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

I said I did, as I stared directly at Gordon’s immaculate necktie knot. He knew only too well what that look meant.

The four of us returned to our own apartment, where Gordon conducted the officers on a hasty tour, being careful to keep one of them between us at all times.

“The money is under the rug there. In the northwest corner.”

“Pull it back.”

Gordon obliged and I noted that where there had been ten rows of twenty dollar bills, there now were only five. A cool saving to Gordon of $2,000! He went on:

“...and I found wrist watches under the bathroom sink, a mink coat in the laundry bag in the bedroom... and...”

“Gordon, there isn’t any doubt that I can establish ironclad alibis for the evenings these robberies took place. Are you able to do the same?”

“Well, I think I can prove I was with you in those nights, dear brother. And if you are innocent, that can only mean that our apartment has been used as a drop!”

“Gordon, do you really believe our apartment was used as a place for illegal stash?”

He only smiled.

“Gordon, I suppose you were careful to wipe your fingerprints from the goodies.”

“Fingerprints?”

“And, of course, found some way to apply my own. That will all come out when the police begin taking a closer look, you know.”

“Fingerprints?”

“You didn’t. Ahh, Gordon. Such a gross error.”

“Fingerprints?” he reiterated, slightly dazed.

He wasn’t smiling when the police led him away.

Monday, April 26: Exemplary behavior shaved Gordon’s twenty-year prison sentence to seven. He returned thinner, paler and compliant, with one battered suitcase and one plain suit. And one bleeding, larcenous heart. He knew my key weakness and he exploited it. A brother was still a brother, that was my weakness. I agreed reluctantly to let him stay under he got his bearings.

That was the year I accepted a position with Macy’s, in its Men’s Accessories Department. It was the same year my eyes fell upon Gigi Schwartz.

She was everything for which a batchelor dreams. She had an almond-shaped face framed in cascading curtains of blonde hair. And because she worked in cosmetics at the same emporium, she knew which enticements to apply to that face to make a man want to sink into it beyond all propriety and reason. She was not a woman of soaring intelligence. She was neither wit nor voracious reader, nor a cook to rival the talents of Miss Ivy.

She once began a thickly dubious novel titled Cajon: Memoirs of a Slave and that her favorite and best recipe was a dish called Freaky Beef Stew. In the face of love, some shortcomings can be overlooked.

Meanwhile, Gordon was still descending upon the unemployment office once each week, filling his days with cartoon shows on television and an all-out effort to turn the apartment into New York’s only elevated garbage dump.

But he was absent from the apartment often enough to make living there for me tolerable. During these absences I would invite Gigi Schwartz over for homecooked Chinese dinner, tea and saki. The recipes had been given to me by Miss Ivy and for a time, I felt some guilt about using them to entertain another woman. But I was ever so gradually terminating my relationship with Miss Ivy, a termination which took four weeks. She showed no animosity toward me for it, except to warm me never to use her friendship again to reserve tapes and records at the public library.

During this period, Gordon hit a fifty-to-one horse-racing bet at Aqueduct on what I think he said were four, five-dollar win-tickets. The following week he hit what is known as a twin-double at Roosevelt Raceway. About horse-racing I know absolutely nothing, but I gathered that this stroke of fortune was considerable, since Gordon was no longer coming to me for money.

In celebration of these events, Gordon even bought me the $3.85 Bouillabaisse Marseillaise at the Fisherman’s Net on Third Avenue. That dish, if you have not already linguistically deciphered it, is fish stew. But in defense of Gordon, it also should be mentioned that he opted for a five dollar bottle of white wine. Domestic.

During this period of alternating indolence and long-shots, it should be submitted that Gordon engaged in no criminal activity, except the crime of overstaying his welcome. But he was useful around the apartment. He cleaned occasionally and did the shopping. And, of course, he was also charged with the care, feeding and exercising of Cory.

Of the latter, he was miserably derelict. Each morning at ten he was to take Cory to Bryant Park for a romp. After two weeks I went to Mishkin for feedback.

“If he’s walking that dog every morning, then it’s gotta be the greatest disappearing act since Lamont Cranston and The Shadow. That dog’s been away from the park so long now he probably wouldn’t know a squirrel if it jumped up on the bridge of his nose and introduced hisself.”

I asked Mishkin for suggestions.

“Tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Freer. You been a tenant here at the Hellingforth over twenty years now and that entitles you to special consideration. I’ll make you one of those doggie doors. Two of them. One upstairs and one in the front door of the building. How tall is the dog?”

I shut my eyes slightly. “Nearly two feet.”

Mishkin shook his head. “That’s a big damn dog. But I’ll do it. I can work out a lock system for the one in the lobby so’s we don’t get hit by any midget bandits. Like I say, Mr. Freer, you got tenure here and that calls for special consideration, especially with a brother like the one you got. No offense, Mr. Freer.”

Yes, I can hear you submitting already that none of these crimes against me was so heinous that I would be driven to consider murder as retaliation. Then Gordon must have perpetrated some greater crime against me, must have placed across the camel’s back some final straw which broke it.

Indeed he did. Yes, Gordon’s murder is being considered because he stole from me my most precious possession. He stole from me Miss Gigi Schwartz.

He wormed his way into her life as deftly and swiftly as a worm works its way to the core of a soft, Gravenstein apple.

On the evening of another of my dinner dates with Miss Schwarts, Gordon was malingering around the apartment. His own date with a Miss Hadley on the second floor had fallen through. He knew Gigi Schwartz was coming to dinner and it was easy to see he had designs on an introduction.

He loitered in the kitchen as I dried vegetables and bamboo shoots for Muk-Hsu, readied cabbage and crab for Tientsin Cabbage with Crabmeat, prepared frog legs for stuffing with ham and garlic sauce.

“What’s she like, Alden?”

“A bit like Miss Ivy. But much taller.”

“That Ivy chick is five-seven.”

“Who but the superficial notice superficialities in a woman?” I said.

“That’s a tall broad, all right. What’s she look like?”

“She has a face of some character and attraction. The operation, she tells me, did wonders.”

Gordon recoiled slightly. “Operation? What operation?”

“The one to which she submitted after the accident.”

“Accident?”

“Automobile collision. Head-on. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt.”

But I wasn’t scaring him off to a movie. I could tell he was trying to see through me. And that he wasn’t going to leave without at least getting a peek at the merchandise.

“Plenty of food there for two, it looks like.”

“Miss Schwartz is a sturdy eater. You have to be if you play amateur basketball and wrestle A.A.U.”

Perhaps I was laying it on too heavy. Because Gordon wasn’t at all convinced I’d be dining with the mutation I’d described.

He began searching out silverware. “Just set the table for you before I go. Just a helping hand.”