Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 41, No. 4, October 1977

Partners by Hal Ellson

Every man has his price, and so does every woman. It comes out as forty thousand dollars.

She waited close to the phone and wondered if Max would call. Timid Max might come apart at the last moment and not go through with it. As for herself, Jill was ready for the biggest event of her life and had no qualms over what was about to unfold.

Unless Max falters in the stretch, she thought. But he wouldn’t, he couldn’t. He had sworn that he loved her and would never let her go.

Dear little Max, she hummed, and the phone rang. It was Max and his voice trembled.

“Are you ready and packed?” he asked.

“Everything is set with me,” Jill answered. “And you? You know, we can’t afford a mistake.”

He assured her that he had the plane tickets, had confirmed their flight and, once in Mexico, they’d be completely free. As for the money, he had drawn all of it from the bank.

“Forty thousand dollars?” she said.

“With interest, which should keep us going for a long spell and in proper style.” He chuckled, then grew alarmed when Jill didn’t reply. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Well,” she said.

“Well, what? You’re not going to back out now, are you?”

“No, but I was thinking of what I am about to do. In a way, it’s a terrible thing, you know, just going off like this and leaving Bill without letting him know.”

“He doesn’t deserve to know. Let him suffer the way he’s made you suffer,” Max said.

“But I’m not like him. I don’t want him to suffer and I don’t want revenge. Besides, if I don’t let him know I’m leaving him, he’ll probably think I’ve been kidnapped or something like that and have the police searching for me.”

“Let him think and let the police search,” Max argued. “It’ll do Bill good to wonder what hit him and the police will never find you.”

“But what if they do?”

“If the impossible happens, there’s really nothing they can do — and Bill can do less,” Max insisted. “But Jill was still hesitant, thinking it wiser and safer to let Bill know the truth.

“All right, leave a brief note for him. ‘Goodbye, Animal’ should be appropriate,” Max said, laughing. “And now hurry, hurry, lover, the plane takes off in an hour and we don’t want to miss it.”

“I’ll be at your place in ten minutes,” Jill answered. She placed the phone down then and turned to the vanity mirror and surveyed herself. Blonde and shapely, she looked as young and innocent as a high school girl. None the less, she was a married woman, married to Bill who, as Max had put it, was certainly an animal. But, then, all men were animals, she believed, even poor little Max, except that he wasn’t vicious. He was as tame as a teddy bear, and worth forty thousand dollars.

At thought of the money, she smiled at herself in the mirror, turned away, then remembered the note she was to leave for Bill. It wasn’t necessary, of course, but on second thought she decided it was certainly appropriate, as Max had suggested, so she scribbled it quickly on the vanity mirror with the reddest of lipstick. She picked up her bag then and left the apartment. Ten minutes later, a taxi dropped her off in front of the brownstone where Max lived. She left her bag in the cab, told the driver to wait and went up the high stoop of the brownstone to ring the bell.

Seconds later, as Max opened the door, heavy footsteps sounded on the stoop and Jill whirled about. “Oh, my god, it’s Bill!” she gasped.

It was Bill, with a gun in hand. “Get back in that taxi and wait for me,” he said. “And you, run.” He shoved the gun in little Max’s ribs. “Back in the house.” Stunned and speechless, Max obeyed.

In less than a minute, Bill stepped out the front door of the brownstone, calmly descended the stoop and got into the cab. Calmly, he lit a cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke and glanced over at Jill. “Well,” she said. “Well, what?” he snapped. “It’s all over, finished — kaput. What do you want me to do, write you a letter or count the money right here?”

“That might be a good idea,” Jill answered, “but did you get it all?”

“I’m a hungry guy. I made sure.”

“And the plane tickets?”

“Yeah.” Patting a pocket.

“What about Max?”

“What about him?”

“Did you hurt him?”

“A bit. He’s dead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Poor little Max.”

“Yeah, you’re sorry for him now, but you wanted the money. You’re greedier than I am.”

“And smarter. I set the whole thing up.”

“Sure, you did, and you had your fun with Max while you were at it, while I was sucking my thumb and waiting six months until you talked him out of taking his money from the bank.”

“I couldn’t rush things and scare him off, you know.”

“Yeah, you couldn’t — but six months?” Bill snorted. “You must have liked his style.”

“Well, he was a gentleman.”

“Even in bed?”

“Yes, even in bed. Listen, for your information, no guy’s a gentleman in bed. We’re all animals.”

“You mean, like you?”

Bill’s hand came up, slapped her across the mouth and the taxi braked to a halt. “You wait here. I forgot something upstairs,” Bill said. He had the forty thousand dollars in a brown paper bag and was about to hand it to Jill, then stopped himself and said, “I better take this with me.”

“What’s the matter, you don’t trust me now?” Jill snapped.

“Baby, with forty thousand, I don’t even trust myself.”

Two minutes later, in their apartment, he picked up the phone in the bedroom, dialed a number and a woman answered.

“Hey, I got it,” he said. “We’re on the way. Meet me at the airport, at the spot. Jill? After we check in at the ticket counter, I’ll dump her and pick you up. No, she won’t go to the police. She can’t, or she’ll hang with me. See you at the airport, baby.”

With that, he hung up and had started to cross the room toward the bed where his topcoat lay when he noticed the lipstick message on the vanity mirror. Goodbye, Animal, hey? Well goodbye to you too, he thought.

A sound behind him alerted him, but too late. A blunt instrument dropped him in his tracks.

Jill turned when the cabbie came out the door of the apartment house and climbed behind the wheel of the taxi. As he started the motor, she leaned forward.

“Have you got the money, Jim?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s in the bag?”

“And the plane tickets?”

“In my pocket,” Jim answered and the he laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Jill asked.

“That message you wrote to Bill on the vanity.”

“Do you think he saw it?”

“He was looking at it when I hit him, so maybe he did, but let’s get to the airport before our plane takes off.”