EQMM, June 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He waited till after dark the next evening, when he felt safer out on the streets. He would have taken a taxi, but he didn't know Chloe's address except that it had been somewhere on Richmond Hill. He'd decided to walk, wearing the suit and the new tie and the Je t'adore.

  The house was higher up the steep hill than he remembered. He'd been on cloud nine when he'd come here before. Tonight the place seemed to be in darkness. He hoped she was home. As he opened the gate and walked up the small path towards the porch a pair of coach lamps came on and a security light dazzled him.

  A voice at his side said, “What do you want?"

  He turned to find himself almost nose to nose with the scary Brady.

  Should have realised Chloe's house would be under guard, he thought. “I, em—"

  Brady cut in, his tone and manner transformed. “It's you, boss. Sorry. Didn't expect you so early."

  The new tie, the artificial light, or the unscheduled appearance. Whatever it was, Brady himself had fallen for it.

  Herbie shrugged and smoothly got into character. “Make yourself useful and let me in. Is she home?"

  "Yes, boss.” Brady produced a key and opened the door.

  Herbie stepped inside. “See we're not disturbed."

  "You bet.” The door closed.

  Chloe's voice called out, “Who's there?"

  "It's okay,” Herbie called back. “It's me."

  "Hey, what a wonderful surprise!” She came into the hall and hugged him. Then she stood back and smoothed her hand under his tie. “This is new. Cool. And you smell so nice. Someone knows how to turn a girl on."

  He'd been rehearsing a little speech about the dangers he was in now that The Weasel had been murdered, but it would have to wait. Chloe was still holding his tie, loosening it. She said, “Shall we go upstairs?"

  Herbie said, “Why not?"

  And that was how he finally got his benefit night. Deceitful? Yes. Unforgivable? No. Not in the light of what happened. Two or three times she said, “You're amazing. They should lock you up more often. I swear you're bigger than ever."

  He said, “It's because of you. So amazing. I've waited so long for this.” He was coming to his third climax when there was a bang like a car backfiring.

  Chloe said, “Was that in my head, or did you hear it, too?"

  "It was out in the street."

  "Yes. Hold me closer, Jimmy. Don't stop."

  He didn't, but he felt compelled to say, “Actually, I'm Herbie."

  She was crying out in ecstasy.

  Finally the moment passed and she said, “You were kidding, of course."

  "No.” He paused. “I did say I'd like to see you again."

  He was prepared for the backlash and he deserved it. But she said nothing to him. Instead she reached for the phone at her bedside and pressed one of the buttons. “Brady, was that a gun going off just now?"

  Herbie was so close that he heard every word of Brady's answer.

  "It's okay, Chloe. I dealt with it."

  "What was it?"

  "Only that little runt we used as a double. He tried to get past me, making out he was the boss, so I totaled him."

  "Oh my God! Killed him?"

  "Put one through his head. No problem. He was a nobody. I'll take care of the body."

  She put down the phone. She had her hand to her mouth. “The dumbass shot Jimmy. We're all finished."

  "I'm not finished,” Herbie said. “But I could have been. Seems to me I've had a lucky escape."

  "We were all on his payroll."

  "Do you know where he kept the money?"

  "Various accounts under other names."

  "You have the details?"

  "I know where to look for them. But Jimmy always collected the cash in person."

  Herbie folded his arms and grinned. “Then it looks as if you're going to need my help."

  There was a long pause. Chloe's eyes widened. “Would you?"

  "No one else needs to know he's gone,” Herbie said. “Not even Brady. Let him carry on thinking he murdered me. I'll feel safer that way."

  "You'll have to practise the signatures he used."

  "I can do that."

  "And if you're going to carry this off, you'll have to take over his life."

  "And all that goes with it,” Herbie said, stretching his limbs.

  * * * *

  The police never succeeded in solving the murder of The Weasel, or the disappearance of Herbie Collins. But they earned some praise when the crime rate in West London dipped dramatically. The Calhoun gang seemed to have lost interest in armed robberies and protection rackets. The probation service said it spoke volumes for prison as a instrument of reform.

