Silver Bullets

by Douglas Greene et al.

  There were only two at the back of the reception area, and one had the familiar symbol for a unisex restroom. Karlsdottir followed me to the second, and I knocked just as its handle turned.

  The door swung inward, showing a background of manila files stacked in teetering towers on the floor and against two walls. The short man looking up at me was about forty, with black hair beating a retreat above his temples, leaving a little tuft of wayward strands at the crown and a moat of scalp around it. Nuzzo wore a dress shirt and suit pants, but no tie, and his belly sagged over his belt. In his hand he had a cellphone.

  “What’s this all about?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You on a call?”

  He looked down at the cellular. “No, the damned thing’s not working. Won’t even tell time.”

  I stuck out my own hand. “John Cuddy.”

  He shook it without obvious enthusiasm. “Michael Nuzzo.”

  “And this is my client, Ms. Freydis Karlsdottir.”

  He seemed to appraise the tall woman whose shadow loomed over him. “Well, come on in.”

  Nuzzo had to move another pile of files from one of his own client chairs to give both of us places to sit. As we did, he moved around his desk and dropped the useless cellular on top of it. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re looking for a friend of Ms. Karlsdottir’s father.”

  “What makes you think I know him?”

  Him, not “this person” or other ambiguity. “You represent the man on a Worker’s Compensation claim.”

  “Hey,” gesturing toward the files, “you got any idea how many comp’ cases I do a year?”

  It seemed a bit of a non-sequitur, but I’ve always felt you learn more by letting attorneys in any speciality talk. “You want to tell us?”

  Nuzzo gave me a sour look. “When I got out of law school fifteen years ago, you could make a good living off comp’. Hell, in ninety-one, there were over forty-thousand claims filed with the Commonwealth state-wide. Then Governor Willie ‘May he burn in hell’ Weld, a blue-blood who never did manual labor a single day in his life, got the legislature to cut benefits from sixty-seven percent of the weekly wage to sixty, and the benefit period from five years down to three. And now there’s less than half as many claims filed as back in ninety-one.”

  Karlsdottir broke in with the question I was about to ask. “But you must keep a list of all workers you help and the place they live, yes?”

  Nuzzo stared at her. “Confidential.”

  That seemed a little over-protective, since we’d already told him we knew he represented our boy. “Hogni Ragnarsson.”

  The lawyer didn’t flinch or even squint at the unusual name. “Confidential.”

  Karlsdottir leaned forward in her chair. “I have from my father an inheritance for Hogni.”

  Nuzzo perked up. “Inheritance?”

  I said, “The reason we’re trying to find Mr. Ragnarsson.”

  “Well,” a pursing of the lips. “You could make out a check to me, and I could pass it on to him.”

  “If you represent the man,” I said. Nuzzo shot me another sour look.

  Karlsdottir shook her head. “I must give this to Hogni for my family. It is a matter of honor.”

  Nuzzo stood up. “Then I guess this conference is over.”

  My client started to speak, but I squelched her by rising also. “Thanks for your time.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  As we left his office, I put a finger to my lips so that Karlsdottir would hold her peace. On our way past the Cambodia desk, I thanked the woman while plucking one of Nuzzo’s business cards from its plastic crib.

  Out on the sidewalk, Karlsdottir tugged on my coat sleeve. “John Francis, why did you not—”

  I motioned her to move with me beyond the angles of sight allowed by the picture windows. Then I took out my cellphone and dialed that buddy of mine at Verizon again while crossing the street toward the Prelude.

  “Who do you call?”

  I shook my head as I heard my friend pick up. “It’s John Cuddy.”

  “Twice in one day?” came back from a transmitting tower some-

  where.

  “Another favor, yeah. Right about now, there’s a call going out on”—I glanced down at Nuzzo’s card and read off the ten-digit office number—”and I need to know the address it’s going to.”

  “Cuddy, you make a better enemy than a friend.”

