Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1953

Julie had her slim legs drawn up beneath her. I’ll never forget her shoes: tiny suede shoes with four-inch heels. I was staring at them, wondering what it was that seemed somehow wrong with them.

It was the heels. The spike heel of one of Julie’s shoes was a dull satiny suede — the way it should be. But the heel of the other shoe had a sort of slick look, as if it had recently been scrubbed very hard with soap and water.

There was something else. Julie wore round garters, I knew very well, always rolled very high on her thighs. Just where the top of her stocking would be, there was a small oblong bulge.

And suddenly I knew who had murdered Gloria Gayle. And I knew, too, that I no longer need worry about finding Ed Farr.

I didn’t like what I was going to do, but it had to be done.

I put my arm around Julie and drew her close to me. She murmured something and snuggled up, and then I slipped my hand around beneath her arm and fumbled with the buttons at the top of her dress. They held tightly.

“Wait a minute, baby,” she whispered. She reached up and undid the first two buttons and settled back again. Her body against me was tense, expectant.

I brought my forearm across her, just beneath her breasts and pinned her against me. Quickly, then, I put my free hand under the hem of her skirt and whipped it up and twisted out the thing that had been making the tiny bulge in her garter.

A tight roll of bills.

I pushed Julie away from me and fanned the money out with my fingers.

There was a lot of it, and all the bills were big.

Julie didn’t make a sound. She sat staring at me as if she had been stunned. Her wide blue eyes were sick with fear.

I didn’t have to count the money to know that there was at least twelve thousand dollars in that roll.

“How?” Julie breathed finally. “How did you...?”

She wasn’t the only one who was stunned, and she wasn’t the only one who was sick.

“You killed Gloria Gayle, Julie,” I said. “There are weird acoustics in the Cavern Club. When I called you a while ago I could hear the drink-mixer just as clearly as I heard your voice. If I could hear it over the phone in your check room, that means that you could have overheard Gloria and me talking. You heard her tell me that she had twelve thousand dollars, and you heard me tell her to wait for me in my car, and where it was parked.”

Her lips moved, but there was no sound. The tip of a pink tongue came out to wet her lips, and stayed there. I could see the pupils of her eyes contract.

“It was easy,” I said. “You followed her to the car and hit her a hell of a blow on the temple with your spike heel. You tore her clothes off to make it look like the murderer had been a man. The heel of your shoe left a crescent-shaped cut, and got blood on your heel. You had to get it off, and then you couldn’t remove the signs of having scrubbed the suede.” I stared at her.

“Jesus, I knew from the way you were always plugging for gifts that you’re money-hungry, but I never figured you for anything like this...”

My mouth was dry from talking, and still she hadn’t said another word. She had scarcely even moved. The dress was still hiked up around her hips. She shut her eyes and pressed her lips tightly together, and I could see the cords begin to stand out on her neck.

She sat like that for almost a full minute.

And then suddenly she screamed and sprang off the sofa and darted past me to the open window. I lunged after her, but I was half a second too late. I stabbed for her ankle, felt it graze my palm, and she was gone.

I took a deep breath and let it out very slowly, and then I looked down into the street.

She was there. A white blob on the pavement six stories straight down.

Cars were stopping in the street. Two of them. Men got out of them and ran toward her. A man’s voice floated up to me.

“My God!” I heard him say. “She’s still alive!”

I leaned up against the bathroom wall and was very sick. And then I threw cold water on my face and went out into the living room to wait for the police.

There was nothing I could do for Julie Cole now, absolutely nothing.

Julie lived for almost forty-eight hours. She knew she had no chance, and she told the homicide cops exactly how it was. I’d been beside her hospital bed when she did it. She’d wanted to see me, the cops had said, and after they’d taken her declaration they left me alone with her.

She looked at me and smiled and tried to say something. But she didn’t make it. She was dead before the words passed her lips.

And since then I’ve always wished there weren’t so many thousands of tiny spike-heel shoes in New York. Every single pair of them reminds me of Julie Cole.

There was one funny thing about the stabbing: neither side had wanted trouble.

The ringing telephone came almost as a relief. Wiley was lying in bed unable to sleep. The sheets were wrinkled and uncomfortable and his mind was going over his preparation for a murder trial still a month off. The telephone continued to ring. He threw aside the covers, fished for his slippers, and flapped into the living room where he picked up the instrument.

“This is Wiley,” he said, yawning.

“There’s a call from the Tenth,” the man down in Communications said. “Some kid got stabbed in a street brawl. He’s a merchant seaman, I understand. English. One of those things. They say they’ve got witnesses.”

“Who’s on the case?”

“Ricca and Corbin.”

“Well, that’s good,” Wiley said, “Now, what about a car?”

“Just a minute.” There was a moment’s silence in which Wiley could hear familiar sounds in the background, then the man returned. “It’s on the way, Mr. Wiley.”

“Say, Sergeant—”

“Yes, Mr. Wiley?”

“Do you know what all this is about?”

“Sorry, I just didn’t ask. The victim is at the hospital, but the rest of them are all at the Tenth.”

There was a click and David Wiley was left holding the telephone receiver. He returned to the bedroom to dress in working clothes, a sweater, jacket and an old Army trenchcoat.

Dorothy murmured and turned.

He sat down on the bed beside her and slid his arm under her shoulder. “It’s just some stabbing, I’ve got to cover. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, dear.” She brushed aside a hair. “What time is it?”

Wiley looked at his luminous wrist watch.

“About five. It’s near dawn.”

“Just don’t get tied up, darling,” she murmured, and turned over in her warm bed. “We’ve got company tonight.”

Wiley kissed his wife and went to the kitchen. He found some milk and bread and he was drinking a pair of raw eggs when he heard the hooting of an auto horn out in the street.

He left the dark apartment and went down to the street and got into the waiting sedan. They started off. It had been raining and they swept through the wet streets with the sound of drumming tires.

“I hear an English kid got it,” the driver remarked, “a merchant seaman. Now why don’t they watch out for themselves?”

“I don’t know.” Wiley closed his eyes. “They just get into trouble.” He sank into a weary silence while the driver talked about the previous day’s baseball.

“We’re here,” the driver said.

Wiley looked up. The green lights of the station house were shining in the darkness. Wiley dismissed the driver and turned into the building. As he passed the desk, the officer, a sergeant, nodded. Wiley went upstairs into the Homicide Squad offices.