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

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.