EQMM, May 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Then something that wasn't a fountain pen poked me in the spine. “Reach, Gentleman Jim,” the older man said.

  The kid was getting up from the grass, looking a lot less sporting. His partner stopped him with a single word: “Relax."

  He patted me down, found the Waterman, and swore. “Who the hell are you?"

  "Scott Elliott, Hollywood Security,” I said, thinking it might be my last chance to make that claim.

  He shoved me under the nearest paper lantern. “One of Paddy Maguire's crew? Let's see some identification."

  "Haven't got any yet."

  He swore again. “Another rookie."

  The kid I'd sat on the grass rubbed his jaw and looked embarrassed. I was starting to feel the same way.

  "Who are you guys?” I asked.

  "Truax,” the man with the gun said, tapping himself on the necktie. “He's Riggs.” As he returned the snub-nosed revolver to his shoulder holster, he added, “We're Hollywood Security's competition. Only we're legitimate."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "You'll find out, if Maguire keeps you around long enough. In the meantime—"

  Somewhere off in the shrubbery, a woman screamed.

  * * * *

  6.

  It was my second scream of the evening. This one was cut short before it really got going, which somehow made it worse. My two new friends took off up the path, with me a step behind them. At the head of that path was a jumpy guy with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He took one look at us and exited stage right. The scream had come from stage left, from somewhere down a gravel path that skirted the Arbor's big bay windows. Just beyond the light they cast, we found Evelyn and Beeler.

  She was seated on the gravel, nursing a bleeding lip. Beeler was staggering around, his wavy hair standing up like the back hairs of an angry cat. He was looking for something—his golden glasses, I realized. As I helped Evelyn to her feet, I noticed a second missing item. A whole lot of jade.

  "He took it,” she said. “A guy with a gun."

  "Describe him,” Truax ordered.

  "A black-haired zoot-suiter, the creep. He hit me. Then he ran off that way."

  She pointed away from the building. At a nod from his partner, Riggs took off in pursuit. I started to follow him, but Truax blocked my way.

  "They'll be coming from the club,” he said. “Buy us some time."

  "Yes, please,” Evelyn added.

  I handed her my handkerchief and trotted back toward the lights. Three men had come out of the Arbor, none of whom looked thrilled about this call from danger and intrigue. I told them some guy had gotten fresh with his date, and they went back inside happy. When I rejoined the trio on the path, Beeler was in his glasses again and demanding names, ranks, and serial numbers.

  Truax introduced himself as an operative of the Transcontinental Detective Agency.

  "You too, Elliott?” Beeler asked me.

  "Hell no,” Truax said. “How do you know Elliott?"

  "He warned us about a robbery,” Evelyn told him. “Back at Nick's Hideaway. He'd noticed your friend watching us."

  "Then he hurried along after you to make sure the real robber would have a clear field,” Truax said.

  "Wait a minute,” I said.

  "Wait nothing. If you hadn't stopped me, I would have seen the whole thing. I would have nailed the guy.” He turned from me to Evelyn. “My firm was hired by your husband, Mrs. Lantrip, to keep an eye on you."

  Things were getting darker fast. I said, “Lantrip knew someone would try for the necklace?"

  Truax looked pained by something. My naivete, as it turned out.

  Evelyn said, “He wasn't worried about theft, Mr. Elliott. He was worried about infidelity. With good reason."

  "Shut up,” Beeler said in a tone that made me sorry he'd found his glasses.

  "Go to hell, David. I'm sick of this masquerade. And I'm not getting stuck for the price of that tramp's jewelry."

  Truax, who was faster than me on the uptake, said, “You're not Evelyn Lantrip?"

  "No. My name is Marion Hale. I'm Guy Alexiou's assistant."

  Finally, a name I could place. Alexiou was maybe the hottest director in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's current stable.

  The woman with my pocket linen to her lip said, “Mrs. Lantrip met Alexiou when she was catting around out here last year. They've been trading love notes ever since. She knew her husband had hired Transcontinental to chaperone this year's fling, but she also knew you only had her description to work with. I happen to fit that description, too. So she and Guy worked out a switch."

