Kwik Krimes (17 page)

Gerald Elias is an internationally renowned musician and an award-winning author. A former violinist of the Boston Symphony and associate concertmaster of the Utah Symphony, Elias has concertized, conducted, taught, and had his own compositions performed on five continents. Elias is also author of the Daniel Jacobus series, murder mysteries that take place in the murky corners of the classical music world, which have achieved popular and critical acclaim.

Loren D. Estleman

L
yon was angry, I think.

You never can tell whether the little butterball is seriously miffed or just emulating Nero Wolfe, his role model and life’s obsession.

Then again, it might have been disgruntlement over having to spend two hours playing with his tomatoes, which never need more than ten minutes’ attention even in crisis; orchids are another thing, but tending to them is beyond his green thumb, which isn’t green at all, but almost as fat as his torso.

Too bad. If you’re going to keep a greenhouse on your roof instead of a swell patio, you reap what you sow.

But he may just have been primping for our guest, whose Prada bag and Chanel suit indicated money, and whose blonde head suggested the opportunity of my selling her the Triborough Bridge. She’d arrived unannounced, but I didn’t want to risk alienation by asking her to wait, and as anyone knows who knows even one-tenth of what Claudius Lyon knows about Wolfe, nothing is more vexing to a fat genius detective than entertaining a client in his plant rooms.

“I cannot help you now, Miss—?”

“Alexandra Pring.”

“I hope to cross this plum with that beefsteak and create a tomato that is both delectable and substantial. If you wish to consult me, you must wait until eleven o’clock, when I’ll speak with you in my office. Mr. Woodbine knows that, but has chosen to ignore the rules of this house.” He favored me with the gassy-baby’s face he thought petulant.

The fake. He was tickled pink over having a client. The one thing he can’t pull off about his masquerade is a convincing show of pique at the chance to flash his brain before an audience. Since he’s a rotten horticulturist, and can burn a salad in the kitchen, solving mysteries is the only thing he has left.

“But it can’t wait! I’ve lost my job, and my rent is past due. Please make an exception this one time!”

I was batting only .500. I’m sure there are plenty of blonde PhDs, but I’d sized this one up right. I flied out on the rest. In bright sunlight, the bag and suit were knockoffs; and now I was the one who was miffed.

Lyon hid his delight under a gruff litany of made-up Latin, fingering ordinary vines while drawing her out on the reason for her visit.

“I run errands for an eccentric millionaire in Queens,” she said. “That is, I did. He was always complaining that he couldn’t reach me because I keep forgetting to charge my cell.” She opened the phony bag and showed him a cheap no-contract phone. “I admit I’m absentminded. I keep forgetting to pay my rent, and by the time I think about it, the money’s spent. But I’m very efficient once I’m given an errand. Mr. Quilverton must know that.”

“Ronald Quilverton, of the Boston Quilvertons?” I perked up. There might be money in the thing after all, if she was as reliable as she claimed and Quilverton was grateful to have her back.

“Yes. I said he’s eccentric. That’s why he lives in Queens, New York, instead of on Beacon Hill back home.”

Lyon scowled in earnest, wiping black loam onto his apron.

“The solution is hardly worthy of my abilities, Miss Pring. Tie a string to your finger and remember to plug in your mobile.”

“I’ve thought of that, of course. But how can I correct my behavior if my former employer won’t take my calls asking for a second chance?”

“My dear young lady, you need an advice columnist, not a detective.”

“Hear me out, please. The last time I spoke with him, I was walking down Junction. He was giving me an assignment when my phone beeped, warning me my battery had run out and the call was about to be dropped. He heard it. What I can’t figure out is why he said what he said then.”

“If it was ‘You’re fired,’ I think I can educate you.”

“‘Steak and eggs.’”

“Once again?”

“I’m quoting. Well, I lost the signal before the second
s
, but it was definitely ‘Steak and egg,’ and of course no one says it that way in a restaurant, even if all he wants is one egg. What did he mean?”

“He was instructing you to bring him breakfast.”

“Mr. Quilverton is a vegan. He wouldn’t touch either item with a ten-foot fork.

“I tried calling him back from a landline, but he never answered. Maybe he had a stroke. I’d call 911, but if I’m wrong, he’d never forgive the intrusion. I’m as worried about him as I am about myself. He’s a recluse and lives alone; he may be lying on his floor, with no one to help.”

“Steak and egg; you’re sure?”

“Yes.”

I was thinking the eccentric was just plain nuts when Lyon surprised me by foraging in one ear with a finger. That was his
answer to Wolfe’s puckering his lips in and out, indicating he was near a solution. Either that or the food talk had him thinking about lunch.

“Miss Pring,” he said, wiping wax onto his apron. “Did it occur to you Mr. Quilverton was imploring you not to think about a hearty morning meal, but to stay connected?”

“Stay connect—? Oh!”

“We’re increasingly an aural society. ‘Steak and eggs’ and ‘Stay connected,’ the latter cut off abruptly when your cell lost power, would sound identical.”

