Robert Bloch - Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 1. September 1956

“That’s true,” I said.

“And it ain’t finished yet, even if you got a nice office up here on the top floor. There ain’t nobody above the eighth floor yet. There ain’t even a super, except the engineer who runs the furnaces. Being Sunday afternoon, nobody’s likely to show.”

I kept wondering if I could maneuver so as to make a pass at that gun, but decided against it. At forty-two, my reflexes were good, but I doubted they’d be equal to this young punk’s. I was thinking that he appeared to be a particularly vicious and deadly little rat.

“Answer me,” he said. “Am I right or wrong?”

“You’re right. Now, tell me what you want.”

“Sure, but first I want you to know a couple of things about me. My name is Jigger Abbott. That mean anything to you?”

I said, “No. Why should it?”

He squinted at me. “Think again. Jigger Abbott — Jigger — oh, the hell with it. He was my old man, and he used to run a mob.”

I remembered then. “Yes,” I said. “I remember him. But I never met him or had anything to do with him.”

“Who says you did? He’d never bother with a square like you. I just want you to know that I’m like he was. Just like he was — only they won’t burn me, and I’ll be bigger’n he ever was. That’s why I’m here.”

I was getting sick of the gun, pointed at me by a kid whose father had been a deadly killer and had gone to the electric chair for murder when this boy couldn’t have been more than four or five.

I said, “Put that gun down and tell me what you want.”

He hefted the pistol, but he didn’t put it down. “It’s a nice gun, ain’t it? Know where this came from? Al Capone’s trigger man gave it to my old man. Get that? Al’s trigger man.”

“Fascinating,” I said.

“You’re a wise guy,” he told me. “I don’t like wise guys. Neither did my old man — he hated ’em. Okay, I’ll tell you why I’m here. Four months ago, a guy named Patsy Eaton fell off one of your damn buildings.”

“What’s that got to do with you?” I asked.

“Patsy’s daughter and me are like that. Her old man got killed on one of your jobs, and it’s your fault.”

I started to reach for the pack of cigarettes on my desk, but thought better of it. The kid had pale green eyes, flecked with yellow. I’d seen those kind of eyes on a cougar once — just before I shot him.

“Now hold on a second,” I said. “I don’t know what you want, but you might as well get the story straight. Eaton did work for me. He was fired two months before he got killed. The day it happened, he showed up on the job, and he was drunk. He was told to get out, but he didn’t go. Instead, he climbed up five stories and fell. The insurance company wouldn’t pay, and neither will I.”

“We figure,” the kid said, “that it’s worth seventy grand. Now all you gotta do is write a letter to Patsy’s kid and say you know she rates the dough. Then write a check, and we’ll just mail it to her. Date the letter and the check yesterday. How about it, Mr. Landin?”

I said, “If I don’t, I suppose I get shot.”

“That’s right,” he said cheerfully. “And I ain’t a patient guy. My pop used to say — you got a sucker on the hook, pull him in fast before something happens. So you write the letter and the check, beginning right now.”

He impressed me — even a kid with a gun in his fist can be impressive. The whole scheme was crazy anyway. I could stop payment on a check — though I supposed he had thought of that too. I used my stationery and wrote a letter in longhand. I made out a check, clipped it to the letter and put the whole thing in an envelope. After I addressed it, I pasted on the stamp. He watched me with those green-yellow flecked eyes, as if I might pull a gun on him at any moment.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Now I ain’t touching that, on account of fingerprints. We take a walk out to the hall and drop it down the mail slot, okay?”

“If you say so.”

“Then,” he said, “we go up on the roof. I want to see what the view looks like from there.”

I didn’t let him know that I realized his intention all too well. The crazy kid meant to throw me off the roof. That was his way of thinking it out. His girl would get this letter and the check — dated before my death. It would have to be honored. I’d just set myself up as a killer’s victim.

I said, “Why the roof? The temperature is about zero up there.”

“I want to see the view,” he repeated, and he drove the barrel of the gun into my ribs hard enough to make me wince.

I walked ahead of him to the corridor. There wasn’t a chance of anyone seeing us. I was beginning to give the kid credit for having more brains than I had realized. The mail slot was right next to the stairway to the roof — a steep, narrow stairway — and the door was held ajar by a couple of bricks, because the plaster on the walls wasn’t quite dry yet.

I dropped the envelope down the slot and wondered if I was dropping my life with it. I turned around. The kid was just a little careless. I suppose he thought the hard part of his self-assigned job was finished. He stood beside the partly open door, and all I had to do was reach out my hand and push the door into his face.

I used all my strength, and it was enough to send him reeling back, but not enough to knock him down. There wasn’t a chance to jump the gun. There was even less of a chance to sprint for the down stairway, so I did the only thing I could. I ran up the stairs to the roof.

It took him a few seconds to get his breath and his wits back, and then he started after me. I was at the top by this time, and I had the heavy door open. There was a key on the inside of the lock. I managed to get this free, and I was putting it into the outside of the door when he started shooting.

One slug missed me by a sixteenth of an inch. I didn’t need a ruler to measure its closeness — I could feel its wind on my cheek as it whined past. He had me right where he wanted me. The heavy door wasn’t easy to close. If I tried to duck behind it, he’d get me with the next bullet.

I just stood there while he climbed the stairs. He gave me a shove with the flat of his hand and then went by me. He turned and pointed the gun at my heart. I pushed the door closed, put my back against it and hoped he didn’t see me turn the key.

He said, “You got more nerve than I figured, Mr. Landin. I like a guy with guts, but it ain’t going to do you any good.”

I had to take a chance. I reasoned that he wouldn’t want to shoot me. The validity of the check might be questioned if I was unquestionably a murder victim. The same idea must have been stored away in that brain of his, because, when I lunged to the right to get away from the gun, he didn’t shoot. All he did was clout me over the head with the barrel — hard enough so that I was sent staggering back against the door.

“Okay,” he said, “it’s too cold to fool around up here. Start walking and keep right on going.”

“Going where?” I asked, keeping up the foolish pretense that I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Right off the edge of the roof, pal. I don’t want that check stopped, get it? And what the hell — you put up this building, so it’s possible you were up here just to look things over, and you fell off.”

I said, “I don’t exactly feel like committing suicide.”

“Okay,” he told me. “I’ll knock you cold and roll you off. Hell I got nothing against you.”

I started walking. I made my way across the roof, stopped and looked around. This was the tallest building for maybe half a mile. It topped everything else, so nobody could possibly see us. Besides, it was far downtown, and and streets below were as empty on a Sunday afternoon as they were busy on a week day.