Near to the Knuckle

It’s Best To Leave Cootie Alone by Donal Mahoney

Old Seth — Fri, 31 May 2013 20:12:32 +0000

“Damn the vernal equinox! Full speed ahead!” is all that Cootie Murphy would ever say when he sat on the last stool at the end of the bar in The Stag & Doe Inn. He wouldn’t say it very often, only when provoked by someone or stirred by thoughts known only to him. Mostly he would simply sit at the bar in silence, staring straight ahead, tapping his fingers now and then, and sipping his Guinness.
+++++Cootie had held the rights to the last stool for more than 50 years, ever since he returned from Korea in 1953 after two years spent in conflict. Some people thought he suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, although they didn’t call it that back then. Others thought he was nuts before he went to Korea and had simply come back a little nuttier. Both sides would find their opinions confirmed on nights when the moon was full and Cootie would throw his head back and howl like a wolf. Regular customers were used to it by now and they’d sometimes join in. The bartender would only say, “It’s best to leave Cootie alone.”
+++++The bartender also said that if Cootie ever died, his stool should be buried with him. But the neighborhood mortician, Rory McCarthy, always a customer after a funeral, had said he had never seen a casket that would accommodate both a man Cootie’s size and his stool as well. He agreed, however, that he would see what could be done if Cootie ever required his services, provided the family didn’t drive the body–as they did his mother’s–to O’Brien’s, another mortuary a few blocks down the street.
+++++McCarthy said that he knew of no law against burying Cootie upright—sitting on his stool, Guinness glass glued to his hand. That might be an option worth looking into. But it would require a customized casket of unorthodox configuration best ordered in advance. That would cost a little more, McCarthy said, but what’s money in a time of grief.
+++++There were no signs, however, that Cootie, despite his age, was a candidate for death. In fact, he took no medications. He was simply a strange and contrary fellow with many eccentricities.
+++++For example, it didn’t matter whether you were a regular customer who had known Cootie for decades or a first-time customer. He would respond in the same way. If someone asked him any question—did he have a match for a cigarette or did he know if the Cubs had won–his answer was always the same.
+++++“Damn the vernal equinox! Full speed ahead!”
+++++Regulars had no idea what he meant or why he said it. And strangers would walk away bewildered.
+++++Sometimes, however, a stranger who had drunk too much himself would take offense at Cootie invoking the vernal equinox. Over the years, several of the strangers had threatened Cootie with a thrashing. Such a threat, of course, was like a call to prayer in Damascus for regular customers who, otherwise bored, would bow their heads and turn on their stools quietly toward the commotion. They knew that as soon as Cootie would hear a threat, he’d get off his stool and put his fists up, John L. Sullivan style, and start shadow-boxing around the stranger, flicking left jabs and then a right cross, all just inches from the stranger’s chin.
+++++With Cootie circling him, the stranger wouldn’t know what to do. After all, Cootie might have been old but he stood 6’5,” weighed at least 300 pounds and he had fists like bear paws. He didn’t look his age and he moved and jabbed pretty well. Anyone could see that despite his years, Cootie looked capable of flattening anyone.
+++++Even more discouraging, when Cootie was flicking jabs, was the spinning of his eyes. His face looked like a slot machine malfunctioning. And as he danced around, his tongue would emerge quickly from the corner of his mouth, much like the penis of a younger man on the first night of his honeymoon.
+++++Cootie’s odd behavior had begun 50 years earlier shortly after his return to Chicago from Korea. He came back bearing medals galore and a Korean wife who made her own kimchi, a spicy Korean condiment consisting of pickled cabbage and a variety of spices. One regular customer once said that nothing in Chicago smelled like Cootie’s kimchi. Not even the stockyards, which back then was still in operation.
+++++Soo Loo Park, a good wife, would prepare the condiment with great care, pack it into clay pots, and bury the pots all over their small back yard. Wherever she buried a pot, she would stick a popsicle stick bearing the date the pot had been buried. How long a pot was allowed to ferment in the ground would determine the piquancy of the final product. Cootie liked his kimchi screaming hot, the cabbage leaves as gnarled as his hands, moist and glistening with red pepper.
+++++Oddly, Cootie liked to share his kimchi. He always brought a jar of it with him to The Stag & Doe to eat along with the hard-boiled eggs and pickled sausages that sat on the bar in big glass barrel jars. Give him a few sausages and a couple of hard-boiled eggs, followed by a fork full of kimchi, and Cootie was a happy man. He’d wash it down with glasses of Guinness from the tap, managing to get the froth all over his considerable mustache.
+++++Everyone was welcome to sample his kimchi. They didn’t even have to ask. Regulars, of course, wouldn’t go near the stuff but strangers occasionally did. On such occasions, the regulars would always have to suppress a laugh. Just a pinch of Cootie’s kimchi would make a Mexican weaned on jalapenos scream for a fire extinguisher.
+++++One slow evening the bartender mentioned that watching Cootie arrange his glass of Guinness, sausages, eggs and kimchi on the bar was almost like watching a defrocked priest preparing to say an aberrant Latin Mass, especially since Cootie always made the Sign of the Cross and said Grace before he ate or drank.
+++++He had been taught these and other spiritual practices by his brother, Paddy, a monk in a monastery located not too many miles away. Paddy was said to be a very holy man but maybe not a scholar.
+++++Nevertheless, he had done well in the monastery, over the years, adding pecans to the tops of fruitcakes the monks would bake and sell by mail. He knew how many pecans a cake required and where to place them. He was the only monk trained for this job. He had no understudy. If Paddy had a sick day, some other monk would just plop the pecans on the cakes without any sense of order.
+++++At communal prayers five times a day Paddy would pray for all the reprobates he had left behind in the old neighborhood. Cootie would give him a monthly update on their latest deeds when he’d visit him at the monastery. He would tell Paddy up front that none of the regulars had shown any improvement since his last visit. But, as Cootie would remind him, a lot of them had passed away and the future for the rest didn’t look too promising.
+++++Each death, of course, would force Paddy to pray even harder because he felt that half the souls in Purgatory had probably come from his old neighborhood. Who knew if there’d be room in that Halfway House in the sky when it was time for Cootie and him to check in?
+++++Cootie’s sister, on the other hand, had been quite different than her brothers. She had been a nun and was said to have been very smart. But she had died, young and unexpectedly, while teaching a third-grade English class in the parish school. She fell backwards one day, like a tree falling, and was looking up to heaven from the floor just as the bell rang. She never moved.
+++++The parish priest arrived in minutes to give her the Last Rites but she was already dead. No one had any doubts, however, that she was already in heaven, explaining to some saint weak in punctuation the difference between the usage of a semi-colon and a colon.
+++++No autopsy was performed. And it seemed as if the whole neighborhood took a shower and put on their best clothes to attend her funeral Mass. Even a few Southern Baptists chose to enter a Catholic Church for the first time to pay their final respects. Some of them were surprised to return home spiritually intact.
+++++Cootie never talked about the years he had spent in Korea, the battles he had survived, the number of enemy he had killed or the event that led to the plate inserted in his head. He never explained either what he had done to earn all those medals.
+++++And Cootie’s lack of braggadocio was appreciated because when he first came home, one of the regulars in the bar, a fellow named Stanley, a veteran of World War II, had announced to all the other customers that unlike Cootie, he had been in the “real war,” the one the United States had won.
+++++Cootie didn’t say a word. But a half hour later, after a little small talk with Stanley, Cootie asked him to get off his stool so they could finally settle a bet made in high school as to which of them was taller. Standing face to face, Cootie indeed appeared to be taller. Then he hit Stanley with an uppercut launched from his knee. It took a bucket of water, a lot of encouragement and three sober men who had just walked in to get Stanley on his feet. Two of his teeth were never found.
+++++After the Stanley incident, none of the regulars ever bothered Cootie again. And the bartender always told new patrons, “It’s best to leave Cootie alone.”
+++++But occasionally a stranger, clearly out of his element, would arrive in a suit and tie or in Bermuda shorts and white bucks. Given the circumstances, it wouldn’t be long before one regular or another would engage the stranger in conversation and tell him in glowing terms about Cootie’s status as a hero of the Korean War. He had won so many medals, the stranger would be told, that he needed a suitcase to bring them home.
+++++Often the stranger, after a sufficient amount of Guinness, would stroll down to the end of the bar and extend his hand to thank Cootie for his service. Like others before him, the stranger would learn that it was best to leave Cootie alone.
+++++As every regular knew, Cootie had little to say about the war America hadn’t won. But if pressed to comment on the matter, he’d bounce off his stool and shout, “Damn the vernal equinox! Full speed ahead!” Everything else he said with his fists. And it was always a brief conversation.

BIO

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had poetry and fiction appear in various publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html

Uncluttering by Ryan Sayles

Old Seth — Wed, 15 May 2013 06:34:21 +0000

Author’s note:

I didn’t write this because I’m a horrible person, I wrote it because I’m not. This is a catharsis. It’s how I shed that film of gutter humanity. What follows is something I’ve seen in real life tweaked enough for me to feel comfortable calling it “fiction.” After I saw all of this, I was deeply bothered. As a human, as a husband, as a father. I was unsettled and ill, like someone else’s vomit was roiling in my stomach. This is how I excised that feeling before it became a cancer.

