Death Sentences

by Otto Penzler

  “What?”

  “We have to settle this issue straight away. I don’t think I’m being alarmist, but if they’d kill Roger for it, they aren’t going to accept a polite delay from you.”

  The increasing darkness that had been growing in Monty’s mind now suddenly took a very specific shape. Heat raced through him as if he felt flames already.

  “I’ve no idea what price to put on it,” he said desperately. “I wish I’d never found the thing. Sergeant Tobias said she’d have her father come and look at it some time this week. What if they won’t wait? Or won’t pay what he says it’s worth? I suppose I should tell the Greville Estate solicitors, shouldn’t I?”

  “No,” Hank replied after a moment’s thought. “From what you told me, Roger bought the books as a job lot at auction. They belong to his estate, not the Grevilles. But you’re right, I don’t think you can wait until a valuation is put on the scroll. That could take quite a while, especially if it really is what the scholar claims it is. That would actually make it almost beyond price.”

  “Then what the hell can I do?” Monty demanded. “Give it to the British Museum?”

  Hank bit his lip. “Do you think the bishop, or Mr. Garrett will allow you to do that? Who do you think killed Roger?”

  Monty shut his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “One of them, I suppose. Hank, what can I do?”

  Hank sat for a long time without answering.

  Monty waited.

  Finally Hank spoke, slowly and very quietly. “I don’t believe we can wait, Monty. I don’t know what this scroll is, but I do know it has great power. Whatever is in the scroll itself, or in what various men believe of it, that power is real, and it is very dangerous. Roger is dead already. I believe that we need to end the matter long before any experts can run their tests and verify it. For a start, I don’t think the bishop, or whoever he is, is going to allow that to happen. His whole purpose in buying the scroll is to destroy it, to make sure that mankind never gets to know what is written in it—expert, scholar or ordinary man in the street, or more importantly to him, perhaps, man-in-the- pew.”

  “What about Mr. Garrett? What does he think it is, and what does he want it for?” Monty asked.

  “I don’t know who he is, but I have an absurd guess, for which I doubt my own sanity. The reason he wants it, I believe, is to reverse the verdict of history.”

  “What can we do?” Monty asked, searching Hank’s clear blue eyes.

  “Tell the men we know of who want it to meet us at Roger’s house, and we will hold an auction there, privately for the three of them.”

  “I don’t know how to contact them,” Monty pointed out.

  “Times personal column,” Hank said simply. “Although they may have some way of knowing anyway. Funny they should be so wrong about where the scroll was, though.”

  “What? Oh … you mean … in Roger’s house? Why did they think that? Why did they kill him? He didn’t even know about it?”

  “Was the crate with the scroll in it addressed to him?”

  Monty had a sudden vivid picture of the address label in his mind’s eye.

  “Yes. Yes it was …”

  “Then that may be the answer. At that time they did not realize Roger was sick and not coming in to the bookshop. They assumed he would take it home.”

  “How did they know about it at all?” Monty pursued.

  “That is something I can’t answer,” Hank admitted. “I don’t believe in your ghosts, all of whom have a logical explanation in either fact or hysteria. But I will admit that there are things I can’t explain, and I am prepared to allow that they could have to do with a more than ordinary evil … albeit a highly powerful human one, with manifestations we don’t yet understand.”

  “Generous of you,” Monty said with a touch of sarcasm, the sharper because he was afraid.

  Hank ignored him. “Put an advertisement in the personal column of the Times: ‘Gentleman wishes to auction ancient scroll. Regret photocopies impossible. Auction to be held at 7:00 p.m. at home of now deceased owner of shop. Replies unnecessary.’ That should reach those with an interest.”

  Monty’s throat was dry, his tongue practically sticking to the roof of his mouth.

  “Then what?” he croaked.

  “Then we lock up the scroll here and go to Roger’s house to wait,” Hank answered, but he too was pale and there was knowledge of fear in his eyes.

  At seven in the evening Hank and Monty were in Roger’s sitting room, too restless to occupy the armchairs. Hank was by the window looking over the back garden and Monty paced from the center of the room to the front windows and back again. The acrid smell of smoke was still sharp in the air. The electric lights were not working since the fire, and as the room grew darker with the fading sun Hank struck a match and lit the hurricane lamp they had brought.

  “They’re not going to come,” Monty said at quarter past seven. “We didn’t give them enough time. Or else they’ve gone to the shop, and they’ll break into the safe and steal it while we’re here. We shouldn’t have come.”

  “If they were going to steal it they’d have done so anyway,” Hank pointed out. “It was there every night, wasn’t it?”

  “Then why didn’t they?” Monty demanded.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps they need some legitimacy—or maybe they just aren’t good at safe cracking. It’s a pretty good safe, isn’t it?”

  “Yes …”

  The hurricane lamp burned up, sending its glow into the corners of the room and showing the dark outline of an old man with a child beside him, a fair-haired girl of about eight, whose brilliant, ice-cool eyes gleamed almost luminously.

  Monty felt the sweat break out on his skin and run down his body, cold within seconds. He turned to Hank, and instead saw in the doorway the robed and implacable figure of the bishop, his face filled with a scalding contempt.

