100 malicious little mysteries Read online

  He was a slender man, smooth and oily, cold and deadly as a rattlesnake. He sat there, smiling contemptuously, a stain on the community. Any time he pulled the strings, a couple of politicians danced.

  And then, quite suddenly, two months ago, a reform ticket had placed Dan Raynor in the district attorney’s office. Dan Raynor was not for sale. Nobody had that kind of money. Alone, Raynor was not dangerous. But teamed with his special investigator, Tom Gahagan, they menaced the organization, the very existence of Hauser’s machine.

  Gahagan was all cop. Ploddingly, meticulously, he’d piled up the evidence against Hauser, enough to send the man to the gallows, and some half dozen big shots with him.

  So of course Raynor had to go. The evidence had to be blown out of the safe. And Gahagan—well, that was the question. Where was Gahagan? The only man who could tie Hauser to this rap.

  At the bottom of the river? Bought off? Hiding? I didn’t know, and it probably wouldn’t do much good if I did.

  Because this was one murder case that was fixed. Good and tight. Hauser was going to go scot free.

  The jurors had been bought and paid for. I’d known that since the second day of the trial. What’s more, Hauser was the man who’d hoisted Martin to the bench. And the judge was going to protect him even if he had to rewrite the rules of evidence. With Gahagan missing there wasn’t anything I could do.

  What I really wanted though, was to get Gahagan up there on the witness stand. I wanted him to shout his testimony until the bailiffs dragged him from the chair. Sure, it wouldn’t hang Hauser, but the spectators would hear it, the reporters would hear it, and maybe the world would learn what was going on in this beautiful city of ours.

  You see, Gahagan had been in the district attorney’s home that night Raynor was killed. He had been in another room, but at the sound of the shot he’d caught a fleeting glimpse of the car as it rocketed away down the street. He had recognized it as Hauser’s.

  But—Gahagan—was—missing—

  I clenched my fists. Fifty grand! A hundred grand! That kind of money was chicken feed to Hauser. But it might turn the head of even a man like Gahagan.

  I know. It had been offered to me. I was still weak from temptation. But if I’d ever accepted a bribe from Raynor’s killer, it wouldn’t have been much fun living with myself.

  The weapon that had smoked down Raynor had been tossed through the window of his study. It was an old Colt army automatic, millions of which had been manufactured, practically impossible to trace. It had already been introduced into evidence. I picked it up and showed it to the thin man on the witness stand.

  “When you heard the shot and ran into the deceased’s study, where did you find this gun?”

  Raynor’s secretary wet his lips, his eyes wandered to the floor. He said: “Mr. Raynor was holding it in his hand.”

  For a brief instant I was shocked into immobility. I just stood there, staring at him, completely stunned. A whisper rippled through the courtroom.

  It had happened. They’d bought off Raynor’s secretary. They were trying to show that the D.A. must have committed suicide. My own witness had boomeranged. And I was bound by his answers.

  I guess what happened then was absolutely unprecedented. I saw red. My face was burning. I took a single step forward and sent my fist crashing full into his face.

  Hell broke loose. Judge Martin started banging with his gavel. Sam Lubock was on his feet shouting. Two bailiffs were dragging me back. Hauser’s mouth was warped by a thin smile. If I could have got my hands on him at that moment, I would’ve choked the life out of him.

  I waited for the judge to finish his scalding comments. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, licked, beaten, ready to give up the fight. And then, suddenly, there was a flurry in the rear of the courtroom.

  I turned and the pulse started hammering against my temples. A tall figure, his hands pressed tightly against his sides, was walking in stiff-legged, jerky steps down the aisle.

  Tom Gahagan . . .

  He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at anybody. He went straight to the witness chair, gripped the arms and eased himself into it. His eyes were narrowed, his lips grim and colorless. He seemed tired, almost exhausted. Then his eyes found mine, and 1 saw a thin sheen of oily perspiration standing out over his whole face.

  Lubock vented an audible gasp. Hauser was staring pop-eyed. Both men looked dumbfounded, as if they’d paid Gahagan to go to Africa and were suddenly amazed to find him here. I knew then that they had never expected him to show up.

