“Sure, I know games. Football. Poker. Insurance. It’s all about risk and reward, and reading people, anticipating their next move. Chess? Yeah. It’s like polo. A game for the rich. They play by different rules. They can afford to lose. But the prize for everybody in any game is money and sex. I went after the prize. That’s all.”
Syd Conklin got up from his jail cell cot and stood under the small barred window four feet above him, letting the sliver of sunlight shine on now-gaunt and haunted face, basking in the glow of infamy.
“What about the dame?” Bart Azar was like any other journalist. If the story bleeds, it leads, but sex sells as quick as dope. Conklin’s story had plenty of blood thanks to a phallic .45 but he wanted a few sexy details to spice it up.
“What about her?” Syd with a shrug. She wore red lipstick and stiletto heels to bed. She was a winner in the sack, sure. And in an elevator and the back seat of a Plymouth. Mine was blue. Dual-quad carburetors that could make it from San Diego to L.A. in an hour and a half. Wish we were in the yard. I want a smoke.”
Azar watched him stretch his arms towards the window in supplication. Was he praying for forgiveness or a pack of Pall Malls? Two people were dead Rita Dirkson and her husband Tom, and Conklin had killed them both after sleeping and scamming with the blonde Rita laying in a morgue drawer.
“Here,” Azar said as he fished a half-empty pack Luckies out of his shirt pocket. “Take ‘em. For later.”
Conklin stared at the outstretched hand offering the gift. “You remind me of the guy on the train. Wendell Lang ⸺the guy who’s testifying I asked him to get my cigars.”
“That’s when you jumped off the train and put Tom Dirkson’s dead body on the tracks.”
“Never mind.” He took the cigarette pack and passed it under his nose. “Why do bad habits smell so good? Tobacco. Crisp counterfeit Jacksons. Rita’s perfume. I bought her a bottle of the shit she liked. Dangerous by Reveli.”
“Is it expensive?”
“Six dollars an ounce. Why, you got a gal stashed somewhere your parents don’t know about?”
“I’m older than I look, Mr. Conklin.”
“Lucky you.” Conklin returned to his cot and leaned against the wall. “Maybe she works in editing? No. More like the mail room. Is she pretty?”
“Uhhh, yeah. But it’s nothing serious. Girl next door kinda thing. Not anything like Rita Dirkson.”
“Meaning you haven’t nailed her,” Syd said with a grin. “Okay. Maybe the perfume will work. Why’d the Sheriff let you in here and not the Tribune? You got an ‘in’ with the department?”
“It was a lottery. I won. I was the only one who agreed to let the Sheriff have prior restraint. The public has a right to know, do you regret killing two human beings?”
Conklin leaned forward, looked into Azar’s blue innocent eyes, and whispered, “The real me loves killing better than sex.”
***
The next time Azar saw Syd Conklin was in court. Judgment: voluntary manslaughter. The jury thought Tom’s death wasn’t premediated, that Syd was at the mercy of a seductress who almost killed him after collecting the insurance money.
The other reporters swarmed D.A. Marioti, but Azar waited a week before calling on the losing side. “I don’t second-guess verdicts, and I can’t try Conklin again. End of story.” Marioti settled into an uncomfortable leather office chair and waited. “Alright, Azar, what can I do for an aspiring Walter Winchell?”
“I’m not here to ask you questions without answers. I’m here to give you information. The jury may have had reasonable doubt, but I know it was murder one.”
Marioti was smiling now. “Do tell. The psych said he was depressed. Conklin said he only assisted Rita in getting rid of the body and killed her in self-defense. He did have a .22 slug in his shoulder. Are you sayin’ you’re smarted than the doc?”
“No, I’m saying I know why he did it, and he’ll kill again.”
“Who’s next?” Marioti bit off the end and lit a cigar.
“Wendell Lang.”
“He said he didn’t think it was Tom Dirkson who asked him for the favor, but couldn’t say for certain Conklin was the one who did. Why kill him…”
“I tell you, Syd confessed that killing to him is better than sex. What does that say?”
Marioti slammed a fist on his desk. “Then why didn’t you testify?”
“I … I couldn’t. I was going to, but I knew he wasn’t going to be convicted no matter who testified.”
“How? How’d you know?”
“Because Syd’s lawyer was going to put Rita on trial the way they do all women who get mixed up with a guy like him,” Azar said. “Hell, his boss testified on his behalf. You think Century Insurance was happy about Lawson Miles telling the world what a great employee Syd was?”
