by Colin Deerwood
The phone was ringing in the hall. Ringing. I could hear it. Ringing. I could see it. Ringing. In my mind’s eye. Ringing. In a smokey pool hall. Ringing. Why wasn’t anyone answering the ringing? I would have answered but the room I was in had no doors, just four walls of cheap wallpaper and scratched up wainscotting. The ringing wouldn’t let up. The smoke was making my eyes weep blood. I had to force them open to the faintest slits. That’s when it hit me like a bucket of cold water. The bucket of cold water.
Standing over me with an empty bucket and an impish grin was the moonshiner’s daughter. “You set yourself on fire!” She said it like it was a joke.
I felt like a joke. The slant rays of light through the window of the cabin sparked the dust motes and the smoke and filled the empty jar on the table like the ghost of what it once contained. I looked down at myself covered in wet, the blanket as well, and the ragged smoking black hole the now soggy cigarette had burned through it.
The light was hurting my eyes worse than before and now I had a brutal headache to go along with it. I glanced up at Marie out of the side of my eye. She seemed to be gloating.
“Where were you yesterday when I needed you?”
She desperately wanted to be needed. “No! What are you talking about?”
“You were supposed to keep a lookout so nobody’d sneak up on me.”
“What?”
“Yesterday I got a visit from Constable Thorndyke. You coulda warned me.”
She shook her shoulders with a shiver. “Oh, Thorny. He’s a snake.” And she made a face like she’d tasted something unpleasant. “”He likes to make like he’s your uncle or some other relative and tell you what to do, especially with girls. The boys he just puts them in jail if he catches them, but the girls, he takes out for long drives on deserted back roads in his jalopy and talks about the Lord and how we’re supposed to all act like young ladies.”
I pulled myself upright and wiped some water off my scraggly beard. “You’ve gone on a ride with Thorny?” I didn’t want to sound too paternal.
She shook her head. “No, Thorny wouldn’t dare cause he knows what pa would do to him. But some girls I know, older girls, they told me. Said they’d rather go to jail than go on ‘the ride’ with Thorny. He made their skin crawl.”
I grunted in acknowledgement that I understood. “Where were you, anyway?”
“I was at the Odeon in Grover City with my friend, Irma. We spent the day there. First for lunch at the Downtown Diner, and then a double feature. Two Clark Gable movies. I’d seen one of them before, but that Gable, he’s so dashing, Though I don’t think he’s that good of a singer. And Claudette Colbert is just too brassy. I don’t know what he sees in her,” she said wistfully. “There’s a change of feature tomorrow with a new William Powell movie. I like him too, especially when he’s acting with Myrna Loy. He seems very charming. Even as a private eye.”
I nodded and groaned as any movement of my head made it throb. I could have said that’s what I am, a private eye, but then she might have got the wrong idea from the movies. Hollywood never gets it right. They always give the shamus a conscience, noble principle. You can’t have any of that if you’re going to be a private investigator and expect to survive. When you’re a bottom feeder, high falutin ideals just get in the way of doing the job. I knew that. I had gone soft on Rebecca and that got me nothing but grief.
I staggered to my feet and she reached out to help me. I pushed her away. I was a little unsteady but I managed. I knew what I had to do and soon. I lurched for the door and mumbled “gotta see a troll about a hole” and stumbled off the porch and in the direction of the lopsided closet off to the side of the cabin.
“”Don’t fall in!” she called after me brightly.
I hadn’t really wanted to think about it. What Thorny had said on the way back from the graveyard. We’d been stopped by the roadblock. Thorny knew the deputy, a young lug with a square head and eyes that wouldn’t stay still. A girl had gone missing, the daughter of Judge Chandler. She didn’t return home after a shopping trip to Grover City. It had been two days now. They had the dogs out searching the lower shore of Middle Lake near the dump.
The deputy had eyed me suspiciously. Maybe it was the dark glasses, or the beard that was growing unevenly along the ridge of my jaw. Thorny had laughed when he caught the drift of the deputy’s gaze. “This here’s one of the Ask cousins from out in the Midwest. If you know the Asks you’d say they all had that same family resemblance. This one here is the near spitting image of old Ned Ask who didn’t look like any of them either. You might remember him from when you was a young hellion.”
