“The resulting ‘Boom!’ rattled the whole ship. I glanced out the porthole. A giant brown projectile was hurtling right towards the oncoming enemy cruiser. It spattered over their space-wind shield, rendering them effectively blind.
“‘Right turn! Right turn!’ I told the helmslady, and she grabbed the great wheel and rotated it ninety degrees. The Sundogger slid just under the alien ship. We all turned to watch the alien metal cylinder plow a furrow into the third planet of Rastus.
“‘Gee! That was close!’ Scottie mumbled.
“‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but I never had any doubts when I saw that turd from the sun!’”
—Third from the Sun,
by Cole Spayze (1957)
My conversation with Margie had left me very unsettled, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in a semi-daze. We’d never had a romantic relationship—I mean, I understood that much about her from the beginning—but we had been close friends for a great many years, and I thought I knew all of the important things that there were to know about her. Obviously, I was wrong.
I couldn’t possibly imagine Margie as the killer—she was just too down-to-earth, it seemed to me. I didn’t think she had the willingness to kill that seems innate in certain individuals, although I knew that almost anyone could be pushed to murder under the right circumstances. But she was one of those individuals whom I regarded as solid and practical and not likely to allow herself to be upset in the kind of way that I envisioned killers to be. But I’d been wrong before, and there was much about her that I clearly didn’t understand.
What I did know was this: Margie had just become the prime suspect for the murder of Lissa Boaz, at least from the point of view of the cops. I assumed that they had her prints in Lissa’s room, in addition to the supposed eyewitness account of her visitation there at the right time of the evening. I wouldn’t think that a boa would retain prints, but these days, with the technology that the cops have available, there could be a DNA residue or something like that—although those kinds of tests took longer than overnight to gain results, I knew.
The problem was this: in order to disprove Margie’s connection with the murder, I had to find the real killer, and do so in a way that that individual’s guilt was established beyond any doubt. But there were any number of possible murderers available. Paperback mongering had become a cutthroat business in the past decade. I knew all of the vendors at the show, if not in person, at least by reputation; and perhaps a third of them had been accused or suspected, at one time or another, of questionable business practices. It’s not much of a jump to go from cheating someone (semi-legalized robbery) to banging them over the head to steal their property, which is what might be involved here.
And then there were the possible personal motivations. What if Margie’s former “friend” was indeed present at the proceedings, perhaps greatly aged or disguised in some way, having been tipped off by Lissa that the one thing that might identify her after all these decades was about to be revealed? This seemed far-fetched to me, because I still couldn’t imagine why anyone would actually care about something that had occurred a half-century earlier; but people do strange things sometimes, and reputation, status, and position mean just about everything to certain kinds of individuals. So it was a possible motive—just barely, in my estimation.
Also, Lissa was not, shall we say, well-liked. She had an acerbic, biting personality that rubbed many people (including myself) the wrong way. She gave feminism and lesbianism a very bad name. She enjoyed deliberately doing things that punished or hurt other people, for reasons that only made sense to her. So, she might have been killed by one of her myriad enemies, from both inside and outside the business.
The only thing that I could think to do that might eventually lead me to the murderer was to track the book. What had happened to the inscribed copy of The Secret of Castle Dred? According to the rumor mill, the police hadn’t located it in her room. Someone—the killer or an onlooker—had walked away with it. Someone had it now. They wouldn’t be able to sell it openly, not with the notoriety that had now been attached to it; but there would be a buyer, sooner or later, who would agree to purchase it under the counter. I knew this business, and I knew that lack of scruples went both ways.
“Have you thought about getting an attorney?” I asked Margie.
“I have a friend who’s a lawyer,” she said. “I phoned him an hour ago. He recommended a good criminal practitioner, but I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”
“Unless they find someone better, I think you’ll almost certainly be arrested,” I said. “You need to be prepared for that possibility.”