Sometimes I hate my job. Sometimes I hate people. “Sometimes” is becoming more and more. So I hold my children, tell them I love them, feel their little heart beats, listen to the air go in and out, laugh when they ask the absurd things children ask and I thank my wife for giving me all the gifts in my life that have ever truly mattered. Do the same. I’m not asking please. You do it.

***

She finally sat back from the edge of the tub, leaned against the toilet and caught her breath.
+++++“There,” she said in a huff. “Life is officially uncluttered.”
+++++Her arms burned. All the water on the floor soaked her through. Goosebumps. Her lower back burned from the odd angle of being on her knees leaning over the lip of the tub as long as she had. Pushed a drift of wet hair from her face with a huff. God, I need a cigarette.
+++++If this was what being twenty-three was like, to hell with it.
+++++Her shirt clung to her chest like her babies. She sneered and dug around on the sink counter for a smoke. Found one, carefully dried her hands before handling it. Pruned fingers make it hard to flick a lighter but she got a flame. Dragged deep. That burn coupled with the rawness of her throat—exertion, it’s a bitch—and she savored the pain.
+++++“This is where I’m at in life. This is my life,” she leaned back until her hair fell in sodden clumps along the toilet lip. “Fuck.”
+++++Stared down at her toes. The last thing she spent any real money on. French tips are all she wanted. One foot, twitching with a beaten flip flop on it. The other flip flop down the hall. Lost getting to the bathroom. Her ankle bracelet, a present from her prom date, snapped in half. The beads dotted the floor like confetti.

Her nails needed attention. Kim, her regular nail girl, had called three times to schedule an appointment. Have to call her back. Use the last of her EBT on that since she’d already bought this week’s carton.
+++++She’d taped a picture of David and her on the wall. Forget when she did it; one of those memories that meandered too far away in the fog of her burdened life. Next to that picture, another. Her and James.
+++++The David picture was four years old. She may have been pregnant in it. Cassie was three now, so the math worked. The James picture was nearer to now; maybe ten months ago. She was six months pregnant in that one. James junior was eighteen months.
+++++Cassie. Cassie equaled three years of broken sleep. Insatiable bouts of crying. Cassie was the worst. Sometimes Cassie would cry well into the night no matter how much she screamed at her. “Shut the fuck up already,” echoed up and down the apartment hall. And that bitch downstairs—the one that always eyeballed her when she’d come home late with whatever guy it was that night—would call the cops.
+++++She got tired of answering the door just to rub her hangover temples and lie. Listen to their radios squawk about other calls more important than her being exhausted.
+++++Three years of, “This is my life. Fuck.”
+++++And if David could get off his ass and send any of the child support he’d promised when he packed up and left them … She didn’t even care if he furnished the whole amount, but damn. Do something.
+++++“Bitch, I’m outta here.” His words, back when his little princess was the ripe age of four months. “You’re too fucking crazy with all your post-partum whatever. You gonna throw shit at me? I oughta call the fuckin’ cops! Crazy bitch.”

He never did call the police, and she was quite sure he had planned that speech since the day he signed the birth certificate. He was just looking for the right excuse to give it. She knew David was worthless. Hell, his own mother never spoke to him without using cuss words and screaming. No wonder his parenting skills were subpar. David hadn’t seen Cassie in five months.
+++++“But, if I had my way,” she said at the bar just last night, “I wouldn’t either. I mean, I love her and all, but I get so tired of her neediness. James junior is less clingy.”
+++++James senior was probably out getting high like he always did. “Baby,” he’d say with that high-pitched weed giggle all the pothead faggots on TV laughed with. That retarded hyena cackle. “Baby, I only get high on days that end in Y. Hee heeeeee heeeee … !”
+++++She only fucked him because she was lonely and he had good smoke. Now this. Now James junior. After that pregnancy test she decided to start embracing rubbers. Even on Medicaid the pill was too expensive. Budgeting it in around other necessities—which she defined as cigarettes and a little bit of cheap booze because, let’s face it, Friday night is Friday fuckin’ night—and even the miniscule amount she’d pay in for the pill got too steep. Let the guy absorb the cost and finance the protection.
+++++And what about her? She exhaled a frail ring of smoke up into the bathroom ceiling and started crying right there on the wet tile. Short-shorts, soaked T-shirt and that was about it. All the red marks on her arms. Her eyes swollen from the sobbing before now.
+++++What about her? Her whole life ahead of her and then BOOM. Knocked up by a lowlife. Her own mom just said, “Join the club,” and laughed at how her dad was out of prison for a total of fourteen months scattered across her entire life. Cocksucker was out just long enough to get another felony.
+++++Her friends went to college. Far away. Came home with stories of better parties that what she could get to. Something besides shooter games with well drinks. They started dropping top shelf brands and her stomach turned. Envy. Seething envy. Stories about something besides skunk weed. Imagine a dime bag with no stems or seeds. Holy crow, she wanted to go to college. Fuck the reading and studying. The social life … oh, the social life. Her stomach turned. Envy. Seething envy.
+++++She tried not to be bitter towards Cassie, but some nights it was hard. Cassie was the anchor that sunk it all. James junior got a pass just because he only added to an already existing problem. Him and his Cookie Monster shoes. Learned to walk in them.
+++++Her skin crawled with missed opportunities. Like mites scurrying along on six prickly legs, tearing up her flesh and nibbling here and there, each pinch of their jaws a reminder. A reminder of her forgotten life. She needed to unclutter.

No Johnny in a letterman’s jacket. No sports car. A curfew every night because her own mom refused to be a babysitter. “Get home and bath your own kid for bedtime. Let me tell ya something, Grandma doesn’t equal “new ma,” for Christ’s sakes.”
+++++David packing up, ignoring he made all the promises she’d ever want to hear. Never fulfilling a single one. She should’ve learned when she told him she was pregnant and he whispered, “I’m so excited, baby. I promise you’re gonna feel like a queen.”
+++++Queen? Nope. Does a queen have nothing but one damn flip flop and a smoldering cigarette in her wet hand? Sore muscles? An uncertain future? An obsessive, blinding drive to unclutter her life that really translates to un-fucking her life?
+++++Ash falls and sizzles in her palm. She jerks out of her reverie. All was still now. Finally quiet. She sees the pair of Cookie Monster shoes still sticking out of the tub water at an odd angle. On the other side one of Cassie’s legs crawled up the side, her toes intruding on the soap shelf. Snakes of her hair floating up from the bottom, playing in the luke warm water’s ripples.
+++++Two upside down lollipops. Easing her burden.
+++++She tries to stand, slips in all the spill. It was a hell of a fight down the hall. Lost her damn flip-flop in it getting back here. Yanked her ankle bracelet in half. Cassie nearly got away. She gets her pay-as-you-go cell phone off the counter. Dials 911.
+++++“They’ve drowned,” she says, and while she is numb and hollow and dazed and uncertain, she doesn’t feel any better about her life.

