13 Classic Stories

12 Masters of the Genre

"Unreasonable Doubt", Copyright © Max Allan Collins, 2001.

"Death's Brother", Copyright © Bill Crider. Originally published in New Mystery Magazine #2, 1992.

"Poisoned", Copyright © Stephen Gallagher. Originally published Kimota 6, 1997.

"Remaindered", Copyright © Lee Goldberg. Originally published in the August issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, 2001.

"Fire in the Sky", Copyright © Joel Goldman, 2011.

"The Baby Store", Copyright © Ed Gorman. Originally published in Noir 13, 2010.

"The Jade Elephant", Copyright © Libby Fischer Hellmann. Originally published in Expletive Deleted, 2007.

"The Big O", Copyright © Vicki Hendricks. Originally published in A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, 2007.

"The Chirashi Covenant", Copyright © Naomi Hirahara. Originally published in A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, 2007.

"El Valiente en El Infierno", Copyright © Paul Levine. Originally published in The Road to Hell, 2011.

"A Handful of Dust", Copyright © Harry Shannon. Originally published in Hardluck Stories, 2007.

"The Canary", Copyright © Dave Zeltserman, 2011.

"The Chase", Copyright © Top Suspense Group, 2010.

These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, companies, institutions, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Visit the Top Suspense Group at www.topsuspense.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Unreasonable Doubt by Max Allan Collins

Death's Brother by Bill Crider

Poisoned by Stephen Gallagher

Remaindered by Lee Goldberg

Fire in the Sky by Joel Goldman

The Baby Store by Ed Gorman

The Jade Elephant by Libby Fischer Hellmann

The Big O by Vicki Hendricks

The Chirashi Covenant byNaomi Hirahara

El Valiente en el Infierno by Paul Levine

A Handful of Dust by Harry Shannon

The Canary by Dave Zeltserman

The Chase by Top Suspense Group

About the Authors

INTRODUCTION

Hold on tight, my friends. You're about to go on a literary thrill-ride, propelled at breakneck speed into the wickedly clever, frightening, and exhilarating world of Top Suspense, a sizzling collaboration of twelve master storytellers at the peak of their powers.

These aren't your typical writers...they are all widely-acclaimed, multiple-award-winning professionals who have seen their hugely successful novels published globally and made into hit movies and TV series. And now they have teamed up to guarantee you the very best in ebook excitement.

This unforgettable anthology - packed full of cold-blooded killers, erotic tension, shady private eyes, craven drug dealers, vicious betrayals, crafty thieves, and shocking twists - is only a taste of the thrills you will find in the breathtakingly original ebooks by these authors at www.topsuspensegroup.com.

So sit back, bite down on a piece of strong leather, and prepare to get hit by some gale-force suspense and writing so sharp it will draw blood.

Nathan Heller is probably the author's signature character - a somewhat shady private eye working in Chicago and Los Angeles from the 1930s to the '60s. He first appeared in the Shamus-winning novel True Detective in 1983, and - after a ten year hiatus - returns in Bye Bye, Baby (2011). AmazonEncore will be bringing out the first twelve Heller novels as e-books and trade paperbacks in 2011, as well as two collections of Heller short stories. Here's a preview.

UNREASONABLE DOUBT

by Max Allan Collins

In March of 1947, I got caught up in the notorious Overell case, which made such headlines in Los Angeles, particularly during the trial that summer. The double murder - laced as it was with underage sex in a lurid scenario that made "Double Indemnity" seem tame - hit the front pages in Chicago, as well. But back home I never bragged about my little-publicized role, because - strictly speaking - I was the one guy who might have headed the whole thing off.

I was taking a deductible vacation, getting away from an Illinois spring that was stubbornly still winter, in trade for Southern California's constant summer. My wife, who was pregnant and grouchy, loved L.A., and had a lot of friends out there, which was one of the reasons for the getaway; but I was also checking in with the L.A. branch office of the A-1 Detective Agency, of which I was the president.

I'd recently thrown in with Fred Rubinski, a former Chicago cop I'd known since we were both on the pickpocket detail, who from before the war had been running a one-man agency out of a suite in the Bradbury Building at Third and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.

It was Friday morning, and I was flipping through the pages of Cue magazine in the outer office, occasionally flirting with Fred's good-looking blonde receptionist - like they say, I was married but I wasn't dead - waiting to get together with Fred, who was in with a client. The guy had just shown up, no appointment, but I didn't blame Fred for giving him precedence over me.

I had seen the guy go in - sixtyish, a shade taller than my six feet, distinguished, graying, somewhat fleshy, in a lightweight navy suit that hadn't come off the rack; he was clearly money.

After about five minutes, Fred slipped out of the office and sat next to me, speaking sotto voce.

My partner looked like a balding, slightly less ugly Edward G. Robinson; a natty dresser - today's suit was a gray pinstripe with a gray and white striped tie - he was a hard round ball of a man.

"Listen, Nate," he said, "I could use your help."

I shrugged. "Okay."

"You're not tied up today - I know you're on vacation..."

"Skip it. We got a well-heeled client who needs something done, right away, and you don't have time to do it yourself."

The bulldog puss blinked at me. "How did you know?"

"I'm a detective. Just keep in mind, I've done a few jobs out here, but I don't really know the town."

Fred sat forward. "Listen, this guy is probably worth a cool million - Walter E. Overell, he's a financier, land developer, got a regular mansion over in Pasadena, in the Flintridge district, real exclusive digs."

"What's he want done?"

"Nothin' you can't handle. Nothin' big."

"So you'd rather let me hear it from him?"

Fred grinned; it wasn't pretty. "You are a detective."

In the inner office, Overell stood as Fred pulled up a chair for me next to the client's. As the financier and I shook hands, Fred said, "Mr. Overell, this is Nathan Heller, the president of this agency, and my most trusted associate."

He left out that I wasn't local. Which I didn't disagree with him for doing - it was good tactically.

"Of course, Mr. Heller commands our top rate, Mr. Overell - one hundred a day."

"No problem."

"We get expenses, and require a two-hundred dollar retainer, non-refundable."

"Fine."

Fred and I made sure not to look at each other throughout my partner's highway robbery of this obviously well-off client.

Soon we got down to it. Overell slumped forward as he sat, hands locked, his brow deeply furrowed, his gray eyes pools of worry.

"It's my daughter, Mr. Heller. She wants to get married."

"A lot of young girls do, Mr. Overell."

"Not this young. Louise is only seventeen - and won't be eighteen for another nine months. She can't get married at her age without my consent - and I'm not likely to give it."

"She could run away, sir. There are states where seventeen is plenty old enough - "

"I would disinherit her." He sighed, hung his head. "Much as it would kill me...I would disown and disinherit her."

Fred put in, "This is his only child, Nate."

I nodded. "Where do things stand, currently?"

Overell swallowed thickly. "She says she's made up her mind to marry her 'Bud' on her eighteenth birthday."

"Bud?"

"George Gollum - he's called Bud. He's twenty-one. What is the male term for a golddigger, anyway?"

I shrugged. "Greedy bastard?"

"That will do fine. I believe he and she have..." Again, he swallowed and his clenched hands were trembling, his eyes moist. "...known each other, since she was fourteen."

"Pardon me, sir, but you use the term 'known' as if you mean in the...Biblical sense?"

He nodded curtly, turned his gaze away; but his words were clipped: "That's right."

An idea was hatching; I didn't care for it much, but the idea wasn't distasteful enough to override my liking of a hundred bucks a day.

Overell was saying, "I believe he met my daughter when he was on leave from the Navy."

"He's in the Navy?"

"No! He's studying at the Los Angeles campus of U.C., now - pre-med, supposedly, but I doubt he has the brains for it. They exchanged letters when he was serving overseas, as a radioman. My wife, Beulah, discovered some of these letters....They were...filth."

His head dropped forward, and his hands covered his face.

Fred glanced at me, eyebrows raised, but I just said to Overell, "Sir, kids are wilder today than when we were young."

He had twenty, twenty-five years on me, but it seemed the thing to say.

"I've threatened to disinherit her, even if she waits till she's of legal age - but she won't listen, Louise simply won't listen."

Overell went on, at some length, to tell me of Louise's pampered childhood, her bedroom of dolls and Teddy bears in their "estate," the private lessons (tennis, riding, swimming), her French governess who had taught her a second language as well as the niceties of proper etiquette.

"Right now," the disturbed father said, "she's waging a campaign to win us over to this twenty-one-year-old 'boy friend' of hers."

"You haven't met him?"

"Oh, I've met him - chased him off my property. But she insists if we get to know Bud, we'll change our minds - I've consented to meet with them, let them make their case for marriage."

"Excuse me, but is she pregnant?"

"If she were, that would carry no weight whatsoever."

I let the absurdity of that statement stand.

Overell went on: "I've already spoken to Mr. Rubinski about making certain...arrangements...if that is what Louise and her Bud reveal to us tomorrow evening."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes, we have a yacht - the Mary E. - moored at Newport Harbor." He smiled embarrassedly, the first time he'd smiled in this meeting. "Excuse my pomposity - 'yacht' is rather overstating it, it's really just a little forty-seven footer."

Little?

"Louise asked me to invite her and her 'boy friend' aboard for the evening, with her mother and myself, so we can all get to know each other better, and talk, 'as adults.'"

"And you're going along with this?"

"Yes - but only to humor her, and as a...subterfuge for my own feelings, my own desires, my own designs. I want you to explore this boy's background - I don't know anything about him, except that he's local."

"And you think if I turn up something improper in this boy's past, it would matter to your daughter?"

His eyes were so tight, it must have hurt. "If he's the male equivalent of a golddigger, won't he have other girls, other women? That would show Louise the light."

"Mr. Overell, is your daughter attractive?"

"Lovely. I...I have a picture in my wallet, but I'm afraid she's only twelve in it."

"Never mind that right now - but you should know there's every possibility that these two young people...and twenty-one seems younger to me, every day...really are nuts about each other. Gollum may not be seeing anybody else."

"But you can find out!"

"Sure, but...aren't you overlooking something?"

"Am I?"

"Your daughter is underage. If I catch 'em in the backseat of this boy's jalopy, we can put him away - or at least threaten to."

"...Statutory rape?"

I held up two palms, pushed the air. "I know, I know, it would embarrass your daughter...but even the threat of it oughta to send this rat scurrying."

Overell looked at Fred for an opinion. Fred was nodding.

"Makes sense, Mr. Overell," he said.

Overell's eyes tensed, but his brow unfurrowed some; another sigh seemed to deflate his entire body, but I could sense relief on his part, and resignation, as he said, "All right...all right. Do what you think is best."

We got him a contract, and he gave us a check.

"Can I speak with your wife about this matter?" I asked him.

He nodded. "I'm here with Beulah's blessing. You have our address - you can catch her at home this afternoon, if you like."

I explained to him that what I could do today would be limited, because Overell understood that his daughter and would-be future son-in-law were (and he reported this with considerable distaste) spending the day "picnicking in the desert." But I could go out to the Los Angeles campus of the University of California and ask around about Bud.

"You can inquire out there about my daughter as well," he said.

"Isn't she still in high school?"

"Unfortunately, no - she's a bright girl, skipped a grade. She's already in college."

Sounded like Louise was precocious in a lot of ways.

Around ten-thirty that same morning, I entered at Westwood Boulevard and Le Conte Avenue, rolling in my rental Ford through a lushly terraced campus perched on a knoll overlooking valleys, plains and hills. The buildings were terra cotta, brick and tile in a Romanesque motif.

I asked a cute coed for directions to the student union, and was sent to Kerckhoff Hall, an imposing building of Tudor design with a pinnacled tower. I was further directed to a sprawling high-ceilinged room where college kids played ping pong or played cards or sat in comfy chairs and couches and drank soda pop and smoked cigarettes. Among sweaters and casual slacks and bobby socks, I stuck out like the thirty-eight-year-old sore thumb I was in my tan summer suit; but the kids were all chatty and friendly. My cover was that Bud had applied for a job - what that job was, of course, I couldn't say - and I was checking up on him for his prospective employer.

Not everybody knew Bud Gollum or Louise Overell, of course - too big a campus for that. But a few did.

Bud, it seemed, was a freshman, going to school on Uncle Sam. Other first-year fellas - younger than Bud, probably nineteen - described him as "a good guy, friendly, and smart," even "real smart." But several didn't hide their dislike of Bud, saying he was smart-alecky, writing him off as a "wiseguy."

A mid-twenties junior with an anchor tattooed on his forearm knew Bud as a fellow Navy veteran, and said Bud had been a Radio Man 1st Class.

"Listen," the husky little dark-haired, dark-eyed ex-gob said, "if you're considering him for a job, give him a break - he's smarter than his grades make him look."

"Really?"

"Yeah, when you see his transcripts, you're going find him pulling down some low junk, so far this year...but it's that little skirt's fault. I mean, they don't let dummies into pre-med around here."

"He's got a girl friend distracting him?"

The gob nodded. "And it's pretty damn serious - she's a young piece of tail, pardon my French, built like a brick shithouse. Can hardly blame him for letting his studies slide."

"Well, I hope he wouldn't be too preoccupied to do a good job - "

"No, no! He's a right fella! Lives at home with his mom and stepdad - he's an assistant scout master, for Christ sakes!"

"Sounds clean cut."

"Sure - he loves the outdoors, always going hiking in the mountains up around Chatsworth, backpacking out into the desert."

"His girl go in for that?"

"They go everywhere together, joined at the hip...don't give me that look, buddy! I mean, haven't you ever had a female lead you around by the dick?"

"No," I said, and when he arched an eyebrow, I added, "Does my wife count?"

He grinned at me. "Does mine?"

A table of girls who were smoking and playing pitch allowed me to pull up a chair for a few questions; they weren't very cute, just enough to make me want to bust out crying.

"I don't know what a cute guy like that sees in ol' Stone Face," a blonde with blue eyes and braces said. I liked the way she was getting lipstick on her cigarette.

"Stone Face?"

"Yeah," a brunette said. She wasn't smoking, like her friends, just chewing and snapping her gum. "That Gollum gal's got this round face like a frying pan and's got about as much expression."

"Except when she giggles," a redhead said, giggling.

All the girls began to giggle, the blonde saying, "Then she really looks like a dope!"

"She laughs at everything that idiot says," the brunette said. "They hang onto each other like ivy - it's sickening."

That was all I learned at the college, and the effort took about three hours; but it was a start.

Pasadena was the richest city per capita in the nation, and the residential neighborhood where the Overells resided gave credence to that notion - mansions with sunken gardens, swimming pools and tennis courts on winding, flower-edged, palm-flung streets. The white mission-style mansion at 607 Los Robles Drive, with its well-manicured, lavishly landscaped lawn, was no exception.

Mrs. Overell was younger than her husband by perhaps ten years, an attractive dark-blonde woman whose nicely buxom shape was getting a tad matronly. We sat by the pool watching the mid-afternoon sun highlight the shimmering blue surface with gold. We drank iced tea and she hid her feelings behind dark sunglasses and features as expressionless as the Stone Face with which those coeds had tagged her daughter.

"I don't know what I can tell you, Mr. Heller," she said, her voice a bland alto, "that my husband hasn't already."

"Well, Mrs. Overell, I'm chiefly here for two reasons. First, I can use a photo of your daughter, a recent one."

"Certainly." A tiny smile etched itself on the rigid face. "I should have thought of that - Walter carries a photo of Louise when she was still a child. He'd like to keep her that way."

"You do agree with this effort to break off Louise's relationship with this Gollum character?"

"Mr. Heller, I'm not naive enough to think that we can succeed at that. But I won't stand in Walter's way. Perhaps we can postpone this marriage long enough for Louise to see through this boy."

"You think he's a male golddigger, too?"

She shrugged. "He doesn't come from money."

"You know where he lives? Have an address?"

"He's here in Pasadena."

I couldn't picture a wrong side of the tracks in this swanky burg.

"No, I don't have an address," she was saying, "but he's in North Fair Oaks...where so many coloreds have moved in."

I had been met at the door by a Negro butler, who I supposed had to live somewhere.

But I didn't press the subject. I sipped my tea and offered, gently, "If your daughter is willing to wait to marry this boy till her eighteenth birthday...which I understand is many months from now...perhaps what you ought to do is humor her, and hope this affair cools off."

The blue and gold of the sun-kissed pool shimmered in the dark lens of her sunglasses. "I would tend to agree with you, Mr. Heller. In time she might come to her senses of her own volition. But Walter is a father who has not adjusted to losing his little girl...she's our only child, you know...and I do share his concern about the Gollum boy."

"That's the other reason I wanted to speak with you, directly," I said, and - delicately - I filled her in on my notion to catch the two in flagrante delicto. I wanted to make sure she wouldn't mind putting her daughter through the public embarrassment a statutory rape accusation would bring.

Another tiny smile etched itself. "We've gotten quite used to Louise embarrassing us, Mr. Heller."

Mrs. Overell thought I might have trouble catching them, however, since they so often went hiking and camping in the West San Fernando Valley - like today. That would be tough: I was used to bagging my quarry in backseats and motel rooms.

As it turned out, Mrs. Overell was able to provide a snapshot, filched from her daughter's room, of both Louise and her beau. They were in swimsuits, at the beach on towels, leaning back on their elbows smiling up at the camera.

Louise had a nice if faintly mocking, superior smile - not exactly pretty, and indeed round-faced, but not bad; and she was, as that ex-gob had so succinctly put it, built like a brick shithouse. This girl had everything Jane Russell did except a movie contract.

As for Bud, he was blond, boyish, rather round faced himself, with wire-rimmed glasses and a grin that somehow lacked the suggestion of cunning his girl friend's smile possessed. He had the slender yet solid build so often seen in Navy men.

I spent another hour or so in Pasadena, which had a sleepy air of prosperity spawned by the many resort hotels, the formidable buildings, the pretentious homes, the bounteous foliage. The North Fair Oaks section did seem to have more than its share of colored residents, but this was still nicer than anywhere I'd ever lived. With the help of a service station attendant - the private detective's best friend in a strange city - I located the home of Dr. Joseph Stomel, married to Bud's mother, Wilhilmina. But I had no intention of talking to anyone there, as yet. This was strictly a point of reference for the eventual tailing of Gollum.

That was Friday, and between the college and the Pasadena run, I'd earned my hundred bucks. I spent all day Saturday with my wife, and friends, enjoying our premature summer vacation.

Then I went back to work Saturday night, though I looked like a tourist in my blue sportshirt and chinos. The camera I had with me was no tourist's Brownie, however, rather a divorce dick's Speed Graphic loaded with infrared film and the world's least conspicuous flash.

It was around ten o'clock when I turned right off State Highway 55, my rental Ford gliding across the low-slung spit over the mouth of an inlet of landlocked Newport Bay, dotted by sails, glistening with moonbeams, dancing with harbor lights. Seaside cottages clustered along the bay shore, but grander dwellings perched on islands in the lagoon-like bay, California-style Riviera-worthy stucco villas, a suitable backdrop for the fleet of yachts and other pleasure crafted moored here.

My behind was moored in a booth in the Beachfront Café, a chrome-heavy diner with a row of windows looking out on the dock and the peaceful, soothing view of lights twinkling and pleasure crafts bobbing on the moon-washed water. I ate a cheeseburger and fries and sipped coffee as I kept watch; I had a perfect view of the sleek cruiser, the Mary E. A few lights were on in the boat, and occasional movement could be made out, but just vague shapes. No different than any number of other boats moored here, gently rocking.

Overell had told me that he and his wife would be entertaining their daughter and her beau aboard the cruiser, having dinner, talking out their problems, perhaps even coming to some sort of understanding. What I had in mind was to follow the young lovers when they left this family powwow. Since Bud lived at home with his mom, I figured the couple would either go to some lover's lane to park, or maybe hit a motel. Either way, my Speed Graphic would collect the evidence needed to nail Bud for statutory rape. It's not elegant, but it's a living.

Around eleven I spotted them, coming down a ladder, stepping onto the swaying dock: Bud and Louise. Hazel-haired, taller than I'd imagined her, she did have an admirable top-heavy figure, which her short-sleeved pale blue sweater and darker blue pedal pushers showed off nicely. Bud wore a yellow sportshirt and brown slacks, and they held hands as they moved rather quickly away from the boat.

I was preparing to leave the café and follow them up to the parking lot, and Bud's car - Mrs. Overell had given me the make and color, and I'd already spotted it, a blue Pontiac convertible, pre-war, battered but serviceable - only, they threw me a curve in addition to Louise's.

The couple were heading up the ramp toward the café!

Absurdly, I wondered if they'd made me - impossible, since they hadn't seen me yet - and I hunkered over my coffee as the lovebirds took a couple of stools at the counter, just about opposite my window booth.

At first they were laughing, at some private joke; it seemed rather forced - were they trying to attract attention?

Then they both ordered burgers and fries and sat there talking, very quietly. Even a trained eavesdropper like me couldn't pick up a word. Perhaps they'd had a rough evening with her folks, because periodically one would seem to be comforting the other, stroking an arm, patting a shoulder, reassuringly.

What the hell was going on? Why did they need a burger, when presumably that luxury cruiser had a well-stocked larder? And if they wanted to get away from her parents and that boat, why hang around the dock? Why not climb in Bud's convertible and seek a burger joint that wasn't in her parents' watery backyard?

Such thoughts bobbed like a buoy in my trained snoop's mind as the couple sat at the counter and nibbled at their food. It was a meal any respectable young couple could down in a matter of minutes. But forty-five minutes later, the two were still sitting on those stools, sometimes picking at barely eaten, very cold-by-now food, often staring soulfully into each other's eyes. Every other stool at that counter had seen at least three customer backsides in the same span.

I was long since used to boring stakeout duty; but it was unnerving having my subjects so near at hand, for so long a time. I finally got up and went to the men's room, partly to test whether they'd use that opportunity to slip away (again, had they made me?), and partly because after three cups of coffee, I needed to take a piss.

When I got back, Bud and Louise were still sitting on their stools, Louise ever so barely swivelling on hers, like a kid in a soda shop. Frustrated, confused, I settled back into my booth, and glanced out the window, and the world exploded.

Actually, it was just the Mary E. that exploded, sending a fireball of flame rising from the cruiser, providing the clear night sky with thunder, hurling burning debris everywhere, making waves out of the placid waters, rocking the pier.

Rocking the café patrons, too, most of them anyway. Everyone except the employees leapt to their feet, screaming, shouting, running outside into a night turned orange by flame, dabbed gray by smoke.

Almost everyone - Bud and Louise were still just sitting at the counter, albeit looking out the window, numbly.

Me, I was on my feet, but then I settled back into the booth, trying to absorb what I'd seen, what I was seeing. I knew my client was dead, and so was his wife - two people I'd spoken to at length, just the day before - as that cruiser was already a listing, smoking shambles, sinking stern first into the bay's eighteen feet.

Finally, the couple headed outside, to join the gathering crowd at the water's edge. I followed them. Sirens were cutting the air, getting closer, closer.

Louise was crying now, hysterical, going from one gaping spectator to another, saying, "My father was on that boat! My mother, too! Somebody save them - somebody rescue them...somebody has to rescue them!"

The boy friend remained at the side of the stricken girl as she moved through the crowd, making her presence blatantly known, Bud's boyish face painted with dismay and shock and reflected flames.

I went to my rental car and got my Speed Graphic. I wouldn't even need the flash - plenty of light.

Snagging shots of the dying boat, and the distraught daughter and her beau, I heard the speculation among the boating-wise onlookers, as to the explosion's cause.

"Butane," one would say.

"Or gasoline," another would say.

But this ex-Marine wasn't so easily fooled.

Butane, hell - I smelled dynamite.

Before long, the Coast Guard arrived, and fire trucks, and police from nearby Santa Ana and Orange County Sheriff's Department personnel. The Chief of the Newport Beach Police showed, took over the investigation, questioned the tearful, apparently anguished Louise Overell and promptly released her, and her boy friend.

Pushing through the bustle, I introduced myself to the chief, whose name was Hodgkinson, and told him I was an investigator who'd been doing a job for Walter Overell.

"A job related to what happened here tonight?" the heavyset chief asked, frowning.

"Very possibly."

"You suspect foul play?"

"Oh yeah."

"Where are you staying, Mr. Heller?"

"The Beverly Hills Hotel."

That impressed him - he didn't realize it was a perk of my security work for the hotel. "Well, obviously, Mr. Heller, I'm gonna be tied up here quite a while. Can you come by the station tomorrow sometime? Tomorrow's Sunday - make it Monday. And if I'm not there, I may be back out here."

"Sure. Why did you let those two kids go?"

"Are you kiddin'? We'll be dredging her parents' scorched corpses outa the drink before too long. It's only decent to spare that girl the sight of that."

Only decent.

Sunday I took my wife to the beach at Santa Monica - she was only a few months pregnant and still looked great in a swim suit. Peggy was an actress and recently had a small role in a Bob Hope picture, and even out here her Deanna Durbin-ish good looks attracted attention.

She ragged me, a little, because I seemed preoccupied, and wasn't terribly good company. But that was because I was thinking about the Overell "Yacht Murder" (as the papers had already starting calling it). I had sold my crime scene photos to Jim Richardson, at the Examiner, by the way, for three hundred bucks. I was coming out way ahead of the game, considering my client and his wife had been blown to smithereens the night before.

Call it guilt, call it conscience, call it sheer professionalism, but I knew I hadn't finished this job. Walter Overell deserved more for that two-hundred buck retainer - just like he'd deserved better from that shrewd sexed-up daughter of his.

So on Monday, bright and early, looking like a tourist in sportshirt and chinos, I began looking. What was I looking for? A slip of paper...a slip of paper in the desert...sounds worse than a needle in a haystack, but it wasn't. I found the damn thing before noon.

Chatsworth was a mountain-ringed hamlet in the West San Fernando Valley that used a Wild West motif to attract tourists, offering them horseback riding and hiking trails, with the ocean and beaches and desert close at hand for lovers of the outdoors - like that Boy Scout Bud Gollum and his bosomy Campfire Girl.

The guy behind the counter in the sparse storefront at the Trojan Powder Company looked a little like Gabby Hayes - white-bearded, prospector-grizzled, in a plaid shirt and bib overalls. But he had his original teeth and a faint British accent, which took him out of the running for playing a Roy Rogers or Gene Autry sidekick.

This was the owner of the place, and he was looking at the photo I'd handed him, taking a closer look than he had at the Illinois P.I. badge I'd flashed him.

"That young woman will never drown," he said, with a faintly salacious smile.

"I'm not so much interested whether you recognize her tits as if her face is familiar - or her boyfriend's."

"I recognize the whole batch of them - both faces, both bosoms, for that matter. The girl didn't come in, though - she sat out in their convertible - a Pontiac, I believe. I could see her right through the front window."

"Did he make a purchase?"

"I should say - fifty sticks of dynamite."

Jesus, that was a lot of dinah.

"This is fresh in my memory," the proprietor said, "because it was just last Friday."

Day before the boat blew up.

"Can anybody stroll in here and buy that stuff?"

"It's a free country - but back in the early days of the war, when folks were afraid of saboteurs, city and county officials passed an ordinance, requiring purchasers to sign for what they buy."

I liked the sound of that. "Can I see the signed receipt?"

Bud had not signed his own name - "R.L. Standish" had purchased the fifty sticks of dynamite - but I had no doubt handwriting experts would confirm this as the Boy Scout's scrawl.

"Some officers from Newport Beach will be along to talk to you," I told him.

"Fine - what about reporters?"

"Good idea," I said, and used the phone.

Examiner editor Richardson paid me another C-note for the tip, and the proprietor of the Trojan Powder Company earned his own fifty bucks of Mr. Hearst's money for providing the exclusive.

I found Chief Hodgkinson at the Newport Beach dock, where the grim, charred wreckage had been surfaced from the depth of eighteen feet - about all that remained was the black blistered hull. The sun was high and golden on the waters, and the idyllic setting of stucco villas in the background and expensive pleasure craft on either side was turned bizarre by the presence of the scorched husk of the Mary E.

Seated in the Beachfront Café across from the blue-uniformed, heavyset chief, in the same booth I'd occupied Saturday night, I filled him in on what I'd discovered up Chatsworth way. He excused himself to pass the information along to a couple of D.A.'s investigators who would make the trip to the Trojan Powder Company.

When the chief returned, bearing a plate with a piece of pecan pie with whipped cream, he sat and ate and shared some information.

"Pretty clear your instincts were right about those kids," he said gruffly but good-naturedly. "It's just hard to believe - patricide and matricide. Only in California."

"The late Walter Overell was supposedly worth around a million. And, like I told you, he was threatening to cut his daughter off, if she married her four-eyed romeo."

"What made you think to go looking for that sales receipt, Mr. Heller?"

"I knew they'd gone 'picnicking' in the San Fernando Valley, and a college pal of Bud's said the loving couple liked to hike up around Chatsworth. Plus, I knew if Bud had been a Radio Man 1st Class in the war, he had the technical knowhow to rig a bomb. Hell, Chief, Saturday night, you could smell the dynamite in the air - and the murder."

He nodded his agreement. "It's as cold-blooded a crime as I've ever come across. We found thirty-one sticks of unexploded dynamite in the galley, crude time bomb thing, rigged with wire and tape to an alarm clock - second of two charges. Bulkhead kept the larger one from goin' off. Which was lucky."

"Not for the Overells."

"No, the smaller bundle of dynamite was enough to kill 'em plenty dead," he said, chewing a bite of pecan pie. "But it wasn't enough to cover up the rest of the evidence."

"Such as?"

"Such as what the coroner discovered in his autopsies - before the explosion, both Mom and Dad had been beaten to death with a ball-peen hammer we found aboard the ship....That there was no water in their lungs backs that theory up."

"Jesus - that is cold."

A young uniformed officer was approaching; he had a wide-eyed, pole-axed expression. "Chief," the young cop said, leaning in, "somebody's here and wants to talk to you - and you won't believe who it is."

Within a minute, a somber yet bright-eyed Louise Overell - in a short-sleeved, cream-colored, well-filled sweater and snug-fitting blue jeans - was standing with her hands fig-leafed before her.

"Hello, Chief Hodgkinson," she said, cheerfully. "How are you today?"

"Why, I'm just fine," he said.

"I'm doing better...thanks," the blue-eyed teenager said, answering a question Hodgkinson hadn't asked. "The reason I'm here is, I wanted to ask about the car."

"The car?"

"My parents' car. I know it was left here in the lot, and I thought maybe I could drive it back up to Flintridge...I've been staying up there, since...the tragedy."

"Excuse me," I said, getting out, and I flashed the chief a look that I hoped he would understand as meaning he should stall the girl.

"Well," the chief was saying, "I'm not sure. I think perhaps we need to talk to the District Attorney, and make sure the vehicle isn't going to be impounded for..."

And I was gone, heading for the parking lot.

Wherever Louise went, so surely too went Bud - particularly since another driver would be needed to transport the family sedan back to the Flintridge estate.

Among the cars in the gravelled lot were my own rental job, several police cars, Bud's Pontiac convertible, and a midnight blue '47 Caddy that I just knew had to have been Walter Overell's.

This opinion was formed, in part, by the fact that Bud Gollum - in a red sportshirt and denim slacks - was trying to get into the car. I approached casually - the boy had something in his left hand, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't a weapon.

Then I saw: a roll of electrical tape, and spool of wire. What the hell was he up to?

Then it came to me: while little Louise was keeping the chief busy, Bud was attempting to plant the tape and wire...which would no doubt match up with what had been used on the makeshift time bomb...in Overell's car. When the chief turned the vehicle over to Louise, the "evidence" would be discovered.

But the Caddy was locked, and apparently Louise hadn't been able to provide a key, because Bud was grunting in frustration as he tried every door.

I just stood there, hands on my hips, rocking on my heels on the gravel. "Is that your plan, Bud? To try to make this look like suicide-murder, planned by ol' Walter?"

Bud whirled, the eyes wild in the boyish face. "What...who...?"

"It won't play, kid. The dynamite didn't do its job - the fractured skulls turned up in the autopsy. You're about two seconds away from being arrested."

That was when he hurled the tape and the wire at me, and took off running, toward his parked convertible. I batted the stuff away, and ran after him, throwing a tackle that took us both roughly down onto the gravel.

"Shit!" I said, getting up off him, rubbing my scraped forearm.

Bud scrambled up, and threw a punch, which I ducked.

Then I creamed him with a right hand that damn near broke his jaw - I don't remember ever enjoying throwing a punch more, though my hand hurt like hell afterward. He dropped prayerfully to his knees, not passing out, but whimpering like a little kid.

"Maybe you aren't smart enough for pre-med, at that," I told him.

Ambling up with two uniformed officers, the chief - who had already taken Louise into custody - personally snapped the cuffs on Bud Gollum, who was crying like a little girl - unlike Louise, whose stone face worked up a sneery pout, as she was helped into the backseat of a squad car.

All in all, Bud was pretty much a disappointment as a Boy Scout.

# #

The case was huge in the California press, the first really big crime story since the Black Dahlia. A grand jury convicted the young lovers, and the state attorney general himself took charge of the prosecution.

My wife was delighted when we spent several weeks having a real summer's vacation, at the expense of the state of California, thanks to me being a major witness for the prosecution.

I didn't stay for the whole trial, which ran well into October, spiced up by steamy love letters that Louise and Bud exchanged, which were intercepted and fed to the newspapers and even submitted to the jury, after Bud's "filth" (as the late Mrs. Overell would have put it) had been edited out.

The letters fell short of any confession, and the star-crossed couple presented themselves well in court, Louise coming off as intelligent, mature and self-composed, and Bud seeming boyishly innocent, a big, strangely likable puppy dog.

The trial took many dramatic twists and turns, including a trip to the charred hulk of the Mary E. in drydock, with Louise and Bud solemnly touring the wreckage in the company of watchful jurors.

Not unexpectedly, toward the end of the trial, the respective lawyers of each defendant began trying to place the blame on the other guy, ultimately requesting separate trials, which the judge denied.

After my wife and I had enjoyed our court-paid summer vacation, I kept up with the trial via the press and reports from Fred Rubinski. All along we had both agreed we had never seen such overwhelming, unquestionably incriminating evidence in a murder case - or such a lame defense, namely that Walter Overell had committed suicide, taking his wife along with him.

Confronted by the testimony of handwriting experts, Bud had even admitted buying the dynamite, claiming he had done so at Walter Overell's request! Medical testimony established that the Overells had died of fractured skulls, and a receipt turned up showing that Bud had bought the alarm clock used in the makeshift time bomb - a clock Bud had given Louise as a gift. Blood on Bud's effects was shown to match that of the late Overells.

And on, and on....I had never seen a case more open and shut.

"Are you sitting down?" Fred's voice said over the phone.

"Yeah," I said, and I was, in my office in the Loop.

"After deliberating for two days, the six men and six women of the jury found Bud and Louise not guilty."

I almost fell out of my chair. "What the hell?"

"The poor kids were 'victims of circumstance,' so says the jury - you know, like the Three Stooges? According to the jury, the Overells died due to 'the accident of suicidal tampering with dynamite by Walter Overell.'"

"You're shitting me...."

"Not at all. Those two fresh-faced kids got off scott free."

I was stunned - flabbergasted. "How could a jury face such incontestable evidence and let obvious killers go free?"

"I don't know," Fred said. "It's a fluke - I can't imagine it ever happening again...not even in California."

# #

The trial took its toll on the lucky pair, however - perhaps because their attorneys had tried to pit Bud and Louise against each other, the girl literally turned her back on the Boy Scout, after the verdict was read, scorning his puppy-dog gaze.

"I'm giving him back his ring," she told the swarming press.

As far as anybody knows, Louise Overell and Bud Gollum never saw each other again.

