AHMM, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The music stopped and the man spoke through a microphone. “Testing. Mickey Mouse is in the house. Testing."

  Two customers who had been sitting at one of the tables rose abruptly and made a beeline for the front door as if they had just remembered leaving their cars outside with the engines running. The elderly man who had been hanging on the bar vanished into the men's room.

  A rear entrance, whose existence Auburn hadn't even expected, opened with a crash and Sergeant Kestrel burst into the room with service revolver pointing heavenward. “Police!” he announced in a shattering tenor. “Everybody stay where you are. Keep both hands in sight."

  As soon as his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, Kestrel advanced to Auburn's table and stood behind him like a guardian angel.

  "What kind of game are you playing, Kestrel?” snorted Auburn.

  "Your cover's blown.” Kestrel stood with his back to the fireplace, sweeping the room with his watchful gaze. “Time to fade."

  Auburn stayed where he was. “Will you get real and get out of my face? This isn't Public Safety's operation, it's the Feds'. And I'm in about as much danger in here as if I was at an ice cream social."

  Kestrel retired in good order, looking slightly crestfallen but maintaining his vigilance to the end and not holstering his weapon until after he disappeared the way he had come. The music started again.

  Eight-Ball Zook appeared at Auburn's elbow. “Man,” he said in a deep growl that just barely made it out of his throat and through his teeth, “you some kinda Oreo."

  He leaned forward with his hands flat on the table and his single eye showing a lot of white like a frightened horse. But Auburn thought it was probably a long time since Eight-Ball had been frightened. “You come ‘roun’ here shuckin’ and jivin’ like a jackleg brotha and you ain't nothin’ but the Big Foe hissef."

  Auburn shook his head. “Not this week. I done laid some cross words on the wrong honky, and the Big Man done hung me out to dry. And then—"

  "I hear what you sayin',” gargled Zook. “But who this Mista Snow I jus’ see in here wavin’ a joint up in my face?"

  Everybody in the place was waiting for the answer. “Will you listen here to me?” said Auburn. “They come ‘roun’ an’ ast me would I hep find out who wasted Malabar Lewis."

  "You mean B.F. Lewis, what crashed his car last night?"

  "That's the man. You know him?"

  Zook looked off into his favorite corner, just this side of infinity, and nodded.

  "'Course I did."

  "He in here last night?"

  "If he was, I didn’ see him."

  "What kinda stuff he deal?"

  "I don’ know nuffin’ ‘bout no dealin'."

  Auburn leaned closer. “Lewis, he dead and gone. Nuffin’ you do gonna hurt him. If he—"

  "Okay, now, you listen here to me, Mista Cop what got hung up to dry. Ain't nobody sell no drugs in this place, no time. And that the square bidness. Man, that would be ugly. And God don't like ugly."

  He went back to the bar to serve customers, and the waitress reappeared at the fireside.

  "You neva finish you drink,” Auburn told her.

  She picked up her glass without sitting down. “Dippin’ ‘roun’ this place,” she said, “could get you one upside the head."

  "Yeah,” agreed Auburn, fixing her with a hostile glare, “'specially when somebody in here drops on you."

  She leaned over the stone curb around the fireplace, picked up the twisted piece of paper she had flipped inside it a few minutes earlier, and laid it on the table in front of Auburn.

  "Honey,” she said, “now you owe me. Big time."

  "What this?"

  She slapped his hand. “Don’ you touch that. If you keep your eyes on Kaneesha's fingas instead of someplace else, you might notice Kaneesha use her finganails—"

  "I ain’ got no two-inch finganails."

  "You betta not have no two-inch finganails."

  She sat down at the table and held down a corner of the paper with one nail while Auburn untwisted the rest of it with the eraser end of a pencil so as not to add his prints to any that might already be on it. It was a piece about three inches square, apparently torn from a notepad, and it bore the printed logo of Zerbat's House of Magic at Tunbridge Mall along with the phone number of the store. The only writing on it was a string of playing card symbols: 8 (club) A (club) K (spade) 7 (heart) K (club) A (club) 7 (spade)...

