EQMM, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Not anymore,” I said. “It's in the hands of the DEA. What's it to you? You're not incriminated by it. Although it doesn't show your nephew in the best of lights. How'd you find out about the recording, anyway?"

  "Shut up.” He took a drag and then punched his cigarette out on the arm of the chair. “All right. I knew about the recording because Tommy Carlucci told me he had it. He was trying to use it for leverage. Then he got himself killed in jail, and what do you know, you wind up taking out a Zeta at his house. Coincidence? Ain't no such thing. That means you must have the recording, because that's why the Zeta went to Carlucci's house in the first place, to get it."

  I laughed. It was too surreal.

  I got smacked across the face for my trouble.

  "You're right,” Carrasco said. “It probably don't make any difference any more. I sent Julio back home. I wanted the recording because having it around is bad for business. Having it would have been sweet, especially since the Gulf Cartel wants it so bad. They don't need the heat either. It would have been better just to let Zeno Duke take the fall, but that ain't going to happen—but the DEA getting it, I guess that's better than nothing."

  He stood up and looked down at me.

  "But you—you ain't worth the trouble. Let's go, vatos."

  They slipped out the door and shut it behind them, leaving me where I was. I struggled to my feet, went to the window, and pulled back the curtains to watch them drive away.

  They climbed into a black Mercedes S600 parked at the curb.

  WHOOMP! The limo erupted in an actinic sphere of fire and my front window shattered, showering me with fragments of jagged glass. I passed out.

  * * * *

  The last time Custer Malone had visited me in the hospital, he'd brought me a recording of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. This time I wasn't in the mood for music.

  "Figueroa figures that the Gulf goons assumed that Candy got his hands on the recording when he went to call on you,” Malone said. “He says the car must have been wired for some time—the bomb was detonated by cell phone—and when he walked out of your place, they decided it was time to get rid of the evidence."

  "I thought you said they were trying to keep things to a low sizzle,” I replied. “Isn't that why they killed Jenna instead of the boy?"

  "I guess something changed their minds,” Malone said. “Maybe they were afraid of looking like they were going soft."

  "Maybe,” I said.

  "Hey, have you seen today's Calendar section?"

  On the entertainment pages of the Los Angeles Times, there was a photo of a smiling couple at a party. The woman was a raven-haired beauty.

  Mira Keller, left, enjoying a joke with boyfriend Zeno Duke.

  ©2010 by James Lincoln Warren.

  Black Mask Magazine title, logo and mask device copyright 2010 by Keith Alan Deutsch. Licensed by written permission.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  I would be remiss if I didn't occasionally take the time to mention the podcasts provided on the EQMM Web site. There are half a dozen stories or more there now, most of them read by their authors. Take a look at the page and listen to a story (or two or three) right here (www.themysteryplace.com/podcasts/mysterypodcasts.aspx). You'll find selections by EQMM favorites like Steve Hockensmith and Melodie Johnson Howe, so you know you can't go wrong.

  How long has it been since you took a trip Down Under? Well, that's too long, and you should drop in on Crime Watch (kiwicrime.blog-spot.com) for “News and Musings on New Zealand and International Crime/Thriller Writing.” The blog is maintained by Craig Sisterson, who says he's “a New Zealand-based features writer and book reviewer.” In addition to in-depth reviews of crime fiction, Sisterson has links to loads of Kiwi writers, to the sites of many international writers (not me, though, the rat), to his reviews not carried on the blog, to New Zealand publishers, and a lot of other things. It's all very interesting, so be sure you have some time to spare when you make your visit.

  Writers Plot, a blog I've written about here in the past, is now defunct, with its keepers moving on to other projects and other blogs. One of the bloggers there was Leanne Sweeney, who's now at Cozy Chicks (www.cozychicksblog.com), which I've also mentioned before. In case you've forgotten, it's a place where you're invited to “cozy up to some killer books.” Sweeney is joining Kate Collins, Deb Baker, Maggie Sefton, J.B. Stanley, Heather Webber, and Lorna Barrett, who post regularly about their writing, their lives, and their latest books. They're offering free bookmarks while the supply lasts, and their coveted “Blue Ribbon Award” will go out to the person who's the top commenter on their blog for 2010. Join the conversation and maybe you'll win the ribbon or get a bookmark.

