AHMM April 2008 Read online

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  Copyright ©2008 Dell Magazines

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  Cover by Joel Spector

  CONTENTS

  Department: EDITOR'S NOTES: FIRST PLACE IN MYSTERY by Linda Landrigan

  Fiction: COLD REASON by James Lincoln Warren

  Fiction: WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR by Russel D. McLean

  Fiction: THE HARD CASE by Robert Lopresti

  Fiction: CASE CAPPED by Marianne Wilski Strong

  Fiction: TALKING HERSELF TO DEATH by Cathryn Grant

  Fiction: THE LAGOON by Eve Fisher

  Department: Solution to the March UNSOLVED

  Fiction: 8 ACROSS by Leigh Lundin

  Department: THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER by Willie Rose

  Fiction: MESSENGER FROM HADES by Edward D. Hoch

  Department: BOOKED AND PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  Fiction: MURDER IN THE BARRENS by Judy Roe

  Department: SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CYPHER

  Mystery Classic: IF I QUENCH THEE... by William E. Chambers

  Department: The Lineup

  Department: COMING IN MAY 2008

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  Department: EDITOR'S NOTES: FIRST PLACE IN MYSTERY by Linda Landrigan

  We are thrilled to announce that we have a winner for the first annual Black Orchid Novella Award, or BONA. We worked with The Wolfe Pack to plan and introduce a writing contest that celebrates the classic detective genre and encourages an underappreciated literary form, the novella. Rex Stout, creator of the private eye Nero Wolfe, was a master at the form, and numerous Nero Wolfe novellas were published in sets of twos and threes. At AHMM, we read more than fifty blind submissions after they had been vetted by the Wolfe Pack members to make sure that there was nothing on the manuscripts that identified the authors. The best submissions displayed the author's awareness that the novella is more than just a long short story. There's much more room for complexity in the plot, and yet in many ways the novella must be as spare and economical as a short story. We were impressed by the overall quality of the submissions, but one stood out for us as having a well-developed detective who uses more mental muscle than brawn in his occupation, a strong mystery, and, most importantly, an engaging story. As it happens, both the detective and the author will be familiar to regular AHMM readers. Look for John Betancourt's winning story “Horse Pit” and his detective Peter “Pit” Geller in the 2008 July/August issue. Congratulations, John!

  For more information about the contest and The Wolfe Pack, go to www.NeroWolfe.org.

  We have three new authors to introduce to you this month. Leigh Lundin ("8 Across") made an impressive debut with his first published story in EQMM, “Swamped"—it won that magazine's Readers’ Award last year. He is also a reglular blogger (along with issue mates Robert Lopresti and James Lincoln Warren) at www.CriminalBrief.com. Cathryn Grant makes her AHMM debut with a psyhcological suspense story, “Talking Herself to Death,” which probes uncomfortable (to say the least) interpersonal dynamics at the office. Judy Roe ("Murder in the Barrens") is a former actress, and really a Jack of all trades in the theater. She drew on some of her professional experience when she wrote the novel The Same Old Grind (1975) about burlesque. Welcome all!

  One final note: Our Reel Crime column is on hiatus this month, but will return in a future issue.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Linda Landrigan

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: COLD REASON by James Lincoln Warren

  Edward Kinsella III

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  "Don't you know that it's traditional for private eyes to play chess?"

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  Little old Stanley Stowicz is the only guy I know who buys the newspaper for the chess column. I don't mind chess. My brother Joe, the Ferrari family boy genius, taught me how to move the pieces when I was a kid back in New York, and explained things like castling and discovered check. That's as far as I got. Barroom billiards turned out to be a lot more my speed. To me, a Sicilian defense is the Fifth Amendment.

  So when Stan starts babbling about gambits and fianchettos, this variation and that variation, my eyes have a tendency to glaze over—I only remember fianchetto because it's an Italian word.

  "Carmine, don't you know that it's traditional for private eyes to play chess?” he once indignantly asked me. “Especially in L.A."

  "First I've heard about it."

