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Special Feature: EQMM'S EARLIER REVIEWERS by Steve Steinbock
Fiction: DOLLY'S TRASH AND TREASURES by Lawrence Block
Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider
Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen
Special Feature: 2010 EQMM READERS AWARD
Fiction: TURNING LEO by Clark Howard
Fiction: SOMEONE LIKE YOU by Meenakshi Gigi Durham
Fiction: THIS THING OF DARKNESS by Peter Tremayne
Fiction: A DROWNING AT SNOW'S CUT by Art Taylor
Fiction: JIM LIMEY'S CONFESSION by Scott Loring Sanders
Department of First Stories: A STUDY IN DETAIL by Michael Guillebeau
Fiction: STARDUST by Phil Lovesey
Fiction: ENGLISH by Leigh Lundin
Fiction: NORMAL by Donna Andrews
Passport to Crime: THE WAIT by Sunny Singh
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Shakespeare's "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" has inspired several mystery novels playing on the comedic suggestion, but many writers, in moments of private fantasy, probably also have a book critic or two they'd like to put in a killer's sights. It takes courage to be a book reviewer, not, of course, because anyone expects the murderous impulses aroused by a stinging review to be put into action, but because the critic often knows the writers whose books he or she must give less than favorable comment. Friendships may be at stake, and if the reviewer is also a fiction writer, giving an unfavorable review to a book by a bestselling author could jeopardize any chance of helpful endorsements from that author later.
Many publications give their reviewers the cover of anonymity. One of EQMM's proudest traditions is the signed review column. Since 1970 that column has gone out under the heading "The Jury Box." For more than thirty years (with only a short break in the 1980s), Jon L. Breen, a novelist, short-story writer, librarian, anthologist, and college English teacher, has written The Jury Box for EQMM with integrity, insight, and style. Covering a dozen books each month for three decades is a remarkable achievement in itself, but that's the least of his contributions to the field. The concision with which impressions and conclusions are conveyed in his reviews is a marvel, and he writes, always, with a clear purpose: to serve the reading public. Without ever stooping to the sort of clever barb that has no purpose other than to boost a reviewer's ego at the expense of an author, he is unfailingly honest in his assessments, as if he has always in mind that readers will be spending time and money based on his advice. The combination of knowledge, keen analysis, and---not least---love of the mystery that Jon Breen brings not only to his EQMM reviews but to his books of reviews and criticism (four of them, to date; two of them Edgar Allan Poe Award winners in the biographical/critical category) earned him the Ellen Nehr Award from the American Crime Writers League in 2000.
EQMM's longest-serving reviewer, Jon has chosen the magazine's 70th anniversary year to bring his service in The Jury Box, as a regular juror, to an end. This issue carries his last regular column, but he will return twice each year hereafter with his verdicts on reprinted classics and short story collections. Readers can also expect to see his fiction in the magazine in years to come. He is already the author of more than a hundred published short stories, and his eight novels include one, Listen for the Click (British title Vicar's Roses), that was nominated for the John Creasey Award for best first novel of 1984 and another, Touch of the Past, that received a nomination for the best novel dagger of the British Crime Writers Association in 1989.
Now that he's only an alternate to The Jury Box, we expect that some of Jon's own books will come up for review in EQMM's pages. He tells us he plans not only to write more fiction but to edit more anthologies. His favorite collection to date, American Murders, is one he co-edited with his wife of forty years, Rita Breen.
A deeply felt thanks to Jon, from the staff at EQMM, for his unsurpassed work. May he and Rita find many splendid ways to enjoy the freedom his release from Jury duty should bring.
Next month, meet The Jury Box's new foreman, Steve Steinbock!
HOWARD HAYCRAFT
By the time Howard Haycraft's "Speaking of Crime" column began appearing in EQMM, with the magazine's February 1946 issue, his name was already synonymous with detective fiction scholarship. After editing several collections of detective stories for boys, Haycraft composed his 1941 masterwork, Murder for Pleasure, an in-depth history and analysis of the mystery story, which Otto Penzler once called "the most important single work of mystery-fiction scholarship ever produced." The book included a list of 108 titles that Haycraft believed comprised the definitive mystery library. That list grew into a long collaboration with EQMM founding editor Frederic Dannay and resulted in a final list referred to as the "Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones," which today remains the standard for mystery collectors. In 1946, Haycraft edited The Art of the Mystery Story. His "Speaking of Crime" column ran in EQMM every other month for ten issues between February 1946 and October 1948.
ANTHONY BOUCHER
Before taking over Haycraft's "Speaking of Crime" column for the February 1949 issue, Anthony Boucher (the pen name of William Anthony Parker White) served as mystery reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and had written seven mystery novels and over one hundred episodes of The Adventures of Ellery Queen radio program. Boucher's "Speaking of Crime" column appeared in eight issues in 1949 and 1950. After a hiatus, he returned to the pages of EQMM in November, 1957, with a one-page review column called "Best Mysteries of the Month." His stated goal was "to select each month a few books with more to offer than the one-a-day routine." In his first column he reviewed five novels, giving each a star rating, a tradition that Jon Breen would later carry on. The column ran until February 1968, just a few months before his death. In 1970, mystery fans gathered in Santa Monica, California for the first World Mystery Convention, named "Bouchercon" in honor of Anthony Boucher.
JOHN DICKSON CARR
Already a legend in the mystery field as the "master of the locked room," and author of nearly seventy novels (under his own name and as Carter Dickson), John Dickson Carr took over the "Best Mysteries of the Month" column with the January 1969 issue. Carr introduced himself in that first column as an "old devotee of blood and thunder." In May 1970, Carr's column was expanded from one to three pages and was renamed "The Jury Box." During his first few years, Carr typically reviewed four titles in each issue (usually three new titles, and one classic reprint), but in his blustery, jovial style, Carr had little problem filling three pages with entertaining exposition. As years went by, Carr varied the number of reviews, often looking at a dozen titles---in other words, a jury box of books. Carr continued to be foreman of the Jury Box through the October 1976 issue, shortly before his death.
ALLEN J. HUBIN
During a five-year hiatus that gave him a chance to focus on his own writing, Jon L. Breen's seat in the Jury Box (which followed on Carr's) was filled by mystery reviewer, collector, historian, and fan Allen J. Hubin. This was the second time Hubin had filled a position previously held by Anthony Boucher: In 1968 he replaced Boucher as mystery reviewer for the New York Times. Hubin was also the founder and first editor of The Armchair Detective, the preeminent mystery fan magazine, and editor of several annual Best Detective Stories anthologies. Hubin is perhaps best known for his mammoth reference book, The Bibliography of Crime Fiction 1749-1975, a periodically updated catalog of every mystery written in English, referred to among collectors and historians simply as "The Hubin." Al Hubin began his tenure in "The Jury Box" in the December 1983 issue and continued through most of 1988.
Little, Brown and Company will release a new novel in Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series, ADrop of the Hard Stuff, on May 12, shortly after this issue mails to subscribers. Scudder is one of the most iconic characters in American crime fiction and it's been six years since he's appeared in a novel. The author says he will be "spending publication day on national television." We'll be looking out for that, but meanwhile, here is a non-series story by the MWA Grand Master.
"Mrs. Saugerties?"
A nod.
"That would be Dorothy Saugerties? And did I pronounce that correctly? Like the Hudson River town?"
Another nod.
"Well, Mrs. Saugerties, I'm Baird Lewis, and this is my colleague, Rita Raschman. We're with Child Protective Services."
No response.
"One of your neighbors called to express concern over the living conditions here, and how they might impact upon your children."
"Haven't got any."
"I beg your pardon? According to our records, you have four children, three girls and a boy, and---"
"Haven't got neighbors. This here's mine, from the road back to the creek. Then there's state land on that side. Nearest neighbors would be a quarter-mile from here."
"Well, one of them---"
"Might be more like a half-mile. If it matters."
"Baird, may I? Mrs. Saugerties, you do have four children, don't you?"
"Did."
"They're not living here now?"
"Not anymore. Tricia, Calder, Maxine, and Little Debbie. Moved away and left me here."
"When was this, Mrs. Saugerties?"
"Hard for me to keep track of time."
"I see."
"He moved out, see, and---"
"That would be your son, Calder?"
"My husband. It got so he couldn't take it, you know, so he moved out."
"Does he live nearby?"
"Don't know where he took himself off to. But he left, and then the children."
"They just left?"
"Here one day and gone the next."
"But how could---"
"Rita, if I may? Mrs. Saugerties, let me make sure I have the names right. Patricia, Calder, Maxine, and Deborah, is that right?"
"Tricia."
"That's her actual name? Good, Tricia."
"And not Deborah. Little Debbie."
"Debbie."
"Little Debbie. Like the cakes."
"Like---?"
"The cakes."
"It's a brand of cupcake, Baird. You can find them next to the Twinkies."
"My life is ever the richer for knowing that, Rita. They just left, Mrs. Saugerties?"
"Might be they went with their father."
"I was wondering if that might be a possibility."
"Because, see, they just hated it here, same as he did. On account of there's no room in the house anymore. On account of my stuff."
"Your stuff. I can't help noticing there's a pile of trash on either side of the porch glider. Is that the sort of stuff you mean?"
"Ain't trash. 'Smy stuff."
"I see."
"I like to have things, and then I like to keep 'em. Other people, they don't care for it."
"Like your husband."
"And the children. Their rooms filled up, along with everything else, and there was no place for them to play. But you know, there's the whole yard. It's our property clear back to the creek."
"Yes. Do you suppose I could use your bathroom, Mrs. Saugerties?"
"Don't work."
"I see. Well, let me just go in and get myself a glass of water."
"That don't work, either. Oh, I guess he didn't hear me. He wasn't really supposed to go into the house."
"I'm sure Baird won't disturb anything, Mrs. Saugerties."
"It's just such a mess, you know. No room for a body to get around. And the animals mess in the house. I don't know why I can't keep up with their messes."
"Animals?"
"Well, dogs and cats."
"How many do you have?"
"I don't know. There's different ones, and they come and they go."
"Like the children."
"Except all they did was go. I wish they'd come back, but I don't think they will."
"Well---"
"And there was a raccoon. Besides the dogs and cats, I mean. But I ain't seen him in I don't know how long. They don't belong in a house anyhow, you know. Raccoons, I mean. They'll make a godawful mess."
"I'm sure that's true. Baird, are you all right?"
"Yes, of course."
"You look like you saw a raccoon."
"I look like what?"
"I just said---"
"Never mind. I have never seen the like."
"I can imagine."
"No, Rita, I don't think you can. How anyone can live like this is quite beyond me. No children, so we can wash our hands of it, and I'll tell you, right now mine could use washing. We'll refer it, of course. And I don't envy the poor bastards at APS who draw this one. Mrs. Saugerties? I think we'll be going now. Uh, some other people may be in touch. They'll be able to give you a good deal of assistance."
Help? Don't want help.
Got all I need, right here where I am. Got my stuff right where I can put my hands on it. A whole house full of my things, and the cellar and attic, too.
Oh, I know this is no way to live. I'm not crazy. I'm not stupid, either. I don't talk much. Better if you don't. What's it they say? A fish'd never get hisself caught if he just kept his mouth shut.
That's unless they come with a net.
"Mrs. Saugerties? How do you do, ma'am? My name is Thelma Weider and this is my associate, John Ruddy. And may I call you Dorothy?"
"I guess."
"Dorothy, John and I are with Adult Protective Services of Lantenango County, and we're here to provide you with some assistance, and---"
"Don't need it."
"Well, I believe you'll find---"
"Who're them two?"
"The tall gentleman is Mark, and his partner is Clayton. They're with the sheriff's office, and they've come along on the chance that they might be needed, but I'm sure we'll be able to work this out without bringing them into it. Now before we go inside---"
"Not going inside."
"Ah. Dorothy, I believe I see bedding and a pillow on the porch glider. Is that where you've been sleeping?"
"Nice sleeping in the fresh air."
"I'm sure it was comfortable this summer, but it's autumn now, isn't it? The trees are starting to drop their leaves. The nights are getting cold."
"Ain't too bad."
"And winter's coming, and then it will be really cold."
"Got lots of blankets."
"But you've got a big house. What do you have, four or five bedrooms?"
"About."
"And you're all by yourself here."
"With my stuff."
"Yes, I've heard about your stuff. Rooms filled almost to the ceiling, isn't that what Baird and Rita told us?"
"What Thelma's getting at, Dorothy, is that we could help you be a lot more comfortable."
"Dolly."
"I'm sorry, do you want a doll? I don't---"
"What to call me. Dolly. Not Dorothy, nobody calls me Dorothy."
"Ah, I see. Dolly, why don't we go inside and have a look around your house? Maybe you can point out some of your most treasured things for us."
"No."
"I'm afraid we have a warrant, Dolly, that empowers us to enter and search the premises, and Mark and Clayton are here to guarantee your compliance. So I'm going in. Would you like to come with me, or would you prefer to stay out here with Thelma?"
It's embarrassing, having people go through your house and look at your things. Knowing they're judging you, feeling the thoughts they're thinking as sure as if they were saying them out loud.
What a pig, what a slob, how could a woman let herself go this way, how could she let her house get away from her like this? Blah blah blah. All this junk, all this rubbish, why would anyone want to live with these broken dolls and old newspapers? And look at the plates, the food still encrusted on them, rotting there. Blah blah blah. And the smell, who could stay in a house with such a smell in every room? Blah blah blah.
Someday I might read the newspapers. There's plenty of interesting articles in them, if I ever get around to it. No reason not to hang on to them for when the time comes. Same with the books and magazines. I don't read much these days, but it's something I might get back to, and when I do the books will be there for me, and the magazines, and the newspapers.
And yes, a lot of the dolls are broken, but they could be fixed. Why, there's doll hospitals that do nothing but repair broken dolls, because they recognize the importance of preserving treasured memories. Even as they are, the dolls and other toys bring back memories. I bought the Raggedy Ann for Tricia, the Storybook dolls for Maxine. And there were Barbies, so many of them, that I bought for all three of the girls. And Chatty Cathy, how Little Debbie loved that doll! Of course the voice is gone, and there's no string to pull, but Cathy's still there, and if you pick her up and look at her you can almost hear her little voice again, almost hear Little Debbie parroting the phrases right back at her.
And some of my stuff is worth money. All those Jim Beam decanters, they're scattered all over the house, but they're here somewhere, and a few of them are genuinely rare, and worth good money to a collector. The Colorado Centennial one? You think that's easy to find? Or cheap to buy when you do find it? Walter was a scotch drinker, but he was a good enough sport to switch to bourbon when they came out with those decanters, and in a sense they never cost me a cent, because he had to drink something and he said it might as well be bourbon. And didn't he say he'd got to prefer Jim Beam to the Cutty Sark he used to drink?
What's he drinking nowadays, wherever he is? Did he go back to scotch? Or did he stay with Jim Beam?
What's it they say? One man's trash is another man's treasure. Just 'cause it's trash to you don't make it wrong for me to cherish it. But it's all empty bottles as far as these two are concerned, John and Thelma, all empty Pepsi cans and beer bottles.
Trash and treasures. If I ever opened a shop, that's what I'd call it. Dolly's Trash & Treasures. Which is which? Well, that's up to you, isn't it?
And then there's the bottle caps, and don't ask me how many of those I've got. I decided I could make earrings for the girls, they'd be cute and cost next to nothing, so I started saving bottle caps, and I bought a box of the posts you mount the caps on, and got the right kind of quick-setting glue, and no, I haven't actually made any earrings yet, but who's to say I won't one of these days? With the girls run off there's not much point in making earrings now, but who's to say they won't come back?
Nehi Orange, that was always Little Debbie's favorite. And somewhere I know I've got a pair of orange bottle caps set aside, and wouldn't they make perfect earrings for Little Debbie?
"I'm just not getting through to her. What do we have to do, throw her in the back of the sheriff's car and haul her off to the nuthouse?"
"John!"
"I know, I didn't mean to use the word. I find this stressful, I admit it. I'm sorry."
"John, let me try. Dolly, at this point you only have two choices, and---"
"Dorothy."
"I thought you said people call you Dolly."
"My friends call me Dolly."
"Ouch. I gather you don't think we're your friends."
"If you were my friends you wouldn't be trying to force me out of my own house and home."
"Oh, I love it. A home? It's a home to vermin and unidentifiable rodents, not to a human being."
"John---"
"And it won't even be a house much longer either, with the structural damage you've got going on there."
"John, this isn't helping."
"Sorry."
"If you could just allow me to---"
"I know, I know. I won't say anything more."
"Now Dolly, as I was saying, you've got two choices, and you're the one who has to make the decision. The first possibility is that you allow us to relocate you to a really beautiful county facility for assisted living."
"A nuthouse."
"No, Dolly, and if John used that expression it was a mistake."
"A loony bin."
"Not at all. The people are perfectly nice and the staff is wonderful. My own mother is there, as it happens, and she's truly happy. Would I let my mother go there if it wasn't a good place?"
"My children moved away and left me all alone, but at least they never put me in a loony bin."
"Oh, Christ."
"John! The other choice you have, Dolly, is to allow us to clean your house. We'll get a crew in here to clean it top to bottom."
"And throw out all my things."
"A lot of what you've got here is trash, Dolly. We know that and you know that. Old newspapers, empty pizza boxes, paper plates with food on them---"
"I guess some of it's trash."
"See? If it wasn't such an overwhelming chore, you'd throw out a lot of it yourself."
"There's times I've wanted to. But I wouldn't even know where to start."
"Well, that's where we'll be able to help you. We'll bring in a full crew of trained professionals who've been through all this more times than you could imagine. They'll know where to start and they'll be able to see it through to the finish."
"It sort of got away from me, you know. It wasn't like this when I moved in."
"I'm sure it wasn't."
"And I didn't set out to make it like this. But, you know, I like things, and I don't want to part with my memories. And throwing out useful things is wasteful."
"Well, that's true, isn't it?"
"And if these men start throwing away all of my good things---"
"Dolly, you'll be here the whole time. The things you want to keep, you just say so, and they'll be put in boxes to be saved. Or if it's too tiring, we can make some of the decisions for you. And before you know it you'll have a clean house, a home you can take pride in."
"It's not so bad the way it is. And I have some wonderful things here."
"Oh, Christ."
"John---"
"I mean, it's my house. I'm the only one here. Why can't you all just leave me be?"
"Dolly, let me explain it one more time. . ."
All these people. There must be twenty men, all dressed alike with royal blue shirts and navy blue slacks. Their first names are embroidered in gold braid on their shirt pockets. The only names I've managed to read are Harry and Ben. I keep reading those two names over and over, Harry and Ben, Harry and Ben. Maybe there are ten Harrys and ten Bens, or maybe I just keep seeing the same two young men over and over. They all look the same anyway, with those white masks covering their noses and mouths. Like the air in here would kill them.
Going through my things. Picking up a Little Debbie cake box or a book with the cover missing, holding it out, rolling their eyes. They don't think I notice what they're doing.
They'll throw out some things I'd like to keep. I know that. I do what I can, I tell them no, I want to save this, put it in a box to be saved. And sometimes the woman talks me out of saving it, or else she agrees and they put it in a box, but how do I know what will happen to all those boxes? If I let them, they'd take everything I own and cart it to the landfill.
When your house is clean again, the woman tells me, you'll have a much richer life. Richer without things than with them? You'll have space, she says. And who knows? Maybe your children will come back, when they have a decent clean place to live, when they can have their own rooms again.
It would be so nice to believe that. And maybe it's true. Maybe Calder will come back, and Tricia, and Maxine. And Little Debbie. Oh what I'd give to see my Little Debbie again!
"I don't believe this."
"You've never had a case like this before?"
"Never anything like this. I mean, I read about the Collyer brothers, but I thought they were the only people in the world who ever lived like this."
"It's more common than anyone realizes, John. I've heard estimates that one percent of the population has a problem with compulsive hoarding."
"That sounds crazy. That'd be what, three million people?"
"I know. The thing is, most of the time it's invisible. The people seem completely normal until you get inside their homes."
"Not our Dolly. Spend thirty seconds with her and you know you're dealing with a fruitcake."
"John!"
"She can't hear me, she's in the kitchen explaining why an empty Peter Pan peanut butter jar is a priceless treasure. See, it's glass, and nowadays they make them out of plastic, so who'd be crazy enough to throw it out?"
"I know."
"And the rotten peanut butter at the bottom just adds to the value. Proves it's authentic. Plus it gives the ants something to eat."
"Oh, dear. But there are people who are almost as far gone as Dolly and you wouldn't know it. There was a woman in Swedish Haven, and she was always immaculately groomed and clean about her person, and she walked to and from her place of business every day---"
"She had a place of business?"
"A shop, actually. She sold notions and bric-a-brac and, oh, local souvenirs. The shop was neat as a pin."
"And I bet she sold pins, too."
"And doilies and place mats. Until one day the shop never opened, and when her doorbell and phone went unanswered someone broke into her house and found her there. A stroke or a heart attack, whatever it was, but dead or alive she was in better shape than her house. It turned out she could have been a Collyer sister."
"Don't tell me it was like this."
"It wasn't filthy, and everything was in a semblance of order. But she never threw anything out, and the newspapers were packed in orderly stacks until they reached clear to the ceiling, and so were old clothes and everything else you could think of. Including empty jars, peanut butter and otherwise. She soaked off the labels and scrubbed the jars clean, but she kept them all, along with just about everything else that came into her hands."
"Good grief."
"I don't know that you can call it a disease, but it's certainly a disorder. I understand the FBI profilers divide serial killers into organized and disorganized, and I suppose you could distinguish between Dolly and the woman in Swedish Haven in much the same way, and---"
"John? Thelma? Excuse me, but there's something you ought to see."
"What is it, Arnie?"
"Well, it's a cat."
"There've been a few of them running around. What's so special about this one?"
"Well, for one thing, its running days ended awhile ago. A couple of years, would be my guess. Come on, you're not gonna believe this."
I wondered whatever happened to that cat. It was a gray tabby, and I can remember the sound it made when it purred. Although I guess all cats make the same sound, pretty much. It's a comfort, hearing them make that sound, which I guess is part of the reason I always liked having animals in the house.
I thought it probably wandered off. They come and they go. But something must have happened to this one, and then it just turned up again.
"It's like an archaeological dig. You go down another stratum and you're in another year."
"And if it's a truly productive site, sooner or later you unearth a dead cat."
"Did you hear what she said? She always wondered what happened to that cat. You know what it looked like?"
"A cartoon cat."
"Exactly! Like Wile E. Coyote when he falls off a cliff and flattens out on the pavement. Or like Tom when Jerry outsmarts him---"
"Which is all the time."
"---and he gets run over by a steamroller. Then he picks himself up, fills out again, and gets back into the game."
"Without having learned his lesson. But I'm afraid this cat's not going to fill out again."
"No."
"I wonder how it died. And when."
"I hope you're not going to order an autopsy."
"No, hardly that, but they didn't come across it until they'd moved a whole mountain of junk. It must have been there for years."
"Unless it dug its way under there and died."
"Why would it do something like that?"
"Maybe it knew it was dying, and how else could it make sure it got buried? You know what else I was wondering? I was just---oh, hang on a minute. Arnie, is there a problem?"
"A problem? It's all of it a problem, isn't it? The thing is, well, I don't know if you need to know this, or if you even want to know it, but the boys just found another cat."
It was the little calico.
Except I should say she. All calico cats are female. It's genetic, and you'll never find a male one. How many people know that?
They think I'm stupid and ignorant, but I'm not. There are a lot of things I know that most people probably don't. All white cats with blue eyes are deaf. Born that way. Genetic.
How do I know? Well, I sure didn't learn it in school. There's a book about cats, a very good book, and there's a chapter in it about genetics. One gene decides if a cat is Siamese or not.
I've got the book here somewhere. Unless one of them threw it out, one of these geniuses with his name on his shirt so he won't forget who he is.
That calico cat, she was always Little Debbie's favorite. Of course all of the children liked all of the animals, that's the way they were brought up, but that calico, Little Debbie was crazy about her.
"That woman in Swedish Haven?"
"She was remarkable. The way the inner and outer lives were at such utter variance."
"Right, but here's my question. How many cats did she have?"
"Not a one."
"Seriously? I thought they all had a house full of cats."
"She didn't have any, living or dead. Unless you count china cats."
"She had those?"
"Oh, plenty of them. She collected them. And patterned glass, and travel books, and postcards and matchbooks. All of them carefully organized and neatly displayed, except that there was such a profusion of clutter that you couldn't really see any of the displays. But they were all there, and all in apple-pie order."
"Your organized lunatic, as opposed to your disorganized lunatic."
"Except they're not lunatics, or at least not all of them. Something goes wrong in their wiring, or maybe it's a way to come to terms with a horrible childhood, or---"
"Oh, shit, everybody had a bad childhood."
"Well, I have to say nobody molested me, or locked me in the closet for a week at a time. While some of the cases we get---"
"All right, point taken. Mine wasn't that bad, either. I used to say I had as miserable a childhood as the next braggart, but it was way short of being that kind of nightmare."
"I just hope there aren't any more dead animals. Because the good news is that we're making real progress here."
"Well, give the dead cats some credit."
"What do you mean, John?"
"Ever since the first one turned up, she hasn't been kicking up a fuss. Haven't you noticed? Instead of putting up a fight every time somebody wants to throw out the 1972 World Almanac, she stays locked into her own private world and leaves the men alone. It makes a big difference."
"Maybe she's resigned herself to it."
"And maybe she figured she knows where the county landfill is, and she can just drive down there and retrieve her treasures after we're gone."
"Oh, God, don't even say that."
"Plus who knows what other treasures she might find while she's there, and---Arnie, what is it? And please don't tell me dead cats come in threes."
"No, John, I think it's worse than that. Arnie, you're white as a sheet. It's bad, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Arnie, what is it?"
"Eddie and that other fellow, I can't think of his name right now---"
"Never mind his name."
"I don't know why I can't think of it. But it don't matter for now. The two of them, they was in the basement, which is no judgment calls involved, you know, because it's all water-damaged and all gotta be thrown out, and they were in, I don't know, the root cellar or the fruit cellar, or maybe it was the coal cellar back in the day."
"And?"
"You just better come downstairs. You better come see for yourselves."
One look and I knew who I was looking at. I recognized her right off. Her T-shirt was faded, it used to be yellow and now it's more of a gray, but you can still make out Minnie Mouse's picture on it, and that meant it was Little Debbie. It was one of her favorite shirts, she plain loved Minnie Mouse.
But I'd have known anyway, because of the size. She was the youngest, and small for her age on top of that, so it for sure wasn't Tricia or Maxine. Plus her red hair was a dead giveaway. Nobody else had hair that color. I guess she got it from her father, not that he was a redhead but his mother was. And nobody on my side of the family had red hair.
Not that I know just how that works in people. Cat genetics, there's something I know a little about, but I think it's more complicated in human beings.
I'll tell you something, I think I knew it was Little Debbie before I even set eyes on her. I just got this powerful feeling on the way down the cellar stairs. I couldn't guess when was the last time I went anywhere near the cellar, but on the staircase, well, I had this feeling.
So I guess she didn't run off after all. I guess it couldn't have been so bad here at home, I guess she liked it well enough to stay.
A mother's not supposed to play favorites, but she was my favorite, Little Debbie. It's funny, I don't know how to explain this, but I have to say it: I'm sort of glad she's here.
I wonder what else will turn up.
Copyright © 2011 Lawrence Block
A lot of crime fiction readers also like to watch crime shows on television, and some of the best of those shows originate in the U.K. Eventually they make their way to this side of the pond, and that leads us to Crime Time Preview (www.crimetimepreview.com), a website that previews "cop dramas and thrillers coming to U.K. television and radio." As I write this, the discussion on the site is about the BBC's new Dirk Gently series that stars Stephen Mangan as the holistic detective. "Great fun" is the verdict. There's a lot of other good stuff at this site, so take a look for the latest news.
Crimeculture (www.crimeculture.com) is another site with considerable news and information. It's maintained by Lee and Kate Horsley, and here's what they have to say about it: "Crimecultureis a site designed to appeal to anyone interested in representations of criminality. It provides introductions to crime fiction, crime films, and true crime. Our Rogue's Gallery section deals with the early literature of crime from the 16th through the 18th century; and 21st-Century Crime offers interviews, reviews of fiction, nonfiction, and classics reissued from 2000 on." The latest interviews posted are with Hilary Davidson and Joelle Charbonneau, and they're worth your time. Crime writer Robert Skinner has written an article for the site, and I'm eager to read that one as soon as it's posted.
Wayne Dundee is best known for his stories and novels about a blue-collar private eye named Joe Hannibal, but his blog, From Dundee's Desk (fromdundeesdesk.blogspot.com), while it does have some mentions of news about Hannibal, is mostly devoted to reviews of books by other writers like Don Winslow, Andrew Vachss, and William G. Tapply. I'm always interested in what writers have to say about the work of their peers, and Dundee's blog doesn't disappoint.
On the true crime front there's Hook 'em and Book 'em (hookembookem.blogspot.com), which bills itself as a place "where readers, writers & law enforcement connect." The blogger is Mark Young, a Vietnam vet who has thirty years of law enforcement experience. When he tells you how to do a building search or explains why traffic stops are deadly business, you have to figure he knows what he's talking about. Good information for writers or for readers who like a little dose of reality along with their crime fiction.
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine can be found at billcrider.blogspot.com.
Copyright © 2011 Bill Crider
My last column as regular "Jury Box" proprietor affords a chance to salute a dozen writers who have given me particular pleasure over the past few decades. These, along with many others, make the reviewer's job worthwhile.
\*\*\*\* Loren D. Estleman: The Left-Handed Dollar, Forge, $24.99. Retro Detroit private eye Amos Walker takes a case for a criminal lawyer known as Lefty Lucy, who is trying to clear a mobster of an old charge of attempted murder, the victim of which was a close friend of Walker. His sharp eye for detail, mastery of character and plot, and beautifully crafted prose and dialogue place Estleman in the first half dozen in any ranking of classic private-eye writers, and this is one of his best.
\*\*\*\* Michael Connelly: The Reversal,Little, Brown, $27.99. L.A. defense attorney Mickey Haller takes on the unfamiliar role of prosecutor, appointed to handle the retrial of Jason Jessup, whose 1986 conviction in the murder of a 12-year-old girl was thrown out because of DNA analysis of a key piece of evidence. With his ex-wife as second chair and half-brother Harry Bosch as investigator, Haller confronts a morass of legal and factual complications. Though some may consider it a police-proceduralist's sideline, non-lawyer Connelly has written some of the finest courtroom novels in the history of the form. This is another.
\*\*\*\* Richard A. Lupoff: The Emerald Cat Killer, Minotaur, $24.99. The saga of insurance investigator Hobart Lindsey and Berkeley cop Marvia Plum is brought to a very satisfactory conclusion 13 years after the previous novel-length entry, The Radio Red Killer (1997). Their case, which they approach from different directions, is the murder by laptop computer of a paperback mystery writer whose last work may have been plagiarized by the company that is Lindsey's firm's client. The killer of the title, known to the reader from the first, is chillingly, heart-breakingly believable. This is one of the best of an outstanding series.
\*\*\* Jill Paton Walsh: The Attenbury Emeralds, Minotaur, $25.95. The author of two novels in posthumous collaboration with Dorothy L. Sayers, Thrones, Dominations (1999) and A Presumption of Death (2003), is on her own bringing the saga of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane into the early 1950s. The plot, a shell-and-pea game with emeralds that harks back to one of Wimsey's earliest cases, is nicely managed and the familiar characters, including Jeevesian manservant Bunter, are expertly realized. Efforts to continue a detective series after the original author's death have had varying degrees of success. Walsh's channeling of Sayers ranks at or near the top.
\*\*\* Sharyn McCrumb: The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, St. Martin's/ Dunne, $24.99. In Wise County, Virginia, the trial of young schoolteacher Erma Morton for the murder of her father precipitates the 1935 version of a media frenzy. Young and ambitious Carl Jenkins, reporter for a small-town Tennessee paper, wants to get it right; other journalists, veterans of New York dailies, are more interested in ignoring reality in favor of hill-country stereotypes. Carl's psychic cousin Nora Bonesteel, a memorable adult character in the author's earlier Appalachian novels, appears here as a wise-beyond-her-years 12-year-old. Combining the mundane everyday with a touch of the supernatural is not an easy trick, but McCrumb manages it beautifully.
\*\*\* Bill Pronzini: The Hidden, Walker, $24. An environmentalist serial killer is terrorizing the remote California coast where unemployed Jay Macklin has taken his reluctant wife Shelby for the week between Christmas and New Year's in the hope of repairing their fraying relationship. Complications ensue and storm-tossed tension builds in an expert novel of pure suspense. Can a writer receive a Grand Master Award from Mystery Writers of America and still be underrated? I think so.
\*\*\* Parnell Hall: Caper, Pegasus, $25. New York private eye Stanley Hastings takes a rare case from other than his personal-injury-attorney employer: a woman who expresses concern that her teenage daughter is turning tricks. Like departed masters Westlake and McBain, Hall carries the reader along with snappy dialogue, and the semi-farcical, constantly puzzling but never confusing plot would have delighted his fiction-writing model, Erle Stanley Gardner.
\*\*\* Lee Goldberg: Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out, Obsidian, $22.95. The latest hilariously funny and devilishly clever novel about TV's obsessive-compulsive sleuth Adrian Monk is an impossible-crime lover's delight. How could the driver of an otherwise empty, constantly observed vehicle be garroted? How could a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme operator under house arrest and constantly wearing a state-of-the-art tracking device leave his home to murder former associates? The best comic set-piece, in which the financially ruined Monk, having lost his consultancy job with the San Francisco P.D., becomes a supermarket employee, is also one of three self-contained mystery puzzles unrelated to the main plot.
\*\*\* Ed Gorman: Stranglehold, Minotaur, $24.99. Political consultant Dev Conrad has plenty of challenges in his efforts to get Congresswoman Susan Cooper reelected: her awkward stepmother, the murder of an opposing political consultant, an insider sabotaging the campaign, and the candidate's own erratic behavior. The plot, the characters, the humor and humanity, and Gorman's frighteningly believable description of campaign dirty tricks make this a first-rate piece of political fiction.
