Long Live the Dead (27 page)

Had the girl been watching, Dutchy’s look of utter astonishment would have given the play away. But she wasn’t

watching Dutchy. Her gaze was all for Reurto. Her hero!

Kimm groaned.

Dutchy muttered, “What the hell, boss, you said—”

“You know very well what I said! I told you to explain all this to Miss Macomber!” Reurto turned again, darkly scowling, and took the girl in his arms. His scowl softened. So did his voice. “I’m sorry, darling,” he murmured. “Terribly, terribly sorry. I do owe you an explanation, don’t I?”

Kimm felt terribly, terribly sick. He said crookedly, “You might explain the
Milly Mae
business first, Fancy Face.” And that was a mistake.

Reurto released the girl and walked over to Kimm. He did this slowly, with a glance at Dutchy to make sure he was not putting himself between Kimm and Dutchy’s gun. Maintaining this advantage, he lifted Kimm from the chair and planted a fist squarely in Kimm’s face. Kimm struck the wall with a thud and fell against a chair. He could have got up, but didn’t. He liked it there. The light was less revealing.

Reurto said to Fern Macomber, “It is true, my dear, that I deceived you on board Bayha’s schooner. I had to make you believe I was aboard, sick. Your life was in danger here, and I had to get you away while removing the menace. Brave heart that you are, you wouldn’t have gone if you had known the truth.” His voice was a caress. It made Kimm sick, but Fern seemed to like it.

Julius Macomber’s daughter clung to him, sobbing a little. She said, “It isn’t true that you’re plotting against my father. It isn’t true, is it?”

“But of course not, my sweet!”

“I knew it wasn’t.”

Kimm was glad that his thoughts could not get up and walk around the room. The smell of them would have been unbearable. He eyed the gun in Dutchy’s fist. He was wondering if, with luck, he could get to it. He decided to try it and, as a preliminary, inched his left hand along the floor and gripped the leg of a chair. And then the door opened.

Dutchy whirled to look at the door, and Miguel Reurto cried shrilly, in a voice not at all masculine, “Look out!”

For a moment Reurto’s warning was the only sound in the room except the noisy rasp of a breath drawn by Dutchy. Obviously, Dutchy did not quite know what to do about the person who stood in the doorway. The intruder was a woman.

She was the beautiful woman who had called herself Carmen Molina.

Kimm plucked the chair off the floor and went into action.

He was magnificent. He thought later it was a crying shame that no one in the neighborhood had turned a motion-picture camera on him, in order to record for posterity the events of the next few moments. Diminutive but ambitious, Kimm swung the chair at Dutchy Schmidt’s head and scored with it. The blow pitched Dutchy into the woman who called herself Carmen Molina, and both went down.

Kimm leaped for Reurto. Reurto, suddenly white of face, stepped behind Fern Macomber and went for a gun. The gun was under his coat, in a specially designed pocket close to the snug waist-band of his trousers, and he had trouble getting it out. He had so much trouble that Kimm was on him, having shouldered the girl aside, before the gun came clear.

Kimm blasted a fist to the South American’s face and followed through with another, then hurled himself bodily at the man’s legs and knocked him sprawling. He ducked, then, because someone was shooting from the doorway. He crabbed sideways, came up with Reurto’s gun, aimed at a pair of silk clad legs, and squeezed the trigger—and discovered the safety catch was still on: He cursed Reurto for being so damn careless, threw the gun and watched it bounce off the chin of the woman who called herself Carmen Molina.

She dropped her own gun, with which she’d been frantically trying to hit something. She made a noise like a kicked cat and turned to run.

Gleeson, the Great Unwashed, came over the threshold at that moment and caught her in his arms. He seemed surprised. His wide-eyed expression said plain as day, “Well, think of this! Pennies from heaven!”

“Hold her,” Kimm snapped.

The big, barny room was quiet again. Well, almost. Reurto moaned on the floor, pawing at his face. Carmen Molina struggled in Gleeson’s grasp and tried to bite him. The air reeked of smoke.

Kimm said, “Well, well.”

He wondered if things like this happened often in Key West, and if so, why the Chamber of Commerce didn’t advertise them. Scowling a little, he stepped past the petrified form of Fern Macomber and looked down at Reurto. “Oh-oh,” Kimm said. “She hit you.”

“Get a doctor!” Fancy Face wailed. “For Gawd’s sake, get me a doctor!”

