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The Novels of Ellery Queen by Edward D. Hoch
The Barber's Toe by Edward D. Hoch
Why'd You Bring Me Here? By Stanley Cohen
The Man Who Jumped for England by Peter Lovesey
Heroic Proportions by Daliso Chaponda
June 2005
Vol. 125 No. 6
Dell Magazines
New York
Edition Copyright © 2005
by Dell Magazines,
a division of Crosstown Publications
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Mystery Magazine are fiction.
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Anthony Boucher once wrote, "Ellery Queen is the American detective story," and certainly no other American writer was so active, for such a long period, in so many different aspects of mystery writing. From 1929 to 1982 the name was in the forefront of mystery writing, editing, and scholarship. Queen not only produced some of the best detective novels of the so-called "Golden Age" (roughly 1920 to 1940) but also continued to publish important---and sometimes classic---novels during the decades that followed.
Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee's first joint effort under the Ellery Queen name was The Roman Hat Mystery, published on August 15, 1929. It was an immediate success, transporting readers to the glamorous Broadway theater world where a clever blackmailer named Monte Field is poisoned while seated in the last row of the orchestra at the Roman Theatre. Inspector Richard Queen is in charge of the case, and his son Ellery joins him at the scene of the crime. Virtually the first words out of Ellery's mouth are, "You just lured me away from a perfect book-lover's paradise," thereby establishing his character as surely as Rex Stout established Nero Wolfe's character five years later with his first words in print: "Where's the beer?"
The investigation moves from the Roman Theatre to Monte Field's bedroom, where late in the book a secret compartment full of top hats is discovered. Some seventy-five pages before the finish, Queen stopped the action with the first of his famous challenges to the reader. All the clues have been given and Ellery knows the identity of the killer. Does the reader? The action resumes and moves on to a capture just as the killer is about to strike again. The final chapter, a letter from his father to Ellery, outlines the clues that helped them arrive at the surprising solution.
Though few critics today would list The Roman Hat Mystery among the ten best Queen novels, that is only because it has been eclipsed by far better adventures in the decades that followed. It remains an amazing achievement for a first novel, and was to set the pattern for the first nine Queen novels. All would have similar titles using a nationality, a common noun, and the word "Mystery." Most would feature a Challenge to the Reader, and most would have lengthy, complex solutions revealing the killer to be the least suspected person.
Queen's second novel, The French Powder Mystery, was published just a year after the first. It contained many of the same elements---an unfamiliar setting (this time a department store), a large cast of characters, some complex but logical deductions, and the usual Challenge to the Reader. But this time the authors added something more. The solution is so cleverly constructed that the killer's name is withheld until the final two words of the book. It was a feat that could be topped only by Queen himself in a later book (which shall be nameless here), in which the killer's name appears only as the first words of the novel and its last words---but is found nowhere else in the book!
The Dutch Shoe Mystery, about murder in the Dutch Memorial Hospital, was published in 1931. Its plot, involving a killer disguised as a doctor who strangles a patient awaiting emergency surgery, is almost as good as the first two Queens---but the best was yet to come. In 1932 they published four of their best early novels in a single year.
For the first of these they decided to adopt a second pseudonym and acquire another publisher. They became "Barnaby Ross," chronicling the cases solved by Drury Lane, a retired Shakespearean actor forced to give up his career because of deafness. The first Lane novel, The Tragedy of X, was Dannay and Lee's best book to date---a baffling mystery that cleverly uses varying modes of transportation for its settings. Thus the first murder, by nicotine poisoning, occurs on a crowded Manhattan streetcar. It is followed by murder on the Weehawken ferry to New Jersey, with the murderer finally unmasked aboard a train in New Jersey. The Tragedy of X has been called by Francis M. Nevins, Jr. (Royal Bloodline) a book of staggering complexity, stunning ingenuity, and dazzling fairness to the reader. As such, it was the first truly classic mystery to come from the pens of Dannay and Lee.
It was followed within three months by an equally complex and rewarding novel under the Queen name, The Greek Coffin Mystery. The longest and best of the early novels about Ellery, it involves the death of a wealthy old man, and the strangled body of a second man found in the coffin with him. The complicated plot features some dazzling detective work involving a typewriter, and a least-suspected person that should surprise even the most astute Queen reader. The book marks Queen's first use of multiple solutions. In fact, four solutions are given during the course of the novel, with the true one the most astounding and satisfying of all.
Their third book in 1932 was another Drury Lane adventure under the "Barnaby Ross" name. The Tragedy of Y is a favorite Queen novel among Japanese readers, and American critics differ only on whether it or X is the best of Lane's cases. Its portrait of the doomed Hatter family is superb, and the solution once again breaks totally new ground. Its least-suspected person has been used since then by other writers, but this was its first use in a detective novel.
The year ended with the publication of The Egyptian Cross Mystery, Ellery's fifth case and yet another dazzling performance. The crucifixion of decapitated bodies made for some bloody murder scenes, but there was method in the killer's seeming madness and one could forgive the gore in the face of some fine detective work and another surprising solution.
In 1933 the third of Drury Lane's adventures was published. If The Tragedy of Z marked a falling-off from the classic stature of the first two books, it was still a very good mystery. Patience Thumm, a police inspector's daughter, narrates the story and though parts of the narration are awkward, one still wishes she could have developed into a series character on her own. The murders here take place near a state prison in upstate New York, and the book features two memorable scenes in the prison's execution chamber. Drury Lane arrives at the killer's surprising identity by establishing four traits or qualifications which he must have, based upon the clues, and then ruling out all but one of the possible suspects. It was a clever technique that Queen would use again. Another plot element, mysterious packages delivered to the victims before their murders, hinting at vengeance from the past, would reappear in Queen's The Origin of Evil, eighteen years later.
The first Queen adventure of 1933 was The American Gun Mystery, in which the murder occurs during a rodeo at a huge Manhattan sports arena. The plot solution involved a clever reworking of a least-suspected person the authors had used before. By this time it was clear to Dannay and Lee that the Queen books were outselling the Ross ones, and Drury Lane's Last Case put an end to that series, much to the dismay of mystery critics and readers.
The Siamese Twin Mystery, the next Queen novel, was something of a departure. There was a smaller cast---a household of people trapped with Ellery and his father on a mountaintop threatened by a forest fire. The solution when it came was without the usual Challenge to the Reader, and seemed far simpler than what had gone before. Still, on rereading the book one appreciates its clever use of dying messages involving playing cards.
The Chinese Orange Mystery, published in 1934, is still remembered fondly by many readers for its bizarre crime scene. The year also saw publication of The Adventures of Ellery Queen, a collection of outstanding short stories which had appeared in various magazines. The best of these, and the most often reprinted, is "The Mad Tea Party." The final book in Queen's early period was The Spanish Cape Mystery in 1935. The novel opens with a kidnapping and, later, the discovery of a naked corpse on a secluded beach. Once again the solution is a surprise.
The next five novels in the Queen canon, influenced by the demands of slick magazines (in which some of them were serialized), show a distinct movement away from the complex plots and pure deduction of the earlier Queens. Some consider these five to be among the poorest early Queens, but they should not be dismissed too readily. Halfway House, published in 1936, is really a transition novel and still included some of the best deduction features from the earliest period. Its story of a man who lived two lives and was murdered in a limbo between his two identities is quite clever. And 1937's The Door Between is a locked-room mystery with a startling double solution. The Hollywood settings of the next two novels, The Devil to Pay and The Four of Hearts, seem somehow to be the wrong milieu for Ellery, and in The Dragon's Teeth Ellery himself is absent from too much of the action, yielding the scene to a charming imposter.
The high point of this second period was undoubtedly the publication of a second short-story collection, The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, in 1940. Especially notable was a short novel, "The Lamp of God," in which an entire house is made to disappear without a trace. The collection also includes four sports mysteries, notably the boxing story "Mind Over Matter."
It was 1942 before the next Queen novel, Calamity Town, appeared. It was worth the wait, and by general critical consensus is one of the two best novels Ellery Queen ever wrote. In this book Ellery abandons the crowded environs of Manhattan and Hollywood for the more relaxed pace of Wrightsville, a small New England town which was to have more than its share of murders in the years that followed. The characterizations in Calamity Town are more rounded, the writing is at its peak, and the novel has a depth lacking in much crime fiction. Ellery, seeking peace and quiet, is drawn into the mystery when murder occurs at a New Year's party. All the principal events of the book take place on holidays, and Ellery finally arrives at the tragic solution on Mother's Day.
There Was an Old Woman, published the following year, marks a brief return to the older Queen style, with nursery-rhyme allusions reminiscent of "The Mad Tea Party." The idea of murder during a duel with pistols is an interesting one, the characters are suitably wacky, and the double solution is satisfying, but the book is not one of the major Queen efforts.
In 1945 Ellery returned to Wrightsville in The Murderer Is a Fox, an underrated novel that has much to recommend it. Here the puzzle involves a twelve-year-old poisoning which Ellery must reconstruct and solve. He does so, brilliantly, using once again a false solution followed by the real one.
In 1948 came Ten Days' Wonder, a major Queen novel and one that continued to attract the attention of critics and filmmakers thirty years after its publication. The religious overtones in this novel are stronger than in any previous Queen book. Again Ellery is in Wrightsville, involved with Diedrich Van Horn, his young wife, and his adopted son. Though the cast is small the book is full of surprises, and includes a double solution. It is, truly, a rich cosmic drama, and a book that has gained in stature with the passing decades. It is not too bold to suggest that future generations might come to regard it as Queen's finest achievement in the novel.
Ellery himself was near despair in the final pages of Ten Days' Wonder, and Cat of Many Tails, published the following year, is a direct sequel. Still questioning his abilities, he is called upon to discover the identity of a Ripper-like strangler who is killing people, apparently at random, on the streets of New York. It is Queen's longest postwar novel and his richest. The portrait of New York in the grip of near hysteria has never been bettered, and the hunt for a killer known only as the Cat is intriguing all the way. The motive, and thus the pattern the killings follow, is one of the cleverest in mystery fiction, and the apparent capture of the Cat, using a young woman decoy, is perhaps the most suspenseful scene in any Queen novel. Once again a second, true solution follows the first, leaving Ellery with further doubts about his reasoning powers. Critics generally agree that Cat of Many Tails and Calamity Town are the two best Queen novels.
After this high point Ellery returned to Wrightsville in 1950's Double, Double. Here a series of killings seems to follow a children's rhyme ("Rich man, poor man"). The final solution, after another false one, is satisfying---though a variation had been used in an earlier novel. It is not the equal of the three previous Wrightsville books, though still a distinctively Queenly novel.
The 1951 Queen novel was The Origin of Evil, which echoes some elements from previous books. Here again the killings are preceded by enigmatic gifts, and the motive lies in the past. Ellery returns to Hollywood in this novel, and it is far more successful than his previous outings there.
The first of Queen's two 1952 books was another short-story collection, Calendar of Crime, with each story revolving around an event associated with a month of the year. All the stories grew out of scripts Dannay and Lee wrote for the Ellery Queen radio series, and two of them, "The Gettysburg Bugle" and "The Dauphin's Doll," are among Queen's best. The 1952 novel was The King Is Dead, a clever locked-room mystery set on the mythical island kingdom of a weapons tycoon. It is Queen's closest attempt at a political thriller, but the plot---complete with a scene back in Wrightsville---seems closer to fable than reality.
The Scarlet Letters, an enjoyable Manhattan romp that follows a blackmail plot to twenty-six New York locations keyed to letters of the alphabet, followed in 1953. The murder and solution, bunched together near the end of the book, provide a plot more suitable for a short story than a novel. But the book is fun to read and gives us our best novel-length portrait of Ellery's secretary Nikki Porter.
In 1954 Queen produced something entirely different, a novel with serious overtones about American life in the 1950s---and the threat of McCarthyism---which also happened to be a first-rate detective story. The Glass Village was Queen's first novel without Ellery or any other series character, and its plot involved a foreign-looking tramp accused of murdering an elderly primitive painter. Johnny Shinn, a returned veteran whose uncle is a judge, solves the mystery in a New England town. Dannay and Lee hoped to attract attention by lifting the book out of the regular Ellery Queen series, but in truth the detective could have been Ellery and the setting could have been Wrightsville. In fact, the novel was dramatized in an Ellery Queen television series with Ellery as the detective.
The year 1955 saw publication of another short-story volume, QBI: Queen's Bureau of Investigation, including "Snowball in July" and other excellent tales. In Inspector Queen's Own Case, published the following year, Ellery is again missing, while his father, retired from the police force, falls in love and solves a mystery involving the murder of a two-month-old baby. Since most of the suspects are older people, the contrast with the extreme youth of the victim is striking. The book has much to say about ageing, suggesting that the Queen canon might be drawing to an end. Indeed, Queen's 1958 novel The Finishing Stroke showed every sign of being his last, from its title to the intricate house-party murder set back in 1929 but not solved until the present. Again there is a series of bizarre gifts, and a neat twist about halfway through the book.
The first of twenty-eight paperbacks under the Ellery Queen name but without Ellery began appearing in 1961, the work of other writers supervised by Lee. But it was not until 1963's The Player on the Other Side that Ellery was back again, in a small masterpiece plotted by Fred Dannay. Once more religion figures prominently in the plot, and the doomed York family reminds one of York Hatter's family in The Tragedy of Y. But the surprise solution here is unlike anything Queen had attempted before.
The following year saw publication of And on the Eighth Day, the last of Queen's truly innovative plots and Fred Dannay's personal favorite among his novels. Taking place during Holy Week of 1944, it follows Ellery as he loses his way while driving across a western desert and stumbles upon a small religious community living by primitive customs. The community views him as a forerunner in the manner of John the Baptist, and when a man is bludgeoned to death during his stay he must solve the mystery. Both the crime and its detection seem simple at first, but the book grows in stature upon rereading.
Early in 1965 Queens Full appeared, a collection featuring a Wrightsville novelette, "The Death of Don Juan," and a surprising least-suspected person in another novelette, "The Case Against Carroll." A new Queen novel, The Fourth Side of the Triangle, offered a series of false solutions, and was followed by 1967's Face to Face, with more echoes of earlier Queen books.
The year 1968 saw a final story collection, QED: Queen's Experiments in Detection, with one of Fred and Manny's special favorites, "Abraham Lincoln's Clue." That year's novel was The House of Brass, a treasure-hunt story featuring Ellery's father and his new wife, with Ellery appearing only near the end. In 1969's Cop Out, Ellery and his father are both absent and the bank robbery plot contains no real detection. Both are back on the scene in The Last Woman in His Life, a novel with a fairly obvious dying-message clue.
The final Queen novel before Manfred Lee's death was A Fine and Private Place in 1971, serving as a fitting end to the Queen canon. The book contains more real detection than its immediate predecessors and has a complex plot built around the number nine. A detailed outline of the next novel, The Tragedy of Errors, was prepared by Fred Dannay but never completed by Lee. It was published along with some uncollected stories in 1999.
Ellery Queen's novels, and the changing character of Ellery himself, reflected the evolution of the American mystery from 1929 to 1971. In much the same way, Fred Dannay's editing of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine traced the progress of the mystery short story, and has done more than anything else to keep it alive and well.
Copyright © 2005 by Edward D. Hoch.
Doug Allyn fans should not miss the seven-time EQMM Readers Award winner's new novel The Burning of Rachel Hayes (Five Star/November 2004). Featuring a series character who debuted in EQMM, Dr. David Westbrook, the book received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said: "Characters and plot are superior, but Allyn mesmerizes when describing Westbrook and a pack of abused greyhounds.... unbelievably heart-wrenching."
A sunny Saturday morning in Des Moines. Quiet little suburban neighborhood west of Pioneer Park, cookie-cutter split levels in muted pewter, clay, Prussian blue. Lawns mowed and raked. Kids playing soccer in the schoolyard.
The black Cadillac Escalade crawled slowly up the street. Brand-new. Smoked windows rolled up despite the heat, the heavy beat of rap music echoing across the sleepy enclave like a warning drum.
Slowing in the middle of the block, the Caddy eased to the curb.
Two men got out. A mountain-sized Mohawk and a copper-skinned black man. Both around forty, black leather car coats, sunglasses. The Mohawk wearing a leather Kangol beret. Bad to the bone.
The black man was more compactly built but just as hard. Shaved head, Chinese characters tattooed on his neck, razor-cut goatee. Glancing at the name on the mailbox, he arched an eyebrow.
"Reverend Alec Malley?"
"His marker doesn't say anything about a reverend. You sure this is the right place?"
"Address is right. Let's ask."
They sauntered up the steps. Moving easily. No hurry. On the porch, the front door stood wide open to the June morning. Canned laughter from a TV cartoon echoed from another room.
The black man rang the buzzer as the Mohawk moved to his right, giving him room.
"Got it, hon." A tall, slender guy, narrow-faced with thinning blond hair, answered the door. Barefoot, white T-shirt, pajama bottoms. His smile faded when he saw them.
"Hi. Are you Mr. Malley? Alec Malley?"
"I'm Reverend Malley. What can I do for you?"
"Mr. Malley, my name's Raven, this is Mr. Pachonka---"
"I know who you are. Let me alone," Malley snapped, slamming the door in their faces.
Shrugging, Raven pressed the buzzer again, holding it down this time. "Mr. Malley---"
The door exploded as a slug blew through it, slamming into Raven, kicking him backward off the porch.
Jerking an automatic from a shoulder holster, Pachonka backed quickly down the steps, covering the door. "Beau? How bad you hit?"
"I don't know. Can't feel my arm---" Both men ducked as a second gunshot echoed from the house.
"To hell with this," Pachonka snarled, charging back onto the porch, gun at the ready. The front door was ajar and he almost fired through it on reflex. Didn't, though. Stepped closer instead, nudging it open with his foot, sweeping up and down the gap with his weapon, two-hand hold.
Malley was down, leaning against the wall, a small nickel-plated revolver in his lap. Pachonka kept his gun on him but there was no need. Bullet hole in his temple, right eye bulging outward from the pressure. Blood and brains sprayed across the rose-petal wallpaper behind his head.
Easing warily inside, Pachonka knelt beside Malley, pressing a blunt fingertip against the carotid artery. Nothing. Gone.
A rustle to his right. Pachonka wheeled, raising his weapon to cover---a frightened woman in a fuzzy pink housecoat and bunny slippers. No makeup, her hair in curlers, holding a dripping spatula in her hand. Blood draining from her face when she saw him.
Pachonka's automatic didn't waver. "Step out where I can see you, lady. Is anyone else in the house?"
"My---my children. What's happened? Who are you?" And then she looked past him. And saw the late reverend's body.
Dan Shea slowed his pickup truck to the posted limit as they neared the village. In the back country he drove with the hammer down. Never in small towns. Local hobby cops love writing tickets. What else have they got to do?
Wolf Woman Bay was like fifty other northern Michigan villages. Isolated, built around a rocky cove on the Lake Superior shoreline. Dying on the vine.
Pretty little place, though. Older houses, well maintained. Narrow streets lined with towering oaks and maples, leaves glowing red and gold in the pale October light.
"What kinda name is Wolf Woman?" Shea asked.
"Ojibwa," Puck said. "Anishnabeg. Stole their country, took the names right along with the land. Ever hear the story?"
"Another time, okay?"
"Fine, stay ignorant. Back in the big timber days, this town was famous for caskets."
"Why caskets?"
"Lot of black walnut in these hills back then. Since the wood doesn't rot, folks figured bodies would keep longer in a black walnut coffin."
"Do they?"
"How the hell would I know? Where's this job?"
"Right down on the harbor, the man said. Major remodel. Good money, maybe enough inside work to carry us till spring."
"Better be. It'll be a long winter, we don't find somethin' pretty quick. Thing is, I worked around here one winter when I was loggin'. Don't remember any houses near the harbor."
"How long ago was that?"
"Sometime after Korea. Mid 'fifties, maybe."
"Jesus, Puck, you really are older'n dirt." Shea grinned, turning right, cruising down a gently sloped main street lined with antique and curio shops, most of them already closed for the season.
Slowed as he approached the harbor. Not much to it. Paved parking lot, couple of cement ramps for lowering small boats into the water.
Not a home in sight. Only a ramshackle old warehouse crouching out over the water on ancient log pilings. Sagging wooden ramp leading out to it, windows boarded up. Eyeless. Weather-beaten sign over the door. Jastrow's Wholesale Fish.
"The job must be someplace else," Shea said, looking around. "Guy said he'd meet us here..." He broke off, his voice drowned by the rumbling thump of rap music. The black Cadillac Escalade pulled up alongside Shea's pickup, the heavy bass rattling his windows.
Raven and Pachonka climbed out. Leather car coats, shades. Raven's left arm was suspended in a blue shoulder sling under his coat.
"Who we got here?" Puck asked. "The freakin' Sopranos?"
Puck and Shea stepped out of the pickup. Both of them North-Country working class. Faded jeans, sweat-stained baseball caps, Carhartt vests, steel-toed boots. Faces rough and reddened from working in the wind. A matched set, blue-collar men, before and after, thirty years apart.
"Mr. Raven? I'm Dan Shea. This is my foreman, Puck Paquette."
"Beau Jean Raven," the black man said. "That's Tommy Pachonka." Nobody offered to shake hands. "So, what do you think? Is it doable?"
"Is what doable?" Shea asked. "You don't mean this old ... fish house?"
"It looks rough, but that's how you guys earn your money, right? I have architectural drawings in the car. Would you like to check them over?"
"Why don't you just walk us through it first," Shea said doubtfully. "Might save time all around."
"Fine. Got a flashlight? Power's turned off in there."
Grabbing a lantern out of the glove box, Puck fell into step with Pachonka, following Shea and Raven across the ramp.
"For openers, you're gonna need a new ramp," Puck said, kicking at a loose timber. Pachonka glanced at him, but didn't reply.
The front door was padlocked and Raven's key didn't seem to fit. Annoyed, he reared back and kicked the door in, nearly tearing it off its hinges.
"And a new door," Puck added.
Inside, the building was musty, dusty and dim. And huge. Puck played his light across the cobwebbed ceiling peak, two and a half stories above the rough wooden floor, massive wooden roof beams the size of tree trunks. Except for a couple of corner offices, the room was entirely open, no partitions.
"Floor's rock solid," Raven said, stamping his foot for emphasis. "They used to store ice blocks in here to preserve the fish, stacked it all the way to the ceiling. Must've weighed thirty, forty tons. The plans call for adding a second level in here, twelve feet up, steel beams bolted to the original building frame for support. The new upper level will be a loft, living quarters with a lot of light and a full view of the bay. Windows all around, skylights in the ceiling. With me so far?"
Shea nodded.
"The bedrooms and baths will be partitioned off, but I want everything else left open to the light. See that little door at the far peak? It leads to a tackle tower outside, built out over the water. It held the winch for lifting the ice blocks. I want that tower enlarged into an office, fourteen foot square, glass walls." He glanced the question at Shea.
"If they winched ice up from it, it should be solid enough for an addition."
"The ground floor will be partitioned," Raven continued. "Weight room, laundry room, storage room, a heated garage, and a workshop for my motorcycles. Still with me?"
"Sure you don't want one of them discos down here while we're at it?" Puck asked drily.
"I'll let you know. Can you do the job or not?"
"Maybe," Shea nodded, scanning the room. "What you've described is complicated but not impossible, Mr. Raven. Pretty damned expensive, though."
"The architects priced it out at two hundred and eighty thousand, give or take ten percent. Does that sound right to you?"
"I'd have to check their paperwork," Shea said, "but it's in the ballpark. Can you play ball in that park, Mr. Raven?"
"I have a little over two hundred thou in savings. I can finance the balance."
"That might be a problem. Loan officers don't like jobs like this."
"Our bank will cover it," Pachonka said.
"You fellas own a bank, do ya?" Puck asked.
"We work for one. Sort of. M.T.C.A. Mohawk Tribal Casino Administration, St. Regis, New York."
"You're a long way from home."
"Only me. Beau Jean is half Ojibwa, so Northern Michigan is home, I guess. He's sector boss for the Midwest. The Financial section will cover anything he needs."
"Must be nice," Puck said. "What kind of work you fellas do, exactly?"
"Collections," Pachonka said with a smile that never reached his eyes. "Write a bum check, cancel a credit card, scam a casino dealer, we'll be around to see you. Some white people shouldn't gamble."
"Some Mohawks shouldn't talk so much," Beau Jean said. "What else do you need to see, Mr. Shea?"
"We'll have to look under the building, check the support structure."
"Let's get to it, then."
Two people were waiting on the shore side of the ramp when they came out. A woman, late twenties, tweed sport coat and jeans, auburn hair cropped short. Pretty, in a tomboyish way. Her companion was taller, elderly, with thinning silver hair, sunken cheeks. Blue cardigan with a matching bow tie.
"Excuse me," the woman called, "we're looking for a Mr. Raven?"
"That would be me," Beau said, crossing the ramp with Pachonka at his shoulder. "What's up?"
If the woman was intimidated, it didn't show. "I'm Erin Mullaney and this is---"
"---Mr. Stegman," Beau finished for her. "Nice to see you again. Still running the supermarket on Montreal Street?"
"No, I'm retired now but---I'm sorry, have we met?"
"A few years back. Maybe thirty. You caught me stealing comic books in your store, slapped me around pretty good. Called me some pretty ugly names. Funny you don't remember. I was the only black kid in town. And I definitely remember you."
Stegman started to shake his head, then hesitated, reading Beau Jean's face. "My God. Raven. You're Mary Raven's ... boy."
"Mary Raven's pickaninny, you mean? That's what people used to call me. Not politically correct nowadays, but I guess those were different times."
"I'm sorry. I---"
"No need to apologize, it was a long time ago. Still, it seems like there ought to be some sort of ... settlement." Reaching inside his coat, Beau took out his wallet, peeled off a bill, and held it out.
"Here, Mr. Stegman. Fifty bucks for all the times you didn't catch me stealing comic books."
"I don't want your money," Stegman said, reddening.
"Then give it to charity," Beau said, stuffing the bill in the older man's shirt pocket. "I always pay what I owe."
Crumpling the fifty, Stegman tossed it aside, then turned and stalked away.
Erin started after him, then whirled to face Raven. "What the hell was that about?"
"History. His and mine. What can I do for you?"
She took a breath, visibly controlling her temper, face flushed, accenting her freckles. "I'm Erin Mullaney, I'm city manager here. The Bay Chamber of Commerce has been planning to convert this warehouse into a combination museum and community center. A magnet to draw people downtown."
"Nice idea. Why didn't you bid when the state put it up for auction?"
"We did, but---"
"---but you went lowball. Tried to grab it up for back taxes plus a dollar, right?"
"We didn't think anyone else wanted the place."
"You thought wrong. Sorry about that."
"Granted, bidding low was our mistake, but the council is prepared to make things right with you, Mr. Raven. We're willing to refund your bid and any expenses you've incurred plus a reasonable profit for your trouble---"
"Not interested."
"Let me finish, please!"
Surprisingly, Beau smiled. A good smile that softened his face. "Okay, sorry, Red. Go ahead on."
"The name is Erin Mullaney, not Red."
"I'm guessing the locals call you Red, right? They're big on nicknames around here. Or used to be."
"Not that I've noticed. There are a number of attractive vacation homes for sale in the area. If any of them interest you, the council can help you arrange financing."
"Very considerate. Of course, they made this offer before they knew who I was, right?"
"I don't see what difference that makes."
"Maybe none. Times change, maybe things are different now. We'll see."
"Then you'll consider the offer?"
"Nope. I don't need financing and I'm not interested in any other properties. I have the one I want."
"But why would you want this ... dump? It's practically falling apart."
"I'm going to put it back together. As for the why part, that's really none of your business, Red---Miss Mullaney. There is one thing you can do for me, though."
"What would that be?"
"This property is zoned commercial. I'll need a variance from the zoning board to convert it into a private residence. I'd appreciate it if you could arrange that for me."
"All things considered, the board might be reluctant to do you any favors, Mr. Raven."
"Then I'll manage without it. My attorney says one rental rowboat tied to the dock will qualify the site as commercial."
"You've already consulted an attorney? Why? Were you expecting trouble?"
"I'm just a careful guy, Miss Mullaney. Like a Boy Scout, you know? Be prepared? When you get careless in my line of work, bad things happen." He patted his sling.
"I wouldn't know. And I don't know what your problem is with Mr. Stegman, but---"
"I don't have a problem with old man Stegman or anybody else in this town."
"Then I wish you'd at least consider the council's offer."
"No deal. Sorry."
"So am I," Erin said, disappointed. "If you change your mind or want more information, here's my card. In the meantime, I'll ask about getting your variance."
"That's mighty white of you, miss."
"Just doing my job. By the way, how did you injure your arm?"
"I was just doing my job. And somebody shot me."
"Why am I not surprised?" Erin sighed. "Nice meeting you, Mr. Raven. Gentlemen. Welcome to Wolf Woman Bay."
Sloshing around in the muck beneath the warehouse, Puck pulled a clasp knife out of his hip pocket, flicked it open, then stabbed upward into the support beam. The blade barely penetrated. Jerking it free, he tried another beam, then a third. At the far end of the warehouse, Shea was doing the same, methodically checking every piling. A dirty job. The beams were filthy, draped with cobwebs and grunge from decades of exposure.
"What do you think?" Shea asked when they met in the middle.
"I think that half-breed Ojibwa up there ain't no Boy Scout. Nor his pal, neither. Look like leg breakers to me."
"I meant about the building."
"I'm getting to that. Building looks okay, sort of. Been here a hundred freakin' years, oughta be good for another hundred."
"So why aren't we happy?"
"This ain't the original building, Danny. See them doubled up pilings under the east wall?"
"I wondered about those. Why are they so much heavier than the others?"
"Because they weren't designed to support a warehouse. They're trestles for a narrow-gauge railway. Timber train. I noticed some old photographs of a sawmill and a bay full of logs up in the office. Thought they were for pretty, you know? But now I'm guessing they're pictures of the original building. You don't run railroad tracks to a fish house. I think this place used to be a sawmill. Probably burned in the Great Fires."
"What fires?"
"The Great Fires, you young pup. Remember the Great Chicago Fire? Mrs. O'Leary's cow and all that crap? Michigan burned at the same time, only one helluva lot worse. Millions of acres went up, more than a thousand people died, maybe fifteen hundred, roasted alive. Pretty goddamn awful."
"Why did it burn?"
"Loggers. Like me and my dad and my granddad. Back when they cut the virgin timber they didn't clean nothin' up. Left the branches and slash to rot on the ground. After the loggers moved on, that slash dried out, turned into tinder. Lightning strike, careless campfire, it exploded like napalm. Lucky the whole damn country didn't burn down."
"Okay, there was a bad fire. So what?"
"Wasn't no timber left after the Fires so they didn't rebuild the sawmill. Built this fish house instead. On the original pilings."
"Even so, they're in great condition."
"You bet they are. They're at least a hundred years old and not a termite hole or dry rot on any of 'em. Know why? Because they're from the virgin forest around here. They're black walnut. Every damn one of 'em."
"My God," Shea said, glancing around. "How many are there? Twenty?"
"Twenty-four, all at least a foot thick. And nowadays they sell black walnut logs by the inch. I don't know what Raven paid for this wreck, but the timbers holdin' it up are worth six, eight thousand apiece. Too bad."
"Why? I don't ... Ah." Shea nodded, getting it. "If we tell him, we can kiss our remodeling job goodbye. He'll tear this dump down, sell off the timbers, and walk away whistlin', a hundred grand ahead of the game."
"That's what he'll do, all right. If we tell him."
"Let me get this straight," Raven said. "You're saying this building's worth a lot of money?" They were in the fish-house office. Dusty desk, layout table. Yellowed photos on the wall beside crossed fish spears, an antique shotgun over the door. North-Country chic.
"The building isn't worth doodly, only the pilings that support it," Shea explained. "They're black walnut. When they built this place there was a lot of it around here but it's a rare wood now, used for veneers and fine furniture. Black walnut logs sell by the inch. This dump of a fish house is sitting on a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty grand worth of timber, give or take."
"Wow. I only paid twenty-two for the place," Raven grinned, glancing at Pachonka. "Seventeen for back taxes plus a five-K bump."
"Looks like you got one helluva deal, Mr. Raven," Puck said. "Tear it down, take the money and run. You want to thumb your nose at this town, it's the perfect way to do it."
"Who said anything about thumbing my nose?"
"I just did. You've obviously got some kind of beef, that's why you lit into that Mr. Stegman, ain't it?"
"He slapped me around when I was a kid. Seeing him again ... maybe I overreacted. But that's got nothing to do with building this house."
"Don't it?"
"No, Mr. Paquette, it doesn't. Now about these support logs. The only way to salvage them is to tear the building down?"
"The only practical way," Shea said. "You might be able to jack up the building, replace the beams with a concrete and steel framework, but it would take a year and eat up most of your profits."
"Are the beams sound the way they are?"
"Appear to be. They'll have to be inspected but they look rock solid."
"Good. Then it's nice to know they're valuable but it doesn't matter. If you want the remodeling job it's yours, Mr. Shea."
"Whoa up, Beau," Pachonka said. "The man just said you can clear a quick hundred grand."
"But only if I wreck the thing I came for," Raven said. "That wouldn't make much sense, would it?"
"You haven't been making sense since that cracker popped you in Iowa. You got nailed in the arm, man, not the head. You need to start thinkin' straight."
"If you don't like it here, Chunk, the keys are in the Caddy. Take off."
"Not me," Pachonka snorted. "Wouldn't miss this for the world."
"What about you, Mr. Paquette? I get the feeling you don't like me much."
"Not much, no."
"Which half bothers you? The Ojibwa half or the black half?"
"Color's got nothin' to do with it, sonny. I've worked with Indians all my life and I soldiered with blacks in Korea. We all bleed red. But I do have a problem with you."
"What's that?"
"The chip on your shoulder. This is rough country up here, Mr. Raven, with some pretty rough characters in it. If you're here lookin' for trouble, you're damn sure gonna find it. If it don't find you first."
Shea shook his head, kissing the job goodbye. But again Raven's smile surprised him.
"I'll bear that in mind, Mr. Paquette. Thanks for telling me about the logs, gentlemen. I know you didn't have to. So. Do you guys want the job or not?"
Two days later, the first trucks rolled in. Flatbeds carrying structural steel, fifty-foot H-and I-beams. Shea's work crew followed the steel in a ragtag convoy of work vans and pickup trucks. A gypsy construction gang, six men plus Puck and Danny. North-Country boys from around Valhalla. Woolly and rough around the edges. Hard workers who knew their trades.
Job one? Tearing out the ramp from the shore to the fish house, replacing it with twelve-inch I-beams, bolted to concrete pylons ashore and the ancient railroad trestle supports over the water.
A few locals stopped by to eye the construction and the crew. One old-timer complained about the stack of steel girders blocking access to the boat ramps. Most left without saying much, a rare thing in a part of the country where common courtesy is still common.
First official visitor? The village constable. Old enough to vote but not much more. Looked like a kid dressed up to play sheriff: tan uniform, brown jacket, oversized baseball cap. Adolescent acne. Found Shea, Puck, Raven, and Pachonka in the fish-house office, scanning the architectural drawings.
"Who's in charge here?"
"I'm Beau Jean Raven, it's my property. What can I do for you, Officer?"
"I'm Constable Chabot. Those men out front work for you?"
"They work for me," Shea said. "What's the problem?"
"Half the parking lot is still city property. Your men are taking up most of the slots."
"A few are still open and I haven't noticed anybody using them."
"Maybe they don't like the company. There's another lot up the street. Move some of those vehicles there, all right?"
"Sure. Anything else?"
