The Paperback Show Murders (2 page)

“FEMALE FATAL”

Friday, March 25

“Shorty McDirk wasn't the most private of eyes, but he had a nose for nostrums, and that one talent had carried him through thick and thin and just about everything in between.

“But what to do about Glen and Glenda? There were just no easy answers. He'd tracked the terrible twins to their lair on 546
th
St. and Avenue Alpha, and kept a close watch on the place for 16 straight days without seeing not hide nor hair of either ‘G'—before he was finally reported by the garbage men as a loiterer.

“After a rough night fending off boozers and Bolshies in the 69
th
Precinct clink, the private dick returned to A.A. the next morning—Day 17—and pounded on the door.

“No one answered, but the weathered slab of lemon-stained wood slowly swung open into the stifling steamy stench of an urban Hell.

“‘Hello?' McDirk whispered as he tiptoed through the opening. Then he stumbled over the outstretched bare leg of…either Glen or Glenda!

“‘My God! It's a female fatal!' he exclaimed.

“But was it really?”

—Female Fatal
,

by Hoggy Garfinkel (1954)

That afternoon, the show closed its exhibit area an hour early at five o'clock. Since the rooms would be locked for the night, we covered our less expensive stock with sheets, and took with us just our cash and a few small boxes of
la crème de la crème
, the latter of which we stashed temporarily in the lock box of our van. Then we drove to dinner.

Bunyan's Dive-In was a hole-in-the-wall café slathered along the south side of Division Street in “San Verdoo.” It wasn't much for looks, save for the oversized, psychedelic painting of Paul and Babe plastered on the outside side wall, but the great eats trumped the rube
décor
.

You could get a huge stack of eggs, waffles, hash browns, and Polish sausages any time of the day or night, or munch on the Blue Ox Burger (three patties interlayered with bleu cheese, bacon strips, hot garlic sauce, onions, and 'shrooms), or try to scarf down the “Axe Me No Questions” triple-thick prime steak smothered with sautéed scallions, portabellas, and jalapeño peppers, or—well, you get the picture. No one went home hungry from Bunyan's, and I wouldn't have been surprised to see ole Guy Fieri himself slumming at one of the communal benches, demonstrating his signature “hunch.”

Instead, we promptly spotted a group of con attendees—the feminist book dealer, Lissa Boaz; the well-known western writer, Ferdinand Bartholomew; the “Generation XYZ” horror writer, Brody Richard “The O-Man” Dameen; the latter's new girlfriend, Gully Foyle; the nursie romance author, Kitty Gaylord; Kitty's SF writer partner, Cole Spayze—all sitting there waiting for us like a panel of self-satisfied judges.

“Well,” Ferd said in his over-loud, condescending voice, “here comes one of them bookmonger folks. I guess we'll have to be careful what we say.”

“That would be a first,” Margie hissed in my ear, and I nearly laughed out loud.

I looked around, but the place was packed, as usual, and the only open seats were just down the row from where our “friends” were lurking.

“You want to go somewhere else?” I asked my partner.

“We're already here,” she said, “and the food's pretty good. We might as well eke it out.”

I ordered the “small” chickie-in-the-drink (just half the bird, fried as an entire unit in hot oil!), with smashed spuds drenched in gravy, and green beans sprinkled with slivered almonds, plus a cup of the spicy “'Fredo Soup”; and Margie picked the Chef Salad, piled high with arugula, spinach greens, lettuce, strips of ham, chicken, beef, and turkey, several kinds of diced cheese, and a mix of chopped fresh veggies, all drizzled with a shower of the house balsamic vinaigrette. (I'd covered the place in my book with J. Howard Beeks,
Our Favorite Eats in the Inland Empire
.)

“So, Lissa,” I offered, as I sipped from my kiwi iced tea and munched on the restaurant's signature Bunyan Bread (double-sized rolls) and Pterodactyl Pretzels, “have you found a buyer yet for
Castle Dred
?”

“Oh, I
do
think so!” she said, almost gushing in her enthusiasm, fiddling with the ends of the obscene boa draped around her neck. The twitching almost made it look alive.

“And just
who
is this mysterious purchaser?” I asked, not letting her off the hook.

“I told you before—
the
author!
” she said. “I won't sell it to anyone else.”

“You mean the writer's actually present at the show?”