  “I’ll wait patiently.”

  As I did, we reached my car, and Freydis Karlsdottir treated me to her beaming smile.

  FIVE

  It took us less than five minutes to reach the address, also in Eastie, that my friend gave me. The number belonged to the payphone in a rooming house, one that had seen better days, now that we were pulling up outside it.

  “Hogni is like me,” said Karlsdottir, giving another solemn nod. “He goes to the professional most close to him.”

  I set the parking brake as my client said, “Please, to open the boot?” As we both moved around to the back of the car, Karlsdottir added, “John Francis, already you have been such a good guide to me, I should see Hogni alone, yes?”

  I keyed the lid, but she reached in before I could help her take the wooden case out. “Hey, Freydis, we’ve come this far together, I’d like to meet the guy.”

  Karlsdottir clutched the case to her chest, nodding uncertainly now. We began walking up the path to the rooming house’s front door. About halfway there, it flew open, and a tall, red-headed man burst onto the stoop, looking down at the steps and limping down them, too, with a duffle-bag in his left hand.The door—maybe on a spring—

  slammed behind him as he hit the path and looked up to see us. And to freeze.

  Which is when I found myself on my knees, registering that I’d been struck over my right ear, the pain expanding geometrically through my skull. As I lost even that precarious balance and pitched forward, I managed to get my palms out in a modified push-up to break the rest of the fall, ending up on all fours and low to the ground.

  Karlsdottir’s voice above me said, “John Francis, I am so sorry.”

  The red-headed man yelled her first name, then a string of what I guessed to be Icelandic.

  With that, Karlsdottir strode around and in front of me, tossing a short, broad sword toward his feet and brandishing an axe on a short handle with a spearpoint at its business end.

  In English, cutlass and halberd.

  Karlsdottir yelled back at Ragnarsson, “Hogni,” and then her own indecipherable statement.

  He dropped the duffle bag, but made no move for the sword, instead limping backward with his hands up in stop signs and baying in Icelandic.

  She advanced on him in a herringbone pattern, first angling left, then right, the halberd held with both hands like a batter in baseball stalking a pitcher who’d just plunked him at the plate.

  Ragnarsson, cringing and babbling now, tripped over the last step of the stoop and fell backward, his head nearly at the closed door, crying out in pain but also, I thought, pleading.

  It did him no good.

  Karlsdottir arrived over him, and brought the axe down like she was felling a horizontal tree, the blade on impact making a sickening “thock” as Ragnarsson fell silent.

  I closed my eyes, thinking I’d just witnessed an example of what “smote” means.

  When I opened my eyes again, Karlsdottir was kneeling in front of me, her hands empty but Ragnarsson’s blood spattered over them as well as her face and clothes.

  “Freydis…?”

  “John Francis, true I am sorry. But Hogni in Iceland did rape on my young sister while he was to be caring for her in his house, as I was caring for my father in ours. My sister is in mental hospital forever from the attack of Hogni, yet the courts ordered him to jail for no time. And so he comes here, to escape me.” Karlsdottir’s eyes drifted northeastward. “I promise to my father as he dies I will take blood vengeance for my sister, because I am the
only one of our family who can do just so.”

  I shook my head, the consequent pain nearly blocking my words. “But the inheritance…?”

  Freydis Karlsdottir’s bleak smile. “In our tradition, inheritance and vengeance are two sides of the same road, John Francis.”

  I think I said, “A matter of honor,” just before blacking out.

  DEATH ROW

  by Michael Z. Lewin

  My Crippen & Landru story collection, The Reluctant Detective and Other Stories, was published in 2001. Doug was a total pleasure to deal with – responsive, intelligent, knowledgeable and quick.

  He knew my work. There was a story he suggested that I didn’t want to include (not good enough) and one I submitted that he asked me to omit. No problem both ways. I really wish that Doug’s manner of working had been an industry standard in the course of my career. Let’s just say it hasn’t been; I’ve been lucky to get one of the adjectives above, much less all four.