Nine months after her release, Louise married one of her jailers - I wondered if he'd been the guy who passed the love letters along to the prosecution. The marriage didn't last long, though the couple did have a son. Most of Louise's half million inheritance went to pay for her defense.

Bud flunked out of pre-med, headed east, married a motordome rider with a travelling show. That marriage didn't last long, either, and eventually Bud got national press again when he was nabbed in Georgia driving a stolen car. He did two years in a federal pen, then worked for a radio station in the South, finally dropping out of public view.

Louise wound up in Las Vegas, married to a Bonanza Air Lines radio operator. Enjoying custody of her son, she had a comfortable home and the security of a marriage, but remained troubled. She drank heavily and was found dead by her husband in their home on August 24, 1965.

The circumstances of her death were odd - she was naked in bed, with two empty quart-sized bottles of vodka resting near her head. A loaded, cocked .22 rifle was at her feet - unfired. And her nude body was covered with bruises, as if she'd been beaten to death.

Her husband explained this by saying, "She was always falling down." And the Deputy Coroner termed her cause of death as acute alcoholism.

I guess if Walter Overell dynamited himself to death, anything is possible.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Fact, speculation and fiction are freely mixed within this story, which is based on an actual case and uses the real names of the involved parties, with the exception of my fictional detective, Nate Heller and his partner Fred Rubinski (the latter a fictionalization of real-life private eye, Barney Ruditsky). I would like to acknowledge my research associate, George Hagenauer, as well as the following works: The California Crime Book (1971), Robert Colby; For the Life of Me (1954), Jim Richardson; "Reporters" (1991), Will Fowler; and the Federal Writers' Project California guide.

Bill Crider's Death's Brother was originally published in New Mystery #2 in 1992. It an example of Crider's noir side, which can be seen in his novels published under the name "Jack MacLane" and in his private-eye novels featuring Truman Smith.

DEATH'S BROTHER

by Bill Crider

"O soft embalmer of the still midnight,

Shutting with careful fingers and benign,

Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: . . . "

Jon Cline closed the leatherbound book on Keats' poem to Sleep and thought about the words. He especially liked the part about the "soft embalmer of the still midnight," with its suggestions of the undertaker's parlor and cool marble slabs, but he also liked the "careful fingers and benign."

He looked at his own fingers, wondering how benign they were, put the book on the end table by his leather-upholstered recliner, and took the glass of Wild Turkey that was sitting there. Sipping the smooth, fiery liquid, he thought about the time he had first heard about Sleep, Death's brother.

It had been in high school, in an English class where the teacher was discussing Greek mythology. Even then Cline had been interested in literature, and he remembered most of what the teacher had said, though of course he had read the story again later on.

It seems there were two of the gods that most of the others didn't like at all. The two who proved to be so unpopular were the sons of Night—Death and his brother, Sleep. The other gods had so little regard for those two that they wouldn't even let them reside up on Mount Olympus, where all the rest of the immortals were living and having a high old time of it. Sleep had to live in a cave quite some distance away and was hardly even mentioned in any myths at all.

The gods apparently didn't even like to think about him, not until they needed him, anyway.

The story Cline remembered best about Sleep concerned a man who had to die for some reason or another. Cline couldn't quite remember why. The man was the helmsman on one of the ships of Aeneas, and the gods sent Sleep to do him in. Sleep pulled all the tricks he knew, but the man—Palinurus was his name, Cline suddenly recalled—was too devoted to his duty; he just wouldn't let go of the helm and fall into the sea.

Sleep must have learned a few things from his brother, though, because he finally just pushed Palinurus over the side.

The man slipped into the sea, still clinging to the helm. In fact, he took it right along with him, but Sleep got the job done, all right.

Cline had always admired him for that.

# #

The old man's room stank. It smelled like someone had puked in there, and Cline would have bet the toilet in the little adjoining bathroom hadn't been cleaned in a month.

There was a lamp on the nightstand next to the old man's bed, but it just had about a twenty-watt bulb in it. It mostly made a lot of shadows and gave the room a kind of yellow glow.

That was good enough for Cline, though. He could see just fine.

There was a big chair over in one corner with what looked like about a week's laundry in it, sheets, pajamas, stuff like that. Maybe some of the stink was coming from there.

There was a tv set sitting on top of a chest of drawers, but Cline doubted if the old man had watched it in a long time. He didn't look to be in much of a condition to watch anything, what Cline could see of him.

What Cline could see of him in the dim light was just his head, which was sticking out from under the dingy sheets of the bed he was lying in. It looked like one of those heads Cline used to see as a kid in the old movies when they unwrapped The Mummy, or when Dracula had been in the sun about a minute too long, dried and shriveled and covered with lines like a road map.

The rest of him probably wasn't in much better shape. Cline could see sort of an outline of him under the sheet and lightweight thermal blanket that covered him. Hell, he probably looked worse than The Mummy. Out from under those covers, the old guy would probably make The Mummy look like he'd just gotten back from a visit to a health spa.

The covers hardly moved with the old man's shallow breathing. A clear bubble of spit formed in his mouth as Cline watched him.

The man had been like that for months, more than a year. He should have died long ago, but for some reason he kept clinging to a life that had nothing of dignity left in it.

There was dirt in the corners of the smelly room where he lay. He had to wear diapers and be changed like a baby. He was unable to identify his own daughter when she appeared in the room.

He needed someone to push him over the side.

That was Cline's job. He hadn't taken it on voluntarily, not exactly, but he hadn't run from it, either.

# #

"I don't know what I'm going to do, Jon," Dana Randall

had said to him. "I need the money so much, and I'll never get it as long as he's alive."

They had been sitting in deck chairs, looking out beyond the pool and the tennis courts at the woods that bordered the Randall estate. The sun dappled the wooden redwood deck, and the leaves of a huge pecan tree speckled it with shadows.

"Surely there's enough to run the estate," Cline said, sneaking a look at Dana's long, tanned legs. They were just about the best legs Cline had ever seen. Movie actresses like the ones in the 1950s, the ones who were always going and having what they referred to as their "gams" insured for a million dollars, would have killed for legs like that.

Dana raised a languid hand and let it drop. "There's enough for that, of course. But not for anything else."

"Anything else" in Dana's terms covered all the things that really mattered to her—cars, parties, clothes, jewelry—the necessities of life.

"He can't last forever," Cline said. He'd known Dana for almost a year, ever since she had signed up for his class in Romantic poetry at the university as a way to ease her boredom and kill a little time while she waited to come into her inheritance.

Cline had soon found himself doing more than was required of him as a professor to help her do both of those things. He spent extra time to tutor her in his office and then at her home. Before long, she was tutoring him. In the bedroom.

It was the kind of tutoring Cline had often longed for. He was single and lonely. And while he had heard stories of other professors who got involved with nubile young women, it had certainly never happened to him. That it finally had seemed like a minor miracle.

Dana tossed her long black hair and looked at Cline. "There was something you said in class one time, something Byron said when he was hoping for an inheritance."

Cline remembered. "It had to do with the fact that old women never die."

"That's right. They just hang on to life forever. Just like my father. He'll never die, Jon. He'll hang on for ten more years just to spite me, so I'll be too old to enjoy the money. It isn't fair."

Cline figured that Dana would be around thirty-six in ten years. He was a ten years past that already.

Dana turned in her chair and looked at Cline with intense blue eyes, the eyes that were so startling with her dark hair and tanned skin.

"You could help me," she said. "I'll give you ten thousand dollars if you will."

# #

The old man stirred slightly in the bed. Not much. He didn't seem capable of much.

Cline walked over and looked down at him. He wondered what it would be like to be so near to dying, and he thought about a sentence from Keats: "Many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death."

Maybe the old man wanted to die and just couldn't say so. Cline was pretty sure he would in that situation. Well, there was no use in putting it off any longer. It was time to help the old man to cease upon the midnight with no pain.

Cline took one of the flimsy pillows from the bed and prepared to press it to the old man's face.

Dana had assured him that it would be all right. "People die in places like that all the time. And I can guarantee you there won't be an autopsy. I won't allow it."

That was one reason she had put him in the Happy Hills Nursing Home. The old man's money would have bought him much better, but with more care and watchfulness on the part of the staff, it would have been harder to do him in. Dana admitted to Cline that she'd planned it that way from the beginning.

Cline leaned down and the lamp threw a long shadow across the old man's bed, darkening his face.

Cline brought the pillow down.

The old man's eyes popped open. He stared wildly at Cline, at the descending pillow. He might have had difficulty recognizing Dana, but he had not trouble at all recognizing what was about to happen to him. He struggled with the covers and managed to get one spidery hand out, raising it as if to protect his face.

Cline hesitated, stopping the pillow's descent. He didn't know what to do. Dana had told him that her father wasn't aware of anything, didn't even know who she was.

The old man's hand reached up and his scrawny fingers tangled in the pillow case as he tired to force it away from him. He had almost no strength at all.

Cline moved the pillow and leaned down. He could smell the old man's breath, foul and hot.

"Wha . . . ?" the old man said. "Wh . . . why?"

Cline looked behind him, though the voice was lower than a whisper. The door was securely closed. Cline looked back at the man on the bed.

"Because," Cline said. He suddenly realized that he was sweating profusely. "Because it's past your time. "You have to die. You should want to die." He brought the pillow down, feeling the pressure of the old man's hand.

"No." The word wheezed out of the old man's mouth. "I don't want to die. I want to live."

Why? Cline wondered. Why would anyone want to live in that dark room with that rank smell, with that body that was nothing but a husk?

He held his breath and pressed down hard on the pillow.

# #

Cline needed the ten thousand. His salary at the university wasn't that bad, but he'd made a few bad investments right before the oil bust and his retirement plans had been set back five years. Worse, in need of some cash in a hurry to cover one of the investments, he'd borrowed heavily and was now in danger of losing both his house and his car.

"It wouldn't be like you were killing him," Dana said. They were at a seafood restaurant now, a place known for the bounty of its buffet supper, and they had eaten crab and shrimp and gumbo until they could hardly eat any more. "He's practically dead already."

"But he's not dead," Cline pointed out. "There's a big difference."

"He doesn't know me when I visit," Dana said, spearing one more shrimp on her cocktail fork and popping it in her red mouth. "He doesn't move, he doesn't talk, and he even smells dead."

Cline didn't give in that easily, but later that night, in the rumpled sheets of her bed, he capitulated.

"It would be almost like you were doing him a favor," Dana said. "He doesn't have anything to live for, after all."

# #

The trouble was, no one had explained that to the old man. He clung to his life with a tenacity that surprised and frightened Cline, writhing under the thin covers and clawing at Cline's hands with amazing vigor.

But Cline persisted, and finally the struggling stopped.

Cline took the pillow away from the ravaged face and put it on the bed. There would certainly be an investigation if he left things as they were. The old man had kicked the covers loose from both sides of the bed and the foot, and even the rubber sheet over the mattress pad had twisted beneath him.

The old man's bulging eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.

Cline straightened everything as best he could. He wanted it to look as if the old man had died peacefully in his sleep. The last thing he did was close the staring eyes.

Getting out of Happy Hills was easy. He had never been there before, and he had come in wearing a heavy tweed sport jacket, a beret, and very dark, very big sunglasses. He had walked right past the reception desk as if he knew exactly where he was going, because he did. Dana had given him explicit directions. Leaving, he had the jacket draped over his arm, the beret in one of its pockets with the sunglasses.

It didn't really seem to matter much. The woman at the desk never looked up.

# #

The sun slanted in through a gap in the curtains and fell across the table as Cline scanned his newspaper at the breakfast table the next day.

Cline had expected to see headlines about Randall's death; after all, at one time Randall had been a big man, a well-known name in financial circles.

But there was nothing. Cline stared at the obituaries, wondering if Randall's body had even been discovered yet. Happy Hills had seemed pretty lax, but not that lax.

Then the name Happy Hills caught his eye and he found himself reading an article about the death under suspicious circumstances of one Gregory McCarthy.

"Jesus wept," Cline said. He kept reading and discovered that McCarthy's son Thomas had gone to visit his father at Happy Hills late in the afternoon and found the old man's body. He had called for a supervisor, who had called the police. The police were investigating the receptionist's story of a mysterious visitor to McCarthy's room. The visitor was described in detail, right down to the color of his eyes, and the description fit Cline like a thousand-dollar suit. An autopsy of the body had been ordered.

"Son of a bitch," Cline said, and he knew he'd been screwed.

Thomas McCarthy had been a student in the same class with Dana Randall. McCarthy was an athlete, and he had not performed well in class, but Cline had to admit that the young man was certainly handsome. He had broad shoulders, crisp and curly blonde hair, green eyes, and a killer smile.

Cline, on the other hand, was balding, skinny, and prone to have dandruff on his bad days. He'd sometimes wondered how Dana Randall had been attracted to him, but he'd attributed it to his brains.

Now he knew it was something else. And it certainly hadn't been his goddamned brains.

He put the paper down on the breakfast table. It lay there between the cup of cooling coffee and the plate of half-eaten bacon and eggs while Cline tried figure things out.

Why would Dana have tricked him into killing someone else's father?

Probably for the same reason he had been willing to kill hers.

Money.

She had set Cline up and played him for a sap. He had walked right into it. He remembered the way it had developed now, with her gradually allowing him more and more intimacy with her and finally mentioning her father's condition.

It had never occurred to him to check out the truth of things. He had simply believed her.

"Idiot!" he said aloud. What a fool he had been. Old man Randall was probably alive and well on a tropical island somewhere, or maybe he was living on ranch in Colorado or in a condo in San Francisco. It didn't much matter. It was certain that he still controlled all the finances in the family. Dana had no doubt told the truth about one thing. She had no money of her own.

But Thomas McCarthy did. Or would, as soon as his father's will was probated. That part of the story had probably been true as well, except that it was Thomas rather than Dana who needed someone out of the way.

So Thomas and Dana had met in the class, hit it off, and wondered about how to get the money. They needed someone else. A patsy, that was the term, Cline believed, and he certainly fit the definition.

He could never go to the police, of course. How could he tell them that he was innocent in McCarthy's death, that it had all been a simple misunderstanding? They would get quite a laugh out of something like that.

There was no way out, even if he did go to the police. He had believed Dana when she said that there would be no investigation. His fingerprints were probably all over the old man's room, and he didn't doubt that the receptionist could pick him out of any line up. She would have been coached carefully and provided with a good clear photo. All Dana had to do was deny everything.

But what about motive? What motive did he have for killing Gregory McCarthy? None at all. Wouldn't the police see that?

They might, he thought, but the fingerprints, the description, the identification by the receptionist—those would outweigh the lack of motive. The police wouldn't give a damn, and the jury probably wouldn't either.

Cline was sweating as much as he had in the old man's room. He stood up and walked to the telephone. Maybe he was completely wrong. Maybe his imagination was getting the better of him. He had to find out.

He reached for the phone.

# #

Dana knew who the caller was before she picked up the phone. She had been expecting the call.

"Hello?" she said.

"Dana?" Cline's voice was uncharacteristically weak.

"Who is this?" she said. She held the phone in her right hand and examined the fingernails of her left as she talked. The polish was chipped on the index finger.

"You know who it is. It's Jon."

"Jon?"

"Jon Cline, goddamnit."

"Oh, yes, the professor at the university. What can I do for you, Dr. Cline?"

Her voice was cool and impersonal. Cline knew he didn't have a chance against her. He hung up without saying another word.

He knew there was no use to ask about his ten thousand dollars.

# #

Cline didn't go to the campus that day. He called his department head and told her that he was coming down with something. He spent most of the morning wondering how in the hell he had gotten himself into such a mess and what he was going to do about it.

Cline's problem was that he didn't think of himself as a murderer, but then he had never thought of himself as being someone who could be transformed into an total ass by a beautiful woman, either.

As far as the murder went, he was probably in the clear as long as he kept quiet. His description was like that of a lot of other men his age, and his fingerprints would be meaningless to the police. He had never been in the military, never been arrested.

It was the situation that was intolerable. He thought of himself as an intellectual, one who liked and appreciated the things of the mind and soul. Now he was a killer.

In a way, he knew that he was kidding himself about the intellectual bit. The material things of life were of great interest to him, and so were the luxuries. His interest in the ten thousand was evidence of the first, and his passion for Dana spoke amply of the second.

Another part of the problem, however, was that Dana would always have him in her power now. She didn't need him at the present, but there might be an occasion when she did.

"Yes, Jon," she might say. "I want you to kill someone else for me. . . . What's that? You don't want to? But what if that receptionist from Happy Hills were to accidentally pass you on the street and recognize you? You wouldn't want that, would you, Jon?"

No, he wouldn't want that.

He went into his study, pulled a volume of Keats from the loaded bookshelves, opened a decanter of Wild Turkey, and started to drink and read.

# #

The liquor made everything clear to him.

He had done nothing really wrong. He had ended an old man's life, but the old man would not have lived long anyway. What did it matter that there was still some life in him? Couldn't he appreciate the fact that Cline had relieved him of the burdens of existence?

Look at Keats. There was a man who would have appreciated a little relief, someone like Cline who could deliver him from the weariness, the fever, and the fret, where men sit and hear each other groan.

It had been a mission worthy of Sleep, Death's brother. The old man was clinging to the tiller, and all Cline had done was push him over the side, nothing more.

It was all Dana's fault, anyway. She had asked him to do it, taken advantage of his weakness and his feeling for her. She was the one who should be punished. Along with her stud, that Thomas McCarthy.

Cline couldn't go to the police, naturally. That would just be playing into Dana's hands.

He would have to take care of things himself. He took a last drink of the whiskey and got unsteadily to his feet. He tried to remember how much he had drunk. Too much, probably. It was already late afternoon. He had been sitting in the study all day. The decanter was nearly empty.

He went into the bedroom and began rummaging in the closet. After a while he found the pistol, a .38 revolver that he had bought five or six years before because of a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. He had even learned how to use the pistol by taking a course at the firing range of a nearby community college, though he didn't remember much of what he had learned. He had kept the pistol in his nightstand for several weeks, then put it in a box in the closet where it had remained ever since.

The gun was not loaded. Cline had prudently removed the shells, but he found them in their green and yellow box. He extracted five of them and awkwardly thumbed them into the chambers.

He struggled clumsily into a sport coat, slipped the pistol into the pocket, and left the house.

# #

There was a red Miata parked in front of Dana's house.

Cline had known somehow they would be there, but he was surprised that McCarthy was already wasting his inheritance by spending two or three thousand dollars over list for a toy car.

Cline parked his own car, a three-year-old Chevy Malibu that wasn't sporty but was at least made in America. When he got out, the pistol sagged against his hip.

He walked around to the back of the house. He was sure they would be taking a swim or maybe sitting on the deck, sipping white wine before dinner, which they would probably eat at one of the town's trendy restaurants.

They were there, all right, sitting in the same chairs where he and Dana had sat when she brought up the subject of her father's murder. They were both in bathing suits, Dana looking as if she'd just walked out of the SI swimsuit issue, McCarthy looking like something carved from a block of granite. The low sun slanted across their perfect bodies.

Cline reached for the pistol. The sight caught on the lining of the pocket, but he got it out after making only a minor tear in the fabric.

Then he found that he couldn't hold the weapon steady. His hand refused to stop shaking. Too much Wild Turkey, he thought.

His foot scraped on the wooden steps of the deck, and McCarthy heard him.

"Jesus Christ," he said, looking casually around. "It's the fucking masked avenger."

Cline thought the comment was unnecessarily crude, as well as inaccurate. He wasn't wearing a mask.

Dana turned her blue eyes on him. "Don't be silly, Jon," she said.

Silly. That was what she thought of him, all right. That was what they both thought of him. Well, they were wrong.

"Bitch," he said. He'd thought he could say it clearly, but it came out sounding like "Bish."

McCarthy laughed. "The old fart's drunk."

"Go home, Jon," Dana said. "There's nothing for you here."

"Used me," Cline said, slurring the words. "Used me."

"Of course I did," Dana told him. "What did you expect? Thomas and I needed a little help, and you seemed like just the person to provide it."

"Damn right," McCarthy said. "You don't think she fucked you because she liked it, do you?" He stood up and ran a hand over his completely hairless chest. "Not when she had something like this around."

Cline wanted to shoot McCarthy more than anything in the world, but the alcohol had not quite short-circuited his brain. He knew now that he wasn't going to kill anyone. "Told me you usually couldn't get it up," he said. "Told me when you did, it wasn't any bigger than her little toe."

"Asshole," McCarthy said. He started across the deck toward Cline.

"Don't, Thomas," Dana said. "He's just trying to upset you."

"It worked," McCarthy said. He was reaching for the pistol. "I'm gonna take that thing and make you eat it, Cline."

Cline was trying to pull the trigger, but he couldn't hold the gun steady, and his finger didn't seem to have any strength in it.

McCarthy's big hand closed over Cline's smaller one and crunched. Cline's fingers felt like chicken bones about to splinter and pop through his skin.

"Gimme that gun," McCarthy said.

Cline stubbornly held on, and McCarthy reached out to swat him in the face with a palm the size of a tennis racquet.

The palm connected, snapping Cline's head back, and the pistol went off though Cline wasn't conscious of having pulled the trigger. He staggered back into the yard and fell down.

When he looked up he saw McCarthy staring his right shoulder. Bright red blood was running down over his chest.

"Are you all right, Thomas?" Dana said. She still hadn't gotten up.

"I'm gonna kill that sumbitch," McCarthy answered, coming down off the deck after Cline.

Cline's head seemed to be vibrating, and he couldn't get to his feet. He looked around him for the pistol, which he had dropped, but he couldn't see it. The whiskey he had drunk was burning in his stomach, and he felt it about to come up. He didn't try to stop it.

"Gross!" McCarthy said when Cline spewed the Wild Turkey on the lawn. McCarthy was obviously repulsed, but he didn't slow down. He kicked Cline in the chest with a right foot that could have propelled a field goal attempt through the posts at fifty-five yards.

Cline felt something in his chest crack as he tumbled backward. He didn't even try to get up this time, and McCarthy kicked him again, in the face this time. Cline's nose flattened with a grinding sound and he felt teeth break.

McCarthy reached down and grabbed a handful of Cline's thinning hair and hauled the older man to his feet. He held him up as he punched him repeatedly in the stomach and chest.

As the fist smashed into his ribs, Cline felt as if someone were stabbing his insides with a sharp knife. He opened his mouth to scream, and McCarthy unhinged his jaw with another blow from his open palm.

"Mine's bigger than yours, goddamnit," McCarthy said.

In a frenzy of desperation, Cline yanked his head back as hard as he could, leaving McCarthy with a handful of hair and a bit of scalp to go with it. Blood trickled into Cline's eyes.

Cline's knees were wobbly, but not because he was drunk. He had never been more sober. The pain had done that for him. God, he wished he were drunk, now.

He stumbled backward, trying to escape McCarthy. Through foggy eyes he saw Dana calmly watching them from the porch. She didn't seem to be disturbed or excited in the least.

McCarthy was both. It was as if the blood had inflamed him. He caught up with Cline and grabbed his left arm. Cline slumped, and McCarthy brought the arm down sharply over his bent leg, snapping Cline's radius and ulna like dry cane.

Cline shrieked and nearly fainted, but McCarthy wasn't through.

He pulled Cline up and rammed his knee into Cline's testicles, raising Cline up a foot off the ground. Cline's mouth opened in the rictus of a scream, but only a dry cawing sound came out.

"Don't matter how big it is if you can't use it," McCarthy said.

Then he kicked Cline twice more. The toe of his shoe hit Cline's stomach and then nearly touched his backbone.

Cline lay on the ground, gagging. McCarthy was hardly winded. He spit on Cline's upturned face.

"Asshole," he said, turning to go back up on the deck.

Cline felt something hard and metallic under his right hand. It was the pistol. He got his fingers around it, lifted it, pushed himself up on one elbow.

"McCarthy," he tried to say. It came out of his ruined mouth sounding more like "Muhguthy, but McCarthy turned around.

Cline wasn't sure he even had the strength to pull the trigger, but he did. He pulled it three times.

The first shot missed and zinged by Dana. She rolled out of the chair and fell to the deck. Cline might have laughed had he been able, but he wasn't. He was pulling the trigger again, and this time, as much by accident as by design, he hit McCarthy in the stomach, bringing a look or shocked surprise to McCarthy's face, a look which was obliterated by the next bullet, which hit McCarthy right in the mouth and punched out the back of his head, taking a surprisingly neat square of skull right along with it, as well as some other stuff of red and gray that was not nearly so neat.

McCarthy stood there for a second, and then something told him he was dead.

He fell like a stone.

The pistol dropped from Cline's fingers and he lay back on the grass.

Dana stood up and walked across the deck and onto the lawn. She stood for a second looking down at McCarthy's body without any noticeable regret.

Then she walked over to Cline. "I knew I could count on you, Jon," she said.

He looked at her pleadingly. He didn't understand.

"Daddy's never let me have enough money," she said. "That was the truth. But he's as healthy as a horse. The doctors are always amazed at his checkups. He'll live to be a hundred."

"Buh-buh . . . ."

"I decided to get Thomas's money. We've been engaged for ten months. Time enough for Thomas to make a will leaving everything to me. His father was in the way, of course, but you took care of that for me."

Dana looked off into the distance. The sun was going down now, and her black hair looked even blacker in the dying light.

"Then Thomas was in the way. I didn't want him, Jon, any more than I wanted you. But you took care of that, too, didn't you."

Cline looked at her in wonder. All he could feel was pain, in his arm, in his chest, in his stomach, in his head. It had all blended into one gigantic pain that threatened to tear him apart.

"Jealousy is a terrible thing, isn't it?" she said. "You killed Thomas's father, God knows why. And then you came over here to kill him." She looked back over her shoulder at Thomas's body. "You did it, too. But you didn't survive, did you?"

Cline realized that he was crying. The hot tears were rolling down his face.

"I was in the house when I heard the fighting," Dana said. "But by the time I could get here it was too late. I saw you shoot Thomas, and then you turned the gun on me, but you were weak and I wrestled it away from you."

She bent down and picked up the pistol. "Four shots. There should be at least one more, shouldn't there, Jon?"

She pointed the pistol at Cline's face.

His broken mouth worked as he tried to speak, but no words came out.

"What is it that you want, Jon?" Dana said.

The pain ran through him like a living flame, searing him inside and out. His head rang like a cathedral bell. He had never known that pain could be like that. He thought he might shudder to pieces, or maybe explode, if he just let himself go.

I want to die, he thought.

But then the words came, and with them a sudden understanding. "I . . . want to live," he managed to say.

Dana threw back her head and laughed. She had a beautiful laugh.

Then she bent down over Cline like a ministering angel and shot him between the eyes.

She dropped the pistol in the grass and walked back to the house, thinking of all the ways she would spend the money that would soon be hers.

Poisoned, by Stephen Gallagher, was first published in issue 6 of Kimota magazine in the summer of 1997 and appears in the author's short fiction collection Out of His Mind. Gallagher's novels often fuse crime with elements of horror. His TV work includes scripting for Doctor Who and the creation of the CBS series Eleventh Hour.

POISONED

By Stephen Gallagher

Dylan told his mother that he was going to read in the garden. It was a fine day, and it always seemed to brighten her up when he chose to read. Even a book with very few words and mostly just pictures was reckoned to be better than nothing. She said he watched too much television. She'd talk about rationing his TV watching, but then she'd never do anything about it.

Thank God.

"Stay where I can see you," she called after him.

"I will," he said.

The garden was a long one, and he could disappear into it. There was the part you could see from the house, and then there was the part beyond that had been left to go wild. It had dense bushes and an overgrown pond, and a derelict shed that he'd once turned into a den. Along the back of the garden, there was a wooden fence. This was rotten in places, although the greenery before it was so thickly-grown that there seemed to be no way to reach it. His father probably had no idea what state it was in. But if you knew what you were doing, and where you were going, there was at least one way to get through.

"Dylan?" his mother called.

"I'm right here," he called back.

He left his book in the shed, went around the old pond, ducked and squeezed through the greenery, and then wriggled out through the gap that had been made by some dropped planking. Beyond the gap stretched a dozen yards of clear ground, not exactly a track because no-one ever came down here, and then the perimeter fence of the local sports field. Turn left, and the corridor went into a dead end; but go right, and it would lead along behind the other big houses with their big gardens and come out into a descending valley with a stream. If he should follow the stream down, then the landscape would open out endlessly before him.

Halfway along behind the houses, he stopped and listened. Was that his mother, calling his name again? She was always checking on him. He lingered, torn by a vague sense of guilt. He knew that it was probably her, but a part of his mind was working hard to whitewash this out.

When it had succeeded, he turned and carried on.

The stream fed down into the first of the Ponds. There were three of these. There were also low hills, and flat plains, and sandy-coloured paths that snaked around and joined each other in unexpected places. It was something like a cruder version of a golf course, without the golf. The council had called it a country park, and put signs by the road. The river ran through it at the far end. Very few people came here.

He turned and listened again. But he heard nothing now.

So then, with a completely clear conscience, he went on.

His parents watched him all the time. Talk about angels hovering around us while we pray; his parents hovered around him, whatever he tried to do. It nearly drove him mad. He'd been their only child, and he spent most of his time either alone or in their company. Their idea of a good day out was to look around the shops in a town they hadn't visited in a while, and then find a cafe for afternoon tea. All three of them, together.

Occasional escape was the only option.

He'd lost count of the number of sit-down serious talks they'd had on the subject of the Council Estate children. His parents wanted him to stay away from them but they could never give him a single solid reason, other than to say that anything else was "inappropriate'. By Dylan's understanding, that simply meant that his parents didn't like the idea. No reason, just reaction. But how could he make them understand? Everybody needed friends, and he'd never had any problem making them. The problem seemed to be that he'd never made one that they'd considered suitable, and probably never would.

He followed the path of beaten sand, down into a field that had been churned up by horses' hooves into a surface like a choppy sea. Gypsies had camped down here for much of last year, and they'd left the place litter-strewn and blasted. Dylan's mother had been horrified by the gypsies' presence even more than by the prospect of her son following the Estate children around. She'd signed a petition, and had organised their immediate neighbours to sign as well. Now all the country park's access roads had been blocked by concrete-filled drums and heaps of earth so that no vehicle could get in. If it had been quiet out here before, it was even quieter now.

From the gypsy field, Dylan could hear voices.

Over a hill and down the other side, he found them. In the dip stood a bent tree with a rope swing hanging from one of its branches. A length of log tied into the lower end of the rope made a crude seat. The ground underneath had been worn into plain dirt.

One was up and swinging, three were watching. He knew them all. Fat Sam, Jason with the ever-runny nose, Kelly's brother Michael - the youngest by a couple of years - and Kelly herself. Kelly, the savage one, the tomboy; the one who both scared and fascinated Dylan. The boys were in jeans and trainers. Kelly was wearing a spotted dress and sandals.

He stood at a distance for a while, watching them, not wanting to approach uninvited. He heard one of them - it might have been Sam - say, It's him again, all the more distinct because it was said quietly and not shouted. They didn't give any sign of awareness, but their game suddenly grew more elaborate, more of a performance to make him envy the fun that they were having.

And it was hard going, because the rope had worn and snapped so many times that the seat had been repositioned too high for any of them to reach it with ease. When, finally, they got fed up and started to move on, Kelly turned toward him and called out, "Are you coming, or what?"

It was the closest to an invitation that he was going to get. He ran to catch up.

Michael was telling the others about a one-legged cat he'd once seen.

"A one-legged cat?" Sam said.

Jason, who seemed to have a permanent cold and whose nickname was Silversleeves because of his habit of relieving it on his pullover, said, "I've seen cats and dogs with three legs, but I've never seen a cat with just one."

"Well," Michael said uncomfortably, "this was."

It was obvious that what he'd had in mind was a three-legged animal, but now he was in a corner and he felt obliged to defend it. Better to persist in a mistake, the logic went, than to face the derision involved in admitting one.

Sam said, "How did it manage to walk?"

"I don't know," Michael said. "It just did."

Kelly said, "What do you call a one-legged cat?"

"Pogo!" Jason said, and everyone except for Sam hooted and cackled for as long as they could force it. Sam looked dark.

"Snot fukkin funny at all," he said, with grievance.

Dylan, just happy to be along, said nothing.

They were trooping down a narrow cut with bushes to either side. Without warning, something burst out onto the path ahead of them. It was a black and white sheepdog with a pale wall-eye, and it must have been attracted by the noise they were making. Kelly gave a shriek.

"It's all right," Dylan said quickly. "I know it."

"He looks mad," Michael said, grateful to the point of eagerness for any change of subject. "Look at his eyes."

"It's a she," Dylan said. "Those are just ordinary eyes for that kind of dog. Look at her tail."

The tail was wagging.

"Come on, Sherry," Dylan said.

But the sheepdog, having checked them out and finding them of limited interest, dodged his outstretched hand and headed off and away. She was a neighbour's dog, forever escaping and coming down here to hunt for rabbits. Her owner would set out looking for her, blowing a special whistle which the dog would ignore. Sometimes she'd drag home the day's catch, to audible effect.

Dylan said, belatedly, "That's how you tell with a dog. You look at the tail."

"That's only for normal dogs," Jason said. "Dogs that get out here go funny."

"They don't go funny," Kelly said. "Our Rex used to run all over around here."

"I know, and then your dad had to have him put to sleep."

"He did not. Our Rex went to live on a farm."

They walked on up to the crest of the hill. There they sat in a line, looking down onto the river. It was some way below them. Where it turned, a brown foam gathered and piled. From here, it looked like dirty snow that lifted and moved when the wind blew.

Jason wiped his nose in the usual way, and told them about a local dog he'd heard of whose puppies had been born without any eyes. This had been years and years ago, but for some reason people were starting to talk about it again.

He said, "One of women from the big posh houses came knocking on the door last week. She was trying to get everyone to go to a meeting about it."

Sam said, "If it really was dangerous, they wouldn't allow anybody down here."

Dylan said nothing, knowing that by 'the posh houses' they meant the road on which he lived. The newer council housing was almost right alongside. Both sets of residents stayed aloof. The people in the big houses were still trying to get the street layout altered so the council residents wouldn't cut through. The council tenants accused the private residents of wanting to put up a dividing wall.

Kelly said, "Them in the posh houses are always trying to get you to join something or sign something. Our dad always sends them off."

Jason said, "My dad says there's all sorts under the soil out here. Before it was fields, it was all mines and factories that got pulled down."

"I know there was mines," Kelly said. "That's what those fenced bits are."

"There was a battery place and a dye works as well. That's why all that orange and green stuff comes bubbling up when it rains."

Dylan's interest in the subject was waning already. There were trees, there was grass. All was fine. End of story. Could he hear a whistle? Jason was saying, "Then the dogs probably go home and lick their paws after they've walked in it. Then they go all strange and then they die. It's poison."

"It's not poison," Kelly said. "I've supped some of that."

"You don't know."

"I know more than you."

"My bum's all damp," Michael said, and so they got up and moved on.

Walking down the side of the hill, Dylan looked across the fields and saw the figure of Mr. Johnson, Sherry's owner. He was alone. He lowered the dog whistle, and Dylan guessed that he was staring in their direction although at this distance it was impossible to be sure. He wondered whether he ought to wave, but he didn't.

Dylan felt guilty for a while. But the guilt passed as they continued to descend, and Mr. Johnson was lost from sight.

Kelly, whose grandfather had been a miner, was talking about the pit shaft heads that dotted the reclaimed industrial area underlying the country park. To Dylan, these were no more than occasional fenced squares about the size of a small vegetable garden, all in unexpected places on otherwise featureless slopes.

Kelly said, "The tunnels are all underneath us. They go for miles."

"They're supposed to have been filled in," Sam objected.

"They're not," Kelly said. "There's all sorts down there. There's a town."

"You liar."

