Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 01/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  “So what was all this business of putting our tools under a microscope?”

  “At the factory,” explained Auburn, “the cover of the box where the relays were installed had been closed with one-way screws to discourage tampering. The person who opened that box stored the one-way screws inside temporarily and replaced them with standard machine screws.”

  Garner stood vacillating in the shadows like a man who has either had one too many or needs one more. “Excuse me, Officer,” he said, “but ... one-way screws? To me that sounds a bit like left-handed screwdrivers, and glass hammers, and such.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s no joke. One-way screws have their heads partly cut away from alongside the slots. You can drive them in with an ordinary screwdriver, but if you turn the screwdriver the other way it can’t get a grip. Rides right up out of the slot.”

  “So how do you get them loose?”

  “You can use a special tool, if you have one. They’re expensive, hard to find, and they don’t work all that well. Or you can back the screw out with pliers, but that’s even harder. Unless you’ve got a good pair of locking pliers that you can clamp onto the screw head and turn like a doorknob. That’s what the killer used.”

  Chris Stollard had followed Auburn’s explanation with intense concentration. “How can you tell that?” he asked.

  “Because the tool left marks—one clean set of marks on each screw head. A regular pair of pliers would have had to be repositioned many times, and it would have scratched and chewed those screws like a dog gnawing a bone. As you probably know if you watch much TV, the marks left on wood or metal by a tool that’s been used a few times are as distinctive as a fingerprint. Sergeant Kestrel took a print of each of the tools he examined by closing it down tight on a plug of soft alloy. And one of those tools matches the marks on the screws from the box with the foreign relays.”

  He read Ron Reese the statutory warning and asked him to put his hands on top of his head and face the wall. Schottel searched him and found a wallet, keys, cigarettes, a disposable lighter, and a roll of antacid mints.

  “I’m not going to remain silent,” said Reese, turning to face Auburn and lowering his arms. “It’s not such a great feeling, knowing you killed somebody—even somebody you hated as much as Vance Ballard. That muscle-bound creep made my life miserable day after day during four years of high school. He used to call me Sunshine to torment me. He’d bump me off the sidewalk and then pretend it was an accident.

  “His father had his own drugstore, and mine was a painter at a body shop. Ballard thought I was some kind of a nerd because I could do algebra, and he couldn’t even spell it. He was so pathetically stupid he flunked art three years in a row, but they kept him in school because he also led the football team to the state championship finals those same three years in a row.”

  Oblivious of Stollard’s shock and the embarrassment of the others, Reese recited his catalog of grievances with hanging head and whining delivery, manifesting a passive, obsessive, paranoid personality that must have been fully established before he ever met Ballard.

  “He and I were on the debate team. Every time we came up against each other I’d choke up, and he’d butter up the judges with his silly grin and his line of bilge, and he’d win. In our senior year a girl broke a date she had with me for the prom and went with him instead. That just about did me in. I spent graduation day in bed with the covers over my head.

  “Sure, that was a long time ago, but that kind of pain stays with you for life. All that abuse from Ballard back then had a permanent effect on my mental health and self-esteem. It’s put a blight and a shadow on every day of my life since. It wrecked my marriage. Two years after I started my own business, I was bankrupt. I spend half my income on counseling, which does me about as much good as herbal tea.

  “When I found out he was coming home to get dunked on the machine from Aardvark, nothing in this world could have kept me from doing what I did. I’ve still got a garageful of parts from my business that went under. At three o’clock yesterday morning I went out to the warehouse and installed those relays in the machine.

  “If it had been anybody else who died, the whole thing would have been written off as an accident. But because it was Bomber Ballard, the home-grown idol and superstar, you guys had to ... go the whole nine yards ...”

  By the time the inevitable breakdown came, Studebaker and Garner had moved out of earshot and Crivelli had reclaimed his tools from Kestrel and left the theater. Only Stollard stood by in mute distress as Auburn and Schottel formally arrested Reese, cuffed him, and led him to the cruiser.

