Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 1, January, 1955

“All right, they have,” I said.

“Sure,” Stu said, seriously. “That’s why I’m here. As long as that blowtorch angle had them busy, the turps were safe. Besides, I couldn’t take them out of the studio with everyone around. But I’ll get rid of them now, and then I’d like to see them pin anything on me.”

“It’s too late for that, Stu. The police have probably found Andy by this time.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

“So what? What good will it do when they find her? I didn’t kidnap her. Someone else did. Someone I hired. Let them prove I was behind it.”

“Kidnaping is a federal offense, Stu. Your stooge may not feel like riding it out alone.”

Stu considered this for a moment, and his mouth tightened. “You shouldn’t have come snooping around, Jon. This is a personal matter.”

“You knew she was pregnant?”

“Yes,” he almost shouted. I saw the gun hand waver, and I edged closer to the prop table, putting my hands flat on the table top behind me, putting down the plastic gun because I wanted both hands when I started my play. “Pregnant, that lousy cheat! Artie Schaefer’s kid, Artie Schaefer who only dated her a few times. It speaks well for the morality of Cynthia Finch, doesn’t it? I took care of him, too. I took care of him, all right.”

“You did, Stu.”

“She had the gall to tell it to me, just like that. Like exchanging pleasantries at breakfast. ‘I’m pregnant, Stu. Will you marry me, anyway?’ I married her, all right. I married her to fire and a dented skull, and then I got the guy who ruined it for me. It’s too bad you came into this, Jon. It’s too bad you and Andy...”

I reached for the bucket of turps, whipping it around with the open circle pointed toward Stu. I threw with all my might, and the brushes flopped out of the can, and the commingled turpentine and paint splashed into Stu’s face and eyes. He backed off screaming, the .45 going off once, twice, firing blindly into the walls of the small prop room.

And then my fist collided with his jaw, and the gun clattered to the concrete, and I hit him again just before he dropped down alongside the gun.

It was all over for Stu Shaughnessy.

We sat together in the restaurant, the three of us. George Hilton looked peculiarly spruced in his dress-up clothes, and Andy looked wonderful, and I couldn’t get enough looking at her.

“I don’t understand,” I said, “how you realized it was Stu. All right, even if you did know he was going to marry Cynthia...”

“The papers, silly,” she said, squeezing my hand and smiling brightly. I wanted to kiss her right then and there, but I remembered George Hilton.

“What papers, doll?” I asked.

“The ones Charlie brought in. He was very nice, Charlie,” Andy said. “I hope you won’t go too hard on him. After all, he was just being paid for a job.”

“Charlie is a kidnaper,” George said, “no matter how you slice it.”

“Still, he was very nice to me. Even when he caught me phoning you, Jon, he simply hung up and said, ‘Did you tell him where you were?’ And when I said I hadn’t, he just warned me to stay away from the phone after that.”

“As a matter of fact,” George said, “he ripped the phone from the wall. When we got there, we found it that way.”

“Yes,” Andy said. “Charlie was very strong.”

“I never knocked on so many doors in my life,” George said, sighing.

“Well, thank you, sir,” Andy said, smiling.

“About the papers,” I prompted. “What papers?”

“The daily newspapers. It was Saturday’s paper that carried the story about Cynthia having been pregnant.”

“That’s right,” George said. “We released the story Friday night.”

“Well, the minute I saw that, I went over the conversations again. That was when the wedding bells rang. It seemed like the only thing that made sense.”

“Did you see this paper?” I asked, pulling out the phony headlines I’d had made in the penny arcade.

Andy looked at the bold black ANDREA MANN ASSAULT VICTIM, and then squealed, “Oh, you darling little prophet,” and threw her arms around my neck.

George Hilton looked at the headline and said, “Huh?”

Andy took her mouth away from mine and winked at George. “Silly,” she said, “he just proposed!”

Which I guess I had.

Everybody was after me — Dudley Sledge. But I knew what to do. I picked up my machine gun and my hand grenades and my rifle and my brass knuckles...

She was cleaning fish by the kitchen sink when I climbed through the window, my .45 in my hand. She wore a low-cut apron, shadowed near the frilly top. When she saw me, her eyes went wide, and her lips parted, moist and full. I walked to the sink, and I picked up the fish by the tail, and I batted her over the eye with it.

“Darling,” she murmured.

I gave her another shot with the fish, this time right over her nose. She came into my arms, and there was ecstasy in her eyes, and her breath rushed against my throat. I shoved her away, and I swatted her full on the mouth. She shivered and came to me again. I held her close, and there was the odor of fish and seaweed about her. I inhaled deeply, savoring the taste. My father had been a sea captain.

“They’re outside,” I said, “all of them. And they’re all after me. The whole stinking, dirty, rotten, crawling, filthy, obscene, disgusting mess of them. Me. Dudley Sledge. They’ve all got guns in their maggotty fists, and murder in their grimy eyes.”

“They’re rats,” she said.

“And all because of you. They want me because I’m helping you.”

“There’s the money, too,” she reminded me.

“Money?” I asked. “You think money means anything to them? You think they came all the way from Washington Heights for a lousy ten million bucks? Don’t make me laugh.” I laughed.

“What are we going to do, Dudley?”

“Do? Do? I’m going to go out there and cut them down like the unholy rats they are. When I get done, there’ll be twenty-six less rats in the world, and the streets will be a cleaner place for our kids to play in.”

“Oh, Dudley,” she said.

“But first...”

The pulse in her throat began beating wildly. There was a hungry animal look in her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath and ran her hands over her hips, smoothing the apron. I went to her, and I cupped her chin in the palm of my left hand.

“Baby,” I said.

Then I drew back my right fist and hit her on the mouth. She fell back against the sink, and I followed with a quick chop to the gut, and a fast uppercut to the jaw. She went down on the floor and she rolled around in the fish scales, and I thought of my sea captain father, and my mother who was a nice little lass from New England. And then I didn’t think of anything but the blonde in my arms, and the .45 in my fist, and the twenty-six men outside, and the four shares of Consolidated I’d bought that afternoon, and the bet I’d made on the fight with One-Lamp Louie, and the defective brake lining on my Olds, and the bottle of rye in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet back at Dudley Sledge, Investigations.

I enjoyed it.

She had come to me less than a week ago.

Giselle, my pretty red-headed secretary, had swiveled into the office and said, “Dud, there’s a woman to see you.”

“Another one?” I asked.

“She looks distraught.”

“Show her in.”