  "Where this come from?"

  "White dude. Set at that table ova there las’ night.” She pointed to a table even closer to the fireplace than Auburn's. “I see him throw that in the fire right before he lef', but he missed."

  "He drunk?"

  "He workin’ on it. Put down three double whiskeys."

  "He playin’ cards?"

  "No. Just chillin’ out by hissef."

  "A white dude."

  "Uh-huh. I ast him did he have the jungle fever."

  "You ast him that? What he say?"

  "Nuffin'. Just give me the red eye."

  "How long he here?"

  "Come in about eleven, hung out till we close."

  "What he look like?"

  "Well, he wadn’ no diesel like you, baby. Skinny little bone of a dude, with one them chin beards."

  "How old?"

  "Maybe thirty-five. Wearin’ one them camouflage jacket with a hood. Button’ right up to his neck."

  "Ever see him before?"

  "Nope.” Kaneesha stood up and gestured vaguely toward the other tables. “Gotta drift."

  Auburn found the bakery truck parked out in front, near the highway. Thawl and Wickham were strangely taciturn, and they had nothing whatever to say to Kestrel. But if Kestrel was abashed by his gaffe in trying to rescue Auburn from the jaws of death, he didn't let it show as he resumed possession of the microphone and transmitter.

  "What did Lewis have on him besides that tennis ball full of pebbles?” asked Auburn.

  Kestrel seemed less than enthusiastic about discussing evidence with a public safety officer not in good standing. “Just the usual junk,” he said. “And a piece of scratch paper that said, ‘Hazmat 3:30.’”

  "Has which?"

  "Hazmat. Hazardous materials. There's a sign up on the interstate, just outside the city limits, that gives an alternate route for vehicles carrying hazardous materials."

  Auburn stepped out of the truck and shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked along Route 21. Clearly visible in the distance was the interstate overpass where Lewis's car had struck the concrete support.

  "How far is that sign from here?"

  Kestrel stepped down beside him and pointed. “You can see it right there to the left of the overpass."

  "But Lewis's car was down here on Highway 21, right? It didn't flip off the interstate?"

  "Correct. It did not."

  "Anything else on that paper? Printed name or address?"

  "No. It was a strip torn off the margin of a newspaper."

  "Did Lewis have any playing cards on him or in the car?"

  "What's with the playing cards? You asked that waitress about cards."

  "Just an idea.” As a private citizen, at least for the time being, Auburn felt no obligation to share any evidence he happened to have in his possession with a representative of the official force. “By the way,” he said, “thanks for what you did in there. Sorry if I got kind of—"

  "It's okay. Forget it."

  The afternoon had been a learning experience for Auburn, if nothing else. David Kestrel—rigid, compulsive, aloof—had put his life on the line, or at least thought he was doing so, to protect a brother officer toward whom his feelings were lukewarm at best.

  The federal agents dropped him back home around four o'clock with half-hearted expressions of gratitude. Maybe, thought Auburn, in the future they'd think twice about leaning so heavily on Public Safety for technical support and supplementary personnel.

  Without changing clothes, he set out for
Tunbridge Mall. Although he was under suspension, he hadn't yet been deprived of his car, which bore city plates. He left the car in a distant corner of the vast mall parking lot and walked a quarter of a mile in bright, breezy March afternoon weather to the north atrium.

  He'd never set foot inside Zerbat's House of Magic, but the facade of the store was well familiar to him, particularly since he'd recently taken to watching late night TV. Every night at midnight, Channel 8 broadcast a two-minute “Witching Hour” news and weather spot from the north atrium. The spot was sponsored by the House of Magic and was shot live in front of the store, which was situated almost next door to the television studio.

