EQMM, July 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “I have to ask, Ridley,” Terry said, fluttering his long jet lashes sidelong at her, but looking adoringly at me. “For me?”

  Ridley smirked coyly. “He's taken, sweetie boy.”

  Ridley's eyes flicked to me. “Terry's messing with you,” she said. “Eden wants to see you before the party goes full swing.”

  I smiled and inspected my Adidas.

  “Come with me, honeybunches,” called Terry, flagging his hand over his bare cheeks from behind and walking toward the back door.

  Leaving the house with Terry and having half the crew on the beach see me leaving with Terry made me feel gay enough to skip to his dingy blue Mazda Miata parked on the street, but I resisted.

  Terry fired her up and sputtered onto Webb Way and back up PCH for a short stretch, where he wrenched a hard right onto a road I recognized. My fingers tightened on the armrest when I realized he was taking me to Emerson Haddock's beach house.

  Terry glanced at me, bouncing over a speed bump into the compound. “Not to worry, sweetie,” he said, “Eden's alone. Emerson's at City Hall—called out an hour ago.”

  But I did worry. I had expected Eden and I would meet in a dark bar over in Trancas, or at worst, in the Blue Lounge at Moonshadows up on PCH. I didn't like it but I wanted to see her, and as we neared the house I realized just how very badly I wanted to see her.

  “Here we are, pally,” Terry said, inching over another speed bump and into a slot. “You take it from here.” I turned and stared at him blankly. “I'll be back in thirty—don't be late.”

  I flipped the door handle and felt Terry's hand lock onto my wrist. It was a strong grip.

  I looked back.

  “Take it easy with Eden,” he said in a flat, unaffected voice. “Cuz she's a peach, a real peach, and that bastard is mean.” His face had set up like quick concrete and proffered an unspoken threat. “And if I thought—”

  I quickly and firmly covered the hand on my wrist with mine and drove my thumb between the knuckles of his index and middle fingers in one move. I pressed down hard and broke his hand free, sending a sharp tremor into the boy's upper lip. I got out and started for the house.

  * * * *

  It was a large condo not unlike one I'd sold a few months back not far from here. Built in the prosaic architectural style of most Southern California weekend homes, with a russet barrel-tile roof, Spanish-Mediterranean windows, and a plaster finish slapped on for a rustic effect. The Pacific view was worth a couple million, the mountain view maybe half that, and the home in any other market would fetch maybe three hundred grand.

  Eden was bending over a pair of scuba tanks, holding a large commercial air compressor hose to one, as I ascended the last of two right-angled flights of red brick steps to the deck. The late sun was splashing out its last brilliant rays of the day onto the deep blue Pacific behind her. Her soft blond hair feathered her face in the easy breeze. She didn't see me at first but looked up when I strayed into her peripheral vision.

  We both stood frozen in the moment. Her rich café au lait skin glistened. Her stark sapphire eyes held me like a vise. Her pouty lips quivered slightly, as though she had caught a sudden chill.

  “I thought you wouldn't come,” she finally said. “I thought I'd . . .”

  She had on flared khaki short shorts, a denim workshirt tied tightly at her midriff, and wore a pair of scuffed men's-style work boots. I smiled and thought of the old Snap-On Tool pinup calendars of the past. All she needed was a tool belt.

  I still didn't speak but moved with determined steps to her, taking the hose in my hand and throwing it aside and scooping her into my arms. “Never again,” I said. “He goes today, or I do.” I buried my tongue deep in her mouth. Eden met it with hers and hungrily searched my mouth, biting and nibbling my lips, her long fingernails cutting like razor blades into my back.

  “Never again,” Eden gasped. “My God, how I love you, Nick.”

  * * * *

  We lay there on the warm hardwood deck in the rummage of garments we'd shed, taking in quick but lengthening breaths.

  “He'll be there tonight,” she finally said. “It's not a good time—”

  “Bullshit,” I snapped. “There'll never be a good time, but it will be tonight nevertheless.”

  Eden reached for my arm. “Darling, please. Tomorrow morning, I promise, but don't ruin Ridley's party, she has clients in.”