She sighed. “I don’t know why I went to Lissa’s room last night, I really don’t. In retrospect, it seems so damned stupid. I know what kind of person Lissa is. She’d only have been interested in hard cash, cash on the line, and I don’t bring very much to these shows. She had to have someone—or someones—on her string, or she never would have brought the book with her. She knew an interested party would be here. But who?”
“You’re sure it wasn’t your friend?”
“How would I recognize her? I haven’t seen anyone here that reminded me of her—not even close. But it’s been so long. She’s never made any effort down the decades to contact me, and on the one occasion when I went back home in the late ’60s, she refused to meet me—I think she was afraid that her husband would realize that our friendship was more than that. A few years later, when I returned for my Mom’s funeral, she was gone—no one knew where. My brother had left town not long after I did for the city lights, and there was no one still close to me that I could ask. Someone told me later that she’d left her husband and remarried—but they had no contact information. I have no idea even what her name might be now—or if she’s still alive.”
“OK,” I said, “so let’s assume Lissa knew what she was doing. She may have been a real shit, but she always made a profit. She must have had at least two possible bidders for the book who’d agreed to come here. They could have been dealers themselves, or ‘interested parties,’ or both. How would she have handled it?”
Margie thought for a moment. “Well, I think she would have called both of them, told them what she had, and said that she was initially going to conduct a private auction; and then, if the bids were insufficient, she would have told them that she’d go public, and try to sell it that way. She might have given them a window between, say, seven and nine p.m., and made appointments for specific times for each of the interested parties—with the most interested individual being left for last. And then she’d try to jack up the price while reaming them out with the threat of revelation.”
“And if that final potential purchaser couldn’t match the price…?”
“Maybe they slipped over the edge—and killed her.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Now all we have to do is find the culprit!”
CHAPTER NINE
“HE WAS NEVER A FRIEND TO ANYONE”
Saturday, March 26
“I turned the corner at Orzechówka Street, and crept like a rat between the shadows, watching for any movement up ahead, my hand firmly clasped around my strzelbą dwururka. You could have cut the smog with a stainless steel carving knife—but at least the damp air muffled the passage of my iron-toed leather boots. Swish, swish, swish they went, as I moved slowly and carefully from doorway to doorway, waiting for the bullet that never came.
“We were two hunters stalking our prey—one another—with an intensity that belied the coldness of the silent war we fought—just two hunters bent upon the destruction of the living symbol of a political system, one red, the other red, white, and blue. Which swatch would survive unstitched remained to be seen.
“‘Blat,’ I heard, and instinctively ducked—not that it would have done me much good—as a chip of pink brick scoured a furrow up one cheek. I wiped the blood away.
“‘Not quite “Gut Enuff,” Comrade!’ I chirped into the night, zipping a ta
ut little package right back at my enemy. His name was Colonel Żyleniec, but I called him Żylak, or ‘Varicose Vein,’ which I knew infuriated him. We’d played this game many times before over the past two decades, sometimes on my turf, and now on his. But I had a feeling that this would be our last bout upon the chessboard of life.
“‘You von’t escape me this time!’ he yelled back, sending another bullet my way. ‘Blat,’ ‘blip,’ ‘blink’ went our mini-missiles hurling back and forth, forth and back. Finally, I could stand the strain no more, and I stepped out in the middle of the street, right where the trolley tracks cut their twin furrows through the cobblestones—and Żylak followed suit. We would finally resolve our issues like the iron-nosed men we were.
“We fired simultaneously, but I think my second barrel must have tipped the balance, for the Polish Colonel slumped down on his knees to the wet pavement, staining his one good western suit, and dropping his fuming fuzja right there on the bricks.
“‘I die,’ he said, coughing up gouts of pink-hinged blood (still a diehard Commie). ‘I die, but you and I, ve vere the same! The same to the very end!’
“‘No,’ I said out loud, ‘we were never the same, Comrade.’
