Category Archives: Pulp Fiction

Better Than Dead—11

November 7, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction"Brother can you spare a dime?", 1940, A Detective Story, Better Than Dead, Crime Fiction, Diamonds and Cucumbers, Fedoras and Flatfoots, Hard Boiled Fiction, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Colin Deerwood

I’m not a big believer in coincidence but Becky’s description of the shooting in Soloman’s flat was going to win me over. She kept it to herself as we made our way through the traffic and gathering crowds drawn by the police action and blocking the once deserted upscale neighborhood street, me still struggling to maintain my stooped over squat pose—there’s no doubt my knees took a beating that night. I finally got to stand tall a couple of blocks later once I was stepping down the tiled stairs to the turnstile and through to the subway platform. Becky kept her grip under my arm, propping me up, even though she didn’t have to at this point.

“Ok,” I said, “tell it to me from the beginning” at the same time realizing that the pain in my head was like a spike being driven through my eye socket and that I had a thirst that would drain a lake.

The platform was empty and silent, no air stirring tunnel roar signaling the approach, trains less frequent in the graveyard hours. From the vantage of the dim lit far end I could keep an eye on the entrance to the platform while staying in the shadows. Becky too kept a focused vigilance. Unless anyone looked close, our disguises held true.

Despite being manhandled by Soloman’s thugs, the adrenaline was keeping me cocked, and my brain clocking a thousand miles an hour though there was no telling how much longer until I sprung a spring. I had to think that I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time or it had something to do with me. Kovic had picked up my trail and that led him to Rabbi Joe and his minions. But if they were after me, why go to all the trouble of shooting up the place. Becky’s description of the gunmen made me think that they might be a gang of professional robbers. There’d been a rash of penthouse robberies in the ritzy neighborhoods around the first of the year. The Anti-Claus Gang, one rag dubbed them as they were after expensive holiday purchases of jewels, gold, and art. Their masked getup was in favor of that conclusion. They might have started up again. And in the report of the previous strong armed heists, there had never been any shootings, just very effective threats. But the one thing that Becky said had me leaning to not a coincidence at all.

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.

She must have read my mind. “Lack, we can hide in my father’s shop, no one will think to look for us there. Today is the Sabbath and he will not. . . Oh!” She caught her breath.

“Was your father’s at Soloman’s when. . . ?

She nodded. “I know he was there but he was not with the others. He has a room behind the kitchen where he can stay when he does not stay at the shop. It is next to my room.” She made a face. “Maybe I should call it a cell where I live and work with the women. But my father is not one of them, the top echelon, Professor Soloman’s council. He has high intelligence but for our cause he is better used analyze strategy to defeat the enemy he told me. But I have never seen him with gun. And guns I saw and guns I heard.” She put her hands to her cheeks in horror. “I could only think, they are ruining the furniture!”

The train pulled into another stations. No one entered the car and the blind man bobbed with the jolt of the train lurching back up to speed.

“Ok,” I said, “tell it to me from the beginning” at the same time realizing that the pain in my head was like a spike being driven through my eye socket and that I had a thirst that would drain a lake.

“It is all so what you say swiftly passing by my eyes, flashing, so fast. One of the maids was look for me and call my name. I should be in my room but she call up the stairwell because she know I have to get away sometime to myself. When I come down, she say I have package, but who would deliver package at that time at night, and before she say any more, loud noise come from front door near where we are stand and men with guns in long coats and hats pulled down over eyes, red kerchiefs over faces, some with racing goggles, rush in

“There were three, maybe five, into parlor when from Herr Doktor’s library’s Isaac the door open to step out with his gun shooting. Then all they started shooting. Isaac fall in the doorway and I see Golie and Herr Doktor and some of other men come with guns shooting. Guns fire from everywhere. The maid, Anya, who had come get me, hit on cheek by splinter of doorway explode from bullet. From my room for my coat I go by back stairs. I was in panic not to go down where there might be others to do me harm. Up is only other way.”

What she described had all the makings of a heist I was convinced. I had a question but a shadow filling the door at the far end of the car distracted me.

She was saying, “But Lack, there is something else I must tell you,” when the door opened and in walked trouble.

One of them was dressed like a typical college kid, tweed suit coat, vee neck sweater, bowtie, and a crushed fedora on the back of a mop of black hair. The other two looked like they were still waiting for the right haberdasher. The tall skinny loose limbed one wore a shirt whose sleeves only reached to his elbows, a pair of baggy pants held up by a belt knotted at the waist, and a baseball cap with the bill tipped up. He was a blinker and about as bright as a dead bulb. The short guy in a beanie with a smudge of moustache looked like he might be the ring leader. They were loud and maybe a little drunk. The blind man drew their immediate attention as the object of their rambunctious baiting, laughing and pointing, waving their hands in front of his eyes giving him the how many fingers test.

The one with the bowtie must have caught sight of me, and of Rebecca who had turned to glance over her shoulder at the ruckus, and now he was poking beanie in the arm with his elbow and nodding in our direction and saying something under his breath that made beanie’s eyes get that special sparkle.

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.”

“Yeah,” the string bean drawled, “we’re the big bad wolves.” There was no mistaking the waterfront twang of their accent. Bowtie gave a crocodile grin leering at Rebecca.

None of them were being subtle and there was no reason why I should be. With as much soprano as I could manage, I piped, “You look more like the three little pigs.”

Beanie’s eyes darted to me. “What a really big yap you got, grandma.” Bowtie was giving me a suspicious scowl as string bean leaned over beanie’s shoulder to look down on me to say “Yeah, and what really big feet you got, too, grandma.” Everyone stared down at my Thom MaCans.

My forehead smacked beanie between the eyes after I’d grabbed him by the shirt front. His eyes rolled back like he couldn’t believe it and he folded like a pair of trousers around his ankles. I had more headache to pass around and went for string bean but his hands were high above his head and gawking at Rebecca. She had a little pistol pointed at him. Bowtie scrambled stumbling back down the aisle toward the next car tripping as he ran past the blind man, sprawling head first into the edge of a seat.

Was I dragging the kid along, too, or was she part of the deal? She was cool, smart, and she had a gun. That was in her favor.

I stood my full height and stepped on beanie’s hand. The train was slowing on the approach to the next station. I could tell by the squeal of the brakes and that of beanie’ pain.

“You messed with the wrong grandma.” I grabbed bean stalk by the arm and twisted it. I pulled beanie to his feet by his collar and dragged them both to the doors as the train entered the station. “You don’t want to miss your stop.”

Bowtie was holding his head sitting up. He immediately got what the motion of Becky’s pistol meant and as soon as the doors parted he dashed out onto the platform with his pals.

I looked around. There was no one else in the place but me, Rebecca, and the blind man. He held up his hand. “I didn’t see anything.”

The tailor shop was a solid brick block from the subway exit. I had shed the scarf and stood at the curb looking up at the building. All the windows were dark. In the distance the silhouettes of the midtown skyscrapers were lightening around the edges. Soon people would be heading off to work or looking for work.

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.

I was dying for a smoke but I knew better than to light up. The headache was a dull throb now and had moved to behind my right ear. My tongue felt like sandpaper. I could feel another prune forming above my left eyebrow. I was in the middle of something that was spinning out of control, sucking me in. Was I dragging the kid along, too, or was she part of the deal? She was cool, smart, and she had a gun. That was in her favor.

I knew I had to get the stink that was Kovic off me. He tried to have me iced after I rescued his hophead daughter from the sour mash South. He put a couple of slugs in Ralphie, my lawyer, an old pal from the neighborhood who had steered me to the blood hound job in the first place. Times were tough and any cabbie or street corner mug mighta made me. Dropping a dime was not gonna be any sweat of their noses.

Running into the tailor and his daughter was pure luck. Whether it was good luck or bad luck was another matter I still couldn’t figure. Who had been chasing me when I chanced onto them? I didn’t feature that it was any of Kovic’s mob. Someone was tailing me, that was for sure. The mess in my room had been tossed by someone who claimed to be my sister, according to Curtis, the super’s pervert son. His description made me think Al’s sister. I had something that belonged to her, the pink postal package slip I’d lifted from her mailbox. A fair exchange for setting me up. Was she just the tip of the iceberg and was I a titanic dope for not seeing it coming? She had to have some reach. As soon as I come up with her ex-boyfriend’s whereabouts, he ends up dead. Now there were more bodies. The robbers used the package delivery ruse, but at that time of night what express service would be delivering? Unless someone was expecting a delivery. But Rebecca had said that the package was for her.

It was like I had come in to the middle of a movie and wasn’t making heads or tails of the plot. Her beautiful face close up filled the entire screen of my vision. For a kid she was quite a dame.

As if I didn’t have enough worries, I had pricey rock floating around in my gut with no idea on how I was going to work that out. I’d asked the kid to tell me again the part about when the gangsters busted in, what were they yelling? “Where are the diamonds?” she’d repeated and then something she couldn’t make out. “It sound like name, Worsey. Wharzee? I do not know.” I repeated the name to myself again in the darkened doorway. Worsey, Wharzee, Wharz-ee, Where-zee. Where is he?

A light blinked or it coulda been me dropping off, asleep on my feet.

There was a cot behind the curtain separating the display room from the back workshop of sewing machines, ironing boards, and a narrow cutting table. I stumbled toward it as if I was being drawn by an irresistible urge to fall face first on it. I was beat, not to mention bounced around, kicked, and hammered. Too long without anything to eat, too much to drink, or no time for sleep made me want to throw in the towel, wake me when it’s over. I drank water from a glass in big gulps. My head was swimming. I held it in my hands sitting on the edge of the cot knowing I’d drift off as soon as I was horizontal.

Rebecca fussed unpacking the bags and taking my pants to the large tub sink against the back wall.

“Lack, there is something you should know.” Now she was looking at me with those pale blue eyes and it seemed like that was all I needed to know. She sat on the cot next to me and looked down at her hands. “Those men, Doktor Soloman and the others, they cheat you out of the diamonds of your agreement. Your address book was not destroy. I hear them talking.

“When I was brought back, Herr Doktor tell me go to my room and stay until he call. When I go through kitchen before my room, the cook is shaking head because she is not understanding why she must boil a book of empty paper for Isaac who she does not like but because zayde say so.”

It was like I had come in to the middle of a movie and wasn’t making heads or tails of the plot. Her beautiful face close up filled the entire screen of my vision. For a kid she was quite a dame.

“They discover your notebook in water closet. Drop in commode when one of the men went to use. He give it to Herr Doktor who has an idea to keep your valuable information, and diamonds, too. I hear them talking before they bring you up back stairs. They are laugh. They think they are very clever about how they cheat you.”

She was looking at me now and I felt her soft breath soothe my battered cheek. I leaned toward her blinking to keep my eyes open. My lips brushed hers. I didn’t blame her for putting her hand on my chest and pushing me away. It didn’t take much. I’m a pushover for dames like her. And I kept falling, onto the rumpled blanket that smelled of cabbage and old sweat, hearing her say, “There is something else you should know,” and me replying, “You say the nicest things,” before her lips pressed hard against mine and I realized that some part of me was still very much awake.

Next Time: Diamond In The Rough

On The Road To Las Cruces —One—

November 7, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp FictionA Novel Account of the Last Day in the Life of A Legendary Western Lawman, Based On Historical Fact, Buffalo Hides, Buffalo Hunters, Comanche, Crime Fiction, Hard Boiled Fiction, On The Road To Las Cruces, Pulp Fiction, Skinners, WesternNuallain House, Publishers

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.

Adams, a ruddy-faced young gringo, had arrived on the mesa before dawn. He had waited in the black one-horse buggy, wind whipping at the flaps of his long gray duster, one hand on the reins, the other holding down the bright green bowler on his head. Her husband had slowly crossed the yard, shotgun in hand, shoulder to the blowing sand, and climbed up onto the bench beside the young man. He had waved once as the buggy wheeled and headed away.

A slight breeze stirred in the doorway of the adobe, a chunk of firewood propping open the slat door to let some of the heat from the dark stuffy kitchen out onto the late afternoon mesa. She stared out at the dry, beige landscape. There had been a time, when they lived in Roswell, she had been able to look out of windows, real glass windows, at rows of peach trees. Maybe it was all a dream, the luxury, the finery of days gone by. Now her hope for a comfortable life rested with the young man who had come to fetch her husband to Las Cruces. Adams wanted to lease their land to graze cattle, and that was being used by a young drover named Billy Brazil. But Brazil had an agreement with their oldest son, Pepe, for the rights to graze goats on the land, and would only vacate if they agreed to buy the herd outright. Her husband had refused to honor the agreement and had taken Brazil to court. The Justice of the Peace had ruled in the young man’s favor. That had made matters worse. The bad blood between them had turned to poison. All the same, Adams seemed intent on getting his way and had arranged for a meeting with Brazil in Las Cruces. She could not help but feel apprehensive. She knew how much her husband despised Brazil. There would be violence if he were pushed too far, especially if he’d been drinking.

She almost jumped out of her skin as the door slammed shut. She screamed in the sudden darkness in spite of herself. The door creaked, opening wide, and was again buffeted by the wind, slamming shut with explosive violence. The awful realization of her worst fears crept over her. She screamed, screamed again.

Her youngest daughter, Paulita, hurried to her side. “What is it, mamma? Why are you doing this?” She tried to pry her mother’s hands away from her face. “Why, mamma, why. . .why are you crying?”

Between sobs, Apollinara spoke her fears. “He is dead.”

Paulita tried her best to comfort, but Apollinara continued to weep, falling to her knees and praying for the repose of her husband’s soul. Paulita, caught up by the hysterical crying and praying, joined in.

After some time and a long, solemn silence, Apollinara addressed her daughter. “You saw him last. What was he doing?”

The young girl, still bewildered, recounted how she had followed her father after he had left in the buggy. She had caught up with them, riding as far as the first gate just before the trail dipped down into the canyon. “I opened the gate for them. . . .”

“What were they talking about, your father and the young gringo? Were they arguing, were they fighting?”

“No, mamma, I think they were talking about Indians. I kissed papa on the cheek. I said, ‘Cuidado, papa’ and got back on my pony and came home.”

Apollinara whispered to herself. “Indians?”

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.

That, and the look on Pedro’s face. He almost smiled. A small party of Comanche had raided a homestead just outside of Lincoln, run off a half a dozen head of cattle, killed a dog, burned a milking shed, and scared the bejeezus out of the folks in town who were certain that this was the beginning of new hostility. He had joined the posse because he’d had experience tracking from his buffalo hunting days. That and he was a dead shot. It was a break from the boredom of herding cattle for Maxwell. And this raiding party was careless. They had come upon their camp in less than two days, no guard posted, mostly youngsters armed with bows and a few antique rifles. They did not have a chance.

“You hunted buffalo?” the young man asked, “You must have some wild and wooly tales to tell.”

It could have been a growl as the old man sucked smoke from the black root. He was not a teller of tales. That was something Ash excelled at, but not him, no sir, he was always glad to leave the chin music to someone else. Ash was dead now though his voice was still very clear in his ears, exaggerating every little detail, going on and on, splashing another shot of whiskey in his glass, flapping his gums till the rooster crowed. How would Ash tell the story? Buffalo hunting. He shivered. What he remembered most was the harsh winter and stacking the rigid hides, frozen stiff like sheets of furry slate.

“It was hard work, son, I’ll tell you that. You bedded down every night with the sound of gunfire ringing in your ears. The money was good, though. A prime hide could fetch you two dollars, and on a good day I was bringing down a hundred, a hundred and fifty head.” That was Ash talking there. A hundred maybe, if you got a stand going and the wind was in your favor. A lot of the time was spent chasing little herds of no more than half a dozen buffalo and then helping the skinner peel hides.

“Did you ever have a run in with hostile Indians?” Indians again. This boy has been reading too many yellow backs. Almost a chuckle. If he only knew. He would be pestering for the details of that, too. Well, it was going to be a long ride to Las Cruces.

“Most of the Indians on the Staked Plains out by the Brazos River were Kiowa and Comanche, maybe a few Cheyenne. Anytime they went some place they had to have an escort from the 10th Cavalry with them. Anyway, that’s the way it was supposed to work, but a lot of the time the young bucks would sneak out of their camps and raid a hunting party, burn the skins if they could, slash them. You see, they did not take too kindly to the fact that the white man was out there slaughtering their source of food. Buffalo did not belong to them. And they were worth a powerful lot more to the white man than the Indian. Used to call it ‘wooly gold’ or ‘brownbacks’.” There was Ash again. He never called them anything but hides, if that. And he never got his money from that hunt. He could use it now. If only he had listened to Shelton in the first place.

Whenever Shelton would take his hat off, his thin red hair stood straight up like the flame on the tip of a Lucifer.

Adams had red hair too, what you’d call a copperhead, poking out from under that damn green hat. Shelton had always worn a gray, wide brimmed, rebel cavalry officer’s “Jeff Davis” sombrero. He had been right proud of being a Johnny Reb from Georgia. He would foam at the mouth whenever he encountered what he called “carpetbaggers” or “just plain Yankees.” If you weren’t from the South, you weren’t fit human company. Niggers and Indians were animals. Foreigners smelled bad and were not to be trusted.

“This was in ‘76. In Fort Worth. Just back from Dodge City on a cattle drive where I ran into a man named Shelton from Georgia and a man named Duke from Kentucky. They were looking for a partner to join their hunting party. I threw in my pay from the drive and two days later the four of us headed out to the Rio Brazos and Fort Griffith.”

“Wait, you said, the four of you. . . .”

“The sheeny kid, Joe, I picked him up as a skinner to save money.

“Sheeny? I’m not. . . ?”

“Irish. He was young but he looked strong and I figured once he got experience, he’d be as good a skinner as any.”

Shelton had thrown a fit. He hadn’t wanted to nursemaid no goddamn paddy whelp. He’d spit, he’d howled, he’d kicked. There was a picture to smile about. Shelton not getting his way, taking off his hat and throwing it in the dirt and kicking it. Still, the kid had joined the hunt as a skinner despite all the fuss.

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?

Joe’s pale and very young face pleaded with him, pleaded to be hired on as a skinner, large shiny tears rolling down his face. The patrons at Beadle’s Saloon down by the hide yards were beginning to wonder what exactly was transpiring between the two of them. To shut the kid up and save himself from the embarrassing public display, he agreed to hire the kid on.

Even after twenty-five years, he could still feel the heat of his regrets. Unless you had raised livestock or worked in a slaughter-house, there was no easy way of breaking into the skinning 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.

“We were out on the range when Nigger Horse and his renegades bolted from their encampment. The Army was right on their trail but a white man wasn’t safe out on the Plains by himself, especially if he was hunting buffalo.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, we had over two thousand hides stacked up at our camp. We loaded as many as we could on our wagons and dug caches for the rest of them. We had a couple hundred pegged out to dry that we had to leave and hope nobody, Indians or hide thieves, would run across them. There’s safety in numbers as I’m sure you’ve heard so we broke camp and headed for Charlie Rath’s outpost near Double Mountain.”

“Were you ever attacked?”

The old man shook his head. He had a live one here. Ash would have played him like an old tune. You had to have the knack to lead someone on, have them follow you down every backwater, gully, and blind alley you could imagine and still have them come out believing every word you said. He did not have it.

“No, we were pretty safe as long as we stuck close to the outpost. Nigger Horse and his bunch might have outnumbered us, but we out gunned them easily. Hell, with the Sharps most of the hunters were using, a hostile attack wouldn’t have even got close enough to get in range.”

“You favored a Sharps, did you?”

“No, can’t say that I did. The .50 caliber Sharps was like a hand cannon, it did the job on the buffalo, but it was slow and heavy. I was partial to the repeating Winchester. Lighter than the Sharps. It didn’t pack the power, but if you knew how to shoot, it did just as well.”

“Did the Army ever catch up with Nigger Horse?”

“That they did but not before a bunch of hunters decided to out-army the Army and go after the renegades themselves. The way they figured it, each day they spent off the range they were losing money, so the sooner they killed or rounded up all the Indians, the sooner they could get back to the hunt.”

He stopped to relight the black stub clenched in his teeth. He had to hold up a side of his thin cloth coat to shield the flame. He struck the match on the barrel of the shotgun draped over his lap. This time with the help of the coat and the cooperation of the wind, he got it lit.

“You get a bunch of howling drunk, blood-in-the-eye range rats riding out to murder, it’s hard to creep up on anybody.” Ash would have liked that. “By the time the hunters came up on the Indian camp they were riding straight into an ambush.” Maybe he could weave a tale like old Ash. But he’d need a drink first. To tell it right. “Lucky as many as did made it back.”

“But you didn’t go looking for the Indians.”

“No sir. Hadn’t lost any.”

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.

The whippersnapper at the reins had no idea. Even those slight victories had been defeats. Just when he thought he had his hands on the goods, they had the habit of turning to dirt. The buffalo hunt had been the beginning of it all. He had lost everything then. There was no real profit in running a little ranch, and the saloon deal had ended in bitterness. Only his election as sheriff had proved fruitful, providing respectability, and the prospect of settling down and raising a family. Even that had led to his ultimate undoing.

The old man drew on the cigar, holding a mouthful of acrid smoke then letting it blow. He examined his companion’s outfit; the barely soiled gray canvas duster, snakeskin riding boots, heavy blue denim trousers. The bright green bowler. He could not for the life of him figure what irked him so much about that hat.

Even when he had had the money, he would never have dressed as outlandishly. The threadbare black broadcloth he was wearing had been his habit ever since he could remember. He had bought his first black suit for his swearing in as Sheriff. He had worn it to his wedding. He wore it to funerals, and to court. He had picked up a couple more over the years, always the same cut. It was not the sturdiest cloth and it did show wear when there was some. And there was always some, around the elbows, around the knees, around the back pockets.

He had been partial to brocade vests, however. And Polly, who thought he should show more imagination than an undertaker in his dress, gladly made a few of them for him, with mother of pearl buttons and silk backing. He had worn a glossy white one to Santa Fe once. Then he had foolishly lost it in a poker game.

He could add that to the things he’d lost along with the peach orchard, the irrigation company and his dream of watering the Pecos Valley, the thoroughbred horse ranch outside of Uvalde, Texas, his job as Customs Inspector in El Paso, and slowly but surely, the little property he owned in the Organ Mountains.

He had been blessed with eight children, it was true. And his wife had stuck by him through all his trials and tribulations. He could be thankful for that. His present troubles, however, did stem from his oldest boy’s rashness. He would set it right, if it was the last thing he did.

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.

Next Time: The Brazos Bottoms

The Last Resort, 32-33

November 7, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp FictionA Lee Malone Adventure, Backwoods and Barefoot, blondes, Corkscrew County, Crime Fiction, Hard Boiled Fiction, Pulp Fiction, SAPHO, The Last ResortNuallain House, Publishers

by Pat Nolan

Chapter Thirty Two
WONDERING WOMAN

I felt something touch my arm at the elbow. It was cold and hot at the same time. Then I lost consciousness. When I came to, my hands were tied behind my back and I had that horrible feeling of déjà vu. The last time I’d been in a similar situation, I had been found face down on the floor of my cell at Sabbia Negru by Mohamed el-Ipir of the Prince’s security force, the purple swelling of a bruise under one eye.

In that instance, everything had to be made to appear as if I had been mistreated. I had been recognized and word of my whereabouts revealed. The women of SAPHO had no choice but to clear out. Besides, I had served my purpose. My captors, if it was up to me, would remain anonymous, a mystery to the world at large.

I had been smeared with dirt and Xuxann had reluctantly, though forcefully, poked a fist in my face. Then I had been fitted with a gag but not so tight that I couldn’t swallow or breathe. Hours later I heard the churning rotors of a helicopter and felt the tiny cell shake with the nearby vibrations as it touched down. I had been rescued, I realized then, by the very men who wished to keep me prisoner.

This time I wasn’t gagged and my cheek was resting on the cool black leather of a couch in a dimly lit room. From the ornate desk at one end, it appeared to be some kind of executive office suite. As my eyes blinked and found focus, the circumstances that had landed me in this fix overtook me in a rush of detail.

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 was in a wondering mood. I wondered why I was looking for the exit that would take me out to the rear of the castle. And when I found it and walked out to the edge of the grassy terrace, I wondered how close I could get to the warehouse without appearing conspicuous. The rows of vines luxuriant with early August foliage ran parallel to the warehouse and looked like they might provide adequate cover. I wondered if the posted signs that read Warning, Grounds Patrolled by Security Dogs really meant what they said.

Barefoot is not always the best way to walk through a vineyard, but engulfed by the lushness of the vines, the tart aroma of the ripening clusters, and the organic breath of the warm tilled earth, my feet didn’t seem to be touching the ground.

As I suspected, the chain link fence blocked closer access. The warehouse was a formidable structure, no mere storage facility. I heard a succession of sharp barks around the back and voices yelling at the dogs to shut up. Ducking under a few vine rows I saw two men in dark suits. They were chauffeurs if most of my life spent in limos was any judge. And they were taking a smoke break. Two large Dobermans in the nearby kennel, alert to their presence, snapped out challenges. A door opened at the back of the building and a man in what appeared to be a uniform stepped out and added his authority to the demands that they be quiet. The dogs dropped obediently to their haunches. When the men finished smoking, they crushed their cigarette ends with the soles of their polished shoes and reentered the warehouse.

Normally cautious, though some would dispute that claim, I felt a fierce recklessness surge within me. I made a dash for the door as soon as it closed behind the drivers. The dogs raised a howl as I suspected they would. I crouched down on the hinge side of the door, my back pressed against the metal siding. The door swung open and the voice of authority in black military-style boots stepped down onto the concrete pad and shouted them into submission. The dogs returned to their haunches but reluctantly. They could see me behind the door but he couldn’t. As the door swung slowly shut on its pneumatic hinge, I picked up a chunk of oak twig from the ground litter and jammed it into the closing gap. It was just enough to keep the latch from catching. I gave myself time to take a couple of deep breaths and then cracked the door open a few inches. Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, I made out a long corridor that ended in wide auditorium double doors. I heard muffled voices and laughter coming from the security post, a closed sliding glass window over a half wall, the door to the small office also closed, just inside the entrance. Like a white mouse in a maze I crouched low and hugged the wall making my way to where I thought there might be cheese. There was a burst of hearty laughter and then a low voice of accented English with East European intonations spoke. Bulgarian immediately popped into my ultra-conscious mind.

When I reached the double doors, I discovered stairways flanking them and leading up to a balcony. I heard the sound of music, the kind with a grinding backbeat. I padded up the carpeted stairway on all fours keeping my head low. I peered into the near dark of the empty balcony. Bright light splashed over the railing from below. I gazed down onto a small amphitheater with a runway jutting out from the proscenium. A young Asian woman in high spiked heels and little else did her version of the model-strut. Shortly she was followed by a tall leggy blonde in an outfit that consisted of fringe draped from her broad shoulders. A man in a tuxedo at the back of the stage called out a name and a number, first in English, then in Arabic, and then in Japanese. My gaze widened to take in the men in the shadows seated along the edge of the runway. Their attention was not a leering lust, but the focused appraisal reserved for merchandise.

I’d seen that look myself many times before as I had swung my hips to the end of the runway, haughty and saucy, decked out in the latest fashion in New York, Paris, Milan, and Budapest. What I was witnessing was a parody of my life as a model. Only a few select men could have me, and only on my terms. The male fantasies of the world turned to surrogates, women who would serve their desires while I remained pure and unattainable.

I felt something touch my arm at the elbow. It was cold and hot at the same time and I lost consciousness. I moaned involuntarily as I came to and tried to make sense of my surroundings. My moan was greeted by a growl and I was suddenly aware of the bared dripping canines of a guard dog staring me in the face. My instinct was to play dead, close my eyes and let my head drop back against the leather couch. I tried to keep my breathing shallow but my heart was pounding like a runaway piston. Then it took a leap.

Overhead lights blazed on. I heard men’s voices approaching. I cautiously opened one eye to a pitiless glare of bright artificial white. They were standing over me. I recognized one face immediately. I should have guessed. It was Blackie.

Chapter Thirty Three
A BURST OF POWER

The scowl on Blackie’s face said he wasn’t happy to see me. I almost burst out laughing. Not because I didn’t grasp the tight spot I was in, but because of the absolute hilarity of what had just occurred to me. It was that delicious line once spoken by Mae West: “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” The gun wasn’t in Blackie’s pocket, it was in his back. He stumbled forward, pushed from behind. The gun was in Tommy Junior’s hand. His lips were stretched across his teeth in a smile. It wasn’t a happy smile.

I’ve been told that a woman with a sense of humor is dangerous. Men consider laughter, the only emotion they dare express, to be their inviolable domain. Once again I was where I wasn’t supposed to be, doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing. And I was surrounded by men, all bristling with ambiguous hostility. Behind young Tommy, a limp withered figure glared from a wheelchair. Behind the wheelchair stood Preston Carmichael. The wizened apparition’s right hand moved, bringing a pale plastic wand to its throat. It wasn’t much of a leap, but I knew immediately that I was looking at old man Montague, aka Tommy Perro. A metallic sound crackled from the wand and shaped into words, “Must be my lucky day.”

Tommy Perro’s hard eyes had no intention of smiling. The skin beneath his cavernous eyes hung like folds of mottled vinyl. “My old pal, Blackie, come to visit me, and he brought his girlfriend, the most beautiful woman in the world.” His laugh sounded like static.

Tommy Junior managed a sneer, “Once the most beautiful, don’t you mean? You have to admit she’s got a few miles on her.”

“A woman is not an automobile.” Preston spoke in his measured tone, his wan cheeks slack but his amber eyes calculating. “Like a fine wine, certain vintages will age to perfection. And this one will bring a price to rival anything on four wheels.”

The old cripple wheeled closer to the couch where I no longer pretended to be unconscious. My heightened awareness enlarged my vision. My eyes felt like they were the size of dinner plates. I was one beat ahead of everything going down. It seemed all so very predictable. Except for the Doberman, tensed, ready to lunge at a word, and incidentally, the only other female in the room.

“I get payback, from my old buddy Blackie for ripping my family apart, and as a bonus, something that will be the prize of some sultan’s collection. It’s my lucky day.”

“I’m afraid she’s already spoken for.” Preston’s tone was firm. “I have an exclusive contract with a certain party for the finest of Caucasian flesh, particularly of Circassian ancestry.”

The old man turned in his wheelchair in a way that looked both painful and menacing. It was a demand for explanation.

“In the late seventies, I had been asked to arrange to have a certain fashion model with a notorious reputation entertain a very wealthy and politically powerful man at his villa on the Caspian Sea. Enroute to this assignment she was intercepted and kidnapped by a gang of terrorists. Lee Malone, once the highly sought-after international beauty, Leeann, is still very much a prize. This is my opportunity to restore credibility with my client.” Preston pulled a small pistol from under his dinner jacket and pointed it at Junior. “I’m afraid I shall have to take possession of her. You can deal with your friend as you must.” Being a lawyer, Carmichael relied heavily on the bluff.

Tommy Perro had gone to a different law school. The old man rasped a noise through his wand and the Doberman launched like a brown projectile at the dapper lawyer. Preston fired, hitting the dog in midflight. At the same time, Junior fired his pistol.

For a minute I thought I was on the set of the Maltese Falcon: men in dinner jackets with gats. And it happened instantly, inexorably, no close ups, no wide angles, overhead or tracking shots, just bang, bang, bang, one, two, three, by the numbers, the last round fired in reflex as Preston dropped like an expensive Pelure Cochon leather sack, fashionable but empty. One dead dog and one dead man. Tommy Junior spun and pointed his gun at Blackie who looked like he might be contemplating something gallant but stupid.

The old man may have been constrained by his physical condition but his barked electronic commands were dispatched with authority. He had some very valuable property and he was certain that there were those who would pay a tidy sum to acquire it.

I was hustled down to the auditorium and taken backstage by the security muscle, a scowling ape with a shaved head and glowing red eyes. I should have been frightened. Instead I felt fearless, as if I was inhabited by another entity, a truly powerful being bursting with supernatural energy.

The ringmaster reappeared to adjust the lighting and check the sound system. He asked with a grin if I was having a good time. Then he asked me if there was any particular music I preferred for my walk down the plank. He indicated the row of cassette tapes next to the stereo console. I didn’t hesitate. My eyes were drawn to it and my finger pointed at it. The Pipes of Pan, music by tribesmen from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. I’d been poolside at Brian Jones’s mansion outside of London when I first heard it. It was exactly what I wanted. After all, Pan is the root of the word panic.

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.”

“I was just about to do that myself,” I said, raking him with a fierce look that clawed his eyes and made him flinch. The ringmaster started the music, spoke my name and stated the opening bid. Shades of county fairs and the beginnings of my conquests as the queen of beauty. They could have at least started the bidding a little higher. I stepped out onto the runway accompanied by the cacophony of fifes and drums. I was in my element.

It was all very clear to me. I had become Treyann, the embodiment of the three secret aspects of womanhood: the ancient, the beautiful, and the powerful. As I swayed and whirled in dance, clapping my hands in rhythm over my head, proud of my firm uplifted breasts, nipples triumphant, I knew that all eyes were on me and soon they would be under my spell. They might have thought that their dreams were within their grasp. I was about to become their worst nightmare.

There was no doubt as to exactly who I was. I spoke to myself the words I had always known. I am Leeann, paramount in my sphere, far beyond competition in my beauty, in my power to enchant men. I am, in a word, irresistible, Aphrodite in human form, the face that launched a thousand shipwrecks. I am supreme, above the best. Over the currency of my flesh wars are fought, yet in my name peace is invoked.

A physical transformation took hold of me. My supple roundness acquired a hard muscular edge. The skin of my cheeks grew taut, my eyes narrowed to gun slits. I bared my teeth, canines extruded like those of a cat or viper. I knew then that I had their undivided attention. And I knew that they realized, perhaps not in so many words and with the same depth of understanding, that from the beginning of time they, as men, have struggled with the threat of female dominance, against her strength, her complexity and impenetrability, her dreadful omnipresence. No man has yet been born who is not spun from a pitiful gob of refuse to a conscious being on the secret loom deep within the cave of a woman’s body, the body that is a nurturing cradle but also the inevitable pitiless fatality of nature. As every woman I control all of creation. What I bring into this world I can take out. I am the beginning. I am the end.

I stopped in my tracks and thunder clapped thrice, swaying like an axe about to fall. The air crackled with a faint blue intensity. I heard a collective gasp. I concentrated all my energy directly at the old goat in the wheelchair. He burst like a paper bag full of wet sand.

Next Time: From The Frying Pan

Contents Vol. I No. 10

October 12, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp FictionA Detective Story, A Lee Malone Adventure, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Dropping A Dime, Hard Boiled Fiction, Hard Boiled Myths, Helene Baron Murdock, Pat Nolan, Perry O'Dickle, Pulp Fiction, The Last Resort, The White RoomNuallain House, Publishers

Introducing Dime Pulp Number Ten

In Issue Ten of Dime Pulp, A Serial Fiction Magazine, the big news is that Colin Deerwood, who had always considered A Detective Story as a working titled, has finally settled on Better Than Dead for the title of his 1940 serial detective fiction prompted by the illustration of a vintage Black Mask cover and featuring the hapless Lackland Ask now on the run from the cops and the mob after the massacre in the Heights.

The Last Resort, aka Tales Of A Long Legged Snoop, picks up the pace toward its concluding chapters as Lee Malone, former international beauty and reporter for The Corkscrew County Grapevine, accompanies her boss to a Charity Fund Raiser fashion show at Montague Winery’s flashy mini Bavarian castle.

In the final installment of The White Room, Helene Baron-Murdock’s Detective Jim Donovan of the Weston County Sheriff’s Office Violent Crimes Unit narrowly escapes being shot on sight as he tries to solve the mystery of the death of Ike Carey in this latest Hard Boiled Myth.

Dime Pulp continues its crime spree with the serialization of two full length novels, The Last Resort and Better Than Dead, A Detective Story, as well as another serial short story based on Greek myths under the rubric of Hard Boiled Myth.

If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the links below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume One, Number Ten

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

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.

The Last Resort, Chapters 30-31

Greek myth is rife with murder, mutilation, cannibalism, mayhem, and the ever popular incest. Weston County Sheriff’s Detective Jim Donovan of the Violent Crimes Unit wouldn’t know a Greek myth from a Greek salad, but if he did he would find some troubling similarities to the cases he’s investigating. Revisited as crime fiction are the strange death of Hippolytus, the agonizing death of Heracles, the slaughter of Penelope’s suitors, the Fall of Icarus, the sparagamos of Orpheus, and the cursed lineage of Pelops. Helene Baron-Murdock’s Hard Boiled Myth taps into the rich vein of classical literature to frame these ancient tales in a modern context.

The White Room I
The White Room II
The White Room III
The White Room IV
The White Room V

Lackland Ask is the name. ‘Lack’ to my friends, ‘Don’t’ to those who think they’re funny. You might have seen my portrait on the cover of Black Mask, the crime fiction magazine. This is my story. It starts with a blonde. This kind of story always starts with a blonde.

A Detective Story—10

Better Than Dead—10

October 12, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction"Brother can you spare a dime?", A Detective Story, Better Than Dead, Crime Fiction, Fedoras and Flatfoots, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Colin Deerwood

“Becky? Becky!” but with the gag covering my mouth I could have just as well been saying “cookie.” I clattered around in my severe confinement and yelled, “Becky! Get me out of here!” I had managed to slip the gag off to one side of my chin. “Becky! Hurry!”

“I can’t, Lack. They would know it was me and I would be in much more trouble. I am confined to my room and was only able to sneak out because, as your native Americans say, they were having a big powwow.” She sounded sorry sad and I might have sympathized except that I had a pressing need.

“Becky, listen to me!” I strained to make my voice heard, the gag now around my chin. “You don’t understand! This is very serious!”

“Lack, I know,” she spoke quietly, “I have overheard them talking. It is serious.”

“Then get me out of here!”

“I can’t, I’m sorry.”

I figured I’d let her in on the emergency. “How can I put this delicately, uh, I have to whiz so bad my back teeth are floating!”

“Whiz? What is this whiz? Oh, perhaps it is the new all color film from Hollywood? But teeth, I’m not certain. . . .”

“Becky!” I yelled, “Listen to me! If I don’t get out of here I’m going to wet my pants! Just let me out of this box so I can find a corner to do my business and I promise I’ll get right back in and no one will ever know. I’ll even let you tie me up.” I was desperate. I would have crossed my legs if they hadn’t been tied at the ankles.

Silence. Then, “The teeth that float. . . .”

“Becky! I’m begging you! Let me out of here!”

“Shush!” she hissed. “I think I hear them calling for me.” I heard movement away from the box. “I’ll return if I can.”

That decided that. It didn’t matter that I wet my pants because worse was yet to come and once I was ripe enough, the mugs would sort through what’s left of me and get their diamond. I would have to come to terms with that, but incrementally.

Wet wool is itchy. Maybe that would make a good epitaph for my tombstone not that I could be guaranteed anything more than cement socks at the graveyard bottom of the East River. The happy thoughts just weren’t coming as I tried to distract myself.

I’d managed to get the gag off my face and somehow loosened the rope binding my hands only to have them explode into a swarm of pins and needles. Problem was, I was breathing my own air and it was making me drowsy.

I could hear workmen nearby hammering. Someone raised a shout. And the sporadic hammering resumed. I was surprised by the sound of running and suddenly my confinement was given more light as well as a large displacement of air. I was crushed by a heavy weight consisting of knees, elbows, and full torso with a voice shushing in my ear. The lid to the box snapped down and I was in the dark again. It was Becky. And it was the last straw that emptied my suffering bladder.

I grabbed her by the elbow and brought my face close to hers. “What I heard wasn’t hammering, they were gunshots. Who was doing the shooting?”

She was breathing hard in my ear, her chest heaving. I started to say something but she shushed me again. “Stay quiet they won’t find us.” She whispered and I realized I could get used to those whispers in my ear. I tried to relax but trussed up the way I was and with her knees in my kidney and her elbow in my neck, I just couldn’t get comfortable. She wasn’t tied up so she could shift her weight and her hip pressed down on my ribs causing me to gasp for breath. I grunted. She whispered “Sorry,” and that made it all better. We stayed quiet listening to each other’s breathing and for any sounds outside our confinement. My stomach rumbled or maybe it was hers. The minutes seemed like hours.

I heard a hinge creak and a shaft of light pierced the dark interior. Now both her knees were gouging into my arm and my thigh. There was enough light for me to catch her profile as she peaked outside the box which I realized was a large trunk with a domed top. Then she sat back down on me and let the lid drop and we were in the dark again.

“It was awful, Lack, they burst in shooting everyone.” She started to blubber.

“What? Who? Becky, untie me and get me out of this box so I can understand what you’re babbling g about.”

The trunk lid was pushed open and I was bathed in a dim grey light.

“These knots are impossible! And they’re wet!”

“I have a penknife in my vest pocket, use that!”

I felt her frisking me but maybe she was unfamiliar with men’s vests?

“Oops, sorry.”

“Yeah, not that pocket.”

Finally she found it after fumbling under my coat and began sawing at the rope tying my hands to my feet. The ropes came loose and I was able to free one hand and pull myself upright. She stood on the outside of the trunk helping me stand up. I took the knife from her and freed my feet. I pulled myself over the edge of the large trunk and fell to the floor. It hurt and felt good at the same time.

I didn’t waste a minute getting rid of the ropes, rubbing the circulation back into my wrists. I grabbed her by the elbow and brought my face close to hers. “What I heard wasn’t hammering, they were gunshots. Who was doing the shooting?”

“I don’t know,” her eyes wide with fright, “Their faces were covered by kerchiefs and they wore auto racing goggles. I heard one of them shouting ‘Where are the diamonds?!’ Issac and Golie and the others were shooting too, and Herr Doktor I think was. . . .”

We were in some kind of storage loft. A dull light seeped through the dusty windows along one wall, packing crates, more large trunks, odds and ends of bulky furnishings made indistinct shadows and shapes. The windows were closed but I could still hear the sirens getting closer. “We have to get out of here.!”

Rebecca pointed to the door set into the far wall and I followed, limping the cramps out of my legs. I was reminded once again that I’d been left to my own devices and that certain things can’t be put off forever.

The door led to a dimly lit hallway at the head of a flight of stairs leading down. At the opposite end a window allowed access to a fire escape. I could hear the shouts and clomping of flatfeet spreading out over the crime scene several floors below. From the vantage of the window onto the fire escape, the alley was swarming with the flashing lights of patrol cars.

“What floor are we on?”

“We are at the very top, seven.”

“I shook my head. “Too much can go wrong on a fire escape seven stories up. What’s on the roof?”

“A little garden where the women of the building grow edibles for their kitchen. Oh, and Golie’s pigeon coop. He is so gentle with them, you wouldn’t think that he was the same fearful enforcer.”

“How close are the nearby buildings?” I was thinking if worse comes to worse.

She shook her head. “No, they are either too distant or many stories shorter.”

“Well, that’s it. We’re cornered. The cops are after me in connection with my lawyer Ralphie Silver’s murder I heard through the grapevine. They found my prints at the scene. Kovic’s mob is after me for dumping him in the drink and icing his muscle. That I should have figured, but Max confirmed it. Somebody else is after me for something I don’t even know about. And my ex is after me for alimony payments. The cops are gonna turn this place upside down looking for witnesses, victims, or gunsels and I’m a hot property.”

She looked at me perplexed. “I am not certain I understood everything you were saying except that maybe you are in a lot of trouble if the police find you. I too must avoid contact with the police because if they ask for my papers, they will learn that I am in this country illegally.”

“Rats, just as I get out of one pickle I end up in another!”

“Lack, this is no time to think about food. I have an idea. Come.”

She hurried back into the storage loft and I followed on her heels as she rushed over to a bank of shelves and started pulling down bags and suitcases. She rooted through some large boxes, yanking out articles of clothing, handing me a dress. “Here, try this on.”

It was too tight around the shoulders and the neckline was too revealing. I saw what she was up to and I liked what she had in mind but I didn’t think it was going to work. Not many dames of the six foot square shouldered variety.

She must have realized that too. She pulled out a large man’s overcoat that likely belonged to somebody who was wider than they were tall. The bottom hem came to my knees. She fit a big ugly green scarf over my head and tied it under my chin.

“Take off your pants.”

I wasn’t sure I heard right. “What?”

“And your suit jacket. Put them in this bag”

She had me step into a large skirt with lace around the hem and then fit an apron over that, cinching it at the waist. My hairy ankles and clodhoppers were still in plain view.

She frowned. “Stoop down. Yes, bend your knees. Good, that hides most of your ankles and your socks and garters. Here, keep this bag with your clothes in front of you so that they cannot see your big man’s shoes.”

She hurriedly slipped into a large gray overcoat and slung a leather purse over one arm. She wrapped a multicolored scarf over her head and tied it under her chin. Then she fussed with my scarf, closing it around my face so that nothing but the tip of my nose and my eyes were showing. She stepped back to admire her handiwork and gave a big smile. “If we had a mirror we could see that we look like a couple of old babushkas on the way to market!”

The first cops, a couple of plainclothes mugs running up the stairs with their guns drawn like Saturday matinee cowboys didn’t expect to see us. We were on the back stairs that existed for services not the front where the lobby, elevator, mezzanine, and carpeting were for looks. The young one with the slicked back hair and the twenty five dollar suit stared at us and then spoke to Rebecca. “You ladies live around her?”

I looked him over. I could take him and his cheap suit but what about his partner, a downtown cop I’d seen in the company of Hogan before looking back wondering why the kid was bothering?

It was the two cops guarding the other side of the door on the steps leading to the alley that wanted to make a deal of it..

Rebecca, shoulders hunched timidly, pointed a finger up the stairwell and said “mop,” miming the action, and then mimed passing an iron over a board.

“Ok, yer the housekeepers for the apartment upstairs? You seen any guys with guns running around?”

I had a hard time keeping from bursting out laughing and covered with a sneeze. Rebecca’s shock and disbelief looked real.

“C’mon,” the older cop called, continuing up, “they don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

The second set of cops were mostly uniforms clustered around the exit door to the alley and looked mean the way street cops do, having seen it all, and too worldly wise to be taken by some cheap disguise, parted like the Red Sea as Rebecca held me under the arm and I shuffled along as best I could to the exit door, head bowed down, not one of them thinking what are these two old broads doing at the scene of a crime?

It was the two cops guarding the other side of the door on the steps leading to the alley that wanted to make a deal of it.

“Hold up, ladies, and where do we think we’re going now?” He was a tall skinny redhead with his cap sitting on the back of his head. His partner was a beefy bloke with a cauliflower for a face. He said, “What you two’s doin here?”

Rebecca put her fists to her hips and got close, frowning into his grainy mug. “Ve are to verk how ve cannot eat not verk?”

“Now, ma’am,, he just wants to know the reason why you’re being at a crime scene seeing as how it being off limits to all but the police and all.”

“I vant complain!” she shouted, “but no is listen! Mrs. Krawitch old lady!” she said tugging me down the steps, “cannot sleep all that bang bang bang. I call police can’t sleep! Tell them must verk Vest Side, mop, mop, mop, clean, clean, clean!”

“But lady, we are the cops!” pasty face offered.

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.

I had to admit that she had talent and I could just imagine what those dumb flatfoots were saying behind our backs.

“That’s the trouble with them foreign broads, they’s ugly as sin. Ya seen the mug on that old hag. I swear she was growing a moustache. Smelled like an outhouse.”

“Yeah, but the young one’s a looker.”

“Problem is they all end up looking like they got crippling arthritis, five o’clock shadow, and permanent shiners.”

Next Time: The Subway To Bliss

The White Room—5

October 12, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp FictionCrime Fiction, Hard Boiled Fiction, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Helene Baron Murdock

“County Sheriff! Keep your hands where I can see them!” Donovan leveled his weapon at the man with the dog just stepping into the clearing. The mastiff strained at its leash. “Heel your mutt or I’ll shoot!”

The dog lunged forward, growling. “Put your gun down and get on your knees,” the guard commanded. “You are trespassing on US Government protected property in violation of the lawfully posted warnings! I have authority to use lethal force!”

Donovan hesitated. It was either shoot or be shot. The rote response of the guard struck him as oddly dispassionate, mechanical. He wasn’t going to waste any time thinking about it because he knew it was coming and that the decision was going to be made for him. He was just buying time. He didn’t have long to wait. He felt the cold prod at the base of his skull.

“Drop the gun, asshole, on your knees.”

Donovan held his arms out away from his body and let his weapon drop to the ground. The dog was on him immediately as with the force of the blow knocking him down. Then the jolt shooting through him like a fully body funny bone motor lock up shock and the dark pit of forever falling.

Slowly he caught his breath, the pounding of his heart jackhammering in his head. His arms were jerked behind his back and he heard the familiar sound of a zip tie pulled tight, a snarling snout filling his blurred field of vision. His jacket yanked down over his back, he felt a sharp jab in his shoulder as his face was pushed into the dirt until he floated away in a pale inflated softness.

His first thought was of Ionna as he slowly pieced himself back into consciousness followed by the spike of panic not knowing if she had escaped the dog patrol. They had agreed to meet at the Sparta Creek Overlook the day after their conversation at the Sole Sister Diner. She would show him the waterfall access up to the old summer camp but would take her own car. She didn’t want to chance being seen in his sedan by friends or acquaintances. She’d mentioned that she had already had rides in squad cars but mostly in the back and handcuffed, and wasn’t eager to revisit the environment. One thing she wanted to protect was her reputation.

He’d spotted her watching the hang gliders launch off the bluff, drifting like bits of engineered debris down to the pastel beach runway below. A good wind blustered off the expanse of ocean pushed by a formidable line of gray fog on the far the horizon, otherwise the noon sun in complete command. He’d parked as unobtrusively as possible among the SUVs and camper shelled pickups. She’d joined him as he was lacing up his patrol boots and he followed her to a service road leading off the parking lot.

Beyond the large green storage container belonging to the State Park, the road petered out, and they’d followed a foot path down around a large granite outcropping that led along the meager creek. The trail looked well-trodden with debris and signs of encampments along its meandering to where the gravel beach hemming the watercourse expanded to the edge of the narrow brook and then abruptly stopped at the base of a twenty foot megalith and a large swimming hole.

Donovan gave the open space a three-sixty. There didn’t seem to be any way forward. He tilted his head back and took in the sheer granite cliff that loomed above him and assumed that at its top sat the old Mount Oly summer camp and the now off limits compound.

“You come here often?”

Ionna laughed, cocking her head, “I think I’ve heard that line before.”

Donovan raised an eyebrow that said “Ok, you got me.”

“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.”

“So are you a surfer as well?” Donovan small talked choosing his footing carefully across the larger unstable rock field beneath the embankment while she scampered up to the barely perceptible opening in the brush like a mountain goat.

“When you are in the arms of mother earth,” she turned to wait for him to catch up, “you realize how precious she is. The waves are her breasts from which we suckle the pure joy of being. The air is her perfumed breath through which we glide.” She saw his bemused look. “Don’t worry, I won’t turn into a wood nymph and fly away!”

“Hang glider, too?” he said under his breath and she continued up the deer track toward the hillside behind the massive boulder overlooking the creek.

She’d heard hm. “Of course. I’ll try anything if it looks fun or thrilling.” She turned to catch his eye. “Or dangerous.”

They’d agreed, she was only supposed to show him the old waterfall access up to the compound.

“You’re a rogue cop, a cowboy. I thought you’d all left and got jobs in television.”

At first his eyes adjusted to a wide band of light, bright but also indistinct. A shadow crossed the luminous field. It moved from side to side, growing larger and then smaller. His eyes followed it the way a frog’s would tracking a fly. Another fly appeared to one side.

“He’s coming back,” a muffled voice spoke and he realized that he was sitting, his shoulders slumped forward. He tasted the bile, raised his head and tried to swallow, and felt nauseous, gagging.

“Give him some water.”

A straw was placed in his mouth and he was given a metal cylinder to hold. His eyes began to focus with the first cool sips of liquid. There were two of them, maybe more he couldn’t see just yet. The light came from a wide observation window set in the thick walls of an ovoid white room. He took another sip from the straw realizing that his hands were no longer locked behind his back. Tension painfully gripped his shoulder muscles and those in his neck, and his head was pounding so hard it could be heard into next week.

He looked up to bring into focus a beautiful face wreathed by a lustrous mane, predatory gaze looking down her aquiline nose at him as if she were deciding what to serve him with. “I’m Doctor Ida Quinn, director of the IDA Project. You no doubt understand that you’ve just stepped into a black hole. This is my chief of security, Dak Tillis. He’ll explain it to you.”

The other shadow came into focus as a square faced tiny eyed crew cut action figure and fit the description the Highway Patrol officer had provided, a universal warrior type. “Welcome to Calcutta, loser, the very fact of your being here constitutes a breach of national security. Pursuant to the provisions of section 20 of the Internal Security Act of 1950 in accordance with the directive issued by the Secretary of Defense on the Tenth of December 2005, I have the authority to hold you indefinitely without habeas corpus. Think Guantanamo, the government’s own Club Med, and you’ll get the idea. You might as well take a pill because you’re not ever going anywhere again.”

Donovan looked back at Doctor Quinn, wet his whistle and rasped, “Does he have an off switch?”

“Spare us your Hollywood dramatics, Detective Donovan, we are not amused.”

“Then spare me the phony legalities. You can do whatever you want with me so why the drama?” Donovan leaned back and found the support of an armchair. His blood was getting to all its proper places and the gears engaged behind his eyes. “I am here as a sworn and duly authorized officer of the law investigating a murder that possibly occurred on these premises.”

“Two things, Detective, a court order, and good luck with that. Federally administered property is outside your jurisdiction.”

“Tell me something I didn’t know. But it is my job to proceed while potential evidence is still actionable to make my case. What the DA does with findings isn’t really my problem.”

“You’re a rogue cop, a cowboy. I thought you’d all left and got jobs in television.”

“Meanwhile you’re still talking.”

Tillis made to strike him but Quinn held him back. “That would be unproductive at this point. I think our unwanted guest may have become a solution to the unfortunate incident with Professor Nimoi’s shift into another time dimension.”

Now would be a good time to wake up, Donovan told himself.

“If someone hadn’t sounded the alarm with your location, you’d have been found floating in Corinth Bay as a result of a party boat accident.” Tillis growled as if it were a personal affront.

“Someone, Detective,” Doctor Quinn continued, “female by the voice, transmitted a Code 30 on the emergency frequency, officer in distress at the top of Mount Oly at the abandoned girls summer camp, an accomplice, perhaps, one of your officers waiting for you to return within an agreed upon amount of time? Someone who remembered that there had once been a summer camp up here years ago. Your device was compromised as soon as you crossed into the advanced electronic faraday shadow around our perimeter so you obviously weren’t able to transmit your location.”

He’d stopped listening. He felt relieved, Ionna had made it back to the sedan and called for help. Now it was up to his boss to let him twist in the wind or call out the cavalry. He was angry with himself for being so foolhardy. He’d put a civilian’s life in danger just to prove he was right, to satisfy his self-righteous ego.

When they’d reached the base of the old waterfalls he couldn’t at first see any way up the wall of rock without climbing gear. Ionna had led him to a narrow fissure off to one side of the rock face. Out of the beating sun it was dark at first, then points of sunlight seeped into the angled shaft onto a field of brush, rubble, and gigantic boulders climbing more gradually toward a ragged glimpse of sky. She’d pointed toward the edge of light. “At the top is a little gulley that takes you up behind the mini tower lookout and toward the highest point on Mount Oly.” He’d been reconsidering his options when she said, “Come on, I’ll show you the way up. Steer clear of the poison oak and watch out for rattlesnakes.”

A few narrow crevasses were a squeak for him to twist through or crawl under. The rubble field was not very stable and had a tendency to slide. But he’d made it, a little out of breath from the unaccustomed exertion. When they’d reached the top of the narrow overgrown gulley following another deer track, she’d insisted that she just had to see for herself what they’d done with the place. By then it was late afternoon and he was too winded to argue. They followed a dirt track that led to a clearing, staying to the shadows of the forested hillside. They were looking down onto a hollow in a crease of the hillside at the center of the camp and its cluster of dark green roofed cabins among a grove of tan oaks and oleander.

“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.”

They had likely set off a motion detector alarm at some point. He could faintly hear a buzzer pulsing and barking dogs in the distance. He didn‘t have many choices. They could retreat together and try to outrun the dogs. Unlikely, as he was still catching his breath from the slog up the old waterfall. Or he could buy Ionna some time. He quickly explained what to say and how to operate the sedan’s radio, handing her his keys. And to repeat the code and location until she received an acknowledgement from dispatch, then to make herself scarce.

He’d unholstered his weapon and run up toward the highest point on Mount Oly. He could hear the dogs behind him, barking, as he took a path that led upward to a cluster of large lichen covered crags. On the other side was nothing but a straight drop off and the long flat expanse of surf battered beach. The wind pushed against him like a sail. He didn’t wonder why the hang gliders coveted this spot, but could Ike Carey have launched from this spot in his home made set of wings? Had he fashioned the wings himself ? Or had someone else helped, someone with a sardonic sense of humor? Too much didn’t add up.

Ida Quinn was talking to him like she could read his mind. She had a classic beauty that could have sold a trillion shares, hypnotic in its allure, and whatever it was he would have been a subscriber, yet behind those eyes was a seductive intelligence that was both remarkable and terrifying. “Your little investigation is meaningless, especially since the prime suspect has already flown the coop. We thought we had recovered him after he had been taken to the hospital after his, shall we say, accident. . . .”

“When your bruiser here pulled a PIT maneuver on the old Merc. I thought I recognized your trademark g-rig on the flatbed. It’s a tricky one, you have to be careful someone doesn’t get hurt, land in a ditch. . . .”

He could feel Dak Tillis’s glare. “You could have killed one of my men with your stunt!”

Quinn glared at him. She didn’t like being interrupted. “. . .but he proved too clever, switching his identity with another patient whom we took into custody before we were aware of the subterfuge.” She seemed almost embarrassed. “Sometimes the contractors are not always the most thorough.”

“Does this he have a name?”

“Not a name that you would recognize, but it belongs to one of the most talented geniuses in the history of science, rivaling Feynman, Einstein, Newton, Archimedes, and Pythagoras. Professor Pavel Anton Nimoi, is one of the greatest men of science in any century. As are many men of extreme intelligence, he is a little eccentric and has a particularly troublesome quirk. He is a murderer.”

“You’ve got my attention.” Donovan shrugged and shifted his shoulders to work the stiffness out and felt the presence of movement behind his field of vision. “You’re saying he killed Ike Carey?”

“There have been others over time.”

“Over time? How old is this guy?”

Doctor Quinn shrugged it off. “His mind is ageless, it transcends time. Physically, he is typical of men in their later years.”

“You must have a photo of him. A physical description?”

“That, Detective, I’m afraid, is above your pay grade. You will never find him because you will never have any idea where to look. Professor Nimoi believes that he is a trans-dimensional being who has developed a method of time travel that insures immortality and that requires the death of someone close at hand, a ritual sacrifice if you will, what he terms ‘a cutout’ to another time dimension, such as the one formerly occupied by the person whose death he’s caused. You see it is his theory that we each inhabit our own time dimension while we are alive. But we can stay forever young by traveling through the time dimensions of others.”

“You know this about him and you go along with it?” Donovan leaned forward to read her, find some hint of sadistic taunting. “This is nuts! Do you actually believe this theory?”

“It’s a matter of national security. Professor Nimoi is ultra-secret. No one can know about him, especially hostile governments or predatory corporations. His inventions, innovations, theoretical breakthroughs are immeasurably useful to certain clients with whom we contract for research and development, some so astounding and spectacular that they must remain under wraps until the groundwork has been prepared for their eventual presentation. Think internet but something exponentially more advanced and life changing.

“High security for the IDA Project was necessary in part to secure the perimeters and keep out interlopers, both innocent and the overly curious, some with malicious intent. But it was also to make sure that Pavel Anton Nimoi did not wander away to satisfy his homicidal urges. Ninety percent of the time he was preoccupied with his work, a perfectly well behaved human, for a raving genius, and we had no reason for concern.”

“But that ten percent was murder. Ever hear of ankle bracelets?”

But she wasn’t listening, looking up as if she were hearing a voice and then with a finger to her ear she said, “Yes, Senator, this is Dr. Quinn,” and began to walk away, “I certainly was not aware. . .yes, we’ll form a search party right away.” She tuned to look back at Donovan.

“What do we do with the cowboy?” Dak wanted to know.

She shrugged. “Like we do with all the others, package him.”

His arms were pulled behind his back, the water bottle tumbling to his feet. Another pair of hands in disposable gloves kneaded his left shoulder muscle and he felt the jab. Tillis, grinning mockingly and holding up a rectangular device no bigger than a paperback saying, “Smile for the birdie,” blinded him with a double strobe.

He didn’t remember much although at times he thought he recalled a detail, but it just wouldn’t reveal itself, peeking from behind a synaptic partition, like a word on the tip of his tongue that could never be brought forward into consciousness no matter how he tried.

He remembered what he’d been told. A search party from the Mount Oly compound had found him unconscious on a rock ledge overlooking Sparta Creek Beach. IDA Project personnel had used their own helicopter to medivac him to the hospital. Half a dozen hours later he regained consciousness, wondering how he’d got there. He’d been given a medical evaluation and they’d found no signs of trauma except for a nasty bruise on his shoulder. When he couldn’t tell them what happened, they said that it was probably temporary amnesia and his memory would return eventually. So far all it did was tantalize. He spent the next twenty four under observation and then was sent home and told to take some sick days to recover his equilibrium. It didn’t include an exemption from an ass chewing.

The Sheriff started off the phone call with “I’m not even going to ask what you were thinking” and it went downhill from there. One morning he woke, got dressed for work, figuring he’d spent enough down time, and got as far as the back door with his keys in his hand before he paused and went back into the kitchen, had another cup of coffee, and did the math.

“The architecture of oppression is the same with all the world builders throughout history erecting their edifices on mountains of skulls.”

And he wanted to thank Ionna even though she wasn’t having any of it. He hadn’t mentioned her and feigned ignorance when they questioned him about who might have known to transmit the Code 30 using his radio call sign. It was part of his voluntary amnesia, that and how he knew to access the compound by the abandoned falls. He would keep that to himself, and he wanted to assure her of that pact. A phone call, an email, a visit to her office would all have been more than just coincidence. There couldn’t be any links between them other than what might have been recorded on the listening device in her office in conjunction to Ike Carey’s death. Something was nagging at him and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

That morning he drove to Old Town Santa Lena and the Sole Sister Diner for breakfast. On his second cup of coffee, she slipped into the booth to face him. “I blame myself,” were the first words she spoke. “If I hadn’t shown you the way up, you’d still be trying to figure out how to get there. I saw it on the news, Sheriff’s Detective Recovered In Daring Cliff Rescue. . . .”

“Just the opposite, it was irresponsible of me to involve and endanger a private citizen.” He was going to offer more excuses but her smile stopped him. It said terms of agreement met and mutual responsibility accepted.

“You’re not the ordinary copper.” She stared across the table at him, hands placed on either side of her cup. “I mean that as a compliment.”

“Most cops are ordinary. I don’t see that I’m any different.”

“You should know I have strong opinions about the organization you work for.”

Here it comes, he thought, the civilian fantasy of how to fix, defund, dismantle the police, and make the world a better place for kitty cats. He rolled his eyes up and watched the ceiling fan turn over the empty late morning tables of the diner, the few stragglers nursing coffees at the counter. She wasn’t angry, just insistent and he didn’t mind the sound of her voice.

“The judicious enforcement of the law is crippled by a disease known as mission creep. Law enforcement is getting funded for work that is outside their purview. Sheriff Departments are the most susceptible as besides being an independent law enforcement agency they are also a political entity by dint of popular election and subject to outside influence and financial considerations. To generate additional funding that the tax payers can’t provide, they are ready to take on additional duties generally outside their initial mission to protect and serve.

“Why should a cop respond to a mental health emergency. That’s a mental health professional’s job. Most of the times it’s the police who escalate the violence. Racism, sexism, ethnic prejudice have no place in the judicious enforcement of the law. And I don’t blame the individual cops although they could probably do with more sensitivity training.”

If she only knew what the rank and file thought about “sissy” training, as it was known, her idealism would be sorely disappointed. He smiled and shook his head.

“And typical of any top heavy government agency, administrators keep adding more busy work that would be better accomplished by NGOs or at least social service agencies, not because they think they can do a better job, but because it feathers their nest, makes them appear to be wheelers and dealers in the competition of more power and politics. Money talks and the more funding for supplementary programs in the form of grants and transfer of military surplus equipment only makes the administrator, the Sheriff, in this case, seem more able and effective. Unfortunately it also relegates the policing force to an occupying body with no relation to the community they ostensibly serve and protect and setting up an us-versus-them mindset among the civilians, as you call them, and the ranks, essentially enforcers of a police state.

“You are an agent of oppression whether you realize it or not. You are just a factotum, a straw man, a straw of the straw man. The real police state is accountants, publicity agents, and AI surveillance networks that keep ordinary folks poor, distracted, and distrustful. Most elected officials, your boss included, are congenital hypocrites, and those that aren’t don’t last long.”

“Wow, just like 1984 except that was almost forty years ago.”

“This country was a police state long before that date, keeping people of color in their place has a long long history, but the realization that we are all under the thumb of big corporations and the corrupt inept governments they own is now catching on! The architecture of oppression is the same with all the world builders throughout history erecting their edifices on mountains of skulls!”

He listened to her ramble and felt sorry for her and her delusion. He’d heard a lot of it before, from an ex-wife, from girlfriends, including Marion, who’d suffered indignities because she was a black woman, constantly being pulled over for imaginary traffic infraction. “You never know if they gonna give you a ticket or ask for a sexual favor,” she’d told him, and it gave him grief to remember her weary voice pronouncing those words.

Ionna reached across the table and touched his arm as if sensing something. “But I want you to know, Donovan, I really appreciate you going the extra mile to get justice for Ikey.”

“Unfortunately I failed, miserably,” Donovan sighed letting his hand fall open next to his coffee cup, “and those responsible will never be held accountable.”

She nodded, her intense eyes focused on his, “Welcome to my world.”

As he got up to leave, she stopped him. “One more thing. Maybe you can tell me the name of the person who is informing on EAF.”

Donovan shook his head. “They’re not identified by their real names in the reports. Most of the time though, it’s someone close to the top. Otherwise, what use would they be?”

The morning of his “performance review,” as Tim Collins called it, he’d driven out to the Sparta Creek Trailer Park and found Heron sitting on the bench outside her weather beaten trailer watching a couple of young surfers in the space next to hers wax their boards. She frowned when she saw his sedan pull up. He smiled and waved at her as he approached, pulling a plastic bag from his coat pocket.

“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.”

On the return to Santa Lena, he got a text from Debbie inviting him to a charity auction for the hospital volunteers. Why not, he could use some charity. Logging in at his desk there was an email waiting from the new chief of detectives wanting him to close out the Ike Carey case so he could review his notes pending any disciplinary action. He knew right away he was going to love this guy.

He stared at the spreadsheet on the screen in front of him and retraced the timeline. Someone, presumably one of the guards at the IDA compound, had likely shot at Ike Carey as he launched from a point high enough that he could safely land on Sparta Creek Beach even with the homemade hang glider. Something bothered him about that scenario. It sat cockeyed in his head and he couldn’t understand why. Could it have been Dad, or the name that had been on the warrant, Philip Andrew Nichols? But why? He entered the initials into the cell, color coded red for NFI, Needs Further Investigation. Ike Carey’s initials, of whom he had a fairly complete picture, occupied the green cell adjacent. He accessed the spreadsheet macros menu and clicked on the one labeled Final to run it.

The phone on his desk warbled. He’d been expecting the call. It was Helen from HR.

“Am I speaking to Detective James Donovan?”

“You are.”

“I can send you the material as an attachment over email. There are FAQs that’ll likely answer all your questions. Just follow the guided questionnaire.”

“Filling out a questionnaire is only going to make me more undecided.”

“There are seminars you can attend. Let’s see, you just missed one so the next one won’t be till after the first of the year, that’s only four months away. I’ll send you the registration info, OK?”

Something had caught Donovan’s eye as he glanced at the screen, dissatisfied with the way the conversation was heading. “Uh, yeah, ok, thanks, Helen,” and hung up.

He stared at the bottom of the page and the report, the red and green cells adjacent to each other read PAN IC. The time and date stamp pulsed, 10:04 AM on 10/4, a Monday.

The Last Resort, 30-31

October 12, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp FictionA Lee Malone Adventure, Backwoods and Barefoot, blondes, Corkscrew County, Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, SAPHO, The Corkscrew County Grapevine, The Last ResortNuallain House, Publishers

by Pat Nolan

Chapter Thirty

GLASS SLIPPERS

It’s not like I didn’t have any clothes. A model always has clothes. Mine were in the trunk of my Volvo. There was a basket of laundry I never found time to do. And two shopping bags full of clothes I never got around to donating to the local thrift store. Underneath all that was a large garment box my mother had mailed to me in a fit of spite. It contained the cast-offs of a life spent in the promotion of my classic good looks.

I had spread most of the clothing across the bed and on the wicker furniture of the cabin I was now renting at the Mint, just a few doors down from where Rikki and Wallace were staying. The laundry basket contained the usual delicate items gone stale, the tops that stained too easily, and the jeans and skirts that were too confining for the summer months. I was amused and not a little surprised by the items I pulled from the thrift bags. Things that were long past fashionable seemed like treasures now that they were all the clothing I had. Some of the items went back twenty years to the mid-sixties when the styles, by today’s standards, seemed laughable. There were miniskirts and plunging necklines as well as the colorful confusion of paisley gowns. Each piece had its own history that I could have called up wistfully, but I had to decide on something to wear and in a hurry. JJ was getting impatient.

For a brief moment I had the sense that the long narrow garment box was a cardboard coffin in which a life that had once been mine was now entombed.

I had promised to be her moral support when she strolled down the runway at the Montague Winery Charity Fashion Show, something that apparently took precedence over the burden of my recent calamity, and she was going to hold me to it.

“That’s nice,” JJ commented on the beaded bolero jacket I held up. Unfortunately there was nothing else that went with it. The belted miniskirt tunic was a little too twiggy, and I had thrown away my white go-go boots long ago.

“What’s in the box?” She lifted the flap and poked around disinterestedly.

“I can’t remember.” A few years back I had gone to the post office and the box had been waiting for me. The enclosed letter contained the usual irrational accusations of diminished affection my mother liked to imagine and use as a guilt lever. It had worked before, but no longer. The emotional blackmail in that letter still made me angry. “Some old things.”

“Is this a cheerleader outfit?” JJ held up the blue and gold sweater, beaming. “I had one just like this, except it was maroon and white!”

“I don’t think I could possibly wear that,” I dead-panned.

“And a tutu?” She had turned her attention to the other items.

“I must have been twelve when I wore that. I’ve grown a bit since then.” I held up a silky iridescent shift. “I wore this when I was crowned Miss Teen America.”

JJ gaped. “Oh my god, that’s right, you were a Miss Teen America!”

For a brief moment I had the sense that the long narrow garment box was a cardboard coffin in which a life that had once been mine was now entombed.

“You wore this?” JJ held up an embroidered peasant blouse with an expression of disdain.

Seeing the blouse again startled me. I reached blindly into the box certain of what else I would find. Yes, it was there too, the red, black, and white tiered full length skirt. It and the blouse were some of the only clothes I had worn when I was being held in the villa compound on Sabbia Negru. I remembered Xuxann explaining the significance of the colors to me. They were the colors of the goddess: white for innocence, red for fertility, and black for death. Those items of clothing were tangible proof of the most bizarre chapter in my charmed yet otherwise disheveled life.

I felt a stab of pain at the tip of my finger. Cautiously this time, I extracted the skirt from the box and spread it on the bed. Pinned to the waistband was the small bronze medallion that Treyann had given me not long before we parted ways. It depicted a woman around whose lower torso twin snakes were twined, and whose heads she held parallel to her own. She was the great earth goddess, mistress of the underground, and prototype of the caduceus.

“I think I’ve found what I’m going to wear.”

“What?” JJ wrinkled her nose. “That? That’s so. . . ethnic hippie gypsy earth mother peasant. . . .” And when I turned to seriously reflect on the blouse with its intricate embroidered history, “Kind of passé, don’t you think?”

I ran my thumb over the embossed medallion smiling to myself, and pictured Treyann swirling in dance, a dance in which the arms were extended over the head and the hands brought together in rhythmic thunderclaps accompanied by flute and tambour.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen stitching quite like this on a peasant blouse before,” JJ observed when she realized I wasn’t going to be swayed by her disapproval. The embroidery was as unusual as it was ancient. Ears of barley were depicted in the distinctive motif as well as small purple flowers similar to forget-me-nots.

She pointed to the multicolored spirals embroidered at intervals along the neck line. “These look like little galaxies.”

I had to smile. “Mushrooms.”

Her eyes widened. “You mean like. . .mushroom mushrooms? Shrooms?” She gave a tentative knowing grin.

I nodded. “Yes, when I. . . .” I was going to say, “was held captive” but decided on “lived at Sabbia Negru, I partook of them regularly.”

Again, I puzzled her. This was something else about me she had failed to anticipate. “Sabbia Negru?”

“It’s a long story.” And it was a long story, one that I thought I had extricated myself from but was once again insisting in capturing my attention. My confinement on the grounds of the villa had been made less of an ordeal because of the daily companionship of Treyann. She was the wise old priestess at whose knee I learned about an ancient selfless world, a world in which inner beauty complimented outer beauty and made one radiant. They were lessons in the power of the female that did not reside solely in the triad of attraction, the face, the breasts, the pudendum. I was made aware of this awesome unity with Treyann’s guidance through the sacramental mushroom. My eyes were opened and what I experienced was a power both benevolent and cruel.

JJ glanced at her watch. “Well, we don’t have time for a long story. If that’s what you’re going to wear, get dressed. I don’t want to be late for the preshow rehearsal.”

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.

JJ was looking at me like she wasn’t quite satisfied. “Shoes, you need shoes.”

All my shoes had gone up in smoke. “I’m thinking barefoot.” That was how I originally worn this outfit.

JJ shook her head, “Mmm, no, not quite.” She flashed me a sly grin as she held the door open. “I’m thinking glass slippers.”

Chapter Thirty One

SCAPEGOAT

Tommy Montague was a real charmer. JJ had every right to gush. He was a good looking guy, attired in dark slacks, a gold polo shirt, and a tan dinner jacket with the Montague Winery crest on the breast pocket. His manner was professional, his handshake firm. But there was something about him that bothered me.

For one I had no effect on him. Even with a thousand watt smile that would normally turn most men’s brains to mush, his eyes registered nothing, nada. What also bothered me was that if you took an eyebrow pencil and drew a raggedy goatee around his mouth and then combed half a can of motor oil through his hair, you would have the man in the gray van, the one with the vicious dog.

Tommy personally took us on a tour of the petite castle. Except for the private apartments, which, of course, were off-limits. We were shown the wine cellar, the tasting room where a sumptuous buffet was staged, and the spectacular ballroom with the runway the models would soon be catwalking down. The mezzanine led to an open terrace overlooking sloping stretches of vineyards interspersed with little oak oases. There were champagne fountains in the tasting room as well as on the mezzanine. I availed myself of a flute as soon as the server came by with a tray. I have a weakness for bubbles.

Our guide had a two-way radio that called him away. He made his apologies and left hurriedly. I accompanied JJ to the dressing room and got caught up in the crush and hysteria.

There were two kinds of women elbowing each other for mirror space to make last minute adjustments. The professional sticks, ‘twiggys,’ who are nothing more than skeletal clothes racks, and the amateurs, or as they are known in the trade, ‘heifers,’ who are mostly high school girls, innocent and perfect, or middle aged women who think they still have something. 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.

Rikki and Wallace had volunteered their services to do hair and make-up for the show. I was greeted by Rikki who eyed my outfit and immediately dubbed me the ‘barefoot Contessa’ and cracked that I was not doing the fashion world any favors by parading around like a hippie princess in front of all these impressionable young women. He was aghast that I was shoeless. I reminded him that my shoes were charred rubble. All I had in the way of footwear were a pair of hiking boots and rubber flip flops. That shut him up though it didn’t change his look of sour disapproval.

I had to laugh. Here I was, a world famous model at a charity fashion show, and I would not be sauntering down the runway. Certainly not in my archaic pagan outfit. I was aware that I had been recognized and that my presence was causing a minor commotion among the participants. As usual I remained unapproachable.

I quit the hubbub of the dressing room and wandered among the arriving patrons with my flute of champagne. I had determined earlier that the terrace off the mezzanine would be the ideal place to await the start of the show. I was feeling especially bright and forgiving. As chintzy as the phony miniature castle appeared from the outside, the interior was expensively and, to a certain pedestrian extent, lavishly accoutered. I was particularly taken by the large medieval tapestry at one end of the mezzanine in what Tommy had indicated as the private suites. I was drawn to it by the intricate weave of story it told. It was a classic, a lithe blonde female with her hand on the snout of the pure white unicorn. I felt as if I were being drawn into the woven landscape and wondered if I may not have had a horn too many.

On the stage, in tiered skirts of ancient fashion, the women of SAPHO performed a whirling foot stomping version of a primitive flamenco.

A door opened at my left to draw me out of my reverie. A large man in a large dark suit approached and glared at me with large disapproval. I got the message and made my way back through the wide gold filigreed doors that took me out to the terrace and the cool of early evening. My bare feet seemed to sense the deep warm character of the marble paving. My eyes were drawn to the misty distance where an orange aura backlit the ridge of conifers. The air was heavy with earthy fragrance and the scent transported me to my time in captivity, or as I had come to consider it, my retreat and rebirth. I had experienced a similar overwhelming sensation, but at the time I had voluntarily imbibed in one of Treyann’s herb, amphibian and mushroom cocktails. I ran my lightly throbbing finger over the image of the brooch that had pricked it and let the realization sink in. A tincture of that potion applied to the brooch pin would have been enough to produce the heightened awareness I was now feeling. A tiny pea shaped mouth in my head was telling me to panic but I held firm. One of the many things I had learned from Treyann was how to fearlessly walk the gossamer tightrope into a state of pure delight. I also learned that there was a dark side to this particular power.

Again it was an instance where my curiosity had got the better of me. It was one full moon night when a large group of women had been ferried over from the resort at the northern tip of Sardinia. I had been prohibited from joining the evenings of music and dancing on the chance that I would be recognized and my presence at the old Roman villa on the St Bartholomew straits would get out. After months of custody I was trusted enough that I no longer needed to be escorted by Xuxann. Besides, I had been biding my time in the company of Treyann. I had spent that particular day hiking on the hillside behind the villa and had come back exhausted and famished. Treyann had fed me homemade stone ground bread, goat cheese and olives. I had fallen asleep on the little cot that she kept out in the open space between the garden and her hut. I was awakened by a chilly breeze off the Mediterranean. It was late evening and I heard the strains of fife and drum coming up from the courtyard of the villa. I called for Treyann but got no answer. She never went anywhere after dark. She did not trust her eyesight to walk the winding trails at night.

I wandered back to my little cell above the villa, but the sounds of gaiety and the throaty ululations called to me. Stealthily, I slipped into the courtyard and was not disappointed. A mass of women, bare breasted or in tiny shrugs covering not much more than their shoulders, exulted in their freedom, arms waving in the silver air of a full moon like fields of grain in a breeze, their feet stamping to the rhythm, hips undulating to the hypnotic music of a primitive orchestra of breath and skin.

The musicians were mostly African women, one of whom was Xuxann. Their instruments included a variety of drums, from the tall African type to smaller single head Celtic tambours. The flutes were of all sizes as well, shrill piccolos and the larger bass breaths of the Australian outback. They had cut a groove and the dancers followed it like water down a chute. On the stage, in tiered skirts of ancient fashion, the women of SAPHO performed a whirling foot stomping version of a primitive flamenco. Among the mass of swaying bodies I was anonymous. Then everything I had ever assumed turned upside down and inside out.

The music stopped with the exception of the low moan of a large bamboo flute. A female figure was paraded around the stage on a palanquin carried by four women dressed in sheer glistening gowns. At first I assumed that it was a statute like the one of the Virgin Mary I had seen carried in processions in Mediterranean villages on certain holy days. On her head, a large elaborate gold headdress perched like an exotic bird. Very much alive, the woman was helped to her feet by her attendants. She was astride shoes with soles that were easily two feet high, adding to her already towering presence. Even though she was draped in layers of multicolored scarves, her face painted to exaggerate her eyes and highlighted with fearsome red streaks, I recognized Treyann

The music started up again, slowly at first then building to a frenzy. Treyann twirled and whirled to the frantic beat of the drums and the piercing shrieks of the fifes as gracefully as if she had been barefoot. All eyes were fixed on her and a great hush descended over the assembled women as we all seemed to breathe in unison with the spinning apparition. As the tempo changed from frenzied to that approximating a steady heartbeat, it became obvious that Treyann was enacting a ritual, a paean to female power. A piebald Old World Nubian buck that had seen better days was brought onto the stage and placed before Treyann. She spun like a dust devil around the trembling animal. The flutes fell silent. The drums continued with rolling solemnity. A towering Treyann swayed, stomping her elevator shoes in time to the beat, hands held above her head clapping a polyrhythm. The drums stopped abruptly. In the rushing silence, every woman breathed as one. Treyann clapped her hands thrice like the crack of thunder. She directed all the gathered energy at the sacrificial animal. The old goat tottered and then crumbled, a mere bundle of skin and bone.

Next Time: Wondering Woman Snared By Her Curiosity

Contents Vol. I No. 9

September 5, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp FictionA Detective Story, A Lee Malone Adventure, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Dropping A Dime, Hard Boiled Myths, Helene Baron Murdock, Pat Nolan, Perry O'Dickle, Pulp Fiction, The Last Resort, The White RoomNuallain House, Publishers

Introducing Dime Pulp Number Nine

In Issue Nine of Dime Pulp, A Serial Fiction Magazine, the big news is that Colin Deerwood, who had always considered A Detective Story as a working titled, has finally settled on Better Than Dead as the title of his 1940 serial detective fiction prompted by the illustration of a vintage Black Mask cover and featuring the hapless Lackland Ash in a quest for diamonds and the legendary Empress’ Cucumber.

The Last Resort, aka Tales Of A Long Legged Snoop, picks up the pace toward its concluding chapters as Lee Malone, former international beauty and reporter for The Corkscrew County Grapevine, is under suspicion of torching her own country cabin. To the rescue comes her neighbor, Rhonda LaLonda, one time porn star, to take her under her wing for commiseration and whiskey.

In the fourth installment of The White Room, Helen Baron-Murdock’s Detective Jim Donovan of the Weston County Sheriff’s Office Violent Crimes Unit ties together more pieces of the mystifying puzzle into the death of Ike Carey with the help of Ionna Gunn, director of the environmental group, EAF, that points to a sinister government agency operating behind the scenes as he tries to solve the mystery of this latest Hard Boiled Myth.

If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the links below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume One, Number Nine

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

The Last Resort, Chapters 28-29

The White Room I
The White Room II
The White Room III
The White Room IV

A Detective Story—9

Better Than Dead, A Detective Story—9

September 5, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction"Brother can you spare a dime?", 1940, A Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Crime Fiction, Diamond & Jade, Fedoras and Flatfoots, Hard Boiled Fiction, Lackland Ask, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Colin Deerwood

The rain had stopped but there were puddles among the piles of trash in the alleyway. I steered her away from a big one by stepping in it for her.

“You’re so gallant,” she said.

She had looped her arm through mine and leaned on me for support. I leaned on her because it felt good. She was smiling and humming to herself and I kinda knew what that felt like just then.

“Mind if I call you Becky?”

She looked shockingly pleased. “Becky, a name like in your American writer, Shemuel Klemins’ book, who is the sweetheart of a Tom Sawyer, yes, Becky. We read his stories when I was in school in Zurich.” Her tone turned confidential and intimate. “He is quite famous with his American tall tales translated into many languages. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was my very favorite. How I longed to sail on the mighty Mississippi!” she added with a sigh.

Max’s hi-test fruit juice had really made her loopy and I didn’t want to pop her bubble to correct her because she was pretty happy thinking she knew what she was talking about, but everybody knows that Tom Sawyer was written by Mark Twain and even though I never read the book I did see Jackie Coogan in the movie version and that whole fence routine was a pretty funny scam. I’ve known guys who operate just the same way, although they weren’t all that nice or clever in getting you to do their work for them, and then taking all the credit. As for that whole bit with Becky, it just proved that dames are dames even at a young age waiting for some charming prince to ride up on a white pony and rescue them.

We were under the streetlight by then. I looked down into her glimmering eyes and said, “You can call me Tom.”

Her laughter echoed down the deserted rain wet street. It was a pleasant laugh, full of promise.

“Golie? Golie is here, too?” Now she was frightened and that was exactly what she wanted me to be as Hairy the Hat had her by the arm and was hustling her toward the Packard.

Then Herr Hat had to spoil it. He came running out from the shadows. “Rebecca, Rebecca! Where have you been? You took so long! We were going to come looking for you!”

“Oh, David!” she said as he approached, obviously ready for any and more attention, “Were you really worried about me?”

By then he’d got close enough to get a whiff of her breath as she smiled up at him. “Are you drunk?” I got the benefit of an angry glare.

“Don’t be silly!” She slapped him playfully on the lapel. “I am perfectly slobber, I mean, sober!” And then broke out in a fit of giggling.

The Hat was making moves like he might want to take a poke at me. I wasn’t too worried about him, he was just a kid. It was the other guy behind him, a guy I hadn’t seen before, with slick backed pomaded hair, a razor sharp nose, pencil thin moustache, and a mean sadistic gleam in his bug eyes.

The dame saw him, too. “Isaac? Why is Isaac?” she addressed the kid in the hat, and then stared at me, instantly sober.

I was keeping my eye on the Isaac guy when I thought I saw the big pole in front of the barbershop step forward. I wasn’t feeling any pain but I wasn’t that far gone. Then I remembered that there wasn’t a barbershop on this block and that wasn’t a barber pole. The guy was seven foot if he was an inch and a head on him like a cornerstone.

“Golie? Golie is here, too?” Now she was frightened and that was exactly what she wanted me to be as Hairy the Hat had her by the arm and was hustling her toward the Packard.

“Hey!” I shouted, about to say, “you can’t do that!” when I got a set of knuckles in the kidney from razor face. I folded like a day old racing form.

If it ever crossed my mind I might have considered what a ragdoll felt like being tossed into the back of the rattletrap pulled up at the curb. It was an old bazou from the previous decade, as they say up north of Maine, and if it ever had a cushioned bench seat it wasn’t obvious. It didn’t matter anyway as I was dumped on the floorboards and the big mug kept his foot on my back while hatchet face took the wheel. The jalopy was lacking in springs as well and every bump and pothole was telegraphed like a smack to my face. It seemed like the driver was going out of his way to find something to bump over or bang against. And of course when he took a corner on two wheels, my head slammed on the door post. Good thing I was wearing my hat. By the time the ride was over I’d been pummeled and no one had laid a hand on me. Unless you count the bruiser’s foot, and the brass knucks to the kidney that was the admission price for this carnival ride.

The gorilla pulled me to my feet and pushed me against the gray granite of a swank building. And it had started to rain again. I had a sense that I was back where I started from but in the alley by the servant’s entrance. I was still feeling weak in the knees when Mutt woke me up by slamming my head against the bricks. Neither of them had said a word the whole time I was taken for the ride. Now the skinny guy said, “Less go” while the lummox picked me up and tossed me into the open doorway.

There were a couple of tough nuts waiting for me, each one there to greet me with a fist to the solar plexus or the side of the head. At least I was out of the rain. I tried to look at the bright side but now all I was seeing were stars. Then everything went black because they knocked my hat off and pulled a hood over my head. I was more in the dark than I wanted to be. One of their punches had affected my hearing and all that was coming through was the dull roar of voices as they dragged me up a couple flights of stairs. I wasn’t resisting but they were moving faster than my legs would allow and they didn’t care that my shins were banging against the risers. Then they half dragged me a long stretch through another door by the sound of it slamming open.

A gruff voice gave an order that sounded like “put him there” or “in the chair” and next thing I knew I was thrown roughly into the sitting position and the hood was yanked off my head. I blinked in the bright light. A couple of big body shapes came into focus. The Mutt and Jeff of the strong arm crew first, hovering, waiting for me to make a wrong move, any move, in fact. Among them standing well back by his desk, Herr Doktor and his pointy goatee looking more than agitated, the bookshelves and the maps looming behind him and I knew I was back to where I’d started from, but obviously things had changed.

“Do you takes us for fools?!” It wasn’t a question Professor Soloman was expecting me to answer.

“We have made inquiries about you, Mr. Ask. We have friends in high places. According to them you have an unsavory criminal record, receiving stolen property, public nuisance, drunk and disorderly, impersonation a police officer, soliciting prostitutes, nonpayment of alimony, vagrancy, assault and battery, unlicensed possession of a firearm, discharge of a weapon in a public place, murder, attempted murder, trespassing, invasion of privacy, stalking and spying with lewd intent. To say nothing of the fact that you have a price on your head placed there by the notorious Balkan gangster, Jan Kovic, a mortal enemy to our cause and my people, a tentacle of the Black Hand in this country!”

By the time Soloman got all that out off his chest I had a chance to get a sense of the mess I was in. There were a couple of other palookas besides the viper named Isaac and the gorilla they called Golie standing around the den with broad shoulders and mean eyes mostly pointed at me. They had me surrounded. The next thing I know I might be dead.

I pointed to the pocket of my suit coat. “Mind if I smoke?” I was playing for time and they probably knew it. The viper hissed and made like he was going to smack me one. He hadn’t hit me in the last five minutes and maybe he needed to go another round.

Soloman waved him away. “No, no, let him have his cigarette.” He said it like he was letting me have my last smoke.

I shook out one of the few left in the pack of Lucky’s and fit the smiz to my lip, the one that was starting to swell when the snake had smashed my face against the wall. I searched out a blue tip from my vest pocket and snapped the flame to life with a thumbnail. After I caught a lungful I blew it out slow and easy like I didn’t have a care in the world. I felt a little tickle below my throbbing nose where my moustache used to be and put a finger up to it. It felt sticky and when I looked at the tip I saw that it was blood. I leaned back and crossed one leg over the other.

“You might have missed a couple, Doc, but seeing as how they were minor offenses, I’ll let it pass.” I picked a fleck of tobacco off the tip of my tongue. “Sounds like someone let you take a peek at my rap sheet. Each one of those so-called charges are not at all what they seem.” I brushed some floorboard dirt off my pantleg “Take for instance the drunk and disorderly. I’m no stranger to drink but when you find out your wife has been carrying on with your best pal, well, it does something to you so I got drunk and angry. You can’t blame me. And besides the mug threw the first punch and I was in no mood for that and laid him out with a right to the jaw. But he wouldn’t stay down so I had to kick him in the head a couple of times till he got the idea, and then the bartender and some of his friends came after me and I had to pull my rod to let them know I meant business and put a round over their heads. When the cops arrived I told them I was one of them and showed them my private investigator tin. They said that it wasn’t a real badge and that I was under arrest.

“But it was just that one time.” I waved away the smoke. “And just to set things straight, I never murdered anyone. The rest of that is just part of the job or misunderstandings, personal and financial. Besides you don’t need a pedigree to do what I do in a world of cheats, chiselers and double crossers. You gotta know the game, Doc, And that’s something I know. So you think you can just toss me around and step on me? Something’s up and it smells fishy.” I blew out another mouthful of smoke like I meant it.

“Fishy? There is this!” He shoved a wet towel in my direction and I saw what looked like a soggy pile of paper the size of an address book resting on its soaked black leather covers. It looked very familiar.

“This mushy matzos is what was discovered in the water closet after you left.” He positioned himself to give me the broadside. “But not before the contents had been irreparably damaged!”

I’d seen Oliver Hardy give a more convincing chin nod. He had malarky written all over his mug.

“This item you had to sell to us is useless, worthless. We could not consider the remuneration we had agreed on and must withdraw our offer.”

I got up to take a closer look but the big brute slammed me back in the chair with one hand on my shoulder like he was merely closing a window. I stared at the pile of paper pulp. How could four dozen pages get so soggy in that short of a time? I hadn’t stuck Yamatski’s address book in the toilet tank, but in the space behind it and the wall, and if the address book had survived a swim in the East River fairly intact, especially zippered shut, why was it now just a sopping stack of curled pages?

Then I remember that I’d seen such a mess before. In the kitchen of Pat Fitzpatrick’s apartment, a freelance reporter I used to know who went off to cover the war in Spain and hasn’t been heard from since. His wife at the time, Flossie the floosy, had washed a pair of his trousers but forgot to check the pockets and didn’t find his notebook till she was putting it through the ringer. Pat was in a rage when I just happened to drop by and I might have saved Floss another knuckle mouse to her powdered cheek. But Floss wasn’t one easy to phase. She heated up her iron and one by one steam pressed each of the pages and laid them out to dry. Pat’s pencil and the ink scribbles were still readable if not a little scorched. She’d even stitched it together when it was dry and handed it back to him saying that maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he washed his own clothes.

I eyed what had been my ticket out of the dumps. If the information in that address book was that valuable, why weren’t they trying to save it? I would have. I didn’t doubt that it had occurred to them so why the con?

“Keep your shirt on, big boy,” I said as I fished the pebble out and held it between my thumb and forefinger. “This what you’re looking for?”

I drew on the fag and considered my options. I didn’t have many. I never expected a jackpot from the contents of the address book just more opportunities to get my revenge on Kovic and his mob, and I’d already harvested the cash so I was back to Go and waiting for my turn on the dice. I let out a breath of smoke. “Well, easy come, easy go. Too bad about the soaking of the goods, Doc, and that we won’t be doing business. I can’t expect you to accept damaged goods.”

“Garbage!” the old guy insisted, “You offer me garbage!” He pointed his cigar at me accusingly. “And to think I allowed young Rebecca to accompany you to meet with that degenerate, Max Feathers, a traitor to his people!”

I could tell he was warming up to launch a tirade and I didn’t want to hear it. “Listen, Doc. . . .”

“No, you will listen, Mr. Ask. I will not deal with criminals like you and Feathers. Again my suspicion is aroused. Perhaps you are an agent of the Black Hand after all, sent to reconnoiter the scope of our operation. I was right to be suspect you of trying to trick us with this worthless material! This garbage.”

“I get the drift, Doc, it’s garbage, but it’s my garbage so I’ll just take it back and be on my way.”

“Don’t bother yourself with it, we will dispose of it for you.” He called over one of his goons, “Maurice, see that this muck is thrown out with the kitchen refuse,” and handed him the pile of wet paper.

I had to object. “Hey, wait, that’s my mine, I don’t care if it’s wet!”

Soloman waved away my objection. “It is unusable rubbish. You have no use for it.”

“It is still my property.”

“It is something that belonged to someone else of which you were in possession, hardly your property. You are a thief and consort of thieves. Young Rebecca tells me that you, not she, are in possession of the uncut diamond, something else that does not belong to you. You will surrender it.” He held out his hand.

I admit that it stung my pride that she’d finked on me because I thought that there just for a moment maybe we had seen eye to eye and she had felt about me the way I felt about her but it was probably just Max’s bug juice that was making me addlepated. A dame is always going to be looking out for her own best interest and the kid was a dame, she couldn’t help it.

“Ok. Ok, let me stand up. I have to reach in my trouser pocket.”

I was hemmed in on all sides. Once I gave them what they wanted what’s to say they wouldn’t drop me off a roof or in the drink with bricks tied to my ankles. I was getting the bum’s rush that was plain to see, and this skit with the useless notebook was doing serious damage to their high and mighty cause.

I stuck my hand in my pocket and felt for the little white box the diamond was in. I could tell that it had popped open, likely during my manhandling on the way over, and that now the rock was somewhere in the corner of my pocket consorting with the local lint. I pulled out the open box to give my finger more maneuvering room and tossed it on Soloman’s desk.

He was alarmed to see it empty and Isaac stepped toward me impatiently like I was trying to pull a fast one.

“Keep your shirt on, big boy,” I said as I fished the pebble out and held it between my thumb and forefinger. “This what you’re looking for?”

I laughed at Soloman’s anticipation as I tossed the rock in my mouth and did a quick swallow just before Isaac’s fist hit me right on the button and the lights went out.

I felt trapped like a rat, encased on all sides by something that wouldn’t give. I was blind as a mole but I could still picture what that was like. I couldn’t feel my hands and my shoulders ached from being pulled behind my back. My knees ached for the same reason. I was struggling to breathe. I’d been falling and tried to catch my breath. That’s what brought me back. I had a clanging headache as well. If it was a bad dream I was dying to wake up. The combination of the workover I got and the gut full of Max’s plum potion treating me to the stamping feet of pink elephants convinced me that the pain was too real to be all in my head even though that’s where all the hurt was congregating.

How long had I been out? My jaw still throbbed so maybe not that much time had passed. I was thirsty and at the same time had the urge to relieve myself. I was lying on my left side, not my preferred side for unconsciousness. I didn’t have much choice the way I was trussed up. The gag was constricting my breathing and I started to panic. I could still move my head and tried to rub my cheek against the surface I lay on. I didn’t have much leeway. I felt as if I’d been stuffed in a crate that was too small for me.

Finally the edge of the gag pulled away enough to let in a little unobstructed air. It was a relief but my bladder may have got the wrong message. Next to being dead, the last thing I wanted was a spill in my BVDs.

I was boxed in, no mystery there, and how to get out was a question for Professor Quiz as I had let my subscription to Houdini Magazine lapse and missed the issue where they had tips on how to escape from a fix just like this one.

At the same time I managed to reposition the blindfold up over my cheekbone that allowed for an unimpeded view of more dark. There was a distinct smell of damp mustiness that reminded me of mothballs and dusty attics.

It was a familiar smell. I’d spent a lot of time in my granny’s attic above the old mercantile store upstate. It was a kingdom of dust and cobwebs and I would root around in the old crates and barrels and cedar chests and play with old wooden toys that belonged to my dad and my grandad before him. Tattered leather bound books piled on the floor and the shelves behind them, and bundles of piano sheet music for the piano no one played anymore, itself gathering its own dust in the parlor below. There were mice and spiders in the rafters, threads of gossamer trailing from the clay thimbles around which the wires for the “electric”, as granny called it, were wound to power the light in the parlor and in the kitchen and one in the bathroom.

I’d lived at granny’s off and on when I was growing up, mostly when the old man was at sea and the old lady was off doing something that didn’t involve anything that had to do with me. They fought a lot and drank a lot when they were together, and I kinda fell into that pattern too, and soon I was a candidate for reform school which had nothing to do with reform and everything to do with keeping me locked up. How I ended up being a private peeper is another story for another time.

I tried to unbend my knees but that only pulled on my arms and wrenched my shoulders but in doing so I managed to dislodge more of my gag. Big gulps of air almost made me forget the headache and my throbbing chin. I was still under pressure from my bladder. I did a little more squirming and all it did was make me feel helpless.

Angry, I jerked whole body no matter how much it hurt. It had the effect of bunching up the top of the blindfold so that my left eye could peek over the edge and make out more darkness. I kicked the only way I could and my feet hit a wall behind me with a solid thud. I could feel with the top of my head that it was lodged in a corner of the crate. My knees with a little movement bumped another solid surface.

I was boxed in, no mystery there, and how to get out was a question for Professor Quiz as I had let my subscription to Houdini Magazine lapse and missed the issue where they had tips on how to escape from a fix just like this one.

Beside the sounds of my struggle and grunts there wasn’t much to hear. I felt like I was drowning in a big bowl of silence. Silence, with an occasional creak and groan of the architecture and maybe the occasional soft tread, titter, and squeak of rats, the occasional slammed door, a distant car horn, the rumble of an elevator, those are the sounds of silence in the big city. And the occasional sound of feet walking discretely on toe tips, the sharp tapping of fingertips on the outside of the crate, and of a soft voice asking softly, “Lack, are you all right?”

Next Time: Massacre In The Heights

The Last Resort 28-29

September 5, 2021Crime Fiction, Pulp FictionA Lee Malone Adventure, Backwoods and Barefoot, blondes, Corkscrew County, Crime Fiction, Hard Boiled Fiction, International Beauty, Lee Malone, Pulp Fiction, SAPHO, The Corkscrew County Grapevine, The Last ResortNuallain House, Publishers

by Pat Nolan

Chapter Twenty Eight
THE LADYBUG RUSE

Anything I said could and would be used against me. I had a right to remain silent. Yet in many situations such as mine, people have a tendency to babble, volunteer more than anyone needs to know, and in the process, unwittingly incriminate themselves in crimes that they never committed or intended to commit. People can be so obliging in the face of authority.

As a young up-and-coming model with a mind of my own and outspokenly opinionated, I had learned the hard way that anything I said would be twisted and bent to mean exactly the opposite of its intent. After being burned at the stake in numerous tabloids, I chose my words carefully and dispensed my opinions even more penuriously than I did my favors. I had taken as my motto the words of the other Hepburn. I didn’t care what they said about me just as long as it wasn’t true. I kept my mouth shut.

First there was the long silent ride to the Hall of Justice where May Ann Young had her office, a tiny cramped closet in the basement. Her manner was apologetic as she had me sit in the only other chair. Battered black file cabinets took up most of the wall and floor space. Cardboard boxes overflowing with case files occupied any area that didn’t block entry and exit. A few posters exhorting fire safety served as decoration on the otherwise drab green walls. She had removed a sheaf of forms from her desk drawer, a dinged and dented metal affair that looked like it had come in last at a destruction derby. She referred to the small yellow pad I had seen her with at the fire scene and copied her notes into the spaces provided.

I felt cold. In the heat of this late July day my flimsy attire would have been appropriate, but my chill had more to do with an uncomfortable self-consciousness at having only bikini bottoms and a makeshift halter top underneath the ridiculous polka dot trench coat. My gold sandals had turned to mush and so for all intents and purposes I was barefoot. The scent of my charred cabin hung about me like a noxious perfume. I was trying to put together a scenario that would explain who would be capable of such an act. Blackie came to mind immediately. Even after what Chandler had told me, I had difficulty believing that he would set fire to my home. Yet his words “play with fire and you get burned” resonated with ominous significance.

May Ann returned my driver’s license after copying from it onto the form in front of her. She extracted a cassette recorder from a drawer and set it on the desk, plugging it in the outlet behind her chair. When she faced me again, her mouth set in determined seriousness, she reminded me of my rights. “Why don’t we talk about why anyone would want to torch your cabin?” she said as she depressed the record button on the machine.

I could have declined to speak until I had a lawyer present. But there were more viable suspects than me. And, I was never good at taking my own advice. I told her about the Fashwalla murder and the one at the Franklin Resort. About the dog killings and the men in the gray van. And about Blackie. I also mentioned Assistant DA Chandler Wong. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything about the ongoing investigation into Tommy Montague and Ramparts Corp.

Her eyes narrowed with a steely glint. She punched numbers into the keypad of her phone after she stopped the recorder. She shuffled the forms on the desk in front of her while she waited for someone to pick up.

“Mr. Wong, May Ann Young, County Fire Investigator.” She paused. “I’m fine, thank you. The reason I’m calling is that I have a women in my office on a suspicion of arson.” She paused again. “Her name is Lee Malone. She says she knows you.” A longer pause. “Her own home.” May Ann blinked in surprise and for a moment lost some of her professional composure. She listened to the voice at the other end of the line, nodded in assent a few time, interjecting an “I see” now and then. All the while her eyes took me in as if the words she heard were prompting a reappraisal. When she put the phone down, her cheeks appeared flush. She folded her hands on the desk and looked down at them for a moment, gathering her words. She fixed me with her relentless gray eyes and spoke. “Ms. Malone, your story checks out with the DA’s office. You’re free to leave. And I apologize for any inconvenience.” She sounded sincere.

I didn’t have to be told twice. I picked up my purse and opened the door. I hesitated.

“Turn right and up the stairs. I’ll call up to have them buzz you out to the lobby.” Her tone had lost its hard professional edge.

When I reached the locked security door that led to the lobby, there were two younger women waiting to be allowed out as well. If I had not been barefoot and wearing my fashion faux pas, we would have been in similar states of undress. One of the women was a short skinny blonde with way too much make-up that did not look all that freshly applied. Her denim shorts were cut so that much of the curve of her buttocks was exposed. An off-white sweater top allowed a view of her bare midriff encircled by a gold chain. The open-toed high heeled plastic shoes she wore could have doubled as step ladders. Her friend was taller, closer to my height. There was something familiar about her, as if I had seen her somewhere before. She wore a green blouse with short puffy sleeves over a bright orange tube top that accentuated her perky breasts quite accurately. A leather mini-skirt and black thigh thigh-high boots completed the outfit. From the way they both joked with the deputy at the door, it was obvious they were familiar with the routine.

Once out in the lobby, they stopped to chat with another deputy at the reception kiosk. I made a bee line for the double glass doors that led outside. I stopped in my tracks. A throng of reporters and TV cameras were waiting at the bottom of the steps. The last thing I wanted to do was face them, especially in my ladybug coat. One of the reporters spotted me and alerted the others. A deputy kept them from bursting into the lobby. I turned to look for another way out. That’s when I caught sight of Rhonda.

I was surprised to see her there. She had just recently returned from an extended stay in Switzerland. There was a hospital in Zurich that promised a cure for what was afflicting Ward. I had not seen her in months. But thinking back on the years I had lived in that neighborhood, she and Anna were often gone for long periods of time. They were retired, she told me more than once, and they loved to travel. They even had a little place in Malaga. On the other hand, she liked to say, there was no place like Corkscrew County to get away from it all.

“Who’d a thought we’d ever be in the woman’s bathroom at the Hall of Justice with a famous old time porn queen and a world famous fashion model?” Liza exclaimed like a delighted child. Sandy was bubbling over with giggles.

At my puzzlement, she explained that she had come to bail me out. She knew I hadn’t set fire to my cabin. She had already told that to the deputy who questioned her. She’d been taking her midday nap when she was awakened by the sound of a motorcycle roaring away. Soon after that she had smelled smoke and had seen flames coming from my cabin. She had been the one who had called it in. Now she was here to take me home, what was left of it. It was just the neighborly thing to do.

The mention of the motorcycle made me think of Blackie again. The reporters were clamoring at the glass doors and I moved further out of sight.

“Help me, Rhonda,” I pleaded, “I can’t go out there and face them.”

The hookers had wandered over, drawn by curiosity. I saw inspiration light up Rhonda’s face. She motioned to the two women. “Do you ladies know who this is?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “This is Lee Malone, world famous fashion model.”

The one who had looked familiar to me nodded and said, “Yeah, I thought you looked familiar.” It was then I understood why I thought I’d seen her before. She was me. She had imitated my hair style, the way I used to make up my eyes, along with a slight physical and facial resemblance.

Rhonda explained my predicament as she led us all into the woman’s bathroom. She was about to outline her plan when the short blonde, whose name was Sandy, pointed a finger at Rhonda and said “I know you! I’ve seen you in porn movies. You’re famous!” The prostitute who looked like me and whose name was Liza chimed in. “Right, right! I’ve seen your movies before. My boyfriend made me watch them. You’re amazing!” We all looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Who’d a thought we’d ever be in the woman’s bathroom at the Hall of Justice with a famous old time porn queen and a world famous fashion model?” Liza exclaimed like a delighted child. Sandy was bubbling over with giggles.

“Now, calm down, girls,” Rhonda said, “After all, we’ve all sold our bodies in one way or another. Nothing to get excited about. Here’s my plan.”

Liza and I were to exchange garb. She was thrilled by the makeshift halter top after I explained I had gotten it in one of trendiest boutiques in Monte Carlo. She wrinkled her nose and passed on donning the bikini bottoms. And she wasn’t so sure about the trench coat but that was a big part of the ruse. I had no problem fitting into the tube top, the boots and the leather miniskirt. I don’t know why I was surprised that she wasn’t wearing underpants.

Rhonda’s plan was that Liza, dressed as me, would create a diversion to draw the reporters away from the front doors, and then Sandy and I, as hookers, would slip away unnoticed. She sweetened the deal with a few bills from the bankroll she pulled from her purse.

The plan worked like a charm. The reporters swarmed Liza who put on fashion model airs quite naturally. I caught a glimpse of her wide smile as she basked in the momentary crush of notoriety. By the time the reporters realized that it wasn’t me, I was being whisked away in Rhonda’s Coupe Deville.

Chapter Twenty Nine
ODD WOMAN OUT

I had no clothes. I had no home. And I didn’t have a clue why anyone would want to torch my cabin. I stood on the littered asphalt and stared at the smoking debris. Rhonda dragged me back to her house and handed me a large glass of scotch. “You need to relax” was her admonition. I took a tentative sip, the alcohol burning as it went down. My nerves released their grip and by the time the molten drop made it to my gut, I wanted another taste.

We talked. Rather, I babbled and she listened. I had to get over the hurdle of my disbelief. When I voiced my suspicion that Blackie might have done it, she considered me warily and then shook her head.

“I go way back with Blackie and unless he’s changed since then, I don’t think he would do something like that. If Blackie has a bone to pick with you, you’ll know it because he’ll be right there in your face,” she said touching up the glasses with a drab more scotch.

“That’s right, you guys were in business together.” Rhonda’s fingers tighten around her glass, lips pulled into a mirthless smile. “More like co-workers, considering that we were both employees.”

“So you knew Arlene.” I was curious about the woman who had been Blackie’s mate and whose photo I had seen on the wall of his shop.

Rhonda drained her glass and then stared at the empty bottom. “Arlene was my best friend. We both come from foster homes in the Midwest. Me Indiana, her Missouri which she liked to pronounce misery. We were runaways. And we met out here, on the West Coast. A way to make a quick buck back then was posing for nude photos. We were just kids, but that’s what the pervs want to see. We were hoping to be discovered in Hollywood like a lot of young gals. This was after the war. We hooked up with a gang of motorcycle guys who also had the idea of making it into pictures, as stunt men. One of them was Blackie, another one of them was Tommy Perro.” She paused as if making an effort before she spoke the other name. “And Chip Pierce.”

I’d seen the picture on the repair shop wall, a young Rhonda with someone Blackie had identified as Chip. I vaguely recalled something about an accident, too. “Blackie told me a little about those days. You were all models, is that right?”

“That’s one way of putting it.” Rhonda chuckled. “And if that’s the way Blackie wants to remember it, that’s fine with me.” She shrugged. “The way I remember it is that Tommy had a friend who worked as a cameraman for a low budget studio. They came up with the idea of making dirty movies, what you’d call soft core these days. The plan was to use me and Arlene, and Chip and Blackie as actors. The first one they made went nowhere. It was mostly ham-handed situations, innuendo, cleavage and crotch shots, and a lot of tongue twining, grunting and panting.” She exhaled a staid chuckle and splashed more scotch against the sides of her glass. “Tommy found a backer, a two-bit gangster and wannabe movie producer, to put up the money. But the guy wanted something a little more realistic. At first everyone was cool to the idea. We all knew that once you were in stags, your chances of going legit were dead. But the money was easily more than either of us made in months of waitressing. And the guys, well, they were always broke. The way Tommy talked it up, we wouldn’t be doing anything we weren’t already been doing with each other. It’d just be on film is all. So Chip and me went at it first. Then Arlene and Blackie. Then Arlene and me. Then Blackie and me. And Arlene. And Chip.

“Once we got over our initial bashfulness, we went through the motions like actors playing their parts. All except for Blackie. ” Rhonda smiled grimly. “He was a hunk, then as now. But he just happens to be an apple with a short stem.”

I laughed involuntarily at her expression.

“Tommy used to rag him mercilessly about that. But Blackie took it from Tommy because they were friends. And among Blackie’s faults is his blind loyalty. If he’s your friend you can count on him to give you the shirt off his back.”

“And if he’s not your friend?”

She shrugged. “What do you want me to say? He’s got a temper.”

“So I heard.”

“Really?” Rhonda sat back in her chair, guarded. “What have you heard?”

I realized that I might know more than I should let on. What Chandler had told me was confidential. “Oh, just something JJ said in passing.” I’m not a very good liar. “You were saying, about Tommy and Blackie?”

Rhonda nodded and looked at her glass as if the thread of the story would be found in the half inch of amber liquid. “Yeah, Tommy was a ball buster. But Blackie took it good naturedly. Of course we all knew not to tease Blackie, especially about something like that. The actor Tommy used as a body double with Arlene didn’t know that. I don’t think he even got to finish the taunt. Blackie came unglued and beat the man to a bloody pulp.”

I inhaled sharply. Even though I’d heard the story, it still shocked me. “He hurt him pretty bad?”

“He killed him.”

The way Rhonda spoke it so matter-of-factly it shocked me nearly as much as Blackie’s brutality. “Oh.”

“Blackie served his stretch, and when he got out he looked up his old friends. Arlene was first on his list. You can’t blame him.” Rhonda sighed, a troubled frown drawing a V between her penciled eyebrows. “But Blackie had spent his time in the pen thinking about a lot of things besides Arlene. One of them was his old buddy, Tommy. He came to realize that Tommy was a manipulator, a behind the scenes backstabber and that he only cared about numero uno.” She said it with a sly sarcastic smile. “Blackie’s plan was to get back together with Arlene and get as far away from Tommy as he could. He didn’t expect to find her living with Tommy and two babies, twin boys.” She didn’t take notice of my gasp. “Arlene didn’t hesitate. She packed her bags, loaded the kids into her car and took off with Blackie.”

I was dumbfounded. These were details that Blackie had conveniently left out when he told me the story of how he and Arlene ended up in Timberton. “What about you? I mean, did you know they were going to leave it all behind?”

Rhonda shook her head, maybe more at the memory of what she was dredging up than my prying. She swirled the scotch in the bottom of her glass before knocking it back in one practiced motion. “No, I was out of the picture about then.” She gave me a baleful stare. “The problem with working for Tommy is that he wasn’t just making dirty movies. He was dealing drugs, too. Hard drugs. Most of his actors were using. Chip got hooked after his accident. Morphine and then heroin. And it gets to be a habit. You realize you’re not going to survive the day without a fix.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s kind of ironic, you know? Blackie getting out of the slam and me going in.”

“You went to prison?” I didn’t hide my disbelief.

“In front of the camera?” Rhonda took a sip with an amused expression. “Not for a couple of years now. You’d be surprised how many men want to see an old gal get it on.”

Rhonda nodded. “About a month before Blackie got out, I was sent up on a drug charge. I owed Tommy for drugs, and after Chip overdosed I really hit rock bottom, so I was moving weight for him.” She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows as if to say what do you expect. “And I got popped.”

“I don’t get it. Tommy and Arlene and two kids. Blackie just spirited them away? Tommy didn’t do anything about it. I mean, they were his kids, right?”

Rhonda cocked her head to one side and considered me with a narrowed look, like I was being a little too nosy. “Yeah, no telling what was going through his head. Besides dollar signs, I mean. I didn’t know what Arlene and Blackie had done. I didn’t find out till much later when I was let out on parole.”

“That Blackie and Arlene and the kids were living up in Corkscrew County?”

“Right. I heard that Blackie was working as a mechanic, and living at the Mint, in fact. Arlene wasn’t idle either, making the rounds of garage and estate sales, buying things to resell. She always had good sense in that way.”

“What became of the kids, the twins?” I hold my liquor better than I can contain my curiosity. “Isn’t one of them named Tommy?” And get enough liquor in me and I’m liable to blurt out anything.

She gave me a pained smile. “Did Blackie tell you that? Yes, Tommy. And Timmy.”

I tried not to be coy. “I know that Tommy Perro is now Tommy Montague and the money behind Montague Winery. And that he has a son, also named Tommy, running the business. I didn’t know about Timmy.”

Rhonda offered a bemused smirk before answering. “Tommy was making too much money so he got the idea of buying up property and planting vines as one way to launder the dirty cash. The boy, Tommy, he’s smart, crafty like his old man. Timmy, his twin? Let’s just say he’s. . . .” She paused, searching for the word. “Odd.”

Odd how that word struck me. Odd. I searched my memory of anyone I thought of as odd, and I’d known many who fit that description. But none of them came immediately to mind. The image the word triggered was of a greasy dark haired man with a scraggly goatee. A man I had seen not more than a few times and then only briefly and in passing. Someone who filled me with apprehension. The booze was prompting my odd fuzzy logic. Odd that I felt a sudden chill. “So what happened to them?”

Rhonda stretched her arms across the table, empty glass in her hand, weariness weighing the corners her eyes. “It took a while but Tommy tracked Blackie and Arlene down. I was out of prison by then. He had the money, lawyers and the connections to have Arlene declared unfit. She could have fought it, but she knew that if she did Blackie would get involved. And he would kill Tommy.”

“Were you still working for Tommy then?”

Rhonda shrugged, the strain of this stroll down memory lane taking its toll. “I got straight. Took my cue from Arlene and cut loose of Tommy. I worked restaurant jobs, went back to school, looked for something better paying. I’d find one, and then some guy would recognize me from a stag film, and once word got around the office, they usually found a reason to let me go. I was too much of a distraction.” She snorted a laugh into her empty glass. “I kept at it, though, spent a good fifteen years walking the line, keeping my head down. I even resorted to wigs, dying my hair and wearing glasses to change my appearance, and eventually it worked. The problem was that I was making peanuts while all my old friends who were still in the business were sitting in the lap of luxury.”

Rhonda considered the bottle before she continued. “I knew that I didn’t want to work for another crook like Tommy. So I got together with an actress I’d worked with before. You know her. Anna.”

I nodded dumbly, partly in shock. I was desperately trying to keep all the new revelations from tangling into an incomprehensible snarl. The fact that my head was swimming from the effects of alcohol didn’t help.

“And we started our own production company. We had a pretty good idea what guys wanted to see, but we also knew what women were interested in. The money was good and it was better than walking the street. After that I never worked more than a couple of months a year. I can’t complain. I’ve lived well.” She said it with great satisfaction. “I’ve got a house in the Frisco, a place in Spain, and when I want to get away from it all, I’ve got my little shack in the woods, which up until yesterday was nice and quiet.” She held up the bottle at an angle and stared at the corner remaining before dumping it into her glass. “When Arlene took sick I semi-retired and moved up here, to be near her.”

“Semi-retired? You mean you’re still. . . ?” I didn’t exactly know how to say it.

“In front of the camera?” Rhonda took a sip with an amused expression. “Not for a couple of years now. You’d be surprised how many men want to see an old gal get it on.” She hefted her large breasts with both hands. “I still got it.”

That was obvious, and I wondered if I would still have it when I was her age. I sighed. “Well, it’s a man’s world, after all.”

Rhonda rolled her eyes. “Listen, honey,” she said, pointing a well-manicured finger at me, “man may have invented the wheel, but if it weren’t for women, it would still have corners.”

Next Time: Diamond In The Rough

Next Time: The Brazos Bottoms

Chapter Thirty Two WONDERING WOMAN

Chapter Thirty Three A BURST OF POWER

Next Time: From The Frying Pan

Introducing Dime Pulp Number Ten

Next Time: The Subway To Bliss

Chapter Thirty

GLASS SLIPPERS

Chapter Thirty One

SCAPEGOAT

Next Time: Wondering Woman Snared By Her Curiosity

Introducing Dime Pulp Number Nine

Next Time: Massacre In The Heights

Chapter Twenty Eight THE LADYBUG RUSE

Chapter Twenty Nine ODD WOMAN OUT

Next Time: A Sleeping Beauty Awakens

Chapter Thirty Two
WONDERING WOMAN

Chapter Thirty Three
A BURST OF POWER

Chapter Twenty Eight
THE LADYBUG RUSE

Chapter Twenty Nine
ODD WOMAN OUT