Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(78)
Angela luxuriates in the question. Over the reporter’s shoulder she sees Ruby surrounded by photographers. Anthony Fox is trying to edge into the limelight. Unnoticed, Glenn Lancaster moves quickly through the crowd, making his way into the theater. There are no photo ops for executive producers. Angela feels sorry for the beautiful young woman on his arm. She looks familiar, and after a moment Angela realizes she might have been one of the production assistants that worked on Scandal. In charge of props? Possibly.
The lights in the theater lobby are flashing and ushers are shooing people inside. Angela answers the reporter’s question and a few more before excusing herself. She hurries inside and takes her seat next to Ruby.
The house lights go down. The theater reverberates with music as the movie starts. There, among the opening credits, is Angela’s production company: Adventuress Films LLC. The logo is the red outline of two women, both wearing slinky low-cut gowns. Their arms are linked.
MARTIN X
by Gary Phillips
The dean of black empowerment lay dead on the worn throw rug. A ragged bullet hole violated Professor Lincoln Barrow’s wrinkled forehead. He was dressed in slacks and slippers, a ratty robe splayed open over an athletic T-shirt covering his pot belly. Near his outstretched hand was the spilled cup of tea he’d been holding. The stuff had soaked into the rug, the cup and saucer amazingly unbroken though the summation was he’d dropped to the floor instantly after being shot.
“That was part of a set C.L.R. James had given him,” said the beefier of the two men who stood looking down at the body. He meant the fine china items on the floor. “He mentioned it to me once,” he added, as if that meant the murdered man had shared a confidence.
The one he told this to was also over six feet. He had shoulders like a linebacker, thick Fu Manchu mustache, modest sideburns, and hair flattened on top and close-cropped at the sides, what they called a “fade” in uptown barbershops. John “Dock” Watson turned from the body and began inspecting the spacious room—chamber, he supposed it would be called in the Post. Two walls were composed of tall built-in bookshelves. On those packed shelves were numerous first and rare editions, from W.E.B. DuBois’ The Soul of Black Folk to Capital by Karl Marx and a personally signed copy of I am not Spock by the actor Leonard Nimoy.
Watson knew one of the late leader’s guilty pleasures was being a science fiction fan. He could imagine a future when all were free to pursue their hopes and dreams. But now his resourceful intellect had been stilled, his inspiring voice silenced to inspire no more. Replacing the biography, his roaming gaze indicated nothing on the shelves had been disturbed—but Watson knew better than to believe such. He knew at some point it might mean all the books would have to be taken down and the surfaces behind them studied carefully for a hole, possibly hidden among the wood grain—or even a hole that had been recently patched from the other side. He quickly took in the rest of the great man’s private library and study. There weren’t many framed photos or plaques on the walls, though what there were of them chronicled the stalwarts of the domestic and international freedom struggle. An animated Fidel Castro, intense Malcolm X, and the good Doctor sitting around a table when Castro had stayed at the Hotel Teresa in Harlem, the time he came to speak at the U.N. Grace Lee Boggs accepting an award from the doctor-professor at some ceremony, and a grainy shot taken of him marching with farm workers, in the lead alongside organizers Delores Huerta and Cesar Chavez in California’s agricultural-rich Central Valley.
There were rectangular windows high up on the walls, and Watson stood on a footstool the deceased man had also used. Though he was taller than Barrow had been, Watson couldn’t reach the windows over the bookshelves.
“There must be some sort of extension he used,” he said to the other man.
“Here it is.” He began to reach for a length of slim pole with a catch on the end of it leaning against the dead man’s desk.
“Don’t touch it,” Watson said, looking over his shoulder.
“But it would be normal for our prints to be in here.”
“I know, but you’re going to tell the cops everything the way it happened—only, leave me out.”
“Right on.”
Watson moved the footstool about, standing on it and studying each window. The room was a basement construction and the windows let out onto the sidewalk. They were barred on the inside and as far as he could tell, each was latched in place.
“The heat ain’t gonna like it I busted in the door,” said the good-sized Tony “Squelch” Waller.
“You were doing your job.”
“If I was doing my job, Dr. Barrow would be alive.”
Watson smiled grimly. “Don’t beat yourself up, brother. This was his sanctum sanctorum.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning this is where he went to be alone, to get away from the masses to read and contemplate, or to work on his writing. It wasn’t unusual for him to be holed up days on end.”
“But they got to him, Dock,” Squelch Waller said, strain and worry contorting his mild features. “What the hell we gonna do, man?”
Watson crouched down, studying the doorjamb, faceplate, and lock mechanisms. The door locked from the inside but it wasn’t a sophisticated piece of equipment, no doubt once upon a time bought at the neighborhood hardware store. The door wasn’t that heavy either, but solid wood, dating back to the thirties was his guess. The door chain had also been in place when Waller used his shoulder and a fire axe to get in.