Parish nodded with sudden decision. “I’d like to do something in Victor’s memory. Give the boy a decent burial.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Parish.” Gladys was having a little trouble keeping her voice steady.
“My pleasure. He seemed a decent lad. Liked him on sight. Had he asked you to marry him?”
“We were friends, that’s all.”
“Too bad. He’d have made a fine husband. Did Eddie speak of his uncle often?”
A bull’s-eye for me, I thought, smiling tightly to myself in the closet.
“Oh, yes,” Gladys said. “He read me all of his uncle’s letters.” She frowned. “As a matter of fact, his uncle sent him a snapshot once. I think I have it. Eddie traveled light and I keep a lot of his personal papers in my wardrobe trunk.”
“Was there much resemblance?”
“A little, around the eyes. It’s hard to remember details like that.”
Parish sighed. “Victor was my right hand man for years, and I haven’t a single memento. Would the picture still be in your possession?”
“I think so. Shall I try to find it?”
His face brightened eagerly. “Why, yes. I’d appreciate that very much.”
She swung open her wardrobe trunk, removed one of the drawers, placed it on the bed, and bent over to sort through an accumulation of papers. The man behind her rose silently. His lips, I saw, were pulled back over his teeth. The whole cast of his face had changed, its features distorted. He raised the walking stick.
I kicked the door open and was on him like a cat, gripping his wrist. An enraged growl tore at his throat. He twisted violently, trying to break loose. I bulled him across the room and wrenched the weapon free.
He crouched back, panting, a bloated vein throbbing spasmodically in a blue diagonal across his temple.
Gladys had wheeled and was watching us, white-faced, stifling a cry.
I saw the red beard quivering with indignation as he tried to assume an air of outraged innocence. “What does this mean?”
“It means it’s all over, Victor,” I said.
“What?” His jaw hung askew.
“You heard me. The masquerade is over. You tried to pull a fast one and it almost worked. Malcolm Parish died in Italy last year and you took his place. No one knew him there and it was easy. You grew a beard like his and learned to forge his signature. You changed your appearance and your handwriting, but you couldn’t change your character. Parish was satisfied to live on his income, but you were more ambitious. You wanted the whole works.”
Victor Lang swallowed audibly. He was breathing hard through distended nostrils. “You’re crazy!”
“Not me,” I said. “You are. Crazy to think you could get away with killing Eddie because he recognized you. You couldn’t swear him to silence. The boy was too honest to go along with your stunt, and he threatened to upset your apple-cart. He’d seen my name in the papers connected with the Parish Lines and said he was going to see me right after the last show. But you got there first and nailed him when he came out of the elevator.”
Victor Lang was shaking and trying to control it. His nose and mouth were pinched and gray. “You have no proof, Jordan.”
“All the proof we need,” I said. “You think we can’t wash that red dye out of your beard and hair? And how about the key you took from Eddie’s pocket so you could search his room in case he left some memento to link you with the crime? You were there when I arrived and you hid in the closet. I owe you one for that clout you gave me.”
He stepped back, his lips working.
“You were in a sweat,” I said, “and that’s why you came back here to the hotel again. You had to be sure Eddie hadn’t left anything with Gladys. When you learned she had a picture you were scared she might recognize you. So you decided to swing the stick again. And it was all for nothing, Lang. She had no picture. It was a plant. You think we have no proof, mister? We have enough proof to strap you in the chair.”
He broke. His eyes raced wildly around the room and he lunged at the door. I caught him behind the ear with his own walking stick and knocked him sprawling against the wall. I was ready to deliver an encore when Gladys cried out: “No, Scott, please...”
She was right, of course. I was neither his jury nor his executioner. The tightness ebbed out of me.
“Okay,” I said. “Call Headquarters, will you, honey?”
Victor Lang was watching me with bankrupt eyes as I took out his ten thousand dollar check and tore it up. I felt very sad. And then I saw Gladys. I saw the admiration and the promise in her face.
I didn’t feel sad any more.
The Quiet Room
by Jonathan Craig
“Okay,” the cop said. “You’re in trouble. But maybe you can buy your way out...”
Detective Sergeant Carl Streeter’s home on Ashland Avenue was modest. So were the dark gray suits he always wore, and the four-year-old Plymouth he drove. But in various lock boxes around the city he had accumulated nearly fifty thousand dollars.
He was thinking about the money now as he watched his daughter Jeannie clear away the dinner dishes. He never tired of watching her. She had just turned sixteen, but she was already beautiful, and lately she had begun to develop the infinitely feminine movements and mannerisms he had once found so irresistible in her mother.
The thought of his wife soured the moment, and he frowned. It had been wonderful, having Barbara away for a few weeks. But she’d be back from the seashore next Monday, and then the nagging and bickering and general unpleasantness would start up again. It didn’t seem possible, he reminded himself for probably the ten thousandth time, that anyone who had once been almost as slim and lovely as Jeannie could have grown into two hundred pounds of shapeless, complaining blubber.
“More coffee, Dad?” Jeannie asked.
He pushed his chair back from the table and got up. “No,” he said. “I guess I’d better get going if I want to get down to the precinct by seven.”
“Seven? But I thought your shift didn’t start till eight.”
“It doesn’t. There are a couple things I want to take care of down there, though.”
“When will you be home?”
“Depends. Not until three or four, anyhow. We’re a little short-handed.”
“You put in too many hours, Dad.”
“Maybe,” he said. He grinned at her and walked out to the front hall to get his hat. Just another few months, he thought. Six months at the outside, and I’ll have enough to put Jeannie in a damned good college, ditch Barbara and her lard, and tell the Chief to go to hell.
Sally Creighton was waiting for him in the Inferno Bar. She pushed a folded piece of paper across the table as he sat down facing her.
“How’s the Eighteenth Precinct’s one and only policewoman?” Streeter asked.
Sally looked at him narrowly. “Never mind the amenities. Here’s the list we got off that girl last night.”
He put the list into his pocket without looking at it. “Did you check them?”
“Don’t I always? Only two of them might be good for any money. I marked them. One’s a dentist, and the other guy runs a bar and grill over on Summit.” She lifted her beer and sipped at it, studying him over the rim of the glass. “There’ve been a few changes made, Carl.” Her bony, angular face was set in hard lines.
“Like what?”
“From now on I’m getting fifty per cent.”
“We’ve been over that before.”
“And this is the last time. Fifty per cent, Carl. Starting as of now.”
He laughed shortly. “I do the dirty work, and take the chances — and you come in for half, eh?”
“Either that, or I cut out.” She put a quarter next to her glass and stood up. “Think it over, Sergeant. You aren’t the only bruiser around the Eighteenth that can shake a guy down. Start making with the fifty per cent, or I’ll find another partner.” She moved toward the door with a long, almost mannish stride.