"It's for the politicians if there's another war," she said. "It's got streets and shops and everything, but it's completely deserted. They used the miners to dig it all out and then they sacked them all to keep it secret."

Dylan said, "Is that true?"

She turned to him. "You can see it, if you find the right place to go in," she said. "They've got hidden doors. I can show you one."

A few minutes later, they were climbing the next hill toward one of the shaft heads. Like the others, it was no more than a dozen metres square and contained by a wooden rail fence with barbed wire strung along the top and between the rails. Inside the square Dylan could see tall grasses and young, stunted saplings. As they were making their way up toward it, Kelly was whispering something to each of the others in turn.

It looked secure, but one of the fenceposts had been splintered at its base. It went over when Jason pushed, and the wire went with it. It didn't go all the way to the ground, but it was low enough for them all to be able to pick their way over. Michael got one of his socks caught on a barb, and squalled until Kelly pulled him free.

Dylan was scared and excited, both at once. Scared at being caught somewhere that he wasn't supposed to be. Excited for exactly the same reason. There didn't seem to be much else to get worked up about. The shaft had been capped with a platform of concrete sleepers, and the cap filled over with several feet of dirt. Two of the sleepers had crumbled and dropped, and the dirt had collapsed downward through the opening. The result was a depression in the middle of the square, and it was deep enough for the five of them to descend into. At the bottom of the depression was the way in.

"It's not like a trapdoor," Dylan said. "That's just a hole."

"It's a hole where the trapdoor used to be," Kelly said. "There are stairs inside."

"It's dark."

"There's a light you can switch on. Don't you want to see it?"

Dylan looked around. He realised that only he and Kelly had descended to the opening. The others were all back up at the top. Suddenly selfconscious, he said, "No, thanks."

"You're the only one here who's not seen it," Kelly said. "Don't be such a baby."

He could feel himself starting to blush. "I'm not," he said. "I'm just not that interested."

"I'll come in with you," she said. "Go on."

He had to duck to get under the rusty wires that were sticking out from the fallen concrete sections. He'd go in as far as the daylight reached, and no farther. Kelly was close behind him. She was still talking about how there were stairs and a light switch somewhere inside. It didn't look likely. The space beyond the hole formed a dark chamber. It looked as if the gypsies had used it to dump stuff. There was a car wheel with a bald tyre on it, and some bags of refuse that were split and seeping.

"Feel for the switch," Kelly said from behind him. "It's on that wall."

"There isn't a wall." There was only rubble.

"You're not looking properly. When we get down there, you can just walk into any of the shops and play with all the things in them. It's great. There's no one around who can stop you."

Enticing as the prospect was, he still couldn't quite bring himself to believe it. Steadying himself on the uncertain footing, he started to turn. Let her find the switch herself, if she was so certain it was there. He was certain now that she'd only brought him down here to make fun of his readiness to believe.

"Hey," she said. "Look at this."

She was silhouetted against the daylight. All that he could see was that she'd pulled her knickers down to around her knees and she was holding the lower part of her dress up high with both hands.

He didn't know what to do. There was braying laughter from outside and he could hear one of them saying, "She's doing it! She's really doing it! Have a look down and see his face!" The outlines of their heads bobbed in and out of the entranceway, and Dylan felt trapped and scared.

"Stop it!" he said.

Kelly hauled up her knickers and turned, as if to run to the others and leave him there. But as she spun around she went straight into one of the dropped beams, whacking her head right into it at eyebrow level. She stopped. She'd made no sound, other than the cricket-ball crack of bone against concrete.

Then she dropped with a certain grace, and landed with none.

There was a silence. Then the others started to call to her.

"Kelly?" Sam called.

And Jason shouted, "What's going on?"

"She's banged her head," Dylan shouted back. "You've got to come and help."

But nobody came down. He could hear them talking outside. There was urgency and concern in their tone, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

"Come on," he called out to them, but still nobody came.

He had to do something. Kelly was lying in the rubbish. He got hold of her under the arms, and started to drag her out. Would she need an ambulance? He was wondering how one could ever get to them, given that every track into the park had been blocked. To get one at all, somebody would have to call for it. That meant a lurch into the world of responsibility. The very thought made him feel sick.

Kelly's dress caught on something and when he struggled to pull it free, it tore. He hadn't looked at her too closely. She might have been dead, for all he knew. But as he was dragging her, she suddenly revived and started to cry, as if he'd jogged some wires that had sparked her back into life. Once started, she wouldn't stop.

Outside, she sat on the ground bawling while the rest of them stood around her and watched. Her forehead was cut and the rest of her looked pretty wretched.

Michael said, "What did you do?"

"Nothing," Dylan said.

"Our mam'll go mad."

Still crying, Kelly was arranging her torn dress over her scratched and dirty legs in a belated act of modesty. She was putting out the same loud, sobbing note, over and over. Her face was all twisted up and streaked with clean teary tracks through the grime. She sat on the pressed-down grass, looking utterly helpless.

Dylan wondered aloud whether they ought to call someone to come out for her, hoping that someone else would volunteer, but this was quickly deemed unthinkable.

Jason turned to look down at Michael and said, "You're going to have to take her home."

Michael, stricken, looked up at each of them. "I'll get killed when mam sees her," he said.

"You'll get killed if you just leave her here screaming her head off," Sam pointed out.

They all tried to help her to stand, and she beat their hands away the first time but then couldn't manage to get up on her own. They raised her to her feet. She was bawling too much even to say what hurt.

The four of them went off one way, in the direction of the estate, and Dylan went another in order to pick up the path that would lead him toward home. He watched them as they crossed the lower fields, and could hear Kelly all the way. She never let up.

Dylan re-entered the garden using the same route by which he'd left it. His book was gone from the shed, so his absence had definitely been discovered.

He got back into the house and up the stairs to his bedroom without being seen. Some of his clothes were dirty and so he quietly changed them, opening and closing his drawers and the wardrobe door with elaborate slowness. He hid the soiled clothing under the bed, and then he sat on the coverlet and waited for his mother to find him.

She found him.

"I looked all over for you," she said from the doorway. "Where did you get to?"

"Just on a walk," he said.

She was obviously displeased with him. "You don't ever leave the garden without telling me first," she said. "Especially not to go down to the Ponds. What's out there has brought us enough unhappiness. How many times have I got to say it?"

"Sorry."

"It's always sorry. But it never sinks in, does it?"

She left him and went back downstairs, and he sat alone in his room for a while. He looked at his model aeroplanes, hanging from the ceiling on lengths of fishing line so that you could squint a little and they'd look as if they were actually in flight. They never moved, but their shadows passed across the walls again and again as the days went by.

Mostly he could put things out of his mind, once they'd happened. Without immediacy, it was as if they faded and left no stain. But the hurt of Kelly and the others turning on him as they had. . . for some reason, this was something that wouldn't go away.

He lay back. The hurt shifted. But still it stayed with him.

Visitors came calling, some time later. He heard their muffled voices down below. He wondered. He wondered who it was. Then he thought he heard his name. Nobody called for him, but after a few minutes he heard his mother coming up the stairs. He tensed as she approached his room along the landing.

He'd expected her to be angry, but she wasn't. Just very, very deliberate. She sat on the bed, and his heart dived in despair. He'd known scenes like this before, but only rarely. When loved ones died, or his pets "went away'. The serious moments, where his life took some kind of a turn that he hadn't asked for and couldn't control.

She said, "I'm going to ask you something. I want you to tell me the truth."

Dylan said nothing.

His mother said, "Where did you go when you went out this morning?"

"Just playing," he said.

"Who with? The ones I've had to keep telling you about?"

Again he said nothing, but the way that he avoided her eyes was a form of admission.

She said, "There are two policemen downstairs. They're going to ask you this, but I want you to tell me first. Did you touch Kelly at all?"

Touch her? He'd had to.

He said, "I pulled her out when she banged her head."

"Pulled her out of where?"

"This place they were showing me." He couldn't bring himself to tell her about the other part.

"Were they making fun of you?"

"We were all just laughing."

Then his mother said, "Listen to me, Dylan. They're children. You're twenty-six years old. I've tried to explain this to you but I can never seem to make you understand. You're not one of them. They're not your friends and they never can be. Now, tell me again. Did you touch her?"

Dylan swallowed.

"Not like that," he said.

The hurt was coalescing into something deeper and more vivid now; an apprehension that was all the more fearsome for being without a shape or a name.

She said, "Come on, Dylan."

"Come where?"

"We've got to go down and talk to these policemen."

"I don't want to," he said.

"I know you don't," she said.

And then she took his hand, and he had to let her lead him down the stairs.

Lee Goldberg's Remaindered was originally published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine a few years back and was a finalist for the Readers Choice Award. In late 2010, he wrote & directed a short film based on the story that is now playing the festival circuit throughout the country. You can catch the trailer on YouTube… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr3SF3VoNCs

REMAINDERED

By Lee Goldberg

The voice of a new generation sat at the end of aisle 14, where the house wares department ended and the book section began. He peered over the neat stack of paperbacks on the table in front of him and, once again, as politely as he could, told the irritable woman in the orange tank top and slouchy breasts that he had absolutely no idea where she could find wart remover.

"You're not being much of a help," she snapped, leaning one hand on her shopping cart, which was filled with disposable diapers, Weight Watchers Frozen Dinners, Captain Crunch, a sack of dry dog food, a box of snail poison and three rolls of paper towel. "Look at this, it's doubled in size just this week."

She thrust a finger in his face, making sure he got a good look at the huge wart on her knuckle.

"I don't work here," he replied.

"Then what are you doing sitting at a help desk?"

"This isn't a help desk. I'm an author," he said. "I'm autographing my book."

She seemed to notice the books for the first time and picked one up. "What's it about?"

He hated that question. That's what book covers were for.

"It's about an insomniac student who volunteers for a sleep study and falls into an erotic relationship with a female researcher that leads to murder."

"Are there cats in it?" she asked, flipping through the pages.

"Why would there be a cat in it?"

"Because cats make great characters," she dropped his book back on the stack, dismissing it and him with that one economical gesture. "Don't you read books?"

"I do," he replied. "I must have missed the ones with cats."

"I like cat books, especially the ones where they solve murders. If you're smart, you'll write a cat book." And with that, she adjusted her bra strap and rolled away in search of a potion to eradicate her warts.

The way things were going, maybe a cat book was the way to go. Things certainly couldn't get any worse than they already were.

He was wrong about that.

"Attention K-Mart shoppers," blared a shaky voice over the loudspeakers. "We're pleased to welcome best-selling author Kevin Dangler, the voice of a new generation, who is signing his latest book, Twisted Sheets, on aisle 14. Be sure to stop by and say hello, and on your way, don't forget to visit our garden center, where a flat of spring color is only $9.99."

He laid his head down on his arms and cursed God for his cruelty. One day, you're signing books in New York alongside Elmore Leonard and Sue Grafton for hundreds of adoring readers, and the next, you're sitting in a K-Mart in Spokane, competing for attention against a tray of bargain begonias and losing.

It was hardly the future he envisioned when his first novel, Frost Bite, burst on the literary scene five years ago with a starred review in Publishers Weekly declaring him "the reincarnation of James M. Cain at the peak of his literary powers." A front-page rave from The New York Times Book Review anointed him "the voice of a new generation."

His wife Janine, who had supported them both for years as a legal secretary, abruptly quit her job, flushed her birth control pills down the toilet, and demanded immediate impregnation. Giddy with success, Kevin enthusiastically complied.

Frost Bite landed on the New York Times bestseller list for a week, just long enough to sell the paperback rights for six figures and justify calling himself a best-selling author for the rest of his life.

One year, five hardcover printings, one new house, two BMWs and one colicky baby girl later, his second novel came out. Personally, Kevin thought Do Unto Others was his best work, an opinion not shared by Publisher's Weekly, which called "the phone book a thriller by comparison." Kirkus Reviews lambasted it as "478 page suicide note for a once-promising writing career." Entertainment Weekly wondered if the author had "undergone a previously undisclosed lobotomy after finishing his last book." The New York Times ignored it altogether.

It surprised nobody but Kevin when Do Unto Others tanked, remaindered to $1.99 oblivion in just six weeks. He was immediately written off as a one-hit wonder.

Kevin set out to prove them wrong and started writing a new novel. In the meantime, his enthusiastic spending caught up with him, forcing him to downsize. He traded the house for an apartment and the Beemers for Daewoos, assuring his furious wife he'd buy it all back with the big money from his third book.

But his publisher rejected Twisted Sheets, and so did seven others. His wife decided it was time that the voice of a new generation went to work in her father's shoe store.

Frantic, Kevin finally sold his book for $7500 to a paperback house best known for churning out an endless series of occult romances by an author who died twenty years ago.

The instant Twisted Sheets came out, Kevin fled in his Daewoo on a self-arranged book tour. He partly financed his cross-country trek by selling autographed, fifth editions of Frost Bite, which he bought for a buck and, when he could, sold out of his trunk for $20.

For the last two months, he'd been signing anywhere and any place, desperate to spark word-of-mouth, willing to do anything but have to return to his nagging wife and wailing kid and the nightmarish prospect of selling Florsheims for the rest of his life.

"I can't believe you're here," a woman said softly, almost whispering.

"Neither can I," he replied, his face still on the table.

Kevin wearily lifted his head and saw a woman in her early 20s, dressed casually in white sweat pants and a tight-fitting, sleeveless t-shirt, the words READ BETWEEN THE LINES emblazoned across her boyish chest. Her short, blond hair was tussled in that just-got-out-of-bed way, which made him think of her in bed and all the things she might have done to tussle her hair.

Kevin started to perspire. She handed him a copy of Frost Bite, the book jacket carefully protected in a clear, plastic cover. "Would you sign this for me?"

She brought a book with her. That meant she actually came here specifically to see him. To a K-mart. This could be the turning point. A small sign from God that things were starting to go his way.

"Of course," he eagerly snatched the book from her and opened it to the title page. It was a first edition. She must have had it for years. At last, a fan. They were finally coming out of hibernation.

"Who should I make it out to?" he asked.

"To Megan."

As an afterthought, she picked up one of the paperbacks and set it in front of him. "And this one, too, please."

"My pleasure." And, he could have said, a tremendous relief. In fact, that's almost what he inscribed in her copy of Frost Bite. Instead he wrote: To Megan, who reminded me why I became a writer.

"I've wanted to meet you for so long. I think you're the greatest writer," she bounced nervously, watching him sign her book. "This is kind of embarrassing for me to admit, but it's the sexiest book I've ever read."

Kevin looked up at her again, her unfettered bosom directly in front of his eyes. Self-conscious, he quickly shifted his gaze to her face. She was blushing.

"I'm very flattered," he said, leaving out the fact that he was also very excited.

"I really mean it. I used to make my ex-boyfriend read it to me before we made love," she said, a little breathlessly. "I think that was one of the reasons we split up. That, and he doesn't like books."

"All books, or just mine?" he closed Frost Bite, admiring again the careful way she'd folded the plastic cover over the jacket, and opened the paperback to inscribe it.

"I'm a librarian. I also collect signed, first edition mysteries. I have hundreds of them," she replied. "But there's only one I keep beside my bed."

He cleared his throat and glanced up at her chest again. A bead of sweat rolled down his back. She was the most attractive librarian he'd ever seen. "It must be a very impressive collection."

"Would you like to see it?" she asked tentatively.

Kevin looked back down at the paperback, as if hesitating over what to sign instead of fantasizing about what a peek at her collection could lead to.

He was hundreds of miles from home. His wife would never know. And didn't he deserve just a little appreciation after all the humiliation he'd endured?

Kevin smiled. "I'll finish up here and meet you in the parking lot in ten minutes."

# #

It was a 102 outside, so Kevin cranked up the Daewoo's air conditioner, the occasional puffs of lukewarm air it produced straining the four cylinder engine so much, he had a hard time keeping up with Megan at thirty miles per hour.

He followed her pristine, '91 Cutlass through Spokane, where KFC was still called Kentucky Fried Chicken, every other car seemed to be an old Ford pick-up with a camper lid and everybody he saw had a Budweiser cap.

His readers weren't here. They were hanging out in funky coffee houses or laying on the beach in Hawaii or recovering from plastic surgery or jetting across the Atlantic in business class. They weren't eating at Arby's and living in motor homes.

All the more proof that Megan was a sign. No, a miracle. She was the fishing boat that spotted your life raft just before you were going to eat the other survivors.

Megan led him to a tiny, ranch-style home in a forty year old housing tract, the decaying rubble of the baby boom. She rolled her Cutlass into the carport and hurried to the front door. He pulled up to the curb and when he got out, she was already inside the house, holding the screen door open for him.

"Come on in," she said enthusiastically. "I'll get you a beer."

As long as you don't bring me the hat to go with it, he thought. "That would be nice."

She stepped aside to let him through, forcing him to squeeze past her to get inside, his body brushing hers so closely, he could feel the heat off her skin.

He was still enjoying the sensation when he got his first look at her place. It was like stepping into a small town library. The walls were lined, from floor to ceiling and around the windows, with those white Ikea screw-and-glue bookcases, each shelf containing an orderly row of hardcovers, all protected in clear, plastic jackets. He wondered if she had a her own card catalog to go with it.

A leather couch, a recliner, and a coffee table were crammed closely together in what little space remained in the room. Comfort seemed secondary to collecting books.

"It probably seems crummy compared to your mansion," she said apologetically, heading for the kitchen.

"There's no place nicer than a room full of books."

Why ruin it for her? She didn't have to know he was living in a two bedroom apartment with one bath.

Kevin made a slow circle of the room, cocking his head to one side to read the titles on the shelves. She had books from all the biggest names in mysteries, from Block to Westlake. They couldn't all be signed.

He pulled a book out at random. Blood Work. It was a first edition. To Megan, this one is from the heart. Michael Connelly. He grabbed another. Get Shorty. First edition, signed by Elmore Leonard. To Megan, with appreciation.

Wow.

Kevin put the book back just as Megan came out of the kitchen, a cold bottle of Bud in each hand.

"This is an amazing collection," he took the bottle she offered him.

"I'm into books." She sat across from him on the arm of the couch.

"No kidding. I had no idea so many authors signed in Spokane."

"They don't," she grinned mischievously. "I have to chase them down."

"Really?" he grinned back, taking a drink.

"I go to all the big mystery conventions and stand in a lot of lines," she said. "But it's worth it to just to meet the authors."

"Why?"

"Because they've let me see what they see, feel what they feel, dream what they dream. You can't get more intimate than that. I want them to know who've they've touched and, if I can, touch them back."

Megan took a swallow of beer, tilting her head back. She had a wonderful neck, long and slender, and she caught him looking it. She smiled. "This is unreal, you standing here in my house."

"It's probably even more exciting for me."

"I don't know how that can be. I mean, who am I?"

Kevin knew exactly what to say. She'd practically given him the words herself. He set down his beer on a shelf and took a step towards her.

"The warm breath on my neck when I feel the most alone, the gentle caress along my arm when I think I'm lost. The presence I've always felt standing just behind me when I write," he said softly. "I always thought it was just my imagination. Now I know it's not. Now I know that all this time, it was you."

It was such a load of crap. It was all he could do to say it without laughing. But he could see that it was working, a slow flush creeping across her face. Megan rose from the couch and took his hand.

"Let me show you where I keep your book," she said huskily.

Megan led him down a short hallway to the bedroom. There were bookcases on every wall there, too, with barely enough room for a full-size bed and a nightstand, her copy of Frost Bite already in place. He wondered how she got it back there so fast.

She let go of his hand, slowly lifted her shirt over her head and fell back on the bed.

"Read to me," she whispered.

# #

He'd never done so much for so long and so many times. It was eight hours of carnal calisthenics. And now, well into the night, he lay on her bed, his skin sticky with sweat and saliva, feeling as empty and as fulfilled as he'd ever been.

She crawled to the end of the bed and stood up.

"You going to get us some more beers?" he asked.

"No, I'm getting the book."

"It's right here," he picked up Frost Bite off the nightstand and dropped it on the bed. "But I'm gonna need a break before I read you any more."

"That's not the book I'm looking for."

Megan strode naked to one of the bookcases, giving Kevin the chance to admire her bare back. He never thought shoulder blades were sexy before. She was changing his outlook on a lot of things.

She reached behind a row of hardcovers, pulled out a small diary and brought it back to the bed. "I want you to sign my autograph book."

He grinned. "Haven't I given you enough to remember me by?"

She opened the drawer of her nightstand, found a pen, and handed it to him with the diary. "This is my book of love."

"Your what?" his grin evaporated.

"These are all signatures of writers who first shared their dreams, and later their love, with me."

He opened the book. It was full of signatures and dates. Men and women. It was like thumbing through the bestseller lists for the last decade. What possessed these people to sign? Didn't they know what this diary was? Maybe they thought it was a harmless way to shut her up.

Whatever their reasons were, he wasn't making the same mistake. Not if there was a chance his wife could find out what his signature meant. If Janine left him, there would be no one to work while he wrote, no father-in-laws with shoe fortunes to borrow money from. And he certainly couldn't afford alimony and child support, not without getting a job.

"I can't sign it," he thrust the book back into her hands.

"You won't sign my book of love?" she was shocked.

"It wouldn't be right," he said.

"Why not?" Her voice cracked.

He tried to be gentle, to appeal to her sensitive, adoring side. "This is our private moment, just for the two of us. I don't want to share it with anyone else."

"But I do," she said. "I'm so happy, I want to run down the street shouting for everyone to hear."

"No."

"I want everyone to know that I touched you the way you touched me."

"Megan, you can't do that," he said, realizing the instant after he spoke that was the wrong approach. He knew what her weaknesses were. He should take advantage of them.

"I'm proud of what we have," she said, hurt turning to anger now.

"So am I, which is why I am going to honor it and cherish it by keeping it only for myself."

"That's selfish," she said, stunning him. "Sharing a great experience with others spreads the joy and makes the world a better place."

"I don't want you to spread the joy," he said firmly. "You can't spread this joy."

"I will, starting right now," she got to her feet.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to send an email to my entire buddy list," Megan said. "In a few minutes, the joy will be out there."

"No!"

But she was already starting to go. Without even thinking, he picked up his book and whacked her across the head. It felt so good, he just kept doing it even after she hit the floor.

Spread the joy? Whack. What sort of insanity is that? Whack. You don't have a career. Whack. You don't have a reputation. Whack. You won't be plunged into a financial abyss from which there is no escape. Whack. You. Whack. Crazy. Whack. Psycho. Whack. Bitch! Whack.

By the time he got a hold of himself, the only thing Megan was spreading was a pool of blood on the carpet. Kevin looked at the bloody book in his hand, and suddenly realized just what he had done. He felt her pulse.

She was dead all right.

He dropped the book on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed, shocked at how fast his life had turned to crap. What was he going to do now?

Think.

He stared straight ahead.

That's when his gaze fell on a row of books on a bottom shelf. They were books about writing. Mystery writing, to be exact.

So, she wanted to be a writer, too. Another dark side of her personality he didn't catch.

He stepped over to the bookcase and scanned the titles. One of them jumped right out at him: A Writers Guide to Crime Scene Investigation. He yanked it off the shelf and thumbed through it.

It's was a mother lode of good advice for the unprepared murderer. According to the guide, the biggest thing he had to worry about were fingerprints and anything they could pull his DNA from.

They'd used condoms, that was good. He'd have to get rid of those. And the beer bottles. It'd probably be a good idea to wash the sheets and make the bed, too.

What else?

The book was full of helpful suggestions. First, he gathered up all the sheets and his clothes and stuck them in the washing machine. Then he went into the kitchen, found a pair of rubber dish gloves, a bottle of Lysol, some paper towels and a garbage bag.

Kevin dumped all the beer bottles and condoms into the Hefty bag, then sprayed Lysol on every surface he touched or might have touched, including the copies of Get Shorty and Blood Work, wiping them clean.

After that, he transferred the laundry to the dryer and vacuumed the entire house, removing the vacuum bag afterwards and putting it in the trash with everything else.

By then the laundry was done. Kevin emptied the lint tray into the garbage, got dressed and made the bed.

He'd never cleaned anything so thoroughly in his life. If Janine saw this, she'd put him to work in their house. Of course, she'd have to be dead, too, before he'd let that happen.

Now it was time to consider the murder weapon. That was a problem. Obviously, he couldn't leave the book. But if he took it, someone might notice it was gone, particularly if it was true that it was the only book she left by her bed. Her ex-boyfriend would certainly know it was missing.

There was a simple solution.

He dropped the book into the Hefty bag, cinched it closed and carried it to the front door, which he opened just a crack to see if anyone was on the street. There was no one around and nobody had their lights on, pretty much what he expected at 3 am.

Kevin hurried to his car, opened the trunk, and took a copy of Frost Bite from the box inside. Then he stuffed the Hefty bag into the car, closed the trunk as gently and quietly as he could, and crept back into the house.

Still wearing the rubber gloves, he searched the place until her found Megan's stash of plastic, Brodart jacket protectors, carefully folding one around the Frost Bite cover.

Kevin put the book back on her nightstand and was about to turn away, when a question occurred to him. Should he sign it?

If he didn't, there would be nothing tying him to her. He'd walk away totally clean. Then again, what if she told someone she was going to get it signed? What if someone saw her at the K-mart?

The more he thought about it, the safer, and smarter, it seemed to sign it. Besides, no killer would leave his autograph behind. That alone was almost like an alibi.

He started to pick up the book with his gloves when he realized that would be a big mistake. His fingerprints, and hers, should be all over the book. So Kevin picked up the book with bare hands, took her pen, and signed it.

To Megan, a true book lover.

Kevin pocketed the pen, to dispose of later with the rest of the trash, put on his gloves again, then crouched down beside Megan's corpse and slapped her hands on the book a few times.

He returned the book to the nightstand. There was no easy way to take his fingerprints off her diary, so he took it with him to destroy later.

Kevin put the handy Writers Guide to Crime Scene Investigation back in its place and left the house, pleased and a little bit proud of himself at having committed such a flawless murder. There might even be a book in the experience some day.

Rather than check into a hotel for the rest of the night, he drove on to the next town on his signing schedule, ditching most of the trash in scattered bins on his way out of the city. When he was a good hundred or so miles south of Spokane, he pulled off the highway and drove down a dirt road for a while, well out of sight of anyone, before stopping.

Kevin got out, dug a little hole, and burned the book and the diary, spreading the ashes in the wind like the remains of a cremated friend.

# #

"Attention K-Mart shoppers. It's picnic season, and to celebrate, buy a family bag of your favorite snack chips and get one free! Then you can sample our onion dip and meet best-selling author Kevin Dangler, who's signing his new book Twisted Sheets. Welcome him to Walla Walla and get his book for 30% off!"

A gangly man, shirtless under denim overalls, abruptly steered his shopping cart to Kevin's table, where the voice of a new generation sat behind a stack of books and a bucket of chips, forcing himself to read the first chapter of The Nine Lives of Purrlock Holmes, currently number three on New York Times paperback bestseller list.

"Are you Kevin Dangler?" the man asked, snagging a complimentary potato chip and raking it through the complimentary bowl of onion spread.

No, I'm the Kevin Dangler imposter who goes from one K-Mart to another enjoying the vicarious thrill of not selling any books.

"Yes, I am," Kevin said.

"I liked Frost Bite."

"Thank you."

"But your last two books really sucked," the man shoved the chip in his mouth and grabbed another greasy handful of them out of the bucket. "Welcome to Walla Walla."

The man pushed his cart away, munching chips and leaving a wake of crumbs. Kevin stared after him, seriously considering whether to commit his second murder in two days. Maybe it's true what they say, it does get easier after the first time.

"If it makes you feel better, I can have his car towed," someone said.

Kevin turned to see a pot-bellied man in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki slacks, holding a paper bag..

"You can do that?" Kevin asked.

"It's the least of my super-powers," the man set the bag down on the table, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a leather wallet, which he flipped open to reveal an ID card and a badge. "You'd be surprised what a homicide detective can do."

Kevin stared at the ID. Detective Bud Flanek. From Spokane. He felt all the blood drain from his face and wondered if the cop could see it.

"You're a long way from home," Kevin said, trying hard to keep his voice even and calm.

This could be a coincidence. They happen. There wouldn't be a word for it if they didn't.

"It's about a four hour drive," Flanek replied, shoving his badge back in his pocket. "You could make it in less time, but I like to stop in Lewiston for a burger on the way."

"What brings you to K-mart?"

"You, Mr. Dangler. I missed you when you were in town and I'm a big fan."

"Really?" Kevin's heart was pounding so loud, he was certain Flanek could hear it. He took a paperback off the stack and opened it up to the title page. "Well, let me hurry up and sign a book for you. I know you've got a long trip back home."

"You know what I like best about your books? You really get inside the killers head. Gives me some insight, let me tell you," Flanek said. "I've often thought about calling you up for advice."

"That's very flattering," Kevin motioned to the book with the tip of his pen. "How would you like me to sign your book?"

"As a matter of fact, I'm working on a unusually difficult case right now," Flanek continued. "This librarian was murdered in her own home, hit over the head with a blunt instrument. We don't have any idea why."

Kevin looked up from the book. Flanek was smiling jovially, just a friendly fan who couldn't stop talking. But Kevin knew a cat-and-mouse game when he saw one. The key was to keep his cool. They had nothing on him, he saw to that.

"Surely the killer must have left fingerprints, a hair, something you can go on."

Flanek shook his head. "That's what's so strange. It was like she was killed by a ghost. Whoever did it wiped the place clean."

Kevin almost sighed with relief, before catching himself and turning it into a cough instead. "What about witnesses?"

"We aren't that lucky," Flanek absently scratched his belly. "Tell me, what would you do if you were writing this as a story? How would you catch the guy?"

What does he expect me to do, confess?

"In fiction, the killer always makes a mistake," Kevin replied. "The subtle, behavioral ones are the best, much more satisfying and dramatic than a forensic clue."

Flanek smiled, nodding his head in agreement. "That's why I like your books so much, especially your first one."

Everybody's a book critic, Kevin thought.

"Did I mention this librarian collected books?" Flanek said. "Signed first editions."

"It's a good hobby," Kevin said. "Keeps guys like me in business."

"Funny thing is, out of hundreds of books, she only had one that wasn't a first edition."

The detective reached into his paper bag and pulled out a hardcover copy of Frost Bite, wrapped in a nice, plastic cover. He opened it to Kevin's signature.

"This one," Flanek said.

Kevin stared at the book in disbelief, stunned by his own stupidity.

"It's a fifth printing," Flanek said, "just like the rest of the books in your trunk."

It wasn't enough to convict him, but Kevin knew the rest would fall into place now. Security camera videos from the K-Mart would probably put Kevin and Megan together, maybe even show him following her out of the parking lot. That was just a start. If Flanek could spot the difference between a first and fifth edition, he had the ability to build a strong, circumstantial case against him.

Flanek glanced over Kevin's shoulder. Kevin turned to see two uniformed officers standing a polite distance away, hands near their holsters.

Kevin sighed, resigned to his fate. He wasn't the first author ruined by a remaindered book, but he'd certainly be the most memorable.

He looked back at Flanek. "Would you still like me to sign your book?"

Flanek nodded. "Please."

Kevin had no trouble coming up with an appropriate inscription.

To Detective Flanek, who caught all my mistakes.

Joel Goldman is the Edgar and Shamus nominated author of two thriller series, the first featuring trial lawyer, Lou Mason, and the second featuring former FBI Special Agent, Jack Davis. The first four Lou Mason novels will be released as ebooks in the spring of 2011 and his fifth Lou Mason novel, Final Judgment, will be released in March 2012.

FIRE IN THE SKY

By Joel Goldman

Bobby Staley wiped his brow on his bare arm and prayed for a gust of wind that would carry him to heaven if only for a moment.

"Please God," he murmured, "let loose Elisabeth Bumiller's gown and I promise to get down on my knees every Sunday for the rest of my life. I know it's a sin to ask for somethin' like that, but that gown is half off her already and if you'd make this one miracle happen, I'd know that you surely are for real. Amen, sweet Jesus."

Elisabeth was an Electric Park fountain girl with the most perfect creamy white breasts Bobby ever hoped to see. She was one of a dozen girls that posed each night on wooden pedestals under white lights as rainbow-hued jets of water shot in the air, mist clinging to their gowns until the fabric became transparent, or so it seemed to his fevered seventeen-year-old brain. Her jet black hair peeked out from her bathing cap, framing piercing blue eyes he swore lingered on him as he hung on the wrought iron rail surrounding the circular fountain.

"She's lookin' at you," Terry Martin said, elbowing Bobby in the ribs. "That prayer of yours must be workin'."

Bobby jabbed him back, hissing under his breath. "Quit actin' like some jackass never seen a pretty girl before."

"Who you callin' a jackass? I'm not the one askin' Jesus to show me her titties!"

Bobby and Terry's families lived together with three other families in a Kansas City mansion turned boarding house. Terry had apprenticed to his father as an electrician but neither could find any work. Both their fathers found little to do but drink.

Terry was two years older, three-inches taller and shaved every day. Lean, muscled and long, he had a natural swagger and easy smile Bobby hoped would rub off on him. He was Bobby's guide through an uncertain world wracked by the Depression where their parents pinned all their hopes for the future on Roosevelt's New Deal while Terry preached the gospel of find an angle and take it. Bobby envied his bold, grab-life-by-the-balls-and-squeeze way of doing things, never backing down and taking chances that would have made him shake, Terry telling him at least once a day to grow a pair.

They made the pilgrimage by streetcar to Electric Park every night, sneaking in to watch the girls in the fountain, joining the crowd of men that gathered around it. Some of the men sported boaters and bowties, others wore jeans and t-shirts, all of them smelling of sweat, tobacco and beer and all of them joining in Bobby's prayer.

As soon as they slipped into the park, Terry clapped Bobby on the shoulder.

"Show starts in half an hour. Save me a place on the rail."

"Where you goin'?"

"Have me a look around."

Bobby didn't question him. Terry was always having a look around, his way of saying none of your business. Bobby never pushed. Terry was his only real friend and that meant not asking too many questions. He ducked and weaved his way to the rail, saving a space for Terry who showed up half an hour later sweating and out of breath, giving Bobby the big grin that always made him light up.

"Show time!" Terry said.

The fountain was terraced with a deep pool surrounded by a lower, shallow ring where an outer row of pedestals was mounted. At the beginning of each performance, the girls waded through the knee-deep water of the outer ring, using rungs carved into the sides of the pedestals to reach the top.

A single pedestal, reserved for Elizabeth, rose from the center of the deep pool, towering over the others. Bobby studied her smooth, graceful passage through the water and onto her perch twenty feet above where he stood, clearing his throat and rapping his knuckles on the rail to get her attention. She glanced his way, favoring him with a quick grin.

He blushed and turned toward Terry. "You see her lookin' at me!"

"You're dreamin! You got a hole in your jeans and no money in your pocket. Just watch the show and quit prayin' for miracles. Girl like that ain't got no time for the likes of you. Shit, you got a better chance of gettin' one of them young Jefferson House girls than you do her."

The Jefferson House for Women was two-doors down from their boarding house. It was a home for unmarried pregnant women and orphan girls.

Bobby pointed to Elizabeth. "She's a Jefferson House girl!"

Terry put his arm around Bobby's shoulders. "Trust me, son, that is no girl. She's all woman. And, long as we're stuck in this shit hole town, we ain't never gonna get the girl in the fountain 'less we can give her what she wants. You wait, I'm gonna find a way out of here and when I do, I'm takin' the girl in the fountain with me and I ain't never comin' back."

Bobby listened to his friend, having heard him make the same complaint and the same boast since they were old enough to get a hard on. It's what they talked about when they'd had all they could take of living under one roof with five families, listening to their mothers cry because there wasn't enough food on the table and watching their fathers die a piece at a time because there wasn't enough work. He agreed with Terry. He just didn't think it was possible to get out clean.

