Masters Of Noir Vol Iv Part 10

Carmic laughed, reached up inside his parachute hut. He pulled down a bulging brief case. I didn't have to see inside. I knew what was there-what Celia had been looking for-all the cash and negotiable securities he'd managed to get his hands on-his profits from Carmic Detectives.

"Well, baby, it's finally working. Just the way we planned. I wish you hadn't brought a 'copter. I'm not sure I can handle it."

I went cold. The nightmare was complete, I saw all they'd planned. Carmic disappeared, destroyed his plane. Celia searched for him and was lost in the search. That must be Handsome's part in this-to make sure the authorities wrote her off as well as her husband. Then much later two very rich people would turn up in Rio-and live happily ever after. I wasn't sure where that left Handsome, how much he was getting out of this.

But I saw where that left me. The river looked cold and black. I wouldn't be lonely-the alligators would keep me company. What was murder when Carmic faced prison and his wife faced poverty? It had been a well-planned if desperate gamble-but the odds hadn't been as long as they seemed.

Carmic pawed in the brief case. I saw the gleam of green bills, the black of an automatic. He said, "We'll take care of your boyfriend and then we'll get out of here."

"Curt." Celia's voice was deadly.

We both faced her, moving in slow motion.

"Curt," she said again. "You're not going anywhere. You were lost in a plane crash. Remember? We couldn't find you. I'm sorry, Curt. But I'm not sure I'd like Rio. Why should I run? I can go back to Washington-the rich widow of a martyred hero."

We both stared at the .25 automatic she'd taken from her shirt. A woman's weapon. She'd had it all the time. She'd saved it for this.

Curt's mouth dropped. His eyes widened, hurt and sick. Maybe no man can ever believe the woman he trusts will cross him. It was like that with Carmic. He stared at the gun in her hand and still didn't believe it. He looked in her eyes and saw it all there, and still doubted it. It was clear enough. She wasn't going to run the rest of her life. She didn't have to run. She could have his money and a life even better than she'd ever had. In her eyes he saw that had been her secret plan all along, no matter what lies she'd told him.

"You think you'll have her?" he said to me. "You think you'll be different than the hotel clerks and the band leader and football heroes on Sat.u.r.day night-" he was almost crying, the poor dope. "But you won't be different-they've got to be new. They've-"

The little gun in Celia's hand made a popping sound in the silence. It popped again. She didn't miss. He was too big a target and she was too close.

Curt stopped talking and he stopped breathing as he crumpled to the ground where he would stop living. I heeled around suddenly and grabbed Celia's wrist. I twisted hard. She didn't fight and she didn't cry out. She folded a little at the knees, bit her lip. She dropped the gun. I picked it up, thrust it in my pocket.

She stared at me. "I had to kill him, Jim. Don't you see? He was in the way. I love you and he was in the way. It's all right. Everybody thought he was dead-and now he really is. There's a quarter of a million dollars there, Jim. A quarter of a million! It's all ours. He didn't steal it-not all at once-n.o.body can ever claim it. He acc.u.mulated it, as steadily and as quickly as he could. There was some suspicion, but nothing they can prove. It's ours, Jim! Didn't you say you wanted money enough so you could afford me? We've got it now. We'll be rich. Richer than any dream you every had."

"You killed him. Murdered him."

"You don't know. How he has beaten me, insulted me, hurt and degraded me. He was a beast, Jim. He deserved to die." She shook, her shoulders sagging and she looked as if she might fall. I steadied her.

Her arms went around me, her trembling mouth found mine. She was sobbing then and I felt her warmth, her animal-like warmth against me. "Let's get home, Jim," she cried softly. "Let's get home."

I couldn't forget her husband's body, but there was nothing I could do for him. Not now, not here.

Celia didn't speak all the way back. She sat with the satchel of money between her feet.

I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything more to say. That little .25 had said it all back there on the black and bottomless river in the unchartered glades, into which the 'gators would have pulled Curt Carmic by now.

I thought about the way I had wanted money enough so I could afford Celia, and there it was-the money and Celia. But would I have come back, would she have let me come back if she could have handled a 'copter? If I had taught her, would I be doing the dead man's float beside her husband?

I set the plane down in the front yard. Handsome's car was baking in the sun beside Celia's Caddy.

I helped her out of the 'copter. I managed to hide what I felt. I tried to remember back to when she'd come here that first day. I couldn't make it. I was cold. In the blazing sun, it was ten below.

We reached the steps. We went in. The door slammed behind us, hard. Handsome had a gun in his hand. I stared at him. Then at her. I got it. They They had what they wanted now. had what they wanted now.

"Stay right where you are," he said to me.