  Excitement quickened my blood. Here was a chance to do something. If only Judge Martin didn’t order the bailiffs to throw us both into the clink for contempt of court. I asked Gahagan a few preliminary questions and he answered them in short cryptic sentences. Then I picked up the old Colt army automatic and handed it to him.

  “This is the People’s exhibit one,” I said. “Do you recognize it?”

  He turned it over slowly in his hands. You could hear a watch ticking in the courtroom. All eyes were focused upon him. He opened it, peered into the empty chamber, then held it loosely in his lap. He looked up.

  “Yes. This is the gun that killed Mr. Raynor.”

  “Where were you when the shot was fired?”

  Gahagan’s eyes met mine in a steady look. “I had just opened the door to Mr. Raynor’s study.”

  That was a lie! I sucked in a sharp breath, waiting for Lubock’s objection. Gahagan hadn’t been near the study. But Lubock was biding his time. I knew then what was going through Gahagan’s mind. Probably he felt that if all the other witnesses were perjuring themselves for the defense, he could lie for the prosecution.

  A thought struck me and suddenly my hands were clammy, like two lumps of cold dough. What if Gahagan had sold himself? What if he testified that he had seen Raynor commit suicide? Scarcely breathing, I asked my next question.

  “What did you see?”

  Lubock and Hauser were both leaning tensely forward, watching Gahagan. Judge Martin sat stiffly at the bench. Gahagan’s eyes traveled along the counsel table and came to rest on Hauser. He said in a low voice:

  “I saw Hauser standing at the window holding this gun in his hand, pointing it at Raynor, like this—”

  And he lifted the gun, sighting along the dull barrel directly at the defendant. Hauser’s mouth sagged loosely and he stiffened in his chair. For once in his life I could see that Lubock was speechless. But his neck muscles were taut and he was getting ready to jump up. For the moment, Gahagan’s play had caught everyone by surprise.

  His eyes were opaque, like blank empty windows. A vein bulged in a blue diagonal across his forehead. His voice came out clearly, almost ringing:

  “Hauser pulled the trigger—like—this—”

  A shot exploded in the courtroom. And as I watched, a raw red-lipped hole suddenly jumped into the temple above the bridge of Hauser’s nose. A split-second of unbelief rioted across his face, then he toppled forward over the defense table.

  A woman screamed, high and shrill. Spectators ducked under their seats. The jurymen cowered back against the rear of the jury box. Judge Martin held his gavel poised in midair. Lubock held a horror-stricken look upon his client.

  Gahagan dropped the gun. It clattered to the floor. His face, the color of wax, was lighted by a smile, a strange triumphant smile. Unseen, he had slipped a shell into the automatic. I grabbed his arm and dug my fingers into it.

  “They didn’t want me to testify,” he said in a dull voice. “They were holding me in a warehouse.”

  “Good Lord, man! This is murder. You didn’t really see Hauser kill the D.A.”

  Gahagan coughed. “No, but I saw him kill somebody else down in that warehouse this morning.”

  I stared at him. “Who?”

  “Me,” Gahagan whispered hoarsely.

  And then he tumbled forward out of the witness chair in a half turn,
sprawling to the floor on his back. He didn’t say anything more. I didn’t expect him to. For his coat had pulled open and in stark crimson relief against the white of his shirt was the jagged tear of a bullet hole.

  The Way It’s Supposed to Be by Elsin Ann Graffam

  We had so much fun. I don’t remember about when I was real little, but I’m ten now and I know we had a good time, just the two of us, ever since my father went away.

  Mom had his picture on the mantel and she talked about him all the time—how he loved me so much and what he was like and stuff. My Dad was a great guy, on the football team at college and everything. Then he was a stockbroker and married to Mom. Mom was glad he bought stocks for us because that meant she didn’t have to go out to work and leave me when he went away.

