EQMM, November 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Anyway, I made a bit of a fuss, and eventually Mum decided to smooth things over and asked Uncle Tony really nicely if he'd do this one thing. I said it'd make us all feel more like a proper family, and Uncle Tony sort of made a throaty noise, shrugged, and gave way, saying he'd give it half an hour, and if it was bollocks, then he'd leave it.

  So, Sir, just after half-seven that night, I put Hamlet on our DVD player. Imagine that—a bit of real culture in our grotty house. Amazing, eh? And then I did what Hamlet does, watched my mother and my uncle real close as the story unravelled....

  It didn't take long, say twenty minutes at the most, and that's even with all the old language to cope with. Mum and Uncle Tony soon got the gist of it—the betrayal of Hamlet's father—and began sort of shifting uncomfortably and giving these sideways looks at each other. Honestly, Sir, it worked a treat.

  Uncle Tony started coming out with all this stuff about Mel Gibson going “poofy,” and that he was much better in Braveheart and the Lethal Weapon films. I just knew he was begging for an excuse to leave what was becoming more and more embarrassing for him. So at that point I decided to tell him about you, Sir. Not the Cheryl Bassington stuff, or even the way you were so mean to me; no, instead I told him about the other stuff.

  Yeah, I know, I lied. But just a white one, really. And Hamlet himself does that, doesn't he, when he tells poor Ophelia that he doesn't really love her anymore? I told Uncle Tony that when I was in town buying the DVD a strange bloke had come up to me asking me my name and where I lived, and when I told him, he asked me if Tony Watts lived with us. When I said he did, the man told me he wanted to speak to him about “the favour” he'd done my Uncle Tony with the security cameras, and that as far as he was concerned he thought that Tony Watts owed him, big-style, and that he'd be waiting in the Wellington at 8:30 to “sort it all out."

  Well, my Uncle Tony being the sort of bloke he is, you don't have to try too hard to imagine his reaction. He was well angry, and began swearing and cursing, telling me I should have told him much earlier, asking for a description of you, then grabbing his coat and storming off, slamming the front door behind him so loudly that the walls shook. Mum looked right ashen, turned the DVD off, and told me to get straight upstairs to my room, that she thought I'd caused enough upset for one night. Uncle Tony didn't come home that night.

  That was two weeks ago, and you've been off school ever since, haven't you, Sir? At Thursday morning's full-school assembly, the Head told us that you'd been attacked the previous night, and were staying away to recover. Two broken ribs and a fractured jaw, the local paper said, with a couple of witnesses saying you'd been beaten up by a Tony Watts (unemployed) in the car park of The Wellington Arms. Police, apparently, are still trying to find a motive, but I'm sure with a little “help” they'll have a clearer picture of why he did that cruel thing to you.

  Uncle Tony's on remand, as we can't afford the bail, so he'll be inside till the court case, which should be really interesting. The police have already interviewed my mum about Uncle Tony, but they haven't got to me yet. I'm not sure whether to tell them what I know, or to keep quiet about it. I'll write to Dad and ask him what he thinks I should do.

  Our substitute teacher isn't very good, but she's told us to finish these assignments and the school will send them to you to mark while you recover. I'm sure that when you read this, Sir, you'll realise why you were attacked that night, together with how much I know about you that you'd rather other people didn't.

  In conclusion, I say that whether Hamlet was faking his madness is irrelevant. How sane are any of us, anyway? And isn't the very idea of faking madness a bit mad in the first place? Maybe you should know, Sir, the amount of faking you've done in the last few years.

  I look forward to receiving my A for this essay. After all, I really did my homework on you. l Copyright © 2009 by Phil Lovesey

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Black Mask: WHAMMER JAMMER by Mark Arsenault

  Mark Arsenault has been making his living as a reporter since 1989, cur-rently with The Providence Journal. He has also found time to write some attention-getting novels—four to date: Spiked, Speak Ill of the Living,Gravewriter, and the just published Loot the Moon (St. Martin's Press), the second in a series that began with Gravewriter. All of his novels have met with critical acclaim, and he's a past nominee for a Shamus Award.

