by The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021
On the way home I stopped by the bank ATM and deposited the check from Ruskin. The transaction went through, thanks to the warning from Dudley.
I was still thinking about Dudley when I stepped into the boathouse. He’d probably say he got drunk and broke into the workshop by mistake. Ruskin would spring him from jail before the arresting officers got off their shifts.
A guy like Dudley doesn’t make his way through life without leaving tracks. I called the best tracker I knew. If John Flagg was surprised to hear from me at three o’clock in the morning, he didn’t show it. He simply said, “Hello, Soc. Been a while. What’s up?”
Flagg seems to function without sleep. Which may have something to do with his job as a troubleshooter for an ultra-secret government unit. We’d met in Vietnam and bonded over our New England heritage. He was a Wampanoag Indian from Martha’s Vineyard whose ancestors had been around for thousands of years. My parents came to Massachusetts from the ancient land of Greece.
“Ever heard of a guy named Merriwhether Ruskin the Third?”
“Sure. He runs one of the biggest mercenary ops in the world. Bigger than the armies of lots of countries. Why do you ask?”
“He hired me for a job.”
“Never figured you for a soldier of fortune, Soc.”
“Me neither. That’s why I’m no longer on his payroll. Ruskin has another guy working for him. First name is Dudley. Maybe Australian. I know that isn’t much.”
“Give me a minute. I’ll look in the bad guy database.” He hung up. I could imagine him tapping into the vast intelligence network he had at his fingertips. He called back after three minutes. “He’s an Aussie named Dudley Wormsley, aka ‘The Worm.’ Interpol has a pile of warrants out for him.”
“I thought as much. Wonder if there is any way to let the FBI know that ‘The Worm’ is sitting in the Harwich, Massachusetts, police station, under arrest for breaking and entering.”
“I’ll take care of it. When we going fishing?”
“Charter boat’s coming out of the water, but there’s my dinghy. As you know, I don’t bait my hooks.”
“Suits me,” Flagg said.
I hung up and thought about Mike. He said he’d been attacked by goats. Dudley had referred to the hazmat suit as a spook suit. Spooks equal ghosts. Which meant plural. Which meant he wasn’t alone. Which meant the second ghost was Ruskin.
With Dudley out of the way, Ruskin was an open target, if I could get to him, although that was unlikely given the airtight fortress he lived in. When I got home I retrieved the box from the deck and brought it inside. I took out the plastic case protecting the merganser, put it on the kitchen table, and stared at it, taking in the graceful lines of the bird’s body and neck.
“Talk to me,” I said.
Early the next morning I got up, poured some coffee into a travel mug, and called Ruskin’s number. The butler answered the phone and said his boss was busy. I said that was all right. I merely wanted to drop off Mr. Ruskin’s decoy. He said to leave it at the gatehouse.
After hanging up, I got a small leather case out of a duffle bag I keep in my bedroom closet. Inside the case was a full range of lock picks. After a few tries, I popped the padlock and lifted the box lid back on its hinges. I remembered how Ruskin had reached into the box for the carving and lifted it above his head.
Then I took the decoy out of the box, put it in the sink and got a jar of peanut butter out of the refrigerator. I spooned some butter out of the jar onto the bird carving and smeared it all over the wooden feathers with my hands. Then I nestled the glistening fake bird back into its fake nest. I padlocked the box again and carried it out to the truck.
As I drove away from the gatehouse after dropping the box off for Mr. Ruskin, I thought what I’d done was rather sneaky and not very nice. Maybe Ruskin was allergic to peanuts. Maybe not. But I didn’t like being played for a patsy, especially when innocent people are hurt. It happened at a village in Vietnam, and with Murphy. It wasn’t going to happen again.
I stopped by the hospital on the way home. Mike was out of the ICU and sleeping. The nurse in charge said he was doing fine.
Bridget called me that night to say that she had been trying to reach Ruskin, but his butler said he wasn’t available. She said she would keep me posted. I didn’t know what Ruskin was allergic to when I returned his decoy. Maybe I just got lucky.
