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

A long sigh hissed between Torgen’s stiff lips. He stirred in his chair, and a little life returned to his eyes.

“Tough. Thanks for telling me, Malory. I’ll want to send flowers.”

“I thought you would. You with friends all last night, Hank?”

“You’re wasting your time. I’ve always got friends around.”

“Sure,” Malory said, getting up. “A guy as popular as you never has to worry about being lonely. Or guilty. Thanks, Hank. See you around.”

He went out, collecting Lonigan at the door. In the car, he took the wheel himself and drove slowly around the block. Not quite all the way. On the side street coming hack, he pulled to the curb and stopped.

“Hank’s black Cad was at the curb,” he said. “Heading this way. He’ll he crossing the intersection pretty soon. We’ll wait.”

Hank Torgen sat quite still at his desk for a long time, looking across the room at nothing with blank eyes. He was thinking that Trixy Vincent had got a facial. Now Trixy was dead. Murdered. The way Hank saw it, you could go three ways from there. One: Trixy was killed by a new connection. Someone he’d met after changing his identity. Two: he was killed by someone who had caught up with him from behind. Three: he was killed by someone who had been in on the fade from the beginning. Someone who’d known him with both faces all along.

It was the third way that appealed to Hank. It put a name in his head. It gave him someone to start with. Getting his hat, he went out of the office and down the short hall into the large main room of the club.

The goon was behind the bar, mixing himself a drink. Hank was tempted to give him hell for letting the coppers through but decided against it. After all, it was a lucky break that the coppers had made it. They had put him back on the trail of half a million bucks worth of ice that he’d just about kissed good-by. Without speaking, he went on through and out to the Cadillac at the curb.

Driving across town, he pulled up in front of an apartment house that had the name Corinthian Arms chiseled in stone above the front entrance. Inside, he rode to the fifth floor and knocked on a door. When the door opened, he entered without speaking. He was in a nice room, but he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. The blonde who followed him in from the door was even nicer. Tall. Wearing soft satin pajamas that let the softer curves of her body show off. A face that fell into the beauty class if you didn’t object to eyes and a mouth on the hard side. She was called Pepper. That wasn’t her real name. Trixy Vincent had tagged her that because her last name happened to be Minter. Trixy always had a taste for the cute.

Hank turned in the middle of the room and looked at her. There was usually a certain light in the eyes of men who looked at her. There was one in Hank’s too, but it wasn’t the right light.

“Hi, baby.”

“Hello, Hank. Long time no see.”

“Yeah. I’ve been busy. I guess you have, too.”

“Not especially.”

“No? I’d call gunning an old boy friend being busy.”

“You’re going too fast, Hank.”

“Okay. I’ll play games for a minute. Trixy Vincent has turned up. Dead. No news to you.”

“It is, Hank. I swear it is.”

He took two quick steps to reach her. The back of his heavy hand smacked her mouth, flattening red lips against white teeth. She took it without flinching, watching him with eyes that slowly filled with hate as a drop of blood appeared on her lower lip. The tip of her pink tongue slipped out to remove it.

“Don’t bother to lie anymore, baby. I’ve got it figured. You were in the fade with Trixy. You’ve known all along that he had his face changed and stayed right here in town. After Trixy peddled the ice, you were going to take a powder together. That’s what Trixy thought. Not you. Maybe you didn’t like Trixy so well with a new face. More likely you just liked the money Trixy got from the ice better than any face. Pretty smart, letting him peddle the stuff for you before you did the job. You killed him, baby. You have the idea that no one would recognize the body? A smart cop caught the facial right away.”

“You’re all wrong, Hank. I didn’t know anything about Trixy’s facial.”

He hit her twice more. Once on the left side of the head with his right hand. Again on the right side with his left hand. Hank’s hands were big and hard like rock. Her knees buckled a little inside the satin pants, and a whimper escaped her bruised lips.

“You’re lying, baby. You’re a cheap little liar. You know what happens to dames who lie to Hank Torgen.”

“I’m not, Hank. I swear I’m not.”

He spun away from her and went to work on the apartment. Looking everywhere a smart dame might have cached a wad of skins. Not carefully. Not bothering to leave anything as he found it. When the living room was a shambles, he moved into the bedroom.

Pepper stood in the middle of the living room and listened to him work. The hate inside her was almost more than she could bear. There was a .38 in the drawer of the table beside her bed. She wondered if he could get it and kill him, but she shook her head and stayed in the living room. She’d always had a level head. Smart. She’d figure a way to get him. Later and good, without any danger to Pepper.

He came out of the bedroom and stopped in front of her. His eyes were burning with fury, but his voice was slow and patient, as if he were reading a lesson to a dumb kid “I’ve just started. If those rocks have gone through. I’ll find out. If they have, it means a lot of lettuce is somewhere around. Hank Torgen’s lettuce. You say you didn’t have anything to do with it. If you didn’t, you’re lucky. If you did, I’ll be back. Don’t bother to run. One rat got away from Hank Torgen. It won’t happen again. The facial Trixy bought himself was nothing, baby. Nothing to the one you’ll get. For free.”

Wheeling, he went over to the door and out.

Pepper stood in the wreckage of her apartment and went on thinking from where Hank had left off. She was smart. Smarter than Hank. He had got as far as her and bogged down. She was already way down the line. The minute he’d mentioned the facial, the perfect answer had jumped into her head. Hank’d get to it later. The smart cop, too. In the meantime, a smart girl could sew it up. A smart girl could always use the money Say — two hundred grand, maybe. She said it and liked the sound of it.

Pouring herself two fingers of rye, she slugged it down neat. In the bedroom, she got out of the satin pajamas and into street clothes. From the floor where Hank had dumped it, she retrieved the .38. Rejecting her purses with zippers, she found one with a simple catch and slipped the .38 into it. Then she went out to the telephone in the living room and rang the garage downstairs.

“Miss Minter speaking,” she said into the mouthpiece. “Please get my car ready to go out. I’ll pick it up, myself, in the garage.”

She went down the service stairs at the rear of the building. Half an hour later, she was standing before the front door of a brick house in a fashionable suburb. Beside the door was a neat little, bronze plate that said: Maurice Connerly, M. D. Pepper had been here before. The night Trixy Vincent had to have a slug dug out of his leg. She opened the door and stepped into the hall.

No one was around. Ahead of her, the right side of the hall took to the stairs and went up to the second floor. The left side was the low road, going straight back to a closed door at the end. She took the low road to the door and knocked. A voice told her to come in.

The man she found on the other side of the door had a thin, dark face below thick, dark hair that was turning silver at the temples. He lifted an eyebrow and waited, looking at her.