by Marvin Kaye
“And why do you presume I did all this?”
“You killed Edgar Poe because you thought he was David Poe. Edgar was wearing his father’s clothes, and you simply mistook him for his father. Once old Mr. Poe realized that he was the intended victim, he must have gone into hiding. Once he emerged, you found him and killed him, too. As for Tom, I can only assume that his investigation into the case began to reveal facts that you did not want brought to light.”
“A fanciful story, but one that completely unravels unless you can explain why I would want to kill the old man in the first place.”
“Because he was a drunk, like your father.”
Even in the dimness I could see Jed Hadley’s face harden.
“Old Sam told me of your hatred of drink,” I went on. “Was killing a sot like David Poe your way of killing your memory of your father?”
There was a moment of silence, followed by a sound that disturbed me more than any I was prepared hear: uncontrollable laughter. Once he regained his composure, Hadley said: “My God, I had you pegged as an imbecilic tin soldier, but this is richer than anything I could imagine! I’ll admit it was particularly satisfying to be able to rid the world of a useless tosspot, but that was not why I set after the old wretch.”
“Why then?”
“Because I was paid to, junior,” Hadley said. “You see, I offer a special service that even old Bellwether knows nothing about. For the right price, I will eliminate anyone, for any reason. I was contacted by a man to whom Prince, or Poe, owed a sizable gambling debt. He knew he would never see his money, so he settled for revenge. I followed the man I believed to be my quarry and treated him to a bottle of good gin. He was in such a celebratory mood that he did not notice the smell of the formaldehyde.”
“Good lord,” I muttered.
“My error became clear a few days later, and my employer was not happy about my mistake. It took all of my persuasive powers to keep from becoming his next target, by I managed, with the promise that I would keep looking for the intended victim, which I did for over a year before concluding that he was already dead. My employer accepted my judgment, though I was unable to collect my fee for killing the wrong man. Then like manna from the heavens, you come walking into the agency and announce that you have found the father of Edgar Allan Poe! I pretended not to believe you, but I knew you were telling the truth. You have no idea what a gift you were. I was offered one more chance to kill my quarry and finally collect my fee, and since you were already looking for the man, you would become the perfect suspect for a murder investigation. That, however, would require an unambiguous murder, so I abandoned the formaldehyde and used a simple firearm instead. All I had to do was to shoot the sodden old fool and then saddle you with the gun.”
“But Tom Macgowan figured out what you were doing, so he had to die, too.”
“True, although up until the point at which his suspicions became dangerous, he played his part admirably.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was Macgowan who helped me rough you up,” Hadley said.
“What? I cannot believe that!”
Hadley chuckled. “After you mentioned your friend at the Advisor, I went to see him. I learned a little bit more about the two of you, particularly about how you used to pull pranks on each other at the Academy. So I laid out a little proposition: how would he like to assist me in a prank that would test your mettle as an operative, in return for my feeding him information on future cases? I promised him I wouldn’t really hurt you, so he agreed, and we tossed you around that night. But when the old man’s body turned up, he began to make connections that were, shall we say, troublesome for me. Occasionally the situation necessitates plying my trade without compensation.”
“You cannot get away with all these murders,” I said. “Others will make the same connections. Eventually you will be caught.”
“There are other towns with a need for a good operative who offers special services,” he rejoined. “If too many questions arise, I will leave and start over elsewhere. But for the moment, I need something from you.”
“From me? What?”
“Macgowan was a clever sort so I was not surprised when he began to piece things together. You, however, are a feeble-brained cadet. Yet something I did planted the seed of suspicion in you. Tell me what it was so I know not to repeat it.”
“It was actually something Mr. Bellwether said at the jail. He was speaking of a lawyer who won freedom for a client who had been caught red-handed. That brought to mind the image of Mr. Poe’s ruined hand, which was scarred and red. Then something you said earlier, when you were taunting me in the jail, jumped into my head. You referred to David Poe as a ‘one-handed rummy.’ I knew that Mr. Poe had only one good hand, because he showed it to me. Later, Tom saw it in the morgue. When I questioned Sergeant Broughton about it, though, he had no knowledge of the man’s ruined hand.”
“So what?”
“Curlowe stated that everything the two of you knew about these murders came from your friends in the police, yet they knew nothing of the damaged hand. So how did you know? You had to have gotten close enough to David Poe to see his hand. That was an inconsistency in your story.”
“Which in no way proves I killed him.”
“You have already admitted to killing him. All that I required was the chance to confront you with the inconsistency, and trust that you would do the rest, which you did.”
Hadley sighed. “Well, well, well, so there is a working brain in that vapid head after all.” Then he slowly stepped toward me and pressed the cold barrel of the Deringer against my left temple. “It will not, however, work for much longer.”
I was seated on my bed with a gun pointed directly to my head. I knew if I moved I would probably be shot before I could take a step. However, if I remained still, I would definitely be shot.
I opted to move.
