This Woman Is Death

  THIS WOMAN IS DEATH

  HANK JANSON

  This edition first published in the UK in 2013 by

  Telos Publishing Ltd,

  17 Pendre Avenue, Prestatyn, LL19 9SH, www.telos.co.uk

  Telos Publishing Ltd values feedback. Please e-mail us with any comments you may have about this book to: feedback@telos.co.uk

  This Ebook edition © 2013 Telos Publishing Ltd

  Novel by Stephen D Frances

  Cover by Reginald Heade

  Silhouette device by Philip Mendoza

  The Hank Janson name, logo and silhouette device are registered trademarks of Telos Publishing Ltd

  First published in England by S D Frances, 1948

  This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The appeal of the Hank Janson books to a modern readership lies not only in the quality of the storytelling, which is as powerfully compelling today as it was when they were first published, but also in the fascinating insight they afford into the attitudes, customs and morals of the 1940s and 1950s. We have therefore endeavoured to make This Woman is Death, and all our other Hank Janson reissues, as faithful to the original editions as possible. Unlike some other publishers, who when reissuing vintage fiction have been known to edit it to remove aspects that might offend present-day sensibilities, we have left the original narrative absolutely intact.

  The original editions of these classic Hank Janson titles made quite frequent use of phonetic ‘Americanisms’ such as ‘kinda’, ‘gotta’, ‘wanna’ and so on. Again, we have left these unchanged in the Telos Publishing Ltd reissues, to give readers as genuine as possible a taste of what it was like to read these books when they first came out, even though such devices have since become sorta out of fashion.

  The only way in which we have amended the original text has been to correct obvious lapses in spelling, grammar and punctuation, and to remedy clear typesetting errors.

  Lastly, we should mention that we have made every effort to trace and acquire relevant copyrights in the various elements that make up this book. However, if anyone has any further information that they could provide in this regard, we would be very grateful to receive it.

  1

  There were 20 or so folk lined up at the bar of the Florida when I steered Lola to one of the individually-lighted side tables. She was a sweet kid. I’d known her since she was 12 and wearing pig-tails, and she looked upon me as a big brother.

  ‘What’ll it be?’ asked the waiter, as he turned on the table lamp and dabbed at imaginary crumbs.

  ‘Two Old-Fashioneds and sandwiches,’ I told him. ‘Okay with you, Lola?’

  ‘Suits me fine,’ she said and began pushing her hair about with the tips of her fingers in the way that women do. She looked right cute, sitting there with her big eyes smiling over towards the bar. I reminded myself again that I’d have to give this big brother stuff the pay-off. I’d been meaning to do so a long time, but being away from home so long hadn’t given me a chance to get stuck into the idea.

  Lola was cute enough to have lots of fellas playing around in her back garden, although it never got so crowded she couldn’t spend an evening with me whenever I got back into town.

  ‘Those guys sure are stewed,’ she commented, nodding her bead towards the bar.

  I took a quick gander at them. Judging by the way the bartender sweated, they’d been keeping him busy.

  ‘He sets ’em up; we drink ’em down,’ Lola murmured.

  ‘What a job,’ I said, thinking of the bartender.

  ‘Yeah. It’s hell to live,’ she said, and there was bitterness in her voice.

  ‘Isn’t that Arden Jnr over there?’ I said quickly, to change the conversation. Lola was always bitter about her job. She’d had a fine chance of graduating to college after passing her exams with honours. But just then her father had died and Lola had elected to go out to work to keep her bedridden mother. I reckoned modelling dresses was a job Lola could do ten times better than the next, but deep down inside, she resented having to miss that opportunity. But she kept a stiff upper lip. I doubt if any other person, apart from me, ever guessed how much of a sacrifice she’d made.

  ‘You can’t see straight,’ she said.

  ‘That’s through being dazzled by you.’ It was a weak rejoinder, but it changed the line of conversation.

  ‘More likely that blonde over there dazzled you.’

  I’m not saying that Lola mightn’t have been right. There certainly was an eyeful of blonde perched on a high stool. She had legs, too. From where I was sitting you couldn’t doubt she had legs. Those high stools may be uncomfortable to sit on but they have their advantages.

  ‘Hey, remember me?’ said Lola.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the two points of interest.

  ‘Not that I want to stand in your way, honey,’ said Lola. ‘But the fella with her looks tough enough to take a swing at competition.’

  I guess Lola was right there too. He was a young, fine-built six-footer. You could tell right away that his shoulders weren’t all padding. He was some hero. And judging by the way he was looking into the blonde’s eyes, he was sure swallowed up on her.

  It was just at that moment that the drunk sitting next to the Hero clumsily tipped his glass over so that beer flooded along the bar. It swirled around the Hero’s elbow and cascaded into the Blonde’s lap.

  It all happened so quickly that the damage had been done before anyone realised it.

  The Blonde reacted first. She gave a scream, leaped off the stool as though it was red-hot and began dabbing at her lap. She was just about ten times quicker off the mark than her boyfriend. He kinda stared, stupefied, until his sleeve soaked up sufficient moisture to penetrate to his arm, and then he was off his stool with a ‘Say, what the hell?’