  The smell of old smoke seemed heavier, catching in the throat.

  The bishop moved into the room and his place in the doorway was taken by the scholar, a smile on his handsome face, a fire of intense curiosity blazing in his eyes.

  Hank looked at Monty. “Perhaps we had better begin the bidding?” he suggested.

  Monty cleared his throat again. “I do not know what the scroll is, or whether it is authentic or not. Each of you has offered to purchase it, as it is. Please make a bid according to what it is worth to you.”

  “Where is it?” the bishop demanded.

  “Hush man, it is of no importance,” the scholar cut across him. “Mr. Danforth will provide it, when the time is right. We don’t want to risk having it destroyed in another fire, or do we?”

  The old man smiled. “How wise of you. I fear destruction is what the bishop’s purpose is. He will pay any price to that end.”

  “May the fires of hell consume you!” the bishop shouted hoarsely.

  “The fires of hell burn without consuming,” the old man said wearily. “You know so little. The truth is deeper, subtler and far better than your edifice of the imagination …”

  The bishop lunged forward and picked up the hurricane lamp. He smashed it on the floor at Monty’s feet. “Betrayer!” he cried as the flames spread across the spilled oil and licked upwards, hungry and hot.

  The scholar, who had been watching Hank, charged him and knocked him over, seizing the small attaché case he had been carrying. He picked it up and made for the window, leaving Hank stunned on the floor.

  It was the old man who took off his coat and threw it over Monty, smothering the flames at his feet, catching his trousers already burning his legs.

  But the oil had spread wider and the sofa was alight. The billows of black smoke grew more intense, choking, suffocating. The bishop was lost to sight. Hank was still on the floor and Judson Garrett was bending over him, talking to him, pulling him to his feet.

  Dimly through the black swirls Monty could see the child hopping up and d
own, her face brilliant with glee, her eyes shining with age-old evil as she watched the fire grow and swell, now reaching the old man’s clothes as he lifted Hank up. He was strong, his hair dark again, his face young. He carried Hank over to the window, smashed it and pushed him through as the fire burned behind him, swallowing him up.

  Monty fought his way to the door and out into the hall, gasping for breath, the heat all but engulfing him. He flung the front door open and fell out into the cool, clean night. Behind him the flames were roaring up. There was going to be nothing left of the house. He must find Hank, get him out of the way of exploding debris.

  He was as far as the corner of the house when he saw Hank staggering towards him, dizzy but definitely upright.

  “Monty! Monty!” he called out. “What happened to Garrett?”

  Monty caught Hank by the arm. “I don’t know. We’ve got to get away from here. It’s all going up any minute. Those dry timbers are like a bomb. Come on!”

  Reluctantly Hank allowed himself to be pulled away until they were both seventy yards along the road and finally saw the plume of flame burst through the roof and soar upwards into the sky.

  A cloud of crows flung high in the air like jagged pieces of shadow, thousands of them, tens of thousands, all shouting their hoarse cries into the night.

  “Did anybody else get out?” Hank asked, his voice shaking.

  “No,” Monty answered with certainty.

  “He thought the scroll was in my case,” Hank said. “The bishop. I’ve had that case for years.”

  “What was in it?” Monty asked.

  “Nothing,” Hank replied. “He would have destroyed the scroll.”

  “And the scholar would have published it, no matter whose faith it broke,” Monty replied. “People need their dreams, right or wrong. You have to give them a new one before you break the old.”

  “What about Garrett?” Hank asked, pain in his voice as if he dreaded the answer.

  “He’s all right,” Monty said, absolutely sure that it was the truth.

  Hank stared at him, then at the burning house. “He’s in there!”

  “No, he isn’t, not now. He’s all right, Hank.”

  “And the child?”

  “Gone. I think he’s free of her … it.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?” Hank asked, not with doubt but with hope.

  “Oh, yes, yes, I think so. I’m talking about sacrifice and redemption, about faith, about hope being stronger than even the demons who dog you with memory and tales of hatred, and who tempt you to justify yourself, at all costs.”

  “And the scroll? What are you going to do with it now?”

  “I think when we go and look, we’ll find it’s gone,” Monty replied. “We aren’t ready for it yet.”

  Hank smiled and together they turned to walk away towards the darkness ahead, no more than the soft folds of the night, with sunrise beyond.

  The end.

  XI

  It’s in the Book

  Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

  Co-author’s note: It’s unclear when Mickey began this story, which I have developed from an unfinished typescript, but internal evidence suggests the 1980s, so I have made that the time period of the tale.M.A.C.

  COPS ALWAYS COME in twos. One will knock on the door, but a pair will come in, a duet on hand in case you get rowdy. One uniform drives the squad car, the other answers the radio. One plain-clothes dick asks the questions, the other takes the notes. Sometimes I think the only time they go solo is to the dentist. Or to bed. Or to kill themselves.

  I went out into the outer office where a client had been waiting for ten minutes for me to wrap up a phone call. I nodded to him, but the six-footer was already on his feet, brown shoes, brown suit, brown eyes, brown hair. It was a relief his name wasn’t Brown.

