The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack Page 12

  By the increased light I could see the struggling figures under the net were a pair of teenagers from the neighborhood, both members of the Street Tigers. One was named Pancho Gomez and the other was a youth named Will Talley.

  All their struggles were accomplishing was to get them more fouled up in the net. They had managed to thrust all four arms and all four legs through openings and back through other openings until they were hopelessly enmeshed.

  Putting away my gun, I moved into the kitchen. Glancing upward, I said to Mr. Olem, “How’d you have this contraption rigged?”

  “On retractable hooks,” he said. He indicated a series of small, oblong, open-fronted boxes attached to the ceiling at the edges of the room on all four sides. “You can’t see the hooks now, because they’re retracted into their receivers.”

  “What made them retract?”

  “An electric eye activates the device when an intruder gets within six feet of the office door. I also rigged a separate electric eye for use during business hours. It causes the hooks to retract only when someone walks through the office door into the office. I figured that in the event of a holdup, I would be forced to the office at gun point and would enter it first. The net would then drop over whoever was behind me after I was safely out of its way. After closing the store, I’ve been switching off that electric eye and turning on the other one.”

  I gazed up at the series of boxes again wonderingly. “Where did you ever acquire the know-how to rig anything like this?”

  “Oh, I was once a foreman in a Berlin plant that manufactured electronic equipment,” he said offhandedly.

  I wondered if there were any specialized field, including brain surgery, in which he didn’t have at least a smattering of knowledge.

  From under the net, Pancho Gomez called plaintively, “Will you get as out of here, Mr. Martinez?”

  “You’ll be all right there until the cops arrive,” I told him. “Just relax.”

  Mr. Olem cleared his throat. “Maybe it would be better to free them from the net before the police arrive, Mr. Martinez. You could keep them covered with your gun.”

  “Why?” I asked with raised brows. “They’re safer where they are.”

  “Perhaps, but if we simply turn the boys over to the police with the story that we captured them in the act of committing burglary, the story won’t draw more than a line or two on the inside pages of the papers. But if news of my burglar trap leaks out, some reporter may play it up as a human-interest story. And once the thing receives any publicity, it will be forever after useless.”

  After thinking this over, I nodded. “I see your point. Okay, you peel that net off them while I keep them covered. I’ll let you get it out of sight before we phone the police. I doubt that the boys will care to mention how they were trapped to anyone, because it makes them look kind of silly.”

  I drew my gun again.

  The story did only rate brief mention on the inside pages of the local papers. Because they were both juveniles, the boys’ names weren’t even given.

  Later, I got to wondering if there hadn’t been a potential page-one story in Mr. Olem’s device, though; not just because of its cleverness, but because of possible catches it might have made previously that went unreported.

  I don’t know that it ever made any previous catches, of course. It’s pure speculation based on what may well be merely my overactive imagination, but young Joe Ramirez, Tommy Coster and Jimmy Elias still haven’t reappeared in the neighborhood, and none of the other Street Tigers seem to know where they are. They’ve dropped out of sight before, but never for this long. No one but me is likely to get worried about them, because Joe and Tommy don’t have any parents, and Jim’s father disowned him.

  Also, it was odd the way that bandit pair in the witches’ masks so abruptly ended their crime spree. Their first night of activity they made three hits. It occurs to me as possible that they again planned three hits instead of only two on their second night out—and maybe the third was Olem’s Delicatessen.

  If I hadn’t happened along just as the net dropped over the Gomez and Talley boys, I wonder if the break-in would have been reported.

  For a time the seeming lack of any motive on Mr. Olem’s part stymied me. Then I started thinking about his experience of living with a native tribe in New Guinea in his youth. I looked up New Guinea in the encyclopedia and it is one of the few places left in the world where some natives still practice cannibalism.

  After stewing about the whole thing for several days, I finally decided to continue my lifelong habit of minding my own business—but I’m not going to eat any more of Mr. Olem’s delicious sausage.