"Nothing official, but some of the town folk are wondering about the boat ramps. You've got them blocked off. I understand they're on your property now, Mr. Raven, but they're the only access to the bay at this end of town. Are you going to keep them closed?"
"I haven't given it much thought."
"They have to stay blocked for now," Shea said. "It's a construction zone. What happens afterward is up to Mr. Raven."
"Who hasn't given it much thought. Okay, I'll pass that along. Meantime, keep the parking lot clear, understand?"
"No problem."
"You'd best think hard about keeping those ramps open for the locals," Puck said after the constable left.
"Why? There's another park with ramps at the far side of town. They still have free access to the bay."
"You're not seeing it the way they do. When we finish this remodel it'll be a showplace, a three-story home in the heart of the town shoreline. It'll have a great view of the bay, five miles out at least. And your house will be visible just as far. Man goes out to do a little fishing, get away from things. He looks up, first thing he sees will be your place. It's like you're making the bay your own private pond, Mr. Raven. Or is that the point?"
"The point is, I'm turning an eyesore into something special. It's got nothing to do with anybody but me."
"It ain't that simple. Look at these old pictures on the wall. The bay full of logs from one end to the other. Most of these folks came here then to work the timber. After the virgin forest was logged off and the Fires took the rest, they stuck it out, fished the lakes for a living. Now that's played out, too. But they still hang on, doing what they can to make a life in this country, raise their kids. An outsider comes in, buys up---"
"Outsider?" Raven snapped. "Mister, I've been gone awhile but I was born in this town. And you don't have to tell me squat about fishing. My mother worked in this building. Standing at a long table with a half-dozen other women, mostly Ojibwa, cleaning fish with big-ass scissors. Snip off the head, zip open the belly, scoop out the guts with your thumb. Her hands always ripped up by fish bones. Don't tell me how tough life is around here, pops. I know all about it.
"Know what a gutbucket man is? End of the day, all the fish heads and guts are dumped in a big tub. Somebody's gotta row that tub way the hell and gone out in the bay, dump it downwind, away from the town. The gutbucket man. Filthy job. Ojibwa job. My grandfather's job. Everybody else is headed home for supper, we're puttin' out in the bay with a stinkin' tub of fish guts. Gramps half drunk---" Raven broke off suddenly, turning away, massaging his injured shoulder.
"Look, I don't want anything from these people, but they've got no favors coming from me, either. I just want to wake up in my house, make a fresh cup of coffee, watch the sun climb out of the bay. If anybody's got a problem with that, tough rocks."
"It's not just their problem, Mr. Raven," Shea said, "it's yours, too."
"How so?"
"For openers, we aren't likely to get that commercial-zoning variance you want from the city council."
"I can manage without it."
"Sure you can. And if the local building inspector gives us trouble we can appeal his rulings to the state board, but it'll cost time and money. It'd be a lot simpler to make peace, try to get along."
"Hate to say it, but the cracker's making sense, Beau," Pachonka said. "Sooner you finish this dump, sooner we get back to real life. Do a deal."
Pausing in front of the old pictures of the bay, Beau shook his head. "Man. I wonder if it was this complicated a hundred years ago?"
"It was worse," Puck said. "Loggin's a tough life."
"Yeah, I bet it was," Beau said, shrugging his leather coat on over his sling.
"Where you goin'?" Pachonka asked.
"To cut a damn deal."
"With that redhead?" Pachonka grinned. "Dirty job but somebody's gotta do it. Want company?"
"No."
"Didn't think so."
City hall was a Main Street storefront with a sign in the window. Wolf Woman Bay, Village Office. A bell jingled as Beau stepped in. Small room, knotty-pine paneling, a Formica counter. Erin Mullaney alone at her desk. White blouse, blue skirt. Prim as a nun. A pretty nun. Scowling over a spreadsheet. On seeing Beau, her frown deepened.
"Mr. Raven, what can the village do for you today?"
"What makes you think I need something?"
"Because you're not the kind of guy who drops by to shoot the breeze. What's the problem?"
"I don't have one, you do. The boat ramps on the harbor. I own them now. I'm told the locals want them kept open."
"It would be convenient. The public's always had the use of those ramps."
"Not anymore, sorry. I prefer to keep them private, but---" He held up his hand, stifling her objections. "---since the construction crew will be repaving the ramp to my building anyway, I can arrange to have them build new boat ramps on the public parking lot next-door. We can split the cost fifty-fifty. Does that sound fair?"
"More than fair," she said warily. "And in return you'd want...?"
"Zero. Nada. Consider it a peace offering. All I want is to be left alone."
"Odd attitude for a guy building a house in the middle of a town park."
"Anything I do to that building will be an improvement. Hell, dynamite would be an improvement. So is it my building you don't like, or just me?"
"It has nothing to do with you. We had plans for that building. A museum, a gift shop for tourists---"
"Get over it. I have plans of my own."
"Plans for a home? Or for getting even?"
"Getting even? Whoa up, where's that coming from?"
"I've heard stories about your childhood here---"
"These people don't know squat about my childhood. Know what they used to call me? Mary Raven's lil' pickaninny. My dad was an airman from the base at K.I. Sawyer, killed in Vietnam. No other blacks here, so I was the town joke. After my mom got fed up and took off, I fought my way through foster care till I was old enough to enlist. Three tours in the Corps: Beirut, Iraq. Then a security job with the Mohawk Nation. All the time saving every damn dime so I could live where I want, the way I want."
"Even in a place where you're not welcome?"
"Lady, I collect gambling debts for a living. Nobody rolls out the welcome mat for me, but nobody runs me off, either. We can all get along or not, that's up to you people. Either way, I'm here to stay. Get used to it."
"Mr. Raven?"
He turned, his hand on the door. "What?"
"You're right. It's not your fault our plans for the fish house fell through. We should have worked harder to make them happen. As you did. Your offer to build new boat ramps is very generous. I'll take it to the council. But to be honest, I doubt they'll accept it. People are pretty upset."
"Whatever."
"But for what it's worth, not everyone's unhappy you're here."
"No?"
"No. You've made my job a little more complicated but at least it isn't boring. I'll let you know what the council decides."
"Right. Do that. And ... thanks."
"No charge. Anything else?"
"Just one thing. Used to be a guy here named Tobias Gesh. He wrote to me when my grandfather died. Know him?"
"Old Toby? Sure. Still lives in the same place."
"Which is?"
"A cabin west of town on Old Reservation Road. The gravel ends about three miles out, but just keep going. Can't miss it. Figures you'd want to see him."
"Why?"
"Because the locals call Toby the last wild Indian. Of course, that was before you showed up. Have a nice day, Mr. Raven."
Mullaney was right, he couldn't miss it. But getting there wasn't easy.
After a mile or so, the dirt road narrowed to a two-rut trail barely wide enough for the Escalade. It took Beau nearly forty minutes to crawl back to Gesh's place in low gear.
Erin had called it a cabin but it wasn't, exactly. It was a hogan, a traditional Ojibwa log hut, sod-roofed. Seemed such a natural part of the forest that it could have grown there like a wild mushroom amid the dark pines surrounding it. Cords of firewood were stacked neatly along one wall. Antlered deer skull nailed up over the door.
Stepping out of the black Cadillac, Beau tapped the horn. "Mr. Gesh?"
"Around back."
Following the voice, Beau circled the lodge. Old guy out back, seamed face dark as walnut, flannel shirt, jeans, moccasins, buckskin vest, shaggy mane of gray hair. Sitting on a stump, scraping the fat off a beaver hide with a bowie knife. Other furs stretched on hoops were drying in the sun. Muskrat, coyote.
"Mr. Gesh? I'm---"
"---Mary Raven's kid," the old man finished for him. "Heard you were in town. Pull up a stump, set yourself. Got anything to drink?"
"No, sir, sorry. Didn't know I was coming."
"Just as well. What can I do for ya?"
"For openers, I wanted to thank you for writing to me when my grandfather died. It meant a lot."
"But not enough to bring you back for his funeral."
"I was stationed in Beirut at the time, got your letter a couple of weeks late."
"Figured it was like that. Well, for what it's worth, Frank didn't feel no pain. Died like he lived, drunk as a skunk. Got trashed out of his skull one night, never woke up. For guys our generation, it was natural causes."
"What about his funeral? Do I owe anybody for that?"
"Nah, the tribe paid for it. They got plenty of casino money and it didn't amount to much anyway. Just me and a couple old-timers. Your grandfather didn't have many friends. From what I hear, you're not so different. Why'd you come back, anyway? Ain't no casinos around here."
"Maybe that's why. I'm done with casinos. Seen too much of the harm they can do."
"Never cared for 'em much myself," Gesh said, flicking a dollop of fat off the blade of his knife. "Not natural for Native people to earn that way. Playin' white man's crazy games."
"Do you know if my grandfather ever heard from my mother? Where she went to? Anything at all?"
"No." He paused, frowning. "He never said nothin' about Mary one way or the other. But it wasn't like we was big pals. Just knew each other a long time. Are you tryin' to find her?"
"Why should I? She gave me up."
"That was pretty common back in them days. Before the casinos, the Anishnabeg people had nothin'. Whites made our kids cut their hair, educated 'em in white schools. Made 'em ashamed of what they were. Nobody wanted to be Ojibwa back then. Now everybody does. Even black guys."
"Is that how you see me?"
"You shave in a mirror every morning. What do you see?"
"I'm not sure anymore. When I was a soldier, I traveled, saw a lot of the world. Seems like I've been moving most of my life. I need a place of my own now. A place I belong."
"And you think you belong in Wolf Woman country?"
"I was born here."
"I was born in a hospital in Manistique. Don't figure I belong there."
"You know what I mean." Raven glanced around, taking in the woodland clearing, the scent of hides drying on hoops, woodsmoke rising from the hogan. Remembering other scenes like it. Hazy memories from long ago. In other lives.
"Yeah, I guess I know what you mean," the old man admitted, squinting up at him. "And I guess you got a right to come back here. But as far as belonging? If I was you, sonny, I wouldn't try puttin' that to no vote."
Fish-house office: Beau, Shea, and Puck.
"So?" Shea asked.
"I gave it a shot," Beau shrugged. "The lady doubts it'll fly."
"Like sendin' Attila the freakin' Hun to a tea dance," Puck groused. "Now what?"
"We'd best find out how tough they're going to make it," Shea said. "Pull two men off the ramp and dig out around a couple of the support pilings. I'll ask the county building inspector to check 'em. If he's gonna jack us around, we might as well know up front."
"And if he does?" Beau asked.
"Those supports may be a hundred years old but they'd hold up the Sears Tower. If he won't approve them, we can file a complaint with the Bureau of Construction Codes, ask for a state inspection. We'll win, but it'll take time."
"How much time?"
"Depends. Might take a month for the inspector to show up."
The next afternoon, Shea was installing headers for the new door when a white Chevy van pulled into the lot. Lanky older guy in coveralls and a painter's cap clambered out, carrying a clipboard.
"Mr. Shea? I'm Howard Donakowski, township building inspector. Understand you've got some supports you need checked."
"Right. Thanks for coming out so quickly." Shea tossed aside his wrench, waving Puck over. "They're down here."
"Do tell," Donakowski said sourly, following Puck and Shea down the bank into the soft sand beneath the fish house, now neatly raked. "Any idea how old these timbers are, Mr. Shea?"
"Older'n any of us, but in better shape," Puck answered.
"Speak for yourself," Donakowski grunted, kneeling down beside one of the two beams Puck had dug out, prodding the concrete base with a scratch awl, then jabbing the timber as he rose. "The bases are original Portland cement. Gotta be a hundred freakin' years old."
"Still rock-solid, though." Shea said.
"That one seems to be." Donakowski conceded, crossing to the other, repeating the process. "You only dug out two. I count ... twenty-four."
"We checked the others down to the ground, they're all in perfect shape. We'd replace 'em if they weren't."
"Damn straight you would. I wouldn't pass them otherwise," Donakowski finished filling out the check sheet. Signing it, he tore off the small green sticker at the bottom and gave it to Shea. "You're approved."
"Thanks," Shea said, surprised, checking the number on the sticker against the sheet, to be sure it was in order. "We appreciate it."
"You should. I'll tell you flat out, Mr. Shea. I don't like this project of yours. An outsider buyin' up the only dock this end of town to build a fancy condo? Lived here all my life, like the harbor just fine the way it is.
"If it was up to me, I'd chickenshit this job every step of the way. Make you dig out every damn one of those pilings, check every timber for plumb, exactly ninety degrees, you know the drill. But I've got my orders. Keep your work up to code, you won't have any problems with me. See you boys around."
"Right," Shea said, giving Puck a what-the-hell look. "Thanks for coming out."
"He didn't hassle you at all?" Raven said when they told him. "Why not? What's up with that?"
"The man said he had his orders," Puck shrugged. "Must be small-town politics involved. Same families probably been runnin' this place for a hundred years. Maybe you've got a friend here you don't know about."
"Not likely. Well, maybe one. So what does this mean to the project?"
"Katie bar the door." Puck grinned. "If we're gonna be inside before the snow flies, it's pedal to the metal from here on, full speed ahead."
As soon as the new ramp was complete, Shea backed the flatbed across it and unloaded the I-beams into the warehouse. Inside, the crew began bolting them together like an Erector set, stiffening the original structure and creating a support base for the new second floor.
On the roof, a three-man crew began stripping off the old shingles, leveling or replacing uneven boards, marking it off for skylights and modern shake-style architectural shingles. Shea was pushing the crew hard, ten-hour days, sometimes more.
No complaints. The men were used to the grind and happy to collect the overtime pay, knowing the first winter gales could sweep down anytime. Nobody wanted to be skating around on a roof or wrestling steel beams in the wind at ten below.
The first week blew past in a blur. Men cursing, riveting the building's new steel skeleton into place, trash trucks dropping off dumpsters which the roofers promptly filled, suppliers delivering materials for the first phase of construction: rough lumber, shingles, skylights for the roof, rolls of Tyvek insulation wrap to seal the building, prepping the walls for cedar siding.
Then? Trouble. Shea and Puck found it when they arrived at first light. Paint thrown against the side of the building, lumber stacks tipped over. Nigger spray-painted over the old Jastrow's Fish Wholesale sign.
The constable was already leaving when Raven and Chunk rolled in.
"What's all this?" Raven asked.
"Kids, according to the local junior G-man," Shea said.
"What kids?"
"He doesn't know," Puck said. "He's gonna look into it."
"How much damage?"
"Nothing serious. The paint they slopped around doesn't really hurt anything, we're residing the building anyway. I'll have my guys pick up the lumber and paint over the racial slur---"
"Leave it. It doesn't bother me."
"It bothers me," Puck said.
"Whatever. What do we do about this?"
"I'll move a cot into the office," Shea said. "Keep a man here at night."
"No need for that. I can sleep here."
"That's not a good idea, Mr. Raven. You've got a bum wing and I don't think kids did this."
"Neither do I. That's why I want to be here if they show up again. Don't worry about my arm."
"It's not just the arm," Puck said. "If they know you're here alone they may decide to have a go at you."
"Good. Let's get back to work. Winter's coming."
That afternoon, Raven was in the fish-house office scanning delivery lists when there was a knock on the door.
"Got a minute?" Erin Mullaney asked, stepping in. She was wearing a somber blue business suit and a look to match.
"What's up, Red?"
"I stopped to let you know about the council meeting last night. They didn't grant your zoning variance. Sorry."
"Gee, what a surprise. No sweat, I'll have a rental boat tied to the dock by the end of the day."
"It may not be that simple."
"Why not?"
"We had a bigger turnout than usual last night and things got a little out of control," she said, avoiding his eyes. "A lot of people spoke against your project. They said a private home on the harbor will wreck the bay view and that the council should have stopped you. There were threats of a recall election. And some talk about taking more direct action."
"Okay."
"You don't seem concerned."
"Actually, I've already been notified. Somebody painted 'nigger' over my door last night."
"My God!"
"Hey, it's just a word. It's not the first time I've heard it."
"I can't believe what's happening to this town. Before I came here I worked in Detroit six years. There were so many problems, it was like shoveling smoke. Poverty, unemployment, politics. Coming up here was the answer to a prayer. Scenic little village dreaming on the lakeshore, no crime, no pollution. I thought I could really help improve people's lives."
"Maybe you will."
"Not after last night. When I brought up your offer to build new boat ramps I was shouted down."
"They weren't interested?"
"I never got the chance to find out. Mr. Stegman's oldest son runs a sawmill on the north shore of the bay. His crew was making most of the noise and they're a pretty rough lot. People were intimidated."
"Thanks for trying anyway. And for talking to Mr. Donakowski."
"Who?"
"The building inspector. He was here a few days ago and gave us a pass, though he wasn't too happy about it. I assumed you leaned on him."
"No, I haven't seen him."
Puck rapped on the door and stuck his head in. "Mr. Raven? You'd better get out here. We got visitors and they ain't the welcome wagon."
Raven started to follow, then turned back to Erin. "You'd best stay here."
"I'm not afraid of them."
"It's still better for you if they don't see you with me. Wait here, okay?" He hurried out without waiting for her answer.
Outside, the parking lot was filling with vehicles, SUVs and oversized pickups with contractor cabs and dual rear wheels. Engines roaring like a NASCAR practice lap, they formed up in a phalanx of Detroit iron facing the fish house.
Someone blared a horn, and in an instant the others followed suit, raising a thunderous din that echoed across Wolf Woman Bay like an L.A. gridlock.
On the fish-house deck, Puck glanced at Shea but neither man said anything. Overhead, the roofers quit working, eyeing the scene below.
Pachonka took a long look at the crush in the parking lot and shook his head, smiling.
"Guys, I think I hear my mama callin.' Have fun, Beau Jean. See ya."
"Right," Raven nodded as Chunk walked coolly to the Cadillac Escalade, climbed in, and drove off.
Gradually the din slackened, then halted altogether as the men began piling out of their vehicles. A rough dozen loggers, flannel shirts, canvas pants, hobnailed boots. No weapons in sight, but considering the odds, they didn't need any.
"Cedar savages," Puck said. "That's what the locals call 'em."
"An insult or a compliment?" Raven asked.
"Depends on who says it," the older man said grimly. "I wouldn't use it if I were you."
"But you could say it?"
"Hell, I'm one of 'em. You want me to talk to them?"
"No point, Mr. Paquette. They're not here for you."
"Which one of you clowns is Raven?" Big guy, a step in front of the rest. Burly, bearded, shaggy hair shot with gray. Tweed sport coat over faded jeans. A fashion plate compared to the others.
"That would be me." Beau Jean stepped onto the ramp, alone.
"I'm Rich Stegman, I own a sawmill on the north shore. I understand you gave my dad a hard time."
"I gave him fifty bucks. Figured I owed it. If you don't like it, give me a fifty back, we'll call it even."
"You always were a mouthy little punk. But you ain't a kid no more. I'd kick your ass for ya but it looks like somebody beat me to it. Or is that sling a city-boy thing, like carryin' a purse?"
"It's real enough. But I can put my other arm behind my back if it makes you nervous."
"Another time. And it'll have to be some other place. Because you're leaving."
"Not likely. I just got here."
"We know the city council offered to buy this dump, but we figure they're a bunch of politicians, so maybe they didn't explain the situation clear enough. That's why we put together this here citizen's committee. To make sure you understand how things are."
"I think I get the picture."
"No, you don't, or you'd already be gone. This is our town, Raven. Our bay. We don't want any houses here, especially when you're only building it to give everybody the finger."
"Not true. It'll be a nice place. I've offered to build the village new launching ramps---"
"Screw that. We don't want anything from you. But we're not chiselers. We took up a collection, came up with fifty grand. Cash money. You'd better take it while you can."
"Not interested."
"No reason he should be," Puck said, stepping onto the ramp, the decorator shotgun from the office cradled casually in his arms. "The building's worth two or three times that in salvage alone. Maybe more."
"What are you talking about?" Stegman demanded. "Who the hell are you?"
"My name's Dolph Paquette, Puck to my friends and everybody else. I'm a workin' man, like you boys. Spent a couple winters loggin' these hills back in the day. I work construction now with Danny Shea. This is our job site. Know what we found here? The substructure holdin' up this old fish house is black walnut, timbers a foot thick. Or maybe you knew that already?"
"No," Stegman said, glancing uneasily at some of the others. "We didn't know anything about it. But if that's the problem, we can work something out---"
"We tried that," Puck said, cutting him off. "Me and Danny already told Mr. Raven he could make a bundle of money by tearin' down this rattrap and sellin' it for scrap. He said no. Just wants to build his house. So that's exactly what we're gonna do. Why don't you boys get on back to your jobs, let us get on with ours?"
"And if we don't?" One of the loggers stepped forward. Barrel chest, bow legs. Built like a bear in Carhartt coveralls. "You plan on using that shotgun, old man?"
"This? Nah, I found it in the office. Don't even know if it works. Some chickenshit weasel messed up our job site last night. If I knew who did it, I'd find out if this thing shoots or not. Wasn't you, was it?"
"Don't know a thing about it."
"Glad to hear it. Anybody else know who trashed our site? No? Good. We'll be addin' some crew in a few weeks. Any of you boys need work over the winter, come see me." Puck turned and sauntered back toward the porch, giving Raven a "Come on" look. With a shrug, Raven started to follow.
"Wait a minute," Stegman said. "We're not finished."
"Sure we are," Raven said. "You made your offer, I'm not interested. Have a nice day."
"Hey, Raven! Hey, pickaninny!" the bear in the Carhartts yelled, pushing past Stegman. "Remember me? Tay Maggert? I used to jump your mama. Five bucks a hump."
"Really?" Raven said, facing him. "I'm surprised. You look like little boys would be more your speed."
"You sonovabitch!" Maggert roared, charging him, swinging wildly.
Raven held his ground, waiting. Ducking under a haymaker, he lunged upward, headbutting Maggert full in the face, lifting the big man off his feet, kicking his legs out from under him as he fell. Maggert hit the deck with a thud. Raven was on him like a cat, his knee jammed against Maggert's chest, fist cocked, ready to finish him.
No need. Maggert lay writhing on the ramp, blood gushing from his ruined face, his right leg twisted at an odd angle. Beau rose, facing Stegman. "How about it, sport? Wanna try your luck? Anybody else?"
Dead silence, except for Maggert's moaning.
"Take your friend and go," Raven said. "If you come back, better pack a lunch. You'll be in for a long day."
A few minutes after the parking lot cleared, Pachonka came rolling back in the black Escalade. Taking a rifle case out of the backseat, he came trotting up the ramp.
"Nice you could drop by," Puck said sourly. "Fun's over."
"I know, watched it from higher ground a few blocks up the street. Through a scope," he added, patting the gun case. "That was a pretty gutsy move with that old shotgun, pops. It's broken, you know."
"I thought it worked pretty well," Raven said drily. "Thanks for stepping in, Mr. Paquette."
"Didn't do it for you," Puck said. "If I'd known Cochise here had your back---ah hell, now what?"
Siren howling, strobes flashing, a village patrol car roared into the lot, screeching to a halt at the ramp. Constable Chabot scrambled out, tucking his nightstick into his belt.
"Mr. Raven, you're gonna have to come along with me."
"For what?"
"Assault, for openers. Tay Maggert's on his way to the hospital with a broken nose and his kneecap kicked halfway off."
"I was on my own property and he came at me. I just defended myself."
"Mr. Stegman tells it differently."
"I'll bet he does," Erin said, stepping out onto the deck. "But we all saw it and you work for the village, Constable, not for the Stegmans."
"There were a dozen loggers with him," Puck said. "If you don't wanna take our word for it, ask them. They may work for Stegman but I doubt they'll lie for him."
"I'll question them later. Right now, Mr. Raven's coming with me."
"I don't think so," Chunk said quietly. "You have no warrant and no cause to make an arrest. So maybe you'd better do like the man says and question the other witnesses. Because nobody's going anyplace with you. Unless you think you can take me, too."
Pachonka's hands were in plain sight. There was no obvious threat and Chabot was armed. But he read Chunk's dead eyes. And that was enough.
"Maybe you're right," he said, swallowing. "I'll talk to the others, check out your story. But if I don't like the answers I get, I'll be back."
"I'll be here," Beau said.
"You two aren't fooling anybody, you know," Chabot said. "I ran your names through the Law Enforcement Intelligence Network. You've both been arrested a half-dozen times."
"Wrong," Pachonka corrected. "We've been detained for questioning a few times. Neither of us has ever been arrested for anything."
"That's a lot of questions."
"They must have liked our answers." Pachonka shrugged. "Because here we are."
"You were involved in a shooting a month ago in Iowa."
"Jesus, Constable, can you read your own damn reports? Beau was the victim in that shooting. We ring the guy's buzzer, he fires a round through the door that puts a hole in Beau, then blows his own brains out. How is that our fault?"
"Maybe it's not," Chabot conceded. "Maybe what happened here today wasn't, either. But you two aren't just innocent bystanders."
"Never said we were," Pachonka said.
"This isn't over," Puck said after the constable left. "Those boys came out on the short end today but they'll be back. The way they see it, the bay is theirs. If we're gonna work here through the winter, we need to iron this out."
"I offered the town new ramps," Raven said. "They aren't interested. What else am I supposed to do?"
"Lemme think on that. Meantime, maybe you'd better think about seeing a doctor."
"I'm all right."
"No, you're not. You're bleedin' all over your damn shirt."
"Oh my God," Erin said. "Do you have a first-aid kit?"
"In my truck," Puck said. "I'll get it."
"Do you know what you're doing?" They were in the office, Raven watching as Erin quickly rifled through Shea's red emergency kit, taking stock.
"I'm a licensed practical nurse, paid my way through grad school working in the Samaritan Hospital E.R., Detroit. Take off your shirt and sit on that table."
Beau thought about cracking wise but the set of her mouth was so grim he passed. Eased out of his shirt instead. After wiping her hands down with disinfectant pads, Erin turned to face him. And hesitated, eyeing his tattoos. And his rock-solid frame.
"What?"
"You work out."
"Sometimes."
"A lot," she countered, peeling back the adhesive strips holding the surgical pad in place. "Most guys with tats like yours are fresh out of jail. My. Your wound is more like a gash than a puncture. What did he shoot you with?"
".38 Smith. Punching through the door deformed the slug, slowed it down."
"Lucky you," she said, dabbing up the blood oozing around the plastic clips that held the gash closed. "Looks like it hurt."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And why did the gentleman shoot you?"
"He didn't say. I suppose he was afraid."
"Of what you'd do to him?"
"We couldn't do anything to him. Some states don't recognize gambling debts at all and taking losers to court is bad publicity for the casinos."
"Then what can you do?"
"Realistically? All we can do is talk. Sit down with the guy, figure out his situation. If he wants to pay, we can work out an arrangement. If he doesn't, we can have him barred from every casino in the country. For most deadbeats, getting barred is a blessing."
"And it takes two guys like you and Pachonka to deliver this blessing?"
"Intimidation is part of our game," he admitted, meeting her eyes. "We want the deadbeats to pay. They owe the money to the Native people and compared to what's been stolen from us, it's spit in the ocean. When they win, we pay them. If they lose, we expect them to make it good. But if they welsh, we don't have all that many options."
"If that's true, why did he shoot you?"
"He gambled away money he'd embezzled from his church. He was facing disgrace and probably jail time. So he shot me and then killed himself. With his wife and kids in the next room eating Cheerios. Nice business I'm in."
"What he did wasn't your fault."
"Maybe not. But like the man said, I wasn't an innocent bystander, either."
"This isn't the first time you've been shot," she said, touching a scar on his rib cage.
"Actually, it is. That one was mortar fragment in Beirut. Got these two when our Hummer hit a mine in Iraq."
"And these?" she asked, frowning at a thin arc of keloids along his collarbone.
"Cigarette burns," he said evenly. "After my mom took off, I bounced around in foster homes. Some were pretty bad. Beirut was better."
"You're a beautiful man, Mr. Raven. These scars are ... a crime."
"I didn't put them there."
"No. But I've got a feeling you earned most of them. The bleeding looks worse than it is. You tore one of your clamps loose, but the wound's still closed. The next time you're mad at somebody, try beating them at chess."
"I'll do that." As she straightened, he reached out, cupping her cheek with his palm, reading her eyes. She met his gaze just as openly. Curious. Unafraid.
"Is something happening with us?" he asked.
"I think so," she said quietly. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Why did you come back? Really? From what I've heard, your childhood was miserable here. Why is this building so important to you?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"I definitely won't unless you tell me. Please. I want to know."
"All right, maybe I owe you that. When I got shot in Iowa, I was in the hospital for a week. Nothing to do but lie there. And think. What Maggert said about my mother---"
"That was vile."
"But it might be true. All I know about her is what I can remember from when I was six or seven. From the odds and ends I recall, I think she probably was a prostitute. And maybe a little slow, mentally, I mean. I know we were dirt poor because we were staying in the fish house with my grandfather. The gutbucket man.
"I guess it was pretty grim, but it didn't feel that way to me. I used to dream a lot. Had a little battery radio, and I'd hide up in the tackle tower, read comic books, listen to music. It was like my own private castle. I'd look out over the bay and daydream about the places I'd go someday, the things I'd do. And I was happy.
"I didn't understand racism. They'd call me pickaninny or red nigger and laugh, and because they were laughing I thought they liked me. That I'd done something clever. So I'd laugh too and play the fool....
"Later, after my mom ran off and I got kicked around in foster care, I remembered this place as a special time in my life. Maybe the best time. Subscribed to the local paper, followed the high-school teams, birth announcements, obits. Wolf Woman Bay was like my ... virtual hometown, I guess. The only one I had.
"So I'm laid up in that Iowa hospital, thinking. A man killed himself and nearly killed me. Didn't know who I was, didn't care. Shot me just for showing up. And I realized my life wasn't anything like I dreamed it would be. Nothing.
"I knew from the paper the old fish house was for sale. And I got this idea that if I could come back here, start over somehow, turn my old make-believe castle into a nice home, maybe I could start my life over, too. Do something better with it. Stop being a guy people shoot just for showing up. Pretty funny, considering how things are working out."
"It's not funny at all, it's a wonderful dream, Beau. Thank you for telling me."
"But?"
"I can't help it. I hate what your dream is doing to my town."
"I only want to build a house."
"I know, and you have every right to do it.... I just wish you could do it somewhere else."
"Sorry, but I can't. Thanks for patching me up."
"No problem, Mr. Raven. You'll be fine. Until the next time."
"Gonna live?" Pachonka asked, when Beau and Erin rejoined the others out front.
"For now."
"Good. Shea here is making a goodie run back to Valhalla to pick up some gear. I'm gonna catch a ride with him to the airport. I'll leave the Cadillac and the gun case with you. What do you want me to tell the boss?"
"Say I said hello."
"You're not coming back to work, are you?"
"I don't know. I'll be busy here awhile. Tell her I'll call in a week or so."
"Assuming you're still breathin'. Okay, I'll tell her. I'll see you, brother."
Beau nodded. "Hope so."
Pachonka swiveled in the seat, taking a long look back over the town as Shea's pickup climbed the shore road above Wolf Woman Bay. He caught Shea's glance as he turned back.
"What?"
"You tell me. I think your pal Raven's in a peck of trouble."
"So do I." Pachonka shrugged. "Might even get himself killed."
"And you're bailing out? I thought you two were friends."
"We are. Been together since the Corps. I got him the job collecting for the Mohawk Nation casinos and we work good together. But that's over. He's changed. Still tough enough for the work, but not mean enough. Not anymore."
"Looked mean enough to me. That logger outweighed him by forty pounds. He took him one-handed, put him in the hospital, and barely broke a sweat."
"Beau Jean's a bad-ass, no doubt about that. But he could've hurt that guy a lot worse. And he should have. A month ago he would have stomped him into dog meat. Put the fear of God in the others, maybe they let him alone."
"Why didn't he?"
"That thing in Iowa messed him up. It was pretty damn ugly. Beau on the sidewalk bleedin' out with the guy's kids screamin' we killed their daddy."
"Well, didn't you? I mean---"
"Mister, all we did was ring that prick's doorbell. It was the wrong he did that killed him. But if he hadn't blown his own dumb-ass brains out I damn sure would've done it for him. You have to pay what you owe in this life."
"I guess that's true."
"Damn straight it is. Only Beau doesn't see it that way now. Laid up too long. Too much thinkin' isn't healthy in our game. Especially for a guy like Beau. I don't even think he's strapped anymore."
"Strapped?"
"Packing a gun, man. We're licensed to carry everything but a freakin' bazooka. When that cracker came at him Beau never even made a move for a piece. That thing in Iowa's got him so messed up I think he'd rather take a bullet than kill anybody else, even to save his own life. Or mine. You can't help a man like that. He'll get himself killed, and anybody near him. You had half a brain, you'd bail out, too."
"Nobody's ever accused me of being smart."
"So you're sticking? Why? You only met Raven a few days ago. You don't owe him anything."
"Sure I do. He's my client, so we're in this thing together, like it or not. And I gave him my word."
Pachonka snorted. "No offense, Shea, but I'm Mohawk, full blood. You can probably guess what we figure a white man's promise is worth."
"I can't answer for anybody else. Only me."
"You want to throw in with Beau Jean, fine by me. I like white men who gamble. Good for my business. But take some advice. Don't lay too much on the line. Right now Beau's a real risky bet."
Neither man spoke the rest of the trip. But as Shea turned into the airport drive, Pachonka swiveled to face him.
"One last thing. My line of work, you get pretty good at reading people."
"I expect so."
"That bunch of crackers today? There was something wrong about them."
"How do you mean?"
"I'm not sure, that's what bothers me. They were definitely ticked off because Beau's an uppity half-breed building a nice house in their town. But there was more to it. Must have been a dozen of 'em, they could have stomped us all. Why didn't they? Why did they try to buy him off instead?"
"I don't know."
"Neither do I, and I don't like it. Know what's weird? I had the feeling they were afraid of him. Or afraid of something. Beau missed it 'cause he's all wrapped up in his dream house, so I'm telling you. Maybe that ol' hard-case partner of yours can figure what's up with those boys. He's practically one of 'em."
"I'll ask him."
"Do that," Pachonka said, climbing out, getting his flight bag out of the back. "Thanks for the lift, Mr. Shea. For what it's worth, Beau Jean's a bud so I appreciate you standing by him in this thing. Just don't stand too close."
The next morning, first light, Beau Raven came putting across the harbor in a small wooden motorboat. Idling down the outboard, he coasted to shore beside the fish house. Shea was on the roof with Puck, checking the new felt and the alignment of the first rows of shingles.
"Little late in the season for fishin'," Puck yelled. "Where'd you get that junker?"
"Bought it up the shore. We'll keep it tied up with a For Rent sign on it. A real small one---" He broke off, startled by a splash fifteen yards offshore.
"What the hell?" Splinters leapt out of the roof a few feet from Shea.
"Get down off there," Beau yelled. "Somebody's shooting!" The first echo of gunfire rolled across the water like distant thunder as Raven scrambled out of the boat. Shea was already dialing 911.
"Did you actually see anybody firing at you?" Constable Chabot asked doubtfully.
"Hell no," Shea said. "It was coming from the far side of the bay. Come on up top, I'll show you the damn bullet holes in the roof."
"Oh, I'm sure you've got a few dings up there. This is hunting country. We get stray-round complaints every year, nothing unusual about it."
"Balls," Puck said. "This wasn't no accident, son. He ranged us. First shot barely missed, next three didn't."
"I admit it might look like that, but it could just as easily have been some guy sighting in a rifle who overshot his backstop. And even if it wasn't, take a look at the far shore. Forty square miles of timber and only a few logging trails in and out. We'd never find anybody in there."
