by Sean Dexter
The Shamus Sampler
The Shamus Sampler
Collected and Edited by Jochem Vandersteen
Published by Sons of Spade
Copyright 2013
All rights reserved by individual authors
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please visit Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of each author's respective imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design © Keith Dixon
Cover image © Dreamstime Stock Photos
eBook Formatting and Conversion by Sean Benjamin Dexter
Contents
Introduction by Reed Farrel Coleman
Mysterious Private Investigations by Peter DiChellis
One Hit Wonder: A Jake Diamond Short Story byJ.L Abramo
The Case of the Derby Diamond by Jeffrey Marks
Gypsy's Kiss by Jim Winter
The Smell of Perfume by Graham Smith
Rage: A Jim Wolf Mystery by Tim Wohlforth
The Patriot by Sean Benjamin Dexter
Drumstick Murder by Michael Haskins
A Matter of Heart by Bill Crider
Christmas Mourning by Stephen D. Rogers
The Same Old Story by Keith Dixon
The Dutch Connection by Kit Rohrbach
Mario and Cheryse by Fred Zackel
Hired From the Grave: A Noah Milano short story by Jochem Vandersteen
Introduction
The Landscape
by
Reed Farrel Coleman
Unfortunately Reed Farrel Coleman wasn’t able to send in a story in time for this anthology. He was able to write an original essay about why the PI still matters. He pretty much sums up my opinion as well.
There was a period during the 1930s, ‘40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s that the American crime fiction landscape was, to use a bit of old pulp jargon, filthy with famous PIs. You know the names: Spade, Marlowe, Hammer, McGee, Archer, Spenser, Scudder, et al. Even the most casual readers, readers who might never have considered reading anything remotely connected to the crime fiction genre could have probably recited several of those names. These days, however, the landscape is a very different one. It’s still quite crowded, more crowded than ever, but it is no longer dominated by PI novels. That is not to say that there aren’t many fine PI novels being written. There are. Walter Mosley, Sara Paretsky, Philip Kerr, SJ Rozan, Peter Spiegelman, Steve Hamilton and many many other authors still produce very high quality private detective fiction. I’d like to think I turn out some fairly good PI novels myself. What I am saying is that the PI novel no longer holds the preeminent position it once held.
Currently, the world of crime fiction offers a vast array of subgenre choices to readers. There are even sub subgenres and sub sub subgenres . Whereas there were once just cozies, there are now craft cozies, pet cozies, urban cozies, Western cozies, paranormal cozies … the list is long. There are any number of types of thrillers. Spy thrillers, religious thrillers, drug, thrillers, police thrillers, legal thrillers, terrorism thrillers, paranormal thrillers, YA thrillers. There are Scandanavian, European, and African thrillers and police procedurals. Noir isn’t just noir anymore. Even traditionals and historicals aren’t as wed to the conceits of their subgenres as they once were. And there has been a kind of inbreeding of subgenres that has produced hybrids. Though all to the good for the crime fiction landscape, it has taken a toll on the PI novel.
I feel a bit like Marc Antony at Caesar’s funeral, only this isn’t a funeral and I’ve come to praise the PI novel, not bury it. We can spend long hours debating whether or not the PI novel is a modern iteration of the tales of medieval knights or Westerns that have been scrubbed of trail dust and had their tumbleweed removed. Whichever it is or whether it is a combination of or variant of both, is beside the point. What is important is that all three—knights tales, Westerns, PI novels—share at least three essential elements: the one against the many, a quest or honor-bound duty, and a personal code of behavior that defines the parameters of the protagonist’s actions.
The PI is an important cultural icon because he or she embodies the struggles we all face as individuals in an increasingly confusing, alienating, and potentially dangerous world. They can represent something as powerful as the individual against the state. Note that PIs are often pitted against police departments, politicians, governments, not because they are doing wrong, but precisely because they are doing right. Any person who has been wrongly issued a parking ticket and has been forced to spend hours or days fighting to have that error corrected should love the PI. And PIs, like you and me, have to act according to our own codes. Cops, lawyers, journalists, even spies, have official codes of conduct, but PIs must make difficult moral choices the way individuals do. PIs are usually outsiders who were once insiders—ex-cops—who chafed at the hypocrisy of authority and bureaucracy. These days, don’t we all feel like outsiders? Don’t we all skirt that very hazy border between what society expects of us and what we expect of ourselves? PIs are us and over the years they have evolved to look like us, pray like us, and have sex like us. The day of the white, male, Christian, vaguely misogynistic, alcoholic loner who is too fast with his fists and gun is over. PIs can be black, women, Jewish, married, gay, robots, whatever.
