The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

by Martin H. Greenberg

  I am not the only one who has seen it. Mtepwa is staring right at the Goniff, and he just smiles, and I know he’s got something up his sleeve besides his arm, but I don’t know what.

  The bell rings and the fighters come out for the fourth round. Terrible Tommy connects first, a blow to the solar plexus that should double the Kid over in pain, but instead Tommy screams and pulls his hand back like he’s just broken it punching a concrete wall, and then they circle around until the Kid’s back is to me, and suddenly Mtewpa starts mumbling again, and the Kid throws his money punch, and I look, figuring this is the end and Terrible Tommy is going down for the count, but it’s not Terrible Tommy, it’s the Goniff, and he takes the punch on the point of his chin and goes reeling around the ring, and the Kid starts pummeling him, and it occurs to me that the Kid looks a lot more like Rocky Marciano and a lot less like Kid Testosterone.

  Every time he delivers what looks like a knockout blow, Mtepwa starts mumbling again, and no matter how much punishment the Goniff takes he stays on his feet. Finally the Kid winds up and knocks him through the ropes and he falls to the floor right in front of me.

  “Is there something you’d like to say to me before you climb back into the ring?” I ask pleasantly.

  “I ain’t climbing back in there!” he mutters through bleeding lips.

  “Yes you are,” says Mtepwa, and against his will the Goniff gets to his feet and turns to face the ring.

  “All right, all right!” he says. “I cancel the bet!”

  “You don’t even have to cancel,” says Mtepwa before I can stop him. “Just promise you’ll never bet with Harry again, or use Dead End Dugan to hex a sporting event.”

  “I promise,” says the Goniff.

  The instant the words are out of his mouth he collapses, the referee declares Kid Testosterone the winner, and the Goniff is carted off to the hospital.

  “Thanks for nothing!” I say to Mtepwa. “We didn’t cancel, so I still have to pay off! The bet was that the Kid would knock Terrible Tommy out, and he did!”

  “The evening’s not over yet,” he replies, and indeed it isn’t, because the Kid fails a urine test, which doesn’t surprise anyone given that he made it all the way to the fourth round, and the fight is declared a draw—not a non-contest where I would have to return the Goniff’s money, but a draw, where everyone who bet on either fighter loses and only those who bet there’d be a draw win.

  And that’s the story.

  Well, not quite all of it. I’m not a bookie anymore. I took on a full partner—Cool Jumbo Cool, who eventually decided that this was the payment he wanted—and these days we head a pretty successful betting syndicate.

  Jumbo’s really gotten into the swing of things; he likes this millieu. Tonight he’s hexed the big game between the Montana Buttes and the Georgia Geldings. I gave Benny Fifth Street a promotion, and we’ve even got a couple of new runners. In fact, I have to close now. It’s time to pass my money to Dead End Dugan and the Goniff and tell them where to lay our bets.

  She’s Not There

  STEVE PERRY

  Nobody is immune to Glamour.

  In the ten years she’d had the talent, Darla had never come across anybody who had seen through it, far as she could tell. Old, young, men, women,—it fooled everybody, every time.

  Not that she’d need it here: Fifteen feet away, the widow Bellingham snored fully-dressed upon her bed. The old lady had put down a bottle of very expensive champagne earlier at the party, and Darla could probably could bang a Chinese gong and not rouse her, but still . . .

  She opened the last drawer of the jewel box, her movements slow and careful. The smell of cedar drifted up from the intricately-carved wooden box, which was probably worth more than Darla’s car.

  Ah. Here we go . . .

  It was an oval pin about the size of a silver dollar. Inset into the platinum were thirty-some diamonds, fancy yellows, the majority of them a carat or so each. Not worth as much as clears and nowhere near the value of the intense pinks or fancy blues encrusting the pieces in the top drawer, of course, but that was the point. These were good stones—good—but not outstanding, and with what she could get from her fence, plenty to keep her going for six months.

  One-carat gems of this grade were easy to move.

