Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, July 1959

Never Turn Your Back by Larry Holden

Kenny was a hard cop to figure out. He had a murder to untangle... not a sexy redhead’s love life.

He was just about the most shot up guy I had ever seen. He couldn’t have been standing more than six feet in front of the muzzles when the shotgun let go with both barrels.

He’d taken the double load right in the chest. The funny part of it is, he had a real peaceful expression on his face, as if this were the best thing that had ever happened to him. Maybe it was.

He was a big, blond, good-looking guy, what I’d call the athletic type wolf, and the bedroom he was stretched out on the floor of, he had no business getting well-acquainted with in the first place, if you know what I mean. In other words, he had asked for it and, brother, he had gotten it in spades. The kind of spades they dig graves with, I mean.

He was dead about six hours when me and Kenny Riordan walked in there at eight that night. Me and Kenny is what you’d call a team on account of when you try to figure out a homicide, somebody’s got to have brains, and I ain’t no Einstein.

This red-headed dame was sitting on the sofa, and even though she was scared stiff, she was just about the sexiest looking tomato I ever laid eyes on. She was wearing one of those white nylon things that did to the old-fashioned bathrobe what the atom bomb did to the bow and arrow, and man, was she loaded in all departments!

Kenny pulled over a chair and sat down and started talking to her real soft and quiet. Kenny’s a smooth worker and a hell of a handsome guy. You know that kind of Irish — tall, black hair, blue eyes, et cetera. If he was in the movies, it wouldn’t be Rock Hudson’s puss you’d see up there in technicolor.

“We realize this is a terrible shock, Mrs. Sloan,” he said, schmoozing her, “and I hate to bother you at a time like this. But if you can calm yourself, it would be best to give us the details while they’re still fresh in your mind.”

Little by little he warmed her up and after awhile she sat there looking into his face like he was reading poetry to her, and here’s the story we get from her—

This guy Andresson — that’s the stiff — had been trying to make her on and off for months. So this night he walks in, and she’s getting dressed for dinner in the bedroom, and the next thing she knows, he’s making a pass at her. According to her, she wasn’t having any, and there they are rassling to and fro in the bedroom, and all she’s got on is panties and a brassiere, and who walks in but the husband, a guy with a terrible temper. She passes out cold and when she comes to, there’s Andresson all over the rug and the husband gone.

“I’m sure it was an accident, Mr. Riordan,” she said, giving him the big eyes. “They must have been fighting over the gun. Lew wouldn’t shoot anybody on purpose.”

“Okay, sister,” I said, real tough. “That was a nice little story and I enjoyed every word of it. But now let’s have the facts.”

This is just an act, see? I’m supposed to get tough, then Kenny bawls me out and tells me to beat it, and this gives whoever it is the idea that he’s a friend of theirs and before they know it, they’re telling him things they wouldn’t write in their diary.

She turned as white as an unfried bagel, and Kenny snapped at me, “That’s enough of that, Gene!”

“Enough of what? Fairy tales like we just listened to?”

“I said that’s enough! Beat it!”

I said, “You’re the boss,” real huffy, and walked away. But I had a funny feeling that this time he meant it. He really sounded sore, and I thought maybe I had done it wrong.

I poked around the house, and off the kitchen, there’s this little room, and there’s all kinds of guns up on the wall, and over on the bookcase there’s a big silver cup, and Lew Sloan turns out to be the state pistol champion of 1956. Brother! That guy Andresson just didn’t have good sense.

Later on, Kenny called to me, and when we left, the dame went to the door with us. To me she was an ice cube, but with Kenny it was a different story.

“You’ve been very kind, Kenny,” she said to him in a throaty voice, giving him the big eyes again. “Very kind.”

“Not at all, Lura,” he said, looking back at her. “If I can be of any help, just let me know.”

As we walked down the lawn toward the car at the curb, I said, “For Pete’s sake, Kenny, you ain’t falling for that tomato, are you?”

He turned and took a swing at my jaw, and if he hadn’t slipped on the grass, I’d have been spitting teeth for a week.

I jumped back out of the way before he could wind up again. “I’m sorry, Kenny,” I said. “I didn’t mean...”

“Nuts!” he said, real sore. “‘Let’s get to work.”

He walked up the sidewalk and I followed him. I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t even answer. I didn’t know what to make of it. I just couldn’t believe he was falling for a dame like that. I mean, that stuff she tried to give us about Andresson and trying to fight him off et cetera. This wasn’t football. There weren’t no uncompleted passes in her league. Then I thought, the hell with it.

