Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

Kindle Edition, 2012 © Penny Publication

Wit & Wisdom

LINDA LANDRIGAN, EDITOR | 135 words

Few would argue that intelligence is a necessary prerequisite for the successful detective, but as the self-help books tell us, there are different kinds of intelligence. This month’s stories showcase characters who display their smarts in a variety of ways. There are the coping skills of Steve Hockensmith’s memory-impaired retired detective; the cooperative skills of cops from different agencies in David Edgerley Gates’s complex procedural; the cultural intelligence of Rex Burns’s Aboriginal police officer in the Australian outback; the systems intelligence of Chris Muessig’s security professional; the extrasensory perception of the detective in Raymond Goree’s tale; and the native cleverness of Jas. R. Petrin’s two teenage boys caught in the wrong place.

Of course, mystery readers are known for their intelligence as well, which is why we’re sure you’ll find this month’s issue an intellectual delight.

CONSTABLE SMITH AND THE LOST DREAMTIME

REX BURNS | 4340 words

Constable Leonard Smith squinted against the glare of the Indian Ocean. The girl’s body looked as if it had washed up along with the wisps of sea grass that marked high tide. It lay half on its side, one arm under the torso, the other folded against the foot of the steep bluff.

He took photographs as he approached the corpse across the wave-swept sand by following the footprints of Indigenous Ranger Nathan Ross. Above Smith, on the bluff that towered thirty meters over the beach, Ross squatted in the hot winter sun and kept his eyes away from the body.

Scratches in the packed beach ran from the girl’s black hair to a scatter of sand balls dredged from a small black hole where a crab waited hungrily for the intruder to leave. Leonard knelt and saw what had lured the creature: Where the curve of scalp should have been, light showed through the tangle of hair. The crushed skull no longer bled, but a thread of gray brain had been tugged out, along with the girl’s life and hopes and dreams.

He pushed that thought away and went to the distant, cold place in his mind where he could photograph the body and study the injury. Something hard, something heavy enough to bash the bone deeply. But other than the tattered flesh on eyelids, lips, and ears caused by feeding fish or crabs, no injuries to the face. No bloating that he could see. The girl’s palms and the soles of her feet showed the beginning of washer-woman’s skin from immersion. A cloud of flies, busy with hunger, swirled over the corpse. The autopsy would determine when she died and how; but from the absence of maggots, Smith guessed that she had lain here less than a day.

It was possible the blow came after she was in the water—that she dived in and struck her head on a reef before drowning. But he saw no abrasions on her knees or elbows where the surging water might have dragged her across the seabed. No cuts from coral on the torso beneath the twist of half open blouse, none along the girl’s legs beneath the cut-off jeans.

He stood and gazed up and down the long, sun-filled beach. To the north, cliffs of red pindan earth jutted into the calm sea; south, pink sand faded emptily into mist. Almost on the horizon, a sport fishing boat, probably headed south to Broome, was too distant to show its wake as it made a gliding white dot. A seagull’s faint cry heightened the emptiness of the wind.

"Handle it, Smith." On the sat-phone, Senior Sergeant’s voice had been weary. "Business as usual until the effing courts make up their minds about the bloody Sovereignty issue. Record the scene, get the body down here, that’s all you have to do. A detective will take it from there." But, Sovereignty issue aside, Leonard doubted that any district detective, even in a tourist season this slow, would rush to investigate something as common as one more Aboriginal death.

He shouted up to Ross. "Oy, mate! Throw down the tarp from the ute—it’s in the tray behind the off seat."

The man looked at Smith for a long moment before getting up to slap sand from his trousers. He disappeared and a few moments later tossed the folded cloth down. Smith straightened the arms and legs as best he could and closed the torn blouse over the girl’s swelling but unformed breasts. Spreading the canvas, he carefully anchored its edges with damp sand to shelter her until the ambulance made the hundred kilometers up the Cape Leveque Road from Broome. Then he climbed up the bluff to settle beside the ranger.

The Indigenous Rangers was an Aboriginal group that coordinated with state and commonwealth agencies to care for the ancestral country. Its members worked with local communities to protect the Dampier Peninsula’s wildlife and plant life from poachers, and to combat illegal fishing offshore. Any ranger—Land or Sea—knew far more than Leonard about this area and its inhabitants.

"Good thing you found her before the seagulls did."

Nathan grunted. "If you call it good."

"Recognize her?"

A nod.

Smith wasn’t surprised; the population of the peninsula, scattered over twenty-thousand square kilometers and six language groups, was less than a thousand people. "Name?"

The ranger shook his head. To say the victim’s name would call her spirit back to seek revenge. "Lives in Ganlargin Community."

"Parents’ names?"

"Both parents dead: grog. She and her brother Ronald live with her mother’s father." The ranger added, "He’s a community elder—teaches the kids about bush lore, hunting, dreamtime stories."

Grog-orphans—familiar on Aboriginal reserves, even those that had banned all alcohol. "Any recent dustups? Any humbug she was into?"

Nathan shrugged. "Don’t know her that much. Just see her around now and then."

"Do you remember what time you found her?"

"Sun was half high when I called in—nine, maybe ten."

Senior Sergeant had called Smith around eleven, and it had taken him almost two hours to make the drive from the Multi Function Police Facility in Lombadina to the isolated beach.

"You know anybody who might have bashed her?"

"No." Nathan sucked a deep breath and stared out at the ocean. "You think she was killed?"

"Maybe."

The ranger frowned into the sea glare. "That would be bad. Real bad."

That was true. "This beach part of your patrol?"

"Yeah—Camp Inlet to Carnot Bay." His hand flicked toward the ocean. "Sea Rangers have all that."

"What are the currents along here?"

"Maybe two knots at full. Run southeast with the rising tide, northwest when it falls."

"Tidal range?"

"Anywhere from three to five meters. This time of the moon . . . maybe four meters. Up to the cliff, anyway."

"What time was high tide this morning?"

He thought a moment. "Probably around six."

A tiny ripple in the southwest horizon some thirty kilometers out snagged Leonard’s gaze. "Is that the Lacepede Islands there?"

Nathan squinted. "You got good eyes. Yeah, the East Island light, anyway. Can’t see the islands—too low."

"Anyone live out there?"

He shook his head. "Nature Reserve: sea turtles, dugong, bird rookeries. There’s some pearl farms and a lot of fishing boats—good fishing on the reef. But no landing without a permit from one of the local communities. Poachers can make forty, fifty thousand dollars stealing green and long-necked turtles, so the Sea Rangers keep a good eye out." A thought struck him and he nodded toward the corpse. "The one she lives with, he issues the landing permits for Ganlargin Community."

Leonard considered that. "Any idea which direction she could have drifted from?"

"Has to be south—tide’s still going out. It’ll turn soon, maybe in an hour." He added, "She wasn’t here too long or the salty would have her."

Saltwater crocodiles swam off all of northern Australia. "Would he smell her?" Although the sun’s heat had lessened the rigor mortis in the arms and legs, the flies had only begun to smell death, and as yet the odor did not reach human noses.

"See her. They got sharp eyes—cruise outside the break for whatever might wash up." Nathan’s arm made a sweeping motion. "I see one along here now and then: nose, eyes, spurs on the back and tail breaking water. He sees me, too—stays offshore and watches me until I’m gone."

"Big one?"

"Good six meters, maybe seven." He added, "It’s his territory—been going up and down this piece of country for years."

Leonard could not help looking over his shoulder toward the bush.

Which Nathan saw. "He’s not up here. Has a nest somewhere on a quiet inlet."

"Could he crush a skull?"

"Sure! But he’d take what he found." He nodded at the canvas. "Wouldn’t leave her."

"Did you see any people around here this morning?"

"A few boats out of Broome headed north." He explained, "Fishing and swimming’s better up the coast. And that’s where the tourist camps are, the whale watching, and all."

"What’s the grandfather’s name?"

Nathan murmured so the answer would not carry to the beach. "Billy. Billy Yaburara." He frowned at the horizon. "You going to tell him?"

"My job."

"I’m glad it’s not mine. He told me he was teaching her to be the first female ranger. Was real proud of her. Said she learned faster than her brother."

"He had no trouble with her?"

"Not her, not her brother Ronald. Both good kids, I hear. Don’t know anybody would want to hurt either of them."

Smith’s sat-phone rattled. The display said it was the ambulance from Broome, and the voice asked for more specific directions. "Bloody tracks run all over the place, mate. What’s your coordinates?"

Leonard read the location from his GPS and added, "Due west of Ngardalargin, five—six kilometers." Then, to Nathan, "Should be here in twenty minutes."

But it was twice as long before the sun glinted on a slowly bobbing windscreen as the bulky vehicle picked its way across the pindan toward them. In the Wet, leaving the sealed Cape Road was impossible; in the Dry it was almost so. Leonard stood so the driver could see which bit of cliff to aim for.

"Hell of a long way beyond the black stump, mate." The two men carrying a stretcher stared down at the tarp. "Give us a hand, then."

Leonard could hear Nathan swallow as he took a deep breath and joined them. In his effort to avoid touching the corpse, he did not help place the body in the bag nor load it onto the canvas. But he put his back into working the stretcher up the cliff and into the open rear door. The vehicle slowly lurched away, starting the victim’s long journey first to Broome and then the twenty-two hundred kilometers south to Perth for the postmortem and toxicology tests at the state mortuary.

Nathan threw a few handfuls of sand on his chest and shoulders and scrubbed it off.

Leonard watched him try to wash away the lingering feel of death. "You have a spirit doctor to smoke you?" Most of the Indigenous communities had men of high degree whose rituals maintained a balance between the spirit world and this one, and who were called on for protection when the world of the dead approached too near the living.

"Yeah. But I don’t know when he might get to it. Long time, maybe." He shook his head. "If she was killed . . ."

The mysteries of dealing with malevolent ghosts had their requirements, many of which took often lengthy and always secret preparations. Leonard had been taken away before he could be initiated into his clan’s skin lore, but he knew how strong were the beliefs of those who had. And something as serious and spiritually disruptive as a murder would call for serious and spiritually profound rites.

As Leonard said, it was his duty to inform the victim’s nearest relatives. Nathan gave Leonard directions to Ganlargin Community and then headed along the cliff to complete his patrol. Smith steered his Tojo down a two-rut track cut roughly across the pindan toward a scatter of metal roofs rising above low bush. A sun-bleached wooden sign identified the community and warned NO GROG. At its foot, rusty beer cans and splintered bottles made reply. A woman in the first house Leonard stopped at pointed out Billy Yaburara’s roof.

Like the other ten or twelve homes scattered about, the roof was elevated a meter or so above the wooden walls to let air circulate and to provide deep verandas on three sides. A cook-shed was tacked on the fourth side and a sandy path led to the dunny. Smith clumped up two board steps and knocked on the door frame. "G’day—anyone home?"

A muffled thump of bare heels came from somewhere and a silhouette crossed a window in the far wall. Then a furrowed, white-bearded face peered through the fly-wire. Behind him stood a youth in his early teens.

"Mr. Yaburara? Billy Yaburara?" Leonard introduced himself. "May I come in?"

The old man studied Smith and his truck, eyes suspicious. "What you want?"

Leonard took off his hat. "I have some bad news for you. It’s your granddaughter, sir. . . . I’m sorry to tell you her body’s been found."

Yaburara pressed his forehead against the fly-wire. After a few moments, he asked in a hoarse whisper, "What happened?"

"Not sure. Could have been an accident—or not. Her body’s been sent to Perth to find out."

The wrinkles and lines that creased his dark skin seemed to harden into a mask. "Will they send her home?"

"Yes. It might take a week or so, but yes—she’ll be coming home."

The man’s reply was less word than groan.

Leonard asked the youth, "You’re Ronald—her brother?"

The youth stepped backward as if Leonard had threatened him. "Yes."

"I need to ask both of you some questions."

Yaburara finally opened the door for Leonard. "Where was she?"

"On the beach north of here. When did you see her last?"

He stared somewhere past Leonard, bony shoulders lifting and falling. Ronald stared at the dark planks of the floor. It was jarrah wood, hard as iron, lasting forever, and—in the towns—eagerly sought and expensive. Finally, Yaburara’s whisper broke the silence, "Last night. Dinner."

"Do you know where she went after dinner?"

"Women’s camp—to learn women’s business."

"Who was she meeting at the Women’s Camp?"

"Her mother’s sister’s daughter: Clara Wiggin."

"She was going to stay all night?"

Yaburara nodded.

That would not be unusual—ceremonies often took an entire night or even several.

Leonard hesitated, but finally asked, "Do you know anyone who maybe wanted her dead?"

Yaburara’s eyes went bloodshot with anger or fear or pain, but he only shook his head in silence.

"Maybe she was drinking with someone? Sniffing petrol, maybe? Got drunk, fought over nothing, somebody didn’t mean to hit her?"

"No. Not her. She didn’t do none of that."

Or at least the old man did not know that she did. "What about you, Ronald? Do you know if she did any of that humbug?"

The youth looked up. "None of that here."

It was everywhere, but he nodded as if he believed the boy. "Someone may have killed her, Mr. Yaburara. Do either of you know why someone might do that?"

The old man, mouth a tight line, shook his head again.

Leonard waited for a question or a challenge to his assertion, for some sign of shock at the idea of the girl being murdered. But the two were silent and he could feel them stifling emotion. Finally, "I need her name and age for the police report."

The old man flinched, but he murmured, "Nancy. Nancy Ngambe. She’s fourteen."

The Women’s Camp, a cluster of humpies sheltered by low acacia trees, was on the bluff above the beach. Leonard parked his vehicle within shouting distance and waited by its door until, with no hurry, a figure came out of the grove toward him and halted a few steps away. "This is Women’s Camp."

"I know. I’d like to talk with Clara Wiggin."

The woman’s eyes held the familiar animosity toward policemen. "This is native title country. You don’t belong here."

That issue had not yet been settled by the court, but Leonard smiled. "I’m not here to arrest anyone. But I need to talk to Clara Wiggin."

Finally, she tilted her head toward a stunted wattle tree spreading its shadow on the sand. "You wait there."

A few minutes later, Clara Wiggin, thin figure draped in a patterned cotton dress, plodded toward him. "What you want with me?"

"I understand that Nancy Ngambe came to meet you last night."

"Why you asking?"

"She was found dead on the beach this morning."

"Oh—oh no!"

"Did she come to see you, Clara?"

A nod. "For a singing. Learn woman’s song."

"When did she leave here?"

"This morning, real early. Just before sunrise."

Which would have been around five. "Do you know where she went?"

"Went with her grandfather’s brother’s son’s son."

"His name?"

"Kevin."

"Where’d they go?"

"Fishing."

"She told you this morning that she was going fishing?"

"Last night. Said she was going to cut bait today."

"Cut bait?"

"For the white fellas to fish. Kevin, he’s crew on one of them flash fishing boats in Broome. Sometimes he needed her to help out with the fisho’s."

A fancy charter boat. "You saw her leave with Kevin Yaburara?"

"Heard her. Heard his ute drive up, heard her say hello and get in, and they drove away."

"You’re sure it was his vehicle?"

She nodded. "Got a hole in the exhaust. It was him."

"That was this morning before sunrise?"

She nodded again.

"Did she and Kevin ever have words? Maybe go drinking together?"

"No! Her mother’s father, he’s an elder. He wouldn’t put up with no humbug from her or Kevin."

"Maybe he didn’t know about it."

The woman slowly shook her head. "I don’t think so. Billy was teaching her stuff about the animals and tracking and stuff. Not man’s business, not that. But the stuff anybody can know: how to read the tracks, what animals like to do and where they stay. Where they find water in different country." She shook her head more emphatically. "He wanted her to be a ranger, first ever woman ranger, and she really wanted to be one."

"Any reason why Billy Yaburara would be afraid of something or someone?"

"No. Nobody do him no harm."

Leonard studied the cluster of acacia trees. "Where does Kevin live?"

"Sometimes here with his father’s father, sometimes in Broome with his mother’s people."

"Where’s his father’s father?"

Clara pointed to a roof on the far side of the village.

Leonard rapped on the doorpost. Like his brother Billy, Lazarus Yaburara had a gray beard and a suspicion of police. As he listened to Smith, his wide nostrils flared as if smelling something unpleasant. "What you want with Kevin?"

"Was he here last night?"

"No. Went out yesterday, fishing."

"Yesterday? Did he say anything about taking Nancy Ngambe along?"

"Nancy? No. But sometimes she goes with him, when they need more crew."

"Who does he crew for?"

"Captain Parker. The Lucky Lady."

"And you haven’t seen him or Nancy Ngambe today?"

"No." Still no unease at hearing the name.

"Any idea where he stayed last night?"

"Probably in Broome. When he’s not fisho he’s a jackeroo. His mother’s sister has a camel station in the back blocks." He added, "And slow as this fishing season’s been, he’s there a lot."

Two hours and a phone call later, Leonard guided his Tojo down a sandy lane carved through the bush on the outskirts of Broome. A rough sign painted on a plank marked a narrow drive leading to Outback Adventure Camel Rides. The screen of low trees opened to a wide clearing that revealed a house huddled in the shade of gums. The rest of the station was a sprawl: a low work shed, a few small outbuildings, and several sturdy pens where camels stood or lay watching Leonard’s vehicle jounce to a halt. Three or four rusty automobile bodies, cleaned of anything useful, were scattered about; near the work shed a well-used red ute was parked under an acacia. A tall young man came out of the shed. Long curly black hair and sideburns framed a strong face that had a hint of moustache over the corners of his full mouth. "G’day."

"Kevin Yaburara?" Leonard introduced himself. "When’s the last time you saw Nancy Ngambe?"

The youth’s eyes widened, and he wiped a nervous hand down the front of his shirt. "Dunno. Couple days ago, maybe."

"You didn’t pick up Nancy this morning in Ganlargin?"

A silent shake of the head as if distancing himself from the girl’s name.

Leonard glanced at the ute. "That’s your vehicle?"

"Yes."

"You let anybody use your ute this morning?"

"No."

"Then who drove it up to Ganlargin to pick up Nancy Ngambe?"

"What do you mean?"

"Nancy told Clara Wiggin she was going to cut bait for you today. Clara heard a ute pick her up about five this morning. Said it was your ute—said she knows the sound your ute makes."

The youth’s tongue wiped across his lower lip and he seemed to shrink from Smith.

"It would be better if you told me about it, Kevin."

Silence.

"You told your father’s father that you were going out on the Lucky Lady yesterday. But the harbormaster’s office told me that boat’s been moored to its buoy for the last three days." Leonard waited, but Kevin was concentrating on something in the trees.

"Kevin, you know Nancy Ngambe’s dead. Tell me why."

He shook his head.

Leonard spoke softly, reasonably. "You picked her up this morning at five, maybe five thirty. A half hour or so later, she was bashed and thrown over the cliff. She landed in the water, Kevin—high tide. High tide was near six. But bodies don’t float until after two, maybe three days, so when the tide went out, Nancy stayed there and was found. You drove her there, Kevin. Did you bash her too?"

"No!"

"Then who? And why?"

No reply.

"You were with her," Leonard said again. "If nobody else was there, it had to be you. Murder means a long time in prison. Maybe you’ll die there, a long way from your people."

Kevin took a deep breath, eyes closed.

"They’ll find out if she was raped. Down in Perth, the medicos will find out."

The youth said nothing.

"All right, then. Let’s go to the station. You can tell me about it there."

Two hours later, Leonard once again halted his Tojo in front of Billy Yaburara’s house. By now everyone in the community had heard about the death, and a small gathering sat on the ground in the long afternoon shadows of the gum trees. Two men beat slow time with clap sticks, and from the cluster of men and women came a gentle chant like a low moan. It was the beginning of Sorry Time, Leonard knew that much. When Nancy’s body came back from Perth, there would be a Sorry Camp and funeral songs with didgeridoos, a chorus of clap sticks, traditional chants, and community dancing to ensure that she would find her way to the Dreamtime and her ancestors.

Smith rapped on the door. The man who answered let him in and said over his shoulder, "Billy, it’s that copper. He wants to talk with you."

Yaburara sat on a sagging couch, his gaze wandering from one item to another in the room as if he could not find what his eyes searched for.

Leonard drew up a battered wooden chair and studied the old man’s lined face. "Kevin Yaburara’s in the Broome lockup. He’s being charged with her murder."

The man’s lips tightened as if to hold back words.

"He said he didn’t do it, but he won’t say anything more. I think he’s afraid of something." Leonard waited, but Billy Yaburara did not speak. "When you and I talked this morning, you already knew she was dead, didn’t you?"

The lips remained clamped.

"Why didn’t you tell me you knew?"

Yaburara’s dark eyes avoided Leonard’s face.

"You’re afraid of something too."

In the silence, the chanting outside rose and fell, paused and started again. "I need to know what happened before she was killed, Billy. I need to know why she was killed."

The man stared at something hanging in the space in front of him.

"I need to know motive—why Kevin would do it." Leonard studied the lined face that looked back at him through layers of mistrust—mistrust of officialdom, of white man’s law, of the copper who stared at him. "You knew she was dead and you said nothing, and you and Kevin are both afraid. Those things bother me—those things make me wonder."

The singing outside the house rose for a few moments, then grew quieter.

"Maybe Kevin didn’t do it, maybe he did. Tell me a reason why he would do it." Leonard thought he saw something behind the mask of the man’s face. "Prison’s a death sentence for a lot of people like Kevin—a lot of Aboriginals give up and die in prison. If you know something and don’t tell me, you could become Kevin’s killer, Billy."

Some inner tightness went out of the man. The sagging flesh of his face clearly showed his pain and all his years. Yaburara drew a deep breath. "He wanted a permit to land on the islands. People pay a lot of money for turtles and dugong. Even for birds and eggs. One-time permit, he said. Just to get through this bad time, he said."

The Lacepedes were nothing more than treeless sandbars, and anyone landing on them would be seen and questioned by fishermen or Sea Rangers. "You said no?"

"I told him no. He said I would be sorry. He went away for awhile. Then he came back this morning. Said she was dead and if I didn’t give him the permit Ronald would be dead next. Said if I told anybody anything about it, Ronald would be next."

The vision of the girl’s lonely body on the empty sand flooded across Leonard’s memory. That was the motive: Greed was what wasted her life and the dreams she pursued. "Kevin can’t hurt Ronald or anyone now, Billy. He’s locked up. He’ll be locked up for a long time."

"Not Kevin." Yaburara’s eyes, burning deep beneath the ridge of heavy brow, stared intently at Leonard. "Captain Parker."

"Parker! Parker wanted the permit? Not Kevin?"

"Him."

"Why didn’t you tell me this morning?"

"White man, white man’s law."

Leonard saw it now: Kevin was Parker’s access to the girl. He could deliver her to the man with no trouble—she would trust Kevin, would get quietly into his ute to go cut bait. Kevin may or may not have known what was going to happen; maybe Parker said he only wanted to talk to her. She would be puzzled to stop at the cliff, to see Parker waiting in the early light. Not yet afraid—or too late afraid. And if things went bad, Parker could say the black man killed her. It would be a black man’s word against a white man’s in a white man’s court.

But the only one with motive was the white man.

"You and I, we’ll go talk to Kevin, make him tell us what happened. He will spend time in prison—can’t get around that—but not so much as Parker. Ronald will be safe, Billy. Parker will pay for what he did." Leonard wanted in some way to allay the man’s hurt. "Ronald will be safe," he said again. "Parker will be in prison for a long, long time, and Ronald will be safe."

But the bitterness was still there. "That won’t bring her back."

There was nothing Leonard could say to that.
Copyright © 2012 Rex Burns

The author would like to thank Mr. Terry Thornett and Senior Sergeant Jon Kazandzis for their linguistic and technical help.

MAD DOG

JAS. R. PETRIN | 6361 words

Art by Jorge Mascarenhas

"It’s him," Robert told us. "I know it is."

We were at Pappy’s, a local steakhouse, a place we’d frequented in our twenties but had gotten away from in recent years. Recent decades, more like it. I was shocked at their appearance: Robert, rotund, wheezing and tonsured; Eddy, gaunt, bent at the shoulders, and sporting old-fashioned spectacles with built-in hearing aids.

What I looked like to them I couldn’t guess.

"And you say he’s where?" Eddy refilled his glass and knocked back half the contents. There was a fine web of broken blood vessels in his hawk-bill of a nose.

"At River Glen. One of those retirement homes."

"I know it." Eddy shuddered. "A hellhole."

I shared that opinion. I’d made a service call there once, just before giving up my heating and air-conditioning business, and it had almost caused me to shelve my retirement plans. Empty-eyed inmates drifting about like zombies. One old codger staring at a television that was displaying only drifting lines. A lady who looked at least a hundred, tied to a chair so that she wouldn’t hurt herself.

"How can you be sure?" I asked. "It’s been a long time."

"A hell of a long time," Eddy said. "And you never actually saw him back then, did you, Rob?"

Robert gave a dry smile, a grim twitch of the lips. "I saw his picture. It gave me nightmares. I’ve never forgotten it, believe me."

I believed him. I refilled my own glass, folded my arms, and contemplated the ruby liquid.

It certainly had been a long time . . .

In our small, peaceful city of Easton, back in the summer of 1957, something terrible happened. Young men began to go missing. It didn’t attract a lot of notice at first; the police weren’t anxious to get the citizens riled up. And the first few victims were apparently transients, and disappearing is what such people do. But then local boys started to vanish, and terror began to stalk the streets.

Even in our neighborhood, parents were anxious, and we lived in a part of the town where indifference to current events was endemic—more important was where next month’s rent was coming from, or tomorrow’s groceries. Still, I recall my mother’s face flushed with apprehension if I came home late from school, or stayed out with a friend too long.

To me and the guys I chummed with, a kidnapper—hell, even a murderer—was about as relevant as the atomic bomb. Something you heard about on the radio, not something that actually touched your life.

But that was before Eddy’s mad dog.

"Crazed," he assured us. "Foaming at the mouth. Out by the city dump, chasing some kids."

"What kids?" Robert looked horrified.

