AHMM, April 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

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  Rereading Poe's best works is a treat and a rediscovery. The addition of commentary by writers such as Stephen King, Jeffrey Deaver, Laura Lippman, Lisa Scottoline, and others make the book a treasure.

  All of the essays are worthwhile, from Laurie R. King's indictment of Poe as a “blatant and unscrupulous thief of all the best ideas” to the late master of the short story Edward D. Hoch's conclusion that “For anyone who aspires to write short stories, there is no better teacher than Edgar Allan Poe.” Readers will even discover what tales make horrormeister Stephen King afraid and how a reluctant Sue Grafton discovered a Poe tale she admired.

  There is humor in some of the essays, as with novelist Jan Burke's refusal to sleep with her door closed after reading “The Cask of Amontillado,” Michael Connelly's scare while reading “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and Nelson DeMille's terrified journey through a graveyard after seeing the film Phantom of the Rue Morgue.

  Novelist and Edgar Grand Master (2006) Stuart M. Kaminsky had a different task as editor of On a Raven's Wing: New Tales in Honor of Edgar Allan Poe (Harper, $14.95); he collected tales that make “Poe himself or his work ... central to the story.” Happily, his accomplished contributors prove worthy of their subject. That is not surprising when you read the roll: Mary Higgins Clark, Thomas H. Cook, James W. Hall, Jeremiah Healy, Edward D. Hoch, Peter Lovesey, and more.

  Mary Higgins Clark delivers a delightful send-up called “The Tell-Tale Purr,” its inspiration obvious from the title. Thomas H. Cook's “Nevermore” is a moving tale of a dying father's use of Poe's poems to communicate with his estranged son. Brendan DuBois effectively updates one of Poe's classics in “The Cask of Castle Island.” Edward D. Hoch's mastery of the short story is amply demonstrated in “The Poe Collector,” as he combines knowledge of Poe's life and work with the zeal and greed of modern collectors to produce a clever puzzler.

  Poe has been both used and abused by the movie industry but Paul Levine's hilarious “Development Hell” imagines a bemused Edgar Allan Poe dealing directly with an executive of Diablo Pictures who envisions a franchise ("sequels, prequels, spinoffs") from “The Pit and the Pendulum,” with merchandizing riches and more. Of course, there would have to be changes. Who knows how Poe would have responded to such possibilities in his lifetime?

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  Peter Lovesey mines more Poe history for “The Deadliest Tale of All” in which the unfortunate author endures one last misfortune, while John Lutz's “Poe, Poe, Poe” cleverly weaves many Poe titles and characters into a story that features Poe as its main character.

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  All Points Bulletin: MWA has chosen The Edgar Allan Poe Society and The Poe House as the recipients of the 2009 Raven Award to be given at the Edgar Awards Banquet. * In addition to the volumes honoring Poe's impact on the mystery genre, it is worth noting that homage to his influence is also paid in Poe's Children: The New Horror (Doubleday, $26.95) an anthology edited by Peter Straub. Straub's assembled a stellar list of twenty-five authors including Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Carroll, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Thomas Tessier. Random House Audio has produced an abridged version of this volume on 12 CDs (15.5 hours) for $49.95.

  Copyright © 2009 Robert C. Hahn

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  From the severe aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the deadly miscalculations of a CIA operative, contemporary themes mark the fine, haunting selections of The Best American Mystery Stories 2008 (Houghton Mifflin, $14). Editor George Pelecanos (The Turnaround) has curated an addicting blend of evocative, timely modern mysteries. Giants like James Lee Burke and Joyce Carol Oates are placed next to talented newcomers, notably young writers Kyle Minor and Holly Goddard Jones. Minor takes readers through the powerful psychological journey of an elderly woman haunted by a horrific crime in her past in “A Day Meant to Do Less,” while Jones brilliantly parses the plight of a young loner burdened with terrible secrets in “Proof of God.” Leo ‘Skig’ Skorzeny, a sympathetic, brutal loan shark familiar to these pages, has a memorable turn in Jas. R. Petrin's ‘Car Trouble’ as an advocate for an elderly friend at a sleazy car dealership. Whether the crimes are on a domestic or international scale, they make for masterful turns of plot and character in this anthology.—Laurel Fantauzzo

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  Fiction: MANHUNT by Frank T. Wydra

  The one named Bracer rammed a leather-jacketed forearm into Johnny Doogle's teeth, busting a lip and bouncing his head off the brick. Bracer's partner, Cooley, kept an eye on the street, as if watching for witnesses. The flasher was on the dash, but turned off, like they knew the thing always drew a crowd.

