“Must have been fascinating. What’s your name, sailor?”

  “Marty. Marty Bowman. I’m from Nebraska.”

  She smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. A little of her lipstick had gotten onto her front teeth, too. “I once knew someone from Nebraska. My name’s Margie. Margie and Marty. That’s cute.”

  She laughed and he laughed with her. Then she said, “Want to be nice to me, Marty?”

  “Sure I would.”

  “How about buying me a little old drink, then? A girl can get awful thirsty sitting here by herself.”

  This is it, Marty thought. Everything Tony told me worked out the way he said it would!

  “What do you want?”

  “Make it a Scotch and soda,” she said.

  He cornered a passing waiter and ordered two Scotch and sodas. The drinks arrived almost immediately—this place operated efficiently—and the waiter wanted immediate payment. Two-fifty.

  Marty wanted to say, “Two and a half for a lousy couple of shots of whiskey?” But he didn’t say it. Instead he pulled out that bulging wallet and handed the waiter three singles and told him to keep the change. He watched Margie’s eyes pop a little as she saw how thick the wallet was. She didn’t have to know that all those bills were just ones and fives, he thought. Let her figure they’re twenties or fifties.

  He didn’t mix the Scotch and the soda, but put down the shot of liquor first and then drank the chaser, the way Tony had told him to do. Tony said it was a waste of good whiskey to mix it up with soda or ginger ale, concoctions like that. He noticed that Margie mixed her drink up and stirred it around, but he didn’t say anything.

  He bought some more drinks a little while later, and again downed the shot straight. He forgot about the chaser. He was feeling very good. His hand had crept across the table and he was holding hers, and the music in the background had created a very pleasant mood. He made a mental note that he had to thank Tony specially when he got back to the ship. Everything was working out marvelously, just marvelously.

  * * *

  It was about quarter to eleven when Margie whispered to him, “Listen here, honey. There isn’t any sense in you handing over a buck and a quarter a shot for the cheap whiskey they sell here. Suppose we get out of here now. We can pick up a bottle of something in a liquor store and bring it up to my place for a little party.”

  Marty grinned. This was what he had been waiting for all evening. Tony had said, Just wait and she’ll ask you to come up to her place!

  “That’s sure okay with me, Margie!”

  “Okay, then, lover-boy. Let’s get out of here.”

  He left a tip on the table even though he had been tipping the waiter with each drink, and she took his hand and led him through the thick crowd at the bar and out into the street. It was a warm night and Times Square was crowded.

  Marty felt very dizzy and very very good. He was sure that this girl was a sincere and honest girl who had had some bad breaks in life. She had told him a little of her story, and it was a sad one. She had married much too young and her husband had left her after a year or so. She had had a baby, but the baby had died and she had gone heavily into debt paying the hospital expenses. That had been five years ago, but she still hadn’t recovered from debt, and she was forced to live in a cheap rooming house while she waited for the man of her life to come along. It was a pitiful story; Marty felt deep sympathy for her, and he was happy that an understanding woman like this was going to be the first one he had had.

  They went around the corner and found a liquor store near Eighth Avenue. The store was big and brightly lit and was doing huge volumes of business despite the late hour.

  Marty said, “What should I get?”

  “Ask for a fifth of bourbon.”

  “We were drinking Scotch in there, weren’t we?”

  He remembered that it wasn’t considered healthy to mix your drinks in one evening.

  But Margie said, “Yeah, but I’m tired of it. Let’s get some bourbon now.”

  So he bought a bottle of bourbon. It cost him six dollars, but he didn’t mind. Charge it all off to entertainment, he thought.

  Outside, Margie said, “Okay, now we go to my place. It’s just a couple of blocks from here.”

  “I can’t wait!”

  “You better let me carry the bottle, though. You look kinda wobbly.”

  “I’m perfectly sober,” Marty protested.

  Her apartment was on 42nd Street past Ninth Avenue, in a very shabby neighborhood. Marty felt pity for her all over again when he saw her little two-room place, with the kitchenette and the cracked mirror and the dingy draperies. How could anyone go on living in a place like this, year after year?

