The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  "Your loss," he said. He unscrewed the top of the flask and took a long pull at it. "Aaaaahhh," he breathed in satisfaction. The smell that wafted across the room told me it was not very good bourbon.

  "What do you get out of this, Mr. Ruttenberg?" I said, partly to make conversation and partly because I really wanted to know. "You have to be aware that here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the vast majority of the people are either hating your guts or just laughing at you."

  "Some folks do," he admitted. "Like you. But I think you'd be s'prised at how many folks are starting to think my way. Our way."

  "That's why you travel with two bone breakers and hired me as extra security, huh? Because everyone loves you."

  "Of course not. Not the kikes or the spics or the pope lickers. And certainly not the mud people."

  "Damn," I said.

  "What?"

  "We're going to have to amend our little agreement, Mr. Ruttenberg, and put a moratorium on all the racial and ethnic slurs, or I'm not going to be able to keep from pounding the piss out of you."

  "Just trying to get your goat, Jacovich. And I seem to have done a good job of it. Well, okay, I'll be good. But I can't guarantee what kind of words my friends might say at dinner tonight. You gonna pound the piss out of all of them?"

  I didn't respond.

  "But let me answer your question. What do I get out of it? The, um, minorities in this country are going to take over if we're not careful. The Jews have all the money and they control all the newspapers and television, the blacks have all the jobs, and the Catholics keep on grinding out new little Catholics like sausages to suck up our tax money in welfare. This country was founded by white men. What I get out of it is reminding the white people of this country of that fact so they don't let the U.S. of A. slip out from between their fingers. And to remind the others that there's a whole bunch of folks who just aren't about to let them take our birthright from us."

  "I see," I said, feeling as if an elephant had just stepped on my chest. I'd heard this kind of foamy-mouthed crap before; all of us have. But I never looked at it across the same room before, and it was causing me difficulty in breathing.

  "So what I get out of it," he went on, "is a U.S. of A. that I'll be proud to leave to my children and grandchildren."

  I suppressed a shudder. The thought of Earl Roy Ruttenberg actually breeding and reproducing was an unsettling one.

  I had brought a paperback along with me, figuring I'd rather read than have to talk to him, so I sat by the window, occasionally glancing up from the page and out into the parking lot to make sure no one was out there with a bazooka, while Ruttenberg went into the bedroom to make some phone calls. He emerged at a quarter to seven in the sports jacket and snot-green shirt, his jowly face glistening from a very recent shave.

  "Let's eat!" he said, and actually rubbed his hands together.

  * * *

  Red's Steak House is for people who have arteries like firehoses. Gnarly steaks, french fries, meat loaf, roast duck, pork loin, and anything else one might cook with grease were featured prominently on the menu. For those who don't eat red meat, there was fried perch. Other than the desserts, there was not much else. There is a lounge attached to the dining room, the kind of bar where ordering a frozen daiquiri is indicative of either seriously impaired judgement or a death wish.

  The Klan had been relegated to what Red's laughingly called their banquet room, a private dining room with two long tables— each table was actually five tables pushed together— that seated sixteen people each. Ruttenberg ensconced himself at the head of one of them and indicated that I should sit next to him. But frankly, I didn't think I could eat a thing, despite Ruttenberg's generous offer to pay for my dinner. It was less the prospect of a heart attack on a plate that engendered a loss of appetite, frankly, than the company. I opted instead to stand at the door, just in case I had to earn my money, and unbuttoned my jacket in the event I had to draw my weapon quickly. Ruttenberg actually seemed a little hurt, but Ozzie and Jay flanked him and made him feel safe, so he didn't need me.

  Most of the flint-eyed, slack-jawed men I'd seen checking into the Pine Rest had showed up, some of them tackily and gaudily dressed for the occasion. I guess they operated on the theory that you can't spew misanthropic hatred at the dinner table if you aren't gussied up for the part.

  After everyone had enjoyed a pre-dinner cocktail or four, the first course was brought out. As befitting his exalted station in life, Ruttenberg was served first. It was soup, chicken noodle from the look of it, and for a while the only sound in the room was sucking and slurping, like standing next to a sewer grating after a heavy rain. Then, when the soup plates had been cleared away, Earl Roy Ruttenberg tapped on his water glass with a fork, waited until his followers had quieted down, and rose.

  "My fellow patriots," he said when he had everyone's attention. "First off, I wanna thank y'all for being here. The camaraderie of white men is something special— warm and loving and strong in its devotion to a righteous cause. And I am reveling in that camaraderie right now."

  Applause, heartfelt and enthusiastic. Nothing like a warm-and-fuzzy to fire up a lynch mob.

  "Naturally, we're hoping for a big turnout tomorrow," Ruttenberg went on. "But that really isn't important anymore. Because just by being here, we've won the game. The Negro politicians who run this town are at one another's throats already, and we couldn't have asked for more help from the liberal news media than if we'd paid for it!"

  "Hear! Hear!" somebody said.

