Murder Most Merry (30 page)

“We can’t. 20-C moved out when the building converted to condo and 20-D’s out of town. Besides, he’s at the front door of 20-B. If you try to go out in the hall he’s got you.”

“Let’s get out on the balcony and scream for help!”

“Who’d hear us in that storm?”

Val swung around, raced down the inner hall to the bedroom. Loren knew why. To throw on street clothes and get her gun. If she’d brought one with her. Loren hadn’t asked.

The phone shrilled again. Loren stared at it as if hypnotized. He let it ring six times, nine. Over the rings he heard Donna’s sobs of terror from the bedroom. Oh, God, if only it were Krauzer on the other end, or Belford the F. B. I. man. or anyone in the world except Weak Eyes, anyone Loren could ask to call the police! On the twelfth ring he picked up the receiver.

“Mensing.” the low calm voice said, “I have just placed a charge of plastic explosive on the outside of your door. You have two minutes to take down that barricade I heard you put up and send Donna across the hall. Do that and you and Tremaine live.”

Loren slammed the phone down. Val in a dark gray jumpsuit ran back into the living room. There was no gun in her hand. Loren almost cried out with frustration. “Donna’s in your closet,” she whispered. “I pushed the dresser against the door.”

Loren nodded, held her close, and spoke feverishly into her ear. Time slipped away into nothingness. Val went down the inner hall, turning off lights, opened the fusebox, and cut the master switch. The apartment was pitch-dark now. Loren found the hall closet, put on rubbers, and his heaviest overcoat. Then he tugged the couch away from the front door, undid the deadbolt and chain, and ran across the room.

He slipped on the couch cushions in the middle of the floor and pain shot through his ankle. He bit down on his lower lip, hobbled the rest of the way across the room, threw open the door leading to his balcony. Sudden cold stunned him, made him shake uncontrollably as he stood outside, behind the curtained balcony door, and watched through the thin elongated crack.

The front door was flung back and Weak Eyes leaped in, using a combat crouch like Wilt at the airport. In his hand there was a gun. His eyes focused on the patch of light across the dark room, the light coming from the balcony. He stalked across the room like a wolf. Loren tensed, waiting. Yes, he was close enough to the balcony now, time for Val to make her move.

There she went, crawling across the wall-to-wall carpet in the dark, all but invisible in her jumpsuit, making the front door and then for the firestairs.

Weak Eyes heard nothing, didn’t turn. He kicked the balcony door all the way open, looked down the long balcony. There was nothing to see but a white-painted cast-iron outdoor table and three matching chairs. He took a cautious step out onto the balcony, his eyes trying to pierce the deeper shadows at the far end.

Loren brought the fourth iron chair down hard on the back of the killer’s neck. Weak Eyes howled, flung his arms up for balance. The gun flew out of his hand into the slush. He skidded halfway down the balcony, his belly slammed into the outdoor table.

Loren kept hitting him with the chair until Weak Eyes wasn’t moving. It was all Loren could do to keep from hurling him over the balcony rail and down twenty stories to the street.

Loren was still standing there, his teeth chattering in the cold, his ankle throbbing, sweat pouring down him, when a few minutes later Val and two uniformed patrolmen rushed out to the balcony.

“What a world,” Lieutenant Krauzer grunted eight hours later. “Her own brother.”

Weak Eyes was in a cell, Donna had been taken to the hospital under sedation, and they were gathered in Loren’s apartment. He sat on the blue couch with his right leg raised on a kitchen chair and the ankle bandaged tightly. Val sat on a hassock at his side, refilling his coffee cup, handing him tissues when he sneezed. Outside. Christmas morning dawned in shades of smoky gray.

“It had to be her brother,” Loren said. “Once Val described the fake Gene Holt it all clicked, because I remembered seeing a man of that exact description in the airport auditorium after the Graham murder. And then I remembered three things Donna had mentioned in passing: that she and her late husband had had mutual wills, that she hadn’t gotten around to making a new will yet, and that her wrongful-death suit against the driver of the car that killed her family was going to net her a lot of money.

“Now suppose she’d been killed by that burglar, or at the airport? Who would have wound up with that money? Obviously if she died intestate it would go to her next of kin. Who’s her next of kin? Her parents are dead, her only child is dead—
but she had a brother who dropped out of sight fifteen years ago.

“Now the picture clears up,” he went on. “Charles and Cindy Greene die in a tragic accident that gets heavy coverage in the media. Wherever he was at the time. Donna’s brother hears of it, sees huge financial possibilities, comes to the city quietly, and begins shadowing her. He satisfied himself that the wrongful-death action is going to produce big money and that his sister hasn’t made out a new will. He had to get rid of her before she does. He looks around—the forged ID and bugging equipment and plastique show he has underworld connections—and hires Frank Wilt for the hit.

“Wilt breaks into her house a week ago Monday night and bungles the job. Brother gives him another chance. Wilt follows her to the airport, makes his move—and by blind chance a man with a name similar to Donna’s is next to her in line, turns faster than she does, and dies instead of her.

“Brother has gone to the airport too, as a backup in case Wilt blew it again. He and Donna are both rounded up as witnesses and taken to the auditorium but either she doesn’t see him in the crowd or just doesn’t recognize him after fifteen years. When she’s let go he follows her to my place and works out a plan to kill her here, doing the job himself this time. He reads the newspaper stories about the airport murder, picks up the name of Sergeant Gene Holt, and uses it as his cover identity but makes the big mistake of assuming from the name that the sergeant is a man.”

