Does It Have to Be Murder?

Warner Bros.

I've been chatting with a podcaster about the upcoming season for her and her husband's show, where they read mysteries live. The husband, who handles the music, tries to solve the mystery by the end of the show. She can't because she reads every story before it's even accepted.

This year, they're doing something different. Anything but murder. Which got me thinking (and about more than my proposed story.) Does every crime fiction story need a body count?

This summer, I'm editing anthologies. A lot of anthologies. Plus, I read an ARC for the upcoming Bouchercon anthology. Virtually all the stories in that and two of the anthologies I've copy edited involve murder. My next anthology short story? Murder. The last three crime fiction novels I've read? Murder. Hell, one was the basis for Season 1 of Bosch.

While I've never agreed with Donald Maas's philosophy of increasing the body count with each book in a series – Let's call that what it is: a cheap ploy eventually leading to bad writing – I do concede murder is the highest of stakes. You're taking a life. If you ask most people how many of the Ten Commandments they've broken, the more honest will likely say, "I ain't killed anyone. Yet." Everyone lies at one point or another. Most people have taken something that wasn't theirs, broken with their parents, and that most underrated of the Big Ten, envied. I'm reading Cormac McCarthy right now, and boy, does he give a writer a case of envy. Leaving out the "God commandments," we continually break the Sabbath. Hell, I'm writing this on a Sunday morning. And while most people get through life without cheating on a lover or a spouse, more do than will admit it. But murder?

Murder is the big one. The taking of life. Most people quote that commandment as "Thou shalt not kill," but really, the original word translates as "murder," the deliberate taking of life. Killing in war or self-defense doesn't count because that other person is trying to kill you, or at least, inflict grievous harm. Accidents? You might get sued, but you won't go to prison unless you did something really stupid, like drive drunk or neglected some obvious bit of safety. But the deliberate taking of life? Either in a fit of rage or through (allegedly) careful planning?

I don't care what religious creed you follow, even if you're an atheist -- or maybe especially if you are one – that's the big kahuna. Taking life deliberately and without any mitigating reason is a huge crime against humanity.

But is it possible to write about crime and not murder? Does it really need a body count?

It takes a bit of skill, and quite often, it goes toward comedic. Oceans 11 is a prime example. It's the heist. It's George Clooney and Brad Pitt being smartasses. The source material is an excuse from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. to play cops-and-robbers.

Catch Me if You Can, the Tom Hanks-Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle based on real life, focuses on Leo's cat-and-mouse game with Hanks's FBI agent and their later collaboration. Murder is not a primary plot device.

Cannonball Run

And if you want to get to the heart of it, the two Cannonball Run movies are really light-hearted (and admittedly light-headed) crime movies. The crime just happens to be an illegal road race that turns into a bunch of comedy sketches sewn together.

But notice the tongues firmly planted in cheeks for these movies. There are relatively few bodies in these films. And when there are, it's often an accident or natural causes, sometimes the inciting event.

Yet if you go all the way back to one of the first modern detective stories, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter," the plot does not center on a body but a missing letter. Our intrepid detective, Dupin, foreshadows Sherlock Holmes in his talent for looking beyond the obvious. The letter is soiled and wrinkled, looking like an old, well-worn paper and not a recently written missive that could bring down the French government. Doyle would revisit this time and again. The stories are not comedic, but neither do they depend on a body.

So, does it have to be murder? For the same reason we all rubberneck at a traffic pile-up or a train wreck, murder grabs our attention faster. Someone's life ended because someone else deliberately ended it. But there are plenty of ways to spin up other crimes: Theft, fraud, adultery (not a crime, but a dirty deed.) It's all in how you handle it. Instead of bleeding, someone simply needs to ask, "Are you in or out?"

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to sketch out a story of the adventures of Florida Man!

Poisoned Pen

A friend of mine sent me this article asking if I knew anything about it. The long, tortured affair took place in Circleville, one of those small railroad towns that dot the Midwest. This one is north of Columbus and not on any of the Interstates. I grew up on the fringes of the Cleveland area, spent six months in Amish country, and have lived in Cincinnati ever since. So, no. I barely knew of Circleville.

Which is interesting because of the town's long-standing mystery. Who's writing all the nasty letters?

It began in the 1970s. A bus driver named Mary Gillespie began receiving letters accusing her of having an affair with the school's vice principal. The harassment continued for some time until her brother-in-law and his wife tracked the letters back to one of Mary's coworkers, a man named David Longberry. Longberry was never charged, though he was later charged with sexual assault in an unrelated case.

But before the letters stopped, Mary's husband received a phone call. Angry, he went to confront Longberry with a pistol. Almost an hour later, police found his pickup off the road, him dead.

While Longberry was never charged, he came under some unwanted scrutiny. The letters stopped.

For a time. Then they started up again, along with signs on Mary's bus route detailing her alleged affair. The number of letter recipients increased as well, as more and more Circleville residents began receiving their own poisoned pen letters. Things escalated when Mary attempted to rip down a sign along her route only to find one crudely booby-trapped with a pistol.

The perpetrator attempted to file off the serial number, but a forensics technician recovered it. The gun traced back to a brewery employee in Columbus, who in turn sold it to his supervisor, who then sold it to someone else. The gun belonged to Paul Freshour, Mary's brother-in-law and the one who fingered David Longberry.

Before long, the sheriff began looking at Freshour.Eventually, he was convicted and sentenced to prison. The letters stopped.

