With coordinates from Raymond, we clambered over the rocks to the boulder with the white cross. Stan and Raymond pulled away the small rocks. When I heard Raymond gasp, I looked. But I never really saw what was left of the body. I got only a glimpse and retreated to find a place to throw up. Animals are, well, animals. They don't let much go to waste. Water doesn't have much respect for human flesh either. But because it was winter when Mrs. Forelli was, uh, laid to rest, she wasn't entirely gone. In cold weather, maggots— You don't want to hear the rest.
Stan later identified the woman as Mrs. Forelli all right, under that rock with the white cross. She'd been buried with a rosary, her wedding ring, and a beautiful medal of the Virgin and Child. It was sterling silver and had Mrs. Forelli's name engraved on it, a gift from A. Forelli, her husband, according to Stan.
* * * *
Stan let me go with him to Forelli's, on condition that I keep my mouth shut. I crossed my fingers and agreed.
Mr. Cinella broke down when Stan showed him the medal. Mrs. Cinella glared at him while he sobbed.
"She died of a heart attack,” Mrs. Cinella declared. “Plain and simple. We just didn't have the money for a funeral. You can't arrest us because we didn't hold some expensive ceremony."
Stan barely looked at her. “Donald,” he said. “Did she die of natural causes? If not, we'll know soon enough anyway. The coroner is working now."
"She died of a heart attack,” Mr. Cinella whispered. “That much is true.” His skin was stretched tight about his mouth, his eyes were dead, and he sounded worse than Shirley.
"Why did you try to hide her body, Donald?” Stan's voice was soft, almost hypnotic. He was good at his job.
"We don't have to say anything,” Mrs. Cinella growled at us. “I want my lawyer."
"Beatrice,” Mr. Cinella said, shaking his head slowly, “we can't—"
"I want my lawyer,” Mrs. Cinella said, ignoring her husband.
"Go ahead and call him,” Stan said.
Mrs. Cinella looked at her husband. “Just keep quiet. Don't say anything."
He didn't answer.
She punched him in the shoulder. “You keep quiet.” She got up and went into the kitchen, accompanied by Stan's deputy.
"So it was a heart attack that killed your mother-in-law?” Stan asked again. “But you carried her body into rough terrain. That means she must have lost a lot of weight. Yet I can't find a doctor in town, including the one who treated her for a year, who saw her before she died."
Mr. Cinella put his head into his hands.
"I can't prove it,” Stan said softly, “but I'm guessing she wasn't very well cared for. Food? Medication? Is that why you hid the body?"
Mr. Cinella nodded. “We didn't kill her, but we neglected her. Then we realized that she left the restaurant to her other daughter, though I was to remain the manager.” Cinella said. “Beatrice said we couldn't just give the restaurant up after I'd worked so hard for so long. She said she'd bring her mother to live with us and everybody would think it was Mom.” His voice broke. “I mean my mother-in-law, Mrs. Forelli. I tried to argue with her, but . . .” He lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “I gave up. I just gave up. I shouldn't have agreed. It was my fault."
I had to admire the man for not making excuses. I felt sorry for him, too. He had been eaten up by guilt.
Mr. Cinella spoke slowly. “I couldn't bury her in a church graveyard or anyplace like that. So I carried her into Boulder Field. I took a can of paint and a brush. I had to give her a cross. At least that."
"You knew someone might spot it someday, didn't you?” Stan said.
Mr. Cinella nodded.
"Didn't that worry you?"
Mrs. Cinella came back out and stopped short, her eyes shooting from Stan to her husband. She looked astounded that her husband had not obeyed her.
"No,” Cinella said. “I just wanted her to have something. I couldn't just throw her away."
"You fool,” Mrs. Cinella shouted. “I told you to keep quiet.” She advanced on her husband.
He didn't move.
"You fool,” she yelled. “You weak fool. She was dead. What did it matter?"
* * * *
The next day, I went to tell Shirley all about the deception. I told her that Stan said the Cinellas would be fined, but probably wouldn't get a jail sentence. They hadn't murdered anyone.
