EQMM, August 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Waiting for the crime-scene guys to give me back my home, I picked up cigarettes at the corner bodega, then decided to kill some time mooching around in the laundromat across the street. The elderly Hungarian manager, Tina, was a friend of mine, or anyhow we were on kidding terms. If I'd had my laundry, I could have done a load or two. Though I guess the cops wouldn't have let me remove it from the scene.

  "Schveetheart!” she greeted me. “I been lookink for you. Your friend with the funny accent left a clodink, and I tink it's yours. Vait a minute, I find it."

  She reached under the counter and pulled out a hooded navy sweatshirt that I recognized by its indelible markings of grease and paint.

  "That's mine,” I affirmed. “Thanks, Tina."

  "He load machine so fest, it fall behind,” she explained. “I find it later. Nice boy. He do your wash?"

  "No, he borrow—borrowed my clothes.” I took the sweatshirt. Should I tell her the nice boy would not be coming in to do his laundry anymore, and why? No, I didn't have the heart to wipe the smile from Tina's pleasant wrinkled face.

  Thanking her again, I left the laundromat. I held the sweatshirt up to my nose and sniffed. It smelled of cigarettes—endemic on my clothes—and booze. Not hard to deduce Rufe had worn it to a bar.

  The sweatshirt had deep pockets: kangaroo pockets, in fact, the front pocket on either side meeting in the middle. I thrust my hand inside. My fingers touched an assortment of small objects. I grasped and drew out a fistful of debris. I blew off the lint and examined my haul. A couple bucks’ worth of change. I slipped the coins into my own pocket. Oz-Boy wouldn't need them. A crumpled Marlboro pack, empty. A MetroCard, which I also pocketed. It might have a fare or two left on it. And three more items: a matchbook, a pen, and a single business card.

  I knew I should hand over all of it to the cops. But I rationalized. It was my sweatshirt. I wanted to wear it, not have it impounded as evidence. I could have offered them the contents of the pockets. But they had told me to stay away until the crime-scene folks released my apartment. So I stayed away and held on to what could be clues.

  I squinted at each item in turn. The matchbook came from a bar on Second Avenue, a few blocks away. I'd spent countless hours in every bar in Yorkville since before the neighborhood yuppified into the Upper East Side. But this one, Dusty's, had changed hands shortly before I got sober. That meant I didn't know the bartenders, and they didn't know me. The pen, a nice rollerball, was blue and gold with a corporate logo. Amiable Exchange, Inc. I'd never heard of them. They had an address on Third Avenue in the East Fifties. The business card belonged to a Selena Robidoux, CPA. An accountant. I wondered if I'd seen her underwear. Or her. I had caught a glimpse of some of Oz-Boy's visitors as I stumbled to and from the bathroom in the dark.

  Only one way to find out. I waited till after dark to venture into Dusty's. I kept looking over my shoulder, as if some fellow AA might come along and blow the whistle. I hadn't walked into a bar since I got sober. As I let the heavy door creak closed behind me, a familiar music struck my ears: clinking glasses, a buzz of talk, laughter that ranged from hoot to whinny. The ballgame on TV had the sound turned off, but I could hear an underlying thumping bass, a tape or radio turned low.

  I ambled up to the bar. Suppressing a wild desire to say, “Gimme a sarsaparilla,” I asked for seltzer with lime. The woman tending bar squirted me a tall glass with a help-yourself gesture toward the bowl of lime and lemon wedges that lay on the counter between us. She had curly brown hair and a peachlike complexion that glowed even in the dim light of the bar. Her red silk shirt gaped open far enough to show a hint of black lace underneath. Hanging on a thin gold chain, the name “Carly” nestled against her collarbone.

  I palmed two chunks of lime and squeezed them one-handed into my soda.

  "Hi, Carly.” I looked her in the eye. “Can I buy you one?” As she quirked an eyebrow at me, I added, “Not what I'm drinking—whatever you want."

  "Sure. Thanks.” She flipped a bottle of Sam Adams out from under the bar, tossed it in the air in a double somersault to show she could, sent the cap spinning, and took a long pull.

  "We've met before,” I told her. She started to smile. Tending bar, she would have heard a million corny pickup lines.

  "Enough foreplay, huh? Have we ever screwed? Sometimes I lose track."

