'Well, yes, it was your plan, so I suppose the dope was rightfully yours. And we all got paid for what we did, so it wasn't really right of me to . . . well. . . run off with the stash, I know that, Sonny. The plan was a brilliant
one, oh, God, what a plan! First the diversion in the Cow Pasture.
'I see you remember.'
Smiling.
'How could I forget? And then the heist itself, at the Department of Sanitation incinerator.
'Yes.'
Nodding. Remembering.
'Houghton Street on the River Harb Drive,' she said. 'Remember, Sonny? Me driving the truck, you sitting right beside me?'
'Went off like clockwork,' he said.
Still smiling, remembering.
'Like clockwork,' she said. Smiling with him now. Beginning to feel this would go all right after all.
'I found the house you used to live in, Gloria. Took me a while, but I found it.'
'What took you so long?'
'Recuperating. You almost did me in. A doctor named Felix Rickett fixed me up. Dr. Fixit, I called him,' he said, and smiled again.
Yeah, well, like I said, I'm sorry about that.'
'I'm sure you are,' he said, and glanced knowingly at the gun in his hand. 'The present owner of the house told me he'd bought it from a woman named Gloria Anstdorf.'
Yep, that was me, all right.'
'German ancestry?'
'I suppose so. I know the dorf part means 'village' in German. My grandmother thinks the anst may have come from 'badieansalt,' which means 'baths' in German. A village where they had thermal baths, you know? She thinks the Customs people at Ellis Island shortened it when her parents got to America. To Anstdorf, you know?'
'But that's not the name in your mailbox, Gloria.'
'No, it isn't.'
'You bought this apartment as Gloria Stanford.'
'Yes. What I did was rearrange the letters a little. From Anstdorf to Stanford. Made the name a little more American, you know?'
'A lot more American.'
'Never hurts to rearrange the letters of your name here in the land of the free and home of the brave, does it? Especially when someone might be looking for you.'
'It's called an anagram, Gloria.'
'What is?'
'Rearranging the letters to form another word.'
'Is that right?'
'Anstdorf to Stanford. An anagram.'
'Is that what I did? An anagram? I'll be damned.'
'Never hurts to use anagrams here in the land of the free and home of the brave.'
'I suppose not.'
'But I found you anyway, Gloria.'
'So you did. So why don't we make the most of it?'
'Was that your German ancestry, Gloria?'
'Pardon?'
'Tying me to the bed that way?'
'I thought you liked that part.'
'The Hamilton Motel, remember, Gloria?'
'Oh, how I remember.'
'In the town of Red Point. Across the river.'
'And into the trees,' she said, and smiled.
She was feeling fairly confident now. She sat on the edge of the bed, patted it to indicate she wanted him to sit beside her. He kept standing. Kept pointing the gun at her chest. She took a deep brearh. Never hurt to advertise the breasts here in the land of the free and home of
the brave. He seemed to notice. Or maybe he was just searching for a spot on her chest to shoot her.
'Was that German, too?' he asked. 'Little bit of Nazi heritage there?'
'I don't know what you mean, Sonny'
'Shooting me twice in the chest that way?'
'Well
'Leaving me tied to the bed that way?'
'Speaking of beds
'Leaving me there to bleed to death?'
'I'm really sorry about that, I truly am. Why don't you let me show you just how sorry I am?'
'Turnabout is fair play,' he said.
'Come over here, honey,' she said. 'Stand right in front of me.'
'Fair is foul, and foul is fair,' he said.
'Unzip your fly, honey,' she said.
'Macbeth,' he said. 'Act One, Scene One.'
And shot her twice in the chest.
Pouf, pouf.
2.
'NOW THAT IS WHAT I call a zaftig woman,' Monoghan said.
'How do you happen to know that expression?' Monroe asked.
'My first wife happened to be Jewish,' Monoghan said.
Monroe didn't even know there'd been a first wife. Or that there was now a second wife. If in fact there was a second wife. The woman's skirt had pulled back when she fell to the expensive Oriental carpet, exposing shapely thighs and legs, which, in concert with her ample breasts, justified the label Monoghan had just hung on her. She was indeed zaftig, some five feet nine inches tall, a woman of Amazonian proportions, albeit a dead one. The first bullet hole was just below her left breast. The second was a bit higher on her chest, and more to the middle, somewhere around the sternum. There were ugly blood stains around each bullet hole, larger stains in the weave of the thick carpet under her. The detectives seemed to be staring down at the wounds, but perhaps they were just admiring her breasts.
Today was Tuesday, the first day of June, the day after Memorial Day. The dead woman lying there at Monoghan's feet looked to be in her mid-thirties, still young enough to be a mother, though not what anyone would call a young mother, which was the juiciest kind. Monroe's thoughts were running pretty much along similar lines. He was wondering if the woman had been sexually compromised before someone thoughtlessly shot her.
The idea was vaguely exciting in an instinctively primitive way, her lying all exposed like that, with even her panties showing.
Monoghan and Monroe were both wearing black, but not in mourning; this was merely the customary raiment of the Homicide Division. Their appearance here was mandatory in this city, but they would serve only in an advisory and supervisory capacity, whatever that meant; sometimes even they themselves didn't know what their exact function was. They did know that the actual investigation of the crime would be handled by the detective squad that caught the initial squeal, in this instance the Eight-Seven - which, by the way, where the hell were they? Or the ME, for that matter? Both detectives wondered if they should go down for a cup of coffee, pass the time that way.
The handyman who'd found the dead woman was still in the apartment, looking guilty as hell, probably because he didn't have a green card and was afraid they'd deport him back to Mexico or wherever. The super had
