A Twist Of Noir 318 - Malachi Stone

RAPED OVER THE COALS - MALACHI STONE

Another Chapter From Malachi’s Novel HEARTBALM

“I thought for a minute somebody’d forgot to pay the light bill,” Grimm said.

“That you, Tiny Tim?” Drey hollered in greeting from across the room where she was standing.

“Hey there, K-Mart,” Grimm grinned. “Lookin’ better than ever.”

“I don’t go by K-Mart no more,” Drey said. “My new nickname’s Drey, for my special friends. You like it?”

“Drey,” Grimm mused. “Yeah. I like it. Kinda exotic and that. Like an exotic dancer name. It suits you.”

“See how you are?” Drey flirted.

“What’re you doing hanging around with these yahoos?”

“Aw, they ain’t so bad. Fact is, me’n Ricky’re whatchacall your fuck buddies—”

“Drey!” I protested weakly.

“What? Caint lie to the po-leece, Ricky—and Harold here just dropped in to make it interesting.”

“Looks like Harold’s got your fuck buddy interested as hell.”

Drey glanced at me with mild impatience. “Boys will be boys,” she shrugged.

Turning to Snug, Grimm demanded, “What’re you doing back here already? Hell, it hasn’t been four hours since your Assassins girlfriends sprung you. And quit playing with his cock while I’m talking to you.”

“Free country,” Snug retorted. He glanced at me and winked before withdrawing his hand.

Grimm shook his head disgustedly. “What the hell’s the goddamn story, Counselor?”

“What do you mean?”

“For starters, why wasn’t that MILF wife of yours invited to this party, as if I didn’t know? It was her that called us, you know.”

“Now we’re gonna get raped over the coals,” Drey said. I didn’t correct her.

“Lucky for you I happened to be working late and caught the call. Lucky for me you left me a key to keep an eye on the place. Lucky for all of us there’s still a few shots of booze left in that bottle.”

“Help yourself,” I said.

“I intend to.” From my desk top, Grimm took the misshapen clay cup Wolf had made me back in preschool for father’s day, dumped out the paper clips it held and poured himself a strong one. “Counselor, you and me are a couple of lucky guys, don’t you think? Two really lucky guys.” He continued staring at me standing there nude while he drank off a slug.

“How do you figure?”

“Well, let’s analyze this: I catch a pain-in-the-ass missing persons distress call from the lovely and charming wife of a prominent local attorney—an attorney well-known to the department for his suspected involvement in a series of embarrassing incidents that shall remain unmentioned—”

“What’s he talking about, Ricky?” Drey asked.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“—culminating in him and his beautiful and talented wife Diane being found naked and in a drugged stupor in a minivan illegally parked facing the wrong direction on the Poplar Street Bridge with their four youngsters, mercifully oblivious to the extreme peril of their situation, fast asleep in the back. Despite what appeared to have been hasty removal efforts, there were traces of red ocher on Diane’s voluptuous body. I don’t know if you’ve ever studied anthropology, but from time immemorial primitive cultures have used red ocher in what you’d call your devil worship rituals. That’s your fuck buddy, K-Mart.”

“Drey,” she corrected, “and I already heard about all that shit at the meetings.”

“Ah, yes, the meetings,” Grimm replied. “It seems the Counselor here has friends in high places. Favors were called in. The whole thing was glossed over; he lost his driver’s license for a year and had to go to meetings. He abandoned a lucrative and promising career in personal injury for a do-gooder practice in the field of child welfare. And he’s no do-gooder, not our Counselor—matter of fact some say he’s a no-gooder. Yeah, we know all about the Counselor here. We got his number. There are those well-placed in the department positively salivating, waiting for him to fuck up again. And now it looks like their wish would have come true at last, except that luck thing must have been working overtime tonight, right, Counselor?”

“Call me Ricky.”

“Call me Lieutenant Grimm.”

“Mind if we get dressed, Lieutenant Grimm?” I asked.

“Mind if you get dressed? Why, this party’s just getting started, Ricky.” He looked at Drey standing naked beside my globe, the one Diane had bought at a yard sale for three bucks. “Oh, I get it,” he went on. “Where are my manners? I’m making you all uncomfortable, like the only guy wearing clothes at a nudist camp. Well, here goes.”

Grimm was the kind of guy who keeps his shoes and socks on while he undresses. He turned out to be a hairy, muscle-bound bastard. When he had stripped down to his skivvies, black socks and black spit-shine military shoes he hesitated.

“I got small feet and a smaller peeder; it’s why they call me Tiny Tim. Only thing big about me is my appetite. So don’t anybody laugh when you see my baby dick, all right?”

Nobody felt like laughing. Grimm pulled down his shorts and stepped out of them. He was definitely the Tim of the celebrated online amateur video May I Giss The Bride.

“What are you going to tell Diane about this?”

“Haven’t decided.” Grimm stroked his chin. “Let me ask you something, Ricky,” he said, “now that you and me’re on the subject of wives: you ever like to talk wives with another man while you’re both naked?”

“Never tried it.”

“No time like the present. My wife’s name is Suze and she’s got her a low-hanging pair of tits with worm nipples you gotta see to believe.”

“Sounds hot.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Your idea; you start.”

“How about you, Harold? You down for a little naked wife talk?”

“Depends,” Snug said.

“You see, Ricky? Unlike you and me, Harold here has set some standards for himself, some boundaries for his personal behavior. For Snug, it depends.”

“Hey guys, remember me?” Drey said. “I’m the barenaked hoosier woman in the room with you all.” She took a step forward; her left ass cheek eclipsed the eastern Atlantic and the horn of Africa.

Ignoring her, I said, “So how do we play this game exactly?”

Grimm said, “Simple: we all three jack our cocks while each of us takes turns telling how he’d like to do the next guy’s wife. Drey here can watch, or join in if she wants.”

“Hey, Ricky, can I tell how much I’d like to eat Diane’s pussy?” Drey laughed.

“Won’t make me mad,” I said.

“If you’re a gambling man we can even place penny ante bets to make it interesting,” Grimm added. “First one to cum wins the pot, like a circle jerk. Betting stays open. Guy feels himself getting close, he can always raise the ante, throw down however much he wants into the pot. The others have to match it or fold. Winner take all. Agreed?”

I nodded, but Snug seemed unsure.

“What’s that big-titted wife of yours’s name again, Harold?” Grimm asked him. “Heart, isn’t it?”

“Fuck this!” Snug roared. He gathered up his leather and chains and got dressed while Tim and I worked out how much a paper clip was worth. As soon as I heard the front door slam I hurried out and locked it again, then rejoined my other guests.

“How much you wanna bet them Hades Assassins are nothing more than a jack-off club cleverly disguised as a motorcycle gang?” Grimm sneered. “Bunch a faggots, you ask me. Oh, well, you up for a little two-handed, Ricky? Little ones a quarter, big ones a dollar, and them big black clips’re a ten-spot.”

“I’m in.”

“And no fair using your hands, Drey; this is between just us guys.”

“I notice you ain’t said nothin’ about usin’ my mouth.”

“No female to male body contact of any kind. Them’s the rules. You want to make yourself useful you can be in charge of the betting. Once we get going, each guy will call out his bets and you can take paper clips from his pile and put them in for him. That way it frees up our hands for other things. My advice is that we move that big executive chair of yours off to the side, take up that plastic carpet protector thing and spread it between us.”

“You got this all figgered out, ain’tcha, Tiny?” Drey taunted. “This what they do to pass the time on them lonely nights up in the squad room?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I tell you what,” she said, “this is way funner than goin’ on the casino gambling boat.”

“Open for a dollar,” Grimm said.

I looked him in the eye. He was already furtively playing with himself. “Match it and raise you ten.”

“Hoo wee, big spender!” Drey whooped. “I thought you said you didn’t have no money, Ricky.”

“Just a warning,” Grimm cautioned. “One time me and some guys were playing this, and one fella come up short when time rolled around to cover bets? He wound up having to give all the other guys blow jobs to settle up.” Grimm’s face was flushed, and not just from the booze. “You ever been to a jack-off party, Ricky?”

“Not until now.”

“I ain’t talking about this here. Whole bunch a guys. Got called out to one at a fleabag motel on the edge of town a while back? Dozen or so fellas horsing around in their underwear, all crammed into one single room, looked like some kinda Olsen and Johnson cluster fuck. The dot head running the place called us worried about the occupancy laws or some damn thing. After I overcame some of their initial reluctance, them guys finally admitted to me they’d been meeting together regular here and there for months, telling their wives and girlfriends it was an investment seminar. Even had fake brochures printed up, in code, like? Thought maybe a guy like you might of run into something like that.”

“First I’ve heard of it. What happened?”

“That night? I cooled the dot head out with the seminar shuck, wrote it up as a fire code warning. And just to show you I ain’t married to the job, I admit I broke down and took in a coupla seminars myself since then. You want, I could add your name to their mailing list. Trust me, them brochures’re so slick your old lady will never suspect a thing.”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

Drey shot a wry disapproving look at me.

“Take it from me, you owe it to yourself. I’ll have them send it to the office so it’ll look like any other junk mail. Wanna flip that coin now? Heads it’s Diane giving me head, tails it’s Suze giving you tail.”

Grimm won the toss. And the pot. Undeterred, I excused myself to take another little blue pill.

“Been meaning to try them cock starchers myself,” Grimm said. “Is there anything to that four-hour warning? I always had it figured for an advertising shuck.”

“Try one of mine,” I offered.

“You sound like one a them old cigarette commercials used to be on television,” Grimm said. “Don’t mind if I do, though. Gotta keep the game even.”

“You don’t take alpha blockers for angina, do you?”

“Hell, I don’t even know what that is. Occasional aspirin is all,” Grimm said, accepting the pill I offered him and washing it down with Bushmill’s. “Say, ain’t that the shits how when we were kids they advertised them coffin nails all the time on TV, and now them’re banned and instead we’re seein’ penis enlargers and pills to make your dick hard? I guess you call that progress. How long’s this dope take to kick in?”

“Why? You goin’ somewheres?” Drey teased.