  An entertaining review site is Austin Lugar's Nostalgia from Yesterday's Conversations (lugarslists.blogspot.com). Lugar co-edited Mystery Muses with Jim Huang while still in high school, and he's now a student at Ball State University. Though he reviews mostly crime fiction on his blog, he'll talk about other things now and then, including books on film history. He's recently reviewed Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey, Harlan Coben's Long Lost, and Mark Harris's Pictures at a Revolution. The reviews are informal and informative. Check it out.

  Bill Crider's own peculiar blog can be found at billcrider.blogspot.com.

  Copyright © 2010 Bill Crider

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: THE CITY OF RADIANT BRIDES by by Janice Law

  Recently retired after nearly twenty years teaching literature at the University of Connecticut, Janice Law will be returning full-time to her fiction writing. She's a past Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee and versatile enough to write both genre and mainstream books and short stories, with historical or contemporary settings. Her story for us this month is contemporary, but that didn't stop her from weaving in a bit of Old World passion, jealousy, intrigue, and vengeance.

  When Louise met Florin, she believed that she had entered the City of Radiant Brides. She had longed for this metropolis from afar, via the weddings, parties, infidelities, quarrels, and breakups of a host of celebrities. There was Kendra Wilkinson, married “looking radiant,” naturally, at the Playboy Mansion. She was marrying a big- time athlete set to keep her in platinum jewelry, and Louise figured pretty much anyone would look radiant under those circumstances.

  And there was J. Lo, starring in an island wedding with fabulous dresses and helicopters and every detail of Technicolor romance so different from the workaday world of the restaurant, even the very nice, very profitable restaurant such as Louise's husband ran.

  Angelo easily made enough to enjoy some of life's nicer things, and Louise had been dismayed to find him stingy except with clothes. That's what had led her astray. When they were first dating, Angelo would spring for nice shoes and good cocktail dresses and squire her to the restaurant. He'd said that he wanted to keep an eye on the operation even on his nights off; Louise respected that. What she hadn't realized was that he was measuring her for the hostess job.

  "Family run, we all pitch in,” he said, citing his saintly mother, who sat behind the till every day until she keeled over at seventy-eight. Angelo saw her as a model; Louise, as a warning, though the old lady had been smart to work the register instead of standing around all night in insane heels with a pile of menus in her hand and a phony smile on her face.

  The register would have offered opportunities of other sorts, too, but Angelo had placed his cousin in charge of that. Cousin Joe had permanent damage from shrapnel caught in the first Gulf War. He needed a soft job, and he was, as Angelo phrased it, “reliable."

  This meant, Louise discovered, that Joe could count the takings to the penny but turn a blind eye when Angelo's cronies from the old neighborhood turned up with mysterious envelopes full of dirty cash that slid into the till and flowed out again into nice, clean circulation.

  Louise learned to ask for the special things she wanted after these visits, a
ware that there was always a bit of extra money spread around to keep things quiet. Considering everything, hostess at La Primavera was not the worst job she'd had by a long shot, but it wasn't exactly the City of Radiant Brides, and the position was open-ended. Without some luck, Louise figured she'd be carried out feet first in her black cocktail dress.

  That was the situation when Florin blew in on the day of the tornado. Rain like you couldn't believe, waist-deep water running in the streets, brooks rampaging over the roads, trees down everywhere, their limbs shattered as if a bomb had gone off. The restaurant remained open, naturally. Saintly Mother had never, ever closed.

  With stranded motorists and business people and shoppers trapped in the storm, the kitchen was surprisingly busy. Louise was out front, holding the fort, as Angelo put it, literally hanging onto the door when Florin shouldered his way in, bringing rain that swept after him to stream onto her face and dress.

  "Princesa! A thousand apologies."

