“No, Irma, he’s not all right. Willis Marlow is dead. He was murdered, just as your husband was murdered, Irma. And by the same person.”
She looked scared and bewildered, both. Her eyes cast from side to side, like a trapped and frightened little animal’s.
“But how... how did he get up there, Matty? He couldn’t. He was down by the lake. He was hanged there. Gus told me. Gus said Marlow was—” She broke off, staring at Gus.
“Stop it!” Gus Berkaw cut in on her. He suddenly walked over to Chief of Police Arnold Quimby who was standing at the bar, still, looking on, goggle-eyed, befuddled. Berkaw said, “Arnold, you’ve got to do something with her. She’s blowing her roof. The shock of her husband dying and all has been too much for her.”
He got up close to Arnold Quimby. The police chief wore a Sam Brown belt and a fine, hand-tooled leather holster. Gus Berkaw had no trouble slipping the gleaming black .38 from Quimby’s holster. He did it fast and neatly and stepped back and away while Quimby stared, dumbfounded at his own gun in Berkaw’s hands as though he was wondering how it got there and what it was doing there.
Gus Berkaw held the gun on all of us, while he stood clear. He spoke to Irma Wenzel and his eyes stayed with all of us, watching our every move, yet somehow he seemed to be looking straight at her.
“Are you crazy, Irma? What’s the matter with you, you drunken little fool? If you hadn’t broke, if you hadn’t let it get you, they couldn’t have proved anything. That damned busy-body reporter didn’t know a thing; he was just guessing. Now you’ve thrown it right in his lap.”
She kept looking at Gus Berkaw, at the revolver in his hand. She stood there, drunk and swaying and the tears ran on her face and left mascara streaks down her cheeks. She said, tiredly, “It’s no good, Gus. You talked it to me so much. You talked me into it. But after it was done, it was no good. It wasn’t what I wanted.”
“No good!” he repeated. He spat out the words. “I did it for you. You were in love with me, you said. You always said, if it wasn’t for Harry— Well, you’re in it, damn you. You’re right in it with me. You were my accomplice. We were going to be in clover.
“There wasn’t only the insurance. There was the big dough this place was suddenly worth with the new highway coming through. It was when I heard about that, that I knew it had to be tonight. Well, now you’ve lost all that for us, Irma. But you’re not going to cheat me altogether. You’re going with me. Come over here, Irma. Don’t make any more mistakes.”
“Don’t be crazy, Gus!” she told him. “I... I don’t love you. I couldn’t — not a cold-blooded killer. When I started to realize — to really understand that Harry was gone, I knew I’d made a mistake. He was worth ten of you, Gus Berkaw. He was a man. He—”
Berkaw took a step toward her and his face was twisted like a mask. He jabbed the .38 toward her. “Get over here!” he said. “You’re going with me, Irma!”
“No, Gus!” she said. She put up both hands, palms out.
He took another step toward her. “I said, come here. I—”
I didn’t hear the rest of it. I was scared and all tight like a spring inside of me. There was a buzzing in my ears. Gus Berkaw wasn’t seeing anybody but Irma at that moment. I still had Lee Marlow’s spinning outfit in my hands. That viciously hooked Flatfish plug was still on the end of the line. It was worth a try.
I wasn’t trying to be any hero. It was just sort of something I had to do. I whipped the light rod back and then forward. I watched the plug flash across the room toward Gus Berkaw and I saw it hit his hand in a perfect cast. I pulled back on the pole as though to hook a striking fish.
Gus Berkaw screamed and the gun fell from his hand. I held the line taut, his hand, hooked solidly, pulled out the full length of his huge, beefy arm toward me.
“Don’t try to move. Stand still, Gus, or that plug will rip out half of your hand.”
He did that, his face all twisted with the pain of the hook barbs sunk deeply into his flesh. The rest of the crowd closed in around him. Gus Berkaw’s legs gave way with him, then and he sunk down onto the floor, holding his wounded hand with the plug still in it. He kept mouthing curses, incoherantly and tears wormed down his dark, meaty cheeks.
Then, before anybody could stop her, Irma Wenzel stepped toward the gun that had been flung from Gus’ hand. She bent and scooped it up, her eyes flashing hatred.
“Get out of the way!” she said harshly.
Pete Saterlee and Eric Fabian stepped swiftly out of her path. Chief Quimby yelled something at her but she didn’t seem to hear. Holding the revolver in both hands, her face as stiff and drawn as though it had been bathed in alum, she walked close to Gus Berkaw. She shot him in the head at close range. Before the echo of the gun shot faded from the room, she turned the smoking barrel toward herself. That second shot was muffled, somewhat.
I turned and caught Lee Marlow as she fainted.
There was no trial, of course. There was no one to try. All the principals involved were dead. The whole affair had the township of Boone buzzing for a long time and there was a lot of talk that the thing had been twisted around and some angles covered up because a couple of rich and influential men like Pete Saterlee and Eric Fabian were involved. But that wasn’t so. It was just like I’ve told it. What did they want; how much worse could it possibly have been?
It took a long time for Lee Marlow to get over the whole thing. But I waited. She was worth waiting for. And we never talk about it at all. Mrs. Hoyle and I.
We don’t go out fishing very much, either. If we do, it’s with an old bamboo pole and worms. We don’t have a dog, either. Not that we don’t like dogs, but there are some things that are hard to forget.
The Slay’s the Thing
by Phil Richards
Ex-playwright James Greer gave flop space to the local parasites — so his guilt complex could wear a halo.
It was a hot, sticky night and even the air was sweating. But Rawne, turning west on Twenty-second Street, looked cool enough. Everybody else was parboiled. Brown-stone stoops were draped with people too fagged to stagger to the corner tavern. They stared languidly at Rawne as he strutted airily along.
Halfway down the dusty block he spoke to a wispy little man leaning against the brick wall of an apartment house. The little man was bald and he had a straggly gray mustache. He wore a pink-striped silk shirt dabbed with green paint, and the sleeves were cut off near the shoulders. His arms were muscular. He was nursing a perspiring bottle of beer.
“Good evening, Mr. Rawne,” the little man said. He polished his moist skull with a calloused hand. “Hot, isn’t it? I hear Mr. Greer has Blown Smoke in the seventh race at today and goes to the fifty-dollar window with a stack of win tickets. Mr. Greer doesn’t visit me and pay six months back rent.”
Rawne blew a cloud of smoke. “You’re the superintendent, Schmidt,” he said. “You’ve known the bum for years. He’s got dough. Reach him quick. Because fellers he don’t owe are fellers he don’t know.”
Rawne went down two steps into a spotless foyer. He pressed the button opposite the brass name plate James Cullen Greer. There was no click to the front door’s lock release. Schmidt came in jingling a large ring of keys. He let Rawne into a gloomy hall lit by a small bulb.
“Whenever I ask Mr. Greer for the rent,” Schmidt said, “he gives me his speech on the brotherhood of man, but now that Blown Smoke pays sixteen forty, I think Mr. Greer resigns from the lodge.”