AHMM, June 2005
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CONTENTS
Editor's Notes: Crime Notes
Monday, Sweet Monday by John F. Dobbyn
The Body in the Spring by Kevin Prufer
The Method in Her Madness by Tom Savage
Death of an Aztec Princess by Martin Limón
Our Daughter is in Heaven by Elaine Menge
Who's Going to Hang? by Joyce Gibb
The Blackmailers by Harvey O'Higgins
Unsolved by Robert V. Kesling
The Mysterious Photograph
The Story That Won
Booked & Printed
Reel Crime
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Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
June 2005
Vol. 50 No. 6
Dell Magazines
New York
Edition Copyright © 2005
by Dell Magazines,
a division of Crosstown Publications
All rights reserved worldwide.
All stories in Alfred Hitchcock's
Mystery Magazine are fiction.
Any similarities are coincidental.
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine
ISSN 0002-5224 published monthly except for January/February and July/August double issues.
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Editor's Notes: Crime Notes
John F. Dobbyn is known to AHMM readers for his Boston-based stories featuring jockey-turned-P.I. Billy O'Casey. His story this month, “Monday, Sweet Monday,” features Michael Knight, a character from the O'Casey series. In his solo outing Knight, a young defense attorney with a passion for jazz, takes on what looks like a hopeless case. Mr. Dobbyn teaches law at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, and has written a novel featuring Knight and his senior partner Lex Devlin.
Martin Limón has earned critical acclaim for his series of stories featuring George Sueño and Ernie Bascom of the U.S. Army C.I.D. in Seoul, South Korea, in the 1970's; the C.I.D. agents made their debut in these pages in 1991 with “The Black Market Detail.” This fall Soho Press will publish his fourth novel in the series, The Door to Bitterness, and reissue in trade paperback Slicky Boys and Buddha's Money. In this issue, “Death of an Aztec Princess” marks the first AHMM appearance of Gonzo Gonzales, a former cop who is now a P.I. in East L.A., who must penetrate a rough Chicano gang to find out why his young cousin Juanita was murdered.
We also welcome three authors new to AHMM this month. Tom Savage draws on his experience in the theater with “The Method in Her Madness.” Mr. Savage tells us, “I was an actor, started writing plays and screenplays, evolved to mystery/suspense novels because that is what I've always read.” He has published four thrillers and his 1996 novel Valentine, published by Little, Brown, was turned into a film of same name; as T. J. Phillips, he is the author of the Joe Wilder mystery series.
Kevin Prufer, author of “The Body in the Spring,” has published three books of poetry; his poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, and elsewhere, and his latest poetry collection, Fallen from a Chariot, will be published this year by Carnegie Mellon University Press. He is also the editor of the literary journal Pleaides, a professor at Missouri State University, and a collector of ancient Roman coins.
Hailing from Oklahoma, Joyce Gibb makes her fiction debut with “Who's Going to Hang?” Currently working as a psychotherapist, Ms. Gibb has been a junior high school English teacher, a technical editor, a real estate broker, and a proprietor of an herbal apothecary. She tells us her passion is Medieval English history and she is working on more Nicholaa de la Haye stories.
New writers, new characters, familiar pleasures. Enjoy!
—Linda Landrigan
[Back to Table of Contents]
Monday, Sweet Monday by John F. Dobbyn
There are, as they say, only three certainties in life: death, taxes, and a motion session on Monday in the Suffolk County criminal court of Judge Herbert “The Hammer” Sadoski. The first two are unpleasant. The third is hell in CinemaScope.
Being engaged in criminal defense work, and the junior partner of the reigning bear of that particular cave, Alexis Devlin, I awoke on Monday to the prospect of standing before “The Hammer” with at least half a dozen motions to suppress evidence illegally obtained from the apprehended worthies who decorate our client list.
His Honor cut his legal teeth after law school as a prosecutor and never outlived the mindset. He seemed to take unholy delight in lining up my motions like clay turkeys in a shooting gallery and drilling silver bullets through their little hearts.
You might wonder if this is debilitating to the ego. It is. And yet, I can still say “Sweet Monday,” because come tornado, flood, or raging lunatic on the bench, at ten P.M. on any Monday night, I wind down the circular row of steps at 87 Beacon Street like a kid entering Disneyland.
Daddy's Club is a long, dark, subterranean room with a bar against the long left wall, six tables down the center, and a bandstand to the right of the door large enough to accommodate five tight-packed musicians and not one mouse more.
On most nights, but always on Mondays, a third of the stand is consumed by the gargantuan bulk of Charles “Daddy” Hightower himself. The other musicians rotate depending on who's in Boston at the moment.
