ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE 
Vol. 30, No. 9, September, 1985. 

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 CONTENTS

 ETERNALLY YOURS by H. Edward Hunsburger
 EMPATH by Elliott Capon
 THE SMILE by J. R. Petrin
 THE SIMPLEST THING IN THE  WORLD by Thornasina Weber
 THE FOREVER TRIP by Rob Kantner
 THE ULTIMATE PICKPOCKET by Jeffry Scott
 TO WIN AT ANY COST by Robert Gray
 MRS. BIRD'S DREAM HOUSE by Nonna Siebenhefler


  Eternally yourS

  
 by 

H. Edward Hunsburger

 My name is Jeff Winsor and I'd like to say straight off and for the record
that I don't believe in ghosts. I never have believed in them. I never
will. And I can't think of one good reason why I should.
  The whole notion of restless, prowling spirits strikes me as a waste of
time. Even in the afterlife there must be better things to do than wander
around
 Mustration by Skve Karm

 6

 moaning and wailing, frightening poor mortals out of a good night's sleep.
Messages from the recently departed are an even sillier idea. Let's face
it, most people say far too much in one lifetime to have anything
worthwhile left over for broadcasting from The Great Beyond. And as for
things that go bump in the night, all I can say is that they never bump
into me.
 ETERNALLY YOURS

 7

  I figure it's over when it's over. You total up a life's credits and
debits, rise quietly from the table, and cash in your chips. Maybe there's an
afterlife. Maybe there isn't. But either way, there are no such things as
ghosts.
  Now what I do believe in is the scarcity of good apartments in New York
City. The kind of elegant, spacious apartments you find in those old but
beautifully maintained buildings surrounding Gramercy Park. The kind of
apartment I finally got to move into when Admiral Miles Penny tripped on the
carpet and fractured his skull.
  I'd like to be more sympathetic, but I never met the man. From everything
I've heard, he'd led a long, full, if somewhat tempestuous life. Not to
mention all the trouble he caused me after he died. But up until I moved in,
the only connection between us was that I got his apartment. I'm not even
going to go into what I had to do to get it or how much the rent is. Let's
just say that wretched excess pretty well covers it all.
  I moved into the place on October first, a week to the day after they moved
Penny out to a less spacious but far more permanent address. I wanted to
concentrate on unpacking, but I had an assignment due. I decided the
cardboard carton ob-

 stacle course would have to wait for a while.
  As it turned out, both projectsgot sidetracked. Because that was the day
the first postcard arrived.
  It was jammed in the apartment door mail slot along with some catalogues
from a shoe company, a bookseller, and one of those Vermont cheese and smoked
hdm places. It was an old postcard, yellowed at the edges, with a view of a
few ragged palms and a seedy looking pink stucco hotel. All that was on one
side. The following brief message was on the other.

 Miles,
  You were right about that adaptation of the Krimsky book. It stank. I
didn't like the lizard scene either. Knight to C-3.

 Fraternally yours,
  Charles

  Nothing unsettling there, nothing ghostly. Right? Just a chess-by-mail
crony of Penny's who hadn't yet heard of his demise. That's what I thought
too. The incongruity of it didn't hit me until later that afternoon when I
was hard at work at my easel.
  The adaptation that Charles had referred to was Cold Moon. It was a
blockbuster novel that had recently been made into a

 .~o
 8

 H. EDWARD HUNSBURGER

 TV movie. It was the recently part that bothered me. The film had had its
world premiere just five days ago. So how in the world could Miles Penny
have an opinion about a movie televised after his death? I felt something
like a chill along my spine. Inside my head a tiny voice started humming
the theme from The Twilight Zone. Was the late admiral carrying on a
correspondence from beyond the grave? Was heaven a seedy resort hotel? And
was 1, Jeff Winsor, nonbeliever in ghosts, being haunted, indirectly, by
means of the U.S. mail?
  A ringing phone cut short my crazed speculations. For a wild moment I
thought it might be Admiral Penny trying to reach me direct. But as it
turned out it was the earthy, and earthly, voice of Karen Hunter, the lady
in my life%
  "You sound a little flustered," she said after the usual preliminaries.
"Anything wrong?"
  I told her about the postcard. I heard a suppressed giggle, but at least
she didn't laugh out loud.
  "There has to be a rational explanation," Karen insisted. "You should try
to contact this Charles guy who sent the card. Is there a return address?
What about the postmark?"
 I looked at the card again.

 "There's no return address and the postmark's too blurred to be legible."
  "Well," Karen sighed, "that's all I can think of. You've roused my
curiosity about Admiral Penny, though. I remember you told me he died of
a fall. Is there any possibility of foul play?" Her rich, contralto voice
gave the last two words a lot of dramatic emphasis.
  "Give me a break," I said. "The authorities pronounced it accidental
death. He was going to get his mail when he tripped on the little rug in
front of the door, fell, and fractAred his skull. The realtor told me Penny
was in his eighties. The bones get thin and brittle at that age. Any kind
of bad fall can be fatal. There's no way it could be murder. The door was
locked and bolted from the inside. They had a locksmith take the whole door
off just to get into the apartment."
  "He died on the way to get his mail," Karen said thoughtfully. "Doesn't
that strike you as a strange coincidence? And now he's sending you
messages, messages that come to the exact spot where the crime occurred."
  "What crime?" I practically shouted. "Penny's death was accidental. And
he isn't sending me any messages. He's writ-, ing to some guy named Charlie
who's sending his replies here. What the hell am I talking
 ETERNALLY YOURS

 9

 about? Penny isn't writing anyone. Penny is dead."
  There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. door,:'F
met about the locked aren said finally. "It doesn't prove anything. People are
always getting murdered behind locked doors in mysteries. All of this," she
said solemnly, "can only mean one thing."
  "What?" I demanded irritably.
  "That Admiral Penny was murdered. His restless spirit is calling upon you
to bring his killer to justice. The poor man won't be able to rest in peace
until you've solved this murder."
  "I don't believe in ghosts," I shouted.
  "See you tonight at eight," Karen cheerfully ignored me. "You'd better
get busy on this. Painting book jacket illustrations for mysteries is one
thing. Actually solving one might not be so easy."
  Before I could get another word in, she hung up on me. I replaced the
receiver and swore for a while. Karen's a terrific lady with more than her
share of intelligence, beauty, and charm. The only thing she has too much
of is imagination. She not only believed that there was a murder and a
ghost involved in this. She really did expect me to solve the mystery.

 And I knew I'd never hear the end of it if I didn't at least go through
the motions.
  Slightly dazed by my sudden elevation to amateur sleuth, I threaded my
way through the cardboard-box jungle and went back to work. I make a com-
fortable living painting dust jacket illustrations for mystery and suspense
books. I did all kinds of commercial art up until a few years ago when the
cover I painted for Death Is My Interior Decorator won all the big awards
in the field. Now I* specialize in the crime stuff, which is fine with me
because I like to read mysteries, too.
  I'd barely gotten back into the painting when the doorbell rang. If this
was the late admiral calling in person, I wasn't even going to bother
unpacking. The apartment was nice but not that nice. As it turned out, it
was only Tom Banks, the doorman.
  "Getting settled in?" he asked with a friendly smile. A tall,
broad-shouldered man in his early sixties, he has one of those open,
expressive faces, the kind that seem readymade for smiles and laughter. I
figured him for one of those rare people, a man who actually enjoys his
work.
  "Settled in," I answered. "I'll be lucky if I get everything unpacked
before the two year lease is UP."
 Banks laughed and handed

 I--- 10

 H. EDWARD HUNSBURGER

 me a stack of mail. More catalogues, from the look of it, and perched on
top of them, you guessed it ... a neat little pile of postcards. "I've been
holding them downstairs," he explained. "Drayton, the postman, asked me to.
He didn't want the moving or cleaning people tampering with the mail."
  Better them than me, I thought.
  "Very conscientious," I said aloud. "I've never been in an apartment
building before where they deliver the mail right to your door."
  "That's Drayton," Banks nodded. "Very dedicated to the job, he is. Never
taken a sick day in twenty years. The perfect postman, I call him. He told
me just the other day that he was being considered for mail carrier of the
year."
  "How about that." Just my luck. If he'd been a little less zealous, I
might not have ever seen the damned postcard.
  "Do the rugs look okay?" Banks asked. "They spent all afternoon on them.
I guess they got all the blood out of that one," he added, peering down at
the faded two by three Oriental I was standing on. It was the very same rug
on which the admiral's sea legs had a fatal loss of footing.
  "They look fine to me. When's the relative due?"

  "Well now," Banks was suddenly evasive. "A couple of weeks, I guess.
Shouldn't be more than a month or so." He spread his hands in a gesture of
futility. "There's nothing I can do, Mr. Winsor."
  "I'm not blaming you," I reassured him. Part of the deal for my getting
the apartment was that I kept the admiral's stuff there until his only
living relative arrived from some distant port of call. Apparently there
was no more storage space in the basement of the building. I'd managed to
cram most of his furniture and personal stuff into the spare bedroom. But
there was no way I could get all the rugs in there, too. As a compromise
the management had agreed to have the rugs cleaned before I moved in.
  After wishing me well with the unpacking, Banks returned to his post in
the lobby. I should have gone back to work myself, but I looked at the
postcards instead. There were four of them in the pile of mail Banks had
brought up, each with the same view of the rundown hotel. They were all
from his friend Charles, with a chess move at the end of each message. Two
of them seemed normal enough, but the other two carried obvious replies and
comments to events that had taken place after Admiral Penny's death.
 What the hell was going on
 ETERNALLY YOURS

 11

 here? Was there chess after death? Was the U.S. Postal Service a whole lot
more far reaching than I'd ever given it credit for? I hadn't. taken the
one card all that seriously, but this was something else again. Charles had
signed all of the cards "fraternally yours." I wondered how Admiral Penny
was signing the cards he sent to Charles? Eternally yours?
  I was too keyed up by then to go back to the painting. I grabbed my
jacket instead and went downstairs. I needed a walk in the park, something
to get my mind out of neutral. Maybe I could come up with a coupl e of
notions that would clear the whole thing up. The worst part of it was that
I was actually starting to believe what Karen had said. That Admiral Penny
had been murdered and that it was up to me, if I wanted the "haunting" to
stop, to bring his killer to justice.
  One of the advantages of living on Gramercy Park is the park itself. It's
a small, fencedin square of immaculately maintained greenery, to the best
of my knowledge the only private park in New York City. A neighborhood
association handles the upkeep, and the park is strictly reserved for area
residents only. Some people might find it a little on the snobbish side,
but I wasn't complaining. Since I now lived there,

 I intended to make the most of it.
  My new key fitted perfectly in the park's wrought iron gate. I closed it
firmly behind me and began to stroll the graveled paths, enjoying the
autumn sunshine while I tried to think detective-like thoughts.
  I almost knocked the girl over before I saw her, She spun around and
glared at me, a tall, willowy blonde with the face of a Botticelli angel.
"I didn't hear you coming," she sputtered angrily. "You really ought to
learn to walk louder." Her wide blue eyes narrowed as she focused in on me.
"You're Winsor, aren't you? The fellow who just moved into 3C."
  "That's right," I smiled. "And you're Tana Devin, the star of Maneuvers."
  The recognition and the way I'd phrased it brought on a fullwattage
smile. She'd obviously mistaken me for a fan of the show. Maneuvers was a
new and very popular daytime soap, and Tana Devin played the vixen, the one
you love to hate. She couldn't act worth a damn, but it didn't matter.
Nobody else on the show could, either.
  "We're neighbors, you know," she informed me. "I live right next door to
you in 3B."
  "You must have known Admiral Penny then?" If I was going to do some
detecting, now was the time to start.

 0
 12

 H. EDWARD HUNSBURGER

  Her smile did a fast fade, and I could almost see the smoke from the
smoldering anger that backlit those bright blue eyes. "Penny," she seethed.
"Dropping dead was the only thing that man ever did that made me happy. He
was the nosiest old crock in creation. Always looking through the peephole
in his door to see who was coming in and going out of the other apartments
on the floor. I could hear his raspy breathing every time I walked by. It
was getting so I hated to invite anyone over. No privacy at all in my own
damned building." Her blue eyes narrowed a little more as she studied my
face. "I hope you're not going to be manning the peephole like Penny? I
won't stand for any more of that crap." Her soft voice was suddenly as cold
and merciless as an Arctic winter.
  "Not me," I assured her. "I'm far too busy for that kind of nonsense."
  "Glad to hear it," she said. "Just keep it that way and we'll get along
fine." On that cheerful note, she turned away and strode down the path
without a word of goodbye.
  Well, I'd certainly learned one thing about the late admiral. Tana Devin
hated him. Now, no one likes being spied on, but it's basically a harmless
pastime. What I couldn't figure out was why Tana Devin loathed

 Penny with such intensity. There had to be more to it than that.
  After a couple more turns around the park, the answer came to me. The
lovely Miss Devin's name had been in the papers quite a lot these past few
weeks. Not the real papers but those supermarket tabloids they sell at the
checkout counters. I vaguely remembered the headlines on one of them, some
kind of sex scandal that linked Tana Devin with a prominent but very
married politician. I remembered somebody's mentioning that the liaison had
very nearly cost Tana her part in Maneuvers. While the show portrayed this
kind of bedhopping all the time, the chairman of the company that sponsored
it was an uncle of the politician's wife. I guess rating points won out
over family ties because Tana did manage to keep her job. But the way I
heard it, it had been a very close thing.
  What I remembered best about the whole business were the pictures that
appeared under the headline. Pictures of Miss Devin and the politico that
had that slightly off, distorted quality that tends to catch an artist's
eye. Exactly the kind of pictures you'd get shooting through an old fash-
ioned peephole ... just like the one on the door of my new apartment.
 I was positive that that's what
 ETERNALLY YOURS

 13

 Penny had been doing. A few candid snaps of the two lovers as they passed
by the door might have fetched a good price. They would also make an
obviously secret affair as public as the corner library. Was that motive
enough for murder? As far as Tana Devin was concerned, I believed it was
motive enough and then some.
  I told Karen all about it over dinner that night. After all, it's no good
being a detective if you don't have a Watson around to bask in your
reflected glory.
  "It's a nice start," Karen said, patting my arm. Not exactly the
complimentary outpouring I'd been expecting. "But what you need is a few
more suspects. Not to mention the how part of a locked room murder."
  "Details," I muttered. "I just need a couple more days to put it all
together." Not necessarily true, but it sounded good.
  "Glad to hear it," Karen smiled. "Remember, I'm counting on you. I
imagine Penny's ghost would like to settle down, too. I doubt haunting is
all it's cracked up to be."
  "I'm working on it," I said testily. "I do have a few other things to do,
too," I reminded her.
  The next morning I did one of them, putting in three hours at the easel.
It was a cool, gray day with a steady syncopation of rain that drummed on
my

 windows. Atmospheric mystery story weather, but not much good for
strolling in the park. So when I finally took a break from painting, I
stayed indoors and inspected the scene of the crime.
  Feeling as though I should be brandishing a magnifying glass, I knelt
down in front of the little Oriental rug on which Penny had tripped and
died. The cleaners had gotten all the blood out. I couldn't find a trace.
I did notice something, though. When they yanked the cleaning tag off, they
left a little nylon loop still threaded through the fibers. I teased it
free and slipped it in my pocket.
  I figured out the how part of the murder when I shifted my attention to
the door. The mail slot was the key. Visualize Penny standing at the door,
staring out the peephole, while someone, the murderer, crouched out of
sight on the other side of the door. All the murderer would have to do was
quietly open the outside mail slot and shove a stick or a cane through,
knocking Penny's legs right out from under him. It was as simple as that.
  "Brilliant deduction," I murmured to myself. I thought about phoning the
police right away but decided to spring my theory on Karen first. Besides,
I still had to figure out the who part. Tana Devin was a good candi-

 -4
 14

 H. EDWARD HUNSBURGER

 date for the killer, but I hadn't even talked to anyone else yet. Also,
I needed that little thing they call proof.
  Just past noon I heard the postman at the door. I put down my brush and
went to check the mail. It had slid through the slot and was lying on the
little rug. Two catalogues and, of course, another postcard. It looked
exactly like the other ones except for the message, which read:

 Miles,
  How did you guess that the prime rate was going to drop two days before
it happened? What have you got? A crystal ball? Thanks for the tip. Bishop
to C-6.
Fraternally yours, Charles

  Now Penny was giving financial advice from the Great Beyond. The prime
rate had dropped earlier in the week, and from the cheerful tone of the
note it appeared that Charles had taken advantage of Penny's powers of
prediction. Was it just a lucky guess, or did Penny have special, inside
information from Up There? I don't know what bothered me more, the postcard
or the fact that the admiral hadn't taken the time to write me about the
shift in the prime. It was the

 least he could have done. After all, I was the one trying to solve his
murder. If there actually was a murder. In spite of my theory about the
mail slot and cane, I still wasn't one hundred percent convinced.
  I figured I ought to talk to the postman, though. He might be able to
tell me something more about Penny. I swung open the door and caught
hinijust before he reached the elevator.
  "Excuse me," I said. "I'm Jeff Winsor, the new tenant in apartment 3C."
  "Lew Drayton," he introduced himself "I'm sorry, Mr. Winsor, but there's
nothing for you today. It usually takes a week or so for the forwarded
stuff to start coming through." He smiled as if to say the delay was a
shame but there was nothing he could do about it. He was a short, pudgy,
moonfaced man with thick, rain-misted glasses. His postman's slicker
glistened with moisture, and his bulging leather mailbag fitted the conto
urs of his body as though it were a part of it.
  "I'm not worried about my mail," I told him. "But I was wondering about
Admiral Penny's. Are you going to keep on delivering it here? He died, you
know."
  "Yes, I heard," Drayton sighed. "A real loss to the community. As for his
mail, there are a couple of ways to go. You
 ETERNALLY YOURS

 15

 could mark it 'deceased, return to sender.' Or you could readdress it to his
next of kin, but Tom Banks told me the admiral's only living relative is out
of the country at the moment. If you want my opinion, the easiest thing for
you to do is just keep it here until the next of kin arrives to claim it. But
that's entirely up to you," he added quickly. "I'll be glad to arrange it any
way you want, Mr. Winsor. Just say the word."
  His eagerness to oblige threw me for a moment. After all, this was New
York, a city hardly noted for its zealous public servants. I'd forgotten that
Banks had called Drayton "the perfect postman."
  "Let me think about it," I said finally.
  Drayton nodded. "Take all the time you want. Besides, most of Penny's mail
is catalogues, like this one from Pitt's up in Maine." He reached out and
tapped the catalogue I'd carried out into the hall with me, ignoring the
postcard that rested on top of it. "Those Pitt brothers make a sweet rod and
reel," he grinned, "but a little too pricey for me. If there's nothing else,
Mr. Winsor, I'd better get back to work."
  "Did you know the admiral well?" I pressed him. "Get along with him okay?"
  "I just delivered his mail," Drayton shrugged. "And I get

 along fine with everyone on my route. Got to get moving," he tipped his cap.
"Don't like to keep my customers waiting." He waved and stepped into the
waiting elevator where his bulky form was quickly concealed by the closing
doors.
  Feeling a little deflated, I wandered back into the apartment and spent a
couple of minutes contemplating the park through my rain-streaked bay window.
I guess after Tana Devin, I'd been anticipating something a little more
meaty. But then everyone couldn't be a suspect. Drayton was just the postman.
Like the fraternal Charles, an unknowing helpmate, a bearer of haunted mail.
  I decided that if I really wanted to learn more about Penny, I should talk
to Tom Banks. New York legend has it that doormen know everything about their
tenants, all the little details ranging from shoe size to sexual preference.
I hadn't thought about Banks before, but if there was any truth to the
legend, he could be a regular well-spring of information.
  On my way down to the lobby I was nearly bowled over by a big, gray-haired
man who came catapulting out of the elevator.
  "Sorry about that," he said as I regained my balance. "I guess my mind was
somewhere else. I only wish the rest of me was, too," he added with sudden
bit-

 -0
 16.

 H. EDWARD HUNSBURGER

 terness. He had the look of a stick? I could practically see it
 businessman gone to seed. His
 tailor-made gray suit was wrin
 kled and stained. There were
 dark circles under his eyes, and
 the hand that gripped his ebon
 wood walking stick was white
 knuckled with tension. He
 blinked at me and-frowned. "I
 don't remember seeing you be
 fore? Are you visiting someone
 in the building?"
  "Just moved in," I told him.
 "I'm the new tenant in 3C."
  "Penny's place," he said in a
 harsh whisper, as if the name
 itself was almost too painful to
 pronounce. "If I could have
 spared the time and the shoe
 leather, I would have danced on
 the old bastard's grave. If any
 one ever deserved to die, he was
 the one."
  "What do you mean?"
  "Mind your own damn busi
 ness," he muttered, pushing
 past me. He stomped down the
 hall, cutting at the ~ir with the
 gleaming ebon stick as though
 he were slashing away at some
 imaginary foe. He paused at the
 door of apartment 3A, unlocked
 it, and disappeared inside,
 slamming the door behind him
 with a thunderous crash that
 echoed through the hallway.
  "Well now," I said to myself.
 "The suspect shortage is cer
 tainly over." Even death hadn't
 lessened the man's obvious
 hatred of Penny. And that
 gleaming ebon-wood walking

 cannonading through the mail slot to shove the old admiral's legs right out
from under him. But who was this guy? I didn't even know his name yet. And
why did he loathe the recently departed Penny?
  I found Tom Banks at his post in the lobby, staring moodily out at the
rainswept street. "Mr. Winsor," he turned and smiled at me. "Surely you're
not thinking of going out in that downpour without so much as an umbrella?"
  I shook my head. "I just came down to pass the time of day. I wanted to ask
you about one of my neighbors, a big, gray-haired man in A? What's he got
against Penny?"
  "That would be Mr. Campbell." Banks sighed and shook his head. "He'll be
leaving us at the end of the month. Some recent financial setbacks are
forcing him to relocate."
  "Why do I have the feeling that Penny is somehow involved in that?" I
prodded him.
  "Mr. Campbell isn't too good at hiding his feelings," the doorman nodded.
"I guess there isn't any harm in telling you about it now. Mr. Campbell and
his partner own a computer company. A few weeks back, the two of them were
planning to take over another firm, a small company that unknowingly held a
patent that would
 ETERNALLY YOURS

 17

 give Campbell and his partner a virtual lock on a big, upcoming defense
contract. Campbell sold off all his assets at a loss to raise the necessary
capital, but before he could put in a bid, a rival firm bought the company
right out from under them."
  "How does Penny figure into it?"
  "Well," Banks hesitated, "Mr. Campbell can't prove anything, but he and
his partner were discussing the takeover when they walked by Penny's door.
They had a longish wait for the elevator, so they pretty well covered it
all. No one else knew about the deal, and with Penny's reputation for
spying on his neighbors, he seemed like the only person who could and would
have alerted the rival company.
  "I could see why Campbell would hate him," I sympathized. "What about
you, Tom? How did you get along with the admiral?"
  "It's my job to get along with all the tenants," Banks replied with quiet
dignity. "But now that he's gone, I have to admit that Penny was a hard
man, the only one I've ever met who would go out of his way to make someone
else's life miserable."
  "You sound as though you might be speaking from personal experience,"
I.said. The sad, regretful tone of his voice

 gave him away more than any words could.
  "It happened a few months back," Banks said softly. "Like the admiral,
I'm a retired navy man myself. Now, I'm not one to ask for favors, but I
have a grandson, a fine boy with all the makings of a naval officer. Ever
since he was a lad he's wanted to go to the Academy. He has all the grades,
the qualifications. All he needed was a recommendation, a little pull at
the top to get him in. I asked Penny if he'd be willing to put in a word
for the boy. All it would have taken was one phone call, a few minutes of
his time, Well, first he said yes, then no, then yes again. By the time I
realized he never intended to do it, it was too late to ask anyone else.
It seemed as though he took a kind of perverse pleasure in keeping me
dangling like that."
  Although I'd never met Penny I was beginning to hate the man myself.
"What happened to your grandson?" I asked Banks.
  "He went into the navy as an enlisted man," Banks said bitterly. "There's
no shame in that," he added, "but he would have done the Academy proud. He
never had his chance, thanks to Penny."
  There wasn't anything I could say to that. I left Banks staring out at
the rain and went back
 18

 H. EDWARD HUNSBURGER

 to the apartment. I was beginning to wonder how Admiral Penny had lived
as long as he had. If he hadn't been murdered, he certainly should have
been. I'd never come across anyone who was a more suitable candidate for
homicide. I was also beginning to regret my own attempt at amateur
sleuthing. If Penny had been murdered, his killer almost deserved to get
away with it. I say almost because I still intended to solve the crime if
I could. Penny had done some pretty horrible things in his life, but none
of them as terrible as murder itself.
  I spent the rest of the day and all that evening at the easel, finishing
up my assignment. While my hand wielded the brush, my mind arranged and
rearranged all the bits and pieces I had about Penny and his death. I had
started out with no suspects, not even a proper murder. None of this would
have come about if it hadn't been for the postcards and Karen's insistence
that I investigate.
  Now I had three suspects. Tana Devin and Campbell were the more obvious
ones, but Tom Banks was also a possibility. He seemed quiet and friendly
enough on the surface, but who could really tell what was going on inside?
As for the murder part of it, My cane-

 through-the-mail-slot theory eliminated the whole locked room element. It
should have put Campbell at the head of my suspect list, but it didn't. Any
one of them could have bought a cane and shoved it through the slot. And
after Tana Devin's description of Penny's "raspy" breathing, any one of
them could have easily ascertained if he was at his post on the other side
of the door.
  I had suspects, motives, and method. I had everything I needed except for
the most important thing: a solution to the crime.
  It was still raining when I turned in at midnight. The rumble of thunder
and the crack of lightning punctuated my- futile attempt to sleep. When I
finally did doze off, I had the craziest dream. I was being chased through
Gramercy Park by a giant postcard. And it would have caught me, too, if it
hadn't been for the lifesized chessman. He was a white knight who poked a
hole through the postcard with his uptilted lance. The postcard fell to the
ground, but then the knight started bearing down on me, with his lance
aimed straight at my heart.
  That's when I woke up. Not only had I escaped the sinister pursuers of
my dream but I'd come up with the solution to the mystery. And it was so
simple
 ETERNALLY YOURS

 19

 that I should have seen it right away. I still had some checking to do,
though, just to make absolutely certain I was right.
  The rain tapered off around six, the last of it disappearing with the
dawn of a bright, autumn day. After an early breakfast I went downstairs
for another talk with our friendly 'doorman.
  "Who plays chess around here?" I asked after we'd exchanged good morning
pleasantries.
  The question seemed to take him by surprise. "Well now," he hesitated.
"I play a little chess. Strictly amateur stuff. Drayton, the postman, and
I often have a game on Sundays. Then there's Mr. Campbell. He's won a
couple of local championships, and I know he spends a lot of his free time
over at the Marshal Chess Club."
 "What about Tana Devin?"
  Banks frowned thoughtfully and nodded. "Now that you mention it, I
believe she's a player, too. She once starred in an off-Broadway show
called The Chess Match. So she must know at least the rudiments of the
game, though I don't think she has much time for it. Are you looking for
a game?"
  "No," I said smiling. "I'm looking to end one."
  Leaving Banks more confused than ever, I paid a brief visit to a local
shop. After that

 I returned to the apartment where I spent the rest of the morning
experimenting at the scene of the crime.
  When the postcard slid through the mail slot at a little past twelve, I
was ready and waiting. I didn't bother to bend down and pick it up. I swung
the door open instead, startling the mailman so much that he stumbled back,
nearly losing his balance.
  "Mr. Winsor," Drayton grinned. "I'm sorry but there's nothing for you
today."
  "That's okay," I told him. "I was wondering if you could mail this for
me," I asked, handing him a postcard.
  "No problem," he said eagerly. "I used to mail cards for the admiral all
the time."
 "I know you did."
  He must have sensed something, either in my face or in the tone of my
voice. "Now, what do you mean by that?" he asked quietly. He wasn't grin-
ning any more.
  "I figured it all out last night. The whole thing started with the
postcards, but I got sidetracked for a while, never realizing that the
answer was right there under my nose."
  Drayton forced a smile. "You're talking in riddles, Mr. Winsor. I still
can't figure out what you're trying to say."
  "You're the perfect postman, right?"
 20

 H. EDWARD HUNSBURGER

  "The best in the business," Drayton agreed.
  I shook my head. "When I asked you what I should do with the admiral's
mail, you listed several options, all of them dependent on the mail's being
delivered here. You never once mentioned the routine procedure of having
the post office hold it or putting in a change of address that would have
sent it directly to Penny's next of kin. It would have been easier on both
of us, but you never said a word. Because you wouldn't have seen the
postcards any more. After all that time on the sidelines, you were finally
in the game. You just couldn't bear to give it up, could you?"
  "Are you accusing me of tampering with the U.S. mail?" Drayton bristled.
  "I'm accusing you of reading some postcards," I said softly. "The ones
Penny gave you to mail for him and the ones you delivered from his friend,
Charles. You're a chess player yourself. It's only natural that you'd
become interested in a game, especially if it were a good one. I didn't
suspect you at first. But last night I realized that somebody else must be
carrying on the game with Penny's friend Charles. You were the only one
besides me with access to all the incoming postcards. And since Penny was
an elderly man who spent most of his time

 eavesdropping from behind the door, it seemed only logical that he'd give
the outgoing cards to you to mail for him. It all came down to your being
the one, the only person who could keep the chess game going after Penny's
death. Charles must be a worthy opponent," I suggested. "Are you enjoying
the game?"
  "All right," Drayton said with a sheepish grin. "You caught me at it.
Charles Fairfield is a top-ranked player just like the admiral was. I
couldn't resist the challenge. After all these years of trying to
second-guess them, I had to see if I could beat Fairfield myself." The
heavyset postman shrugged. "All I did was write a few postcards and sign
Penny's name to them. No harm in that, right?"
  "No harm if the admiral hadn't caught you reading the cards in the first
place," I corrected him. "These past few days I've learnedjust what kind
of man he was. What you did was only a minor infraction of the rules. After
all, postcards aren't meant to be private. But Penny would have complained
just the same, ruining your standing as the 'perfect postman,'spoiling your
chance to be named mail carrier of the year. But first he would have let
you dangle for a while, er~oying the prolonged agony. The sight of you
sweating it out, never knowing exactly when your
 ETERNALLY YOURS

 21

 spotless reputation would be shattered beyond repair. He waited too long
this time," I said quietly. "Long enough for you to kill him."
  "Are you crazy?" Drayton sputtered. "Penny tripped on a rug behind a
locked door. No way that could be murder."
  I shook my head. "There are a couple of ways, but I didn't figure out the
right one until last night." I dug the little loop of nylon cord out of my
pocket and held it out for Drayton to see. "I found this knotted through
the rug. The rug Penny tripped on when he fractured his skull."
Involuntarily both of us glanced down at the faded Oriental. "At first I
thought the loop was left over from a cleaners'tag. But then I remembered
Tom Banks's comment that the cleaners had spent 'all afternoon' on them.
They'd done the work right here. No reason to tag them if the rugs weren't
leaving the apartment."
  I prodded the nylon loop in my open palm. "I took this over to a sporting
goods store this morning. The man in the fishing department identified it
as a piece of deep sea fishing line, strong enough to withstand the pull
of a fighting marlin. And I know you're a fisherman. You told me as much
yourself when you talked about not being able to afford a rod and reel from
the Pitt catalogue."