  CHEERS

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, February 1968.

  I stayed out until 11:00 p.m., hoping the landlady would be in bed by then, but she had waited up, and her door opened just after I had sneaked past it.

  “Mr. Willard!”

  I flinched, then turned around to face her. She stood in her doorway, fat arms folded across her ample bosom, her eyes blazing.

  “Yes, Mrs. Emory?” I said meekly.

  “It is the seventeenth!”

  “Yes, ma’am, I know we promised the back rent today, but the fight we had scheduled was postponed—”

  “Fight, schmight,” Mrs. Emory interrupted. “I don’t think you’re ever going to have another fight. You and Mr. Jones either pay up or get out. Tonight!”

  “At this hour? Be reasonable, Mrs. Emory. I guarantee that by noon at the latest—”

  I was interrupted again, this time by the front door opening with a bang. I recognized my roommate and manager by his lanky legs. That’s all you could see of him because the upper part of his body, and even his head, was hidden by the huge pile of packages he was carrying.

  I moved forward to relieve him of part of the load. In one of the paper bags I took from him, bottles clinked in an interesting manner.

  Ambrose Jones peered around the remainder of the packages. “Ah, Mrs. Emory,” he said with amiable formality, “you’re looking particularly revolting tonight.”

  If the packages hadn’t already given it away, his greeting would have told me that Ambrose had fallen into money. He always insulted the landlady when he was flush. His formal tone also told me he was half-stoned.

  Mrs. Emory knew the symptoms, too, and ignored the insult because she knew it meant our back rent was forthcoming. She used her pass key to open the door, and we both dumped our packages on the nearest twin bed. With a flourish Ambrose drew out a roll of bills.

  “Here you are, my benevolent gargoyle,” he said, counting out four twenties into the landlady’s outstretched palm. “Two weeks back rent and two weeks rent in advance.”

  Mrs. Emory sniffed and left the room. Ambrose locked the door behind her and fanned the roll to show me that the twenties had been its lowest denomination. Most of the bills were fifties.

  “How soon can we expect cops to be beating on the door?” I asked.

  “Now, Sam,” he said reproachfully, “this represents the advance on a business transaction. One thousand dollars, less what I spent for purchases and paid to Mrs. Emory. We have four thousand more coming at the conclusion of the deal.”

  The only thing I could think of was that he must have matched me with the champ and guaranteed that I would take a dive. No, that couldn’t be it. Why would the champ need a guarantee? I hadn’t lasted a full round in two years and hadn’t even had a fight in six months.

  While I was going through these mental convolutions, Ambrose was opening packages. There were clothes for both of us. There were cold cuts, cheese, rye bread, pickles, caviar and smoked oysters. There was champagne, Scotch, bourbon and various mixes.

  Ambrose stacked the comestibles on the dresser.

  While he sorted out the clothing, his and mine, I mad
e myself a thick sandwich.

  Then I asked. “Who do we have to kill?”

  “A fellow named Everett Dobbs,” he said brightly, and poured champagne into two water glasses.

  I said, “Kidding aside, Ambrose, what’s the deal?” He raised his eyebrows at me, and popped a couple of smoked oysters into his mouth which he swallowed before saying, “I told you. Our client is a Mrs. Cornelia Dobbs, a handsome but fading nymph of middle age who has tired of her husband. I met her in a bar. After buying me several drinks she broached the subject of murder. She seemed to be under the impression I was a criminal type because the place was Monty’s.”

  That was understandable. Monty’s is a waterfront bar where a large percentage of the clientele are criminal types.

  “So you conned her out of a grand,” I said.

  “Conned her? I accepted an ethically binding advance. Are you accusing me of being dishonest?”

  I found shot glasses in the top bureau drawer, opened a bottle of bourbon and poured. We had several more each, along with cold cuts, cheese, caviar, smoked oysters and pickles. As we reveled, Ambrose explained the arrangements he had made in more detail.