“Yes, I saw her today, in fact,” Lissa said, “and she was very,
very
interested. I told her that if she came to my room later this evening, we could talk business—if, that is, she wants me to keep her little secret. If she doesn't, well, then I'll offer it to someone else who's, uh, less discriminating, if you know what I mean.”

“Hey, uh, I'd buy it, uh, in an instant!” The O-Man said. He was always speaking—and writing—in, uh, clichés.

“And do
what
with it?” Margie asked.

“Write, uh, a blog,” he said. “I could call it, uh, ‘The Writer Undead!' Or, uh, maybe, ‘The Female Fatal'.” Then he chugged an entire bottle of beer.

“Isn't that supposed to be ‘femme fatale'?” Margie said.

“Whatever,” he said. “I don't know, uh, that many Eye-talian words.”

“Have any of you actually
read
the thing?” Kitty interrupted.

“Well,
I
have, of course,” Lissa said. “Or at least, I skimmed it. It's pretty bad by today's standards. I mean, old Donnie was digging pretty deep for this one. He must have been absolutely desperate for material.”

“I think it was the late Evelyn Grippo running the show by that time,” Margie said. “I remember meeting her at a con in the Big Apple, and hearing her talk about signing a bunch of British reprint rights for romantic suspense novels that she was going to repackage as gothics, and how she was trying to find some writers to add a few original titles to the series—but that none of the authors she'd inked thus far were really generating the atmosphere that she wanted for these books. She mentioned
Dred
in passing, but I don't recall now what she said about it. It wasn't really my thing.”

“Yeah, weren't you editing those L. T. Woodward ‘sex studies' for Monarch Books back then?” Kitty asked. “I thought they were penned by some sci-fi hack.”

“Among other things. I was a low-level assistant in those days, so I worked on whatever Mr. Heckelmann assigned. I dealt with everything from bad SF to bad sleaze to faux Tarzan rip-offs. I sure wish, though, I'd kept a couple of boxes each of the five Burroughs pastiches we published—I could retire now!”

“Heckelmann wrote some pretty decent oaters, as I recall,” Ferd said. “Things like
River Queen
for Graphic Books.”

“He also worked as a pulp magazine editor before founding Monarch Books—and after it failed, he moved on to Popular Library in the late 1960s. He knew everyone there, from Ned Pines on down, from his old pulp days, when it was still Thrilling Publications; and he was able to draw on his contacts to bring many of the same authors to his paperback lines. That's how things operated back then—still do, to a great degree. X knows Y knows Z, etc.”

“Ain't it the truth,” Spayze said. “But these days, there's just not much money in the business for the average Joe—except for the bestsellers, of course.”

“And how many of
those
are there?” I asked. I got no reply.

“But, uh, the authors get
nothing
in, uh, return for the books you sell,” Dameen said. “That, uh, just doesn't seem fair to me.” He grabbed another brewski.

“No,” everyone agreed.

We all knew plenty of writers who'd suddenly slipped from Easy Street to the Bowery. It could happen to any of them without warning, and the only real alternative these days was print-on-demand or e-publishing. These could bring their OP works back into press, but rarely earned anyone much in the way of hard cash. The Golden Era of paperback publishing—of print publishing in general—was gone, and it wasn't ever coming back.

We were all gray-tinged dinosaurs, I knew, toddling off into the sunset of irrelevancy. When the dark finally came, all that would remain of any of us would be the fossilized spines of our crumbling books.

“I DON'T KNOW NOTHING!”

Saturday, March 26

“Her name was Dorothy Malarkey, but it'd been a couple of years at least since she'd seen the grubby corn fields of Southeast Kansas.

“‘'Fess up, Malarkey,' Sergeant Brillow said, ‘We know ya done the deed!'

“Then he back-slapped his hard, hairy hand right across the girl's red, rubied lips.

“‘Oh! You Brutus!' she gasped, a drop of blood crawling its way right down to the cleft of her chin. ‘I don't know nothing!' She thrust her twin peaks of defiance right at the police officer, twisting her body back and forth to titillate him.

“But Brillow knew better than to be swayed by the giggling of such gutterswipes. ‘Ya ain't in Kansas anymore, girlie. We found the grain stashed in the vic's kitchen. It couldn't've got there by accident. And he wasn't any cook, neither.'

“‘No, no, no!' she screeched, suddenly attacking the cop with her pink, inch-long fingernails. He grabbed her by the wrists, and held her fast.

