EQMM, August 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  After a dozen calls and a jumbo Red Bull to keep me amped, thirty minutes later we were heading southwest again. It was just past midnight. I stared straight ahead into the darkness and chewed a handful of aspirin from a bottle I kept in the glove compartment.

  "Did you call my dad? What did Billy say? Is Donofrio going to take the five thousand for now?"

  My hands twisted on the steering wheel. I swallowed some scalding bile that inched up my throat as the oncoming headlights doubled and reset. No doubt about it, I thought, my brain is definitely messed up.

  I thought about Marty's gun that was now stashed under my seat and considered throwing it into a marshy tidal area as we blew by. Then I remembered the timbre of Billy's voice on the payphone at the convenience store and reconsidered. The kids didn't have any ammo, but even empty I might need it. Should've brought my own gun but, hell, I'd thought this was going to be easy.

  "Hang in there,” I assured Andy, “I think it's going to be all right. Your dad woke his finance guy and he should be transferring funds electronically to an offshore account as we speak."

  The kid's relief was palpable, “Really? Oh, thank God. Really?"

  "Yeah. But we still have to meet Billy."

  "What? Why?"

  I bunched my shoulders. “Just do. You have to apologize."

  Forty minutes later we pulled into a potholed parking lot behind a boarded-up restaurant off of Route 40 in the middle of south Jersey farmlands. The night had cleared and a crescent moon hung big over the scraggly pines. In the back of the restaurant, a window in the kitchen door threw a warped rectangle of light on the oily pavement next to a garbage dumpster, a red Ford pickup, and a black GMC Yukon XL. I could see shadows moving inside the kitchen.

  I killed the engine and didn't look at Andy.

  "Come on,” I said.

  Andy climbed out first. When he moved I reached under my seat and shoved the empty nine-millimeter into my waistband. Andy then sheepishly followed me to the kitchen door. Even in the cold, the air smelled like rancid fry grease. I handed him the duffel bag with the five thousand.

  "Ready?"

  Andy visibly shook. His voice steamed in the air. “I guess so."

  We went inside.

  In the center of the kitchen Billy leaned against a stainless-steel prep table. Billy was undeniably two-eighty with biceps that hammed out his yellow golf shirt sleeves like a carved set of fleshy cinderblocks. Shaved head, smoldering cigar stump clenched in his teeth, goatee trimmed tight like a Saturday-cartoon version of Satan. Two other goons flanked Billy, both slightly smaller but bouncer-formidable, wearing Carhartt canvas work coats and concrete crusted Timberlands. One rack of sputtering fluorescent tubes illuminated the scene. The rest of the kitchen was eerily dark.

  Billy click-sparked a butane cigar torch over and over. The blue two-inch flame hissed from the lighter's tip like a curse.

  "Well, well ... look here. If it isn't the college boy."

  I stepped back to square off the kitchen's exit and touched Andy's arm. “Relax,” I told him. “Your slate is clean with Mr. Donofrio now. Isn't that right, Billy?"

  Billy's mouth was sour. “Yeah. I just got the call a little while ago. Cayman transfer went through without a hitch. Today is your lucky day, kid. Your buddy Byrne over there saved your ass. Word is it isn't the first time.” Billy aimed his chin at me. “By the way, Mr. Donofrio asked me to thank you for the intel on Larry Paige's whereabouts."

  Larry Paige was a sneaky little skell who'd burned Dante Donofrio on a small-time real-estate deal a couple of years back. Paige had disappeared from the south Jersey radar after an associate of Paige's had his feet chopped off by some of Donofrio's crew. I had a hunch a couple of my sources could provide a bead on Paige's whereabouts, so I called in a few favors back at the convenience store to help placate the situation with Andy. Be some time before I could go back to those particular wells, and as for professional ethics—well—let's just say there are only so many seats available on the quality-of-life bench. Larry Paige just lost his.

  "Please tell Mr. Donofrio I appreciate his willingness to balance out this unfortunate mistake."

  Billy nodded digestively. “What's in the bag?"

  "Give him the bag, Andy."

  Andy crept over and gingerly handed Billy the bag with the five thousand.