Again, only for a time. Eventually, Unsolved Mysteries got involved, sending a production team to the small town. Soon, producers received their own poisoned pen letters threatening the crew if they showed up. Spoiler alert: Robert Stack totally did a segment on the unknown letter writer. Perhaps feeling the heat, the letter writer soon went silent for good.

Longberry and Freshour have both since died. Curiously, letters continued after Freshour went to prison. Only when Unsolved Mysteries showed up did they stop. The long story sounds like the beginnings of a Stephen King story, although King would have made the perpetrator supernatural or had him run afoul of the supernatural. More likely, it has much in common with SA Cosby's semi-rural Virginia tales, should Cosby opt to write an homage to Sherwood Anderson.

The motivations and machinations behind such episodes are familiar to anyone who grew up in small towns, exurbs, and even suburbs. Like the Cleveland-area town where I grew up, Circleville is exactly the type of American or Canadian town described in the song "Subdivisions," existing between the bright lights and the far, unlit unknown. Most of us who grew up there hear whispers, half-heard gossip. So-and-so is having an affair with someone-or-other. The bus driver grows pot on an abandoned farm. The undertaker enjoys his work too much, or the small bank president is skimming the receipts. Undoubtedly, the original letters arose from something like this: misplaced outrage or perhaps jealousy. Over the years, someone else became a copycat, the way some serial killers or burglars will copy some of the more outlandish of their chosen crimes. This person or persons saw a way to lash out at small-town hypocrisy. Unlike burglars, robbers, and worse, their crime is one of nuisance. It can flare into deadly confrontation, but the reason the person or persons behind Circleville's ordeal could continue for so long is one of resources. Small town police and rural/semi-rural departments are understaffed while urban agencies have a higher number of murders, rapes, robberies, and property damage to deal with.

And of course, now I have a pitch for Down & Out Books.

Can't Happen Here

 It happened in January. On my street, we park our cars along the street. There are big, wide spaces that are clearly not part of the road, but do give us enough space to park one or two cars. Not surprisingly, we get possessive of these spaces. The guy across the street, universally considered the nicest guy in the neighborhood, can get nasty about someone parking in front of his house. Never mind that it's actually public parking.

After five years living in this house, someone hit my car. Alcohol was not likely involved. No, it was one of my own neighbors from literally up the street. I had taken late December and early January off from Uber and had planned to go out the next evening. I would not drive again until March. My response?

BUT THAT NEVER HAPPENS HERE!

It's a fender bender. So, naturally, I'm not nearly as skittish about parking out front. It took five years for someone to hit my car. Plus, if you'd seen our driveway, for which I still haven't forgiven the previous owner, you'd understand why I'm still risking it. And no one was killed. Though there's a black cat my neighbor attempted to miss that's in danger of landing in the violin factory.

Yet, as I type this tonight racing a deadline, I'm watching a news story from nearby Arlington Heights. The towns surrounding Lockland, including Arlington Heights, have fallen on such hard times since the disappearance of Lockland's industrial heart that some of them no longer have police departments. A woman was attacked inside her home despite her street now patrolled heavily by neighboring Reading. The woman says, "You hear of this elsewhere, not here." 

She wants to leave. Granted, someone knocking in your car's door because their driving skills leave a lot to be desired doesn't compare to an assault inside your own home by two strangers. Violence traumatizes people. It's a leading cause of PTSD. If someone beats the hell out of you where you live, leaving is not an unreasonable reaction.

It happened to me once when I first moved to Cincinnati. Taking my girlfriend on an afternoon trip downtown, we wandered around the late, lamented Skywalk. Walking between Carew Tower and the Westin, a guy came up and started muttering about violence to someone who did him wrong. Then he asked us for a couple dollars. My response to the homeless had been sometimes to give them money to make them go away. There is a subset of people who will make intimidation or aggravation a means of getting money out of hassled passersby. This guy did not go away. Back in the Tower, we thought we'd grab lunch. Only our friend was back. With a friend of his own. We thought it was because that was his territory. Only he followed us. We went down to the food court. He and his new friend followed. We crossed to the elevators. He made a beeline for us.

We escaped by taking an elevator up a floor, then jumping into another car, taking it up ten floors. It bewildered the people at the law firm on that floor, but we were able to leave in peace. We had lunch across the river in Kentucky. 

That was 1992. I did not visit Carew Tower again for five years. By then, my experience with the characters downtown had deepened. I could spot the bad actors, the harmless cranks, and those who actually needed help.

It only takes one incident, no matter how rare. My stepson AJ will not ride his motorcycle on Ronald Reagan Highway after a hit-and-run sent him to the hospital. His mother won't drive in nearby Covington alone after a carjacking. We like to think we understand the risks, but especially these days, we've become risk averse. If it happens once, it's hard to imagine it won't happen again.

¿Quién mató a Sara?

Not every miniseries on Netflix is a Harlan Coben story. Astounding, yes, I know, even though I enjoy them sprinkled amongst other series.

My Netflix favorites tend toward foreign productions. European shows dominate, but occasional works slip in from South Korea, South Africa, Venezuela, and Mexico. And Mexico is where the murder mystery Who Killed Sara? is set.

Many of its actors appear in telenovelas, i.e, Hispanic soap operas, sexy soap operas. Cultural tip: Pretty much everything on Telemundo and Univision is sexy, good motivation to learn Spanish.

So, because a number of these actors are cast in daytime dramas, Who Killed Sara? was miscategorized as another telenovela and dismissed. Creator José Ignacio Valenzuela never expected the show might become a global sensation, and misjudging the series as a mere soap serial seemingly sealed its coffin, limiting its impact within Latin America.

