False Negative (Hard Case Crime)
Read False Negative (Hard Case Crime) Online
Authors: Joseph Koenig
“A superior piece of work...beautifully written.”
—New York Times
“Inventive...engrossing...could make as splendid a film as it does a book.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Stunning...the murderer is the slickest, most charming madman around.”
—Providence Journal
“Koenig’s done it again...his best yet. A gripping story, told with skill and style.”
—Tony Hillerman
“A fine...and entirely original crime novel.”
—Washington Post
“Gripping...cleverly plotted and filled with wonderfully drawn characters.”
—Philadelphia Daily News
“Koenig invests his story with unusual resonance... superbly maintained suspense as he builds to the thrilling, unrelenting—and very cinematic—final pages.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Get the book. You’ll enjoy every minute of it.”
—True Detective
Mollie came out in the robe, and de Costa showed her where to stand. She shrugged the robe off her shoulders, surprising Jordan as it fell around her feet. De Costa showed no expression while Mollie’s confidence melted, a woman naked in every way.
De Costa gave her a second look through the viewfinder of a Nikon. “You’ve been startled,” he said, “and are trying to locate the source of a disturbing sound.”
De Costa fired off a handful of shots, then removed the camera from the tripod. “Let me see you cognizant of danger, but not panicky, prepared for anything.”
Expression flickered across her face, and was extinguished at de Costa’s command to clear the slate for their next experiment. Jordan knew the edgy look he wanted from the shooting on Park Place, when Mollie had walked past the dead body on the floor. De Costa would refine it into something glamorous, keeping readers in mind that they were paying for a detective magazine.
De Costa changed lenses and came close, barking commands. Jordan saw tears on Mollie’s cheeks. De Costa ordered her to stop crying, mocked her, browbeat her while he captured each drop. Then he unloaded the camera, and gave her a towel to dry her face, brewed a cup of tea for her, and thanked the other girls for their time.
“That was a terrific impersonation of quiet fear,” Jordan said when she was dressed.
“What impersonation? I was scared to death...”
SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:
FIFTY-TO-ONE
by Charles Ardai
KILLING CASTRO
by Lawrence Block
THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER
by Roger Zelazny
THE CUTIE
by Donald E. Westlake
HOUSE DICK
by E. Howard Hunt
CASINO MOON
by Peter Blauner
FAKE I.D.
by Jason Starr
PASSPORT TO PERIL
by Robert B. Parker
STOP THIS MAN!
by Peter Rabe
LOSERS LIVE LONGER
by Russell Atwood
HONEY IN HIS MOUTH
by Lester Dent
THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES
by Jonny Porkpie
THE VALLEY OF FEAR
by A.C. Doyle
MEMORY
by Donald E. Westlake
NOBODY’S ANGEL
by Jack Clark
MURDER IS MY BUSINESS
by Brett Halliday
GETTING OFF
by Lawrence Block
QUARRY’S EX
by Max Allan Collins
THE CONSUMMATA
by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
CHOKE HOLD
by Christa Faust
THE COMEDY IS FINISHED
by Donald E. Westlake
BLOOD ON THE MINK
by Robert Silverberg
Negative
by
Joseph Koenig
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-107)
First Hard Case Crime edition: June 2012
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 0UP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Koenig
Cover painting copyright © 2012 by Glen Orbik
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-580-3
E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-740-1
Design direction by Max Phillips
Typeset by Swordsmith Productions
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Printed in the United States of America
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
For Naught
CHAPTER 1
Flynn from the
Bulletin,
dead earnest over a four-martini lunch, said he had a ticket he was looking to get rid of. “Front row, center. You’ll taste ozone when the lights dim.”
A younger man drinking Schmidt’s moved his head noncommittally.
“Best seat in the house,” Flynn said, “aside from Conrad Franklin Palmer’s, and he would gladly change places with you.”
The beer drinker looked at his watch. In the United States courthouse across Market Street a lackadaisical jury was deliberating racketeering charges against stewards from the Atlantic City racetrack. “Where will you be?”
“New Haven.” Flynn peeled back a lapel, uncovering yellow pasteboards in an inside pocket. “Be a crime not to use these, too. I was talking to Professor Einstein on the anniversary of his coming to America, and I mentioned, I asked him did he know a way I could be in two places, the same time. Not with the technology presently available, he said, but see him again in thirty, forty years.”
The beer drinker, whose name was Adam Jordan, said, “While you’re watching the Yalies roll over Princeton, who’s the
Bulletin
got to see Palmer die?”