  She pulled out a little table and opened the bottle of liquor. Putting two glasses out in front of him, she said, “I’m going inside to change into something more comfortable. You get started on the bourbon while I’m there.”

  “I’d rather wait till—”

  “No, have a drink.” She poured it for him.

  He grinned at her and downed the drink while she went into the other room and closed the door. Bourbon was sweeter than Scotch and burned a little on the way down. He began to feel very strange. But Tony had said, Be a good sport and do a lot of drinking. You can hold it. I’ve seen your kind of physique before. You can take more liquor than you think you can.

  “Good ol’ Tony,” Marty said happily to himself, and poured out a second drink. He had downed that and was working on his third when Margie reappeared.

  “Thought you’d never get through in there,” he said.

  He looked at her.

  “How do you like?” she said.

  She was wearing a filmy pink dressing-gown which revealed a lot of what was underneath. She wasn’t wearing anything under the gown. Marty could see the hint of firm, full breasts, long creamy legs, a supple body. Maybe Margie was getting along in years, but she still had plenty of body left, he thought.

  “I like,” he said.

  “Have another drink.”

  He poured one for her and another for him. His head was starting to swim. He reached out to grab her, but she ducked away.

  “Naughty, naughty! Have another drink first.”

  The level in the bottle was diminishing rapidly. Marty realized vaguely that he was drinking about two and a half shots for every one of hers, but he didn’t care. He was perfectly sober. Hadn’t Tony told him he could hold his liquor? He had another drink. And another.

  His head rocked deliriously. Margie seemed to be circling in orbit around him, like a lovely sputnik. She put some music on and pulled him up to dance with her, and he wobbled around the floor, full of liquor and dizzied by her nearness and warmth.

  “Margie—Margie—” he mumbled.

  After a while the bottle was empty and the radio was silent. He was holding her tight in his arms and his head felt ready to explode.

  “Come on with me,” she said.

  She led him into the adjoining bedroom and dropped him down on the bed. He felt her unbuttoning his uniform and then felt her warmth against him. It was all very nice, though he hardly knew what was going on.

  “Margie—”

  Darkness welled up around him. He felt very tired, very drunk, very happy.

  He wanted to sleep.

  To sleep.

  After a while, he slept.

  * * *

  He didn’t know what happened next. He was out cold on the bed, so he didn’t see the girl pick up his bell-bottoms and pull out his wallet. Didn’t see her take the remnants of the thick bankroll from it.

  Marty didn’t hear the knock on the door either. He didn’t see Margie go over to answer it, nor did he see the lean, thin man in sailor’s uniform come in.

  Margie said. “He’s asleep. Like a little baby, out cold.”

  “Let me see him.”

  The lean man looked down on the sleeping figure. He chuckled. “Like a little baby,” he said.

  Together, they pulled Marty up and stuffed him back in his clothes, Marty mumbled a little in his sleep, but he was too liquored-up to realize what was going on. They propped him up and buttoned his buttons, and then the lean, thin man slung the boy’s heavy form over his shoulder and carried him out into the hallway and down the stairs into the street.

  The sun had not yet come up, but it wasn’t much before dawn. Marty was deposited gently in an alleyway a block away and stretched out there. He would wake up in a few hours, or maybe the police would find him first and take him back to the ship. It wasn’t unusual for a drunken sailor to be found in Manhattan.

  The lean man returned to Margie’s room.

  “You put him outside?”

  “Yeah.” The lean man stared questioningly at the girl. “How much do I get?”

  She picked up the thick roll of bills she had taken from Marty’s wallet. Sadly she said, “It looked like a mint, but it was all small stuff. I figure we got a hundred eighty-two bucks out of the kid.”

  “Not bad for a night’s work.”

  “Not bad at all.”

  She counted out a pile of bills and handed them over to the man.

  “There. Half of a hundred eighty-two is ninety-one bucks, on the nose. Fifty-fifty.”

