Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 6, May 1963

Egan interrupted. “There won’t be a next time, Heisman. You’re going on an extended vacation.”

Heisman was silent.

After Heisman and O’Konski had been booked and jailed, Egan wrote out his report. Dawn was beginning to light the eastern sky as he headed the black Chevvie towards Muriel’s apartment on Mount Vernon Place. He had promised to come up no matter what time it was, so he did.

She answered the bell in a revealing black negligee, but it was easy to tell she hadn’t been sleeping. Her eyes were red and tired-looking and the ash trays were full of lipstick-stained, half-smoked butts.

Wordlessly they embraced.

He sank into an easy chair. “I could use a drink,” he said. “Or two or three.”

She mixed him a stiff bourbon and water, and as he sipped it he told her all about it. “Heisman and O’Konski planned the whole thing when they were in the army together. It was in the army that O’Konski learned to be a baker and Heisman a pharmacist. They learned those trades as a cover. They even got married as a cover. Heisman is a genius but he has the heart of a born thief who’d rather steal ten bucks than make a hundred legit.

“If he patents that key-making thing of his he’ll pile up a fortune in prison. He took the whole plan to the syndicate boys and they okayed it for a forty percent cut. Byers, Visconti, and Mahaffey were lent to Heisman as muscle, to do the necessary stealing, act as lookouts, and stuff like that. Also to see that Heisman and O’Konski didn’t cross the big boys.

“We got to them largely through Byers, although your idea about the locksmiths was a big help. Byers is dead. So is Visconti. Mahaffey is shot up and may not make it. Con McClure has a smashed hip and Steve Kohnstamm a broken wrist.”

“God,” she murmured. “What a night!”

As Thanksgiving Day dawned, they drank bourbon and ate some scrambled eggs and finally fell asleep in each other’s arms on the floor in front of the fireplace.

C.O.D. to a Corpse by Tighe Jarratt

“I am a licensed private eye,” Chip pointed out. “You are an evil eye,” Aunt Tilly corrected.

* * *

There were seven messages to phone Aunt Tilly when Chip Stack checked his answering service. Imperative. Aunt Tilly spoke with the authority of a million dollars and the boss of the Stack clan.

Chip snapped a cigarette into his deceptively amiable face and considered that Aunt. Tilly carried her gold-headed cane not from infirmity, but to wallop hell out of any purse snatcher or mugger foolish enough to disregard the glint of her bird-bright eyes. She knew her nephew without illusions, disapproved of him entirely, and had once characterized him a renegade to the human race. Aside from that, she liked him.

But not seven phone calls worth. This was trouble. Chip took a neat drink for fortification, expanded his breath, and intrepidly dialed her number, feeling much like a soldier charging a flame throwing tank with his bayonet.

“Chip Stack,” she greeted him. “How long since your deeply lamented Uncle Arthur was laid at rest?”

“Why,” he grunted with surprise, and flicked a glance at the calendar. “It was three weeks ago last Monday — twenty-three days. Is something desecrating his memory?”

“Racketeers,” she sniffed. “Cheap ones, too, and how he loathed the type! Unless it was you?”

“I appreciate the suspicion,” he said dryly. “Has somebody a bequest, or dug up the story of how he made his first fifty thousand?”

“Somebody,” she stated, “used his departure to swindle me out of fifteen dollars and forty-two cents.”

“Why, forty-two cents?” Chip asked.

“Special handling. It was a Parcel Post — C.O.D.”

“Oh, one of those,” he muttered. “They sent him a letter that they’d picked up an unclaimed package addressed to him and thought it might be important. And you wrote back to send it immediately?”

“It’s passing strange that you know the details so intimately,” she crackled.

“Well,” he grinned, “it’s a pretty old con game. They used to send C.O.D.’s directly to the obituary list, but the Federals stepped on that. Now they have to get a written order, but the departed person’s relatives usually ask for delivery if the sum involved is not too great. It still turns out expensive for a pair of cheap slippers or a ten cent pen.”

“I must say, you are well informed,” she commented. “I suppose you’d call on the Fifth Amendment if I asked you to do something about it?”

He said cautiously, “I don’t mind the nuisance of trailing them down, but the case will be dismissed, even if I get them into court.”

“Who said anything about court?” she barked. “I’m simply sure that if common swindlers can think of a trick that foul, you’ll think of something more so, and I want them whamied.”

“I am a licensed private eye,” he pointed out.

“You’re an evil eye,” she corrected. “And I want these tricksters chastised.”