  That explained the secret smile she and Beeler had exchanged after my warning. I'd let them know the plan was working.

  "While you've been traipsing around behind us,” Hale concluded, “Lantrip and Guy have been over in Malibu, going at it like rabbits."

  "Shut up,” Beeler said again.

  He made up for being late with the line by shaking her arm roughly. That was all the opening I needed, glasses or no glasses. Only Truax beat me to the punch, literally. He hit Beeler in the breadbasket with a movement I admired both for its efficiency and effect.

  "Why did the brother here go along?” he then asked as though nothing had happened.

  Hale said, “He thinks Alexiou is going to get him in at Metro. He's been out here for years, trying to worm his way in somewhere. Guy's playing him the way Lantrip's playing her husband."

  Riggs trotted out of the darkness. “No sign of him, Sam. He must have had a car waiting."

  "He's halfway to Mexico by now,” Hale said. We all looked at her, even the stooping Beeler, so she explained. “He had an accent."

  That rang a bell. And Hale's earlier reference to a zoot-suiter finally registered. But Truax still had the floor.

  "How did he lure you away from the lights?"

  Beeler wasn't up to speaking, so Hale answered. “He met us on the club's front steps. Gave us a song and dance about how there'd been a big fight and a newspaper photographer was inside snapping away. I couldn't afford to have my picture taken as Evelyn Lantrip. The guy told us this path was a shortcut to a taxi stand. He followed us and pulled a gun."

  The Transcontinental man worked through it aloud. “He can't have known the next party coming up that path would have a small fortune around her neck, any more than he knew that Elliott would come along to cover his back. He must be having the luckiest night of his life."

  I was good and sick by then of playing the fall guy. “His luck's run out,” I said. “If we move fast, we've got him."

  "We?” Truax said.

  "Sure. It'll make a great ending for your report to Kansas City."

  * * * *

  7.

  I took off for the bougainvillea tunnel, ignoring the group's questions until we were passing the Arbor's front door. Then I said to Hale, “You can wait inside. Or they'll call you a cab."

  "What about Beeler?” Truax asked.

  "He goes with us,” I said.

  "The hell I will,” Beeler said.

  Riggs, who was supporting Beeler at the elbow, stole his boss's line: “Relax."

  Hale said, “I'm going, too. I want to see how this ends."

  I liked her for that and said okay. Truax wasn't liking much about the setup, but he didn't voice his objections until we were all squeezed into their coupe, Beeler and his nurse in the backseat and Hale between Truax and me in the front.

  "Why Beeler?” he demanded then.

  "Who picked the Arbor as your next port of call?” I asked Hale.

  "David did. He said it was part of the circuit his sister liked to make."

  "It is,” Beeler said.

  "And how did the gunman know you couldn't afford to be photographed as Lantrip? That fairy story was especially designed to scare a woman in disguise. Nothing happened tonight by chance; everything's been planned out. That's why Beeler."

  "You're forgetting your part,” Truax said. “They couldn't know you'd blunder in
. But if you're right about Beeler being involved, then the robber had to have known his mark was being tailed. No gunman would waylay the lady if he knew she had a private cop in tow."

  It was a great objection. Either Beeler was an innocent party and the robbery was a lucky fluke or Beeler was a mastermind who'd set up a robbery that couldn't work unless I happened along. Luckily, I'd seen a third way.

  "Remember the guy with the unlit cigarette we scared when we charged out of the jungle? He was part of the scheme. All he had to do was ask you for a light and you'd be off camera long enough for the thing to work. Only I slowed you up instead. By the time you finally showed, Miss Hale had screamed and the jig was up. So the accomplice took off."

  I'd been giving Truax driving directions in small chunks, the same way I'd been passing on my brilliant solution. I knew that once I told all, it would be back to the chorus for me. Eventually, though, we arrived at Nick's Hideaway.

  "Why here?” Truax asked.

