EQMM, December 2007 Read online

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Cover Illustration by Rafael de Soto (c) 1947

  CONTENTS

  Fiction: THE MAN WHO COULDN'T MISS by David Handler

  Fiction: GYPSY GOLD by Edward D. Hoch

  THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  Fiction: PARTY'S OVER by Patricia Smiley

  BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  Fiction: A RUN THROUGH THE CALENDAR by Jon L. Breen

  Fiction: WILD WALLS by Loren D. Estleman

  Department of First Stories: THE BATHTUB ORACLE by Caroline Menzies

  Fiction: THE MUMMY by Peter Turnbull

  Fiction: ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT by Marilyn Todd

  2007 EQMM READERS AWARD BALLOT

  Passport to Crime: A MALEFACTOR by Anton Chekhov

  Fiction: AN INDEX by Martin Edwrads

  Fiction: MURDER ON THE LONDON EYE by Maria Hudgins

  Fiction: SNOWBIRD by Michael Bracken and Tom Sweeney

  2007 INDEX: VOLUMES 129 AND 130

  NEXT ISSUE...

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  Fiction: THE MAN WHO COULDN'T MISS by David Handler

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  Art by Laurie Harden

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  This new David Handler is the first short story to feature his series character Stewart Hoag. The first two “Hoagy” novels, The Man Who Died Laughing and The Man Who Lived by Night, were reissued by Busted Flush Press in an ‘06 omnibus, followed in ‘07 by an omnibus containing the third and fourth books, the Edgar winner The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Woman Who Fell From Grace.

  * * * *

  Her voice on the phone was booming and authoritative, especially for five-thirty in the morning: “I'm trying to reach a Mr. Stewart Hoag."

  "And you have."

  "Sir, this is Sergeant Yolanda Snipes of the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad. Sorry to bother you at such an early hour...."

  "No problem. I was already up.” Having just returned from Paris the day before and, unlike Merilee, wide awake since four. I'd changed our fourteen-month-old, Tracy, into a fresh blue summer onesy and brought her across the meadow to my writing room, where I was trying to decode the feverish scribblings that constituted my road map for Novel #4. Lulu, my basset hound, lay under my desk with her head on my foot. Tracy was on the rug next to her tugging on Lulu's big ears and giggling with fascinated delight. “How may I help you, Sergeant?"

  "Your name has come up in connection with a criminal investigation. Are you acquainted with a Paul Romano? Paul John Romano?"

  I searched my memory bank. My fallback second career as America's preeminent ghostwriter of celebrity memoirs had brought me into contact with numerous mega-stars and their hangers-on over the past de-cade, quite a few of them murderers. But none named Paul Romano. Paul John Romano. “Don't think so, why?"

  "He listed you as a personal reference on a job application he filled out last month at B and B Building Supply in Dorset. The address he put down for you is on Joshua Town Road in Lyme. Is that correct?"

  "It is.” Beneath me, Tracy had shifted her attention from Lulu's ears to the only thing in the world that fascinated her more—her own toes. “And you say he listed me?"

  "Were you ever contacted by the employer?"

  "No, but I've been out of the country for several weeks.” All thanks to Novel #3, my male menopause epic, which had stunned everyone—especially my publisher—by rocketing to the top of the bestseller lists. Even outselling my fabled first novel, Our Family Enterprise, the one that led The New York Times Book Review to crown me the “first major new literary voice of the 1980s.” Filming of the big-screen version was under way in Paris, and the producers had flown me over to doctor the script, which meant me making suggestions and them ignoring them. But they'd put me up in a first-class hotel and paid me fifty thousand dollars, most of which I'd blown on clothes. “Did he give them this phone number?"

  "He did. What's the significance of that?"

  I didn't tell her that the line she'd reached me on was our un-listed business line. That there was absolutely no way someone I'd never heard of ought to have it. My many scrapes with the law had taught me not to volunteer anything. “Why are you looking for him?"

