AHMM, October 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Laura's face tightened in anguish. “Anyway, I had just started out on patrol when it hit me. I knew that the other two babies had died when the wind got started, just like it did on that day, and suddenly I was afraid for Carol and her baby."

  "So you refused Captain Craig's summons."

  "I had to check on Carol. It was nothing but a gut feeling, you know? Not something I could explain. But it was something I had to do."

  "You saved her, Laura."

  Laura shook her head. “No, you did that. Leo clocked me but good. And you saved Austin too."

  "Why—why do you think he did it?"

  She shivered. “I don't know."

  Her lips trembled and suddenly the words tumbled out. “After Rosa died, he blamed me. He beat me up pretty bad. He said I wasn't fit to have his baby.

  "You know, I thought he loved me. I remember in the hospital, he told me and Carol how beautiful we were—I bet he said the same thing to Mrs. Loeb and the Samms girl. He told us he could see the pride in our eyes. I thought he was just talking about being proud to have a baby. But I didn't know it was him, not until I found him with Carol. There's no way you could have known about it."

  Doug's face got hot. He knew if he'd looked hard enough, Leo would have been there.

  "He sure was one screwed-up crazy dude,” she said flatly.

  "Yes, he was,” Doug replied slowly. “I don't suppose we'll ever know entirely how crazy he was."

  His brow furrowed. He had to ask. He had to know.

  "Do you remember at all—I mean, how—how exactly, did Leo fall off the roof?"

  Laura didn't answer right away. When she did, she was looking down at her hands, as if wondering whether she could use a manicure.

  In a small voice, just above a whisper, she said, “I guess he just slipped."

  Copyright (c) 2007 James Lincoln Warren

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  BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  Private investigators occupy a special place in mystery fiction. They neither have the rights and privileges of members of the law enforcement community, nor all the restrictions. They certainly don't have the same access to resources available to officialdom—but they often have unique resources of their own. This month we look at two authors whose detectives have proven their mettle for decades and continue to perform at a high level, and at a third whose first three books should make readers hope he has similar staying power.

  Hardboiled private eyes originated in the great metropolises and clustered around the coastal cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. But Midwestern P.I.'s have had plenty of success as well, from Rob Kantner's Detroit-based Ben Perkins to Jon Valin's Harry Stoner in Cincinnati and Les Roberts's Cleveland P.I., Milan Jacovich. Perhaps the most successful Midwestern run belongs to Loren D. Estleman's Amos Walker, who has been prowling the streets of Detroit since 1980's Motor City Blue and continues to do so in his nineteenth appearance in the aptly titled AMERICAN DETECTIVE (Forge, $24.95). Walker has aged but not changed a whole lot in the intervening years. He still smokes, drinks, and swaggers, though perhaps not as much as before—and he still has a smart mouth, and that hasn't changed or abated at all.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  In American Detective Walker is hired by former Detroit Tiger ballplayer Darius Fuller to buy off a sleazy creep named Hilary Bairn, who is his daughter's fiancé. She's due to come into a sizeable trust fund in just a few months, and Fuller, despite being virtually bankrupt, is willing to offer Bairn fifty thousand to break off the engagement and disappear. Walker agrees to be Fuller's “bag man."

  Sometimes the simplest cases are the most convoluted. Before Walker can meet with Bairn, Fuller's daughter is killed and suspicion is thrown onto Bairn, and then Walker himself. Before the case is resolved Walker will find himself dealing with a loan shark, a gambling honcho and his various enforcers, and a powerful Asian American woman with a legal empire built on illegal enterprises. And another murder.

  Estleman writes what he knows. The Detroit setting is perfectly captured, from its iconic sports figures to its politics, from its traffic system to its weather extremes. Estleman is also a master of the hardboiled genre, and while his detective may have lost a step or two, it's obvious that his creator has not. And both detective and author are still winners.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Marcia Muller's first Sharon McCone mystery, 1977's Edwin of the Iron Shoes, introduced the prototypical female P.I. Then in 1982 both Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski made their debuts. Cumulatively these three authors blazed a trail that has since become a well-traveled highway, inspiring countless followers. Amazingly, all three remain in the vanguard of the movement more than twenty-five years later.

