the ice cold nude

“I’m not interested in Marty Estell right now,” she said quickly. “It’s all those lies you—”

“Honey,” I said softly. “I’d be real nervous if I were

you—about the chances of Marty finding out you not only killed Louise but conned him into killing Byers for you—and conned him out of that tiara at the same time!” “1 didn’t!” Her voice was suddenly shrill with fear. “1 didn’t do any of those things and you can’t—”

There was no sound, no rustling or even a murmur— only the voice, very close and almost talking directly into my ear.

“You wouldn’t do anything stupid, pal, like grabbing for your gun?” he said in a conversational tone.

I lifted my hands slowly in front of me until they were chest-high. “Not me, Marty,” I told him. “I wouldn’t be that stupid!”

“Yeah,” he said without any inflection.

He moved around in a slow semicircle to a spot about midway between where I was standing and Patty was sitting on the couch. The gaunt face looked as if it had somehow achieved the impossible in the last twenty-four hours and shrunk even more. The caved-in cheeks were a sickly gray color, and the flaming thatch of red hair looked obscenely alive in contrast, as if it were feeding on the body’s vitality and slowly but surely starving it to death.

“Marty!” Patty looked at him with glowing eyes. “I thought you were never coming out of the bedroom!” “What need?” The side of his face twitched violently. “Boyd’s been busy talking to me all the time and I could hear him real well in there.”

“He’s crazy!” she said contemptuously. “Just because I went to bed with him last night, he’s gone berserk!” “You live in a real dream world, baby,” he said slowly. “You really figure that’s a big deal with a guy like Boyd? —or me, even? With a dame like Louise now, maybe that was different—she could do things to a guy’s feelings somehow. She could set you on fire. One look from that baby and it was like somebody lit the fuse and the bomb went up. But—you?” He shook his head slowly. “You just don’t have it, baby, you never did. The body’s the same like Louise’s was.” He studied her dispassionately for a long moment. “Real good—nice and round, firm in the right places—but it’s what you’ve got inside that makes the difference. Right, Boyd?”

“Sure,” I agreed with him. “Last night I figured she could turn it on and off like a light switch, and when it was on, it was for real—but it wasn’t.”

Patty nearly choked with fury. “How dare you!” she whispered blindly. “How dare you talk about me like this! As if I was-—a—an animal!”

“It’s important, baby,” Marty said in the same flat voice. “Real important. That was the difference between you and Louise. She could get any guy she wanted, and real important guys, too—like this big wheel, Rutter. Even me—I’m quite a catch in my own way. But you had to settle for the leftovers, doll. The squeezed-out, tired old guys who’d take anything they could get and be grateful—guys like Byers, huh?”

She put her hands to her ears and pressed them tight against the sides of her head. “I won’t listen to any more,” she said in a stifled voice. “I don’t hear a word you’re saying!”

*‘I don’t care too much whether you hear me or not, baby,” Estell rasped. “I just had to figure out why you hated Louise that much, and that’s the reason. So now we all know, right, Boyd?”

“Right,” I said.

The side of his face twitched again. “So I owe you, doll.” His voice had smoothed out again into a monotonous dirge. “I owe you for Louise—for the tiara I never got—and for conning me into knocking off Byers. It’s just the way Boyd said it was.”

Patty’s hands dropped to her lap as she suddenly lifted her head and stared into his face. “Marty?” The apple in her throat jumped convulsively. “You wouldn’t—” “You’re kidding, doll?” Again the sudden nervous spasm disfigured the side of his face. “With all I owe you— and after Byers, I got nothing to lose!”

“Danny!” The black terror-stricken eyes were riveted on my face for the brief instant it took for hope to swing back to despair.

“You’re asking him?” Estell laughed briefly, with a weird cackling sound. “Baby—he set it up!”

Slowly she came onto her feet and started to walk toward him with careful, mincing steps—like a ballerina about to step out onto the stage. “Marty?” She breathed his name reverently, like it was etched in stardust around her heart. “This is so stupid—I mean, for us to quarrel. I can be another Louise to you, if you let me, or maybe even more—”

“Tell Louise hello for me, huh?” he said easily.

The gun in his hand bucked suddenly, and the room was suddenly engulfed in a cataclysm of exploding sound and flame. He fired four shots into her body at close range and the impact drove her backward onto the couch. The violence and the fury died away slowly, while her body sprawled grotesquely across the couch, the head hung down over the edge, her mouth gaping open. The staring eyes still mirrored that last split second of absolute disbelief.

“You know something, pal?” Marty Estell looked at me with no expression on his face at all. “You bother me.” “How’s that?” I asked.

“Like I told the broad, you set this up—you figured I was hiding out isu.the bedroom for sure and I’d hear whatever you said, right?”

“That’s right, Marty,” I agreed.

“You figured this would happen—or something like it, huh?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But it happened, anyway.”

“So you let me jump you,” he went on easily. “You had it all doped out so good up to here, I’d kind of like to hear the rest. What do you figure will happen now?” “I’m going to take you, Marty,” I said confidently. His face twitched. “Axe you crazy? I’ll gun you down before you got a chance!”

“I can take you any time, Marty,” I said, with the same confident tone. “You want to know why?”

“So tell me?”

“Remember last night in Byer’s apartment—when I pulled a gun?”

“I remember,” he said laconically.

“You chickened out, Marty.” I grinned at him. “When you saw Pete had gotten it—or he was about to—you quit. You ran the hell out of there before it could happen to you.”

“I wasn’t taking any chances!” he snarled. “You think I’m stupid or something?”

“Not stupid—just yellow,” I sneered. “I got that same thirty-eight in the shoulder harness, Marty, right now. You’ll get the first shot in, sure, but then we’re even.”

“All I got to do is squeeze the trigger, Boyd,” he said tightly, “but 1 like to hear you talk—for a little while.” “I got a crazy idea that now 1 know where that tiara is,” I said. “But I don’t plan on telling you, Marty.” “You—” His jaws clamped tight. “So it won’t do you any good where you’re going, Boyd!”

“It’s someplace where you wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting at it, anyway,” I said. “You want to know where? You’ll die laughing, Marty, it’s—”

I jumped—lately I was getting good at it. I jumped sideways toward the couch in a giant, convulsive leap that carried me maybe six feet away from where I had stood the moment before. Marty’s reactions were slow— too slow by maybe one-fifth of a second—and that was because he’d been listening too hard. So the slug aimed for me hit only the space where I’d been, and plowed on into the far wall. By the time Marty was lining up for a second shot, I had the .38 out in my hand and I pressed the trigger before he did.

My shot took him in the chest. The gim spilled from his hand while his eyes contemplated eternity. Then, rath- | er than fall to the floor, he seemed to melt away like an iceberg drifting into the Gulf Stream.