We poked around, but we didn’t find out very much. There were only the two houses on the block and the people next door weren’t home and the neighbors across the street was at the ball park. But three blocks away was the gas station, and the attendant told us that Lew Sloan had bought a tankful a little after six, and had acted real funny, his hands shaking, dropping his money, and all that.

“Like he was drunk or something,” he said. “I asked him what was the matter and he yelled for me to mind my own damn business, and shot out of here like a bat out of hell.”

That was just about all we got anywheres.

Lura gave us a handful of pictures of him, and we passed them out to the papers, and had a flock of readers printed, and got the usual false alarms from jerks who were almost positive they had seen Lew Sloan in Philly, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and points north, east, south, and west.

A week passed, and we were still on the same dime — and with Kenny, I was still behind the eight-ball. At first I tried to make it up with him — hell, I liked the guy — but it went on and on and I couldn’t get to first base, and finally I thought, the hell with you.

Then this Saturday night I was in the Drop Anchor Inn down by the river with this dame I know, and we were dancing to the juke box, and back there in the corner booth, who do I see but Kenny and Lura. There were a couple drinks on the table in front of them and they were sitting side by side so close you couldn’t have wedged a finger between them even if you were a midget.

And while I was watching them, she lifted up her mouth and he kissed her, leaning down into it as though that was all he wanted to do for the rest of his life. And when I saw that, brother, I really blew my stack.

I took my dame back to the bar and said to her, “Put it on a stool and keep it warm, baby. I’ll be right back.”

I walked over to the booth. Kenny saw me coming and stood up, giving me a silly grin. His hair was mussed and there was lipstick all over him.

“Hiya, Gene.” He flapped his hand at the booth. “Siddown, siddown. Buy y’ drink.”

I started. “You damn fool...”

He smacked me. His fist couldn’t have moved six inches, but when I opened my eyes, there I was down on the floor among the cigar butts and chair legs, and my dame was sloshing my face with a wet rag and not caring how she did it, either. Boy, was she sore! Half the gin mill was standing around looking down at me over her shoulder.

“Now if you’re finished making a holy show of yourself,” she snapped, “I hope you’ll be gentleman enough to take me home!”

I got up and looked around. Kenny and Lura were gone. I took my dame by the arm and she pulled away from me and marched out with me behind her. Every face in the joint watched us go, and there wasn’t a friend among them. Brother, I was in the doghouse all round. I took her home, but I had sense enough not to even try to kiss her goodnight. I didn’t need anymore pokes in the snoot.

The next day the Chief had me up on the carpet.

“What’s this with you and Kenny Riordan?” he asked.

“Nothing, sir,” I said.

“You tried to pick a fight with him last night.”

“Yessir,” I said, but I couldn’t tell him about Kenny and Lura. “I had a fight with my girl and took it out on Kenny.”

He bawled the hell out of me and said if Kenny hadn’t spoken up for me, I’d be on thirty days suspension without pay.

“Now for God sake,” he yelled at me, “get out there and see if you can help him clean up this Sloan mess and stop acting like a damn fool!”

I walked out with my ears on fire. I went into the detectives room. There were a couple of the guys standing there talking, and when they saw me, they turned their backs. In their book, I was a muckheel. I was bigger and heavier than Kenny. I should have picked on a guy my own size. I didn’t have to be no mind reader to see what they were thinking.

By now, it was over ten days and still nothing on Sloan. He had gone into a hole and pulled the hole in after him. I didn’t see much of Kenny, but I knew he was spending every minute he could with Lura. I saw them together a couple times, once at another nightspot when they disappeared outside for an hour and he came back with more lipstick on him than she had.

When they got back to their booth, they fell in another clinch, and I walked out before I flipped my lid again. She had her eye on me all the time, but he didn’t know that anybody else was alive but her. I never saw a guy so gone on a dame.

And that’s what started me thinking about Sloan. He was just an ordinary guy. He worked from eight to five, forty hours a week, and you couldn’t call him a guy that knew his way around or had contacts. Then all of a sudden I remembered what I had thought about Sloan going into a hole and pulling the hole in after him. I mean, the very words.

Him going into a hole, specially.

Lura didn’t have me fooled. She was a beautiful dame. Marilyn Monroe didn’t have a thing on her but Arthur Miller. And furthermore I knew damn well she had been shacking up with Andresson and didn’t give a damn about Sloan. Let’s say she even wanted to get rid of him, but didn’t do anything about it till he blew Andresson all over her bedroom.

