“They have the whole place fixed up... those colored lights on a string and the tables under the trees and two bands on the platform. As soon as one stops, the other one starts. And there’s a guy goes around in a white coat with those little sandwiches and you can take all you want.”
There’s the scream of a siren in the distance. The men take out guns.
“The girls all wear flowers,” Dotty says. “And I don’t have none. But Rusty says, ‘You just wait here,’ and soon he’s back with a big bunch of flowers, all colors and kinds. Only I can’t wear half of them, there’s too many. And then we dance and drink punch until the cops come. And then we have to lam out of there; they say Rusty bust in the glass in the town florist shop.”
The siren is much louder now. The man with the shotgun runs in.
“A patrol car just passed!” he says. “Come on, let’s blow!”
Dotty don’t seem to hear. “Get back out there,” she tells him.
The man’s face goes even whiter. He looks at Dotty and then at the others. “I say we move,” he says. “Rusty or no Rusty. We’ll be knocked off here sure.”
The other men try to stop him but can’t.
“And we don’t even know that he’ll show. He might’ve turned south, or kept west. All the time we’re waitin’ here he might even be—”
Dotty has put her back to the bar. She waves a gun at the man.
“Get away from that door,” she says. She leans back on her elbows. “Drop that rattle and get over there. We don’t want to have to step over you.”
It takes the man a minute to get it. Then his knees begin to give. He opens his mouth a few times but nothing comes out.
Then there’s that static on the radio and the announcer telling how Rusty was nabbed down in Talbot. Dotty stands there and listens, resting back on the bar.
“Not a single shot was fired,” the announcer says. “The gangster was completely surprised by the raid. Alone in the hideout with Nelson was a pretty, dark-haired, unidentified girl.”
Then there’s that static and the music again.
Nobody looks at Dotty for a while. Then the man with the shotgun bolts for the door. No sooner he’s opened it, he shuts it again. “There’s a guy comin’ up the road,” he says. “He’s got on a badge.”
For what seems a long time, Dotty don’t move. Then she reaches out and snaps off the radio. “Let him come,” she says. “You guys get out in the car.”
The men don’t argue. They go out the back.
Dotty walks slowly to the door. When she speaks, her voice isn’t flat anymore. “You know,” she tells me, “it was funny about those flowers. They just wouldn’t stay put. Every minute I’d fix them and the next minute they’d slip. One of the girls said the pin was too big.”
She steps out on the porch, and I drop flat in back of the bar.
“Hello, Copper,” I hear her say. The rest is all noise...
One of these days I’m going to show the sheriff. One of these days he’s going to tell once too often how he got Dotty and I’m going to take him out on the porch and show him...
Sure, she might have missed him, even Dotty might have missed him twice in a row. But she would never have put those two slugs in the ceiling. Not Dotty. Not unless she had reason to. Not unless she wanted to die.
Track of the One-Eyed Cat
by Bernard Lynch
Bernard Lynch was born and educated in New York City, graduating from City University with a degree in history. Currently, he is living in Belford, New Jersey, where, he told EQMM, he is at work on a novel. His debut fiction is fanciful and fun, imbued with a spirit of adventure and told with suck zest that readers will, we think, readily suspend disbelief and embrace the tale’s more fantastic elements.
Insurance investigator Mandy McHenry, standing in a secluded part of Central Park, couldn’t tell from the look on the man’s face whether he could be trusted or not. With her right hand she brushed the side of her leather jacket, warm and snug against the October chill, and felt the reassuring presence of her automatic in the holster underneath, on her hip. A small owlish-looking man with spectacles and a pious manner of clasping his little hands together while speaking, he seemed harmless enough. But still, it was the harmless-looking type that often turned out to be the most dangerous, and the more she thought about it now, the more she knew she wasn’t going to trust this little freak any further than she could kick him.
The little man smiled and peered up at her, the spectacles he wore catching the late afternoon light, and said: “You are the Huntress and he is the Hunted, but believe me when I tell you that without my help, you’ll never run this quarry to ground.” His voice had that singular nasal quality of a Parisian who spoke English only as a last resort. Mandy frowned. She was in no mood for melodrama — especially one that might require subtitles. Anxious to get this over with, she said: “Perhaps. So far, though, you haven’t told me anything about him that I don’t already know.”
And he hadn’t. Earlier, on the phone, he had introduced himself as Simon Ducroix or, “As some people call me, Brother Simon.” He told her that he was a retired INTERPOL agent and currently serving as a security consultant to a number of museums and art galleries in Paris, Rome, and London. He then told her it was greatly urgent for them to meet on a matter of mutual interest: the whereabouts of the infamous British jewel thief Jack Monsarrat, otherwise known as The One-Eyed Cat. Recently he had broken out of a Spanish prison and was rumored to be in a dozen different countries at once. Mandy had been an insurance investigator now for over ten years and whenever she spoke to someone over the phone about a lead or a tip it was always a matter of great urgency. Most of the time, it turned out to be anything but urgent; most of the time, it turned out to be nothing. But still, she had to go through the motions: It went with the job and the job was her life. Also, she had a special interest in The One-Eyed Cat — he had been responsible for the one failure in her career: the theft of the Sunburst Diamond.
Now the little man turned and pointed across the way toward a small outdoor cafe and said: “You see that beautiful woman who is sitting alone at the table there and sipping at her cappuccino? Her name is Dahlia Manning. And she just so happens to be the mistress of our Monsieur Monsarrat. Now there is something I will wager you did not know about him. Or am I being, how you say, presumptuous?”
“No, now you’ve got my attention, Mr. Ducroix.”
“Brother Simon. Please, I insist.”
“All right, Brother Simon.” And for a moment she was tempted to say, Call me Sister Mandy. But she resisted the impulse, instead saying: “That beautiful woman looks like she’s waiting for someone — someone special?”
“Yes, indeed, someone special. She is waiting for her husband, Anton Manning, who is also Monsieur Monsarrat’s best friend and partner in crime.”
At that Mandy allowed a flicker of a smile herself. “Now you’ve really got my attention.”
An angular man of medium height, pale, with thinning gray hair, dressed in a corduroy jacket, now joined Dahlia Manning at the table. His face was working and his hands were fluttering about like a couple of birds. She reached out and put her hand to his cheek with a caress, as though to calm him. Watching from across the way, Mandy said, “So, that’s the husband.” Brother Simon nodded, saying, “Yes, that’s Anton. Poor, weak, sad Anton: Always getting in over his head. You know, it was because of Anton that Monsieur Monsarrat ended up in that Spanish prison. Yes, he took the rap for him. You still say that — the rap?” Without waiting for an answer he continued: “He knew that his friend could never survive such an ordeal, so he went in his place. Rather an extraordinary gesture on his part, don’t you think?”