I
thought maybe we’d revisit THE ZOZOBRA
INCIDENT this week. You know, I really like the cover on this book. That
flaming, open hand picks up the theme of the Burning of Zozobra ritual at the
Santa Fe Fiesta and throws it right back in your face. Martin Brown Publishers
are good at cover art. That’s Sharene Martin Brown’s doing, I think. Not
Robert, he’s a good publisher and great dancer, but cover art? Nah, that’s his
wife’s thing. As a matter of record, I like the cover on THE BISTI BUSINESS just as well, possibly better.
But
I digress (something I seldom do, you know). The following scene comes near the
climax of the book in Chapter 27 (Page 259, as a matter of fact). During tense
moments in the case, BJ has returned to his third-floor office in an old
historic building at 5th and Tijeras NE across the street from the
public library in downtown Albuquerque. He’s returned at night after being on a
stakeout most of the day. You should know his building has an open middle
atrium with offices around the perimeter, accessed by a landing with a sturdy
brass rail.
#####
But it was the
last message that really caught my attention. Mrs. Gertrude Wardlow, my plucky
neighbor across the road, had noticed a suspicious car passing up and down the
street two or three times earlier in the evening. She suggested I use “extreme
caution” in returning home. What a wonderful old gal.
If this mess
kept up much longer, my staid and stolid neighbors would ask me to move. On
second thought, most of them hadn’t had this much excitement in ages. Safe, or
presumed safe, behind their windows and drapes, the old geezers probably
scanned the street every night before going to bed to check on that “private
investigator fellow” down the street.
Resisting the
temptation to sack out on my office couch, I got up, stretched, and started to
leave. An indistinct noise from the landing—a footfall, a shoulder brushing
against the wall, something—stayed my hand on the doorknob. The door was a
solid plank of heavy oak, but a panel of frosted glass to the left darkened
momentarily as a shadow passed across it. After five minutes of inaction, I
cautiously cracked the door. A quick look up and down the landing revealed
nothing alarming. If anyone was on this floor, he wasn’t visible, but a side
hall leading to the restrooms lay between the elevators and me. Was someone
crouching in ambush there? I stepped out onto the landing, locked the door, and
tugged the peashooter from my belt. I turned away from the elevators and made
for the stairwell.
I did not hear
my assailant’s sneaker on the carpet until it was too late to face him, so I
dropped to all fours. He tripped over my legs and fell with his body sprawled
halfway across mine. Before he had time to recover, I gained my feet and sagged
against the metal banister at the outer edge of the landing. Clinging to my
back, he came up with me, flailing with a knife. When the blade ripped into my
right biceps, I panicked, twisting away from the hand with the blade and
straightening my back to throw him off of me.
Time switched to
slow motion. The man clawed at my shirt for a moment. Then his center of
gravity shifted. He slid over the railing. I clutched at his legs but couldn’t
hold on. He fell with a terrified scream. I leaned over the railing and watched
him flip on his back during the forty-foot drop to the hard, polished tiles
below. He landed with a terrible suddenness and a sickening thud. A dark corona
haloed his head. The blood and the clatter of his knife across the baked clay
squares, kick-started my brain and released my frozen muscles.
#####
Hope
you enjoyed the read. I also hope it grabbed you by the neck and demanded you order
a copy of the book. Except for the famous ones, authors are always poor and
starving. At any rate, that’s it until next week – same time, same place.
Thanks
for reading. Take a look around the blog site while you’re here.
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
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