  The man pocketed the money. Then he said, “I don’t have to get back for a while. How about you and me having a little fun now?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  A couple of hours later the lean man left. As he stood at the door, Margie looked up at him and smiled. “Ninety-one bucks. Pretty good for a night’s take.”

  “Have I ever failed you yet?”

  “Not yet, Tony. You’re swell. Next time your ship’s in town, send me another sucker, yeah?”

  “Sure, Marge. So long—and take it slow.”

  Tony Donelli turned away, patting the bills in his pocket. Ninety-one bucks. He felt good about things. He wondered if there’d be some other kid he could give good advice to, the next time they were about to dock in New York. He knew a good bar to go to for a pickup.

  NAKED IN THE LAKE

  Originally published in the February, 1958 issue of

  TRAPPED DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE

  So I was going to have to kill Peggy. It sounded strange, put as nakedly as that: kill. Murder was a crime that involved other people. Never yourself. Only now, as I fumbled out my key and let myself into Peggy’s apartment, I knew there wasn’t any other way out.

  She was waiting for me, wearing a pink housecoat, her blonde hair up in curlers, her face pale, without lipstick. She looked nice and domestic. Just like my wife, only ten years younger. Twenty-three, instead of thirty-three. A good clean kid.

  Her eyes went wide when she saw me standing there. “Mike!”

  “Hello,” I said, kissing her. “Well? What did the doctor say? Yes or no?”

  Color came into her cheeks in a gentle rush. Her eyes dropped. “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes? You’re—”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’m going to have the baby, Mike.”

  I sank down on the cheap sofa and stared at my hands. “I don’t understand. We were so careful—”

  “The way you sound, Mike, you don’t want the baby. Or me. Is that true?”

  “You know it isn’t, Peggy,” I lied. “I love you. And I want the baby. But—”

  “But what, Mike?”

  “My wife’s sure to make trouble. She always does. You don’t know Helen the way I do, Peg.”

  A ripple of anxiety passed over her smooth face. “She’ll give yon the divorce, won’t she? I mean, she wouldn’t want to hold out, Mike.”

  I shook my head. “Helen’s a funny woman. Sure, she’ll give me the divorce. But she’ll stall and stall and wait around. Anything to foul me up. She’ll wait till the baby’s born. Then there’ll be the mess of finding a place where you can stay until the wedding, of getting the papers fixed up so the kid’s legitimate, of—” I stopped. “Well, it’ll all work out, I hope.”

  “I hope so too, Mike.”

  I glanced up, eyeing her. Her figure was still slim, inviting, with no sign of the distortion that the next few months would work on it.

  “What doctor did you go to?” I asked.

  “The one in Brooklyn. Like you said. I told him my name was Mrs. McAllister, like you said.” Shyly, she indicated the cheap five-and-ten wedding band on her finger and blushed again. “I didn’t want him to think—well, you know what I mean, Mike.”

  “Yeah. And he said the test was positive?”

  “I’m in my third month,” she said. “Definitely. I’ll have the baby some time next winter. February, most likely.”

  Like hell you will, I thought to myself. But outwardly I just smiled sweetly at her as if she were my wife and not just a spare-time hobby I’d picked up along the way.

  She touched the cheesy wedding band. “I’ll be getting a real one of these soon, won’t I? Mike, I love you so much—you’ll see about the divorce, won’t you? I—I want to get married to you before it starts to show. You know how I’d feel if—”

  “Sure,” I said tenderly.

  She was silent for a few minutes. Then, in the roundabout way she always uses to preface such things, she said, “I had a little trouble paying the doctor bill. I wonder if you could—give me a little, just to tide me over, Mike. You’d be a doll. A living doll.”

  We’d been through this plenty of times before. I took out my wallet and slipped two twenties out of the billfold, crumpled them up, and stuck them in her palm. Somehow Peggy never seemed to have enough cash. In the year since I’d met her, I figured I’d given her a couple of thousand in cash, a drib and a drab at a time, aside from all the money I’d spent on her. Well, it hadn’t mattered much to me. Helen had plenty of money when I married her, and she was due to come into plenty more next year. I could write Peggy off as an expensive hobby, period. As long as Helen didn’t find out where the cash was going.