"Especially if you don't look," Beau said.
"Look, Mr. Raven, I got myself and two part-time officers to cover the whole township. Normally, we manage just fine. An occasional B and E in a vacation home, drunks on Saturday night. No real trouble. Until you and your Mohawk buddy showed up. Now it seems like every damn day there's some new hassle. So I'm sorry your building caught a few stray rounds---"
"Stray?" Puck echoed.
"That's how it's going in my report unless I get some indication that it's anything more."
"When one of my men stops a slug, you mean?" Shea asked.
"You knew what this job was when you took it, Mr. Shea," Chabot shrugged. "Maybe you should ask for combat pay. I'll look into this, but I wouldn't expect too much. Probably just a hunter."
"That kid had one thing right," Puck said after Chabot left. "He's not gonna find anything."
"What do we do?" Shea asked. "I can't keep men working with lead flying around."
"Give them the afternoon off," Beau said. Grabbing several short pieces of scrap one-by-two lath, he scrambled up the ladder to the roof with Shea right behind.
"Show me the bullet holes." Flicking open a butterfly knife, Raven quickly whittled down the ends of the lath into round dowels. Shea pointed out the gouges and Raven plugged a lath into each of them. When he'd finished, the three sticks pointed back across the bay like accusing fingers.
"There," Raven said. "He was somewhere just beyond that little notch. Probably fired from the beach. Must be twelve hundred yards. Pretty fair shooting. Know anybody around here who can shoot like that, Mr. Paquette?"
"Hit a building at twelve hundred yards? Around here, grab any six guys off the street, half of 'em could make that shot. As I recall, there's a logging road that goes through that area."
"Think you could find it?"
"You bet. And I believe I'll bring my old 30/30 deer rifle along. Just in case we run into any more stray rounds."
"What makes you think he fired from the beach?" Shea asked. They were in Raven's Escalade, snaking along a rutted trail through the hills on the northern shore.
"The first shot splashed wide right. He corrected for windage with the next round so he must have seen the first one hit. To do that he'd need a decent scope and a clear view of the fish house. Had to be on the beach or just above it."
"It's a long shoreline."
"And a pretty one. Odd name, though."
"You don't know about the Wolf Woman?" Puck asked. "I thought you were Ojibwa."
"Half. I think my mom told me the Wolf Woman story but it's been a long time. Tell it."
"Story goes, back in the Ojibwa days, a woman lost her husband and went mad with grief. Tribal custom was to protect crazy people, but the woman was beautiful, and in her madness, she would dance naked, drive the young bucks wild. Naturally, this made the village wives unhappy, so one day while the men were off on a hunt, the women drove the madwoman into the forest.
"A pack of wolves found her there, dancing. But instead of ripping her apart, the boss wolf carried her back to his den, made her his mate. But her wolf pups were mad like their mother. Foaming at the mouth, attacking any man they met. To this day, you still see 'em in these hills, sometimes."
"Rabies," Shea said.
Raven nodded. "Every Ojibwa tale has a point. You see a wolf foaming at the mouth, you remember the story, get him before he gets you."
"Kinda like we're doing today," Puck agreed. "How will you know the spot?"
"When we can look back at the fish house and see the tips of the three dowels I stuck in the bullet holes, we'll be there."
"You seem to know a fair amount about shooting at folks."
"It used to be my trade, Mr. Paquette. Like construction is yours. Rough guess, it's not far now."
Leaving the Caddy in the middle of the trail, they shouldered through wind-blasted clusters of jack pines down to the stony shore, then turned north along the beach. Coppery autumn light glittered off the gentle swells of the bay. With Puck carrying his ancient Winchester and Raven scanning the far shore with binoculars, they could have been a hunting party from the last century. Or the one before that.
"Right here," Beau said, lowering the binoculars. "All three rods are lined up. We must be near the place. See any signs?"
"Up there," Puck gestured with the rifle, trudging up the slope to an old stump at the edge of the tree line. Picking up an empty brass cartridge, he squinted at the base, then tossed it to Raven. "I can't read it. What is it?"
"Seven-millimeter Magnum." He sniffed it. "Fresh. Good eyes, Mr. Paquette."
"Yeah, but that's about all we're gonna get," Shea said. "The logging road is about forty yards farther on. The shooter parked there, came down through the trees same way we did."
"Probably used this stump for a shooting rest." Raven nodded. "It's a perfect spot. Which makes him a local, right? Only somebody familiar with the area would know it was here."
"Not necessarily," Puck said. "There are clearings like this all over these hills. Black walnut stumps, most of them a hundred years old and more."
"How can you tell how old they are?"
"See the gouges across the top? Two-man crosscut saw. The scorch marks mean it was dropped before the Great Fires burned through here back at the turn of the century. This one was a big tree. Near two foot across. Won't see walnut that size again in this life."
"If it was cut a hundred years ago, why hasn't the forest grown over it?"
"Walnut sap is toxic, carries a poison called juglone. Kills bugs, grapevines, anything that might injure a tree. Gives it growing room. Nature's insurance policy. So our shooter didn't have to know about this particular stump, he could have stopped anywhere."
"Are there any tire tracks on the trail?"
"Not anymore," Shea said. "A skidder's been through here, a big log hauler. If there were any tracks, it wiped them out."
"Unless our guy was driving it," Puck countered. "I see more skidder tracks farther along the beach. Somebody must be logging near here."
"Logging what?" Shea asked. "There's nothing but second-growth poplar and scrub pine. Trash trees."
"Maybe we should ask," Beau said. "Didn't Stegman say he owned a sawmill on this shore?"
Stegman's Great Northern Custom Cutting was nowhere near as grand as its name. A backwoods sawmill housed in a converted cow barn with a half-dozen smaller outbuildings used for storing or seasoning lumber, an office housed in a squat, double-wide trailer. Several late-model pickup trucks in the parking lot. Some of the same trucks they'd seen at the fish house.
Puck wandered off to look over the operation. Beau and Shea trotted up the office steps, rapped, and stepped in.
Rich Stegman was alone behind a desk, blue chambray shirt, woollen vest. And an attitude.
"What the hell do you want? If you came to buy lumber, forget it. I'd burn it before I'd sell you a damn stick."
"Nice to see you, too," Beau said. "Somebody fired shots at my place this morning. Thought you might know something about it."
"You've got a ton of nerve, coming out here. Tay Maggert's still in the hospital. They have to operate on his knee."
"I'll send him a card. What about those shots?"
"We hear shots all the time. Poachers bang away at anything that moves in these woods. Probably just a stray round."
"These weren't strays. Somebody fired from the beach less than a mile from here. He used a stump for a rest and he was aiming directly at my place. We even found the brass he left behind. Seven-millimeter Magnum."
"A lot of guys hunt with that round. Common as dirt up here."
"Really? Do you own a seven-millimeter, Mr. Stegman?"
"I own three. This is gun country, Raven. NRA heaven. And like I said, seven-mils are---"
"---common as dirt, right. Why don't we step outside, Mr. Stegman?"
"Look, I don't want any trouble---"
"No trouble. I just want to show you something."
Rising warily, Stegman followed Beau and Shea out. Beau strode to the Escalade, pulled Puck's ancient 30/30 out of the backseat. Stegman paled, backing away.
"Relax, Mr. Stegman, I'm not here to shoot anybody. But I do need a likely target. How about that weather vane?"
"Hey, wait a minute---"
Racking the rifle one-handed, Beau shouldered it and fired, three times in as many seconds, punching holes through the copper rooster atop the barn. The third round blew it off the roof. The gunfire brought loggers charging out of the building in their goggles and hard-hats. But everyone froze when they saw Raven with the rifle.
"Sorry about your bird, Mr. Stegman. I'll admit, clocking a copper rooster is nothing to crow about, even one-handed. Weather vanes can't shoot back. But from now on, my building can. I was a sniper in the Marine Corps, trained to punch out a playing card at two thousand yards. A man's a much bigger target, even across a bay. Fair warning, the next weasel who uses my building for target practice will go home in a box."
"Why tell me?" Stegman blustered. "I told you I don't know anything about it."
"You're head of a citizen's committee, right? I'm counting on you to get the word out. Before somebody gets hurt. Send me a bill for the rooster."
"That was quite a show you put on back there," Puck said. They were in the Escalade, driving back to town.
"Let's hope it works."
"They got the message," Shea said. "They may not like you, Mr. Raven, but nobody wants to get killed over a building. If that guy this morning was really serious about hitting somebody he could have set up closer."
"How about you, Mr. Raven?" Puck asked. "Were you serious? About shooting back, I mean."
Raven glanced at him but didn't answer. Which was answer enough.
Shea turned to Puck. "Where were you, anyway?"
"Took a look around, talked to some of the guys. Used to work in a backwoods operation back in 'sixty-one. Fifty-inch buzz saw powered by a Ford 8N tractor. Stegman's got himself a real high-tech operation here. Brand new Poulan laser-guided blade. Can zip through sixty-inch oak or take your appendix out. Everybody tricked out in fancy respirator face masks. They look uncomfortable as hell but it must pay pretty good, judging from all that shiny Detroit iron in the parking lot."
"You don't miss much, do you, Mr. Paquette?" Beau said.
"Your line of work and mine have somethin' in common, Mr. Raven. Careless people ain't around long. Know what else I saw? Two skidders parked beside the barn. Engine was still warm on one of 'em. And I saw a dead owl. A snowy."
"Somebody shot a snowy?" Shea asked. "They're protected, aren't they?"
"Nobody shot this owl, it was just dead on a sawdust pile. Quite a few dead critters around. Mice and such."
"Stegman probably puts out rat poison and the owl ate the wrong rat."
"Could be." Puck nodded. "Damn shame, though. Snowies are beautiful birds. Not many of them left. Sons of bitches shouldn't leave their damned poison lying around like that."
Raven caught the edge in Puck's tone and glanced curiously at the older man. Puck was staring out the window, lost in thought.
So Beau let it pass. Which was a mistake.
By midafternoon, construction was back in full swing. Roofers were shingling and laying down new felt while the ironworkers continued assembling the structural beams inside.
Raven disappeared for a few hours. When he came back, he started toting boxes into the office.
"What's all this?" Shea asked.
"A cot, sleeping bag, a little space heater. I'm moving in for the duration."
"Sounds cozy," Puck said. "Want some company?"
"No. It's too dangerous now. I don't want anybody else getting hurt."
"Neither do I, Mr. Raven. That's why I'll be here, too. And the next time we have trouble, I'd better do the talking."
"Meaning what?"
"You're a scary fella, Mr. Raven. Stomped that logger into the hospital and blew away Stegman's weather vane one-handed. You've also got some baggage from growing up in this town. And kind of a short fuse. Bad combination."
"Maybe you're right," Beau admitted. "Fair enough, Mr. Paquette, the next time we get company, you can do the talking. Just be ready to duck."
"Sonny, I been ready to duck since the first day I met you."
Raven snapped awake. Listening. Checked the clock. One-forty hours. Across the darkened office, Shea was snoring softly on his cot. Puck was in a chair by the window in his long johns, silver hair awry, watching a sliver of moon coasting like a galleon through the clouds over the bay.
"What's that noise?" Beau asked quietly.
"Engines, I think, somewhere across the water. Nothing to do with us."
"What kind of engines?"
"Couple of trucks, maybe a motorboat. And a skidder."
"You mean that big log hauler? Why would it be running at two in the morning? Do loggers work at night?"
"Never heard of any who did. Job's risky enough by daylight. Big trees droppin', chain saws ripping away an inch from your boots. Bit like your trade, Mr. Raven. On any given day you can come home from work in a bag. Even worse in the old days. All hand labor back then, double-bitted axes and saws. Bullwork. Cold, too. They only logged in the winter."
"Why?"
"Needed snow to skid the big timber out of the woods. Used horses to drag 'em to the nearest frozen stream. Come spring, the flood would carry the logs down to the bay. Thousands of 'em. Like that old picture over the layout table. Log rafts as far as you can see. Know when that was taken? May of eighteen ninety-six. Just before the Great Fire swept through. Burned the forest, the town, this old sawmill. Quarter of a million acres burned down to the ground that year. Three hundred dead. Before my time, of course, but my granddad said the land looked like Hiroshima after the bomb. Nothing but ashes for hundreds of miles. Railroad tracks twisted like pretzels, whole towns erased like they'd never existed."
"Must've been God-awful."
"Damn straight. But afterward, the people came back, the land came back. And a hundred years later, here we are."
"I get the feeling you're trying to tell me something, Mr. Paquette."
"Maybe one thing. A lot of folks around here are kin of the same families who burned out in 'ninety-six. Grandsons, granddaughters. Bad as those times were, they toughed it through, put things back together. Different breed than folks in the cities down below. Harder, maybe. But good people all the same. You give 'em time, I believe they'll come around."
"I've never been much on patience."
"I've noticed that," Puck said. "Go back to sleep, son. I've got the watch."
The wind woke Raven at first light. Whining and keening like the rabid wolves of the Wolf Woman tale. An early November gale, mild by north-country standards, dark waters roiling like a great beast shifting in its sleep, temperature dropping like someone opened a freezer door.
Raven found Puck at the rail, scanning the horizon with his binoculars.
"Nice little blow," the older man said. "Might see some early snow this year. Come on inside, I'll rustle us up some breakfast."
"What were you looking at?"
"Nothing. Just the storm."
"Mind if I look?" Taking the glasses from Puck, he scanned the horizon, slowed, then stopped cold. "Something's moving out there. What is that? An overturned boat?"
"Not likely. Not in this weather."
"Likely or not, it's there," Raven said, offering him the binoculars, "look for yourself."
"Son, I couldn't see that far if you gave me a damn telescope. But nobody in his right mind would be boatin' in a storm."
"Someone was out there last night. We heard them."
"We heard something, but sound can be tricky across the water. That engine noise could've been ten miles off."
"Or maybe somebody's in big trouble. Either way, I'm going to find out. Feel like a boat ride, Puck?"
"Hell no. Let it be, Mr. Raven. It's dangerous, it's none of our damn business, and there's nothing out there anyway."
"Isn't there?"
Beau kept the outboard throttled down, putt-putting slowly across the bay, sliding over the oily swells instead of trying to buck through them. Scattered rain squalls blew past every few minutes, cutting visibility, shadowing the far shore. Ten minutes into the run, even the fish house receded into a vague outline glimpsed through the drizzle.
He'd used a twisted pine on the far shore to fix the overturned boat's position but the thrust of the waves kept driving his small craft off course and he lost sight of the marker tree in the rain. Tried to correct by steering into the wind. Twenty minutes out he guessed he must be near the place but couldn't see anything.
Shifting the outboard motor to neutral, he rose slowly, keeping his knees relaxed, gliding over the waves like a surfer. Spotted the shape. Roughly forty meters off in the mist.
Not a boat. A log. Big sucker, maybe twenty feet long, couple of feet thick, its stubby nose rising and falling with the swells. Something black and bulbous appeared to be lashed to it a third of the way along its length.
Squinting into the wind, Beau tried to get a better look---and a bullet ripped past his ear!
Reflex! Beau dove hard to the left, kicking the boat out from beneath him, hearing the crack of the rifle as he plunged into the waves.
Floundering beneath the surface, he felt the icy grip of the bay surging through his clothing, chilling him to the bone.
And clearing his head. Gunfire. And that was no stray round. Only missed him by an inch. He tried to remember which way he'd fallen, to orient himself. Couldn't think, running out of air...
He surfaced, gasping, frantically looking around for the boat---
Damn! It was already twenty yards away, drifting with the wind, motor idling. Leaving him exposed---
Sucking in a quick breath, he ducked under again, just as a second slug smacked into the surf over his head. Dove deeper, kicking hard, swimming with his free hand, trying to catch up with the little boat. Couldn't.
Surfacing again, he gulped down air like a seal, then dove again. No shot. Hadn't showed himself long enough. But the shooter would be waiting the next time he surfaced, timing him. Had to get behind the damned boat!
Swam harder, desperately seeking the outline of the boat overhead. Finally spotted it. Too far. No! Not if he could hold on just a little longer ... Ten seconds, twenty. His world was going red. Had to breathe!
Exploding out of the surf, he gagged down a mouthful of water instead of air. Coughing, flailing around---his fingertips brushed the boat.
Grabbing the gunwale, he hung on, hacking up lake water, clearing his lungs. Felt the boat jerk as a bullet punched through it, smashing out a fist-sized exit wound a foot from Beau's head.
Whoa! Couldn't stay here. Had to get aboard and make a run for it. If the shooter popped it at the waterline or trashed the motor he was dead meat out here. Could he haul himself over the gunwale with one hand? No choice. Had to. But even as he braced himself to try, he hesitated, his mind flashing to the images he'd glimpsed below when he was looking for the boat.
He knew he only had seconds to get clear but ... Damn it!
Sucking in a deep breath, he let go of the gunwale, slipping beneath the waves again, swimming down and down into the dark, trying to make sense of what he'd seen.
Then he was kicking hard for the surface. Bursting out of the surf, clutching the rail, using his momentum to roll himself aboard. Felt a bolt of agony as he landed hard on his injured shoulder. Sweet Jesus!
Grabbing the steering arm, he cranked the throttle wide open, nearly throwing himself overboard again as the boat wheeled into the surf, bucking wildly through the waves, engine howling, charging headlong into the gathering storm.
"A log?" Shea said. "You went out in the middle of a blow to look at a damn log?"
"Didn't know what it was when I went out," Beau said, teeth chattering as he sipped scalding coffee. "Puck and I heard engine noise from across the bay last night. Thought it might be an overturned boat. But it was only a log. Big one, though, twenty feet long, couple of feet in diameter. With a float attached to it."
"What kind of float?"
"Inner tubes, I think, to make it buoyant. Didn't get a close look at it. Somebody started shooting at me from the far shore and I had to bail out."
"Stegman?"
"Couldn't see, I ended up in the water. Between the mist and the surf he couldn't see me any better or I might not be here. Kept diving, got behind the boat, then made a run for it in the rain."
"You're lucky you made it back," Shea said.
"Funny, I don't feel very lucky. More disappointed. Because you're not surprised at what I found out there, are you Mr. Paquette? You knew what it was."
"No."
"What are you two talking about? What's out there?"
"Not just one log," Raven said. "Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I couldn't see very far when I ducked under the water, but I could see enough. The bottom of the bay is littered with them."
"What logs?" Shea demanded. "From where?"
"The last cutting before the fire of 'ninety-six," Puck explained. "They were felled that winter, floated down to the bay in the spring, filled it from shore to shore like that picture in the office. They were there waiting to be cut when fire took the town and the sawmill. By the time folks moved back, the logs had settled to the bottom. No way to get them out in those days. Been down there ever since."
"Until now," Raven said.
"That's why Stegman's men wear respirators and animals are dying near the sawdust piles." Shea nodded, getting it. "They're salvaging black walnut logs out of the bay. Did you know about this, Puck?"
"Not for certain. From the skidder tracks on the beach, the dead owl, Stegman's loggers driving new trucks, I guessed what might be going on."
"But you didn't warn me," Beau said.
"I told you it was none of your damn business and it's not," Puck said bluntly. "They may be outside the law, but it's a lousy law. Down in Lansing they claim every damn thing in the lakes belongs to the state. Easy to say when you've never swung an axe. Old-time loggers busted their backs puttin' those timbers into the bay and now their grandsons are takin' 'em out again. They aren't stealing anything that isn't already theirs. They aren't hurting anybody."
"Until they started shooting at me."
"To be honest, I never thought they'd go that far."
"Because they're all such fine people?"
"No, damn it, because it's stupid! Half the folks in town must know what Stegman and his loggers are doing. Nobody rats 'em out because they're local and they're risking their necks for every log they salvage. I can understand them trying to run you off to protect their living. But a killing would be crazy. It'd bring the state police down on 'em and their secret wouldn't last ten minutes. Folks won't lie to the law to cover a murder."
"Not even mine?"
"Hell no! You don't think much of these people, do you, Mr. Raven?"
"Let's just say we've had different life experiences. If your tan was a little darker, maybe you'd have a clue."
"Ever occur to you when you show up packing an attitude and an automatic, folks won't roll out no red carpet no matter what color you are?"
"What's wrong with my attitude, Paquette? Too uppity for you?"
"Put a lid on it, both of you!" Shea snapped. "We're all in the same crapper now and barking at each other won't help."
"Not exactly the same," Raven countered. "Nobody's shooting at you."
"They were yesterday and they might try again tomorrow unless we come up with something. Puck, if you had this thing figured, why the hell didn't you say so?"
"I thought Raven squared things away out at the sawmill. These guys are loggers, not gangsters. He put the fear of God into 'em. I figured they'd talk it over and try to cut a deal."
"What kind of a deal?" Raven asked.
"Your place has a perfect view of the bay. You'd spot their operation sooner or later and they know it. When running you off didn't work, I expected 'em to offer you a piece of the action to keep quiet. I never thought they'd try to kill you. It doesn't make sense."
"Maybe they're dumber than you think."
"No," Shea frowned, "he's right. Why risk murder when you can solve the problem for a few bucks? The constable took you for a lowlife because of your arrest record, and anything that kid knows, the Stegmans know, too. They should have tried to buy you off."
"Maybe they figured a bullet would be cheaper. Especially for a half-breed."
"I don't believe that," Puck said stubbornly. "I'm a logger, a cedar savage like those boys. I don't feel that way and don't think they do, either. We got no royalty up here, nobody gives a damn about your pedigree. A man's measured by what he does, not who his daddy was."
"Okay, Mr. Paquette, let's say your logger pals are all stand-up guys, not a racist prick in the bunch. I don't think so, but for the sake of argument, if the color of my skin isn't the problem, then what is?"
"I don't know," Puck said slowly. "The only thing that killing you would change is this house. It would go back to being a museum, the way they wanted in the first place."
"That can't be it," Shea argued. "Nobody shoots anybody over dinosaur bones or old arrowheads."
"But as a museum it would have stayed pretty much as it was," Puck mused. "Maybe it's something about the way we're remodeling it---"
"No, the trouble started even before they knew what my plans were."
"But they could have made things a lot tougher," Shea said. "Why didn't they?"
"How do you mean?"
"That building inspector could have stopped us cold. If he'd condemned the supports, an appeal to the state would've taken months and cost a bundle. He even admitted he wanted to jack us around---"
"---but he had his orders," Raven finished. "You're right. If they're trying to run me out, why did Donakowski give us a pass?"
"It doesn't make sense," Puck said. "Unless..."
"What?"
"Maybe he wasn't giving us a break. Maybe he just didn't want us digging around those timbers."
"Why would he care?"
"I don't know. Unless there's something down there they don't want us to see?"
Raven eyed the older man a moment, then both men nodded.
"Dig them out," Raven said. "Every damned one of them."
They didn't have to. Shea pulled the men off their jobs, passed out shovels, and set them to digging. Intersecting circles around each support base beneath the building, four feet deep. At the sixth column, halfway back, one of the men called Shea over.
"Is this what we're looking for?" A bone angled up through the soil about thirty inches down. A femur. Possibly human.
"We'll need to see more of it to be sure," Shea said grimly. "But be very careful."
Using spoons and a whisk broom, they cleared away more soil, revealing a rib cage, still wrapped in a rotted blanket. And a cheap red plastic purse tucked beside the remains.
Shea fished it out gingerly, checked inside. A few loose coins, lipstick tube, a wallet with three dollars. And a thirty-five-year-old driver's license. A faded photo ID of a young dark-haired woman smiling shyly at the camera
Mary Beth Raven.
Swallowing, Shea turned to hand the purse to Beau. But he was gone.
He found him in the inner office, his weapons case open on the display table. An AR-15 assault rifle, matte black. A blunt, Benelli Tactical pump shotgun with a rear pistol grip. Two Glock handguns, both automatics. Checking the retainer spring on a magazine, Beau slid it into the pistol butt and slammed it home.
"What are you going to do?" Shea asked.
"What I do best. Collect what's owed."
"From whom? You don't know who did this."
"The hell I don't---"
A hard rap on the door. Erin Mullaney stepped in.
"Puck called me, told me what you'd found. I'm so sorry---"
"We both know who's been pushing me since I got here," Beau continued, ignoring her. "That inspector who wanted to jack us around said he had his orders. I thought maybe Erin cut us a break but she didn't. I only know one other person in this town with enough juice to order an inspector to give us a pass."
Shoving the automatic into his belt in the small of his back, he picked up the short-barreled shotgun. Holding the slide, he racked the action one-handed, then began loading the magazine, pushing blunt red shells into the tube with a solid thunk.
"You can't really believe Mr. Stegman caused your mother's death," Erin said.
"I don't know. Neither do you. But I'm sure as hell going to ask him." He racked the shotgun again, chambering a round.
"With that?" Erin asked.
"Lady, it's a tool of my trade. Never shot anybody with it. Never had to. You'd be surprised how talkative people get when they're starin' down a barrel, seeing their future."
"If that young punk constable spots you with that thing, he'll panic and start shooting," Puck said.
"Then he'd better not miss."
"Or what?" Erin asked. "You'll kill him? You don't want that."
"Don't tell me what I want! That's my mother down there! Thrown away like garbage, all these years. I'm gonna settle up for that, so you'd better decide which side you're on."
"You know I'm with you," Erin said. "All the way. That's why I won't let you screw up like this. You had a gun in Iowa. It didn't solve anything there. It won't here, either. What do you want, Beau? To know the truth? Or just to get even?"
"Both," he said. But he left the shotgun in the case when he snapped it closed.
A handful of townspeople were already gathered in the parking lot as word of the discovery spread. Beau stalked out of the fish house amid a buzz of murmurs and whispers, but no one asked him anything. One look at his eyes and people stepped aside.
He started for his Cadillac, then veered off, leaving it, heading for Main Street. The town was only four blocks long and he knew exactly where he was going. Erin walked beside him with Shea and Puck only a step behind.
A few locals followed, more joining in as they marched through the village. Shopkeepers, retirees, curious, concerned. They'd grown to a fair-sized crowd by the time Raven's group arrived at a proper, white Victorian home at the end of the block. Trotting up the steps, Beau hammered on the door.
George Stegman opened it. Gray man in a gray cardigan and reading glasses, holding a book that slipped from his fingers when he saw Raven and the crowd in the street behind him.
"What do you want?"
"We found my mother's body, Mr. Stegman. Buried under the fish house. What happened to her? How did she get there?"
Stegman paled, backing away, the bluish hue of his lips becoming darker by the moment. "Why do you---I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you do," Beau said, pushing the elderly man farther back into his living room with two fingertips. "This is your town, Mr. Stegman, you know everything that happens here. And you know about Mary Raven." Stegman's knees bumped against the sofa and he sat down.
"I make a living reading people, Mr. Stegman," Beau said softly, leaning over him, their faces only inches apart. "You've been carrying the truth like a cancer in your belly all these years. But it's worse since I came back, isn't it? Give it up. It'll take your pain away."
"I don't---" Stegman swallowed. "Look, I can give you money---" He coughed, trying to catch his breath. Didn't work. His coughing became a wrenching paroxysm, convulsing him. Then he stiffened, eyes rolling up, face going blue.
"No, you don't!" Beau roared, grabbing Stegman's shirt, pulling him upright. "Don't die on me, old man! You don't get off that easy!"
"Beau! Let him go! You're killing him!" Erin shouted, pulling him off. Cradling Stegman in her arms, she eased him down on the sofa, wiping the foam from his mouth.
Beau loomed over her, eyes dark as a thunderhead.
"Back off!" Erin snapped. "Leave him to me. He can't tell you anything if he's dead!"
Beau straightened as the front door banged open and Constable Chabot burst in.
"What's going on here?"
"Mr. Stegman's having some kind of a seizure," Erin said. "Call an ambulance."
"What did you do to him?" Chabot demanded, pushing Beau backward.
"Nothing, yet."
"Damn it, I knew you'd be trouble---"
"Constable!" Erin roared. "Are you freaking deaf! This man's having a seizure! Now call an ambulance and give me a hand!"
"You stay put!" Chabot ordered, glaring at Beau. Yanking the cell phone from his utility belt, he hastily tapped 911 and reported the emergency. When he looked up, Raven was gone.
Puck trailed Raven back to the fish house. Found him kneeling beside the remains, trying to clear away the soil with his fingertips.
"There's no need to dig any further, Mr. Raven. It's a crime scene now. The state police will be here in the morning. They'll see to it."
If Beau heard him, he gave no sign. Kept scraping away the soil.
"Mr. Raven---"
"Thirty years," Beau said quietly. "Alone down here in the dark. In this muck. Nobody even looked for her. Not the police. Or my grandfather. Not even me. I don't want to leave her this way another night, Mr. Paquette. Not another hour. But I can't dig very well with one hand. Will you help me? Please?"
"Sure," Puck said, kneeling beside him. "You bet."
It was nearly dusk when Erin got back from Valhalla. Beau was alone in the inner office. Sitting beside the layout table. A single candle the only light.
His leather coat was lovingly folded around the mortal remains of Mary Raven. It made a surprisingly small bundle.
"Where is everybody? I thought Shea and Paquette were staying here?"
"I sent them away. Wanted to be alone with ... my mom." He nodded at the bundle. "How is Mr. Stegman?"
"He was alive when I left. They're medevacking him down to Ann Arbor by helicopter. I don't think he'll make it."
"Did he tell you anything?"
"Almost everything. We talked in the ambulance. He knows he's dying. Afraid to face final judgment, I guess. But ... Please don't make me tell you, Beau. It's ... ugly."
"It's all right," he said, reaching up, covering her hand with his. "It can't hurt her anymore. What happened?"
"There was a party. Rich Stegman and some of his crew were drunk, decided to ... visit Mary. From what Stegman said, there was nothing unusual about that."
"I know what she was. Go on."
"Anyway, something went wrong. Maybe they were too drunk or there were too many, but Mary tried to stop them. She started screaming. And..." Erin took a ragged breath. "Somebody hit her with a bottle. Just to shut her up, Stegman said. But he must've hit her too hard.
"They tried to revive her, but couldn't. So Rich ran and fetched his dad. Mr. Stegman said Mary was dead when he got there. So they buried her under the fish house. The next day Mr. Stegman told your grandfather she'd run away. Gave him money to take care of you---"
"Please. He paid him off to keep his mouth shut. My grandfather didn't give a damn about anything but his next bottle and Stegman knew it. Who hit my mother?"
"He said he doesn't know, Beau, and I think it might be true. He wasn't there. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. Thanks for trying. And thanks for backing me off the old man at his house. I was out of control. I don't know if you were trying to save my ass or his but you did the right thing."
"No charge. Actually I've grown rather fond of your ass. And the rest of you, too. Do you mind if I sit with you awhile?"
"No. I'd like that."
They sat without talking for a time, the only sound the rising wind whining and rustling around the old house.
"I remember the night it happened..." Beau spoke so quietly Erin wasn't sure if he was talking to her or himself. "She sent me away. To my hidey-hole up in the tackle tower. She'd done it before when she had a ... visitor, you know? Boyfriends, she called them. But I woke up and ... I heard her crying.
"Sometimes she made noises when she was with a man and ... I didn't want to know about it. So I turned up my little radio. Pretended it was the Wolf Woman and her pups howling."
"Maybe it was only the wind. Like tonight."
"No. The bay was like glass. It wasn't the Wolf Woman. It was my mother. Screaming."
"You were only a kid, Beau. You couldn't have done anything."
"Maybe not. But I didn't try. I didn't even goddamn try."
"What will you do now?"
He chewed that one over a moment. "Nothing."
She glanced at him curiously.
"I won't have to do anything. They think I came back to get even. Like an avenging angel or something."
"Didn't you?"
"No. I didn't know about any of this. After I got decked in Iowa, I was just trying to find my old hidey-hole again. If they'd let me alone, I would have laid up here awhile, then moved on. None of this had to happen."
"And now?"
"I won't have to find them," he said, rising. "They'll be coming for me. You'd better go."
"Not a chance."
"I mean it. I can't do what I have to if you're---" He froze, listening. "Get over against the wall. Right now."
A single rap on the door. "Mr. Raven? It's me." Puck slid inside, closing the door behind him.
"I told you to stay out of this."
"We thought about it. Stopped at a bar up the street. Heard some talk. About burning this place and you along with it. Danny's trying to locate the constable. I thought you ought to know."
"Okay, you've told me. Thank you. Now I want you to take Miss Mullaney and go."
"It's too late for that," Puck said, over the rumble of pickup trucks pulling into the lot. "This is my building, too. I'm in."
"No, you're not. You stay inside and keep her safe, you understand? And stay the hell away from the windows."
"Raven!" Rich Stegman yelled from the parking lot. "Come on out. Your time's up!"
Beau paused a moment to touch the small bundle on the table, then stepped through the door, closing it carefully behind him.
Outside, the fish house was awash in light, four pickup trucks in the lot, headlights and roof-rack halogens erasing the night.
The same men as before, but not so many. Five loggers in a loose line. Armed, this time.
Stegman looked as if he'd just come from the mill: flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. Unshaven, haggard, red-eyed. Holding a rifle. An expensive one. Weatherby Mark V. Seven-millimeter Magnum. The others were carrying a mix of shotguns and rifles. Hunting guns.
"People tell me you roughed up my dad. Put him in the hospital. I'm gonna finish you for that." His words were slurred. He'd been drinking. Maybe all of them had.
"Is that why you're here? I thought it might be about the body under the fish house. Mary Raven."
"We don't know anything about that. You've been pushing people since the day you got here. Jumping my dad was way over the line."
"And your pals? Are they all here about your dad, too?"
"They're my backup. We know you're some kind of professional thug. Saw what you did to Tay Maggert. You wouldn't know what a fair fight is."
"Sure I do. And this isn't it. Because if you came to settle up for my mom, Stegman, you'd better send for more help. A lot more."
"What are you talking about? You're alone."
"No he ain't," Puck said, easing through the doorway behind Raven, moving to the end of the porch. Carrying Beau's shotgun.
"You're backing the wrong side, old man," Stegman said. "You're one of us."
"Been a logger most of my life," Puck agreed. "Cedar savage and proud of it. But I ain't no murderin' rapist, Stegman. And I'm not with you."
"You can't get all of us, not even with that thing."
"It won't matter," Erin said, stepping through the doorway, standing beside Beau. "They have Mary Raven's body now, Mr. Stegman. Your father has already told the police how she died and who was involved---"
"Hey, now hold on a damn minute!" one of the loggers said, lowering his rifle, backing away. "I had no part in that. I'm out."
"The rest of you best do the same," Puck said. "The police are on their way. You might get past what happened to Mary Raven. It was a long time ago. But only if you back off now. Lay 'em down, boys. Go home. It's over."
And it worked. After a moment's hesitation, a second logger backed away, then another.
"No!" Stegman roared, shouldering his rifle. "Damn you, Raven, I should have killed you the first day!"
Beau wheeled, pushing Erin aside, clawing for his pistol as gunfire exploded. Stegman's first shot went wild, whistling past Beau's head as his weapon came up, too late---then the shotgun's savage blast ripped into Stegman, smashing him to the pavement in a tangled heap, his rifle spinning out of his hands, clattering across the concrete.
A moment of stunned silence, then the loggers broke and ran. Scrambling into their pickups, tearing out of the lot as a police cruiser roared in, siren howling. Chabot and Dan Shea piled out. Shea hurried to the deck as the constable knelt beside Stegman, feeling for a pulse.
Nothing. Chabot rose, his hand on his gun butt. "You on the porch. Put that shotgun down. Now."
Puck seemed surprised he was still holding the stubby weapon. Lowering it to the deck, he backed away from it.
