Jerzy's working upstairs at the Closeout Hut, signing tax forms he doesn't understand. It's what Reggie wants. Reggie's downstairs, selling fire-smoked boots to babushkas, taking in pockets full of crumpled twenties and fifties.
But now Jerzy's discovered that Reggie took in something else, a letter. A long time ago. A letter that would have changed Jerzy's life. Now Jerzy's got to change Reggie's life.
And Detective Edrow Fluett's got to figure out how he did it.
CHICAGO BLUES
An anthology edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann;
Bleak House Books - October 2007
"Good Evenin', Blues" by Jack Fredrickson
Sure, Jimbo was mindful of the old Delta legend about bargaining with the devil when he named his blues joint The Crossroads. But that was just a myth -- or so he thought, until the stranger showed up.
"An author with an acclaimed recent debut novel, Jack Fredrickson (A Safe Place for Dying) demonstrates equal talent in short form." - Publishers Weekly
"The Brick Thing"
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
September/October, 2002
A man moves into the house next door. That's reasonable enough, even though the man is very wealthy and it is a neighborhood of modest, single story homes. What's not reasonable is the man starts taking the house apart from the inside, board by board, in the middle of the night. When he thinks no one is watching.