  "What does that prove?" Drayton demanded. Behind his thick glasses his
eyes had taken on a narrow, almost glowing intensity. Casually he slipped
his mailbag off his shoulder and put it down on the floor. "It's real
interesting," he said with a slow smile. "But it still doesn't add up to
murder."
  "Sure it does," I insisted. "I spent a lot of time this morning standing
on that little rug with the door closed. Right off I noticed how the rug
gets bunched up from shifting your feet around. It gets pushed up against
the door and a little edge of it gets shoved between the door and the
bottom of the frame. Not much," I emphasized. "Just enough to knot a line
in it."
  "Go on," Drayton prompted me. He was still smiling, but there was no
pleasure at all in his voice.
  "You must have done that part of it quietly," I continued. "Keeping well
below the sightline of the peephole. It would have been easy. Most of the
tenants aren't around this time of day. Then you make your normal
appearance, dropping the mail through the slot. When you hear Penny picking
it up, you hurry away. The other end of the line was secured to something
heavy and tough. Your mailbag is my best guess. It's perfect for the job.
The sudden
 22

 H. EDWARD HUNSBURGER

 pull on the line yanks the rug against the door and Penny with it. It was
a pretty sure bet that something like that would fracture an old man's
brittle skull. After you hear the crash, you just walk back and cut the
line with scissors or a knife."
  "You mean a knife like this?" The short but lethal looking blade suddenly
appeared in Drayton's hand.
 "Just like it," I gulped.
  "I thought he was my friend," he continued with quiet intensity. "He used
to meet me at the door every day. I'd hand him his mail and he'd give me
the cards to post for him. Then one day he caught me reading one of
Charles's postcards. I guess he must have been suspecting it for a while.
He wouldn't open the door after that. He'd just stand on the other side and
taunt me, telling me over and over again that everyone would find out that
I really wasn't perfect. I had to kill him. Don't you see? I am perfect.
The perfect postman!"
  He lurched toward me, the blade upraised. As he crossed the doorstep and
stepped onto the rug, I gave the line hidden in my hand a tug. His feet
went flying out from under him. The knife fell from his hand. He cracked
his head against the doorjamb and sagged to the floor, unconscious but
still very

 much alive.
  "Well, that's one ghost laid to rest," I said to myself. I reached behind
a pile of boxes and switched off the tape recorder. Then I phoned the
police.
  Karen came over that night, long after they'd taken the raving postman
away in a straitjacket. I felt sorry for him but not all that sorry. He'd
tried to kill me, too. I'd told her all about it on the phone, rubbing it
in just a little when I reminded her about restless ghosts and hauntings
by mail.
  I wasn't surprised when she showed up with a peace offering.
"Housewarming gift?" I asked, accepting the brightly wrapped package.
 "Open it up," she smiled.
  I did just that. "But I don't need a chess set," I protested. "I don't
know how to play and I'm certainly not going to learn now. I don't believe
in chess."
 "What -about ghosts?"
  "I don't believe in them, either."
  "Then what do you believe in?" Karen demanded.
  I looked around me, taking in the endless stacks of cartons and crates,
untouched since the movers had left them there except for the addition of
a faint coating of dust. "The scarcity of good apartments in New York
City," I said firmly. "That's what I believe in ... I think."
 FICTION

 I
 I
 I
 I i
 , EMPATH
 I  I
 I by Elriott,,,Capon

EMPATH

 by


 ELLIOTT CAPON

 The shark swam furiously back and forth in the enormous tank, angered not
only by the bright glare of the TV lights but also by its intense hunger.
It wanted to kill something, and it wanted a meal, and it would attack
whatever entered the tank next.
  Clark Penner stood on a makeshift diving board suspended over the tank,
blinked at the lights, and prepared to jump into the water

 when the Penners discovered that they were going to be parents for the
third time, they gave a lot of thought to their older child, seven-yearold
Freddie. Freddie had been five when his mother presented him with a sister,
and he had spent the next year throwing the infant out of her crib, spill-
ing things on her, slapping her. The Penners were unable to afford a child
psychologist, and ended up taking Freddie to a succession of county-run
social service programs and nonprofit agencies. Freddie ended up with
labels such as "malicious," "maladjusted," "genetically vicious," and
"uncontrollable." They tried amphetamines and depressants, punishments and
rewards. Freddie would not change his behavior patterns. The only thing
that could keep

 the baby safe was for Freddie to be under someone's constant eye.
  Which was all right as long as there was just one child to look after.
But with another one on the way, the Penners worried that Freddie might get
to one or the other and do harm. No daycare center would have him: he was
too much. No mental institution would take him: he wasn't enough. The
Penners, to whom abortion was anathema, and so had to have this child,
spent nine months worrying about the future health of their newest
offspring.

  Clark Sheldon Penner was born with little trauma to either himself or his
mother.
  For almost ten months Freddie never got within an arm's length of his new
brother. He gave up abusing his sister, but no one realized it was because
he was waiting, planning for the day when they would finally leave him
alone and he could get his hands on the baby.
  One day he did. A broken hose on the washing machine, a clumsy and
slightly bleeding daughter, and an insistently ringing phone all distracted
Mrs. Penner long enough for Freddie to run to his room, retrieve the dirty
pocketknife he found in the street, and sneak into his parents'room where
Clark lay,
 EMPATH

 25

 blissfully contemplating swirling particles of dust.
  Freddie crept with exaggerated stealth to the crib, the broken-bladed
knife held in a tight fist over his head, drawn back for the plunge. Clark
noticed the movement and turned his head to follow it. He must have
realized something was amiss because his eyes got wide and his contented
cooing ceased.
  Freddie snickered and tensed his arm, preparing to bring the knife down.
  And suddenly he was terrified.
  His throat closed and his heart began to pound. A black and red roaring
filled his eyes and ears. He had never known such fear, and the little
infant in the crib was the cause of it. Freddie screamed and dropped the
knife and ran to his room. His mother found him a few minutes later,
cowering in the corner, unable to give her an explanation. Later that day
when she brought Clark into the living room and Freddie saw his brother,
he screamed again and ran back to his room, whence he couldn't be coaxed.
Nor would he stop screaming.
  That was enough for them to get Freddie institutionalized for life.

  Clark Penner grew up a very likable child. No one, from the

 most malicious little brat to the grouchiest old curmudgeon, could look
at him and not return his warm, open smile. Eager to help him forget the
supposed horrors of the day Freddie was taken away, his parents showered
every possible luxury and joy on him, and he rewarded them by being the
best, cheeriest child who ever lived. He made everyone happy.
  Clark was eight when he experienced real fear for the first time in his
memory.
  He was somewhere he had no business being, a littered alley that led to
a vacant lot thatjust a few years before had been a thriving apartment
building. He picked his way amid the broken glass, crushed cans, misshapen
woods and metals, forgotten garbage. In his childish fantasy, he imagined
that he was both the owner and destroyer of a mighty empire, that he had
caused all this chaos, and now lorded triumphantly over the remains,
wallowing in his rights of chattel.
  Unfortunately, there was another who claimed title to the alley: a dog,
half German shepherd, half mastiff, made wild by years of living in the
jungle of the city, the leader of a pack of similarly wild canines, out for
his morning perimeter patrol. He didn't like the idea of trespassers.

 I
 26

 ELLIOTT CAPON

  Clark saw the dog, and didn't know how to react to it. Dogs were
finely-manicured poodles or pampered Lhasa Apsos, or cartoon heroes; this
one was big and dirty, wore no collar and no license.
  The dog lowered its head and sniffed loudly. Clark was no threat; even
so, he was violating the most basic laws of territoriality and had to be
removed.
  While Clark stood wondering what to do next, the dog bared its teeth in
an evil grin and leaped for him.
  Clark turned white and screamed.
  The dog interrupted its leap and hit the ground with all four legs
scrabbling to put its body in reverse. Ears laid back, tail between its
legs, whimpering as if it had been scalded, the dog took off as fast as it
could run. Clark did not bother to reason; he just sat down and cried,
 Later, he thought about it.

  All Clark's friends in junior high school were astonished at the way
Clark managed to score consistently with the girls. They were all in
varying degrees of puberty, were all going through the curiosities and
unbridled lusts endemic to that period of life, and spent most of their
waking hours in clumsy attempts to experience sex, as

 boys their age have been doing for thousands of years. They would stand
around in groups, talking to the girls, hoping that the more explicitly
they talked, the more successful they would be. Then Clark would walk over,
equally preoccupied. The only difference was that whichever girl Clark gave
his attention to, whichever one he focused his desires on, would flush,
breathe hard, and go back with him to his garage. One wag suggested that
Clark had deflowered the entire seventh and eighth grades in their school.
And with the exception of a few girls whom Clark did not find attractive,
the wag was right.
  Clark thought about that, too. An idea was beginning to form.

  It wasn't until college, when he took a useless course in parapsychology
designed to separate liberal arts majors from another three credits' worth
of money, that he came across the word empath. One who can project emotions
and feelings. One who can project his own fear to a wild dog, and scare it
off; who can throw his own cheerfulness and warmth onto others; who can
instill others with his own horny feelings.
  Like a painful wave, the recognition of his talent -his gift?-broke over
him. A
 EMPATH

 27

 hundred, a thousand incidents now rushed to his conscious memory, and were
explained. He had a Power. He could do anything he wanted with it-could
control other people's emotions just by making them share his.
 What to do with it?
  Clark had what was basically a "decent" personality. He was as honest as
the next man, as considerate and thoughtful. He was also as avaricious, for
rare is the "next man" who, faced with the opportunity to score, to win
something big his neighbors will never possess, turns down that
opportunity. Clark did not want to rule the world, or set up a mansion of
sex slaves; on the other hand, there was no reason not to try to capitalize
on his empathic talent, now that he knew what he had and why he was capable
of . . . of what? There was one friend he could turn to with this source
of potential, untapped wealth.
  Stewart Kogan was, in his own proud words, a "goniff." He would rather
earn a. devious penny than an honest dollar. Clark had met him in high
school, and they continued on to college together. If there was a pyramid
scheme going on, an insurance scam, a lottery, a stolen exam sale, a
switched file, a missing piece of equipment, or anything else just barely
le-

 gal--or barely illegal-one could be sure that Stewart Kogan was in the
neighborhood. He had but one flaw in his personality: loyalty and honesty
when it came to dealing with his friends, and, like everyone else, he was
Clark's friend.
  There might not have really been dollar signs instead of pupils in
Kogan's eyes as they sat in a popular student hangout, but Clark was sure
he could see them.
  "Publicity," Kogan said. "A demonstration. First we get you known, get
your talent proved, then go for the big bucks: the TV shows, maybe you get
paid for being experimented on, who knows?"
  Clark frowned. "I want to do something with this, not just be a media
freak."
  "Do what? Call the world leaders into one room and make them all like
each other? Go to accident sites and telekiness overturned cars right side
up? The only thing you can do with this is eat as much money through
publicity as you can!"
  "Yeah ... okay. What do we do?"
  Stewart Kogan smiled his biggest wolf-in-sheep's-clothing smile. "Leave
it to me."

  Clark didn't know how Kogan managed it. He overheard phone calls in which
Kogan
 28

 ELLIOIT CAPON

 represented himself as a "Professor von Mullerr frrom Heidelberrg" and as a
network executive and as a dozen other things. He piled scam upon scam upon
fraud and managed to leave the shark tank at the local aquarium without
laying out a penny. He got all the local TV network affiliates to send camera
crews: since Professor von Muller had won the 1979 and 1981 (albeit totally
fictitious) Europea Prize for Psychology, a prize which all and sundry were
informed by a senator's aide made the Nobel look like a toy in a Cracker Jack
box, it was Muller who attracted the attention, von Muller and his amazing
discovery, the Student Who Could Survive in a Shark Tank.
  Clark had rebelled against the idea, but Kogan, using the logic and reason
of the deceitful, which sounds purer and clearer than a Sunday sermon,
convinced him that this was the only way to cash in.
  "You can't possibly be killed," Kogan told him. "You know why? Because when
you jump into that tank you're going to be terrified. Remember the incident
with the dog? You're

 going to scare the shark silly, and then you just hang out for a minute or
two. Simple."
  The logic was inescapable, and so was his position, perched on a board
overhanging a large tank, while a sixteen-foot Great White shark thrashed
angrily right beneath him, back and forth, back and forth.
  Clark's heart pounded and he felt faint. God, he thought, am I scared! I'm
going to be killed. I'm going to die. No, no I'm not. The shark is going to
be scared, and won't come near me. He'll pick up my fear and feel it himself.
He'll climb the walls trying to escape. He won't come near me. I'm safe. I
have the power to control others. I'll be all right. The shark won't come
near me. Just spend a minute in the water. Just a minute. He won't come near
me. I'm going to be safe. I'm going to be okay.
  With that, he threw a smile onto his face, raised his right arm, and
plunged into the water.
 He wasn't afraid.
  And neither, therefore, was the shark.

  They buried the head and the left foot from the ankle down, which was all
that was left.




 THE SMILE

 by

 J. R. Petrin-


 It was pretty much agreed afterward among the members that if it hadn't
been for Disdaine. the Ravens Five might never have gotten its very own
skeleton in the first place. For, as Swan said himself, "Disdaine, not me,
gets the credit for it, first to last,"
  Still, they might have thought Swan was something overmodest in saying
this, for it was he, as they all very well knew, who first went out and got
the thing and fetched it home.
 "For the realism," as he told them.
  They listened to Swan, paid attention when he spoke; but it wasn't always
so. In fact, Swan wasn't even a member a few months before, just a kind of
observer.
  He sat excluded in a corner of the living room while the Ravens Five
raved and recited over their latest dogeared crime novel (brilliant
author-a real find), leaving rings of tea and Swan's best sherry on the
furniture, and shedding crumbs of Mrs. Swan's coffinshaped sugar cookies
over the carpet.
  In his corner Swan sat, a passionless man, all were convinced, a doer,
a worker, a bustling insect person, bereft of imagination and true romantic
feeling. Not Ravens Five material at all. "No membership," said Disdaine,
"for Swan."
  For although Mrs. Swan was the club treasurer and, along with President
Disdaine, a founding member, the connection was not enough, Disdaine
insisted, to overcome one major objection to Swan's admittance: Swan had
never read a book completely through, cover to cover, in his entire life.
 Couldn't manage it.
  Even with a newspaper, he could not bring himself to leave the island
safety of the rock-black headlines and cast himself into the sea of fine
print below. He couldn't swim it, his breathing wasn't right.
  "Anyway," he admitted, "I'd rather be out doing things than reading."
 The members shuddered.
  Disdaine said, leering from his seat so close to Mrs. Swan, "You're
always doing things, Swan. Trouble is, you don't finish things."
  Mrs. Swan's tinkling voice was the first to laugh, and rang loudest, high
up above the others like a wind chime just out of reach.
 Swan cringed. There were nights he didn't finish things.
  "Now then," called President Disdaine, clapping his death-white,
long-boned hands for attention and thumping the book that lay before them,
"down to business."
 31
 32   J. R. PETRIN

  Swan retreated into his corner and into himself, jaws arc-welded shut, lips
riveted together, vanishing from their world, gone. Like the man in a movie
he had once seen who shrank away to nothing at all, nonexistence, as good as
dead to all who knew him.
  But he watched. And he listened. They couldn't deny him that, not in his
own house.
  Mrs. De Forest, blinking through enormous spectacle lenses like two
magnifying glasses, hoping to slide in a word on the subject of
strangulations; Davis, sucking at his too-large meerschaum pipe and hammering
a sudden fist into a palm to show how a skull might be caved in "like an egg!
just like an egg!" And fat Mr. Warkentein, a lover of stab wounds, drinking
tea "because the demon alcohol breeds wickedness!"
  And there, his own Mrs. Swan, so very agreeable, siding with any two
arguments at once, but in the end deferring to Disdaine, who painted opinions
grandly on the air with bold strokes of his long white hands, hands that
scarcely paused in their swooping flights except to fall from time to time
like settling moths upon the arm of Mrs. Swan.
  Whenever Disdaine's knee pressed against Mrs. Swan's leg, it felt to Swan
as if a steel blade were being driven into his own flesh.
 And yet, what could he say or do?
  "You're a failure," Mrs. Swan told him tirelessly. And she was right.
  In his wake, so many failures, like dead and dying bodies falling behind a
rudderless ship. Jobs. Friendships. And because he did possess a keen mind in
spite of it all, like a fine Swiss movement, polished and electric, at the
heart of a bomb that would not explode, Swan had known for some time that his
marriage was failing, too.
  There had been no great ground-splitting overnight rift between him and
Mrs. Swan. It was impossible to say when it had started. But with the same
inexorable slowness by which it wore down mountains, time had come between
them, drifted them apart like continents, Swan glancing back but seeing no
one familiar on the far retreating shore. Too much time.
 Too much boredom.
  Once she had given him books, crime novels, to read. But he had started a
dozen and never finished one. After the first chapter, always it was like
pushing knee-deep through the ink; exhaustion got him, finished him.
 So now there was the club, and Swan in his corner, envying. He
 THE SMILE  33

 wanted to be a member, a part of things with Mrs. Swan. Perhaps he was
sorriest of all when a meeting had to end. When the members left, the
sparkle in Mrs. Swan's eyes went with them.
  Disdaine's voice brought Swan back to the present. "Well, so much for
that one."
  The crime novel of the week lay discarded on the table, finished. As they
always did, they had pulled it apart like some luckless:, startled fly,
dismembered it leg by leg by leg, wing by shivering wing, then put it back
together again by committee until Disdaine saw that it was good-and
adjourned.
 The sherry bottle was empty.
  The members lounged about a few more minutes, having a comfortable and
easy chatter. Swan watched them as if through a telescope. He envied them
their kinship. Especially, he marveled at the depth of grisly knowledge
held by these gentle people.
  He saw them to the door with genuine reluctance (good heavens, can that
really be the time?), found their hats for them, helped them heavily into
their coats, and saw them all off.
 With the exception of Disdaine.
  Swan retired discreetly to bed, leaving Mrs. Swan and the lingering
Disdaine to talk, two old and very dear friends, the founding members.
 Although he really wasn't so very trusting a man.

 sunlight on the bedroom wall. Monday morning.
 Swan woke to an empty suite, Mrs. Swan, up at six, having showered, eaten
her single slice of bone-dry scaling toast under the ticking kitchen clock,
dressed, and streetcarred off to her job at the flower shop. All that
marked her passing were a few drops of water on the shower curtain and the
faint sad scent of her lilac perfume in the air.
 One of these days, Swan thought, she won't be back.
  The coffee was cold on the sideboard. He made a fresh pot. He gathered
up the scattered morning paper, refolded it neatly, set it back on the
table, headlines up and waiting.
  He could not bring himself to read even the headlines today. He stared
out through the window into the frosting blue-sky morning where two trees
he admired framed the view, trees he had decided were an oak and an ash,
now wearing patchwork autumn yellows and sprinkling leaves against the
glass. Soon, he thought, they'll
 34  J. R. PETRIN

 have lost their leaves entirely. And with a start, as though an icy hand
had touched him, Swan realized the brooding nearness of winter. It brought
him an uneasy sense of urgency,
 Mrs. Swan was going to leave him. Soon. With Disdaine.
 "And I'm just sitting here waiting," he said aloud.
  Mrs. Swan had left next week's book on the table-Murder Is Easy. He
picked it up, opened it, fanned the pages, closed it hard. No use. He
wasn't a good reader. He was a doer.
 "Well then, do something!"
  There was the club. If only they'd allow him to join, maybe he and Mrs.
Swan would have something in common again, something to share, something
to talk about in the evenings. But how to convince the members?
 He could do something for them. That was it.
  He could go out and find them something interesting-no, shocking!
Something that would lift them up out of their parlor chairs and slap the
library dust out of them. Stories, novels, poems, plays: all words and
words. He'd go out and stalk the back streets and bottomless haunts, places
the members mouthed about but dared not go, and bag for them some raw chunk
of criminality they could pass around and thump down on the table till the
polished woodgrain cracked. They'd realize then, Mrs. Swan would realize,
what an important part of things he could be, the hands of the Ravens Five,
whirring silent, clockwork-steady, sitting in on Sunday, sitting in on
Sunday....
  Sudden thoughts flowed warmth through Swan like liquor. How Mrs. De
Forest's eyeglasses would flash. How Disdaine would shrivel away. And Mrs.
Swan there to see it all. Wonderful.

 The elevator dropped him down to the street. He began walking north.
 As he went, the city aged. It was as though the town-hall clock had
reversed itself, begun beating the other way, its time machinery carrying
him back at the rate of twenty years to
  city block. Behind him the tall, younger buildings subsided in
  group. Ahead, the old buildings hunkered down, scarred and soiled brick
under dull onionskin paint, buildings that had seen things.
 Dead leaves blew circles in the street.
  He had turned into a long, brick-lined trench of a street where shadowed
alleyways opened up at intervals like carious mouths,
 THE SMILE

 hungry, patient. There were hooded windows high up and black iron
firestairs spidering down. A mongrel dog challenged him over something raw.
 "Murderers dwell here," Swan muttered, "or ought to."
  He might have walked right on past the shop if something hadn't made him
look twice.
  It was a cast-aside place at the end of a mews, easily missed, a
grime-blackened low front of brick, hard up against the road and out of the
sun. Abreast of its dust-smutted window, Swan stopped, curious, to squint
through the glass.
  What did he expect? Perhaps an old thumb-worn pistol with notched barrel
and silencer; or brass knuckles with spikes and dark secret stains; maybe
switchblade knives that had seen duty.
  In fact, giving up its shadows as Swan's eyes adjusted, the window
revealed only a mad jumble of used household bric-a-brac: a tall, spangled
lamp; a wall clock shaped like a star; a wine rack; some funereal brass
oddments; a long row of tea cosies. Disappointed, Swan drew back; but his
eye was caught then and held by a gleam of white back deep in the dark that
looked like ...
 And Swan realized what it was. "Yes," he breathed.
  It was real-better than real. It was something that stopped his heart
slam dead in his chest, then started it up again in the wrong gear.
Something that brought Alfred Hitchcock alive in his knees and stomach and
sent something glinty-eyed stealing through his veins.
 A human skeleton.
  At the back of the shop, only just visible in the skelter of turvey junk,
it grinned back at Swan with a fine set of teeth and no eyes.
 Swan went in, breathing.
  The shopman owned a long, watchful, canine sort of face, and stood
looking pleasant by the counter, and welcoming. He followed Swan's gaze to
the skeleton and said in a stalking voice:
 "Good item, sir. Much in demand. Medical students, you know..
 "Is-is it real?"
  "Real? better than real. Plastic, maybe. Last a lifetime-ha, ha. And so
cheap-thirty dollars."
 "Plastic?"
  The shopman reconsidered. "It might be real. A student brought it."
  The skeleton sprawled among the pawned and sold-off items with an air of
enormous patience, as if it were awaiting the return of
 36  J. R. PETRIN

 its original owner, who would then, with his ticket, reclaim it. All
around, mounded up in a vast confusion, were the tumbled castoff belongings
of men and women. Swan had the feeling he was at the scene of a colossal
train wreck from which all except one had escaped with their lives.
  They stood among the clutter inspecting the skeleton, weighing it in
their minds on different scales. Swan wanted it to be real. "It's yellowing
a bit," he said.
  "Oh, real bones will do that, oh, they will." The shopman spoke with
authority. He might have been an anatomist who had come for the day to run
the shop for a sick aunt.
  Swan had already bought the skeleton in his thoughts, had already fetched
it halfway home. Aloud he said, "What keeps it together?"
 "Well, for your convenience, it's all wired, sir. Look-"
  Like some sly old dusty Strombolli, the shopman held the skeleton up,
dangling, a white marionette waiting for the music to start.
  "Throw in an old suitcase," tempted the shopman, reading Swan's thoughts,
"good for carrying, storage, and keeping people's noses poked somewhere
else like they ought to be, and for keeping the rain off. Package deal.
Cash sale. Thirty dollars."
 Swan paid.
  The skeleton grinned like a boy as the shopman accordioned it into the
suitcase, lock-snapped it in with the two big brass rattrap catches. Swan
hugged the rattling load home with him and shoved it pridefully under the
bed.

