The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories

Stolen Goods

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1979.

It wasn’t much of a twenty-fifth-birthday celebration. I was dead broke except for the rent money stashed in my room. Stan had a few bucks, but he had promised to take his mother out to dinner. All he was willing to blow for was a six-pack.

It was a warm Saturday afternoon, and we were just drifting around in Stan’s station wagon, sipping beer. Stan had just turned off Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood onto a street called Archwood when he suddenly pulled over to the curb and set his beer can on the floor between his feet.

I was slumped down with my knees against the dashboard. Figuring he had spotted a cop, I quickly set my beer on the floor too and sat up.

But it wasn’t a cop that had caught his attention. It was a duplex house a little way down the block. A sign on the lawn in front of the farthest unit said FOR RENT and gave a realtor’s address and telephone number. A U-Haul truck was backed into the driveway, and a man and a woman were just mounting the porch steps.

He was a burly, thick-shouldered man of about forty, wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt that exposed powerful forearms matted with black hair. She was a well built but rather substantial blonde of perhaps thirty-five in slacks and low-heeled shoes. Presumably they were the Stokeleys — a decorative redwood sign with that name printed on it hung just below the porch roof in front of the door. As we watched she preceded him through the open front door.

Then I saw what had attracted Stan’s attention. A console television set stood on the grass at the bottom of the porch steps. Apparently the couple had carried it from the house and set it down instead of loading it onto the truck, then reentered the house for some reason.

“What do you think, Jerry? Stan asked.

I looked at him. “About what?”

“Think we could rip it off before they come out again?”

“Are you nuts?” I inquired. “Suppose they caught our license number?”

“It’s too late anyway,” he said ruefully. “Here they come.”

The man was backing through the front door, carrying one end of a sofa. The woman had the other end. They carried it down the steps and slid it onto the truck, then lifted the television set on after it. Apparently they had decided after they got the TV set outside that the sofa should go on first.

As the man raised and latched the truck tailgate, the woman went back up the steps to close and lock the front door. Through the barren windows we could see there was still some furniture inside.

I said, “They must not be moving a distance. It looks like they plan to make more than one trip.

We watched as the woman came back down the steps and both she and the man climbed into the truck cab, the man behind the wheel. After the truck had driven off, Stan examined the nearer unit of the duplex thoughtfully. The front drapes were open and no one could be seen inside.

“It looks like their neighbors are out,” he commented.

“So?”

Instead of answering he climbed out, walked up the sidewalk to the duplex, and rang the upstairs bell. After waiting a few moments he returned to the car.

“Nobody home, he said. “Do you think there’s an alley behind the place?”

“Why don’t you drive around and see?’ I suggested.

There was an alley, and the backyard of the duplex was surrounded by a six-foot-high redwood fence that the neighbors couldn’t see over.

Stan parked so that the rear of the station wagon was just beyond the gate. He opened the rear end before we went through the gate. I went up the back-porch steps first. I examined the neighbor’s back door, and made a face when I saw it had one of those fancy deadbolt locks that don’t work by spring action but have to be locked with a key.

The other one was a simple spring lock. It was unlikely anyone was inside or the woman wouldn’t have locked the front door but just to be safe I pounded on the door.

When no one answered I tried the knob. The door was locked but spring locks are no problem. It took me about fifteen seconds to push the bolt open by shoving a plastic credit card into the slit between the door and the jamb.

The door led into the kitchen. A quick glance around told us there was nothing of interest there. Off the kitchen was a dining room devoid of furniture. A pair of bedrooms off a central hallway were empty too. The only room still containing furniture was the front room, and it contained only three items — an overstuffed chair, a spinet, and a combination AM-FM radio, tape-and-record player.

The latter was a beaut. Hi-fi is my hobby, and I’ve checked out every stereo combo on the market. This one, I knew, retailed for about $1,500 without the speakers.

Glancing around, I noted spots in the opposite corners of the room at ceiling level where the wall paint was lighter than that surrounding it. Pointing out the spots, I said ruefully, “The speakers were there. They’ve already moved them.

“You can buy speakers anywhere,” Stan said. “Is it a good set?”

“About fifteen hundred clams, as is.”

Stan emitted a small whistle. “That means Spooky would lay out a hundred and fifty.”