“And that bit of chauvinism’s going to cost him twenty years in the slam.” Krauzer yawned and lumbered wearily to his feet. “Well, if you’ll excuse me it’s Christmas morning and I’ve got grandkids to play Santy for.” He winked broadly at Val. “Remember he’s a sick man and needs his rest.”

When he had let himself out Val slid off the hassock to sit on the floor. “Funny,” Loren said as he ran his hand through her hair. “The way Christmas turned out isn’t anything like what I either was afraid of or hoping for. I can’t walk, I haven’t slept in two nights, I’ve got the chills, but all in all I feel good. The crazy way this world goes. I’ll be damned if I know if it’s all chance or if it’s meant.”

“I’ll take the world either way if you’re part of it,” Val told him softly.

CHRISTMAS GIFT – Robert Turner

There was no snow and the temperature was a mild sixty-eight degrees and in some of the yards nearby the shrubbery was green, along with the palm trees, but still you knew it was Christmas Eve. Doors on the houses along the street held wreaths, some of them lighted. A lot of windows were lighted with red, green, and blue lights. Through some of them you could see the lighted glitter of Christmas trees. Then, of course, there was the music, which you could hear coming from some of the houses, the old familiar songs, “White Christmas,” “Ave Maria,” “Silent Night.”

All of that should have been fine because Christmas in a Florida city is like Christmas anyplace else, a good time, a tender time. Even if you’re a cop. Even if you pulled duty Christmas Eve and can’t be home with your own wife and kid. But not necessarily if you’re a cop on duty with four others and you’re going to have to grab an escaped con and send him back, or more probably have to kill him because he was a lifer and just won’t
go
back.

In the car with me was McKee, a Third-Grade, only away from a beat a few months. Young, clear-eyed, rosy-cheeked All-American-boy type, and very, very serious about his work. Which was fine; which was the way you should be. We were parked about four houses down from the rented house where Mrs. Bogen and her three children were living.

At the same distance the other side of the house was a sedan in which sat Lieutenant Mortell and Detective First-Grade Thrasher. Mortell was a bitter-mouthed, needle-thin man, middle-aged and with very little human expression left in his eyes. He was in charge. Thrasher was a plumpish, ordinary guy, an ordinary cop.

On the street behind the Bogen house was another precinct car with two other Firsts in it, a couple of guys named Dodey and Fischman. They were back there in case Earl Bogen got away from us and took off through some yards to that other block. I didn’t much think he’d get to do that.

After a while McKee said: “I wonder if it’s snowing up north. I’ll bet the hell it is.” He shifted his position. “It don’t really seem like Christmas, no snow. Christmas with palm trees, what a deal!”

“That’s the way it was with the first one,” I reminded him.

He thought about that. Then he said: “Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. But I still don’t like it.”

I started to ask him why he stayed down here, then I remembered about his mother. She needed the climate; it was all that kept her alive.

“Y’know,” McKee said then, “sarge, I been thinking; this guy Bogen must be nuts.”

“You mean because he’s human? Because he wants to see his wife and kids on Christmas?”

“Well, he must know there’s a
chance
he’ll be caught. If he is, it’ll be worse for his wife and kids, won’t it? Why the hell couldn’t he just have
sent
them presents or something and then called them on the phone? Huh?”

“You’re not married, are you, McKee?”

“No.”

“And you don’t have kids of your own. So I can’t answer that question for you.”

“I still think he’s nuts.”

I didn’t answer. I was thinking how I could hound the stinking stoolie who had tipped us about Earl Bogen’s visit home for Christmas, all next year, without getting into trouble. There was a real rat in my book, a guy who would stool on something like that. I was going to give him a bad time if it broke me.

Then I thought about what Lieutenant Mortell had told me an hour ago. “Tim,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re not a very good cop. You’re too sentimental. You ought to know by now a cop can’t be sentimental. Was Bogen sentimental when he crippled for life that manager of the finance company he stuck up on his last hit? Did he worry about
that
guy’s wife and kids? Stop being a damned fool, will you, Tim?”

That was the answer I got to my suggestion that we let Earl Bogen get in and see his family and have his Christmas and catch him on the way out. What was there to lose, I’d said. Give the guy a break, I’d said. I’d known, of course, that Mortell wouldn’t have any part of that, but I’d had to try anyhow. Even though I knew the lieutenant would think of the same thing I had—that when it came time to go, Bogen might be twice as hard to take.

McKee’s bored young voice cut into my thoughts: “You think he’ll really be armed? Bogen, I mean.”

“I think so.”

“I’m glad Mortell told us not to take any chances with him, that if he even makes a move that looks like he’s going for a piece, we give it to him. He’s a smart old cop, Mortell.”

“That’s what they say. But did you ever look at his eyes?”

“What’s the matter with his eyes?” McKee said.

“Skip it,” I said. “A bus has stopped.”

We knew Earl Bogen had no car; we doubted he’d rent one or take a cab. He was supposed to be short of dough. A city bus from town stopped up at the corner. When he came he’d be on that, most likely. But he wasn’t on this one. A lone woman got off and turned up the avenue. I let out a slight sigh and looked at the radium dial of my watch. Ten fifty. Another hour and ten minutes and we’d be relieved; it wouldn’t happen on our tour. I hoped that was the way it would be. It was possible. The stoolie could have been wrong about the whole thing. Or something could have happened to change Bogen’s plans, or at least to postpone his visit to the next day. I settled back to wait for the next bus.

McKee said: “Have you ever killed a guy. sarge?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve never had to. But I’ve been there when someone else did.”