EQMM, June 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I saw two Escalades pull around back of the house, similar trucks to the one I'd used earlier. Six guys got out. They were the blackhats; they'd obviously been here before, knew where the girls were.

  I had to slow them down. I ducked behind the pile of machinery closest to the door and started shooting.

  They broke and scattered for cover like roaches, returning fire. It was full dark now, the only light coming from the house and the headlights. My field of view was too limited to keep them all pinned down at once, but I could drive them away from the back and the woods. How I'd get to my own truck was another matter.

  I didn't have enough ammo. I hadn't come prepared for a firefight. I should have been on the road south for an hour now, well away from all this. And I certainly wouldn't have chosen this shitty location to make a stand if I'd had more time to prepare.

  So much for sentimentality. So much for perceived obligations. Ego, nerves, and imagination were gonna get me killed.

  Headlights, pulsing blue lights, and loudspeakers. The cavalry had arrived.

  “Federal officers! Put your weapons down!”

  Fire drew away from me. This was my last chance to get out of here.

  Not through the front door, though. I'd need a hell of a diversion. I thought longingly of RPGs and flash-bangs. The exchange of fire and shouting wasn't enough cover.

  I squeezed past the tractor's wreck, found a window I could fit through. Through the filthy glass, I could just make out the meth shed with its blacked-out windows across from me.

  I smiled. No need for grenades now.

  I emptied out the last of my magazine, and was slapping in another, when the most beautiful explosion erupted outside. I ducked down, felt window glass and splinters fly over my head. I heard screams; someone had been too close by. More shouts, more confusion.

  Time to go.

  I hauled ass through the window, trying not to breathe the toxic shit that was fueling the explosions and fire. I scrambled along the outside of the barn as another explosion roared through the chaos. I ran for the truck, got in, and drove.

  I kept my eyes on the dirt road, but the fire in my rearview only got brighter, the whirling lights on the Feds’ vehicles and sirens adding to the confusion until I turned a corner.

  * * * *

  I called Attorney Spector the next night. We met at an all-night diner on the interstate, about ten miles from her office.

  She slid into the booth, her suit changed for a flannel shirt and jeans. The extreme line of her haircut and those scary eyes were disguised with a Red Sox cap. She didn't want to look like a lawyer and did a good job of it.

  “Didn't exactly tell you to dump a load of illegals on my doorstep, did I?” she said once the waitress left. “Okay, only one of them was without papers.”

  “Figured you'd have a better idea of how to deal with them,” I said. “Me leaving them by the side of the road didn't seem like the best choice. Who knows I was here?”

  “So far, no one. The young women said one of the Brodys left the ax too near the door. As for the other bodies I've read about, they're blaming Santoro and his guys. Still working it out, but so far, there's no sign of you.”

  “That's why they pay me the big bucks.”

  “I can fix things, should anything come up.”

  “You don't need to. I knew what I was getting into.”

  “If I can, I will.” She shrugged. “I owed Naomi too.”

  Another story one of us wasn't going to share.

  “She wasn't one to leave you in the lurch.” I thought about it. “Just how many names were on that list?”

  “More than you'd think. Fewer than I'd like.” Spector hesitated, which looked odd on her. “If I find . . . I could use your talents again, may I use that e-mail address?”

  “I'm a bartender, now. I don't really—”

  “A bartender who could have left those women to die, but didn't.” She sipped her coffee. “Naomi always said it took only one person to make a difference.”

  “Yeah, I know, but . . .” Connections complicate things. People complicate things. I had a thousand reasons for telling her to lose my information, but realized I liked Spector's attitude. Even if she spooked me. “Screw it. E-mail, if you think I can help.”

  She raised her coffee mug in salute. I shrugged again. I wasn't Naomi, who did good by bringing people together, by adding something to the mix, effecting change with positive measures. If I did good, mine was more of a subtractive process: one soul at a time.

  Copyright © 2012 by Dana Cameron.

  Black Mask Magazine title, logo and mask device Copyright © 2012 by

  Keith Alan Deutsch. Licensed by written permission.