  "Shortly after B and B hired him he took off with a truckload of building supplies worth a fortune. Since then, his face has popped up on numerous surveillance cameras—Mr. Romano is behind a series of late-night armed robberies of shoreline convenience stores. Five in the past two weeks. The most recent last night in Westbrook. This is a dangerous customer, Mr. Hoag. We want him off of the streets. If anything comes to you, please call me, okay?"

  I went back to my scribblings. Or tried to. I kept asking myself why a man I'd never heard of—a wanted criminal, no less—had listed me as a reference on a job application. Baffled, I sat back in my chair and gazed out the window at the meadow grass that glistened with dew in the early light of dawn. The morning breeze off of Whalebone Cove was soft and cool. All was blissful and serene—until Tracy moved on from her toes to the buttons on her Busy Box. Which, to her great pleasure, made all sorts of loud noises when she pushed them. Ducks quacking. Bells ringing. Not the least bit distracting when Daddy was trying to think. She was a happy, sunny child. Beautiful, too, if you could get past the fact that she still seemed to possess an unusually large head. She had Merilee's emerald-green eyes. Merilee's luxuriant blond hair. Two, count ‘em, two bottom teeth. And a one-word vocabulary—annawoo, which was Tracy-speak for Lulu.

  We were spending the rest of the summer on our farm. It had eighteen acres in all. A center-chimney colonial built in 1736 with seven working fireplaces. A post-and-beam carriage barn of hand-hewn chestnut. The one-time chapel where I worked. A duck pond. Apple and pear orchards. Merilee's vegetable and herb gardens. Here on the farm, she wasn't the Oscar and Tony Award-winner Merilee Nash. She was just Merilee. The crusty locals never fussed over her. That would be unseemly. She'd be cruising into rehearsals for the new Mamet play in a few weeks. Me, I was grateful to be productive again after so many years in literary hell. The writer's block. The coke-fueled flame-out that had cost me Merilee. My descent into pen-for-hire hackdom. But I'd won Merilee back again after all of these years. Now there was Tracy. And the work. At long last, life was sweet.

  Which should have been my first clue that something was about to go sour.

  The phone rang again now. Sergeant Snipes, I assumed, calling to tell me it had all been some kind of misunderstanding.

  "That you, Hoagy?” His voice was hoarse and unfamiliar.

  "And you are...?"

  "Name's Romano, bro."

  "Do I know you?"

  His harsh laugh quickly morphed into a wet cough. “Let's say I know you, okay?"

  "Not okay. What is it you want?"

  "Not much. Some money is all."

  "You just stole some last night, didn't you?"

  "I already owed that to somebody who was about to break my legs.” He sounded as if he was calling from a highway rest stop. I could hear trucks lurching into gear, cars screaming past. “I still need to get out of town fast. Mexico, maybe, because things are getting a little hot. Twenty-five thou ought to do. I know you can spare it. I'll call yo
u back later with the where and when. And no games, bro. No troopers. Not if you value that happy home of yours. You do this for me and I'll be out of your hair forever."

  "I didn't realize you were in my hair."

  "Oh, yeah, I'm good and there."

  "How so? Why would I pay you that kind of money? Who are you?"

  His reply was: “Ask the great big movie star."

  * * * *

  "Merilee, who is Paul John Romano?"

  By now we were putting away breakfast in our gallantly battered old farmhouse kitchen. A toasted baguette with homemade blackberry jam for me. Protein shake for Merilee. A tin of Nine Lives mackerel for Lulu, who has mighty strange eating habits and the breath to prove it. And a festive strained banana-orange medley for Tracy, which Merilee was spoon-feeding to her in her booster chair. So gifted was Merilee Nash at controlling her responses that her hand on the spoon wavered only fractionally at the mention of his name. I doubt that anyone would have even noticed it, but I'm not anyone.

  She was officially forty now, yet had never looked lovelier. Not that Merilee had ever been conventionally pretty. Her jaw was too strong. Nose too long. Forehead too high. Plus, she was nearly six feet tall in her bare feet, broad shouldered and big boned. Right now, she had on a tank top and yoga pants, waist-length golden hair tied up in a topknot bun. Her personal ashtanga instructor, Kimberly, was due soon for her empowering ninety-minute session. I tried joining them once. Lasted eleven whole minutes.

