A Twist Of Noir 354 - Robert Crisman

AN OLD SWEET SONG - ROBERT CRISMAN

Editor’s Note: You may notice a similiarity between this story and Robert’s GETAWAY DAY. That’s because they are essentially the same story. There is, however, one very notable difference. In this story, Eddie isn't quite as meek as he was in GETAWAY DAY. Your mileage may vary on which version of Eddie you prefer but that shouldn’t keep you from enjoying either story.

Eddie thought he might even make it. He’d stopped off in Kent and filled up the tank and went back in the can and topped off again. He got back on the road, to all appearances, blasé, blasé. Montages were muted, at least for awhile.

Montages: the robbery; Dennis goes apeshit; three people dead at the dopehouse; the old lady sprawled on the sidewalk outside; Ramon comes to kill him; he gets away with the dope...

He had that dope stashed in the trunk of his car. A pound-and-a-half of Mexican brown. Weight and long money. Live large while you can...

Eddie laughed at himself, a dry, silent chuckle.

Down through Chehalis and bang-on toward Portland. A stop by the side of the road near Kalama. Smooth out the edges. Smooth as a baby’s behind. The world, a slow-motion parade.

Through Portland toward Salem. The groove began to wear thin. Niggling thoughts punched his stomach.

Back at the station he’d pinched off maybe a gram, enough, he hoped, to get him to Cali. He didn’t want to dip in the trunk.

Junk in the trunk. Singing the siren song, right? Big ball of ratshit...

A pound-and-a-half of junk in the trunk! Holding it meant that he’d feed the monkey and die like a dog. Well then, what? Drop it off by the side of the road for the buzzards? That’s thousands of dollars you’re talking there, buddy! The stake toward new life!

The monkey kept nipping his neck...

He’d off the dope down in Frisco, Sixteenth and Mission.Pieces and bits unless he got lucky and dumped the whole thing in one swoop—not at all likely to happen.

He could see himself getting robbed or winding up busted.

Fun prospects.

Slinging smack is ugly business in any event, a death trip however it goes. You rub elbows with mutts who are destined to die under dumpsters. You help put them there.

Eddie, death merchant...

But, what to do?

The first thing right now—shitcan this line of thinking. Eddie pulled to the side of the road and re-upped. And then he sat back and sighed.

His fear now, muffled down deep for awhile. He got the car back on the road.

Eddie and the monkey, watching the farmland roll by.

He remembered a daydream he’d dream on his bunk in his cell, his second year there when he’d been there forever and release seemed like eons away. He’d ridden the dope through a lot in those days...

He had this big car in the dream. A snazzy Mark IV, all midnight purple like Batman’s, with bitchin’ chrome rims, cruise control, and a sound system made just for angels that screamed out to heaven and hell, on key all the way.

Sights set on Cali in gangster-lean mode. All skies were blue.

He’d laughed in that cell at the comic-book aspects of heaven two years from release.

China White in the trunk in the dream, top tier in the stairway to heaven. Enough to hold him for life plus forever.

He had a plan in the dream. Go like the wind, down 101 in the cool breeze. Play tunes and dream dreams. And ease in the trunk when the groove would begin to wear thin.

All at his leisure, you dig it? Winding his way down the Oregon coast, looking out at the waves. And watching the seagulls swoop down on dinner as the sun tracked its way toward Japan.

Smack’s good for that. It keeps out the chill. You’re bundled up snug as a bug in a rug and the world sweeps softly on by.

It turns of course. One day it’s a raft on White Powder River. Next day, you bang and you bang and don’t quite hit Eden. Almost, but almost isn’t shit.

You’re chasing it now. Chase all you want. Something cold deep inside you just will not be touched. You’ve used up your ticket. Soon enough, man, every nerve end you’ve got will be begging and bleeding, and shitting all over the car seat. Turns out that Eden is merely a road stop to Under A Dumpster somewhere.

Eddie knew this. In the dream he came up with a gameplan to deal. He’d feel the turn coming and pull into a no-tell motel by the sea. One good geez left, the one that would float him to Alpha Centauri.

He’d tie off, find a vein, drive the dope home. He’d lay back on the bed, eyes slowly closing as waves lapped outside. Blackness would come like a loving mother’s caress.

That was the dream. Now, outside Eugene, rain started falling. He let out a sigh. In the dream skies were blue.

Funny thing, it seemed now that time was rushing up on him. Telling him, move. There were ogres and demons in crannies, scratching up under him now. The soft, feathered groove was not going to carry him long.

A movie flickered inside his eyes. Reverie was not quite the word. Reverie wafts. This vision locked right on track, the route pre-ordained. Reverie also is toothless. Eddie’s thoughts gnawed, up under the chiva, insistent.

On the screen now, Ramon in deep shadows. Posed and pimped out top to toe. He turns and his eyes lock on Eddie, go dark. Eddie stares at Ramon, and then down at Dennis, dead as a duck on the floor...

Blood, blood, and blood. Now the old woman, deader than Dennis. Spotlit so Eddie won’t miss her. Then, black, and then gunfire erupts—and the dog’s head explodes. Dennis, haloed, gun in his hand, grins and grins.

Mona screams, claws toward Dennis who holds her baby aloft by the heel. Then calmly, her voice disembodies, she says to Eddie, “Please help me.”

Eddie blinks and breath will not come.

Eddie, complicit—

And Mona lies splayed on the couch, eyes wide at nothing, riddled with bullets, one foot on the floor. Her baby, bloody, sprawls by her foot.

Eddie sidearms the lapdog right at the wall. It bursts like an egg and dribbles blood-red to the floor.

A flash then, and Mona, maw gaped, decomposing...

Eddie tried like a bastard to blink the movie away. The soundtrack—shrieks interwoven with gunfire’s echoes—held it in place. He pulled to the side of the road and pulled out his rig, chased the willies. He lay back in the seat with a sigh.

He got back on the road. Grant’s Pass by morning.

The groove sent him back through his archives: sepia photos, old notes, report cards, the laughter and tears and the songs and the screams that made his childhood a ride down the rapids.

Eddie is three. He’s dancing and laughing and mugging for Mama. She laughs, delighted, she and her friends. The women all love him, with laughter, applause, enveloping warmth. He tries a new role: Godzilla, destroyer of cities. A three-year-old monster, roaring and stomping, on stage for the ladies. Powerful, thrilling, little man, leading man up there in lights...

Mama starts wringing her hands.

Mamas would have their babies stay babies. Especially boy children, the next set of dicks in the world. Godzilla scared Mama.

Daddy scared Mama. Daddy scared Eddie. That dead, failed dog of a man.

Daddy ruled in the house, with words, slaps, and spit. When Eddie was 20, he picked up a chair and put paid to his ass, right after Daddy’d slapped Mama that one time too many. Daddy died of cirrhosis some 18 months later.