  July 20, 1973

  Boston Garden arena, Boston, Massachusetts

  * * * *

  Skating five hard crossover steps through the turn, I closed in on The Pack, a rolling gangfight of baggy tights, knee socks, and flying elbows on roller skates. The crowd rose in a blur when I shot down the next straightaway. Greasy faces shining in the stifling heat; their screams so loud I could barely hear my wheels on the oval. The fans hated me because I was the villain. They loved me because I was a star.

  I caught up to the slowest zipperhead skating at the back of the pack. He was a lumbering white kid trying to pull off a soul patch and an Afro. I jabbed a knuckle into his kidneys. He grunted and clutched his back. I slid around him and rammed a wholly unnecessary elbow to his breastbone. His eyes slammed shut and he went down like he'd forgotten we were on wheels. The crowd moaned ohhhh!

  Any cheese-weasel can skate for the Roller Rumble, but the stars were obliged to offer something more. Be the fastest. Hit the hardest. Something. A big chest was something, but that was the gals.

  Me? I was the dirtiest skater on the tour. The one they called The Rat.

  The opposing team's captain, Charlie Hyre, glanced back at the commotion on the track. His rusty muttonchops were matted with sweat. “Jammer!” he screamed to his squad.

  That's right, Scooby, here comes the jammer.

  Each Roller Rumble team had four blockers, one pivot man, and one jammer circling the oval track. Only we jammers scored any points. We scored by passing skaters on the other team. Sounds easy, but try skating through a bloc of antisocial 200-pounders who will employ every variety of felonious assault to put you off your wheels.

  The pack rolled into the next turn.

  My team, the Eastern Atoms, wore alien-green jerseys and tights, which made us look like bad-tempered, unripe bananas. My blockers bashed shoulders with Hyre's squad, trying to clear a lane for me to pass. My thighs were smoking, but this was the last jam of the period and I let it fly, weaving past the red shirts and piling up points.

  The Garden had no air conditioning, and the inside felt like a rainforest. The arena was the color of dried mustard, the crusty stuff under the cap, the color a cigarette will stain your fingernails. Blue smoke floated in the lights. The fans beyond the rail were close enough to sweat on. But the upper deck was mostly empty. What's with the empty seats? I thought. We sold out this dump in ‘71. Back then, when Roller Rumble was at its peak, we outdrew Elvis in this building.

  The trip back to Boston was a homecoming for me. I glanced up toward my old season-ticket chair. That old cheap seat. Up so high the concessionaires sold oxygen. The chair probably still had the wad of Bazooka Joe I stuck there the night Cousy and Russell won their first Celtics banner, back in ‘57. Yup. Game seven, overtime. Had tears in my eyes. I was in that same seat three years later when candidate JFK delivered his last homily before the vote.

  I ask you to join us in all the tomorrows yet to come...

  Had tears in my eyes that night, too. But that was a different me. That was Robert B. Culligan, Jr., the engineering student. Can't say I miss him, because I barely remember the dude.

  "Screw yooooou, Robbie!” a fan sang to me through the din. “Robbie the Rat!"

  Wham!

  I hip-checked a red-shirted blocker into the rail and zoomed past him for the score. Just Charlie Hyre left ahead. He skated hard, to make me work for it. I linked hands with my pivot man; he reared back and slingshot me forward. I chased after Charlie. In the turn, he drifted high up the bank and I thought I had him, but that was what he wanted me to think. As I approache
d, he swerved sharply and stabbed an elbow in my ribs. I grabbed him. We clung together, rolling on, whacking each other. The crowd begged him to floor me.

  "Y'hear that Bruce Lee died today?” Charlie grunted, as he yanked my jersey and tried to throw me off the track.

  "Say what?"

  "In Hong Kong."

  "Get the hell outta here."

  "Just up and died."

  The women's squad lined the rails, waiting to skate the second period. I didn't see Tammy, but I figured she was watching me loving it up with Charlie Hyre and I felt self-conscious.

  Enough chitchat. I lifted my right skate and jammed it into Charlie's ankle, like kick-starting a Harley. He cried out, staggered, and tumbled down ahead of me. I calmly hop-stepped over him.

  The fans gasped ooh! as if they had each been poked with a stick.

  A whistle ended the jam. I whipped off my helmet and coasted a victory lap, panting in the humidity, feeling sweat run down my neck and enjoying the boos that rained down from the crowd. I hoped to hell Charlie was kidding about Bruce Lee. Just up and died? Like Mr. Bojangles’ dog?