Mike got out of the hospital a few days later. I drove him home and checked in on him while he healed and popped painkillers. When I asked why he had called me instead of 911, he said it was because Marines stick together.
Once he was able to talk at length we discussed what to do about the Crowell decoy.
He confessed that he’d taken it from the Orloff mansion for payment of back wages. When he found out the bird was worth maybe a million dollars, he knew he couldn’t sell it. He read about Chinese reproductions somewhere and went into the fake decoy business for himself. He had the original scanned in New York and made in China. He sold out the first batch except for the one he kept. But he started to get nervous about attracting attention to himself and wanted the Crowell bird out of the house. He hid it in plain sight at the historical society museum, never figuring they’d put it in the Crowell barn.
“Legally speaking, the bird may belong to Ruskin,” I said. “He told me that he paid Orloff for the merganser, but I have only his word for that. It’s quite possible no money exchanged hands, which means that the sale never went through. In that case, Orloff was still the owner. Did he have any heirs?”
“None that I know of. He left lots of folks holding the bag. Including me. But if I admit I took it from the house, I could get into trouble.”
Mike was right. He’d removed the bird without permission. His sticky fingers saved the carving, but it was still grand larceny. If the debtors heard about the bird, they’d want it put up for auction so they could get a cut, no matter how small.
I thought about it for a minute. “You mentioned a fund for handicapped children that Orloff cheated,” I said.
“Big time. They’ll never recover.”
“They might,” I said. “Suppose we contact their lawyers and say we have the bird. Tell them that Orloff felt remorse over cheating the fund, and he wanted to donate proceeds from the sale of the Crowell at auction.”
“Great, but how does that explain me having the bird?”
“You’re a bird carver. Orloff let you take the bird so you could prepare a prospectus at auction. When he went to jail and the house was sealed, you didn’t know what to do. Orloff called and told you he wanted to move ahead with the sale, then he died.”
“That old bastard never said that. Never would.”
“Maybe, but that’s the way you understood it. It makes him look good, and helps a bunch of kids who need it. Splitting it among the debtors would only make the lawyers rich. Look at it this way: the Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand. Semper fi.”
Mike shook my hand with a lobster grip.
“Semper fi.”
Mike’s new implants look like the real thing. They should. I used Ruskin’s check to help pay for them. It was the least I could do, but left me with nothing for the boat loan. I was drowning my sorrows in a beer at Trader Ed’s one night when another boat captain offered me a job crewing on a charter boat in the Florida Keys. I said I’d take it. The timing was good. Bridget called the other day to let me know the Ruskin job was permanently off.
Sometimes I wonder what Crowell would have made of the whole affair. He’d be puzzled at all the fuss over one of his birds, but I think he’d be pleased how things turned out with the preening merganser.
The knees of the gods, as Homer said.
Or my partner Sam used to say after a good day of fishing: “Finestkind, Cap.”
*The idea of writing a mystery centered around master bird carver Elmer Crowell had rattled around in my skull for years. I frequently drove by his former workshop and I had read that wealt
hy collectors paid millions for some of his rarer pieces. People have killed for far less and it seemed to me that a missing Crowell bird carving or carvings might be a good basis for an Aristotle Socarides book. When Suspense Publications asked me to contribute to an anthology entitled Nothing Good Happens After Midnight, I decided to use the Crowell concept. It was my first short story and I had to ask a longtime writer friend named Brendan DuBois how long it should be. Crowell is not well-known outside of collector circles. I’m hoping the story will make more people aware of this remarkable self-taught America genius.
Stephen King has been one of the world’s bestselling authors for four decades, most of his work being in the horror, supernatural, fantasy, crime, and suspense categories. Among the many films and television series made from his books are Carrie, The Shining, Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, It, and The Stand.