“Just what the hell are you getting at?” Marioti seemed humanly calm now.
“Not every reporter is a hard-boiled scrapper. Some are like me …” Azar said.
“Humph! You mean like college boys who think they’re better than everybody?”
“You’re not taking me seriously. Do you think the jury would have believed me instead of hating Rita the vamp?”
Suddenly alert, Marioti hit his intercom button. “Margie! Get some coffee in here.” He got a pen and a yellow legal pad from his desk drawer. “Okay. Wha’dya got? How do you take your joe?”
“Black and strong. What I have is a way to charge Syd with crimes that’ll stick. Attempted murder. Intimidation of a witness …”
He stopped talking when Margie came in with two steaming cups of black goo. “Sorry guys, all the cafeteria had was dregs.”
Marioti took a sip and winced. “That does it. I’m buyin’ a hot plate and a percolator. You were saying … ?”
Azar nodded. “Thank-you, Ma’am.” The coffee was bitter, but real men drink anything on hand and know better than to talk when a third party might overhear. Maybe Marioti needed reminding.
“You’re sure Syd will try and kill Lang after he does time?” the older man said after Margie left. “Maybe Century Insurance will rehire him. He was salesman of the year three years straight. Maybe he’ll get married. He’ll only be thirty-two. Only one visible scar.”
“He doesn’t actually have to commit a crime. You only have to prove he did. Isn’t that the way the system works?”
“He got three years —should be paroled in eighteen months. He’s no dummy. He knows we’ll be watching him every second for the next eighteen.”
Azar leaned back in his chair and hoisted his feet onto Marioti’s desk. “But he won’t know I’ll be watching him, if you get my drift.”
***
The day Syd walked out of Folsom State Prison, Lawson Miles was waiting to drive him back to San Diego. “Maybe you did humanity a favor,” Miles said to break the ice. “Rita Dirkson was the devil’s daughter. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on her. She was pretty, but so was Henrietta Lorenza.”
“Wasn’t that the woman you were going to marry?”
“Yeah. To look at her, you’d think she knew the Blessed Mother. Sweet. Wore pink lipstick and nail polish to match. How do they get the nail paint the same color as lipstick, Syd?”
“I’m no chemist. No artist either. But gals know a hell-uva lot about deception. I give ‘em credit for that.”
“All we know is insurance. Poor bastards that we are. What’re you goin’ to do now, Syd? Century won’t hire you back as a salesman —yeah, I asked. But I said we had a duty to help rehabilitate you ‘cause if you hadn’t been working for us, you’d never have met Rita Dirkson.”
“Thanks, Miles.”
“Thanks, nothin.’ The big boss said I could hire you on as Director of Housekeeping. Forty bucks a week. Tell me the name of your parole officer, and I’ll have him set it up. The one way I can be sure you won’t be meeting any more Ritas is to have you working evenings. Five p.m. to one a.m., five nights a week. And playing golf on the week-ends. You were getting to be a fair duffer. Wa’dya say?”
Syd didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t often the man you double-crossed, the man who had all the faith in the world in you, offered you a chance to go straight. “Director of Housekeeping, hunh. It sounds classy even if it means head janitor. Yeah, I’ll take it, Miles. And thank-you.”
The rest of the way down the Coachella Valley, they rode in silence, except Syd asked if Miles wanted him to drive a spell, “No. Go to sleep a free man,” and that’s what he did until Miles stopped in front of his old apartment building. “Ahhh, I hope you don’t mind, but all that vacation and sick pay we owed you? I paid your rent with it. Folsom isn’t the vacation I’d have chosen but here’s your keys…”
He hadn’t lost everything after all.
“Get married, Syd. It’ll make you less of a sap. Nothing like a good woman to keep your pants zipped.”
That had been Syd’s wining excuse. He was a sap. Made a fool of. No doubt most of the seven men on the jury had been down that road, and the five women had probably strung a guy along at least once in their lives. The coroner testified Rita had sex before she died and the jury assumed it had been Syd. It wasn’t. She’d cheated on him before she plugged his shoulder, the bitch. Maybe he should swear off dames forever … but was a young guy. And how was he supposed to get married unless he shopped around for a wife?
