Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

Collective Noun for Blackmailers by Stephen Ross

Copyright © 2006 Stephen Ross

Stephen Ross makes his living as a data-systems programmer for an IT company, but he has worked as both an English teacher and a technical writer, and he has a passion for music that has found an outlet in scores he’s composed for theater, a couple of short films, and a TV documentary. For the past couple of years, however, fiction-writing has been his consuming interest.

It happened two years ago at ten o’clock in the morning.

(1) A guy walked into a bar.

(2) He tossed some nuts into his mouth.

(3) He pulled out a gun.

(4) He shot the solitary drinker seated at the end of the bar.

(5) He strolled out again.

The case became known as the Eats, Shoots, and Leaves Murder. It was one of the less noteworthy cases of 1950.

No one knew the dead man and no one got a good look at the shooter. The bar was not in the kind of neighborhood where people took notice of those who came and went. In fact, in that neighborhood, people went out of their way not to notice.

The bartender had never seen the dead man before that morning. The dead man was drinking gin, and apart from asking for the gin, he hadn’t said a word.

The bartender had seen the shooter come in, but he was busy answering the phone in the office at the time and he didn’t pay any attention.

There were no clues, apart from some nuts on the floor. The bullet passed clean through the man’s neck and lodged in the jukebox on the back wall — number one with a bullet, like they say. The slug was from a .45 and the nuts were roasted.

The bartender was grilled. His name was Merkon. He owned the bar and had bad breath. The phone call he was answering had been from the young woman he employed mornings as a waitress. She was an hour late and had called in sick.

The waitress was also grilled. Her name was Nancy. She wasn’t sick. She had spent the night arguing with her boyfriend and didn’t feel like working that day. The boyfriend was spoken to. His name was Bruno, he was a saxophone player — he had a bruise on his forehead where a dinner plate had hit him.

The dead man was about fifty-five. He was of medium build, had tidy hair, and was clean-shaven. He was dressed in a near-new suit and his shoes had recently been shined. There was nothing unusual about him except for his right eye — it was made of glass.

The dead man had no personal identification on him. He had a wallet — inside were two quarters and a dime. He had smoked, wore aftershave, and his fingernails were immaculate. In sum total, he was not the kind of guy you’d expect to find dead in that neighborhood.

The old man who had shined the shoes was located two days later, six blocks away. The old man didn’t know the face in the morgue photo, but he recognized the shoes; he’d shined them the morning of the shooting. Imported. Good-quality leather. The dead man’s English had been broken. He had had an accent. He had seemed impatient and he didn’t tip.

The killer was never identified and neither was the dead man — they couldn’t even trace the glass eye, although it was probably of European origin. The case had never been closed.

Anderson leaned back in his chair. The look on his face was one of bemusement. “So, why are you telling me all this, Wilson? This was two years ago. I wasn’t even the editor here then.”

Wilson stubbed his cigarette out. “I’m telling you all this because Nancy Stillwater’s photo just made page seven of today’s edition.”

“Nancy? The waitress?”

Wilson nodded. “She had an accident. She backed over a poodle coming out of her driveway. The poodle belonged to the sister of the mayor.”

“Mayor Guthrie’s sister?”

“Yes.”

“She’s the sister with the six Picassos and the house up in the hills?”

“The very one.”

“Wrong lady’s poodle to flatten.”

Wilson nodded. “And she’s suing.”

Anderson echoed the nod. “I’ve no doubt.”

Wilson dropped a newspaper onto Anderson’s desk. It was opened out at page seven. “Nancy was photographed coming out of court. It seems Nancy and the mayor’s sister are neighbors. This is not the first time they’ve had trouble.”

Anderson stared at the picture. Even in black-and-white, Nancy Stillwater looked like the kind of woman his heart surgeon had warned him about — tall, cool, blond, dressed in a fur, with a look on her face suggesting she owned, if not the world, at least you.

Anderson grew skeptical. “Just how does a two-dollar waitress get to live in the same street as the mayor’s sister?”

“Nancy owns the house next-door,” Wilson explained. “It has eight bedrooms, and there’s a tennis court out in the back.”

There was a stunned look on Anderson’s face. “Did she come into money?”

Wilson nodded. “Two years ago, Nancy Stillwater lived in a one-room above an appliance store.”

“Okay, I see your point,” Anderson said. “Investigate it.”

Wilson smiled.

“But I want receipts this time.”