  "Well, it is. Sharpens the mind, nu? Philip Marlowe was himself a chess player. Read the books."

  "Philip Marlowe wasn't real,” I said, “and I got enough to read without adding fiction to the list."

  Stan just shook his head and mumbled, “My boss, the proster kind."

  Stowicz is an experienced investigator, which is why Custer Malone and I hired him at California Operatives, Inc., in the first place. I don't really know if his chess playing makes him a better detective or not. But it did once get us a client.

  * * * *

  "Jesus wept. Red, our travel costs are out of control.” Malone calls me Red because my first name is Carmine. My hair is actually black, but he likes the idea of claiming he's got a Red Ferrari at the office, yuk, yuk. As if we could afford it, or have the nuts to drive one even if we could afford it—a P.I. is supposed to blend into the pavement, not stick out like a drag queen at a Hell's Angels rally. Outrageously expensive sports cars are attention-getters, even in Beverly Hills. Of course, Malone says the same thing about my Armani suits, and I say the same thing about his six-hundred-dollar cowpie-kicker boots, but dress is an altogether different thing from cars, especially in L.A.

  It was early Thursday morning, January 5, 2006. Cus and I were in the office by ourselves, going over the firm's expenses from the previous year. He looked at the ledger, shaking his head. “We've got to show more discipline, or at least find a way to get more frequent flier miles."

  "I'm just glad that football game was played in Pasadena last night,” I said. “You would have flown to Timbuktu to see your Longhorns beat USC."

  "It's not just long distance, Red. We need to tighten up vehicle use too. From now on, we're going to keep the car keys in here. When somebody needs a company car, they're going to have to check it out from one of us first. We'll start a mileage log."

  Stan marched into Malone's office, looking like he'd just seen Moses part the Red Sea. “I played chess with Thor Brunker last night,” he said, wide eyed.

  We stared back at him.

  "Now, that's just sad, Stan,” drawled the Senator—I think of Cus Malone as “the Senator” when he struts out that paternalistic Texas twang—indulgently smiling and brushing back his mane of white hair. “First of all, that anybody would actually be named Thor. And secondly, heck, I know chess is easier for you to understand than college football, but there's really no excuse for missing Texas whup on them Trojans for the championship."

  "I understand college football fine,” Stowicz said. “It's just there's no point in watching football unless Brandeis is playing. And Thor and I have been playing chess over cigars and a good bottle of claret every Wednesday for twenty years."

  "Brandeis has a football team?” I asked.

  Stowicz snorted. “Of course not. I just said that's why I don't watch college football. Plus, I like costly wine better than cheap beer. Thor is quite the
oenophile."

  "No kidding. So, how many years will oenophilia get you, anyway?"

  "Not a crime, Red—oenophile is just a way of saying, ‘gourmet wino.’ So Stan, if y'all have been playing together twenty years,” Malone asked gently, “what was so special about last night?"

  "It's the first time he's ever asked for help,” Stowicz said triumphantly.

  Malone sat and I stood there waiting. Then the penny dropped. I asked, “You mean that Thor realized you're a better player than he is and asked for advice on a move?"

  Stan frowned. “That, he already knew. And that stubborn old bastard wouldn't take advice from a doctor if he spat out his spleen."

  Wrong penny.

  "Thor's an attorney, and he's got a situation. He wants our help."

  "He wants to hire us?” Malone raised his eyebrows.

  "Wait until you hear. He has a client named Friedrich Lieber. I know neither of you zhlubs have ever heard of him, but he's a pretty well-known retired chess grand master, originally from Bavaria, who now lives here in Beverly Hills. Anyway, if you can believe it, Lieber somehow found and got his lapes on the Morphy watch."

  "Whaddaya know. Amazing. Uh—what the hell is a Morphy watch, exactly?” I inquired.

  "Stan actually said the Morphy watch, Red,” Malone pointed out. “So what we really want to know, Stan, is—what the hell is the Morphy watch, exactly?"

  "The Morphy watch. Paul Morphy's watch."

