Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

He pulled the threadbare collar around his throat. In a few moments, he knew, a green-and-white car would turn the corner and come toward him down the street. He knew because he had made his plans carefully. After the first full shock of deciding to snuff out a life had passed, after the sweating and the momentary panic were gone, there remained only the work to be done. It was unpleasant work. There were tedious details to be attended to. The hours of standing in chilly doorways as he observed the comings and goings of the people who lived in the brownstone on Trimble Street. The purchase at the hardware store. The stop at Liebermann’s.

He began walking again as the green-and-white car passed him and pulled to the curb in front of the brownstone. A girl got out and ran up the steps to the porch. He followed her slowly, gripping the railing, stood stamping the wet snow from his shoes as she fitted her key in the lock. He coughed. The wreath with the words Seasons Greetings was still on the door. He began humming to himself, tunelessly, waiting.

The girl seemed to be having difficulty with the lock.

“Here. Let me,” he said, putting the violin case at his feet. He opened the door, stood back and motioned for her to preceed him, a smile on his face.

“Thank you,” she said. She went inside and he heard the sound of her small feet on the stairs.

Inside it was very dim and cold. There was not much air. He squinted at a row of names under the dusty mailboxes in the hall. Brown. Mulhern. Schulze! His feet moved noiselessly over the worn carpet that ran down the hall to the flight of rickety stairs. He took the stairs slowly, right hand on the railing, with only the sound of the floorboards creaking under his weight.

Haller’s apartment was in the front, overlooking the street. The lock was no problem. He had learned about locks in the concentration camp. There was only one room. It was small, cramped; the walls squeezing in like a giant vice. For a moment Fischer felt like turning and running out. He thought how odd it was that the pitiful, fishy-smelling cubicle was so much like the pitiful, fishy-smelling cubicles of the concentration camp.

Fischer pulled back the curtain that draped the window. The curtain rings made a whining noise. A fly started across one of the panes of glass, hesitated, as if it were not sure of where it wanted to go. Fischer watched the fly, listening to the sound of the traffic in the street. He closed his eyes and the familiar image came to him clearly. He wondered what Haller would do when he returned home to find this skeleton in his room. Smiling, he placed the tip of one finger over the fly and pressed it against the glass.

He was still standing there, when he saw Haller down the street, a lopsided figure, one shoulder down, hurrying along toward the brownstone. Fischer wondered if Haller had come to America to accept a job as a cook. Perhaps he was the chef at one of the big downtown hotels.

He slid the curtains closed, casting deep shadows in the room, and fished the potato from the pocket of his coat. It was not a very large potato. He had wanted a bigger one, round and temptingly fat, but it would do; besides, Liebermann had thrown it in with the liverwurst, free of charge.

Quickly, he unfastened the clasps on the violin case, and removed the heavy, flat-honed meat chopper he had purchased at the hardware store. He put the package of liverwurst in the violin case and slid the case beneath the bed. He placed the potato carefully in the center of the sagging, wooden-topped dresser, opened the door to the closet and slipped behind it just as Haller came into the room.

From his hiding place he could see the potato clearly, illuminated by a soft shaft of light from the hall, no more than an arm’s length away.

Haller did not close the door. He seemed to be standing still. Fischer could almost place him by the rasp of the other man’s breathing. He knew somehow that Haller was staring at the potato, puzzled, perhaps disturbed by some half-forgotten recollection.

Fischer wanted to cough, but he did not, sucking air into his mouth and down into his pounding chest. He wondered how long it would be before Haller’s curiosity made him reach for the potato. He raised the chopper slowly over his head. There was a faint crinkling of the flesh around his eyes and the corners of his mouth pulled into the beginnings of a smile.

Body-Snatcher by C. B. Gilford

“Anton,” Mrs. Kopping said. “I want to reward you for your years of faithful service.” Then she told him where she’d hidden his wife’s body.

* * *

Anton Vandrak groveled in the dirt, literally and figuratively. And he cursed the day and the hour and the woman that had brought him to this place.