Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 120, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 733 & 734, September/October 2002

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Authors often have favorites among their stories, and this tightly woven crime caper is one that particularly pleased its creator, Clark Howard. Mr. Howard is a five-time winner of EQMM’s Readers Award, a top true crime writer, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award winning short story writer. Though the setting for the tale is a place famous in connection with our current President, Mr. Bush is not one of the story’s characters.

Frank Raine wasn’t supposed to drink alcoholic beverages. He had been out on parole from the Texas penitentiary up in Huntsville for just a week, and he knew full well that the Tanqueray and tonic in front of him on the bar could put him back in the place they called The Walls for another two, maybe three years. He wasn’t supposed to associate with known felons, either, but he was about to break that rule, too, waiting as he was in a small Houston bar to meet his old cellmate, Jesus Ortega. Because the Spanish pronunciation of Ortega’s given name was Hay-soose, everyone called him “Soose.” Raine had not seen him since Soose made parole some eight months earlier, but when Frank walked out of the joint a week ago, a message from a gate trusty had been passed to him, a phone number on a scrap of paper, and when he called it a couple of days later, Soose answered. Now, as Frank Raine took his first tangy sip of the T-and-T, Soose walked in the door and Frank rose to greet him. The two men embraced and exchanged amigos. Soose was carrying about thirty extra pounds, and Frank patted the Latino’s belly. “Who’s the father, man?”

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