EQMM, September-October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The only surprise I got was finding Barry Irvington sitting next to Kilgallen. He had his fingers laced behind his head like a spectator who didn't find the proceedings interesting. He didn't look at me. I thought, Oh, crap. It was my day for disappointments.

  Dad dropped the knapsack onto the sofa, and nodded to Parker. “Hi, Lou."

  "Hi, yourself.” Lou's grin was almost as big as his hat. “Took a year off my life when I spotted you walking around Bahama Village tonight. When Gloria says she's done someone, I thought I could take her word for it. She used to be better."

  "She wasn't bad."

  I leaned against the wall beside the front door. Lou, or whoever he was, winked at me. “Some girl you got there, Dan. First off, I'm sorry about Hector. I know he was your boy, but he had to go."

  I shot my father a look, but he was watching the stack of money in front of Kilgallen. Without moving his head, he said, “What happened to him?"

  "Gloria figured there wasn't room for all three of us, and she liked me better.” The beard split in a grin.

  "Two's better than three,” my father agreed.

  Listening to him, my heart sank.

  Kilgallen cleared his throat. “Avila went in the gulf last week. Guess he didn't float as well as you did, Dan. By the way, doing you was Gloria's move. I wasn't consulted. I got nothin’ against you. Are we okay?"

  "Yeah."

  "Good.” He patted the cash. “This is your cut of what we did through December. Figured it might square things."

  "It'll help."

  "Okay. Let's get to our problem. We got two dead people that have to be explained. Sergeant Irvington here has kindly volunteered to be the fall guy. It won't be airtight, but it'll work."

  Barry's glance met mine. For the first time, I noticed that the hands behind his head were manacled.

  "Why would he have killed Bennell and Hewitt?” Dad asked.

  Kilgallen lifted his shoulders. “Greed. We pass the hat, put twenty grand in his bank account. That would buy a local cop. Then we have a scenario. Crooked cop gets caught and eats his gun. We're covered. The money-scrubbing business goes quiet for a while. Three months from now, we're back up and running. No one from Miami gets bent out of shape, except at Avila, who's run off with their money. You're the only one we gotta bring on board, Dan."

  "What about Gloria Hasty?"

  "What about her?” Kilgallen said.

  "She's dead."

  Kilgallen's head turned. “Lou?"

  Lou didn't apologize. “One of those things. It can fit the cop. Okay with you, Danny?"

  "Just fine. So which of you took care of Bennell and Hewitt?"

  "Gloria.” He stopped playing with the whiskey bottle. “They'd gotten cold feet. She did it nice and clean with Bennell but lost it on Hewitt."

  "Okay. Why Gloria, Lou?"

  "She had Avila's boat. There's about two million in good checks on it.” Lou tapped his big fingers nervously on the top of the machine gun. “I got the location out of her this afternoon."

  "Where's the boat?” Kilgallen demanded.

  Kilgallen and Lou stared at each other.

  "We'll talk about that later,” Lou said.

  "Yeah, we will. That leaves who deals with Irv. Any volunteers?"

  I couldn't look at Barry. He had befriended me, had helped me over rough ground. If I hadn't told him about Parker, he wouldn't be here.

  "Volunteers?” Kilgallen repeated.

  "Guess it's my turn,” my father said. My heart dropped. He took a big handgun from his jacket and was two steps from Barry when Lou complained, “Cripes, not here! It's my room. Besides, if people are going to believe the cop did it, we got to set the stage."

  "What do you suggest?"

  "Take the cop over to Gloria's. She's dead in the pool. Shoot him with her piece. Like the lieutenant says, it'll work."

  My father rubbed his chin. “We'll have to drive. Who's got a car?"

  "Dad,” I said. I owed him a warning. Behind me, I had my gun out.

  Lou looked at me, and his hand moved a little on the machine gun. “Uh, Danny, we got a problem. Your kid is pals with Irvington."

  "She's just stringing him for me,” my father said.

  "You still shoulda known better than to bring her."

