Crime After Crime

by Crime After Crime (v5. 0) (mobi)

  Edelman’s eyes quickly flashed toward the woman, but he didn’t answer.

  “Look, your ass is in trouble. People are following you, and they aren’t your friends. Stein’s people are after me because I stuck my nose in this, and I had to pop one of ’em today. You ain’t a fighting man, Myron. You need all the help you can get before somebody kills you.”

  “He’s not the one they want to kill,” the woman replied.

  Jacks stared at the abrasion on her forehead. Everybody had been trying to tell him, but maybe his tranquilizers kept him from listening.

  “They want me, but it’s too late. I’m already dead.”

  Her voice was husky and as hard as what was left of her beauty.

  Edelman patted her shoulders and rubbed her back in a consoling manner, although it appeared that she didn’t need it. The pain in Edelman’s eyes told Jacks that he was actually consoling himself.

  Beverly had fallen victim to the big disease with the little name. Her words. She was dying and talked as if she was reconciled with her fate. It was something that Jacks had seen before and all too frequently. She was a woman who had made bad choices but had arrived at the understanding that, at best, she had to live with them, and at worse, die with them. Although it was Edelman touching her, her eyes remained fixed on Jacks. People like that recognised their contemporaries. He was as empty as she was. She had just filled her emptiness with a deadlier placebo. He felt the pressure of his pill box in his pocket, but it didn’t comfort him.

  “I want you to take me somewhere, Riley Jacks,” she announced.

  Edelman reached for his hat.

  “Not you, Myron, just Jacks.”

  “What… why?” Edelman began.

  “There’s something I need to do, and I need Jacks to help me do it. Besides, Mr Jacks’ burning curiosity is killing him. He wants to know if all of this b.s. swirling around him is likely to interfere with his money. A favour for a favour, Riley Jacks. You help me and maybe I’ll tell you a story.”

  “I can help,” Edelman protested.

  “No you can’t.”

  The finality in her voice ended the conversation.

  “I think Jacks and I understand each other. You understand what you want to understand, Myron. It’s not your fault, and I don’t dislike you for it.”

  She hugged him for a long time – long enough to make Jacks feel like an intruder. He turned his back and walked toward the door.

  * * *

  Beverly only told Jacks where she wanted to go after she got in his car.

  They rode in silence for a while before Jacks decided how to talk to her about what she was doing.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he finally said.

  “No need to worry. Jake Stein’s a wimp. He won’t do his own killing, besides, you’ll be there to watch my back and make sure things turn out right.” She managed a smile that touched him in spite of himself.

  “Hell, what’s this about, lady? Why can’t he wait to see you dead?”

  She sighed and lit a cigarette. It made her cough, but she smoked it anyway.

  “I couldn’t afford the medicine,” she began. “It was ten or twelve grand a year. I took it on and off. Most of the time I didn’t take it. I had met Stein through Myron back when I was singing. He could see that I was sick, and I was desperate. He said he would pay for my medicine if I would do this one thing for him.”

  She paused for a long time, and stared out of the side window as if she had no intention of continuing.

  “What?” Jacks said.

  “Sometimes…” her voice choked, “sometimes you do bad things because you have to.” She turned back toward Jacks with tear-dampened cheeks. “Jake Stein didn’t own Def Watch. He just acted like he did. His father-in-law owned the business. I guess Jake got tired of watching the money pass through his hands without stopping, so he asked me…” her voice faded briefly, “he asked me if I would be available at a birthday party for his father-in-law.”

  Jacks listened with unrestrained curiosity. He listened to what she said, but more importantly, he listened to what she didn’t say.

  “Available? Available for what?”

  “What the hell do you think?”

  “Wait. Wait. He knew what was wrong with you, right?”

  “That’s why he wanted me. Jake Stein wanted to be rid of his father-in-law. Tate could have shot him, stabbed him or run him down, but it would have all pointed back to Stein. What could you say, though, about a grown man stupid enough to catch AIDS from a hooker? I was his sixtieth birthday present. Don’t look so shocked. I still looked pretty good with make-up and without these cuts on my face. Anyway, he paid for the drugs for about a year then I guess he decided that I wasn’t dying fast enough. He didn’t like having someone alive who could testify about what he’d done.”