  Copyright © 2010 John H. Dirckx

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  Fiction

  THE KARNIKOV CARD

  KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

  Art by Andrew R. Wright

  From the start, I said it was a bad idea. I told the organizers of CelebCon Five that paying the exorbitant appearance fee for Dmitri Karnikov would backfire. Yes, Dmitri Karnikov had starred in the biggest science-fiction films of the 1990s. He was a megasuperstar, whose megawattage hadn’t just faded, it had imploded after a series of scandals that made Mel Gibson seem like a nice, well-spoken boy.

  After all, why else would someone of Dmitri Karnikov’s stature be willing to make an appearance at a science-fiction convention?

  But Fandom is what Fandom is—which is, at its heart, a collection of fans (fen, we call ourselves). We not only believe the best of our heroes, we want their signatures in our books, on our DVDs, and across our navels. Even if we have to overlook a few stink bombs to do so.

  The stink bomb I was worried about wasn’t a potty-mouthed movie star on a rampage. It wasn’t even some wild party in which some poor fen got both deflowered and disillusioned.

  I was worried that Dmitri would take our upfront fee (which was half of last year’s CelebCon revenues) and vanish without a trace. In the few years of its existence, CelebCon, held in Los Angeles, had tried to out Comic-Con Comic-Con. Comic-Con had been the go-to convention for Hollywood types, comic-book aficionados, gamers, and random sf people. It had become so big that every single hotel room in San Diego sold out a year in advance—and so did most of the cheaper hotel rooms in Los Angeles.

  Deals got brokered, movies got sold, and a lot of professional writers/artists/creative types got rich on that very weekend.

  CelebCon, held in March, was attracting the same kind of numbers that Comic-Con had had during its growth spurt, and there was talk—a lot of talk—that it would be the Next Big Thing in entertainment.

  If Dmitri Karnikov stiffed us, we’d be out more than his appearance fee. Our reputation as the next Comic-Con upstart would vanish; we’d be the laughingstock of Fandom for a generation to come.

  No one in CelebCon’s concom (convention committee) cared that we could lose our rep. They didn’t believe that folks would laugh at us, and they figured the fen would return even after a disastrous year. This concom had no real money people, so they didn’t understand that the loss of so much revenue would put the convention into a hole that it couldn’t recover from.

  So they went ahead against my wishes, and booked Dmitri Karnikov.

  I stayed on, not because I had any loyalty to CelebCon, but because I wanted to be around for the I-told-you-so. There were a few folks who really needed to hear it, and they were going to hear it from me.

  Only when the time came, I couldn’t go through with it.

  Because I hadn’t told them so—at least, not about this.

  Most of the time, I enjoy the respect I get from Fandom. Everyone calls me Spade. Hardly anyone knows my real name anymore, primarily because I don’t use it.

  The nickname comes from my detecting ability. Ever since the mid 1990s, I’ve solved all kinds of minor (and not-so-minor) mysteries at science-fiction conventions. After I solved the first one, some wag called me Spade, for Sam Spade, and the moniker stuck.

 
; I didn’t have the heart to tell the guy that the better handle would’ve been Nero Wolfe. I’m six six, four hundred pounds, and set in my ways. I don’t have orchids or an Archie Goodwin, but I do possess a sharp eye for detail and a critical understanding of the dark side of human nature.

  So Spade it is. And in the way of the fannish, my success has become my downfall. So many young fen want to spar with me, trying to prove they’ve gotten the best of the Great Spade.

  I don’t joust very often, and when I do, the battle is verbal. The young fen have no hope of besting me in the verbal arena, just like I have no hope of besting them in the physical one. Occasionally they take a vote, like this concom did in the Karnikov matter. They thought that outvoting me was like taking me down in battle.

  But the battle hadn’t even begun.

  This year’s con shaped up badly from the start. We lost our venue two months in, and had to book another place with only eighteen months’ notice—which, for a convention of this size, was quite literally the last minute.

