Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007 Read online

  The Jury Box

  by Jon L. Breen

  Copyright © 2007 by Jon L. Breen

  The great days of the post-World War II paperback original are the subject of much recent celebration, including old and new books in the style and format. The most prolific reprinter has been Stark House, which offers at $19.95 each two-novels-to-a-volume trade paperbacks by three writers who flourished in the ’50s and early ’60s and whose career crises in the late ’60s and early ’70s had varying outcomes: Harry Whittington, who made a strong comeback writing historicals as Ashley Carter; Peter Rabe, who became a college psychology professor; and Gil Brewer, who never stopped writing but lost a battle with alcoholism.

  Whittington lives up to his reputation as one of the great noir storytellers in both A Night for Screaming [and] Any Woman He Wanted, a 1960 wrongly-accused-fugitive variation and a 1961 honest-cop-in-corrupt-city tale, respectively. A new introduction by David Lawrence Wilson and a re-printed essay by Bill Crider illuminate the prolific Whittington’s career. Rabe’s My Lovely Executioner [and] Agreement to Kill, from 1960 and 1957, show him the finest stylist of the three. Both man-on-the-run variants begin with the protagonist leaving jail, one by reluctant breakout, the other having completed his sentence, both headed for trouble. The first is a gem of pace, plot, and prose, the second much less compelling. A brief recollection by agent Max Gartenberg is joined by George Tuttle and Donald E. Westlake essays that recur from previous Stark House volumes of Rabe’s work. Brewer was a lesser practitioner, but Wild to Possess [and] A Taste for Sin ($19.95), from 1959 and 1961 (the latter much the better), are not the soft-core porn their titles and cover illustration suggest, but rather studies of crime and obsession in the James M. Cain vein, often effective despite clumsy plot machinations and improbabilities. Publisher Gregory Shepard’s new introduction is joined by previously published pieces by Bill Pronzini and Verlaine Brewer.

  John Lange’s 1970 Edgar-nominee Grave Descend (Hard Case, $6.99), a Jamaica-based nautical thriller with echoes of James Bond and The Maltese Falcon, offers crisp, fast-paced storytelling. (Though the book and accompanying publicity keep it under wraps, Lange was an early pseudonym of Michael Crichton.)

  Meanwhile, the paperback noir tradition lives on, albeit mostly in hard covers.

  **** Richard Stark: Ask the Parrot, Mysterious, $23.99. On the run following a bank robbery, career criminal Parker first becomes part of the posse searching for him, then aids a disaffected racetrack employee in a plan to loot the track’s take. Stark (the best-known of Westlake’s pseudonyms) began the Parker series in 1962. After a twenty-year-plus hiatus be-tween 1974 and 1997, the series is stronger than ever. Stark/Westlake is a consummate master of crime fiction who can get a character in a couple of paragraphs better than many authors with a twenty-page dossier and can surmount any challenge, including writing one short chapter from the convincing view-point of a caged parrot.

  **** Bill Pronzini: The Crimes of Jordan Wise, Walker, $23.95. To win the heart of a beautiful woman who wants to live on the edge with the finer things, San Francisco accountant Wise engineers a complex embezzlement scheme that allows the couple to escape to a new and carefree life in the Virgin Islands, until complications en-sue. This is an extraordinary piece of pure storytelling, with the noirish mood, pounding narrative impetus, and unsparing character insights of the best 1950s Gold Medal paperbacks.

  *** Max Allan Collins: The Last Quarry, Hard Case Crime, $6.99. Quarry, the first professional killer for hire (with the possible exception of some spy types) to front a series of novels, returns in a typically dark, funny, and compulsively readable adventure based in part on two previously published short stories, “A Matter of Principal” and “Guest Services.” Is Quarry so amoral he will carry out his assignment to kill an attractive and well-liked young librarian? Added inducement: a great cover by iconic paperback artist Robert McGinnis.

  *** Lawrence Block: Hit Parade, Morrow, $24.95. Another series hit man, John Keller, returns in a darkly comic short story collection disguised as a novel. At least some of these nine droll and sometimes oddly moving stories first appeared in Playboy or original anthologies, including several from Otto Penzler’s sports-themed collections.

  *** Peter Corris: Taking Care of Business, Allen & Unwin, $11.95. Australia’s most famous private eye, Cliff Hardy, returns in eleven expertly crafted short cases concerning white-collar crime, seven from Australian periodicals, the rest new to print.