  Lou had the machine gun. When there's one in the room, you can't point a handgun and tell the guy to drop it. Both men had had the same training. Lou was about half a second late in realizing that in getting close to the fall guy, Dad had closed the distance with him, too. The protective vest he wore had a vulnerable area at the armholes. It's where unlucky police officers catch one now and then. Dad was at the wrong angle for that. He shot Lou in both knees faster than you can say the words, and the heavy man went down too shocked to scream. Before Kilgallen could move, Dad had a knee on Lou's back and was aiming across the table.

  I stepped away from the door to have a better angle on the lieutenant. His hand twitched toward his jacket. He scowled. “What's this, Dan? You want everything for yourself?"

  Dad wagged the pistol. “Pull your gun, Larry."

  Kilgallen thought about it and shook his head. Then he blustered. “This is a stupid move."

  "Not for me."

  I said, “Dad...."

  "Last chance to go for your gun, Larry."

  Kilgallen sat stock-still.

  "No? Let me tell you something that might change your mind. Hector Avila was my friend. He also was an undercover Treasury agent. That makes killing him a capital crime. So, Larry: Are you sure you don't want to try for your gun?"

  Kilgallen kept his hands still. “I'll take my chances in court,” he said.

  * * * *

  When you sit with your father at a comfy restaurant, enjoying the sunset and the Straits wind, nibbling stone crab and Margaritas, it's not a good time to say you were ready to shoot him. Not an ideal time to admit just how close he'd come, when he was moving toward my favorite cop.

  "I couldn't tell you the truth when I thought Hector was alive,” Dad said, as if that little fib was the only thing between us. “Gloria, Kilgallen, Bennell, and Hewitt were running the local laundry operation. It wasn't a stable partnership even before Gloria decided to take out Avila and keep the money."

  "She said there was no honor among thieves,” I said.

  "Once Gloria had the checks, she had to clean up the scene. Bennell and Hewitt had to go. She was leading Lou around by the nose searching for Hector's boat, which she already had.” He chuckled in admiration. “I figure Lou got her just before she would've gotten him."

  He still looked haggard, after twenty hours’ sleep and a medical checkup at taxpayer expense. We had spent the afternoon arguing about the KeyHole. He wanted me to keep the boat, while I wanted to go back to Connecticut. He planned to be in Miami for a while.

  "Get the damned explosives off the boat and I'll think about it,” I said.

  "They're gone.” He set his drink down. He'd had several, was in a mood to have more. We were in the last port south, and the drinking flag was up. “What do you think I had in the knapsack? That was my fallback position."

  "What—blow up the hotel?” He'd spent several minutes on the boat. I hadn't guessed why.

  "I didn't know who we were dealing with till we got there,” he reminded me. “If there were more cops, if it wasn't just Kilgallen, I might have had to run a bluff. Anyway, if the bag blew, it wouldn't have gone beyond the room."

  "We were in the room."

  He looked at me oddly. “I told you I didn't want you along."

  His coldness sank in, and for the first time I understood how he could have abandoned Mom and me. How he could shoot another man faster than a coin hits the floor. The emptiness in this man I had always loved was a mile deep. Too deep for me to continue to care about him.

  He flicked a hand at a waiter, who came with another drink.

  (c)2008 by John C. Boland

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  Revi
ews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  Why are so many writers who already have serious reputations in the wider world of literature turning to crime fiction? It could be the realization that the genre, far from limiting comment and creativity, offers infinite possibilities for exploring serious themes and societal mores. It could be dissatisfaction with the downgrading of plot in so-called literary fiction. In many cases, it is undoubtedly a commercial decision, in recognition of the shrinking audience for general fiction. Whatever the reason, many have made significant contributions, e.g. Joyce Carol Oates, James Lee Burke, and Michael Chabon. Invaders from the mainstream are especially welcome when they come not to subvert or “transcend” the genre but rather, armed with a knowledge and appreciation of its history and conventions, to practice it with a high level of skill. Take the recent example of Benjamin Black, pseudonym of Booker Prize winner John Banville, who demonstrates that a whodunit can keep the reader guessing without distorting or falsifying the characters.

