AHMM, September 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “In a dump,” said the guy on the left. They were spreading out, surrounding him.

  “Don't insult our new friend here. I'm sure he'd rather be inside than out. Wouldn't you, pal? What's your name?”

  “Screw you.”

  The sidemen laughed. “Not nice, pal. I'm just trying to show my friends what I learned in class. Don't you believe in education?”

  “Looks like a dropout to me,” said the guy on the left.

  Coyle was backing toward the woods.

  “Tell him what class you're taking,” said the guy on the right.

  Blondie grinned. “Martial arts.”

  * * * *

  Coyle blocked the first kick but the second knocked him on his ass.

  The three men moved closer, waiting for him to stand up for the next demonstration. Blondie was irritated that he had managed to block the first shot. “On your feet, pal. You gotta earn your forty bucks.”

  Coyle took a deep breath and turned over onto his hands and knees. The shortest of the three men was between him and the street.

  He made an effort to get up, but fell back as if he were too weak to rise.

  Blondie laughed and started to say something. Coyle jumped up and charged toward the shortest one, who tried to stop him. Coyle grabbed the man's left arm with both hands and broke it at the elbow, barely slowing down. The man shrieked and collapsed.

  He could hear the other punks behind him as he ran past the stone gate and straight into the street.

  It was a police car that hit him.

  * * * *

  “We'll be filling out paperwork for a week,” grumbled the black cop.

  “Where's the damned ambulance?” asked the white one. “Mister, you still with us?”

  “Biggest manhunt in a decade going on. Everyone else is chasing a damned assassin,” said the first cop. “And we're patching up a suicidal wino.”

  “Is he gonna make it?” asked the ambulance driver as he moved into gear. Sirens wailed.

  “Could be,” said the EMT. “Mister, what's your name?” The patient just stared at him.

  “No ID, No money. Hey, why aren't we going to Taft Medical?”

  “Closed to trauma. The governor or somebody got shot and that's where they took him. The feds are locking the barn door now. Until they're happy with security nobody gets in or out. So I'm headed up to Mercy.”

  “No can do. You're forgetting our boy here has no insurance. Larry will cut off the free cigars if we start sending him street sweepings.”

  “Damn. You're right. On to County General.”

  “That's the ticket.” He patted Coyle's shoulder. “You won't mind, will ya, bud?”

  The patient's lips moved.

  “What's that?” The EMT bent down. “Jesus, did you hear that? He said he could kill me with one finger.”

  “Ungrateful dude,” said the driver.

  “Well, this must be my lucky day, friend, because most of your fingers are broken.”

  The ambulance kept heading north, siren screaming. Tourists swerved out of the way. The locals mostly ignored sirens. They had heard them before.

  Copyright © 2012 Robert Lopresti

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Fiction: THE BEST LAID PLANS

  by Jim Ingraham

  On a warm October morning in Portland, Maine, I found a police cruiser half on the sidewalk in front of Doris Wilson's apartment house, another cruiser blocking the entrance to the parking lot. A woman in uniform told me I couldn't park there. I drove down the slope and pulled up to the curb and walked back.

  Ernie Collins, a cop I had once worked with, stopped me at the elevator.

  “Hey, Duff,” he said, grinning. “Ain't seen you in a while.”

  “What's going on?”

  “Something upstairs. What floor you want?”

  “Third. I've got an appointment,” I said.

  “What's the name?”

  “What's going on?”

  “We got a complaint. What's your party's name?”

  “Doris Wilson.”

  “Wait here.” He stepped aside, raised a portable to his ear. In a few seconds he told me I was wanted upstairs, third floor.

  * * * *

  I stepped off the elevator into a long corridor that smelled of cigarette smoke. Two detectives were waiting for me, one, a short man with bushy eyebrows and thick gray hair, used to work with my father. Name was Lionel Savarin.