A baseball card there in the Dream Room. Eddie, the Phillies’ lefthander, closing on 300 wins. He’s handsome, respected by Albert Pujols, and adored by the fans.

Among whom, of course, is Madonna.

Poor A-Rod crying...

Eddie laughed, at A-Rod, Madonna, and not least, himself.

He’d notched 19 strikeouts one time in a CYO game. He’d also hit two long home runs. He was 13 years old. Girls love winners. That 12-year-old blonde, third row up in the stands, already curvy, drank him right up with her eyes.

Then, logical segue, Alesha, sort of the love of his life, drifted to sleep with a smile as he read her a story, one last soft slur in his ear and goodnight...

She’d tell him, “You’re gorgeous!” She might even have meant it. He sure loved to hear it. They were driving one time and stopped at a red light in Renton, and made out like 12-year-old kids. The snuck a look back at the woman behind them. She smiled, delighted, and waved.

Happy days.

Grant’s Pass, 15 minutes. Eddie decided to keep right on going, through town and past the Rogue River. He’d stopped there once at the park by the river and grooved on the green and the sound of the water a long time ago. He’d top off there and hit 101. Maybe Eureka by morning.

He fixed, not a lot, and got antsy down toward the state line. He really wanted to bang. The monkey was making rude noises and digging its nails in deeper.

Eddie itched. If he scratched, he would bleed, bleed, and bleed.

The monkey’d turn into Vlad the Impaler...

But that itch! Who in the world could blame him for scratching that fucker to death?

He needed relief! His need, his excuse. For spreading his cheeks for the monkey once more...

A boatload of no-tell motels in Eureka. He could check in, hang Do Not Disturb on the door, bang a load, and waft off to Alpha Centauri.

He kept driving. Thoughts grew long teeth once again. Quick snapshots: Mona redux, the old lady swimming in blood, out of time.

Eddie had helped grease the gun. Does chiva cover that bill?

Thoughts—bip, bip, boom, bam. Dennis, Eddie’s old road dog. Ramon, that reptile cocksucker.

Instant replays of This Is Your Life: The Last Fucked-up Years... Prison, thin-margin scuffles, the drop down that hole at the dopehouse...

He would sleep in the no-tell and lay down his burden for good.

A stab of panic shot through, distanced a bit by the last little load—

Which allowed him to see the fear thrashing around like a fat anaconda inside his intestines...

Goddamn! He saw it! He blinked. Just for an instant unknown became known—and diminished a little thereby.

The shrinkage allowed him to see...

A no-tell motel by the side of the road, far, far from home, life’s last promise.

A hope for safe passage to alien landscapes. His passport locked in the trunk...

Heroin, ugly brown ball of shit...

A cheap way to go.

Eddie whispered, “Goddamn...” He was amazed at how clearly he saw the whole trek—and that, thereby, he had a choice, to crawl down that road or get off it.

He’d been, what?—too lazy to see it before? Too scared...

His neck stiffened. Anger, or maybe its echo, now bubbled up under the junk.

He’d wanted to be a ballplayer once! In sixth grade he’d sat in the back of the class and daydreamed past boredom. A ballplayer, man! He’d had the moves and he’d known the game. The game had given his hands and his soul a sure purpose and swept him right up.

A man has to dance with whatever it is that puts the light in his eye.

Sureness of purpose! The heart’s own deep need. Sureness of purpose is home. Home reshapes the world, turns screams to songs.

Eddie’d turned down a wrong street on the way to the dance. But somewhere the music still played...

Songs, oldies but goodies, buried for years under garbage and dirt. But now in the car on the road to Eureka they pushed toward the light, croaking their first notes since Adam got tossed out of Eden.

Eureka and no-tells upcoming. War raged inside Eddie. He felt so tired. Each breath that he took came the hard way. Thoughts caromed this way and that, strafings launched in a fight to the death, pounding his eyes and turning the taste in his mouth to dead metal.

All this under the coating of chiva—a coating like paint being stripped by the wind and the rain.

Now on his right, the outskirts of town. Beyond it the ocean. Lined up stood the no-tells, last hos on the stroll, for his choosing.

Set back a bit from the road unlike the others, the Starlight Motel. He could hear the waves lapping gently outside the back room they had waiting for him. In the courtyard a lineup of cars from the same lot as his. He slowed to five miles per hour. No other cars on the road. The neon sign winked, said, “It’s time to come home.”

It’s time to die, bitch...

Eddie’s eyes bugged as he inched down the road, trying to make sense as war raged and bombs burst in air.

How nice it would be to lay down his burden and learn how to sing that old song, even off-key for a minute, till God’s juice kicked in.

He damn near squeezed out a laugh. God was deader than J. Edgar Hoover.

And now, like an ogre out of the smoke—Ramon. Standing there by the side of the road! Ramon spit and smiled, as if he knew how the drama was bound to play out.

Ramon, his father, the jailers down through the years—biographers all, their notebooks held in their hands at their sides, the last chapter already written:

“He died like an old, broke-dick dog. The End.”

But he’d winkled those fuckers! He’d stood with a gun in his face and spit on Ramon and made it away like a deer past the headlights.

Fuck Ramon. Fuck dear old dad. Fuck all the jailers sideways with sticks. And fuck that last chapter...

Eddie gasped, laughing. Here he was in Eureka at three in the morning at three miles per, the Starlight Motel on his right and—what? He fucking wanted to die?

Eddie gasped, laughing...

He remembered a night with Alesha before things went south. They sat on the porch on a warm summer night and they heard a snatch of a song from a car passing by.

What a Wonderful World...

Louis Armstrong, a gravel-voiced angel singing of heaven right here on the ground where it should be.

The memory went in a blink. Its echoes gave Eddie another look at the sky.

He came back to earth, in time to see the Starlight Motel recede in his rearview. He picked up speed. The dope in his trunk was a million miles away and, for the moment, forgotten.

In days to come, Eddie knew, dopesickness would wrack him. He’d want to bang his way to the graveyard. He might get busted...

And, just like that as he sped through Eureka, crowding his mind now were visions of hell that he’d carried a long fucking time. Yet still, muffled under, that old sweet song croaked, and on-key. He made himself sing as he drove down the road.

He might live. He might die. He might do 30 years. He might pitch a no-hitter somewhere beyond darkness.

Regardless, he wanted to see what came next.

Life’s like that.

BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and some scheduled on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.

A Twist Of Noir 353 - Robert Caporale

ROMEO AND RITA - ROBERT CAPORALE

Musclehead steps into the Empire Café, sidles up to the bar next to Paulie. He orders a shot of Stolies and a beer.

How'd it go? Paulie asks.

Musclehead slides an envelope in front of Paulie. You can mark Sid Spain paid in full.

Cool.

