5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

DEATH ALL AROUND ME spat. It was a lovely section. Several steps led up to the apartment house door which was made of brass grillwork. Once there’d been glass on the other side of the grill. That had been a long time ago. I stepped into the lobby, and the assorted smells of cook- ing cabbage, fish, and garlic welcomed me. I was so used to it I hardly no- ticed. The mailbox said Mrs. Joan Haven lived on the third floor. I went up there, moving from daylight to semi- gloom as I climbed the stairs. There were ‘half a dozen apartments on the third floor. Mrs. Haven was especially stylish. Her name was typewritten on the piece of paper thumbtacked to her door. It was a weary business, and I often wondered how I’d drifted into it. Need of money, I suppose. In the law busi- ness, it’s a matter of reputation. If you become known as a patient, diligent guy, you turn into a title searcher and spend the rest of your days working over dusty record books. Defend a cou- ple of punks and get them off, and you’re a criminal lawyer. Take civil suits and sue the hell out of people who should be doing the suing, and you’re a smart civil lawyer. But collect a few bills and —you’re a bill collector with a degree. I knocked on the door. Qe ULELING slippered feet ap- proached the door and it opened on a womah who’d become fat through carelessness. She’d probably been a knockout in her day, but there wasn’t much left of her. She had washed-out blue eyes, hair that was no longer blond and was too dirty to be called any real color. She wore a_ shapeless house- dress, a couple of sizes too tight, and she had legs like an eighteen-year-old chorus girl. “Mrs. Haven? Joan Haven?” “Yes,” she said. The voice came from an alcohol-scratched throat, and her breath was gin laden. “My name is Johnny Craig. I’m a lawyer.” “A lawyer?” Her faded eyes grew wider. “Who sent you? What are you gonna do—try to make a deal?” “The Messick Corporation Sent me. You haven’t paid for your electric dish- washer.” The hope that gleamed in her eyes went out as if it had been forcibly with- drawn. The corners of her mouth went down. She shrugged, walked away from the. door, and went over to a battered mahogany table on which stood a bottle half full of gin. She poured some of it into a smudged tumbler. “Come in and close the door,” she said. “Do you think I want my nosy neighbors to know ?” I closed the door. “Look, Mrs. Haven, we can work something out. I don’t want to take the washer back.” She took a long drink of the stuff, and it went down like water. “You can have it, mister. The damn thing busted three months ago.” “Then I’ve got to have the money,” I said. She looked me over the same way a man looks over an interesting girl. She finished what wagin the glass. I looked right back at her. She flushed slightly. “Go ahead, say what you think of me. I’m a busted-down, heel-blistered old bag.” “Cut it out, Mrs. Haven. All I’m after is the money.” “Yeah. I’m after the same thing only I don’t get too much any more. You think maybe I can pay that bill?” There was a twenty-one-inch TV set in the corner, with a heavy bust of some- body on it. The protective glass plate was so grimy I wondered how she saw the picture tube. There was one of those new posture chairs, a thing made of leather with back rests, knee rests, foot rests, and everything that a drunk might get a lot of comfort out of. I had a hazy idea she liked to sleep in it with the back tilted far down so the alcohol would stay in her brain longer. I’d met her kind before. Well, not exactly her kind. Her kind of woman owes money like everyone else, but they move around so fast you never can catch up with them. Apparently she’d lived here for a long time or Nick wouldn’t have known so much about her. “We can arrange some way to pay it off a little at a time.” a “And if I don’t?” The booze was making her belligerent. MICLOOKS A (C(O) (C@)