  Herbie moved in with Chloe and found no difficulty adapting to the lifestyle of a millionaire ex-crook. On a Saturday he was often seen in the directors’ box at Chelsea and he'd pass the evenings in the Black Bess with his new friends. The nights were always spent with Chloe and the last thing she would whisper to him before falling asleep was always, “You're the best Suit."

  (c) 2008 by Peter Lovesey

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  Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  As I've no doubt said before, the world of blogs is one of constant change. Almost as soon as I recommended Bill Peschel's Reader's Almanac (www.planetpeschel.com/index), it disappeared. And almost as soon as you read about its disappearance in this column, it returned. So you can once again check each day for the important births and deaths that occurred on that date, and there's always a writing-related quotation, as well.

  A new blog worth your attention is August West's Vintage Hardboiled Reads (vinpulp.blogspot.com), which presents reviews of, well, vintage hardboiled reads. Recent ones include Jonathan Craig's Renegade Cop (1954), Harry Whittington's short story “Flight to Nowhere” (from a 1953 issue of Male), and The Convertible Hearse (1957) by Bill Gault. Each review is complemented by a cover scan. This is a blog that I hope will be around for a long time.

  Victor Gischler's Gun Monkeys was nominated for an Blog Bytes Edgar and his follow-up crime novels have been equally good. The title of his latest book, scheduled for July, is Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse, which might not be crime-related, though we should never judge a book by its cover or title, right? At any rate, Victor Gischler's Blogpocalypse (victorgischler.blogspot.com) will keep you posted on what the author's doing and present his ruminations on such things as popular culture and beer.

  Robert B. Parker writes so many different series, not to mention Westerns and books for young readers, that you'd think he wouldn't have much time for blogging. And maybe he doesn't, since his posts are few and far between. However, if you're a fan (as I am), you'll want to check out his blog (robertbparker.typepad. com/robertbparker) occasionally just to find out what he's up to.

  Mark Coggins’ current novel is Runoff, which is just about perfect for the election season. His blog, Riordan's Desk (riordansdesk.blogspot.com), isn't political, however. It has a lot of photos, including those of San Francisco locations used in Runoff, and it has links to his discussion of The New Black Mask, which should be of interest to readers of this publication. The links lead to The Rap Sheet (therapsheet.blogspot.com), a blog mentioned here previously and one that's always worth a visit.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Bill Crider

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  Novelette: CRUEL AND UNUSUAL by Clark Howard

  A writer who's a better research-er than Clark Howard would be hard to find. The five-time Readers Award winner is always lacing his stories with inter-esting facts and often, as here,sets them against the backgroundof contemporary issues. Perhapshe's drawing on skills develop-ed in his complementary careeras a top author of true crime.

  * * * *

  Art by Mark Evans

  * * * *

  Readers who enjoy this new Keller story from Lawrence Block—adapted from one of the vignettes that comprised his 2006 Keller book Hit Parade—won't want to miss t
he new novel starring the hit man, Hit and Run, sure to be witty, and due to be released by William Morrow in June of 2008. Also in 2008, Hard Case Crime will reissue one of Mr. Block's vintage mysteries, A Diet of Treacle.

  * * * *

  Loretta Rudd made the decision that would eventually kill her when she was just eighteen years old, a senior getting ready to graduate from a small high school outside the rural county seat of Nowers County, which was derisively referred to as “Nowheres” County.

  The decision that Loretta made was to tell the boy that she loved, and who loved her, that she had decided to marry someone else. The boy who loved her, a senior at another high school in a neighboring county, had met Loretta at a Friday-night football game between the two schools three years earlier when they were both ftfteen; they had been going steady ever since, and had become cautiously intimate. When she told him of her decision, he was stunned.

  "You're not serious,” he said, half thinking, hoping, it was a joke of some kind. “Tell me you're just kidding, Retta.” He was the only one in her life who ever called her “Retta."

  "I'm very serious,” Loretta declared. “I've been seeing Carter Graham while you were away at ROTC camp. And he's asked me to marry him."

