Masters of Noir: Volume One Page 6

  "Why ‘naturally,’ honey?"

  "He's an old guy—and he's married. Oh, he's sort of an ugly geek, and kind of funny, but we still wouldn't have had anything to do with a chaser like him. He's tried to date other girls around here, too."

  "He go out with any that you know about?"

  Norma shook her head, frowning. She described Hecker for me and told me his wife worked in the market with him. Finally I told Norma I'd keep in touch and left. Hecker's was only a block and a half down Melrose, so I walked. On the way I picked up a newspaper, just out, at a small store; the Judith Geer murder was on the front page.

  Hecker's Market was kind of run down and needed a coat of paint. Inside, the meat case was on my left; shelves along the right wall held hams and canned goods; a couple frozen-food lockers stood before them. There weren't any other customers, and Hecker was behind the glass-fronted meat case. He turned to look at me as I came in.

  Hecker was built like an ape. An inch or two shorter than my six-two, he must have weighed 300 pounds, almost 100 pounds more than I, and his enormous wrists were nearly as big as my forearms. He was heavy-featured, with eyes that looked too round, too big, in a pasty-white and red-veined face. When I stopped before the meat display he said, “What you want?” in a deep voice that rumbled in his thick chest.

  "Top sirloin,” I said.

  He slid open the rear glass of the case and grabbed a steak, flopped it onto a paper on the scales. Behind him was an oversized meat block, pitted and stained; a lot of sawdust was on the floor, and dark stains were around the chopping block. Above the block a green-shaded light hung on a cord from the ceiling.

  He slid the wrapped meat to me and I tossed the newspaper on the counter while I got out my wallet. Paying him I said, nodding at the paper, “Hell of a note, huh? That kid?"

  I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he said, “What kid?” I pointed to the story. He picked up the paper and glanced at it. “Yeah.” His fingers left blood-marks on the newsprint.

  I heard a noise behind me and looked over my shoulder as a woman walked toward us from the rear of the store. From Norma's description, I recognized her as Hecker's wife. She walked behind the meat counter and stood beside her husband.

  Mrs. Hecker was a frail, plain-looking woman, bony and angular, wearing no makeup and with short dark hair matted on her head. She looked almost like a small wizened boy, standing there next to her huge, thickly-muscled husband.

  I said to Hecker, “This Judy and her sister shopped here?"

  He turned his head slowly to stare at me from the large too-white eyes. “Who'd you say you were?"

  "Shell Scott.” I hadn't said.

  "What you so gabby for, mister?"

  I could feel a warm flush on my face and neck, but I pulled my wallet out again and flipped it open so he could see the photostat of my license.

  "Cops,” he rumbled. “Geezus, all the crudding cops."

  "Since the girls lived so close, I wondered if you ever noticed anybody hanging around them, following or watching them."

  He grinned, showing square, too-short teeth, a film of yellow coloring them. “You didn't want no steak, did you?"

  Before I could answer he walked from behind the meat counter and across the floor to the door of a walk-in refrigerator. Keys jangled as he unlocked a big padlock, then slid a heavy bolt back, flipped on a light and went inside; in a moment he came out with what looked like a whole half cow balanced on one of his heavy shoulders. Holding it with one upstretched hand he bolted and locked the door, then carried the beef back to the meat block, carried it effortlessly, big muscles swelling.

  He dropped the beef with a sodden thud onto the block, picked up a long wide-bladed knife and conical stone, began sharpening the knife with a whispering grate, grate, grate of steel on stone, ignoring me.

  I said, “You didn't answer my question. Might be you could help."

  Without looking at me he said, “I don't know nothing about them. They bought meat here is all. Beat it.” The knife moved faster as he sharpened it, then he slid the stone into a metal bracket clamped on the block, ran the keen blade over the meat, sliced easily down to the bone.

  I rephrased my question, asked it of Mrs. Hecker. She shook her head wordlessly, looking tired and nervous. In silence Hecker deftly sliced around the bone, put down the knife and picked up a massive cleaver, raised it over his head. He swung it in a swift arc and I heard it crack completely through the bone, bury its edge in the wood beneath. Then he turned and stared fixedly, soberly at me, still in silence. Finally he turned back to the block. I left.