  Marcia Muller's THE EVER-RUNNING MAN (Warner, $24.99) is her twenty-fifth Sharon McCone mystery, and things have changed for the San Francisco—based P.I. after thirty years. She is no longer a lone operative but instead has acquired a staff, including a computer forensics department, a financial investigator, and other operatives.

  When her husband, Hy Ripinsky, talks her into investigating a series of bombings that has damaged numerous facilities belonging to the maverick corporate security firm he co-owns, McCone takes on a dangerous, life-threatening case that ultimately threatens her marriage as well.

  All three co-owners of RKI—Dan Kessell, Gage Renshaw, and Ripinsky—have checkered pasts with common links to Southeast Asia stemming back to the Vietnam War, so McCone starts her investigation by assigning her staff to probe the pasts of the owners—including her own very private husband.

  Muller continues to deliver the complete package in new and entertaining ways, crafting an absorbing mystery around a familiar and evolving cast of characters and providing enough grit and substance to make readers look forward to the next installment of her series. It is worth mentioning that Muller's recent nonseries mysteries, including Cape Perdido (2005), Cyanide Wells (2003), and Point Deception (2001), are well worth reading also.

  * * * *

  The relative youngster Michael Koryta has created a welcome addition to the ranks of Midwestern private eyes in the person of Cleveland-based Lincoln Perry. His first mystery, Tonight I Said Goodbye, won the St. Martins/PWA award and earned an Edgar nomination. That was followed by Sorrow's Anthem, which also received critical praise.

  A WELCOME GRAVE (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95) builds on Lincoln Perry's successes in the first two novels and deepens the reader's understanding of Perry's background, revealing more of how the ex-policeman came to be a private eye and exploring his relationship with ex-fiancée, Karen Jefferson.

  Perry is a natural suspect when Alex Jefferson is brutally tortured and murdered—when Jefferson “stole” Karen from him, Perry gave him a public beating, and that incident precipitated his move from policeman to private eye. A suspect, sure, but Perry figures he'll be cleared easily and the cops will move on to try to find the real killer.

  Then Karen calls and begs him to come see her. All she wants Perry to do is find Jefferson's estranged son, whose whereabouts are unknown and who doesn't know he stands to inherit millions. Against his better judgment, Perry is persuaded to take the case.

  Every door Perry opens, every path he treads leads him deeper and deeper into a morass where he becomes a suspect not only in Jefferson's murder but also in another. Every move he makes is anticipated and countered and serves to entrap him more fully. In order to extricate himself Perry must first convince his old partner Joe Pritchard to help him, and then he must make an ally of one of the most dangerous killers in Cleveland.

  Koryta's ingenious plotting is absolutely first-rate, and it isn't often that the author's hero is as thoroughly outmaneuvered and outplayed without ever seeming a fool. Lincoln Perry proves he can hold his own with the best private eyes of the past or the present.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Robert C. Hahn

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ck to Table of Contents]

  A SIGN OF PEACE by James T. Shannon

  "I need some help, Gilbert,” my cousin Flora said.

  "Sure, Flo, what's up?"

  I thought it was a coincidence that my cell beeped just as I'd turned onto Route 24 on my way down to Fall River, since that's where Flo lived, as did my parents and most of my aunts, uncles, and other cousins.

  "I just called your mom,” she said, bursting the coincidence bubble. “She said you were coming to see them and gave me your cell phone number."

  "You didn't call my home?"

  I live in Putnam, a Boston suburb, where I'm a detective on the police force, and all of my relatives have that number.

  "No, uh, I didn't want to disturb Sandra."

  "You wouldn't have,” I said. “She'd have liked to hear from you."

  Most of my relatives have accepted the fact that I didn't exactly wed out of the species when I married a woman who was not Portuguese. But after twelve years some are still a little cautious around my wife. And her name is Sondra, not Sandra. Flo, however, always gets the name wrong because she's Flora, not because she's mean.