\*\*\* Ken Bruen: The Devil, Minotaur, $24.99. This is a wild one, even by standards of the over-the-top series about Galway private eye Jack Taylor: a variation on Faust (literally, not metaphorically). Once you get into the rhythm of his one-sentence paragraphs, multi-paragraph sentences, and epigraphs set off by blank pages, minimalist Bruen can be as compulsive a pleasure as a bag of potato chips.
\*\*\* Bill Crider: Murder in the Air, Minotaur, $24.99. The overwhelming stench emanating from a chicken farm and the murder of the farm's owner precipitate the latest en-thralling case for Dan Rhodes, sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas. Other elements are a mysterious mischief-making archer, inevitably dubbed Robin Hood, and a dangerous and illegal form of fishing called noodling. Though typically light and humorous, the novel makes an important point about pollution from rural factory farms.
The landmark first novel about Max Allan Collins's series hit man, Quarry (Perfect Crime, $14.95), originally published in 1976 as The Broker, has a new afterword by the author. The next in the series, Quarry's Ex, originally announced for September 2010, is now scheduled for fall 2011, as its publisher Hard Case Crime changed distributors.
Steve Steinbock will assume the juror's chair in the next issue, and I'm looking forward to his debut as much as anyone. I owe gratitude to the EQMM editors who have made my work better and my life easier over the past few decades, from the late Fred Dannay and Eleanor Sullivan to the successor who impressively upholds their demanding tradition, Janet Hutchings. Thanks as well to assistant editor Emily Giglierano and all her predecessors and to all readers of this column, especially its first reader, my wife and in-house editor Rita.
Copyright © 2011 by Jon L. Breen
Dave Zeltserman
Doug Allyn
This year's Readers Award results are notable for the fictional time spectrum they span: both forward in time with first-place winner Dave Zeltserman's "Archie's Been Framed," whose technology requires a bit of suspension of disbelief to imagine put in practice in the here and now, and backward in time in Doug Allyn's second and third place stories "The Scent of Lilacs" and "Days of Rage," which, respectively, look at the American Civil War and revisit the turbulent 1960s.
Last year, Dave Zeltserman came in third in the Readers Award voting for the first story in the series to which "Archie's Been Framed" belongs, "Julius Katz." Rarely have we seen a premise as original as that behind this series---a miniature computer who, in the spirit of the Nero Wolfe novels of Rex Stout, plays Archie to the stories' private detective; and the manner in which the idea is executed is equally fresh. Of course, Dave Zeltserman already had a leg up in writing of the endearing computer Archie: For twenty years he worked as a software engineer. Much of the rest of his fiction, however, is in the noir genre, including 2008's Small Crimes, which was chosen by NPR as one of the top five novels of its year. This past autumn the Needham, Massachusetts author won a Shamus Award for Best Short Story for "Julius Katz." His novel The Caretaker of Lorne Field is currently nominated for a Black Quill Award, and the 2011 Zeltserman novel Outsourced has been optioned for film.
Doug Allyn is not new to the historical mystery. His 1994 Edgar-winning story "The Dancing Bear" (AHMM) belongs to that genre. But "The Scent of Lilacs" is more personal, based on his own family's lore, and it provides a most unusual perspective on the Civil War. As always, the eight-time Readers Award winner earned his spectacular finish in this competition with engaging characters, memorable setting, and sweeping action. His third-place winner, "Days of Rage," brought back series character Dan Shea and demonstrated the Michigan author's ability to weave controversial social and political issues into his fiction. In 2010 Doug Allyn was the winner of the Best Long Story Derringer Award of the Short Mystery Fiction Society for "Famous Last Words" (EQMM November 2009).
Congratulations to these gifted writers and to all of the finalists listed below!
Fourth: "Mr. Monk and the Seventeen Steps" by Lee Goldberg
Fifth: "To Kill an Ump" by Brendan DuBois
Sixth: "Winter's End" by Clark Howard
Seventh: "Last Dance in Shanghai" by Clark Howard
Eighth: "Skyler Hobbs and the Rabbit Man" by Evan Lewis
Ninth: "The Man With One Eye" by Stephen Ross
Tenth: "The Changelings: A Very Grim Fairytale" by Carol Biederman
A ward of Cook County, Illinois by age twelve, Clark Howard grew up on the lower West Side of Chicago, living in a succession of foster homes, from which he habitually ran away. His latest story, about friends from that West Side neighborhood whomeet decades later on opposite sides of the law, draws from that period in his life. Mr. Howard went on to becomeone of the most honored writers in our field, with Edgar, Derringer, and EQMM Readers Awards to his credit and several movies made from his work.
Leo Pilsen answered his front doorbell at six-thirty in the morning, wearing a satin robe over his silk pajamas. The scowl on his face was testament to the fact that he usually slept until noon after going to bed at three or four a.m. Gangsters like Leo did not keep normal business hours.
Opening the door, he stood face-to-face with an old friend from Chicago's Lower West Side streets, Danny Manley. The two had run together in a teenage gang called the West End Dukes. The gang owned two blocks of West End Avenue, and patrolled and protected it like an old-time fiefdom. When away from those two blocks, they broke into boxcars in the railroad yards, burglarized chain drugstores, stole and emptied small delivery trucks, and in general lived by the dogma of their streets: Live Fast, Die Young, and Have a Good-looking Corpse.
There were five of them. Two were shot dead trying to hold up a savings and loan office in the suburbs, and a third was bludgeoned to death by the brother of a young Hispanic girl, age thirteen, whom he had impregnated after getting her drunk at a block-party dance.
Of the two who were left, Leo Pilsen managed to swing a low-level job with the Outfit, Chicago's organized crime family, and over the years had risen, via brains, bullets, and boldness, to a position of high authority in the mob.
The remaining member of the Dukes, Danny Manley, had, in desperation to get off the streets, joined the Marine Corps, and served honorably for four years. He was awarded two combat medals in Desert Storm, and upon his return home was recruited to join the Chicago Police Department. He too had risen through the ranks, through patrol, custody, robbery, vice, homicide, and eventually back to patrol with the rank of lieutenant.
That morning, when Pilsen answered the doorbell and faced Dan Manley, they had not seen each other since several weeks earlier, when they had split a pizza and a pitcher of beer at Danno's out on Cicero Avenue, at the monthly meeting they had carried on for a number of years. Leo's mouth dropped open at the sight of Danny at his front door at six-thirty in the morning.
"What is it?" he asked urgently, his gangster mind immediately going into high gear. This had to be something bad. "What's wrong?"
"It's Katie," Manley said. "They've got her in the lockup down at Central on some kind of open charge, waiting for an incident report to be filed."
Leo's head swung around. "Diane! Diane, check Katie's bedroom---now!"
Katie, given name Katherine Eileen, was the elder daughter of Leo and Diane Pilsen. She was barely eighteen, by a few days. Their younger daughter, Barbara, was fifteen.
Moments later, Leo's wife, Diane, her face ashen, hurried to his side.
"Katie's bed hasn't been slept in."
An hour later, Lieutenant Dan Manley was in his office at headquarters, on a speaker phone with Fred Summar, a special agent in Chicago's FBI office.
"How do you read him?" Summar asked.
"So far he's hanging tough. Right now he's probably on the phone with a mob lawyer and their bail bondsman trying to sort everything out."
"His wife?"
"Losing it. Visions of lesbian rape driving her crazy. Her poor little girl in a lockup."
"What did you tell Pilsen you'd do for him?"
"I said I'd check everything out. Try to make sure the kid was kept in isolation. Break down the evidence to see how serious it is, and get back to him."
"Well," Summar said, "why don't you do that, then. I'll see if I can pull in some favors with the county to postpone bail if it's offered. Meet for lunch?"
"Okay. Scarpi's at noon?"
"Copy that."
Leo Pilsen, meanwhile, was burning up the phone lines.
"How soon can you get her out of there?" he demanded of the Outfit's top attorney, J. Mitchell Britten, who had been awakened by Pilsen's call.
"I have no idea, Leo. I don't even know what kind of charge they have against her. Let me see what I can find out---"
"I want her out by noon, Britten!" Leo ordered, and hung up.
Next he called Harry Lewis, who operated the Outfit's bail bond business, and was always in his office early every morning to approve overnight bail postings.
"I need to get her out on bond as quickly as possible, Harry. Diane is hysterical over this---"
"I'll get on it right away, Leo. Did Manley say where she was being held, or what for exactly?"
"No, he just saw her name on a central booking computer or something. He's looking into it for me now."
There was a pause, as Harry Lewis weighed Leo's last statement. Then: "Manley's not on our pad, is he, Leo?"
"No. Just a friend of mine from the streets in the old days. We've kept in touch, but he's straight."
Hanging up, Leo kept his hand on the receiver as he mulled over Harry's question. He did know several policemen who were on the Outfit's pad---its payoff list. One of them was a vice officer, Captain John Taft. Accessing his private directory, Leo called him and explained his plight.
"I'll get to the bottom of it, Leo," Taft said. "This is Katherine, the older girl, right? How old is she again?"
"Seventeen---no, I mean eighteen. She just turned eighteen last week."
That made her an adult, Captain John Taft automatically thought. "I'll get back to you quick as I can, Leo. Try to stay calm."
Behind Leo, as he hung up the phone, his wife Diane was sobbing and pounding her fists on a counter in the kitchen.
Lieutenant Dan Manley checked his computer again for any new information on the arrest of Katie Pilsen, but as usual that early in the morning computer updates coming in from all twenty-five police districts in the city were backed up like morning traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway. All the listing read was: pilsen, katherine eileen wf18 pending ip.
Leaving his office, Manley walked down three floors to Central Booking's main computer-processing department. He found Officer Grace Murphy at her desk next to a grimy window that overlooked a grimy back alley. "Hey, Gracie," Manley said.
"Hey, Danny," she said, looking up from her keyboard. She was a redhead, forty, high cheekbones, who never wore makeup, never needed to.
"You still married?" Manley asked.
"Yeah. You?"
"Barely. We've got a court date for final divorce disposition in two weeks."
"What is this, number three?"
"Yeah. Want to get together sometime soon?"
Grace Murphy sat back in her typing chair. "You wouldn't be looking for number four, would you, Dan?"
"Not a bad idea. How about it?"
She thought about it. "Well, Glenn and I don't exactly have a marriage made in heaven. I think we may have reached an impasse of some kind. So, okay. He works Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights next week. Take your pick." Glenn, her husband, was a city firefighter.
"I'll work something out," Manley said, with a wink. "Listen, I know you're swamped in here but could you run a quick search for me?"
"Only if it's a fugitive, terrorist act, or officer down. You know the rules, Dan."
"Come on, Gracie. This is important to me."
"How important?"
"Important enough to maybe get me transferred from patrol to organized crime."
Her hazel eyebrows went up. "Are you serious, Dan?"
"Dead serious."
Grace pushed a notepad across her desk and he wrote Katherine Eileen Pilsen's name on it. Grace then initiated a search engine that speed-scanned all incoming data not yet recorded. What she found and printed out for Manley was: pilsen, katherine eileen wf18 dui/drugs. traffic incident. report pending. offs d. ives, j. provo.
That's a piece of luck, Manley thought. The primary report was in his own division.
"Thanks, Gracie," He gave her another wink. "I'll call you this weekend."
An hour later, Manley had Officers Ives and Provo in his office, where he listened to a rundown on the traffic incident involving Katie Pilsen.
There had been six teenagers in a Lexus van, three male, three female. The van was being driven erratically along Michigan Avenue and was pulled over in the 600 block. Katherine Eileen Pilsen was the driver. The van was registered to Diane Lee Pilsen. All six teenagers in the van appeared to be under the influence of a controlled substance. In plain view of the officers in the center seat of the van was a wooden mixing bowl containing a quantity of approximately four to five dozen pills and capsules of pharmaceutical types. Also in plain view was a six-pack of Blatz beer with three bottles left in it, and a second six-pack carton empty. All six subjects were taken into custody and a transport vehicle and two female officers were summoned. An ambulance was also called due to one of the female passengers, identified as Audrey Kane, white, age seventeen, being in a non-responsive unconscious condition.
"Where was the Kane girl taken?"
"Cook County Hospital Emergency."
"And the others?"
"Booked at Central pending transfer to juvenile detention. Except for the Pilsen girl, who was eighteen and booked as an adult."
"The bowl of drugs?"
"Tagged and given to the detective squad at Central."
"All right. Good job, boys. Keep all this under your hats and if it turns out to be something special, I'll see that you both get a commendation for it."
Dismissing the two patrol officers, Manley immediately dialed Leo Pilsen's home number.
"Leo, it looks like Kate has been involved in a drug bust with five other kids. Has she had problems with drugs before?"
"No, never!" Pilsen swore. "What kind of drugs? Pot, coke, what?"
"Looks like prescription pills of some kind. Quite a lot of them. Enough for a felony charge."
"Do you know where she is?"
"She was booked at Central but she might have been moved to the criminal courts building by now for arraignment. I'll track her down, don't worry. Do you know an Audrey Kane?"
"Yeah, she's a friend of Katie's. Why?"
"She was in the group that was busted. Apparently she was unconscious and has been hospitalized."
"Which hospital is she in?"
"I don't know," Manley lied. "I'll run that down, too. Listen, Leo, it wouldn't be smart for you or Diane to contact the Kane girl's parents. You need to stay as far away from this situation as possible, you understand?"
"Yeah. Do you think anyone has figured out who she is?"
"Not yet, far as I know. But it's only a matter of time. Maybe we can get her released before anybody tumbles to that."
"Okay. Thanks for the advice, Danny. You're a good friend."
"Anything for an old West End Duke," Manley said.
Manley met FBI agent Fred Summar at noon for lunch at Scarpi's, a cop hangout in Little Italy, and passed on to him all the information he had developed so far.
"We need to get our hands on those pills," he told Summar. "Are you tight with anybody at DEA?"
"Leon Platt. You know him?"
"No. You think he might want to get in on this with us?"
"It's worth asking. He could establish a backdated file on Katherine Pilsen for suspicion of drug trafficking. Get a federal warrant to seize the drugs taken from the van."
"Can you find out where and when the girl is going to be arraigned and arrange for a federal prosecutor to be there and move to have the case transferred to federal court?"
"Yeah, I think I can handle that." Summar paused. "You know we'll probably have to cut Platt in for a piece of the pie."
Manley nodded. "Whatever we have to do, Fred, we do. Right?"
"Copy that," Fred Summar said. It was a favorite phrase of his. Everyone knew he had washed out of astronaut training before joining the bureau.
Manley found the two detectives who had caught the drug bust. He knew both of them: Ralph Kenmare and Ned Garvan.
"What's your interest in this?" Kenmare asked, without preliminary.
"The girl's father and I are old friends," Manley said truthfully, knowing that the two detectives were probably already aware of his relationship with Leo Pilsen, as many of his superiors in the department were. "I'm trying to do him a favor that will then be owed to the department."
"Do you trust him that much? An Outfit man?"
"I do," Manley answered flatly. "Having Leo Pilsen owe us a favor is the next best thing to having an undercover officer in the Outfit. Whatever benefit it brings the department in the future will be significant." He paused to let the two detectives think that over. Then he pointed out the obvious. "I could go to the chief of detectives, but then any future credit would go to him, not you."
"We won't change any report that's already been made," Kenmare said.
"Naturally not. You have no way of knowing who's already read the reports. Anything you give me is strictly off the record."
"But you cut us in for a piece of whatever it brings you?"
"Guaranteed."
The detectives took Manley into an interview room and turned off the audio-video system. Garvan did the talking.
"From what we can figure, the six kids were on a medicine-cabinet scavenger hunt. You familiar with what that is?"
"To some degree, but enlighten me."
"Well, the old-fashioned teenage scavenger hunts involved them going out looking for common things, like a green button, a purple bow, an argyle sock, a tennis ball, stuff like that. They went out in teams of two and they weren't allowed to buy anything; they had to get them from people they knew. First team to find all the things on the list won the game. It was all just clean fun."
"But not this time," Manley said.
"No. This time it had to be stuff from people's medicine cabinets. One pill from every prescription medication in any medicine cabinet they could get access to. They hit the homes of relatives, friends, neighbors---anybody they could con into letting them use their bathrooms. They might even break into the homes of complete strangers. One pill out of every prescription bottle. At the end of the hunt, all of the pills went into a bowl, got mixed up, and then the kids would have a pill party. They'd get a couple of six-packs of beer, go somewhere, and start popping, one pill at a time, in turn; the only rule was that nobody could take the same color pill twice in a row. They'd keep it up until various drug interactions would kick in and they'd either get high or sick."
"You think that's what the Pilsen girl and her friends were doing?"
"We don't think, we know. They still had half a bowl of pills and part of a six-pack when the patrol guys pulled them over."
Based on information he already had, Manley knew that the detectives were leveling with him. "Where's the evidence now?" he asked.
"In the lab, being processed."
"And the kids?"
"Four of them, all minors, are in juvenile intake, puking their guts out. A fifth minor is in county hospital; they pumped her stomach and have her on a bunch of IVs, but she's still unconscious. Problem is, the doctors don't know exactly what she took."
"The Pilsen girl?"
"Central District intake. She's no longer a minor, as of eight days ago. She's puking her guts out too, last we heard."
Manley paced around the tight little interview room, pulling at his lower lip. "How much of what you've just told me has been reported?"
"Nothing. We haven't been able to interview any of them because they're all so sick. The only thing we've put in the system is what your patrol guys had in their arrest report."
"How long before you figure to get preliminary interviews?"
"Twenty-four hours, guessing."
"Can you guess thirty-six?"
The two detective partners exchanged glances. "If it's worthwhile," Kenmare said.
"And you won't forget us," added Garvan.
"It could be very worthwhile," Manley predicted, "and you won't be forgotten," he promised.
At the Pilsen residence, Leo Pilsen's private line rang. The line had been privately installed, went through two independent switchboards, and was swept daily for taps. It was a call that Leo knew would be coming, and he dreaded it.
"Hello---"
"Mr. Pilsen," a female voice said, "Mr. Carpenter wants to speak to you. Hold on, please."
Frank Carpenter was one of the six commissioners who governed the Outfit. He was Leo Pilsen's direct boss.
"Good morning, Leo."
"Good morning, boss."
"I understand you're having a little personal problem. How serious is it?"
"I'm not sure yet, boss. I think it could turn out to be just some crazy teenage stuff that got out of hand."
"If you think that, Leo, why would you call our senior attorney, and our bail bondsman, and a police captain in our employ?"
"I was just playing it safe, boss. Covering all my bases---"
"The police captain you called is a major asset to our organization, Leo. We call on him for very high-level favors. Not for things like this problem of yours."
"I'm sorry, boss---"
"And our senior attorney is also concerned with high-level matters: major felony indictments, interstate matters, parole and pardon petitions---"
"Yeah, I realize that, boss---"
"Please don't interrupt me, Leo. The purpose of my call is to make you aware of the nature of the responsibilities that are handled by these people. When their assistance is required by a situation of such gravity that they need to be summoned and brought into it, I am the one who does that. Do I make myself clear, Leo?"
"Yes, boss. Very clear. I understand completely."
"Is that cop friend of yours, Manley, helping you out on this?"
"As much as he can, yes."
"I see. Do you think the matter requires any help from me in any way?"
"No, not at all, boss," Leo assured him. "Like I said earlier, I think it will turn out to be just some kid stuff that got out of hand."
"That's your best judgment, is it, Leo?"
"Yes, boss. Absolutely."
Frank Carpenter ended the call on a cordial note, but left Leo Pilsen staring at the receiver, his hairline and neck slick with sweat.
Dan Manley prowled the glassed-in hallway of the criminal forensics laboratory until he found a room that had a white sheet covering an examination table upon which was spread out a colorful assortment of medical pills, tablets, and capsules of various shapes, sizes, and colors. They were being sorted out by a female laboratory technician wearing a department-issued lab coat.
Pressing the button of a two-way speaker system at the door, Manley said, "Excuse me, is that the evidence from Detectives Garvan and Kenmare of Central District?"
The tech turned. She was an Asian woman of indeterminate age and inscrutable expression. She glanced at a clipboard and replied through the speaker, "Yes. May I help you?"
"Lieutenant Manley of Central Patrol," he said, holding up his badge and ID. "Is your room sterile or may I come in?"
"No, not sterile. Come in." She pressed a buzzer and admitted him.
"Quite a drugstore you've got there." He observed the assortment of pills.
"A pain in the ass is what I've got here," she said, surprising Manley with her candor. He read her name tag: pat woo.
"Why's that?" he asked.
"See this book?" She pointed to a thick volume upright and open on a metal stand next to the examination table. "This is the International Drug Directory, one thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two pages of reference to every prescription medication known to modern medical science. I've been going through it for four hours identifying these pills until my eyes are going like this---" She looked directly at him and crossed her lovely eyes until both were looking at her nose. "See?"
Dan Manley smiled his best smile. "When I used to do that as a little kid, my mother would tell me that someday my eyes would stick like that."
"I think mine might be on the verge," she said, uncrossing them. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?"
"I'm just trying to help my patrol guys who made this collar broaden their report a little. Make it look a little better. Instead of just showing 'miscellaneous pills' as evidence, I was hoping to get something a little more specific. Am I out of line at all?"
"Oh, hell no," she said. "Glad to help our guys on the street anytime. Get out your notebook."
Manley took a spiral-lined book from his inside pocket and clicked a ballpoint to the ready. Pat Woo pointed to a row of medicines that she had already classified. She began to recite.
"Dyazide, for high blood pressure. Zyloprim, anti-gout. Caverject, anti-impotence. Kineret, rheumatoid arthritis. Iopidine, for glaucoma. Kemstro, muscle relaxant. Colazal, bowel inflammation. Valium, which needs no explanation. Xanax, cousin to Valium. Zyban, a smoking deterrent. Celebrex, for osteoarthritis. Zithromax, for upper-respiratory problems. Cordarone, an antiarrhythmic, for abnormal heart rhythm. Campral, for the control of alcoholism."
She spoke slowly, but with authority, and spelled out the drug names for Manley.
"Shall I go on?" she asked presently.
"No, please don't," Manley said. "No wonder your eyes were crossing." He checked for a wedding ring, found none. "You by any chance free for dinner some night?"
"Don't date cops. Sorry."
"Not even lieutenants?"
"Especially lieutenants."
"I know a great Chinese restaurant."
"I'm Korean, hate Chinese food."
"Well, how about---"
"Forget it, Lieutenant. I'm also gay."
After leaving the crime lab, Manley checked out an unmarked car and drove to Cook County Medical Center. He located the jail ward where Audrey Kane was, and the resident physician who had been assigned to her, Dr. Luz Duran, a thirtyish Hispanic with eyes so big and dark Manley thought a man could drown in them. And she was not wearing a wedding ring.
"How's the patient?" he asked, after identifying himself.
"Stable, but still potentially serious," Luz Duran replied. "We pumped her stomach and gave her a massive diuretic, and got all kinds of ugly stuff out of her at both ends. Our lab is analyzing the product trying to determine what she might have digested."
"This might help," Manley said, showing her the list he had obtained from Pat Woo. "These drugs were in her possession when she was arrested. The list is incomplete, incidentally, and she may or may not have ingested any of them."
"Hey, yes, great," Luz Duran said enthusiastically. "The lab will love this. May I keep it?"
"I have to retain it, but you can copy it."
At the nurses station, Luz Duran made a copy of the notebook pages, scribbled a note to staple to the copy, and gave it to an orderly to be taken down to the lab. "Thanks very much, Lieutenant. This could be a big help."
"Exactly what I thought," Manley said, showing her his best smile. "Has the girl had any visitors?"
"Her parents have been in and out. And her family doctor, an internal medicine physician named DeVries. You want his number?"
"No, but thanks anyway. What have you told her parents regarding her condition?"
"Just that she's still comatose, vitals appear normal, but we won't know if there's brain damage until she wakes up."
"Any idea when that might be?"
The doctor shrugged. "Five minutes or five days."
Manley gave her his card. "Would you mind calling me if there's any significant change in her condition."
"Be happy to."
"Appreciate it." Manley held out his hand and she took it. He held it longer than necessary, and their eyes met. "Can I call you sometime, Doctor? Dinner, maybe?"
"Try me," she said, and handed him one of her own cards.
Back in his car, Manley used his cell phone to call FBI agent Fred Summar and give him a report on the Kane girl's condition. "What's new on your end?" he asked.
"I talked to Platt over at DEA. He likes what we're setting up and has agreed to come in with us. He's going to exercise Drug Enforcement Agency jurisdiction over the case with a backdated file pegging the Pilsen girl as a possible trafficker in pills. So we can count on her being removed from arraignment status in the county."
"Sounds good. You vouch for this guy Platt?"
"Yeah. We've pulled a few shortcuts together in the past to make cases. He'll play ball for a piece of the action."
"Okay. Where do we go from here?"
"We need to ring in somebody from DOJ. It's imperative that we have Justice Department participation arranged before you move on Pilsen. You on anybody's attaboy list over there?"
"When I was in vice, I worked with a pretty sharp gal named Angela Domini on some interstate prostitution task-force cases."
"How'd she seem?"
"Amiable. Why don't you contact her. Use my name. Tell her I'm setting this thing up with you. See if it interests her."
"Copy that," said Summar. "When are you planning to move on Pilsen?"
"Tonight."
At the Pilsen home that evening, Dan Manley sat down in the breakfast room with Leo and Diane Pilsen. Diane had a coffee service set up, and Leo had a bottle of Napoleon brandy for a bracer.
"I wish I had better news for you two," Manley said. "But I don't. Katie is in big trouble. Serious trouble."
"Oh my God." Diane's hands began to tremble. Leo reached over to calm her.
"How serious, Danny?" Pilsen asked.
Manley ran down the medicine-cabinet scavenger hunt, the traffic stop, all of the ensuing events, and outlined what the consequences might be.
"Katie was driving the van. She was the only adult among the group---"
"Danny, she's just a kid," Pilsen objected.
"Put that out of your head, Leo. She's an adult, as of last week when she turned eighteen. Get used to that. She can be held responsible for what happens to the other five who were in the vehicle with her---all of whom are juveniles. She can be charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors, conspiring with minors to obtain alcoholic beverages, conspiring with minors to obtain controlled substances, burglary of residences for every home medicine cabinet they raided---"
"This is her first offense," Leo ventured. "She can get off with probation. I know some county judges---"
"You know any federal judges?"
"What do you mean?"
"Late today the DEA lassoed the case. Katie will be transferred to federal custody."
"Oh my God, no!" Diane Pilsen gasped.
"And that's not the worst of it," Manley said evenly. "The Kane girl is in a coma. I checked out her condition a little while ago. The doctor treating her thinks she may have brain damage. She may even die."
Leo Pilsen turned ashen gray. He reached for the brandy bottle, bobbing his chin at Manley, who nodded okay. Pilsen spiked all their coffees with a liberal shot.
"How---how is she right now, Danny?" Diane Pilsen asked. Her voice trembled in concert with her hands.
"She's sick, but not seriously sick. I had her put in an isolation cell away from the other detainees. She's got a cot and a toilet and some privacy, and she's being given anti-nausea medicine." He was making it up as he went along. "But that's just for tonight; tomorrow the feds will take over her custody."
"Do they know who she is?" Leo asked.
Manley shrugged. "If they don't, they soon will."
"She can't tell them anything, you know. About my business, I mean---"
Manley sat back from the table and locked eyes with Pilsen. "Will Frank Carpenter believe that, Leo?" he asked quietly.
Pilsen stared at his old boyhood friend, and his wife stared at Pilsen the same way. "Leo---" she said tearfully, pleadingly.
"What can I do, Danny?" the gangster asked helplessly.
"It's a federal matter, Leo," Manley told him evenly. "You know what you can do."
The next morning, Dan Manley accompanied Leo Pilsen to an apartment on Lake Shore Drive that was an FBI safe house. They were met by FBI Agent Fred Summar, DEA Agent Leon Platt, and a woman named Angela Domini, who was an assistant United States attorney with the Department of Justice. After an exchange of introductions, Angela Domini opened the conversation.
"I know how concerned you must be about your daughter, Mr. Pilsen," she began. "Let me assure you that she is now in federal custody and receiving the best of medical care in a nearby suburban hospital---"
"When can I see her?" Pilsen interrupted.
"Soon. Meanwhile, there's a telephone over there with a secure line; if you'd like to make a quick call to your wife to assure her that your daughter is being well cared for, please help yourself."
As Pilsen made the call, the four law-enforcement officers made small talk among themselves, as if the matter being dealt with was no more than a local PTA meeting.
After Pilsen's call had been made, Angela Domini resumed her conversation with him. "You have come to us, Mr. Pilsen," she pointed out the obvious. "What can we do for you?"
"I want to help my daughter," Pilsen said. "I want to get her out of the mess she's in."
"All right. I think that can be arranged." Angela Domini was an attractive brunette, impeccably dressed in a St. John knit, wearing pearls. Her attitude as she spoke was cool and impassive. "What are you prepared to do for us, Mr. Pilsen?"
Pilsen shrugged. "Whatever it takes."
"Well, what it will take, Mr. Pilsen," she said quietly, evenly, "is full and complete disclosure by you of all your ongoing criminal activities, and all of the people with whom you are associated in those activities. Do you understand what that entails?"
"Yeah---I do."
"We will, of course, provide you and your family with full government security in our Federal Witness Protection Program. That will begin immediately after our first debriefing with you. Is that agreeable?"
After a nervous glance at Dan Manley, Pilsen swallowed dryly and answered, "Y-yes."
"All right." Angela Domini removed a set of formal-looking documents from her briefcase and placed them side by side on a table. Handing Pilsen a pen, she said, "These are formal contracts you are making with the United States government to cooperate fully in the investigation of any criminal matter put forth to you. Sign each set of papers on the lines with a blue star next to them, please."
After again glancing nervously at Manley, Leo Pilsen signed the documents.
"Thank you," Angela Domini said. ''Now come with me, please." She accompanied Pilsen to another room, where three more Justice Department agents waited. "These agents will conduct your preliminary debriefing, Mr. Pilsen. It will probably take about three hours. After that, we will accompany you to your home and attend to your family."
Leo Pilsen sat down to cooperate with law enforcement officials for the first time in his life.
Late that afternoon, four dark gray unmarked sedans, traveling in convoy, drove from the Lake Shore Drive apartment to Leo Pilsen's home in Northridge. Three of the vehicles were driven by Department of Justice plainclothes agents, all armed. In the lead car passenger seat was FBI Special Agent Fred Summar, with two agents in the rear seat. In the second car passenger seat rode Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela Domini, with Leo Pilsen and Dan Manley in the rear seat. In the third car passenger seat was Drug Enforcement Agent Leon Platt, with two DEA agents in the rear. The fourth car carried only FBI agents.
At the Pilsen residence, two of the vehicles blocked off the circular drive in front of the house, and armed agents cleared and secured its perimeter. The two lead agents, with Angela Domini and Dan Manley, escorted Leo Pilsen inside. Three DOJ agents followed. Pilsen was met by his wife, Diane, and their younger daughter, Barbara.
"We have to leave," Pilsen said.
"Leave?" Diane spread her hands out in bewilderment. "What do you mean, leave?"
"We have to go with these federal agents, Diane. Don't ask questions. Just do as they say---"
The three junior agents stepped forward and handed Diane and Barbara each two large black plastic Hefty trash bags. "You've got one hour, ma'am," one of them said. "You can take whatever you can stuff in these bags, but no cell phones or other electronic devices. Nothing else except what you can put in these bags. Everything else stays."
"But---but---I don't understand---" Diane blurted. Leo Pilsen stepped forward, took her by the shoulders, and shook her smartly. "Do as you're told, Diane! We've got to leave this place now---or we could be killed!" He turned to his younger daughter. "Fill one bag with your things and the other with your sister's things," he instructed in a calmer voice. "Go ahead, honey. One of these young men will go with you." Then he took one of the bags his wife held. "Come on, babe. I'll help you. Collect your jewelry first---"
Two hours later, with several agents remaining in the house, Leo Pilsen, his wife, and his daughter were in the rear seat of one of the government cars, with Dan Manley in the passenger seat, and FBI Agent Fred Summar driving. There were only three cars now, moving in a loose convoy north on Interstate 94, through the Chicago suburbs of Evanston, Highland Park, and the outskirts of the city of Waukegan, then across the state line into Wisconsin.
After riding in silence for a while, Leo Pilsen finally asked through dry lips, "Am I allowed to know where we're going?"
"I can tell you that right now you're on your way to General Mitchell Airport south of Milwaukee," Agent Summar told him. "You'll be turned over to a Witness Protection team there. That's as much as I know. My guess is that you'll be flown from there to a safe house in another city for your in-depth debriefing, which will take a month or so. Afterwards, you'll all be taken to your new permanent home somewhere."
"What about our other daughter?" Diane Pilsen asked anxiously.
"My understanding is that she is already at the airport. She was transferred there with a nurse and two agent escorts while we were at your home."
"Thank God." Diane put a protective arm around her younger daughter, who was crying softly beside her.
After another period of silence, Pilsen reached forward and placed a hand on Dan Manley's shoulder. "Did I do the right thing, Danny?" he asked quietly.
"You did the only thing, Leo. The only thing that would protect you and your family. Frank Carpenter wouldn't have let you live a month. Too risky. You know what a careful man he is."
Sitting back, Leo Pilsen quietly nodded his head in agreement.
When they reached the airport, agents from the two backup cars circulated into the main terminal for security, while the Pilsens were taken to a private Transportation Security Administration lounge and reunited with their elder daughter, Kate. There, Angela Domini and the Witness Protection team lead agent signed and exchanged documents to formally transfer custody of the family to WitPro.
Dan Manley and Leo Pilsen took a moment to say goodbye. Despite the circumstances, Pilsen was able to force a tight smile.
"Long way from West End Avenue, Danny."
"Yeah. Long way, Leo."
"We went through a lot of risky times as kids."
"Yeah. It was a nervous way to live." Manley extended his hand. "Make a new life for yourself and your family, Leo. This is your one chance to do it."
"I'll try, Danny." He shook Manley's hand.
Then the two parted.
One month after the turning of Leo Pilsen, a private luncheon hosted by the United States Department of Justice was held at the Peninsula Hotel just off the Chicago Loop. Attending were high-level representatives of the Chicago Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, and several divisions of the Department of Justice itself. The speaker was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the Deputy A.G. addressed the group, "welcome to this multi-agency awards luncheon, which has been convened to recognize an extraordinary example of cooperation among law enforcement personnel of various groups, which resulted in the resettling of a major organized crime figure, the identity of whom you all know.
