I found her in the bedroom.
She had taken a quick sponge bath, and her body gleamed like dull ivory in the gathering darkness.
‘All right, Agnes,’ I said. ‘It’s all over.’
‘What do you mean, Dud?’
‘The whole mess, Agnes. Everything, from start to finish. A big hoax. A big plot to sucker Dudley Sledge. Well, no one suckers Sledge. No one.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Dud.’
‘You don’t know, huh? You don’t know what I mean? I mean the phoney story about the bank job, and the ten million dollars your husband left you.’
‘He did leave it to me, Dudley.’
‘No, Agnes. That was all a lie. Every bit of it. I’m only sorry I had to kill twenty-six bird-watchers before I realized the truth.’
‘You’re wrong, Dudley,’ she said. ‘Dead wrong.’
‘No, baby. I’m right, and that’s the pity of it because I love you, and I know what I have to do now.’
‘Dudley...’ she started.
‘No, Agnes. Don’t try to sway me. I know you stole that ten million from the Washington Heights Bird Watchers Society. You invented that other story because you wanted someone with a gun, someone who would keep them away from you. Well, twenty-six people have paid... and now one more has to pay.’
She clipped two earrings to her delicate ears, snapped a bracelet onto her wrist, dabbed some lipstick onto her wide mouth. She was fully dressed now, dressed the way she’d been that first time in my office, the first time I’d slugged her, the time I knew I was hopelessly in love with her.
She took a step toward me, and I raised the .45.
‘Kiss me, Dudley,’ she said.
I kissed her, all right. I shot her right in the stomach.
She fell to the floor, a look of incredible ecstasy in her eyes, and when I turned around I realized she wasn’t reaching for the mortar shell on the table behind me. Nor was she reaching for the sub-machine gun that rested in the corner near the table. She was reaching for the ten million bucks.
There were tears in my eyes. ‘I guess that’s the least I can do for you, Agnes,’ I said. ‘It was what you wanted, even in death.’
So I took the ten million bucks, and I bought a case of Irish whiskey.
Chinese Puzzle
The girl slumped at the desk just inside the entrance doorway of the small office. The phone lay uncradled, just the way she’d dropped it. An open pad of telephone numbers rested just beyond reach of her lifeless left hand.
The legend on the frosted glass door read Gotham Lobster Company. The same legend was repeated on the long row of windows facing Columbus Avenue, and the sun glared hotly through those windows, casting the name of the company onto the wooden floor in shadowed black.
Mr. Godrow, President of Gotham Lobster, stood before those windows now. He was a big man with rounded shoulders and a heavy paunch. He wore a grey linen jacket over his suit pants, and the pocket of the jacket was stitched with the word Gotham. He tried to keep his meaty hands from fluttering, but he wasn’t good at pretending. The hands wandered restlessly, and then exploded in a gesture of impatience.
‘Well, aren’t you going to do something?’ he demanded.
‘We just got here, Mr. Godrow,’ I said. ‘Give us a little...”
‘The police are supposed to be so good,’ he said petulantly. ‘This girl drops dead in my office and all you do is stand around and look. Is this supposed to be a sightseeing tour?’
I didn’t answer him. I looked at Donny, and Donny looked back at me, and then we turned our attention to the dead girl. Her left arm was stretched out across the top of the small desk, and her body was arched crookedly, with her head resting on the arm. Long black hair spilled over her face, but it could not hide the contorted, hideously locked grin on her mouth. She wore a tight silk dress, slit on either side in the Oriental fashion, buttoned to the throat. The dress had pulled back over a portion of her right thigh, revealing a roll-gartered stocking. The tight line of her panties was clearly visible through the thin silk of her dress. The dead girl was Chinese, but her lips and face were blue.
‘Suppose you tell us what happened, Mr. Godrow,’ I said.
‘Freddie can tell you,’ Godrow answered. ‘Freddie was sitting closer to her.’
‘Who’s Freddie?’
‘My boy,’ Godrow said.
‘Your son?’
‘No, I haven’t any children. My boy. He works for me.’
‘Where is he now, sir?’
‘I sent him down for some coffee. After I called you.’ Godrow paused, and then reluctantly said, ‘I didn’t think you’d get here so quickly.’
‘Score one for the Police Department,’ Donny murmured.
‘Well, you fill us in until he gets back, will you?’ I said.
‘All right,’ Godrow answered. He said everything grudgingly, as if he resented our presence in his office, as if this whole business of dead bodies lying around should never have been allowed to happen in his office. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘What did the girl do here?’ Donny asked.
‘She made telephone calls.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes. Freddie does that, too, but he also runs the addressing machine. Freddie...’
‘Maybe you’d better explain your operation a little,’ I said.
‘I sell lobsters,’ Godrow said.
‘From this office?’ Donny asked skeptically.
‘We take the orders from this office.’ Godrow explained, warming up a little. It was amazing the way they always warmed up when they began discussing their work. ‘My plant is in Boothbay Harbour, Maine.’
‘I see.’
‘We take the orders here, and then the lobsters are shipped down from Maine, alive of course.’
‘I like lobsters,’ Donny said. ‘Especially lobster tails.’
‘Those are not lobsters,’ Godrow said indignantly. ‘Those are crawfish. African rock lobster. There’s a big difference.’
‘Who do you sell to, Mr. Godrow?’ I asked.
‘Restaurants. That’s why Mary worked for me.’
‘Is that the girl’s name? Mary?’
‘Yes, Mary Chang. You see, we do a lot of business with Chinese restaurants. Lobster Cantonese, you know, like that. They buy the Jumbos usually, in half-barrel quantities for the most part. They’re good steady customers.’
‘And Miss Chang called these Chinese restaurants, is that right?’
‘Yes. I found it more effective that way. She spoke several Chinese dialects, and she inspired confidence, I suppose. At any rate, she got me more orders than any Occidental who ever held the job.’
‘And Freddie? What docs he do?’
‘He calls the American restaurants. We call them every morning. Not all of them each morning, of course, but those we feel are ready to reorder. We give them quotations, and we hope they’ll place orders. We try to keep our quotes low. For example, our Jumbos today were going for...’
‘How much did Miss Chang receive for her duties, Mr. Godrow?’
‘She got a good salary.’
‘How much?’
‘Why? What difference does it make?’
‘It might be important, Mr. Godrow. How much?’
‘A hundred and twenty-five a week, plus a dollar commission on each barrel order from a new customer.’ Godrow paused. ‘Those are good wages, Mr....’