Shirley and I worried about Mrs. Cinella's mother, an innocent victim in the deception, kept confined upstairs in the restaurant so as not to give away the game. I decided to talk to the nuns at my mother's nursing home. They'd take her in, I felt sure. I doubted that her daughter would object. She didn't strike me as a loving caregiver.
"Boulder Field,” Shirley said. “Imagine, lying there through a cold, cold winter because a son-in-law's wife doesn't want to give up a nice business. Just lying there among all those hard, hard rocks."
I remembered a line from one of Shakespeare's plays. “Is there any cause in nature for these hard hearts?"
Copyright © 2010 Marianne Wilski Strong
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Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
In this month's column, we delve into three debut novels making their marks in the mystery world. Two authors use old events to build new stories: Ellen Horan takes on a real-life murder that seized Manhattan's attention in the ninteenth century, and Carol McCleary bases her fictionalized sleuth on Nellie Bly, the late nineteenth-century journalist famous for her exposés. David Gordon takes on a familiar process—writing—and gives it a witty spin with a hack scribe reluctantly taking on a challenging mystery. All first-time books make for satisfying reads.
* * * *
Carol McCleary was inspired when a friend introduced her to nineteenth-century reporter, author, and adventurer Nellie Bly—so much so that she gave Bly a new voice in the alchemy of murder (Forge, $24.99). Elizabeth Jane Cochran, better known by her pen name, Nellie Bly (1864-1922), was a fascinating historical character, and her life and accomplishments gave McCleary a solid foundation on which to launch Bly's sleuthing adventures. McCleary makes excellent use of both Bly's pioneering journalistic career and her penchant for headline-grabbing stunts. The novel begins with the well-worn but effective device of the discovery of a previously unknown Bly manuscript, which allows her to tell her own story while the “editors” provide elucidation of obscure passages.
Bly's journal begins when she is twenty-five years old, already established as a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, and in Paris, where she is on the trail of a serial killer she refers to as “the German Doctor.” Bly first encountered the killer in 1885 during her famous, real-life exposé of the Blackwell's Island insane asylum for women, when she had herself committed to the asylum to get an insider's view of the barbaric conditions there.
Bly follows the killer to London in 1888, where a series of brutal murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel earns him the sobriquet “Jack the Ripper.” She comes close to him there before admitting failure. Then she learns of similar killings in Paris, and without Pulitzer's support she decides to coninue her pursuit of the killer.
It is in Paris that McCleary's story really takes wing. Paris is a thriving city of progress exemplified by the ongoing World's Fair and its astonishing new edifice, the Eiffel Tower. It is a city fermenting with radicals and anarchists intent on ridding the world of governments by any means, including assassinations. And it is a city where riches and privilege exist side by side with appalling poverty and desperation. Finally, it is a city in the grip of a plague-like disease many believe to be emanating from the antiquated sewer system.
Bly receives help—reluctant help at first—from a crusty Jules Verne. (The real-life Bly was later to undertake a journey round the world in emulation of Verne's fantasy Around the World in Eighty Days). She also receives aid from an aging Louis Pasteur who is trying feverishly to identify the bacterium responsible for the plague killing scores of Pari
sians.
Many other famous contemporaries make appearances here, often accompanied by amusing or informative asides. Pasteur, for instance, despite his already impressive life-saving discoveries, was held in low esteem by the medical establishment because he was a mere chemist. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec supplies a useful tidbit of information, but his paintings earn this snide comment from Bly: “Someone should tell him that he'll never achieve artistic acclaim painting prostitutes and dancing girls."
McCleary's debut does homage to the real Nellie Bly's determined accomplishments, evoking the electric air of Paris in the 1890s in garish colors that would have delighted Toulouse-Lautrec as Bly pursues a mad killer into the dingiest, most dangerous recesses of the blighted city.
* * * *
* * * *
For Ellen Horan inspiration came in the form of an etching of a Manhattan town house on an 1857 newspaper page and the story of a murder at that address. Her considerable research created 31 bond street (Harper, $25.99).
