Джонатан Крейг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 12, December, 1953

They allowed him to leave the hospital after a month. He would have to remain at home, though, for another month before resuming work.

Beryl was her usual sweet, solicitous self. She did everything to keep things harmonious and calm at home. She was happy to have him back, but one thing disappointed her. She had hoped that in a renewal of their love, she could help his return to normalcy. But when they tried to make love, he became impotent. The doctor told her this was to be expected in view of his nervous condition.

Only Clifford knew the real reason. In his imagination, he could love Beryl. He could think about that time on Seventh Street, when the man was ripping her clothes off, stifling her cries, trying to take her by force. Or that dream, when he choked her and kissed her puffed lips. Thinking about those things, he wanted her with an intoxicating passion. But when he went to her at night he had to restrain his hands from bruising her white flesh, from choking her. And so he failed her. And he lay there, staring up at the black night, sweating, his nerves screaming for release.

She was his wife. He must not harm her. Yet, all the other doors to passion had been closed for him.

His restlessness increased. One evening after supper, he went for a walk. He found himself, after a while, near the lonesome part of Seventh Street. Under a street light, he caught up with a person walking in his direction.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Leighton.”

“Hello, Jean,” he greeted, recognizing the person as a teen-age girl who lived across the street from him.

“You walking this way far?” she asked.

“Why — yes, I am.”

“Then I’m glad I ran into you. I have to go to a play practice at the gym tonight and Dad and Mother had a bridge date and couldn’t take me.” She shivered. “Gives me the creeps to walk down this dark street alone.”

“Well, I’ll walk with you...”

As they strolled together she chatted. He glanced toward her young curves, hugged by a tight sweater, and her white throat.

The next morning at breakfast, Beryl opened the paper and emitted a shocked gasp. “Oh, how horrible!”

“What’s the matter?” Clifford asked.

“Oh, that poor child.” Beryl glanced across the table at him, her face ashen. “Jean Austin. You know her. The girl that lives across the street. The police found her body this morning. All her clothes were torn off. She’d been assaulted and strangled to death.”

Clifford did not answer.

“I must go over there right away,” she exclaimed, dropping the paper and jumping up from the table. “Her poor mother must be frantic—”

That night as they prepared for bed, Beryl held to him for a moment with a little shiver. “The poor girl,” she whispered. “She didn’t have someone like you to protect her, darling — the way I had that night.”

Clifford kissed her. “I think,” he murmured softly, “that I’ll be all right tonight, Beryl. I want to make love to you very much.”

She raised her eyes to his, her face suddenly flushed. All the events of the day, the trouble at the Austins, fell away from her mind. “Clifford,” she whispered thickly, her eyes star-filled.

He went into the bathroom to shave and undress. The bathroom door opened into their bedroom. When he pushed it open, he could see Beryl in there, silhouetted against the moonlight coming through an open window. She was waiting for him and she did not have a stitch of clothes on. He went into the room where she was. She seemed to be moving toward him through a fog. He reached for her, his eyes hot and bright, and his thick fingers began to twitch...

Perfect place for murder, Malone thought as he joined the parade. The men parading were all undertakers.

The parade started late, as all parades do. There was the usual confusion, with bands mustering on the wrong street corners, floats getting stuck in the traffic jam, and drum majorettes detained at the last minute by snap and elastic failures in strategic areas. There was the customary mix-up in the line of marching orders, with division captains running up and down waving their arms and blowing whistles, and the parade marshal sweating it out in his limousine and scowling at his wristwatch. And there was the usual search for visiting dignitaries, finally discovered in a nearby saloon. That was why John J. Malone was able to catch up with the parade after it had progressed only a block or two from its starting point at Michigan Boulevard and Roosevelt Road.

For the little lawyer, too, had been detained. Finding a rental outfit that would trust him for a frock coat, a high hat and a pair of patent leather shoes without the formality of a cash deposit was not easy on such short notice. That was the formal regalia of the Oblong Marching Society and to have appeared in anything else would have made him look conspicuous. He had no desire to look conspicuous. Somewhere along the line of march one of the marchers was to slip him a list of names and one thousand dollars in cash.

“What do I have to do for the money?” Malone had asked Rico de Angelo. Rico was an undertaker, a relative of Joe of Joe the Angel’s City Flail Bar. “You don’t have to do anything,” Rico had told him on the telephone. “All you have to do is keep this guy’s name out of the newspapers.”

“Why?” Malone said.

Rico hesitated. Then he said, “Remember the Gerasi murder? Well, this friend of mine, he was a friend of Gerasi’s too. And Gerasi gave him this list of names before he was killed. Gerasi wanted him to give the list to the cops. But when Gerasi got killed, my friend got scared. He wants you to take the list and give it to the cops, Malone. He wants to stay out of it.”

Simple. Just a shade too simple, Malone told himself as he hung up the receiver. The newspapers had been running black headlines for weeks about ballot box frauds in the spring elections. Ghost voters. Names taken ‘from the cemeteries. The cops had figured that Gerasi’s Funeral Home had been supplying the names for the fraud. But Gerasi had turned honest, and passed the list on before he’d been killed. Now Malone had to get the list to the cops. But it had to be on the q. t. If the gang found out about it Malone, and Rico’s friend, might both be Rico’s customers.

His friends on the papers would thank him for a list like that, Malone knew, but he also knew that gangsters and crooked politicians took a dim view of informers. He would only be taking the heat off Rico’s friend and putting it on himself. Still, a thousand dollars was a thousand dollars. He had a date with a blonde that night. There was also the office rent, three months overdue, with the landlord breathing down his neck. A thousand dollars would very nicely take care of both emergencies. He could depend on the boys at the city desks to keep his own name out of the papers, he assured himself. Besides, there was his duty as a lawyer to help the innocent, and this guy was an innocent party to the fraud — he hoped.

Third row from the front, fourth guy from the left, facing front, the guy with the red face and the gold tooth. That was how Rico had identified the client. Now, what with the hot Chicago sun beating down from above and the sizzling asphalt giving him the hotfoot from below, the instructions were getting a bit fuzzy in his mind. Fourth row from the front, third guy from the left, or was it third row from the left, fourth guy from the front — no, that couldn’t be it. Something about facing front. He had been following the contingent. The thing to do was to hurry up ahead of it and count facing it. Malone hated walking, anywhere, any time, for any reason. Besides, his feet were killing him in the rented patent leather shoes. Maybe he shouldn’t have reinforced himself quite so much from the bottle in the emergency file in his office before leaving. Under forced march he managed to get up ahead of the marchers and, turning around to face them, walking backwards, he scanned the lines. Yes, that was it. Third guy from the front facing left— Oh, the hell with it. One thing he did remember. Somewhere in that weaving line of faces was a red-faced guy with a gold tooth and one thousand dollars. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Malone reminded himself. Especially one with a gold tooth.