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This was my second story for the March, 1961 Guilty. I wrote it in September, 1960 and called it “Death Has a Twin,” which I suppose could be construed as a bit of a spoiler. Scottie called it “I Can’t Die Now,” something of an improvement.
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I CAN’T DIE NOW
I was top man in my racket. What a time to kick off!
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The phone rang shrilly. Ned Graham, who was thumbing through the pages of a fake French sex novel that had just come from the printer that morning, scowled and put the book down. He grabbed up the phone in irritation. He hated to be bothered during working hours.
“Hello?”
“Boss, this is Max. They just shot your brother!” a high-pitched voice babbled.
“What’s that?” Graham barked. “Where are you, Max? Who shot him? How is he?”
“It was the Charlie Dyson boys, boss. A real old-fashioned gang rub-out!”
“He’s dead?” Graham said.
“Afraid so.”
“The sons of bitches. Go on, tell me more!”
Max said, “It happened just a couple minutes ago. I’m downtown, Spruce corner Redmond, making a delivery. And I step out into the street and it’s lunchtime, you know, and there’s the bank across the street and I see a guy I think is you come out. And all of a sudden this big Chrysler pulls up and there’s a bunch of shots, and I think, Jeez, they shot the boss. But then Phil here says no, it’s the boss’ brother, this is the place where he works. Jeez, boss, I’m glad it wasn’t you they got, you know?”
“And he’s dead?” Graham demanded.
“Yeah. There’s cops all over the place, and the ambulance came, but I got a look at him just before they pulled the blanket over him, and Jeez, boss, it gave me the creeps seeing him there like a piece of Swiss cheese—”
“Shut your goddam mouth!”
“Sorry, boss. I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean. You didn’t mean.” Graham paused, got control of himself. “Okay,” he said more calmly. “Thanks for the word, Max. You’re sure it was Dyson’s bunch?”
“Sure as I’m sure of anything. I even saw Nick Cioffi at the wheel. Say, boss, wonder what Dyson had against your brother, huh? I thought he didn’t mess with the racket stuff.”
They didn’t have a goddam thing against him, Max. Not a goddam thing. You got anything else to tell me?”
“We unloaded the order like scheduled.”
“You get paid?”
“Ten thousand. I’m on my way to make the deposit. You want I should do anything else?”
“Not now, Max. I—I got to think things over.”
Graham dropped the phone back into its cradle and stared at it for a long silent moment.
They killed my brother, he thought.
They killed Ronnie.
The bastards. The rotten lousy bastards.
–
Shoving the book aside contemptuously, Ned Graham elbowed up out of his plush chair and went to his office bar to pour himself a drink. He let four fingers of bourbon roll into a glass, and gulped it down without a chaser. He realized he was shaking all over. Partly with anger. And partly with fear, too. Because he knew he had just had a very narrow escape indeed.
Because he knew that the bullet which had killed his twin brother Ronnie had been meant for him.
He walked to the window and stared down over the sprawling city from his fifteenth-floor vantage point. He was trying to get used to the idea of not having a twin brother any more.
Not that they had been really close. Or close at all. The resemblance between Ned and Ronnie Graham had ended two millimeters below the surface of the skin.
Ronnie had been the older, by half an hour, and for some reason that had always made him the more conservative of the two brothers. In school, it had been Ronnie who was always chosen to be a monitor, while it had been Ned who was forever being kept late as punishment. It had been Ronnie who won the Citizenship award at high school graduation, and it had been Ned who just barely managed to graduate at all. It was Ronnie who had gone to Princeton on a scholarship, and it was Ned who went straight into the rackets at the age of eighteen.
It was Ronnie who had been a rising young banker, who had a lovely house in the suburbs and a lovely young wife. It was Ronnie who voted a straight Republican ticket and swore by all the conventional virtues.
It was Ronnie who now lay dead in the morgue, riddled by bullets that had been meant for his brother.
Ned Graham scowled darkly, getting used to the loss. For thirty-two years he had had another self, a Good Self who did all the right things and was a credit to the community. Now, in a hail of lead, that other self was gone, and for the first time in his life Ned Graham was absolutely alone in the world, robbed of the knowledge that somewhere else in the same city was his double, his image, his twin brother.
The bastards. Killing him like that.
There was a knock on the door. Graham whirled around.
“Come in!”
It was his second-in-command, Leo Reagan, a short, sly-faced man who knew the dirty-book business inside and out. In three short years Graham had made himself the state’s leading supplier of obscene and pornographic books, and it had been Reagan’s know-how that had helped him get where he was.
Reagan said, “I just came from the darkroom, Ned, and I want to show you these prints for that playing-card deal. Take a look, will you?” He was beaming with pride. “How do you like that little blonde? Ever seen a pair of headlights like that before? Kid’s only nineteen, but she’s really got everything she’ll ever need. She—boss? Something wrong, Ned? You look so peculiar?”
“Max just called from downtown. Charlie Dyson’s mob killed my brother.”
“Ronnie? Why in hell would they want to do that?”
“Maybe they mistook him for me. I don’t know.” Graham scowled down from his craggy six feet three at the little man. “I tell you this, Leo. I’m going to make those bastards burn in hell for this. Every last one of them.”
The phone rang. Whirling, Graham snatched it up.
“Hello!”
“Is this Mr. Ned Graham’s office?”
“Graham speaking.”
