The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  "I was going to use the talk to spring a trap on the conspirators, as I did tonight, catching as many as possible with the hollowed-out books. At the last minute, some lab work wasn't ready, and we weren't ready to make an arrest. Rather than give the speech, I postponed it a couple of weeks so we could follow through with the original plan. We had a dozen men scattered through the audience, with uniformed officers outside."

  He walked outside with them and lingered for a moment with Jean. "Mark seems like a nice guy."

  "He is." There was something else she had to ask Eugene. "This undercover work— it was all because of what happened to our father, wasn't it?"

  "I suppose so. I didn't much like him, growing up, but he died in a fire. To me, fire has always been the enemy."

  "It was the Grists who were the enemy." She gave him a hug. "It's good to have you back."

  Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Scorpion's Kiss

  STUART M. KAMINSKY has juggled several series over the course of his long career, and juggled them well. From his dark, intense mysteries starring Porfiry Rostnikov, the Moscow police inspector who always solves the impossible cases assigned to him by his superiors, to his funny-melancholy chase-mysteries with Toby Peters, a Hollywood P.I. in the 1940s, to his wry-solemn Abe Lieberman books about a Jewish detective in modern-day Chicago… all his series have one thing in common: the deft touch of a master craftsman. In "Scorpion's Kiss," first published in the German anthology Aszendent Mord, he proves once again that he's just as good at shorter lengths.

  Scorpion's Kiss

  Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Ringerman was almost finished shaving when the doorbell rang. No one had rung his bell or come to his door in the three months he had lived here, but he wasn't surprised by this announcement of his first visitor.

  He looked in the mirror. He had been through much in forty-six years. His face still looked youthful and smooth and there was no more than a little gray in his hair.

  The doorbell rang again.

  He had stepped out of the shower only minutes ago. He wanted to be ready for what he had to do this afternoon. Now he stood barefooted, shirtless. He wiped away the soap and washed his face with cold water. Then he dried.

  Ringerman had not worked out with weights for more than four months but his body was still firm and he did do a half hour of push-ups and sit-ups every morning and at night.

  The doorbell rang.

  He examined himself once more, brushed back his hair with his hands and went through the door. He had one more thing to do in his bedroom and living room.

  The doorbell rang.

  Finished with what he had to do, he moved across the wooden floor to the heavy, metal-reinforced door he had installed when he moved in. One of his conditions, which the landlord of the building accepted because he was having difficulty renting in this rapidly declining district, was that Ringerman could put on a new door and install bars on the windows.

  Since the apartment was on the fifth floor, the tired-looking landlord in the crumpled suit, head balding, tinged with sweat, agreed. He had nothing to lose. When Ringerman left, the landlord, whose name was Gentry, would use the bars and reinforced door as inducements for a possible tenant.

  The doorbell was ringing again as Ringerman opened it after looking through the peephole. On the wall across from his door in the corridor, Ringerman had installed two mirrors three feet apart at angles. The mirrors were small, unobtrusive and allowed him to see to the end of the corridor both right and left. There was no one outside but a woman looking back at him.

  He opened the door.

  "Robert Miles Ringerman?" she asked.

  She was as tall as he, dark of face as he was, and definitely pretty. Her hair was short and blond. Her dress was dark and fashionably expensive. She looked as if she were no more than thirty-five. He was certain she was older, close to his age. She was holding something in her hand.

  "Yes," he said standing in the doorway.

  "Here."

  She handed the wallet to him.

  "You dropped it in the Jewel, near the deli counter."

  He took the wallet.

  "Thanks," he said.

  "You're welcome. You going to count the money, check the credit cards?"

  Her smile showed perfect white teeth.

  "No, I'm not going to count the money or check the credit cards."

  "Then it's all right?" she said.

  "Yes, thank you. It's fine."

  "Then I'll go."

  "Can I offer you? …"

  "No," she said with a smile. "I… no, but thank you."

  "Please come in. Just for a minute. Let me get you something to drink or…"

  She looked at the thin gold watch on her left wrist and puckered her full lips in thought.

  "A minute," she said.

  He stepped back and she entered. Ringerman closed the door behind her. It clicked shut, metallic, firm. He threw the dead bolt.

  She looked at the door, unafraid.

  "You're careful," she said.

  "Paranoid," he said. "If you're afraid…"

  He reached over to open the door again.

  "No, no."

  He nodded and said, "Coffee. Can I offer you coffee?"

  "Coffee would be nice. Black."

  She smiled nervously, looking around the room.

  Ringerman didn't smile.

  "I'll have it ready in a minute or two," he said. "Have a seat, please."

  She nodded and gave a careful smile.

  He went through a door to his right and out of sight.