Except word got out. People watched. And more people watched. And more. So many viewers, Netflix noticed. And funded a second season. And a third. At one point, it topped their popularity list. Who Killed Sara? had made it.

How Good Are the Bad Guys?

I’m convinced the success of a crime novel hinges upon how good– er, I mean how bad the bad guy is or how complex. The worst of the bad guys should either make your fictional life much more interesting or scare the bloomers off Buchenwald Oberaufseherin Ilse Koch… or both.

Think of any James Bond movie. The best are those with the baddest badass bad guys. The cars or the fancy ass gadgets from Q, might have drawn our curiosity, but remember the scary Colonel Klebb, Dr No, the metallic-toothed Jaws, and pretty much anyone from Golden Eye. Them’s scary!

(A major miscast in Tomorrow Never Dies was media mogul Elliott Carver– the world had yet to meet Rupert Murdoch, an Australian leftist hellbent on bringing the US and Britain to its knees… That’s one hypothesis.)

I previously promoted Hungarian actor Lukács Bicskey as one of the most interesting bad guys in the film Titled Day of Wrath / Game of Swords. Sadly, the movie’s star, American actor Christopher Lambert, sucked the life out of the show, guaranteeing a spot in Film Purgatory.

I present a new nominee for badass bad guys: Ginés García Millán playing César Lazcano, self-made multimillionaire businessman, patriarch of the Lazcano crime family. He’s a charming man who kicks the crap out of his son Chema for being gay and recreationally bangs the wife of his older son, Rodolfo. He and his henchmen are not above murder, including multiple attempts to kill their children’s betrayed friend, our hero Álex. And yet as much as César hates and fears the boy he betrayed, he also admires him. More than once, he is heard berating his kids, telling them he wished he had Álex as his son instead.

Other bad guy nominees might include the OddJob to  Lazcano’s Goldfinger is psychopathic sadist Sergio Hernández, played by Juan Carlos Remolina, César’s best friend and business partner. And Mariana Lazcano, portrayed by Claudia Ramírez, wifely manipulator and enabler. Thanks to her motherly pretense, her insidious nature takes longer to reveal. But César Lazcano…

The plot’s problem becomes not who killed teen Sara, but who didn’t have a motive to kill her? Sara, her brother Álex, and the three Lazcano children were close childhood friends, but Sara was extra ‘friendly’ with everyone. She pretty much jodido’d the entire cast except possibly her brother Álex… I think. Then someone sabotaged a parasail killing her.

To keep his family and their business at arm’s length, César and Mariana Lazcano persuaded the dead girl’s young brother Álex to shoulder the blame, promising at most weeks in jail, a transplant for his ailing mother, and a handsome reward him for his troubles. Álex and the Lazcano children were shocked when Álex was sentenced to eighteen years, and worse, reneged on the promises, including caring for his dying mother. Lazcano even attempted to kill Álex in prison.

Thus the series begins with Álex’s release from a tough Mexican prison. He’s angry, wants vengeance, and is determined to sort out who killed his darling sister, not knowing she had carnal relations with half of Ciudad de México, both Lacano parents and their son Rodolfo, Álex’s former best friend.

And then things change. Fluid situations melt and reform. Alliances shift. César Lazcano and Álex team up and attain a mutual respect, whereupon the second season wraps, waiting for season three, and we’re not much closer to figuring out who killed Sara.

Some of My Best Friends…

Actor Eugenio Siller plays the Lazcano’s middle child, José María ‘Chema’ Lazcano, César and Mariana's middle child, second best friend of Álex… and deeply in love with him, unrequited love. His father refuses to acknowledge Chemo is gay and beats him badly to demonstrate manly virtues of something or other.

Nothing goes right for poor Chema. Minor missteps and the simplest of errors results in magnified consequences. To my surprise, I found my heart breaking for him. His character has tragedy stamped all over him. Second only to the relationship between Lazcano daughter Elisa and Álex, I chewed my metaphorical nails over Chema. The actor and writers reached across the border, the cultural barrier, and the gay-straight continuum shaking up my normal affectionate tolerance similar to Álex’s. Nicely accomplished.

And Now We Wait

This project has been filmed through the pandemic. I can’t imagine what the crew had to go through to avoid infections in this midst of this killer coronavirus. For certain, they have created an innovative story with care worthy characters, at least through two seasons. I’m adding this to my list of pending new seasons. It’s darn well worth it.

Have you seen it?

Update: NetFlix says season 3 will be released on the 18^th of the month. Yay!

Florida News – Cold-Blooded Edition

While you’ve been social distancing and avoiding the coronavirus. Floridians have been going about their usual madness– alleged madness– it’s all alleged. I know you’ve been paying attention, so at the end, you’ll find a quiz to test your knowledge.

Capitol Rioters

Kissimmee, FL.  Police Officer Andrew Johnson reportedly got himself fired for racist and seditious remarks posted on Facebook supporting the Capitol riots. “Day one of the Revolutionary War!! Hang on, it’s only just begun. … Civil War is right around the corner. It’s coming.”

It’s not known if he’s any relation to Adam Johnson of Bradenton who stole the House Speaker’s lectern.

Casselberry, FL.  Commissioner and Vice Mayor Mark Busch is all about free speech after riling up a crowd prior to 6 January, telling them Vice President Mike Pence had “better do the right thing” or he'll face “pitchforks and torches” for failing to overturn a legitimate presidential election. Leading from the rear, the commission members exhibited less guts than our Kissimmee crowd. Casselberry couldn’t bring itself to reprimand Busch, who vowed to “continue the fight for freedom of speech,” like shouting, “Fire!”