Horan painstakingly reconstructs the Manhattan murder case that saw Emma Cunningham go on trial for the murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell. The result is a novel that paints a vivid picture of a bustling port city awash with the currents of commerce and politics that presaged the Civil War, and of a society that hobbled women almost as much as it did black Americans, free or not.
It is easy to understand why the trial was a sensation at the time. Burdell, a dentist, with a successful practice and various other ventures on the side, is found on the floor of his bedroom, nearly decapitated. Emma and her two young daughters were in the home as were a few servants. No signs of a break-in, no murder weapon, and plenty of rumors about the relationship of the widowed Emma and Burdell.
Add the ambitious District Attorney Abraham Oakey Hall as the prosecutor and shrewd defense attorney Henry Clinton as Emma's defender, and you have a trial that rivets the attention of New Yorkers for weeks. Horan packs so many fascinating aspects of how the courts, police, and judges worked at that time that readers can get caught up wondering at the strangeness of the nascent American justice system. For instance, Emma and her daughters were put under detention in their home while the home itself was taken over by the coroner, the prosecutor, and their minions. An inquest was held on the spot with newspaper reporters serving simultaneously as court reporters and stenographers.
Horan works backward and forward, filling in the story of a widowed Emma husbanding her resources and looking for a match that would allow her to launch her daughters into society properly, while Burdell emerges as a man with grandiose plans who is unscrupulous about how to achieve them. Horan's account draws heavily on contemporary accounts of the crime and the trial, which makes readers appreciate the ending Author's Note that reveals the fate of the major characters following the conclusion of the trial. The fully realized story makes for enthralling fiction.
* * * *
* * * *
David Gordon's amusing debut, the serialist (Simon & Schuster, $15), features Harry Bloch, a hack writer who uses various pseudonyms to author modestly successful genre fiction that earns almost enough to support him. As the “Slut Whisperer,” he authored an advice column for Raunchy magazine—the titles tell you all you need to know about that job. As T.R.L. Pangstrom, Harry created the Zorg sci-fi novels that combined soft-core porn and fantasy. As J. Duke Johnson, he is the author of the Mordechai Jones series about an unofficial private eye, a black Jew of Ethiopian and Native American descent. And his vampire novels by Sibylline Lorindo-Gold comprise his latest and most successful series.
Harry's life changes when a letter addressed to one of his Raunchy pseudonyms reaches him from Sing Sing inmate Darian Clay, a notorious New York serial killer who photographed the women he tortured, killed, and decapitated. Clay is now on death row awaiting execution and has a proposition for him. His exclusive and valuable story will be granted in exchange for Harry visiting some of Clay's pen-pal lady friends (yes, Clay has groupies) and writing about what Clay would do with them or to them were he free to visit himself.
It is a Faustian bargain that leads the easily overmatched Harry into contact with bizarre characters, and evolves into a nightmare when the women Harry has visited start turning up dead in crimes that mimic Clay's. And Harry, of course, becomes the prime suspect.
Aided by precocious teenager Claire Nash (fourteen going on thirty), who seems to know much more than Harry, who was hired to tutor her, and by Dani Giancarlo, twin sister of one of Clay's victims, Harry reluctantly turns detective.
Gordon is a very witty writer who uses excerpts from Harry's pseudonymous writings to poke fun at various genres but who also makes trenchant observations such as this characterization of genre fans: “They still read like children, foolish and grave, or like teenagers, desperate and courageous. They read because they need to."
I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of a career Harry Bloch will manage to carve out for himself, but I'm betting that Gordon's career will be better than his creation's.
Copyright © 2010 Robert C. Hahn
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Fiction: HAMMER AND DISH by Robert Lopresti
Lorrimer didn't realize he was in a fight until the little man kicked him.
He had plodded out of the office building, carrying his bulky steel sample case—which felt especially heavy on a day like this, when he hadn't sold so much as a boiler bolt—when he felt a whack on his backside. Well, really on his upper thigh, because the little man hadn't reached his target.