We were walking home from school along Birch Street and had reached Bestway Grocery, where we generally stopped for candy if we had any money: red licorice, jawbreakers, sometimes flat, dusty sticks of chewing gum.

"Where? Where did you see this?" Robert wanted answers. "You mean where the creek comes out behind EAGLE OILS?" When we spoke that name, we saw it in upper case. It was to us the equivalent of a haunted castle.

This time only Eddy could afford to duck into the store and buy something: He had a job delivering fliers, which meant he usually had more pocket money than Robert and me. Which was fair, and as it should be, since his dad was never home and his mom couldn’t give him an allowance. He came out with jujubes and shared them around.

"You mean behind EAGLE OILS?" Robert repeated.

"Uh-huh." Eddy popped a cherry jujube into his mouth and chewed it with his mouth open. We began walking again. "Mad dog. Foaming at the mouth. We could head out there tonight after supper, and I could show you guys."

"And we could get our butts chomped off," Robert said with a scowl. But he looked interested. I was fascinated myself. I liked dogs. And a truly mad one? Yikes.

Robert asked suddenly. "What were you doing out there?"

I was wondering about that too. Excursions to the mountainous landfill that was the city dump we generally made as a group.

"I was looking for stuff," Eddy said. And it made sense. That was the reason any kid went to the dump—to find stuff. We’d struck upon many treasures there over the years. I brought home a birdcage once, slightly squished, which after a few twists and straightenings was practically as good as new. And you could always find wheels there for any racing cart you were building. But my prize item was an old square-framed Remington typewriter with a couple of wonky keys. I used it for years.

"You could’ve told us," Robert said.

"Yeah, well, you weren’t around. You’re around now, so are you coming or not?"

"There’s that kidnapper. Our parents won’t let us."

"They’re not gonna know."

"What about the dog?"

"It’s the reason we’re going."

Robert thought for a minute. "Well then," he said finally, "maybe we should each take along a stick or something."

In those days our fathers were powerhouses. Mysterious, remote, and unfathomable. It didn’t matter that one of them lay on the front room couch and snored his lungs out most of the time; or that another spent almost every evening in the tavern at the end of the block, and threw up by the back stoop when he came home; or that one went away on long unexplained absences, leaving his wife to scurry along the street avoiding people. They were powerhouses. You didn’t screw with them.

That, at least, was how we saw them. They lived in a world entirely removed from ours, as distant as gods on Olympus.

Which I suppose was why—later—we couldn’t go to them.

When I got home my father was lying on the sofa with his face planted in the back cushions. He didn’t come to dinner. He rarely did. My mother and I ate in the kitchen, keeping our voices down so as not to disturb him. I think we had stew that evening.

"Did you come straight home from school, Will?" my mother asked. She had a strained tone in her voice. I heard it a lot.

"Yup."

"I hope you’re not planning on going out somewhere with your friends this evening."

"Aw, mom. There’s this mad dog—"

"What?" She froze with her fork in the air. "It could have rabies."

"Oh, mom!"

She knitted her brows, trying to work it out. "I hope you mean it’s on TV tonight. Is that it? You want to go to Robert’s house?"

She had thrown me a lifeline. "That’s it." Robert was the only guy I knew whose folks owned a television. His dad, in spite of his drinking, held down a switchman’s job at the CPR rail yards.

"You’ve got exams coming up. You should stay in and study."

"I study every morning." It was true. I did. But I didn’t let it get around. That sort of thing could mark you in the neighborhood where I grew up. But my mom knew it. And we both knew her real reason for putting up an argument was because of the vanishing boys. Three local ones, by that time.

"Robert lives just down the street," I reminded her.

She gave an exasperated sigh. "All right," she said finally, and there was that strained note again. "But don’t go anywhere else. And don’t talk to strangers. And don’t go near any real mad dog."

"Listen to your mother!"

My father’s voice boomed from the sofa so unexpectedly, we both jumped.

God had spoken.

Eddy came striding up the street, and I burst out our front door and fell in step with him. Half a block down, Robert joined us. "Did you tell your mom you were heading over to my house?" Robert asked, reading the look on my face. I nodded, and he added, "I said I was going to yours." We both grinned. Eddy, who enjoyed great freedom, glanced at the two of us and rolled his eyes, as if to say, "Poor slobs!"

We continued along the street to Bannatyne, then turned east four blocks to Weston Road. At that time this is where civilization stopped. At least for us it did. Just past that point was the CPR mainline south, then the creek, then a sprawling uncharted and undeveloped wilderness of alder scrub and waist-high thistles. If you followed the train tracks, you reached the city dump, and down below it the moldering pile that was Eagle Oils.

Which is what we did.

"So where’s the dog?" Robert said when we got there. We stared at the dump. Begun a hundred years ago by Red River’s first citizens, it was now a hundred feet high and half a mile long. There was a meadowlark singing somewhere in the rushes near the creek, and a steady drone of cicadas from the slopes.

Ed got huffy. "What? You think it’s nailed to the ground? It moves around, you know. It’s got legs. But this is where I saw it. Right here."

"Where?"

"Right here." He gestured vaguely. "It chased these kids down the slope there, and right around the back of the building."

"It must have been an awful slow dog," I said, "if it didn’t catch them quicker than that."

"No kidding," Robert said. "Slow as molasses."

We suddenly realized Eddy had made the whole thing up. Personally, I was relieved. I didn’t really want to find a mad dog. Robert, trying to act disappointed, said, "I think you just told us that to get us to come out here tonight."

"Yeah, well," Eddy admitted, "so what. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have come, would you? You guys never get to go anywhere anymore."

"It’s that kidnapper."

"Yeah, yeah. The kidnapper. You’re not going to see any kidnappers hanging around here."

"How do you know?"

"Well, look around, for crying out loud. No kids."

"We’re kids," Robert said.

That statement kind of floated on the air a minute, then Eddy turned on his heel.

"Look. We’re here, aren’t we? So we might as well check things out."

We fell in behind him.

Eagle Oils was an ancient abandoned factory, sprawling, decrepit and rat infested. And we loved it. It was built of wood—no bricks and mortar squandered here—and it had once housed the equipment and workers of a major food oils manufacturer. That, of course, was in a bygone age. Now the wild oats and thistles grew waist high around it, and to reach it we walked along a rusted spur line, then crossed a rubble-strewn lot. This brought us close to a small, sagging outbuilding. I called it the shed, Robert called it the garage, and Eddy called it the old shack. "Look," Eddy pointed out, "they’ve been at it again."

We peered in the door. The last couple of times we’d been here, we’d seen evidence of someone trying to burn the place. The traces were still there. A splintered pallet and hunks of tarpaper lying half charred on the floor.

"Dumb kids," Robert said.

"They weren’t trying very hard," Eddy said. "I could start this place burning in ten seconds."

"That’d be arson," Robert reminded him. "You could go to prison—and get raped."

Rape was something we understood, and so appalling a notion that we didn’t talk about it.

The factory slumped at one end. Its few windows were boarded over or smashed. We crossed to the loading dock, ducked under it, then waddled with bowed heads to the underpinnings of the place. Here, set at intervals in the foundation wall, were heavily meshed openings that vented the crawlspace. One of these could be pried open. We passed through it and dropped inside.

The air was musty and smelled of cat droppings. And something else. We stared around in the dismal light.

"It stinks," I said.

"It always stinks," Robert said.

"Anybody bring a light?"

Since Robert and I had come to see the dog, we had brought no such thing. But Eddy was equipped, of course. He was already pulling a small torch from his pocket and switching it on. He played the beam around, and shadows bobbled and weaved. Recalling that scene now, I don’t know what the attraction was. With dry-rotted floor joists grazing our heads, and dank earth under our feet, it wasn’t the most inviting place. In fact it was downright creepy. Anything could have been lurking there. Maybe even Eddy’s dog.

"Somebody’s been here," Robert said. "Look at that." He seized Eddy’s hand holding the flashlight and directed it at a short-handled spade lying flat in the dirt.

"I told you guys the last time that I thought somebody had been poking around," I said in a voice that came out tighter than I wanted it to.

"Yeah, well this time we believe you," Eddy said.

Weeks had passed since that visit, and even then the place hadn’t seemed quite right to me, though I couldn’t have said exactly why. Now it was obvious, with the abandoned spade before us. The spade had damp earth clinging to it. I was about to mention the fact, and suggest we look to see where the hole was, when something happened that concentrated our minds. A door slammed loudly above us, followed by the heavy tread of feet crossing the floor.

"Let’s get out of here," Robert whispered, instantly panicking.

"Hang on," Eddy said, "this is our place. We need to see who’s up there."

"Are you crazy?" Robert’s eyes bugged out.

There was a trap a few feet away. We often used it. Eddy started to move toward it, but I pulled him back. "No," I said. "Better go the other way."

There was another trapdoor into the building but we rarely used it. It opened into some sort of equipment room filled with old boilers that had leaked dark brown sludge, probably toxic waste, that had rotted out the floor in places. You had to watch where you stepped.

"I’m not going up there," Robert said.

"You don’t have to," I told him. I wasn’t crazy about the idea either, but I couldn’t let Eddy do it alone. "You stay here and watch our escape route." Robert calmed down, and I glanced at the shovel. "Maybe while we’re gone you can look around and see what this is all about."

Robert bobbed his head. "What about the light?"

"You keep it," Eddy said, handing it over.

Robert took it and almost kissed Eddy’s hand. I can still see the relief in his eyes.

Eddy and I duck-walked away into the smelly shadows, knees bent, heads bowed, to what I think was most probably the north end of the old building. There, just visible in the gray light that filtered through the mesh, lay a slab of ancient, spalled concrete, rocked at an angle, settling into the earth. Above it was the other trap. Shut tight. I remember praying it would stay that way, that it would be too swollen with damp to move.

But no such luck. It opened easily enough. When Eddy gave it a push, it popped loose right away. The stench of the sludge immediately flooded down on us, and I gagged; I had almost forgotten how bad it was. But there was light up there in the room above. A thin, colorless light that we knew seeped in through small windows set up high in one wall. Eddy put his head up above the sill for a quick reconnoiter, then grabbed hold to hoist himself up, but I pulled him aside. I wanted the bragging rights. Dumb. I can say that now.

"Don’t make any noise," Eddy warned, giving way.

I went up through that hole like a cat.

The room was small, or maybe only seemed that way, crowded with leaking boilers and a bewilderment of grungy pipes. I took one step and my foot nearly went through the floor. "Quiet!" Eddy whispered. A moment later he was beside me, jabbing his elbow into my ribs. He pointed to the disturbance we had made in the dust the last time we were here, and we followed our own trail amongst the boilers to the door, a warped, sagging slab. It stood ajar an inch or two, and through the opening we could distinctly hear the faint sound of voices. Adult male voices. We crept along the corridor to where it joined the main factory floor.

There was some sort of cabinet, or bench, at the hall’s end, and we crouched behind it and peeped cautiously over it.

The room had been crammed with machinery at one time; you could trace the outlines of it in the grime on the floor, and see its bolt-holes everywhere you looked. But what we noticed were the three men. Two of them about as old as our fathers, and the third much younger, maybe still in his teens. One of the older men, a full-gutted guy in bib overalls, was doing introductions and smiling a lot.

"This here’s Hank, Charlie." He pointed out the other older man. "My partner, you might say. Been kicking around together for quite some time." Bib-Overalls sounded pleasant enough, but didn’t look it. He was in rough shape. He had one drooping eye. He was unshaven and needed a haircut, and there was an egg-white pallor to his skin. His partner Hank looked even worse, practically skin and bone; a living cadaver with a balding death’s-head and mottled skin stretched tightly over it. He seemed lost in his clothes—a shapeless plaid shirt over several other shirts, and a pair of stained, raggedy cotton trousers, bagged at the knees and unraveling at the cuffs. His belt was far too long, the tongue drooping almost to his knees and swaying when he moved.

Eddy nudged me. "Couple ole rubby-dubs," he mouthed with a smirk.

Charlie, the younger of the three, was pretty shabby himself; but even at a distance his grime looked superficial, not ground in the way it was with the other two. He gripped a small suitcase, and I remember thinking that he must have been on his way somewhere when he had met up with Overalls. And he looked to be having second thoughts.

"Charlie plans to stay a day or two, Hank," Overalls said. "We met at the depot. Seen him getting down off the bus, I did, and I said to myself, now there’s a young fella could do with some Christian charity."

Hank’s little eyes shifted.

Bib-Overalls, still smiling, reached for Charlie’s bag. "I’ll just find a place to put this so’s you can sit down and get more comfortable."

Just where he expected Charlie to sit wasn’t clear. On the floor, apparently. There was no furniture, only a couple of filthy bedrolls.

But the young man wasn’t handing over anything. It was clear from the expression on his face that he knew he had made a bad mistake. "Ah, no," he said. "I guess I won’t stay after all. I’m running out of time. I got to get to the West Coast."

Overalls narrowed his good eye until he was squinting through a malevolent slit.

"But you said your bus ride ended here."

"Well, that’s right. It’s all I could afford. What I’ll do from here, I’ll thumb a ride, I guess —"

"Good plan," Overalls agreed. "But if I was you, I’d stick around till morning. Nobody’ll pick you up at this hour."

"Oh, somebody will," Charlie said. He blinked. "Or I can stay at my cousin’s place."

Bib-Overalls faked astonishment. "Your cousin’s place? That’s funny. You never mentioned any cousin before."

Charlie had already backed away several steps, and was turning and moving to the door. As if at a signal, Hank the death’s-head darted forward and smacked the back of Charlie’s head with a stick of wood, the arm of an old wooden chair.

I think I gasped. I know Eddy did. The attack had been so sudden and brutal, neither one of us had seen it coming. Charlie let out a grunt and went down on one knee, tried to stand but his leg folded under him. He had a bewildered look on his face.

Eddy and I scrunched down even lower.

"What’d he do that for?" I hissed in Eddy’s ear.

"What do you think?" Eddy whispered back. "These guys got a system. They get chummy with a guy, get on his good side, then bring him back here and mug him."

"Jeez!" I said.

"Look," Eddy said. "We better scram. Let’s go grab Robert and get the hell out of here."

But I had to look again. I couldn’t stop myself.

Charlie was dazed but not down. Hank and Bib-Overalls hovered over him. They were like predatory animals gloating over an antelope. Then Overalls produced handcuffs, snicked one end to Charlie’s wrist and the other to a pipe sticking out of the wall. "I think," Overalls said, "you should stay. That’s my advice. There’s no telling what might happen to a young fella like you at night."

He stroked Charlie’s face with the back of his hand, his grin showing two yellow canines. Meanwhile, Hank was tearing into the suitcase.

I glanced back over my shoulder at Eddy; he was already halfway down the hall. But still I seemed to be rooted in place, mesmerized, paralyzed, I don’t know what. The young fellow, Charlie, was gaping around in a stunned, wide-eyed kind of way, as if too dazed to see anything, but suddenly his eyes locked onto mine. I ducked, but not before Bib-Overalls noticed, spun around and spotted me.

"Hey!" he shouted, and made a lunge.

It unstuck me. I turned and ran. In the boiler room, Eddy was at the trap, standing over it and holding it open for me. I was impressed by that. Still am. I dropped through, and then the unthinkable happened: The death’s-head suddenly materialized and grabbed a handful of Eddy’s hair as he hopped down after me. I’d describe how Eddy screamed but he wouldn’t like that, so I’ll just say he hollered. Man, did he holler! It was the most tortured, traumatized wail I’d ever heard in my entire life.

That might have been it for us—at least for Eddy. But at that moment we caught a break. The death’s-head tried to yank Eddy back through the hole, and his foot—in fact his whole leg—suddenly burst through the floor right in front of me. And he screamed, you’d better believe he did. Splintered boards chewed into his flesh, digging deeper as he tried to pull free. But he still had hold of Eddy, and I had to do something about that. I had no weapon, not even a stick, so I did the only thing I could. I kicked that dangling leg. I booted it square in the kneecap, and above the trap there was a roar like a buffalo. Eddy pulled free, and we beat it back under the floor.

We had no plan. We just wanted to run. Grab hold of Robert and keep on going. But Robert wasn’t where we’d left him, and he wasn’t scouting around with the flashlight either. Instead he was huddled under the loading dock, shivering and quaking with his knees drawn up under his chin. He looked like an old man. I swear there were lines in his face. We tried to scoop him up but he shied from us.

"I found—I found a grave," he whispered.

"What?" Eddy’s voice was harsh. "What are you talking about? We got to get out of here. There’s these men— Where’s my flashlight?"

"Flashlight?" Robert blinked. "I must’ve dropped it. I just ran."

"Well that’s great." Eddy let out a few choice cuss words. "It’s my mom’s. She’ll skin me alive. I’m going back for it."

"Eddy," I said, trying to reason with him, "those men. They know where we are. We’ve got to get out of here now."

"I’m not leaving without that flashlight."

He ducked back through the mesh. I clapped Robert on the knee. "Wait," I told him. "We’ll just be a second."

I didn’t know if he understood, or even if he’d heard. He wouldn’t look at me and his jaw was quivering.

I ducked back under the building and went after Eddy. I knew we only had a minute or two. Outside the sun was going down, red-orange rays striking in horizontally through the mesh, lighting things up. I found Eddy crawling around in the dirt, groping for his flashlight. "A grave," Eddy grumbled. "Rob’s freaking out."

But even as he said it, my hand touched something, and I knew exactly what Robert was talking about. In revulsion, I threw myself backwards, and my head grazed a floor joist, sending a bright sheet of pain through my skull.

"I just touched a body!" I hissed through clenched teeth, writhing and cradling the back of my head. "There’s a body right here in front of us!"

Eddy had recovered the flashlight, and now he switched it on and skipped its beam around. Then he steadied it. We looked and saw a dry, bony hand—a whole arm!—sticking out of the earth.

"Ah, jeez," Eddy moaned, and made a hawking noise.

The setting sun was dying fast, and the beam of the flashlight cast every lump and mound in stark relief. There wasn’t one grave. There were several. Here a jutting knee, there a foot, and when we saw an eyeless face staring back at us—the rats had been busy with it—we both screamed.

We were back with Robert in seconds. "There is a grave back there," Eddy said. "In fact, there’s a whole freaking cemetery. Come on, Rob. We got to—"

Then he saw the expression on my face. "What?"

"That guy up there," I said. "That Charlie guy. They’re not going to let him go, are they?"

Eddy took a shaky breath. He sank down on his haunches. "Yeah. I mean no."

"We can’t leave him," I said. "That’d be murder."

"Hey. They’re the murderers. Not us."

"But if we don’t help . . ."

Part of me was screaming "Run!" But still we sat there. We wanted to help the guy. But how could we do it? We couldn’t go back upstairs. Eddy’s mad dog, growling and slavering, couldn’t drive me back inside that place.

Then I remembered the shack—garage, shed, or whatever the heck it was. Eddy nodded. The same thought had struck him. We scampered across the lot, and in less than a minute had a roiling blaze sending up billows of oily black smoke.

"If nobody spots that," Robert said, coming out of his shock, "then they’re all blind."

It was pretty dark by now, and the flames lit the side of the building.

There was a shout, and we practically wet our pants as Bib-Overalls came bursting out the door. We pelted across the rutted gravel, skipped over the train tracks, and crashed through alders and scrub willow down the embankment. I last saw Bib-Overalls glaring after us with an animal rage in his eyes.

"If that guy ever catches us," Eddy said, "he’ll kill us."

We didn’t doubt that for a single minute.

When I got home it was completely dark, and I was hoping I could scoot straight to bed without any explanations. I had things to answer for. I’d lied about where I was going; worse, I’d left the safety of my own front street, and I’d been trespassing, never mind that Eagle Oils had been boarded up for about as long as any of us could remember.

At least my father wasn’t in sight. He’d gone to bed to rest up for another demanding day on the sofa. But my mother was there. And after giving me a scolding for coming home late —not too convincing, since she had to do it at a whisper—she kind of softened a little.

"Did you see your mad dog?" she asked me.

I nodded. "Yes."

The following day Eddy emerged from the grocery with a newspaper in his hand—no candy. We were disappointed, but he had a look on his face. A look I’d last seen on him when we’d each paid a dollar to inspect a Sasquatch frozen in a block of ice at the Royal American Shows: amazement, awe, and wonder, all tussling inside him at once.

He held the paper up with the headline showing.

KIDS SAVE YOUNG VICTIM FROM KILLERS

There was a picture of Eagle Oils, and one of the shack belching smoke and flame. Below was an inset of the guy who had been cuffed to the wall, and another of the death’s-head who had clobbered him.

"Wow!" Robert and I said together.

"How did they find out about us?" Robert asked.

"They haven’t found out anything," Eddy said.

"That Charlie guy saw me," I reminded them. "So did the guy in the overalls."

"That doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know who you are."

We read the rest of it with our lips moving, and when I was finished I sat back, bewildered. The young man had seen at least two boys, he’d said. And he’d overheard his captors shrieking about a third one. He’d also heard them discussing what they planned to do with him, and had told the cops to take a look under the floor. The authorities had disinterred nine bodies. And they were still digging, the article said.

"We were there," Eddy said. "Corpses all around us."

"I touched one," I said. And felt suddenly queasy. The back of my head ached as if I had rapped it on a joist again.

The mayor wanted the three boys to step forward. He said the police were interested in talking to us, and that we would probably be awarded a citation for bravery. "Cool," Robert breathed, putting his finger under the word. "What is it?"

"Never mind," Eddy said. "What about that last bit?"

"Henry Lingus Malley, of no fixed address," Robert read under the picture of the death’s-head, "was remanded by Judge Kohler to the end of the month. He is accused of kidnapping, forcible confinement, murder, and sexual assault. A second man, Joseph Shorki, fled the scene. Shorki faces warrants in North Carolina for desertion from Fort Bragg in 1944." There was a picture of a much younger Shorki with two good eyes.

"So," Eddy said, "anybody want to sashay down to City Hall and claim this whatever-it-is? —sedation? You better realize that the minute our names hit the street we’re gonna be on that Shorki guy’s hit list. A soldier, for crying out loud."

"He didn’t look like a soldier," I said. "He looked like a farmer."

"Don’t let the overalls fool you. He deserted years ago. He could be a commando. Or a sniper. Put a bullet through each one of us before we even know what’s happening."

"Omigod," Robert mumbled, quivering.

I closed my eyes and felt faint.

"Best thing for us to do is keep our heads down," Eddy said. "Shut our mouths about it. That’s the smartest thing."

"What about the sedation?" Robert whispered. We could see in his eyes he really wanted that. Hell. We all wanted it, whatever the heck it was.

Eddy let out a strange barking laugh. "That’s something we’re gonna have to forget about. We’re gonna have to keep our yaps shut and totally forget about being big brave heroes."

Heroes? No, we weren’t that. Brave? Not that either. If we had been, we’d have sashayed down to City Hall for our "sedation," Joseph Shorki be damned. But we were decent kids. And I think we were honest. When I said yes to my mother’s question about whether or not I had seen a mad dog that night, I don’t think I was telling a lie.

So we followed Eddy’s advice. We kept our yaps shut. And we continued to keep our yaps shut for the next forty years, leaving the city’s gratitude unclaimed. Oh, I’m not saying we didn’t allude to it once in a while, or that we didn’t discuss it among ourselves—especially later in life, and usually over a beer. Robert confided he’d had nightmares well into his teens. But by and large we kept it at the backs of our minds, only beginning to lighten up when we realized Shorki was getting old enough to be eating pablum off the end of a spatula.

And now Robert was telling us he’d spotted the aging ogre.

We drove out to the River Glen Home For the Elderly and Infirm in Robert’s car. Entering the building, I could see things hadn’t improved much since I’d been there last. Major redecorating was long overdue.

"He’s changed his name," Robert said. "He goes by Gilbertson now. Which is pretty much what you’d expect, right? That he’d change his name? If he hadn’t, they’d have nailed him years ago."

"He’d need some fake ID," I pointed out, but Robert only sniffed in reproach. And, of course, I realized it would have been relatively easy for Shorki to assume the identity of one of his victims. If not somebody from Easton then from some other place. God alone knew what trail of mayhem stretched behind such a man.

The place was cold. There were only a few scattered visitors. Elderly men and women in bathrobes wandered aimlessly in the halls. We followed Robert into one of the older wings, and peered through an open door into room number 8. There was nobody in it. And it was devoid of personal effects.

"This is where I saw him," Robert said. "Glanced in the door, and there he was."

"Maybe he died," Eddy said, putting his head inside and sniffing the air as if death might have left a telltale scent. There was a scent, all right. Of disinfectant and urine. But the walls were bare—no books, no ornaments, no fading photos of happier times.

Then Robert stiffened. "This is him," he whispered, and we stood back against the wall as one of the staff guided a decrepit husk of a man past us into the room where we stood. We stared at the guy as he shuffled past, and I for one knew right away it was Shorki. He had dropped forty pounds and aged a hundred years, but it was him, no question about it. His drooping eye was now closed completely. His once pudgy cheeks had collapsed. He wore a cotton nightdress, and dragged an IV pole with one liver-spotted claw. The pole had a wheel that chirped and wobbled, and he walked with careful, hesitant steps.

The aide studied us suspiciously, and I saw fatigue in her eyes. "Are you visitors for Mr. Gilbertson? Yes? Well, just wait a moment while I get him settled." With her bare, brawny arms, she practically dragged the old killer into the room. "Visitors, Mr. Gilbertson," she snapped. "Make sure you behave yourself."

She dumped him in an ugly, plastic-covered recliner, waved us into the room, and strode away.

We were alone.

Alone with the monster.

Shorki’s feet didn’t quite reach the floor, and his hairless shins were bruised. His nightshirt had snagged on one arm of the chair, pulling up to reveal a blue-veined thigh and a diaper that needed changing. His one eye stayed open—staring at us, through us, past us—perhaps he wasn’t aware of us at all.

I wondered if his gaze wasn’t so empty after all. I could convince myself without much effort that his glassy orb was fully fixed on me. After all, I was the one he’d seen face-to-face that day, except for a fleeting glimpse of Eddy. So what was he thinking? Had something clicked in that murderous old mind? Had he made the connection?