Kimm looked at the wound and decided it was nothing to worry about, even if he felt like worrying. He worked his hands under Reurto’s arms and wrestled the man into a chair. “A lawyer would do you more good,” Kimm said. “That’s what you’ll be needing, fella. A smart lawyer. One of the slick, crooked kind who take pity on slick, crooked birds like you—for a price.” He hipped his hands and struck an attitude. “On the other hand, a murder rap is hard to beat,” he finished.

Reurto flinched. Fern Macomber took a faltering step toward Kimm and stopped. The girl in Gleeson’s arms shrilled, “I hope they do pin a murder rap on you, you heel!”

“Oh,” Kimm said softly. “You
meant
to hit him?”

“I meant to hit
you
.”

“I’m having the damnedest time,” Kimm said, “trying to dope you out.” He scowled at her and still thought she was beautiful, but her beauty now was a little too violent for his liking. “The boy friend was crossing you, hey?”

“I’ll tear his eyes out!”

“That,” Kimm said severely to Reurto, “is what you get for crossing a woman. Rather, it’s what you get for letting her
know
you’re crossing her—by setting thugs on her. You weren’t smart. Two or three times in this game, fella, you weren’t smart. Now look at you.”

Reurto showed his teeth in a snarl. “You’ll regret this, Kimm!”

“As I get it,” Kimm said, “you and your girl friend here planned this together. Your part of it was to play up to Miss Macomber and get her to write some letters—or maybe you wrote them for her. The letters went Washington and put Julius Macomber in a hole. All you had to do, then, was keep Macomber’s daughter under your thumb until the explosion.” He wagged a finger under Reurto’s nose. “Was this your own idea, Handsome, or did it spring from the fertile brain of P.

K. Esterhood?” “I wish you’d tell me,” Gleeson said, “what the hell to do

with this dame. She’s got more wiggles than a snake.”

“Sock her,” Kimm grunted. “Well, Reurto?”

“But you are insane! You are mad!”

“With a phony accent,” Kimm nodded. “Which proves I’m close to home. All right, R K. Esterhood doped out the play and you pulled it off. But you ran into trouble. Carmen Molina, the real Carmen Molina, was on your island chumming with Fern. She got wind of what you were up to, tried to get to New York to tell Julius where the smell was coming from. Her father and Julius are friends. More than friends. If Julius folded, her father would fold with him, and she meant to prevent it. But you monkeyed with that plane, fella, and she crashed.”

This, Kimm realized, was a guess. It made sense and it slid neatly into its proper niche, but he had nothing with which to hammer it home. The effect of it, therefore, surprised him. Miguel Reurto’s face turned the color of a sheet not washed in Fels Naptha and began twitching.

“All you had to do then,” Kimm said, satisfied, “was get Fern to a place where her father wouldn’t find her. You used Joe Bayha’s boat. You fooled her into thinking you were on board, while you stayed in Key West to meet another vulture, Paul Bibeault. I don’t get that, entirely, unless at this stage of the game you figured to play both ends against the middle and double the take. Esterhood planned the job and no doubt paid a fancy price. So maybe you thought Bibeault would pay, too. No?”

“Look,” Gleeson complained. “She won’t stay socked.” He grinned at Kimm, put the palm of his right hand over the face of the girl who called herself Carmen Molina, and gave her a shove. The shove dumped her into a chair and she cursed him. Kimm turned again to Reurto.

“Which brings us,” Kimm said, “up to the present, to your girl friend here. Is she in this?”

“No!” the girl shrilled. She popped out of the chair despite Gleeson’s unambitious attempt to stop her. Confronting Kimm, she thrust out her chin, which was black and blue now. “I came here,” she snapped, “because I heard he was too damn interested in other women. I used the name Carmen Molina because I’d heard of her and it was the first name came to my mind when I registered, and I didn’t want to use my own. If this slick-haired Romeo is going to jail, count me out!”

“Cute, ain’t she?” Gleeson said. He slouched forward and stroked the girl’s arm. “I could use someone like you to pour my meals for me. I’m right easy to get along with, honey, and—”

She bit his hand.

“Well,” Kimm said with a glance at Dutchy Schmidt, who was still out, “let’s go.” He leaned over Reurto.

Fern Macomber said, “You leave him alone!”

She had a gun. Dutchy Schmidt’s gun. It looked like a cannon in her small brown hand, but she held it in front of her and managed somehow to keep it pointed in the general direction of Kimm’s stomach. Kimm stood very still and broke out in sweat, because a gun in the unsteady hand of a rank amateur is bad, very bad. A gun in the hand of a professional goes off when the professional wishes it to go off, but a gun in the hand of an amateur is apt to go off any time.