The thing is that PIs haven’t so much faded away as they have been camouflaged. What has really happened is that they have been coopted by authors of other subgenres and hidden before us in plain sight. Think of the essential nature of the PI as I have outlined it and think of your favorite thriller protagonist or your favorite cozy protagonist. When Jack Reacher rides into town, does he act so differently than Marlowe or Easy Rawlins? Does the owner of the quilting store who sets out to solve the murder of her brother-in-law act so differently than Lydia Chin or Alex McKnight? Whether the protagonist is trying to solve a crime or prevent one, the die has been cast. I would argue that PI novels are not so much out of favor because there is no audience for them, but rather because they fell victim to the appeal of the nature of their protagonists. So the next time you read a cozy or thriller or historical, put it to the test. See if the protagonist isn’t actually a PI dressed up as someone or something else.
*****
Called a hard-boiled poet by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan and the “noir poet laureate” in the Huffington Post, Reed Farrel Coleman is the author of sixteen novels, two novellas, poetry, short stories, and essays. He edited the short story anthology Hard Boiled Brooklyn and is the former executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America. Reed is a three-time recipient of the Shamus Award for Best PI Novel of the Year and a two-time Edgar Award nominee. He has won the Macavity, Audie, Barry, and Anthony Awards as well. He is an adjunct instructor of English at Hofstra University and a founding member of MWA University. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now lives with his family on Long Island.
Mysterious Private Investigations
by
Peter DiChellis
Peter DiChellis is one of the more inexperienced writers in this anthology but that doesn’t make this tale of a jewelry heist any less intriguing. And he sure did his research!
Jimmy told me about the burglary almost exactly a year after it happened. Right after we got thrown out of the pawnshop where Jimmy tried to sell the jewelry.
He had gone into a house one afternoon, Jimmy told me, with a guy everybody called Howie The Dog because he could sniff out excellent burglary sites. A shaded corner house in “a nice doctor and lawyer neighborhood,” as Jimmy put it. Howie and Jimmy felt sure they’d hit big money when they saw the tuxedo and evening gown hanging in the mirrored dressing area, instead of in the closet. They went right to the jewelry case, figuring the wife took her expensive stuff out of the safe for a fancy event.
Two days later Jimmy read the good news in the local paper. The jewelry they boosted was worth maybe $200,000. Small-timers Jimmy and Howie might get only ten cents on the dollar, still a steak-and-hookers payday party for mooks like them.
The two thieves only trusted one fence, the guy in the crappy pawnshop they’d used for years. They agreed they wouldn’t show the jewelry there for a year, too hot to touch. But then Howie caught a prison stretch for a different burglary, one he told Jimmy he didn’t do.
“An assload of CSI science shit and an old lady witness blind as a dead bat,” he’d said to Jimmy. “She sure as hell never seen me, ‘cause I wasn’t there.”
The two burglars struck an honorable deal: Howie’s money from the jewelry heist would be waiting for him when he got out of prison. The deal fell apart.
Of course, my part in the story didn’t start with Jimmy. It started with a phone call.
“Mysterious Private Investigations,” the perky recorded voice announced. “Our agents are in the field, please leave your name and contact information.”
My answering machine coaxed me from my nap, a light doze on what most people call a couch, but what I call my “office” and the perky recorded voice calls “the field.”
Silence.
Then a woman’s voice, not perky at all.
“I need help,” she said. “It’s bad.”
She left her name and contact information, just like the perky recorded voice had asked.
We met at a nearby diner. I go there a lot, just for coffee and a place to think. She was tall and fit, with unfussy brown hair. Her generous, angled lips made her mouth look a little lopsided. I liked that.
“Marlana Forsant,” she said.
After I introduced myself, we slipped into a booth and ordered coffee. As always, the coffee the buxom waitress brought smelled burnt and tasted muddy. And as always, I smiled and drank it anyway.
I asked Marlana for her story. Her little brother landed in prison, she told me, for a burglary he didn’t do. A felony. Now, a year in, he was grappling with a brutal prison gang. She had found evidence that could free him, she hoped, before they killed him.
“Take it to an attorney right away,” I said.
“Can’t yet.”
Turns out her little brother had an alibi for the night of the crime, a friend who didn’t want to be found back then and still didn’t. But if I could find him, Marlana felt certain she could persuade him to help. Seven hundred dollars cash, right now, if I said yes.
“Seven hundred now?” I said.
She nodded. And she had a photo of the friend, she said, and a good idea where to start looking for him.
“An alibi from a friend might not free your brother.”
“There’s more.”
She told me about a study by a government research group, the National Academy of Sciences, showing that faulty forensic evidence, including the same type of CSI test that helped convict her brother, put plenty of innocent people in prison. No doubt about it, she said. And as for the eyewitness against him …
“An eyewitness?” I asked.
She told me about the Innocence Task Force, a non-profit legal group that has freed hundreds of people from prison after new evidence proved them innocent beyond any question. The biggest reason for all those false convictions? Eyewitness mistakes.
“Look it all up,” she said. “I dare you.”