I scowled at him.

We trouped back along the halls to the exit and Robert’s car. We hadn’t said one word to the old horror. Eddy climbed into the back, propping his duffle-coated elbows on his knees, while I sat up front with Robert. None of us spoke. Instead of heading back to the restaurant, Robert drove us up the road to the top of the city dump. I still called it that, we all did, but it wasn’t officially a dump anymore. It was a park now, Overlook Park, though there wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere.

Robert snugged the car up tight to the guardrail, giving us a view down the slope to where Eagle Oils had once stood. The building had long since been demolished and carted away, and in its place there now stretched a clutch of pastel-shaded, low-rental apartment buildings.

Eddy cleared his throat. "The old bastard looked terrible."

"Did you see that diaper?" Robert shook his head in disgust.

"I wonder if he knew us," I muttered. "For a moment there . . ." But it was ridiculous. The old man scarcely knew himself.

"What we have to do now," Robert said, "is visit the cops. Turn the bloodthirsty monster in."

"Past time too," Eddy said.

"Long past time," I agreed.

We continued to gaze down the hill. Not only had Eagle Oils been obliterated, but even the train tracks had been removed. Things that had once seemed so permanent, gone. Soon we would be gone as well. Hell, we were each of us pushing seventy.

"If I end up in a place like that," Robert said, "shoot me. I’m serious. Pull the plug on me. Promise me that."

"We’ll do it," Eddy replied, "if we can walk the length of ourselves."

We thought about that chilling prospect awhile.

"We’ll have another meeting, and we’ll make a decision," Robert said. "We’ll decide how we should go about this. Decide which one of us makes the call, or if we should all go visit the cops in a group."

"Sure," Eddy and I agreed.

He started the car. Made three attempts before the engine caught. He took us back down the hill and out to the restaurant, and as we got out of the car, he said:

"So we’ll do that then?"

"Yup," we said.

"We’re all agreed?"

"Yup."

But we never did.

It was a year or two later that I saw the obituary—under Gilbertson. I called a scramble meeting at Pappy’s, and we got together, drank wine, and searched our souls.

We’d missed our chance. Why hadn’t we turned him in? Not one of us could say for certain. Was it because he was such a feeble old relic? Or because his sins couldn’t be put right again anyway? Or were we safe in the thought that the hellhole he occupied was at least as bad, if not worse, than any prison they’d eventually stick him in?

We couldn’t agree, though it was probably all those things.

But I sometimes imagine, when it’s late in the evening and the sun is casting long red-orange shadows, that it was something else. That at some primitive, reptilian level, the old monster still scared the living hell out of us.
Copyright © 2012 Jas. R. Petrin

COMING UP FROM CAPE FEAR

CHRIS MUESSIG | 9451 words

We sat in the fantail of Difile’s fifty-footer enjoying an excellent single malt and the Diamond Crowns he had handed around. The sun had just set, and the marina was left mostly to quiet parties and sessions like ours.

We had been talking about origins, humble or otherwise according to each man’s self-narrative, but had yet to hear from our host.

"I’ve nothing new to offer in that regard," he said, amidst protests. "But, if you like, I can tell you about another genesis—of the business that made all this possible."

The ruby tip of his cigar underscored the rakish superstructures towering all about us.

"It was 9/11, right?" said a youthful voice.

"No. That was just the proof of the pudding for which we had already positioned ourselves. Actually, it goes back to the original changing of the guard. I don’t think I’ve told the hurricane story, have I?"

He drew deeply on the fine, hand-rolled Dominican and in its sanguine glow began the following tale, which he had no idea was being digitally recorded.

Dale Lassiter was waiting for me at the RDU baggage claim with a black-markered sign. He had misspelled my last name, but his penmanship was good.

He was close to fifty then, less than average height, thickening, and a few years past the hairier headshot in the Raleigh brochure. The damp trench coat he wore was an attempt at atmosphere, I think, spoiled by being unbuttoned to a power combination of blue, pink, red, and gray.

His free hand rested genteelly on a loosely rolled golf umbrella. The smile on that naked, genial face was tentative; his eyes were bouncing around trying to deduce which of the male arrivals might be his visiting fireman. Apparently, he’d not done the simple thing of contacting the home office for a description.

I emerged from the crowd and raised my hand.

He spoke out in a homegrown tenor. "Mr. Difile? I’m . . ."

"Dale. I know. Why don’t you call me Rocky."

We shook hands and went over to the carousel.

"I never met a Rocky before. Isn’t that a name they preserve for boxers and halfbacks?"

I handed him my card. "It’s Anglo for Rocco. And Difile was DiFillippo until it got botched up at Ellis Island."

He compared the pasteboard with his sign and stuffed the latter into a trash bin.

"Oh, right. But don’t you have a middle name you could go by? Professionally, I mean."

"My middle name is Cornelius, so I guess I chose the lesser of two evils, didn’t I?"

He sensed that it was time to get away from the name game. He asked if I’d been to Raleigh before, and I told him the closest I’d been was Camp Lejeune.

"Jarhead, huh? I got drafted into the Army, but I lucked out and got MP duty at Bragg. How ’bout you?"

"I enlisted, and I guess you’d say I didn’t luck out."

My bag was one of the first around. I grabbed it and put it aside.

"You have more luggage?" He was surprised because I was only supposed to be in town for a couple of days, which the one fold-over suitcase should have covered. I pointed at my golf clubs as they pushed through the curtain strips, and watched his face relax. The clubs signaled something less than hard-assed scrutiny, although he looked doubtfully at the rain-spattered windows behind us.

"Rain or shine, I take them wherever I go," I said, playing into his hopes.

"Well, if this weather clears, we ought to get out for a quick nine."

"We’ll see. When’s our appointment at GlobalSoft?"

"Right after lunch."

Dale insisted on carrying the travel golf bag, and I let him lug it to see if he was in as bad a shape as he looked.

Outside the terminal, the gusts of saturated air felt tropical compared to where I’d come from. I held his umbrella over us both as we walked to the short-term. By the time we reached his sedan, he was changing hands every five steps and breathing with coughlike undertones, but he proved stubborn enough to make it.

The hotel he had put me in rose up into the lowering sky above Hillsborough like an oversized lighthouse. I’m not sure what the chain had been thinking when they built it, but they were stuck with it now. I told him to wait for me in the big glassy lobby while I did my early check-in.

The room was decent and offered a great view for someone interested in long-range surveillance or a sniper shot at the government buildings. I tossed my bag on one of the beds, leaned the clubs in a corner, and took out the tiny new cell phone the company had bought me. I called my wife first.

"The Eagle has landed," I said.

"Pounced you mean. How’s the local guy? Everything you thought?"

"And more. Or do I mean less?"

"Remember, Rock, no quick judgments—especially down there."

"What else am I good for?" My defiance was wasted, however, for she was chronically bent on changing my impatient and ethnocentric ways.

"And keep an eye on the weather. The tropical storms are backed up like cars on the Expressway."

We talked briefly about back-to-school stuff and the aftermath of the Labor Day shindig and I got off without any more cautions. The next call was to boss number two.

"Hey, Rocky. Got your feet on the ground? I was worried they’d close down the airport."

"Yes, I’m here, and your Mr. Lassiter met me himself. He’s a good old boy, isn’t he?"

"I know, I know. But when we first set up down there, he was a perfect fit."

"Did you mention this trip to your old man?"

"It did come up. You’ll probably hear from him."

"I can’t wait."

"What can I say?"

"Tell him to play more golf. Maybe you could introduce him to the shopping channels."

"Careful, you never know when he might be using a wiretap. Anyway, you’ll keep me posted, right?"

Dale was lollygagging with a female desk clerk when I got back to the lobby. He parted from her with dramatized regret.

"Did I ask if you had breakfast?" he said. "You can’t beat the diner at the Farmer’s Market for a kick-ass breakfast."

"I had coffee and croissant courtesy of the airline. That’ll hold me. I’d like to see the office."

We had a two-story brick building a block off St. Mary’s and not far from the hotel. I could have walked over in a pinch. Were it a calm and sunny day, the office would have lolled in the tranquil shade of the full-grown oaks and maples that agitated now above a rear lot filled with leaf-plastered vehicles. Dale parked in the manager’s slot, hospitably leaving me plenty of room to open my door while he struggled out on the driver’s side like a contortionist.

He ran us around to the front entrance so that the lush, mature woman at the reception desk could make a lengthy fuss over her damp boss and the VIP.

My wife and others had warned me that my Yankee sense of subjective time was going to be badly wrenched on this trip, and so it was. I have to admit, though, Miz Jessica impressed me with her ability to adroitly weave Southern Gothic autobiography and fawning references to sweet Mr. Lassiter into the woof of incoming calls. Unfortunately, too many of the calls seemed to be from disoriented guards either looking for their assigned post or reporting they had shown up at one already manned. She wasted no time in rerouting them to the dispatcher once their plaintive tone struck her practiced ear.

I extracted myself only after vowing a pilgrimage to her list of favorite spots in and around the capital.

The conference room, of which Dale seemed inordinately proud, was right off the lobby. The big polished table shimmered with a virginal gleam when he clicked on the overheads. The matching chairs looked like they hadn’t been pulled out since March Madness.

The dispatcher’s office was next. I thought I was looking into a betting parlor. Whiteboards covered everything except the doors and windows. A young man in shirtsleeves moved around like a mural painter with colored markers clenched in one hand. He was adjusting lists of names, times, and locations from a clipboard he held in the other hand. A big-bellied, mustachioed guy with lieutenant’s bars called out from a central desk stacked with more clipboards: "Lonnie, you put Roscoe out to the inkabator ’stead of Gen’rul Turbine. Fix that. And use the red marker for the night shift, not the blue. You color-blind?"

He heard our step and swiveled around affably. Then he realized the visitor had arrived and rocked himself up and out of his oversized chair with a croaking of springs that sounded like a bullfrog being crushed. I could tell he was proud of his sprawling database.

"Lonnie, leave off and come on over here."

Somewhere, the angelic, analog version of my wife’s voice counseled me again about cultural bias.

"Mr. Difile, this is Lieutenant Beljour, our head dispatcher and a former Wolfe County deputy sheriff. His assistant here is Lonnie Mills, who is an intern from the criminal justice program at our community college."

Beljour gave me a confident handshake, sensing the presence of another retired lawman.

"Where’s Wolfe County, Lieutenant?"

"It’s further out the Piedmont, but my wife has people in Durham, so we made the move after I retired from the department."

Behind him, Lonnie breathed noisily around the green marker cap and looked down at some stray pen marks on the front of his white uniform shirt. His mom would have a tough time with those.

"Quite a setup," I said. One wall was devoted to a personnel roster that cross-referenced with the numerous facilities, businesses, malls, and campuses on the other walls, all in block letters like a ransom note.

"I show it to every new prospect," Dale said, crinkly-eyed. He pointed at a blank section of whiteboard and added, "Always room for one more."

Especially, when one’s clients were defecting.

I perused the GlobalSoft listing, which rated an around-the-clock team. During business hours, we had an on-site supervisor-lieutenant and seven men rotating between the gate, monitoring stations, and foot and vehicle patrols. At night, they made do with a sergeant plus one inside and one outside man. I noted the names and shift lengths and walked over to the personnel list.

"This guy Hurley, he goes from GlobalSoft days to Qualitech on two nights. He’s doing fifty-six hours a week, yet you have some part-timers who could cover those nightshifts and save us overtime."

Dale spoke right up, no hemming or hawing. "Yes, indeedy, but we need to keep Qualitech mollified with our square-jawed guys. Besides, Jeff needs the extra time ’cause his wife’s got a disorder, and our benefits plan hasn’t quite kep’ up with the bills."

I looked toward Beljour. He said, "Hate to lose Captain Fontel’s nephew to some other outfit what would pay him the overtime." He remained genial, but he had pulled his gut in a millimeter or two. I let the topic drop for the time being.

Dale took me upstairs and we peeked into his office. It was privileged with corner windows looking down upon a quiet, sloping intersection, but aside from a big red and white state banner hanging on the interior wall, it was unpretentious: a bare oak desk, a leather couch and matching chair, and a low bookcase for family photos and a showing of regs and yearbooks propped between a pair of undersized trophies. Pictures of pedigree industrial campuses hung between the windows. Among the certificates on the wall above the bookcase, I recognized Mr. Nixon’s heartfelt appreciation for Dale’s service to the nation.

The next office was shared by his two captains. One desk was empty; a trim guy with short gray hair occupied the other. When he stood up, his uniform uncoiled into military creases, but his desk was not quite so well ordered. It looked like he was involved in a prodigious struggle with payroll. He was working with a lot of paper and a laptop while a larger monitor sat aside on an ell, hooded like the cage of a noisy bird.

"This here is Phil Langley, my numbers guy. We were in the Army together, but he stayed on and made a career of it after I bailed. Glutton for punishment."

Langley smiled politely. He was clearly anxious to get back to the fiscal jigsaw puzzle that had probably devolved from the wallboards downstairs.

"How many years were you in?" I said.

"Twenty, sir. Came out Sergeant First Class."

"What was your MOS?"

"Ordnance disposal. Took some accounting courses while I was in and finished them up when I got out. Safer job." He gave me a thin smile, wondering perhaps whether the job was as safe as he thought.

Dale said, "My other right-hand guy, Pete Fontel, is out drummin’ up business and doin’ drive-bys."

Fontel’s desk looked more like a bare monument than a workstation.

"He’s on the road quite a bit actually, checkin’ posts and nosin’ out new clients," Dale said. The reiteration struck me as defensive.

We let Langley get back to his ordeal, which looked trickier than defusing a booby-trapped shell, and moved on to the IT room. Dale rapped a quick knuckle on the locked door and waited. The panel swung open on a submarinelike interior of stacked modules and a pair of monitors filled with programming text.

"Hey, Pal! What’s happenin’?"

Pallav Annapragada was a second-generation Indian transplant not much older than Roscoe downstairs. He hadn’t an ounce of fat on him, which made the big dark eyes look as if they were going to spill out. His hair poked up like he’d been running his hands through it steadily since daybreak.

"Pal, say hello to Mr. Difile."

"Hello!" Or was it "Help!" Anyway, Pallav looked beseechingly at me, as if I were a rescuer.

"We got Pal gettin’ us ready to fire up our customer info and personnel files and payroll in a ’lectronic version."

"I am ready!" Pallav said expressly to me, because I don’t think he believed anyone else in the room would listen.

"Come on now, son, you got to admit we got a little more dry runnin’ to do before we take the plunge."

"Didn’t we have this equipment installed a year ago?" I asked rhetorically.

Pallav bit his lip. Any more vocal desperation would have been disloyal. Around us, cooling fans whirred valiantly; tiny lights glowed like miniature traffic signals.

I said, "What kind of power backup do we have for this system?"

"We have batteries that will give us eight hours if the electricity ever goes out. No problem."

"How did you fare when the hurricane came ashore this summer?"

"Fine, fine, no outage. Another time, a car crash took down a line, but we were back up in two hours. No problem."

"And what if Bertha had headed here instead of up the coast?"

"We are ready with the batteries."

"No problem, right?"

Dale came to the rescue. "These tropical storms usually shear off from us after they chew up the Outer Banks. They might dump a lotta rain, but the wind runs outta steam."

I knew his observation could be disputed by any number of elderly locals who still had memory cells at their disposal. I said, "Well, there’s another big one not too far away, and there’s no guarantee our luck will hold out. How prepared are the clients? Are they ready for the worst?"

"Come on now, don’t jinx us. Fran’s headin’ for South Carolina, God hep’m. Anyways, them high-tech outfits in the Triangle ain’t about to skimp on emergency power. They all got generators."

I had begun to feel an incipient claustrophobia in the cluttered room. "We’ll talk again," I promised Pallav, although the assurance did not seem to penetrate his gloom.

Dale had a small "ready room" on that floor for guards ostensibly awaiting daily floating assignments. Amidst basic cafeteria furniture and snack and soda machines, two uniformed men were finishing up a heart-stopper of a brunch while watching a wall-mounted TV tuned to a soccer match, of all things.

The pair at the table paused in their eating, looking up respectfully but without embarrassment from their gravy-soaked biscuits. They could have been father and son, generational members of the nondescript sentries of America chowing down in their clubhouse.

"How’s it goin’, Yuri, Anzelm? Lieutenant Beljour’s probably gonna send y’all over to Astrodyne today."

Well, well, Yuri and Anzelm—not only soccer fans, but also entrusted with guarding a defense contractor’s premises. Senator McCarthy was rolling in his grave.

We retired to Dale’s office.

He didn’t look very much at home behind his desk; moreover, his good-natured veneer had thinned.

"Well, Rocky, Junior obviously thinks I need help workin’ out this GlobalSoft thing. But what else are you here for?"

I had intended to begin our talk with a firm suggestion about converting some of the ready-room space into more elbow room and ventilation for Pal’s technology-in-waiting, but since Dale wanted to cut to the chase, I obliged.

"Okay, once we get a handle on the breach over there, which seems to have happened on our watch, we are going to use our findings to figure out not only how to retain GlobalSoft, but how to hold on to our other clients and grow at the same time. Our existing customers are losing faith. We have to make them believe our services are indispensable, and their accounting departments have to be willing to pay up in a bottom-line universe. Also, while we’re at it, we want them to spread the good word about us."

"I get that. I know we’ve lost an account or two, but they’ll be back when they realize you git what you pay for."

"I’m not so sure. Right now, what makes us that different than the other uniformed stooges?"

"I can tell you I’m damn careful who I hire. The supervisors and key dudes are what make the difference. Even the rank and file here are better’n average."

"That may be, but in the long run it’s how much more secure we make the clients feel. And that starts, as with any community, by demonstrating how in secure they actually are."

Rain lashed Dale’s windows like a deliberate scourge.

"And, Dale, do you really think our clients and new prospects are impressed by Beljour’s wall art? I think they’d feel much more comfortable if they knew we handled that stuff on a spreadsheet, don’t you?"

"I don’t entirely agree. It’s like the scoreboard in one of them classy old ballparks—the human touch ’stead of a giant TV and light display."

"I hope you’re not serious. And you’ve literally got your IT in the closet. It’s time for Pal to come out, although you may have driven him half crazy with the delay and overcrowding."

"Pal’s an emotional guy; he gets a little impatient. You know how these cum laude people are from Duke. Then again, maybe you don’t; but I got our customer service reps just about done processing the paper files into the boy’s database."

"And where are these processors?" I knew I hadn’t matched up enough people with the cars in the lot.

"In the basement. I didn’t show you that yet. It’s a mite messy down there."

"Get that processing done, Dale. Consider it a priority."

He nodded tightly. "Okay, high tech comin’ up."

"That ain’t high tech, Dale. We need to step things up in every department. For instance, the home office is thinking about doing its own alarm installations and monitoring instead of farming them out."

"Hell, next thing you know we’ll be going into residential security!"

I said nothing. He stared at me as if I had hatched out of a recurring nightmare.

"Home security. Well, bless Junior’s ambitious heart," he said, so gently I couldn’t take exception. He might have been more vociferous if I’d disclosed the rest of Junior’s vision.

Difile paused as a ferry horn blasted across the old whaling harbor. The boats’ nighttime arrivals were always lit up and full of fanfare, harking back perhaps to when the service had been run by a famous circus owner. As the double-ended vessel nuzzled into its slip and yawned wide for the waiting traffic, the storyteller took advantage of the hoopla to replenish empty tumblers.

When the actor in our midst complimented his spot-on dialect, Difile said, "That comes from all the trips I eventually made down there. I became totally immersed in the culture. You need to take on the camouflage of local manners to operate effectively when you’re solving indigenous problems—something the government’s never got the hang of."

"You could definitely have a go in my business," said the thespian.

"Thanks. Anyway, this technology gap I’ve described was obviously detrimental, but worse were the bad apples rotting in the barrel."

We parked away from Pete Fontel’s company patrol car. Neither the weather nor the early hour seemed to have deterred the serious lunchers from crowding into The Pale Ale Grill. The lot was full of late-model sedans and pickup trucks, many decked out with snapping car flags that declared college allegiances with all the pride of Bloods and Crips.

Fontel’s vague itinerary had listed a meeting here, so I suggested that we grab lunch at the same spot. Dale, dyspeptic from his first serving of management’s new thinking, hadn’t liked the idea. Now he was leaning on the wheel and looking at the barn-board exterior with pursed lips.

"Something you need to tell me, Dale?"

"Nope, just hate to crowd my people."

We made a dash with faces averted from the pelting rain. A tag team of young girls who should have been cheerleading someplace held the inner doors open. They showed us where to hang our damp coats, found out we wanted nonsmoking (now it was Sir Walter Raleigh’s turn to roll in his grave), and led us to a booth that allowed us to watch five giant screens at once.

The VIP treatment energized Dale. He looked around and spotted his captain sitting at the bar beyond the room divider. He was talking loquaciously to a beefy suit with a stereotypical comb-over, a man Dale identified as the assistant operations manager of Hercules Systems.

Fontel’s profile glistened under a spill of too-black hair. His peaked cap was on the bar at the foot of one of those supersized drafts they had begun to peddle. I watched him take a big gulp and point toward one of the screens over the bar.

Our waitress arrived to let us know her name was Jill and what could she get us to drink. Dale heard me order seltzer and followed suit, so I didn’t learn right away what his poison was.

"Tell me about Captain Fontel, Dale."

"Hey, don’t people wine and dine up North?"

"They sure do. It’s a hobby with a lot of them."

"Well . . . me’n Pete go way back. His momma raised me along with her own when my folks passed." His eyes focused on a nostalgic interior scene.

"Maybe you should have hired his mother," I said after a decent pause.

The comment made him go so cold I thought he was going to get up and walk out.

"Sorry, that was out of line. I gather she was a good woman. Tell me about him, though."

He looked back at Fontel, whose big laugh I could now differentiate from all the others in the buzzing room. The Hercules contact at his elbow picked up a massive bun and bit into it. Sauce surged over the edges of the sandwich like blood from a gash.

Our seltzers arrived, and we ordered food, which gave Dale time to collect himself.

"I needed someone to help out with the sales end. That’s what he’s always done."

"Sales? What—lawn tractors? The local brewery?"

He looked directly into my eyes with misery written all around his own.

"Sales is sales, Rocky. And he’s a fren’ o’mine. Family. What else you want me to say? I know damn well even the Old Man’s got other kin on the payroll besides Junior."

"The Old Man’s retired now, Dale, so all that’s going to be reassessed."

"I don’t believe he’s lettin’ go like that."

"You better believe it."

I dragged more of Fontel’s background out of Dale while I waited for my Cobb salad. Pete was the baby of the family, Dale’s ward in the scheme of things. He had missed the draft, kicked around the community college for six years, partied in between jobs, married twice, and finally settled down into a hale and hearty mediocrity as a generic salesman of goods and services.

"It doesn’t seem like he’s picked up much of the slack for you."

"The clients like him. He shows up at least once a week to check posts and make a fuss. Buys ’em lunch."

"But he’s not writing any new business to speak of, is he? How many times has he gone after this Hercules bunch?"

"It ain’t that easy anymore."

"You got that right. That’s why we have to gear up and repackage our whole operation."

Jill put a bacon cheeseburger and sweet potato fries in front of him. They sat there like a plateful of stones.

"You seem less and less pleased with the way we operate down here, Rocky."

"The problems keep multiplying, which is why we may be in trouble with GlobalSoft—and whoever else they can badmouth us to. Unhappiness travels fast, Dale."

We looked together toward a loud guffaw, prompted apparently by a sports blooper filling the screen above the taps and bottles.

"Eat," I said. "We have a tough afternoon ahead of us."

We were on our refill of coffee when Fontel and Mr. Hercules pushed away from the bar. They walked out through the lobby slapping each other’s shoulders, shaking hands on the move, grabbing toothpicks. I noticed Fontel was hatless and, sure enough, after a few moments, he returned. He walked back to the bar and, after a glance at his watch, nodded for the gal to draw him another big one.

"I’ve seen enough," I said.

Fontel was looking up dreamily at a college football recap when we joined him at the bar. He glanced aside as we entered his space, returned to the frenetic highlights, and then did a double take back to Dale.

"Yo, Pete, this here’s Mr. Rocky Difile, the operations fella I told you was comin’ down from the head office."

From the uncomfortable once-over I got as we automatically shook hands, I was sure Fontel had hoped to stay out of my purview.

"How’d your meeting go, Captain?" I said, looking pointedly at his twenty-two-ounce beer.

Recovering his equilibrium, he shrugged and said, "It’ll take a little more persuadin’, but I think them boys at Hercules’ll take us on."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Chemistry, Mr. Difile. Chemistry’s my speciality."

"Well, speaking of chemistry—alcohol and driving don’t mix. Why don’t you hand over your car keys to Mr. Lassiter and have that young lady behind the bar call you a cab."

"Beg pardon?" He was honestly stunned. He looked at Dale for guidance.

"And let me have your cell phone while you’re at it."

"Dale?"

"He’s the man, Pete. Don’t worry ’bout it. Just do what he says an’ we’ll sort it out later." Dale was torn but had bowed to the inevitable, trying to file down its sharper edges for his old pal.

Still, the big man did not reach into his pockets. He would only look at Dale, and his face was settling into a stubborn, enough-is-enough expression you would give an exasperating relative.

I shifted over a step so that I got between them and he couldn’t avoid me.

"Captain, I’m sure you don’t want to have a scene in front of your favorite food-and-drink servers, do you? I have authority in this matter, and I assure you, you will not go out the front door with those keys or that phone in your possession."

"I kin hold my beer, Mr. Difile." He could not hold back the yeasty odor of it, though.

He tried to stare me down, but he did not have enough force of character. I held out my hand.

"This is bullcrap, Dale!"

Dale said nothing, and the clubbed fingers fished out the keys and detached the phone from his belt and thunked them on the bar. He turned away from both of us and his eyes drifted back up to the gridiron out of habit.

I scooped up his stuff.

"We’ll talk again, Captain—in the office, first thing tomorrow."

He looked down at my shoes, willing them to walk away.

