EQMM, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

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  Dell Magazines

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  Copyright ©2010 by Dell Magazines

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  Cover by Mark Evan Walker

  CONTENTS

  Fiction: WHOLE LIFE by Liza Cody

  Black Mask: JUNGLE MUSIC by James Lincoln Warren

  Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  Fiction: THE CITY OF RADIANT BRIDES by by Janice Law

  Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  Fiction: MIRROR IMAGES by Mick Herron

  Passport to Crime: THE GONG OF DOOM by Paul Halter

  Department of First Stories: THE HIDDEN BALL TRICK by Patrick Glendon McCullough

  Fiction: THE GIFT by Phil Lovesey

  Fiction: PARSON PENNYWICK IN ARCADIA by Amy Myers

  Fiction: LAST DANCE IN SHANGHAI by Clark Howard

  Fiction: THE PIPER'S DOOR by James Powell

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  Fiction: WHOLE LIFE by Liza Cody

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  Art by Laurie Harden

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  In 2009, Liza Cody's celebrated novel Gimme More, which one re-viewer called “a razor-sharp dissection of the corruptions of fame,” finally saw print in the U.S. through Bloody Brits Press. It's a publisher to watch. Editorial director Val McDermid, EQMM contributor and one of the most celebrated authors in the U.K., explains, “I know . . . how hard it is for British writers to get a toehold in America . . . a lot of excellent books don't make it across the Atlantic.” Now they do, thanks to Bloody Brits.

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  If eyes were knives she'd have cut me stone dead. Instead, she gave me that look and then spat. I hate passing the bus shelter. But I have to pass it by because I can't wait for a bus there anymore.

  They took the shoe off of the roof of the shelter, but they still haven't mended the crazy crack where Jamie's board hit the safety plastic. It was a drenching night, that night, so when the law arrived they say there was hardly any blood left. It gurgled away down the gutter as fast as it spilled out of Jamie's body and there's not even a stain left. Poor ginger lamb.

  That's what I'd tell the woman with the eyes—poor ginger lamb. He was red-headed, plump, gay, and that night he was carrying a new skateboard. If she was even talking to me she'd tell me he was a sweet kid who never did anyone any harm. And she'd say he had “'his whole life ahead of him.” That's what they always say: “Whole life ahead . . . “

  What's a whole life? Is my life without my son a whole life? Is it a whole life when I can't use the nearest bus stop? My life, minus my kid and a bus stop; my life minus respect, my reputation, two of my three jobs, and all my friends isn't a whole life, is it? It's a life full of holes.

  Jamie's whole life ran red—from his eyes, mouth, ears, nose, and groin. It ran away from him down a storm drain never to return. And Ben came home and said, “Can you wash my shirt, Mum? A kid had a nosebleed and it went all over me.” It was his school uniform, so I stuffed his clothes into the washing machine and he had a hot bath because he was shivering from the rain and cold. I left him alone to do his homework with half a pizza in the oven and some chocolate pud in the fridge. His whole life was ahead of him. Then I went to the Saracen's Head to serve drinks to drunks.

  You see, I thought I was a good mother. I washed Ben's clothes and I left a hot supper for him—I didn't just bung him a couple of quid and expect him to go back out into the rain for a takeaway.

  The law said, “Your son comes in covered in a murdered boy's blood and all you do is wash his clothes? You must've known something was up. We could charge you as an accessory."

  Mary Sharp didn't wash her twins’ shirts. The law found their clothes in a soggy tangle under the bunk beds. Roseen Hardesty didn't even come home that night. Rocky Hardesty tried to wash his own uniform but the machine was bust. He ate his beans cold, straight from the can, and stayed up till five in the morning playing computer games.

  There wasn't even a speck on Jamal's clothes. I think cleanliness is part of Jamal's mum's religion, but I don't really know because her English won't stand up to an ordinary conversation.

  Me? I was home by half-past midnight. I asked Ben if he'd done his homework and he said, “Yes—why do you always go on at me?"

  I told him to go to bed and I transferred his clothes from the washer to the dryer because he'd forgotten. Then I tidied the kitchen and was in bed by a quarter past one myself. I was tired and I had to be up and out at six-thirty to clean three offices by nine.

  That's when I saw the police tape at the bus shelter. The one purple-and-white trainer was still on the roof. At that point, no one knew it was Jamie's. So I still thought I had my whole life ahead of me, whereas I'd already lost it hours ago. So had Ben, although most folk round here would say he didn't lose it, he chucked it all away and got what he deserved.

  "What happened here?” the bus driver asked when I got on.

  "Search me,” I said. “Kids?"

  "Someone got knifed,” a woman said. She works part-time. I see her on the bus three mornings out of five.

  "Not round here,” I said. “They're good kids round here."

  "I heard it on local radio,” she said. And we all turned to look at the crazy crack on the plastic shelter as the bus pulled away.

  Later, this same woman went round telling everyone that I was playing the innocent but she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was lying. Do doubts have shadows? I think they must do. My whole life has been about doubts and shadows ever since.