The young deputy had nodded his head, grinning. “The fisherman! With the old Indian motor bike!”
Right about then a rickety Model T sputtered up behind Thorny’s Ford and the deputy waved us through after saying he was pleased to meet me.
I didn’t think too much about being mistaken for old Ned but Thorny’s remark struck a nerve. And it bothered me all the way back to Little Lake.
The grease monkey who pumped my gas at the livery in Ridley had thought I looked like my old man’s younger brother. Marie and her father had remarked on the closeness. And now Thorny. Only Ruthie hadn’t said anything, maybe because she’d known all along and wasn’t surprised that I looked like Ned.
It got me to thinking and when I’m thinking I like to do it with a drink for company as it helps provide a different point of view on what I might be thinking about. I dipped into old Ned’s cache of everclear and settled in to a bit of hard thinking and hard drinking which maybe I shouldn’t have been doing especially when I was thinking about things that maybe I shouldn’t have been thinking about. But those thoughts just kept crawling back into my head and I had to drink more to blot them out. The more I drank, the tighter the circles my thinking made until I got so dizzy I passed out.
All of that thinking drink gushed out of me like a fire hydrant into the hole at my feet.
If I was any good at math I might have put two and two together. I’d soaked my head in the lake trying to wash out the ache. I’d changed into an old pair of trousers I’d cut off at the knees as a swimsuit from the pile of musty old clothes in Granny’s bedroom. I ran my shirt under the pump and wrung it out. I spot cleaned my jacket and trousers and set them and the shirt out to dry on a big boulder by the lake.
Then I crept over to the chicken coop on Crazy Wilson’s property and swiped a couple of fresh eggs Marie had left out with the idea that I could collect them. She’d offered them when she heard me complain about how I was getting tired of canned beans, burnt rice, and lake trout. She also showed me how to avoid the booby traps her pa had set up around the property. If any one of them were triggered, he was sure to shoot, she’d warned.
I lit a fire in the outdoor stone fireplace and greased up a flat skillet and fried up the eggs. They hit the spot and satisfied my empty belly but my throbbing head was making me wobbly and I knew that there was but one solution. Hair of the dog. Unfortunately, using hair of the dog to cure the hangover has a lot in common with being in debt to a loan shark: you’ll never pay it off.
The first sip went down hard and I felt my gut riding the elevator up to the top floor. The second taste wet my whistle with only a slight shudder. By the third lip smacking swallow, my headache and I were on more friendly terms.
My eyes still burned but I could see clearly what my next step was going to be. I had to get over to the courthouse in Grover City where the birth records were kept at the County Recorder’s Office. Once I got the certificate I was going to use it to apply for a passport under the name of Jerome Paulsen and take myself some place south of the border where Kovic, the cops, the feds, the diamond dealers, the draft board, or the Thieves Of Bombay would never find me. I figured that if I went in asking for the document looking like a mug, the clerk might be a little suspicious. I had to look legit, like that was my job, that I did it all the time. I worked for a law firm in the city if they thought to ask. But if they’re like most government clerks, they almost never do. Unless they stepped on the cat’s tail that morning and spilled their entire cup of hot coffee over themselves.
I had just stretched out in the shade of the porch, counting my chickens before they hatched, mainly about how much money I could get for Ted’s art piece if Alice found a buyer, when I heard a high whistle pretending to be a bird. That was Marie’s warning signal. I looked up to see her at the edge of the thicket between the properties pointing to the path leading up to Little Road. And then I heard the voices. I spun around just in time to see a slim young boy in a pair of swimming trunks, towel draped around his neck, and lugging a large wicker picnic basket. Right behind, a little girl in a summer dress and bare feet came running after him. And behind her, the other twin with their mother, Ruthie. I should have known. She’d probably sent Thorny out to reconnoiter the lay of the land as it were. Bringing up the rear, a large gunny sack over one shoulder and murder in her eyes, was the cook.
