Black Cat Mystery Magazine #8

By Elizabeth Zavin, Barb Goffman, John M. Floyd and John Hegenberger

The first Black Cat Mystery Magazine of 2021 presents 7 compelling original tales, plus a classic reprint by Donald Barr Chidsey. Included are:

TRIP UP ON HIGH STREET, by John Hegenberger
ST. KILLIAN’S CHOICE, by M.A. Monnin
YOU LOSE, WE FIND, by Jon Matthew Farber
THE BIG PICTURE, by John M. Floyd
AN ARTIST IN THE HAREM, by Elizabeth Zelvin
PLANTED IN MIDAIR, by D.V. Bennett
AN INCONVENIENT SLEUTH, by Barb Goffman
"Just Another Bum," by Donald Barr Chidsey

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781479457298

Book preview

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

FROM THE CAT’S PERCH, by Michael Bracken

STAFF

TRIP UP ON HIGH STREET, by John Hegenberger

ST. KILLIAN’S CHOICE, by M.A. Monnin

YOU LOSE, WE FIND, by Jon Matthew Farber

THE BIG PICTURE, by John M. Floyd

AN ARTIST IN THE HAREM, by Elizabeth Zelvin

PLANTED IN MIDAIR, by D.V. Bennett

AN INCONVENIENT SLEUTH, by Barb Goffman

JUST ANOTHER BUM, by Donald Barr Chidsey

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2021 by Wildside Press LLC.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

FROM THE CAT’S PERCH, BY MICHAEL BRACKEN

Having a story nominated for an award or selected for inclusion in a best-of-year anthology is quite an honor for any writer, and it also reflects well on the editorial staff of the story’s original publisher. That’s why I’m pleased to note that John M. Floyd’s Rhonda and Clyde, from the fifth issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine, is one of twenty stories featured in The Best American Mystery Stories 2020 (Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Though I can claim no reflected glory from the inclusion of Rhonda and Clyde in The Best American Mystery Stories—Carla Coupe and John Betancourt accepted it long before my involvement with the editorial side of this publication—I am honored to have known John and to have worked with him in a variety of ways during the past several years.

Lucky for us, John has a new story in this issue, as do six other writers. Barb Goffman, John Hegenberger, and Elizabeth Zelvin have previously graced these pages, while D.V. Bennett, Jon Matthew Farber, and M.A. Monnin are new to us. Also included this issue is a classic reprint by Donald Barr Chidsey.

Here’s hoping you enjoy their stories as much as we did when we selected them.

STAFF

Publisher & Executive Editor

John Gregory Betancourt

Editor

Michael Bracken

Wildside Press Subscription Services

Carla Coupe

Production Team

Sam Hogan

Karl Würf

TRIP UP ON HIGH STREET, BY JOHN HEGENBERGER

I thought I heard a sound outside my window. Some distant voice calling from the darkness. My dorm room is on the third floor of a six-apartment brick building on 15th Street just off High. I separate the blinds with the tips of my fingers and peek out beyond the half-full bottle of whisky chilling on the window ledge. A long, white Dodge moves away into the evening traffic, taillights dwindling. The night is empty and friendless.

* * * *

My name is Eliot Cross and I don’t know how it all changed so drastically. That’s a lie. I know damn well.

Today, everything near Ohio State is different from my college days. They moved the Student Union away from High Street in the ’80s. As a result, all the gathering spots like Larry’s or the Agora have been pretty much replaced by fast food joints and junk shops. The SBX and earlier Long’s bookstores are gone; everybody gets their classroom materials on-line now.

And the drugs. My god, pot will soon be legal. Mary Jane, or hash, is the stuff we once arrested and imprisoned holders and dealers for possessing. Hell, soon you’ll be able to buy it at Walgreens or the CVS.

But back in the day, when I was eighteen and living off campus, I could not have foreseen any of the crap to come. Nor how, over forty years later, there are certain times of my life I’d like to live over. Sometimes, exact moments.

* * * *

My best friend in Mifflin Junior High was Doug Fairchild. Pretty much all the way through to senior year in high school, too. Only I had more friends than he did, because I joined the choir and the band and the drama club, instead of just the debate team, like Doug.

We all called him Dawg, since he hung around the school hallways, leaning back against the metal lockers, with a sad hound-dog expression. Something about too much skin on his face made his eyes seem to sag and his features fall in a perpetual frown. It didn’t help matters that his shoulders slumped and he shuffled a little when he followed behind you.