  *** Hailey Lind: Shooting Gallery, Signet, $6.99. San Francisco artist Annie Kincaid, granddaughter of an accomplished forger of paintings, fronts one of the best new series in the Janet Evanovich tradition. The plot, beginning with a sculptor hanging from a tree, is just strong enough to support the humor, ranging from wit to slapstick, and the insights on creating, restoring, and authenticating works of art. But the author should watch the character names. The first few chapters give us Annie, Annette, Agnes, and Anthony, and later we meet both Pete and Pedro.

  ** Sarah Graves: Trap Door, Bantam, $22. The Home Repair is Homicide series features handywoman Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree, whose monumentally dysfunctional family includes an alcoholic son and a deceased ex-husband who haunts her 19th-century Maine house. The back story gets tiresome; the complex plot is totally goofy; and an unresolved paranormal subplot, presumably to be pursued in the next book, is annoying; but humorous style, interesting characters, household hints, and even some fair-play clueing compensate.

  ** Steve Brewer: Monkey Man, Intrigue, $24. Albuquerque private eye Bubba Mabry, a non-tough guy along the lines of John Lutz’s Nudger or Parnell Hall’s Stanley Hastings, is seated in a cafe with a zoo employee concerned about a higher than normal incidence of animal deaths when a person in a gorilla suit enters and shoots the prospective client to death. The case doesn’t quite live up to its irresistible opening hook, but much of it is very funny.

  The title of The Rex Stout Reader (Carroll & Graf, $16.95) suggests a more varied menu than what is delivered: two pre-World War I magazine serials, Her Forbidden Night (1913) and A Prize for Princes (1914), with an introduction by Otto Penzler. Don’t look for Nero Wolfe or Archie Goodwin, but these early works will intrigue mystery historians and the author’s most devoted fans.

  One would think Wilkie Collins’s classic 19th-century mystery novels, The Moonstone and The Woman in White, better suited to the elbowroom of a TV miniseries than single two-hour versions. But the DVD pairing of two Masterpiece Theatre presentations in The Wilkie Collins Set (WGBH Boston, $29.95) offers superb productions of both.

  Doorway to Heaven

  by Frank T. Wydra

  Copyright © 2007 by Frank T. Wydra

  Art by Luis Perez

  Another so-so day in paradise, dawn just breaking, drizzle clouding the view of the beach, temperature on the south side of eighty, me, feet propped on the rail, catching it all through the lanai, sipping my third cup of black. Fort Myers Beach is like that, day starts out kind of punk and by noon it works its way out of the depression and up toward the manic end of life. The beach is no more than a seven by half-mile strip of sand on the east side of the Gulf, which God put there to keep the natives’ feet dry during high winds. Its real name is Estero Island, but somewhere along the way the real-estate agents figured they could make more money selling sand if they named the place after its big brother on the mainland, some would say swampland. I’m taking this all in, wondering if a few more hours of rays to add to my three-day tan is in the cards, when the cell rings.

  “Hey, Matt,” the scratchy voice says, “how ya doin’?”

  “Hey, Ov,” I’m back at him, wondering how I got lucky enough to have paradise put on hold, ’cause whenever Ovitz Marker calls, there’s some kind of trouble. Marker is this client of mine in the Detroit area, place I hang when I’m not on the beach. Over the years I’ve done maybe a half-dozen jobs for him, mainly tracking down money that somehow slipped out of his pocket.

  “You staying down he
re, on the beach?” he asks.

  Down here? I check the window on the cell and the area is 313, but that doesn’t tell me anything since all the cells are on Roam nowadays.

  “Been here a long half-week,” I said. “You too?”

  “Hey, December through March every year. Can’t stand the snow anymore. Y’know, get to be a certain age. Anyway, didn’t call to talk weather. You got time we can get together?”

  “Something sociable, yeah, I got time, have a drink or two. Otherwise, I’m on vacation. Y’know how it is, Ov, everybody’s got to take a break.”

  “Let’s do the drink,” he says, “give us a chance to talk. What say the Beach-A-Doo at five. Catch the sunset.”

  “No business,” I say. Ov likes to squeeze free consulting into a drink.

  “Whatever,” he says. “See you at five.”