THE FIFTH STEP
Stephen King
Harold Jamieson, once chief engineer of New York City’s sanitation department, enjoyed retirement. He knew from his small circle of friends that some didn’t, so he considered himself lucky. He had an acre of garden in Queens that he shared with several like-minded horticulturists, he had discovered Netflix, and he was making inroads in the books he’d always meant to read. He still missed his wife—a victim of breast cancer five years previous—but aside from that persistent ache, his life was quite full. Before rising every morning, he reminded himself to enjoy the day. At sixty-eight, he liked to think he had a fair amount of road left, but there was no denying it had begun to narrow.
The best part of those days—assuming it wasn’t raining, snowing, or too cold—was the nine-block walk to Central Park after breakfast. Although he carried a cell phone and used an electronic tablet (had grown dependent on it, in fact), he still preferred the print version of the Times. In the park, he would settle on his favorite bench and spend an hour with it, reading the sections back to front, telling himself he was progressing from the sublime to the ridiculous.
One morning in mid-May, the weather coolish but perfectly adequate for bench sitting and newspaper reading, he was annoyed to look up from his paper and see a man sitting down on the other end of his bench, although there were plenty of empty ones in the vicinity. This invader of Jamieson’s morning space looked to be in his mid to late forties, neither handsome nor ugly, in fact perfectly nondescript. The same was true of his attire: New Balance walking shoes, jeans, a Yankees cap, and a Yankees hoodie with the hood tossed back. Jamieson gave him an impatient side-glance and prepared to move to another bench.
“Wait,” the man said. “I sat down here because I need a favor. It’s not a big one, but I’ll pay.” He reached into the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie and brought out a twenty-dollar bill.
“I don’t do favors for strange men,” Jamieson said, and got up.
“But that’s exactly the point—the two of us being strangers. Hear me out. If you say no, that’s fine. But please hear me out. You could . . .” He cleared his throat, and Jamieson realized the guy was nervous. Maybe more, maybe scared. “You could be saving my life.”
Jamieson considered, then sat down, but as far from the other man as he could while still keeping both butt cheeks on the bench. “I’ll give you a minute, but if you sound crazy, I’m leaving. And put your money away. I don’t need it, and I don’t want it.”
The man looked at the bill as if surprised to find it still in his hand, then put it back in the pocket of his sweatshirt. He put his hands on his thighs and looked down at them instead of at Jamieson. “I’m an alcoholic. Four months sober. Four months and twelve days, to be exact.”
“Congratulations,” Jamieson said. He guessed he meant it, but he was even more ready to get up. The guy seemed sane, but Jamieson was old enough to know that sometimes the woo-woo didn’t come out right away.
“I’ve tried three times before and once got almost a year. I think this might be my last chance to grab the brass ring. I’m in AA. That’s—”
“I know what it is. What’s your name, Mr. Four Months Sober?”
“You can call me Jack, that’s good enough. We don’t use last names in the program.”
Jamieson knew that too. Lots of people on the Netflix shows had alcohol problems. “So what can I do for you, Jack?”
“The first three times I tried, I didn’t get a sponsor in the program—somebody who listens to you, answers your questions, sometimes tells you what to do. This time I did. Met a guy at the Bowery Sundown meeting and really liked the stuff he said. And, you know, how he carried himself. Twelve years sober, feet on the ground, works in sales, like me.”
He had turned to look at Jamieson, but now he returned his gaze to his hands.
“I used to be a hell of a salesman—for five years I headed the sales department of . . . well, it doesn’t matter, but it was a big deal, you’d know the company. Now I’m down to peddling greeting cards and energy drinks to bodegas in the five boroughs. Last rung on the ladder, man.”
“Get to the point,” Jamieson said, but not harshly; he had become a little interested in spite of himself. It was not every day that a stranger sat down on your bench and started spilling his shit. Especially not in New York. “I was just going to check on the Mets. They’re off to a good start.”
