Murder by the Book (1995) Anthology by Cynthia Manson

Author:Cynthia Manson [Manson, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CARL MARTIN

Something Ventured

It was a typical July evening in Los Angeles. The daytime temperature had been over a hundred and now it wasn’t much cooler. A hot, dry breeze was coming from the desert at about five miles per hour, drying the sweat as soon as it popped onto my brow. My sport shirt was sticking to my back. I thought how nice it would be to have a convertible, or at least a car with air conditioning.

The freeway was filled with high-priced foreign cars, and old clunkers like the twenty-year-old Ford I drove. But the new automobiles looked somehow more shiny and sleek than they did in other cities, and the clunkers were far less rusty than they were back East.

Both men and machines were feeling the heat. I passed several vehicles, new and old, that had been pulled to the side of the road to allow their engines to cool.

I was forty-five and had been out of prison about three years. Three dull, boring years. A stretch in federal prison hadn’t rehabilitated me, but it had done the next best thing—I’d lost my nerve. I could no longer be the lone-wolf bandit I had been. Since my release, I had eked out a living as a writer.

They say a writer should write about what he knows, so I had become a specialist in big-caper crime stories. Unfortunately, I was two decades too late. The short-story market had dried up for that kind of fiction, and the current TV shows were all either situation comedies or westerns. I might have written a book, but after a life devoted to finding and following shortcuts, I didn’t have the staying power it takes to write a novel.

Now I had a feeling my luck was about to change. I had been dragging my feet long enough. As they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I had to do something, even if it was wrong. It was time to put a plan I’d been considering into action. All I had to do was toss out the bait, be cautious, reel them in slowly, and let everyone think the final idea was someone else’s. Nothing to it.

I pulled off the freeway at Laurel Canyon Boulevard, crossed Ventura, and climbed through the canyon till I reached Mulholland Drive. Then I turned right and snaked along the crest of the mountains until I reached the narrow lane where Rita Penny lived. The structure was a pseudo-Spanish bungalow with white walls and a red tile roof. She had planted flowers along the front of the building.

As usual, I was late for our monthly writers’ meeting. There were already a couple of cars filling Rita’s carport, so I parked on the street and walked back. The windows were open, telling me Rita’s air conditioning hadn’t been fixed. The thought of sitting in her sweltering living room made me slow my pace.

Alfie Norton’s high-pitched voice drifted out an open window: “He reached for his gun and I shot him, shattering his kneecaps.

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