“Mr. Graham, this is Lieutenant Tompkins, at the 11th Precinct. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Graham. There was a shooting outside the Merchants’ National Bank a little while ago, and the victim has been identified as your brother, Mr. Graham.”
“Where’s the body now?”
“Police morgue. We were wondering if you’d care to break the news to your sister-in-law yourself. It’s sometimes easier when it comes from a close relative.”
“All right. I’ll do it. And then I’ll come over to claim the body. Okay?”
“Of course, Mr. Graham.”
Graham hung up. Turning back to Reagan, he said, “Leo, go inside and get the Talcott Funeral Parlor on the wire. Talk to old man Talcott himself. Tell him what happened and order the best funeral in the house. I’ve got to call Ellen and tell her the news.”
–
It was a tricky operation. Both Ned and Ronnie Graham had been in love with Ellen. But she had preferred stability to romance, and turned down the dashing Ned for the staid Ronnie. She and Ronnie had been married five years, but she hadn’t changed at all. The birth of two children hadn’t altered the trim tapered loveliness of her legs, the exciting thrust of her full breasts. She was as beautiful as ever. And Ned Graham wanted her as much as he ever had. As he dialed her number, he found himself wondering what chance he stood with her now. After a decent interval of mourning had elapsed, of course. But there wasn’t any real reason why she wouldn’t marry him.
Physically, he was identical to his late brother down to the tiniest details. And he made a damned good income, certainly enough to support her in style. Of course, there was the little matter of the way he earned his income.
Ellen had always seemed disgusted at having a peddler of pornography for a brother-in-law, even when he went into his usual routine of attacking the puritanical moral code and claiming to be simply a man interested in bringing about an honest attitude toward sex.
Ellen hadn’t gone for that. She was too smart to mistake a man who sold dirty books to twelve-year-olds for a crusader against Puritanism.
He waited for her to answer the phone. She was probably busy with the kids, he thought. A devilish little three-year-old boy and a girl of sixteen months. He could fit right into the family picture, and the kids would never know that they had a different daddy now.
“Hello?”
“Ellen, this is Ned.”
“Oh. Yes, Ned,” she said in a flat voice, as though she couldn’t care less what her black sheep brother-in-law might have to say to her.
It annoyed him enough to make him brutal. “I’ve got some bad news, Ellen, and I’m going to come right out with it and not beat around the bush. Ronnie’s dead.”
“Dead?” Wonderingly, incredulously.
“He was shot in front of the bank. The police just phoned me to let me know.”
“A holdup?” she asked, with that strange curiosity that comes from shock.
“I don’t know what it was. But he’s dead. I’m having a funeral arranged for him at Talcott’s. And I’m on my way down to the morgue now to claim the body. Can you meet me at Talcott’s in half an hour?”
“I don’t know, Ned. God, I’m so stunned I can’t think! The children—”
“I’ll take care of the funeral expenses. You don’t have to worry about anything, Ellen. If there’s anything I can do for you now—”
“Thanks anyway, Ned. But I’ll manage. Ronnie’s insurance will cover the expenses.” She was cold, matter-of-fact. Even in her grief, she refused to let him draw close to her in any way. “I’ll —I’ll come to Talcott’s—”
–
Reagan had made the funeral arrangements while Graham had been on the phone. The hearse would call at the morgue for the body and would prepare it for burial. The funeral would be held on Friday. That would allow time for Ronnie’s college friends to fly in if they wanted to see him off.
Graham went downstairs. His limousine was waiting for him. He lived well these days. The smut racket was big business. He had an office in the newest office building in town, he rode around in an air-conditioned Cadillac, he lived in a swankily furnished six-room apartment in the exclusive Carpenters Hill section of the city.
Why not? He was pulling in fifty or sixty thousand a year right now, and the way he was sewing up exclusive distributions channels right and left he could easily see himself making a quarter million a year clear profit before too long. So he allowed himself nothing but the best.
“Take me to the 11th precinct house,” he told his chauffer.
“The cops?”
“You heard me, you idiot!”
The car moved off. Graham wasn’t afraid of paying a visit to the cops. They were old friends of his. The fifth franchise of this city had always had a good working relationship with the police force, and when Ned Graham had taken over control of the organization he had continued to keep things well buttered up.
It cost him fifty grand a year to have the cops of the town look the other way while his products were sold, but it was well worth the outlay. Eight grand a year to the Chief of Police, five grand apiece to the three men right under him, and scattered gifts right down to the level of the beat cops, who got their twenty bucks at Christmas without fail.
Graham had an idea about this murder. Max had good eyesight, and if he had seen Nick Cioffi at the wheel of the death car it had to mean that Charlie Dyson was behind it. Dyson was an upstate man who was trying to cut in on Graham’s business.
Last year Dyson had set up an affiliate here, with a man named Linetti in charge of distribution. There had been a mysterious fire one night that killed Linetti and burned up half a million bucks’ worth of Dyson’s inventory. Dyson had been scheming to get even a long while.
So it had been a rub-out scheme. But they had bungled it. They knew what Ned Graham looked like—a big full-back of a man, with craggy features and a barrel chest. What they didn’t seem to know was that there were two men in town who fit that description. So somebody in the Dyson gang had put the finger on Ronnie, and they had waited outside the bank with their guns ready and the safeties off.