***
While the women cleaned up after the salespeople, Syd haunted the upstairs offices of the claim’s adjustors, emptying ashtrays and trashcans, vacuuming carpets, washing coffee cups, and … he looked at the locked file cabinets. He still had his old office keys. One fit the cabinets. He found “P” for payouts ⸺and just inside the file was the master list of payees and the amount of the checks signed by Lawson Miles.
Sub heading: Double Indemnity Claims.
He scanned the names:
• Mrs. Adriana Heinz, thirty-four, 3625 E. Mountain View Drive, one-hundred-fifty thousand dollars;
• Mrs. Eleanor Roark, fifty-five, 2811 Orange Ave., fifty-thousand dollars;
• Mrs. Frances Robinson, forty-two, 339 W. Point Loma Blvd., one-hundred-thousand dollars.
He could be a charming replacement companion for their deceased husbands, and perhaps become the sad survivor of a rich spouse himself. He set his sights on Adriana Heinz whose husband owned a Texaco station and garage at First and Kettner Blvd. He made a mental note to fix that flat tire he’d arrange tomorrow.
***
“You wouldn’t be looking for a job, would you?” Adriana said, half-joking. She didn’t have anyone to fix his tire and had watched him do the work himself.
He’d put his jacket and shirt on the front seat and borrowed her tools. “From the looks of that For Sale sign, I figure you’ve made up your mind to move on.”
“If I can’t find a buyer or a manager real soon, I’ll be selling at auction. You know what that means.”
“It means you’ll lose your shirt. Ol’ FDR says we’ve turned a corner, but we’re still in the same neighborhood. I suppose I could run the station for you part-time. My dad had a garage in Jersey.”
“Could you run it full time? I might be able to keep it if the insurance company ever pays my claim.” She tried hard to hide her tears but made sure he saw her do it. “I lost my husband three months ago in a vacation accident.”
“Losin’ people’s tough. I’ve been there.” He kept quiet as he put the repaired tire back on the car and tightened the lug nuts. “I …um … already have a job. I’d hate to quit and then …”
“Oh, I understand. Absolutely.”
“I supervise a cleaning crew from five to two a.m., but I could work afternoons a few days a week. Get you some reliable help. If it’ll help you out.”
“Come inside the office. We’ll talk.”
She led him to a windowed room that looked more like a hospital waiting room than a garage office. The floor tiles were clean and the file cabinets dusted. She had a potted palm in the corner and magazines neatly arranged on an end table. A coffee urn and paper cups sat at one end of the counter and the register on the other. No ashtrays. A good wife, he decided, was his best bet. He could handle two jobs; he’d sleep on Miles’ office sofa while the maids worked.
***
Syd didn’t know who was tailin’ him in the Chevy Bel Aire. Maybe the cops, maybe his parole officer. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t propose to Adriana until his parole was up. He needed time to woo his mark anyway. At least that’s what he decided until a skinny nine-year-old came by the station selling magazine subscriptions. “I sell two more, and I can go to summer camp,” the kid explained. Syd bought two. One for him and one for the station.
Adriana cried when he told her Field and Stream would come monthly. “The customers can read it while I change their oil,” he said.
“You’re so sweet,” she said. Boo-hoo. Sniff-sniff. “My husband read that magazine. He loved to fish. Slipped on a rock up at Clear Lake, hit his head, and drowned in four inches of water.”
“I’m right sorry, Ma’am.” She put her head on his shoulder and he enveloped her in his arms. She pulled him closer; he smelled familiar perfume. The day he bought Dangerous for Rita, he’d sampled another called Pretty Poison. They kissed and he stroked her pretty rose petal skin.
They reluctantly parted when the “ding” signaled a customer. “I … I’m going to take your car to pick up Mr. Salazar’s spark plugs, Addy. I thought I heard it ping.”
Aroused, he limped through the back gate around eleven forty and waited until noon when she drove his Plymouth to Tops Drive-in for lunch. In Salazar’s car he followed the Chevy as it followed his Plymouth. Amateur, he thought, as he pulled up next to the Chevy at a stop light. Cheap wig. Fake moustache. The guy was so intent on following the car ahead of him, he never even looked to his right. Was it possible? He stopped off at the market on State street and bought a newspaper. He found Azar’s picture next to his op-ed column and drew a moustache on the baby-faced reporter. “Ya’ little shit,” he whispered to himself.
Being shadowed, even by a light-weight wanna-be, weighed on his mind, and grew larger and heavier as he chronicled the Chevy’s persistent presence catty-corner from the station. Then John Floyd brought in an answer to his prayers —his black De Soto.
