“Yeah, yeah, Leroy,” Quinn said. He could see good old pious Nick Rizzo, his black eyes flashing, and then turning his back on the frenzied, sick girl to feed his guppies. And there’s that ring in his pocket that can buy her another fix. What’s a tap on the head? And while at it, maybe the cash register. But she was too trip-happy to pop it open.
“Those tea cups, they made me think, just like you, huh, Mr. Quinn? And we were right, it was Anna, you know.”
Turning slowly, Quinn looked wearily at the big man, and Leroy’s eyes suddenly inflated with fear, like an animal that’s trapped but doesn’t really know why he should feel that way.
“I... I done wrong, huh? You think Nick he’d be mad at me in heaven?” He was backing toward the doorway.
Quinn felt numb as he watched him. Then he heard the heavy footsteps as Leroy ran down the stairs and disappeared into the bar.
He hoped Leroy would keep running until he was out of the Purple district, out of the wormy mess in which Nick had tried to maintain his little oasis, his Eden. Only, finally, Nick’s guard dropped. And the district had finally gotten to the Eden, too.
Through its Eve.
The lieutenant went downstairs and found a narrow opening at the bar. He waited patiently for his drink.
The Cut-Out Pasted Heads
by Pauline C. Smith
A drab little handmaiden of death, she had been. Now it was her turn to die...
Of all possible murder victims, Mary Oliphant was the most unlikely, being submissive, subservient, silent and sluggish. So who would want to kill Mary?
The idea was unthinkable.
However, someone had thought of it.
I was closely questioned by the police because it was assumed I probably knew her best. Actually, it turned out that I didn’t know her at all — not then, anyway. Not until much later.
She lived two doors from me, and due to the fact that the neighbors between us, a retired couple, were anti-social to the point of hostility, Mary had only one place to go. And that was to my house, where she sat, as imperturbable as a Buddha, hands clasped across her fat in solemn expectation that I would fill up the vast wasteland of her daily life with coffee and conversation. The first she swished around her teeth and tonsils like a mouthwash before swallowing and the second simply lulled her with sound.
She was found in one of the high backed rockers in her phlegmatic little living room, all brown and beige, as impersonal and as passionless as was Mary herself. I knew the rocker, one of a pair, upholstered with tan-colored seat and back pads of an uninspired print. She had been hanged by a piece of cord cut from her own drapery pull, looped around her neck and tied to the high back of the chair.
“What was she like, Mrs. Morton?” the police asked.
What was Mary like? I honestly didn’t know.
“Did she have any visitors?”
I shook my head.
“Family? Relatives?”
“Not that I know of,” I said.
The officer consulted his notes.
“Yet you knew her two years?” he asked incredulously.
Mary had moved in as quietly unobtrusive as she had lived in that little house these past two years. I’m a friendly, outgoing widow and with that withdrawn couple next door, the self-centered parents beyond and all the others along the block coupled up and off to work, I went over with a pot of coffee and a plate of sandwiches to welcome her.
When you welcome somebody, you question them.
Like: “I’m a widow. I’ve got one daughter and two grandchildren five hundred miles away that I don’t see often enough.” Then you pause and expect whoever it is you’re questioning to lean forward and say, “Oh, me too,” and tell all about their children and grandchildren.
Not so with Mary. She simply said she never lived in any one place for long, which seemed to mean she never lived in any one place long enough to acquire either children or grandchildren. So I talked of Susan and the kids while she listened.
She used to phone me every morning at eight o’clock sharp, always beginning her conversation with, “What’s doing?” the vague lead-in question that not only relinquishes the burden of conversation but requests a schedule of activity. One of these days, I promised myself, I wouldn’t answer that eight o’clock call.
But that first morning the call failed to come, instead of triumph, I felt a sense of guilt because it was not there not to answer.
The second morning of silence I began to feel rejected, so in the early afternoon, I phoned her and received no answer.
That was when I really began to worry. What in the world was wrong with Mary Oliphant? Where in the world could she be? By going to the far rear of my property, I could see over into hers and she certainly wasn’t in her back yard; and by going out to my hedge in front I could see into her front yard. She wasn’t there.
Mary had no car, and with all of California on wheels, bus service being terrible if at all, the only time Mary went anywhere, she went with me. I’d say, “I have to go to the supermarket,” and over she’d come to go along. I’d say, “There are a couple of good garage sales in the east part of town. Want to go along?” She always did and while I picked and pounced, my imagination creatively transforming other people’s junk into my very own treasures, Mary placidly followed without interest. “You know what?” I said. “You need a hobby.”
“I have a hobby,” she answered without expression. What hobby, for heaven’s sake, follow-the-leader? I thought she was joking, making fun of herself for being such a dud. But she had a hobby all right, as I learned after her death.
I have never seen such apathy. That’s why I was so surprised when I noticed the mailman stuffing all those news magazines in her mailbox each week. Mary Oliphant and the news? The idea was unbelievable. So I sprinkled my monologue with news events, not that I know so much about what’s going on except what I read in the local paper and see on Channel 2, but Mary didn’t know even that much and cared less.
On the third morning with no call from her, I began to act.
I phoned first, letting it ring eight or ten times before I banged down the receiver and raced out my front door. I flew past the hostile house and tore up Mary’s walk and her steps and had my finger on the bell almost before I’d hit the porch. It rang all right. I could hear the double chimes.
Nothing happened.
I tried the door, which was locked tighter than a drum. The drapes were closed so I couldn’t see inside. Then I remembered the mailbox and leaped off the steps, raced down the walk, opened it up and pulled out what was in there. One news magazine, the light bill and about three pieces of occupant junk mail. Well! I got my light bill two days before, so either Mary was inside that house so sick she couldn’t raise her head or she was gone, and where would she go and how?
I shuddered at what I refused to think about, stuffed the mail back in the box and hurried home to call the police. They fed me all the bromides like she’s probably gone on a little trip... Mary Oliphant? She’s probably visiting someone... Mary? Anyone but me? Finally I got mad and they got disgusted and came out and got into the house and found her hanged from the back of her rocker.
Who would want to kill Mary Oliphant?
Then came the questions and the raised eyebrows when I admitted I didn’t know item one about her, even though I had talked to her or seen her every blessed day of those two years, excepting, of course, for the week last Christmas and the one before that I spent in San Diego with Susan and the kids and the two weeks last summer I was there.