"Do I have a choice?" I asked him. "Now take it easy with that thing ... "

Celia would be happy with him, him and Curt's money. They could buy the world. I was all that stood between them and freedom with that quarter million.

Handsome nodded at the satchel in Celia's hand. His mouth broke into a smile. "You found Curt." It was a statement. He dampened his lips. "You got the money."

Celia must have nodded. I wasn't looking at her. I was watching him, and that gun.

He jerked his head toward the Caddy. "Get Norton's gun, Ce. Take it and get into the car. I'll follow in mine, as soon as I've taken care of Hayseed here."

She didn't look at me. She went around behind me. She held the satchel in one hand-that previous, b.l.o.o.d.y satchel. With her hand he felt my pockets for the guns, mine and the one she'd used on Curt.

I felt lighter without the guns, and helpless. I sweated, wishing I could sucker Handsome near enough to jump him. I'd give him odds, I'd let him have the first shot. Celia had not moved from behind me.

"All right, Celia," he said. "Get away from him-get out to the car."

"No. I'm sorry. We can't get away with killing him. We'd have to run. Hide. Always. If you'd had the guts or brains to learn how to handle a 'copter, like I wanted, it might have been different. But no. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to run and have to hide forever."

She stepped away from me. It sounded like a cannon. I swear I felt the burn of it, my ear drum felt as though it were bursting.

The surprise and horror in Handsome's face were deeper even than Curt's had been. All the hours he must have spent planning the way it would be ... and now he, too, was in her way. She'd knocked him out of her life, because I'd stepped into it.

He looked as though somebody had hit him in the chest and left a dirty brown stain on his shirt. He rocked backward under the impact of the bullet but his knees buckled first and he toppled forward and fell slowly down to the floor.

I didn't move. I stared at him, knowing he was dead. I didn't have to touch him. His gun lay on the ground at my feet. I didn't touch it either.

Celia's voice seemed to be coming at me from across the widest everglades. I could hardly hear her.

"You'll say you shot him, Jim. It'll look better that way. He was prowling and you shot him. He really was prowling, wasn't he? They won't even hold you. Then we'll meet, in Rio-anywhere. But we won't have to stay, Jim. We can come back, live on the west coast or in the northwest. Anywhere, in fact. Jim, it'll be like you wanted!"

Like I wanted. I'd told her I'd do anything to have her and she'd dealt me in. Her hand was double-murder and she was making me her partner. I heard her that first night saying You might be held to that. And soon. You might be held to that. And soon.

I was hearing Curt Carmic asking if I thought I'd have her, if I thought I'd be different than all the other men she'd had. Old men and new money....

I was Number One on her hit parade now. I'd won the jackpot-the quarter million dollars and Celia-because I'd owned a 'copter, and was six-two and rugged and had fallen in love with her. But six months from now, a year? I felt Handsome looking up at me, sightlessly, and was sorry for him.

Who will be next, Celia? What man will you want tomorrow, next week, next year? How will I get it, Celia, when I'm the one who stands in your way?

She was staring at me, lips parted, breathing hard, reading my thoughts, the questions in my eyes. "You don't love me," she whispered softly. "You're like the rest of them. Just talk. I killed for you-and you're afraid of me. You'll turn me in, won't you? You'll tell them. All this money-and you'd tell them." Her voice rose, was almost a shriek.

I lunged as the gun came up in her hand. I grabbed her right wrist; the satchel flew out of her left hand. I twisted hard.

She fought at the trigger, and never fought me at all. Her arm went limp and I heard the gun blast between us, rocking the very earth. For a moment she quivered as though in a spasm and then she relaxed all over. I held her to keep her from falling. But it could do no good. She was falling away from me.

I let her down gently. She was no good, a killer. Mad, maybe, for all I knew. But all the same, my eyes blurred as I got into my car to go for the sheriff.

FACE OF EVIL by DAVID ALEXANDER

It was noon and the stocky detective with the swarthy face waited in the corridor of the City Hospital. He was a middle-aged man with heavily defined features. His coa.r.s.e dark hair was salted with gray and a little string of sweat beads glistened on his forehead. His heavy shoulders drooped from fatigue. His eyes were large and dark and there was weary compa.s.sion in them as if they had looked upon the thousand faces of human life, neither with despair nor hope, but only with a patient acceptance. The whites of the eyes were filamented with b.l.o.o.d.y threads. He had not slept the night before. He had stayed on duty because the psychopathic killer the papers called The Butcher was loose again.

The detective's name was Romano. He was a lieutenant of Homicide, Manhattan West.