"During the past four weeks, at a safe house in Omaha, this subject has been thoroughly debriefed by the Department of Justice, numerous depositions have been taken from him, and a significant amount of intelligence obtained from those depositions has been distributed to interested departments in all participating agencies. I am able to tell you at this time that the debriefing of this subject has now been completed, and he and his family relocated to their new permanent home, with new identities, in another part of the country.
"I am also able to tell you now that on the basis of the intelligence gathered, thirty-seven arrest warrants have been served on organized crime members in the Greater Chicago area, including a warrant on one Frank Carpenter, one of the commissioners of the Chicago Outfit, who, as I speak, has been taken into custody this morning and appeared before a federal magistrate where he was ordered held without bail on numerous charges, including nine counts of conspiracy to commit murder."
A wave of applause flowed through the audience, after which the deputy called to the podium various representatives of the agencies involved in the operation, who in turn called up their agents and officers to receive recognition.
Special Agent Fred Summar of the FBI received the bureau's Special Merit Award.
Agent Leon Platt of the DEA was given the agency's Outstanding Enforcement Achievement Award.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Angela Domini was presented with the Attorney General's High Esteem Award.
And Chicago Police Lieutenant Daniel Manley, recently appointed to the Organized Crime Division of the Chicago P.D., was given the department's Outstanding Merit Award.
Additionally, Special Achievement Scrolls were presented to Detectives Ralph Kenmare and Ned Garvan, Records Officer Grace Murphy, Laboratory Technician Patricia Woo, and Patrol Officers Dale Ives and John Provo.
All in all, it was a convivial and enjoyable luncheon overflowing with the camaraderie of law-enforcement personnel celebrating a job of crime-stopping well done.
When the luncheon was over, Dan Manley and FBI Agent Fred Summar walked to an underground parking lot together.
"Who collared Frank Carpenter this morning?" Manley asked.
"FBI," said Summar. "Got him while he was eating breakfast with his wife in their home out in Elk Grove. Word I got just before I left the office was that he claimed he never heard of anybody named Leo Pilsen."
"Gee," said Manley, "you don't suppose you arrested an innocent man, do you, Fred?"
"He's about as innocent as Al Capone was," Summar said. "Say, what's the word on the young Kane girl?"
"Fully recovered and back home. Dr. Duran says no permanent damage to her system in any way. I think she's learned her lesson too, as have all the other kids. They're all on probation, of course."
The two men shook hands and parted. Before Manley got to his car, he ran into Grace Murphy going to hers.
"Thanks for the kudos in there, Danny," she said. "My name's been moved to the top of the promotion list."
"Well deserved," Manley said.
She gave him a little peck on the cheek. "I'm glad we decided not to get together. Glenn and I are working out our differences. I think we're going to make it work."
"That's good news, Gracie. I'm happy for you."
Manley drove out to the West Side and parked his car for a few minutes at the edge of Garfield Park where West End Avenue began. The neighborhood had not changed much, except that most of the faces were black now. He thought of Leo Pilsen and the three other boys he had run with in the Dukes gang. As he had told Leo when they said goodbye, it had been a nervous way to live. Chicago was a hard city for street kids. Not too many survived. Dan Manley knew he was one of the lucky ones. Or maybe, as Leo had once said, one of the smart ones.
Using his cell phone, he called a nurses' station at Cook County Medical Center and got Dr. Luz Duran.
"Dr. Duran, this is Lieutenant Manley, Chicago P.D. I have a physical problem I wonder if you could help me with."
"Is it the same problem you've had for the past three weeks?" she asked in a low, smoky voice.
"Yes. It seems to go away, then every time I think of you it comes back."
"I see. It sounds to me like you need another treatment. How about a house call at eight tonight?"
"Copy that," Manley said. He was going to have to stop seeing so much of Fred Summar.
After he and Luz Duran rang off, he started the car, tossed a final glance down West End Avenue, and drove away.
Copyright © 2011 by Clark Howard
Meenakshi Gigi Durham says that her mystery fiction blends her Indian and American cultural experiences; and in this story, she also probes the emotional currents underlying academic life. She is a former journalist who teaches journalism at the University of Iowa. She got her start as a fiction writer in our Department of First Stories in December of 2004, with the story "The Drum," and appeared again in 2008 with a story about New Orleans, her husband's hometown, in the aftermath of Katrina.
After it was all over---after the blood lay in brilliant crimson daubs on the new-fallen snow, after the crime-scene tape and the police and the inquest and the jostling reporters---Bernard would remember, with a pang, that it was he who had set the wheels in motion, inadvertently, yet inexorably, that miserable midwinter night. Perhaps he was really the one to blame for that hideous death. He kept this to himself, of course, but he thought about it every now and then for years afterward, wondering if things might have been different, if death would not have been the vile outcome, had he never called Callie that night.
That night . . . He remembered how cold it was, and how the wet snow had pelted down, and how he'd wished he hadn't had to go out at all. But the candidate had flown in all the way from some fancy Ivy League university, and this guy was the prize hire, the one they were competing for, so he had to take him to dinner at the finest restaurant this little Iowa town could boast. Sandy was to have come, too---good old Sandy, professor emeritus, so full of bonhomie and erudite wisecracks and unfailing good humor that he was guaranteed to coax any up-and-coming young scholar to join this faculty in the middle of the cornfields. But Sandy had succumbed to some kind of bug, and Bernard had called Callie at the last minute.
He knew she'd be alone: She always was. He knew she'd probably be working---and in fact, she had just settled down to grade a pile of essays, the big orange tabby in her lap, the required snifter of brandy glowing in the lamplight beside her to help unkink her brain. When the phone had started ringing, she'd been irritated. In fact, she had let it ring. She was aggravated at the very idea of pushing the heavy cat off her lap, setting aside the brandy and the grading (which she was really getting into), and trundling across the room to the hallway to answer it. But the machine had clicked on, and when she'd heard the note of despair in Bernard's voice, she'd known all was lost.
"Callie, I know you're home," he pleaded, his normally fruity baritone turned tinny on the machine. "Pick up, pick up. We have to take this candidate out to dinner, and Sandy can't do it, and I need someone else there. We could lose this hire if you don't come, Callie. It's for the good of the department."
She could not resist that plea, of course, and Bernard knew it. Callie's life was her work. She was the one he could always count on to attend every faculty meeting, to read every administrative memo, to be on every committee, to hold endless office hours so she could counsel students at length on prereqs and course sequences, to wear school colors on game days. Others commented uncharitably that it was because she had nothing else going on: no love life, no kids, no hobbies. Bernard suspected there was some truth to this---that Callie worked so indefatigably to fill all the gaps in her life. But that, he thought, was not fair: Perhaps Callie didn't see them as gaps. After all, it was the twenty-first century. Not all women wanted babies or partners or escapist pastimes. And Callie was an asset to the department, a productive scholar, a dedicated professor, and a loyal colleague: He'd be hard-pressed to find another like her.
She had sighed, pushed the cat away, and walked over to the telephone, catching Bernard before the machine clicked off. "I'll come," she had said. "Where do you want me to meet you?"
"Callie, you are an angel," he'd trilled. "We're taking him to Chez Hélene, of course. I need to show him we aren't as provincial as people think we are out here in flyover country."
She sighed again, heavily. Chez Hélene would require changing out of her limp old cotton skirt and well-worn Hawkeye sweatshirt into something that resembled sophisticated attire.
"You know I hate driving in the snow," she grumbled.
"I know, Callie, and you are truly an angel," Bernard repeated. Will work for crumbs, he thought with satisfaction: good old Callie.
She replaced the receiver and contemplated the cat, the fire roaring in her grate, her pile of papers, the amber liquid glowing in the glass. Then she shuffled down the hallway to her late mother's room. The only decent clothes in the house were the ones her desperately stylish mother had painstakingly acquired on trips to Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City. Her mother had despaired of Callie's utter disinterest in fashion or personal grooming.
"You could be so pretty, Callie," she had moaned, when Callie was a teenager, and later, as she grew into young adulthood. She'd been particularly offended by Callie's graduate-school slovenliness, even though Callie had looked like every other English doctoral student on campus in her baggy jeans and stained Tshirts. "If you'd just take the trouble to put on a little makeup, get your colors done . . . you're an autumn, I think, like me, dear: You should wear warm colors instead of those awful grays and drabs." And Callie had just looked at her dismissively over her glasses.
Now she was grateful for her mother's obsession with staying chic in the middle of the pig farms. Her mother had been more slender than she, and shorter, so the clothes would be a little tight and short, but Callie wasn't worried about that: They'd be better than anything she owned.
She fingered the fabrics falling in lovely lines from their hangers. Her mother had died in this house just a year ago, pancreatic cancer bringing the end swiftly. Callie had not troubled herself to consider disposing of her mother's possessions, and she knew nothing about taking care of fine things, so the Chanel suits and Prada coats and Fendi bags were precisely as her mother had left them, carefully arranged in closets and on shelves. She had to admit the colors were beautiful; the fabrics gleamed in the lamplight. She pulled out a claret-colored outfit that turned out to be a dress with a bolero jacket. Callie pulled it on, cursing as she pressed her lumpy body into the fitted garment. It was tight under the bodice---an empire waist, she believed it was called---and the skirt flared out. The jacket was a squeeze; she could not button it, so she let it hang open. She found a pair of black pumps on a shelf and crammed her feet into them: her mother wore a half-size smaller than she did, and she could tell her bunions would be killing her by the end of the evening. The things I do for work, she muttered to herself as she slung on her old down coat and limped out to her car
She had not been in love before, had only read about the concept in the classical literature that was her specialty, but she recognized the emotion when her eyes met those of the candidate. He's beautiful, she thought in confusion as she extended her hand to him. He is the most gorgeous man I have ever seen. Adonis, she called him privately forever after.
"Callie, this is Nikhil Lakshman," Bernard explained, his voice now back to its usual velvety baritone. "And Nikhil, this is . . ."
"Oh, I know your work well, Dr. Chambers," Nikhil interrupted, turning a dazzling smile on Callie. "Your reading of Aeschylus in last month's Mythic Review was absolutely masterly---it caused such a stir in academic circles, too! To be honest, you are one of the main reasons I decided to apply for this position at the University of Iowa."
His large, liquid gray-green eyes, fringed heavily with long dark lashes, never left hers; he gazed at her ardently throughout the evening. She could feel the color mounting to her cheeks. Indeed, he seemed entranced by her, directing his comments almost exclusively to her, deflecting Bernard's questions to seek out her opinion, gushing about her writing: He seemed to have read everything she'd ever published. She had never been paid so much rapt attention by any man, not even by students trying to wheedle a higher grade out of her. Bernard seemed puzzled, then amused, then on top of the situation, recognizing that this could result in a hire. He joined in, heaping fulsome praise on Callie and refilling her wineglass frequently, so that by the end of the evening she was lightheaded, muddled, and ridiculously happy: happier, she believed, than she had ever been in her life.
When she got home, she caught a glimpse of herself in the hallway mirror and stopped to consider her reflection. Why, she was pretty, she thought with surprise. Mother had been right! Her hair was mussed---it had escaped from the sloppy chignon it had been in and curled about her flushed cheeks, and it sparkled with melting snowflakes; her eyes glowed from the wine and the unaccustomed stimulation of the evening; and the lines of the dress hid her bulges, making her suddenly graceful. No wonder he has fallen in love with me, she thought, and I with him. He is much younger than I, of course, but such things happen, she thought with satisfaction. She had read of these things: May-December relationships, cougars and kittens. Such romances had been known to blossom, she believed.
Her feelings were confirmed over the next few weeks, as the position was offered and Nikhil/Adonis accepted it. He would teach postcolonial literature and theory; his specialization was mythology in South Asian poetry. He was, she learned, a second-generation immigrant from the Indian subcontinent. His parents had arrived in Manhattan when he was a toddler. She thought of his bronze skin, olive eyes, glossy black hair, so different from the pallor and freckles of the boys she'd grown up with, so different from herself. He emailed her frequently during the negotiation process (he had a quick, literary wit even in two-line messages), and thanks to her he landed an unheard-of starting salary and benefits, even for a sought-after new Ph.D. from a prestigious graduate program. She had fought for this, with Bernard and the dean, and she felt a surge of power when the terms had been written into Nikhil's contract. This is just the beginning, she thought smugly. Once we are lovers, I can do wonders for him; I can give him the moon.
That outcome was destined, she was sure. The way he had looked at her at dinner! The way his hand had curled around her elbow as he had helped her up from her chair, the way he had tenderly draped her coat around her as he had seen her out the door, his eyes never leaving hers! The little intimate witticisms in his e-mail messages to her!
Of course, things moved even more rapidly once he moved to Iowa and began his job in the English department. His office was on a different floor from hers, but in the first few weeks he stopped by frequently to consult her on various issues. They began having a standing lunch (a lunch date, she said to herself) every Friday, meeting at a nearby bistro with intimate tables and shadowy lighting, talking shop but drifting eventually into the realm of the personal. He was the first one she'd ever told about her lonely, book-filled childhood in the chilly old prairie house she had now inherited; about her gruff, NRA-obsessed, right-wing father and the chic, severe mother she'd nursed on her deathbed. He, in turn, confessed the crises of identity that had beset him as an immigrant child grappling with an American upbringing, reaching for a never-seen homeland and culture. They talked about how their work resonated with the crosscurrents of their lives, how ancient mythologies and literature and poetry conjured the mysteries and sufferings of human life. Callie had never felt as close to anyone before.
"You will inspire me to greater things," Nikhil said one day, reaching for her hand across the table. "You truly are your name---Calliope, is it not? The muse of epic poetry. Why did anyone ever shorten it to 'Callie'? I shall always call you Calliope; you're becoming my muse, you know."
"Thanks for mentoring young Lakshman," Bernard said to her in the hallway one day. "Not many of our senior profs would take the trouble to help a young faculty member out like that. You're a champ, Callie." And Callie had smiled secretly to herself: "Mentoring" was not exactly the way she thought about their romantic tete-a-tetes.
Callie could not remember quite when Nikhil had first mentioned the idea of an engagement; he had dropped it so casually into the conversation, she hadn't even registered it. But he brought it up again, until it became a motif in their weekly lunch talks: It seemed his mother was trying to arrange a match for him, in the traditional Indian way.
"Arranged marriage?" Callie had inquired, stunned. "Surely not in a family like yours, here, in Manhattan?"
"Oh, yes." Nikhil had smiled ruefully. "All the best Indian-American families are brokering these things all the time, all through the Ivy-League-Seven-Sisters-Stanford-IIT network. A whole bunch of my friends, my cousins, they've all had their marriages arranged by their parents through the global Indian gossip circuit. Now my mom thinks it's high time I capitulated. Ridiculous, of course, to imagine I'd do anything of the sort."
"I would think!" cried Callie. "You need to find your own partner, someone who really understands your complexity, your brilliance."
"Someone who is my intellectual equal and who can yet handle my emotional tsunamis," said Nikhil, smiling. "Someone like you, Callie."
She had not imagined that: She remembered how he'd said it, later, when she was alone in her house that night. Someone like you. She gazed at herself in the mirror, recalling how his eyes had softened and rested on her face, so thoughtfully, so yearningly, when he'd said it. Any day now, she thought. Any day now he will confess his love, and I mine.
At lunch the next week he was somber, pensive. "Is anything wrong?" she asked. "Are you having any trouble with your classes---or is it your writing? Did they reject that last article you sent out?"
"No." He put down his fork, staring into his plate. He sighed. "It's just that my mother has found someone here, here in Iowa, that she wants me to meet. You know, a girl, someone she thinks I should consider."
"Consider?" echoed Callie.
"Yes, to get engaged to." Nikhil looked at her. "That's how it's done. They set you up to meet them, and then you go out a few times, and you both decide if you want to get engaged. They, the parents, have already figured out if you have, you know, compatible backgrounds in terms of family wealth, and religion and caste and all that."
"Really?" asked Callie. "How archaic. You know, in most American families the one your mother likes is the last one you'd want to marry." That got an appreciative chuckle out of him. "Honestly, does she expect you'll know whether you want a lifelong partnership after a few dates?"
"It's crazy, isn't it?" said Nikhil. "But she's already given this girl my contact information and she's breathing down my neck about seeing her. And I can tell already I'm not going to like this Sharmila or whatever her name is. She's doing an MBA in Chicago, but her family lives in some podunk Iowa town. She's probably some over-made-up bimbo who's obsessed with 'climbing the corporate ladder' or some such thing. Hardly my type at all---I like quiet, brainy women, you know."
"I know," said Callie, beaming.
He didn't mention the girl again, to Callie's relief; he was as eager and attentive as ever when they met, and she felt they grew closer every time, discovering a shared dislike of black olives and a guilty love of Merchant-Ivory films. One late spring day, as the trees were breaking out in delicate blossoms and the birds chirruped outside, Nikhil hesitated as they rose to leave the bistro and took Callie's hand.
"Calliope, there's something I need to tell you." He looked down at their clasped fingers, hers so white against his coppery skin, and then at her. "Can you meet here on Wednesday? I know it isn't our usual day . . . but there's a reason and I . . ."
"Of course," she said, her voice quivering. "I have a meeting but I can move it. This sounds important!" And she tried to laugh gaily, as though it were a splendid joke.
"It's incredibly important," he said. "And thank you for moving your meeting. God, Calliope, you are just so . . . incredible. . . ." His voice grew thick with emotion and he leaned toward her impulsively. He is going to kiss me! she thought with breathless excitement. She had never been kissed before. He is going to . . .
His lips brushed her cheek; he made an inchoate sound and stumbled to the door. She stood gazing after him. He's Indian, she thought. They are so shy about public displays of affection. Well, so was she, really. It made her love him more. There would be plenty of time for all of that, in private, after he proposed to her on Wednesday.
When she arrived at the bistro on Wednesday, he was already there, and a bottle of champagne listed in an ice bucket on the table. He sat drumming his fingers nervously on the arms of his chair; when he saw her, he sprang to pull out a chair for her.
"Champagne!" she cried, pretending to be surprised. "How lovely! But why?"
"You look beautiful," he said. She was glad he thought so: She had struggled with what to wear---what did one wear to one's proposal?---trying and discarding one after another of her mother's outfits and ending up in a limp gray skirt of her own paired with one of her mother's lacy blouses. She was not sure if the combination worked, but Nikhil apparently thought so, so that was all right.
"Hello," said an unfamiliar voice. "Hi, Nikhil, sorry I'm late. And this must be Callie!"
"Trollop" was the first, old-fashioned word that sprang to Cassie's mind. The girl looked like a trollop in a tight straight skirt, a flimsy top that resembled lingerie rather than respectable outdoor clothing, and hot-pink lipstick. As she held her hand out to Callie her long shiny hair swung forward, and Callie caught a whiff of cinnamon or vanilla or some such thing. Cheap, she thought, wrinkling her nose. Cheap perfume.
"This is Sharmila," said Nikhil. "Callie, please meet Sharmila Balaram."
"It's my pleasure, really," said Sharmila. "I've heard so much about you, Callie---Nikhil never stops talking about you."
Callie's head was in a whirl. She sat down, suddenly short of breath.
"Why, Callie, you look winded. It must be the heat." Nikhil reached out, lifted the champagne, began pouring the sparkling gold liquid into three flutes on the table.
"Here," he said. "Callie, I can't tell you how much it means to me that you're here. You're my dearest friend at this university, you've been like a mother to me, and I wanted you to be the first to know. Sharmila and I are getting engaged."
She didn't know how she made it through that luncheon. She was wrenched with nausea the whole time, her head spinning, her palms clammy. She wanted to faint, to weep, to scream. Engaged to this harlot! Only because it was his mother's wish, she knew, and only because this half-naked harridan had gotten her hooks into him somehow. She got through lunch somehow, toasting the happy couple, smiling and nodding through her queasiness, her lips fixed in an artificial rictus that passed for a smile. She left before they did, claiming another appointment; they hardly noticed her departure, laughing and giddy, deep into their second bottle of bubbly.
He was drinking too much to drown out his real feelings, she knew. He realized he should be with her, Calliope, his brilliant muse, his soulmate. But he couldn't, because of the family pressures, because of his mother's expectations, because of the social stigma. And he probably wanted to protect her reputation at work: People would talk so! If they became lovers, if they married, they might have to seek jobs at different colleges to avoid accusations of nepotism. It could get very complicated, and he was probably only thinking of her, poor boy. But there was no need to make this rash move, to get engaged to this Sharmila creature, just because he thought he couldn't have her, Callie, his muse, his Athena! She could free him. She could change the course of destiny, for was she not brilliant and beautiful and powerful, as a muse should be?
The guns were in the basement. Her father had gathered them over the years, at gun shows and pawn shops and collectors' meets. When she was a little girl, he had allowed her downstairs once in a great while to look at them, and had pronounced their names for her: Luger Parabellum P08, Colt 45, Walther SP22. Smith & Wesson, Glock, Steyr. They gleamed on the wall, polished to a high shine, deadly and menacing. She had watched him load and fire them, though she had never been allowed to touch them herself. She'd never wanted to, either. She was afraid of them. Her mother thought they were dangerous, dirty, frightening, and so did she. When her father had died, they had left them alone; now they were dusty and dull, but just as menacing in the light of the naked bulbs that dangled from the dark ceiling.
But she knew what she had to do now, knew that the guns would be her salvation, hers and Nikhil's. It was the Walther that she thought would be the easiest to handle---it had been her father's favorite. She knew where he had kept the ammunition, and she'd watched him load it many times. She knew what to do, though her fingers shook as she fitted the bullets into the chamber and cocked the hammer. She took the gun upstairs with her. It lay on the mahogany table while she took out her best linen notepaper and penned the letter.
Dear Sharmila (if I may), she wrote, I was delighted to meet you today. I am so pleased to learn of your and Nikhil's soon-to-be wedding, and I regret that I had to leave that lovely luncheon in such haste.
The words came easily, flowing onto the page from her fountain pen in the precise, feathery curlicues of her old-fashioned script.
I feel we really should get to know one another better. Nikhil and I have grown so close in the months that he has been here, and I know I will learn to love you as much as he does.
I hope you will come to tea with me next week. I would like to spend time with you alone. I look forward very much to becoming your friend, as Nikhil is mine.
She read it over and was satisfied that it conveyed nothing more than a genuine eagerness to get to know the slut. She wondered if she should put in something about "girl talk" or "woman-to-woman time," but decided against it. She signed it with a flourish.
Cordially, Calliope Chambers
It started snowing again that weekend, a freakish Iowa late-spring snow that grew worse every day until it was piled halfway up the fire hydrants and blanketed the streets. It crushed the budding flowers that had sprung so hopefully out of the ground, froze the buds on the trees and broke their branches. Stoically, people pulled their down coats back out of their closets: Iowans are accustomed to atmospheric disappointments.
For Callie, the weather sharpened the pangs of anxiety that had gripped her all morning. What if it kept the wench from coming? What if she decided it was too much, to drive all the way out to Callie's deserted house in the snow? What if she canceled?
When she had called to accept Callie's invitation, she had sounded puzzled. "Would you like us both to come?" she had asked, and Callie had almost dropped the receiver in panic.
"No, no," she'd said, forcing a note of brightness into her voice to mask her fear. "Just you, dear, just you. I want to get to know you. It's important that we spend some time together. Us girls!" she added, with a brittle laugh.
"Okay," said Sharmila. "Sounds like fun."
All morning, Callie paced the hallways, the cat watching her inscrutably from the armchair. The gun, heavy and gleaming, lay on the hall table. Callie picked it up from time to time, hefting it, fingering the trigger, feeling the weight of the loaded chamber. It would only take a moment, but that moment was crucial, she knew. She had to aim and fire it before her will failed her. She did not think it would. Every time she thought of the girl---Sharmila, with her vacant doelike brown eyes and pouting lips---she grew agitated and furious. How dared she imagine she could marry someone like Nikhil, someone so brilliant and sensitive and malleable, someone who needed a kindred spirit to share his passions and his commitments, to shepherd him through the rigors of academic life? What could this little business girl know of the beauty of literature, the poison of academic politics, the triumph of parsing a text in deeply theoretical ways? She would destroy him, would wreck his potential, would rob literature of one of its future greats. She had to be stopped, Callie knew, for every possible reason.
She was confident a judge would understand that. She knew there might be questions, an investigation, maybe even a trial. But Nikhil would be at her side, overwhelmed by the enormity of what she had done for love, and the entire literary world would make her case. She would be acquitted and absolved, for she was on the side of the angels.
Still, when the door-knocker's sharp clatter resounded in the hallway, fear clutched at her heart and her knees buckled. The moment of truth had come, and she was not sure she was ready for it. She took the gun in her hand. It was cold and heavy, and suddenly slippery from the sweat on her palms. She drew a deep breath and reached to open the door, the gun raised, the hammer cocked, her finger on the trigger. The door swung slowly open.
And she gasped, because it was Nikhil who stood before her in the snow, smiling tentatively, snowflakes clinging to his head and collar. She stepped backward in confusion, lowering the gun, and then suddenly she felt a hand gripping her wrist. Sharmila had stepped out from behind Nikhil; her gloved hand held Callie's tightly, powerfully.
"I knew it!" she said. "You crazy bitch." She twisted Callie's hand sharply, turning it and forcing it upward, and Callie felt her fingers tighten in an involuntary spasm; in that split second, she knew she had lost.
The gunshot shattered Callie's face; it went off at such close range that death came instantaneously; her body crashed backward. The cat leapt from the chair at the crash and fled; Callie's head hit the edge of the hall table as she fell. Then there was silence, a silence so deep that the sound of the snowflakes filled it.
"I told you," the girl said contemptuously. "I told you she would try to kill me. I could tell she was crazy. That's why you had to go to the door first; she wasn't going to touch you. She thought she was in love with you."
"My God," he responded, dazed, leaning against the door weakly. Callie's blood, fragments of bone, the aftermath of her death was everywhere: on the doorjamb, the step, their clothes, the snow. "My God, Sharmila, you just . . . we . . . you just committed . . ."
"She shot herself," said Sharmila sharply. "Poor thing was just so close to the edge. She opened the door and just shot herself." She stepped back, pulling a cell phone from her purse. "Don't look so poleaxed, Nikhil. We didn't kill anybody. She did it to herself, the silly bitch."
"But . . ." He turned away, then back to look at Callie sprawled on the floor. Her face was beyond recognition. He flinched and turned away. The cat wandered into the hallway, then sat and began to lick its paws.
"It was suicide," said Sharmila. "Hardly surprising, living all by herself out here in the middle of nowhere, just her and her work and her cat. All that literary nonsense just got to her. She had to go out with drama."
"Dido," said Nikhil. "She was Dido and I, her Aeneas."
Sharmila paused and pouted at him. "What are you babbling about?" she asked.
"Dido," said Nikhil. "She was the queen of Carthage who fell in love with Aeneas, and when be betrayed her, she killed herself."
"Yeah," said Sharmila. "Yeah, that's it. You got it. It wasn't murder. Dido. Whatever."
She flipped the cell phone open: It was pink, like her lipstick. She smiled at Nikhil, slipped her arm through his, and dialed 911.
Copyright © 2011 by Meenakshi Gigi Durham
Peter Tremayne, a writer Booklist has called "a master of the medieval mystery" for his books and stories featuring 7th-century Irish legal advocate Sister Fidelma, shows in his latest stories for EQMM that he is equally a master of the late Elizabethanperiod. His sleuth Master Drew Hardy returns here for his second EQMM adventure, following February 2010's "Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun." Mr. Tremayne's latest novel in U.S. publication is The Dove of Death (a Sister Fidelma mystery).
"This thing of darkness,
I acknowledge mine."
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, scene i.
Master Hardy Drew, Constable of the Bankside Watch, stood regarding the blackened and still-smoking ruins of the once imposing edifice of the house on the corner of Stony Street near the parish church of St. Saviour's. There was little left of it, as it had been a wood-built house and wood and dry plaster were a combustible mix.
"It was a fine old house," Master Drew's companion said reflectively. "It once belonged to the old Papist Bishop Gardiner."
"The one who took pleasure in burning those he deemed heretics in Queen Mary's time?" asked Master Drew with a slight shudder. He had not been born when Mary had been on the throne but he knew it to be a strange, unsettled period when, during those five short years, she had earned the epithet of "Bloody Mary."
Master Pettigrew, the fire warden, nodded.
"Aye, Master Drew. The same who condemned some good men to the flames because they would not accept Roman ways."
"Well, it is not infrequent that buildings catch alight and burn. You and your sturdy lads have put out the flames and no other properties seem threatened. Why, therefore, do you bring me here?"
Master Pettigrew inclined his head towards the smouldering ruins.
"There is a body here. I think you should see it."
The constable frowned.
"A poor soul caught in the fire? Surely that is a task for the coroner?"
"That's as may be, good Master. Come and examine it for yourself. It is not badly burned," he added, seeing the distaste on Master Drew's features. "I believe it was not fire that killed him."
He led the way through the charred wood and the odd standing wall towards what must have been the back of the house and into an area that had been partially built of bricks, and thus not much had been destroyed by the conflagration.
Master Drew saw the problem straightaway. The body of a man was hanging from a thick beam by means of iron manacles that secured his wrists and linked them via a chain over the beam. He breathed out sharply.
"This is a thing of darkness. A deed of evil," he muttered.
The constable tried not to look at the legs of the corpse for they had received the force of the fire. The upper body was blackened but not burnt for, by that curious vagary which fire is often prey to, the flames had not engulfed the entire body. The fire seemed to have died after it had reached the corpse.
The body was that of a man of thirty or perhaps a little more. Through the soot and grime it was impossible to say much more about the features.
Master Drew saw that the mouth was tied as in the manner of a gag. The eyes were bulging and blood-rimmed, marking the struggle to obtain air that must have been filled with smoke and fumes from the fire.
"You will observe, Master Drew, that the upper garments of this man speak of some wealth and status and the manner of his death was clearly planned."
The constable sniffed in irritation.
"I am experienced in the matter of observation," he rebuked sharply.
Indeed, he had already observed that, in spite of the blackened and scorched garments, they were clearly garments affected by a person of wealth. His sharp eyes had detected something under the shirt and he drew the long dagger he wore at his belt and used it to push aside the doublet and undershirt. It was a gold chain on which was hung a medallion of sorts.
Master Pettigrew let out a breath. He was probably thinking of the wealth that he had missed, for being warden of the fire watch around Bankside did not provide him with means to live as he would want without a little aid from such items collected in the debris of fires such as this.
Using the tip of his dagger, Master Drew was able to lift the chain over the head of the corpse and then examine it. Master Pettigrew bent over his shoulders.
"A dead sheep moulded in gold," he breathed peering at the symbol.
Master Drew shook his head.
"Not a dead sheep but the fleece of a sheep. I have seen the like once before. It was just after the defeat of the Spanish invasion force. They brought some prisoners to the Tower and I was one of the appointed guards. One of the prisoners was wearing such a symbol. When one of the sergeants wanted to divest him of it, our captain rebuked him, saying it was the symbol of a noble order and that the prisoner should be treated, therefore, with all courtesy and respect."
The warden looked worried.
"Some nobleman murdered here on the Bankside? We will not hear the last of it, good Constable. Nobles have powerful influence."
Master Drew nodded thoughtfully.
"A nobleman, aye. But of what country and what allegiance? This order was set up to defend the Papist faith."
Master Pettigrew looked at him slightly horrified.
"The Papist faith, you say?"
"This is a Spanish order, for I see the insignia of Philip of Spain on the reverse."
"Spanish?" gasped Master Pettigrew. "There are several noble Spaniards in London at this time."
Master Drew's features hardened.
"And many who would as lief cut a Spaniard's throat in revenge for acts of previous years. Were there no witnesses to this incendiary act?"
To his surprise, Master Pettigrew nodded an affirmative.
"Tom Shadwell, a passing fruit merchant, saw the flames and called the alarm," returned Master Pettigrew. "That was at dawn this morning. My men managed to isolate the building and extinguish the flames within the hour. Then we entered and that was when I found the body and sent for you."
"Well, one thing is for certain, this poor soul did not hang himself nor set fire to this place. To whom does this building now belong?"
"I think it must still belong to the Bishop of Winchester for he has many estates around here. Such was the office of Bishop Gardiner, but he has been dead these fifty years during which it has remained empty."
"That's true," Master Drew reflected. "I have never seen it occupied since I came here as assistant constable. No one has ever claimed it nor sought to occupy it."
"Aye, and for reasons that local folk claim it to be haunted by the spirits of the unfortunates that Bishop Gardiner tortured and condemned to the flames as heretics."
Master Drew pocketed the chain thoughtfully and glanced once more at the body.
"Release the corpse to the charge of the coroner, Master Pettigrew, and say that I will speak with him anon but to do nothing precipitous until I have done so."
He was about to turn when he caught sight of something in the corner of the room that puzzled him. In spite of the fire having damaged this area, he saw that the floorboards were smashed and that, where they had been torn away, a rectangular hole had been dug into the earth. He moved towards it.
"Is this the work of your men, Master Pettigrew?" he asked.
The warden of the fire watch shook his head.
"Not of my men."
Master Drew sniffed sharply.
"Then someone has excavated this hole. But for what purpose?"
He bent down, peered into the hole and poked at it with the tip of his long dagger.
"The hole was already here and something buried, which was but recently dug up and removed and . . ." He frowned, moved his dagger again, and then bent down into the hole, carefully, trying to avoid the soot. With a grunt of satisfaction he came up holding something between thumb and forefinger.
"A coin?" hazarded Master Pettigrew, leaning over his shoulder.
"Aye, a coin," the constable confirmed, scraping away some of the soot with the point of the dagger.
"A groat?"
"No, this is a shilling, and an Irish shilling of Philip and Mary at that. See the harp under the crown on the face and either side; under smaller crowns, the initials P and M? Now what would that be doing here?"
"Well, Bishop Gardiner was a Papist during the time of Mary and approved her marriage to the Spanish King Philip. It is logic that he might have lost the coin then."
Master Drew looked down at the hole again. He knew better than to comment further. Instead, he slipped the coin into his pocket and moved towards the exit of the blackened building. Outside, groups of people were already gathering. He suspected that some of them had come to forage and pillage if there was anything worth salvaging.
"Where are you away to?" called Master Pettigrew.
"To proceed with my investigation," he replied. "I'll speak to the fruit merchant who first saw the conflagration."
