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CONTENTS
Fiction: CENTRAL ISLIN, U.S.A. by Lou Manfredo
Black Mask: THE LIFEGUARD METHOD by Kieran Shea
Fiction: A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES by Christine Poulson
Fiction: A VOICE FROM THE PAST by Art Taylor
Fiction: THE SHANTY DRUMMER by Robert Lopresti
Passport to Crime: SNOW ON BLOEDKOPPIE by Bernhard Jaumann
Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider
Fiction: DEATH WILL TIE YOUR KANGAROO DOWN by Elizabeth Zelvin
Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen
Fiction: FAKE RESUME by Jon L. Breen
Fiction: THE PIRATE'S DEBT by Toni L. P. Kelner
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Fiction: CENTRAL ISLIN, U.S.A. by Lou Manfredo
Lou Manfredo's last story for EQMM, “The Alimony Prison” (May 2006) was a hardboiled historical. He employs a historical setting here too, but the story is a traditional whodunit. Mr. Manfredo's first novel, Rizzo's War, will appear inSeptember, from St. Martin's Press. It's the first of three novels he's under contract for with St. Martin's featuring Detec-tive Sergeant Joe Rizzo, a character from his short story “Case Closed,” which merited inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories in 2005.
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Art by Laurie Harden
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The warm June sunlight twinkled and danced as it moved across the long, shiny, sky-blue hood of the brand new 1959 Edsel sedan. Gus Oliver swung the steering wheel deftly and stabbed lightly at the gas pedal. The huge E-400 V-8 responded immediately with a purring surge of smooth power. Gus settled in for a short drive along Motor Parkway to the cozy Long Island town of Central Islin.
Little Joey Oliver sat stiffly next to him on the front seat, a stony look of hurt on his face. Gus smiled as he spoke to the nine-year-old.
"Now, Jo-Jo,” he said, using the pet name for his grandson that was theirs alone. “I'd not let it bother me all that much. ‘Specially when it's just gettin’ into June and you're lookin’ straight at two months of summer vacation."
The boy's face twisted up with discomfort. “But Grandpa,” he said. “She said she was disappointed in me. Disappointed! I don't like it when she says that."
Gus sighed and squinted into the early morning sun that rose from the east before him. “Well, I don't guess you should like it. Your mom is a fine mother, and a better wife for my oldest son I could not ask for.” Now he turned to his grandson and smiled. “But sure as the Dodgers left Brooklyn, she's got some learnin’ to do about young boys. About men, I guess.” He turned his eyes back to the road and continued to speak.
"Now, first of all, seems to me you're gettin’ old enough to have yourself some private time when you're in the shower. There doesn't seem a need for her to be peekin’ in checkin’ for God knows what. I'll be talkin’ to your daddy about that soon enough, Jo-Jo. But, secondly, let me tell you what your momma should already know: All little boys pee in the shower. Hell, all men pee in the shower if the need comes on. The difference is this: A gentleman, well, he aims directly at the drain—doesn't go sprayin’ it around, random like. You remember that, Jo-Jo, and you'll get by just fine. Trust me."
Joey's face softened. He smiled. “Okay, Grandpa,” he said.
Gus smiled back with satisfaction. “Now let's get some breakfast,” he said.
He turned left off Motor Parkway and sped along Carlton Avenue. When it became the six hundred foot Main Street that was the town of Central Islin, he gently slowed the blue-and-white Edsel to twenty miles an hour.
He spied an open perpendicular parking space in front of Bargain Bill's variety store, nosed the car in, and killed the engine. Main Street was lined on its east and west sides by stores and businesses: the Bohack Supermarket, Dominick's Shoe Repair, Optimo Tobacco and Candy, and The Continental Bakery sharing the east sidewalk with Bargain Bill's. On the west side stood the Hollywood Movie Palace, Lang's Drug Store, Muller's Delicatessen, The Green Lantern Tavern, and Jill's Flower Shop. At the extreme northwest corner, the hundred-year-old Central Islin railroad station stood just as squat and square as always, beside the single track that crossed Main Street and carried the mammoth diesel locomotives east and west across Long Island. Behind the station parking lot were the tiny twin buildings housing the post office and police station.
Gus Oliver had been born on his parents’ farm just ten miles out of town on a blustery December morning. After graduating from Central Islin High, he served a three-year hitch in the U.S. Navy, as a Shore Patrol policeman, where he had developed an interest in law enforcement. Upon returning home to Central Islin, the mayor, a family friend and fellow farmer, had appointed him Central Islin's first town constable. Gus had served in that office for thirty years, then took his modest pension and retired back to the farm where he was born. He and his wife now worked the land leisurely, raising small crops of potatoes, tomatoes, and hay to supplement his pension. Their two sons had married young and stayed local, one a small-town lawyer, the elder a surveyor for Suffolk County. It was a good life.
With great fanfare, the town council had, that very March, appointed its first police chief to officially replace the old position of town constable. That appointee, a college-educated ex-insurance adjuster named Bill Carters, had immediately hired two deputies to begin serving in the newly incorporated Central Islin Police Department.
