Kathy Franklin was at the gate, just handing in her tickets, when Leopold reached her. “I came to say goodbye, Kathy.”
She whirled, pale as death. “What—?”
“Where’s your traveling companion?”
Then he saw Tommy Razenwood, standing to one side with a magazine partly obscuring his face. Tommy saw Leopold at the same moment and seized Kathy. In an instant he had his arm at her throat, with a knife in his free hand.
“Tommy!” she screamed.
“Out of the way, cops! Try to take me and she dies!”
Leopold stood his ground. “Kathy’s not some nine-year-old child, Tommy. Kill her if you want, but we’re taking you.”
He moved then, as Fletcher came in from the other side. Razenwood shoved Kathy into Leopold and tried to run, but Fletcher brought him down with a waist-high tackle that sent the knife flying from Razenwood’s grip.
Then they had the handcuffs on him, as Connie grabbed Kathy.
“No Mexico trip after all,” Leopold told her. “You made me kill the wrong man.”
“He would have knifed me!” She turned to spit at Razenwood, who had ceased to struggle in Fletcher’s grip.
“So it was Pete Selby who died in the burning car,” Connie said.
Leopold nodded. “A dark street, a closed car, a man fleeing after she’d fingered him as Razenwood — that’s all it took to start us shooting. She’d already made sure of that by warning us he had a gun and would use it. Of course Pete Selby was fleeing because he was earning heroin, not because he was a murderer. Razenwood had taken Selby’s place in Kathy’s bed, so they figured it was only right for Selby to take his place in the morgue.”
Two uniformed police officers appeared then, to help them get their prisoners out of the terminal. The scattering of midnight travelers turned to stare at the proceedings. “How’d they know the car would burst into flames like that and prevent easy identification of the body?” Fletcher asked.
“I imagine it was soaked in gasoline, with a few extra cans in the trunk. Selby hesitated as he started the car, remember. He may have smelled the gasoline.”
It was in the police car going downtown, with Razenwood seated between Leopold and Fletcher, that Leopold asked him a question. “What if our bullets had missed, Tommy? What if Selby had stopped the car and tried to surrender before it caught fire?”
He lifted his eyes and stared straight ahead. “That wouldn’t have happened, cop. I was on the roof of the building with a rifle, just to make sure he didn’t. I don’t know if it was you or me who drilled the trunk and set off that gasoline. But I guess it didn’t make any difference to Selby.”
“No,” Leopold agreed, “I guess it didn’t.”
Dana Lyon
The Living End
The living arrangements that Nell had made with her friend Emma had not been in effect a month before she realized that it had been a devastating mistake. Why, she asked herself, sitting trembling at her desk while she was going over her bills, hadn’t she left well enough alone, without worrying about money all the time? She had her little house, her so-so job with Civil Service and a pension not far in the offing, her solitude at night, her peace and quiet, even if inflation was taking a large piece out of her accumulated savings while the little apartment above was standing idle; so why hadn’t she left it that way?
Money, she thought. Worrying about the future. Seeing the savings growing smaller instead of larger, feeling the need for an increased income which she’d never get from her job now that she was this close to retirement. So that apartment upstairs that she had built and used herself years ago while her parents were still living in the downstairs quarters was the answer to her need for increased income, just sitting there waiting for another tenant.
She had tried: the nice young couple both of whom worked and were therefore out of the house all day — until she discovered that the girl had been three months’ pregnant at the time of signing the lease, and then there was the baby, waking Nell at night with its incessant crying, until she had finally had to give them their notice. What was $85 a month weighed against her peace of mind?
And then the nice-looking middle-aged woman who worked downtown and brought home man after man and was such a wretched housekeeper that some of her roaches had finally invaded Nell’s living quarters. Notice served.
And there were others, even less desirable, particularly the ones who managed to evade rent day, and those who wanted to be sociable, wanting to use her telephone or her washer, wanting her to accept C.O.D. packages and forgetting to repay her, and always and forever the excuses for not being able to pay the rent. (“Just a week or two, Nell dear — I’m expecting a check in the mail any day.”)
She had hated being a landlady, but now she was hating, even more, seeing her small savings depleted in order to take up the slack caused by inflation. Nevertheless, no more bothersome tenants — until suddenly she had thought of Emma.
Emma had been her closest friend, her chum, when they were in high school together, her confidante, nearer to her than anyone else had ever been. Arms entwined, heads together, whispering about boys, daringly discussing the origins of life — a commitment they knew would last for life. It didn’t, of course.
Nell had gone her way to college and other friends, to love affairs and marriage, to divorce and finally a job with the state, and somewhere along the way Emma had been almost forgotten. Except for one definite and unfailing commitment that had lasted all these years: they exchanged long letters on each other’s birthday and thus at least kept in touch once a year. But as time went on there was little to tell each other about their lives which had remained almost static in their later years.
They were both in their early sixties now, but this one contact remained; they dared not neglect this birthday acknowledgement for fear that whoever didn’t write would be considered dead by the other. So they had continued writing.
Emma. Nell thought now. I know she doesn’t have much money. I wonder if she’d like to take the apartment overhead. I could bring the rent down to $75, and I’d be company for her, and she’d be company for me — but not too much, not as if, heaven forbid, we had to live in the same rooms. Nell enjoyed her privacy too much, her own way of doing things — letting the dishes go if she felt like it, or flying at the cleaning chores some weekend if that was what possessed her at the time, or playing the radio late at night, or the TV, or painting in her little studio room. Snacks at any hour of the day when she was home, instead of regular meals. Quiet reading. Walks alone along the country road where she lived. Just to be alone when she wanted to be—
However, the apartment upstairs was entirely separate, and even had an outside staircase of its own, and someone like Emma, who had always been so thoughtful of others, would not make much noise. The $75 would help; it would just about take over the depletion that present-day prices had made in her savings. Well — a few more years and she’d be able to retire on her pension and what she had managed to save during the years of her enslavement. But there’d be no savings left unless she rented the apartment.
Emma was delighted. She wrote, “I have been so depressed, dearest Nell, because I thought the rest of my life would have to be spent alone, no family, even my friends here are dying off; and you make the little apartment sound so fascinating. I’ll give notice on this dinky room I live in.” Room, thought Nelclass="underline" is that all she has? — and began to feel qualms along with the Good Samaritan warmth within her. “I’ll just pack up my things and get a bus ticket and be with you in a week.”