I won the next toss. My storytelling prowess of my imagined exploits with Suze proved to be such that Grimm won the next pot as well. Drey said, “I wanna play too!”

“How’s that gonna work?” Grimm protested. “A man can’t tell whether a woman’s cumming or faking it. Especially where there’s money involved.”

“Ain’t that a sad commentary?” Drey observed. “Still, Ricky can tell when I’m cumming, can’t you, Ricky? I get this here rash all over my belly like prickly heat, my toes curl and my calf muscles jump like a frog’s. That ain’t something you can fake too easy.”

“It’s true,” I said, not knowing whether it was or not, but simply wanting to watch Drey join in.

“I ain’t playin’ this with no woman,” Grimm said. “Unless of course the exquisite Diane would care to join us. What would you say to that, Ricky?”

“I’d say fuck both a y’all,” Drey grumped. She struggled out of a squat—farting audibly in the process—collected her clothes and began to dress.

“Well, don’t go away mad, K-Mart,” Grimm smirked, dick in hand.

Red-faced with anger, Drey re-tied her uniform apron and said, “Ricky, whenever you get done fooling around with this jack-off, it’s five dollar Jell-o twat shot night at the Fox n’ Sox Lounge. Kinda chilly slidin’ in, but ooh la la. Most men I’ve met are partial to the wild cherry.” Receiving no response, she stalked out. I heard the front door slam.

“Looks like it’s down to just you and me, Ricky,” Grimm remarked.

“Looks like it.”

“Two men with but a single thought.”

“Right.”

“Who needs her anyway?” Grimm said. “It’s like some anonymous shithouse poet wrote on the wall over one of the pisspots down at the station:

“Pussy is sweet but so is honey; Fuck your fist and save your money.

“Truer words were never spoken, huh, Ricky?”

Now that Drey had left I found myself growing tired of Grimm’s presence. “So what are we going to tell Diane about tonight, Lieutenant?”

“Well, now that’s an interesting question. You think she might want to join in, for real?”

“There’s no way.”

“Too bad. Let’s analyze the remaining possibilities.” Grimm counted on his fingers while he ticked them off. “First, there’s always the truth: I caught you three ass-naked in the dark and interrupted you in the course of committing an unnatural act with a known felon. Think she’d like that one?”

“Doubt it.”

“Didn’t think so. Well, we could say I found you dead drunk passed out in a puddle of your own vomit. Don’t know as that one would go over any better, what with your twelve-step involvement and shit.”

“Still, it’s more palatable than the truth.”

“Most lies are,” Grimm agreed. “Of course there is a third possibility I’m considering. Matter of fact I kinda like it best of all.”

“What’s that?”

“I could always leave out the unnatural act, put everybody’s clothes back on and eliminate Drey’s presence, tell Diane we checked the phone lines and the woman’s voice she thought she heard answer was a wrong number. That leaves Harold “Snug” Robbins to be accounted for.”

“Why can’t you eliminate him like you did Drey?”

“Oh, I plan on eliminating him, all right,” Grimm said. “Only not the way you mean, because that’d be official misconduct or subornation of perjury or some other happy horseshit. No, I want to nail this troublemaking prick once and for all, put him away so he’s off my radar for a good long time, so that maybe when the boys at the station are throwing me my surprise retirement party years from now and they’re cutting into the cake I’ll start reminiscing over a long career and say to myself: ‘What was the name of that seven-foot asshole, the one that broke into that lawyer’s office years ago not once but twice, the second time beating the shit out of the lawyer and dislocating his shoulder in the process?’ Ever do any wrestling in high school, Ricky?”

“Only in gym class. Got my ass wiped most of the time.”

“Figured as much; you don’t have the build for it. I wrestled in high school. Went to All-State but damned if I didn’t get my shoulder dislocated in the semi-finals. Not a day goes by it don’t hurt. Piss away a fortune on that roll-on shit they sell on television. Wanna know what it feels like having your shoulder dislocated, Ricky?”

“Not really.”

“Hurts like a fucking bastard.” Without warning, Grimm leaped at me and in a split-second had me in a hold. I could feel his naked body pressing close against mine, leveraging me into position for whatever it was he had in mind. His body hair felt like a horsehair blanket with the horse still in it.

“The Greeks and the Romans wrestled naked, did you know that? That’s where we get the word gymnasium. See, gymnos is Greek for ‘naked.’ It means like, ‘naked-asium.’ Get it?” He squeezed harder; I felt my right shoulder joint tighten, then start to give.

“I get it,” I gasped in pain.

Grimm spoke calmly, gripping me more tightly and inescapably than any schoolyard bully. “Now anybody asks you, it was Snug that done this, right? It was Snug that come back to your office and overpowered you while you was working late on a Saturday, Snug that threatened to kill you and your whole fucking family if you testified against him, and Snug that beat you within an inch of your life, get it?”

I nodded rapidly. Grimm’s chin clamped over my left shoulder like a vise while he murmured words in my ear with a voice soft as a lover’s. “Public interest lawyer, my ass. You ain’t fooling anybody. I’ll bet you’ve fucked half the clients that come through those doors, haven’t you, cocksucker? Meantime, your sexy wife sits home ignored while a missing link like Snug Robbins plays with your cock in the dark. You some kind of faggot, or what?”

“How many kinds are there?” I whispered.

“Suppose I was to fuck you up the ass right now and find out?”

“Let me go,” I pleaded in a voice made tiny as a child’s from Grimm compressing my chest.

Grimm’s arms were iron bands around my body. He did something that moved my right arm into a crazy angle. “It’s these goddamn steroids, is what it is,” he said. “Keeps me young and in shape for on the job but shrinks down my peeder and balls at the same time. Oh, well, everything in life is a trade-off, ain’t that right, Ricky? By the way, you right-handed or left-handed? In the game just now I coulda sworn you was right-handed. I’m right, ain’t I? Correct, I mean.” He let up on the chest pressure barely enough to let me speak.

Struggling for air, I said, “You’re a trained observer, Lieutenant.” I thought about how convenient it would be for me with Snug put away; how grateful Heart would be to have him out of her life and safely ensconced in a distant penitentiary for decades like the other men in her life. All I had to do was lie under oath and make it happen.

“You gonna remember what I said, Ricky? About how Snug come in here and did this to you?”

I nodded and tried to speak but no sound came out.

“Because if you try and tell it any different, I’m all of a sudden gonna remember the truth about what went down here tonight, everything I saw. And I’m gonna tell Diane and everybody the truth, the whole truth and nothin’ but the truth. We don’t want that now, do we?”

I shook my head.

“I can’t hear ya, Ricky. Do we want that or don’t we?”

“Anything but,” I wheezed. Maybe it was the wrong answer to a poorly-phrased compound question because, at that moment, Grimm jerked my right arm. A crazy jolt of agony shot through my shoulder, into my neck and down my arm. When Grimm let go, I could no longer feel my right arm; my hand was pins and needles and I didn’t know whether I would ever be able to move the fingers of my right hand again.

Back in the day when my practice had been concentrated in personal injury, insurance adjusters could be counted upon to poo-poo mere shoulder dislocations as “soft-tissue injuries,” and open their offers with specials and a taste; in other words, not much over the medical bills for pain and suffering. I had listened to client after client relate their stories of ongoing pain, stiffness and multiple complaints from injuries no different from the one Grimm had deliberately inflicted on me—the first step in being drawn and quartered. And now here I was sitting naked on my office floor and couldn’t even begin to dress myself with one arm hanging dead and useless. The weight of the arm I couldn’t feel tore away at my shoulder joint like a twisting knife blade.

“You could say he forced you to strip naked to humiliate you, maybe even tried to rape you; I’ll leave that part up to your discretion,” Grimm went on. He was getting dressed, pulling his suit pants on over his shoes. “Lay it on as thick as you want, I don’t care. Long as you tell it right in court and Snug goes away for good. I’ll call it in, but first let me get rid of all this booze.”

Grimm straightened up the office; I lay on the floor and tried not to move. From that point, I don’t know how much time went by. All I remember is that Grimm returned and stood over me.

“You want what Kevin got?” he said. “You got it coming, you ask me.”

“No. Please.”

He appeared to weigh my request for a few seconds and then said, “Fuck it. You’re Kevin’s lawyer; you’re getting the same as he got.” The toe of Grimm’s black military shoe crashed into my left eye once, then again and again.

Fireworks went off in my head, and in the center was Grimm’s face, a big leering man-in-the-moon. An announcer’s voice crooned over lush orchestral swells, “With the stars Art Carney.”

Crash went the shoe. “Audrey Meadows.”

Crash again. “Joyce Randolph.” More fireworks.

One final crash, hard enough to change the channel. Almost pleasant this time, distant thunder. “And Jerry Mathers as the Beaver.”

I must still have been whistling the happy theme song to myself while they strapped me onto the gurney and wheeled me out to the waiting ambulance parked in the alley.

BIO: Malachi Stone, hard-hitting attorney by day, prolific novelist by night. Check out his website INTERMINABLE CONVERSATIONS WITH A SILENT MAN for other stories and more.

A Twist Of Noir 317 - Richard Godwin

WEASEL HEAD - RICHARD GODWIN

Weasel Head stood by the juke box and put on the next song.

It was The Beach Boys crooning Help Me Ronda and I felt like smashing a chair over his head. He’d been inflicting song after song on us for an hour while we waited for the twister to die outside, and all we had to drink in the tiny cramped café was draught beer as warm and weak as cat piss.

Weasel Head. I’ll tell you how he got his name.

Remember a weasel is a small predatory animal and predatory summed him up.

He liked to find vulnerable shopkeepers, loan them money and destroy them. Payments were demanded in the form of sexual favours from the owners’ wives or the owners themselves if they were women and their daughters weren’t out of bounds, either.

He’d taken over many businesses and was hated and feared in the same ratio.

He burned one shopkeeper to death. He only owed him a hundred dollars.

So here I was stuck in the tiny café with Weasel and a trucker and the owner, a short pretty lady who was looking so nervous whenever he walked up to her that I was sure he’d been pressing her for cash.

