Fletcher Flora - The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™ - 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

Steve lifted his eyes and sorted the dick out. He was concentrating on his drink, something in a tall glass with a peel curled over the edge, but Steve had the strange feeling that he was a guy trying too hard not to look at someone he wanted like hell to look at. A handsome guy. A tall, smooth, easy-to-look-at guy. Inside, Steve felt shrunken and icy cold, deadly with the pointed, purposeful deadliness of someone who’s waited too long.

“He shouldn’t have followed you,” he said. “He never should have come.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll have to kill him, of course. I’ll kill him fast, and we’ll move out of here.”

“No!” Her whisper possessed a desperate urgency. “No, Steve!”

“Why not? We killed once. This time it’ll be easier.”

“That’s just the point. Each time it’ll be easier. We can’t go on killing forever.”

“Who said forever? Just twice. After this one, nobody’ll ever find us.”

“Look, Steve. There’s another way. A better way. Give me a chance to convince you.”

“When?”

“Tonight. Just as soon as I can get to you after dark.”

He thought about the two of them on the dark beach after so long a time, and again his pulse was an acute and throbbing pain. “Can you shake the dick?”

“Leave it to me.”

“Okay. I’ve got a shack down the beach. There’s an outcropping of rock, jutting into the sea. The shack’s the first one beyond it.”

“I’ll be there, darling. Wait for me. Wait just a little bit longer.”

“Okay. For you and the money. Don’t forget to bring it with you.”

“I’ll bring it.”

He slipped off the stool and smiled at her like a guy who’d invested a drink in a project he intended to finish later. Without looking at the black-haired man in the white suit, he went out of the bar and the hotel and back down the beach beyond the outcropping of rock to the shack. He lay on his back in the sand with one arm bent up over his eyes to reinforce the thin, inadequate defense of his lids against the glaring white light, and all the tension that had mounted within him during the past half year seemed to dissolve and disappear, leaving his body relaxed and his mind functioning with a kind of dispassionate clarity. He lay without moving for a long time, until at last he became aware of a sudden chill in the air, and he opened his eyes to see the sun plunging into the sea. Almost before he could get up and go into the shack, the black, obliterating night had fallen with incredible suddenness and silence.

Inside the shack, he lit an oil lamp, turning the wick low. From his bag under the cot he slept on, he got a .38 revolver. He slipped the revolver under his belt, beneath the loose tail of his shirt, and sat down on the cot to wait some more. From his position, he could look through the open door of the shack and down across the beach at an angle to the mass of rock lapped by the sea. Once, after about half an hour, he got up and found a bottle and took a long pull from the neck. Then he resumed his seat on the cot and didn’t move again until, such a long time later that he’d become unable even to estimate the time, he saw Ella coming up across the sand from the rocks in the first light of the moon.

He stood up to meet her, and regret twisted within him like a sharp knife that there would be no time to say hello as they had said good-by. She came in through the door and into his arms, and the weight of her body against his pressed the .38 into his flesh until it felt like a belly cramp.

She felt the steel in her own flesh and arched back in his arms. “A gun, Steve? Why?”

He released her with one arm and took the gun out of his belt. He lifted it. “For you, honey. For you and your black-haired lover.”

The hot blood drained out of her face, and the smoke cleared from her eyes on a bitter wind of fear. She put a palm flat against his chest and tried to push away, but he held her trapped tightly against him with one arm.

“What’s the matter with you, Steve? You gone crazy?”

He laughed softly. “Maybe a guy who waits too long develops a lot of peculiar twists you could call crazy. One thing, he gets sensitive. He develops what the skull-shrinkers call ideas of reference. Everything seems to point at him. Everything has significance. Most of all, he doesn’t believe in coincidence.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Steve. I swear to God.”

“Don’t you, honey? I’m talking about your phony insurance dick. I’m talking about your just happening to see him in town. About your just happening to tail him right to the insurance company’s offices. About how he just happens to be a tall, sleek guy. Just the kind of guy you’d like to buy with a hunk of fifty grand. But more than anything else, I’m talking about how you don’t want me to kill him. Don’t you remember me, honey? I’m the guy who killed for you once before. I’m the guy who remembers how you could hardly wait until I got the job done. Since when have you become so sensitive?”

“You are crazy, Steve!” She leaned against him again, letting her lips brush his in the formation of her words. “I’m here, aren’t I? Why would I have come, if I’d wanted to double-cross you? All I had wanted to do was stay away.”

He laughed again, feeling the soft, wet stirring of her lips, the stronger stirring inside of an almost sickening desire to believe her. “Why? I’ll tell you why, honey. Because you’re a gal who wouldn’t want to spend the rest of her life expecting someone she didn’t want to see. Because you knew damn well I’d come back eventually and find you. The only way to prevent that was to come down here to kill me. You and lover-boy.”

A violent tremor shook her flesh, and she beat his chest softly with a clenched fist. “No, Steve. It isn’t that way. For God’s sake, you’ve got to believe me! Would I have brought the money? Would I have brought it just the way you told me to?”

“Where is it? I told you to bring it here.”

“It’s in a belt around my waist, Steve. Fifty thousand-dollar bills, minus two for expenses. Let me go, I’ll show you.”

He released her and stepped back. “All right. Show me.”

She lifted her skirt and removed the belt. It was thin, flat, made of water-proof silk. She handed it to him, and he unzipped it and counted the forty-eight crisp pieces of paper. He stuffed the belt and the paper into the front of his shirt, tucking the loose tail into his trousers. Color had returned to her face in bright spots high on the cheek bones. Her breasts rose high and fell and rose again. Her tongue slipped out to dampen her dry lips.

“Now do you believe me? Now can you show a gal how you missed her?”

She came to him, but he held her off by the shoulders, shaking his head. “A guy who’s waited as long as I have can wait a little longer. This time we’ll do it together, honey. Down by the rocks.”

She shrugged angrily, the color burning hotter on her cheeks, and turned away and out the door into the sand. He followed, the gun held loosely at his side. Steps apart, they crossed the beach in thin moonlight and vanished into the cast shadow of the outcropping. Waiting there in darkness that had acquired a penetrating chill, the ancient rock towering above him, he could dimly see her, could smell her, could hear the heavy whisper of her breath pass in and out between her lips, and he prayed to whatever dark gods listen to prayers of ones like him that the black-haired man in the white suit would not come.

But he did. And soon. He came swiftly and silently down the beach, and his gun was already in his hand. When he came abreast, about five yards inland, Steve lifted his .38 and fired. The sound crashed against the rock and was thrown out across the sand at the man who had stopped suddenly, erect, to twist slowly in the direction of his death. The .38 crashed and jumped a second time, and the man stepped back, swayed, and sank to his hands and knees. He remained in that position for a moment, head hanging, and then very slowly, with tremendous effort, he lifted his head until his face was faintly visible in the moonlight, and his voice, distorted by anguish, carried clearly across the sand to the rocks.