Wilson Hills was a short, punchy little man. Barely five-four in height, he had a round face and a cheerful smile. He always wore the same tie — lime green, with stripes — and favored a loose-fitting suit.

Nancy Stillwater and the mayor’s sister lived up in the hills on Delshaw Drive. It was the kind of street where nobody cut his or her own lawn, and every other house had a swimming pool. And if you didn’t have a pool, you had a tennis court.

Wilson parked his car at the curb. Nancy’s house was white stucco. It had two floors and balconies. There was casualness to its design, as if it was something Frank Lloyd Wright might have sketched up on a sunny afternoon over coffee and witty repartee.

The front door was open — wide open. Wilson rang the bell and stepped inside.

The interior of the house was Art Deco. The floor tiles were white. There was a sweeping staircase — to the left of which stood the statue of a woman. The woman was silver, taller than Wilson, and wearing an expression of unobtainable demureness.

“Hello?” Wilson yelled. His voice echoed in the entranceway.

No one was answering the door, not even a maid.

“Nancy Stillwater?”

The house was devoid of life. The faint hum of air conditioning purred in the background.

Wilson followed a hallway leading to what looked like a living room. The walls of the hallway were lined with photographs of Nancy. Some photographer had decided Nancy was a work of art, or she had paid one to make her think that.

It was a living room. There was an acrid smell in the air. It hung. There was a palm tree in the corner of the room. A grand piano stood in another corner, an acre of framed photos stood on top of its closed lid.

At the center of the room was a wooden area large enough for a tango — of a very fine dark wood. Polished. The furniture surrounding it was all white. Plush. Seating for thirty.

The acrid smell was gunpowder. Nancy was dead on the dance floor. Someone had shot her in the head. The furniture was ruined.

Wilson looked for the telephone. The gunpowder smelled recent. He noticed there were nuts on the dark wood of the dance floor. He took a closer look. There were a handful of them. Roasted.

Wilson found the telephone. He hadn’t even put his hand to it when he heard the sirens. He figured the neighbors must have heard the gunshot. Maybe the mayor’s sister had put in the call?

Within a minute, Nancy’s living room took on the appearance of a police convention. Uniformed officers were everywhere. They were taking bets on the type of gun used. They were huddled about in groups picking over last night’s fights. They were using the dirt at the base of the palm as an ashtray. Two were playing a duet of “Chopsticks” on the grand.

Lieutenant Harden, a sour-faced dump truck of a man in possession of few facial features and dressed in a black overcoat, knew Wilson. Knew him and hated him. And when he walked in and laid eyes on him, he wished the first officers who had arrived on the scene had shot him dead.

Harden hated reporters, especially short ones who poked their noses where they shouldn’t ought to.

“How’s the wife, Harden?” Wilson inquired as the dump truck approached.

“You’re under arrest,” Harden grunted at Wilson.

“Why?”

“Why not? There’s a dead girl lying on the floor and you have no alibi.”

“You haven’t even asked for an alibi.”

“Do you have one?”

Wilson shook his head. “How about a motive? I don’t have one of those, either.”

“Book him,” Harden grunted at the nearest uniform who wasn’t preoccupied.

Wilson protested, but he was firmly escorted from the building and out to a waiting patrol car.

Before Wilson got in, he remembered he had forgotten his hat. He excused himself to retrieve it.

The officer waited.

Wilson went out the back, around the pool, and over the wall. The last time Wilson had ever worn a hat had been during the war.

Sitting in a police cell would not be working — it would be sitting. Wilson hadn’t shot Nancy, so he saw no reason for loafing on the job.

The bar was in a back street off an alley. The bar had two claims to fame: the Eats, Shoots, and Leaves Murder, and the fact that Rudolph Valentino drank there once.

Wilson was an instinctive reporter, and his instincts told him if you want to know the story, start at the beginning. The bar was the beginning of this story. Everything began there, so there he went.

The place was empty. The jukebox still had the bullet hole in it. Behind the bar was a young redhead with her hair done up in a bun. She was smoking a cigarette and reading Time magazine — Lucy was on the cover.

“Is the owner about?” Wilson asked.

“Mr. Rutherford is on holiday,” the woman replied, glancing over the top of the magazine.

“Rutherford?” Wilson asked. “I thought the owner’s name was Merkon.”

“Mr. Rutherford became the owner after the death of Mr. Merkon.”

“Merkon died?”

The redhead nodded.

“Let me confirm, Merkon was the owner here when the Eats, Shoots, and Leaves Murder took place?”

