after that, a darkened hall wall with a gleam of light bathing it in dim, subtle hues of
amber. I heard nothing from the other room. The world was almost soundless. There
was a noise, of course.
But that was only my pulse trip-hammering like ninety. Deep silence, and a dread so thick you could cut it with a knife, enclosed the
atmosphere about me. There was no wonder in that.
Finally, at last, my eyes, my brain, my reflexes---had come back.
To Me. The Home Base.
To what I was. A man in a fix.
To where I was. In deep trouble.
To the boat that Jo Malmedy had put me in. A paddle-less canoe.
With the towels and the paper-covered drinking glasses on the shelf to the left of
the medicine cabinet mocking me, with Essex House emblazoned and monogrammed on
hotel property and directness on the blue wall, I so very suddenly saw, with cold, clear
vision, the trap I was in.
Jo Malmedy---again, who else could have cared so much?---had steam-rollered
and boxed me up good. It's never been done any better.
I was hanging from the ceiling. The fly was living, by comparison.
Naked, I hung. Dangling and spiraling gently, like that other fly caught in the
spider's web. Panic wanted to make me scream. I kept my lips sealed shut. That never
helped anything. I had to take my time, to push the shock out of the way and let sanity
build some kind of protective wall for me. Before I plunged off the deep end. I wasn't
being killed, not just yet. I was obviously being saved for the coup de grace. Some
finishing stroke which the menu did not call for just yet. The menu or the program.
Straining, keeping my cool, I studied my prison. And myself.
That was what the prison really was. From head to toe, a prison.
Grimly, holding my breath, I took stock. I didn't like a single atom of the situation but it had to be appraised, estimated,
like a house up for sale, if I was ever going to get out of that blue bathroom alive. And
smell green grass again.
Steel handcuffs, a policeman's set, lashed my wrists together above my head and
these had been hooked over the shower curtain rail. My weight normally would have
brought the railing down from the wall but my bared feet were standing in the porcelain
tub, which was as dry as a bone. And not cold at all. Unconscious and slow-to-awaken,
I had supported my own bulk instinctively, knees bent but no quite slipping from the
standing position. There was a heavy, clammy feel to m y body, now that I was fully
revived and only a second was necessary to solve that riddle. And this was the greatest
blow of all. The keenest shock.
Both frightening and mystifying, altogether. And at the same time.
From pectorals to mid-thigh, I was wrapped and bound and mummified in what
could only be a woman's old-fashioned corset. The still canvas and whalebone
monstrosity of another time slot, another age. This had been laced and buttoned and
drawn so tight that my proportions had been mercilessly hour-glassed into the parody of
Lillian Russell or the drag queens of the Twentieth Century. I was cramped, choked and
stuffed, like the forty first sardine into a tin can that's only supposed to hold forty.
Now I could feel the rack and ache of my chest muscles and thigh bones. Now, I
had to hold myself up, to keep from dragging my knees on the floor of the tub. My eyes
flew to the overhead shower railing. And my heart sank. The iron or steel bar ran into
the wall, all bracketed and riveted. It was as sturdy as a stanchion. I wouldn't be able to
yank it down. I could run the manacles along the railing, about four feet in each direction but I would be going nowhere. Thanks to the grotesque corset prison, elasticity
was denied my legs. I was stiffened and fore-shortened like a truncated man. Without
the power to bend or sway. It was an impossible trap. Senseless, stupid, meaningless
but all in all, one hundred percent perfect and effective. I shut my eyes tight for a
second, trying to think. I could scream. I wasn't gagged. But hotel walls are thicker
than thieves when it comes to deluxe hostelries like Essex House. The privacy of the
guests, the demands of intimacy---chances were no one would hear me. Not right away.
And screaming just might bring on my death quicker than the schedule called for. I
began to perspire. Real Fear Dew.
There were no shower curtains.
I could feel it trickling down my baked, abused flesh. The mad corset clung like
ivy to a college, covering me with a mammoth hand.
And then were was no more time to sweat. Or think. Or worry.
Jo Malmedy loomed on the threshold of the bathroom.
Exactly as I remembered him. Formidable and very young.
Seersucker suit, built like a flying wedge, Jesus Christ hair-do and challenging,
green eyes. Wild eyes, now. He looked dedicated. Elated and purified. And when it
comes to Loco Joes, those are the worst kind.
He also held a hypodermic needle in each hand. There was a glistening, pale
brown fluid in each tubular syringe as he held them up the same way a two-gun man
covers the lynch-fever extras in a western.
"Thought I heard you rattling your chain in here," he murmured, his voice still
youthful and light but the undercurrent of some tremendous inner excitement made the words almost giggly and blurry. "Time you were up. It won't be any good unless you
know exactly what's going to happen to you. You understand that, Noon? It has to be
this way."
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything just yet.
He remained in the doorway, surveying me, green eyes wide open, mocking,
amused, the hypodermics still held at high port.