Lorrimer was six four and weighed two hundred and forty pounds. Starting in junior high school and continuing right through college he had broken the hearts of a dozen coaches who had begged him to try out for a team, any team. He had never been interested, but even now at age thirty, his weight was more muscle than fat.
Except for the occasional drunk in a bar, no one had ever tried to pick a fight with Lorrimer, and that was fine with him. One reason he had stayed away from athletics was a distaste for physical collisions.
Try telling that to the guy who kicked him.
Lorrimer turned around, slowed by the steel case dangling from one hand.
The little man had made no attempt to run away. He was perhaps four foot ten and weighed half as much as the salesman. He wore a gray suit a few shades darker than Lorrimer's. His eyes were wide with rage and his mouth was working as if he were saying things he alone could hear.
"Hey, watch it,” said Lorrimer, backing away.
"You big lump!” shouted the little man, and tried to punch him on the nose. He had to jump to reach that high, and Lorrimer had plenty of time to step back.
"Just stop that,” he said, holding out a big palm like a traffic cop.
The little man swatted Lorrimer's hand, as if it were a pesky fly. Then he tried to punch him in the stomach.
Like many big men Lorrimer had a dread of looking ridiculous. He couldn't help picturing how this scene must appear. He wondered if anyone out there in the dusky city street was observing them, perhaps getting out a cell phone to call 911.
If so, he was sure most of the callers would be reporting that a big man was beating up a small one. Because who expects a dish to try to break a hammer?
The little man landed a punch on Lorrimer's left bicep, hard enough to sting. Lorrimer made a fist, but then thought better of it. The way his luck was going, if he landed a punch the little man would crack his skull on the sidewalk. And who would believe he had only been defending himself?
Lorrimer decided to go back into the building. He grabbed the door handle and yanked.
Locked. Blast Wragg for keeping him waiting so long after business hours. At this time of night you needed a pass card to get in.
Damn. The little madman had kicked him again.
Lorrimer turned round in a fury, his heavy case swinging out at a forty-five degree angle. If it had made contact with his opponent he would definitely have broken some ribs.
"What's wrong with
you?” he demanded.
For an answer the little man threw another punch. Lorrimer tried to grab him but his opponent danced away, still waving both arms and cursing.
What were his choices? Walk away? He had no desire to be kidney punched.
Run away? He couldn't go very fast, carrying the sample case. Besides, it offended his dignity to flee from the tiny fool.
Not that there was much dignity in dodging kicks to the shins, either.
Shout for help? Again, it seemed ridiculous.
And everyone else seemed to have left for home hours ago on this office block. Obviously no calls had been made to 911, and no cops were rushing to the rescue.
Ouch. The little man had stomped on his foot. Like most salesman, even in the age of cars, Lorrimer had sensitive feet.
Enough is enough. The next time the maniac moved in close Lorrimer grabbed a big handful of the attacker's shirt with his free hand and slammed him against the wall. The little man stared at him, pop eyed.
"Just stop it,” he said, more calmly then he felt.
He felt the other body knot up and then go limp. “Sorry,” the little man said. It was almost a whisper. “I'm sorry."
"What the hell was that all about?” asked Lorrimer.
"I've had a bad day. Hey, let go of me, why don't you?"
"Are you done with the kicking?"
"Oh, jeez.” The little man hung his head. “I'm sorry about that. No more kicking; I give you my word."
Cautiously, Lorrimer let go.
The other man slumped forward, all rage gone. He rubbed his chest where Lorrimer's hand had pressed. “I am so sorry. I shouldn't have taken it out on you. My name's Stan Shanley, by the way."
"Max Lorrimer.” They shook hands, awkwardly. “So, what's your problem, exactly?"
"It's like this, see. My company is downsizing."
"They're letting you go."
"Hah. Not this round anyway.” Shanley shook his head. “No. Today I was told I have to decide which of two people in my department to lay off. My two best friends."
AHMM, June 2010 Page 10