  She limited herself to a job every three or four months, enough to keep her below heavy police radar—or at least it had done so for eight years.

  Truth was, it had been almost too easy. Never a really close call. At first, it it had seemed a grand adventure, but it wasn’t long before it turned into just a part-time job, no more exciting than shopping for fruit at New Seasons Market. Go in, pick out the organic apples you like, leave—without paying—and take a few months off, ta dah!

  Disappointing in a way how easy it was, though certainly better than working for a living . . .

  Six or seven million in fine jewelry here, and that just the dailywear stuff. The really good pieces would be in a bank vault somewhere . . .

  Darla wrapped the pin in a square of black velvet and slipped it into her jeans pocket. She slid the jewelry box’s drawer closed.

  As always, she was tempted to clean the box out, but she knew better. Unique pieces were hard to move, worth only what the loose stones would bring, unless you wanted to mess around trying to find a crooked collector, and that was risky. This particular pin? It might not be missed for weeks or months. The top-drawer stuff sure; the bottom drawer? Maybe the widow would never even notice. When you could go in and plunk down a million bucks for a brooch or a necklace without having to look at your checkbook balance? A pin worth a couple hundred grand? Shoot, that was practically costume jewelry . . .

  So, she’d take just the one piece.

  The perfect crime, after all, was not one where the cops couldn’t figure out who did it; it was one the cops never even heard about . . .

  Darla uttered the cantrip just before she pushed open the stair door into the apartment building’s lobby. When she stepped through, she looked the same to herself, save for a slight bluish glow to her skin that told her the Glamour was lit.

  The guard at the desk looked up. “Morning, Mr. Millar. Early start today, hey?”

  Darla grinned and sketched a two-finger salute at the guard.

  The armed man touched a button on his console and the building’s door slid open. As she left, Darla waggled one hand over her shoulder, in what she thought was a friendly gesture. Silently, of course. Her Glamour fooled the eyes, but not the ears—if she spoke, she would sound like a twenty-something woman and not the sixty-something man she picked as a disguise.

  She had been careful coming down the stairs to avoid the surveillance cams, too, since her trick wouldn’t fool them, either.

  When the real Mr. Millar exited for his morning walk, the guard wouldn’t say anything—he wouldn’t want anybody to think he was crazy . . .

  It was a fantastic thing, her trick, even if it had a couple drawbacks: She had to touch somebody before it would work on them, and do that within a day, since the effects of the touch faded away after that. Still, it was impressive.

  She had no idea why or how she had come by it. She had been found in a dumpster as a baby, raised in an orphanage. The words to the cantrip were from a dream she’d had on the night she turned sixteen. Eventually, she had come to realize that, somehow, the dream had come true.

  Magic? No such thing, everybody knew that. But here she was. She’d wondered about it over the years. She’d cautiously nosed around in a few places, but never found any other real magic, only people faking it. Why did it work? How? She didn’t know. Still, you didn’t have to be a chemist to strike a match, and apparently you didn’t need to know jack about magic to use the stuff. Case in point.

  Worrying over the reasons might drive her nuts if she let it, so she didn’t try any more. She just thanked whatever gods there might be for bestowing it upon her and that was that.

  She had a car, but she seldom used
it on a job where public transportation was available. She walk to the bus stop. The TriMet driver would see her as a white-haired Japanese man, since she had touched his shoulder earlier in the day when she’d ridden the bus in this direction. She would exit six blocks from her apartment and walk home. Nobody could connect Darla Wright to the expensive Portland penthouse occupied by the widow Bellingham, even if the woman ever did notice she’d been robbed.

  Smooth as oil on glass, no muss, no fuss, just like always, and she planned to sleep in until at least noon.

  Life was good.

  Darla strolled into her neighborhood Starbucks, next to Fred Meyer’s, and inhaled the fragrances of brewed coffee and freshly baked pastries. She was scouting for a fattening cherry turnover she figured she’d earned, when she bumped into a good-looking guy about thirty who stopped suddenly ahead of her in the line.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, turning to steady her. “My fault.” He smiled. Nice teeth. Black hair, blue eyes, rugged features, pretty well-built under a dark green T-shirt and snug jeans. Three or four years older than she was, but that was nothing.

