Honorable Mention

Miss Smith... In The
Laundry...With A .32

Diane and Marvin Fishman
(Farmington Hills)
Madge and Jerome Levine
(Scottsdale, Ariz.)
more unlikely pair would be
hard to imagine: Miss
Locklin Smith, an elderly,
proper Christian woman was
infatuated with a much younger
Jewish businessman, Isidore Fink, who
owned the laundry adjacent to her
apartment. Although Mr. Fink was
never known to enjoy female compa-
ny, he had in fact carried on for two
years a torrid, secret love affair with
Miss Smith. There was a connecting
door between her apartment and the
laundry, which usually was kept closed
and unlocked to facilitate the
romance...and the subsequent murder.
Mr. Fink always kept the front door to
his laundry locked. People thought
this was only for security, but it also
enabled him to have complete privacy
for intimate moments with his lover.
However, Isidore gradually tired of
the arrangement and ended the affair.
Miss Smith was devastated! For a
week, she brooded alone in her room
before she decided to confront her for-
mer paramour to try to reconcile. On
a lonely Saturday night, Miss Smith
applied a few drops of her favorite toi-
let water behind her ears, put on her
blue dress with the lace collar that
Isidore had always liked, and opened
the connecting door to visit her for-
mer lover.
Locklin's frustration was mount-
ing, and she decided to close the
transom to prevent their voices from
carrying out to the street. She
grabbed the long pole and clumsily
jammed the transom shut, breaking
off a bracket in the process. She did-
n't even realize the bracket had fallen
on the floor because her mind was in
a fury. This formerly genteel lady
snapped and became a scorned
woman, out of her mind with rage.
As she stormed back to her apart-
ment, she suddenly remembered the
.32-caliber gun Isidore had kept in
the top left-hand drawer of his desk
by the rear door. She grabbed the gun
from the drawer and turned to face

Al

him. Isidore saw Locklin with his gun
in her hand, and he slammed the
iron on top of the hot stove. Locklin,
crying hysterically, aimed the gun at
his heart and screamed, "YOU
RUINED MY LIFE! I HATE YOU!"
Holding the gun with both hands,
she fired twice into his chest. Isidore
staggered toward her, crying,
"Locklin, don't do this. I-I still love
you!" He reached for the gun, but it
was too late. She squeezed another
steel-jacketed bullet, which passed
thorough his left hand. Izzy fell face
down in a pool of blood, arms out-
stretched, dead.
Locklin stumbled into her apart-
ment and, feeling sick to her stomach,
headed for the bathroom. There, gasp-
ing for breath, she knew she had to
calm down. She realized that if she did
not regain control of her emotions
there would be not one but two vic-
tims of tonight's violence. She poured
herself a large snifter of brandy and
downed it. Invigorated, she proceeded
to close the door connecting her
apartment to the laundry, then nailed
it shut as if it had always been that
way — trying to distance herself from
her former lover. Then she composed
herself and carried the lethal weapon
out her front door and quickly dis-
posed of it in the sewer.

Honorable Mention

Cain
And Abel

Dr. Sam Lerman (Southfield)

ain was what he called him-
self. He was my patient in the
Bellevue psychiatric ward in
1950. I had just returned
from four years in Europe in the Royal
Canadian Army Medical Corps and a
year of research in France on a new
wonder drug, thorazine, that calmed
the wildest maniacs. A chemical strait
jacket, we called it.
Cain was raving that he had killed
his brother, Abel, that God had cursed

ID

him, driven him out to suffer. After he
had been on thorazine for several days,
we were able to remove him from his
padded cell and talk to him.
His fantastic story was that he and
his younger brother, Isidore, had
come from Russia to New York in
1921, and with the money entrusted
by their father they started a laundry.
"My brother was a gonif, cheated
me, lying that he was sending all the
money back to our parents, made me
leave, so I started my own laundry.
"For years, we never spoke to each
other. My rage grew until one day I
bought a gun and decided I would
confront him and make him give me
back my share of what he had been
stealing from me all these years. I
went to his laundry that Saturday
night, hoping we might settle things
peaceably.
"At first, our discussion was calm.
But when he told me, 'You're crazy,' I
yelled and shoved him. He tried to
choke me and we threw each other
about for awhile until I was able to
get my gun out.
"My first shot got him in the hand
and he backed off, moaning, 'Don't
kill me.' I stood there with my gun
pointing at him for many minutes,
waiting for his apology. When none
came, my next two shots were better
aimed and he got what he deserved.
"I knew someone had heard our
struggle and might have gone to call
the police. I slid back the bolt on the
side door, doubled a piece of string
around the knob on the bolt so that I
could pull it shut from outside after I
closed the door.
"I went home in a weird state,
reciting in Hebrew Genesis N. I was
Cain and had just slain my brother,
Abel. I was truly mad, and my neigh-
bors called the police, who took me
to Bellevue.
"Only in the last few days have I
realized that I am Morris Fink and
have killed my brother, Isidore. Please
call the police; I am ready to face my
just death sentence."
Clearly, "Cain" was not yet sane.
Whether I believed his story or not,
he was too psychotic to stand trial.
Someone made a phone call to the
authorities, who were too busy to try
to track down a 21-year-old unsolved
murder.
My rotation in the psychiatric
ward ended that week, and I had
completely forgotten this until, after
retiring last month from my medical
practice, I read the story in The

Jewish News.

Ellen Goldman (Sant eke)
fter much rese
discovered that Mr.
Fink's
Morris,
was
not brother,
estranged
but

jseim
aloP us
l Y s otfrarig
Mte.FHe
ink'sw s a tsicicnessan
elY
sa at

being both a laundry owner and a
plumber. To add insult to injury,
Mr. Fink also was the ladies man
of the family. The mere Thought
that his brother had the means to
live with a roommate and pay $ 4
a month rent enraged him. He

wanted his brother dead.
One
Re night Morris , whose looks
were identical to our MrFink,
crept into the laundry and hid
behind a>dryet:

ecame n

public k
snuck u
using
Fin

h e facili

hi:n

Other top detectives
on the case:

Paul Gross (Farmington Hills)
Lorraine Morris (Oak Park)
Sister Virginia Parker (Detroit)
Ronnie Sinai (Southfield)
Susan Tawil (Oak Park)