knew nothing about cops or police routine except what I had learned from
Dragnet
on radio and television. I forget what
Manhunt
used to pay, but it couldn't have been more than two or three cents a word, and that wasn't enough to allow research. Whatever verisimilitude exists in these stories is entirely due to sleight of hand—and the fact that I once sold lobsters by telephone. They follow now in chronological order, no further commercial breaks.

H
ER FACE WAS SMALL AND CHUBBY, THE EYES BLUE AND
innocently rounded, but seeing nothing. Her body rested on the seat of the wooden bench, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath her soft little body.

The candles near the altar flickered and cast their dancing shadows on her face. There was a faded pink blanket wrapped around her, and against the whiteness of her throat were the purple bruises that told us she'd been strangled.

Her mouth was open, exposing two small teeth and the beginnings of a third.

She was no more than eight months old.

The church was quiet and immense, with early morning sunlight lighting the stained glass windows. Dust motes filtered down the long, slanting columns of sunlight, and Father Barron stood tall and darkly somber at the end of the pew.

"This is the way you found her, Father?" I asked.

"Yes. Just that way." The priest's eyes were a deep brown against the chalky whiteness of his face. "I didn't touch her."

Pat Travers scratched his jaw and stood up, reaching for the pad in his back pocket. His mouth was set in a tight, angry line. Pat had three children of his own. "What time was this, Father?"

"At about five thirty. We have a six o'clock mass, and I came out to see that the altar was prepared. Our altar boys go to school, you understand, and they usually arrive at the last minute. I generally attend to the altar myself."

"No sexton?" Pat asked.

"Yes, we have a sexton, but he doesn't arrive until about eight every morning. He comes earlier on Sunday mornings."

I nodded while Pat jotted the information in his pad.

"How did you happen to see her, Father?"

"I was walking to the back of the church to open the doors. I saw something in the pew, and I ... well, at first I thought it was just a package someone had forgotten. When I came closer, I saw it was ... was a baby." He sighed deeply and shook his head.

"The doors were locked, Father?"

"No. No, they're never locked. This is God's house, you know. They were simply closed. I was walking back to open them. I usually open them before the first mass in the morning."

"They were unlocked all night?"

"Yes, of course."

"I see." I looked down at the baby again. "You wouldn't know who she is, would you, Father?"

Father Barron shook his head again. "I'm afraid not. She may have been baptized here, but infants all look alike, you know. It would be different if I saw her every Sunday. But..." He spread his hands wide in a helpless gesture.

Pat nodded, and kept looking at the dead child.

"We'll have to send some of the boys to take pictures and prints, Father. I hope you don't mind. And we'll have to chalk up the pew. It shouldn't take too long, and we'll have the body out as soon as possible."

Father Barron looked down at the dead baby. He crossed himself and said, "God have mercy on her soul."

We filed a report back at headquarters, and then sent out for some coffee. Pat had already detailed the powder and flashbulb boys, and there wasn't much we could do until they were through and the body had been autopsied.