  Driving downtown in the Cad there was a tightness between my shoulder blades; all I had was a funny feeling about Hecker, a hunch, no real proof against him. But he had acted damned strange. And I kept seeing that knife rub on stone, hearing the grating sound, hearing the crack of a cleaver slicing bone. I went to Homicide.

  Samson had his inevitable cigar going, so naturally there was a horrible smell in his office. I gave him the story of the last hour. “This guy's a bug,” I said to him. “He's non compos whatever, not at all pleasant. He could sure as hell stand a check."

  Samson sighed, fumbled in his desk, found some papers and flipped through them. “Robert Hecker, fifty-two years old, married, no kids—he's been checked. Along with a hundred and forty others."

  "You mean he's clean?"

  "Not clean. Just nothing that looks wrong."

  "You got a man on him?"

  A slight trace of annoyance flickered over his pink face. “How many men you think we got, Shell? I put men on some other guys that look better and got records that fit this better. I'd like to have a man on all hundred and forty. And it still could be the hundred and forty-first."

  "Answer me this, pal: you told me yourself the guy that did the others, and this one, knew what and where and how to do it; that he could be anything from a meat cutter to a brain surgeon.” He nodded. “And they were all three frozen stiff; this guy's got a cold room, a freezing room with beef hanging in it; easy enough to drop the temperature lower than usual if he wanted; he's got frozen-food lockers."

  "Yeah. So has every other butcher in town,” Samson growled. “You want to watch the guy, watch him. Get me some more cops. Take the butcher to dinner and show him ink blots."

  "Yeah, sure. I'll get you a good cigar."

  He blew foul smoke in the air. “O.K., Shell. This guy's got me jumpy, but we'll put him through the wringer, give him a closer look."

  I spent a long afternoon at the office. Samson phoned me before he went home for dinner. “No soap on Hecker,” he said. “Nothing yet, anyway. No past record, not even any complaints; far as we can tell he never even went out with any of the girls that live around Melrose there. He tried to date some—but according to the boys that saw his wife, you could hardly blame him for trying."

  "I know what they mean. If she were married to anybody but Hecker, she'd look more like a man than her husband."

  "We'll go over him some more, but he looks clear."

  "Thanks, Sam.” We hung up.

  Maybe I was a little off balance about it, but thinking of Hecker still gave me the creeps. When I headed the Cad out Sunset I remembered how carefully locked and bolted that walk-in refrigerator had been. Seemed funny that it would be locked during the daytime, when Hecker was in the market himself. He must be damned careful about his meat. Or something.

  I swung over to Melrose and when I got close to Hecker's it looked dark. I doused the Cad's lights, parked at the curb and poked the glove compartment open, fumbled for a ring of keys I keep there. I wanted a look in that big refrigerator.

  When I got out of the car I could see that the front door of the market was closed, but a thin strip of light slanted out the window from behind drawn blinds—and I could hear the soft, measured thud of that cleaver. I hesitated, and my right hand went to my shoulder where my gun should have been—only the gun was in my office desk. Then I made up my mind. The so
dden chop, chop, persisted inside as I tried the door, found it locked, and selected keys on my ring until one worked. I unlocked the door, eased it open, slipped inside and pulled the door closed behind me.

  Light from the green-shaded bulb behind the meat counter spilled down over the bulky shape of Hecker, reached out to touch me here by the door, glanced from the cleaver as Hecker raised it above his head and slammed it down onto the block. He wore only an undershirt covering his huge chest, and perspiration glistened on his hairy shoulders and arms. I moved forward, bent so I'd be out of his line of vision, then straightened until I could see a quarter of beef on the chopping block. Cold sweat beaded my forehead. There was something odd about Hecker's actions, the way he chopped at the meat, and I could hear grunting sounds in his throat. His arm rose and fell rhythmically.