I had been thinking in terms of replacing the hi-fi set in my room, but that was only an idle dream. I needed the seventy-five bucks that would be my share a lot more than I needed a better hi-fi. I knew we would have to fence it. Sighing. I stooped to grab one end and told Stan to get the other end.

It was heavier than I d expected. We re both pretty sizeable guys. At six-feet-four but only 150 pounds, I was pretty strung out, but I was strong as an ox. And Stan, who was thirty-live pounds heavier than me, didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. We had to set the cabinet down to rest twice en route to the back gate though. It must have weighed two hundred pounds.

We finally got it loaded into the back of the station wagon. Stan closed up the rear end as I was shutting the gate. He slid under the wheel and I climbed in the other side.

As we drove off, I lifted my beer can from the floor and took a slug from it. Stan lifted his too and drained it.

I said, “How about that spinet?

Stan just looked at me without answering. It was a dumb question. The spinet would never have fit into the station wagon, even if we’d left the hi-fi behind.

We drove straight to the Jerry Hitter Service Station off San Fernando Road. The station bore my name because I owned it, and that’s why I was broke. I not only couldn’t make a living from it, I couldn’t sell it. It had been closed and up for sale for six months. In the meantime I had squeezed a few dollars out of it by selling off as much of the equipment and as many of the tools as I could. I had also sold my car, and that income, supplemented by whatever Stan and I managed to rip off, was all that kept me going.

Stan and I used the closed station for temporary storage of our stolen goods. We never left anything there very long, though, because in that neighborhood there was too much danger of it being re-stolen. Despite the boards over the front windows and the protective wire mesh over the smaller ones, there had been several attempted break-ins-none so far successful, probably because they’d been by kids instead of pros.

Stan backed the station wagon up to the service-garage door. We got out and I went to get the key from where it hung on a hook up inside the mouth of the drainpipe, then he opened the hack of the station wagon while I unlocked and raised the sliding metal door.

We carried the set over to the wall where the single live electrical outlet was. The utilities had been shut off since I closed the place, but I’d tapped one of the circuits of the office building next door to run a line to that outlet so we could test the appliances we ripped off.

When we had set it down, I said. “Let’s run over and pick up my speakers so we can see how it plays.”

Glancing at his wristwatch, Stan said, “I can run you over and back but I won’t be able to stick around. I told Mom to be ready by five.”

At twenty-four, Stan still lived with and sponged off his widowed mother, but in a lot of ways he was good to her — like never keeping her waiting, for instance.

“O.K., I can handle it alone, I told him.

My rooming house was on Cypress Avenue, only about four blocks from the service station. My room was on the second floor. I stuck an eight-track tape in my hip pocket and picked out an LP record. I unplugged my speakers and each of us started downstairs with one.

My landlady’s behemoth figure was blocking the foot of the stairs. Her hands were on her hips — a storm signal.

Coming to a halt, I said politely, “Yes, Mrs. Sull?

“Moving, Mr. Hitter?” she inquired.

“No.”

She examined both speakers. “Perhaps you’re planning to pawn those to pay your rent — which is due on Monday, in case you’ve forgotten.

I shook my head. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll have it for you.”

“Well, now, that will be a pleasant change, she said. “This time you won’t be requesting a few days grace?

Since she had made it clear at the end of the previous month that grace would no longer be extended — and my room lock would be changed on the second of the month if my rent wasn’t paid on the first — I took that as a rhetorical question. “You’ll be paid on time,” I assured her. “May we get by, please?”

She moved aside like the opening of a massive door. As we went by she said ominously, “Good afternoon, Mr. Turner.”

Stan, who has always been terrified of the woman, muttered something inaudible.

As we loaded the speakers into the station wagon he asked me, “How old is Mrs. Sull?’

“I don’t know. Not as old as she looks. Forty-five, maybe.”

“That’s not too old, he said. “I know how you could get her off your back about the rent permanently.”

“How?”

“Marry her.”

When I stopped laughing. I climbed into the car.

We got back to the station and Stan helped me unload the speakers. Then he looked at his watch again and said he had to go.

“O.K.,” I told him. “You going to contact Spooky?”

“After dinner. That won’t be too late, we should be home by seven. I’m just taking Mom to a Mexican-food joint.

“Give me a ring when you get home, huh? I said.