"He has the barrow at the corner of Clink Street, selling fruit and nosegays to those visiting the folk within the prison."
The constable made no reply but he knew Tom Shadwell, the fruit-seller, well enough and often passed the time of day with him as he made his way by the grim walls of the old prison.
"A body found, you say, good Constable?" Tom Shadwell's features were pale when Master Drew told him of the gruesome find. "I saw only the flames and had no idea that anyone dwelt within the building. Had I known, I would have made an effort to save the poor soul. So far as I knew, it had been empty these many years."
"You would have been too late anyway," replied Master Drew. "It is murder that we are dealing with. Therefore, be cautious in your thoughts before you recite to me as much as you may remember."
Tom Shadwell rubbed the bridge of his nose with a crooked forefinger.
"The first light was spreading when I came by the corner of Stony Street to make my way to my pitch. I was pushing my barrow as usual. It is not long after dawn that the prison door is opened and visitors are allowed to go in. I usually start my trade early. I was passing the old house when I saw the flames . . ."
He suddenly paused and frowned.
"You have thought of something, Master Shadwell?" prompted the constable.
"It is unrelated to the fire."
"Let me decide that."
"There was a coach standing in Stony Street, not far from the house. Two men were lifting a small wooden chest into the coach. It seemed heavy. Even as I passed the end of the street they had placed it inside, then one climbed in and the other scrambled to the box and took the reins. Away it went in a thrice. I then crossed the end of the street towards the old house and that was when I heard the crackle of the fire and saw its flames through the window. I pushed my barrow to the end of the street, for I knew Master Pettigrew, Warden of the Fire Watch, dwelt there. I was reluctant to leave my barrow---prey to thieves and wastrels---but there was no one about, so I ran along to his house and raised the alarm. That is all I know."
"This coach, could you identify it?"
Shadwell shook his head.
"It was dark and the two men were clad in dark cloaks."
"Well-dressed fellows, would you say?"
"Hard to say, Master Constable."
"And which way did this coach proceed? Towards the bridge?"
Shadwell shook his head.
"In this direction, towards Clink Street or maybe along to Bankside, not towards the bridge."
Having ascertained there was nothing more to be gathered from the fruit-seller, Master Drew turned past the Clink Prison to the adjacent imposing ancient structure of Winchester Palace which dominated the area just west of the bridgehead. Southwark was the largest town of the diocese of Winchester. In the days when Winchester was capital of the Saxon kingdom, before London reclaimed its Roman prominence, the bishops of Winchester were all-powerful. Even after Winchester fell into decline as a capital, the bishops remained within the royal court circles and therefore had to be frequently in London for royal and administrative purposes. So the grand Winchester Palace was built on the south bank of the Thames.
Master Drew explained his business to the gatekeeper of the palace and was shown directly to the office of Sir Gilbert Scrivener, secretary to His Grace, Thomas Bilson, the Bishop of Winchester.
"The house on the corner of Stony Street? We have large estates in Southwark, Master Drew, as you do know. But I do vaguely recall it. Unused since Bishop Gardiner's decease."
"You have no personal acquaintance with the house, then?"
"My dear constable," replied Sir Gilbert, "I have more things to do with my time than to personally acquaint myself with all the properties controlled by the diocese. As for the burning of this building, and the murder of foreigners, it is not to be wondered that they and empty houses are treated in such manner---and it may be a blessing, for it has long been His Grace's wish to rebuild that crumbling edifice and set on the site something more useful to the church and the community."
"So you are acquainted with the house?" frowned Master Drew sharply.
Sir Gilbert spread his hands with a thin smile.
"I said, not personally. But I am His Grace's secretary. I fear you do but waste your time, for do we not live in Southwark and is it not said that these mean streets are better termed a foul den than a fair garden? Its reputation is best described as notorious. Bankside itself is a nest of prostitutes and thieves, of cutthroats and vagabonds."
"And playhouses," smiled Master Drew grimly. "Do not forget the playhouses, Sir Gilbert."
Sir Gilbert sighed impatiently.
"I cannot spare you more time, Master Constable. I wish you a good morning and success with your endeavours."
Outside the gates of Winchester Palace, Master Drew paused, frowning, his hand fingering the golden chain that reposed in his breeches pocket.
He sighed deeply. It was going to be a long walk to where he felt his next inquiry was going to take him. His allowance as Constable of the Bankside Watch would not stretch to what the justices of Southwark might deem unnecessary expenses to a wherryman to ferry him across the river. So, with a shrug, he set off towards the entrance to the London Bridge. He was walking towards it when a voice hailed him.
"Give you a good day, Master Constable."
He glanced up to see old Jepheson, the tanner, guiding his wagonload of hides towards the bridge. He knew him well, for he had prevented the old man and his wife from being attacked and robbed one summer evening in their tannery in Bear Lane.
"Good day, Master Jepheson. Wither away?"
"To deliver these hides to The Strand."
Master Drew smiled broadly. Here was luck, indeed.
"Then I will seek the favour of a ride with you there, for it will save an exhausting walk and the wearing of my shoe leather."
"Climb up and welcome. I am already in your debt."
Master Drew obeyed with alacrity. While old Jepheson prattled on, Master Drew could not help but dwell on the meaning of the golden chain in his pocket. A symbol of a Spanish noble order found on the corpse of a murdered man. All England knew that the long war between England and Spain was coming to a negotiated end. Envoys from the two kingdoms were even now meeting in the palace built by the Duke of Somerset. Since 1585 the war had continued with no side gaining any advantage. With the death of Elizabeth and the accession last year of James VI of Scotland as James I of England, it was felt time to end the long and wasteful war. The old enemy, Philip II of Spain, was also dead and Philip III now ruled there. Six leading Spanish noblemen had arrived with their entourages to conduct the negotiations that would, hopefully, lead to a treaty.
Somerset House was on the north bank of the river Thames. Southwark was south of London Bridge and a separate jurisdiction from London. It owed its importance to its position at the southern end of the only bridge spanning the Thames and thus the main thoroughfare to the south. And its population had grown by making itself a pleasure ground for the more law-abiding north bank of the Thames. It had only been in 1550 that the City of London had decided to attempt to control the lawlessness of Southwark by setting up justices and constables, such as Master Drew's own office.
Southwark still felt separate and would not be forced to obedience of the justices of London. It became the headquarters of the rebel Sir Thomas Wyatt in 1554 when he raised an insurgent force to move on London to prevent Queen Mary's intended marriage to Philip II of Spain. Only the fortification on the northern end of London Bridge and the training of the cannons of the Tower of London across the river on the homes and churches of the people of Southwark, forced the withdrawal of the insurgents.
It was because of this "independence," this freedom and laxity in the laws, that the Bankside area became a place where playhouses had sprung up outside of the restrictions placed on them by their neighbours on the northern banks of the Thames. The Bankside had become a haunt of prostitutes, pimps, and thieves. And due to this separation in jurisdiction, Master Drew realised, he would be unable to exercise authority on the northern bank.
Master Drew left Jepheson and his wagon of hides in The Strand and walked to the gates of Somerset House. In the courtyard an officer of the guard stopped him and shook his head when he said he wanted to see one of the Spanish delegation or their secretaries.
"You have no jurisdiction here, Constable," replied the officer. "I can let no one through here without legal authority."
"Master Drew?" a sharp voice suddenly called behind him.
The constable swung round. A man of small stature, crook back, with a tawny-coloured beard and hair and sharp green eyes was examining him. He had apparently emerged from a nearby doorway. The officer of the guard stiffened and saluted while Master Drew performed a clumsy bow as he recognised the Lord Chancellor of England, Sir Robert Cecil.
"I thought it was you," Sir Robert said, with a soft, malicious smile. "I never forget a face. What business brings you hither?"
Master Drew tried to repress thoughts of how Sir Robert came perilously close to having him arrested for conspiracy to High Treason while Elizabeth lay dying the previous year.
"A matter that may be one of national importance, Sir Robert."
The Lord Chancellor raised his eyes and then waved away the officer of the guard.
"Then come walk with me, and tell me what you mean."
Master Drew, with few wasted words, explained what had happened as they paced the courtyard and ended by presenting Sir Robert with the gold chain.
The Lord Chancellor frowned as he examined it.
"I have seen the like before, and recently. You have in mind that it belongs to one of the Spanish delegation?"
"And even worse," agreed Master Drew. "That the owner of the chain and the body in the house on Stony Street might be one of your Spanish nobles. If it is so and one of the ambassadors has been murdered at such a fraught time . . ." He shrugged.
The diplomatic implications were not lost on Sir Robert.
"If so, then, indeed, we face perilous times," he said softly. He turned back to the officer of the guard and called to him.
"Go to the apartment of His Grace, the Duke of Frias, and ask him if it would not be troubling him too much if he could attend me in my chamber. I pray you, put as much courtesy and politeness in the request as you can."
The officer went off on his new errand.
Sir Robert guided Master Drew into the building and through to a chamber where a fire crackled in the hearth.
"I have seen the Duke of Frias returning from his morning ride, so I know he is safe," confided Sir Robert. "He is chief ambassador of the Spanish and should be able to assist in this matter."
It seemed only a short time passed before there was a knock on the door and the officer of the guard entered and stood to one side.
"His Grace Juan de Velasco Frias, Duke of Frias, Constable of Castile," he announced solemnly.
A tall, dark, and elegantly dressed man entered and made a sweeping courtly bow to them.
Sir Robert went forward to greet him.
"Your Grace, forgive me for disturbing your morning's preoccupations, but we must ask for your advice and information on a pressing matter of concern to both our nations."
The duke smiled but with a movement of his facial muscles only, his dark eyes looking enquiringly at Master Drew, taking in his more shabby clothing and appearance, which clearly did not place him as a courtier or officer of state.
"It is what I and my compatriots are here for, Sir Robert. But I have not had the pleasure of acquaintance with this gentlemen."
"This is Master Drew, Constable of the Bankside. . . ."
"Master Drew? And a constable? I am Constable of Castile. Do you not have to be of the knightly rank to be a constable in this kingdom?"
"There is a difference in office, Your Grace," Sir Robert explained hurriedly. "Suffice to say, Master Drew is much in our confidence. Tell me, have you seen all your compatriots this morning?"
The duke frowned.
"All? Indeed, we breakfasted together to discuss some points to raise at our sessions later today. Why do you ask?"
"Master Drew has something to explain."
Master Drew cleared his throat and repeated his story and then held out the chain for the Spanish duke to inspect.
"The Order of the Golden Fleece," the duke whispered softly. "It bears the insignia of His Majesty, Felipe the Third." The expression on his face told them he recognised it. He turned his dark eyes to Sir Robert. "Can someone ask the Count of Villa Medina to join us?"
Sir Robert glanced towards the officer of the guard who had remained by the door and issued instructions.
When he had gone, Master Drew asked: "Does Your Grace think that this belongs to the Count of Villa Medina?"
The Duke of Frias shook his head.
"I know that the Count of Villa Medina is not a member of this noble order. However, he will, I am sure, be able to cast light on the person who held this honour."
Again, it was not long before the door was opened to a nervous man whose movements reminded Master Drew of a bird, quick and unpredictable. He possessed the habit of running his hand quickly over his small pointed beard each time he spoke.
This time, the Duke of Frias explained in a rapid Spanish and then turned to Master Drew and asked him to hold forth the golden chain.
The count's face paled as he examined it.
"I can identify the owner of this," he said slowly. He spoke a fair English but without the fluency of the duke.
"And the owner is . . . ?" queried Master Drew.
"My secretary, the Chevalier Stefano Jardinero y Barbastro."
Master Drew frowned.
"Stefano Jardineiro?" he echoed.
The count made a quick motion with his hand, stroking his beard rapidly.
"He is of an English family who fled to Spain on the death of Mary, the former Queen Consort of Spain."
Sir Robert sniffed in embarrassment as he explained.
"Stefano Jardineiro was a nephew of Bishop Stephen Gardiner. That is why the name is familiar. I recall the family."
Master Drew tried to hide his surprise.
"Bishop Gardiner of Winchester?"
"The family was granted asylum by the late King Felipe, who gave them an estate in Barbastro," added the Count of Villa Medina. "The chevalier proved his nobility and loyalty in the service and so was ennobled by the court and made a member of this order."
Sir Robert glanced keenly at Master Drew.
"I am aware that Bishop Gardiner sent several worthy men to the flames as martyrs for the Protestant cause. Therefore there might be some who would see the death of one of his family as just retribution. But before we seek conclusions, let us seek the facts. I presume the chevalier is currently unaccounted for?"
The count looked embarrassed and nodded.
"I sent for him this morning to discuss notes appertaining to the treaty but was told he was not in his chambers and that his bed had not been slept in. He has not been seen since last evening."
"And why has an alarm not been raised?"
The Count of Villa Medina shrugged.
"The Count is still a young man and there are many distractions in this city to preoccupy him."
Master Drew looked sharply at him. The manner of his speech was careful to the point where it seemed obvious that he was withholding something.
"If I am to expedite this matter, I need to know the facts."
The count was hesitant but the Duke of Frias spoke to him sharply in Spanish.
"It is true," the count said, as if answering the duke but in English. He turned to Master Drew. "Very well, the facts it shall be. The chevalier said he had to go out last evening, as he wanted to collect an old . . . how do you call it? Una reliquia de familia."
The duke translated for him.
"A family heirloom. He spoke to the count of this within my hearing. He mentioned no further details."
Master Drew sighed deeply. "I would be grateful if the count would accompany me across to Bankside in order that he may formally identify the body. After all, it may not be the chevalier. But if it is, let us confirm it. Perhaps, Sir Robert, you might provide a coach to take us south of the river? I cannot ask the count to walk with me."
"Even better," replied the Lord Chancellor, "there is a boat by the quayside at my constant disposal that will make your journey shorter." He turned to the officer of the guard. "Captain, take you two good stalwarts of your guard and accompany Master Drew and the count. You are the constable's to command and his commands may be given in my name. Is that clear?"
The officer saluted and turned to fulfill his task.
A moment later the count and guards were seated with Master Drew in the boat, whose four oars were manned by men in the livery of the Lord Chancellor. It pushed off from the north bank, making its way swiftly over the dark waters of the Thames south towards the less than salubrious quays and wooden piers that lined the Bankside.
An elderly man limped forward to help tie up the boat in the hope of receiving a coin for his trouble. Master Drew recognised the man as one of those unfortunates who regularly frequented the quays to scavenge or pick up the odd job here and there. A thought suddenly came to him.
"Were you about the quays last evening?" he demanded sharply.
The man touched his cap awkwardly.
"That I was, Master Constable. I do be here most times unless the ague confine me to pot room at The Bell, wherein I do be given a place by the fire by the good office of the innkeeper."
"Did you notice a boat similar to this one?" He jerked his head towards the boat they had arrived in. "Did a young man land here last night?"
"There be many young men come to the Bankside, good Master. You know as well as I. Young rakes in search of a good time at the taverns or theatres, and the company of low women."
Master Drew took out a penny and fingered it before the man's eyes.
"This man would have been well dressed and foreign withal."
"Foreign, you say? Spoke he like a Dago?"
Drew's eyes narrowed.
"You spoke with him?"
"By my soul, I did. It was late and I was about to go back to The Bell. There were few folk around. He came from the quay and asked if I could direct him to Stony Street, which I did. He then asked if I knew whether the Gardiner house still stood. That I could not say, for I had never heard of it. But when he confided that Gardiner was once the bishop here, I said he had best call at Winchester Palace and enquire there. I told him where that was and he gave me a coin and went his way. That's all I do know."
Master Drew dropped the penny into the man's hand and instructed the boatmen to stand ready to transport the count back to Somerset House. The mortuary was not far away and, as soon as the count had confirmed that the body of the young man was, indeed, his missing secretary, the Chevalier Stefano Jardiniero, he was despatched with one of the guards back to the boat with assurances that his murderer would soon be found.
With the officer and the other guard in attendance, Master Drew made his way directly to Winchester Palace and went straightway to the gatekeeper, who was the same man who had been on duty earlier.
"Who was on watch here last night between dusk and midnight?" he demanded without preamble.
The man looked nervously from the constable, whom he knew, to the liveried soldiers behind him.
"Why, old Martin, Master Drew."
"And where shall I find old Martin?" snapped the constable.
"About this time o' day, he'll be in the Bear Pit Tavern."
It was a short walk to the tavern, which was on the quayside, and old Martin was soon pointed out.
Master Drew seated himself opposite the elderly man.
"Last evening you were the watch at the entrance to Winchester Palace." It was a statement and not a question.
Martin looked at him with rheumy eyes.
"I cannot deny it."
"A young foreign gentleman called there?"
"He did, good Master. That he did. He asked me if the Gardiner House on Stony Street still stood."
"And you told him?"
"I told him that all the houses belonged to the diocese of Winchester and which did he mean? He was trying to explain when Master Burton came by and took him aside to explain. They were in deep conversation for a while and then the foreign gentleman . . . well, he went off looking quite content."
"You saw no more of him?"
"None."
"And who is this Master Burton?"
"Why, he be manservant to Sir Gilbert Scrivener."
Master Drew sat back with a curious smile on his face.
Within fifteen minutes he was standing before the desk of the secretary to His Grace, the Bishop of Winchester, with the officer of the Lord Chancellor's guard at the door. Sir Gilbert was frowning in annoyance.
"I have much business to do, Master Constable. I trust this will not take too long and I only condescend to spare the time as you now say you come on the Lord Chancellor's business."
Master Drew returned the man's gaze steadily, refusing to be intimidated by the man or his office.
"I would tell you a brief story first, about one of the Bishops of Winchester. He fortunately died in the time of Queen Mary and so did not have to account for the Protestant souls he cast into the flames to cure them of what he deemed heresy. He was a wealthy and influential man and owned many houses here when he occupied this very palace. One particular building he used in which to interrogate and torture heretics. You know the one; the one that was burnt down last night.
"It seems he gathered some wealth, a chest of coins, that, if Mary lost her throne and the Protestant faction came in, would help him escape to Spain and ease his exile. In the end, Mary outlived him, but members of his family had already fled to Spain. Before his death, he seems to have written instructions to his family in Spain as to where they could find that chest of coins. But war between Spain and England prevented any member of the family seeking it . . . until now, nearly twenty years later when, it so happened, one of his family was appointed as secretary to the Spanish ambassadors who are now in this country to make a treaty of peace ending the war."
Sir Gilbert looked stony-faced.
"Are you coming to a point, Master Constable?"
"Last night this scion of the Gardiner family, now known as Chevalier Jardinero y Barbastro, came in search of the Gardiner house wherein the box was buried. He made the mistake of being too free in his enquiries."
"Are you saying that someone decided to kill him out of vengeance when they knew he was the relative of Bishop Gardiner?"
Master Drew shook his head.
"Not for such a lofty motive as vengeance was he killed but merely of theft. He was followed and watched and when he dug up the box of coins, they attacked and bound him so that he could hardly breathe and left him to the tender mercy of the fire that they had set. They hoped the conflagration would destroy the evidence of their evil. They had a coach waiting and set off with the box. That much was seen."
Sir Gilbert raised an eye, quickly searching the constable's features.
"And were they thus identified?"
"When the young man came here asking directions, he was told the way by Master Burton," Master Drew went on, avoiding the question.
"Master Burton? My manservant?"
"Where is Master Burton?"
Sir Gilbert frowned.
"He set out this morning in my coach with some papers for Winchester itself."
"And with the chest of money?"
"If he is involved in such a business, have no fear. I will question the rogue and he shall be punished. You may leave it in my hands."
Master Drew smiled and shook his head.
"Not in your hands, I am afraid, Sir Gilbert. Master Burton had an accomplice."
"And do you name him?" Sir Gilbert's jaw tightened.
"You were that accomplice."
"You cannot prove it."
"Perhaps not. But you revealed yourself earlier when I was asking you about the ownership of the house and spoke of the body found there. I had not mentioned anything about the body or the possibility of its Spanish identification---yet you said to me that the burning of a house and murder of a foreigner was not to be wondered at in this city. How would you know that the body found was that of a foreigner unless you shared Master Burton's secret?"
Sir Gilbert's eyes narrowed.
"You are clever, Master Drew, and with the tongue of a serpent. But when all is said and done, I am an Englishman with good connections, and the young man was a foreigner and a Spaniard at that."
"The war is over, Sir Gilbert, or will be when this treaty is signed."
"My answer will be that I was retrieving what is rightfully the property of the Bishops of Winchester from theft by a foreigner. I shall say that he tried to make away with this treasure and Master Burton and I prevented him and reclaimed it for its true owner."
Master Drew paused and nodded thoughtfully.
"It is, perhaps, a good defence. But there is one aspect that may not sit well on such a plea; that is, the Chevalier Stefano Jardinero y Barbastro was a member of the delegation currently negotiating the treaty. True, he was but a secretary within the delegation, and there are arguments to be made on both sides whether the treasure to which he had been directed was his family property or whether the subsequent Bishops of Winchester had a right to it. And, of course, we will have to ascertain whether Master Burton has gone directly with the chest to the Bishop of Winchester or whether he may have cause to rest with it awhile in your own manor at Winchester Town. And, even when these arguments are all set in place, it will come down to a simple fact of politic. How badly do the Lord Chancellor and His Majesty desire this treaty ending the twenty years of war with Spain? The Spanish ambassadors may seek to be compensated for the murder of one of their number before agreement can be reached."
It was at the end of August of that year of 1604 that the treaty of peace and perpetual alliance between England and Spain was finally signed in Somerset House. Two weeks before the agreement, a certain Master Burton was taken from Newgate in a tumbrel to Tyburn Tree and hanged. A year later, a prisoner in The Clink caught typhoid, in spite of the payments he had been able to give the jailer to secure good quarters during his incarceration. He was dead within three days. It was gossip in the prison that he had once been a man of some status and influence and had even dwelt in the grand palace of the Bishop of Winchester, adjacent to the prison.
Copyright © 2011 by Peter Tremayne
Art Taylor is a book critic and assistant professor of English at George Mason University. His short fiction has appeared in the North American Review and various regional journals and newspapers, among them the Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer's "Sunday Reader" section. His story "A Voice From the Past," from the August 2009 EQMM, made the list of Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2009 in the Best American Mystery Stories 2009 anthology.
Even though I'd driven down from Northern Virginia late the night before, my father still insisted on getting to the marina just after daybreak on Friday.
"The water is smoother early in the morning," he explained. "We'll get an early start---a full day to enjoy." Emphasis on the word full. After nearly forty years, I catch the nuances.
But he was right, at least partly so. As I lugged my overnight bag and a cooler of drinks and sandwiches, I saw the serenity in the morning haze: boats moored in their slips, seagulls hopping along the dock, a sway of marsh grass, the Bogue Sound like a sheet of glass. A couple of the marina's workers were prepping for the day, but even their voices and movements seemed soft and easy---the calm before the storm when a clamor of boaters rushed in for gas and supplies and help with the lines.
Dad came up beside me. "Beautiful, isn't it?"
"Sure," I said, but the word turned into a yawn before I could catch it.
Dad stiffened, the lines around his eyes growing tighter.
"I hope you'll like the new boat at least," he said curtly and walked down the dock. A duffel and a camera bag hung from his shoulder. He squeezed hard on the new lengths of rope he carried, the veins popping up on that hand. On the other side, he carried a worn leather satchel with his thick Waterway Guide and a couple of John D. MacDonald novels. I'd already gotten on his bad side about those, too. When he told me he'd been rereading some of the old Travis McGees, I reminded him not to get his expectations up. Our own little boat trip wouldn't have the action or the women.
But even as I'd said it, I'd heard Mom's voice in my head: Don't start anything with him. And my own conscience nagging me: You're all he has now. Remember that.
Then Dad turned down a small side dock, and I saw the boat for the first time. "Wow," I said, not just pretending. It was a knockout, thirty feet or more, dark blue along the hull, the deck a bright white, and teak trim running the length of the topsides. The lines were sleek. The fiberglass gleamed. I Dream of Doris was written in script along the stern.
"It's a Back Cove," Dad said. "Yanmar engine, three hundred eighty horses. A couple of years old. Used, but I like it." He sounded like the salesman he'd been---manufacturing equipment in his case, big companies, big contracts, but still the same patter: the history of the company behind the boat, a legacy of quality, a friend who'd had a similar model. Then his voice faltered just slightly. "After your mother," he began, and then stopped. He seemed to be scanning that fiberglass and that teak as if he were seeing it for the first time himself. "I needed something to . . . to look forward to, something to be excited about," he said, and then reddened slightly, embarrassed by his own words.
"Well, this sure is something to be excited about," I said. Stay upbeat, Mom might've cautioned me, but I hadn't needed that nudging. For a few seconds, I simply forgot that long history of bickering and harsher arguments and all those more recent phone calls---tense, brittle conversations with nothing to talk about except the weather and what each of us had eaten that night for dinner and then the weather again. Then those few seconds passed.
"A boat like this makes you wish you were making more than a reporter's salary, huh?" he said, coming to himself once more. "Get one of your own?" He laughed, the smile edged.
"Good to be back, Dad," I said with my own edge, remembering again all the times he'd encouraged me to get a real job. No profit in newspapers, he'd told me before. Profit is important. Or asking, Is there room for advancement at that paper of yours? I hadn't mentioned yet about the cutbacks, of course, about my being laid off. Maybe it would've been easier just to tell him and get it over with. But it was the principle of the thing. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.
I started to step on, then held back. "Permission to come aboard?"
"Want me to get a picture?" he asked, fumbling in his camera bag---another new toy, a little digital point-and-shoot. But I didn't wait.
"Nah," I said. I tossed my bag on deck.
"Don't forget that when you step on board, you use your right foot first," he said. "And be sure that you've got a firm grip." And so the lessons continued. "Do you remember how to tie a bowline?" he asked as I stored gear in the cabin, nowhere near a rope. "How about a square knot? A cleat hitch? We'll get the lines out later and run through them again." And then later, "Red, right, returning from sea or . . . when else?" He seemed to be hoping I'd get the answers wrong so he could set me right.
"If I flunk the test, can I go home?" I finally asked. He looked hurt, but at least he stopped.
By the time we eased the boat out of the slip, some of the morning haze had burned off, but the day was still gray and the sky overcast. Clouds seemed to be gathering and settling.
The waterway was mostly quiet. Late May, a weekday---the season had barely started. Dad had taken the helm to guide the boat through the tight, shallow channel that led away from the marina, but once we were on the waterway, he offered me the wheel: "Get it up on a plane, son. It'll do almost twenty-four knots if you push it, but I think it's better to keep it around twenty-two hundred rpms. Above that, it burns too much fuel too fast."
I leveled it out about 2600 rpms, cutting the water at a fast clip. I could see him eyeing the tachometer, but to his credit, he didn't say a word---still sore, maybe. He did take a picture this time: his son at the helm. I wondered what my expression betrayed.
Talk to him, my mother would have said. That's all he wants. Someone to talk to.
"Smooth," I said to him, above the roar of the wind.
He nodded, started to speak, and then didn't.
Each of us left it at that.
We were heading south---Morehead City to Southport, a single night docked at a marina there, and then back the next afternoon. A short trip because I needed to get back to work, I'd told him. And that was half true if you counted emailing resumes to newspapers that weren't hiring or scanning the Internet for possibilities on some unseen horizon. Long empty days, little in the way of prospects. It had already been two weeks since I was laid off. A short trip with anyone else might've done me good, but I already felt the need to rush through this one, rush back.
The markers flew past, red and green alternating. The Intracoastal Waterway thinned and broadened. Along some sections, houses with grassy yards stood on the edge of water, wooden docks jutting out toward us, boats tied up and bobbing lightly in the current or else hoisted up on simple lifts. Other stretches of our trip were just sand and marsh and those windswept oaks, and an occasional sailboat or power yacht. Lone fishermen stood along the shore here and there. Elsewhere a couple of guys tossed lines out from a small skiff. We passed the quaint old fishing village at Swansboro and then the old Hatteras Yacht plant, and then cruised through the training grounds at Camp Lejeune, the signs warning boaters not to anchor, not to come ashore. Dad snapped photos of all of it, each landmark, each little patch of scenery.
Every time we'd slow for the No Wake Zones near marinas or at any of the numerous bridges that dotted the channel, Dad asked if I wanted a Coke or a pack of nabs or tried to strike up a little patch of conversation. But trouble lurked around the edge of each question.
"Working on a big story these days?" he asked.
"Same old, same old. You know how it is."
Later he tried again: "Everything I read says that the newspaper business is on the downswing these days. You okay?"
"Holding my own," I told him---one of his own old phrases, tossed back his way.
As soon as each No Wake Zone ended, I pushed the throttle ahead quickly, drowned out any potential for those questions to go much further, and drowned out the memories of old fights and new failures.
We anchored for an early lunch along Snow's Cut, a thin canal that leads the ICW west toward the Cape Fear River. The canal was thin, barely a hundred feet wide, with just a few slivers of beach and a couple of stretches of tall cliffs. Dad brought out some sandwiches---chicken salad. There was a small dinette just behind the cockpit but we sat down on a couple of chairs on the lower back deck, enjoying the sun. Not far from us, a pair of fishermen sat glumly on a small boat, their lines hanging slack in the water. On our other side, a cruiser had stopped for lunch---a man, a woman, and a couple of small kids. "Who wants hot dogs?" said the woman. A chorus of yeses followed.
"Sandwich okay?" Dad asked.
I nodded, chewed.
"Your mother's recipe," he said. "I knew it was one of your favorites, so I dug it out. Tried my best to do it like she would've, but . . ."
I hardly remembered that it had once been a favorite, and would never have recognized it as hers. But he'd surprised me, and I was moved again by the way his thought trailed off and that faraway look.
I put my hand on his shoulder. "I wish she was here with us," I told him. "She would've loved to be out here."
Dad came back from wherever he was. "Well, not here, maybe," he laughed. "You know how she was about boats."
"Oh, she could hold her own," I said, dropping my hand off his shoulder. I remembered her at the bow as we shoved off from the dock, or taking the wheel while Dad checked the charts, or the two of us laughing as we dodged the seaspray when Dad cut across the wake of a larger boat. "She was a pro."
"She was a good sport," Dad corrected. "But she never cared for it, even from the beginning." Something sparked in his eyes. "Did I ever tell you about the first time we went out on a boat? We were just dating then---a couple of teenagers on a little Boston Whaler we'd rented. I loved it. Man, I was in seventh heaven. There was a little bit of choppiness on the water, but I just gunned the engine and cut right through it. On top of the world. And then I turned and saw your mother clutching the rails and her feet pressed hard against the hull. She was almost green---seasick right out in the middle of the channel---and she begged me to take her back to the marina. And I did, of course, and after that, I swore to her that I'd never make her go out again, not another time, not ever."
"There's a promise that didn't last," I said, taking another bite of the sandwich, then talking through it. "I can't remember when we didn't have a boat, and I think I could count on one hand the times she didn't go out with us."
"The boats were her idea, her insistence," he said, bristling a little. I hadn't meant it as an accusation. "I loved her enough to give up everything for her, and she loved me right back---and that meant loving what I loved, I guess. And for a while there, a big supply of Dramamine, too." He shook his head. "But if she'd ever asked---once---I'd have given it all up."
Over at the other boat, the kids were throwing little pieces of hot dog bun into the water. Seagulls had already begun to swoop in. "Stop that," called the mother, laughing. "They'll be all over us." Dad shook his head, watching the birds gather. For a few minutes neither of us spoke.
"Remember that storm we got caught in?" I said finally. "I think I was eight or so. Remember how dark it got, and the rain and the waves? I was scared to death, but Mom just kept smiling, talking about what an adventure it was, telling me how you were keeping us safe."
"She was scared to death herself, and gave me hell later," Dad said. "But she never let it show, did she?"
"She was a good sport, like you said."
"A good woman." He nodded. "We were lucky to have her."
Laughter echoed across the water, as the gulls swooped and cried. Boats passed along the channel, their wakes rocking us softly. One of the fishermen stood up and began to reel in his line, then slowed and stopped, sat down again. Soon we finished our sandwiches, pulled up the anchor, and headed off again.
After that, I kept our speed a little slower---not quite coasting, still not talking much, but not rushing the way we had. Dad offered me a beer and then cracked it open for himself after I shook my head. At one point, he put his hand on my shoulder, the way I'd put mine on his. There was thought and effort behind it, but the weight felt odd.
It must have felt odd to him, too. After a few seconds, he let it drop.
By five p.m., we'd made Southport and taken a quick walk around the town---an old fishing village turned into a couple of cross streets of shops and restaurants and sleepy cottages. Back at the marina, Dad settled down for a while on the long chaise at the stern of the boat, reading a dog-eared copy of one of those Travis McGees, A Tan and Sandy Silence. While he read, I slipped down to take a shower, and as I dressed, I heard his voice through the hatch, talking to someone else. "Just the night," he said, and "Down from Morehead," and "My son's a big-city reporter and a fine one." I pulled on my shirt, stepped up on deck.
"And here he is now," Dad announced as I came up.
In the slip beside us was an older boat, as big as ours but nowhere near as sleek, though Dad would praise it later as a classic. A woman stood on deck, maybe ten years or so younger than Dad, chatting amiably across the thin dock.
"Phyllis Stackley," she told me, with a little wave. She had that distinguished look that some older women get: confident, almost regal, but wearing it easily. To the manor born, to the manor settled. Her skirt was a swirl of pastels, and she wore a white top. Casual, but elegant. "And this is my husband Dennis," she said, and a man emerged at her side. I hadn't noticed him before. He'd been just inside the transom---stocky and stern where his wife seemed thin and playful. He was graying at the temples, and he gave a curt nod.
"Won't you two handsome men come join us for a cocktail?" asked Phyllis.
"Only if we can bring over our own drinks," Dad said before I could wave off the invitation.
"It's a deal," she said brightly.
"Are you sure?" I asked, directing my question at Dennis. I thought I'd glimpsed a reaction from him, something a little sullen or sour. But he greeted my question with a smile. "Certainly, certainly," he said. "It wouldn't be a party without guests."
"That's what I always say," said Phyllis. "We'll get some cheese and crackers. Come over when you're ready." She disappeared into their cabin. Her husband gave a quick look our way---that same look I'd glimpsed before---and followed behind her.
"Maybe we shouldn't intrude," I told Dad, already up at the bar of our own boat.