The redhead nodded again.

Wilson frowned.

“Mr. Merkon was shot too,” she added. “Only they didn’t give it a fancy name.”

“Merkon was shot?”

The woman behind the bar nodded. “Six months ago. Five bullets. His body was found by the city dump.”

Wilson ordered a whiskey. He climbed up onto a barstool and got to know the redhead better.

The woman’s name was Sophie. She had been working at the bar for eight months. She knew all about the Eats, Shoots, and Leaves Murder.

Merkon had told her all about it. Merkon had told everyone all about it. But, it was what he hadn’t been telling everyone about the murder that really fascinated the redhead.

“He called it his retirement fund,” Sophie reported. “He showed it to me. He kept it hidden. It was a little candy box. It had a tartan design to it, only what was inside probably wasn’t candy, and probably not Scottish.”

“What was inside?” Wilson asked.

“He never told me. But it had something to do with that murder, and he said it was going to make him a rich man.”

“Where’s the box now?”

Sophie shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve looked for it, but I’ve never found it.”

Wilson would have left the matter there, finished his drink and gone on his way, were it not for Sophie’s next remark: “You know, there was a guy in here just last week asking the same questions as you.”

“What guy?”

“A middle-aged guy. He smoked cheroots. I don’t know I would trust him if I had to. I told him about the candy box, too. He took a great interest in it.”

Wilson stared at the redhead. She had blue eyes. Sophie was a nice name for a redhead with blue eyes. Wilson could sit in that bar a whole long time, he imagined.

“Did I say something?” Sophie asked. She noticed a sparkle in the short man’s eyes.

Right around then, a police cruiser pulled up outside the bar. Within seconds, two thickset police officers came into the bar with their guns drawn.

Wilson went out the back door — it was next to the jukebox. He slipped through the doorway like a rabbit down a hole. A hail of gunfire went after him. Half of the bullets went into the jukebox, and the other half went through the doorway and narrowly missed him. One didn’t — it nicked his cheek.

So, Merkon had been shot dead — six months ago. Merkon’s passing had passed Wilson by unnoticed, so he headed to the morgue to catch up.

The morgue was in the basement of the City Daily Herald. Every issue the newspaper had ever printed was archived there, along with every report file, photograph, mimeograph, memorandum, and shopping list anyone in the building had ever written, filed, or sneezed upon.

Wilson had to wait until well after dark before he went in, and only then entering through a seldom-used back door. If the police had followed him to the bar with such apparent ease, then they’d have certainly staked out his office up on the fourth floor.

Once downstairs in the morgue, Wilson waded his way through the dusty back editions, rolling back the days about six months.

It was dark and damp down in the basement. The morgue was really no better than a rat-infested warren of corridors and shelves, lit by two five-watt light bulbs. The word “dank” had been coined there.

Merkon’s death barely got more than a paragraph and was buried toward the back of a late edition under a story about combine harvesters.

Wilson read about Merkon by the light of his cigarette lighter. It was pithy: Merkon was a man, he was found dead at the dump, and police had no leads in the investigation.

Wilson went for the back files — maybe there was more in the reporter’s notes. But there was no file on Merkon. Nary a slip of paper.

Wilson dug deeper. There weren’t any files on Merkon’s bar, and none for the shooting there, either. The reporter’s notes on that alone surely would have been an inch thick — Wilson knew this, he wrote much of it.

And there were no files whatsoever on Nancy Stillwater. Not even confetti.

Wilson lit a cigarette and pondered. Files were what a news-paper was built on. Documentation was the lifeblood of journalism.

Wilson could hear footsteps — slow, deliberate steps. They drew near.

“What are you doing?” asked a voice in the darkness. The voice had an English accent.

In the dim wattage of the lighting, Wilson could make out the peering eyes of a man with a Victorian moustache.

“I’m looking for back files,” Wilson explained. “Marvin Merkon and Nancy Stillwater.”

The man came further into the light. He was a polite-looking man, with a touch of gray about his hair. He looked like the type of man who’d wear a smoking jacket of an evening.

He looked like the type of man who, at this time of night, should be at home in his parlor poring over a copy of Dickens rather than hauling around a bunch of dusty documents in the basement of the Herald.

“I have all those files here,” the man reported, tapping the papers he was holding. “And you shouldn’t smoke down here. It’s rather dangerous with all this paperwork around.”

“Who are you?” Wilson asked.

“James Filbert, copyeditor. Who are you?”

“Wilson Hills, reporter.”