Special by Mark Cooper

Old Seth — Thu, 09 May 2013 05:06:20 +0000

I’ve been told that I’m special – right now, I don’t quite see it.
+++++I’m in a basement of a building filled with dead men. They don’t know it yet, but by the time I’m done everyone here will have had a very bad day indeed.
+++++Why the basement you ask? Well, that’s where the wall is thinnest of course and it was the only place that I had a photograph of that allowed me to visualise the space without any issues – but more about that later. I do this job and I’m set up for life. It did occur to me that the reason why the price on this guy’s head is so high is because he appears to be untouchable.
+++++Steven Kenson used to work as a research analyst for META-4, the government run Agency that watches over everyone that’s classed as a Neo. You’ve heard of the FBI and the CIA? Well, these guys were above and beyond even them. You’ve heard of Black Ops? META-4 makes them look positively white in comparison.
+++++Why does someone want Kenson dead? I don’t know, and I don’t care – all I’m bothered about is the money. Like I said, I do this job and I’m set for life.
+++++The Glock nestles comfortably in the holster on my hip as I pull out and re-order the fuses to the power for the building. Everything goes dark for a minute – good job I’ve got the night vision goggles with me today. I know the back-up generators will kick in after about fifteen minutes, but that’s all the time I’ll need. It creates just enough confusion and uncertainty amongst those in the building to unnerve them – and that’s exactly what I want. Everyone on edge, twitchy, anxious. Makes it all the more easier for me when it comes to picking them off.
+++++I had a life once – a boyfriend, a cat, an apartment. I was training to be a nurse – I wanted to save lives – now all I do is take them. Funny how things can turn out, isn’t it? That was before everything changed. Before Dr Tachyon. He called it the Wild Card process – everyone else knows it as the forerunner to DNAscent; the forced evolution of the human genome. I guess I was one of the lucky ones – they theorised that because I’m a woman I must have pulled an ace from the pack due to my genetic makeup. Fifty percent of people who underwent the process were killed by it.
+++++If you ask me, they were the lucky ones.
+++++Now it’s been refined and “mastered”, the government uses it to create super-soldiers to fight their precious war on terror. I wonder how long it will be before the “bad guys” get their hands on the same technology. I could apply my talents elsewhere and make a fortune if I wanted to.
+++++Not that I would – I might be a killer, you understand, but I’m also a patriot.
+++++When they said that the Raven had caught Tachyon I was so angry – I wanted to be the one who got to him first, not that do-gooder bitch. I wanted to see the look in his eyes as I killed him. I guess I still could – he’s only in Ravenstone Prison after all, but everyone has to move on with their life. Take the hand you’re dealt and roll with it as best as you can.
+++++Like I said, people tell me I’m special. We’ll see.
+++++The door to the basement opens – two figures enter, waving torches around. They’re moaning about the power outage, their forms illuminated clearly by the red emergency light in the far corner of the room even without my goggles. Despite the fact my body is completely covered in this light absorbent suit, I’m still nervous. As they look at the fuse box I make my move – I drive the knife into the base of the skull of the first guy, and then I grab the second guy by the shoulders, forcibly throwing him to the ground on his back. I keep hold of his arm as my foot stomps down onto his throat. I then pull his arm upwards, jerking his body towards me while my foot holds his neck in place. I hear the sound of bone breaking and in the alien green hue of the goggles I watch him twitch spasmodically for a minute before confirming he’s dead. Retracting the knife, I wipe the blood from the blade on the first guy’s jacket before I climb the stairs out of the basement.
+++++I need to move quickly – the two in the basement will be missed soon and the element of surprise will be lost. I should just go straight to the third floor – but I can’t afford to get caught out. Plus as I don’t know what’s up there I could just appear in the middle of a wall or something – then who would look stupid? That’s the problem with teleportation – you need to “know” where you’re going otherwise things just get messy, hence the need for the photograph to get into the basement. I sweep around the first and second floors, finding them empty as I expected. The power disruption has wiped out the elevator – not that I need it, but I use the stairs in case I run into anyone coming down them.
+++++I reach the third floor and carefully open the door from the stairwell. Thank god for well-oiled hinges. As I slowly open the door, I can see a guy at the vending machine. He’s fumbling with change in his hands as he tries to simultaneously balance the torch under his arm and count up the selection of coins he’s extracted from his pocket. I wait – if I move now the sound of the coins hitting the floor could alert people to my presence. I can afford to be patient. Plus the vending machine is practically an antique – it’s an old Hertzberg model, the sort that work off a crank handle mechanism like the ones they have at Coney Island. It would be a crime to damage it after someone has clearly taken their time restoring it. For a minute I’m six years old again with my Dad at the fair, pleading with him for a raspberry Slurpee and a cone of nuts before we get on the Ferris wheel.
+++++Six dimes and three nickels later, he’s lighting up the candy dispenser with his torch. I step forward, approaching him in his blind spot – the silencer on the end of the Glock looks almost ridiculous compared to the size of the subcompact pistol in my grasp. I’ve always liked the Glock 26 and the later 29 versions – it’s perfect for concealment in a purse or a jacket pocket and thus, perfect for my line of work, even if it only holds ten rounds in the magazine. My hands are an average size, yet this almost miniaturised weapon looks wrong almost – like it’s a child’s toy in the hands of a woman.
+++++He’s still trying to decide which can of soda to purchase as the extended barrel edges closer to him. He has no idea what’s about to happen as he reaches out for the over-sized wheel that he needs to twist to finalise his selection – I can feel the anticipation building inside me, my mind is racing – the pressure of my finger on the trigger is increasing slowly, building to a climax. He reaches out, his hand just touching the rim of the wheel now…
+++++Pfhtt!
+++++I place the shot just behind his right ear, upwards into the skull. Somehow I manage to catch the torch before it hits the floor as the red and white decorative logo on the vending machine gets an impromptu paint job of blood and brain matter. That’s a shame – they’ll need to repaint it as you’ll never get that out with just soap and water. Bleach might do it. His body hits the floor with a soft thud – the carpet deadening the sound.
+++++There’s only one door in this hallway – and Kenson must be behind it, along with whoever is left babysitting him. They’ll be expecting their colleague to come back shortly – I don’t disappoint them.
+++++He’s heavy – heavy enough that once I lean his corpse up against the door it starts to open. As he falls through it, pandemonium erupts inside – the beams of torchlight illuminating their fallen colleague.
+++++One of them rushes forward – I put a bullet into his skull before I dance out of the way of a series of gunshots that tear through the flimsy wooden structure. All those years of ballet and gymnastics as a child paid off. I hear the voices – some urging restraint, some hollering for revenge. The remnants of the door are shattered as one, two, three men rush out, sweeping the hall with their torches.
+++++They are the first to go – one shot into each barrel, shattering the bulbs and robbing them of their perceived advantage. The knife is out of my hand and buried in the throat of one man before the others can react – bullets strike their foreheads a moment later. Everything goes quiet – everyone is waiting for the other to make the next move.
+++++There’s a rattling sound, then something rolls into the hallway. Smoke begins to fill the confined space – two shadowy figures dart out, towards the stairs. I take a second to focus, and then fire two quick shots into the back of the trailing figure – he falls to the floor, catching the trailing leg of the second figure.
+++++I can hear him coughing as I approach him. Through my green-filtered eyes I can make out his features – it’s Kenson; and he looks scared.
+++++I kneel down and jab the barrel of the pistol into the underside of his chin – he’s crying now, pleading with me for his life. If only it were that simple.
+++++I slowly pull the pistol away, and then drop it theatrically to the floor next to him. Something in his eyes seems to click – he thinks I’m giving him a chance. He’s wrong of course – but that’s what makes the next bit so delicious. I grab the lapels of his obscenely expensive jacket and I close my eyes.
+++++They say I’m special. I’m not so sure.
+++++The next time I open them I’m four hundred feet above the city streets. My hands are still gripping Kenson’s jacket as his screams fill my ears. I can feel the rush of the wind through my suit, giving me goose bumps across my body. We’re falling at a terminal velocity of thirty-two feet per second – the asphalt beneath us is getting ever closer and closer. I pull him towards me and speak for the first time that evening.
+++++“I hope you can fly.”
+++++Then I close my eyes and let go. When I open them I’m standing on the sidewalk – I see Kenson falling through the air, then watch as he smashes into the tarmac, just behind a yellow taxicab that’s dropped off its last fare of the night. I casually walk over to the impact site, ignoring the shocked people standing on the sidewalk, mouths a jar at what they’ve just witnessed – it’s amazing how much the human body resembles a melon when it’s dropped from a great height.
+++++I pull my mask off and run my hand through my dirty blonde hair. I realise that what I want right now is a long soak in a hot bath. Then I close my eyes and in a heartbeat, I’m back at home.
+++++They tell me I’m special. Maybe they’re right.