  I told them then about seeing the watchful youngster in the dated suit and got the demotion I'd expected. Truax told Hale to stay in the car, she told him to tell it to the Marines, and we all five went in. Though the music was still playing, no one greeted us. I showed them the door marked Private. Truax tried its knob very quietly, then drew his gun and kicked the door in with the same economy of motion he'd earlier used on Beeler.

  If Guy Alexiou had been directing the scene, the little tableau that greeted us couldn't have been any more perfect. The gunman with the accent and the dated wardrobe was standing next to the room's center of light: a big desk trimmed out in brass studs. Seated behind the desk was Nick Sebastian. Between his fat hands stretched a long strand of green beads.

  We trooped in, Riggs shutting the damaged door behind us. A movie script would have provided some snappy dialogue at that point, but we did without. Truax patted down the Mexican and took his gun. Only then did Sebastian ask what we wanted.

  "That,” Truax said, aiming his snub-nose at the necklace. “And you two."

  "The gentleman told me he found this outside,” Sebastian said. “If that isn't what happened, it's news to me."

  I said, “Your silent partner here says different. He says that jade was going to remodel this dump."

  Sebastian picked Beeler out of the crowd. “You four-eyed sponge. I should have known better than to trust you."

  It was a great spot for one of Beeler's retroactive shut-ups. Instead, he took us all by surprise. Riggs still held him by the arm, but only loosely. Beeler pulled the kid into a headlock and, reaching around him, drew the gun from Riggs's holster.

  "Drop yours,” he told Truax. “Both of them."

  The detective couldn't hope to shoot without hitting his partner, so he dropped his revolver and the Mexican's glittering automatic. When its previous owner stepped to retrieve it, Beeler waved his gun at him.

  "No you don't, Pedro. I'm flying solo from here on."

  He pushed Riggs aside, crossed to the desk, and took the jade from Sebastian. “Enjoy prison food, Nick."

  As he backed toward the door, he noticed Hale. The look he gave her made me step between them.

  Then the door behind Beeler flew open, hitting him a whack that sent his glasses flying and shoved him my way.

  I grabbed his gun arm and raised it to the ceiling just as the revolver went off. Then I landed a right cross, a solid one this time.

  Beeler sank to the floor, revealing the figure in the doorway. It was a little guy with a beak of a nose and a nonstop blink. Claude Dabney. He was huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf.

  "I want my hat, you chaps,” he announced. “And I want it now."

  * * * *

  8.

  Just shy of last call, Marion Hale and I found ourselves in the tiny, book-lined bar of the Arbor Supper Club. We'd gone back there—after a preliminary interview with the cops—to collect my LaSalle. The club had let us in despite the early hour and even though I no longer had a tie. I'd used mine to bind the hands of Claude Dabney, king of the jungle. He was now asleep in the backseat of my car, wearing his beloved hat, which I'd been carrying around for him since the Troc. But not wearing his shoes. I'd locked those in the trunk as an added precaution. Marion had tossed in her phony wedding ring for good measure.

  We'd earned our nightcaps, and they sat on the hardwood before us, a Gibson for me and a Gimlet for Marion. She was ignoring hers to gaze into my steely blue eyes, which gave me a dilemma. Not concerning what her gaze meant or where we were heading. I wasn't that wet behind the ears. I was wondering how I'd break the news to Paddy that I'd won an in at MGM and would be returning to my old profession.

  I'd already turned down one job offer since they'd put the cuffs on Beeler and Sebastian. That had come from Sam Truax on behalf of the Transcontinental Detective Agency, and it had been easy to refuse. If I had to be a babysitter for the Dabneys and Lantrips of this world, I preferred to work for a firm with Hollywood in its title, not one whose name threatened a transfer to Tacoma or Topeka or Trenton.

  A chance to crash MGM was another matter entirely. So I was wording my resignation and feeling a little regret over it, now that I'd glimpsed my job's more exciting possibilities. Then Marion rendered the question moot in the extreme.

  Her exact words were: “Want to help me say goodbye to Hollywood, Scotty?"

  "Goodbye?"

  "Yes. I'm heading east, maybe after I have a farewell toot, like that little friend of yours."