"Mr. Paquette---"
"Get the hell away from me, Raven. I'm done with you. None of this had to happen." Puck turned and walked unsteadily toward the end of the deck, staring blindly into the darkness over the bay.
Raven started after him but Shea grasped his arm. "Let him be. He's upset but he's a tough old bird. He'll feel different tomorrow."
"No, he's right," Beau said, helping Erin up. "Maybe I shouldn't have come back. But I'm not sorry. All these years, I thought she abandoned me. When my grandfather said she ran off, I didn't understand. She was my mom and I loved her. It didn't make sense. Now it does.
"But Puck's right, it's a high price to pay. Maybe too high. It's finished, Mr. Shea. Thank your men for their work, send me a bill."
"Hold on, Mr. Raven, we should talk about this. I'll admit I thought remodeling this place was nuts at first, but you were right. It can really be something special."
"Not to me. Not anymore."
"I understand that, but you can't just walk away from it, either. If we leave it half-finished it'll be ruined. This old building has stood a hundred years, it deserves better."
"So did Mary Raven. We're done here, Mr. Shea. Collect your crew and go. You're fired."
It took the state police most of the day to gather the evidence and complete their interviews. Four loggers were arrested in the death of Mary Raven. Puck would have to testify at the coroner's inquest but there were no formal charges against him. The county prosecutor ruled Stegman's death a justifiable homicide.
Shea tried talking to Raven again but it was no use. It was truly over for him. Finished.
First light the next morning, Puck and Shea packed up their gear and checked out of the motel. Their crew was already pulling out, a convoy of work vans and pickups, heading home to Valhalla.
And none too soon. The storm had been gathering strength during the night, the temperature dropping to zero like a rock as a fierce cold front moved in. In the hills above the village, the pines were already glistening Christmas white. Branches rimed with frost, unable to flex in the wind, were snapping like gunfire in the forest.
"Pull over," Puck said suddenly.
"What's wrong?" Shea asked, easing the truck onto the shoulder.
"Will you look at that," the old man breathed. From the roadside they had a panoramic view of the village and the bay beyond it.
A northern miracle.
Sometime during the night, the temperature and winds had fallen together and worked their wintry magic.
Wolf Woman Bay had frozen over.
From the shore to the horizon, the surface was a single, glittering sheet of ice. White as a wedding gown, dusted with diamonds.
But not for long. Mountainous storm clouds were rolling in off the big lake, looming over the northern shore, marching inland, their shadows darkening the hills.
"Gonna be a serious blow," Shea said. "We're clearing out of here just in time."
"Not hardly," Puck growled. "Way late, if you ask me. Wish to God we'd never heard of this place."
In the heart of the village below there was a sudden flash, then another. A streak of flames raced along the porch of the fish house, climbing up the walls. In seconds the front of the building was engulfed. And even at that distance, they could see a single dark figure backing away from the blaze as the fire took hold.
"My God," Shea said, grabbing his cell phone, "he's torching his own damn building." Puck seized his wrist.
"Let it be, Danny. It's his house."
"But he's letting it burn!"
"What else can he do? Couldn't live there or give it back to the town. It's better this way. Finally over and done with."
"Maybe you're right. But that's one hell of an expensive gesture. And it's a damn shame."
Far below, Beau Raven stood like a stone, watching his dream burn down to the waterline. A few townspeople gathered but kept a wary distance. No one tried to stop him.
As if answering the madness in the village, the northern gale unleashed its fury over the bay. Storm winds howled out of hills and across the ice, snow devils spinning wildly ahead, keening like a pack of ghost wolves.
The rising storm whipped the blazing fish house into an inferno. Sparks and cinders hurtling upward in a pillar of smoke, towering high above the bay.
Writhing and swirling in the wind.
Like a Wolf Woman.
Dancing.
Copyright © 2005 by Doug Allyn.
Alexander Swift, Revolutionary War spy and amateur sleuth, is one of Edward D. Hoch's newer series characters, having debuted in EQMM in September '95 ("The Hudson Chain"). The war over, Swift continues to hobnob with the celebrities of the age in this 1796 adventure featuring Washington and Adams. The incident with the barber's toe, Mr. Hoch says, "is mentioned by John Adams in his diaries."
It was with a certain sadness that Alexander Swift called upon President Washington for possibly the last time in September of 1796. He'd seen little of the President in recent months, and Washington's decision not to seek a third term had set off a flurry of activity among both the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.
"It is a delight to see you again, Alex," the President said, greeting him with a firm handshake in the presidential office in Philadelphia. The date was September nineteenth, and he was about to depart for a few weeks at Mount Vernon. "How are Molly and young George?"
"Fine, sir, both of them. I was greatly moved by your Farewell Address in this morning's newspaper, though I'm sorry to learn of your decision not to seek a third term. Now you will never reside in the new presidential mansion in the District of Columbia."
Washington smiled sadly. "I leave that honor to my successor. Our new nation does not need another monarchy. Two terms are enough. Adams and Jefferson can battle it out."
"I understand that John Adams has not been happy in his role as your Vice President."
"He has complained to his wife Abigail that it is the most insignificant office man ever conceived, and I suppose there is some truth to that. But our nation is still young. I trust that in future generations the office will become more meaningful. Adams has another problem right now. As I understand it, someone from his past has threatened his life. He is quite concerned, and we have no official means of protecting him. I suggested you might be able to help."
"Of course," Alex said at once. "I'll do what I can."
"It would only be temporary. I suspect the threat will pass after the election."
"You can't think Jefferson's people are behind this."
Washington shook his head. "No, no---of course not. This is something far in the past. It is a bizarre story, but it is best you hear it from him."
A meeting had been arranged with Adams for the following day. The Vice President was a small man, especially when compared to President Washington, and he had a small office. His round face was set off by tufts of gray hair on either side of a balding head. More a philosopher than a politician, Adams was known to have resented Jefferson's drafting of the Declaration of Independence, a document he felt had taken much from his own Boston Declaration of Rights in 1772.
"How is your campaign going?" Alex asked after they exchanged pleasantries.
"It is just getting started, but I fear the Federalists are losing power, at least in New York. Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans are gaining on us. It will be a very close vote." He seemed a bit weary as he spoke, looking all of his sixty years. "Since presidential candidates do not run for office with vice presidential candidates of their own choosing, it is possible that Jefferson and I might have to take office together as President and Vice President---if we are the two top vote-getters. But whoever wins, the country must come to grips with the increased naval threat from France and Britain. I feel we should avoid war with France at all costs."
"President Washington said you were having a problem."
"Yes, yes. A minor thing," he said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. "But he felt you might be of service to me. This all happened eighteen years ago, in March of seventeen seventy-eight, when I was aboard the frigate Boston, en route to France on a diplomatic mission for the Continental Congress. It was a long, rough voyage and I was seasick part of the time. We encountered and captured a British warship and had run-ins with the French as well. We had on board a French barber whose name I have forgotten, if I ever knew it. During one skirmish off the coast of Spain he tried to go below deck, contrary to orders. He scuffled with a sentinel and the man cut off the barber's left big toe with his cutlass. For a brief time, there was ill will with the other Frenchmen on board, but we managed to calm them."
"How has this event come back to trouble you?"
"The barber, apparently a man named Pierre Facon, is living in New York. Last week, after rumors of Washington's impending retirement began to circulate and I let my candidacy be known, I received this threatening message. It was hand-delivered to my office by a street urchin."
Alex took the message and read it. The handwriting was crabbed, difficult to decipher, and seemed to be in a combination of French and English. The writer accused Adams of having ordered the sentinel to cut off his toe, causing him to go through life with a painful limp. He ended the message with a promise of vengeance unless he was paid an unspecified sum of money.
"The maiming happened during a scuffle," Adams insisted. "It was not deliberate."
"In any event, why would he blame you, a mere passenger on the ship? It was not as if you were under arms."
"It is a fact that I was carrying a musket at the time. I sometimes aided our forces by firing at enemy ships during an engagement. This barber may have objected to my actions. It is difficult to remember after so many years."
Alex turned over the message, seeking an address. There seemed to be none, although the letter had been written on the back of a handbill for a boardinghouse on New York's Greenwich Street. He knew the city well, having lived there with his first wife at the start of the Revolution. "I could go to New York if you wish, and try to find this fellow."
"It would put me deeply in your debt if you could remove this threat. With the election looming, Abigail is already concerned for my safety. Offer the man money if he is in need of it."
"I know it was eighteen years ago, but do you have any recollection of this Pierre Facon's appearance?"
"A tall man, as I remember. Taller than me, at least. He'd be middle-aged by now. I hadn't thought of him in years, didn't even remember his name."
"I doubt if you're in any real danger," Alex told the Vice President. "But I will attempt to find this French barber and deal with him."
Adams seemed alarmed at his words. "I don't want the poor man harmed."
Alex laughed. "I am not a violent man, sir, as I'm sure the President has told you. During the war it was something else, but now I prefer peaceful resolutions to problems wherever possible."
"When will you leave for New York?"
"Tomorrow. Perhaps a good conversation with Pierre Facon will settle the matter."
It had been some years since Alexander Swift last visited New York. The nation's capital had moved to a more central location in Philadelphia, and the city on the Hudson brought back unpleasant memories of his first wife, Amanda. She'd left him for a British officer, Major Jack Jordan, and when he was subsequently killed she'd married for a third time. Now a happily married husband and father himself, Alex had no desire to seek her out. He knew she now lived not far from Greenwich Street and he hoped their paths would not cross.
The coach had brought him to the ferry in New Jersey, and Alex crossed the Hudson River to land at the Cortlandt Street dock in late afternoon. It was only a few blocks up Greenwich Street to the Ring boardinghouse, the place advertised on the handbill in his pocket. It was a large house with three stories plus an attic, and could probably accommodate more than a dozen borders at a time. A wooden canopy stretched forward across the wide sidewalk to a street with a convenient water pump at the corner.
Alex carried a saddlebag with a few necessities in it. When he stopped at the desk inside the door, a middle-aged woman glanced up from her ledger and said, "I'm Mrs. Ring. Are you looking for a room?"
"I was to meet someone here. I'm not certain I have the right place."
"What's his name?" Her tone was almost indifferent, as if she didn't care whether he stayed or left.
"Pierre Facon."
"No one here by that name."
"A Frenchman, middle-aged, walks with a limp."
"Can't help you," she said, returning to her ledger.
"He might work as a barber."
"There is a barber down in the next block," she admitted. "He would be closed now, though."
"Is that a place where you left this handbill?" he asked, showing her the printed side.
"It might have been."
Alex took a room for the night, deciding it was useless to continue the search before morning. He paid in advance and she gave him a key, directing him to Room Seven on the second floor. The bed was lumpy and uncomfortable but he had slept on worse. Mostly he missed the pleasure of sleeping with Molly in their own bed back home.
Alex was up early, breakfasting on the meager fare offered by Mrs. Ring before venturing onto the street. The boardinghouse was quite close to the docks, and even at an early hour there were seamen about, some returning to their ships after a night in town. He spotted the striped barber pole in the next block and headed in that direction. The shop with its sign Dijon Barber was already open at eight in the morning, with a customer in the chair. A gold-headed cane stood against the wall by the customer's coat.
The barber motioned him to have a seat, but instead he asked, "Is there a Pierre Facon who works here?"
The barber, a grizzled man in his forties with at least one gold tooth, shook his head. "I'm Matthew Dijon. I cut hair as well as he does."
"I'm sure you do. Where can I find him?"
"Ask Meg Wycliff. Sometimes she takes him in."
"Doesn't he work at a barbershop?" Alex was noticing some of Mrs. Ring's handbills on a shelf next to the door. Facon had picked one up somewhere to write his note to Adams.
Matthew kept the scissors flying as he answered. "Works for me off and on, when he feels like it. If you find him, tell him I could use an extra hand for a few days while the ships are in."
"Where can I find this Meg Wycliff?"
The barber glanced at his wall clock. "If she's up yet she'd likely be having breakfast with Prester Gamecock at the Purple Seal."
"Who?"
"You're new around the docks," Matthew remarked. "That's the name he uses. Prester Gamecock deals in fighting cocks. Everyone bets with him." He finished with the customer, who paid him, grabbed his coat from a hook, and hurried out to the street.
Alex thanked the barber and went on his way, thinking about Prester Gamecock. He decided he'd been away from the city too long---or not long enough.
He did know the Purple Seal, though, a long-time hangout for sailors off the merchant ships. It was only a few blocks down the street, near the dock where a large fishing schooner lay at anchor. He entered the place casually, well aware that his city clothing immediately set him apart from these dock-dwellers out for a morning's food and drink. He stopped a barmaid carrying two tankards of ale and asked, "Is Prester Gamecock here yet?"
Her lips tightened into a grim line as she motioned toward a back booth. Alex saw a large man with a mottled face, wearing a blue bandanna around his head. He was seated with a dark-haired, green-eyed young woman who might have been twenty or a bit younger. He must have overheard Alex's question because his head came up slowly until their eyes met. "Looking for me?" he asked in a rasping voice that seemed to go with his face.
"Looking for Meg Wycliff. They said she might be with you."
He placed his arm possessively around the dark-haired woman. "How much is she worth to you?"
"I only want to talk," Alex said, slipping into the other side of the booth. "You are Meg Wycliff?"
"I am," she announced with some pride.
"My name is Alexander Swift and I come from our nation's capital. I'm seeking a friend of yours, the French barber named Pierre Facon."
The woman and man exchanged quick glances. "I know him. He has not been seen lately," she replied.
"Why do you seek him?" the man called Gamecock wanted to know.
Remembering John Adams' offer of money, he said, "I might be able to help him if he's in financial difficulties."
"He is that!" Meg Wycliff confirmed. "Are you a friend?"
"I've never met him, but I bring a message from someone who has, our Vice President. Could you tell me where I might find him?"
It was Prester Gamecock who answered. "We see him on occasion. Perhaps even tonight. I have a prize cock fighting at the Men's Sporting Parlor in the Bowery, and that usually attracts him."
"I may come there," Alex told them. "Where is it located?"
"In Patsy Hearn's Five Points grogshop. Anyone can direct you to it."
Alex spent the remainder of the morning searching the dock area and nearby boardinghouses for Facon, without success. Gamecock and Meg Wycliff seemed to be the only leads he had. He prowled the city's center, stopping to inspect the stocks and whipping posts as well as the nearby gallows designed to resemble a Chinese pagoda. Hanging, he knew, was still the punishment for burglary, arson, and forgery, as well as for murder. Further along he encountered a pair of pigs running wild in the street. Perhaps pigs, like people, were enjoying their freedom from British rule.
By afternoon his travels around the city had extended east to John Street, where he knew Amanda and her present husband resided. He was not especially surprised to recognize her entering a greengrocer's halfway down the block. Avoiding an encounter would have been easy enough, but he realized that he wanted to see her again after all, to learn how her life had been.
She did not notice him in the shop until he spoke. "It is a bit late in the season for the best greens, Amanda."
She looked up, startled, and relaxed only when she recognized him. "Alex! What brings you to New York?" She was still a handsome woman, even with the bits of gray creeping into her hair.
"I'm here on business, just for a day or two. I recognized you entering the shop and thought I'd say hello."
Her face had relaxed now into the smile he remembered. "It's good to see you again. Are you happy?"
"Very much so. Molly and I have a fine twelve-year-old son named George."
"After Washington."
"Of course. We were married at West Point and Washington attended the ceremony. How about you?"
"Roland is a master tanner. He sells leather to shoemakers in the city. I help with his bookkeeping. We entertain at dinner and keep quite busy." A thought occurred to her. "I'd like you to meet him. Would you be free for dinner tonight, Alex?"
He smiled. "Roland might not appreciate meeting your former husband. Besides, I have an engagement tonight, in the Five Points neighborhood."
"That place is a slum, infested with Irish immigrants!"
"It's business. I'm certain no harm will come to me."
"Alex---"
"Next time. Perhaps Molly and I can dine with you next time. It was good seeing you, Amanda." He turned and left her in the shop.
The Men's Sporting Parlor was in the rear of Patsy Hearn's grogshop, and Alex found a place to sit on the pine planks that ran around a sunken pit some fifteen feet square. Admission was a mere twenty-five cents, and the man next to him explained that it had cost more before the opposition to bearbaiting had ended that practice in many places. Now there were only the cocks to fight, and an occasional battle between rats and trained terriers. All the events were good for wagering, and Alex joined in by betting a dollar on a ruffled rooster that looked as if it had survived a few previous battles.
He didn't notice Prester Gamecock until the end of the first match. Alex's cock had triumphed and a one-eyed sailor brought him his winnings. As he looked up he saw the large man with the blue bandanna seated across the arena from him, along with Meg Wycliff and another man. There were five matches scheduled that night, and when the last of them ended with an explosion of blood and feathers, Alex made his way around the pit to join Gamecock's party.
"Did you have some winners, Mr. Swift?" the woman asked.
"I won on the first match and quit while I was ahead. How often are these fights held?"
"Whenever we have enough cocks," the large man answered. "Once a week, sometimes twice."
The crowd around them had cleared out, and a black man was spreading sawdust over the bloodstained pit. Alex's gaze had drifted to the third member of their party and Meg Wycliff announced, "This is Pierre Facon, the man you've been looking for."
"Mr. Facon?" Alex asked, extending his hand.
"Yes, that is me," the man agreed. He spoke English with only a trace of a French accent. He was fairly tall, but seemed a bit young to have been working on shipboard eighteen years earlier.
"Did you work as a barber aboard the frigate Boston in seventeen seventy-eight?"
"I did, sir. Those were proud days, fighting alongside the Americans."
Alex glanced at the others and decided the rest of the conversation should be between Facon and himself. He thanked Gamecock and the woman for their help and went off with the Frenchman to the front of the grogshop. Once they were seated he ordered two tankards of ale and told the man, "I've been sent here by Vice President Adams."
"I assumed as much."
"You wrote him about the events on board the Boston."
"Yes," he agreed.
"Your letter could be seen as a threat against the Vice President."
"I didn't mean it as a threat," he replied, suddenly ill at ease. "I just felt I should get some money for what happened."
"You must realize the Vice President was not responsible for your injury."
"He owes me something," Facon insisted. "He might be the next President."
"As a Frenchman, that should please you. Adams opposes a war with France over the maritime incidents."
"Aye, he is not a bad man."
"Are you working? I spoke with Matthew, the barber down on Greenwich Street. He said he could use you for a few days."
Facon smiled and shook his head. "I made some money tonight on the cocks and I expect some more from Mr. Adams. I don't need his job, though he has been kind to a fellow countryman."
"You'd better tell him you won't be in."
"I'll leave a note on his door tonight. What about the money?"
"Meet me for breakfast tomorrow at Mrs. Ring's boardinghouse. Perhaps I can help you out, if you promise to cease annoying the Vice President."
"Mrs. Ring's," he repeated with a smile. "I'll be there. About eight?"
"Fine."
Back in his room at the boardinghouse, Alex considered how much he could reasonably offer the man the following morning. Adams had given him a free rein, but he did not want the exchange of money to seem like any sort of payoff or bribe to keep quiet. The Vice President had done nothing wrong, and any payment must be of a compassionate nature only.
In the morning he decided on an appropriate sum and went downstairs a little before eight to await the arrival of Pierre Facon. But it was Meg Wycliff who appeared at the boardinghouse door, her face twisted with grief. "You must come," she told him. "Pierre has been murdered!"
Alex quickly followed her down Greenwich almost as far as Liberty Street. "What happened?" he asked as they walked. "Who killed him?"
"We don't know. He spent the night at a bawdy house."
She led him to a two-story frame dwelling with shuttered windows. They went up the front steps to the door where a stout older woman waited.
"No police!" she told Meg. "I told you no police."
"He's not police. He's from the government. Alex, this is Mrs. Blithe. She owns this place."
"Where is Facon?" he asked.
"This way." The stout woman led them to a second-floor hallway. Girls in nightdresses, barely past school age, clustered by an open doorway until she shooed them away. Facon's body lay inside and blood from a head wound had turned the rug crimson. He was wearing one-piece underwear and his feet were bare. He had ten toes.
"What happened to him?" Alex asked.
Mrs. Blithe shook her head. "I don't know. He was in here with one of my girls and she went down the hall to wash up. She swears he wasn't alone for more than five minutes. She heard a thump and came back to find him like this."
"His skull was crushed by a hard blow," Alex said, glancing around for any possible weapon. Nothing likely was visible. "You must know who was up here at the time, Mrs. Blithe."
"This early in the morning most of the girls are asleep. Anyone could walk in the front door."
He motioned toward the body. "Is it common for customers to spend the night?"
"Sometimes, if they come late. This man had no wife."
"Pierre Facon? Was that his name?"
Mrs. Blithe shrugged. "It was the name he used. Down on the docks nobody asks many questions."
"Where's the girl he was with?" Alex asked.
She glanced around, finally summoning one of them. "Estelle, come here! Tell this man what happened."
Estelle was a bit older than the others, with squinty eyes and a hard mouth. "He came in after midnight," she told them. "After a while he just fell asleep, so I let him be."
"Was he a regular customer of yours?"
"I guess you could say that," she admitted. "He always came to me if I wasn't busy."
"Then someone looking for him might have come to your room."
"Maybe," she admitted with some reluctance.
"Did he ever talk about his past, about his days at sea?"
Estelle's eyes squinted even more. "He was a barber, not a sailor. What would he be doing at sea?"
"How about enemies? Did he seem fearful of anyone?"
She thought about it. "That man Gamecock. Everyone's afraid of him. He's the one should have gotten killed."
"I thought they were friends."
"Nobody's his friend. The girls all fear him, and the men hate him because he takes their money. Some say he even fixes the cockfights, feeding small amounts of belladonna to some of the birds to sicken them."
Alex considered the possibilities. "Could he have gotten in here this morning without being seen?"
"Of course he could! And anyone who happened to see him would be afraid to say so."
Meg Wycliff had followed him upstairs and tugged at his arm. "You're endangering these people with your questions! Facon is dead. Whatever you came here for, it's over."
"Perhaps. Where can I find Gamecock now?"
"Sleeping, probably. He sleeps late, especially on the mornings after a cockfight."
"Where?"
She took a deep breath. "If I told you, he'd kill me."
"All right. Tell me this---where is the real Pierre Facon?"
"What? In there, on the floor. What do you mean?"
"This man isn't Facon and I think you know it. When you and Gamecock heard I was looking for him, offering money on behalf of the Vice President, you found someone to pass off as Facon in hopes of making an easy profit. Only I happen to know that the real Facon is missing the big toe on his left foot, and that body on the floor has all its toes."
"And I happen to know he's the real Pierre Facon, and there's no business with missing toes. I've known him all my life."
"The barber, Matthew, said you took him in sometimes."
"I took him in because he was my half-brother."
In the downstairs parlor, while Mrs. Blithe poured them tea, Meg Wycliff told her story. "My mother was married to a French trader named Victor Facon. He fought with the colonists against the British and was killed at Trenton in 'seventy-six. Their son, Pierre, was twelve at the time."
Alex remembered thinking he'd seemed a bit young to have been aboard the Boston in 'seventy-eight. "And your mother remarried?"
She nodded. "The following year, to a man named Peter Wycliff, and I came along soon afterward. They moved west to Ohio a few years ago, but I stayed here with Pierre."
"He was a barber by trade?"
"He worked at the shop with Matthew Dijon for a time, but he was always looking for something else, something that would bring him big money. I think that's why he wrote the letter to John Adams."
"Then you knew about the letter?"
"Not immediately. When you came looking for me yesterday he told me what he'd done."
"He was never on board the ship with Adams?"
"Never on board anything bigger than the fishing boats around the harbor. In seventeen seventy-eight he was only fourteen, still living at home. He told me how he helped take care of me as a baby."
"Did you ever hear this story before about a toe being cut off?"
"Never."
"What about you? Were you here when he was killed?"
Her face reddened at his question. "I am not a strumpet, in spite of anything you might have heard. Mrs. Blithe sent someone for me as soon as she saw the body. I remembered Pierre telling me you'd be at Mrs. Ring's boardinghouse and I came for you at once."
"All right, I believe you. Now tell me where I can find Prester Gamecock."
"If I know him, he'll be collecting his winnings from last night's match. You might find him in any of the shops along the river."
The police, always a bit reluctant to deal with bawdy houses, had at last arrived on the scene. Alex managed to slip away, and if any of the officers noticed his exit they no doubt took him for a shy customer eager to avoid questioning. He made his way over to the river and stopped in all the likely shops, asking after the man he sought. But if any of them knew the name Prester Gamecock they were reluctant to admit it. By the time he reached the Purple Seal they told him Gamecock had been there and gone.
Gazing down Greenwich Street, he saw the familiar barber pole at the Dijon shop. It was as good a place as any to try next, and it was a fortunate choice. Alex peered through the window and saw Gamecock collecting some coins from the barber. He opened the door and went in to join them. There were no customers, and no coats or canes by the wall hooks.
"Do you have business with me?" Gamecock asked, obviously annoyed at his presence.
The barber moved off to one side, as if fearful of being caught in the middle. "Pierre Facon was killed this morning at Mrs. Blithe's house," Alex said.
"Interesting," the large man said, weighing the coins he'd just received in the palm of his hand. "You'll need a new assistant," he told Matthew.
"Who might have wanted him dead?" Alex asked them.
The barber shrugged. "He probably got rough with one of Mrs. Blithe's girls and she whacked him. Wouldn't be the first time."
Alex turned to Gamecock, who had started for the door. "What do you think?"
"I never judge people. There is enough of a challenge in judging fighting cocks."
He left the shop. Alex started to follow and then changed his mind. Something was wrong, something was missing, and it took him a moment to realize what it was. He let the door close behind Prester Gamecock. "Matthew?"
"Yes?" the barber responded.
"What happened to your gold-headed cane, the one that was leaning against the wall here yesterday?"
"Cane?"
"I thought it belonged to your customer in the chair, but he grabbed his coat and hurried out the door."
"You mean this cane?" he asked, lifting it from behind a cabinet.
"That's the one, Matthew. The one you used to bludgeon Pierre Facon to death this morning. Don't try it with me. I can move a great deal faster than a limping man with a missing toe."
"I know nothing about his death."
"You knew enough to say he might have been whacked by one of the girls, when I hadn't mentioned how he died. You have a cane that could be the murder weapon, and the necessity for a cane in someone your age implies a foot or leg injury. It was you who lost a toe on board the Boston, wasn't it? You told the story to Facon and he stole it as his own, writing to Adams to ask for compensation. When I told him last night that you needed an assistant barber, he wrote you a note and left it in your door. Whatever he said in that note made you realize what he'd done. In your fury, you sought him out at Mrs. Blithe's, knowing he'd be with Estelle, and split his skull with your cane."
"I have no accent, yet you accuse me of being a French barber on board the Boston?"
"Facon described you as a fellow countryman and your name is certainly French. If it's not you, take off your left boot and let me count your toes."
He sighed, realizing that further denial was useless. "He stole my story to get money from Adams! I went there full of anger, to beat some sense into him, not to kill him. I never requested payment from the United States and I never would. I am proud to be part of this new nation." He was silent for a moment, finally adding in a quiet voice, "Now what is there for me?"
"I am not the police," Alex told him. He considered his courses of action. "I will report back to the Vice President. The decision will be his, but I can tell you he is a just man and a fair one. I believe he will leave the investigation to the local police without involving himself."
Matthew Dijon nodded. "Thank you, sir."
Alex touched the hair on the back of his head. "As long as I'm here, could you give me a trim before I leave?"
The barber smiled. "It would be a pleasure, sir."
Copyright © 2005 by Edward D. Hoch.
A graduate of Swarthmore College, Ruth Francisco studied voice and drama in New York City before moving to Los Angeles to work in the film industry. Her first novel, Confessions of a Death Maiden (Mysterious), appeared in 2003 to universally strong reviews. It was followed a year later by Good Morning, Darkness (Mysterious), which Publishers Weekly called "one of the year's best mysteries."
Celeb sighting, 4:15 P.M., Fifth Avenue, New York City.
At first, she doesn't notice me. She stops in front of Gucci, window-shopping, leaning forward, tilting her head to one side. I crouch and point the lens. She steps back, squares her shoulders, and continues down the crowded sidewalk.
I glue my eye to the viewfinder, tracking her. I'm loaded with Kodachrome---none of that digital stuff for me---one camera with a 24-millimeter lens, the other with a 150-millimeter.
I jump up and run ahead of her, weaving around pedestrians, stepping on and off the sidewalk, winding the camera strap around my left wrist in case I have to dodge a taxi. I turn, cock the shutter, and fire.
She passes into the shadow of the skyscrapers. I switch to the Nikon. No time to add a filter or change the lens. Shoot! Shoot!
Where'd she go? I lower the camera to look. There she is in front of Saks. I've got time for adjustments. I set the lens to f 8. I estimate the depth of field. Shafts of sun break between the buildings. God, she looks great!
Damn, she's going in.
I follow through the revolving door, careful so that my cameras don't bang against the glass. She meanders up an aisle. I step behind a mannequin to pull my light meter out of my breast pocket. I check for fluorescent light. A lady shopper who looks like Laura Bush gives me the evil eye: She thinks I'm looking up the mannequin's dress. I lick its leg. She walks off in a huff.
Step back, adjust, level, check light, shoot. Nothing clumsy. I am as methodical as a surgeon sewing up a bullet wound.
As she left squealing-crashing-honking Fifth Avenue and stepped inside Saks, the gentlest of artificial breezes greeted her.
Dressed in a simple sleeveless smock, hair in a scarf, she pulled off her windshield sunglasses and wandered down an aisle of glistening glass shelves. She stopped to admire the crystal-cut perfume bottles. As if she were a secretary on her lunch hour without intention or means to make a purchase, she guiltily sprayed the tester sample. Lavender filled the air, Provence lavender, lavender warmed from the midday sun. She moved on before memories overwhelmed her.
She passed by blue-and-white porcelains and soft leather purses the colors of exotic hardwoods. She passed by cascading silk scarves---trefoil and fleur-de-lis, posies and primroses, lions and unicorns, blue, gold, and red---artfully arranged so as not to seem cluttered. Her eyes drank in the beauty. With each step into the lair of treasures, she forgot herself, growing lighter, taller, anonymous.
The saleswomen smiled at her pleasantly, their eyes sparkling with recognition, yet saying nothing, careful not to frighten her off. She gave them a nod to show she appreciated their discretion, but moved on, seeking to buy something that stirred her soul.
An experienced shopper, she saw in a nanosecond that there was nothing of interest here, yet her eyes lingered on the money clips. She stood motionless and remembered buying one from Tiffany's, in silver, her first major purchase for a man, shivering with excitement as her world began to spin faster and faster---Was it the right thing to do? Marrying a politician?---presenting it to him on her wedding day, wanting him to like it, because it was understated and perfect, yet also teasing him, because he refused to carry money.
She also remembered---because bad follows good---placing it in his coffin, clipped over a hundred-dollar bill to pay for his passage across the river Styx, bending the fingers of his left hand around it, amazed how they sprang open like rubber. Even in death, he refused to carry money.
Something lodged in her chest above her sternum, an ice cube, her panic building, crushing her chest. She couldn't breathe. Give me one day without thinking about him! She shook off the image as she had learned to do---Open your eyes. Look. What do you see now? What do you smell now?---ordering herself to the present. But her discipline failed, her thoughts sliding back into dangerous territory, like how the display cases were nearly the size of coffins, or how jewelry outlived us all.
Was there no escape? Passing back through time was so exhausting. Perhaps, she thought, it was time for another vacation (although she had yet to unpack from her recent trip to Buenos Aires), perhaps to someplace she'd never been, which would be hard because she'd been nearly everywhere that had a decent hotel.
Someplace---anyplace---where I can be anonymous.
As she wondered where such a place might be---a remote island, Bali, Antarctica---she jumped with inspiration. She did need something, a case for her oversized sunglasses, because she had begun to realize that the only way to overcome her anxiety was to take off her glasses and look at the world with naked eyes.
She moved to a case filled with sunglasses from Paris, Milan, and London, lenses from amber to turquoise, frames of tortoiseshell and titanium, displayed naughtily, earpieces spread wide. The salesgirl pulled out a tray of cases, her manicured fingers trembling as she snapped open one in black crocodile skin. In her confusion as to how to address the woman, the salesgirl trembled with excitement, her words barely audible---"These are just in from Milan, designed by Bartolomeo Vivarini"---her voice sticking in her throat as she explained the handmade dyes the designer used, the Indian thread of spun gold, the gossamer feathers of Tibetan parakeets. "These are very chic, very classy," she said, immediately overcome with embarrassment: Who was she to tell Her what was chic and classy?
Suddenly the woman saw a quick furtive movement out of the corner of her eye. Pop, pop, pop! Bolts of lightning exploded off the mirrors, blinding her, burning her optic nerve. Oh my God, no!
In an instant, she was back at the rally, the hot sun shooting off windshields and office windows like broken glass, deafening rifle blasts bouncing off buildings. No!
She turned and saw the Cyclops crouching near the escalator, mouth open, drooling, his lens pointed at her, his round black eye, silver-lidded, unblinking. He fired.
She panicked. She crammed on her sunglasses and rushed to the revolving door. Suddenly everyone seemed to recognize her, pointing, as if spotting a comet. "Look! Look!"---"There she is!"---"Over there!"
She smelled his sweat and his whiskey breath, heard his sneakers squeaking behind her on the marble floors---Don't go! Wait!---heard the camera lens and extra film rattling in his pockets.
She twirled out the revolving door into the chaos of Fifth Avenue and sprinted across the street, fleeing blindly, her eyes throbbing from his flash. She heard him following, puffing, calling her name. She ran for her life, all the way up the avenue until she reached Central Park and dashed into it like a gazelle across the savanna, her hair flying, her athletic arms swinging: chop, chop, chop.
Always the Cyclops followed her, pursuing her like a guilty conscience, beckoning her, his legs akimbo, pelvis tucked as he steadied his lens---"Look here! Look at me!"
Fleeing the past, evading the present, frightened of the future, could she ever run fast enough?
We have a history, she and I. She's been mine from the very beginning.
From the time I first saw her at her coming-out party, sweeping down the front staircase like Scarlett O'Hara, pinching her cheeks to make them pink, fluffing her skirts, pirouetting, her arms lifted like a ballet dancer taking a curtain call.
Then at her wedding, looking around with this plastic smile on her face, eyes dazed as if she didn't know what she was signing on for---didn't know the deal.
You marry a rich politician, I own you, baby.
I followed her down to Barbados. Got some of those happy honeymoon pictures to sell to the tabloids, but the real gems I kept for myself. Pulling on her bathing suit under a towel. She gave me this haughty look like she's got a right to some privacy. Ha! Not on your life, sweetheart. It's open season and you're fair game.
During the campaign, she hired two bodyguards, turned 'em loose on us. They were pretty nice---they knew we had a job to do. They never broke our cameras, though sometimes they asked for our film. Mostly, they stood in front of us so we couldn't shoot nothing and told us to go away 'cause we were "disturbing" the lady.
Honestly! She looks at me sometimes like she's afraid I'm going to gun her down. But I protect her. I'm not like those paparazzi. I never sell pictures that would hurt her precious reputation. I have shots of her kissing guys---just in greeting, but that's not the way it looks in the photos. And pictures of her without a top. Her skirt riding up her leg getting out of a cab. Falling off a bike. Giving the finger to a heckler. I could've sold nude photos for big money to Playboy or Hustler, but did I? And when the senator was shot, did I sell pictures of her covered in blood, her face all stretched out like a laugh, only it wasn't? Hell, no. I got too much class for that.
I just want her to come down to our level. If she's gonna be that stinking rich and famous, she's gotta share a bit, you know what I mean? Hell, we live in a democracy.
