More Good Old Stuff

Neighborly Interest (“Killers’ Nest,” Detective Tales, February 1949)

She came to the back door of the cheap new frame house, and Stan Ryan didn’t ask her in. He went out, pulling the door shut behind him. The back porch was a six-by-six platform, without roof or railing, supported by cinder blocks. New unpainted steps, giving promise of a short life, descended steeply to the muddy, grassless soil of the backyard.

Stan looked at her, saw that she was young and too thin, a vanishing prettiness in her pale face. Her brown hair was coarsened by a cheap permanent, and great blobs of yellow-brown mud were stuck to her shoes. Her hands were reddened, the skin rough, the knuckles swollen.

He gave her a polite and distant smile, and she opened her mouth to speak, but had to wait because of the whining grind of a trailer truck going by on the highway that led to the city eight miles away.

When the truck roar faded, she put on what was obviously a social smile and said, “I’m Mrs. Clarey and I live right down there.” She pointed, laughed thinly and added, “I guess I must be your nearest neighbor, Mr.—”

“I guess you are,” he said, still wearing the cool smile, ignoring her request for his name.

Obviously that was all she had planned, the conversation up to that point. Her smile began to have a strained quality, a smile painted on a thin face.

“George and I, we saw the baby carriage on the front porch and we thought that being neighbors and all... your wife...” She lost the sentence and flushed.

“She isn’t well,” Stan said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is there anything that I—”

“No, thanks.”

She scraped some of the mud off her shoe onto the edge of the top step, then decided that she shouldn’t have done it, as she bent over and shoved the clod loose with her thumb. She straightened up, rubbing her thumb on the palm of her other hand, her smile gone.

“I guess I’d better go and come back when Mrs. — when your wife is feeling better.”

“You do that.”

She went awkwardly down the steps, picking her way across the mud toward the strip of pasture that separated the two houses. The back of her neck under the tightly curled hair looked flushed. She turned and glanced back quickly and went on, moving as though she wanted to run from him.

Stan Ryan waited until she had crossed the rise in the middle of the pasture and disappeared on the far side. He could see the green roof of the Clarey house. He spat out into the mud, turned and slowly moved back into the house.

Sticky dishes were piled high on the kitchen drainboard and a neat row of empty bottles was lined up under the sink.

Stan Ryan was drenched in sweat, as though he had run a long way or lifted a great weight.

Art Marka stood in the dining-room doorway, his hands in his pockets, a stubble of black beard on his face, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His pale blue shirt was stained dark in wide patches at the armpits.

“How are your nerves, kid?” Art asked.

“As good as yours.”

“You know, kid, we really got an asset in that honest puss of yours. Even freckles you’ve got. Everybody trusts a man with freckles. She take it okay?”

Stan shrugged. “Guess so. She won’t be back. She’ll probably tell her punk husband tonight that we’re pretty unfriendly. No more than that. I told her my wife was sick.”

Art sighed and stretched. “Kid, I wish you had a wife and I wish she was here and I wish she wasn’t sick. This place gets on my nerves. I need a break.”

From the dining room, where the shades were drawn, Steve Jadisko said, “Stop dreaming, moon boy. Come on back. I’m about to knock on you.”

“Rummy, rummy, rummy,” Art muttered. “Go take my hand, kid. I’ll stake you. I’m going to take a nap.”

Stan went in and sat across from Steve at the cheap new maple table. The top had long dark scorch marks from cigarettes, pale rings from careless glasses.

Steve Jadisko was short and squat, with a face like a gray paving stone, an underlip that hung pendulously away from yellowed teeth. He looked like a moron, but Stan knew that Steve was probably smarter than Art Marka, who had planned the kidnapping.

Stan picked up Art’s hand and began to plan mechanically. The word “kidnapping” had an alien and foreign sound to it. An unreal sound. It was a word that brought on night sweats. Even though it had happened over three months before.

Steve knocked with eight, added up Stan’s hand, marked the score.