  Jacks brought the car to a stop across from the entrance to Stein’s office.

  “What’s the plan?” he said.

  “Myron won’t leave me alone. He’s got the guilts. No reason though. I was a big girl. One of these days we’ll make a wrong move and Ramar Tate will kill him too, just for the hell of it. I don’t think I could bear that. I’m going to beg Stein to leave us alone, convince him that I won’t talk. I won’t live another year anyway.”

  She got out of the car, and Jacks started to follow, but she stopped him. She needed somebody to watch her back, to make sure that Ramar Tate didn’t sneak into the building before she was finished.

  Jacks waited in the car. He had a bad feeling about this, but it wasn’t his play. He didn’t know what he was doing there. Maybe he was just seeing that things turned out right.

  Several minutes passed, and the unexpected blare of approaching sirens split the air. An ambulance and police cars blocked the street as frightened people ran from the building. He listened to Stein’s employees repeat the story as they led Beverly from the building in handcuffs. She had walked in as cool as a cucumber, popped him twice in the head with that pea-shooter, then sat down and smoked a cigarette while they called the police.

  * * *

  With Jake Stein dead and his father-in-law sick with AIDS, the value of Def Watch dropped like a rock. Before it was over, Myron Edelman acquired the company for a song, and Angela Edelman got paid without having to go to court. The way she and Myron grinned at each other, it wouldn’t have been surprising if they ended up bed-mates before the check had cleared. Money cures a lot of pain.

  Riley Jacks emerged from his bank having deposited the four-figure cheque he received from Angela Edelman. A familiar young man exiting a black Mercedes approached him.

  “I have the balance of your payment, Mr Jacks, and our benefactor would like to speak to you.” He handed Jacks an envelope and directed him to the Mercedes.

  The tinted rear window opened slowly revealing an attractive middle-aged woman dressed in black. She wore dark glasses, and her fingers were drenched in diamonds.

  “I wanted to personally thank you for seeing that things turned out right, Mr Jacks, she said in an elegant and subdued voice.

  Jacks accepted her handshake but remained at a loss for words.

  “I… uh… I don’t know what you think I did, but…”

  “You saw that things turned out right, Mr Jacks, whether you intended to or not. My father thinks he was just unlucky. He doesn’t know what my husband did to him, but at least I have some satisfaction in knowing that evil will not triumph.”

  The tinted window slowly rose to end their conversation, and the Mercedes pulled away. This wasn’t difficult to figure out. Jacks just couldn’t understand why Jake Stein didn’t. A man can’t kill his wife’s father and expect to continue business as usual.

