We are delighted to welcome Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks to Omnimystery News today.
Andrew and Paul have edited the new crime anthology Coast To Coast: Murder from Sea to Shining Sea (Down & Out Books; October 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats), and as a way of introducing you to it, have shared with us Paul's contribution to the book, "My Enemies Have Sweet Voices".
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I DON'T BELIEVE IN FATE, DO YOU?
Fate is something for old movies, old women and Gypsy fortune tellers. But I do believe in friends and you know what they say, a friend will help you move. A really good friend will help you move a body. Ray Garnett was a really good friend.
I used to think I was a pretty damn good PI. I'm not so sure about that anymore. It's not like in the old movies with dames and molls, gats and gunsels. Mostly it's tail jobs, finding missing people or people who are missing on purpose and don't want to be found. And these days, with computers and the internet, half the time I can find them without ever leaving the office. I've met some interesting people, made some decent money and when they couldn't pay in cash they paid with other unusual things: guns, a Harley Davidson Electra Glide, free dominatrix services — which I never availed myself of. You get the idea.
She didn't walk into my office like in the movies. She didn't have legs up to here on six-inch heels. No, she smiled her wholesome all-American smile at me over the backyard fence in our Echo Park neighborhood.
We'd only met a couple of weeks before, when Cheryl and her husband Cory moved in, placing the C2 mat on their front porch. Cute. So would baby make it C3?
Cory seemed okay to me. Helped me move an old couch out to the curb for the Salvation Army to pick up. Cheryl watched from the porch, three glasses of lemonade waiting.
The knock on the door woke me the next morning — nine thirty. Most people would be up. My job often kept me trolling the mean streets or the net all hours, so I often slept in.
"Goddamnit." I rolled out of bed, grabbing the Sig P220 from under the pillow. Some guys sleep with their wives, others their girlfriends. My Sig was my constant companion and bedmate — happiness is, after all, a warm gun.
I was tempted to use the Sig on whoever would be standing at the front door, until I saw Cheryl in her sandals and shorts. But her most amazing features were her perfect skin and big, round, brown eyes.
"I'm sorry. I didn't realize I'd be waking —"
I hid the Sig behind my leg. "What's up? Everything okay?"
"I just need help moving a plant and replanting it. It's heavier than I thought."
A few minutes later I was dragging a huge, potted honeysuckle from her back porch to a planter in front of her house.
"This plant was doing so good before we moved. Now it looks like it's dying."
Cheryl hummed Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love," while I stabbed the dirt with a trowel to loosen it, yanked the honeysuckle out and put it in a rectangular hole Cheryl had dug. It looked more like a grave than the round hole I would have dug. Maybe she knew something about planting that I didn't. Sweat dripped from my forehead as she came outside with a pitcher of ice cold lemonade.
"It's fresh. I just pulled the lemons from our tree an hour ago. Didn't put too much sugar in — I don't like it too sweet."
"Neither do I."
"It's hot out here. Why don't you come inside?"
"Might not look good to the neighbors."
"Don't be so old-fashioned. Jeez."
So I followed her inside. There was an old black and white John Garfield/Lana Turner movie on the TV. She flicked it off. Said it was a film noir. I'd heard the term, but didn't really know what it meant.
Cheryl was the girl-next-door, literally and in the sense people mean when they use that old cliché. Sweet, wholesome. All-American. She filled me in on her life story, before and after Cory. Nothing out of the ordinary. Grew up in the suburbs outside of Cleveland, but wanted more culture or at least to be able to get a pizza after midnight. Said she could sing, though she wasn't sure how good she was. She'd sounded pretty good to me.
"So why Echo Park?"
A tart sting of lemonade gave me a chance to think. Really, why had I moved to Echo Park? "It's old L.A. Has a certain charm to it. You?"
"I thought the streets were paved with gold —"
"In Echo Park?"
"— And that there were agents on every corner waiting to discover me." She flashed a bashful smile.
She'd said earlier that she could sing. Now she was talking agents and streets of gold. I guess once you're here you might as well have stars in your eyes. Everyone else does. Why not her?
It was a perfectly innocent meeting. Honeysuckle. Lemonade. Conversation. I went home and back to bed. Just me and my Sig.
***
I'd spent the next day tailing the future ex-wife of a washed up Hollywood mogul. The temperature topped out at a humid one hundred. Seems like there's a lot more humidity in L.A. these days than when I was a kid. More pools. More people. More murder. I opened the fridge door and let the cold air swarm me. Grabbed a Bud Light and rolled the can up and down my face. I think that felt better than drinking it, though that felt pretty good too.