Marka had picked the family right. They had paid the four hundred thousand without a whimper, and the small bills weren’t marked. Art had insisted that the kid be kept healthy because then, if things went wrong, there was a better chance of a jury recommendation for mercy.

Steve had been the one who was in the second car when the exchange was to be made. He had the kid on the floor in back in the basket. Art had picked up the bundle and run back to the first car, and as soon as Art had checked the bundle by ripping open a corner, Stan had given the two beeps on the horn that was the signal to Steve to unload the basket.

But when Steve had shown up at the crossroads, the kid was still with him. Still in the basket. The kid had started to bawl, probably for food, and Steve, getting nervous, had pulled the blankets up over its head to stop the yammer. The kid had stopped.

Before Steve had unloaded, he had taken a look and found the kid’s face blue because it had smothered.

So at the crossroads, Art had made Stan take it back into the brush and scoop a hole in the leaf mold. The cold sweats came at night when Stan dreamed of how the body had felt in his hands, how still it was, how incredibly heavy.

So, of course, the family had blatted their troubles to the FBI, and it hit the papers the day after the Boy Scouts had found the grave, and now it was Murder One for sure. Stan Ryan thought a lot about death. Often he found himself clamping his solid thigh between strong fingers and feeling the aliveness of himself, picturing the blood rushing through the veins and arteries. It was a hell of a thing that they wanted to take him, Stan Ryan, and make him dead.

There had been no point in getting rough with Steve Jadisko because it was done and nothing could change it. Sometimes in the night Stan woke up and thought he had heard the kid crying the way it had cried in the cellar room where they had kept it for those five days before the payoff, five days while the family got the cash together.

Art had planned the hideout. A month before they had taken the kid, Art had bought the house two hundred miles away, eight miles from a big city. A cheap and lonesome house, a get-rich-quick venture by a small, sloppy building contractor.

Stan had lived in the house for two weeks before the kidnapping, following the routine that Art had set up for him.

After the kid was buried, they had split and gone to the house. The only car they kept was legitimate, a gray ’68 Plymouth. Registered. Stan Ryan did the buying. Art and Steve hadn’t left the house in three months, hadn’t been seen by a soul.

It had died off the newspapers, except for an editorial now and then. “Why haven’t the brutal murderers been apprehended?”

Stan sorted his new hand, sighed and said, “How soon do we leave, Steve?”

“Hell, kid! You know as well as I do. Another month and a half. Then we divide and split up.”

“Where are you going, Steve?”

“Kid, if I should tell you and if they should grab you, they got ways to make you tell them. If you don’t know you can’t tell them a thing.”

Stan knew where he was going. To Mexico and from there to Guatemala. He had heard they couldn’t extradite you from there. And it was cheap. If he was careful, his hundred thousand might last the rest of his life. One seventy-five to Art and one twenty-five to Steve.

For a long time Stan had been nervous about them killing him and leaving him in the house. But Art had explained that nobody should try anything funny because it might give the cops a quick lead and it would be easier to follow a trail from a known place, and if anybody got wise, they might well be signing their own death warrant.

Steve glanced at his watch. “Time for your housework, Mother,” he said.

Stan walked to the front door, took a cautious look around, then stepped out, grabbed the baby carriage and wheeled it into the front hall. Dust from the traffic had collected on the pale blue blanket. He took it out and shook it.

Testing the front door to make certain it was locked, he went out onto the back porch, across the muddy yard, and untied the end of the clothesline that was fastened to the corner of the garage. It was a lot easier to take in the line, clothes and all, than to take the clothes off each day and then hang them back on the line. He held them high to keep them out of the mud, untied the end fastened to the house and took the whole wad inside, dropped them in a corner of the kitchen. The line held aprons, women’s underthings, T-shirts, shorts, a couple of sheets. All the things necessary to show that the house was occupied by a man and wife.