 Days passed waiting for Sunday, anxious days. Swan found himself
thinking more and more about bones.
  In the bathroom mirror, seeing reflected his own collarbone, his own
cocked finger, his brow high-too high-and wide over sculpted cheekbones,
he wondered and wandered his hand over them. "That's me in there, the
real me, hiding." He thought about skeletons. Bones long and socketed,
holding the flesh up into the wind like tentpoles. Bones inside
everyone, hidden and secretly working. "Are you going to spend forever
in that washroom?" And Mrs. Swan, he watched her, too, sour-pouting and
moving
 THE SMILE  37

 about the apartment on her bones, silently, her flesh muscles lifting her
skeleton now this way, now that. At her elbows, knees, heels, chin, the
bone-ends nudging out as though they might one day break free and escape.
  On Tuesday they had chops; Swan studied the bones. On Thursday, chicken,
and Swan sat over the remains of his meal a long time, thinking. Mrs. Swan
let out very loud sighs and crashed things in the kitchen.
 Sunday.
  Mrs. Swan rapping up the steps of the church on her best flinthard heels,
Swan three strides behind. Mrs. Swan not relaxing until they reached their
pew and from across the aisle Disdaine unwound her with his eyes and mellowed
her down, Swan glancing quickly away.
  They began the first hymn, and for once Swan did not remain comatose
between eyeblinks like a lizard on a rock. He looked at Disdaine and at the
congregation. All these people, all these bones, Disdaine leading them, it
seemed. An army of bones creaking up for a hymn, and down for a prayer.
Skeletons, every one like every other, caught in a ponderous choreography of
sameness, enslaved by their flesh. Creaking up, creaking down. Up. Down ...
 I Know Not What the Future Hath, they sang.
  Disdaine went up to read the lesson, and standing over them he was
wonderful, flinging his armbones, handbones, fingerbones out and in, out and
in, like a baby pterodactyl learning to fly.
 Hymns, prayers, collection, hymns, prayers.
  Then they were leaving, Mrs. Swan and Disdaine whispering and smiling at
the foot of the steps while Swan shook the pastor's hand, feeling the bones
move under the skin like sticks. "I'll be right home," called out Mrs. Swan
with too much conviction, pushing Swan away with her eyes from behind
Disdaine's black-wool body. Swan legged it home alone, making his skeleton
work, and the only things he noticed along the way were a tramp with a torn
umbrella, and his two trees losing their leaves in long empty rents through
which their branches showed.
 Lunch. Soup and a sandwich. Silence.
  She must come home, he thought, all her things are here. And the door
rattled open and there she was, throwing her keys down onto the counter like
a handful of ice and moving her hips on through the room.
 "I'll warm you some soup. . . " Swan called after her. The bath- 38   J. R. PETRIN

 room door closed between them like a barricade.
 A whisper of leaves sifted against the window.
  Zero hour, the hour of the members, the hour of show and tell was near.
A sudden panic gripped him. How would he manage it? He blushed at the
thought of dragging his prize and his pride out into the room without good
reason, like a child pressing a favorite toy on the attentions of gathered
bored uncles and lip-biting aunts.
  The first ring at the door made Swan jump, and it brought Mrs. Swan out
of hiding. Disdaine rustled in, white-cheeked and gaunt, blowing on his
hands and peering about for Mrs. Swan as if he hadn't seen her in weeks.
Swan admired his skeleton, helping him out of his coat.
  The others then came in a rush, letting October into the room with them,
shaking the cold out of their gloves. Swan had already scurried to his seat
in the corner before they disentangled and broke out of the front hall.
Dear God, thought Swan, bring me an opening.
  He watched the members move, looking into them for their bones. Mr.
Warkentein was a problem, having so successfully buried his skeleton under
flesh. None of it protruded, excepting his little white teeth, with which
he ate the coffin cookies steadily. It was as though he were determined to
build up even more of a mound over his bones to keep them safe, like
spading too much earth over a grave.
 The Ravens Five settled in.
 They talked of bodies.
  Bodies poisoned, strangled, beaten, burned. Bodies stabbed, bodies shot,
bodies drugged. Bodies thrown over precipices, under trains, into swamps,
out of airplanes. Bodies collided, squeezed, stretched, shaken, or treated
to heart-stopping fright. Bodies, bodies, thought Swan, all meat.
 What about the bones?
  Time stole by like a thief Swan caught himself crushing his watch under
his thumb to slow it down.
 An opening, pleaded Swan, an opening, please, please,,heaven ...
  Then, miraculously, there it was, his chance, coming up on him in a rush
and sweeping by so fast he had to jump and shout to catch it.
 "-fractured his skull," finished Disdaine.
 "Like an egg," added Davis.
 Swan leaped.
 "Speaking of skulls. . .
 THE SMILE 39

  The water-babble of voices stopped as suddenly as though some unseen hand
had turned a valve.
  "I wonder," said Swan bravely, "if we all appreciate just how difficult
it would really be to break a human skull?"
  Like searchlights probing an incoming enemy, the members turned their
stares on Swan. Mrs. Swan's eyes nearly drew blood.
 "A skull," Swan pursued doggedly, "is really quite strong."
  Ten beaconing eyes scanned him, unblinking. Four seconds, five ...
  Then, like the first hairline crack in a yielding chrysalis, the armor
plate fissured: Davis, slowly raising his hand and hesitantly kneading the
top of his head, puzzled.
  "It seems fragile to me." Davis raised an eyebrow at his neighbor, fat
Mr. Warkentein, who reluctantly, as if it were a duty, pressed pink sausage
fingers against his own glistening pate and frowned.
  Swan feathered out his breath, relaxing. They were all doing it now,
nudging, probing, and tap-tapping the tops of their heads. Only Disdaine
continued to glare. And Mrs. Swan.
 "Hard," pronounced Mrs. De Forest.
 "Brittle," said Davis.
  Mr. Warkentein, never quick to commit himself, sausaged away at his own
head, frowning.
 Disdaine's eyes machine-gunned the room.
  Swan was elated. He bounded into the bedroom; with another bound he
reappeared.
 "Look!"
  He thrust under Mrs. De Forest's face something large, pale, spidery,
dried up, a thing of tombs and graveyard nightmares. Mrs. De Forest
screamed as though the roof of her stomach had collapsed.
  A start of horror broke from every throat. Every face paled as the blood
ran out of it. Only Disdaine found words:
 "Swan! What in God's name ... T'
  Swan stood blinking, dazed at the reaction. He had not expected this.
Surprise, interest, of course, even Disdaine's cold indifference. But not
this-this thunderclap of terror. And not from the members of the Ravens
Five, to whom no aspect of the macabre was unfamiliar, people who ate
murder for breakfast. Surely nothing of this sort could frighten them?
  Mrs. De Forest was making little pigeon sounds and dabbing at her eyes,
feeling for the heavy glasses lost in her lap. The others just sat, rigid,
like plaster saints.
 40  J. R. PETRIN

  It was Davis who grew bold first. He leaned a tiny bit forward in his
chair. "What is it?" He wrinkled his nose.
  Swan faced him. "Just a skeleton . . ." The collection of bones hung
loose from his hand behind him.
 "I know that. Can I see?"
 Swan hesitated.
  "Come on, Swan, let's see the bloody thing," demanded Mr. Warkentein.
"Might as well, eh? after all the damn fuss."
  Shyly, bracing himself for another explosion, Swan brought the skeleton
forward into the light and held it up to them.
  There was a long silence punctuated by a sharp snort from Disdaine's
corner. But Swan felt a new hope, a thaw, come to him on the air.
 "Is it real?" Davis asked.
  Then the tension broke all of a sudden like a gate, questions and
comments surged and spilled in the room.
 "It's so light. . ."
 "See how the arm bends. . .
 "And look at the jaw. . .
 "And the teeth . . ."
  Swan relaxed, letting apprehension slide out of him in a long rush of
air. It was going to be all right. They were poring over the skeleton now,
feeling and exclaiming. But where was Mrs. Swan?
  Disdaine was aloof, sulking on the couch, his eyes small and hard, the
tip of his cigarette a third eye of angry red. And Mrs. Swan was still
seated next to him, looking as though she had been slapped. How much alike
they look, thought Swan; like a pair done in ceramics, ready for the kiln.
  Mr. Warkentein was pulling at Swan's arm. "Fantastic thing, terrific!
Don't know where you ever found it."
 "Thanks." Swan looked again at Mrs. Swan, wanting her by him.
 But she was with Disdaine, hard as porcelain.
  The rest of the meeting revolved around the skeleton. Everyone wanted to
hold it, to handle it. Mrs. De Forest, now fully recovered, summed it up
for all of them: "I mean, you talk, you read about a thing for years, never
actually see it, and suddenly there it is!"
  Swan avoided looking again in Mrs. Swan's direction, he couldn't stand
not seeing appreciation in her eyes. She was gone, that was all. Just as
surely as if she had taken a train, she was gone, traveling with Disdaine
in strange territory, plotting with Disdaine to spoil this new chance for
Swan. He could almost hear their two
 THE SMILE 41

 minds working across the ten thousand miles of living room carpet, trying
to think up a way to do it.
 The evening passed.
  Mrs. De Forest recovered so well she even told Swan of a method for
bleaching the white back into the bones: "A little vinegar, dear, and
baking soda. . . "
  Then everyone was gone and only Disdaine remained, sitting just as he had
all evening, in an angry cloud of cigarette smoke with his knee, that
groping knee, against Mrs. Swan. They watched Swan fold his skeleton away
like some ancient, delicate musical instrument.
  In bed, Swan lay with his hands crossed over his breast and heard their
voices cutting hard in the living room, their quick razoring laughs.
  He was still wide awake when the apartment door closed and the lock
snapped Disdaine out, and he waited with his stomach clenching like a fist,
listening, until he heard Mrs. Swan move in the hall.
 She hasn't left me yet, he thought, not yet.
  Mrs. Swan came to bed. They lay together in the darkness, inches apart,
facing upward with their silences pulled over them, speaking to each other
only in voiceless shallow breaths that came and went, came and went, and
would not keep in time.
 Inches below, the skeleton lay staring upward too, smiling.

 The Sundays arrived now for Swan with the measured excitement of birthday
parties.
Swan and the skeleton. The skeleton and Swan. They were lionized by the
members like some Hollywood crime feature duo. Everyone wanted to talk to
Swan, and did. Everyone wanted to talk to the skeleton, but couldn't, and
so talked to Swan instead.
  Meanwhile, Disdaine smoked four hundred cigarettes, drank one hundred
glasses of sherry, and never once said thanks or a civil word to anyone.
He and Mrs. Swan sat apart with their heads together, looking very high
above it all, exchanging looks with one another, and grim little smiles.
  And one Sunday, Davis brought up the subject of Swan's becoming a member.
  Disdaine rose, looking fierce, lifted a finger at the room, opened his
mouth, said nothing, and left.
 Mrs. Swan fled to the bedroom and stayed there.
 42  J. R. PETRIN

 when, the following afternoon, Swan let himself into the apartment with a
bag of groceries, he knew right away that something was wrong.
 There was no telltale sign to warn him, of the kind the Ravens Five always
talked about: no smoldering, abandoned cigarette, no picture slightly out of
plumb on the wall, no half-opened window with a breeze inhaling, exhaling the
draperies. None of that. Just a tiny hollow somewhere in the suite where
something had been, a tiny hollow that pricked the little hairs up on the
back of Swan's neck and held them.
  Mrs. Swan was there, looking away and pulling at her nails. And there was
a flush on her cheeks.
 Then Swan knew.
 "No.,'
  He dropped the groceries onto the table and headed for the bedroom.
 "No!"
  Swan fell to his knees and threw up the bed skirt; and with a pressure
building around his chest and a fire of needles burning under his skin, his
fingers reaching, grasping, closed on nothing. No suitcase. Nothing.
  Swan heard himself groan like an animal. Behind him, in the doorway, Mrs.
Swan laughed. He turned on her, hands swelling up into fists.
 "Where is it? What have you done with it?"
 "Gone." She tinkled with wind chime laughter.
  Swan felt dazed, without breath. It was as though he had been dropped into
freezing water, pulled out, shaken, and tossed back in again. His pulse
pounded the blood through his veins. He took a step forward and lifted his
hands.
 Mrs. Swan covered her mouth in mock fear.
  "Oh, my. You wouldn't strike me, would you? Well, go ahead! I don't care if
you do. You never finish anything you start anyway."
 "You gave that skeleton to Disdaine, that's what you did!"
  "No, really I didn't." More laughter. "He just took it. He said he was
going to burn it. And good riddance."
 Swan brushed her aside.
  He forced himself along the passageway to the telephone table, fumbled the
directory open and found the entry in Mrs. Swan's flowery hand. Halfway out
the door he stopped, came back and tore out the telephone cord. He shouted
over Mrs. Swan's laughing:
 THE SMILE  43

  "I just better get there before he does anything. That's all. I just
better-"

 Disdaine picked up the last of Swan's skeleton, the skull, and clucked his
tongue. "'Alas for you, poor Yorick. Where be your gibes now?'"
  He threw the skull after the rest of the bones, in through the furnace
door, and saw with satisfaction how the flames whumped up into a fiery heat
and the sparks whirled. He held out his palms and flinched with delight at
the roaring blaze. Two names blossomed in a fury from the eyeholes of the
skull as it settled into the firebed, grinning.
 Disdaine watched, not minding, grinning back.
  "Burn," he muttered, "burn, my grisly white friend. How abhorred in my
imagination you are. My gorge rises to you. Up, up you go, atomized smoke
and hellfire dust, up the chimney to ride the next wind out of town, to
settle on a thousand graveyards after cheating only one. And with you goes
an undeserved membership for Swan, the real jester, a man who wouldn't
recognize a crime if he fell over an open grave at a picnic.... Burn. Not
one now, to mock your grinning. . . ."
  There was a movement, black on black, near the bottom of the cellar
stairs. Disdaine half turned, tightening. A voice, a familiar voice, said,
"I hope you didn't burn the suitcase, too. I think I might need it. . . ."
  And Swan-it was Swan-stepped into the guttering light with a shovel held
high. And Disdaine thought for a small eternity how queer it was not to see
the blow fall before an explosion of painless but sickening color and
stereophonic sound erupted in his head and the floor came rocketing up at
him but ... never ... quite ... reached him.
 The skeleton burned.
  It burned, still looking out of the furnace door, laughing gouts of flame
and slowly crumbling, settling in the embers and the ash.
  Like some ghastly Cheshire cat, its smile was the last thing to go.

 hey're here," Swan said to Mrs. Swan. She didn't look up, busy with her
cookies.
 "T"I'll go," said Swan.
 It was the members at the door, all come at once.
 44   J. R. PETRIN

 Mrs. De Forest, polishing winter out of her glasses; fat Mr. Warkentein,
breathing hard through petulant lips; Davis, pipe dead between his teeth
and leaning eagerly out of his coat.
 "Well, Swanny," cried Davis, "today's the day, huh?"
  Swan blushed and passed Davis a hanger. Swanny-he liked that. It had a
friendly, warm, nice sort of weight to it. He led the members into the
living room, beaming.
  Mrs. Swan was waiting for them, had the cookies, the tea, the sherry all
out and ready. Swan was pleased. He had dusted and cleaned the room
himself.
 Davis chafed his hands together, then suddenly crowed:
  "Mrs. Swan! Oh, now you've outdone yourself. Look, everyone! Look at the
cookies!"
 "Skulls!" cried Mrs. De Forest. "How lovely!"
 "My idea," said Swan.
 They all sat, Swan going to his old corner.
  "No, Swanny, not there." Davis beckoned, "Here at the table with the rest
of us." He laughed. "Can't swear you in at long distance, can we?" He held
up his hands. "And now-"
  He waited until he had their attention, then with a grand gesture, as
though he were a conjurer, produced the club treasure from an inside
pocket. "Here it is, Swanny," he cried. "Our bible. Our very own
leather-bound, first edition of Poe!"
  He opened the book randomly, for the oath. They all ducked forward to
see, like toy drinking birds.
  "Oh!" cried Davis. "This is appropriate-look!" He read the title out to
them: "The Man That Was Used Up."
  "Now, Swanny, place your right hand over this book and repeat after me.
. ."
  It was done in a moment. Swan fell back in the chair, suffused with
happiness, a full-fledged member of the Ravens Five. Dedication had paid
off. And besides, as Davis had pointed out to the members, it would have
been a shame after Disdaine's desertion to have had to change the club
name....
 Davis was cracking his knuckles on the table.
 "Two more items. First, we must elect a new president-"
 Davis was elected by acclamation.
  "Second, we need a name for our new mascot, generously donated by brother
Swanny."
  Eyes swiveled to view the skeleton. It was slumped in a chair, head back
against the wall, thin, gleaming, smiling approval.
 THE SMILE 45

  "Oh, Mr. Swan," cried Mrs. De Forest, "I see the baking soda worked."
 "Suggestions?" prompted Davis.
  The clock ticked in the kitchen. They all stared in different directions.
 "Well, I have an idea," Swan put in finally.
 "Yes, Swanny?"
  "I was thinking that-I mean, I know he left without a word, and all, but-in
view of his past services to the club, as a sort of honor, why not call the
skeleton-I mean, our skeleton-Disdaine?"
 Davis hooted.
  "Terrific! Great! Sort of looks like him, too, doesn't it? Kind of long and
dry. And I'll tell you what-"
  Davis reached out and brought the skeleton rattling over the table top to
fetch up in Disdaine's old spot at the end of the couch.
 "To good old Disdaine!" Davis raised his glass.
 "Disdaine!" they echoed.
  And from where he sat, Swan could see the skeleton settling comfortably
into the cushions, like a bird, some bizarre sort of stork, come home to its
nest, smiling, smiling, a knee pressing into the thigh of Mrs. Swan.
 Swan looked over into Mrs. Swan's vacant eyes, raised his glass,
 and smiled too.

THE SIMPLEST THING IN THE WORLD

by

 Thomasina Weber

 By draping the body over the wooden bridge railing, George Carson was able
to grasp her ankles and heave her the rest of the way, smiling as he heard
the splash when Agnes hit the water six feet below. The river was swollen
from the recent rains and it would not take any time at all for the current
to carry her far away and, he hoped, out to sea.
  In the bright moonlight he began the climb up the road to his house. Life
was going to be

 46

 much more pleasant without Agnes around to nag him. He had managed to endure
it for twenty-five years, but each year it was harder to do. Tonight had been
the last straw, topping the load of straws that had been piled on him all
through the day.
  First, he had run out of penicillin and was told it would be two hours
before he could get any. Then Mrs. McCarthy had come in to get her
prescription refilled and he had had to listen to the latest medical report
on
 THE SIMPLEST THING IN THE WORLD

 47

 every member of her family, most of whom he did not even know, and all of
whom were living in different states.
  "You aren't looking at all well today," she told him. "You really must
get more rest, Mr. Carson."
 "I feel fine, Mrs. McCarthy."
  "Heart attacks can come quite unexpectedly, you know. I had a friend once
who never dreamed-"
  "I feel fine, Mrs. McCarthy." George sometimes wished he had not made
such an effort to live up to his slogan, The Friendly Corner Druggist.
Being friendly could be exhausting.
  He had been weary when he got home and not in the mood for Agnes, who had
decided that tonight was the night to discuss closing in the porch to make
another room. He had walked out of the kitchen, but she had followed him.
Even when he locked himself in the bathroom, she talked through the door.
When he came out she was still yattering at him and yattering and yattering
and yattering-
  George Carson resented being classified as middle-aged. He was more
active now than he had been as a youth. As a young man he had had frequent
lazy spells, periods when he could not have cared less about a career or
success or the future. Then he had met Agnes, who was forceful and
attractive, and

 after they were married he settled down.
  He had to give her credit for that, he thought as he walked back through
the moonlight toward their house-his house now. She had motivated him and
steered him into the success pattern. Because of her, he was established
in town as the owner of two drugstores, with negotiations in progress for
the purchase of two others in the next town.
  Everything has its limits, though, and Agnes had overstepped hers.
Motivation and encouragement can quite easily develop into nagging. George
no longer needed to be prodded, and every prod Agnes gave him reinforced
his desire to get rid of her.
  He allowed himself the luxury of a laugh as he entered the sumptuous
living room. All those stories he had read about the difficulties of
killing someone were ridiculous. Those writers probably thought they were
helping the cause of justice by making a potential murderer afraid of
failure and thereby changing his mind about committing one. Well, George
Carson knew the truth now! It was the simplest thing in the world to kill
a person.
  Of course, everyone might not be as obliging as Agnes had been, turning
her back so that he could crown her with the
 48

 THOMASINA WEBER

 heavy paperweight, but that was because she was so sure of herself and
sure of George. She thought she knew him inside out. George laughed again
as he went into the kitchen to make coffee. How wonderful it was to be
alone at last.
 "Hello, Georgie."
  George dropped the coffee canister. He turned to see Connie Blake
standing at the back door.
  "You seem nervous tonight, Georgie. Agnes been giving you a hard time?"
  Connie always made him nervous; she was so openly flirtatious. He hoped
no one would get the wrong idea. "You startled me, that's all," he said.
"I didn't see any lights next door and I thought you were out."
  "I was." She opened the screen door and came in. "I was walking along the
river."
  George' was glad he had dropped the canister because sweeping up the
coffee gave him an excuse to bend over and conceal his shock at her an-
nouncement. If the moonlight had been bright enough for him to see by, it
had been bright enough for someone else to see by.
  "Will you have some coffee?" he asked. "I have another can in the
cupboard."
 "Sounds good."
  He purposely avoided her eyes as he prepared the coffee. She

 and Agnes had been cordial when they met, but there was no love lost
between them. Connie was stunningly beautiful and Agnes was not, and that
in itself would be enough to discourage a friendly relationship. In
addition, Agnes thought Connie was trying to seduce George, which just
proved how unreasonable Agnes was. George stood five foot eight and weighed
one hundred and sixty pounds and wore thick glasses and had thin blond hair
spread carefully over a distressingly pink scalp. Connie's husband, on the
other hand, had a football star's physique, perfect white teeth, and an
engaging smile. He was less successful than George-he was a car
salesman-but his personality gave the impression that he was more so. He
commanded respect wherever he went, and there wasn't anyone who did not
like him.
  "Where's Richard?" asked George, hoping he would not come looking for his
wife and find her alone here with George.
  "He stayed late in town." Connie smiled and George read knowledge in her
smile, as if she shared a secret with him. His hand shook as he poured the
coffee.
 "Agnes is--has gone. To bed."
  "Yes," said Connie, still smiling.
 "She-uh-had a headache."
 THE SIMPLEST THING IN THE WORLD

 49

 "I don't wonder."
  "What do you mean, Connie?"
  Her eyes widened. "Why nothing, George, except that Agnes often has
headaches. She worries about you. "
 "I'm not a child!"
  "Behind every successful man is a woman."
 "Nagging him to death!"
  "Don't you know that money keeps a woman quiet?" She extended her cup for
a refill. "Anyway, Agnes always had your best interests at heart."
  George caught her use of the past tense, and he was sure her mention of
money had nothing to do with Agnes. Connie had seen what happened to Agnes
and now she was going to blackmail him. George's feelings at the moment
were a mixture of panic and sorrow. Connie was such a beautiful woman.

 Connie weighed less than Agnes, and it was easier to drop her off the
bridge. While he had felt satisfaction as he dumped his wife, he felt
regret over Connie. Selfpreservation came first, though, and regret had to
be ignored. Being a druggist had its advantages. As soon as he realized
Connie had witnessed his crime, he excused himself and went into the
bathroom where he kept an assortment of pills and drugs. Returning to the
kitchen,

 he suggested they kill the pot, admiring his macabre flash of wit, and
dosed her third cup. It knocked her out and he was able to carry her to the
bridge, relegating the completion of the job to the swift current that had
been waiting for Agnes.
  He was halfway back to his house when the headlights swung across him,
pinning him to the spot. After the first start of terror, he realized they
belonged to the Blakes'car, which had just turned into its driveway. A door
slammed and footsteps came toward him.
  "What do you say, George old boy?"
  George was thankful for the distance between them which saved him from
the usual paralyzing slap on the back. "Evening, Richard."
 "Out for a walk?"
  "Yes. It got a little stuffy inside."
 "Where's Connie?"
  George looked at him in surprise. "What makes you think I know where your
wife is?"
  "Don't get excited, old boy," said Richard, laughing. "Our house is dark.
I thought she might be with Agnes."
  Richard could laugh if he liked, but that did not change the oddity of
his remark. It was just possible that he had arrived some time before his
headlights proclaimed, especially if he wanted to arrive un-
 50

 THOMASINA WEBER

 announced in order to check up on his wife.
  "Since everything's dead at my house, George, I'll accept your invitation
for a nightcap."
 "I'm rather tired, Richard."
  "Then a relaxing drink with a friend will make you sleep."
  "Maybe some other time-" But they were already in George's kitchen.
  George felt a swift dismay when he saw the two cups on the table, but it
passed quickly. Richard would assume the drinkers had been George and
Agnes, of course.
  He and Richard saw the lipstick stain at the same time. "I thought Agnes
never wore makeup," said Richard quietly.
  "She doesn't. That is, not usually. She put some on tonight. Just for
fun."
  "Agnes never was one for fun," said Richard.
  "Well, you know how women are. You can't figure them out."
  Richard did not answer. He was picking something up off the floor.
George's mind blotted out all sound, all sight except the small
handkerchief with Connie's initials embroidered on the corner. Gradually
sight came back and George could see the hand that held the handkerchief,
the sportjacket sleeve leading upward to the massive shoulder.
  Richard could have been a statue, as still as he stood, star-

 ing down at the square of linen in his hand. "I've suspected about you and
Connie for some time," he said absently, as if he were making polite
conversation while his mind was engaged in something else. "Ever since
Agnes put me wise." Then he lifted his head and his face grew hard. "I
thought you were my friend, George, but you're nothing but a rat!"
  What was the matter with everyone? Agnes suspecting him, Richard
suspecting Connie-it was incredible. George's eyes watched the big man com-
ing toward him, but his hands were pulling a drawer open, fumbling,
finding, lifting, driving-then dripping.
  George thought he was going to faint as he watched Richard slump to the
floor, the paring knife buried to the hilt in his chest. He shook his head
to clear it. This absolutely could not be happening. All he had wanted to
do was kill his wife and now three people were dead, killed by George
Carson, The Friendly Corner Druggist.
  He dropped into a chair by the table. Earlier, he had been elated at how
easy it had been to kill his wife. It had been easy to kill Connie, too,
but not as pleasurable. It had also been easy, surprisingly easy, to kill
Richard, big as he was. George had to be honest, though: if Richard had not
been dis-
 THE SIMPLEST THING IN THE WORLD

 51

 tracted by his wife's apparent infidelity, it would not have been easy at
all. Besides, he still had to get Richard down to the bridge and over.
  Suddenly George felt exhausted. He wanted to crawl under the table, curl
up into a ball, and stay there, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing
nothing. Now, now, he told himself, there is a job to be done. After that
is completed there will be time to take a bath, relax, and resume the in-
terrupted pattern of your life. All he would have to do was report his wife
missing after a walk along the river. The body might never be found, so a
fatal accident would be assumed. As for the Blakes, he need do nothing
about them. They were only neighbors, and it was not up to him to keep
track of their comings and goings. Let someone else report them missing.
  He really ought to get up and drag Richard's body out of his kitchen, but
the man looked so heavy and George was so tired. Just a few more minutes
and then he would go and get the wheelbarrow-
  Then Richard moved. George watched in horror as his huge fist clenched
and unclenched then, palm down, began to creep across the floor, feeling
and groping. It was impossible, of course; Richard was dead. The knife was
still in his chest. An

 agonized groan made George clap his hands over his ears.
  Richard's eyes were closed. Although a dead man could not see, he might
be able to hear, so George sat motionless. Then the body tried to gather
its feet under it, to get up on its knees. George was paralyzed. If the
body grasped him, to take him back with it, he would be utterly unable to
resist.
  The body was on its feet now, dripping blood, bent over the table,
swaying. Slowly it raised its head. George gasped and covered his face with
his hands. He could not look into the eyes of a dead man.
  Behind him, the kitchen door opened. Blindly, he listened to the dragging
footsteps crossing the floor. "Oh, no!" and "My God!" intermingled
impossibly. George buried his head in his arms on the table. A nightmare
could be banished by opening one's eyes, but George was deadly sure that
he would never escape from this nightmare, no matter what he did.
  Suddenly strong fingers grasped his hair and pulled his head upright. His
eyes flew open with shock. "You slime," said Agnes through puffed lips.
"After I gave you the best twenty-five years of my life, you try to kill
me! Lucky for you I have a hard head, but the branch I managed to catch
hold of didn't do much for my hands!
 k

 52

 THOMASINA WEBER

 And lucky for Connie I was recuperating on the riverbank when you launched
her."
  Still staring, George turned to look at Connie, who was trying to hold her
husband up and stop his bleeding. Her blouse was plastered to her body and
her slacks were still draining. "I'll make you pay for this if I don't do
another thing in this life," she said to George.
  The doorbell rang, but no one made a move to answer it. It rang again, and
then heavy footsteps approached. Two policemen entered the kitchen.
Dumbfounded, they looked from one person to another. Then one of them said,
"Better call an ambulance, Jim. This guy's lost a lot of blood."
  When Jim had left the room, the other officer said, "What's happened here?"
  Agnes, who never seemed to be at a loss for words, answered with a question
of her own. "What are you doing here?"
  "Mrs. McCarthy phoned us. It seems she noticed the pills she picked up
today looked different from the last ones, so she called the house here and
got no answer. She told us she had noticed today that Mr. Carson didn't look
well, and when nobody answered the phone, she wag sure he had had a heart
attack."
  Jim came into the kitchen and announced that an ambu-

 lance was on its way. "Maybe I should have ordered two," he said, his eyes
taking in the dripping women.
  "Noone hastold me whathappened," said the other officer.
  "It's not as bad as it looks," said Agnes. "Connie-Mrs. Blake-and I went
for a walk along the river and I slipped and fell in and when Connie tried to
grab me, she fell in, too. We managed to pull ourselves out, and when we
reached the house, we found Richard with George. The overhanging branches had
scratched us up pretty well and George went to pieces when he saw us. He got
a knife to cut off our torn clothing, but he nearly fainted when he got blood
on him, so Richard tried to take -the knife, but George yelled that he could
do it and they struggled for the knife and-well, you can see, Richard got
it."
  "It was nobody's fault," said Connie. "They were only trying to help us."
  "Is that what happened, Mr. Carson?"
  George met the officer's eyes. "That's exactly what happened," he said.
  The ambulance arrived, but Agnes insisted that she did not need to go to
the hospital with Richard and Connie. "George will take care of me," she said
softly. "And then, I will take care of George."