Filbert led Wilson back to the morgue’s entrance — at the foot of the stairs by the bottom of the elevator shaft.

Filbert explained to Wilson that the police had asked to see all the files pertaining to the Merkon murder and Nancy Stillwater. Filbert had spent two hours rounding up all the files, and no, Wilson could not look at them. They were to be handed to the police forthwith.

Wilson stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. Something dawned on him. “Are you Filbert? I mean, are you the Filbert?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the copyeditor who came up with the Eats, Shoots, and Leaves Murder headline?”

Filbert looked a bit miffed. “That was my headline, what of it?”

“We’re still laughing about it on the fourth floor, that’s what of it.” Wilson’s grin suggested the laughter on the fourth floor wasn’t because they thought it was funny.

“Writing headlines is hardly writing Shakespeare,” Filbert sniffed. He spied blood on Wilson’s cheek. “Why are you bleeding?”

“Something wicked my way came. Nice to meet you, Filbert.”

Wilson made his way up the stairs back to the street. When he got to the top, he turned around and stepped back down to the basement. Since when was the newspaper handing over its archives to the police for their perusal?

When Wilson got back to the foot of the stairs he could hear Filbert before he could see him. Filbert was talking on the basement telephone. He was talking to the police. He was telling them that the fugitive they had been looking for was leaving the building, and if they wanted to catch him, they’d better hurry.

Wilson was about to get the hell out of there when Filbert did a curious thing. After he hung up the telephone, he put a cheroot to his lips, struck a match, and lit it up. After seeing this, Wilson got the hell out of there.

It was approaching midnight. Wilson headed to the bus terminal. He had a key to locker 221. He had a feeling he might need the contents of locker 221.

Wilson hadn’t got but three steps inside the terminal when a tall, beefy man in a brown suit grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him around, and walked him back out again.

The beefy man walked Wilson across to a car — a black sedan. Its engine was running.

The beefy man tossed Wilson into the passenger’s seat as if he were an overcoat. He then walked around the car and got in himself.

Once behind the wheel, the big guy flicked on the headlamps, put the car into gear, and drove away.

“And you would be Bruno,” Wilson said, winding down the window.

“How you know my name?” Bruno asked, negotiating the traffic.

“I’m a reporter.”

“Is that what you do?”

Wilson noticed that Bruno had lips the size and shape of a prizefighter’s fingers, and chin stubble like a porcupine.

“Yeah, that’s what I do,” Wilson said. “You’re Nancy Stillwater’s boyfriend.”

They drove across town, until there were no more oncoming car headlamps and the street lighting had faded to nonexistent.

Bruno parked the black sedan out in the back of a run-down and dilapidated building. There was a sign by the back entrance: STAGE DOOR. It was held up by one remaining hinge.

Bruno flicked a switch on the fuse box. The lights came on. He walked Wilson out onto the stage of what had once been a rather splendid old theater, but had long fallen into decline.

There were some dusty decorations strewn about which suggested the last show the room had seen was a USO party eight years back — New Year’s, 1944.

“I got this place cheap,” Bruno explained. “I’m going to get in some people and fix it up.”

“I take it you didn’t bring me here to discuss the decorating,” Wilson replied.

Bruno dug his hand into his suit pocket. He pulled his hand out again and tossed a fistful of nuts into the air above his head. When the nuts came back down again, some went into his mouth, the rest landed on the wooden floor of the stage and scattered across it.

“Why’d you shoot Nancy?” Bruno asked, chomping on a mouthful of nuts.

“I didn’t shoot Nancy,” Wilson answered. “Are you sure you didn’t?”

Bruno shook his head. “Why would I shoot Nancy? Nancy was my wife.”

Wilson smiled politely. “That might not stand up in court.”

“I went out for beer,” Bruno explained. “When I come back, I see you being led out of my house by the police. I see Nancy being carried out on a stretcher — with her head covered.”

“I didn’t shoot Nancy,” Wilson said. “I’m a reporter. I only come into the picture after something’s happened.”

“Is that what you do?”

“Yeah, that’s what I do. Anyway, what’s with you and Nancy? Two years ago you were blowing a saxophone in a strip joint and she was a waitress. Nancy now owns a house up on Delshaw and you’ve gone into property investment.”

Bruno put his hand into his other pocket — only it wasn’t roasted nuts that he kept in that one.

Wilson stared down the unforgiving barrel of an M-1911.

“Do you sing?” Bruno asked.