  Everett Dobbs was a retired real-estate speculator with about half the money in the county. He and his would-be widow lived in one of the huge homes in the Glen Ridge area. Dobbs spent most of his time at the Glen Ridge Country Club, however, and that’s where Cornelia Dobbs wanted us to “take” him.

  According to Cornelia, her husband left the club promptly at eleven every night, almost invariably alone, and drove home. She had furnished Ambrose with a description of the man’s car and its license number. We were to wait in the parking lot, waylay him, and drive him off in his own car. One of us would drive Dobbs’ car, the other would follow in the jalopy Ambrose and I jointly owned. We would arrange some kind of fatal accident. Cornelia, of course, would have arranged an unbreakable alibi.

  I didn’t doubt he was completely serious at this particular moment, and I was quite sure there actually was a Mrs. Cornelia Dobbs and that Ambrose had agreed to kill her husband for five thousand dollars, but Ambrose tended to lose his sense of perspective when he was drinking. I figured that when he groped through the red haze of next morning’s hangover, he would be appalled at himself.

  In fact, I thought I might have a problem convincing him to keep the thousand-dollar advance. Cornelia could hardly demand it back without risking considerable trouble for herself, but my manager had a peculiar code of ethics. He was capable of arranging a fixed fight, but he always stood by his word.

  I was still turning over in my mind arguments in favor of keeping the advance and telling Cornelia to get lost when Ambrose passed out.

  Ambrose awoke with the hangover I had predicted. When he could open his eyes all the way without bleeding to death, he gave me a weak smile and elbowed up.

  “Smoked oysters don’t mix very well with champagne, I guess.”

  “No,” I agreed. “I’m sure it was the oysters.”

  He got up, wrapped a robe around his lanky frame and went up the hall to shower and shave. When he came back, I made the same trip.

  Ambrose has remarkable powers of recuperation. He was dressed and clear-eyed by the time I got back. We had no conversation until I finished dressing.

  Then I said, “You won’t have to return the money. She couldn’t possibly do anything about it.”

  “Return it? Why should I return it?”

  “I mean she can’t go to the police.”

  He frowned at me. “Why should she go to the police?”

  “For fraud. When we don’t kill her husband.”

  He examined me as though searching for the hole in my head.

  I said patiently, “You’re certainly not serious about becoming a professional killer.”

  “For five thousand dollars? Of course, I am. I explained it all last night.”

  “You were drunk last night. We’re not killers.”

  “We’re not anything,” he said. “You’re not a fighter. You’re an ex-fighter, which makes me not anything either. I’m an ex-fight manager.”

  There must have been a lost look on my face, because he said in a more kindly tone, “This is our chance, Sam. With a stake we could find another fighter. I’ll manage and you can train him.”

  “But murder, Ambrose!”

  “Aw, come off it, Sam. You killed a man in the ring once.”

  “An accident,” I said. “It’s not the same. They put you in the gas chamber for murder.”

  “Only if they catch you. Do you know why most murderers get caught?”

  “Sure. Because they’re not as smart as cops.”

  “Most aren’t,” Ambrose agreed. “Statistically, eighty percent of the murders in this country are committed by friends or relatives of the victims. The cops have it easy with these cases. They simply check back on all the victim’s associates, and eventually they have to come to the one who pulled the trigger or swung the axe or dropped the poison in the coffee.”

  “So eventually they’ll get to us.”

  Ambrose gave his head a slow shake. “How? We’ve never even seen him and he’s never seen us. There’s no point of contact for the cops to check back on.”

  That made sense, but it takes a while to adjust to the idea of murder. I said, “They always suspect the wife. Suppose she breaks down and fingers us?”

  “She won’t break down. She’ll have a perfect alibi, and besides, it’s going to look like an accident.”

  I fingered one of my cauliflower ears while I thought this over. Finally I said, “Suppose he doesn’t come out of the club alone?”

  “Then we wait until the next night and Cornelia rigs another alibi.”

