Talbot laughed softly.
She came to him and fitted her body against his. Her palms were warm against his ears and her lips were full and damp against his mouth. “Have I ever told you that I love you?” she asked.
“Many times,” he chuckled. “Why do you think Arnold had to die?”
“Darling, you have a marvelous mind.”
Talbot put her off gently, quieted the tape recording and carried the full-breasted mannequin into a closet. He locked the door and smiled on her again.
“To California?” she asked.
“In about a month,” he said. “We can’t afford to make the police suspicious.”
He kissed her briefly and opened the frosted door. Jamison, the night watchman, gave them a crooked grin and unfolded from a chair. Talbot pressed a twenty dollar bill into Jamison’s palm. “Business completed,” he said.
Jamison grinned down on the bill. “Well, thank you, Mr. Talbot! I sure won’t forget this night!”
“Please don’t,” Gretchen Kane said significantly.
The Pink Envelope
by Allen Kim Lang
Controversy surrounds the determination of just which of life’s lessons is the most difficult to learn. As our hero can firmly attest, much depends upon the teacher.
No doubt it scandalizes you to have the ex-President of the famed Hayden Street Social & Athletic Club begging you to purchase a pair of tickets at one buck a head to the fabulous dance we’re sponsoring at Braustein’s Basement next Saturday night, music live by the Katzenjammer Six; so I’d better explain how I got a knife in my back in the subway.
As President of the Hayden Street Social & Athletic Club, I’d called my battle-staff together to discuss our most pressing problems, which was fiscal. “A little loot in our kitty,” as Brother Squint phrased it, “would give the Club a new leash on life.”
“I say we ought to hold a dance,” Thing said. “How does the Junior League keep in beer money and postage? They hold society dances, that’s how.” He pushed his box of cigars over for me to open it and take the first one out. I shook a green Corona out of its torpedo, unwrapped the redwood from around it, punched a hole in its tail with a kitchen match, and lit up. I’d as soon not smoke cigars, but as President I had to hold with tradition.
“Dances,” Mouse groaned. His voice had lately changed from squeak to gravel, but it was still fine for snide remarks. “You know what’ll happen, if we sponsor a stupid dance?”
“Lend us the fruits of your wisdom, Brother Mouse,” I invited, granting him the floor.
“OK,” he said. “We get the Acme Print Shop to run us off five hundred tickets. That’s twenty bucks. We tell the Katzenjammers we want ’em to bugle and boom for six hours. They get twenty-five apiece and free beer, which comes to a hundred and a half, plus. We rent a hall. Fifty. Buy ice for beer and soft drinks, on which we won’t make a nickel, since there’s freeloaders besides the band, and you can’t watch everybody. Twenty bucks. So far, we got two hundred and fifty dollars clear, figuring that we sell all the tickets, which we’ll have to lean on people to buy. But what happens when the music starts?”
“What happens?” Squint asked.
“There’s one of our guys starts cutting it up with a doll from Lewiston High,” Mouse said, “and her date thinks our man is moving too close, and he smashes a bottle. The juve squad comes roaring up to cool our rumble, and we get fined twenty-five a head. This dance of Brother Thing’s, I figure, will cost the Hayden Street S&A about eight hundred dollars. Prez, I say we can’t afford that sort of jive.”
“Always knocking,” Thing observed. “Mouse, you get under my nerves.”
“We’re discussing finances,” I said, “and we know the Mouse is a Bernard Baruch from ’way back.”
“OK, financial wizard,” Thing said. “If we don’t raise the dough we need on a dance, how do we get it?”
“Well...” Squint pondered. “We could maybe learn by heart the wanted posters in the Post Office and turn crooks in for rewards.”
“That suggestion is not, Squint, the high level of thought I’ve come to expect from the personnel at this table,” I said. “I would guess there are not more than fifty men in this city with prices on their heads; and as wanted criminals they will hardly be roaming the streets as living temptation to our membership. Try again.”
“How’s come you’re always stomping on my ideas, Prez, when you never hatch one out yourself?” Squint demanded.
“Hear, hear!” Thing shouted.
Mouse wished to speak, but he had accidentally inhaled smoke from his cigar, and was coughing like a flooded outboard.
I banged my gavel. “The function of the Chairman,” I said, “is to assure the right of each and every member of this battle-staff to speak according to parliamentary procedure, and not to show off his personal brains.”
“Who told you so?” Squint asked. “I bet it was Heavy Hanna Henniker, scourge of English-12B.”
“Firstly, it is not fitting to refer to a splendid teacher’s slight overweight,” I said. “Secondly, we are here, gentlemen, to guide the destinies of our famed club, and not to take violent issue with each other.”
“I still say the Prez should come up with a gimmick of his own,” Squint said. “This thing of him knocking my schemes without he’s got any is a bone I got to pitch with him.”
“You want an idea,” I said. “OK, I’ll toss one out. For what is the Hayden Street Social & Athletic Club best known?”
Brother Thing, who is six feet tall and weighs a hundred pounds dressed for blizzards, said, “Handsome men.”
“Parliamentary procedure!” Squint shouts out.
“We’re the biggest S&A Club this side of the Sanitary Canal,” the Mouse suggested.
“It’s a good thing school starts next month,” I said, “because it is evident to the meanest intellect that the grey matter involved at this table during the past few minutes is in dire need of formal training.” I pushed the box of cigars, minus the four we were burning, toward the center of the table. “Brother Thing, where did you get these weeds?”
“I thieved them, Prez, as well you know,” Thing said. “I got a couple of the Club’s juniors to stage a diversion in front of Sieve’s Smoke Shop, and seeped in behind the counter while Big Steve was making peace with his broom handle.”
“Squint, where did this table come from?” I asked.
“It was on the stage of the school auditorium when you said we needed it,” he said. “I got eight of the membership and moved it downstairs and out the street door during lunch period.”
“And my gavel?” I asked.
“You swiped that from the Junior Chamber of Commerce,” Mouse told me, “right after they gave you that fifteen dollar check for the best extemporaneous speech on the topic, What I Believe.”
“As Miss Henniker might say, Q.E.D.,” I said. “We are thieves, are we not?”
“Clever ones,” the Mouse boasted.
“Never busted once,” Squint pointed out.
“And never made a dime off it,” Thing said, always eager to stone the bluebirds.
“That’s all over now,” I said. “The most skilled boosters this side of the Sanitary Canal...”
“... either side,” Squint said.
“... will refresh their treasury at public expense,” I said. “We will pull off a job that will go down in history with the Brinks Robbery.”
“Prez, do you recollect where the guys that pulled that caper are hanging out their laundry nowadays?” Thing asked. “For a hint, I’ll tell you they’re wearing numbers on their backs.”