  "No, but you've been in my apartment. Remember Rufe?"

  Her eyes lit up.

  "Ri-i-ight. The Aussie. You guys roommates or something?"

  "Or something.” I hated to break the news—if it was news. When I told her, her mouth turned down and her eyes went sad. She made me slide around to the end of the bar, away from traffic, so we could talk.

  "He was good in bed,” she told me. “Went at it like he'd really studied the manual and taken it to heart. But it was more than that. Like he enjoyed the work, you know?"

  We talked awhile about her. Carly seemed uncomplicated, and I couldn't detect any rancor toward Rufe or anyone else. But who knew?

  I roped Barbara in to help me get a look at the accountant. If she'd seen me at the apartment, I could hardly pretend I wanted to hire her to do my taxes. So I lurked out in the corridor while Barbara told a pack of lies about her finances to Selena Robidoux, CPA. She was a tall redhead who looked maybe forty, impeccably dressed in a purple suit that ended halfway down her thighs and matching stiletto heels. I checked her out, peeping around the corner, when she shook hands with Barbara at the door. Rufe must have met her, since he had her card, but I'd never seen her before.

  "I don't think it's her,” Barbara told me afterward. “She had husband pictures on her desk and two adorable redheaded kids. What I really want to know is, why can't nice Jewish girls have legs like that?"

  I was sure the corporate pen would lead me to a woman. I tracked down the address. Amiable Exchange occupied six floors of a big building. I went back at lunch hour, hanging out in front see if anyone I recognized emerged.

  I got lucky. I spotted her talking on her cell phone as she hit the street. She looked Korean, with high, flat cheekbones and glossy black hair swinging around her shoulders. She wore a bright red power suit. Some of those crocodiles Rufe had never wrestled swung from her shoulder. She moved off at a brisk trot, her reptile shoes biting the pavement. I followed.

  Two blocks down, she dodged into a nail salon. I loitered until a police car pulled up. Diving into the next-door deli, I kept an eye out until I saw her come out and head back toward work. I went into the nail place. While I made an appointment for an imaginary wife, I scanned the book. Marina Kim was a weekly regular. I got Barbara to call the salon and book the same time. She agreed that women talk when they're getting their nails done.

  We had a week to wait. I don't like waiting. I wanted to go back to Dusty's, not sure if I wanted to pin the murder on Carly or ask her out. One day at a time, I stayed out of the bar. Barbara bit her nails: not, she assured me, from anxiety, but for artistic verisimilitude. Sure enough, when salon day finally came, the nailista who settled her into a seat right next to Marina exclaimed over her ragged edges and promised to work miracles. I peeked out from behind a copy of Vogue as Marina kicked off the alligators and wiggled her toes.

  "I want a pedicure this week,” she announced. “With pizzazz."

  "Pizzazz?” I could just see the little manicurist's brow furrow, then smooth out. “Ah, I know. We have a special on Kissable Flavors. Sweet Mango, Coconut Paradise, or Chocolate Delight?"

  "Perfect.” Marina sounded smug. “Let's try the Chocolate Delight. Unless you've got any liqueur flavors?"

  "No, just Sweet Mango, Coconut Paradise, or Chocolate Delight."

  Barbara turned her head and flashed Marina an infectious grin.

  "Got a hot date?"

  Marina laughed out loud.

  "In the land of Oz."

  Barbara managed to sound puzzled.

  "With a Munchkin?"

  Marina shook her head and said something so softly I di
dn't get it.

  "She said,” Barbara reported later, “'Just a boy and his old kangaroo.’ She didn't know he was dead."

  "Or she wanted us to think she didn't know."

  "Who's us?” Barbara demanded. “I was just a woman getting a manicure, and you were just a male body with a copy of Vogue on top."

  A retroactive alibi? Maybe she was practicing her story just in case the police managed to trace her. Or could Marina have spotted me as the owner of the couch of delight? I needed to think some more.

  Or I could stir things up. Three phone calls would do it. Once I thought it through, I realized it would only take one.

  The sash window onto my fire escape yawned invitingly. Dim orange light fell on my bed. I heard her tiptoe past the hump under the covers. She tried the couch first. As she grew more frantic, she made more noise. Now her panicky steps came closer.