  The women took the track for their warmups, and the crowd howled in appreciation. Each Roller Rumble team had a men's squad and a women's squad, which skated alternating periods. The fans adored the girls. Something about those young bunnies banging into each other...

  That was when a tremendous scream slashed a dark, jagged gash through the arena.

  From the tunnel ran “Lil’ Baby” Barbara Fleet, a backup jammer on our women's squad. She was in street clothes, sporting a cast on her wrist from a pileup last week at a skate in Bangor. How could a woman five-foot-nothing make such a huge scream? She must have had four-foot lungs.

  I met her eyes and I could tell this wasn't about Bruce Lee.

  "It's Tammy!” she cried, and then fell to her knees. Adulthood seemed to melt off her in an instant. She was a lost child.

  I raced down the tunnel on my skates, hopping electrical cables, shoving people out of my way. A small crowd had gathered at the door to Tammy's dressing room. I forced my way through. The first thing I noticed was clothing strewn around: socks, tights, underwear, Tammy's green Number 34 game jersey.

  Then I saw her.

  The toughest female skater in Roller Rumble—"Crashin'” Tammy Glassen—lay naked on a tan sofa. Her head and one arm dangled limp off the edge. A thin red wound, like a ribbon of blood, circled her throat. She was dead; nothing could have been more obvious. And even in death she drew my eyes all over her ... long, powerful legs that could crack a man's pelvis, bedroom eyes blazing from beneath a Cleopatra hairdo ... I looked away and squashed an urge unfit for print.

  Marty Papadakis, owner and manager of Roller Rumble, knelt at Tammy's side, gingerly probing her wrist for a pulse. The smoldering Camel between his lips had an inch of ash at the tip.

  "Mr. P?” somebody asked.

  Papadakis pulled his hand away, passed a palm over his flaking bald scalp, and stared at the floor, without words for the first time anybody could remember.

  In the hallway, Charlie Hyre was screaming. “Don't you tell me not to go in there! That's my wife's dressing room!” He bulled his way in and gasped. The sight put him straight to the floor like an ice axe between the eyeballs.

  That was when my brain unfroze from the shock, and I felt a tingle of dread for what was about to come. For the top female star of the Roller Rumble didn't just up and die. Somebody had strangled her.

  * * * *

  The first detective was a bony black guy with a neatly trimmed Fu Manchu. He was too tiny to beat up a horse jockey. His partner was a six-foot-six Irishman squeezed into a plaid blazer that was probably a 54 Long.

  My interview was two hours after the body had been discovered, which had given the police plenty of time to pull papers on everybody. Their obvious contempt for me baked off them like heat waves rising from the Mass Pike on an August afternoon.

  I asked them, “Which one of you is the brains and which is the muscle?"

  Their brows wrinkled at what was an insult to the both of them. The little dude handled the introductions. “I'm Detective Sergeant Andrews. This is Detective Nangle."

  There were three chairs and a metal desk in this tiny office somewhere below the Garden's parquet floor. The cops stood, so I stood. Nangle had to duck below a ventilation tube.

  "I see you're back home this weekend, eh, Mr. Culligan?” said Andrews. He picked a sheet of paper off the desk.

  "Grew up in Dorchester,” I confessed. “Had season tickets to everything in this dump."

  "Then you moved to state housing at Concord in ‘sixty-six, as a guest of the taxpayers. Looks like you stayed three years."

  "Paroled a year early."

  "Grand larceny, auto,” Andrews confided to Nangle, as if Nangle didn't already know. “Led police on a hundred-mile-per-hour chase over the Longfellow Bridge."

  "Never topped eighty,” I corrected. “The Chevy I boosted had a bad cylinder. People don't take care of their vehicles."

  "Arrested for battery. Couple of drug busts. Vagrancy.” His eyebrow rose. “Assault on a police officer?"

  I shrugged. “Spitting counts, apparently."

  "Whew,” Andrews said dramatically, as if my meager criminal record was so long he was exhausted from reading it. “So how'd you end up performing in the Roller Rumble?"

  I reviewed the question in my mind for possible traps. Seeing none, I gave the truth. “Mr. Papadakis advertised for ‘skaters with attitude’ for his traveling exhibition. I got attitude, man. I figured I could fake the skating."

  "The victim was a big star in this show, yes?"