 THE FOREVER TRIP

 by

 Rob Kantnerl

 1.
 DRINKING TOM AND JERRY

 Uncle Dan stared down the length of his sheetcovered body. "So, Benjy,
they're gonna take another piece of me."
  I knew what he meant. At the end of him, under the crisp white hospital
sheet, his right foot showed and his left foot didn't. Diabetes, controlled
for years, had gradually gained on him and caused the circulation in his
left foot to fail, resulting in gangrene. Twice in the past year they'd had
to amputate, removing the foot first and the leg below the knee second.
  "Just your gall bladder this time, Uncle," I answered, seating myself in
the chair next to his bed.
  "Aah." Uncle Dan stared at me coldly with his crisp blue eyes. His face
was lined, pale, and wasted, marked indelibly with the gall bladder pain
that had kept him in a near-fetal position for the past week in his
retirement community bed, He looked every one of his eightyseven years.
  "Listen," I said cheerfully, holding up some envelopes, "I picked up your
mail. Want to go through it?"
  "You go ahead," Dan said dourly. "Let me know if there's any movie role
offers in there or anything."

  "Sure," I grinned. I inventoried the mail. Mostly ads, which I tossed.
The last item was a six by nine manila envelope. I ripped it open. A small
note fell out, clipped to a Baggie which had another envelope inside it.
I opened the note and read it to my uncle. "'Dan: This just came today.
Thought it might be important. Do you believe that crummy post office?
Love, Millie."
  Uncle Dan looked at the Baggie and then at me, eyes narrow. "Millie! My
old landlady. What'd she send?"
  The Baggie had one of those printed messages from the post office on it,
apologizing for the delay in delivery. I ripped the plastic and took out
the notesized envelope. It was faded, wrinkled, addressed in a scrawl to
Uncle Dan at his old apartment on Schaefer. I held it up to him. "Looks
really old. Want me to open it?"
 "Sure, why not."
  I opened the envelope and shook out the note. It was small, written on
cheap paper, and short. "'Tuesday morning,'" I read. "'Dear Dan, I'm in
desperate trouble. If you meant what you said, meet me at the bar tonight.
I need you. XXX000. Lila.'"
  I looked at my uncle. He'd raised himself slightly on his thin elbows,
staring hard at me, eyes burning, face pale. He

 55
 56

 ROB KANTNER

 whispered hoarsely, "Ben. The date. What's the date on the envelope?"
  I checked the cancellation and my heart nearly stopped. "1939," 1 said.
"August 16, 1939, afternoon. Postmarked Detroit."
  "Forty-five years," Uncle Dan muttered, lips dry.
  "Wow." I stood and read over the note and the envelope again. "This is
really something, Uncle. Who's Lila?"
  The back of his bald head faced me as he stared out the bright window of
the Detroit Metro Hospital at the Jeffries Freeway/Farmington Road in-
terchange far below. After a long silence he said without looking at me,
"She was special."
  I walked around the bed to where I could get a look at his face. "What
happened to her?"
  "I don't know. She disappeared. I never heard."
  My amusement evaporated as the tone of anguish in his voice sank in. I
said, "She really was special, huh?" He didn't answer. I asked, "What bar
was she talking about?"
  "Burly Curly's," he answered. "We met there practically every day for
weeks ... months."
  I wanted to press him further, but decided not to. He was going under the
knife in the morning to have his gall blad-

 der removed, and he was weak and drained from the pain and in shock from
the letter. I went to a grocery sack that sat on the floor next to my chair
and took out a red thermos. "Hey. Uncle. I brought some Tom and Jerry."
  "Hot?" he asked hopefully, turning to face me.
  "Of course." I opened the thermos and poured some into a plastic glass
that sat on his tray table. "Egg, milk, sugar, brandy, a tad of salt, just
the way you like it."
  "Well," Dan said with a wan smile, "just a taste." He took the glass in
his thin, veined hand and gulped, I refilled the glass and he gulped again
and set the glass downjerkily. Sighing, he lay back on the bed. "Guess I
blew it, Ben. She needed me and I didn't show up.
  "Well hell," I said, pacing to the window, "how could you know? You
didn't get the note."
  "Wonder what happened to her?" Uncle Dan whispered. "Wonder where she
is?"
 "We can find out."
  His smile was distant. "You've got cash-paying clients to take care of,
Ben, you don't have to do detective work for me. Besides, it's been too
many years. I'll never know what happened to her now."
  I stepped toward him and fixed him with a stare. "Come on," I said
harshly. "You done
 THE FOREVER TRIP

 57

 survived three years in the air over France, and then the union troubles
in the thirties, and you're gonna get out of here, too, and by the time you
do I'll have the answer about Lila. Believe it."
  His smile did not change. "Of course." He looked at me sharply. "You
still flying?"
  "Sure, every chance I get, Uncle."
  "Be careful. I've read some articles. Those ultralight airplanes are
dangerous."
  "No worse than the bamboo and wire crates you flew. And I don't have
people shooting at me up there."
  He waved a wasted hand at me. "Go, take off. I gotta rest up. And take
that crap with you.
  I picked up the mail. "I'll be back tomorrow to look in on you after
they're done." He waved without looking at me, and as I walked out of the
hospital room I saw him drink the last of his Tom and Jerry.

  I called the hospital the next morning. The operation, scheduled for
eight, had been delayed till ten. They told me I could come by and see him
in the afternoon. So, with time to kill, I located an old picture of Uncle
Dan and drove through the late fall rain to the Detroit Library main branch
on Woodward.
 The Detroit telephone direc-
 tory for 1939 showed a listing for Burly Curly's in the three hundred
block of Cass. I drove over there, not expecting much, and wasn't
surprised: the block was a devastated shell of burned-out buildings. On the
way back to the hospital I stopped at Bullet Realty in Wayne, where Owney
Busbee, the owner/broker, was hunched over his cluttered desk; he agreed
to run a title search on the Burly Curly's property to try to get a line
on the owners.
  Back at Greater Detroit Metro Hospital, I found Uncle Dan unconscious in
his bed, looking white and shrunken. He sprouted tubes, one conveying, I
could tell, oxygen. I sat by the bed watching him for what seemed like the
longest time and he did not move. A doctor, who introduced himself as Ahmed
Senatkor, stopped by briefly. He told me that the gall bladder operation
had gone as expected, but that the post-operation X-rays had revealed a
bowel obstruction. He said that they had Uncle Dan on oxygen and fluids and
had inserted an abdominal tube to drain the bile that was collecting in his
abdominal cavity.
  I found a pay phone in the
 hall and dialed my sister Libby's
 number. No answer. I dialed
 my brother Bill and got him. He
 said he'd be ' over to the hospital
 right away. Instead, about fif- 58

 ROB KANTNER

 teen minutes later, his wife Marybeth arrived.
  She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, sat down in a chair facing Uncle
Dan's bed, and got out her knitting. Bill, she told me, hadn't felt up to
coming. She said she'd stay with me till visiting hours ended. And so we
stayed and watched Dan, who did not regain consciousness. Marybeth knitted
and ~ccasionally moistened Uncle Dan's mouth with a damp washcloth, and
talked to me. I stared at my uncle and took a few trips down to the smoking
room and thought about the forty -fi ve-ye ar-old letter and Lila and the
longgone Burly Curly's bar, till visiting hours ended.

2.
THE BALLOON BUSTER

 The morning sunlight drenched Uncle Dan's bed. I stood over him, holding his
thin hand. He stared up at me through blue eyes that were crystal-clear no
more. "Got two of 'em today, huh, Frank?"
 "I sure did, Dan," I answered.
  Uncle Dan chuckled. "You got guts, Frank. Them balloons are crawling with
D-Ts to protect 'em. And you get past'em and blow the balloons all to hell
anyhow."
 I said through a dry mouth,

 "Those observation balloons are just too fat and pretty a target to ignore,
Dan. And they're valuable to the Jerries. They keep tabs on movements in the
trenches from the balloons."
  "C'mon, Frank," Dan said, mouth twisted with sarcasm, "you don't go after
the balloons because of their military value. Don't kid me. You go after'em
for the glory. 'Frank Luke, The Balloon Buster,' they're starting to call
you. And you love it."
  I grinned without feeling. "Got me there, Dan."
  "Yeah. Hee-hee. I got you there." His face went pensive and he looked away
from me. "I heard something about you the other day, Frank. They tell me you
carry a .38 with you to knock yourself off if your plane catches fire."
 I squeezed his hand. "Dan."
  His thinlipped mouth went into rictus. "Not gonna catch me doin' that,
Frank. I don't think burning up'd be so bad-"
 "Dan-"
  "'Dan'? 'Dan'?" He stared into my face, eyes fierce and blue. "I'm Uncle
Dan to you, youngster!"
 "Yes, sir."
  "Listen, Ben," he said softly after a long pause. "That'd have been a man's
way to die. Burnt into ashes in the skies over France. That'd have been a
right fine way to- go out."
 I struggled to keep my voice
 THE FOREVERTRIP

 59

 steady. "Take it easy, Uncle. You're not going to die. Just take it easy."
  Back home in my apartment there was a message from Owney Busbee. The
owner of Burly Curly's in 1939 was named Earl Eidson. There was no listing
of that name in the phonebook, but a check with a contact at the credit
bureau gave me an address in Franklin. As I left for my car I remembered
the devastated block of Cass where Burly Curly's had stood so long ago and
thought that, judging from the address, Earl Eidson had gotten out in one
financial piece, indeed.

  Earl Eidson offered me a cigar. Margrit Eidson offered me tea. I turned
down both offers with thanks. We sat on their patio deck that offered a
splendid view of Smithfield Lake beyond a long, smooth, freshly mowed
zoysia lawn. It was warm and humid and cloudy, the kind of weather that
signals the end of Indian summer.
  Earl was short, burly, bald, and tan, dressed for golf. Margrit was tall
and lanky in shortshorts and a roomy printed blouse, at the tail end of her
years of real beauty. They were childless, wealthy, and, from the welcome
they'd given me, anxious for company.
  I said to them, "I'm a private detective, trying to track down

 a woman who used to frequent your bar on Cass back in the late thirties."
  "Burly Curly's," Margrit Eidson said affectionately. "I miss those days."
  Earl Eidson's voice was booming, domineering. "We had lotsa regulars in
those days, Perkins. Folks from when my dad ran the place. I inherited it
from him, you know."
  I didn't know, and didn't particularly care. "Woman's name was Lila." I
paused. "That ring any bells?"
  They looked at each other, shook their heads, and looked back at me
expectantly.
  I got my old picture of Uncle Dan out and laid it on the glass table in
front of them. "She used to meet this man at your bar. Several times a week
for months, I'm told."
  They squinted at the picture, then reared back and reacted in unison,
Margrit with an "Eep!," Earl with a grunt. Margrit looked at me and said
in a strained voice, "I knew him! Dan! I knew him!"
  "You bet she did," Earl said, voice low, glance averted.
  "Where is he?" she asked me. "What's he doing?"
  "Pushing up daisies, I hope," Earl grunted.
  "He's my uncle." They studied me silently. "He's quite ill."
  Margrit clasped long-fingered hands in front of her. "I'm
 60

 ROB KANTNER

 sorry to hear that." She looked anxiously at her husband and said, "Please,
Earl. It was so long ago." She smiled sweetly. "I don't bring up Lucy, now do
IT'

  Eidson gave her a dark look, then said with a flat, stiff-lipped voice,
"Sorry, Perkins."
  Part of me was embarrassed, another part was amused. I'd always known Uncle
Dan was a lady-killer in his day. "Do you remember the woman my uncle met
there? Anything at all?"
  Margrit Eidson straightened her spine, gave her husband a hesitant look,
then said to me, "I remember her. I was ... I was interested in Dan. It was
over by the time he began meeting her there. I was jealous, I watched them."
She put her hand on her husband's and squeezed it tightly. "Earl," she said
urgently, "it was her! The mystery woman!"
  His face brightened as he looked intently at his wife. "The shooting? The
Joe Verdi thing?"
  "What shooting? What the hell does old Joe Verdi have to 'do with this?" I
asked faintly.
  They looked at me like I'd just arrived from Mars. Earl Eidson barked, "You
don't remember the Joe Verdi case?"
  I raised both hands in a backoff gesture. "Joe Verdi I've heard of But
hell, in'39 I wasn't even born yet."
 Margrit Eidson fairly bounced

 with excitement. "Quick, Earl! Get the scrapbook!" Earl scraped his chair
back and trotted into the house. Animation made Margrit's face look twenty
years younger. "We never knew her name! The police asked us and asked us. And
the reporters. Oh, we were in the news for days after that."
  Earl Eidson returned with a string-bound scrapbook as thick as a lengthwise
brick and laid it on the table in front of me. He sat back down next to his
wife and, as I opened it, they leaned toward me, expecting me to be
fascinated.
 And I was.

  Carlo Infante arrived at the 1-75 rest stop near Trenton just after I did.
The place was a midafternoon madhouse of truckers and tourists who stared
anxiously at the threatening sky and ran ducking against the cool wind into
the little buildings to answer the call of nature. As Infante dropped
gracefully into the passenger seat of the Mustang and greeted me, I had to
make an effort to divorce myself from the scrapbook and its vivid depiction
of the Detroit organized mob scene of the late thirties. Carlo Infante, a top
finance guy in today's Detroit organization, fit today's image well. Young,
cool, smooth, colorless, a businessman.
 THE FOREVER TRIP

 61

  "Had hell breaking away on such short notice, Perkins," he said as he got
a cigarette and a lighter out of his snappy suit jacket. I don't know why
he carries smoking equipment around with him; I've never in my life seen
him actually light up.
  I stared past the restroom buildings at the flat horizon, angry gray
clouds roiling above it. "Joe Verdi still alive, Carlo?"
  He stared at me, obviously caught off guard. "Well, sure he is, Ben.
Retired, though, been for years. Why?"
 "I want to see him."
  Infante's surprise faded and he became guarded.
 "Why?"
  "There's an old bit I want to ask him about. Fellow named Henry Porch,
gunned down back in '39 at a bar called Burly Curly's on Cass. Word is
Verdi knows something about it."
  Infante smirked. "You've got me at a disadvantage. I wasn't around then."
  "Neither was L" I stared into his thin face. "Porch was an orr ganization
finance man. Department of Justice turned him, used him to get an
indictment against Verdi for you-name-it. Pre-trial, smuggled him to De-
troit, kept him in hiding till testimony time. But the Justice boys ran
into a slight snag."
  Infante sighed. "Since you mentioned a shooting, and since Verdi's never
been convicted,

 do I have to guess what the snag was?"
  "Porch was gunned down late in August. Government lost its witness, Verdi
walked. Strutted, more like."
  "They prove anything on Verdi?" Infante asked.
  "Nope. 'Course not. Had a pretty decent alibi, like about thirty-six
thousand people at Briggs Stadium with him watching the Tigers."
 "So what's your interest?"
  I fired up a short cork-tipped cigar. "I'm not after Verdi," I said
firmly. "I should give a damn, after all these years? But there was a woman
in the bar. When Porch went down, she ran to him and hugged him and
screamed. Then she took off, before the cops got there. Nobody ever got a
line on her. 'The mystery woman,' the papers called her. I want her."
  Infante toyed with his cigarette and his lighter for a long time, staring
distantly out the windshield. "What makes you think Joe knows something
about her?"
  "Just hoping." I looked at him again through the upward stream of cigar
smoke. "This is," I said distinctly, "historical research for an old,
extremely important client. Nothing kicks back on nobody, guaranteed."
  Infante smiled faintly. "I believe you, Ben. Question is, can I deliver
a piece like this for
 62

 ROB KANTNER

 you." He thought. "I'll get the word to Savastano. He's next step up. Best
you can hope for is a meet with him. I'll let you know."
  As he opened the Mustang door, I put my hand on his shoulder. He looked
at me. I said, "It's personal, Carlo. Extremely important to me personally.
I got no other angles."
  "What you gotta hope," Carlo said as he got out, "is that Savastano
believes that as much as I do."
  I was just approaching the I94 interchange on the Southfield Freeway when
my car phone rang. It was Marybeth. "Trouble at the hospital," she said.
 "You there now?"
 "Yes. Hurry, Ben."
 "Ten minutes."
  I swerved into the left lane of the Southfield and floored the
accelerator. The big secondary carburetor ports opened to suck air and the
Mustang leaped forward, turning the center lane stripes into a white blur.

  Marybeth, dressed office-style in brown skirt and sleeveless white top,
stood at Uncle Dan's hospital room and clapped-her hands together when she
saw me approach. "Ben-"
  "Where is he?" I pushed past her into his room. It was a disaster area:
furniture askew, paper wrappers strewn around

 the floor, closet door ajar. My uncle lay on the bed, atop the covers,
strips of cloth binding his wrists and ankle to the chrome railings of the
bed. His face was frozen solid, lips pursed, and every wasted inch of his
body bucked against the bindings as he gasped air convulsively through his
mouth.
  I felt Marybeth behind me. "What happened?" I asked.
  "Cardiac episode," she whispered, taking my hand. "His respiration became
irregular. All of a sudden the place was overrun with doctors and nurses,
working on him. They shoved me out into the hall. I just got back in here
a few minutes ago." She pressed her face against my shoulder. "It's the
bowel obstruction. They're taking him into surgery soon. They say they-"
  I cut her off with a gesture and approached my uncle. He bucked and
wheezed, gasped and panted, eyes glued shut. I touched his forehead. It was
burning up. I looked at Marybeth. "You call Bill?"
  "Yes." She bit her lip. "He won't come, Ben. He can't handle this kind
of thing. You know that."
 "Libby?"
 "No answer."
  A nurse, an orderly, and an older man in a white jacket came into the
room, wheeling a gurney. I stepped back around
 THE FOREVER TRIP

 63

 the bed to Marybeth as the nurse and orderly untied my uncle and
transferred him to the gurney. The doctor said to me, "We're taking him
into surgery now."
  He didn't look familiar. "You're Dr.-"
  "Levin. Mr. Perkins' attending physician."
  "Where's Dr. Senatkor?" I asked.
  We stepped back to allow the gurney through the door. Dr. Levin repeated,
"I'm the attending physician."
  I found strength in my voice. "What happened to my uncle, doctor?"
  Levin, a moonfaced, kindly looking man, said, "It's the bowel
obstruction. He's collecting too many fluids. Infection could result. And
he's weakened, especially hi's heart. We were hoping to build his strength
first, but we have no choice. We have to correct the bowel obstruction
now." He looked at Marybeth and back at me. "He's almost in a coma now,"
he said in a tone he assumed was comforting. "It's distressing to see, but
he feels nothing, I assure you." He turned and left.
  Marybeth walked aimlessly past Uncle Dan's empty bed to the window. "What
are we supposed to do now?"
 "Wait, I guess," I answered.
  I'd just seated myself when a nurse's aide walked impor-

 tantly into the room. "Oh, hey," she piped, "you've got to get these
things out of here, folks."
  "My uncle's in surgery," I said tonelessly.
  "Well sure, but after that he'll be in ICU. Intensive care unit. Sixth
floor. We need this bed for someone else." She began collecting Uncle Dan's
things-suitcase, pillow, shaving kit, and other items-out of the closet.
"You can take these to your car if you want," she said hopefully. "He won't
need them up in ICU. Okay, folks? Thanks!"
  I hijacked a wheelchair and used it to dolly Uncle Dan's things
downstairs and out to my car. Back upstairs, on the sixth floor, I met
Marybeth in the waiting room of the intensive care unit. We sat and waited,
and looked at each other and at the TV, and watched other pinch-faced
people waiting for word, throughout the afternoon, into the evening, well
past nightfall.
  Finally a young curly-haired man in a surgical gown came in the door and
said, "Mr. Perkins?"
  I bounded to my feet, followed by Marybeth. "That's me."
  The doctor was twenty-eight, twenty-nine, tops. Where's Robert Young when
you need him? He said, "I'm Dr. Sims. Bowel thing's squared away. Your
uncle's in the ICU now.
 64

 ROB KANTNER

 He handled it 'bout as well as we could expect."
  Marybeth said, "What are his chances for survival?"
  Dr. Sims seemed to suppress an urge to shrug. "A lot better than they'd
of been ifwe hadn't gone in again."
  Take it at face value, Perkins, I said to myself. Don't press. But I had
to ask, "What happened to Dr. Levin?"
  Sims did shrug this time. "I'm the attending physician now, Mr. Perkins.
You can see your uncle in the morning. Check the ICU visiting hours
schedule on the bulletin board." He turned and left.

  The United Airlines 747 had been at the gate for five minutes when the
door from the jetway opened. Carlo Infante said to me, "Rick always flies
first class. He'll be one of the first off."
  "Fine." I watched the passengers start to stream toward us through the
door. It was midmorning, but for these passengers on the Los Angeles red-
eye, it wasn't even sunrise yet, and they looked it.
  I recognized Rick Savastano as he strode into the gate from the jetway.
He was tall, wellbuilt, with fighter-pilot good looks, dressed in a pale
gray suit and maroon tie and carrying a wallet-thin leather briefcase. He
nodded at Infante and

 his eyes flickered coldly with recognition when he saw me. We fell into
step walking up the concourse toward the terminal.
  Savastano said, "Carlo filled me in by phone, Perkins. Make your case."
  I did so, as briefly as I could, adding information about Lila and her
relationship with Uncle Dan, and the note that had taken forty-five years
to reach him. Savastano said, "This kind of soppy syrup sentimentality, I
didn't expect that of you, Perkins."
 "It's important."
  Savastano's mouth twisted distastefully. "You're aware, of course, that
Mr. Verdi has been retired from the business for years now. Steve Ritchie
is running things."
  "I know that. I don't want to step on anybody's toes. I want to go
through channels."
  We entered the terminal and threaded through crowds between the Delta and
New York Air desks toward the big glass doors. Savastano looked at me and
said, "First it's up to Steve. I don't smell any rats, but he might, and
he's the boss. Then, if he goes along, it's up to the old man. That's where
it ends, Perkins. We'll be in touch if it's a go.
  We went through the automatic swinging doors. The sky was lead-gray and
the wind crisp and chilly as we headed
 THE FOREVER TRIP

 65

 toward the curb where a creamcolored Cadillac stretch purred. "I appreciate
it," I answered, feeling bitter at being at this man's mercy. "Let me know
either way, okay?"
  The chauffeur trotted around the front of the limo and had the back door
open just as Savastano reached it. Savastano looked down his long nose at me
and said coldly, "We'll be in touch if it's a go, I said."
  I thought about Uncle Dan strapped down convulsing in his hospital bed, and
as I looked into Savastano's eyes I thought about how much I'd welcome a
chance to take a real damaging poke at these bastards. It was a struggle to
keep these feelings off my face, but I succeeded. I thanked them, waved, and
trotted off for my car as Infante and Savastano boarded the Cadillac stretch
and sighed away into the traffic.

  Visiting hours in the intensive care unit were strange and rigidly
enforced: odd hours only, ten minutes' duration. I showed up for the first,
eleven A.M., directly from the airport.
  Uncle Dan's room was half again the size of his former one. Much of his
extra space was taken up with equipment: an electronic monitor on the wall
showed changes in his heartbeat in digits and reflected the same in a
scrolling, jagged se-

 ries of lines; trees of IV bottles stood on each side of the bed, their
tubes snaking down and under his sheet; a ventilator loomed on the left side
of his bed, its big plastic accordionlike plunger going up and down with
pneumatic sighs, echoed by the rising and falling of my uncle's thin chest.
  He lay stiffly on his back, the oxygen tube affixed to his nose, ventilator
tube inserted in his mouth, his arms tied down to the rails of the bed. His
eyes were closed.
  I leaned down to his ear and said, "Uncle?"
  His eyes opened. Though cloudy, they showed recognition. He raised a
clawlike hand and waved to me. I said, "I know you can't talk. Don't try."
  His mouth formed a grisly smile around the mouthpiece of the ventilator.
  His wasted face, so unfamiliar, made me feel sick inside. I said heartily,
"Thirty-one victories, remember, Uncle? Thirty-one of them bastard Jerries."
  He nodded jerkily and his right hand contorted into a thumbs-up. Poor guy.
I was trying to hearten him, and all he wanted to do was hearten me.
  I said, "You done got through that, and you done made it through this
operation, too. You're gonna walk out of here,
 66

 ROB KANTNER

 Uncle. Take a lot more'n this place to kill you, you tough old son of a
bitch. Be sure to kiss the nurses as you go. Maybe even Pat 'em on the ass,
too. They won't mind."
 He kept smiling.
  "I'll be back here later on today, Uncle. Marybeth's coming for the
afternoon visits. Libby'll be by later, too. You'll see."
  I looked around the room. Hard to talk when nothing gets said back. I
looked back at him. "On Lila. I'm making progress. I know part of the
story. I ought to know the rest soon. I'll keep on it, Uncle. You and me'll
whip up some Tom and Jerry and I'll fill you in later. Okay?"
  He nodded again, eyes fixed on me, filled with spirit and defiance. The
ten minutes were over and I said goodbye and went back to my apartment to
wait for Savastano's call.