  And it’s been a pleasure meeting and talking with Doug about other things and other people many times, at conferences and at Detection Club events in London.

  He also particularly liked a couple of my funnier stories with Dan Quayle as detective. Remember Dan Quayle? Looks a bit better than he used to, doesn’t he?

  The story in this collection doesn’t feature Danny, but “Death Row” is true. Well, true to the extent that there really is such an institution in a pub in Bath.

  The real pub isn’t called The Sun and Moon. It’s called The Star and it’s been a licensed public house since 1759. That’s not the oldest boozer in Bath, but it’s a special place and, of course, I had to go there and do some research as I was writing the story.

  The story was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and that fact hit the papers here in Bath. I’d like to say that’s because murder in this ancient and beautiful city is so rare but that’s not entirely true. What’s rare is a story set in a local pub. Except for the ones told around the tables (or overheard by shy and retiring folk such as I.) No, I’m not claiming this is as a true crime tale, but there is a Death Row.

  Although I’m American by birth, I’ve lived in England nearly fifty years. But even now by no means all my oeuvre is set here. For instance, my newest book, Alien Quartet, marks a return between soft covers (and in electronic formats) of my first fictional character. Albert Samson is a PI based in Indianapolis, first published in 1971… The book contains four linked stories, all also previously published in EQMM but never before put together in book form.

  No space ships in Alien Quartet: apologies for those seeking yet more novelty from me in the mystery genre. But a still-sensitive, sometimes reflective private eye. One of the stories won a Shamus, another a nomination.

  Big thanks too to the redoubtable Jeffrey Marks who has put this collection together with such courtesy and efficiency.

  “But it’s my only chance,” Morrison said. “It’s my last chance.” Katy drank from her pint. Then she shook her head slowly,

  dismissively. “What do you need to be on television for anyway? I’ve never been on television. I don’t feel less a person because of it.”

  “You’d avoid being on the tele, if what you’ve been telling me all these years is true.”

  “Oh it’s true all right.” She dropped her eyes. “And I can’t even tell you most of it.”

  “So you always say,” Morrison said. He finished his own pint as Katy’s head snapped up, a frown on her face. “And I’m not disbelieving you. I’m not. You’ve lived one hell of a life. One that would put most men to shame. One that puts me to shame. But that’s not point. The point is that here I am, seventy-eight years old, and I’ve never been on the television and now I got a chance and all I’m asking for is a little help.”

  “A little help is what you call it?” Katy rubbed her face.

  “It’ll be like riding a bike,” Morrison said. His wry expression silently added, “if what you’ve been telling me all these years is true.”

  “I still don’t get why it’s so damned important to you.”

  “It’s television,” Morrison said. “It’s the modern age. Everything is on the tele. Everybody is on the tele. You’re nothing if you haven’t been on tele. Unless, of course, it’s your personal choice. But my grandkids, I can tell by the way they look at me, they think I’m a slug because their mother thinks I’m a slug but if suddenly, there I was, on the TV, then that’d all change. There’d be some respect in their eyes. I’ve been waiting all my life to see some respect in my grandkids’ eyes.”

  “Your grandchildren are twenty-two and twenty-eight, Mo. And when was the last time you even spoke to the twenty-eight-year-old?”

  “OK, Colin’s a DJ or impresario or whatever queer thing he’s went and made himself. But there’s little Becky.”

  “Who has two kids of her own and lives in a council house.”

  “So maybe it’s my great-grandkids I want some respect from.”

  “When’s the last time you saw them?”

  “If I was going to be on the tele I could call Becky up, tell her when, visit her. Maybe we could watch it together with the greats. It could be the start of a whole new phase of my life. I could be a real grandfather to these ones. I could teach them things. I could tell them stories. And they’d listen because they could tell their friends that’s my great-granddad and he was on the TV news.”

