5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 43: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DANCE, PRETTY MAIDEN V Hhvary KERN awoke in complete darkness, with a throbbing head and a crushing weight of fear on his chest. He lay, breathless, reconstructing his last hazy memories—the yellow car snaking through the narrow streets of the Mexican town, a stop in a sheltered patio, the dim interior of a pawn shop they had passed through into a barn- like room that seemed full of musical in- struments of all sorts and where he had collapsed on a battered couch and passed out. With an effort, Kern sat up. Blades of pain stabbed behind his eyes; he panted like a sick animal. “You want sometheeng?” asked from the darkness. “You’re damned right—a drink—and fast!” A shaded light wentgn. Fausto Azul was seated on a stool before a piano; a table holding the lamp and a radio was beside him. His sky-blue coat was off now, and the twin bands of scarlet sus- penders made double slashes across his white shirt front, the left one almost touching a chamois shoulder holster from which the butt of an automatic protruded. Smiling, he reached for a tray that held a bottle and glasses, poured a drink, and carried it over. Kern grasped it with shaky hands. The glass knocked awkwardly against his teeth, but he tilted it and let the liquor run, hot and astringent, into his throat. Shivering, he began to look about. In a far shadowy corner of the room he could see more musical instruments, music racks, a microphone, and other apparatus. Azul handed him a second drink. He started to take it, but instead, leaned forward and set the glass on the floor. He looked at Azul. “T’ve seen you before,” he said. “Wait —aren’t you Liria’s cousin who came to take her to her mother’s once?” - Azul went back and sat on the piano stool. “No cousin,” he said cheerfully. “Just old friend. For a long time I do not see Liria. Then, by accident, I meet her. ‘Hola, chiquita, where you been, what you doing?’ ‘Oh, I doing fine, I a voice 43 work for. Mestaire Kern, who collects the music.’ Diablo! Kern, you say? Bot I work for heem myself—” he broke off in peals of laughter. “You?” Kern bristled. for me?” Azul sobered, leaned forward. “You steel got money, no?” “Money? What if I have? What’s it to you?” Azul’s black eyebrows came up until they almost met his low hairline. “Bot, you need the help! I geeve you the help, all the help you need. So you pay me. Is fair, no?” Kern said, “I can pay for what I get. But what’s this all about? What hap- petted to Liria? Why are they hunting me?” Azul weighed him with shrewd eyes. “You do not joke? You do not know you get droonk and keel Liria?” | Kern’s breath stopped, and the angry denial that had sprung to his lips died there. He felt cold and weak, and his brain groped in a fog, trying to recall. Bits of memory came back, and he mut- tered aloud, “I don’t know, something happened— Wait! We were there at her apartment. I was hopped up over getting that record and I took a drink to celebrate. I took another. She put on the costume to dance to the music. I got out the knife to play the priest’s part. We put the record on the phono- graph. Then—” Azul leaned nearer. “Well? Then, for some reason you get mad, keel Liria? Liria tell you something make you mad ?” “What should she tell me?” Azul shrugged. “I ask you. Maybe- so she tell you somebody make the beeg fool out of you?” | ERN frowned, then snapped his fin- gers. “No! She didn’t. But some- body else did. It was a phone call. I was pretty drunk, but I went and an- swered it, and this other girl began to tell me—” “What?” “Why,” Kern said, a little startled at the other’s avid interest, “she told me Liria was two-timing me.” “So you get mad, kill Liria?”’ “For that?” Kern laughed harshly. “You work CoOnniclooo S (C(O) mM