Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12

by Dell Magazines

  “Where’s the logic in it? We pull you in, you might give information against those who sent you.”

  If I lived long enough. “Yes.”

  She didn’t dare look at the tray she’d brought. Instead she looked at the men still on the veranda, smokers mostly, leaning along the porch rails. A voice drifted to her: “That room in Albany was the closest to college I ever came.” His companion laughed and said, “You might have mentioned that a few dozen times, Al.”

  Al Smith, the governor of New York, wore a white linen suit that on him looked as elegant as a fishmonger’s apron. He, Roosevelt, Palmer . . . any might be President someday. And all were just a stone’s throw from Mario’s platter.

  “They chose me because I can pass for a servant,” she said. “Better than any of them.” And how they’d pampered her last night. The pastries and fresh cream, the kisses on the cheek. Because they knew they’d never see her again?

  “Come with me,” the marshal said.

  He jerked her toward the French doors. If he got her inside, either to question her or arrest her, someone might lift the tray’s lid while they were gone. And if that triggered a bomb? Ella might get away then, in the confusion. Mario wouldn’t be waiting where the driveway met the road. But the dust and carnage would give her a chance to run.

  Spots danced in front of her eyes, sweat dripped between her shoulder blades and down her back. Saying anything now was the same as signing her own arrest warrant. So the enormity of her words nearly lodged them in her throat: “The tray,” she said. “The one I was about to uncover. They gave it to me, to bring inside.”

  Killy reacted as if she’d slapped him. He turned to face it.

  It was too big to pick up with one hand. He let go of her. He grabbed the tray without a backward glance.

  She watched him dash down the veranda stairs with it, hurrying past the lush arbor and along the path to the pond.

  It was no use leaving. With no car to take her away, she’d be picked up soon enough. And she had to know for sure. Mario, Sacco . . . would they truly have sacrificed her? She was afraid the answer was clear in the guest list.

  Ella was a few paces behind Killy when he reached the dock. He set the tray down, then looked to the boathouse as if searching for something. Not for Ella. He nodded as if certain she’d be there.

  “Ah,” he said. He grabbed a pole hanging from a support.

  The long stick had a crook at the end for pulling skiffs closer. He signaled for her to back up, then he hooked the handle of the tray’s dome cover. He lifted it and set it aside.

  Ella didn’t know exactly what she was looking at, there on the tray. A bit of glass glinted on a pyramid of greasy-looking tubes. A second later, she heard popping, like firecrackers. Again using the stick, Killy pushed the tray into the pond. Then he backed away to stand in front of Ella. His arm went up as if by instinct, shielding his face. Then he let it fall. For a moment he didn’t move.

  Ella ventured, “So was it—? Those little bursts. Only firecrackers?”

  “Blasting caps. A vial was rigged to tip when the lid came off. What you heard were the caps underneath. Set off by acid.”

  “Blasting caps? Did they only mean to . . . to scare people?”

  “No. The caps would have ignited the fuses. Dynamite fuses. Like the package bombs. That’s how I knew we had to get to the water. . . . But those had one stick. This had nine, stacked four, three, two, the vial on top. Who gave it to you?”

  The world seemed to dim. “Mario Buda.”

  “The man who wrote the bomb-making pamphlet?” He wheeled to face her. “Salute è in Voi? The one they sold in Galleani’s newspaper?”

  “No! That can’t be Mario.”

  “He and some others. But Buda was the main— How could you know him, but not know this?”

  “I remember the ad. In the Cronaca Sovversiva.” Twenty-five cents for the anonymous booklet. “So tiny. For that and other pamphlets. All of them full of bravado. Fish stories, I thought. Because the country was mad for war—the parades, the marches. It was like that, I supposed. The same lust for battle. But pushing through cracks in a philosophy where it didn’t belong.”

  “So you didn’t know Buda as a—?”

  “No! No, of course not. I know him as . . . as an organizer. I’ve seen him only twice in these last . . .” She could hardly stand. She was shaking, her head pounding.

  “Was he in Seattle with you?”

  “He came for the strike.” The shame overwhelmed her. What he’d done to the marshal. Because of her.