I'd never hurt her, like chasing her in front of a truck. I wouldn't do that to a dog. Have I ever broken the speed limit going after her? Never! Besides, if she got hurt, there goes my meal ticket.
It's not like I'm some kind of crazed stalker. I'm just trying to earn a living. You know what I mean?
She collapsed inside the door of her Park Avenue condo. Her back slid down the wall until her butt thumped on the floor. She hugged her legs to her chest, sobs ripping up her esophagus.
What did they want from her? The crowds who hovered outside her building, teenagers and housewives fawning over her as if she were the Virgin of Guadalupe, reaching across the police barricade, fingertips stretched, on fire. Holding out photos of her to sign, babies to kiss. And the Cyclopes, blinding her with their flashes, squatting, jumping around the fans, their cameras whirring---pop, pop, pop---oblivious to the traffic and the busy sidewalk.
When would it end? When would they leave her alone? They took her husband! What more did they want?
She felt weak, persecuted, violated. Like a fox chased through the woods by a pack of beagles and men on horseback. A fox without a chance.
She huddled in the corner of her hallway, panicked and shivering. Like a roach, she sought a dark crevice where she could hide. She wished she could disappear.
Her heart fluttered, beating too fast, and her skin burned all over. The hallway floor tilted, the ceiling pressed down. Whimpering as she sobbed, she gasped for breath.
This is it, she thought. I'm losing my mind. They have driven me crazy. But even as these and other unspoken words zipped between her temples---insanity, paranoia, psychosis---even as she dashed into her bedroom, yanked a pistol from her bedstand drawer, and shoved it into her mouth, a pea-sized knot of reason held fast.
The barrel felt cool against her lips and tongue. It tasted and smelled like motor oil, making her gag. She took the gun out of her mouth.
As tears poured down her face, she sat on her bed and looked at the pistol. It was silver and not much larger than her hand, a gift from a lobbyist for the NRA after her husband spoke in favor of banning the sale of handguns. Before he was gunned down.
She felt its weight in her hand. No, she would not let them drive her insane. She was stronger than that.
Mental anguish my foot! Bloody bitch thinks she's gonna sue me? What about my First Amendment rights! She's got all the money in the world and she wants to prevent me from making a living? There are a million photographers out there. How come she's got to harass me?
She has these fancy New York lawyers. Fine. We'll fight in court, baby. A big trial ain't gonna embarrass me none. Hell, it'll be good for business. Free publicity.
So there she is on the witness stand all weepy, looking straight at the jury, in her whispery I'm-just-a-poor-defenseless-woman voice: "I feel like a prisoner ... all I want is a small measure of privacy ... I feel terrified of what he might do next, especially to my children." Boohoo! Her voice cracks. She dabs her eyes. The jury looks at me like I'm some kind of child molester. One lady bares her teeth at me. Christ! I got kids, too!
Then, after the jury goes out, one of her employees trots in with a big picnic basket, and she and the judge have lunch in his chambers. Is that even legal? What a sham!
Sure she wins. How's a working schlub like me gonna compete with all that money? Against a mother protecting her children? No way. Everyone on that jury acts like she's some kind of princess. But what the hell has she ever done? Nothing but snag a famous husband. Yet she gets respect and I get kicked in the teeth.
Sure, I'm mad at her---she doesn't have to be that way. But I don't hate her. Hell, I make my living off her---I oughta love her. I'll tell you what I really love. I love that moment she sees me, her eyes filled with terror. Like a wild animal. That's real. She can be as phony as she wants to the rest of the world, but when she sees me, I get her soul. Sure, I get off on it. It's power. Then she takes off until next time.
It's like we have a relationship.
You're thinking I'm a psychopath. No way. I'm good for her. I let her know WE exist out here. I let her know she's human. I let her know she's got responsibilities to us. She should be grateful to me.
I hear she's got a big blowup of one of my photos hanging in her dining room. You know, the one where she's looking over her shoulder at me in jeans and braless in a tight jersey, her hair flying in the wind, with this ferocious look in her eye like she's about to bite.
So you see, she knows I'm good at my job. I guess that makes me kind of happy.
I see him as soon as I cross Fifth Avenue and turn the corner by the museum steps. He follows, keeping his distance. His Cyclops eye zooms in on me, scoping me out like a sniper's rifle. He shuffles with his camera pressed to his face, bumping into tourists, darting between cars, flipping a finger to honking taxis, Screw you, sweetheart!, skipping around businessmen, ducking for a moment behind a hot-dog stand, then sliding between gray-haired matrons and their middle-aged daughters.
On he comes, never ceasing. His feet splayed in a duck walk, his heels hitting hard, his polished leather coat flapping against his thighs. On he comes, unerring, undeflected, a missile to its enemy, a predator after its prey. On he comes. On target.
By Conservatory Water, the children in red-and-white sailor maillots prod toy sailboats with sticks. Dried leaves twirl in spiraling gusts. The oak trees and crape myrtle bend lightly in the wind. Weary Park Avenue au pairs chat in foreign tongues as their toddlers take tentative steps toward one another. Old men eat peanuts from small paper bags, and tourists take off their shoes to rub their feet.
HE lurks on the other side of the pond, his black proboscis probing the shadows until he finds me.
I turn and flee back up the path toward the museum and into the tunnel that leads to the Great Lawn. I stop and wait. He charges into the underpass, lenses rattling. He pulls up abruptly when he sees a dark figure leaning against the wall. The tunnel is dank and narrow, smelling of pee and moss, the kind of place bad things happen, the kind of place New Yorkers run through holding their breath. He hesitates, not knowing if it's me or someone who will stab him, grab his cameras, and kick him in the face.
He takes a step toward me. I'm sure he can't make out my face. He wheezes; his breath is shallow. Does he have asthma or emphysema? Is my stalker ill? I smell his body sweating in leather, frowsty like an old man. My stalker is ageing with me.
I hear the tinny clank of his light meter knocking against his second camera. "Smile, sweetheart," he taunts. The tunnel explodes in white light. His camera whirrs.
I spin on my foot and dash out into the gray-yellow light, through the piles of dead leaves, my ankles twisting on horse chestnuts underfoot.
I glance behind and see him laboring, his brow beaded with sweat. On he comes.
Is today the day I succumb? I can't run forever. One day my legs will give out.
I dash across the Great Lawn, through the wild Rambles, down to the lake, my feet slipping where the grass has worn to mud. I pause on Hernshead Rock under the London plane trees and look out. Fall colors edge the lake in yellow and brown like a cuff of leopard fur. The sun breaks from behind a cloud and makes an amoeba-shaped patch on the still water. A single rowboat in the middle drifts as a man and a woman look at one another from opposite ends of the boat.
The Cyclops runs out of the woods; when he sees me he stops and raises his camera.
As soon as you are born, you begin to die. HE is there, every moment of your life, stalking, waiting ... ready. No one escapes.
I could run west toward Columbus Circle, or east into the zoo. But I have come as far as I want. I will run no more.
I turn and face him.
What's she doing? She's walking toward me. Well, make my day, honey.
I finish a roll of film and she's still headed toward me. Like taking candy from a baby! Defiant, head-on shots. Sultry and furious. God, she's gorgeous.
It's like she wants me to take pictures. Hot dog! That's it, honey, look hard. Make me sweat.
She puts her hand into her purse, fumbling around without looking, walking slowly. She pulls out something silver. What the hell?
I turn fast, bolting back toward the woods. I look over my shoulder. She's coming at me, jogging fast. I gotta make it back to Fifth Avenue.
I aim for the tunnel ahead. My left arm is getting numb and my chest feels like someone is kicking me with boots. Damn! I'm not in shape for this. I pause in the tunnel, just for a second. I lean my right hand against the wall. It's wet and cool, but my chest! Stop kicking! I can't get my breath.
I hear her footsteps enter the tunnel. She wouldn't shoot a guy who's having a heart attack, would she? I turn and lift my arm, trying to tell her that I need help, but the words don't come out. I take two steps toward her.
Something crashes, like a truck smashing into an overpass. My chest explodes and I think it's my heart. My knees buckle and I'm on my back on the cold wet pavement, but I feel warm all over. I taste blood in my mouth. I see her beautiful face above me, like an angel, warm and relaxed, her hair falling around her shoulders, smiling.
What a fabulous shot.
I reach for my camera. "I'll take that for you," she says, her voice like music playing. She points it at me, and all I see is the black lens like a big black tunnel, and I'm falling down into it, and I hear the flash, and a bright white light blasts at the end of the tunnel, pulling me away.
Copyright © 2005 by Ruth Francisco.
Born in Liverpool, England, Eileen Dewhurst read English at Oxford University. After graduation, she worked as a journalist, and in 1975 her first mystery novel was published. She has continued to produce highly regarded books in the genre ever since. Readers interested in her novels will want to look for the latest, Naked Witness (Severn House/2004).
I'd been thinking for some time anyway about going back to Bangor, cathedral city of North Wales with its maelstrom of wartime memories, and when I read about the female skeleton that had tumbled into view at the feet of some city-council ditch diggers, I set off as soon as I could find a few days' space.
I'd spent my school holidays in Bangor during the war while there was the likelihood of air raids on Liverpool, in the flat above my uncle's jeweller's shop in the High Street, only a flight of stone steps and a road-crossing from Bangor Mountain, where the skeleton had been found.
The High Street! In 1942 it was my Champs Elysées. All human life was there, its apotheosis the BBC's Light Entertainment Department, which when the Blitz began had moved lock, stock, and barrel from London. The glamour of it washed over us round the clock. Summer evening after summer evening, my cousin Bea and I would stand with our autograph books outside the old County Cinema round the corner, waiting for the likes of Tommy Handley, Arthur Askey, the cast of Happidrome, and many other celebrities of the day to emerge and give us their signatures and a bit of chat. Neither of these blessings, if I remember rightly, was ever denied the two little girls, and I can still recall the number of Arthur Askey's modest car.
Day after day we would stand at our first-floor sitting-room window, watching for stars on the High Street pavements below and seldom having long to wait. What our grandmother was waiting for was one of us to spell out aloud the shaky white letters chalked on the grey stone wall of the bank building opposite. Eventually it was my ten-year-old cousin Bea (I was a majestic---but no less innocent---twelve) who obliged. "S-H-I-T ... That's a funny word. Grandma, what does it mean?"
"Just something not very nice, chick. It's a silly word, no one with any sense would use it."
Something else not very nice, according to Grandma, had invaded Bangor Mountain that summer of my keenest memory.
No one had ever monitored our frequent disappearances up the flight of steps at the end of the narrow alley separating our shop from the next one up the High Street, content to think of us on our way to our lofty playground. Until the day Grandma told us, with uncharacteristic hesitancy, that she didn't want us to go up Bangor Mountain anymore because ... well, because some dangerous snakes and lizards had been found there, beasts with poisonous bites. This behest followed the arrival in the city of a small contingent of American soldiers---GIs---but girls of my cousin's and my age at that time were far too innocent to interpret our grandmother's metaphor and understand that the beast she was afraid would soon be infesting Bangor Mountain was the beast with two backs.
Now, on my latter-day return, I discovered that my great highway is so narrow it's unable to accommodate two-way modern traffic. And that I couldn't stay at the Castle Hotel, that fondly recalled pinnacle of 'forties sophistication near the cathedral precinct, because it had closed down. This wasn't the shock the other changes were, because I'd heard the news, of course, when I'd been unable to reach the hotel by phone and booked into a place in the nearby countryside.
The biggest shock of my return was the overall erosion of the close-knit grey stone city, holes blasted first by the numerous extensions of the university, and then, offered the precedent, by the iconoclastic jerry-builders of the 1960s. Builders of roads as well as buildings: the High Street isn't just narrow, it's become irrelevant. Oh, sic transit!
I drove to Bangor the morning after I'd checked into my hotel, and when I'd managed to find a parking space I went on foot round my old haunts, and the places that had figured in the final drama. Not yet up the mountain---partly because my climbing days are just about over, but also because I was pretty anxious to get to the police station and try to learn more about the unearthed bones. But I did pause in front of my uncle's old shop and remember, as I looked sentimentally at its unchanged facade and the small recessed space where the two windows stand proud of the door, that the manager had once locked Bea and me into that space when the outside gate had gone up at closing time and we were being especially obstreperous, and left us there for a corrective ten minutes, to our chagrin and the amusement of passersby.
A few doors up there was no trace of Dai Jones' the newspapers, and when I went the short walk to Dean Street I discovered that the County Cinema building had become an unsavoury-looking nightspot called the Octagon.
So it was in a queasy mood of mingled nostalgia, sorrow, and apprehension that I went into the police station, announced my maiden and married names, and asked if I could speak to a senior member of the CID.
"May I inquire what about, Mrs. Anderson?"
"About the female skeleton that's just been discovered on Bangor Mountain. I was in Bangor during the war; my uncle was a jeweller in the High Street. The shop's still there. Nearly sixty years on." So, surely, there was no one left I could hurt. "If you haven't been able to identify the skeleton, I just might have some helpful information."
A young-looking detective chief inspector was there within minutes, and took me into an interview room.
"A young woman?" I asked him, as we sat down. "About five foot six? Blond hair, though I don't suppose there are any of those still around."
He didn't say yea or nay, but he looked cautiously interested and asked me to go on.
"It's a long story, and it may have nothing to do with the skeleton."
"Of course. But I'd like to hear it."
I recalled it as I told it. The story of Megan and Dai and Gladys Lewis and the American soldiers.
But I began with the BBC Light Entertainment department, in order to lament aloud the less-than-complete attention my cousin and I had given the real-life drama.
"Perhaps you can imagine the excitement of one's radio heroes suddenly there in the flesh. I mean, my uncle actually got to know the cast of Happidrome, and invited them home. My cousin and I used to go to sleep with the live sounds of their signature tune floating up from the sitting room. Even the American soldiers couldn't compete with that!"
"American soldiers?"
"That's right. I'm afraid I can't remember precise dates, how long they were there, or how many of them, but they were there that summer---nineteen forty-two, it must have been---when Megan Evans disappeared."
I can see Megan now, her health glowing through her pancake makeup, her enhanced blond hair piled high in the front and flowing down the sides of her lovely, animated face à la Veronica Lake (I had to explain that reference to the DCI), the beloved locket she always wore bouncing between her big breasts as she leaned over to kiss us in succession in greeting or farewell. I once heard the word blousy under my grandmother's breath (I remember it because neither Bea nor I knew what it meant and long pondered it together), but she was no more immune to Megan's charm than anybody else, and after all (my grandmother said), she had been chosen by that lovely boy from the newsagent's to be his girl.
And whatever happened in the end, Megan and Dai did have a lovely relationship for a while, the sort that at one and the same time included other people in their laughing affection and proclaimed them exclusive to each other. The only jarring note was the frequent presence of Gladys Lewis, another local girl, but as lumpen and unattractive as Megan was sexy and charismatic. (Neither of those words was current in 1942, but I used them because the DCI seemed so young.) Gladys nursed an unrequited passion for Dai, which used to amuse Bea and me as much as it made us uncomfortable, the way her large mournful eyes scarcely ever left his face. But neither Dai nor Megan was put out by Gladys's devotion, they were so secure in each other.
Until the arrival of the American soldiers. And we had no idea they had affected that happy relationship until Bea and I, finding our indoor occupations suddenly grown stale, disobeyed our grandmother one warm early evening when she was out, and went defiantly up Bangor Mountain in the face of her injunction to keep away.
And came upon the beast with two backs.
And saw that half of it was Megan.
It was what modern politicians might call a double whammy---the beast itself, and half of it being so familiar to us. If it hadn't been Megan, I think the beast itself would have troubled us more than it did in the aftermath of our shock. We knew, of course, in theory, what it would probably look like, but in those days there were no magazines or TV programmes or movies to fill out our timorous imaginings, and to find out the truth of it so totally unprepared had to be a trauma.
But one immediately on the back burner as the man tumbled sideways and we saw who the woman was.
She must have had plenty of sang-froid, our beloved Megan, because even in that horrendous situation---her legs apart and what was between them hidden by her crumpled skirt through luck rather than management---she put a finger to her lips as she stared gravely from one to the other of us. I remember we both nodded violently before we turned and fled.
Neither of us spoke until we had skittered almost to the foot of the mountain, and then Bea muttered, "Grandma has to have done that!"
"Only twice," I reassured her. "Once for your father, and once for my mother."
"So why should Megan...?"
"I don't know."
Although we had managed to pick up the technicalities, we had no concept of desire, of sex for its own sake.
"Girls of ten and twelve, which my cousin and I were, were too young in those days to get excited about men in real life; it was our dream heroes that absorbed us. Which is why we didn't pay all that much attention to the GIs. Until we found one of them with Megan on Bangor Mountain. And then ... well, it was too awful for us to be able to think or talk about and we threw ourselves even more enthusiastically into the arms of our radio heroes. Metaphorically, of course."
"Of course. I presume it was so awful because you caught them in flagrante delicto?"
"Yes. And it was awful too because of Megan going steady with Dai and Dai expecting to marry her."
"Dai wasn't in the forces?"
"No. He was a bit of a wizard with gadgetry---I suppose today it would be electronics---and although he worked at a local RAF station, he was a civilian in what was called a reserved occupation. If you were in one of those, you weren't called up."
The next day, in silent apprehensive accord, we'd taken ourselves off to the milk bar.
At first it was a relief to see that they were there, and on their own, but we were still in the doorway when we realized all was not well between them: There were no smiles, no movements towards one another of the hands. No conversation, just Megan with downcast eyes, and Dai's eyes pleading as he gazed at her.
So although she'd told him something, she hadn't told him that. And he hadn't found out.
Without a word between us we crept out of the milk bar and slunk home. But I remember that on the way we passed Ronnie Waldman, the head of BBC Light Entertainment, and his glamorous wife Lana Morris, and were distracted from our concern for Megan and Dai.
"This is interesting, Mrs. Anderson, but how are we moving towards the old bones?"
"I'm sorry. It's just that there's so much coming back to me.... That evening Megan came to the flat and asked our grandmother if she could take us for a walk."
Sometimes the three of us had gone up Bangor Mountain together, but that night Megan led us another way, into a little local park. None of us said anything until we were lined up on a seat with Megan in the middle. I've just remembered that the sun was in my eyes and I was glad I couldn't see Megan properly when I turned towards her. As soon as we were settled, she began to speak. She thanked us in a soft, sad voice we'd never heard from her before for not having said anything about what we'd seen, then told us she and Dai had broken up.
"I can't love him enough, can I, chicks, if I could do that?"
"You got to love the American soldier pretty quick," Bea said.
"I don't love him."
Then we sat in silence while Bea and I digested another shock: The knowledge that that could happen without love. I didn't look at Megan, but out of the corner of my eye I could see her hand playing feverishly with her locket. It was very unusual, that locket. Bea and I admired it so much we used to ask to hold it, the small round of gold framed in gold coils with a tiny emerald frog set in its centre. It had been left to Megan by her grandmother, and inside were tiny photos of both her grandparents, which she told us she had had to poke in with a pin, it was so fiddly.
"This is relevant to my story, Chief Inspector."
Eventually I asked Megan if she would be seeing the American soldier again. Doing that again, I suppose is what I meant.
I remember she took quite a long time to answer, and then said, "Yes. If he wants to see me."
She didn't make any excuses, try to soften it. Looking back now, I think there was a sort of nobility about that. And just before we got up and went home, she said, "Two people I do love are you both. That's easy." Then she got up off the seat and stood looking down at us, making us meet her big troubled eyes. "Do you both still love me?"
I think I spoke first, but the two of us assured her eagerly that of course we did, and I'm sure Bea meant it as much as I did.
"I wish I could ask her, Chief Inspector. I wish she could be here with me now, she'd probably be more help to you. But she died last year." And that's something I shall never get over.
Megan said, "Thank you, chicks. And if I ... if maybe you don't see me anymore, you'll love me still? You won't stop?" There was a sob in her voice and I saw her breast heave (it's astounding, what the catalyst of the bones is telling me I remember) and we were both even more fervent in our assurances of undying love.
But then, alas, we were taken actually to see one of our favourite programmes being recorded, and when we recovered from the excitement of anticipation, event, and aftermath, we discovered that the Americans had moved on, Megan had disappeared, and Gladys Lewis was sitting with Dai Jones in the milk bar.
He didn't seem to be taking any notice of her---that was our one consolation. So perhaps she had just sat down at his table without being invited. Perhaps he hadn't noticed her; his head was down in his hands. For the second time we stood still in the doorway, and for the second time we turned without a word and went out, when we saw Dai was allowing Gladys's extended hand to lie on his without shaking it off.
"As far as I could understand at the time, Chief Inspector, Dai Jones was given a bit of a hard time of it by the police. If Megan had managed to keep her secret from him, he wouldn't have been able to cite the GIs in his defence, and he had to admit that he and she had broken up against his will because just about everyone in town apart from BBC Light Entertainment knew what had happened, and were concerned for him and Megan both. The police even interviewed Bea and me because of being told how friendly we were with Megan, and when they asked us straight out if she'd perhaps been friendly with an American (like so many of the other pretty local girls) we did say yes, we thought she had, and that she'd sort of suggested to us that she might go away. I honestly can't tell you whether or not we'd worked it out---that if she'd gone off because of a GI it would take the heat off Dai---but I think that must have been what happened, because they left him alone after a while. And there wasn't a body, there wasn't a shred of evidence that Megan Evans was dead. Until now, perhaps?"
Again the DCI didn't look a yea or a nay, but he asked me if I knew what had happened to Dai.
"Yes," I said reluctantly. "He married Gladys Lewis. Not right off. When I came back to Bangor at Christmas I didn't hear anything about it. But by the next Easter holidays they were engaged, and they were married in the summer. My uncle told me ... oh, it must have been ten years or more later, that Dai had had a heart attack and died. Chief Inspector, if there was a locket like the one I've described among the bones, would you tell me?"
"If there was a locket like the one you described among the bones, Mrs. Anderson, there'd have been a closeup picture of it by now in the national press."
"Ah ... Thank you for telling me." And for telling me the bones couldn't be Megan's.
"And thank you for telling me about the locket, Mrs. Anderson. If your Megan always wore it, you could have given us some useful negative information. Our inquiries would, of course, have dug Miss Evans up eventually..." The DCI coughed, and asked me to excuse his unfortunate choice of metaphor. "And without what you have told me today we might well have spent time considering her at the expense of other more likely candidates for ownership of the bones. Although we will still, of course, have to retain her on our list of suspects." And here, for the first time, the young detective chief inspector smiled and then laughed. Which I thought was pretty stoical of him, seeing as it looked like he had just lost the straw which had appeared to be within his grasp. "May I get you a cup of tea?"
I declined, because suddenly, having imparted what information I had, I was eager to acquire more.
The Joneses had been chapel, and I went straight off to the most central one, directed by the PC on the desk.
It was easy. There in the register was the evidence of the marriage of Dai "work of national importance" Jones and Gladys "shop assistant" Lewis in 1943, and the minister told me for good measure that Evan Williams, son of the minister who had solemnised the marriage, was alive and well and living in Penrhyn, just outside the city.
So by five o'clock I was in his immaculate semi, drinking tea, having told him on his doorstep that I was the niece of the jeweller who for a spell during the war had owned J. Welch & Co. in the High Street---the goodwill name over the shop that my uncle had retained and which was still there as I spoke in its original handsome old glass facade.
"What do you know, then?" he responded excitedly when we were sitting down with the tea and his silent, eyes-down wife. "J Welch ... It gives on to the steps leading up to Bangor Mountain, don't it? Where they've just found some old bones. You heard about them, lady?"
"Yes, I've heard. I was interested because ... I used to stay over the shop as a child during the war, and my cousin and I were always going up the mountain."
"But you didn't find a body, bach, or we wouldn't have this mystery now, eh, girl?" This last to his wife, who looked up for a moment, half smiled and nodded, then returned her gaze to her teacup. Perhaps her ebullient husband embarrassed her, but he was just the type I had hoped for.
"You'd have been around during my visits, wouldn't you, as a very small boy?" He was clearly younger than me, but not all that much. I decided to take the plunge. "When Megan Evans disappeared, it was thought she might have gone with the American soldiers. D'you remember that, Mr. Williams?"
The eager face brightened even further. "Well, I don't rightly know if I remember it, or if I got told later on. Bit of a legend it became, you know."
"So you're thinking, Mrs. Anderson, that she might not have run away after all, Megan Evans, that it might be her bones on the mountain?" Mrs. Williams's straight question, asked as her head came up and her penetrating gaze was transferred to me, made me jump slightly.
"It's a possibility, isn't it?"
Mrs. Williams shrugged, and her husband leaned forward and shouted, "Yes!"
"Nobody suspected at the time that she might have come to grief?" I asked, looking now from one of them to the other. "Did the police suspect foul play?"
"I wouldn't know that," Mr. Williams responded reluctantly. "But I do remember my da saying that young Dai Jones had to be feeling uncomfortable. Son of Jones the newspapers, he'd been going steady with Miss Evans but she'd broke it off just before she disappeared."
"I think I remember that, too." He had brought me to where I wanted to be. "And I remember he married..." I pretended to fumble for the name, and Mr. Williams supplied it.
"Gladys Lewis," he said. "I remember my mother saying she'd got what she wanted, but that she wouldn't have had a look-in if Megan hadn't taken herself off. Dai worshipped the ground Megan walked on; my mother reckoned he only married Gladys because nothing really mattered to him after Megan disappeared."
"Gladys Jones is still alive," Mrs. Williams supplied as she poured me a second cup of tea. My hand was trembling as I took it from her. "In the Craig Bueno nursing home in Upper Bangor. Not that I've seen her, but I've a friend who visits old people's homes with a dog for them to pat, and the Megan-Dai-and-Gladys drama's still a local legend. No mind, I'm told, but a good appetite."
"Gladys was terrible ugly," Mr. Williams said. "And never a word to say for herself. Dai Jones must have been out of his mind to take so much as a second look at her. But I suppose that's what he was, seeing he'd been so crazy for Megan. I didn't go to his wedding, o' course, but I remember it because of all the drama that had gone on, see?"
Mrs. Williams asked me then how I thought the Bangor of today compared with the Bangor of sixty years back, and I was happy to sit back and exchange nostalgias, having got far more than I'd hoped for.
Gladys Jones having no mind made it easy for me to present myself at the nursing home the next morning as being on a trip down memory lane and having known her as a child.
But I decided I might learn more if I didn't help the head of the establishment out when she tried to break Gladys's condition to me gently.
"So I'm afraid there's no possibility of her knowing you," she concluded. "She doesn't know anyone."
"Not even her own children?"
"Mrs. Jones has no children."
I don't know why, but something inside me rejoiced for Megan, that no other woman had carried on Dai's line. And I was rejoicing for him, anyway, that he hadn't lived a long life with his second choice.
"Here we are! She doesn't walk now, but she can still give a good kick if she suddenly doesn't like someone, or thinks they're too close to her ... So sit down here beside her, pull the chair round a bit ... HERE'S SOMEONE TO SEE YOU, GLADYS! It's a long time since she's had a visitor. I'll be in my office if you'd like to look in before you go."
I wouldn't have known Gladys. For a start she was so much smaller, her bristly dark hair was thin and white, and the aggressive teeth had gone. Her eyes, though, were still large and mournful, larger even than I remembered them in what was now her thin little face. The hands, though, hadn't changed much, lying together in her lap. On a reflex I started to move one of mine towards them, then to my surprise drew it back.
"Hello, Gladys," I said.
The head took a few moments to turn towards me, and there was no new expression in the eyes. "Kill her, God!" Gladys said.
"It's Mary, Gladys. Mary Rowe. D'you remember? I used to see you in the milk bar in the High Street."
I knew it was a total waste of time, but one can't help trying. And now Gladys's eyes softened, and she said, "I love you."
I was about to make myself say, "And I love you, too, Gladys," when she shifted in her seat and something she had round her neck swung forward. A small gold circle framed in gold scrolls, with something green gleaming in the heart of it. For a moment I was lightheaded, feeling my heart pumping in my throat. The next I had to hold my hands together, to prevent them ripping it from between her shrivelled breasts.
"She's fallen asleep," I lied, in the director's office. "At least I've seen her. That's a very interesting locket she's wearing, by the way. Did she come in with it?"
"She came in with a small locked strongbox," the director said reluctantly, looking embarrassed. "When she got bronchitis last year we thought we were going to lose her, and as she's no family, we decided to open it. There was no key, so I'm afraid we had to force it. There were one or two other bits of jewellery, a few papers, and this locket. She seemed to have a bit of an excited reaction when she saw it, so we put it on her. Then when we tried to take it off, she got so distressed we just left it. We like to keep them as individual as possible, even if they're unaware of it."
"Very commendable," I heard myself say. "Any photographs in it?"
"No. It was empty."
No doubt emptied with a pin, it was so fiddly. I felt my eyes fill with tears.
"It is upsetting," the director said. "It was very good of you to come."
I thanked her and left, and left the car in the nursing home car park and went walking without deciding where I was going, the picture suddenly in my mind playing over and over: the picture of Megan pleading for her life before a pair of implacable hands. One moment they were fastening round her neck, the next they were lifting a stone for the lethal blow, the next they were pushing her down a slope. Each time they buried her.
At least I knew they couldn't be Dai's. Dai would never have taken her locket from her. But now there's no BBC Light Entertainment to distract me, and I'm terribly afraid that the picture will run and run.
Even though I've done what I realized as I walked that I would have to do. Megan had pleaded in vain for her life, and sixty years on she was pleading with me for justice. Well, I could give her that.
So I went back to my car and drove down to the police station.
Copyright © 2005 by Eileen Dewhurst.
A mystery novelist, memoirist, and professor of English, New Hampshire's Joseph Monninger occasionally pens an offbeat short story as well; we've published three of his tales prior to this one. His memoirs Home Waters and A Barn in New England: Making a Home on Three Acres have both been highly praised. He is currently on sabbatical from Plymouth State University; we hope he's using the time to write more in our genre.
The vampire's house stood on a small knob of New Hampshire granite. Pine bushes pressed against the house and ate the paint. The bushes needed clipping and the house needed scraping. The house also needed a pound or two of nails to hang the shutters back in place, to put the soffits right, to hang the numbers of the address over the front door again. The steps to the front porch had cracked. Frost had found the cracks and widened them. A drainpipe on the south side of the house had come free and dangled against the clapboards, bumping in the afternoon breeze. The empty pipe matched the beat of a tire swing, hung from an oak branch that swayed enough to twist the support chain. November had stripped the oak and a scarecrow's worth of leaves had collected in the belly of the tire. The rest had made a leafy mat along the front weed patch.
Vampires aren't much on home maintenance, I thought.
A Goth girl answered the door when I knocked. She looked to be twenty-five. She liked black. She wore three studs in her nose, ten in her ears, one in her bellybutton, five in her eyebrows. She probably had more you couldn't see. She made you want to grab a kitchen magnet and plunk it on her. She had been pretty once, but now she wasn't.
"What?" she asked.
"I'm Detective Poulchuk," I said. "Does Alan Pemi live here?"
"Why should I tell you?"
"Why not?"
"You're a cop," she said. "Cops suck."
"Right," I said.
"Don't you need a warrant or something?"
"I'm not here to search anything. Just want to talk to Mr. Pemi."
"He doesn't talk to people until sunset."
"Because he's a vampire?"
She shrugged.
"But you're not a vampire," I said.
She shrugged.
"You must be in training," I said.
"Shove it."
She closed the door.
I drove over to Java the Hut's, bought two coffees, then drove to Wentworth Park and pulled up next to the statue of a Boy Scout. The Boy Scout posed on one knee, his hands stretched out to give drinks to passing animals. During the summer, water dripped out of his hands into a drinking bowl for dogs. Now, without the trickle of water, the Boy Scout looked like a kid asking for a handout. Not the intended effect.
Wally Hoyle, my deputy, slid into the passenger seat.
"You don't think it's cold," he said, "and then it is."
"November in New Hampshire," I said.
"Tell that to the freaking kids," he said.
He pushed his chin at the usual collection of kids, early high-schoolers, pre-drivers. Girls and boys. They smoked cigarettes and played Hacky Sack and sometimes did drugs. They asked older kids to pick them up a six-pack or two. They didn't do much that other kids didn't do, except that they did it in the center of town with the municipal bandstand as their headquarters. Today, from what I could see, they seemed determined to kick their skateboards into the air and slide on them along a sidewalk railing. Nothing new there, either.
"Coffee for me?" Wally asked.
I nodded. I stirred my coffee with a wooden stirrer. Wally took a sip of his. He hardly looked much older than the kids collected around the bandstand. He wore a red mackinaw and musher's fur cap. His pistol formed a small bulge under his jacket, but you wouldn't notice it if you didn't look for it.
"Anything?" I asked.
"They're not talking," Wally said. "When I mentioned the vampire, they all shut up. They're scared of him."
"They admit he's been down here?"
"They don't say yes or no. You know kids. They don't want to give anything away."
"The vampire is still sleeping," I said.
Wally glanced at the late afternoon sky.
"Of course he is," he said.
"Do what we said then," I said. "Tell them someone sold Ricky Adelar some dirty Ecstasy and that Ricky's brain may be scrambled. Tell them that Ricky said it was the vampire, but that we're still investigating. Tell them to be smart. If they want to turn anything in to us, no questions asked, we'd appreciate it. Tell them Ricky's parents are completely devastated."
"Okay," Wally said.
"And try to sound like Jimmy Stewart when you do it," I said.
"Okay," Wally said.
He climbed out of the car. He took the coffee with him.
I swung by Speare Memorial, got Ricky's room number from a young nurse in a cardigan sweater, then went up in the hospital elevator. As soon as the door opened I spotted Mr. Adelar. He sat in an easy chair reading a Farmer's Almanac someone had left in the waiting room. The TV behind him broadcasted Granite State Challenge, a quiz game that pitted one New Hampshire high-school team against another. I heard Manchester's Trinity High School mentioned, but then Mr. Adelar looked up.
"Afternoon," I said. "How's Ricky doing?"
"Better," Adelar said.
He put the almanac aside and stood. He was a tall, thin guy with an outsized Adam's apple. You couldn't look at him without thinking about blue herons. He worked for the state's agricultural department. Something to do with lumber production, out of the Fish & Game Department in Plymouth.
"Still disassociated," Adelar said. "Really it's just wait and see. He recognizes us, knows where he is, but he's not sure of the day of the week, the President, stuff like that."
"Does he still maintain he took Ecstasy?"
"He isn't that precise. Have you talked to this vampire fellow he mentioned?"
"Not yet."
"Are you going to search his house?"
Trinity High School buzzed in on a question. What Caribbean country's volcano recently erupted, causing the population to evacuate?
Trinity's team captain said: Bermuda.
The quizmaster buzzed. Wrong answer.
"Guys like this fellow," I said, "never have the stuff in their houses. A guy up in Rumney buried a school bus in a retired stockbroker's field. Turned it into a pot factory. Little generator, the whole thing. Grow lights. Made it through three seasons before someone finally spotted him going through a manhole cover into the ground. Most we'd get if we searched the place would be a little pot, if that."
"So then what do you do?" Adelar asked.
The other team buzzed in, said, Barbados, and got buzzed, too.
Montserrat, the quizmaster said.
"I'm going to see him right after this," I said. "We'll make it uncomfortable for him."
Mrs. Adelar stepped out of Ricky's room and nodded at me. If Mr. Adelar was a heron, Mrs. Adelar was a trout. Her ankles and neck had about the same thickness. She was as balanced as a throwing knife. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt that had a black dog on it. The black dog promoted beer and a certain bar.