Black Ops by Jim Spry

Old Seth — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:09:31 +0000

The first wall had been easy; grab, lift, climb. Dropping down behind
a sprawling lilac just as simple. The red-eyed Doberman, big and sleek
and sniffing like a super model at a mirror, that was a different
story.
+++++Lungs burning from caged-in breath, I shifted slightly behind the
bush, reached into my jacket pocket. Gentle as a new mother stroking
her baby, I danced my fingers against the pen-thin sliver of plastic,
drew it out with mime-slow movement. The big mutt, ears fine-tuned
beyond anything I’d used out East, took another big gulp of night air,
growled a little from deep in its belly then took a quick, confident
step in my direction.
+++++“Here boy”, I whispered.
+++++The hell-mutt snarled as I stepped out from behind the tree, shot up
its hackles as I held out my hand and dropped to my belly. A second
growl, longer, deeper, ripped the night like a rusted bayonet. The
beast took a couple more tentative steps toward me.
+++++“Good dog,” I whispered, guts flipping at the thought of it barking.
+++++Pulse rate jumping, I lay on the ground, waiting. Head tilted to give
me a view, hands spread slightly by my head, I watched it come closer,
circle me. Its musty, drizzle damp coat stank of wet wool.
+++++“Good dog.”
+++++Wet grass soaked through my t-shirt. The rich smell of sodden earth
clogging my throat, I let the Doberman sniff me over. The big beast’s
nose probed my face, my ears. Its low, threatening voice told me if I
liked breathing, I’d stay nice and still, nice and submissive.
+++++It circled a couple more times, leaning in to nip my hair and back
with ice-pick teeth. Two minutes of prowling, it quit the belly
rumble, huffed at me with same brand of disdain a city banker reserves
for vagrants before stopping at my head and cocking a slender,
powerful leg.
+++++Hot, stinking piss splashed my face and shoulders, sprayed my cropped
skull, dribbled into my eyes, my mouth. Dominance exhibited, the
German bully-boy trotted back to its place on the three-storey town
house’s patio, dumped its arse on a low-sided bed.
+++++I grabbed a handful of waterlogged grass, wiped it across my stinking
face, jammed it into my trousers. Slipping the syringe back into my
jacket, I braced my knees and elbows against the ground,
leopard-crawled toward a bed of dead roses. I could have made a run
for it, could have got to my feet and dashed across the garden. I’m
sure the still-watching dog would have loved that.
+++++Boots sinking in fertilised soil, I stared at the second wall. Higher
than the first, broken glass concreted to its top edge glistened in
the light of a crescent moon. Slipping my jacket off my shoulders, I
draped its leather back over the wicked blades, dragged myself up and
over.
+++++I crossed the second garden in a low, ape-like run. Muscles loose,
breathing controlled, I darted along its shadowed boundary, stopped
short behind a corrugated iron shelter that stank of cigarette smoke.
Fumbling the bandana tied at my neck, I dragged it up over my face.
The acrid stink of dog piss made me want to gag.
+++++Boot steps light, I tabbed over to a heavy wooden door, slipped picks
from a cargo pocket, reached for its corroded handle with a flash of
inspiration. Grinning, I turned the metal knob, slipped inside, pulled
the door shut.
+++++Back pressed against a corridor wall, I scanned the rehab clinic’s
shadowed interior. A cocktail of bleach and vomit filled my lungs with
every breath, penetrating my damp mask. Running through the
blue-prints I’d committed to memory during a week’s recon, I rolled
tension from my neck, hit a right. Adrenaline spiked as a low moan
filtered behind the first door I passed, tightening my muscles to hot
wire. The groaning died in a beat or two.
+++++I followed my internal map up a flight of rickety stair, took another
right into a door-lined corridor, its ceiling dotted red with
emergency lighting. At the third door in, I reached for another
handle, stopped with hand midair when I noticed circular welt of a
Yale lock.
+++++I swallowed surprise in a fraction of a second, Squatted down with
picks in hand. Despite the darkness, my tension wrench found its mark
straight off, followed by a jagged pick. I stroked metallic pins with
my thief’s finger.
+++++Tumblers clicked into place, the wrench turned. I pushed the door and
rose to standing in one smooth movement, stashed the picks in my
trousers and stepped inside. Lavender and sandalwood pierced my
dog-stinking mask, the hum of an electric heater buzzed in my ears.
+++++“So you’ve come.”
+++++The voice, flat and calm, sent a shiver through my spine. He sat on
the bed, silhouetted by silver light leaking through his open window.
+++++“I knew you would. I knew she was too much of a hater to let it go.”
+++++The voice from a dozen movies rolled like honey through my brain as
the shadow raised his hands palm up, the gesture trying to placate me,
to let me know he’d acted outside his control.
+++++“I knew she’d be trouble, it made me want her more. What could I do?”
+++++I slipped a hand into my jacket. My other hand slid around to the
small of my back, gripped rubber. I shifted it back to the front, let
moonlight dance along the k-bar’s razor edge.
+++++“You could have kept your dick in your pants,” I said tossing the
hypodermic needle into his lap.
+++++“There’s enough in there to do the job, you’ll barely notice.”
+++++The patch of blackness picked up the plastic sliver, turned it in his
fingers like he’d never seen one before.
+++++“So you’re going to go through with it? Kill a penitent man?”
+++++“Only if you make another bad decision.”
+++++Dark, silent molasses passed between us for a moment. Movement in his
shoulders told me he was toying with the needle, the idea of dying,
probably weighing up his chances. A sharp jerk of his elbows killed
the silence with a sharp crack.
+++++“I don’t think you’ve got the gu…”
+++++Two steps and a single lunge cut him dead. I twisted the blade as I
pulled it from his sternum, felt not a damned thing as he tumbled
sideways onto his sheets.
+++++“Wrong choice,” I said, wrenching the blade from his chest, wiping it
off and stashing it at the small of my back.
+++++I left the same way I got in, walked through wet streets to my stolen
Cavalier. After changing my clothes, I pulled a pay-go mobile from the
glove box, sent a message to an equally untraceable phone. It read
‘Let it go’. Half hour later, I was back in my flat, sipping whiskey
while the car, phone and blade smouldered merrily in the roughest part
of town.

END

Bio

Jim Spry lives in an old naval city that’s been stripped of its
navy. With no jobs, no pride and no hope, the place is a melting pot
for ideas and inspiration, although Jim often has to tone down some of
the violence he sees. Jim blogs at
http://dirtymercsbarandgrill.blogspot.co.uk/ when he can find the
time.

A Hard-To-Shake Melody by Scott Dingley

Old Seth — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 09:56:47 +0000

Picture the lopsided figure-eight of the English side-by-side shotgun muzzle aimed at the crown of the bowed head, the police-issue handcuffs biting into the guy’s wrists behind his arched back. Listen to the warbled sound of the country double-act begging for five minutes more from the record turntable a few feet from him. Now see the taut and slowly winding length of cord rigged to the hub of the old record player, and how it in turn is fixed to the finely curved trigger of the clamped-down shotgun. That’s Buddy Fitch and his predicament.
+++++Fitch: Average Joe, working stiff, kind of old-fashioned at heart—a ladies’ man, never broke any serious laws; only thing he ever did was fall for the wrong woman. Broke somebody’s law and that somebody turned out to be lawyer Benny Markaris.
+++++Markaris is somebody, alright… If you’ve been around Florida in the last twenty years or if you move in certain kinds of circles, you know the name Benny Markaris. Back when New Orleans capo Ludovico Goldoni got pinched for extortion, it was Benny represented him. Benny never killed anybody, sure, not directly—he’s no triggerman. Benny’s just an attorney in the pocket of the mob, but that makes him somebody for sure.
+++++Some men kill in a roundabout way is all. Bad luck for Fitch is Benny’s also a grade-A nut, a control freak who likes to square his accounts; flamboyant, possessive, jealous, vengeful Benny. The kind of ego that figures, ‘If I can’t have you, no one will.’
+++++Mandolin strings drift into his dream.
+++++We’re already done with the pre-chorus. Fitch is aware of the tightness of the gag in his mouth. His head lolls about as he drifts into consciousness, a waking kind of nightmare accompanied by a familiar melody loaded with baggage. Twin barrels stare him in the face. He shifts in the chair to which he is bound and gets nowhere fast as the crackly post-war bluegrass hits the second verse. He knows that chorus—it’s catchy, what they used to call a real earworm. It’s Mrs Markaris’s favourite, that’s what it is; Bunny, the bored young trophy wife. It’s their song, only before it was their song it was Benny’s and Bunny’s song; it was playing on a jukebox in the dive where she first caught his eye, it was the first damned dance at their garish and loveless wedding, no less. The cord pulls the trigger backwards, straining like a miniature tow rope, just as Fitch’s bound hands strain behind his back, dirt under his fingernails, muscles built from manual work—the way Bunny truly likes it. His burning eyes focus and they pick out a shadowy figure at the back of the wood panelled den, watching…
+++++That’s Benny Markaris.
+++++Fitch watches back as the figure in a polyester suit and fur collared coat inhales the sweet scent of the red roses Fitch cut specially for her and catches the glistening white flash of a toothy grin and a fat diamond wedding ring on a fat finger. The smile and the jewels slip back into darkness and Fitch is alone in the room with just the dizzy, sick feeling of dread and the memories conjured by a hard-to-shake melody. Three minutes from death. Even love helped along by a sentimental pop song doesn’t last forever.
+++++He wonders what it means for her, this game, as he begs for a few minutes more with her, but not out loud. Maybe they’ll end up together, dumped in chopped up pieces in the swamps for the ‘gators; or cemented beneath a back lot, or in cans of dog food. You old romantic, you…
+++++His senses regained, Fitch struggles in vain to get loose. No dice, the chair legs are crudely bolted to the floor. Things don’t always work out like in the fairytales. He wonders too if this is all just a nightmare, and then despite himself he wishes he’d never hooked up with that hot-blooded little Louisville temptress, Mrs Bunny Markaris. Fitch rests, as if to listen to the lyrics, in between his mad bursts of wrestling with the chair. The needle edges closer and closer to the centre of the vinyl, the trigger gives the tiniest fraction. He makes a muffled cry of desperation through the gag in his mouth and feels his own hot breath blow back at him.
+++++Last chorus of the song, one final desperate jolt disturbs the turntable and the needle gets stuck in a groove, playing the same lyric over and over with maddening, nerve-shredding repetition… “letmestayletmestayletmestayletmestay…” Fitch freezes. Sweat beads roll down his forehead stinging the pistol whip wound that cold cocked him—a precarious stay of execution. He continues to pull at the cuffs with new-found determination, splintering the wood frame of the chair, freeing his wrists, but… jolting the needle again to continue the song’s crescendo, Buddy Fitch’s grand outro:

“…in your embrace…”

The string winds one last turn and love—life—has run its course. After the briefest, longest moment of the needle spinning mutely but for a soft static click, Buddy Fitch and his predicament are through. The hopeful, giddy roses run red with harsh reality, a spattered dew of gore.
+++++Buddy Fitch lost his head to another man’s woman and Benny never pulled the trigger—a lawyer might call it suicide in more ways than one. Anyhow, that song that gets into your head so, it belongs to them again…
+++++Benny Markaris and his irresistible young trophy wife, Bunny.

