Loot for the Unlucky Lady

At first he couldn’t identify the sound. A soft chucking sound. Then he smiled grimly. A spade being driven down into the sand in rapid strokes. Let her continue. He was confident that he had beaten Barnard to the cottage. Let her do the labor.

The shoveling ceased. He heard the slam of a screen door. At that moment a car moved slowly down Beachbreeze, as though someone were looking for numbers on the cottages. He moved back behind the angle of the cottage wall, heard it stop outside, heard the chunk of the car door shutting, the motor starting up again.

The taxi made a U-turn and headed back toward the bridge.

She would meet him at the front door. He walked quickly around the edge of the windbreak, walked silently up to the screen door, eased it open and stepped inside, the automatic in his hand.

Her voice, coming from the front room, was almost a sob. He heard the harsher murmur of Barnard’s voice.

He stood in the middle of the small kitchen and let the voices come closer to the doorway. Then, with a swift sure movement, he took two quick steps to the doorway, covering them with the gun, his hand steady and unwavering.

“Right over there against the wall!” he snapped. “Both of you!”

Barnard backed against the wall slowly, his eyes venomous.

Gloria stood and looked at him with wide eyes, her face whiter than death. “Steve!” she gasped.

“Over against the wall,” he ordered.

“So you know him!” Al said in a thin voice. “Very nice. How are you two going to split the cash?”

“Shut up!” Steve said.

Gloria turned to Al. “Do you think that I—”

“He was here waiting for me, wasn’t he?”

She gasped. She whispered, “I’ll show you, Al. I’ll show you.”

She turned and walked directly toward Steve’s gun, shielding Barnard. Steve tried to move to one side, but she rushed toward the gun, reaching for his wrist. She caught his wrist just as Barnard said, “Okay. Drop it, guy!”

He was covering Steve with a heavy revolver, a belly gun with a short barrel and no trigger guard and no front sight.

Steve let his automatic thud onto the rug. Gloria picked it up and backed away. She laughed nervously. “Now what do you think?”

“You’re okay, Glory. I’m sorry. If he’d been smart he’d have clubbed you and taken a pot shot at me. Who are you, guy?”

“He’s Steve Harris, Al. He’s a private detective from New York.”

“Private, eh? That smells like Gibb and that makes it easier.”

Steve had been unable to cope with the way she had walked into his gun. Everything had been so carefully planned and executed, except this last move — the move which lost everything for him.

“What’s easier, Al?” she asked.

“Honey, they can only burn you once. You seen the New York papers?”

“No.”

“They know it’s me, honey. They know I did it. Now that they know, I don’t have to hold off on our friend here. Where do you want it, guy. Through the head?”

“Al!” she said, her voice almost a scream.

“Don’t soften on me,” he snarled. “This joker is probably working alone. We got to think he’s alone. We’ve got an investment to protect. If you don’t want to watch it, go on out in the kitchen and shut the door. Hey, maybe you got a towel I can wrap around this thing. We don’t want publicity.”

“You can’t, Al! You can’t!” she said.

Her lips quivered and Steve saw that her hands were tightly clenched.

“You don’t understand these things, Glory.”

“I won’t let you!” she said.

“You soft on this fella? Smarten up.” Barnard looked carefully at her for a moment and then said, “Honey, there’s other girls, you know. Lots of them. All I’ve got to have is dough. If you try to foul me up, I can leave you here right beside him.”

Steve looked at her, saw her shoulders slowly slump, saw the bitterness around her mouth, saw some of her youth leave her eyes, and knew that it would never return.

“I’ll get a towel,” she said.

“Now you make sense, Glory.”

She went into the kitchen. Steve heard her dull steps on the linoleum. She came back with a heavy beach towel. She carried it toward Al. The shape of it didn’t seem quite right.

Steve didn’t catch on until she jammed it against Al’s ribs. Al, his revolver still steady on Steve, slowly turned his head and looked down into the white face of Gloria Gerald. Steve guessed what would happen. He would spin away from the pressure of the gun, Steve’s gun that she had picked up. Al would slam her over the ear with the revolver he held.

She must have suddenly sensed her danger, as she started to move back. The sudden flat jar of a shot slammed against Steve’s ears. Even as his body quivered in anticipation of the brutal thud of lead, his mind told him that the sound had been too thin and brittle to have come from the revolver Al Barnard held.

Al Barnard’s upper lip was a bloody ruin, the flesh smashed away from the broken teeth. He moved back one step, his pale eyes blank and bewildered. The second shot cracked and a small black hole appeared in the middle of his forehead.