the ice cold nude

“I slugged him!” Pete said triumphantly.

“Okay—so I boobed,” Marty said flatly. “After you slugged him—what then?”

“I frisked him, of course,” Pete answered in an injured tone of voice. “In case he was carrying a—oh, yeah! I see what you mean.”

My fingers wrapped around the butt of the .38 in a loving but firm grip. “That painting of Louise up on the wall in back of you, Marty,” I said. “You take a real good look at it?”

“I got no time to waste with paintings!”

“Right in back of the painting is a wall safe,” I lied. “And that’s where I stashed the ice.”

“Here?—in Byers’ apartment?” The doubt showed in his eyes, but the impulse to find out was irresistable. “Pete! Take a look.”

The giant lumbered across to the painting, got both hands under the massive frame, and gave it a sudden upward jerk. It moved fractionally and the veins stood out in his forehead as he tried again. This time it moved all right. There was a sound of ripping plaster as the supports tore away from the wall, then the whole damned thing came crashing down onto the floor. It was the noise, I guess, that made Marty turn his head away.

“He’s lying, boss!” Pete stared at the blank wall not long enough, then swung around in time to see me pull the .38 out of its harness. “Look out!” he bellowed frantically.

Marty Estell moved faster than any guy had a right to move, throwing himself sideways so the two shots I fired at him missed and plowed more plaster from the wall. Then I didn’t have time to worry about him any more—Pete,was lumbering toward me, moving real fast and only six feet away. His large and brutal hands were extended in front of him, reaching for me in lusting anticipation. I knew if once those squat obscenities of fingers got hold of me, he wouldn’t stop until some time after I was dead.

It was like shooting at the side of a house from maybe four feet away—I just couldn’t miss. The first shot hit him squarely in the chest and I relaxed my pressure on the trigger. He kept on coming and I fired again and hit him in the chest a second time. He still kept on coming and sudden terror engulfed my mind. The third shot took him in the throat and for a moment of sheer insanity it was raining blood. Then the lights went out.

I didn’t think—the compulsive reflexes took over, hounded by a flood of adrenalin. I went off the couch in a froglike leap the moment before it shuddered with a splintering sound as Pete’s huge bulk cannoned into it. When I started to think consciously, I found myself on my hands and knees, straining my eyes in what I vaguely figured was the direction where I’d last seen Marty Estell heading. It seemed like reckless suicide to think even, in case he heard the sound, never mind breathe.

How long I stayed that way I wouldn’t know but after what felt like a couple of long nights in a row, I realized there was a faint sliver of light showing from the corridor outside. Marty had slammed the door shut in back of me when I first came in, I remembered, and now it was open. So he was either playing it awfully cute, or he’d gone. There was one sure way to find out—I fired another shot and started rolling at the same time. I rolled maybe ten feet and there was still no answering shot. Nobody could play it that cool, I figured, so I climbed onto my feet and headed toward the fractionally open front door and the light switch beside it.

In the sudden harsh illumination, the room looked like a battlefield—the huge painting face down on the floor, the plaster wall in back of it chipped and scarred. There was no sign of Marty Estell and I guessed maybe he chickened out when he realized Pete wasn’t going to be any more help at all.

I walked across to the couch, which had been slammed up against the opposite wall, and looked down at Pete. He was on his knees, his body bent forward across the couch, with his face buried in the plump cushions. Both arms were still outstretched in front of him, and the rigid fingers were half-buried in the back of the couch where they had punctured the upholstery. It was about where my face would have been if I hadn’t made that froglike leap at the last moment. Where his face was buried, the cushion was saturated with a glistening wet stain.

Like the song said, I didn’t know what time it was, only for different reasons. It felt like I had lived a whole lifetime in Willie Byers’ apartment already. The police routine had rolled through the whole lengthy process, from flashlight bulbs popping to the guys from the meat-wagon carrying away their grisly clients. But Lieutenant Schell still paced up and down the room like everything was still brand new and he was surprised.

“It’s like living a nightmare over again!” he stormed. “You only came into Santo Bahia yesterday—and in that little time you manage to come up with three corpses! Two homicides and one justifiable homicide—or that’s your story, without witnesses. I promise you, Boyd, if I can’t get you into the gas chamber, I’m going to see you locked away for a minimum of two thousand years! I’m going to—”

“Promises, promises!” I snarled at him. “It was your idea in the first place bringing me back here, remember? You were the smart one who had it all figured out—and what happened to that guy you were going to have tailing me all the time?”

“That was just a gag to keep you on your toes,” he snarled right back at me. “We got other things to do in the department. But if I’d ever dreamed what would happen when a maniac like you was let loose in town— “You know something?” He covered his face with his 78 hands and groaned in despair. “Thirty-six hours back, the only problem I had was a stolen tiara. Then you arrived and what have I got now?”

“Two unsolved homicides and one justifiable,” I said promptly. “You sure little Willie didn’t kill himself?”

“I’m sure,” he said sourly. “No powder burns on the side of his head. I wish he had suicided, it would make things a hell of a lot easier for me.”

“Do Marty Estell and Pete Wotzis have a record?” I asked hopefully.

“Sure,” he grunted. “It’s Pete Ungar and he’s got a long-playing record—you name it, he’s done it! Marty’s a lot smarter—only one conviction out of twelve arrests. He did two years upstate for assault with a deadly weapon.”

“You know their records already,” I said obviously, “so you knew they were in town.”

“I know everybody who’s in town,” he snorted. “But I didn’t figure them in the Elmo job, it wasn’t their kind of operation. More likely if they’d planned to heist that tiara, they would have gone in through the store’s armor-plated window—with Marty using Pete as a battering ram.”

“You didn’t know that Marty was Louise Lamont’s boy friend?”

“So you could get lucky and walk in on Pete the first time you went calling on the girl,” he growled. “I don’t have that kind of luck.”

My watch said it was long past midnight and right then I wouldn’t have been excited if the real tiara had materialized six feet up in the air.

“Lieutenant,” I said politely, “I’ve been through the whole thing three times already. You mind if I go now?” “Yeah,” he said in a flat voice, reminiscent of Marty Estell, “I mind.”

“Okay,” I shrugged helplessly. “You play pinochle?” He stopped pacing up and down for a moment, and stared at me distastefully instead. “It’s the missing pieces that can drive you crazy.” His voice was morose as he talked more to himself than to me. “So Louise Lamont was shacking up with her boss, Rutter, and she figured to make some hard cash out of it—okay. The blackmail attempt on Rutter’s wife bounced right back into her face and she goes out on her ear. She hears about the beauty contest, or maybe it was her own idea, and cons Rutter into letting her enter, with the promise she’ll win it—or else she’ll smear his reputation in all the places it’ll hurt most. This I understand—it’s logical, even.” “I know what you mean,” I said glumly. “It’s the stinking coincidences, along with the bits missing, that make it real tough. She happened to go to some art classes where she happened to meet Willie. Then Poolside happened to dream up a publicity scheme with Elmo’s jewelry store, using that tiara. And Willie happened to be the guy who made that tiara.”