Is that Romeo out there darting in and out of traffic?

He's trying to kill himself, Paulie says.

The Lovely Rita walk out on him again?

He walked in on her; she was in the sack with a merchant marine and a glassblower named Alice.

She's a trip.

You got to love her, Paulie says.

She's messing with Romeo's head.

Romeo has to learn how to deal with her.

Romeo's in love, Musclehead says.

That's the problem.

Why didn't you drag him off the street?

I sent him out there.

You!

He's bluffing, Paulie says. He's dodging traffic, not jumping into it. He's been out there for good ten minutes and he's still not dead.

But it's dusk...there's no depth perception out there now. One slip up and boom boom out goes Romeo's lights.

There's a screech of brakes; someone lays on a horn.

Through the blinking red Empire Café sign Paulie and Musclehead look out the plate glass window to the street. The early evening sky is dim and grainy. Beams of headlights crisscross as they swerve to miss Romeo.

Tomtom drops a shot and beer in front of Musclehead.

Musclehead peels a Jackson off his roll, places it on the bar.

Outside, more horns blast.

Musclehead wants to know why Paulie's being such a hard-ass.

He got on my nerves. He was close to tears. It was disgusting. Ask Tomtom, he saw the whole thing.

It was not pretty, Tomtom says wiping down the bar.

So you send him out to play in traffic?

He wouldn't listen to reason.

Musclehead gestures to Tomtom for a bowl of beer nuts.

I told him we're all amateurs when it comes to matters of the heart, Paulie says.

What the hell does that mean?

It's good advice. I told Romeo to chill. I told him that some girls are not the marrying kind. And that The Lovely Rita is not the type of girl you bring home for mom's meatballs. I told him to take The Lovely Rita at face value, nothing more; nothing less. Enjoy.

Probably not a good move.

Evidently, Paulie shrugs.

Another loud screech accompanied by a blast of a truck's air horn.

We should do something, Musclehead says.

Paulie drops some beer nuts into his mouth, chews.

There is a long loud shrilling screech of hot rubber. Paulie and Musclehead brace themselves waiting for the thud.

I'm not looking forward to peeling Romeo off of someone's grillwork, Musclehead says.

He'll be dragging his sorry ass back in here soon enough, Paulie tells him.

The Lovely Rita blows through the door of the Empire Café in turmoil and a tight skirt. She glances around, spots Musclehead and Paulie, floats over to them. There's some fool out there dancing with traffic, she gestures.

That fool is your Romeo, Paulie tells her.

Rita glances out the window, squints across the boulevard. Christ, she says.

Paulie sent him out there, Musclehead tells Rita.

Nice, Rita says and shoots Paulie a nasty glance, I wouldn't expect anything less from Paaaulie, she says. She says it just like that, Paaaulie.

Paulie ignores The Lovely Rita.

For some strange reason Romeo looks up to you, she tells Paulie, he trusts you, and you send him out to play in traffic.

He didn't have to go.

You backed him into it...playing those little mind games of yours. I hope he gets crushed out there.

That will teach me a lesson, Paulie grins.

Rita spins around on her heels and blatantly parades her very best stuff across the barroom floor towards the door to everyone's delight.

Rita swings open the door letting in a drone of traffic noise. A beam of headlight hits her dead on while she stands in the open doorway. The intense brightness illuminates her and transforms her into a dazzling light fandango, a hazy celestial ghost. Rita steps out of the Empire Café in gossamer clothes.

Paulie and Musclehead love it. They order another round for themselves and invite Tomtom to join them.

They get comfortable and turn their attention back out the plate glass to the darkening boulevard. The city sparkles in neon.

Rita rubs the bright from her eyes, shouts something out to Romeo and steps into traffic. A UPS truck sends her hustling back up onto the sidewalk where she starts running to and fro out of harm's way trying to reason with Romeo while gesticulating in some bizarre abstract pantomime to please get his scrawny ass off the blacktop.

Musclehead and Paulie cannot hear Romeo and Rita's conversation, but that does not diminish from the overall experience. It actually adds to it, giving it the flavor of a slapstick absurdity.

This is great, Paulie smirks.

I'm loving it, Musclehead says.

Pretty soon Romeo zigs and zags his way over to Rita. They stand face to face on the sidewalk just inches apart. Romeo is sweating, taking deep breaths. They exchange a few soft words. Romeo stares into Rita's eyes. There is nothing endearing in them, they are only mirrors reflecting city lights. Romeo takes a hold of her, draws her in to him.

Rita grabs Romeo's hand and leads him up the stairs of a brownstone stoop, and in the shadows of the entranceway throws a liplock on him. Romeo jacks Rita up against a bank of doorbells; Rita glances over to the Empire Café before peeling up her short tight skirt. Romeo lifts her off her feet. Rita works on his belt buckle while wrapping her legs around Romeo. Doorbells start chiming in a dozen apartments.

Paulie and Musclehead show their appreciation with a subdued standing ovation.

BIO: Robert Caporale lives and writes in Massachusetts. Some of his work has previously been published in Confrontation, Zahir, Hardboiled, Tattoo Highway, Cafe' Irreal, Conversely, Avatar Review, Alsop Review, and Zuzu's Petals Quarterly, among others.

A Twist Of Noir 352 - Douglas Sullivan

MEN LIKE US - DOUGLAS SULLIVAN

It started in the city. A distance away from the suburban void, close enough to the heart to feel blood pumping through the ventricles.

It started down behind the Jack in the Box, one street over from the pharmacy and three streets over from where they kissed the second time.

It started after school, after supper, after graduation, after two other failed lovers and three abortions, after sixteen part-time jobs, all involving retail cash registers and paper hats.

It started ten minutes ago. The first shot was fired careened two blocks away. It rattled through a young couple’s bedroom, grazed her breast; he had his eyes closed, thought it was her period, freaked. The second shot was from a smaller gun; the pop barely escaped the suite, even as an up the block Cholo bursts from the lobby door. His Jesus chain spattered red, his Spanish fading into prayer English as he’s stumbling by.

It’s through that lobby of the Grand Hotel: spot the bullet casings, spot the tattered wood. The floor’s marble, feels right for the heart we draw closer to.

There’s not many bodies, not many dead, seems most are the type to run from gunfire not toward it. Following the destruction in reverse, back past the discarded pistol, back past a patron, innocent, with her fingers still sort-of crawling themselves forward.

This hotel is a marvel, but its moment hasn’t been defined yet. Its history is still developing as we push along the second floor hallway. The golden glint of the room numbers, a faint scream, a curdle of perceived meaning, but not to us, not if we want to catch it starting; the beginning is too important, has to be seen.