“Sure.”

He went out and pulled the sliding door closed behind him. A moment later I heard him drive off.

With the door closed the lighting in the service garage was kind of dim because the windows were dirty and the wire mesh over them further cut the light. But I could see well enough to operate. I attached the speakers, plugged in the set, and lifted off the lid. As it was set for AM radio, I left it there and switched it on.

When a few seconds passed with no sound I turned up the volume control and moved the tuning dial. Still nothing happened. I switched to FM and drew a blank. I had no more success when I switched to Phono and to Tape.

Unplugging the set, I pulled it away from the wall and plugged in the work lamp I kept there. Since the lamp worked I knew the trouble wasn’t in the outlet.

The tool rack on the wall still contained a few tools-mainly screwdrivers and pliers. With a Phillips screwdriver I took out the dozen screws holding the back in place and lifted it off.

I meant to lean the back against the wall, but it slipped from my hands and fell flat on the floor when I saw what was in the cabinet.

There were no works in it.

Instead there was a dead body!

The corpse was of a man about fifty, with a gaunt face and red hair peppered with grey. He was dressed in brown slacks and a blue sport shirt. He was rather skinny, and I guessed him to be about six feet tall, though his height was difficult to judge because of the way he was folded into his improvised coffin. The cabinet was only about four feet long by three high, and about the top eight inches was taken up by the turntable and the controls. The works of this particular model were set in a metal framework that could be removed for repair work simply by loosening four screws and unplugging two wires. Someone had done that, but the space left was only about four feet by a foot and a half by a little less than two and a half feet. The body was on its back with the knees crammed back against the chest and the feet jammed against the top so that the toes pointed straight forward.

The cause of death was apparent. There was a small, purple-ringed hole in the center of the forehead that looked as though it had been made by a very small-caliber slug, perhaps a twenty-two.

I screwed the back of the console on again and shoved the set against the wall. I left the speakers there-four blocks was too far to walk with one under each arm — but took my tape and record. I unplugged the work lamp, raised the sliding door enough to duck under it, locked up, and put the key back inside the drainpipe.

It was five-thirty when I got back to my room, which I managed to do without encountering Mrs. Sull. After replacing the tape and the LP record, I went downstairs to call Stan from the pay phone in the lower hall. There was no answer. Obviously he and his mother had already left.

Mrs. Sull called her rooms light-housekeeping apartments, which meant they were equipped with small refrigerators, hot plates, and a few dishes and pans. I had some canned soup and a cold meat sandwich, then tried phoning Stan again. Still no answer. It was still only about six.

I couldn’t face the prospect of sitting alone in my room for a full hour waiting for Stan to call, so after some soul searching I took five dollars of the rent money hidden beneath the newspaper liner in my shirt drawer and walked to the nearest liquor store. I decided that if worse came to worst I could always take Stan’s advice and propose to Mrs. Sull — but there was no way I could survive the evening without a drink.

There was a cheap brand of bourbon on sale for $3.99 a fifth.

When I got back to the house I tried phoning Stan again before going upstairs but there was still no answer.

Up in my room I had a couple of jolts from the bottle, just enough to settle my nerves. At seven I went downstairs to phone Stan. This time Mrs. Turner answered.

When I asked for Stan, she said, “He’s out for the evening. Is this Jerry?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“I think he’s headed for your place. We only got home about two minutes ago, and he went right out again.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Thanks.

It wasn’t more than a five-minute drive from Stan’s house to the rooming house, but it was forty-five minutes before he showed up. By then the bottle was half empty.

“Where the devil have you been?” I asked as I slid in next to him in the station wagon.

He gave me a curious look. “Are you bombed?”

“I had a few jolts,” I confessed. “I needed them. Get going.”

He shifted into drive. As he pulled away from the curb he said, “I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up.”

Dipping into his jacket pocket, he brought out some folded bills and passed them to me — three twenties, a ten, and a five.

“Your share of the hundred and a half,” he said.

“Not from Spooky for the combo set?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Since when does he pay off before delivery?”

“It’s delivered. I went by the junk yard and happened to find Spooky there, so he followed me to the station in his pickup.

I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. Spooky Lindeman had been known to break arms for being dealt bummers. Charging him a hundred and fifty dollars for a corpse was likely to put him in a mood to break necks.