A doctor in a white coat came out of a nearby hospital room and closed the door after him. He was accompanied by a nurse. The nurse was dark and young and pretty and Romano thought of his own daughter who was a student at Marymount College. Romano rose slowly from the hard chair in the corridor, sighing with exhaustion. His feet had begun to throb and ache. That was always the first sign that his body was rebelling against the demands he made of it. Soon his nervous stomach would start acting up and he'd feel the painful little twinges of rising blood pressure. He was getting old. He would have to take his pension soon. Years ago he would have been driven and sustained by excitement, when a big squeal was this close to the break. He felt nothing like that now. He was just dead-tired.

The man in the hospital room was the only living person who could identify The Butcher, who had murdered five women and dismembered their bodies in a manner horrible enough to justify the name the papers had awarded him.

Romano lumbered slowly toward the doctor, his big feet slapping heavily on the rubber linoleum of the floor.

"Has he come out of it, Doc?" Romano asked.

The doctor was a thin man with high cheekbones and a small mustache. His slim, white fingers toyed with the stethoscope that dangled around his neck.

"He's out of coma, if that's what you mean," the doctor answered. "But he's hardly rational. I would say he's still suffering from shock. He has a heart condition, we've determined that. The experience he went through last night-well, it's a wonder he's alive under the circ.u.mstances. It might be better to wait awhile, Lieutenant."

Romano said, "It's pretty urgent, Doc. It's about as urgent as it can get. Time may mean a lot."

The doctor hesitated. The pretty nurse looked disapprovingly at Romano. She does does look kind of like my daughter Ellie, Romano thought. She doesn't like me. Maybe she hates me, even, because she thinks I'm callous, that I want to torture a poor, sick man. look kind of like my daughter Ellie, Romano thought. She doesn't like me. Maybe she hates me, even, because she thinks I'm callous, that I want to torture a poor, sick man.

The doctor said, "I suppose you can go in for a little while, if you insist. But try to be considerate. Don't press him too much. You have to realize what he's been through."

Romano nodded. "I know," he said.

It sounded false, perhaps. But he did know. That was the tough part about being a cop. You saw all the violence and sadness and suffering there was and unless you were made of rock it became a part of you and you understood it and shared it. You understood afresh each time you saw the wild anguish in a woman's face, each time you looked into a man's dazed eyes and saw his quivering lips.

The doctor drew aside, said, "Just a few minutes, then. A very very few minutes, please." few minutes, please."

Romano opened the door and walked into the hospital room. He closed the door behind him.

The man on the bed stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. His name was Lester Ferguson. The Butcher had murdered his wife the night before. Ferguson had found her body on the floor of their bedroom when he returned from choir practice.

Romano stood quietly by the bed for moment. The man did not even look at him.

Romano said, "Do you remember me, Mr. Ferguson?"

With an obvious physical effort, Ferguson turned his head toward the detective. He said, "I-I'm not quite sure."

"I'm a police officer, Mr. Ferguson. Lieutenant Romano, Homicide. I talked to you a moment last night at your house before you collapsed. You told me you saw his face. You said you could identify the man."

Ferguson's voice was a whisper. "The face," he said.

Romano waited. Ferguson said nothing else. He was off in a world of his own again.

"You told me you saw the murderer's face, Mr. Ferguson," Romano persisted. "When I asked you if you could identify it, you answered, 'Yes, yes, I will remember it forever.' It was right after that you became ill. Can you describe the face to me, Mr. Ferguson? I hate to do this. I know what you've been through. But this man is an insane killer. Your wife was the fifth woman he has killed. The same s.a.d.i.s.t, the same psychopath committed all the murders, because his method was always the same. He'll kill again, Mr. Ferguson, unless we find him first. And you're the only person on earth who can identify him."

Ferguson had drifted off again. Finally, he said, "The face."

"Yes, sir," said Romano eagerly. "The face you saw last night. The face at the window. Can you describe the face, Mr. Ferguson?"

Ferguson's voice was husky. "It-it was the Face of Evil," he said.

Romano sighed heavily and seated himself on the edge of a straight chair beside the bed.

"It was an evil face," he prompted. "Can you tell me a little more, Mr. Ferguson? Was it a young face or an old one? Was it broad or thin? Were there any scars or other distinguishing marks, perhaps?"

Ferguson said, "You cannot describe the Face of Evil in such terms."

Romano wiped the sweat beads from his face with the edge of his hand. Why were hospitals always such stuffy places? Sick people should have fresh air.

"Please try to help me, Mr. Ferguson," he pleaded patiently. "We'll have to have a little more than that to go on."

"What did you say your name was?" Ferguson asked.

"Romano. Lieutenant Romano. I'm a detective a.s.signed to investigate the murder of your wife."

