2:45 A.M.
In his office off the kitchen of the restaurant, George Mikos paced a while, too keyed up to sit down and type, which was what he'd come here to do. Finally he sat down at the desk, took the cover off the typewriter and put fresh paper into it. He began to type:
Dear Perry:
This has been the damnedest night. If you'll forgive the cliché, hell has been popping right and left.
Yes, this is a new letter and not a continuation of the one I started to you earlier. Everything has changed so completely that it would seem silly to go on with that one. But I'll enclose it, uncompleted, with this, so you'll have the background to understand what this one is about.
It started a few minutes after eleven-thirty, when I'd just closed up and was starting to check the register. There was a phone call and a man's voice—not her husband's—asked for Ruth Fleck. She was still here, getting ready to leave. I called her to the phone but there was no one on the line when she got there.
You can deduce what I guessed from that, when she admitted she could think of no possible reason why any man except her husband should be calling her at that time of night.
I insisted on driving her home, and I also had her wait in the car while I went up and searched her flat to make sure there wasn't a reception committee waiting for her there. (I had told her I was bringing a gun so she wouldn't worry about me doing this; actually I don't even own one.) Then I escorted her upstairs, made sure she bolted herself in, and left.
But I didn't go very far. I was more worried than I let her think (luckily) and I drove off only in case she'd be watching from a front window or listening for the sound of my car starting. I U-turned at the corner and drove back the way I'd come, parked on the opposite side of the street and a quarter of a block away. I'd decided to watch the doorway of that building until I saw her husband come home, no matter how late it might be.
She had a code knock of some kind worked out with her husband so she'd know it was he when he came home and I'd impressed on her not to throw the bolt otherwise. But I was still worried about her for two reasons. First, she was confident Ray wouldn't have done any talking in bars about that code knock, but I wasn't. Second, while neither the door to her flat nor the bolt on it were flimsy, neither were they so strong that a husky, heavy man might not be able to break in with one good hard lunge. And it turned out I was right on both of those counts.
At about one o'clock I saw, or thought I saw, Ray Fleck come around the corner and go into the entrance of the building. But he'd hardly disappeared and I hadn't yet turned the ignition key in the car when I did the goddamnedest double take and realized that the man I'd seen had not been Ray Fleck. He'd been about the same height and weight, but not the same build; his bulk had been across the shoulders and he had a narrow waist, whereas Fleck's weight distribution is just the opposite.
And I was out of the car and running. If my second impression had been wrong, if it had really been Fleck I'd seen, I was about to make an awful ass of myself, but I was willing to chance that rather than to take the opposite chance. When I got to the third floor I saw the door was closed and not broken down—so I must have been right about Fleck talking; she'd never have opened the door except to that special knock. I didn't waste time trying the knob, which was just as well since the door had been bolted again from the inside; I threw my weight against the door, so hard that I still have a sore right shoulder, and the door burst open and I almost fell into the living room.
He'd heard, of course; he was in the doorway of the bedroom and rushed me before I got my balance. I managed to turn my head in time to take a vicious blow on the ear (it's still ringing) instead of the jaw. I took a couple of steps back to get on balance and then started to move in on him. I'm a wrestler; I wanted to grapple instead of trying to slug it out. He cooperated, in a way; he rushed me, head down for a solar plexus butt, both fists cocked low to start pumping into my stomach or groin as soon as he connected with the butt.
He couldn't have pleased me more. I moved just enough aside at the last split second to let his head graze past my right side and then I clamped down my arm and had a solid headlock on him. I twisted my body around and twisted his neck with it. Until there was a quite audible snap as his neck broke, and the fight was over. It had probably lasted all of three seconds.
I didn't even bother to check whether or not he was dead; if by any chance he wasn't, he wasn't going to be dangerous for a long time. I just dropped him and ran into the bedroom.
Ruth was lying on the bed, unconscious, where he'd no doubt carried her after knocking her out with a single blow as he came through the doorway.
