Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993, page 9
part #618 of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Series
“Where did you meet Sallis?”
“At a research laboratory near Bombay. Indian scientists are among the best in the world in some fields.”
“This had to do with your population studies?”
She nodded. “Methods of birth control—”
She was interrupted by a sudden commotion from the ship’s bridge. Almost at once there were two explosions in the water about a mile ahead of them, lighting up the sea for a fiery instant. “What in hell was that?” Rand wanted to know.
Rodriguez came out of the pilot house and called down to them. “Stay calm! A Turkish destroyer has fired warning shots across our bow. We’re being boarded.”
“In the middle of the night?” Sishane asked. “What is this?”
The ship’s searchlights were turned on, and at once they saw a pair of rubber boats approaching off the starboard side, a half-dozen black-clad men in each. One of the crewmen, Fandul, saw them too, and appeared on deck with a rifle. As he raised it to his shoulder, Rand moved to stop him. But Pierre Claquer was faster.
He had appeared from somewhere holding a heavy Luger pistol. He yanked the rifle out of Fandul’s hands and threw it to the deck. “Put up your hands!” he ordered. “This vessel is in the hands of the Turkish Navy and the Drug Enforcement Administration.”
The joint force of Turkish and American investigators swarmed aboard, fanning out immediately to search the ship. Captain Rodriguez climbed down from the bridge and offered a mild protest. “You could have waited until we docked,” he grumbled.
The man who seemed in charge, an American named McNeil, answered simply, “You might have dumped your cargo. It happened with a ship last month.”
“We carry only oil-drilling equipment.”
McNeil turned to the erstwhile bird watcher. “What did you discover, Claquer?”
“Not much. One of their crew got his throat cut two days ago. The captain hasn’t reported it yet.”
“It happened in international waters,” the captain insisted. “I was waiting until our first port.”
McNeil, a slender man with graying hair, seemed more interested in his mission. “We’ll want to search the compartment where your anchor chains are stored. Found two tons of morphine base in one awhile ago.”
“Search all you want. You’ll find nothing.”
Rand followed the American when he moved away from the group to converse with Claquer. “Since when do Americans have authority to act in Turkish waters?” he asked.
McNeil studied him before responding. “The Drug Enforcement Administration has been working with the Turkish police for more than a year, trying to shut down the two major routes of the narcotics smugglers, across eastern Turkey and here in the Mediterranean. There have been some big seizures. A ship like this carries far more than a caravan of camels.” Almost as an afterthought he asked, “Might I ask what you’re doing on board, sir?”
Rand introduced himself. “I’m retired from British Intelligence.”
McNeil’s eyes took on a new interest. “I doubt if you people ever retire.”
Rand smiled slightly. “That’s what my wife says all the time.”
“I’ll want to speak with you later.”
He moved off with Claquer and Rand watched them take Sishane into one of the cabins for questioning. Rand could see it was going to be a long night, and he was right. It was nearly four in the morning before the search of the ship was completed. No drugs had been found.
Captain Rodriguez stood on the deck and lit a cigar. “I told you I was clean. You picked the wrong ship this time.”
Sishane had reappeared and she told Rand, “I think my father is behind this somehow. They’re taking me off the ship as soon as it’s daylight.”
“What for?”
“Further questioning. At least that’s the term they used. I have to pack my things.”
Rand suspected she was right about her father’s involvement. Claquer would have reported on the ship’s passengers, and Efes Kemal could have passed the word to keep her out of harm’s way. Perhaps he hadn’t trusted Rand to do the job.
“There were no drugs?” Rand asked the American, McNeil.
“Nothing. We opened every one of those crates in the hold. I suspected if we didn’t find morphine base or cannabis we might discover a shipment of Russian weapons coming from Afghanistan. No such luck.”
“Why are you taking Miss Kemal?”
“Her father is a high-ranking Turkish official,” he said, as if that explained everything.
As dawn came up over the Mediterranean, the last of the searchers prepared to leave the Happy Moon. Sishane came out of her cabin, following Fandul, who was carrying her suitcase. Rand saw Gunther Sallis coming down the steps from the upper deck to intercept her. Out in the water, a small motor launch had pulled alongside to carry her to the waiting destroyer.