Lunging forward as rapidly as I could, I dove for the chair and grabbed my jacket, which lay over the top of it, and swung it at the candle, which fell over and extinguished. I then spun around while continued to swing the garment as forcefully as I could until it connected with Jed Hadley’s arm, forcing it downward as the pistol fired, lodging its bullet into the floor. I turned and bolted out of the room and down the stairs as fast as my legs would propel me, expecting at any moment to be felled by another bullet.
Luckily, it never came. I made it to the front door of the boarding house and burst through it, only to hear a familiar cry: “Hey, son!” Standing in front of the house were Samuel Bellwether, Sergeant Broughton and two armed officers!
A moment later Hadley came through the door, pistol still in his hand, though four guns were trained on him before he was able to reach the porch steps. “You can’t win this one, Jed,” Mr. Bellwether called. “Drop the pistol.”
Hadley did as instructed and the policemen rushed him, binding his hands behind him and dragging him off the porch. As he passed us, I could hear him trying to persuade Sergeant Broughton that this was a misunderstanding, and that the real killer was getting away. To his credit, the sergeant was having none of it.
Mr. Bellwether asked me to join him at the Town Crier, and I readily agreed. If ever I needed a drink to calm my nerves, it was now. As we walked to the tavern, I said: “You have no idea how glad I was to see you and the police, but how did you know I was in trouble?”
“Sergeant Broughton called me down to the station and explained your theory about Hadley,” he said. “I confess that I had a hard time believing that one of my men could be a murderer. But when I got back, I watched Hadley closely for the rest of the day. In particular I noticed a change in his usual demeanor when he received that note you sent to him. When Hadley left for the day, I told Curlowe to tail him. He didn’t like it, but I’m his boss, so he did it. He tailed him right to your house. By that point even Pete realized that something was going on that wasn’t on the level, and came back to report. I went to get the
police. I’m just glad we got there in time.”
“So am I, Mr. Bellwether.”
Old Sam’s face suddenly appeared to take on both age and weariness. Godamighty,” he sighed, “a cold-blooded killer working right under my nose, in my own office, and I don’t even know it. Some detective I am.”
* * * *
If Tom Macgowan were alive, he might have written that Jed Hadley’s arrest shook the city of Baltimore to its very core. Upon searching Hadley’s home for evidence, the police discovered a hidden file containing the names of all of his secret clients, and information relating to a series of murders he had accomplished on their behalf. On a more personal level, Old Sam Bellwether wasted little time in making me a full operative with my own case load and ordered Pete Curlowe to either accept the new situation or move elsewhere. He chose to move elsewhere. The last I heard Curlowe was once again in uniform, back in the force over in Washington D.C.
The hot summer of 1852 quickly gave way to a cool autumn. On the seventh day of October of that year, having finished work on a particularly challenging robbery case, I stopped into the Town Crier for a beer. A host of conflicting emotions flooded over me as I sat at the bar in the place where I had earlier connected with two gentlemen, both of whom were now gone. It was only after I had paid my tab and prepared to leave that the significance of the day’s date dawned on me. Going back to the bar I ordered a small bottle of cognac and took it with me.
Walking to the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Fayette Street, I entered the grounds and found the stone I was looking for, the one inscribed with the name Edgar Allan Poe, who went to his reward exactly three years ago this very day. I left the bottle of cognac in front of his stone and walked on to another grave, an unmarked one located close by. Even though there was no stone, I knew who was buried there. I had paid for the restial myself. Stopping a moment, I fished a silver dollar out of my pocket. “You were the gambler, sir,” I said to the ground, and then flipped the coin into the air and caught it again, slapping it onto the back of my left hand. “Call it, Mr. Poe.” I lifted my right hand and saw the side upon which it had landed. “You win,” I said, smiling.
I tossed the coin into the grave and strode on.
CARTOON, by Andrew Toos
THE DOUBLE, by Janice Law
Mostly when I have a problem here, I consult with Evelyn, who’s done so much to smooth my way in this strange land, but not this time. There’s no way she could help me with the General.
For starters, how could I ever explain General Rezart to her? Sure, she’s seen him on TV; she reads the papers, but words alone cannot convey the impact of the General, a truly remarkable man—and remarkably far-sighted. His foresight, as well as his psychopathic tendencies, were the difference between him and the rest of us. But while his violence and cruelty became public, even international, knowledge, his visionary grasp of future contingencies remained private. I think I’m first to understand just how far ahead the General planned.
We’d been thrown together in the old Red army, where Rezart was a corporal and I was his sergeant. Our resemblance was so marked that some joker suggested we trade places and see whether Lieutenant Dragusha would notice. I forgot that incident; the General-To-Be remembered.
Came the collapse of the Communist empire, old Royalists and nationalist fanatics joined former Reds and spanking new capitalists. While most hesitated, uncertain which banner would be safest, the General-To-Be acted, as you know. If you don’t, the history of our sad country will enlighten you. I was demobilized by that time, running a building supply yard in a border province, living an ordinary life, half considering marriage, hoping for opportunity, and keeping my head down politically. Surviving, in short, the way we did in those days.