Still and all, he was a good boy with a quick wit and a sharp tongue that could cut a cynical insult right through you. Naturally, he had very few friends. The rest of our gang wondered aloud why I hung around with him. I wasn’t sure myself, but it likely had something to do with my wanting to be admired, maybe even worshipped.

Dawg always checked with me before he did anything socially. Do you think she likes me, man? I could always count on him waiting for me after band practice. On the weekend, we’d usually get together and talk about movies, TV shows, and girls.

He was a comfort, a guilty pleasure.

I remember when Dawg and I used to go on swipe raids. We’d set out on a Saturday in the early sixties on our Huffy bikes with the feverish intent up Cleveland Avenue, past the Isalys ice cream store and on to the Northern Lights shopping center. We’d steal anything we could get our grubby hands on. What a thrill!

There was no stopping us as we slunk from store to store, Rexall drugs to Woolworth’s five and dime, stuffing the pockets of our worn jeans with everything from packets of flower and carrot seeds to spools of colorful #10 thread. Anything, as long as we didn’t have to pay.

It was a contest between us two. The biggest prize was to steal waxed packages of baseball cards when the store clerk at the IGA wasn’t looking. One time, we must have made off with a haul of at least twenty dollars worth of dumb, useless stuff. Take that, America, Ohio, and Columbus! You’re going to hear from me!

And then we were caught by a couple of off-duty police officers. That ended that. And a year later, started something worse.

* * * *

You make the buy and we’ll put a wire on you to get the evidence. The two cops look over the back seat of the unmarked police car at Dawg and me. It’s easy. One of the cops is bulky, the other lanky with a mouth slightly lopsided, as if his top lip had been cut open and sewn up crooked. But his mouth evens up when he smiles. You’ll be heroes.

The other cop says little; just looks hallow under the car’s yellow dome light.

Back then, I wanted to be a hero, a tough guy, like all the protagonists in the fiction I’d read growing up.

Dawg’s eyes gleamed. Fuckin’ A, man. Pardon my French. He’d been using. Not a lot; just enough to make regular buys and the cops knew it. I stayed away from the stuff. The heroes I read about in books and watched on television would never smoke weed.

My friend, torn between my view of reality and his growing craving desire, perhaps wanted to find a way out. Thus, he came to me one evening and explained how he’d been picked up by the cops, but let go if he’d turn in his source.

I realized he worked for them now. Fighting crime in the streets, just like those tough guys in the books. I envied him that.

He was quick to grasp my envy. It likely made him seem important to himself. We hatched a plan together and soon met the two cops who were on patrol against illegal substances in Columbus.

Initially, I was hesitant and uncomfortable with these undercover buys. And then I got a whiff of the thrill of the thing.

We’d ask around for the best place to score a hit or make a buy and after a few suspicious glares, we’d find someone who’d tell us when and where to meet a guy, usually in the back of a darkened bar booth or between a billboard and parked car up a few blocks on some side street. Ironically, the most favored spot was behind the pharmacy on 14th Avenue.

Dawg usually did all the talking. He came on energetic and slightly bold. I was the quiet one, trying to appear strong, silent, and tough as crime on wheels. What the hell did I know then?

We’d keep our voices low, pretend to ask for a match to light a fag, exchange folded five-dollar bills that the cops had given us, and quickly clutch the nickel-bags of shredded—and likely cut—grass, stashing the plastic baggies into our jacket pockets. Then, everyone looked away, walked away, stepping into the shadows as if we’d never met.

But, all the time, I was wearing our police buddies’ wire. And Dawg had been memorizing the dealer’s features for later description.

The cops waited until we found our way back to the unmarked and handed over the evidence. Then, they let us catch a bus downtown, or hop a taxi, while they scurried off to bust the pusher before he could deal more drugs. It was all efficient and clandestine.

I guess we helped take a lot of unlawful activity off the streets that one summer in the mid-sixties. Gradually, I came to realize the huge risk I was taking. Dawg kept wanting to go out and do more crime fighting, while I began to grow bored, sad, and jittery with a soiled taste in my mouth that no amount of beer foam could wash away.

Then, came the night I almost died. What I didn’t realize then but understood later…the police were shamelessly using both of us. They would probably get a promotion if and when the marijuana bust worked out. My buddy and I would shoulder the risk while the cops sat in their unmarked car, gathering evidence.