"Yeah, well be sure and send me a postcard."

The fountain was the most popular attraction in the twenty-eight acre amusement park. Men would rather watch the girls on the pedestals than ride the rollercoaster or watch Alligator Joe hypnotize reptiles by rubbing their bellies or soar two hundred feet above the park in Captain Honeywell's hot air balloon. When the fountain's streams reached their apex, showering the girls with a million liquid crystals, there was little short of a cataclysm that could turn their heads.

An explosion in the Bug House did just that. A transformer short-circuited; cutting off the current to the fun house's spinning floors, shifting walls and blinking lights, two hundred people groping for a way out of the acrid smoke and rippling flames, tricked and turned around by false doors and mind bending mirrors.

Escaping parents snatched their screaming children by their collars, men and women tripping and trampling one another in a mad dash as the flames leapt to the adjacent American Derby merry-go-round, swallowing painted horses as riders bolted to safety. Electric Park was on fire.

The crowd bunched fifteen deep around the fountain pivoted like a school of fish as the fire swept through the merry-go-round, and began devouring in succession the dry wood in the California Fruit Store, the Dragon tunnel, the Grey Hound scenic railway, the Fairy Swing and the rolling tubs of the Whip, advancing from the southwest on a collision course with the fountain. Men broke ranks, hooting and hollering, some cupping their hands to their mouths, shouting for wives and kids, others making for the exits and still others racing toward the flames to lend a hand.

The electrical fault spread to the city's power grid, the town going dark. The fire reached for the heavens, the only light for dozens of city blocks.

"Mother Mary! It's hell on earth!" Terry shouted.

Bobby watched his friend sprint toward the stampede, holding his ground, the lure of the flames no match for his passion and prayer.

Elisabeth Bumiller, alone among the fountain girls, didn't panic. While the others screeched and flailed their way out of the fountain and ran, she remained on her pedestal, basking in the fire's glow. For Bobby, she was a goddess, rising above mere mortals, her gown sliding further off her shoulders as her eyes blazed and her bosom heaved.

Bobby stayed until they were alone, unable to take his eyes off of her. He threw one leg over the rail, intent on rescuing her when she smiled at him again, loosened the straps of her gown, letting it fall to her feet, revealing a white swimsuit, winked and dove into the deep pool, barely making a ripple. Stunned, he lost his grip and fell into the shallow water. Scrambling to his feet, he splashed around the fountain but she was gone.

# #

Vivian Chase crossed the Missouri River from the north on the Hannibal Bridge, a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver in her purse and a carpetbag stuffed with twenty thousand dollars tucked beneath the front seat of her Plymouth Deluxe PE convertible coupe. The top was down, warm summer air swirling around her face.

Flames from the Electric Park fire were visible throughout the city, devil tongues painted red, orange and pink, chasing the darkness, making real the images of Hell the Reverend Artemis Johnson had promised sinners at the revival meeting where she'd been saved the night before.

Men had spoken in tongues and women had swooned with rapture in a hot crowded tent on the courthouse square in Liberty, Missouri, twenty-five miles north of Kansas City. The spirit of the Lord entered her without warning, flinging her to the sawdust covered floor in agony for her sins, Reverend Johnson scooping her into his arms, letting her wail like a newborn.

"Surrender to Christ, girl, and repent," he urged her and she cried some more.

She couldn't remember the last time someone had called her a girl or held her with such encompassing, protective warmth, craving the Reverend's voice and touch, missing her lost years and the daughter she'd given up to save her from her mother's mistakes.

He was right about her fate. She'd earned it, coming to Kansas City to make good her repentance, not surprised to find Satan's gate in her path. Reverend Johnson had armed her with faith but hers was fresh, fragile and untested, no match for the devil. She reached inside her purse, taking more comfort from her gun.

"Is that furnace for me, Old Man?" she said, lifting her eyes to the heavens, shaking her head when God didn't answer, wrapping her fingers around her gun. "Or, maybe not."

Her coupe glided to a stop in front of the Jefferson House for Women. She lit a cigarette and leaned back against her seat, inhaling until her lungs burned, letting the smoke leak through her nostrils, trying to make sense of a life that had brought her to this place at this moment.

"You sure are a pretty one," George Chase had told her when he stopped at her parents' farm in Greene County to ask for directions one day all those years ago. He had a thick shock of red hair and broad shoulders and hazel eyes that made her heart skip a beat.

"How pretty?" she asked, staring straight at him without a trace of shame.

She'd developed early, getting used to the way men and boys looked at her curves, taking care to brush her dark brown hair a hundred strokes every night, her mother calling her a natural born heart breaker.

"Pretty enough," he said, flashing a grin that lit her up inside and out.

He was twenty-two and she was sixteen when they were married. She was seventeen when she began driving getaway for him and eighteen when their daughter, Lilly, was born. Three years later, George was killed in a fight over six diamond rings he'd stolen and given to Vivian, his killer another woman who claimed he'd promised the rings to her. Robbing folks was no life for a child but it was all Vivian knew so she dropped Lilly off at Jefferson House, sneaking visits whenever the police tired of looking for her.

Lately she'd taken up with Pighead Hardeman, a thick-necked man, sharp-edged and quick with the back of his hand. She squirmed in her seat, the latest bruises he'd given her working a dull ache in her right side. Pighead would come after her when he found out she'd run off with the money they'd stolen in a string of drug store robberies in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, money that was in the carpetbag, money that would insure Lilly's future and her peace. She had a day, maybe two, on him and more ground to cover, last night's revival meeting costing her time she didn't have. At thirty-four, she was all in and all done.

# #

Bobby Staley framed his mouth with his hands and yelled until he was hoarse.

"Terry! Terry Martin! Goddammit, Terry! Where the hell are you?"

His shouts were lost in the din. If he couldn't hear himself against the roaring fire and the clamoring mob, there was no chance Terry could hear him but he yelled again, darting through the crowd, jumping up and down for a better look. There was no sign of his friend. It was as if Terry had been swept out to sea, Bobby feeling just as lost.

An anonymous shoulder knocked him to the ground and someone else tripped over him as he tried to get up, a knee to the head leaving him woozy as they both sprawled in the dirt. He made it to his feet, wet from his spill in the fountain, now muddy and gasping for air, panic squeezing his lungs like the time he nearly drowned in a quarry pool and would have if Terry hadn't dived deep and pulled him free from rocks where he'd caught his foot. Carried along by the crowd, he fought his way out of the current, tumbling through the door of the locker house where people changed before using the swimming pool, slipping on the damp, stone floor, skidding to a stop ass down and feet up.

"Well, look at you," Elisabeth Bumiller said, laughing, one hand over her mouth.

Bobby flushed, feeling the heat in his face, more because she was standing over him wearing nothing but her panties, her arm hiding her breasts, than that he was on his butt looking like he'd just wrestled a pig and lost. Paralyzed and speechless, he watched in mute, wide-eyed amazement as she turned her back to him and slipped into a dress.

"C'mon now," she said. "On your feet and zip me up before that fire makes toast out of both of us."

When she dove into the fountain and disappeared he thought he'd lost her. Now she'd materialized at his feet as close to naked as he dared to hope, securing the promise he had made to God from that day until his last. He placed one trembling hand on her waist, pinching her zipper between two fingers of his other hand, drawing a quick breath as his rough knuckles brushed against her soft skin, tracing a path from the shallow base of her spine to the fine downy hair on the back of her neck.

"You forget how to talk?" she asked.

"Um, no m'am," he answered, clearing his throat.

"What happened to that fella you was with?"

He shivered, thrilled again that she'd noticed them and stricken with guilt that he was here with her instead of out searching for Terry.

"He ran off when the fire started."

"But you didn't." She turned and faced him, close enough that he could taste her breath. Mint or clove, he couldn't tell which. He was surprised to be looking down at her. She'd always seemed so tall on that pedestal. "You chose me over your friend. Why?"

His speech deserted him. His arms hung at his sides, useless shanks of meat, his fingers dangling and dead. She searched his face with impossibly blue eyes that were at once cold and hot.

"I don't know."

She caressed his cheek. "I think you do."

He swallowed hard. "You do?"

"Mmmm," she murmured, her palm soft against his skin. "Yes, I do." She took his hand. "C'mon. Let's go find your friend."

# #

Jefferson House was dark when Vivian knocked on the front door. She stood on the porch that ran the length of the house, the colors in the stained glass windows invisible until a lantern lit them from the inside, a swaying yellow glow making the red, blue and green images float in midair.

"Who's there?"

Vivian recognized Martha Moore's voice. She ran Jefferson House, never turning away anyone in need. She was white-haired and big-bodied, easy with a laugh and firm with a switch when need be.

"It's me, Vivian."

Martha Moore hadn't asked for an explanation when Vivian brought Lilly to Jefferson House. She had her hands full providing a future for her girls and let others worry about their past. God would pass judgment on them, she was certain. In the meantime, she welcomed Vivian's visits because Lilly loved and missed her mother and because Vivian always gave her enough money to pay for Lilly's care and to buy things for the other girls. Martha thanked her, blessed her and didn't ask questions.

She opened the door, set the lantern down and the two women embraced.

"How's Lilly?"

They sat on a porch bench, the lantern casting a halo around them until Vivian turned it off. Martha didn't object, understanding that Vivian wanted her visits kept quiet.

"Doing fine," Martha said, sighing. "She's more woman than girl now. Almost sixteen. Pretty and high spirited, like her mother. And itching to get out from under me."

Vivian let out a breath, the worry she'd carried in her back and neck all the way from Iowa easing a bit.

"What happened to the lights? The whole town's gone dark."

"Power went out a couple of hours ago. Must have something to do with that."

Martha pointed to the fire in the sky.

"Has anyone come around asking about me or Lilly?"

It was the same question every time she came to see her daughter only this time Martha's answer was different.

"Earlier tonight, a man sat in a car down the street watching the house but he never come to the door. He left just before you got here." Vivian stiffened, hugging her chest. "Don't mean he was looking for you. Could've been anyone. Lord knows most of my girls come from trouble. How're you doing?"

Vivian smiled. "I ain't sure. Only thing I know is that I got to find another road than the one I been on. If I stay here, things will catch up to Lilly and I can't let that happen."

Martha nodded. "She's sleeping, or supposed to be. I'll fetch her."

Vivian sat on the bench, peering into the surrounding darkness, imagining the man who'd been watching the house, wondering if he was a thug or a policeman who'd gotten a tip, maybe even a bribe from Pighead, who wouldn't hesitate to buy a cop if it meant getting his money back and beating a hard lesson into her.

Vivian's hand went to her throat, clasping the gold chain and the cameo that hung from it around her neck. Tens of thousands of dollars had run through her hands with nothing to show for it. The necklace was the only thing of value she owned and it had been a gift from her mother on her sixteenth birthday, a week before she ran off with George Chase. What, she wondered, would she give her daughter before she ran off again?

"Momma?"

Lilly rushed to the bench and threw her arms around Vivian, mother and child hanging on to one another.

"Hey, baby girl. You doin' all right?"

Vivian stroked Lilly's hair, kissing her cheek. Lilly let loose and stood, smoothing her nightshirt, wiping away tears.

"I'm full growed, momma. It's time I was with you."

The nightshirt couldn't hide her daughter's shape and the darkness couldn't dull the excitement in her eyes. Vivian knew what that was about. Lilly wasn't just glad to see her mother. Her daughter was feeling the call to bust out and take on the world same as she had the day George Chase drove into her parents' yard. Looking at Lilly was like looking in a mirror only the image Vivian saw was of her past. She was sure when Lilly looked at her, her daughter saw a future of glamour, love and adventure and not the hard road her mother had traveled.

"You are full growed. I'll give you that. Sit with me, child." Vivian put her hand on Lilly's knee, Lilly covering it with her hand. "I brought you to Miss Moore cause I couldn't take care of you like she could. Seeing how pretty you turned out, I know I done the right thing. I was about your age when I left home and it was the mistake of my life except for havin' you. Believe me, Lilly, when I tell you not to make the same mistakes I made. Stay here with Miss Moore. I'll be back when I can."

"Miss Moore makes me go to school all week and go to church on Sunday. I'm so full of readin' and writin and Jesus, I think I'm gonna explode. I want to be with you. How will I know what to do if you don't teach me?"

"All I can tell you is not to do what I done."

Lilly leaned against the bench, arms crossed, pushing her lower lip out. "Like what?"

Vivian looked away, turning her eyes to the heavens, giving God another chance. The moon had risen, smoke and fire turning it pink.

"Look it there," Vivian said, pointing to the sky. "The moon is pink. One day, some man is gonna come along and tell you how pretty you are and you're gonna believe it cause it's true and you and him are gonna want to do somethin' about it. That's the way it is with men and women. But that feelin' ain't gonna last any longer than that pink moon. The fire's gonna go out and that man will turn cold as a pale moon. He'll take every bit of you and leave you on the side of the road like a cornshuck."

A car pulled up in front of Jefferson House, headlights sprayed all over them as it stopped alongside Vivian's coupe. Pighead Hardeman stepped out, leaned over the open driver's door, aiming a gun at them.

"Goddamn you, Vivian Chase! You no good, thieving, whoring, bitch! Where's my money?"

# #

Bobby clung to Elizabeth's hand as they ran out of the locker, stopping in their tracks when they saw what lay in front of them. Lofty tongues of flame shot skyward, wood popping with fiery starbursts, like an artillery battery. Heavy black smoke rolled overhead, a doomsday cloud, as hot, cinder-filled fog choked and scorched their lungs.

The social contract was the first casualty of the fire, primitive instincts turning the park into a cauldron where survival and conquest were the only imperatives. Boys and men carried off whatever they could grab, the strong turning on the weak. A mother, bent over and shielding her child, wailed, afraid to move. A trio of teenage girls held hands as they ran past, searching for an exit. Behind them, a man cradling his daughter, staggered through the smoke, his face blackened.

Sirens reverberated as a phalanx of police waded into the crowd, wielding their clubs in a vain effort to corral the rioters. Outnumbered and outmatched, they locked arms and retreated, waiting for reinforcements.

Across the way, firemen drove their trucks into the middle of the conflagration and unspooled their hoses, turning heavy sprays on the nearest blaze. The fire sucked up the water, spit it back as boiling steam and raged on.

"Sweet Jesus!" Bobby said.

"I think he's sitting this one out," Elizabeth said. "Let's go!"

She was nimble and fearless, dodging the flames, taking him deeper into the park. He kept pace, wondering how she knew where she was going and how they would possibly find Terry. They rounded a corner, stopping at a windowless, one-story stone building; it's heavy oaken door wide open and smoldering.

"In here!" Elizabeth commanded.

It was dark and smoky inside but Bobby could make out a dim light on the far side of the room they'd entered.

"Terry!" Elizabeth said. "Is that you?"

She'd surprised Bobby again, somehow knowing Terry's name though he'd never told her. He hadn't even told her his name.

"Over here, babe!" Terry answered. "Talk about luck, huh? The power goes out but, lucky for us, the bean counters had a flashlight."

"Terry?" Bobby asked as his friend emerged from the smoke carrying a canvass bag over his shoulder.

"Bobby?" He turned to Elizabeth. "What the hell, Betts?"

Elizabeth took Terry's arm. "It's okay, honey. He showed up in the locker house while I was changing. Even got a little show," she said, winking at Bobby.

"And you brought him? Here?"

"He was worried about you. Besides, you and him are buddies, ain't you? What's the harm?"

"What's going on, Terry?" Bobby asked. "Where are we?"

"We're in the park's business office, where they keep the money that they collected today. Me and Betts, we're gettin' out. Just like I told you."

"How? What's in that bag?"

Terry grinned. "Enough money to make it happen. I'm guessin' at least three grand, maybe more."

Recognition dawned slowly but when it did, Bobby shook his head like he'd taken a punch.

"You did this? You started the fire so you could rob the park?"

"Short-circuited a transformer in the Bug House. Been figuring out how to do it all summer. Goddamn thing blew up just like I thought it would."

"But the fire?"

Terry shrugged. "Can't plan on everything that happens. Just got to go with it. We figured the bean counters would have to get out and they'd leave the cash lying around waiting for us to take it. And that's what happened. Didn't figure on the fire being so bad, though. Can't do nothin' about that now." He turned to Betts. "You ready?"

She threw her arms around him and kissed his soot-stained face. "I was born ready!"

"All right, then," Terry said. He pulled away from Elizabeth and put his hand on Bobby's shoulder. "I won't be seein' you for awhile. Might be I'll never see you again. I'm countin' on you not tellin' no one about this. I'd take you with us, but you ain't cut out for the life me and Betts got ahead of us. So you best get on home. You grow a pair, you come lookin' for us. We'll have us a time. I promise you that."

# #

Bobby took the streetcar home, walking the last six blocks. He turned onto his street as a car passed him, burning rubber in the turn, jolting to a stop in the middle of the block next to a Plymouth convertible coupe, headlights flooding Jefferson House. A man jumped out of the car and cursed at someone on the porch.

"Goddamn you, Vivian Chase! You no good, thieving, whoring, bitch! Where's my money?"

Vivian turned to her daughter. "Go in the house."

Miss Moore swung the door open, grabbed Lilly and pulled her inside. Vivian reached in her purse for her Smith & Wesson and stepped off the porch.

Bobby hid behind a thick oak in the front yard of his house, afraid his father would hear the commotion, find him in the yard and order him inside before he could watch what was about to happen. A woman walked down the steps from Jefferson House, the headlights making her a silhouette.

"You wait right there, Pighead. I got something for you," she said.

Bobby bit his lip when she raised her right hand and leveled a revolver at the man she called Pighead, bursts of flame erupting from the short barrel. The man screamed and flinched, returning fire before ducking into his car, jamming the gears in reverse, spinning around and racing off in a drunken zigzag. The woman staggered to the coupe, slumping to her knees, one hand on the door handle.

Bobby ran to the woman. Blood oozed from a wound in her side. Her color was gone and her breathing was faint. He heard a shout from Jefferson House and looked up to see Miss Moore flying down the steps, a girl trailing her, wearing nothing but a nightshirt. He knew Miss Moore to say hello and had seen the girl around but never talked to her, heeding his father's demand that he stay away from the Jefferson House girls, calling them trash.

"Oh, dear God," Miss Moore said, cradling the woman. "Dear, sweet Jesus."

"Lilly," the woman said, her voice faint.

"I'm here, momma," the girl said, kneeling next to her mother.

Miss Moore gripped Bobby's arm. "She's hurt bad, Bobby. You've got to get her to the hospital."

"Me?"

"There's no one else. I can't leave the girls and no one can know that she was here or who she is. You'll have to leave her with the doctors and get out of there before anyone asks you questions. Now help me get her in her car."

They eased Vivian onto the front passenger seat and Bobby got behind the wheel. He had no trouble working the Plymouth's clutch and gearshift. As he was about to pull away, Lilly grabbed the side of the car, tears streaming down her face.

"Please," she said. "Save her."

Moonlight shone in her eyes, dancing across her face. She stood straight, her shoulders square, her pain and beauty so raw and clear to Bobby that he fell in love for the second time that night. She let loose of the car and wrapped her arms around her middle, as Miss Moore laid a protective arm across her shoulders. Bobby glanced at his passenger. Her chin lay on her chest and her face was slack.

"If she can be saved, I'll do it," Bobby said.

Fifteen minutes later, he wheeled the coupe to a stop outside the emergency room entrance to General Hospital off of Twenty-Second and Holmes and was about to open his door when Vivian murmured.

"Wait," she said.

"Can't wait, m'am. You're hurt too bad."

"Necklace. Give my necklace to Lilly."

"Yes, m'am," Bobby said, lifting her chin until her head lay back against the seat, hoping no one was watching or he'd surely be accused of murder and stealing.

He pocketed the necklace and tore into the emergency room.

"There's a woman in a car outside! She's been shot!"

Two nurses and a doctor rushed out the door, picked Vivian up and carried her inside, disappearing behind swinging double doors. Though Miss Moore had told him to leave as soon as possible, he couldn't without knowing what happened. It didn't take long before one of the nurses came out, shoulders slumped, taking her time because time didn't matter and called the morgue. Bobby ducked out before they thought to ask him any questions.

He drove away, pulling over on a side street a mile away, his mind churning. Terry was gone and he'd never felt so alone. He couldn't believe what Terry and Elizabeth had done, setting fire to Electric Park so they could steal the day's receipts and start a new life. It was awful, terrible and thrilling all at the same time. Awful for the people at the park, terrible for all the destruction, but he had to hand it to Terry. He'd done what he always said he'd do.

He thought about what Terry had said, how he couldn't take him with them because he wasn't cut out for that kind of life. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was doomed to a life on the unemployment line, a thought that made him feel even worse until he heard a voice inside his head calling bullshit on him.

He took Vivian's necklace from his pocket, absently tossing it in the air, his eyes lost in a distant space, the necklace falling to the floor of the car on his third toss. He reached down, feeling for the necklace and found Vivian's carpetbag. He hoisted the heavy bag onto his lap, opened it and whistled.

"Holy Mother!"

He counted the money twice to be sure he had the count right, his hands trembling. He closed the bag and put it back under his seat, holding Vivian's necklace up to the moonlight. He studied the cameo, deciding with sudden clarity what he would do. Terry Martin wouldn't tell him to grow a pair ever again. No one would.

Electric power had been restored when he pulled up in front of Jefferson House. Lilly Chase was sitting by herself on the front porch. She'd changed out of her nightshirt into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Bobby parked the car at the curb, considering his next move when Lilly rose from the porch bench and walked slowly toward him. His stomach did flips, knowing he'd be the one to tell her that her mother was dead. The next thing he knew, she was standing at the driver's door, her eyes full, her lip quivering.

"She didn't make it, did she?"

Bobby shook his head. "I'm sorry. She wanted you to have this." He handed her the necklace.

She slipped it on, running her fingers along the chain and the cameo.

"That's my momma's car."

"I don't reckon she's gonna have much use for it now."

She wiped her eyes. "You figurin' on keepin' it?"

Bobby looked deep into her eyes and saw something he hadn't seen in anyone else. His future.

"Maybe. Depends on a couple of things."

"What?"

"Well, first thing is if you don't mind me keepin' it and the second thing is if you get in so we can get out of here."

She smiled, splitting her face ear to ear, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.

"I don't mind," she said, opening the door and sliding alongside him.

Bobby fired up the engine and pulled away, pointing to the sky.

"I'll be damned! Look at that will you? The moon is pink."

In the future being the best includes having the right kind of family. This story first appeared in Noir 13, Perfect Crime Books, 2010.

THE BABY STORE

By Ed Gorman

"You know how sorry we all are, Kevin," Miles Green said, sliding his arm around Kevin McKay's shoulder and taking his right hand for a manly shake. "It's going to be rough and we know it. So any time you need some time away, take it. No questions asked. You know?"

"I really appreciate it, Miles. And so does Jen. Everybody here has just been so helpful to us."

Miles smiled. "If you're not careful, you're going to give us lawyers a good reputation, Kevin." He checked the top of his left hand where the holo was embedded. "Time for me to head out for LA. The rocket leaves in three hours."

The Miles incident had occurred at the top of the day, just as Kevin had been about to settle himself into his desk chair for the first time in two months. The firm of Green, Hannigan & Storz had been generous indeed with one of its youngest and most aggressive lawyers.

By day's end Kevin had been consoled by fourteen different members of the staff, from the paralegals to the executive secretaries to the firm's reigning asshole, Frank Hannigan himself.

Hannigan said: "I know Miles told you to take all the time you need. But if you want my advice, Kevin, you'll get back in the game and start kicking some ass. And not just for the sake of your bonus this December. But for your mental health. You're a gladiator the same as I am. The battle is what keeps you sane." Hannigan frequently spoke in ways this embarrassing.

As Kevin was leaving the office, he heard a brief burst of applause coming from one of the conference rooms. As he passed the open door, David Storz waved him in. "C'mon in and celebrate with us, Kevin. My son just graduated at the top of his class at his prep school."

Reluctant as he was to listen to even ten minutes of Storz's bragging, Kevin stepped into he room and took a seat.

Storz, a balding enthusiastic man with dark eyes that never smiled, said, "This is quite a week for this firm, I'd say. Phil's son jumped from second grade to fourth after taking a special test. Irene's daughter wrote a paper on George Gershwin that's going to be published. And now my boy is at the top of his class."

The people Storz had cited were sitting around the conference table, pleased to be congratulated by one of the firm's founders.

No one seemed to understand that inviting Kevin in to hear people bragging on their children was a bit insensitive given what had happened to him and his wife. But then nothing ever seemed to deter the lawyers here from bragging on their kids.

More than winning cases, more than accruing wealth, more than performing as talking heads on the vidd networks, the greatest pleasure for these men and women came from congratulating themselves on how well they'd designed their children at Generations or what the populist press disdainfully called "The Baby Store." Of course it wasn't just this law firm. Designer children had become status symbols for the upper classes. An attractive, bright child obviously destined to become an important citizen was now the most important possession you could boast of.

These parents were unfazed by the media criticism that insisted that the wealthy and powerful were creating a master race by genetically engineering their progeny. After all, as Miles had once said, "You design the child yourself. And it's no sure thing. Every once in a while somebody designs a dud."

Kevin was able to leave before the liquor appeared. It would be a long one. Six fathers and mothers bragging on their children took some time.

# #

"May I help you, Sir?"

Only up close did the woman show even vague evidence of her actual age. The plastic surgery, probably multiple surgeries in fact, had been masterful. In her emerald-colored, form-fitting dress, with her perfectly fraudulent red hair, she looked both erotic and efficient.

"Just looking, really."

"Some very nice ones. And feel free to read their biographies. Some of them are pretty amazing."

"I don't have much time today. I think I'll just look at the holos."

"Fine." A smile that would have seduced a eunuch. "I'll just let you look. If there's anything you need, just let me know."

He spent equal time with male and female holos. They were all so perfect they began to lose individuality after a time. As Storz said, people did, of course, design duds. The looks didn't turn out quite right; the intelligence wasn't impressive or even, sometimes, adequate; and then there were personality flaws, sometimes profound. Most of these problems resulted from parents who wouldn't listen to the advice of the scientists and programmers. But their arrogance could be tragic.

Given what had happened, he settled on looking at the girls. These were finished products, used to guide the buyer in creating their own girls. He was particularly taken with a dark-haired girl of sixteen whose fetching face was as imposing as the amused intelligence that played in her blue-eyed gaze. Yes, good looks—and intelligence. Requisites for a leadership role later on.

He doted on the girl, imagining the kind of boasting you could do in a session like the one he'd just left. Even up against the likes of Storz and the others, this girl would undoubtedly triumph. Whoever had designed her obviously known exactly what they were doing.

But then it was time to catch the bullet train home. A soft summer suburban night awaited. He just hoped Jen was free of her depression, at least for a few hours.

# #

He was never was never sure how to characterize the sounds she made—"crying" was too little but then "sobbing" was probably too much. He usually settled for "weeping."

She was weeping when he got home that night. He went upstairs immediately to knock softly on the door of the master bedroom. "Is there anything I can do, honey?" he asked as he'd asked every night since the death of their five-year-old son three months ago.

"Just please leave me alone, Kevin," she said between choked tears. "Just please leave me alone." Even given the loss they'd suffered, could this tragedy alone fuel so many endless days of bitter sobbing sorrow?

Dinner alone. By now he was used to it. An hour or so in front of the vidd with a few drinks. And then bringing her a tray of food. Otherwise she wouldn't eat. He'd come to think of all this reasonably enough as The Ritual.

After eating—she'd lost fifteen pounds from an already thin lovely body—Jen usually went into the bathroom and showered for bed. Afterward was when they talked.

"Somebody at the office told me about a very good doctor. Very good with depression."

"Please, Kevin. No more shrinks. I couldn't take another one."

"I wish you'd take the meds."

"The headaches they give me are worse than the depression."

Sometimes he wondered if she wasn't purposely punishing herself. Maybe her depression was her way of dealing with what she'd saw as her negligence in the death of Adam.

"You know the doctor said he'd never heard of anybody getting headaches from this particular med."

"That's what I mean about doctors. They say things like that all the time? They don't take the drugs. We do. We're their guinea pigs. And when we complain about something, they tell us we're just imagining it."

And so on.

The best part of the night was when she lay in his arms in the darkness, responding finally to his patience and kindness, trusting him once more as she had always trusted him in their young marriage. Sometimes they made love; sometimes the day-long siege of depression and tears had left her too shattered to do much more than lie next to him.

Tonight he was afraid. He didn't know if he should tell her what he'd done or not. He certainly didn't want to set her off. But maybe the idea would appeal to her. Maybe she was ready now to talk about the rest of their lives. Maybe a talk like this was exactly what she needed to hear to make her forget—

He'd tell her about his impulsive visit to the Baby Store and—

But then he smiled to himself for there, her regal blonde head on his shoulder, came the soft sweet sounds of her child-like snoring.

# #

In the next few weeks he visited the Baby Store tree times after work. On the second visit he asked if he could visit with one of the consultants. He kept assuring the doctor that he was only asking questions while he waited for his train. The doctor kept assuring his in turn that he understood that quite well.

On the third visit, his words seeming to come unbidden, Kevin explained how four-year-old Kevin, Jr., had drowned in the small lake that ran very near the front porch of their summer cottage and how Jen blamed herself for it. She'd been on the phone when he walked into the water. Kevin had been in the back yard dealing with some particularly aggravating gopher holes.

The doctor, a middle-aged man with kind blue eyes, said, "It's especially traumatic when you lose a child you designed yourself. It's a double loss."

"I guess I hadn't thought of that. You're right. And we spent so much time making sure he'd be just right."

The doctor, whose name was Carmody, spoke gently. "I know why you're coming here, Kevin. And I think you've got the right idea. But what you're worried about is convincing your wife."

Kevin smiled. "You're a mind reader, too."

"Oh, no. It's just that I've been through this process with a number of people over the years. Something unfortunate happens to the child they've designed and they're not sure if they can deal with designing another one."

"That's right. That's exactly right."

"Usually the man is the one who suggests it. The woman is too lost in her grief. And he knows that she won't like the idea at all. Not at first. And her feeling is perfectly natural. You'll both feel guilty about designing another child. Kevin, Jr. is dead and here you are going on with your lives—and replacing him."

"I'm already feeling guilty. But I think that's what we both need. A new child. While we're still in our early Thirties. With our lives still ahead of us."

Dr. Carmody nodded. "But it won' be easy. She'll resist. She'll probably even get very angry. And she'll feel even more isolated than she does now. She'll think you don't understand her mourning at all."

"So maybe I shouldn't suggest it?"

"Not at all, Kevin. All I'm saying is that you should prepare yourself for some very heated discussions. Very heated."

# #

"I don't know how you could even think about another child now," Jen said at dinner that night. "We loved him so much. It's not like buying a new pair of shoes or something."

"Honey, all I said was that it's something to think about. You're so sad all the time—"

"And you aren't?"

"I guess I don't have time to be sad most of the time. I'm always rushing around with work and—" He knew he'd said the wrong insensitive thing. He eased his hand across the candlelit dinner that the caterers had prepared so nicely. He'd wanted the right mood to even raise the subject. He knew that convincing her was somewhere in the future. "Why do you think I don't sleep well? I'm thinking about Kevin, Jr."

By the look in her blue eyes he could see that he'd rescued himself. And what he'd said hadn't been untrue. He couldn't sleep well these nights. And a good deal of the time during those uneasy hours, he thought of his son, his dead son.

"I don't even want to talk about it now," she said. "Or think about it." Her smile surprised him. One of the old Jen smiles, so girlishly erotic. "Tonight I want us to drink all three bottles of wine and just be silly. It's been awhile since we've been silly."

He slid his hand over hers, touching it with great reverence. His one and only love. He missed her. The old her. "Well, if you want silly, madame, you've come to the right guy. Nobody's sillier than I am."

And they toasted his silliness. In fact, before they managed to stagger into bed and have some of that old-time sex of theirs, they'd toasted a good many things. And every one of them had been silly. Very, very silly.

# #

Then came the day when he got home from work and found Jen's personal holo filled with images of children from the Baby Store. Jen often forgot to turn the holo to FADE when she was done with it. His first inclination was to rush up the stairs to the exercise room and congratulate for beginning to show interest in designing another child. But then he realized it would be better to let her interest grow at its own pace.

He was disappointed that she didn't mention the holo that night at dinner. But the fact that she'd come down to dinner at all told him that old Jen hadn't been lost to him after all. The old Jen was slowly returning to the shining presence he loved so much.

She didn't mention anything about the holo—or subsequent viewings of the Baby Store holos—for the next eight evening meals. And when she brought it up the reference was oblique: "Sometimes it's so quiet here during the day. Bad quiet, I mean, not good quiet."

It had rarely been quiet when Kevin, Jr. had been alive.

# #

Dr. Carmody said, "I think a little nudge might be appropriate here, Mr. McKay."

"What kind of nudge, Dr. Carmody?"

"Oh, nothing confrontational. Nothing like that. In fact, something pleasant. I had a patient who was having a difficult time getting her husband to come in. They'd only recently come into some money and her husband still had some of his old attitudes about designer babies from the days when he'd been not so well off. But she surprised him. Invited him to his favorite restaurant, which just happened to be near here, and after the meal she just happened to steer him in our direction—and four days later, he came in and signed the papers and started creating not one but two children. Twins."

"Well, one of Jen's favorite restaurants is near here, too. We go there for our anniversary every year."

"When's your next anniversary?"

"Two weeks from tomorrow."

Dr. Carmody smiled his Dr. Carmody smile. "That's not very far off, is it?"

# #

She was late getting into the city and for a frantic half hour Kevin was afraid that Jen had known that this would be more than an anniversary dinner. He couldn't contact her on her on her comm, either. Maybe she'd decided not to meet him. Maybe she was in the bedroom, weeping as she once had. He stood on their street corner lost in the chill April dusk and the shadow crowds racing to the trains and the freeways.

And then, golden and beaming, tossing off an explanation for her tardiness that was both reasonable and reassuring—then she was in his arms and they were walking like new lovers to the restaurant where their reserved table waited for them.

After her second glass of wine, she said, "After dinner, let's go for a walk. I don't get down here very often. And I still love to window shop."

The center of the city gleamed in the midst of darkness, an entity constantly reinventing itself, taller, faster, more seductive in every respect, the streets patrolled by android security officers. The androids were without mercy.

The store windows Jen stopped at were alive with quickly changing holos of haute couture He was happy to see her interested in her appearance again. She even talked about making one of her shopping trips .

He made sure that they kept moving in the direction of the Baby Store. As they turned a corner, entering the block the store was on, she said, "I think I've got a surprise coming up."

"A surprise?"

She leaned him into him affectionately, tightening her grip on his arm. She laughed. "You've been steering us in a certain direction since we left the restaurant."

"I have?"

"We're going to the Baby Store as you've always called it."

"We are?"

But of course they were,

A small staff kept the three-story building open during the nighttime hours. As Kevin had arranged, Dr. Carmody had stayed late. He greeted them in the lobby and led them back to his office.

"Happy Anniversary to both of you," he said.

"Thank you, Dr. Carmody. I guess I knew in the back of my mind we'd end up here tonight. Sometimes I can sort of read my husband's mind."

"I hope you're not disappointed, Mrs. McKay."

She shrugged in that sweet young-girl way she had. "No, maybe Kevin's right. Maybe this is what I need."

"We'll certainly do our best," Carmody said.

And so they began.

Coffee cleared their minds and numerous holos of designed girls—that was the only thing Jen knew for sure; a girl this time—sharpened their imaginations. They began to form a picture of the infant Jen would carry. And what this infant would look like at various stages of her life. And what kind of intellectual acumen the child would have. In a world as competitive as this one, superior beauty without superior intelligence was nothing.