The following day he would hang the washing back out, push the carriage out onto the porch, bringing it in at regular intervals, putting it back out. There was a celluloid rattle with a red plastic handle that had to be placed on the front porch steps or on the dirt below the front porch railing.

Steve came into the kitchen, looked over the larder, said, “Kid, you’ll have to go to town tomorrow. We’re getting low.”

Stan felt a deep tremor in his gut. He dreaded the strain of shopping, the strain of keeping from looking behind him as he walked from the car to the store, the strain of keeping the car at a speed of not over thirty-five as Steve had instructed him.

In the evening they had a regular routine. The front-room shades were not drawn, and Stan had to spend a certain amount of time seated in the window, reading. Art and Steve never showed themselves by an unshaded window. All lights had to be out by ten.

Steve moved ponderously around the kitchen, his hands deft and quick. Stan watched him for a moment, and said, “Ham and eggs again?”

Steve straightened up. “Maybe you’d like this job, Ma?”

“No. Go ahead. I’m not bitching.”

When the meal was on the dining-room table, Stan went up and awakened Art. Asleep, Art’s face had settled into flaccid lines, the skin under the stubble of beard looked like a rancid crust on a bowl of grease. When Stan touched him, Art jumped violently, his eyes staring and startled. Then he relaxed, swung his legs over the side of the bed, his face in his hands.

“Shouldn’t sleep during the day. My mouth tastes like the bottom of a dishpan.”

He followed Stan down the stairs. They ate silently and quickly. The coffee was hot, strong and black. Steve hissed out his cigarette in the dregs of his coffee.

“That’s a dirty habit!” Art snapped.

Steve laughed flatly, without humor. “Sensitive, Arthur? Go to hell!”

“I’m going nuts in this place,” Art said petulantly.

Neither of the other two answered him. Stan carried the dishes out to wash them and Art got the cards, brushed the crumbs away and started to shuffle them.

When the dishes were done, Stan watched them for a time, yawning. He went and sat in the lighted front room, turned the light out at nine and went up to bed. He lay in the darkness, thinking of the thin woman who had called. Not bad eyes. Maybe with a little meat on her bones...

Well, there’d be women in Guatemala. Women who would look more than once at a young guy with a hundred thousand U.S. dollars. The memory of the weight of the dead kid in his hands was trying to push its way up out of his subconscious, but he fought it back. Hell, they didn’t have a line on the three of them yet. No, it had been played smart. Careful.

Sleep was black soft water that lapped at him, finally washed over him, carrying him down into a frightening place, a sweaty sickening place...

Suddenly he was wide awake, a cry stifled on his lips. Sweat was cold on his face and he sobbed softly. In the darkness he glanced at the luminous dial on his wristwatch. Only nine-thirty. He had only been asleep twenty minutes. He pounded the pillow into a new shape, tried to relax.

From a distance he heard the drone of voices. Art Marka and Steve Jadisko. He frowned. Usually they were quiet over the rummy game. He wondered what they were talking about. There was no chance of getting down the stairs, because already the new staircase creaked badly.

He was sleeping in his underwear. Silently he rolled out of bed, padded down the hall and into the end bedroom, the one where Steve slept. The dining room was under that bedroom.

He knelt in the dark on the bare floor, stretched out on his belly, and put his ear to the varnished hardwood. When he stopped breathing, he could just make out the words. Steve’s voice: “... but he’s the cover, Art. You can’t do it until we’re ready to haul.”

“I know that. The way I figure it, we stuff him in the furnace and they don’t find the punk until next winter. When he starts to stink, it goes up the chimney. We get all set before we do it. We split his end even.”

Stan got slowly to his feet, went silently down the hall and got into his bed. He lay with his eyes wide open, looking up into the darkness. He did not feel the least bit afraid. Instead he felt a cold wrath. He was the cover. He was the fall guy. Kill him when his usefulness was over.

