The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

A Beautiful Babe and Money

Originally published in Manhunt, October 1957.

I was bone-tired when I locked the last gas pump, turned off the lights and closed the garage door. It had been a long day. One of an endless number of days.

I crossed the concrete apron, got in my jalopy and started the motor. I gave the filling station a last look. It was tired and grubby in the early night. I’d really tried to make a go of it here, but one man can only do so much.

All I wanted was to get a hot bath, food, and some sleep. I lived half a mile down the road from the station. The cottage, nestled among some pines, had looked good, like the station, when I’d first brought Helen here. Now, as the headlights swept over it the cottage looked like the station. A pitiful lot of nothing for a man to break his back over.

I parked the crate beside the cottage. When I entered the small, dark house, I got the living hell knocked out of me.

I didn’t know the blow was coming. No warning. No reason for it. It glanced off the side of my head and knocked me sprawling on the floor.

I was numb at first. I had sense enough to roll away from the direction the blow had come. Then the dime store lamp on the wicker table flicked on. A really beautiful blonde babe had turned the switch. She was tall, sheathed in a black dress that nudged the imagination to exercise. She was looking toward me. Her features combined to give her face a lazy, dreamy look. There was a kind of vacuum in her blue eyes. But if she was short on brains, it didn’t matter. She had so much of everything else, she wasn’t supposed to have brains.

I came out of my stupor enough to move my head. A man was standing over me. He was husky, but trimmed lean, like an athlete. He wore a good looking suit of some soft blue material, white shirt, silk tie. His face was square-cut, hard. A thin smile was on his lips as he looked at me.

“Hello, Joe,” he said quietly.

I watched him drop his gun in the side pocket of his suit. I hadn’t seen Greene in quite awhile. We’d been neighbors in the same slum area, gone to the same school, dated in the same crowd.

A lot alike, Greene and me. And a lot different. Both of us had hated the place where we grew up. Greene was for slugging his way out. I’d always thought different. While he cheated in school, I struggled to make decent grades. When he was out stealing hubcaps, I was shagging groceries for old man Spivak’s market.

By the time we were grown, Greene was in the habit of calling me Joe The Sucker. I was sort of glad when he drifted away from town to avoid trouble with the local law.

Now he was back; here in my house. And real trouble was not far behind him this time. I’d heard the newscasts. He had killed a big-time bookie in the state capital. The bookie had been holding his collections. Nearly two hundred thousand dollars.

So here was Greene with a beautiful babe and all that money.

I got slowly to my feet.

“Sorry, Joe The Sucker,” he grinned. “I hope I didn’t hit you too hard. But I had to impress on you that I mean business. You were always such a timid, honest little snot.”

That wasn’t exactly accurate. I’d never been timid, little, or snotty. I was as big as Greene and just as tough. But he had the gun.

The beautiful babe drifted over to his side. He slipped his arm around her and gave her a brief squeeze. She accepted the attention without batting her big, beautiful, dumb blue eyes. She was certainly a knockout for looks.

“Princess meet Joe The Sucker, the honest punk I was telling you about.”

“Hi,” Princess said. “We hate awfully much to inconvenience you.” She pronounced the words like maybe she studied a dictionary real hard.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Ain’t you interested in why we’re here?” Greene said.

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Real smart,” Greene laughed. “What do you imagine?”

“You’ve had to abandon your car someplace. You’ve needed a hole to hide in. The bookie’s boys as well as the cops would like to see the color of your blood. The usual hiding places would never do. The bookie’s boys would know about the ones the cops don’t. So you thought of Joe. The sucker from a long time back. The isolated cottage where he lives alone.”

“Yeah,” Greene said. “You got it about right. He always did have brains, honey,” he added to Princess, “though he never had the knack for using them.” He brought his eyes back to me. “We don’t want to be a lot of bother, Joe. I really mean that. We’ll have dinner with you, stay the night, and borrow your car tomorrow morning. Nobody’d ever think of looking for us in that heap. We’ll leave you tied up and somebody will find you.”

If I didn’t starve first. I had no friends out here. No regular customers much at the station. The station was so run-down it would look deserted. If I didn’t show up, folks might think I’d finally thrown in the sponge.

“Let’s eat,” Green said, giving me a shove toward the kitchen.

As I passed the wicker table, I noticed the briefcase on the floor beside it. Greene saw my glance. He laughed, like rubbing salt in a cut. “It’s full of money, Joe The Sucker. Something you never had.”

“It’s such terribly, awfully beautiful money,” Princess chimed.

“Yeah, and as long as I got it, I got you, eh, baby?” Greene said.

“That’s right. I do love the beautiful stuff,” she assured him.

“Too bad you ain’t got dough,” Greene said to me. “You could have a babe. Even the Princess, if it wasn’t for me. Cripes, you can’t really blame Helen for getting bored stiff out here and running off with the first guy who offered her some excitement.”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” I said. But Greene followed me into the kitchen, chuckling. He was really enjoying this. For some reason or other, he’d always hated me. I’d always got under his skin. I guess it was because I’d tried to live by a code he could never measure up to.

“Still the same Joe,” he said, standing behind me as I got some canned goods out of the overhead cabinet. “Hiding his head in the sand. Not talking about what has really happened. Pretending that things are always going to be better. A genuine, twenty-four carat sucker, if I ever saw one. Why don’t you get wise and see yourself for what you really are? A poor sap stuck on the edge of nowhere, working his guts out for a lot of nothing.”

“And I guess you got so much more, Greene?”

“I got the money, the clothes, the babe.”

“How about if you get caught?”

“I’ll take my chances. They’re good. Once out of the state. I’ll have my choice of directions. The hunt will die down. Already there are people in the capital putting the hush on. Big people who don’t want that dead bookie’s connections coming to light. Which is what might happen if I’m caught and a thorough investigation gets under way.”

He chuckled again. “Me and the Princess. On the beach at Miami. Taking a plush trip to South America. Driving the best car, eating the finest food, drinking the tastiest imported stuff, wearing clothes you couldn’t afford in a month of Tuesdays, Joe The Sucker. Stack that up against what you’ve got. Which of us is the smart guy? Take my advice and get wise to yourself.”

He was in high good humor. But that wasn’t what put the shakes in my hands. The pictures he had painted. That’s what caused something to snap tight inside of me.

I happened to glance at Princess. She gave me a lazy smile.

Princess would go with the money.

And the money was just in the next room.

I opened the drawer to get out a can opener. Instead of the can opener, my hand closed over the handle of the heavy butcher knife. My body hid the knife from Greene. He was close behind me.

He’d never have a chance, fast and physically conditioned from hard work as I was.

For a second something tried to tell me that Greene was really wrong. Life didn’t work his way indefinitely. There had to be a settlement sometime with life.

But that was all in the future.

Right now there was Princess and all that money.

I gripped the knife hard.

And I decided at last to take Greene’s advice...