  "It's a bonus,” I said. “A little sugar for you. No hard feelings."

  Billy unzipped the bag and looked into it without expression. He then threw it on the prep table and wrinkled his nose at the two goons. Both men seized Andy's elbows.

  Andy looked wildly over at me.

  "You gonna stick around and drive him to the hospital after?” Billy asked.

  I turned away as Billy's cigar lighter clicked on and held its hiss. Andy sobbed.

  "Yeah,” I said, my hand on the kitchen door. “I'll be outside."

  Copyright © 2009 by Kieran Shea.

  Black Mask Magazine title, logo, and mask device Copyright © 2009 by Keith Alan Deutsch. Licensed by written permission.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES by Christine Poulson

  Christine Poulson, a British academic and art historian, had many nonfiction publications to her credit before she began to write mysteries. And her most recent work of non-fiction, a book on Arthurian legend in British art, 1840-1920, was short-listed for the Mythopoeic Award in the U.S. in 2002. Her novels feature a Cambridge lecturer turned amateur sleuth. Some titles in the Cassandra James series are now available in the U.S.: Stage Fright, Murder is Academic, and Dead Letters.

  * * * *

  Art by Allen Davis

  * * * *

  A hare starts up in front of them and crouches there, quivering in the grass. Rufus is afraid that it will be trampled under the hooves of his horse. It is too young and frightened to understand that it can escape by dashing off to one side. At the last moment it shoots off and its white scut vanishes into the undergrowth.

  Rufus glances at Simon. He hasn't noticed. No doubt he is preoccupied with the work ahead. They ride on in silence. It was scarcely light when they left Rufus's house. It is now six o'clock on a fine June morning and mist is rising from the fields.

  Simon arrived at Rufus's house late the previous evening to request his services and a bed for the night. The two had not met since they were undergraduates together at Jesus College nearly twenty years ago. True, Rufus is a magistrate as well as a priest—and for a search like this it is necessary that a magistrate be present—but Simon could surely have found someone closer to the house in question. Rufus suspects him of engineering an opportunity to bring home the way in which their paths in life have diverged. At Cambridge, Simon was a raw-boned country boy, his father a yeoman in a small way. Rufus was of far superior birth, but somehow Simon always had the upper hand. Since then he has grown rich on confiscated estates and has married above his station, while Rufus has progressed no further than his first living—and it is not a large or a prosperous parish.

  Rufus looks sideways at his old friend. The diamond ring, the boots of supple Spanish leather, the fantastical high-crowned hat tilted sideways: such finery sits strangely with the thick nose, broken more than once, and the jutting jaw. Simon has the vanity of an ugly man. That is not a thought that would have occurred to Rufus in the old days. He glances down at his own somber costume, kept decent by Sarah's deft needle. Sarah's family, if truth be told, is scarcely even of the middling sort, but she is a good housekeeper and an excellent mother to their children. Rufus reminds himself that Simon has only one daughter surviving, but of the eight children Sarah has borne Rufus, six remain, four of them sons, and every one of the brood healthy. God has indeed blessed him. Those are his jewels—

  Simon breaks into his thoughts. “Women, children, servants, they are the weakest links and today we will find the mistress of the house alone. Her husband is a barrister who has been detained on business in London."

&nb
sp; "That is fortunate."

  "Indeed,” Simon says drily.

  Rufus understands that Simon has arranged this. He had been naive to suppose that anything would be left to chance.

  To cover his embarrassment, he says, “How will you go about the search?"

  "I have my methods, my modus operandi. I begin with those parts of the house where there is a solid mass of masonry: chimney breasts, turrets, in which a hollow space could have been fashioned. Where one part of the house is newer than another, we look for discrepancy in floor levels, any space, however narrow, into which a man might crawl. In one house—that was in Lancashire—we searched for days before I noticed a chimney that had no smoke blackening at the top. It was a shaft to allow air to a hide at the side of the fireplace. It had been concealed by bricks and mortar fastened to planks and then painted and blackened to look like part of the flue."

  "It took days?"

