“And the stock went down some more,” Hamilton said.
“That’s right.”
“She called him Billy,” Shirley reminded them.
“It was his name. We all called him W.T., but he signed his memo to me William T. Knox. I suppose the two of them thought it was a great joke, her calling him Billy when they were together.”
“Where is she now?” someone asked.
“The police are still questioning her. I’m going down there now, to be with her. She’s been through a lot.” He thought probably this would be his final day at Jupiter Steel. Somehow he was tired of these faces and their questions.
But as he got to his feet, Sam Hamilton asked, “Why wasn’t Billy here for the meeting at ten? Where was he for those missing hours? And how did Knox know when he would really arrive?”
“Knox knew because Billy phoned him, as he had earlier in the morning.”
“Phoned him? From where?”
McLove turned to stare out the window, at the clear blue of the morning sky. “From his private plane. Billy Calm was circling the city for nearly three hours. He couldn’t land because of the fog.”
Copyright ©1965 by Edward D. Hoch
The Mentor
by Dave Zeltserman
The last two short stories Dave Zeltserman contributed to EQMM featured the inimitable anthropomorphic computer who plays Archie to his detective, Julius Katz. The first of those stories, entitled “Julius Katz,” recently won both the PWa’s Shamus Award for Best Short Story and the SMFs’s Derringer for Best Novella. Mr. Zeltserman is also a much-lauded novelist, whose forthcoming novel, Outsourced (Serpent’s Tail) is already optioned for film. Also not to be missed, 2010’s The Caretaker of Lorne Field. The last two short stories Dave Zeltserman contributed to EQMM featured the inimitable anthropomorphic computer who plays Archie to his detective, Julius Katz. The first of those stories, entitled “Julius Katz,” recently won both the PWa’s Shamus Award for Best Short Story and the SMFs’s Derringer for Best Novella. Mr. Zeltserman is also a much-lauded novelist, whose forthcoming novel, Outsourced (Serpent’s Tail) is already optioned for film. Also not to bemissed, 2010’s The Caretaker of Lorne Field.
Patrick was fifteen when he got ahold of a dog-eared paperback copy of Charlie Valtrone’s 1960 hardboiled crime novel I, the Killer. The novel was Charlie Valtrone’s first and was considered a cult classic. It was also unlike anything Patrick had read before or even imagined that a book could be, both in its realistic depiction of violence and mob-related crime and the raw visceral energy within it, which hit Patrick as hard as if he’d been smacked in the face with a sledgehammer. After that book, Patrick greedily devoured everything else he could find of Charlie Valtrone’s, and would later buy every subsequent book as it was published.
It was because of Charlie Valtrone and the power of those books that Patrick wanted to become a writer. He majored in English Literature in college and supported himself now installing carpets while he worked on his unpublished manuscript. For a long time Charlie Valtrone had been his literary hero. Now the great man was not only his acknowledged mentor but his buddy. Hell, the two of them, at that moment, were drinking Buds and smoking Cohiba cigars as they lounged in the backyard of Charlie’s modest Paterson, New Jersey home, while porterhouse steaks sizzled on the gas grill.
A year ago Patrick had sent Charlie his manuscript. He fantasized that he might get a short note back from the man, but certainly didn’t expect anything. After all, Charlie Valtrone was a legend while Patrick was an unpublished twenty-six-year-old nobody. Even though he only lived a couple of towns over from Charlie, the last thing Patrick expected was Charlie calling him to tell him, “Kid, there’s some good stuff in this. But you need to fix a few things. Let’s get together.”
Patrick didn’t waste any time getting together with his idol. That first meeting was spent drinking whiskey and talking about everything except writing. More late evenings followed, and before long Patrick was coming over to Charlie’s home three or four times a week. It was more than Charlie becoming his mentor, it was as if Charlie and his wife, Eunice, had adopted him. They’d feed him when he’d come over, and after Eunice went to bed, he and Charlie would drink long into the night, with Charlie telling him about his younger days when he used to hang out with members of the mob.
“Now, remember,” Charlie would say, “I was just hanging around these guys. Doing a little bookmaking on the side, a few errands here and there, but nothing heavy. I wasn’t going around breaking legs or nothin’ like that, so don’t get any big ideas in your head.”
“Yeah, right,” Patrick would respond. “Someone late in paying up, and you telling me you wouldn’t lean on them?”
“Me?” Charlie would wink and show a thick-lipped grin from ear to ear. “I’m a regular pussycat. Who could I have scared into paying up?”
Not quite a pussycat. Even at seventy-four Charlie was an imposing figure. A big man, barrel-chested, thick heavy arms and large hands with knuckles as hard as concrete. Although his hair had turned from black to white over the years, he still had all of it, and it was still cut short in that trademark bristle cut of his. His jaw heavy and his face broad and square and with enough scars marking it to show that he’d seen his share of barroom brawls and back alley scraps in his younger days. You’d know this even if you didn’t notice his somewhat flattened nose. Patrick watched as Charlie blissfully blew smoke rings from his mouth. He tried to imagine what it would be like if he didn’t know Charlie and the guy came knocking on his door to collect on a late loan. Yeah, if that were to happen, even with Charlie Valtrone being a geezer in his seventies, the sight of the guy standing outside his front door would probably have caused Patrick to piss his pants.
Patrick was still watching his mentor blow smoke rings when Eunice walked over to Charlie and started rubbing his shoulders. She was maybe fifteen years younger than Charlie. Patrick had seen pictures of her when she was a young woman, and she was gorgeous back then and she was still a good-looking woman now. Over the years she’d kept herself slender without ever becoming bony. There weren’t many wrinkles on her face and she dyed her thick long hair the same red that it had naturally been twenty years earlier. She was a woman of class. Charlie slid his eyes sideways so he could look at his wife without moving his head. In his raspy, gruff voice he asked her how the steaks were coming.
“Look at the kid,” he growled. “The boy’s famished. We got to feed him soon before he keels over on us.”
Eunice laughed at that. “I think he’ll survive another five minutes.”
“I don’t know. The kid’s all skin and bones. He’s wasting away in front of our eyes.”
That wasn’t exactly true. Patrick carried twenty pounds more than he should thanks to all the junk food he ate on the job, as well as all the booze and good food Charlie and Eunice fed him. Eunice rolled her eyes and told Charlie she’d get them a couple more Buds and that that would tide them over. As she walked away, Charlie reached out to smack her playfully on the rear. She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled wickedly before stepping back into the house.
“Ah, nothin’ like a good woman,” Charlie said in a contented growl. “Kid, you need to get yourself one.”