The bastards, Graham thought. Dumb business can’t even pull a rub-out decently. I’ll fix’em. Before they have a chance to correct their mistake.
The limousine rolled up in front of the squat brick building that was the 11th Precinct house. Graham’s chauffeur scuttled out to open the door. Graham got out and stalked into the police station as though he were the mayor coming around for an inspection tour.
Hendrikson, the desk sergeant, looked up at him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Graham. I’d like to offer my condolences—”
“Thanks,” Graham said curtly. “Where’s my brother’s body?”
“In the basement. I’ll have Leeson take you down.”
A stubby, curly-haired cop appeared, and guided Graham downstairs to the icebox room. The heavy door swung open. They went in.
Ronnie was on a slab, with a police medic standing by filling out a report blank. They had him covered with a piece of muslin.
“Take the sheet off him,” Graham said.
The medic complied. Graham looked down at his brother’s body and felt a surge of vertigo that nearly toppled him. Tough as he was, he wasn’t prepared for the sight of a body just like his own which had been treated this way.
“Oh, God,” Graham muttered. “They made hamburger out of him!”
“He was shot at least thirty times,” the medic said. “A quick tommy-gun blast from head to toe.”
Graham’s flesh crawled. The bullets had nearly cut his brother in half the long way. Old man Talcott and his staff of undertakers would have one hell of a time making this corpse presentable for a funeral.
“Cover him up,” Graham said hollowly. He looked at the medic. “The Talcott people will call here in a little while. Turn the body over to them.”
“Of course, Mr. Graham. If you’d only sign this release form—”
He scribbled an almost illegible signature.
“And what would you want done with the deceased’s personal effects?” the medic asked, indicating a heap of tattered clothing, a wallet, a pocket comb, a fountain pen, a notebook.
Graham shrugged. “Wrap them up and give them to Talcott too. Tell them to ship ’em to the widow.”
As he left the morgue room, the cop who was guiding him said, “If you’d step into Lieutenant Tompkins’ office, the Lieutenant would like to question you for a couple of minutes, Mr. Graham—”
He went in. Tompkins, a fat, self-satisfied-looking cop who drew sixty bucks a week as his rake-off from Graham to go along with the ninety-three the city paid him, was wearing a properly grieving expression. Moistening his heavy lips, Tompkins said, “Mr. Graham I don’t need to tell you how profoundly shocked I am by this murder. I’ll do everything in my power to bring your brother’s killers to justice.”
“Yeah. You do that, Lieutenant.”
“Tell me, did your brother have any personal enemies, Mr. Graham? Any reason why this might have happened?”
Graham deliberately cracked his knuckles, one after another, before answering. He said finally, “Ronnie didn’t have any enemies, Lieutenant. He was a law-abiding citizen and everyone who knew him respected him.”
“Then why—”
“Because they were trying to get me, that’s why! Only nobody told them I had a twin!”
“Who’s this they, Mr. Graham?”
Graham stiffened. “None of your business.”
“Now, now, that’s no attitude to take. I want to help find these people, Mr. Graham. You’ve got to understand that any information you may have can help us.”
“I don’t need your help.”
Tompkins smiled faintly, torn between his responsibilities to his uniform and his loyalty to Graham. “We can’t let you take the law into your own hands, Mr. Graham. Murder’s a serious thing. You’ll have to let us handle the investigation.”
“Go ahead, then. Investigate.”
“I’m trying to. Who do you think might have killed your brother, Mr. Graham?”
Graham shrugged elaborately. “There are lots of guys in this state who would love to remove me, Lieutenant. I don’t have any idea which ones in particular fired shots. I really can’t say.”
–
He left the police station a short while later. He was determined not to give the cops any leads at all. This wasn’t a matter for cops. The cops would invariably pull in the wrong man, some underling or other. The one to go for was Dyson, but of course there was no case against him. No legal case, anyway. It was a matter that had to be taken care of through other channels.
It wasn’t a sheer matter of vengeance, either. Graham was sore as hell about his brother’s death, but he also knew that he wouldn’t be safe himself until Dyson was out of commission.
Dyson’s mobsters would find out quick enough that they had nailed the wrong man, and they would come down for another try. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life walking around in bulletproof armor. He had to strike back and rid himself of the danger.
With Dyson out of the way, it would be a simple matter to absorb the Dyson organization into his own. Then he would control a state-wide network of distributors that couldn’t be touched. And, at his leisure, he could pick off the men who had actually shot down his brother and take care of them in his own way. First Dyson had to go, though.
He had himself driven over to Talcott’s funeral parlor. Old man Talcott, who in his eighty-odd years had supervised just about every major funeral in the city, came shuffling out to extend skillful condolences. The hearse, he told Graham, was on its way over to the morgue now.
“You’ll have a hard time patching him up,” Graham said. “There isn’t much left of him.”
“Our men are artists, Mr. Graham. We’ll do our utmost to restore your brother’s appearance. Ah—your sister-in-law is waiting in the anteroom.”
Graham went in to see her. She was dressed in black, and her face was terribly pale except where the eyes were reddened. But neither the mourning clothes nor the pallor could hide her beauty. Graham felt the old lump in the pit of his stomach as he thought of this girl.
She rose as he walked in. He went to her, putting his arms around her in what he wanted her to think was a brotherly hug. He felt the steep thrusts of her breasts against him. She freed herself quickly, too quickly.
