And then my fist collided with his jaw, and the gun clattered to the concrete, and I hit him again just before he dropped down alongside the gun.
It was all over for Stu Shaughnessy.
13.
We sat together in the restaurant, the three of us. George Hilton looked peculiarly spruced in his dress-up clothes, and Andy looked wonderful, and I couldn’t get enough looking at her.
“I don’t understand,” I said, “how you realized it was Stu. All right, even if you did know he was going to marry Cynthia...”
“The papers, silly,” she said, squeezing my hand and smiling brightly. I wanted to kiss her right then and there, but I remembered George Hilton.
“What papers, doll?” I asked.
“The ones Charlie brought in. He was very nice, Charlie,” Andy said. “I hope you won’t go too hard on him. After all, he was just being paid for a job.”
“Charlie is a kidnaper,” George said, “no matter how you slice it.”
“Still, he was very nice to me. Even when he caught me phoning you, Jon, he simply hung up and said, ‘Did you tell him where you were?’ And when I said I hadn’t, he just warned me to stay away from the phone after that.”
“As a matter of fact,” George said, “he ripped the phone from the wall. When we got there, we found it that way.”
“Yes,” Andy said. “Charlie was very strong.”
“I never knocked on so many doors in my life,” George said, sighing.
“Well, thank you, sir,” Andy said, smiling.
“About the papers,” I prompted. “What papers?”
“The daily newspapers. It was Saturday’s paper that carried the story about Cynthia having been pregnant.”
“That’s right,” George said. “We released the story Friday night.”
“Well, the minute I saw that, I went over the conversations again. That was when the wedding bells rang. It seemed like the only thing that made sense.”
“Did you see this paper?” I asked, pulling out the phony headlines I’d had made in the penny arcade.
Andy looked at the bold black ANDREA MANN ASSAULT VICTIM, and then squealed, “Oh, you darling little prophet,” and threw her arms around my neck.
George Hilton looked at the headline and said, “Huh?”
Andy took her mouth away from mine and winked at George. “Silly,” she said, “he just proposed!”
Which I guess I had.
Kiss Me, Dudley
by Hunt Collins
Everybody was after me — Dudley Sledge. But I knew what to do. I picked up my machine gun and my hand grenades and my rifle and my brass knuckles...
She was cleaning fish by the kitchen sink when I climbed through the window, my .45 in my hand. She wore a low-cut apron, shadowed near the frilly top. When she saw me, her eyes went wide, and her lips parted, moist and full. I walked to the sink, and I picked up the fish by the tail, and I batted her over the eye with it.
“Darling,” she murmured.
I gave her another shot with the fish, this time right over her nose. She came into my arms, and there was ecstasy in her eyes, and her breath rushed against my throat. I shoved her away, and I swatted her full on the mouth. She shivered and came to me again. I held her close, and there was the odor of fish and seaweed about her. I inhaled deeply, savoring the taste. My father had been a sea captain.
“They’re outside,” I said, “all of them. And they’re all after me. The whole stinking, dirty, rotten, crawling, filthy, obscene, disgusting mess of them. Me. Dudley Sledge. They’ve all got guns in their maggotty fists, and murder in their grimy eyes.”
“They’re rats,” she said.
“And all because of you. They want me because I’m helping you.”
“There’s the money, too,” she reminded me.
“Money?” I asked. “You think money means anything to them? You think they came all the way from Washington Heights for a lousy ten million bucks? Don’t make me laugh.” I laughed.
“What are we going to do, Dudley?”
“Do? Do? I’m going to go out there and cut them down like the unholy rats they are. When I get done, there’ll be twenty-six less rats in the world, and the streets will be a cleaner place for our kids to play in.”
“Oh, Dudley,” she said.
“But first...”
The pulse in her throat began beating wildly. There was a hungry animal look in her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath and ran her hands over her hips, smoothing the apron. I went to her, and I cupped her chin in the palm of my left hand.
“Baby,” I said.
Then I drew back my right fist and hit her on the mouth. She fell back against the sink, and I followed with a quick chop to the gut, and a fast uppercut to the jaw. She went down on the floor and she rolled around in the fish scales, and I thought of my sea captain father, and my mother who was a nice little lass from New England. And then I didn’t think of anything but the blonde in my arms, and the .45 in my fist, and the twenty-six men outside, and the four shares of Consolidated I’d bought that afternoon, and the bet I’d made on the fight with One-Lamp Louie, and the defective brake lining on my Olds, and the bottle of rye in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet back at Dudley Sledge, Investigations.
I enjoyed it.
She had come to me less than a week ago.
Giselle, my pretty red-headed secretary, had swiveled into the office and said, “Dud, there’s a woman to see you.”
“Another one?” I asked.
“She looks distraught.”
“Show her in.”
She had walked into the office then, and my whole life had changed. I took one look at the blonde hair piled high on her head. My eyes dropped to the clean sweep of her throat, to the figure filling out the green silk dress. When she lifted her green eyes to meet mine, I almost drowned in their fathomless depths. I gripped the desk top and asked, “Yes?”
“Mr. Sledge?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Melinda Jones,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Jones.”
“Oh, please call me Agnes.”
“Agnes?”
“Yes. All my friends call me Agnes. I... I was hoping we could be friends.”
“What’s your problem, Agnes?” I asked.
“My husband.”
“He’s giving you trouble?”
“Well, yes, in a way.”
“Stepping out on you?”
“Well, no.”
“What then?”
“Well, he’s dead.”
I sighed in relief. “Good,” I said. “What’s the problem?”
“He left me ten million dollars. Some of his friends think the money belongs to them. It’s not fair, really. Just because they were in on the bank job. Percy...”
“Percy?”
“My husband. Percy did kill the bank guards, and it was he who crashed through the road block, injuring twelve policemen. The money was rightfully his.”
“Of course,” I said. “No doubt about it. And these scum want it?”
“Yes. Oh, Mr. Sledge, I need help so desperately. Please say you’ll help me. Please, please. I beg you. I’ll do anything, anything.”
“Anything?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she wet her lips with a sharp, pink tongue. Her voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Anything,” she said.
I belted her over the left eye.