Jack rubbed a palm across his mouth. “I liked this guy I met at the Sundown, so I got up my courage after a meeting and asked him to be my sponsor. In March, this was. He looked me over and said he’d take me on, but only on two conditions: that I do everything he said and call him if I felt like drinking. ‘Then I’ll be calling you every fucking night,’ I said, and he said, ‘So call me every fucking night, and if I don’t answer talk to the machine.’ Then he asked me if I worked the Steps. Do you know what those are?”
“Vaguely.”
“I said I hadn’t gotten around to them. He said that if I wanted him to be my sponsor, I’d have to start. He said the first three were both the hardest and the easiest. They boil down to ‘I can’t stop on my own, but with God’s help I can, so I’m going to let him help.’ ”
Jamieson grunted.
“I said I didn’t believe in God. This guy—Randy’s his name—said he didn’t give a shit. He told me to get down on my knees every morning and ask this God I didn’t believe in to help me stay sober another day. And if I did, he said for me to get down on my knees before I turned in and thank God for my sober day. Randy asked if I was willing to do that, and I said I was. Because I’d lose him otherwise. You see?”
“Sure. You were desperate.”
“Exactly! ‘The gift of desperation,’ that’s what AAs call it. Randy said if I didn’t do those prayers and said I was doing them, he’d know. Because he spent thirty years lying his ass off about everything.”
“So you did it? Even though you don’t believe in God?”
“I did it and it’s been working. As for my belief that there’s no God . . . the longer I stay sober, the more that wavers.”
“If you’re going to ask me to pray with you, forget it.”
Jack smiled down at his hands. “Nope. I still feel self-conscious about the on-my-knees thing even when I’m by myself. Last month—April—Randy told me to do the Fourth Step. That’s when you make a moral inventory—supposedly ‘searching and fearless’—of your character.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. Randy said I was supposed to put down the bad stuff, then turn the page and list the good stuff. It took me ten minutes for the bad stuff. Over an hour for the good stuff. When I told Randy, he said that was normal. ‘You drank for almost thirty years,’ he said. ‘That puts a lot of bruises on a man’s self-image. But if you stay sober, they’ll heal.’ Then he told me to burn the lists. He said it would make me feel better.”
“Did it?”
“Strangely enough, it did. Anyway, that brings us to this month’s request from Randy.”
“More of a demand, I’m guessing,” Jamieson said, smiling a little. He folded his newspap
er and laid it aside.
Jack also smiled. “I think you’re catching the sponsor-sponsee dynamic. Randy told me it was time to do my Fifth Step.”
“Which is?”
“ ‘Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs,’ ” Jack said, making quote marks with his fingers. “I told him okay, I’d make a list and read it to him. God could listen in. Two birds with one stone deal.”
“I’m thinking he said no.”
“He said no. He told me to approach a complete stranger. His first suggestion was a priest or a minister, but I haven’t set foot in a church since I was twelve, and I have no urge to go back. Whatever I’m coming to believe—and I don’t know yet what that is—I don’t need to sit in a church pew to help it along.”
Jamieson, no churchgoer himself, nodded his understanding.
“Randy said, ‘So walk up to somebody in Washington Square or Central Park and ask him to hear you list your wrongs. Offer a few bucks to sweeten the deal if that’s what it takes. Keep asking until someone agrees to listen.’ He said the hard part would be the asking part, and he was right.”
“Am I . . .” Your first victim was the phrase that came to mind, but Jamieson decided it wasn’t exactly fair. “Am I the first person you’ve approached?”
“The second.” Jack grinned. “I tried an off-duty cab driver yesterday and he told me to get lost.”
Jamieson thought of an old New York joke: Out-of-towner approaches a guy on Lexington Avenue and says, “Can you tell me how to get to City Hall or should I just go fuck myself?” He decided he wasn’t going to tell the guy in the Yankees gear to go fuck himself. He would listen, and the next time he met his friend Alex (another retiree) for lunch, he’d have something interesting to talk about.
“Okay, go for it.”
Jack reached into the pouch of his hoodie, took out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. “When I was in fourth grade—”