  The Beach-A-Doo is every man’s vision of a beach dive. Done up in shrimp and turquoise, the place looks as if it was designed by a pimp. Upstairs is the respectable part: dining room, every seat with a view of the gulf; terrace with a dozen Bimini umbrella tables; bar, long, coppered, with three bikini-topped tenders doing all drinks shaken, not stirred. Upstairs is where the gray-hairs pretend they’re young. But downstairs, where Ov wants to meet, is where the locals hang. Here the bar is open-air so you can catch a whiff of salt and seaweed while you watch young bodies push a volleyball on a sand court. One corner is owned by a steel-drum band playing Carib tunes while most space is filled with picnic tables and benches. In the Beneath, as this level is called by the natives, the tenders and staff are just past legal.

  I get there fifteen minutes past and Ov is at the bar chewing with a twenty-something tender, nursing a straight-up martini. Ov is a tad past fifty, but with the extra flab he carries and the hair slicked over his bald spot he could pass for sixty, easy. Little guy, though, decked in khaki shorts showcasing his knobby knees and broomstick legs and a black shirt with neon orange, pink, and green parrots. Ov doesn’t like to draw attention to himself.

  Seeing me, he shoulders a wave, then points to the stool next to his. The tender flashes whites and dimples pop to her cheeks. For a minute I toy with parking on the other side and seeing if there’s a snag in the works, but Ov ends that with his motions, saying, “Matt, hey man, thought I’d lost you.” He pats the stool and I sit, telling dimples I’ll take a Jack-rocks.

  “So, you’re down here over the cold,” I say, keeping it light. “Got a condo, or what?”

  His eyes brighten and he says, “What I wanted to talk to you about. Got it in ’eighty-seven when the market tanked. Guy couldn’t make the payment on his vig, so I took it in trade. Been coming down ever since. Started with maybe a week or two, then said, shit, who needs the cold. Nice place, two bedrooms, tenth floor, on the Gulf, little balcony. Not big, but I like it, all I need.”

  I sip the Jack, waiting for him to get to it, and eventually he does. “You hear about the guy who took a dive last month? Did a one-and-a-half from his condo, no water in the pool?”

  I hadn’t.

  “Next-door to me. Same building, same floor, same view. Guy’s a wheeler on the beach, but weird. Name’s Rhodesia Sam, but everybody calls him Rhodo. Story is he comes out of Africa palming diamonds, starts buying up beach property like it’s all that’s left, mainly vacant lots but some run-down shacks, too. Anything, so long as it’s on the water. Pays top green. We figure he’s fronting for some rollers who are going to do a high-rise.”

  Ov orders another martini and we both watch dimples shake the can. Fresh juice in hand, he picks up where he left off. “Five, maybe six years, me and Rhodo are neighbors and nothing passes but how-ya-dos. This year, though, I come down like I always do, after Thanksgiving, and there’s a hole in my wall. No shit, a door cut in between my place and Rhodo’s. I’m ballistic. I grab Rhodo and say, ‘What the hell’s with the hole?’ What does he do but give me a grin and says, ‘Oh, that, sorry, I should have asked, but my mom was visiting and I wanted a place she could call her own. Privacy, you know?’ My jaw’s at my belt. ‘You what?’ I says and he says it again, same thing. Guy like this, you never figure he’d have a mom. Anyway, then he says, ‘Tell you what, how about I buy your place? Pay you twice the market in trade.’ ”

  Ov mouths one of the three olives from the martini. “Well, I like my place and selling’s never entered, but ‘twice’ catches my ear, so I asks, ‘What’s it mean, in trade?’ ‘Y’know,’ he says, ‘I got some property’s worth twice the market of your place. We swap. Trade. I get yours, you get mine.’ Twice the market, right away I’m thinking extra bedroom, extra bath, not that I’ve ever needed them, but y’know, down here space is space, maybe even on the fourteenth floor with a wrap-around balcony, that’s the kind of place you’re talking at twice the market. So I says, ‘This other property, tell me about it.’ You should have seen the smile on his face. Two gold molars showed. ‘You’re going to love it,’ he says. ‘You’re from Michigan, right? I’ve got this hundred-and-thirty-acre piece just above Gaylord, small lake on it and a cement plant.’ ”