I’d still be there, in sight of the great pass and the unmelting snows with eagles overhead in blue mountain air, if a black Mercedes hadn’t arrived late one afternoon, lumbering out of the dust, the low red sun reflecting on the windshield. Three men in city suits got out; I knew they weren’t interested in building lumber or cement blocks or a few pounds of nails.
I figured that I’d been denounced, that a little business I’d done across the border had attracted notice, that I had an enemy. I actually considered mentioning the General, something along the lines of, “You realize I was in the same regiment as the General, Beloved of Us All,” but these boys were so efficient, I didn’t even get my mouth open.
“You have an opportunity to serve the state and the General,” they announced and bundled me into the car. The Mercedes wallowed across the potholes in the dirt road, later to be paved by the General’s fiat, and between my dusty provincial shop and the port, the center of the General’s power, they made their proposal.
The General had remembered me, not for my many good qualities, my exceptional intelligence and stalwart friendship, but for the shape of my nose, the breadth of my shoulders, the unusual length of my arms. He had many enemies, some desperate; he needed a double. I was his man.
One of several, in fact, but within months, I was unquestionably the mainstay. As the General, I met boring ambassadors, inaugurated public works in unsettled areas, ate at banquets with gunmen and fanatics. I was a quick study, and I was good. Lacking the ruthlessness to become a General on my own, I nonetheless discovered some of the qualities needed to be the General. After I survived a second assassination attempt, I dared to improvise remarks from the door of the ambulance—if the tape has survived in the archives, you can judge my performance for yourself.
Immediately after I was discharged from the hospital, I was summoned to see my former military comrade at the palace, a structure dating from the old monarchy: marble turrets, glorious tiled roofs and walls, acres of gardens with date palms, exotic birds, and flowers of all kinds. Beautiful, of course, but I was shaking.
Thanks to the nasty scar under my collarbone and a stiff shoulder, I was no longer so exact a double, and, knowing the General’s paranoia and the reputation of his secret police, I was afraid that a quick shot in the head was probably the best of my prospects.
But as he would so often, the devious General surprised me. “You saved my life, Malik,” he said, stepping forward on the gleaming floor and kissing me on both cheeks, “as was your duty.” Then without preliminary, I was ordered to shave my beard, trim my hair, and learn a new language. I was to be sent abroad.
“A position of great trust,” said the General, “only to be offered to someone who was a comrade in arms.”
I bowed, still barely able to breathe. “And my duties, General?”
He waved his hand. “Make a life, something respectable and comfortable, but
without connections. That’s very important, no wife or children. A job? Possibly; the society is said to be industrious, and I want no questions asked about you. You need to fit in, like the glove on my hand.”
He smoothed the kid gloves that he wore even indoors, even in what seemed to me stifling heat. Rezart had always been highly sensitive to cold. I saw him turning my life inside out like a skinned rabbit, and I hesitated before his power.
He nodded slightly, as if he appreciated my reservations. He was not then, as he later became, totally blind to the feelings and wishes of others. “The alternative,” he said and paused.
I understood that only too well. “It will be an honor to serve you, General,” I said.
Rezart kissed me on both cheeks again, and I was dismissed into the custody of the men in the dark suits and cloudy glasses. Study, language coaching, a new name, new documents, new money, and finally a flight to a vastly bigger and richer port city, a hot, bright, glossy, godless place where I have lived comfortably for fifteen years, thanks to the General.
When I get up in the early morning, I step out of the air-conditioned house into the cool of the yard. Doves call in the trees, my parrot squawks, potted orchids bloom along the fence. Tall palms and pines break the sun, which gains an extra glitter from the sea just two blocks away.
This is a desirable property, one of several I own and manage. I could live on my rents if the General cuts my stipend—something I have expected for fourteen years, at least.
Perhaps you are granting him the virtue of gratitude? Not me, yet even I did not
anticipate how far ahead he looked. A remarkable man, whatever his faults and vices.
I lived as I’d been instructed. I was watched, of course; that went without saying. I found the heat distasteful initially, but I discovered the beaches and learned to swim; I grew dark in the sun. I invented a past, unnecessarily as it turned out. People came to this port city to escape cold, bleakness, and regret; the young for fun, the old for death in comfort. I was among exiles.
I cultivated small vices. I grew lazy and refused work; the apartments were enough. I had no wife—a curious stipulation—but there seemed to be no objection to women, “girlfriends” was the local term, or to boozy nights dancing at clubs or afternoons sunning at the “clothing optional” beach; the General was an eccentric, not a puritan.
Periodically, I was “refreshed” with tapes from home, recordings of the General, both video and audio, brought via the diplomatic bag, a useless skullduggery now that my satellite dish brings forth, in somewhat dark and grainy video, the official station of my homeland. Lately I’ve been able to see the Republic Day Parade, the birthday celebrations of the General, Beloved of Us All, and his annual visit to the Tomb of the Fallen. He looked older, as if unlimited power were beginning to tell on him.
Predictable. There have been the usual troubles in the mountains, my home province, plus difficulties with miners in the south, and with intellectuals in the port city, his base. While I’d been relaxing, enjoying life, and learning curious things from Evelyn, he was fighting and executing and watching his back.