  Bracer, arm now pinning Johnny's throat, fished a hand to an inside pocket and pulled out a black-and-white photo. “Gimmie a light here,” he ordered Cooley, then growled into Johnny's face, “Ever see her? She one of yours?"

  Johnny, eyes blinking, turned his head away from the sudden bright, showing the golf ball-sized white birthmark on his cheek. Snowball the locals called him, a name the cops didn't know. Bracer helped him focus by giving his head another bounce. “You hearing? She one of yours?"

  The picture was of the face a white girl, blonde, good looking, about sixteen.

  Johnny Doogle peddled crack, and this storefront, where Bracer was bouncing his head, was in the middle of his territory. Little after midnight, not much chance anyone but dedicated customers would pass by, and no chance at all they'd stop with a cruiser sitting one wheel on the curb where he was having this informal chat with the cops. Bacon. They might pulp him, but that was the worst of it. Went with the job. Something he'd come to expect.

  Bracer and Cooley did the graveyard, Central District. He knew them, they knew him. Like family. Only this family, Papa was a pit bull.

  The girl in the picture, the blonde kid, he knew her too. Customer. Smart mouth. Plenty of money. Came around about, say, once a week. Always good for a fifty dollar bag of something: amps, hash, bennies, M&Ms, starter stuff, mainly. He'd tried to move her up to crack or cane a couple of times, but she nixed the gig. Scared little rich kid. Now the only reason Bracer was pushing a photo of her in his face is she'd come to no good. Dead, probably. From shit. Someone else's. But, Johnny thinking, if he opens his mouth and says, “Yeah, I seen her,” they'd be over him. Next thing, he's downtown shoulder to shoulder with four other dudes and someone behind the glass is fingering him. No way. So he shakes his ‘fro and says, “Don't know her, man. So let loose.” But Bracer, not acting convinced, does another rep with the arm, bouncing Johnny's head, saying, “Look again."

  His eyes go to the photo, and he says, “You think I don't know my people? Something like that comes round, I'm gonna forget? So lay off, man. Can't breathe."

  Bracer gives the arm another push, cutting off the words, then lets loose.

  "Listen, punk—” He pushed the kid's picture in Johnny's face. “—this is for you. Make the rounds. Anybody knows her, you tell me, I go easy for a month. You getting this? Easy for a month.” Bracer, stuffing the picture in his shirt, slinging him to the ground, getting in the car with Cooley, leaving him there in the dark on the crumbling cement.

  Johnny thinking, they want someone bad. Want someone that bad, don't care who it is. Just someone. And a dozen people know he's peddling to her. One of them, they gonna say, “Snowball.” Then they're back on him. Next time for real.

  Johnny pushed himself to his feet and brushed off the dirt. He felt a tear in the elbow of his Snoop Dogg leather jacket. Three hundred seventy, the thing cost. Bacon, there, rips it, the way he pushed him. He felt the inside pocket of the jacket where he kept the stuff. Hadn't searched him. Left him his stash. Maybe twelve bills worth. What was that, a signal? Bacon telling him, give them a name, he's safe?

  Johnny thought about names he could drop on them. Dealers. But, man, start that and it's war. He outs some dude, dude's friends come back on him. Not worth the has
sle for a month's peace. Johnny pulled out the photo and tried to look at it, but with the streetlights all shot out, it was too dark. He almost balled it up to throw away, then thought better of it and put it in his pocket. Might as well go home, way bacon was cruising there was no business to be had anyway.

  Every once in a while he passed a few bros sitting on stoops, flapping gums. Ones he knew, he took a minute with. Bonding. But what he really wanted was to get his hands on the Free Press, see what the hassle was about. Party store on Cass run by a sand jockey was closed. No cars in the dirt lot. Fifty-gallon drum still smoldering from the day's burn. A red Free Press coin box outside the store still had a paper in it, but Johnny had nothing but bills in his jeans. He kicked the box and pulled at the lid. Tighter than some dead dude's fist.