But otherwise, I'd got there in time. She hadn't been raped, let alone strangled. Her jaw was beginning to swell but it didn't look as though it was broken—and I learned later at the hospital that it wasn't. She was breathing normally, and her heartbeat was okay.
He'd ripped open the housecoat that she was wearing, and torn the tops of her pajamas. I put a cover over her partial (and very beautiful) nakedness and then went to the living room again. I checked the psychopath to see if he was dead; he was. And then I used the phone to call for a police ambulance. The guy I got on the phone annoyingly wanted details, but I told him a woman had been injured by the psycho and I wanted the ambulance fast and I'd do all the talking they wanted after she was hospitalized. I told him they didn't have to worry about the psycho any more; they could send a meat wagon for him at their leisure. He wasn't going anywhere. Then I hung up.
And then went back to wait by Ruth, in case she should recover consciousness before the ambulance came.
But I'd sat there only a few minutes, and hadn't heard any sirens yet, when the phone rang. I answered it and—
Now hold on to your hat, Perry. Here comes the incredible part. It was the city jail, wanting Ruth Fleck. When I'd convinced them that she couldn't come to the phone but I'd take any message, I was told that I should tell her that her husband was dead. He had been killed—strangled, mind you—by a man in the same double cell with him. Fleck had given himself up and was being held on suspicion of theft. His killer was (or had been) a harmless moron who was being held overnight because he'd made a false confession of murder. He was unable to give any coherent account of why he'd killed Fleck; he talked about laughter, and devils, and the police not believing him. Although they'd known the man was slightly unbalanced mentally, he'd always been completely harmless, and they'd thought nothing of putting another prisoner in the same cell with him.
That was all I could learn; tomorrow I'll see what more I can learn, and I hope it's something that will make things make sense. I hate coincidences, and it takes a lot to make me believe in one. Especially one as extravagant as a man getting himself strangled to death on the same night his wife would, except for my intervention, have been strangled to death—and not by the same strangler.
The man at the jail said Ray'd given himself up. I can't see him doing that, on any charge, unless he had some damned good reason for wanting to be in jail.
Maybe the story will come out somehow, or maybe we'll never know. Ray Fleck can't tell us his end of it. Nor the psychopath his end.
For that reason only, I'm sorry I killed him. That is, I guess I am. I might have been able to subdue him without killing him, but it would have taken time. And besides there was the risk of my losing the fight. What if he'd been able to get in a lucky punch and knock me out? He'd have strangled me while I was unconscious—and then he'd have gone back to Ruth. Neither of us would have been alive right now. No, I couldn't have taken that chance.
Ruth was still unconscious when we got her to the hospital, and they gave her a sedative so she'd stay that way a while, or rather so the unconsciousness would blend into normal sleep.
So I haven't talked to her yet. They told me she should have at least a few hours of normal sleep, and kicked me out. I can go back at five A.M.
So I have a couple of hours to kill and that's what I'm doing now, writing this.
Perry, how'd you like to be my best man? Maybe I'm over-confident, but I don't think so. I'm almost certain that Ruth will marry me, now that she's free. I don't know how soon; there'll have to be what people call a decent interval. And it'll be up to Ruth how long that is. As far as I'm concerned, I'd marry her tomorrow and start out our honeymoon by attending Ray Fleck's funeral. She'd hardly go along with that, but she didn't really love him any more and I'm hoping she'll think that not over a few months will be long enough.
And I'm serious about the best man business. And if Ruth will accept my plans, you wouldn't even have to come here to do the job. I've been thinking for a long time of taking a vacation and a trip to Europe; I'd probably have done it before now if I hadn't fallen in love with Ruth and wanted to stick around for that reason. And combining a European tour with a honeymoon would be combining pleasure with pleasure. We could be married in New York en route, so you could stand up for us there, stay a week for a look at New York if Ruth wants to (and I imagine she will; she's never been there) and then hop off for Europe.
I feel as though I'm dreaming, and I suppose I am—but it's a dream that will come true, I know it will.
Your old friend,
George Mikos.