Just South of Here by B.Plemmons

Old Seth — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:47:44 +0000

He awoke to an angry buzz that he traced to the money bag. He found his cell phone inside with twenty two missed calls. All from his wife.
+++++He called her back, and she answered with, “Antioch, where the hell are you?”
+++++“Escaped. I made it. I actually made it,” he said.
+++++“Made it? What are you talking about? FBI agents are here. They just finished questioning your seven year old about where her daddy is.”
+++++“Don’t talk to them, Anna.”
+++++“They are threatening to take us all to jail as accomplices. They are saying the kids will go to foster care.”
+++++“That won’t happen. Cops are full of shit. You know that.”
+++++“Do I? We can’t gamble on that. You have to get back here, now. Just talk to the agents and tell them where you are, and they swear to leave the family out of it.”
+++++Antioch didn’t respond.
+++++“You can’t be thinking about this, Antioch. There is nothing to think about. No decision to make. Get back here. Today.”
+++++Another uncomfortable pause. Antioch could hear his wife’s desperate breathing, and he wondered if he could say it.
+++++“Can’t do it, Anna.”
+++++He heard Anna screaming, “you worthless bastard,” just before he heard a delicate shattering of electronics when the phone hit the road. He watched a dump truck roll over the parts, and he thought he could hear Anna’s voice muffled by two tons of pressure.
+++++He got dressed, stuffed the stolen guns inside his waistband and walked downstairs with his shirt unbuttoned and his hair uncombed. At the foot of the stairs stood a potbellied bandito with a machete who said, “Buenos días, Gringo. ¿Eres el ladrón de bancos?”
+++++Antioch’s eyes narrowed as he rested a hand on the butt of his gun. “No se. ¿Eres el muerto?” He thought that sounded pretty good, like something Billy the Kid might have said.

Twenty four hours earlier, Antioch rented ten outlaw movies, locked himself inside his garage and watched them all. A lack of sleep, alcohol and Hollywood had Antioch’s adrenaline pumping hot. He started a fire in his wife’s copper fire pit, and he burned his license, his credit cards and his membership cards. He found his birth certificate, passport and social security card, and he burned those too.
+++++He wondered at his purpose as he watched his hands find a crowbar and mallet. Then Antioch remembered his neighbor, a cop named Reginald, who loved talking about his weapons. Once he bored Antioch for an hour — literally — describing each and every gun in the trunk of his cruiser.
+++++Within seconds Antioch’s hands used the tools to pop Reginald’s trunk. He found two handguns and stuffed them inside his waistband. Then he slammed the crowbar and the mallet through the windshield of the cruiser. He climbed into his wife’s red Volvo Station Wagon and peeled the tires out of the driveway.
+++++He passed a bank and turned around. He parked, walked in and calmly raised his shirt to show the teller his twin handguns.
+++++“Money.” He said, and simple as that, Antioch became someone else.

He drove south on interstate five from San Diego. He passed through Chula Vista and Imperial Beach. Getting into Mexico seemed impossible but logical. He arrived at the Tijuana border crossing and sat as cars inched out of America into that southern escape.
+++++Beethoven’s Fifth played on his local NPR station as perspiration rolled down his temples. Just before he reached the border guard, Antioch heard an alert go out over the guard’s radio: “red Volvo, possible fugitive, wanted for armed robbery, extreme caution, consider armed and dangerous.”
+++++Antioch retrieved the handgun from his waistband, and he watched the guards converge around a red Volvo coupe two lanes over. They had their weapons pulled, and they were ordering the bewildered driver to “get the fuck out of the vehicle, now.” Antioch smiled and rolled away.

A year ago, when his shrink asked him to explain his problems, Antioch said: “My main issue is that I just turned forty and my purpose is hidden, folded somewhere within the grand scheme of things.” Then Antioch clenched a fist between his heart and stomach when he said: “I have this inner turmoil, this rumbling desire to find my own relevance. It gnaws on my soul.”
+++++“Relevance?” The shrink asked.
+++++Antioch considered the question. “I want to believe that my birth meant something.”
+++++“Meant what, exactly?”
+++++“I don’t know. I just want to be the difference, good or bad, somewhere, somehow.”
+++++“Why not just be you, Antioch?”
+++++But that was the problem, Antioch didn’t know how to be Antioch.
+++++“Who are you?” Asked the shrink.
+++++Antioch’s mind drifted like a winter wind, blown from California to Canada to Singapore to Nova Scotia. He twirled into a tornado and he tore through a city of innocents with all his dissatisfaction unleashed. With a single breath, he blew a two-by-four through a cinder block wall and pushed a piece of tin halfway through the trunk of a thirty inch Oak. With a turbulent gust, he picked up a swaddled infant and flung it seventy five miles into a desolate cornfield two counties away.
+++++“Antioch, do you know who you are?”
+++++The truth: Antioch had always admired outlaws, guys that walked their own path and gave society the middle finger. Guys like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Doc Holliday. He liked that outlaws actually lived their lives. They didn’t just exist. They were born bad, and they were good at being bad.
+++++“I am an outlaw, Doc,” Antioch responded. “Maybe my purpose was to be bad from birth, and I suffered all this time because I ignored my calling.”
+++++As the shrink discussed responsibility and maturity and fatherhood, Antioch thought about his name beside those of famous outlaws: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Doc Holliday, Antioch Raulens. He liked it, and he thought it fit.

BIO

B. Plemmons lives and writes in the States, just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. His fiction and non-fiction have been published in various journals. He practiced criminal law for several years prior to taking up the pen for good. He is currently working on his first novel, and he churns out a new short story every month or so.

Near To The Knuckle Presents: Gloves Off – Our First Anthology

Old Seth — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 10:04:12 +0000

“Gloves Off” is a collection of dark stories from the cream of the literary crop. These stories have one thing in common: they will come at you, all guns blazing. There’s a story lurking down every dark alley. Just when your back is turned a plot-twist is ready to attack.

The stories in this anthology are mainly crime, but there is also grim humour and the supernatural; dark tales for an adult audience featuring hit men, mobsters, bikers and stalkers. Are you prepared for the bloody scenes within?

This anthology was spawned from the dark, talented minds of:

Gareth Spark, Richard Godwin,
Paul D. Brazill, Aidan Thorn,
Pete Sortwell, B.R. Stateham
Brian Panowich, Ryan Sayles,
Chris Leek, David Barber,
Vic Errington, Graham Smith,
Walter Conley, Tom Pitts,
Allen Miles, Jim Spry,
Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw, Mike Monson,
Alan Griffiths.

A Way Out by R.J. Spears

Old Seth — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:02:33 +0000

They were coming. Every instinct in Jerry screamed “Run!” But he fought the fear down and slowed his pace. By the sound of the footsteps, there were three of them. A shoulder clipped him as they passed and he stumbled for three steps before catching himself on street sign.
+++++“What’s up, my man?” A large face with a toothy grin loomed into his space.
+++++Jerry stood his ground, saying nothing.
+++++Another one bumped by him and he swiveled on his feet to take all of them in. ‘Toothy’ kept smiling, but there was nothing friendly about it. The one that had just bumped by was long, lean, and emanated all the friendliness of a wood chipper. The last one was short and squat, but graceful despite his girth. His face was perhaps the most frightening because it said nothing.
+++++“What’s a man like you doing in our hood?” Toothy asked.
+++++Jerry definitely stuck out with his suit and fine leather shoes; like pearls in shit, but that was on purpose because he wanted everything about his presence to be a beacon.
+++++“You’re not 5-0, are you?” The lanky one asked, then answered his own question, “No, you’re not the po-po.”
+++++“Who the fuck are you?” Toothy asked, but the smile was all gone. “You can’t just come down here in the middle of the night like king shit and expect not to pay a toll.” He moved in on Jerry, his head cocked like a pit bull ready to snap.
+++++Despite not wanting to, Jerry took an involuntary step back. Toothy nodded his head with approval, but Jerry rallied and stepped forward taking back the ground he’d lost.
+++++“You want to fuck with me?” Toothy asked.
+++++The lanky one punched Jerry in the shoulder from behind sending him into Toothy’s waiting fist which drilled into Jerry’s stomach causing all the air in his lungs to go in full retreat. He went to his knees, feeling the grit and grime of the street tear at his pants. Toothy sent out vicious kick to Jerry’s face, breaking his nose.
+++++Jerry went down on all fours, blood dripping onto the sidewalk. He let his breath return, then looked up to them and said, “Fuck you.”
+++++He hadn’t come for a beating. He had come for the whole enchilada and they must have seen something in the set of his face. Both Toothy and the lanky one stepped back misinterpreting the intensity behind Jerry’s face.

Short and Squat didn’t share their fear and kicked Jerry in the side.
+++++Jerry rolled over and coughed for several seconds. He forced himself onto his hands and knees, then spat a mouthful of blood onto Short and Squat’s feet hoping that would get the party started. And it did. Short and Squat didn’t share any of his colleague’s hesitance and kicked Jerry again, a glancing blow off the side of his head. Jerry rolled with it because he didn’t want any chance that they just beat him unconscious and leave him to be taken to the hospital.
+++++No ambulances, he thought. He’d only accept a hearse.
+++++Three days ago, he has sat alone in the dark at the edge of a six story parking garage wanting to jump, but was afraid it’d be interpreted as a suicide. Insurance companies didn’t like suicides and could tangle up the money for years. Accidental death paid double and that’s what his family needed. It was cleaner and less ambiguous. That double indemnity would pay off the house, send the two kids to college, and keep his family from poverty.

Treatment for stage IV liver cancer, on the other hand, would drain their every last penny of their savings. Plus his kid’s would have to see him suffer and waste away. He would have none of that. Better to get it over quickly. He had heard of suicide by cop, so why not suicide by thug?
+++++Jerry stumbled to his feet and decided to finish this thing, reaching inside his jacket like he was going for a gun. Short and Squat beat him to it, pulling an ugly little pistol and putting four slugs in Jerry’s chest, slamming him back against the ground where he became the city’s latest homicide.