  I rolled my head and met her eyes.

  “Just for tonight, sweetheart,” she whispered. “I swear.”

  I chewed the corner of my lower lip for a moment, took in some air and released it long and slow. “Tomorrow—not a day more, Eden. I mean it. And so help me, if that pompous bastard even looks crossways at me tonight, I'll kick his ass. He put those Gold's Gym faggots on me the other night—”

  “Oh, Nick, surely he didn't!”

  “Not a doubt in my mind. Or Ridley's, for that matter.”

  Eden's eyes widened and drifted skyward in thought. I could tell the truth had dawned on her. “I'll stay away from you tonight, we can meet at the store tomorrow morning. Eleven.”

  I pulled to my elbows and kissed her deeply.

  That was my last chance to walk away, though I didn't give it a thought at the time.

  * * * *

  The full moon had risen over Malibu Colony, spilling its white light on the placid Pacific. I propped my elbows on the deck railing. Maurice White's husky baritone alternated Philip Bailey's tenor through the doors behind me, as half-naked couples—boy-boy, girl-boy, girl-girl, and two or three combinations I couldn't calculate—nuzzled and swayed slowly to Earth, Wind & Fire's mellow R&B rhythm.

  I doused my smoke and turned around, hung my elbows back on the rail. I was drinking too much. Everyone was drinking too much. The parties in Malibu may begin as soirées but after eleven o'clock they're bashes, just like the ones in Tarzana. Lights were dimming and clothes were loosening. The mean drunk—every party has one—had already let his temper flare like a sunburnt rattlesnake before Ridley hooked his ear and threw him out.

  Emerson Haddock stood chatting casually in the living room with a movie producer who lived a few doors down, and Eden and Ridley had vanished into a back room with a klatch of other women.

  Haddock was a California boy in the extreme, with his highly cultivated tan—too much tan for a man who didn't work or apparently even play outdoors. The scuba gear had belonged to Eden. The outdoors for Emerson was something one experiences from a chaise lounge with an extra-dry martini. His black cigar lisped a twirl of steel-blue rebar from between his fingers as he impressed the producer with something clever enough to chuckle about.

  Suddenly someone screeched and a pride of guests spilled out onto the deck. Someone else shouted that the grunion were making a run on the beach. A few vaulted the deck rail, others hopped down the steps onto the light-dappled sand, and the rest crowded in on me to see onto the beach. Haddock and the producer trailed the others down the stairs with their cocktails.

  I was hunched on the rail watching as a dozen or more naked-to-the-waist partygoers skipped into the foam swinging little plastic pails and squealing, grabbing frantically at wriggling fish, when I felt a tug on my arm. It was Ridley.

  “With me,” she said. “Quick, Nicky. Let's go.”

  I chased Ridley around to the far side of the deck, away from where Haddock and the producer supervised the grunion run. Eden stood in the moonlight with a martini glass sparkling in her hand.

  “Eden's nuts,” Ridley said to me. Then, scowling at Eden, said, “You two don't be long. I'll keep an eye out front.”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Ridley disappear around the edge of the house.

  “Eden couldn't do it all night,” I heard Eden say. I looked back around. She had an evocative smile on her face, the same smile I'd seen the day we met. “Eden had to hold you.”

  I sat my beer on the edge of the cedar rail and walked to her. Eden sat her glass next to it and wrapped her arms
around my waist, burying her head in my chest.

  “Let's get the hell out of here,” I whispered. The fragrance of her hair was like God had created the sea just for her. “We can be in Florida tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, baby,” she said breathily. “I do love you so. . . . You will take me away, won't you? Far from him?”

  There is a thrill like none other I've known. It's the rapture of a reckless stolen moment when the seconds are ticking away and the exhilaration is plaited as tightly in the risk as it is in the romance.

  It was a foolish moment.

  “What is this?” I heard Emerson Haddock bellow from behind me.

  Eden broke free and stepped back and I'll never forget the look on her face, although I didn't think of it at the time. Her eyes romped like a jubilant puppy.

  I turned around and Haddock braced his legs apart, stopping about ten feet from us.

