Shadows Everywhere

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O
ld friends. Roaming back through my file cabinets and through the years to assemble this collection, that's how I came to think of the shadowy people of my earlier fiction. Like real-life old friends revisited, some of them had aged more gracefully than others, some seemed outdated, some improved with the passage of time. Most of them, I am happy to report, held up admirably under the weight of the years.

A few sentences into each of their stories, my memory clicked and I knew them well again. The high-spirited, don't-give-a-damn trucker in "Explosive Cargo" remained every bit as volatile as what was in his truck. The victim in "A Verdict of Death" still evoked a sympathy that was the flip side of the loathing inspired by the victimizer. The hardscrabble farm woman of "The Midnight Train" continued after all these years to exert the subtle but irresistible siren's pull on the hapless traveler. And there as ever was "The Lemon Drink Queen," caught on life's wild side and finding herself a catalyst of fate. Once more the husband of a poor household in an impoverished country made the sacrifices necessary for the survival of his family in "Hector Gomez Provides," a theme that too often mirrors hard actuality. In "A Rare Bird," I found myself again intrigued by the odd adventure of the tentative blackmailer.

Please excuse my lack of modesty when I say that I'm proud of these shadowy people whose fates play out in worlds of my creation. I'm also proud of my art of storytelling, and of my colleagues who face with me the same formidable obstacles that need to be overcome with each telling of a tale. It's quite a responsibility, delivering to the reader what, at least for the duration of the reading, must seem to be flesh and blood characters with emotions that can he understood and shared. That's what fiction is all about, engaging the reader's emotions. A writer can do that in only a limited way with situation, setting, or theme. Even, or perhaps especially, in the mystery, where the clever puzzle and solution, where plot and intellectual engagement, are so important, good fiction continues to rest primarily on good fictional characters. They are the way to the reader's heart.

One of the reasons an effective short story is more difficult to achieve than an effective novel is that the writer has limited space and time in which to create individual, recognizable and real characters. What might be done in paragraphs or pages in a novel, must be accomplished within sentences in a short story. Substance must be achieved under the constraints of brevity.

So I'm particularly pleased that the characters in the following stories emerge from the shadows of my file cabinets and the past to become real enough to make the stories in which they exist real and interesting. Real and interesting to me, anyway, admittedly a biased reader living them again after the intervening years. If these stories still work, it's because of the individuals who people them. As I assembled them for this book, it was my pleasure as their creator to experience the almost instant familiarity of meeting long-time, long-absent acquaintances, and feeling that I'd chosen my friends carefully and well.

So let me introduce you to my old friends. I think you'll like some of them. Some I think you'll hate.

Either way, I think you'll be glad you met them.

Introduction

Shadows Everywhere

The Lemon Drink Queen

A Rare Bird

A Verdict of Death

All of a Sudden

Living All Alone

Garden of Dreams

Prospectus on Death

Fair Shake

The Midnight Train

Hector Gomez Provides

Explosive Cargo

Copyright Information

"Y
ou want what they all want," Garvy said. "There isn't any need to be shy about asking." He was around forty, a wide man–not fat, but wide – with a sharp-nosed, Roman sort of face and dampness beneath the arms of his pale blue dress shirt despite the frigid air-conditioning in his small office.

The boy, in his early or mid-twenties, squirmed in the chair before Garvy's desk, crossing and uncrossing his ankles. "Nobody recommended you or anything. I saw your classified ad in the paper:
Garvy Detective Agency— Shadows Everywhere.
I
don't know much about hiring a private investigator."

"It's like any other business arrangement," Garvy said with a reassuring smile, "only what you're paying for here are facts–cold facts. Obtaining those facts is my business. You might say, corny as it sounds, that I'm dedicated to pursuing truth."

The boy, who'd said his name was Dan Windemer, sighed as two vertical frown lines appeared above the crosspiece of his heavy-framed glasses. He was a slight, nerve-ridden youth with pale, quick hands. "I guess we can do business, then, because the truth is what I want to buy."

"Be sure, now," Garvy said, leaning back weightily. "Sometimes my clients get too much for their money."

The pale hands darted together, fingers laced. "I'm sure. I have to know about her."

"Your wife?"

Dan Windemer nodded. "Janet. I think she's seeing somebody behind my back."

Garvy struck a match to a cigar. "Who?"

"I'm not sure." Pale hands unlaced, spread, laced. "I just know there's somebody."

"By the way she acts, I suppose," Garvy said thoughtfully. "A man can tell about his wife. You want her followed and reported on?"

"I do," the boy said solemnly, then his wan face twitched out a quick, nervous grin as he realized the customary usage of the words in such solemn tones. "If that's the way you do it."

"That would be the method," Garvy said smoothly. "Thirty dollars a day plus expenses is my usual fee."

"Of course I wouldn't want her followed every day," Windemer said. "Could I let you know when I thought she was... going out on me, and you could tail her then?"

Garvy ignored the TV police talk. "If that's what you want. Why don't you tell me something about your wife?"

Windemer nodded, swallowed. "Janet's a secretary at Sanders Electronics. She gets off work at five o'clock, but lately she's been getting home late, sometimes an hour or so after me, and I get off at six. She always has an excuse; car trouble, reports to type,
someone she
had to drive someplace. Maybe I
am
too jealous like she says, but... well, I just have to find out."

"Sure," Garvy said. "Why not put your mind at ease? One way or the other, at least you'll know for sure."

"That's the way I look at it," Windemer said, jerkily tracing the crease in his trousers with his thumb. "Tomorrow night Janet's supposed to be going out to eat, then to a show, with another girl who works at Sanders. That's something else she's been doing more and more often lately–saying she's going out with girlfriends."

"And you want me to latch onto her when she comes out of work and give you a report on her activities for that evening."

"Right," Windemer said with a nod.

"I'm free tomorrow night," Garvy said. "I'll be glad to take your case."

Dan Windemer grinned thankfully and took out his checkbook. While Windemer was writing out a check for a retainer, Garvy said, "Do you have a photograph of your wife?"

Windemer said he did, handed Garvy the check along with a color snapshot of a slim blonde girl. She might have been fourteen instead of in her twenties, long hair combed straight down, and a toothy, wholesome grin.

"She'll be driving a red Volkswagen," Windemer said. "The girl she's supposed to go with is a short brunette and drives a convertible."

"I'll know your wife when I see her," Garvy said, tucking the photo into his shirt pocket. "I can mail you the report later this week."

"No, no, don't do that," Windemer said. "Janet gets the mail sometimes."

Garvy wasn't surprised. "All right, you can drop by the office if you like and pick it up." He stood and held out his hand. Windemer shook the hand and thanked him, moving backward to the door.

At the door the youth stopped and shrugged. "I just have to know for sure, that's all..."

"That's all there is to it as far as I'm concerned, too," Garvy said. "I understand perfectly."

Windemer smiled and left, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

Garvy sat for a while, doodling exquisitely graceful curved parallel lines on his scratch-pad. Then he tore off a fresh sheet of paper, jotted down some notes, and placed the paper and Janet Windemer's photograph into a yellow file folder. He made a notation on his desk calendar: Five, Sanders Elec., Janet W.

S
anders Electronics occupied a long, low, absurdly clean-looking building in one of the spanking new business communities that were springing up west of town. As Garvy sat behind the wheel of his gray hardtop across from the building, he listened to the radio with half his mind while the other half concentrated on the sun-glazed glass entrance to Sanders Electronics. He was patient, used to his work by now, and he didn't even bother to glance at his watch as the minute hand edged toward five o'clock.