Ruthie was wearing a long sleeved robe, a large woven purse slung over one arm, open toe sandals, a floppy straw hat, and white frame sunglasses. She stopped in her tracks and placed a hand on her hip when she saw me. I felt like a bug under a magnifying glass or maybe a mouse who had just wandered into the cat’s path. Either way, the only word I could think of was “uh-oh.”
She smiled to show me she was pleased with what she saw or was it just to show me her teeth, a row of tiny uniform bone grinders.
“Surprise! We thought we’d come and use the lake. Hope you don’t mind.”
They’d all gathered around the front porch looking at me expectantly. Ruthie cocked an appraising eyebrow. “Who do you think you are, Tarzan?”
“Yeah, that’s me, Tarzan. I got tired of the jungle and thought I’d try out the pines and the lake.”
“Tarzan doesn’t have a beard,” Ruthie’s boy chimed in.
“Have you ever seen Tarzan shave? Maybe he has a barber. Runs down to the local village and has the witch doctor scrape a machete across his chin.”
“I don’t think he wears dark glasses.” This was the older girl, well on her way to being just like her mother.”
I had to shrug. “I don’t understand why. As lord of the jungle he’s certainly entitled to.”
“That’s quite a swim suit. Make it yourself?” Ruthie said with a mocking grin.
I laughed because I probably did look a sight, a ragged fringe of threads dangling around my knees. “I found an old pair of trousers in Granny’s room. I had to use the axe to chop them off at the knees.”
“Granny’s room,” Ruthie looked past me at the doorway. “That was the forbidden inner sanctum. If you got caught in there you’d get the switch.”
“Telling us we weren’t allowed to go in there was like telling us we had no choice but to try.”
“I snuck in there one time with Cole Turner, my older cousin. He said he wanted to show me something. Everybody talked on how Granny must have had jewels or gold hidden in there that she kept so secret.”
I’d heard that rumor and once asked my mother about it. She assured me that there was no truth to it. Granny was just guarding her privacy. “Are you sure it was him going to show you something?”
Ruthie caught what I was hinting and narrowed her eyes at me, and then glanced over at her kids. “What are you standing around for? Go jump in the lake!” And as an afterthought, asked me, “How’s the water?”
“Wet.” The kids hadn’t waited for my answer and were already running down to the boat dock.
“Very funny. You should be on the radio. Like Jack Benny.”
“Maybe I should have my own show. A quiz show. I’d call it Ask Me Anything. With your host, Lackland ‘Lucky’ Ask!” I gave a dim smile.
“People still call you Lucky? That was Granny’s nickname for you.”
“No one in recent memory. And for obvious reasons. Granny hated the name Lackland which is a family name on my mother’s side. She couldn’t understand why anyone would be named ‘no land.’”
“Well, she was right, it is an odd name.” And peering into the dimness beyond the door. “You sleeping in her room?” she asked with a wicked smile.
I don’t know why I blushed but I did. And I almost never stutter. “No, no. I sleep on the, the cot by the door.”
“Why, Lack, are you still afraid to get caught in Granny’s room? By her ghost?”
Of course I wasn’t, but that was Ruthie, always looking for a way to make fun of someone. “I go in there all the time!” I insisted a little too vehemently. “That’s where I got these trousers. Not much in there but an old musty rat eaten mattress and boxes and drawers full of old clothes.”
Ruthie brushed past me and stepped into the cabin. “You know, Tarzan doesn’t wear pants, just some little old leather mud flap.”
The cooked dropped one of the pans she had hauled in the gunny sack and the clatter distracted me. Much about Ruthie the few summers I’d spent at Little Lake was coming back to me. Besides being a bully to the younger kids, she liked to dare you to do something stupid and then fink on you when you did. “Ruthie made me do it” was the common excuse although it didn’t save you from getting the switch or the belt.
“Well, if you don’t mind I’ll just go into Granny’s room and change into my bathing suit.” And she stalked to the back of the cabin.
The cook was struggling with the pump handle and I walked over to help her. “The handle’s stiff at first. It just needs a few good pumps.”
