Roy Carroll - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 4, April, 1953

On the threshold of the door, Carlin sucked in his breath, held it as he moved cat-footed into the room in which Eve LaMotte stood naked before a full-length mirror.

Carlin stared at her firm, pointed breasts, at the soft curve of her stomach, mirrored in a long panel of shining glass; at the clean lines of her white flanks and the profiled breasts. Her flame-colored hair rippled about her white shoulders, and her back was a flawless, deeply indented marble wedge, tapering into a slender waist.

Carlin moved up behind her. He held the long supple blade of the steak knife pressed against his forearm, and he let his knuckles touch the warm curve of her throat.

“Don’t yell,” he whispered. “Don’t make a sound. Just do what I tell you, and you won’t get hurt.”

He felt the girl shudder beneath his clenched fist, saw the dark eyes jerk up and go wide with terror, looking at his reflection in the glass. Carlin ground his knuckles against her mouth, muffling the scream that rose in her throat. “Keep quiet,” he said. “You yell, and I’ll kill you. You make any noise, I’ll kill you. Do what I say, and I won’t hurt you at all. So help me, I won’t.”

The frightened eyes stayed on his face a moment, and then she shivered and hunched her shoulders in a despairing shrug. She made a gesture of resignation with her narrow hands and spoke with her lips soft and moist against his fist. “I won’t yell,” she said. “Take your hand off me. I promise I won’t yell.”

Carlin withdrew his fist, keeping the knife carefully hidden from her sight. “I don’t want you,” he said. “I don’t want you the... the way I did before. I didn’t come for that.”

The girl moved away from him slowly and sat down before her vanity. She drew her long legs up onto the seat and wrapped her bare arms about them. “Why, then?” she asked, her teeth chattering behind the sensuous lips. “Why did you come? You cleaned me out last time. You took every bit of jewelry Eddie’d given me in four years — in all the time we’ve been together. I haven’t anything of value; nothing but a few dollars in my purse.”

“Sure, sure, baby,” Carlin said. “Listen, I want two things. To get even with a guy, and to grab some getaway dough. You’re going to help me do both.”

She stared at him without saying anything, and he let the knife fall into a pocket of the raincoat. He crossed to the wide bed that filled a corner of the room and picked up the negligee that lay upon a silken pillow. The negligee was a filmy cloud of almost transparent silk, the same one she had been wearing the first time Carlin had seen her. Carlin sighed and turned and brought the negligee back to her, and stood over her as she drew the clinging green stuff around her body.

“Here’s how you’re going to help me,” he said. “You’re going to make a phone call — to Paul Velco.”

“You mean that fat politician I sometimes see around town?”

“That’s him,” Carlin said. “A guy who’s got a lot of things, including a yen for Eve LaMotte, a yen that’s eating him alive. So you’re going to call him. You’re going to tell Velco that your boy friend Eddie’s out of town, and that he left you no dough, and that you can’t cash a check. Then you’ll tell Velco you’re all alone, and ask him will he lend you a couple hundred bucks, to last you until Eddie gets home. You’ll tell him that you’re alone, and he’ll bring you the money, personally, here. And you tell him to give four rings, two long, two short, so that you’ll know it’s him.”

“Take it easy! God!” Her eyes were slightly narrowed now. While they waited, the girl asked him, “How’d you get in here, anyhow? I paid a guy ten bucks to change the lock on the door, after your last little visit.”

“It was easy,” Carlin said. “I’ve had a lot of practice with locks. I heard the water running in the bathtub, and it covered what little noise I made. I didn’t make much.”

The doorbell of the apartment was a soft chime, and its music came to them then, in two long, and two short bursts of pleasant sound.

Carlin came to his feet like a marionette jerked by violent strings. His legs were shaking, but he crossed to the girl quickly and pushed his face close to hers.

“Now listen to me!” he snarled. “Get what I tell you! I’ll be behind the door when you open it. You turn right around and come back here, and he’ll follow you, and I’ll close the door. I’ll take it from there.”

Eve LaMotte looked at his face, and the dark eyes were round with fear. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “You’re not going to —?” She choked as she looked into his eyes. “Oh, God, no! Not here!”

“Do like I said,” Carlin told her, “and maybe you won’t get hurt.”

He was behind the door when the girl opened it to admit Velco. He stood so close to him that he could smell the perfume and talcum and pomade aroma of the big man as he followed the girl out of the hallway and into the dim light of the living room. He gripped the knife handle so tightly that his fingernails were like sharp blades digging into his palms. He moved soundlessly to the end of the short hallway, and paused.

Velco chuckled, a soft, growling noise deep in his throat. “What a surprise, Baby, your call was,” he said to the girl. “Last thing I expected, but I don’t have to tell you it’s all right. Plenty all right.”

The girl laughed, a nearly hysterical cackle.

“That stinking Eddie, to leave you without dough,” Velco said softly. “But, it’s a break for me.” He nudged her, and began to laugh.

To Joe Carlin, the big man’s laughter sounded like tearing silk. He saw the vast belly shake. Then he came into the room, on tiptoe, and halted six feet away from Velco’s back.

“You know something, baby,” Velco went on. “I didn’t bring you the lousy two C’s you asked for. I thought it would be nicer if I brought you a special little present. A little token of how much a guy like me appreciates a really beautiful dame.”

Carlin heard the stiff crackle of paper as Velco reached a hand into the breast pocket of his coat. The light shone dully on an envelope in his pudgy fingers.

Velco purred, “Me, I like to do everything the big way. The great big way. So, you ask me to lend you a couple of hundred dollars, instead, I bring you this — as a gift. Here, baby — a thousand-dollar bill.”

Velco’s words burst and echoed in Joe Carlin’s brain. A thousand-dollar bill. Not the two hundred bucks Velco should have brought, the two hundred bucks that would have taken Carlin to Pennsylvania and the farm where he could get well. No! Velco had to big-dog it with a thousand-dollar bill !

Carlin heard himself yell, a choking, sobbing scream that seemed to rip at his throat, a shriek that turned somehow into a swelling crimson bubble within his head, and broke against his skull in a tearing burst of pain. He plunged forward and drove the steak knife into Velco’s broad back. From the corner of his eye, he saw the girl as she ran, screaming hysterically, out of the apartment door. Then he twisted the knife loose and buried the long blade in Velco’s body again.

He was still crouched near Velco’s corpse when the police came. He flung himself at them, but the knife was deep in Velco’s back, and there was nothing in Carlin’s hand but a torn and bloody fragment of a thousand-dollar bill.

He ran straight at the cop who shouted at him to halt. The cop shouted again, and then, when Carlin came screaming on, the cop fired straight into Carlin’s writhing face.

It was difficult to understand the police interest in the case. There s nothing illegal about killing a thief who attacks you.