Okay. So Sloan knocks Andresson off and she gives him that song and dance about Andresson attacking her and he believes her, but at the same time he knows he’s got to get the hell out of there or it’s the chair. He loves her. Let’s get out of here, he says. Okay, she says. So he runs down to the gas station and fills up while she’s supposed to be dressing and packing.

He goes back, and when he walks in the door, she points a gun at him and pulls the trigger, drags him down in the cellar and puts him under the coal pile, and when me and Kenny walk in, she gives us that business about passing out. So now she’s making a play for Kenny, so that when she gets him good and hooked, he’ll help her get rid of the stiff in the cellar and have police protection at the same time. A very nice set-up.

But I was the guy that was going to clobber it!

I waited till about ten that night when I was sure her and Kenny would be out somewheres, and then I took the car and drove around the side street a block away from her house. I had a pickax and a shovel with me, in case I might have to do some digging in her cellar, and went around the back way, coming up to her house through the empty lot behind.

The house was dark, so I didn’t bother ducking around playing cops and robbers. They had one of those slanting cellar doors, but there was a padlock on it, so I put the pickax under the hasp and pulled it out by the roots.

I was just bending over to pick up the shovel when — wham! Something hit me on the side of the head, and the next thing I knew I was looking straight up and the moon was wavering around in front of my eyes. Only — it wasn’t the moon. It was Kenny’s face and he was saying hoarsely: “Gene, Gene, Gene...”

And then I remembered that wham, and I knew I hadn’t been slugged. Somebody had taken a shot at me. I tried to raise my hand to feel my head, but I couldn’t move it.

“Are you okay, kid?” Kenny babbled. “Gene, are you okay?”

I looked at him, and thought of that .38 he packed, and how gone he was on Lura Sloan. “‘Go to hell,” I said.

“Thank God you’re okay,” he said, and did he sound phony!

He helped me up. I was bleeding a little, but the bullet had just glanced off my thick skull. He put on a big act about helping me into the house to fix me up, but every time I looked in his face, he looked some place else.

“What happened, kid?” he kept asking. “What happened? You trip over something?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I fell down.”

He banged on the kitchen door, but there was no answer. I didn’t bother watching him put on his act. I felt dizzy and sick and leaned against the house.

I heard the door splinter when he kicked it in. He helped me inside, but by this time I had my own gun in my side pocket. He switched on the light.

There was Lura, stretched out on the floor with a bruise the size of an ashtray on her forehead. He went down on his knees beside her and felt all around the bruise with his fingertips to see if the bone had been splintered. I thought he was going to faint, the way he looked while he was crouched over her.

I looked around, and there was a coke bottle on the floor against the refrigerator. That would just about be it. I looked back and Kenny had Lura half in his arms. She was mumbling and he held her tighter.

“What, darling?” he begged. “What’d you say, honey? What, what?”

She opened her eyes. Her jaw was dropped. “Lew,” she mumbled, “Lew...”

“What about Lew, darling?”

“No, Lew, no... no... nononono!”

She screamed and grabbed him and he held her against him and rocked her, telling her that everything was okay, everything was okay, and what about Lew?

“He hit me,” she whispered, “he hit me with a bottle.”

“He was here?”

“He hit me...” she began to cry, and then she got hysterical, and finally Kenny carried her into the living room and laid her on the sofa and covered her with a blanket and sat there and patted her hand,

I didn’t know what to think. She’ had been smacked all right, and she thought it was Lew. I just plain didn’t know what to think.

“Oh, Kenny, Kenny,” she said. “He hit me—”

“You’re all right now, honey.”

“Hold me tight, Kenny. I’m so scared!”

“All right, honey, all right, all right...”

I just couldn’t watch them doing that, and something went cold and hard inside me. I looked around again and spotted the cellar door off the kitchen. I went down. It was the usual kind of cellar. There was a furnace and a coal bin next to it. On one wall was the gas and electric meters, and on the side wall was a work bench with a little vise and a rack of tools where Sloan must have worked on his guns.

There was a long poker- leaning against the furnace and I took it and thrust it into the coal pile from all angles. If there was a body there, I would have hit it, but there wasn’t. I looked at the furnace. It was a little house and the furnace was little, too, and the door was just about wide enough for the coal shovel. She would have had to cut Sloan up in pieces to get him in there, but I looked all the same, even holding a match inside.

