“Fact three: my wife is a redhead, and she was wearing a dress that didn’t belong to her.”
“What’s all that got to do with...”
“I’ll tell you, Hobbs. I think that dress belonged to the dead redhead in the pickup truck. I think that’s the same dress she wore coming into town, and on a number like her, it must have caused quite a stir. I think you slammed that dress onto my wife because you wanted to make sure everyone saw the dead redhead leaving town. That’s what I think, Hobbs.”
“You’re crazy! You’re...”
“I think you forced my wife to get onto that bus. Rabbit here probably had a gun in her purse. I think you took her off the bus somewhere between here and New York, and I think you’re holding her until you can ditch the redhead’s body someplace far away from here. That’s why she’s in the pickup, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know any redhead. Pickup truck or otherwi...”
“One thing I want to know, Hobbs. Is my wife still alive?”
“I don’t know where your goddamned wife is. I never...”
I swung the .45 up and down, catching Hobbs across the cheek bone, ripping the skin back in a wide, bloody flap.
“Is she alive, you bastard?”
“Go...”
I gave him another whack with the gun before he could complete his sentence. This time I caught him on the mouth, and he fell back against the wall, holding his splintered, bleeding teeth.
He began blubbering, and then he started cursing and swearing.
“Is she alive?” I shouted. “Where is she, you bastard?”
Hobbs lifted his head, and spit at me, and the blood and sputum hit my face an instant before I hit him on his skull with the gun. This time he folded against the wall, and then his knees went out from under him, and he fell face forward on the wooden floor.
I turned and walked toward Bunny.
“All right, sweetheart,” I said. “Your playmate’s out of the running. Now it’s your turn.”
She swallowed hard and looked at the .45 in horror. “You... you wouldn’t... you... wouldn’t...”
“Wouldn’t I though? Did you put my wife on that bus, you bitch?”
She opened her mouth wide as I raised the .45. “Yes, yes! I did! For Christ’s sake...”
“Where is she?”
“A rooming house about forty miles from here. Jesus, Mac...”
“She’s all right? Is she?”
“Yes. Yes, she’s fine. We... we were going to let her go later. We... we just wanted to get rid of the redhead first. We just wanted to make it look like the redhead left town.”
“Who killed the redhead?”
“Not me! Jesus, not me! I didn’t...”
“Zach?”
“Yes. Zach. He... he said he wanted to break her in. He told me to send her to the office. I guess... I guess she didn’t like... I guess she objected to what he... he killed her.”
“And then he had to make it look like she’d left town, so that when her body turned up, he’d be in the clear.”
The girl was blubbering now, just the way Zach had. “Yes. Yes, he... that’s what. That’s... Mac, I just work here. I just take orders. You don’t know, Mac. You don’t know. I swear... I just... your wife is okay. I didn’t harm her.”
“Who’s she with?”
“Zach’s sister. She... she runs the rooming house.”
“Where? What’s the address?”
She gave it to me, and I went to Hobbs’ phone and dialed the state police, and then tried to explain the whole thing. I told them everything that had happened, and I also told them the local police were probably in on the coverup, and that they had Hobbs’ truck with the dead girl in it.
I hung up and waited then, and a trooper’s car reached the office in seven minutes flat. They’d already radioed to have Anne picked up at the rooming house. Hobbs wasn’t talking to anyone when they came in. He was still huddled against the wall like a broken egg.
We drove back to the city that night.
Anne was silent for a long time. She kept smoking cigarettes, peering through the windshield until dawn spread across the sky in a pale grey wash.
“Was it bad?” I asked her.
“No,” she said.
“Then why... I mean...”
“I keep thinking of you,” she said. “With all those naked women running around.”
I took one hand off the wheel and hugged her close to me, and she buried her head in my shoulder.
“Did... did you look?” she asked.
“Sure,” I told her.
“You... you did?”
“Yes, but not very hard.”
She snuggled closer to me, and I added in explanation, “They didn’t have any redheads.”
Richest Man in the Morgue
by Harold Q. Masur
The man in the Oriental costume was going to talk to Jordan. He reached Jordan’s door — but he never got inside.
It started with a Hindu dancer and a lawyer. When they met, the Hindu dancer’s heartbeat stopped permanently and the lawyer’s temporarily. I did not know the Hindu dancer at all, but I knew the lawyer well enough. He’s me, Scott Jordan.
The event was a memorable one. It led to a small brunette and a large swindle. Both were beauties. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It was Thursday morning, 2:30 a.m., when I came awake sharply and irritably at the insistent ringing of my doorbell. I muttered thickly into the pillow and tried to ignore it, but the bell kept going, so I got up and shuffled blindly into the foyer. A summons at that hour usually means trouble. Still, I couldn’t help myself. In some ways a lawyer is like a doctor. Sickness and crime work on a twenty-four hour shift right around the clock.
I opened the door and there he was, brightly festooned in the costume of an Oriental potentate, with a jeweled turban wrapped around his head. At first I didn’t see him. He was on his knees, bent over, his forehead touching the floor in an attitude of prayer.
I knew if I touched him he would topple sideways. I knew it because the knife sticking out of his back had been planted in exactly the right spot. But he toppled anyway, listing to port slowly and then rolling over with a soft thud.
I stood in the doorway, impaled, heartbeat suspended.
His lips were frozen in a twisted grimace, and lidless eyes stared upward in a kind of perpetual astonishment. He was young, about twenty-five, his face darkly smeared with theatrical makeup. I didn’t know the fellow from a hitching post.
Good-bye rest. No more sleep for me tonight. I could, of course, haul him down the corridor and deposit him in front of somebody else’s door. But I’m in the business. I know better. Transporting a homicide victim carries stiff penalties, and besides, this chap had been scratched out on his way to see me and I wanted to know the reason why.
I sighed with resignation and headed for the telephone.
I can recall the next two hours as a montage of frenetic activity. City employees came, performed their chores with calculated efficiency and departed. Homicide detectives of all shapes and sizes kept firing questions at me, but through it all I maintained complete innocence. The corpse was finally removed and at last I stood alone with Lieutenant John Nola.
The lieutenant was a neat, dark, sober, slender man, with brooding eyes and a searching brain, tough but human, and absolutely incorruptible. He was studying me carefully. “Hope you’re not trying to promote something, counselor,” he said.
I gave him an aggrieved look. “Haven’t I always been on the level with you, John?”
“Up to a point, yes. But I’d hate to think you were pulling a fast one now.”
If he ever did it would be curtains. Five years of friendship would go out the window. He lit one of his thin, dappled cigars and inhaled thoughtfully. I knew that he had established the victim’s identity and asked him about it.