  Another two-thousand dollars. He perused the newspaper while he waited for the next teller. The local news was boring except for the arrest of a suspect in the recent murder of an unidentified man in front of the Union Bank. An anonymous tip led police to the murder weapon, which had b
een stolen from the bank’s security guard and was found under the seat of a car belonging to a street criminal named Ramar Tate. Jacks grinned broadly. Jake Stein’s wife had been prophetic. Things did have a way of turning out right after all.

  ~~~~~~~~

  About the author

  L. A. Wilson, Jr. was born in Norfolk, VA and grew up on the coastal plains of North Carolina. He is a graduate of North Carolina Central University and Meharry Medical College and currently lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife and children. He is a member of The Mystery Writers of America and his works have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Night Terrors, The Edge and Detective Mystery Stories.

  Nominated for the 2012 Shamus Award for short fiction by The Private Eye Writers of America for a publication in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

  Stevie’s Luck

  Gerry McCullough

  Okay if I sit here, mate?

  Ta.

  Nice quiet place this, I like it. Fuller than usual tonight, or I wouldn’t butt in like this, see?

  Buy you a round?

  Och, no problem, lager is it?

  Bit quieter than the dive I was in a few weeks ago. Fights breaking out all the time, there, so they tell me. There was a bad row even the once I was there, I’m telling you.

  Bad.

  I missed out on the worst of it, I’m glad to say.

  Let me tell you about it. Don’t mind, do you?

  Don’t usually go to this Drummond place, like I say it’s a bit of a dive, never know what might be happening, bad stuff, maybe. It was Marie wanted to go, my usual’s the King’s Head, a bit more upmarket, but Marie says the Happy Hour in the Drummond’s real good value, so, hey, I goes along with it.

  Place is jumpin’ when we gets there, Thursday night, wouldn’t expect it, but maybe news about this Happy Hour stuff’s got around. They’ve done it up since I was last there, lotta red paint, hanging baskets, coupla tables outside – like, who’s going to sit there more than a coupla days a year in our climate? Oh, right, it’s for the smokers, isn’t it? You see them outside all the pubs now, shivering and smoking away, must think it’s worth it. I’ll smoke outside on a fine night, but not the sorta weather some of them put up with. The flowers in the hanging baskets inside are a bit droopy, from not getting watered much, I’d bet. You need to look after flowers, water them enough and not too much. Nobody gets it right. That’s the sort of thing I care about. I’m sensitive, me.

  I used to look after the flowers and plants when I was a kid. Mum never bothered, or she’d drown them and they’d be dead in a day or two. I told her not to bother after a while. I took care of them.

  Mum wasn’t that good at any practical stuff, come to that. She was a lovely woman, not very tall, slim, delicate sorta girl. I’ve got some snaps of her here, you wanta see? Lovely, right? Coulda gone on the films, I used to think. She and me got on fine, especially when I was a kid. She was a popular lady, always some fella or other chasing after her, but none of them mattered to her like I did, or that’s how it seemed to me, right? Sometimes one or other of them’d move in for a while. I didn’t mind, long as he didn’t cause me no pain. She kept them in line, made sure they behaved. One guy, I’ll never forget him, he was called Jimmy, he lifted his hand to me one day when I’d been giving him a bit of cheek, called him a baldy ould git, as I remember it. Well, Mum was down on him like a ton of bricks, and he was outa the house, bag and baggage, the same afternoon. That’s what she was like.

  Money? Well, I don’t know, she managed okay, never seemed to be short, don’t really know where it came from. The dole, I reckon, and maybe my da sent her some from time to time. It wouldn’t have been anything else, see, if that’s what you’re suggesting!

  She changed a bit as I got older. Stopped being so protective. But there weren’t so many of the men after her by that time. She was getting a bit rough looking, tell you the truth, by the time I was sixteen or so. Musta been all the drinking. Lines on her face. Hair needing touched up, and she often didn’t bother, so the grey was starting to show every now and then. Couldn’t seem to talk to her any more, way we used to. She’d get angry, right out of the blue, sometimes, and turn on me. She was the only one I could trust, from when I was a kid, and then I couldn’t trust her either. I moved out a year or two after that. Hey, sad story, right?

  My da? I dunno where he was. Don’t even remember what he looks like. Only what Mum used to say. Only saw him two or three times, when I was the size of sixpence.

  Mum said we were well rid of him.

  Okay, so here we are in the Drummond, Marie and me.