And that was when it happened. I had what you might call an epiphany.

And I do like guns. I especially like the smell of their oil.

The Beach Boys stopped singing and the lady behind the counter switched the radio on to hear news of the twister.

It was hard to tell whether it was moving off far enough for us to get out of there. Through the window I could still see trees flying.

And I heard it. A voice as sweet as honey.

The local preacher was trying to keep everyone together and he said it.

‘Now, people, use this opportunity to do some good, look around you, there may be someone worse off than you, a situation you’ve thought about for a while and you may just see the chance to help someone worse off than yourself and if you do then you’re doin’ God’s work and this here twister’s the opportunity.’

That was it. That was all I needed.

‘Do some good while the storm rages,’ he said.

And as the wind howled and the windows buckled I saw Weasel Head follow the lady to the back of the shop. And I went in.

He’d got her up against the wall and was fondling her breast and saying ‘You suck, don’t you? Then I can give you a little leverage on the money.’ The lady looked terrified.

‘Do you really think she wants to be handled by you?’ I said, and he turned and she ran out of there and I closed the door.

His little weasel face was twitching now and he curled up his lip.

Well, I just hit him with the butt of my pistol and then pulled his head up and placed the barrel against his head as the wind outside howled so loud one of the panes shattered in the tiny café just as I pulled the trigger and laid him down.

Then it all stopped.

Silent as a blue windless morning.

BIO: Richard Godwin lives and writes in London, where his dark satire ‘The Cure-All’, about a group of confidence tricksters, has been produced on the stage. He has just finished writing a crime novel.

A Twist Of Noir 316 - Malachi Stone

A MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART - MALACHI STONE

A Modified Excerpt From Malachi's Novel HEARTBALM

Nothing like the privacy of my law office for cruising cyberporn. Eyes riveted to the monitor, beginning to doubt my sanity, I relearned the old lesson that pornography, even homegrown amateur porn co-starring my own wife Diane, is ultimately boring. After an hour’s viewing and reviewing ARLENE AND HER GOING AT IT, I actually found myself losing interest. My mind began to wander. Ennui crept in as I continued to observe Diane and Arlene spelunking below the belt, eating each other hollow, doing the mattress hokey pokey, Arlene wearing nothing but the geriatric wraparounds. And, as generally occurs whenever I become bored, legal analysis comes to the fore.

Having seen the video, would I now have to give Arlene’s husband Howard Kuhn back his five thou because of conflict of interest? Not necessarily; most conflicts could be waived in writing after full and fair disclosure to the client. And Howard and I had already bonded. A security contractor, at my furtive request he had installed a hidden webcam in the women’s john as a professional courtesy. But how best to approach Howard with the unsettling news that his newly-retained divorce attorney’s wife was the one carrying on with Arlene?

As they teach you in every twelve-step group, one has to focus on the positive. And there were a few pluses in the current situation. First of all, there was that peculiar sensation of relief. At last I had something on Diane that I could use against her whenever I wanted. My perfect, church-attending, child-rearing unyielding Diane had her Achilles’ heel. As far as my marriage was concerned, I was now running a dead heat with Diane in the degeneracy department. Second, there was that curious impression of freedom. Perhaps license would be a better word. I deemed myself free to cheat without any sense of guilt whatsoever. I would be no better and no worse than Diane as far as infidelity was concerned.

The mental release was thoroughly exhilarating. I recognized the emotion: gratitude. I was grateful to Diane for betraying me with another woman. She had given me what I could never have obtained for myself: escape from an impossibly stultifying code of moral behavior. Even the realization that she had shed those forty pounds not for me but rather to make herself attractive to her female paramour failed to ignite jealousy in my newly-enlightened libertine soul.

I felt so good I called Diane at home. Time to have some fun with her. She sounded pleasant, satisfied.

“How’s everything going at the office?”

“Cool. How’re things with you?”

“Oh, fine, I guess. When are you planning on coming home? I wanted to go to the health club this afternoon.”

“Really? How long might that take, do you suppose?”

“Oh, I don’t know; the usual.” Now I understood the underlying reason for Diane’s meticulous care with her personal appearance before her thrice-weekly workouts, why her makeup and hair had to be perfect.

“I have some good news.”

“What’s that?”

“We signed a new divorce client today. Howard Kuhn. Ever heard that name? Howard Kuhn?”

Silence. “Should I have?”

“No reason I can think of. His wife’s name is Arlene. He tells me she’s a member at the same health club as you. How’s that for a coincidence?”

“If you say so.” Long pause. “So who brought up the subject of the health club in the first place?”

“You know me. I always try to conduct a careful and thorough intake interview. You never can tell when some trivial little tidbit of knowledge might prove decisive and crucial.”

“You know what you’re doing, I guess.”

“That’s very true, Diane. No guesswork about it. And what’s more, I know what you’re doing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, nothing bad. What I mean is, whatever you may be doing, it’s all right with me. It obviously agrees with you, and I have no problem with it. No problem whatsoever.”

“O-kay,” Diane said uncertainly.

“Well, I just wanted to check in and see how you were.”

“Are you coming home now? It’s nearly lunchtime.”

“In a while. Let me wrap up a few loose ends before I shut things down. Maybe you’d better go ahead and eat without me.” I suppressed a laugh at that one.

“Well, don’t work too hard.”

“Don’t worry; I won’t. Don’t you, either.”

I debated actually getting some paperwork done, but decided against it. Instead, I called Drey’s number again. I’d been trying her cell off and on all afternoon. Kendra Martin, one of the most outspoken members of the twelve-step group for sex addicts Diane made me join last year, wanted all her men friends to call her Drey. She thought it sounded sexy. Drey was what folks around St. Louis derisively refer to as a “hoosier,” a born and bred full-blooded member of the WT. This time, she answered. They should never let guys like me play with the phone.

“Where have you been, Drey? I’ve been calling you steady.”

“You try me at work?”

“No.”

“Well, then, that’s why. I got me them three jobs to go to, remember? Just come home to change into my Cracker Barrel uniform.”

“Well, if you’re busy—”

“Now don’t go getting’ all limp and fainthearted on me. I always got time for you, Ricky. Why you been trying so hard to call me? As if I didn’t know.”

“I was remembering something you said, when it was just the two of us in bed together at your place the other day.”

“What was that?”

“How all I had to do was call whenever I needed you.”

Long silence at her end.

“Remember, Drey? Remember saying that to me? I’ll always remember, and treasure those words of yours.”

Another extended silence; I thought maybe she had hung up, then, “I’ll tell you what, Ricky. You’re fixin’ to make this country girl cry.”

“Happy cry, I hope. Wouldn’t want a sad cry.”

“Happy cry. Where you at now, hon?”

“My office.”

“You busy?”

“Never too busy for you, Drey.”

Still wearing her waitress uniform, she made it to the office in the time it took for the little blue pill to dissolve in my stomach. I unlocked the door for her, closed the blinds and greeted her with our very first kiss. Drey was an aggressive tongue-kisser, burrowing hers into my mouth with a persistent flutter.

“What kept you?”

“Did I keep you waiting long? Never even took time to go’t the little girls’ room.”

“Go ahead if you want; it’s in the back.”

I raced to the computer in my private office as soon as I heard the bathroom door close, clicked on the webcam icon and hit the record button before Drey had time to take down her panties.

An apparition reflected in the monitor caused me to turn around. A seething seven-foot hairless apparition of solid muscle in biker boots, biker jacket and biker chains towered over me.

There was no escape, so I tried for levity. “Is this where I’m supposed to say Klaatu barada nikto?”

Harold “Snug” Robbins, my new secretary’s insanely jealous biker husband, must not have been a science fiction fan. He took one step forward and pulled out the phone cord as easily as if it were a silken thread. He leered at me with anticipation, lacing his powerful fingers and cracking his knuckles in a manner I’d never seen outside of pro wrestling. Despite my terror, or maybe because of it, the little blue pill was busily giving me a hard-on. Just then I heard Drey’s voice behind me saying, “That’s a load off my mind—Harold! What the shit’re you doin’ here?”

Snug said, “Drey!”

Drey ran and hugged him. He lifted her as effortlessly as if she were a rag doll.

“Ricky, this ol’ boy’s a friend of mine, Harold. Harold, Ricky.”

Snug’s expression darkened at the introduction. “This here’s the maggot that’s been committing adultery with my wife.”

“Oh, bullshit, Harold,” Drey said, “only one committing adultery with Ricky here is me. I oughta know. If he’d been porkin’ your wife, he’d a bragged about it at the meetings sure as hell. I never heard him mention it once. Plus, I been steady wearin’ him out with sex. See, me and him’re what they call fuck buddies?” Saying the last like a question.

“That ain’t what I heard.”

“Well, you heard wrong, Harold. Matter of fact, before you showed up, we was fixin’ to get it on right here on he’s desk—holy fuck shit!” Drey had noticed my monitor, the video still recording. “You mean to tell me you was watchin’the whole time I was in there tinklin’? Why, you tricky little bastard! See how you are?”

I tried a shit-eating grin. “Wanna see?”

Snug leered and said, “Yeah.”

Drey cuffed him on the shoulder, then rubbed her hand and howled, “Ow! That hurt!”

“Have a seat, Harold,” I said uneasily. Better to have him sitting down, although I didn’t hold out much hope of escaping once he chose to get violent. Heart, my secretary, had said that Snug knew all the crippling moves, that he could ruin a man with his bare hands using pressure and counter-pressure. “Here, let me start it for you. Want the earphones?”

The headset looked like a toy on Snug’s enormous shaved head. The three of us watched while Drey wailed, “Can’t a girl even get no privacy goin’ to the can?” and, “You ain’t gonna post that up on that there Internet, are you?”

The video clip looped over and over again, until Drey looked like a woman who had overdosed on a diuretic. Finally I closed it and asked Snug, “So Harold, what do you think?”

Snug pondered the question. “Felliniesque,” he said at last.

“Felliniesque?”

“Is that something nasty?” Drey asked.

