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

I moved along the edge — but didn’t let myself get too close. It was cold — only a few degrees above zero — and I was beginning to feel it. All I had on was my suit. The kid was more comfortable. He wore a heavy overcoat and a muffler.

He got sick of trailing behind me, although he stood for it longer than I’d hoped he would. He said, “Okay — make up your mind. How do you want it?”

I turned around and regarded him for a moment, wondering if that twisted little mind of his was going to be able to digest what I intended to tell him.

“I’m not going to jump,” I said. “And you’re not going to knock me out and push me over.”

His was an unexpectedly cunning brain.

He said, “Mister, you know something. What is it?”

I said, “You want the money that check will bring you and your girl. If I die up here on the roof, you’ll not only never lay your hands on the money, but you’ll be arrested for murder. What’s more, you’ll be convicted.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded. He looked around quickly as if he thought someone else might be up here with us.

I spelled it out for him. “There’s one door on this roof. There’s no fire escape, no other way to get off. The door happens to be a used one, installed temporarily until the new door is made up. It also happens to be a very strong door, and it locks with a key.”

“So what?” he asked. The kid was getting sore and worried. It was a bad combination for a man at the other end of his gun.

“It’s simple, kid. I locked the door, and I’ve hidden the key. You can’t get off the roof. If I go overside, the cops will come up here to investigate, and you’ll have a hard time explaining why you’re here and what happened. If you shoot me — the same thing — you’ll be here when the cops arrive.”

“Give me the key,” he said.

I shook my head. “That would be like giving my life away.”

He whipped me across the face with the gun before he ran to the door and checked. He pulled at the knob, he tried to break it down with his shoulder. Finally, he put the muzzle of his gun against the lock and fired.

I’d been afraid of that. Not because a bullet would smash the lock, but because it might foul up the mechanism so that even the use of the key wouldn’t get us off the roof.

I laughed out loud at him, and I turned up the collar of my coat and stood there, shivering. There was a sharp wind that high up, and it cut like ice.

The kid walked up to me. “You can’t get away with it,” he warned. “I’ll get that key if I have to kill you by inches.”

“You’re wrong, kid. I’m a dead man anyway — but when I die, so do you.”

He yelled at me, cursing me, while he searched my pockets. Then he began looking for the key all over the roof. I wished I had the pack of cigarettes that rested on my desk a floor below. Even the heat offered by a burning tip would be a comfort. I began to shiver harder. The cold went right through me.

But I laughed at the kid’s desperation and felt as happy as could be expected under the circumstances. He checked the rooftop, foot by foot. He even climbed the water tower, presumably on the theory that I might have thrown the key up there. It took him half an hour before he was satisfied that I hadn’t hidden the key — unless it was on my person, and his first search had missed it. He walked up to me, dangerously angry.

“I want that key,” he said. “I want it now.”

I told him then. “I’ll unlock the door when you give me your gun.”

He backed up a step. “Turn around,” he ordered. “You got that key on you, and I’m going to find it. I’m Jigger Abbott’s son, remember?”

I turned around and raised my hands. In so doing, I made my first bad mistake. He simply stepped up behind me and swung the gun butt. My knees buckled, and I went down, but there wasn’t quite enough steam in the blow to put me out.

I put the flat of my hand against the ice-cold roof to do a push-up. I saw his foot go back. I knew what he was going to do, but I was too dazed to do anything about it. He kicked me beside the right temple, and my push-up expired along with my senses. I had a vague feeling that I was already off the edge of the roof and on my way down.

That sensation changed after a while. I thought I was being tossed around in a polar sea. There were gigantic ice cubes all around me, and the water kept getting colder and colder until I felt like an olive, slipped by accident into the mixer instead of the cocktail glass. I knew I couldn’t survive this cold much longer. It would chill the blood in my veins until it became thin, crimson ice. It wouldn’t circulate any more, though it would make little difference, because my heart was already a block of ice.

There were bells too. The damnedest things were filtering through the black cloud of unconsciousness. Church bells! I didn’t have any business hearing church bells, because I hadn’t attended services for years, though at this moment, I thought it might be a good idea.

There was a driving pain, like a hot iron, in my side. It came again and again until I realized someone was kicking me. I opened my eyes and looked at the ash-grey surface of the rooftop. I wondered who had fished me out of the ice-filled sea.

“Get up,” he was saying. “On your feet!”

I didn’t have any feet. My being began somewhere near the top of my head and extended only as far down as the area of my jaw — mainly because my jaw was sore. Below the jawline, I didn’t exist.

The crazy kid got a handful of my hair and pulled me up to a sitting position. I sat there, staring down at my legs. I did have legs after all, I thought. The fact seemed odd. They were very white legs except for the parts where they were blue. I’d never heard of anyone with white and blue legs. I’d be patriotic as hell if I bled a little.

But how did it happen I could see all that skin? The last I knew, I was wearing pants. A hand went down, rubbed along my thigh. I barely felt it. Then I realized my arm and shoulder were naked, too. I shook my head, got some of my senses back. Damned if I wasn’t dressed only in shorts.

“How do you feel now, wise guy?” the kid asked.

Full realization came back to me. That little punk had knocked me out, searched me for the key and, not finding it, had stripped me down. He was going to freeze me into submission.

Somehow, I managed to get to my feet. I saw my clothes flung wildly over the rooftop. I staggered toward the big brick chimney and leaned against it. For a few minutes, I enjoyed the faint warmth the bricks gave off, but the kid soon sensed what I was doing.

“Get away from there,” he said. “You’re going to freeze until you tell me where the key is.”

“Maybe I threw it over the edge,” I said.

“The hell you did!” He had more brains than I’d given him credit for. “That’d be like killing yourself. Get away from that chimney.”

I didn’t move. “Go ahead and shoot,” I said. “What’s the difference? So you’ll kill me, but they’ll send you over the same route they sent that lousy old man of yours.”

“Shut up,” he screamed at me. “Keep that mouth of yours shut. I’m warning you...”

“They’ll carry you to the chair — like they carried him,” I said. “You’re all alike.”

He fired. I barely felt the bullet that plowed into my thigh — that’s how cold I was. But the shock made my leg buckle, and I fell. I lay there, damning him. I asked him for my shirt to use as a bandage, and I got sneered at and threatened some more. I put my hand down hard on the wound, hoping it would stop the bleeding. It didn’t — but the cold did.

I looked up at him. “We’re getting no place,” I said. “Without the key, you’re finished. Hear those church bells? That’s vespers, though I doubt that the word is familiar to you. I’ll explain — vespers is an evening service. That means it’s getting dark. As soon as the sun goes down, so will the temperature. Even that overcoat won’t keep you from freezing then.”