  "No one calls him Paul,” she said finally, her happy mommy face never slipping as she fed Tracy. “He's always been P.J."

  "Fine, now that we've got that cleared up, who is he?"

  "Someone I knew way back when I was in New Haven."

  "He was at Yale Drama School with you?” That his name rang no bells didn't necessarily mean anything. Plenty of people come out of prestigious programs like Yale and don't make it. Hell, most don't.

  "Yes, he was. And we were ... sweetness, please!” Tracy was sticking her fingers in her mouth and happily flinging her medley wherever it wanted to go. “That is to say, he and I went out for a while,” she explained, coloring slightly.

  "Is that all you two did?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Merilee, I don't own your past any more than you own mine. But the Major Crime Squad is after this guy and he seems to think he has something on you. Something that I should give him money to keep quiet about."

  "How much more does he want?"

  "Twenty-five thousand. And you just said the word ‘more.’ Have you been paying him off?"

  Merilee nodded her head, swallowing. “He showed up here out of the blue the very morning you left. I swear, it was as if he'd been watching the house from...” She shot a gaze out the windows at the woods beyond the pond before turning back to me. “I hadn't seen him in more than fifteen years. He acted like it was last Tuesday. Flopped right down at this table, chattering nonstop, and waited for me to make him breakfast.” Which explained how he'd come by our business phone—it was printed on a card stuck to the refrigerator door. “So I gave him some ham and eggs. And then I gave him ten thousand dollars."

  "Why would you do that?"

  "In the hope that he'd go away. But I—I...” She faltered, her face etching with concern. “I've just made a mess of things instead."

  "Not necessarily. And don't furrow your brow that way or you'll get lines."

  "Nobody gets those anymore, silly. That's why God invented Botox."

  "So there's a God?"

  "Of course there is. There has to be."

  I got up and poured us more coffee. Lulu circled around three times under the table and curled up with a grunt. Tracy continued to sit in her chair waving her limbs and giggling. “You'd better tell me everything, Merilee."

  She raised her chin at me, hands folded before her on the table. “Out of all of us who were there, P.J. was the one who had it,” she began quietly. “He was tall, dark, and incredibly handsome, with huge, soulful brown eyes. And so much raw animal intensity you couldn't take your eyes off of him when he was on stage. The man positively smoldered with bad-boy sex appeal. He was authentically street. Grew up in the Federal Hill section of Providence with small-time wise guys and hustlers. Honestly, Hoagy, I thought he'd be the next De Niro. Every single one of the girls got weak in the knees around him. And the actors all hated him. You wouldn't believe the envy."

  "Sure, I would."

  "As for me, I wanted to tame him,” she recalled wistfully. “I couldn't, of course. He was unreliable. Unfaithful. Stoned half of the time. And in way over his head when it came to gambling. Betting money he didn't have on long shots that never came in. Always into a lot of rough characters for money—which he'd pay back by borrowing it from me. But I didn't care. He was so talented and beautiful and...” She lowered her gaze to her hands. “One night, a faculty member had a party for everyone at her place out in Stony Creek. P.J. borrowed his cousin Richie's Trans Am so we could go. It was a terrific evening. We laughed a lot. Drank a lot of wine. It was very late by the time he and I started back to New Haven. I quickly realized he was in no condition to drive. He'd snorted a ton of coke in the bathroom, which I hadn't been aware of until he started flying down these narrow, twisting country roads, going faster and faster. I begged him to pull over and let me drive. He just laughed and floored it. Until we came flying around a bend and he ... we ... hit a man, Hoagy. A poor fellow out walking his dog along the shoulder of the road. I'll never forget the sound it...” She broke off, shuddering at the memory. “P.J. cursed and took off. I screamed at him to go back. He wouldn't. Because he was coked to the gills and because he hadn't exactly borrowed cousin Richie's car—he'd stolen it. I remember I kept screaming at him to let me out. Finally, he pulled over and I got out in the middle of nowhere. Walked the rest of the way home to my apartment. Ten miles at least."