Now, at seven a.m., on this magnificent June morning, Gus crossed Main Street and took his only grandchild to Lang's Drug Store for a satisfying, old-fashioned counter breakfast. It was their usual Saturday morning routine, the most cherished of Gus's weekly activities.
But on this particular Saturday, things would be quite different.
Just as Gus finished mopping up the last of his over-easy eggs, he felt a slight tap on his shoulder. Turning, he found himself looking into the wide-eyed, excited face of Jimmy Duke, one of the two newly hired town policemen.
"Why, good morning, Officer Duke,” Gus said with a smile. “How are you this fine morning?"
The man shot a nervous glance at Joey, seated next to his granddad on a green vinyl-cushioned counter stool, his feet dangling above the floor and kicking rhythmically at the counter base.
"Well, sir, Mr. Oliver ... can I have a quiet word with you?” Duke said in a tight, formal voice. He glanced again at young Joey.
Gus had been a town constable long enough to know when something was up. He peered more closely into the young cop's eyes. Something, Gus saw, was most definitely up.
"Joey,” he said. “You finish up your chocolate milk and wait right here. I'll be back in a minute or two."
Joey placed his straw between his lips and blew gently through it, bubbling up the thick milk before sipping at it again.
"Okay,” he said.
Once out on the sunny sidewalk, Duke leaned in closer to Gus. His whisper was soft thunder and awe.
"There's been a murder, Mr. Oliver. A murder!"
Gus blinked and stepped back from the man. “A murder? In Central Islin? Well, I will be damned. Who? Where?"
Duke tossed his head to his left. “Right next-door. The delicatessen. That new woman, Ellie Strauss. Dead and gone, sure as rain. Strangled, looks like."
Gus looked over the young man's shoulder. He eyed the neat, spotless storefront of Muller's Delicatessen, a town fixture for nearly fifty years. Just six months earlier, Frank Muller, the elderly son of the original owner, had sold the business lock, stock, and barrel to a brother and sister, Henry and Ellie Strauss, newly arrived Austrian immigrants.
"What can I do to help?” Gus asked.
Duke reached a hand to Gus's shoulder, gently prodding him to move.
"Chief Carter's asked me to fetch you over. Said I'd find you with your grandson in Lang's."
"That's for sure. Every Saturday morning till he grows too old to be interested."
"The chief told me I should run the boy home. In the prowl car."
Gus nodded. “Okay. Let me have a moment with him. Tell him it's okay to go on home with you. You tell his ma something, not the truth, not yet. No need gettin’ her upset sooner than necessary."
When at last he entered Muller's, Gus was struck by the normalcy of it all. The mixed aromas of cheese and spicy dried meat, the long, tight-skinned sausages hanging above the shiny white refrigerated display cases seemed normal, all so normal. But the look of grim sorrow on Doc Adams's face belied it all. Things are far from normal, the look said. Normal was now gone from Central Islin. Or, considering the changing times, perhaps normal had just arrived.
"She's back here, Gus,” Doc said from the rear doorway, fingers running through his thin gray hair.
In the rear kitchen, next to the shiny stainless-steel preparing table, the body of sixty-year-old Ellie Strauss lay crumpled on the floor, oddly not unlike a casually placed sack of soiled laundry. Police Chief Carters, dressed in hastily donned civilian clothing, stood looking down at the corpse, his face angry and tight. Next to him, in the dark blue and gray of the newly designed Central Islin police uniform, stood twenty-two-year-old Officer Bobby DeVay. Both men looked up as Gus walked over to join them.
"First violent death I've seen since the Bulge,” Chief Carters said softly. “Looks worse here, though. Looks much worse here."
Gus nodded grimly. “How'd she die?” he asked.
From over his right shoulder he heard the answer.
"Strangled, looks like,” Doc Adams said. “County medical examiner will make the call, ‘course, but I'd say strangled. Lookit down at the poor woman's neck."
Gus dropped to one knee and looked. A deeply imbedded purple-black pressure line was burned into and around the flesh of the throat. Pinpricks of bright, rich-looking blood sporadically pushed through the tortured skin and glistened in the light. Gus turned away and stood up.
"When you figure it happened, Doc?” he asked.
Adams removed his spectacles and rubbed them absently with his worn checkered handkerchief. “Can't say. Not for certain. But like I told Bill, it wasn't too long ago."
Carters spoke up. “She'd usually come in about six a.m. to make the salads. You know: coleslaw, potato, macaroni. Stuff like that. Then she'd open at seven-thirty.” Chief Carters sighed. “Poor old lady, must have surprised a burglar."
Gus frowned. “A burglar? In Central Islin? Hell, Bill, you've lived here all your life, you ever even locked a door? Why I'd bet there ain't a one of us here carrying house keys."
Now it was Doc who spoke. “Well, Gus, I hear you, but consider this: We got us a murder, no denying that. Not much of a stretch to imagine we got a burglary, too."
Gus pursed his lips and shook his head. “Don't necessarily follow, Doc. But, yeah, it is a possibility. Who found her?"