“Now, listen,” Kimm said.

Fern Macomber was being stubborn. Her colorless face was stiff and her lips were curled hard against her teeth and her heart was pounding. She said, “I don’t care! It can’t
all
be true, what you’ve said about him. And you’re not going to ruin my life just for a lot of filthy money!”

“
Your
life?” Kimm said.

“We’re going to be married, and you can’t stop us!”

Kimm opened and closed his hands convulsively and longed to shake the little fool’s teeth loose. He opened his mouth to say this and heard laughter. Loud, shrill laughter. It was like nothing human and he wondered if by some chance the pelicans of Key West were cousins to the loons of Canada. He turned, scowling, and Miguel Reurto’s beautiful girl friend brushed past him.

She was practically doubled up with the mirth that poured out other. Oblivious to the gun, she walked up to Fern Macomber and thrust her left hand under Fern’s face. A ring winked on the third finger and she wiggled the finger to make it more prominent.

“See it?” she said. “It’s probably made of tin, but he gave it to me, honest he did. He gave it to me two years ago when I was sap enough to marry him.”

“W-what?” Fern said.

“He’s my husband, dearie. You can have him if you want him, but you’ll be awful surprised.” She wagged the finger again, took the ring off it. She threw the ring and it rolled to Reurto’s feet, stopped there, and he pulled his feet back as though it were a snake about to bite him.

Mrs. Reurto said to Kimm, “I’m on my way and don’t anybody try to stop me.” She went out.

Fern Macomber looked down at the gun in her hand, shuddered and dropped it. Inwardly grinning, Kimm said to Gleeson, “Run out, fella, and hunt up the cops.”

K
imm drove leisurely over the highway from Key West to Miami, the night air cool off the Atlantic, strange and interesting sounds rising from the cypress swamps on both sides. It was one
A.M.
, the day was Wednesday, and after he got to Miami and called Fred Meaton, the Kelver City storekeeper, to come and get the car, a plane would take him to New York in time for Fern Macomber to speak her little piece in defense of her father. Kimm was at peace with the world.

The girl beside him stirred a little and opened her eyes. She had been sleeping. She said, “I suppose you think I’m an awful fool.”

“Mmn,” Kimm said.

The stars were very bright.

“It’s just that I’m so darned romantic,” Fern declared gravely. “I wouldn’t have married him, really. I mean I don’t think I would. He
was
handsome, though.”

“Mmn.”

“You’re kind of handsome yourself.”

“Mmn.”

“And brave, too. Awfully brave. Why, the way you sailed into that man Dutchy …” She snuggled closer. “I’m a fool about strong, brave men. I guess I need someone to take care of me.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Kimm said.

“What?”

“There’s something I ought to do, just to make this night complete.”

Her wide eyes looked up at him under long lashes and she whispered, “Yes? What?”

“This,” Kimm said.

He stopped the car. Then the bright stars looked down in solitude on a strange sight. They saw Abel Kimm, grimly chewing an unlighted cigarette, shift himself out from under the wheel, turn the daughter of Julius Macomber over a knee and spank her. Soundly.

This is another 1940 tale published in
Black Mask
, appearing in the magazine’s November number. For me, at least, it’s a one-of-a-kind story. I don’t believe I ever wrote another such, with each of five or six characters coming forward to tell what he or she thinks happened. It’s a favorite tale of mine, and I hope it will rate high with you as well.

HBC

He was wanted for murder and troopers, city cops, reporters, and mere citizens combed New England for him. How could they tell he had evaporated in a cloud of alcohol fumes? Of course they might have guessed, for wasn’t Mr. Lee a liquor salesman after all?

I
n my own words? Well now, that’s what I’m trying to do—if you’ll just be good enough to
let
me. After all, I have my rights, don’t I? There’s no law says I have to sit here and be insulted. Some of you policemen think … Oh, all right, all
right
! Shut up then, and listen. This Mr. Lee was an odd sort of person, right from the beginning. I said so to Judith, the day he rang the doorbell and asked if I had any rooms to rent. He knew right well I had rooms to rent. I keep a sign on the front door all the time. But he asked me in that little pipsqueak voice of his, and I said yes, and then I took him upstairs and showed him the perfectly elegant front bedroom, but he didn’t like it.