“That’s close, shamus; you’re smarter than I thought you were,” said Mendoza. “You’re right about everything except the part about Grey and Dyer not coming across with the pendant. That’s not right; Mr. Grey gave us the pendant tonight. Look.” Mendoza reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a gold, heart-shaped pendant on a fine chain. He dangled it in front of my face. It was exactly as Mrs. Dyer had described it — except there wasn’t a large diamond at the top cleft, just a large hole. “So you see,” Mendoza went on, “I’m not upset because they didn’t give me the pendant. I’m upset because they didn’t give me all of the pendant. Without the big rock, it’s not even worth twenty grand: small change. And I don’t deal for small change.”
Robert Grey made a noise in his throat. His eyes became wide, and he looked at Mendoza with a pleading expression. He said, “But, Mr. Mendoza, I’ve already told you what happened to the large diamond. Pamela kept it. I told her you would be angry, but she wouldn’t listen to reason. You must go and talk to her if you want the diamond.”
I started laughing. My laughter filled the dark room with a strange sound. Three dumb faces stared at me.
“Stop it,” ordered Mendoza.
I didn’t.
Mendoza jerked his head at Eddie, who came up from the door. Eddie switched his gun to his left hand and hit me in the mouth with his right. I tasted blood immediately, and my laughing stopped. Then I laughed some more. “Again,” said Mendoza. Eddie took a good swing this time and knocked me prone onto the couch. Blood flowed into my mouth.
“What’s so funny, shamus?” Mendoza asked.
I looked up at Mendoza and felt cold hatred. “You should know,” I said through thick, numb lips. “Ask your gunboy about last night.”
Mendoza looked over at Eddie, but Eddie just shook his head. “Make it plain, Hammond,” said Mendoza.
“Pamela Dyer is dead,” I said for the third time today. “Eddie strangled her after they knocked me out Then he dumped her in the backseat of my car, where I found her this morning.”
Eddie shook his head furiously. “No, Mr. Mendoza, I didn’t do anything like that. When I left the house last night, Mrs. Dyer was plenty alive.”
I sat upright again and looked over at Grey. He was as nervous as a squirrel. “Sorry, Eddie, my mistake,” I said. “You didn’t kill Pamela Dyer; Grey did. I joked about it when I went to see him this afternoon, but now I see I was right. He must have come to the house after you left to pressure Mrs. Dyer into turning over the pendant.” I turned to Mendoza. “That was the same reason you sent Eddie over there for, wasn’t it? Mrs. Dyer was holding out.”
Mendoza nodded.
“Well,” I said, “Grey figured he and Pamela Dyer couldn’t afford to hold out against you, so he went to see her himself. That’s when she told him she was keeping the big diamond. Grey must have gone berserk: he knew you wouldn’t stand for it. He strangled her and took what was left of the pendant with him as a peace offering. He put Mrs. Dyer’s body in my car because he wanted to frame me for the job, or he figured I would get rid of the body. Just like I did.
“There was only one problem. The maid at Mrs. Dyer’s house saw the whole thing before she went home last night. That, or Grey thought she did. He went over to her house this afternoon to talk to her about it, but I showed up while he was there. He panicked again. After I left, he smashed the maid’s skull with the rolling pin she’d been using in the kitchen. When I bumbled in a final time, he was forced to take a swing at me too. With me lying on the floor next to the body, he called the police and left in a hurry.” I addressed Grey. “I bet you were pretty surprised when I showed up at your office right on your heels.”
Things happened. Grey yelled something I didn’t understand and dove at me on the couch. Eddie tried to block him, but the fat man’s momentum was too much for Eddie. They both hit the couch, one on top of the other. I crawled over to them and made a play for Eddie’s gun; this time I got hold of it. Mendoza made a move with his hand toward his jacket. Too bad for him. The gun jolted and three slugs found their way into his gut. Mendoza dropped to the floor, his skull making a thud as it hit. I giggled.
Eddie and Grey hesitated for a moment and then reached to restrain me. Too bad for them. I worked the trigger quickly. Two bullets slammed into Eddie’s red face. The blood splattered on my arms and the couch. I turned the gun on Grey and fired. He slumped on top of my legs, died. I giggled some more.
I threw Grey’s body off me and stood up. Blood was everywhere in the dark room. I looked down at the bodies and leered obscenely. I wasn’t human.
My head was reeling, and I began to feel very, very sick. I went to the toilet and threw up. I phoned the police then.
The police really put me through the works. They didn’t like the dead bodies on the apartment floor; they didn’t like the missing diamond that they never found; they didn’t like my running from the maid’s house; they didn’t like the way I moved Pamela Dyer’s body; and most of all, they didn’t like me. I didn’t blame them. I was released after a seventy-two-hour confinement on suspicion of murder because of lack of evidence.
I quit then. I gave up. I stopped trying to be the clever private detective with all the witty chatter. I had had enough of the mindless killing, the low-class punks, and the high-class chislers I had to deal with, and the general feeling of cheapness. I was tired of being everyone’s lackey. Give it to Hammond; he can take it. He loves being smacked in the head or punched around. Go ahead, hit him some more. He’s tough. Yeah, he’s tough — but not tough enough.
Delbert was horrified with the way things turned out. He couldn’t accept the fact that I had killed three people. When I told him I was quitting, he offered me a job selling insurance with his company. I thanked him, but I wasn’t ready to go that far in the other direction.
I saw Lynn Marrow a couple of times more, but her attraction to me wore off when she finally realized I was never going to work as a private detective again. It wasn’t my fault. I had warned her once — once when I didn’t realize how right I was: there’s no such thing as private eyes.
David A. Bowman
Pincushion
David A. Bowman describes himself as “just a regular guy” who likes good fiction — Jim Harrison and Jonathan Valin in particular — and has been practicing for ten years to write it. “Pincushion” is his first published story, if you don’t count “The Big Nap,” a mystery for young readers on computer diskette distributed by Scholastic Software, where he works as an editor. Mr. Bowman is presently at work on a private-eye novel. He is twenty-eight.
The woman showed up at his door with a Great Dane taller than a bicycle.
“Mrs. Rhine, please leave your friend outside,” Foy Laneer said, trying to smile.
She let go of the dog’s leash and it plowed past Foy’s belly to the middle of the office, where it thumped down on the mg and began panting.
Mrs. Rhine edged past Foy and sat down on the chair beside his desk. She was not a small woman. He could imagine her scooping mashed potatoes onto trays in a cafeteria.
Foy sat down behind his desk and asked Mrs. Rhine why she wanted to hire him to follow her husband.
“I think my husband is doing adultery again,” she said, dropping her hands into her lap.
Foy got out a legal pad and pen to take notes. Mrs. Rhine told him that her husband was never at his office Tuesday and Thursday afternoons when he was supposed to be. She kept track of the daily mileage on his Impala. On those days he was driving 120 extra miles.
“Maybe he’s out on business,” Foy suggested with a shrug.