  The mall seethed with the usual late afternoon throng of shoppers, idlers, and adolescents just released from the bondage of school. Joining the swarm and allowing himself to be propelled along by it, Auburn gave the House of Magic a quick preliminary walk-by. Signs across the top of the front window announced the shop's stock in trade: Tricks—Games—Novelties—Books—Party Items. Displayed in the window was the usual merchandise of such establishments—sneeze powder and exploding cigars, vampire blood and chattering false teeth. An illuminated and animated clown mask changed unceasingly from a smile to a frown and back to a smile again.

  Several playing cards, not of standard dimensions but from a deck of oversize stage cards, were strung out in seemingly random order across the bottom of the showcase. When he was well past the store Auburn consulted the slip of paper Kaneesha had given him and verified that the sequence of cards listed on it was ex-actly the sequence of the cards in the window.

  Turning, he joined a stream of people moving in the opposite direction for a second walk past Zerbat's. And then he noticed something he'd missed a minute earlier because of his absorption in the playing cards. The store next door to the House of Magic was Petownik's for Pets, and its front window display featured a huge tropical fish tank with a layer of smooth white pebbles at the bottom.

  Auburn didn't venture into the House of Magic, but he loitered long enough outside this time to see a clerk, or perhaps the proprietor, demonstrating something to a customer. The clerk was wearing a sham tuxedo and a shiny black top hat rather than a camouflage jacket with a hood, but his skeletal physique and goatee beard fitted Kaneesha's description of the man who had hung around the Teutonia Grotto for several hours before Malabar Lewis's murder.

  Auburn went home and after considerable searching found a deck of cards. His card-playing experience in recent years had been confined to games of Uno and Go Fish! with his niece and nephew. He had only the vaguest notions of the rules of games like poker, bridge, and euchre, and he had never played solitaire in his life.

  It was almost beyond doubt that the arrangement of cards in the window of the magic store, which was broadcast to about twenty counties daily at midnight, conveyed some kind of message to those who understood the code. Auburn decided, without much hope of success, to try a simple substitution cipher first.

  Supposing that the eight of clubs represented the eighth letter, H, then the ace should be A, and the king of spades should be the thirteenth letter, M. That at least was a word, if not a very promising one. But the seven of hearts should be G, and the next two letters were M and A.

  It quickly dawned on him that using the number values of the cards could give only the first thirteen letters of the alphabet, but that any two suits combined would yield exactly the needed twenty-six numbers. Very little further experimentation was needed to show him that the black suits, clubs and spades, represented the first and second halves of the alphabet respectively. Thus the king of spades stood not for M but for Z, and the intended word was obviously “Hazmat,” the word on the scrap of paper Lewis had in his pocket when he died.

  In that case, the seven of hearts, and the deuce of hearts further along, must have been inserted as nulls to prevent the casual observer from noticing that the message consisted only of black cards. And the two treys of diamonds, followed by a joker, stood for three thirty, the time on Lewis's paper and near enough to the time at which he had been murdered.

  Auburn had no doubt that any of a half dozen colleagues downtown would have looked up information for him that he couldn't access from home. But he didn't want to get anybody in trouble for revealing classified data to an officer under suspension. More importantly, as a matter of personal pride he was determined to solve this puzzle by his own resources.

  He consulted the Better Business Bureau site on the Web. The entry for Zerbat's House of Magic listed, under Nature of Business, “Retail sales of novelty items, games, playing cards,” and under Principals, “Mendel Petownik, Owner” and “Miko Zerbat, Manager.” The store had been in business for four years and the bureau had processed no customer complaints during the preceding three-year reporting period.

  The Nature of Business given for Petownik's for Pets was “Retail sales of domestic pets and tropical fish, pet feeds, health and grooming products, cages, aquariums and related equipment.” Mendel Petownik was listed as the owner of this firm also. The pet store had been in business for nine years and the bureau had processed only a small volume of minor complaints from customers.

  Further research at the computer told Auburn that Petownik was not only one of the owners of Tunbridge Mall but also heavily involved in other local retail and development projects. Zerbat belonged to a professional magicians’ organization and put on magic shows and demonstrations of card tricks for small groups.