  "Did you call nine-one-one?"

  Merilee closed her eyes before she shook her head. “I intended to, I swear. I even dialed the number from the first pay phone I came to. Only, I panicked and hung up. Next morning, it was on the local news that a prominent professor at the School of Architecture had been the victim of a late-night hit-and-run driver. A neighbor heard it happen and did call nine-one-one right away."

  "Did the man survive?"

  "He did not,” she replied, her green eyes puddling. “P.J. killed him. We killed him."

  "You weren't driving."

  "I was there. I knew who was responsible. I could have given his family some comfort. Seen that justice was done. But to my great and enduring shame, I didn't. Too afraid of what would happen to me. So I kept quiet. And I've stayed quiet all of these years, Hoagy. Never told a soul."

  "You could have told me."

  "I was too ashamed. And I was hoping it was behind me. P.J. was behind me."

  "What happened to him?"

  "He self-destructed. Started getting work Off Broadway right away, but he kept showing up late for rehearsals. Didn't know his lines. Fought with directors. I'm talking punches thrown. He got himself dropped from three or four shows. Still, he was so gifted that Scorcese handed him a choice role in Goodfellas. Yet he managed to get himself fired from that, too. Drugs were involved, apparently. After that, he was done. P.J. Romano destroyed a can't-miss career, Hoagy. Single greatest waste of talent I've ever seen. The last I heard, he'd drifted back to the world of Federal Hill hoods he came from."

  "Except now he's back in your life."

  "And still betting the house on impossible long shots. Would you believe he asked me if I could get him in to read for the Mamet play? He hasn't been within ten miles of a workshop in God knows how long. He's strung out on crystal meth. Up to his eyeballs in drug debts, gambling debts. Looks awful."

  "Why has he shown up now?"

  "Who knows why? Because he's desperate. Because he thinks I'm the last bargaining chip he has left. He said if I didn't pay him the ten thousand he'd tell the police
Iwas driving the Trans Am that night."

  "They won't believe him."

  "That doesn't matter, darling. His attorney will run straight to the media and the story will be all over the Internet within an hour. Any charge against someone like me, no matter how frivolous, leaves its mark. And this isn't frivolous. A man died. Let's face it, my reputation will be trashed.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It won't help yours any either."

  "I don't care about that."

  "Well, I do. You don't deserve to get dragged into this."

  "I wonder why he used my name as a reference on that job application."

  "So you'd ask me about him and it would stir up trouble between us. Along with all of the rest of his delusions, I'm quite convinced he's hoping to win me back."

  "He says he wants to leave the country."

  "P.J. says lots of things. Half of the time, he even believes them. But they're never true. He'll just keep coming back to us for more money until they catch him. And when they do I have no doubt he'll throw me to the wolves.” She reached over and grabbed my hand, gripping it tightly. “Oh, Hoagy, what on earth are we going to do?"

  "Maybe Tracy should stay with my parents for a couple of days,” I suggested. They had a condo in a nearby assisted-living facility. “They have excellent security there. Mother will be tickled."

  "Absolutely not. P.J. Romano is not taking my baby from me."

  "You should have told me about this before, Merilee."

  "I was taking care of it. Or I thought I was.” She detested clingy females. Was so stubborn about hiding her vulnerability that it was almost a sickness. “Besides, it was my own private shame."

  "I wouldn't call it your own private shame any longer."

  "Why, what would you...?"

  "I'd call it blackmail."

  * * * *

  My high-powered New York City lawyer, Bruce Cooperman, was summering a half-hour away from us at his beach house in Willoughby, the ultra-exclusive shorefront village where he kept his yacht moored. Willoughby had a historic town green complete with gazebo and Revolutionary War memorial. A steepled white Congregational Church. Galleries selling all sorts of ugly, obscenely expensive art. Shops selling all sorts of ugly, obscenely expensive antiques. And it had The Nook, a dark, narrow, landmark diner with high-backed booths of well-worn wood.