  A clicking noise from inside the ventilation tube interrupted us. Nangle banged a fist on the tube and the noise scurried away. “Damn Boston Garden rats,” he said.

  I answered, “Yeah, she was Crashin’ Tammy Glassen, Roller Rumble's biggest draw. Bigger than me. Tammy flung the sharpest elbow on the team. It was her signature move. We called it the Whammer Jammer, because when she hit the other team's jammer they went down hard. Tammy was our ace in the competition with Texas RollerGlam, that new all-bimbo league that's been cutting into our action and taking our fans."

  Andrews grinned from the side of his mouth. “And she was sexy, was she?"

  "Tammy? She could bust up a marriage with one sly look from sixty yards. Everybody loved her. Men, women—everybody."

  "Did you?"

  "We worked together. Traveled together. That's all."

  "Rumor is you were sleeping with her."

  I threw back my head and laughed. “That's too stupid for words, man. She was married to Charlie Hyre. He's captain of the Shockers."

  "We know who he is.” Andrews looked to Nangle and then flicked his thumb toward me. The big cop suddenly snatched my wrist, whipped my arm behind my back, and bent me facedown over the desk.

  "Not cool!” I shouted. “Just maintain, man. Ow! Main ... tain!"

  He fished my wallet from my pocket, flipped it onto the desk, and then let me go. Andrews pulled a twenty from my billfold.

  "I better get a receipt for that cash,” I warned.

  "Crisp bill,” he said. “You see, Tammy Glassen cashed her check at the bank this morning. Eighty bucks. Got four brand-new twenties, in sequence. But we only found sixty dollars in the purse in her dressing room.” He opened a notebook. “I wrote down the serial numbers of the other bills ... well, golly—this twenty from your wallet is part of the series."

  He let the accusation hang there.

  Nangle pushed me down into a chair and stood over me. They were using all the cop props except the spotlight in my face.

  "You guys hear Bruce Lee died?” I asked.

  "This morning, yeah. Weird,” said Andrews.

  "I loved that guy,” Nangle moaned. His big fists opened and closed.

  We all frowned and shook our heads over the inexplicable loss. Such are the whims of the universe.

  "All right, Scooby
,” I said, “it's like this..."

  * * * *

  Tammy rolled to her feet and left me naked but for my tube socks on the swampy tan sofa in her dressing room.

  "One more time for the road,” I pleaded. Drops of sweat ran down my chest. “Just gimme five minutes to recover."

  "You ain't got five minutes, Robbie,” she scolded, in what was left of a Louisiana accent bastardized by cross-country living. “You're skating first period. You wanna explain to my husband why you were tardy for the opening jam?"

  I watched her unpack her uniform, socks, and skates and lay them neatly on a chair. “When I get out of the shower, you'll be gone and I'll have five minutes to myself,” she said.

  "See you tomorrow?"

  Her lips pressed tight. “See you when I see you,” she answered. “Vamoose."

  She shut the bathroom door behind her. I heard the shower running.

  Reluctantly, I dressed and pocketed my wallet and watch. From my knees, I looked under the couch to be sure I hadn't dropped anything for Charlie Hyre to find in his wife's dressing room. Hmmm. Tammy had tucked her purse under the sofa. It was open and I could see the green.

  The water was still running. The bathroom door was closed. I pulled out her bag and helped myself to twenty dollars, pretending in my mind that she was paying me for sex. So I had earned it, kinda.

  That was when I noticed an airline ticket in her bag. First class to Austin. What the hell? Leaving Logan Airport Saturday afternoon ... but we had another game to skate in Boston on Saturday night...

  I put the purse back where I had found it and slipped out, wondering if I had seen the last of Crashin’ Tammy Glassen. As it turned out, I had.

  * * * *

  The cops made a lot of notes during my story, but didn't say much. “I left her alive,” I told them plainly, in case they were thicker than they looked. “Then I went back to the bus to dress for the game. I skated the first period, and then Lil’ Baby found Tammy dead."

  "Put it together for us, Robbie,” Andrews urged. “What happened?"

  I looked at them like this was the most obvious thing in the world. “Dudes! She was bookin’ it to Austin and leaving Charlie Hyre. If I'm proof of anything, it's that her marriage was sham-city. Charlie couldn't stand to let her go. He sneaked into her room after I left and he killed her. Dig? You cats should talk to Charlie."