“It holds a somber satiric mirror up to life’s absurdities,” Snug explained. “Kind of like what they said in Cahiers du Cinema about Fellini’s body of work. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Bunuel, too: that starkness meant to shock us out of our bourgeois sensibilities. Plus, I like watching women pee. Do you have any more?”

What the hell. I concluded the impromptu avant garde film festival with the video of my Diane going down. When it was over, everyone was quiet for a while. Finally, Drey broke the uncomfortable silence.

“That wife of yours sure likes to eat pussy.” She pursed her lips, blew a lazy kiss in my direction and added, “Must run in the family.”

“Who knew?” I said.

“It don’t bother you none, her lickin’ on some other woman’s twat?” she asked.

“It’d sure bother me,” Snug said. “In Romans One even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural.”

“Romans One? That some new club I don’t know about?” Drey asked.

“I guess it means we have an open marriage,” I shrugged. “You know what they say: when in Rome.”

“That’s the trouble with being married to a beautiful woman,” Snug went on. “It can be exquisite psychological torture once you suspect her of being unfaithful. Like with Heart and me, it got so bad there were certain passages from Boccaccio’s Decameron I couldn’t bear to read without breaking down and frankly weeping.”

“Is that a fact?” I said. “You know something, Snug? You’re a deceptively complex, many-faceted individual.”

“Bet your ass,” he grunted.

“So Heart gave you cause to suspect her of infidelity?” I said, falling back on the initial interview cheat sheet I carried around in my head for new divorce clients.

“Constantly,” Snug said. “Like every time I’d ride with the brothers there’d be some indefinable thing about her when I came back home. Something subtly different about her attitude. You know the way a woman acts after she’s been had? Her facial expressions, the lazy way she moves? Not defiant exactly, but smirking, like maybe some man had come over and fucked the hell out of her while I was gone, the two of them clapping a set of cuckold’s horns on my head like one a them Viking helmets they wear.”

“I know the ones you mean.”

“No shit you do. I never had to worry about Heart wanting to be with women, like the problem you’re seein’ with your old lady. Damn, that’s heavy duty!”

“Maybe I should file a heartbalm suit against Arlene Kuhn.”

“That her name?” Drey asked.

“Why?” Snug responded.

“Just curious, is all. What’s a, what’d you call it, a heartbalm suit, Ricky?”

“A lawsuit claiming damages against a person for allegedly seducing your wife. In the old days, they called it Alienation of Affections.”

“Isn’t that kind of archaic?” Snug asked. “I didn’t know they still had those.”

“The cause of action still exists, but because of abuses the General Assembly enacted the Anti-Heartbalm statute barring punitive damages.”

“Ain’t it awful the kind a crazy shit people’ll run out and sue each other for?” Drey caviled. “Why’d they wanna go and have some stupid lawsuit like that in the first place?”

“I suppose the initial policy considerations were to discourage the aggrieved party from taking more physically aggressive measures.”

“Say what?”

“In other words, to keep the husband from beating the crap out of the wife’s boyfriend. Or challenging him to a duel.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Snug had thought of something. Something that put me in danger, I feared. “Have you been peeping at my wife going to the toilet?” he demanded.

“Absolutely not, I swear. Matter of fact, the guy only installed this setup a few hours ago, after she’d already left for the day. That’s never gonna happen, Snug—I mean, Harold.”

From Snug’s expression, I didn’t know whether he was about to tear my head off or start to cry. He lurched from my chair and bolted for the bathroom. I heard the sound of splintering wood, the yanking of cables. A moment later, he returned with the webcam dangling from his grasp like a gouged-out eyeball.

“Show’s over,” he said.

Drey and I stared at the ruination of Howard Kuhn’s ill-fated handiwork. I shut the computer down and turned off the power strip. Drey said, “I don’t know about you all, but this gal could sure use a drink right about now. You got you a jug a anything with a kick to it around here, Ricky?”

“I imagine I could scare something up,” I said. In fact, a grateful client, unaware of my twelve-step involvement, had presented me with a fifth of Bushmill’s last Christmas. The seal had never been broken. Until now, that is.

“Hope you don’t mind drinking it out of coffee mugs,” I said, returning from the kitchen after pouring generous slugs for the three of us. “Irish coffee without the coffee.”

“Coffee ain’t good for ya anyhoo,” Drey said. “Gives me the jitters.”

“Couple shots of this will calm your nerves right down.”

Snug drank his in two gulps, then motioned for more. I poured him four fingers and brought the bottle this time. We sat and drank for what seemed like an hour, but turned out to be three as I discovered when I looked at my Blackberry. Five missed calls: two from home, three from Tyranno. I hadn’t noticed the vibration, so I turned it back to ring mode. The phone hadn’t rung at the office. Snug must have ripped out the phone at the receptionist desk on his way in while I was rapt with attention watching Drey on my monitor. And Tyranno wasn’t going to go away. Tyranno—another of the men who called Kendra “Drey”—had been talking shakedown ever since he’d stolen that sex video I’d made of Drey and me. But with a few shots of the Irish in me, right now I didn’t care.

“Tyranno, Tyranno, Tyranno, suck my bananno,” I lilted.

“Thass the thing about the good stuff, it don’t give you no hangover,” Drey was saying to herself. By this time, she had shed her waitress uniform and had her breasts out from when she’d pulled her stretch bra up to flash us and then left it there in what she’d called “undecent exposure.”

“You know one sure way to tell you’re an alcoholic?”

“Whazzat?”

“One sure way you can tell you’re an alcoholic,” I went on, “is the no hangovers. That and extraordinary capacity.”

“Everybody gets hangovers,” Snug said, “whether they own up to it or not. The thing with your alcoholics is, they start right in drinking at the first sign of a hangover, so naturally they never remember it afterwards. It’s a form of denial.”

“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” Drey said.

“I come from a family constellation wracked with substance abuse,” Snug said. “I’m not just talking out my ass here.”

“I never said you was. All’s I know is I wind up with a hell of a hangover ever’ time I go drinkin’ that cheap shit.”

The Blackberry rang where I had foolishly left it lying on my desk. Before I could stop her, Drey reached for it and picked it up. “Grab n’ Go,” she said, laughing hilariously. Then, “What? Well, who the hell’s this?” I lunged, took it from her and ended the call. “God, I hate rude people,” she said.

“Who was that?” I asked apprehensively as I checked the caller ID. Sure enough, it was from home.

“I dunno. Some woman.”

“Oh, no! Oh shit!”

“Didn’t nobody teach your clients telephone manners? You don’t never call somebody up and first thing outta your mouth’s ‘who’s this.’ I get that alla time at work and it drives me loco.”

“Oh shit,” I moaned again. “Oh shit!”

The Blackberry rang again. Harder this time, I thought, and more insistently. “Don’t touch it,” I yelled, even though it rested securely in my hand. We all sat in silence while I put the call on speaker; my recorded greeting had never sounded more bored and off-putting. Then the beep, and Diane’s angry voice.

“Ricky, pick up this phone! Ricky! I know you’re listening; answer this phone right now or I don’t know what!” Then an exasperated huff and the slam of the receiver at her end like a plank hitting concrete. I threw back a shot and shook my head.

“You’re the only guy I know with worse woman troubles than mine,” Snug said.

“What’s she bitchin’ about?” Drey added. “You got her dead to rights on videotape.”

“DVD actually, but I don’t want to get her dead to rights, I want to preserve my marriage. That’s what I’ve always wanted. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“You know, Ricky, I had you figured wrong; you ain’t half bad,” Snug said. “You’re a man after my own heart.”

“Thanks, Harold.”

“‘Thanks, Harold,’” Drey parroted, irritation creeping into her voice. “Ain’t ya never heard the expression ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd?’ In case ya hadn’t noticed, me and my fuck buddy Ricky was fixin’ to get it on before you showed up, Harold. Present company expected. Know what I mean?”

“You mean ‘present company excepted,’” I corrected her.

“You’re sayin’ you wanna make this a threesome, Ricky?” Drey asked.

“Not accepted. Excepted.”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m willin’ if you are. I know for a fact both you fellas’re hung like goddamn Clydesdale horses. Whip it out for us, Harold: I know you ain’t shy.”

Harold looked timid despite Drey’s claim. He stood and said, “You first, Ricky.”

I looked at Snug and he looked at me in a weird Mexican standoff. The only sound was the clock tower chiming nine bells.

“Hell, I’ll go first,” Drey conceded. “Can’t wait all night while you two trade meaningful glances.” She wriggled the rest of the way out of her bra and mussed her hair. “Would have to be wearin’ the littlest damn thong I own,” she said, peeling it down and kicking it across the room as though going for the extra point.

“You’re beautiful, Drey,” I sighed. After a few drinks, she was.

“Have another drink and lose your laundry, Ricky,” Drey invited. “Show us what you got danglin’.”

My erect cock strained for release against my Fruit of the Looms as I surveyed her nudity. I had impetuously ignored the warnings to avoid alcohol to excess when under the little blue pill’s influence. Hung like a goddamn Clydesdale, was I? Impetuously, I stripped naked, answering her and Snug’s challenges, my back to the room. With an ecdysiast’s flourish, I spun around to face both of them, erect as a pagan god. Snug’s eyes widened. Drey was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Drey?”

“She went to make a call,” Snug said, pointing to the door.

I found her in the outer office, stark naked and oblivious to the full-length clear glass front door and the fluorescent lights blazing, talking into my Blackberry. She must not have known how to take it off speaker. I heard her arguing, “He’s been steady tellin’ me and tellin’ me how he ain’t got a red cent to he’s name.”

“An’ you sittin’ there listenin’, and believin’ what he sayin’? Don’t you know a lawyer with no money is like a skunk with no stink?”

“They got them de-stinkered skunks now. People make pets out of ’em.”

I killed the lights before crossing the room. Startled, she said, “Hey!”

“Make a muthafuckin’ de-stinkered pet outta you you don’t put the man on the phone.”

“Here he is,” Drey said, cowed. To me, she mouthed, “It’s Tyranno,” handing me the Blackberry. I took it off speaker after she left me with it. Drey returned to my inner sanctum and closed the door. I sat down at Heart’s desk and answered.