It should be known that Daddy, as everyone calls him, came up through the ranks of jazz musicians of the stature of Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Mingus, and other pathfinders of the fifties New York scene. He was the bass player of choice for everything from recording sessions to sit-ins among the royalty of New York jazz, until he ran afoul of the boys in a certain Sicilian organization who wanted exclusive ownership of his talents. Daddy was not for sale. They broke most of the bones that can be used to wring magic out of a stand-up bass, and Daddy became a hospital orderly.
Around 1990, one of the musicians he had played with did a stretch as a patient in the Massachusetts General Hospital and recognized him. One thing led to another, and a group of musicians bankrolled the start of Daddy's Club on Beacon Street. From that day on, no competent jazz musician passed through Boston without stopping at Daddy's Club for a sit-in.
On this particular Monday night, I came down those steps with the spent energy of a seventy y
ear old. As always, I found a seat at the bar and cuddled up to the three inches of Famous Grouse scotch that Manny the bartender slipped in front of me. A sweet blanket of Johnny Mercer's “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home,” driven mostly by Daddy on bass, folded over me, and by the end of the second improvised chorus, I was twenty-seven again.
The set ended, and I just floated in the aura of the sounds I had just heard. Daddy was surrounded by musicians giving assorted handshakes and asking about the old days.
I was pulled out of near slumberland by a great beefy hand on my shoulder and Daddy's perspiring ebony face at my left ear.
"What you think of that?"
I turned to that big grinning face.
"You did it again, Daddy. You drove the old man right out of here."
"What old man is that?"
"Doesn't matter. He's gone now. Just us chickens here."
"Then why don't ‘us chickens’ do what God put us here for?"
It was a physical effort to unwind my fingers from the Grouse, but I followed Daddy to the stand. I slid onto the piano bench as I had every Monday night for the past four years. The keys found my fingers, and I waited for Daddy's cue.
In the dark, I saw the tall, lean figure of an African American, closer to my age than Daddy's, work his way through the tables to the stand. I caught the gleam of one of the few rays of light in the place on a saxophone as he got close.
He whispered a bit to Daddy, and I heard a few names I recognized. Daddy leaned over the piano to me.
"Michael, this here's Keno Westoba. Says he's in from Philly. Worked with a couple of the Heath boys down there. That's good by me."
I shook hands with Keno and picked up on an accent from one of the islands.
Daddy started laying down a driving rhythm on bass. I picked up the familiar chord changes of an old Rodgers and Hart standard called “Mountain Greenery” and yelled the name and the key over to Keno. I waded in on the second chorus and ran the melody. Daddy gave the nod to Keno for the third chorus, and I settled down to comp behind him. We alternated improvised lead and back-up through eight or nine choruses. By the time Daddy gave the closed fist sign to bring it back to the original melody for one last round, both Daddy and I had grins that bubbled up from the inner soul at the grace and maturity Keno poured into the horn.
We played set after set until close to four in the morning. I was nearly numb by the time I slapped Daddy's hand and said I needed at least two hours’ sleep before facing the courtroom on Tuesday. As I left the stand, I wasn't surprised to hear Daddy offering Keno a regular gig on weekday nights.
* * * *
Tuesday began with a jury trial in Cambridge. At three in the afternoon, I was about to launch into a closing argument when a message popped up on my cell phone. My secretary, Julie, cryptic to a fault, simply wrote, “Your father called. Keno arrested. Call quick."
My father had passed away when I was seven, which led me to believe the caller was Daddy, which must have left Julie wondering about my ethnicity.
As soon as court adjourned, I got in touch with Daddy at the club. He said a couple of plainclothes detectives came in about five A.M., an hour after I left. They put the cuffs on Keno and said something about an arson in the South End.
"What did Keno say?"
"He said he never heard of the South End. I told him to clam up till he talked to you."
"You're a good lawyer, Daddy. I'll see if I can find him."
* * * *
I checked with the desk sergeant at the Suffolk County lockup where they hold prisoners awaiting trial. They had him. I presumptuously said I was his counsel, and they brought him to the counsel interviewing room.
He was taller than I remembered from the night before, probably six foot three or four, thin, and athletic looking. He was dark complected like Daddy. The goatee and mustache probably added a few years to his appearance, but I figured him for less than thirty.
He looked terribly alone, confused, and out of place when I first walked in. He saw me for the first time in the light, and I'm sure he didn't recognize me from the night before.
We shook hands, and I told him Daddy had reached me. He seemed ill at ease and understandably nervous. He folded his lanky frame onto the metal chair and leaned over the table.
I started slowly.
"Where are you from, Keno?"
"From Haiti. I come two years ago. Been livin’ in Philadelphia."
I was right about the accent.
"When did you come to Boston?"
"That's it. That's it, Mr. Knight."
"Call me Michael, Keno. That's what?"
"That's what I told them. I just come up to Boston Sunday. They say I burned some building last Friday."