  She stood by the bed for a long moment before she raised the knife. I stepped out from behind the closet door.

  "Don't even try it, Selena,” I said. “I've already called the cops."

  I'd known it had to be her. The pen and the matchbook couldn't have led the cops to any particular woman. Nobody had seen the women except me. Nobody else knew Carly and Marina had been there. But the business card identified Selena. The police never came to question her, so she'd thought she was safe. Then, when she thought I meant to blackmail her, she had to come. She had the most to lose.

  I'd known she'd think I was asleep in bed, too. My mother always had. I'd been getting out that fire escape since I was eight years old. l Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Zelvin

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  Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  Some of the finest crime novels of recent years have shared several characteristics: no series character; an investigation fo-cusing on the past, including internal shifts in time period and/or a story-within-a-story; mystery and even detection (albeit unconventional and often with the reader as detective); and greater emphasis on character interplay than thriller set-pieces. See, for example, Joyce Carol Oates's My Sister, My Love, reviewed here in March 2009, and several novels by British writers Laura Wilson and Peter Dickinson, the all-time master of the type. Three recent examples follow.

  **** Andrew Taylor: Bleeding Heart Square, Hyperion, $25.99. In 1934 London, high-born Lydia Langstone walks out on her abusive husband and moves in with her dissolute father in the downscale cul-de-sac of the title. Chapters begin with segments from the diary of Miss Penhow, the owner of the house, who disappeared mysteriously four years earlier. Apart from involving characters, smooth prose, and clever structure, the novel brilliantly captures the time's political and social context with its insights into the British Fascist movement led by Oswald Mosley.

  *** Laura Lippman: Life Sentences, Morrow, $24.99. Best-selling memoirist Cassandra Fallows, her first novel having been a disappointment, returns to nonfiction and her Baltimore roots to investigate the mystery of former schoolmate Calliope Jenkins, who spent years in prison after taking the Fifth Amendment when asked what happened to her vanished infant son. Cassandra re-establishes contact with childhood friends who figured in her first book and remember events differently. Illustrating the style and character insights that are the novel's greatest strengths, Cassandra describes her married lover's fidelity to both wife and girlfriend: “Sort of like a subway line with an express track and a local track.” (Lippman, an even better short-story writer, contributes a masterful tale to the anthology Two of the Deadliest [Harper, $25.99], edited by Elizabeth George.)

  *** Thomas H. Cook: The Fate of Katherine Carr, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25. Reporter George Gates, still haunted by the unsolved murder of his eight-year-old son, investigates the disappearance of Katherine Carr, an aspiring writer who became reclusive after surviving a deadly attack. Gates gradually doles out segments of the mysterious short story Carr left behind to his unexpected partner in detection, a brilliant twelve-year-old girl near death from progeria, the premature aging disease. Cook has varied this pattern more frequently, arguably more successfully, than any other writer. His latest is enthralling, well constructed, deftly written, and unquestionably ambitious, but the mystical element won't convince every reader.

  *** Michael Connelly: The Scarecrow, Little, Brown, $27.99. Journalist Jack McEvoy, who followed the elaborate clues in The Poet (1996), investigates another serial killer (this one known to the reader) while dealing with his impending layoff from the Los AngelesTimes. Connelly excels at police, legal, and journalistic procedurals; this one entails all three with the emphasis on the latter. The standard thriller jumps are efficiently taken; the romantic subplot is the weakest element; the details of Web site use and abuse are fascinating; and the sad picture of a big-city newspaper in decline may stick in the memory longest.

  *** C.J. Box: Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, Minotaur, $24.95. Denver tourism promoter Jack McGuane and wife Melissa have had their adopted baby daughter Angelina for nine months when they learn that the infant's teenage birth father, son of a powerful federal judge, never signed away parental rights. The judge is intent on taking the child, and the devastated couple make desperate and dangerous efforts to keep her. Some plot turns (including the arbitrary deadline of the title) and scenes of over-the-top violence strain credulity, but complex characters and expertly wrought suspense firmly grip the reader. (An un-abridged CD version, well read by John Bedford Lloyd, is available from Macmillan Audio for $39.95.)

