Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

The announcer kept talking, but I couldn’t hear the words, the blood was pounding in my head too loudly. Schell was slightly bent over the set, still glaring at me, not missing a word. Finally the announcer shut up and he snapped off the set.

“So you’re an insurance copper, and you killed Monk,” he snarled.

He was too far away from me to try anything, and he held that gun like it was on a tripod. I just swallowed hard and didn’t say anything.

He threw his head back and gave an insane laugh, it was the weirdest thing I ever heard in my life. I could feel the cold sweat beading on my forehead, a chill raced down my back.

“That’s real funny,” he said. “An insurance cop slob like you almost fooling Leon Schell, imagine that. But that was the last laugh, you’ll be very dead in a minute or two, after you tell me why you came up here with that junk. Now talk, while you’re still alive.”

My mind was a chaos, I tried desperately to think of something, anything, to stall for time. For sure I didn’t want to die, but if I lived, I didn’t want him to get away.

“Sure, Leon, sure,” I said. “Only if I were you I’d put that gun away and forget all about shooting people, especially me. You’re hung up on the jewelry job, you’ve had it on that. There’s no percentage in making it worse and signing your own death warrant by killing me and that’s just what you’d be doing.”

He was icy calm again, his face a hard mask of hatred.

“Why would I sign my death warrant?” he asked. “Seems to me I remember saying a few indiscreet things to you a while back, things I never should have said. You don’t think I’ll let you walk out of here so you can tell people what I said, do you? You might even try to convict me for that jewel robbery. And I hate witnesses. A bullet in your head now and I never have to worry about you.”

The way he looked, the hate in his eyes, I knew he meant it. It had never looked worse for me. I decided on a desperate gamble — it was all I could do.

“Look, Schell,” I said, “I didn’t come up here for a social call, you realize that. And I didn’t come up here to hand you a suitcase full of glass. I came up here to get you to talk, and brother, you sure did, with bells. Only I have a microphone and a transmitter strapped to me, and every word you said was broadcast to a truck my boys have downstairs. And they have earphones on so they know what’s going on up here and by now they’ve probably called Police Headquarters to send a few squad cars around. So now if you want to shoot, go ahead.”

I knew from the flicker of doubt and confusion in his eyes I had scored heavily. Nobody commits a murder when the cops might walk in a couple of minutes later.

“Where’s the mike and transmitter?” he asked. His gun still hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch.

I half bent over and pulled the material of my trousers tautly over the bulge of the recorder strapped to my thigh. “Right here,” I said.

“I don’t mean like that. I want to see this great invention. Take your clothes off. Strip.”

“What!” I was incredulous. I couldn’t believe it.

“You hear me boy, get your clothes off fast, otherwise I take them off you, after I put a slug in you. Now!”

There was nothing I could do but obey. I started to unknot my tie.

“Just be very slow and easy with your hands, copper,” he said. “If they move too fast I’ll put a slug in your head. Now strip, right down to your skin.”

I undressed slowly, careful not to make any abrupt moves with my hands.

“Fact is,” he said, “I just don’t believe anything you say. If you are telling the truth, it seems to me your cop friends should be here by now, and I don’t hear anything. But if they are outside, I’d be foolish to try to make a break for it, if that’s what you want me to do. If you’re lying then you don’t have a transmitter there and that’s what I want to see, just what it is.”

Leon Schell was no dummy. He almost had it figured out. I had slipped the control switch out of my jacket pocket and it was hanging down over my belt. I unhitched my belt and slipped out of my trousers. The recorder and the microphone were clearly visible now, held to my legs with adhesive tape, the wire to the control hanging to the floor. I felt like a damn fool standing there in my underwear, socks, and shoes.

“Okay, boy, that’s enough. Now just turn around and get your hands up high over your head,” Schell ordered.

He came up behind me and I felt his hand on my left leg at the microphone, but didn’t feel the gun in my back. He was a pro, all right. I couldn’t move a muscle. He ripped the microphone off, then the recorder, tearing savagely at the tape. It felt like two fistsful of flesh came with them. I almost screamed with the pain. Then he backed away from me.