Tricks and Treats, page 29
Bill slowed, swung the car into the deep ruts, and they crawled and bounced upward through deep jungle-like growth. The road levelled off when they reached the top of the hill and far below a wide panorama of islands stretched out before them. Three miles away, directly in front of them, the bright, green mountains of St. John rose majestically toward the sky. White beaches lined the water’s edge and sparkled brightly in the hot morning sun.
Ancil said, “How much further is it?”
“Another mile or so,” Carter told him. “The bay is just beyond the end of the road.”
He was thinking about the beaches of St. John. His eyes were closed, and he was remembering moonlight nights, the feel of hot sand against his back, the gentle roll of a boat riding at anchor, and, most of all, Cora.
The bumpy, dirt road ended on a bluff a couple of hundred feet above the water. The three men left the car and walked down a path until they came out on the beach. There was very little breeze, and it was hot. All three were sweating profusely.
The bay was ringed with palms and sea-grapes, and the white beach lay like a ribbon in front of them. The beach was empty except for a dinghy drawn up on the sand. About three hundred feet out in the bay a two-masted sixty-foot motor sailor rode at anchor. Otherwise there was no sign of human habitation. The only sound was the occasional cry of a sea gull and the gentle slap of water on the beach.
Ancil pointed to the boat. “Is that it?”
“Yes.” Carter indicated the dinghy. “We’ll have to row out.”
Bill and Carter dragged the dinghy down to the water and the three men got in. Bill sat in the bow. Carter did the rowing, and Ancil sat in the stern facing Carter. He took his heavy automatic out of his pocket and held it on his knees.
When they reached the boat, Bill got out first and climbed aboard. Ancil handed him the automatic and went up the ladder. Once on deck he took the pistol again and covered Carter as he climbed aboard and made the dinghy fast.
Carter led the way through a companionway, and they entered a large, roomy cabin. It was musty and dimly lit. Dirty dishes filled the small sink in the galley and there were three or four empty whisky bottles scattered around. A woman’s dress hung on a hanger just inside the companionway leading forward. The door to the head was open, and it swung lazily back and forth with the even roll of the boat. An open letter and envelope lay on the deck near a small secured table with drawers in it.
Ancil motioned vaguely with his automatic. “Okay, Braun, where’s the dough?”
Carter’s bloodshot eyes seemed to stare through Ancil. He seemed to be looking at something a long way off. “It’s there in the drawer,” he said. He turned and took two steps toward the table with the drawers in it.
Ancil lifted his automatic and squeezed the trigger. The pistol roared and jumped in his hand.
The bullet hit Carter just left of center in the middle of his back. The impact knocked him forward against the bulkhead. He hit it hard, face-on, with both arms outstretched. His knees buckled, and he slid down into a kneeling position. It was as if he were praying to the bulkhead.
He made no sound and stayed in the bent-over kneeling position for five or six seconds. A dark stain of blood was spreading over the back of the flowered sports shirt. It spread incredibly fast. A little gurgling noise came from his mouth, and he toppled sideways onto the deck. He didn’t move again.
The thin blond man’s face had turned the color of cigar ash. He stared at the man on the floor and said, “Christ, Ancil!”
Nothing had happened to Ancil’s face. He jerked his head toward the small table. “See if there’s any dough in there.”
Bill nodded and walked stiff-legged to the table with his eyes still fixed on Carter’s body. There were three drawers. He opened all of them and looked inside. He shook his head. “Nothing in here.”
He looked bewildered and a little sick.
“I don’t get it. What was he trying to pull? That talk about the money and—”
“Hell,” Ancil said, “he was just stalling, that’s all.”
“You mean you knew it and let him bring us all the way out here?”
“Can you think of a better place?” Ancil ran his eyes around the cabin in a business-like manner. “Can you run this tub?”
Bill said, as if he were thinking of something else, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Good. Let’s haul the anchor and get sloggin’.”