  Auburn returned to his project of finishing the basement in hopes that the data on the murder of Malabar Lewis would somehow arrange themselves in his subconscious while he was measuring and sawing and nailing. Such tactics had worked for him before. But by the time he knocked off work late that evening, he had collected only another Band-Aid on his right index finger and a throbbing welter of blood under his left thumbnail.

  At midnight he watched, and taped, the Witching Hour news and weather spot on Channel 8. The cards in the display window of the House of Magic were arranged exactly as before. The clown face, though still lit up, had been stopped with its red rubber lips drawn down in a woeful frown.

  Auburn passed the next few days in a muddy blur of amateur carpentry and wildly erratic eating and sleeping habits. But every night at midnight he studied the sequence of cards in the window of the magic shop. On the fourth night the cards were different. And the clown was smiling.

  It took him a matter of seconds to decipher the message of the cards. “Skogstrom 2:45.” This obviously referred to Skogstrom State Park, and more particularly to the sign on the interstate indicating the exit nearest to the park. But there was one sign for eastbound traffic and another for westbound, and they were probably about a mile apart.

  Lewis's fatal rendezvous had been near where Route 21 passed under the interstate. Probably the hazmat sign was one of several markers for sites where one could approach the interstate on some lesser highway, or even on a country road, close enough to collect a weighted tennis ball tossed from a car on the interstate.

  The interstate itself formed the southern boundary of the park, and the main access road ran parallel to it for half a mile. There were only private residences and farmsteads on the south side of the interstate. Inevitably, then, the Skogstrom sign meant by the message was the one for the westbound lanes of the interstate.

  On the assumption that the intended time was again a.m. and that tonight was the night, Auburn had a sandwich and two cups of coffee before setting out a little after two o'clock for the contact point.

  The night was dark and cold, with a hint of frost. A sliver of moon and, once he got away from the city lights, a sprinkling of stars showed that there was no cloud cover. As he neared his destination he began to reflect on the fact that Lewis had apparently been slain after keeping just such a rendezvous as this one, and that the man who had arranged the cards in the window was probably his killer. Had the clown been smiling that night?

  Had the card message been a trap for Lew
is? Wasn't it possible that tonight's message was a trap for Auburn? Kaneesha had passed the word to the patrons of the Teutonia that he was a cop, even before Kestrel's one-man raid. Had she later told somebody else about showing him the paper with playing card symbols that Miko Zerbat had left by the fireplace? The night seemed sud-denly colder despite the steady flow of warm air from the heater. He sorely missed the familiar weight of his service revolver against the left side of his chest.

  Traffic on the interstate was moderately heavy at two thirty a.m., but there were few big trucks, and even fewer vehicles in the slow lane. As Auburn passed the sign saying skogstrom state park next right he saw no cars stopped either on the shoulder or on the access road that paralleled the highway here, separated from it only by a five-foot wire fence. He took the exit, crossed over to the eastbound lane, backtracked to the next interchange, and headed west once again on the interstate. His dashboard clock said two forty when he pulled off on the right shoulder about three hundred yards short of the park sign and killed his lights.

  After waiting for a lull in the flow of traffic, he slipped out of the car and crouched down on its right side where the lights of passing cars couldn't pick him up. With a fervent prayer that a state trooper wouldn't happen along in the next few minutes with nothing better to do than investigate a vehicle abandoned on the shoulder, he settled himself to await developments.

  The air near the ground was damp and chilly, and each passing car sent a cold wind sweeping under Auburn's car to scatter pebbles and throw another shiver up his spine. Even the slower cars were doing more than sixty, and from his point of vantage—or disadvantage—they seemed to be shooting past like rockets. Or bullets.

  At precisely two forty-five a car traveling in the right lane whipped past Auburn's position and pulled to a stop on the shoulder just opposite the park sign. As nearly as Auburn could tell by the uncertain and shifting light, the driver was alone in the car. Without switching off his headlights the driver leaned across the front passenger's seat and skillfully tossed two objects, one at a time, out the right front window of the car and over the wire fence into the darkness of the park access road. Auburn would have wagered a week's salary that they were green tennis balls.