“Goodbye,” she said, turning to the first mate to shake his hand. “I’m sorry—”
Sallis moved instantly. Before Rand fully realized what was happening he’d looped his arm around her throat and pulled her against him as a shield. His right hand held a razor-sharp knife against her throat. “All of you stand clear or she dies!” he warned. “We’re taking that launch!”
Rand took a careful step forward, trying to block their path to the gangway. Sishane, looking terrified, was stumbling as Sallis pushed her forward. The captain and McNeil seemed frozen to their spots. It was Pierre Claquer who acted, almost without a second thought. He raised his Luger and put a bullet through the side of Sallis’s head.
Efes Kemal had changed little over the years. A balding man in his fifties with a heavy black moustache, he still conveyed to Rand the appearance and demeanor of the quintessential diplomat. “How is your daughter?” Rand asked after they’d greeted one another at Kemal’s office in Istanbul.
“As well as could be expected after her ordeal. I’m pleased you were there, old friend.”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t much help. Pierre Claquer, working with the American Drug Enforcement Administration, is the one who really saved Sishane’s life.”
“And I’m grateful for it. What’s that you have there?”
Rand lifted the leather pouch he carried and placed it on Kemal’s desk. “This, I fear, was the cause of it all.”
Kemal unzipped the pouch and stared at the dozen bottles of vitamin pills. “I don’t understand.”
“You told me your daughter was in trouble with drugs and I leaped to the wrong conclusion — that she was taking or dealing in illegal narcotics. The drugs you referred to were pharmaceuticals. I finally realized that when she told me she met Gunther Sallis, the ship’s first mate, while visiting a pharmaceutical house in India. It was then that he suggested she return here on board the Happy Moon. She’d heard you mention the ship, probably in connection with suspected narcotics trafficking, and it seemed like a good idea to her. She thought it would be easier to get through customs than on a plane, where searches can sometimes be very thorough.”
Kemal tapped one of the bottles with his pencil. “What do these contain?”
“I asked myself that, too. It had to be something that would drive Sallis to kill two men — I’ll get to that in a moment — and threaten your daughter’s life as well. Then I remembered the captain telling me that Sallis was in the early stages of AIDS. There are a number of medications being developed around the world to combat this scourge, though they haven’t yet been approved for use in America or most European countries. Sallis went to the Indian pharmaceutical house to obtain a supply of a new drug for himself, but Sishane got there first. Your daughter is an enterprising young woman. Somehow she obtained these pills, disguised as vitamins, and was transporting them for sale abroad. Each of these dozen bottles contains more than two hundred pills — some twenty-five hundred in all. I’m told there are AIDS sufferers in America and Europe who would pay two hundred dollars apiece for these pills, to be taken once a day. Perhaps even two hundred pounds apiece. You’re looking at a half-million dollars or more right here in this pouch.”
Efes Kemal nodded sadly. “A black market in AIDS medication. That’s what my daughter was involved in.”
“I’m afraid so. Sallis knew she’d gotten the medication he needed, and he was searching her cabin when Multan came in and caught him in the act. Sallis cut his throat, and then changed the blanket and sheets to dispose of the bloodstained ones. He carried the body to the empty cabin in hopes of delaying its discovery. All of this, the changed sheets, the transported body, pointed to a crew member rather than Sishane or Claquer.”
“Can you be so certain the sheets were changed after the murder?”
Rand nodded. “There was blood soaked into the mattress but the sheets were clean. Your daughter didn’t notice it till morning. Sallis was in charge of such things on board. He’d have known where to find new sheets and a blanket.”
“You told me on the telephone that another man was killed back in Karachi.”
“He’d just told me that Sishane was sailing on the Happy Moon. The wound in his throat was so similar that I’m certain Sallis was in the crowded café too. When he heard her name mentioned he walked by the table and slashed this man Grantor. Perhaps he feared Grantor could tell about the pills as well.”