  “Duff Kerrigan,” he said, introducing me to his partner. “Known this guy since he was in high school—big football star in those days.” His buck teeth protruded when he laughed.

  “Heard of you.”

  “So, why are you here?” Savarin said.

  “Is she okay?”

  He shot a glance at his partner. The two of them walked down the hall and talked for a minute. Savarin beckoned me to follow him into a large room where a woman in slacks and a white shirt with an insignia on the sleeve was kneeling at a TV set examining a stain in the carpet. Savarin walked me around her into the dining room, then into a bedroom. A pink quilt was draped over the foot of the bedstead, a sheet half on the floor.

  “This picture,” he said, holding up a framed photograph of two girls on swings in a garden. “Which one is Doris?”

  “I have no idea. Never met her.”

  “Why're you here?”

  “Wanted to talk with her. Can you tell me what's going on?”

  “Got a call from a neighbor, said he heard loud talk and doors slamming in here last night. This morning the same neighbor said her car was out back, but she was gone. It's probably nothing.”

  I laughed. “I read that editorial,” referring to an article in the Press Herald criticizing the police for neglecting citizen complaints.

  “Yeah, a pain in the ass. You on a case?”

  “Mike knows about it.” Mike was Myron Kadish, his lieutenant.

  He acknowledged the meaning of that. “This Doris probably just went off with somebody she had an argument with last night. Doesn't look like anything bad happened here,” he said, glancing around. “Bed's unmade is all.”

  The police didn't bring a lab tech, two uniforms, and two detectives to check on a simple domestic complaint. Obviously something was going on that Savarin didn't want to share with me.

  I noticed the closet door was open. Inside there was a big gap on the clothes rod, and one drawer in a dresser was slightly open.

  “Maybe took some clothes to the cleaner?”

  “Possible,” he said.

  “Left in a hurry?”

  He shrugged.

  We went back through the living room. The tech, gaining Savarin's attention, shook her head, shying off looking at me. She didn't know who I was or what I was doing there.

  I followed Savarin to the elevator.

  Pretending I had noticed nothing strange, I said, “Glad to see you guys on the job. I'll tell my friends at the newspaper.”

  “Check with Mike first,” Savarin said, giving substance to the concern that had crept into me. I didn't know much about Doris Wilson. But I knew more than I had let on.

  * * * *

  Twenty minutes later I drove into the alley outside my loft and saw my client at the end of the wharf looking across the harbor at an oil barge moving past the bug light on the breakwater. I pulled my Jeep into the shelter under my outdoor staircase and walked down the planks, listening to the cries of seagulls, the occasional bleating of a boat horn, and smelling asphalt that had recently been spread on the boat ramp at the Coast Guard station at the next wharf.

  I called out: “You looking for me?”

  A small man in bone-colored slacks and tucked-in blue shirt walked toward me. A white cap on his round head, his face looked drawn and sickly. His clothes looked expensive and new, maybe purchased for this visit.

  “Any success?”

  “A lead,” I said. “You have any reason to think she doesn't want to be found?”

&
nbsp; He shrugged. “I don't know the woman.”

  “But you're confident she's in the area?”

  “I flew here to get a painting autographed,” he said, implying that the question was stupid. He didn't like me, maybe didn't like anyone. I wasn't too fond of him.

  “But you haven't given me much to go on,” I said.

  “All I have is a rumor from an artist she once studied with, who said she was researching places where Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth did their painting. Have you learned anything?”

  “What can you tell me about Doris Wilson?” I asked.

  His face stiffened. “I don't know that name.”

  I was unconvinced by his abrupt response. “She and Veronique share an apartment on State Street.”

  “Then you've found her?”

  “Found where she lives,” I said, and waited.

  When he didn't ask for an address I decided not to mention my meeting with the police. I didn't want to spook him. Possibly he was trying to involve me in something shady. He was a queer duck. I didn't believe he flew here to get a painting autographed. Veronique Pascal was an art teacher. Her work didn't have much market value. Technically correct but sterile was the general impression.