  “No problem,” she said. She returned the smile.

  Ice cream, she thought, looking at him. To go with the pastry, hey . . . ?

  No . . . She couldn’t. Not today. She had to meet Harry at two, and she’d slept past noon, so Ice Cream here would have to wait. Business before pleasure.

  There were plenty of other men in the pond, and she was going to have free time to do a little fishing, lots of time . . .

  Nothing as obvious as running a pawn shop, Harry had a guitar store, a hole-in-the-wall place twenty minutes from Portland, in Beaverton. Beaverton was where Portlanders went to buy fast food and shop at the 7-Elevens, a bedroom community that had once been swamps and filbert orchards and beaver-dammed streams.

  The guitars at Harry’s ran from a few hundred bucks up to ten or fifteen thousand on the high end, mostly acoustic and classicals, and the place actually did a pretty good business. Today being Sunday, the shop was closed, but Harry answered the bell at the back door. She waited while the four big and heavy locks snicked and clicked, bolts sliding back, and the door, made of thick steel plate, swung quietly open on oiled hinges. Trust a crook to know how to protect his own stuff.

  The shop smelled of wood, and some kind of finish that was not unpleasant, a sharp, turpentine-y scent.

  “Layla. How nice to see you, as always.”

  Even Harry didn’t get her real name. Darla was very careful.

  “Harry. How business?”

  “I can’t complain. Come in. Some tea?” He was seventy-five, bald, thin, and wore thick glasses that kept slipping down his nose. He thought she was hot, though he’d never made a move on her.

  “Thanks.”

  She sat at a table while Harry made tea. “Oolong today,” he said.

  Eventually, he sat the steaming cup in front of her.

  “So, kiddo, whaddya got for me?”

  She produced the pin, opened the velvet wrapping.

  “Ah.” He picked it up, pulled a loupe from his shirt pocket, held the pin up to the light. “Quality stones. Nice cuts, nothing outstanding. Say . . . fifty?”

  “What, did I get stupid since you saw me last? Eighty,” she said.

  He smiled. “Might could go sixty, because I like you.”

  “It’s a steal at eighty, Harry. Two and a quarter for the bigger stones, and maybe another ten or fifteen for the little ones. Plus seven, eight hundred for the platinum. Pushing a quarter million, and you can pocket half that.”

  “Honey, we both know it’s a steal at any price, but since I’ll have to fly down to Miami to move the rocks, sixty is a gift. You know how I hate air travel.”

  “Miami? What’s wrong with Seattle?”

  He pulled the loupe off and put the piece onto the table. “Too warm for Seattle. Even broken up, thirty stones this close will have to be moved a few at a time. Could take me months. Who has that kind of time at my age?”

  “Warm? The, uh, previous owner doesn’t even know it’s gone.”

  “Alas, dear girl, I’m afraid she does. Mrs. Bellingham, widow of the late Leo Bellingham, owner of steel mills and shipyards, right? Probably pays her boy toys more than this bauble is worth, but she has definitely missed it.”

  Darla shook her head. “How could that happen? And how do you know it?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe today was inventory day. Or it was a gift from a special friend with sentimental value. Who can say? All I know is, I talked to Benny the Nod this morning and he said the Portland cops had come to call upon him early, waving a picture of this very item.” He tapped the pin.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she said.

  “I doubt He would have any part of this, hon, though you can tithe if you want. So, sixty?”

  “Yeah, well, I guess. Sure.”

  They drank more tea and he prattled on about some new classical guitar he’d just bought, Osage Orange this, cedar that, Sloane tuners, a genuine Carrith, look at the little owl inlay here—it all flowed into one ear and out the other. How unlucky was this? That the old woman had discovered the theft within hours of it happening? That cost her at least twenty thousand dollars!

  There was just no justice . . .

