The blond man nodded toward him and said in a low pleasant voice, “Deutsch?”
Stocker’s hand shot to his chest. He staggered backward, a look of horror shattering his broad face. He tried to scream “No!” but nothing came out but a whimper. Pain crisscrossed his upper torso as he fell to the floor, writhing, face up. His breath exploded into the void, once, twice, three times.
He saw someone in uniform. The blond man appeared shocked. Sunlight streamed through the plate glass, striking Deutsch’s distorted face. Within seconds the solar light went out: all the lights in the world went out.
A policeman kneeling beside him said, “Please move away, folks. The gentleman is dead.” Then the officer, a young sergeant who seemed unconcerned by the hubbub, got up and turned to the blond man. “Could you tell me what happened, sir? You were talking to him, I think.”
The blond man stared at the policeman, stunned. He spoke in a low voice: “Es ist schrecklich. Ich wollte Ihn nur fragen ob er Deutsch spricht.”
The policeman asked, “Can’t you speak English?”
The blond man shuddered. “Sorry. In my shock... What I just said was, ‘It’s terrible. I only wanted to ask him if he speaks German.’ ”
The Quick Red Fox
by Gerald Tomlinson[10]
They say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Old wives’ tale or not, it certainly isn’t true at EQMM. A kind of literary lightning has struck twice at EQMM surprisingly often. Once again a new writer has sent us a second story before we’ve had time to publish the first; so once again we are happy to give you, back to back in the same issue, a first and second story by a writer who has never before been published.
And once again we marvel at the startling contrast, both in style and substance, that the two stories offer. Our new writers are doing splendidly, thank you!
Read now how Gerald Tomlinson, to quote from his letter, “avoided the sophomore jinx”...
“I’m afraid you’ve failed the polygraph test, Mr. Older. In fact, you come across on it as a terrible liar.”
Billy Claiburne scowled at the earnest personnel secretary who had just spoken to him. “Drat and double drat. Does that mean I can’t get a job at Fargo Distillers?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it does. You have no idea how careful we have to be in this business. The amount of stealing that goes on here is something awful.”
Claiburne’s red-orange eyebrows rose in an expression of professional interest. “You don’t say.”
“Oh, yes. Just last week one of our fork-lift operators was arrested after setting up his own cocktail lounge in Cold Spring Harbor. It was stocked to the roof with Fargo whiskey, all stolen.”
“You can’t trust anybody these days, Miss Dillon. Now, if you’ll just point me toward the Men’s Room.”
The secretary glanced over her right shoulder, letting her eyes do the pointing. “Down that hall, five doors on the left, Mr. Older. I’m sorry about the lie-detector test.”
“Don’t let it worry you a bit,” said Claiburne, heading toward the teak-paneled canyon, wheezing as he went At 45 his body was scrawny and consumptive-looking, a liability in his line of work. But he had assets. His bespectacled blue eyes were brightly alert, his senses acute, and his mind was a cunning computer of risks.
At the end of the hall, in a small empty office lined with four-color posters for Old Chisholm Bourbon, he saw what he wanted, an IBM Executive typewriter. Entering the office, he pulled a printed note from the pocket of his red plaid jacket, laid it on the desk, stifled a cough, bent over, yanked the electric plug from a floor socket, and copped the 341st typewriter of his career. The note read:
For posterity he had provided an autograph, The Quick Red Fox, and underneath the signature he had scrawled 341/500.
It was past one o’clock, well into the lunch hour at Fargo Distillers. Voices issued from a cafeteria far down another hall, but Claiburne passed no one on his way to the side door of the two-story suburban office building. Into the passenger’s seat of his car went the IBM, into the driver’s seat went The Quick Red Fox himself, and off went the fastest typewriter thief in the East.
His destination was the C&M Typewriter Company of lower Manhattan, dealers in new and used typewriters, operating out of a shabby store in a rundown West Side neighborhood. He parked in his reserved spot in a red-signed, yellow-curbed tow-away zone, which was one of Police Sergeant Alex McSween’s many streetside sources of income.
Three doors toward Ninth Avenue the dusty plate-glass window of C&M offered the best deals in town on new typewriters, unheard-of low prices on used typewriters, and prompt repair service, no savings stated, on any make of typewriter.
“Hey, Jesse,” Claiburne rasped as he closed the door, “there’s an IBM in my car. Grab it before the blind beggar gets it. He’s eyeing it, and he looks like he could use a fix. Where’s Bats?”
“Up in Westchester, man. He said to tell you he’d be back at three.” Jesse Plummer, a retired railroad porter, started toward the front door at his Penn Central shuffle. Plummer treated The Quick Red Fox with easy familiarity, but Bats was quite another matter. Jesse regarded Bats Masterson, master criminal and Claiburne’s tycoon-partner, with mumbling, sycophantic awe. So did many other people.
Claiburne’s office, a cubicle in mauve enamel and frosted glass, was tucked in a corner at the right front of the store. The Fox shed his red plaid jacket — only a costume since Claiburne preferred dark pinstripes — and stepped through the doorway.
Instantly his left arm was twisted like a carriage-return bar as someone applied a sharp upward thrust on it from behind. Pinned nose-to-frost against the glass, he started to sputter. He was stopped by the affable growl of Sergeant Alex McSween. “Didn’t hurt you, did I, Fox-O? Listen. What I want to know is, where’s the birthday present? It’s three days past due. My wife wants a night out and my kids are asking for their allowance.”
Claiburne muttered “Drat” through clenched dentures. “Double drat. Did I ever miss a payment, you dumb ox? Get your hands off me. Money for parking, money for protection, twelve birthdays a year — you’ve got a better partnership than Bats.”
McSween dropped the clamped arm and stepped back, squinting at Claiburne’s bottle-lensed eyeglasses, which were catching a ray of spring sunshine through the grimy window. The sergeant’s heavy jowls worked over a stick of chewing gum, and his heavy-lidded eyes were quizzical.
“I don’t know, Billy. As a matter of fact, I think we both better watch out. I’m not quite sure what they got on you, but somebody at headquarters is taking a sudden interest in this place. What’s going on, Billy? What’s your M.O. these days? You selling horse instead of typewriters?”
Claiburne’s thin mouth tightened. He resented the insult. The Quick Red Fox didn’t need a sideline. He was a specialist in crime, a celebrity, although a minor one, his last important press notice having appeared in the Daily News following theft number 303 only a few months ago. Stealing typewriters was his life, his fulfillment. Bats called it crazy, but it had grossed C&M $100,000 in five years. With a touch of fame and that kind of revenue, what more could a dropout from P.S. 167 ask?