  "What I wanted to talk to you about is kind of private anyway, Gilbert. And I'd rather speak to you in person, if that's okay."

  "Somebody in trouble?” I said, wishing again that the family had a couple of lawyers instead of Gilbert Souza, one lone policeman, who lived sixty miles away and was expected to drive down every time somebody's kid broke a window.

  "No, uh, not that kind of trouble, but I do need your help. It'll only take a couple of minutes."

  "Sure. I'll be there in less than an hour."

  "No, not my house,” she said. “I'll meet you at ... how about at the church? I was going to go there this afternoon anyway."

  Though Fall River's got plenty of them, she didn't have to tell me which church. Like most of my family, Flo and her husband and kids still live in Our Lady of Fatima parish.

  "Sure, I'll see you there, then,” I said, and disconnected.

  Let's see, Saturday afternoon. Flo had to be going to confession so she could be ready with a clean slate for Sunday Mass. And she's the kind of woman whose slate wouldn't be more than a little smudged if she put off confession for months. Me? Well, for years now, the only times I've been in the church have been for baptisms, weddings, and a couple of funerals.

  Forty minutes later, I was parking in front of the squat brick structure that had been the heart of the city's first Portuguese parish. But I didn't even get the ignition turned off before Flora was at the passenger door.

  Small, dark haired, and trim for a woman who's had six children in the ten years she's been married, she was in the car and whisking her hand at me to get driving.

  "Remember, girl, you just went to confession,” I said. “And we are first cousins."

  She shook her head and spritzed out something that sounded like a very old-fashioned “Pshaw."

  "I just didn't want anybody to see us together because then they might mention it to Henry,” she said. “Then he might ask me why you were down here. And I just couldn't lie to my husband."

  Yep, pure Flora. She meant it too. The pshaw, the confession, the six kids, the reluctance to lie to anyone, never mind her jerk of a husband, Henry. Even as kids, I never told Flo anything that might require her to lie to cover for me.

  "Okay,” I said, after we'd cleared the neighborhood and I had stopped in a small park. “What's the problem?"

  She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, whispered, “It's Phillip Furtado."

  Flo could still surprise me. Not that I thought Phil Furtado couldn't be a problem. But for Flora?

  "What about Phil?” I said.

  "He's been ... I don't know how to say this, Gilbert. He's been bothering me."

  "Bothering how?"

  "During Mass. That's the worst thing about it. It's during Mass."

  Okay, I was a little relieved to hear that. There wasn't too much bothering even Phil could do during the crowded Sunday Masses at Our Lady of Fatima.

  "What's he doing?"

  "Well, it's really only during the sign of peace,” she said.

  She meant the handshake exchanged by congregation members. I imagined Phil as a kid with a joy buzzer hidden in his palm.

  "What's he doing during the handshake?"

  "It's the sign of peace, Gilbert,” she said, frowning at my flippancy, “and what he's doing is he's always there. No matter where I'm sitting, Phillip's always positioned so I sort of have to shake hands with him. In front of me, in back. He doesn't have the nerve to try to sit next to me, but he's always there. And it's driving me crazy, Gilbert."

  "How about Henry? Hasn't he noticed it?"

  Henry's got about five inches and fifty pounds, most of it muscle, on Phil. And he'd never been too timid about using that muscle, including a few times, I've suspected, on his wife.

  "Henry doesn't, you know, come to church with me. He tells me he goes to the Saturday Mass so he can stay with the kids while I go on Sunday. But he comes back from his Mass smelling of beer and peppermint breath mints, so I'm pretty sure he's attending services at the Ace.

  The Ace is a bar two blocks and about five Commandments away from Our Lady of Fatima.

  "So you think, what,” I asked, “that Phil's trying to make a move on you?"

  She nodded, her eyes watering.

  "It's been every Sunday for about two months now, Gilbert. The first week, I didn't think anything about it. I was just surprised to see Phillip at Mass. The second time I figured for a coincidence. The third week I began to get nervous. After that, I knew."