Efes Kemal nodded and stood up. “Old friend, thank you. This will be a secret between us. Let the police have their own theories for Sallis’s actions and his assault upon my daughter. I will speak to her.” Rand reached out for the pouch but Kemal waved him away. “I will handle these.”
They shook hands one more time and Rand departed from the office. He would catch a plane back to England that evening. Thinking about it all on the way to the airport, he had only one regret. He may have made a mistake when he left that half-million dollars’ worth of pills sitting on his old friend’s desk.
The Jury Box
by Jon L. Breen
© 1993 by Jon L. Breen
Trying to define a mystery subcategory can be tricky. For example, Mary Higgins Clark’s introduction to Malice Domestic 2: An Anthology of Original Traditional Mystery Stories (Pocket, $4.99) quotes Mary Morman, a knowledgeable fan and founder of the Malice Domestic mystery convention held annually in the Washington, D.C. area, as follows: “The root of the word ‘domestic’ is the Latin domos, meaning ‘home’ or ‘house.’ Books and stories that fit the Malice Domestic genre involve the protagonist not in a professional capacity but through home relationships. They involve sisters, brothers, friends, and lovers. In addition to home relationships, Malice Domestic often breaches the sanctuary of the home itself. Bodies in the bathtub, corpses on the hearthrug...” (pages ix-x).
My suspicion that Morman’s definition is a bit too narrow was borne out with the first story in the collection, Amanda Cross’s “Who Shot Bryon Boyd?”, a case for English professor Kate Fansler that doesn’t fit under the definition at all, involving a crime not in the home and professionally motivated. The Cross story is far from the high standard of her novels, a weak volley in detective fiction’s wearying gender wars. But after that, things begin to look up.
Several other series characters, all of whom coincidentally operate in historical periods, are in better form than Fansler. K. K. Beck’s twenties flapper Iris Cooper appears in “A Romance in the Rockies,” which is marginally MD if you consider Iris only at home when travelling. Ed Gorman’s 1890s Cedar Rapids policewoman Anna Tolan encounters murder among members of a charismatic sect in “Anna and the Snake People,” while Carole Nelson Douglas’s Doyle spinoff Irene Adler is in especially good form in the pointedly feminist 1886 case “Parris Green,” brought her way by an entertainingly presented Oscar Wilde. The latter two involve domestic situations, though in each the detective is called in rather than directly involved.
The collection’s non-series tales are more apt to fit the MD definition, including “Cold and Deep,” a chilling tale of a family Christmas by Frances Fyfield; “Dog Television,” domestic crime from a canine viewpoint by Robert Barnard; and “... That Married Dear Old Dad,” a fresh variant on a venerable crime-story situation by Margaret Maron. Also interesting, but not MD, are “The Return of Ma Barker,” a police procedural by Gary Alexander, and a very much off-the-wall new metaphor of death, Susan Dunlap’s “Checkout.” The Cross and Dunlap stories illustrate the downside and the upside of original anthologies: the former a big-name writer with an inferior piece of work, the latter another big name with a highly experimental story that might not otherwise have found a ready market.
Illustrating the merits of the reprint anthology, which can draw proven material from an extended time period, is Swindlers & Grifters (Carroll & Graf, $18.95), the latest compilation from the back-files of EQMM and AHMM, edited by Cynthia Manson. Leading off in a darkly humorous vein is a 1957 tale, one of Jim Thompson’s two short stories about inept but despicable conman Mitch Allison, “The Frightening Frammis.” Francis M. Nevins, Jr.’s more likable Milo Turner appears in “The Western Film Scam,” a well-plotted 1980 story that combines old movie lore with a variation on the Queenian dying message. Congame stories are especially well suited to the twist-in-the-tail O. Henry surprise, as illustrated in Robert L. Fish’s “One of the Oldest Con Games” (1977) and Donald E. Westlake’s “Just the Lady We’re Looking For” (1964). Also present in strong form are such writers as Julian Symons, A1 Nussbaum, and William Campbell Gault. The high quality holds up in the last and newest story in the book, Jacklyn Butler’s “The Messenger” (1992), which describes an unusual scam that is arguably more humane than most.