“Damned if I know what’s wrong with ‘er. Making that click-ping noise that drives me crazy. Cain’t drive ‘er no more with click-pinging remindin’ me I might break down at any minute.”
“I know what you mean,” Syd said. “Got a nerve-wracker of my own. I’ll have to keep it a few days. Noises hide like snakes in a tree and all of a sudden reappear. You need it before the week-end?”
“Keep ‘er ‘til she purrs.” He signed his name to a work order. “Jest gimm’me a call.” Floyd looked around the office for an ashtray. “Mrs. Heinz sure keeps the place tidy. Don’t look nothin’ like when the Mister ran the place. Sure do miss him. Used to stop by here Thursday noons and play a game of checkers. You play, do you?”
“Sometimes. Did you know the Heinzs well?”
“Yep. Him.” He hesitated, like he wasn’t sure if he should go on. “We was Doughboys together. You’re too young to remember the Great War. Too bad Steve passed. He could tell stories about Par-ee like nobody’s business. Have you known Adriana long?”
“Naw. I just saw she needed help. I’m just a part-timer.”
“Yep, Little Miss Charmer can get folks to do most anything. She sure charmed Steve.”
There was something about the brittleness in his voice that made Syd reconsider his lunch plans. This guy was angling for information and Syd felt like fishing a little himself. “You got that checker game with you? You didn’t figure on running into the champion of Soiux Falls Iowa, now did you?”
He drove Floyd to a greasy spoon called Noodle’s where they picked up hamburgers, and then back to the station to knock off a few games before driving the ol’ man home. He hoped it looked like he and Floyd were buddies to Azar.
“So, why don’t you tell me about Par-ee?” he said for openers.
Floyd, got a fresh cigar from a box of Havana’s and offered Syd one too. “I like my women solid and shapely. I’m Irish. Steve liked those Parisian ladies ‘cause they was wispy, like smoke that disappears quick when the money runs out. He must’a had somethin’ going for him, though. That there Louisa let him come ‘round during the week. He said it was ‘cause he was from San Francisco and knew the ways of the world. I could believe that. His parents sent money along with their letters.”
“Must be nice to come from wealth.”
“Adriana sure thought so. King me, Syd.”
“Is Adriana from Frisco too?” Syd put one red checker on top of Floyd’s and realized he was going to lose to this codger in a hurry if he didn’t pay attention.
“Nope. L.A. ‘Round the tar pits, I’d say. Steve took one look at her and fell hard. They met when she come into the station. Prettied up, smellin’ like flowers, playin’ like she was Mary Pickford herself. I told him, beware the painted doll. Oh, you don’t know about them. The Frenchie’s make these puppets…. Well, it don’t matter. He said I was jealous ‘cause she was a lot younger than us.”
It sounded all too familiar. Rita Dirkson had dangled her youthful charms in front of middle-aged Tom, and he’d taken the same bait. “Did Steve have any kids?”
Floyd hopped his checker around the board and left Syd with three pieces. “Not him. And he never caught the clap either. Kept his johnson protected in all kinds of weather.”
“And Adriana? Was it her first rodeo?” He noticed Floyd scrutinizing his face for a sign of what Syd suspected before he held up three fingers. “What happened to her other two husbands?”
Floyd leaned back on the sofa. “I hear tell they both died.”
“Heard from who?”
“California Bureau of Statistics in Sacramento when I called my nephew. Young man, you seen like a bright fella, but the way you play this game, I’d say you were out of your league. They keep you busy milkin’ them dairy cows in Iowa?”
Syd laughed. “What kept you busy?”
“Puchin’ a herd of cattle in Oklahoma and lookin’ out for Apaches. I wasn’t about to lose my scalp.”
***
As he drove back to the station. the big question kept repeating in his head: How had Adriana gotten away with murder when an insurance expert like Miles was able to piece the Dirkson fraud together so quickly? God, how he wanted to ask her. Maybe Miles’ internal ‘radar man’ had been rattled by the perpetrator being so close. Sure, it was possible that all the deaths were accidental, Syd thought, but his gut told him otherwise.
He called in sick with Century for the first time in a year. He needed time to think things through. Floyd had advised him to steer clear of his mark, and it was advice he’d heard before ⸺before he strangled Tom Dirkson. His own ‘radar man’ had screamed beware! Adriana was as dangerous as Rita, but sexier. Was it beauty or danger that made his own dough-boy stand at attention every time he was near her?