  We sent payment to Dmitri Karnikov, locking him in as the celebrity guest of honor, and two dozen of our most beloved celebrity guests quit in protest. Some of us wanted to cancel Karnikov right there, but the bulk of the concom balked. They pointed out that preregistration was off the charts—in fact, we’d sold out the new venue five hours after announcing Karnikov—so they really didn’t care that a lot of our old faithful celeb friends weren’t coming. Clearly, the concom wasn’t thinking of next year. Next year, when the two dozen faithful refused to be associated with CelebCon. Next year, when CelebCon would need—and wouldn’t be able to get—a guest of equal drawing power to Karnikov.

  However, it was my job to worry about this year’s disasters, not next year’s. And I was involved in a few disasters in other parts of the country, so I didn’t really notice how CelebCon was shaping up.

  I’m what’s known in fannish circles as a Secret Master of Fandom. There’s an entire group of us. We run conventions, especially the big ones. We make certain the small ones get off the ground.

  We protect Fandom. I don’t know about my fellow SMoFs, but I see my job this way: I keep conventions safe. I want young fen to feel like I felt when I started in Fandom. I want them to feel like they belong, like nothing bad can ever happen to them at a fannish gathering no matter where it is.

  But I don’t run security at conventions. I’m the Lord of Finance. My trusty computers and I manage the money for the biggest events of the year, and I teach a lot of the smaller events how to set up their financial system. Annually, I run the finances for about twenty different conventions. I’m never home, and I stop answering my cell whenever a concom implodes, which is about one out of every ten. I figure the locals can work it out for themselves.

  This is a long way of saying that after the preliminary planning meetings and the one emergency session about the lost venue, CelebCon wasn’t really on my radar.

  Until I arrived two weeks before the convention and found a disaster on my hands.

  The big problem was that Dmitri Karnikov wanted more money. He demanded we renegotiate his contract or he’d bail out of the convention.

  I did a little Web-surfing, found out he had just settled a multimillion dollar lawsuit with a major Hollywood studio, and it was going to cost him a wad of cash.

  He wanted a lot more money from us, but it didn’t appear that he had another group of idiots who wanted to outbid us for him that same weekend. So if we canceled his contract (claiming we were going to renegotiate it), he had to pay us back three-quarters of his upfront appearance fee, since appearance is based on, you guessed it, appearing.

  But the concom wasn’t savvy to the ways of business and panicked when I mentioned canceling his contract altogether. Then when I said it would be a good negotiating ploy, they hit the ceiling.

  The fans of Dmitri Karnikov didn’t not want to piss off His Greatness. In fact, they wanted to offer him more money just so that he wouldn’t skip out on them.

  At that point, I thought I could head off disaster. The only disaster I saw was continued extortion by the unnecessarily impoverished Dmitri Karnikov.

  I volunteered to negotiate with him to make sure that he would honor his contract.

  The concom made me swear that I wouldn’t cancel his contract, and I swore I wouldn’t unless there was already a new deal in place. Of course, I didn’t tell the concom that the new deal wouldn’t be in writing. Cash-starved Karnikov would bend to my will or I didn’t know my overspending celebrities.

  The concom gave me permission to speak for them with Karnikov, and I had my people contact his people for a meet.

  I’m no slouch in the negotiations department, nor am I some starstruck impoverished fan willing to do anything for my idol.

  So I had no illusions as I headed to Karnikov’s. I knew that I’d find dozens of hangers-on, yes-men, and so-called security guards, and I did. I also knew I’d find an out-of-control star who hadn’t had someone set limits with him in thirty years.

  Karnikov had a rental in Malibu, although I hesitate calling anything that goes for 100K per month a rental. To me, that’s like calling the Taj Mahal a McMansion. But he had to rent because most of his properties got seized in one lawsuit or another. The rest were sold off for quick cash.

  As I drove through the windy roads to Malibu, I reflected on that. And my involvement with this concom. They were dumb enough to make an agreement with a man being sued by half the planet, and that was just the half of the planet who could afford lawyers. The other half would probably sue him as well, if only they could pony up the initial court costs.