  "Not the first time today,” she said, but she noticed his big, chocolate-colored eyes, thick black-and-silver hair, gleaming white teeth, and beautiful fawn-colored suit, and was less annoyed than she might have been. This feeling was cemented a few minutes later when the barman brought her over a glass of their best red wine and she saw Florin raise his glass to her across the room.

  A good beginning. Soon Florin, big spender and generous tipper, was one of their regulars. He brought his friends in for boisterous dinner parties and always sent over a glass of good wine “for the hostess.” It wasn't long before Louise found his big black Cadillac parked next to her Toyota when she got off work and, very soon, waiting a block from the house on her days off.

  Welcome to the City of Radiant Brides—or, at least, of Radiant Girlfriends who visited expensive spas, got gifted with elegant jewelry, and spent afternoons, when they were supposedly visiting elderly aunts, with their lovers. Louise felt that she could adapt to this life very easily.

  Of course, there was Angelo to consider, but he seemed even more involved with the restaurant and catering and visits from old neighbors than usual. He accepted Aunt Maria's angina episodes, even the late-night ones that let Louise spend evenings at the casino with Florin or at shoreline restaurants or in fancy hotel rooms with marble showers and exquisite bedding.

  All this beat her hostess job hands down, and Louise was willing to squash guilt and continue indefinitely. Then, one evening, while she was sitting in a heart-shaped Jacuzzi with champagne bubbles fluttering up her nose, Florin said, “You need to leave him."

  "Who?” asked Louise, who had been thinking of calling room service and ordering one of their nice petit four plates.

  "Who? Who? Your husband. Angelo.” He spoke with an irritation that Louise recognized.

  Florin was terrific—glamorous, romantic, generous—so long as he was getting his own way. He adored her, treated her, indeed, like the princesa he always called her, and nearly overwhelmed her with presents. Because requests were always presented as “you will like,” “just a try,” or “just for me,” Louise found it easy to overlook a bossy, even bullying, streak. Besides, any time she was put out with him, she could always say that she had to work unexpectedly. The much-disliked hostess job turned out to be her way of controlling the situation, and she discovered a reluctance to give it up.

  "How can I leave Angelo?"

  "Americans divorce all the time,” he said, and she caught a whiff of Old World disapproval. Florin's surname was Italian but his passport was Rumanian, and Louise suspected that his home country was the nineteenth century.

  "Then I'd be a divorced American,” she said and got Florin laughing.

  She thought that was the end of it, but he kept returning to the topic. At first it was flattering, heavily romantic, tabloid stuff: “I can't bear to think of you with Angelo, Princesa.” Then his feelings took on another coloration. Florin would sulk and stamp around their hotel room and sometimes throw things. He broke a mirror once, which even Louise, who was not superstitious, saw as bad luck.

  Other times he would turn his chocolate eyes on her and sigh and say that he was crazy about her and maybe buy her something especially nice. Louise liked that. She liked to be in control of the situation, but she also liked to reside in the City of Radiant Brides.

  Sometimes when she stepped out of the big black Cadillac and said good night, Louise was tempted to hop right back in and tell Florin to drive to Florida or Vegas or to JFK for a plane to Paris. Those were the nights when she thought that maybe she had a future with Florin, though there would be trouble with the relatives, who'd support Angelo one hundred percent, and probably with old friends, too.

  Other times, she would remember those impulses and feel a little shiver as if she'd had a close escape. This was usually after Florin had disappeared for a week or two without so much as a call on her cell phone.

  "Business,” he'd say, or “I had to visit the Old Country.” That was it, no information, no calls, no postcards, no little presents. Business trips were quite unlike his pleasure trips to Florida or the Islands, when he'd tease her to accompany him.

  There were other moments, too. Eating dinner one night, his cell phone rang and as soon as he answered, she saw his face get dark. “Take care of it,” he said, and when the phone rang again a half-hour later, he got up and said he had to leave. Just like that.

  "Something wrong?” she asked. But she got no answer.