"He's asleep," Mrs. Adelar said. "He drops off so suddenly it terrifies me."
Mr. Adelar slipped his arm over his wife's shoulders.
I reached down and picked up the Farmer's Almanac. Sunset, according to the chart, had already happened five minutes ago.
The Goth girl opened the door.
"Is he awake yet?" I asked.
"He's awake but he says you need a warrant."
"Tell him he watches too many TV shows about cops. Tell him he doesn't really want to make this more difficult than it needs to be."
She looked at me. The streetlight caught the speckle of her studs.
"Stay there," she said.
I did. I turned around and looked at the street and thought about vampires. If I were a vampire, I figured, I'd live someplace warmer. Maybe Florida. Maybe Louisiana. New Hampshire seemed like a hard place to be a vampire. People stayed indoors in winter and wore turtlenecks.
I turned back to the door when I heard it open.
"Come in," she said, "but he hasn't fed yet."
"Fed?"
She nodded.
"You don't want to anger him," she said.
"I wouldn't want that," I agreed.
She shrugged.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Wolf," she said.
"Wolf?" I asked. "Like the dog?"
"Like the wolf."
"As in 'bay at the moon'?"
She nodded.
"Got it," I said.
I followed her down a very ugly hallway, past two doors that might have led to sitting rooms when the house had a different spirit, then into a large ell kitchen. The kitchen, in the dim light, looked as though it had last been renovated during the 1950s. Linoleum floor, vinyl counters, red plastic kitchen chairs. It was retro without having a clue what retro meant. A chicken-shaped clock clicked above the sink. Or clucked. The chicken hadn't cleaned the dishes below it in some time, and neither had anyone else in the house.
Wolf turned around and left.
The vampire sat at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette. He wore black. He had a horse-head, a long, thin skull that made his chin hang too far out from his chest. He had as many studs in his face as Wolf. He looked slack and thin, but, I considered, maybe he would look better after he fed. He might have been thirty. He resembled a guy who came back to the high-school reunion and still couldn't figure out why everyone still wanted to shove him in a locker.
He stood. He was short, maybe five nine. He wore a chain around his waist. Someone had bolted the chain into the wall behind him. A leash. He offered a chair. I sat. He sat. The kitchen table sat between us. The vampire jabbed out his cigarette and folded his hands.
"We have a kid named Ricky Adelar who says you sold him Ecstasy," I said. "The kid's in a hospital acting a little unglued."
"Kids says the darndest things," the vampire said, "don't they?"
He smiled. Now I got the full dazzle. His upper teeth had been filed into points. He had a shark mouth. If you were fifteen years old, and escorted into this room, the combined vampire effect would have been pretty good.
"Kids do say funny things," I said. "But he says he bought it from you and that's not all that funny."
The vampire spread his hands.
"Yippee," he said.
"If the kid died, it could be murder."
"Everyone dies," he said.
"Not vampires."
"Christians drink the blood of Christ for eternal life. We drink other blood. Different strokes."
It was a prepared speech. I bet he gave it all the time.
"You always wear the chain?" I asked.
"Always," he said. "Except when I don't."
He smiled to say I couldn't ruffle him. And to show me his teeth.
"Here's the thing," I said. "I could get a warrant and come back and search the place and maybe I'll still do that. Or maybe I could hear that you stopped coming around the kids and that maybe you even decided to leave town. Either way, you're on notice. If you decide to stay, it will probably be a matter of time before you get picked up. Meanwhile, Ricky may remember more about what went on with his purchase. We may even get a few other kids to remember a few things. It might take a little while, but your string is going to run out. That's the way these things go."
He looked at me. Smiled.
"And your name is Alan," I said. "Alan Pemi. And you come from Berlin, New Hampshire, where your dad is still a logger and your mom does hair. They said to say hello and wondered when you would be home to visit."
He nodded. If having his true identity presented to him made any impact, it didn't show.
"Your problem is," he said, "trying to link me to the kid. And you can't do that. So buzz off. As to the rest, it's police harassment. So buzz off again. I don't sell dope to kids."
"Maybe I'll give the kids crucifixes."
"Maybe you should."
We sat for a while. He lit another cigarette. He had me and he knew it. I couldn't prove much. Ricky Adelar, especially in his current condition, wouldn't make much of a witness. He leaned back and crossed his legs. The chain rattled a little.
"Anything else we need to talk about?" I asked.
He shrugged.
"Do you think you're a vampire?"
"I am a vampire," he said.
"How about Wolf?"
"Not yet," he said. "These things take time."
"If I took a mirror and held it in front of you, would you see your reflection?"
"Sure," he said. "I'm not Bela Lugosi."
I nodded and stood.
"Up here in New Hampshire," I said, "the turtlenecks get in the way?"
He shook his head.
"Not too bad," he said.
I picked up Wally from the town square.
"You give the kids the talk?" I asked as he climbed in, the cold air following him.
"You bet."
"They buy it?"
He shrugged. Ice had formed on the top of his hat and on the collar of his mackinaw. He rubbed his hands together in front of the heater vent.
"He hangs around the cemetery," Wally said. "That's kind of his big thing. Hanging at the cemetery."
"The kids tell you that?"
He nodded.
"Could have the stuff buried there," he said. "Not a bad place to stash things."
"The dead keep their secrets," I said.
He looked at me.
"I can't tell if you're joking or not," he said.
"Maybe issue garlic to the kids," I said. "And wolfsbane."
Wally stopped rubbing his hands. "How'd your talk with him go?" he asked.
"He's not stupid. He knows we have to connect him to Ricky Adelar somehow."
"Won't be easy."
"He's a small-time pusher. Maybe if we could figure out who supplies him, they would put the vampire out of business. Wolfsbane him."
"Do you know what wolfsbane is?" Wally asked.
"No idea," I said, "but I like saying it."
"Does it work against vampires?"
"It must," I said. "Garlic can't be the whole protection system."
"You're having fun with this," Wally said.
"Always wanted to hunt a vampire," I said. "Now I can."
Two days later I saw Steve Sweeter pruning trees. He stood on an apple ladder in front of the Simons' yard. A sign on Sweeter's red truck gave his phone number. He didn't have a company name or a yard-service rig. You only called Sweeter if you wanted the best and you only got him if he felt like your plants merited his attention. Apparently the Simons had an interesting tree.
I pulled over and stepped out. The weather had turned colder. The noon sun did what it could. Sweeter wore a fleece, jeans, and a pair of earmuffs. He nearly always wore earmuffs. This day he wore bifocals, had saggy khakis tucked into a pair of outsized boots, and wore a black back brace the size of a heating pad across his beltline.
"Wolfsbane," I said.
"Monkshood," he said, not looking at me.
"Keep vampires away?"
"Poisonous," he said. "Keep just about anything away. Hooded flowers, look like a monk's hood. Aconitum genus. Also known as aconite and wolfsbane."
"Why wolf?"
"Why elm? Why birch? Who knows?"
"Werewolves?"
He stopped trimming and looked at me over his bifocals.
"You're a strange man," he said.
"Given the source, I'll count that a compliment."
He went back to picking at the tree.
"Monkshood probably had various uses. Abortion. Killing your mother-in-law. Love charms. I'm not an expert on its uses. Might work against vampires and werewolves."
I watched him work for a while.
"What kind of tree?" I asked.
"Metasequoia. Cousin of the coastal redwoods. Also known as a dawn redwood. They thought this was extinct until about nineteen thirty-eight when a Chinese biology professor wandered into a valley and found a shrine built below one. Big race to bring back the seeds. Harvard versus California."
"Harvard win?" I asked.
"Depends who you ask," he said. "Tree came back from the dead. Propagated all over the world. This one isn't happy this far north."
"Can you save it?"
He looked at me.
"Do you have anything else to do?" he asked.
"Not this minute. Where would I find some wolfsbane?"
"On the Internet, where else? The entire world is on the Internet, didn't you know?"
"Any Web site?"
"Google wolfsbane, you'll find it. You could check the health-food store."
"I'll let you know if it works against vampires," I said.
"Is there one hereabouts?"
"Some say."
"Well, well, well," Sweeter said. "Vampires don't like dogwoods, either. Christ was executed on a dogwood."
"You see why I stop to talk to you?"
He looked at me. His glasses flicked light at me as he returned to his work.
The temperature turned twelve degrees at 9:37 P.M., one minute before I saw the vampire in the graveyard. I knew the time because I checked it on my Timex Expedition watch. It has a glow feature. I knew the temperature rang down at twelve because I used my night-vision glasses to check the tiny L.L. Bean thermometer on the zipper of my parka. I sat against Caleb Potter's headstone without much else to do. My haunches had frozen and my back felt the thick click of cold dropping into my spine. And I was bored, because after sitting up for six nights in a row, the vampire hadn't shown.
Until now.
You could not film it better. He came from the south end of the graveyard, moving slowly through fog and mist, headstone to headstone. Without the night-vision glasses, I wouldn't have spotted him. He wore black. No surprise there. But I hadn't been quite prepared for the precision of his movement, the graceful way he glided through the mist.
I reached in my pocket. Garlic, wolfsbane, a small crucifix. I took out my cell phone and called Wally.
"He's here," I said softly.
Then I turned it off.
Alone in a cemetery with a vampire. I had to smile.
I watched. I sat in the old part of the cemetery, up where the founding families had been buried. That section had been built on a small rise. From Caleb Potter's grave I could watch most of the newer portion of the cemetery. The newer sections had a dozen mausoleums, attractive, I figured, to the living dead.
I felt pretty good, pretty smart watching him---until he disappeared.
Just like that.
I stood. He hadn't moved behind a mausoleum, nor had he slid down behind a gravestone. From all appearances he had been walking along and had suddenly vanished. I couldn't help admiring him. It had been a neat trick.
But when you have eliminated all other possibilities, whatever remains must be the truth. He wasn't a vampire. He hadn't flown or turned invisible. That meant he had slipped into a hiding place. The fog and mist had made it more convincing than it would have been on a clear night. I pushed up the glasses. They didn't help much in the fog.
I drew my revolver and walked down the hill toward the spot where he had disappeared. I wondered if I needed silver bullets. If he didn't go up, he had to have gone down, I figured. I looked back at Caleb Potter's gravestone to calculate distance and line. When I arrived at the spot where I had last seen him, I stopped. I used my flashlight and searched the ground. It took a few minutes. Next to a clump of winterberry I saw the trapdoor. The vampire had done a good job with it. He had covered the lid with sod and had placed the hole back among the plants so that no one strolling through the cemetery would step on the trapdoor. He could disappear quickly and he could reappear when he liked. It would freak kids out to see him suddenly materialize in the cemetery when no one had seen him coming. Maybe Wolf walked kids nearby, escorted them to a fixed point, and then the vampire would appear magically.
I was still admiring his work when he suddenly snorkeled a periscope out of a breathing hole. Again, a pretty slick feature. He could scan the area to make sure no one was around. He probably told himself that he was smarter than anyone else and no one could catch him. The periscope scanned slowly in a circle.
I put my hand over the periscope lens.
I resisted the impulse to say peekaboo.
Out on Millcross Road, I heard Wally arrive in the department Cherokee.
I pulled some wolfsbane out of my pocket. Garlic, too. I pushed the periscope back in, then dropped the wolfsbane in and the garlic. I stepped on the trapdoor.
"Wally," I yelled, "bring the wooden stake and the holy water."
The vampire started yelling under my feet.
Two days later Wally gave me the report. The vampire's hideout had been an old refrigerator, enlarged at the foot and head with two plastic boxes. It had been tight, but he had been able to go inside, fish out whatever he needed, then tuck it into his jacket. He had three flashlights, a PVC air stack, and a blanket. He could sleep in there to hide out. Maybe it made him feel like a vampire.
He also had a small pharmacy.
"Did you watch a lot of vampire movies as a kid?" Wally asked.
He sat next to my desk in the rolling chair. He liked the rolling chair because he could push back and glide to his desk. He delivered the report by sliding to me.
"As many as I could."
"I always thought they were stupid," Wally said. "All that hypnosis. The bats in the eyes."
"The vampire could control Frankenstein. That's something."
"But didn't the wolfman kill the vampire?"
"In Abbott and Costello. Real vampires would never let that happen."
Wally looked at me.
"You meeting the vampire's parents?"
I nodded.
"You think they can get him to admit selling the stuff to the Adelar kid?"
"Doubt it."
"Then what's the point?"
"You never know until you know."
"Is that Zen?"
"If it's not, it should be."
The vampire didn't look great in orange. His Concord State Prison jumpsuit sagged around him. His pointed teeth looked merely old and decayed. When he sat down across the table from us, his mother reached for his hand. He let her hold it. She was a gray woman who wore a gray raincoat and brown slacks. She wore Merrells on her feet. She made no sound when she walked. She reminded me of smoke.
"You have to stop all this nonsense," his father said. "No more of this vampire crap."
His dad wore plaid. Plaid coat, plaid shirt, plaid hat. He looked like a Scottish potato. He was no taller than his son, but twice as broad.
"My lawyer said not to say anything," the vampire said.
"You don't have to," I said. "But you could help yourself. Tell us who supplies you, who else is selling things. All you need to do today is agree in principle. Then we can talk about the details later."
"Alan," his mother said, "you listen to Chief Poulchuk."
"I can't squeal on other people. It wouldn't be good for my health. I'll tell you this much, though. Ricky Adelar helped himself to whatever drugs he took. He used to sell the stuff all the time. One of my competitors."
His dad blew air between his lips. His mom kept the vampire's hand in hers. She looked at my expression to see if her son's confession had any impact on me.
"Interesting," I said.
"So he got a little nutty from the stuff and he had to blame someone. So he blamed me," the vampire said.
"Might make sense," I said.
"Put me out of business and cover things with his parents."
"Got it," I said.
I stood. Mom and Dad remained seated.
"What was that shit you threw down at me?" the vampire said. "Into the hole, I mean."
"Wolfsbane."
"Thought so."
"And garlic."
"Cut it out," his dad said. "Just cut it out."
Copyright © 2005 by Joseph Monninger.
Stanley Cohen's short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories and World's Finest Mystery and Crime Stories. In 2002, one of his tales appeared in the Mystery Writers of America's collection Murder in the Family, edited by Lawrence Block. He joins us here with a tale of pure suspense.
Soaking wet, he emerged from the mouth of the cave into the chill air. Nothing looked familiar. After hesitating a moment, he broke into an exhausting dead run, straight ahead, through the snagging underbrush. His feet were cold and leaden in his waterlogged shoes. He had to get help and get back to the cave. He had to get her out of there, if possible before nightfall. The sun was already down into the tree line, dusk less than an hour away.
"There's just one way out of here," he'd told her. "And that's by swimming. Underwater. We've got to dive in and swim underwater toward that spot of light, and when we come up on the other side of that big rock, we can walk right out."
"Why'd you bring me here?" she'd said.
"It was a mistake. But that's not what's important now. What's important is that there's only one way out: by diving right toward that spot of light and coming up on the other side of the rock."
"You know I can't swim."
"You've got to. Don't you understand?"
"I can't."
"But we don't have a chance of getting out any other way. Don't you understand? It's the only way out. There's no use trying to get back out the way we came."
"I can't swim."
"You don't have a choice."
"It's no use. I can't swim at all, much less dive down there. You knew that."
"We've got to. It's the only way. I'll help you. I'll pull you through it. But we've got to." He'd turned the flashlight into her face briefly at that point and, seeing her expression, knew she'd never make it. For a moment he'd pictured in his mind trying to pull her down through it. And as he did, he experienced the kind of panic he knew must have gripped her. She was right. It was hopeless. You can help a nonswimmer on the surface of water but never, never downward through water. He'd imagined the two of them underwater, upside down, trying to move downward, deeper, toward nothing more than a glow of light, she desperately clutching at him and drowning and he losing control and feeling the cold underground water flowing into his own mouth and nose.
He'd had to give up the idea. It couldn't be done. How deep was the pool? How far down was the pass-through? How large was the pass-through? Could he make it himself? Alone? He thought about getting stuck in it and thrashing helplessly until dead. He imagined her watching his legs as he'd start through, stop, and then kick until he stopped kicking. But that wouldn't happen. Others had made it. Lots of them. He'd make it. But only alone. There was no other way.
He took her into his arms. "Here's what we'll have to do," he'd said, "I'll have to go out through there and go for help."
"Why did you bring me in here? You could have come alone."
"There's no use in talking about that now. Don't you understand? There's no point in talking about anything except getting out."
She remained silent.
"It's the only choice we've got." He knew she was thinking about being left alone in the cave. "There's nothing in here that'll bother you. I'll get back with help as quickly as I can."
She still didn't speak.
He had run probably a hundred yards from the mouth of the cave, ripping and stumbling through the coarse underbrush. He had run hard, which he realized was stupid because he was already exhausted in the wet clothes and shoes. And he'd run straight ahead, which was also stupid, hoping in his desperation for a miracle, someone standing there, waiting to help him. He stopped, turned, and started back toward the cave, jogging. He passed the mouth of the cave, cringed, and started up the side of the hill toward the other entrance, the "lock" through which they'd entered. It wasn't far. The chamber was much shorter on the outside than it seemed within.
He stopped at the lock, leaned against the sign, and looked in. Nothing. Darkness. He shouted down the hole, "Sweetheart, are you all right?" No answer. "I'm out safely. Be back soon with help." No answer. "Sweetheart? Take it easy, now. I'll be right back." Silence. "Sweetheart? Are you okay?" Nothing. She couldn't possibly hear him. It was too far down the sheer, vertical, convoluted drop of the lock, through the twisting passageways, to the gravel beach by the pool with the emerald light source at the bottom.
He glanced around. The sun had set and night was coming on fast. Night would snuff out the emerald glow, the only source of light in the cave where he had left her. Had he made a mistake? A really stupid mistake? He should have stayed there with her all night and left at the first sign of light in the pool. He should have left her alone during daylight, with at least the little green glow in the water. He'd figured wrong again. Stumbled ahead without planning, just the way she said he always did. Should he drop back down through the lock and wait with her until morning? He was already out. The dive had been tough. Real tough. His lungs and ears had nearly exploded. The water was deep. Maybe he'd get lucky and get back with help in a hurry.
He pushed away from the opening and broke into a run, toward the road, he hoped. He had found the cave from the road. He should be able to find the road again. But it was rapidly getting dark.
She was alone in darkness now. She had the flashlight but he had cautioned her against burning it continuously. "It won't last too long," he had said. "I'll probably be back long before it'd burn out, but we'd better not take any chances. Best thing to do is just turn it on for a minute or two and take a quick look around every once in a while. Or if you hear something." What a stupid thing to have said! He'd realized it as soon as he'd gotten it out. "But you won't hear anything because there's nothing to hear. There's nothing down here. Nothing to be afraid of."
"Why did you bring me here?" she'd asked again.
He came to the road. Right at the place where they'd left it, right by the landmark for finding the cave, the big white boulder shaped like a cow's head with one horn. At least he still had his sense of direction.
He looked up and down the desolate road, trying to decide which direction would bring the quickest help. He couldn't see any lights in either direction. It was a cloudy night and was going to get good and dark. To the right was back toward town. He vaguely remembered seeing a few little houses somewhere back that way. To the left was unknown. Just around the curve could be help. Maybe he'd get lucky.
He started down the road to the left, running, but not fast. His clothes were nearly dry but the wet shoes burned his feet. As he rounded the curve in the road, he could make out that the road went straight for a long stretch and there wasn't a light of any kind in sight. This stopped him. He'd be better off going back toward town.
He stopped and started back in the opposite direction, running slowly, more of a trot, hardly faster than a walk. He passed the cow-head rock and headed into another curve. He slowed to a walk because he couldn't run anymore. It was extremely dark. He began to realize that a lot of time had passed since he left the cave. He thought of her alone in total blackness on the rocky beach by the pool, bruised and skinned from the descent through the moss-slicked lock. He walked a little faster for a while and then he saw the pinpoint of light ahead.
The light spurred him into a dead run, and as he pounded toward it, he realized it was much farther away than it had looked. He finally had to stop running and walk because of the pain in his sides. When the pain had let up, he started running again and reached the little frame house with the wooden porch. He ran across the yard, walked up onto the porch, and rapped on the screen door.
The lights went out in the house and then he heard a slide latch on the inside of the front door. "Hey, please," he shouted. He slapped the screen door against the jamb several more times. "You gotta help me. My wife's in the bottom of the cave back down the road." He paused. Hearing no sound within, he hit the screen door again. "Hey, please, help me. Just let me use your phone." He waited again. Still no signs of response. "Call the police," he shouted. "At least do that. Will you do that?"
He looked at the window that had gone dark after his first knock. He thought about kicking it out and going in and getting them to help him. But they might have a gun and decide to shoot him. That's what he'd probably do if he was in the house and somebody came busting in.
He rattled the screen one more time. "Aren't you going to help me? Please! My wife's in the bottom of that cave up the road. Just call the cops for me."
He paused again. They obviously weren't going to do anything. He turned and sat down on the porch step. She was alone in that black cave. How was he going to get her out? He'd really done it this time.
He loved her. He really did. Loved her more than he thought possible. She was so great to him. She put up with so much. Sometimes he wondered why she did. He didn't drink and he didn't chase around after other girls. That was probably part of it. And he loved her and she knew it.
But he had to do things. That was the way he was. He heard about things and just had to do them. That was why they didn't have anything. She often said they probably never would. But he couldn't help it. Once he got a bug up his ass, he was off and running. The sky-diving lessons. The flying lessons. That stuff cost big money. And the automatic rifle with the scope. That had cost all of both their take-home pay from the mill for a week.
They didn't need that rifle. But once he'd made up his mind, she went along with it. They'd taken it and hiked out to the old quarry a couple of times and floated bottles and beer cans on the water and sat up on the rim of the quarry and used up a couple of boxes of shells potting away at the stuff, taking turns. Then she'd heard the ricochet. Since that time, the rifle just hung on the wall in their apartment.
He thought about their apartment. She called it their rat's nest and that was just about right. But he couldn't help it. He'd rather do things than have things. They didn't even have a car. Not even an old one. They walked to the mill and they hitched most everywhere else. They'd had a bike for a while, a Harley, a real beauty, but he'd wiped it out trying to learn to hill-climb. He'd had to let it go and he got off just in time, then sat there watching it head back down alone, end over end, just flying. They made payments for eight more months on something they couldn't ride. Salvage parts covered one payment.
He heard about the cave and how the light coming up through the water was the most fantastic sight anybody ever saw and he had to see it. Clearest and greenest water anywhere, glowing green in the middle of a black cave. A giant emerald. A giant green light. He hadn't listened too carefully to the part about getting out. He remembered that you had to get wet, but he figured you just got down on your belly and crawled through. He didn't get the message that you had to swim straight down maybe fifteen feet. After he decided that he had to see it, he talked her into going with him, told her that it was something he wanted to do bad and it wouldn't even cost anything. He'd said they'd just wear old clothes and she'd said that was all they had. And she'd finally agreed to go on a pretty Saturday afternoon when there really wasn't much else to do.
And now it was a black Saturday night and she was in there alone. He wondered if there were any bears in that cave. Or snakes or waterdogs or rats. Or spiders. She was deathly afraid of spiders. Or bats that could see in the dark and fly down and get tangled in her beautiful long brown hair. What if there was another person in there? Maybe somebody hiding out? He had to get her out of there. He glanced back over his shoulder at the window. The lights were still out.
He got up and went back to the door and tapped lightly on the screen. Maybe he'd been too rough before. "Please listen," he said in a pleading voice. "I've got to get help and get back to that cave back down the road and get my wife out of there. I'm not going to hurt anybody. I just want to get help. Can I just use your phone? Or could you just call the highway patrol? Please, won't you help me?" He waited several minutes. "Please? Can't you see I'm in trouble and need help?"
When he saw they weren't going to answer, he became enraged. "Goddammit! Open the door! Help me! I need help." He waited again. It was useless. He slammed the screen once more and then turned, left the porch, went across the yard and back onto the dark road. He could just make out objects near the road in the darkness. He thought about the level of blackness in the cave and wondered how much she'd used the flashlight. As he did, he tried to figure back how long he'd been gone from inside the cave.
Having rested on the porch, he started running again, his footsteps on the pavement producing the only sound anywhere in the vacuum of the black, windless night. He glanced back over his shoulder and the lights were on again in the window.
He kept moving, and in a few minutes the sounds of his heavy breathing fell around his footfalls as he concentrated on finding a pace he could maintain for a while. How far had he run? How far was he from the big cow-head rock? Two, three miles? That's how far it seemed. Maybe four. The rock was around twenty-six miles from the edge of town. Would he have to get close to town to come to any more houses? He couldn't remember.
Suddenly he saw some light. A car coming toward him. The first one he'd seen since he'd been on the road. It was coming pretty fast. He stepped out into the road in the path of the car and began to wave his arms up and down. The car approached, slowed down as it got near him, steered carefully around him as if he were an obstacle, and then accelerated back up to speed.
He turned and watched it disappear and then dropped to the surface of the road, flat on his back with his knees up, resting, waiting for his body to stop throbbing. He wanted to sleep and closed his eyes for a moment. He thought about his wife in the blackness of the cave and wondered if somehow she might have been able to sleep, or at least rest. Probably not. How would anybody be able to? He had to get help and get back there. Suddenly feeling very rested, he hustled to his feet and started off again, first walking and then in a slow run.
The road curved sharply and he saw another light in the distance. Remembering how he had been fooled before, he didn't rush at the light but held his pace, watching it slowly approach him with each heavy jogging stride. The little house was very reminiscent of the first one---same distance from the road, same setting, same porch on the front with the light coming through the window. The house was on the right-hand side of the road instead of the left. Could it be the same house? Could he have started off in the wrong direction when he got up off the road? Maybe he had slept a minute or two and had gotten up all turned around. This possibility made him feel weak for a moment, but he figured he'd find out as soon as he knocked on the door. He slapped the screen three times and waited.
The lights went out and a strong voice said, "Git going!"
"You gotta help me. I gotta get help. My wife's in the bottom of a cave back down the road and I gotta get help getting her out."
"Git going. Git off the porch and off this land. Git going."
"Please help me. I mean no harm. Let me just use your phone. I'm telling the truth. My wife's in that crazy cave down the road. I gotta get help."
"If I open the door I'm gonna be shootin' to kill. Now, git!"
"Please! You gotta help me. Just let me use your phone. Call the cops. Anything. Please help me."
"Got no phone. Now git moving."
He hesitated a moment. "How far to the next house?"
After a prolonged silence, "A mile toward town."
"Tell me something else," he said to the closed door. "Was I here banging on your door a little while ago?"
A foot kicked the other side of the door and the voice shouted, "Git! Git moving!"
The kick startled him and he ran off the porch into the yard. He stopped, turned, and stared at the house. There was a white earthenware pot with something growing in it on the porch step which looked familiar. He had gotten turned around. He had to get moving toward town. One mile to the next house. He could get there in ten minutes. He was going to get lucky at the next one. He felt assured and took off running down the road.
Another car approached him from behind and this time he was determined to stop it. He turned and stayed in the middle of the road, flagging wildly with his arms. When it became apparent that the car would hit him if he didn't move, he leaped out of the way and watched the red taillights fade.
He started running renewed. Help was a few minutes away. This time he was sure. He was going to get help and get on back and get her out of that black hole. The next house was the one.
He came up over a little rise and the lights appeared, right on schedule. He pounded harder, down the hill, feeling much stronger. Second wind. As he came upon the house, he could see it was much larger than the other one, set farther back from the road, painted white, lots of lights, a nice house, one like she often said she wished someday she could have.
He slowed down as he reached the corner of the yard and then noticed an old pickup truck, a small one with an open bed, parked heading out. He studied the house. They couldn't see him. They were inside in the light. He was outside in the dark and already had eyes like an owl's, used to the dark.
He moved across the yard to the truck, stepped up on the running board, and reached through the open window. The key was in the ignition with a heavy piece of cotton string hanging from it. After surveying the house again, he silently eased the truck door open and slid into it. He clutched, twisted the key, and the old clunker exploded into life. He was on his way to get help.
As he approached the town, things finally started looking familiar. Once in the town he began to realize that a lot of time had passed. Everything seemed quiet, deserted, asleep, even for Saturday night. He went straight for the highway patrol station and as he pulled up to it to park, two troopers got out of a car where they had been sitting and walked over to him.
"Where'd you get the truck?" one of them said.
"You gotta help me. My wife's in the bottom of the cave and we gotta get her out. She's alone out there."
"Where'd you get the truck?"
"This is the fastest one yet," the other trooper said. "We get the call fifteen minutes ago and here he comes, driving right up to us."
"Please, you've got to help me get her out of that cave."
"Taking trucks is serious business, friend. You'd better come inside."
"Please listen to me. My wife's in the bottom of that crazy cave about twenty-five miles out on Fifty-eight. You guys gotta help me. We gotta get her out."
"You want to call a lawyer?"
"I don't need a lawyer. I need help getting my wife out of that cave."
They kept him in a cell for what seemed an endless period of time until they could get the sheriff up and in to see him. He lay on the cot and fidgeted, thinking about her out there in that black hole. He began to think about how much he really did care about her, how much he liked just touching her, seeing her at lunch at the mill, having her go with him when he was off doing something, watching her give in when there was some new wild-ass thing he just had to do.
"How'd you get out there?"
"We hitched."
"What'd you go out there for?"
"I had to see it."
"See what?"
"The green light."
"What green light?"
"The light that comes in through the water under the rock. Some of the guys at the mill told me about it and I had to see it."
"Didn't they tell you about getting out of there after you got in?"
"I guess I didn't figure the water was so deep."
"Didn't you read the sign on the lock, telling you to stay the hell out of there?"
"They went in and saw it and got out okay. I figured I could, too. And I did."
"Why didn't you leave your wife outside?"
"Anything I want to do that bad I like her to get to do, too. Can't we go get her out?"
"In a little while. We need a little more light. We got to get a wrecker over to the hole. We've had to do this a time or two before. You're lucky. We drop a chain down with a little harness on it and strap it around her and snake her back up out of there. We need a little more light to get the wrecker down the hill to the lock."
They dropped off the pickup truck on the way back out to the cave. And he studied the little house with the porch as they passed it. Not much of a place.
He read the sign carefully for the first time as he watched them set up to drop the harness down through the lock. "Warning! Stay out! Do not enter. Once down inside, impossible to get back out." He wanted to be the one who went in to help her out, using the harness. He wanted to be the first to see her. And he wanted just a little bit to see the green light once more. But he was relieved when the sheriff said no, that the man who'd designed the harness and handled the other rescues would go. He was relieved because he wasn't sure what to expect.
She appeared at the mouth of the pit, both feet wedged into the little stirrup and a wide leather strap around her hips, binding her to the chain. She clung to the chain with one arm and held the other arm tightly over her eyes to protect them from the gray morning light and she was sobbing convulsively. They helped her off the chain and onto the ground and she sat, her face against her knees, closed in by her arms, her whole body shuddering. He wanted to go over to her but he was afraid and so he stood back and watched. He felt his own eyes fill up and start sending water down his face. He watched her and he watched as they dropped the chain back in and easily brought out the other man.
A trooper gave her a pair of sunglasses. She walked next to the sheriff back up the hill to the road and he lagged a little behind the two of them. When they reached the sheriff's car, she began to get in front, doing so in such a way that it was clear he was to sit in back. As she was getting in, he finally said, very softly, "You all right, sweetheart?"
She glanced quickly at him. "I'm fine," she said. And as she closed the door, he knew that she would never look directly at him or speak to him again.
She had been moved out for two weeks. He kept watching for her around the mill but she avoided him. He missed her, wanted her back, couldn't get used to being without her. Everything seemed to be falling apart.
Since it was Saturday, he slept an hour or so later. When he woke up, he lay there, thinking about her and also about the fact that he'd have to make some changes. He couldn't afford even their "rat's nest" without her paycheck coming in, helping to carry it. He'd have to find something cheaper. Lots of things were going to be different.
He got up and looked outside. Pretty day. After some cereal and milk, he left the place, walked to where 58 came through town, and started hitching. The first lift took him all the way. When they reached the cow's-head rock, he got out, hiked into the thicket to the lock, and lowered himself down to the floor of the cave. He made his way to the gravel beach and sat down, rubbing a freshly skinned elbow, to stare at the beautiful green glow and think about how it all had happened.
Copyright © 2005 by Stanley Cohen.
Peter Lovesey's latest novel-length mystery to see print in the U. S. is Bloodhounds (Soho Press/12-'04), the fourth installment in the Peter Diamond series set in Bath. The tale centers around a group of detective and mystery fiction fans, and involves discussion of classic mystery plots and some of mystery's illustrious authors, including John Dickson Carr, who reviewed Mr. Lovesey's first two novels in this magazine.
I laughed when I was told. I took it for a party joke. There was nothing athletic about him. People put on weight when they get older and they shrink a bit, but not a lot. Willy Plumridge was five-two in his shoes and the shape of a barrel. His waistline matched his height. If Sally, my hostess, had told me Willy sang at Covent Garden or swam the Channel, I'd have taken her word for it. Jumped for England? I couldn't see it.
"High jump?" I asked Sally with mock seriousness.
She shrugged and spread her hands. She didn't follow me at all.
"They're really big men," I said. "You must have watched them. If you're seven feet tall, there are two sports open to you---high-jumping and basketball."
"Maybe it was the long jump."
"Then you're dealing in speed as well as size. They're sprinters with long legs. Look at the length of his. And don't mention triple-jumping or the pole vault."
"Why don't you ask him which it was?"
"I can't do that."
"Why?"
"He'd think I was taking the piss."
"Well," she said. "All the time I've known him---and that's ten years at least---people have been telling me he once jumped for England."
"In the Olympics?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Bungee jumping, I could believe."
"Is that an international sport?"
"Oh, come on!"
Sally said, "Why don't I introduce you? Then maybe he'll tell you himself."
So I met Willy Plumridge, shook the hand of the man who jumped for England. I can't say his grip impressed me. It was like handling chipolatas. He was friendly, though, and willing to talk. I didn't ask him straight out. I came at it obliquely.
"Have we met before? I seem to know your face."
"Don't know yours, sport," he said, "and my memory is good."
"Could be from way back, like school, or college."
"I doubt it, unless you were in Melbourne."
"Melbourne, Australia?" My hopes soared. If he was an Aussie, I'd nailed the lie already.
"Yep. That's where I did my schooling. My dad worked for an Australian bank. The family moved there when I was nine years old."
"You're English?"
"Through and through."
Not to be daunted, I tried another tack. "They like their sport in Australia."
"And how," he said.
"It's all right if you're athletic, but it wouldn't do for me," I said. "I was always last in the school cross-country."
"If you were anything like me," Willy said, "you stopped halfway round for a smoke. Speaking of which, do you have one on you? I left my pack in the car."
I produced one for him.
"You're a pal."
"If I am," I said, "I'm honoured."
That first dialogue ended there because someone else needed to be introduced and we were separated. Willy waved goodbye with the fag between his fingers.
"Any clues?" Sally asked me.
"Nothing much. He grew up in Australia, but he's English all right."
She laughed. "That's half of it, then. Next time, ask about the jumping."
Willy Plumridge and his jumping interrupted my sleep that night. I woke after about an hour and couldn't get him out of my mind. There had to be some sport that suited a stunted, barrel-like physique. I thought of ski-jumping, an event the English have never excelled at. Years ago there was all that fuss about Eddie the Eagle, that likable character who tried the jump in Calgary and scored less than half the points of any other competitor. A man of Willy's stature would surely have attracted some attention if he'd put on skis. The thought of Willy in skin-tight Lycra wasn't nice. It was another hour before I got any sleep.