Room six one three. View of the whole valley. Etched into the skyline, the buildings force the sun into jagged patterns that spray across the main room. This is a suite: a sitting room, king bed, plasma, polished bath knobs. We’re moving faster now, passed the couch flipped, cotton shredded across the room’s girth; passed bits of fabric, bits of wood, drops of blood, a limb near the mini-bar. The sun pulls through that room, past the bathroom, and the two men slumped over each other in there.

The money appears in single bills at first; an errant hundred peeking from beneath the door frame, a stack of rubber bands across the marble counter. He’s in the bedroom. Against the nearside wall, hand on his gut, crimson trickling through his fingers. He’s wheezing like a husky grade-schooler, and a blackness is wiping across his pupils. Already we know he’s too young to die. His face hasn’t yet scarred, the angles to his frame are still sharp, able to bear weight. Sweat cakes along his brow, his sideburns. This is James. Never call him Jim.

She comes from an adjacent room. We know her; she grew up around the corner from all of us. She’s the one who used to buy coffee before everyone else. She had the sun blonde hair year round, and one dark winter night she came by our apartment. She wanted to go for hot chocolate, to the market where they still sold looseys, and the strong peppermint cocoa to mask the smell. She came and we went, and we never told her, never took the two seconds to say you’re pretty when you smile. Instead, we became pals; we became achievers at other things, distractions really, because even that young -- not men, but closer in our heads -- we knew a girl like her comes rarely, sometimes not even once. James knew that, probably knew it coming down the birth canal. That’s why he’s here, down on the ground for her, and she’s desperate to love him for as long as she can, but that time is shrinking. She leans over him, kissing his cheek, a tinge of blood across her bottom lip.

Men like us aren’t usually here for this type of thing. The final moments, the lovers dealing with the results of a sage violence. Thugs like us, dirty work people like us, we’re usually getting the car, taking care of the other guy; we bag money, we don’t spend it.

She’s crying softly, her eyes silver by it. She slides the black duffel away from his grasp. It opens wide enough for the dollars, still vacuum-sealed in clear plastic, to reveal their abundance.

He tries whispering pieces of the story together. He’s mumbling about men coming from all corners, blasts of heat, ripples of sound. He tries apologizing to her, a sniffle of words that would never escape the man he was just hours ago. She has his hand on her leg, looking at his mouth as they try the words he’s thinking. He remembers too far back. He wastes precious moments recounting the weighing and cutting. We can still taste the residue on our fingers. Listening to him talk, we’re the ones who start thinking if there’s a balloon anywhere that someone forgot.

He grabs at her body digging his nails into her. She leans in, taking him against her breast. He slides through emotions as though snippets of years he’ll never see. He pulls thin strands of her hair, tells her to take the money. The sirens are distant yet draw closer, the minutes begin making their decisions. He wants her to live a better life, move from the city, find happiness; she mistakes his tears for sadness. He’s angry, sucking air now; he says she needs to get who did this. Hunt them, kill them.

We’re getting antsy in the adjacent room. Our clothes shrink from neck and back sweat. We see them as an abstraction. A collection of noises, hair, and skin. The sunbeams turn sinister amber coming through the off-white drapes. She lays him on his back, as the city quiets for the approaching police.

She moves to the money, zips the bag, but keeps coming back to him. She touches his body, his legs, his arm; when she holds his face for an instant his eyes adjust to see her fill his frame once again, allowing him a smile black with blood. Men like us never have instances such as this. We’re in here shifting one foot to the other, ruffling our jackets.

In these final moments, those things said about him as a boy return: he looks pure, his eyes smokey blue reveal truth in whatever they lay upon, and he has a deep, deep capacity to love. He lays back across her legs, and looks to be remembering some great instance. Maybe it’s when he learned how slick he was, when he first had her over for the night, how he woke up with her leg still jammed in between his.

There’ll always be a key difference between a man like him and us. He never expects to lose, and until now why should he.

That’s his gold ring. That’s his diamond chain gifted to her. That’s his girl, his money, and his Goddamn suite. Men like us though, we took our time to learn things. We use alleys, not avenues. We unlatch your back lock, we use our kiddie knife to do it, and we take what’s been waiting for us.

When we finally lose our patience, we come through the door two guns already out. Her back’s to us, but he sees. He paws and snatches at her, trying to grab her attention. He’s lost his words; all that remains are stutters and vague gurgles. When she steps from him toward us, his eyes nearly burst. His brain’s last synapse carries his sudden understanding of how this all went down. His breaths sharpen to a shrill chirp. Gun rounds chamber, hammers click, and men like us, we always knew it would be like this.

BIO: Born in the Northeast. Cultivated in the Southeast. Maturing in the West. Douglas Sullivan holds a bachelor’s degree in English. He’s been writing professionally for eight years, unless professionally is defined by dollars earned from the craft. He’s held many jobs, from running a boutique coffee shop to editing fitness videos, and along the way his writing has amassed local prizes as Winners of the Barbara A. Pilon Poetry Contest and the Robert Walker Memorial fiction award. Douglas likes clean prose with strong coffee. He lives in a California Valley with increasing adoration, though if he has to choose a coast, he has to choose the East.

A Twist Of Noir 351 - Paul D. Brazill

LATE NIGHT FILM - PAUL D. BRAZILL

Originally published in Disenthralled #3 in November 2009

Fade in.

It’s spring and, teetering precariously at the precipice of middle age, I become a self-imposed exile from London and get drunk between the moon and New York City. I know it’s crazy but it’s true. I set off with a half-arsed plan to hit the road, like Jack and Tom, and like so many half-arsed plans it all goes pear-shaped as quick as spit disappears on hot pavement.

Spring soon segues into a forty-two degree summer in Madrid. Close up on me burning my hand on the side of a taxi; falling into a fountain in Sol, as drunk as fuck; a row of prostitutes lined up outside a shop called Easy Everything, one of them blind; waking up in a shop doorway in the midday heat as a policeman goes for his gun. Freeze frame.

And then summer stumbles into autumn which tumbles into a winter in Warsaw’s snow smothered streets. More close ups: beer breakfasts in a twenty-four hour pub; the football stadium’s Russian market selling Nazi memorabilia; a Ukrainian lap dancer on her knees, snorting cocaine in the middle of Old Town square.

And then cut to a sparse apartment, walls splattered with blood that looks shitty in the pissy light. Then...

Fade Out.

BIO: Paul D. Brazill was born in Hartlepool, England and lives in Bydgoszcz, Poland. He has had stories in A Twist Of Noir, Beat To A Pulp, Blink Ink and other such classy joints. He can be found stalking Paul D. Brazill at Paul D. Brazill.

A Twist Of Noir 350 - Alec Cizak

LOCAL GODS - ALEC CIZAK

You may not be familiar with the name Joshua Beckett. If you live in Los Angeles, though, you’ve bought food from him. That’s right, Josh’s supermarkets. The big red ovals with his name in fancy white letters litter the landscape.