“Ellen, I’m so terribly sorry for you. He was a prince, a real prince. To think that a guy like me is allowed to live, and Ronnie has to die so young—”
“Have you seen him?”
Graham nodded. “They’re bringing him over from the morgue now. But don’t go to look at him.”
“Is it—bad?”
“It isn’t pretty. But he must have died instantly. He didn’t feel any pain.”
She smiled bitterly. “That’s some consolation, isn’t it?”
“At least he didn’t suffer.”
“But he’s dead! And he didn’t have to be dead, not so soon! Why did he have to die? Who would want to kill him?”
He couldn’t tell her the truth, that the bullets had been meant for him. “Who knows? Maybe it was some grudge. Somebody he refused to allow a loan. Money can make people go crazy, sometimes.”
“Yes, I know that,” she said coldly.
“I’ll take care of the funeral arrangements. You better get yourself some rest, Ellen. This must be a tremendous shock to you. Anything you need, just call on me.”
“You’re so helpful all of a sudden.”
Why does she hate me so much? he thought. “I’m just trying to do the decent thing,” he said. “He was my only brother, after all. And you’re just about the only relative I have. Even a relative by marriage. Don’t get so stand-offish, Ellen. Don’t be too proud to accept help from me.”
“Ronnie had insurance. I’m well provided for. I don’t need help.”
“Maybe you think you don’t. But the next few days will be a terrible strain for you. I’d just like to shoulder some of the burdens.”
She looked straight at him. “If I need you, I’ll let you know,” she said in a voice that told him she wouldn’t need him at all.
He left her. He wasn’t pleased by the meeting. Well, she was worked up now. Probably wishing Ronnie was alive and him dead in his place. Couldn’t blame her for that. But Graham had hopes. She was making a brave show of her courage and independence right now. But a few days of an empty bed might break down her self-sufficiency. A few days of listening to little Ronnie wondering where Daddy had gone. A few days of realizing that her insurance money wouldn’t last forever.
She’d begin to think about remarrying before too long. Maybe she’d come to think that it wouldn’t be so bad marrying the carbon copy of her late lamented. Graham hoped he could win her over. She was the one thing in the world he wanted and couldn’t have.
His money could buy him a different woman every night, hundreds of slinky creatures with ripe breasts and delectable legs and bedroom thighs. But it was Ronnie who got Ellen. Graham had always been bitter about that.
But maybe now he’d have a second chance, he told himself.
–
He got back to his office a little past two. There was plenty of work to be done, and not even the murder of his twin brother was going to keep him from taking care of it.
Graham was the kingpin in the operation. Every sexy book that got published, every dirty book and pamphlet of jokes and pack of playing cards, had to be approved by him. From his office radiated a whole string of smut peddlers. Greasy characters who unloaded their wares all over the lower half of the state. Around high schools, colleges, even grade schools. You had to be careful around grade schools, of course. You found a kid who was smarter than the others, and you sold him the books at a dime apiece and let him be your middleman.
Then there was the mail-order branch. Also a thriving operation. The public’s appetite for smut was terrific. Business was booming. Too bad it was all illegal, Graham often thought. Otherwise he could sell stock to the public and make a killing on Wall Street.
He worked steadily through till four o’clock. Then he sent for Reagan.
The little man entered quickly.
Graham said, “I got a little project in mind, Leo. It involves rubbing out Charlie Dyson.”
Reagan nodded, a bird-like quick up-down gesture. “I figured you’d be thinking of that, Ned.”
“I should have done it a long time ago. But I don’t like violence. You know that, Leo. So as long as Dyson stayed in his own territory and didn’t interfere, I was willing to leave him alone. And even when he tried to move down here, I figured just burning his warehouse and killing his stooge Linetti would scare him off. Looks like he’s gone too far this time. I got to clear him away before he makes another try at erasing me. So he’s got to go. And then we take over his organization. That gives us state-wide.”
“You got any ideas for removing him, Ned?”
Graham leaned back and studied his immaculately groomed fingernails thoughtfully. “Simplest thing is just to send a carload of the boys upstate to blast him the way he blasted my brother. But that’s too risky. The fuzz upstate aren’t on our payroll. And there’s all that crap in the State Legislature about wiping out the pornography racket. If it starts looking like a statewide gang battle, we’re likely to get cracked down on hard. So we got to be more subtle.”
“Like how?”
Graham shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. Dyson’s well-guarded, and he doesn’t take many chances. And I got to keep my own nose clean in this thing too, you know. So let’s just kick it around some, hey? You and me. We’ll see what ideas we can come up with. Maybe that bridge bit—”
–
After half an hour they had worked a couple of ideas around and were starting to get some notion of how to go about removing Dyson. First of all, Graham would leave town. He would go to his summer place up at Ettinger Falls. Word would get around that he was going to take a couple of weeks off to get over his brother’s death. Reagan would be able to run the business okay in his absence.
With Graham legitimately off the local scene, things would be quiet for a week or so. Reagan would get hold of a Dyson man and extend tentative merger feelers, hinting that Reagan would knock off his boss in return for an important place in the expanded Dyson operation.
Dyson would probably be interested in the proposition. Through intermediates, Reagan would arrange a get-together with Dyson at some motel midway between their territories. There wasn’t a chance in the world that Dyson would fall for a merger feeler from Graham, but it might be different coming from Graham’s Number two.