  I had a rental, too—a high-end Lexus SUV befitting my bulk. Unlike Dmitri Karnikov, I’m good with money, which is a bit like saying Superman is good at flying. Decades ago, when Microsoft was an upstart company that no one had ever heard of, the illustrious Bill Gates decided to give his employees the option of being paid with cash or in company stock. I took the stock, making me a thing still known in the Pacific Northwest as a Microsoft Millionaire.

  So many Microsoft Millionaires handled their money like Dmitri Karnikov handled his that there aren’t many of us left. Most who remain don’t work for a living, but they’re not really wealthy either. Only a select few of us translated our millions into more millions.

  I don’t talk about money much, except to acknowledge that I have some, but there’s a reason I handle the finances for more than twenty science-fiction conventions nationwide.

  I know what the hell I’m doing.

  And Dmitri Karnikov didn’t. His handlers probably did, but his handlers wouldn’t get the last word. He would.

  Which was why I wasn’t even nervous going into this meeting. Not as I used the GPS to take me along the goat paths up the hills overlooking the ocean, not as I turned on the driveway, deliberately graveled to look as if it led nowhere, not as I passed through the giant stone gate with the prominent security signs and the poor schlub manning the gatehouse who actually had to check me in as if I were entering a studio lot.

  I didn’t get nervous until I walked up the marble stairway leading to the marble entry designed to impress with its breathtaking waste. At the moment, I wondered what the hell I was doing, representing a concom willing to give in to a man who wasn’t willing to negotiate.

  Then I squared my shoulders, tucked my CELEBCON ONE T-shirt into my good black jeans, and followed the majordomo who led me into the deliberately stunning living room.

  Even a man determined not to be impressed had to pause to look at the view. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls extended over the beach, making you feel like you were floating over the ocean itself. The Pacific was its usual beautiful blue, made even more beautiful by the matching blue sky. Usually the smog extended all the way out here, but on this afternoon, the air was so clear that everything had the razor-sharp edges you usually saw only in photographs.

  I had to remind myself not to gape, but by then it was too late. I was gapin
g, and someone was talking to me.

  That someone was Dmitri Karnikov himself.

  I hadn’t expected that either. I had expected some lawyer or financial minion or bouncer to deal with me—at least initially.

  But Dmitri Karnikov was standing just past the blazing white grand piano, a clear drink in one hand and an apple in the other.

  “Stunning, huh?” he asked.

  The voice sounded out of place in this room. It was a famous voice, a familiar voice, one that belonged in the darkness of a movie theater or narrating some high-end car commercial on my television. I had experienced this dislocation before with other celebrities, and I never ever got used to it.

  “One of the most beautiful I’ve seen,” I said as I turned toward him.

  As usual, I dwarfed him. I dwarf most people, but I dwarf actors most of all. Male actors are generally short—dunno why, just a fact that I didn’t believe when I first read about it in one of screenwriter William Goldman’s books. Goldman, who is tall, has made a game out of discovering an actor’s real height, since most of these guys wear lifts (even, Goldman claims, in their socks).

  But Karnikov was barefoot—so no lifts. He wore shorts and a Spider-Man T-shirt depicting the comic book Spider-Man, not the Tobey Maguire movie version of Spider-Man.

  And it was the damn T-shirt, along with the bare feet, that also threw me.

  I had never considered the idea that Dmitri Karnikov wanted to come to CelebCon because he was a fan. Actors, writers, artists, and other celeb types will often finagle invites to various events not because they need the face time but because they’re a fan of someone attending or of the event itself.

  Which meant I had forgotten one of my own rules: At heart, every single American is a member of Fandom. Most of them just don’t know it yet.

  I recovered enough to surreptitiously wipe my palm on my jeans before extending my hand.

  “Mr. Karnikov, it’s an honor—”

  “Cut the crap,” he said. “You’re here to talk about the money.”