"Leave me alone!" someone shouted. Though I wasn't sure that's what I actually heard with the windows shut and the AC running.
I heard it again. Cheryl and Cory having a fight? If I heard breaking glass I'd go over there or call the cops. I looked out the window. Cheryl's car was in the driveway. No sign of Cory's SUV. Maybe it was in the garage.
It went on for several minutes — no breaking glass. Then it died down.
I got up early the next day — early for me. Headed out to my car and another day on the tail job. Cheryl was bent over the honeysuckle in the front planter. She waved. I waved back. I just wanted to hit the road. Not because I was so anxious to get to the tail job but I didn't want any embarrassing moments with my neighbor about last night.
But we don't always get what we want. Before I could open the car door, she was standing next to me. After the usual pleasantries, she said, "Hey, I hope you didn't hear us last night."
I said I hadn't. I was thinking, I only heard you, but who needs to get into it? Maybe Cory was the silent, passive-aggressive type. She offered me fresh-squeezed OJ. I declined and hit the road.
That night was Take Two. More yelling. But mostly, I thought, from Cheryl — again. I didn't think I heard him. After fifteen minutes of that, I put the Sig in my holster, charged out the front door and did my best cop-knock on Cheryl and Cory's door. She answered a minute later.
"Hey, Cheryl. Is everything okay?"
"Sure." She swatted a tear from her eye. "You know, lots of tension from moving I guess. And Cory's job."
"Where is he?"
"He just left."
I hadn't heard the car. Maybe the AC had blocked it.
"Sometimes he does that. Just goes off to a bar or something."
"Do you want to report him?"
"No. He's just blowing off steam." She was holding her arm.
"Did he hit you?"
"Uh-uh," she said a little too quickly, taking a step back. "Besides, he's leaving town tomorrow for a few days. I'll get a break then."
"You come knock on my door tonight if he comes back drunk and pissed. Doesn't matter what time."
"Thanks, Jimmy. I'd heard everyone in L.A. is so cold. I'm glad to know it's not true."
Back home, I paced a track in the hardwood living room floor. Dialed my friend Ray, an L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy. We'd been best friends since seventh grade when Johnny Rotten, the bully from ninth grade — whose real name has been changed to protect the guilty — was beating the crap out of Ray. Big for my age then, I gave Johnny some of his own poison. Later, Ray and I joined the Army together; he went into Special Forces and I did my time as an MP. Ironically, he became a cop. I didn't want any more of that regi-mentation so I went the private route. I was best man at his wedding. He was still waiting for me to give him the same honor. I figured he'd be waiting a long time.
I filled him in, adding, "I think there might be some abuse."
"Well, if she doesn't want to file a complaint and you don't see any bruises, not much you can do. If it happens again call the cops — you're in LAPD territory. They're good — almost as good as the Sheriffs."
That gave us a good laugh before we hung up. It also broke the tension I was feeling in my gut so I could get a halfway good night's sleep.
I didn't see Cheryl for a couple days. Saturday morning we bumped into each other. She was all smiles, different sandals and shorts, even shorter than before, freshly washed hair and sweet-scented body lotion. I guessed Cory had gone on his trip. She was taking her Camry to the mechanic, needed a ride home. Being the chivalrous type I offered my trusty steed, my pickup, for the return trip.
Heading home down Sunset, I cut down Glendale Boulevard and gave her the Five Buck Tour — it used to be a nickel back in the day.
I went to shift and her hand brushed mine. On purpose? I wasn't sure and didn't want to read too much into it.
"This is Edendale, where the first movie studios were. Fox and Mack Sennett and a whole bunch of others. The real first Hollywood."
She seemed suitably impressed. We turned up Vendome Street in Silverlake. I stopped and we got out of the car.
"What's this?" She looked around, not sure what she was looking at. Just a bunch of old houses. And one very tall, very steep and very long staircase. "Where do those stairs go?"
"Those are famous stairs."
"Famous stairs?"
"Those are the stairs Laurel and Hardy push a piano up in The Music Box." She liked film noir, I liked Laurel and Hardy. But I was also starting to like her.
"L.A.'s really just one big movie studio, isn't it?"
We hiked up the stairs, sweating and out of breath. At the top, there was really nothing to do but head back down. Cheryl stared toward the bottom of the hill. "I wonder how many steps there are."
