Anthony Boucher - Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 1, 1960

Spade told me, bragging a little. “Next door’s a shoe store, Scott. I had a friend get me the architect’s plans of this dump, plus the joints on both sides. The shoe store was perfect.” He gestured at the hole. “Through there’s a storeroom, back end of the shoe store. The old duck that runs it’s in there now, tied up and gagged.” He grinned. “Took me most of the night to get through. Just about like the Western-Federal job.”

That rang a bell. Six months or so back the Western-Federal Savings and Loan had been burglarized. The thieves had broken through the wall between it and the adjoining clothing store, blown the safe, and left before dawn with $80,000. Leaving, they’d been spotted by a police car and chased, but they’d gotten away after several shots had been fired. A police officer in the car had been bit, and died the next day.

This guy just might make it, I thought. Through the hole, out the shoe store, and home free.

“Okay, Scott, let’s get the films. In case anything goes wrong, you get a pill in the head.” He paused. “And don’t try to get close to me. I’ve been awake all night. I’m tired. I’m sleepy and damned hungry. What I mean, I’m on edge.”

I didn’t say anything. We went out, down the short hallway into the empty theater. If I told Spade there weren’t any films, he wouldn’t believe me; and no matter what I said, he’d check for himself after coming this far. We started up the aisle. The music still throbbed around us; it was an incongruous note now. I felt a little as if this were a funeral march, but the record was “When the Saints Come Marching In”! Which isn’t exactly a funeral march these days.

I said, “Why’d you kill the guy, Spade?”

“Personal thing. He was the only guy knew I shot that cop after the Western-Federal job. He was cracking up, first the booze, then H. Sooner or later the cops would sweat him, keep him off the dope — and my tail would be in the sling. Just one of those things that had to be done. Like this.”

We were twenty or thirty feet up the aisle when a weird sense of unreality started creeping over me. I thought I had heard a squeal — one of those high-pitched feminine squeals you sometimes hear...

I shook it off, took another step. Couldn’t be. Just something wrong with my ears. Then I heard it again. Either my ears were getting very musical, or... I knew. All of a horrible sudden, I knew.

Before I stopped, before I turned my head and looked, before the sight actually walloped me in the eyes, I knew what was happening. As I stopped stock still and started craning my head around, and Spade mumbled something I didn’t catch, I heard it again: “ Yee-yi!” it sounded like. High and full and fruity.

“No...” I said to myself, aloud, my voice hollow. “No... It can’t be...”

It was.

Robbie. There she was, on the stage, gliding about, wiggling, gyrating. She wore a pink brassiere and pink pants and was twirling her skirt around her head. “ Eee-yi-ooh!” she went.

Spade shook all over, yanked his head around, and gawked at me, his face twitching. “What in the—” he said.

My mind was racing — every which way. He might decide just to shoot me. He might decide to shoot Robbie. He might decide anything. He backed over against the seats at the edge of the aisle, moved up a couple of feet to where he could watch me and the stage at the same time.

“What in the—” he said again.

I didn’t say anything. My mind refused to function. I opened my mouth, in there trying, but nothing came out.

On the stage: “Eeee-ooo- eee! ”

The skirt had gone flying through the air, and her brassiere was sliding off. While she swayed and gyrated and snapped her head, brush of auburn hair flying wickedly.

When the Saints ... come marching in ... POM — POM!

When the Saints — POM — Come marching — POM — in ... POM-POM!

Oh, she was glorious, stupendous, unbelievable. Only I couldn’t enjoy a bit of it. Not a glide. Not a POM! I broke out in a cold sweat, then hot flashes, then got gooey all over. My brain seemed to unravel, crumble, get soupy.

I couldn’t think straight. What in the hell did she think she was doing up there? Why here? Why now? Why?

Spade’s head snapped back and forth, from me to the stage, his jaw sagging about half an inch. He was bewildered — even more bewildered than I. And a small surge of hope fluttered in me. His snaps were getting less snappy. He was looking more at the stage, just rolling his eyeballs back toward me.

And slowly hope turned to certainty. My confusion disappeared, my thoughts steadied, focused. In a moment of peculiar clarity it seemed that this had a kind of inevitability about it, and all I had to do now was let it happen, merely watch history unroll while I played my small part in it.

Because history, I suddenly realized, was now repeating itself. This was essentially the same scene with which all the trouble had started. Same girl, Robbie; same dance; same guy, me; same lousy intruder, Spade. Except that it then had been on the beach and was now in a theater, all of the original elements were again present — only, like a big flea with small cats on it, the positions were reversed.

Then it had been Spade who ruined everything for me — and maybe for Robbie. Now, with Robbie’s marvelous help, I was going to ruin everything for Spade. It seemed a thing of beauty, almost poetic: Justice!

I almost smiled as Spade’s eyes wobbled toward me and then snapped back toward the stage. In a kind of starchy tone, stiff and yet gummy, he said: “Do you see what I see?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t see anything.”

It was a hot flash of inspiration. Logic would tell him this couldn’t be happening. If I agreed with logic, he might get completely unstrung. “But — that music,” he said.

“What music?”

He twitched. “Don’t you hear the music? Don’t you hear the music?”

“What music?”

“Something is cuckoo.”

“Spade,” I said, “you are getting all pale, Spade.”

On the stage, plenty of movement.

Just high-heeled shoes and pink pants now. And Robbie’s hands were at the top of the pink, diddling and dawdling as she had diddled and dawdled that grand afternoon at the beach. I remembered how that sight had transfixed me, riveted my entire attention even while murder had flickered in the corner of my eye. I took a deep breath, squeezed the fingers of my right hand together.

“She’s there!” Spade cried. “Hear the music?”

“Spade, you’re getting awfully pale.”

I guess at this point he didn’t care if he turned purple. Spade hadn’t forgotten me completely, but I was growing less important by the minute. It was inevitable. Robbie’s fourth dimension had practically zoomed into the fifth, and now she was approaching the most climactic climax this stage — maybe any stage — had ever experienced.

Down slipped the pink, then it was a pink blur in her hand, and a moment later flying through the air. Spade’s jaw sagged two more inches.

Robbie gyrated, wound up. The music was screeching to a nerve-shattering peak of wildness. Any second it was going to happen. It was, I knew, going to be memorable, marvelous. Something had happened to Robbie up there. She knew she had an audience, she was on stage, doing the thing she’d always wanted to do, and it was as though slow lightning flowed through her. She was getting rid of those repressions and suppressed desires all at once, flinging them every which way, and she had in these moments risen to peaks of magnificence even she might never reach again.