  Marie’s looking all about, seems to be expecting someone. She’s dressed up real nice, short narrow skirt, lots of eyeliner, fluffy blonde hair pulled up on top of her head and a few curls hanging down on her smooth neck that’s all brown from the sun, and this sharp, spicy perfume. Top so low cut you could see gleams of white flesh where the suntan ended. Maybe she’d like me to tell her it makes me fancy her, but, hey, it’s not good for chicks to think they’ve got you going. Gives them a big head, makes them think they can push you about.

  I wasn’t looking bad myself, mind. I’m not all that tall, but so what. I look a bit like Sinatra, the chicks tell me, before he got old and wrinkly, in the first pictures he made, you see them sometimes on the late night movies, or you get them on DVD, slim figure, thin bony face, smooth good looks. When all the chicks were howling for him, right? Not saying they’re all howling for me, but I get my share okay, see?

  Mum used to say I looked the image of my da.

  Before she went into the home, that was. When she could say anything that made sense.

  She came round to see me one day, maybe ten years ago now, and started ranting and raving and threatening me. Seemed to think I was my da. Didn’t recognise me. Didn’t talk any sense. End of it was, I had to call the doctor, and they said she needed to go into an institution, for her own safety. Not to mention mine, the look in her eye when she started shouting at me and lifting the kitchen knife and coming at me, well, I had to get out quick, I’m telling you. Nothing else for it.

  Senile dementia, they called it.

  But she wasn’t that old.

  I always remember her the way she used to be, when I was a kid, when she made a fuss of me and told me how handsome I was, just like my da. Showed me a photo of him once, but when I asked to see it again, she’d burnt it, she said. When I try to picture it, all I get is Frank Sinatra in his younger days. But I reckon that should be close enough.

  I like to dress right for the look, dark coloured shirt with the turned down collar and a real smooth light coloured tie, blue to show up my eyes, see?

  So, when Marie started looking all round, I says to her, “Hey, what’s up, babe?” Not that I was really that worried, but you gotta make an effort, make them think you’re interested, it’s half the battle.

  “Nothing,” she says. She gives me a look, and I squeeze her bare knee under the table, and I can see I’ve got her going, right? Then she says, “See Porky anywhere?”

  I don’t. Don’t want to.

  “How would I know where Porky is?” I says.

  “Thought you were talking to him on the phone the other day?”

  “Hey, that wasn’t Porky,” I said. I laughed. “You’ve got Porky on the brain, kid! Waiting for your next fix, right! You mustn’ta heard me right. That was my bookie!”

  “Oh, right,” she says. “Just, I was hoping to see him. I’ve got the cash for some gear,” she couldn’t help telling me, though she knows I don’t like that sort of stuff.

  I’m getting sick of sitting there without a glass in front of me.

  “Buy me a drink,” I says.

  She’s still looking all ways, like, but she heads off up to the bar

  That’s what chicks are for, right?

  Totally.

  Porky, I have to tell you, is a guy I can do without.

  Full of shit,
okay? In both senses.

  See me, I’m not into all that stuff.

  The odd bit of blow, yeah, but the gear, like, that’s another whole bag of trouble. Not for me.

  What Marie does is her own funeral. Totally.

  Hey, that wasn’t a bad sort of joke, right?

  He does other stuff, Porky, beats people up to order, I’m told, but that’s not something I would have anything to do with, either, right? Gotta look after yourself, keep clear of all that stuff. I look after myself, always have done, nobody else’s going to do it.

  So I’m waiting for Marie to get back over with my drink, when this fella comes up to me.

  “Stevie McCartney?” he says.

  I give him a look.

  “You owe me big time,” he says.

  I know who he is. Joe Murphy, from the bookie’s.

  Big red faced guy, with a crooked nose. Used to do some boxing.

  So I know he’s been waiting to collect from me for the past month, on account of I missed out on last month’s payment, but what I don’t know is how he knew to look for me in the Drummond, which is like a dump I never go to, and I was starting to wonder about Marie, but, hey, she wouldn’t squeal on me, not Marie.

  She comes back then with the booze and I can see they know each other.

  “Joe.”

  “Marie Bas. Hi, babe. Good to see ya.”

  It makes me wonder again.

  I grabs the drink, and, what about it, it’s lager.

  So I bangs it back down on the table, so’s a big gollup of it spills. Makes a bright goldy sort of pool on the tabletop.

  “I don’t drink that muck, Marie,” I says, keeping my voice calm. “You know that rightly. Bacardi. Tequila. Either. Even a good vodka. Not lager.”

  What’s that, mate? Oh, right, yeah, a tequila’d be great. Ta.

  Good stuff, that. Thanks. Feel like I need something tonight, don’t know why. Just need a bit of comfort, sort of.

  Right, so, where was I?