  Doing a three sixty, checking the ‘hood, looking for eyes. So far as he could see, no one was peeking from behind blinds. No one was lurking. He bent, hefted a brick, moved to the steel box, and gave it a Joe Louis. Nothing. Changing the angle, this time to catch the lip of the lid, three quick whacks, and the front popped. Two folded papers sitting there. Reaching in, he grabbed one, left the brick to weigh down the other, and walked away. Not enough light to read, even if he wanted to stand on the street waiting for noses to peek at the noise.

  Once in his dig, he put the paper on the kitchen table and started looking for headlines. Page three. Dead blonde kid. Same picture and a long story saying how they'd wheeled her into Beaumont's E.R. White man's hospital down the road from ritzy Birmingham. She'd OD'd on Fentanyl. That stopped Johnny. Little percopos? Analgesic lollipops? Not something anyone OD'd on. He read the article through to the end. Two other kids dead, same cause, in the last three months. He could feel the heat. Three dead kids in money-land, soccer moms bleating like sheep, find the sucker selling to the little princesses. Pissed him off, way these honkies stole headlines. Any month, ten black kids catch lunch, not one of them making the Free Press.

  He leaned back in his chair, looking around the dig. Clean. No dishes in the sink. Two wooden chairs. Metal table. Paint worn off the cabinets where the scrubbing had got to it. TV, leather sofa, easy chair, and a small bookcase through the doorway. King-sized bed in the adjoining ten-by-twelve room. Showed the style you could have selling drugs. More money in working the assembly line, if anyone was offering the work. And no bacon bouncin’ his head on the brick.

  Johnny sighed and looked at the headline again. Whoever was selling to the blondies was going to kill his business. Maybe him along with it.

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  It was five fifteen A.M. when Cooley pulled the unmarked car into the precinct lot. Bracer with his usual energy was out of the car and moving to the door before Cooley had his open. After thirty in the weight room and a shower, they sat in the locker room, switching to streets.

  Cooley said, “Thing I don't get is why you're so hot on this case. Not like we don't have enough of our stuff to follow."

  Bracer, five-ten, had the solid build of a wrestler and walnut skin, flat nose, and skin around the corners of his eyes eroded by all he'd seen. “Y'know,” he said, as if it were an explanation. Not that Cooley needed the story. Bracer, twelve years out of the academy, last three as undercover street, had an obsession: He wanted to get out of the city and move to Birmingham. Birmingham, with its one murder every twenty years. Big-gest crime being rowdy teens after Seaholm High won a game. Place where schools actually taught kids to read and write and do the math. He wanted to get his five year old into those schools, have her mix with the right kids, kids who expected to go to college. He hoped to get a job on the Birmingham PD. To do that, though, he'd have to jump the other hundred wannabees. By the time that happened, LuAnne would be a high school grad who could read at the third-grade level.

  "Trouble with you,” Bracer said, “is you got no kids."

  Cooley rolled his eyes. “This what it's all about? You getting that honky job? Ain't going to happen, so let it go, man, we got enough to do."

  Bracer, tying his laces, gave Cooley a look. “Don't give me that crap, man. You know how it is.” When he'd gotten the word on the Brandon girl being carried into Beaumont, then dying before she came around, he knew she had gotten her stuff on his street. In that moment he saw a way. Nail the dealer who put the blonde teen on the slab and it would vault him to the top of that waiting list. “Chance like this, don't happen that often."

  Cooley leaned his face into Bracer's, pointing a finger to his own temple. “You got a thing up here. Don't mean it's happening on the street."

  "These people are slime,” Bracer said, playing one of his favorite themes. If there had ever been an empathy between him and the inner city street-life, it had been rubbed raw by years of contact. “You with me on this, or what?"

  Cooley straightened, shaking his head and screwing his face into a disgusted look. “Aw, man. Don't put it that way. Let's just have a beer and forget about this white broad. None of our business."

  Bracer, shoulder muscles flexing, face hinting at a snarl. “I'm asking. You with me or not?"

  "Bracer ... y'know I'm with you, but man, what are the odds?"