So the meeting would be held, all right. And nothing would be accomplished. But after the meet broke up, Dyson would have a little accident leaving the motel. An old wooden bridge over the Kawanee River would happen to collapse just as Dyson’s bullet-proof limousine passed over it. Neat, quick, efficient. No gun-play, no complications. Provided Dyson played ball, of course.
Ronnie’s funeral was held on Friday. Saturday, Graham packed up and had himself driven up to Ettinger Falls. It was a rustic community in a valley between a couple of rugged mountains.
He had a cabin in the woods, by the side of a small lake. Tremendous hunting and complete privacy, and five hundred acres of virgin land that nobody could trespass on. Trouble was, he was too busy to go there very often. Which was a pity, since he had paid a steep five-figured price for the place, and enjoyed staying there.
He had a staff of three. A cook, a caretaker, and a warden-bodyguard. That was all. The place was completely secluded, and ideal hideaway while other things were going on down in the city.
For a week, Graham hunted and fished, sending the slugs thundering into the bodies of hapless deer with fierce savagery. Every time he pulled the trigger, he found himself wishing he had the barrel pointed at Charlie Dyson’s gut.
He waited. And he fretted. He didn’t like these delays. He hated to be away from his telephones and his office and his contacts. Reagan was a good man, sure. But it wasn’t safe to trust an assistant with big responsibilities for too long. The assistant might get ideas. He might decide to really rub the top man out, instead of just pretending he was interested in removing him.
Graham didn’t like that thought. He trusted Leo Reagan about as much as he trusted anyone in the world, which is to say not very much. Leo had never given reason to doubt his loyalty.
But Leo only made about thirty grand a year, and it wouldn’t be hard for him to pull down three times that much if he took the second spot in a Dyson-Reagan organization. It was a big temptation.
Half a dozen times, Graham considered calling the whole thing off, returning to the city, and simply sending an executive squad up to Dyson’s territory to carry out the rub-out in traditional fashion.
But there was too much risk involved in that. A car full of mobsters falling into a river wouldn’t get the newspapers half as worked up as a Chicago-style gang battle. And Graham wanted to play it cool. He didn’t want any trouble with the law, not when he had such smooth understanding with the men in blue right at the moment.
He waited.
He sweated.
On the eighth day, Reagan called.
“It’s all fixed up, Ned. I sent Max out with some feelers, and he got through to Cioffi and then to Dyson.”
“And?”
“And they’re tickled pink that I’m going to sell you out. I could practically hear Dyson rubbing his hands together over the phone. He wants to kill you so bad he can taste it, you know that?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Graham said. “So what kind of arrangements were made?”
“We’re having a meet on Tuesday at Harmon’s Motel just outside Mountain View.”
“Did he act suspicious about the particular place?”
“He didn’t seem to care. He suggested I come up to his headquarters, and I said no, why doesn’t he come down here, and of course he wouldn’t go for that. So then I said how about a motel halfway between, and he said okay, and I named Harmon’s and he didn’t object. Hadn’t heard of the place, but he figured it would be okay.”
“What time on Tuesday?” Graham asked tensely.
“Noon.”
“Okay. Around two in the afternoon on Tuesday you tell him you’ve got to get back to town. He’ll leave. I’ll take care of the bridge deal.”
“You know where?”
“Sure,” Graham said. “Half a mile north of the motel on Route 169. If he takes some other way back, it’ll screw things up. But I don’t see how else he can get back to the Turnpike except on 169.”
“There isn’t any other way,” Reagan said.
“And in case anybody else wants to use the bridge, I’ll tell them the road’s closed. I got all the stuff here ready to use.”
“Okay, boss. Till Tuesday, then.”
–
Graham had been planning this for a long time. Not especially with Dyson in mind, but with anyone who happened to cross his path. It was an ideal set-up. A rotting country bridge on a lonely road that just happened to be the only access from the tiny town of Mountain View to the Turnpike. The moment Graham had seen the deal, he had begun to scheme to make use of the bridge. And now he had his chance.
Tuesday morning, he drove over to Mountain View, using not his limousine but a battered old pickup truck that he kept at his lodge. Mountain View was twenty miles east and some forty miles north of his place. The trip took him an hour and a half over bumpy country roads.
He was dressed in workman’s overalls and tin hat, and there were some items in the back of the truck that he had obtained from the police department in one shady way or another: some red flags and a few ROAD CLOSED FOR REPAIRS signs.
He reached the bridge about one in the afternoon. He hoped Reagan’s timing was okay. If Dyson came along too late, there was the chance of state police or someone like that wandering along and wondering why the road was closed.
You normally didn’t have more than half a dozen cars an hour coming along Route 169, and on a Tuesday afternoon there was no reason to expect any traffic jams. All the same, it would be awkward as hell for him to hang around three or four hours shooing people away from the monkeyed-up bridge.
Graham drove past the bridge, and planted his first red flag and ROAD CLOSED FOR REPAIRS sign two miles north of it. There was a turn-off there, so anybody coming southbound 169 would be able to take an alternative route when he saw the sign. Graham planted a second sign half a mile from the bridge, and a third one a quarter of a mile away. If that didn’t deter anyone driving southbound, Graham figured he would flag them down himself and trust to his luck that nobody recognized him or remembered his face later.
Moving across the bridge to the south side—the side Dyson would be coming from—Graham put down a couple more signs a quarter mile and a half-mile along the road.