Outside, the wind and rain were dealing out bad hair to anyone without a hat. Dale started for his sedan, but I grabbed his arm and pointed to the marked car that Fontel had parked in a handicap spot. I handed him the keys.

"Why are we usin’ his car?"

"I want to simulate one of his ‘drive-bys’ when we go to GlobalSoft."

He probably felt I was adding insult to injury, but it was too wet and wild to stand and argue.

I had to clear the passenger seat before I could get in.

"What’s that smell?" I said.

"Barbecue. But it’s a mite aged."

Dale kept his own counsel as he drove us through the downpour and into the spider web of roads and highway that interconnect city and suburbs. He glanced aside at me sadly every now and then as I rummaged unproductively through the detritus in the patrol car.

Gradually, the tasteful new shopping centers and the curious blend of modern and traditional communities gave way to pine forest, meadowlike lawns, and half-hidden cathedrals and prisms of glass and colored metal. We were in a region now where the physical surroundings were metaphors for the vast intellectual properties within.

We turned up a steep drive flanked by GlobalSoft’s 3-D blue-and-white logo. The car crossed over a culvert that had a loud bottled roar to it, and I saw whitecaps when I glanced down. Ahead, through the busy sweep of the wipers, I could see a big old pine tree or two leaning away from rain-loosened roots. The landscape was ripe for the domino theory of hurricanes. I hoped the ground tenders had cleared enough space between the forest and the architecture.

The prow of GlobalSoft’s stylistic ark breasted the swaying trees. In the foreground was a manned booth and barrier. As we approached, a sharp-looking kid in a yellow slicker and plastic-covered cap came out. He had a fat manila envelope that he held under the shelter of the eaves. It was hard to see his face clearly through water wipe, but when he realized there were two of us, he casually leaned into the booth and came out with a clipboard in place of the envelope. Nodding respectfully to Dale, he stooped to peer carefully at his passenger, as if to make sure I wasn’t holding his boss at gunpoint.

"Jeff Hurley, this here’s Mr. Difile from the head office. We should be down on your list for a one thirty."

"Yes, sir," he said in a military manner.

He handed in the protected clipboard for Dale’s signature and stayed in a half crouch, his expressionless eyes still on me. He looked to be in his mid twenties, ripped, white walled, and clean shaven.

"How long do you stay out here in the booth?" I said.

"Just started a two-hour turn, sir."

He took back the board and activated the crossbar, and we drove on.

"What did you do, put out a memo to everybody that I was in town?"

"No, suh—only the main office and the day shift here."

"Same effect. Anyway, I hope all our employees are as vigilant as Hurley."

"I do try to hire for alertness—when I can. Jeff’s a little more motivated than most. He was a jarhead like you. Did the Desert thing. I reckon he’d still be in if his little gal weren’t so sickly and wantin’ him nearby."

We took a visitor’s spot under a huge, crescent-shaped portico. The tall sheets of lobby glass were reflective, and I felt watched from within. Sure enough, another of our guards opened the front door before we could reach for the handles. Dale looked to see if I was impressed.

The guard took our coats and showed us to an echoing, marble space where we could square ourselves away. In five minutes, we sat neatly combed before the desk of Ted Timmons, the chief operating officer.

He looked young for the job, and casual, being totally into GlobalSoft’s dress code—blue dress shirt, no tie, khaki trousers, sports jacket over the back of his chair—which was supposed to encourage thinking outside the box, I venture. When he talked to us, his eyes kept straying to papers spread out on his desk like a hand of cards. Here was that rare man who thought he could multitask. Either that or we had been relegated to the status of a formality, and I knew that formalities were as exchangeable as a pair of, well, tan slacks.

Dale introduced me as Rocco Difile and surprised me by accurately encapsulating my law enforcement career and meteoric rise through the ranks of the company. Maybe he had done some checking after all. Timmons listened politely and then asked if, as a policeman, I had ever investigated computer crimes. I told him that I had lobbied for just such a special task force at my last command and had been gratified to see it put in place on my way out the door.

"So you never saw it in action."

"No, but our company has its own qualifications in that area."

Something sour was at work in his lower tract.

I kept running with the ball he’d tossed.

"I understand one of your premarket designs has shown up in rival hands. Your people are probably hard at work examining the firewalls and encryption used in your systems. It so happens our head office has been upgrading its own IT department, adding personnel your people will be able to consult with."

"That’s kind of like closing the barn door after the fact."

"It’s a response that not every security firm is prepared or willing to make, Mr. Timmons. Over the past year you must have noticed the attention we’ve devoted to the issue in our newsletter."

"Fine. But what else can you do for us besides regurgitate congressional reports?"

"Have you considered the possibility that you have ongoing espionage taking place on the premises? That it might not be just your systems but also your personnel that need to be scrutinized?"

His stacked spine told me I had hit a nerve, but he was not ready to abandon the party line.

"That’s crap," he said. "We don’t hire lowlifes. Even the temps have their backgrounds thoroughly examined. We have checks and balances and need-to-know clearances. Every man and woman operates with sophisticated IDs and passwords."

"They’re easy enough to get around."

"Really?" He reacted as if I were trying to unload a case of snake oil onto his desk. Of course, he was no more irascible than many executives I had sat down with, but I wondered how Dale had kept him from going over his head until now.

Strangely, none of his ire seemed actually directed at our easygoing district manager. The anger seemed buffered, and I wondered if the granting of gigantic tax breaks obligated even world-class émigré businesses to adapt the antiquated, nonabrasive manners of their new patrons.

"Let’s take a little walk, Mr. Timmons," I said, rising to my feet. Dale took the cue but remained deferentially half seated, an encouraging look on his face. Timmons got up, his eyebrows converging like strokes on a caricature. Behind him, long rags of cloud and rain hung down into the parkland vista like a mobile backdrop.

I asked him to take me to the workstations of people who were not in the office that day. The first cubicle we visited was plastered with a historical foldout of NASA’s various flight programs and a couple of laminated Buck Rogers cartoon strips. I sat before the monitor, glanced at the underside of the keypad, and reached down to hit the power button on the hard drive. While it was booting up, I asked Timmons about the employee: full-time, male, mid forties, a decade with the company, part of a team of software engineers working on a satellite communications subcontract for the government. (As he spoke, he was frowning at me over Dale’s shoulder.)

"Trust him?"

"Completely!" he said, but I think he already knew he had set himself up.

When the man’s log-in appeared, I said, "What do you use for IDs around here?"

"Initials plus the first six letters of the last name, all lower-cased."

"Same for everybody, right?"

The employee had a beat-up desk nameplate that read "Jack C. Preuss, Astronaut’s Assistant." I typed jcpreuss in the ID box and entered the elaborate password he had taped under his keypad. I pulled up his list of files and sat back so Timmons could see the screen clearly.

"I’m sure you take the precaution of changing passwords fairly often. That’s good, but some people just don’t trust their memories."

Timmons was a tad more receptive from that point on. He was no dummy, probably had no illusions about the careless, devious, and greedy ways of his fellow humans, yet maybe he had let himself be lulled by the litany of company values—each one led off by a letter of the GlobalSoft moniker—rising up everywhere on vertical wall banners much like those the samurai had carried into battle.

"Assuming we had a thief on board," he said, "how would you go about catching him or her?" He was holding something back; otherwise, he would have had the police in by now instead of bitching to us.

I answered indirectly at first, careful to scratch only the surface, to tantalize him with a sense of the expertise needed to counter the criminal acquisition of proprietary information.

Companies were already vulnerable to open-source collection of stuff they put out themselves. In a free, capitalistic society, annual reports and analysis by trade journals could be very revealing. On the other hand, a trained eye keeping track of simple things, like who among the lower-paid employees was spending significant time in the company library, could head off harmful access to nonpublic information. Obviously, support personnel were more likely to fall into this category. Having passed through the fire of an expensive background check, they might subsequently fall prey to substance abuse, financial setbacks, or simple resentment, which made them receptive to outside recruitment.

I asked if the company faxed heavily to overseas destinations, did they have foreign students among the temps they hired, were there any joint ventures or mergers with foreign business partners in the offing, and was he aware that some of our most valued international allies felt perfectly justified in illicitly rifling our technology? I hinted at the humongous checklist of other pertinent questions that we had compiled amidst the confusing clamor and crosscurrents issuing from a proliferation of official counterespionage agencies (I rattled off a half dozen acronyms), who should have been working together but weren’t. I stressed that we had hired or were hiring former agents from the key organizations, skilled men and women who were actually cooperating in the nourishing atmosphere of our home office to track and effectively stymie the myriad threats to our valued clients.

While the mental picture of our crusade still glowed, I said, "We can certainly offer our talents to investigate this situation in retrospect, but we need to get something straight. Yours is a privately owned company, right? So, hypothetically, if something bad happens in the family, figuratively or literally, management might not react the same way as in a publicly owned corporation."

Timmons sat back and swiveled halfway toward the outside weather show.

"Who is it you suspect, sir? Why is the company reluctant to initiate a criminal investigation?"

He swiveled back with tented hands.

"This is confidential, yes?"

"As long as we’re not being asked to abet anything unlawful."

"Three days before the diarrhea hit the wind tunnel, the owner’s son, who is a software engineer involved in product development, called in sick. That was two weeks ago, and he hasn’t been back since. This past weekend, he was seen in London by a European businessman we are closely associated with."

"Whose company was he in?"

"He was at a dance club with two young females."

"Has he played hooky like this before?"

"Never. We have no conclusive proof of his collusion, yet, but his behavior gives us a bad, bad feeling."

"And you wish to suppress any hint of scandal."

"Yes, we have some new contract talks coming up with the government that we don’t need tainted."

"I take it this breach did not affect other government deals?"

"No, otherwise, the place would be crawling with Feds."

"Hey, they’re getting sensitized to any form of technological bleeding. And I have to tell you, you’d be taking a chance in not disclosing this development during the upcoming negotiations."

"What they don’t know can’t hurt them."

"So what if we investigate and establish that the young man is indeed involved. What then?"

"That’s being pondered as we speak."

When we left Timmons, I felt we had inserted a wedge into his corporate psyche. He said he would let us know very shortly if we were to help with their internal investigation and made an appointment with Dale to discuss more sophisticated security measures beyond the teasers I had handed over gratis.

"So what do you think?" Dale asked me as he started up Fontel’s car. He was still a bit bewildered by the dragon’s teeth I’d sown.

I said, "I think we’re close to making a better kind of deal. And you can use it for a template."

What I actually thought was if GlobalSoft decided to use us to backtrack the theft, my first call to the head office would be like yelling "Action!" on the set of a Keystone Kops movie. But you do have to start somewhere.

Jeff Hurley raised the barrier as soon as he saw us coming. He had the clipboard ready so that Dale could sign us out. He did not stoop to peer into the car as he waited for the signature; he affected a deferential but detached air.

I got out of the car and came around to where he was standing. Squinting against the thick spatter of rain must have put a scowl on my face.

I held Hurley’s eye and sidestepped into the booth. His indifference vanished with a visible jolt. The manila envelope was in the lowest slot of a small vertical desk. He filled the doorway as I reached down and slid it out.

"That’s private stuff, sir."

"Really? You were about to hand it off to us when we arrived earlier because you thought it was your Uncle Pete in the car, right?"

A short beat, then, "No, sir."

"Well, that’s the way it looked to me. What would I find if I opened this up? Skin magazines? Betting sheets?"

He was trying to keep his cool, though I think he considered taking it away from me.

"Hell," I said. "I hate suspense." I pinched the clasp and opened the flap. As I unsheathed the printed pages, a GlobalSoft logo emerged and a watermark that read: "Confidential."

When I looked up at his face, all I could think was, Is this an armed post? I didn’t know. None of the interior guards had been armed. If he was carrying, the holster was under the slicker, which might have open-bottomed pockets. His hands were down at his sides, but they looked ready to go.

I was piercingly sorry I had left my Glock disassembled in my golf bag. Numbers from our latest report on workplace homicides popped unbidden into my head. I found my hair was too wet to stand on end.

"Hurley, you are relieved, but I want you in the office first thing in the morning. Let me have your company cell. Are you driving your own car?"

Bravado is a tricky thing with a short half-life. Somehow, I should have established whether there was a gun, but I didn’t want to call attention now to its possible presence. I had no right to ask Hurley to surrender it anyway.

A strange, almost relaxed expression softened his face, which could have signified a number of things. Had he somehow been in contact with Uncle Pete after we arrived? Did they have a plan B?

He nodded, and I watched to make sure it was a phone that emerged from his slicker pocket. I’m not sure I would have been fast enough had it been a pistol grip. Without a word, he walked off toward the parking lot.

"What happened there?" Dale said.

"Is he armed?"

"No, only the night supervisor packs at this job."

"Move the car out of the way, please. Then come in here and call your lieutenant to post another man on the gate. After that, have Beljour drag someone away from the snack machines to replace Hurley for the day."

As he made the calls, I thought back to my own return from overseas, the KA-BAR and the derringer I had hung on to for a while, and the revolver I’d carried off-duty during my first few years on patrol.

A shiny red mustang came down from the lot. The bar was still up, so Hurley had no reason to even slow down much. Instinct interposed me between Dale and the open doorway, which made me doubly stupid, for, if anything, it would be his avuncular presence that protected us.

The car shushed by, disappearing into the slashing rain at the foot of the drive.

While we waited for the new guard, Dale said, "We ought to bring those papers back inside."

"No, I need to wave them under their noses tomorrow. I’m sure they’re copies, but we’ll put off destroying them until after we’re satisfied no one’s detected the replication."

"But . . ."

"This is their current R&D status report."

"Dang."

"Our situation’s kind of like GlobalSoft’s, isn’t it?"

"Yeah, them two’s like kin to me. You think they had a hand in the other thing?"

"Maybe we can establish our exposure tomorrow. They’re done one way or the other. I just can’t believe they were so blatant about this little heist. There’s a floppy in the envelope, too, so printing it out was stupid. By the way, let me guess the kind of business Hercules does."

He looked sick. "They bid on some of the same contracts as GlobalSoft."

"And how long has Fontel been wooing them?"

"Too long, I suppose."

The evening had grown so quiet that Difile’s voice had only a tinkling buoy to contend with. The wan radiance off the tin reflectors of the old-fashioned dock lamps barely touched us. The restaurants flanking the marina with their beckoning lights and the quaint shops uphill had siphoned off most of the pedestrians. The humidor and the strangely named Scotch were passed around again.

"Connections are always a complication," said a bitter voice in the stern. "There’s such a thing as corporate inbreeding."

"Speaking of connections," said one who sat on a number of boards. "Who was it that actually hired you?"

Difile, silhouetted by soft light from below, sat very still in his canvas-back chair. "The Old Man," he said after a moment. "While he was still in charge and anxious to know how Junior would handle the transition."

"So your first loyalty was to Senior."

"How shall I answer that?" Difile said.

We drove back toward the city in premature twilight. Dale’s misery was counterproductive, so I said, "Like anything, we have to look at this as an opportunity, not a setback."

"How’s that?"

"As an exercise, make believe I’m an existing or prospective client. Play back the stuff I fed Timmons in light of our experiences today. Let’s hear you make it into a power pitch."

"I don’t know as I’m in the mood for it right now, Rocky. By the way, since when do we have all this counterintelligence stuff up and running?"

"Hey, your job is to create a perceived need. Don’t worry about the details. Believe me, all the new goods and services getting rolled out nowadays are way behind their marketing images. Sometimes they never catch up. Now, give it a go. I always heard you were a salesman first. Sales is sales, right?"

And sure enough, even the drenched gloom and the cowed traffic could not prevent Dale’s revival. There’s nothing like a solid set of sales points to bring down the tongue of fire that supersedes all personal problems. So, it was a productive ride, and it made me hopeful that we would not only retain but also expand our clientele in the Neuse River Basin—and beyond, of course.

I let him wax a while on how good a spiel we’d worked up, and then I said, "I’m going to want a good steak and a beer tonight, but first we need to talk about how we’re going to usher out your two pseudo-relatives without creating a self-defeating scandal of our own."

"You sure know how to puncture the pigskin, Rocky."

We left the office a little after five and drove to a huge barnlike structure out on Route 70. There was plenty of parking; the weather was starting to make its inroads on the dining public.

My cell phone rang as we were shaking ourselves off in the lobby. I looked at the caller ID and said, "I gotta take this. I’ll join you at the table."

Dale went off obediently in tow of a chic brunette in black and white. Standing by a wall filled with enough single-action Colts to supply a spaghetti western, I said hello to the Old Man.

"Rocco, where you at?"

Aside from my late dad, Senior was the only person who had ever stuck with my given name, meticulously avoiding the wordplay that surely occurred to him.

"Me? I’m workin’ the sunny South."

"Yeah, so I heard." From someone besides Junior? "Looks like Fran may be changing her mind about where she makes her beachhead, my friend. Stay away from windows."

"I do that anyhow, but we’re a long way from the beach. Where are you at, by the way?"

"I am a voice in the desert."

"Arizona, huh? I wish I was there. At least I’d be able to use my clubs."

"How’s my friend Dale bearing up under your scrutiny?"

His voice sounded as arid as the desolation outside of Scottsdale.

"We’re having a steak together. He’ll survive."

"I insist on that. In what capacity, though? I heard my son already has a short list of candidates to take over the Raleigh office."

"We’re going to show one of his captains the door. That’ll create a vacancy."

"Captain Lassiter?"

"Well, maybe we’ll generate a new rank, like Major or Colonel."

"In the Confederate tradition? Well, what about his pay? He’s got some obligations."

"We’ll work something out with a commission structure."

"You were prepared to pull the plug on him, weren’t you?"

"I was counseled not to rush to judgment." I’m glad he didn’t probe into the origin of that advice.

"Good, I’m glad that the company’s going to keep faith with him. A business has to peek around the blinders every now and then, Rocco. Well, you enjoy your dinner. Say hello to Dale for me and stay hep to that changeable storm out there."

When I was sure he was finished, I hit the end button. Too many weathermen were telling me which way the wind was blowing.

The next time my cell phone rang, I had to grope for it through profound darkness because the bedside light switch didn’t work. The LED was gone from the radio alarm too.

"Are you all right?" my wife said. "Your mother called to see if you were still alive." And then I felt the tremors hitting the tall building, like something hungry and taller was trying to shake its way in. The shriek of an enraged multitude filled the air for a second and then was whisked away.

"Whoa!" I said. "What time is it?"

"Three-ish."

I got up and opened the window curtains, standing well to the side. Looking down, I saw one avenue still had live traffic lights bouncing like baby jumpers in the scudding rain. The rest of the city was totally dark. The headlights and whirling colors of emergency vehicles moved through streets that ran like gutters beneath the thrashing shadows of roadside trees.

"I told you to watch the weather."

"Let me go. I’m fine. I have to check in with Lassiter."

He was at the office fielding anxious calls on cell phone and radio from both clients and stranded personnel. Fallen trees and flooding had effectively isolated some of the protected facilities.

"I’m coming down there," I said.

"How you gettin’ here? Canoe?"

"I’ll walk."

"Like hell. I’ll send Beljour to getcha. He can drive the company SUV. It’s got official lookin’ whirly lights and a lotta freeboard."

"How long you two been there?"

"Beljour never left. Said he had one of his big-gut feelin’s. I swung by after I dropped you off and been here ever since. He spooked me."

"Send him along if you think it’s safe."

"One place is as safe as another tonight."

I knocked over my clubs searching for the flashlight I kept stowed in the bag. I dressed by its light and took the stairs down to the lobby where guests had gathered and candles were burning like votives and a maintenance guy was belatedly taping the windows. I wondered why such a big chain hadn’t invested in an emergency generator, and put it down to the "charmed life" syndrome that was one of our national ills. The night manager seemed to think everything would be back on as soon as the wind died down some.

I didn’t see the images until later, but the hurricane had made a radical change in course. After surging across the barrier islands, it charged undeflected into the interior, killing and maiming as it came up I-40 from Cape Fear like a howling and murderous avenger.

Beljour was forced into a few detours, but he persisted, stolidly backing and filling amidst fallen trees and wires, and within half an hour, I was standing before candlelit whiteboards, writing up situational notes coming in from the field. As we worked, the room took on the confusing scent of warring perfumes from the candles scrounged from Miz Jessica’s extensive assortment at the reception desk.

Over at GlobalSoft, the emergency generators had never kicked in. Floodwater had overflowed the culvert and ran like an unbridged moat below the property. Trees were also down across the road approaches. We got the plant engineer in touch with the sergeant, who had some mechanical ability, and eventually they got the power up so that their database was preserved. There were a number of similar situations that, as luck would have it, we or our creative on-site guards solved after a fashion.

Dale broke out a bottle of bourbon, at last revealing his poison, and I downed a few shots that set like fishhooks in my gut.

A tree came down in the parking lot just before dawn. It sheared off the little overhang sheltering the rear door and crushed the dumpster. Beljour was dozing on his creaky throne and never heard a thing, but I didn’t begrudge him his exhaustion.

"The cell phone and radio batteries are ’bout run down," Dale said. "We’re not gonna be able to palaver with anyone pretty soon."

"I think we got marching orders out to everybody. All the major clients are in the picture. I don’t like the fact that we’re in the dark here, though. There’s no way the utility company’s going to solve this mess in a hurry. And we’re going to lose all our own data when Pal’s batteries go dead."

"Speakin’ of pals, Beljour got holda one, who’s headin’ over here with a portable generator that we can hook up to power the servers and maybe spark a string of lights through here. It’ll be noisy and another tree might fall down on it, but we gotta try."

My watch said it should have been daylight, but it wasn’t. The walls shuddered with the wet shrouds of sound slapping against them. I heard glass break upstairs.

"Dale, this is one more thing we can add to the template to grab their hearts and minds."

"Beg pardon?"

"Now you can throw nature into the mix of potential security risks. And make a metaphor out of it, too—like the kind the Old Man was fond of using. The bad guys will be coming up the pike just like this hurricane. Get it out there while it’s still fresh in everybody’s mind."

"Is that sour mash doin’ your talkin’, Rocky?"

I looked at him amidst the moving shadows, thinking that if he couldn’t make use of all this chaos and perfidy, then we’d find someone who could. A more urbane someone at that, just as soon as the Old Man’s arthritic grasp had loosened a little more.

It was too bad Jeff Hurley had turned rogue. Junior had some other plans that could definitely maximize a gung-ho kid with weapons training or make better use, for that matter, of Captain Langley’s familiarity with explosives—and pay them a wage that might even secure their loyalty.

Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe not, but a panoramic vision swooping from suburban households to distant pipelines rushed through me as I climbed to see what had gusted into the upper room.

Difile must have felt his anecdote had ended less tidily than intended. He offered an epilogue.

"Junior had done the right thing by concentrating on his marketing department first. They did a brilliant job getting in on the ground floor of fear, so to speak. I like to think I was the one who brought them the original grist for their mill."

"What about the Old Man?" said the banker, rising to leave.

"Is that disapproval in your voice—you, of all people? Well, that’s another story, for another night."

Difile’s cigar butt hissed in the quiet rush of the outbound tide.
Copyright © 2012 Chris Muessig

FRANK

STEVE HOCKENSMITH | 3617 words

Art by Linda Weatherly

A Sunny Day

The old lady was talking to him about toothpaste, and he didn’t know why.

"I always buy Colgate. Always. I’m very loyal," she said. "And I get it in the big tubes. Economy size. It’s just me here, Perry passed five years ago, but still—you know you’ll use it all eventually, right? A penny saved, that’s my way. But would you look at this?"

The woman held up a small, half-flattened tube of toothpaste. It looked strangely familiar.

"This was in my medicine cabinet this morning," she said. "A dinky little tube of Crest. Now I have to ask you: Have I ever bought Crest? Ever?"

She really seemed to expect an answer.

He had no idea who she was. He looked around the room, searching for clues.

They seemed to be in an apartment. It was small but tidy, with few furnishings. A TV. A bookshelf. A table. The recliner he was sitting in. The couch the lady was on. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, but all he could see outside was a green-blue blur. The pictures on the walls were hovering smudges.

"Have I?" the woman asked.

"Have you what?" he said.

She didn’t seem to hear him.

"The same thing happened with my dishwashing liquid. Joy. That’s what I’ve used for fifty years. And what do I find when I go to do the dishes last night? A teeny little Dawn. Dawn!"

"Oh," he said. He didn’t know what else to say.

"They come in the night and switch things. Leave small for big, cheap for expensive. Because they think we won’t notice. But I do! I’m going to talk to Barbara about it right now!"

He nodded. "That’s a good idea."

The name "Barbara" meant nothing to him.

The woman started to stand. It was a long, laborious process, with much grunting and wobbling. He felt as though he should help her, but he could barely scoot to the edge of his chair himself. So he merely held a hand out uselessly.

I can’t help, the gesture said, but I haven’t forgotten that I should try.

When the woman was finally steady on her feet, she began shuffling away.

"She probably won’t believe me. I’m just another crazy old lady to her. Or maybe she’s in on it! She’s always smiling smiling smiling, but you never know. People."

She spat that last word out like a curse.

When she reached the door, she paused, her hand on the knob.

"You should catch them, Frank. You used to be a detective."

And then he remembered. A little, anyway.

Frank. That was him. And yes—he’d been a policeman once. He lived here now. This was his room.

"Okay," he said. "Goodbye."

After the woman left, he just sat in his recliner for a while, doing nothing, thinking nothing. Eventually, his hand found the remote control on the armrest. He turned on the TV and immediately found himself in a world he understood perfectly.

Jim Rockford was getting beat up for the thousandth time, and when it was done he dusted himself off and made his ten-thousandth wisecrack. Then he got in his souped-up car and drove off to catch the killer. It was silly and sloppy and predictable, and Frank was, for a time, utterly content.

Much later, when he was getting ready for bed, he found a new tube of toothpaste by the bathroom sink.

Colgate. Economy size.

A Tuesday (according to the paper)

Frank was hunched over his tiny dining-room table reading the Times with a magnifying glass. It was hard work, and for what? He didn’t understand half of what he read. Who were these people? What were they doing? Why should he care?

There was a knock.

