Stone Cold Dead by James Ziskin (great novels of all time txt) 📕

Wilbur took a step toward him. “You think it’s funny? I’m here to kill you for what you did to Darleen.”

Joey didn’t flinch, didn’t move, didn’t do anything. Except to pull a small pistol from his coat pocket and aim it at Wilbur’s chest. Despite my fear and the stinging of my cheeks, I couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t used the gun before, to threaten me or to shoot Ted Russell. You wouldn’t think these things would course through your head in such life-threatening moments, but they do.

And then there was a rumbling on the stairs. Joey looked at me, the gun still pointing at Wilbur, who was backing up slowly toward the door. I figured there were three possibilities: (1) Mrs. Giannetti. I doubted she would make so much noise, which left me with two other choices. (2) Fadge. He was so big and made such a racket when he came up the stairs, you would almost swear it was someone falling down instead. And (3) Officer Palumbo. He’d promised that if he saw my distress signal in the window, he would storm up the stairs with guns blazing.

I was wrong. The man who burst through my kitchen door was Dr. Arnold Dienst, huffing and sweating like a buffalo after a summer rampage across the plains.

“Grab him!” I screamed, pointing to Wilbur Burch, who chose Dienst’s arrival as the moment to make good his escape. Dienst was certainly large enough to handle Wilbur, but he was slow, like a lummox, and watched him whiz by. I thanked my lucky stars that Joey hadn’t fired the pistol, and then Wilbur tripped on the stairs and tumbled all the way down to the street, crashing through the glass storm door at the bottom. Chaos reigned. I heard Mrs. Giannetti screaming bloody murder downstairs, and then another set of footsteps mounted the stairs. Palumbo. Finally.

On the porch, a second cop handcuffed Wilbur Burch, who had knocked himself unconscious with his half gainer down a flight of stairs. Dr. Dienst tried to talk Palumbo into letting him take charge of Joey, but Vic Mature would hear none of it.

“What were you doing here, anyway?” the cop asked him.

“I’ve been trying to find Joseph for days,” said Dienst. “I finally had a brainwave this evening, and I thought he just might try to bother Miss Stone again. It’s not the first time, after all.”

“Officer,” I said, interrupting. “He’s got a gun in his jacket,” and I pointed to Joey, who offered it up sheepishly.

“It’s not real,” he said. “From wood shop. Plus some shoe polish.”

Palumbo took it and turned it over and over in his hand, admiring the workmanship.

“This is amazing,” he said in his deep baritone, positively aglow. “The best I’ve ever seen. You made this?”

“Yeah,” said Joey, shrugging his shoulders.

Palumbo looked to Dr. Dienst, holding out the fake pistol.

“Now, Joseph,” said Dienst, “if you applied yourself to other endeavors in the same manner, think what you might accomplish.”

More police arrived, as well as half the neighborhood who’d seen the cherry tops spinning. Wilbur Burch came to and claimed I’d pushed him down the stairs. When asked what he had been doing in my apartment after midnight, he couldn’t think of anything and asked for his lawyer instead. The police were willing to oblige him but soon discovered that Wilbur didn’t have a lawyer or even a dime to phone one.

“At least you can sleep soundly now that we know who tried to break in the other night,” said Palumbo.

“Was it you the other night, Joey?” I asked. He shook his head. “Dr. Dienst?”

“Certainly not, Miss Stone.”

“Then it must have been Burch,” said the cop.

I shivered. “No, I’m afraid not,” I said. “Wilbur told me he got into town this afternoon.”

“Then who was it?” asked Palumbo.

“I don’t know.”

“Now I bet you wish it was me,” said Joey. “I always knew you had a thing for me.”

Palumbo finished with the legalities and cuffed Joey. As he led him to the door, I reached out and touched Joey’s hand. He stopped and looked at me, nothing in his dark eyes.

“Thank you, Joey,” I said. “You were very brave.”

He shrugged it off and said it was no big deal. “Thanks for the bacon and eggs,” he said. “And the booze.”

“You served him liquor?” asked Dr. Dienst. “And bacon?”

“Can you do me one favor, Ellie?” asked Joey.

“Of course. What?”

“Take a picture of me and print it in the paper. I’ve never been in the paper before, and I think it would be cool.”

Palumbo had no objections. Dienst just stared. So I fetched my Leica from the other room, focused it on Joey and the arresting officer, Mike Palumbo, and clicked off five quick shots. Joey was pokerfaced in all of them. No expression on his lips or in his eyes. Perhaps a little sorrow, but nothing else.

Once he and Wilbur had been taken away to the station, Officer Palumbo came back upstairs and smiled apologetically.

“I got a call for a break-in on Prospect Street,” he said. “Otherwise I would have been here earlier.”

“All’s well that ends well,” I said.

“Are you okay?” he asked, squinting at my red cheeks.

I made a move to cover my face then blushed. “I’m fine. He just slapped me around a bit. Open hand.”

“Only a very small man strikes a woman,” he pronounced.

We stood in awkward silence for a moment. Then he asked if I might be free for dinner sometime.

I smiled. “Like when?”

He cleared his throat and coughed out an invitation for the following evening.

“Tomorrow night?” I asked. “Sunday?”

“Sunday and Monday are my days off,” he said. “If you’d rather not, I understand.”

“I’ve got to eat on Sundays too,” I said. “Sure, I’d love to.”

“I’ll pick you up at eight.”

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 1961

I read the Sunday papers over a hard roll and coffee in a booth at Fiorello’s. The University of Georgia had been ordered to admit two Negro students. President-elect Kennedy was