  Louise had been around the old neighborhood often enough to figure that Florin, despite his dreamy accent and fancy manners, was a crook of a serious sort; next to him, the guys who visited the restaurant and helped out their cash flow were small-timers. She opened her eyes a little more and saw that Angelo was afraid of Florin, and that made her think that maybe she should be, too, before she dismissed this notion as unworthy of the City of Radiant Brides.

  In this way, Louise dithered between fear and carelessness until the Christmas season, when decisions could be postponed in the holiday rush. Then came the New Year. She and Angelo went out for the evening and had a pleasant time. He wasn't exciting like Florin, but Louise recognized that she was more relaxed with him. There wasn't the edge of possible confrontation or sudden storm. He was a decent man, if a little boring, and Louise resolved to break off with Florin as New Year's resolution number one.

  She was unprepared for his reaction. They were at a very nice oyster bar, and he tipped a full plate of Blue Points over the table and onto the floor. They'd have been asked to leave if the maitre d’ hadn't also been afraid of Florin, who swore and carried on in a very dramatic and operatic way until she agreed to “think things over."

  When she did, Louise found she couldn't yet keep her good resolution. Florin was unreasonable but exciting, and though Louise did not want to face it, there was something dangerous about him that she was unwilling to provoke. They went on for a while, but less agreeably. Florin kept pressing her to leave Angelo—but not, Louise noticed, offering to marry her himself.

  Indeed, when, deciding to up the ante, she mentioned the prospect of marriage, Florin changed the subject, leading her to wonder if he already had a wife. That was quite possible, since she had never met any of his family and had only been introduced briefly and in passing to a couple of his friends.

  In April, Angelo had what his doctor called a “cardiac episode.” Louise didn't see Florin for three weeks, what with doctors’ visits with Angelo and running the restaurant in his absence. At the end of that time, when Angelo was out of danger and back to work, she called Florin and told him it was all over.

  A silence on the line and then his voice, low and with a note she had never heard before, “You'll regret this, Princesa," before the line went dead. Louise was shaking when she put down the phone, but Florin did not call again.

  No flowers, either, no little gifts, none of his usual ploys. He stopped coming around the restaurant, which was both a relief and a disappointment, depending on how she felt on the day. Someone heard
that he'd gone back to Rumania—or maybe to Italy. His whereabouts remained vague, and Louise felt relieved. Really. It was only when the evening rush subsided at the restaurant and her feet started to ache that she missed Florin and wondered if she had made a big mistake.

  But otherwise, she was content. She and Angelo had gotten on better since his illness. She turned out to have a head for business, and she was not so bored and restless when she was involved in the orders, planning, and administration of La Primavera. Louise persuaded Angelo to look for a new hostess, and Florin and the City of Radiant Brides receded in her consciousness until the morning when she was late getting to the restaurant.

  She had been at a big wine-tasting event with their distributor the night before, and it was almost ten-thirty before she pulled into the parking lot, unlocked the back door, and stopped. Something was wrong. A smell of something at once oily and burning and another smell, like the inside of the meat locker.

  "Angelo?” Louise's voice was unrecognizable to her. “Joe? Freddy?” She took another step forward and saw the bodies lying on the kitchen floor, the blood on the walls, bowls of sauce and salad overturned, something smoking on the stove.

  "Angelo! Angelo!” She ran toward the office, slipped on the blood, saw it on her hand and screamed. No answer. Still no answer. She caught herself against the doorframe and saw him lying in the corridor, facedown with blood on his back.

  A moment of blankness. A black wall. A roaring in her head. That's what she told the first officer, the one who found her sitting frozen at the desk, still holding her phone. There was so much blood on her that they thought at first she had been shot, too, but when they found she was not wounded, they took her to the hospital anyway, and for two days she had no thoughts at all, just deep and terrible fears and angers as if she had stepped into pure emotion, like being sucked into a tornado.

  Louise didn't emerge until the funerals, when she was loaded up on Valium and wearing enough black for a Sicilian village, complete with a ridiculous veil. Under the watchful eyes of the homicide detectives assigned to the case, friends, relatives, neighbors, local businessmen, and Angelo's dubious buddies appeared beyond her black scrim to whisper condolences.