Oh, fine! Then he felt a deep, excited thrill that ran up his back. They had given him his freedom. The take was in the brown suitcase in the back of Art’s closet. Kill the two of them, take it all and leave. Four hundred thousand sounded a lot better than one hundred. Maybe with four hundred he could stop remembering the dead kid and the picture in the paper where the father was holding up the kid’s mother, where she looked as though she’d slip right down onto the floor if he let go.

Killing them was easy to say, not so easy to do.

He turned on the light. Quarter to ten. He pulled his clothes on, went noisily down the stairs.

“Hi, guys!” he said airily.

“Thought you folded, kid,” Steve said.

“Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get myself a drink.” He went on into the kitchen, rinsed out one of the coffee cups, sloshed it half full of rye. The liquor was warm and he almost gagged when he finished the big jolt. But it began to radiate warmth through him, and that was good.

He heard the slap of cards on the maple table, heard Steve say, “Knock with four, sucker. Catch you big?”

“Lemme see. Twenty-eight, thirty-three, thirty-six. Satisfied?”

“That takes care of the first two games, and damn near a schneider on the third.”

Stan forced himself to be calm. The odds were that the kitchen circuit and the dining room were on the same fuse. There was a pinup lamp over the breakfast booth, with a fake parchment shade. He strolled over, out of sight of the card players, pulled the plug out of the wall. With a kitchen knife he quickly unscrewed one of the little brass screws that held the wire tight, wrapped the loose wire around the other post. Then he plugged it back in. There was a crackle, a spit of blue sparks, and both the kitchen and the dining room went dark.

“What the hell?” Art said in a hushed tone, and Stan smiled in the darkness as he heard the fear.

“Nothing. I turned on this lamp out here and I guess it’s shorted. Must have blown the fuse. I’ll take a look. Maybe one of you guys ought to come along. I’m no electrician.”

Steve was the one who joined him. Steve clicked the cellar light on. Stan felt afraid. He hadn’t thought of the cellar light. He had wanted it to be in darkness.

Together they went over to the fuse box, and Steve opened the black metal door. He peered in at the fuses. “Here it is. This one,” Steve said. “You got a penny, kid?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Wait. I got one.” Steve twirled the fuse out, pulled the switch on the side of the box, and the cellar lights went out. Stan heard the clink of the penny, the grating of the fuse being turned back into the socket.

The cellar lights went on. Steve, his hand on the switch, yelled, “Okay up there?”

“Okay,” came Art’s answering yell.

At that moment Stan struck with the kitchen knife. Right under the left shoulder blade. The metal grated on bone and slipped away. Steve grunted in pain and whirled with uncanny speed, his eyes narrowed, his mouth twisted with pain. He reached toward his hip pocket.

Stan grunted with the force of the blow as he blindly stabbed down at Steve’s face. Steve stood perfectly still for a moment, one eye suddenly wide. In the place of the other eye was the dark protruding handle of the paring knife.

As he fell heavily on his side, rolled over onto his back, Stan looked down at him and giggled. Then he made a soft retching sound, turned away, weak with the sudden sickness, his hand against the rough, whitewashed wall. He pulled the switch down.

“Now they’re out again!” Art called. “What are you guys doing down there?”

“Just a minute,” Stan yelled hoarsely. He tugged at Steve, rolled him over onto his face. The knife handle gritted against the cement floor. Stan got the flat automatic out of Steve’s hip pocket. He worked the slide, heard the clink of a round hitting the floor. He thumbed the safety off and went up the stairs.

As he stepped into the kitchen, he called back, “I’ll see if Art’s got one, Steve.”

He knocked against the doorframe, blundered into the dining room. “Say, Art, we need a penny to fix the fuse. You got one?”

“I hope you guys know what the hell you’re doing down there. The lights going off like that gives me the creeps. Did I hear Steve laughing?”

“Yeah. He was laughing. Now you can laugh, Art.”

“What are y—” That was all.

It was as though the slugs drove the breath out of Arthur Marka’s chest. The darkness stank of smokeless powder. Stan stood and listened. A heavy truck went by, and then two cars.