  "But I wanted to give each and every one of you my personal and sincere thanks. We are the last line of defense in the United States, and I am just damn proud of all of you for—"

  He stopped, got a strange look on his face, and burped.

  " 'Scuse me," he said. "I am proud of each and every…"

  And then his face got very flushed, his eyes grew wide, and he bent over almost double from the waist and vomited down the front of his green shirt.

  If you've ever given serious thought to putting rat poison in your basement, you would probably rethink it if you'd watched Earl Roy Ruttenberg die. It took him about seven minutes, and from his roars of agony, his writhing on the floor, his vomiting black bile, and the horrible contractions that sent his body into spasms every few seconds, it was not an easy seven minutes. Someone called the paramedics, but they arrived far too late.

  The Klansmen were bumping into each other in panicked disarray, but they were muttering darkly about revenge and payback as well. It's apparently true that when you cut off the head of a snake, the rest of the body lives on.

  Lieutenant Florence McHargue of the Cleveland P.D.'s Homicide Division arrived a few minutes after the paramedics. She was cranky because such a high-profile victim had dragged her away from her Saturday night, and even crankier because she was a black woman whose duty had thrown her among a rattled mob of Ku Kluxers. She temporarily ordered them all out into the main dining room of Red's Steak House, where they milled around bumping shoulders like nervous steers in a slaughterhouse pen.

  She wasn't exactly overjoyed to find me there, either. Lieutenant McHargue doesn't like me very much, but as far as I've been able to tell she isn't really fond of anyone.

  "I heard on TV that you were going to hold Ruttenberg's hand," she said. "This serves you right." She looked down at the body, which had been hastily covered with a couple of tablecloths until the coroner's technicians could arrive. "Serves him right, too."

  "And there are only about three hundred thousand people in greater Cleveland with a motive, too. This should be a slam-dunk for you, Lieutenant."

  "Let's start with slam-dunking you," she said. "Talk to me."

  "I can start with Clifford Andrews. I suppose you know about him hanging me out to dry on television the other night. Did you also hear that he threatened both me and Ruttenberg publicly in Piccolo Mondo the other day?"

  "Oh, yes," she said. "That got back to me in a hurr
y."

  "I'd think, then, that you'd start with slam-dunking him."

  "I will, believe me. But the fact is that while in public Andrews is a fire-breathing race baiter, privately he is a very logical, reasonable, and even charming man. Most of the time, anyway."

  "When he's not throwing furniture."

  "At his age, he's lucky he can still lift it, much less throw it."

  "Nobody had a better motive," I reminded her. "It kills two birds with one stone. He rids the world of Earl Roy Ruttenberg, and he makes the mayor look like a doofus."

  "The mayor does that himself without anyone's help," she observed dryly; the mayor and the police rank and file regarded each other the way the Albanians do the Serbians. "What else?"

  "Not much," I said. "Ruttenberg was a little obsessed about his safety, but obviously just because he was paranoid, it didn't mean someone wasn't after him. Hate has a way of blowing up in your hand."

  "We're questioning all the kitchen help and the wait staff. Who knew the Ruttenberg crowd would be eating here?"

  "I have no way of knowing who they told. I know I didn't tell anybody." Then the skin prickled on the back of my neck. "Except Willard Dante."

  "The stun-gun guy?"

  "That's the one. I happened to mention to him that the Kluxers were going to be having dinner here. But he's a Pat Buchanan conservative; why would he want to kill Ruttenberg?"

  "Why indeed" she said, and jotted his name down in her notebook. "This town catches fire this afternoon and his phone will be ringing off the hook with people wanting security cameras and alarm systems and even stun guns to protect themselves from rioters. What made you tell him and no one else?"

  I had to think about that for a while. "Because he asked."

  "Uh-huh," McHargue said.

  * * *

  Willard Dante's house was in the elegant little village of Gates Mills. Apparently the stun-gun business was a lucrative one. He seemed surprised to see me on his doorstep, because I hadn't called first. From what I could see over his shoulder into the formal dining room, he and his wife were apparently hosting a dinner party for two other couples, a casual one because he was wearing white sailcloth slacks and a fuschia polo shirt.

  He looked shocked when I told him about Ruttenberg.

  "But why come all the way out here to tell me?" he wanted to know. "I had nothing to do with him."

  "Is there someplace we can talk?"

  He looked nervously back at his guests. "Sure, in the garden room."

  Which turned out to be a quaint little utility room that had been done up with white wicker furniture and trellises against the walls. It was a peaceful room, the kind of room one sits in when the pressures of business are great and the batteries need a little peaceful recharging.

  "Will," I said after we were both sitting down, "why did you come to my office the other day?"

  "I told you. I was in the neighborhood, and I thought what a lousy deal you'd gotten from Clifford Andrews's talking about you on TV like that, and I wanted to drop by and show you some support."

  "Support because I needed it, or support because you thought Earl Ruttenberg was a patriot?"