  I said, “I can see you now, Mr. Hanson.”

  At her reception desk to one side of my inner-office door, Velda—a raven-haired vision in a white blouse and black skirt—was giving me a faintly amused look that said she had made him, too.

  Mr. Hanson nodded back. There was no nervous smile, no anxiety in his manner at all. Generally, anybody needing a private investigator is not at ease. When I walked toward him, he extended a hand for me to shake, but I moved right past, going to the door and pulling it open.

  His partner was standing with his back to the wall, like a sentry, hands clasped behind his back. He was a little smaller than Hanson, wearing a different shade of brown, going wild with a tie of yellow and white stripes. Of course, he was younger, maybe thirty, where his partner was pushing forty.

  “Why don’t you come in and join your buddy,” I said, and made an after-you gesture.

  This one didn’t smile either. He simply gave me a long look and, without nodding or saying a word, stepped inside and stood beside Hanson, like they were sharing the wrong end of a firing squad.

  Something was tickling one corner of Velda’s pretty mouth as I closed the door and marched the cops into my private office.

  I got behind my desk and waved at the client’s chairs, inviting them to sit down. But cops don’t like invitations and they stayed on their feet.

  Rocking back, I said, “You fellas aren’t flashing any warrants, meaning this isn’t a search party or an arrest. So have a seat.”

  Reluctantly, they did.

  Hanson’s partner, who looked like his feelings had been hurt, said, “How’d you make us?”

  I don’t know how to give enigmatic looks, so I said, “Come off it.”

  “We could be businessmen.”

  “Businessmen don’t wear guns on their hips, or if they do, they could afford a suit tailored for it. You’re too clean-cut to be hoods, but not enough to be feds. You’re either NYPD or visiting badges from Jersey.”

  This time they looked at each other and Hanson shrugged. Why fight it? They were cops with a job to do; this was nothing personal. He casually reached in a side suit coat pocket and flicked a folded hundred-dollar bill onto the desk as if leaving a generous tip.

  “Okay,” I said. “You have my attention.”

  “We want to hire you.”

  The way he hated saying it made it tough for me to keep a straight face. “Who is we?”

  “You said it before,” Hanson said. “NYPD.” He almost choked, getting that out.

  I pointed at the bill on the desktop. “Why the money?”

  “To keep this matter legal. To insure confidentiality. Under your licensing arrangement with the state of New York, you guarantee that by acceptance of payment.”

  “And if I reject the offer?”

  For a moment I thought both of them finally would smile, but they stifled the effort, even if their eyes bore a hint of relief.

  Interesting—they wanted me to pass.

  So I picked up the hundred, filled out a receipt, and handed it to Hanson. He looked at it carefully, folded it, and tucked it into his wallet.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked them.

  Hanson composed himself and folded his hands in his lap. They were big hands, but flexible. He said, “This was not the department’s idea.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  He took a few moments to look for the words. “I’m sure you know, Hammer, that there are people in government who have more clout than police chiefs or mayors.”

  I nodded. He didn’t have to spell it out. Hell, we both knew what he was getting at.

  There was the briefest pause and his eyes went to my phone and then around the room. Before he could ask, I said, “Yes, I’m wired to record client interviews …no, I didn’t hit the switch. You’re fine.”

  But they glanced at each other just the same.

  I said, “If you’re that worried, we can take it outside …onto the street, where we can talk.”

  Hanson nodded, already getting up. “Let’s do it that way then.”

  The three of us went into the outer office. I pau
sed to tell Velda I wasn’t sure how long this would take. The amusement was gone from her dark eyes now that she saw I was heading out with this pair of obvious coppers.

  We used the back door to the semi-private staircase the janitor used for emptying the trash, and went down to the street. There you can talk. Traffic and pedestrians jam up microphones, movement keeps you away from listening ears and, stuck in the midst of all those people, you have the greatest privacy in the world.

  We strolled. It was a sunny spring morning but cool.

  A block and a half later, Hanson said, “A United States senator is in Manhattan to be part of a United Nations conference.”

  “One of those dirty jobs somebody’s gotta do, I suppose.”

  “While he’s in town, there’s an item the senator would like you to recover.”

  Suddenly this didn’t sound so big-time, senator or not.

  I frowned. “What’s this, a simple robbery?”

  “No. There’s nothing ‘simple’ about this situation. But there are aspects of it that make you …ideal.”

  My God, he hated to admit that.

  I said, “Your people have already been on it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not your concern, Hammer.”

  Not my concern?

  We stopped at a red light at the street corner and I asked, “Where’s the FBI in this, if there’s investigating to do? A U.S. senator ought to be able pull those strings.”

  “This is a local affair. Strictly New York.”

  But not something the NYPD could handle.

  The light changed and we started ambling across the intersection in the thick of other pedestrians. There was something strange about the term Hanson used—‘recovery.’ If not a robbery, was this mystery item something simply …lost? Or maybe I was expected to steal something. I deliberately slowed the pace and started looking in store windows.

  Hanson said, “You haven’t asked who the senator is.”