"I don't know, but I do know I'll be happier going down them than up."
She gazed down the stairs — a far off stare. I'd seen that look before. In Iraq. In Afghanistan. And now, here in Silverlake.
Her foot slipped on a puddle at the top of the stairs. She started to tumble, till I caught her by the elbow.
She laughed, her own special laugh. "I'm hungry. Race you down the steps to the car."
Before I could agree or disagree she was off. She beat me, of course. But I didn't care. I wanted to catch her and when I did I wanted to do something, but it wasn't eating.
We hit a Mexican café near Echo Park Lake, munched on chips and salsa and a couple of icy cold margaritas that loosened us both up a little and eased the heat of the day.
She had that thousand-yard-stare again. Before I could say anything, a smile broke across her face. "Sorry, I know I was staring off."
"It's a little disconcerting."
"I was going to leave Cory before we moved to L.A. I sort of wish I had."
She sipped her third margarita, provocatively flicking her tongue at the salt on the rim. "You want to know what I was thinking at the top of the stairs, when I was staring off?"
I'm not sure I cared. I had other things on my mind. But I'd keep those to myself, as well as my hands. I nodded.
"I probably shouldn't tell you this." She downed another sip. "I was imagining pushing Cory down those steps. He was great when we first met. I had stars in my eyes. Lately I've had stars circling my head."
"He hits you?"
"Not very often." She dug her nails into her palms. "I shouldn't be telling you this. I hardly know you. But you're the only friend I've made in L.A."
"You really should call the cops. We can stop and make a report on the way home."
"They won't do anything, you know that. And besides, it will only piss him off more. But what the hell, I have a few more days of peace."
"You could be gone by the time he gets home."
"Where would I go?"
We did a three-sixty around the lake. The sun caught something on her leg, sending shards of light kaleidoscoping off in all directions, like a knife to my eyes. I blinked, momentarily free of the intense light. I opened my eyes, still blinded by the brightness shooting off her anklet.
"I'm scared, Jimmy." She took my hand. Squeezed. Slid her fingers up my arm to my shoulder, pulled me close to her lips. We kissed — made out — like teenagers in love for the first time.
That night I dug more tracks into the living room floor. She was next door, alone. I wondered if she was having as much trouble sleeping as I was. My protective instincts were in full gear. So were my male instincts. I had the hots for her — did anyone use that expression anymore?
I tried to stop thinking about her. Couldn't. I was obsessed. I downed a slug of Johnnie Walker Red — who can afford the black label or the blue at two hundred bucks a bottle? It didn't help. Took a cold shower. That didn't help. Closed my eyes, but I saw her in the dark.
It was a few minutes after midnight when I knocked on her door. She answered, rubbing sleep from her eyes. I guess she didn't have trouble sleeping. She went to the bedroom to put on a pair of sweats. I could hear her humming. Who was she kidding? She sang like a slumming angel. If I was an agent I'd be drawn to her like a bee to honeysuckle. She came out and we sat on the sofa, the TV droning in the background. An old black and white movie she said was called Detour.
"I don't know what to do, Jimmy. The slightest thing sets him off."
"I'll take you to file a police report."
"I've tried that before — they didn't believe me. Didn't take it seriously 'cause Cory knows how not to leave marks when he hits." She winced at the memory. "Maybe you can let me borrow your pistol?"
"You can't shoot him."
"I don't plan to. But just in case — in case he comes at me again."
I stared at the TV.
"I, I could take care of your problem for you." What the hell was I saying? I wasn't that kind of person.
"What do you mean?"
"Cory. I could take care of him —"
"Take care of him? You mean like...kill him?"
I nodded. I couldn't get the words out. But I meant it.
"We can't. I mean — can we?" Cheryl shivered up and down her body. "I can't believe we're talking about this."
It's not so much that I wanted to kill Cory — even though I hated him, hated that he abused her — but I wanted Cheryl. If that meant killing Cory — murdering him, but that's a harder word to say — then that's what it meant. Besides, he was beating the hell out of her twice a week, wasn't he? I gave her the Sig after our talk. Just in case. But the plan was that she avoid using it if she could.
She took my hand, led me to the bedroom.
I had romantic notions of doing it in some dramatic way. Pushing Cory down the Laurel and Hardy stairs in Silverlake, off of Angels Flight or the Colorado Street Bridge, which spans the Arroyo Seco, in Pasadena. Making it look like an accident. Reality wasn't quite so fanciful. It never is.