Sanford, FL.  Claiming to still be investigating, Sanford FD has yet to acknowledge reporting to federal authorities the probable involvement of fireman Andy Williams.

St. Augustine, FL.  Florida Capitol riot arrests include John Anderson of St. Augustine, Matthew Council of Tampa, and Michael Curzio of Marion County, geniuses all.

Katie, Disbar the Door

Tampa, FL.  You know that softcore trope of the good-looking police officer who handcuffs and strip-searches the arrestee whilst suggestively wielding a nightstick? No? Ahem, I don’t either, of course, but Andrew Spark, esq, wrote the script. Working in two different jails, he managed to film scenes for a porn flick. Bad attorney! Bad!

Sarasota, FL.  Two women pretending to be police officers live-streamed themselves screaming and swearing at detainees during fake traffic stops. Word has it attorney Andrew Spark (above) has volunteered his legal services for the two ladies.

Good Cop / Bad Cop

New Port Richey, FL.  A man leaving a bar mistook 911 for Uber and called the police for a Lyft, then swore at the poor 911 operator. A kind officer gave him a ride to a place with lots of bars.

World’s Worst Marksman

Orlando, FL.  Or perhaps he’s damn good if he was trying to miss after firing a hundred shots at his romantic rival. Count everyone lucky.

Lift and Separate

Miami, FL.  An annoying box marked ‘CENSORED’ makes it difficult to tell exactly what went down, but you be the judge.

Hi! I'm Trashy.

Unbagged

Pompano Beach, FL.  Trashy, the animated rubbish bag, leaped off Saturday morning cartoons to torch evil garbage trucks… Okay, I made up Trashy, but a man dressed in garbage bags mysteriously set fire to a number of garbage trucks. If you or your trashy friends know anything, you may collect a $10,000 reward.

Bagged

Bradenton, FL.  One woman guaranteed her own stimulus check of sorts. It’s not clear how her man died, but she stuffed him in a trash bag inside a rubbish bin and collected his social security check. I’m thinking she got the bags from Trashy.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

Tampa, FL.  An arsonist tried to torch a house. Instead, he set fire to himself. Ouch.

Lehigh Acres, FL.  A burglar executed himself climbing through a window. You may want to skip this one.

In the Name of Jesus

Orlando, FL.  Mention Florida in the same breath as evangelism, you can comfortably assume we’re talking scam. Drill down to ministries in Orlando, and you’ve hit a dead certainty. Now, along comes the Church of Florida, Aslan International Ministry, operated for and by the Edwards clan who, according to authorities, sucked approximately $9-million out of the federal coronavirus Paycheck Protection Program. Don’t worry, they weren’t spending it foolishly. They were using part of it to purchase a $3½-million house at Walt Disney World.

The Ugly Floridian

Pensacola, FL.  You can dress ’em up, but you can’t take ’em anywhere. Gloria Lancaster carved out a Florida Hall of Infame niche all to herself for chomping camel testicles… still part of a live camel, see, at a Louisiana truckstop. And there was this deaf dog and her husband Edmond and the camel is currently being treated with antibiotics and… It’s complicated.

Leave Them Balls Alone

Coral Coral, FL.  As you know, Albert the Alligator kept salesmen from the door for 25 years. He was a loyal pet that would come when a family member whistled. Treat animals with respect, man. This idiot in this episode has no clue how fast gators can turn.

Snakey, Snakey

Miami, FL.  Less reprehensible than our reptilian politicians is our wildlife. Not long ago, Florida paid a bounty for lionfish, a colorful invader in Florida waters. Them’s good eatin’.

Now Florida is suggesting we snack on python meat. Mmm, tastes like chicken and they are plentiful.

Almond Joy

Tampa, FL.  Remember the scene in Jaws where Brody tells Quint, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat?” Erika Almond said something like that when a great white chomped on it.

The SleuthSayers Florida News Quiz

Take the pre-Superbowl Florida Madness Challenge. It’s easier than you think!

The Bank Job

In the waning days of my stint at Data Corp, a bank-owned subsidiary in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, security auditors visited the company. These stern-faced men and women differed from bank and financial auditors. They studied physical facilities, detectors, alarms, and personnel. They reminded employees that banking is serious business.

Thus it came to pass, they paid particular attention to me, rogue hired-gun, expert in multiple languages and knowledgeable in the intricate arts of operating systems and the mysterious software void. I had delved deep into the labyrinth of the sacred OS and lo, I not only survived the puzzles of the Minotaur, but my reputation grew, a mark of my shadowy powers and the peril I represented.

Sandman, Matt… how different could we be? Birds of a feather, cut from the same cloth, tarred with the same brush. The auditors were determined to unmask… Danger Man.

Caught between the security professionals and Data Corp’s need to keep me around, the company assigned their top programmer to watch me, to make certain no Harry Potter magical enchantment passed my fingertips to the detriment of the Eastern Seaboard banking community. My transition from legendary hero to potentially a bad, bad boy had the spectacular effect of enhancing my dark reputation amongst the fair sex of the Shenandoah Valley. That’s a story improper for a scholarly work such as this.

“It’s nothing personal,” said the vice president.