  We stared blankly at Stowicz.

  "You mean you guys never heard of Paul Morphy?"

  "I think that's safe to assume,” said Malone. Of course Stowicz knew we'd never heard of Paul Morphy, but he was enjoying himself too much.

  Stan started, stopped, paused to get his composure, and said in his most I-know-you're-an-idiot-but-I'm-still-trying-to-be-nice voice, “Paul Morphy was only the greatest chess player of all time. He was a nineteenth-century New Orleans lawyer. Now pay attention.

  "In 1858, Morphy toured Europe and crushed every opponent who faced him. In those days, they didn't have world champions, but if they had, everybody agrees it would have been Morphy by a landslide. Anyhow, in 1859, when he returned to America, the Brooklyn Chess Club presented him with an engraved gold watch they had manufactured specifically for him. It became instantly famous. The company that made it even used a Morphy testimonial to advertise the accuracy of their product."

  "I'm guessing that's the Morphy watch,” I said.

  "Shut up and listen. Like a lot of great grand masters, Morphy was one meshuggeneh sobanavitch. Persecution complex. He was convinced his brother-in-law was out to get him, so he struck back with a lawsuit—an expensive lawsuit. To cover the costs, Morphy pawned the watch to a friend of his, Jules Arnous de Riviére, a famous French master. The watch remained in Arnous de Riviére's family until they offered it for sale in 1921. The price then was six thousand francs, or about five thousand dollars. But then it disappeared, and no one knows how or why."

  "I reckon it's worth a pretty piece of change by now,” Malone observed, “the antiques market being what it is. Maybe even more than double what it was then."

  "Ten thousand dollars maybe will get you a quartz Timex and a cup of drip coffee. No, gentlemen, to a serious collector, that watch is friggin’ priceless. But the story doesn't end there. You see, in the sixties, the dial was discovered and acquired by the San Francisco Academy of Sciences. It was very easy to identify because it was engraved with Morphy's name, and instead of numbers it has little chess pieces. Unique. But nobody ever knew what happened to the rest of the watch. Not until Lieber, that is."

  "That's a very interesting story, Stan,” said Malone. “How do you know all of this?"

  "Am I a detective or what?"

  "And where do we fit in?” I asked.

  "An old battle-axe named Madeleine Saulnier is suing Lieber for possession of the watch. Claims it was stolen from the Arnous de Riviére family and belongs to her by right of inheritance. Thor wants us to trace its provenance and prove the watch is legally Lieber's."

  "That's a little outside our line,” Malone said. “Red, what do you think?"

  "The customer is always right, Cus,” I replied. “If Counselor Brunker is willing to pay the going rate, I say we put Moon on it."

  "All right, then."

  * * * *

  One thing about Cal Ops is that we all have different ethnicities. This is important for a detective agency in Los Angeles because the city itself is widely and wildly diverse, and we need operatives that will fit in anywhere if we're going to be able to do our job.

  Likewise our backgrounds. I'm former NYPD and Italian Catholic. The Senator was once a Texas Ranger and is Orange Irish-Texican, but we put up with him anyway. Stowicz grew up in Brooklyn and worked as a Pinkerton man until Securitas bought them out, whereas John Jett, who is black, was in the L.A. Sheriff's Department for twenty-one years, most of them as a detective. The only one of our operatives we raised from apprentice ourselves is Jessica Zavala.

  Nora Moon came to us from the investigative branch of Jewelers Mutual. Nora is of Korean extraction, in her mid thirties, of average height, with an athletic figure and a face reminiscent of her surname, fair and round and radiant. Obviously her normal beat is the Asian community, but given her experience in the jewelry trade, she was the clear choice to look into the Lieber matter.

  "He seems like a sweet old coot, but his place is a little creepy,” she said as she returned the company car keys in conformance to Malone's new accountability rule.

  "Tell me about it."

  So she did.