“Oh, no!” I said. “We’ve got to get that set back!”

Stan gave me a look of surprise faintly tinged with alarm. “Doesn’t it work?”

“It doesn’t even have any guts.”

Now he looked puzzled. “It didn’t feel empty.”

“It isn’t. It has a corpse in it with a bullet through the head.”

Stan drove right through a red light. Horns blared as cars coming from both directions took evasive action. He pulled over to the curb and stopped.

“Say that again,” he requested.

I repeated what I had said and described the body.

Eventually he said, “You think that man and woman with the U-Haul killed him?” I nodded. “But why stuff him in a hi-fi cabinet? Why not in a trunk or something?

“I’ve been working on that ever since I found him,” I said. “I figure it wasn’t a planned murder, but a spur-of-the-moment thing, and they’d already moved everything else they could put him in when it happened. They couldn’t just carry him out to the truck in broad daylight, so they had the bright idea of taking the works out of the hi-fi and hiding him in it until they could decide how to dispose of him.”

Stan nodded. “But what did they do with the guts?”

“Just loaded them onto the truck, I imagine.

“Then the insides are probably over at their new house, right?”

“I guess so.”

Stan shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To get those guts so we can stick them back in the set.”

I disagreed. “The first problem is to get rid of that body. Spooky will kill us if he finds it in there.

“He’ll kill us if he finds the cabinet empty.” Stan said. “So there’s no point in taking the body out until we have the works to put in.”

He was right, but there was another factor. I said, “How are we going to get the guts when we don’t know where those people moved to?”

“We’re going to find out where.”

He took the Hollywood Freeway to Lankershim Boulevard, drove north on Lankershim to Archwood, and parked in front of the duplex. By now it was a quarter after eight, but because of daylight saving time it was still light. Through the bare front windows of the unit with the FOR RENT sign in front of it, we could see that the front room was now empty.

A car was parked in the driveway belonging to the other unit, and we could see a man sitting in the front room reading a newspaper.

“You come with me for moral support,” Stan said, “but let me do the talking. Your tongue is too thick.”

We both got out and I followed him along the walk to the front porch. The redwood sign reading THE STOKELEYS was gone, but a card that remained beneath the doorbell read DON AND EVE STOKELEY. Stan rang the doorbell.

“What are you doing?” I said. “There’s nobody here!”

“It’s for the benefit of the neighbors,” he explained. “Keep your knickers on.”

He peered inside through the front window, shrugged, and crossed over to the door of the other unit. I followed him.

A plump, middle-aged woman answered Stan’s ring. Beyond her we could see the man reading the paper. He was about the same age as the woman and equally plump.

Even if I hadn’t been a little bombed I would have let Stan do the talking — he’s a born con man. With his most charming smile he said, “Excuse me, ma’am. We’re looking for the Stokeleys, but it looks like they’ve moved.

“Yes,” the woman said, “just today.”

Stan let a rueful expression form on his face. “My mother sent me over with twenty bucks she owes Mrs. Stokeley. Did they move out of town?”

“Oh, no, just over to Benedict Canyon Drive. They bought a home. Wait a minute and I’ll get you the address.”

She went away, leaving the door open. The man folded his paper, got up, and came over to the door.

“You fellows friends of the Stokeleys?” he asked.

“She’s a friend of my mother,” Stan said. “I barely know her — they became friends after I got married and moved away from home. I only met her once, as a matter of fact. She’s a blonde, isn’t she? Kind of big but good-looking?”

He nodded. “That’s Eve.”

“And he’s a big heavy guy with hairy arms?”

He shook his head. “That’s Bert Pinter, who works for Don. Don Stokeley is a painting contractor, you know. I guess he’s doing pretty good. They bought a beautiful house. I’m not surprised you took Bert for Eve’s husband-he was over there a lot. Matter of fact he was helping them move today. Don’s kind of tall and skinny, has red hair, turning grey.”

The woman came back earning an address book and she read off an address on Benedict Canyon Drive.

Stan repeated it and thanked her.

Back in the car I said, “You’re pretty smooth.”

“I’m proud of you too,” he said. “For keeping your mouth shut. Was it her husband they bumped off?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Probably the old triangle. Maybe they killed poor Don because he caught them in a hot embrace.”

