Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

I shook my head to indicate that I did not understand.

“Don’t you see?” Jake made a falling gesture with one of his arms. “She landed face first in the bowl of liquid smoke.” He prompted me with his other hand, the one holding the glass.

A light began to dawn in my head. “She went—” I mimicked Jake’s falling gesture with my hand, “—down in smoke?”

He began to laugh uncontrollably. “Yes, yes,” he sputtered. “Down in smoke.” He laughed on for a few seconds and then added, in a more controlled voice, “Of course, I had to hold her head down in the bowl until I was certain...” His voice trailed off and he turned morose again. “It was a great tragedy, of course. A terrible tragedy.” He poured himself another drink and stared at the glass in silence.

After a while I broke the silence with another question. “What about the body, Jake?”

His features went soft. “Aw — I buried her in a beautiful spot. It’s up on a hill above the river. A beautiful stand of hickory.” He stood up shakily and opened one of the fire doors. Again, the flames made magical shadows dance around us. He turned to me, the poker dangling from his hand. “You don’t use liquid smoke, do you?”

“Who, me?” I was offended. “Of course not.”

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “You know better. It’s not—” he looked at me, and in an instant of understanding we spoke in unison, “—the real thing.” He sat down again and poured me another drink. “Barbecue is my life,” he said.

We did not speak again that night. It was like a religious experience — just me and Jake and the cathedral oven.

Mojo Man by Doug Allyn

Axton watched the Beech Bonanza drop out of the waning sun and touch down lightly on the runway, snow devils swirling and dancing behind it as it taxied toward the terminal. Turco’s charter flight? He hoped so. He hated waiting around airfields when he wasn’t getting paid.

Linnea Harris apparently didn’t like waiting, either. She’d been pacing the nearly deserted V.I.P. lounge since Axton arrived. She was a striking woman, not pretty in the conventional sense — hawkish, aquiline nose, wide set gray eyes, short auburn hair, no makeup, none needed. She was wearing a rumpled dun trenchcoat that somehow looked chic on her. A tarpaulin would have looked chic on her.

Her companion, Benjie, a chubby guy in thick granny glasses and faded denims, knew how to wait. He was folded across two chairs, zonked, a “Turco and the Turks” tour cap tipped down over his eyes.

The sleeper suddenly blinked awake, caught Ax staring at him, and grinned, an open apple pie of a smile. He stood up, yawned and stretched, then trotted over to the tunnel door just as Gary Turco pushed through it. Turco handed the kid a guitar case, and Benjie jogged off, no greeting, no handshake. All business. Turco was taller than Axton had expected, cornstalk thin, pallid as a vampire, his albino blond hair teased into a rock star shambles, stub-bled jaw, sunglasses. He was wearing an ankle-length black leather overcoat.

“Welcome to Detroit, Mr. Turco,” Linnea Harris said. “Good flight?”

“Fine,” Turco said curtly as Ax sauntered up. “Is this guy my new bodyguard?”

“No, sir,” Axton said, his drawl thick enough to pour over grits, “leastways not yet. Benjie asked me to meet your plane, but he said you’d decide whether I get hired or no.”

“Where’d Benjie get you?”

“Bob Seger’s road manager recommended me. I’ve worked security for Seger, Rod Stewart, the Stones. My name’s Axton, R. B. People call me Ax.”

“Yeah?” Turco said, unimpressed. “I guess you’re big enough, Axton, but your face looks like you lose more fights than you win.”

“Motorcycle accident,” Ax said. “You lookin’ for a bodyguard or a model?”

“You got a concealed weapons permit?”

Ax nodded.

“Then I guess you’ll do for now.”

“Maybe not,” Ax said, “we need to clear the air first. If I sign on, I bodyguard. I don’t gofer, I don’t pimp. Unless you’re diabetic I don’t want to see any needles; if you smoke dope, you hold your own stash. I’ll keep the little girls from ripping your clothes off, but I won’t sneak ’em up to your room. You still want to hire me?”

Turco arched one eyebrow and shot Linnea Harris a look. “Did anybody tell him why I need a new guy?”

“Mr. Turco’s last bodyguard is in a Toronto hospital,” Linnea said evenly, gauging Ax’s reaction, “with two broken arms and a concussion. And just for the record, Mr. — Axton, he wasn’t a pimp either. He was a former N.F.L. linebacker.”

“What happened to him?”

“Two guys came by my dressing room at the Toronto Civic Auditorium while I was onstage,” Turco said. “There was a — scuffle, my bodyguard got the short end.”

“Two broken arms doesn’t sound like a scuffle,” Ax said, “more like a train wreck. What’d they want?”

“We don’t know, they didn’t say.”

“Do you know what your bodyguard said to them?”

“What he said? No, why?”

“Just wonderin’,” Ax shrugged, “so I can avoid sayin’ it to anybody.”