Then he got to work on the bridge.
It was an old bridge, maybe a hundred or a hundred fifty years old, and it wasn’t in the best of health. It was only some thirty feet long but right beneath it there was a thirty-foot drop and then the raging fury of the river. It was a wild, narrow, deep river, studded with big rocks that stuck up like jagged fangs. Even if anybody survived the plunge, they’d be carried downstream and broken to bits on the rocks if they crawled out of the car.
Signs at both sides of the bridge warned that no trucks heavier than eight tons were allowed across. Well, Dyson’s limousine, even allowing for its armor plating and for the fact that it would probably be full of goons, wouldn’t weigh much more than five or six thousand pounds. So he had to reduce the strength of the bridge by a factor of four.
But that wouldn’t be very hard.
A trellis of ancient beams supported the bridge. Taking the sledgehammer from the back of his truck, and looking around carefully to make sure nobody was around, Graham carefully lowered himself into the fragile understructure of the old bridge.
He studied the beams for a moment. Then he swung the hammer.
Whang! A half-rotten slab of century-old timber lost its grip on its nails and went slithering down to the water, where it was carried instantly out of sight. Graham pursed his lips thoughtfully and swung the hammer again.
Whang!
A funny thing, he thought, watching the second beam go into the bright foamy rapids. Even if someone did come along, there probably wouldn’t be any trouble. He had a tin hat on, and he looked official and there were repair signs slung around everywhere and red flags on the bridge. So anyone who came would make the automatic assumption that all was as it should be, and if there were a fellow with a sledgehammer hanging down there demolishing the bridge it was somehow perfectly all right to do so.
Whang!
A third timber went. Graham chewed his lip and wondered where to stop. He didn’t want the bridge to collapse of its own weight before Dyson appeared. But he didn’t want to leave the bridge still strong enough to support the car.
It seemed to him that the old bridge was tottering already. Just imagination, he told himself. It would take a hell of a lot of weight to rip through the remaining timbers.
Whang!
He knocked off a fourth. Now he could hear the nails creaking and complaining as unusual stresses were put on them. A couple of the timbers seemed to be buckling ever so slightly. He looked at his watch. Quarter to two already. If Reagan worked things right, Dyson would be coming along in less than half an hour.
He was afraid to risk knocking another beam loose. He scrambled back to the bridge level and tiptoed across to the north side, where he had left his truck. He tossed the sledgehammer into the back of the truck. Then, crossing the bridge again, and worriedly wondering whether his mere two hundred thirty pounds would be enough to crash it all down under him, he went down the road and picked up the road warnings he had left a quarter and a half-mile down.
It was just about two o’clock when he made his third and final crossing of the bridge. It seemed to be swaying and groaning in the wind. The river below looked vicious. Graham felt tense and knotted-up inside. He got into his truck and drove it a little way up the road, where it would be invisible to anyone coming up 169 from the south side of the bridge. Then, on foot, he returned to the bridge and settled down in the underbrush to wait for the arrival of the Dyson car.
–
Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. Twenty.
Half past two, now. Graham was sweating profusely. What if Dyson took some other route? Or if another car came zooming up from the south? He wouldn’t have time to run across the bridge and flag him down. Some poor bastard might go into the river for no reason at all, with Dyson just behind him and missing the collapse.
Too many uncertainties. Graham told himself he was crazy to have done it this way. It was only his flair for the unusual that had led him to rig up this complicated way of killing his brother’s murderer.
He waited.
Two-thirty-seven.
What was keeping Dyson?
Had Reagan genuinely sold out? Was he playing a double game?
Had Dyson been tipped off to the plot?
Fifty thousand conflicting guesses ran through Graham’s tormented mind as he crouched behind a boulder and waited. The rushing of the river was the only sound he could hear. He strained his ears, trying to pick up the grate of tires in the distance.
Now. There.
A car was coming. Slowly, because it was a steep grade, and the speed limit was posted as 25 right here. Who was it, Graham wondered in agony? Some dumb joe of a farmer tooling along in his Model T? Some slick chick in a Thunderbird on her way to meet her boyfriend? The State Police, maybe?
He could see the car now. The big, heavy grill, like a broad, sardonically grinning mouth. A Chrysler Imperial, jet black. Dyson’s favorite kind of car. Massively heavy, air-conditioned and armor plated, a tank of a car.
Dyson was coming!
The car was a hundred yards from the bridge now. Graham’s keen eyes picked out the narrow, swarthy face of Nick Cioffi at the wheel—Dyson’s right-hand man. There were two other thugs in the front seat, and a couple of figures in the rear. One of them had to be Dyson. Had to be!
Here they came, now. The yards crawled off. No more than twenty yards to the bridge. Fifteen. Ten.
Twenty feet, now. Just the length of a car.
The ponderous Imperial rolled out onto the narrow bridge. For one terrible moment Graham thought they were going to make it across. The entire length of the car was out on the bridge, and it was just another couple of seconds and they’d be across and safe.
Suddenly there was a great shattering sound, as of wood splintering, and the entire south end of the bridge gave way behind Dyson’s car. Graham sprang out of hiding, his heart in his mouth, and watched in awe and delight as the Imperial strained to make it onto solid ground, and failed, rolling backward as the bridge collapsed behind it.