"Come in."

The door opened, and a small, smiling man leaned into the room.

"Good morning, Demetrius," said Frank.

He knew the man was Demetrius Something and that he hadn’t been working at Buena Vista Independent Living very long and that he was nice. He knew all this because it was that kind of day. A good day. Or a better day, anyway.

"You mean afternoon, Frank," Demetrius said. "It’s almost two. I noticed you didn’t come down for lunch again. You hungry?"

It took Frank a while to answer. It was as though he had to ask his body first, and his body took its own sweet time deciding.

"No. I’ll just make myself a hot dog in a while."

"All right. Don’t forget your pills, now."

Demetrius left.

Frank ate his lunch two hours later. Campbell’s chicken and rice soup and Club crackers. He warmed the soup in the microwave because the stovetop confused and scared him. Something had happened. Something had burned, hurt. That was all he remembered. But it was enough.

When he went to wash his bowl and spoon and plate, the bottle of Joy by the sink reminded him of a crumpled note he’d found in his pocket that morning.

Large Colgate—Joy—Julie’s???

Julie lived next door. She was a fine enough neighbor, but exhausting. Sometimes she’d come into his room without knocking and plop down on his couch and just start talking, even if he was in the middle of a show. He had no idea why he’d leave himself a note about her and Colgate and Joy, but apparently he had.

The shaky handwriting was his own.

A Wednesday?

Frank knew it was Wednesday because he was having lunch with Andrew, and Andrew always came on Wednesdays. They were eating spaghetti in the cafeteria, too, and spaghetti was every-other-Wednesday food.

"You like it?" Frank asked.

Andrew nodded as he slurped up some noodles. "It’s good."

They ate in silence for a while after that. There wasn’t much to talk about.

Andrew was the son of a friend long dead, a fellow cop who was little more than a name today.

Barney. Friend. Cop.

That was all Frank could remember.

He hoped he didn’t have children of his own. If he did, he’d forgotten them.

Andrew worked with computers—fixed them for a big chain store. Beyond that, Frank didn’t know much. Was Andrew a husband? A father? Did he golf? Paint? Breed llamas? Why did he even come to visit anymore? Frank had no idea. So he’d usually just tell stories. He had plenty to share. Every cop does.

Only today they weren’t coming to him, and instead of "Did I tell you about the time I . . . ?" he heard himself say, "I think I have someone else’s toothpaste."

Andrew stopped chewing. He stared at Frank a moment before swallowing.

"Oh?"

"I think I have her Joy too."

"Her joy?"

"Her dish soap."

"Oh." Andrew nodded slowly. "How did that happen?"

"I don’t know. I try to think about it, but . . . it comes and goes."

"Well. A new mystery to solve. I’m sure you’ll crack it."

"I’m not crazy," Frank snapped.

"I didn’t say you were, Frank."

They went back to eating without speaking. Eventually, a woman approached their table. She had long, dark hair and a big smile and though she was young, Frank knew she ran the place. Her name didn’t come to him at first, but he pushed hard for the memory and found, to his relief, that he could still get at it.

"Hello, Barbara."

"Hello, Frank. Always nice to see you, Andrew."

"Always nice to be seen," Andrew said.

The woman was still smiling, smiling, but it was all for Andrew now.

"I hope you haven’t forgotten your promise," she said.

Andrew was smiling too. "The DVD projector? I haven’t forgotten. In fact, I’ve got half an hour before I have to get back to work. I could probably set it up for you right now, if you want."

"I don’t want to interrupt your lunch."

"I was just finishing up."

Barbara turned to Frank again. "You won’t mind if I steal your guest?"

Frank shrugged. "Steal away."

Andrew stood and put a hand on Frank’s shoulder.

"See you next Thursday."

"Thursday?"

"Of course," Andrew said with a smile. "I’m here every Thursday, Frank. You know that."

A rainy night?

McCloud was getting yelled at by his boss and some big shot in a tuxedo, a politician maybe, and he was just about to drop the big bombshell and name the murderer when Julie had to barge in.

"Well," she said, "that Barbara didn’t believe me about the Colgate and the Joy and now it’s happened again."

Frank reluctantly turned the TV off.

"What’s happened again?"

"I eat Cheerios. I eat Special K. I eat Grape-Nuts. I do not eat Toastie Oaties or Health Flakes or Fiber Crunch."

"Oh," Frank said. "Okay"

"Do you understand what I’m saying? Someone came into my room and traded all my good cereal for generic crap."

"Why would anybody do that?"

"To get better cereal, of course! And to drive me crazy."

"Why would anyone want to drive you crazy?"

"Because I’m the only around here who’s still got all her marbles."

"Do you really think that?"

"Are you saying I’m senile?"

"No. I meant . . . what if . . . what if . . ."

Frank knew he needed to tell Julie something. Something about her . . . toothpaste? But there was no time to dig for the memory. The woman had lost her patience and was headed for the door.

"I’m going to talk to Barbara again right now and we’re going to get to the bottom of this and then we’ll see who’s senile."

"Hold on, Julie. Just calm down. You’re going to have to wait till Barbara comes in tomorrow morning anyway."

Julie snorted. "It’s ten thirty in the morning, Frank."

She stormed out—to the extent an eighty-something woman can storm. Once she was gone, Frank lifted the remote control and pointed it at the TV. But he didn’t push the power button. Instead, he hauled himself to his feet and shuffled into the kitchen.

It took him a few minutes to find the right cabinet. He couldn’t remember where anything was supposed to go anymore. He’d left his eggs in the freezer once. Another time, Demetrius noticed a horrible smell and found a pound of raw, rotting hamburger sitting in the oven. You never knew what would be where or how it got there.

Like the Cheerios and Special K and Grape-Nuts Frank found tucked away under the sink with the garbage bags and sponges and Comet.

Julie wasn’t crazy. Someone was taking her things. Frank even had a prime suspect.

Himself.

Later that afternoon or evening

Frank shuffled up and down the halls for what seemed like hours. More than once, another resident called out to him, tried to engage him in conversation, but he just grunted and kept on going. He couldn’t let himself get distracted. Pause to respond to one "What’s the hurry?" and he wouldn’t be able to respond, because he’d forget everything.

At last, he spotted the man he’d been looking for: Demetrius. He was the one to talk to because, of all the attendants or caregivers or zookeepers or whatever they were called, he was the one Frank remembered. You can’t start questioning someone with "Who are you and why would I be talking to you?"

"Demetrius! Demetrius, I need to ask you something!"

The man was coming out of one of the other resident’s rooms, and he closed the door gently and put a finger to his lips.

"Mrs. Marquez fell asleep on her couch."

Frank wasn’t sure if he knew Mrs. Marquez or not. Still, he lowered his voice. He assumed Mrs. Marquez was as deaf as everyone else around there, but he’d always been a polite man, and he could remember his manners when all else was gone.

"Have you noticed me wandering the halls at night lately? When everyone else is asleep?"

"I’m not here at night, Frank. You’d have to ask Janice or Ed or Felicia," Demetrius said.

Frank looked down and ran a hand through his wispy hair.

Janice, Ed, Felicia—more names that meant nothing. And it was always worse for him at night. It was worse for most of the residents at night. "Sundowners Syndrome," did they call it? The other darkness that fell?

Whatever. Frank knew he couldn’t count on himself to remember anything after nightfall, let alone ask questions.

"Barbara might have heard something," Demetrius said. "You could ask her."

"How about during the day? You ever see me going places I shouldn’t? During mealtimes maybe?"

"Not really, Frank . . . though you do seem a little lost sometimes. What’s the problem? You afraid you’re sleepwalking or something?"

"Something."

Frank started hobbling away.

"Oh," he said, "one more thing . . . ."

The question was gone in the time it took to turn around. It had been something about keys, maybe? Locked doors?

Details, details, details—that had been his specialty once. The big picture as revealed by the minute. But big picture or small, it was all hopelessly out of focus now.

He stood there looking at Demetrius a moment, mouth opened to speak words his mind had swallowed.

"Frank," Demetrius finally said, "did you take your pills this morning?"

Frank thought it over.

"I don’t know," he said.

The next day . . . or maybe the day after that

Frank couldn’t find the butter, and the bread came out of the toaster as black as charcoal briquettes. So he decided to go down to the cafeteria for breakfast.

It wasn’t something he liked to do. It made him anxious, being around so many strangers. (He’d been at Buena Vista Independent Living for years, yet he only knew half a dozen people by name these days. Eventually, he’d be living in a whole world of strangers.)

He passed Julie in the hall. She was standing near the entrance to the rec room—another place Frank usually avoided—talking to a couple propped up on matching walkers.

"Oh!" she said when she saw Frank. "They came back!"

"Who came back?"

"Them, them," said Julie. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. "That Barbara didn’t do a thing, and they came back, and now it’s my jewelry they got! They took all my best rings and pearls and earrings and left a bunch of costume trash."

"Nice of them to leave you something to wear, though," the old man said.

"Oh, yes," the woman beside him added. "Most thoughtful burglars I ever heard of."

They looked at each other and rolled their rheumy eyes.

Julie didn’t notice.

"Are you going to do something about it, Frank?" she asked. "Are you going to help me? Frank?"

He’d turned around and headed back to his room.

He searched for as long as his strength held out. In drawers and cabinets, under the bed, behind boxes and towels, under clothes. He didn’t find any jewelry.

He did come across something he’d thought long lost, though: the scrapbook. It was buried beneath a pile of old TV Guides. He collapsed back into his recliner and opened it.

The dry, yellowing articles inside had been neatly clipped from the Times. His name didn’t appear in most of them, yet his wife had always known which cases were his. That’s who’d done the clipping—the Missus. He’d never liked the scrapbook.

"I don’t want to be reminded of all that," he’d say, and he’d tap the side of his head. "It’s all up here anyway—and most of it I wish I could forget."

His wish had come true. Scanning the old news stories about cases solved, killers caught, Frank felt like he was reading about someone else. Had he really done all this? It was hard to believe. He didn’t feel like a detective. He felt like a thief trying to snatch away one more thing that didn’t belong to him. First toothpaste, now an identity. A life.

After a while, something came back to him, though. Not so much a memory from the old days as an instinct.

When the details weren’t all there, when the puzzle had missing pieces, that’s when you laid a trap. Sometimes you had to lure your prey into it, sometimes scare them in. And sometimes you could rely on their blind arrogance to guide them blithely in.

He could trap himself like that. Hide the snare and just wait till he forget it was there. Then he’d know for sure what he really was. What he’d turned into.

All he needed was bait.

Is it Thursday already?

When Andrew came around again, Frank gave him the envelope. Frank didn’t know what was in it. He just knew it was sealed, it was light, and it had been sitting on his kitchen counter for days. Written across the front in his own handwriting were the words FOR ANDREW—OPEN LATER.

"What’s this?" Andrew asked.

"I don’t know. Do I owe you money?"

"Of course not."

"Maybe you forgot."

"And you remembered?"

Frank shrugged.

"You hungry?" he said.

Chair Yoga Day

Frank hated chair yoga. If you’re going to sit, sit. Don’t put your hands on your head and call it exercise. And the woman who came in every week in her stupid purple tights always talked to everyone like they were four years old. "Wonderful!" she’d enthuse when somebody managed to touch his own shins without falling to the floor. "Just look at you!"

But Demetrius was good at browbeating, and he usually managed to round up at least a dozen residents—including, this day, Frank.

Julie was there too.

"You should come by and see the new Mick my grandkids got me," she was saying as Frank scuffled into the rec room.

"Mick?" an old man asked. Frank thought his name was Cho or Chu or Chan—something Chinese-sounding.

"Isn’t that what they call them? Micks? Or is it Macs?" Julie said. "Anyway, it’s the cutest little computer. With a camera built right in so I can actually see the kids when they’re calling me."

"Your grandchildren actually call sometimes?" the old man grumbled.

"Aren’t you afraid they are going to come back and replace it with a calculator or something?" another resident asked. Frank had no idea what her name was—though he did get the feeling that forgetting it had been a choice.

"Oh, no," Julie said. "They know I’m onto them."

She looked at Frank and winked.

Frank froze.

She knows, he thought.

And then he thought, Knows what?

Why did he feel guilty all of a sudden? He hadn’t done anything.

Had he?

Not a Thursday

Frank was watching the show about the geezer detective with the funny name, and of course he’d spotted the bad guy before the first commercial but what could he do but keep watching and wait for the old coot on screen to catch up?

There was a knock on the door just as the last act began.

Frank thought about ignoring it, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he had. The door opened, and Julie came in.

"Turn that off, Frank," she said. "We’ve got something to show you."

Barbara and Andrew came in behind her.

"Andrew?" Frank said.

"Sorry to barge in." Andrew threw what looked like an exasperated glance at Julie, then held up something in his hand—a flat, white rectangular pad. "But you really should see this."

When Frank didn’t move quickly enough to suit her, Julie picked up the remote control and switched off the TV herself. Andrew, meanwhile, was opening the white thingamajig. It was one of those portable computers. A laptop. Andrew turned it around so Frank could see what was on the screen.

It was a picture of a man’s face.

Frank squinted at it, wondering why the chin was so weak, the nose so thin, the hair so dark. He wondered, in short, why it wasn’t him—and why he felt so much relief when he realized that.

"It looks like . . . like . . ."

"Ed," Barbara said.

"That’s it. Ed. He works here at night, right?"

Barbara shook her head. "Not anymore."

"I don’t understand."

"I loaned Julie a MacBook," Andrew said. "It has a video camera and GPS—and anti-theft software. It took a picture of Ed as soon as he tried to use it, then uploaded the picture to a website."

"All right," Frank said. He preferred nice, neutral responses when he had no idea what someone was talking about.

"Ed had stolen the computer, Frank," Barbara explained. "He slipped it out of Julie’s room and took it home."

"Oh. I see. Well, that was a very clever way to catch him."

"Yes, it was," Andrew said, and he reached into his shirt pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. He snapped it open and handed it to Frank.

It was a newspaper article clipped from the Times. The headline: "Laptop Catches Own Thief." Frank couldn’t read the rest without his magnifying glass, but he could make out the scribbled note down the side.

Could you try this with my neighbor Julie? She needs help. Ask Barbara for details.—Frank

"I’ll admit it," Barbara said. "I thought we’d just use the anti-theft stuff to convince Julie the computer hadn’t been stolen."

"Because you thought I’d get confused and lose it," Julie sniffed. "Just like I got ‘confused’ about my toothpaste and dishwashing liquid and jewelry." She turned to Frank and smiled. "See? I told you someone was trying to drive me crazy. I guess Ed had already stolen everyone else around here blind, sneaking around at night when most of us were either asleep or in a stupor. But when he started in on someone who’s still sharp as a tack, he had to make people think she was senile so nothing would be done about it."

Barbara cleared her throat. "Yes, well . . . we had a bad apple, but not anymore. Thanks to you, Frank."

Frank still didn’t quite grasp it all. He did know what to say, though.

"You’re welcome."

His guests stayed to chat a little longer after that, basking in their

collective victory over crime. Their presence wearied Frank, however—trying to follow the conversation was exhausting—and eventually even Julie noticed and began shooing the others toward the door.

The newspaper article was in Frank’s lap when they left. He’d have to put it in the scrapbook later . . . if he could find the darned thing again.

He picked up the clipping and squinted at it for a while, but it still didn’t make much sense to him. He knew how it made him feel, though.

He felt like himself.
Copyright © 2012 Steve Hockensmith

A CHANGE OF HEART

RAYMOND GOREE | 7183 words

Not many people get a second chance at life. Most of them just seem to disappear when they die, leaving behind nothing but worn memories and a hole in the lives of the people who loved them. I guess you’d say I’m one of the lucky ones—though I don’t feel lucky. This new life of mine is prolonged by little more than hope and drugs. Lots of drugs. Cyclosporine and azathioprine, tacrolimus and daclizumab. And ISA(TX)247, the latest-greatest-and-most-expensive. Plus a variety of steroids and antihypertensives—not to mention the occasional laxative—to counteract the side effects of all the other drugs. My kitchen cabinet looks like grandpa’s medicine chest. It’s hard to believe I’m only forty, but the thing is, I have the heart of a much older man. He gave it to me a little over a year ago.

I’d always considered myself something of an athlete. I played sports through high school, and went out for track in college, and kept right on running even after the academy. I stayed active, watched my cholesterol, took the department physical every year. My goal was to be one of those people Thomas Perry wrote about, who exercise and diet all their lives, and then get a big surprise when they turn eighty and die of nothing.

I didn’t even make it halfway.

My wake-up call came at 12:53 P.M. on an overcast Wednesday that bore the rare promise of a late summer rain. The desert breeze still blew hot and dry, but it no longer had that brick-oven edge to it, and you could tell it wouldn’t even reach a hundred that day. I was riding shotgun in an unmarked unit with Felix Segovia, my partner on Homicide, heading out to the Red Rock Casino to talk to a cocktail waitress about her felony-prone boyfriend. We’d just crossed Rainbow when I started feeling punky and figured I got a bad piece of grilled chicken for lunch. Felix pulled into a gas station where I bought a bottle of water and started feeling better. When I threw up behind the No. 2 pump I felt even better, and figured I’d be okay. We were back in the car when I felt sick again. Felix told me to man up and quit whining because the cocktail waitresses at the Red Rock pool were renowned for the brevity of their bikinis. Felix had used up all his bedside manner back at the gas station.

My face felt greasy with sweat. I was scared, like worse was coming—the first steep drop on life’s big roller coaster. Felix told me to make a fist, and I tried but couldn’t; my arms belonged to somebody else. Anyone who knows Felix won’t believe this but he looked scared too. Then the roller coaster hurled off the tracks and I was careening out into space thinking this ain’t right. I’m not supposed to die out here on Charleston Avenue with the taste of puke in my mouth.

"Hospital," I told Felix, but instead of running code he pulled over and called in a 444 Officer Needs Medical Assistance and three minutes later the paramedics showed up to start working on me. I don’t remember much after that, but later I found out they’d taken me to Valley Hospital for an emergency angioplasty. Felix told me they broke their old record—twenty-four minutes from call to balloon.

When I woke up Liz was there and I was feeling good. They’d put a stent in my heart, so the next few days were a drug-induced haze, but Liz smiled whenever I came to and I knew things couldn’t be all that bad. It seemed like everyone I’d ever met came by. Even the sheriff dropped in, though I don’t have any idea what I said to him. Then the drugs wore off and all the fun stopped.

"Bad ticker," the surgeon told us. "Very bad. That stent won’t last long. It was like trying to sew Jell-O together."

I met a whole new slew of doctors after that. The whole experience was like a slap across the face. I woke up, looked around, and saw what a fool I’d been.

The first time I ever saw Liz was at the Y in Chicago, where I spent summers lifeguarding—and that last summer, watching the auburn-haired beauty in the white bikini. Believe me when I tell you, it wasn’t easy doing both—those Red Rock girls had nothing on Elizabeth Gannon. I didn’t get up the nerve to ask her out until Labor Day, and I couldn’t believe it when she said yes. I was the luckiest guy in the world. When we got married a year later, I was the luckiest guy in the universe.

But then . . . I don’t know. Seems like there was always overtime to work, or a marathon to train for, or something. Something that I thought was important. But when I was sitting on the side of road thinking that I was going to die—when I was watching the fat raindrops spatter on windshield, the traffic whizzing by, the world spinning on without me—it wasn’t the ribbon I won in the marathon or the golf clubs I bought with the overtime money that seemed to be floating in front of my face. It was Liz. It was always Liz. She was the single most important thing in my life, and I’d almost lost her forever.

I remembered that when I woke up in the hospital, and realized I’d gotten a second chance. I’d been ignoring Liz for too long, taking her for granted, but now I could devote whatever life I had left to making it up to her.

I waited eight months on the donor list, waiting to make Liz a widow. We put the house and the bank accounts in her name, and sold the plot of land we’d always sort of daydreamed about building a house on someday. I told Liz the preparations were just-in-case worst-case scenario, but I knew—and she did too—that we were putting up the shutters and closing up shop.

Even so, those were good days for us. I’d always thought of us as a happy couple, but now we were happier. Liz blossomed into the girl I remembered from the Y, and I was once again her besotted beau. I took her to the shows we’d always meant to see, and some of the new restaurants we’d heard about but never got around to trying. It was date night every night. We acted like a couple of kids, laughing at our own private jokes, or at nothing. It was great.

Until the day I came home from a doctor’s appointment to find two Nevada Highway Patrol cruisers parked in front of our house. I figure they sent two because I was a cop, and not so deep down inside I knew why they were there. I got out of my car and they got out of theirs and met me on the sidewalk in front of the cast-iron mailbox Liz ordered from The Renovation Company. Turns out Liz had been killed on I-15 by a jack-knifed semitrailer full of espresso machines. Joke’s on you, says God.

My heart donor was a guy named Sammy Podrazo, a retired blackjack dealer from the Hacienda. I actually met him before the operation. We were both at Summerlin Hospital on the same day—the day I was downgraded from Status Two to Status One Critical, and he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. A red-letter day all the way around.

Sammy wasn’t the kind of person I usually came into contact with—which means he wasn’t a cop or a crook—but circumstance and blood type had brought us together. I placed him at about sixty, which was old for a heart donor, but it was sort of a waste-not-want-not situation. Sammy was short and wide and thick, with wisps of gray hair sticking out from his ears, and a glass eye that made him look skeptical of everything—probably not a helpful characteristic in a high-limit blackjack dealer. Sammy didn’t look like he’d jogged a mile in his life, though he did once admit to running for a bus. He had a chronic cough that punctuated everything he said, yet did not seem to impede the flow of his stories. He never told me the one about his glass eye, and I never asked—I was afraid the story would be too mundane, like a car accident or retinal cancer.

We spent that day in the sterile waiting room, me waiting for the fax from UNOS while he waited for his biopsy results. We were both widowers, so we had that going for us. Sammy, strenuously coughing throughout his life story, told me about what it was like to work in the big casinos back in the glory days, before they were imploded as New Year’s Eve diversions. He told me about his daughter winning a blue ribbon in the seventh-grade science fair, and about Sheldon’s Deli in the Gold Dust Casino, where they made the best Reuben sandwich in Vegas.

I don’t usually talk shop with civilians, but for whatever reason I told Sammy about an old case of mine—the one with the Pomeranian, the wheelchair, and the Brink’s armored truck—and he got it. When the doctor came in with his biopsy results, Sammy asked me to stick around awhile, and then he shook my hand afterward.

"Guess that’s it, then," was all he said before he left.

So now, about once a month—usually after my echocardiograms—I stop in at Sheldon’s Deli for one of their famous Reuben sandwiches. Sheldon’s reminds me of the places my dad used to take me after baseball practice—shiny red booths, chipped blue dishes, bustling waitresses in once-white aprons; golden oldies, muted conversation, the clink of silver playing in the background. The sandwiches aren’t bad, but if I gain two pounds in two days my doctor hits the rejection alarm, so I have to count every calorie the week before. I could probably run it off because I’m supposed to run six miles a week, but I never do. My heart’s just not in it anymore. But I do what I have to do for the sandwich, and for Sammy. I figure I owe it to him. More often than not, he joins me.

Sammy slides into the booth across from me, still wearing the same old royal blue sweat suit he wore in the hospital. He looks, not surprisingly, like death.

"How’s the ticker?" he always asks.

"Takes a lickin’" is the stock reply.

The pre-transplant Sammy I met in the hospital may have had terminal lung cancer, but he looked more than ready to box a round or buy one. Today’s Sammy is only a shade of his former self—thin, pale, dispirited. But at least he lost the cough.

"Still on steroids?" he asks, evidently noticing the lingering puffiness of my face. "Those things used to kill me, so to speak. How’s the sandwich?"

"The best." I take an extra big bite and talk around it. "Best I’ve ever had."

Sammy closes his eye and takes a deep breath, wafting in the aroma of corned beef and sauerkraut. I wonder again why I do this to myself. It’s the first really hot day of the year and the deli’s air conditioning is cranking like gangbusters, but I still feel damp under my clothes from my walk through the parking garage. Sammy, on the other hand, look’s like he’s packed in ice.

"Those sandwiches were always the best," Sammy says. "But what I miss most is the cigarette afterward. You know I used to smoke three packs a day?"

"Yeah, how’d that work out for you?"

"You’re the one fella who oughta be glad I didn’t have no self-control. Lemme see the scar again."

I put my sandwich down and unbutton my shirt, discreetly pulling it aside just enough to expose the ten-inch crease in my sternum. I hardly even notice it anymore.

"Coming along nicely," he says, and I tell him I’m glad that he approves. Then he pulls the zipper of his sweatshirt down to show me his—a ragged Y-shaped incision that runs from his shoulders to the elastic waistband of his royal blue sweatpants. His chest looks like a railroad switching yard, and I’m glad I put my sandwich down.

"I definitely got the worst end of the deal," he says, cheerfully zipping up again. I can’t help but look around to see if anyone’s noticed.

"I ever tell you I have a daughter?" he asks me.

He has, but I shake my head anyway, because my mouth is full again. I can’t wait to choke down the rest of this sandwich and get the heck out of here.

"I got a favor to ask you," he says.

This is something new. Our usual postoperative conversations have been fairly depressing, but I can live with depression. Or not. It hasn’t escaped my notice that I now keep my service pistol on the nightstand when I go to bed—something Liz would never have approved of. I also attribute this new and alarming habit to depression. Sometimes I worry myself. I should probably talk to somebody, but I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore. So I lie in bed and watch the eerie glow of tritium night sights shining in the long, lonely dark, and think, My new girlfriend has green eyes.

"Sure, anything," I tell Sammy. Maybe he’s going to ask me to start smoking. I don’t know if I’ll do it or not. I already have everything I’m ever going to need from Sammy, but something keeps him coming around. Maybe just knowing that a piece of him is going to live beyond his years.

Sammy digs down into his pants pocket and comes up with a dog-eared photograph.

"My daughter," he says, smiling at it before showing it to me. "This picture is the only thing I took with me when I checked into the hospital, except for the clothes on my back."