  Even without doing the math, Bracer knew the edge was slim. Their beat was the Cass Corridor, a strip just west of Woodward, Detroit's main drag, running from the Fisher Freeway to Warren, the southern border of Wayne State University. Though boasting some of Detroit's iconic structures, it was also a no-man's-land of burnt-out buildings, vacant lots, easy houses that gave citizens what they wanted at prices anyone could afford, respectable old apartments, and newly built condos. Iron bars over first floor windows was a standard part of the decor. Not as obvious were the pushers working the alcoves. The bosses had divided the Corridor into about a dozen territories, giving a franchise to each of the dealers in return for a percentage of the take. More dope peddled in this little strip than on the dirt streets of Marrakesh. The most lucrative sites were those on the north, closest to the university, where the student population was heaviest. Add cream to the cake, rich boys from the other side of Eight Mile had taken to cruising the campus looking for buys. Being smart, those willing to run the risk, also found that by meandering a few blocks south they could save a few bucks on the stuff. Pick your danger, pick your place, pick your price. So the way Bracer saw it, chances were, girl from the suburbs wants to make a buy, she would shop the Corridor. Odds of finding the pusher who sold it to her were next to nil. People in the Corridor had little use for police, regardless of their skin color. What justice there was got dispensed by the gangs, groups of dropouts who wore Po-boy pants, triple-X tees, two-hundred-dollar Nikes, and thirty-eight specials. But, like the man said, don't look, don't find.

  "Fuck the odds,” Bracer said.

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  High noon and Johnny was on the street. There was a place on Third where the bosses huddled, place he almost never went. Bosses were trouble. They gave. They took away. Didn't need no reason. But he wanted to check, see if any of them could peg the dead blonde with another dealer. You got trouble like he had, some things you got to do.

  His neck hurt from the way bacon had rammed him. And the jacket, didn't know if it could be sewed up. Even then, close-up, it wouldn't look new. He kept his hands in his pockets as he walked, doing a stare-down at any dudes gave him the eye, letting them know he could handle it. Not sure if he could, neck and all.

  Place he was looking for was a cinder block one-story, vacant lots on either side. One side had been a parking lot back in the eighties when the place was still doing business. Now, weeds pushed through the asphalt. Other side, just dirt from where a house used to be. Although the front door was stout steel with a fogged-glass, eight-inch square of a window, it was hasp locked. A plywood door in the alley served as the main entry. He kicked the bottom of the plywood three times and waited. A slider in the door opened enough for an eye to do him.

  "Yeah,” a voice said.

  "See the man,” he said.

  "Says who?"
<
br />   "Johnny D."

  The slider slammed and about a minute dragged until the door inched open. Although there were lights on in the room—electricity pirated from a place across the alley—it took a while for Johnny's eyes to adjust. There were about a half dozen bros in the room, most sitting on easy chairs or plush sofas. Johnny's main contact, Bad Man Duff, was not among the loungers. He didn't know if that was good or bad. Nobody was playing pool at the big table in the center of the room. Nobody playing games at the electro-boxes against the wall. Nobody turning down the blaster thumping hip-hop at a hundred decibels. Johnny felt the rhythm and involuntarily pimp-stepped to the beat as he approached a man dressed in comic book clothes and gold chains.

  "Hey, Mr. Quick,” he said, offering his hand palm up for the boss of bosses to five.

  Quick declined the slap and gave a little jerk of his head. In the middle of a beat the sound level dropped in half. “What yo want?"

  Johnny gave an awkward smile. He'd never asked the man for a favor before and wasn't sure how it should be done so he just came out with it. “Some help, that's all."

  "What this look like, Kelly Services?” Snickers around the room.

  Johnny pulled out the picture of the dead girl from his pocket and offered it to Quick. With another head move, Quick ordered the bruiser next to Johnny to snatch the picture, then hand it to him. Johnny said, “This white kid got some bad shit and burned. Hauled her into that white hospital, Beaumont. Now the bacon looking for whoever sold to her."

  Quick showed a mouth of ivory. “And you the one that peddled.” Not a question.

  Johnny shook his head. “One of mine, but I ain't seen her in a month. ‘Sides, she dosed on Little percopos, not stuff I do."