Officer Bobby DeVay cleared his throat. “Me,” he said weakly.
Gus looked to the boy. He seemed pale and nervous, avoiding eye contact, and perspiration glistened on his forehead. Gus knew him only slightly. DeVay had quarterbacked the 1954 Central Islin Patriots to a regional high-school football championship. After graduation, he had floundered a bit, as many ex-high school jocks do, fluctuating between menial jobs and periods of unemployment. He had also taken to drinking a bit too much and had been asked to leave the Green Lantern on an occasion or two. Gus had been surprised when he heard DeVay had been chosen by Chief Carters to fill one of the police positions that had been created, and he suspected the town elders, still impressed with the boy's glorious football exploits, had greased the wheels a bit.
Gus glanced over at Chief Carters. The man read Gus's hesitation.
"Go ahead, Gus, ask whatever questions you want. It's why I sent Jimmy to get you. You had this job for thirty years, I'm new at it. I'm not too proud to look for help. All the help I can find!"
Gus nodded and turned back to DeVay. The boy looked like he was about to lose his breakfast any second. “Tell me what happened,” Gus asked, keeping his voice soft.
"Well,” the young policeman began, “I came on duty at six a.m., just like the chief told me to. I went to the station house and picked up the prowl car. Then I made a fast run out to Carlton Avenue, to Eddie's Texaco. I gassed up the car and came back to town. I knew that old lady Strauss was in here, even though she hadn't opened up yet. I come by every morning when I'm working. The front door stays locked till she opens, so's no customers come in and disturb her while she's making the salads. But she always leaves the back door unlocked. I went around there and knocked. I was gonna get some coffee and an egg sandwich, like I usually do."
"And?” Gus interjected, more to slow the pressured speech of the young cop than for any other reason.
"And so I knocked and knocked and there was no answer. So I ... I went in. I figured it'd be okay, me being a policeman and all, and since I knew her and all. So I went in. That's when I found her."
"What time was it?” Gus asked.
"About six-twenty, six-thirty. Around there."
Gus thought for a moment. “Was the corpse still body-temperature?"
Despite his already pale face, DeVay seemed to blanch.
"How should I know?” he said, his voice rising in pitch. “I didn't never touch her!"
"Okay, son, relax. Maybe you want to sit down."
The young man nodded and walked with great care to a small chair in the far corner. He couldn't quite conceal the weakness in his knees as he crossed the room.
At that moment, a fourth man entered the room. John Henderson, town real-estate agent and licensed insurance broker, had called Central Islin his home since the end of the Second World War. For the past five years he had also served as mayor. In the last election, he had run unopposed and nominated by both parties, with the all-important endorsement of the Mid-Island Grange Society to boot. He was forty-eight years old but appeared ten years younger. Tall, tanned, and extremely articulate, with a politician's memory for the names and talents of everyone's children, he was trusted, well liked, and respected. He had also proven himself to be a tireless and effective mayor, dedicating hundreds of service hours a year in return for the token thousand dollar a year mayoral salary, which he always donated to the Grange Society.
"My God,” he said when
his eyes fell upon the body. “I prayed I had dreamt your phone call, Chief. But of course, I hadn't. The poor woman.” The mayor turned to Gus and extended a hand. “Good of you to come, Gus. It was my suggestion that Bill send for you. I knew you'd be just next-door at Lang's. How is that grandson of yours, Joey?"
Gus shook the firm, dry hand of the mayor. “Fine, John, just fine."
He nodded. “Good, good. And thank you again. Bill's just fine with this. You've already solved one murder, maybe you can help him with this one."
He was referring to the only murder in Central Islin's history until this very morning.
"Well, that was a long time ago,” Gus said.
"Nineteen thirty-nine, I believe,” the mayor said. “Am I right?"
Gus nodded. “Right as rain."
Now it was Chief Carters who spoke. “Mayor,” he said, “we're going to need more help than Gus can give us. No offense, Gus, but this is a murder! We need the county police, maybe even the state police from the Riverhead barracks. We need an autopsy, fingerprints, photographs, blood samples, and God knows what else. I signed on for this job to see to it nobody parked in front of the fire pump or came out of the Green Lantern too drunk to drive home. I don't know enough about..."
The mayor held up a hand. “Easy now, Bill, just take it easy. Of course we'll get help with the fingerprints and all that. But we just fought—I just fought—a long, hard battle with the county executive to establish Central Islin with a genuine incorporated police department. That brings in county and state revenue for the town. We can't just go running back to the county saying we're not responsible enough to run a police investigation after I just busted my tail convincing them we are. Now this is a terrible thing that's happened here, and we need to get this done right. But let's not panic and go crying to the county like a bunch of little children who saw a bogeyman under the bed."
"But, Mayor...” Carters began.
"No, no, no,” the mayor said. “Listen to me. We'll call the county. Get the evidence documented. Get the autopsy done. But at least let's look around, see what we can do. If we all put our heads together, I'm sure..."
EQMM, August 2009 Page 1