  "What about your job?"

  "Gone. Guy fired me, the goat. I called Malibu from the ladies’ room back at Nick's. I wanted to let Evelyn know she needed a good divorce lawyer. Guy canned me before my first nickel ran out. Said I'd never work in this town again, the plagiarist."

  "He'll apologize,” I said.

  "He'll have to do it long distance. I've got a standing offer from a typewriter company in Ohio. My old man runs it. Someday I will. You're looking at the first female president of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce."

  I controlled an impulse to down my Gibson and raised it to her instead. “Good luck with that,” I said.

  "You should think about getting out, too, Scotty. Guy and all the other vest-pocket Napoleons in this burg are living on borrowed time. They think things are going to go back to the way they were before the war, but those days are gone forever. The future's waiting to do to Hollywood what the flood did to Johnstown."

  She was just blowing off steam, but her prediction still gave me a chill. Not that I let on. I knew that much about playing a gumshoe.

  In my best offhand delivery, I said, “Sounds like I'd better hang around and make sure everything turns out okay."

  Marion raised her drink to me. “Good luck with that,” she said, and we clinked our glasses on it.

  ©2009 by Terence Faherty

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: L'ETANG DU DIABLE by Caroline Benton

  Caroline Benton's novel The Path of the Dead was published by Constable, in the U.K., in 2006. She is currently at work on a follow-up novel, which she expects to complete early in 2009. She has also been producing a lot of short stories, mostly in the crime genre, but also some tales of the supernatural and women's fiction, which she has sold in the U.K. and Scandinavia. She previously appeared in EQMM in 1/09.

  * * * *

  Art by Allen Davi

  * * * *

  laughed when Gabrielle told me Le Coisel was haunted. Ghouls and ghosts are not part of our modern vocabulary, except as ingredients of a particular genre of movie intended to scare, and more recently of emotive love stories intended to cause weeping. I expected Gabrielle to laugh with me, but her face remained solemn.

  "I know what I know,” she said cryptically.

  I smiled. “And what do you know, Gabrielle?"

  But she was not to be drawn. She snatched up her duster and told me she was too busy to talk.

  * * * *

  Gabrielle is Le Coisel's femme de menage, the daily
help. It was she who held the keys to the house after the death of the previous owner, and she who, when we first discovered it, silently showed us around. She lives with her farm-labourer husband, Jacques Prudence, in a one-storey maison rustique a kilometer from here, where the track from Le Coisel meets the small country road. They are the nearest neighbours.

  Like most of the farming community in this quiet area of Normandy, Gabrielle speaks not a word of English. Never a problem for my wife, a fluent speaker of French, but frequently one for me, though on this occasion I was sure I had not misunderstood her. Back in my study I checked the dictionary to make sure. No, no mistake. Hante—haunted. I smiled at the credulity of countryfolk.

  Her revelation had come as a result of my request for help the following Friday evening when we were to give our first small dinner party. We had met an English couple the previous weekend in the paint section of the local brico, and had pounced on each other as only expats can. Already we were missing our native tongue.

  Neil and Penny Morgan had a house twenty kilometers to the northeast in the area of Calvados known as the Bessin, and had been permanent residents for two years. The countryside around them was flat, they told us, but coming from Norfolk, they were used to that. They were a little vague as to how they were surviving. He mentioned doing building work for other Brits—of which, it seems, there are many—and she enthused wildly about “running chambres d'hotes” when their own renovation was completed, which I gathered was a long way into the future. They seemed envious of my writing, though more for my ability to generate income in a foreign country than from any literary kudos I might have acquired. They had not (apologies all round) read any of my books.

  We asked them what they missed most about England. Cheddar cheese, they said, and bacon, and cream that isn't sour, at which point my wife—who, forewarned, had a quantity of cheddar still in the deep-freeze—invited them to dinner. They were an odd-looking pair, younger than us and a trifle “New Age": he tall, spare, and bearded, she with long braided auburn hair and voluminous skirts. I suspected we would have little in common other than language.