“You see, I was a friend to mankind and my dog; but that Żylak, he was never a friend to anyone!”
—Incident at Czyścimnie,
by Donnie Grollman Opdyke (1967)
We finally shooed away the last lookie-loo of the afternoon, packed up the primo pbs and covered the rest with a cloth, and got out just as Tomás and the security guards were locking up the place. We were both exhausted, for more reasons than one. I saw what appeared to be a plainclothes policeman watching us as we headed towards our van.
I locked the carton of quality books in the safe box in the vehicle, and then we drove the few blocks to Restaurant Row on the other side of the freeway. I suggested the Jade Tiger, the best Chinese restaurant in town, and Margie just nodded—I don’t think she really cared at that point.
I ordered some hot-and-sour soup and a platter of Shanghai dumplings, and we munched away in silence—or at least I did—while contemplating the day’s events.
“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” Margie finally said.
“You mean Lissa?”
“She may have been a nasty piece of work, but she was alive, you know what I mean? The bristles were real. She didn’t deserve to die—not over some fading pages slapped between cheap cover art. I mean, Ace never spent that much money on anything. My friend was paid just $500 for Castle Dred. Of course, she was only nineteen at the time.”
“I remember Don Wollheim telling me once how he had to scrimp on everything, while his boss lived in this grandiose place out on Long Island. But why did he publish that book?” I said. “I mean, it was pretty bad, even by Ace’s standards.”
“Yeah, it was no classic, that’s for sure,” Margie said, “although at the time, we both thought it was a real lark. Like mine, her novel satirized some of the ‘in’ people in town. I had the impression that she knew somebody who worked for the company, and Wollheim was ordered to buy it by someone further up the chain.”
“Really! That’s very interesting.”
“It is, but like so much of this, it’s old history. Who cares now?”
“Somebody cares, that’s for sure,” I said. “Somebody cares a great deal. Did your friend come from a prominent family?”
“I always thought so,” she said. “She lived in a big house just outside of town, and they always drove the newest cars, and went on vacations to exotic places. But now that I think about it, I don’t really know what her father did. He was away a lot, and I rarely saw him in person. She never talked about him much; I had the impression they weren’t very close. He was a banker or real estate investor or something like that—maybe. She married one of his friends, someone much older. She wasn’t too happy about it, but she told me at the time that she had no choice, that if she came to New York to live, her father would find her and drag her back again.”
“How utterly medieval,” I said. “I mean, you can’t do things like that these days.”
“Back then, in a small town, if you were connected—yes, you could, and everyone in authority would back you up too.”
Then I heard a loud voice raised in anger, and I looked over at the high booth across the room from us. Brody Dameen was arguing with someone sitting back in the shadows. Suddenly, his opposite number leaned forward into the light, and I recognized the fat face of Freddie the Cur, as he stuffed another wonton into his mouth.
Freddie was a big man in every sense of the word: tall and long and round and ugly, like the girl from Ipanema blown inside out. He must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, but you could section that lard piece by piece, if you dared, and never find a heart. If he’d ever had one, he’d fried it in grease and eaten it a long time ago.
“Don’t you threaten me, you tipsy little turd!” I heard him tell the “O-Man.” “I’ll crush you like the bug you are.”
“But I have it!” Dameen said, and then dropped his voice, and I couldn’t make out anything else that they said to each other, except, “I do!”
“What was that all about?” Margie asked.
But before I could respond, Gully Foyle, Brody’s “significant other,” stormed into the room, and halted right in front of the two men. She was a blonde woman of perhaps forty, well-dressed and well-apportioned, if you know what I mean.
“What are you doing here, Freddie?” she hissed—just loud enough so we could hear. “Leave him alone. He never did anything to you.”
“But, I…uh, I…,” Brody said.
“And you! What’s the matter with you, dealing with the likes of him? You know what kind of person he is.”
“But….”
