HCC 115 - Borderline (21 page)

He turned around. There was a little man next to him, a little man in shabby clothes
with a sad expression on his face. He reached over and tapped the man on the shoulder.

“Hey!” he said. “You know who’s in the building?”

The little man nodded wordlessly.

“Who is it?”

“Mrs. Pelton,” said the little man. “Morris Pelton’s mother.”

He had never heard of Morris Pelton. “Well, Joe’ll get her out. Joe’s a good fireman.”

The little man shook his head. “Can’t get her out,” he said. “Can’t nobody get her
out.”

He felt irritated. Who was this little jerk to tell him? “What do you mean?” he said.
“I tell you Joe’s a helluva fireman. He’ll take care of it.”

The little man flashed him a superior look. “She’s fat,” he said. “She’s a real big
woman. She must weigh two hundred pounds easy. This Joe’s just a little guy. How’s
he gonna get her out? Huh?” The little man tossed his head triumphantly and turned
away without an answer.

Another sacrifice, he thought. Joe would be disappointed. He’d want to rescue the
woman, but she would die in the fire.

He looked at the window. Joe should come out soon. He couldn’t save Mrs. Pelton, and
in a few seconds he would be coming down the ladder. And then the fire would burn
and burn and burn, until the walls of the building crumbled and caved in, and the
fire won the battle. The smoke would curl in ribbons from the ashes. It would be wonderful
to watch.

He looked up at the window suddenly. Something was wrong. Joe was there at last, but
he had the woman with him. Was he out of his mind?

The little man had not exaggerated. The woman was big, much larger than Joe. He could
barely see Joe behind her, holding her in his arms. Joe couldn’t sling her into a
fireman’s carry; she would have broken his back.

He shuddered. Joe was going to try to carry her down the ladder, to cheat the fire
of its victim. He held her as far from his body as he could and reached out a foot
gingerly. His foot found the first rung and rested on it.

He took his other foot from the windowsill and reached out for the next rung. He held
tightly to the woman, who was screaming now. Her body shook with each scream, and
rolls of fat bounced up and down.

The damned fool, he thought. How could he expect to haul a fat slob like that down
five flights on a ladder? He was a good fireman, but he didn’t have to act like a
superman. And the bitch didn’t even know what was going on. She just kept screaming
her head off. Joe was risking his neck for her, and she didn’t even appreciate it
at all.

He looked at Joe’s face as the fireman took another halting step. Joe didn’t look
good. He had been inside the building too long. The smoke was bothering him.

Joe took another step and tottered on the ladder. Drop her, he thought. You goddamned
fool, let go of her!

And then he did. The woman slipped suddenly from Joe’s grip, and plummeted downward
to the sidewalk. Her scream rose higher and higher as she fell, and then stopped completely.
She struck the pavement like a bug smacking against the windshield of a car.

His whole being filled with relief. Thank God, he thought. It was too bad for the
woman, but now Joe would reach the ground safely. But he noticed that Joe seemed to
be in trouble. He was still swaying back and forth. He was coughing, too.

And then, all at once, Joe fell. He left the ladder and began to drop to the earth.
His body hovered in the air and floated down like a feather. Then he hit the ground
and melted into the pavement.

At first he could not believe it. Then he glared at the fire. Damn you, he thought.
You weren’t satisfied with the old woman. You had to take a fireman too.

It wasn’t right.

The fire was evil. This time it had gone too far. Now it would have to suffer for
it.

And then he raised his hose and trained it on the burning hulk of the tenement, punishing
the fire.

STAG PARTY GIRL

Originally published in the
February, 1963 issue of MAN’S MAGAZINE

Harold Merriman pushed his chair back and stood up, drink in hand. “Gentlemen,” he
said solemnly, “to all the wives we love so well. May they continue to belong to us
body and soul.” He paused theatrically. “And to their husbands—may they never find
out!”

There was scattered laughter, most of it lost in the general hubbub. I had a glass
of cognac on the table in front of me. I took a sip and looked at Mark Donahue. If
he was nervous, it didn’t show. He looked like any man who was getting married in
the morning—which is nervous enough, I suppose. He didn’t look like someone threatened
with murder.