  “I'm taking her away,” I said coolly.

  “You're . . .” He stared into my eyes blankly. “With him, Eden?” he said, still looking at me. “He's a killer . . . . a disgraced policeman running a two-bit real-estate swindle. The authorities are an inch off his heels as I speak.”

  Furor rose in my chest, my lip twitched at the corner, my muscles tensed in my midsection. I did want him dead.

  Emerson's chin made an arrogant jut forward and that wicked twist I'd seen the night he sicced his boys on me worked on his mouth.

  He started to speak again. “I've notified—”

  I brought it in from the hip, throwing all the power my two-hundred-pound frame could muster into the punch. It launched him five feet back into the railing where he flounced liked a Raggedy Ann and sank to the planking. I heard screams in front and behind me but I was already on the councilman.

  I remember yelling something about teaching him to do his dirty work himself and hurling merciless blows into his face and body. I remember strong arms scrabbling at my shoulders and neck and me shaking them away while I continued to pummel Haddock. I remember the sharp metallic taste of hatred on my tongue.

  I remember Ridley helping me to my feet and telling me to go to the beach to cool off while she took care of it.

  The next thing I remember is being wanted for the murder of Los Angeles City Councilman Emerson Haddock.

  * * * *

  The Times headline read HAS ‘JILTED LOVER’ COP KILLED AGAIN? in boldfaced type. I was flopped on a sagging twin bed inside a room at the X Motel on the outskirts of Lancaster, California, a windblown tract of sand and Joshua trees about sixty-five miles northeast of Los Angeles.

  The story went on to give the details of my altercation with Haddock at Ridley's party and my alleged involvement with Eden Folet, Haddock's bride of only nine months. Then it said Haddock was found later that night on his deck in a grizzly scene, brutally murdered.

  Eden had been unavailable for comment at press time and Ridley had slammed the door on a clutch of television reporters. The story showed a photo of me in LAPD blues.

  * * * *

  I had walked the beach for an hour and returned to the party, where several of the guests treated me like a hero and the movie producer avoided me like I wanted to renegotiate my contract. Ridley was a little high, but she made me a drink and pulled me onto the sofa, telling me Eden would be back after getting Haddock settled. She seemed to think there wouldn't be police. Haddock would be up for reelection soon and wouldn't want that kind of press. We agreed it was best I go home and wait for her call.

  I showered and went to bed when I arrived at my home on Maple Drive in Beverly Hills, at around two-thirty.

  I awakened around four in the morning with the sweats and an odd sensation pressing into my chest.

  I poured a drink at my living room bar, idly flipped on the set, sat down on the sofa, kept it muted. The news had a full-screen picture of Emerson Haddock staring out from behind the reporter.

  I hit the sound and knew I was in trouble.

  I flicked the remote and surfed through until I landed on Harvey Levin standing in front of the Haddock condo in Malibu. A handyman was speaking, saying he witnessed the scene just before the police arrived, and that he had been summoned by Ms. Folet from the guesthouse next-door, where he had been living for two months.

  “I ain't never seen anything. . . .” The handyman winced. “There was this hose, one a them air-compressor jobs like at the gas pumps. . . . It was stuffed where the sun don't shine, if you get that—air runnin’ full blast.”

  When questioned further, the man said Haddock's face was black and blue and swollen and his head in a pool of blood. The implication, said the investigative reporter, was that Haddock had been knocked unconscious and sodomized with the air hose, literally blowing his intestines apart.

  I clicked off the television.

  After Ridley's guests had broken off the fight I trundled onto the beach but I had seen Haddock standing to his feet as I stumbled down the steps. He was bloodied but fine, a far cry from anything approaching dead, anyway. I had probably broken his nose and blackened his eyes but had not done any severer damage. I was certain of that.

  Eden had been filling scuba tanks that afternoon when I met her at the house. My fingerprints and DNA would be all over the place.

  I ran like hell.

  * * * *

  I've heard it said that you don't do time, it does you. That is certainly the case on the Row at Quentin. Death Row is like working worry beads with a gun against your head. Worrying is the fun part.