“It seems personal,” I said. After the fiascos with Sandman and then Matt, I felt peeved, petulant and perhaps a little petty, those p-offed adjectives. Later, I would become better known for guarding my tongue, but I childishly couldn’t resist showing off. “The auditors are looking in the wrong place. They shouldn’t be suspicious of talent, but of simple vulnerabilities. I bet I can have money out of the bank and on your desk in 24 hours.”

“I don’t believe in gambling.”

“Neither do I. I prefer certainties. Wanna wager?”

“You’re serious?” He sighed. “We have to tell them.” He started to beep the chief auditor but stopped himself. Cogs visibly turned in his head. On the off chance I was right, why reveal weaknesses to the auditors? “How?” he asked.

“The obvious everyone overlooks.”

“It’s obvious you’re presumptuous.” He didn’t say it unkindly. The vice president leaned forward on the edge of his chair, hands braced on his desk. I could see his mind churning, thinking over the computer rooms, an entire floor of programmers’ offices, the banking terminals scattered around the counties. “It doesn’t mean you can’t be right.”

Neither of us believed in gambling, but for different reasons. The VP was a pious man. He said, “I don’t bet, but I will pay you five bucks if you can pull it off.”

I said, “Fair enough. One thing though– keep things as they are– no extra security just because of this, okay?”

He muttered under his breath. If he hadn’t been a religious man, it would probably have sounded something like, “arrogant sodding bastard.”

 A Draft In The House

A few hours remained before my self-imposed night shift, so I visited the banking center off the lobby. I bought a money order to pay my phone bill, watching every move the teller made. Afterwards, I went back to my rooms to sleep a few hours.

The vice president fibbed about not stacking the deck against me. That evening for the first time, a guard searched my flight case as I entered the computer facility. The VP also ordered the data vault closed, a concrete and steel room with a blast-proof door. If I needed a data cartridge, I’d have to ask Nagle, the watchdog programmer they’d hung around my neck, to fetch it.

Like a personal albatross, he watched every move, my every keystroke. As I rolled my chair between consoles, he followed, straining to see if I attempted anything unusual. I simply did my job, asking him to give me breathing space as I studied program code.

We ordered Chinese food. Nagle consumed his with coffee rather than tea, striving to stay alert. I asked what his instructions were and he said he’d been directed to keep a special eye on me. “They think you’re up to something.”

green-bar, fanfold paper

“I am. I’ve got to debug this by morning.”

From time to time I pulled ‘green-bar’ stacks of paper off the big high-speed printers. I had a well-known propensity for leafing through paper listings, giving my eyes a rest from luminescent computer screens. Nagle had wearied from working all day, but occasional requests for tapes or discs kept him awake.

Taking great precautions but overlooking a small, seemingly insignificant but crucial details is only human. Long ago, I’d remarked upon one of these details to the computer room operators who’d forgotten by the next morning. They had stuffed a box of Christmas Club checks on a panel of the control unit next to the printer, handy if they had to make a quick check run. Nothing sinister about printers, right?

I asked Nagle to fetch a data cartridge from the vault as I gathered a listing from the printer, I simply tore off a sheet of three checks and slipped it among the pages of my printout.

An hour after midnight, I dragged manuals and listings into what tellers called the ‘back room’, and spread them out on work tables. To enter the computer room, operators and officials had to pass through a couple of electronically locked anterooms into the data center.

It was also possible to pass from the lobby into the customer area of the banking center where lexan barriers protected the teller area. Behind the glass, trusted employees could pass through the back room to the computer room itself– and vice versa. The computer room contained a photo lab at the back, which the security auditors didn’t like since it gave non-computer people access to the servers.

MICR check imprinter

The back room was of special interest to me because it contained a small machine I needed, a MICR imprinter, a shoebox-size device with a simple keyboard used to encode the special magnetic ink numbers along the bottom of a check.

During the day, the back room was used by clerks to spread out reports and by tellers to imprint deposit slips and checks as needed. During the evening, operations bundled and unbundled stacks of checks and imprinted the occasional ‘carrier’, a glassine envelope for damaged checks. By night, I used the same room when I needed an expanded work area. Nagle stopped paying attention to me when I left the main room because the tellers’ back room contained no computers.

I’d never used the imprinter before, but I’d watched the operators. My plan was to key in the account number the bank used to pay me and that’s when I discovered the bank had made my task easier– and an easier crime for anyone else to carry out. When I filched the checks, my famed 007 powers of observation had been running low because I hadn’t inspected them closely. Rather than print individual account numbers on Christmas Club checks, the bank used one general account thoughtfully pre-printed on the checks along with the routing and serial numbers. The check numbers linked a given check to a customer. I didn’t need the MICR imprinter after all.

I discovered something else. Next to the MICR machine were open boxes of bank drafts and money orders accessible not only to tellers, but any person who strolled in from the computer room. They were sequentially numbered and I had no idea if anyone took note of the number in the mornings. I took samples out of the middle.

Back in the computer room, Nagle was nodding off. He headed for the coffee machine.

Green-bar program listings from large computers were printed on continuous ‘tractor-feed’ fan-fold paper stock that were packed and stacked in a zig-zag fashion. The printer prints one accordion-pleated side only– the back is almost never used and, when fastened in a binder, the back is never seen. In other words, a page was actually two sheets back-to-back attached at the leading edge and bound at the back. It formed a pocket, perfect for nefarious smuggling.

Visit Bob Lemke's vintage cheques

Cue Mission Impossible theme.

Uncapping a glue stick, I dabbed the drafts and the Christmas Club checks and tucked them within the multi-fold pages. James Bond had nothing on me.

