Ed Gorman - Save the Last Dance for Me

Save The Last Dance For Me

by Ed Gorman

Volume I of Two Volumes

Pages i-Xii and 1-168

Published by:

Carroll and Graf Publishers

An Imprint of

Avalon Publishing Group Inc.

161 William St., 16th Floor

New York, Ny 10038.

Further reproduction or distribution in other than a specialized

format is prohibited.

Produced in braille for the Library of Congress, National Library

Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, by National Braille

Press Inc., 2003.

This braille edition contains the

entire text of the print edition.

Copyright 2002 by Ed Gorman

Book Jacket Information iii

A Sam McCain Mystery

Praise For Ed Gormans

Sam McCain Mystery Series

Sweetly nostalgic mystery.

[McCains] zeal to cleanse Black River Falls of evil makes him the kind of hero any small town could take to its heart.

Marilyn Stasio, New York

Times Book Review

Gormans delightful series

provoke[s] a bracing nostalgia for a time that was neither as innocent nor as dull as is sometimes said..Wall Street Journal

Gormans successful capturing of time and place sharply evokes the twilight of the ejs..Los Angeles Times

No writer captures the mood of 1950s middle America better than Gorman.

..Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Gorman seems to have hit a mother lode with this series..Publishers Weekly

In Black River Falls good and

evil clash with the same heartbreaking results as they have in the more urban crime drama of Block or Leonard..Booklist

Murder strikes a poisonous note in

1950s Iowa as the acclaimed Sam McCain mystery series continues.

It is August 1960, and Vice

President Richard Milhous Nixon is

riding the campaign trail. Among his next stops is Black River Falls, Iowaa prospect that has the whole town talking and Judge Esme Anne Whitney, the

presidential candidates old friend, bustling with Republican fervor. Out on the north edge of town, meanwhile, in the abandoned garage where the country preacher John Muldaur has set up his ministry, the snakes are rattling. Very Muldaur has not endeared himself to the people of Black River Falls either with his snake-handling ceremonies or with the anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic pamphletsThe Jews

Behind John F. Kennedy screams their headlinet hes been circulating. Still, the towns youngest lawyer and sometime private investigator, Sam McCain, finds

Muldaurs claim that he may be the target of a papist assassination plot largely improbable.

McCain cant deny, though, that somebody has got it in bad for Muldaur when, apparently by snakebite but actually from strychnine-laced Pepsi, the preacher drops dead at his own altar.

With Nixons visit only a week away Judge Whitney wants this inconvenient matter of murder cleared up fast, to keep the entire population of Black River Falls from looking like a bunch of hill people to the Gop and the national press. Between McCain and the solution stand a heap of local prejudices, some unpleasant family secrets, the dim-witted police chief Cliffie Sykes, Jr., another

corpse, and a cageful of rattlesnakes.

Ed Gorman, winner of the Shamus, the Spur, and the International Fiction Writers Award among others, is the author of many novels, including Cold Blue Midnight and Senatorial Privilege. He has

written three other mysteries in the Sam McCain series..The Day the Music

Died, Wake Up Little Susie, and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?and is the editor of Mystery Scene magazine. He lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Jacket design by Susan Shapiro,

adapted from original series

design by Saksa Art and Design

Jacket photographs:

The Drifters; Frank Driggs

Collection/getty Images all other

photos Hulton/archivest Getty Images

Author photograph: Vii

Amy Kinney

Also by Ed Gorman

The Sam McCain Series

The Day the Music Died; Wake Up Little Susie; Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

The Jack Dwyer Series

New, Improved Murder; Murder

Straight Up; Murder in the Wings; The Autumn Dead; A Cry of Shadows

The Tobin Series

Murder on the Aisle; Several Deaths Later

The Robert Payne Series

Blood Moon; Hawk Moon; Harlots

Moon

Suspense Novels

The Night Remembers; The First Lady; Runner in the Dark; Senatorial Privilege Short Story Collections

Prisoners; Dark Whispers; Moonchasers

All of the characters in this book are ix fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

For Joe and Mitsue Gorman

and the grandkids

Shannon, P.J., and Regan

and For Sadao, Norika, and

Hisami Sugiyama

with great love, affection, and joy

I have drawn extensively from Richard Xi Hofstadters fine book

Anti-Intellectualism in American

Life.

E.G.

It was not until I was 8 years old that I discovered that not all the world was Roman Catholic.

When John F. Kennedy ran for president, it became clear that many Americans outside our homogeneous enclave considered our faith strange and suspicious and threatening. It turned out we were a they.

Anna Quindlen

Save The Last Dance

For Me

You hear them, McCain?

Oh, I hear them all right.

And I did. How could you not hear them?

So you know what they are? she said.

You bet I do, I said.

And youre not scared?

Who said I wasnt scared?

You did. On the way over.

Oh.

So you are scared? she said.

A little, I guess.

Im scared. But then Im a girl. Im not a big brave five-foot-four he-man like you.

Five-five.

Yeah, in motorcycle boots maybe.

In motorcycle boots Id be

five-six. If I owned a pair.

Have I ever told you Im

five-foot-seven?

Not more than 4eagcb times, I said.

Almost five-eight, actually.

All right, Im scared. Does that make you feel better?

She gave me her best kid-sister grin and squeezed my hand. It was a kid-sister squeeze, too. Nothing romantic.

Actually, that does make me feel better, McCain. So lets go in, all right?

Just as we walked away from my ea red Ford ragtop, she stopped me and said. Actually, maybe were imagining it.

Imagining what?

You know. Hearing the rattlesnakes. I dont think you can hear rattlesnakes this far away.

You want to get out a tape measure?

The grin again. It always made me want to kiss her. But she was married and we were both reasonably honorable people. So I knew better than to try and she knew better than to let me should I be foolish enough to try.

I guess I should do a little scene-setting here.

The date is August 19, 1960.

The town is Black River Falls, Iowa, pop. 20eacjj. The pretty, red-haired young woman Im with is Kylie Burke, ace reporter for The Black River Falls

Clarion. Only reporter, actually. She isnt writing the storyher boss is doing thatbut she thought itd look good on her resume (in case the New York Times calls

someday) to say she did background on a group of Ozark folks who moved here after getting kicked out of every state contiguous to ours. Seems these folk incorporate rattlesnakes in their services and that is a violation of the law. And after all the rain we had this past spring, there are plenty of timber rattlers to be had in the woods.

Kylies a bit uneasy about visiting these folks, as am I, so were here together.

My name is Sam McCain. Im the youngest and poorest attorney in town. Im also an investigator for Judge Esme Anne

Whitney, the handsome, middle-aged woman who presides over district court. At the age of twenty-four, I earn more from Judge Whitney than I do from my law practice. Im here tonight because I was summoned by Reverend John Muldaur, the hill-country man who procures the rattlers and oversees the services.