“‘All right! All right! I did it! He said my cornbread wasn't as good as his ma's. I just couldn't take it any more! So I put some good Wichita weed in the next batch I baked, and when he choked on that, I just laughed. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!'

“She was still laughing when they hauled her away to the clink.”

—Sharecropper's Girl
,

by Wiley Villemen (1960)

I awoke the next morning to a rough pounding on my door. I staggered out of bed in my underwear, wrapped myself in a robe, found my way to the exit, and greeted the new day with a not-so-joyous,
“What?!”

Margie was standing there, a very strange look on her face. “It's…it's Lissa,” she finally said. “She's dead.”

“Dead?”

My brain just doesn't function well before I've filled my body with caffeine, and I simply didn't get what she was saying for a second or two.

“Dead?” I finally repeated. “How?”

“They're not saying, but there's…there's cops everywhere.”

I peered over the balcony, and sure enough, several police cars were parked near the front lobby. I knew—many folks knew—that Lissa's room, 1313, was located on the back side of the complex, well away from the traffic and noise.

“I better get dressed,” I finally said. “I'll meet you in the Eatery,” which was the RC's nod to a motel café.

* * * * * * *

Half an hour later I found Margie lurking at a large back booth with some authors, editors, and booksellers. The talk was all about “THE MURDER,” as everyone was now calling it.

“So it's official?” I asked. “She was killed?”

“Strangled by one of her boas, they say,” Levi Barton said next to me. “You know, she had it coming!”

“That's a bit gauche,” Kitty Gaylord said. “After all, the woman's barely in her coffin.”

“She's not in
any
coffin,” Barton said. “If they've removed the body, she's down at the morgue waiting to be cut open from hat to twat.”

“How disgusting!” Margie said. “Why do you always have to be so vile, Levi?”

“Well, let's face it,” he said, “no one much cared for the bitch. And she
was
a bitch, no question.”

We might have all privately agreed with him, but none of us cared for the blunt, insensitive way with which he handled the passing of a colleague.

“Enough of that,” I said. “Do they have any suspects?”

“I hear the cops are questioning everyone, but I don't think they have anybody particular in mind—at least not yet,” Kitty said.

“What about the expo?” Margie asked.

“They haven't made a decision,” Kitty said. “Tomás is talking it over with several of the other organizers, and they'll have an announcement by noon. Everything's shut down until then.”

“But, surely they can't go on…,” Margie said.

* * * * * * *

But they
would
go on, or at least that's what the flyer that was handed out a half-hour later said. The second session would open at one, and continue until six that evening, and the third would take place tomorrow at the usual time.

Meanwhile, the police had finally located the Eatery (superior detective work, that!), and were systematically asking the patrons if they'd known the deceased, and in what capacity, where they'd been last evening between the hours of nine and ten
p.m
., and if they knew of any reason why someone would want to kill Melissa (which turned out to be her
real
name—who knew?).

“I'm surprised she lasted this long,” Barton said in such a loud voice that
all
heard his outburst. “She was just a nasty, nasty,
nasty
individual that everyone purely hated. She had it coming, if anyone did!”

“It was that
book
!” Kitty said, “That
Castle Dred
thing. That's what got her killed!”

“You think the author murdered her?” I asked.

“Who else?” she said. “I heard the police didn't find it in her room.”

“Every dealer here had a motive,” I said, “a big financial one.”

“Yes, but who'd buy it now?” Barton asked. “The seller would immediately be suspect.”

“Not if it were sold ‘under the table,' so to speak,” Margie said. “If the author's really here at the con, then she or he would want to stop the secret from getting out.”

“Just what I stated,” Kitty said. “It was the
writer
, no question.”

“Excuse me. Were you folks at the convention?” someone asked us from behind.

I turned and looked up at a nondescript man in a black suit and tie. He flashed a badge at us. “Lieutenant Alwin Pfisch, S.V.P.D. Homicide,” he said. “I'd like to talk with each of you separately, before you return to the show this afternoon. We've set up in Room 1003 in the motel for interviews. Sergeant Hamm”—he nodded to the police officer lurking a few steps back—“will take your names and contact info. Thank you.”

“But I don't know nothing!” Kitty said.

“Nonetheless,” Pfisch said, “You'll each please make yourselves available for a brief interview.”

Then he left to accost some other patrons, but the Sergeant remained to record the particulars from everyone at the table. When he departed, trailing in his supervisor's wake, we all just looked at each other. I think everyone was thinking the same thing: “Was that a killer sitting across from me?”