  She looked around the room, glanced at the barred windows. It was late afternoon. The sun was still shining. She looked at the furniture and the polished wood floor. When he moved in, Ringerman had pulled up the dirty carpets and found good oak underneath. He had polished it into respectability. The furniture was simple, consignment, two armchairs, a sofa. They were a rough fabric, gray with a series of black stripes. A small television stood on an oak cabinet against the wall near the door he had gone through. There were three floor lamps and a handmade bookcase about three feet wide and reaching to the ceiling. The shelves were filled with neatly lined-up books.

  But what really drew her were the paintings, twenty of them, all in simple black frames, some horizontal, some vertical, all of them the same size, about two feet by two and a half feet.

  She heard him moving around the kitchen as she moved to the wall, drawn by the paintings. The paint was thick on the first ones to her left, thick, heavy, dark standing out in three dimensions like irregular mountain ridges. She thought she felt anger in what she saw. As she moved down the line, the paint was laid on less thickly. The colors were brighter. They moved from left to right from abstraction and darkness to sunlight and portraits of men, women, children.

  The first six paintings of darkness were of the same room, a room without windows and no people, just furniture. The furniture was simple. There were different angles of the room.

  The next set of paintings was less dark but more abstract. The one that held her longest was of a simple balance scale, grayish white against a background of blue. The scale was tipped to the right because the left plate of the scale was empty and the one on the right held a red scorpion, its tail raised, ready to strike.

  She moved quickly past the rest of the paintings of people, mostly men, tired men, smiling men, and finally to the portraits of women, four of them, all beautiful, all, she could now see, were of the same woman. The woman's hair was short and blond in one painting, long and dark in another, piled dark and red in the third, and hanging in an almost white ponytail over her right shoulder. She was smiling in all of the pictures. These were followed by another set of four children, each different, ages from perhaps five to twelve.

  He was still moving around the kitchen. She moved to the bookcase, pausing to examine the scorpion on the scale for a moment. The painting held her till she forced herself to look away and step toward the high bookc
ase.

  There was no pattern to the books. There was a book on Inuit art, a history of Peru, a thin book on learning to play the banjo, a book on diplomatic relations with India, biographies of movie stars, authors, soldiers, a book on clocks and clock repair, and novels, Mickey Spillane, Tolstoy, Joyce Carol Oates, James Fenimore Cooper, Hans Helmut Kirst, Albert Camus, Roald Dahl, Louis Lamour, Borges, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

  She was holding a book on astrological signs in her hand when she sensed him in the kitchen doorway across the room. She turned slowly, book in hand.

  "You read all of these?" she asked looking at the rows of books.

  He stood with two mugs, identical, blue, in his hands. He was wearing a long-sleeved button-down denim shirt now.

  "Yes," he said.

  She carefully returned the book to the shelf and moved toward him to take the warm cup. Their fingers touched.

  "Your taste is certainly…"

  "Eclectic," he said. "I read whatever comes to me."

  "Have you ever seen The Manchurian Candidate?"

  "Sinatra? Yes."

  "After he's been brainwashed he reads everything, anything, book after book, piled up all over. He meets Janet Leigh and he stops the manic reading."

  "I remember," he said. "Saw it a long time ago on television. Guy is brainwashed into killing some friends. Then he kills his girlfriend and her father and then his stepfather and mother."

  "You're right. Does he kill any brothers or sisters?"

  "He didn't have any," Ringerman said.

  "And you?"

  "Brothers or sisters?"

  "Yes," she said. "Wife, children, mother? father?"

  "Mother and father are dead," he said. "I have one sister, a twin. I'm not married."

  "Are you close? I mean you and your sister?"

  "Very," he said. "You?"

  "Yes," she said stepping back to sit on the sofa. She held the mug in both hands. Her long red fingernails formed a jagged pattern. "I have a husband, a fourteen-year-old son, and a brother."

  "Are you close?" he asked.

  "With my husband and son? Yes. With my brother, not really. I'd say 'no'. These paintings. Yours?"

  "Yes," he said, still standing, looking toward the paintings.

  "You've done more?"

  "Yes."

  "Many more?" she asked.

  "About eighty more. Some of them went to friends. I've got other ones stored."

  Something clattered outside, maybe a truck. They could hear it far away through the closed and barred windows and down five floors. Ringerman and the woman paused.

  "That one," she said pointing toward the wall when the clatter had stopped. "The one with the scale and the scorpion. Before you put your shirt on I saw…"

  "Scars," he said.

  "Yes," she answered. "Scars and what looked like that scale tattooed on your left arm, right by the muscle."

  "Libra," he said. "I'm a Libra."

  "Your only tattoo?"

  She sipped her coffee.

  "Yes," he said.