  **** Benjamin Black: The Lemur, Picador, $13. Burnt-out investigative journalist John Glass, an Irishman transplanted to Manhattan, is asked by his father-in-law, communications tycoon and former CIA agent Big Bill Mulholland, to write his biography. The Lemur of the title is researcher-for-hire Dylan Riley, who hints at blackmail and is murdered, leaving Glass to figure out who killed him and what family secret he had uncovered. The novel is beautifully written, admirably brief, and effective both as character study and mystery.

  **** Ruth Rendell: Not in the Flesh, Crown, $25.95. Rendell achieved a serious literary reputation while working within the crime-fiction genre. Her Chief Inspector Wexford's debut, From Doon With Death, appeared in 1964, making the English cop one of the longest active current sleuths. He remains in excellent form in a case involving an eleven-years-dead murder victim, whose skeleton is uncovered by a truffle-sniffing dog, and an ailing novelist on Biblical themes whose odd household includes both an ex-wife and a current one. A subplot concerns the appalling practice of female genital mutilation among Somali immigrants.

  *** Laura Lippman: Another Thing to Fall, Morrow, $24.95. Baltimore private eye Tess Monaghan takes a job babysitting an accident-plagued TV series's female star, whose unhealthy thinness and apparent vacuity are both pathetic and terrifying. Some of the characters, particularly one of Tess's unlikely night-school students, are hard to believe, but the depiction of the city and of TV production are rich in amusing insights.

  *** Max Allan Collins: Strip for Murder, illustrations by Terry Beatty, Berkley, $14. In 1953 Manhattan, former stripper Maggie Starr returns to the stage in a Broadway musical based on Hal Rapp's hillbilly comic strip Tall Paul, leaving her Goodwinesque stepson Jack in charge of their newspaper syndicate. Was the death of Rapp's bitter rival Sam Fizer, creator of the classic boxing strip Mug O'Malley, suicide or murder? The second in this good series offers conflicting clues, compulsive punning, period cultural references, and more thinly-disguised figures from the show biz and comics worlds, culminating in a Queenian challenge to the reader delivered via Beatty's cartoons.

  *** Parnell Hall: The Sudoku Puzzle Murders, St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $23.95. As regular readers know, alleged Puzzle Lady Cora Felton couldn't solve or construct a crossword to save her life, but it turns out she's a whiz at sudokus. Both types of puzzles figure in a case involving two Japanese publishers, who are professional and romantic rivals, and a stolen samurai sword. Much of the bright dialogue, albeit used as an extending ingredient, is very funny, and the denouement features one of the most unusual comic courtroom scenes in fictional annals. Four sudokus of varying difficulty are credited to New York Times and NPR puzzle maven Will Shortz.

  *** Mary Higgins Clark: Where Are You Now?, Simon and Schuster, $25.95. Ten years ago, Columbia University senior Mack MacKenzie disappeared, his only communications with his family annual phone calls on Mother's Day. When his younger sister Carolyn sets out to find him, a wonderfully complicated plot involving a large cast is set in motion. You don't read Clark for her prose, dialogue, or characterization (all serviceable at best), but her gift for story structure and personnel management explains her status as perennial bestseller.

  *** Katherine Hall Page: The Body in the Gallery, Morrow, $23.95. Faith Fairchild, caterer and pastor's wife in small-town Massachusetts, takes over the local museum's restaurant operation in order to find out who replaced a friend's donated art-work with a forgery. The titular body is a young shaven-headed woman who has taken the place of a goldfish in one of the alleged artworks on display. Ultimately the domestic side, including a subplot on the alarming phenomenon of cyberbullying, is more interesting than the mystery. This is a lesser entry in a literate, informative, and often amusing series that is always worth reading.

  *** Dennis Palumbo: From Crime to Crime, Tallfellow, $24.95. In acknowledged homage to Isaac Asimov's Black Widowers (to the extent that the ultimate detective is a mutton-chopped elder named Isaac), the suburban husbands of the Smart Guys Marching Society turn their Sunday afternoon male-bonding sessions to armchair detection. Their EQMM debut, a locked-room mystery, is joined by eight cases new to print (with a dying message and ghost sightings among the trappings) and three non-series tales, one new and one (from The Strand) casting a young Albert Einstein as detective. While some of the plots stretch credulity (as did some of Asimov's), classical detection buffs will enjoy these good-humored puzzles.