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  * * *

  Reviews: BLOG BYTES

  by Bill Crider

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  * * * *

  That intrepid pair Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri have perpetrated a number of blogs previously mentioned here. They've described A Thriller A Day, discussed all 49 episodes of The Outer Limits on We Are Controlling Transmission, and delivered commentary on all 120 episodes of Batman. Now they're taking on the complete adventures of Carl Kolchak in the TV series The Night Stalker at a blog called It Couldn't Happen Here (akolchakaday.blogspot.com/). For those of you too young to remember, Kolchak was a reporter (played by Darren McGavin), who found himself involved with all sorts of supernatural creatures, mysteries, and crimes. Besides the episode assessment, there's also some excellent introductory material, by other hands, including discussion of the TV movies that preceded the series.

  For those who find werewolves and vampires a bit outre, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel (classicmystery.wordpress.com/) might be more appealing. Here you're promised “Spoiler Free Reviews of Fair Play Detective Fiction.” That doesn't mean only Golden Age material, as most of the reviews are of current books, including many historical mysteries. There are some other links at the blog you'll want to check out, including one of particular interest to readers of this magazine. It's “a summary page linking to hopefully what will be a complete set of reviews of the Ellery Queen novels.” There's a similar link for Henry Merrivale, as well.

  While we're on the subject of classic mysteries, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Classic Mysteries (www.classicmysteries.net/), which brings you “podcasts and conversations about fine detective stories worth reading and re-reading.” Rex Stout, Elizabeth Ferrars, and Georges Simenon are among the writers discussed recently. There's also a nice review of the short story collection The Duel of Shadows: The Extraordinary Cases of Barnabas Hildreth” by Vincent Cornier. If older novels and stories are some of your favorite things, Classic Mysteries should be a regular stop.

  Tim Mayer holes up in Z7's Headquarters (z7hq.blogspot.com/), a blog of eclectic reviews of “pulp, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, crime, and horror novels.” You'll find reviews of books by authors as varied as Jim Thompson, Fredric Brown, Karl Edward Wagner, and Phyllis Paul. If you're occasionally led to read popular fiction outside the crime and mystery field, you're sure to find something of interest here.

  Copyright © 2012 by Bill Crider

  Bill Crider is the author of The Wild Hog Murders, published by St. Martin's Press.

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  * * *

  Novelette: THE RITUAL OF MR. TARPLEE

  by Simon Brett

  The Malice Domestic Convention's Lifetime Achievement Award winner for 2012 is Simon Brett, long-time contributor to EQMM and a writer with a devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic. After working as a producer for radio and TV, Simon Brett began writing full-time in 1979. He's created four popular mystery series, the first starring actor Charles Paris, the second the widow Mrs. Pargeter, the third a pair of amateur sleuths from the village of Feathering, and the latest Blotto and Twinks, a pair of detecting aristocrats. His short stories are often stand-alones; we think you'll like this one!

 
“Mr. Tarplee comes here the same week every year,” said Mrs. Bolitho. “And there's a story goes with that.”

  Hayley-Jane waited. She'd been at Penwillan Castle Hotel long enough now to know that Mrs. Bolitho liked to tell her stories at her own pace. Trying to hurry the old woman would only put her off her stroke and make the storytelling even slower in the long run.

  After the initial few weeks of sheer panic at having secured her first job and adjusting to the world of work, Hayley-Jane had begun to realise how slowly the time passed. Back then, listening to Mrs. Bolitho's stories while the digits of her watch clicked imperceptibly towards the end of her shift had seemed to be a refinement of the torture, but that stage had passed.

  Hayley-Jane had now come to terms with the fact that she had to go to work every day, and that work moved at a different pace from school. Even if she had nothing to do, she couldn't leave the premises of the Penwillan Castle Hotel before the allotted time. Those were the hours she was being paid for, and the “being paid for” part was important. For the first time in her life Hayley-Jane had some money that hadn't been grudgingly handed over by her parents and though she still thought the amount her Mum charged her for rent was way too much, she did like the feeling of the residue nestling safely in her bank account. It wasn't much, but it was hers.