"Are you a religious man, Lieutenant?" Ferguson asked.

Romano winced. His wife Rosa and Father Riordan were always needling him about missing Ma.s.s. A cop's hours were so unpredictable. A cop got so d.a.m.ned tired.

"I believe in G.o.d, Mr. Ferguson," he said. "I'm a member of the church."

"All religious men have looked upon the face of G.o.d," Ferguson declared, his voice suddenly clear, animation coming into his dead-white face. "But how can you describe the face of G.o.d? You cannot describe the face of G.o.d as old or young or broad or thin or scarred or smooth."

The effort seemed to have exhausted the man on the bed. He fell back on the pillow, breathing heavily. Romano waited. Finally he said, "It was a human face you saw last night, Mr. Ferguson. You said you saw it staring at you through the window. It was the face of the man who murdered your wife."

Ferguson seemed exasperated at the detective's obtuseness. "Who can say if the Face of Evil is a human face?" he asked. "I mean no blasphemy, but it is like the face of G.o.d, because it is so many things. It is the face of a wanton woman who waits in shadows. It is the face of a soldier who is killing his enemy. It is the face of a maniac who runs amok with a flaming torch. It is the broad, red face of a lecherous sot who mouths obscenities. And it is the pinched, white face of a narcotics addict. Does that answer you? The Face of Evil is all these things."

Romano said, "Then it wasn't the face of a person you saw last night. It wasn't a real face, after all."

Ferguson lurched upright in the bed. His voice rose to shrill hysteria and Romano glanced apprehensively toward the closed door. "Of course it was real! It was a murderer's face. It was the face of the man who killed my wife!"

Romano sighed. He decided to try another tack. The doctor or the nurse would be in any second to tell him that his time was up.

"About the window, Mr. Ferguson," he said, consulting scribbled notes. "Your apartment is on the first floor. There is a bedroom window that opens on the little garden. It is quite probable the murderer entered and left through the window. It was not locked. But you told us you stood in the bedroom doorway and saw the face in the window directly opposite you. You were mistaken there, weren't you, Mr. Ferguson? There is no window directly opposite the doorway. The window is some fourteen feet to the right of the door. You would have to walk into the room, past your wife's body, and turn to the right to see the window. You were a little confused on this point. Under the circ.u.mstances, that is understandable."

"No! No!" Ferguson exclaimed. "I came home from the church. I was feeling ill. I have been having these little spells. It is my heart, they say. I sank down into a chair, exhausted. I tried to call my wife. I wanted the medicine in the bathroom cabinet. She did not answer. I must have dozed off, lost consciousness. When I came to, I called my wife again. She did not answer. I opened my bedroom door. Her body was there at my feet, with the knife beside it. I looked up and there was a window directly above my wife's body, directly opposite the door, and the naked Face of Evil was staring at me through the window."

Romano said, "I see." The door was opening quietly. The nurse had come to summon him. He said, "Thank you, Mr. Ferguson. I hope I haven't tired you. We'll talk again when you are feeling better."

Romano nodded politely to the nurse and left the room. He had learned never to hope too much when a break was in the making. Now he was not too disappointed. He had to work on the theory that Ferguson had actually seen a face, because that was the only possible lead to the madman who had butchered five women. When Ferguson's mind cleared he might be able to describe the face in recognizable terms. He might be able to go over the mug shots of the hundreds of psychopaths in the I. D. room and pick out one and say, "That is the face." Romano had to hold to that. The Butcher had killed five times in seven months. He would kill again if they failed to find him.

Romano returned to Manhattan West, the old precinct house on the edge of h.e.l.l's Kitchen that was the clearing house for all the crimes of violence committed west of Fifth Avenue. He mounted a flight of worn stairs and entered the cubbyhole that served him as an office. A green-shaded bulb burned above the desk night and day, for no light came through the small window on an air-shaft. A large, young detective named Grierson, Romano's a.s.sistant, lay sleeping on the cracked leather couch. Grierson was a detective first-grade, which meant he drew lieutenant's pay, even though he did not have the permanent rank on the Department rolls. And he's only been a cop for seven years, Romano thought. Grierson was the new type of cop. He had been graduated from City College and on his nights off he studied law at N. Y. U. Romano sank down in the creaking swivel chair and sighed heavily. He reached down and loosened the laces of his shoes. As he had expected, his nervous stomach was acting up. He took a small bottle of soda tablets from a drawer, shook out two. He poured water from a thermos jug on the desk and swallowed the tablets.

Grierson awakened and sat up on the couch, smoothing down his black hair with a big hand. He hadn't been to bed either, since The Butcher's latest kill had broken. Grierson yawned and said, "How is it?"