  His face flushed. "That's a shitty thing to say, Milan. Sure, I'm a right-wing conservative, and sure, I've lived in Cleveland all my life and my favorite color isn't black, but I'm no Kluxer. I thought Ruttenberg was pig shit, to tell you the truth."

  "Enough to slip rat poison into his chicken soup?"

  "You aren't serious!"

  "You made a point of asking me where Ruttenberg was staying and where they were going to eat. Why would you want to know that?"

  Out in the dining room, everyone laughed. They were having a lot better time than their host. "I told you I dropped by for support and friendship," Dante said, "and that's true. But I also came to see if I could do a little business. Remember I asked you if you wanted hidden cams put up?"

  "I remember," I said.

  "So trying to turn a buck or two makes me a bad guy?"

  "Not necessarily."

  "It sure doesn't make me a murderer."

  "Who else did you tell about Red's Steak House and the Pine Rest motel?"

  "Nobody," he said. "Who the hell would I tell?" Then his eyes got big and round. "Oh, wait," he said. "In the parking lot outside your office. I just happened to mention it in passing. Reverend Quest. Was he coming to see you, Milan?"

  Lieutenant McHargue wasn't glad to see me the next morning; she never is. And she was overwhelmed with work, trying to coordinate the police presence at the Klan rally for that afternoon. But I had, after all, cracked her case for her, and she couldn't be downright rude and toss me out of her office.

  "Go figure," she grumped. "A man like Alvin Quest. God!"

  "He made a full confession?"

  She nodded. "He sent one of his people in to Red's Steak House and got him a job as a busboy— using a phony name, of course; that's how the rat poison got in the chicken soup. The kid is long gone from the city and Reverend Quest will go to the execution chamber before he'll tell us his name. Quest's lawyer will probably plead temporary insanity. He may have something at that. Find me twelve jurors in this town who are going to send Alvin Quest to death row." She took a deep breath. "Frankly, I'm more pissed off at him for trying to incite a riot in my city than for ridding the world of garbage like Ruttenberg."

  "It's the same scenario as Clifford Andrews," I said, "only Quest's was more dignified and with a little come-to-Jesus thrown in. Certainly Quest had every reason in the world to hate Earl Roy Ruttenberg and want him dead. And if things blow up this afternoon, the mayor is going to have a whole Western omelet on his face. And that would give Quest the wedge he needed to run for mayor himself."

  "Well, the joke's on him, Jacovich, and you, too. Because there isn't going to be any blowup. We've got every cop who can drag his or her ass out of bed with riot gear and tear gas, ready to uphold the Constitution and protect the rights of a bunch of mouth breathers with pillow cases over their heads. Or we will have," she said pointedly, "if you get the hell out of my office and let me do my job."

  "Good luck this afternoon."

  "Are we going to see you at the rally?"

  "And listen to that kind of filth? No, thanks. I have better things to do with a summer Sunday afternoon."

  "Like what?" she said.

  "I was thinking about straightening out my sock drawer."

  I didn't go near my sock drawer, after all, but I did stay home and watch the Indians play the Oakland A's on television. Jim Thome didn't hit a dinger, but the Tribe won anyway.

  I stayed around for the six o'clock news, though, and was delighted to hear that the Klan rally passed without incident that afternoon. Less than a hundred Klan supporters showed up, probably because the keynote speaker was in cold storage with a tag on his toe. About twice that many anti-Klan protesters linked arms and sang "We Shall Overcome." The biggest contingent of all was the press, and they had precious little to write about when it was all over. No incidents whatsoever, no sound bites for the networks to use to castigate poor old Cleveland, and when it was all done, the mayor came out smelling like the Rose of Tralee.

  I was damned proud of my city that day. Cleveland can be a tough town, but it's always, always fair.

  Clark Howard

  When the Black Shadows Die

  THIS SECOND of the brilliant Clark Howard's stories to grace our collection this year, "When the Black Shadows Die," shows off his strengths in full force as he chronicles the lives of several outsiders in southern California. This piece first appeared in Mystery Scene Magazine, issue 67.

  When the Black Shadows Die

  Clark Howard

  As Tony parked his rented car on the East Los Angeles funeral home parking lot, he saw that he was being observed by two men posted at the entrance driveway. One of them spoke at once into a palm-size two-way radio. It did not surprise Tony. He was a stranger, an outsider. Strangers did not attend the wake of a
man like Frank Barillas. Not if they were smart.

  Tony locked the car and walked toward the funeral home, a tall, lean man with the easy movements of someone with self-confidence and skills, someone who did not fear to walk an unknown path, such as the one to the wake of Frank Barillas. He wore a dark suit and dark tie, which made his light nutmeg complexion seem even lighter; much lighter, for instance, than the darker brown men at the parking lot driveway.

  There was a small group of people congregated outside the funeral home entrance, a few of them smoking, all talking in subdued voices. They stopped when Tony approached, their eyes appraising him, the women because of his clean, handsome features, the men because of his obvious macho bearing. Tony made his way through the group without making eye contact with any of them.