  So, having made these mental adjustments, she had concluded that listening to Mrs. Bolitho was preferable to just sitting alone feeling bored in the linen room. It didn't really matter how long the old woman's stories went on, so long as they didn't last beyond home time.

  Hayley-Jane had started the job in early September, just about the time she would have gone back to school, except of course she was never going back to school again. She'd started at the Penwillan Castle Hotel on a Monday, less than twenty-four hours after returning from a family holiday in Marbella with her parents and infuriating younger brother Kelvin. She had spent most of the fortnight away lying on a lounger, reading Mills & Boon romances and pretending that the rest of her party were nothing to do with her. If she had any say in the matter, Hayley-Jane would never be going on another family holiday either.

  The Cornish summer holiday season was running down by the time she started her job. The families had mostly left because of the beginning of the new school term. There were a few older couples, eking out the autumns of the year and their lives, but every week fewer and fewer bedrooms at the Penwillan Castle Hotel were occupied. This is when the management hoped to switch over to what was importantly referred to as “the conference trade” but, according to Mrs. Bolitho, “the conference trade” never really got started. Though Christmas and the New Year could be busy, till then there wasn't going to be much work to be done. But, she urged Hayley-Jane, never let the management know you haven't got enough to do. Just keep out of their way and, when they did see you, make sure you looked busy. Otherwise there might be talk of “laying people off.”

  In the first few weeks Hayley-Jane had spent a lot of her spare time—as she had while she'd been in Marbella—exchanging constant texts with her school friends, the girls obviously, but also with her on/off boyfriend Bazza. After a time, though, she'd stopped, because there wasn't really that much to say. Those like her who'd been lucky enough to get jobs were too busy—or pretending to be too busy—to communicate that much. So the ones who did text back were the unemployed, which meant they just moaned, Bazza in particular.

  (Hayley-Jane was very equivocal, so far as Bazza was concerned. She'd liked having him as a boyfriend at school, because he was very fit, for one thing, and also because she'd snaffled him from under the nose of one of her best friends. But as a member of the ranks of the unemployed he was less appealing. All he seemed to really want from her was sex. And though Hayley-Jane didn't really mind sex, she strictly rationed the amount of it she allowed him. Increasingly, she was coming to the conclusion that she could do a lot better than Bazza.

  He certainly didn't fit into any Mills & Boon scenario. Like many women addicted to romantic fiction, Hayley-Jane knew the boundaries very well between that and real life. She didn't expect any relationship of her own to match those between the brusque doctors with tragic secrets and the feisty young nurses that she read about. She just enjoyed the abstract idea of a good romance.)

  So exchanging texts with former schoolmates was a matter of diminishing returns. There wasn't much to do in Cornwall if you hadn't got any money, and there was only so much reporting of her friends’ daytime-television viewing habits that Hayley-Jane could take. Besides, after a time, other people's moans got depressing. They all ended up saying that there was nothing for young people in Cornwall, that they couldn't wait to get out of Cornwall, and Hayley-Jane wasn't so sure. She appeared to agree with her friends when they moaned on about it, but only for form's sake. Though she was desperate to get away from her parents and the infuriating Kelvin, Hayley-Jane loved the county of her birth. Now if she could afford a nice little flat somewhere a bit classier . . . Penzance, Newlyn, or St. Ives, say . . . well, that wouldn't be too bad, would it? Though somehow Bazza was never going to fit into that kind of scenario, was he? The mental image she nurtured of her “nice little flat” never had room for Bazza in it.

  Besides, Hayley-Jane was in no hurry to make any long-term decisions. She'd never rushed into things, and she wasn't about to start now she was settled as a chambermaid at Penwillan Castle Hotel, in its “stunning clifftop location looking out over the famous Pollack's Head rock,” as the brochure and the Web site put it.