  But Marybeth called first, about three-thirty. She was crying. "He looks
so awful, Ben."
  "Hey, he's been through two operations-"
  "But he was crying!" she wailed. "Both times, when I saw him. I tried to
cheer him up-told him about the family and old times, and-"
  "Steady on, kid," I said, not so steady myself.
  "He keeps pointing to his mouth. It's so dry, and-his lips are cracked
and-he wants

 something to drink and-I can't give it to him and-I can't help him!"
  "Once he's off that damn ventilator, we'll be able to help him,
Marybeth."
  "Ben," she said, getting control of herself, "do you think he's going to
die?"
  "Hey," I said loudly, "Dan's been through it all. He survived the fight
on the overpass in'36, remember that? When three union-busting goons tried
to put him away? He survived that, and he'll survive this."
  "Okay. Okay." We stayed silent for a while, then she said, "You coming
back later?"
  "Yeah, I'll make the seven for sure. And Libby'll probably be out today,
too."
  "No, she won't," Marybeth said. "She says she'll come but she never does
and she never will and you know it."
  "I'll be out later," I said, and hung up.
  Five minutes later, Rick Savastano called.

  Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy Hospital is a small, exclusive, private
facility at the lakefront foot of Edgemont in Grosse Pointe Park. A pair
of anonymous, suited goons met me at the doors and walked me to another
pair, who rode up with me in the elevator and turned me over to yet a third
pair on the sixth floor landing. These
 THE FOREVER TRIP

 67

 gentlemen escorted me into a suite that was more like a luxurious hotel
than a hospital. Lying in the center of the large bed facing the picture
window which looked out over Lake St. Clair was the wizened, yet vigorous
looking, Joe "Gunboats" Verdi.
  Flanked by his goons, I stopped at bedside. Verdi, a jowly man with a
full head of solid gray hair and dressed in loud red p~iamas, smiled at me
sardonically. His voice was, totally unexpectedly, weak, wispy, forced.
"Ben Perkins?"
 "Right, Mr. Verdi."
  "The boys said you wanted to talk to me about the old days," Verdi
wheezed. I realized that by "boys" Verdi meant Steve Ritchie and Rick
Savastano, each of whom was pushing fifty if not past it.
  "That's right. I'm wondering about the shooting in Burly Curly's bar back
in '39. 1 told Savastano this is research only, nothing you tell me'll kick
back now or ever."
  "I should worry about kickbacks?" Verdi squeaked. He patted his bull-like
chest. "I've got the Big C, liver. I got maybe a month or two. Nothing that
happens now could ever hurt me worse'n I'm about to be hurt." His eyes
turned crafty. "But if you're asking me if I ordered the hit on that
rat-faced little snitch Porch, I'll be forced

 with all honesty to say, 'No comment.'"
  The last thing I expected to do there was laugh. This was, after all,
Gunboats Verdi, Detroit organization boss for fifty years with maybe four
times that many murders on his sheet. And though he was dying, he was dying
in a place with ten times the luxury of the little room in which Uncle Dan
was fighting for his life. But I laughed anyway.
  Verdi laughed too, ending in a sick, rasping cough that turned his lined
face purplish-red. He took an empty cup and spit into it, then set the cup
down. When he looked back at me, his eyes were cold and dark, the eyes of
a dying old man looking at a vigorous younger one. "What do you want to
know?" he whispered.
  "My uncle was meeting a woman there at the bar," I said. "He was deeply
involved with her, but he didn't know much about her. She disai)peared
right after the shooting. Witnesses have told me that the woman he was
meeting seemed to know Porch very well." I paused. "Her first name was
Lila. I'm trying to find her. Do you know anything that might help me?"
  "Quicksilver," Verdi rasped. He coughed again and repeated the name.
"Lila Quicksilver. Porch's flanc6e. He brought her to Detroit with him
while he
 68   ROB KANTNER

waited to testify against me."
  Oh boy. I felt my heart pound as I said, "Where'd she go, Mr. Verdi?"
  "Chicago," he answered readily. "Still there, in fact." He squinted at my
  expression and smiled. "How do I know? I kept tabs. I didn't know if she
  might decide to turn state's evidence the way Porch tried to. And she was
  an interesting chick.... Your uncle has good taste. A lot like me."
  I thought, Uncle Dan's like you only in that he's dying, too. It was the
  first time I'd consciously thought that Uncle Dan was going to die.
  Verdi said in what for him was a kindly way, "You're trying to find Lila
  for your uncle, is that it?"
 "That's right."
  He waved an imperious hand at one of the goons. "Larry, call Savastano for
  me. Tell him, the notebook in the - safe, under the name Lila Quicksilver.
  Have him call her, give her Mr. Perkins'name and say he's trying to reach
  her. Ask her to call him."
  "Sure, Mr. Verdi," one of the faceless goons stirred.
  Verdi smiled at me. "There. That help you, son?"
  One last exercise of power of a dying man. But he could have refused to see
  me, could have refused to help. I smiled and nodded. "Thanks, Mr. Verdi."

  "Maybe," Verdi said with a narrow look, "you'll remember that I did you
  this service."
  "I will remember it, Mr. Verdi. Thanks."
  Not that he'd be around long enough for it to do him any good.

  I met Marybeth in the ICU waiting room just before one the next day. She
  looked pale and exhausted and though she held her knitting in her lap, it
  didn't look as if she'd made any progress since the previous day.
  As I sat beside her, she took my hand and said, "He wasn't so good at
  eleven o'clock. He refused to look at me. Didn't wave, didn't wink, didn't
  smile."
  I breathed deeply. "What'd the doctor say? How's Dan doing?"
  "Dr. Bates talked to me. Said Uncle's got serious infections. They're
  fighting to stabilize him, changing medications."
  "Bates? Who's Bates? Didn't you talk to Sims?"
  "Sims? But Dr. Bates said he's the attending surgeon now."
  I gritted my teeth and said in a low voice loud, enough to attract the
  attention of the other visitors, "Can't a man have a doctor of his own any
  more?"
  Marybeth shrugged helplessly.
  "What about the ventilator?" I asked in a lower tone.
 She shook her head. "Doctor


 THE FOREVER TRIP   69

 said Uncle Dan'll need it at least another week, till he's under control and
they've turned the infections around." She gnawed her lip, reached out and
put her hand on mine. "Brace yourself. He's accumulated fluids. He's gained
twenty-five pounds in fluids just since yesterday, Ben. He looks just ...
awful."
  One o'clock came and we went into Uncle Dan's room. Nothing had changed.
Same equipment, same bottles, same tubes, same monitor with its blinking num-
bers and jagged lines, same ventilator hissing and wheezing, breathing life
into Uncle Dan.
  The fluid retention was obvious. Uncle Dan looked swollen and shiny, like
a newborn baby, skin stretched so tight it looked as if it was about to
split. His eyes opened when I spoke to him: "How's things, big fella?"
  He stared at me and did not move.
 "I'm back again, Uncle Dan,"
 --Marybeth smiled as she leaned and kissed him on the cheek.
  He looked at us and then raised a hand as far as the cloth restraint would
let him and pointed toward the ceiling.
  I looked where he pointed. Nothing. "What is it, Uncle? What do you need?"
  He lowered his hand, then raised it, pointed his index finger to his temple
and

 dropped his thumb.
  I looked away quickly, eyes burning. Marybeth looked at me with frightened
eyes and said as cheerfully,as she could, "The doctor says you're getting
along fine, Uncle Dan. No time at all you'll be out of here. And we'll have
a big party for you. Right, Ben?"
  We talked like that for the full ten minutes, more to each other than to my
uncle, and all the while he pointed to the ceiling again and again and again.

  I'd just arrived at my apartment to shower and change clothes when the
telephone rang.
  "Ben Perkins?" asked the long-distance female voice.
 "You got him."
  "I'm Lila." Silence. "Lila Quicksilver."
  "Oh. Hi." I sat down on the couch, pressing the receiver to my ear. "Glad
you called, I-"
  "Actually my last name is Brockmann now, I'm married."
  "Uh-huh. Okay." Silence. "The, uh-you get told why I wanted to talk to
you?"
  Her voice was guarded. "Something about the shooting?"
  "Really I'm calling about Dan. Dan Perkins. He's my uncle."
  This time the silence went on so long I thought she'd hung up. But she
said, "Dan? How nice. How's he doing?"
 "Not so good. But Lila-Ms.
 70

 ROB KANTNER

 Quicksilver-Mrs. Brockmann-let me ask you, you were close to my uncle,
right?"
 "That was many years ago."
  "Forget that! You were real close, I know that. How'd you meet him? What
was your connection with Henry Porch?"
  "I don't want to talk about that. It's nobody's business. It's past and
buried."
  Unwillingly, I said, "Fine, tell me or don't tell me, that's not
important now. What is important is something that you never knew." I
paused. "Dan never got your note. Not tilljust; a few days ago."
 A long pause. "No."
  "It's true. He never got it. He never knew what happened to you. You
disappeared and he wondered about you for all these years and he never knew
and he never forgot about you."
  "No," she said definitely. "Even life isn't that cruel."
  "Oh yeah? Well, try this. Right now my uncle is in intensive care at
Greater Detroit Metro Hospital. He's strapped down and on a respirator and
... and he's eighty-seven and alone and drugged and fighting for his life.
Tell me about cruel, Lila."
  "Well, what am I supposed to do about it? All that was my whole life ago.
I cared for Dan but he wasn't there when I needed him, and there's nothing
I can do for him now!"

  "You just do what you want," I said, standing. "But you should know that
you were special to him. And he never got your note. And if he had, he'd
have been there at Burly Curly's for you. And he never married, Lila, and
he never forgot you. Just do what you want, though. Youjust do what you
damn well please."
  I slammed the phone down and stomped in several aimless circuits of my
living room. Withholding information from a private detective just isn't
done, I thought.
  Then I went into my kitchen in search of a Stroh's tall boy and the
half-bottle of black Jack I'd been saving.

3.
THE FOREVER TRIP

  The ringing phone brought my eyes open. I focused on the orange numerals
of the bedside clock: one thirty-five A.M. I wrestled the receiver to my
ear with numb hands. "Perkins."
  "This is Detroit Metro Hospital," came the brisk female voice. "The
doctor has asked me to contact the family of Dan Perkins. We think you
should get here right away."
  "What's wrong?" I mumbled, raising myself.
  She said carefully,"There's been some cardiac disturbance. The doctor
thought it best that
 THE FOREVER TRIP

 71

 family representatives be present."
  "Okay, all right, I'll be there," I hung up the phone, switched on the
nightstand light, picked up the receiver again, and dialed my brother
Bill's number. He answered with a grunt. I said, "Wake up, bro, there's
trouble at the hospital."
  "Oh no." He paused. "You going, Ben?"
 "I'm rolling. You?"
  Marybeth came on. "I'll be dressed and on my way in five minutes, Ben."
 "I'll pick you up."
  "No, it's quicker, I'll meet you there." She hung up.

  The intensive care unit never closes. The waiting room was thronged with
exhausted people, waiting for word on traffic victims and shooting victims
and disease victims; they bore identical signs of strain mixed with equal
measures of hope, fear, and resignation.
  Marybeth, dressed in jeans and a white top, met me at the big double
doors, and we silently pushed through them and went to the desk. I gave my
name to the nurse. "Oh, yes, the Perkins family," she said. "Just step into
the office there, the doctor will be right with you."
  We went into the closetlike, booklined office. Marybeth took the single
chair, I leaned against the door. We said nothing. After

 a few minutes a short black woman in a white coat that blinked with
stethoscope and other hardware came in. "I'm Dr. Johnson," she announced
to us generally. "You're the Perkins family?"
  "Where's Dr. Bates?" I asked, then repeated with her: "You're the
attending physician."
  She smiled at us and stepped past Marybeth to seat herself behind the
tiny desk. Marybeth asked, "What happened to Uncle Dan?"
  She was smooth, practiced, professional. "He had an episode of cardiac
arrest. But, happily, we were able to resuscitate him and restore his blood
pressure."
  For the first time since Uncle Dan had gone into the hospital, my
sister-in-law Marybeth let go. Not angrily, but with ultimate despair: "Oh,
no. Why did you bring him back?"
  Dr. Johnson blinked, her composure broken for a moment. "Well, we had to,
in order to--"
  "He's dying!" Marybeth pressed. "He's been dying since he came here. Why,
oh why didn't you just let him go?"
  Dr. Johnson sat back and drew herself up. "There are no instructions on
file as to the family's wishes in the event of a life-threatening crisis,"
she said formally.
 "You want instructions?" The
 72

 ROB KANTNER

 women looked at me. "I'll give you instructions. I don't want my uncle
strapped down like a piece of meat any more. I don't want him hooked up to
miracle machines and pumped full of drugs and fed through tubes any more.
I don't want my uncle reduced to the level of an experiment for
ego-tripping doctors. I don't-"
  Dr. Johnson cut in sharply, "If we remove medical support, your uncle
will die."
  "Then so be it." I looked at Marybeth for approval and saw it. "If he
can't live without the machines, then he ain't living, and if he understood
that, he'd agree with me."
  "Very well," Dr. Johnson said, briskly rising. "We'll call you when we're
ready."
  It took ten minutes, and then we were ushered into Uncle Dan's room and
left alone with him there.
  Marybeth sat on his left, I sat on his right. She took one of his hands,
I sat there and watched him. His eyes were open and dull, his body
shrunken, his chest rising and falling in accord with the puffing of the
ventilator. I became fixated by the numerals on the monitor that registered
his heartbeat. When we came in it was reading in the one hundred thirties.
  Long moments went by. A nurse looked in on us. One hundred twelve. I
looked at

 Marybeth. Her face was narrow and pinched and she tried to smile at me and
looked back into Uncle Dan's face.
  The rate dropped below one hundred.
  I stood up and walked around the bed, looking at my uncle from each
angle. He was silent, vacant. The machine said sixtyfive.
  I sat back down. Marybeth looked up at the monitor, then bent and kissed
Uncle Dan and whispered something in his ear. Down to forty now.
  I tried to say something, thought better of it, then said it anyhow: "I
won't forget your stories, Uncle."
  "No," Marybeth chimed in. "None of us will." The monitor read into the
thirties and, as I watched, dipped to twenty-five. The graph register below
showed its jagged peaks much less frequently now, and they weren't as
sharp-edged.
  Twenty, fifteen, ten, seven, two, zero.
 Zero. Zero. Zero.
  The graph register made waves like the long swells of a gentle ocean and
then went flat.
  The ventilator pumped mindlessly on.
  Marybeth looked up at me, tears streaming silently, heavily down her thin
cheeks. I sighed and wiped my eyes and pressed Uncle Dan's hand one
 73

 last a couple of years before, dressed in a white blouse and expensive
blue suit; my brother Bill, short, bald, big-shouldered, wearing a tan
blazer and tie and dark slacks; and his wife Marybeth, tall, whip-thin, and
elegant in a midnight blue dress with a thin string of pearls around her
neck.
  Mr. Roski, the baby-faced, pudgy funeral director, adjusted his thick
glasses and looked at me. "Those were the instructions we had from Mr. Ben
Perkins, Mrs. Gillespie."
  Libby shot me a dirty look. I said, "It's what he wanted, Libby."
  "Like hell!" she spat. "You had no right to make that kind of decision
without clearing it with the family, you insensitive ghoul!"
  Bill and Marybeth looked uncomfortable, their eyes meeting no one. I said
as evenly as I could, "I most certainly knew what he wanted, Libby. I took
care of his finances for him for years. I visited him every week. Where the
hell were you on his birthday and Christmas? Where the hell were you when
he was dying in the hospital? Who the hell are you to swoop in here and
start calling people names?"
  "I'm his niece," she shot back shrilly, "and I won't stand by and allow
my uncle to-to be discarded, like some kind of refuse, without a proper
funeral!"

 THE FOREVER TRIP

 last time. The door to the room opened and Dr. Johnson came in. "Please
accept my condolences on the passing of your uncle," she said.
  We stood. I said huskily, "Thank you, doctor."
  She said, "If you would, I need some information about the arrangements,
Mr. Perkins."
  I looked at Marybeth. "Would you?" ,
  She nodded, throat bobbing. She walked around the bed and pressed the
entire length of her body against me, dampening my shoulder. Then she
turned and followed the doctor out of the room.
  I looked down at my uncle for a long, long time. Then I stepped out of
the room, closed the door, and stood with my back to it in the empty hall.
  I thought: No one can touch him any more. I won't let them. I'm the
detective and he's my client, and I fix things and help people and protect
them, and I won't let anyone hurt him any more.

  Libby said harshly, "I demand an explanation as to why my uncle was
cremated so quickly."
  We sat, the remains of Uncle Dan's family, in the cool, wellfurnished
silence of the funeral home's parlor: my sister Libby, slimmer than when
I'd seen her
 74

 ROB KANTNER

  Mr. Roski cleared his throat and said carefully, "Of course, our facility
stands ready to assist the Perkins family with whatever arrangements you
mutually decide to make." He had his eyes on Libby all the while.
  She said, ticking fingers as she talked, "We want a coffin, and a proper
visitation period, and a service in the Baptist church and burial in a nice
cemetery. The way it's supposed to be." She looked imperiously at my
brother. "What do you say, Bill?"
  He sighed, flicked me a look, and nodded to Libby.
 "Marybeth?"
  Her look my way was regretful, but she had to go along with her husband.
  Mr. Roski clapped his hands once and stood. "Then it's decided! Very
well. Mrs. Gillespie," he said, taking Libby's arm, "we have a fine
selection of coffins and vaults to choose from in the next room. Let me
show you. . . "
  They left the room, Bill and Marybeth trailing them. I walked out,
turned, went through the lobby, and left the building.
  As I crossed the parking lot to my car, I looked at the rolling
stone-dotted hills of the cemetery and thought, there's no way I'm leaving
my uncle in this place.

  The visitation at the funeral home the next evening was, thanks to
Libby's calls to the newspapers, well-attended. Libby herself held forth
in one corner, flanked by Bill and Marybeth and surrounded by old people
who knew Dan somewhere or another. I sat alone in the opposite corner, my
eyes on the closed bronze coffin which sat on the altar-like stand amid an
array of floral arrangements.
  Toward the end of the visitation, as the crowd started to thin, I became
aware of a woman standing near me. Late sixties, wisp-thin, heavy
gray-streaked dark hair cropped close. "Mr. Perkins?" she asked.
 She wasn't familiar. "Yes."
  Her blue eyes were large in her thin face. She stepped closer to me,
looking at me intently. "Mr. Ben Perkins?"
  "Yes," I said with some impatience. Probably some mortuary ghoul or
professional mourner or something.
  Her smile made her look younger. "You do look a little like him. He was
just about your age when I knew him." She caught my look and added,
flustered, "Oh! Excuse me! I'm Lila. Lila Quicksilver."
  "Well, jeez." I stood clumsily and shook her thin, firm hand. "You made
it, huh? Well, that's something."
 "I thought about it," she an- THE FOREVER TRIP

 75

 swered, looking away from me. "It must have been a lot of trouble for you
to track me down. And Dan and I were we were very close." She looked back
at me. "And you said he never got my note."
 "Never did."
  She shook her head. "Such a shame. How different our lives would have
been, if. If, if, if."
  "Yeah." She took the chair next to me and we sat and looked at the
coffin. "So, tell me. How did it happen? Who was Henry Porch? How did you
get to know Uncle Dan?"
  She sighed. "Henry and I were engaged. Living in Chicago. He decided to
turn state's evidence in an investigation of Joe Verdi. The FBI brought us
to Detroit incognito to wait for Henry to testify. We thought the trial
would start quickly. But it didn't. We waited and waited. Days. Weeks.
Months. Hiding."
 "How'd you meet Dan?"
  "I'm getting to that." She paused. "I was afraid. Afraid, and bored. I
hadn't known the depth of Henry's involvement with the mob till then. I was
afraid of what those men would do to him if they caught him. And I was
bored, cooped up in that grimy little motel room day after day. So I began
to go out, alone."
 "To Burly Curly's."
 "Yes. I met Dan there." Her

 voice softened and I felt her eyes on me. "He was a fine man. Much older
than me, of course. But so handsome and dashing, a real wicked twinkle in
his eye, yet decent and gentle too. I became infatuated with him, Mr.
Perkins."
  "Did you tell him about Porch and the investigation?"
  "Of course not! I never even told Dan my last name. I was afraid. And
ashamed. I began to think about Dan, about leaving Henry and going to Dan,
where I'd be safe."
  I closed my eyes and sighed. "So what happened?"
  "One day Henry got a phone call. I don't know what was said, but it
terrified him. I was convinced that Verdi's people had tracked Henry down
and were going to kill him. I dashed off a note to Dan and mai led it,
asking him to meet me that evening at Burly Curly's. I was going to tell
him the whole story and ask him to take me away. I went to the bar and
waited, but Dan never came. Instead, Henry showed up. He'd gotten word of
where I went, somehow. As he came in the door, two men with shotguns
followed him and shot him."
  She touched my arm and I felt her hand tremble. After a moment she went
on, "I ... I went a little hysterical, I think. But I got out of there and
made it to the bus station and grabbed
 76   ROB KANTNER

 the first bus west. All the way back to Chicago. And I've been there ever
 since and lived a quiet life and thought all that trouble was behind me."
 Her voice deepened. "Till the other day, when that horrible man from Verdi's
 organization called."
 "I'm glad you came," I said.
  "Just wish I'd come in time to see him."
  We stared silently at the coffin a long time. It was late, everyone else
  had gone, leaving us alone in the room. She said suddenly, "One thing I
  know for sure. Dan wouldn't have wanted-" she gestured around the room-"all
  this."
  "You're right." I roused myself and stretched and looked at her. "I got
  some thoughts on that. Want to help?"
 "How?"
 I told her.
  She looked back at the coffin and then at me, eyes misty. "I'm with you,"
  she whispered. "But I want to be in it all the way, Ben."
  I snorted. "Come on! It's gonna be dangerous."
  She smiled wickedly. "I may look sixty-eight, but I'm as young as you,
  maybe younger. And I want to do this for Dan."
  I shrugged. "Okay." I glanced around, the room was still empty. "Now's as
  good a time as any. Ready?"
  She stood, went to the door of the visitation room, peered out,

 then nodded to me.
  I walked up to the coffin, hoping it was unlocked.
 It was.

  People drifted across the grass away from the gravesite, hunched in their
  jackets against the cool, sundrenched breeze. Lila and I were halfway to my
  car when Libby caught up with us. She certainly was dressed for the role of
  chief mourner in a black dress, black stockings, black shoes, and a black
  hat equipped with a veil, for heaven's sake. Ignoring Lila, Libby took my
  arm.
  "I'm sure glad that's all over," she sighed. "These things are so hard on
  a person, don't you think?"
 "True enough."
  She swept the veil back from her face. "But don't you agree with me now,
  Ben? This is the right way, the proper way to see to things."
 "Anyway, you got it done."
  "Listen," she said eagerly, "I'm having everyone over to the house for an
  early supper. It's important that the family-" she gave Lila a meaningful
  look-"hang together in times like this, don't you think?"
  I felt sick. "Thanks anyhow. We've got business." Taking Lila's arm, I
  turned my back on Libby and made for my car.

 The second seat-which I



 THE FOREVER TRIP    77

 generally use for cargo, never for a passenger-of my modified Maxair Hummer
sits directly behind the pilot's seat. I helped Lila into it and strapped her
in. She sat nervously, looking tiny in slacks and a warm wool jacket, but she
nodded at me with a defiant smile.
  I completed the pre-flight inspection of the aircraft by checking the
translucent plastic gas tank one last time. Full. Dropping into the bucket
seat, I tucked my leatherjacket tight around me-despite the full sunlight, it
was a chilly day-positioned my feet on the rudder bar, primea the engine with
a couple of squeezes of the pressure bulb, set the choke, cracked the
throttle, and after yelling "clear!" (even though there was nobody but Lila
in sight), I gave the T-handle a good jerk. The 250cc Zenoah engine engaged,
barfed, blatted, and caught into a good healthy purr from its mounting ten
feet behind us. Killing the choke, I set the throttle at about two thousand
rpm and sat back to let her warm up.
  It was midday, mid-week. There were no golfers using the Norwegian Wood
course. Wind was steady at twelve knots out of the southwest-a bit stronger
than I'd have preferred, but this wasn't exactly a pleasure flight we were
embarking on.
 Everything was set. "Here

 we go!" I hollered over my shoulder. I goosed the throttle and the Hummer
began to roll. I swung her around toward the southwest, edged the throttle up
a little more, and pressed the stick forward to raise the tail. We passed
high taxi, I gave her more gas, the aircraft rolled faster and swayed, the
wind began to sing in the flying wires, and just as we reached the eighth
green, we left the ground. I did the pattern, tested the wind, checked the
trim of the ship, then made a sweeping turn and, gaining altitude all the
while, headed almost due west toward Stapfer Lake.
  "This is wonderful!" came Lila's reedy voice amid the rush of the wind.
Your first time in an ultralight does that to you. You're sitting out in the
open, no cockpit, nothing above you but wings and nothing below you but a
couple of aluminum frame members and, way, way down, the ground.
  We were at a thousand feet by the time we got to the lake. It wandered
around jerkily in a wide blue bowl, marred h~re and there by whitecaps,
circled by dense woods. I circled the lake and then, applying maximum stick
and throttle, took her up close to five thousand.
  The wind was calmer there. The lake looked smaller. Roughly in the center
was the small wooded island that Uncle
 78

 ROB KANTNER

 Dan owned. I could see, amid the scrub and trees, the charred ruins of his
old cabin, torched a few years ago by a maniac who was trying to kill me
and got someone else instead. I put the aircraft on a steady trimmed course
traversing the lake, gripped the stick between my knees, reached to the
down-tube, and unstrapped the mediumsized aluminum canister from it.
  The screw-top was hard to get loose but I finally spun it off and tossed
it. I reached around the seat and put the canister into Lila's waiting
hands. I sideslipped for a moment to correct my course and then, when dead
center over the lake, I said, "All right."
  Lila leaned down, tipped the canister, and let the ashes stream out.
  They fell in a solid gray funnel. Caught by the windstream, they fanned
out wider and wider in a descending ever-lightening V. When the canister
was empty, Lila tossed it over the starboard side. I poured power to the

 Hummer engine, climbed steeply, then leveled, and we looked down silently.
  Caught by the lower wind currents and illuminated by the sun, the ashes
fell toward the blue water in a just visible, glinting veil, then
disappeared.
  I sat up in the bucket seat. Couldn't do France for you, Uncle, but this
is the next best thing.
  I kicked the wings over, set the throttle a notch higher to maintain lift
in the tail wind, and headed for home.
  After a moment Lila leaned forward and said, over the engine and wind
noise, "You know what Dan-called it?"
 "What?"
 "Death."
  "No. I don't remember him ever mentioning it."
  "He hated euphemisms like ,everlasting life' and 'eternal rest' and 'the
big sleep' and things like that. Said they made assumptions."
  "Sounds like him. So what did he call it?"
 "The forever trip."