  That morning I went straight from the office block to Moby's Cafe where I worked during the day. I did the food preparation, waitressing, and cleaning up.

  Mr. Moby was there when the school rang to say that Ben was with the law. He looked daggers at me because I wasn't supposed to take personal calls while I was at work.

  "It's a mistake,” I kept saying. “Ben's never been in any trouble.” But I had to go to the police station to find out what was wrong and Mr. Moby said he'd dock my wages. He'd been on my case since that time I slapped his face in the mop cupboard.

  On the other hand, he spoke up for me to the law. He said I was a hard worker and as far as he knew I was honest. But he also told them I wasn't very bright. Then he fired me because of the boycott the Friends of Jamie Cooke people organized.

  The Friends made Kath and Ed Majors at the Saracen's Head fire me, too. But Pauline Greenbe
rg said I could go on cleaning offices because I wasn't working with members of the public. She said nobody cared who cleaned for them as long as they didn't have to see me. She also gave me more hours on the nightshift so I can keep up with the rent.

  I remember Pauline from school. She was a couple of years older than me but she was famous for beating up two boys and Roseen Hardesty when they called her dad a dirty Jew. She did well for herself. She employs twenty women—but never Roseen Hardesty.

  She likes us to be on time, so I walked quickly through the estate to Kennington Road to catch the Number 3. There was no one at the bus stop but me and a gang of screaming urban seagulls. They'd torn a rubbish bag open and made a mess of the pavement. At first I thought they were fighting over a chicken carcass, but then I saw they were plucking the eyes out of a dead pigeon and stabbing their cruel beaks into its throat and breast. Seagulls have such clean white heads. Their beaks are a beautiful fresh yellow. You wouldn't think, would you, that something so clean and fresh lived on city garbage and carrion?

  I just waited for my bus and minded my own business. I didn't try to shoo the gulls away, because they never take a blind bit of notice, and, truth to tell, I'm a little bit scared of them. They eat, fight, and shriek, and if anyone gets in their way they attack—a bit like . . .

  I didn't know Ben was in a gang. I just thought he had mates. He'd known the Sharp twins and Rocky since they were in Juniors together. When it all came out, he told me he'd only joined to stop the others picking on him. Jamal said the same thing. The law believed Jamal because Jamal's mum forced him to talk. But they didn't believe Ben. They took away his mobile phone and said they could prove that the gang members had been talking to each other nonstop all night.

  But Ben is quite small; he hasn't had his growth spurt like the others. His skin is still fresh and peachy without spots and open pores. His voice hasn't broken, but he tucks his chin in and talks as low in his throat as he can. I think he was telling the truth—maybe the bigger kids would have picked on him for not being manly enough. The law said that was probably why he wanted to prove himself and that's why he turned on Jamie.

  But how can such a beautiful boy do ugly things to a poor gay ginger lamb? He can't, I know he can't. He's too innocent to be guilty.

  He's sensitive. He cried when his dad forgot his thirteenth birthday and didn't even send him a card from Hull or wherever he and his new family are living now. I can't believe a boy who cried about his own father would do anything so cruel to Jamie Cooke. But the law never saw him cry so they said he was guilty and “showed no remorse."

  A white van pulled up to the bus stop and a man leant over to open the passenger door. It was Ron Tidey, who lives on the estate. He drank regularly at the Saracen's Head, and he drank a lot. But he said, “I saw you waiting all by yourself. Hop in. I'll give you a ride to work."

  I don't much like Ron Tidey, but I got in because no one had spoken to me for weeks.

  He said, “I don't care what they're all saying. It isn't your fault. It'd be even more unnatural if a mother didn't stand up for her boy."

  "He didn't do it, Ron,” I said, feeling suddenly so tired I could've lain down then and there and slept for a hundred years. The cab was warm and smoky.

  "You aren't doing yourself any favours, Cherry. You should just shut up about it and keep your head down."

  "I am doing,” I said. “I'm always shut up cos there's no one to talk to."

  "Tell you what, Cherry, why don't you and me go out for a drink later? Somewhere no one knows you. It'll take you out of yourself. You're still a young woman, more or less, and you got your whole life . . . “

  "Don't say it, Ron,” I interrupted. But I agreed to meet him. I was that lonely.

  I suppose you could say that loneliness was always my downfall. Ben's father wasn't much of a catch. But I did get Ben out of it, and I thought, if I had a baby, there'd always be someone for me to love who'd love me back. But I suppose just loving a child isn't a whole love. I wasn't living a whole life, according to Roseen Hardesty. “Get yourself a man,” she said. “At least, get yourself a shag. A grown woman can't go without for long, Cherry, or she'll turn sour and grow rust on it."

  "Use it or lose it,” Mary Sharp agreed.

  "Mary Sharp's in no danger of losing it,” Roseen said later. “Her problem might be overuse."

  "Meow!” I said, because I wasn't taking anything they had to say seriously. They both had new boyfriends every week as far as I could see, while their kids had holes in their shoes. Yes, I was a bit snooty back then. Now, when we meet sometimes outside the Young Offenders Unit on visiting days we hardly exchange a word.

