Evidence

by Dennis Palumbo

About the Author: Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), Dennis Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press). His series of mystery thrillers (Mirror Image, Fever Dream, Night Terrors, Phantom Limb, and the latest, Head Wounds, was named SUSPENSE MAGAZINE’s “Best of 2018”).

Excerpt

Ervin Biggs was the best-dressed killer I’d ever seen.

I ought to know. After all, most Italian-Americans of a certain age had at least one tailor in the family. In my case, it was Uncle Salvatore, who to a boy of six or seven seemed about a hundred years old. The son of an immigrant who’d arrived in the States at Ellis Island, Sal ran a small tailor’s shop in downtown. Whenever I’d be taken there by one of my aunts for a visit, the tiny, elderly man always had fresh pizzelles or anisette cookies to offer me. Then he’d give me a lecture on the different types of fabrics and modes of stitching, most of which I forgot by the end of the drive home.

However, over the years I’ve retained just enough of his sartorial wisdom to recognize the hand-sewn quality of Ervin Biggs’s suit. When we’d shaken hands in the lobby of the Burgoyne Plaza, I noted how crisp and fresh it looked on his wiry, compact body. Even at this late hour, after a long day’s toil in his law office.

As did the man himself. Probably nearing sixty, he had shrewd, steady eyes, closely trimmed hair and severe, dark-framed glasses.

We found a quiet corner booth in the bar and ordered drinks from our pretty, solemn-faced waitress. I hadn’t been in the Burgoyne for a while, but knew it well from earlier visits. The trendy hotel was one of those places where political bigwigs and Hollywood celebrities stayed when in town. Where campaign fund-raisers were held. Where the wealthy celebrated their children’s birthdays and bar mitzvahs.

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