Binder in hand, I told Nagle, “I’m going upstairs for an hour. I’ll be back.” He gratefully closed his eyes in the operations office. The security guard, mystified by the runes of technology, only cursorily glanced at the listings.

I needed time and privacy to duplicate the same type of printing on the draft and the Christmas Club check. From the tractor feed paper and proximity to the printer, it was easy to deduce the Christmas Club checks were printed on the high speed impact printer, a device the size of a roll-top desk capable of churning out hundreds of pages in seconds. I needed to duplicate its distinctive type face, so on one page of the program I had been working in, I’d printed a sample: my name, ‘FIVE AND ***’, and $5.00. All I needed was a way to emulate the printer’s font.

Beating the Draft

The bank draft presented a different problem. The name on the draft I purchased in the afternoon was printed using a monospace sans-serif font, and it wasn’t similar to any I could find on the PCs commonly used in the office. I was surprised– They had almost everything.

I expanded my search. Nothing. I didn’t have access to Illustrator or Photoshop. I couldn’t log onto the Adobe site for a matching font, and it didn’t seem sensible to pay them more than I was going to collect.

But wait; I was overthinking. The vice president expected me to engineer a hi-tech crime, but I’d gone lo-tech. Where had I seen an IBM Selectric? Chase’s secretary’s desk. The office kept a couple of typewriter balls in a junk drawer. I picked the most computerish style and dropped the font ball into the typewriter.

I tweaked the positioning and ran a test copy on plain paper. When I held it up to the light in front of the blank draft, it looked close. I adjusted the margins until I was satisfied and printed one of the drafts made out to me with several zeros in the amount. I repeated the process with one of the Christmas Club checks made out for five dollars.

Leaving the draft in my desk, I set the Christmas Club checks aside. No sense taking them back into the computer center.

I wrapped up early for which Nagle was grateful. The guard glanced in my briefcase. Seeing no wads of bills or bullion, he let us go.

---

After sleeping until noon, I drove through a branch drive-thru and cashed the $5 Christmas Club check. Back at the office, the security guards perked up. They gave my briefcase a thorough going over. Finding nothing incriminating, they let me pass.

When I casually strolled toward the vice president’s office, he glanced up and waved me in. “Any luck? You’ve just a couple of hours left.”

“Oh, yes. Here’s a bank draft made out to me, all legitimate looking. I didn’t cash it so I wouldn’t screw up the bank’s accounting.”

His lips thinned when he saw the number of zeroes. Pinching it between two fingers, he looked it over carefully with narrowed eyes. He set it aside as if I had handed him a used tissue. “You said you could get money out which I took to be cash.”

I pulled $5 from my pocket and put it on his desk.

“You’re conceding?” he asked.

“No.”

“What’s special about this?”

I put the receipt on top of it. “It’s from the bank’s Christmas Club account.”

Never before had I witnessed a ‘basilisk stare’. For a moment, I worried I’d crossed the line. However, he prided himself being a fair and rational man, and he went from personal offence to realizing I could help plug a hole or two the auditors hadn’t yet spotted.

“How much?”

“How much what?”

He sighed. “How much is this going to cost me?”

“Lunch.” I reconsidered, thinking about his tightwad reputation. “A good lunch.”

In fairness, he made it a very good lunch.

Loose Ends

Management instructed their tellers to lock away the blank drafts at night. The Christmas Club checks they moved into the vault as they should have from the beginning.

Nagle told me he’d been yelled at, but the shouting was only half-hearted. The vice president had merely instructed him to ensure their in-house Robin Hood didn’t attempt a Mission Impossible hi-tech transfer. Instead I had come in under their radar with an old-school lo-tech crime, which made it worse. They found it sobering, but they took comfort the security auditors hadn’t detected the gaffe and the price of one lunch was right.

Why I Don't Read or Write True Crime, Part Three

This is Part Three of a three-part series. For Part One, click here. For Part Two, click here. 

I have a jack-in-the-box in my desk, at work (for those of you who don't remember, I teach middle school history). It's not a traditional jack-in-the-box. It's an Iron Maiden (the British metal band, not the torture implement) jack-in-the-box, and it's got Eddie, Iron Maiden's ghoulish mascot, as the jack-in-the-box. It's still in the box.

This particular jack-in-the-box was a gift from a former student. And the kid who gave it to me was one-of-a-kind. As a seventh-grader he'd gotten himself into a remarkable amount of trouble, and by the time I got him as an eighth-grader his parents had tossed out all of his black clothes, his guy-liner, every piece of studded black leather, all of the things that he had worn or used to drive them crazy before the final time he'd gotten himself kicked out of school. When I met him, he dressed like a preppy, because his parents picked out his clothes and insisted he shut the door on the black leather and the emo music.

So when I mentioned that I had first seen Iron Maiden in concert as a high school senior in 1982, he decided I was alright. One thing I've learned in all of my years of teaching is that people can connect over the smallest of things. British metal band Iron Maiden was my point of connection with this young man.

His family moved out of state at the end of the year, and right before he left, he gave me the aforementioned jack-in-the-box. I was really touched by the gesture, and by how happy his family was with how much better this very intelligent young man was doing in school. So when his parents sent me a Facebook friend request before they left so we could stay in touch, I was happy to agree to it.

Three years later he killed himself. Over a girl.

I had another student once who robbed a guy in a parking lot drug deal after the guy (who was his dealer) showed him the big bag of money he had made from selling pot. So my former pulled a pistol, took the money, and jumped into a waiting car (driven by another former student of mine). The robbed dealer gave chase on foot. The robber used his gun and shot out the window as they drove off. He killed the the guy.