With a fearful crash the wooden timbers drooped into the water, and, seemingly floating above the falling wood, the big car plunged too, tail first. It dropped the thirty feet in no time at all and banged against the upthrust mass of a big rock, caromed off like a toy, and plunged wheels first into the torrent.
Graham stood at the bridge, watching the car settle under. It sank like a stone, straight down. He caught sight of the gleaming black hood a couple of inches below the surface, and then it vanished as the rippling water swept over it.
Graham stood by the brink for perhaps five minutes, waiting to see what would happen. Nobody came to the surface. It was probably impossible to open the doors of the car against such a fierce current. They were trapped in there like sardines. Graham wondered how long five or six grown men could breathe the air inside an automobile. Not for long, he figured. Especially if no rescuers were notified. It wasn’t a pleasant death at all, down there.
That’s for Ronnie, he thought.
He trotted back to his truck and drove up the road to collect his remaining ROAD CLOSED signs. Five minutes later, he was heading north on the turnoff route, back toward his hunting lodge.
–
He got back there around four o’clock. Rennert, the warden-bodyguard, greeted him and told him, “Mr. Reagan, he’s been calling since around three. I said you’d be back some time this afternoon.”
“He leave a number?”
“No, sir. Said he’d keep on calling till he reached you.”
Nodding, Graham went upstairs. He was tight with tension, and in his mind the image of that big black limousine tumbling into the rapids burned bright and vivid. If only he could be sure that Dyson was aboard!
If not—well, if not, then each side had made a false move in this mutual extermination campaign, that was all. But it would be a lousy shame to have dumped the bridge for nothing. The State would come along and build a ferroconcrete one in its place, and he’d never be able to use that dodge again.
The phone was ringing.
Graham made it to the upstairs extension in record time. “Hello?”
“Boss, this is Leo. I been trying to get you for an hour.”
“I know. I just this minute got back from the bridge.”
“How’d everything go?”
“First you answer me a question. How many cars did the Dyson bunch come down in?”
“Just one. Big black Imperial limo. Five guys altogether. Dyson, Cioffi, Bernardi, Robinson, and some other guy.”
Graham exulted. “We got the bastards, then!”
“It worked, huh?”
“Imperial limo with five guys inside, and I saw Cioffi at the wheel. They went down like a lead weight. And nobody else saw. It may be hours before anybody notices the bridge fell. Maybe days before anyone fishes up that car. Dyson can’t last for days down there, can he?”
“Of course not, boss.”
“So he’s dead, huh? Charlie Dyson is dead.” Graham felt on top of the world, nine hundred feet high in his stocking feet. “I showed the lousy sons! I got even with them all!”
“Sure, boss.”
Graham sobered immediately. “Tell you what I want you to do now, Leo. Find out who’s left in Dyson’s bunch and tell ’em that we’re taking over. They’ll be too demoralized to fight back.
“Get half a dozen of the boys and head upstate to grab Dyson’s headquarters, and no shooting unless necessary. Tell everybody he’ll get as good pay from me as he was getting from Dyson, that this is only a sort of merger and as far as the lower echelons are concerned the situation’s absolutely the same as it was before. Got that?”
“I’m on my way, Ned.”
“Good. I’ll stick around here for the rest of the day and come back to the city first thing in the morning. Business as usual now.”
Graham hung up. A powerful current of pleasure was throbbing in him. To have avenged Ronnie’s death and to have wiped out his chief rival—that was a sublime pleasure. And to have done it himself, swinging the hammer with his own hands instead of sending some subordinate off to wreck the bridge—that added an extra twist to the kick.
Now there was nobody but Ned Graham in charge of the racket in this state. And maybe next year, it would be time to take a little trip across the river and begin talking syndication talk with a couple of the guys in the next state—
Plans whirled in his mind. Big plans. He was on his way, now. Nobody could stop him
He heard wheels down below.
A car pulling in.
What the hell was this? It was private property. You couldn’t just drive in without permission. Unless you were the police, of course—
The police.
No, he thought. There wasn’t any way they could have connected him to the bridge. Why, they didn’t even know the bridge was down! How could they—
He sprang to the window and looked out. No, it wasn’t the police. The car that had pulled up was a 1959 two-tone Oldsmobile, and he knew that car. It had belonged to his brother Ronnie, who didn’t like the ostentation of Caddies or Continentals or the other flashy cars.
Someone was getting out. A trim feminine figure in pullover and tight slacks that molded the luscious contours of her buttocks.
His sister-in-law Ellen.
What the hell’s she doing here? Graham wondered.
He stared downstairs, a puzzled frown on his face.
–
Before he reached the foot of the stairs, he heard Rennert saying, “I’m sorry, Miss. Mr. Grantham is resting and does not receive visitors here without prior appointment.”
“I don’t give a damn about that. I’m his brother’s widow, and he’ll see me.”
“I’m sorry, Miss—”
“Go on. Ask him if he’ll see me,” Ellen said.
Graham stepped into view. “It’s all right, Rennert. I’m always glad to see Ellen.” Dismissing the bodyguard, he went on, “This is a surprise, though. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you, Ellen. Won’t you come upstairs? I’ll have a couple of drinks sent up to the den. What’ll it be?”
“I’m—not thirsty, Ned.”
“Oh, come on, now! After driving all the way up here yourself! How about a Manhattan, at least?”
She shrugged. He took that for agreement, and told Rennert to mix drinks and bring them upstairs.
