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

They looked at me with awe. Their combined I.Q.s I guessed would add up to about one hundred, which is normal. Normal for one person, that is.

“As soon as you learn anything, phone me. My apartment is listed in the book. Don’t phone here, because the police probably have Durant’s phone tapped. Any questions?”

They shook their heads dumbly.

“Then scram out of here and get to work. And look where you’re going. I wouldn’t want you to bump into any soft-nosed bullets before you get your jobs done.”

Buttons Sharkey and Hub Topping snapped to instant obedience, departing with frowns of concentration marring the normal blankness of their expressions. But Little Joe Tecca lingered.

“You don’t have to treat us like we’re idiots or something, Moon,” he said resentfully.

“ Mister Moon, Tecca. Don’t drop it again, or I’ll knock your head off. I’m not treating you like idiots. Idiots have only the mental development of two year olds. I’m treating you like morons, who have the mental development of ten year olds. Want to make something out of it?”

He blinked at me, for a moment undecided whether he did or not, then decided he didn’t and departed after the rest.

Ann Durant started to accompany me to the front door, but we didn’t make it all the way. As we passed through the dining room, which was half dark, its gloom cut only by what light filtered in from the hall beyond it, she pointed out a sideboard well stocked with bottles and asked if I’d like a drink. A subtle note of intimacy in the invitation warned me I had better not accept it.

“Not tonight, thanks,” I said.

She stopped me by putting a hand on my arm. “Don’t be in such a hurry, Mr. Moon. Why do you insist on the mister? ”

“That’s only for mugs. You can call me anything you want if you don’t do it in baby talk.”

“I think I like Manny,” she decided. “Isn’t that what your friends call you? You know, Manny, I was quite impressed by the way you ordered around those gangsters. They are gangsters, aren’t they? As long as Frank’s lived with us, I’ve never met any of his business associates before. Would you consider Frank a gangster, Manny? Let me give you a drink.”

As she rattled this out in a kind of compulsive monologue, she gently steered me toward the sideboard until we were both practically leaning against it. One hand rested on my shoulder, and while no other part of her touched me, I sensed without checking it would have been difficult to slide a dime between our bodies. When she said, “Let me give you a drink,” she said it with her lips two inches from mine, as though she were holding the drink in her mouth.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What’s started you rattling all of a sudden?”

Her green eyes gleamed up at me and I felt her free hand between us doing something to her starched white uniform. “Being alone with you in a dimly lighted room maybe.”

The hand went away from between us to rest on my other shoulder, I looked down and got a shock, though not exactly a surprise.

There were three buttons to the top of her uniform, but from the waist to the hem it was snapped. The three buttons were open, and as I looked she pressed both knees outward and the snaps came loose with a series of little popping sounds. She didn’t have a stitch on under the uniform.

She leaned away from me slightly to let me have a better look, arching her back to make her breasts jut upward. She had reason to be proud of them. In burlesque they would have made her a fortune.

Pushing her hands away from my shoulders, I said unsteadily, “If you were single I’d pour salt and pepper on you and eat you up, madam. But there are too many fish in the sea to swipe from another guy’s hook.”

There was a sudden sound of footsteps at the doorway behind Ann.

Both her hands moved so rapidly it made me blink. When she swung to stare at her husband haughtily, the three buttons were in place. The snaps, of course, were still loose, but he couldn’t see that as long as she stood still.

“Evening, Doctor,” I said casually. “Thanks for the offer anyway, Ann. The drink I mean.”

She glared at me furiously and stalked toward the infirmary.

Dr. Durant was still gazing at her with a set expression on his face when I brushed past him on the way to the front door.

The next morning I discovered my elaborate intelligence organization had netted not a single rumor. Buttons Sharkey, Little Joe Tecca and Hub Topping all phoned to tell me they had been unable to uncover evidence of a single syndicate man in town.

I ordered a systematic check of tourist courts within a radius of ten miles from the city.

At noon I got a long distance call from Marty Swan. It came from Elmsterville, Illinois, a little town ten miles beyond the river.

“Hear you’ve been having shooting over there, Mr. Moon,” he said.

“A little,” I admitted. “Nothing very bothersome.”

“Wonder if maybe the syndicate could give you a hand in straightening things out?”

“No thanks,” I said politely. “We’ll manage.”

“Hmm. Might save you a lot of trouble. We’ve got some pretty effective techniques in putting a stop to civil war.”

“So have we,” I informed him, and hung up.

Fifteen minutes later I had a carload of gunmen streaking toward Elmsterville. By four in the afternoon they were back with the report Swan must have used a pay phone while passing through town, for there was no sign of the advance man nor any other syndicate employee in Elmsterville.

When evening came, my elaborate defense setup had accomplished exactly nothing. I had not the vaguest idea how many syndicate guns we were up against, nor from what point the syndicate was operating. Mentally I reviewed the negative reports which had been pouring in all day, and again went over the conversation I had had over the phone with Marty Swan.

And then, in what I can modestly describe only as a flash of genius, I got the whole picture. I knew where the syndicate men we had been searching for were, I knew who had operated the decreasingly accurate machine gun, and I knew what a patsy I was for getting involved in a gang war.

I dialed the number of the Durant home and asked for Mrs. Durant.

When she came to the phone, I asked, “You have to stay by your patient’s side all the time, or can you manage to get out?”

“Why should you care?” she inquired coldly. “Aren’t any of those other fish in the sea biting tonight?”

“They’ve all got dates. And I’ve been sitting here all day talking myself out of last night’s scruples. I still have two more single girls to ask as soon as their lines stop giving a busy signal, but in case both of them are busy, how about meeting you?”

She gave an indignant little snort, then suddenly laughed. “With your technique, no wonder you’ve stayed single. Did a woman give you that bent nose and funny eyelid, by any chance?”

“My mother,” I said. “What time tonight?”

She was silent for a minute. “I really shouldn’t leave the house,” she said finally. “Why don’t you come here?” There was another pause before she said, “The doctor will be out on calls until at least one A.M.”

“Clear me with the gate guard and expect me at ten,” I told her.

When I arrived she led me to a small play room across the hall from the surgery. It was furnished like a cocktail lounge, complete with bar and glass topped tables. Over the door on the inside was a tiny frosted bulb in a socket fixed to the sill, which she explained was connected to a switch in the infirmary. If her patient needed her, the light would go on.

She indicated she wanted me to sit behind one of the glass topped tables on a leather bench running the length of one wall, and after mixing two drinks at the bar she slid in next to me. Although there was plenty of room on the bench, she crowded in so close her hip and thigh pressed against mine.