“I’ve heard that said.” She gave me a leery side glance.
“Let me help you with that.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need you interfering with my business.” And with the tilt of her round chin. “You gonna be busy yourself here before too long.”
I was wondering what she meant by that when I heard my name called.
“Like I said, I can do that myself. You got other things to tend to.”
Ruthie called out my name again, this time adding, “I want to show you something!”
I glanced at the jar of clear liquid sitting on the edge of the porch and decided that if I was going to responded to Ruthie’s summons, I was going to need another pull.
“I found something you might want to see!” was the siren’s call beckoning me to my doom.
The shadows of men halted in front of the wide display window. One of them put his nose up against the window to peer in. I recognized the nose and the face behind it. The G-man, Nekker.
“They ain’t gonna think of looking for us in plain sight,” I said when she stared at the wide windows looking out on to the street. There was another couple in the one booth in the back and I would have preferred to be down there, half way out of sight, instead of perched on a stool hunching my shoulders to the street. Still I had a gut feeling that we might have eluded the G-Men and I could catch my breath. From the counter man’s mug he thought we looked a little rough.
“Crane’s. Yeah, I remember. What a disaster that was. Ted got so drunk. He was celebrating the first one man show of his assemblages. He knew he was dying even then but kept it under his hat. Didn’t want to bother anyone unnecessarily” She turned from the tiny icebox. “Milk’s gone sour, but I’ve got a little honey if you want.” with a self-effacing smile that shouldered all the sorrows of the world. “What about the show?”
Ted was my brother-in-law for a very short time. When I hooked up with Grace, he was already pretty sick. Alice said it was because of all the chemicals he used in his business that had got to his lungs, his brain. He refinished furniture so he could afford to work on his art. Every once in a while I helped him moving furniture he had refinished and deliver it to the customer in his old ’28 Ford when I wasn’t tracking down runaway daughters or nieces or spying on the wives of poor deluded bastards or retrieving someone’s possessions, like jewelry boxes.
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.
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.
I instructed the boys to park mid-block in the shadow of the cone from the street light. Max’s Triple A Loans was half a block down and locked up tighter than a spinster’s legs on a full moon night. I squired the dame around the corner and into the alley that ran behind Max’s pawn shop. She didn’t hesitate once as we entered the narrow unlit corridor of discarded crates and overflowing overturned garbage cans, a sliver of gutter water gleaming down the center, the scramble of rats scurrying away. Visible in between the gap of tall buildings the sky was filling with the dark billowing clouds and in the distance a flash then a rumble sounding like someone was moving furniture around in the apartment upstairs, really heavy furniture.
Well, that cinched it. I was going to be a rich man. My eyes and my grin were competing with each other over which was going to get bigger. I looked at the dame and her smile was trying to make up its mind if she was pleased or now what. But I didn’t care. All I could think about was what I was going to do with all that money once I turned those diamonds into cash. A new roadster like a Torpedo or that Roadmaster I had my eye on, an apartment in a classy neighborhood with a doorman at the entrance, new suits, none of those second hand threads, dames, booze, travel, maybe catch a train to Frisco and look in on Della who I heard was working for a slick lawyer on Mason Street and flash my roll and say “who’s the loser now.”
I looked at my cup. Maybe the joy juice had affected my hearing. “You mean Dracula country? Don’t tell me you’re a vampire, Max.”
“And I had landed in St. Petersburg at the turn of the century, a simmering cauldron of political dissent and talk of revolution, but now as the servant of a man who was a jewel merchant or a jewel thief, depending on whom you spoke with, a tiny man with a very bad temper who was not quite Russian and not quite Chinese—he claimed to be from the region near Lake Baikal which later proved useful in extricating me and my companions from a very dangerous situation.
“Even in your most extravagant moment you could not imagine the horrors I witnessed. Peasants starving or killing each other over a crust of bread, soldiers committing suicide or deserting which was almost the same thing as they had no hope of surviving in the wilderness, and particularly after a troop train of their wounded comrades passed the other way, there were always the wails of inconsolable desperation. We had to be continually on our guard and Mr. Otobayer and I had to deal forcefully with the growing insolence of the peasants. We feared for our lives and the gems we carried which of course would mean nothing to them. They wanted our clothes and our shoes.”
Max turned his head and smiled at the frail as if he hadn’t just been talking about conspiracy and murder. “So you’ve picked the red cheongsam dress with the gold embroidered birds of paradise. Excellent choice. The size looks right but maybe the hem could be let out a bit otherwise you might show a little more ankle than is proper. I can have it done by tomorrow and delivered to your address.”
The tailor’s daughter smiled and I about swooned. She spoke and I felt my knees turn to Jell-O. “I think I know, zayde. I have been studying my American. Nertz is a Brooklyn pronunciation of the expression ‘nuts,’ maybe meaning crazy or perhaps nonsense, also a negative term for bankrupt or no good.”
“First of all, Doc, suddenly you’re worried about authenticity. You musta thought that this page was the hoot’s snoot otherwise you wouldn’ta asked me into the inner sanctum. You were gonna offer me a bag of gravel in exchange for the book. That’s how authentic you made that single page. I get it. You think you need to be extra careful because you don’t know me from Adam. But lemme put you straight. This book usta belong to one of Yan Kovic’s goons, a guy by the name of Yamatski who is now swimming with the fishes in the East River. How I got it is a story we won’t get into. Just let’s say I got wet and the pages only suffered a little water damage around the edges, but everything is still readable because it was written in pencil. It’s an address book and doubles as a wallet, about the size a cigar case, leather like one, and it’s got a wraparound zipper that closes up the three sides.” I don’t know why I felt I had to claim the wallet was empty, but I did. “There are pages of what look like names and addresses like I said, and what looks like some kinda codes. I couldn’t figure out what they said because my Buck Rogers decoder ring got lost in the mail. Besides they mostly was all in that serialic writing.”
Two mooks sat like bowling pins in the front seat of the Packard—they couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old—the one who looked like he was working on a ‘stache driving. The other one had a head of curly hair no hat, even the bucket he was wearing, was going to hide.
“Yeah, I think you got the hang of it. Try this one on for size. Ouyay areyay ayay ishday.”
enormous mahogany bar along the other that allowed only constricted access to the darker reaches of the back where the facilities were located. And the phone booth. That’s where I headed.
Ralphie wasn’t answering so I dialed for a cab from the booth and then strolled to the front door and peered out the small square window. I couldn’t see much from that vantage, just the odd hat bobbing past, and the intermittent shadows of bodies hurrying by. When the cab pulled up, I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, strode across the squares of sidewalk to the curb and jumped in the back almost all in one motion. The cabbie cut back into the traffic flow with a screech of tires. I gave him an address on Second Avenue and glanced out the rear window. A big black town car driven by a tall hat had pulled out from the curb a few cars back. I didn’t want to take any chances.
it with a hard stare. There was an elastic looped through the top of the key. “You can wear that around your wrist when you shower.” He said it as if were a dirty word. And I just wanted to get clean. The use of a razor with disposable blade was another two bits. I followed the arrows that pointed to the lockers and the shower bay. There were rows of wooden lockers with their doors standing open. I picked one closest to the tiled entrance to the showers and shucked off my clothes. I stood there with my towel in front of me feeling very naked. It bothered me that my wallet and Yamatski’s address book would be vulnerable to anyone who bothered to sneeze on the lock and rifle through my belongings while I was in the shower. Most of the other lockers around mine were empty. I took a chance and removed the items and tucked them at the far back of the top shelf of the locker next to mine. I took a fin out and stuck it in my pants pocket. That done I stepped across the cold wet tiles, hung my towel on the rack at the entrance and up to the first shower head. I was alone. And naked. I stayed naked while the hot water gushed over me with pleasant stinging force. I wasn’t alone for long.
He handed me a hat. “The pièce de résistance.” He said it like he was serving me dessert.
The apparition stepped out from behind the curtain. She was beautiful and petite, red curls cut close to her perfectly shaped head. Even in the ankle length full sleeved shift she was wearing, you didn’t need x-ray vision to make out that the proportions were correct and that everything bulged or gave way in the right place.