Dr. Carmody left them alone in front of the enormous holo console. They were so infatuated with the prospect of a new child that they became infatuated with each other, friendly kisses giving way to passionate ones; a breast touched, long lovely fingers caught behind Kevin's neck pulling him closer, "Maybe the wine hasn't worn off after all," Kevin said.

After forty-five minutes they stopped looking at holos and began talking seriously about the child they'd come to create. Hair color, eye color, body type, features—classic or more contemporary? What sort of interests it would have. The level of intelligence—some parents went too far. The children had serious emotional problems later on.

Kevin asked Dr. Carmody to join them.

"Did you like any of the holos you saw?"

"They were all very impressive, Dr.," Kevin said. "In fact they were all so good it got kind of confusing after awhile. But I think we've started to have a pretty good idea of what we're looking for."

"Well, we're certainly ready to proceed with the process any time you are," Dr. Carmody said, his perfectly-modulated vidd-caster voice never more persuasive. "We just need to look over our standard agreement and get to work."

"I'm sure that won't be any problem," Kevin said. But as he spoke he noticed that Jen no longer seemed happy. The tension of the past four months had tightened her face and given her eyes a somewhat frantic look.

Dr. Carmody had become aware of her sudden change, too. He glanced at Kevin, inclined his head vaguely toward Jen. He obviously expected Kevin to deal with this situation. It wasn't the doctor's place to do so.

But as Kevin started to put his hand on her arm, she stood up with enough force to make herself unsteady. Kevin tried to slide his arm around her waist to support her, but she pulled away from him. She was suddenly, violently crying. "I can't do this. It's not fair to our boy. It's not fair!"

And then before either man could quite respond, Jen rushed to the door, opened it and disappeared.

Kevin started to run after her. Dr. Carmody stopped him. "Just remember. She's been through a lot, Kevin. Don't' force her into this until she's really ready. Obviously she's having some difficulty with the process. There's no rush with this."

Kevin, scarcely listening, rushed out the door after his wife. She was much faster than he'd imagined. She wasn't in the hall nor, when he reached the lobby, was she there. He hurried outside.

The sidewalk was crowded with people his own age, of his own status. Drink and drugs lent them the kind of happiness you usually saw only on vidd commercials.

He didn't see Jen at first. Luckily he glimpsed her turning the far corner. He ran.. People made wary room for him. Somebody running in a crowd like this instinctively made them nervous. A running man meant danger.

There was no time for apologies, no time for gently moving people aside. When he reached the corner, his clothes were disheveled and his face damp with sweat. He couldn't find her. He felt sick, scared. She was in such a damned vulnerable state. He didn't like to think of what going to the Baby Store might have triggered in her.

He quit running, falling against a street lamp to gather his breath. He got the sort of cold, disapproving glances that derelicts invited. While he was getting his breath back, he smelled the nearby river. The cold early spring smell of it. He wasn't sure why but he felt summoned by the stark aroma of it.

In a half-dazed state, he began moving toward the water, the bridge that ran north-south coming in view as soon as he neared the end of the block.

She stood alone, staring down at the black, choppy water. Though he knew it was probably best to leave her alone for awhile, his need to hold her was so overpowering that he found himself walking toward her without quite realizing it until he was close enough to touch the sleeve of her coat.

She didn't acknowledge him in any way, simply continued staring into the water. Down river the lights from two tug boats could be seen, like the eyes of enormous water creatures moving through the night. In the further distance a foghorn sounded.

He leaned against the railing just the way she did. He remained silent. He smelled her perfume, her hair. God he loved her.

When she spoke, her voice was faint. "I killed our son."

"Honey, we've been over this and over this. You were on the phone and he didn't stay on the porch like you told him. He went into the lake despite everything we'd warned him about."

She still didn't look at him. "I lied. I ran out the door in time to save him. I could have dived in and brought him back to shore. But I didn't. I wanted him to drown, Kevin, because I was ashamed of him. All the women I know—they were always bragging about their sons and daughters. But Kevin Jr.—we did something wrong when we created him. He just wasn't very smart. He would never have amounted to much. And so I let him drown. I stood there and let him drown while you were in the back yard."

He'd always felt that her grief was more complicated than the death of their son. And now he knew that his guess had been correct. In addition to loss, she was dealing with a kind of guilt he couldn't imagine.

"You just thought I was in the back yard."

For the first time she turned and looked at him, her face in shadow. "But you were in the back yard."

"True. But only for a while. I heard him scream, too, I ran around to the side of the house. I was going to save him. That was all I thought about. But then I stopped myself. I started thinking—you know how in just a few seconds you can have so many different thoughts—I started thinking the same things you did. I loved him but we'd created a child who just couldn't compete. Who'd never be able to compete."

She clutched his arm. "Are you lying to me, Kevin?"

"No. I'm telling you the truth. And I'm telling you that we're both equally guilty—and that we're not guilty at all. We made a terrible mistake. We didn't listen to our counselor. We designed our son badly. It wasn't his fault and it wasn't ours. I mean we had the best of intentions."

"But we let him die."

"Yes, we did. And you know what? We did him a favor. We'd already seen how mediocre his school work was. What kind of future would he have had? He wouldn't have had any kind of enjoyable life." He drew her close to him. "But now we have another chance, Jen. And this time we'll listen to our counselor. Dr. Carmody will help us. We'll create the kind of child we can be proud of. And when Storz and everybody at the office starts bragging about their kids, I'll finally be able to brag about mine."

She fell against him. This time joy laced her sobbing. He could almost psychically share the exuberance she felt knowing that he was as much to blame for Kevin Jr.'s death as she was. There was such a thing as the saving lie and he was happy to relieve her of at least some of her guilt.

A numbing wind swept up from the river. She shuddered against him.

"We need some coffee," he said. He slid his arm around her shoulders and together they started walking back toward the center of the city.

"We never did decide if we want our daughter to be blonde or brunette," he said.

"Or a redhead," she said. "I've got an aunt with beautiful red hair. "

An image of an ethereal red-haired girl came into his mind. One who inspired lust and myth in equal parts. That was the kind of daughter they'd create. He couldn't wait to see the envy on Storz's face when the daughter was fifteen or so. The envy would be something to exult about for weeks.

The Jade Elephant was originally published in Bleak House Books' Expletive Deleted Anthology in 2008. In 2010 it was republished in Nice Girl Does Noir, Vol. 2. It has also been optioned for film. Libby Fischer Hellmann is the award-winning author of Set the Night on Fire, the Ellie Foreman series, and the Georgia Davis crime fiction series.

THE JADE ELEPHANT

By Libby Fischer Hellmann

Gus stared at the jade elephant in the window of the pawnshop, wondering if it could be his salvation. A soft translucent green, about ten inches tall, its trunk curled up in the air as if it was trumpeting the joy of existence. Charlieman, his fence, said that meant good luck. Charlieman was Chinese.

Gus folded his newspaper under his arm. Charlieman's pawnshop was pretty much the same as all the others. Tucked away in a building with an illegal gambling operation upstairs, it was a grim and dingy place. Faded yellow Chinese characters — who knew what they said? - covered the window. A shabby dragon sat above the door spitting imaginary fire.

Gus trudged down chalky cement blocks and pushed through the door of the restaurant. One of the few that hadn't fled to the suburbs, it had dim lights, but that wasn't all bad — at least you couldn't see the yellowed napkins and the stains on the tables.

Pete was in the second booth, slurping his soup. The only other customers were three Asian men at a back table. The Chamber of Commerce claimed Chinatown was bustling with commerce, but much of that commerce was conducted by dubious "businessmen" in alleys or street corners or greasy Chinese spoons like this. Rumor was the mayor had slated Chinatown for urban renewal. Then again, that was always the rumor.

Pete stopped slurping and looked up. "What kept you?"

"Traffic." Gus slid into the seat across, wondering why they still came here at all. Habit, he figured. Inertia.

His partner grunted and went back to his soup.

"How is it?"

"Like always."

A waiter came over and offered Gus a laminated plastic menu whose edges curled away from the page. Gus waved it away. "The usual, Chen."

"You want egg roll or soup?" he asked, rolling his "r's" so they sounded like "l's."

Gus pulled his coat more tightly around him. The December cold had seeped into his bones. "Soup."

Chen nodded and disappeared through a swinging door that squeaked when it flapped.

Pete looked over. "So?"

Gus leaned his elbows on the table. "It was benign."

Pete cracked a smile. "Attaboy!"

"I was lucky."

"It's all that clean living." Pete laughed. "What'd the doc say?"

Chen came out from the kitchen, carrying a steaming bowl of soup. He set it down in front of Gus.

"That it happens when you get old."

"Who's fucking old?" Pete sounded defiant.

"You're pushing sixty, and so am I," Gus said. "He said I could get another in a couple of years. With the stress and all."

"Stress causes tumors?"

Gus nodded. "Said I should take better care of myself. Build up my immune system."

"Eat your vegetables," Pete snorted.

"That's what he said."

Pete took a bite of his egg roll and chewed slowly. "But hey. You dodged the Big C. Time to celebrate!" He twisted around. "Hey, Chen. You got any champagne in that lousy kitchen of yours?"

Chen's face scrunched into a frown. "Sorry. No champagne. Next door. I go?"

"Naw. Don't bother," Gus called out. He looked over at Pete. "It ain't worth it."

"You sure?" Pete looked like he wanted to argue, but then decided not to. "Well, at least have some Dim Sum."

"I don't -"

"Chen. Bring the man one of your fucking Dim Sum, okay?"

Chen disappeared into the kitchen.

"So you ready to get back to work?" Pete asked.

"Why? You got something?"

"I got lots of somethings." Pete grinned. "I was waiting to hear about you. There's this sweet job out in Barrington, for openers."

Chen brought the Dim Sum on a plate. Gus studied the puffy white thing, not sure how to eat it, then palmed the whole thing and took a bite. It was surprisingly good.

"There's this trader. Mostly retired now, see. Lives in a mansion, but they're gone most of the time. Snowbirds in winter, Michigan in summer, Europe in between. The place is empty. We get Billy to disconnect the alarm, and —"

"Not Billy! Christ. He's a maniac on wheels. Remember the last time? He nearly got us picked up."

"I know. But he's good with electronics." Pete made a brushing aside gesture. "So. You in?"

Gus shook his head. "I don't think so. Not now."

Pete frowned. "How come?"

When Gus didn't answer, Pete shrugged and poured himself some tea. He took a sip and made a face. "Bitter."

Gus cracked a smile.

"What's so funny?"

Gus shook his head. "Nothing."

"Hey," Pete said. "There's something else we need to discuss."

"What?"

"I think we got a problem with Charlieman."

Gus shot him a look. "What kind of problem?"

"Well, you probably didn't notice, what with being preoccupied with your—your situation. But I got a feeling something's - well, he's just not himself. I think he's in trouble. I'm thinking he made a deal with the devil. Surveillance. That kind of shit. So I found this other guy, but he's not in Chinatown, see? And I —"

"No." Gus shoved his bowl of soup away.

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

"Charlieman would have warned us. We've been working with him a long time."

"I don't know, Gus. He's actin' different."

Chen came with their food: chicken chow mein for Gus, sweet and sour pork for Pete. Gus sprinkled crunchy noodles from a wax paper bag on top. For a few minutes, the only sound was the clink of forks on plates. They hadn't used chopsticks for years.

After a while, Pete blurted out, "Hey, man, what's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Don't try to con a con. I know you twenty years."

Gus stopped eating. "You're right." He laid his fork across his plate. "When I was sitting in the doc's waiting room, there were all these patients there. Most of them were really sick, you know? You could - I could tell from their goddam faces."

Pete nodded.

"The doctor was over an hour late. I don't know why the assholes can't get their act together, know what I mean?"

Pete giggled nervously. "If we were that late, our asses would be warming benches at Cook County."

Gus nodded. "I'm antsy, you know? I hate hospitals. So I take a walk down the hall. So there I am walking, and there's this pay phone at the other end. I walk past it and I see this woman on the phone."

Pete speared a chunk of pineapple.

"She was in a hospital gown, and she was crying."

"Fuck. I hate to see a woman cry."

"Me, too. So I turn around and go back the other way, but as I did, I sneak a look at her." Gus paused. "There was something familiar about her. I don't know. Something about her face. Her voice, too. I'd heard it before."

"Yeah?" Pete shook out a cigarette from the pack he kept in his shirt pocket.

"I walk away real slow, but I can still hear her, you know? Turns out she's talking to her insurance company. Asking them to pay for a new kidney. But they don't want to. She's begging them, Pete. Says she don't got nothing left. She's got to get some help, or she'll die."

Pete struck a match and lit the cigarette. "That's tough."

"She looked bad, too. Scrawny. Pale. All bent over." He sighed irritably. "I mean, the woman's looks like she's about to keel over any minute, and no one lifts a finger to help."

"Maybe her - what d'ye call it - maybe she reached her limit."

"I dunno. So, I'm just turning around on my way back to the doctor's office, when it dawns on me how I know her."

"How?"

Gus licked his lips. "We, pal. She was one of our marks."

"What?"

"You remember the job we did in the high rise downtown? About six months ago?"

An uneasy look came over Pete. "The one where the woman was in her bedroom and we had to —"

"Yeah. The one where — where we scored the jade elephant."

"No, man. You gotta be wrong. What are the odds —"

"I'm telling you it was her. You was the one…" He paused. "…who took care of her, remember?"

"I remember." Pete frowned. "Hey, do you think that was how —?"

"I don't think anything. Except that she's gonna die because she can't pay for a damn kidney transplant."

"Shit. That's Twilight Zone stuff, you know?" Pete shook his head. "But we didn't make her kidney dry up. All we did was rip her off."

"You think?" Gus went quiet.

"Hey." Pete went on. "This ever happen to you before?"

"No."

"Me neither, but Pauly… remember Pauly?"

"We worked a couple jobs with him, right?"

"Yeah. So he's doing a job out on the North Shore. Something looks familiar. He can't place it. Then all of a sudden, he realizes he ripped off the place five years earlier. The same place. But this time, he trips a silent alarm and some guy comes after him with a shotgun. He got five to ten."

Gus kept his mouth shut.

"Hey, don't get squirrelly on me. God didn't put her in your path. It's just the way it goes. Her luck ran out. Yours didn't." Pete wiped his napkin across his mouth. "By the way Mike - the new fence — says he can get us ten grand or more for that elephant."

# #

Pete did the job in Barrington the following week without Gus. He did another in Winnetka after that. Gus insisted he use Charlieman to fence the goods, but Pete wasn't happy. He wouldn't even go into the pawn shop. Gus handled the negotiations. While he was there, Gus scoped out the place, looking for tiny cameras, bugs, or recorders, but he didn't see a thing. The place looked like it always did: shabby and crowded with junk. He asked Charlieman how much he wanted for the jade elephant, but Charlieman said he didn't know. He was waiting for the right customer.

The next few weeks flew by. The city glittered with lights, music, and tinsel. Even Chinatown was decked out, and if you walked down Cermak, you could hear a tinny rendition of "Silent Night" from somewhere. Pete convinced Gus to have lunch at a new restaurant in the Loop, but the waitresses were too young for the attitude they copped, and the food was too rich.

"So what's it gonna take for you to come back to work?" Pete asked over apple pie. "You were right. Billy is a fucking lunatic."

"I don't know, Pete."

"You still thinking about that woman?"

Gus shrugged.

"You think it's your fucking fault. You want to do something for her."

Gus looked over in surprise. "How did you know?"

"You always had a goddamn soft spot."

Gus shrugged again and finished his pie. They made plans to have dinner the next night.

After lunch Gus bought himself a winter coat at Field's and started walking. He noticed the squealing kids and their parents in front of the department store windows. The Salvation Army volunteers shaking their bells. People gliding around the skating rink, sappy smiles on their faces. Why was everyone so goddamn cheerful? Come January, all the unkept promises would litter the streets like garbage. Now, though, the promise of hope and deliverance floated through the air. Gus fastened the buttons on his new coat.

He hadn't planned it - or maybe he did - but just before dusk he found himself in front of a condo off Michigan Avenue. It was prime property, the middle of the Gold Coast. That's why they'd cased it to begin with. They'd hit more than one place in the building, and truth was, it had been a good day. In addition to the jade elephant, they'd scored some jewelry and a roll of bills some idiot had stored in his freezer.

"Got us some cold cash," Pete had laughed afterwards.

"Everyone's a comedian," Gus replied.

Now, he peered up at a series of porches that jutted out from the building like horizontal monoliths. She lived on the eighth floor, he remembered. He counted out eight slabs. Light seeped around the edges of the window shades. What was she doing? He was surprised to realize he hoped she wasn't alone. That someone was looking in on her. He wondered how she got the jade elephant in the first place. Had she traveled to some exotic spot to buy it? Was it a gift? He lingered on the sidewalk, half-expecting to see some sign she had found a way to pay for her kidney. But all he saw were flat granite facings, slabs of porch, and light seeping around the window shades.

He took the subway and then the bus to his apartment on the West side. He turned on the tube to some tear-jerker about a lost baby and a frantic mother. Ten to one there'd be a "Christmas miracle" where they found the little bugger. A few minutes later, he snapped it off and pulled out a bottle of bourbon.

# #

The next night Pete told Gus something came up and he couldn't meet him for dinner. Just as well, Gus thought. He wolfed down a sandwich and a brew at his neighborhood bar. Then he went home, and dressed in dark clothes, gloves, and a stocking cap. He filled his pockets with a knife, picklock, and flashlight. Opening a drawer, he lifted out his 38 Special. He raised it to eye-level and sighted, then slid it into his holster. He belted the holster around his waist.

It was after midnight when he got off the Red Line at Chinatown. The Hawk was hurling blasts of arctic air that sliced through him like a blade. Halfway to the pawn shop, he heard footsteps behind him. He moved into the shadows. Three Asian goons swaggered down the block like they owned it. They probably did, thanks to an uneasy alliance with the Russians. The street was full of Boris's and Wan Chu's these days; Tony and Vito had been relegated to also-rans.

Gus waited until they were gone, then snuck into the alley behind the pawn shop. A lamppost spilled weak light on Charlieman's back door. The smell of garbage was strong. He pulled out his picks and was about to start working the lock when he noticed the door was slightly ajar. Curious. Charlieman never forgot to lock up. Gus put his ear against the door. He heard a faint rustling. Mice? Then he heard a couple of steps. Not mice.

Gus stuffed his picklocks back in his pocket. If Charlieman was working late, his lights would have been on. So it wasn't Charlieman. Maybe it was one of the Asians? Charlieman had been talking about getting a silent alarm, but Gus figured he was too cheap to spring for it. Still, he crept out of the alley and went around to the front and peered at the window. Damn! The jade elephant which usually sat in Charlieman's window was gone!

Suddenly the overhead lights snapped on, and a harsh fluorescent glare poured over everything. In the stark illumination, Gus saw Charlieman at the back of the store, aiming a gun at someone. Gus squinted and craned his neck. Christ! It was Pete! At the back door. With the jade elephant in his hand.

Gus froze. He thought banging on the window and yelling, "Hey, Charlieman, don't shoot." He thought about pulling out his 38, but knew he couldn't get to it in time. How could he shoot his fence, anyway? Maybe he could buy Pete some time. Make a disturbance. Take Charlieman's attention off his friend. He started toward the front door, shouting, "Stop! Both of you."

Pete looked his way, astonished. So did Charlieman. Gus jiggled the doorknob. "Listen, this isn't right. Put the gun down. We can work it out."

Charlieman's gun hand waved dangerously from side to side, and wild Chinese exclamations spewed out of his mouth. But Pete took the hint. He feinted left, broke right and, lunged toward the back door. He even managed to throw it open before Charlieman pulled the trigger. The flash of blue made Gus blink. Pete dropped and bent over so far his face nearly touched the floor. Then he lurched through the door.

Gus ran back into the alley. Pete lay crumpled on the ground. He was still clutching the jade elephant. Gus crouched next to his friend.

"What were you thinking, pal?" he said softly. "Why did you do it?"

The only thing that came out of Pete's mouth was a gurgle.

Sirens whined in the distance. Gus looked up. Charlieman was at the back door yelling hysterically in Chinese and making big swooping gestures. But Gus was back in the shadows, and he knew Charlieman couldn't see him.

The phone rang inside the shop. Charlieman backed away from the door. Pete lay curled up on his side. Gus gazed at the jade elephant. By some miracle, the thing wasn't broken, but Gus could see streaks of red marring its green surface. Merry Christmas.

The sirens grew louder. The flashing lights were only a block away. Gus tried to ease the elephant out of his partner's hands, but Pete's grip was too strong. Gus had to pry back one finger at a time before he it came loose. Clutching it to his chest, he scrambled up and hurried away from the shop.

# #

The next morning, Gus wrapped the elephant in newspaper, stuffed it in a shopping bag, and headed downtown. The streets were full of beggars. Everyone had their hand out this time of year. He tried to steer around an old woman hunkered down on the pavement with a black kettle in front of her and a hand-lettered sign that said "Need money for food."

When the doorman made him cool his heels in the lobby, Gus grew uneasy. He shouldn't be here. This was crazy. He was just about to leave when the doorman got off the intercom and pointed him to the elevator. The numbers on the car's panel blinked as he flew up, but the door was slow to open. When Gus finally stepped off, the woman was waiting for him in the hall. She looked every bit as pitiful she had at the hospital.

He handed her the shopping bag. "This belongs to you. Merry Christmas."

She peeked into the bag then set it on the floor. "Well, I'll be damned."

Gus cocked his head.

"I remember you," she nodded her head. "And your partner."

Gus swallowed. "He's dead."

"Too bad." She said it almost cheerfully. Then a steely look came into her eyes. "But I remember what you did to me. The rope. The gag. And the rest of it. You almost killed me, you know."

"That's why I'm here. I'm - well — I hope this helps." He looked down.

Silence pulsed between them. "I saw you at the hospital," she said. "While I was on the phone."

Gus looked up, surprised.

"Afterwards I went to the nurse to get your name. I even got your address when the nurse wasn't looking. I was going to call the cops, turn you in."

Gus fingered the button on his coat. "But you didn't."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I had a better idea." She eyed him curiously. "Why did you come here?"

"I told you. I wanted to give this back to you. It's worth a lot of money."

"You trying to turn over a new leaf?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

"Aren't we all." She laughed, but it was a hollow sound, and something about it pricked the hair on his neck.

"So are we square?" He asked.

She didn't say anything for a moment. Then, "We will be."

It was Gus's turn to cock his head.

"I've been thinking about this for a long time."

"About the jade elephant?"

"No." She slipped her hand in her pocket and pulled out a 22. "Did you know we have the same blood type?"

Gus frowned. "Huh?"

She grimaced. "Well, I'll say one thing. You saved me the trip to your place." She aimed at high, so as not to damage his kidneys. "Merry Fucking Christmas."

Edgar Award finalist Vicki Hendricks wrote The Big O for Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, edited by Megan Abbott, Busted Flush Press, 2007. It is also in Hendricks' collection, Florida Gothic Stories, Kitsune Books, 2010.

This woman might be the most despicable of all Hendricks' noir characters, but her motivation is pure.

THE BIG O

By Vicki Hendricks

My ass was tired of driving, and I welcomed the sight of the dented, mildewed trailers on the east side of Lake Okeechobee. Miles of trailer parks with single- and double-wides stretched down the road on the side by the lake, a few of them tidy, landscaped Florida retirement villages; but discarded refrigerators, and broken down cars were the landmarks of my interest. I needed the worst rubble-strewn lot and the cheapest tin can I could find.

Some months earlier, Merle and me had made a Sunday drive up from Miami to check out what we figured was an affordable lakeside resort. When he saw the layout, Merle said he'd rather pitch a tent in the Everglades, but I took note. It was a place where anybody could get lost, and I had it in the back of my head that I might need to do that soon.

It only took me a few months to stash some bucks and finance an old car. I'd managed to dodge the punch the night before and lock myself in the bathroom till Merle passed out. It wouldn't be the first time I'd left a man, far from it, and usually for less reason than I had now. My threats had lost all effect in the three years Merle and me'd been together, and I didn't want Chance toddling around a household like that.

I knew it would be rough. My dreams of making it as a fashion model were all dried up, and I lived for the nights, the high I could depend on with Merle and sweaty rough sex. Yeah, I'd miss 'em. They were my only relief from the boredom and bad luck that were all life ever had to offer. It took discipline to keep pushing Merle's appetite for my pussy out of my mind. He was hot shit. But I was determined. I had dreams for Chance—his name was no accident. He was the possibility for me to redeem my luckless life. I had to break out of my old habits before he was old enough to absorb his asshole father's anger into his sweet baby brain.

I was in my area, trashy trailer parks scratching bottom. Splintered wood, dead palm fronds, tarpaper, soggy insulation, shingles, and scrap metal waited for pickup, mounds of trash sprawling over the properties. Last year's hurricane litter would soon be this year's projectiles, crashing through windows, killing people. Not that I cared about people in general, just Chance. I reached behind me and stroked his soft little foot.

Hell, if it was my trash, I'd have just left it there too. That's the way I was, always dragging my ass, till teeth were in it. I couldn't say shit about anybody else. I fit right in.

I drove down the strip, reading names that would've been attractive if I seen them in the Yellow Pages. Lakeside Haven, Quiet Waters Retreat, Jenny's Big O Fish Camp, Water's Edge RV—sure there was water, a canal that flowed behind the trailers, but the 15-foot dike behind the canal, surrounding the lake like an Indian burial mound, didn't give a peek at Lake Okeechobee. The berm, as they called it, kept the lake from drowning thousands at every hurricane, like I heard happened in the twenties, when the water flowed over farms. Even so, I wondered how all these tin cans had made it through the last hurricane season. I pictured them in a big blow, rolling and bouncing into each other, corners smashed and contents banging around like pebbles in a rock tumbler. I'd seen the wreckage of a trailer park near the coast, a few homes untouched through sheer luck, amid fifty or more smashed and resting on their sides, soggy insulation hanging out in clumps. But here were many survivors, thank god—cheap, crusty boxes, perfect housing for an unemployed, dry-alcoholic single mother.

The Big O. I liked the nickname for Lake Okeechobee for obvious reasons. No more big "O's" from Merle though. Too bad.

Chance started to crank up with some whining in the back seat. Not to blame him, he was barely a toddler, a year old, and had been strapped in for hours. I glanced at my watch. Pretty soon, time for him to nurse. I couldn't think about that for long or I'd start to leak.

I was low on gas, food, and money, and needed a sweet deal on the spot. No time for jawing with scraggly old farts who expected to glare at my tits for free. I slowed to a crawl and scanned the windows, seeing plenty "For Rent" signs, all crappy places, but still above my finances.

The "Touch of Clapp"—Class—Trailer Park sign caught my eye. I had to laugh. Local vandals had a sense of humor.

Just past it was the office, a single-wide with rusty awnings and ugly as the rest. For a person that reads men way better than books, the scrawled white letters sprayed on the glass sliding door, Merry Xmas, Dudes!—at least six months old, or maybe a year and a half—told me this was the right stop. Maybe the good-ole-boy manager was the one with the sense of humor, and I didn't mind that either.

Nursing was handy in more ways than one. I pulled off the road beside a huge pile of trash, and unbuttoned my shirt—one, two. I'd hold back on button number three for now.

I stuck Chance on my hip and crunched across the gravel and dry sticks to the door. I could hear a baseball game on the TV. I put Chance's little hand inside my shirt, and he started to knead like a kitten. I chewed my lip, he was so cute.

I knocked. A dog barked, and a tall shadow flickered past the slit in the curtains. If this didn't turn out to be a straight, single, long-haired, druggie white boy, thirty to forty, I swore I'd turn lesbian.

The door opened. My sexuality was safe.

"Back off. Back off," he said and pulled a white-headed bulldog aside with his collar. The dog stopped barking and snuffled and snorted at my knees.

I tucked my chin a little so I could bat some lashes and look up at the dude with my big blue eyes. Chance was pawing my breast, exposing mucho skin, as if on cue. "I'm interested in a rental," I said.

The guy glanced at my tit. He was a young forty—or an old thirty-five. A hunk of blond hair fell over his eye, and the smell of beer, cigarettes, and slight B. O. drifted into my nose. I was in my element. He patted Chance on the head with a muscular arm tattooed to the wrist and smiled. The tattoo to tooth ratio wasn't looking good, but I couldn't afford to be choosy. Teeth were never a priority in the style I was accustomed to.

"Cute little sucker," he said and reached for Chance's tiny hand, partway down my shirt. Mr. Tattoo's thumb brushed the poking nipple, sending a chill down my chest, and I knew the hook was set perfect.

"I've got a single-wide, fully-equipped with furniture and kitchen utensils for $400 a month, including utilities. It's got a leak in the plumbing so the bathroom floor is rotted in the corner, but the rest is tight. I'd want two months up front, one for the deposit. Need to have it cleaned first, if you're interested."

"I need a place right now," I said and nodded toward Chance. I licked my upper lip slowly. "I'm short on cash. How about . . . if I do the cleaning myself?"

"How short are you?"

"I've got almost a month. Gotta keep a few bucks for food till I find a job. Then I'll catch up."

"Not much work around here."

"I'm fast and cheap. I can always find something." Chance started to whimper and stretch my shirt lower. I bit my lip. "C'mon, pal. That rust bucket is sitting there empty. I'll improve it for the next tenant."

The dude studied my tits, searching for his answer.

"Give me a chance." I felt my face light up in a smile. I always got a good feeling when I used my baby's name. Chance was all sweetness and innocence.

I pulled back my shoulders to make my chest stand out proud. I winked.

"I can put you in there, if you give me $400 and clean the place. When you get a job, I'll add on twenty-five bucks a month until the deposit is paid."

"Three-hundred is all I've got. C'mon. You're not going to rent that place this time of year. Everybody's left before the mosquitoes could carry them away."

"You'll have to owe me the rest then. I'll give you a month and see how it goes."

I stuck out my hand. "Candy," I said. "Pleased to meet you."

"Jimmy," he said and shook on the deal. He pointed to the dog that had dropped down drooling. "Spike."

The trailer was the worst on the lot, but it had a little air-conditioner with a shredded La-Z-boy under it, so Chance and me settled right in. I looked around at the cheap paneling and dirty carpet while I nursed him. I wouldn't be able to let him loose. Lucky I had his playpen and swing in the trunk. I just hoped there weren't bed bugs or other nasties to bite his sweet skin. I couldn't wait to get started on the cleaning. I could see a dead roach on the countertop from where I was sitting, and the bathroom was bound to be moldy as hell.

# #

Life was exactly as I expected at the trailer park. A month later, having moved into Jimmy's place, I felt like I'd been there for years. I raised up from his sunken mattress and glanced in the mirror, then dropped back on the pillow. My eye was swollen and purple as a ripe eggplant. I looked down at Jimmy sleeping. With his mouth closed, tattoos covered by the sheet, and that blonde hair, he looked enough like an angel, so's I almost believed that he was sorry for the punch, even before he said so. He wasn't quite as cocky as Merle, because he just plain wasn't as cocky, but his cock was big enough. Leastwise, my asshole wasn't sore. And so far, he hadn't asked me for any money.

Jimmy yawned and dropped his arm across my chest. I was rock hard with Chance's breakfast and it hurt. "Fuck!" I pushed him away.

"Oh, sorry, darlin. Lemme kiss it and make it better."

He grabbed my arm and nuzzled into my left breast before I could dodge him. The touch of his lips on my nipple let down the flow and he laughed and tongued at the warm spray as it wet his mustache. "I thought there was only one hole," he said. "You've got yourself a sprinkler head."

I tried to knee him away, but he was too close to get any force behind it, and he had me pinned in a second and clamped his face onto my nipple, slurping hard and cutting with his few teeth.

"Stop it!" I yelled. "Get your rotten mouth off me!"

My voice woke Chance in his pen in the living room, and he was whimpering. I tried to worm away, but Jimmy had both my arms in control while he drained my sweet milk. His erection pressed into my thigh, and all I could think of was poor Chance, hungry and scared out in his little crib, while Jimmy wheezed and sucked. Finally, Jimmy broke off to breathe. I had his allergies to thank.

He swung over on top of me and stuck his cock in. I was wet despite myself. He was busting to come, and the strokes filled me up to a fine tightness. I beat him by a few seconds with a groan and a hot gush, and he pumped on out. His weight eased down on top of me, but I pulled loose and made my escape. Chance was bawling loud by this time. I headed to the shower to scrub off the cigarettes and beer before I offered him what milk was left. I could fill him up on baby cereal and strained bananas, but I felt guilty as hell. I'd done wrong hooking up with Jimmy in the first place. I wanted to bash out a few of his teeth—which wouldn't leave him with any. I decided right then that I was gonna pay him back for being such a motherfucker.

Anger ate on me all week, until one morning while I nursed Chance. I looked into his clear blue eyes and caressed his powder-soft cheek and shiny hair, almost transparent, like corn-silk, and thought, what am I doing? He was all the motivation I needed to form a plan. Besides teaching Jimmy a lesson, I needed money. With money, I could forget the losers and have my chance—I smiled—to be a good mother. I'd thought about getting a job, but that wouldn't leave me any time for my boy. It was a vicious cycle that only strong action could break.

I knew Jimmy ran a drug business locally and had his stash in a heavy safe cemented in the floor of the Ted's Shed behind the trailer. Running the park didn't bring in enough to cover his daily habits, so he'd found a way to skip the middle man and make a profit besides. I'd heard him on the phone enough to know the code, and I walked out to the shed with him a few times when he went to get the money for his deals, but he always shut the door in my face. I knew it was a keyed safe, because he kept that key on his person, and hid it good when he slept. From the looks of the nylon bag he'd bring out of the shed, there was major cash-flow. He was only living in a dump because he was used to it. He'd grab a gun from an end table drawer in the living room. It was a .38, just like the one my uncle let me shoot when I was a teen.

My eye had turned from ripe eggplant to green by then, so I had to get moving before the evidence disappeared. Besides that, after the milk incident, I could hardly fake enough affection toward Jimmy to keep myself around. I let him plug me, telling him I had a sore throat to stop his slobbery kisses, but I couldn't keep it up much longer.

I couldn't think of any way to get the money, except by pure force. That was where Merle came in, dynamite on a half-inch fuse, bold as shit. He wasn't any kind of father material, but he didn't know it. He was bound to be frothed up like a rabid hyena already, since I snuck off and took Chance. That energy could be put to good use.

I remembered one day shortly after the little tyke was born. I was taking a putrid diaper off him, wiping pea-colored shit off his little red butt, and Merle came into the room drinking a beer. He just stood there with this look of wonder. I knew what he was feeling. I always had to bite my lower lip on the inside to keep from bursting with love. We both swore an oath that we'd eat baby-shit rather than let anything happen to our little guy. That choice never came up, but I knew I could use Merle's strong feelings to help Chance and me lose both those losers for good. I'd taken enough shit off men. Come to think, I'd taken abuse from every man I ever knew. There was nothing to recommend any of them—except their parts. I needed to get past that.

It took some guts to give Merle a ring. I was sweating a puddle in the payphone booth.

"Hi," I said.

"Where the fuck are you?" he hollered. "Where's my son?"

It was five-thirty and he had a good start on Happy Hour. He'd either quit his mechanic job or took off early to get a start on the weekend.

"We're fine, thanks."

"The cops are looking for you. It's illegal for you to take Chance and run off like that."

"I didn't think you'd notice."

"Fuck."

"Merle, listen, I'm really sorry. I made a big mistake. Is there any chance we can patch it up?" I smiled and hoped he could hear it in my voice. "For Chance's sake?"

"Come back and we'll talk."

"I can't. I'm up by Lake Okeechobee. The car's broke down and I'm broke. I can't get a job because there's nobody to watch Chance, and I owe the trailer park dude a bunch of money." I took a breath and made my voice sound pitiful. "He already beat me up once. You should see my eye. I'm scared."