"You can ask some question first, Noon. You're entitled. And then I'll take the
floor. Might as well do this in the standard, classic manner of all great detective novels.
Where the diabolical villain tells all before disposing of his opponent. Holmes and
Moriarty. Bond and Dr. No----it's okay with me. I prefer it that way. I owe you that
much."
I had to talk, then. There was nothing else I could do. He had me by all the short
hairs. By all that was unholy. Keeping him talking seemed to be the only tactic I had.
He had Schneidered me from the start.
"You've got me in check, Jo. I can't argue with you."
"Ask me," he commanded, grinning madly. "My ego demands it."
"Okay," I said, talking fast because it's always helped me in the past, by keeping
my mind off the pickles I get in. "You walked into this room without so much as a
handkerchief in your pocket. You never came near me and all of a sudden, I get drugged
on my feet. I wake up and you seem to have gone shopping and returned with handcuffs,
corsets, medical equipment and God knows what else. So I can only conclude you have
a confederate or the management of this hotel is partners-in-crime with the great Jo
Malmedy. Which is it?" His broad-planed face lost its smile. The green eyes narrowed.
"Nobody's sharing this act with me. Nobody. She was my mother. No one else's.
You want answers. Well, here they are. When I learned you were at the police station
and would be there quite awhile, I went to a man I know on Broadway who deals in this
kind of thing. Special equipment---shall I say---oddball device for a select sort of
clientele
?---then I doubled back in time to pick you up when you left Headquarters by the
back door. I had all this in a leather attaché case. A big one. Then when I knocked on
your door, I left the case out in the hall, in a convenient corner, behind one of the
lounge chairs. I knew you would have inspected the bag, otherwise. As for your sudden
sleep---the shopkeeper I mentioned also sells small, plastic balls, no bigger than a
marble and these contain a knock-out gas. I broke it under my armpit while we were
having our little talk. I held my breath. You didn't. Simple? Then I went out to the hall
and retrieved my bag."
"Simple. And then you chopped me down." He nodded happily and while he
was nodding, I slipped in the only question worth asking. "Why did you chop down
Marcel Alevoinne? He never did a thing to you. Did he?"
Jo Malmedy shuddered and his barn-door shoulders squared.
"A mistake, of course. It was the back of your head that did that. Can you tie
that? I saw the back of your head and everything went crazy. The whole project. My
careful plans, my arrangements. You see, I wanted to sweat you first. With the play to
bug you, with ghosts of the past---with maybe phone calls from women who would
pretend to be Alma Wheeler and then I would step in and deliver the punch line. Me. The son of the woman you murdered. The woman whose head you blew the back off.
God, how poetic if I had had you in the same way!"
"That was an accident," I said, as calmly as I could. Which was quite a trick
because the hairs on the back of my neck wanted to stand up. The confining corset had
become an unbearable, intolerable prison. A strait-jacket of terror and brutality. And the
nausea of dread.
"Yes, an accident," Jo Malmedy said, tightly. "And my killed poor Marcel was
the same thing, wasn't it? You bending down to pick up those damn cigarettes of yours
and a shot gone wild---a million-to-one shot---hitting a guy right between the eyes! Man,
what a mockery all of this is. Nothing but accidents. Accidents! Truth is stranger than
fiction, Noon. Exactly as the man said."
I stared at him. Still somehow incredulous. Perhaps, not wanting to believe. Oh,
not about Alevoinne. About everything else that was mad.
"Are you really her son, Jo? Honest to God?"
"Honest to God," he said, soberly, "and I wish I wasn't."
"That makes two of us," I murmured, trying to think of ways out.
Jo Malmedy stepped into the bathroom. Only a yard away from my hanging,
corseted helplessness. The needles shone like radium in the light of the blue bathroom.
His green eyes were slightly sad, now. As if some memory had come back, punching
and kicking him cruelly. Without let-up.
"You know I like you, Noon. Like you and hate you at the same time. Does that
make any kind of sense at all?" "Maybe. I can't really say. All I can say is that this is Dumas right down the line.
Mordaunt come to kill D'Artagnan. And Athos and Porthos and Aramis. Twenty years
after the fact. Because they had Milady, Mordaunt's mother, beheaded by the
Executioner of Bethune. I told you. You're an unconscious plagiarist."
He laughed, almost delightedly.
"I know that book. This one is going to have a different windup. You believe
that. Mordaunt fouled up. I won't. And no one is ever going to know about Dolores
having a son who came and evened the count. You, dear friend, are going to kill
yourself. In remorse. A suicide for the police to find. And that Lieutenant Di Gregorio
down at Homicide will be content enough with that. He won't go looking for revenge
murderers. I know his record. His type of cop. As long as he gets answers and
convictions and solutions, he doesn't put a strain on his integrity."
"You pegged him," I agreed, testing the manacles with no success. "And why do
I lower the boom on myself? Don't mind my asking."
"I want you to ask," he chuckled. "That's all the fun there is in this, Noon.
