by Ed Gorman
Ebersole berated himself for overreacting, for overlooking the obvious.
He said, “Lead the way, Don.”
The inmates quit the quiet chatter among themselves when Ebersole walked through the door. He settled at the desk, faked a smile apologizing for his tardiness, and said, “Anyone have something new to share?”
Cooke said, “Call on Smiley Burdette, why don’t you? Oh, wait, the old pain in the ass has quit the class permanently.” His laughter drowned out a round of hisses and boos.
Rauschenberg stood. “Maybe next time,” he said and sat back down.
George Murdock looked up from the legal-size yellow pad he’d been studying and raised his hand for attention. He cleared his throat. Screwed self-doubt onto his face. Dismissed the idea of reading with a gesture.
Ray Lemmon had another four pages in the story he’d been working on about the dead detective. The inmates applauded him after he finished and Ebersole gave him an encouraging critique.
Absent volunteers from among the slackers, Ebersole read them a locked-room mystery from one of the old issues of C&P he carried in his attaché case and talked briefly about story structure before signaling the guard that class was ending early today.
Ebersole reached his home off Ventura Boulevard, behind CBS Studio Center in the flats of Studio City, within the hour. His worries about Ricardo Ramirez had resumed and consumed him throughout the drive, eviscerating his earlier common sense conclusions, building a fear that compelled him to circle the shade-tree-lined block twice in search of strangers hunkered down in unfamiliar cars. He exercised similar caution entering the house and exploring the rooms before he felt safe, secure, and comfortable enough to pour himself a double vodka and dial Syd Moretti at C&P.
His solution to the problem with Ricardo was simplicity itself.
He would tell Syd he had to renege on the contract for “A Snitch in Time,” having only now remembered that the story was sold earlier in the year to C&P’s major competitor, Killer Thrills & Chills, by his ex-agent. He’d stress the ex. Apologize profusely. Assure Syd there was no problem with “Unnecessary Lives.” He’d have to endure some serious flak, but it beat anything Ricardo would have in store for him.
“I was just thinking to call you,” Syd said, hopping on the line. “Got good news, buddy. Great news. You sitting down?” Before Ebersole could answer, Syd said, “I somehow came up a story light for the next issue. ‘A Snitch in Time’ was a perfect fit. We’re on the presses now, and as a bonus, your name’s plastered on the cover … Gus, you there? You hear me? You sharing the excitement, Gus?”
“Sharing, Syd,” Ebersole said, trying to sound excited, trying to remember where he had stored the .38 Special he learned to use while doing research at the Police Academy for an early Inspector Phogg story. He found it in the W-X-Y-Z drawer of the metal file cabinet m the guest bedroom he’d turned into his office after buying the house six years ago. The .38 needed a lube job. Bullets too. By evening he had it in prime working condition, in easy reach on the nightstand when he stumbled into bed.
Three weeks later, the program quit Ebersole before he could quit the program.
He was relieved to get Commander Foley’s call, the commander using “attrition” as the cause, with no mention of the times Ebersole had shown up nursing a hangover and launching disjointed lectures that may have made sense to him, but to no one else.
The class was down to the sleepy silent minority and, if one were to believe Foley, the current jail population lacked anyone anxious to fill the desk seats vacated by Cooke, Murdock, Rauschenberg, Lemmon and, of course, Smiley Burdette and Ricardo Ramirez
Cooke had waltzed out on bail after his appeal hearing was granted. Murdock’s lawyers had successfully argued for a change of venue, and their client was now resident at the Presley Detention Center in Riverside. Rauschenberg had completed his sentence. Lemmon was among the latest beneficiaries of early release.
And Ebersole was getting no writing done.
None.
Not for lack of trying.
Every story idea petered out after a page or two, every creative thought supplanted by the quick brown fox, every noise or vodka-burnished notion reminding him the mail would bring the new issue of C&P any day now, and a visit from Ricardo Ramirez in its wake.
Instead, Ricardo showed up a week before the magazine arrived, in his mug shot on the six o’clock news, tied to a report about an attempted armed robbery turned deadly at a 7-Eleven in Koreatown.