  Tomorrow they're moving Ben to someplace in darkest Wales and I don't have a car. I can still send him sweets and toothpaste but I won't hardly see him, train fares costing what they do.

  "Cheer up,” said Ron Tidey later that night at the Elephant and Castle. “Have another voddy and talk about something else. You're like a broken record."

  So I had some more vodka and then some more after that, and at about midnight, when we were in the back of Ron's van and I couldn't find my underwear, Ron said, “There, you're more relaxed now, ain't ya? Don't never say Ron Tidey can't show a lonely woman a bit of sympathy.” He was busy spraying himself with deodorant and chewing peppermints so's his wife wouldn't rumble him.

  I felt like crying, but I didn't, because Ron has a van and if he thinks I'm a miserable cow he won't want to see me again or maybe even give me a lift up to Wales.

  Also, last time I did anything like this I got Ben. Maybe I'll get a whole other life out of Ron, and if I do, maybe this time it'll be a girl. They say girls are better company than boys. I hope it's a girl.

  Copyright © 2010 Liza Cody

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Black Mask: JUNGLE MUSIC by James Lincoln Warren

  In addition to being a short-story writer of repute, James Lincoln Warren is the founder and editor of “Criminal Brief: The Mystery Short Story Web Log Project” at criminalbrief.com. Regular contributors to the blog, which is becoming one of the most-referenced sites in the online mystery community, include EQMM writers Melodie Johnson Howe, L. Leigh, and Steve Steinbock.

  The details didn't make the news at first—too sensational for TV, too lurid for the Los Angeles Times, and anyway, who the hell cares about another nameless dead hooker?

  She lay in a WeHo motel, sleazier even than its reputation, a run-down rent-by-the-hour fleabag off Sunset that had not yet succumbed to the neighborhood's inexorably encroaching gentrification. Her nude corpse was discovered by a preop twink there attempting to turn a long trick. The john, some middle-aged suit, split long before the sheriffs arrived, but the hysterical boy-girl stayed long enough to provide the law with a statement. Not that it helped.

  Either the dead woman or her killer had pulled down the shower curtain and spread it out on the floor for a peanut-oil party. The victim's body, spread-eagled on the cheap plastic sheet, glistened with the stuff. It was everywhere, soaking her hair, between her toes, filling her ear canals, seeping from her nostrils. At first the investigators thought maybe she'd drowned in it. There were bruises all over her swollen body, particularly on her lower face and on her arms, some of them clearly defensive wounds. Obviously a homicide, by all appearances a specialty liaison dangereuse gone horribly awry.

  She was bagged and stacked in the hallway of the overcrowded Los Angeles County Morgue like a log on a cord of wood, where after several days an autopsy revealed she had almost a quart of peanut oil in her stomach. Although the toxicology screen came back pegging the meter for cocaine, the cause of death was determined to be anaphylactic shock: She'd been allergic to legumes.

  Her fingerprints were not on file anywhere. Somehow, she'd managed to escape being busted, surprising given that she was in her mid thirties and had all the appearances of having been in the game for a long time. Nor was she recognized by any of the vice detectives as a known or sus
pected pro.

  That would have been the end of it. But then an M.E. who just happened to be an audiophile, with a record collection large enough to make the Smithsonian salivate, recalled seeing her face above an expensive and revealing outfit in a music-industry trade magazine photo. There she stood, frozen in time, laughing like she didn't have a worry in all the world, hanging on to the left arm of a famous pop music maven at a Hollywood launch party. Jane Doe no more, she had a real name: Jenna Wells, left, enjoying a joke with boyfriend Zeno Duke.

  Duke had never bothered to report her missing. Furthermore, he had been observed near the scene on the night she died by several of the Boulevard regulars. He was arrested, charged, and booked. That's when the details made the news.

  Zeno Duke, one-time wonder boy of the record industry, a combination of cutthroat venture capitalist, sound-groove guru, and slick carny barker. He had specialized in turning small indie labels into major ones and then selling them to media conglomerates for millions. True, his star had dimmed in the last decade, but the Hollywood press loves nothing as much as a has-been on hard times.

  They say that L.A. is the Entertainment Capital of the World, and that every other person you meet on the Boulevard is in movies or TV. This may be true, but trust me: After live televised freeway chases, celebrity trials are our number-one pastime.

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  We never would have gotten the case if Zeno Duke hadn't played with Jackie Jett in a high school jazz combo. Somewhere along the line, Zeno remembered that Jett had become a detective and called him, begging for help. Even then, it was several weeks after the press had their field day.

  "When Z was sixteen, he took up astrology because he found out it was a great way to impress gullible girls,” Jett said. He's got a deep voice that makes you think you're listening to the rumbling of a distant volcano. He sat at our table at Jezebel's House of Juke, the Culver City jazz club on Jefferson, relaxing between sets, his Wayfarers folded in one massive hand resting on the table. “It was always about the skirts with him. I can't say I was surprised he wound up in jail because of a woman."