Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

Annalou shivered. “Oooh! Makes my skin crawl, just to think about it.” She went over to take the order.

“Strawberry ice-cream,” the girl ordered. She was about twenty — tall, slim, haughty — with a thin, small mouth that was a slash of carmine in a long, pale face. “And none of that marshmallow goo you put on it, to imitate whip cream. Just plain ice-cream, understand?”

Annalou was coldly polite. “Yes, miss.” She turned to the man. He was older than his companion, maybe thirty; well-dressed, good-looking in a short, plump and mustached way.

“Gimme one of these Combination Ham ’n Lamburgers. Plenty a pickle-willie, huh?” His soft brown eyes surveyed Annalou’s trim figure in lazy admiration. “An’ lissen, cutie, — no mustard but a big, thick slice a raw onion, huh?”

“One combo with raw.” Annalou scribbled it on her pad, blandly.

Don laid a quarter beside his cup. “You’re gonna be busy. I’ll be hittin’ the breeze.”

“You going out to that apartment without me?” Annalou slammed the refrigerator door, slapped the cake of meat on the french top with a sizzle of grease.

“Say not. No fun in that. I’ll go back to the shop, rewind a couple armatures — see if I can earn enough to pay for one pillowslip, maybe.”

“Be back at nine?” she asked wistfully.

“On the dot.” He swung around, pushed off the stool, went out to his truck.

As he shut the screen door behind him, he heard the girl with the red wound of a mouth laugh and say “Patsy” to the man beside her.

Don eyed the extra-body-length job parked beside his half-tonner — a sleek, black Cadillac with double aerial whips slanting jauntily over its gleaming top.

You seem to be doin’ all right for yourself, Patsy, Don thought. But you could have twice your dough an’ here’s one gent who doesn’t envy you! Money ain’t everything — not by a darnsight! I wouldn’t swap girls with you for all the rice in China...

He was putting a coat of shellac on a two-gang condenser when the phone made him jump. Who’d be calling him here at the shop? Not his friends. They all knew he spent Satty peeyems with Annalou...

“Regal Radio Repairs; Don Rixey talkin’.”

“Oh, Mister Rixey! I’m in the most awful jam!” A girl’s voice, high-pitched, gushy and affected. “I’ve a whole bevy of guests here and everybody’s been dancing, having a perfectly marvelous time... and then blooie ... my stupid ole radio set goes on the blink.”

“Like to help you. But I couldn’t get to it tonight.” Why’d these emergency calls always come just when he was ready to quit? “I’m closing up—”

“But you’ve simply got to help me! I mean you really have to! I’ve all these people here... I’ve tried to call a dozen repair men and you’re the only one who answered. Please, Mister Rixey! I’m sure there’s hardly anything the matter with the ole fool set... probably only a silly little tube or something you can fix in a minute!”

“Where you live?” If she was way across town, he wouldn’t bother with it no matter how she squawked. He’d promised to get back to Annalou at the Outside Inn by nine and it was eight-thirty already.

“Forty-two Chestnut. At Highland. Know that big apartment house at the corner?”

“Sure, Which apartment?” Chestnut was only six blocks over; he could make it there in a hop-skip.

“Three B... name’s Garnet... Mrs. Francine Garnet, How soon can you make it, Mister Rixey?”

“Oh, five minutes or so. What kind of set you got?”

“It’s a Klaravox... one of those console things...”

“Okay. Be right over.”

It might be a five-dollar job at that. The Chestnut Street address was pretty ritzy — anybody who owned one of those big Klaravox boxes ought to be willing to pay more than a two-buck service fee, for overtime work, and a rush call. Annalou could use that five for her hope-chest fund.

He put some extra toggles and trimmers in his kit, checked the chart for the tube numbers and added them — took along his loan-out portable in case there might be something he couldn’t fix offhand.

He parked his truck in front of the apartment. That ‘Ring Regal for Rapid Repairs — Main 4266’ sign on the side of the panel looked a little out of place, jammed in between the snazzy station wagon and that convertible with its canary-yellow leather upholstery — but maybe the free advertising would drum up a little extra business. He could use it...

There was no one in the lobby. No row of mailboxes, as in more modest apartment houses.

The elevator was upstairs. He’d walk up the two flights anyhow, rather than risk some gold-braid flunky snooting him by asking why he hadn’t used the service entrance.

The door to 3B was open a couple of inches. The radio across the hall was tuned up full blast on the night ban game; he couldn’t hear any partying inside the Garnet apartment. He thumbed the buzzer.

“Come in...” Mrs. Garnet’s voice, from somewhere inside.

“Radio man.” He pushed into a small, shadowy lobby with bulbous gilt antique mirrors and spindly-legged gilt chairs.

“Come right in here.” She was evidently calling from the living-room beyond the arched doorway.

He took off his hat, marched in. He got two steps beyond the arch when the roof fell in on him!

An overpowering screeching in his brain, as if some gigantic oscillator was vibrating out of control. A searing flare like a million flash bulbs exploding simultaneously. Then Voom! Blackout!

Instantly, the nerve-torturing screech again. The piercingly painful light once more. It penetrated his closed eyelids — or did it?

He opened his eyes. Dazzling light blinded him with a nauseating glare. The light wouldn’t stay still. Kept zooming up close to him, then receding. He tried to recoil from it, found he couldn’t. He was flat on his back. The light was a chandelier overhead.

Walls swam dizzily into focus. The screeching became a fierce, grinding ache at the back of his head.

“Hey!” He managed a thick-tongued mumble.

No answer.

“HEY!” Cold fear numbed him as memory poked through the haze of pain. “What happened?”

Still no answer. He rolled on his side. He still had his kit. No. It wasn’t the leather handle of the repair kit — it was cold metal. A gun!

He dropped it as if it were a live wire. Stared at it as if it really was alive. A heavy, blue-steel, ugly-nosed automatic!

He pushed him s elf back on his haunches, blinked around. He wasn’t alone, after all!

But the man on the floor behind him wasn’t going to be able to explain what had happened. Three bright scarlet threads flowed from blackened holes in the white triangle of shirt which showed above his vest, down toward his right armpit, out of sight beneath his coat.

Don lurched to his feet.

Maybe the dead man couldn’t talk. But his half-open eyes, showing nothing except the red-veined bloodshot whites... the gaping mouth where slack muscles had let his jaw fall open — they said plenty!

They said “Murder”! And “Frame-up!”

Don bent, whipped out his handkerchief, wiped off the butt of the automatic, dropped it on the carpet again.

He looked around for his kit. There it was, against the wall. He grabbed it, stumbled toward the arched doorway.

Probably the smart thing would be to search the place, see if “Mrs. Garnet” was still there, dead or alive.

But Don didn’t care about being smart. All he wanted was out.

He had his hand on the knob of the hall door, when he remembered his hat. He turned, his eyes searching the lobby, the little corridor leading to the living-room. No hat on the floor anywhere.