Dale Andrews - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134 & 135, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

And what was it that I had told the police? Just this: Drew Richards had been the only person that day who would not look at the stump . Everyone else, complain as they did, couldn’t seem to look at it enough. Richards couldn’t bear to.

So everything was back to normal in Witka, or at least as close as we get. Sheila Halsey made Everett cut down the stump after he recovered. Halsey was horrified to hear that some folks thought it was indecent, especially when “folks in France pay to see the same darn thing.” It’s funny, though, people here in Witka still remember Halsey’s statue and go over to Little Brook Lane to see it once in a while. Everett has it in the shed out back. The visitors include Evelyn Wyatt Szymanski. According to her, her daughter Janie’s birthmark began to disappear shortly after she touched “the wood lady.” It’s gone completely now. Evelyn, to this day, swears it was some kind of miracle. But I don’t know; they say those things just disappear on their own sometimes.

I do know that as I carved a pumpkin for my front step that Halloween I thought about the power of objects and images. That is what Halloween’s about, after all. The power of ghoulish images to frighten away evil spirits, to exorcise demons. Everett Halsey created such an object, one that spoke to each person differently. To some it was an artistic inspiration revealed, to others an expression of guilt, or a sick fantasy, and in the end, maybe even a miracle. And to Drew Richards? It was an accusation. One that his own conscience couldn’t live with.

Chalk up one evil spirit, chased out of Witka.

Copyright © 2009 Maurissa Guibord

Five-time Readers Award winner Clark Howard is one of the all-time masters of the mystery/crime short story. This autumn, at the Bouchercon Convention in Indianapolis, the Short Mystery Fiction Society will be recognizing his incomparable accomplishments in the field when they make him the first winner of a new award named in honor of EQMm’s long-time, beloved contributor Edward D. Hoch. The Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement will join many other certificates and plaques Mr. Howard has earned — including, of course, the statuette of Edgar Allan Poe that he won in 1981 for best short story.

Angus Doyle was having a late breakfast on the east patio of his gated, guarded estate when his attorney, Solomon Silverstein, arrived.

“You eat yet?” Doyle asked by way of greeting.

“No. And I probably won’t all day,” the lawyer snapped. “I’ve lost my appetite. And my ulcer is going crazy. It’ll probably perforate.”

“Oh? What’s bothering your ulcer, Sol?”

Silverstein sat and drew over an extra chair on which to place and open his briefcase. From it he extracted four documents folded in blue legal covering. “These are what’s bothering me,” he said, placing them directly in front of Angus Doyle’s breakfast plate.

“What are they?” Doyle asked, not touching them.

“Subpoenas, Gus. Federal grand-jury subpoenas. For Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor.”

“But not for me?”

“Not yet.”

Doyle grunted quietly. “What’s the grand jury looking at? RICO again?”

RICO. Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations. An all-purpose federal crime designed to bring down organized-crime operations.

“No, not RICO. Not this time, Gus.” The lawyer’s expression turned grim. “This time it’s income-tax evasion.”

“What!” Doyle was taken aback. “I pay my taxes!” he declared indignantly.

“Of course you do,” Sol said. “On your legitimate businesses. On your up-front operations: the bowling alleys and bars, the laundry and dry-cleaning services, the limo and escort services, the convenience-store franchises, all the rest. But you don’t pay income tax on the other stuff: the gambling, hijacking, prostitution—”

“How the hell can I?” Doyle demanded. “Those things are illegal!”

“Exactly. And that’s what they’re now trying to get you for. Income is income, whether it’s legal or illegal. Remember a fellow named Al Capone?” The attorney leaned forward urgently. “Can’t you see what they’re doing? Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor. Your four top men. Between them, they know everything about your operation. Everything you run, all the front businesses, the payoffs, where the money comes from, where the bodies are buried—”

“Sol, please. I’m eating,” Doyle said.

“Do you see my point?”

“No.”

“Look, they’re going to bring in each of your men separately to be questioned by Department of Justice attorneys in front of a secret grand jury. No defense lawyers are allowed, there’s no transcript, no rules of evidence apply because the purpose is not to convict anyone, merely to indict.” Silverstein took a deep breath. “Do you suppose I can get a glass of cold milk?”

Doyle rang a small silver bell on the table. In seconds a white-coated attendant appeared and the milk was ordered. “Sure you wouldn’t like something to eat, Sol? Eggs, bacon, O’Brien potatoes?”

“Good God, no! Do you want to kill me?”

There was a twinkle of mischief in Angus Doyle’s eyes, with just a hint of malice attached to it. Doyle was a stout, almost brutish, ruddy-faced man who could eat anything, and who could, and had, killed enemies with his bare hands. He was Black Irish to the core, and while he valued Solomon Silverstein to a large degree, he had never really been fond of him. In his entire life, Angus Doyle had never really been fond of anyone who was not Irish.

Sol fidgeted with a corner of the starched white cloth of Angus Doyle’s breakfast table. A thin, hyper, dedicated worrier of a man, he was nevertheless a brilliant litigator and appellate attorney who had kept Angus Doyle out of legal harm’s way for two decades, and someone whom Doyle had made very wealthy in return. When his glass of cold milk arrived, the lawyer gulped it down in several swallows, then rubbed his stomach as if to spread around its soothing effect.

“Tell me in plain language what’s bothering you, Sol,” Doyle said, continuing to devour the O’Brien potatoes laced with onions and green peppers.

“Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor. They will be questioned individually, in secret, and no one except the Justice Department attorney and the anonymous grand-jury members will ever know what they say. But — everything they say can be used to find evidence against anyone they give testimony about.”

Doyle belched. “So?”

“So, Gus, suppose one of them cuts a deal with the government?”

“One of my men? Sol, please.”

“It could happen, Gus. One of them gives enough information for the government to find cause to indict you, and you’d never know which one did it. Even they wouldn’t know which one did it. You go down. Your entire organization is wiped out. And the government gives immunity to Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor — so nobody ever knows who the informer was.”

“None of my men would ever do that,” Doyle said confidently.

“What makes you so sure? How do you know how much the government has compiled on each of them over the years? How do you know how much pressure can be put on one of them? Immunity, Gus, can be an orchid in a field of weeds.”

Doyle stopped eating. His expression grew thoughtful. “All right,” he said quietly, “for the sake of argument, suppose one of them does cut a deal. What happens next?”