I knew I wouldn't relax until I'd got the answer. I called Sally next morning. "Is it possible he did winter sports?"
"Who?"
"Willy Plumridge."
"Are you still on about him? Why don't you look him up if you're so bothered about this?"
"Hey, that's an idea."
I went to the reference library and started on the sports section, checking the names of international athletes. No Willy Plumridge. I looked at winter sports. Nothing. I tried the Internet without result.
"He's a fraud. He's got to be," I told Sally when I phoned her that night. "I've checked every source."
She said, "I thought you were going to look him up."
"I did, in the library."
"You great dummy. I meant look him up in person. He's always in the Nag's Head lunchtimes."
"That figures," I said with sarcasm. "The international athlete, knocking them back in the Nag's Head every lunchtime."
But I still turned up at the bar next day. Sally was right. Willy Plumridge was perched on a barstool. I suppose it made him feel taller.
"Hi, Willy," I said with as much good humour as I could raise. "We met at Sally's party."
"Sure," he said, "and I bummed a fag off you. Have one of mine."
"What are you drinking, then?"
The stool next to him was vacant. I stood him a vodka and tonic.
"Do you work locally?" I asked.
"Work?" he said with a wide grin. "I chucked that in a long while ago."
He was under forty. Of course, professional sportsmen make their money early in life, but they usually go into coaching later, or management. He'd made a packet if he could spend the rest of his life on a barstool.
I had an inspiration. I pictured him slimmed down and dressed in silks and a jockey cap. "Let me guess," I said. "You were at the top of your profession. Private jet to get you around the country. Cheltenham, Newbury, Aintree."
He laughed.
"Am I right?" I said. "Champion of the jumps?"
"Sorry to disappoint," he said. "You couldn't be more wrong. I wouldn't go near a horse."
Another theory went down the pan.
"Wouldn't put money on one, either," he said. "I invest in certainties. That's how I got to retire."
"I wish I knew your secret," I said, meaning so much more than he knew.
"It's simple," he said. "I got it from my dad. Did I tell you he was in banking? He knew the way it works. He told me how to make my fortune, and I did. From time to time I top it up, and that's enough to keep me comfortable."
Believe it or not, I'd become so obsessed with his jumping that I wasn't interested in how he'd made his fortune through banking. Maybe that was why he persisted with me. I was a challenge.
"If you were to ask me how I did it, I couldn't tell you straight off," he said. "It wasn't dodgy. It was perfectly legit---well, almost. I'm an honest man, Michael. Thanks for the drink, but I have to be going. Next time it's on me."
I ran into Sally a couple of days later. She asked if I was any the wiser. I told her I was losing patience with Willy Plumridge. I didn't believe he'd jumped for England. Ever.
"But are you getting to know him?" she asked.
"A bit. He strikes me as a bullshitter. He was on about making a fortune out of banks. No one does that without a sawn-off shotgun."
"He's not kidding," she said. "He's fabulously rich. Drives a Porsche and updates it every year. If he offers to let you in on his secret, let me know."
"Sally, the only thing I want to know---"
"Ask him, then."
One more possibility came to me during another disturbed night. I broached it next lunchtime in the pub. "You must have done plenty of flying in your life, Willy."
"Enough."
"I was wondering if you ever went in for parachuting."
"Me? No way. What makes you think that?"
"Someone told me you were a very good jumper."
"That?" he said with a laugh. "That wasn't parachuting."
"They said you jumped for England."
"And it's true." He took a sip of his drink.
I waited for more and it didn't come.
"What do you do to earn a crust, Mike?" he said.
"I'm a freelance illustrator. Kids' books, mostly."
"Satisfying work---but not too well-paid, I reckon."
"That's about right."
"Suppose there was a way to set yourself up with a good amount of cash. Would you take it?"
"Depends," I said. "It would have to be honest."
"I like you," he said, "so I'll tell you how I made my first million. You've heard about Swiss bank accounts?"
"Where people salt away money with no questions asked?"
"That's the myth. Actually, a lot of questions are asked. It's no simple matter to open a Swiss bank account with a suitcase full of banknotes. The gnomes of Zurich have strict banking laws these days. Customers have to be identified. You have to convince the bank that what you are depositing isn't the proceeds of a crime. Various money-laundering scandals have led to stringent legislation being introduced. These days you can't open a numbered account, as you once could, without identifying yourself. The beneficial owners of accounts have to be declared. As they should."
"Agreed," I said, uncertain where this was leading.
"They've also tightened up on withdrawals. The whole point of using Switzerland is that every account is rigidly protected. Great-Uncle Edward dies and leaves you everything and there's a rumour that he was stashing away money in a Swiss account. Can you find out from the bank? No. All you get is a petrifying glare and a reminder that they are bound by their banking codes. In another twenty years, the bank can claim the money. There are said to be tens of billions locked away in dormant accounts in Switzerland. The gnomes bide their time and then collect."
"What a racket," I said.
"Yes, and as soon as any of the big names gets in trouble and questions are asked about the funds they salted away, the banks freeze the accounts. Noriega, Marcos, Ceausescu, Sukarno. But I don't care about monsters like that. It's Great-Uncle Edward I feel sore about. I won't say the little people because we're talking serious money here. Let's say family money, Mike. It should stay in the family, right?"
"Right."
"Well, I'm uniquely placed to help out people like the family of Great-Uncle Edward. My dad---the banker---had a contact in one of the great Swiss banks. Someone he trusted, a man of honour who had a conscience about these unfortunate families trying to get information. His hands were tied. There was nothing he could do within the Swiss banking system. But he knew the magic numbers the families needed, you see. He passed the numbers to Dad, who passed them to me. Then it was just a matter of matching the right families to the money that rightly belonged to them. It involved some basic research. Anyone can look at a will in most countries of the world. You find the beneficiaries and you offer to help."
"For a fee?"
"A small commission."
"A small percentage of a big sum?"
He smiled. "You're getting the idea, Mike."
"So you pass on the information about the account numbers?"
"And the sums involved. Dad's friend listed the balances with the numbers. So I'm the bearer of good news. I've made a big difference to some people's lives."
Including your own, I thought. Not bad.
I said, "I guess some of this money is ill-gotten gains."
"I never enquire," he said. "If Great-Uncle Edward was a train robber, or painted fake Van Goghs, it's no concern of mine. The way I see it, the family has more right to it than the bank. Are you with me?"
"I think so," I said.
"I'm only mentioning this because I think you can help me."
I hesitated. "How?"
"Well, I still have details of a few accounts I haven't been able to follow up, and time is running out. The twenty-year rule means that the banks will scoop the pool if something isn't done. I begrudge them that. I feel I owe it to the memories of my old dad and his friend---who also died about the same time---to recover that money. These are families I haven't traced yet. I've found the wills, but the beneficiaries are more elusive."
"You want someone to do the research, track them down?"
He shook his head. "There isn't the time. What I need is someone I can trust to approach the bank and show them the documentation and claim the money for the estate."
"What---go to Switzerland?"
"That isn't necessary. They have a City of London branch. I'd do it myself, but they know my face from a previous claim."
"You want me to pretend I'm acting for the family?"
"Pretend? You will be acting for them, Mike. I've opened an executors' account. You show them the copy of the will and the death certificate and they verify that the names match. You give them the account details, which they confirm with Zurich. They write you a cheque, and bingo!"
"Why should they deal with me?"
"To keep them happy, you say you're one of the executors."
"I don't like the sound of that."
"Don't worry, Mike. I'll give you proof of identity."
"No, this isn't right."
"Would five percent make it right?"
I didn't speak.
"Think it over," he said. "Let me know tomorrow, or the next day. No sweat."
Plenty of sweat. Another night of disturbed sleep. This time I was wrestling with my conscience. It was a scam and a clever scam. But the only loser would be a bank that was about to get a fortune that didn't belong to it.
Much neater than pointing a gun at a cashier. This was beating them at their own game, with account numbers and cheques.
Could I trust Willy Plumridge? He had the lifestyle that backed his story. Good suits, a Porsche, usually parked outside the pub. I hadn't seen his house, but Sally had told me he had two, and they were both big places.
In the morning my credit-card statement arrived. I owed them three grand and some more.
"If I did this," I said to Willy, "how much would I make out of it?"
He took out a calculator and pressed some buttons. "Give or take a few pence, fifty-five grand."
I tried to sound unimpressed. "So it's a sizable inheritance?"
"You can work it out."
"And there won't be any problem with the family?"
He grinned. "The beauty of it is that we don't know where they are. And when we trace them---if we do---they're going to be so delighted by this windfall that they won't begrudge us our commission. Believe me, Mike, this isn't the first such deal I've negotiated."
I had my doubts whether Willy's efforts to trace the family would yield a quick result. Maybe, like the bank, he reckoned the money should come to him after a passage of time.
Fifty-five grand would set me up for a couple of years at least. I could do some real painting for a change, get off the treadmill of cute teddy bears and badgers dressed as postmen.
"Would this be a one-off?"
"Has to be," Willy said. "I couldn't use you again. I have to find some other guy I can trust."
"So we can draw a line under it?"
"You'll never hear from me again. It'll be as if we never met."
"I'd prefer the money in cash, if that's possible."
"No problem."
He was efficient. He'd done this before. A packet arrived at my house two days later. Inside were the details of the Swiss bank account of the late James Alexander Connelly, standing at £1,106,008, his death certificate, and his last will and testament, including the names of two executors, Harry and Albert Smith. I was to be Albert. There was a letter from Harry giving me authority to act on his behalf, and another from an English bank confirming that an executors' account had been opened. A birth certificate in Albert Smith's name was included as proof of identity.
Willy had told me to make an appointment. Banks don't like people coming in off the street and making big withdrawals. I was to say I was an executor for James Connelly's estate enquiring about the possibility of a bank account in his name. No more than that.
I called the bank and spoke to someone who listened without much show of interest and invited me in the next morning at eleven-thirty.
After another uneasy night I put on the only suit I owned, dropped my documents into a briefcase, and took the train to London. Sitting there shoulder to shoulder with the businessmen who commuted daily, I felt isolated, one of another species about to venture into their territory.
The bank was right in the City of London, a massive building with grey pillars. Unlike my own suburban bank, this one had a security guard and a receptionist. I mentioned my appointment and was shown to a seat. The décor was intended to intimidate: marble, mahogany, and murals. Don't let them get you down, I told myself. They're the crooks.
They kept me waiting ten minutes, and it felt like an hour.
"Mr. Smith."
I almost forgot to respond.
"This way, please."
The young woman showed me upstairs, where it was Persian carpets and embossed wallpaper. She opened a door. "Please go in and sit down. Mr. Schmidt will be with you shortly."
Schmidt. One of the family? I said to myself, trying to stay loose. I sat back in a large leather chair and patted my thighs. I wasn't going to cross my legs in case I looked nervous.
Schmidt entered through another door. He looked younger than I expected, dark, with tinted glasses. "How can I help?"
I gave him the spiel, stressing that Uncle James had repeatedly spoken about his special account with the bank. After his death there had been a delay of some years before we---the executors---found his notes with the account details. "His filing system was nonexistent," I said. "We came across the note in a book of handwritten recipes. We almost threw it out. As a cook, he was a dead loss."
"May I see?"
"I didn't bring the recipe book," I said. "I copied the figures."
"And do you have other evidence with you?"
I removed everything from the briefcase and passed it across.
Schmidt spent some minutes studying the documents. "It seems to be in order," he said. "Would you mind if I showed the papers to a colleague? We have to verify anything as major as this."
"I understand."
When he left the room I found I'd crossed my legs after all. I took deep breaths.
The wait tested me to the limit. Just in case there was a hidden camera, I tried to give an impression of calm, but pulses were beating all over my body.
When Schmidt returned, there was a cheque in his hand. "This is what you were waiting for, Mr. Smith, a cheque for a million and just over two hundred thousand pounds. The account accrued some interest. All I require is your signature on the receipt."
Resisting the urge to embrace the man, I scribbled a signature.
"Your documents." He handed them across. "And now I'll show you out." He opened the door.
Slipping the cheque into an inner pocket, I stuffed the rest of the paperwork into the briefcase and went through that door walking on air.
Some people were in the corridor outside. I wouldn't have given them a second glance had not one of them said, "Mr. Michael Hawkins."
My own name? I froze.
"I'm DI Cavanagh, of the Serious Fraud Squad."
I didn't hear the rest. I believe I fainted.
Three months into my sentence, I was transferred to an open prison in Norfolk. There, in the library one afternoon, I met Arthur, and we talked a little. He seemed more my sort than some of the prisoners. As you do, I asked him what he was in for.
"Obtaining money by deception."
"Snap," I said.
"Only I was caught with the cheque in my pocket," he said.
"Me, too. I was caught in a Swiss bank, of all places."
"How odd," he said. "So was I."
It didn't take long to discover we had both been talked into the same scam by Willy Plumridge.
"What a bastard!" I said. "And he's still at liberty."
"Waiting to find another mug to tease some money out of the bank," Arthur said. "I bet I wasn't the first."
"Well, he got rich by doing it himself, I gather," I said.
"True, but with less risk. In the early days of this racket, he traced the families and advised them. They made the approach to the bank, and it worked. They paid him well for the information. Later, he was left with the account numbers he couldn't link to a family, so he thought up this idea of finding people to pose as executors. Maybe it worked a few times, but banks aren't stupid."
"So I discovered. What I can't understand is why they haven't pulled him in. He's Mr. Big. You and I are small fry."
"They won't touch him," Arthur said.
"Why?"
"He's the man who jumped for England."
That again. "Give me a break!" I said. "How does that make a difference?"
"Don't you know?" Arthur said. He glanced to right and left to make sure no one could overhear him. "One of those account numbers he got from his father belonged to someone pretty important. A former prime minister, in fact."
"No! Which one?"
"I never found out, except they're dead. Supposed to have been a model of honesty when in fact they were salting away millions in bribes. Willy got onto the family and offered to liberate the money without anyone finding out. The next generation had some heavy expenses to meet, so they hired him. The bank, of course, was utterly discreet and totally duped. Willy pulled it off and was handed the cheque. Then I don't know if his concentration went, or he was lightheaded with his success, but he slipped on the stairs at Bank tube station, fell to the bottom, and suffered severe bruising and concussion. He was rushed to hospital and no one knew who he was."
"Except that he was carrying the cheque?"
"Right. And various documents linking him to the family. The police called them. They panicked and said they knew nothing about Willy. He had to be an impostor and all the documents must be faked. After a night in the cells, he was charged with obtaining money by deception and brought before the magistrate at Bow Street. They put him on bail, pending further investigation. Only it never came to trial."
"Why?"
"The secret service intervened to avert the scandal. If it had ever got to court it would have destroyed a prime minister's reputation. They decided the best way to deal with it was for Willy to jump bail and go into hiding. No attempt was made to find him and the matter was dropped. The family cashed the cheque, Willy got his commission, and the good name of a great prime minister was saved from disgrace. That's why you and I are locked in here and Willy Plumridge is sitting in the Nag's Head enjoying his vodka and tonic. He did the decent thing and jumped for England."
Copyright © 2005 by Peter Lovesey.
Annie Reed lives in northern Nevada with her husband and daughter. Her short story "The Beginning" was published in Strange New Worlds VI (Pocket/ June 2003). She is a graduate of the 2002 Oregon Coast Short Story Workshop, taught by writers Kristine Kathryn Rusch (herself an EQMM contributor) and Gardner Dozois. She is also a recipient of a Nevada literary arts fellowship.
Me and Bobby, we started a fire yesterday in that empty house on Colfax, the one with the ugly puke-green Realty Masters For Sale sign in the front yard. We got in through the patio door, real easy-like. The guys working on the inside, fixing up the place, they don't always lock up when they leave. I guess they think no-body notices, but I do. Even I know better than to leave a house open like that. Just asking for trouble.
We were outside the AM-PM on Fourth and Garnett, hanging out in the shade, when I came up with the idea. Me and Bobby, we went to AM-PM for drinks like we always do. I had a Mountain Dew with lots of ice. I like lots of ice in the summer, crunch it between my teeth like candy. Bobby was sucking down AM-PM's lame-ass version of a sour-berry Slurpee. He stuck out his tongue every now and then just to gross me out, like a blue tongue is all that gross. I've seen grosser.
I'd slipped a lighter in my jeans pocket when the AM-PM cashier wasn't looking. The lighter was clear orange plastic, the kind where you can see the fluid inside sloshing all around. I almost forgot about it until I did that little jump-skip thing I do over cracks in the sidewalk and I felt the lighter poking hard against my hip.
"Wanna see something cool?" I asked.
I took the lighter out of my pocket and showed it to Bobby, and all of a sudden, just like that, I had the idea.
Kinda funny when I think about it, how ideas come to me. I didn't really want the lighter, hadn't planned on swiping it. It was just so easy to take.
It's part of the game, to see what I can get away with. People look at me and expect me to be nice. Bobby says it's my face, the way I can make it look all sweet and innocent. I think he's jealous because he can't. People look at Bobby and just expect him to do something bad.
Like that stupid AM-PM cashier. She was this old lady with rotten teeth and frizzy bleached-out hair and a loser job. She watched Bobby the whole time he was in the store like he was going to stuff his Slurpee in his shirt instead of pay for it, or maybe she thought he'd pull a gun on her and rob her. Just because of how he looks, like he can help it. So I smiled my sweet, innocent smile and paid for my Mountain Dew, and when she went back to watching Bobby's every move, I grabbed the lighter off the display next to the counter. Serves her right. I hope they make her pay for it.
Bobby didn't want to do the fire at first. He's always so scared of getting caught.
"Roberto, man, c'mon, we gotta do this," I said, and because I know he hates his real name, I said it again, drew it out singsong. "Ro-berrrrr-to."
He took a swing at me, but I'm faster than him and I ducked out of the way without spilling any of my drink. I could have hit him back, but he's my friend so I didn't.
"Don't call me that," Bobby said. He looked like he wanted to try to hit me again. "You know I ain't that freaking name."
Yeah, I know, but saying it makes Bobby mad enough to do what I want him to. I know it, and he knows I know it, but that doesn't change things. Bobby'll do almost anything to prove he's not Roberto, not some worthless piece of shit like his old man.
"Listen," I said. "I been inside already. There's all sorts of stuff in there that'll burn."
"Yeah? Then why don't you go do it? You're the one who's got a hard-on about it."
Hard-on. That's funny.
Bobby sucked down some more of his drink and pretended to ignore me. But I saw the glint in his eye, and I could tell he was coming around to the idea. That's one of the reasons he hangs with me. I come up with all the best ideas.
We stood there for a while, finishing off our drinks and watching the traffic on Garnett. Wasting time, but it was Saturday and we had no place special to be. I didn't want to go home, not yet. There was nothing to do there anyway. There never is.
An eighteen-wheeler roared by, belching nasty-smelling diesel over its rusted trailer. Garnett has a No Trucks sign, but nobody pays any attention. There's a park across the street from AM-PM, lots of grass, a couple of basketball courts, and a playground with swings and a slide and a little-kid merry-go-round. I guess somebody figured trucks driving by a park where a bunch of kids hang out wasn't a good thing. Too bad nobody cares. I flipped the truck driver off even though I knew he couldn't see me, and Bobby laughed.
"This is lame," I said, tired of just standing around. "Let's go."
I tossed the rest of my drink toward the trash. It hit the rim and bounced back on the sidewalk, spilling ice on the hot concrete. Bobby picked up the cup and threw it with his into the trash can.
"What are you, the garbage man?" I asked as I headed off down Garnett. Colfax was four blocks away, the empty house three blocks up.
"Rebound Man," Bobby said. "He shoots, he scores!"
He did an air-ball jump shot and then started walking with me, and just like that I knew he'd decided to do it.
Never a doubt. Bobby's my friend.
Seven blocks can take forever when you're walking someplace you don't want to go. Your feet drag and the hot sidewalk burns through your shoes until the bottoms of your feet feel like they're on fire. The sun zaps all your energy, and it's all you can do to keep on walking.
The seven blocks to the empty house on Colfax wasn't like that at all. The sun still fried my head and the sidewalk, but my feet didn't feel the heat. A few cars drove past, but nobody else was out on the streets but me and Bobby. No kids jumping rope or throwing ball. No dads mowing half-dried-out lawns or washing cars in the driveway, no moms pulling weeds in front-yard flowerbeds. Even the dogs that normally yapped their heads off while they chased along after me inside chain-link-fenced yards only barked a couple of times and stayed in the shade.
Lazy, hot Saturday afternoon, and I was so jazzed I could hardly keep from running. I get like that when I'm playing the game.
"Burgers," Bobby said, his nose in the air, sniffing like a dog.
I smelled barbecue, too. Somebody was in their backyard grilling lunch or maybe an early dinner. Probably sucking down a beer or two and listening to the Giants game on the radio. My stomach rumbled. Barbecue was one of the best things about summer.
"Steak," I said. "Gotta be steak. Or maybe ribs with lots of sauce. Or chicken. Burgers don't smell that good."
"Burgers rule."
Bobby was Burger Man. He'd eat burgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if he could get away with it. McDonald's, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Bobby didn't care as long as it was a burger. I always figured it was part of him wanting to be Bobby instead of Roberto. Nobody could like burgers that much.
"Burgers suck," I said, just to piss him off. "Give you Mad Cow Disease."
"Do not!"
He went to shove me, but I veered off the sidewalk into the street. I mooed at him and he laughed at me.
"Mad Cow," I said, and mooed again, then we both started to laugh.
Half a block away from the empty house, Bobby started walking slow. He eyed the house like it was going to bite him. It wasn't anything special, just like any other old house in the neighborhood except for the For Sale sign. Sure, the lawn was dried out and the yellow paint on the outside of the house was peeling, but half the houses we walked by were in worse shape.
"You sure nobody's there?" Bobby asked, eyeing the rusty old white Toyota parked in front of the house.
"It's Saturday. They don't work on Saturdays. I told you, I been watching."
Watching long enough to know that the Toyota belonged to the house next-door. That meant the neighbors were home, but I could hear the deep thump-thump-thump of a rap beat coming from their house. Whatever me and Bobby did, they'd never hear us.
"I'm hungry," Bobby said. "We should get something to eat first."
He was stalling. Maybe he'd decided to back out. I could start the fire myself and it would still be cool, playing the game was always cool, but it wouldn't be as much fun without Bobby. Friends did shit together, that's what being friends was all about.
"You backing out on me?" I asked. I stepped up close to him, getting in his face. "Huh? Roberto?"
Bobby backed away from me.
"No," he said, defiant-like, but he wouldn't look me in the eye. "I don't think this is such a good idea. I mean, this is somebody's house."
"No, it's not." I pointed at that puke-ugly sign. "Nobody lives here, nobody's gonna care. They'll just fix it up again."
"Yeah?"
I smiled my sweet, innocent smile. "Yeah. It'll make them happy, give them more work to do. They'll get more money. Everybody's happy when they have more money."
"What if we get caught?"
"We're not gonna get caught."
I slugged him in the arm, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to let him know I was getting tired of his shit.
"Don't be stupid," I said.
I walked to the backyard gate and pretty soon Bobby followed me like I knew he would. The sidewalk around the side of the house was littered with cigarette butts.
"Look at this." I kicked at a cigarette butt with my toe. "I bet they'll blame the whole thing on these guys, smoking on the job."
"Smoking'll kill you," Bobby said.
Bobby's old man smoked, but it hadn't killed him yet. Drinking hadn't done it, either. Maybe he should take up running. I heard that killed a lot of people.
I opened the gate. The hinges creaked and the gate sagged, its wooden slats scraping against the concrete sidewalk. Bobby winced and looked over his shoulder like it was an alarm or something, but I knew it didn't matter. All the houses around here have tall wooden backyard fences. Everybody wants privacy, and everybody else gives it to them. It's rude to peek through the cracks in the fence to see what's going on in your neighbor's backyard. Once we got behind the fence, we could do almost anything and no one would know.
Bobby walked through the gate and I closed it behind us like we belonged there. No sweat.
Most of the backyard was just dirt, but some of it had been lawn before the workmen trampled it down. Their big, ugly boot prints were all over the place. Scraps of lumber and little bits of chalky walling and rusty nails were ground into the dirt right along with more cigarette butts. In the back corner a couple of piles of dog shit drew flies. I wrinkled my nose against the smell. Debris from inside the house---big pieces of walling and insulation and scraps of wood and little bits of wire---was piled against the inside of the fence, and more stuff was jammed in a battered metal trash can next to the back gate.
The guys who worked here were slobs. Good thing. Hidden underneath all that debris was the little red Sold sign I pulled off the top of the Realty Masters sign the day before. If they'd cleaned up their mess they would have found it. Some people make it so easy to play the game. They deserve what they get.
The sliding-glass patio door was unlocked, just like it was yesterday.
"Easy," I said. "Told you."
I slid the door open and grinned at Bobby. It wasn't my sweet, innocent grin, more like a shared-secret kind of grin. My playing-the-game grin. The best grin of all.
The door opened into a room I guessed was supposed to be the dining room. A paint-splattered plastic sheet covered dirty carpet. The room was empty except for three doors propped up against the walls. Yesterday the white paint on the doors had still been wet. Now the doors were dry, but the house still stank as bad as it had the day before, maybe even worse because it was so hot inside.
I looked at the white door closest to the patio door. The scratches I'd made the day before with a nail in the new paint at the bottom of the lowest panel were still there. Not quite my initials---I'm not stupid---but enough of a mark that if anybody looked close, they'd know somebody did it on purpose. I wondered if anybody would notice before they put the door back where it belonged.
"You do that?" Bobby asked, leaning in to look at the door.
"Yeah." I laughed. "Cool, huh?"
"You're a freak, you know that?"
If anybody else had said that, I would have slugged them. But Bobby knows he can call me that and I won't get mad.
"And you're the freak's friend, so what does that make you?"
"Freak Man!"
Burger Man. Rebound Man. Now Freak Man. That was just too much. Bobby could always make me laugh. We stood there on that paint-splattered piece of plastic, busting up in the middle of a hot, stinky dining room over something that was only funny because I was in the game.
We were both freaks, and that was fine by me.
Things started to go bad when I showed Bobby the dead hamster.
I didn't think it through, I guess. Animals are just animals to me, nothing special. But Bobby, he used to have a dog before his old man found a mess it made and beat the crap out of it. That's the only time Bobby ever stood up to his old man, and that piece of shit turned his belt on Bobby. He ended up with a bruise on his arm the shape of a belt buckle, and probably more on his back that he wouldn't show me. I wanted to wrap that belt around his old man's neck and squeeze, pull it tight until his face turned as purple as Bobby's arm. I didn't do it, though. Part of the game is to pick the right time. One of these days it will be the right time for Bobby's old man.
"C'mon," I said after we finally quit laughing. "I gotta show you the weirdest thing."
The dead hamster was inside what was left of a wall in an upstairs bedroom. I found it the day before, just a piece of stiff, dried-up fur with sunken holes where the eyes used to be. The guys working on the house had punched out a hole in the wall between two of the bedrooms, and the hamster was wedged in tight next to a beam in the empty space between the two sides of the wall. I figured maybe it got inside somehow and couldn't get back out again. Stupid thing probably starved to death.
I thought the hamster was cool. Bobby wanted to give it a funeral.
"A real funeral, you know, like a Viking or something. You wanted to burn something anyway. We could make a funeral pyre."
All that Bobby knew about funeral pyres came from reading comics. That heroic, send-your-dead-warrior-off-in-a-burning-boat crap. I could have cared less about the funeral, but the idea of a pyre was kinda cool, I had to admit. Barbecued hamster. Better than burgers.
"Well, I'm not touching it," I told him. "You want to set it on fire---"
"Give it a funeral."
"Whatever. You're picking it up."
It took Bobby a good five minutes to get that hamster out of the wall. The thing must have been jammed in there real tight. Me, I wouldn't have had the patience, but Bobby wiggled it back and forth real slow. Like he didn't want to leave even the smallest piece of it behind.
Bobby carried the hamster back downstairs like it was still alive, cradled it in his hands right up next to his shirt.
"That thing probably has bugs in it," I said. "Worms. They're gonna come crawling out all over you."
"Shut up."
"Slither right up your arm---"
"Shut up."
"---crawl in your nose---"
"Shut up!"
"---and eat out your brain."
"Shut up, shut up! You don't know anything about it!"
Bobby never yelled at me. Never got so mad at me that spit flew out of his mouth and his face got all blotchy red.
I stopped on the stairs and just stared at him. For the first time, Bobby looked ugly to me. Just for a second I saw some of Bobby's old man in his face, saw other kids with black hair and permanent tans and mean eyes who hid guns and knives in their baggy pants, and I knew that was what other people saw when they looked at Bobby.
He turned away from me and started down the stairs again. Me, he yelled at, but he talked baby talk to the dead hamster, walking down the stairs real slow and deliberate like he was at a real funeral.
"So, where are we going to do this?" I asked him just for something to say.
Bobby didn't answer me, so I followed him downstairs and through the house as he walked from room to room. He was looking for a place to do it. I thought he'd pick the fireplace just because that's where somebody like Bobby would start a fire. No imagination. No great ideas. But he surprised me. He took that thing to the kitchen and stopped in front of the sink.
"Here," Bobby said. "This is a good place."
He looked at me like he expected me to argue. I didn't. I was too jazzed. Finally, we were going to do what we came here for. I'd make him pay for yelling at me later.
The kitchen sink was full of gunked-up paintbrushes and dirty rags, and a couple of old cans with some kind of dirty, muddy-looking liquid in them. Something to clean the brushes, I guessed. Not water, because it stank to high heaven. I moved the junk out of the sink, piled all of it on the countertop next to the stove.
"What are we going to use for the pyre?" I asked.
"Wood," Bobby said, like I was the stupidest person in the world. "Funeral pyres are always made out of wood."
And there was plenty of wood, right outside in that junk pile next to the fence. I knew better than to tell Bobby to get it. He was still talking baby talk to the stupid hamster, standing there sweating in the afternoon sunshine from the window behind the sink. Fine. I'd get the wood. Better than listening to Bobby anyway.
Finding dead-hamster funeral-pyre size pieces of wood turned out to be harder than it looked. I ended up with scraps of two-by-fours, building-block size, plus a couple of bigger pieces just because they looked cool. I used the front of my shirt like a sling to haul the scraps back to the kitchen, and I dumped the scraps in the sink. The scraps didn't make a very big pile of wood. I wanted more of a fire than that.
Bobby smoothed down the top of the scrap pile and put the hamster on it.
"Gimme the lighter," Bobby said.
No way. This fire was mine.
"I'll do it. It's my lighter."
Bobby actually tried to dig the lighter out of my pocket. I pushed him off me. "Get away from me, pervert!" I yelled at him.
"You won't do it right. You don't care."
"You didn't even want to do it. Roberto."
"Yeah, well, I do now. You'll mess it up."
He kept grabbing at me, clawing at my jeans, at my arms when I tried to push him away. His nails dug scratches in my skin. I was shocked when he yelled at me before, but now I was just mad. He was ruining the game.
"What the hell is your problem, Roberto?!"
I still had one of the two-by-four pieces in my hand. I hit him in the shoulder with it to shove him back. He bounced against the counter, his arms flailing out to keep his balance. His hand knocked one of the cans of paint cleaner over, and the muddy liquid splashed over the countertop and ran in dirty rivers onto the floor.
"Gimme the lighter!" he screamed at me. "This one's gonna be right, I'm gonna do it right, nobody's gonna screw it up this time, not even you!"
Bobby charged me. He must have pushed himself off the counter because he hit me like a football tackle, shoulder hard into my stomach. I fell backwards on the kitchen floor. My head bounced against the hardwood and Bobby fell on top of me. My breath whooshed out in one great lungful. I never knew Bobby was that heavy.
I tried to yell at him to get off me, tried to hit him, but my arms didn't want to work. I felt him dig in the pocket of my jeans, heard him shout when he grabbed the lighter.
My lighter.
Bobby stood up and flicked the lighter on, right in front of me, making sure I could see him do it. I didn't say anything, just glared at him, worked on getting my breath back. My head hurt, my stomach hurt, and I was so mad, all I could think about was getting the lighter back.
"You don't know how to do this," Bobby said. "You don't know anything at all, just how to make trouble." His voice was flat and terrible, and I knew this really was the Bobby everyone else saw.
Bobby turned back toward the sink, turned his back on me. I heard the click as he flicked the lighter on again.
Not with my lighter, you don't.
I had my breath back by then. I reached my hands out to push myself up off the floor and I felt the two-by-four I'd dropped when Bobby hit me. I grabbed it, held it like a baseball bat with both hands. I took two steps toward Bobby and swung hard.
"The fire is mine!" I screamed at him.
The two-by-four hit Bobby in the back of his head. He never even saw me coming. He pitched forward face first into the sink, probably kissed that stupid piece of dead hamster, but he held on to the lighter. Still lit, the lighter and his arm came down on the countertop. Right in the middle of the muddy paint cleaner and the dirty rags.
Suddenly the whole countertop was on fire. Bobby screamed and reared back. Fire climbed up his arm toward his face, like I told him the worms would. His shirt caught on fire, and then his jeans, and I saw his hair start to smoke. Little lines of fire ran down the counter to the wooden floor, reaching out toward me. I backed away, terrified and awed at the same time. I couldn't let the fire catch me. I couldn't let it turn on me, not like Bobby had.
Bobby'd quit screaming. He took a stottery step toward me. I backed away farther, into the dining room. The curtains over the kitchen sink were burning, the wooden cabinets, thick smoke choking my lungs. Bobby fell to his knees. Through the flames I could still see the lighter clutched in his hand. The smell ... the smell was worse than anything I'd ever smelled, but underneath it all was the smell of barbecue, and my stomach heaved.
I turned and ran.
Bobby's memorial service is tomorrow. Mom told me I have to go, and that I have to wear a dress. I hate wearing dresses. Bobby'd make fun of me, just like I would if he had to wear a suit.
I think Mom wonders why I haven't cried about Bobby. I should, and I'll probably force myself to at the service tomorrow. Tears work almost as well as my sweet, innocent face. So I'll sit there with all of Bobby's relatives while they talk in a language I can't understand, and I'll look all sad like I should.
Maybe Bobby's piece-of-shit old man will be there. Someday I'm going to play the game with him. He's the reason Bobby went crazy about the dead hamster, whatever he did to Bobby's dog. Bobby would still be here if it wasn't for his old man. I should do something about that.
Bobby was my friend.
Copyright © 2005 by Annie Reed.
The African continent is featured this month in a story by Malawian Daliso Chaponda. The tale also qualifies for our Department of First Stories, as his first paid fiction (though he is an L. Ron Hubbard contest finalist). Mr. Chaponda is currently living in Canada, where he works as a comic with his own show, Black History YEAR: A Month Isn't Enough. "My native tongue is Chichewa," he says, "which I spoke for my first six years of life. But I write in English because years of British education gradually made that the language I am most fluent in."
"DICTATOR DIES WHILE SITTING ON TOILET." That was the headline. Beneath it, a full-page photo showed General Ebeso, self-proclaimed "Lion of the Savannah" and "Leader for Life," sitting on a ceramic throne with trousers pooled around his ankles. As always, he was in full military regalia. The bullet wound in his chest was a crater in his bloated mass.
Detective Kachani leant his head back in an uninhibited laugh.
Govinda Patel's eyes flickered dangerously behind oversized, pink-rimmed glasses. "This is funny to you? The police not take me serious?"
