SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: KID CARDULA

"Kid Cardula" by Jack Ritchie (first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 1976; reprinted in Alfred Hitchock's Anthology #2, Spring/Summer 1978, also published in hardcover as Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Take Your Breath Way, 1977; in Fantastic Creatures, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, & Charles G. Waugh, 1981; in Alfred Hitchcock Tales of Terror, edited by Eleanor Sullivan, 1986; in Fantasy Stories, edited by Andrew Goodwyn, 1991; and in Ritchie's collection Cardula and the Locked Rooms, 2026.

Okay, so the guy's a vampire but neither he nor the author nor Cardula's loyal servant Josef ever mention it directly; neither, it seems do any of Cardula's clients -- and no mention= was ever made about any possible anagrams of Cardula's name.  Ritchie wrote nine stories about Cardula, who becme a private investigator in the second story, with office hours from 8 PM to 4 AM, depending on the solstice.

"Kid Cardula" was the first story in the series.  Cardula is broke and needs rent money.  (Later in the series we learn that he was once very rich but most of his monies were invested in extensive holdings in such countries as Cuba, the Belgian Congo, Lebanon, Angola, and Bangladesh...areas that turned nout to be very poor investments at the time.)  Through reading the sports pages, he learned that there was a great deal of money to bade in boxing for very little (for him) effort.  Cardula, pale skinned, of an uncertain age, and dressed all in black, went to Manny, a local gym owner and boxing manager and offered his services.  

The easiest way to get rid of this guy was to put Cardula in the ring against a professional boxer who would make short work of him.  The boxer hit Cardula with a couple of powerful punches to no effect.  Then Cardula struck out with a left  that was so fast one could hardly see it, and with  that one punch knocked his opponent unconscious.  Manny began to see dollar signs.  Cardula had one condition, however:  he would only fight at night, claiming he suffered from a case of photophobia.  

Cardula's first professional fight was against a rising fighter named McCardle.  McCardle was just a few matches shy of the big time and his scheduled opponent was scratched due to illness.  McCardle needed an easy opponent at the last minute and Cardula appeared to fir the bill.  When the fight weas held, however, Cardula knocked McCardle out.  The fight lasted nineteen seconds, including the count.

After that, Manny convinced Cardula to stretch his matches out and not to go for the knockout so early ion the game.  He even talked Cardula into faking being knocked down a couple of times before wining a match.  Things were going good.  Cardula's rent was paid, he kept winning matches, began to get  a local reputation, and even attracted the interest of a  number of curious women -- none of whom he paid much attention to.  Until...

Cardula told Manny he was quitting the ring and was marrying a very rich lady who had expressed more than an interest in him.  Since she had money, he no longer needed to earn money boxing.  What really happened, though, was that Cardula's distant overseas relatives learned of his boxing career and his growing reputation and advised him to stop.  It was always best for Cardula to "fly" under the radar.

Poor Manny.  His dream of riches managing Cardula had vanished.  But in leaving, Cardula left Manny one final gift in appreciation...

Jack Richie was a master of the criminous short story with never an extraneous word or a word lout of place.  His stories often have a slight humorous bent and an unexpected ending.  I have mentioned before that I feel he was second only to Edward D. Hoch in ingenuity, plot, and originality.  Cardula and the Locked Rooms -- which contains all nine Cardula stories, plus six additional "impossible" crime stories -- is only the sixth Ritchie collection to appear; he wrote over 500 stories so there are still a lot of gold nuggets to be mined.  As you go through life, a simple rule of thumb is never pass up a Jack Ritchie story.

Th June 1976 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (also including stories by Lawrence Block, Nelson DeMille, Kay Nolte Smith, Joyce Harrington, and others) can be found here:

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/PU/AHMM_1976_06.pdf