The grates were clean and there weren’t even any ashes. I went over the cellar floor, inch by inch. It was cement, and if anybody had chopped it up for any reason, you would have spotted it a mile off. There wasn’t even a patch on it, and you could have spotted that, too.

So I stood there with a splitting headache, trying to figure it out.

I went upstairs. I looked in the living room and Lura had her arms around Kenny. He saw me and his lips went back from his teeth.

“Get lost!” he said.

“It’ll take me longer than you,” I said, and walked out.

I had a pocket flash, and I went over the grounds outside from front to back and side to side. It was all grass and nobody had dug a hole in it for a long time. I was up the block going through the empty lots the same way when I saw Kenny come out of the house and get in his car and drive away.

It was four in the morning when I got home myself, but by that time I was absolutely positive that Sloan hadn’t been put in the ground anyplace around that neighborhood.

I didn’t sleep a wink. I just couldn’t see Kenny taking a shot at me, but on the other hand, Lura Sloan was a dame some guys would have shot their grandmother for. I mean, she was so damn sexy that you couldn’t be in the same room with her two minutes without wanting to do something about it.

I hated her on account of what she was doing to Kenny, but even me — all I had to do was look at her, and something turned over inside. Don’t think I didn’t feel hypocritical and plain rotten about it. She just did something to you, and you couldn’t help yourself. I said I couldn’t see Kenny taking a shot at me. That’s a lie. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, and that was the whole thing. I could see Kenny, or anybody else, taking a shot at me, if it was a choice between me and her. He knew I’d crucify her in a minute if I had the chance.

I went down to Headquarters around nine the next morning. I must have looked a wreck because the desk sergeant said, “You ought to lay off that stuff, Gene.”

I told him to stick it, and went upstairs. I had some paperwork to do, and the print kept swimming in front of my eyes like guppies. I must have dropped off for a minute because all of a sudden there was Kenny shaking me by the shoulder.

“Here’s the break, kid,” he said. “She just heard from Sloan.” He sounded all wound up.

I said, “Huh?” only half-awake.

“She heard from Sloan. She knows where he’s hiding out, so come on, let’s go! This is it.”

My heart started to bump. His face looked so sharp and hard and I had the feeling he was saying one thing and meaning another. I got up and felt in my pocket to make sure I had my gun, and then we went downstairs to the car. I drove and he sat next to me with his lips pressed together.

The tension was building up in me and I asked, “Did she tell you where he’s hiding out?”

He said, “Out in the country some place,” and [could tell from the way he said it his mind was on something else entirely.

She was waiting for us at the house. She had on a skirt and a sweater and just looking at her, you had to breathe twice to catch one breath. Her face was white, but that only made her mouth look more like something you’d never satisfy even if you spent the rest of your life on it.

She came down the walk to the car. Her skirt was tight and every step she took told you just exactly what she was underneath and inside. I turned my head and stared straight ahead through the windshield, so I wouldn’t have to look at her. I didn’t want to feel any different about her than I did.

She sat between us, and it wasn’t me she leaned against. She had a big straw pocketbook and she thrust it down into the pocket on the door next to Kenny.

“What’d he say on the phone?” he asked her.

“He needs money.”

“Do you know where he is exactly?”

“Yes, but it’s kind of hard to explain. It’s up in the mountains the other side of Boonton. We used to go there on picnics. You can’t get in with a car. You have to walk about a mile.”

“Can we get in there without being seen?”

“Oh yes. The woods are very thick.”

They both sounded all tensed up, and you could tell from the way they talked that if I hadn’t been there, things would have been a lot different. A couple times I caught her looking at me from the side of her eyes, and each time she looked right away, and it gave me a cold feeling. Her and Kenny were holding hands where they thought I couldn’t see them.

Every once in awhile I could feel her rub herself up against him, and once I heard her whisper; “Oh honey, honey, honey...” as though she just had to say something like that to him.

He said, “Shhhhh...” and she leaned away from me a little more, like she was pressing her cheek against his mouth.

Neither of them said a word to me.

We went all the way out Route 6 past the Jersey City reservoir, then down a long weedy road, then up another one and around and in back of a big stand of scrub birch, and that was where we stopped. We got out of the car, and the minute she hung that big straw handbag over her shoulder, I could see from the way it sagged on the strap that she had something heavy in it — something just about the weight of a gun.