  THE ULTIMATE PICKPOCKET

  by

  Jeffry Scott


  It is misleading and very likely expensive to regard my friend Tony Smooth
as a practicing con man. For, as Noel Coward remarked in a different
context, practice doesn't come into it, the wretch being perfect at what
he does. And what, or rather who, he does is other people.
  Wonder about his apprenticeship, how Smooth got started, and he will tell
you. "I may be a crook, but I'm a patriot, too. The minute we declared war
on Mr. Hitler in 1939, guess who lied about his age to get into the

 80

 army three years before they came and fetched him? Silly little beggar,
I was!"
  That's hard to believe, since the mature, present-day Smooth has a sly
grin and the aura of a fox, with russet hair to complete the image. "Ah,"
he points out, "but back in 1940 when I was Bombardier Smooth, T., pride
of the Royal Artillery -well, I was proud enough to bust, anyway-I was
honest as the day is long.
  "Truly. I didn't know any better, see. Hadn't found my ... what's that
sprauncy French
 THE ULTIMATE PICKPOCKET

 81

 word? M6tier, that's the joker. I was fifteen years old, big for my age,
and probably thought a m6tier was something you shoved coins in to keep the
lights and gas fire going. Oh yes, I was too green to even consider being
a villain.
  "One night changed all that and put me on the path to my chosen career."
Here Tony Smooth tends to smirk so smugly, disturbingly, that one almost
sees chicken feathers fluttering at the corners of his mouth.
  Such is ex-Bombardier Smooth's preamble to the wartime legend of an
impossible crime, the riddle of The Ultimate Pickpocket.

 smooth liked army life. Most recruits were shocked by its austerity,
discomfort, loud authority, and lousy food. To a London slum kid, all that
was a marked improvement: new clothes, plenty to eat. Certainly he got
shouted at, but Tony Smooth had endured that and worse, without khaki
compensations.
  Training over, he was posted to an anti-aircraft battery in Scotland, and
that did shake him. Especially since they sent him off on his own, with
warrants to cover train and bus travel. Until donning uniform he'd seldom
left his two-square-

 mile Cockney ghetto. Scotland might have been fabled Cathay, far
Samarkand....
  The first train was packed, its schedule a bad joke. There were stops to
avoid air raids, detours to avoid bomb damage, halts for priority freight
to go through. It took Tony Smooth the best part of two days to reach
Inverness, sleeping on the corridor floor with his helmet and pack for
pillows; and that was hardly two-thirds of the trek.
  He was heading for somewhere called Gaddack Head in the bleakly extreme
north.
  Back at holding camp near Dover, the Orderly Room clerk had grunted, "You
can't miss it, son. Go any farther and you'll fall off the end of the
British Isles." At Inverness he must leave the main-line train, getting a
local to Allum Beg Junction. There the day's first and last bus, at five
P.m., would carry the warrior a final fifty miles to Gaddack Head, where
there were at least three guns and, it was rumored, a searchlight or two.
  Smooth was relieved to find other travelworn servicemen on Platform 4 at
Inverness. The RAF kept a weather station at Gaddack Head, it seemed, and
the Royal Navy had fueling facilities on a nearby inlet. Six months in the
army had given
 82

 JEFFRY SCOTT

 young Smooth a herd instinct, and the sight of more uniforms soothed him.
Not much, however, since his new companions looked either shifty or brutal.
  Eventually an antique, tinpot little train with a mere brace of
chickenshack carriages took them aboard and began faltering into the
Highlands without urgency or much conviction.
  "Gaddack Head?" scoffed a three-badge stoker who filled a bench seat by
himself and stank like a distillery explosion. "Good luck, kid! Soldiers
up there are cannibals, well known for it. Can't blame'em, bunch of hungry
squaddies get snowed in for a month with five days' rations . . ."
  Tony Smooth trusted that the monster was joking. Stoker had confided,
earlier, that he was freshly out of military prison, and Smooth was quite
confident that had been no jest.
  The other service passengers were two RAF Leading Aircraftmen, one like
a messily thawing icicle with a perpetual dewdrop on his spiky nose, the
other a grinning, restless-eyed midget nicknamed, of course, Lofty. They
weren't much older than Smooth, but cocky with it, and he didn't trust them
an inch. Within minutes they'd dealt him a dozen successive losing hands
at blackjack. Lofty

 and his pal Icicle weren't good sharpers but, outnumbering the young
soldier, didn't need to be. He simply stopped playing.
  The short winter's day plunged towards evening. Tony Smooth couldn't
afford a watch but felt in his bones that Allum Beg Junction was still far
off while the solitary bus's departure time was not.
  The others confirmed both theories without sharing Smooth's panic. Sure,
they yawned, he was supposed to report at the Gaddack Head battery at 2100
hours that night. "But," the stoker pointed out, ~geven pig-ignorant
soldiers know the trains are no good. You turn up before the week's out,
they'll be happy."
  "That's the ticket," Icicle agreed. "All in the same boat, we are. I'm
happy. Cast-iron alibi for an extra day off the leash. We'll find a decent
boozer at this Allum Whatsit place, have a laugh and a shout with the
girls, doss down somewhere. . ."
  All new to Scotland, the party assumed that Allum Beg Junction would be
a typical dull railway township, but even dull towns boast pubs and girls.
Their shared assumption was optimistic by about a thousand percent.
  Because Allum Beg Junction turned out to be exactly that,
 THE ULTIMATE PICKPOCKET

 83

 part of the transport system and no more.
  They arrived in windy darkness with a fingernail of moon. The moment the
train jolted on its way, the wind rose several notches, fairly howling and
implicit with sleet. Appalled at such desolation, Tony Smooth stared around
wildly and spotted a dim figure skulking off at the far end of the
platform.
  When he hailed it desperately, backed by Stoker's enraged booming, the
figure paused. Then it emitted an extraordinary sound, a kind of snarling
bleat at once wordless and eloquent of hostility and fervent indifference
to the fate of Sassenach passengers. Clambering aboard a bicycle, the fig-
ure pedaled off for dear life.
  Teeth chattering, Lofty returned from fruitless searching for any other
staff. "Not a pane of glass in the waiting room windows, lads. It's warmer
out here, honest."
  Icicle, stamping his feet and flailing his arms, whined, "How far is it
to the town, then-which way?"
  Stoker roared, "This is it, there isn't any town, you foolish person."
That was his gist; the unexpurgated retort took fifteen seconds and twice
as many adjectival epithets.
  "There's got to be houses near," young Smooth argued,

 with a Cockney's confidence that dwellings, like rocks and trees, were a
part of every natural landscape; and he set off to find one. The only way
to go was along a lane, its surface luminous with frost, beside the
railway,line. Since exploration would keep them warm-less chilled at any
rate-the others swore but f6llowed.
  Half a mile on, Stoker growled satirically, "Got to be houses, kid?"
Stoker obviously detested hiking, and Icicle was grizzling savagely,
questioning Tony Smooth's sense of direction and parentage alike.
  The whistling made them jump, Lofty halting so abruptly that he fell
over.
  Not a metal whistle but the cheerily human signal for attention that
demands good lungs and two fingers stuck in the mouth. Followed by a
woman's voice calling, "Over this way, lads. Fbad the gate in the wall,
come on in. You're home for the night!"

 The Crofters Arms, where Molly Green had led Tony Smooth and the rest,
  wasn't that homely. It was an ex-pub, a former inn, a hostelry that had
been drummed out of the regiment.
  "Miserable devils, the Scotch," Mrs. Green said, tone less sour than the
words. "Soon as my old
 84

 JEFFRY SCOTT

 man took it into his head to go back to sea, they turned round and said a
woman on her own wasn't fit to run a pub. Me, what's been barmaid at every
pub in Lambeth! Practically. But they took the license away."
  They were shrugging out of their packs and straps, pee'ling off overcoats
and stowing kitbags in a corner of the bar parlor, a flagstone-floored room,
low ceiling varnished brown by generations of pipes and cheap cigarettes,
shutters closed over the windows with brown gummed-paper strips sealing every
chink. In 1940, letting light escape risked a fine and suspicion of being a
Nazi spy and, more to the point, inviting a bomb.
  It was a sad room that had never been that jolly. Its sole decorations were
a last year's calendar from a brewery and farm-sale and flower show posters,
months out of date.
  Tony Smooth and company weren't complaining about the ambience. Compared to
outdoors, the place was positively snug. Especially since Molly Green had
invited, "You're welcome to doss down on the benches, I've got plenty of old
blankets for bedding. No charge, not to lads in uniform.... Fancy that,
soldier, sailor, and two Raff boys, I got the full set!" And Mrs. Green's
corrugated

 yellow waves became agitated as she giggled foolishly.
  Young Smooth detected a swift change in atmosphere without quite getting
the hang of it. Stoker muttered, "Now I've seen the ruddy lot-a pub with no
beer." But he was beaming, pool cue fingers brushing his thinning hair over
the bald patch. Icicle and Lofty had taken to swapping inaudible confidences
and sniggering.
  The truth being that while Molly Green struck Tony Smooth as motherly,
nothing special, the other three were willing to give her the benefit of the
doubt as A Bit of All Right, Ta Very Much. They were of an ilk in finding
availability the most potent aphrodisiac.
  Smooth caught on, after Mrs. Green jiggled away to the kitchen, pledging
cocoa even if she couldn't manage beer or spirits. Stoker cocked an eye at
the others and spoke softly-for him. "You can try the benches. Play me cards
right, I should be in a feather bed, come lightsout."
  Outraged and disillusioned, Tony Smooth protested, "But she's doing us a
good turn!"
  "Just what I'm saying," Stoker purred, doing more hair arrangement. "Keep
your nose out, kid. This is grownups'business."
 THE ULTIMATE PICKPOCKET

 85

  Molly Green returned with mugs, none of them matching, a stale loaf of
sawdusty bread, and a tiny cube of margarine. Representing several days of
her food rations. It made Smooth all the angrier and more alarmed on her
behalf. Sixteen is a grand age for knights-errant.
  Yet after a while, as the men munched and swigged and Molly Green
chattered compulsively --evidently she'd been living alone for long enough
to store months of extremely minute smalltalk-Smooth's dread subsided. He
could believe that Molly was a veteran barmaid. She handled Stoker, Icicle,
and Lofty superbly, somehow putting them on the plane of friends without
advancing their lecherous aims by the thickness of a cigarette paper.
  "Afraid of burglars?" she answered Stoker. "Nah, luv. Hector-that's my
old man-left me a shotgun. My bedroom's like the bloomin'Tower of Lon(fon
armory. Shotgun by the bed, and I got a kitchen knife that long under my
pillow." Molly Green spread her arms in an angler's claim. This caused her
extensive if not sculpted bosom to curtsy invitingly, but her three
potential suitors looked more thoughtful than ardent.
 Tony Smooth nodded approv-
 ingly. Noting the reaction, Molly twinkled at him conspiratorially.
Plainly she might be an amiable ninny, but by the same token, Mrs. Green
was determined to sleep alone.
  Before she left them, however, Smooth started worrying again. Molly Green
was talking about Hector with less than wifely admiration. Typical Jock,
she grumbled, dour, canny, grudging. And stupid with it. The pub had been
going downhill before Hector tried his luck in the merchant marine, and
that was his own fault.
  "All it needed was doing up, lick o' paint, nice bit of lino on this
bloody stone floor," Molly lectured, gliding along a familiar nagging
groove. "Hector couldn't afford it. Not much! All the time he had his
silver cups and shields and that, billiards and snooker champion for years,
daft old bugger. Worth a hundred quid, easy. Would he sell them? Not
Hector! Still sitting in the. cupboard there. That's a Jock for you, boys,
even if he is my old man and I says it as shouldn't. Too close to spend a
hundred quid and make a thousand."
  Green as he was-and totally unlarcenous, never pinched so much as
tuppence from his mum's purse to see a Tom Mix or Charlie Chaplin movie,
Tony Smooth insists--it made his
 86

 JEFFRY SCOTT

 scalp tighten and his blood run cold.
  High on grievances, Molly Green babbled on. Smooth wondered whether it
was a trick of firelight making Stoker's eyes gleam greedily, and whether
the RAF contingent wasn't a little too interested in the cupboard behind
the bar....
  Picking his moment, he murmured to her, "Shut up about the silver,
missus. In front of strangers, get my drift?"
  Mrs. Green bit her lip. "Gawd, what a chump I am." She took a heavy iron
key from beneath the bar. She sounded painfully stilted when she said,
"Talking of silver, I'd better lock the cupboard. No offense, gents, but
Hector's mustard on me locking up last thing at night."
  She turned the key in the solid oak door, smiling at its click of
reassurance. Nobody appeared to take much notice. Stoker was rummaging in
his kitbag, Lofty and Icicle absorbed in their cards.
  Molly Green patted the cupboard door, flustered embarrassment subsiding.
"Need matchsticks to keep my eyes open, boys, so I'm off up the wooden
hill. Bring you a. nice cupper char first thing in the morning, okay?
Nighty-night."
  They heard her mounting the uncarpeted staircase, and the rattle of a
chair being placed

 under her bedroom door handle. Stoker stretched until his muscles cracked.
"Shame ... still, fortunes of war, mates. At least we're out of the cold.
Now put that bloody light out, let's get some kip."
  Tony Smooth was last to sleep. Molly Green had squeezed his hand while
saying goodnight -he'd opened the bar parlor door for her-and in doing so,
she slipped the cupboard key,to him.
  When Smooth awoke, it was to find the room in noisy confusion, Mrs. Green
weeping and swearing distractedly, Stoker shouting. The famous cupboard's
door gaped open and its dusty shelves supported nothing but a can of silver
polish and some dusters.

  It was like that when
   I brung your tea,"
   Molly Green sniveled.
   "Which one of you done
 it, rotten, ungrateful bleeder?"
 Icicle, old-maidishly adjust
 ing his blue forage cap to the
 fancied angle, spoke coolly.
 "Seems simple to me, lady. That
 door's not been jemmied open,
 right? And me and Lofty took
 a gander at the lock. Bit you
 can see inside is old, rusty
 ... no scratches showing,
 'twasn't picked." Icicle glanced
 at Tony Smooth with a strange
 mixture of pity and respect.
 THE ULTIMATE PICKPOCKET

 "My laddo there had the key, it's down to him."
  Smooth, less defensive than baffled, blurted out, "But the key never left
me all night, cross my heart! It was down the front of my underpa-" Blush-
ing crimson, he turned that into a lame, "-in a safe place. I'd have woken
up if anyone took it~)
  Icicle cackled and wagged his head. "I'm not arguing it never left you,
Sunshine. You opened the cupboard with it, nicked the stuff, hid it outside
for later, and-"
  "I never!" cried Smooth. And: "He never did," Molly Green agreed. "Bless
him, the kid's not bent. Nor daft, come to think of it. Soon as I gave him
the key to hold, he couldn't nick the stuff. Stands to reason."
  "I would have, in his place," Lofty put in. "Double bluff, see. Well, why
not?"
  Stoker said, "I can't see it. The kid's no tealeaf, you can tell." A
reader of Conan Doyle, the sailor brightened suddenly. "Here, tracks! The
stuff can't be far, look for tracks."
  But the ground around the Crofters Arms was iron hard from frost.
Trooping back in, they found Mrs. Green setting a fresh tray of steaming
mugs on the bar. She'd dropped the original wakeup brew on seeing the
plundered cupboard.

  The two RAF men had been in conference. Icicle suggested, "Maybe we got
a pickpocket as well as a straight thief." Stoker flexed his thick fingers
at the phrase. Icicle nodded eagerly. "Yuh, it doesn't make sense for the
kid to use the key, knowing he'd be prime suspect, right? Me and Lofty saw
a stage pickpocket, Fulham Empire, last leave. He could slap you on the
back and have your suspenders and watch away, quick as quick and you none
the wiser till your trousers fell down.... See what I mean?"
  Tony Smooth was sure that no pickpocket could have taken and returned the
key without waking him. On the other hand, there seemed no other expla-
nation. Either way, Smooth would be a fool to doubt the theory, publicly.
  Molly Green sighed and shrugged. "Sorry, boys, but PC Mattheison goes by
on his bike about nine o'clock every morning. I'll have to tell him. Hector
and his blasted trophies ... he'll kill me. And he'll be docking next week,
I got the letter. No offense, I don't want trouble, but I got to report it
or my old man will go potty."
  Police Constable Mattheison duly appeared-Stoker and Smooth walked down
the pub's derelict garden to signal him-and by mid-morning a
 88    JEFFRY SCOTT

 police car had taken the entire party to the nearest large town, for
 interrogation by the CID.

        That," Tony Smooth recalls, "is how I
'gTdiscovered my vocation. I mean ... the Ultimate Pickpocket ... somebody
 who didn't really exist, doing something that never really happened!" At
 this stage Smooth makes formless, excited, shaping gestures.
  "It's like being a great author or actor or whatever. The con itself was
  silly, childish even, but it created something as well as lifting the
  silver, sweet as a nut. I can't explain it, if you're not bent. I
  couldn't hardly wait to pull it for myself-not the Ultimate Pickpocket,
  but the same line of country."
  The police investigation was a bit of a joke, he says. And for young
  Smooth, an education. They were fingerprinted-Mrs. Green as well, for
  elimination purposes-though nobody disputed that all four men had been
  in the pub or that Smooth had handled the key. Smooth made his first
  acquaintance with that historic double act, the Tough Skeptic and the
  Soft Reasonable CID Man. There was a lot of talk, much taking and signing
  of statements.
  Today's Smooth says, indulgently, that the Ultimate Pick-
  
  
 pocket could only have worked at that precise time. "It was 1940, we were
 servicemen with places to go, by order. A hundred quid, which the silver
 was worth, was big money, but in 1940 we were about to be invaded by
 Adolf, paratroopers disguised as nuns-you were told to look out for boots
 beneath the habit-and the Fifth Column. Different world, different
 priorities.
  "The cops told each one of us to own up because they had us bang to
  rights. That didn't work. And like I said, the world was about to go up
  in flames. The silver had to be hidden near the pub and we couldn't get
  back to it right away, for obvious reasons connected with Absence Without
  Leave. The law figured the odds and decided to go for finding the loot
  before the thief could get leave and come back for it. Behind that was
  the thought that all of us service lads could be dead by summer, or
  prisoners taking our orders in German; a spot of burglary was sort of
  academic.
  "So a military-police truck turned up to run us to Gaddack Head, and that
  was the end of it."
  Before leaving the Scottish police station, though, and bidding farewell
  to poor, confused, wronged Molly Green ("Last time I play Good
  Samaritaness,

 89

 see if it isn't, talk about diabolical liberties with a lady!"), Tony
Smooth officially entered his cherished m6tier.
  He did it by whispering fewer than twenty words to the person who had set
the Ultimate Pickpocket loose in the bar parlor of the Crofters Arms that
night. "To show I was less green than cabbage colored, as the saying goes.
To prove I'd twigged. The person looked right startled. Then they winked
at me, the rascal!"

 t was 1953, Coronation Year, before Tony Smooth ran into Molly Green. "She
bought me a drink for old times' sake-and for keeping my trap shut."
  The thing about Mrs. Green, Smooth explains, is that she only told the
truth by accident. "That bit about working in all the Lambeth pubs was
kosher, for instance. Molly kept nicking stuff and getting sacked, that's
why. . . "
  She had not been Hector-ofthe-pub's wife, of course. "Simply his fancy
piece. He'd picked her up at the 1938 soccer cup final, spun her a line
about being a wealthy hotelier. Soon as he went to sea, she legged it off
to Glasgow and sold his trophies for the scrap bullion value.
 "But it was harder to do a

 runner during the war, bags of rules and regulations, I.D. cards and
ration books and such. Molly knew Hector would send the law after her. Live
for the day was her motto, but his ship never got torpedoed or anything,
and time was running out.
  "So she decided to get the silver stolen, official, and not by her.
Service lads were always getting stranded overnight at Allum Beg Junction,
so she was spoilt for choice. The rest was pie-easy. Molly reckoned she
.was sure none of us would get our collar felt for the job. Not having done
it, we wouldn't confess; we couldn't get caught with the loot, she'd saved
us that risk, weeks before. Molly felt the only victim was Hector, and he
richly deserved some aggravation."
  But what of the Ultimate Pickpocket's coup?
  "I said it was childish," Tony Smooth chortles. "Molly crept downstairs
at first light, quietly opened the cupboard, then dropped her tray of tea
and yelled blue murder so we could all be off to the races.
  "Sure she opened it, no key and no trouble. What I whispered to her at
the nick was this: 'You unlocked that cupboard in front of us all, before
you gave me the key!"'

 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 by

 Robert Gray


 On the fifteenth tee,
  Virginia Crossley stood
  for a moment and sur
 veyed  the terrain. A two
 hundred  and one yard par three,
 the fairway was a narrow em
 erald corridor carved from the
 surrounding pine forest. It ended
 at a large oval putting green
 protected by sand traps on either
 side and deep rough behind.
 Not the  sort of hole one could
 lUus&utwn by Barbara Roman

 90

 ustion, however. Off to one side, Virginia's caddy, a mind reader after
all their years together, had already extracted the three wood from her
bag. She accepted it, pushed her teed ball deep into the perfect grass, and
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 took a couple of loosening-up swings. The long club flowed in seemingly
effortless arcs around her, its persimmon head like a moon in orbit.
  Virginia stepped up to the ball, planting the clubhead just behind it.
She picked up the club and waggled it twice in the direction of the green,
then settled in her stance with a deep breath. In a smoothly synchronized
coiling and uncoiling of her long, lean body, she drove the ball. Its
flight began along the right side of the fairway; then, ever so gradually,
a slight draw brought it back on course. When it landed, it bounced twice
before rolling to a stop on the front fringe of the green.
 "Nice ball," said the caddy.
  "Thank you. Just give me four of those this weekend," she replied,
bending over to pick up her tee.
  "Don't be greedy, Gin," said her playing partner, Jackie Phelps, who was
taking a proffered club from her caddy.
  Though not friends in any sense of the word, the two women often played
their practice rounds together. Gin had been a professional for seventeen
years and Jackie for only three, but they were both now at the top of their
games. Every week the leader board seemed to list them among the top five
as a tournament progressed. They fed off this rivalry and it

 had made them better players, so they took full advantage of the
situation, even in practice.
  Jackie followed her own set of preparatory moves. To the non-golfer, they
might have looked like a duplication of Gin's, but the knowledgeable eye
would notice Jackie's more studied pose over the ball, and the stiffness
in her programmed swing. She was six inches shorter than her rival, with
long blonde hair held back from her pretty, tanned face by a yellow visor.
That face now showed the strain of intense concentration as she prepared
to hit, an intensity that had not been apparent in Gin's impassive
features, though the results were equally proficient.
  At least the results were usually proficient. This time, however, perhaps
reaching for extra yardage that wasn't in the club, she pulled her drive
straight into the woods along the left side of the fairway. Her caddy
marked the point of entry by an out-of-bounds stake at about the hundred
and sixty-five yard mark.
  Jackie teed up again, took a little more time to get set, and rifled a
much better shot down the middle. It kicked left and stopped five yards shy
of the sand trap.
  While Gin and her caddy walked down the fairway, the other two headed for
the woods
 to see if Jackie's ball could be found or if, by some stroke of benevolent
fate, it had caromed off a tree limb and rolled back in bounds. Jackie was
slamming her three wood against the ground as she walked, punishing it for
the lousy hit.
 "Need some help?"Gin called.
  "No, we'll have a quick look. No big deal," Jackie repliedjust before
they disappeared in the underbrush.
  Gin had already begun to set her mind in gear for the next shot when she
heard a scream. She did not remember starting to run but was suddenly aware
of her heart pounding and her breath coming in harsh gasps. With her caddy
beside her, she plunged through a row of bushes near the edge of the woods
and into a clearing beneath the tall trees.
  The forest floor was carpeted with pine needles, upon which sat Jackie's
caddy, dazed and holding his hand against the side of his head, where some
blood trickled between his fingers. Behind him lay Jackie's three wood.
After that first scream, the only other sound had been the moaning of the
caddy. Jackie Phelps had vanished.

 Laura Cavanaugh was on the telephone in her library, a high-ceilinged
Victorian room lit by Tif-
 ROBERT GRAY

 fany lamps and sunlight diffused through four stained glass windows
depicting turn-of-thecentury horseracing and hunt scenes. The Cavanaughs
used it as an office for their informal, unlicensed private investigation
service in Saratoga Springs.
  Laura replaced the phone in its cradle. She poured two scotch and sodas,
then carried them out to the kitchen, where her husband was performing bi-
zarre sacrificial rites upon what had once been a perfectly respectable
frozen Long Island duckling.
  Henri was rushing back and forth in their large kitchen, from spice
cabinet to sink, from sink to stove to butcher block work table they had
recently acquired. The focus of all this activity lay in a roasting pan on
the table. A forlorn, plucked creature, it was gradually disappearing under
accoutrements ranging from orange marmalade to maraschino cherries, from
tarragon to dill weed.
  "Should I call for dinner reservations now or wait until you're through?"
asked Laura as she entered, handing off the drink to her husband as he
swept past like a fullback on an off-tackle play.
  Henri sipped his drink in mid-stride and set it down near the roasting
pan. "You just have no faith in me, my pretty. When
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 93

 are you going to take my cooking seriously?"
  "Maybe when you finally learn how."
  Undaunted. by the critics, Henri was off again, heading for the
refrigerator. He took out a quart of orange juice and approached the
duckling. There was an evil gleam in his eye that Laura recognized as the
culinary equivalent of Dr. Frankenstein about to bring life to a soulless
corpse. He moved toward his experiment with head outthrust, bent at the
waist and sporting a mischievous grin on his gaunt face.
  "You look like a cross between Groucho Marx and the Galloping Gourmet,"
teased Laura as she sat on a stool near the table.
  Henri raised his free hand and imitated Groucho's classic cigar waving,
eyebrow-raised leer as he passed by her. "Now here's a viaduct leading over
to the mainland."
  It may have been the worst impression of Groucho in comedy annals, but
Laura humored him by feeding the appropriate movie line with her best Chico
accent. "All right. Why a duck? Why a no chicken?"
  "I don't know why a no chicken. I'm a stranger here myself. Who was on
the phone?"
  "Oh, just an old, old friend from college. Virginia Crossley. Gin we used
to call her."

  "Name sounds familiar. Big nostalgia session?"
  "Kind of. You've probably read her name in the sports pages. She's rather
a famous golfer. This week she's playing at a small tournament in Con-
necticut. She suggested we come down if we get a chance."
  "You don't sound too thrilled at the prospect."
  "It's not that," Laura said. She took a deep breath, then sipped her
drink. "I guess I didn't like the sound of her voice. It was almost as if
she were upset about something, but afraid to say what. Like she wanted
someone to talk to, but couldn't bring herself to unload on me. After all,
it has been twenty years since we saw one another. Maybe it was just my
imagination."
  Henri looked at his wife, then down at the duckling, which was drowning
in a sweet sea of marmalade and orange juice tinged with maraschino blood.
He looked up at Laura again. "We could probably have dinner on the road if
you wanted to leave tonight."
  Laura smiled and nodded. "I think I'd like that. Not that I wasn't dearly
looking forward to your ... whatever you had planned there."
  Henri dumped the rest of his scotch in the roasting pan. "Don't you
recognize Viaduct ii l'Orange when you see it?"
 94

 ROBERT GRAY

 They had called ahead for reservations, settling for a motel on the
outskirts of the city when they discovered that both downtown hotels were
booked full for tournament week. Since it was past midnight when they
arrived, Laura suggested they turn in and contact Gin in the morning.
  At seven A.M., they were sitting in a downtown cafe. Henri laboriously
chewed his rubber pancakes and insisted he could have done a much better
job had he been in charge of the kitchen. Laura listened to his complaints
in noble silence.
  She had called Gin earlier and arranged a meeting here. Fifteen minutes
after their arrival, Virginia Crossley entered the cafe and headed for
their table, a newspaper tucked under her arm. Henri thought that she and
Laura could have been sisters. It was almost as if their college had been
in the business of cloning aristocratic, attractive daughters for the upper
class.
  Both women had reddish hair, though Gin's was cut shorter. They wore
nearly matching midlength skirts and blazers in complementary shades of
burgundy and brown. Their white blouses might have been purchased in the
same store. Probably had been. Neither woman used, nor required, much in
the way of makeup.