Nonetheless, I’d sort of become addicted to danger from all the TV crime adventures and heroic fantasy novels I’d consumed. I liked to imagine myself as a nearly bulletproof cause for justice. In my youthful ignorance, I felt invulnerable to misfortune.

My pal Dawg and I wore a tiny police wire and met with the jittery, suspicious drug dealers near campus in a back alley under skeleton-branched trees shuddering dead leaves.

But the savvy dealers found the wire. And they had knives. One had a gun. I felt a sliver of panic and ran into the night, leaving my pal behind to fend for himself.

The cops never swooped in. I hide among dumpsters and trash cans behind Pearl Alley for more than an hour in the clinging dark, huddled in an endless loop of unwanted thoughts. The cops cruised by and then drove off without me. Covered in sweat, I caught a ride on the Columbus Transit Authority bus to the other end of the OSU campus.

Frantic and shaking, I went to my room and dialed my friend’s number. No answer. I drank some whiskey from a bottle that I kept cold at night on the ledge outside my third-story window. I ate something salty and crunchy from a vending machine in the hall. I took a shower and folded the microphone and mini-recorder into a tight ball of black plastic.

Finally I couldn’t stand not knowing. I forced myself to walk to a bar we frequented, close to Lane Avenue, past Mershon Auditorium. There were lots of people and noise and smoke inside. I searched the crowd for Dawg.

I found him in the back room, sitting at a table with a black girl we knew and the two cops. They had successfully made the bust and were celebrating with pitchers of foamy brew and fresh packs of Marlboros. I came up to the table with my hands in my pockets.

The bulky cop sneered at me through a haze of tobacco smoke. What happened to you? He had a stare that gave you the sense he saw presences others did not.

Yeah, why’d you run, man? There was a sweet tang of weed on Dawg’s breath.

The girl in a short maroon dress didn’t seem interested.

Dawg beamed with pride. He’d do it all again, if asked. Go out and be a staked goat.

My hands shook. My mind spun, full of stupid words and unconnected thoughts. Don’t try to put words in my mouth. My statement made no sense.

They blinked and then ignored me for the rest of the night.

I’d never be a hero to them again.

* * * *

Good old college life in the swinging sixties.

Then, the big deal was you got to hang around the OSU campus, home of Lucas, Havlichek, and Hayes. You ate at the Burger Boy Food-o-rama, better known as the BBF. You bought LPs at Discount Records. You listened to rock tunes on 1230 The New WCOL. You hauled heavy textbooks and wrote complex term papers. Completely independent, on your own, trudging across the Oval where I’d once seen Alan Ginsburg reading Howl, past Mirror Lake and into the most massive university library in Ohio.

Up three or four floors, back among the stacks of neatly shelved and labeled volumes from the last hundred years, you’d slide into a cold wood and iron study-stall next to a tiny barred window that looks down at the bald head of William Oxley Thompson, a graduate dentist and the only statue on the campus grounds.

It’s a secret place. One you’d inhabit in attempts to study for a test in twentieth-century comparative literature or the ROTC Code of Justice. But, if you’re lucky you might hear the sounds of heavy petting a few stalls over, or catch a faint whiff of scented smoke. The weed of crime. The stuff that dreams are made of.

But all that comes with a cost. You could get addicted, or arrested. No, not arrested, since you’re working undercover for the cops. Still… how much can you trust them?

It’s dangerous, but you’re sure you can handle it. It’s worth it to be on the right side of the law. Still, let’s not go crazy here. Wandering up and down High Street across from the Student Union, hanging out in bars like the Heidelberg South, Larry’s, and Hennix can be exhilarating, but also dangerous.

Sometimes, it felt like eyes were watching or someone was following. It would be nicer if you were back in your room, watching The Saint or The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on your portable TV. Instead, you’re getting jostled by crowds of teens and hippies weaving around in the loud, thudding music, slurping up mugs of sudsy draft beer in The Library, the best bar on campus other than the Varsity Club.

* * * *

I’ve often pondered weakly why I wasn’t tempted to become a regular user. On that matter, there was a distinguishing difference between Dawg and me. Oh, I tried smoking weed several times. And I immediately saw incredible images and deep meaning in the album covers of the Moody Blues, or the ashes of a trash fire.

But it was Sandy Monelli who pulled me back. I’d had a crush on her throughout senior year of high school. Dark eyelashes, pinched-pink cheeks, lush honey hair. She hadn’t given me a second thought, until I evolved into a suave, keen college man. Then she found me