"Oh, you're fucking him."

I heard something—like a beer bottle—hit the terrazzo floor and shatter. "Merle, sweetie, I just want you back. I want our little family together again."

He was cussing so loud I had to hold the phone away. I knew he considered me his property. I got goose-bumps.

Finally, there was a pause in obscenities. "I'm coming up there to take care of my son."

"I need you inside me, baby," I added, using a little gravel in my voice.

"Didn't I tell you I'd kill you, if you left me?"

"That wouldn't do either of us any good," I said.

He grumbled something, and then said he could get to the park around noon. I said I'd meet him at Butch's Fish Camp and Backyard Bar. Nobody knew me there, and I didn't want him driving into the Touch of Clapp so's his car could be identified.

That morning I seen on the weather report that a hurricane was headed our way, Beryl. She'd been off in the Gulf but switched course and now they expected her to cut straight across the state, anywhere between Clewiston and Okeechobee. The whole lake was in the red cone of warning, and I was glad I was getting out. I didn't want to be near the Big O, even though the berm was supposed to hold it.

I had to walk down to Butch's because I didn't want Merle to catch me in a lie right off about the car, so I put a cap on Chance and smeared the sunscreen thick on us both. It was sweltering outside and I knew the bar must be half a mile from The Clapp. Jimmy had drove to Lake Wales to pick up some trailer parts, or so he said. I figured he was making a drug run. He was always gone most of the day, taking Spike with him, and came back high, so it was good timing for the setup.

Merle walked into the bar right at noon. I saw him first. His mouth was hard and his eyes mean, but when he looked at me with Chance in a highchair, he couldn't hold back a grin. I felt a big one slide over my face too. He sure was pretty, with his square jaw clean-shaved and hard muscles bulging. It looked like the beer belly had tightened up some too. I had to get over all that.

He stared at Chance and me like we were the Madonna and Child.

"Hey, Merle."

His face hardened, but I knew I still had power over him. He moved close and stuck out his finger so Chance would grab it.

"What the fuck's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. I'm better now. That last punch you threw me loosened up my brain. I thought I could really leave you, you know."

He hung his head, and I figured that was as big a sorry as I was going to get, the motherfucker.

He sat down in the booth next to me, and I gave him a kiss. He squeezed my thigh under the table hard enough to remind me that it was time to get down to business. I told him the story about Jimmy nursing off my tit and pointed out the eye, which was a rainbow of colors by then. I watched his neck get red. He considered himself a protector of women and children, even though he was just as likely to break my nose as look at me. He couldn't wait to go over there and rip Jimmy a new asshole.

I waited to spring the drug money idea on him, since it involved murder. We ate some cheeseburgers and he drank some beers. Didn't take long to loosen him up.

"You know, Merle, that asswipe deals drugs on the side—to high school kids. He's got a safe in his shed just full of money. I sure worry about Chance when he's a teen, with those kinds of guys around. He's got no morals whatsoever."

Merle looked over at Chance and I could see he was thinking. His brain was hard and soft at the same time.

"It would serve him right if somebody got a hold of that stash," I told him. "Jimmy's no asset to the world."

"You got any brilliant ideas?"

I shook my head. "Not sure. He keeps the key to the safe on a chain around his neck. I think he even wears it in the shower."

"He don't trust nobody."

We had another beer and then the weather report came on the TV at the bar. Beryl was strengthening and still moving in our direction. It was only a Category One so far, but all mobile homes were on mandatory evacuation by Sunday night.

"Better start packing up, all you guys in the double-wides," the bartender hollered. "Beer cans are gonna roll!"

There was excitement in the air, even though hurricane prep was a major pain in the ass. "Hmm," I said. "I wonder what asshole Jimmy does for a hurricane."

Chance started to fuss. He had a big mess of wet crackers crumbled on his tray, but I knew what he wanted. "Let's go out in the truck and crank up the AC. I can tell you my idea while I feed Chance."

It was a simple plan. We'd knock out Jimmy in his trailer and leave him for the hurricane. He was a dumb enough fuck that nobody would question his decision to stay. We'd whack him with a piece of wood so when the trailer got tossed around it would be a natural injury, like a shelf or a table got him. If that seemed unlikely to happen, we'd pull his body out on the ground after dark so it looked like he got hit by flying debris.

"I heard that some guy died last year when he stepped outside for a smoke and a tree limb hit him. Probably happens all the time."

"I bet his wife wouldn't let him smoke in the house," Merle said. "Sounds like something you'd make me do." He laughed. Then he stopped. "You're talking murder, Candy. You know that."

"So, what? He's a scumbag. Without him, the world will be a better place. I bet you already killed somebody in your life for less reason."

He didn't answer, so I figured it for a yes.

I knew I was a pretty picture feeding Chance with my shirt unbuttoned and my tits loose and sweaty. I gave Merle a slow smile and put his hand part on Chance's cheek and part into my cleavage. "We need a fresh start and there's nothing like a pile of money to help us get along." I stretched my neck to give him a long kiss and tongued and nipped his throat until I figured the bargain was sealed. There were people in the world only a cunt-hair away from murder. You just had to know how to spot em. It was my job to get Merle and Jimmy together.

"There shouldn't be any suspicions," I said. "I don't have any friends here, and it would make sense if I never came back after the hurricane."

"What about the time of death?"

"I don't think they'd know that close, if you knock him off late Sunday."

"This is my job?"

"You're the man, darlin. We'll turn the AC down low so he stays cold until the electricity cuts off—if it does."

"We can't stay in there when the hurricane comes."

"So, we put the money in a suitcase and head to the shelter. It's easy."

We set the time for the deed at 9 pm, so it would be dark, and most everybody else would be gone, but we'd have plenty of time to get the money and get out before Mother Nature dealt us her blow. In my mind, it would be enough time for me to shoot Merle besides.

Merle went off to a motel since he couldn't be seen at The Clapp. I walked home to sweat it out with Jimmy and set him up for Merle's arrival.

"He's a maniac, I'm telling you. If you got a gun, you better get it ready so you can scare him off. I don't know how he found me, but my best friend called this morning. He might already be headed this way."

"With a hurricane coming?"

I shrugged. "He's a madman."

"Maybe you oughta just leave. I'm not in any of this."

"He's out for you too."

"Christsakes, why? How could he know anything about me?"

"I bet he got a P.I. That's all I can think."

"Cock-sucking motherfucker."

Sunday morning people were cranking down their awnings and clearing out. By mid-afternoon there was a solid river of traffic going north and about half that flow headed south. I guess it depended on where the friends and relatives lived. Since Beryl could change course, especially when she made landfall, neither direction was safe because you might be driving straight into her path. You run out of gas and the stations are shut down, you're pretty well fucked.

I would have liked to got moving, though. I was nervous for Chance, knowing we had to stay late, but the shelter was only a few miles away in the high school and we were still only looking at a Cat One. I went ahead and put Chance's porta-crib and swing in the trunk and packed the clothes and some bedding for me.

Jimmy said he had lots of hurricane prep to do at the park, checking the augers for the tie-downs, moving porch furniture and other junk. He was working on a cooler of beer at the same time, so I didn't have to worry that he'd be headed out early. Everything was going just right. I used dishwashing gloves when I got the bullets out of his .38, so only his prints would be on there. I waited to make supper late, cooked Jimmy a few hotdogs. I figured I'd put a couch pillow over the gun barrel the way they do on The Sopranos when I killed Merle, just in case there were still cops around. Under the sound of the wind whipping and rain drumming, the crack of the shot could be anything.

It would be easy to make it look like Jimmy shot Merle and then let the hurricane take care of the rest of the evidence. I'd leave a small amount of money in the safe, and nobody would know anything was missing. Later, when the cops tracked down where Merle came from, they'd figure Jimmy plugged him in a fight over me. It wouldn't be no surprise to anybody, and I'd squeeze out a few tears when they told me.

I had Chance asleep in his stroller in the back bedroom, and it was eight-thirty when Jimmy stuffed the last half of his third hotdog into his mouth and pointed his beer bottle toward the road. "I think your friend decided to hunker down at home, just like I thought."

"No friend of mine. Might be all the hurricane traffic slowed him down. You got that gun handy in case, don't you?"

"Always got it handy, babe." He cocked his head toward an end table, and I knew the gun was still in the drawer where I'd found it and put it back that afternoon. He took his beer, rousted Spike off the couch, and punched on the remote. "I don't want to leave Spike and go to that disgusting shelter until I have to. Maybe you should leave with the kid now."

"I'd rather wait for you," I said, but I was sure starting to worry about the storm. The flow of traffic outside had dwindled to almost nothing, so every time I saw headlights my heart started to pound. I wanted to get it done, but I didn't. I knew Jimmy was no match for Merle, especially if he was pointing an empty gun, but chance was always unpredictable. I smiled.

The wind was loud through the trees, and I was almost gonna take Jimmy's suggestion. Let Merle take care of him and just get away. Finally, lights swung past the window. The sound of tires pulling off the road set me on the edge of my chair. I didn't need to fake being nervous. "That's him. That's Merle. I knew it."

Jimmy sat up and motioned me to stay in my seat. The engine was shut off, and footsteps crunched on the drive. He'd parked behind my trailer, like I'd told him. I grabbed Spike and held him.

The knock was soft, just like I'd said to do.

Jimmy slid open the drawer and took out the gun. He walked to the door and opened it a crack.

"You got something of mine in there. You know what I mean?"

Jimmy pulled up the gun, ready to show it to Merle through the crack. "You get off my property while you still can."

Merle ripped the door out of Jimmy's hand and threw himself into the room, the door banging closed behind him with the wind. Jimmy pulled the trigger, once, twice. His face drained and he flung the gun toward Merle's head. There was a flash of a two-by-four and Merle had him on the floor, out cold, his forehead bloody. I was sitting on Spike, who was barking his head off.

"Whack him again," I yelled. "Make sure."

Merle bent over and gave him a couple more hard ones in the same spot. The gun was on the floor next to me and I slid it under the sofa with my foot.

Chance started to whimper in the bedroom. I shoved Spike into the bathroom and slammed the door. "Key's in his jeans' pocket. You get it, and I'll get Chance. Meet you in the shed."

He picked up the bloody two-by-four. "I better put this in the truck so we can toss it."

"Good idea," I said. I was thinking that I had to remember to bring the board back.

He went outside, and I took the gun into the bedroom. I had to change Chance's diaper, put on the plastic gloves, and reload the bullets. When I brought Chance out to the living room, the body was laying there just the same, but Merle must've got the key off him and went to the shed. It wasn't a pretty sight in front of me, the dead body and ugly green shag carpet soaking up blood. I put Chance on the couch and hid the gun behind the pillow. Chance reached for the shiny gun, but I pulled him away in time. I didn't want to mix up any baby fingerprints with Jimmy's.

The trailer wobbled and squeaked in its tie downs. Once Merle got back into the trailer there'd be no reason to poke around, just shoot and run. I was spooked by the sound of the wind and the bad reputation of the metal coffins.

Merle was taking too long. I wasn't sure whether it was safer to carry Chance with me or leave him inside, but I stuck him on my hip and tore out of there. It was wild outside, garbage cans already rolling around, branches whipping by. I shielded Chance with my arm and ran to the shed. The door was closed and for a second I thought Merle had snatched the money and left me, but when I yanked it open, he was zipping the overnight bag.

"You didn't take it all, did you?"

"No, I left a pack of twenties and two ziplocks full of crack, so everything looks normal. No sense trucking that shit around anyway." He hefted the case, weighing it in his hand. "I don't know how much this is, but several of these packs are hundreds."

"Give me a look."

He unzipped the top and picked out a pack of hundreds, flipping the bills close to my face. There was only one dim light bulb in the shed, but I could see more packs of money in the bag.

"You were right," Merle said. His eyes were big with excitement. "We're rich." He grabbed my hand as I reached toward the bag. "Why the gloves?"

"I been doing some cleaning up."

"Wiped my prints off the door?"

I nodded. "Okay, let's put the key back around Jimmy's neck. It's getting crazy outside." I was too freaked to be happy. I still had to commit murder and escape the storm with my baby.

I followed Merle back into the trailer and put Chance in the corner of the couch. Merle knelt down by Jimmy with the key, wiping it on his shirt, putting it back in Jimmy's pocket. I picked up the pillow and the gun behind it.

Merle was shaking his head. "What if the hurricane doesn't break this sucker up? The cops'll know it's murder. Moving this asshole outside won't work either because the blood's in here."

"I never thought of that," I said. I had the gun pointed at him from behind the pillow. "Jeez, what should we do?"

I didn't wait for an answer, just squeezed the trigger. I hadn't done much shooting before, but being close, I hit him in the chest, and he fell backward, dropping the bag, oozing red down the front of his shirt. Chance was screaming bloody murder and Spike was barking like a maniac, but I stood over Merle and gave him one more to the head to make sure. Clumps of gray jellyfish stuff spattered onto the wall. It hit me then, what I'd done. Chance was still bawling hard, but I had to race into the bathroom past the dog to puke.

I splashed my face and ran back to Chance just in time before he could fall off the couch into the mess of Merle and Jimmy. I grabbed him and hugged him tight. "Don't cry, sweetie," I told him. He was scared by all the noise, and maybe the scenery. I wished I could explain how it was all the best for him in the long run.

Spike was sniffing around Jimmy, and I felt real bad about that. He was really a good dog, but there was nothing to do but shoo him out the door. He'd have to find a safe place to hide while Beryl passed over.

I put the gun in Jimmy's hand and closed his fingers. If the trailer went, everything would be tossed around messing up the evidence. Even if it didn't, it would seem like Jimmy revived long enough to shoot Merle—the way it happens in the movies. There was only a few minutes between their times of death. I doubted I'd be a suspect, since I didn't have a motive to kill either of them—except that they were men. The cops wouldn't think of that one. Merle, on the other hand, was well known for his temper, and Jimmy was a drug dealer with a gun.

Chance wailed, rain pounded the aluminum roof, and the trailer creaked and shuddered. There was a snap and crackle in the roar, like Rice Krispies, that I recognized as all the tiny dead branches popping off trees from the force of a gust. I'd seen and heard that before, in my last hurricane experience. Those heaps of rubble from last year must've been scattering too, all projectiles looking for a head to smash. The lights went out. I set Chance back on the couch and felt my way outside to the pickup for the bloody two-by-four.

When I ran back inside to toss it on the floor, Chance was so quiet, I thought he'd fallen off the couch and knocked himself out. I started to panic, but I felt for him and there he was. I prayed he wasn't traumatized. I held him to my chest, grabbed the bag of cash, and dashed to the car.

I held my breath as I drove, dodging branches and trash cans, all kinds of unidentified debris. Now, according to the radio, Beryl was up to a Cat Two, and the outer bands were already hitting the Big O. The berm was expected to hold, but there could be small breaks and minor flooding.

I laughed when I saw the high school with lights still on. "We made it, baby love. You're my lucky Chance!" I parked in an area blocked from the wind by buildings and took a deep breath. God finally sent good fortune flowing my way. He helped those that helped themselves.

There was nobody outside, and I couldn't resist a peek at the money. I hoisted the bag onto the seat. It was heavy. With all those hundreds, there should be enough to cover years of cheap living until Chance started school. One thing I knew was how to live cheap. I wouldn't skimp on Chance though. I'd buy him all the fancy educational toys. He would love the one where you touch an animal, like a bear, and he growls and says "bear."

I laughed, just thinking about the fun we'd have, and unzipped the bag and pulled out a pack of bills. I flipped through them. A hundred on top—but the rest was ones! I reached back into the bag for more, only found two, and they were all singles. I dug down. Old newspaper and cans of beer from the floor of Merle's truck. My head boiled with rage and I thought the top might fly off. "Damn you, you cocksucker!" I screamed out loud to Merle.

Chance started to cry and I had to shut up and swallow it down, but I never wanted to kill somebody so much in my life. It was frustrating, since fucking Merle was already dead.

I dropped the packs of ones and turned the key. I had to go back. I pulled out from between the buildings and into the wind. Big chunks of wood and metal, were flying around now, and that was just the stuff I could see in the headlights. I tromped the gas and turned onto the road. Something slammed into the side window and flew off. The glass broke into tiny beads that splattered inside the car. Rain poured in. Chance screamed like I'd never heard him before. I looked close, but couldn't see any blood. It was pure terror. I let out an angry roar at the wind and pulled back between the buildings. I couldn't risk the drive. If something happened to Chance, all the money in the world would be worthless to me. I pulled back into the sheltered spot. I doubted I could return for the money after the storm. I'd be seen and become a suspect for sure.

I couldn't stop my tears as I bundled Chance into a blanket and carried him inside the building. I didn't even have enough money to rent a sleazy trailer. With my usual luck, I was in the same damn place where I started, except for I'd learned a lot about murder. I'd took right to it.

Lights were bright inside. The auditorium was packed, mostly old people and Spanish-speaking families. I found a cot, sat down, and adjusted my shirt to settle Chance with a nipple, calming him and trying to stop my own sniffling. I wasn't showing much tit, but I felt eyes on my chest.

I glanced across the room. There was a looker all right, big guy in a cowboy hat, legs spread, sitting on a folding lounge chair, shuffling a deck of cards. He looked free and open to suggestions. I felt a juicy twinge. The Big O that I hadn't had for a while came into my mind and slid over me. Those jeans were snug and I liked the boots. I was too tired to think much farther.

I let my head hang, watching Chance, his feathery lashes on his cheeks, suckling like an angel. My plan had failed, but at least his father was out of the picture—no more worry about violent assholes as his role models. I tilted my head up with one last bit of energy and winked at the cowboy.

As I relaxed and drifted off, I saw the Big O rushing over the berm and felt the cold water pour over us. It was like being caught under a wave, but I knew I was dreaming, so I didn't struggle. My luck was changing. I just had to hold my breath till the sun came out.

Black-and-white photographs from a beauty pageant in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo inspired this story, which was originally published in the anthology, A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, in 2007. It was subsequently republished in Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics.

THE CHIRASHI COVENANT

By Naomi Hirahara

There were Alice Watanabe's deviled eggs, lined up in diagonal lines on her white ceramic serving plate, Betty Shoda's potato salad mixed in with a smidge of her secret ingredient, wasabi, and Dorothy Takeyama's ambrosia, peeled orange slices with coconut flakes.

Next to the hostess's ham was a wedge of iceberg lettuce with Green Goddess dressing dripping from the sides. Not a surprise-Sets Kamimura hated to cook and always took the lazy way out. The rest of the women knew this but would never say anything to Sets, even in jest.

And finally, in a huge round lacquerware container was Helen Miura's chirashi. The women were amazed by Helen's handiwork. Each piece of vegetable-carrot, shiitake mushroom, burdock root-was uniformly cut and mixed in with the rice like scattered tiny leaves and twigs blown by the Santa Ana winds. Others may have used a grater or a Japanese daikon suri, but Helen was a master with the knife. Her father had been a fisherman in Terminal Island before the war and Helen, being the oldest, was in charge of cleaning the catch he brought home for dinner. Her mother worked in the tuna cannery, so Helen was destined to get things done.

# #

In the ice box was a vanilla cake, which had been purchased at a Japanese American bakery on Jefferson Boulevard in the Crenshaw area of Los Angeles. Written in thick pastel icing were the words, "Japanese American Court Reunion" and below "10 Year Anniversary."

In 1941, these seven women had ridden on a float in a parade down the streets of Little Tokyo. Yoshiko Kumai, who was hosting the reunion, had been the queen, but everyone knew that Helen was the most beautiful one of them all. Even today, with her thin frame despite having a baby girl two years ago and her long legs, she captured second looks from men of every color and income bracket.

But what Helen lacked was charm. She didn't smile easily; even in the all the photos with the rest of the court she never showed her teeth. It had been Helen and Yoshiko, both twenty-year-olds at the time, who stood together at the Yamato Hall in Little Tokyo, waiting for the winner's name to be called. Yoshiko groped for Helen's hand, her own hand moist and warm. Helen's hand remained limp and cool, and when Yoshiko squeezed, Helen did not reciprocate.

Even though Helen hadn't won the beauty contest, she had won life's competition so far. She had married Frank, probably the most eligible Nisei man in the Manzanar War Relocation Center. By all counts, the insurance company he had started for the resettled Japanese Americans was headed for success.

"I just don't know how you do it, Helen," said Alice. "I'm always embarrassed to make chirashi, because I know how beautiful yours comes out."

"It's nothing, really. Just a lot of chopping and cutting. You need to start off with a good knife."

The conversation then quickly turned to children and the Japanese American women's club that three of them belonged to. While the women giggled and laughed, Helen grew more distant.

"I'll be right back," she excused herself, taking her clutch purse with her.

When Helen was nearly out the back door, Sets pressed two fingers to her mouth and then mimed blowing smoke from her lips. "Ta-ba-co," she commented to the others, with a wink.

# #

Helen took a package of cigarettes from her purse. She had started smoking just recently. Frank didn't approve, of course, and his mother had been aghast to find her smoking in the back yard of their rented Boyle Heights wood-framed house. No matter how much Frank and his mother commented on her smoking, Helen refused to give it up. She needed something of her own.

"Hello." On the other side of the low fence stood a hakujin man in a suit. He was clean-cut and handsome with a large open forehead. A William Holden type.

Helen lit a cigarette with a lighter she had purchased in a department store in Little Tokyo.

A young white couple emerged from the back door of the next door neighbor's house. The woman was visibly pregnant. "We love it, Bob. It's perfect," she said. They then noticed Helen on the other side of the fence. Helen could feel their enthusiasm wane immediately.

"You'll love the neighbors," the man who had greeted Helen said enthusiastically. Almost like he meant it. "Ken was in the U.S. Army, fought over in both Italy and France, I think. Works for the city as a draftsman. He and Yoshiko have two children. They're good people. Go to a congregational church not far from here."

"That's nice," the pregnant woman said weakly. She was disappointed, Helen could tell. Her picture-perfect world was shattered. Helen knew what that felt like.

"Don't worry," Helen spoke up. "There's not too many of us living on this block. But give us ten years, it might be a different story. But you will have moved out by then."

The couple exchanged glances and looked down at the lawn. "Well," the pregnant woman said a little too brightly, "let's take another look at the laundry room." The couple surveyed the backyard wistfully, as if saying goodbye for good before returning to the inside of the house. The man in the suit remained outside.

"I think that I might have cost you a sale," Helen said without any regret.

"Well, good riddance, then. Ken and Yoshiko are good people. Anyone would be lucky to have them or any of their friends as neighbors."

Helen was surprised. She had expected to be met with anger.

"Bob Burkard." The man walked to the low fence and stuck out his hand. Helen hesitated. She moved her lit cigarette from her right hand to her left to better shake hands. She murmured back her name.

"Are you in the market for a new home?"

"What do you mean?"

"You look hungry for a new house." The agent then laughed. "I can tell these things. In my job, you need to be observant." Frank had said the same thing in his line of work. He was constantly selling, but in a comfortable, non-threatening way. Usually by the end of his sales pitch, his customers thought that they had approached him for insurance.

"Not here," Helen said. Not Montebello, a few cities east from where they lived now. Montebello was a growing suburb, but it was inland. Helen hated to be landlocked.

"Where, then?"

"The ocean."

"Ocean? Do you mean Sawtelle?"

Helen almost burst out laughing. Alice Watanabe had represented the Sawtelle area in their beauty pageant. Unincorporated, it drew a cluster of Japanese American nurseries and small shops just a stone's throw away from the Veteran's Administration hospital.

"Not Sawtelle. Pacific Palisades. Malibu. Right by the ocean."

The agent didn't even blink. Helen was impressed.

"I grew up near the water," she offered up more.

"Where?"

"Terminal Island."

"The military base?"

"It wasn't always the military's."

Helen snuffed out her cigarette on the Kumais' cement patio floor and turned to go back inside.

"Wait," Bob called out.

Helen took a few steps into the soft grass again, restaining the pointy heels of her pumps.

Bob handed Helen his business card. "Call me at my office. We'll see what we can do."

# #

Helen had told Frank her dream to live in Pacific Palisades months ago.

"Dear," he said, refolding the Japanese American newspaper that was delivered to their rented house every afternoon. "That's impossible."

"They can't keep us away. Not anymore, right?" Helen readjusted the embroidered doily on the middle of their dining room table.

"It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court says. Remember what happened to the Uchidas in South Pasadena—they had to interviewed by all the neighbors. Do you want to go through that? Get their seal of approval? I don't want to be where I'm not wanted."

"Who cares what they want? How about what we want?"

"It's too far. I need to be around Japanese people. They are my customer base, our livelihood. Someplace like Gardena is a better bet for us. And what would Mama do in Pacific Palisades? She needs to be close to Japanese people, too."

Helen said nothing. She went outside and smoked two cigarettes right below her mother-in-law's bedroom window.

# #

Helen had absolutely not wanted to get married in camp. She hated the idea of being imprisoned with other Japanese Americans on her wedding day. Frank's bachelor friends had agreed to move out of their barracks so that the newlyweds could have a proper honeymoon night, but Helen refused to go along with it. If Frank insisted that they get married in Manzanar's mess hall with tissue paper flowers, Helen would force him to spend their first night together in a bumpy mattress next to his widowed mother's, only separated by some hanging wool blankets.

"We need to get out of here," she told Frank. "Let's apply for special clearance." She brought back bulletins about work in Detroit and Chicago.

But the answer was always the same. "What about Mama? At least in camp she has her friends nearby."

Helen thought everything would have changed when Japanese Americans were allowed to move back to the West Coast in early 1945. But Mama would live with them and they had to be close to Little Tokyo.

Then came the birth of Diana. When Helen looked down at her perfectly formed daughter, this mini-human being that both she and Frank had created, Helen knew that she had a renewed purpose in life.

"I won't let anything happen to you," she had whispered in her daughter's ear. "You will have everything life has to offer."

# #

Despite their earlier conversations, Helen told Frank that she was going to be looking for a new house. Frank was busy with work after all. "You should use Jun. I have his office phone number somewhere." He rifled through the layers of paper on his desk in the corner of the living room.

"There's an agent I met through Yoshiko," Helen said. "I think I'd rather use him."

Frank shrugged his shoulders. "Just don't sign anything."

The next day Helen kissed Diana's forehead and left for Bob Burkard's office in Montebello. Bob's hair seemed freshly combed and the scent of his cologne was so strong that it tickled Helen's nose.

They drove in his new Studebaker towards the beach.

"Who's watching your daughter?" he asked.

"My mother-in-law."

He showed Helen two homes and then drove her back to his office. This routine continued for four days straight.

On the fifth day, Bob parked his car in a dirt lot overlooking the ocean. "I brought us lunch," he said, taking out a blanket and picnic basket from his trunk.

Helen thought it was strange for a bachelor to own a picnic basket. "You've never married?" she couldn't help but to ask him after eating one of his egg salad sandwiches.

"Came close," he said. "It's just taken me some time to meet the right woman."

"So you're picky."

"And what's wrong with that? It's the rest of your life, right? You want to get that right."

Tears came to Helen's eyes. She knew that she was being silly.

"What did I say?" Bob became flustered and fished a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean anything by it." Before Helen could stop him, he was wiping her tears with his handkerchief. He then rested his hand on her cheek. "You are a remarkably beautiful woman. Do you know that, Helen?" With that, he kissed her. Helen had never been kissed by a white man before.

On their silent drive home, all Helen could think about was, what have I done?

# #

The picnics continued the next day and then the next. Bob's kisses quickly moved from her mouth to her neck, down to her breasts and beyond. Helen knew what she was doing was wrong. That she would be punished someday.

"Hausu sagashi? Mama asked when she returned from one of her expeditions with Bob.

"Yes, house hunting," said Helen, feeling grains of sand in her panties.

"Really," she said in Japanese, not looking convinced of it at all.

# #

Helen wasn't sure if Mama had spoken to Frank about her long hours away from the house and their daughter. Frank, for all his earnestness, wasn't the type to deal with a problem directly. Instead he usually found a solution through a side door.

"I found it," Frank reported one evening upon returning home. "A beautiful house. It's in Gardena, but southern Gardena. Not that far from the ocean, and when you breathe hard, you can smell salt air, really."

Frank even had a photo of the property. A single-story wood framed house, which didn't look that different from the property they were renting.

"What are those?"

"Oil derricks. But you can pretend that they are towers. The Eiffel Tower."

In the past, Helen would have been amused by her husband's fancifulness.

"So, what do you think?"

Gardena was at least thirty miles away from Bob's office, even further from their spot in Malibu. Helen said nothing.

"You'll love it, dear. Really. It'll grow on you."

# #

"I'm moving to Gardena. Frank's bought a house," Helen told Bob over the phone while Mama was bathing Diana.

"Gardena?"

Helen nodded. "I won't be able to see you anymore."

"Why?"

"I can't be driving all the way to Montebello. Diana will be ready to go to school soon. I need to spent more time with her."

"Well, then, I'll find us a meeting place down there."

"In Gardena?" Both Helen and Bob knew very few secrets could be hidden there.

"Listen, I've found the perfect house for you in Malibu. It's just come out on the market."

"It's too late, Bob."

"It's never too late. I'll show it to him. He can always sell the Gardena house. He'll fall in love with it, really."

"But why? It's not like I'll be able to see you in Malibu much."

"I want you to be happy."

Bob was being ridiculous, and Helen was angry that he couldn't accept the inevitable. Their affair couldn't last. Diana was getting fussy from her long hours away from her mother. Helen had to bury her feelings. She had practice, but obviously gaman, perseverance, was a new concept for Bob.

That Thursday evening, Frank didn't come home for dinner. He hadn't called and Helen was becoming worried. She called Frank's secretary at home and was told that he was meeting a real estate agent on the west side of town.

At nine o'clock, the phone rang. "Is this Mrs. Frank Miura?" A male voice that Helen didn't recognize.

"Yes."

"This is the LAPD. There's been an accident."

# #

Helen was surprised that Frank's mother wanted to come with her to the coroner's office. Helen told her to stay with Diana. "Mama, it will be better if you stay behind."

"This is your fault," Mama said in Japanese.

Helen's legs had been shaky to begin with, but now she felt like her knees would buckle underneath her.

"You told him that you wanted to move near the water. He only wanted to make you happy."

# #

The coroner had warned Helen that she might not recognize her husband. His body had been severely battered from the rocks. It had been fifty feet drop, after all.

His neck was twisted; his beautiful face now raw and torn. Helen thought that his nose was missing, but she saw that it was instead flattened into a pulpy mass.

His ears were still intact, and Helen checked behind his left earlobe, and sure enough, his mole was there. She studied his hands. His fingers were stiff but his nails were still well manicured, a little squarish at the top.

It was definitely Frank.

Later a police officer sat down with her and asked Helen what her husband was doing on a cliff in Malibu.

"I'm not sure. His secretary told me that he was there to look at a house. A new house that we were thinking of buying." Helen's voice shook. Should she mention Bob? She wasn't sure it had been Bob. But it had to be him.

"Yes, we found the address in his pocket. The real estate agent, in fact, was the one who discovered your husband's body. Do you know a man named Bob Burkard?"

# #

The police car parked in front of their rented house and Helen got out, her hands still trembling.

She thanked the officer, and the car slowly disappeared down the street. Before she got to the stairs, someone pulled at her arm.

"How dare you come here?" Helen said to Bob.

He pulled her into some pine trees framing the side of the house.

"You killed him," she declared.

Bob shook his head. "I didn't even make it on time for our appointment. He had fallen by the time I had arrived. I was the one who called the police."

"I'm going to tell the police about us." Helen was ashamed that she had not been more revealing during the police interview. All she mentioned was that Bob had been their agent. Purely business.

"That we were having an affair? What do you think that will do to your daughter? People will talk. You'll be implicated, you know."

Bob was right. Tongues would wag. Helen Miura was having an adulterous affair with a white man. Diana would be shunned by the parents of her peers. Her family shamed. And if something happened to Helen, who would take care of Diana? Mama couldn't do it on her own. Helen's parents were too old, and Helen's siblings had their own children to raise. Helen knew what it was liked to be one of many. She didn't want that to happen to her Diana.

"I'll wait for you. Even a year. In respect of your husband's death."

Respect? Helen felt like screaming, tearing Bob's hair out. I know what you have done. She wanted to spit in his face, but she used all her rage to manage a slight smile on her lips.

# #

That night Helen lay in their double bed by herself. The doctor at the Japanese hospital had dropped by some sleeping medicine for Helen. Something to stir into hot water. But Helen didn't want to sleep. She didn't deserve to sleep.

Helen reached out for the crumpled sheets Frank had slept in the night before. She planned to never wash them. Instead she would save them in a box so that she could periodically go and smell her late husband.

She wrapped the sheets around her legs and stared at Frank's pillow. There were a few loose hairs coated with oil.

She felt now that Frank, in his death, could see everything. He could see her deception, the romantic trysts in Bob's car and on the beach.

"I'm so sorry, Frank," she whispered. And then she knew what she had to do.

# #

Helen's parents had an old family friend, Kaji-san. Kaji-san, a Japanese immigrant like Helen's father, had been a fisherman as well. He was rambo, rough. A lot of Terminal Islanders had been that way, cured in the sun and salt water. But Kaji-san not only had callused hands b but a callused face, dried up crevices like earthquake faults.

After the war, Helen's relatives had taken the old bachelor for a while before he got back on his feet and opened a Japanese restaurant in Little Tokyo. To everyone's surprise, Kaji-san succeeded and before long, he had even purchased a boat that was docked at Redondo Beach Pier.

Kaji-san felt indebted to Helen's family, so much so that they even stopped going to his restaurant because he never took their money. But Helen needed a favor now, and Kaji-san was, of course, more than willing to comply. Deep down inside, he had questions and concerns. Helen had lost some weight—she was thin to begin with, but now her high cheekbones were even more prominent and defined. Frank's death had definitely taken a toll on her, but Kaji-san knew that Helen would never do anything rash. She wasn't that type of woman.

Helen arrived at the empty restaurant three hours before her appointment and let herself in the back with Kaji-san's key. She needed the extra time to get ready.

Bob came early, too, fifteen minutes early. Helen could tell from the flush in his cheeks that he was excited. She even let him give her a peck on her cheek. That much she could tolerate.

Helen had him sit at the wooden counter and served him a piping hot cup of green tea.

"I've never had green tea before." He sipped carefully and then grimaced. "Bitter."

"You'll get used to it. This tea is expensive; you'll insult me if you don't finish it."

By the time the teacup was empty, Bob's head rested on the wooden counter. Helen went to the kitchen and put on her rubber gloves. And then rolled out the wheelbarrow.

One time she had been out on the fishing boat when her father had caught a blue fin tuna. It had been a magnificent fish, almost six feet tall, almost three hundred pounds. It took three men to handle the fish. The fish first needed to be stunned. Helen's father used one of her brother's baseball bats. This time Helen used Frank's.

The fishermen found the soft spot in the fish's head and then pushed a spike in its brain. Helen was amazed how easy it was to kill a huge fish like that. It shuddered as if it was hoping for another chance for life and then became limp.

There was a method to cutting a blue fin tuna. You first needed some time to bleed the fish so that its sheen would still be maintained. And then go right to the internal organs in the gilling and gutting of the fish. Later you would cut the fish's meat into chunks and sell them by the pound.

Helen could skip many of the steps she had learned as a child. The most important tools here were the knife and the mallet. She was thankful some family friends had watched over her father's tools while they had been in Manzanar.

After Helen was done, she carefully packed different parts of Bob in three different suitcases and cleaned the cement floor of Kaji-san's kitchen. She had brought extra bottles of bleach for the task. She then drove to Redondo Beach Pier and took Kaji-san's motorized fishing boat as far as she could, and dropped each suitcase into different parts of the ocean. The water was black as the ink of an octopus, and for a moment, Helen imagined a huge sea monster emerging from the darkness and tearing her, too, into shreds. But her mind was only playing tricks on her. After closing her eyes hard and reopening them, she found that her fear had disappeared.