The clerk had been quicker with the double-barrel shotgun under the counter than Ricardo was with his Saturday Night Special, a Raven Arms MP-25 semiautomatic handgun.
R.I.P. Ricardo.
Ebersole toasted the screen with his vodka and, loaded down with renewed energy and enthusiasm, stumbled to the computer. The quick brown fox quickly overpowered his euphoria, but he slept through the night for the first time in months.
The noises that awakened Ebersole two nights after C&P hit the newsstands sounded like breaking glass at the rear of the house, followed by the squeak of rusty door hinges, then footsteps cautiously advancing along the hardwood floor leading to his bedroom.
His adrenaline kicked in. His heart took off like a jazz drum solo. His breathing matched the beat. Recently there had been a series of home invasions in the neighborhood. One, a block over, had resulted in the deaths of an elderly couple. Was he about to become the latest victim? He didn’t dare move as one thought after another charged through his mind, squeezing his eyes tighter when he felt the subtle heat of the flashlight beam stroking up and down his face.
The .38 Special was in the nightstand drawer.
Should he risk it?
He didn’t have time to think it through before a muffled, vaguely familiar voice prompted him, “Time to rise and shine, Gus.”
Gus. The intruder knew his name. This was no random home invasion. Ebersole pushed up into a sitting position. He clamped a hand over his eyes to block the flashlight’s dazzle. “Please take what you want and leave,” he said, answering a question he had nursed for years: How would he react if he ever found himself in this situation? The intruder made a dismissive noise. “You write better dialogue in your stories, Gus.”
“You read my stories?”
“How Mrs. Marlowe was always saying, ‘You naughty boy, you. I could be your dear mother.’ That was a real hoot every damn time. “Your mama’s dead and gone to hell, where she belongs, along with that damn maggot passing himself off as your papa.”
“I can’t recall writing that,” Ebersole said. “Mrs. Marlowe would never speak that way.”
“Not her, Mrs. Marlowe. It’s in the story that just came out, ‘A Snitch in Time.’ Maybe you can’t remember because you didn’t write the story, although it has your name as the author.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Like you don’t know without me explaining it to you?” The overhead light clicked on, momentarily blinding Ebersole. The intruder was hiding his identity inside a black woolen ski mask and a heavy olive-colored overcoat a size too small that quit at his ankles. The coat was open, exposing a poorly fitting uniform of some sort.
“That’s my story, I wrote it,” he said. “I named it ‘A Cutthroat Death,’ but nothing else was different about it except your name. Your damn name on my story.”
“Who are you?”
“Who do you think I am? I’m my own avenging angel.” He dropped the flashlight into a coat pocket, reached inside the coat, and came out with a foot-long knife.
“Maybe you remember this from the story, Gus? The black Glock Survival Knife with the six and a half inch blade sharp enough to split nose hairs in half. A utility saw on the back of the blade? My weapon of choice, but not available while I was at Central, forcing me to be inventive with toothbrushes.”
“You killed Smiley Burdette?”
“Yes. And the other one, the damn predator. Perverts like him have no business walking this earth
instead of feeding earth worms six feet under.”
“But why Smiley?”
“He told me he was going to snitch to you about the favor Ricardo did for me by passing off the story as his own. It was nobody’s business why I wanted it to be a secret, but after you tore into it like a rabid dog, I knew I had been right. Ricardo didn’t mind though. He said forget it, it was only a flea bite. And I did — until I saw it in Crime & Punishment Magazine. Your name. You lied about my story to the class so you could steal it for yourself, making you a different kind of predator.”
Holding the knife out like a bayonet, he moved in on Ebersole.
The blade cut into the pillow seconds after Ebersole reflexively rolled sideways.
He scrambled to his feet on the side of the bed opposite the intruder and pulled open the nightstand drawer. The .38 wasn’t there. He cursed himself for forgetting he’d moved it back to the W-X-Y-Z file drawer the morning after celebrating the news of Ricardo’s murder.
The intruder had come around the bed and was advancing on him.
Ebersole rolled across the bed, dashed out of the bedroom and down the dark hallway, the intruder in noisy pursuit. He slammed the office door shut, turned the bolt lock, and scrambled to the file cabinet, dropped to his knees, and went after the 38. The intruder was rattling the knob, pounding and kicking on the door. Ebersole padded across the room and took a shooter’s stance, arms extended and two hands on the weapon. He squeezed the trigger, again, then another time, then twice more. The bullets crashed through the door, at first causing undecipherable outbursts from outside in the hallway, then nothing at all.
Ebersole, raining sweat, held his position for another minute and played catch-up with his breath. He half expected the intruder to come crashing through the door, blood spilling from his wounds, attempting another murderous charge. How many times had he written that scene in one of his short stories? How many times had he watched it played out that way in the movies and on TV? He eased his grip on the .38, but kept his finger on the trigger while unlocking and opening the door a creaking inch at a time.
The intruder was a motionless pile of bloody, bullet-riddled dead meat a few feet away, still clinging tightly to the knife. Ebersole approached the body cautiously. Satisfied, he settled on his haunches and sucked in a year’s supply of oxygen before lifting the intruder’s ski mask to see who owned the eyes staring blindly at him.
They belonged to George Murdock, who apparently had no problem murdering his ex and her lover, but never could bring himself to share any of the writing he brought to class. A shame, Ebersole thought now. There could have been something equal to “A Cutthroat Death” and equally worth acquiring as his own.
Two days later, Ebersole met Al Cooke for coffee. A Starbucks on Ventura, up from Laurel Canyon, a nest for writers diligently slaving over laptops on their Great American Novels and milliondollar screenplays.
“It wasn’t hard tracking you down after I read in the news about that murderous creep Murdock and how you took him out,” Cooke said, pumping his hand with the type of enthusiasm usually reserved for presidents and pontiffs. “An old buddy downtown was happy to do a favor for a fellow defender of the Blue Wall, if you know what I mean?”
“How is your appeal going?”
“The wheels of justice are slowly grinding to a halt. Don’t be surprised when you learn the D.A.’s dropped all the charges against me and I’m back protecting and serving.” He took a lick of the whipped cream on his white chocolate mocha and made a yummy face. “I’m getting out from under on the legit, where Murdock had to maneuver an escape, overpowering that guard at Presley Detention, stealing his uniform, the rest of it before he came after you like he did. Did he say why before you managed to clock him for keeps, lucky bastard that you are?”
“Murdock accused me of stealing a story from him.”
“How brain dead can a person be? He never opened his mouth once in all the weeks of the program. Any truth to it, though, I could see where he might be pissed off. Happened to me, I would be tempted to do the same thing to the bastard, only I’m smarter than Murdock. Crime is easy; anyone can do it. But not everyone knows how to keep from getting caught. That’s an art.”
Ebersole fought to hide his discomfort. “You said you were working on a book — ”
“Cop-Out. It’s still in the works.”
“But you never took it past that in class or presented a story.” Cooke smiled.
“Why I phoned you. What I wanted to talk about.” He worked the white chocolate mocha and spent several seconds with his eyes trained on a leggy brunette in short shorts and an overflowing halter top studying the counter menu. “I was the cop in the ointment, getting no respect, you remember? That old big-mouth Burdette with his nasty cracks, par for the course, so why run anything I wrote up the flagpole? Instead, I planted a chapter of Cop-Out on your desk anonymously, the one I titled ‘Unnecessary Lives.’ I figured you’d read and critique it, so I’d get some quality input. Instead, you stashed it in your case, never to be seen or heard about in class. So tell me, did you read it? What did you think? I’m dying to hear.”
Ebersole spilled his coffee.