Slowly he exhaled. He lit a match, shook it out. Three in the chest and the last one in the face. Art was slumped in the chair, his chin on his chest, both arms hanging straight down.

In the darkness, Stan pushed him off the chair. He hit with a sodden, dead sound. Stan found his heels, dragged him to the cellar stairs, got behind him and pushed. Art Marka’s body rolled noisily down the steep flight, thudded against the cement at the bottom.

He turned out the cellar light, went up to his room, saving the money until last. He packed his few clothes, walked through the darkened house to the back door. Very simple. Two suitcases on the kitchen floor. One full of money. All for Stanley Ryan.

The car was gassed up. Lock the door and leave. The clothes and the carriage were in and the front door was locked.

Three feet from his head the bell shrilled. He started violently, stood shaking in the darkness. He cursed. Crouching, he ran to the front of the house, looked cautiously out the front-room window.

A white trooper car was parked in front, the motor running.

Caught like a rat in a trap.

He slipped out of his coat, threw it aside, transferring the gun to the right-hand pocket of his trousers. With trembling fingers, he unbuttoned his shirt down the front.

He turned on the hall light, opened the front door, yawning, and said, “What do you want?”

Two tall troopers stood there, and behind them, her eyes wide, stood the thin woman who had paid a call in the middle of the afternoon.

The trooper nearest the door looked disgusted. “Mister, we got funny stories and we have to look into them.”

“He’s the one! He’s the one!” the woman said shrilly.

“Yeah, lady. We know. Mister, I understand your wife is sick. Is that right?”

Rising hope gave Ryan the courage to smile. “Not very sick. Just a little under the weather. You know how it is. She only had the kid about four, five months ago.”

“If I’m not too curious, what is all this? What did this woman say to you? She called this afternoon and I thought she acted a little off her rocker.”

“I might as well tell you, mister,” the trooper said. Ryan moved out onto the porch.

Suddenly the woman darted into the house. Ryan made a grab for her and missed.

One of the troopers grabbed Ryan and the other one went after the woman. The trooper who had taken Stan Ryan’s arm said, “Joe’ll grab her. She’s just a harmless nut, I guess.”

Stan, listening, heard the woman go up the stairs, the trooper pounding behind her. He knew that there wasn’t much time. The woman would be looking for a woman and a baby.

The money was in the kitchen. There was a small chance. He turned half away from the trooper, let his hand drop down until his fingertips touched the cool butt of the gun.

From somewhere upstairs the woman yelled loudly. Stan yanked the gun out, shot twice at the middle of the trooper.

He ignored the clothes, grabbed the brown suitcase. Someone shouted hoarsely. A more authoritative gun roared.

The coupe motor caught the first time, and he was glad that he had backed it into the garage.

It jumped down the drive and a figure ran out from the side of the house, an orange-red jet of flame spurting toward the car. The car swerved, thumping on the rim, wedging against the side of the house.

He ran fifty feet before the slug smashed his shoulder. The impact drove him over onto his face and he rolled, sobbing, yelling with pain and fear and the knowledge that he would die.

Two days later, after Stanley Ryan had dictated his confession to the police stenographer who sat by his hospital bed, he said to the lieutenant, “I’ve been thinking. Why did that Clarey woman bring the troopers around?”

The lieutenant, a weary-looking man in his fifties, inspected the end of his dead cigar and said, “Why, son, she thought you’d gone out of your head and killed your wife and kid.”

Stan puzzled over that. “Why should she think anything like that?”

“She has two little kids of her own, son. She found the weak spot in your window dressing.”

“Weak spot?”

“Sure, Ryan. Weak as hell. You see, you had those things on the line every day, and every day she’d take a look, because she missed the one thing that should have been out there. She missed the one thing real bad. And finally she had to come over to talk to you. If you’d given her a chance, she was going to ask about it. There was one very necessary thing that wasn’t out there every day blowing in the breeze. And young Mrs. Clarey knew there wasn’t any diaper service that far out of town.”