  “If you'll give me your phone number—”

  “I'll be here around noon,” he said abruptly, keeping his hands in his pockets and giving me a silent up and down, waiting for me to remove myself.

  Remembering he had said he had flown to Portland, I asked, “You need a ride out of here?”

  “No.”

  When I looked down from the top of my staircase, he was gone.

  * * * *

  I parked way down Middle Street and walked back to the police station. Even at that distance I could smell the harbor and hear the cry of seagulls.

  I picked up a tag at the inside window, hung it off my breast pocket, and went upstairs. Gretchen Stallworth, a fingerprint tech I remembered from the old days, came out of Mike's office and gave me a smile. A man I often worked with, Helmut Steiner, waved at me from his desk in the bullpen. There was some kind of chemical smell in the corridor, paint thinner maybe.

  “Come in,” Mike said. He was a thick-bodied man in a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up, collar loose, and blue tie dangling over a brass belt buckle he once told me was a gift from one of his daughters—Whitney, I think. He wasn't the belt buckle type, but he was a hell of a father.

  “So,” he said, “what is it about this Doris Wilson I'm supposed to know?”

  “Savarin called you?”

  “How else? What were you doing up there?”

  “I just wanted to talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “Actually, I'm looking for an art teacher, Veronique Pascal.” The name bounced off him without effect. “A client wants a painting authenticated ... or so he says.”

  “You don't believe him?”

  “No.”

  “He have a name?”

  “Calls himself Samuel Jones.”

  “Fake?”

  “It's the name he gave me.”

  Mike let it go. My client, my business—or so I thought.

  Just for the hell of it I asked, “Is your interest in Doris Wilson more than casual?”

  “Your client mentioned her?”

  “I think he knows her, or at least has heard of her, but I got her name from the art department at Cleeve College where Veronique teaches. She's on sabbatical right now. She and Doris share that apartment. Been there a couple of years.”

  “And you thought this Doris Wilson might know...”

  “Just a thought.”

  “What'd your client say about her?”

  “Nothing. He denied knowing her. But the mention of her name troubled him.”

  “You notice anything odd at her apartment?”

  “Only that Savarin was able to get in. How'd that happen?”

  “The door was ajar.”

  “With a little persuasion?”

  “No, actually it was open, and the neighbor said Doris never left without locking it, called her nervous, afraid of being robbed or something.”

  We stared at each other a few seconds, him sitting there, arms folded, reading my face. After a while he said, “Has anyone at the college heard from this Veronique?”

  “Her department chair said she'd be surprised if Veronique contacted anyone. She's okay with strangers but doesn't make friends easily is what she said. Always ate alone in the cafeteria.”

  “People you talked to seem worried?”

  “I couldn't find anyone who gave a damn what Veronique was doing.”

  For a moment he was distracted by something on his computer screen. He tapped a few keys, made a face of displeasure, growled about something.

  “You haven't talked with the police in Portsmouth?”

  “New Hampshire?” Where'd that come from? “There's a reason I should?”

  Ignoring that, he asked for the third time, “And your client never mentioned Doris Wilson?”

  “What's going on?”

  “Lionel said you had an appointment.”

  “Not really. I left a request for one on her voice mail.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Nine o'clock or so. Why?”

  “It never got erased,” he said.

  “Lionel picked up her phone?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “That would be illegal,” and gave that a small grunt. He lowered his face for a moment in thought. “I'd prefer you stay away from the newspaper on this.”

  “I was just kidding when I said—”

  “No, I mean asking questions about Doris Wilson.”

  “Okay,” and I waited.

  He did a lot of frowning, leaned back in his chair, hands in his lap, played with his fingers, tapped his wedding ring. “I'm sure you read about it—the homicide in that bakery in Portsmouth?”

  “Doris is involved in that?”