Joshua started his business back in 1979. He bought a small space on Fairfax, just south of Wilshire, and began selling fruits and vegetables to the Hollywood royalty that passed through on their way to better neighborhoods. That was the most he chose to remember about his chain’s origin. Then he got a call from Butch Keats.

“Joshua?”

He didn’t recognize the voice at first. Cautiously, he answered, “Who’s this?”

“Butch.”

The silence that followed was accompanied by what felt like a tremendous weight dropped right down on his shoulders. Try as he might, he could not shake the fact that he knew exactly why Butch was calling.

“Joshua, you there, buddy?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Like to see you today.”

Joshua looked at the watch on his hand, as though that might offer an excuse. He was now staring down the barrel of seventy and had no desire to get involved with Los Angeles’s last, stubborn Irish-American gangster.

“I, ah, you know, I gotta business to run, Butch.”

“You sure do! Seeing as how there’s a Josh’s on every damn corner I’d say you’re doing a hell of a job, yes?”

“I’ve been lucky.”

“Hope you haven’t forgotten how your little store took off.”

Joshua sighed. He said nothing. He didn’t have to.

“Let’s meet at Nick’s, just up the street from the old neighborhood. Say, noon?”

After a pause, Joshua let out another breeze of displeasure, then agreed. “Sure, Butch, I’ll be there.”

They said goodbye to each other and hung up.

The unpleasant truth was that Butch had done him a favor back in 1970 when Mickey Poole opened a grocery mart directly across the street from the first Josh’s. His prices were lower and the products he sold were better. He would surely have buried Joshua if Butch hadn’t agreed to chase him away. The price for the favor was a returned gesture of equal or greater proportion, requested at Butch’s leisure.

As Joshua got ready for the meeting he cursed a lot of things, mostly Butch and his decision to wait thirty years to settle the bill. He put on his coat and hat, took an umbrella in case of a random L.A. rain, and drove south, towards Wilshire and Fairfax.

*

Butch was sitting in the booth closest to the back door of Nick’s Diner. He had occupied that spot for as long as Joshua could remember. It was the same place they had made their deal thirty years earlier. Despite being much older than him, Butch looked at least ten years younger. Maybe it was plastic surgery. Maybe life in the crooked lane was more exciting and that in turn kept the tell-tale signs of age at a distance.

When Joshua entered, Butch got to his feet and opened his arms. “My friend, how the hell are you?”

Joshua refused the hug, offered a handshake instead. Butch accepted and they sat down.

Two younger thugs stood near them. Butch told them to get lost. They nodded like obedient servants and walked to the front of the diner to sit down.

Aside from the sole waitress working the joint and a cook in the back so bored he spent the majority of his time smoking cigarettes and playing an old Pac-Man video game in a corner by the door, there was no one else in the place.

“You know why I called, yes?”

Joshua looked down at the table. “Butch, that was thirty years ago. I, I don’t have it in me to do the kind of job you have in mind.”

Butch laughed. “Ye who have no stinkin’ faith! I just need a quick favor, that’s all. It’ll take you this afternoon and the slate’ll be clean, yes?”

“But Butch,” Joshua brought his wide, protesting eyes up to help plead his case, “thirty years!”

Butch lowered his voice to a deep, threatening gravel. “Now you listen to me, bubba. You promised me you’d be there any time I needed you, yes?”

“I figured, you know, within the next few years.”

“I didn’t need you then.”

Joshua sat back. “Do you know how badly the police grilled me after the fire?”

Butch shrugged. “I told you there’d be some pressure from the cops. Your competition’s establishment burned to the ground under fishy circumstances, yeah, the pigs are gonna poke their snouts towards the closest logical culprit.”

“It was hell. They questioned me and, God rest her soul, my first wife Angela.”

Another shrug. “You knew there’d be some turbulence when you asked me to eighty-six Mickey Poole.”

Joshua looked around. The thugs by the door wouldn’t let him leave. He was certain there would be one or two more in the back. Then he reminded himself, You’re sixty-eight years old! How the hell are you gonna run anywhere without having a heart attack?

“Alright,” he said, “what do you want me to do?”

Butch slid a set of keys across the table. He motioned with a nod of his head towards the parking lot outside. “See that hatchback pile of crap?”

Joshua sat up straight and looked out the window. “Yeah.”

“Drive it over to Herm Weiss’s junkyard in Chatsworth. I’ll give you money to take a cab back here.”

“That’s it?” Before he finished asking, he knew that was the wrong question.

“That’s it.”

Joshua picked up the keys and looked at them. “What’s in it?”

“An engine, radio, air conditioning.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He ran it through his head--why would Butch need to get rid of a car? Then it hit him:

Bill Brooks, a killer often hired by Butch to bump off enemies and their friends, was on trial in downtown L.A. He had been brought in before and brushed off the charges as though they were the mildest nuisance. However, now the state had a witness. An insurance salesman named Enrique Paz had seen Bill running from an apartment complex that later produced the bullet-filled bodies of two ‘gang-bangers’ who had made the mistake of beating and raping one of Butch’s nieces.

“Don’t tell me,” Joshua said, putting his hand up to stop whatever explanation Butch might have had, “the car belongs to the Salvadoran guy who’s testifying at Bill Brooks’ trial.” He sat back, exceptionally proud of himself, and let the keys drop to the table. “No way,” he concluded.

Butch grinned. “You mean Enrique Paz, yes?”

Joshua nodded.

“Enrique testified already. What good would killing him do me now?”

“I don’t buy it, Butch.”

“You want to take a look in the trunk, no?”

Butch grabbed Joshua's hand and forced the keys into it. “Stop being so paranoid. Drive the damn car to Chatsworth.” He took out a fold of money and slid it across the table. “There’s three hundred dollars. The cab ride probably won’t cost that much. You keep the rest, yes?” He snapped his fingers and motioned for Joshua to hit the road.

The young goons from the front walked over to assist him out of the booth and, if needed, out of the diner.

Joshua put the money in his pocket and exited on his own.

*

On the way to the car, he turned over several ideas. Maybe, he thought, I can hire someone else to drive it for me. Then he decided if any trouble did come down, it would get right back to him. If he was going to absorb a scandal it would be best to involve as few people as possible.

As he rounded the back of the car, he slowed down. Fighting the urge to look in the trunk, he convinced himself that it appeared entirely too small to hold a corpse. That was enough assurance to get him into the driver’s seat and on the road.

He pulled onto Fairfax and headed south for the freeway. He obeyed every traffic rule. Along the way he noticed, one after the other, how many Josh’s there were between Wilshire and the freeway.

He got on the highway and stayed in the slow lane, barely hitting 55 at any time. Cars raced around him, the drivers occasionally showing him an upright middle finger accompanied by an angry honk or two. From high above the city he could see the red signs across the skyline. Josh’s, in big, white, flamboyant letters. No wonder his last two wives had accused him of being self-centered and egotistical.