ROBERT S. LEVINSON, bestselling author of In the Key of Death, Where the Lies Begin, Ask a Dead Man, Hot Paint, The James Dean Affair, The John Lennon Affair, and The Elvis and Marilyn Affair, is making his fifth consecutive appearance in a “year’s best” mystery anthology. He is a regular contributor to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, whose readers have cited him in the annual EQMM Award poll three years running, while his plays “Transcript” and “Murder Times Two” were award nominees at the annual International Mystery Writers Festival at RiverPark Center in Owensboro, KY. Bob wrote, produced and emceed two Mystery Writers of America “Edgar Awards” shows, as well as two International Thriller Writers “Thriller Awards” shows. His articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, Written By Magazine of the Writers Guild of America-West, Los Angeles Magazine, and Crimespree Magazine. His work has been praised by Joseph Wambaugh, T. Jefferson Parker, Nelson DeMille, Clive Cussler, Heather Graham, John Lescroart, David Morrell, Michael Palmer, James Rollins, and others. Visit him at www.robertslevinson.com.
What Happened To Mary?
BY BILL PRONZINI
When you live in a small town and something way out of the ordinary happens, it’s bound to cause a pretty big fuss. Such as a woman everybody knows and some like and some don’t disappearing all of a sudden, without any warning or explanation. Tongues wag and rumors start flying. Folks can’t seem to talk about anything else.
That’s what happened in my town last year. Ridgedale, population 1400. Hundred-year-old buildings around a central square and bandstand, countryside all pine-covered hills, rolling meadows, and streams full of fat trout. Prettiest little place you’d ever want to see. Of course I’m biased. I was born and raised and married here, and proud to say I’ve never traveled more than two hundred miles in any direction in the fifty-two years since.
Mary Dawes, the woman who disappeared, wasn’t a native herself. She moved to Ridgedale from someplace upstate after divorcing a deadbeat husband. Just drifted in one day, liked the look of the town, got herself a waitress job at the Blue Moon Cafe and a cabin at the old converted auto court on the edge of town, and settled in. Good-looking woman in her thirties, full of jokes and fun, and none too shy when it came to liquor, men, and good times. She had more than her share of all three in the year or so she lived here, but I’m not one to sit in judgment of anybody’s morals. Fact is, I own Luke’s Tavern, Ridgedale’s one and only watering hole. Inherited it from my father, Luke Gebhardt, Senior, when he died twenty years ago.
Mary liked her fun, like I said, and rumor had it she didn’t much care if the man she had it with was married or single. But she never openly chased married men and she wasn’t all that promiscuous, even if some of the wives called her the town slut behind her back. One relationship at a time and not f
lagrant about it, if you know what I mean. She came into the tavern one or two nights a week and drank and laughed and played darts and pool with the other regulars, but I never once saw her leave with a man. She made her dates in private. And never gave me or anybody else any trouble.
One of the regulars gave her trouble, though, same as he gave trouble to a lot of other folks at one time or another. Tully Buford, the town bully. Big, ugly, with bad teeth and the disposition of a badger. Lived by himself in a rundown little farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Carpenter and woodworker by trade, picked up jobs often enough to get by because he was good at his work.
Thing about Tully, he was more or less tolerable when he was sober but when he drank more than a few beers he turned loudmouthed mean. More than once I had to throw him out when he had a snootful. More than once the county sheriff’s deputies had to arrest him for fighting and creating a public disturbance, too, but he never started any fights or did any damage in my place. If he had, I’d’ve eighty-sixed him permanently.
Worse he ever did was devil people and throw his weight around, and as annoying as that was, I couldn’t justify barring him from the premises for it.
Oh hell now, Luke Gebhardt, be honest. You were afraid if you did bar him, he’d come in anyway and start some real serious trouble.
He was capable of it. Town bully wasn’t all he was. Vandal, too, or so most of us believed; Ridgedale had more than its share of that kind of mischief, all of it done on the sly at night so nobody could prove Tully was responsible. Animal abuse was another thing he was guilty of. Doc Dunaway saw him run down a stray dog with his pickup and swore it was deliberate, and there’d been some pet cats, a cow, and a goat shot that was likely his doing.
So it was easier and safer to just stay clear of him whenever possible and try to ignore him when it wasn’t. The only one who felt and acted different was J.B. Hatfield, but I’ll get to him in a minute.