A Hell of a Woman (Crime Masterworks) Read Online Free PDF Page A

couple hours, eating and doctoring my account cards, and went back home.
    She was gone but her memory lingered on, if you know what I mean. She'd left me something to remember her by. The bedroom windows were pushed up to the top, and the bed was soaked with rain. My clothes-well, I just didn't have any clothes.
    She'd poured ink all over my shirts. She'd taken a pair of scissors and cut big holes in my suit, the only other suit I had. My neckties and handkerchiefs were snipped to pieces. All my socks and underwear were stuffed into the toilet.
    A real swell kid, didn't I tell you? A regular little doll. I'd have to do something nice for her if I ever ran into her again.
    I went to work, straightening things out the best I could, and it must have been two in the morning before I got through and stretched out on the lounge. Worn out, burned up, wondering. Ijust couldn't get it, you know. Why, if she didn't like a guy and didn't want to get along with him, had she gone to so damned much trouble to get him?
    I'd met her in Houston about three years ago. I was crew manager on a magazine deal, and she was pushing cigarettes in this dive; and I used to drop in for a ball every night or so. Well, she started playing for me right from the beginning. The way she hung over my table you'd have thought she was the cloth. I couldn't lift a drink without seeing her through the bottom of the glass. So-so one thing led to another, and I began taking her home from work. What's a guy going to do, anyway, when a chick keeps throwing herself at him? I left her at her door a few nights, and then she let me come inside. And she had one of the nicest little efficiency apartments you ever saw. I gqess they had maid service in this joint, and with just herself to look after she got by pretty good. Not that I made any inspection of the place. I had my mind on something else. So I said, howsa about it, honey, and-_boing!_ She hauled off and slapped me in the kisser. I jumped up and started to leave. She started crying. She said Iwouldn't think she was a nice girl if she did; I wouldn't want to marry her and I'd throw it up to her afterwards. And I said, Aw, now, honey. What kind of a guy do you- No, now wait a minute! I think I'm getting this thing all fouled up. I believe it was Doris who acted that way, the gal I was married to before Joyce. Yeah, it must have been Doris-or was it Ellen? Well, it doesn't make much difference; they were all alike. They all turned out the same way. So, as I was saying: I said, What kind of a guy do you think I am? And she said -.. they said – - – I think you're nice. I-… I went to sleep.

5
    PAY-E-ZEE had seventy-five stores across the country. I'll tell you about this one, the one I worked for, and you'll know about them all.
    It was on a side street, a twelve-foot-front place between a shine parlor and a fruit stand. It had two small show windows, with about a hundred items in each one. Men's suits, women's dresses, work clothes, bathrobes, wristwatches, dresser sets, novelties- more stuff than I can name. Why it was there, I don't know, because it wasn't once in a month of Saturdays that we got a customer off the street. Practically all the selling was done on the outside by me and five other guys.
    We did a volume of about fifteen grand a month, with collections running about seventy-five per cent. And, yeah, that's low all right, but our mark-up wasn't. With a mark-up of three hundred per cent you can take a big loss on collections. You'll still do better on a fifteen-g volume than most stores do on fifty.
    I was a little late getting in that morning, and the other collector-salesmen were already gone. A heavyset guy-a "just looking" customer-was thumbing through the rack of men's jackets. Staples was in the office at the rear, a space separated from the rest of the store by a wall-to-wall counter.
    Pay-E-Zee didn't have the usual office employees. Just the credit men-managers like Staples. I laid out my