A week later, Cheryl sent Cory over to borrow some aspirin at eleven thirty at night. We walked through the house to the kitchen. He was making apologetic noises for the hour. Making small talk. I couldn't talk. My throat was dry, felt like it was going to seize up and choke me.
"Sorry about the mess," I croaked, as we entered the kitchen, stepping over a blue plastic tarp on the floor. "I was going to paint, then decided maybe I'd wait. Haven't cleaned up completely yet."
He said he understood.
"Do you want the bottle or just a couple?" Even being an MP, I may have killed in Iraq, but that was the enemy. Impersonal. Shooting at them from a distance, even if that distance was only a few yards. And still that takes its toll. It's not the same killing up close. Face to face. Rationalizing, I told myself that Cory was the enemy too. Treat him like one. Depersonalize.
He was looking around the kitchen, sizing it up, the way you do when you go to someone's house you haven't been to before. I grabbed a pre-stashed pillow from the counter. Folded inside was an unregistered gun that a client had paid me with one time. I slammed the trigger back, not like in the movies where they tell you to "squeeze." Gut shot him twice. He fell square on the tarp, just as I'd hoped. It was planned out, the bullets couldn't be traced to the throwdown gun. The pillow muffled the sound enough so that the neighbors with their TVs, iPods and internet porn wouldn't notice. Things were working out just fine.
I figured if the police caught on I could always say he broke in, I thought he was a burglar. Who the hell comes over for aspirin at eleven thirty? But I didn't want to deal with the cops.
I dragged him out to the little side yard. Threw an old blanket over him. He was damn heavy and I wasn't as strong as I used to be. I had planned to do the job myself, but I needed help. If I moved him myself he'd fold over and leak all over the place. Now I had to improvise.
Shaky fingers punched in my best friend's phone number.
"Jimmy, it's after midnight. What's up?"
"Hey, Ray, can you come over?"
"Now?"
Ray was a friend — he came right over. We stood over the blanket. I thought I saw a sliver of light and a moving blind in Cheryl's house. I pretended not to notice.
"You thought he was a burglar?" He stayed inside the shadows of the house.
I nodded.
"You should call the police."
"They'd think I did it on purpose."
"'Cause he's the one with the pretty wife you told me about?"
I thought I could trust Ray. I hoped I could trust him. But he was already putting it together.
"You gotta help me, Ray. We've been friends —"
"Don't pull that crap on me. Let's just do it. Get rid of him. Then I don't want to hear from you for a long, long time. Maybe never." He'd been waiting since seventh grade to pay me back for Johnny Rotten. Now was his chance, as distasteful as it might be. "Roll him up in the tarp. And we're using your truck, pal."
We decided to dump the body in the Angeles National Forest — L.A.'s well-known body dump.
Just before sliding into the driver's seat I saw a flicker of light in a front window of Cheryl's house. I couldn't see her, but I knew she was there, watching. I gave her a thumbs up over the roof of the cab, out of Ray's line of sight. I got in and slowly drove off down the street.
Neither of us talked. Hitting Angeles Forest Highway, I kept my eyes out for other headlights. We turned up a dirt fire road, parked. Picked the body up out of the back and ran it into the chaparral. A dead body is dead weight. They seem to add phantom pounds expo-nentially. Not that I'd tried to lift Cory while he was alive, but I was sure he weighed three times as much dead as alive. Or maybe it was just the weight of guilt.
I grabbed a shovel from the pickup, dug a hole, while Ray watched. We rolled Cory out of the tarp and into the hole, covering the body with leaves, branches and rocks. I folded the tarp up quickly, put it back in the truck — I'd dump it later.
Ray was stone-faced on the ride home. Silent. He was helping me because I was his friend. But he'd seen another side of me. He didn't like it. He told me again not to contact him for a long time, but I think he never really wanted to hear from me again. I didn't blame him.
Ray got out of the truck without a word, headed to his car and drove off. I knew he wouldn't turn me in. I also knew I'd lost a friend. I hoped I'd make up for that with Cheryl. I couldn't go over there now. Everyone in the neighborhood was asleep, but what if someone wasn't? What if they were getting a midnight snack or smoking their medical marijuana on their front porch? I couldn't chance it. I walked up my driveway, dead tired, the irony of that term not lost on me. I crashed in my bed. Sleep never came.
