I’ve always been afraid of cancer, of cirrhosis. Now I was afraid of a hypercrisis. Psychotherapeutic techniques. All that’s missing is those color tests. I dialed the number my doctor had given me. “Psychological Clinic, good morning.” I hung up.
There are 3,583 investigations going on, Lucia Basconte, and I can think of nothing but you. Your photo is still in my pocket. Soraya will get used to it.
Gregorio phoned me with the latest. (Could he have called Soraya?) He hired some starving university coeds to do tests in the killer bathtub and confirmed that without violence it was impossible to drown them. (How did he get Soraya’s phone number?)
Lapa Cemetery. We were impressed by the good condition of Eleonora Mendes Brandao’s body. The exhumation was only possible because she’d been embalmed. Gregorio, insufferably professorial, explained, “Whenever a corpse is transported from one city to another, we do that. It slows down decomposition.” Know-it-all. Two-bit media-friendly playboy. Screw you.
The results of the exhumation led us nowhere.
Eleonora had died by drowning just like Lucia Basconte. Drowned in a water puddle. We still didn’t have a shred of evidence against the bastard. That was the truth.
Gregorio gave me a ride. Silently, I mulled over the same question: How is it possible to drown someone in a tub without leaving a trace?
I arrived home, took off my shirt, and collapsed onto the bed. Soraya didn’t call. No one called. I fell asleep thinking how good it would be if you were here, Lucia Basconte.
The phone rang. Soraya checking up on me?
“Jaboticabal? Jesus, Gregorio, now, at this hour?”
At four-thirty I was arriving in Jaboticabal. Gregorio is married and has seven kids. I’m going to mention that to Soraya. I’d like to see her a newlywed taking care of all seven. We went into a room packed with books and glass. In the middle was a bathtub filled with water and three inflatable dolls.
“Take off your clothes and get in,” said Gregorio, pointing to the tub. “Why?” I asked. He was grandstanding, which irritated me. I hate people who grandstand. My situation was ridiculous. There I was, in undershorts and T-shirt, in a pathologist’s lab, getting into a bathtub. (I can’t believe you’re seeing this guy, Soraya.)
“I think I’ve discovered how Lucia Basconte and Eleonora Brandao were murdered. Put your feet here, please.” I obeyed, more irritated than ever. “They were found with their feet outside the tub, you know why?” I had no answer. Gregorio held my feet. “You don’t know, but I do. See, the killer stood here, near the feet of the women, and like a Don Juan—” I felt water rushing into my nose.
I awoke dizzy, my head throbbing. (I’m sure of it, Soraya wasn’t screwing this guy.) He was a doctor, he’d probably heard of the panic syndrome. I was going to tell him. I have panic syndrome, whatever the hell that is. I was just about to spit out the first word, when he delivered the gold. “When I pulled on your feet, the water went up your nose suddenly and provoked a collapse in your nervous system. You fainted. If I had let you, you’ve have drowned in the tub, and no one would find a single sign of violence. The murderer did to Lucia Basconte and Eleonora Brandao exactly what I did to you,” Gregorio explained.
I now know what your final moment was like, Lucia Basconte. That bald clown yanking with all his might on your feet. You deserved better, love.
I lit a cigarette. I was tired, it was six a.m. Gregorio lent me some dry clothes. I could smell Soraya on the shirt. There was no mistaking it. Fake Azzarro Number 9. It was my Christmas present. I started the car:
“Why didn’t you do that with the coeds?”
“Do what?”
“Pull their feet.”
“I didn’t get the idea till this morning. They weren’t here.”
We laughed. You son of a bitch. I’ve got my eye on you.
I’m going away, Lucia Basconte. Try to forget me, love.
Copyright © 2011 by Patricia Melo; translation ©2011 by Clifford E. Landers
The Teapot Mountie Ball
by James Powell
In 2010, Canadian-born James Powell received a nomination for the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story for his February 2009 EQMM tale “Clown-town Pajamas.” He’s a previous winner and multiple nominee for that award. Mr. Powell has lived in the U.S. for many years, mostly in Pennsylvania. He has several series running in EQMM, but it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen an entry in that starring Maynard Bullock of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
On a warm October night three buses with curtained side windows drove up Canada’s Gatineau Valley Highway from the direction of Ottawa. Passing an abandoned quarry, they doused their headlights and turned off onto a narrow macadam road. Behind them, dark figures came out of the trees carrying a large metal sign marked “Road Closed.” They were followed by a loaded gravel truck which parked behind the sign to reinforce its message.
More figures with flashlights stood along the roadside to guide the buses until they reached the dark shape of the Quarryview Dance Pavilion, where their passengers stepped down. Then the pavilion doors swung open, casting a quadrangle of light that revealed sixty men and women, not one of them over five foot six inches tall, in red tunics and Stetsons formed in ranks of six abreast. From inside the building a dance band with muted horns struck up “Little Things Mean a Lot” and the new arrivals marched smartly inside. The Tenth Annual Teapot Mountie Ball had begun.
After the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s successful infiltration of organized crime during the 1980s, the mob became so gun-shy that an undercover Mountie needed more than a loud tie, an applied scar, or a fake cauliflower ear to get taken on. In fact, they gave a quick bum’s rush to any mobster wannabe who met Mountie height and weight requirements or had the hint of a steely gaze.
So the Force recruited a secret cadre of short, stout men and women for undercover work. The Mountie Academy taught them shiftiness of eye, slouching, language no Mountie would ever use, wisecracking, how to cheat at cards and, for the ladies, the seductive walk and come-hither look. The Force nicknamed these short, stout newcomers “teapots,” Mounties in every sense of the word except that they were not allowed to wear the uniform in public or enter headquarters by the front door.
Thanks to teapot infiltration, mobsters were soon crowding the halls of justice again or had fled the country. (The United States scratched its head over this sudden return of people they’d gotten rid of for years with a stiff boot in the pants, a bus ticket for Toronto or Montreal, and a stern warning not to come back.)
Searching for a way to honor these short, stout, unsung heroes, Mountie Commissioner Ralston came up with the Teapot Mountie Ball. On this occasion, Ralston decreed, the teapots would come in full dress uniform, while the Mountie brass and other members of the Force would attend in civvies.
Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock was pop officer for the ball again that year, in charge of the soft-drink stand. He’d come on the buses’ earlier trip with the Mountie musicians and others in attendance.
Bullock never cared much for wearing civvies or what he called his mufti duds while on duty. For him, the uniform was a real morale booster and the dress uniform all the more so. One day awhile back he’d gotten himself real down in the dumps thinking he might have made a bad career move when he left field work to go into the public relations end of Mountieing, posing for tourist photographs among the flowerbeds on Parliament Hill and doing TV public-service spots with the popular Mountie mascot Winnie the Peg, the small black bear who wore a wooden replacement for a leg lost in a trap. So when good old Mavis, his wife, reminded him they’d been invited to a party that night he decided to buck himself up by going in full Mountie regalia, boots, breeks, scarlet tunic, and all. It wasn’t until their host greeted them at the door dressed as Chuckles the Clown that they remembered it was a costume party. So Bullock spent the night trying to convince the other guests in fancy dress he really was a Mountie. No one believed him, not even the guy in what looked like a Swiss cheese kilt who claimed to be Sponge Bob Squarepants’s Manhattan cousin, Harold Squarepants. The man eyed him up and down sceptically before walking away humming “Give My Regards to Broadway.” Good old Mavis hadn’t helped any by telling everyone she’d come dressed as a Mountie’s wife.