  ‘Shorry,’ said the drunk, waving his arm and nearly sending another glass flying. ‘Doan marrew. I’ll buy nuther. Nuther drin there.’ He banged on the counter. ‘Hey, bring me nuther drin, willya?’

  The Hero was one of those fellas with an ugly temper. He may have been slow off the mark, but once be got around to figuring things out, he liked to do things thoroughly.

  ‘Say, did you upset that beer?’ he asked.

  ‘Doan marrew. Buy nuther. No ’arm, no ’arm.’

  ‘No harm, eh? Just look at this lady’s dress.’

  ‘Doan wanna look. Doan worry. Doan like the place, go somewhere else.’

  The drunk obviously wasn’t himself. Most fellas would have cursed him roundly and left it at that. But the Hero wasn’t made that way. It happened so quickly that I didn’t realise he was moving fast for a change, until I saw his fingers digging into the drunk’s throat.

  ‘Why, you little rat …’ he began.

  The Blonde got hold of his arm and tried to pull him away; the bartender got his arms in between the two men and began to lever; two or three of the bar-leaners got up so quickly that their stools rocked over backwards; and right in the middle of it the double doors burst open and three grim, menacing figures spread themselves across the entrance.

  The Hero didn’t see them, but the Blonde did, and the scream she gave was so full of horror that it cut through all the rest of the hubbub. For a moment everything looked like a motion picture still.

  The Hero was looking towards the invading gangsters with his mouth slightly open, his fingers still digging into the drunk’
s throat. The Blonde was cringing back against the counter staring with panic-stricken eyes. The bartender, who I’ve never before known to be surprised at anything, just gaped.

  ‘All right, Morton,’ growled the centre man. ‘We want you.’ From the way he held his hand in his pocket, I knew he was ready to throw lead. ‘Make it snappy, Morton.’

  And then the Blonde split the air again. Shriek after shriek, loaded with agonised panic, rang out. I could tell by the way her eyes rolled that she was crazy with fear.

  One of the gorillas stepped forward and swung his knotted fist up from the waist. The clop it made as it connected with her jaw sounded like a meat cleaver cutting into a side of beef. The scream was clopped off clean and the Blonde went splaying backwards, landing spreadeagled across her stool.

  Everything was happening so quickly that nobody else was moving. You know how it is. Something happens quickly among a large crowd and everybody stands stupid and watches without raising a finger.

  The man who’d smacked the Blonde grabbed the Hero’s arm and jerked him towards the door, and then the drunk who’d only just got his neck released started hitting out. He swung wildly, but his fist caught the gorilla behind the ear. The gorilla staggered backwards as the drunk, fighting mad, planted a fist in the middle of the Hero’s pan.

  Then one of the other gorillas got busy. He fired through his pocket, which isn’t the best way to aim a gun, and the drunk spun around, twisted by the force of the lead that mashed his hand.

  For a moment he gazed stupefied at the blood gouting from the place where his fingers used to be, and then with a mad bull roar he rushed at the lead-slinger.

  Another slug tore into him, but he was going pretty fast by that time and his impetus carried him smack onto the killer. The Hero, moving quickly, wasn’t far behind him, and the other two toughs got scared and started blazing as well.

  It all happened so quickly. Right from the time the beer was spilled until the time the entrance doors swung together behind the killers as they beat it, not more than ten seconds had elapsed. The air was full of smoke, my ears were ringing, the Hero and the drunk were down, two other men were bleeding like pigs all over the bar and Lola was lying splayed across our table and a crimson stain was spreading over the tablecloth in front of me.

  2

  I just couldn’t believe it had happened. One minute we were sitting there, talking and then … Then Lola was lying across the table, lying there quietly while something inside me was clamouring frantically to make me believe it was all a dream.

  I reached out and touched Lola’s hand. It was limp. The feel of her was alien. I gagged and heard a voice I knew was mine screaming her name.

  ‘Lola, my god, Lola!’

  I took her face between my hands and lifted her head so that I could look into her eyes. But her head was strangely heavy and her cheeks cool and white. I gently rested her head on the table again and felt her pulse – or rather, tried to feel her pulse. And when I couldn’t feel it, I went frantic, ripped at her blouse to feel her heartbeat. Instead I found an ugly little red hole in her soft white flesh from which a fine trickle of blood was beginning to run. Another smaller and neater hole in her back showed where the slug had entered.

  It happened just like that.

  I was dead myself, too. It was as though everything in me stopped working. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t think. I was just numb from head to heels. I stood and stared and still couldn’t believe that Lola was dead. In some vague way I was conscious of the uproar around me, the shouts of men, the hysterical screams of women, the groans of wounded men, and somewhere outside the shrill screech of police whistles.

  And then suddenly I wanted to get out of there. I didn’t reason about it. I couldn’t think straight anyway. I just felt that I wanted to get away before I went mad; get somewhere quiet where I could lie back and forget, stop thinking, stop feeling numb the way I was feeling.

