“Maybe more than you figure, baby. Those boys don’t leave loose ends laying around. And we’re loose ends. Real loose! You’d better—”
“Shut up.” The blonde’s face was contorted with rage. She crossed the room on the run. The barrel of the gun flashed up, caught Liddell across the side of the head, slammed him back against the couch. A thin trickle of blood ran down the side of his cheek.
Lois stuck the gun in her robe pocket, ran into the bedroom. When she emerged a few moments later, she was fully dressed, carried a small overnight bag. She ran for the door, hesitated with her hand on the knob as she heard Liddell groaning his way back to consciousness. She slammed the door behind her, ran down the hall to the elevator.
Painfully, Liddell pulled himself to his feet. He stood swaying for a moment, tottered toward the door. He reached it just as the elevator started downward. He called after Lois, his voice echoed hollowly down the hall. Doggedly he started for the stairs. He was on the second floor landing when she left the elevator, ran across the lobby toward the street.
Liddell’s convertible stood at the curb where he had left it. The blonde pulled his keys from her pocket, threw her bag in the back, slid behind the wheel. She could hear Liddell yelling to her.
She turned on the ignition, jammed her foot down on the starter. There was a shattering blast as the windshield seemed to disintegrate in her face. A bright yellow flame shot from the dashboard, the heavy car seemed to lift from the street, then settled back, a shattered pile of twisted, smoking metal and splintered glass.
Liddell ran out onto the sidewalk, followed by a white-faced night clerk. “Send for an ambulance,” he tossed over his shoulder. As he reached the car, he shook his head. “Never mind that ambulance.”
Windows were going up in buildings on both sides of the street, heads were appearing cautiously. Somewhere a siren moaned.
The night clerk followed him across the sidewalk, stared at the smashed body of the blonde. “What was it? How did it happen?”
Liddell shook his head wearily. “It was just the boys keeping their word. They paid off in full.”
Now that you’ve finished reading this Johnny Liddell novelette, you’ll have discovered that Liddell hasn’t even scratched the surface of the waterfront rackets Barney Shields was investigating when he was killed. He’s got the person who murdered Barney — but that’s only the start of things.
Frank Kane deliberately ended the story at this point. In our Anniversary Issue, coming up next month, Kane will be back with the sequel to THE ICEPICK ARTISTS, a brand-new story about Johnny Liddell, and the real bosses of the waterfront rackets.
The Insecure
by R. Van Taylor
She was there in the house when — one by one — her family began to disappear.
Kay had finally gone to bed. But sleep was impossible. She lay there in the darkness of the bedroom, wide-eyed, listening for the sound of the car, for the metallic click of a key in a lock, for the sound of his voice. All she heard was the ticking of the clock which seemed in a panic to unwind itself.
She snapped on the bed lamp.
It was after two.
She looked across at Joe’s bed. The emptiness of it was unreal. Unreal — that was the word for the entire night. It were as if this night had been cut loose from its moorings of simple, routine, everyday reassurances and had drifted away from her, leaving her stranded in a void of frightening questions and increasing uncertainty.
She had to do something.
Of that much she was certain.
She got up and slipped into a robe, then tip-toed to the door of the nursery.
The sight of a six-year-old son and a baby girl of sixteen months were reassuring things. Comforting things. Solid stepping stones across a night that had turned into quicksand. She tucked the blanket carefully about Judy. At the side of Mike’s bed she picked up the Mars Special — a battered veteran of many solar flights.
Strange, she thought. When we were children we were afraid of reality and escaped into a world of make-believe. And then, we we grew to be adults, we built a dike about our world of reality, and when a break appeared in that dike, fear flooded in.
She returned to the bedroom and went to the blinds and opened them. She looked at the Davis home across the way. As this feeling in her grew she covered her shoulders with her hands as if to ward off the cold.
Abruptly she cast off the last shackle of indecision. She went back to the bed and reached for the phone on the stand. She dialed. In a moment, through the blinds, she saw a light come on in the house next door.
A man’s voice answered.
Then she said, “Frank, this is Kay. I hate to bother you but I’m worried about Joe. He hasn’t come home.”
“Hey! That’s no good, is it?” Frank said.
“I can’t imagine where he could be. I kept dinner on the table until nine. I... I kept thinking that if he had to work late he would call me, but he never did. Finally I called the office, but I didn’t get any answer.”
“Imogene and I will come over,” Frank said.
“No, you don’t need to do that,” Kay said. “It’s just that I don’t know what to do.” Her hand tightened on the phone. “I thought about calling the hospitals, but if he had been in a wreck they would have been sure to find his identification and notify me.”
“We’ll be over in a minute,” Frank said. He hung up.
Kay replaced the phone. The phone. There was something solid. A direct line to reality. And the Davises. Good friends. Sandbags. Sandbags with which to repair the dike.
Frank and Imogene arrived in less than five minutes, Frank with his pajama tops stuffed into his trousers and Imogene with a housecoat wrapped over her nightgown.
“Kay, dear!” Imogene said, putting her arm around her. “Why didn’t you call us sooner?”
Kay tried to smile. “Well, I... I kept thinking he would come in.”
“You poor thing. I know you’re just worried sick.”
“One thing we can be sure of,” Frank said, grinning too much. “We know he’s not out with another woman — not with the kind of homework he’s got.”
“Not funny, Frank,” Imogene said. “Kay doesn’t need bum jokes; she needs help. Think of something.”
“I’ll tell you, Kay,” Frank said, “I could go out and look for him, but it would be pretty pointless. There’s just no place you can look for a fellow like Joe. I’m not trying to scare you, but I think maybe it would be a smart move to call the police. Why don’t you let me do it?”
Kay felt herself tense. Frank was talking sense, of course. It was simple and obvious. And yet, she felt a hesitation that she did not fully understand. Perhaps it was because once that she called the police she would be admitting to herself that her existence was insecure.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll call them.”
“Frank can call them,” Imogene said. “Let’s you and I go back to the kitchen and put on the coffee pot. The children all right?”
In a minute or so Frank came back to the kitchen and told them that the police were sending someone. Then they sat around the kitchen table and drank coffee and talked about everything except what was important. In less than thirty minutes two uniformed policemen arrived. Frank brought them into the kitchen and poured them coffee. They were polite men with trained efficiency. The one named Monohan asked the questions.