“Do you have a request?”

“I like to sing. People tell me I have a beautiful voice.”

“You have a beautiful voice.”

“I wanted lessons when I was a kid, but my mother made me learn an instrument.”

“You have a beautiful voice. Want to point that .45 at someone else?”

“Nancy was my brain,” Bruno explained. “She thought of everything. I just played the part.”

“What was the picture?”

Bruno blankly stared at Wilson. Analogy and metaphor may as well have been types of pasta.

“What part did you play when you were playing your part?” Wilson asked.

“Nancy was an attractive woman,” Bruno explained. “All kind of guys was attracted to her.”

“Rich guys?”

“Yeah, rich guys. Rich guys with money.”

“How did it get to be your money?”

“They’d take Nancy out. They’d show her a good time.”

Wilson nodded knowingly. “And she’d show them an even better time.”

Bruno had that blank look again.

“We’ll put her down as a gracious hostess.”

“They had a good time,” Bruno said again, stiffly, on the verge of getting the point.

“So, how did you fit into it?” Wilson asked.

“I’d play the jealous husband.”

Wilson nodded. “Got it.”

“I’d show up, mess the guy up a bit. Pull a few buttons off his shirt.”

“And then you’d blackmail them?”

“Nancy would have them pay her money.”

“How much money?”

“A lot of money. She’d tell them I’d killed a man. She’d tell them I’d caught her fooling around once before.”

“So, why were they giving her money?”

“She told them she was going to hire a man with a gun. The man was going to take care of me.”

“Blackmail with a twist.” Wilson grinned. “And let me guess, after they’d paid her the money, something would go wrong.”

Bruno nodded. “How did you know that?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Nancy would telephone them a few days later. She’d tell them I had found out all about it. She’d tell them I had killed the man with the gun. She’d then say I had shot her and she was dying, and now I was coming after them and they ought to run.”

“And they left town by sundown.”

“Yeah.”

Wilson nodded. “Okay, so why then did you shoot dead the guy with the glass eye in Merkon’s bar?”

Bruno didn’t like that question.

A gunshot rang out. It echoed inside the theater like thunder. Bruno fell to his knees and clutched his stomach. He was bleeding. He’d been shot from behind and the bullet had gone right through him. A second later he flopped to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

There was another gunshot. This one was aimed at Wilson. Wilson could feel it slice the air next to his head as he leaped from the stage.

Three more shots chased Wilson as he sprinted up the aisle of the theater towards the entrance. Several divisions of both the German and Italian armies had failed at putting a bullet into Wilson, and he had no desire to change his batting average now.

Back at the bus terminal, Wilson slid his key into locker 221. He needed its contents now more than ever. He opened the locker and pulled out a rolled-up newspaper.

Wilson went to the men’s room and locked himself in a stall. He unrolled the newspaper and pulled out an old war buddy — his Colt semiautomatic.

Wilson tucked the pistol into his inner jacket pocket.

Wilson’s apartment building was staked out. Two police officers dressed in long coats and reading newspapers stood on the steps by the front door of the building and pretended not to be police officers.

There’d be others inside for sure. In the hallway, on the roof, and probably a couple of them waiting right inside his living room — playing poker and eating his leftovers.

Wilson was starting to get annoyed. They were his leftovers and he was hungry.

“Are they police officers?” a voice asked him quietly.

Wilson nearly jumped out of his skin. He thought he had been alone standing in the darkness of the alley across the street from his building.

“Those guys on the steps?” It was the redhead from the bar. She had somehow managed to sneak up on Wilson without making a single sound.

“Yes, they’re cops.”

“I thought they might be,” Sophie said. “They’re only pretending to read those newspapers.”

“What are you doing here?” Wilson asked, seeing Sophie’s eyes in a sliver of moonlight.

“I was looking for you.”

“How did you know where I lived?”

“You’re in the telephone directory,” Sophie reported.

“Why are you looking for me?”

“I found the candy box.”

Sophie’s room was above an all-night drugstore. Red light flicked on and off outside her open window — vertical neon letters:

Sophie flicked on the ceiling light. She pointed Wilson in the direction of the dining table.

Sophie’s room was small, but tidy — a single bed, a couple of chairs. Her dining table had a surface area equivalent to that of a chessboard. On top of it lay a small candy box — tartan-patterned.

“It was inside the jukebox,” Sophie explained. “It fell out when those cops put a bunch of holes in it trying to shoot at you.”