  Starting the job was also the first time Hayley-Jane had mixed with older women on even vaguely level terms. Of course, her mum had always been around, and there had been the teachers at school, but in both cases they'd really been the enemy. People like Mrs. Bolitho and the other chambermaids and the Penwillan Castle Hotel kitchen staff brought her into a new sense of a female community. There was a bit of “who snogged who” talk like there had been at school, but Hayley-Jane had found herself included in discussions about wider subjects, like marriages, child-rearing, the sexual antics of the guests, and the enduring inadequacy of men. Some of the other staff also enjoyed Mills & Boons, but none of them had any expectation of finding anything of that sort in their own lives. Hayley-Jane enjoyed being part of these intimacies; for perhaps the first time, it made her feel fully grown up. But she never mentioned her relationship with Bazza to the other women. Though they still met for occasional sex, Hayley-Jane was already airbrushing Bazza out of her life.

  Mrs. Bolitho was probably the oldest person working at the hotel. She had started off there as a chambermaid straight out of school, just like Hayley-Jane. Perhaps it was for that reason that she took a particular interest in the girl. Or perhaps, as some of the other staff rather waspishly observed, the old woman would take an interest in anyone who was prepared to listen to her.

  Though never specified, there was a general understanding that there had been some “sadness” in Mrs. Bolitho's life. She had no children, nor was there ever any mention of a Mr. Bolitho, so maybe that lay at the root of her misfortune. But whatever had gone wrong had gone wrong a long time before, and no one left on the Penwillan Castle Hotel staff had been around when it had happened. Maybe somebody could have explained the “sadness” to Hayley-Jane, but by the time she thought to ask the question she was too much a part of the hotel set-up to be able to do so.

  Mrs. Bolitho could remember when the hotel had been “family-run.” She still spoke fondly of “Mr. and Mrs. Jago” and it didn't take long for her to reiterate the opinion that “everything had gone downhill since Mr. Jago died and Mrs. Jago sold up.” The Penwillan Castle Hotel had been bought up by another couple, but they'd come from “the pub business” and “hadn't had the touch.” Thereafter the premises had been sold on to a series of small hotel chains and become “impersonal.” The latest, the ones who were hoping to develop “the conference trade,” had only owned the Penwillan a couple of years and Mrs. Bolitho didn't “hold out much more hope for
them” than she had for any of the others.

  There was also the unspoken assumption under everything she said about “management” that, even though Mrs. Bolitho only had the status of “housekeeper,” the Penwillan Castle Hotel would be much better run if she were in charge.

  Through all the changes of management, the one constant had been Mr. Tarplee booking for the first week in October every year. And Mrs. Bolitho was the only person still at the Penwillan Castle Hotel who knew “the story goes with that.”

  When Hayley-Jane first set eyes on Mr. Tarplee, she knew he was in some way different from the other guests. It wasn't just his age, though he was old. But then there were plenty of old people in the hotel. She had got used to seeing parchment-skinned old men and chicken-legged old women stacked up in the sun lounge like redundant furniture. And she had stopped wondering what on earth was the point of their lives. Most of them seemed happy enough with their lot, though Hayley-Jane couldn't imagine why they should be. They didn't have any real conversation, not what she'd call conversation, except for endlessly discussing whether the rock out onto which the sun lounge faced really did look like the head of a pollack (a fish most of them had probably never seen). It seemed unimaginable to Hayley-Jane that she would ever be that age.

  So it wasn't just that Mr. Tarplee was old—though Mrs. Bolitho had said that he was a good fifteen years older than she was. And from the jokes the other staff made at her expense, Mrs. Bolitho had to be over sixty . . . well past the age she ought to have retired, according to some. No, it was something else that made Mr. Tarplee stand out. A kind of . . . Hayley-Jane had difficulty in describing it. She'd heard in some old horror film she'd once watched the word “otherness” used, and perhaps that was the nearest she could come to defining Mr. Tarplee's unique quality.

  He was always alone, but he didn't have that waft of loneliness that some of the widows and widowers carried around with them like a musty smell. He had a dignity about him, an air of dignified grief. Something romantic. Mr. Tarplee wasn't gregarious, he didn't seek out company, but he was perfectly friendly if anyone addressed him. Hayley-Jane had once found him still in his room when she'd come in to make the bed, and from that moment every time Mr. Tarplee saw her she was rewarded by a smile. Not a lascivious smile, like some of the older men tried on. Mr. Tarplee's smile was shy more than anything else.