**** Susan Dunlap: Time Expired, $18.95. The latest in the reliable series about Berkeley policewoman Jill Smith delivers an especially fine combination of quirky characters, complex plot, and strong sense of place. After the suspenseful hostage negotiation sequence of the opening chapters has played itself out, other problems remain (or emerge) for Smith and her colleagues. Who is behind the series of generally applauded pranks directed at the city’s meter maids, who come in both genders? And why is a terminally ill local attorney, whose support of radical clients has made her the object of a police dart-board, murdered in a nursing home? Dunlap is one of the best active proponents of the classical-style police procedural.
*** Parnell Hall: Actor, Mysterious, $18.95. New York private eye Stanley Hastings gets an unexpected chance to return to his theatrical roots when asked by an old friend to play the star role in Shaw’s Arms and the Man, filling in with two days’ notice for an actor who has died. (The back jacket shows author Hall in a 1968 performance of the same role, Captain Bluntschli.) If you enjoy the backstage backgrounds of writers like Ngaio Marsh and Simon Brett, and if the prospect of an unashamedly old-fashioned whodunit with no apparent concern beyond reader pleasure is attractive, this is your book. The outrageously theatrical confront-the-murderer scene may be unique in detective fiction, though it has an acknowledged cinematic precedent.
*** Aaron Elkins: Old Scores, Scribner’s, $20. In his third adventure, Chris Norgren, the Seattle Art Museum’s curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art, travels to France to check out the offered gift of a Rembrandt — with some odd strings attached by a donor with a penchant for elaborate jokes on the art world. This is an extremely enjoyable book with vivid characters, an amply-clued puzzle, and much fascinating background information. Norgren is low-key and likable, very similar to the author’s better-known Gideon Oliver. He tells his own story, where Oliver appears in third person, and I thought the book had slightly fewer eating scenes than a typical Oliver adventure — until Elkins managed to describe two meals on one page late in the going.
*** Joseph Hansen: Bohannon’& Country, Viking, $19. Hansen’s rancher and sometime private eye Hack Bohannon, a strong second string to the author’s better-known Dave Brandstetter, appears in three of the five stories here, and they are crisply efficient mystery novels in miniature. But the two tales in which Bohannon does not appear are the prizes of the collection. “Molly’s Aim” (originally published in EQMM) does a remarkable job of getting inside the head of its young, female protagonist, and “McIntyre’s Donald,” which involves some of Hack’s supporting cast but not the man himself, is one of those stories that keeps the reader guessing whether its events are supernatural, psychological, or something else.
Bantam continues its reprinting of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe saga with a cleverly matched pair at $4.99 each: The Mother Hunt (1963), introduced by Marilyn Wallace, and The Father Hunt (1968), introduced by Donald E. Westlake. The two stories are good ones; the celebrity intros make some provocative points (Wallace credits Stout, via Archie Goodwin, with a pioneering understanding of “gender differences in communication styles”; Westlake finds Wolfe unlikable and not “that clever a detective”); and the material in the “World of Rex Stout” appendices, reproduced correspondence between the author and his publishers, is more interesting than that the old book covers and magazine illustrations offered in some of the books in the series.
Groundhog
by Bennie Lee Sinclair
“Here comes Sally with a snicker and a grin,
Groundhog grease all over her chin — Groundhog!”
— Southern Appalachian folk song
© 1993 by Bennie Lee Sinclair
South Carolina poet laureate Bennie Lee Sinclair has had a number of stories published in small-press magazines and is a recipient of a Best American Short Stories citation. Her 1991 novel The Lynching (Walker Books) marked her debut in the crime field, but this is her first piece for EQMM.
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Pumpkin Creek cut across the bottom fields in a straight line but went underground several times for stretches of a dozen yards or so. There was a place where farm equipment was able to safely pass over these underground channels, a clearly marked crossing, making it even more puzzling how the boys’ truck came to rest upside down in the creek. Even then, it might not have been a disaster if they hadn’t been drunk and going so fast, night-hunting and joyriding over the rough turf.