  “The reason we intercepted thirty of the package bombs last April? It was thanks to Ole Hanson. His aide opened one upside down. The acid dripped onto the desk instead of the caps. So we knew what the parcels looked like. And that they came from someone who disliked Seattle’s mayor.”

  Ella gestured toward the veranda, not yet empty of partiers. “If I’d taken the lid off?”

  “Porch and drawing room would be a smoking hole now. Everyone in them vaporized. Or torn to chunks.”

  For an instant, Ella saw it through Mario’s eyes: the triumph. Bloody death to the leaders of a party that brought years of war and injustice.

  “They’re wrong about us, you know,” Killy said, as if hearing her thoughts. “We’re fools at times, but we mean well.”

  “I’d have said the same to you about Mario and the others, yesterday.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “A farmhouse, ten or fifteen miles north. Abandoned. It belongs to a dead soldier.”

  The marshal would soon find it, she supposed. But would Mario and the others still be there?

  A pair of men were coming toward them.

  “Was that firecrackers?” one called out.

  The other said, “You all right, young lady?”

  They were nearly on the dock now. It took Ella a moment to blink them into focus. She recognized William McAdoo, the President’s son-in-law, from newspaper photographs.

  “Will you stay with her?” Killy asked. “I have to make an urgent call, but I can’t have her left alone.”

  Ella caught her breath. What? Marshal Killy was walking away from her? Trusting strangers to keep her here? When she’d escaped from him twice already?

  McAdoo was with Governor Smith, who slipped a hand under her elbow. “You ought to get out of this hot sun, honey.”

  Killy looked as if he meant to say something to her. But he didn’t. He turned and ran toward the house.

  The men walked her to a boathouse bench. Smith sat beside her. He said to McAdoo, “You go on back, Bill. Tell Roosevelt and Cox not to steal the nomination before I put in a good word for myself.”

  McAdoo laughed. He was handsome in the way of rich men, with their unworried smiles and uncrimped brows. “Fine way of saying it won’t be me, next year in San Francisco. When you know it will.”

  Smith patted Ella’s hand, on the bench between them. He was a sweet-faced man with a soft smile. His jacket was almost as rumpled as his blond-and-white hair. He said, “I bet the Westfields will give you the rest of the day off if you’re feeling punk. Even useless politicians can make do with only a swarm, and not an outright herd, of servants. Oh, now. Don’t cry.” He fumbled for a handkerchief, setting it on her knee. She looked down at it. An embroidered A and E flanked a larger S. “Can’t be as bad as all that.”

  What would he think if he knew she’d nearly killed him?

  It was a few minutes before she could speak. She managed to say, “Bless you for Triangle Shirt.” He’d been on a committee to review the factory fire—146 girls burned alive behind locked doors. Those who appointed him wanted a hasty whitewash but he gave them a three-year inquisition. “I worked in a place like that.”

  Smith looked sad. “We’re not done yet. Long road ahead. But look there, old McAdoo’s come back.”

  “Say,” McAdoo said. “That campaign manager of Palmer’s? Sent me down with a message for you, missy.”

  She
blotted her tears with Smith’s handkerchief. Killy would return soon with reinforcements. She hoped their interrogation didn’t leave her scarred. One of her neighbors had lost an eye. Another, all her teeth on one side.

  “Asked if you remember Jim Corbett?”

  “The big-game hunter?” Smith said.

  “That’s the one,” McAdoo said. “Dashing fellow, remember? Killed that man-eater in India.”

  “What about him?” Ella knew this must be important. Killy wouldn’t send a man as august as the President’s son-in-law, the former Secretary of the Treasury, to relay a mere afterthought.

  “Said Corbett was always sorry the tiger got a last victim. A few minutes before Corbett shot the cur, it tore apart a girl about your age. That’s what he told me.” McAdoo laughed again. “I hope the story doesn’t frighten you?”

  “No.”

  “You were talking about . . . Champawat, is it? That’s what he said. That he didn’t know if he’d see you again later. So when I came to fetch Al—he says they want you at the house, Al—would I please mention this to you.”