The house on Benedict Canyon Drive was a one-story green stucco home with a front stoop that was merely a six-inch-thick concrete slab, so the front door was only that much above ground level. Benedict Canyon Drive is hilly and curvy, and the house was situated on a curve at the bottom of a hill.

There was no parking on the side of the street where the house was, so Stan drove past it, turned around in a driveway, and drove past it again to park on the other side. Because of the sharp curve, there was no parking immediately before the curve on that side either, so that he had to park on the crest of the hill a good fifty yards beyond the house.

Because of the way the road curved we had a perfect view of the house from that point. When we swiveled in our seats to look back at it, it occurred to me that Mrs. Stokeley would be wise to build a brick wall along the front. If a car ever missed that curve it would plough right through her front door.

The U-Haul truck was parked in the driveway running alongside the right side of the house. A Volkswagen was parked behind it. Beyond the house, at the far end of the driveway, was a garage with the door closed.

It was just beginning to get dark, and the lights in the house were on. With no drapes or curtains on the windows we could see the big blonde woman — Mrs. Stokeley-and Bert Pinter walking around inside. We were too far away to make out what they were doing, but I got an impression of restlessness.

Apparently Stan got the same impression because he said, “I imagine they’re kind of worried about what happened to that corpse.”

“They must be going nuts.”

“You think maybe they stored those works in the garage?”

“If they didn’t, we’ve got a problem,” I said. “Because then we’ll have to try the house and I doubt if those two plan to do any sleeping tonight.

Stan glanced up and down both sides of the street. Halfway down the hill on the other side two men were conversing on a lawn. A little farther down on our side a teenaged couple sat on some porch steps. That added up to a lot of witnesses. Stan said, “I guess we’d better wait until it’s good and dark before we check out that garage.”

“Uh-huh. But we’d better not wait here.”

Nodding agreement, Stan pulled away. “About eleven, you think?”

I nodded. “We can come back then to check out the setup. If people are still up and around we’ll just drive on by and try again at midnight. We’ve got all night.”

“All weekend, Stan said. “Spooky won’t be going down to the junkyard on Sunday.”

“I’d as soon get it done tonight,” I told him. “I’m not going to be able to sleep until this is taken care of.”

Where Benedict Canyon Drive runs into Woodman Avenue, Stan kept on it to the Ventura Freeway and took an eastbound ramp onto it.

“What do you want to do until eleven?” he asked.

“We could kill some time by picking up my speakers and taking them home.

“O.K. Incidentally, Spooky said to offer you another fifty for those.”

“Big deal,” I said. “They cost me a hundred and twenty-five.”

By the time we got to the service station it was quite dark. Stan parked facing the sliding door and left his headlights on. We both got out and I got the key from the drainpipe and unlocked the door. We each picked up a speaker and stowed it in the station wagon.

“We’d better pick up whatever tools we’ll need to put the guts back into that cabinet,” Stan said.

I went over to the rack on the wall and got a Phillips screwdriver, a small standard screwdriver, and a pair of pliers.

“Another thing,” Stan said. “There’s an eight-foot chain-link fence around the junkyard. Do you think you can pick the lock on the gate?

“We’ll climb over it,” I said.

He cocked an eyebrow at inc. “Carrying the guts to the set on the way in, and a corpse on the way out?

While I was considering this, my gaze fell on the tow rope hanging from a hook in the corner.

“Problem solved,” I announced.

I took the tow rope and put it and the tools on the floor of the middle seat of the station wagon. When I turned around Stan was still standing in the service garage, staring at something on the floor.

I went back to see what he was looking at. It was the wheeled creeper I used to use for sliding beneath cars.

“That would come in handy to move the body,” he said.

The creeper was longer than most, because I’d built it myself to accommodate my six-foot-four frame. It was about five feet long, and Id nailed an old roller skate to each corner, so it had a total of sixteen wheels instead of the usual four. “Let’s take it,” I said, and stooped to grab one end.

It was a little after nine when we got the speakers back to my room. After plugging them in I put on an Aretha Franklin tape and turned the volume low.

“You got any more of whatever it was you were drinking? Stan asked.

“Sure, but I’m still a little bombed.”

“Well, I’m not,” he told me. “Don’t be such a cheapskate.”

I got out the bottle and made Stan a stiff highball, then decided to have a weak one myself.