Phil Abeles—short, intense, brittle-voiced—stood. He started to read a sheaf of fake
telegrams. “Mark,” he intoned, “don’t panic—marriage is the best life for a man. Signed,
Tommy Manville…” He read more telegrams. Some funny, some mildly obscene, some dull.

We were in an upstairs dining room at McGraw’s, a venerable steakhouse in the East
Forties. About a dozen of us. There was Mark Donahue, literally getting married in
the morning, Sunday, tying the nuptial knot at 10:30. Also Harold Merriman, Phil Abeles,
Ray Powell, Joe Conn, Jack Harris and a few others whose names I couldn’t remember,
all fellow wage slaves with Donahue at Darcy & Bates, one of Madison Avenue’s rising
young ad agencies.

And there was me. Ed London, private cop, the man at the party who didn’t belong.
I was just a hired hand. It was my job to get Donahue to the church on time, and alive.

On Wednesday, Mark Donahue had come to my apartment. He cabbed over on a long lunch
hour that coincided with the time I rolled out of bed. We sat in my living room. I
was rumpled and ugly in a moth-eaten bathrobe. He was fresh and trim in a Tripler
suit and expensive shoes. I drowned my sorrows with coffee while he told me his problems.

“I think I need a bodyguard,” he said.

In the storybooks and the movies, I show him the door at this point. I explain belligerently
that I don’t do divorce or bodyguard work or handle corporate investigations—that
I only rescue stacked blondes and play modern-day Robin Hood. That’s in the storybooks.
I don’t play that way. I have an apartment in an East Side brownstone and I eat in
good restaurants and drink expensive cognac. If you can pay my fee, friend, you can
buy me.

I asked him what it was all about.

“I’m getting married Sunday morning,” he said.

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” He looked at the floor. “I’m marrying a…a very fine girl. Her name is Lynn
Farwell.”

I waited.

“There was another girl I…used to see. A model, more or less. Karen Price.”

“And?”

“She doesn’t want me to get married.”

“So?”

He fumbled for a cigarette. “She’s been calling me,” he said. “I was…well, fairly
deeply involved with her. I never planned to marry her. I’m sure she knew that.”

“But you were sleeping with her?”

“That’s right.”

“And now you’re marrying someone else.”

He sighed at me. “It’s not as though I ruined the girl,” he said. “She’s…well, not
a tramp, exactly, but close to it. She’s been around, London.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I’ve been getting phone calls from her. Unpleasant ones, I’m afraid. She’s told me
that I’m not going to marry Lynn. That she’ll see me dead first.”

“And you think she’ll try to kill you?”

“I don’t know.”

“That kind of threat is common, you know. It doesn’t usually lead to murder.”

He nodded hurriedly. “I know that,” he said. “I’m not terribly afraid she’ll kill
me. I just want to make sure she doesn’t throw a monkey wrench into the wedding. Lynn
comes from an excellent family. Long Island, society, money. Her parents wouldn’t
appreciate a scene.”

“Probably not.”

He forced a little laugh. “And there’s always a chance that she really may try to
kill me,” he said. “I’d like to avoid that.” I told him it was an understandable desire.
“So I want a bodyguard. From now until the wedding. Four days. Will you take the job?”

I told him my fee ran a hundred a day plus expenses. This didn’t faze him. He gave
me $300 for a retainer, and I had a client and he had a bodyguard.

From then on I stuck to him like perspiration.

Saturday, a little after noon, he got a phone call. We were playing two-handed pinochle
in his living room. He was winning. The phone rang and he answered it. I only heard
his end of the conversation. He went a little white and sputtered; then he stood for
a long moment with the phone in his hand, and finally slammed the receiver on the
hook and turned to me.

“Karen,” he said, ashen. “She’s going to kill me.”

I didn’t say anything. I watched the color come back into his face, saw the horror
recede. He came up smiling. “I’m not really scared,” he said.

“Good.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he added. “Maybe it’s her idea of a joke…maybe she’s
just being bitchy. But nothing’s going to happen.”

He didn’t entirely believe it. But I had to give him credit.