"Just a drink and then we'll come back and make dinner." He was pouring us a couple of bourbons. Woodford Reserve on the rocks. "Too good to mix," he explained and gave me a generous pour.
"One'll be enough, if that's the way you're making them," I laughed.
"Never skimp," he said. A lesson there, too. I didn't mention that it contradicted another of his aphorisms: "Everything in moderation." We stepped across to the other boat---right foot first for balance, I remembered, just in time.
Never skimp overruled everything in moderation, as it turned out. One drink wasn't enough. But Dad was having a good time, and I hated to spoil it.
He and Phyllis had really hit it off, and they sat at the stern talking and laughing. She kept encouraging her husband to keep everyone's glass filled, and Dennis topped off Dad's drink with bourbon from their own bar---"No need to keep stepping over to your boat," he said---and made his wife one vodka tonic after another.
"He puts a new wedge of lime in for each round," she said. "That way we both always know how many I've had." There were four curls of lime in her glass already.
"My wife was always two drinks, never less, never more," said Dad, already on his third. "She always liked to keep her wits about her, and speaking of wit . . ." He told a story then about one of Mom's April Fool's jokes: something about clocks and calendars and the previous day's newspaper. He'd already been talking about Mom, and beaming all the while: how they'd met, how long they'd been together, how much she loved crosswords and books and gardening. Despite his gray hair and the creases in his face, he seemed boyish and spry. At one point, I'd stepped over to our boat for a jacket and to "check my messages at the office"---really just seeing if any bites had come back on my résumés before the end of the week---and when I came back, Dad was talking about how proud they had been of me, too. He even mentioned a local award I'd won, one that I was surprised he knew about.
Through all of it, Phyllis listened with rapt attention---laughed and sighed at all the right places, sincerely, it seemed to me. It reminded me of something Dad had told me: You'll always be remembered as a fine conversationalist if you let the other person do all the talking. Tonight he was holding court, enjoying the attention and even opening up a little. When he talked about Mom's cancer and how it had devastated her, how it had devastated both of them, he talked about it with a frankness and emotion he'd never shared with me.
"You poor dear man," said Phyllis, putting her hand on his arm.
Dennis had stayed quiet beside me through all the talk, but as his wife touched my father's arm, he let off a little grunt and shifted in his chair.
"You say you're from Delaware?" I asked, trying to pull him into the conversation.
"The real Wilmington," he said with a brisk little laugh, and then Phyllis jumped in.
"Dennis is an old sourpuss," she said. "Don't mind him. He always makes that joke, every time we come through here."
"You come here often?"
"Winters in Florida," he told me, "so twice a year, once on the way down each fall, and then again on the way up in late spring."
"Since Dennis retired," said Phyllis, "we've become nautical wanderers, following wherever the current draws us." As she turned back toward my father, a little of her drink sloshed out on the deck.
"Honey," Dennis said, a quick caution.
"Oh, Dennis," she said, "it's fiberglass. It'll wash easy." She leaned toward Dad again. "I have to admit, I never enjoyed boating, and this wasn't how I imagined retirement at all. No, I saw travel in Europe and Asia, not salty air and seasickness. And don't get me started on what the humidity does to my hair."
"Seasickness," Dad said.
"The worst," she said. "I'm bad in a car, so imagine what being on the water does to me. But Dennis loves his boats, and I love him, so . . ." She stood up and gave a little dance, just the smallest little shimmy, holding her arms out wide and shaking them. "Now," she said, "I can take the rolling waves and the curves, and I can sleep through the whole night no matter how the boat rocks. . . ."
Watching her, I thought of a gypsy dance---something about that word wanderer, maybe, and that skirt she wore, muted but still colorful. If she'd had bracelets on, they would've jangled, but thin plastic bands clung to each arm instead, the ones that people wear for some charity or cause. Dad and I had worn them ourselves---the breast cancer that had taken Mom. Our bracelets had been the color of Phyllis's, and I wondered if Dad had made the same connection.
Dennis himself didn't seem to soften when his wife said, "Dennis loves his boats, and I love him." He just stared at the spot of vodka tonic growing sticky on the deck. But Dad clapped lightly as she danced. Still, even though he gave a broad smile, I could tell that something hid behind it. The moment was bittersweet at best.
"Your wife's quite a charmer," I said to Dennis, trying to draw him into the conversation again.
"Yes, she is," he said. "Always some damn scene like this." He took another sip of his drink.
Phyllis had finished her dance as we talked and plopped back down beside Dad, both of them laughing. Neither of them had heard her husband.
Dad showered while I pan-grilled a couple of steaks on the cooktop. Dennis had gone down into the cabin of his own boat after our drinks, but Phyllis stayed on deck. "Smells good," she called out about the sizzling steaks.
"Come join us," I said, but I think she could tell it was just idle politeness on my part. She waved off the invitation.
"We'll just see you tomorrow," she said, and then she stood, weaving slightly, and moved unsteadily across the deck toward the hatch that led down into their cabin. En route, she paused to grab the bottle of vodka and raised it toward me, as if tipping a glass my way---warm and cheerful. But a couple of moments after she'd gone below, I heard different tones, she and her husband talking. The conversation wasn't loud, but I thought I detected an undercurrent of anger. Fortunately, whatever was happening there stopped before Dad came up from his shower.
While we sat on the dinette and dug into our steaks and talked about the plan for the next day, Dad kept looking over at the other boat, longingly, it seemed to me.
"A beauty, isn't she?" he said at one point, out of nowhere.
"How's that?"
"The Bertram," he said, and I thought he blushed, but it may have been all he'd had to drink. "That boat is a true classic. You wouldn't believe it, but it probably cost nearly as much as this one. They just don't make 'em like that anymore."
Not just longing, but that loneliness again, too. Wistful, appreciative. I realized for the first time, awkwardly, that he would probably date again and might someday find someone else, and I wondered what she'd be like, how similar to Mom, how different. I was glad again that the voices on the other boat had died down.
Soon, the alcohol and the big steak took their toll. While I cleaned up our plates, Dad stretched out on that long chaise at the stern again, trying to read under the lights from the dock. But every few moments he'd nod off and then jerk himself awake. "Tough to see out here," he said finally. "I'm gonna go down," and he took his book back to his berth.
There was a bar just across the small harbor and sounds of a big crowd echoing across the water, and I went over for a while to see who I might meet. No one waiting for me back in Virginia, after all, no one serious at least, so why not? I did end up talking with a couple of women, but when they asked where I was from and what I did, I realized my heart just wasn't in it. After two drinks, I headed back for the boat and sat out on the stern under the stars, listening to the lap of the waves and to the small ripples of conversation from the other boats docked throughout the marina. From down in the cabin, I heard an occasional snore from Dad.
Another memory came back to me: Dad and me arriving home after a fishing trip, returning with a cooler full of spot and croaker, and then me standing beside Mom in the kitchen while she cleaned them. "Did you have a good time?" she'd asked, and I'd shrugged. I hadn't. "What did you boys talk about?" And another shrug from me.
"Dad told me I wasn't baiting the hook right," I said finally. He had kept trying to show me what to do and how to cast the line right. We'd both ended up frustrated. "I just couldn't do it."
"Well, maybe there's a lot your father doesn't know how to do, either," she said, after a moment. "Sometimes he tries, and he doesn't get it right, either. You think he might've been trying to do something he didn't know how to do very well?"
But I just shook my head. "No," I said. "He already knew how to do it all." When he baited the hook, he'd done it just right, and he'd cast out his line with the perfect flick of the wrist. There had been a time when I'd been in awe of everything he could do, but that day I'd felt suffocated by it, and soon after I'd begun to resent it.
Mom had the bigger picture. Most days, even now, I still couldn't see it.
When I went down to bed, I saw that Dad's book was still stretched across his chest and his mouth hung slightly open. As quietly as I could, I converted the galley table into another berth the way he'd shown me, but it took awhile for sleep to come, and even then it was restless, thinking about Dad and his life and what was ahead for him, and then about my own uncertain future.
About six a.m., barely daybreak, I thought I heard a voice again from the Bertram beside us, and then I definitely heard someone cranking it up and pulling it out of its slip, heading back toward Delaware or at least somewhere else. Our boat rose and fell slightly with the wake from their boat, and soon I drifted back to sleep.
Dad was eating cereal when I got up, almost to the end of the book he'd left open on his chest the night before. I poured my own bowl, and as we sat together, I caught him a couple of times looking at the empty slip beside us, but he didn't say anything about the boat being gone and neither did I.
When it was time to head out, he handed me a credit card to go settle up with the harbor master. I took it---no need for an argument---and planned to use my own, same as I always did when he offered. Dad began straightening things around the boat, prepping for the trip home.
In the office, two young men---college-aged kids working summer jobs, khaki shorts and polo shirts with the marina's logo---huddled over a CB radio. I caught the tail end of the words on the other end, "no attempt to resuscitate," and then a squawk and dull static.
"Man," said one of the kids, shaking his head. He had a scruffy beard.
The CB radio squawked again, another staticky voice: "Closest dockage is Oceana Marina. Give me your ETA and I'll---"
The other, clean-cut and well tanned, had caught sight of me and turned down the volume, then stepped up to the counter. The first looked disappointed and leaned his head down lower toward the speaker.
"Yes, sir," he said. "How can I help you?"
"One night's dockage," I told him. "The blue boat there. I Dream of Doris." I pointed through the window. Dad had brought out his camera and was snapping a few photos of the docks.
"Yes, sir," said the kid behind the counter. His nametag said Patrick. "It's a dollar seventy-five a foot," he said. "What size is your boat again?"
I realized I didn't know. Thirty-something, I figured. "Thirty-three," I said---the age at which I'd gotten the job I'd just lost.
"Fifty-seven, seventy-five," Patrick said, and I started to hand him my credit card, but the thought of being jobless made me suddenly cautious. Practicality won out over principles. I reluctantly handed him Dad's instead.
"Dude," said the bearded one, standing up. "Vodka and Dramamine." He shook his head. His nametag was upside down. Billy, it said. "I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know you're not supposed to mix that stuff, do you? Not that much of it, I mean, and especially old people."
"You shouldn't mix it at any age," said Patrick, and then under his breath, "and you can't call our customers old."
"They were old," he said. "That's just a fact, Jack."
"The boat that was docked next to us," I said. "The Bertram. Is that who you're talking about?" I glanced out at Dad again. He was looking up at me now through the window. I gave a quick wave, held up a finger.
"There's been . . . a drowning," Patrick said, aiming for a solemn tone and respectful pause. He sounded like a TV anchorman.
"Vodka and D is just not a mixed drink," Billy said---to me this time. "But you know, I wonder. If you mixed vodka and Dramamine and Red Bull, would it all counteract itself?"
"How did you hear about this?" I asked Patrick.
"We've been listening to the Coast Guard, and I have a buddy from school who's working at the state park up at Carolina Beach. He's been following the whole thing."
"How did it happen?" I asked---going into reporter mode. Who, what, where, when, why?
"It's effed up," said Billy and then caught sight of Patrick's glare. "I mean screwed up---the story that's coming across the radio. The Coast Guard said the people had been drinking all night and then they were out on the waterway early this morning and they got into a fight and then the boat turned and the lady---" He made a movement with his hand like diving off a diving board. "They should've just stayed here until they sobered up."
See you tomorrow, Phyllis had said. She hadn't expected an early departure.
"Why did they leave so early?" I asked.
"Dude said they were getting an early start," said Billy. "He came in late yesterday just before we closed and prepaid, said he wanted to make sure they didn't miss us, said he liked to settle his debts. I told him we opened at seven, but he said he might be gone before then."
"They left about six," I said. "I heard them." Him, I thought. Dennis. And then I saw that sour look of his and heard that snarl in his voice---"Always some damn scene like this"---as Phyllis laughed and leaned into Dad. A fight, Billy had said. About what? About last night? About Dad? My first urge was to dig deeper, find the story behind the story. But then I remembered I wasn't a reporter anymore. And anyway, I was letting my imagination run away with me. She'd been drinking heavily. She'd admitted to seasickness. Sure, her husband was a jackass, but it was a leap from there to anything else, and what would be gained by testing that leap? And then I thought about how relaxed Dad had seemed the night before, and about the look he'd given the empty boat slip this morning, and about how much he'd already lost. Practicality? Principles? Maybe a little of both this time.
"If you step down there before we go," I told the boys in the office, "don't mention any of this to my father, okay?"
They nodded, a little confused but agreeable. I signed the credit-card receipt, thanked them for their time.
Dad snapped a photo of me as I came back to the boat. I tried to smile.
"What took so long?" he asked.
"Credit-card machine," I said. "Everything's fine."
Not far out of Southport, I asked Dad if I could take the helm.
"Sure," he said, "And remember, we're heading north now, but we're also heading into port, so . . ." He raised an eyebrow at me.
"I got it," I said, but I caught myself smiling this time. It wasn't just pity.
I kept us at a slow pace, not a crawl but certainly slower than the way down. Snow's Cut wasn't too far ahead of us, and I wanted to give the Coast Guard time to get that Bertram into the marina before Dad and I crossed paths with the drowning.
Dad puttered with some of the instruments and relooped a couple of lines, and then turned on the CB radio. Before I could come up with a reason for him to turn it off, the chatter had already begun: "Two Coast Guard cruisers at Snow's Cut," and another voice asking, "What's the trouble?" and then the answer: "Not sure, but looks big. Suggest keeping your speed slow, no wake."
"Sounds like we should steer clear of that," I said. "Want to take the scenic route?"
"All scenic, isn't it?" Dad said. "But I don't think there's another route---at least not an easy one."
"We could cruise up the Cape Fear a little. A side trip? Let them work out whatever the trouble is?"
"Nah. Let's just take it through. You need to get back, I know, and I'm interested to see what's happening up ahead." He reached down to adjust the squelch knob.
Just as he did it, the next words came through: "Nice-looking Bertram. I heard someone went overboard."
A puzzled look. "You don't think that's . . . ?" Dad let the question hang.
"Dad," I said, reluctantly. I pulled the throttle back and let our own boat slow, the wake from behind us catching up and bobbing us up a little as we came to a drift out on the wide, open water. "I have to tell you something."
I told him---all of it, everything I'd heard.
"Dammit, son," he said, "if you'd told me before." He pushed me aside and took the wheel. He shoved the throttle ahead. The boat nearly jumped out of the water. I grabbed the bench to keep from being thrown back, and just barely managed to right my balance.
"What are you doing?" I called out over the sudden roar of the wind.
"There may still be time." The tachometer was quickly racing toward the red line---3100 rpms, then 3200 and 3300---but he didn't pull back. "C'mon," he said. "C'mon."
"She drowned, Dad," I called out. "She's already . . ." I couldn't bring myself to say the word.
"I heard you the first time," he snapped. "But we have to nail that smug son of a bitch that did it."
"He was a jackass, Dad, but there's nothing to say he killed her." I didn't want to stress all the drinking again, didn't want to make it sound like her fault, but I did call out "Dramamine" again.
"What kind of reporter are you?" he asked---bitter, angry. His words didn't come through clearly over the wind and roar, but I heard him say "an eye for detail" and "pay attention!" and then "wasn't taking Dramamine. No need."
"Her seasickness," I said. "I got that detail. Did you?"
He shook his head, pushed the throttle a little further. "Doris," he said. "Doris didn't need---" The spray swept around us, cold and cutting.
"She's not Doris," I called out. "It's Phyllis, Dad. Phyllis. You try to pay attention."
He shot an angry look my way. "I know who she is," he shouted---the words clear this time. "I'm not senile, son."
Whatever distance we'd bridged between us was gone, and gone too Dad's openness of the night before. He shut down and shut me out as he focused ahead. I was glad to return the favor.
The veins on his hands rose and fell as his grip pulsed against the wheel. He passed several other boats, pushing past them, leaping their wake as we left the shipping channel and swung through the twists of the ICW leading toward Snow's Cut. He cut tight by the markers, even pulled briefly out of the channel a couple of times---reckless, hurried.
"C'mon," Dad said again---to the engines, the boat. It was as if I wasn't there.
Soon, the entrance to Snow's Cut loomed---those tall cliffs rising ahead, the channel narrowing abruptly. We struck ground briefly, the depth finder letting out its shrill alarm, a brief tug at the bottom of the boat. I hoped the propeller wasn't damaged. It certainly didn't seem to be. Dad never slowed down.
Just before a bridge that spanned the waterway, we sighted the Bertram, anchored outside the channel. A Coast Guard boat was pulled up alongside, its light flashing and swirling. Another Coast Guard boat kept a slow patrol nearby, barely pushing through the water, marking a perimeter. Like an accident on the side of the interstate, I thought, and same as with the highway, other boats were bottlenecking the scene. Dad just swerved around them.
"Slow it down," someone shouted as we sped past, that boat rocking heavily in our wake.
From another: "Are you blind?"
"Gotta slow down," I told Dad, but he barely pulled back the throttle. The second Coast Guard boat saw us, turned on its own flashers, and spun to intercept.
"Slow your vessel," a voice boomed through a loudspeaker, echoing against the walls around us. "Slow your vessel now. Do not approach."
Dad slowed and then began to wave his arms, beckoning them near. It was unnecessary. The Coast Guard boat was coming whether we wanted them to or not. Beyond them, the Bertram and the other Coast Guard cruiser bobbed as the wake from our boats reached them. An officer stood at the Bertram's stern, looking down at his feet. Was there a body lying there? I was glad we'd been stopped where we were.
"She didn't fall in," Dad called out as the Coast Guard boat pulled alongside. "He pushed her. Her husband. He had to."
The officers on the approaching boat---blue uniforms, close-cropped hair, one taller than the other---looked at him warily. The shorter one had his hand close to his sidearm, too close for my comfort. The other looked confused.
"You know something about the drowning?" that second, taller one asked.
"We just got here," I said. "We didn't see anything." I tried to look apologetic, didn't know quite how to signal them that I wasn't responsible.
"Did he say she fell in?" Dad asked. "Is that what he says? She'd been drinking? What, all night?"
"Yes, sir," the taller of them said.
"Hell, she wasn't taking Dramamine," he said. "She was---"
"You know the deceased?" the other asked.
"We met her last night," I said. "We only just met her." I turned to Dad: "Dad, she said she was seasick."
"She used bracelets," he said. "She didn't need Dramamine, because she was using motion-sickness bracelets. That's what she showed us last night. Don't you remember?"
The dance, the gypsy dance, the bracelets that didn't jangle because they were plastic. What kind of reporter are you? Where's your eye for detail?
"We saw the Dramamine, sir," said the taller officer.
"Don't worry," said the other. "We'll do a full blood test to make sure."
"And you'll find it," said Dad. "She'll be full of it."
People were watching us now, the boats rubbernecking our scene as much as the Bertram before. Dennis had stepped out onto the stern of the boat. He watched too.
"But, Dad," I said, worried again. "You were just saying the opposite---that she wasn't taking Dramamine."
"Who made the drinks?" Dad said. "He did. He was making them. She wouldn't have taken Dramamine herself. She didn't need to."
The officers exchanged glances with one another. One of them opened his eyes wide, an "Oh, boy" look.
"We'll handle it, sir," one of them said.
"Just look," Dad said. "Look to see if she's wearing them now. If he's trying to cover his tracks, he would've taken them off of her. He would've known he'd have to. Call them. Call over there."
The taller man shrugged, went over to his radio. He turned away from us as he talked. The shorter man stood watch over us, his hand still close to his gun.
Movement over at the other boats---someone on the cruiser moving toward the Bertram, the officer there leaning over to talk. Dennis stood at the stern of the Bertram and stared our way. I couldn't see his face clearly, not from this distance, but I wondered what his expression was. Grief? Worry? Did he have a reason for the latter? Had Dad been right?
The officer on the Bertram turned and knelt down. The body was indeed down there---Phyllis lying across the stern there where we'd had drinks the night before. Dennis glanced down, then back to us. The officer on the boat stood up, asked him a question. I thought I saw Dennis shake his head. Then his questioner pointed down. Dennis shook his head vigorously then, threw his arms out as if exasperated, pointed to himself. The officer held up his hand, a calming gesture. Then Dennis pointed our way, angrily, jabbing the air.
"I don't think she was wearing any bracelets," I said.
"Of course not," Dad said. His tone was still clipped, impatient. "He took them off. He was trying to cover his tracks. I just hope he threw them overboard."
"Why's that?"
"Because if they can find the bracelets on board, he can claim that she took them off. But if he threw them overboard, he has to claim that she never had them."
"Our word against his."
He shook his head. "I've got a photo. When you went back to our boat to check in at your job. Dennis took it himself."
The radio squawked on the Coast Guard boat bobbing next to us. The man answered, and then called up to us.
"He says his wife wasn't wearing any bracelets. She didn't have them on this trip."
I glanced over at Dad, looking for that "gotcha" look of his. But his features were grim and showed no sense of triumph.
"I'll get the camera," I said. I patted his arm before I headed to find it, and I thought I felt him, just for a moment, lean toward that touch.
The rest of the trip back, we kept an easy cruising speed, enjoying the relative peacefulness of the sun and the salt air and the easy breeze. We were running later than scheduled at that point---given the statements we needed to make to the Coast Guard and then to the police---but it seemed wrong to rush.
"Want a beer, Dad?" I asked as I steered us around a turn.
He shook his head, his eyes downcast. He was sitting right beside me, but seemed worlds away.
"Wanna pull over and dock for a while?" I asked later. "Get some lunch?"
He didn't even answer that, and so we cruised along further---marsh and oaks and water and that distance between us.
Talk to him, son. That's all he wants.
"I lost my job," I said finally.
"What?" he asked, as if he was waking up.
"I was laid off," I told him. "Two weeks ago. A lot of us were. Cutbacks everywhere. The paper was just bleeding money."
He squinted his eye at me. "You were laid off," he said, but it didn't sound like a question, despite the confusion in his look. "Why didn't you tell me? Why'd you tell me you had to get back to work?"
Keep it light, Mom would've said, but I told it to him straight---no bitterness, just honesty. "Because I was afraid you'd say exactly what you said. What kind of reporter am I? And I've been wondering myself. If I was better, maybe they would've kept me on."
Dad surprised me. He didn't react, but just nodded softly. "I was wrong to say that. Sometimes I don't . . . think first. And---" He hesitated, as if thinking now. "I should've known better, because I---well, I wondered if something like that might have happened. I check for your articles every day. Online. And I noticed the paper hadn't published anything lately. I've been wondering, but I just---I just didn't know how to ask."
I shook my head. He'd known all along. As usual, he was one step ahead of me and right about everything. And then more words came back to me: You think he might've been trying to do something he didn't know how to do very well?
He placed his hand on my shoulder then, loosely, easily. "You're a great reporter, son. Don't worry. I know you'll land on your feet."
A boat passed, and the driver waved our way. Dad hadn't noticed, but I raised a hand in return.
"And you're a good detective," I told him. "I guess those Travis McGee novels are paying off, huh? A job for your retirement, maybe?"
He shook his head slowly, looked out beyond the bow of the boat, somewhere at the next marker or maybe further beyond. Ahead of us, the channel widened.
"I'm fine to read them," he said finally. "Not to live them." But he smiled a little as he said it. "Just no profit in it, son. None at all."
Copyright © 2011 by Art Taylor
Atlanta-born Scott Loring Sanders has had two novels published over the past few years, 2008's The Hanging Woods and 2009's Gray Baby. Published by Houghton Mifflin in the category of young adult fiction, "The Hanging Woods," said the Canadian journal The Labradorian, "shows how mature young adult fiction has become. It's gotten to the point where the separation between teen fiction and adult fiction is all but indiscernible." Adult readers won't want to miss these books.
As told to his granddaughter, Rita Limey Phillips, on October 19, 1993, several days before his death in Woodley, Alabama.
My daddy's name, your great granddaddy, was Robert Limey. At least that's what the white folks started calling him after he went into business for his own self, back when I was just a baby. I guess he didn't ever see no reason to correct them. When he got killed, about nineteen twenty-two I think it was, I took over the business. I was somewhere around thirteen, fourteen years old, and not at all ready for my daddy to be gone.
The day after Daddy went in the ground, it was time for me to get to work. I was the man of the family then, and it was up to me to take over the business. I'd been going around with Daddy some anyway, so I knew most everything there was to know about it. I hitched Miss Annabelle to the wagon, loaded up the barrels of lime, then headed to town.
We made all the lime right there on the property. Daddy'd been a smart man and figured it all out his own self. He built a stone kiln and used shells from all along the riverbanks of the Alabama. He used to pay us boys a penny a sackful. There were shoals along the river where it was nothing but crushed shells. Whole bars you could walk on that reached way out into the water. Clam shells and mussel shells, all bleached white from sitting in the sunshine for a hundred years. Daddy worked four days a week making lime in the kiln, and the other two on privy duty. Sunday was church and rest. So that's where I was headed with Miss Annabelle that first day after Daddy'd been buried, going to town for privy duty.
There were about fifty privies spread throughout Woodley that we took care of, most in town, some out in the country. Lots of farmers used the lime for their cotton and peanut crops too, so that's why Daddy spent so much time making it, because everyone needed it for something or other. You can make a fair dime in lime, that's what he always said.
There wasn't much to it, really, privy duty. I had me a steel shovel that I'd scoop the stuff out with. At the back of each privy was a plank, blocking the opening. I'd slide out the plank and then shovel the slop, dumping it into a slatted whiskey barrel sitting on the wagon. At the end of the day, I'd empty the barrel in the woods down at the far end of our property. You've never seen so many flies in all your life as when you're pouring human muck into a privy pit. You've also never seen a place so bright green come springtime, what with all those plants growing like all get out. Like the rind of a lime, Daddy would say. He always managed to get lime in there somehow.
After I emptied a privy, I'd go inside and lime the hole real good. Every privy had a small little bucket on the floor which I kept filled so they could do it themselves if it got to smelling real sharp. In the winter it wasn't too bad. Summertime was the worst; that's when things got ripe. It could knock out a dead man when that stink got all mixed up with the heat and humidity. You could almost taste it sometimes. I'd use me a hanky to cover up with if it was really powerful, but only when I knew nobody was home. White folks didn't like to see a Negro covering up his face at the smell of their business.
I charged a nickel a week. If no one was home to pay me, I'd just leave a tiny heap of lime, no more than a handful, down on the floor at the base of the commode. That way they'd know that I come by, and I'd just collect the following week. Daddy kept track of it all in his head, and I did the same. Of course, just after he died, I didn't know who owed what, but most folks were real good about it and paid what they knew was due.
There was one man, though, who was just plain hateful and crooked. Crooked as a barrel full of fishhooks. His name was Wendell Burroughs, and he never had a kind word for nobody. What was left of his hair looked like a mercury-shined nickel. He was short and beanpole skinny, but you could tell he was strong. When he did something as simple as grab a shovel handle, his muscles rippled like pond water. His face and arms were burnt red from making his living off the land. He lived in a tiny shotgun house on the far end of Dr. Love's property, tucked way back in the woods and off to itself.
The first day I showed up without Daddy, he was standing on the front porch atop a steep set of rickety stairs, glaring with hateful eyes down across the yard at me. The privy was about seventy-five feet from the steps, and I'd gone straight to work, not wanting at all to mess with him. I'd seen how he talked to Daddy before, and I didn't expect he'd be any nicer to me.
"Heard your daddy's dead, boy," he said from the porch as I dumped the first shovelful of slop into the whiskey barrel.
"Yes, sir," I said. "He passed Saturday evening."
"Well, I didn't owe him nothing, and I don't got no money for you, neither," he said. "Not today, anyways." As he climbed down the steps and into the yard, he gimped along like an old fyce with a bad paw.
"That's all right, Mr. Burroughs," I said. "You can just pay me next week." I went around to the back of the privy for another shovelful.
"Goddamn, boy, you'd probably go around your elbow to get to your thumb, seeing how you're doing it. Your daddy done it lickety-split."
I'd learned early on to just zip my mouth shut and keep working when dealing with white folks like Wendell Burroughs. I finished up and scatted out of there as fast as I could, repeating to him that next week would be just fine for payment.
Now, Dr. Love couldn't have been more different from Wendell Burroughs. He was a fine man and always kindly to me. He had a fancy house on the west corner of the square in Woodley, with long white columns out on the front porch that stretched all the way to the roof. Thick live oaks shaded the yard, and pretty crepe myrtles added bursts of red all around the property. He loved those crepe myrtles, and lots of times he'd be out in the yard trimming and shaping them. Loved them so much he named his daughter Myrtle May Love. She was born shortly after Daddy died, and over the years that little girl grew on me.
Myrtle May was about the sweetest thing you ever did see. She looked just like that Shirley Temple that was in the movies a few years later. She wore the same frilly dresses and had fluffy locks hanging from her head like little blond sausages. Big blue eyes, too. She was the cutest thing, and you could tell by looking at Dr. Love that she was everything to him. He was getting on in years and had never had any children until Myrtle May come along. She'd always follow me around the yard when I come by. Often times, she'd have a baby-doll in one hand and a carrot in the other.
"Hey, Jim Limey," she'd say, "you reckon I can feed your horsey a carrot?"
Now Miss Annabelle was a mule, not a horse, but it didn't make no difference to me, I just told her to go right ahead. Myrtle May would get a big kick out of that, giggling and carrying on the whole time Annabelle munched down on the carrot. I'd gotten so I'd always bring some rock candy along that your grandmamma Hixie made out of sorghum. Your grandmamma was Mose's daughter, and I ended up marrying her just after I turned eighteen. Kind of strange that I married the daughter of the man that killed Daddy, I reckon, but I never had no ill will toward Mose. He was a good man. And besides, it wasn't his fault.
Anyway, I kept that candy folded up in my hanky, and I'd always open it up for her before I got started on Dr. Love's privy. I'll never forget those little hands, white and creamy as goat's milk, reaching into my hanky, rooting around for the biggest piece. She always wanted me to eat a little with her.
"Ain't you gonna have a piece, Jim Limey?"
"No, Miss Myrtle May, I don't reckon I will."
"Please have just one square with me," she'd say, and then I'd go ahead and have a piece. It was like a little game we always played. Then I'd get to work and that smell from the privy would directly drive her away.
Even though I only charged a nickel for my work, Dr. Love always gave me fifteen cents. Every time. And at Christmas he'd give me an extra dollar. Tell me to buy something nice for Mama. I got her a brass picture frame that first year and stuck Daddy's picture in it---the only one she had, which she kept tacked to the wall above her bed. It was a good picture, too, of him wearing his favorite floppy hat and smiling wide. I set it by her little bedside table so it was the first thing she saw on Christmas morning. She come into the kitchen just a boo-hooing, squeezing that frame to her chest, and gave me a bear hug so tight she nearly choked all the breath out of me. I think there were some happy tears mixed in with all those sad ones, though, because she smiled and her eyes said thank you. It nearly got me to crying, seeing Mama like that, knowing how much she missed Daddy.
I can recollect the day he died like it was yesterday. Got knocked upside the head with a horseshoe and it killed him dead on the spot. Deader than a sack of hammers. Like I said before, it was ol' Mose that did it to him. He and Daddy and Rufus Cupp and Bigbad were playing one Saturday evening. That's what they always did, played horseshoes every Saturday, except when it got too cold sometimes in the winter. They'd get stewed like witches, drinking corn liquor and chewing plugs of tobacco. Had themselves a big time.
After supper that particular evening, Daddy and the others got to tossing shoes while all the ladies sat around on the front porch, gossiping. I was playing mumblety-peg with my little brothers and remember turning toward the pits when Bigbad yelled real loud and sudden at Daddy.
I saw Daddy all bent down, brushing his hand in the river sand that filled the pit, looking for the shoes that Mose and Bigbad had just pitched. But what Daddy forgot---Mama blamed it on the hooch and I reckon she was right---was Mose had only tossed one of his shoes. Mose was in mid pitch and had just let go when Daddy dropped down to check for points, his head leaning right over the steel stake.
Mose was the best player out of all of them. He had himself a pretty throw that turned over and over, and he always pitched more ringers than any of the others, even Daddy. Well, sure enough, Mose was on his way to another ringer when Daddy's skull got in the way. Hit him right in the soft spot on the side of his head. He dropped down, his face full of sand, dead just that quick. At least he didn't suffer none. Mama suffered something fierce.
Well, anyways, one day six years later, on October eighth---I'd headed to town on privy duty. I remember the day exactly because me and Hixie had been married for two years that day and she'd pestered me to stay home. Just like a woman, using all those tricks you women use, keeping us men from doing our jobs. But I told her I had to get on. It took everything I had in me to fight her off, too, because I was still a young jackrabbit back then and Hixie was an eye-popper if there ever was one. But I went on, telling her I'd try and get home early if I could manage. Well, I managed it all right, but not the way I'd planned.
The first sign I had that something wasn't right was when I saw ol' nutty Caledonia in the street, mumbling something or other. Caledonia was a big, heavy woman and crazy as a coot. She used to keep house for some of the white folks until she went loony. She always walked around wearing a dirty dress and carrying a straw broom, sweeping pine needles and pine cones. But she never did sweep the sidewalk or the street; she only swept the yard, in winter just as likely as summer. And not just in front of her house, in front of every dern house in Woodley, and talking to herself all the while. I couldn't ever understand a word she said. All the children, colored and white, they were more scared of her than any haint that might have been floating around in the woods.
I knew something was off when she stopped sweeping and looked up at Miss Annabelle and me when we come rolling into Woodley. Caledonia always kept her head down and didn't pay no mind to anyone that come by, like she was off in her own place somewhere. But this time she looked up at me and spoke clear as day. "It's a dark time, Jim Limey. Dark as death and there ain't no hope." I didn't know what the devil Caledonia was talking about, but it scared me bad. I didn't even know she knew my name, seeing as how she'd never spoken a direct word to me before. But there she was, talking about death and darkness. It sent a chill running up and down my arms, standing my little hairs on end. I snapped the reins and Miss Annabelle broke into a trot, which must have meant she was scared too, because she didn't ever go no faster than a blind turtle for nobody.
I made my first couple of stops and that's when I got my second sign: There wasn't a soul at home at any of the places I went to. And then it hit me after my fourth or fifth stop that I hadn't seen anyone walking on the streets either, other than Caledonia. When I rounded the corner in the square, heading for Dr. Love's house, that's when I knew something bad had happened. The sheriff's prowler was in the driveway and there were a mess of people standing around talking to each other, no voice above a whisper. I stopped when I spotted Bigbad in the crowd---it wasn't hard to do, he was about a whole head taller than any other man in Woodley---and he come over and told me everything.