"Interesting. That leaves two questions. Can you prove you were in Philadelphia until Sunday?"
"I was livin’ with another musician. He seen me there all the time."
"I'll need his name and address. Second question. Why do the police think you did it?"
He just shook his head.
"You said you told this to the police. What else did you tell them?"
"Nothing."
"Good. Let that be the last thing you say till I tell you otherwise."
* * * *
I was back in the office of my senior partner, Lex Devlin, by five o'clock. I filled him in on what little I knew about Keno's situation. He rocked his square granite frame in a leather desk chair that gave up a muted complaining squeal with every rock. His gaze down on the traffic of Franklin Street told me he was taking in every word. I gave him everything I knew, and told him so, to avoid an unnecessary grilling.
"Has he been indicted yet?"
"Like I said, Mr. Devlin..."
"Everything you know. And you don't even know if he's been indicted?"
"I've noticed you have a more terrifying effect on assistant district attorneys than I do. I think it's my youthful appearance."
He gave me that look, but he had the phone in his hand, and put it on speakerphone. He got through to the deputy district attorney, Billy Coyne, with whom he had had more knock-down drag-outs in court, and more pints of Guinness at Sullivan's in Court Square, than either of them cared to count.
"Billy, which of you heartless inquisitors is persecuting this poor lad, Westoba?"
"I'll ignore the scurrilous aspersions on the character of the people's good office in the spirit of take it from whence it comes. As a matter of fact, Alexis, I am."
Only Billy Coyne, who grew up only a few Irish tenements away from the birthplace of Mr. Devlin in Charlestown, could get away with calling him “Alexis” instead of Lex.
"And you're prosecuting on the basis of what, may I ask?"
That's exactly the kind of question that, coming from me, would cause most of the assistant D.A.'s to pull the cards closer to the chest.
"On the basis of an informant who identified your Mr. Westoba."
"And how do I find this informant?"
There was an uncharacteristic pause.
"I don't think so, Lex."
"Billy, take the wax out of your ears. This is me asking."
"I know it is, Lex. It's also your client, Mr. Westoba. My guess is you don't know a whole lot about him. This is a dirty business, Lex. My informant says he set fire to one of those old apartment buildings in the South End. One man died."
"What if I have an alibi witness who says my man was in Philadelphia until last Sunday?"
"You put on your witness. I'll put on mine. That's all we can do, Lex. Then it's up to the jury."
"Not if I get the case dismissed at the preliminary hearing, which I take it is tomorrow morning."
"Take your best shot, Lex. I still say it's a dirty business."
"What aren't you telling me, Billy?"
"You know where your guy's from originally, Lex?"
Mr. Devlin looked at me. I mouthed “Haiti.” He repeated it to Mr. Coyne.
"The man who died in the fire arrived here from
Haiti a while ago. He applied for asylum in this country. Claimed he'd be killed by one of the factions that's stirring up trouble if he was sent back to Haiti. He was also a musician. Both from Haiti, both musicians. Strange coincidence, what, Alexis?"
I whispered to Mr. D., “What was the name of the musician?"
He asked the question. I could hear Billy Coyne thumb through a file.
"Hector Makela. He was a regular at one of the jazz clubs up on Boylston Street."
My stomach did a jump-twist. I used to drop into The Jazz Curtain on Boylston at least every few months to hear Makela. He combined African and island roots in a way I'd never heard on a sax.
"Your informant, Billy. Is he a Haitian too?"
I could hear the smile in Mr. Coyne's voice. “Ah Lex, you're cruising into forbidden waters. My informant stays under wraps."
"For the love of Pete, Billy, you'll have to produce him to testify at the preliminary hearing tomorrow."
"And that I shall do. Till then he's my little secret."
* * * *
I was getting conflicting vibes. I'd left the jail with a solid feeling that Keno was a victim of circumstances at best, a frame-up at worst. On the other hand, Billy Coyne has a good nose for suspicious coincidences.
I went back to the jail for a quick word with Keno. I kept focus on his eyelids for telltale blinking when I asked him if he knew Hector Makela.
Keno said he'd never heard of him. And he never blinked. It had plausibility, since to my knowledge, Makela had never played out of New England and had never recorded.
* * * *
In preparation for the preliminary hearing, which was scheduled for Wednesday morning, I needed a witness. Keno gave me the name, Sosa Agipa, and an address in Philadelphia.
This was too important to trust to a phone conversation. I made the drive down to Philadelphia that evening. The address took me to the heart of the Haitian community in West Philly. If the accents didn't say so, the cooking aromas were convincing.
I liked the fact that the apartment had two names above the bell, one of them being Keno's. I buzzed, but neither the entrance hall buzzer nor the lock on the door seemed to be working. I walked up three flights and knocked. A tall, lean, dark-complected man came to the door in his underwear.