“Music to my ears.” Wilson grinned. “Do you know why they were trying to shoot me?”

“Yeah, they said you shot a woman.”

“Do you believe them?”

“I don’t know, you seem okay to me.”

Wilson pulled the lid off the candy box. Inside the box was a passport. Wilson flicked the passport open.

The photograph inside the passport was of the dead man with the glass eye. The dead man’s name was apparently Paul Johnson. He was an American citizen, born in Akron, Ohio, in 1896.

“Mr. Merkon must have taken this off the dead man right after he was shot,” Sophie supposed. “And then he didn’t show it to the police.”

“Merkon wanted to play his own game,” Wilson said. “By the way, the woman I’m supposed to have shot was your predecessor, Nancy Stillwater.”

“I heard,” Sophie said.

Two cars pulled up outside with abrupt screeches of tires.

Wilson went over to the open window. Two police cruisers were parked in the street below — six large cops were climbing out. The cops were brutish-looking, hairy, fat Neanderthals of law enforcement. Two of them had to lift their hands to stop them dragging on the ground.

“The police are getting awfully serious,” Wilson remarked, pondering the sight below.

“They must have followed us,” Sophie said, flicking off the light. “They must have seen us across from your building.”

“Should I run or just throw them some bananas?”

Sophie decided for both of them. She led Wilson down the stairs from the second floor.

When they got to the first floor they didn’t stop, they kept on going and went down into the basement.

Sophie muttered something about a laundry and adjoining cellars. Wilson couldn’t make out the exact words, but by the time the cops had gotten to the stairs leading up to Sophie’s room, he and Sophie were coming up the stairs in the neighboring building — directly into Mr. Song’s laundry service.

Mr. Song was pleased to see young Sophie. Her clothes were ready anytime she wanted to collect them. Wilson stopped and made brief inquiries about having some pants turned up at the leg.

By the time the cops burst their way into Sophie’s room, she and Wilson were coming out into the pitch-black alley behind the neighboring building.

They marched briskly. A handful of stars above were about the only light in the alley.

“Did the guy asking questions at the bar last week have a big old-fashioned moustache?” Wilson asked.

“Yes, he did,” Sophie replied.

“His name is Filbert, he works at the newspaper. I ran into him earlier this evening.”

They got out of the alley and onto a cross street. They had planned to head back to the bar. But they hadn’t walked more than a block before the black sedan pulled up at the curb next to them and the familiar sight of a barrel of a .45 was pointed in their direction.

Bruno was apparently not dead.

“Do you ever do anything in life where you don’t point a gun at someone’s head?” Wilson snapped at Bruno.

Bruno was not dead, but he was rapidly running out of blood and growing paler by the minute. With his gun pointed in their direction, he drove them back to his theater. He parked out the back, and then gun-pointed them back inside.

“If all the world’s a stage, why am I back on this particular one?” Wilson moaned, clomping his way across the wooden boards to the center of the stage again.

“Shakespeare?” Sophie inquired, right behind him.

“Kind of.”

“Who’s Shakespeare?” Bruno asked, trying to point the gun at both of them.

“Nobody special,” Wilson commented.

“Did he shoot Nancy?”

Sophie shook her head. “Shakespeare didn’t shoot anybody. He’s been dead for hundreds of years.”

Bruno nodded knowingly. “Somebody got him, huh?”

The three of them stood in the center of the stage, with Bruno aiming his gun in their general direction, with his other hand holding a clump of blood-soaked cloth to his chest.

“This place could do with a good clean,” Sophie griped, glancing about the theater.

“So, what’s going on, big guy?” Wilson asked. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Who’s the broad?” Bruno asked, pointing his nose at Sophie.

“She works at the bar where you shot Paul Johnson.”

“That man’s name wasn’t Paul Johnson,” Bruno reported.

“I figured that,” Wilson replied. “I have his passport in my pocket. It’s counterfeit.”

Bruno stared at Wilson with suspicion.

“A year ago I worked a story that broke a counterfeit-passport ring,” Wilson explained. “I know what to look for.”

“Did the broad shoot Nancy?” Bruno asked, pointing his nose at Sophie again.

“The broad has a name,” Sophie sniffed. “Point your nose at someone else, lump-head.”

“She didn’t shoot anybody,” Wilson argued.

“Give me a gun and we’ll see about that,” Sophie snapped.

“What’s the broad doing here?” Bruno asked.

“I’m waiting for Mr. Right and some chocolates, lump-head.”

