5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 40: what you’re looking at

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

40 the cigarette in an ash tray. “What kept you, Darling?” It wasn’t a term of endearment. Some- body had been pretty cute in this game. Somebody had set this game up, for some reason I didn’t know, and— UST a whisper of sound at my back. Before I could turn, before I could even think about the gun in my pocket, and before I could even snap, “Damn her—” something hit me hard on the back of the neck. I pitched forward and saw the rug coming up to meet my face. That was the last thing I saw. The last thing I heard came from the man in the lounge chair. He was snickering. Some kind of dance music awakened me. It was the radio turned up too loud, and the sound hurt my throbbing head. I rolled over. My head ached some more, but not nearly as much as I had expected it would. Somebody who knew how to handle a blackjack and hit me in just the right spot, with not enough force to kill, but just the right amount to knock aman out for a while. The music stopped with a crash. An unctuous voice said, “This is Mike Todd, your m.c. for the Hour of Stars broad- cast, featuring—” On wooden legs, I got up, walked to the radio, and shut it off. Then I pulled the small automatic out of my coat pock- et, sniffed the barrel. It hadn’t been fired. The little slick-haired man whom somebody had worked over recently still sat in the lounge chair with his feet on the hassock. There was a bullet hole in the front of his open-necked, tan shirt. There was a little blood on the shirt, but not nearly as much as you’d imagine. He was quite dead. I opened the shirt front, eyed the wound. It was no wider than the width of a pencil and the blood around the hole had just started to coagulate. The killer who was so sure of his accuracy that he knocked off Kitty Watrous and this man with a .22 had been around wei If the killer were a he. FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE Using a handkerchief, I fumbled out his billfold. He had a name. Anthony Y. Norelli, and a Paterson address that was no good to him any more. Age 28, and a lot of his years had not been good ones. There was a picture of a girl’s face in the wallet’s window, and I shook it out, careful of fingerprints. Under the light of a bridge lamp, I studied the face. Soft, light-colored hair around a pretty face. Large, dark eyes, and the expression on her face, despite what had happened in the last few hours, almost virginal. But you never know. She was Eve Ankins, Mrs. Lester Joseph Macon’s maid out at 14 Airline Drive, Ridgewood, New Jersey. She was tied in to Kitty Watrous, dead at Crystal Lake; and tied in to Anthony Y. Norelli, dead in that chair; tied in to young Joe. Macon, with twenty-one grand and dia- monds in his pocket. Yes, tied in to a .22 gun. She had slipped up, had pretty Eve Ankins. After she had sapped me-into unconsciousness and gunned her boy friend with the .22, she should have remembered to take this photograph of herself from Anthony’s billfold. Police don’t like a corpse dumped in their lap. It interferes with their pinochle game in the back room. But when they get the picture of a pretty girl from a dead man’s billfold, they never give up until they have a name and address to go with the pretty face. They would catch her. Put the pretty picture back in the billfold, Darling. I put the pretty picture in my coat pocket, along with the small automatic. I put the billfold back into Anthony’s hip pocket and even buttoned the button on the pocket, like it had been. “Why,” I muttered, “had she killed Anthony, and not you?” I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Some- times, you’re just happy because you can breathe. I started to leave the room, remem- bered something. Using the handker- chief, I lifted the French phone, waited until a voice said, “Number, please,” MICLOO Go S