# #

Shortly thereafter, Helen, Diana and Mama moved into the wood-framed house in southern Gardena. Next door was a flower farm and packing shed.

"That Miura widow is a cold one," the flower grower's wife said to her husband as they were bunching up flowers at night to get ready for the two o'clock morning drive to the Flower Market in Los Angeles.

The flower grower, Tad, just nodded, so that his wife would be under the impression that he was listening.

"Never says hello. She was on one of those beauty queen courts back in 1941. But she wasn't the queen. Too stuck-up for the judges, I think."

Tad grunted. He wasn't one to spread stories. But he knew who she was. One day when he was driving back from the flower market in the morning after the children went to school, he saw her in the middle of his snapdragon blooms, next to one of the oil derricks. She was screaming and crying; at first he thought that she had been injured. When he slowed his panel truck, she straightened her hair and rubbed the smeared makeup from below her eyes.

"You okay?" he asked from his open car window.

She stared back at him, her eyes shiny like wet black stones. She then spoke, her voice barely audible above the rhythmic squeak of the derricks. "Are any of us?"

Tad's panel truck remained idling as the widow slowly walked back into her house and closed the door.

In El Valiente en el Infierno, (The Brave One in Hell), a 13-year-old Mexican boy makes a treacherous midnight crossing into California in search of his father. The boy's courage is tested when he runs into two gun-toting American vigilantes, and the confrontation will change all of them forever. The story originally appeared in The Road to Hell.

EL VALIENTE EN EL INFIERNO

(THE BRAVE ONE IN HELL)

By Paul Levine

I am not afraid.

That is what I tell myself.

Just after midnight, five hundred meters from the border fence, I keep still, squatting on the ground beneath a mesquite tree. Buried in the sand are motion sensors and infrared cameras.

My name is Victor Castillo. I am 13 years old.

Back home, in my village, a man warned me not to do this.

You are looking for el cielo. Heaven. But you will find only el infierno. Hell.

Still, I am not afraid. In a matter of minutes, I will be in the United States. By breakfast time, I will be with my Aunt Luisa in a little California town called Ocotillo. She is a nurse, but an even better cook. The best huevos rancheros in the world. Homemade tortillas, the eggs not too runny, the red sauce spiked with jalapenos. We will have a cry about my mother, then mi tia will put me on a bus to Minnesota, where my father works in the sugar beet fields.

But first, there is the fence. It slithers down a rocky slope and disappears between distant boulders, like an endless snake. We move from the cover of the trees to a ravine filled with desert marigolds. I hope the golden flowers are a good omen. We climb out of the ravine and up to the fence, the links glowing like silver bullets in the moonlight. The man who calls himself El Leon - "The Lion" - snips at the metal with wire cutters. He wears all black and his long hair is slick with brilliantine.

In the States, they would call El Leon a coyote. In Mexico, he is a pollero, a chicken wrangler. Which makes the rest of us - Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans - the pollos. The chickens. Hopefully, not cooked chickens. If we are caught and turned back, I don't know what I will do. All my mother's savings - $2,200 - are paying for my passage

The wire cutters fly from El Leon's hands, and he curses in Spanish.

This is taking too long.

Above us, a three-quarter moon is the color of milk. Under our feet, the earth is hard as pavement. Somewhere, on the other side of the fence, La Migra, the Border Patrol, waits. I listen for the whoppeta of a helicopter or the growl of a truck.

El Leon, please hurry!

He keeps working and keeps cursing. I sit on my haunches, inhaling the smell of coal tar from the creosote bushes. From a pocket in my backpack, I take out a photograph of my mother, her face pale in the moonlight.

El Leon works quickly now, the links cra-acking like bones breaking. Finally, he says, "You first, chico."

I duck through the opening, then hold the wire for a Honduran girl. Maybe I should say a Honduran "woman," because she is pregnant, her stomach a basketball under her turquoise blouse. But she is probably only seventeen or eighteen and is traveling alone, and she looks too young and too scared to take care of a child. On her feet, huarches, sandals made from old tire tread. I hope she can keep up with us. A selfish thought, I realize, and immediately feel ashamed. My mother taught me better.

The pregnant girl places two hands on her stomach, bends over, and squeezes through the fence. Following her are two campesinos from Oaxaca who smell like wet straw. The men wear felt Tejana hats, cowboy boots, and long-sleeve plaid work shirts. Then the rest, fourteen in all.

Ten minutes later, we are climbing a dusty path, moonbeams turning the arms of cholla cactus into the spiny wings of monsters.

Los Estados Unidos. I am here!

Do I feel different, changed in some way? I am not sure. The rocks on the ground and the stars in the sky all look the same as in Mexico. Maybe mi mami is looking down at me from those stars. Her weak lungs gave out five days ago, and I recited the oraciónes por las almas over her grave.

"Let me see her again in the joy of everlasting brightness."

The stars have "everlasting brightness," so yes, I pretend she watches me, even though I never believed half of what the priests said.

I travel alone to find my father. My two older brothers have been with papi for nearly a year, carrying their weeding hoes all the way from our village in Sonora to a town called Breckenridge in Minnesota. Beets, strawberries, cabbage. Melons, corn, peas. Whatever is in season and requires hands close to the ground. The work is hard, but the pay is good, at least by Mexican standards.

Now we walk along a rocky path that crawls up the side of a hill sprouting with stubby cactus like an old man who needs a shave. El Leon yells at two Mexican sisters, calls them parlanchinas - chatterboxes - tells them to keep quiet. He has a rifle slung over a shoulder. But why? Who would he shoot?

The older sister is still babbling, something about every house in California having a swimming pool, when El Leon hisses, "¡Cállense la boca!"

He cocks his head toward the hill. I hear something, too.

A clopping.

Growing louder. Horses!

A gunshot echoes off the hillside.

"Vigilantes!" El Leon yells.

My stomach tightens. Our village priest warned me about the vigilantes. Not policemen. Or National Guard. Or Border Patrol. Private citizens, gabachos, calling themselves the Patriot Patrol. Maybe protecting their country or maybe just taking target practice with their friends. Maybe one day shooting Mexicans instead of road signs and cactus.

"Run!" El Leon screams.

But where? On one side of the path, a steep upward slope. On the other, a creviced, dry wash.

The two campesinos leap into the wash and take off, the spines of prickly pear tearing at their pant legs. El Leon leads the others back toward the border. But I cannot follow them. ¡Mi papi está en los Estados Unidos!

I scramble up the steep slope, grabbing vines, pulling myself hand-over-hand. The horses are so close now I can hear their hooves kicking up rocks on the path.

"Yippee ti-yi-yo, greasers!" A gabacho's voice. Gruff and mean.

Two men on horseback in chaps, boots, and cowboy hats. One man holds a large revolver over his head and fires into the air.

"Git on back to Meh-ee-co! Look at 'em run, Calvin."

Calvin, a big man with a belly flopping over his jeans, coughs up a laugh. "Whoa, what do we got here, Woody? Looks like a piñata on Michelins."

I see her then, too. The pregnant Honduran girl in her tire-tread huarches, trying to hide in the shadow of the hill.

"Someone aims to have herself an anchor baby," Calvin says.

I know what the man means. Anyone born on this side of the border is automatically an American citizen. Doesn't matter if you're from Mexico, Guatemala, or Mars. If Osama bin Laden fathered a child in Los Angeles, the kid would be an American.

"Welfare and food stamps and diapers all on the taxpayer's dime." Woody spits out the words.

Gripping a vine at its root, I keep still. Afraid to dislodge a stone. Afraid the gabachos will see me. And ashamed of my fear.

On the path below me, the girl tries to run back toward the border, but the best she can do is a duck waddles. The two men cackle and whoop. Calvin grabs a lariat from his saddle. "Where you goin' chica? The amnesty bus already left the station."

He twirls the lariat and tosses it over the girl's head, where it settles on her chest. He pulls it tight, nearly yanking her off her feet.

"No!" she screams, clawing at the rope. "¡Mi bebé!"

"If there really is a kid..." Calvin hops off his horse. "Let's have a look, chica."

He struts toward her, bowlegged, his belly jiggling over his wide belt,

which is studded with silver buttons.

I want to fly down the mountain and take the gun away. If they give me any trouble, I will shoot one in the kneecap and the other in his big, fat belly. Isn't that what a valiente - a courageous man - would do? Take any risk, fight any foe, protect the weak, punish the wicked. But I am a boy. And they are grown men with guns.

"You with that coyote calls himself 'El Leon?'" Calvin demands

The girl's head bobs up and down.

"El Leon's a narcotraficante. You carrying his cocaina instead of a kid? You a mule?"

"No! Mi bebé!"

"C'mon. He always uses kids and women to carry his drugs."

"Not me. ¡Te lo juro por Dios!"

Calvin slips the lariat off the girl, then yanks up her blouse.

Even from this distance, I can see her bulging stomach, creamy white in the moonlight.

"She ain't lying," he says to Woody, patting the girl's belly. "Maybe we should deliver the baby right now. Save the county some money."

The girl screams.

"You got a knife, Woody?"

"You know I do. Bowie knife."

I must do something, but what? My arms feel like they're dipped in boiling water. I try to get a better grip on the vine, but it tears from the dry earth. I dig my sneakers into the slope.

Calvin says, "Who's gonna operate?"

"You do it, Woody. I can't stand the sight of blood."

The girl chants in Spanish. Asks God to take her own life but save her baby.

I do not expect God to answer her prayers. He did not answer mine when my mother was sick. It is up to me.

Can a valiente be afraid?

I tell myself yes. If he acts with courage, despite the fear.

I grip the vine with my left hand, pick up a rock with my right. Round and jagged, the size of a baseball. I throw the rock at Woody, the gabacho still on his horse. It sails past the man's head, clunks into the dry wash.

"What the hell!" Woody turns in the saddle, faces the slope, revolver in hand.

"Up here, pendejos!" I yell.

"It's a kid," Calvin says, pointing. "Right there, Woody."

"C'mon down here, you little jumping bean," Woody orders.

"Come and get me, culero!" I throw another rock, adjusting for the downward arc. Woody never sees it coming out of the darkness, and it plunks his shoulder. He yelps and his horse does a little dance under him. He turns the revolver toward the slope and fires. A bullet pings off a boulder. Not even close. I think maybe he is not such a good shot.

"I work for El Leon!" I yell, waving my backpack in the air. As if I'm carrying cocaine and not just a pair of jeans, two t-shirts, and a first baseman's mitt.

"Little greaser's the mule!" Calvin sounds as if he's just made a great discovery. Now, I think maybe the men are not too smart, either.

"I may be a mule, but you're nothing but chicken-hearted banditos!"

I start up the slope again, clawing at rocks to make my way.

"Stop, you little punk!"

I keep going, hoping they will try to follow.

Another gunshot ricochets off a boulder far over my head.

"C'mon down here, you little peckerwood!" Woody shouts. "Give us the coke and we'll let you go."

I reach the top of the slope and look down toward the two vigilantes. "So long, pendejos!"

"Go around that way, Cal," Woody orders, tugging the reins and pointing into the darkness. "We'll meet up on the far side."

The vigilantes turn their horses and take off in opposite directions. They will try to cut me off on the other side of the hill. And they may succeed. But at least, they have left the girl alone. I glance one last time down the slope. The girl waves and says something to me I cannot hear, but in my head, I think she is chanting a blessing for me. I wave back and scramble on hands and knees over the top of the hill.

Minutes later, I am stumbling in the dark, tripping over roots and trying to avoid prickly pear with spines as long and sharp as porcupine quills. The slope becomes too steep, and I slide part way down on my butt, ripping my pants, and scraping my hands. Near the bottom, I stop and listen for the sound of horses or the shouts of angry men.

But what I hear is a wail. A cry of pain.

"Broke my damn ankle, Woody. Can't put an ounce of weight on it."

"Hang in there Cal."

I peek around a stand of organ pipe cactus. Two horses, but only one man. Woody is bent over the edge of a cliff, his hands yanking at his lariat, which is stretched taut. "Damn rope's fouled in the rocks."

"Git it loose, Woody. Hurry! Jesus, ankle's swole up and hurts like hell."

Calvin's voice, raw with pain, coming from over the side. The vigilantes must have stopped here and gotten off the horses. The big man never saw the cliff. Now he was over the side.

It is more than I could have hoped for. A perfect distraction. I can work my way around them in the darkness. I can get away.

Then I hear Woody moan. "Damn, it hurts like a sumbitch. I might pass out, Cal."

"Hang with me, man!"

"Gonna die out here." Woody starts to sob. Great, wracking sobs that seem to echo off the rocks and boulders.

I am not sure why I don't just sneak past them. But sometimes we do things without ever knowing exactly why.

"You can't get the rope free that way," I say to Calvin as I come up behind him.

Startled, he wheels around. "Ain't your business, chico. Git out of here."

"I can rope down the cliff."

"What the hell you talking about?"

"Rappelling. Rock climbing. I've done it back home." I look over the side of the cliff. Woody sits on a ledge about 20 feet below us. The rope is stuck in a crevice maybe 15 feet from him. "I'll work the rope out, walk it along the cliff face till I reach your friend."

Calvin looks at me as if he thinks I might steal his wallet. "Why would you help?"

"Because somebody has to."

He seems to think about this a moment.

"After you pull him up, drop the rope back to me," I tell the man.

"You trust me to do that, kid?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Okay, then," he says, just as an orange streak of the sun appears over the mountains to the east.

I rappel down the face of the cliff. Seconds later, I am working the rope out of a slot between two rocks. Once it is free, I wrap the rope around my waist, hold on with both hands, and bounce-walk along the face of the cliff until I reach the ledge.

"Thanks. You're a good kid." Woody winces in pain as I hand him the rope. Up close, he looks older and not as fierce as he did from so far away. His face is slick with sweat. His puffy cheeks have a gray stubble and his breath smells of tobacco and beer.

He is able to put weight on one leg and use it against the cliff face. Huffing, puffing, and cursing, Calvin pulls him up. A few moments later, I reach the surface just as Woody painfully struggles to get back on his horse.

Calvin looks down at the ground, kicks at the dust. Seems like he wants to say something. Sorry, maybe. But he can't quite get it out.

"You're not a drug mule, are you kid?" he says, finally

I shake my head. "I just didn't want you to..."

"We never would have hurt that gal. Just meant to scare her into going back home, tell her friends to stay put."

"Where you headed?" Woody asks.

"Ocotillo. My aunt lives there."

"We got a truck two miles over if you want a lift. Ocotillo's on our way to the hospital." He says it softly. Sounding a little embarrassed, wishing he had more to offer.

"My Aunt Luisa's a nurse. She can take a look at that ankle."

Woody doesn't take me up on the offer.

"Mi tia can make us all breakfast," I say, trying again. "She's a great cook."

The sun is an orange fireball, fully above the distant mountains now.

The two men don't look like vigilantes any more. Ordinary guys with creased, tired faces. They exchange bashful looks.

"Do you like huevos rancheros?" I ask.

"Love it," Calvin says.

"No better breakfast on either side of the border," Woody agrees.

"So?" I ask.

There is no more meanness in the men's faces. "What are we waiting for?" Calvin says. "I'm hungry as hell."

I do something I haven't done since crossing the border. I smile.

Top Suspense Group's Dave Zeltserman used to run a great online magazine called Hardluck Stories. When he asked me for a tale, I tried to think of something that would combine his East Coast sensibilities and my home state of Nevada. This was the result.

A HANDFUL OF DUST

By Harry Shannon

The monster known as Pike had short brown hair speckled with grey. He wore blue Armani with a salmon tie. Pike rode down in the elevator alone, well after midnight, rolling a lightweight suitcase behind. He crossed the loud, garishly furnished lobby and casino, bought a copy of the New York Times and carried it to a back table. He sat behind a potted plant and ate mozzarella with fresh tomatoes and a side of Canadian bacon. After two espressos and a cold bottle of mineral water from France, Pike called the valet to order up a brand new rented mustang ragtop that had been charged to a fraudulent credit card. He tipped the sleepy carhop appropriately, without once meeting his eyes.

Pike drove away. He paused at the mouth of the driveway, in the neon glare of the massive, pyramid-shaped casino, and put some of his favorite music on the CD player; Hans Biber's melancholy "Die Rosarie Sonaten." He waited for some drunken tourists to pass, flipped on his headlights. He cruised down the strip to the freeway entrance and headed northeast.

Later, when the highway forked, Pike took the back road, a little-known ribbon of cracked asphalt that paralleled the main highway up to Elko and then Dry Wells. The desert night was chill and the indigo sky freckled with winking stars.

Pike knew his way around Nevada, but wasn't terribly fond of the state. To him, the high desert was merely a cratered landscape littered with pale fists of bleached tumbleweed, as devoid of charm and empty as the surface of the moon. He liked it better at night. Pike checked his platinum Rolex, activated the radar scanner and drove as fast as he dared. After four listens, he changed to Biber's heartbreaking "Requim," but eventually even that familiar work began to grate on him. Pike tried to find a radio station, but he was already too far from civilization. He'd opted to avoid satellite systems for security reasons. He drove on in silence, mind empty and handsome face bland.

Before dawn, when the rising sun would smear red and orange chalk along the rocky peaks, Pike came to the city limits. To the left, in his headlights, stood a weather-beaten metal sign, chains squeaking in a light breeze, announced "Historic" Dry Wells. Pike sniffed with disdain. In the dark, the battered wooden storefronts looked like some abandoned movie set. The cracked windows were streaked with dust; many were broken. This part of town seemed deserted.

Pike went to the right, past a closed gas station and liquor store, until he saw the small neon sign that read TAPS. He parked out of sight, around the side, next to a dented white pickup truck, and got out for a stretch. A man in a black cowboy shirt sat in the cab, lighting what smelled like a decent cigar. He never looked up. Pike strolled to the front of the ramshackle building, past a bug zapper that was doing brisk business. He looked around carefully before entering through a squeaking pair of old wooden batwing doors.

Tap's was furnished with card tables and folding chairs. A small, geriatric television set was mounted on the far wall. Despite the hour, it was tuned to a sports network and the sound was muted. Pike looked around, searching for surprise customers or hiding places. He found none, and as promised, there seemed only one way in or out.

"Evening, Tap," Pike ventured. He waved one hand in the air.

The bartender, a white-haired old-timer with long white hair in a ponytail who'd been paid to stay open all night, wore a ripped, tie-die wife-beater tee shirt and blue overalls. He was festooned with fading tattoos and sat clipping his toenails with grim resolve. His feet were filthy. He squinted at his handiwork before replying.

"Want a beer?"

"Do you have anything German?"

Tap squinted, shook his head. "Just the Coors. Want one, or not?"

Pike nodded, enunciated carefully. "That would be nice." He walked closer, annoyed that his new Gucci shoes were already coated with sawdust. The bar itself was made of long plywood sheeting nailed to a couple of sawhorses. Pike took the cold bottle of beer and backed away. He chose a table that would allow him to keep an eye on both the owner and the front door; took an unopened pack of cigarettes from his jacket and set it on the table. The desert night looked like a velvet drape. Insects droned.

Pike was on his second beer when yellow headlights splashed the dirty windows. Someone else was arriving. The engine sounded small, maybe Japanese. Pike glanced outside. The driver waited quite a while before stepping out into the graveled driveway, under the street lamp. He approached the door heavily, like a man on the way to the gallows. Pike reached around, under his shirt, to adjust the small 9 mm Firestar seated in the holster at the small of his back.

The batwing doors opened with a horror-film creak. From the voice on the phone, Pike half expected 'Mr. Smith' to be a jumpy little weasel. He was somewhat surprised to see a stocky, pleasant looking, balding businessman perhaps fifty years old. Smith stepped into the room and did a pathetic job of acting casual. He smiled, asked for a can of soda. Tap was still occupied with his toenails. He looked up and offered a beer instead.

Moments later, Smith brought the unopened bottle to the table. Pike moved the pack of cigarettes to one side.

"Mind if I sit down?" Smith's voice was higher than one would expect, and broke on the last syllable. "I've been driving all night." That was definitely the voice Pike had heard on the phone. Smith swallowed nervously and positioned himself with his back to the room, another clear sign of an amateur. His eyes were pink spider webs. "Have you read anything by James Michener?"

"Only 'The Source.'"

"You should really read 'Hawaii,' then."

"I don't get much time to read these days."

Pike pinned Smith to the chair, lowered his voice. "Now that we have that nonsense out of the way, why don't you tell me why you dragged me up here to this God forsaken part of the country in the middle of the night?"

"Ah." Smith swallowed again, Adam's apple bobbing. "You chose the time and place, sir."

"I know that," Pike sighed. "I just don't want to go through all this for nothing. Now, tell me who it is and why."

"Why?" Smith seemed surprised. "I didn't think you'd care."

"I don't, except if I don't know everything there may be some surprises that pop up along the way and put me in danger. You look like a businessman, I'm sure you can understand that."

"Certainly," Smith said. "Of course." He glanced back at the indifferent, now dozing bartender. "Are you sure it's safe to talk in here?"

"Don't worry, Old Tap is nearly deaf. He's also bought and paid for."

"Are you satisfied you can trust me, sir?"

"Of course, Mr. Smith." Pike leaned forward. "After all, Reggie himself vouched for you." His elbows shifted the table and en empty beer bottle clanked against the ashtray. "So, just briefly fill me in. The wife?"

"Excuse me?"

"It's usually the wife."

"No," Smith said. He leaned closer. His eyes seemed glassy. He was perspiring heavily and his breath smelled like cinnamon breath mints. "It's a business associate, actually. I'm trying to close the deal of a lifetime, and he's in the way."

"Do you have any special requirements?"

Smith cocked his head, bemused. "I don't understand."

"For example, does it matter to you if he suffers first?"

"No," Smith blanched and shook his head rapidly. "No, it doesn't matter at all."

"Okay, good," Pike said. "That keeps things simple."

A long silence followed. The bug zapper on the porch snapped and crackled like distant thunder. Mr. Smith wiped his brow. "It's really hot in here." Pike sipped his beer without answering and Smith got the hint. "Okay, one question. How will you…do it?"

Pike shrugged. "That all depends. An accident is best. Maybe we cut his brake line before a trip, or arrange for a burglar to break in and shoot him. Sometimes I set up a fatal heart attack."

"You can do that?"

"For the right about of money, Mr. Smith, I can do anything."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Indulge me for a second," Mr. Smith said, ignoring Pike's response. He had abruptly stopped sweating, and his eyes were no longer shining. "How does somebody get into your line of work?"

"You don't need to know that."

"Perhaps, but I'd like an answer anyway."

Pike decided to give him two more minutes. "If you know Reggie, then you know the Russians have moved into LA. I started running errands for them maybe ten years ago. I made myself useful and let them know I was a team player. A chance came along and I took it."

"You eliminated someone they found troublesome."

"Obviously."

"Were you scared that first time?"

A burst of laughter, short and low as a lion's cough. "I don't scare very easy, Mr. Smith. If I did, I'd find myself another line of work."

"I'll accept that…but does it ever bother you?"

For some reason the question, routine and somewhat expected, made Pike feel unusually uncomfortable. "Not really, Mr. Smith. It's just a job to me. I'm a professional."

"You enjoy it, then."

"I suppose you could say that."

"Okay, then…" Smith lowered his voice even further. "I'll return to the subject of fear. Do you ever take pleasure in making other people feel afraid, Mr. Pike?"

"I need to see the color of your money," Pike said, briskly.

"I'm sorry, I have offended you."

"Not really, but this has already taken too long."

"You do. I knew you would."

"Do what?

"Take pleasure in it." Smith reached into his jacket, removed a thick packet wrapped in brown paper and twine. He held Pike's eyes as he pried one end open, thumbed through the one hundred dollar bills. He set the money down on the table. "Half in advance, just the way Reggie said I should do it."

Pike took the money without counting and tucked it into his coat pocket. "Now give me the name and address, Smith, and we're both out of here."

"Fear is nothing more than adrenaline racing through the body." Smith looked down and away, as if he'd just discovered something hiding on the sawdust floor. His voice went hollow. "And yet there is something about it that fascinates, don't you agree? We have Halloween, Day of the Dead, horror films and books and all manner of murder mysteries and thrillers are always on the best seller lists and doing well at the box office. For most of my childhood I avoided fear like the plague. Oh, I went on a roller coaster once, and although it was rather delicious, I did wet myself."

This guy's demented, Pike thought. He leaned back in his chair. "Mr. Smith, this is all too fascinating, but time is money."

Smith seemed not to hear him. "My abusive stepfather introduced me to hunting when I was a teenager. He was a nasty, cruel person. Told my mother it would make a man of me. How cliché! Anyway, that frightened me too, at first, but eventually I got quite used to it."

"Killing," Pike said, "something of an acquired taste. Not everyone enjoys it."

Smith nodded and his mouth went thin. "I never did, to be honest. Oh, I came to quite like the hunt itself, but never the death."

"Mr. Smith, I need that name."

Smith looked up, and his eyes were suddenly wide with excitement. "What if I changed my mind, Mr. Pike? What if I said I really wanted that man to suffer? What could you do to him?"

Pike shrugged. "We could maybe cut him up first, smash his toes. Let him hurt a while and then torch his house while he's still breathing. If the fire burns hot enough, no one would ever need to know how he died."

"How would you prove it to me, what you did?"

"I can make a video if you'd like." Pike yawned. "Or just tape the sound, if you don't think you could sit through watching."

"Isn't that risky?"

"Once you've checked it out, I'll destroy it so there's no evidence."

"Of course, of course. Is there anything else you could suggest?" Smith rubbed his palms together like a pervert at a peep show.

"To make it bad, really bad?"

"Yes…if I wanted to make it all very nasty."

Pitt yawned. "We could burn his skin with drain cleaner. See, what you do is, you explain it all up front and then take him out bit by bit, even make him swallow some at the end."

"Oh, God. That is truly horrific."

"Yes."

"And the target is always aware of what is going to come next. I'd guess that must engender the deepest fear of all."

"It gets their attention."

"Then that's what I want."

"Fine, Mr. Smith," Pike said, briskly. He checked his watch. "There's just one little problem. I have the deposit, but I still need the man's name."

Smith chuckled. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Tap was not paying attention. "Mr. Pike, I have a confession to make. I have brought you here under what might be considered false pretenses."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, I am still going to hire you, in a manner of speaking, but not in quite the way you'd imagined."

Pike let his hand creep back toward the 9mm Firestar in his belt. "What exactly do you mean?"

"Well, the real reason I brought you here is because of my long obsession with fear." Smith drank deeply from his beer, belched politely behind one hand. "As I said, it started when I was a child, and has continued to this very day. So when a friend of mine died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and a professional hit was suspected, I decided to find out who'd done the job."

Pike tensed, gripped his weapon. "You're here because I did a friend of yours?"

"Not exactly, Mr. Pike. Please relax. William wasn't a friend, actually, although I was quite close to his wife, Jane. Very close, if you know what I mean. She was quite relieved to have him out of the way. In any event, it took me several weeks to retrace all the steps, but eventually they led me to our mutual acquaintance, Reggie." Smith saw Pike's eyes narrow. He held up his right hand, palm empty and asking for peace. "Please don't be alarmed. Look, I must say that what you do for a living absolutely fascinates me."

Pike showed him the gun. "You're on real thin ice, here."

"I know, I know." Smith said weakly. "I just want to discuss something with you. You can keep the money."

"You paid me thirty large just to talk? You must be a very rich man."

"Oh, I am," Smith said, "but I didn't go to all that trouble just to talk. First, you must understand one fact. I have recently learned that I am terminally ill. It is a rare form of cancer, quite lethal. Oh, the pain is quite manageable with drugs, and I assure you that I have at least six months, so I'm certainly not asking for your pity."

"What the hell are you asking for, then?"

"Well, I actually came to turn the tables, as it were. Now that I know who you are, and what you look like, my intention is to stalk you, Mr. Pike."

Pike laughed. "What?"

"As already mentioned, I have hunted in my time, but never the most dangerous game of all, never man. I would like to experience that before I'm gone."

"Okay, let me get this straight. You plan to hunt and kill me?"

"Just so."

Pike sneered, shivered. "Oh, I'm so scared."

"I know it sounds foolish at this point," Smith said. "But I do so want you to feel those waves of intense dread and forbidding you have so frequently inflicted upon others, at least once in your life. It seems only fair."

Pike set his gun sideways on the table, in plain view. He kept his finger on the trigger. "Like I said a few minutes ago, old Tap is pretty much deaf, and he's nodding off over there. He's also bought and paid for, so whatever happens next, he won't be talking to the cops about it."

Smith smiled. "You forget that I have finally come to quite enjoy the sensation of fear, Mr. Pike."

"I hope for your sake that this is Reggie's idea of a practical joke."

"I'm sorry." Smith pursed his lips. "Regretfully, our friend Reggie is dead. I shot him through the right eye with a 22 automatic. I have read in mystery novels that the shells rattle around better in the skull that way."

"You're nuts."

"Perhaps I am." Smith winked, lewdly. "Hey, don't worry. I came here unarmed, just as I promised."

Pike stared and then took out his cell phone with his free hand. He hit autodial, waited. His stomach felt sour. After three rings Reggie answered. "Yeah?"

Pike felt relieved. "Reggie, it's me, Pike."

"I can't talk right now," Reggie said, briskly. "Call me later." The line disconnected. Pike folded his cell phone and tucked clipped it back on his belt. He considered the man before him. Meanwhile, Smith rubbed his temples like a man coming down with a headache. When he looked up, his expression was again timid and uncertain, like a man recovering from a hallucination. Pitt grimaced with frustration. Smith was clearly a full-on psychotic.

"Let's take a walk."

"Please, no." Smith whimpered, shook his head. He looked pale. He kept his hands in plain sight. "I don't want to go outside."

"You're really something," Pike said, admiringly. "You're probably a fruit loop, but I have to admit you've got guts."

"Do you know Elliot?"

"Elliot who?"

"T.S. Thomas Stearns Eliot, Mr. Pike. Have you read him?"

"Some," Pike said. He was now honestly baffled.

Mr. Smith closed his eyes and recited from memory. His tenor voice was clear and resonant and brought the poem alive. "You know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief. And the dry stone no sound of water. Only there is shadow under this red rock. Come in under the shadow of this red rock and I will show you something different from either…Your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you." Smith opened his eyes. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

Pike leaned down closer to the pack of smokes he'd placed on the table. "Willie, we're on the way out." He tucked the pack into his coat.

Smith blinked. He looked around the room as if bewildered. "Who were you talking to?"

Pike glanced at Tap, who had clearly fallen asleep. He aimed the gun at Smith's head, but did not pull the trigger. He abruptly reached across the table, seized Smith by the thumb and painfully turned his wrist. The smaller man yelped and got to his feet, following Pike's lead.

"Ouch, that hurts!"

"Keep it down, or I'll do you right here and now."

"Ow!"

Pike wrist-walked Smith to the door, the Firestar pointed down at the floor. He poked his head outside. There was no traffic on the highway, although he could see a pair of headlights in the distance, coming closer. He yanked Smith close and whispered in his ear. "You've stepped in it now, buddy."

"Please," Smith gasped. "It was a joke. I already said you can keep the money, just don't hurt me, okay?" The reddened eyes had gone glassy again. He's definitely on some kind of heavy medication, too.

"What were you thinking, pal?"

"I only wanted to see what a real hit man was like before I died, that's all. I really am sick. It was just a bad joke, Pike. I made up all the rest of it on the spot, just to see what you'd do."

"You're a lying sack of…" Pike dragged him through the batwing doors and down the dusty wooden steps. The desert night was cool and crisp and huge stars speckled a deep, blue sky.

"No! I really wasn't lying about being sick, just about the rest of it. I've been under Psychiatric care, and they say I'm getting better."

Pike released his wrist, kicked the seat of his pants. Smith was visibly trembling, now. He began to sob. He stumbled around the side of Tap's and closer to the pickup truck parked in the darkness. When he saw the broad-shouldered cowboy standing next to it holding a tire iron, he cried out again. "God, please don't kill me!"

Pike kicked him again. "Did you think I'd be here alone? Willie's worked with me for years. He's got enough equipment in that truck to block any signal but our own, and enough firepower to take on the National Guard."

"So this is the big man?" Willie uncrossed his massive arms. "He's moving around a lot. You want I should kneecap him first?"

Pike briefly considered the idea, but shook his head. "Wait a second, Willie." He walked back down the gravel driveway and peered into the night. The headlights up the road were almost upon them. Pike called out: "Lose the tire iron, we got company."

Something clattered into a pile of trash at the back of the building. Willie puffed on his cigar again, the orange tip showering sparks. For a long moment, Smith's pale and terrified face was visible, like a reflection of the full worm moon.

Pike saw the rack on the top of the Highway Patrol car and his stomach tightened. "Stand him up, Willie," he said softly," and pour some booze on him in case we need to knock him out."

Pike slipped the 9mm in the back of his belt and walked back toward the porch. The patrol car pulled into the driveway, spraying gravel; faint but incessant radio chatter flooded the air. After a long moment, a bucolic looking young officer with short red hair and a gut slipped out of the driver's door. He stood so that the vehicle remained between them and nodded.

"How y'all doing tonight?"

"Just fine, officer," Pike said, pleasantly. "I was about to drive away when I remembered I hadn't paid my tab."

"Tap okay in there?"

"You know Tap." Pike paused in the doorway and grinned. "He was sleeping two minutes ago."

"Hang on there a second," the young cop said. "Stay where you are." He left the engine running and walked around the front of the car, hand on the butt of his Glock. His shadow spread a pool of ink on the cracked plaster wall. Pike froze, but subtly let his own fingers crabwalk back toward his own gun. The cop trudged up the steps. He shined his flashlight in Pike's face. Blinded, Pike flinched and looked away.

"What's your name, friend?"

"Gavin Hollenbeck," Pike replied, using the name on his fake driver's license and bogus credit card.

"What you doing out here, Mr. Hollenbeck?"

"Just passing through on my way down to Vegas to have some fun."

"You call us about a broke down car?"

"No, I sure didn't."

"Maybe old Tap did it, then?"

"If he did, he didn't say anything to me about it, officer."

The cop peered over the top of the batwing doors. Pike considered dropping him on the spot, one quick shot to the back of the head, but before he could go for the Firestar the kid had changed position again. He turned off the flashlight. "Tap's sleeping, all right. How much you owe him?"

Pike opened his wallet and produced a ten-dollar bill. "Couple of beers and a tip, that's all."

Someone coughed by the side of the building. The cop stiffened and flicked the flashlight back on. "Who's that, Mr. Hollenbeck?"

Pike took a deep breath. "I don't know, just a couple of guys standing around having a beer, I'd expect. One of them has a big old cigar, and Tap doesn't like smoke, right?"

The cop took two steps, froze. "I thought you said you were just passing through, Mr. Hollenbeck. You know old Tap?"

"I am just passing through," Pike covered, and gently produced the fake pack of smokes. "He just said to go outside, that I couldn't light up."

"You there," the cop called. He was tense again. His hand was back on his Glock. "Come on out in the light, where I can see you."

Pike let himself drift back to the batwing doors. He wanted to be able to duck inside, in case he needed cover. Smith came out first, looking washed-out and disheveled. His hands were shaking and he now stank of whiskey. Willie appeared behind him, half in the gloom. Pike used his eyes to keep Willie calm until he could decide what to do. The cop looked Smith up and down and chuckled.

"What's your story?"

The chastened Mr. Smith eyed the scene and shrugged. He clearly didn't want to get caught in a shoot-out. "I only had a couple of drinks, officer," he said. He belched and his face sagged. "I wasn't feeling too good anyway, and after that I really got really sick."