"Miss Myrtle May gone missing," he said to me. "They cain't find her nowhere."
My heart just about fell out of my chest when Bigbad said that.
"They said there ain't no trace of her. It's like she plumb disappeared."
I sensed something in the air, the same way you feel a storm coming on, and I think every one of those folks standing around felt it too. I decided I'd head on home, not feeling much like working. I knew Hixie would be all excited when I pulled up, thinking I come back early for a little coitus, but that wouldn't last once I told her the news. Trying to explain it to Hixie, that's what I was thinking about when I noticed someone other than Bigbad next to my wagon.
"Hey, boy, I'm talking to you."
I looked up to see Wendell Burroughs staring at me, his eyes sharp and squinted like a snake's.
"Did you hear me?" he said quietly, as if he didn't want no one to hear him talking to me. His face looked weak, tired. "Don't be going by my place today, you hear? Under the circumstances and all."
"Yes, sir. Okay. That's what I was just thinking to myself. That I ought to go on home."
"You just come on by tomorrow. And make sure you bring me plenty of lime," he said. "I'm nearly out."
"You're out, Mr. Burroughs?" I said. "I just refilled your bucket last week."
"Just bring some, boy," he said, mean and nasty as ever. "Don't you know to stay out of a white man's business? You best be careful, understand?"
And I understood, all right. I understood exactly. I got real scared then, not because of what he said, but because of what I knew. Caledonia's words, the feeling in the air, Wendell Burroughs needing lime. It just all come together. Like Jesus whispered it in my ear. And Wendell Burroughs standing in that crowd all cool and calm like he was just as worried about Myrtle May as the rest of us. Sickened me, is what it did. And all of those folks, including Dr. Love and the sheriff, having no idea.
"Yes, sir," I replied. "I'll bring some by tomorrow." Then I popped the reins and got on out of there. On the way home, my body shook as bad as a dog afflicted.
That next morning I still felt sick, like I'd been in the corn liquor the night before. I didn't want to go over to Wendell Burroughs' place, not for anything, but I knew I didn't want to cross him just then. There was no telling what he might do. Besides, I still didn't know for certain if he'd done something. Hixie begged me to stay home. She was scared for me ever since I told her about Caledonia and all the signs and what I'd felt in my bones. She stuck two dried cattails into a pair of Coke bottles and lit them. They were smoking on the front porch when I left, warding off the evil.
There was a grassy lane that ran on the very back of Dr. Love's property, leading to Wendell Burroughs' place, and I steered Miss Annabelle under the limbs of the pecan trees to get there. I wasn't sure what might happen, though I did feel a bit better when I saw the sheriff's prowler in the driveway, same as the day before. I wanted to yell for the sheriff to follow me because I thought I knew who done it. But it was just like what Wendell Burroughs had said to me---I knew better than to fool in a white man's business, no matter what the circumstances. If I accused him of taking Myrtle May and it turned out I was wrong, I'd be swinging in the Hanging Woods by nightfall. I wasn't going to take that chance, not even for little Myrtle May.
When I showed up, everything was quiet and still, the only noise being the cardinals and catbirds singing in the morning sunshine. It was a pretty day, felt real nice, like that humidity had finally decided to up and leave and wouldn't be back until spring. Floating in the breeze was that good smell of fresh-turned crops.
Wendell Burroughs's house looked closed up and dark. I hoped he was either sleeping or out working. I slid off the wagon seat and went to the privy to grab his bucket. When I opened the door, I got the Holy Jesus scared out of me because Wendell Burroughs was in there. I smacked him with the door and he screamed out. I always made a habit of knocking before I went in, but my mind was so filled up with Myrtle May that I must've forgotten. I stepped back and he come out a second later, gimping on that bum leg, his face as white as the lime I was about to give him. When he saw it was me, though, his face changed to an angry red.
"Goddamnit, don't you know to knock before you open a johnny house? Stupid sonovabitch. Almost give me a heart attack."
My whole body shook I was so scared. "I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Burroughs," I said, dropping my head to hangdog. "I just wanted to get your bucket filled up. Then I was fixing to clean out that hole for you. Figured you was still sleeping."
"Well, I ain't sleeping, boy. And I decided I ain't gonna be needing you to clean out the hole no more. Just fill up my pail."
He went inside the privy and come back out with the bucket. I filled it up at the wagon and carried it back over, but he blocked me from taking it inside for him.
"I'll do it," he said, and grabbed it from my hands. With the door open, he dumped the entire thing down the hole, then handed it back to me. "Give me one more bucketful. Shoot, I don't know why I been paying you to do this. I can do it just as easy."
"Usually, Mr. Burroughs, I only dump a few scoops in at a time, not the whole thing like that."
He got all mean, then, and I knew I should've just kept my mouth shut. He stepped up and put his nose where it was just about touching mine. It would have, too, if I hadn't been wearing a brimmed hat. The whiskey on his breath nearly got my own head a-buzzing. "I thought I told you yesterday to stay out of a white man's business. Ain't that what I told you?"
"Yes, sir, that's right. And I'm sorry. I'll get you another bucketful."
"You're sorry all right," he said.
I went to the wagon, got him one more bucketful, then got back on my seat, ready to skedaddle. He reached into the pocket of his overalls, pulled out two dimes, and handed them to me. I wasn't expecting that, I'll tell you.
"You come back in a few days and bring me some more lime," he said. "If I ain't here just leave it, and I'll pay you when I see you. But I don't want you messing with that hole. You understand?"
"Yes, sir. I understand," I said. And then I got on out of there. I hadn't been certain before, but I was certain right then and there of what he done.
The rest of the morning, as I cleaned out the other privies around town, I couldn't think about nothing but Myrtle May. It bothered me more than anything had ever bothered me, knowing that the lime I made with my own hands was the very thing covering her up, keeping the sheriff from finding her.
Now, this last part I'm about to tell you, I ain't never told to nobody before. Not even your grandmamma. Reckon I've been ashamed all these years. Or just too scared. When Hixie was dying, I wanted to tell her, just so there wouldn't have been no secrets between us, but it would've only killed her that much faster. I'm an old man now, had a good life, I reckon, and I know just as well as you that this cancer's got me good. I figured I better tell someone before I die, just so I'd have a clear mind when I go to meet Jesus.
Myrtle May never was found, and the whole thing wasn't never solved. Nobody arrested for it or nothing. Only me and Hixie and Wendell Burroughs, I reckon, ever knew the truth about where Myrtle May really was. As the years went by and flush toilets became more popular, I guess you could say that my business went straight down the drain. Dr. Love was one of the first to get a flush toilet, but I didn't blame him none. I'd have probably had me one down at my place, too, if I could've afforded it.
I'd see Dr. Love outside in the yard sometimes when I'd go past. He'd never been the same since the day Myrtle May disappeared. I don't reckon nobody ever is, losing a child that way, with no answers. Always wondering. He'd stare at his crepe myrtles, trimming them here or there, but he didn't ever seem to be on this Earth no more. Like Caledonia, I reckon, off in his own place.
Wendell Burroughs couldn't afford a flush toilet, so he still had me come every week with the lime, but he never did have me clean out his privy for him again. One day I went out there to drop off a bucketful. This was years after Myrtle May disappeared. I had a bunch of children of my own by then, including your daddy. Well, anyway, I went out there and stopped where I always did. It was early morning in midsummer, barely light out. When I got off the wagon, I looked back and saw the tracks in the grass where the wheels had gone through the dew. It was kind of sparkling, the grass was, with that early morning sunshine lighting it up.
I went to the privy and filled up his bucket. I ain't going to lie to you neither, I always peeked down that hole, just wondering if I might see something---a shoe, a speck of dress, that little baby-doll she used to carry, something. It was always too dark, but I looked anyway. Well, I come out of there and was making to get back on the wagon when I heard a noise. Sounded like a boar hog rutting with a sow, but not nearly as loud. Just a soft grunt, really.
I turned my head toward the house, trying to see if I might hear it again. And then I did. I started creeping up real slow, like a cat on a bird, waiting to see if I'd hear it again, trying to pinpoint exactly where it come from. And then I saw him, Wendell Burroughs, down at the bottom of those steep, rickety stairs, his body all twisted up like a stubborn yew root, his legs in the bushes. His head rested on a slate steppingstone and there was a stream of dried blood on it, running off into the yard. I stood over him as the sun got a little higher, just coming up over the trees. Glass glistened all around him, same as that morning dew had done just a few minutes before. Then I saw the broken handle from a jug of whiskey on the bottom step of the stairs, and a few more pieces higher up on other steps, like a little trail left behind as he'd fallen.
"You all right, Mr. Burroughs?" I said. "You need some help?"
His head stayed on that stone and his eyes looked up at me. His neck was turned all crooked and uncomfortable like. He didn't move at all, except for his mouth. He was trying to say something, but nothing come out but another one of those grunts. His lips just twitched a little. Reminded me of a banked catfish that had swallowed a hook deep. And this part I'll never forget. His tongue was whiter than a cottonmouth's, his eyes all bloodshot and swollen. A real sight, he was. Looked like to me he'd probably been out there for a couple of days already, baking in the sun like an autumn fox grape left on the vine.
"I sure am sorry, Mr. Burroughs," I said, "but I can't understand you. And I know better'n to fool in a white man's business."
And you see, Rita, that's when I got on my wagon and left. Now, I hope to God you won't look down on me for what I done, because I'll tell you right now, I've always felt guilty about it. Ashamed to no end. Not one day's gone by since then that I didn't think about Wendell Burroughs.
There ain't no good that comes from letting something suffer, whether it's an animal, a man, or even Wendell Burroughs, I reckon. There ain't nothing good about keeping something locked up inside you for that long, neither. So that's why I had to tell somebody, because I wanted to get everything straight down here before I headed on up to the next place. I reckon Jesus would want it that way. And I'll be honest with you, the way I see it, Wendell Burroughs got what was coming to him. That ain't the way of Jesus, I know, but somehow I hope He'll forgive me. I've prayed every morning and every evening that He will, at least. I figure we'll probably have a long talk about it before He lets me through the gates for good.
So that's what I did that day. Only God knows if I did the right thing or not. But I left him, spread out in his yard with that sun coming up, and I could tell it was going to be another hot one. A real scorcher. And it was, too.
Copyright © 2011 by Scott Loring Sanders
Michael Guillebeau, author of several e-zine stories, primarily in the science fiction and fantasy fields, makes his debut in print here; this is his first paid professional publication. The Huntsville, Alabama, author has been used to making his living at a different kind of "writing": He writes software for the crew of the International Space Station. He tells EQMM that his daughter, a talented artist, is to be thanked for the many technical details about art needed for this story.
She loved us both, and that was a big part of what made me love her. Other people didn't understand: They just saw me alone at parties where she was supposed to be, apologizing again because Marta was caught up in a painting and couldn't be torn away. Like most vicious things, their comments were phrased as sympathy: "Too bad she doesn't see what this does to people like you who love her," or "All this, and nobody wants to buy her paintings." But I just smiled and imagined her home at her easel, humming away while she worked on something new rather than being here enduring small conversations with small minds and trying hard to keep a smile on her face. Her paintings mattered to her, and I mattered to her, and not much else mattered to her. I figured that anyone who had that kind of intensity had plenty for me. And I was right. At least, I had been until lately.
When I woke up she was already out on her bike doing her penance or meditation or whatever it was. She had started running errands around town a couple of years ago on an old thirty-dollar beach cruiser, then found she thought best and felt most alive on her bike. After a lot of prodding from me, she graduated to a red Felt FW25, light as the wind and twice as fast. She would fly along a ten-mile loop around the lake all day, stopping for coffee and food at a little convenience store where the Nigerian owner always asked about her mileage, and flesh out details in her head of something she was working on, or maybe figure out why something wasn't working.
The rides were magic for her, ideas for paintings spinning as fast and smooth as her pedals. But her paintings weren't selling, and she took it personally. The world was rejecting her children and she didn't know what to do about it. So the bike miles were turning into miles looking for blame, and the blame was coming home more and more to me. Sometimes, if you can't kick the world, you kick your dog. If you don't have a dog, you kick your spouse. Counterproductive, I know, but we all do it sometime.
I told her to make a change, any change. She said she wanted a new life. Didn't know what that meant or what kind of life she wanted, but it had to be a whole new life. I told her to find a way, any way. With my help, without it. With me, without me. She suffered for her children; I suffered for her. We were all suffering, and we were all tired of it.
I went for a run and came back into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and see if she was back. In my empty cup was a note: "Enjoy your new baby and your new life." Cryptic, but typical Marta. She had locked me out of the studio for the last week, didn't want me to see what was in there until it was done, but she sometimes did that, and then, when it was done, she didn't want to be around when I first saw it, couldn't bear to see my reaction firsthand. So I knew where she was: out on her bike, flying around and around the ten-mile lake loop until she was sure I was awake and had seen her new baby. I took my coffee and went up the stairs to the studio we'd made by gutting the whole floor into one open room with big windows on every side and a couple of skylights in the roof. There was a big, bright new painting in the middle, waiting. It was a portrait of me, full-length, but I had to laugh: She had painted me in electric-blue workman's overalls, with tools coming out of every pocket. I got it. Once we had gotten into a terrible fight: one in a series of fights that we seemed to have over and over with no way out. She was ranting about something, anything, it never seemed to matter what as long as she had something to rant about. I was trying to come up with solutions. But every solution I came up with just made her madder until she screamed, "Paul, the Practical Man. Paul, Who Finds a Way." Somehow, that caught her, and she started giggling at her own joke. "That's just who you are," she said. "That's just who you are. You live in the real world; I have to live in my own imagination. That's who you are. Paul, the Practical Man." The fight was over, it never came back, and that was her nickname for me from then on.
So there I was, Paul the Sweaty Runner with a Cup of Coffee in His Hand admiring Paul the Practical Man. She had found a new technique. Somehow, Paul the Practical Man seemed to float a couple of feet out from the rest of the painting, glowing. I was trying to figure out how she had done that when I noticed the title painted in a scroll across the bottom: "For Paul, Who Understands." I looked at the face. It had a big smile, bigger than any I'd ever smiled, but it also had a tear. That was one of Marta's trademarks: contradiction. Every painting had to have two meanings, or it never made it out of her studio. I stepped closer. The background appeared dark from fifteen feet away, but up close I could see that there was much more. There was a cabin where we had spent our first weekend together. The beach where we spent our honeymoon. Or where I spent it; she spent it in a back room, lost in a watercolor that she got an idea for on the flight down, and just had to finish it, just had to or the idea would run away. There was more: There I was with a sledgehammer, smashing our first kitchen table. I had spent hours putting the damned thing together with the damned Ikea directions, and she burst into tears and said, "I hate it, I just hate it, I'm sorry, but I just hate it." So I took a sledge that I was using to remodel the upstairs and smashed the thing that I hated building and she hated looking at. Didn't solve the problem, of course, but it sure felt good.
The painting had all of our history somewhere in the background, and that was Marta's other trademark---the one that killed her commercial appeal: She worked in careful layers, letting each layer dry so the backgrounds of her paintings had fantastic details. If you would spend an hour with anything of hers, you would spend two, and then three, and more, until you could follow the whole fantastic story she told with tiny brush strokes in giant paintings. But of course, if you just spent thirty seconds in a gallery, you walked away unimpressed with "that red thing" or "that blue thing." I went downstairs to call work and tell them I'd be late. This one would take all morning. I made myself a Nutella sandwich to take upstairs and heard someone at the door.
I thought it was Marta, forgetting her keys again and sure I'd be there to let her in. I was going to tell her to get back on her bike for the rest of the morning while I finished adopting the new baby, but I saw Newton through the glass. Newton owned the gallery where Marta's work usually opened, and was the closest thing to an agent Marta had.
"Come on in, Newt," I said. "You missed Marta. She's out on her bike again and she may be gone a long, long time."
Newton knew about Marta and her bike and didn't like it. Newton was all business and dealt with everything right now. Marta would disappear on her bike for hours and refuse to be interrupted by carrying a cell phone. Newton looked at me.
"Yeah, I know." He pushed past me into the house. "Come on in and sit down, Paul.
"The police just left the gallery, Paul. They found Marta's bike on the bridge. It's been run over, and there's no sign of Marta. There's blood on the rail, too, but at this point, they're not sure if it's hers." He took a breath. "I'm sorry. I didn't know any way to tell you but to just tell you. I didn't want you to hear it from the police. Or the radio.
"Maybe she's okay, Paul. The police are searching the area, and we can get down there and help. Maybe she's sitting in somebody's house right now, waiting for you."
"Maybe," I said, starting to plan what to do. I knew the bridge, and it was a high one, so high that there was usually a suicide from it every couple of years. This is a pretty bike-friendly area, but the bridge had become a battleground between bikers and traffic. There was a footbridge half a mile away that bikers could use, if they walked their bikes across. Bikers asserted their right to the traffic bridge; some drivers, particularly some truckers, went out of their way to intimidate the bikers. There had been a couple of incidents in the last couple of years, one conviction of a driver, and one death from a hit-and-run that nobody saw.
"I know the river as well as anybody around here. I'm going to get my rafting clothes on and take a kayak down there," I said.
Newton stopped me. "There's something we need to talk about first, Paul." He took a breath. "You remember Jonathon Crowley? Worked in acrylics, did little pieces with odd shapes?"
I nodded. "Yes," I said, and then, "No, that's not what happened."
Newton hesitated. "Probably not. But it's something you need to consider. Nobody loved their paintings more than Marta loved hers. She didn't care that much about the money or fame, but it tore her up that her paintings didn't find the homes she thought they deserved. Every time I had to move one of her paintings into storage, I knew I had a big fight coming, like I had just locked one of her kids in a closet and wasn't going to let him out.
"You know what happened with Crowley. Big success after he commit--- . . . died. Off of the same bridge. Marta talked about it all the time, maybe he had done the right thing, that kind of talk. Another thing: You know how Marta likes to make a statement and how she loves that bike. This will get something done on that bridge, maybe bike lanes or barriers or something.
"I'm not saying she did anything overt. Maybe just a swerve before the sun came up." He looked at me and shrugged. "Maybe not. You know, I don't know why I brought it up. I'm sure she's okay."
"You don't know Marta," I said, though we both knew he knew Marta better than anyone but me. But he was wrong about this.
We'd left the door open. There was a man in jeans and a brown sport coat standing in the door.
"Excuse me, sir," said the man. "I'm Detective Alswan. I take it you've been told what happened." He glared at Newton.
"Yeah, but not details. Any sign of her in the river? She's a good swimmer. She can make it to shore."
"The rescue squad's down there, sir. We've got men going to every house in every neighborhood downstream." He looked at both of us. "Sounded like you two were trying to get your stories straight when I walked in. Anything either one of you wants to say?"
Newton shook his head. "We're going to find her," I said.
"No." He stepped toward me. "We---the police---are going to find her. You and your pal are coming down to the center, separately, for questioning. I don't like what I heard, and I want to hear more."
"I'm going to the river. We'll talk later. You can talk to Marta, then, too."
"I'll ask her why she was on that bridge before dawn," he said, pushing his nose almost into mine. "Like why she wasn't on the walkway instead of playing in traffic."
I looked at him a slow second and realized he was trying to make me lose my temper and do something stupid.
"The walkway's for pedestrians," I said. "The bridge is for vehicles, including bikes. You need to read the law, and you need to enforce it. What about the driver? What did he say?"
He looked back with a long, emotionless stare. "No sign of him. Just a crunched-up bike found in the middle of the road, and some blood on the rail that we're testing now. And I will enforce the law."
"You should have traffic cameras. Marta may be able to help identify him, when we find her. Someone needs to pay for what's happening to bikers on that bridge. If you had done your job before, Marta would be standing here safe now."
Same dead-eyed stare. "We do our job, sir. Even if it means harassing truck drivers trying to earn an honest living while dodging big kids playing in the road."
"Enough of this crap. I'm getting my stuff and getting out on the river. Call me on my cell if you get anything. Or arrest me, if you think you can."
The detective started to say something, but Newton put his hand on his arm. "Detective, Mr. Beschloss owns the rafting franchise just below the bridge. He knows the river better than anyone around. If Marta's on the river, he'll find her."
Detective Alswan thought about that. "So you own the landing below the bridge? Convenient. Tell you what. I'll give you a choice. I know the river, too. I'll take your friend down to the center, change clothes, and meet you at the landing. You've got a two-man kayak there, right? I'll go with you, and we can talk while we look." I hesitated and he continued. "Either that, or you come with me now."
"Deal," I said. "Don't get in the way."
They left and I ran into the bedroom and pulled on waterproof pants and a Gore-Tex jacket. I'd get a kayak and a pack with food and water from the store while I was waiting on Alswan. On the way out I looked at the new painting one more time.
There was something wrong. The cabin where we spent our first weekend was a small detail, something no one but me would notice. The gravel road leading to the cabin was just a few swipes of grey paint. But there was a bridge just before the cabin, and the bridge was missing. There was a gap where the bridge should be, a blue swatch where the water cut the road in two. It wasn't right. I stared at it. I got a light, and a magnifier. There was another layer behind the road, and the paint on the top layer was still wet. I picked up a can of turpentine and a rag and started carefully removing paint, as fast as I could without disturbing the lower layer. There was writing. After a few minutes, I could read it.
"If you come for me, they will hurt my children."
I knew then that we wouldn't find Marta, and I knew that she was right. We treat tragedy with admiration, failure with contempt. The paintings of a dead artist would get attention and find homes. The paintings of an artist who had faked her death, and been caught, would be laughed at. Marta's palette was still here from painting the road to the cabin. I picked it up, disguised the writing, and quickly painted the road back, adding the bridge.
Detective Alswan and I searched the river together for a week. I gave interviews, and demanded that the bridge be fixed. Marta's paintings got the attention they deserved.
Now I lecture and travel, or just travel. There is an obligation and a price in loving someone, and an obligation and a price in loving what they love. I will not search for Marta. But I will accept every offer to travel anywhere, anytime to lecture about her paintings. Perhaps, someday, when no one is watching, there will be a woman in the back of the room. She won't look like Marta, but I'll know her just the same. We'll smile but not speak. Perhaps, someday, we'll find a way. For now, I go to openings and say a few words about how much this painting or that painting meant to Marta. And when people stare in wonder at her paintings and say, "She lives on," I smile and say, "Yes, she does."
Copyright © 2011 by Michael Guillebeau
Phil Lovesey is the author of four crime novels, all from HarperCollins: Death Duties (1998); Ploughing Potter's Field (1999); When the Ashes Burn (2000); and The Screaming Tree (2002). He is also an award-winning and prolific short story writer, and while The Times (London) has commented on the "keen, brutal perception of modern existence" and "shocking violence" in his novels, the author's short stories are almost all in a gentler vein. This one has an element of whimsy.
Someone---it doesn't matter who---once told me we're all stardust. Just strange organic composites of the carbon atom; walking, talking, loving, killing. Humanity reduced to powder. Perhaps it was the dull old spud who attempted to teach me science; maybe the warbled lyrics from a prog-rocker; or a TV presenter doing his best to enliven some sort of astrophysics documentary---like I say, it doesn't matter who---but the words, the concept of it has remained with me since. Bought me comfort over the years at times, helped me sometimes to zoom out from the chaos, the injustices of this life, see myself as merely a cosmic speck at the mercy of the universe and its frequent bitter ironies.
Pretty existential for a petty thief, I guess.
Then again, I have had the occasional six or nine months locked away with my thoughts and battered prison-library paperbacks to think some of this stuff through. A not-very-good petty thief, in truth.
Anyway, back to the stardust and ironies . . .
I'd just finished a small stretch at one of Her Majesty's less-than-salubrious hotels for the wretched, and had found myself fetched up in front of my new front door as sorted by the dear folk from the Probation Service. A good system this, for the serial offender like myself, get given nine months, keep the old nose clean for five of them; smile, make the right noises, tell the panel how much you've changed, how nights racked with remorse have brought about a life-changing conversion to go straight, and hey-presto, they're sorting you new digs, clothes, and some cash in your pocket to tide you over.
Best bits of thieving I've ever done . . . and all from the taxpayer. Shame on me, you might say. But seriously, in my shoes, you'd do the same. Your dust ain't no different from my dust.
It's a horrible door, in a horrible block of flats, in a horrible part of town. The probation guy tries to sell it to me as an "apartment," as if by his Americanising the shabby place I'll not notice the damp, the cracked windowpanes, worn furniture, and bare bulbs. But I smile and thank him anyway. After all, I tell him, home's what you make it. Or what you take from others. He doesn't react to the quip. He's young, this one---would probably refer to himself as a "rookie"---and simply wants to go. I let him, knowing there's no banter to be had. He's too desperate to "check in for a burger and fries" somewhere, the perfect twenty-something product of a life made bland by corporate domination.
Like I said, I've had a lot of time to read this sort of stuff.
Now, there's a drill for this sort of place. It goes like this---let them come to you. They always will. For where there's one shabby probationary flat in a block, there'll be others. And the occupants will soon know when the new bloke hitches up. And then come sniffing, scratching, seeing what's to be had. It's just how it is---I've done it myself.
Sure enough, within ten minutes of College Boy leaving, a bearded, lanky heap of methadone-using stardust is on my doorstep, trying to ingratiate himself, his pink eyes swimming in a pallid head that nods and twitches as he asks me for "a few quid---just for a few days, like." I invite him in, give him the money in exchange for some essential "local" information.
He's called Rambling Ian---apparently---and has served the usual amount of time in the past. We talk about various jails, wings, screws---not reminiscing but testing each other for truths, lies, connections, mutual friends and enemies we've made along our less-than-merry way. I think he's probably all right, and he goes on to describe himself as a "standard human road accident on the heroin highway."
I ask him about others in the block. He tells me we're the only two "insiders," the other flats housing the predictable assortment of single mothers, forgotten pensioners, unemployed divorcees, and immigrant workers. No rich pickings to be had here, then. But I'd guessed that already. Rambling Ian follows up with a few possible opportunities for a spot of nocturnal thievery just a few streets away.
"Big places," he says. "Fancy."
"And full of alarms," I reply, knowing where it's heading.
"Maybe, but with the two of us . . . you know . . ."
I smile. I'm not about to shatter his illusion that he's on the verge of hooking up with a latter-day Raffles, because however ridiculous the notion may be, I need him onside for a while; he may have his uses. So I tell him I'll think it over, and he makes for the door.
" 'Course," he adds on his way out, "there's always Buzz on the top floor. He's an odd, old geezer."
"Buzz?"
"As in Lightyear, from the kids' film. You know, all those toys comin' to life an' that?"
I shake my head. Children's films were never my thing, unless it was to try and pick a few adult pockets or rob a hassled mum's handbag in the gloom of the cinema. My spoils from the Hollywood film industry.
"American, he is," he goes on. "Crazy old fella. Lives on his own at the very top with just a telescope. Never lets anyone through the door. Rumour round here is that he used to be some sort of spaceman or something."
"Spaceman? As in an old druggie?"
My new "partner" looks a little hurt by this. "No. The real deal. That he went up on one of those Apollo missions back in the seventies. Walked on the moon, drove one of them buggy things, the lot."
"And, naturally, he ends up living on top of a crummy block of flats in South London."
"I'm just telling you what folk say about him," he replies. "Never met the fella myself."
"Yeah," I say, trying to sound sympathetic. "Well, I reckon there's a few people pulling your leg, Ian."
"Ask around if you don't believe me," he insists. "They'll maybe even tell you about the moon rock he keeps up there. Size of your fist, it is, and he brought it back from the moon itself. Smuggled it out of NASA, brought it over here. Be worth an awful lot of loot, that, wouldn't it? Bit of the bloody moon?"
"Ian," I calmly reply, "even if there was the tiniest chance that any of the rumours are true, just how easy do you think it would be to convince someone to fork out 'an awful lot of loot' for a lump of stone?"
"A moon rock," he replied, wide-eyed, clearly not getting it. "A sacred piece of the heavens."
"And right now," I said, closing the door, "I need to get a sacred piece of sleep."
Rambling Ian was right about one thing: We were the only two "probys" in the block. Indeed, from mostly law-abiding observations over the next few days, I began to realise that of the twenty-six flat stack, maybe a third of them were empty, boarded and shuttered. One day an Asian family moved out, the next day the boards and shutters appeared. The whole block felt like it was dying---a good thing, probably. I guessed that I was the last "resident" who had been allowed in, and now the powers that be simply waited until people moved out, or on to pastures new, in order that it could be pulled down without the cost of rehousing remaining residents. Robbery in its own way, but conveniently legal.
As for me, familiar urges were beginning to return, fuelled by dwindling money, lack of real employment opportunity for someone like me, and just . . . let's call it old habits dying way too hard. It's not excusable what I do, it's not exciting---or glamorous---it's just what I do. And like I say, I'm not even that good at it. But just as some are born to be judges, I reckon some are born to be judged. Without us, there's no them. Universal balance, I guess.
Of course, the eternal problem for the house thief is cash conversion. Finding a trusted fence with whom to pass over your liberated goods in exchange for some of the lovely folding stuff. A dying breed, the local fences, literally. None of the youngsters sees the opportunities of the profession, preferring the easier, more obvious routes. Granted, there'll still be a bloke in the local pub who'll mention that he'll give you a couple of hundred quid for a wall-mounted plasma television, but honestly, you try getting those things off the damn wall in the first place. I guess you could say I'm part of a dying breed, too. Forty-seven and too old to rob and roll . . .
So, I'm looking for easier places, easier things to swipe. Never been good with any kind of vehicle, so they're out. Leaves me with houses---big ones, mostly, for obvious reasons. Not too big, though, as I've never had the know-how to bypass alarm systems. However, as most medium-sized places nearly always have unlinked alarms, they don't present the same problem an engine-disabled Mercedes does. In fact, as any competent housebreaker will tell you (and I do count myself as competent at breaking in, it's the getting out and away with it that tends to be a little more problematic), the appearance of an alarm box on the side of your home is the finest advertisement for opportunists like me. Forget a blaring siren, just have a recorded message that shouts: Hey! Up here on the wall! Yeah, look at me! Lots of lovely stuff inside, and no one's going to give a damn if I start screaming! Get in, help yourselves! The same with half-drawn curtains, lights blazing away inside. The genuinely rich got that way by saving money, not wasting it on electricity. Their curtains will be drawn, just one light in the room they're in. Couple of pointers from the other side for you, that's all. Happy to oblige.
Anyway, one night I'm returning after a little late-night work a few streets away from the block, not much of a haul, jewellery mostly, but enough to last another week if I can fence the stuff, when I get back to the flat and discover a note has been slid under the door:
You went in by the front downstairs window. Used a glass cutter. Turned the lights off once you were inside. You went to the front upstairs bedroom. Again, turned the light off. Then left three minutes later. I may have some work for you. Number 26.
I'd been spotted.
It was an impressive telescope. Very impressive. Not that I'm the least au fait with optical devices, but this was impressive because it didn't even look like a telescope. Not the normal kind, anyway, the type you might see jammed into a pirate's eye in a swashbuckling yarn. No, this was something you'd expect from a fifties sci-fi B-movie, a great white barrel of a thing, with pipes, meters, and humming electronic devices secured to it, mounted on a sturdy tripod. And, at this precise moment---pointing from its vantage point right at the house I'd just broken into.
I had my eye pressed into an insignificant-looking tube at its side, but the image was crystal. Made more impressive by the green night-vision.
By my side, the elderly American messed with a few switches. The image zoomed out a little, then flipped to a series of bodies and cars passing by in variegating red and orange tones.
"Thermal imaging," he said. "I followed your every move, then switched to night vision when you were inside. It's a good view here, the house is nicely exposed."
I stepped back. "I guess I was, too. Exposed, I mean."
He nodded, as I tried to age him---late sixties, early seventies? Small, compact, still reasonably fit. "You said you might have some work for me?" No point in beating about the bush.
Another nod as he moved a pile of papers to sit in a tattered old armchair, and they joined one of the many other piles on the floor. I guess that was what made the scope all the more impressive, a gleaming technical artifice in the obvious shambles of such a chaotic flat. Half-finished meals and abandoned coffee cups lay amongst the detritus. He offered me another chair, which even I refrained from sitting on. And as a bloke who's shared a cell with three other lags for twenty-three hours a day, that was really saying something.
"People round here," he began, "call me The Astronaut."
I shrugged, unimpressed. "I heard it was Buzz."
He smiled. "After Aldrin?"
"Lightyear," I corrected him. "Some character from a kids' film."
The smile wavered as he caught my eye line wandering back to the scope. "If you're thinking of stealing it, I guess you should know it weighs close on a quarter of a ton. They winched it up the side of the building to get it in. And, in case you're wondering, it's worth well over a hundred thousand of your Brit pounds."
My Brit pounds. The old guy was obviously still smarting from the Buzz Lightyear thing. Granted, he sounded a bit American, but only in that sort of clichéd way anyone would if they tried to put on an accent. I probably do a more convincing effort after watching a couple of old Star Trek reruns.
I looked briefly round, tried to get some sort picture of the bloke. Too much contradictory information. An old guy living in a dump like some sort of tramp (no doubt he'd have said "hobo" to try and add extra authenticity to the Yank thing), yet clearly able to afford the sort of sky-gazing kit Greenwich Observatory would have been proud of.
Other signs. No trace of a woman's touch, so presumably he lived alone. No evidence of any help from the social services---God, it'd have taken a crack team of their best cleaners to even begin to sort the place out. So---weird old recluse with access to expensive technology living in some sort of delusional fantasy world in which he once strolled about on the moon? Yeah, I know---it's where the word "lunatic" derives from.
And yet, something else about Buzz that Rambling Ian had told me stuck in my mind---Lives on the top with a telescope. Never lets anyone in. But here I was, forty minutes after illegally entering one locked premises, and I'd seemingly gained effortless entry into another.
"Another great feature of my scope," he began, "is that it . . ."
"Takes photographs?" I finished for him, already ahead. Not much of a leap to make, he'd been so keen so show me the means of my "capture," in all its technological excesses, it seemed logical Mr. Spacemen would also have photographic evidence of my evening's work with which to blackmail me.
He nodded, a little too smugly for my liking. "I love this block," he went on. "Love living here---on top. I guess you could say that when you've been to the places I've been to, seen the things I have, it becomes very difficult for your feet to ever really touch the ground."