“Mistah Lawyer Ricky Galeer,” he gloated.

“Hear you have something that belongs to me, Tyranno.”

“Belongs to you? How you figure?”

“Or technically to my daughter.”

“How you think that big leg daughter of yours’d like seein’ her daddy cock stuck allaway up some woman’s ass ain’t her momma? And cummin’? Like a nigga’s dog. But don’ fret yet: hundred thou buys you another laugh-filled season of your happy white sitcom family life.”

“I’m broke, Tyranno.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m so broke my kids ought to pay me an allowance.”

“Best quit your playin’ before the price goes up to one fifty.” Pronouncing the last like fitty.

“Might as well ask for a million, Tyranno. I don’t have it.”

“You take me for a fool, Lawyer Ricky Galeer? How much you charge an hour?”

“An attorney’s hourly rate is scarcely a reliable indicator of his net income, let alone his net worth. There are countervailing considerations like overhead, debt service, insurance—”

“How much?”

“A hundred-eighty an hour.”

“Sheeit!”

“But half the time I can’t collect it.”

“So it works out to ninety an hour, then? And you claimin’ you broke?”

“Don’t forget I have a wife and four kids at home.”

“I ain’t forgettin’. It’s why I’m countin’ on your prompt and courteous payment.”

“You need to give this up for a bad job, Tyranno. Drop it and move on. I’m a dry hole.”

“You a ho, thass a fact. Just not the dry kind. You ever hear of the hundred thousand dollar fear pyramid?”

“Can’t say as I have, no.”

“They’s this hundred thousand dollar pyramid of seven fears all human beings share, did you know that, you bein’ a lawyer and all?”

“What’s my being a lawyer have to do with it?”

Ignoring me, he went on. “Death’s at the base, of course, the big D. Death and damnation. Then comes pain, paralysis, blindness, hunger, loneliness. Want to take a wild guess what’s at the very top of the fear pyramid?”

“Give me a hint.”

“Begins with a D.”

“I don’t know. Dandruff?”

“You a funny muthafucka. Here’s the answer: disgrace. Otherwise known as humiliation, degradation, and embarrassment. Humanity’s highest fear.”

“Imagine that.”

“You ever spend time out at the local zoological park, Mistah Lawyer Ricky Galeer? Watchin’ the animals while they be watchin’ you?”

“Now and then. Why?”

“As a zoology aficionado, you may find this particularly interesting: they say some of your higher mammals—a bear, for instance, or a elephant—can literally die of embarrassment. You ever hear that?”

“I’m no bear, Tyranno.”

“You hung like a elephant, I’ll give you that. Not a African elephant, though—a white elephant, know what I’m sayin’? What everybody in your world be sayin’ once I post a certain video online: that Lawyer Ricky, man, he be hung like a white elephant. You be world-famous overnight, David Letterman and them other white boys all steady crackin’ jokes about you.”

I tried a risky gambit. “How do you know I’m not recording this conversation?”

Long pause. Then Tyranno responded, barely above a whisper, “I know you not that much of a fool.”

“Didn’t Drey tell you? The cops played the message you left on my answering machine. They’re already on to you, Tyranno.”

“You better make it your business to get them offa me, then.”

“What if I can’t?”

“’Cause if I go down, Mistah Lawyer,” Tyranno said, “next thing everybody see soon’s they boot up they computers gonna be you butt-fuckin’ a dirtyleg. You fittin’ to be every fool’s ass-humpin’ screen saver.” The line went dead.

A thought occurred to my buzzed brain. There had been no call waiting interruptions in all the time I had talked to Tyranno. Diane had never called again. That could mean only one thing: she must be on her way over.

I returned to find Drey and Snug stark naked, circling one another like Greco-Roman grapplers checking each other out. Drey’s assessment of Snug’s equine anatomical attributes had been correct.

“This ol’ boy’s got one monster horse cock on him, I tell you what,” Drey cooed.

“He does indeed,” I agreed. Snug rolled his eyes, acknowledging the compliment. And just as Heart had said, he really did have the words What God Hath Wrought Let No Man Put Asunder tattooed in inch-high German gothic purple letters across his fish-belly white abdomen. Must have been a while since Snug went sunbathing.

“Have another drink, Ricky,” Drey said. “You’re fallin’ behind.”

“Diane may be on her way over here, mad as hell. You hung up on her, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“The more the merrier,” Drew retorted. “I ain’t above a little lesbo exhibition match to get the juices flowin’, so to speak. They tell me I’m versatile, even though I really prefer dick to pussy, to be quite frank.”

“You’re drunk,” Snug told her.

“So what if I am, Harold? Seems to me you ain’t got no more right to complain than his wife does, what with you prancin’ around here naked as a jay bird, tryin’ hard to get ya a little.”

“Everybody calm down and get your clothes on,” I warned. “I’m telling you, if I know Diane she’s heading over here right about now, spitting mad. I’ll go out front again and lock the door this time. Thank God she doesn’t have a key to the place. Don’t need any more unexpected guests.”

“The male cock is such an interesting organ,” Drey taunted, drawing the word out to four lingering syllables as she reached for Snug’s. I took the opportunity to hurry back to the outer office. Good thing I had remembered to shut out the lights to the reception area. Now I relied on the open door to my lit inner office to guide my way. I had no sooner turned the deadbolt latch when I saw the reflection of headlights on the building opposite. Headlights a block away, turning down the narrow side street to the office.

There was virtually no traffic on that inconvenient one-way street after business hours. With a start, I realized it must be Diane rounding the corner in her clunker delivery truck, speeding here to check up on me. I sprinted back into my office. Running with a hard-on is an interesting experience in its own right, although I don’t recommend it. I slammed the door and killed the lights in there, too. Drey yelled, “Hey! What the shit?”

I shushed her. “Diane’s outside,” I whispered. “Keep quiet and maybe she’ll go away.”

Nothing I could do about our Astro still parked in front. We waited in the darkness listening to the sounds of one another’s breathing. The LCD on the digital clock gave the only light. After a few moments, I heard the two of them moving around. A shadow passed between me and the red numbers showing the time: nine eleven.

Furtive fingertips brushed the very tip of my penis, found purchase there and gently stroked the shaft of my cock as though to reassure me. I did nothing to push those fingers away but listened intently for the front door. A moment later, I heard someone pull the handle once, then again, yanking harder this time. As though in response, Drey yanked harder. At the front door, persistent knocking followed, knocking that seemed interminable, and still the superb hand job continued. There would be hell to pay at home. I might as well disappear until I was sober enough to think up a good enough story.

I was reflecting on how there is something about a secret hand job from a strange woman that makes it extra-special if one’s wife is close by when I heard the key rattle in the back door, the lock turn and the door scrape open. Footsteps moved past the bathroom and down the hallway, approaching. The beam of a powerful flashlight swept the room, caught Snug’s hand on my cock and stayed there.

A familiar voice said, “I guess it’s true what they say: a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.” Lieutenant Grimm flipped on the lights and leered at the three of us posed like nude statuary.

BIO: Malachi Stone, hard-hitting attorney by day, prolific novelist by night. Check out his website INTERMINABLE CONVERSATIONS WITH A SILENT MAN for other stories and more.

A Twist Of Noir 315 - Todd W. Bush

THE BACKSEAT VIRGIN PART 4: A SOUTH FLORIDA NOIR STORY - TODD W. BUSH

Peppy Garcia was exactly the kind of cop you’d expect to find in big city. He was conniving, connected and convenient.

First off, he could talk the clothes off a nun, and then convince her that whatever she was about to do was not only in her best interest, but would somehow have her Boss smiling, too.

Next, he knew everybody who was anybody in the upper and underworld of South Florida, from Vinnie Vasciano and his mob family that ran stuff in the upper crust of society, to Big Pete and his hoodlums who specialized in strip bars, escort services and the rest of it all.

And those two things led to the last thing he had going for him: Peppy was usually around whenever something went down. That wasn’t going to change when it came to breaking the biggest unsolved murder case the state had seen in well over three decades. The Backseat Virgin, as she was called, had been raped, shot in the head, her body dismembered, and left in the trunk of an abandoned Mercedes on South Beach. Some dumbass reporter got the location of the body wrong, and the nickname had held up for over two years. No one had been able to identify the victim, much less find out who was responsible.

That is until I came along, or at least until a hooker by the name of Lauren Blake had crash-landed in my office. Thanks to a little basic detective work, I’d been able to come up with the girl’s identity, or at least a name – Jessica Mulholland – to go with the DNA that the police already had. I’m a PI, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to be the center of this whole fucking mess. It simply means that I get paid to take care of other people’s unwanted baggage. The Virgin wasn’t part of my life plan.

But now I was smack in the middle of the whole thing, and surrounding me was the human equivalent of a big ass rock and a really nasty hard place. On one side was the prime detective that had worked the thing two years before, my sometimes buddy Detective Jose ‘Peppy’ Garcia, who was not only wanting to close the book on the Virgin case, but also to get the fame, glory and whatever money came with doing just that. And on the other was the main suspect, Salvatore ‘Sam’ Calvante, the nastiest hit man the Vasciano family had ever been associated with. It was Sam’s car that the Virgin had been found in... well, his wife’s anyway and since she’d been living in the Cayman Islands at the time of the murder, it was safe to say she didn’t do the deed.

Peppy and I were on our way to do something neither of us wanted to do: question Sam Calvante. The forensics lab at the Miami PD had done a rush on the DNA I’d found in Jessica Mulholland’s old room and confirmed that it belonged to the Virgin. Now we needed to know if Sam was the killer.

“Price, you don’t do shit like this for the thrill of it, and you damn sure ain’t no moralistic bastard. So why the fuck are you here?” Four of the best curse words on record in two sentences. Peppy Garcia, my friend and curser extraordinaire.

“I’ve got my reasons, Peppy.”

“Bullshit. Who’s paying you?”

I was quiet as we drove down Old Cutler Road in the village of Pinecrest.