Just as I choked and coughed up the last of the East River, the rain began. It was a hard rain and it hit the scrubbed wood planks of the deck with explosive force, as if each drop were a spark launched upward in the dim amber of the demon lanterns. I was peppered by its force, wetting me more thoroughly than my baptism in the river. I resigned myself to the fact that my hell would be a soggy one. Then the demons rolled me over on my back and teased me with the vision of an angel, a beautiful, blue-eyed angel with red gold wings protruding from her temples. Her luscious full red lips parted ever so slightly to reveal the pearls of paradise. I felt her sweet breath on my face and heard her melodious voice.
The dwarf said something else, stepping from the shadows, half addressing me. I saw that he wasn’t really a dwarf but a truly short stocky man with a thick mass of graying curly dark hair under a well-worn stocking cap. He was dark enough to be African but his features said maybe Arab or Portuguese. The dim light of the bulkhead lamp glanced off the small gold loop in the lobe of his right ear.
Annie nodded. “Yeah, I thought it was a body too, but turned out it was just a waterlogged tree trunk floated down from upstate. What are the chances, huh? You see people in the water and you go to save one of them and it turns out to be just a hunk of wood.”
under the bed frame as well as my private library of French Art magazines. I stared down at the big red bouche of the brunette on the cover of L’Etoile. Amazingly someone hadn’t disturbed any of the magazines. I reached down and pulled out a buried copy of Seins Marveilleux. The pink postal slip still marked the page where Yvette displayed her substantial endowment. Maybe that’s what someone was looking for. I folded it into my wallet. Then I went downstairs and banged on the super’s door with the edge of my fist. 
It wasn’t long before Kovic’s limo swung into view followed by a big blocky sedan carrying the troops. They all hurried inside except for one guy who stayed in the car as a lookout. He wasn’t the one I wanted.
I pulled on a heavy peacoat and fit a stocking cap on my head. A pair of my rattier shoes and I looked like any mug that’d likely be drifting around the riverfront docks and warehouses.
Alice gave one of her sighs and lapsed into more silence. Sipped from her cup, pensive. Her bobbed hairdo fell around her ears like the puff of pantaloons and she was gazing out the window when she said, “I was more alone than I could have ever imagined when Ted died.”
corner in the shadows where I could keep an eye on the door at the top of the stairs where Kovic had his office. I’d been there before. I knew if I went in I’d recognize the red shag carpet. I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted to get even. I’d play the rest by ear.
She had spunk, that much was obvious, and her carrot colored hair had been permed to give it that Orphan Annie look.
“Get outta here!”
The blonde was doing the talking. “Ok, so what do you want, tough guy? Obviously we ain’t the coffee type. Maybe you think we ain’t nice girls or something.”
Al’s sister had me come up to her apartment after I’d called her to say that I’d got a line on her Eddie’s new address. She was sociable this time, maybe a tiny bit seductive. She didn’t object when I asked for an advance and gave me the fifty bucks I wanted. Then she smiled a smile that seemed to say everything.
“Ya don’t say?” He had his fists on his hips, sheaf of papers in one, tie loosened around the collar, sweat darkened yoke and pits, cuffs rolled up to the elbows. If it weren’t for the revolver on his hip, you’d swear he smelled just like a parish priest. Now he was interested.
I had revenge on my mind and there wasn’t room for anything else. I reached under the mattress and pulled out a bundled oily rag wrapped around an old .38 Smith & Wesson with the serial numbers filed off. It was something that had come my way a few years earlier and I had stashed it away for just such a time. I dug through a box of papers on the floor of the closet. No bullets there. I went through a couple of coat pockets and found one .38 caliber bullet. Then I remembered I’d been using one to add up expenses and it was still on the table among the bottle caps and paper matches. That made two. I stood on a chair and reached my hand into the dark recesses of the closet shelf. Nothing but an old suitcase I’d all but forgotten. Full of old papers from a novel I was going to write. And yes, one lone bullet rattling around in the bottom. I had no idea how it got there.
Dime Pulp 