I ignored this, didn't want to be drawn into the fantasy. Point was, however odd, eccentric, or plain insane the man was, he had pictures that could stick me straight back inside. "You mentioned you may have some work for me?"
He smiled, and I knew that he knew he had me. Whatever was going to be played out, it would be at his pace, not mine. "I've lived here since 'eighty-three. Right here, on the top. 'Course, it was in better repair way back then. And I've loved it ever since. It gives me . . . anonymity. Leaves me free to just watch."
"The moon, presumably," I replied, trying to hurry him along.
"No," he replied. "Seen enough of the moon in my time. Far too much."
"Rumour round here is you walked on it."
He smiled. "Lots of rumours round here. I use the scope to see the truth." He fixed me. "I see a lot of things with the scope. Like you, for instance. The day you arrived with the young mutt from the prison services. Yeah, I thought to myself, here comes another one. Then, of course, there's been all your---how should I put this---night jaunts? Those illegal little excursions into these surrounding backstreets. What else could you be but just another common thief?" He paused, steepled his fingers.
I tried to bow in a slightly patronising manner, but I think it just came across as a bow. No point in denying it, the man did have an unsettling presence. Would have made a good judge. "You have me at an advantage."
"I know," he replied.
"You want me to steal something for you."
He smiled, shook his head slowly. "Not for me. From me."
He waited for my reaction. After the aborted bow, I gave it a miss.
"There were," he continued, "several visits of the Apollo space program to the moon. As is the way, the first is the most widely seared into the public consciousness. By the time my mission went up, the people were largely bored, and had begun counting the massive cost of the program. They'd grown tired of watching men bounce on a dark, dusty surface a quarter of a million miles away. The so-called 'scientific value' of such missions was openly criticised. As such, I was one of the last human beings ever to walk on the surface of the moon."
"I heard it was just a movie set somewhere out in the desert," I tried.
"If only it was." He looked away, lost for a moment. "My life soon disintegrated. My marriage broke down, and I took to the bottle." He shrugged. "It's a recognised phenomenon. When you've experienced the heavenly beauty of that cold black solace; when you've looked back and seen how perfect the Earth really is, how it silently spins---just so magisterially---all else, all human experience, pales. You become . . . nothing."
I watched him, sitting there amidst all the rubbish, a lonely old man with nothing but dreams. Delusional---well, he had to be, didn't he? And yet, something about the way he spoke about it all . . .
"You still meet up with all your moon buddies?" I knew it was wrong to encourage the fantasy, yet a small part of me wanted to know more . . . almost, perhaps, wanted to believe. The stardust thing, I guess.
He gave a short, contempt-ridden laugh. "Losers all," he said. "Every darn one of them. Opening crummy supermarkets to turn a buck. Jeez, the last thing I did Stateside was a series of commercials." He pulled a horribly insincere smile. "Say please for Moon Cheese."
"Can't say I ever heard of it," I said.
"So I shipped up and away. Came here. To my tower in the sky. Spend what I can on the scope and live very happily."
"Do you have any friends?" I asked, feeling a little sorry for him. "Relatives? Visitors?"
He turned to me. "What for? I keep my own company." He pointed to the telescope. "I see all the people, all the things they do. I have no desire for their intrusion. It's what makes you and me so similar. We both crave the solitude and the darkness. For you, it's work. For me---personal."
"What's your name?"
He waved a hand. "Not necessary. Neither's yours. But, you know, on reflection, I do quite like the Buzz thing."
"Why do you want me to steal something from you?"
"Shouldn't the question be what do you want me to steal?"
I looked briefly round. "Well, Buzz, I'm guessing it won't be the scope. And frankly, I doubt there's anything else in here that would interest the scabbiest gull on the dump."
"Incorrect," he replied, standing and making his way slowly through the paper piles to a small, smothered chest of drawers, and bringing out a small ring box. "I brought something back. When I was there."
I found myself swallowing as he beckoned me over to a small table. No, I told myself, it couldn't be, could it? The rumoured moon rock? Here, in a shabby block of South London flats? And yet, the closer I got to the box, the more I wanted to open it.
"Is it . . . ?" I asked.
He nodded, slowly opening the lid to reveal a small grey stone no bigger than the tip of my finger. "Interplanetary contraband. Smuggled just the same way those poor drugs mules do. Mind you, maybe more painfully. You try swallowing a wrapped piece of the moon in a zero-gravity space capsule."
I smiled at the image. "And they never found out?"
"The folks at mission control?" He shook his head. "Didn't have a clue. See, after splashdown, each Apollo mission had to spend time in a decompression chamber."
I nodded, briefly remembering newspaper images of astronauts smiling through thick glass windows.
"I'd imagine conditions inside were pretty similar to your penal experiences. Three men locked up with just some very crude sanitation facilities. And of course, when you're back here, gravity suddenly exerts itself very forcefully. Those little bits of rock we'd each swallowed suddenly became extremely heavy as they worked their way through."
I winced slightly.
"All we had to do was keep swallowing the rocks when they . . . reappeared. That, and pray we could withhold them during the debrief and subsequent release to the waiting world's press. I finally got this fella to myself two days after I'd made it home." He took the rock out. "Not many of us can say we've had a piece of the universe pass right through us three times. Guess he's made even more of a journey than me. You want to hold it?"
As an offer, he hadn't sold it that well. "I'll pass. No pun intended."
He snapped the lid shut, slowly scratched the side of his head. "You're thinking I'm insane, of course. That this is nothing more than some little pebble I picked up from the park."
"No. I'm thinking you've called me up here to do a job. I simply want to know what it is."
He slipped the ring box into a pocket, navigated his way back to the window, and began turning wheels on the telescope. I watched as the large white barrel moved slowly to the left, still pointing down towards the darkened town many floors below. Satisfied he'd found the right spot, he beckoned me over. I pressed my eye to the soft rubber eyepiece; saw nothing until he flicked the night-vision switch. A green window glowed. A downstairs room, by the look of it, half-drawn curtains failing to obscure opulent trappings inside. I recognised it immediately, a large house less than fifty yards from the place I'd just relieved of its jewellery. Indeed, I'd been past it several times, had already considered its potential for easy pickings.
"You chose to ignore this place," I heard him say. "Why?"
I kept my eye tight to the rubber, making out more of the room. "The wall-mounted safe. It's just about visible from the street, if you know what you're looking for."
"A standard three-tumbler dial model," he said. "Surely not a problem for someone like you? And an indication of lucrative spoils inside?"
"Not this one," I said, taking a longer look at the small metal box mounted between two gilt-framed pictures. "Open the door on that sucker and all you'll find is a web camera looking right at you, linked direct to the security company. It's bait. Before you know it, there's a dozen police cars waiting outside." I stepped back from the scope. "The whole place stinks of wire-traps and alarms. Whatever they've got in there, they want to keep hold of it."
He nodded.
"But you're not going to tell me, are you?"
He shook his head.
"You just want me to do whatever it is you want."
Another nod. It was like talking to a mute.
"You're going to have to try and help me with some words," I tried. "Even better, an explanation."
"His name is Saunders."
"The owner?" I asked.
"And not just of that house, either," he replied. "He owns this whole place."
"The block?"
"And all its apartments, land, and accesses."
"These flats, they're all rented?"
He nodded. "Cheques payable to Mr. Mark Saunders." He slumped back down in the ruined armchair. "His father's company built the place. Joe Saunders---nice fella. Died last year, left the lot to his son, Mark. His house, its contents, and this block."
I was beginning to get the picture. "And since then, his son's left the place to rack and ruin?"
"S'about it."
"Let me guess," I said, thinking of the boarded-up doors and windows. "Now he's about to sell? Have the place condemned as a liability, eyesore, whatever; then pocket the loot before the demolition teams arrive?"
Buzz nodded. "It's part of a so-called urban-renewal scheme. They'll pay him millions to reduce this place to rubble."
"And you lose your home in the sky?"
He shuffled through some papers at his feet, threw a letter across at me. "Their latest offer."
Headed "Dear Occupier," it was an offer to rehouse the old guy in some new housing development. The words "ground-floor retirement apartment" had been angrily underlined---presumably by Buzz himself.
"I ain't moving," he said. "Just ain't."
"But if this place isn't safe . . . ?" My eyes drifted to a paragraph detailing the owner's concerns with the central lifts, how it might be necessary to close them to residents. "It's going to make getting out of here pretty tough. You could be stranded."
He jabbed a finger. "What are you saying? That I'm too old to manage a few flights of lousy stairs if I need to? Jeez, I walked on the moon!"
It was getting out of control. "Show me the pictures," I said.
"Pictures?"
"The ones you took of me earlier tonight," I replied, pointing at the telescope, the only part of the situation that didn't fit my theory that the man was simply a lonely delusionist.
"Kick those papers out of the way," he instructed from his chair. "Underneath, there's a printer. Push the red button on the left."
I knelt, did as he said, watching the linked printer come to life, then begin spitting out a series of shots of me about my earlier business. Green, pin-sharp, night-visioned evidence that I was there; outside and inside. Conclusive.
He chuckled softly. "I guess your big mistake was to take the hat and scarf off when you got inside. But I think I managed to get your good side."
"So the job is?" I asked, wondering if there was any way to rid the scope of the pictures. There had to be some sort of memory attached to it, an internal digital camera, perhaps. But where . . . ?
"Your job," he said, "is to steal my moon rock, then break into Saunders' house and place it on the cocktail cabinet at the back of the living room, where I can be sure to see it."
I frowned. "The reason?"
"Because," he explained, as if talking to a small child, "when I get back from my weekly astrological society meeting tomorrow night and discover my apartment has been burgled, I shall be able to point the blame at Saunders."
"Just because there's a pebble on his cocktail cabinet?"
"No!" he snapped back. "Because it's the thing he covets the most. The moon rock!"
"Right," I announced, mind made up. "I'm going now. I'm sorry you're going to have to move, but---hey, there it is. But let me tell you this, if you think breaking into people's houses and leaving stones in their living rooms makes a jot of difference, then you're very wrong."
His face began to show panic. "I'll send the pictures to the police! You'll be back in the pen with all the other scum!"
"Don't you get it?" I tried. "It's over. This building is falling down. It's had its time. They're trying to get you somewhere better, more accessible. You can't fight this sort of stuff with bits of the goddamned moon, Buzz. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."
He blinked slowly. "I'll send the photos to the police."
"No, you won't," I said.
"Try me."
"I don't have to." I shook my head, walked towards the door.
"What makes you so sure, thief?"
I turned, looked at the confused, angry old man sitting in the detritus of his lonely delusions. "Because, Buzz," I slowly explained, "you'd have to give the police a signed statement. As, indeed, would I, wherein I'd detail exactly what has happened here tonight. There'd most likely be some sort of court case. You'd be called as a witness; forced to swear on a Bible as to your name. Then it'd all come out, wouldn't it, Buzz? That you weren't who you claimed to be? That you were really an odd little bloke who needed a ground-floor flat and help from the social services."
He stared back, blank.
"Put it this way, Buzz: You shop me, and we're both going down. . . ."
I got to do a fair bit of reading in the next eight months, spent so much time reading about space and space travel that the other lags on the wing got to calling me Buzz, a name I was happy with, though I never let on as to precisely why.
The court case lasted for three days, and to be fair, in a slow news week, attracted a few columns in the tabloids. I guess it was simply the absurdity of it all. I'm not going to tell you his real name, but rest assured he wasn't an astronaut, which came as a bit of a disappointment, in a weird sort of way. His eyes never met mine as he gave evidence, and at no time during the trial did he ever mention any of the crazy moon stuff. He came out as a decent old star-gazing vigilante, photographing misdeeds from up on high---and I came out with eight months.
Rambling Ian came to visit, told me the case had attracted enough attention to warrant the social services moving in on the old guy and "re-accommodating" him. Apparently a crowd had gathered to see the huge telescope being winched back down the side of the building, clapping and cheering. Buzz, he told me, had simply watched, tears in his eyes.
A few months later, I made the usual right noises to the panel, and left Her Maj's Pleasure a cosmologically enlightened man. Sure, I was going to be a thief again, always would, we all have to live, don't we? We're all stardust, after all.
True to form, the Probation set me up in a cosy little dump just south of the river. Three days later, returning from a midnight sortie, I found a note slipped under the doorway: You walked south for four minutes. Turned right, stayed outside number 27 for twelve minutes until the owners returned. You hid in a bush as they went inside. I'm just wondering if you needed a former employee of NASA's mission control to help guide your mission status in a safer and more profitable way? Between us, we could reach for the moon. . . .
Opening the front door, I scanned the horizon, looking past disused warehouses and over the river towards a distant tower block, its top-floor lights blazing.
I nodded, bowed---and I swear something winked back.
Copyright © 2011 by Phil Lovesey
Leigh Lundin debuted in EQMM's Department of First Stories in 2006 with the story "Swamped," and went on to win that year's Readers Award. Since then he's had stories in AHMM ("8 Across" 4/08) and the 2009 MWA anthology The Prosecution Rests ("Quality of Mercy"). He has a Sunday column on the Criminal Brief website: criminalbrief.com.
"That him?" asked my brother.
"Yep," I said, glancing to-ward a slight man standing at the front counter.
"English," the junior assistant manager snarled at the hapless customer. "Speak American."
" 'Scuse me a minute," I said, strolling toward the Tarpit Lanes counter. "Liam, the man wants to play. Give him a lane."
Liam jutted his wispy goatee. "He don't got English."
"Neither do you," I pointed out. "Don't forget the man's change this time."
The man went next to the shoe counter, removed a loafer, and held it up.
"No English, no shoes, no service," said Liam's crony, Hank, turning his back.
"Rent the man shoes," I said, "or I'll fit an eleven up your backside."
Hank glared, but gave the man a pair of eights.
Instead of putting his street shoes on the shelf with everyone else's, the man carried his with him. Understandable, because last time Liam's crew poured Fryolator grease in them.
I tagged along to the snack counter where Liam's skanky girlfriend worked.
"Kaffee," said the man.
"English only," she said, snapping her gum.
"Lindsay, give the man his coffee, or tomorrow I'll file a complaint with the state's discrimination officer."
Whether the state had a discrimination officer would have been news to me. She sniffed and slopped coffee in a cup.
"All the way full, that's right."
I returned to my game with my brother.
"Geesh," he said. "The way business is, you'd think they'd want customers."
"Especially the way he bowls. You watch."
"Doesn't look like much. He took out only pin three."
Tense from the confrontations, I rolled a gutter ball.
"Keep watching. He's warming up."
"He picked off the six. What's his name?"
"Best I can make out, something like Salem."
Earl and his crew wandered in, ambling up to Ray and me.
"Hey Ray, Joe. We want to see that new guy."
"There he is." I drew a split.
Ray said, "He got the two and now the four. Damn, he's picking them off one at a time. Why would he do that?"
"Warm-up exercises," I said, "like a pianist. Keep watching."
"What is he, Mexican?"
"Nobody knows. He doesn't speak Spanish."
"Port-a-gee," said Ned. "I bet he speak Brazil."
"He's not Portuguese," I said.
"Turkish," said Earl. "He's awfully short and dark."
"Might be Eskimo," said Ned. "Nobody knows what they look like under Eskimo clothes."
"Naked," suggested my brother.
"Look at that. He's got three left. What's he doing now?"
"Watch," I said.
Salem, or whatever his name was, switched to a two-handed grip and hurled the ball in an odd cycling motion down the boards. The ball skidded down the lane, slowed, and began spinning like a top. It touched the first pin, knocking it aside, kissed the second, toppling it, and embraced the third, before taking a bow into the pinsetter.
"Wow. What the hell was that!"
"That's English!"
"Keep watching," I said, taking advantage of my brother's distraction.
Salem picked up his ball, rolled his shoulder, and snaked the ball down the lane.
"Whoa. Ain't never seen no one bowl an S-curve," said Ned with reverence.
"He done that on purpose?" asked Earl. "Leaving the one, ten, and seven?"
"Yep. Expect the unexpected."
"Why doesn't he just bowl strikes?"
"It must get boring," I said. "He can bowl thirty or forty in a row."
"Look at that," said my brother. "He took out that one, ten, seven without even trying. Man, why don't we form a team?"
"I was hoping you'd say that."
"Everybody down!"
I heard pops like firecrackers. I pivoted to find two skinny guys waving pistols.
"Nobody move!" One guy punched the front counter cash register and hauled out bills.
The sound of a ball and a strike sounded off to my left. Salem was still bowling.
"Hey, you! Nobody move. That means you!"
"No English," said Liam. "He don't speak English."
"He understand Glock? Hey, moron!" He fired his pistol into the ceiling again.
I spoke up. "Leave him alone. He's foreign."
Looking up, Salem smiled, gave a big wave, and picked his ball out of the return. He addressed the ball and skated to the foul line, bowling a perfect strike.
The gansgta wavered while his buddy emptied the snack bar till and turned toward us. "Everybody, your wallets, watches, and rings. Now! Gimme your bling!" He shot into the ceiling again as the sound of Salem's ball took out another ten.
So much for my K-Mart watch, but I hated giving up my wallet. I'd cashed my paycheck and the rent was due.
"The Mex, too."
"He doesn't understand English," said my brother. "Cops'll be here any minute."
They hesitated, but common sense prevailed.
"Forget him. Let's go."
I heard Salem's ball come up in the ball return. For some reason, I glanced in his direction and watched him scoop two balls and cradle them in the crook of his left arm. He picked up a third ball, spun toward the robbers, and stepped off into his crouch.
As the ball flew from his hand, Salem immediately swung a second ball into motion. The first skidded toward the linoleum, bounced at the metal strip, and smashed one of the crooks behind the knee. The boy went down like he'd been tackled.
The second ball caught the second robber's ankle, causing him to stumble.
Salem never stopped moving forward. He slung the third ball and scooped up a fourth off a rack.
"Ray, Earl," I said, grabbing a ball.
Ned, Earl, and Ray fired balls at them. For a moment, the floor looked more like bocce than bowling. One of Ray's balls caught the downed crook in the ribcage, knocking the wind out of him. His buddy ducked behind the trophy case.
Salem grinned. He switched to his two-handed grip and let fly. The ball shot across the floor, passed the trophy case, and took a sharp left.
"Oww!" screamed the robber. "Mother---" he yelled as Salem's follow-up ball wreaked damage. Realizing he wasn't safe behind the case, he limped out, firing his automatic at Salem, pinging a chip out of the ball Salem held. "No English, huh? Try this, sucker!" He aimed again.
Salem backed down the alley as the gansta steadied. Ray snatched a ball from Ned's hands and slung it toward the gunman, but it clipped one of the seats.
That turned out to be all Salem needed. He ducked and shot his ball up the alley.
The instant it left his hand, I saw it would miss the bad guy. The crook knew it too. As a nasty grin spread across his face, he raised his pistol in that flat stance hoodlums adopt.
Salem's ball nicked the edge of the gutter. It rocketed up the fairing of the ball return and went airborne. As sixteen pounds of ballistic cannonball flew at him, the bad guy gawked, frozen in disbelief.
Salem's delivery was slightly soft. The ball knocked the guy unconscious instead of taking his head off.
Salem broke into a huge smile, imitating the snap of his wrist for us. "Make English," he said.
Most of us stood with our mouths gaping, except Liam's girlfriend. She jumped on the first baddy and battered him with her shoe.
"Damn! That is some English," said Ray, grasping Salem by the elbow and pumping his hand. "Listen, my brother and I are thinking about a bowling team . . ."
Salem absorbed media attention with a shyness that should be a lesson to the rest of us. Liam started a scrapbook with newspaper clippings and he brags to anyone who'll listen how he discovered Salem. Tarpit Lanes added a second trophy case and now a third. Salem's photo hangs above the front counter and rumor has it a framed picture hangs in the women's locker room.
We started our team. My brother liked V-words, suggesting Vikings, Vandals, and Vampires, which the rest of us voted down. I wanted to go with Salem's Wizards, but in the end Salem himself came up with the team name.
English.
Copyright © 2011 by Leigh Lundin
Agatha Award winner Donna Andrews' latest novel, Stork RavingMad, released last July by Minotaur, is another entry in her Meg Langslow series. Booklist called the novel, "a fine blend of academic satire, screwball comedy, and murder." She provides a very different kind of fare for EQMM this time, a tale of the paranormal. We hope even readers who expect rationality in their mysteries will appreciate this one; despite its cast of wizards, ogres, and trolls, its heroine investigates with only human faculties.
"Which one of you's the P.I.?" the tipsy woman asked. She spilled a little of her fruity rum drink on Bart's trouser leg.
"I am," I said. "C.J. Grey, at your service."
She blinked and stared at me. Okay, I look like a fourteen-year-old girl, especially in the Cave's dim lighting, but I was sipping wine. Did she think the bartender would risk the joint's liquor license to serve me?
I liked the gloom---that and the general live-and-let-live attitude. As long as you paid and weren't underage, the bartenders couldn't care less what you did. The other patrons were either too drunk to notice anything strange or too drunk to worry. When they looked at my table, all they saw was an elderly wino, a badly dressed man with the bulk and battered nose of an ex-boxer, and a seven-foot albino transvestite.
Magnus was arguably a wino, but in his occasional moments of sobriety, he was a half-competent wizard. In better light, people might not recognize Bart as a full-grown ogre, but they'd sure as hell know he wasn't from their normal reality. And Taigh wasn't an albino---elves are naturally pale. I wasn't sure about the transvestite part, since in the year the elf had been working as my secretary, I hadn't determined Taigh's gender. Maybe Taigh just had flamboyant taste in clothing.
The woman stared at them briefly. I could almost see the moment when she stopped worrying and chalked up their odd appearances to the rum.
"What can I do for you?" I asked as I studied her. She was plump but pretty. She'd look better in clothes that weren't two sizes too small. Her hair probably wasn't naturally blond.
"I need a P.I.," she said. "I think maybe my husband is . . . you know."
Yeah, I knew. If I ever got my agency on solid financial ground, the first thing I'd do was cut out domestic work. But for now, it kept all of us from starving.
"Maybe you could come around to my office tomorrow," I said.
She looked anxious.
"I'd rather not be seen there," she said.
She'd rather be seen in a dive like the Cave? No accounting for taste.
"Have a seat, then," I said. "Bart and Magnus are my operatives, and Taigh's my administrative assistant. Taigh, would you take notes on my conversation with Ms.---?"
"Mrs. Candee Brown," she said. "That's C-A-N-D-E-E."
Taigh pulled a steno pad and a pen out of the immense leather tote at our feet and began scribbling rapidly, the picture of efficient discretion. Bart tried to look reassuring, and to my relief, he smiled the faint, close-mouthed smile we'd been working on, the smile that did not reveal his razor-sharp, pointed incisors. Magnus just polished off his drink and signaled to the bartender for a refill.
Magnus had time for several refills, and our client accumulated several more paper parasols before she finished telling us, in infinite detail, the sad story of her marriage to Oleg Brown. Honestly, if you marry a bartender who wasn't quite rid of his fifth wife when he started dating you, do you have a right to be surprised when he starts auditioning waitresses for number seven?
But if people always did the sensible thing, P.I.s would have a lot less work. Taigh ran back to the office to fetch a standard contract. Candee handed over a sufficiently large cash retainer, along with blurry photos of Oleg and the cocktail waitress, the waitress's address, and the name of the joint where they both worked.
"We'll get started right away," I assured Mrs. Brown. We watched her stumble up the steps out of the Cave.
"Want me to take the first surveillance shift?" Bart asked.
"Monday will be good enough," I said.
"But you told her we'd start right away," Bart said. I sighed. Ogres can be so literal.
"And we start by checking her out," I said. "We only have her word for it that she's married to this guy and has any kind of right to know about his whereabouts. What if she's some crazed stalker? I'll hit the courthouse Monday."
"I can start a background check on the computer right now," Taigh said.
"I don't mind scoping out the bar on my own time," Bart said.
"Remember, the sooner we start, the sooner we can bill her for more hours," Magnus agreed. "We need the money."
"Okay," I said. I hated it when they were right. "Bart, Magnus---you go over to the bar and start figuring out if there's anything between the husband and the alleged girlfriend. Taigh, do your magic on the keyboard."
Taigh happily waved the three-inch fake talons that somehow didn't interfere with typing.
"What about you, boss?" Bart asked.
"I'll see what I can do tomorrow," I said. "Tonight I'm having dinner with my mother, remember?"
That put a damper on the conversation. Taigh had never met my mother, but had heard all the stories. Bart and Magnus both knew exactly what a horrible time I was in for.
Mother is a sorceress and queen of a minor kingdom in the world where I was born. My complete lack of magical skill is a never-ending source of embarrassment to her. As soon as I came of age, I formally renounced my place in the line of succession and fled here, to the world that had created my idols---Hammett, Chandler, Sayers, and Christie. Growing up, I'd fantasized about them the way kids in this world dreamed about dragons and unicorns.
I brought along Bart, my childhood bodyguard, and Magnus, my tutor. Magnus actually gave me a decent magical education. I know all the standard spells---the words, gestures, props, and ingredients---but they just don't work for me. Spells, potions, charms, curses, amulets---nothing.
Magnus didn't cause my lack of talent---he only diagnosed it. Even so, Mother, irrationally, never quite forgave him. I'm not sure he ever forgave himself. At any rate, his career, never exactly spectacular, stalled and then went down in flames after he became my tutor. He was making a fairly successful attempt to drink himself to death when I finally decided to emigrate to this world.
Actually, he was still doing a pretty good job of it.
"Which reminds me," I said. "Magnus, I assume you'd have mentioned it by now if there was something unusual about our client."
"She's normal," he said. "Human. Nothing hinky." That was one of his main jobs---warning me if I ran into anyone who wasn't exactly an ordinary human. Taigh and Bart could do the same thing sometimes, but not nearly as well as Magnus. And it was surprising how often I needed him to use that talent. In addition to the Chandler and Hammett connections, I'd picked this universe because it was the most mundane one I could find, but every time I turned around I ran into someone from another, more exotic reality. Maybe they sought me out.
Maybe my entourage attracted them. Maybe if I didn't hang around with ogres, elves, and wizards---
I shoved the thought aside. Right now, I needed them, and more important, they needed me.
"Okay, you three get started," I said. "I'll dive in first thing in the morning, assuming I can avoid committing matricide tonight."
"Don't let Her Majesty get you down," Magnus said, as we paused for a moment on the sidewalk outside. "Magic isn't everything. Remember, you have a first-class brain."
A first-class brain that, according to Mother, I'd wasted by filling it full of noir P.I. stories and English manor-house mysteries. And so far I hadn't figured out how to use my superior brain to make more than a meager living. If I couldn't make a go of my agency, we were all in trouble. It wasn't as if any of us knew how to do anything else.
I put on the confident, happy face I always tried to wear when I went home for a visit. The nearby church clock began chiming. I ducked behind a dumpster just in time to hear the seventh and last chime before Mother's teleportation spell hit me.
Dinner was ghastly, but only the familiar, normal sort of ghastly. I politely declined another offer to meet a minor princeling who didn't care if his wife had magical power or not. I smiled politely as my kid sister showed off her latest spells. We were waiting for dessert when my cell phone rang.
"That's weird," I said. "Who'd have thought I could get a signal here?"
I pulled the phone out, and everyone else averted their eyes as if I'd suddenly thrown a dead hedgehog on the table. I checked the caller ID. Bart.
"This better be good," I snapped by way of a greeting.
"No, it's bad," Bart said. "Very bad. Something's happened to Magnus. He's been shot."
Mother was sympathetic, or pretended to be. She sent me back immediately. A few minutes after I materialized behind the dumpster, startling a mangy tom cat, a small paper bag popped into being a couple of yards away. A doggie bag. My stomach churned at the sight, and I left it for the cat or any other scavenger that wanted it.
It was nearly two by the time I made my phone call to the police, and just before dawn I found myself standing in the morgue, looking down at Magnus.
"Yeah," I said. My voice was surprisingly rough. The detective shifted uneasily. He probably thought I was about to cry. I wasn't sure he was wrong. "That's Magnus. Magnus Albertson. He worked for me."
"Sorry for your loss, Ms. Grey," the detective said. "You were close?"
"He was like a father to me," I said. And I realized it was true. My own father had barely stayed around long enough to produce me, which given the way my mother usually treated unfaithful lovers was probably wise. Magnus had been the one who read me bedtime stories, lifted me onto my first pony, and tried, in vain, to share his magic with me.
"What happened?" I took refuge in a businesslike tone.
"Shot twice at close range with a small-caliber weapon," the detective said. He sounded relieved that the threat of tears had vanished. "Probably a twenty-two. Once in the abdomen and once in the throat. He'd have bled out pretty quickly."
He was trying to reassure me that Magnus hadn't suffered much, but I already knew he'd died quickly. If the killer had just left Magnus bleeding in that alley, he probably could have healed himself.
The detective led me back to his office and stuck a cup of coffee into my hands. I don't drink coffee, but I locked my fingers around it. The warmth felt good.
"Can you tell me what he was working on?"
Yeah, I could. I'd stopped by the office on my way to make a copy of my case file. Which hadn't taken long, since it contained only the contract, the photos, and addresses Candee Brown had given me, and a few articles Taigh had found online that mentioned the bar where Oleg and his girlfriend worked.
The folder was so thin the detective looked inside to make sure it wasn't empty.
"Not much here," he said.
"She's been a client for about ten hours," I said. "How much could we find in such a short time?"
"Maybe your partner found something," he said. "Then again, more likely his murder had nothing to do with your case. In a neighborhood like that . . ." He shrugged. "Thanks anyway," he added. "Can we give you a ride home?"
"Some friends are waiting outside," I said. "Thanks anyway."
To my surprise, I hadn't lied. Bart's battered van was waiting down the street. He and Taigh were in the front seat.
"What the hell happened?" I asked as I climbed into the back.
"Magnus got shot," Bart said.
"I know that," I snapped.
"I was parked in front of the bar, waiting to see if they left that way," Bart said. "Magnus went to do the back door."
I nodded. By doing the back door, I assumed he meant that Magnus was going to cast some kind of spell on it. A ward to notify them if the husband or the girlfriend left through the back door, or maybe some subtle spell to make them disinclined to use it. This wasn't the time to lecture Bart and Taigh about the stupidity of using methods that were alien to this world and, more important, couldn't be taken to a mundane court.
"He didn't come back," Bart continued, "and I waited a long time. Then I saw the police and the ambulance go by. I asked someone what was happening, and they said someone had shot an old bum in the alley. I figured they meant Magnus."
"What should we do now?" Taigh asked.
I knew the smart thing to do was mind our own business and let the cops solve Magnus's murder. But I rebelled at the thought. They killed Magnus. Whoever they were. As a wizard, he may have been a burned-out, gin-soaked has-been, but he was my burned-out, gin-soaked has-been, and I resented like hell that someone had knocked him off.
"Okay," I said. "We operate on the assumption that Magnus's murder had something to do with our case. Bart, you do surveillance on the husband. I'll stake out the girlfriend's place. Taigh, find out everything you can about those two."
"Right, boss," they said, almost in unison.
They probably thought I knew what I was doing.
I lucked out. Across from the girlfriend's apartment building was a small coffee shop with a free wireless connection and almost no customers. I fetched my laptop and some books from my trunk, snagged a table in the front window, and settled in to give a convincing imitation of a student trying to pound out a term paper in a hurry.
About noon, Bart called me.
"I think we've got problems, boss," he said.
"Tell me something I don't already know."
"New problems," he said. "You got your cell phone? I could send you a picture from mine."
There was the predictable delay while Bart fumbled with buttons that were not designed for fingers as large as his. Then a picture came into view on the tiny screen. It was tilted to the left and slightly fuzzy, but still a lot better picture of Candee's husband than the one she had given us. I could see what Bart meant.
"Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?" I asked.
"Yeah," Bart said. "He's a troll."
I studied the photo. Natives of this world probably just saw a large, heavyset man with Neanderthal features and overlarge teeth. I wondered what Candee saw in Oleg. I could guess what he saw in the aptly named Candee---to a troll, a plump young human was better than filet mignon and lobster.
I sent the picture to Taigh with orders to focus the computer search on Mr. Brown's past.
About two p.m., I got a call from my client.
"The police came to talk to me!" she said. "Thank goodness Oleg was out when they got here! What's going on?"
"One of my operatives was killed last night while following your husband," I said.
A gasp. A few moments of silence.
"Oh my God!" she exclaimed. "Do you think I'm in danger?"
Thanks a lot for your sympathy, Candee. She babbled hysterically for several minutes, and I made appropriate reassuring noises while trying to decide whether to spill what we'd learned about her husband. Finally I made an appointment to see her in the morning. I'd sleep on the question.
Or maybe I'd just continue to fret about it while watching the girlfriend's door. Sooner or later she had to come out. Or come home.
A patrol car pulled up and two uniformed officers accompanied a suit-clad man into the building. They came out again a few minutes later, and I recognized the suit as the detective I'd spoken to. They left, but it only took me half an hour to spot the car with the surveillance team.
The day wore on. By nightfall, the wait staff were definitely giving me the evil eye, even though I'd consumed several gallons of coffee and at least a dozen pastries. But at last my luck changed. The front door of the apartment building opened and the tall, slender, but shapely figure of the troll's girlfriend emerged.
I glanced at my watch, pretended to realize I was late for an appointment, and began throwing my things into my laptop case.
The girlfriend strolled to the corner and waited while a couple of cars passed.
I paused in the vestibule of the coffee shop and scanned the community bulletin board there, as if fascinated by the poster for the lost miniature schnauzer.
The girlfriend crossed the street and turned in the direction of the coffee shop. I shifted so my back was to the door and adjusted my hair in the mirror tiles that flanked the doorway in a vain attempt to make the vestibule seem larger. In a few seconds, I saw the girlfriend's reflection as she passed the coffeehouse doors.
She was a vampire.
There's a grain of truth behind the old wives' tale that you can't see a vampire's reflection in a mirror. You can see them all right, but the reflection never quite looks normal. I wasn't sure what gave her away---a flash of fang behind the full lips, an overly hollow cheekbone, or perhaps a hint of too-deep pallor beneath the perfect makeup. But suddenly I saw and could never unsee.
Just then I spotted the cops from the parked car following her. I let a few more seconds pass, then stepped outside, leaned against the side of the building, and pulled out my cell phone as if I'd paused to give my full attention to my call.
It would help if I actually called someone. I called Taigh.
"Have you found out anything about the girlfriend?" I asked.