  I was three when he went away and I don’t remember him. I tried to when I was little, but I just couldn’t. But it was okay. He was sort of alive to me in the picture. Mom would say, “Daddy would be so proud to know you had all A’s on your report card,” and I’d look at his picture there on the mantel, and he’d be smiling, happy for me. I bet you didn’t know that pictures could smile, did you? Well, they can.

  People called Mom a widow and I didn’t find out until last year what that meant. Dad was an old man. He’s got gray hair in the picture and that means you’re old. Mom doesn’t have gray hair. She’s young. And pretty. She’s got a lot of fluffy blonde hair around her face and big blue eyes. She’s the most beautiful lady in the whole world.

  I’ll never leave my mother. The other guys, you know, they say they’re going down to Florida and dig for treasure or go overseas and look for monsters in some lake. They can’t wait to leave home. But not me.

  I can’t tell them that. I told Billy Earle once that I’d never leave Mom and he laughed at me. But they can’t understand. They don’t have a Mom like mine. All their mothers have lines between their eyes. That means they frown a lot. My mother never frowns. She’s the nicest person on earth. I’ll never leave her. I told that to Dad a year ago and he looked down at me from the mantel and said, “You’re a good boy, Glenn.”

  Maybe the guys don’t understand, but Dad does.

  Everything was real neat until Mr. Knott came along. One night last summer I woke up because I thought the TV was on too loud. I went into the living room to tell Mom to turn it down, and there was a man sitting on the sofa. Mom jumped when she saw me.

  “Is anything wrong?” I asked her.

  “No, everything is wonderful,” she said.

  I didn’t like Mr. Knott. He was old and he had a big nose.

  “Who is he?” I asked her.

  She said, “This is Mr. Knott and he’s my friend.”

  I went back to bed but I couldn’t sleep. I thought I was the only friend Mom had. I hoped with all my might that Mom would never see him again. But she did. He was over a lot. Mom would say, “Come on, Glenn, just say hello to Mr. Knott.”

  When my tenth birthday came last October, I shut my eyes real tight when I blew out the candles, and I wished that Mr. Knott would go away and never come back. But it didn’t work.

  After a while the lady down the street came to babysit me. Mom would go out with Mr. Knott. I’d lie down on my bed the whole time they were away, thinking maybe I’d die of sadness and then Mom would be sorry for what she did. But I never died and Mom kept on seeing Mr. Knott.

  Once they were away for a whole weekend. Mom kissed me good-bye that Saturday morning and hugged me real tight. But I didn’t care—nothing mattered any more, not after that rotten old man came along. I wanted more than anything else for it to stay that way, just the two of us, Mom and me. The way it’s supposed to be.

  “Surprise!” Mr. Knott said to me that Sunday night when he and Mom got home. “Your mother and I were married yesterday morning,” he said.

  Mom said, “That’s right, Glenn. I didn’t want to tell because we were afraid you wouldn’t understand. We’re going to be so happy!”

  We, we, we! Only the “we” wasn’t Mom and me, it was Mom and that old man.

  You don’t die from crying, or I’d be dead now. I never said a word to him, or looked at him. Mom and he would talk and I’d feel like I was in a deep dark hole. The more days that went by, the deeper and darker that hole got. It was blacker than night there.

  Dad didn’t like it any more than I did. Sometimes I’d stand in front of the fireplace and look at his picture on the mantel, and you know what? He was crying. Big tears came down the glass in the frame. They made a puddle on the mantel.

  One night when I was talking to Dad, the puddle ran over and made spots on the rug. Mom came in the room just then and asked me what I was doing.

  “Look!” I said. “Dad’s crying because you married that man! See?”

  She looked at me funny and left the room. Right after that I heard Mom and Mr. Knott arguing. It was the first time in my life I ever heard my mother yell.

  The next day I got home from school and threw my books on the sofa. Something was wrong. I looked around the room. Then I saw it. Or, I mean, I didn’t see it. There was a blank space where Dad’s picture should have been.

  “Mom!” I yelled. “Where is it?!”

  “Where is what?” she asked. As if she didn’t know!

  “My Dad’s picture is gone!”

