The Mysterious Woman In The Lifeguard Chair

by Bruce W. Most

About the Author: Bruce W. Most has published two previous short stories in Mystery Magazine featuring Weegee, New York City's famous crime photographer in the 1930s and 1940s. Bruce's latest mystery novel is No Time for Murder. Other whodunits include The Big Dive, a sequel to his award-winning Murder on the Tracks, and the award-winning Rope Burn, involving cattle rustling and murder in contemporary Wyoming ranch country. He’s also the author of Bonded for Murder and Missing Bonds.

Excerpt

The summer night was airless, pitch black, and as sultry as sin. The residential lights of Coney Island huddled behind blackout curtains, the bright boardwalk lights snuffed out, Wonder Wheel and the Baby Incubator sideshow gone dark, while saloon patrons drank by candlelight. Even the moon was afraid to come out.

Weegee, New York City’s most famous crime photographer, if he did say so himself, slogged in the soft beach sand in his brogues lugging his 4x5 Speed Graphic press camera. He hadn’t come to photograph a crime scene, however. The tabloids were hungry for human-interest pictures depicting how New Yorkers were surviving the city’s heat wave.

Or maybe it was a crime scene. While the rich cooled off in their luxury high-rises with new-fangled air conditioning, thousands of less fortunate slept on beaches to catch the cool Atlantic breeze, trying to escape heat stroke in their stifling, breathless apartments.

Weegee zigzagged gingerly to avoid stepping on the sleepers and the couples who’d come not to sleep but to find amorous refuge in each other’s sweaty arms.

The sleepers he couldn’t see or hear, except for the occasional snore, but the lovers he could zero in on by their bursts of laughter, moans, or the flare of a cigarette tip.

“No, no, Billy, don’t touch me there.”

“Ah, c’mon, doll, you’ll like it.”

A slap.

“Damn, what was that for?”

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