  “She apparently was the woman on the sidewalk the perpetrator ran into when he burst out the door. Your Doris was taking a one-week brush-up course down there in accounting. Only she quit and came back here with bandages on her face. Portsmouth police got her name from the hospital, talked with her. She said she didn't recognize her assailant. They had no reason to disbelieve her, but they notified us because she lived here and thought we might have a line on her.”

  “You talked with her?”

  “No reason to. The banged-up face is a good enough reason for quitting the program.”

  “But would they notify you if they didn't suspect something?”

  “They just wanted to verify her permanent address. Her name jumped off the computer when we got the complaint this morning. That's why Savarin went over there.”

  “Those voices Lionel told me about. Were they male and female?”

  “Female. Probably your Veronique and Doris came back to get something. They'd been gone two days.”

  I spent a few minutes digesting that. “So I'm not interfering with anything if I keep looking for Veronique.”

  “If you run into her or ‘Mr. Jones,’ let me know.”

  “See a connection?”

  “Where'd he fly here from?”

  “I'll check the car rental agencies,” I said. “He'd have had to show ID. Do people fly here from New Hampshire?”

  “All the time,” he said. “I'll put Helen on it. Stay in touch.”

  * * * *

  When I got back to my loft, I went on the internet to the Portsmouth Herald archive and read about the felony murder that had taken place one day before Doris Wilson had come home with bandages on her face. It was as Mike had said: The owner of a small bakery had been shot in an apparent robbery gone bad. A woman on the sidewalk was injured by a fleeing man who burst out the door. The woman—Doris Wilson from Portland, Maine—described him as young, maybe in his twenties.

  No mention of Veronique or Samuel Jones appeared in the articles.

  * * * *

&n
bsp; Curiously, although Mr. Jones had given me a large retainer, he didn't visit me the next day or call me or make an attempt to reach me.

  I spent hours contacting art colonies up and down the coast and even drove to Brackett Shores where Winslow Homer had painted a famous seascape. No one there had seen a woman down the shoreline. No one at the Portland Art Museum had seen Veronique. Because Winslow Homer's studio on Prout's Neck was closed for renovations, I didn't go there. No members of art faculties at any of the Maine colleges had been contacted by Veronique.

  I considered telling my client I wasn't comfortable wasting his money looking for a ghost. But I couldn't find him.

  Before meeting my girlfriend Sylvia for dinner that evening, I received a message from Mike's secretary informing me that a Samuel Grovner who had flown in from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, two days ago had rented a Ford Taurus for a week. The agent said he remembered the man, said he wore touristy clothes and looked sickly. She gave me the tag number.

  * * * *

  Next morning around ten when I got up, I found a note on the kitchen table saying Mike wanted to have lunch with me at Amato's. I drove to my loft, responded to a few messages, chatted with the chief petty officer from the Coast Guard station who had come over to borrow a book I had told him about, and found Mike at a table outside Amato's biting into an Italian sandwich. I picked up half a sandwich and a Bud and joined him.

  * * * *

  “Anything to accommodate the police,” I said, gazing across Mike's shoulder at a man I hadn't seen in years. He'd lived next door to us on Morning Street, had a daughter, Shirley Berry, I used to watch at night—her bedroom was just across the fence. She went to bed around nine thirty and never lowered her shade. My father was impressed by my willingness to go straight to bed around nine. Shirley was a college student. I was fourteen.

  “Still looking,” I said. “Jones, or Samuel Grovner, hasn't fired me.”

  A glob of sauce dropped off his sandwich, splashing his shirt when it hit the tabletop. “Damn!” He dipped a napkin into his water glass and scrubbed the stain, managing only to enlarge it.

  “You can get little detergent pencils—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, tossing the balled-up napkin across an empty table into a trash barrel. “Portsmouth police don't know much about Samuel Grovner except that he's the father of a Martin Grovner, whom they've had some trouble with.”