Taigh hadn't. Another nondescript sedan pulled up in front of the vampire, and the detective got out.
"She's not what she seems," I said into the phone.
"Another troll?"
"A vamp."
"Oh my."
Yes, they were arresting the girlfriend. If Magnus were alive, and here, I'd have been tempted to break my own rule and have him cast a spell so we could hear what the cop and the vamp were saying. But if Magnus were alive, they wouldn't be arresting her.
"What could a troll and a vampire possibly have in common?" Taigh asked. "Do you think they killed Magnus?"
"I don't know," I said. "Seems unlikely. Neither a troll nor a vampire exactly needs a gun to kill someone."
"But if they were trying to remain unobtrusive?"
"Yes, tearing people limb from limb and draining them of blood are both pretty conspicuous ways of killing," I said. "Stuff like that tends to get the cops' attention. They probably see enough shooting deaths to get a little blasé about them."
"I'll see what I can find out," Taigh said.
I kept the phone to my ear after Taigh hung up and pretended to be talking on it until the drama of the girlfriend's arrest had run its course. Then I headed back to my own neighborhood. I had a solitary dinner at my favorite cheap Vietnamese dive and went up to my office.
Taigh was in the outer room shutting down the computer when I got there.
"Find anything?"
"Lots," Taigh said, waving at the door to my private office. I could see a two-inch stack of papers on my desk. "And take a gander at this."
Taigh turned on our little office TV, fiddled with the TiVo remote, and the familiar face of the local CBS news anchor filled the screen. Taigh hadn't turned the sound up, but I could still tell what was going on. The screen behind the anchor held a grainy enlargement of Magnus's driver's license photo, and the picture then cut to Candee's husband, handcuffed, being eased into a squad car.
"My sources say they found the gun that killed Magnus in his car, and an earring belonging to the girlfriend in the alley," Taigh said. "Looks like the troll and the vamp made Magnus and decided to shut him down before he blew the whistle on whatever they were up to."
I wanted to ask, "Blow the whistle to whom?" It wasn't as if this world had some magical tribunal where you could report the sort of mischief that a troll and a vampire might get into---separately or, worse, together. Almost everyone in this world who knew that trolls and vampires even existed was here to get away from such tribunals.
I didn't think much of the police's chance of holding on to their suspects, either. Once they were out on bail, both would probably flit to other cities, if not other worlds. If the jail's cells weren't bat-proof, the vamp might not even need bail. And I didn't like the idea of Magnus's killers going unpunished.
Taigh paused, head cocked to one side, and then glanced toward the door. Which meant that I knew, when the knock came, that our visitor wasn't from around here.
Taigh opened the door, and a troll walked in. With typical troll rudeness, he didn't even bother to introduce himself.
"My brother didn't kill your wizard," he said. "And for what it's worth, I don't like that leech he's been hanging around with, but I bet she didn't do it, either."
"I know they didn't," I said. Taigh probably thought I was lying to get rid of the troll. I realized, to my surprise, that I wasn't.
"Then who did?"
"I don't know yet."
"So what are you gonna do about it?" the troll asked.
"I don't know that either."
"What do you mean you don't know?" the troll shouted. "You gotta do something! If you hadn't taken the bimbo's case, none of this would have happened! If---"
"If your brother and his bloodsucking girlfriend hadn't been planning to dine on my client, she wouldn't have hired me," I shouted back. "And my wizard wouldn't be dead and your brother and the vamp wouldn't be in jail. I get that part. And I'm going to do something about it---I just haven't figured out what. So get lost."
The troll backed away from the heat of my anger. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a soiled business card, and handed it to me. It was a card from a motorcycle shop that, rumor had it, catered to gangs and thugs.
"You can leave a message for me there. Say it's for Knut."
Which wasn't his name, of course, but the management of the bike shop would know who I meant.
"I'll let you know if I find out anything," I said.
"Or just call me if you want to talk," Knut said. "Always happy to talk to a pretty lady like you."
He smiled. He'd clearly mastered the same tooth-concealing smile I'd been trying to teach Bart.
"Get lost, Knut," I said. "I'm too small to be more than an appetizer, and too tough to be appetizing."
Knut shrugged and left.
"He'll be back," Taigh said. "Want me to stick around?"
"I'd rather you followed him," I said. "Keep an eye on him."
"Right, boss," Taigh said.
I went into my office and sat at my desk, reading through the stack of papers Taigh had left for me. Candee was right to be worried. Her husband and the vampire were old friends, and if you knew what to look for, you could probably deduce that they had done in his previous five wives.
But I didn't have a single shred of evidence that would stand up in court. Not in this world. Going to the police would be futile.
Someone knocked on my door. I hesitated. I felt surprisingly vulnerable with no one to warn me if my visitor turned out to be something other than human. So I did what other human P.I.s do. I got my gun out of the desk drawer and slipped it into my pocket before opening the door.
I relaxed a little when I saw it was only Candee. The one normal human in this whole case.
"Hello, Candee," I said.
"I couldn't wait till tomorrow," she said. "May I come in?"
"Sure." I stepped back and followed her into my office. She sat down in my guest chair, looking around as if she expected something to jump out of the shadows at her.
"I was about to call you anyway," I said, sitting down behind my desk.
"I'm in danger," she said. "I can feel it. I'm leaving tonight."
"I can see why you feel that way," I said. "And leaving town's probably a good idea. The situation's more complicated than you realize."
"You've found out something?"
I hesitated. I sat there, staring at Candee, and wishing she'd waited till morning. I hadn't yet figured out how to explain the danger she was in, at least not in terms a person like Candee---a normal person---could understand.
And then the pieces fell into place.
"Of course," I said aloud. "The only normal person in the case."
"What's that?" Candee asked.
"Never mind," I said. "Okay, here goes. Your husband's a troll."
"Well, I already told you that," she said. ''The two-timing jerk."
"No, I mean really a troll," I said. "As in lurks under bridges muttering 'Fee, fi, fo fum.'"
"Ha, ha," Candee said. I could see she didn't get it.
"The bad news is that I can't find any record that he divorced any of his first five wives."
"The rat!" she exclaimed.
"But don't worry," I said. "He probably ate them, so odds are you're not a polygamist."
"You have a sick sense of humor," she said. "This isn't a joke. When Oleg gets out of jail, he's going to come after me!"
"He probably will," I said. "And he'll probably be pretty steamed that you tried to frame him for a murder you committed."
"Me?" She drew back as if from a snake. "You're crazy. What makes you think I did it?"
"Your husband's a troll, and his girlfriend's a vampire," I said. "Both dangerous to be around, even for a wizard like Magnus. And Magnus would have known that the second he saw them. But you're just an ordinary human being like me."
"You're insane," she said.
"Magnus wasn't much of a gumshoe," I went on, "but he was too good a magician to be caught like that. He'd never have followed a troll or a vampire down that alley---but he'd have gone there with you, Candee. He was just dumb enough for that. He'd have looked you up and down and licked his lips and gone grinning from ear to ear."
Actually, he probably wouldn't have unless she was waving a bottle of bourbon at him, but how often does a private eye get such a perfect chance to paraphrase Hammett?
Alas, Candee didn't seem to appreciate my literary allusion.
"This is awful," she said. She reached down, picked up her purse, and began fumbling in it. "I wanted a competent P.I., and I manage to hire a lunatic! This is---"
"Drop the purse, Candee," I said. "If you need a tissue, there's a box on my desk. And if you have any thoughts of using that gun in your purse, the one that matches the one you planted in your husband's car---don't even try it."
I showed her my own LadySmith .38.
"Boss?"
We both jumped. It was Bart. I was glad to see him. Candee pretended to be.
"Thank goodness you're here," she said, with much eyelash fluttering. "She's crazy, and she pulled a gun on me and---"
"Search her purse, Bart," I said. "She probably has a gun there. If she does, take it away from her. Carefully. No fingerprints."
Bart was wide-eyed with astonishment, but fortunately, ogres are not only very literal but very good at following orders. His hand was too big to fit into her purse, so he had to dig around with one stubby finger. He held up a cheap Saturday night special.
"Unload it, give me the bullets, and then put it back in her purse,"
"You can't prove anything," Candee said as she watched Bart follow my orders. "If you go to the cops with all this crap about trolls and vampires, they'll lock you up, not me."
"You're right," I said. "Which is why I'm asking you to turn yourself in."
She snorted.
"Tell them it was an accident," I said. "Tell them it was self-defense, that you thought he was about to assault you. Tell whatever damned lies you like. But tell them you did it."
"And what'll you do if I say no?"
"Nothing," I said. "Please do it."
She probably misinterpreted the pleading note in my voice. She simpered a little, no doubt thinking she held all the cards.
"If you don't turn yourself in," I continued, "I won't lift a finger to protect you."
"I don't need your protection," Candee said. "Once I leave town, I won't be in any danger."
The phone rang. Taigh.
"Boss, he didn't go far. He's hiding in the alley across the street from our office, watching the door."
"That's fine," I said. "You can stop watching him now. Come on back to the office."
"Boss?"
I hung up.
"Last chance," I said to Candee. "I can call the police for you if you like."
"Forget it," she said. She picked up her purse, tucked the gun inside, batted her eyes one more time at Bart, and tripped out. I could hear the tap-tap-tap of her high heels down the hall to the elevator.
"Boss?" Bart asked.
"I'll explain later," I said. I went over to the window and stared down at the street below. I saw Candee emerge from the front door, and almost imagined I could hear the tap-tap-tap of her shoes as she walked down the street. I saw a large shadow emerge from the alley. Knut was looking up at me.
He tilted his head as if asking a question. I nodded once. Knut turned and hurried off in the same direction Candee had taken.
"Boss?"
Taigh had returned. Or maybe Taigh had been there for a while, watching me stare out the window.
"Go home," I said. "I don't want to talk about it now."
I finally told them what I'd done the next day. They were fine with it, of course. But I didn't expect an elf and an ogre to understand my guilt. I'd turned over a human woman, one of my own species, to certain death at the hands of a monster. The fact that she was another kind of monster should have made me feel better, but it didn't.
The police didn't share my conviction that Candee was the killer. I couldn't blame them. The only really convincing evidence I had would have made me sound like a lunatic if I'd shared it with them. Eventually I convinced them I knew nothing about Candee's whereabouts.
A few nights later, I was about to close up shop and head for the Cave, where I'd been spending way too much time, when Taigh and Bart sidled into my office.
"Can it wait till tomorrow?" I asked.
"I don't think so," Taigh said. "I just came back to make sure I'd turned off my computer and found---well, you need to see it."
It was Magnus. His body, at least, sitting on one of the two thrift shop armchairs in the end of the outer office that served as a reception area.
"I thought you said he was dead," Bart said.
"I did," I said. "He was."
"Is." Taigh took a step back and grimaced. "Can't you tell by the smell?"
"Wasn't he in the morgue?" I asked. "How did his body get back here?"
"Good questions, boss," Bart said.
Though I didn't think anyone was about to answer them, unfortunately, because I had others even better. Like who brought Magnus here, and why had they propped him in a chair in the corner of my waiting room?
I spotted something attached to the lapel of Magnus's rumpled tweed jacket. I stepped closer and peered at it. It was a folded gift tag made of lavender foil and flecked with silver glitter. A thin silver thread attached it to one of the buttonholes.
I opened it and read it aloud.
"To Cassandra, with love, from Mother."
"Oh, dear," Taigh said. "Have I forgotten some occasion?"
"That's your mother's idea of a present?" Bart said. "A smelly old stiff?"
Just then Magnus moved. His hands gripped the chair arms. I stepped back. His eyes flew open. I stared into them and what I saw made me seriously consider matricide.
"Oh, great," I muttered.
"He's alive?" Bart said.
"Not exactly," I said. "He's a zombie."
"Eeuw!" Taigh exclaimed.
Magnus's eyes shifted to Taigh, and I found myself suddenly very glad he wasn't looking at me any longer. I'd never actually seen a zombie in the flesh before, but I knew about them. Ironically, it was Magnus who had insisted I learn about them to begin with.
At least he could still appreciate a good brain, if only in a culinary sense.
"What are we going to do with him?" Taigh asked.
"I don't know," I said. "I now very definitely need a drink. We're going to the Cave."
"We can't just leave him here," Taigh said.
"No, we can't," I said. "Come on, Magnus. Cave time."
Magnus followed readily enough. And no one at the Cave seemed to notice the difference.
I ordered a round for everyone. Including Magnus, because the bartender knew us well enough that he'd think it weird if Magnus didn't have a glass in front of him. I was surprised to find Magnus still remembered how to lift a glass. Surprised, and at first relieved---a Magnus who still remembered how to drink would look a lot more natural, I thought.
"This isn't going to work," Bart said. "We poured a whole bottle of that Aqua Velva stuff on him, and he still reeks."
"Your nose is more sensitive than most humans' noses," I said. "And he should improve over time as he dessicates a bit."
"And he's got a drinking problem, too," Taigh said.
I glanced over at Magnus. He didn't look drunk. He was watching the other patrons with a level of interest he'd never shown before. The other patrons and me. Contemplating how tasty our brains would be, no doubt, and waiting till he thought we wouldn't notice before trying to abscond with one.
He didn't seem the least bit interested in Bart or Taigh, though. Which was fascinating, and possibly useful. Maybe I could still count on him to spot any non-humans who came our way.
I sighed, lifted my Tom Collins, and took a couple of long swallows.
Magnus imitated me. A small stream of bourbon squirted out the bullet hole in the left side of his neck, and then another out of his abdomen. I don't know what people thought of the top leak, but from the side, the bottom one looked as if he was peeing himself.
"See?" Taigh said.
"Can't hold his liquor," I said, nodding. "We'll have to do something about that. Meanwhile---"
"Which one of you's the P.I.?"
A tall, saturnine man in a trenchcoat stood by our table. Magnus glanced up, and then went back to staring at the taller of the two waitresses. Clearly our visitor was no normal human. I'd have told him to get lost, but we needed the money.
"I am," I said. "C.J. Grey. What can I do for you?"
Copyright © 2011 by Donna Andrews
A true citizen of the world, Sunny Singh was born in Varanasi, India, was graduated from Brandeis University in 1990 with a degree in English and American Literature, and went on to earn a master's degree in Spanish Language, Literature, and Culture from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a PhD from the Universitat de Barcelona. She is a winner of Spain's Mar de Letras Prize and now lives in London, whereshe teaches creative writing at London Metropolitan University.
Mrs. Sharma waits for her husband to come home every day. Returning from the college where she teaches, she takes up her usual post on an easy chair on her veranda. The chair is placed to give her a clear view beyond the metal grille gate right up to the end of the street. She will see him when he turns up the street to walk towards the house.
When she looks back at her life, she has done nothing but wait. First, for her father's olive green uniform and the toys he would bring her on his infrequent trips home. And then for the blue of her husband's Air Force colours. She married her husband because her father said that Air Force officers ran a lower risk of getting killed in battle. Back when the country was fighting three wars in a decade, these were considerations that mattered to a young girl of a marriageable age.
But then the country went to war again. Soon after, the telegram arrived. Her husband wasn't dead, though. Air Force officers don't die that frequently in battle. But he was missing, presumed taken prisoner. So she waited.
Then came liberation---of a country, of prisoners of war, of enemy soldiers in our jails. And still she waited. There was no liberation for her. Every day, she watches for that blue uniform to walk up the street, holding a bunch of flowers or a bag of jalebis. Or even empty-handed. And she waits still, as she has every day, for the past thirty years.
Far across the border, Squadron Leader A. K. Sharma had allegedly escaped from the military prison that had been his home for the past thirty years. He had even apparently called the embassy, although no one could imagine how.
"If he tells me where he is, I will put him in my car and drive him across the border," L. "Matty" Mathan, formerly a captain in the Indian army and presently the Consul for Passports and Visas at the Indian High Commission, whispered to his wife.
"Will that be appropriate?" Anita's mouth was close against Matty's ear, her breath tickling the sensitive skin there. He felt an involuntary sexual response as they sat on the edge of the bathtub, the shower running behind them to hide the sounds of their conversation from the inevitable bugs.
"Probably not. Smashing through the border is probably an international incident, especially if you are driving a diplomatic car." Matty smiled wryly, slipping his arm around Anita's waist. "But he is a serviceman. Damn it, we even served in the same sector. . . ." His whisper sounded loud.
Anita put her head on his shoulder. The phone call in the afternoon had revived memories she had buried deep inside: of Matty going to war, of standing in the doorway for interminable hours, of her stomach hollowing at the sight of every army jeep. The inevitable prayer: God, don't let them stop at her house. And then the guilt when the solemn officer halted at a neighbour's house instead. She would wait for confirmation and then gather herself. Another soldier was dead. Another messenger of death had visited, leaving devastation in its wake. She, along with the other wives, would go to help clean up the debris. And Matty? Of daredevil reputation, and no news? She never expected a letter from him. Instead she scanned the casualty lists in the newspapers every morning, looking for friends and acquaintances. And almost casually, noncommittally, for Matty.
Decades ago, she had buried the guilt of seeing him home safe when so many others grieved still or waited. Buried that sour emotion deep under the joy and relief. She had learned to soothe and calm, and only be afraid alone, late at night, when Matty lay breathing heavily, asleep next to her. Matty no longer went to war, she knew. Instead they played childish games with listening devices and shower-muffled conversations. She doesn't mind whispering over the running water or loud music. Snuggled close together, their cheeks rubbing together, hot breath rustling in their hair and caressing their ears, their practical conversations have the romance of furtive erotic interludes.
But a single phone call resuscitated the dead fears. War was back and she could not keep Matty out of it.
With an effort, she calmed the butterflies in her stomach and slid her hand into Matty's. "I think you should start looking for another job. This will kill off your career completely." She smiled at her thin joke as Matty pulled her tight in his arms.
"Thank you," he whispered. "It could be a trap, of course."
"Because of the delegation that came? For the prisons?"
"Yes. And because Mrs. Sharma came for dinner here."
"But only for two hours. She needed her own people," Anita blurted, her voice rising in protest. Matty put his fingers on her lips.
"Yes, service people," she hissed. "After all, it's enemy territory. Looking for her husband after so long. How could they . . ." She trailed off.
She had known how to cope with the open war, where soldiers went off and never came back, where the enemy was identifiable and placed in clearly demarcated sectors, where the news of battles came on the radio, and casualty lists were published in the daily newspapers. But this new war she didn't understand. With bugs, and unofficial assaults, kidnappings, and secret tortures that didn't meet international conventions. She tried to remember what she could of that dinner with Mrs. Sharma.
She remembered the roly-poly woman who had come with a delegation of families to check the prisons. With grey streaks in her neatly bound hair, a cotton sari that seemed crumpled even at breakfast. Anita couldn't believe Mrs. Sharma was an army wife. Such a frump! Then she had caught a glimpse of the sad, droopy eyes and scolded herself for her thoughts. If Matty hadn't returned, she wondered, would she have grown into Mrs. Sharma too? Aged before her time, ravaged and continually bereaved?
Matty hadn't wanted her to meet the delegation. "I don't want you to be sad, Anita," he had told her over dinner. She had known he was right.
From Islamabad, Mrs. Sharma and the delegation had gone to Quetta, and Multan, and Karachi, with Matty always as their guide. They had met innumerable prisoners, spoken to every possible person, searching for their relatives who had been seen in POW camps at the time of the war, and had never come home.
Matty had returned frazzled and silent from the trips. He told her nothing of what he had seen. But he had had nightmares for weeks, thrashed about in his sleep, his breathing harsh and ragged, his teeth clenched (by training, she noted) to prevent any words or cries. At times, he had moaned, a hollow sound full of horrors unknown to her that revisited his mind as he slept. In the mornings, his eyes were bloodshot and bleak.
Anita had wanted to ask him what he had seen. But nothing could be said until their drive up to Murree. There, deep amongst the fir trees, outside the embassy-rented bungalow, where bugs couldn't be placed and their shadowers were over a hundred yards away, Matty had told her.
"Oh God, that was a risk," she had whispered, shocked and frightened. "What if they find your message? What makes you think they will even let him keep the magazine?"
"It was stupid, I know. But I am sure I met Sharma back in 'sixty-five. We flew out of his base."
"But you don't even know if it was him . . . and what if we get PNG-ed?" Anita had argued. "Or even if he will understand what you wrote. He might not even remember. Even I don't remember your call sign from that war. And I am married to you. How could you?"
"I can't tell you why. There are no guarantees anyway, but there is always a chance."
She had simply buried her head in his shoulder, holding him tightly as he stroked her hair.
"Will you mind very much if we got PNG-ed?" he asked after a while. "You can leave your things with the mission, you know. They will send it home after us. It isn't like closing down for war." She had laughed against his scratchy green sweater and called him silly.
Standing close together, held by the cold mountain air and scent of pines, they could have been in any of the many cantonment towns they had called home in the first years of their marriage. But as he spoke, Matty had to remind himself that they were both in enemy territory. And Anita was his only companion, his only ally. She needed to know, had a right to know. So he left nothing out, telling her about the stench, the filth, and the pain. About men who lived within the high walls and had retreated into insanity for relief. Of prisoners who couldn't believe that he could be from their homeland and wanted proof, even as they dismissed each explanation as an elaborate ruse. About the man his own age: a man with ashen skin stretched taut over what must once have been handsome features, who had collapsed at the sight of Mrs. Sharma and wept dryly into her sari, clutching the cotton in his fists. And finally, about Abu, the tall Pathan.
Abu was the guard at the Multan jail and watched implacably from a distance as Matty and the delegation painstakingly went through the lists of foreign prisoners. On the third day, as Matty left the building, he had spoken up: "Janab captain sahib, weren't you in the Sialkot sector? With the special-ops unit?"
Matty had paused, put his briefcase on the ground next to Abu, who stood guard along the side of the corridor, and crouched to adjust his shoelace. He thought for only an instant before answering. His cover story, in any case, included a past in the army. "Yes, you were there too?"
"Taken prisoner after battle with the Sikh Paltan." Abu had grinned.
"We treated you well, Abu miyan, didn't we?" Matty had said, picking up his briefcase. "Now help us find our men." There had been time for no further words as the jail superintendent accompanying the delegation came up, and Matty had to walk on.
The next day, as he entered the prison gates, he looked for Abu but couldn't find him. In the courtyard where the foreign prisoners had been assembled, he tried to get information about each of them even as the delegation members walked amongst them with time-worn photographs of their loved ones.
"Have you seen this man," they repeated over and over again, holding out black-and-white fragments of memory before unseeing, haunted, terrified eyes. Each time a little flicker of hope would flash through them, slicing through the pain of the years, through the torture of the not-knowing. The huddled figure before them would stare blankly, or sometimes flash a frightened glance at the guards, before shaking his head. "We don't know."
From the rickety table the prison authorities had provided for him to take notes about the prisoners, Matty kept an eye on the delegation, marvelling at their resilience, their determination. He had been concerned about bringing Mrs. Sharma, the only woman amongst the kin, into the prison. Would the prisoners jeer at her, or turn nasty, he had wondered. Instead, her pale, crumpled sari, her soft voice, her gentle demeanour seemed to calm them. No one spoke to her, he noticed, simply shaking their heads as she held out her husband's photograph before them.
She worried him, this woman with her soft voice and sad eyes. "There is no hope," he wanted to yell at her, shake her by the shoulders. "Look around you, your husband would be better dead than living such horror," he would scream at her mentally. "There is no hope!" But then he would think of Anita, his photograph in hand, searching, continually searching, and ice would grip his insides. It would take all his control to put aside that image and concentrate on the papers before him.
The prisoners would watch her continuously as Mrs. Sharma moved around the courtyard. Even when they refused to speak to her, refused to look directly at her when she spoke to them. Hungrily, furtively, they followed her with their eyes. Once Matty began to wonder what she reminded them of, but then resolutely stopped his mind from going down that particular path. They watched her, pathetic, hungry, sometimes wistful. That is why no one was prepared for Prisoner Number 351.
Mrs. Sharma had held back her anguish for days. When the offer to travel with the delegation, to look for Abhayan, had been made, it had seemed a beacon of hope. If not Abhayan, then at least she could bring back some news of what had happened to him. All she had was a report from the Times of India, January 12, 1972, a cutting folded and refolded many times, and photocopied again and again, with a list of prisoners of war in Pakistan's jails. Her husband's name was seventeenth on the list.
And from three years later, a photograph from an American magazine on human rights in jails around the world. Behind the barbed wire, surrounded by starved men in tattered clothing, she was sure, was her husband. The fifth one from the right, pushed up against the barbed wire, his right palm held outward. She had gotten the photograph enlarged and seen what she knew she would. On the inside of his wrist, just under the barbed wire, visible in the enlargement, was a small, blue, V-shaped tattoo. V! For her name.
"Now I am branded. Are you quite convinced that I won't be unfaithful," Abhayan had joked at the Dusshera fair when he had gotten the wizened Gujarati hag to imprint her initial on his skin forever. It had to be the same tattoo, even though the photographer who had enlarged the print had expressed his doubts. "Madam, it could be a printer's smudge. . . ."
"In an American magazine?" She had been incredulous. "Do you know how high their standards are? It isn't like our magazines here."
That tattoo had sustained her over the years, always hoping for his return, always hoping he would come back.
But the past few days had shaken her. Half-mad men collected in dirty courtyards, wearing nothing but filthy, tattered rags. She had seen their food---dry rotis with some nondescript liquid. Abhayan would hate it here, she thought, with his finicky taste in clothing and his gargantuan appetite for food. She knew that the prisoners shared other details with Captain Mathan. (Mr. Mathan, she corrected herself. She couldn't give him away.) She had heard snatches of conversations, half-sobbed details about beatings and starvation as they spoke haltingly, and steadfastly refused to hear more. Once she caught herself wishing that Abhayan were dead instead of living in such an awful place, but she stopped herself. Just in time.
Then the incident with the prisoner happened. Prisoner Number 351. His right arm placed in a filthy, stained plaster cast, his eyes haunted and hopeful. She had already showed him Abhayan's picture dozens of times and he had never reacted, not even with a nod. "Please just see it. His name is Abhayan Sharma. Squadron Leader Abhayan Sharma. Have you seen him?" she had pleaded, holding the photograph before him. "He is my husband. Abhayan Sharma. Have you heard that name?"
He had never responded, staring ahead with unseeing eyes. "Have you heard that name?" she had repeated countless times. They had been told that prisoner number 351 was mad, had been so for years. He never spoke to anyone, never cried or moaned. He walked slowly with the other prisoners, day after day, when they were led into the courtyard. And once there, he would settle where he was told and withdraw into some world deep inside himself. Once, on the first day, his eyes had briefly flickered up to Matty. Then he had dropped back into his private, isolated world.
On the fifth day, Mrs. Sharma had decided not to stop to wave the faded photograph at Prisoner Number 351. Hesitating slightly, she walked past him, kneeling before the next man, asking her usual, unanswerable question, "Squadron Leader Abhayan Sharma . . . have you seen him? Heard that name?"
She never noticed when Prisoner Number 351 pulled himself to his feet, trembling and shuddering as if unaccustomed to the effort. Painfully, slowly, he stumbled towards Mrs. Sharma, who was still kneeling some yards away. With an enormous effort, he lunged towards her, trying to cover the distance with an awkward leap. A strangled, half-wild sound tore free from his throat.
Matty, looking up from his notes only at the sound of the animal moan that broke the silence in the courtyard, sprang to his feet. "Careful, ma'am." At his cry, the guards broke into a run, moving swiftly from their posts by the iron gates that led away from the courtyard.
But Prisoner Number 351 had fallen to the ground near Mrs. Sharma, his outstretched hand reaching out to grab an edge of her sari. Harsh moans ripped from his throat, his gnarled fingers clutching at the cotton fabric.
Matty reached the couple first, trying to release the stunned woman from the writhing man. Bending down to pull away the clutched sari, he saw the tears coursing down the grimy cheeks. Stunned by the raw pain in eyes that had held nothing for the past days, he paused.
In that instant, the guards were upon them, struggling to pull the prisoner away, hitting his back and hands with their boots and batons. Putting his arm around Mrs. Sharma's shoulders, Matty tried ineffectually to stop the beatings. "Leave it, chhodo, stop it." Until the ordering voice barked out from his throat: "Stop! Bas!" The guards, instinctively reacting to the authority in his voice, stepped back.
"Are you all right?" Matty asked Mrs. Sharma, self-consciously withdrawing the arm that he had protectively flung around her shoulders.
She nodded, her eyes full of tears. With a visible effort she tried to steady herself.
Bending down again, Matty tried to release the folds of her sari that were still clutched in the unbending fingers. Prisoner Number 351 was silent now, the arm with the filthy cast pulled protectively against his chest. Tears still ran down his cheeks. But his eyes were full of an unspoken hunger.
"Please, let go," Matty whispered, moving his fingers firmly over the fist. Prisoner Number 351 wavered for an instant, his eyes devouring the sari-clad figure. Then the fiery eyes grew dim, focussing at a point in the far distance. His shoulders slumped as his fingers uncurled. And he withdrew again into a world of his own.
Matty waited still, searching the grimy, still face before him. "Who are you?" he murmured. But the prisoner had receded far into his inner cell.
"If you don't mind," Mrs. Sharma's voice was soft behind him, "I think I will return to the hotel, Mr. Mathan."
"Yes, of course. Jain here will take you back. . . ." Matty spoke hurriedly, pointing towards his assistant from the embassy. "You will understand that I still have to speak to some of them." He couldn't bear to look into her eyes. He had always suspected that sorrow was an infinite well, but the extent of pain in Prisoner Number 351's eyes had shaken him. "You will excuse me, please. I will see you in the evening," he blurted.
"Yes, of course, thank you," she murmured, drawing her sari close around her.
After Mrs. Sharma left, Matty's job was nearly impossible. Prisoner Number 351 had returned to his catatonic state, staring blankly before him, a secret new smile curving around his chapped lips. The other prisoners seemed terrified, or just bewildered, and spoke garbled words, unable to answer the simplest of questions. With frustration mounting, Matty explained again and again, speaking slowly and patiently in Hindi and English, that he would not be returning the next day. Any and all information that the prisoners wished to share with him had to be given that very afternoon. But the inmates were confused, some refusing to speak at all while others rambled wildly or sang tunelessly.
As the evening approached, defeated by the din, Matty began to pack up, putting away his notes. He was about to close his briefcase when he saw the magazine that had come from Delhi in the diplomatic bag. Later, when he thought of it or even tried to explain to Anita, he could find no explanation for what he did next.
Quickly, in the guise of making some final notes, he scribbled his phone number on an inner page of the magazine. And instead of his name, he wrote, "Sparrow, 22."
Extracting the magazine, he closed his briefcase with a snap. Walking up to the prisoners lined up at the wall, he found Prisoner Number 351. With a smile, he pushed the magazine, now rolled up, between the plaster-covered hand and the painfully thin chest. "Let him keep it," he told the guards sternly, his officer voice back in place.
"Yes, sir," one of them saluted. Matty walked back to the rickety table and picked up his briefcase with his right hand and gathered the stack of folders he had made on the prisoners in his left.
At the main exit, Abu stood guard. "Salaam aleikum, Captain sahib," he saluted cheerfully.
"Could you carry these to the car, Abu miyan?" Matty held out the folders. Abu accepted them with alacrity, marching alongside to the embassy car that waited in the parking lot, beyond the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the prison.
"Some little help would be good, Abu miyan," Matty muttered. "These men were soldiers, and soldiers should be treated with honour."
Abu nodded in response, smiling widely.
Defeated, Matty reached the car. He turned to receive the folders from Abu and got in. Abu stood aside, waiting to close the door behind him, bending forward slightly.
"Captain sahib, look for your men in the army prison at Muzaffarabad. Here in Multan you will not find them. Except on the other side of the jail and there you can't go. Khuda hafiz, sahib," he murmured.
Matty stared at the tall Pathan looming over the car. Then he smiled as Abu saluted crisply.
Ignoring his orders from home, his training for his present job, and for the first time in two decades after he had given up his uniform, Matty raised his right hand to his forehead in response. "Khuda hafiz, Abu miyan."
That had been eleven weeks ago. Then the phone call had come, late at night, waking Matty from his nightmares.
"Sparrow Twenty-two, Sialkot sector, right." The voice had been urgent, hoarse.
"Who is this?" Matty had responded guardedly.
"Squadron Leader Abhayan Sharma; nineteen sixty-three commission; GD pilot; taken POW on fourth December nineteen seventy-one. I am out. Will you help?"
Matty had shot bolt upright with the first words. "Can you get to Islamabad? No, wait, Lahore? Find Hotel Faletti."
"I will try. I will contact you."
"Meet me . . ." Matty began, but the line had gone dead. Either cut off by the men who tapped it or the caller had hung up. With trembling hands, he lit a cigarette. He thought of waking Anita but then how could they talk? And running the shower at three in the morning would be a little ridiculous. No, he would have to wait till the morning.
With a sigh, Matty sank back into the pillows, reaching out under the covers to touch the warmth of his sleeping wife. Drawing comfort just from her silent presence next to him. When the sun came up the next morning, he had finished his second pack of cigarettes. He had also decided not to inform headquarters about the developments. This one---if it came---would be for Matty alone.
Days later, on the night of Diwali, as every light in the house blazed, Matty and Anita sat in silence, hand in hand, tense, waiting for the phone to ring again. Hoping to hear again from their unknown caller. Before them, alone on the table, a single oil lamp flickered, glowing even amidst the brightness of electric lights. Glowing in the memory of that night long ago when the warrior had returned home.
And across the border, slumped in the armchair on her veranda, Mrs. Sharma continued her interminable vigil.
Copyright © 2011 by Sunny Singh
ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Vol. 137, No. 5, Whole Nos. 817, May 2011. ISSN 0013-6328, USPS 523-610. Dell GST# R123054108. Published monthly except for combined March/April and September/October double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. 1-year subscription $55.90 in U.S. and possessions, in all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Subscription orders and mail regarding subscriptions should be sent to Ellery Queen, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855, or call. 800-220-7443. Editorial Offices, 475 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10016. Executive Office, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. ©2008 Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Protection secured under the Universal Copyright Convention and the Pan American Copyright convention. ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE(r) is the registered trademark of Ellery Queen. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4. For back issues, send your check for $5.50 (U.S. funds) to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Suite SM-100, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. Please specify the issue you are ordering. Add $2 per copy for delivery outside the U.S.
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