I kept mixing them strong for Stan and weak for myself and by ten o’clock I had fully recovered my rosy glow and Stan had caught up with me. Half an hour later he blearily studied his watch and said, “Let’s have a nightcap and split.” There was only about a half inch of whisky left in the bottle. That finished it.

When we got back to Benedict Canyon Drive no one was outdoors and most of the houses were dark, but the green stucco was still ablaze with light.

Stan parked in the same spot as before. In case we had to take off in a hurry he opened the back of the station wagon, and in case there was a padlock on the garage he lifted out a tire iron.

At the bottom of the hill we saw Bert Pinter and Eve Stokeley talking in the living room of the green house. Her face was pale, her hair was sticking out in all directions as though she had been running her fingers through it, and she looked like a nervous wreck.

We turned silently into the driveway, past the Volkswagen and the U-Haul to the garage.

There was a padlock on the garage, but it was a cheap one. Stan gave it one muffled crack with the tire iron and it popped open.

The garage door was the kind that swings up overhead and is held there by tension springs. The springs groaned loudly when we raised it. We stood still, listening and looking toward the house for several seconds, but no one appeared to investigate.

The moon was bright enough so that we could see into the garage without needing a flashlight. It was a double garage, one side occupied by a Ford sedan. I assumed that was the Stokeleys’ car and that the Volkswagen in the driveway was Bert Pinter’s.

Against the wall on the other side of the garage was a welcome sight-the metal framework containing the innards of the hi-fi combo.

We each took one end and carried it out setting it down in the driveway. It wasn’t particularly heavy, probably no more than forty pounds. Remembering how surprised I had been at the weight of the set when we ripped it off, I wondered now why I hadn’t suspected something then.

Stan tried to lower the garage door carefully, but the springs groaned just as loudly as before. Apparently this time Pinter was in the kitchen and heard it, because as we picked up the metal framework and started past the U-Haul truck — me in front with my hands behind me — a floodlight over the garage door suddenly bathed us in a bright glare. A moment later we heard the back door open and a deep masculine voice called, “Who’s out there?”

We ducked out around behind the truck and heard the garage door springs groan again as the door was raised. Then there was a startled exclamation.

“Let’s split!” I whispered.

We took off with the framework at a loping run. We were across the street and a quarter of the way up the hill before the same voice roared from the entrance to the driveway, “Come back here, you thieves!”

All that did was increase our speed. He took out after us, but we had too much of a lead on him. He was only halfway up the hill when we heaved our prize onto the creeper in the back of the station wagon. Stan tossed the tire iron in after it, then scurried to the wheel. I slammed the lower part of the back door shut, leaving the upper part still raised, and ran to jump in next to him.

He had the engine started by the time I got in and took off without lights.

Spooky Lindeman’s junkyard was on the edge of Old Chinatown, in a district where there was nothing but small businesses. They were all closed at this time of night, but the main gate to the junkyard faced a street on which there was occasional traffic even this late at night. There was a rear gate giving onto an alley. As we drove into the alley I said, “Pull over as close to the gate as you can get.”

Cutting the lights, Stan parked within a foot of the gate. Within moments we had some company. Arab, the big German shepherd Spooky turns loose in the junkyard at night to devour burglars, came bounding over to the fence, showing his fangs and snarling.

Arab’s defect as a night watchman is that he remembers daytime visitors to the junkyard or he loves being called by name. When Stan said, “Shut up, Arab,” he instantly stopped snarling and began to wag his tail.

I got the tools from the car, put them in my pockets, and coiled the tow rope around my shoulder. Stan and I lifted the hi-fi innards and the creeper out onto the ground, closed the upper part of the rear door, and set the items back up onto the still-open lower half of the door. I climbed from there onto the car’s roof and Stan handed the metal framework and the creeper up to me.

As I set the framework down, I noted with gratification that Bert Pinter had put the screws in a plastic sandwich bag and taped the bag to the frame.

The top of the junkyard gate extended only about three feet above the roof of the car. As Stan was climbing up to join me I tied one end of the tow rope to the gate’s top bar and tossed the other end over inside the yard. Then I went over the fence and let myself down hand over hand.

The moment I reached the ground Arab put his oversized paws in the center of my chest and tried to lick my face. Pushing him away, I said, “Down, Arab!”

