Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

She lowered the gun and walked, no strutted, no I mean sidled toward me. Everything shook, but it shook just right. So help me, in a spot like that I was distracted. When she handed me the gun I just kept looking.

“I wasn’t really going to shoot you,” she smiled at me. “You’re really much too handsome. I thought maybe you were a burglar or something like that. I was asleep in my bedroom when I heard all that racket and...”

“It’s okay, baby,” I smiled back at her.

Leon Schell moaned again, but now I didn’t care if he sang the St. Louis Blues.

“Where’s your phone?” I asked her.

She went over to the sofa and pulled open the door of the end table at the far end. I found myself getting distracted again, but forced my mind back to business. For a big gal she sure had perfect control of her musculature. I sat down to face Schell. He was still out and now I hoped he’d stay that way for another ten minutes. Just to be sure, I kept my gun at the ready on him. Sandra LaCoeur sat on the couch a foot or so from me, looking at him. She even smelled nice.

I dialed the operator and asked her to get me Police Headquarters. This time I didn’t get any jazz about dialing it myself, I heard a bunch of clicks and noises over the wire and then the cop operator at Headquarters came on.

“Drop the gun, Young. Fast.”

I half turned my head towards the foyer and saw them — two, no three men, stepping quickly out of the kitchen into the foyer, spreading out. Each had a gun in his mitt. My heart leaped, then I recognized one of them, I think his name was Cosgrove, one of the Homicide Squad boys. I dropped the gun silently on the rug. The cop at Headquarters kept saying hello but I couldn’t say anything. I looked at Sandra LaCoeur and she had a stricken look on her face.

“It’s okay, baby,” I said. “These guys are the cops I was telling you about.” I had no idea how they got there that fast.

“Put the phone down, Young,” one of them said. “You won’t have to make any calls for a long, long time.”

I put it down on the cop who was still saying hello. One of the detectives walked to the front door and opened it, then I got another surprise. Men poured through it, but the first one in was Inspector O’Leary himself. His face looked like red granite, his eyes were flashing fire and brimstone if I ever saw it. He looked mad enough to eat me alive if I so much as sneezed. He didn’t say anything at first, his eyes swept over every detail in the room — at Leon Schell still out on the floor, the open attache case, the junk jewelry on the far side of the room where Schell threw it, the mess of the bar where Schell and I had crashed into it, over Sandra LaCoeur, and finally over me. They fastened on me like two gimlets. I realized I had my coat and tie off and Sandra LaCoeur was only a foot away from me on the couch — my face got very red.

“Little hootchie-cootchie on company time?” he finally asked.

One of the detectives let out a wolf whistle behind him.

Inspector O’Leary whirled around. “Shut up!” he bellowed.

He turned back to me. “Now will you mind telling me just what the hell is going on here?” he yelled at me.

“Sure, Inspector, sure,” I told him.

“Shut up, wait a minute,” he barked. “Perrozzi, get your pad out and take down every word he says.”

“Yes sir,” Perrozzi answered.

I told him the whole thing, from the time I left him earlier that afternoon right up to the end. I embroidered the end a little, exaggerating what Sandra LaCoeur had done to help me. Hell, I was willing to give her the whole insurance company for the way she bailed me out of that mess. Inspector O’Leary’s face gradually relaxed as he listened. When I was finished he almost looked human again.

“Where’s the recorder cartridge?” he asked me.

I got up and got it out of my coat. “It’s all on that,” I told him as I handed it to him. “Everything, from the time Monk came in to my room right up to the time Schell made me strip.”

Sandra LaCoeur smiled and a couple of the detectives snickered. Inspector O’Leary took it in his giant paw and slipped it into his pocket. He was almost beaming at me.

“I hate to admit it lad,” he said, “but you did a fine job, sure enough you did. I admit I was a little mad at you for a while, but you were lucky and it worked out just fine.”

“Well, Inspector,” I said, “I promised you I’d get the three of them for you, and that’s what I tried to do, even if I had to cut a few corners. You know, like the old song goes, ‘One, Two, Three, O’Leary’.”

Inspector O’Leary threw back his head and roared with laughter. I didn’t get it, I didn’t think it was that funny, in fact now I couldn’t see anything funny about it at all. But he was having the time of his life. Even the detectives looked puzzled.