  And she said, “Well, Mr. Knott thought it was a good idea to put it away since he is your father now.”

  I banged my head against the mantel and yelled that Mr. Knott was not my father, I had only one real father and he was the man in the picture.

  Mom said, “Glenn, you’re old enough to realize that a lady needs a husband. Your father has been dead for six and a half years. I was all alone. Now I have somebody to love me. Mr. Knott is my husband and the sooner you accept that the better off we’ll all be!”

  And she had frown marks between her eyes.

  That night the babysitter came over. Mom and Mr. Knott went to the movies. I was glad they were gone. I snuck into Mom’s room and opened the top drawer of her dresser. I knew it would be there. I was right.

  I took it out and looked at it. In the little bit of light from the hall, Dad’s face was more alive than ever. His eyes looked right into mine and he told me exactly what to do.

  That was five days ago. I’m out of that dark hole now. Things are fine again. It’s just Mom and me, the way it’s supposed to be.

  Some cops came and talked to me after they took the body away. Mom was crying. “Don’t worry,” the biggest cop said to her. “They can’t touch the boy. He’s too young to know what he did.”

  Mom shook her head until her hair was flying and she said something I don’t understand to the cop.

  ‘‘That’s exactly.” she cried, “what they told me six and a half years ago!”

  Thank You, Mr. Thurston by Ed Dumonte

  They all told me, “Mr. Thurston can help you.” When I took my pictures to dealers or collectors or to other artists they all said, “See Mr. Thurston—he will know what to do.” But how could I? Alone and friendless in the city, I had no influence, no channel of communication, to a man of Mr. Thurston’s stature and importance. I understand this now. But I wasted many weeks sitting in the anteroom of Mr. Thurston’s office. Each morning I rolled up several of my best canvases and went to Mr. Thurston’s office to wait. “Mr. Thurston sees no one without an appointment,” the girl would tell me. Or “Mr. Thurston will be in conference all day.”

  All the mornings and all the afternoons of all the days I waited patiently, hopefully, and I never got so much as a glimpse of Mr. Thurston. At last my money ran out and I had to take my paintings into the streets again—to display on fences and trees.

  But I didn’t stop trying to get Mr. Thurston’s attention. Everybody knows that an artist has no chance of getting a showing or any critical attention unless he can win the patronage of some great man. Perhaps, I reasoned, if I couldn’t speak for my paintings, my
paintings could speak for me.

  Among my best works were scenes of the city, done soon after I arrived, while the city was still fresh and beautiful to me. One of my impressions was a skyline of vertical lines and planes done in shades of gray. Another, painted at the waterfront, interpreted the warehouses as cubes of dingy brown, the river as a parallelogram of polluted blue, the whole surmounted and spanned by arches of rust. These were two of the pictures I rolled into a tube and mailed to Mr. Thurston.

  After a week my paintings were returned . . . unopened. Stuffed into the wrapping was a note: “Mr. Thurston does not examine unsolicited artwork.”

  I was almost angered by the note. But when I thought about it, I decided it was reasonable. Mr. Thurston was a great and influential man, his name on every tongue. He must receive thousands of requests for help every week, hundreds of paintings from daubers and Sunday artists. He could hardly be expected to give his valuable time to every unknown artist who called on him.

  For a time I puzzled over ways and means of getting to see Mr. Thurston. My problem was solved, I thought, by a prosperous-looking gentleman who one afternoon stopped and examined my street display.

  He liked my pictures. They showed depth and feeling, he said. Excellent composition, striking colors. When he asked why I didn’t have a dealer to represent me or a gallery to hang my pictures, I told him, and he understood.

  Although he had no influence himself, he said, he had a friend who would be most interested in seeing my work.

  And he wrote me a letter of introduction to Mr. Thurston.

  Was it to be that easy, then?

  The next day I brushed my suit, applied a bit of black paint to my shoes, and with two paintings under my arm I went back to Mr. Thurston’s office. I interrupted one of the familiar excuses to give the secretary my letter. She disappeared into the inner office, returned after a few moments, and handed the letter back to me.