  Terry Hensley, the butch boy toy who took me to Eden on that final day, was found murdered in Elysian Park the week before my trial, and thus was unable to testify as to why my fingerprints and DNA were found on Emerson Haddock's compressor and deck. The authorities said Hensley had been working a glory hole in the men's room there. They never turned up his killer and it wasn't until later I figured out that Eden and Ridley must have recruited Terry to murder Haddock.

  On June ‘6, 2008, Ridley Notions married Eden Folet in a formal two-ring ceremony at a small Unitarian church in the Hollywood Hills. Luc Pierre the chef gave Eden away. When Haddock's will was read, Eden was the sole heir to his thirty-million-dollar fortune.

  Copyright © 2012 by Grant O'Neill

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  * * *

  Fiction: CRUEL COAST

  by Scott Mackay

  Scott Mackay has had more than fifty stories published in magazines such as EQMM, AHMM, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He's a winner of the Arthur Ellis, Canada's premier crime-fiction award, as well as the Okanagan Award for literary short fiction. He's authored some dozen science-fiction and mystery novels. The latest,The Miser of Cherry Hill (Severn House), stars Dr. Deacon, the protagonist of his 2011 EQMM story “The Girl With the Golden Hair."

  The Village Swarts,

  Cape Colony,

  Southern Africa, 1806

  Mrs. Page was shocked to see me again after so many years. She sat on a garden bench outside the widow Doorenspleet's farmhouse, seven years older, a scrape on her forehead, a bandage on her hand, her locks now devoid of the fussy ringlets I remembered so well from our courtship days. So astonished was she to see me again that she stared as if I were a carriage-and-six thundering straight at her.

  As she struggled to recover herself, she said, “I of course heard of your civil advancement in Swellendam, Commissioner Rivers, but never expected to find you here, on this cruel coast. What tricks fate will sometimes play.”

  I regarded her evenly. “I must confess, I had some warning you'd been a passenger aboard the Ancaster.”

  She arched her pretty brow. “A ship's manifest was recovered, then?”

  “Not a manifest, madam, but your old music book, Un Concert de Famille, the volume I gave you for your twenty-first birthday.” An ungenerous tone crept into my voice. “Do you remember the pencil inscription I made on the title page?” I shook my head with elaborate self-effacement. “How silly of me to make such
a solemn profession of love, especially when you turned out to be so inconstant.”

  She glanced away, disconcerted by my accusation, not responding to the charge but instead focusing on the unexpected marine salvage of her music album. “We had so many lovely hours playing from that book. I'm surprised it didn't deteriorate in the seawater.” She paused. “I suppose the governor sent you to investigate the wreck, Commissioner?”

  “He did.”

  She clasped her hands together. “Then have you heard any word of my husband? I've been ever so anxious.”

  I adopted my official tone. “I'm afraid I have some bad news on that score, Mrs. Page. I regret to report that your husband did not survive. He came ashore without breath, and without life. My deepest sympathies for your loss. Villagers in Swarts recovered his body this morning.”

  She took this upsetting intelligence with a lifting of her hands to her mouth. I gave her a few moments, then delivered the rest of the unhappy details.

  “Madam, it is also my grim duty to inform you that my constable in Swarts has determined that your husband's death was suspiciously different from the deaths of the thirty-nine other deceased passengers. And so, as well as investigating the wreck, I've been commissioned by Governor Baird to deliver a full accounting of your husband's troubling demise.”

  Color climbed to her face. She leaned forward, her spine straightening, the corners of her lips pulling back, her doll-like blue eyes growing wide with incomprehension. “I fail to understand, Commissioner.” Her voice shook as she struggled for control. “Did the sea not claim him like so many others? Was he not drowned and washed upon the shore?”

  “Madam, though he was, as you say, washed upon the shore, both my constable and the doctor in Swarts have determined that he was not drowned, but died while still aboard the Ancaster. They've concluded it wasn't the sea that killed him but something of a more sinister nature. The doctor checked his lungs and found no seawater, so he couldn't have drowned. And because of the singular manner of your husband's arrival upon the shore, my constable suspects not a watery death but one more likely caused by foul play.”