  I stood up and put my hands on her shoulders, lightly.

  “Got a little surprise for you, Peggy.”

  “Surprise?”

  “To celebrate the good news. I’ve booked a cabin upstate for us. Two weeks all alone in the woods—no wives, no neighbors, no tiptoeing and secrecy. Just the two of us. I’ve got it all arranged. My wife thinks I’m going on a boating trip with a friend of mine—a male friend. While I’m away my attorney will let her know the score. Maybe the divorce won’t take long. We can get married in a month or so, maybe. It’ll be a sort of advance honeymoon, up there in the woods.”

  Her eyes were wide and clear. “Oh, Mike, that’s wonderful!” she oozed.

  Yeah. Wonderful. A cabin for two—but only one of us was coming back.

  Well, I didn’t want it to happen. I tried to get Peggy to take precautions. But I couldn’t let her have any babies, and I damn well wasn’t going to divorce Helen and marry her. Peg’s ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter than Helen, but she’s also a couple million dollars poorer. I really didn’t have any choice in the matter. Not at all.

  I held her in my arms. Peggy Armour, age twenty-three. Three months pregnant, and due to die in the next two weeks. It was a pity. But it couldn’t be helped.

  Maybe if Helen had been a little warmer, I’d never have been driven to find a Peggy, and the whole chain of events would never have gotten started. If. But Helen had good looks and a million bucks. It was asking too much to expect a loving heart besides.

  * * *

  I reached our eleven-room place on the Island just before dinner time. It used to be the old Jesperson mansion, and in its day it was one of the swellest places out here. It’s still imposing, though some of the newer homes in our section are even fancier.

  It had been Helen’s home all her life, and she always made me feel like an outsider in it. Which I was. Her dad had been a rich steelman, and she had been born in plush and raised in it. Just why she married me I never figured out, except that she wanted some variety, perhaps. Certainly there was nothing aristocratic-sounding about me—just an ordinary guy, a commercial artist who had never made much money and never would. Helen had the money. She inherited close to a million from her father, and there was another million-plus in trust fund cash falling due on her thirty-fifth birthday, which was fourteen months from now.

  When I came in, the maid told me Mr. Berril was in the pahlah with Moddom Foster, and so I took the left-hand staircase and headed upstairs to say hello. Stuart J. Berril was Helen’s business manager and investment adviser, and he had known her a hell of a lot longer than I had; his father had held the same post for her old man, and he had simply inherited the account.

  They were sitting at opposite sides of the sofa when I entered the parlor, with a pitcher of martinis on the coffee-table in front of them. Berril, as always, was immaculate—a clean-shaven pink-faced man of about forty, very very fastidious about such things as the fold of his handkerchief and the knot in his tie. After a long day in the city and a long railroad trip home, I knew I didn’t stack up—I was covered with city grime and needed a shave.

  “Hello, you-all,” I said.

  Helen detached herself from the sofa and glided across the carpet toward me. She was wearing her blue dress, the low-cut one, and it clung to her for dear life. She was a fine-looking woman, Helen, but there was something harsh and angular and unloving about her that I didn’t find in Peggy Armour.

  She kissed me, aloofly, simply grazing my lips.

  “Hello, darling. How’d everything go?”

  “Pretty well,” I said, walking into the room and pouring a cocktail from the pitcher. “Hello, Stu. You and Helen figure out a new way to bankrupt the U.S. Treasury?”

  “We’ve been discussing a new investment scheme, Mr. Foster,” Berril said primly. I’d been married to his client for six years, now, but he still hadn’t unbent far enough to call me Mike. “It may be a handsome little deal.”

  “Stu figures it’ll bring in a 9% return,” Helen said. “And it’s a cumulative proposition with a steadily increasing increment. All we have to do is amortize the—”

  “Okay,” I said. “Spare me the details. Stu, you’re a financial wizard. I bow six times to you every morning before breakfast.”