Лесли Чартерис: Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 3, March, 1953

“How do you pick the winner, Hammond?” Just a little more time, I thought. He was going to try it soon. He kept edging closer to the gun.

“We know, from friends, when a horse is ready for a good race. About the jockeys, we... bought a couple. One other was married, stepping out with a chippie, and we held that over him. Ramirez was just... a mistake, Scott, a bad break.” He was getting some of his nerve back now. “Listen, Scott,” he said. “Be sensible. You can take me in to the cops, but they won’t keep me. You know Valdez? He won’t let a rap stick. He’ll cover for me, fix any charges. There’s no proof anyway. You can’t win, Scott. And I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s not enough.” His hand was out of sight behind him now; I knew he had his hand on the gun, was just working up his nerve, pushing himself to the point where he could make his try. And I knew Hammond was telling the truth. I couldn’t make a charge against him stick. Not here. And Valdez would get him out of any mess I got him into.

“I’ll give you more, anything, anything you want.”

“It’s not enough.”

He bit his lips. “You’re a fool, Scott. Every man has a price. You’ve got your price, too, I know it.” His voice got higher and louder as he kept on. “You’re stupid, stupid. I can pay you; you’re—”

It was a damnfool thing to do, but he did it. He dropped suddenly to the floor, his face as frightened as any face I’ve ever seen, but he swept the gun out in front of him, firing before the gun was pointed within a yard of me. He would have kept on firing, too, but I put that extra breath of pressure on the .38’s trigger and it roared and flame spat toward Hammond’s belly. He jerked as the slug struck and then I fired again, saw the small hole appear over his heart.

He slumped back against the desk and his head fell forward. He still had the gun in his hand, though, and I couldn’t take any chances. I shot him in the head. Yeah, that was sure a damnfool thing for Hammond to do. But I had to pull the trigger. I had to defend myself. Hell, he was going to shoot me.

He didn’t move any more. He wouldn’t. I couldn’t help thinking that Hammond had been right: like everybody else I had my price; he’d just paid it. And I also thought that Valdez or Rath would have a hell of a time getting Hammond out of this mess.

There were still a few tag ends, including Kelly and the other strong arm boy, but they could wait. I left Hammond on the floor and went out, back up the stairs. Most of all, I wanted to get the hell out of there before any of the boys showed up. Taking care of them was one thing. Meeting them in their own back yard was another. I ran up the stairs quickly.

When I opened the door, Elena was still on the bed but her hands were pressed tightly against her eyes. I shut the door behind me. Slowly she took her hands from her eyes and looked at me. She looked at me for a long time as the fright left her face. When she spoke her voice was tight.

“I’m going to pieces, Shell. I was going crazy. I heard the shots. I... thought it might be you. And I wanted you to come back to me.” She bit her lips, moved slightly on the bed, light gleaming dully on her nakedness.

“Get a coat on,” I said. “Fast. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

I was still feeling high, the blood still rushing through my veins, setting up a terrible din in my head. She grabbed a coat from the closet, a man’s raincoat, shivered into it, and took one last look at Rath, dead and bloody on the floor.

“Let’s go,” she said, turning away. “Let’s get the hell out of here, Shell.”

She was still wearing the raincoat much later, but it wasn’t covering a hell of a lot of her. It was open at the throat, spread in a wide V that gashed down to the tightly belted waist. Her legs were tucked under her on the sofa, in her apartment, and I was sitting next to her and marveling about the wonderful raincoats they were turning out these days.

The drug had worn off now, but who the hell needed it any more. I leaned toward her, pulling her close to me. She ran a hand over the tape on my chest.

Her face was an inch from mine when she said softly, her eyes heavy-lidded and her mouth slack with passion, “You are hurt. But I will be careful with you, my Shell. You will see.”

I pulled her tight against me, kissed the corner of her mouth, her cheek, then with my lips against her ear I whispered, “Elena, honey, be as careless as you like.”

Charlie had been a nice guy. Now he lay in a coffin with his throat cut.

The old neighborhood hadn’t changed much. I was looking out at it now, standing near the window in Charlie Dagerra’s bedroom. The tenements stretched across the cold winter sky like a grey smear. There was no sun. The day was cold and gloomy and somehow forbidding, and that was as it should be because Charlie Dagerra lay in a casket in the living room.

The undertaker had skillfully adjusted Charlie’s collar so that most of the knife slash across his neck was covered. He’d disguised the rest with heavy make-up and soft lights, but everyone knew what lay under the make-up. Everyone knew, and no one was talking about it.

They passed the bottle, and I poured myself a stiff hooker. I’d come to the wake mostly because I knew there’d be liquor there. Charlie and I had been kids together, hitching rides on the trollies that used to run along First Avenue. That was a long time ago, though, and I hadn’t seen Charlie since long before I’d lost my license. I probably would never have seen Charlie again, dead or alive, if I hadn’t run into the Moose down on Fourteenth Street. He’d told me about Charlie, and asked me to come pay my respects. He didn’t mention the fact that I had a three-day growth on my face, or that my eyes were rimmed with red, or that I stank of booze. His eyes had traveled briefly over my rumpled suit and my matted hair. He ignored all that and asked me to come pay my respects to a dead childhood friend, and I’d accepted. But mostly because I knew there’d be liquor there.

“So how you been?” the Moose asked now. He was holding a shot glass between two thin fingers. The Moose is a very small man with his hair thinning in an oval on the back of his head. He’d been a small kid, too, which was why we tagged him with a virile nickname.

“So-so,” I told him. I tossed off the drink and held out my glass. One of Charlie’s relatives filled it, and I nodded my thanks.

“I read all about it in the paper, Matt,” the Moose said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” The Moose shook his head sadly. “She was a bitch, Matt,” he said. “You should have killed that guy.”

He was talking about my wife, Trina. He was referring to the night I’d found her in my own bedroom, after four months of crazy-in-love marriage, with a son of a bitch named Garth. He was recalling the vivid newspaper accounts of how I’d worked Garth over with the butt end of my .45, of how the police had tagged me with an A.D.W. charge — assault with a deadly weapon. They’d gotten my license, and Garth had gotten my wife, but not until I’d ripped a trench down the side of his face and knocked half his goddamn teeth out.

“You should have killed him,” the Moose repeated.

“I tried to, Moose. I tried damn hard.” I didn’t like remembering it. I’d been putting in a lot of time forgetting. Whiskey helps in that category.

“The good ones die,” he said, shaking his head, “and the bad ones keep living.” He looked toward the living room, where the flowers were stacked on either side of the coffin. I looked there, too, and I saw Charlie’s mother weeping softly, a big Italian woman in a black dress.