Linda’s arms were strapped close to her sides and she walked with short, dragging steps and looked straight ahead and didn’t seem to see anything, not even the noose dangling before her eyes.
The sheriff asked her did she have anything to say and she shook her head without looking at him. The sheriff gave the signal and the jailers who’d been practicing on a dummy went to work. It was one-two-three — just like a well-executed football play. One man knelt and strapped her legs together. Another put a black bag over her head and another slipped the noose over that. The sheriff waved his arm and the strings were cut and there was a clang like a heavy door slamming and Linda was below the trap and two men were holding her feet, pulling down so’s she wouldn’t kick.
Old Doc Marston walked up with a stethoscope and opened Linda’s blouse and stood there for ten, twelve minutes and during that long wait while you could hear the roosters crowing louder and the train coming closer, five men and a woman fainted. It was the waiting and silence that got them.
Finally Doc Marston put the stethoscope in his pocket and turned to the sheriff and solemnly shook his head.
“Congratulations,” he said. “She’s dead.”
Later the sheriff was in his office with several of the fellows having a little drink on account of the whole thing’d been such a strain on his nerves.
“I don’t like to hang people, especially women,” said the sheriff, “but this here Linda sure did have it coming to her. To think of a woman with a strong, virile, handsome man like Cass going around and—”
He didn’t finish because old Doc Marston came in.
“I just finished examining Linda,” he said to nobody in particular.
One of the fellows giggled nervously.
“Was the operation a success, Doc?” he asked.
The others giggled inside their lips. They didn’t want to make fun of a dead woman, but the joke was too good to let pass.
“Oh, yes,” said Doc. “It was quite a success. Her neck was cleanly broken.”
He walked toward the door and turned and looked at the people in the room. He chewed a while and then he spat right on the sheriff’s new office carpet.
“Tchew!” he went. “It might interest you to know you’ve just hanged a virgin.”
He turned and closed the door softly and you could hear his footsteps going down the hall.
You could hear his footsteps even after he reached the end of the hall and started downstairs.
Dirge for a Nude
by Jonathan Craig
Pleasant finding a naked girl in your car?
Not when she isn’t breathing...
It wasn’t exactly a new sound I was getting out of the little spinet, but it was a good sound — and the few customers left in this brand-new Village kick joint at three o’clock in the morning were at least hipped enough to know barrelhouse from outhouse. They sat around the stucco walls in twos and threes, and every time I’d hit a real gone figure they’d nod approvingly. Every now and then, when I got tired of this dead-pan approval, I’d sour a note or slide out of chord a little, just to watch them look pained and sympathetic.
I felt pretty good. I was knocking down good dough for this solo spot here in the Cavern Club, and while we wouldn’t be giving Nick’s and Eddie Condon’s any real competition for a while, it looked like we were going to do all right. The club was a natural for the tourists — all tricked up to look like a cave, with weird lighting and recesses in the stucco walls for tables and even a few stalactites scattered around here and there on the ceiling.
A real corny, jazzy place, where you could spend a buck and a half on a four-bit drink. It wasn’t a bad spot, outside of the echoes. The echoes were terrific. Even that frothy, delicate stuff in the treble sometimes came out like bricks rattling in a wash tub.
But the hat-check girl was beautiful, and I had a date with her at four o’clock. So everything was lovely.
I got a good ride rhythm going in the left hand and settled down to show off for the cognoscenti. If they liked their piano pure, then that’s what they were going to get.
That’s when Gloria Gayle came in — and from then on I was no longer the center of attraction. I watched her coming toward the piano and cussed a little and missed a couple of notes and had to cover up quick, like a cat. I needn’t have bothered. Nobody noticed sour notes when Gloria was around.
She draped her equipment over the top of the spinet and smiled at me and jiggled a little to show she was properly sent.
“Baby!” she said.
“Baby, hell,” I said. “Shove off.”
She had blue-black hair that shouldn’t be real, but was, and long sooty lashes and skin as smooth and white as a new piano key. She gave me a long slow sweep of the lashes and the smile got even brighter. Smiles like that they measure in kilowatts.
“Be nice to me, Marty,” she purred. “Or I’ll twist off your head.”
I riffed a little up high on the keyboard and grinned at her. A couple of months ago Gloria Gayle had made the world go round for me. That was before she gave me the heave-o for Al Prince, the guy the sports scribes called the Uncrowned Light-heavyweight Champ.
“The last name’s Bishop,” I said.
“Quit clowning,” she said. “I want to talk to you. Now.”
“I’ve still got this set and another one to go.”
She put both hands down flat on the piano and rocked it. It was that little. All at once I was playing in another key.
“Take a break,” she said.
I got up and walked around the spinet and took her arm and led her over to a table against the wall, next to the service bar. I held up two fingers to a waitress and sat down on the chair next to Gloria’s and said, “I hope this is going to be fast.”
She worked her chair over so that her thigh was pressed against mine and the side of her breast just accidentally brushed my arm every time either of us so much as moved.
“It is, darling,” she said in that sultry voice of hers. “We’re going to Mexico City. Just you and me. Tomorrow. Isn’t that exciting?”
I nodded. “It sure is. And what about Al Prince? And what will we use for money? And why don’t you see a psychiatrist?”
“I’ve ditched Al,” she said. “After you, darling, Al was like a sip of wine after a jolt of whiskey.” She brought up her hand to touch the taut bodice of her silk jersey dress. “And the money’s in here. There’s twelve thousand dollars in my bra, Marty.”
The drink-mixer on the service bar was making a terrific racket, almost in my ear. I was sure I’d misunderstood her. I’d thought she said twelve thousand dollars.
“How much?” I said.
She smiled at me and said it again. “Twelve thousand dollars.”
“Whose twelve thousand dollars?” I asked. I was looking past Gloria toward the check room. My four o’clock date, Julie Cole, was having an easy time of it, what with the hot weather. She was leaning on the counter, looking very hard away from me. A really luscious kid... I hoped this little session with Gloria wasn’t going to give cause for a post mortem. But Julie wouldn’t stay miffed long, I knew. Not when I gave her the bracelet I’d bought for her that afternoon and for which I’d plunked down four hundred bucks. She was a little girl who liked presents, was Julie, and she liked them small and bright and expensive.