The cop stepped a couple of feet to his right, widening the distance. His eyes focused. "Who's that with you?"

"Who?" Smith covered perfectly. "Oh, he's just somebody who was helping me out. Man, the poor guy comes outside here for a peaceful smoke and I suddenly show up and start barfing."

The silence mounted. The cop was clearly suspicious. One in the temple, hide the body out back. Pike came within inches of firing, but suddenly the patrolman relaxed. "Can you drive?"

Smith nodded a bit too enthusiastically and dug out his keys. "Sure can."

"Then get on your way," the cop said. "Beat it."

Damn. Pike and Willie watched helplessly as Smith jogged to a rented Pinto, slipped in and started the engine. He backed out onto the highway and vanished into the night. The cop strolled back to his patrol car. "You two gentlemen have a nice night."

Pike clenched his teeth. "You too, officer."

"And Mr. Hollenbeck?"

It took Pike a second to respond to the name. "Yes, sir?"

"Don't you forget to give old Tap that ten bucks, okay?"

The cop peeled out and the night went silent, except for the sawing of crickets down near the creek bed. Willie walked a little closer, boots crunching in the gravel. He seemed worried. "What you want me to do, boss? Should I try to catch up to that crazy little prick?"

"Maybe." Pike's pulse was still racing. He considered for a long beat, but finally sighed. "No, let him go for now. We can track him down through Reggie when I get back home."

"Man, that dude had one strange idea of a fun evening."

"No kidding, Willie. And you can bet I'm going to have a long talk with Reggie about this."

"You believe the nerve of some people?"

Pike barked a laugh. "Nerve is right. We've sure got to give him that." He cracked his neck and hitched up his trousers. "Wait here, I need to use the john."

Inside, Tap was face down on the bar, snoring. Pike went into the single restroom, which stank of urine and disinfectant. He did his business, washed his hands. He blew out some breath and looked at himself in the cracked mirror. His eyes were clear. He raised his hand and held it out, palm flat. He was not trembling.

Gratified, Pike smiled at himself, splashed water on his face and went back out into the sawdust-filled room. Tap had apparently gone to bed, the bar was empty. Pike flipped his cell phone open and hit redial.

"Yeah?"

"God damn it, Reggie…"

"..right now, call me later."

"Hello?"

Puzzled, Pike dialed again. The same thing happened. Pike scowled. Reggie's answering machine was programmed to say: "Yeah? I can't talk right now, call me later." After that, it would disconnect.

Pike sat down slowly in a folding chair. He dialed another number. "Jake? It's me. Don't say anything. Have you seen Reggie tonight?" The color left his face. "No, I'm just asking." He closed the phone, got unsteadily to his feet.

"Willie?"

No answer. Pike kicked the chair out of the way and strode outside. "Willie, where the hell are you?" He took out his Firestar and slid down the wall, weapon raised. Somehow he knew what he would find. Willie was behind the wheel of the truck with a tiny hole in his head and his chest was wet and dark. The tires had been slashed, they keys were missing. Pike jogged over to his rented Mustang, again certain what he'd find. The distributor cap was missing and wires had been pulled. Pike screamed at the stars.

"Bastard!"

A thrumming insect flew past his ear. Something bit him. Pike growled and felt the side of his head. A small, fleshy part of his cheek was bleeding. He rolled across the wooden steps and down into the shadows beneath the porch. Another puff of dirt exploded near his legs, and this time he heard the faint echo of the shot.

"Smith, Goddamn you!"

Pike broke and ran, in a crossing pattern, through the sand and the skeletons of dead sage. He scrambled down into a gulley, his heart thudding in his chest. He knew he'd never make it out of Dry Wells, not wearing these expensive shoes. Another shot, a ricochet off a nearby flat rock that whined into the hard packed dirt. God, he's got a night scope.

Pike went for the cell phone again, started to dial 911. Suddenly the phone and the tips of three fingers disappeared in a spray of blood freckled with shards of plastic and bone. Pike screamed like a woman dying in childbirth. He ran as fast as he could, on and on through a vivid desert night that seemed to last forever and for the very first time came to know the fear in a handful of dust.

This is a simple crime story featuring a thief and a canary. Make it two canaries.

THE CANARY

By Dave Zeltserman

Karl Haskell didn't like cops and it made him nervous sitting in a room filled with them, but he had no choice, at least not if he wanted to get back the key to that storage locker. He shifted in his seat and tried to keep his attention focused on the list of items up for auction. He couldn't help feeling as if he were being stared at, but the last thing he wanted to do was look away from that sheet and make eye contact with any of the dozen cops sitting in the room. Of course, he knew he was being irrational. The cops in Boston had no reason to know him. The ones in upstate New York did, but he had left there months ago to rob an armored car with Pete Sifer and they struck pay dirt. Three hundred grand, almost double what they had expected. Now the money was sitting in a storage locker at EZ Rentals. Originally, it was to sit there for a few months to cool off, but that was before Sifer screwed things up for them.

Silently Haskell cursed Sifer, his mom, dad, grandparents, and any other relatives he could think of. With three hundred grand waiting for them, the guy had to get pinched with half a pound of heroin. Now Sifer sat in lockup awaiting trial, his property seized as part of Massachusetts' drug seizure law. Sifer had no way of fighting the seizure since he had no visible means of support and no way of explaining all the expensive pieces of art littering his apartment.

Over the years, the two of them had done over a dozen jobs together in New York and Jersey before Sifer moved up to Boston. Sifer would always invest part of his take in art. Better than stocks, he'd tell Haskell, besides you don't have to worry about the Feds or anyone else watching the transactions. Maybe it was a better investment if you didn't act stupid and get caught distributing narcotics, but if you did, you'd find your collection being auctioned off, just like Sifer's was now. The storage locker key had been hidden inside the frame of one of the pieces, a painting by a Hungarian artist named Zulovsky. The painting, titled The Songbird, to Haskell looked like nothing but a little yellow canary that a five year-old could've drawn with a crayon. According to the auction information sheet it was valued at two grand. Normally he wouldn't pay fifty cents for the thing, but now he had close to five grand in his pocket and was willing to pay all of it if he had to.

As other pieces were auctioned off, Haskell felt some relief that they were selling well under their appraised values. Outside of the dozen cops in the room, there were maybe forty other people, all trying to buy the stuff on the cheap. Haskell smiled bitterly to himself as he thought of how Sifer would be fuming if he could see what his "nest egg" was going for. Pennies on the dollar - and the two of them were supposed to be the crooks.

When The Songbird went up for bid, Haskell opened up with two grand, thinking that would be the end of it. He was halfway standing up to pay for the painting when he heard a bid for twenty-five hundred coming from behind him. Turning, he caught a look at the bidder - a thin, tall man with a pencil-thin mustache and a goatee, which covered the tip of his chin. The man was dressed in a cheap suit and wore small oval sunglasses to hide his eyes. Haskell found himself immediately disliking the guy.

Clearing his throat, Haskell bid twenty-six hundred.

"Three thousand."

The man's voice sounded like a chirp that could've come from the canary he was bidding on. Haskell turned and glared at him. The one piece that some jerk-off had to be willing to overbid for.

"Forty-nine hundred," Haskell forced out, his voice a low rasp. He figured no more game playing. Knock the prick out of the bidding and get the damn thing over with. Besides, with all the cops in the room he just wanted to get the hell out of there.

There was a long silence. Relieved, Haskell got to his feet.

"Ten thousand dollars," chirped out behind him.

With a sinking feeling Haskell realized the goateed prick must've been tipped off about the key. There was no other reason the guy would've overbid for that piece of junk. Anyway, it was over. The auction was cash only, and Haskell would've been tapped out at five grand. He headed quickly towards the exit. If he couldn't get that damn canary on the up-and-up, he'd get it another way.

Once outside, Haskell started trotting towards the back parking lot. Too many pizzas and six-packs of beer had ballooned his body close to three bills. That weight, along with being only five-foot-seven and having flesh the consistency of hard compressed rubber, earned him the nickname "Bowling Ball". He hated that nickname. By the time he got to his car his shirt was soaked through and he was wheezing hard. His damn heart felt like it was going to explode out of his chest. After a while he got his breathing under control and slid into the driver's seat. Taking a forty-five-caliber pistol from his glove compartment, he snapped out the magazine, checked that it was loaded and snapped it back in place. Then he angled the car so he could watch the lot.

It didn't take long for the goateed man to enter the parking lot with his painting. Haskell watched which car he got into, then made sure to leave enough distance between the two cars so the guy wouldn't catch on that he was being followed. Haskell squinted against the sunlight as he drove, his lips pressed into a tight grimace. He didn't like the setup, especially that the guy would end up recognizing him, but there was no way around it. He had two choices, either get the money and bolt out of town fast, or shut the guy up for good. He had never gone as far as the second choice before, and was still deciding what to do when the other driver pulled into an apartment complex. He followed him in and pulled up next to him as the guy was getting out of his car. Haskell moved quickly, jumping out of his own car and shoving a forty-five into the man's back.

"You're going to let me take that canary and you're not going to turn around."

The man resisted but Haskell pulled the painting from him.

"Someone tipped you off, didn't they?" Haskell asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about -"

"Someone tipped you off about the key. No other way you'd bid ten grand for this piece of crap."

"No, that's a rare Zulovsky, actually the rarest from his caged bird period, and this would complete my collection -"

"Shut up," Haskell ordered. He hesitated for a moment before making up his mind. The pizza in Boston sucked anyways, more like phylo dough than anything else. He had no problem taking the money and running. "Lie down on the ground now and put your head flat against the pavement. You look up and you're a dead man."

The goateed man gingerly lowered himself onto the pavement and put his head flush against it.

Haskell jumped back into his car and drove fast out of there. He was sweating profusely, his hands shaking as he gripped the wheel. "Lying sonofabitch," he mumbled to himself, the adrenaline pumping through his body. "That prick knew about the money, no other way he pays ten grand for a lousy canary. I should've put a bullet in his head, but I'm just too nice a guy."

Haskell made a sharp turn and headed towards where they'd rented the locker, all the while mumbling to himself about what a nice guy he was. "Sifer must've made a deal with that jerk-off," Haskell continued, becoming more and more incensed as he thought it over. "No doubt that sonofabitch was going to cut me out. We do the job together and he tries to screw me. No goddamned way he ever sees a dime of that money."

He pulled into a parking spot a block from the EZ Rental building. Using a pocket-knife, he cut open the back of the canvas. Instead of seeing the key like he expected to, he saw two small electronic objects. The first he recognized instantly as a bug. The second he would later find out was a GPS tracking device. As he sat staring at the back of the canvas trying to comprehend why those devices were there, he heard the sirens, then tires screeching to a halt, and finally car doors opening and slamming. As it dawned on him what had happened, he knew without looking up that the cops had surrounded him. He moved his hands higher on the steering wheel so they'd be in plain sight.

"Get out of the car now!"

Haskell looked up and saw a tall thin man in a cheap suit, arms stretched out as he pointed a service revolver at him. The sunglasses, mustache and goatee were gone, his voice octaves deeper than the chirp Haskell had heard before, but it was still the same man who had bid on the painting. Behind him were a dozen other cops, all with guns drawn. Haskell felt lightheaded as he obeyed the command and got out of his car. He was pushed to the ground, his arms pulled behind him as he was handcuffed.

"Sifer ratted me, didn't he?" Haskell asked as was pulled to his feet and directed into the backseat of a cruiser.

The detective in the cheap suit shook his head. "Nope. We found the locker key with a metal detector. Sifer was a clam. Couldn't get a word out of him. You, on the other hand, gave us everything we needed."

Haskell started laughing. The gurgling noise probably sounded more to the detective like he was having a heart attack. Haskell could see the alarm in the man's eyes. Screw him, though, and anyway, he couldn't help himself; it was all pretty damn hysterical if you thought about it. The more he thought about the painting of that canary and how he ended up singing on himself, the harder he laughed. Laughed himself right into a heart attack.

The original members of Top Suspense Group dashed out this round-robin short story late in 2010. Each member wrote 250 words and sent it on to the next until it had gone around twice. No planning, re-writing or polishing allowed. It was anyone's guess whether The Chase would flow to a satisfying ending, and you can decide whether we succeeded.

THE CHASE

A TOP SUSPENSE GROUP STORY

Lauren Blaine didn't know who was in the car behind her, and she didn't know when they'd picked up her trail. She looked over at the man in the passenger seat. He looked back, his face a blank. He had nothing to say. He seldom did.

"I don't think I can lose them," Lauren said.

The man's head moved a fraction of an inch in what might have been considered a nod.

"I'm going to try, though."

Another slight movement, which Lauren took for assent. She pressed down on the accelerator and the Cadillac CTS-V surged forward. They were on a little-used farm-to-market road, a curvy, hilly two-lane blacktop that Lauren had turned onto from the Interstate. She'd planned to cut over to the state highway to the west and follow that to their destination. Now she wished she hadn't taken the shortcut.

The car behind her was gaining, which seemed impossible. The Caddy was the fastest production sedan made in the U. S. But maybe the car behind had been made elsewhere.

Lauren risked another glance at the man beside her. He unfastened his seatbelt, reached inside his jacket, and pulled a Kimber 1911 .45 from a shoulder holster. Lauren didn't think a gun was going to be any help, but seeing it did make her feel a little better. The man refastened his seatbelt.

Lauren didn't feel better for long. As the Cadillac crested a hill, she saw a slow-moving farm combine not a hundred yards ahead. It was so wide that it took up most of the road.

"Uh-oh," the man said.

Lauren's heart was in her throat, her pulse pounded, steadily increasing as they raced closer to the combine. It went from a metal insect on the ribbon of road to a behemoth of mud-splattered steel in a terrifying span of seconds. She looked at the man seated next to her for guidance, but his eyes told her everything she needed to know. They said, whatever you do, don't slow down...

POP! Lauren heard a flat, harsh sound, remembered getting so angry with a man for cheating she'd slapped him across the face; it was that kind of sound but smaller somehow, more compact. The wind screeched into her face. With a feeling of dread she located the tiny spider web shape in the safety glass inches from her headrest. A bullet hole. The men in the other car were shooting at them. One round had come within inches of erasing her life. The sound came again.

She panicked a bit and their car fishtailed down the highway, an accidental but effective evasive maneuver. Lauren slid from the road and danced along the embankment, flattening wheat. She briefly wondered if she should gun the engine and try her luck in the fields. But they had no idea what was out there in the rows and rows of wheat, ditches and sink holes and rocks perhaps, scores of ways to stall the car. On the other hand they would be free to run on foot and covered by the seemingly eternal ocean of tall wheat?

The combine driver leaped from the machine and Lauren jerked the wheel left, crossed the road and bounced the car into the field. Her sense of direction was nearly always wrong and she was counting on that, heading opposite of what felt right to get to Kansas City. For over ten years, the darkness of LA clubs had replaced the open sky bordered by glistening grain, beauty she still hoped to reclaim.

Paolo turned. "Shit!"

Her lip curled and trembled. "You're the one insisted on coming."

"I saved your ass!"

She clenched her jaw and checked the road. No car on the hill. Ahead, one hope for cover; a sloping barn against the blue.

What had she been thinking? After two years of marriage, watching Jimmy's drug money grow and keeping her Kansas roots secret, she'd sacrificed her lead-time. Her little farm, the herb garden, dogs, chickens, the pot-bellied pig . . . all her dreams traded for a one-night stand. Now up to three nights. If she'd known that Jimmy was so well connected—but no, it was her stupid drinking that got her into trouble again.

She glanced out the side window. The other car still hadn't crested the hill. Christ, yes! A few more seconds! She glared at Mr. Smooth-face-square-jaw, his wide eyes shifting between barn and highway—what the hell was his last name? She should be sick of those thick lashes and muscular lips, finished with all six foot three of him, but she still felt the warm sting, making her want it again—if only she could find the fucking highway.

"Pull into that barn," Paolo said.

She shot him a glare. "What the hell else did you think I was going to do?"

But she did it anyway, sliding through the open doors that seemed to be waiting for her. She didn't wait for the jerk's help - she scrambled out, shut the barn doors, the scent of hay strangely comforting. In some weird way, she was home.

"We'll wait it out," she said, and turned, and the handsome prick was grinning at her, the Kimber pointed right at her.

"Fuckin' funny," he said.

"I was just thinking that."

"You figured they were after you. No. Me."

"They're not Jimmy's people?"

"No."

"Who are they then?"

"Does it matter? You knew I worked with Jimmy. You knew I swam in those waters."

Talkative now, all of a sudden. Why hadn't he shot her?

Of course. The farmhouse. A shot might bring Farmer Brown. But this move - pulling the gun on her - it spoke volumes: he was stupid. He could have picked the right moment to show his hand. Too early in the game....

"You don't need that," she said, gesturing toward his gun-in-hand. "We're in the shit now. Together. I'm helping you. Why — "

"That's the funny thing. Jimmy hired me to take care of you."

The prick had picked her up in that bar and screwed her silly for how long? And his end game was a bullet?

"Sit over there."

Apparently he didn't see the pitchfork leaned against the post.

She knew she had only seconds to fill her fingers with the pitchfork handle then turn and stab him before he could get an accurate shot off. She remembered how he'd complimented her after their fourth round of lovemaking. She obviously inspired him. Now she hoped that doing a slutty walk in her tight red skirt and sweaty white blouse could distract him from the Kimber in his hand.

She might have been a stripper strutting her stuff as she walked away from him and toward the bale of hay where he wanted her seated. Subtle he wasn't. In the dusty confines of the barn, lazy dust-filled sunlight streaming through the shattered windows, his breathing became loud and short. Horndog.

As she approached the post the pitchfork leaned against, she put her hand to her backside and rubbed, as if giving herself pleasure.

Harder and harder came his breathing. That wasn't the only thing that was harder no doubt.

God, could she actually pull it off? Suddenly the whole plan seemed absurd. He'd kill her right here and right now. What had she been thinking?

But wasn't he going to kill her anyway? What did it matter where she died?

At times in her life she'd been so frightened that she seemed to be watching herself from a distance. A woman who was her twin sister would be trying to extricate herself from a dangerous situation. But Lauren Blaine had the easy part. All she had to do was watch.

"Drop it."

She turned toward him still holding the pitchfork. Fuck, she was angry. She wasn't sure if it was at this prick or at Jimmy, but her rage was near choking her. "Why don't you just shoot me already?" she demanded.

He scratched lazily along his jaw with one hand as he trained his .45 toward her chest with his other. Showing a thin smile, he said, "I'm not done with you yet."

"What do you mean not done with me? In helping you get away from those men or in fucking me?"

"A little of both."

The prick! Those words were like pouring gasoline on her rage as it exploded within her. She charged him then without realizing it, and when he fired a warning shot Lauren threw the pitchfork as she dove to the ground. Something wet and sticky hit her. When she looked up, she first saw the blood spray, then him, his eyes confused, the pitchfork sticking into his thigh and blood spurting from the wound. She had hit an artery and he was bleeding out fast. The confusion drained from his eyes as they became cold and reptilian. He shot at her to kill but he was too woozy to see straight, and the bullets bit into the barn floor next to her. He fired off two more shots as he fell backward. After a few twitches he stopped moving.

It became deathly quiet inside the barn. She heard a car pull up and held her breath as the engine was killed, then doors opened and closed.

Lauren didn't waste any time looking for a place to hide. She scuttled over to Paolo and jerked the .45 from his cold dead fingers. Okay, so they weren't cold. What the hell.

Paolo had fired three shots. How many were bullets were left in the magazine? Four? Ten? A hundred? Lauren didn't have a clue. She pointed the pistol at the doors.

One of the barn doors opened. A man poked his head inside.

Lauren pulled the trigger. The .45 slug tore through the wooden door about three feet to the left and a foot above where the man's head had been. Lauren wasn't much of a shot.

The door opened all the way, and the man stepped inside. He didn't seem afraid. Lauren didn't blame him, but she fired the pistol anyway. And missed again, still wide left.

The man didn't even blink. "You're wasting your time," he said. "My friend's waiting outside, so even if you get me, which I doubt you will, he'll come in and take care of you."

Lauren pulled the trigger. The bullet went wide to the right this time. Over-correction.

"That pistol's a Kimber," the man said. "I heard four shots before, so that means you got one left. Wanna try again, or you just wanna come with me and Frankie? Jimmy wants to see you. Says you got something belongs to him."

Lauren heard a low rumble. It was getting louder. She looked at the Kimber. It might as well have been a water pistol for all the good it did her. She dropped it to the dirt floor.

"Why did Jimmy send three, for insurance?"

That rumbling sound. Hadn't he noticed? No. He was too busy studying her breasts. The man nodded. "We gave Paulo his space until you two took off. It looked like he was more up for dipping his wick than carrying out orders. So we lit out after you." He looked at Paulo's corpse, skin so waxen, the dirt and straw darkly stained. "Thanks. You didn't waste him, we would have had to."

And then he finally heard the noise. Stiffened.

"Is this some kind of convention?" Lauren asked. The stranger moved from registering the rumbling sound to something else, something more sinister. Lauren could see his mind struggling. Jimmy wants it back, but he also wants the bitch dead. What do I do now? Now that there's some other car.

"Hustle up, dude!" The guy outside. The one he'd called Frankie. High voice, California accent. "We got company!"

The guy facing Lauren moved his eyes. They dropped down to his weapon. Armed it with a slide and a click. Lauren acted without thinking. She bent down, scrambled to grab the Kimber, lined up on his groin and fired. Her aim was as terrible as usual, up and a bit to one side, but this time her last slug took off part of his skull in a spray of blood and bone. He dropped. She ran over, pried the 9mm Glock from his hands. Lauren felt giddy. Yawn. Another body, another gun.

The engine cut off and she heard a car door open and close. No voices. Nothing. A shot! Two! Three! Four! How many guys out there? The doors would burst open any second and she had to be ready. She'd seen it on TV a hundred times. She got against the front wall, took a sturdy stance, holding the Glock with both hands. Which side of the door would open?

She widened her legs and held her breath. Waited. Panted. Her arms shook. She propped her elbow on her hip and struggled to keep her trigger hand steady. Sweat ran between her breasts.

After two lifetimes, her arm dropped to her side. All dead? Doubtful. Just waiting for her head to appear.

She glanced around. Light slanted from above, gleaming on Paolo's tan forehead. Other than the sagging roof, the barn seemed sturdy. Odd timing, but she remembered a similar barn. Darrell, unsnapping his overalls. Mmm. He was a hot treat, but being a country wife hadn't appealed to her, stoking the wood stove and snapping beans, chasing after grubby kids with their green-snotted noses. Church on Sunday. Hell, maybe coming back was all a mistake, not just the way she'd done it. There was life in LA.

She gave the door a kick, knocking it open a few feet. Nothing. She charged through and stopped fast in front of a rusty pick up with huge muddy tires. The windows were half down, a collie whining inside. "Sweet baby," she said.

The collie was docile enough. Even more docile was Frankie, sprawled in the late model job alongside the pick-up. Frankie was a little guy who'd splattered a lot of blood onto the driver's side window; he'd taken three hits, two in the face and one in the throat. The latter wound was gurgling a little.

Looked like the pick-up truck's driver had slid up to a stop next to the newer vehicle and just started firing away through his open window.

Somebody didn't like intruders....

Yet no sign of the driver. And that fucking collie hadn't shot anybody. Lauren looked all around - the day had died on her, but visibility was fine in a clear blue dusk long with shadows. She circled the barn; gun in hand, till she came back to where she started.

Nobody.

If Frankie's killer were the occupant of that farmhouse (where a couple lights were on), she'd need to hustle. She quickly returned to the barn, opened the trunk of her car, got rid of the extra suitcase - like Paolo himself, excess baggage - and gave the brown carry-on filled with Jimmy's money a loving little pat.

She was just about to open the barn doors and drive the hell out, hoping for room to squeeze past the two parked vehicles out there, when the rugged-looking Marlboro man with the plaid jacket and blue baseball cap and double-barrel shotgun stepped inside.

"Hold 'er right there, missy," he said, face blank as a hay bale.

"Oh, thank God," Lauren said. "I never thought I'd live through it. I'm so grateful you killed him."

"Never mind that. What's your connection to them?"

She knew better than to tell him anything. She had a bad girl/good girl switch somewhere in her brain. Good girl was in charge now. Sobs. Tears. The stereotypical, hysterical chickenshit woman.

"What the hell's wrong with you?"

Fucking good girl switch. It must not be feeding her full power. She had to make the good girl switch work. She went back to sobbing. Then she pretended to start to faint.

He was right there to save her and right there to listen to her after he carried her over to a hay bale and set her atop it. The story he got should have made him sympathetic—bad guys chasing her and almost killing her—but she could see that he, looming over her, remained skeptical.

Then she stood up and fell into his arms, her fingers nimbly finding his crotch. Hard already. So he had been paying attention like a good doggie. Then why did he push her away?

"I want the truth. Now."

"All right. You're a fucking cynic, here's the deal," she said. Then she told him about the big pay day he'd get if he'd move the cars so she could get out and not call the cops on her for four hours. "That's a lot of money."

He was obviously thinking it over. What was he going to say?

As it turned out he didn't have to say anything. The nasty smile and hungry look he flashed her answered her as well as words. Lauren started to unbutton her blouse, but Marlboro man turned her around and shoved her against the hay bale. There was a moment where he must've been fumbling with his pants, then her skirt was pushed up and her panties yanked down. He was rough as he entered her, his fingers digging into her thighs. Once again she was being used. Just like all those men at the club where she danced before she met Jimmy, and then Jimmy in those early days. How he'd trick her out so he could bust in and rob the sap while they were screwing. And later what Jimmy used to make her do with his business associates.

She caught his reflection in a glass pane, and she knew this time was different. Not just with how he was keeping his shotgun at arm's length, but from the cruel twist of his mouth. She realized something else also.

"That guy in the tractor who ran me off the rode. You look like him. A cousin of yours? A brother?"

He didn't say anything. Just pounded harder into her like she was nothing but meat.

"What's your game? You run rubes off the road, so you can rob them of their cars and money?"

"Shut up!"

"How many rubes you got buried out here?"

He grunted as he pulled out of her. "I'll shut your mouth for you!" She didn't fight him as he grabbed a fistful of her hair and guided her toward him. She went willingly. As far as she was concerned she was only going to be biting a sausage in half.

Marlboro man let out a scream. Lauren spat out a lump of flesh and scrambled to the shotgun while he stumbled a step backward while clutching his bloody stump. His eyes grew wide for a brief moment and then the shotgun blast obliterated them, as well as the rest of his face.

Lauren decided she was sick of Kansas. She adjusted her panties and skirt and then fished a set of car keys from Marlboro man's jacket. With the money she had she was going to leave an ocean or two between her and Jimmy. No one would use her again. She couldn't help smiling at what happened to the last few men who tried.

# #

To find out which Top Suspense Authors wrote which story segments, visit
www.topsuspense.com/TheChaseRevealed.php

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

MAX ALLAN COLLINS has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America "Shamus" nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991), receiving the PWA life achievement award, the Eye, in 2007. His graphic novel Road to Perdition (1998) is the basis of the Academy Award-winning 2002 film starring Tom Hanks. He has written a number of suspense series, including Quarry, Nolan, Mallory, and Eliot Ness; is completing a number of "Mike Hammer" novels begun by the late Mickey Spillane; and collaborates with Matthew Clemens on the J.C. Harrow serial killer novels. His many comics credits include the syndicated strip Dick Tracy; his own Ms. Tree; Batman; and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, based on the hit TV series for which he has also written ten novels that have sold millions of copies worldwide. He has written and directed five feature films and two documentaries, and co-scripted The Last Lullaby, based on his acclaimed novel, The Last Quarry. He and his wife Barbara collaborate (as "Barbara Allan") on the successful "Trash 'n' Treasures" mysteries - their Antiques Flee Market (2008) won the Romantic Times Best Humorous Mystery Novel award in 2009.

BILL CRIDER is the author of more than seventy published novels and numerous short stories in multiple genres. He won the Anthony Award for best first mystery novel in 1987 for Too Late to Die. His story "Cranked" from Damn Near Dead was nominated for the Edgar award. His first private-eye novel, Dead on the Island, was nominated for a Shamus, and his children's book Mike Gonzo and the UFO Terror won the Golden Duck Award for best juvenile SF novel. He has written six acclaimed western novels, including Ryan Rides Back, and as Jack MacLane he published a series of horror novels with Zebra Books, all of which, beginning with Goodnight Moom, are now available in e-book format. He is also writing for the Rancho Diablo e-book series and the Dead Man e-book series created by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin. Check out his blog at http://billcrider.blogspot.com and his homepage at www.billcrider.com.

STEPHEN GALLAGHER was described by London newspaper The Independent as "the finest British writer of bestselling popular fiction since le Carré ... Gallagher, like le Carré, is a novelist whose themes seem to reflect something of the essence of our times, and a novelist whose skill lies in embedding those themes in accessible plots." The Daily Telegraph wrote, "Since Valley of Lights, he has been refining his own brand of psycho-thriller, with a discomforting knack of charting mental disintegration and a razor-sharp sense of place." Winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild awards, Stephen Gallagher's screen work began with Doctor Who and includes miniseries adaptations of his novels Chimera and Oktober. He created TV's Eleventh Hour, with Rufus Sewell taking on Patrick Stewart's role in Jerry Bruckheimer's CBS remake. His most recent novel is The Kingdom of Bones from Random House.

LEE GOLDBERG is a two-time Edgar Award nominee whose many TV writing and/or producing credits include Martial Law, SeaQuest, Diagnosis Murder, Monk and The Glades. As an international TV development consultant, he's worked for production companies and broadcasters in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands. His books include The Walk, My Gun Has Bullets, Successful Television Writing, The Man With with The Iron-On Badge, The Dead Man: Face of Evil, and the bestselling Monk series of original mystery novels. He's also the co-founder, with Max Allan Collins, of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. www.leegoldberg.com

JOEL GOLDMAN is the Edgar and Shamus nominated author of two thriller series, one featuring trial lawyer Lou Mason and the other featuring former FBI Special Agent, Jack Davis. His novels and short stories have been optioned for film and television. His next Lou Mason novel, Final Judgment, will be released in March 2012. His newest novel, Liberty Park, featuring Public Defender Alex Stone, will be released in 2011. He is also proud to be writing an upcoming installment in Lee Goldberg's and William Rabkin's new series, The Dead Man. Joel can be reached at www.joelgoldman.com and on Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In.

Kirkus called ED GORMAN "One of the most original crime writers around." While Gorman has worked in a number of genres, suspense fiction is his favorite genre to write in and read. Gorman's novels The Poker Club and The Haunted have both been filmed. Author of more than thirty novels and ten collections of short stories, The Oxford Book of Short Stories noted that his work "provides fresh ideas, characters and approaches." The Rocky Mountain News called him "The modern master of the lean and mean thriller." Gorman's thrillers include Blood Moon and The Marilyn Tapes both available as part of the Top Suspense Group (TSG). His novel Cage of Night, also available on TSG, is one of Gorman's personal favorites. The sites Gravetapping and Good Reads noted "It is truly a classic of the macabre—part mystery, part suspense, and entirely chilling and haunting." Gorman is now busy on a suspense novel he hopes to finish this year. Gorman can be reached at New Improved Gorman
http://www.newimprovedgorman.com/

LIBBY FISCHER HELLMAN, an award-winning crime fiction author, released her 7th novel December, 2010. Set the Night on Fire, a stand-alone thriller, goes back, in part, to the late Sixties in Chicago. She also writes two crime fiction series. The first, which includes the hard-boiled Easy Innocence (2008) and Doubleback (2009,) features Chicago P.I Georgia Davis. In addition there are four novels in the Ellie Foreman series, which Libby describes as a cross between "Desperate Housewives" and "24." Libby has also published over 15 short stories in Nice Girl Does Noir and has edited the acclaimed crime fiction anthology, Chicago Blues. She has been nominated twice for the Anthony Award and once for the Agatha. Originally from Washington DC, she has lived in Chicago for 30 years and claims they'll take her out of there feet first. More at her website: www.libbyhellmann.com

VICKI HENDRICKS is the author of noir novels Miami Purity, Iguana Love, Voluntary Madness, Sky Blues, and Cruel Poetry, the latter an Edgar Award finalist in 2008. Her short stories appear in many collections, including Otto Penzler's Murder for Revenge, Susie Bright's Best American Erotica 2000. The complete collection of her short fiction, Florida Gothic Stories, was published in 2010. Hendricks has an MFA in Creative writing from Florida International University. She lives in Hollywood, Florida, and has been teaching writing at Broward College for thirty years. Her plots and settings reflect participation in adventure sports, such as skydiving and scuba, and knowledge of the Florida environment. Currently, she is working on Fur People, an animal hoarder love story. Dennis Lehane has named her "the high priestess of neo-noir, a fierce and fearless talent" and Michael Connelly recommends Miami Purity as "a modern noir masterpiece." Her website is www.vickihendricks.com, and she has recently started a blog for aspiring writers at http://vickihendrickscrime-noir.blogspot.com/ Find her first four novels and story collection on Kindle and Nook at www.topsuspense.com.

NAOMI HIRAHARA is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series, which features a Japanese American gardener and atomic-bomb survivor who solves crimes. Nominated also for Macavity and Anthony awards, the novels in the series include Summer of the Big Bachi, Gasa-Gasa Girl, Snakeskin Shamisen and Blood Hina. Her first novel for children, 1001 Cranes, was chosen as an Honor Book for the Youth Literature of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in 2009. A graduate of Stanford University with a degree in international relations, she served as the chapter president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America in 2010. Her web site is www.naomihirahara.com.

PAUL LEVINE, the author of the Jake Lassiter series, has won the John D. MacDonald Award for fiction and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller and James Thurber awards. He wrote more than 20 episodes of the CBS military drama "JAG" and co-created the Supreme Court drama "First Monday," starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. His books, To Speak for the Dead, Night Vision, and Fool Me Twice have all been number one bestsellers on Amazon Kindle's Hardboiled Bestseller List. His newest novel, Balllistic, a story of nuclear terrorism, is an e-book original. His next novel, Lassiter, will be published in hardcover and as an e-book by Bantam in September 2011. www.paul-levine.com

HARRY SHANNON has been an actor, a singer, an Emmy-nominated songwriter, a recording artist in Europe, a music publisher, a VP of Carolco Pictures and worked as a free-lance Music Supervisor on films such as "Basic Instinct" and "Universal Soldier." His books include Dead and Gone, Daemon, the Mick Callahan novels Memorial Day, Eye of the Burning Man, One of the Wicked, and Running Cold, as well as the thriller The Pressure of Darkness. His Stoker-nominated short story collection A Host of Shadows got this rave from Publisher's Weekly, "Impeccable pacing and an eye for the terrifying will leave the reader shaken and unsettled." Shannon has won the Black Quill for Short Fiction and the Tombstone for Best Horror Novel. Harry can be reached via his web site at www.harryshannon.com or via Facebook.

DAVE ZELTSERMAN won the 2010 Shamus Award for Julius Katz and is the acclaimed author of the 'man out of prison' crime trilogy: Small Crimes, Pariah and Killer, where Small Crimes was named by NPR as one of the five best crime and mystery novels of 2008, and Small Crimes and Pariah (2009) were both picked by the Washington Post as best books of the year. His recent The Caretaker of Lorne Field received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, calling it a 'superb mix of humor and horror', has been short listed by ALA for best horror novel of 2010. Outsourced (2011) has already been called 'a small gem of crime fiction' by Booklist and has been optioned by Impact Pictures and Constantin Film. Look for his upcoming crime thriller, A Killer's Essence in the fall of 2011. Dave can be reached via his web site at www.davezeltserman.com.