Flynn turned a swizzle stick around the lip of his glass. “I thought you might make that small gesture.”
“I work for the competition.”
“Loyalty’s overrated, you want my opinion.”
Jordan shook his head at the waiter who asked if he was ready for another Schmidt’s.
“Con Palmer will sell a lot of papers for the
Atlantic City
Press
,” Flynn said. “Would it kill you to do two thousand words under my byline for the
Bulletin
, or pull an old death house story from the clips, and slap a fresh lead on it?”
Flynn turned the stick the other way. To Jordan it looked like he was determined to separate the martini into its individual parts again.
“This is a story that’s begging for you,” Flynn said. “
Bulletin
hacks don’t know what to make of a divinity school student standing to inherit twenty-five million who poisons his parents so he can marry a big-titted Steel Pier hostess. Rita Snyder says Adam Jordan’s the only reporter in our circulation zone worth reading besides myself.”
“Who is she?”
“Our ladies page editor. Big, big fan of yours,” Flynn said. “The Snyders are major stockholders in the
Bulletin
corporation. Show us what you can do, and there’ll be more pinch-hitting assignments down the road.”
He put a ticket to the execution on the table, and moved it to Jordan’s side. “You might even be hired away from the
Press
by a paper that pays better than beer money.”
Flynn captured a waiter by the arm, held him while he finished his drink before sending him for a refill with a gentle shove.
“Eddie Fisher’s opening at the Steel Pier next week,” he said. “Rita’s nuts for Eddie Fisher. If she doesn’t get to see him, she’ll make a scene more disturbing than what you can expect from Con Palmer.
Press
reporters are comped at the Steel Pier. Give me your freebies, and you won’t have to feel you owe me anything.”
Palmer’s girl, there to watch him die, left Jordan uninspired—the massive chest failing to make the case for a forgettable face. He left Trenton State Prison racking his brain for a better angle.
Late for a deadline at the
Press
, he called the
Philadelphia Bulletin
switchboard indentifying himself to a dictation operator as Thomas Flynn.
“
The green room in reality is a soothing shade of buff with indirect lighting and sound-proof panels on the ceiling,
” he began. “
The executioner is a grandfatherly fellow who looks like the florist he is when not moonlighting for the state. But ‘old sparky,’ a straight-back oak seat
—No, make that ‘throne’—
tricked out with leather straps and ankle restraints is a nasty prop out of a nightmare set in a torture chamber...”
He started home trying out a fresh take from the point of view of the lovestruck heir to millions with minutes left to live. In his room above a law office in Absecon he reviewed his notes, then rolled copy paper and two carbons into his typewriter. The words came in bunches, as they always did when the work went well, his fingers racing to keep pace with his ideas. When he dropped into bed two stories for the
Press
were on his desk, the one he liked best a dry-eyed interview with Conrad Palmer’s sister for the Sunday features.
At 8:15 he kicked off the covers. Congressman Theodore Garabedian would deliver his Armistice Day Speech at the American Legion Hall in Brigantine in forty-five minutes. Jordan dangled his legs off the mattress, and then he crossed them and lit a Lucky. Holiday boilerplate from a windbag politician was not worth getting out of bed for. He doubted that many
Press
readers would blame him if he went back to sleep.
But his editors would. They had a news hole to fill, and were counting on him for twenty column inches. A call to the Legion Hall was answered by a woman with a stuffed nose. “God Bless America” blared from tinny speakers in the background.
“I’m Jordan with...with the Garabedian party,” he said, “running late in Absecon, and trying to catch up to the congressman. Do you know if he—?”
“Speak louder, will you? I can’t hear you above the commotion,” the woman with the stuffed nose said. “Representative Garabedian just entered the hall.”
Jordan got back under the blankets to finish his smoke. A medical columnist advised that cigarettes weren’t as healthy as advertised, but it wasn’t Luckys that were choking him. In his first year as a police reporter for the
Press
he had written every kind of story that he ever would, and he had been on the paper now for close to four. Crime on the Jersey Shore followed the seasons. Con artists appeared on the boardwalk in summer, and were joined by hotel thieves around Labor Day when the Miss America pageant came to town. By Christmas the chiselers were gone, and Jordan kept busy with assaults and drunken brawls until the horseplayers returned from the Florida meets with pickpockets in tow. He had covered fires, drownings, fatal drag races and other car crashes, stabbings, shootings, knife fights, suicides, murder-suicides, three wife-murders, two murders for hire, and now an execution.