  "Coincidence," she said.

  "What? You're a Libra?"

  "No," she said, "Scorpio."

  She put her mug down on a Time magazine on the table in front of her and kicked off her left shoe, looking up at him as she did it. She turned her foot so he could see the very small tattoo just below her ankle bone.

  "It's a scorpion," she said. "I'm a Scorpio."

  "Your only tattoo?"

  "Yes," she said kicking off her other shoe. "That's a scorpion on the scale in the painting."

  "Yes," he said looking at the painting.

  "You know a Scorpio?"

  "I'm not really into astrology," he said. "That was done a long time ago. A roommate of mine was a Scorpio."

  "A roommate. That room in the paintings," she said. "You were in jail, weren't you? It's none of my business, but it looks like a cell."

  "Prison," he said. "I was in prison. That's where I got the tattoo. When I first went in. If I flex the muscle, it tips the scale."

  "Which way?" she asked with a smile.

  "Whichever way I want it to go. You want to leave?"

  "No," she said. "No. I haven't finished my coffee. You want to get rid of me?"

  He looked directly at her.

  "No," he said.

  "I've never known an ex-convict," she said. "I got married young, moved to Wilmette with my husband, an accountant. Got a college degree in not much of anything, joined groups. Not a very interesting biography. Your life?"

  He still stood looking at her. He stood for a long, slow thirty seconds before he spoke.

  "Lived with my mother in Wisconsin," he said. "Small house, right on Lake Michigan, just below the Michigan border. Lots of land. No money. My father died when my sister and I were babies. I wasn't much of a student in school. I wasn't much of a son. I wasn't any kind of a brother. Loner, quiet. Started with small crimes, stealing cars. There was a chop shop in Madison my friend and I used to drive them to. His name was Charlie. He wasn't much of a friend. Spent his money getting drunk… and on women. We were kids. Sure you want to hear this?"

  "I'm sure," she said curling her legs under her.

  Ringerman could see that she had good, long legs.

  "I split with Charlie when we were both twenty-five," he said leaning back against the wall, not drinking his coffee. "Went on my own. Safer."

  "Your mother?"

  "She didn't know. I told her I was driving a truck. She worked in a shop that rented uniforms till her legs gave out. She got disability, read, watched television, mostly game shows. Wheel of Fortune was her passion. She actually said that. I just remembered. "Wheel of Fortune is my passion." I'd drive days away, as far as Duluth or outside Chicago or Fort Wayne, put something, cheap mask, stocking, over my face, point a gun in the face of a department store manager or a jewelry store owner, take the cash and get out of town. I'd wear gloves, do all the right things and never go near the same town twice. I'd always use a cheap stolen car, a car I stole from somewhere about twenty miles from the place I'd hit. After, I'd drive the car back to where I'd parked my car out of sight, wipe it down. Did all right. Then…"

  "Then," she said looking up at him intently.

  "Got greedy, getting older, almost thirty-five, and getting greedy. I was doing fine, but not big fine. I decided to go for a bank. Not inside where they have the alarms you can't stop and people ready to be heroes. Or maybe someone gets scared and runs even with a shotgun leveled at them. I decided to take the armored car at the end of a pickup day. Come at the guard, stick the shotgun in his face, grab what he had in both hands, cut the truck tires, back the guard up to my stolen car to keep the armored car driver from helping and get away fast. It was all worked out. I checked the bank out for a week eating at a McDonald's across the street, sitting in the parking lot of the mall where the bank was, reading a book. Had it all worked out."

  "But?" she asked.

  "But," he repeated. "Everything went down perfectly. Truck, tires, guard, gun, bags. A few people were watching, but I didn't care. None of them moved. You never know. When I was backing up with the guard, a little kid, a boy no more than five or six, got away from his mother who was watching. She screamed. The kid ran at me, grabbed my leg and wouldn't let go. I tried to shake him loose, but I had the shotgun at the guard's neck, two heavy bags in the other hand and my eyes on the doors of the armored car. The kid bit me."

  "Too much television," she said.

  "He wanted to be a superhero," Ringerman said pushing away from the wall and moving to the chair across from her. "I told the guard to get the kid off of me but my time was running out. The whole thing had broken down. The guard made a halfhearted move to get the kid loose, but the kid's mother was running fast at me and only a few yards away."

  "And you got caught?"

  "Gave up," he said after taking a long drink of coffee. "If I believed in astrology I'd have said the stars and planets were against me. The
kid was a hero. They said I would have gotten away with two hundred thousand and change. Instead I wound up with fourteen years and change, the change being three months. They tied me to some of the other smaller jobs I'd done. I did ten years with good behavior. Could have been worse, much worse. More coffee?"