  *** David Ossman: The Ronald Reagan Murder Case, BearManor, $19.95. In 1945 Hollywood, 25-year-old director and radio star George Tirebiter encounters murders old (a 1920 case combining elements of William Desmond Taylor and Thomas Ince) and new (a Reagan lookalike found wearing a duck suit in the Santa Monica surf by Lt. Reagan himself). Considering Tirebiter's origin in the satirical Firesign Theatre and the broadness of some of the jokes—he works for Paranoid Pictures, and WOP is a Chicago radio station—the mystery is played fairly straight. Wartime Southern California and the network radio background are nicely captured, and the prose, pace, and dialogue are strong.

  Two important writers have been added to the Rue Morgue Press reprint list ($14.95 each): John Dickson Carr with two classic locked-room puzzles from his peak year of 1938, The Crooked Hinge and The Judas Window, the latter written as Carter Dickson; and Colin Watson with the 1958 debut of his comic Flaxborough series, Coffin, Scarcely Used. As usual, publishers Tom and Enid Schantz provide informative introductions.

  Shepard Rifkin's excellent 1970 civil rights-era novel, The Murderer Vine ($6.99) is the latest in Hard Case Crime's distinguished reprint line.... In honor of Ian Fleming's centenary, Penguin has all 14 James Bond books (twelve novels and two collections) in print in handsome trade paper editions. A rereading of the 1959 classic Goldfinger ($14) shows how good 007's creator could be at his best.

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  Fiction: AN OBJECT OF SCANDAL AND CONCERN by Robert Barnard

  The latest book from CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger recipient is a twisty stand-alone suspense novel entitled Last Post (Scribner, May 2008), in which a woman investigates hidden circumstances in her deceased mother's life. Mr. Barnard is also a master short-story writer and we have several more of his tales to offer readers in coming months.

  Well, this was one situation I hadn't expected to find myself in! I had, in fact, been to church before. It was the funeral of Svein's sister in Molde. He'd left me outside, but it was summer, and hot, and the church door had been left open. I walked into the lovely shade, lay down beside Svein in the aisle, and watched him while he tried to cope with the Lutheran church service, not knowing any of the hymns and struggling with any observance more challenging than reciting the Lord's Prayer. He had not seen his sister for seventeen years, and it was a lot longer since he'd been to a service.

  This was quite a lot different.

  "O Dog, our help in ages past,

  Our hope for years to come..."

  They seemed to have the right ideas. Though how long I, a dog, in my prime
at nine, was going to be Svein's best hope in years to come when he, at sixty-four, was coasting blithely to senility remained in doubt. I was open to offers.

  I was at the monthly service of the English community in Bergen—and of course the English have the right idea when it comes to dogs. The oldest members of the community are mostly Shetland wives—women who married the Norwegians who sailed over to Scotland from occupied Norway and joined the British war effort. Later immigrants came also by marriage, or were academics, businessmen, or workers in the oil fields, though church attendance among the oil workers was exclusively Northern Irish or Scots, or so I was told. And here we were: a well-attended service because the bishop, who served the whole of Northern Europe, was attending: He was giving the sermon, while the local priest was taking the rest of the service.

  The vicar was short, pudgy, and impressive only in the power of his voice. Retired from his English parish, he had for a time lived with his daughter in Bergen. This job was usually filled if possible by a retired clergyman who acted part-time and was rewarded meagrely. The bishop, on the other hand, was decidedly impressive: He could have presided at a royal wedding or a media-attended memorial service. Tall, lean, sleek, Kenneth Rose was the very image of an acceptable modern bishop. My dog's instinct told me that much of the effect he made was show.

  "A thousand ages in thy sight

  Are but an evening gone."

  Before long I was deciding that an evening was like a thousand ages, because the bishop's sermon did go on. I wasn't used to oratory on this scale, because Svein's verbal advances tend to be monosyllabic or confined to commonplaces and fatuous queries. But eventually the whole thing was over, we were out in the sunlight, and the priest and the bishop were shaking hands, the latter being friendly without being condescending, and making enquiries about absent members of the congregation.

  "Just wait and watch, Loyd old boy,” muttered Svein. “We're old friends of the bishop, remember."