  Unsteadily I walked across the room towards the back door. It didn’t seem to matter about leaving Lola there. She wasn’t Lola anymore. She was just some poor dame that got shot up in a stick-up party. She wasn’t Lola anymore. Not the Lola I knew, who could laugh and dance and hold my hand meaningfully. Behind me, sprawled across the table, was all that was left of Lola. But it wasn’t the part of Lola that counted.

  A man jostled against me. I pushed him to one side without giving him a second glance. A chair tipped over and fell in front of me and I kicked it to one side. Somebody got hold of my arm and shouted at me. I didn’t seem to notice what he was saying and tried to brush him off. But he clung to my arm and shouted and wouldn’t let go. It seemed all so senseless and unnecessary. I planted my fist in the middle of his pan and he slipped away out of my sight. Even then he bunched himself around my legs and tried to hold me. I just didn’t feel anything or care. I kicked out and my foot clumped against something soft and yielding.

  That’s just how it was. Like a real dream. And all the time I was just wanting to get out of that place and knowing that there was a back entrance.

  The door marked ‘Staff Only’ seemed to appear before my eyes. I don’t know whether I pushed it open or punched it open. And there, right the other side, was the Blonde who had been sitting up at the bar. Only she was a very frightened dame now. There was a wild look in her eyes and she was frantic. I’ve never seen a dame who looked so scared.

  She rushed at me and grabbed me by the arm. It was just like it had been outside. People grabbing at me and shouting. I brushed her off. She grabbed me again and held tight. I placed my palm under her chin and levered, and not too gently at that. She went flying back and hit the ground with a bump, just a flying tangle of filmy underclothes and silk stockings.

  I walked on, kinda mechanically I guess, and then a small but firm hand caught my shoulder and somehow managed to twist me around. That same hand slapped me hard across the face. And before I could think, I got three more hard slaps that brought me into focus.

  I stood there limply looking at her. My face smarted so that I could still feel each and every finger of her hand. But that slap had been like a douche of cold water.

  She was panting a little and her hair was all over her head. There was still that stark panic in her eyes.

  ‘Look, mister,’ she said. ‘ I’m sorry I had to do that, but I gotta get out of here.’

  I was beginning to live again. The smart of my face was real, the things around me were real and the Blonde was real. I was even able to think again.

  ‘What’s holding you back?’ I said.

  ‘You know this joint. Gemme out, willya?’

  ‘Back door.’ I jerked my head in that direction.

  ‘That’s no good,’ she said. ‘There’s 20,000 rubbernecks outside.’

  That made me think quickly.

  ‘Think of something, willya,’ she mouthed at me. ‘And don’t go crazy on me again, unless you want another slap.’

  But I wasn’t going crazy again. That slap had brought me back to my senses. I was remembering things. And I wasn’t just remembering Lola sprawled over the table. I was remembering this Blonde’s face when those three gorillas came in. I remembered how she’d screamed and how she’d recognised them before any shooting started. And I knew right then that if there was any way to find the men who’d done for Lola, it was through this Blonde.

  ‘Okay, sister,’ I said, ‘follow me.’

  I ran along the passage towards the back staircase. Her heels clip-clopped along behind me, and I found time to wonder that she could keep pace with me in those high-heeled shoes.

  I ran up the stairs two at a time. At the end of the first flight she was still right behind me.

  ‘Is this a gag?’ she yelled. ‘ I wanna get out, not up.’

  I didn’t answer and she followed me like I knew she would.

  On the third floor I walked rapidly along the corridor to the end where the Gents’ toilet was. I opened the door and she kinda teetered on the threshold.


  ‘Get in, willya,’ I said and gave her a shove. There was probably all kinds of ideas chasing around in her head, but she relaxed when I levered back the catch and opened the window.

  I looked out and she pushed alongside me. I could smell the scent of her hair and she was using some delicate and expensive perfume. For the first time since she’d got me by the arm downstairs I realised that she was a dame and an attractive dame at that ...

  ‘See that parapet there?’ I pointed down to a sloping roof about 12 feet beneath us. It was fringed by a wide, three feet parapet that ran along the rooftops for a good few blocks .

  ‘I can’t make it,’ she said, and there was a tremble in her voice.

  ‘Listen, lady, if you can’t make it, here’s where you and me part company.’ I swung one leg over the sill and she grabbed me by the arm.

  ‘You’ll have to help me,’ she said.

  ‘All you do, Blondie, is hang by your arms and drop. Only you’ve got to drop careful, because if you miss your footing you’ll likely roll over the edge.’

  She shuddered. ‘I can’t do it,’ she moaned. She was trembling all over.

  I looked around me. The cistern chain was long and strong. I unhooked it from its arm. It wasn’t long enough by half. But Blondie had an answer for that. For the second time in less than five minutes her skirts were way up above her knees. She was fumbling among a creamy froth of underclothes, loosening suspenders and peeling off skin-tight nylons.

  I drew a deep breath.

  ‘Lady, you can book me for a front seat every night you care to repeat that performance.’

  ‘Hold that,’ she said, thrusting one of the stockings in my hand, while she knotted the other to it. I could still feel her warmth ensnared in the fine threads. I liked the feel of it.

  She gave a tug to test the strength of our improvised rope. It held good and strong.