  *** Bill Crider: Murder in Four Parts, Minotaur, $24.95. Elements in the latest case for Sheriff Dan Rhodes include a rogue alligator, a murdered florist, a barbershop harmony chorus, geocaching, neighbors feuding over chickens, and Texas's bizarre gaming laws. EQMM's prolific “Blog Bytes” columnist is a master of the neatly plotted, humorously told small-town mystery. The exciting action climax is replete with movie references.

  *** Gar Anthony Haywood: Lyrics for the Blues, A.S.A.P., $28. Five short stories, three new to print, about South Central Los Angeles P.I. Aaron Gunner are expertly crafted and agreeably told. Best of the group is the last and longest, “In Name Only,” an inventive riff on the theme of identity theft. Included are an introduction by Law-rence Block, an afterword by Jeffery Deaver, and illustrations by Phil Parks.

  *** Percy Spurlark Parker: The Good-Looking Dead Guy, PublishAmerica, $27.95. Las Vegas game room proprietor Trevor Oaks, a tough private eye in the grand tradition, bodyguards a porn star while investigating the murder of her bisexual husband and manager, who is not excessively mourned. Old pro Parker, author of many short stories in EQMM, AHMM, and elsewhere, delivers a tricky whodunit, a vividly realized setting, and an intriguing cast of characters. But if the finished book is as poorly proofread as the advance galley, the volume of errors will prove distracting.

  *** George Zebrowski: Empties, Golden Gryphon, $24.95. Manhattan detective Benek, investigating the death of an old derelict whose skull is missing a brain, encounters a literal femme fatale. This engrossing genre bender combines police procedural, male ro-mantic suspense, science fiction and/ or fantasy, combines police procedural, male ro-mantic suspense, science fiction and/ or fantasy, noirish pursuit thriller, and gross-out horror story. An afterword pays tribute to the author's mentor, Fritz Leiber, whose Conjure Wife was a partial inspiration.

  ** Erica Spindler: Breakneck, St. Martin's, $24.95. The Rockford, Illinois, police team of Mary Catherine (M.J.) Riggio and Kitt Lundgren explore the world of cybercrime in their search for a killer of apparently inoffensive young people. Non-lovers of the procedural soap opera subgenre will find the cops’ personal traumas an unwelcome distraction, but a fairly interesting mystery with a generously clued solution partially compensates for bland style and crawling pace. (Lorelei King's unabridged reading is offered by Macmillan Audio for $39.95.)

  ** Ken Bruen: Sanctuary, Minotaur, $24.95. Even the Irish writer's most devoted fans may suspect he's coasting in this latest about Galway private eye Jack Taylor, but st
yle and investment in the characters will keep them reading. Newcomers should try some earlier books.

  Rex Stout's third and fourth Nero Wolfe novels, The Rubber Band (1936) and The Red Box (1937), are paired in a single trade paperback (Bantam, $15). The latter title has Carolyn G. Hart's introduction from the 1992 reprint, but the former title lacks Nelson DeMille's introduction from the same series.... The late Donald E. Westlake's outstanding Edgar-nominated 1960 debut The Mercenaries has been reprinted with a sexier title and cover as The Cutie (Hard Case, $6.99).

  The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime (Penguin Classics, $15), edited by Michael Sims, gathers such classic crooks as E.W. Hornung's Raffles, George Randolph Chester's Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, and Edgar Wallace's Four Square Jane, with substantial introduction and story notes. Mr. Sims is mistaken in claiming there is no such earlier collection. Ellery Queen's 1945 anthology Rogues’ Gal-lery, though wider in scope, covers much of the same ground.

  Copyright © 2009 by Jon L. Breen

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  Fiction: FAKE RESUME by Jon L. Breen

  "Breen has a gentle literary personality, and is especially good at picking up on likable characters,” said writer and critic Ed Gorman in his blog review of Jon L. Breen's fiction (on Gormania). The likable—and witty—characters Mr. Breen has been chronicling in this series of stories for EQMM are Detectives Berwanger and Foley, cops who've become highly sought speakers and public relations people for their department. The author is, of course, our longtime, award-winning book reviewer for The Jury Box.

  Detective Berwanger was house hunting. For several weekends he and his wife had been exploring the suburbs with various realtors, looking at what was on offer in what they were assured was a buyer's market. They had seen some houses they loved enough to move into. They had seen some houses in their price range. Unfortunately, they had seen no houses that fit both categories.