At six a.m. I got in the truck, drove all the way out to Death Valley, dumped the throwdown gun, the tarp and blanket, where no one would find them, at least not in this lifetime. On the way home, I steam-washed the bed of the truck. Later that day I patched up the two bullet holes in my wall. I figured no one would consider me for the murder. What was my motive? Cheryl? I hardly knew her. They might consider her though.
Two uniformed cops stood with Cheryl on her front walkway as I drove up my drive. I futzed around the truck awhile, trying to listen. She said something about Cory not coming home last night. She wanted to report him missing. They said it was too soon to file a missing persons report. Split. So did she. Went into her house without a glance my way. We'd planned not to talk for a couple of months after the, uh, incident. But every time I saw her, the cold shoulder. I figured she didn't want people to think we were involved. That was okay with me. I'd play along — for a while — but just a quick look or surreptitious smile would have helped.
It went on like that for weeks. Listening to Cheryl hum or sing her siren song from her yard. Drinking more and more, drowning my sorrows. Until the day there was a loud knock on the front door at six-forty a.m. — I was still in bed. Cop knock — the only people who knock like that are cops.
"James Mallahan?"
"Yes."
"Turn around. Hands behind you."
"What is this?"
"You're under arrest for the murder of Ray Garnett."
"What? I didn't even know he was dead."
I hadn't talked to him in eight or nine weeks, since that night. Just like he'd wanted. And now I was wanted for Ray's murder, not Cory's? What the hell was happening? As they hauled me off to their car, I thought I saw a rustling of Cheryl's blinds, as if she were watching. If she was, she didn't come outside to put in a good word for me.
"You can explain it down at the station."
I tried — but nobody listened. Nobody cared. They'd found my Sig in the bushes near Ray's body, as if I'd hastily dumped it. Ray had been pushed down the Laurel and Hardy stairs and, just in case that didn't kill him, he was shot twice as he lay on the ground. Shot with a Sig 220 — my Sig 220. I was convicted — for a murder I didn't do. But I knew who did. And as I sat in my cell waiting for the day they hauled me back to court for sentencing, I figured it out and knew my enemy had a sweet voice. Cheryl had played me — the dupe of all time. When Ray had gone off with me and Cory's body she must have gotten his license plate and found out who he was, where he lived. I knew that was easy enough — I'd made my living that way.
Then maybe she followed him. Maybe she flirted with him or seduced him. One way or another she got a bead on him and did to him what I'd done to Cory — for her — and with my gun. Only she'd left him where he could be found — she framed me. Smart. I never even saw it coming. Now she was rid of Cory, who may or may not have been as bad as she'd said. I was having my doubts. She was rid of Ray, one of the two people who knew she was part of it. But I was still alive. I could still talk. Did she think I loved her that much — that I'd go to prison for her and not say a word?
I don't know what her motive was. Maybe the house was worth something. Maybe an insurance policy. Maybe Cory really did beat her, but I didn't believe that anymore. Maybe she just liked to play people.
I thought about telling my lawyer my theory. Decided against it. After all, I'd kil-murdered Cory and my best friend was dead, thanks to me. I hated for the world to think I'd killed him, but I would take my bitter pill, so to speak. I could have caused Cheryl a world of grief, but I wanted to wear this hair shirt by myself. I'd killed Cory; I'd caused Ray's death. I deserved my punishment.
But then fate has a way of taking a hand. I was in the prison rec room, scanning a newspaper: "Cheryl Hart Indicted for the Murder of Her Husband, Cory." She skated on that, sort of. While she was out on bail, her body was found — dead — at the bottom of the Laurel and Hardy stairs. Accident? Suicide? Karma? Fate? Any way you look at it: justice.
Do you believe in Fate? I do.
— ♦ —
Coast To Coast: Murder from Sea to Shining Sea edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks
An Anthology of Crime Stories
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Crime in high places. Crime in low places. Crime from Coast to Coast.
Crime in the Faneuil Hall Marketplace of Boston to the Vincent Thomas Bridge in the Port of Los Angeles. From the wind-swept sails of the New England shoreline to the transitioning Italian-American neighborhood of North Beach in San Francisco and the Disney Concert Hall in L.A.
Crime is everywhere, from the murky depths of Echo Park Lake and the body dump of the Angeles National Forest, to the clear waters of Oyster Bay and the beaches of Cape Cod — even Mexico City — in this collection of stories that range from hardboiled to suspense-thrillers. And while these stories differ in locale, climate, mood and the tone and voices of the various writers, they all resonate with the dark underbelly of crime.
— Coast To Coast: Murder from Sea to Shining Sea edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks
