by Colin Deerwood
I like my coffee hot and black. I was drinking a strong tea that had been poured over half a dozen sugar cubes. The daily blatt’s morning edition headlines screamed MASSACRE IN THE HEIGHTS and took up almost all of the space above the fold to make up for the fact that they didn’t have any information except that the cops had found what appeared to be a shootout in an attempt at robbery. Even though I had the inside track of what really happened, I paid attention to what the news hacks had come up with. That the police were baffled came as no surprise. G-men were being brought in to help with the investigation. That was funnier than Dagwood.
Soloman, I kinda figured, was a respected businessman with international connections. He had ties to refugee organizations who were helping displaced people who were fleeing the krauts and the nasties in the Balkans around where I was guessing Rebecca was from. Rabbi Joe, Joseph Frank, they called him, also well respected and a community leader, resided at that address but was unharmed. According to unofficial reports, two of the stiffs were also residents of that suite of apartments, a third, thought to be one of the robbers, was Asiatic which was another way of saying Chinese or Japanese. Half a dozen people had been taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds. A few residents were also not accounted for. There was an ill lit photo of a large room with a long table I took to be the dining room. A trio of men in fedoras with their hands in the pockets of their overcoats very much out of place, Police were questioning neighbors and were asking witnesses with information to please step forward.
I looked up at one of the unaccounted for residents and a witness and got a frown. I’d been getting them since I woke up. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate all she’d done for me. I didn’t expected her to wash my trousers and iron them dry and thought I’d thanked her by saying “you didn’t have to do that.” And she’d grabbed a morning paper as soon as the bundles hits the bricks at the newsstand down the block. She’d obviously read the reported account of what she’d been in the middle of and that giving a cause for worry. But that wasn’t it, exactly.
I had to ask, “Where’s the library?” I got a crossword puzzled look. “The terlit, the commode?” and I was hoping that it wasn’t a bucket behind a curtain.
The confidence that had been a part of her upbeat personality seemed shaken and I suppose it coulda been my fault. I had the choice between being a good guy by being a bad guy or a bad guy by being a good guy. I never thought of myself as a good guy. On the streets, do-gooding tends to get kicked to the gutter. I don’t even know why I chose pain over pleasure or maybe the pain was the pleasure of being perverse. So I said, “No.” And when I saw her look, I said, “Not now.” I wise up at the worst times, and when it happens, I don’t know why it doesn’t happen more often. As a result, I got some much need shut eye while I suppose she stewed over why I didn’t give her a tumble. I had to work out my next step but she had her own ideas.
“I cannot go back to them, Lack, you must understand. They are bad men, dishonorable men. Even my Zayde is foolish and old fashioned and believes the lies they tell him. He was my last hope to make them let you go. You are not at fault. You are good man, Lack, I can see that now.”
My ears heated up and I was hoping I wasn’t running a fever. “You have to find your father and tell him you are all right. To find out if he’s alright. Do you have a phone number you can call in case of an emergency, somewhere you can go to be safe.
“I am safe here, Lack. This is the only place I know other than the room behind the kitchen in the apartments.”
“But what about your things? Your clothes?” I had a pain behind my eyes that wasn’t going away and I wanted to blame Max’s hooch. Besides I wasn’t having any luck convincing her that the worst for her was probably over. “Once this gets calmed down, you can go to your father and tell him you’re safe. Who knows, he might even show up here looking for you.”
“No if he is not here by now, he has either been detained or he is not coming back.”
“You don’t know that he’s dead.”
She shook her head as if to rid herself of a sad expression. “No, I don’t think he is dead because now I understand what has happened.” Now she gave a sardonic little twist to her mouth. “You came to the apartments at a fortunate time, Lackland Ask. Did you not notice the large gathering of men? You came at the end of a long day of discussion and planning by the men of I don’t know what but I can assume it was to do about the refugees who are being detained in Albania. It is a very complicated situation my father has told me.” She shook her head, “He treats me like a child.” Her blue eyes blazed with hurt. “I know what he does for them. He is a proud man and a believer in the cause. It is why he does what he does and wants to keep the truth from me.”
“Well slap me silly and call me Einstein. You’re a Red!”
She must have noticed my surprised look. “What do you know about me, Lackland Ask?” She gave a fierce smile. “You know where I am from, I am a refugee from Salonika, I have no papers, and I cannot go to the authorities. When I was young I play the piano at five years old. I was reading the classics by ten. Then I was sent to special school in Zurich where I belong to a group 
of comrades, we called ourselves the “red kerchief” because that was our uniform, a red kerchief around our necks. When the war came I return to Salonika. My mother was a school teacher and belong to a political party prohibited by the metaxfascist government. The secret police arrest everyone in connection and steal their property. The Black Hand gangsters firebomb our place of worship and kidnap those of our faith for ransom. My mother was torture until death. My father escape to Istanbul on a Black Sea freighter and with help of compatriots come to America. I stay behind to be with my mother and help hide refugees until she is arrested and I hear she is dead. I have to flee because the secret police wishes to arrest me, too. I catch fishing boat across to island of Lesbos, and then to Anatolya where I ride many bus lorry wagon for many days to reach Beirut where after a long wait I am able to catch ship to come to this city and find my father who has joined with Herr Doktor Soloman and his refugee organization and where I can get new papers to say who I am and why we must fight for the revolution and overthrow the oligarchy!”
That made my ears perk up. And the more she talked the more I was beginning to get the picture. She went to a fancy school where they filled her head with a lot of baloney about truth and justice and capitalism and oppressed masses and fired her up with a fever to change the world to be a better place for people and puppy dogs. What she didn’t realize that if it we’re for dog food, the dogs would be eating each other and even bit the hand that might pet them. All this high toned coffeehouse jabber disappears as soon as you step out on to the street where you have to look three way, right, left and right again if you didn’t want to get upended by some bat out of hell, I wanted to tell her. Someone was always on the grift and they didn’t really need to have a fine opinion or reason to take you to the cleaners. You’re just another pebble in the path leading to the top trod on by an endless stream of crooks and cons with table manners and nice suits with their hand in your pocket and who would think nothing of snuffing you as if you were a bug, maybe even less because at least they have to admit the bug’s existence. I was trying to tell her all that and if the people at the top of the heap ain’t buying it, it ain’t getting sold, but she was all pink in the face, eye bugging with intensity, declaiming that the workers of the world had to unite and overthrow the ruling class. I knew they only way that got done was through strong arm robbery, what some might want to call revolution. I had to laugh. “Well slap me silly and call me Einstein. You’re a Red!”
It was probably the wrong thing to say. I got the frown again and the glare that went with it. “I am not a color! I am a human being who wishes for equal rights for all mankind!”
I didn’t want to tell her she was in the minority so I concentrated on the matter at hand. I didn’t doubt that her people even her father and maybe even the cops would show up at the shop. I needed to make myself scarce and even though the kid had got her hooks into me, I was going to have to slip free if I was going to get back what was mine, with interest. I had a diamond in me and I had to get it out. A good strong cup of Java would have done the trick without thinking. The tea, strong and sugary as it was, was making me think about what I had to do and I was wondering if I was up to the intellectual effort. One of the things I learned from my old man was to make sure you were in the proper circumstances and that was by sitting in the library as it was often called. And if I went to library I would need reading material. I noticed that she had been filling in the squares on the crossword puzzle so that ruled that section out. She’d explained when I noticed her scanning the columns of clues, “This is how I am learning vocabulary for to better my English.” She’d said it with a beam of pride. The screaming front page headline seemed untouchable so I opted for the for the funny page.
I had to ask, “Where’s the library?” I got a crossword puzzled look. “The terlit, the commode?” and I was hoping that it wasn’t a bucket behind a curtain.
She gave me a look of pleasant surprise. “So it is called that also, the library! Of course!” She had a key and pointed me to the water closet down the hallway past the broom closet that led down to the furnace room. “Be careful the super does not see you.” It was a tiny spot crowded with a corroded gravity flush commode, a scummy washbasin, a battered plumber’s helper and a stinking soaked mop.
Staring at the blue and red can of Drano on the shelf under the sink wasn’t helping, but then neither had Maggie and Jiggs, Orphan Annie, Gasoline Alley, Mickey Finn, or Terry and the Pirates. My brain was sending commands down to the engine room but nothing was turning or churning. Popeye , The Katzenjammer Kids, Mutt or Jeff couldn’t take my mind off what I had to do. I was about to give in and pull my pants up from around my ankles when I felt the tremor, faintly, but I knew my gut had finally made up its mind and was sending signals to set off a chain of events. I quickly freed a double page of newspaper and slid it under the seat and then sat back down to let nature take its course. I was hoping that what I was expecting was at the head of the line and that I wouldn’t have to wait for the next installment.
I stink, I’ve been told that many times, mainly by dames, and for entirely different reasons. This time I was looking at the evidence that I did and trying not to add to it with something coming up my throat. I set the package on the washbasin and slowly ran water over the sticky stinking muck. They were two well-formed specimens. I began separating them with a pencil tip. Most of it washed away as a disgusting brown slurry and I almost lost it down the drain and had to stop up the hole with my thumb while my other hand carefully separated the tiny chunk of gravel to one side of the basin and onto a dry section of the newspaper. I held the pebble under the faucet and let the slow stream wash the dirt away. It still looked a bit of grit but now that I knew what it was it was more than that. Slipping it into my vest pocket, I ran water over my hands washing off the crap and scrubbing my fingers with the bar of lye soap on the shelf next to the can of Drano. No matter how many times I put my nose to them, the stink lingered around my sparkling cuticles. I dumped the newspaper and the remains into the commode and after slipping into my suspenders, strode out into the hallway and back into the tailor’s shop.
“You seemed pleased with yourself.”
“I’m happy to report that everything came out ok.”
“It was then a good ending?”
“Yeah, very satisfactory.”
“Did you bring some of it with you. I detect. . .something. In the air?”
“Maybe we should find some fresh air. Things are looking up and there’s a chop suey joint down the street in need of my business.”
“Do you think it is safe to be in the public? The police?”
“I plan get as far away as possible from the cops and this little beauty is my ticket out of here. I just got a little bit of unfinished business to take care of and I’m gone.”
“Oh, that is the diamond. Have you had on you all this time? I did not find it when I was washing your clothes.”
“I had it in me.”
“Oh. . .ooh, that explains the odor.”
Yeah, well I didn’t have much choice. I had to do what I had to do do.”
“That is joke, yes?”
“Yeah , you catch on fast.”
“And where is this place you will be gone now that you have a diamond.”
“Any place but here. But I hear South America is nice. Rio, Buenos Aires, maybe even Santiago in Chile. I hear the weather is like California, and it’s not as expensive. A cheap place to lie low while I’m on the lam.”
“Now you are just making up words. I have never seen this word in my cross puzzles.”
“What’s a three letter word meaning ’23 skidoo’?”
“You are making fun of me but you also make me laugh, Lack.”
“Yeah I’m just a barrel of laughs once you get to know me. I kill ya with my jokes cause ya die laughing.”
“Now you speak of murder? Why is this funny?”
“Forget it. It’s just an expression.”
“Lack, I have something else to tell you.”
“You’re full of surprises.”
“Herr Doktor cheat you from the diamonds like I told you. They have the real book that you have sold them for the diamonds. They trick you with a false book soaked to look like it has fallen in the commode. I hear them laughing about this and I think they are cruel and dishonorable men. And I think that they must be not succeeding in this cheating.”
“I appreciate the thought, but a diamond in the hand is worth six in the safe.”
“That is just it, Lack, there are none in the safe!”
“Whaddayamean?”
“When they have their meeting in Zayde’s apartment I go into Herr Doktor’s office and take the diamonds from the safe.”
“You did what? How did you know the combination?”
“It is my birthday.”
“So you have the diamonds?”
I just wanted to curl up somewhere warm, soft, safe and quiet. Instead I was on the back of a noisy chopper with a gale force wind blowing through my skimpy blouse and up my long skirt. And I was on the down slide, the price I had to pay for my extraordinary power. I’d been there before, guided through my initiation by Trayann, and allowed to right my tumbled world before the blazing hearth of her stone hut with a bowl of herb tea, listening to the murmured litany that would help ease me out of the depths of my autism.
shotgun. The blast hit Rhonda on the left side just as she got off a round striking Blackie in the back. She was thrown backwards, taking the oil lamp with her. It shattered on the concrete floor sending flaming oil in all directions. Timmy’s legs were pinned under the weight of Blackie’s body.
—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe 
Deep in the redwood wilds along the Corkscrew River, someone is shooting neighborhood dogs. The year is 1985 and Lee Malone, former fashion model, queen of the runways from Paris to Milan, once dubbed the most beautiful woman in the world, now a part-time reporter for The Corkscrew County Grapevine, is looking for a story to sink her teeth into. When Lee finds the owner of Kelly’s Seaside Resort brutally murdered, it leads her on an adventure that includes a mysterious gray van, another murder, extortion, pornography, sex slavery, and a shadowy organization of militant feminists known as SAPHO. In the process, Lee Malone’s notorious past catches up with her. 
Men in suits suddenly appeared on the platform with the frantic looks of having just missed the train. From the window I watched them scamper to the brink of the tracks as it accelerated out of the station. The car was empty except for a blind man slumped forward, propped up by his white cane, at the other end by the door leading to the next car. I sat facing Becky on the seat across from me, keeping an eye on the door leading into the rest of the train. It was the downtown local because that was the direction of the one room apartment I hadn’t been back to for over a week. It seemed like the obvious place to head. Except. What if Kovic’s goons or the goons in blue had my place staked out? The Y happened to be downtown, too, and the thought crossed my mind that for two bits a night I could hole up there for a while. But then Rebecca’s old man had his used clothing store practically across the street.
With barely a hint of nonchalance they sauntered down the aisle to where we were sitting. Beanie, flanked by string bean and bowtie, took the toothpick out of his mouth and pointed it at me. “Well if it ain’t grandma and little red riding hood. You’ll never guess who we are.”
Rebecca didn’t have a key. She was going to have to wake up the super. She had me wait in a dark doorway of a shop further down where had anyone seen me in my overcoat and bare legs would have called the cops to report a flasher. When the light inside the shop blink on and off I would know to come to the door and she would let me in.
Apollinara gnawed her lower lip, hands clasped over the small Bible resting on top of the yarn basket in her lap. She stopped rocking and went over the scene of her husband’s departure again.
The old man watched the smoke rise from his cigar. Whenever he thought of Indians, the pile of moccasins he had dumped at Pete Maxwell’s feet came to mind.
Whenever Shelton would take his hat off, his thin red hair stood straight up like the flame on the tip of a Lucifer. 
Skinner was a dirty job by any standards. Thinking back, the kid didn’t know what he was getting himself into. Or had he got the kid into it? 
business. Out on the range it was just you, your knife, and the carcass. The hunters would be scouting the river bottoms and the only way you could keep track of them was to remember the direction of the sound of their rifle fire. The kid hadn’t picked up the skills as quickly as he had anticipated and often times someone from the party would have to go out and find him, lost among the bluffs, wandering in circles. Shelton said he prayed for some Comanche to lift his scalp and put the poor bastard out of his misery.
He had lost just about everything he had ever had. He was tired of losing. This snoozer, this goat-boy, would not prevail, no matter what the court had decided. He would not lose this one.
He coughed a dry cough and it reminded him of Ash. Ash was perhaps his greatest loss. He had grown to depend on Ash’s humor and irascibility to balance the grimness of his own turn of mind. He valued his old friend’s rather exaggerated view of life, how the boring and dull events of every day were the foundations of what he liked to call ‘myth.” He could remember how all his petty little worries would disappear after he and Ash had spent time jawing and sipping, sipping and jawing. He was also reminded of how dimly Polly viewed this pastime, and how Ash, a regular Sunday dinner guest when they lived in Roswell, had to endure her steely glares. “Ash and his ideas,” she would mutter after his friend had fallen asleep in the old wing-backed chair in front of the fireplace. When Ash was dying, though, she had prepared the extra room at the Uvalde ranch for him, and had seen to his every comfort. Ash’s death was a slow one. His liver was going, but despite the pain, he still liked to spin a good yarn.