  * * * *

  I'm sure you've heard of certain rich rap stars doing what they can to maintain their “street cred” by demonstrating their insider knowledge of gang signs, drugs, firearms, and bling-bling. In Beverly Hills, the parallel cultural phenom is drive cred, insider knowledge of designer labels, plastic surgery, where to park, and bling-bling. The common denominator is the ostentatious display of wealth.

  Believe it or not, in the flats of southern BH on either side of Olympic Boulevard, there are a bunch of old apartment houses for those unfortunate few in the city who can't actually crap cash, the so-called “slums” of Beverly Hills. Maybe, but a walk-up studio apartment on the second floor of a building built in the forties—anything higher than two storeys isn't really typical south of Wilshire—will still put you out over a grand a month. Friedrich Lieber lived in such a place on Elm Drive, between Beverwil Drive and Doheny Drive, not at all far from south Rodeo Drive and Cal Ops's office on Pico Boulevard.

  Of course, street parking is by permit only, so Moon had a little trouble finding a spot. Then she had to hoof it for three blocks. She walked up the stairs and knocked on the door.

  "It's open,” a deep voice, rich but breathlessly weak, called from the other side. It had the barest hint of a German accent. “Come in."

  "He keeps it dark, shades drawn, and he's got chess boards and clocks all over the place—most of the clocks have two faces,” Nora told us.

  "Those would be chess clocks,” Stowicz offered, “used to time your moves."

  There was also a grandfather clock the size of a sarcophagus, the fanciest Swiss cuckoo clock Moon had ever set eyes on, a big old mahogany mantel clock, a marine chronometer, an elegant silver and gold skeleton clock in a glass dome, an ancient brass windup alarm clock with bells on top—there were timepieces everywhere. There was even a clock on Lieber's coffee maker. The whole room pulsed with ticking.

  "To make room for everything, he sleeps on a futon, the traditional kind you fold away during the day. And no chairs, not even at the breakfast bar in the kitchenette. When I got there, he was sitting in a padmasana on the floor, drinking a glass of dago red and admiring the watch."

  "What's a padmasana?” Stowicz queried.

  "Lotus position. Yoga."

  "Never mind that. Did he tell you how he got the Morphy watch?” I asked.

  "Yes. After I found a place to sit."
/>
  "Don't you Koreans all sit on floor cushions?” asked Stowicz.

  "I was born in Hollywood, Stan,” she replied tartly.

  "Forgive me if I don't get up, my dear,” Lieber said. He coughed violently, his face going from wan to scarlet in seconds and then pale again as he quieted down. “Please excuse me. Asthma is hard on an old man. It's hard for me just to stand these days. I'm trying to get into the empty apartment downstairs, but in the meantime, the stairs do take the mickey out of me."

  "I'm surprised you can get your feet over your knees,” Moon said. “It hurts my thighs just looking at you."

  "The yoga helps me breathe. Sit here beside me,” he said, patting the cushion.

  "No thank you, sir. Not in a skirt."

  "Of course not, how stupid of me. Why don't you remove Capablanca from that short little table next to the ionizer there and sit down on it? It's sturdy. You can use one of my floor cushions to make it more comfortable."

  "I thought Capablanca was an old movie with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman,” I said.

  "Capablanca was one of the greats,” pronounced Stowicz. “Lieber was talking about a chess board displaying one of his games."

  "That's right,” Nora confirmed. “Anyway, I carefully set the board on the floor and parked my butt on the table, crossing my legs, I mean, I didn't want to give the old boy any kind of thrill, not in his condition. The way he was wheezing, a thrill could be fatal."

  "Saucy wench,” I said.

  "Macho pig,” she replied, pausing a beat before adding, “sir. Anyway, he offered me a glass of burgundy and I turned it down."

  For whatever reason, Brunker hadn't told Lieber to expect someone from Cal Ops, but after introducing herself and explaining why we'd been hired, Moon explained what she intended to do, to Lieber's evident approval. “There are essentially two ways to get Mr. Brunker the material he needs to prevail in the lawsuit. The first way is to show that the provenance of the watch is clean and that you are indeed the lawful owner."