  Suddenly he stopped and turned. I thought he'd heard me but he wasn't looking at me, was staring across the room, yards beyond where I stood in partial shadow. I glanced to my right; the door to the walk-in refrigerator was closed, but a red bulb burned above it. He stared fixedly at the refrigerator, seemed strangely agitated.

  He turned back to the block, picked up the long knife, the conical stone, and again I heard the grating scraping noise of steel rubbing stone as he sharpened the knife. He slid the stone into its bracket with a crash, sliced at the meat before him on the block.

  His back was to me and I bent over, moved toward the refrigerator door. It was closed but unbolted, the padlock hanging open. As quietly as I could I cracked the heavy door. Cold air seeped from it and its inside surface chilled my fingers as I touched it, pulled it out far enough to let my body through. The chopping didn't falter.

  I pulled the door shut, turned and looked inside the freezing room, cold swimming over my flesh. In the dim light I could see naked carcasses of beeves hanging from iron hooks. I walked forward, the light throwing eerie shadows on the wall ahead of me. And finally, far in back against the wall, hidden among the suspended meats, I found something that was different.

  It was a white and bloodless thing like something made of wax, an artfully fashioned image of a woman—of part of a woman. It was a human slug suspended from a pointed iron hook. Then I saw the matted, clinging hair, and part of it was blonde, blonde as sunshine. This was what was left of Judy.

  I became aware of quietness without at first realizing what it meant; and then dimly I heard a door slam out in the market, heard the murmur of voices. Footsteps thudded over the floor toward the refrigerator as my momentary paralysis ended and I whirled around.

  The door swung wide and Hecker loomed before me. He yelled aloud as he saw me, then leaped backward so quickly that I almost didn't follow after him in time. He started to swing the door shut before I understood what he meant to do, but I leaped forward, jarred into it a moment before it closed.

  I strained against it with all my strength, then suddenly the weight was gone from its other side. The door swung open and I saw Hecker running across the floor toward the meat block, saw him grab the massive cleaver in his right hand, whirl and run back toward me raising the cleaver above his head.

  On the far side of the room stood his wife; it was she I had heard come in and speak moments ago. I glanced around for something, anything I could use as a weapon, knowing Hecker could send that cleaver slashing through my skull and brain and neck in one blow of his thickly muscled arm. Hanging from iron rods behind and above me, stretching from wall to wall were several unused hooks, S-curved and double-pointed like those, from which the beeves hung. I grabbed one of them, leaped out of the refrigerator room as Hecker slowed his rush, stopped and stared at me, the cleaver held on a level with his head.

  For a second he didn't move, then he walked toward me, not hurrying, just steadily coming closer, holding the cleaver tightly. I let him get six feet from me, then backed away toward the market's rear wall. I took my eyes off Hecker's face for one quick look at his wife, but she stood motionless near the meat case, eyes fixed on us.

  The wall, I knew, was close behind me. I stopped. Hecker didn't falter in his slow stride but he raised the cleaver higher, his face almost expressionless.

  I moved back and turned sideways until my left elbow brushed against the wall. Holding the hook in my right hand I crossed my arm in front of my body just as he jumped toward me swinging the cleaver down in a blurred arc at my head.

  With the wall for leverage I shoved hard, let my body drop toward the floor, slashing my right arm toward his face with all my strength. The cleaver hissed past my head and struck the wood behind me as I felt my hand jar against him, pain ripping through my palm as the second point of the hook dug into it. It ripped across my skin and the hook was jerked from my hand, but as my knees hit the floor I saw where that other point had gone. It had entered Hecker's throat, the curving metal hanging down upon his chest. But it hadn't killed him.

  He jerked the cleaver from the wood as I rolled a few feet across the floor and scrambled to my feet, then he jumped toward me, swinging the cleaver downward. I threw my left hand up, clamped my fingers around his huge wrist, but couldn't stop the blow. I slowed it, changed its direction, but felt the cleaver's edge bite into my chest muscles as I slammed my right hand up to grab that dangling hook, to jerk and twist it. His weight hurled me to the floor and the cleaver thudded against the boards as I rolled away, pain burning in my chest. When I got to my feet I swung around, but Hecker was on his hands and knees, coughing horribly, his life draining from his throat.