He pointed at the Malawi News on her counter. "I wasn't laughing at you." He reached for the newspaper. The photo was a grainy black-and-white. If ever there was a time when a color photograph would have been appreciated, this was it. Still, the image was sufficiently comical. Kachani mentally picked out a spot on his fridge on which to tape it. Better yet, he'd buy a frame.
The paper was abruptly whipped from his grip. "You can buy your own," Mrs. Patel snapped. "Do your job."
This was the last straw. All morning Kachani had been badgered by an increasingly infuriating sequence of proprietors who acted as if their stores were the center of the universe. "Listen," he said. "I doubt anyone is planning to start a carpet-smuggling ring with four carpets. They were probably stolen by rioters too drunk to know what they were taking. You can take some satisfaction in imagining the moment they wake up and realize that while others took televisions, stoves, and bags of flour, all they stole were some useless rugs."
Mrs. Patel tensed as though preparing to pounce. "I sell highest quality Persian carpets, imported ... first rate..."
Kachani darted out of Carpet Nirvana before her rage peaked.
Bunda Avenue was crowded. People milled among the debris of the previous night: glass shards, knocked-over billboards, garbage from upturned bins, and the carcasses of battered cars. Beneath, the deeper scars eleven years of Ebeso had left on the city lingered: streets with potholes and ruptured gutters, neglected buildings with collapsing roofs, people so thin their arms looked like twigs. And now, what? Everything would miraculously become better because Ebeso was gone? Kachani could not make himself feel the jubilation he saw in the faces of people he passed. He made his way back to the station slowly. His eyelids sagged and his muscles ached. He was forty-three, but he walked like a much older man. His face, too, had been worn down. His eyes and thick lips were framed by dark lines, and he was balding. A few grey curls flecked his beard.
He had parked a kilometer north of the ravaged city center. He stopped at a newsstand and bought a copy of the Malawi News, and laughed again at the front page. Definitely worth buying a frame.
The police station was almost empty. Kachani found a slip of paper that said "Come and see me" stuck to his desk. No name was needed; Station Commander Patrick Chundira's messy scrawl was unique. He found him in the middle of what seemed to be a very taxing phone conversation. His tight-boned face was gleaming with sweat. A series of exchanges climaxed in Patrick shouting, "I don't care if you have to arrest them all, just do it!" He slammed the receiver into its cradle.
"What was that about?" Kachani asked after the commander hung up.
"A crisis at the hospital." Chundira dabbed his face with the corner of his sleeve. He took off his glasses and wiped them as he spoke. "There are not enough doctors for all the wounded. After hours of waiting, some of them have become violent. I don't have enough people to send."
"You want me to go?"
"I need you for something more important. I need you to figure out who killed Ebeso."
"What?! Did you somehow sleep through last night? We don't need to waste time trying to find the killer. Everybody's overjoyed."
"That is actually the problem. The killer has become a national hero."
"So?"
"He ran away after shooting Ebeso. I wish he hadn't. So far, three people have come forward claiming the credit."
Kachani grinned.
His boss met this response with a sigh. "I also thought it was funny at first, but I have been talking to the chief of police and this could escalate into disaster. Elections need to happen quickly or the chaos will get worse. Whoever killed Ebeso has an almost guaranteed win. But two of the people who have come forward are just political opportunists. And once their claims spread across the city their supporters will start fighting. Mark Lungu's have guns and I don't know about the others."
Kachani nodded. Mark Lungu was the leader of the Tembelelo rebels. They had been fighting Ebeso for the past three years and were loved by the masses, though Kachani personally felt their acts of dissent hurt civilians as often as they hurt the government. They set fires, hijacked deliveries, and engaged Ebeso's forces with no thought for people caught in the crossfire. "Who are the other two?" he said.
"Archbishop Mpocha and 'Lightning' Kalyati."
Kachani whistled. The archbishop's supporters were probably the largest group, but Zikomo "Lightning" Kalyati, Malawi's most famous ex-footballer, was rumored to have ties to the military. It wasn't an exaggeration to imagine the situation could lead to a civil war.
Chundira shook his head. "If we could have predicted this, we would have closed the murder scene to the press..."
"So the impostors had access to the crime-scene details."
"Exactly why I need your help."
"Why me?"
"Because you're brilliant. I can count on you for results."
Patrick was obviously more used to receiving compliments than giving them, because he hadn't mastered the art of pretending to be sincere.
"The truth," Kachani insisted. He had always done things his own way no matter what the circumstances, and he knew that this had often complicated his superior's life.
The left side of Chundira's mouth rose in his characteristic half-smirk. "All right. It's because you are notoriously apolitical. You have never backed one group or other. You don't care."
Kachani feigned resentment. "Not entirely correct. I simply mistrust all politicians equally."
"Either way, you're the only person I can trust."
Satisfied, Kachani rose. "I'll head to the palace immediately."
"Give me ten minutes," Chundira said, picking up the phone.
"You're coming with me?"
"Of course." He began dialing a number. "This is a sensitive situation. You have no tact or respect for people in positions of power."
Or rather, Kachani realised, there was no way Patrick was going to miss this opportunity. He didn't want to stay director of a small precinct forever, and one of the three supposed killers was probably going to be the next president....
A little later, they were in Chundira's Toyota Corolla. The Malawi News article was spread between Kachani's thighs, shaking with the car's jerky progress. "Good," he muttered.
"What?"
"The woman who wrote the article hated Ebeso."
"Who didn't?"
"The impostors got all their information from this article. Anything I see at the palace that she didn't report accurately will show them to be liars."
"Clever." Chundira made a sharp turn off the main road. "Who do you think did it?"
"Haven't got an opinion yet."
"You must have a hunch. Why don't we bet?"
"No, thanks."
Patrick cast Kachani a disapproving look. "I think it's either Zikomo or Mark Lungu. It can't be the archbishop."
"Why not?"
"He's a man of God, not the violent sort. Also, you've seen him. He's short and weak."
Kachani almost remarked that his boss was only five foot six. Instead, he said, "You don't have to be a giant to pull a trigger."
"You have to be brave, though. A man like that would panic."
"Have you ever spoken to Archbishop Mpocha?"
"No."
Kachani let his silence speak.
Patrick let out a frustrated grunt. "You think he did it?"
Kachani closed the newspaper. "I didn't say that."
"Zikomo Kalyati, now there's a man with courage. Did you ever watch him play?"
"I'm not a soccer fan."
"Something is wrong with you. You're like a woman. He ran like a cheetah. I promise you, if it hadn't been for that car accident Malawi would have won the Africa cup. It was a tragedy, a great tragedy." The policeman's face collapsed into an expression of earnest grief.
Although he didn't follow soccer, Kachani would have had to be living in seclusion not to have heard about the Blantyre team's star player's car accident. His leg had been mauled by twisted steel. Unable to play anymore, he had chosen to exploit his popularity by running for parliament. Under Ebeso, parliament wasn't influential, but MPs still got to pose for photographs, attend official functions, and be introduced as "Your Excellency."
Chundira rambled on. "Mark Lungu is the obvious one, though."
"Why would Mark Lungu take the risk instead of sending one of his rebels?"
"He's not that sort of man. He's a man of action."
Again, Kachani was sure his boss's speculations were based on nothing but hearsay. He reached out and his fingers sandwiched the knob of the car radio.
There was a large crowd outside the palace. They had probably been there since the night before. Once-jubilant faces were now showing signs of exhaustion. Their voices, still screaming and chanting, were now raw and hoarse. Still, they remained gathered---almost as though they feared it was a dream and if they went back to their houses, they would wake to find Ebeso alive. Patrick mentioned that it had been hard to stop the crowds from rushing the palace the day before. Now, policemen stood lazily in front of the residence's gates watching the mollified masses. There was still some life in the weary multitude. It was localised around one man who stood on a makeshift podium of upside-down crates. He gesticulated ferociously as he shouted.
"Who's that, some community leader?"
Chundira didn't know, either.
They entered the palace. It was huge---excessively so. Eleven years earlier, when Ebeso had come into power, he had felt that the old presidential residence in Lilongwe was an inadequate representation of his heroism. He had demanded that a palace "of heroic proportions" be built for him. He inspected the plans drawn up by several architects and ordered them executed for insulting his magnificence. Eventually, one architect satisfied him and the Blantyre palace was built. It had cost more than Malawi's annual domestic budget. It stretched out over twenty-one acres and had twelve floors and elevators on opposite sides. The ceilings were high, and elaborate crystal chandeliers hung from them. The corridors were long and paved with ornate carpets that reminded Kachani of the wares of Mrs. Patel's Carpet Nirvana. Every few meters there was a tribute to Ebeso's magnificence: paintings and photographs of the dictator, wooden carvings of lions, and a large mirror (in front of which he would undoubtedly pose).
"Didn't the man ever get tired of looking at himself?" Patrick mused.
Kachani stopped to look at a nine-foot-tall portrait. Ebeso was always taller, thinner, and more handsome in his portraits. This one barely looked like him. He was identifiable only because of the array of medals for valor pinned to his chest. Ebeso had awarded them to himself. Military might had been essential in Ebeso's vision of Malawi, even though it had never been at war with another African country. It had no raw materials to be coveted, and its land mass was sparse. Hardly worth the effort of invasion. But then again, Kachani considered, how many African countries have ever been at war with another country? Still, all of them spend money and resources on the military. The armies, of course, never go to waste. They are inevitably used on the domestic population.
The bathroom was at the far end of the corridor, a bald policeman standing outside it chewing gum noisily. Like everything else in the residence, the bathroom was huge. It had four stalls and the tiles on the floor were a mosaic of a lion. The image was barely visible now because the floor was covered in a layer of grime. "Did you let every policeman in Blantyre in here to contaminate the evidence?"
"No," Chundira defended himself. "Ebeso had one of his big parties two nights ago."
Everybody who had attended that party, every guard who used to patrol the palace, and everyone else remotely linked to Ebeso had probably fled the country by now. The few followers of Ebeso who had been found by the mobs the night before had been beaten to death. Kachani walked about the bathroom taking meticulous note of everything he saw: three sinks, three urinals, a mop in a bucket, a large fan in the roof, a portrait of Ebeso on the wall ... By the time he had made a complete survey, he was disheartened. Even with her bias, the Malawi News reporter had been very accurate. "I need to speak to the man who found the body," he told Patrick. "Did he leave his address?"
"He's right outside, sir," said the bald policeman.
"Great. Can you get him?"
A nod and a brisk march down the corridor followed.
"He's actually military," said Chundira, pointing at his back. "We didn't have enough police to keep control yesterday so we gave some soldiers police uniforms. Couldn't have them in military uniforms because of the stigma."
Kachani barely heard him. He was looking intently down the corridor himself.
"What is it?"
"Maybe nothing," replied Kachani.
The man who had found Ebeso's body was brought back in a few minutes. It was the man they had seen giving a speech outside. His suit was immeasurably old, with split seams about the shoulders and numerous stains. It was draped over his skinny body like a tarpaulin. He had a veritable glow about him; his smile was huge and his head was held aloft. "I am Arthur Ntaso."
"You found him?"
"Yes," was the proud reply. "I was mopping upstairs when I heard a loud bang. It was like thunder. It made my body shake. I know now that it was the sound of God's vengeance. I ran downstairs, and when I got here I found him gasping for his life. He was holding his wound and coughing blood. As he was dying he held out his hand and said, 'Forgive me, Malawi.' I told him, 'It is too late for you.'"
Kachani stifled a smile. Mr. Ntaso was obviously embellishing to make himself out to be a hero. Who could blame him? Here was a man who had probably been a servant all his life. Serendipity had suddenly placed him at the center of attention and he loved it. The untruths in his story were obvious. Even from looking at the photograph in the newspaper Kachani knew that Ebeso's hands had not been bloody. And the notion of Ebeso begging Malawi for forgiveness was laughable. Kachani kept these thoughts to himself. He could get the information he needed without tearing away Mr. Ntaso's moment of glory.
"Could you show me where you were when you heard the gunshot?"
Ntaso took Kachani and Patrick up a short flight of stairs. "Here. Just outside his study."
"And you ran?"
"As fast as I could."
"You didn't see the killer?"
"No, the instrument of God's fury was already gone by the time I got there."
Kachani had a few more questions and then he made for the car.
"That was a waste of time," grumbled Patrick.
"Why do you say that?"
"He was obviously lying."
"I know, but he still helped. Now, to the two suspects."
"You mean three?"
"Two," he insisted. "As much as Mr. Ntaso was adding to the story, you can be sure that if he had seen the killer he would have told us about it. He may have added a few things like a halo glowing around the killer's head, but he would have mentioned it. You saw how long the corridor was? The killer ran all the way down it in the time that Mr. Ntaso took to run down the stairs. With Zikomo's limp, he couldn't have run that fast."
Chundira opened his mouth, then shut it. "You're right."
Kachani smiled with satisfaction, then added, "St. Paul's Church is ten minutes away."
When Kachani was younger, he had been deeply religious. A crucifix had dangled from his neck and a Gideon's Bible in his back pocket had frequently been consulted. His religious and political disillusionment had occurred simultaneously. After Malawi's first dictator, Kamuzu Banda, had been removed from power, Kachani had been one of the most hopeful. He had praised God and thrown himself into trying to serve his people as a policeman. But in the face of poverty, AIDS, and harsh droughts, none of the presidents who followed Kamuzu helped Malawi. Neither had God.
When Kachani stepped into St. Paul's Church, he felt none of the awe he would have twenty years earlier. A lone figure knelt in front of the crucifix at the far end of the church. Kachani and Chundira approached Archbishop Mpocha. His skin was an inky black that seemed to blend into the suit he wore. His priestly collar was a thin white island in an opaque sea. He did not respond to their approach. His head remained bowed, his expression solemn. His mouth moved soundlessly.
It was a long prayer. Eventually the archbishop's eyes opened and he rose. His wrinkled face, greying beard, and penetrating stare made him look impossibly old. "I was praying for forgiveness."
Chundira jumped at the bait. "A great man like you doesn't need forgiveness."
"I took a life," Archbishop Mpocha announced. "Even a man as vicious as Ebeso was a child of God."
"You did Malawi a glorious service. It was a---"
"Why were you at the palace?" Kachani cut in.
"I had a meeting with Ebeso about the demonstrators he imprisoned last week."
"So after years of standing silent while he imprisoned and executed thousands, what was it about the latest incarcerations that moved the Church to action?"
"I'm sorry," Patrick said desperately. "Please excuse him, he---"
"Do you think this is the first time I have heard insults like that?" The archbishop was unruffled. The only part of him that moved were the fingers of his left hand. They played absently with the hem of his suit. "Blaming the Church is an easy thing for frustrated people to do. We did not stay silent."
"You're right," Kachani replied. "The Church was very vocal in supporting Ebeso. Whenever he ordered a judge removed or one of his rivals disappeared, the Church would denounce that person and every congregation in Malawi would hear how that man had been a sinful Judas."
Archbishop Mpocha's gaze still had a calm, superior veneer. He smiled as one would to a silly child. "So you are so much more righteous? While Ebeso was in power, how many murder investigations did you end prematurely when the evidence led to Ebeso's cabinet? And what did the police ever do when the people committing violence were Ebeso's followers?"
Kachani opened his mouth to reply but the archbishop held up his hand. "On some level, everybody collaborated with Ebeso. It is easy to say, 'You should have stood up to him, you shouldn't have been silent,' but we were all afraid. Of course we were. We did not want to be the next one eliminated. The most anyone could do was find ways to do some good within the restrictions. I was guilty every day because the Church had to support Ebeso and turn a blind eye to his deeds. Yesterday I had been pushed too far. When Ebeso went to the toilet, I knew he was vulnerable for once."
Kachani struggled to control his anger and think logically. "You were carrying a gun?"
"Yes."
"Why? If you didn't plan to kill him, why would an archbishop be carrying a gun?"
"Malawi is not as safe as it once was. I am ashamed to admit it, but I sometimes have to carry a gun."
"Weren't you searched when you arrived at the residence?"
"The guards who let me through were Catholic. My word was enough for them."
"Where is the gun now?"
"I panicked. I threw it away."
"Where?"
"I'm not sure. Somewhere on my drive back here."
Convenient, thought Kachani. "Where did you meet him?"
"In his study."
"And how did he react when you brought up the incarcerations."
"He told me he did not care what I thought. That's why when he got up to go to the toilet---"
"You followed him down the corridor and shot him. In the toilet."
"Yes." The archbishop's restless fingers were now threading the rosary around his neck.
"Think about this. Are you saying that's what happened? You walked down the corridor after him, and shot him in the bathroom."
"Yes."
"We're done," Kachani said to Patrick and began to walk away. "He didn't kill Ebeso."
"What?" the archbishop objected. He finally sounded angry, and this pleased Kachani.
Chundira remained in the church for a few minutes more---probably apologising and grovelling. He was enraged when he exited. "You can't talk to him that way."
"It's how he deserves to be talked to. Have you seen the house he lives in? He has a legion of servants, a pool, and a satellite dish. Many Malawians share a loaf of stale bread with their whole family for dinner, but still give money to the Church every week. This is what it's used for." Kachani pointed at a large red Volvo parked behind the church.
"You called him a liar with no basis."
"He said he followed Ebeso down the corridor and shot him in the bathroom, but he also claims to have met Ebeso in his study. You were there, Patrick; Ebeso's study was upstairs but the bathroom he was shot in was downstairs. The archbishop didn't mention the stairs."
Patrick thought about it. "That's hardly enough."
"I know, but every important thing about the murder is in the paper. Only the tiny details can reveal the liars."
"It's not much at all."
Kachani agreed. As they drove away from the church, he seethed with anger at himself. He had let his emotions get in the way. The smugness of the archbishop had reawakened old resentments. And when Mpocha had asked how many of his own investigations had been prematurely terminated, he had struck a nerve. Kachani could not deny it. There was a stack of "unsolved" cases. Some of them were horrendous---child rapes and murders of whole families. Yet he had done the cowardly thing. Many of the criminals would never be punished. They had probably left the country by now, no doubt with suitcases stuffed with money.
Kachani barely heard anything Chundira said to him as they drove.
They reached Kudya Inn in the late afternoon.
A scar, even a small one, has a way of commanding attention. People see the scar and they can't look away. Every time they look at the other features---eyes, nose, lips---it's a brief glance, and like twirling compass needles, inevitably their gazes return to the scar. Mark Lungu's scar began beneath his left ear and cut across his cheek in a keloid arc. The rest of his face was angled, immaculate, and refined. Without the scar, he would have had the air of a bothered university professor. With it, he seemed dangerous and unpredictable.
Inside Kudya Inn he was speaking to a group of men and women whose ragged garments were at odds with the inn's finery. "...Malawi has never been allowed to reach its potential," he was saying. "The British held us down. Kamuzu held us down. Ebeso was the most recent. Too much of the country's power has been in the hands of selfish bastards instead of with the people. I will return it to you." The speech continued for ten more minutes in this vein.
Afterwards, Kachani and Chundira approached him in the foyer.
He greeted them with a jovial ease. "After years of running and hiding, I was so relieved at being able to return home that I forgot how much I hated making speeches."
"You did a fine job, anyway," observed Kachani. "You pointed fingers and made promises without explaining how you would do it, a by-the-books political speech."
The look of reproach Chundira gave him was exhausted. He was starting to accept that it was pointless to try and control what came out of Kachani's mouth.
Lungu replied in an even but strained tone, "I understand why you're wary. I'll have to earn your respect. What newspaper are you from?"
"We're not from a newspaper."
Lungu's irritation was palpable. "I don't have time for this."
"We just need to ask you a few questions and that'll be the end of it."
"All right." Lungu poured himself some water.
"Can you briefly explain the things leading up to your murder of Ebeso?"
The rebel's lips were beaded with tiny droplets of water when he spoke. "We were losing hope. Our activities were having little impact. Whenever we raided one of Ebeso's bases, he would take it out on the people. More and more rebels were being arrested and executed every week, but to kill Ebeso was a difficult goal because he was paranoid. He was always armed and surrounded by guards. At the big party he threw for his supporters two days ago, we knew he would be vulnerable. I slipped in with the guests."
"You weren't recognized? You?"
"There was a huge group. I just pretended to be one of them and waited. There was no opportunity, and when everyone started leaving I hid in the bathroom. You have no idea how long I waited in there, unsure of when I should come out. I didn't actually expect him to come in, so when I heard someone enter, I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't know it was him until I shot him. I was lucky."
Kachani asked him a few questions to clarify: what color the toilet stalls were, where he had been standing in relation to Ebeso, and other small details.
When they left, Patrick sighed with relief. "That solves it."
"I don't know."
"What do you mean?"
"He answered all the questions, but it didn't seem right. I feel I'm missing something."
"Why are you making it difficult? This is the best way it could have turned out. Mark Lungu is the best person to lead Malawi, he is a great hero."
"So was Ebeso," replied Kachani. "As much as I can't stand pathetic little cowards like Archbishop Mpocha, when they are in power at least things don't get radically worse. Occasionally they steal some money and promote a few of their friends, but that is the most they do. Men like Mark Lungu are more unpredictable. He said in his speech that the British kept Malawi down. Who knows if that will mean he suddenly decides to expel all Malawians of British blood? Leading rebels requires extreme thinking; leading a country is not the same. I don't know if Malawi can survive another hero."
"You're such a pessimist," Chundira accused, and Kachani did not disagree.
"I think we should go see Zikomo now."
"What? But you said..."
"I know, but..." Kachani hated to admit his mistakes, especially to Patrick, who would find ways to bring them back up at inopportune moments. "...I may have been hasty in discounting Zikomo. Zikomo could not have run away before Mr. Ntaso saw him, but maybe he could have hidden in an adjacent toilet stall and slipped away later."
"That's far-fetched."
"We need to check into every possibility."
Chundira grumbled something and Kachani did not ask for clarification. At the next intersection, however, Patrick turned left---towards Zikomo's house. After a few minutes of driving they came across a large group of people walking and running in the opposite direction.
"Now what?" Patrick sighed.
They slowed down and asked a bare-chested man who had a blue shirt wrapped around his head.
"We're going to the palace. At five o'clock Archbishop Mpocha is going to prove he killed Ebeso. It was on the radio."
Kachani turned to Chundira. "That's impossible."
"He wouldn't announce it on the radio unless he was confident."
"Why didn't he tell us?"
"After you insulted him?"
Kachani glanced at his wrist watch. "Hurry. We have to get there."
"I know," agreed Patrick, turning the car around.
They reached the palace at 5:26 P.M. Archbishop Mpocha's revelation was late. Kachani and his boss pushed their way through the amassed crowd. At one point they had to draw their guns and wave them in the air to clear a path. As they neared the front of the group, the archbishop caught sight of them. He gestured for them to approach. "I was hoping you would make it," he said to Kachani. His irritating smile had returned.
"What's your proof?" Kachani demanded.
"Have patience."
"What are you waiting for?"
"Them." The archbishop pointed.
A van from the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation had just arrived. A group of reporters got out, unloading equipment. They approached, clearly bubbling with excitement. After years of being nothing more than a propaganda machine for Ebeso, they were obviously eager to get some real reporting done.
The archbishop waved at the crowd and swaggered into the palace followed by the reporters, Kachani, Chundira, and a few others. He walked down Ebeso's majestic hallway and then to the bathroom. He waited for the reporters to give him a ready sign and then he began speaking. He enunciated crisply so that no word would be missed in the broadcast. "Malawi, here the Lion of the Savannah was slain. Here his reign of terror ended. I spent my life in the service of God. It meant more to me than anything else, but yesterday, when I saw an opportunity to kill Ebeso, I made a choice. It is not a choice I regret or would undo, but I am still sad because I must now announce that I am withdrawing from my position in the Church. This was a sacrifice I made willingly. It makes me angry that there are people who are telling terrible lies and claiming they killed Ebeso. Malawi cannot survive with the uncertainty, and I think God anticipated this. When I killed Ebeso I wanted to get the gun out of my hand immediately. I thought it was guilt, but now I think it was God who made me leave the gun here. The police searched this place, but God did not allow them to find the gun, though it has been here all along." The archbishop bent over the bucket in the corner of the room. He rummaged in the water and then rose with a flourish. He lifted a gold-plated gun in the air and held it aloft. Leisurely he walked out of the toilet and out of the palace. Chundira and the others darted after him.
Kachani stayed in the bathroom, transfixed to the spot. He cursed himself for being so stupid. He had allowed his dislike of the Church to cloud his judgment. For all his claims to Chundira of not making up his mind, he had been convinced the archbishop couldn't have done it. And the gun---there was no excuse for that oversight. In the bucket, of all places. He walked up to it and pushed it forward with his foot. It rolled. He looked down at the parallel wheel marks, cutting across the grimy floor like railway tracks. He stared at them intently. There was something that bothered him but he couldn't pinpoint what it was.
From outside he heard a wild cheer. As much as he disliked the man, he had to recognize the archbishop's finesse. Resigning from the clergy so dramatically opened his way to running for president perfectly. Archbishop Mpocha was definitely a master of spectacle. He was probably holding the gun up to the crowd right now, like a holy relic. The image of the gun flashed in Kachani's mind and then he looked at the tracks left by the bucket again. "Of course," he muttered, and rushed out of the bathroom.
Thirty minutes later, he was knocking on the door of an apartment in Ndirande. A little boy of about five or six answered the door. He had a curly mat of black hair and large oval eyes.
"Is your father home?"
The boy welcomed Kachani into a small, single-roomed apartment. Arthur Ntaso was reclined on a sofa listening to the radio. He got up and flicked the radio off.
"Sorry to disturb you," Kachani said. "I forgot to ask a few things this morning."
Ntaso pointed at the radio. "It's over."
Kachani continued as though he hadn't heard. "You said you were mopping upstairs when you heard the gunshot and you ran downstairs immediately. Why, in your extreme hurry, did you carry the bucket and mop with you? There is no way you could roll the bucket down the stairs anyway. You must have used the elevator."
Ntaso opened his mouth, and then hesitated. He turned to his son. "Go play back there," he said, and the little boy ran out onto the balcony.
When the boy was gone, Kachani added, "The gun Ebeso was killed with was gold-plated. I didn't get to examine it, but I'd be willing to bet it had lions engraved on its barrel. You killed him."
"No, no, no," Ntaso replied, shaking his head vigorously. "I didn't kill him." He paused and considered whether or not to continue. Finally, he shrugged and sat back down on the sofa. "I found Ebeso in his study. I thought he was asleep, but when I came closer I realized he was dead. He had died naturally. Like that, so easily, after all the people he had killed." He pointed at a framed picture on the wall in which he was standing next to a woman. "Miriam died in prison for encouraging her students at the high school to commit treasonous acts. All she did was help some students write letters to Amnesty International, and for that she died alone after God only knows what had been done to her. And Ebeso died peacefully in his sleep. I was so angry. At least if he had been killed by a rival or suffered in some way it would have been bearable. Standing there, I got the idea of how to humiliate him. I could make sure I was the only one who ever knew how he had died. I loaded him onto the bucket and wheeled him to the elevator. I took him down to the toilet and---"
"Shot him in the chest with his own gun," Kachani finished. "Why didn't you just come forward and say you had killed him?"
"Who would believe that I, a cleaner, had killed him? They would ask too many questions and maybe find out how he had really died."
"But now the archbishop is taking the credit."
"I'm the one who told him where the gun was."
"What?!"
"When I found out he was claiming to have killed Ebeso I realised he would make it perfect. If people thought Ebeso had been killed by a man of God, the message would be clear."
Kachani could not find anything to say in response. He had totally misjudged Arthur Ntaso. "Don't you wish people could know what you did?"
"A bit," admitted the cleaner. "But this is the best way, and if I ever feel bad, I have these." He reached under his shirt and pulled out a selection of gold and silver stars. They were the medals for valor Ebeso had awarded himself. "I took them from his body. I'll give you one if you keep quiet about what I did."
"No need," replied Kachani. "You deserve them."
"Well then, maybe I can ask you to stay and eat with us. We are about to have dinner."
"Thank you," Kachani said.
Sometime later, Kachani was sitting at the dinner table with Arthur and his son Bidwe. Dinner was just cobs of maize and boiled cabbage. Not much of a meal, but Kachani looked at Bidwe. The boy had plump cheeks and a strong body. His clothes were faded to the point that Kachani couldn't make out the words printed on his shirt, but they were clean and ironed. Arthur clearly did what he could to be a good father. Kachani's eyes were drawn to the photograph Ntaso had pointed to earlier. How many other families were incomplete because of Ebeso? But then Kachani remembered the portraits of Ebeso in his palace. And of all the other portraits Ebeso had insisted grace the walls of every bank, school, and store in Malawi. In a few days they would all be torn down, defaced, and burnt. In a few years, none of those portraits would be remembered, but no one would ever forget the image of Ebeso's corpse on the toilet.
"Thank you," Kachani said to Arthur, taking a bite out of a cob. He could not remember maize tasting quite as good as it did at that moment.
Copyright © 2005 by Daliso Chaponda.
The Edgar winner for best first novel of 2002, Rebecca Pawel's Death of a Nationalist, an historical novel set in post-Civil War Spain, was one of the finest debuts of recent years, all the more remarkable from a writer in her mid twenties. In The Law of Return (2003), she continued the saga of Guardia Lieutenant Carlos Tejada, a good guy on the bad (i.e. Fascist) side, and his unlikely romance with a schoolteacher of Republican (i.e. Communist) sympathies. Now a third entry upholds the high standard of its predecessors.
\*\*\*\* Rebecca Pawel: The Watcher in the Pine, Soho, $24. In spring 1941, Carlos and Elena, married and expecting a child, arrive at his new posting in the war-ravaged town of Potes, where his predecessor was murdered and bandits menace the Guardias. While you may more easily identify with Elena, very mildly feminist by current standards, Tejada and a local priest are made sympathetic despite attitudes today's readers will find antiquated at best, repellent at worst. Traditionalists note: Pawel honors the detective form with fair-play clues.
\*\*\* Ruth Rendell: The Rottweiler, Crown, $25. The title refers to the inaccurate name the London press (to the vocal distress of Rottweiler breeders) gives a serial garroter of young women who doesn't bite his victims as rumored but steals a small object from each of them. The investigation comes to center on an antique shop, its widowed proprietor, her beautiful sexually manipulative salesclerk, and her upstairs lodgers, an interestingly varied if increasingly depressing lot. Disappointingly, the tantalizing whodunit is discarded before the one-third point, leaving only a psychological whydunit that might have been more intriguing before the market was flooded with serial killers, but consummate novelist Rendell can always keep you reading. (One significant plot strand depends on sirens on emergency vehicles sounding the same in Britain as in the United States, which the last I heard they did not.)
\*\*\* Joan Lowery Nixon: Laugh Till You Cry, Delacorte, $15.95. The final book by Nixon, who died in 2003, demonstrates why she won four Edgars for her juvenile mysteries. Thirteen-year-old Cody Carter, an aspiring California comedy writer transplanted to Houston because of his grandmother's illness, must confront a bullying cousin and school bomb threats. His use of a classroom project on Hamlet to advance his case is inspired.Mary Higgins Clark's introduction pays tribute to the much-admired author.
\*\*\* Maddy Hunter: Pasta Imperfect, Pocket, $6.50. Iowa travel escort Emily Andrew, her senior-citizen charges, and her transsexual ex-husband are touring Italy with a band of romance writers, editors, and cutthroat-competitive wannabes when a series of accidental deaths (yeah, right) befall the travelers. Comedy trumps mystery, as in so many contemporary series, but the comedy (whether situational or satirical, character-driven or wisecrack-driven) is first-rate. My cozy consultant advises that the series predecessor, the Ireland-based Top of the Mournin' (2003), is even better.
\*\*\* Robert S. Levinson: Ask a Dead Man, Five Star, $23.95. In a pre-9/11 world, double-agent KC McClory travels from Belfast to Pasadena to avenge the death of her Irish-terrorist husband, protect her American adopted family, and prevent the assassination of a visiting African leader. While you may not believe all the characters and their relationships, Levinson's story structure, eye for detail, flavorsome style, and knack for Hitchcockian suspense set pieces cannot be denied.
\*\*\* John McEvoy: Blind Switch, Poisoned Pen, $24.95. Jack Doyle's one-shot employment as a race-fixer at a Chicago track leads to an FBI undercover operation investigating mysterious thoroughbred deaths at the Kentucky farm of a pernicious publishing mogul. Flaws include excessive back-story and a Roadrunner-ish slapstick subplot, but the former Daily Racing Form correspondent's style, wit, and inside knowledge of racing, breeding, and betting chicanery fuel a fine entertainment.
\*\* Anne Perry: Long Spoon Lane, Ballantine, $25.95. Anarchist bombings and a Parliamentary proposal to arm the police and trample on civil liberties strain the social fabric of 1890s London, but Thomas Pitt, helped by wife Charlotte and extended family, is on the case. Perry can still draw you in, but this series has declined alarmingly with increasing doses of soap opera and the sinister Inner Circle.
\*\* Michael Koryta: Tonight I Said Goodbye, St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $21.95. A World War II veteran hires Cleveland private eyes Lincoln Perry and Joe Pritchard to prove the death of his son was not suicide but murder and to find out what happened to his son's vanished wife and daughter. While this competent debut is outrageously over-hyped in the back-jacket blurbs, its talented 21-year-old author clearly has a bright future.
For a reminder of Dorothy L. Sayers's transcendence as puzzle-spinner and observer of her times, try the unabridged audiobook of her 1936 novel Gaudy Night (Audio Partners, $39.95), masterfully read by Ian Carmichael. The problem of a serial trickster at an Oxford women's college, illuminating issues of feminism and scholarship, shares the spotlight with the slowly developing romance of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in a novel that shows today's writers how to make a long book justify its thickness: more matter. Also recommended are DVDs of the excellent early-'70s BBC productions of five Wimsey novels starring Carmichael, ideally cast albeit a little old for the role: The Unpleasantness of the Bellona Club, The Nine Tailors, Murder Must Advertise, Five Red Herrings, and Clouds of Witness, available individually ($39.95 each) or in a boxed set ($149.95) from Acorn Media.
A welcome new trade-paper reprinting of the humorous Asey Mayo series by Sayers's very different contemporary, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, is kicked off by her 1931 first novel, The Cape Cod Mystery (Countryman, $10.95).
The first seven issues of a new mystery fanzine, Give Me That Old-Time Detection, include previously published articles from such familiar bylines as Marvin Lachman, Steven Steinbock (on EQ), and Susan Oleksiw, plus new material by editor Arthur Vidro and others. Some of the subject authors in the latest issue include Agatha Christie, Stuart Palmer, Margery Allingham, Cornell Woolrich, E.C. Bentley, Wilkie Collins, and Jack Ritchie. The contents are knowledgeable, well-written, and intelligent, the last being a given since it is the official publication of a Mensa special interest group. Sample copies ($3 each) and subscriptions (one year of three issues $7.50 for Mensa members, $9 for others, $5 additional for overseas subscriptions) are available from the editor at P.O. Box 313, Williston Park, New York 11596-0313. Checks should be made payable to Arthur Vidro.
I miss you, I miss you, I really do miss you
Oh, more than I ever could say
More than the sun misses night-blooming jasmine
Or the moon misses noon every day
Hey, I miss you, I miss you, I really do miss you
Oh, more than you ever could know
More than the Dodgers were missed out in Brooklyn
Or Annabel Lee was by Poe
Oh, more than the anchorman misses the point
Or the audience misses the gag
I could tell you "I miss you"ad infinitum
But it's not my nature to nag.
Still, I miss you, I miss you, I really do miss you
And, boy, it annoys me because
You duck and you swerve and you dodge every shot
And my aim ain't as good as it was.
by H. U. Gesundheit translated by Will Ryan
Visit www.dellmagazines.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.