It was south of Miami, and if you had three or four million in the cushions of your sofa, you could have a nice place here. As I watched the gated homes and palm trees covered with overhanging Spanish moss zip by, I couldn’t help but wonder about girls like Lauren Blake and Jessica Mulholland driving down this same road two years ago. Lauren said that they had spent several nights at with Calvante, ‘entertaining’ him along with their roommate Denise. All three of them were from somewhere else other than South Florida, and none of them had made more than twenty grand in their lives. What must they have felt seeing all these mansions on either side of the street, with their private security, their fancy cars and the thousands of dollars just pissed away on hookers and drugs? They probably thought they had arrived at the big time.

Jessica Mulholland had arrived at the end of her time.

We pulled into the Calvante house and were led into an ornate study. The man himself was sitting behind a car-sized desk, pecking at a computer. I wondered what a hitman would need with a computer, but then remembered that all that killing cost money and money can be invested. Or put in a jar like I have.

He was dressed in a dark blue suit and his head was shaved bald. “Have a seat, Detective Garcia... and Mr. Price, is it?”

I nodded, but didn’t sit down.

“Mr. Lee Price, private investigator, correct?”

I didn’t nod this time; I was actually a little afraid of what might happen if I moved. Sam was known to be especially brutal with people who could hurt him, and I’d found out a week ago that he was gay. He probably didn’t want that little nugget getting passed all over the world, and the best way to do that was to off anybody who knew it.

“Mr. Price, Carmine Trubone told me that you were a good man, and that you were smart. Are you smart, Mr. Price?” His eyes were looking right into mine, looking for any hint of weakness. Or maybe defiance. Either way, I wasn’t showing those; I was scared shitless and I think he knew it. I was smart enough not to tell anything that might get my head chopped off.

Satisfied, Sam extended his hand for me to take the seat next to Peppy.

“Now, to the matter at hand. Mr. Vasciano arranged this meeting so that a disturbing piece of information can be either refuted or confirmed, so let’s just get straight to the point, shall we?”

Sam talked like an investment banker on a power lunch, and I couldn’t see him killing anybody with a vocabulary like that, much less chopping Jessica Mulholland into ten pieces. Peppy was the cop, so I let him do the talking. If I’d done it, my voice might’ve cracked like a fucking teenager.

“Mr. Calvante—”

“Please, call me Sam.”

“Ok, Sam. A witness has come forward in the murder the papers have called The Backseat Virgin. This witness has identified you as the person who killed her.”

Sam didn’t even flinch. “Well, had to be more blunt than that. To answer you equally as bluntly, no, I did not kill this girl.” Straight, to the point, and if I had to guess from my years of experience dealing with people who lied all the time, as truthful as anything I’d ever heard.

“Do you know the names—”

Before Peppy could get the question out, a side door of the study opened and a young man came in. I would have placed him in his early thirties if it weren’t for his prematurely graying hair. It made him look at least ten years older than he was.

“My apologies, gentlemen, this is my nephew, Vince.” Introductions were made all around and Vince asked what this was all about. Peppy didn’t answer but asked Vince why he was curious. Peppy was a brave one, I had to give him that.

Sam didn’t appreciate the question and his tone conveyed his irritation.

“My nephew has been living here in my home for the past five years while he was finishing up his bachelor’s at Miami and is currently working on a master’s.”

Maybe I was wrong, and he wasn’t in his thirties. Damn shame about the hair, though. Might make him a more sought-after killer though if his uncle was showing him the ropes. Vince pulled a seat up at the corner of his uncle’s desk and gave the two of us a condescending look.

“So, now that you both are here, do you know the names Jessica Mulholland, Lauren Blake, or Denise Coughlin?”

Sam was either clueless about the names or the best bluffer I’d seen this side of the poker tables at the Seminole Indian casino; Vince, however, didn’t have his uncle’s skill. His jaw tightened and his eyes widened for just a split second. I wasn’t sure if Peppy caught it, but I had and I knew immediately that Lauren had it wrong.

“No, I don’t know those women, Detective. Do you Vince?”

The young man just shook his head and smiled at us, like he was sorry he couldn’t be more help. Sam then gave us a list of people who could verify his whereabouts on the night the Virgin was killed. It was two dozen strong, and included at least three county commissioners and a state representative.

Didn’t matter to me, I already knew who the real customer that the three girls had been seeing was.

We made our goodbyes and Peppy dropped me back off at my car at the station. “Sorry it didn’t work out, Price. But, hey, at least we know who she was, right?”

I thought about telling him about Vince’s tell, but if Peppy saw it, then he probably would take care of it his way. Or maybe he had a deal with Vince Vasciano same as I did. Either way I had a phone call to make on the way home. It was answered on the first ring.

“You have an answer for me, Mr. Price?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I can tell you that Sam Calvante didn’t kill the girl.”

“That’s exactly what I thought you were going to find out, but as you know I had to be sure.”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“I appreciate your speed and discretion in this delicate matter, Mr. Price.”

“Mr. Vasciano, I—”

“The remainder of your $225,000 will be delivered to you via courier tomorrow morning. Good day.” The line went dead.

I flopped down on my sofa in the apartment over my office and planned a long week of getting drunk and fishing. It was Wednesday and by noon the next day, I’d have enough in the bank to last me the rest of the year. I could only take cases if I got bored.

*

The next day, I got back from a big breakfast at a local diner and was sitting down when my day dreams for a new life on easy street were blown wide open as my bedroom door splintered into the small living room. Vince Calvante and two large men walked in front of me with guns drawn.

“I know you know, Price.” Vince was smiling as he pointed the gun at my legs. I felt the bullet slam into my knee before I heard the sound of it leaving the gun. Pain caused me to scream, but one of the other men backhanded me in the jaw, knocking me to the floor.

“Easy on his face there, huh, Bruce. Pick ’em up, Tony.” Whoever he was, Tony threw me back on the sofa and Vince pointed the gun again. “Want to know what happened, Price? Just like the movies, man. I’m the big fucking bad guy who’s gonna spill everything right before I kill you.”

He nodded at the one called Bruce who threw a jab straight into my ribs. I heard a sickening crunch and knew he’d broken several.

“You know what, Price? I’m gonna let you in all the little secrets, buddy.” He knelt down in front of me and leaned into my face. I could smell Vodka and weed on his breath.

“Thought all you guineas were supposed to drink wine, Vince?”

He sneered and nodded and Bruce again. Another jab sent a wave a pain through me.

“Keep it up, tough guy. ’Cause, see, I’m not gonna make the same mistake that those movie guys do. I’m actually gonna kill you after you hear it all. And I’ll tell you the best fucking one up front. You ready for it?”

I didn’t want to hear anything else. But the throbbing in my side and in my knee prevented me from doing anything but breathing, and even that was hurting like hell. Vince smiled and leaned in closer.

“I’ll say it real slow for you, Mr. Smart Detective. I didn’t kill Jessica Mulholland... she’s still alive!”

I just looked at him, but then a figure stepped from my bedroom and stood smiling behind him. Her mousy brown hair was tied off in a ponytail and I could see that in the last two weeks she’d put back on some of the weight she’d lost. Lauren Blake was giggling at me as she put her arms around Vince’s neck and kissed him on the cheek. His smile was disgusting, and I knew what he was going to say before he even said it. The room at the apartment kept just like it was two years ago when she died, the visits to the house, dropping the name of Sam Calvante. I didn’t want anyone to say it, but she leaned down and whispered in my ear like a lover before passionate sex.

“I’m Jessica Mulholland, Price. Vince killed Lauren.”

I mustered up whatever strength I had left, to keep them talking, to last a little longer. “Why? Why kill her?”

“Remember what I told you on the phone, Price? She was the most real of us. I couldn’t get my way and that meant she couldn’t have what I wanted. And Denise...” She sighed and played hurt. “She just had to be killed, too, but don’t worry, the only way they’ll find her is if some alligator upchucks her ass in the Glades.”

I looked at Vince and he nodded like a star quarterback at the school prom.

“That’s right, Price. She wanted me.”

Lauren... Jessica... whoever she was cooed in his ear as she played with his graying hair. “She was trying to win my baby over, and I just couldn’t have that, now could I? So what better way to beat her than to be her?”

“But... why... why Sam?”

Vince stood up and nearly knocked her over. “That old fuck is history, man. He plays both sides of the fucking fence, going to the highest bidder, showing no fucking loyalty. Especially since he was banging dudes left and fucking right. We put the body in my aunt’s car and stashed it down there on South Beach. He was supposed to go down, and if that asshole cop friend of yours knows what’s good for him, he’ll do it.”

I looked at the floor and Vince smiled.

“Yeah, that’s right. I got your boy on the payroll, Price. What, you think he was pure as the wind-driven snow? That pig’s got a check coming from everybody in town, man. And you coulda had some of the action, too, but you had to go getting into my business with your little look today, didn’t you?”

He pointed the gun at me, not at my knee, but at my head. I had seen the end, but at least I knew the truth. Jessica Mulholland wasn’t the Virgin, it was Lauren Blake. And she had died horribly not because she was innocent, but because she was dirtier than the other girls, because she’d been a better lay they were.

“Any last words, Price?”

I looked up at him. “Yeah, Vince. I—”

Three quick blasts sent Bruce, Tony and Vince to the ground. A brief pause, then another shot hit Jessica flush in the chest, throwing her across the room and into the wall.

A guy wearing a black jacket and dark jeans came into the front door, a black Sig Sauer pistol in his hand. He walked over to where Bruce and Tony were laying and put two more rounds into their heads. Jessica was already dead, her body facing the wall. I could see a fist-sized hole in her back. He turned to look at me and nodded. I knew him. I’d crossed paths with him once or twice before and never wanted to again. He worked for Vasciano’s competition, Big Pete, but occasionally did jobs on the side.

Vaughn nodded at my knee and said, “You’ll live.” He walked over to wear Vince Calvante was trying in vain to stop the bleeding in his neck. Vaughn kneeled down and took his hand away from the wound, then shot him in the groin. Vince screamed, and Vaughn stood back up.

“He’ll be dead in about ten more minutes. Stay here, and the cops’ll be around just after that. With the way you are, they’ll know you didn’t do this, so...”