  Smith said, “Funny way of flirting with a gal.”

  Flirting? Ella imagined Killy sitting opposite her in a restaurant. Imagined them discussing politics and history with pleasure and not with dread.

  Smith rose. “So they miss me, do they, Bill?”

  “How could they not, Al? It’s been a good half-hour since we heard how you worked at the Fulton Market, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and vast talents.”

  Smith laughed. Ella watched the men as if through a fog.

  Killy didn’t know if he’d see her again? He’d said this to McAdoo?

  Corbett was always sorry the tiger got a last victim.

  Ella stood shakily. She extended Smith’s handkerchief. But he closed his hand around hers. “You keep it, dear.”

  For a few minutes, she stood watching Smith and McAdoo walk away.

  On the other side of the pond, farmland rolled through the back acres of other rich Washingtonians’ summer estates. Eventually the fields must meet dirt paths and narrow lanes. Not the road that brought her here. That would be roaring with cars soon—lawmen descending to pull the dynamite from the pond, to question the guests and servants. None was likely to remember Ella carrying the tray in.

  Other cars would race to check abandoned farmhouses for miles around. But Mario and the rest would have left by now. Expecting trouble after what they hoped was a horrific explosion. An inestimable blow to the nation’s ruling party.

  She didn’t know how Killy would explain finding the bomb. She hoped it brought him satisfaction, but she knew it would fade. His friend the Attorney General would soon launch his raids. Palmer would bring an iron fist down on a Bolshevik revolution in America, a Red menace, that was chiefly in his own mind. Killy would see his Fighting Quaker bring unwarranted misery to tens of thousands. Then he would feel, perhaps, the way Ella did now.

  She started toward the far side of the pond. Buzzing over the water, minute insects caught the sun like glitter. Farther on, rectangles of dirt lay fallow and hedges tumbled with yellow flowers.

  Ella didn’t know where she was going. Not home to retrieve the small comforts bought with Mrs. Kingston’s gems. Killy might come looking for her there. He was grateful to her now: She could have let him pull her away from the bomb. She could have let it do its damage.

  Later he might repent this favor.

  It was bitterly hard to lose everything again. But she’d never meant to be a thief. She’d taken the jewelry thinking Mrs. Kingston had no more use for it. It would only trouble her to keep the proceeds now. She’d have to find another way.

  It was worth it to know what Nicky had done. How like him, how brave, to put a sick woman’s needs above his own. To risk all to help a stranger.

  Mario told Ella she’d find Nicky again if she came here. And in a sense, she had.

  By the time the Westfield estate was far behind her, her arm tingled from clutching Al Smith’s handkerchief so tightly. She would never regret that he’d been spared today.

  She wondered if the marshal would ever regret sparing her.

  Copyright © 2012 by Lia Matera

  Previous Article

  BLACK MASK

  BLACK MASK

  ICE

  by Harley Mazuk

  Harley Mazuk’s private eye Frank Swiver debuted in Black Mask in January of 2011, with the story “The Tall Blonde With the Hot Boiler.” Normally, the story would have appeared in our Department of...

  FICTION

  REVIEWS

  REVIEWS

  BLACK MASK

  ICE

  by Harley Mazuk

  Harley Mazuk’s private eye Frank Swiver debuted in Black Mask in January of 2011, with the story “The Tall Blonde With the Hot Boiler.” Normally, the story would have appeared in our Department of First Stories, as it was the author’s first work of fiction, but the tone and style so perfectly suited Black Mask that it found its home there. Swiver is back this month in a case full of action and dramatic tension. His creator is a public affairs specialist who lives and works in the Washington, D.C. area.

  1.

  The ballroom of the Hotel Biarritz had more ice floating in it than all the martinis-on-the-rocks north of the Artic Circle. Sparklers were draped around necks, dangled from ears, and danced on fingers. The gaslights in the swanky room flickered, and made the ice flash even more.

  I had spotted my old pal, Stan Kosloski, when I’d come into the lobby. Stosh was an ex-SFPD flatfoot who was now working as the house dick at the hotel on Nob Hill. He told me the Jamisons had arrived already. “They went up to their rooms. What’s your interest, Frank?”