  I had only one last question. “How do we collect the other four thousand?”

  “She’s to bring it to Monty’s tomorrow night.”

  “I’m still not convinced,” I said. “Let’s go get some breakfast, and maybe you can convince me while we’re eating.”

  He did.

  We spent the day in plans and preparations. We drove out to Glen Ridge Country Club and looked over the parking lot. Then we drove over the route Everett Dobbs would take home and found a beautiful spot for an accident.

  The road wound over Glen Ridge, a small mountain with a hairpin turn right at the crest, protected only by a wooden guard rail. Below the guard rail the mountainside sloped down at a sixty-degree angle to another section of the winding road nearly fifty feet below.

  “They’ll think he cracked up on the way home,” Ambrose said. “Cornelia says he drinks a lot, so it’ll just look like another drunk who missed a curve.”

  * * * *

  We got out to the country club at nine that night, just in case Everett Dobbs left early. Ambrose parked the jalopy and we got out to look for Dobbs’ car. Cornelia had described it to Ambrose and had given him its license number, so we had no difficulty finding it even though it was quite dark by then and there were some fifty other cars on the lot.

  As soon as we located it, Ambrose drove the jalopy into a vacant slot right behind it, and we settled back to wait.

  Ambrose had brought along a fifth of Scotch for himself and a quart of bourbon for me in order to relieve the tedium. We also needed it to quiet our nerves.

  “Maybe we’d better slow down on the hootch,” I suggested.

  Ambrose frowned at me in the darkness and took another swig of Scotch. “I’m as sober as a sphinx,” he said.

  At 10:00 p.m. a lone figure came from the direction of the clubhouse and weaved in our direction. He was a tall, lean man in a dark suit, and his gait indicated he was cock-eyed out of his skull.

  “If that’s Dobbs, he’s an hour early,” Ambrose said. “From the looks of him, the barkeep probably cut him off. He wouldn’t have lasted until eleven.”

&nb
sp; The man put a key into the door lock of the car we were watching.

  “Guess this is it,” I said. “I can handle this joker alone. You just follow.”

  I got out of the car and was surprised when I staggered slightly. Straightening, I went over to where the tall man was still fumbling with the lock.

  “Having trouble?” I asked.

  “The keyhole keeps moving, old man,” he said. “Would you mind seeing if you can hit it?”

  He handed me the keys. The keyhole was moving, I noticed, but I managed to slip the key into it on the second try.

  “Bravo!” the tall man said when I pulled the door open. “May I buy you a drink for your trouble?”

  I decided getting him to go along willingly would be simpler than slugging him. “Sure,” I said, “but not here. I know a better place.”

  “Fine,” he said with enthusiasm. “Any place good enough for my friends is good enough for me.” He thrust out his hand. “My name is Dobbs, old buddy.”

  I shook the hand. “Willard,” I said. “Sam Willard, pal o’ mine.”

  “Delighted, old man. And now the keys, please.”

  “Maybe I’d better drive,” I said. “I know where this place is, and you don’t.”

  “Be my guest,” he said, offering a little bow and losing his balance.

  Preventing him from falling on his face by catching him, I helped him into the car, then slid behind the wheel.

  The engine purred beautifully. As I pulled off the lot, the jalopy chugged along behind us. Dobbs promptly went to sleep. We reached the hairpin turn at the top of Glen Ridge without incident. It was just beyond the crest, so that there was a slight downgrade to it. I parked on the very crest and Ambrose parked behind me. There wasn’t another car in sight.

  Dobbs was still sleeping, and I was afraid he would wake up if I pulled him over under the wheel. I figured nobody would be able to tell he hadn’t been behind the wheel anyway, after a drop of fifty feet.

  Ambrose came up, weaving slightly, as I climbed from the car. Leaving the door open, I shifted into drive, released the emergency brake and reached in to press the accelerator with my hand. I pressed it gently, just enough to start the car rolling. Then I shifted into neutral, pulled out my head and slammed the door.