  “You really believe it makes that much difference to them?”

  “It’s television. What else do they know at their ages.”

  “What’s their ages?”

  “Four and five.”

  “You sure?”

  “Or thereabouts.”

  Katy sighed. She drank from her beer, finishing it. “You want another?” She stood up. “Same again?”

  “And why are we sitting out here?” Morrison said. He gestured around the small garden.

  “Because it’s a nice evening?”

  “Instead of in there. You see anybody else out here because it’s a nice evening?”

  “Just as well, considering what you’re asking me to do.”

  “It’s just that it’s not that nice a evening, that’s my point,” Morrison said. “Only tourists would sit out here else by choice.”

  “You’re just after the ten percent discount.”

  Morrison shrugged. “I’m not a rich man. But that’s not the point.”

  Katy carried his glass and her own to the back door of the public house.

  “It’s not the point.”

  She lifted her shoulders in a shrug, knowing he would see it as she headed indoors for the bar.

  “It’s not the point,” Morrison said to himself. “I got me a chance to go on the television and all I’m asking is a little help.”

  A few minutes later a young couple came to the door of the garden. The woman pointed to the other table and asked, “Is that table taken?”

  “Yes,” Morrison said. “A family. With grandkids. Sorry.”

  The young couple retreated into the interior of The Sun and Moon. A moment later Katy came back out. She glanced back, probably seeing the retreating couple. “They wanted to be alone,” Morrison said. “Didn’t want a table next to some old codger.”

  Katy sat down. “And his old lady friend.”

  “You’re not old.”

  “I’m as old as you.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Because I’m eleven months younger? That’s near as makes no difference at our age, Mo.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Thanks, I suppose.”

  “And you don’t act it. You move like a gazelle.”

  She laughed. “How would you know how a gazelle moves? Especially an arthritic one.”

  “You’re going to tell me you know about gazelles? All that glamorous life you’ve led. Adventures this part of the world and that.”

  Katy tilted her head as if she might contest the idea that she’d had adventure
s. Instead she said, “Hardly glamorous.”

  “You been all over the world. Where have I ever been? Not even on the tele.”

  “I haven’t been that many places.”

  “Africa?”

  “Well…”

  “Far East?”

  “Sitting in an Army office most of the time.”

  “Sitting. Oh right. Not doing anything. I believe that. And the earth is flat.”

  “It is.”

  “What is?”

  “The earth. Flat.”

  He stared at her, his hand around his new pint. “In places.” She laughed.

  “Ha-bloody-ha,” he said. He lifted his glass. “Cheers.” They touched glasses. They both drank.

  “I know you can’t tell me all what you did,” Morrison said. “Not even now. Not even when there’s nobody I could tell it to anyway.”

  “I signed the Official Secrets Act,” Katy said. “There’s a lot don’t

  take that seriously now, but I do. It’s an oath.”

  “And I respect you for that.”

  “I’ll tell you this much though,” she said after a deep drag on her drink. “If I was a young woman now, the adventures I could have, same kind of career, they’d leave what I actually did in the dust. They’re in the SAS now, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Women. There’s about nothing that the blokes in the Army do that the women don’t do now.” She shook her head.

  “There’s some been killed in Iraq,” Morrison said. “Women. Soldiers.”

  “The risk is part of what they pay you for.”

  “Anyhow, you wouldn’t have been much good undercover against the Mau Mau. Or in Korea. Or Suez.”

  “The SAS isn’t about undercover. It’s about getting in there to do a job and then getting out again without being caught.”

  “Or Malaya.” He drank. Katy sat quietly.

  He said, “Northern Ireland…” He looked at her. “You could have been over there. You were over there.”

  “Strictly in an administrative capacity,” she said. “But if it was going on these days, the job I could have done as a woman… There are things women can do that the men couldn’t. They’ve finally learned that.” She sighed, a sigh for the glamour and adventure she’d missed out on because she’d been born at the wrong time.