Both he and the driver are still in jail.

Just a few years ago I had a student who had been diagnosed with O.D.D ("Oppositional Defiant Disorder"). He spent his days at my school acting out, cussing out teachers, and doing no work. Once again I got lucky. I knew who Tupac Shakur was, and had seen him in concert when he was just starting out (how that came about is a long story in itself.). This kid loved Tupac.

So we got along. 

But I wasn't very successful at convincing him to cut other people (students, staff, you know, everyone) any slack. So he was always in trouble. It was shame too, because he was a big, funny, goofy kid. A talented athlete, too. He played basketball on a really good AAU team. He just had no common sense and a get-out-of-consequences-free (for the moment) card.

He went off to high school and I wondered whether he was going to be able to stay out of jail. 

He wasn't. 

He's been busted several times in the intervening years for a string of burglaries, and recently tried to rob a convenience store late one night. The clerk he tried to rob was armed and the two exchanged gunfire. Both were hit. And my former student ran off. He has since turned himself in to police.

These are real stories. This is literally "True Crime." I find it in no way entertaining. There's a human cost here that is painful to recall. And for me there's no escaping it.

And that's why I neither read nor write True Crime.

The Case for Award Juries (why checklists are not enough)

I was once on a jury for a major award with the late, great Ed Hoch.  We did the usual thing; each of us read the entries and came back with a longlist of 10 and a shortlist of 5, and then met by phone and email to discuss our choices.

I was shocked to find that my number one story - the one I thought was a shoe-in for the award - was not even on Ed's top five list.  (It was on his top ten.)

When I stated my dismay about this story not making his shortlist, Ed said two words.

"Convince me."

And so I did.  I pointed out the brilliance of the setting - a near perfect depiction of a famous train - The Canadian - racing through the Rocky Mountains.  You could feel the train moving, hear the squeal of wheels on track.  I pointed out that the plot was unique.  No, it didn't have car crashes like the typical thrillers that win. This was a locked door mystery - one of those clever, quiet stories that led to a smiler at the end.  I had never read that plot before, and neither had he, he admitted.

"You've convinced me," he said.  And it went on our top five list.

A similar thing happened when my book, The Goddaughter's Revenge, won two major awards in 2014.  After the Arthur Ellis ceremony, one of the jury members told me that there was some discussion about whether a caper with no gravitas should be considered for the top spot, even if "deliciously unique."  But one of the jurors pointed out there was indeed a darkly deeper theme in the book:  You are supposed to love and support your family, but what if your family is this one?  How far do you go, and no farther?

It's true that Gina Gallo, a mob goddaughter, struggles with this in every book.  She won't cross a line.  But what is that line?

After jury discussion, it was a unanimous decision.  The book won the award.

We can argue that a book shouldn't need to be serious to win awards.  There are numerous subgenres of crime writing, and surely heists can be written as well and be as entertaining as noir thrillers.  If not, why do we even bother to let them enter?

However, my point is this.  In both cases, jury discussion was necessary for these two stories to reach the podium.  If we went strictly by a checklist point system, with no discussion by juries, we risk the chance that some excellent stories would be lost to consideration.

Ed Hoch reminded me that jury discussion is valuable.  In discussing the merits of a story with others, we see things we may not have seen before.  This is a huge reason why we discuss stories in schools and universities.  Why have profs like me, in classrooms leading discussions, if sending everyone my lecture notes would accomplish the same thing?  Discussion is where the magic happens.

I would say the same for award juries.  Just like in a classroom, discussion adds richness to our comprehension.  Our appreciation of an entry can increase ten-fold by listening to what other jurors find in a story that we might have missed.

Checklists alone can never do that.

Melodie Campbell writes seriously funny capers that have won some awards.  She didn't even steal them.  Available at all the usual suspects.    www.melodiecampbell.com

I Write Therefore I Am

Walking the dogs. Buster above.
 Pepper (left) and Buster below.

Sometimes—often—I get tired of the writing grind. A lot of blood, sweat, tears and toil for very little reward, or so it seems. I’ll complain to my wife that I want to quit. I’ll think about doing just that. But then I think about what I would do with all that extra time. Garden? Watch TV? Read? Do hobbies? Spend even more time walking the dog.

Who would I be? My whole identity is wrapped up in being a writer and has been almost my whole adult life. I don’t think I’d recognize myself anymore if I wasn’t writing. One hears about people who retire and have these great expectations of playing golf all the time or doing whatever their fancy is and then getting bored awfully damn quick. But also losing their identity because so much of it was wrapped up in their work.

Writing is more than a job. It’s a calling. I’ve sacrificed a lot over the years to work at being a writer, so obviously it was something that was worth making sacrifices for.

And I like the process of creating something out of nothing, yet it’s too late for me to be a molecular physicist, if that’s the right terminology. Writing fiction is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle (something I don’t have the patience for). But like a jigsaw puzzle in writing you have to find all the right pieces and put them in all the right places or it just doesn’t fit.

I write, therefore I am. With my assistant, Curley.

Red Smith famously said: "There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."  Even when you open a vein for the Red Cross and donate blood they give you juice and cookies.

Most people don't have an appreciation for what we go through as writers.  The hours spent alone, no one to talk to over the water cooler (though that's changed somewhat with the internet, which is a surrogate water cooler).  The opening of our veins to get to the good stuff.