“You brought her here,” Wilson pointed out. “Think about it, Bruno. Whoever shot Nancy probably also shot you.”

Bruno frowned. He remembered he was bleeding. “Who killed us?”

Wilson smirked. “How about Nancy’s old boss, Merkon?”

“Merkon’s dead,” Bruno helpfully pointed out.

“Merkon was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“So you shot him.”

Bruno shook his head.

“After you shot the man with the glass eye in his bar, Merkon went through his pockets. He found the man’s passport. He knew who pulled the trigger, so he blackmailed you, and then you shot him.”

“Yeah, Merkon was blackmailing us, but I didn’t shoot him,” Bruno said. “Nancy did.”

“Score one for Nancy,” Wilson replied. “Was the glass-eyed man one of your jealous-husband targets?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you shoot him?”

“He was blackmailing us.”

“Him too? How?”

“Nancy found out something about him,” Bruno explained. “Something big from his past. Nancy took him for thousands of dollars. Much more than the jealous-husband routine.”

“What was his secret?”

Bruno wasn’t answering that. He was as white as a bed sheet.

“So, what gave?”

Bruno frowned. “He had pictures, lots of them — photographs of Nancy and me. He said he’d post them to the newspaper. Nancy didn’t want that.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a lot of guys around town who think Nancy’s dead on account of me being a jealous husband.”

“I see the problem.”

Bruno shook his head. “Nancy set it up. The guy was to wait for her in the bar. There was never anyone in there at that time of morning. Nancy telephoned to say she wasn’t working. Merkon was in the office speaking to her on the telephone. I walked in and shot the guy. But then I forgot to do something.”

Wilson shook his head. “What do you mean, forgot?”

Bruno frowned regretfully. It was a sad expression. “I was supposed to leave the gun behind. I was supposed to hide it under a table.”

“Why?” Wilson asked.

“It was Merkon’s gun. Nancy lifted it the night before.”

“You were wearing gloves.”

Bruno nodded dolefully.

“You were going to frame Merkon.”

Bruno nodded.

“Well, ain’t you the smart one,” Sophie chirped, lighting up a cigarette.

“So,” Wilson asked. “Who was the dead man with the glass eye and the fake passport, and what was his big secret?”

Bruno looked as if he was about to say something meaningful, but he finally ran out of blood. He hit the floor of the stage like a sack of potatoes that had gone rotten.

Wilson frowned. “I don’t think he’ll be getting back up again for the third act.”

The sun was coming up.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Sophie asked, winding down the window of Bruno’s black sedan. “Everybody’s blackmailing everybody.”

Wilson changed gears. He smiled. “I know exactly what’s going on. I just need to make a phone call to confirm it.”

The telephone on Lieutenant Harden’s desk rang. Harden put down a mug of black breakfast coffee and grabbed it up with his fat hand. “What?”

A few minutes later Wilson put the receiver down. He was back in the bar.

“Now I need you to make a call,” Wilson said.

Sophie nodded.

The three bears were looking at each other. They looked rather like three elderly gentlemen who had repaired to the garden after breakfast. If they could have talked, they’d have probably discussed the weather — a glorious morning — or the latest zoo gossip, or the stock exchange.

Sophie leaned over the guardrail and stared at them.

“Do you know what the collective noun for a group of bears is?” Wilson asked. He leaned over the guardrail alongside her.

“No,” Sophie replied.

“A sleuth of bears.”

Sophie smiled. “Why did you become a reporter, Wilson?”

Wilson smiled back. “They wouldn’t let me join the police force.”

“Why not?”

“I’m too short.”

Sophie nodded. She could see that; she herself had four inches on Wilson.

At ten o’clock exactly, Sophie was standing alone at the guardrail of the bear pit — as planned. She nervously glanced about. She could hear the chiming of the zoo clock back at the front gate.

Before the tenth chime had sounded, a man walked into view and headed towards her. The man was holding an umbrella under his arm.

The man stepped up alongside Sophie, leaned against the guardrail, and then dropped the cheroot he was smoking to the ground. He stepped on it with his shoe and ground it out.

“Where’s the box?” James Filbert asked.

“Why did you want to meet me here?” Sophie asked.

Filbert looked about. “Because there’s no one here, and because I like the zoo at this time of the day.”

Filbert pulled out his wallet and peeled out a bill. “Here’s the twenty I promised.”

Sophie took the twenty. She pulled the tartan-patterned candy box out of the grocery store bag she’d been holding.