I don’t know who invented the bachelor dinner, or why he bothered. I’ve been to a
few of them. Dirty jokes, dirty movies, dirty toasts, a line-up with a local whore—maybe
I would appreciate them if I were married. But for a bachelor who makes out there
is nothing duller than a bachelor dinner.

This one was par for the course. The steaks were good and there was a lot to drink,
which was definitely on the plus side. The men busy making asses of themselves were
not friends of mine, and that was also on the plus side—it kept me from getting embarrassed
for them. But the jokes were still unfunny and the voices too drunkenly loud.

I looked at my watch. “Eleven-thirty,” I said to Donahue. “How much longer do you
think this’ll go on?”

“Maybe half an hour.”

“And then ten hours until the wedding. Your ordeal’s just about over, Mark.”

“And you can relax and spend your fee.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m glad I hired you,” he said. “You haven’t had to do anything, but I’m glad anyway.”
He grinned. “I carry life insurance, too. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to die.
And you’ve even been good company, Ed. Thanks.”

I started to search for an appropriate answer. Phil Abeles saved me. He was standing
up again, pounding on the table with his fist and shouting for everyone to be quiet.
They let him shout for a while, then quieted down.

“And now the grand finale,” Phil announced wickedly. “The part I know you’ve all been
waiting for.”

“The part Mark’s been waiting for,” someone said lewdly.

“Mark better watch this,” someone else added. “He has to learn about women so that
Lynn isn’t disappointed.”

More feeble lines, one after the other. Phil Abeles pounded for order again and got
it. “Lights,” he shouted.

The lights went out. The private dining room looked like a blackout in a coal mine.

“Music!”

Somewhere, a record player went on. The record was
Stripper
, played by David Rose’s orchestra.

“Action!”

A spotlight illuminated the pair of doors at the far end of the room. The doors opened.
Two bored waiters wheeled in a large table on rollers. There was a cardboard cake
on top of the table and, obviously, a girl inside the cake. Somebody made a joke about
Mark cutting himself a piece. Someone else said they wanted to put a piece of this
particular wedding cake under their pillow. “On the pillow would be better,” a voice
corrected.

The two bored waiters wheeled the cake into position and left.

The doors closed. The spotlight stayed on the cake and the stripper music swelled.

There were two or three more lame jokes. Then the chatter died. Everyone seemed to
be watching the cake. The music grew louder, deeper, fuller. The record stopped suddenly
and another—Mendelsohn’s
Wedding March
—took its place.

Someone shouted, “Here comes the bride!”

And she leaped out of the cake like a nymph from the sea.

She was naked and beautiful. She sprang through the paper cake, arms wide, face filled
with a lipstick smile. Her breasts were full and firm and her nipples had been reddened
with lipstick.

Then, just as everyone was breathlessly silent, just as her arms spread and her lips
parted and her eyes widened slightly, the whole room exploded like Hiroshima. We found
out later that it was only a .38. It sounded more like a howitzer.

She clapped both hands to a spot between her breasts. Blood spurted forth like a flower
opening. She gave a small gasp, swayed forward, then dipped backward and fell.

Lights went on. I raced forward. Her head was touching the floor and her legs were
propped on what remained of the paper cake. Her eyes were open. But she was horribly
dead.

And then I heard Mark Donahue next to me, his voice shrill. “Oh, no!” he said. “…It’s
Karen, it’s Karen!”

I felt for a pulse; there was no point to it. There was a bullet in her heart.

Karen Price was dead.

Lieutenant Jerry Gunther got the call. He brought a clutch of Homicide men who went
around measuring things, studying the position of the body, shooting off a hell of
a lot of flashbulbs and taking statements. Jerry piloted me into a corner and started
pumping.

I gave him the whole story, starting with Wednesday and ending with Saturday. He let
me go all the way through once, then went over everything two or three times.

“Your client Donahue doesn’t look too good,” he said.

“You think he killed the girl?”

“That’s the way it reads.”

I shook my head. “Wrong customer.”

“Why?”

“Hell, he hired me to keep the girl off his neck. If he was going to shoot a hole
in her, why would he want a detective along for company?”

“To make the alibi stand up, Ed. To make us reason just the way you’re reasoning now.
How do you know he was scared of the girl?”