She pouted. “But I’m still out of a job.” Then she brightened. “Perhaps—”

“No. Bringing a woman into this household would be like…” For once, the vocabulary he’d filched from Nero Wolfe failed him.

“Like crossing a plum with a beefsteak,” I suggested.

Loren D. Estleman has published seventy books in mystery, Western, and mainstream fields. He’s received four Shamus Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America; none, to his regret, for a Claudius Lyon story. His latest novel starring Detroit PI Amos Walker is
Burning Midnight.

Christa Faust

S
panking is cheap. You want to hit me in the face, it’s fifty dollars more. A hundred if you want to use a closed fist. That’s not even counting the fee for marks. I charge a flat rate for parts of my body that can be covered by clothing. Double for my face, neck, and hands. When I say marks, I’m talking bruises, contusions, hematomas, burns, cuts, welts, ligature marks, or any other visible injury that takes more than six hours to heal. Try something you haven’t paid for, my guard dog’ll show up and treat you to a little nonconsensual role reversal. Don’t like it, you can try your luck in trendy nightclubs.

Bottom line, you get what you pay for.

In retrospect I guess $800K is a fair price for a gunshot wound.

Mr. Tak was one of my best customers. He was the kind of guy who always needed something to do with his hands. When he wasn’t using them to rough me up, he would fidget compulsively with a deck of cards. He and I were almost exactly the same size, but when he really let me have it, I felt it for a week and remember who’s talking here. I get hit for a living.

I’m pretty sure that Mr. Tak wasn’t his real name, but that’s what he told me to call him. What do I care? Filthy Fucking Whore isn’t my real name either.

Mr. Tak’s scenario was real simple. The usual drill. He paid for fists and made me earn every penny.

That night I could tell something was wrong as soon as he walked in the door. He was antsy, eyes all over the empty waiting room. There was a maroon leather briefcase on the floor beside him. The endless flow of cards between his hands was jerky and awkward. I watched him on the monitor in the security room as he fumbled and dropped a card.

Danny, that’s my guard dog, he shot me this look like he was asking if I was sure I wanted to go through with it. I gave him one back to let him know I was. I guess I should have known something was up, but it was Mr. Tak. I trusted him. Even liked him a little. As much as it was possible to like a guy who pays to beat the shit out of me.

I could see that Danny was less than thrilled. See, Danny was in love with me. I knew he went home at night and jacked off to fantasies of rescuing me and taking me away from all this. I let him. That hopeless kind of love made him a really good guard dog.

What happened next happened so fast I’m still not sure exactly how it went.

I went into the playroom, and Mr. Tak was there. He wasn’t alone. There was another guy. The other guy had a gun. That’s pretty much the only thing about him that I remember.

“Fuck you,” Mr. Tak said to the guy with the gun.

Then several things happened at once. Danny came screaming through the door. Mr. Tak clutched his briefcase to his chest. The guy with the gun used it.

I hit the deck, covering my head with my arms. On my way down, a bullet slammed into my left calf. It hurt, but I didn’t scream. I never scream unless the client requests it.

There was noise and more shots and then long, ringing silence. When nothing happened for several minutes, I looked up through my fingers. Danny was dead. So was Mr. Tak. The guy who used to have the gun didn’t have it anymore. He was on the floor, trying to reach the gun with one hand, but he couldn’t seem to make his fingers work right.

There wasn’t as much blood as you’d think.

Mr. Tak’s briefcase was open on the ground. It was full of money. Of course I took it. The way I see it, I earned it.

I still feel bad about Danny, though. Maybe I should have fucked him after all.

Christa Faust is the author of several award-winning novels, including
Choke Hold, Money Shot,
and
Hoodtown.
She worked in the Times Square peep booths as a professional dominatrix, fetish model, and adult filmmaker. Faust is a film noir fanatic, an avid reader of classic hard-boiled pulp novels, and an MMA fight fan. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.

Lyndsay Faye

M
etal trash cans dot the dark ledge, their fires flickering with colors of piss and ash. Faint human outlines surround them. The bridge looms above, and beyond the graffiti-covered shelter the rain falls into the East River, relentless. It’s always raining these days, Marion thinks, pulling her rail-thin legs closer into her body.

“Doesn’t seem like he’s coming,” Jason says. He likewise sits on the fine layer of traffic grit covering the ledge, back resting against tags done in violent sprays of yellow and red over the concrete.

“He’s coming,” Marion says. She shifts dull blonde hair away from her eyes. She’s eighteen, and, though she wants to be here, she thinks she might be sick.

He does come, five minutes later. Appearing as if the drizzle had parted like a curtain. The Postman is thinly menacing as ever, hunched over as if he carried a shell on his back. A cigarette glows between his weakly shivering lips.

“I heard about Sam,” he says. “That sad little bastard. You can’t let it get ahead of you like that, let it own you. Like I always said.”