  "Six days.” He laughs at the expression on Rufus's face. “It won't take that long today. I'll wager this diamond ring against—against what, let me see, one of your wife's excellent cream cheeses—that I'll flush the fellow out by sunset. Such men are evil. Purveyors of death and sin, corruptors of the state, they must be hunted down like the vermin they are."

  Rufus hesitates. A diamond ring against a cream cheese: He feels insulted.

  "Come on, man! Between old friends! It'll lend some zest to the game. If it goes against the grain for a man of the cloth, you can sell the ring and feed the poor in your parish."

  Against his better judgment, Rufus finds himself agreeing.

  They breast a rise in the rolling Warwickshire countryside and there the house lies before them, nestling in the hollow of a park. They rein in their horses. The sun gleams on the water in the moat and bathes the honey-coloured stone in a golden light. Deer graze in the park, there are fish ponds close to the house, gardens too, bright with flowers. In the hazy morning light, it seems unreal, dreamlike. In a few moments, Rufus thinks, they will shatter this idyll. There will be rich pickings if all this is confiscated. He feels something he can't name. Excitement? Dread?

  There is a rustling nearby and two men on horseback emerge from a clump of birches.

  "Has anyone left the house?” Simon asks them.

  They shake their heads.

  "I have two more men waiting at the back,” Simon tells Rufus.

  "Are you sure he is there?” Rufus half hopes that he will not be, and not just because of the wager. He thinks of the fate that awaits the hunted man—it is necessary, no doubt about that, the security of the state must be preserved—but it is best not to dwell on the details.

  "I believe he is. I have intelligence that he was seen heading for the house early yesterday morning."

  He nods to his henchmen and they fall into line behind him. He digs his heels into his horse's flanks and it breaks into a canter, and then a gallop. It's a high-spirited bay, a world away from Rufus's stolid cob, which struggles to keep pace. As they thunder down the slope, Rufus's heart thumps in time to the thud of the horses’ hooves. He too is used to a more sedentary life. They clatter across the bridge over the moat. Entering the quiet courtyard, they rein in their horses and for a moment or two the only sound is the breathing of their horses. The silence is broken by a dog barking.

  Simon nods to his men. They dismount and hammer at the door. It is opened sooner than Rufus expects and the men rush in. Simon dismounts at leisure, tethers all four horses, and follows the men into the house. Rufus goes with him. Looking around the hall, he sees a gleaming oak floor and staircase, a credenza elaborately carved and gilded, paintings on the wall.

  He becomes aware of a girl in a white night-smock standing at the top of the staircase. His first thought is that she is a daughter of the house. Then he sees the swell of her belly: She is five or six months gone. This must be the mistress, though it seems to him that she is scarcely older than Jenny, his eldest daughter.

  "You are Elinor Hardcastle?” Simon asks.

  She nods.

  Simon bows. “I bear papers that give me the authority to search your house and I am accompanied by a justice of the peace."

  She says nothing. A woman appears behind her, a servant, a nurse, Rufus guesses, carrying a well-grown child in her arms. The women don't so much as glance at one another, yet it seems to Rufus that some communication passes between them.

  One of Simon's men appears in the hall and shakes his head.

  This seems to give Elinor courage and at last the words come, though it's little more than a whisper.

  "You will find no priest here."

  Sunlight reflected from the moat throws watery green shadows on the walls and ceiling of the parlour. The scent of roses drifts in through an open window and for Rufus will ever afterwards be associated with that time and that place. He takes in every detail of the charming apartment: the table bearing an embroidery frame and a half-finished sampler, the ample hearth piled with logs, a harp, a child's cart full of toy bricks. Sarah will be curious when he gets home.

  Elinor Hardcastle stands by the door watching as Simon opens a linen chest and riffles through the contents. Rufus feels rather than sees her suppress a wince. She is fully dressed now and her farthingale conceals her pregnancy. She is perhaps nineteen or twenty. With her brown hair smoothed back and her pale complexion she has the kind of beauty that Rufus admires. He thinks again of his own daughter, who by this hour will already be helping Sarah in the dairy. He feels like an intruder here. Elinor's face is impassive, but Rufus knows as well as if she had spoken that she hates to see Simon's thick fingers handling her fine sheets.