  "Does he do anything besides shake your hand? Does he say anything?"

  "No, he only takes my hand. And he says ‘Peace be with you,’ you know, the way you're supposed to. But he looks at me with those big puppy eyes, and a couple of times he's been so nervous that he reaches out with his left hand. It's really driving me crazy, Gilbert. I need your help. If Henry ever finds out, something terrible will happen to Phillip."

  I got the sense that maybe Flora was enjoying this more than she let on and probably feeling guilty about even that. The nuns at Our Lady of Fatima grammar school always taught us that a sin was a sin in thought, word, and deed. If you enjoyed thinking about something, you had done the same as if you'd committed the action. So Flora had called on her older cousin to step in and take away whatever temptation Phil was offering her.

  "I'll speak to him,” I said. “You know where he's living?"

  "I think in those new Evergreen condos down north,” she said.

  Fall River's built on hills, and since most of the north end is downhill, it's always down north. But the condos she mentioned were far away from Our Lady of Fatima, and I had to wonder how she knew where he was living.

  "I saw his address in the phone book,” she said, as if reading my mind. She was frowning, too, so I guess she knew my mind had been suspicious as she added, “I was looking up his phone number to call him, to ask him to stop bothering me. But I couldn't get up the nerve to do it."

  "You still know his number?” I said, taking out my cell phone.

  She rattled it off, and I punched it in without comment on her memory.

  Phil answered cheerfully but lost the gloss when I gave him my name.

  "Hey, Gilbert,” he said. “How you been?"

  Since we'd never been close friends, and he knew I was a police detective, his fake enthusiasm struck a wrong note. I suppose I'd been hoping Flora had just been confused, not an unusual state of mind for her.

  "I want to know if it's okay if I come by to talk to you,” I said.

  "Sure, ‘course it's okay, Gilbert. Anytime. Is this a ... what ... some official kind of visit?"

  "No, nothing like that. It'll only take a couple of minutes."

  "Sure, sure. You coming down to the city today?"

  "I'm in the city now. Visiting my folks."

  "Well, you want to come on over now, that'
s fine with me,” he said, though I doubt very much that he meant it.

  He gave me his address at Evergreen, and I told him I'd be there in a few minutes and disconnected.

  "Thank you,” Flora said, letting out a deep breath she'd apparently been holding in.

  "No problem, Flo. I'm not sure what I can do legally, but I'll give it a try anyway. Uh, you know what Phil's been up to?"

  "You mean when he's not trying to seduce married women during one of the church's most blessed sacraments?"

  "Yeah, that."

  Phil was Flora's age and had always been a fringe kind of guy. Not bad himself, though he had liked to give that impression even as a kid. And later he always seemed to hang around people with bad reputations.

  "I don't know,” Flora said. “I think he's some kind of salesman."

  "Okay. I'll drop you off at home ... near home,” I added, when I saw the alarmed look in her eyes. “And I'll call you after I talk to Phil."

  "Henry's gone on Saturdays at his Ace Mass from four thirty till about six."

  "I'll call you then,” I said, heading back toward her neighborhood and feeling as if I'd somehow become part of an intrigue.

  The Evergreen condos were back out toward Route 24, handy for people who commuted to Boston. Also handy for single people who were living in a city of triple-deckers originally built for big, mill-working families.

  Phil was in Building D, redbrick and white trimmed like the rest. If there had ever been evergreens in the area of Evergreen, they must have been cut down during construction. A red Mercedes convertible was parked in the space reserved for Phil's apartment. I spoiled the overall impression by parking next to it.

  Phil's unit was 2-C, and he was opening the door as I reached the top of the carpeted stairs.

  "Gilbert!” he said, as if surprised to see me. Big smile, hand out for mine.

  I took it, tempted to say, “Peace be with you” to confirm why I was here, but I didn't remember him as having much of a sense of humor, though I do remember he seemed to laugh a lot.

  He was of average height and weight, and his hair, professionally styled, was still dark and curly. His clothes looked flashy but, like his haircut and his car, expensive.