Bio

R.J. writes primarily mystery/crime and horror fiction. He has had crime stories published on the websites Shotgun Honey and Twist of Noir. His horror stories have appeared in The Horror Zine, Flashes in the Dark, and Tales of the Zombie Wars. R.J’s story “The Touch” has been accepted to appear in the Static Movement anthology “Gifted” later this year and his story, “Belly or the Head” is scheduled to be published in Out of the Gutter sometime in February.

Madhouse (A Turner Hahn & Frank Morales Story) by B.R. Stateham

Old Seth — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:30:18 +0000

Through the wall of light from the four patrol cars setting in the middle of the street and facing me I saw the nightmarish silhouette of my partner walking toward me. A figure straight out of a B-movie horror flick. A freaking giant. Like a miniaturized Hulk dressed in a massive looking trench coat covering a pair of slacks and a sport coat that were about ten years out of style. Not that he cared, mind you. Frank Morales was one of those iconoclastic oddballs that couldn’t care less about his attire. A big, red headed facsimile of a human who happened to be a damn good homicide detective. And my partner for the last decade or more in the detective division of the South Side Precinct.
+++++Tonight, in the cold, even he decided to wear a trench coat. Usually cold weather didn’t bother him. But for the last week the temp had been hovering around the -10F range. Cold. So cold I would have sworn every time I exhaled a breath of air the water vapor in it instantly froze and turned into snowflakes. So cold the leather of my shoes cracked and snapped every time we stepped out into it. So cold my joints ached. Especially my right knee. Like a sonofabitch.
+++++Cold, brother. Too fracken cold for my old bones.
+++++Me? I’m Turner Hahn. Another homicide detective. Just another cop. As tall as my partner but not nearly as massive. Nor as ugly. But really I’m as odd a duck as Frank is in my own right. Frank looks like a humanoid freight train with short, stringy red hair and a permanent scowl on his face. I look like some dead movie actor from out of the 30′s. When he was alive; not being dead for last eighty some-odd years.
+++++And rich.
+++++Yeah, I’ve got a bank account as large as Fort Knox. I earned it the honest way. I inherited it from a grand father I didn’t know was still living. Money coming out of the blue suddenly after I’d been working as a cop for ten years or more. Go figure.
+++++The movie star looks and the wads of cash in a big bank account weren’t going to help us tonight. We had a dead body leaning up against a corner mailbox down on Erin and 10th streets with a hole in his forehead from a .45 calibre semi-automatic. The stiff was sitting upright, with arms crossed across his chest, his legs stretched out, his chin smack on his sternum, his big blue eyes staring off into infinity. Sitting there like he was taking a little nap before deciding to get up and move on.
+++++But there was a problem. There was no blood. No brick work with bullet holes carved into it. No sign of a scuffle. No empty shell casings. Meaning our dead friend had seen his last days somewhere else and someone had deposited him here.
+++++Turning my attention away from the stiff I watched Frank slump toward me, hands in the pockets of his trench coat, head down and looking definitively pissed.
+++++“You want the good news or the bad news first?”
+++++“Let’s go with the good news,” I said, with half a smirk on my face.
+++++“The good news is with have a print on the gun and it’s in the system. A guy by the name of William Goodrich. Gun’s registered to him. And we have his last known address.”
+++++“That is good news,” I nodded, the grin widening. “Now what’s the bad news?”
+++++“The bad news is William Goodrich has been dead for the last eight years. His last known address is the Fairview Cemetery out on Ridge Road. And just to answer your next question, Sherlock. No, the guy isn’t a zombie and his grave is still intact.”
+++++The grin widened. Through the clouds of steam our breaths were generating and hanging motionlessly over our heads I could see the dour smudge of my friend’s face. Beat officers, over dressed for the cold, were moving around us still looking for any evidence to process. A couple of officers were waving flashlights around directing an ambulance, red/blue lights a whirling, into the crime scene. It was a fracking madhouse here standing in the cold. I couldn’t feel my toes anymore. Nor my fingers. And my right knee was killing me.
+++++“Let’s go. The boys can finish up here. The morgue’s picking up the body. There’s no need to be around any longer. Whatta say we got get a cup of java and maybe a bowl of chili or two. While we’re eating we’ll figure out our next move.”
+++++Frank didn’t say a thing but turned on a heel and started walking toward the dark red CTS-V Caddy station wagon . . . yeah, that’s right; a station wagon . . . sitting quietly beside the street curb underneath a blacked out street light. Climbing in the car I quickly kicked over the engine and got the monster humming and grinned.
How many Caddy wagons have you ever sat in that has a six speed manual transmission and 580 horses under the hood? Kicking the tranny into second gear I turned and glanced at Frank.
+++++“A station wagon, for chrissakes. You gotta be kidding me,” he growled, shaking his head and then turning to look at the leather seats and the spacious back end. “Still, betcha this tub can smoke the tires. How fast so far?”
+++++” ‘Bout one eighty five,” I said, shrugging. “But that’s before the cold and snow hit. The dealer said it should do one ninety five easy. We’ll see.”
+++++Okay. So I like fast cars. I collect’em in fact. Got a whole ground floor of a warehouse filled with Muscle Cars from the 60′s and 70′s. But I broke down and bought the Caddy when it came out. A station wagon that could do almost two hundred miles per hours was just too much to pass up.
+++++Forty minutes later we were sitting in a corner both at our favorite all nighter warming our hands wrapped around big cups of coffee in front of us and waiting for Dewey’s unique brand of chili to arrive in oversized bowls. Between the coffee and the chili it was guaranteed you would thaw out in a matter of minutes. Or develop ulcers. Whichever came first.
+++++Eyeing Frank sitting across the table from me in the booth I watched him grunt a few sounds on his cell phone and then shake his head in disgust as he dropped the phone in an inside pocket of his trench coat.
+++++“You won’t believe this. The dead guy? Forensics just ran his prints. He’s in the system as well. Tobias Yates. Used to own a jewelry store up in the Heights. Was suspected to be a fence for most of the cons who worked the jewelry trade. Died eight years ago of a heart attack at home one night while eating supper. The wife buried him in . . .wait for it . . . the same Fairview Cemetery our Richard Goodrich occupied.”
+++++“Really,” I said, lifting an eyebrow quizzically. “Who died first?”
+++++“Goodrich apparently by a week before Yates. Why?”
+++++“How did Goodrich die?”
+++++“Oh. You’ll love this. Caught a bullet in the head. From the gun that was used on Yates.”
+++++“Killed with his own gun? Who killed him?”
+++++For an answer Frank lifted hands, palms up, and shrugged.
+++++“There’s gotta be a connection somewhere in this. Both the trigger man and the victim died roughly at the same time? What do we know about Goodrich? Was he a jewel thief? Did he do business with Yates? You gotta admit, brother. This is getting to be interesting.”
+++++Dewey, the guy who owned the all aluminum camper trailer styled eatery we liked to frequent, slid two big plates toward us. Each one occupied with a large bowl steaming hot chili and general amounts of crackers. Reaching up, sliding the toothpick from between his lips, he used it to point into the parking lot in front of the plate glass window beside us and at the red Caddy wagon.
+++++“Turner, you getting domesticated or something like that? Coaching little league hockey? Maybe delivering hot meals to the elderly? What the hell are you doing driving a station wagon, fer chrissakes!”
+++++The corners on Frank’s lips twitched . . his definition of laughter . . . as he reached for some crackers with his big hands and started crumbling them into a fine powder into his chili. I smirked, glanced at the wagon, then back at Dewey.
+++++“It has lots of horses. Goes faster than a stripped assed ape. And it’s got disk breaks big enough pull the asphalt off a highway in China. So what’s the big deal?”
+++++“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all,” the pot bellied, badly needing a shave owner of the eatery answered, sticking the toothpick in his mouth and mumbling to himself as he walked back to the kitchen. “But who’d a thunk it. A freaking station wagon, for chrissakes!”
+++++With the smirk still on my lips I lifted the spoon up and began digging into the chili. Frank, already about half way through the spicy dish, lifted a bushy eyebrow and glanced at me.
+++++“How the hell do two people die within a week of each eight years ago, go through the system, get planted in the ground, and then get murdered all over again?”
+++++“Somebody’s lying,” I said between spoonfuls of chili. “Obviously neither Goodrich nor Yates died eight years ago. So that means they had reasons to fake their own deaths. And needed help doing it.”
+++++Wind rattled the plate glass window adjacent to our booth. The cold just got colder since the wind was coming off the Little Brown river. Underneath the mercury vapor lights of the parking lot outside even the red Caddy wagon looked like it was shivering in the cold.
+++++“Let’s finish up here and get back to the precinct. Do some digging in the forensics records. We ought to find something.”
+++++We did.
+++++This will come as a surprise, I’m sure; but cop work isn’t glamorous. Ninety percent of the time it’s pure drudgery. You ask questions. Lots of questions. And then you listen. An idea forms in your head. So you ask a lot more questions. And listen some more. Eighty percent of the questions is pure horse manure. They get you nowhere. But procedure says you have to ask them. So you do. It’s the other twenty percent of the questions that go Bingo! on you. Most of those come out of the blue. You have no idea why you asked them. You just do. And the answers sometimes surprise you.
+++++The question that was the ice-breaker for us was asked by Frank while he sat at his desk with a phone stuck into his ear and hanging precariously off one shoulder as he talked to our man down in the evidence room.
+++++“So who claimed Goodrich’s shit after the trial?” I heard him ask as we sat at our desks.
+++++While I was the Yates’ case files from eight years ago I head a voice speaking over the phone partially stuck in Frank’s ear. It sounded bored. But glancing at my partner I could see he was far from that emotional response.
+++++“Oh . . . . really,” he said, one eyebrow going up in surprise. “You sure about that?”