  At the far side of the room there is a large cabinet veneered in walnut and mounted on barley-sugar legs. Simon opens the two doors that front it and Rufus can tell that he is surprised. He shifts so that he sees what Simon sees.

  There are numerous small drawers, inlaid with delicate marquetry, and in the centre a mirrored recess. Rufus moves closer. The recess has been decorated to resemble an elegant little room with gilded colonnades on either side and a black and white diaper floor. It holds a silver-gilt inkpot, too large in the little room and strangely out of keeping. There is something fascinating about this world in miniature and Rufus sees that Simon is attracted by it, too. Elinor has come closer and Rufus is conscious of her standing by his side.

  Simon opens a drawer, puts in a hand, and takes out a handful of coins.

  "Roman,” he says, and tips the coins back into the drawer, leaving one in the palm of his hand. He seems about to pocket it. Then he shrugs, replaces the coin, and shuts the drawer. Why bother? When the estate is confiscated, he'll take this as part of his share. He opens drawer after drawer, revealing wonder after wonder: shells, coral, ivory, semiprecious stones, cameos and intaglios, more coins and medallions, birds’ eggs, flint arrows.

  "A cabinet of curiosities. I have heard of them,” Simon says, “but I have never seen one before. It must be worth a great deal,” he adds in an undertone.

  "It's very precious,” Elinor says. There is something in her voice that makes Rufus glance at her. She looks back at him, but he cannot read her expression.

  Simon is frowning and Rufus knows he is disappointed not to have found evidence of Catholic sympathies. Certain books, a rosary—a makeshift shrine, even—these are illegal and would have allowed him to threaten and intimidate her. But he has looked everywhere in the house and there is nothing. Her child—a lusty fellow of around two years—is too young to be interrogated and there's no joy to be had of the servants either. They are a brazen, tight-lipped lot. No doubt they have been carefully chosen and are themselves adherents of what they dub “the Old Faith."

  "Well,” Simon says. He brushes one hand against the other to indicate that it is time to get down to business. “I'll get the men—and the measuring chains."

  * * * *

  The men measure the thickness of the walls, the window embrasures, and the chimney breasts. Simon is occupied with more
skilled employment.

  "The greatest difficulty is in disguising the entrance,” he explains to Rufus. “We look for places where ornamental moulding might conceal an opening, we look for gaps between floorboards, we look for false paneling, particularly in wardrobes or cupboards."

  The sun climbs the sky. The heat and the humidity rise. The men wipe the sweat from their brows. Simon seems unaffected and works on methodically, tapping panels, running his hands over floorboards, feeling inside cupboards. If there is indeed a man hidden in some cramped compartment, how he must be suffering, Rufus thinks.

  Elinor too is feeling the heat, or maybe it is simply apprehension. She remains in the parlour, coming from time to time to watch their progress. And it is on one of these occasions that it happens. Simon is on his knees in a small first-floor room, running his hands over the floorboards. Rufus sees Elinor come in and stop by the door. There is something in her posture that alerts him, a kind of stillness. She recovers instantly, but Simon has seen it too. He gets to his feet and fixes his eyes on her. She tries to leave the room, but he shakes his head and she remains where she is. Her face is as pale as whey.

  Simon starts to move about the room, his eyes fixed on Elinor, judging her response, following the movement of her eyes. Rufus understands with a thrill of—what? anticipation? no, apprehension—that Simon is guided by what she is not looking at. From what is she so anxious to avert her eyes? It is a sinister parody of the searching game that Rufus's children play: “Am I getting warm?” “Yes, yes, no, no, you're getting cold, yes, warm again."

  Simon moves towards the window, where a seat is set into the embrasure. Elinor has schooled herself not to react, but it is hard, so hard when a man's life is at stake. Her eyelids flicker. That's it. Simon's face relaxes. He has seen it now. He squats before the window seat. And now Rufus sees it, too: a scrap of rough material, sacking perhaps, hardly more than half a dozen threads, caught in the joint where the seat is attached to the base. Very gently Simon feels around, pressing, gently manipulating, and he finds the trick of it. The seat slides forward. Simon climbs into the space. He slides forward, feet first, only his hands remain clasping the edge of the seat, and then they vanish too.