5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 sounded the steady, rhythmic sound of a hammer. Bang-bang-bang, pause. If the guy with the hammer were a crafts- man, if he were driving eight-penny nails, he was a skilled carpenter. Two bangs to set the nail deep, a third bang to drive the nail home tight in the board. Bang-bang-bang, pause. I strolled towards the mesh-curtained windows beyond the further twin bed and glimpsed the blue lake. A hundred yards distant, a man knelt on a boat dock. The hammer lifted, fell. Three times the hammer banged, and he pulled another nail from an apron pocket. A good carpenter, that man. Just three bangs and— I turned sideways, slowly. - Oh, I would have found her without the aid of that bang-banging carpenter. Sooner or later, I’d have gotten around to casing this room and found her. She would have waited. They always wait for you when they have a bullet hole in the heart. I knelt between the bed and the two windows. She was young, say twenty- two or three. She had curly black hair and smooth, tanned skin. She had full, red lips and a soft jaw line. There was more smooth, tanned skin above a bra and below the bra and below the panty girdle. The left leg was angled under the extended right leg. The bullet hole was no larger than pencil width. HOEVER had gunned her was a craftsman with a .22. The killer had known where the heart was and had hit the bull’s-eye. She had died quickly, mercifully, with no more fuss than a wasted breath. Something stirred in the room and I stood up. He had slid from the closet at the far side—a small, slick-looking man, hat- less. He had sharp, beady eyes, and the expression on his face seemed to warn: “I could go for a fast buck.” Somebody had cuffed him around recently. His right eye was puffy with dried blood FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE under it. He had used iodine on a long, thin gash down one cheek. His left hand was jabbed into one coat pocket, the right held close to his body, the elbow slightly away from the coat. He had a short arm with stubby fingers and the fingers wrapped around a gun butt. Not a .22 toy, Darling. He gripped a Luger, and the muzzle yawned openly, like the Holland Tunnel at 3 A.M. “Yeah?” he asked delicately. I guiped. “She’s dead.” - “Veah?”’ “Somebody killed her.” “Yeah?” “With a gun. A small gun. Not like yours.” The Luger moved a fraction. something,” he suggested. I said, “I’m a friend of Joe’s. Look, Joe sent me. He said something about a couple of girls. He said—” “Get under the bed, Joe’s friend.” He was very sure of himself. I crawled under the bed. There was dust on the rug, and it stuck to my nice, flan- nel suit. The crease on the trousers would be ruined, but Mrs. Macon would like that. Maybe, when I returned to Ridgewood, I’d look more like her ver- sion of a private detective. A door closed. A key turned in a lock. It’s safe to come out, Darling! I rolled out. No bang-banging from the boat dock. The carpenter had run out of nails. I ran to the door. Locked. I opened a window at the front, stuck a leg over the sill, and heard a car start up and move off with a tearing of gears. When I reached the convertible by the four-car garage, the sound of his re- treating engine was a faint purr in the distance. “Say il 4 roar were a lot of things I could have done, like chasing him or phoning the police. Or hopping over to the Clay Building and picking up that .38 in my MICLOOOKS (C (C(O)