Lawrence Block - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, No. 6. Whole No. 790, June 2007

“Who is this man?” Littlewolf demanded.

“A private citizen who’s been helping the authorities,” Oaken told him, and that was enough to shut him up. He seated himself at a table with Silverspur and Karen. One of his uniformed officers stood behind them.

Dan Littlewolf hesitated in choosing a seat for himself, finally sharing the piano bench with Bryson. “All right, what have you got to say?” he challenged Leopold. “Have you found Rosco Wein?”

“I think so, yes,” Leopold responded. “You see, the trouble with most criminals is that they don’t read enough. They especially don’t read Edgar Allan Poe.”

“What’s that got to do with my brother?” Karen asked.

“Could I borrow your cell phone for a moment?” he asked.

She couldn’t reach it with her hands cuffed, but Oaken took it out of her jacket and passed it to Leopold. “Now what?”

“What’s his speed-dial number? You called him last night.”

“Sure, he’s my brother. Punch number 2.”

Leopold did it and then they heard the muffled sound — the first few notes of “Yankee Doodle,” seeming to come from the floor beneath their feet, like the beating of the telltale heart in Poe’s story.

Once again Sammy Bryson tried to cover the sound with his jazz piano, but this time he wasn’t fast enough. It was Littlewolf himself who silenced his fingers on the keys. “Where is he? Down there?”

Leopold nodded. “Sammy told me he had to stay here last night to close up. Wein came back with his package for me and probably asked to hide it overnight. Sammy killed him for it.”

The piano player’s face had drained of all color. “That’s not how it was! I asked for some coke and we had an argument. I hit him. My God, I didn’t mean to kill him!”

“But he was dead and you had to hide the body somewhere. It was too risky to carry it out to your car. You wrapped it in the plastic piano cover, which was missing tonight, hoping that would help hide the odor. You pried up some of the loose floorboards and hid his body under them, then nailed them back in place. The old floor squeaked when I walked across to Karen’s table last night, but it was silent when I walked to the same table tonight. You never thought to search the body for a cell phone, though. When Karen tried to phone him earlier this evening, you heard the first few notes of “Yankee Doodle” — the patriotic ring tone she’d mentioned to me. You quickly launched into a jazz version on your piano and covered it nicely so no one realized what they’d heard. That single act proved you knew he was under the floor. It told me you’d killed him, Sammy.”

Leopold remained on the scene while they pried up the floorboards and removed the body. Recovering the victim’s remains was something he’d done so many times before. It had always been part of the job. He’d have to phone Molly and tell her he wouldn’t be home tonight after all.

© 2007 by Scott William Carter

Scott William Carter’s stories have appeared in periodicals such as Asimov’s, Analog, Weird Tales, and Crimewave, as well as in anthologies published by Pocket Books and DAW. He writes YA fantasy novels as well, and tells EQMM that he lives in Oregon with his “patient wife, two children, two indifferent cats, a faithful dog, and thousands of imaginary friends.

Whipping around the sharp bends, tires squealing on wet asphalt, Simon pushed his little Miata close to eighty. The wall of pine trees on both sides, as well as the black sky above, created a dark tunnel into the hills. He was thinking about making it to the coast before midnight, early enough to squeeze in a few hands with the late-night poker crowd at the casino, and he didn’t see the motorcycle until he was almost on top of it. With no taillight, and with its rider clad in black, the bike emerged from the dreary gloom like a moth alighting on his windshield.

“Holy mother of—” he cried, stomping on his brakes.

The shoulder belt snapped taut against his chest. His car fishtailed, back tires screaming, front end coming inches from the bike’s mud-caked license plate.

Up close, the Miata’s headlights slashed through the rain and the dark, illuminating the man and his bike in vivid detail. The guy’s glistening jacket bore a striking design: a white bear head in profile, glowing as if luminescent. It was the only thing on the rider that wasn’t black; pants, boots, even the helmet melded with the stormy night, making the bear appear to hover over the road.

Simon didn’t know much about motorcycles, but the bike was definitely too sleek and compact to be a Harley. It looked like it belonged on a racetrack, not a highway.

Heart pounding, Simon eased off the biker. He would have expected the commotion to startle the guy, maybe cause him to swerve, but the biker’s only re-action was to turn his head halfway around, just far enough that Simon’s headlights appeared on the helmet’s mirrored faceplate like a pair of hot ember eyes. The guy looked for a moment, then turned back to the road.

And dropped his speed down to thirty.

Son of a gun. Simon could understand the guy being pissed — Simon had nearly plowed over him — but going half the speed limit, even in these conditions, seemed petty.

The squeaking wipers struggled to keep the windshield clear. Dashboard fans roared out a steady stream of warm air. There were few opportunities to pass on Highway 18, but Simon knew there was a passing lane in a few miles. He’d driven this road so many times, every pothole and mile marker was burned in his memory. He’d wait a few minutes, give the guy a chance to cool down. He really wanted to get to that poker game — he was already imagining the rush of tossing in his first ante — but he didn’t want to get into some kind of stupid road game. In these conditions, one of them could end up dead in a ditch.

As his heart slowed, he felt a pang of remorse. What if he had died out here? Tomorrow — Saturday — was Jana’s second birthday. He could just imagine the look on her face as she sat on their crappy lima-bean couch in their mousetrap apartment — an apartment that should have been packed with children laughing and making noises with party favors, but instead would be empty and deathly quiet as her mother explained why Daddy wasn’t coming home.

She was so young... In a few years would she even remember him?

Guilt — it was the worst kind of feeling, a feeling Simon had come to dread because he knew it always lurked somewhere around the corner. The worst part, the absolute worst part, was that Tracy would know, if he died on this stretch of road at this time of night (when he was supposed to be hanging out at Steve’s watching horror flicks) that he had broken his word.

Promising to give up gambling forever was the only way he had been able to keep her from leaving him.

But what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. After all, he wasn’t playing like last year when his losses forced them to file for bankruptcy. No, it was nothing like that. Just an occasional game here and there. For fun, really. Spare change he earned from his tips, money Tracy never saw. He’d never dip into his bank account again. He was in control now.

His radio, turned low, was losing its Rexton signal to static, and Simon clicked it off. When he did, he noticed his hand was shaking. Apparently the incident had gotten to him more than he thought it had. The biker went on puttering at thirty, the spray from his back tire misting in the beams from Simon’s headlights. Not a single car passed from the other direction, but Simon knew the road was way too popular, even on nights like this, to chance passing with a double yellow.