He walked over to the window, stared out. “All nice and neat and nobody benefits — or do you, Baby?”
“What do you mean, Johnny?”
Liddell didn’t turn around. “Tony was through with you, wasn’t he, Terry? He was getting set to throw you out and you didn’t like it. He must have been, or he wouldn’t have let that little gunsel of his look you over like a piece of beef. When Tony’s through with you, there isn’t much you can do about it, is there, Baby?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “You were determined not to stand still for it, that it, Terry?”
The blonde shook her head, couldn’t seem to frame words with her lips.
“You don’t have to tell me. I know you were in it up to your neck. You went to Marty with an idea.”
“I didn’t, Johnny. You’re wrong, I—”
“It had to be someone close enough to Tony to know how soft he really was. It wasn’t Mickey, or he wouldn’t have stood there and taken that one in his belly. It had to be you.”
The blonde caught her lower lip between her teeth, chewed it.
“All right,” she said, “I did go to Marty. You knew Tony — he was fixing to swing me into that stable of hustlers of his, shipping me around the country like I was cattle or something. I told Marty how easy it would be to scare Tony. But that’s all I intended. Just to scare him. I didn’t know about the guy with the rifle.”
She walked over to the couch, helped herself to a drink. “The first I heard about him was when they told me Tony was dead. I rushed over to see Marty and he was dead in his apartment.”
“You’re a liar, Terry. You knew all about the guy on the roof. You set Tony up for the kill by opening the curtains and giving the signal.”
“You can’t prove that, Liddell.”
“I don’t have to. They can only burn you once — for killing Marty Cowan. And they’ll have no trouble proving you did that.”
“What do you mean?”
Liddell shrugged. “You signed that one, Baby. Marty was drinking with whoever killed him, but the killer was wearing gloves. It’s a cinch it was a woman.”
“Why?”
“Because a gun smart hood like Cowan, going up against a killer like Tony, even a softened-up Tony, would never let anyone but a woman get that close to him without grabbing for his gun. You probably even wore the gloves home, left them there to be found with the powder stains on them.”
“Who else knows this, Johnny?”
Liddell shrugged. “No one — yet.”
“You wouldn’t turn me in, Johnny. Not now — not after we’ve—”
“Turn it off, Terry. You set me up for the kill when you set Tony up. You signaled your boy with the reacher to take two, Tony and me. You couldn’t have known that Mickey would come into the room just at eleven. Your boy took care of two, thought that was all, started to leave. That’s when I got him.”
The girl sobbed deep in her throat. “Even if that were true, I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know—”
“Is that why you just tried to frame me for Marty Cowan’s kill — by tipping the police off to the fact there was a killing and I was there?”
“I didn’t!”
“It had to be you, Terry. You were the only one who knew I was there. Only the person who killed Cowan could have known enough to tip the cops. I checked the switchboard on the way in. You made a call while I was gone.” He took a deep breath. “That wasn’t smart, Baby.”
“Maybe I didn’t think you were coming back, Johnny,” she told him softly. “Maybe you’re not too smart, either. Turn around.”
He turned around slowly, looked into the muzzle of his own .45 in the blonde’s hands. “I guess it’s like they say — if you want a thing done right, do it yourself.”
“Then it’s all true?”
“Sure. I told Marty that Tony was soft, ready for picking, that we could scare him out and take over. When Tony didn’t go for the shake and didn’t take off, Marty started to get scared. I had to kill him to keep him from backing out.”
Her finger whitened on the trigger.
“Tony had it coming. He was getting ready to throw me over. Only I wasn’t standing still for it. I’m not standing still for anything from anybody any more. Not even you, Liddell.” She clenched her teeth, squeezed the trigger.
The .45 clicked metallically.
“It shoots better with bullets in it,” Liddell said.
She stared down at the empty gun, offered no resistance when he walked over, wrenched it from her hand.
“I didn’t intend to do it, Johnny,” she said. “Honest. I didn’t—”
He stood there looking at the pure beauty of her face, counted off the men whose deaths already lay at her door.
He raised his hand, hit her across the cheek with the flat of his palm, knocked her sprawling. She lay there quietly, a thin trickle of blood on her chin, while he phoned the police.
The Tears of Evil
by Craig Rice
Everybody loved Kathy — which was one of the reasons she was killed.
It was, John J. Malone decided, a most satisfactory party. For one thing, George and Kathy Weston had invited only a few people to help them celebrate their crystal wedding anniversary; and, for another, none of the guests had yet expressed amazement over his personal taste in beverages. Straight gin with a beer chaser had never seemed an unusual combination to him, and it was a relief not to hear it referred to in incredulous tones by people who didn’t know what they were missing.
Malone bit the end off a cigar, lit it, and inhaled it deeply. Fifteen years married, he thought. A long time. And it couldn’t happen to two nicer people than George and Kathy.
He had stationed himself by the table on which the liquor had been set out, and now, as he glanced around the Westons’ luxurious living room, he discovered with some surprise that he was alone. Then he heard laughter from the direction of the kitchen: and now the question was, should he stay here and guard the liquor, or should he go out to the kitchen and join the others?
He had no choice, of course. He leaned his hip against the liquor table, sighed, and broke the seal on a fresh bottle of gin. To stand guard duty properly, a man needed strength.
The clear liquid had just reached the brim of his glass when Malone glanced up and saw George Weston coming toward him from the direction of the stairs. There was something about George’s handsome, flat-planed face that, somehow, made Malone forget his drink. He put the glass and cigar down slowly, while a strange tenseness stiffened his short body and tightened the muscles across his stomach. George was walking toward him as if every step was an effort, as if he were half drunk. But he was not drunk, Malone knew. George Weston was a teetotaler. And yet he was walking across his own living room almost as if he were lost in it.
When he was within a few feet of Malone, George stopped. His eyes came up to meet Malone’s.
“Malone,” he whispered. “Malone... for God’s sake...”
Malone pushed away from the table and stepped close to his friend. He’d seen men in shock, and in hysteria; he’d seen men in most of the ways a man can be — but he’d never seen anyone with the expression that George Weston wore now. The nearest thing to it had been the look on the face of a punch-drunk prizefighter he had watched, an instant before the fighter went down from a knockout punch.
“Damn it, George,” he said sharply. “What’s wrong with you?” He put both wide hands on George’s shoulders and shook him. “What’s wrong?”
George wet his lips. “It’s Kathy,” he said. “She’s—” He looked at Malone, and his lips moved, but there was no sound.