I looked up at him and managed to get out one word. “Who?”

He picked up all three guns from the men on the floor, then reached into his jacket pocket and threw a thick envelope next to me on the sofa. Vinnie Vasciano had sent his courier.

Vaughn gave me a cold smile then walked out the door. He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “These young fucks got no respect for the way things are and the way they need to be.”

As I sat in my apartment bleeding and rich, I knew he was right. South Florida was going to stay exactly the way it always was: bright, flashy, and dangerous.

BIO: Todd W. Bush is the writer of the South Florida Noir series. He has been published at A Twist of Noir and Powder Burn Flash. He lives in South Florida with his family.

A Twist Of Noir 314 - Robert Crisman

HOW RAMON DEALT WITH THE HELP - ROBERT CRISMAN

Businessmen know that personnel problems will kill you unless you deal with them right here and now.

Ramon and Dennis got up to Aurora in northend Seattle at ten after ten in the morning. Up a few blocks, just past 85th, they came to the Tiki Motel. They pulled right on a side street, parked a block up, and walked back.

The Tiki, a cinderblock eyesore—on Aurora, who’d notice?—a two-story pit stop for junkies, dealers, and hos. It was shaped like a U with the parking lot fronting the street. The manager’s pad was first on the left. Mid-morning, his shades were all drawn, which was good; no birddogging asshole checking them out. The bad thing, of course, was that shitholes like this drew the heat all the time.

“This ought to be something,” Ramon said. “Reyes says the guy’s crying, all fucking night, boo hoo hoo hoo. He didn’t know, and all that good shit. Storytime, right? This ought to be fun.”

Ramon, mid-30s, didn’t look like a fun kind of guy. At 5’9”, 150 or so, he carried himself like a much bigger man, a man people moved for. He was mocha-skinned, chorus-boy pretty, with arctic ice eyes. He dressed like a banker-cum-pimp with his black cashmere topcoat, herringbone sport coat and gray flannel slacks, and bad Bally lizards, shined to fucking perfection.

Ramon in the wind? The very air bled...

Dennis? He really was big, 6’5”, 250, with muscles he ripped off of some goddamned bear. His face at age 35 mugged the world like Walter Matthau’s beefed up like Bluto’s. He had cold hazel wolf’s eyes.

He dressed in a black leather car coat and jeans and looked like he’d just been shipped in off the cellblock.

They followed the walkway back to Room 10. Dennis knocked on the door. It opened a crack, and some guy peeked out. He opened the door, and they went in past him.

Ramon said, “Reyes,” and nodded. Reyes, around 21, was thin as a rail. He closed the door after Dennis.

The place was a roach pit, of course. Eons of hos, tricks, and dopers. The shades were all drawn. It was gloomy as hell. The gloom did nothing to soften the skank.

The only light came from a lamp by the side of the bed. A guy was hunched up on the edge of the bed. Luis, sick as a dog. Pointing a gun at Ramon and Dennis. He had the shakes bad.

Poor Luis: he was 30 going on 50 in a wifebeater t-shirt, stained khaki slacks, with a pallor suggesting that leeches had bled him. His eyes were two Xes. His barbers must have been goats.

Ramon looked at Reyes, who shrugged.

Ramon put his hand out to Reyes, palm up. Reyes went into his pocket, came up with a key, and handed it over. Ramon nodded then, and Reyes took off, closing the door softly behind him.

Ramon turned to Luis. “Eh, Luis? So, what is this? What are you doing?” He had this half-puzzled smile on his face. His tone was chiding, but friendly.

One thing to note: talking to Luis, Ramon’s diction changed. With Dennis, he brought it out the side of his neck. With Luis, he sounded more like Don Carlos addressing the peasants.

Luis just sat there hunched like a dog. You could see the sweat sliding off him. If he shook any more, his teeth would fall out.

Ramon had all the time in the world. “I heard you were here, so I came to find out what the problem is. And then, is this how you greet me, with a gun, like an enemy?”

Still nothing from Luis.

Ramon was the soul of patience and calm. “Luis, Luis. We need to talk, you and I. But you have got to put that gun down. You’re shaking. What are you going to do, shoot me by accident? Then, where are we?”

Shaky as he was, Luis kept that gun trained.

“What is troubling you?” Ramon said. “What happened?”

Luis was working up the nerve to speak. He started slow, then built to a rush. “Ramon...the guy...the one I told you about, the biker... He, him ’n two other guys, they ripped us off. They came in an’ threw down on us, they had shotguns—wasn’t nothin’ we could do, I swear, Ramon, they were—”

“Okay, Luis, okay. Easy. It’s alright. I told you, the biker, you have to be careful. Bikers are bad news. Tell me what happened. How did they do it?”

“Man, Ramon, I swear, we were bein’ careful. I had the gun on him when he came through the door. I thought it was just him, like he said it would be. I told him to be by himself, like you said.”

Luis took the hem of his t-shirt and wiped the sweat off his forehead. The gun stayed trained. “He came in an’ I stopped him, you know, an’ I patted him down. An’, when I’m doin’ that, the door, I told Phylis to close it—an’ these guys come bustin’ in, bam, man, real fast. Wasn’t nothin’ we could do. They must’ve come up around back, ’cause I didn’t hear nothin’. Only thing I could figure... It was rainin’, an’, you know...”

Luis shrugged, shook his head. “They, I swear, Ramon, this is true. I swear to God. There wasn’t nothin’ we could do. I—”

Luis broke off and shrugged again. He looked like he was going to crumple and cry. He didn’t forget he was holding the gun, though.

Ramon said, “Luis, don’t cry. Okay? These things can happen. You expect these things, the possibility. You do what you can to prevent it, but it’s a dangerous business. But, then, it happens, and you don’t call me. Why?”

It was as if he was talking to a kid that he’d caught stealing cookies.

“I was afraid, man. The dope was gone. You’d blame me...”

Ramon clucked his tongue, as if perhaps he was getting a little impatient. He took a step forward. “Luis. You watch too many movies. You think I’m, what, Felix Gallardes? Cut you up with a machete? Come on, Luis. Get real. No.

“I’m in business. If something happens, I want to find out what it is, so I can fix it, not cause more damage, just because things didn’t go smoothly, the way I want. I go tearing things up, and I don’t even know what happened here, or why? I don’t even try to talk to you? What good is that going to do?”

He lit up a smoke. “It doesn’t solve any problems, Luis. I don’t even know what the problem is? This thing, going off half-cocked, that’s for cowboys. Dennis and I were just talking about someone we knew who was like that, going around and just tearing things up. He went to the penitentiary, Luis. He died up there, too.

“It’s stupid is what I’m saying, and I’m not in business to do that. I’m not going to waste good people, either. I’m going to solve the problem that we actually have.

“The point here is, I believe you. I believe those bikers ripped you off. It was one of those things that happen. It could have been anybody.”

Luis started to cry.

“Luis,” Ramon said, “look at me. What we have to do now is, fix the problem. We have to find that biker and his friends. Get what they took, and hurt them for what they did to you. Luis? Do you hear me? That is what we have to do.”

Luis’s tears were in full flow now. His gun hand sagged to the floor.

Ramon kicked him dead in the face.

Luis’s head snapped back, and then forward. Ramon kicked him again, this time in the eye. Luis launched off the bed and fell on the floor with a lamp-rattling thud.

He was maybe half-conscious, lying on his back, mouth and right eye gouting blood. He moaned. Ramon kicked him twice in the head. Then he stomped on his face.

He spit on Luis and kicked him again, in the temple.

He brought a gun out from his jacket. He looked at Dennis, then pointed at a pillow on the bed. “Get that, man.”

He unzipped and fished out his dick, and let fly on Luis.

He finished, shook it, tucked it back in and zipped up. Dennis handed him the pillow. He got on one knee, pressed the pillow to Luis’s face, then pressed the gun to the pillow. He squeezed off three shots. Luis jerked like a fish on a dry land. Blood and brains shot past the pillow like paint that’s been blown out a cannon.

Ramon wiped the gun and laid it on Luis’s chest. He looked at Luis a moment. Then he stood, and gave the room a once-over. “Look around,” he said. “Under the bed and stuff. I’ll check the can.”

“Guy shit himself, man,” Dennis said. “Fuckin’ stinks.”

“Yeah, well,” Ramon said, and went into the can. Dennis peeked under the bed. He quick-frisked the dresser and closet. Nothing and nothing, except for some dust, some old matchbook covers, and jellybeans 40 years old in the top dresser drawer.

Ramon came out of the can. Dennis said, “Nothin’.” Ramon said, “No shit.” He looked around once, and then tossed the key on the bed. “Let’s hit the road.”

Back down Aurora toward town. Ramon said, “What time you got to get this piece of shit back to him?”

“This afternoon, sometime.”

“Good. We’ve got time. I need to get downtown. Drop me there, alright?”

“Okay.”

Ramon lit a smoke.

“Man,” Dennis said, “I didn’t believe it, I first heard the story, but, that motherfucker was sick as a dog.”

“Yeah,” Ramon said. “No money, no dope. It happened, alright. Fucking dopefiends. I first heard he took off, I thought the same thing as you. But I talked to Phylis, and she isn’t going to lie to me. Too scared to lie. And, that’s what she said, boy. Those motherfuckers came busting on in, just like he said.”

“She’s the one who told you where he was.”

“Oh yeah. Reyes had called her when he couldn’t get hold of me, and he knew I’d be down there. Luis knew, too. He wanted her to know, same reason, right? Fucker didn’t really have any place to go, you know what I’m saying? Where’s he going to go, where I’m not going to catch up? So, what can he do?

“Try to plead out, and hope something works.”

“Uh-huh,” Dennis said.

Ramon smiled, a small, sour smile. “He was probably asleep on that couch when they came busting in, man. And that’s what I mean, see. If he’d’ve been right, they couldn’t’ve gotten in there like that. He’d’ve had Jaime and a couple other guys in there with him. Bikers, for Chrissake! I tell him, tell the guy, be by himself, but… Guy says okay, you’re going to believe him? A biker? You’ve got to have backup, dealing with something like that. Those guys are bad news.”