Like I said, it’s a calling. And it called me very young. When I was a kid I used to set up my army men on the bedroom floor.  But often, instead of moving them around pretending they were on a real battlefield I would pretend that they were on a movie set. I was lucky enough to have one little plastic figure of a cameraman and I'd even set up my TinkerToys in such a way to mimic Klieg lights. I'd move the men around the floor, putting words in their mouths, the good guys and the bad. Making sounds of gunfire and other sound effects. That, coupled with having been born in Hollywood, literally, made me want to do something in the movies. So today when I write something I figure I'm just doing on paper what I used to do on the floor of my room, moving around letters and sentences the way I used to move "armies" across the floor. And it really all amounts to the same thing. On the other hand, I am really still playing with (and collecting) toy soldiers. See pic.

Still playing with toy soldiers.

And, when I started out as a writer I had romantic notions of what being a writer meant. Images of Hemingway sipping absinthe on the Left Bank. And though Hollywood ain't no left bank it did have Joe Allen's at the time, so I went there for drinks. Or I'd sip some whiskey while writing in my little office. But I found that if I drank while writing—or trying to write—I didn't want to write. I wanted to play. So those romantic visions of the drinking writer (at least while writing) vanished quickly as did the bottle. I also thought writers should hang out at bars and dives and soak up atmosphere or thrown beer. My first adventure out was to a well-known sleazy eatery. I sat at the counter listening for tidbits of dialogue, insights into lives. What I got was a shirt full of beer when two guys playing pool a few feet away got into a fight. Free beer, who could ask for more?  If a cop had stopped me on the way home my shirt-alcohol level would surely have been over the legal limit.  Would they have arrested me or just my shirt?

Cafétafel met absint by Vincent Van Gogh

So, though it can get tedious, though the rewards might not always come, I don’t think I could or would ever give up on writing. Ultimately, we write because we have to. We open those veins because we have no choice. And anything’s better than sitting around watching TV all day, even that vein opening.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

"I hate saying a book transcends the genre and I honestly usually don't like books that do. This one however does and might win some awards because of it."
                                                                          —Jochem Vandersteen, Sons of Spade
                           

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What Went Wrong – (and pass the Scotch)

My friend and colleague John Floyd has inspired me many times, but this time for a singularly bizarre post:  Things that go wrong in the life of an author.

WHAT WENT WRONG:  The Publisher Version

1.  The publication that never was.  John, you mentioned in your recent post Strange but True, that you have received acceptance letters from publishers who then realized they sent them to the wrong person.  I can do you one better (if you really want to call it that.)

This year, I received a very public congratulations from the Ontario Library Association for being a finalist for their YA award.  I was thrilled!  It was my first YA crime book, after 16 adult ones, and they don't usually give awards to crime books.  I basked in glory and excitement for about five minutes until I realized the title of the book they mentioned was not the book I had written.  There ensued a very public retraction.  Everywhere.  And apology.  I am not sure there is anything more embarrassing than receiving a very public apology for an honour snatched back from you.

2.  It isn't often a publisher buys ads for your book and we all celebrate when they do.  The publisher of Rowena and the Dark Lord was out to create gold.  The first book in the series was a bestseller.  So they decided to throw money at book 2, advertising it at more than two dozen places.  And throw money, they did.  Throw it away, that is.  Unfortunately, the ad company misspelled the title of the book in all the ads.  ROWENA AND THE DARK LARD might be popular in cooking circles, but it didn't make a splash with the epic fantasy audience to which it was targeted.

3.  Back in the mid 90s, I was making it, or so I thought.  Had some stories with STAR magazine.  Broke into Hitchcock.  And later, big time, with Moxie magazine.  Remember Moxie?  Up there with Good Housekeeping and Cosmo? No, perhaps you don't.  I was really pleased when they offered me a 50% kill fee of $750.  Not that I wanted to collect it, but it was a status symbol back then to get offered kill fees in your short story contract.  Unfortunately, if you story is killed because the magazine goes under, ain't nothing left for a kill fee.  Big time becomes no time.

WHAT WENT WRONG:  The Event Version

1.  It's always tough when you are shortlisted for a prize and you don't win.  It's even tougher when you are actually at the gala event, and all your friends are waiting for you to be named the winner.  Tougher still, when you are shortlisted in TWO categories, and you don't win either.

But that doesn't touch the case when you are the actual Emcee for the event, you've just finished doing an opening stand-up routine to great applause, you have media there and a full house, you are shortlisted in two categories, and you don't win a sausage.  And still have to run the rest of the event from the stage.

This is why they invented scotch.

WHAT WENT WRONG:  The Agent Version

1.  No fewer than THREE big production companies have approached my agent about optioning The Goddaughter series for TV.  This has gone on for four years, and included hours of negotiating.  "Really excited - back to you on Friday!" said the last one.  That was last summer.  I'm still waiting to see any money.

2.  My first agent was a respected older gent from New York.  Sort of a father figure, very classy.  Like some - okay many - agents, he wasn't the best at getting back to us in a timely manner, particularly by email.  We kind of got used to it.  So it was with some shock that I got a phone call from another author, who had discovered that the reason we hadn't heard back from J is because he had died two months before.  Nobody had gotten around to telling us.

I have a really good agent now. She's still alive, which I've found is a huge advantage in an agent.

Here's the book that was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award last year, along with that short story that also didn't win (pass the scotch):

Remember the A-Team?  We're not them.  

But if you've been the victim of a scam, give us a call.  

We deal in justice, not the law.  We're the B-Team.

At all the usual suspects including....

AMAZON