As he led Ellen up the oak staircase to the paneled den where he had his most treasured trophies mounted, Graham’s pulse was racing madly. Why was she here? Maybe, he thought, she had come to her senses in the last week, had decided widowhood was not her cup of tea, and was going to accept his proposal of marriage. It was the only reason he could figure for her visit.
Rennert brought drinks up. Graham served them. He noticed the greedy way Ellen gulped hers down, as though she badly needed to get her nerves under control. He smiled at her and said, “You’re looking lovely as ever, Ellen. I guess you’re calming down a little now, eh?”
“I’m getting used to the idea that Ronnie is dead, if that’s what you mean.”
“Of course. You can’t go on forever not accepting the realities of the situation.”
“Of course,” she agreed quietly.
Graham stared at her hungrily. At the enticing thrusts of her breasts pushing against the fabric of her pullover. At the magnetic sweep of her hips, the tautness of her slacks over her buttocks, the pert loveliness of her face, the satin-smooth creaminess of her skin. He wanted her fiercely.
He felt full of courage. Dyson dead, Ellen here to visit him—everything was going well. He said, “I’m glad you came, Ellen. I have to confess that I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left town.”
“Oh?”
He nodded seriously. “I guess I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the day I met you, Ellen. I loved you then and I still love you. Lord knows you picked the better man—at least the more decent man. But he’s gone, now. And I want to tell you—well—that once your mourning is finished, I’d—I’d like you to marry me.”
Her expression didn’t change. “I expected you to say that, Ned.”
“It stands to reason, doesn’t it? I mean, I look enough like Ronnie to—to be his twin. And I’m well off. You need a good provider. You’ll want to send the kids to college, you’ll want to have some more kids. And I could fit right into the family picture as Daddy for the kids now.”
He moved close to her. She was looking up at him, her expression cool and remote and unreadable.
He went on, “I know you don’t like the way I make my money. But it’s not as terrible as all that. And I’ll take care of you. Give you anything you want. A trip around the world, a house on Carpenters Hill, anything. If you’ll only marry me. What about it, Ellen?” He slipped his arm around her, drew her to him. For a moment the points of her breasts were against his chest. He put his lips to hers.
Her lips were cold, unresponsive. She let him embrace her for about five seconds. Then she pushed him away.
“The answer’s no, Ned.”
“But—”
“I couldn’t think of marrying you, Ned. Every time I look at you I remember Ronnie. And how good he was, how tender and loving and gentle. And how evil you are.”
“Ellen, you’ve got some crazy idea I eat babies for breakfast. I’m just an honest businessman—”
“Who makes his money corrupting children and pandering to adolescents of all ages. Sorry, Ned. I didn’t come here to let you propose to me.”
His face was stony. “Then why did you come here?”
“Because I found out why Ronnie died.”
“You—found out why—? Well, what was it? Some disgruntled depositor at the bank? And why come up all this distance to tell me?”
Ellen shook her head. “It had nothing to do with the bank, Ned. He died because he was mistaken for you. I heard the whole story. There was this gang from upstate that wanted to kill you, over some gang quarrel or other, and by accident they saw Ronnie at the bank and waited for him thinking it was you. He died in your place.”
“Who told you all this?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Was it that louse Reagan?”
“It doesn’t matter how I know. All that matters is that I do know. And I’m going to fix up the mistake.”
“You—”
She was up and against the wall in a flash, and her hand darted into her pocketbook and came out with a tiny automatic. “Ronnie bought me this gun, Ned. He was afraid some hoodlums might try to kidnap me or the children some day, because of your underworld connections. So he taught me how to use it.”
“Ellen, put that gun down.”
“First I’m going to kill you, Ned.”
His eyes widened. “Don’t talk like a crazy woman! You won’t get anywhere by killing me. Will it bring Ronnie back to life?”
“No. But it’ll take out of the world some scum that should have been removed long ago. If you had died years back, Ronnie would be alive today. You’re responsible for his death, Ned. All your filthy business deals, all the criminals you cheated and stepped on. One of them was bound to try to take revenge on you. Only they got Ronnie instead. Well, I’ll make sure that nobody tries to hurt you by hurting your niece or nephew. I’ll remove you right now.”
“Ellen, this is insane. You’ll never get away with it. My servants know you were here. They’ll call the cops the minute you get away.”
Ellen shrugged. “I’ll tell the police that you had Ronnie killed so you could marry me. And that I shot you while you tried to rape me. They won’t send the mother of two small children to the electric chair for ridding the state of vermin like you.”
She was hysterical, Graham thought. Ronnie’s death had unbalanced her. But he didn’t think she’d shoot. He’d been in positions like this before. All you had to do was keep your nerve, go straight in and make a grab for the gun. Nine times out of ten, if your opponent wasn’t a professional killer, he’d lose his nerve and you could disarm him.
He came forward.
Ellen fired.
“No,” Graham said. It couldn’t be happening. Not after he’d killed Dyson, established himself as the undisputed Number One. He couldn’t die so soon.
He felt the savage sting of the bullet in his middle. He took another step.
“For Ronnie,” Ellen said. “And for all the decent people in this country.”
She fired again.
“Ellen—you—shouldn’t—” he muttered thickly. Then he sank to his knees, blood spurting wildly from him, and shook his head in disbelief as the final, fatal shot came.