I had been standing on the balcony off the mezzanine of the faux castle admiring the view and accepting that I would soon be bathed in a chemical stew altering my perception with heightened awareness. Already the edges of the landscape had become noticeably vibrant. The live oaks shimmered with golden intensity as day waned. In the distance I made out a metal sided warehouse encircled by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and, barely visible just above the roofline, the gridded arc of a satellite dish. I had seen a similar one at the Prince’s chateau outside Paris. Again my curiosity led me down the speculative path. Why would a warehouse have a satellite dish and be surrounded by such a barbed wire perimeter? Why were limousines arriving with what appeared to be a scheduled regularity and its occupants ushered, not into the charity event in the castle, but into the warehouse? Why were they all men? I imagined Tommy Perro alias Tommy Montague holding a high stakes poker game to recoup his contribution to charity.
I watched from the wings as old Tommy was positioned in his wheelchair at the foot of the runway. Tommy Junior came up and glowered at me. He yanked the front of my blouse down to expose my breasts. “Let them see what they’re getting for their money.”
“What floor are we on?”
She pointed a finger at his puffed out chest. “Then something do it about!” she said with all the authority of a shrew. “I have verk go now. Come, Mrs. Krawitch.” Hooking an arm around my stooped shoulders, she carefully steered my shuffling progress through the maze of idling squad cars, occasionally glaring back accusingly at the two perplexed coppers.
“But to answer your question: I used to come out here all the time but not in a long while, not since a group of us snuck into the construction site.. That’s when I realized that you can’t fight them on their own terms, otherwise they’ll always win. They have a bottomless source of money and all we have are donations. So I chose the path of productive nonresistance.” She glanced around, wistful, nostalgic. “The creek’s changed some, lower than I’ve ever seen it. Climate change, you know.” She looked at him, a knowing smile wrinkling her high cheekbones. “Around here Sparta Creek has always been known as ‘Party Creek.’ It might even be in your intelligence dossier on EAF, but some of the earliest discussions we had as fledgling earth activists about saving the planet from this industrial age capitalist runaway train destroying the ecosystem were around campfires down here, setting our world saving agenda, away from the spying eyes of the military industrial complex, the man.” Ionna chuckled. “Or so we assumed.” She turned, looking up at the embankment of wild willow and dune grass edging the gravel creek bed, and pointed at a hillside populated with coyote brush, anemic pines, and stunted oaks. “That way.”
“Wow!” she’d exclaimed under her breath “This is crazy! The last time I was here there was not a stick standing, totally leveled , and now it’s like they rebuilt it exactly like it was when I attended camp.” She’d thrown him a look of disbelief. “Except for that!” She’d stepped forward to point at a squat ovoid tank tower outfitted with an array of dishes and antennae. “That’s not the mini tower I remember.”
“You can have it back now,” he said, returning the bronze medallion. She lit up with a genuine smile that acknowledged her gratitude. He pointed to the bag. “There’s a business card of an antique dealer in there, too. Give him a call if you ever want to sell it. The amulet has been appraised and old Dad Ailess was right, you could probably buy a proper mobile home overlooking the ocean, a couple of cars to go with it, and still have some mad money left over for what that hunk of metal is worth.”
I happily complied, the feel of natural fabric on my bare skin like a recovered memory. I brushed my hair out and let it fall to my shoulders like I wore it when I was a free spirit running on the black sand beaches far from the daily pressures of high fashion and celebrity.
Amateurs have a tendency to carry more meat on their bones which made them dangerous to the intent of high fashion. As every designer has told every model he has ever draped, flesh destroys fabric. There were some models who took it to the extreme. I had been one who had trod that fine line. JJ, on the other hand, as an amateur, had bulges that stretched the limits of design. But then some men find that attractive.
Dime Pulp 