In the top drawer of his dresser was the engagement ring he’d planned to give her in two weeks. He’d let her set the date, and they’d tell her family. God forbid there be a party or worse — an announcement in the newspaper. Yet, it had to look sincere. He’d introduce her to Miles. He’d approve. Adriana was charming. Best of all, she wasn’t a blonde.
But the plan had to be changed. Different town. Different insurance company. Miles would recommend him for a job as a claims investigator, the way Miles had wanted to do. He and Adriana would be married a year and have a baby on the way. Not enough to show, but a rabbit had to die. He’d take out a hundred-thousand-dollar double indemnity policy on himself, and a regular hundred grand life insurance policy on Adriana. Only then would she have her accident.
And the little shit, Azar? What if he talked to John Floyd? Maybe he already had. Fuck! Why did everything get complicated? Was every beautiful woman a potential black widow? Screw it. By ten o-clock that night he was vacuuming Miles’ office.
“I thought you were sick, Mr. Conklin,” Richard, the elevator operator, had said as they rode to the third floor. “My doctor said people shouldn’t come to work sick.”
“Your doctor doesn’t pay my bills,” Syd replied, “Besides, I’ve recovered.” Richard was just another working nobody. He laid on Miles’ couch, sick of the bullshit and sick of work. Miles was right about one thing, among the thousand other things he was right about. When it came to the insurance business, a sick ‘radar man’ was an indication there was something wrong about a situation; maybe Adriana’s prior relationships deserved more investigation.
He couldn’t open Miles’ top desk drawer. Under it was a button Miles pushed at the same time he opened the drawer. Who but a friend would know that? But the side-drawer opened easily. He found the file marked OPEN CASES. No Heinz listed. CLOSED CASES. Yes, that’s the one that held cases that were closed, but were still in Miles’ gun sights. He found Miles’ notes on Adriana Heinz:
Spoke with John Floyd again. Still convinced Steve Heinz’s auto accident was murder. Still no evidence on an accomplice or foul play at a vacation camp ground. She might work alone. Check with Syd Conklin. According to Floyd, he’s working at the station.
“What are you doing here, Syd?”
He didn’t need the light to know it was Lawson Miles. “I played checkers with Jon Floyd today. Let’s just say I’m verifying some information he implied about Adriana Heinz.”
Miles turned on the lights. “What have you got to do with her?”
“Something worth noting. She’s coming on to me strong. After Rita Dirkson, I’ve decided to find out what her game is before somebody gets hurt. I think her game is murder for profit.”
“It’d be nice if we could prove that. It’d let the company recoup the green we forked over.” Miles took the file from his hand and put it back in the drawer. “Remind me never to open this drawer with anyone around.” He sat as his desk and took a cigar out of his breast pocket. “Do you have any evidence?”
Syd sat in one of the office chairs. “Only that she lied about being cash-strapped and that she plays happy homemaker at the station but knows her way around automobiles mechanically. I think she suspects you’re on to her and is setting me up to take the fall. I played it straight with her. She knows I’m on parole. And she told me her husband drowned on a fishing trip.”
“Floyd said she told him the same thing. See, I talked to him today, too. You haven’t seen anyone hanging around who might be Rita’s real lover boy?”
“Somebody’s tailing me. I turned the tables on him and followed him when Adriana was driving my car. It might be him. Brown hair. Moustache.”
“You did right telling me. But I question your research methods.” He still hadn’t lit his cigar, but he was one of those sniffers who tried to make sure the tobacco was fresh.
“I didn’t want to sound paranoid or hysterical. I figured Floyd had talked to you. Maybe you think he’s a crank.”
There was a long pause. Finally, Miles said, “I hesitate to ask for your help, but you always were a good insurance man. Remember when I asked you to give up the doorbells and take a desk job working claims?”
“I’ve grown up since I refused.”
“She’s dangerous, Syd. Husband number one died in a hunting accident. A wrongful death suit against the lodge netted her fifty-grand. She got another fifty-grand from husband number two. He died when his Cadillac dove off a Topanga Canyon cliff. Bad brakes. But Steve Heinz died from a fall into water when his car drove off a bridge. Oh, he drowned alright. Somebody strong must have held him under. Not Adriana, I’ll wager. Who knows what happened to that guy or what she may have in store for you.”
“You mean frame me.”