The photo is of a twentysomething blonde standing next to Johnny Depp, with one hand on his shoulder and the other on his crotch. She’s wearing too much eye shadow and a not-ready-to-have-the-picture-taken expression. Then the photo—not so obviously taken at the Venetian’s wax museum—vanishes back into Sammy’s pocket.

"What’s the problem?" I ask, as noncommittally as possible. "Johnny break up with her?"

"Nah," Sammy says, sadly shaking his head. "She’s with a different loser now, and thinks she’s in love. Problem is, this one’s getting her jammed up in his business, which is selling drugs. His whole family lives off misdemeanors. Him and his brother are a crime wave all by themselves. Anyway, he talked my girl into helping him with a bank robbery, and seeing as how you’re a bank robbery detective, I figured the obvious solution was to have you straighten it out."

"Straighten it out how?"

"Get her out of it. And throw her dopey boyfriend in the slammer while you’re at it."

"It sounds easy when you say it fast."

"What could be easier?" he says, giving me the google-eye. "I know everything about the bank robbery—the time, the place, the plan. Everything."

"Now how would you know all that, Sammy," I ask, but it’s not really a question. Post-op Sammy seems to know a lot of extra special things.

"How do you think I know? I spend most of my time hanging around her apartment, don’t I?"

"When you’re not here haunting me."

"So where else do I have to go?" he shrugs. "Summerlin Hospital? I hate that place."

"Why don’t you just . . . talk to her yourself?"

"I tried that, believe me. But I can’t seem to get through to her. It’s like I’m not even there. You and me, though," he says, pointedly staring at my shirt pocket. "We have a bond between us."

I almost laugh. There’s no way I can eat the rest of this sandwich.

"Listen to me," he says, dead earnest now. He folds his hands on the table like he’s praying, and fixes me with an off-kilter stare. "She’s my only daughter, and she’s in trouble. There’s a time I’d a taken a baseball bat to that mope and swung for the fences, but in my present condition there’s nothing I can do. I need you to fix it. You owe me."

"Hey, Sammy," I say, tapping my chest. "It’s not like you needed it anymore."

But I know I’ll do what he asks. He knows it too. After a suitable delay I pull my notebook from my pocket and ask him to tell me about the plan.

"Her boyfriend’s name is Cory Fergis. Last week he traded some meth for a crappy old Mustang. It’s his getaway car. His brother told him to do the bank on a Friday morning when it’s full of payroll money, which means he has to do it tomorrow, cause the car’s got paper tags that expire next week. See how I put all the dots together?"

"What color’s the Mustang?"

"Primer black, the whole thing."

"Any idea what bank he’s going to hit?"

"United Federal, on east Tropicana. You know the one?"

"Yeah," I say, writing it down. "How’re they going to do it?"

"He’ll go in alone, with a note. He told my daughter that the tellers have to do whatever the note says, so he’s writing in stuff about no exploding dye packs or marked money. Is that true? The tellers have to do whatever the note says?"

"What’s your daughter’s part in this? Getaway driver?"

"Yeah."

"And she’s okay with it?" I’m not writing now.

"Yeah," Sammy says, looking at me cockeyed again. "Yeah, she is. You ask a lot of questions, even for a detective."

"One more. Does he have a gun?"

Sammy hesitates, then shakes his head. He isn’t looking at me now, but staring at what’s left of my sandwich. "I didn’t hear nothing about a gun. Just United Federal Bank, note job, nine o’clock tomorrow morning." Then he shrugs, grins, and looks more like his old self than I’ve seen in a long time. "Like I said, what could be easier?"

I set up on the United Federal Bank at eight o’clock the next morning, parking my unmarked Buick in a shady spot next to the AutoZone, where I can see the front door of the bank. It doesn’t look like a real bank—just a storefront sandwiched between two other shops at the edge of a huge parking lot, with yellow UFB logos in the windows so you can tell it’s not a nail salon. The car temperature already reads ninety. I unroll my foil sunshield and tuck it in around the windshield, to keep the morning sun out and anyone else from seeing in.

I assume I must be nuts. First, for even listening to Sammy, and then for half believing anything he said. Even if only part of it were true, nine o’clock drug dealer time could mean anywhere from noon to three o’clock next week. Still, I decide to give it a couple of hours, or until my magazines and bottled water gave out.

I watch through the gap in the sunshield with one eye and browse Living Without with the other—something Sammy could never do. I see the manager arrive a few minutes before nine. She unlocks the door and goes inside, and about a minute later pulls the curtains open, which I assume is the "all clear" for the other employees. They show up over the next few minutes, ambling inside with purses and paper bags. At nine they turn the lights on and unlock the front door, and then a primer black Mustang pulls up out front.

I know my heart’s got to be pounding like crazy, but I sure can’t feel it. The nerves were cut during the operation and won’t be growing back. Denervation, the doctors called it. I could be having a massive coronary right now and not even know it, which accounts for my monthly echocardiograms. I slip my hand under my shirt to feel it in person. Oh yeah, just like old times.

The Mustang sits there idling for a while. It’s not the junker I pictured but a vintage ’66 that’s had some expert bodywork done and is ready for paint. The meth business must be pretty good. After a couple of minutes a skinny, greasy-haired kid jumps out the passenger side and sidles into the bank—the estimable Cory Fergis, I presume. I don’t get a good look at his face, as he’s wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap—standard bank robbery attire. I memorize his black boots, faded jeans, white T-shirt as he disappears inside. The driver is invisible behind the blinding glare of the windshield. I get out of my car and walk toward the Mustang, subconsciously tapping my badge and handcuffs, flexing my arm against my pistol, making sure everything’s where I need it. I walk up on the Mustang from behind. I notice it’s got a ’65 gas cap.

The driver’s window is down and the raccoon-eyed blonde from Sammy’s photo is sitting inside. She’s alone, with all her attention focused on the bank. She smells like piña colada, or the air freshener does. When I slap my hand on the Mustang’s roof she jumps like she’s been tasered.

"Take off," I tell her, pulling my jacket aside to show her the badge on my belt.

She stares up at me in shock and fear, then in confusion, then with suspicion. When she closes one eye she looks a lot like Sammy.

"Take off," I tell her again. I think about saying something like, "Your dad sent me," but it’d only confuse her. Anyway, she’s already gone, the Mustang skidding out onto Tropicana, leaving tire tracks and blaring horns in its wake.

I move toward the bank, intending to take up a position near the door where I can wait for the kid to come out—but he’s already out, moving fast and right at me. I barely have time to draw my pistol before he slams into me, almost knocking it from my hand. But I’m on him before he can get up, fixing the cuffs on his thin sweaty wrists, holding him down, keeping him still. I ask him where the gun is; he came out so quick I’m worried maybe he just went in to check it out and hasn’t robbed anything, but he says, "I don’t have no gun. I just used a note." His ears move when he talks, like a mouse. I lean in and whisper into one of them.

"You really ought to consider getting yourself a lawyer," I tell him. See, I’m already thinking about Eddie Plum.

Eight months after the heart transplant they sent me back to work. I’d been transferred off Homicide Detail and assigned to the Las Vegas Safe Streets Task Force to work bank robberies with the Feds because the business hours were more accommodating to my medical regimen. I’d known some of the Task Force guys for years, but it was strange and awful the way they treated me now, pussyfooting around like I was a grieving invalid. Then I met FBI Special Agent Edward Plum and the first thing he said to me was, "They’re expecting you to grab your chest any minute now. Give them five weeks. Once they see your new heart isn’t going to fall out onto the floor, they’ll think the transplant thing is cool and start asking you about it."

He was right too. I counted back from the day Sergeant Osterling asked if I could still get it up—I’m not sure exactly what kind of a transplant he thought I had—and found it was my thirty-fifth day on the squad.

Everyone had a story like that about Eddie Plum. They all seemed to like him well enough, though for the life of me I couldn’t see why. He has no personality to speak of and keeps to himself like the rest of us are contagious. And even though he’d been on the squad for over a year, he didn’t seem to know anyone’s name. More than once I’ve caught him quietly studying me. No, not studying. Memorizing.

But Plum’s the smartest guy I know, which makes him the best interviewer I know. That’s the only time he ever appears relaxed—when he’s sitting across the table from a brand-new perpetrator. He’s like a different person then—affable, personable, even charming when required, though he claims to be completely exhausted afterward. I’ve seen him sit back in his chair with his feet on the table and talk to a felon like they’ve known each other for years. He can effortlessly deflect any objection with a few well-chosen words, and provide a seemingly endless litany of reasons for why the perp should just fess up and tell him everything. Plum does whatever it takes to get a confession, and he’s good at it, which is why I didn’t want him getting a crack at Cory Fergis.

"He lawyered up right away?" Plum asked, after we’d dropped Fergis at the Las Vegas Detention Center. "That’s too bad."

"It happens."

Plum scratched his head. "Where you think he was running to?"

"I don’t know, Eddie. I told you I didn’t see a getaway car. I was sort of busy."

"That’s right. Getting a haircut. At the barbershop. Next to the bank."

There really was a SuperCuts next to the bank. I’d already checked.

"Guess I happened to be in the right place at the right time," I told him.

"Right place, right time. Did you notice that the muzzle end of your Glock was imprinted onto his forehead?"

To be completely effective, Eddie should’ve inserted my first name somewhere in there, but I’d bet money he didn’t remember what it was, or wasn’t sure enough to risk a guess. In any case, that was the end of it. Eddie sat back and didn’t say any more about it, knowing as well as I do that you can’t treat your partner like a perp.

But the second time wasn’t so easy to explain.

"I already overheard their side of it," Sammy told me. "What happened on your end?"

We’re at Sheldon’s Deli again, with another Reuben on the table between us. Sammy looks even paler today. His face and perpetual three-day stubble are the exact same shade of lifeless gray. Even his sweat suit looks bleached and washed out, as if poor old Sammy is slowly fading away. If it keeps up, pretty soon I’ll be able to see right through him, like one of those ghosts in the old black-and-white movies Liz used to watch. Sammy Topper.

I pick up my sandwich and start to nibble, then find I’m suddenly

ravenous.

"He went in and showed the note," I tell him, unable or unwilling to suppress a grin. "But then his plan sort of fell apart. The tellers were behind bulletproof glass, so they just looked at each other and pulled their alarms. I got him as he ran out. He immediately invoked his right to counsel, so nobody could talk to him. The subject of your daughter never came up."

I was feeling pleased with myself, but that didn’t last.

"They’re doing it again," Sammy told me. "For bail money. Same bank because they know the layout and the cops won’t be expecting it. This time my daughter’s supposed to go in by herself, like she’s a customer. Then Cory’s brother will run in and hold a gun to her head, and tell them to empty the vault. He figures he’ll get the money if he’s got a hostage, glass or no glass. Then he’ll take my daughter out to the getaway car and take off."

I got out my notebook again. This was getting good.

"What’s the brother’s name? The one going in."

"Cary Fergis. He looks like a bald Cory."

"Cary and Cory? Really?"

Apparently, my good mood was not infectious. Sammy scowled and mumbled at me through clenched teeth.

"They blame my daughter for Cory getting pinched, driving away in the getaway car like she done. One more screw-up . . ." Sammy was barely whispering now. "One more screw-up and they’re gonna drop her in a hole. They’ll do it too. There’s a lot of desert out there."

Sammy’s wayward eye gazed at me like it knew exactly how much desert was out there.

"I’ll see what I can do," I told him, slipping the notebook back into my pocket. I stood up, tossed a twenty onto my empty plate, and walked to the door. When I looked back, Sammy was gone.

I parked in my usual spot by the AutoZone, and by ten o’clock had the air-conditioning going full blast. It was another bright sunny day, without a wisp of cloud in the blank azure sky—like the entire valley was under Sheldon’s biggest soup bowl. It was the kind of day Liz and I would’ve put to good use, hanging out at the Rio pool, having a couple of drinks, and pretending I was retired. All that was over now. Some people leave bigger holes than others.

By ten forty-five I figured the Fergis brother was a no-show, but I wasn’t ready to pack it in. At eleven twenty-two the black Mustang pulled up in front of the barbershop and Sammy’s daughter hopped out, then leaned in to talk to the driver. She had on a yellow sundress today—what she figured someone with a savings account might wear. She slammed the car door and went into the bank, and the Mustang pulled into the closest empty parking space. Two minutes later a bald skinny guy climbed out and hurried in after her. I slipped an extra pair of handcuffs under my belt and got out of the Buick.

There is definitely some advantage to not feeling your own heartbeat. Not hearing it pounding in my ears made me feel calmer. Either that, or I didn’t care how this turned out. I had noticed a recent, somewhat cavalier attitude toward my own survival. Taking on an armed bank robbery crew by myself was not a smart thing to do, but like I said, sometimes I worry myself. All I was sure of was that I wouldn’t make it easy for them.

The asphalt was squishy under my feet as I walked toward the bank, which put the temperature at a hundred and six. But inside the bank was freezing. I let the door whoosh shut behind me, then took a minute to look around. A lot of people were inside because it was Friday. Sammy’s daughter was at the head of the customer queue; even from here I could see her trembling, either from fear or air conditioning. Cary Fergis was at the teller window, both hands tapping on the counter like he was playing the piano. Sammy said he looked like a bald Cory, but I thought he looked more like a computer-generated movie zombie, all skinny and pale and twitchy. His hands were empty, for now. The teller was reading from the piece of paper he’d given her, and when she looked up at him her face went pink.

This is it. I ducked around the customer line, pausing only long enough to tell Sammy’s daughter to get lost. She didn’t hesitate this time, but turned and headed straight for the door. I moved up to stand behind Fergis, who was intently watching his teller as she slowly reached for her alarm. He didn’t like that and told her so; to emphasize his point he grabbed for his waistband and started to swing around for his hostage, but found me instead. I screwed my Glock into his ear, turned him back around, and pushed his face up against the teller glass.

"Is there a problem?" I asked, but the teller—all the tellers—had disappeared. "Don’t move," I told Cary. "Not even a bit. Let go of the gun."

"I will. I will. Here, see?" I could feel his ears moving against my gun when he talked. Must be a Fergis thing. I took his revolver and tucked it in my belt, then holstered my own gun and cuffed him. After a cursory pat down I pulled him toward the door. It was real quiet in the bank. Everyone was watching me. Then a phone started ringing.

"I’ll be right back," I told them.

The Mustang was still parked in front of the bank. Evidently Sammy’s daughter had decided to take the bus. I aimed Cary toward my car, intending to put him in the back seat, but then pushed him to the ground and pulled my pistol as a bright orange van came revving out of nowhere and crashed into my Buick, crumpling the front fender, buckling it into the next car over. Radiator fluid spewed everywhere; I could smell it, hot and cloying. The van was still rocking from the impact when the door slammed open and Cody Fergis leapt out, dragging a shotgun behind him. But I wasn’t where he expected me to be—I was behind him, with my own gun aimed at his center of mass.

"Cody! Drop the gun and hit the deck." He thought about it, but only for a second. Once he was down I moved my finger off the trigger and gave him further instructions, positioning his hands behind his back the way I wanted them. Then I holstered, pulled my extra pair of cuffs, and slipped them over his wrists. I risked a quick glance behind me to see if there were any more Fergises around—a distant cousin perhaps—and then told Cody to "Sit tight. You too, Cary. Give me a minute to catch my breath." But I really didn’t need to.

"J. D. Rozak worked banks for thirty-five years and never once saw a bank robbery in progress," Plum mused. "You’ve been on the squad four months and already came across two."

We were in his car, heading back to the office. This was the first time I’d let him get me alone since the Fergis arrest. There’d been a few comments from other guys on the squad—just joking around, nothing blatant. No one had caught on. Somebody tacked up a teller’s-eye-view bank surveillance photo of Cary Fergis with his face smushed against the bulletproof glass, and everyone took turns writing captions for it. My favorite was John Merrick opens his first checking account. But there’d been nothing from Eddie Plum. Not until now.

"I had to go back to the barbershop," I told him. "Still hadn’t gotten my haircut."

"How’d you end up at the bank instead?"

"Funny thing. I’d have sworn I didn’t see any getaway car last time, but when that old Mustang pulled into the parking lot, it hit me—I’d seen that same car last week. Figured I’d take a peek inside the bank to make sure everything was okay." I looked directly at Eddie Plum. "It wasn’t."

"I know, I saw the video. What’d you say to that blonde girl in the customer line?"

"I told her to get lost."

"None of the tellers knew who she was. I wonder what she was doing in there."

"Opening an account, maybe," I ventured.

"She didn’t have any paperwork on her. Not even a purse."

"What are you getting at, Eddie?"

"The Fergis case is going Federal because of the gun charges," Plum said. "Which means I have to testify in Grand Jury tomorrow. But who’s going to believe it?"

"The other guys didn’t have any problem."

"The other guys don’t want to tell you you’re full of baloney."

Eddie Plum never swore. Not even when circumstances called for it.

"There’s a big hole in your story," Plum continued. "Something’s missing. I just haven’t figured out what it is, yet."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

Plum pulled over, parking his Impala in the shade of a big Canary Island palm. Then he turned the air-conditioning up. Plum was about the last agent in Vegas to still wear a suit every day. Definitely the only one to wear Ermenegildo Zegna. I waited, and then he did something I’d never seen him do before: Eddie Plum loosened his tie. I suspected this was an affectation intended to make him appear like "one of the guys." I knew he wouldn’t be able to leave it that way for long.

"Either you’ve got a death wish," he told me, "or you’re protecting someone. Or you’ve got a source you don’t want to disclose."

How’d he do that? Two and a half out of three.

"I’d go for death wish," he continued, "except that it wouldn’t explain how you knew about the bank robberies in advance. So I figure you’re protecting a source. Maybe you’ve got a girlfriend on the side who’s involved with a bank robbery crew."

"Eddie, my wife died over a year ago. I don’t have to have anyone ‘on the side.’"

"Oh, yeah. I forgot. But you are romantically involved with someone who knows the Fergis brothers . . ."

"I have a source, Eddie. One I have a personal relationship with. Let’s leave it at that."

"A personal relationship with a source is something we have to disclose to the defense," Plum said. "That screws up the whole case. The United States Attorney’s Office will probably decline prosecution and drop the charges."

I couldn’t let that happen. As long as they were in Federal custody, the Fergis brothers were held without bail, but that would change once the Feds dropped the case and the county D.A. picked it up. If any one of the Fergis brothers got out on bail, they’d head straight for Sammy’s daughter.

"Dropping this case is not an option, Eddie."

"Will your source testify in court against the Fergis brothers?"

I though of Sammy sitting in the witness box and almost laughed.

"No, Eddie. My source definitely cannot testify in court."

"Why not?"

"Let’s just say . . . medical reasons."

"Then I don’t see any way we can proceed with this case. Not if you’re personally involved with a source who won’t even testify."

"We have to keep the Fergis brothers locked up, Eddie. For my source. I owe it to him."

"The source you’re having a personal relationship with is a him?" Plum asked. "That doesn’t really improve the situation."

I did start laughing then, and Eddie did too. I don’t know why.

"It’s not a romantic relationship, Eddie. Just one that’s hard to explain."

"Maybe your source can explain it," he said, tightening his tie again. "Can I meet him?"

"I don’t think that’s possible, Eddie."

"I cannot testify before the Grand Jury with a straight face if I don’t know what’s going on," Plum told me, putting the car into gear. "I have to at least meet your source. Otherwise, the Fergis brothers will be released from Federal custody."

Eddie Plum sat across from me at my usual table at Sheldon’s. I asked him to move over a bit, to make room for my source. Plum scowled and pulled his phone again, checking the time. He never wore a watch because he said they felt like handcuffs.

"Is this guy going to show up or not?" he asked.

"I don’t know," I said. "I told you he might not come if someone else is with me."

But Sammy did appear, suddenly sliding into the booth next to Eddie Plum.

"This your bodyguard?" Sammy asked, giving Eddie the once-over with his good eye. "He dresses like Secret Service."

"That’s Eddie Plum," I told him. "He’s an FBI agent. Eddie, this is Sammy Podrazo."

Eddie looked over at Sammy, then back at me like I was crazy.

"Your source," Eddie asked, "is your heart donor?"

I nodded, as sagely as I could manage.

"That is unconventional," Eddie murmured. "But definitely not illegal." Then he turned to Sammy and grabbed his hand, pumping it vigorously. "I sure am glad to meet you, Mr. Podrazo. That was a swell thing you did, donating your heart to this guy. No strings attached."

"Not only that," Sammy said, still in Eddie’s grip, "but I gave it to him with a lifetime guarantee."

They both shared a good laugh. Evidently this was Jolly Eddie.

"How’d that work, exactly?" Eddie asked. Eddie Plum knew exactly how it worked, but he obviously realized how much Sammy liked to tell the story.

"I had terminal lung cancer, see?" Sammy began. "I needed a lung transplant real bad, but the survival rate for those is like zero—unless they give you a new heart to go with the new lungs. So when some guy in Sacramento killed himself, they gave me his heart and lungs—a matched set, see? My old cancer lungs went into the dumpster, but my perfectly good heart they gave to this tall drink of water sitting across from us."

"Like recycling," Eddie said. "So how are you doing yourself? You okay?"

"Good days and bad," Sammy said. "The hardest part was I had to quit smoking. And trying to avoid stress. That ain’t easy."

"Like stress from testifying in court," I interjected.

"And that diet the doc has me on," Sammy said, nodding toward my dinner plate. "This is the closest I’m allowed to corned beef on rye. But yeah, all in all, I’m doing okay."

"He’s doing better than okay," I told them. "Sammy is one of only twenty-two living heart donors in the entire world." Sammy puffed up, looking so proud I thought he’d bust his sweatshirt zipper.

"Well that’s just great," Eddie said, finally releasing Sammy’s hand. "So my partner here tells me you’ve been giving him information about some bank robberies. Is that right?"

"Yeah, my daughter fell in with a bad crowd for a while. But that’s all over with now."

"Maybe not, Sammy," I told him. "Eddie thinks we may have to turn the Fergis brothers loose—"

Eddie held up his hand like he was working traffic. "I too have had a change of heart," he said. "Don’t worry, Mr. Podrazo. I’ll sell it to the Grand Jury somehow, and keep you out of it. The Fergis brothers will be indicted first thing tomorrow morning."

Then Eddie Plum folded his hands and leaned in close.

"Now, Sammy," he whispered. "What else have you got?"

I went for a run that evening, heading into the flat slanting rays of the setting sun. When I got home it was dark, and late, but I felt good, like I’d accomplished something. I went to pick up the mail before going into the house. I don’t know what made me feel worse—the mail that still came for her and that I never tried to stop, or the fact that Liz waited for two months before I got around to digging the hole for the post to mount her mailbox on. What could I have been doing for two months that was more important than planting that mailbox for her? It’d bothered me a lot over this past year. But no more. Not after tonight.

I took a quick shower, then put on my bathrobe and wandered through the empty rooms of my big empty house, switching on lights and switching them off again. When I figured it was time, I got a beer from the fridge and put The Ghost and Mrs. Muir in the Blu-ray player, and pulled my service pistol from my bathrobe pocket and laid it on the table next to my recliner. I sat there for a long time with the sound turned low, watching the movie without really watching it, waiting, half dozing, and when Liz came I could sense her standing beside me, reaching for me. I put my hand to my shoulder, where I felt the soft caress of her fingers.

"Thanks for the tip about Cody Fergis and the orange van," I told her. "It came in real handy."
Copyright © 2012 Raymond Goree

CRAZY EIGHTS

DAVID EDGERLEY GATES | 7959 words

Art by Ron Chironna

Their caseload was murder that October. Literally. Boston had seen seventeen homicides in the month so far, a spike mostly attributed to gang violence, but the month wasn’t half over. Major Crimes was backed up, running on fumes, short of manpower, everybody pulling overtime, nobody good with it.

Weinstock and Kinsella caught number eighteen.

Friday night, early Saturday morning. Three A.M. The bars had already closed. Landsdowne St., behind Fenway Park. Fenway was dark, the Red Sox long since out of the playoffs.

Guy on the sidewalk, bled out. Police perimeter secured, crime scene techs mapping the evidence, EMTs waiting to pick up the body when they were done. Same sad story.

Jean went over the responding officer and flashed her shield. "Detective Weinstock, MCD," she said. "What do you see that I don’t?"

He was a patrol cop, sergeant’s stripes, early forties. His nameplate read Bosshard. He’d seen this before, maybe a few too many times. "Two in the chest, one to the head," he told her. The so-called Mozambique drill. Just in case the guy wore body armor. These days, you couldn’t tell.

"Professional hit?"

The sergeant shrugged.

"ID?" she asked.

"I never touched him."

It was obvious he hadn’t needed to check for vital signs. The head wound had blown open the back of the guy’s skull.

"Time frame?"

"Took the call at two forty, shots fired."

"He hasn’t been dead half an hour, then."

"My guess. Blood’s still pooling."

She nodded. Coagulation started immediately, on exposure to air. He was giving her the benefit of his experience. Nothing more to ask. If there were any witnesses, he would have told her. Bosshard wasn’t playing his cards close.

Kinsella came up. "What do we know?" he asked her.

Jean shrugged. "Time of death, is about all," she said.

"Steve," Kinsella said to the patrol sergeant. They shook hands. Jean was never surprised that her partner knew almost every working cop in town. It was a gift, one she hadn’t relied on, the old boys’ club.

The techs had laid out their physical finds on the tailgate of their SUV, bagged and tagged.

"Shell casings, three."

"Nines?" Jean asked, meaning 9mm.

The senior crime tech shook her head. ".38 Super."

"Not all that common a caliber," Jean said.

".38 Super is basically a hot nine," the tech told her. "Heavier round, maybe a 130-grain bullet, vice 90, and a faster muzzle velocity, call it fifteen to eighteen hundred FPS, out of the gun. Weapon of choice, back in Dillinger’s day."

"Risk of overpenetration?" Jean asked.

The tech nodded. "They’re all through-and-throughs. We’re looking for spent rounds."

"What else?"

"Driver’s license, credit cards, frequent shopper at Sam’s Club," the tech said. "Cell phone—we’ll break out the recent calls, any text messages. People leave footprints. And there’s this." He smiled. "Analog, not digital."