  Then he rolled over and lay on his back, eyes staring upwards, and I saw that he was trying to talk. I went over and listened, and I was damn glad I did, because the thing he told me was the craziest fact in the whole crazy case. He managed only a single sentence before he died, but it was enough to make me realize that he wasn't The Butcher at all....

  It took quite a few hours for the medics to patch and bandage me up, and it was late afternoon before Samson, Louis, and I sat in Room 42 again. Sam had just been talking on the phone, and he turned and said, “They've got Hecker's wife in a padded cell."

  "I'm not surprised,” I said.

  "Me, neither,” Sam said. “She's been raving for hours—drooling about the killings. Well, there's no doubt about your story any more, anyway ... “

  I shook my head. “I'm getting old,” I said. “I should have been tipped the minute Norma told me Hecker'd been trying to date every dame in that neighborhood—I should have realized that a sex killer has got to have violence and attack, and wouldn't be trying to date women.” Sam pushed a bottle into my hand, and I took a deep slug of it. I coughed, and went on, “It just never occurred to me that Hecker's wife was the way she was, and Hecker was just looking for some normal, natural outlets. Who the hell would ever figure that Hecker's wife was The Butcher, that she was so dominant that Hecker was under her thumb and cutting up the bodies for her after she did the killings?"

  Sam took the bottle out of my hand, and took a deep dip before he answered.

  "Nobody'd figure it,” he said. “Nobody'd figure it because it's the kind of fact that just never occurs to people—even people in jobs like ours. A cop's bound to go looking for a man when he's got some sex murders to solve. But it makes just as much sense the other way now that we know the whole story."

  He paused, and I guess we all looked a little sick. “Because naturally,” he went on, “it would also be women who were murdered if the sex killer was a female queer ... “

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  LOOK DEATH IN THE EYE by LAWRENCE BLOCK

  She was beautiful.

  She was, and she knew that she was—not only by the image in her mirror, the full and petulant mouth and the high cheekbones, the silkiness of the long blond hair and the deep blue color of her eyes. The image in her mirror at home told her she was beautiful, and so did the image she saw now, the image in the mirror in the tavern.

  But she didn't need the mirrors. She was made aware of her beauty by the eyes, the eyes of t
he hungry men, the eyes that she felt rather than saw upon her everywhere she went. She could feel those eyes caressing her body, lingering too long upon her firm ripe breasts and sensuous hips, touching her body with a touch firmer than hands and making her grow warm where they rested. Wherever she went men stared at her, and the intensity of their stares undressed their passions and hungers just as thoroughly as the stares attempted to strip her body.

  She sipped at her drink, hardly tasting it but knowing that she had to drink it. It was all part of the game. She was in a bar, and the hungry men were also in the bar, and now their eyes were wandering over her. But for the moment there was nothing for her to do. She had to drink her drink and bide her time, waiting for the men—or one of them, at least—to get up the courage to do more than stare.

  Idly, she turned a few inches on the barstool and glanced at the other customers. Several men were too busy drinking to pay any attention to her; another was busy in a corner booth running his hand up and down the leg of a slightly plump redhead, and it was easy to see that he wouldn't be interested in her, not that night.

  But the other three customers were fair game.

  She regarded them thoughtfully, one at a time. Closest to her was a young one—no more than twenty-one or twenty-two, she guessed, and hungry the way they are when they're that age. He was short and slim, dressed in a dark suit and wearing a conservative bow tie. She noticed with a little amusement the way he was embarrassed to stare at her but at the same time was unable to keep his eyes off her lush body. Twice his eyes met hers and he flushed guiltily, turning away and nervously flicking the ashes off his cigarette.

  And each time the eyes returned to her, hungry and desperate in their hunger. Mr. Dark Suit couldn't keep away from her, she thought, and she wondered if he would be the one for the evening. It was always difficult to predict, always tough to calculate which pair of eyes would get up enough courage to make the pass. It might be Mr. Dark Suit, but she doubted it. He had the hunger, all right, but he probably lacked the experience he'd need for hero.