  As Darla drove her British racing-green Cooper Mini convertible along TV Highway back toward Portland, she relaxed a little. Yeah, okay, her latest theft had been discovered too quickly, but she was still sixty thousand dollars richer, Harry’s cash, in used hundreds, was tucked away in her purse right there on the passenger seat. Life was still good. The sun was shining, the top was down, it was a lovely June afternoon, and she was free to spend the next few months lazing about, doing whatever she damned well pleased. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, hey?

  She stopped at the light next to the Chrysler dealership on Canyon Road, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as the Beatles sang “Hey, Jude” on the oldies station.

  A heavyset teenage boy in baggy shorts and a sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves, a brim-backward baseball cap pulled low, his feet shod in big, clonky, ugly basketball shoes, strutted across the road in front of her. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark shades he wore. Oh, please, kid! Who do you think you’re fooling?

  When he was almost past, on the passenger side, he pointed behind her and said, “Holy shit! Look at that!”

  Darla turned to see what had impressed this wanna-be gansta kid.

  She caught a blur in her peripheral vision, and turned back just in time to see the kid snag her purse—

  “Fuck—!”

  Darla put the car into neutral, set the brake, and jumped out of the car. She chased the kid, but he had a head start and he was a lot faster than he looked. He put on a burst of speed and she lost him behind the car dealership.

  And what what she have done if she’d caught him? Kick his ass? She didn’t know anything about martial arts. She had a nice folding knife, but unfortunately, that had been in her purse, too.

  Son-of-a-bitch!

  By the time she got back to her car, there was a line of traffic piled up behind it. She stalked back to the car, gave the finger to the fool behind her laying on his horn.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

  Sixty thousand dollars!

  The hell of it was, she couldn’t do anything about it! She could hear the conversation with the cop in her head:

  Ah, you say you had sixty thousand dollars in cash in your purse? What is it you do for a living again, Miss?

  Shit!

  So much for the idea of six or eight months of goofing off. She was going to have to find another score. And soon. She was pretty much tapped out. She’d been counting on last night’s job.

  No fucking justice . . .

  Darla remembered a line she’d heard somewhere, when some reporter was interviewing a famous robber. “So, Willie, why do you rob banks?” And his answer had been: “Because that’s where the money is . . . ”


  Probably never said that, but it made the point—you want to see who has the bling, you have to go where they flash it.

  Which was why she was at a posh reception for some famous author at the Benton Hotel in Portland. Once she was past the gate keeper, having him see her as somebody who showed up at these things that he knew by sight, she became herself again, but she had to look the part, so she had dressed up for it. Heels, a black slinky dress, a simple strand of good black pearls, her short, dark hair nicely styled. Nobody inside would bother her, though the crowd was thick enough that somebody patted her on the ass as she squeezed through on her way to the bar. Apparently that cherry pastry hadn’t added enough weight to matter . . .

  She got a club soda with lime, then started shopping . . .

  She winnowed her choices to two possibles.

  One was a forty-something woman with gorgeous red hair and a great figure she worked hard to keep looking that way. She’d had a little plastic work done on her face, very subtle, but offset by a botoxed forehead that might as well have been carved from marble. She wore emeralds—earrings, a necklace, a ring that had to run four carats, all matching settings in yellow gold. The dress was a creamy yellow that went with the jewelry. Quarter million in shades of green fire. Nice.

  The other prospect was a guy, maybe thirty-five, in an Armani tux. He was tanned and fit, with a little gray in his hair, and an easy smile, and though he wasn’t sporting any monster rocks, he did wear a Patek Philippe watch—she guessed it was a Jumbo Nautilus in rose gold, worth about thirty grand wholesale. He had one ring on his right hand, a gold nugget inset with a black opal the size of a dime, that flashed Chinese writing in multiple colors as the opal caught the light when he raised his champagne glass to sip. That good an Australian opal might go ten grand. She wouldn’t want either the watch or the ring, they’d be too hard to move, but he’d probably have other pieces laying around . . .