Рон Гуларт: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

She smiled at him sweetly. “Exactly right, Francis. You wait here. I’ll get him.”

As he waited, McAdams watched as a sudden parade of prostitutes, free of their labors for the balance of the night, filed through the lounge and out the rear fire door to a stairway leading to the back alley. McAdams smiled at each one, greeting them by name, and they variously blew kisses, toodle-oohed, or shook their bosoms for him as they went by. Ah, he thought, it had been a sweet day when, ten years earlier, he had been driven by the dismal employment opportunities for a poor young Irish immigrant to sit for the policemen’s civil service exam. A sweet day, indeed.

When Lily reentered the room, a brooding, obviously drunken Joe Rudi was trailing behind her. He went straight to the bar and reached behind it, pulling down a bottle of gin. Taking two glasses, he sat at the bar and turned to McAdams.

“You wanna drink?” he asked, his words slightly slurred.

McAdams smiled. “Why, Joseph, I truly would. But I’m on duty and I’ve got me reputation to think of.”

Rudi shrugged and poured gin into his own glass.

“Suit yourself,” he said, sipping at it. “But there ain’t nobody here but us, and we got no concerns about reputations, I guess.”

McAdams turned to Lily with a tight smile.

“Now is that so, Lillian? Are we to say the whole floor is empty, ’cept for we three Christian souls?”

She returned the smile. “Empty as our graves, Francis. I checked myself.”

McAdams moved to the bar. “Then pour me that drink, Joseph. I’m not fussy who it is I drink with.”

Rudi poured two fingers of gin into the glass. McAdams frowned at it. “Well, for the love of Mary, Rudi, try to remember the whole damn world ain’t Eye-talian. You’re drinkin’ with an Irishman now, lad, so heavy-up that hand a bit.”

Rudi scowled, but again reached for the bottle. He filled the rock glass, six ounces of straight gin; clear as water, fragrant as a flower. McAdams lifted the glass and downed half of it in a single swallow. He smiled and licked at his lips, raising the glass in Rudi’s direction.

“To your health, of course,” he said, and then swallowed the balance of the booze.

Now he stepped back four feet from Rudi and squinted.

“Joseph,” he said, a scolding tone creeping into his voice. “Joseph, I’m afraid my policeman’s eye has detected a bit of bulge there at your waist. Would that be a heater you’re packin’there, lad? And on the very night there’s to be a lawful crackdown on the joint? That would be insultin’to me, Joseph. A bit insultin’.”

Rudi smiled. “Relax, copper. The gun’s legit. I got all the paperwork I need.”

McAdams stepped back another foot, an exaggerated look of shock washing across his face. “Why, Joseph, heaven forbid you’re implying the boys down at Pistol Compliance displayed such a serious lapse of judgment as to issue a thug such as yourself the legal papers for a carry permit? Is that what you’re implyin’?”

Rudi smiled and drained his glass. He refilled it and then McAdams’s.

“Yeah,” he said, an amused smile on his lips. “That’s what I’m implyin’.”

McAdams shook his head sadly. “Well, then, Joseph, do me a service before I join you in another taste. Slip that heater out and lay it down on the bar. I’ll be feelin’ better with me eyeballs able to rest on it.”

Rudi shrugged. “Whatever you say, copper,” he said, a scornful sneer creeping into his tone.

He reached into his waistband and slipped the gun out from under his worn tuxedo jacket. He placed it on the bar top and slid it five feet away. McAdams glanced at the heavy Remington revolver and sighed.

“Well, Lillian,” he said, his eyes planted squarely on Rudi. “Time to call it an evenin’.”

Lily stepped back further from the bar and smiled. “Yes, Francis, it is indeed.”

Rudi spun his barstool around and faced McAdams. “Already?” he said, his smile now dismissive. “I thought you was an Irish booze master. One drink and you quit?”

McAdams smiled coldly. “No, Joseph Rudi. It’s you that’s quittin’.”

Now Rudi’s smile turned to a puzzled frown. “What?” he asked.

From her distance, Lily spoke. “Give my regards to my first husband, Joe,” she said sweetly.

Rudi looked at her, clearly baffled, the gin muddling his brain.

“Your first husband? Tony Olives? Ain’t he dead?”

McAdams drew the forty-four service revolver from under his heavy woolen winter coat.

“Yes, indeed he is, Joseph. Dead and burnin’ in hell, by the saints above us,” he said.

He raised the gun and fired. Lily flinched against the crashing boom. The heavy slug tore through the center of Rudi’s heart, and he died halfway to the hardwood floor.

McAdams stepped quickly down the bar. Using the now-hot barrel of his own revolver, he pushed Rudi’s gun off the bar top and onto the brothel floor, then kicked it gently towards the leaking, lifeless body. He turned and faced Lily.

“Imagine the brass of the man,” he said. “Rushin’ at a trained law-enforcement officer such as Francis McAdams, a gun in his hand. Why, it was a damn-near godless suicide, it was.”

Lily raised her eyes from the corpse. She smiled at McAdams.

“And in front of a witness, no less. What ever was he thinking?”

McAdams shook his head and compressed his lips. “Lillian, it was the demon liquor doin’ his thinkin’, that’s what it was. That’s why the boys and I do our damnedest to close down these sin parlors. Praise the Eighteenth Amendment for the lives it has saved!”

They moved silently closer to the body, standing shoulder to shoulder and gazing down at it. Without either looking away from Rudi’s corpse, they spoke.

“Now, Lillian,” he said. “what was that deal again? Fifty dollars a night for a year’s time, was it?”

“That’s it, Francis, my dear. Fifty a night every night the cathouse is open, for one full year.”

He nodded. “And a tidy sum it’ll be. It’s not a joke raisin’ two children on a lowly policeman’s pay. The whores’ money will go to good use meetin’ the needs of Francis junior and Mary Elizabeth, I can assure you that, lass.”

With that, the rear door flew wide and the elevator behind them slid open. A half-dozen policemen, pistols drawn and with the brims of their hats turned backwards, rushed in. McAdams held up a calming hand.

“Take a beat, lads, and wind down. The thing is done with, thank the saints. The lady and I have escaped a tragedy. Alas, we’ve lost a soul here, boys, and a brother in Jesus. But it couldn’t be avoided.”

The officers gathered around Lily and McAdams, their guns dangling in their now-relaxed hands. After a moment, McAdams looked up and gazed about at his underlings, a happy smile lighting his face.

“Ah, just think on it, lads. What a great and wondrous country we live in, a country where the likes of us can stand, and the likes of Joseph Rudi can die, on the very same floor where the saintly and honorable Mayor Jimmy Walker himself trod just a few short nights ago.”

Now he looked into Lily’s beautiful gray eyes as she smiled up at him. His mind swam with memories of past sexual delights shared with the woman behind those eyes, and her smile told him there were yet more to come.

Ah yes, he thought. A great and wondrous country indeed.

Copyright © 2006 Lou Manfredo

The following story by Martin Edwards was nominated for one of Britain’s most distinguished short story awards, the CWA Dagger, this past November. It has never before appeared in print in the U. S. The author has recently started a series of mystery novels set in England’s Lake District, with the second entry, The Cipher Garden, just out from Poisoned Pen Press. Five Star has also recently released his novel Suspicious Minds.