“Maybe I deserve to be punished,” he said to himself, “maybe God is trying to knock me down a bit.”

He got off the freeway and drove through Chatsworth to the junkyard on the far end of the city. While sitting at a stoplight, the thought of getting caught became his overriding concern once more. Traffic moved. He did not.

A local police car rolled up next to him. When the woman officer saw that it was an old man driving, she eased her tone of voice and said, politely, “Sir, are you alright?”

Joshua looked over, realized he was on the verge of an unwanted interview with the law. “Yes, yes. Thank you. Just daydreaming, that’s all.”

The officer smiled, then realized who she was talking to--“You’re Josh, right, from the television, right?” Her demeanor suggested she had run into a celebrity, possibly even royalty.

Josh cursed the commercials he had made for years in which he saw to it that his face, more so than the product he sold, was the focal point. He relented, nodded, “Yes, I’m Josh.”

“Oh my God,” the young woman said, “whoever makes the chicken at 3rd and Vermont is the best. I only buy chicken from that store.”

“I think Sonia Chavez is the cook there. She is quite good.”

Cars began to line up. The officer noticed and waved politely to the drivers behind her. “You sure you’re OK?”

Joshua nodded eagerly, “Much better now.”

The squad car turned left onto the cross street. Joshua headed straight.

*

Weiss’s Scrap Mart was a massive operation sitting before a mountain that rose high enough into the sky to have snow at the top year-round. The rows of beat up cars and organized parts clashed with the natural beauty.

When Joshua pulled into the front lot, Herman Weiss himself walked out of the main office to greet him. He was smoking a thin, brown cigarette and coughing and wheezing every time he tried to grab a clean breath of air.

Joshua put the car in park and got out.

“Mr. Beckett?” Herman stretched his free hand, “Herman Weiss. Mr. Keats has arranged everything.” He snapped his fingers at a worker in a blue jumpsuit. “Donny, take this back to the compactor.”

“That’s it?” Joshua asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re gonna turn this into a cube?”

“That’s right. Mr. Keats’ orders.”

The kid in the jumpsuit drove the car into the labyrinth of metal beyond the front gates. Joshua watched the car pull away and became worried all over again.

“Mr. Weiss,” he struggled to speak, “w-what’s in the trunk?”

“Don’t ask.” Herman dragged his cigarette, hacked up more of his insides. “Let me call you that cab.”

In the distance, the sound of the car being scrunched into a hefty square of metal nudged itself into Joshua’s ears and his conscience. Piercing shrieks of iron and plastic bending and twisting filled the air. Underneath all the superficial sounds, Joshua was certain he heard the horrific cries of a man screaming for his life.

He convinced himself it was only his imagination.

Five minutes later the taxi arrived.

*

The cabbie barely spoke English. Neither he nor Joshua felt obliged to make small talk. Joshua sat back and listened to the radio. The broadcast was in Russian, an AM station that played Russian pop songs and broke every seven minutes for commercials.

At least, that’s what Joshua figured they were.

What he didn’t realize was a particularly long break between songs included a news report on the Bill Brooks’ trial. Had he been familiar with Russian, he would have understood that the verdict in the case could not be read until the foreman of the jury was found. He had been missing, according to police, for at least a day and a half. He was last seen driving away from the court to his apartment.

The cab ride became so serene that Joshua nearly fell asleep. He nodded off and came back to several times before the taxi rolled in to the parking lot of Nick’s.

Joshua paid the fare and tipped the cabbie generously. When he got out, Butch was waiting for him.

“That wasn’t so tough, now, was it?” He gave him a hefty slap on the back. Without being obvious, he led him to his car.

“Butch,” Joshua said, “I don’t have anything to worry about, do I?”

The old gangster thought about it, then replied, “Mere mortals can’t touch you.”

BIO: Alec Cizak is a writer from Indianapolis.

A Twist Of Noir 349 - Jake Hinkson

WRONG TURN ON NOWHERE STREET - JAKE HINKSON

For David Goodis

I was home early because I’d just been fired at work. After I was escorted out of the office, I drove to a liquor store, but I was too scared to stop. I just wanted to get home to Fay, to tell her what had happened, to sit with her and discuss what we were going to do to try to repair the damage done to our lives, to our plans for the future. I so intent on seeing her, in fact, I didn’t notice the car parked across the street. If I had noticed it, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. There are always plenty of cars parked on our street, after all. I unlocked the front door and walked in and found Fay on her knees in front of another man.

The mind slows down time. Most moments slip by as unregarded as breathing. Other moments outweigh the sun. In that one moment, I had far too much time. I saw my wife from behind, kneeling on their castoff clothes. I didn’t know the man. When I opened the door he looked straight at me and a sudden, terrible horror burned across his sweaty face. He was balding, with curly orange hair matted to his flabby chest and gut. He pushed her away, and she turned and saw me. I had ruined what was doubtless a very erotic moment. They couldn’t wait for each other, couldn’t wait for the trip up the stairs to the bedroom. Her hunger for him was too much.

Most men, I gather, would have stayed. They would have cursed and yelled. They might have even tried to kill one or both of the adulterers.

I turned and ran. I ran like I was in trouble, like I was the one who’d been found doing something terrible. I ran down the street like someone was chasing me. I ran until my lungs began to burn. I ran until I had to stop.

I was many streets away from my house, in another neighborhood I’d never walked through before. It was a rundown section of Philly, with thick rivers of garbage frozen in the gutters. I’d stopped in front of a demolished housing project. A broken mountain of brick, mortar, and twisted steel loomed next to me. I’d driven by it a few times but never paid much attention to it.

Now, however, I walked across the unsteady bed of busted rock and touched the mountain of rubble. I ran my fingertips across a smooth chunk of mortar, formed a fist, and punched it as hard as I could. Four spikes shot through my knuckles up to my elbow, but I did it again and it hurt even more so I did it again and finally stopped and pressed my torn flesh to my mouth.

My mind had been wiped clean by what I’d seen, but now my senses were beginning to return to me.

She was cheating on me. For how long? Who was he?

Then I wondered, does she love him?

Because it wasn’t the sex. It’s a horrifying thing to see the woman you love with her mouth around another man. But at that moment it was the thought that she didn’t love me that opened like a pit at my feet. I was alone.

And I had no job. An hour ago losing my job had terrified me. Now I knew I would have to endure that fear alone.

My knuckles began to bleed. I watched my blood ooze out of my body. They didn’t hurt much if I didn’t move them.

“You looking for someone?”

I turned and a middle aged woman looked back at me from the street. She was skinny, with tiny breasts and very little hair. Her colorless face was neither concerned nor angry. She didn’t even look curious. Her face looked as if she was bored.

“No,” I said.

“Why you hitting them rocks?”

“I don’t know.”

She stared at me. She wore a black t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of sneakers. Her lanky arms hung at her sides like useless appendages.

“You upset?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“You want something for that?”

“What?”

“You want something make you feel better?”

I looked up and down the street. Philadelphia had died years ago. She and I stood among the ruins of a once great city.

She asked me. “You thinking about it?”

“No,” I said.

“You look like you’re thinking about it.” She eased toward me across the uncertain debris. “You look like you’re thinking about something.”

“I’m thinking about our ruined city.”

“Huh?”

“America was born here, and it died here.”

“You crazy?”

“Yes.”

She gained her footing. “You want something to make you feel better?”

“What are you talking about? Sex or drugs?”

“I’ll fuck you if you want.”

“I don’t want to fuck anybody.” I thought of the suit coat I’d dropped on the floor of my living room and shrugged. “I don’t even have my wallet, anyway.”

“Do you stay around here? You can go get it. I’ll wait.”

I shook my head. “I appreciate the offer... What’s your name?”

“Why you want my name?”

“Just to know it.”

“Fay.”

“Fay...”

“Yeah.”

“Fay, I’m Herbert.”

She nodded. “You got no money?”

“None.” I laughed. “In fact, I lost my job today. I got nothing, Fay. I got nothing.”

“Where do you stay?”

I pointed vaguely to my right. “Down that way. On Baxter.”

She nodded.

“Why don’t you go home?”

I shook my head.

She crossed her skinny arms. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Fay lived in a crumbling tenement on a narrow side street I’d never seen before. She led me to an uneven alleyway overrun with trash and broken bottles. I stepped gingerly, but she navigated it without looking down. We came to a small door peeling green paint, and Fay produced a key from her pocket and went inside. I followed her slowly.

The hovel was an old bathroom converted unconvincingly into an apartment. A mat lay in front of a sink and a toilet. A shopping cart against the wall held a mound of clothes.

That was it.

“You live here?”

She sat down on the mat. “Yeah.”

I sat down. Over us wind whistled through a gaping hole in the ceiling.

My hand hurt. Dried blood caked my knuckles and my fingers. I stared down, afraid to look up at the stranger next to me.

Finally, I did. Fay sat with her back to the toilet, observing me. Her face was gaunt except for the lumps of flesh around her protruding brown eyes. She seemed tired and alert at the same time, and she glanced at the door every few seconds.

I asked, “Why did you invite me here?”

She shrugged. “Something to do. Someone to talk to. Thought you might think again about giving me some money to fuck.”

Something like a grin cracked her lips and I saw some gaps where teeth should be.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“I’ve been over on Baxter about three years. Moved here for a job.”

She moved her head in the approximation of a nod and glanced again at the door. If I’d been in my right mind, I would have wondered why she kept looking at it. But if I had been in my right mind I wouldn’t have been there anyway.

“I really moved here for a woman,” I said. “The job was extra. She knew someone who knew someone.”

Fay moved her head again.

I asked her, “You live here?”

“You said that already.”

“Do you...how do you live here? Like this?”

She rubbed her mouth the back of her hand. “Do what I do. What I gotta do. Nothing else but dying.”

I stared hard at her for a moment and some flash of a long forgotten charity rose up in me. My father had always been a charitable man, but I’d long since decided he was just a soft touch. A good man, yes, but why give money to bums? And not even change. Dad would give cash to any smelly wino who asked him. I didn’t inherit that from the old man.

But now—now I thought about helping poor Fay. This is no way to live, I wanted to say. I’ll help you. I’d go home and get my wallet. I’d buy her some food. I’d take her somewhere. I’d make this poor woman my special mission in life.

This hit me like some kind of religious epiphany. I would save this Fay somehow.

I really was out of my mind.

The door opened and two men stood there.

“On your feet, fuck-o,” one said, but before I could move the other stepped in and smashed me in the head with something heavy.

I wasn’t knocked unconscious but my conscious mind was scrambled. Sight and sound and sensation spun and shook and shattered. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

Voices moved above me.

Violence erupted around me. I babbled and groped for something to hold and strained for something to see. The only thing I was sure of was the ground.

Things calmed and darkened.

Find your fingers, I thought.

Eventually I did. I moved them.

Touch your face.

It was wet. Blood. Sweat.

I sat up and found the sink, but the water wouldn’t run. I used my tie to wipe my face. I should have stayed blind.

Fay lay on her mat, her skull bashed in, blood still seeping out. I touched her arm. Already going cold. Her eyes were the telltale sign, though. Still protruded, they searched for nothing now. Blood ran across her pupils and dripped on the floor.

I couldn’t move, and yet it felt as if I was being hurled down a flight of stairs. It was as if all the world’s gravity had stopped and everything had flown apart.

I couldn’t move, but I had to move.

Get up.

Run!

I couldn’t. The dead woman next to me bled until her blood was gone. I sat shaking, trying to convince myself to leave that bloody little hole in the wall.

Who were the two men? What had they looked like? Why had they murdered Fay?

I shook my head.

Pull it together. Pull it together. You must leave. You must get out of here.

I stood up. Good. I stepped toward the door and opened it. Weak sunlight spilled across the floor and Fay lay covered in blood. I stepped out into the alley, but I was only a couple of steps away from the door when I saw blue lights reflect off the end of the alleyway. In a moment, I turned to run the other way but it was a dead end. I remembered the hole in the ceiling. Tires screeched. I ran into the room, past Fay and stepped up on the toilet and pulled myself up into the ceiling.

It was dark and cramped and I had to crawl into a fetal position to fit. I didn’t move for fear of making too much noise. If they’d seen me in the alley then that would be that. If not, I needed to be quiet.

The door opened and a cop walked in. He stood in the sunlight and I saw his face. He was tall and handsome, with a shaved head.

He looked at the floor a moment, stepped out and looked up and down the alley. I saw him pass back and forth in front of the doorway. Then he stepped back in. He looked up at the hole where I was wedged.

He stepped forward and peered.

Then he looked down at Fay and rubbed his face. He dug a cell phone out of his pocket, stepped to the door and looked down the alley.

“G, it’s Sean. What the fuck, man? I thought you said the guy was here...No...Well, he sure as hell isn’t here now...Don’t get smart with me, you fucking hayseed. I’m here now, and the guy isn’t here...No, I’m looking at her. She’s deader than all hell, but the guy’s not here. I told you to...shut up! Shut the fuck up, G. I told you call me the second you left, so I could cruise right on in here...Ok, ok, ok, just shut up and let me think for a second.”

He shook his head and lowered the phone to his side. Looking down at Fay, he rubbed his face and the sunlight flashed through beads of his sweat. He looked out the door and raised the phone to his ear. “Okay. Where are you now? ...Good, meet me in the old grocery store under the train. No. Over there. Three minutes. I’m coming on foot. Leave your car. Both of you, be there in three minutes.”