There was a narrow path up the mountain, and she went first, and I hung back and Kenny went second. I wasn’t letting either of them get behind me. We walked in for about a half hour, nobody saying a word, but every once in awhile, Kenny would look back over his shoulder to see if I was still there. His face was all strained. The path got rocky and steeper, and finally it was just a narrow little place between two deep ravines.

She stopped just where the path turned around a big overhanging rock. “I’ll have to go the rest of the way alone,” she whispered. “He can see us from here on. I’ll... bring him down here.”

Kenny took her arm. “You can’t go alone!”

“I’ll be all right.”

“For God sake, don’t take chances. Give her your gun, Gene.”

My heart started to go faster and there was a dry, hot taste in the back of my mouth. Was this what Kenny had meant by this being it? Was I the one that was going to be it?

“I ain’t giving nobody my gun,” I said.

“No, no, I don’t want a gun,” she said. “I’ll be all right. Just wait here. I’ll bring him down.”

She went up the path and I watched her handbag bump heavily against the side of her leg. No, she didn’t need a gun!

Kenny said to me, “You take that side of the road and I’ll take this.”

He disappeared down into the ravine on his side of the road. I went down in on my side — but I didn’t stay there! I wasn’t going to be any sitting duck when the bullets started flying. I kept moving up the mountain at the side of the road, but down out of sight. There was an old brook-bed and I could move fast without making any noise. I went about two hundred yards and then climbed the side of the ravine and squnched down behind a big rhododendron bush.

In about five minutes I saw Lura come walking up the path. She stopped about fifty feet below me and looked up at the rocky side of the mountain.

“Lew,” she called. “Lew, are you there?”

My jaw dropped when this tall, skinny guy came out of the rocks.

“Lura!” he said, and ran down to her.

He grabbed her and hugged her and kissed her, and she kissed him back. He pushed her out to arms length and looked at her, then hugged and kissed her as though he couldn’t get enough of it. He was so crazy about her that it hurt.

Then he said anxiously, “Everything’s all right, isn’t it, honey? I mean, they still think I did it, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t suspect you at all?”

“No. But, Lew...”

He put his hand over her mouth. “I’d do it a million times for you, honey. A million times. You had good reason to shoot him, but I couldn’t let you go through a court trial. Oh God, honey, I Jove you so much!”

All of a sudden, she jumped away from him and let out a terrible scream. “No, no, Lew!” she shrieked. “No no no, don’t hit me, Lew, no no, please no...”

And her hand came out of her pocketbook and the gun was in it and her arm kept jerking as she pulled the trigger. The gun must have jammed because nothing happened.

I jumped up with a yell and ran at her. She screamed and ran across the path and Kenny came jumping out of the bushes. She tried to turn, but her feet went out from under her on the loose shale, and suddenly she wasn’t there anymore.

When I got to where Kenny was standing, white as a sheet, I saw the sheer drop down the face of the mountain into the old quarry, and she was down at the bottom and she looked a mile away.

And after all she’d done to him and had tried to do, we actually had to knock Sloan cold to keep him from jumping after her.

On the way back, Kenny said dully to me, “Sorry I had to be such a louse to you, Gene, but it was the only way. She... well, fell for me; and I played up to it. I couldn’t let you in on it because you’re just too damn honest to be a good actor. I had to get her to the point where she had to get rid of Sloan because she wanted me to marry her,”

I didn’t believe him. “Why’d she knock Andresson off?” I asked.

“She was tired of him and he wouldn’t go away. She got drunk one night and as much as told me, but I couldn’t use it for evidence. I had a feeling about her right from the beginning. I mean, there was Sloan a champion pistol shot, yet she tried to tell us he used a shotgun on Andresson. That didn’t add up.”

“Hell no,” I said. “Was she the one that took a shot at me that night?”

“Yes. I’d been watching the house, and Sloan wasn’t near her, so she was the only one. She was afraid of you. I knew that, but I didn’t know she was that afraid.” He looked at me. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Oh sure sure. You suspected her right along and that’s why you let her walk up the hill with a gun so she could knock Lew Sloan off too.”

He held out his hand. There were six bullets in it.

“I took these out of her gun on the way up. If you remember, her handbag was in the door pocket right next to me. I knew you wouldn’t give her your gun, and I wouldn’t give her mine...” His voice trailed off.

I remembered then that he hadn’t offered her his gun, and after a long time he said the one word that described the whole thing and the way we both felt.

“Hell,” he said bitterly.