“Dead men can’t defend themselves.” He struck a match from a book Syd recognized as one from the station, and lit his cigar. “There are Rita Dirksons all over, Syd. You seem to be a magnate for them. I could talk to the big boys upstairs if you’re interested in putting that magnetism to work for Century.”
“Would it pay well?”
“Not really, but there are bonuses. You’d get ten percent of whatever we can recover. In Heinz’s case, with her assets, we might get the whole one-fifty-grand back. That means fifteen-hundred in your pocket. If you live to collect it.” It was the same ol’ Miles. Sardonic. “Think it over.”
***
Did it matter who killed Adriana Heinz? Him or California, as long as he got some real money in his pocket. She planned on making his life hell again. He hated people who fucked over him. Like Azar trying to catch him in something that would send him to the chair. Maybe it was time to do a little framing himself.
As he did with Tom Dirkson, he hid on Azar’s backseat floor and waited for the son-of-a-bitch to leave for his surveillance gig. At eleven a.m., Azar opened his garage door and slid into the driver’s seat. Like most people, he didn’t see what he wasn’t looking for. He put on his brown wig, and his fake moustache. “Let’s see what you’re up to today, Conklin,” he said as he put the key into the ignition.
The last words he ever heard were, “I’m right here, you little bastard,” as Syd collared him with his left arm, and thrust Adriana’s .45 into his torso with his right hand and fired twice. Blood soiled his clean overalls, but some dirty motor oil and dusty tires would cover that up. No one questioned a grease monkey laundering his overalls.
In Azar’s bathroom, he wiped the gun clean, crumpled it in his dirty overalls, and stashed them both in a paper bag. He changed into a clean pair of overalls, went out the back gate where Floyd’s De Soto was parked and drove to the station. He removed the .45 from the sack and returned it to its secret box under the register.
The he waited for Marioti and the questions.
Have you seen Bart Azar lately?
No. But I’ve seen is the guy in a Chevy who’s courtin’ Mrs. Heinz. She never did tell me his name.
Where were you yesterday morning about eleven?
Catching some shut-eye before I went to work.
Can you prove that?
Do I need to? What’s this all about? Maybe you ought to talk to Lawson Miles.
By the time it was over, Marioti admitted Azar had approached him with a plan to manufacture evidence against Syd to send him to the gas chamber. “I told him to get lost,” Marioti swore. “The D.A.’s office doesn’t frame people who’ve paid their debt to society. I think Azar had a personal agenda that didn’t include his heart-throb pluggin’ him with her ol’ man’s revolver.”
Syd was free again. Adriana was behind bars. He had fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket, and a new job as a recovery agent. Yet, something was missing. The delicious rush of adrenaline he felt when he his arm was locked around Azar’s throat. The feeling of a once-living thing wilting in his hands like a defeated flower. The smell of blood beginning to congeal. The way the ache in his groin ebbed away and replaced the tenseness with warm, moist relaxation.
He couldn’t kill Wendell Lang. Ever. But he could kill strangers, substitutes for those who’d harmed and rejected him. Rita. Adriana. And then Azar. Anyone could do, really. There were millions of stand-ins for the deceitful people he knew. Get to know strangers and they become deceitful friends, sooner or later. Why should it matter if he killed them before they had the chance to harm him?
“I’m taking your advice, Miles. I’m taking my first vacation. Maybe it will cure my blues, and set me on a new course of success.”
“That’s the spirit, Syd. You’ve worked hard to rehabilitate yourself. Don’t let bad experiences sour your future happiness.”
And it might have worked out that way … except Marioti believed Azar’s story about Syd’s confession. Officially, Syd wasn’t even a suspect in the Azar murder. Unofficially, Marioti’s ‘radar man’ told him to wait and watch. He and Syd would play checkers for the rest of their lives —or until Syd screwed up so bad one of his dames would finish him off with a bang.
***
With his ten percent, Syd booked a vacation in Paris. He’d wanted to see the city ever since his checkers games with John Floyd. He couldn’t find a painted doll, but he did meet a nice widow on the ship. Charlette Simmons. They were in Paris when it surrendered to the Nazis on June 22, 1940. Syd got his first taste of legal murder as a Corporal in the U.S. Army’s 4th Armored Division, and once played checkers with General Patton —or so he told Marioti when the French government handed him over to California for killing Charlette Simons, Chula Vista’s Chili Queen.
by 
Jenean McBrearty
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