The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 Page 34

  She let it in, let it flood her with confidence.

  “I hate this light,” she said, and then walked over and flipped it off, throwing the room into dimness, and closed the door. “Oh look!” she exclaimed in a mocking little-girl voice. “The bulb has gone out! I think this light bulb needs changing, don’t you? Don’t you want to help me change this bulb, little boy?”

  The old man’s eyes cleared for a moment, and he stared at her with panic. She crossed back to his bed and jerked a pillow out from under his head and then put it onto his face and pressed.

  “And this is for the other children.”

  Just northwest of downtown, where the Kaw River flows into the Missouri and they start riding on east together, there is an overlook that wasn’t there when Judy was a child. If it had been there in the early ’50s, it would have been underwater. She stood with her arms crossed over a railing to watch the rush of muddy water below.

  She thought she remembered the river as having been busy with barges and tugs, but there were none that she saw now. It was as treacherous-looking as she recalled, however, full of rough current and dangerous eddies. She watched a big log pop up and down, get caught, sucked under, and then turn up again downstream. It made her stomach feel funny, like being on a roller coaster, as if she’d ever been brave enough to actually ride one.

  I’m braver than that now, she thought.

  She leaned harder against the railing so she could stare deeper down into the river. In the back of her mind she heard her own scared, childish self, yelling, Back up, Daddy! Back up!

  Judy put her right foot on the lower bar of the railing.

  “I swear that river could shoot us all the way to St. Louis!” her mother had exclaimed that day in the Chevy, during the great flood in Kansas City.

  Judy climbed to the top rung and brought her legs over until she could sit on the railing. The bar was slick with moisture, and it was easy to lose her grip.

  BILL PRONZINI

  Gunpowder Alley

  FROM Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  From where he sat propped behind a copy of the San Francisco Argonaut, Quincannon had an unobstructed view of both the entrance to the Hotel Grant’s bar parlor and the booth in which his client, Titus Willard, waited nervously. The Seth Thomas clock above the back bar gave the time as one minute past nine, which made the man Willard was waiting for late for their appointment. This was no surprise to Quincannon. Blackmailers seldom missed an opportunity to heap additional pressure on their victims.

  Willard fidgeted, looked at the clock for perhaps the twentieth time, and once more pooched out his cheeks—a habitual trick that, combined with his puffy muttonchop whiskers, gave him the look of a large rodent. As per arrangement, he managed to ignore the table where Quincannon sat with his newspaper. The satchel containing the $5,000 cash payoff was on the seat next to him, one corner of it just visible to Quincannon’s sharp eye.

  The Argonaut, like all of the city’s papers these days, was full of news of the imminent war with Spain. The Atlantic fleet had been dispatched to Cuban waters, Admiral Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron was on its way to the Philippines, and President McKinley had issued a call for volunteer soldiers to join Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Quincannon, who disdained war as much as he disdained felons of every stripe, paid the inflammatory yellow journalism no mind while pretending to be engrossed in it, and wondered again what his client had done to warrant blackmail demands that now amounted to $10,000.

  He had asked Willard, of course, but the banker had refused to divulge the information. Given the fact that the man was in his midfifties, with a prim socialite wife and a grown daughter, and the guilty flush that had stained his features when the question was put to him, his transgressions likely involved one or more young and none-too-respectable members of the opposite sex. In any case, Willard had shown poor judgment in paying the first $5,000 demand, and good judgment in hiring Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, to put an end to the bloodletting after the second demand was made. The man may have been worried, frightened, and guilt-ridden, but he was only half a fool. Pay twice, and he knew he’d be paying for the rest of his life.

  Quincannon took a sip of clam juice, his favorite tipple now that he was a confirmed teetotaler, and turned a page of the Argonaut. Willard glanced again at the clock, which now read ten past nine, then drained what was left of a double whiskey. And that was when the blackmailer—if it was the blackmailer and not a hireling—finally appeared.

