David Dean - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

“You tell that mon how you steal all that money in San Francisco?”

“I told him.”

Big grin. “Beautiful wife, fancy villa in Charlotte Amalie, rich mon’s life before it all go away and you end up here.”

“The whole story.”

“What he say?”

“I don’t think he believed it.”

“Somebody might, someday,” Jocko said. “Wrong mon think you still got plenty money left, he try to steal it from you.”

“Or the law might come and take me away to jail.”

“I don’t like to see that hoppen.”

“Of course not. Then you’d go out of business.”

He laughed

I laughed, too.

The fan hummed, the flies circled. Clouds were beginning to pile up along the crest of Bordeaux Mountain; there might be some rain later on. A sleek blue-and-white yawl came gliding in from the sea. From a distance she looked like the Annalise — a thirty-footer with a clipper bow and enough beam to handle weather in blue water. I watched her for a time, but not very long.

I wondered where Annalise was now, what she was doing. But I didn’t really care.

I wondered how much money I had left. I could look at my bank book when I got back to the saltbox, but I knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t really care.

I wondered if Talley would come back. I wondered if he would contact my old firm in San Francisco, turn me in to the FBI. I hoped he would, but I didn’t really care.

I sat there.

Would I really do it over again if I had the chance? I’d been telling myself I would for so long that saying it out loud to somebody else had become second nature. But it was a lie. And so was the conceit that I had committed a perfect crime. Two more lies in the fabric of falsehoods and deceptions that made up my life.

Jocko brought me another rum. Arundel Cane Rum, the best in the Caribbean, the only kind I would drink. I caught up the glass, emptied it.

“World by the tail, eh, mon?” Jocko said.

“This is my world now,” I said. “Jocko’s Cafe and Arundel rum and what I can see through this window.”

He laughed.

This time I didn’t laugh with him.

Copyright ©; 2005 by Bill Pronzini.

Celebrated Canadian crime writer Eric Wright was born in London and emigrated to Canada at the age of twenty-two. For his novels and stories in the mystery genre he has won numerous awards, including the Arthur Ellis Award and the Derrick Murdoch Award for Lifetime Achievement. His latest tale for us involves a mystery of sorts, but whether there’s a crime, we’ll leave up to you.

I ran into Billy one afternoon at Sandown Park between races, in the tea lineup in the refreshment room. It took a long time to find the name to put to the face, but I was well past the point where I could be mistaken, and he didn’t look away. Afterwards, I wondered how long he’d been seeing me before I noticed him. He was a couple of people ahead in the line, and when we were sure of the eye contact, he moved back to where I was. “Stan?” he asked. “Stan Collier, isn’t it?”

“Billy Sutton,” I said, and we shook hands.

It occurred to me afterwards that we shook hands that day for the first time ever, as far as I could remember, even though we’d been together from the beginning. We joined up together and stayed together all through Dunkirk. Actually, for us it was Le Havre, not Dunkirk. Billy and I were picked up off the beach by one of the navy rowboats which took us out to their ship, the last one still waiting for survivors. We had a bit of an argument on the beach, because Billy said he couldn’t swim in his boots, and I said I couldn’t walk out across the pebbles without mine. We’d been retreating for a week and my feet were so sore I was afraid that only my boots were holding them together. In the end we compromised by walking out in our boots until the water was up to our waists, then kicking them off and trying to swim a bit. It was a good thing the sailors got to us right away, because neither of us could do much more than the dog paddle we’d learned on holidays at the seaside. After we landed, I had to wear slippers for a week until I could get my boots on again.

After Le Havre we stayed together in the same mob, the Royal Army Service Corps, in a supply battalion at a depot up in Yorkshire near Catterick racecourse, until we were fit to go again.

As soon as we could march, we were shipped off to Greece to help out with the Italian invasion. I understand we coped pretty well with the Eyeties at first — our army, I mean — and then Jerry arrived to help out his ally, and we were in retreat again.

We regrouped and crossed to Crete just in time to get the order to retreat. Billy and I walked for two nights across Crete, one canteen of water between the two of us, and on the third night we were sucking the biscuit crumbs out of the linings of our trouser pockets. Dozens of us, probably hundreds, if you could see them, shuffled through the dark, many in pairs, one helping out the other who had gone lame, stopping sometimes to retie their boots or just to have a rest. One soldier was sitting by the roadside alongside his mate who was sleeping and he waved us down to get a mouthful of water for his friend. When we got close, we saw his friend was dead, and we told him to come along with us, but he only shook his head. He’d come to the end of the road. We saw two or three like that, stopped, waiting for Jerry to come along and take them prisoner, or shoot them. During the third night I lost Billy, and didn’t see him again until after the fourth race at Sandown, twenty years later.

Sandown was the one place where I was likely to bump into him, and if I hadn’t thought he had gone for good that night in Crete, “missing in action,” I might have had my antennae tuned in for an encounter. As it was, I first wondered where I had once seen that face, now ten feet away — perhaps in the paper, or on the telly, and then it became more personal, a neighbour perhaps, as he returned the look I was giving him and I tried to sort him out. And then who it was announced itself, still without a name until he spoke mine, and then it was Billy.

We collected our tea and confirmed by individual observation that each of us was on his own, and we walked over to a vacant table and sat down.

The way we were, you’d think we were two brothers, living in different parts of the world, not communicating much if at all over the years, come together at a funeral, say, arriving early before anyone else turned up, wondering where to start. “Why didn’t you write?” would be the first question, followed by, “Why didn’t you?”

We sipped our tea and waited to see who would find the right button.

“Thought you were a ghost at first,” he said. He didn’t smile.

“Twenty years,” I said, eventually. “Maybe I am.”

“Twenty-two.”

I don’t think he meant it as a challenge, though that’s what it sounded like.

But it was too soon to get into it. “Fancy anything for the next race?” I asked.

He looked at his newspaper, marked up before he left home, probably. “This one belongs to Piggott, I reckon,” he said.

I thought so, too. “Got your money on yet?”

He nodded.

“Wait here, then, while I put a bet on. I want to watch this one from the rail, so if we miss each other, I’ll meet you back here after the race.”

“How long should I wait?” He leaned back, watching me.

“What do you mean?” I asked. But I knew what he meant.

“You might get detained,” he said.

There was no mistaking his meaning now, but I wasn’t ready for it yet. “I’ll be here,” I said.

The crowd was thick that afternoon, so when I went back after the fifth, and again after the sixth, and there was no sign of him, I let it go. I knew I would see him again soon.