  Laura stood when Gin reached their table, and the women embraced. When
they were seated, Henri sensed the decades fall from their eyes as they
once again became schoolmates. For twenty minutes they reminisced,
commented (positively, of course) on respective physical changes, and ran
through a mercifully brief and incomplete rendition of Henri's life story.
Finally, Laura asked the question they had driven all this way to have
answered.
  "Gin, I know this is going to sound foolish, but yesterday, on the phone
... well, I guess this is more than just a social call. I don't know quite
how to say it, but you sounded odd to me, almost frightened or . . ."
  Gin forced a tight smile. She opened the paper to the sports section,
then turned it around so Henri and Laura could see an article she was
pointing to. A bizarre kidnapping of one of the other players in the tour-
nament had occurred the day before. A woman named Jackie Phelps was
snatched off the course during a practice round. Shep, her caddy, who saw
nothing, suffered lacerations but fortunately no concussion when the
abductor slugged him from behind. Jackie was taken to a car on Forest
Drive, a private road linking Route 20 with Brentwood Country Club. He
drove her
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 95

 around the city for an hour, then released her near the golf course. He
was described as a heavy-set man, bald, six feet tall, wearing an
ill-fitting brown suit and reeking of cigar smoke. He drove a- late-model
blue Chevrolet.
  "Jackie was my playing partner yesterday," said Gin. She described her
tenuous relationship with the victim.
  "Maybe we can help, Gin," said Laura when she was finished. "We've dealt
with this sort of thing before."
  "Then it is true what I've heard about you two. I didn't quite know how
to bring up the subject yesterday on the phone. I wasn't sure the rumors
were true. And if they were, I didn't know if I had the right to impose."
  Laura laughed. "It's all horribly true, Gin. Henri has been such a bad
influence on me these past twelve years. When I told you he was a racetrack
writer, I neglected to add that that is but half of his profession. He was
also a private detective when we first met, but has since given up his
license. I'm afraid I've managed to acquire most of his bad habits. We've
established something of a discreet investigation service."
  Gin was shaking her head. "I'd heard as much through the grapevine. Laura
Woodward, never a hair out of place,'never

 a bad thought, the perfect debutante, now a private eye. Will wonders
never cease? But I guess if I can golf away my inherited good breeding, you
have every right to sleuth away yours."
  Coming from some people this would have sounded like an insult, but Laura
knew it was only Gin's way of welcoming her into a club she thoroughly
approved of, a club whose members had followed their own paths instead of
the ones ordained by their powerful families.
  Gin's face betrayed an unexpected emotion: relief. "I'm so very glad to
hear this. After we talked yesterday and you said you might accept my
invitation, I almost regretted it. I dearly enjoyed our chat, but I would
have found it difficult to put on a happy face all weekend after
yesterday's events. Do you really think you could help me?"
  '11elp you?" asked Henri. "But I thought it was this Phelps woman who was
in trouble."
  "Ali, well, I'm afraid we're both under the proverbial gun until the
matter is resolved. Prevailing talk around the clubhouse seems to lean
toward the theory that I had something to do with the kidnapping. Just wait
until the newspapers get hold of that one."
  "Why? It makes no sense," said Laura.
 ROBERT GRAY i

  "It makes more sense than you might think. Up till this week's event,
I've been the leading money winner on the tour, but Jackie's closing in
fast. She's been playing marvelous golf all summer. If she wins this
tournament, she'll overtake me in the standings. There has been a lot of
publicity about her as my heir apparent. The irony is that she can't help
but win the money crown this year. There are still two more tournaments on
the schedule, but I have an exhibition tour in Japan beginning next week.
So for Jackie's title to have any validity in her eyes, and the eyes of the
press and public -and mine as well, I supposeit's felt she must beat me
this week head to head."
  "And people think you'd arrange a kidnappingjust to take her mind off the
competition?" asked Henri incredulously. "How can they believe for a second
that it would matter to you? You've been on top for so long,"
  Gin's stare answered Henri's question fluently. She had the same hungry,
competitive look he imagined she had possessed right from the beginning.
No wonder the debutante's life had held no allure for her.
  "You know we'll do anything we can to help, Gin," Laura interceded.
"Perhaps if you introduced us to Miss Phelps. . . "
 Gin shook her head. "That

 would be a bad move. Old friends of mine wouldn't have much standing in
her eyes, I'm afraid. Maybe you can convince her you're reporters, or
dedicated fans."
  Henri smiled. "I'm sure I can call in an old favor somewhere and wrangle
press credentials."

 It was arranged that Henri and Laura would follow the women anonymously
through their practice round that morning. They arrived at the first tee
around nine. Laura was wearing a golf outfit she had purchased in the pro
shop, a yellow jersey, powder blue skirt, and yellow sun visor. Henri wore
corduroys and a sports shirt that had a small New York Giants emblem over
the breast pocket. Laura bought him a Jack Nicklaus sweater to cover the
emblem.
  Because of the importance of the confrontation between Gin and Jackie,
as well as the kidnapping attempt, the regional press was out in force.
Newspaper reporters, slickly dressed TV newscasters, and ragged camera
crews traveled in a pack with two dozen local citizens along for the
sideshow. Henri and Laura mingled.
  At every opportunity, a member of the press tried to ask Gin or Jackie
a question. Each time they were told by Jackie's caddy, who wore a hat
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 97

 that didn't quite cover the bandage on the right side of his head, that no
statement would be made during the practice round. A press conference was
being arranged for four o'clock. The newshounds persisted through the first
nine holes, but most of them jumped ship at the turn and decided to wait out
the back nine in the clubhouse.
  On the fifteenth tee, Laura was standing beside one of the two course
marshals assigned to each hole. Dressed in white blouse, dark blue blazer and
skirt, the matronly woman sat in a director's chair near a thin rope fence
separating the gallery from the tee area. The rope bordered the right side of
the fairway and ended in a semicircle around the distant green.
  "Beautiful day," whispered Laura as they watched Jackie tee up.
  "Lovely, I. . . " She hesitated while Jackie hit her tee shot. Both women
were down the middle and short of the green. "I dearly hope it stays like
this through the weekend."
  As everyone left, Laura noticed that Henri had somehow managed to get
beyond the rope and was walking side by side with Jackie Phelps down the
fairway. They seemed to be engaged in a rather intense conversation.
  "What's that guy doing out there? Is that a reporter?" asked

 the other marshal, poised with her two-way radio, ready to call in a SWAT
team if necessary.
  "I believe that's her father," said Laura.
  At the green, Gin had chipped five feet short of the pin and Jackie eight
feet beyond. While they studied their putts, Henri rejoined the other
mortals. He stood near Laura and they talked quietly.
  "What was that all about?" she asked.
  "Apparently Mrs. Phelps likes older men."
 "What?"
 "That's what she told me."
  "And just how did you happen to be out there in the first place,
dearheart?"
  "Heard her talking with a marshal about dinner last night. Said she had a
lobster fra diavolo and wished she had been brave enough to ask the chef how
he made it. I jumped into the fray and offered my recipe."
  "Oh-oh. If she thought her life was in danger from the kidnapper. . ."
  "Funny lady. As a matter of fact, she asked me to join her for dinner
tonight. I'm picking her up at the Regency before her press conference. Seems
like a nice kid."
  While Gin's caddy held the flag stick he had lifted from the cup, the
players tried their putts several times, then moved away and hit a few more
from various
 points on the undulating green, trying to anticipate possible difficulties
during the tournament. A half dozen golf balls were on the carpet, in
constant motion either toward the hole off putter blades or returning when
the caddies kicked them back to the women.
  Laura grinned. "So this is goodbye, huh? Adi6s, toots, it was nice while
it lasted?"
  "Undercover is definitely the way to go with this, I think. I told her
I was a sports reporter from Albany, which isn't a total lie. Horseracing's
a sport and Saratoga's only thirty miles up the road."
 I "What happens when the conversation turns to golf T'
  "Simple. I smile and nod. It always works. Oh, one more thing. Let Gin
know what's up. You can be her long lost friend, and I'll be the mysterious
stranger."
  "Sounds like a plan you'll thoroughly enjoy."
  "It's got to be better than spending all my time here reminiscing about
the good old days at dear Vassar."
 "Bryn Mawr."
  "Besides, I can maybe~ provide a little extra protection for Jackie while
I'm hanging around."
  "Very noble. Would you like me to move out of the motel? I could sleep
in the car."
 Henri stifled a laugh. "No

 ROBERT GRAY

 problem. Jackie's hotel is downtown. She won't know anything about us.
You sure this is going to be okay with you?" "Now-he asks me."

 Laura and Gin decided to pass up the news conference and lunch together
away from the country club. Out of the public spotlight, Gin displayed a
weary and disconsolate face to her old friend. She drank two daiquiris
before they ordered and was sipping a third when the salad arrived.
  "It's really getting to me, Laura. This business with Jackie. I should
be out on the practice range right now."
  "Gin, whatever her troubles may be, they're not your doing. If anyone has
cause to be upset, it's Jackie Phelps. Does she have any idea why this hap-
pened?"
  Gin stared.into her drink. "That's something of a delicate subject. She
told me today that there were two other incidents recently. In New York she
~uffered food poisoning. In Atlanta she was nearly run down in a parking
lot. She thought they were coincidences until yesterday."
  "And now she thinks someone's trying to kill her?"
  "No, not at all. She thinks they're trying to intimidate and distract
her, keep her from
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 99

 beating me this week. She says it must be a demented fan of mine, but I
can tell she's also thinking it might be me ... and she's not the only
one."
 "That's absurd. How can . .
  "You know how people talk. I've never been what you could call 'one of
the girls' in this business. I keep to myself most of the time, and I'm
practically a recluse during a tournament. A lot of people resent that
attitude. I've also been queen of the ball for a long time. With this sudden
challenge to my crown, people naturally suspect I'd do almost anything to
gain an advantage. Even hire a thug."
  "There must be other suspects."
  "I suppose. Jackie has an exhusband who hasn't been heard from in a long
time. They were divorced a couple of years ago, before she made it big on
the tour. He showed up this spring, demanding compensation for all the
years he supported her as an amateur, even heckled her from the gallery
during one tournament. The marshals put a quick stop to that. I haven't
seen him since."
 "And the other suspects?"
  "Well, there's the caddy, Shep. He's reaped some of the benefits from her
success, but I think he'd like a bigger piece of the pie. He hovers over
her like a mother hen, picking out her

 clothes, screening her calls. Things like that."
 "Are they lovers?"
  Gin laughed. "Oh no. He's hardly Jackie's type. Her taste in men runs a
few years older, if you know what I mean."
  "So I've heard," said Laura with a raised eyebrow.

 As Henri rode up on the elevator to the third floor of the Regency, he was
scanning the latest issue of Golf Monthly. He'd just picked it up at a
newsroom outside the hotel, and was now taking a crash course in the finer
points of the game, hoping to learn enough buzz words to get him through
this charade.
  Already he had stored away such essential tidbits as the need for good
leg action on the downswing and follow-through on sand shots, He had also
discovered that Jackie was ranked second in Greens-in-Regulation, whatever
that meant, When the elevator began to slow its ascent, he was studying an
advertisement for a Florida vacation paradise, a full-page collage of sandy
beaches, luxury hotels, and tourists playing golf on flawless courses.
  He tucked the magazine under his arm. The ancient elevator doors ground
slowly open and he stepped out, nearly colliding with Jackie Phelps her-
self.
 100

 ROBERT GRAY

  Dressed in a long blue robe, her dripping wet hair pasted against her
head, she rushed past, screaming, "Stop him!" again and again, running all
the way to the end of the corridor, where it veered sharply right toward
the rear of the building.
  There she stopped. Her shoulders heaved and she was crying. Henri ran
over, slowing as he got close so he wouldn't startle her. Jackie turned to-
ward him and nearly collapsed in his arms.
  "Thank God! Did you see him?"
 "Who? Are you hurt?"
  She was too upset to speak. Shaking her head, she let him lead her back
to her room. A few of the doors along the corridor opened and curious heads
peeked out to see what was going on, then quickly closed before they were
asked to get involved.
  Her suite looked as if it had been leveled by a grenade. The sofa and
chairs were overturned, their upholstery slashed and the stuffing pulled
out as if somebody had been trying to gut an animal. A coffee table lay top
down, one of its legs missing. The marble base of a lamp had been used as
a battleaxe against an end table. The top of the bar had been swept clean
of everything but the phone, and bottles and glasses,

 many of them broken, littered the area. Shards of glass sparkled in the
carpet, reflecting sun rays streaming through the window, which was
stripped of its drapes and cracked.
  In her bedroom, Jackie's clothes closet had been emptied and the contents
thrown around the room. A jewelry box was dumped on the heaps of wrinkled
clothing, necklaces and rings glittering among the folds.
  Henri stood in the center of this devastation. Jackie retreated to the
bedroom and closed the door, saying she just couldn't talk yet. He heard
her switch on a blowdryer, which drowned out her sobbing.
  Tossing his magazine on the floor, Henri began looking around. He peeked
in the bathroom, which was still humid from the heat of her shower, the
mirrors just beginning to unsteam. The towels were all on their rods, and
a bottle of shampoo had spilled in the tub, sending a slow wave of amber
gel toward the drain. The sink was covered with bottles and tubes, their
caps gathered in a tidy pile near the edge. Two drinking glasses were still
wrapped in plastic.
  Jackie was brushing out her hair when she emerged from the bedroom ten
minutes later. Henri had completed his tentative investigation of the liv-
ing room, finding nothing that
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 101

 would be of much help.
  She wore a bright yellow sundress that exposed her tanned, freckled
shoulders. Its cheery color mocked the serious expression on her face. She
had applied makeup skillfully, like an emotional Band-Aid to hide her
distress.
 "You okay?" Henri asked.
  Jackie shrugged and sat on the edge of the overturned sofa. She reached
under the coffee table for her cigarettes, offered one to Henri.
  "Thanks, no. Gave 'em up," he said.
  She found her lighter, used it, then took a deep drag, blowing the smoke
out in a shaky exhalation. She reached into a large pocket on her dress, took
out an envelope, and gave it to Henri. Her hand was trembling. "This was left
outside my door an hour ago. I was going to show it to you."
  The note inside had cutout letters pasted on it in classic ransom note
style, though lacking a hostage or demands. It read, simply, "I will make
your life HELL." The letters of the last word looked like balloons, large and
bright yellow.
  Jackie was looking around the room, shaking her head. K'Why?"
  "Same guy, you think? The note, I mean, and this. . . "
  "Oh yes ... oh yes. Same one as yesterday."

  "What happened in here? I mean ... what happened?"
  She took a deep breath, crushed out her cigarette in an ashtray on the
floor. "I ... I was in the shower, with the bathroom door shut. I was running
late. I knew you'd be here any minute, so I left a note saying you should
just come right in. Dumb, huh?"
 Henri shrugged.
  'That jerk must have thought I'd be in the shower longer than I was. When
I shut off the water, I heard something crash out here, threw on my robe and.
. ."
  She wiped away another tear with her sleeve. ". . . I came out, and he
split. Like an idiot, I chased after him. Don't know what I'd have done if
he'd stopped."
  Henri walked over to the window and looked down at the street. A Cadillac
was pulling up out front, and the doorman welcomed the new arrivals with a
courteous tip of his cap. "I'd better call the police."
  "Okay. But tell them we'll be at the press conference. They can send
somebody over there to talk with me. We're late as it is. I've got some
things to get off my chest."
  "Was anything stolen?" Henri asked as he dialed.
  Jackie glanced at the bedroom, with its tangled heaps of clothing
andjewelry. She shook
 102

 ON-4-
 her head. "I can see a seven hundred dollar ring from here. It's not my
money she's after. It's my sanity."
 "She?"
  Jackie didn't answer. Henri gave the police her message. They were
cooperative, as he had found cops often were around celebrities. Then he
called the country club. Disclosing as little of what hadjust happened as he
could get away with, he left word that they were on their way with a big
story. That might keep the press sober for a little while longer.
  "Can we get out of here?" she said. "I'm really.sorry you had to be dragged
into this, Henri."
  "Don't worry about it. Maybe I can help."
  "You already have. Just by being here ... Oh, remind me to tell the front
desk to get cleaning people up here after the police have done their thing.
I don't want to come back to this. And do you think we could have dinner
someplace quiet after the conference, somewhere away from the madness?"
  "Could, definitely be arranged," said Henri, trying to put a mischievous
twinkle in his eye. He settled for a squint.

 ROBERT GRAY

  Laura and Gin were having a drink in the lounge of Gin's hotel when the
first reporter showed up. As soon as his eyes

 had adjusted to the dark, he headed straight for their table.
  " 'Scuse me, Miss Crossley," he said, his breath coming in gasps, as if
he'd just run all the way from the country club. "Jackie Phelps was late for
her press conference. The same guy who kidnapped her yesterday just trashed
her hotel room while she was in it, and she says that in the past couple of
weeks she was almost run down and her food was poisoned. Plus she got a
threatening letter today, too. She says she knows who hired this goon; says
it's somebody who's got a lot to gain from her emotional breakdown, this
weekend especially. We asked if that meant you, but she said she wasn't
naming names. Any comment?"
  Gin was still trying to decipher the early part of this frenzied monologue.
Laura stepped in as buffer. "Please leave us alone. I'll call the manager if
I have to. Miss Crossley isn't interested in tabloid journalism."
  The reporter ignored her. "Jackie Phelps thinks a professional thug was
hired to harass her. You know anything about that, ma'am?"
  Gin sipped her drink and stared away from them. Her face looked hard and
emotionless.
  "Miss Crossley, about these accusations . . ."
 "What accusations?" Laura
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 103

 demanded. "You said Jackie didn't mention names."
  "Listen, lady. Would you mind? The others are going to be here any second."
  "Others?" asked Gin absently, as if talking to herself.
  "Come on, Gin. Let's get out of here," said Laura. She stood to shield Gin
from the reporter as they made their retreat.
  "You'll have to face us sooner or later," he called as they left the room.
  Laura ushered Gin to the elevator. They took it up to her fourth floor
room. Gin made them another drink. Laura phoned the desk and asked that the
press be kept at bay. Then she walked over to a window, watched the
reporters' vans and cars pull up out front. They looked like an invading
army, gathering in huddled groups near the entrance to plot attack
strategies. Laura searched the mob for Henri, but couldn't find him.

  Jackie hadn't spent much time with the reporters. She'd confined her
remarks to a brief statement, knowing she would be facing a thousand
questions from the police immediately afterward.
  "Please, Henri, let's get away from this circus," she said, after the last
cop had asked his last question and the last reporter had finally figured out
what

 she meant by "no further comment at this time."
 "Where to?"
  "Anywhere. Some of the girls were talking about a place out by the lake
called Gratanos. How about there?"
 "Sure."
  Gratanos wasn't crowded. Henri and Jackie were given, as requested, a
secluded table. Although they were served a feast, much of it went uneaten.
An enormous antipasto was followed by fettucine Alfredo, veal Parmigiana,
homemade cannoli, and fresh espresso.
  Jackie picked at her food and smoked one cigarette after another. Henri
knew she was upset and found himself not eating out of sympathy. They did,
however, manage to drink nearly two bottles of wine.

 Gin fell asleep crying. In the privacy of her room, away from center stage,
  where she was known as the Ice Queen because of her tightly reined emotions
in competition, she surrendered to those same emotions.
  Laura closed the drapes against the evening sun that was heading toward
glorious setting over a distant hill. She took an empty glass from Gin's hand
and covered her with an afghan. Then she left a note saying she would call
later.
 The immediate problem was
 104

 ROBERT GRAY

 getting back to her motel, since Henri had commandeered their car. She
called for a taxi.
  As her driver sped across the city, Laura noticed a large neon sign on a
rooftop, blinking REGENCY HOTEL with irritating insistence against the
darkening sky. She remembered that that was where Jackie was staying, and
asked her driver to change course.
  Standing in the Regency lobby, she considered asking at the front desk for
help, but knew instinctively that she had to start elsewhere, that they would
politely brush off her inquiries. She walked across the lobby toward the
elevator as if she belonged in the building. No one took notice. She slipped
down a nondescript, poorly lit corridor on a hunch and found what she had
been looking for, a door with a faded brass plate marked "Head Custodian."
  The small room was furnished with three tables, a couple of stools, and
four green metal lockers. On a table near the door, a pile of ragged mag-
azines lay next to an open box of stale looking doughnuts and a filthy
percolator. The other two tables were pushed together against the far wall to
form a long workbench, on which pieces of a broken chair had been laid out
like bones.
  A middle-aged man, wearing blue overalls and workshirt,

 was daubing glue on a piece of the chair. He glanced up at Laura, then
reached for an oily rag to wipe his hands.
  "Help you, ma'am?" he asked, moving toward her. Laura backed away. Sensing
her unease, he stopped in the center of the room. Laura glanced away from him
to stare at a magazine on the table next to her. This month's Bon Appetit.
Henri had just received his the other day.
  "Do you cook?" she asked, knowing it was a senseless way to begin this
particular conversation, but seeing it as an out,
  way of starting.
 He laughed, then broke into
  cough that ended with a drawn-out wheeze. From his pants pocket he took
out a crumpled pack of Camels. "Nah. Chambermaids save all them things from
the wastebaskets and drop'em off down here. I'll read most anything."
  Now that some contact had been established, Laura began her subtle
negotiations while the man cupped his hands over a wooden kitchen match to
light up. Within minutes she had convinced him to show her the stuff from
Jackie's room. He said the police had told him to remove everything that
might have been touched by the intruder and store it where they could inspect
it later. They had already dusted it for fingerprints, and he'd heard one of
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 105

 them say that the guy had obviously worn gloves.
  His cooperation, of course, did not come from the power of Laura's argument
but from her purse. For fifty dollars, she had bought his eternal friendship.
  They took the service elevator down to the basement level. He led her to a
dark corner where the furniture was being stored temporarily, covered with a
dirty plastic shroud.
  "As I say, I haven't chucked anything out yet. After the cops, the
insurance'll want to have a look, I imagine."
  Laura began inspecting the pile of stuff as soon as he turned back the
plastic. The custodian, having already pocketed his fifty, stood nearby,
obviously impatient. She didn't let him bother her. Carefully she separated
the items while running through a checklist in her mind, trying to remember
what the contents of a hotel suite would be, what had been brought down here,
what had not. She even found a plastic garbage bag filled with chunks of
broken glass. She kept asking the custodian questions, and his patience had
to be fortified with another twenty.
  In the lobby once again, she found one of those old wooden telephone booths
near the entrance and went in to call another cab. Just as she pulled the
door shut behind her, Henri

 and Jackie entered the lobby, or rather they staggered into it. Henri had
some trouble with the revolving door, then tripped over the shadow cast by a
large potted fern.
  Laura held the phone away from her ear and watched them. Money had already
been deposited and a mechanical voice was making unintelligible demands.
Henri and Jackie disappeared into the elevator.

 Henri felt nauseated. He was not a wine drinker by profession. He had just
remembered that important fact. Jackie was clutching his arm. He didn't know
if that meant affection or fear of collapse on her part.
  He could not recall driving to the hotel from Gratanos. Then he realized
that Jackie had been behind the wheel, but that didn't make him feel any bet-
ter.
  When the elevator doors opened on Jackie's floor, Henri stepped out
tentatively, his mushy brain half expecting he would be run down again by a
hysterical female.
  Somehow they managed to find her door. Jackie fumbled through her purse for
keys, then handed them to Henri. He had to concentrate like a safecracker on
the task of getting the door open. After a half dozen failed attempts, he
fi-
 nally succeeded and the gates were thrown open.
  In his drunken state, there seemed to have been sorcery involved in the
room since they had left that afternoon. It was as if somebody had rewound a
videotape of the destruction. There wasn't a speck of dust, nor a chair out
of place, nor so much as a sock on the floor. The window ha&been replaced and
the bar restocked. The sofa was tight against the wall; the coffee table
upright and polished, displaying at one end a clean ashtray and at the other
a fanlike spread of magazines. The Golf Monthly Henri had left behind earlier
lay sandwiched between Newsweek and People.
  It was almost, but not quite, enough to make him sober. It seemed to have
just that effect on Jackie. She decided they both could use a nightcap. He
declined the offer. She insisted, and led him by the hand to the sofa. He
resisted. She scolded him for being an old prude.
  Jackie went over to the bar. Henri picked up his magazine and said he had
to leave. She turned, her eyes showing a peculiar mixture of surprise,
drunkenness, and disappointment.
  She said he had to stay. She was pouting.
 He said no again.
  She was angry. She approached him, noticed the mag-

 ROBERT GRAY

 azine. "Did you just take that off the coffee table?"
  "Yeah. I forgot it this afternoon. I have to go now, Jackie. I'm ...
  "No, you can't have that. It's mine!" she yelled, grabbing the magazine
from him, her voice that of a furious child.
  "I hate golf anyway," shouted Henri.
  "Get out! Get the hell out of here!" she screamed. "I thought you'd be
fun."
  "A lot of people make that mistake," he muttered as she pushed him toward
the door.
  He appreciated the helping hand.

  Henri remembered being in the elevator. If he wasn't mistaken, by the time
it reached the lobby, he was sitting. He thought he might be dying. When the
doors slid open, he fully expected to be confronted with the fires of hell.
Instead, he saw a radiant angel of mercy.

 Laura was sitting on the edge of the bed when Henri came to. The morn-
  ing sun seemed unbearably harsh, but he didn't complain. Stoicism was the
best defense for a hangover. Pretend it doesn't hurt, and anyone who might
want to nag you will have no ammunition.
 Stoicism.
 He sat up to accept the hot
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 107

 black coffee, and the pain splintered his skull. "Arrggh!"
 So much for stoicism.
  He reached for the cup like a beggar, with both hands. Relieved of it,
Laura returned to her armchair and picked up her own cup. She stared at him
with that bemused smile she always reserved for these special occasions.
  "Who am IT' he asked. "I think I've got amnesia. Do
 know you, ma'am?"
  "I am your queen, sir. We met in a pub. I wish to thank you for a splendid
evening, but I'm afraid you are to be executed at high noon. It is, alas, the
custom."
  "Thank God. At least I'll get rid of this head. It's a terrible burden to
bear."
 "Mmm, I can just imagine."
  Two cups later, they were ready to compare notes. Henri went first, since
they both assumed his mind would be the more vulnerable of the two. Laura
opened a notepad. As he confessed his transgressions of the past twenty-four
hours, she occasionally scribbled something down. He wondered if she was
adding up his demerits.
  When he was finished, she told him -about her day. He looked a bit sheepish
when she described his entrance to the Regency lobby, and shortly thereafter
her discovering him melting into a pool of nothing-

 ness on the elevator floor.
  "Not my finest moment," he confessed, and they laughed.
  After some further questions on both sides, Laura had a couple of pages of
evidence and speculation. They decided that it was time to make some ar-
rangements.

 here was a Pro-Am tournament that afternoon,
 I  Ta preliminary contest one
  day before the real action
 would begin. Jackie won it with
 her partner, a local plumbing
 and household wares magnate.
 Gin did not play particularly
 well, but the reporters were
 surprised at her composure and
 courtesy toward them while on
 the course. Whenever she passed
 near the media herd, she smiled
 pleasantly and shook her head
 as if hearing a silent punch line
 to a joke told at their expense.
 The barrage of questions that
 assaulted her all day was de
 flected by that same sweet smile
 and maddening silence.
  Jackie had been given a plainclothes police escort. Henri, although he had
patched things up with her and secured the dinner date she thought she still
owed him because of last night's fiasco, was relegated to the press corps.
Laura, on the other hand, walked the fairways with Gin in another group.

 Henri and Jackie were shown
 108

 ROBERTGRAY

 to the same table at Gratanos. The seclusion was necessary. Waiters were
already fending off a half dozen reporters anxious to sit within earshot.
  When they were seated, Henri ordered drinks and studied the menu. Jackie
folded and unfolded her napkin.
  "Why is this table set for four?" she asked.
  "Some friends of mine said they might stop by."
 "Not reporters . .
 "No."
  "Henri ... about last night. You have every right to be miffed. I was
pretty smashed, you know. I behaved like a brat. Forgive me?"
  Henri nodded and smiled. "I wasn't exactly an innocent victim, myself,
though I can't remember too much."
  Lighting a cigarette, she laughed nervously and asked him how he had
liked the ProAm. He offered belated congratulations. She began describing
an errant sand shot, and he wondered if she was going to ask him about her
follow-through. He was relieved to see Laura and Gin enter the restaurant.
Jackie was less pleased, stopping in mid-sentence.
 "What's she doing here?"
  "Oh, those are my friends, you know,- the ones I was telling you about?"
 "Then I'm leaving," said

 Jackie, pushing her chair back as the two women arrived. Laura stepped in
behind her and blocked the retreat.
  "Please, not just yet, dear. Don't let's be antisocial."
  "Who the hell are you?" asked Jackie.
  "I just happen to be this elderly gentleman's wife."
  Jackie looked over at Henri, who shrugged. "What? You never told me you
were married. I swear, lady, I don't mess with ... If you think I knew. .
."
  Laura and Gin took their seats and waited for Jackie's apologies to run
their course. ". . . so you see it was all totally innocent. Nothing
happened. ... Wait a minute. Gin, is this another one of your harassments?
You must be getting desperate. And you saw how well your plan worked today
on the course."
  Gin rested her cheek in her hand and stared at Jackie. Again that
inscrutable smile she had displayed all afternoon returned, for just a
moment. She said nothing in reply.
  Jackie looked at Laura, then Gin, then Henri. "There's something else
going down here, isn't there?"
  "You should know," said Henri.
 "What do you mean?"
  "I mean," said Laura, "the game is over. You lose, honey."
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 109

  Jackie opened her mouth to argue, but Laura waved her silent. "Don't
bother, Jackie. You made mistakes. Thanks to some digging of my own, not to
mention some relentless investigative work by my husband, we've managed to
stumble on enough to end your little charade."
 "You're crazy, I haven't. .
  "But you have. Shall I lay it out? I'd love to. Let me tell you a story,
purely hypothetical, of course. A promising young golfer, we'll call her
Jackie Phelps just to pull a name out of the air, needed some kind of edge
against a fading, but still potent, veteran. We can call her Gin Crossley.
Jackie arranged a series of incidents aimed at herself, which would make it
look like Gin might be resorting to desperation tactics. Public and media
sympathy naturally goes to the beautiful young star, not the coldhearted Ice
Queen. And everyone's predictably amazed that Jackie can still compete
despite all her problems. Meanwhile, Gin's concentration is decimated by the
strain of constant hounding by the press, driving her into seclusion and
depression."
  Jackie shook her head, as if she were being told an incredibly farfetched,
tedious fairy tale about people she didn't know.
  "Problem. Gin has this nosy friend named Laura who can't

 quite accept this scenario. I listen to my husband describe your room after
it was broken up. I have already looked at the damaged items taken from there
and made a small list of missing items, things that were not destroyed. I
can't help but wonder why, if this room has been so thoroughly demolished,
the telephone was left undisturbed on the bar when everything else was swept
off. Then I recall that, when I was in the lobby phone booth last night, not
only was I nicely secluded from view, but I had a perfect view of the
entrance. It occurs to me that perhaps there was an accomplice in the lobby
who phoned you when my husband arrived, long after the room had been
disrupted. That way you could jump in and out of the shower and time your run
past the elevator with Henri's arrival. What do you think so far?"
  Jackie lit another cigarette and looked to Henri for help. She didn't get
it.
  "Then Henri tells me about the silly little battle you two had last night
over that golf magazine. I wonder to myself, could there be more to it than
mutual petulance? I return to the hotel this morning and visit my friend the
custodian, to whom the chambermaids donate all magazines thrown in room
wastebaskets. For a small fee he allows me to inspect his
 ROBERT GRAY'

 collection, and what do you suppose I find?"
  Laura reached inside her purse and pulled out a Golf Monthly, which she
opened to an advertisement for a Caribbean vacation. Though part of the ad
had been cut out, in bright yellow balloon letters there remained "-0 SUN-
SHINE, GOODBYE WINTER."
  "You see, that really was Henri's magazine you took from him last night.
After you pasted up the fake threatening letter and tossed this copy in the
wastebasket, your chambermaid gave it to the custodian instead of throwing
it out. When it apparently turned up again last night, you panicked."
  "You call this evidence?" asked Jackie, though traces of moisture were
becoming visible in the corners of her eyes.
  "Who was the accomplice, Jackie?" asked Henri.
  She crushed out her cigarette, took a deep breath, and fought tears. "It
got out of hand, that's all. Shep knew how hard I have to work at my game
and the pressures, I'm under every damn day. He said life would sure be a
lot simpler if we could bring Gin down a notch instead of my continually
driving myself to reach her level.... I guess, when the stakes got so high
this last month, I grabbed at straws. Shep arranged the incidents and I
went along,

 even to the point of conking him during the kidnapping.... Whether you
believe it or not, Gin, I am sorry. I don't expect forgiveness or anything.
Shep said don't worry, but ... you could never understand what it's like
out there for someone like me.... It's all so easy for you, so effortless."
  Gin, her hand still resting against her cheek, was shaking her head
sadly. Henri was surprised to see that her eyes were hard and
unsympathizing. Despite all that had happened, he somehow thought she might
understand her younger, less gifted colleague's desperation.
  But then he saw something else. There was tension in Gin's eyes, as if
she were holding emotions tightly in harness. He thought that maybe Jackie
was mistaken in thinking the mask Gin showed to the world was also the
inner woman. He read pain in those eyes, subtly disguised hurt.
  He sensed that, in her own way, Gin had worked and sacrificed every bit
as hard for what she had achieved; that she resented Jackie's accusations
that she had not,
  And Henri knew it was this "other" Gin who was the person Laura called
her friend, the person she had consoled yesterday while everyone else was
assuming the worst.
 "Did you call the police?"
 TO WIN AT ANY COST

 ill

 Jackie asked Laura, avoiding Gin's cold stare.
 "No. You will do so now."
 Jackie didn't seem surprised.
  Laura continued. "And you will hold another press conference. What story
you fabricate this time is up to you. As long as you clear Gin of all
suspicion and end the rumors, she will not, against my advice, press charges.
Of course, you'll also have to make arrangements with the Regency to compen-
sate them for their damages."
  Jackie nodded again. She accepted some tissues from Laura and dabbed at her
eyes. Then she pushed back her chair. She glanced one final time at Gin,
trying to communicate her regrets.
  If the message got through, Gin did not acknowledge it. She stared
impassively into space.
  When Jackie was gone, the waiter arrived with the drinks Henri had ordered.
Laura took a sip of Jackie's rum and Coke. She offered some to Gin.
  "No, thanks, Laura. I can't drink with the tournament beginning tomorrow.
Disturbs my

 concentration, which isn't something I can just switch off and on. That was
apparent this afternoon. Fact is, I'd better be getting back to the hotel.
Have to wrap myself in a cocoon and prepare for tomorrow. But if you can bear
with my unforgivable manners and stay around until Sunday, I promise that,
win, lose, or draw, I will treat you both to the very best dinner this town
can manage."
 "We'd like that," said Laura.
  "And thank you, thank you so much. You really were marvelous. I don't know
what else to say. You saved my life, in a manner of speaking."
  Gin stood and walked around the table to kiss them. Then she moved across
the dining room. A reporter rose from his chair to ask about the mysterious
conference, but she walked past him as if he weren't there. Henri thought she
would have walked right through him had he been so bold as to step into her
path.
  Laura turned to Henri. She raised her glass and clinked it against his.
Their eyes met and smiles creased their faces.


Mrs. Bird's Dream House

 by

 Norma Siebenheller



       It was just my luck to be alone in the office when Mrs. Bird came in. I own
the business-4enny Hanson Real Estate-and I have two part-time salespeople,
but they. are both teachers and don't come in until three. I man the phones
until then and do my paperwork during the midday hours when things are
generally pretty quiet.
  Of course as long as I'm there the door is always open for walkin
customers. They are few* and far between, but occasionally we're pleasantly
surprised. We have our share of nuts, too-which brings me back to Mrs.
Bird.
  She came in about eleven o'clock, a tiny, fluttery little woman well
suited to her name. Pretty old, I thought, to be looking for a house,
though I suspected she might be wanting to trade down, get rid of a big
barn of a place and buy something small and manageable. But I was wrong.
Actually she never mentioned selling any-
 MRS. BIRD'S DREAM HOUSE  113

 thing, then or later. She only wanted to buy. And she was very specific
about it, right from the beginning.
  "You have, I believe, a small Victorian cottage for sale," she said as she
sat down next to my desk. "Painted yellow with white trim, a little turret on
the side with a tiny room at the top of it, steep sloping roofs, all slate,
and a white picket fence around the garden. . ."
  I searched my brain for the house she meant. We had several Victorians
listed, but none of them matched the description she gave. They were all
considerably larger, to start with. I showed her photos of them, but she
shook her head emphatically, saying, "No, no! This is a small house, only a
story and a half. It's got five rooms, six if you count the turret. Living
room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms ... the most lovely country garden
... mahogany paneling on the first floor, and gas lighting. . ."
  I asked her the address of the cottage, since she seemed to know it so
well, but she replied that she didn't know-that no one had ever told her. I
thought this a curious reply, but of course I didn't say so.
  "Do you mean that it isn't listed yet?" she demanded. I assured her that
that was indeed the case, unless, of course, it was being handled through
another agency.
  She said that was impossible, in a tone so definitive that it didn't occur
to me until later to wonder how she could be so sure.
  "Oh well, then," she said at last, "I suppose I'm a little premature. I was
so certain-but you'll have it. I know that, so I'll stop in from time to time
to check. I definitely want it, you see. It was never possible-until now-but
I've got to have it."
  "Let me take your phone number, Mrs. Bird," I said, "and I'll notify you
the minute it's available."
  But she didn't want to do that. She'd give me neither phone nor address.
That should have turned me off right there, but in my business the customer
is always right, so I just accepted her idiosyncrasies and let it go at that.
If she wants to be anonymous, I thought, so be it.
  In my own mind I doubted she'd be back. I forgot even to mention her to
Sally Reeves and Paul Morris when they came in that afternoon.
 I told my husband at dinner, though.
  "Maybe she lives in some old age home or something," he suggested, "and is
embarrassed about it. Poor thing's probably a little
 114   NORMA SIEBENHELLER

 tetched. One thing's sure, there'll be no sale-you'll probably never see
her again."
  I had to agree. But it was only two days later that the listing came in.
The house was just as she'd described it, and when I went out to Allison
Street to see it and meet the owners, Jim and Aggie Mulvane, I mentioned
Mrs. Bird to them.
  "Obviously she must have overheard you discussing the upcoming sale," I
said. "At the library, or the supermarket-"
  The Mulvanes looked puzzled. "Impossible," said Aggie. "We didn't know
we were going to be selling until yesterday. Jim was just notified of his
transfer-we're going to San Francisco-yesterday morning. I didn't know
until last night. The promotion's effective in thirty days, so we called
you right away this morning. We figured we didn't have any time to waste."
 A wild coincidence, then. But I wondered about it just the same.
  Of course I couldn't hold the house for Mrs. Bird. I had no guarantee
she'd ever show up again, or that she would really have money to spend if
she did.
  I took down the particulars and noted that the asking price, ninety-five
thousand, was very reasonable, considering the excellent condition of the
house and its desirable neighborhood. I said so, suggesting that the
Mulvanes might want to start a little higher and come down to ninety-five
as a final figure.
  "We're in a hurry," said Jim. "It should sell fast at this price, and
that's what we want."
  I agreed that it would and left to tell Sally and Paul, stopping to take
a couple of Polaroids on my way out. They were ecstatic when they saw the
pictures. This would be an easy sale.
  "I've got someone who'll snap this up," Sally said, ruffling the cards
in her Rolodex. "Here," she said finally, "Mr. and Mrs. Peter Ashley. Loved
the Madison Avenue Victorian when I showed it the other day but said it was
too big. There are only the two of them, no children. I'll take them up to
see it this evening if they can make it." She began dialing, and Paul and
I went to work on the details of a closing we had scheduled for the
following morning.
  The Ashleys, as predicted, fell in love with the house immediately and
signed a binder on the spot. By noon the next day a contract had been drawn
up and signed, and they turned over ten thousand dollars to the Mulvanes
as a down payment. Life should always be this easy, I reflected. Closing
was set for March eighth, only one month away.
 MRS. BIRD'S DREAM HOUSE  115

  Three days later Mrs. Bird returned, sat down next to my desk, and said,
"Well?"
  "You should have left me your phone number," I said evenly. "The house did
indeed come onto the market, and we sold it to the very first couple that saw
it. I'm sorry-"
  "But that's impossible!" she cried, her wrinkled little face flushing with
anger. "I told you I would buy it! How much did they pay? I'll give five
thousand more."
  Quietly I explained to her that the Ashleys had a contract, and that the
Mulvanes couldn't legally sell to anyone else now even if they wanted to.
"Why don't you let us look for another home for you?" I suggested.
  "It has to be that house," she answered. "I will have it. The Ashleys won't
keep it long.... I'll be back."
  "I'll suggest again that you leave a telephone number if you're truly
interested," I told her. "If you're going to rely on ESP like you did the
last time, you're bound to be disappointed."
  She threw me a venomous look, as if I'd insulted her grandmother.
  "I've never-had-a telephone," she'said, and walked back out into the
street.
  The sale went through as planned, and after that I forgot all about Mrs.
Bird, as the spring rush was upon us. I had to take on another part-timer to
handle the increased business, and May and June just flew by. I hardly had
time even to read the papers, I was so busy.
  As a matter of fact I missed the paper entirely on July seventh, and so it
wasn't until the following afternoon, when Sally came in, that I found out
the Ashleys were dead.
  "Carbon monoxide poisoning," she told me. "Came from a faulty gas heater,
so the paper said. The thing I wonder is, why did they have the heater going
in July?"
  "Maybe it was for hot water," I replied. But something about it made me
uneasy. I could have sworn the house had had a new hot water heater, an
electric one. Oh well, if the police were satisfied, I guessed I ought to be.
I just thought how ironic fate was ... how it could just as easily have been
the Mulvanes dead-or even old Mrs. Bird-instead of the Ashleys. I got very
depressed thinking about the chance nature of it all.
  And then Mrs. Bird came in, newspaper in hand, her face beaming with
satisfied pleasure.
 116   NORMA SIEBENHELLER

  "Well!" she announced, "didn't I tell you! Now I will get the house. Just
let me know how much you want for it."
  I have ceased being surprised at the stupidity of some people, but I'll
admit to being-well, bemused, I suppose-by her calm assumption that she
could now have what she wanted. Her thinking was that of a small child.
 I patiently explained that the house was not mine to sell.
  "The Ashleys probably had wills," I said, "and they've no doubt left
their estate to someone, a sister or cousin or the like. Just because they
had no children doesn't mean there are no heirs."
  That seemed to surprise her, and she reflected a minute. "After all these
years," she muttered. Then, brightening, "But you will sell it eventually,
won't you? I mean the heirs will sell?"
  I said that was possible but not certain; it would depend on who the
heirs were, and where they lived.... She wasn't pleased with my answer and
began pouting noticeably again.
  To snap her out of it I said, "Look, Mrs. Bird, maybe you ought to be
glad you didn't get the house last spring-it would've been you that was
dead of carbon monoxide, instead of the Ashleys."
  I wasn't prepared for her laugh: it shook the room. She was still
laughing when she gathered up her things and walked out the door.
 She didn't say so this time, but I knew she'd be back.

 By the time she returned, about two weeks later, the whole staff knew all
about her and Paul had dubbed her Mrs. Birdbrain. She was becoming a
nuisance, and we were convinced she couldn't really buy the house even if
it did come up for sale again. Her clothing, we now noticed, was quite worn
and old fashioned, and she always appeared outside on foot, never in a car.
She wasn't listed in the phone book (I'd looked, I admit it), and she
wasn't a resident in the town's only old age home, according to my Aunt
Margaret, who lived there herself. That meant she must be a boarder
somewhere-an unlikely state for someone prepared to pay a hundred thousand
or more for a house.
  I even asked my brother-in-law, who's vice president of our local bank,
if she had an account there, and he said she didn't. She just seemed to
materialize every few weeks and then vanish again, like morning mist.
  So whenever she came into the office I brushed her off rather quickly
with a "No news, Mrs. Bird" or some similar comment.
 MRS. BIRD'S DREAM HOUSE  117

 And that was true, actually-as far as I knew, no move had been made to sell
the house, and I still didn't know who'd inherited it.
  Then one day in September I was out in Allison Street again to look at a
new listing, and I noticed a plumbing and heating truck parked in front of
the Ashley house.
  "I see there's activity down the street," I said to my new client,
Genevieve Snow. "At the Ashley place."
  Yes, she replied, a nephew had inherited it and was planning to move in
with his wife and baby. They were, of course, having a new heating system
installed, but otherwise the house seemed to be in perfect shape. Even the
flower garden had bloomed, despite the fact that no one had tended it since
spring. "It's as if the house were just waiting for its next occupant," she
concluded.
  I finished my business and wondered how I would break the news to Mrs. Bird
on her next visit. She'll have to get used to it this time, I said to myself.
And maybe she'll stop bothering us so much, too. I wouldn't be sorry to see
the last of her.
  As I passed the Ashley place again, I thought how beautiful a house it
truly was. I didn't blame the old lady-the house certainly did have charm. It
was a gingerbread cottage, a dollhouse, a fairytale illustration, especially
with the old fashioned perennial garden in full glory. Who else around here
has hollyhocks? I wondered. I almost began to wish I owned the place myself.
  Mrs. Bird was livid when she heard that the nephew was planning to live
there himself.
  "This could go on and on, like before," she said angrily. "It could be off
the market for years, and I'll never be able . . ."
  "You can't blame people, can you, for keeping it for long periods of time?
After all, it is a darling house. No wonder everyone wants to live there,
it's perfect."
  That seemed to cheer her a little, and for a minute I thought maybe she'd
come to her senses and get over this obsession. Yet I could swear I heard her
muttering to herself as she opened the door to leave. I couldn't hear exactly
what she was saying, but it sounded like the same word over and over.
 Perfect ... perfect ... perfect ...

 Each time I took a client out to the new Allison Street listing, I'd
notice a change or two at the Ashley place. First it was a new mailbox,
then a planting of copper chrysanthemums out by the road. But in early
October I saw a different sight:
 118   NORMA SIEBENHELLER

 three carpets, rolled and left at the curb for the garbage men to carry
away.
  "Sewer backup," said Mrs. Snow when I asked. "The young Ashleys were
devastated. The carpets were new, but even after cleaning they couldn't get
rid of the smell, so they had to throw them away. On top of the oven
explosion it was a cruel blow, that's for sure."
 Oven explosion? I hadn't heard about that.
  It had occurred the previous week, she said. The pilot light must have
gone out, and there was a gas buildup. When Kevin Ashley walked into the
room with a cigarette, there was a terrific bang. He wasn't hurt, but the
wall oven was destroyed.
  I again thought of Mrs. Bird and how she ought to be grateful, not angry,
that all these troubles weren't hers.
  I was even more shocked, though, on my next visit to Allison Street, to
see a roofer in front of the Ashleys' house, covering the slate tiles with
asphalt shingles.
  Kevin Ashley was out on the front lawn, watching with a glum look on his
face. On an impulse I stopped and introduced myself.
  "That was such a lovely slate roof," I said. "What happened? Leaks?"
  "It's the oddest thing," he responded. "I thought it was slate, too. It
certainly looked like slate. But see-" he pointed to a low point near the
front door where the steep roof pitched almost to the ground "-it's. a
sham. It's like Styrofoam. The wonder is it ever kept rain out at all. It's
leaked like a sieve for the last month."
  I could hardly believe it. I'd felt the tiles in that same place the
first day I ever saw the house. It's so unusual to see a slate roof, and
I'd never touched one before. The tiles were cold and hard-stony-then, but
they were soft and porous today. I could penetrate the surface with my
fingernail: in fact, when I did so, a small piece broke off in my hand. I
slipped it into my jacket pocket, shaking my head in amazement.
  "The next thing we have to tackle is the paneling," he went on. "Uncle
Pete thought it was mahogany, but mahogany wouldn't bow like that."
  The great sheets of wood covering the living and dining room walls, it
seemed, were pulling away from their supports, and even cracking in places.
Several pictures had come crashing to the floor, and the wavy walls were
disorienting, to say the least.
  "I'll pull it off," he continued. "Maybe I can use it to finish the
basement some day, if I cut it into narrow strips. But we'll just
 MRS. BIRDS DREAM HOUSE  119

 have to refinish the walls beneath, and hope for the best. I can't afford
to repanel, no way. This house is draining me as it is."
  What a shame, I thought-this pleasant young man must have been thrilled
to find himself a homeowner at such a young age; he wasn't more than
twenty-five, I guessed-yet here he was, faced with one problem after
another. I noticed that the lawn was browning, too, something it hadn't
done in the heat of summer and which was almost incomprehensible now, in
the cool sunny days of fall. The bright flowers had withered and died
overnight, it seemed. The house was a far cry from what it had been only
six weeks before.
  Faul Morris told me the next installment, learned through the Lions Club,
where he and young Ashley were both members.
  "When they got the paneling off," he related, "they discovered the walls
underneath were covered with an awful slime. Smelled to high heaven. They
scrubbed it off, but it built up again. They've done it three times now and
still it's coming back. And to top it off, apparently the baby is allergic
to it-to the mold spores or something. He's developed asthma. Kevin says
he doesn't know how they're gonna solve it, or if they ever can."
  Just about that time winter hit us hard, with temperatures slipping below
zero several nights and hardly ever rising above twenty for weeks. This
halted the Ashley baby's allergy problems, but according to Paul it brought
a host of new troubles. The water pipes froze and burst during the worst
of it, and several of the upstairs windows had spontaneously shattered,
apparently from the intense cold.
  "You'd be shocked," he went on. "No more little dream cottage. It's a
shambles. Mrs. Bird should see it now-she'd be relieved she didn't get it
after all."
  Kevin and his family held out until late February, but then another cold
snap and its attendant ills caused him to throw in the towel. When the call
came to my desk that day, I have to admit I wasn't surprised. I was really
expecting it. He was ready to sell.
  "We're so disappointed," Kevin told me. "It was such a pretty house, and
I'd begun to research its history. It was built in 1905, you know-sort of
late for its style. People named Avis built it. They were to move in in May
but didn't actually come until July because of family problems-their little
girl died of diphtheria the day before they were to take possession. So who
knows, maybe the curse goes back a long time. But they lived here a long
time, urtil
 120   NORMA SIEBENHELLER

 the late twenties, and then their other daughter inherited it. She had
been a baby in 1905. She and her husband held it until ten years ago, when
they died. Mrs. Mulvane was their granddaughter. I got in touch with the
Mulvanes, you know-she said that although they'd never had the problems
we've had, the house had always had odd noises, things falling off the
mantel, bells ringing in the night-poltergeist stuff. They kind of laughed
it off, but I could tell she believed it. She said it was benevolent,
though. Benevolent! Not if it's causing the things I've gone through.
Anyway, I've had enough. We'll take the first offer we get. I just want to
get out of here-fast."
  Ah, Mrs. Bird, I thought, where are you now that we need you? For who
else would buy this wreck of a home but-a nut?
 She flew in less than a week later.
  We hadn't seen her all winter, but on that day in early March she looked
exultant, as if she'd finally achieved a goal.
  "Your ESP must be working," I said, and she visibly flinched. But then
she smiled and said, "I knew he'd sell it.... I'll give him forty thousand
for it, as is."
  A hard bargain, but Kevin really had no other choice. In addition to the
disasters with the plumbing and paneling, every appliance in the house was
on the blink, and a rotten smell pervaded the site even in the lingering
winter cold. I couldn't bear to think of what it might be like in spring
or summer. But that would be Mrs. Bird's lookout-if she could last that
long against the house's evident curse.
  The sale was consummated in a week-Mrs. Bird paid in used hundred dollar
bills-and the Ashleys moved out gratefully, putting behind them a year they
hoped quickly to forget. Mrs. Bird brought in nothing but a small suitcase
of clothes and a toothbrush, I was told. I hoped she also carried a large
measure of optimism, for it seemed to me she'd need it, and then some.
  What a surprise I had, then, when I drove,by one day in May to see the
garden blooming riotously again and the little house sparkling in the
bright spring sun. Mrs. Bird was sitting on the porch in a wicker armchair
reading a novel by Edith Wharton. She looked the picture of contentment,
and I couldn't help stopping to see the fantastic transformation.
  "How did you do it so fast?" I exclaimed when she showed me inside. For
there it was at its Victorian best again, the floors cleanly carpeted,
mahogany paneling again covering the walls. A fresh
 MRS. BIRD'S DREAM HOUSE  121

 cherry pie cooled on the kitchen table, and white fringed curtains
billowed in the breeze. It was a miracle.
  "Even the smell is gone," I remarked, to which she responded that there
had never been any smell, she didn't know what those young people had been
complaining about-
  "I don't know what they were thinking," she went on. "Why, did you know
they'd torn perfectly good paneling off these walls and stored it in the
cellar?" She'd had a carpenter put it right back on as soon as she moved
in. Unfortunately she'd had to buy new rugs, as they had thrown the others
away.
  "Where did you find all the period furniture?" I asked. I knew the
Ashleys had had modern things.
  "Oh, it was around," she said enigmatically. "Tucked in corners. . ."
  I had to admit she seemed to fit the house better than its previous
occupants, and she was so clearly happy that my earlier dislike of her
melted away. "You do belong here, Mrs. Bird," I remarked as I was leaving.
"You were right about that-right to persevere. I hope you'll continue to
be happy here."
  "Oh I will, my dear," she cooed. "I've been-well, preparing-for this, for
a long time."
  As we stepped outside, she reached up to that low corner of the roof,
where Kevin Ashley had had to cover the porous roofing material in order
to keep out the rain.
  "Can you imagine," she said, touching the shiny black tiles, "that young
man covered this beautiful slate roof with asphalt? Of all the Why the very
first thing I had the carpenter do, even before he restored the paneling,
was pull off all those cheap shingles and let this roof do its job again!
Who ever heard of covering up a good slate roof?"
  Who indeed? I felt the smooth hard stone again as I bade her goodbye, and
even now as I write this I can feel it still ... there's no mistaking
slate, after all. I can see it in my mind as clearly as I can see this
little piece of Styrofoam that I took from my jacket pocket.