  The fellow’s entrance into the bar parlor was slow and cautious. This was one thing that alerted Quincannon. The other was the way he was dressed. Threadbare overcoat, slouch hat drawn low on his forehead, wool muffler wound up high inside the coat collar so that it concealed the lower part of his face. This attire might have been somewhat conspicuous at another time of year, but on this damp, chilly November night, he drew only a few casual glances from the patrons, none of which lingered.

  He paused just inside the doorway to peer around before his gaze locked in on his prey. Out of the corner of one eye Quincannon watched him approach the booth. What little of the man’s face was visible corroborated Willard’s description of him from their first meeting: middle-aged, with a hooked nose and sallow complexion, and average to small in size, though it was difficult to tell for certain because of the coat’s bulk. Not such-a-much at all.

  Titus Willard stiffened when the fellow slipped into the booth opposite. There was a low-voiced exchange of words, after which the banker passed the satchel under the table. The hook-nosed gent opened it just long enough to see that it contained stacks of greenbacks, closed it again, then produced a manila envelope from inside his coat and slid it across the table. Willard opened the envelope and furtively examined the papers it contained—letters of a highly personal nature, judging from the banker’s expression. They would not be the sum total of the blackmail evidence, however. Finding the rest was one part of Quincannon’s job, the others being to identify and then yaffle the responsible party or parties.

  While the two men were making their exchange, Quincannon casually folded the newspaper and laid it on the table, gathered up his umbrella and derby hat, and strolled out into the hotel lobby. He took a position just inside the corridor that led to the elevators, where he had an oblique view of the bar entrance. His quarry would have to come out that way because there was no other exit from the bar parlor.

  The wait this time was less than two minutes. When Hook-nose appeared, he went straight to the swing door that led out to New Montgomery Street. Quincannon followed twenty paces behind. A drizzle of rain had begun and the salt-tinged bay wind had the sting of a whip. It being a poor night for travel by shanks’ mare, Quincannon expected his man to take one of the hansom cabs at the stand in front of the Palace Hotel opposite. But this didn’t happen. With the satchel clutched inside his overcoat, the fellow angled across Montgomery and turned the far corner into Jessie Street.

  Quincannon reached the corner a few seconds later. He paused to peer around it before unfurling his umbrella and turning into Jessie himself, to make sure he wasn’t observed. Hook-nose apparently had no fear of pursuit; he was hurrying ahead through the misty rain without a backward glance.

  Jessie was a dark, narrow thoroughfare, and something of an anomaly as the new century approached—a mostly residential street that ran for several blocks through the heart of the business district, midway between Market and Mission. Small, old houses and an occasional small business establishment flanked it, fronted by tiny yards and backed by barns and sheds. The electric light glow from Third Street and the now steady drizzle made it a chasm of shadows. The darkness and the thrumming wind allowed Quincannon to quicken his pace without fear of being seen or heard.

  After two blocks, his quarry made another turning, this time into a cobblestone cul-de-sac called Gunpowder Alley. The name, or so Quincannon had once been told, derived from the fact that Copperhead sympathizers had stored a
large quantity of explosives in one of the houses there during the War Between the States. Gunpowder Alley was even darker than Jessie Street, the frame buildings strung along its short length shabby presences in the wet gloom. The only illumination was strips and daubs of light that leaked palely around a few drawn window curtains.

  Not far from the corner, Hook-nose crossed the alley to a squat, dark structure that huddled between the back end of a saloon fronting on Jessie Street and a private residence. The squat building appeared to be a store of some sort, its plate-glass window marked with lettering that couldn’t be read at a distance. The man used a key to unlock a door next to the window and disappeared inside.

  As Quincannon cut across the alley, lamplight bloomed in pale fragments around the edges of a curtain that covered the store window. He ambled past, pausing in front of the glass to read the lettering: CIGARS, PIPE TOBACCO, SUNDRIES. R. SONDERBERG, PROP. The curtain was made of heavy muslin; all he could see through the center folds was a slice of narrow counter. He put his ear to the cold glass. The faint whistling voice of the wind was the only sound to be heard.

  He moved on. A narrow, ink-black passage separated R. Sonderberg’s cigar store from the house on the far side—a low, two-storied structure with a gabled roof and ancient shingles curled by the weather. The parlor window on the lower floor was an uncurtained and palely lamplit rectangle; he could just make out the shape of a white-haired, shawl-draped woman in a high-backed rocking chair, either asleep or keeping a lonely watch on the street. Crowding close along the rear of store and house, paralleling Gunpowder Alley from the Jessie Street corner to its end, was the long back wall of a warehouse, its dark windows steel-shuttered. There was nothing else to see. And nothing to hear except the wind, muted here in the narrow lane.

  A short distance beyond the house Quincannon paused to close his umbrella, the drizzle having temporarily ceased. He shook water from the fabric, then turned back the way he’d come. The woman in the rocking chair hadn’t moved—asleep, he decided. Lamp glow now outlined a window in the squat building that faced into the side passage; the front part of the shop was once again dark. R. Sonderberg, if that was who the hook-nosed gent was, had evidently entered a room or rooms at the rear—living quarters, like as not.

  Quincannon stopped again to listen, and again heard only silence from within. He sidestepped to the door and tried the latch. Bolted. His intention then was to enter the side passage, to determine if access could be gained at the rear. What stopped him was the fact that he was no longer the only pedestrian abroad in Gunpowder Alley.

  Heavy footsteps echoed hollowly from the direction of Jessie Street. Even as dark and wet as it was, he recognized almost immediately the brass-buttoned coat, helmet, and handheld dark lantern of a police patrolman. Hell and damn! Of all times for a blasted bluecoat to happen along on his rounds.

  Little annoyed Quincannon more than having to abort an investigation in midskulk, but he had no other choice. He turned from the door and moved at an even pace toward the approaching policeman. They met just beyond the joining of the saloon’s back wall and the cigar store’s far side wall.

  Unlike many of his brethren, the bluecoat, an Irishman in his middle years, was a gregarious sort. He stopped, forcing Quincannon to do likewise, and briefly opened the lantern’s shutter so that the beam flicked over his face before saying in a conversational tone, “Evening, sir. Nasty weather, eh?”

  “Worse coming, I expect.”

  “Aye. Heavy rain before morning. Like as not I’ll be getting a thorough soaking before my patrol ends.”

  Quincannon itched to touch his hat and move on. But the bluecoat wasn’t done with him yet. “Don’t believe I’ve seen you before, sir. Live in Gunpowder Alley, do you?”

  “No. Visiting.”

  “Which resident, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “R. Sonderberg, at the cigar store.”

  “Ah. I’ve seen the lad a time or two, but we’ve yet to meet. I’ve only been on this beat two weeks now, y’see. Maguire’s my name, at your service.”

  Before Quincannon could frame a lie that would extricate him from Officer Maguire’s company, there came in rapid succession a brace of muffled reports. As quiet as the night was, there was no mistaking the fact that they were pistol shots and that the weapon had been fired inside the squat building.

  Quincannon’s reflexes were superior to the patrolman’s; he was already on the run by the time the bluecoat reacted. Behind him Maguire shouted something, but he paid no heed. Another sound, a loudish thump, reached his ears as he charged past the shop’s entrance, dropping his umbrella so he could grasp the Navy Colt in its holster. Seconds later he veered into the side passage. The narrow confines appeared deserted, and there were no sounds of movement at its far end. He skidded to a halt in front of the lighted window.

  Vertical bars set close together prevented both access and egress. The glass inside was dirty and rain-spotted, but he could make out the figure of a man sprawled supine on the floor of a cluttered room. There was no sign of anyone else.

  The spaces between the bars were just wide enough to reach a hand through; he did that, pushing fingers against the pane. It didn’t yield to the pressure.