  “A necklace,” I told him. “I’m on a job for an insurance company.”

  “Must be the White Tiger necklace, eh?”

  I nodded. “Did you say rooms?”

  Stosh rolled his eyes. “Yeah. The marriage is on the ropes, and they don’t sleep together. See, that’s the kind of thing I know, ’cause of my job, but it ain’t common knowledge. When they come down to the ballroom, they’ll come in together, like a couple. But after that,” he turned up his open palms, “well, anything can happen. Just watch.” He didn’t wait for me to answer, but went on, “You go ahead into the ballroom. I’ll see ’em when they come down, and I’ll send Felipe in to put you wise.” He indicated one of the bellboys. I had thanked him and made my way to the ballroom, where the 1948 Sonoma Harvest Ball was just beginning.

  I ordered a glass of red wine, and the barman poured me a ’47 Louis Martini Zinfandel. I leaned with my back on the bar so I could watch the room, especially the door. I was responsible for only one piece of the ice, the White Tiger necklace that Mrs. Jane Jamison would have around her neck when she came in. Jed Jamison insured the White Tiger through Golden Gate Insurance Company, and Golden Gate got nervous when Mrs. Jamison wore it to a party. For twenty-five dollars a day, Golden Gate paid me to stand in the room and make sure no one lifted it off her neck, at least while she was at the party. I was cheap insurance for the insurers.

  I let my eyes run over the guests who were already there. I didn’t see any known jewel thieves. I did recognize a few faces from the Napa and Sonoma wine trade, and a couple others I knew from the San Francisco restaurant business. I was a little alarmed to spot Joe Damas. He was as bent as they come, but he was a scratcher, not an ice man, so I didn’t expect Joe’s business interests that night to conflict with mine. I hadn’t spoken to him since the Thursby affair, so I pushed off the rail and wandered over to say hello to the little Frenchman.

  “Evening, Joe. Still smoking those stink weeds?” A Gauloises drooped from his lip. “Maybe you should switch to American cigarettes.”

  “Bonsoir, Swiver. Imagine running into you here,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a flat blue package. “Want one?”

  “No thanks, Joe. I might have to breathe tomorrow. You making out oka
y?”

  He gave me his usual shrug. “Couci-couça,” he said. The smoke from the wide stub of his cigarette curled up into his eye. “I’m going to work the room. See if I can line up some new clients. What are you doing here, Swiver?”

  Joe was a wine distributor. When we met in the spring, he was forging labels and running up his profits by selling cheap plonk as choice-quality juice from Sonoma. He was a good forger; he had to be. He’d learned his trade forging identity papers for the Resistance in France. After that, wine labels were duck soup.

  Joe lost two of his major accounts while the case I was on, the Thursby murder, played out. Now, six months later, he still had a way to go to rebuild trust. But Joe was slick, and a survivor. If anybody could do it, he could. “I’m on a job,” I told him.

  “Uh-oh,” he said, and crossed himself.

  “Relax,” I told him. “I’m not here to protect anybody.”

  “You know, your blond girl is here. What’s her name . . . Velma?”

  That was swell to hear. I hadn’t seen Velma Peregrino since the Thursby case, when she’d quit her job as my secretary and moved home to the Russian River Valley to work the Blackbird Vineyard, which she inherited from the late General Thursby. I looked around the room.

  I’d been watching the ice, but as soon as I looked beyond jewelry, I couldn’t miss her. Velma was a real gem—blond, tall, slim, and beautiful. Throw in smiling and happy. She was holding a glass of Champagne, talking to some jasper with a beard in a tweed sport coat. She was wearing that same little red cocktail dress she’d worn the night of Thursby’s last tasting. “Later, Joe,” I mumbled, and drifted towards her.

  She drew me across the room like a magnet pulls iron shavings. “Velma, sweetheart,” I said, “I’ve missed you. How you been?”

  She did a double-take. “Frank, my God. ’Scuse me if I don’t toss this drink in your face, but it’s Schramsberg—too good to give you a bath with.” She took a pull.