“Marlana, none of those …”
“An alibi and bad evidence. And my brother will die in there.” She stared right through me. “What’s your idea of justice?”
My gaze fell away from her. Three years ago, a drunk driver killed my wife. The cops found the drunk driver slouched behind the steering wheel of his car, unhurt and drooling on himself. A week later, they found him beaten to death with a golf club. The prosecutor said I did it. I said I didn’t and the jury believed me. All the newspapers wrote about it. Since those two deaths my life has never been the same.
“Why me?” I asked.
“I read what happened to you. You know what it’s like. Losing someone. Being accused of something …”
She stopped before saying “… that you didn’t do.” Nobody else says it either.
She began crying. The diner manager walked over, busy and annoyed. “Everything ok?” he asked.
Marlana said yes and I nodded. The manager gave me a look, maybe recognition from all the times I’ve been here.
“I told you before you can’t just get coffee and sit here all day. I’m running a business, not a park bench. Order some food, Mr. Cheap.”
He huffed and went back to running his business. Marlana offered to pay for the coffee, but I waved her off.
“I’m buying,” I told her in my most solemn voice. “And I’ll find your brother’s friend, help you find justice.”
She gave me the photo of the friend, who she knew only as Jimmy, and a local address she said he’d visit in the next few days. And two hundred dollars, not seven hundred. She promised me the rest. She left without saying more.
Back in my conference room, my decrepit computer wheezed. The mattress on my bed was lumpy, which is why I nap in my “office” instead of my “conference room.” The pile of dirty clothes on the floor reminded me to do a laundry load. Soon.
Marlana dared me, so I started by Googling the words: national academy of sciences forensic study. I’ll confess I doubted some of her story, but I needed the seven hundred bucks. And I wanted to see her again.
My internet search found over two million hits. I clicked the top links and began scanning.
“A congressionally mandated report … finds serious deficiencies in the nation's forensic science system and calls for major reforms … with the exception of nuclear DNA analysis … no forensic method has been … able to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual … faulty forensic science has … contributed to the wrongful conviction of innocent persons…”
Damn. Could all those TV shows be wrong?
My next search words: innocence eyewitnesses. Nearly four million hits.
“Eyewitness misidentification is the most common reason for wrongful convictions … eyewitnesses are frequently inaccurate … dozens of research studies confirm … wrongful convictions of innocent people are routinely caused by eyewitness misidentification …”
What was it like, I wondered, not only to waste away in prison for something you didn’t do, but to face being stomped to death, shivved to death, while a gang of caged sociopaths laughed at the suffering they forced on you?
I took the short walk from my conference room to my office. For a nap. The truth is tiring.
The address Marlana gave me matched a crappy pawnshop in a lousy neighborhood. Inside, the place smelled like bad breath. Watches, guitars, wedding rings, cigarette lighters, and a clutter of other forsaken merchandise lay everywhere, glum reminders of stretched paychecks, last hopes, and petty crimes.
The pawnbroker looked at me, not the photo I tried to show him. Ugly as a bottle of poison, he asked if I was a cop. When I said no, he told me to buy something, pawn something, or get the hell out. He was running a business, he said, not a visitors’ information booth.
Undiscouraged, I watched the pawnshop for most of three days and three nights. I thought about Marlana. Maybe she
was thinking about me.
The third night, the guy from the photo went inside. Two minutes later, so did I. The guy from the photo, small and jittery in person, was showing the pawnbroker a necklace, two bracelets, and a set of earrings. They looked like big money.
“Way too rich for me,” the pawnbroker said. “Too hot, too.”
“Then who…” The guy from the photo stopped speaking.
He and the pawnbroker glared at me, suspicious.
“Both of you, out of my store.” The pawnbroker reached under the counter.
My mistake, maybe I should have waited outside. As soon as we reached the sidewalk, I tried to make things right.
“Sorry,” I told the jittery little man, “But I need your help. Marlana needs your help. Her brother …”
He kept walking, but I stayed with him. “Can you give Marlana’s brother an alibi? He’s your friend.”
He stopped. We’d walked more than a block from the pawnshop. Nothing around but parked cars, empty buildings, and a dark, deserted street.
“Who’s Marlana? What alibi? And who the hell are you?”
I didn’t get to explain because Marlana stepped around the corner with a gun in her hand. She looked comfortable with it. She stood close enough to shoot us both easily, far enough so we couldn’t try to jump her.
“The jewelry,” she said.
“Kristina,” the little man whispered.
“The jewelry,” she repeated. “Put it on the hood of that car, then step back to the same spot where you’re standing now.”
He did. She scooped up the jewelry, her eyes and her gun never leaving us.
“Didn’t know if you’d show up, Jimmy,” she said. “And all by yourself. Guess I won’t need my hired help.” She nodded toward me.
“No golf club tonight?” she asked me. “Thugs like us walk away all the time. Innocent people go to prison and life goes on. Our good luck, eh?”