  Carter Graham, then completing his third year at an elite private university, had been home on spring break. He was a local rich kid, the only son in a family that owned half of Nowers County and had every acre of it planted in soybeans.

  "I'm sorry,” Loretta said, and did seem sincerely so, “but I'm tired of being a small-town girl in nowheres, from a nowheres family, going nowheres. Carter's got one more year of college and then he'll go into his father's b usiness and we'll live in a big house up on The Hill with plenty of money for anything I want.” The Hill was an exclusive con clave where only the six wealthy families in the county lived .

  "But I thought we were going to move to Memphis or Atlanta or someplace after we graduated,” her spurned young lover tried to reason. “I thought we were going to find us a place to live, and jobs—"

  "Find what kind of place to live?” she challenged. “A tacky little furnished apartment? And what kind of jobs? Me a waitress and you a delivery man or something? No thank you.” She put a hand on his bare chest, one of the last times she would touch him intimately. “I'm sorry, baby. I just can't."

  "But, Retta, that would just be a start.” He was pleading now. “We could both go to night school, eventually get degrees in something—"

  "Eventually! When? Seven or eight years from now? Ten?"

  "Retta, sweetheart—"

  "No! I've made up my mind. I just can't stand being poor any longer.” She took her hand away from his chest. An ant crawled across his arm. He started to slap it, but Loretta stopped his hand and flicked the ant away with one finger. “I'm sorry for doing this to you, sweetheart, truly I am. But I've got to do it.” She kissed him briefly on the lips, the kiss salty with tears both hers and his. “You'll get over me, sugar. I know you will. Just wait and see—"

  * * * *

  Robert McWade, the state director of corrections, was just finishing breakfast when the phone rang and a moment later Delia, his housekeeper, brought him a portable handset.

  "It's the governor, Mr. Bobby,” she said.

  McWade swallowed his coffee, took the phone, and said, “Good morning, sir."

  "I thought you and I had agreed that you were to call me Grant,” said the voice of Governor Grant Marlow.

  "That's only when we're drinking together,” McWade said. “In private."

  "After all the years we've been friends, after you helped me cheat my way through our freshman year in college copying your notes, how would you like it if I started calling you ‘Mr. Director'?"

  "You're the governor, you can call me anything you want to."

  "You're a hard-head, Bobby McWade,” the governor said. “Listen, come over to my office, will you? Fred Willis and Art Meadows are going to join us. We've just received a federal court order to stay the Carter Graham execution."

  McWade frowned. Fred Willis was the state attorney general, Arthur Meadows the state surgeon general. “Stay it on what grounds?” he asked.

  "I'll tell you when you get here,” Marlow said. “Hustle on over."

  As he turned off the handset, the frown on Robert McWade's face morphed into an expression of perplexity. What possible basis could a federal court have used to stay Carter Graham's execution? In the three years since the condemned man had been convicted of beating his wife, Loretta Rudd Graham, unconscious with a hammer, then putting her in the Tuskey River with a spare tire tied to her ankles, his case had been appealed to, and rejected by, the state supreme court, the federal district court, the federal court of appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Every possible appellate avenue had been explored and denied. And Governor Grant Marlow had declined to commute the wealthy landowner's sentence to life imprisonment because of the heinous nature of the murder: An autopsy had shown water in the victim's lungs, indicating that she had been drowned. Loretta Rudd Graham had still been alive when her husband had dumped her in the Tuskey River with that tire tied to her ankles.

  Carter Graham, at present on Death Row in Parmalee State Prison, was due to be executed by lethal injection in just three days.

  Now that proceeding apparently was off.

  * * * *

  Grant Marlow, at forty-six, with a good firm chin, a full head of attractively graying hair, a wryly engaging smile, and a photographic memory of names, faces, and places, was the perfect image of a governor, someday a United States senator, possibly even a President of the United States. He was currently in his seventh year as governor, and firmly believed the Senate and the White House to be in his future.