“Why? Where to?”
Ancil pointed a stubby finger at the dead man on the deck. “Straight out to sea for a couple of miles, and back here again. The sharks oughta go for all that blood.”
“Oh,” Bill said.
The next morning Tommy Braun received a letter. It read as follows:
* * *
Dear Tommy
Everything worked out okay. Greg is squared and the lead throwers are leaving the Island. Just make sure Greg sticks around and behaves himself. As for me, I’m leaving the islands. I guess you know why. I don’t yet know where I’m going but I have a hunch I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about the boat. She was mortgaged to the hilt so I’m just leaving it for Kempers to take over.
Take care of yourself.
Carter.”
Two days later, a woman in Reading, Pennsylvania, also received a letter. She was sitting on the front porch of her sister’s home when the mailman brought it. Her sister was sitting in a swing beside her. The woman tore the letter open and read it. When she finished, she smiled and shook her head. Her sister said, “From Carter?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “He hasn’t changed any.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much. He’ll miss me, but he’ll get along all right. He’s going to try his luck somewhere in South America.”
“Didn’t he say anything else?”
The woman looked down at the open letter again. Then she started absently tearing it into small pieces. “Yes,” she replied. “He said, ‘Goodbye, Cora.’”
Multiples
Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg
?
One of the logics behind this anthology was our desire to present as many variations as possible on the theme mysterium. Ergo, such headings as HOWDUNIT, THE IMPOSSIBLE CRIME, THE FORMAL MYSTERY, and the like. At the head of this page, however, you will note a simple “?” Why? Because my co-editor and his collaborator have created a story which defies classification. The events occurred—or did they? The man is mad—or is he? The wife is dead—or is she? It is a nest of Chinese boxes, each answer only creating a new and more puzzling question. Writing alone, Mr. Pronzini has carved himself an enviable niche as a suspense writer (Snowbound, Panic!), and Mr. Malzberg as a science-fiction writer (Beyond Apollo). Writing in tandem, they have startled mainstream readers with The Running of Beasts and will absolutely stun them with the forthcoming Justice. - J.G.
Kenner murdered his wife for the tenth time on the evening of July 28, in the kitchen of their New York apartment. Or perhaps it was July 29. One day is much the same as another, and I cannot seem to keep dates clearly delineated in my head. He did it for the usual reasons: because she had dominated him for fourteen years of marriage (fifteen? sixteen?), and openly and regularly ridiculed him, and sapped all his energy and drive, and, oh I simply could not stand it anymore. He did not try to be elaborately clever as to method and execution. The simpler the better-that was the way he liked to do it. So he poisoned her with ten capsules of potassium, I mean nitrous oxide, disguised as saccharine tablets, which he neatly placed in her coffee with a twist of the wrist like a kiss. Nothing amiss.
She assumed almost at once the characteristic attitude of oxide poisoning, turning a faint green as she bent into the crockery on the table. A cigarette still smoldered unevenly beside her. She drank twenty cups of coffee every day and smoked approximately four packages of cigarettes, despite repeated warnings from her doctor. Kenner found it amusing to think that her last sensations were composed of acridity, need, and lung-filling inhalation. It was even possible that she believed, as death majestically overtook her, that the cigarette had done her in.
Kenner, a forty-five-year-old social worker of mundane background, few friends, and full civil service tenure (but nevertheless in grave trouble with his superiors, who had recently found him to be “insufficiently motivated”), then made all efforts to arrange the scene in what he thought to be a natural manner: adjusting the corpse in a comfortable position, cleaning the unused pellets of cyanide from the table, letting the damned cat out, and so forth. Immediately afterward, he went to a movie theater; that is, he went immediately after shutting off all the lights and locking all the doors. Windows were left open in the kitchen, however, to better disperse what he thought of as “the stench of death.”
