Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 2, July 1973

A matron was summoned; and Joe Dillon, having gotten the keys from where Miss Hughes had returned them to the ring in Simon Warren’s bedroom — while Charon and Finney were dressing — opened the safe and found the murder gun and lifted two clear latent prints off of it. When the matron and Becky Hughes left together, Corcoran and Di Lucca trailed the pack in the departmental sedan.

Corcoran kept looking at Di Lucca with open admiration, and finally he said, “Man, you were great back there, Rennie. Brilliant!”

Di Lucca shrugged self-effacingly. “It was police work, Corcoran,” he said. “Observation, recall, addition of facts, procedure. Plain and simple police work.”

“And imagination,” Corcoran said. “You really used your imagination, Rennie.”

Di Lucca released a soft breath, slid down on the seat, and closed his eyes. Rookies, he thought wearily. What did I ever do to deserve the rookies?

He was my flesh and. blood, my brother — my deadly enemy. He had taken my woman, my life, my every joy. But I had one last pleasure to look forward to — the moment he died at my hands...

Though it might be a dangerous miscalculation, I’ve come to the decision to record these last days with my brother Gordon in diary form. I am a precise sort of man in all things, from my receipts and records at the store to my letters and bills at home and I need a record of some sort.

Even if it be used in fatal evidence against me should my plan go awry, this craven need for a private record of my every thought and act is a need to which I must relent. To you, who shall bear silent witness to the events leading up to my brother’s murder, I do apologize.

Tuesday, April 20: I have decided the manner in which my brother Gordon shall die. It will be a bomb — not an elaborate kind because things with moving parts and electrical circuits have always smelled the fear in me and have rebeled against my ineptitude. Toasters spit back at me. And my ten-year old sports car snickers at me by clacking its pistons by way of saying it shall wait until we two are where no other humans can help and then will pull a wire attached to one of its vital organs. So it shall be a bomb.

Wednesday, April 21: After work today I went directly to the New York Public Library, which is just around the corner from the apartment. I share it with my brother Gordon and with Cory, my full-grown St. Bernard of uncertain parentage.

It is easy to become lost in the New York Public Library. But it is also equally easy to lose oneself in it. I spent nearly two hours in the Electrical Engineering section and one hour in the Technology section and my presence went almost entirely without notice.

I looked directly into the eyes of so many people: librarians, shelvers, people from all walks of life there in the library for all of their various educational reasons. And not one of them will ever recall me; nor will they recall the fact that for a brief instant in time, they stared into the eyes of a smallish, slender man in a trim, fashionable suit who would soon be a murderer.

For those three hours I took copious notes and detailed several diagrams of quite good detail and precision. As I worked it struck me that I could have been good at designing or drafting had I not chosen to spend my life’s work on the selling of men’s accessories in department stores around New York.

In my choosing of a profession, I admit that I have not shown much imagination. Part of the blame for that lack of imagination and success can be laid directly on me, but for part of it, the city of New York is responsible. New York has a way of pressing down upon a man with its concrete and steel, a way of making him deaf to his dreams and desires with its unceasing noise. In fact, if I am to be apprehended for Gordon’s murder, I likely shall charge the city of New York as an accessory before and after the fact of my murder. But I should not like to be my lawyer and have to try to prove such a thing.

I did not make the mistake of checking out the books which lent me the support in the construction of my bomb. Books checked out from a public library can be traced back to their borrower. You see how precise and infallibly I am thinking? That precision and infallibility will make the murder of my brother Gordon one of the few truly perfect murders in the annals of crime.

Upon leaving the library, I went to Korvette’s on Fifth Avenue. Nearly anything can be purchased there and at discount prices. I once worked there for a time in men’s accessories. I have been in men’s accessories for twenty-eight years and have not missed a day of work, even between job changes. I venture I am the steadiest, most reliable worker New York City has. The women I have dated have almost to a woman stated that those qualities are my finest. Steadiness and reliability.

You will note that the virtues of sexual attraction, desirability, or worldliness do not rank especially high. That is no matter. Throughout my life I have always known myself and my limitations.

I digress. At Korvette’s I purchased an alarm clock, and three feet of wiring. What store clerk could think anything of these but that I was a heavy sleeper, and intended to hang some pictures?

Thursday, April 22: This afternoon, after work again, I laid plans to purchase the final two ingredients for my bomb, its detonator and six sticks of Trojan stumping dynamite.

In the beginning this was not an easy matter; until my mind began to consider who used dynamite most frequently. Yes, of course, gangsters used dynamite most frequently. The New York newspaper continually spread across their pages in blood the news of the demolition of an automobile and its unbeknownst driver, the redecoration in shambles of a mobster’s home, the concussion reminder to a shopowner that he had fallen behind in his insurance. Yes, to obtain dynamite without the slightest suspicion falling upon me, it was clear that I would have to consort with gangsters.

Friday, April 23: Today Spring burst full-fledged upon the city. Gordon’s bed has been unslept in, which on the morning of a previous Friday night is not unusual for Gordon. Gordon is one to whom New York’s night life appeals like a giddy moth to the flame. On these weekends alone I sometimes go to St. Patrick’s and light a candle. Not for Gordon. For the eternal flame of the city’s night life which has kept him out of my sight and life.

At eleven I drove to a city in New Jersey which, for its relationship to strong criminal elements, shall remain nameless. At a pizza parlor I had conversation with a Mr. Blaster Borodeski, who put me in contact with a man known only as The Firefly in a cubicle in a savings and loan office, who entreated me to go to Vanduchi Construction Supply Company, at 225 South Suffolk Road.

Convinced that my intentions were completely dishonorable, Mr. Vanduchi sold me six sticks of Trojan stumping dynamite and a detonator cap, the total price for which was, as Mr. Vanduchi put it, “two U.S. Grants and two Andrew Jacksons” — $140. I was informed that the price was not so exorbitant when it was considered that the state’s registration requirements for the purchase of dynamite had been circumvented. I had to agree with him.

Saturday, April 24: Gordon is still on his weekend of charming the Big Apple out of its tree, which has given me plenty of time to construct my bomb in my bedroom in private. Well, not strict privacy, for throughout its construction and implantation in an attache case, Cory has been observing my actions with his amber tail wagging in excitement and his big, lummox head tilted in perplexion i.e., he’s excited but he doesn’t really know what he’s excited about.