  Officer Maguire pounded up beside him, the beam from his lantern cutting jigsaw pieces out of the darkness. The bobbing light illuminated enough of the passage ahead so that Quincannon could see to where it ended at the warehouse wall. He hurried back there while Maguire had his look through the window.

  Another short walkway, shrouded in gloom, stretched at right angles to the side passage like the crossbar of the letter T. Quincannon thumbed a lucifer alight as he stepped around behind the cigar store, shielding it with his hand. That section was likewise empty, except for a pair of refuse bins. There was no exit in that direction; the walkway ended in a board fence that joined shop and warehouse walls, built so high that only a monkey could have climbed it. The match’s flicker showed him the outlines of a rear door to R. Sonderberg’s quarters. He tried the latch, but the heavy door was secure in its frame.

  Maguire appeared, his lantern creating more dancing patterns of light and shadow. “See anyone back here?” he demanded.

  “No one.”

  “Would that rear door be open?”

  “No. Bolted on the inside.”

  The bluecoat grunted and pushed past him to try the latch himself. While he was doing that, Quincannon struck another match in order to examine the other half of the walkway. It served the adjacent house, ending in a similarly high and unscalable board fence. The house’s rear door, he soon determined, was also bolted within.

  The lantern beam again picked him out. “Come away from there, laddie. Out front with me, step lively now.”

  Quincannon complied. As they hurried along the passage, Maguire said, “Is it your friend Sonderberg lying shot in there?”

  No friend of mine or society’s, Quincannon thought. But he said only, “I couldn’t be sure.”

  “Didn’t seem to be anybody else in the room.”

  “No.”

  “Well, we’ll soon find out.”

  When they emerged from the passage, Quincannon saw that the elderly woman had left her rocking chair and was now standing stooped at the edge of her front window, peering out. One other individual had so far been alerted; a man wearing a light overcoat and high hat and carrying a walking stick had appeared from somewhere and stood staring nearby. Quincannon knew from rueful experience that a full gaggle of onlookers would soon follow.

  No one had exited the cigar store through the Gunpowder Alley entrance; the door was still locked from within. Maguire grunted again. “We’ll be having to break it down,” he said. “Sonderberg, or whoever ’tis, may still be alive.”

  It took the combined weight of both of them to force the door, the bolt finally splintering free with an echoing crack. Once they were inside, Maguire flashed his lantern’s beam over displays of cigars and pipe tobacco, partly fill
ed shelves of cheap sundries, then aimed it down behind the low service counter. The shop was cramped and free of hiding places—and completely empty.

  The closed door to the rear quarters stood behind a pair of dusty drapes. “By the saints!” Maguire exclaimed when he caught hold of the latch. “This one’s bolted, too.”

  It proved no more difficult to break open than the outer door had. The furnished room beyond covered the entire rear two thirds of the building. The man sprawled on the floor was middle-aged, medium-sized, and hook-nosed—Quincannon’s quarry, right enough, though he no longer wore the overcoat, muffler, and slouch hat that had partially disguised him in the Hotel Grant. Blood from a pair of wounds spotted the front of his linsey-woolsey shirt; his open eyes glistened in the light from a table lamp.

  Maguire went to one knee beside him, felt for a pulse. “Dead,” he said unnecessarily.

  Quincannon’s attention was now on the otherwise empty room. It contained a handful of secondhand furniture, a blanket-covered cot, a potbellied stove that radiated heat, and a table topped with a bottle of whiskey and two empty glasses. The whole was none too tidy and none too clean.

  Another pair of curtains partially covered an alcove in the wall opposite the window. Quincannon satisfied himself that the alcove contained nothing more than an icebox and larder cabinet. The only item of furniture large enough to conceal a person was a rickety wardrobe, but all he found when he opened it was a few articles of inexpensive clothing.

  Maguire was on his feet again. He said, “I wonder what made him do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Shoot himself, of course. Suicide’s a cardinal sin.”