It was a business card, somebody named Jack Thibault.

"Private dick," Kinsella said, looking over her shoulder.

Jean nodded. Again, why should she be surprised?

"Tony Thibault’s older brother," Kinsella told her. "The hockey player, signed with the Bruins? Got creamed on the ice a couple of seasons back. Crippled him for life."

No big sports fan, she vaguely remembered the story.

"More to the point, Jack’s friendly with Frank Dugan," he said. Dugan was a detective lieutenant, downtown. In the heavy, the expression had it, organized crime task force, senior liaison with the Feds.

"How well do you know Dugan?" she asked.

"Well enough that he’d return my call," Kinsella said.

"Let’s get some background," Jean said.

My kid brother Tony was coaching league hockey that year. The boys were thirteen going on fourteen. You might find it odd, having a coach in a wheelchair, but they didn’t give it a second thought. They treated Tony like he was ace high in the deck.

Practice started early, four o’clock, right after school. Three days a week, they got an hour and a half on the rink, each team doing scrimmage and drills, maybe a short pick-up game if there was time. I was watching one of Tony’s kids doing lazy figure eights mid-ice. He was utterly concentrated, in a world of his own, almost isolated, and he didn’t seem to interact much with the other guys.

"Adam Pacharz," Tony told me.

"Kind of a loner," I remarked.

"He’s high-functioning autistic, Asperger’s syndrome."

"You play him?" I asked.

"Sure, he’s the best goalie his age I’ve ever seen. Most saves in the league. Little shy on social skills, but that’s not a handicap in deep defense. He can read the pattern of the game like it’s a chessboard."

"We aren’t all gifted with social skills," I said.

Tony grinned at me. "You’d be the one to know," he said.

Adam was making near-perfect circles, leaning into his turns slightly, switching his weight from his left skate to his right as he crossed the centerline of the figure eight. There was something hypnotic in the repetition, and I admired his easy grace, entirely natural, like a bird in flight.

"Jack Thibault?"

I turned.

Well-built woman in her middle thirties, dark hair cut short, sensible pants suit. The jacket didn’t conceal her weapon. The guy with her was older, lean and horse-faced, Irish by look of him. Cops.

They ID’d themselves. Weinstock and Kinsella, Major Crimes Division.

"What can I do for you, Detectives?" I asked.

"You have a client named Evans Carmody?" Kinsella asked me.

I shook my head.

"Let’s broaden the question," Weinstock said. "Do you know an Evans Carmody?"

The dangers of giving a literal answer. I’d already put myself one in the hole. "He was referred to me by a guy named Max Quinn, who used to do legwork for an attorney I’ve done jobs for myself, Kitty Dwyer."

"What was the job?" Kinsella asked.

"A money drop."

"Why didn’t you take it?" Weinstock asked me.

"It didn’t feel right," I said.

"Didn’t feel right, how?"

This probably wasn’t the time to go into my overcomplicated relationship with Max Quinn, but I knew I’d have to give him up sooner or later. "Too many variables," I told them. "He wanted me to meet a guy I didn’t know, at a location of the guy’s own choosing. And it was a lot of money, a hundred large. I took a pass."

"What was the money for?" she asked.

"I don’t have a clue."

"Where was the meet?"

"We never got that far."

"He give you the guy’s name?" Kinsella asked.

"I’d tell you if I knew," I said.

She handed me her card. It had both her office number and her cell. "Anything," she said, "and I mean anything, Jack, you call me. Don’t be half smart."

"One thing," I said. "Why are you asking?" I already knew what she was going to tell me.

"Carmody caught a bullet last night. Or three, in point of fact. You were right to turn the job down."

They left.

"So?" Tony asked.

"Trouble," I said, fingering the edges of Weinstock’s card.

"You in the middle of it?"

"Not yet, but my guess is somebody wants me there," I said.

I figured Max had set me up.

"You buy him?" Kinsella asked.

"So far," Jean said. "Why wouldn’t he be straight with us? Dugan gives him a clean bill."

"What do you think?"

"I’m thinking Carmody made the meet himself, and whoever it was took the money and left him dead on the street."

"Which leaves us a long way from the shooter."

"Study on this, though," Jean said. "If it were a buy, or a ransom, or a quid pro quo, a trade, you wouldn’t shoot the guy. He’s got something to give you in return."

"Meaning that whoever shot Carmody had nothing to lose."

"And everything to gain."

Kinsella shrugged. "Follow the money," he said.

Jean nodded. "You know this Max Quinn?" she asked.

"I think he was with the States. Fell under a bad odor."

"Crooked cop?"

Kinsella shook his head. "Word like that gets around fast. He’d be unemployable, any kind of security work."

"But if he’s on the sketchy side?"

"Sketchy is as sketchy does," Kinsella said.

"Why in the name of sweet bleeding Jesus would you do any favors for Max Quinn?" Kitty Dwyer asked me.

"I owed him one."

"If anything, the other way around," she said.

"He doesn’t see it that way."

"Jack, you’d better tell me what’s up with this. You’re cruising for a bruising, I’ll need as much cover as you will, if not more so."

"Okay, story thus far," I said.

Max had asked me to meet him the day before, and I didn’t have a good reason to say no. It was a bar called the Plough and Stars, on Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Central Square. He had a smooth-looking gent in his late forties in tow, manicure, Rolex, razor-cut hair, soft suede jacket and pleated pants. Max introduced us and we shook hands.

"Pleased to meet you, Jack," Evans Carmody said.

They were drinking Bushmills 21, top shelf. I let Carmody buy me one. He gave me the impression it was pocket change.

"Got something we thought you might be able to sort out for us, Jack," Max said.

I took a sip of the malt.

"Nothing too strenuous," Carmody said. "I need a bag job."

"What are you buying?"

He smiled, and raised his glass.

"Fair enough," I said. "Where does this happen?"

"I’m waiting for a phone call."

"Who from?"

Carmody smiled, again, sadly. "I can’t trust you with that information, Jack," he said.

I looked at Max.

"One hundred K," he said. "All you have to do is deliver."

"What’s my end?" I asked him.

"Five hundred, an hour’s work, no questions asked," he told me.

I pretended to think about it.

"None of this smelled ripe to you?" Kitty asked.

"The whole thing smelled ripe," I said.

"What did you say?"

"I said no."

Max was disappointed in me. Carmody was offended. He gave Max a poisonous look.

"How much of this did you tell the cops?" Kitty asked.

"All of it."

"Did you tell them about your history with Max?"

"I thought it would clutter the narrative."

"You better come clean, Jack," she said. "They talk to me, I’m going to open up like a bad cantaloupe."

"You’ve got to get some traction," Jean’s lieutenant said.

Jean nodded.

"Can you squeeze this private dick?" he asked.

"You catch more flies with honey," she said.

The lieutenant wasn’t buying. "He’s a material witness, we can tie him up six ways from Sunday."

"Better he isn’t tied up," Jean said.

"Something you’re not telling me?"

"I read the guy as square, and I think he’s a little pissed off. That might be useful."

He tucked his chin in his chest.

Kinsella stuck his head into the lieutenant’s office. "Thibault’s downstairs," he said to Jean. "Sorry to interrupt," he said to their lieutenant. He closed the door again.

The lieutenant shrugged. "Your call," he said.

They brought Jack up to the bullpen. If he was surprised not to be put in an interrogation room, he didn’t show it. Kinsella asked him if he wanted a coffee. Jack said thanks, but no. The three of them sat down at Jean’s desk. She had the case file in front of her, but she didn’t open it. The two cops looked at him. He’d come to them.

"Okay," he said. "I don’t know how far you’ve gotten, but better we don’t have any misunderstanding. I told you Carmody was steered in my direction by a guy named Max Quinn, but what I didn’t tell you is that Max has a beef with me."

Carmody didn’t realize he was a bit part in a script he hadn’t written.

The two cops said nothing.

"Year before last," Jack went on, "I got mixed up with some bikers who were dealing speed. Max was working off the books for the States. For him, it was a grudge match. In the end, it went south, and he blames me for gumming up the works."

Kinsella nodded. "I discern the lineaments of a story," he said.

Jean raised her eyebrows. "The lineaments?"

"Big meth bust," Kinsella said. "Gang called the Disciples were heavy in the trade."

Jean looked at Jack. "We on the same page?" she asked.

"It would have been bigger," he told her. "Max figured on taking out the entire Springfield–Hartford corridor—bikers, mob guys, the whole nine yards."

"What’s he hold against you?"

"We shut down a local cooker, and the guy who laundered the money. Small change to Max."

"Let’s roll the tape back," Kinsella said. "You think that Max Quinn wanted you to take the fall for Carmody?"

"I think he’s got a score to settle," Jack said.

"What am I missing, here?" Jean asked.

"It’s personal," Jack told her. "Max lost his daughter to meth. He’d sell his soul to even up the game. Throwing me over the side counts for nothing."

"How does Carmody fit into this picture?"

"I don’t know anything about Carmody," Jack said.

"He was what they call a rainmaker," Kinsella said. "A guy who brings in business because of his previous connections."

"What were his previous connections?" Jack asked.

Jean cleared her throat. Kinsella had already said more than he should have. "Let’s get back to Max Quinn," she said to Jack.

"I’ve given you what I’ve got," he said.

"Max appears to have gone to ground."

"Not a good sign," Jack said.

"Don’t play games with me," she told him.

"Believe me, I’m not," Jack said. "I’d like nothing better than to be shut of Max Quinn."

"If you hear from him?"

"You’ll be the first to know."

"All right," she said. She stood up. "That about it?" she asked Kinsella.

He hesitated, and then nodded.

"Thanks for coming in," she said to Jack.

He stood up, too, and they shook hands.

"Oh, and Jack," she said, as he started to turn away. "Do yourself a favor. Don’t call Frank Dugan. We already talked to him. He won’t take your calls."

I left probably knowing less than when I got there. Well, no. Weinstock and Kinsella were apparently as much in the dark as I was, and I had one possible advantage. Max might come to me. And there was one other thing working in my favor, which is that nobody knew what the money drop was for.

A hundred thousand dollars is a lot of change to most people, but for Carmody, it looked to be a down payment, earnest money. Kinsella had called him a rainmaker, which I took to mean a fixer. In this case, the fix was already in, even if the wrong guy got fixed.

Or did he? They must have assumed there was some risk involved, or they wouldn’t have tried to enlist a third party. And then when I turned them down, why didn’t Carmody hand it off to Max? He knew his way around the shady side of the street. In other words, which one of them was the key player? I thought it might be Max, and Carmody didn’t realize he was a bit part in a script he hadn’t written.

Too many variables, I’d told the detectives. Like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn, there were a lot of knots to untangle. Besides, the first thing you learn in this trade is never to cross the cops. I was looking at a hit for obstruction of justice, if not an accessory charge, if I involved myself in an active homicide investigation. Weinstock and Kinsella didn’t strike me as overly forgiving types.

Then again, they’d dangled Carmody in front of me. I didn’t think it was an accident, Kinsella’s slip of the tongue. Jean Weinstock was capable and ambitious, and maybe a little ruthless, or she wouldn’t have made senior rank. It wasn’t affirmative action that had pushed her up the chain of command. Another knot to untangle. Was she using me as bait, the way Max had?

Max was off the radar. He’d surface or not. I couldn’t force the issue. Which left me with Carmody. Why had he made the meet himself? It had been a trap. The next question wasn’t any easier. What was he buying?

"You think it’s smart?" Kinsella asked her. "Thibault’s a loose cannon."

"Let’s hope so," Jean said.

"You figure he might draw Max Quinn out from cover?"

"Depends how hungry Max is," she said. "You heard what Jack said, Max has a lot of anger bottled up inside. Angry guys get careless."

"You can’t take that to the bank," Kinsella said.

"I want a full-court press on Max," Jean said. "Talk to the States, find the assistant AG who prosecuted the Disciples case, get on the horn with Frank Dugan. Were the Feds involved, interstate trafficking? DEA, ATF, whoever."

"I thought you already talked to Dugan," he said.

"I was blowing smoke up Jack’s ass," she said. "Get him to go outside the loop. He’s got other arrows in his quiver."

"Carmody."

"We’re dead zero. This was a contract hit. The trigger is in St. Louis, by now, or Afghanistan."

"Carmody is the primary. He was the target."

Jean shook her head. "Carmody was collateral damage," she said. "We need to turn Max Quinn inside out. He set Jack up to take that meet."

"I think you’re going at this backwards," Kinsella said.

"This whole thing is ass-backwards," Jean said. "We’re not seeing the forest for the trees."

Just because they’d put me in chancery with Dugan didn’t mean I was deaf, dumb, and blind. Frank had a friend at Treasury named Dottie DiNapoli, and she owed me one. I phoned her office.

"Jack," she said, when I got through to her. She sounded genuinely pleased to hear from me, but she knew enough to know I wanted something. "You calling in that marker?" she asked.

"I need a line on a guy named Evans Carmody," I told her.

"Spelled like it sounds?" She was taking notes.

"He got shot down by Fenway the other night," I said. "The cops are turning over every rock."

"And they found you under one of them?" she asked, but with a smile in her voice.

I told her how I’d turned the job down when Max and Carmody had offered it to me.

"And you’re trying to learn, what, exactly?"

"One of the detectives assigned to the case told me Carmody had serious gravitational pull. He was an inside guy."

"You thinking he was mobbed up?"

"One way or another," I said.

"That covers a multitude of sins," Dottie said.

"Can you run a trace for me?" I meant OCD, the Organized Crime Database. If the guy was dirty, they’d have a paper trail on him.

"I find something, that doesn’t mean I can give it to you," she said.

"Understood, but right now I’ve got a handful of nothing."

"You talk to Dugan?"

"Frank’s off-limits," I said.

That got her interest, as I knew it would.

"The way I figure it, Major Crimes wants me to do the heavy lifting," I said. "I’m their stalking horse."

"And you want them off your back."

"Honest truth? They’d better be watching my back."

"Who’s the lead investigator?"

I gave her Jean Weinstock’s name.

"You want me to put my oar in the water?"

"The waters are troubled enough," I said. "You’d be better off limiting your exposure."

"Your lips to God’s ears," Dottie said, and hung up.

One down, I thought. Dottie would either do what she could for me, or she’d become suddenly unavailable.

The next step was a little trickier.

I couldn’t use the phone. I could only put the word out on the street that I wanted a sit-down with Johnny Vig.

Jean knew she wasn’t pushing hard enough. There was too much urgency. She couldn’t depend on Thibault. Jack was a slender reed. They had feelers out on Carmody, they had feelers out on Max Quinn, but so far the response had been boilerplate. Nobody was talking. Jean thought that was interesting, even if it was unproductive. It meant somebody had something to hide. Max and Carmody in bed together added up to a hot potato.

Then she got the call from Frank Dugan.

"What the Christ is going on?" he asked her.

Not a lot of collegial chitchat, Jean noticed. "I have an active homicide, Lieutenant," she said.

"I appreciate that," Dugan said. "Why am I taking incoming on this?"

"I’m sorry?"

Dugan cooled down. "Bring me up to speed," he said.

She did.

"Forensics?" he asked.

She gave him what they had.

"Why is Jack Thibault part of it?"

She told him that too.

"I apologize," Dugan said.

Jean felt bold enough to ask him a question. "You figure I can trust Jack?"

"He’s never sold me short," Dugan said.

"What do you know about his relationship with Max Quinn?"

"More than you need to hear."

"I’ve got time," Jean said.

Johnny Vigorino. They called him Johnny Vig, the vig being shorthand for vigorish, interest on a short-term loan. Johnny was muscle for the Provenzano family, a capo. He was as cold as fish caught fresh off the boat.

We met in the North End, on Hanover Street, what they’d once called Little Italy. It was still, but diluted, or translated. Yuppie money had turned it into a Potemkin Village.

"You did me a service," Johnny said. "I admit that."

"I don’t want something you can’t give me," I said.

Johnny shrugged. "Ask," he said.

"Guy got whacked in the Back Bay, night before last," I said to him. "Two center body, one in the head. Boston PD sees it as a professional shooter."

Johnny said nothing.

"Dead guy’s name was Carmody."

Johnny still said nothing.

"If it was a mob hit, it would have to be sanctioned out of Providence," I said.

He nodded. "Good calzones, in Providence. Up the hill, by the college there. I wouldn’t know from a hit."

I was still trying to come up with the right question.

"No, is the answer," Johnny said.

"You don’t know a guy named Carmody?"

"Didn’t say that," Johnny told me. "I said, we didn’t kill him."

The high-tech corridor along Route 128 was known as the Silicon Valley of the East. Along with the big software engineering companies and the smaller start-ups, a whole subset of support activity trawled in their wake like pilot fish, translation agencies, courier services, private security operations. Max Quinn had been a contractor with an outfit calling itself Global Reach.

It was a three-room suite of offices above a Pizza Hut, in a strip mall in North Reading. Its reach looked to extend to about next Wednesday afternoon, Jean thought. She went upstairs with Kinsella.

"Hey, buddy," Teddy Benziger said to Kinsella, getting up from behind his desk. They shook hands, and Kinsella introduced him to Jean. Like a lot of guys in his line of work, Benziger was an ex-cop, after a career twenty with the States, and like a lot of other guys, he and Kinsella went back. Jean knew to let Kinsella take the lead. She was the senior, but Benziger was an old boy from the brown-shoe days.

"Max Quinn," Kinsella said.

Benziger nodded. "Good man," he said. He glanced at Jean. "Kind of guy you’d want covering you, you were in the heavy."

She said nothing.

"What was he working on, last you knew?" Kinsella asked.

"Bunch called Control Dynamics. You know the folk wisdom. Couple of pencil-necks start out in their mom’s garage, like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Come up with something original, sell the patent, go public. These days, they employ some three hundred people here in Massachusetts, couple of hundred in New Mexico, contracts with Sandia labs. The actual manufacturing is outsourced. Would have put us on the map, Max landed them."

"What do they do?"

"Who the hell knows, and who the hell cares? The economy’s in the toilet, these guys are making money hand over fist."

"I’m sorry," Jean said, "you don’t know what their product actually is?"

Benziger looked at her. "Computer modeling of complex polycarbonate structures," he said. "You take me for a complete moron, Detective?"

Jean smiled. "I stand corrected," she said to him.

"Max have a contact name?" Kinsella asked Benziger.

Benziger looked uncomfortable.

"What?" Kinsella asked.

"I should have been more careful," Benziger admitted.

"Is it possible we discern the lineaments of a story?" Jean asked Kinsella.

"Max was my point man," Benziger said.

"It was his commission, he closed the deal," Kinsella said.

Benziger nodded. "I gave him enough rope," he agreed.

"So, you never had a verified contact at Control Dynamics," Jean said. "You left it up to Max."

"I knew he’d watch my back," Benziger said.

"Documentation?"

"I’ve got no paper trail, not even e-mails," Benziger said.

"For a smart guy, you were pretty dumb," Jean said.

"No," he said. "I believed in somebody who never played me false. You ever have a guy you believed in lie to you?"

She had, but she didn’t want to get into it with Benziger, or anybody else. "First question," she said to him. "What does Control Dynamics have that’s worth selling?"

"Proprietary information."

Jean shrugged. "Obviously," she said. "But what is it?"

"I don’t know," Benziger said.

"Second question," she said. "Where do we find Max Quinn?"

"I don’t know that either."

"You’ll call us if you learn anything."

Benziger nodded.

They left.

"We’ve got more than we had before," Kinsella said, down in the parking lot.

"Industrial espionage?" Jean asked.

"Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck," Kinsella said.

"Here’s my question," she said. "Why is Max working for a low-rent unit like this? And why would a high-end corporation like Control Dynamics come to a guy who’s working out of a pizza franchise?"

"Maybe they didn’t come to him."

"Somebody who worked for them did," Jean said. The whole looked bigger than the sum of its parts.

"Surprised to hear from me, Jack?"

I knew his voice. At least he was alive. "After what happened to your client, I figured you might be at the bottom of Boston Harbor wearing cinder block shoes," I said.

"Wishing won’t make it so," Max said.

"We need to talk. And you need to talk to the cops."

"I talk to the cops, I’m dead meat. That’s why I’m talking to you."

"What’s your offer?"

"Same as the last time."

"Last time didn’t turn out so well."

"This time you’re not walking down a dark alley."

"What was Carmody doing, if not walking down a dark alley?" I asked him.

"Carmody was trying to broker a buy," he said.

"Not a sale?"

"Jack, shut up and listen," Max said. "There’s a manila envelope under the front seat of your car. Carmody died for it. You need to get me off the dime."

"Who do I take it to?"

"You figure it out," Max said, and hung up.

There was something Benjamin Franklin once said. Three men can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

"Detective Weinstock? Frank Dugan."

They shook hands. She introduced Kinsella.

Dugan introduced the woman he’d brought with him. "Dottie DiNapoli, ATF," he said. Jean could tell the Treasury agent was already sizing her up. Maybe it was a girl thing.

DiNapoli handed Jean a folder. "The file on Evans Carmody, your murder victim," she said. The folder was awfully thin.

Jean laid it on her desk, unopened.

DiNapoli smiled. "Redacted," she said.

"You going to show us the dirty pictures?" Kinsella asked.

"Carmody was a macher," DiNapoli said. "The kind of guy you go to, you want the wheels greased. Not a lobbyist, not a bagman, a negotiator. He knew who to talk to, he knew where the bodies were buried."

"Who was he working for?" Jean asked.

"He was a freelancer," Dottie said. "But."

It sounded like an extremely large but was coming.

"He had an undisclosed relationship with DARPA."

"Which is what?" Jean asked.

"Department of Defense," Kinsella said. "It’s a black budget R and D outfit, works out of the basement of the Pentagon. Data mining, terrorist profiles, procurement of generally weird technologies." He looked at DiNapoli. "Correct me if I’m wrong about this," he said.

"Some of them might have practical applications," she said.

"Let’s get to the bottom line," Jean said.

"I don’t have one."

"Sure you do," Kinsella said. "You’ve been trying your best not to tell us Carmody was a spook. This has spy crap written all over it. So, where are FBI and CIA, you haven’t put them in the loop?"

"Nothing probative," DiNapoli said to him.

Kinsella had a sharp answer ready, but Jean held up her hand. "Enough," she said to both of them. She looked at Dugan.

"Anything to add, Lieutenant?" she asked him.

Science was never my strong suit. Tony was the one who’d fooled around with a chemistry set when he was a kid, and almost blown up the kitchen drain. Our dad had given Tony a verbal hiding, but you could tell the old man could hardly keep a straight face doing it. He thought it was funny as hell.

I went over to the rink in the afternoon. It was about time for practice. The kids were all suited up, ready for their time on the ice.

I showed Tony the diagram Max Quinn had left for me. It was a pair of intersecting spirals, something like an hourglass, with a long equation of symbols and subscript underneath.

Tony nodded. "Double helix," he said.

"DNA?" I asked him.

Tony shrugged. "Some kind of organic chemical compound, is my guess."

The autistic kid, Adam, was standing at Tony’s shoulder. Close, but not making actual contact, as if his skin were hot to the touch. He was obviously curious.

Tony tipped the diagram so Adam could see it better.

Adam leaned past Tony, awkwardly, and traced the pattern of the helix with his index finger. "Crazy eights," he said.

I started to say something, but Tony caught my eye.

Adam was giving the thing his full attention, as if he were memorizing it. His lips moved slightly, talking to himself.

Tony and I waited, not wanting to break the spell.

Adam straightened up, nodding in satisfaction. "It’s a formula for polymer resin," he announced, very grave, measuring his words carefully, but I didn’t hear any doubt in his voice.

"Thermoplastic shape-memory." He gave me a wary look, knowing I probably didn’t understand.

"It’s okay," Tony said to him. "Go ahead."

"Like this, see?" Adam asked me. He picked up his goalie’s mask and covered his face with it.

"We’re digging ourselves a hole," Jean’s lieutenant told the other three people in his office. "All due respect, Ms. DiNapoli," he said to the ATF agent, "but you’re hanging us all out to dry, you don’t bring in the whole ragtag-and-bobtail, the FBI, for openers, or the Pacific Fleet, for all I care."

"I don’t have much to give the Bureau but speculation," she said.

"What more do you need?"

"Be nice to reel in Max Quinn," Dugan remarked.

"It’s an open homicide," Jean pointed out. "Which means it still belongs to MCD."

"What do you say to that, Frank?" the lieutenant asked Dugan. "CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, they hold your feet to the fire, you want to tell them the series stays in the minors?"

"Not if Treasury’s got our back," Dugan said.

"I can buy us twenty-four hours," Dottie told them.

"Make or break?" Jean asked.

"My career, not yours," Dottie said.

"This case is forty-eight hours cold," the lieutenant said to her. "Another twenty-four, and nobody in this room will have a career worth saving."

There was a knock on the door.

"Come," the lieutenant called out.

It was Kinsella, with Jack Thibault.

The lieutenant waved them on in. "Well, at least we’ll all hang together," he said.

Jack glanced around. He nodded to Dottie and Dugan, and stepped over to Jean. "Heard from Max," he said, and handed her a manila envelope.

Jean opened it, and slid something out. She put it down on the lieutenant’s desk so everybody could have a look.

Jack waited for them to study the schematic.

"Okay," Jean said to him. "What is it?"

Jack looked at Dottie. "Body armor," he said.

"From the beginning, Jack," Dottie said.

I told them about the near-genius kid Tony had playing on his hockey team, and how he was "gifted," but not handicapped by it.

"A thirteen year old came up with this?" Dottie asked me.

"I can read between the lines," I said.

"He’s got an active imagination," Jean Weinstock said.

"He doesn’t interact a lot," I explained. "He’s solitary, he inhabits a world of his own. Hockey draws him out of his shell. But he’s advanced placement, math and sciences, biology, chemistry, physics. He’s taking calculus."

"What the French call an idiot savant," Kinsella said.

"He’s not an idiot," I said.

Kinsella held up a hand in apology. "It means a wise fool, an innocent."

"Or a guy who can count cards in a casino," Dugan said.