He got down but he continued to nudge my legs with his nose and wag his tail all the time Stan was handing me down the hi-fi innards and the creeper.

When Stan climbed down we set the metal framework on the creeper, picked up the creeper, and carried it past the jumble of wrecked automobiles, piles of pipe, and other junk to the building in the center of the junkyard. There was no point in trying to roll the creeper, the ground was so full of embedded stones and potholes.

What Spooky called the “warehouse” was a large square building of cinder blocks that housed his office and a storeroom for items that had to be kept out of the weather. We set the creeper down in front of the office door.

Both Stan and I were fairly good with simple locks, but people as distrustful as Spooky Lindeman don’t use simple locks. After examining the one on the office door we agreed there was no undetectable way we were going to be able to get into the building. I picked up a large rock and bashed out the glass panel in the door.

I tossed the rock off into the night. Since nothing was going to be missing from the warehouse — at least, nothing Spooky was aware had been there — it was likely he’d be more puzzled than suspicious of the broken window. I hoped he’d attribute it to a sonic boom.

Reaching through the glassless upper panel, I opened the door and we carried the creeper and its cargo inside. Arab tried to follow us but Stan shooed him outside and closed the door.

Stan located the light switch for the office, then opened the door to the storeroom off the office, found that switch, and turned it on. We carried the creeper in there and set it down. The huge room was lined with shelves loaded with everything from storage batteries to car radios. On the floor were hundreds of appliances, from toasters to color TVs.

Because Stan had helped Spooky carry it in, he knew exactly where the hi-fi cabinet was. As soon as he pointed it out, I knelt behind it and removed the back.

For some moments after I had taken the back off, Stan regarded the interior of the cabinet in silence. He was looking slightly sick. “That’s the first corpse I ever saw,” he said finally.

“Me too, I told him. “Shall we pull him out of there?”

There was another period of silence before he said, “I can’t touch him, Jerry.”

“He’s got to come out of there,” I said.

“You’ll have to do it alone,” he said in the same low voice. “I’m sorry. I can’t touch him.”

“Well, at least you can help me carry the creeper over here,” I said grumpily, and went over to where we had set it down.

We set the creeper down right behind the cabinet, lifted off the framework, and set it aside. I gripped the corpse by an arm and a leg and pulled.

He didn’t budge. He was stuck.

I continued to pull, but after a time I gave up and looked around for Stan. He wasn’t there. Then I saw him coming from a far corner of the room, carrying a four-foot crowbar.

“Try this,” he said, handing it to me.

I inserted the end of the crowbar beneath Mr. Stokeley’s neck and pushed it until it was wedged behind his left shoulder. When it was firmly in place, I put my foot against the end of the cabinet and drew back on the handle of the crowbar.

There was a popping sound and Mr. Stokeley skidded across the creeper to land on his side several feet beyond it. His position remained unchanged. His knees were still jammed against his chest and his toes were still pointed straight forward.

After staring at the corpse for a moment, Stan took the crowbar from me and carried it back to where he had found it. By the time he got back I had removed the small bag containing the screws from the metal framework. Together we lifted the framework into place. I screwed the four screws home, plugged in the wires, and screwed on the back.

“It ought to work,” I said. “Do you want to carry it into the office and try it?”

“No,” Stan said in a definite tone. “I prefer to have faith. Let’s get out of here.”

Replacing my tools in my pockets, I said, “O.K., but I can’t lift Mr. Stokeley all by myself. You’ll have to help me get him on the creeper.”

He shook his head. “I’m not touching him. ’

In a reasoning tone I said. “You’re going to have to help me carry him after he’s on the creeper even if I get him on there by myself.”

“Then I’ll only have to touch it, not him.

I gave in. Setting the creeper next to Mr. Stokeley’s back, I rolled him over onto it. He was stiff as a colonel s spine. He lay on his side on the creeper, still folded into a cramped capital N.

I stooped to grasp the end of the creeper where the head lay. Reluctantly Stan took the other end.

After we carried it outside, we set the creeper down while I closed and relocked the office door. Arab took a sniff of the dead man, tucked his tail between his legs, and slunk off.