“Come with me, now, Dearie. It’s time we got back to our room. Iron Chef’ll be on soon, and I know you like that.” Then she looked at the book dealer again, and almost spit at him. “You can pick up the tab, you asshole!”
She eased Dameen out of the booth, and carefully supported him as he wobbled from the room, dragging our eyes with them.
But when I looked back across the restaurant, all I saw were the beady little orbs of Freddie the Cur staring right at me. He stuck out his pasty slug of a tongue, and wiped his bottom lip with it, left to right, like a dog cleaning his chops. He might as well have shouted to the patrons, “I see you, old friend, and we’ll take care of business later.”
Yet he was never a friend to anyone, not even to himself.
CHAPTER TEN
“GOODBYE! GOOD LUCK!”
Saturday, March 26
“What can you say about a fifty-four-year-old girl who died?
“Septuagenarian bestselling writer Julius Manderley sat upright on his horse, Daisy Bell, the very beast who’d kicked his beloved to death after she’d tried to force just one more beet into her spayed jaws, while he pondered the strange vicissitudes of life.
“Theirs had been a whirlwind, twenty-four-day romance, beginning at his hospital bed, where he’d been recovering from near-fatal biblio-spasms to his fingers and arms. Writhing in agony, unable to find relief, he suddenly discovered his pain-wracked wrist being massaged by the twinkling toes of the overendowed Nurse Judi Bell, and was immediately captivated.
“Then followed a gusto of events that he could scarcely recall to mind, being somewhat alzheimeristically compromised—of motocross excursions into the Oregon mountains, of long rides on Daisy Bell and Tinkle Bell on the still longer, dusty trails to nowhere, of moonlit nights trying to find their way back home again—always with his beloved Judi Bell at his side, massaging him with those terrific toenails!
“Ah, such ecstasy!
“But all things do finally peter out, and when the veginarian Judi Bell tried to ‘beet’ poor Daisy Bell one time too many, the placid palomino turned on her owner, and kicked her kaput with one mighty blow.
“And now—poor Julius was left a
ll alone once again, with just his fractured memories and his meaningless millions to keep him company—although he did still have the undying love of his two horsies!
“‘Love means never having to say you’re hoary,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Goodbye! Good luck!’”
—Love, Love, Love!
by Hyacinth Peppercorn (1963)
Lieutenant Pfisch was waiting for us back at the motel, with several men in blue, and informed Margie that she was under arrest for the murder of Lissa Boaz. “Or should I say ‘Margaret Storm,’ Ms. Brittleback?” he said. “Turns out you have a record under that name. Why am I not surprised that you told me nothing about this in our little interview this afternoon?”
“You didn’t ask,” she said.
“What record?” I asked.
“She was convicted of dealing drugs in New York back in the 1970s,” Pfisch said. “Served a year, too, before being released on good behavior.”
“It was all a mistake,” she said, shaking her head. “And I wasn’t dealing. I just bought some pot for my own use.”
“That’s what they all say. You can explain that to the judge when the time comes.”
Then he read her her rights and handcuffed her. Margie turned to me and said: “Call my attorney! His number’s 909-555-2212. Leave a message. I’ll be at….” She looked at the Lieutenant.
Pfisch told me where they were taking her.
“Find the real killer! That’s the only thing you can do to help.”
Then they hauled her across the lot to the police car, stuffed her in the back seat, and drove away.
I was stunned by the turn of events, although I’d been half-expecting this. I couldn’t decide what to do. Then I thought about the conversation that we’d overheard in the restaurant—and what Brody had told me earlier in the day—and I decided that I needed to see the “O-Man” one more time.
I phoned the attorney that Margie had mentioned, and then later headed for the motel. Brody and Gully were staying on the back side of the Royal Crest, in Room 1333. I took the elevator to the thirteenth floor, went out to the external balcony that fronted on all of the rooms, and had to walk almost to the end of the row.
The Paperback Show Murders Page 4