“I appreciate your help,” Filbert said, taking the box. “I have a fairly good idea of what’s inside this.”

Filbert opened the box. He stared at the contents with bemusement. “Although I wasn’t expecting that,” he said, gaping at a picture of Lucille Ball.

“It’s from the cover of this week’s Time magazine,” Sophie pointed out.

Filbert screwed up his face in anger. “What’s this all about?”

“It’s all about this,” Wilson barked, walking toward them holding up the Paul Johnson passport.

Filbert was even more confused. “What are you doing here, Hills?”

“I like the zoo at this time of the day,” Wilson replied. “And I was over there hiding in the bushes waiting for you to arrive.”

Filbert pulled a pistol out of his pocket. He pointed it at Wilson. “Give me the passport.”

Wilson pulled his own gun out. “No.”

Sophie backed away. Filbert aimed his gun at her head. “Give me the passport or I’ll shoot her.”

Sophie froze.

“The police didn’t want those files from the morgue, like you told me,” Wilson said.

“How do you know that?” Filbert asked, trying to look at Wilson while aiming at Sophie.

“I asked them,” Wilson replied, the barrel of his own gun aimed squarely at a point between Filbert’s eyes. “You were blackmailing Nancy.”

Filbert didn’t deny it. “What of it?”

“Why did you shoot her?”

“A successful blackmailer knows when to stop.” Filbert smiled. “Nancy was an amateur. She milked Max Braun for every penny he could lay his hands on. She milked him until he was absolutely dry, and look where it got her.”

“I’m figuring Max Braun was the real name of the man with the glass eye?” Wilson asked.

“Yes, it was,” Filbert replied. “He was a Nazi spy, did you know that, Mr. Reporter?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“He came here in the last year of the war. He was an undercover agent, sent to infiltrate. The name in that passport, I think you’ll find, is Paul Johnson.”

“Correct.”

“When the war ended, Braun found himself out of a job, and stuck in a very dangerous place should he be found out.”

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Sophie asked.

“Go right ahead,” Filbert said. He stared at Wilson. “Nancy’s been getting into trouble lately — she could never stay out of it. I made a good deal of money out of her. I chose to quit while I was ahead.”

Something dawned on Wilson. “You have the photographs!”

Filbert grinned.

“Max Braun had photos of Nancy and Bruno,” Wilson said. “He was going to send them to the newspaper.”

Filbert nodded. “They arrived the week he got shot. They were addressed to the editor. Providence saw to my opening the mail that morning.”

“So, you knew what was going on.”

“Max Braun wrote a lovely letter. The photographs were very flattering.”

“So you shot Nancy, and then you shot Bruno,” Wilson said.

“Yes,” Filbert answered. “You see, one of the roles of a copy-editor is to tidy things up. To strip out all the unnecessary parts.”

“You’re hiding all of the evidence.”

Filbert nodded. “Indeed.” He then sighed. “Poor Bruno, I always felt sorry for him. He was always the last to know anything.”

At that precise moment, Sophie’s cigarette hit the spot between Filbert’s eyes where Wilson’s gun had been aiming. It was an expert flick.

Filbert immediately got a face full of cigarette ash. Hot ash went into his eyes and into his mouth.

Right after that, Wilson hurled his gun at Filbert’s head. It whacked him hard. So hard, Filbert stumbled backwards, tripped over the umbrella he was carrying, and upended himself over the guardrail and fell down into the bear pit. He fired every bullet he had on the way down.

Before Filbert even landed, a herd of police officers lead by Lieutenant Harden charged onto the scene from out of the bushes Wilson had been hiding in earlier.

“What in heaven’s name did you do that for?” Harden barked like an indignant walrus as he galloped in Wilson’s direction.

The three bears played with Filbert as if he were a new toy on Christmas morning — and he lasted about as long as one.

Wilson frowned. “I see bears actually do eat more than shoots and leaves.”

Wilson bought Sophie a milkshake. He carefully stored the receipt in his pocket, and together he and Sophie strolled back toward the zoo’s entrance.

“Have you had that gun all along?” Sophie asked.

“Yes,” Wilson replied, lighting a cigarette.

Sophie slurped on her milkshake and looked at him. “Why didn’t you use it last night when Bruno was holding us at gunpoint?”

“I don’t have any bullets.”

Sophie stopped walking and slurped the last drops of the shake. She watched Wilson walk away. The midmorning sun was shining above him.

“Hey, Wilson?” she shouted after him. “Want to buy a girl a real drink?”