Back at the gate I tied the tow rope around Mr. Stokeley before climbing up on top of the station wagon. I hauled him up then lowered him to the ground on the other side of the automobile. Stan handed up the creeper. I set it down, climbed down onto the rear door, lifted it from the roof, and jumped down to the ground. After untying the corpse and rolling it back onto the creeper, I tossed the rope back over the top of the gate to Stan. He pulled himself up over the gate, untied the rope, and came down. Together we loaded the laden creeper into the back of the station wagon.

What we should have done next, of course, was simply to dump the body in an alley. But you don’t do your best thinking on cheap bourbon, and we were both still stoned enough to have it fixed in our minds that tidying things up required everything being returned to its proper place. In the frame of mind we were in it seemed logical that we should return the contents we had just removed from the hi-fi to the place where we had obtained its present contents.

It was around midnight when we again parked on the crest of Benedict Canyon Drive. The green stucco house at the bottom of the hill was still ablaze with lights, but the only other lights along the street were here and there behind drawn drapes. There was no sign of life outdoors.

We both got out and walked to the rear of the station wagon. When a glow of headlights appeared beyond the crest of the hill I paused on the sidewalk instead of continuing my journey to the back of the vehicle, but Stan had already stepped behind it and raised the upper part of the rear door and lowered the bottom.

When the creeper started to roll out, Stan held out a hand to stop it. Then his hand touched the corpse’s head and he emitted a gasp and jumped out of the way.

The creeper rolled all the way out, dropped to the street, and started down the hill. It had a ten-foot lead before I could react and start after it.

The squeal of sixteen un-oiled roller-skate wheels was gratingly loud from the moment the creeper began to roll, but as the thing picked up speed it grew progressively louder.

By the time it was halfway down the hill the neighborhood was resounding with an unearthly squeal as penetrating as the scream of a fire siren.

I was conscious of the glare of headlights behind me as the car that had been coming up the other side of the hill topped the crest and started down this side.

But I neither glanced over my shoulder nor took any evasive action.

I was too intent on catching the speeding creeper.

I was overmatched. It accelerated so rapidly that it reached the curb at the bottom of the hill when I was only hallway down, jumped the curb without even slowing down, and headed along the walk toward the front door of the green stucco house.

No one in the neighborhood could have avoided hearing the piercing squeal of those wheels. It was therefore not surprising that Bert Pinter jerked open the front door to see what was going on.

At that very moment the creeper crashed into the six-inch-high concrete stoop where it came to an instant halt — but the law of inertia caused the body to continue on at the same speed. Still on its side and cramped into the shape of a capital N, it shot headfirst at the man in the doorway. Instinctively he leaped aside.

Through the open doorway I could see Mr. Stokeley skid across the front-room and disappear into the central hallway, where he was met by a feminine scream.

By then I had reached the bottom of the hill and was racing up the walk.

As I scooped up the creeper and spun back to race away again, an authoritative voice called. “Hold it right there, mister!

A black-and-white sedan with a rotating red light on top of it had pulled over to the curb in front of the house. Two uniformed cops were getting out.

I zoomed past the front of the car before either of them was all the way out. I had a ten-yard lead before the one who had emerged on the driver’s side started to lumber after me.

I had enough of a glimpse of him as I shot by to see he was middle-aged and overweight, so I really wasn’t terribly worried about being brought down by a flying tackle. I could tell I was steadily increasing my initial lead by the distance of his voice behind me as he periodically yelled, “Stop or I’ll shoot!

I took the chance that he wouldn’t. There was no way he could know at that point what crime, if any had been committed, and cops aren’t supposed to shoot people on suspicion, even when they refuse the order to halt.

Stan was already in the car and had the engine going. I threw in the creeper, dived in on top of it, and grabbed the back of the center seat to keep from rolling out again.

Stan took off like a rocket.

I looked back to see the pursuing cop coming to a halt halfway up the hill. The other one was pounding on the door of the green stucco house.

I pulled the lower section of the back door closed, reached up to click the upper section into place, then climbed over into the center seat and on into the front seat.

Stan switched on his headlights.

“Do you think we ought to pick up another bottle before we go back to your room?” he asked.

“Definitely.” I said. “That race up the hill sobered me up.”

I could tell that Stan hadn’t even started to sober up though, when he said. “Let’s get a quart instead of a fifth. If Mrs. Sull is still awake, we could invite her in for a drink.