+++++The bored voice spoke again. Frank, listening for a second or two, said ‘thanks’ and hung up and turned to look at me.
+++++“Guess who picked up Goodrich’s stuff.”
+++++“Who?”
+++++“Tobias Yates’ wife. Who happens to be, I might add, the current Richard Goodrich’s ex-wife.”
+++++“So both Yates and Goodrich were married to the same woman at one time,” I repeated as I tried to wrap my limited cognitive powers around it. “And now she is Yates’ widow.”
+++++“Right,” nodded Frank, the corners of his lips twitching. “A regular fracking Days of Our Lives horny-fest if you ask me.”
+++++I nodded, rubbing a hand across the fuss for a mustache underneath my nose, and glanced at the case files lying in front of me.
+++++“Well, I got news for you too, kiddo. I don’t think our Mister Yates died of a heart attack. Reading the autopsy reports kinda sounds like the guy was poisoned. Screw the bad ticker diagnosis. Autopsy report is sloppy. Sloppy and full of holes. So I’m thinking poison. Especially after I read this. Six weeks before Yates died he took out a life insurance policy for twenty million dollars. Two weeks after that he and his lovely wife divorce.”
+++++“Let me guess. Even after the divorce the ex is left on as the primary beneficiary.”
+++++“Bingo!” I said, grinning wickedly.
+++++“So we need to go over and talk to the lovely Mrs. Yates. See if she can shed some enlightenment on this quaint conundrum of horse shit.”
+++++A shot a grin at Frank as I got up. The giant had a way with words, and insults, which always made me smile. Rumbling down the stairs to the ground floor we stepped out into the frigid cold and fired up the Caddy. Thirty minutes later we were pulling up into the circular drive of a mansion. A mansion with no lights on. No streaming ribbons of steam rising up into the cold sky from the many chimney vents in the roof. No signs of life whatsoever. Even the snow was virgin white and without a single human track in it. Nor any tire tracks. As we climbed out of the Caddy underneath the portico in front of the main door both of us were scanning the house, the snow, the wooded grounds surrounding the house and not feeling the least bit comfortable about it.
+++++Definitely something was wrong.
+++++That feeling magnified tenfold when we found the heavy dark mahogany front door of the mansion partially open. Pulling out weapons out from their shoulder holsters we cautiously entered the cold, dark house expecting either trouble or something gruesome. We found gruesome.
+++++A dead man.
+++++Setting on a leather sofa, arms splayed, a small .380 caliber automatic in his right hand. His eyes were open and looking definitely frozen. There was a bullet hole in his right temple. A hole that looked roughly the size of a .380. Around the entry hole was the distinctive burn marks. We found him in a small library in the back of the house. Sunlight now, well past dawn, flooded in through a set of French doors that opened out into the back yard. In the snow starting at the doors were a set of footprints . . . the footprints of a woman . . . relatively fresh and heading straight for a large detached three car garage.
+++++Frank, frowning, pointed to the dead man and glanced at me.
+++++“Betcha that’s Richard Goodrich. The original Richard Goodrich. And he didn’t kill himself. This was murder.”
+++++“How do you know that?” I asked.
+++++“Richard Goodrich was left handed. This guy’s left handed. See . . . he’s got his wristwatch on his right hand. There’s an ink pen in his right shirt pocket. Like a left hander would naturally do when reaching for a pen. So a left hander wouldn’t use his right hand to pull the trigger. Ergo; murder.”
+++++“And the women’s prints outside?”
+++++“Mrs. Yates. She’s running. As you would too if you shot your ex-husband and made it to look like a suicide.”
+++++I nodded in agreement and dug out my cellphone. As I thumbed in the precinct’s number I glanced at Frank.
+++++“Call the airport. Ask’em how many planes are departing in the next hour.”
+++++Frank nodded and reached for his phone.
+++++I knew it was a long shot. But sometimes . . .
+++++We nabbed Betty Tobias, once Betty Goodrich, at the airport. She was a mousey looking woman with brown hair, a flat face, and long red fingernails. She was sitting at a small table in a small bar inside the airport terminal with a beer in front of her and nervously checking her watch. The moment Frank and I walked in, accompanied by a couple of uniform officers, she slumped in her chair like a balloon suddenly losing all its air.
+++++Two hours later we had her in an interrogation room sitting in a hard wooden chair in front of a small wooden table with me sitting opposite of her and Frank looming over her like Dracula ready to pounce. Her cheeks were scarred with black streaks from tears ruining her mascara. She had been quietly weeping for the last two hours. Beside her was her lawyer. A lawyer we knew personally and liked. He looked ashen faced and tight lipped. Signs that told us his client was guilty and was willing to talk.
+++++“Mrs. Yates, run us through this. I admit we’re at a loss as to dotting all the dots and crossing all the T’s. But we have more than enough evidence to prove you killed Richard Goodrich. I’m sure your counselor advised you to open up and cooperate. It certainly will go easier on you. So tell us. How did this all begin? And why did it end like the way it did?”
+++++She glanced at her lower, who nodded silently, before folding hands on the table in front of her and looking at us.
+++++“Eight years ago Richard Goodrich came to my husband with a plan. Back then I was married to Tobias . . . Tobias Yates. Tobias was looking for a way to get out of the business. To get out of fencing stolen jewelry for the mob. He wanted a clean break. He wanted a way to completely disappear. Richard had the plan.”
+++++“Let me guess,” I said. “You take out a twenty million dollar life insurance policy on your current husband. That finances the whole deal. Tobias gets ten million and Richard gets ten million. How am I doing so far?”
+++++She nodded in agreement, lifting a hand up to wipe a stream of teams sliding down one cheek.
+++++“Richard said he knew two patsies who looked vaguely like himself and Tobias. His idea was to kill the two, make it look like it was him and Tobias who had died, collect the insurance money, and disappear. At first Tobias was totally against it. The idea of killing innocent people just to get away with a boat load of cash. But Richard was good. He was smooth. He had this way with words. In the end he convinced Tobias the plan was perfect and they could get away with it.”
+++++“So who does the killing? Richard or Tobias?” Frank grunted from behind the sitting Mrs. Goodrich. “And why did you divorce Tobias and marry Goodrich?”
+++++“Richard killed the two. They really did look like them. As to the divorce . . . well . . . I guess you could say I knew Richard long before I married Tobias. Richard was my first love. I could never say no to the guy. He told me to dump Tobias and marry him. And like the idiot I am I did.”
+++++“Okay. The lookalikes are dead. You divorce your first husband and marry slick talking Goodrich. What happened recently that got the two of them dead?” I asked.
+++++“When the insurance money came Tobias took his cut and left the city. Surprised me when he said he’d divorce me without a fuss. Left town and I didn’t see him until about a week ago. When he came back to town and saw I was now Mrs. Richard Goodrich he went nuts. Threatened to kill Richard with that little gun of his. They fought several times and then Richard, coming to believe Tobias was serious about killing him, decided to play safe and kill Tobias. I . . . I guess that’s the way it went down.”
+++++“So why did you kill your current husband?”
+++++“I didn’t! Richard came back to the house and told me what he’d just done. He was crazy. Out of his head! He knew everything was falling apart. He knew the cops would come in and start investigating everything. Knew they’d finally figure out what had happened eight years earlier. He got depressed. Yesterday I saw him walk back toward the reading room and close the door. The next thing I hear is a shot going off. I ran to the reading room and found Richards slumped on the couch. He was dead. That’s when I panicked! I had to leave. Had to! So I ran. Ran to the airport and . . . and . . . that’s where you found me.”
+++++I glanced at the scowling red headed monster standing behind the woman and her lawyer. Frank’s eyes looked at me and silently he shook his head no. He wasn’t buying it. Neither was I. Looking back at the woman I sat back in the chair, crossed a leg over the other, and smiled.
+++++“Nice try Mrs. Goodrich. But it doesn’t work. It sounds like a great story. And it has a chance to maybe convince a jury you’re the innocent victim in all of this. I’m sure the counselor here is going to do his best to convince the jurors it’s true. But let me tell you how it really went down.
+++++Eight years ago you were the one who came up with the idea of getting out of the business. You were the one who came up with the idea of taking out a twenty million dollar life insurance policy. You knew an old lover who had no problem with morality issues who would do the dirty work. No sane man businessman like Tobias Yates would listen to a total stranger spew out some cockamamie get rich plan of killing two people in an attempt to disappear from the mob. The only way that could happen is if someone he knew, someone he loved and trusted, came up with the idea. That person was you, Mrs. Goodrich.”
+++++“Can you prove that?” the balding little attorney asked in a soft voice.
+++++“She is the one who took out the policy, counselor,” I said, pointing a finger at the woman in front of me. “She is the one who filed for divorce. Strong circumstantial evidence has convicted many a murderer. But we have a bit more evidence to make our case.”
+++++“What evidence?” Mrs. Goodrich asked, color draining from her face.
+++++“We know for a fact you and your ex-husband have been living together for years,” Frank growled from behind her. “We also found a security tape in a bus station showing Richard Goodrich arriving in town about a week ago. So you’re story doesn’t hold water. It was Richard who blew town once he got his cut of the money. But eight years later he’s dead broke . . . and yes, counselor, we can prove that. Richard comes back and begins to put the squeeze on you two. Give him more money or he goes to the cops. You panic. You decide there’s too many loose wires running around potentially threatening you. Quite coldly you decide to clean up the mess. Kill both Tobias and Goodrich. You use Richard’s gun on Tobias and Tobias’ gun on Richard. Nice touch, by the way. I liked that. A kind of poetic justice in a twisted, macabre fashion.”
+++++The woman’s eyes glared at me filled with rage and contempt. But she kept quiet. Her only chance to get clear of this mess was to remain silent and hope her lawyer was good in the courtroom.
+++++He was good. But not quite good enough.