  "Come in, boys, come in,” he greeted his director of corrections, attorney general, and surgeon general, as McWade, Fred Willis, and Arthur Meadows came through the door. Willis had a distinctly sour expression on his face. He had been fighting Carter Graham's slick, expensive lawyers for three years, was within seventy-two hours of being done with it, and his expression communicated that he was not a happy camper.

  When the three men were seated across from him, the governor said, “Okay, Freddie, give us the gory details."

  Willis opened his briefcase and removed a four-page document stamped on each page with a U.S. District Court seal. “It's a new approach to the cruel-and-unusual-punishment appeal,” he said.

  McWade groaned. “That's been up and down the court ladder dozens of times in dozens of states. I thought the law was settled on that issue."

  "Generally it is,” said Willis. “But now a new twist has been added to it. The appeal doesn't contend that lethal injection itself is cruel and unusual; it contends that the method being used to execute a person by lethal injection is cruel and unusual."

  Both the governor and McWade shook their heads in confusion. Meadows, the surgeon general, merely raised his eyebrows in curiosity.

  "I don't understand,” the governor said.

  "Neither do I,” McWade agreed. “What's the difference?"

  Willis shrugged. “I don't really see a difference myself,” he admitted. “But the district court made a distinction. Basically, what Graham's lawyers are contending, and what the court is agreeing to, is that there's no way to tell whether a person being executed by lethal injection can feel any pain between the time the first drug, the sedative, puts him to sleep, and the time the second drug paralyzes his body, and the third drug stops his heart. They say that the current administration of the drugs leaves open the possibility that the condemned man is conscious of what's happening, realizes what's being done to his body, and therefore suffers an agonizing death—which is cruel and unusual. One of the points they make for this possibility is that the condemned man may have a strong enough constitution to subconsciously resist the drug being used to put him to sleep."

  "That's ridiculous,” McWade said. He turned to Arthur Meadows. “What about it, Art?"
r />   The surgeon general shrugged. “In theory,” he admitted, “that could be true. In practice, however, I'd say it was impossible.” Rising, the doctor paced the room for a moment, then turned as if facing an audience of medical students. “The first drug administered is sodium thiopental, known more commonly as sodium pentothal. It's a barbiturate that induces general anesthesia when administered intravenously. Very fast-working drug. It reaches effective clinical concentration in the brain within thirty seconds—"

  "Which means?” the governor asked.

  "Which means that it puts the person being injected into a state of unconsciousness in which that person is unaware of what is happening, is pain-free, is completely immobile, and will have no memory of the period of time during which the anesthesia lasts."

  "Go on,” Governor Marlow said, nodding.

  "For surgical procedures, patients are given a dose of one hundred to one hundred fifty milligrams over a period of ten to fifteen seconds. For executions, in our state, a dose of two grams is administered. That amounts to two thousand milligrams. That dosage alone may be lethal, depending on the person's fat-solubility level and the individual brain's cell reactions to the drug."

  "Isn't there a way to measure the effect the drug has on a particular individual?” McWade asked.

  "To some degree. That's the job of an anesthesiologist—but, of course, medical ethics prohibit anesthesiologists or any other medical doctors from participating in a legal execution. As you know, we have one of our state doctors there to pronounce the condemned person dead, but that's after it's all over. That's not considered participation in the execution itself."

  "Isn't there any other way to measure the effect of the first drug?” the governor asked.

  Arthur Meadows sighed quietly. “Let me answer this way. The brain is truly the most amazing organ in every living creature. Almost any form of life you can think of—birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, mammals—all have brains. And the human brain is the most astonishing of them all. It gives us the power to think, speak, imagine, everything. It controls our body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, ability to breathe. It accepts a vast flood of information from our eyes, ears, nose, sense of touch. It lets our body stand, sit, walk, talk. It lets us dream. Reason. Experience emotion. All of these tasks are coordinated, controlled, and regulated by an organ about the size of a small head of cauliflower.” He slowly shook his head. “No, we'll never be able to tell for certain what anyone's brain feels in a given circumstance."