What Kenner did at the movie theater was to sit through a double feature. The price he paid for admission and what films he saw or did not really see are not known at the time of this writing. Furthermore, what he hoped to gain by leaving the scene of the crime only to reenter at a “safer” time remains in doubt. I must have been crazy. Also, Kenner’s usual punctiliousness and sense of order did not control his actions during this tragic series of events. I was too excited.
After emerging from the theater, Kenner purchased an ice cream cone from a nearby stand and ate it slowly while walking back to his apartment. As be turned in a westerly direction, he was accosted by two co-workers at the Welfare Unit where he was employed. They greeted him and asked the whereabouts of his wife. Kenner responded that she had had a severe headache and, since she suffered from a mild heart condition complicated by diabetes, wanted to restrain her activities to the minimum. I suppose Kenner was attempting with this tactic to lay the groundwork for a “death by natural causes” verdict, but I’m not quite sure. I do know that one of the coworkers, commenting on Kenner’s appearance, said that he looked “ghastly.”
Once parted from his colleagues, Kenner continued west and eventually re-entered his apartment at 10:51 P.M. It was frightening in the dark. Turning on the lights, be went into the living room and found his wife waiting there for him-sitting under a small lamp, reading and drinking coffee and smoking five cigarettes in various stages of completion. Much perturbed, he was unable to account for the fact that she was still alive. I felt as if I were dreaming.
There was a brief exchange of dialogue between Kenner and his wife, the substance of which I cannot recall, and then he proceeded to his own room. He wanted to lock the door behind him but could not, owing to the fact that his wife—saying that separate bedrooms or not, she wanted to know what the “little fool” was doing at all times—had forbidden him a bolt. On the way, he noticed that the plates had been removed from the kitchen table and heaped as always to fester in the sink, and that there was no sign of the violence he was sure had taken place earlier.
Immediately after closing his door, Kenner seized his journal and began to record the evening’s curious events in his usual style. I could have been a published writer if only I had worked at it. He was hopeful that the documentation would help him to understand matters, but I was wrong, this was never the answer.
He was interrupted midway through his writing by his wife’s customarily unannounced entrance into his room. She told him that his strange state of excitation this evening had upset even her, and therefore agitated her mild heart condition (she had one, all right, although she did not have diabetes). She said she thought I was “breaking down,” and went on to say that she knew the “impulse to murder her” had long been uppermost in Kenner’s mind, but he “didn’t have the guts to do it.” She further stated that Kenner was no doubt “dreaming all the time of ways and means and you probably fill that damned journal of yours with all your raving imaginations; I’ve never cared enough to bother reading it, but it’s sure to be full of lunatic fantasies.”
Kenner responded that he was a mature person and thus not prey to hostile thoughts. He begged her to leave the room so that he could continue his entries. I told her I was writing a novel, but she didn’t believe me. She knows everything.
She laughed at him and dared him to make her leave the room. Kenner stared at her mutely, whereupon she laughed again and said if looks could kill, she’d certainly be dead right now. Then she said, “But if I were dead, you’d be completely lost; you’d fall apart altogether. You need me and you don’t really want me dead, you know, even though as I’m talking to you you’re probably filling up pages with more vicious fantasies. I’ll bet I even know what you’re writing this very minute. You’re imagining me dead, aren’t you? You’re writing down right this minute that I’m dead.”
She’s dead.
She’s dead.
She-is-dead!
Kenner murdered his wife for the eleventh time on July 29 or July 30, in her bedroom in their New York apartment He did it for the usual reasons, and he did not attempt to be elaborately clever as to method and execution. In fact, he chose to repeat the procedure of the previous evening. While she lounged in bed as was her custom on weekends (this was either Saturday or Sunday), I made her breakfast and poisoned her coffee with eleven capsules of nitrous oxide.
When Kenner took the tray into her bedroom, she was sitting up in bed and there were three cigarettes burning on the nightstand. She smiled at him maliciously as she lifted her cup and asked if he had “put in a few drops of arsenic or something to sweeten the taste.” After which she laughed in her diabolical way and drank some of the coffee.