"He sees patterns," I said. "Mathematical, game theory, or physical games, like the way the puck moves on the ice."

"I bet he’s a bearcat at video games," the lieutenant said.

"Non-linear," Dottie said.

I thought of the way Adam had followed the helix with his finger, almost touching the page, as if absorbing it through his capillaries, or extrasensory perception.

"Let’s do linear," Jean Weinstock said to me. "How did you get this, Jack?"

"Max left it under the seat of my car, then he called me on my cell."

"No sit-down?"

I shook my head. "He’s scared to come out."

"Scared? Max?"

"Call it overcautious, then."

"All right," Dottie said, calling them to order. "This is a teaser, just a taste. It indicates good faith. It’s not the real deal." She meant the diagram.

"And the hundred grand Carmody brought to the meet was good faith on the other end," Dugan said.

"What went wrong?" Jean asked.

"The guy knew Carmody?" Kinsella suggested.

"Max set it up," I said.

"You’ve got it back to front," Dottie said to me. "Carmody was running Max." She put a funny spin on the verb.

"Running?"

"Max was working out of a storefront," Kinsella told me. "Mom-and-pop security operation run by an ex-cop named Benziger. Not a bad Joe, just a fall guy."

"Max was low-rent," I said. "He was hungry, he wanted back in the game."

"Max was already back in the game," Dottie said. "Carmody was trawling him. Guy on his uppers, makes it look like he’d step over a dollar to pick up a dime. Bent cop, has a grudge or two to settle. You see where I’m going with this, Jack?"

"Who was Carmody?" I asked.

Their eyes slid around, each of them trying to decide how much to tell me, or what any of them knew. I realized they were chasing smoke.

Kinsella pulled a face. "Nuts to this," he muttered. He turned to me. "Carmody was covert ops, off-the-shelf, under the radar. He recruited Max for this."

"What was this?"

"Oh, what the hell," Kinsella said. "Control Dynamics."

Jean Weinstock smiled in spite of herself, relieved the cat was out of the bag. "Might as well tell him the rest."

So they did. Or as much as they trusted me with.

"You think somebody went shopping," I said.

Jean nodded.

"And they shopped it to Max."

She nodded again.

"Not to buy, but to sell."

She nodded a third time.

"Carmody posed as the buyer."

"Right on the money, Jack," Jean said.

"But there was a genuine buyer," I said, looking at Dottie.

"In the woodwork."

Her turn to nod.

"And they’re still out there," I said.

"And the product," Dottie said. "Or its design protocols."

Same difference, seemed to me.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked her. I knew there was a punchline.

"Just like Max said," she told me. "Make the meet."

"Easier said than done."

"Not if there’s a pattern."

Crazy Eights, I thought.

Dottie looked around the room. "Walk it through," she said. "How many people knew there was going to be a meeting, and which of them knew where it was supposed to happen?"

"Three, to the first question," Kinsella said. "Max, Carmody, and the leaker from Control Dynamics." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Four, if you count Jack, but he didn’t bet into the game."

"Anybody?" Dottie asked them.

"Four, even if you leave Jack out of the mix," Jean said. "Carmody was a beard, but figure in the unknown factor, somebody who wanted to take him out of the bidding."

"Okay," Kinsella said. "Who knew about Fenway?"

"The leaker," Jean said.

"And the shooter," Dugan pointed out.

"What about Max?" Dottie asked Jack.

He shook his head. "Carmody said he was waiting for a phone call," he told them. "They wanted to use me as a cutout. Max didn’t know where the drop was planned, either."

"So, what’s he scared of?" Jean asked.

"Incoming," Jack said.

"I don’t buy it," the lieutenant said. "Max Quinn’s got an attitude that could scale fish. He knows to watch his back."

"What, then?" Jean asked.

"Losing the collar, maybe," Dugan said.

The others looked at him.

"Jack makes the drop, there’s no issue, but Jack turns them down, and Carmody makes the drop anyway because he didn’t want to let his mark off the hook," Dugan said. "Problem being, like Kinsella says, maybe whoever it was knew him by sight."

"They can’t let Carmody walk away," Jean said.

"Max isn’t laying low because his nerves have gone bad," Dugan said. "He doesn’t want to queer the play. He needs a guy like Jack, because Jack’s not a threat. No offense."

"None taken," Jack said.

"Meaning the guy can’t smell cop," Jean’s lieutenant said.

Dugan nodded.

"How do we get next to him, then?" Jean asked.

"We sweat Control Dynamics," Kinsella said.

"How?" the lieutenant asked him.

"Benziger said Max was his point man. No contact name, no e-mails. But the leaker’s handwriting has to be all over this project." Kinsella tapped the diagram. "Who has responsibility for it, who’s the lead engineer, who’s on the design team?"

"I’ll take that one," Dottie said.

"Excuse me," Jean said, "but if you go in there with a FISA warrant and the full-court press, our guy’s going to ground."

Dottie smiled. "You’re invited," she said.

Which was all Jean wanted. Dottie DiNapoli might be a pro, but Jean was looking for the confirmed kill.

Which left me, basically, with my thumb up my ass. The cops had invited me out, except as a diversion.

I was surprised to get a call from Johnny Vig. Same place, he said. I went to the North End. I knew he’d find me.

And he did.

"You’re going to step on your dick, Jack," he said, without any foreplay.

"I should be so lucky," I told him.

"No joke," he said. "A guy’s mobbed up, that’s one thing."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"I’m giving you this one for free," he said.

Nothing in Johnny’s world came without a price, and I’d owe him one later.

"We had a conversation about a guy," he said.

I nodded. He meant Evans Carmody.

"You know how things kind of—" He paused. "—interleave?"

I thought that was a good word for it.

"Mutual friend," he said. "Guy tried to take me down, on a shaky bust, but the guy’s straight."

Who else but Max Quinn? I waited for Johnny to fill me in.

"There’s another guy," Johnny said.

I said nothing.

Johnny pretended to be reluctant, like I was pulling teeth to get the information. "Max worked with him at the States," he said, meaning the State Police.

I waited him out.

"Benziger," Johnny said. "He’s private security, now. Max is on his payroll."

There was more, I knew.

"Word is, Benziger’s into the loan sharks for a few hundred large."

"That might present a problem," I said.

"Not mine," Johnny said. "It’s not my money."

"Whose is it?"

"Benziger went to the Winter Hill boys."

Not just a problem, I thought. A death sentence, he didn’t pay off the weekly interest.

"You see where I’m going," Johnny said.

I did.

"Benziger’s dirty. Max Quinn is stand-up."

"Even though he tried to fit you with a frame?"

Johnny smiled. "Can’t do the time, don’t do the crime," he said.

Meaning he’d been guilty, but Max couldn’t pin it on him.

"Point being, Benziger and Max Quinn, I don’t see it."

I didn’t either.

"Lie down with a dog, you get up with fleas," Johnny said.

The first surprise was that Control Dynamics ran their own internal security, which shouldn’t have been a surprise at all, but it raised a question in Jean’s mind. Why had Benziger thought he could land a contract with them? The next thing was that their security chief didn’t stonewall. He knew better.

"Oscar Ruth," he said, shaking hands. "Most people call me Babe." He was ex-military, career, twenty years an MP. White sidewall, high and tight, his shave so close his skin was shiny.

"You know an ex-cop named Max Quinn?" Dottie asked him.

He nodded.

"What’s your relationship?"

He tipped his head to one side, smiling. For a guy who looked like he could bend nickels with his teeth, he had a charming, disingenuous smile. Jean figured he’d gotten a lot of mileage out if it. "I asked Max for a favor," he said.

"Personal?" Dottie asked.

He shook his head. "Professional. I wanted him to see if he could compromise any of our personnel." He held up a hand, forestalling the next question. "We have bids out with Defense, law enforcement, Homeland Security. We work with the national labs in New Mexico, Los Alamos and Sandia, which means access to classified material. We need to be watertight."

"Wouldn’t the FBI have done clearance investigations?"

"That’s correct," he said.

"What was your issue?"

"Primarily, we do applied research," he said. "Give us a problem, we come up with an answer. Sometimes there are a range of answers, or even an accidental answer to a question that was never asked. The guys who work here, in this shop, what we call the Skunk Works, are just computer geeks."

"In other words, they’re not cleared for classified jobs."

"Need to Know," Babe Ruth said.

"Complex polycarbonate structures," Jean said. She stepped forward and handed him the file folder.

He didn’t bother to open it.

"You gave this to Max, to use as bait," she said. "Not the whole nine yards, just a taste of what might come."

"Calculated risk," he said.

"To see if somebody in your outfit would sell it."

"Three mils thick, conforms to the wearer. Stronger than Kevlar," he said. "You take a hit from a 7.62 or a 5.56, you might get a bad bruise or a broken rib, but it won’t penetrate. It affords real protection from shrapnel, IEDs. If you had the design, you could reverse-engineer it, find the weak points."

"Max might have been your weak point," Jean said. "He went on a fishing expedition."

"You can’t fish with an empty hook," Babe said to her.

Ted Benziger had an easy smile and a ready handshake. "What can I do for you, Jack?" he asked.

"I’m trying to get a line on Max Quinn," I said.

"What’s he to you?"

"We go back."

"Me and Max go back too," he said. "Funny your name never came up."

It was late afternoon, but still light. Daylight Savings didn’t end for another month. We were outside in the parking lot of the mini-mall where Benziger rented office space. He was loading some boxes of files into the back of an SUV.

"Not to be rude," he said, again with the easy smile. "You can see where I might be looking out for a friend."

"I wouldn’t call Max a friend," I said.

"There’s a lot of that going around."

"It’s about keeping faith."

"There’s the thing," he said, sadly. "You think you know somebody, you’d trust them with your children’s lives. And then they screw your wife on you, or clean out the cash drawer."

I nodded. Benziger was talking too much. I wondered why he was cleaning out his office. A man with nothing to hide. He was eager to seem transparent.

"I’m cool with Max," he said. "Maybe you get older, if not necessarily wiser, you lower your expectations."

There it was a second time. Saying more than he needed to, but reluctantly. I was beginning to smell a rat.

"Max, he plays it close. Too close for comfort." Benziger shrugged. "Hard to trust a guy, he won’t trust you in return."

"You have to earn trust," I said.

"Ain’t it the truth?"

"Max set me up," I said. "He asked me to make a drop. The guy who made the drop got killed."

Benziger nodded. "Out back of Fenway," he said.

There was no reason Benziger wouldn’t know this. It was in the police blotter, which was reported in the local papers.

"Must have felt wrong to you, you turned it down," he said.

"I might have felt the same."

"A hundred thousand in cash, a guy I’d never met, a place I didn’t choose?"

"Why did the other guy make the meet?"

"You tell me," I said. "Somebody was looking to score."

"Who, and what?"

"Like you say, that’s the thing. Both guys who made the meet were hungry. One of them was looking for a buy. The other guy was looking for a sale."

"Guy made a bad bargain."

"Maybe he was too trusting," I said.

"He made the wrong call," Benziger said.

"Speaking of making the wrong call, I hear you’re into the Winter Hill crew for a couple of hundred K," I said. "A hundred large would cover the vig."

Jesus, he was fast. I was behind the curve, and he had the gun out in less than a thought.

"Sometimes a plain, dumb bastard is just too smart for his own good, Jack," he said. "You step in shit, you don’t come out smelling like a rose."

The muzzle of the Glock 40 looked as big as the entrance to the Sumner Tunnel.

"This is where we part company, Jack," Benziger said.

Dottie and Jean were just pulling into the parking lot when they saw Benziger draw his gun on Jack.

"This is bad," Jean said.

"It ain’t good," Dottie said, but she didn’t step on the gas or brake hard. She turned off to the right, fluid and easy, not attracting Benziger’s unwelcome attention, and eased the unmarked car into a vacant space, keeping her eyes front. "What’s the background?" she asked Jean.

She meant civilians, the chance of collateral damage. Jean shook her head. "They’re in the clear," she said.

"Benziger know you?"

Jean nodded.

"You circle around in back of him," Dottie said, "I’ll take the front."

Jean didn’t ask about rules of engagement.

They got out of the vehicle. Dottie kept her back turned. They were two rows of cars away. Jean glanced over. "We’ve got an unknown factor," she said, quietly.

"More than one," Dottie said.

"No," Jean said. "We’re going long."

Dottie looked at her across the roof of the car.

Jean inclined her head, the barest movement. "Move to your left," she said. "Out of the field of fire."

Dottie didn’t question it.

The unknown factor was Max Quinn.

One of the sounds you never forget is the slide on a pump gun being racked, as the round seats. Chick-chock. It might be the last sound you ever hear. I hoped it wasn’t.

Benziger didn’t break eye contact with me. "You’re late to the party, Max," he said.

"I just came to help clean up," Max said. He was behind me and to the right.

"I can drop Jack," Benziger said, still not looking at Max. "Wouldn’t take but a moment’s thought."

"I could give a rat’s ass about Jack," Max said. "I’m here for you, Teddy."

"We can work this out," Benziger said.

"In your dreams," Max said.

My scalp was prickling, and sweat was breaking out along my spine, but I knew better than to speak.

"Put the gun down," Max said.

"No can do," Benziger said.

"You got me on one side, and two cops coming up on you from behind," Max said.

"I’m dead either way, then," Benziger said.

"You got that right," Max said. "Difference is, O’Donnell and the Winter Hill mob will part you out like a used car, tires and rims. I’ll kill you clean, Teddy, that’s what you want."

Weinstock and Dottie DiNapoli had moved into position, but I wasn’t comforted. If they shot Benziger, the odds were that a stray round or a through-and-through would clip me.

"Nuts to that," Benziger said. He bent down and put the Glock on the ground and straightened up again, hands behind his head. Jean Weinstock came up, pulled his hands down, and cuffed him.

"You okay?" Dottie asked me, holstering her gun.

I looked around at Max. "Thanks," I told him.

He cradled the shotgun at port arms. "Blow me," he said.

A man of few words, as always.

"Who was he working for?" Jean’s lieutenant asked her.

"Max? I don’t know. DiNapoli’s not talking."

"I don’t imagine you’d get much out of Frank Dugan, either. Good bust?"

"Benziger killed Carmody, that’s what you mean," she said.

"Close the case, then, Detective."

She hesitated.

"I served two tours in Vietnam, the late 1960s," he said. "You know what I learned, aside from ducking incoming?"

Jean waited him out.

"Never trust a spook," he said. "Even if they’re dead."

"It was a sting," Tony said to me.

"I was looking through the wrong end of the telescope."

"Max Quinn played you for a sucker."

I shrugged. "I knew that going in," I said.

"You let it happen," my brother said.

"All right, I should have seen it coming," I said, a little irritated. "Cut me some slack."

"You’re missing the forest for the trees, Jack," he said.

"What, that Max Quinn has it in for me?"

"No, that Benziger was in it for the money."

"Everybody’s got a price."

"You don’t."

"That’s flattering," I said.

"You wouldn’t betray a friend, or a promise."

"It’s a weakness."

"There never was a secret buyer," Tony said. "No crazed Arab mullahs, no jihad, no terrorist outfit like al-Qaeda or the Iranians. It wasn’t going to happen."

I looked out at the kids, practicing on the ice.

"Maybe not this time," I said.
Copyright © 2012 David Edgerley Gates

The Lineup

BY LINE ABSENT
| 173 words

REX BURNS won an Edgar Award for his first novel, The Alvarez Journal (1975), newly made available, along with his other novels, as an e-book from Mysteriouspress.com.

DAVID EDGERLEY GATES is a two-time nominee for the Edgar Award for Best Short Story. His last story for AHMM was "Burning Daylight," from the July/August 2012 issue.

RAYMOND GOREE lives in Nevada and works for the U.S. Department of Justice. "A Change of Heart" is his first published short story.

Booked & Printed columnist ROBERT C. HAHN reviews mysteries for Publishers Weekly and New York Post, and is a former columnist for the Cincinnati Post.

STEVE HOCKENSMITH is the author of the Holmes on the Range series. His new short fiction collection "Blarney: 12 Tales of Lies, Crime & Mystery" is available in print and e-book formats.

CHRIS MUESSIG is a public communication specialist for NC State University. His last story for AHMM was "The Sunny South" (March 2012).

When JAS. R. PETRIN isn’t writing, he plays bass with the Kitchen Party House Band on soundcloud.com . His story "A New Pair of Pants" (AHMM, September 2011) is a nominee for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Short Story.

MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH

BY LINE ABSENT
| 146 words

Copyright © 2012 nadirco/Shutterstock.com

Fortress of Solitude

We will give a prize of $25 to the person who invents the best mystery story (in 250 words or less, and be sure to include a crime) based on the above photograph. The story will be printed in a future issue. Reply to AHMM, Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, New York, New York 10007-2352. Please label your entry "October Contest," and be sure your name and address are written on the story you submit. If you would like your story returned, please include an SASE.

BOOKED & PRINTED

ROBERT C. HAHN | 1185 words

This month’s books feature unlikely heroes forced into dangerous or daunting action by the deeds of others. All three novels also involve historical backgrounds with intriguing glimpses of pasts both real and imagined.

William Dietrich’s American adventurer Ethan Gage has already survived four previous outings including The Barbary Pirates, The Dakota Cipher, The Rosetta Key, and Napoleon’s Pyramids. Now in The Emerald Storm (Harper, $25.99) the intrepid rascal is forced into a series of harrowing escapades that take him from the French Alps to the Caribbean.

At the start of the novel, Ethan Gage wants nothing more than to retire from his adventuring and settle down with his bride Astiza (married in 1802) and their son Horus (or Harry). A valuable emerald stolen from Barbary pirates in a previous adventure, if pawned, would give him the means to "emulate the rich and never do anything interesting again." But first, Gage, who often finds himself made a pawn in the plans of bigger men with bigger dreams, is pressed by American envoy Robert Livingston to approach Napoleon about the "wasteland" that will constitute the Louisiana Purchase. Surprisingly, Napoleon wants Gage to convince the Americans to buy the territory, and it seems like an obvious win-win situation for our hero.

All Gage has to do is pawn the emerald, see to the conclusion of the deal between the eager Americans and the equally eager French, and retire. Instead his attempt to sell the gem results in his "arrest" and torture by renegade policeman Leon Martel, who believes that Gage holds the key to a great treasure.

Gage is rescued from the attentions of Martel by the British only to find that they intend to use him to rescue the "King of Saint-Domingue," Toussaint L’Ouverture, liberator of Haiti, from the notorious French prison in the Jura Mountains. The British believe that Toussaint’s rebels have found treasure looted from Montezuma’s Aztec kingdom.

While Gage is being rescued from Martel’s clutches, his young son Harry is not so lucky. The British, French, and Americans all seek to have Gage do their bidding but his goal is clear—rescue Harry and then revenge himself on Martel.

Ingenious plotting allows Gage to tread history’s stage in the company of the famous and the infamous, using the lessons of his mentor Benjamin Franklin, and the inventions of contemporaries, such as the glider of George Cayley. Dietrich’s Ethan Gage adventures are a marvelous combination of swashbuckling daring against a vivid historical background narrated with a great deal of wit and charm.

A less well-equipped man, disgraced journalist Tom Sagan, is pressed into action to save an estranged daughter in Steve Berry’s latest standalone, The Columbus Affair (Ballantine, $27).

Sagan is not a natural adventurer like Gage, and his daughter, Alle, is not a youngster, but an adult with an agenda of her own. Sagan is in fact on the verge of committing suicide—his once stellar journalistic reputation burnished by a Pulitzer Prize, now tarnished by irrefutable charges that he fabricated an important story. His last act is interrupted by the arrival of Zachariah Simon, who claims Alle is his prisoner and shows him a video of his daughter about to be raped and tortured by the men holding her. To save his daughter, Simon says, Sagan must agree to have his father’s body exhumed!

Sagan not only signs the order for his father Abiram’s exhumation but attends it and claims from the body a thin packet before Simon’s representative can take it. That packet, along with the last letter Abiram sent to his son, estranged from both him and Judaism, provides the impetus for Sagan to rejoin the living instead of joining the dead.

Sagan calls upon his dormant investigative skills to follow clues beginning with that provided by the packet from his father’s grave. It’s a trail that will lead him first to Vienna and eventually to Cuba and Jamaica.

Along the way, Sagan encounters another on this trail, Jamaican Bene Rowe, although his purposes are very different from Simon’s. While one seeks an answer to benefit his people, the other nurtures far more sinister designs. Berry’s characters pursue a goal shaped by the history of the voyages of Columbus—and by the speculation that the navigator buried a secret treasure on the island of Jamaica during the year he was stranded there.

Gyles Brandreth who has authored several mysteries featuring Oscar Wilde (Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers, etc.) teams the wild poet and playwright with his friend Arthur Conan Doyle in Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (Touchstone, $14) as gruesome clues sent to Sherlock Holmes lead the two from Germany to Rome.

Gyles Brandreth has turned Oscar Wilde into a sleuth rivaling Sherlock Holmes in some ways, although Wilde is an excitable, flamboyant, and impulsive sort given to both poetic flights and extravagant philosophy. In his latest adventure, Wilde runs into his friend Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle in Homburg, Germany where Conan Doyle has come to rest and to deal with the voluminous correspondence addressed to Sherlock Holmes.

Together Wilde and Conan Doyle tackle the job until a package from Rome disgorges a severed, embalmed hand. An examination of the package, mailed four months previous, reveals no note, no return address, and prompts the friends to search the mail where they discover two similar mailings: one containing a lock of hair and the other a single finger bearing a rose-gold ring etched with the keys of St. Peter—the symbol of the Pope. It is Wilde who immediately decides that there is a murder or at least a mystery that requires them to go to Rome to investigate what is obviously (to Wilde) a desperate cry for help.

On the way to Rome by train the pair meet Irene Sadler (note the similarity to Conan Doyle’s character Irene Adler) and her brother, Martin, the newly appointed Anglican chaplain in Rome. Once in Rome, by whim (Wilde’s of course) they visit the pensione where John Keats once lived and find it inhabited by Dr. Axel Munthe, a Swede and a prominent figure in Rome.

The celebrity of Wilde and Conan Doyle provides entrée to much of Rome society as does the discovery that an old schoolmate of Conan Doyle’s is the Monsignor Nicholas Breakspear, Grand Penitentiary at St. Peters. It is among the papal chaplains, the men closest to the Pope, that Wilde and Conan Doyle find the mystery they are seeking. And among them the pair must find who sent the anonymous summons and who among them might be guilty of murder.

Brandreth weaves his mystery carefully around the careers of his heroes and includes many historical characters and anecdotes into the mysteries built around the ebullient character of Oscar Wilde.
Copyright © 2012 Robert C. Hahn

ALL POINTS BULLETIN: Camilla Läckberg released her new thriller THE STONECUTTER from Pegasus/Open Road this spring. • David Goodis’s dark signature style is celebrated with a new book out from the Library of America: FIVE NOIR NOVELS OF THE 1940S AND 50S (edited by Robert Polito). • William Burton McCormick’s debut novel LENIN’S HAREM will be released in December 2012 by Knox Robinson Publishing, Ltd. • Rex Burns’ fifteen out-of-print mysteries are now available in electronic format from Mysterious Press ( mysteriouspress.com ).

THE STORY THAT WON
SMOKE, BUT NO MIRRORS
EDWARD W. L. SMITH | 409 words

Copyright © 2012 Adrian Britton/Shutterstock.com

The April Mysterious Photograph contest was won by Edward W. L. Smith of Statesboro, Georgia. Honorable mentions go to Paul Ryan of Lansdale, Pennsylvania; Thomas Buice of Blountville, Tennessee; Jed Power of Peabody, Massachusetts; Barbara Hardee of Morehead City, North Carolina; Nikki S. May of Lyons, Michigan; Lynda Unick of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Vincent Stacy Henry of San Jose, California; Nathan Culp of Beaufort, South Carolina; and Jain Makepeace of Westfield, Massachusetts.

"Yes, I was jealous, but I didn’t kill him! I dated her before he did. He won her. We all remained friends."

The questioning continued until everyone at the cookout had been cross-examined to the inspector’s satisfaction. Except for one.

"How did we meet? We were all in the same Chemistry 101 lab our freshman year. Yes, I did go on for a PhD in chemistry. Of course I know about combustible gases."

Now, sensing both possible motive and expert knowledge that could suggest a means for murder, the inspector pressed.

"Jealous? I mean I still care for her, and have always envied him. He won her. I thought about her even when I went off to graduate school. But I was in second place."

Now the questions took an unexpected turn.

"What? I didn’t know about any life insurance policy. Becoming rich doesn’t make me love her any more or any less."

Further motive? Perhaps.

"What do I know about the missing propane tank? Nothing. Someone must have disconnected it after the explosion and removed it."

On a whim, the inspector turned to the newly widowed woman. Then he saw what he had missed before. In the excitement of the explosion, and the ensuing confusion, apparently everyone missed it. On her otherwise immaculate face were the telltale smudges, not of the kitchen where she had been when the grill exploded, but of the grill itself. The inspector knew that even Chemistry 101 students knew the dangers of hydrogen gas.

Editor’s Note: Dell Magazines invites you to take a peek into the publishing world. Join our four fiction titles at the Brooklyn Book Festival, NYC’s largest free literary event, for author signings, giveaways, subscription deals, writers’ guidelines, and more.

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ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE (ISSN:0002-5224), Vol. 57, No. 10, October 2012. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. Annual subscription $55.90 in the U.S.A. and possessions, $65.90 elsewhere, payable in advance in U.S. funds (GST included in Canada). Subscription orders and correspondence regarding subscriptions should be sent to 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. Or, to subscribe, call 1-800-220-7443. Editorial Offices: 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352. Executive Offices: 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. 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. © 2012 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. The stories in this magazine are all fictitious, and any resemblance between the characters in them and actual persons is completely coincidental. Reproduction or use, in any manner, of editorial or pictorial content without express written permission is prohibited. Submissions must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. POSTMASTER: Send changes to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to: Quad/Graphics Joncas, 4380 Garand, Saint-Laurent, Quebec H4R 2A3. GST #R123054108.

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