  Ov does the second olive. “I look at him like he’s crazy, which the dive proves he is, but at the time I don’t know he’s going to play pelican, but I should have figured with the hole in my wall and all. ‘Gaylord,’ I says, ‘Gaylord is in freaking Michigan. What are you talking about Gaylord and a cement plant? I thought you had something here on the beach.’ I’m yelling at the sucker, but he just puts out his hands, motions me to calm down, gives me a smile like it’s me who’s the crazy one for not jumping at this snowball, and he says all over again, ‘This place with the land, the lake, and the cement plant, this deal you don’t want to pass up.’ ”

  Down goes the third olive. “By now, I’ve got no doubt the guy’s fifty-one short of a deck. Guy like that, you don’t come right out and say it, ’cause no telling where he goes from here, so I says, ‘Forget the deal and just fix my wall. While you’re at it, paint the whole freaking room and don’t pull shit like this again.’ And that’s the end of it. Can you believe? Next day drywall’s up. Week later paint’s on, everything back the way it was.”

  Ten years, off and on, I’ve been doing stuff for Ovitz Marker. Ten years every conversation has a problem lurking in it. So I’m listening to this wondering where it’s going, because right now I can’t see the thorn.

  “Hey,” Ov says to Dimples with a wink, “this here martini, you forgot the olives.” Dimples gives a friendly little snort and impales four olives on a toothpick. Scarfing the first one, Ov says, “Aphrodisiac.” I’m thinking Dimples ought to put the whole jar on the bar and let him go at them for all the good it will do.

  “So,” Ov says. “What d’y’ think?”

  What I think is that if I can get rid of Ov, there’s still a chance with Dimples. What I say is, “A character.”

  “Yeah, well,” Ov says. “It’s a good story. But now the chitchat’s over, maybe we can spend a minute on business.”

  I give him the queer eye. “Vacation, Ov, vacation. We don’t do work on vacation.”

  Like I never said it, Ov says, “You got to help me with this one. Besides, knowing you were in town, I already passed your name to this guy and he wants to talk with you.”

  I push away from the bar. “Ov, I’m on vacation. Way I see it, what you got to do is go back to this guy and pass him another name. I’m out. And, so there’s no hard feelings, here’s a ten for the drink.”

  I’m walking away and Ov’s yelling after me. “Your money’s no good here, and the guy I told, he don’t take no for an answer.”

  The sun’s been up for a half-hour and I’m sitting on the deck, still in skivvies, feet propped on the table, trying to decide whether to bike out to Lover’s Key or just walk to the beach, when a woodpecker raps on my door. Four days I’ve been here now, and this is the first time anyone, I mean anyone, has touched that door. “Don’t need any,” I yell, but the pecker does it again.

  Pulling on some plaid
shorts, I pad over to the door. On the other side is a guy wearing a suit coat and tie. Mormon is the first thing that flashes because on the beach nobody still drawing breath sports a tie. But somehow the guy doesn’t look like a Mormon. They’re always young, clean-cut, fresh-looking. This guy is anything but. More like used, cut-up, and ready for the trash bin. The suit is black, the tie is grey silk, and the guy standing behind the guy has at least ten inches on him and four on me.

  “You Jaxon?” the little guy with the tie asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, “and whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any.”

  “Inside,” he says, reaching up with splayed fingers to push my chest.

  Now I’m easygoing, but one of the things that puts me off is short guys in ties pushing me on the chest and giving me orders in my own rented house. So I stand my ground and gently but firmly swat his hand from my chest saying, “Flake off, Charlie.” This time the tree in the second row reaches an arm over the short guy with the tie’s head and starts for my neck. Before it gets there I have the wrist in my paw pushing it upward so that he grabs nothing but cloud. But I don’t get a chance to show off my kung fu or jujitsu because the short guy has a cannon stuck in my belly-button, trying to push it through to my spine.

  “Inside,” the guy with the tie says again, and this time I figure, why not. “Sit down,” the tie says, sliding the Magnum back in his coat. “Treat all your customers like this, you’re not going to stay in business long,” Tie says.

  “A,” I say, “most of my customers don’t pack. B, I’m on vacation, no customers wanted. C, my license’s no good here. D, what’s it to you?”

  “Check it out,” Tie says and Tree starts a tour of my palace. To me he says, “Who cares what you want? You talk to Marker? He’s supposed to let you know I’m hiring you. He says he talked to you, last night. He talk to you?”