He flipped his phone shut and ran out.

I climbed down and hurried to the door. I was blackened from the grime in the ceiling, and when I stepped into the alleyway dust bellowed off of me. I ran down the alley and stopped at the entrance. The cop was running down Prince Street when suddenly he hung a sharp left on a thru street.

I had only a moment to consider what was happening, but in that moment I knew what I had to do. I started running. I was pretty sure the cop was heading to an abandoned building nearby that had been a family grocery until someone had shot the guy who owned it. The dead guy’s wife and son closed up and left Philly. Now the place was gutted. Someone had bashed in the front door and no one had bothered to patch it up. I knew the cop was heading there, and I thought I knew why.

I ran straight down Prince. I must have looked like a ghoul, covered in grime and blood. People lined the streets. They’d seen the cop and they saw me. That must have looked odd.

The cop was zigzagging through the alleys to get to the grocery. He probably didn’t mind the people on the street seeing him run, but he didn’t want too many witnesses. I followed him, catching occasional glimpses of him, but I tripped over a drain pipe and spilt open my knee. I climbed to my feet and hobbled the rest of the way.

I was almost there when I heard the gunshots. I crouched at the end of the alley behind the rotting frame of an old sofa and watched the front of the grocery. It didn’t take long before I heard sirens and the cops showed up. Sean came out of the grocery and did most of his talking to a stern-faced cop with gray hair. Then he took them all inside the building.

The way I figured things, he called for backup and ran to meet the two thugs. When he got there, he shot them on site. When his backup came, he said he’d followed the thugs from the scene of Fay’s murder, attempted to apprehend them, and shot them in self defense.

If I had it figured right, I was off the hook. Sean had some reason to kill Fay. Maybe he was her pimp. Maybe she sold drugs for him. Either way he had some reason to want to get rid of her, so he had his thugs wait until she had a client—or what looked like a client—and they busted in and killed her. The idea was to frame me for the murder. I’m sure I would have been shot while resisting arrest. Now, though, he’d probably written me off. The cops had their killers. I could go home.

But I thought of Fay dead back there in that little rat hole, and I couldn’t bring myself to run away.

Cops and technicians came and went for the next couple of hours. The tepid sun disappeared from the sky and a wintry moon rose in its place.

Sean leaned against a squad car with his arms crossed and talked to the cops until the gray-haired guy with the stern face sent him away.

That’s when I stood up and walked toward the cops. I had my hands up. “Excuse me,” I said. I was polite because I knew I looked like walking death.

They spread out around me. I locked eyes with the gray-haired guy.

I said, “I have some information about the shootings.”

I knew if I could get them to listen to me I could explain what had happened. I could tell them to check Sean’s cell for calls made to the two thugs. I could tell them to investigate his association with Fay.

I was at the station five hours. They let me clean up in the restroom, and I gave my state-ment about fifty times to people from homicide, narcotics, vice, and internal affairs—to the whole damn department it seemed like. It was midnight by the time someone gave me a lift back to Baxter Street.

I stood outside my front door for a long time. As I climbed the steps, a breeze swept down the street and scalded my face. I moved like a man mounting the gallows, but when I turned my key in the lock I knew she’d be gone. We were too much alike. I had run away. So would she.

Maybe she would be back. Maybe not.

The empty apartment sat cold and silent in the pale yellow glow of the streetlamp outside. When I closed the front door behind me everything turned black. I moved through the dark trying to find my way.

BIO: Jake Hinkson has been hard at work all summer long on his book about film noir. With a rush of recent evil inspiration, we are the beneficiaries of this story. You can find his fiction at The Flash Fiction Offensive, Crooked, A Twist Of Noir and Powder Burn Flash, among other places. You can learn more about Jake and his projects at his own blog, The Night Editor.

A Twist Of Noir 348 - Des Nnochiri

THE SPICE OF LIFE - DES NNOCHIRI

“The female of the species is the spice of life.”

Wilson swept his arm, expansively. He raised the highball to his mouth and slurped. Ignoring the dribble from his mustache, and the splotches on his shirt and tie.

Not surprising, really. He’d been drinking steadily for the past half hour; a dangerous mix of liquors that read like a Top 40 of classic cocktails. Knocking them back as if he were a freshman student at his first bar. Or a potential suicide.

And spewing pseudo-philosophical claptrap, with every shot.

“I mean,” he drawled, signaling for another, “look at this place, for example. Have you ever seen so many...”

I was. Looking at the place. And the clock on the wall, opposite.

I’d come into The Masked Bandit about an hour ago. Scanned the club carefully, for what I needed. Found it: a corner booth, nearby exit, good view of the floor. Sat down, pack of smokes on the table, beside me. Ordered a draft beer from one of the thirty or so hostesses doing the rounds. Wondering if the rumors I’d heard were true.

And waited.

About five minutes later, Wilson breezed in. Off-the-rack suit and tie, harried expression. Another mid-level, middle-aging executive on the inevitable downward spiral of life.

He’d zeroed in on my table with the unerring instincts of the terminally boring. Ordered the first of many, from our knockout hostess. And begun to expound.

“...So many, so many jewels of, no... pearls, pearls of great price?”

At exactly 8:30, it started. Happy Hour. And the girls (pearls?) on the floor went into action.

There must have been an armory behind the bar. Because the hostesses at the Bandit all wore sequined G-strings, jeweled masks, and nothing else. The silenced Derringers (that’s what they looked like, anyway) must be house issue.

To the sounds of breaking glass and ripping upholstery, the girls made their pitch at every table. Restocking the shelves and furniture repair must be costing the place a fortune. I guess they could afford it.

And the ladies were crack shots; there was no bloodshed. Didn’t have to be. I mean, what were the customers going to say, “Gee, hon, I'm sorry. I went to a topless bar, and they took me for everything I had?”

As I put my wallet, rental car keys and mobile phone on the table, Wilson finally twigged that I wasn’t listening to him. At all. He looked round.

Our charming hostess was approaching, gun in hand.

Very, very slowly, I lifted the cigarette packet off the table.

“Mind if I keep these?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Your funeral.”

I slid the pack (and the digital camera it had been concealing) into my pants pocket. My editor was going to love this.

“Wilson, old buddy,” I said. “Unless I miss my guess, things are about to get pretty spicy.”

BIO: Desmond (Des) Nnochiri spent his early years traveling with his parents, and was educated in England, the USA, and the Republic of Ireland (Eire). He writes freelance now, and has taken his first steps into the world of screenwriting. He has contributed stories to A Twist of Noir, The Flash Fiction Offensive, and Powder Burn Flash. He blogs at Des Nnochiri’s Write to Speak.