B.R. Stateham writes hardboiled noir and the darker, meaner kind as well. Old enough to know better nevertheless he continues writing them for no particular reason other than he enjoys it.

Drop by Jim Spry

Old Seth — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 12:05:12 +0000

Kid in the dirty jumper hacked it through the crowded shop. Stock and customers bounced off the tips of his jabbing elbows as he bolted for the door. With the grace and speed of a horny wildebeest, I charged toward the entrance, looking to blocked the thief’s escape.
+++++“Give it up, kid,” I barked, planting my feet shoulder-width and my middle-aged spread firmly in his path, “you ain’t going anywhere.” Dark eyes flashed beneath his skewed, red baseball cap, gave me a look that told me I’d snuck in a play he’d missed in his game plan. Hollow cheeks flushing pink, he switched his face left and right. The little prick’s eyes fixed on Aisha’s swollen, baby-stretched belly. I got my carcass moving as his right hand slipped beneath the mess of stolen sportswear hidden by his filthy, over-sized hoody, felt my jaw flap open as he moved toward the young shop assistant. My balls shrivelled as steel flashed in fluorescent lighting.
+++++“Back off, mother fucker,” he hissed through yellow teeth. Aisha screamed high and shrill as his dirty fingers wrapped themselves in her thick black hair, yanked her head back like he was trying to pull it off. Metal glistened against her slender, brown neck.
+++++“Back off or the bitch gets her baby nice and early.” I tasted vomit as he dragged his blade across Aisha’s gut, pressed the tip gently against the front of her uniform. Tongue poking out the side of his mouth like some sadistic cartoon, he drew the blade over her body, circled her left breast then pressed it back against her throat.
+++++“Son,” I said, praying to fuck he was bluffing, not giving a shit about the adrenal twitch in my legs, “let her go. She’s not done anything to you. Let her go, son.”
+++++The savage little bastard threw his head back, cackled like some demented hyena. His thick white saliva spattered Aisha’s hair. “Son?” He said, meeting my gaze dead-on, increasing the pressure on Aisha’s neck. A thick, red jewel glistened against her skin, ran like some hellish imitation of the tears streaming from her wide, brown eyes.
+++++“Yeah, you can be my old man. He was a useless, fat fuck too.” I gave a sneer like his smart-mouth meant something to me, balled a fist at my side and jerked like I meant to hit him. At the same time, I found Aisha’s glassy stare, tried to tell her without words that everything would be okay. I didn’t quite believe it myself. “This ain’t no time to be a hero, pops,” he sneered, twisting his fingers deeper into the shop girl’s hair, dragging her toward the door.
+++++I took a look around the store, saw some bug-eyed granny gawking from the sidelines. Mitch and Tina, the other assistants, stood huddled together by a rack of running shoes. The heroic contingent of shoppers who’d, thirty seconds ago, scrapped and argued about cut-priced goods, had vanished faster than a fart in a hurricane. I hoped to Christ one of them had the chutzpah to call the cops.
“Yeah,” I said, dropping my stance to as close to neutral as I could manage, “we can pretend this didn’t happen. You done a good job with the hat, the cameras won’t make your face. Just let the girl go. You walk out of here, keep the shirts.”
+++++Face twisted into something evil, he jerked Aisha’s hair like he was controlling a disobedient mutt. More blood trickled over the knife, pooling in the pit of her collar bone. When she whimpered, low and soft like a wounded animal, he shifted the blade against her cheek. “Shut it, slut. And you,” he said, turning to me, keeping his stare level as he back-stepped toward the door, “you know I’m getting out of here. The only thing you don’t know is whether she’s coming with me or not.”
+++++I watched the punk shuffle to the door, watched Aisha’s trembling hands, watched the way her lips turned blue and how her uniformed darkened as her bladder emptied. My heart beat a low, steady rhythm that sucked life from my chest and the strength from my body. “Dale?” Aisha whispered through frozen lips, teeth chattering from the shock I could see chewing on her mind.
+++++I raised a hand, like I could comfort her fifteen feet and a world of insanity away. My fingers dropped to my thigh. A flash of movement caught my attention, ripped my gaze off the terrified girl and toward the thief. The old woman, hard as nails and dumb as a hammer, dragged her heavy purse over her shoulder, let rip with a double-hand swing that arched in slow motion toward the red hat.
+++++“Jesus, no!”
+++++Too late, the roar tore open my throat, echoed through the store like a thunder clap. Through tunnel vision, I watched her bag curve toward the psycho’s skull, watched him half-pirouette out of the way. My guts lurched as her bag slammed into his elbow, jerking his knife hand up and in. Aisha screamed one long, agonised note as the blade punctured her throat, three inches of steel biting deep into her flesh. The pregnant girl hit the floor like a dropped sack.
+++++Purse dangling from her hand, the old woman froze. Mitch and Tina huddled together like terrified kids, seeking comfort in one another’s arms. On the floor, blood pooling from her neck like water from a burst pipe, Aisha twitched and thrashed in seizure. Cold, hard, the kid in the hat turned to me with a grin of pure evil. “Fancy a run?”
+++++Laughing, he darted for the door.
+++++Numb, I slapped at my chest, felt the cold, hard plastic of my radio. I pressed the button, mumbled something to control. I don’t remember their reply.
+++++Moving on autopilot, I grabbed a shirt from a rack, shoved it under Aisha’s head, grabbed another and pressed it to her bloody wound. “Mitch,” I said, my tone calm, dead in my ears.
+++++“Come here a second. Hold this to her neck. Please don’t take the knife out.” Mitch staggered over. I showed him where to apply pressure, checked Aisha was as comfortable as I could make her.
+++++“Tina,” I said, walking toward the exit.
+++++“Would you be a love and call control? Make sure they’ve got an ambulance on the way?”
+++++I think she nodded, may even have said something. I don’t remember. I had other things on my mind.
+++++Biting January winds did nothing to clear my head. Outside, shoppers clung in groups, cursing out the padded figure barging a path through their ranks. A girl, maybe eight, pointed to my hands, pulled on her mother’s arm, screamed. The blonde-haired women, ashen faced, threw me a look, pulled her child protectively behind her. I didn’t give a fuck.
+++++My strides came, jerky at first as I pushed through images in my head. I balled my fists, felt Aisha’s still-warm blood slick on my fingers. Half-watching the murderer barrel through the crowd, half trapped in pictures of the knife penetrating my friend’s neck, I forced my pace into something harder, faster. A single, razor-edged tear traced the line of my cheek, breaking my shocked semi-paralysis, shattering my restraint.
+++++Wolf-mad, I hit a sprint, sent scarf-swaddled shoppers flying. Ignoring the burn of a twenty-a-day habit in my lungs, I tore after the red cap. Howling, I cleared the entrance to Gunwharf Quays retail park, shot onto Park Road. Breaks screeched, a horn wailed. I slammed my bloody fists onto a silver bonnet, slid my body over it, ran into the warren of public housing. A shadow scratched at my left eye. Lips pulled back, teeth aching from the tension in my jaw, I veered toward it, hit the alley-mouth at full speed.
+++++The red hat bobbed in my vision. I roared, threw a lunging punch, put my bodyweight behind it. Old, slow, I missed the younger man by inches, felt a double-barrelled retaliation smash my ribs, heard a hacking laugh that will haunt me ‘til the day I die.
+++++I swung again, missed, willed my feet to follow. Confusion bubbled in my chest as my knees gave. Pain burst in my chin as it struck pissy concrete, ammonia filled my nostrils. I tried to stand, coughed, tasted blood thick and metallic in my mouth. Anger melted to panic. I reached a trembling hand to my burning ribs, found slick wetness and sharp, agonising pain. I tried to move, tried to stand. Icy cold spread through my body, froze my legs in place.
+++++Darkness drew in and I remembered the girl on the floor, her life oozing away like my very own. Realisation crept over me. I wondered if I’d made a difference, if a dead girl and ending my days bleeding out in some urinal of an alley had been worth the minimum wage I’d pulled in for over twenty years.
+++++A hacking laugh and retreating footsteps were my only answer.