That's what the corset is all about. And the hypodermic needles. You're a queer, you
see. Something no one has ever suspected. A freak who accidentally killed himself
while he was performing a bondage-masochistic ritual. Do you follow the script so far?"
"Give me that again," I got the words out painfully, trying not to read him
correctly. "Slower this time, if you please."
Jo Malmedy frowned. As if surprised with my lack of knowledge. "So. The hot-shot private eye doesn't know everything there is to know about
Death and Games. Well, that's refreshing, somehow. Though you were up on all things
under the golden sun, My Hero."
"Cut it out," I rasped. "Stop gloating. It's not becoming at all for a fine, sensitive
type like you. A great writer. Spell out what you're trying to tell me."
"There are a lot of famous deaths, Noon," Jo Malmedy recited slowly, as if
giving a seminar on Writing, "that, were the real facts known, would cause a lot of
scandal and talk. But you see, some suicides result from the person having been a
bondage freak, who liked to torture himself by placing himself in traps and tight
squeezes and then just barely getting out of them. That's the kink, you see. The 'queer'
fun. The excitement of a close call. And then the freedom from Death. I suppose there's
a sex-relation in it all. The corset you now find yourself in is one of these devices. A
bondage-masochistic-fetishist's delight. And this time, you will add the niceties of one
hypodermic needle in each buttock, which will be found sticking in your hide even after
you are dead. The theory will be, you injected yourself, after getting into the corset,
and then you manacled yourself to the shower rail. The injection, incidentally, is
that won't kill you, of course."
"How do I die then?" I asked. "And that's purely a rhetorical question. I hope."
My nerve-ends were getting raw, now.
"You hope," he laughed, taking no umbrage. "Well, there will be a leather loop
around your neck, also lashed to the railing. You lost consciousness, you see, from the
drugs and went too far. End of a great detective and a fine human being. Who also killed my mother. And then I can get some sleep again. And go back to work. There's a book
that's been bugging me for far more than a year now---you've cost me a lot of working
time, Friend Noon."
"That's tough."
"I knew you'd think so."
"Jo." I took a deep breath, as hard as it was. The corset was binding me in a
vise. "Is it any use to appeal to your common sense?"
"About killing you? Afraid not. I have to do it, you see. I've gone beyond. Just
like Herr Doktor Frankenstein. It's me or you, buddy. All things being equal, it's got to
be you."
"Sure. The end justifies the means. Etcetera. An eye for an eye. A back-of-the
head for a back-of-the-head. What a waste."
His eyes brightened. "By the way. What did you really think of the play? Don't
go easy on me. I know what's good."
"I'm prejudiced. What difference would it make now?"
"All the difference there is. Tell me."
"It's a good play. Very good. But your lyrics are lousy. And you were wrong
about me. I won't do anything for a fee. I got that out of my system when I turned down
th
e ice cream cone that a dirty old man wanted to buy me. Nobody's going to swallow
this sad-masochism bit."
Jo Malmedy smiled. An honest, troubled smile. Almost a sad smile. "Jesus, I like you, Noon. I always will. Damn shame I have to go through with
this. But it's my hang-up. The only one I've got and I won't be able to go on living if I
don't. See my side, can't you?"
"Your side? Don't make me laugh. You're going to put the blocks to me and I'm
supposed to cry all over your axe blade? Please, Mr. Malmedy. Leave us not be
ridiculous."
His jaw hardened, the green eyes flashed, and he took two more steps toward
me. The hypodermics came up. I recoiled instinctively, trying to edge away. I couldn't.
I was blocked by the back wall of the room, and there were angels crying in the air.
Angels of Death. All girls.
"This is for her, Noon," Jo Malmedy panted. "Not me. Understand that. I have
to get back what I never had in the first place. What I never had at all----"
"Then why go after it?" I tried not to shout, tried to keep my voice down. He
was close enough to the edge to be pushed over the rim and I couldn't risk that. Not just
yet, anyway. "Maybe it's not worth having. Maybe it's not worth all this. Your career.
Your whole life ahead of you. All the women you can have, the good times---"
"No," he insisted, unwildly. As if we were having the most academic of friendly
debates. "I've got Marcel on my hands. I killed him, whether it was an accident or not.
They'd put me away. I couldn't stand that. I was born lousy but I was born free. I need
that freedom. You should understand that. You more than anybody. The last of the red
hot rebels. You've been doing your own thing for years. What kind of a man would I be
cooped up in a penitentiary? What kind of a writer? No kind!" "You wouldn't be a willful murderer---" I squired out of his reach, as far as I
could. Against the blue wall. The corset made all my movements stiff, comical and
unreal. Like a Chaplin pantomime. "And who said you'd have to buy prison time? A
good lawyer could get you off. You have the money. There's Nizer. He's great with lost
causes---"
It was ludicrous the way he followed me. Like a hungry lion.
The way he closed in on me, hypodermics poised and aimed at the lower part of
my body. At thigh level with the undersling of my rump as rounded targets for his