With clinical curiosity, Kenner watched the cup slip from her fingers and spill the rest of the liquid over the bedclothes; watched her expression alter and her face and body once more assume the characteristic attitude of oxide poisoning as she fell back against the headboard. The faint green color looked quite well on her, he concluded.
This time Kenner did not arrange the scene in what he thought to be a natural manner. He also did not open the windows. He simply left the apartment and took a subway to Times Square, where he consumed a breakfast of indeterminate nature in a restaurant or perhaps a cafeteria. Once finished he browsed through a bookstore, purchased a candy bar, and finally took the subway home again. Upon entering his apartment, I think the time was 10:51 A.M., he proceeded directly to his wife’s bedroom.
She was still lying in bed, and she was still quite surprisingly dead. The scene, however, had after all been changed in certain ways. The coffee which he was sure had been spilled across the bedclothes had not been spilled at all; the cup, in point of fact, rested empty on the breakfast tray. Her color was not greenish, but rather a violent purple. The three cigarettes had become four, and each had burned down to skeletal fingers of gray ash. Her hands were clutched somewhat pathetically at her breast.
Kenner stared at her for a long time, after which scrutiny be went to his room and attempted to write in his journal. I could not seem to think, I knew I would have to wait until later. Returning to his wife’s bedroom once more, he paused to study the empty coffee cup and the remains of the cigarettes. It was then that he understood the truth.
The cigarettes and the coffee, not Kenner, had done her in.
What he did next is not clear. Very little is clear even now, many hours later. He does seem to have telephoned his wife’s doctor, since the physician arrived eventually and pronounced her dead of a heart attack. Two or three interns also came with a stretcher and took her away. As I write this, I can still smell the after-shave lotion one of them was wearing.
One thing, therefore, is quite clear: she’s dead.
Damn her, she really is dead and gone forever.
What am I going to do now?
Kenner murdered his dead wife for the first time on August 1, or possibly August 6, in the bathroom of their New York apartment…
The Deveraux Monster
Jack Ritchie
TONGUE-IN-CHEEK
In writing to Jack Ritchie’s agent for permission to reprint “The Deveraux Monster,” the undersigned editor said that “no anthology is complete without a Ritchie story.” This is by no means an isolated opinion. Anthony Boucher and Donald Westlake, among a host of others, have spoken glowingly of Mr. Ritchie’s abundant talents, the most notable of which is his amazing ability to put more plot and more characterization into fewer words than any crime writer past or present “The Deveraux Monster” is a consummate illustration of this talent (and of his unique brand of tongue-in-cheek humor)—a 6,000-word mini-novel loaded with enough twists and turns to fill a 60,000-word book. Mr. Ritchie is the author of over 200 stories and one collection, The New Leaf and Other Stories; he resides quietly in Wisconsin, where, ’tis devoutly to be wish’d, he will write several hundred more. - B.P.
‘‘Have you ever seen the monster?” my fiancée, Diana Munson, asked.
‘‘No,” I said. But I had. A number of times. I smiled. “However, everyone seems to agree that the Deveraux monster rather resembles the Abominable Snowman, but with a coloring more suitable to a temperate climate. Dark brown or black, I believe.”
“I wouldn’t take this at all lightly, Gerald,” Diana said. “After all, my father did see your family beast last night.”
“Actually, it was dusk,” Colonel Munson said. “I’d just completed a stroll and was about to tum into the gate when I looked back. The fog was about, nevertheless I clearly saw the creature at a distance of approximately sixty feet. It glared at me, and I immediately rushed toward the house for my shotgun.”
Freddie Hawkins summoned the energy to look attentive. “You took a shot at it?”
Colonel Munson flushed. “No. I slipped and fell. Knocked myself unconscious.” He glared at us. “I did not faint. I definitely did not faint.”
