Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 4, September 1971

“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,” said the sergeant softly. He looked at Gail Morton. “Knowing Johnny, it’s a wonder he didn’t shoot you.”

“He lacked the nerve, sergeant. You see, I didn’t turn my back to him, I kept looking him straight in the eye.”

The sergeant nodded understandingly. “Yeah,” he said, and added with dispassionate final judgment: “The rat!”...

Once more alone in his office Gail Morton went to his desk and took from its top drawer the newspaper clipping that he had concealed there before Bracco came in. He walked to the fireplace; stood looking down at the picture of the woman whose faded prettiness still aroused repercussions of beauty in his brain.

Mechanically he murmured to himself the bleak words printed above it: “Mrs. George Pendexter, Whose Husband Was Killed—”

Gail Morton’s ugly face took on a light other than that from the glowing grate.

“You’d have done better to have married me, my dear,” he said aloud. “But you loved Pendexter, and that was that. At least I’ve avenged his death this night.

“A small service, but eminently satisfactory. Adroit, too. Very adroit, if I may say so. Good-by, my only dear, and may the Lord of all our twisted fates be kind to you.”

Gail Morton threw the clipping into the fire.

The Hard Cure by Richard M. Rose

Dark, deadly was the game they played, the girl who had nothing but her evil beauty and the man who had everything — except a chance to stay alive this night.

* * *

Brad Stockwell’s fingertips tingled against the cold handle of the .22 automatic in his lap. The .22 had a familiar feel to it, even though he hadn’t used one since Korea. It was almost like shaking hands with an old friend. And his friend would serve him well tonight.

Stockwell lowered the binoculars, and the figure on the beach below shrank into a bronze speck on a glare of sand. But even at that distance, before he’d confirmed it with the binoculars, he was sure that speck was Gloria.

She’d made it easier for him to find her this time. Once he’d known it was Carmel, he had only to check the tourist accommodations, concentrating on the out-of-the-way rentals. The expensive ones.

The Oceanside Cabanas were both private and expensive. The eight prim white structures, Spanish styled, with tiled patios, stretched out along an isolated beach about five miles from Carmel. Yes, just the kind of place she’d choose for her latest affair, Stockwell thought bitterly. Her latest and last!

As he watched from the front seat of his ’70 Thunderbird, parked just off the asphalt road winding along the edge of the steep bluff, the bronze speck below began to move toward the bungalow at the extreme right.

Stockwell raised the binoculars again, and the image of Gloria, his wife, jumped sharply into focus. He watched her glide across the sand, her exquisite body accentuated by a bright turquoise bikini about the size of a G-string. The sight took the wind out of him like a fist in the stomach.

She still had that impact, even after ten long years of her. Her hips were fuller now, the pert breasts not quite so firm, the blonde hair coarser. But the girlish waist, the long model’s legs, the lovely oval face with its full sensuous mouth and luminous green eyes seemed to have survived the years unaltered by time.

Brad Stockwell’s breath came shudderingly as he watched her and wondered what kind of man she’d picked this time — if he’d know him. He doubted it. Gloria had tired of the local country club studs long ago. But no one was following her to the cabana. Stockwell panned the beach with the binoculars. A few people lingered in deck chairs, soaking up the waning sunshine as the blue-green waters of the Pacific slashed noisily at the shore.

Probably in the cabana, Stockwell thought, lowering the binoculars. Or maybe he hadn’t shown yet. He hoped that was it. He had nothing against the man. There had been too many men. You couldn’t hate them all.

Brad Stockwell lit up a cigarette from the dash lighter and leaned back to watch the sun make its spectacular descent into the sea. The cigarette had no taste. He felt completely dead inside. The last bullet in the .22 would only make it official.

It hadn’t always been that way. Not even during those hellish days in Korea, where a combat engineer was open season for Gook snipers. He’d had the dream to sustain him through them. Stockwell & Company, engineers extraordinary. Build a bridge or blast a tunnel anywhere. Africa, South America, the challenging places. That was for him.