Ramon shook his head. “And now, I’m out three grand because dipshit wanted to go get a groove on. That, and plus, whatever he’d stuck up his arm in the first place.”

“Yeah,” Dennis said. “I wasn’t surprised when he’d boogied, regardless. He didn’t call that day I was down there. I told him, call you, He seemed kinda spooky, you know?”

“For all I know, that was the fucking game plan,” Ramon said. “You know, hit his last lick, that’s three more grand in his kick, and arrivederci, you know? Dumb motherfucker. Only thing, he gets loaded, nods off, they take his ass off. So much for game plans.

“He should’ve just kept right on going. But his mind was too fucked up to think. And that’s what I mean about dopefiends, man. They get stupid. Stupid in the first fucking place, and now, something happens, all of a sudden, they’re black belts in stupid, you know?

“That’s why I don’t want any of my people using that shit. And then, they’re tripping, they get these ideas. Going to fly to the moon. Stay grooved for life, and all that good shit. And then, they go do it, whatever it is, and bam. Dumbfucks haven’t thought anything out, and, now it hits them, what they just did, and they’re swimming around, and it’s over their head, and, all of a sudden, they know it. And, now, they’re scared, which they should’ve been in the first fucking place. And they’re running around in six different directions, like rabbits—and here comes the truck.

“Dopefiends, man. Popcorn emotions and rabbit-ass minds.

“Fucking Luis. I knew something was up, way he was acting, but, Jesus Christ.”

They crossed the Aurora Bridge, Seattle’s suicide bridge for the washed-up, spit-out, and lonely. “You read about that dude?” Dennis said. “Skydived off this motherfucker a couple of nights ago? Hit that boat an’ went right through the deck?”

“Yeah,” Ramon said. “One way to go, you feel like you’ve got to, I guess.”

He looked at Dennis. “Your friend Eddie? He’s nervous, you know?”

Dennis looked at Ramon. “Yeah? So?”

“He’s nervous. Out at that place, making those comments and cracks and all that. It was pissing me off.”

“Yeah, I saw that. An’ I had a little heart-to-heart with him, too, about that.”

“Uh huh?”

“Yeah. A couple of days ago. See, I know what you’re sayin’, man, an’, I been knowin’ Eddie a long fuckin’ time. He gets to thinkin’ about things sometimes, an’ all the shit that could happen an’ stuff, like, we go in there, the dude launches rockets or somethin’. An’ then, he gets a hair up his ass. He was that way when we were doin’ stuff before. He always comes through, though, really, he does. This time, what I did, I sat his ass down, got it out of him, what the fuck’s eatin’ his ass, ’cause it always takes awhile, you know, an’ then, I tell him, Look, you know, an’ kinda slap him upside his head. An’ then, he’s, Thanks, man, I needed that, an’ then, he’s okay. He was just, you know, anything can happen on one of these deals, an’ he’s, he just gotta go through this shit, man. It’s like a fuckin’ ritual or somethin’. Don’t worry, he’ll be okay.

“You, uh, okay with that, or what?”

“Hey, man,” Ramon said, “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re way ahead of yourself. You tell me he’s cool. I believe you. Some guys are like that. Long as you got him on track.”

A couple of beats, and then Ramon said, “Does it bother you?”

“Does what bother me?”

“The thought, you know. Like, what if, you know, like what happened to Luis back there. You never know. Like, if, for whatever reason, your buddy comes unglued again. What then?”

“It’s not gonna happen. An’, if it did...”

“What?”

“I do what I gotta do. Whatever I gotta do, you know what I mean? Whatever I gotta do.”

After a moment, Ramon nodded, apparently satisfied.

Personnel problems? Take care of them before they take care of you.

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 313 - Keith Rawson

RETAIL THERAPY: A WAL*MART STORY - KEITH RAWSON

The wife’s kicked me out of the house, at least for tonight.

The wife’s having a dildo party.

I ask her, “What, my cock’s not good enough for you?”

She laughs and tells me to get the hell out.

I’m okay with this, I’m not a party person, especially if the party involves a bunch of middle age women stroking and fawning over a bunch of rubber and glass phalluses.

The wife is a party person, she loves being apart of a crowd; mixing and blending, being a part of multiple conversations.

I have a hard enough time keeping up with a conversation with just one person, let alone three or four.

I do as she asks and head to the Chinese restaurant down the road that I like but I can never get the wife to eat at.

It’s a popular place, lots of couples and families slurping hot and sour soup, noshing egg rolls and pork lo mien. I’m the only one in the restaurant who’s eating alone. This is something else I don’t have problem with. Most people I know hate eating alone. They always need someone else there to acknowledge their presence. Someone to compliment their exquisite manners or admire their chewing technique.

Other than the wife, I don’t eat with other people.

My co-workers at the day job all think I’m stuck up because I’ll never tag along whenever they all go out to lunch. No one’s ever told me they think I’m a snob, but I work in a small office and I hear the whispers, it doesn’t bother me.

I ordered Kung pao chicken and a couple of pork dumplings as appetizers.

Normally I’m a slow, measured eater, but I’m shoveling it in tonight like I haven’t eaten in days, weeks.

I finish up, leave a twenty spot on the table even though my bill’s only eleven dollars and head out the door like my ass is on fire.

I’m in a pissy mood, I have been for weeks.

Don’t get me wrong; the life I’ve established with the wife is a good one. I’m living the big FAT American dream:

Over-mortgaged home

Massive credit card debit

Driving luxury cars that we can’t even remotely afford.

But we look good.

We feel good, except when the credit card bills come in the middle of the month and the wife chews her fingernails to the quick and turns herself inside out—at least until she shreds the bills and goes on a shopping spree.

Like parties, I don’t do shopping sprees.

What’s got me so antsy isn’t my big FAT American life, but my life before.

My life before was simple and satisfying.

It was strictly cash and carry. I owned a car, but the type of wreck you could buy for seven hundred bucks from a private owner no questions asked and abandon at the side of the road when it stopped running. I had no identity, no fixed address. I either slept in whatever jalopy I was driving, or if I was lucky enough, I’d meet some woman, some girl at a bar who was impressed—and drunk enough—by my tattoos, my bad boy stories of rural county jails and prolific drug use. More often than not, I would have a place to sleep for a night, a week, a month or two, but eventually I’d get bored, pack half the contents of whatever woman’s apartment I was staying with into the trunk of my car, drive over to the closest pawnshop and head out of town.

The wife started out as this type of woman.

Just another convenient piece of ass at some nameless bar that played the music too loud and charged too much for draft beer. But for some reason, I stuck around. It wasn’t like the wife was a spectacular lay or anything like that; she was just another drunk girl at a college town hole in the wall. She was nice, though, not the usual trust fund girl. The wife was working her way through school and I didn’t have the heart to rip her off.

She let me stay three months rent-free; I started to feel bad that I wasn’t contributing; she said she didn’t care, but I got a job all the same.

Seven years later...

...sitting in a cube, ignoring office gossip, driving a leased Lexus, vacationing in Cabo...

I don’t miss the old life.

Most of the time.

When I do miss it, I go and do my own version of retail therapy.

With my version, I never end up at the checkout counter with a hot little credit card clutched in my greasy fingers.

I end up cruising out the front door, my cargo pants stuffed with merchandise, ready to bolt if I set off an alarm.

It’s not the same as cleaning out some broad’s apartment, or kicking the shit out of a college kid for his beer money, but what I do now are forgivable crimes; the kind of transgressions that if you get caught, all that happens is you get ticketed along with a stern lecture from the cops. And if you’re smart, you carry fake ID and the ticket the police give you is just another piece of paper to be wadded up and thrown into the ever-increasing pile of trash in the backseat of my car.

I start off the night at my local bookstore. We come here often and my purchases here are my largest contribution to our debt. I’ve always loved books, the weight and feel of the pages. I use to spend hours in the libraries of whatever town I’d end up in after I outlasted my welcome. A library is one of the best ways to judge a new community. You see how a city’s population treats its bums and drunks, how they interact, what they read; if you notice people checking out more DVD’s and videos than books, you know you’ve hit the jackpot; you know you’re dealing with a bunch of easily taken hicks. The downside with this kind of population is that they’re quicker to react with wholesale violence if they catch you in a scam.

If you notice more books flying off the shelves, chances are your dealing with a far more liberal community. Intelligent, forgiving human beings who turn the other cheek as you rob them blind.

I like the liberal cities far more.

I end up leaving the bookstore, not wanting to shit where I sleep and head across the street to the local big box monstrosity and stroll into Wal*Mart. I never come to Wal*Mart and whenever I steal from them I almost feel like a folk hero; like some guy hippies will write bad acoustic jam songs about. The liver spot in a blue vest whose name tag reads, Ralph, fisheyes me as I step through the smudged automatic doors and gives me a nice long view of his tobacco brown dentures. The greeter was Wally World’s half-assed version of security. Cheap bastards, like this old fucker, could stop someone from pushing a cart full of flatscreen televisions out the front door if it was coming at him full speed? I’m not a smash-and-grab kind of guy, there’s no art to it. Not that stealing is any kind of art form, all it is is taking stuff off the shelf and sticking it in your pockets and hoping no one has an eye on you.

I head to the pharmaceutical aisles first. I walk with a purposeful stride and slightly annoyed wrinkle creasing my forehead. If you walk into any store with this kind of expression, with this kind of attitude, it warns people away from you. It lets the world know you’re on some short, annoying errand that’s interrupting your day; the look is especially effective with store employees. The last thing a retail employee wants is to catch an earful of shit from some fucker who was sent out by the wife to grab a box of tampons or a gallon of milk. It also lets me have free reign over the contents of the store.

I pocket every sixth item I pick up. I grab watermelon-flavored condoms, bubblegum-flavored toothpaste, mint dental floss. The pharmacy aisle is a cakewalk. Most stores expect and accept a certain amount of theft, especially when it comes to medicine and food items like candy bars and even if staff sees the theft go down, they’re typically reluctant to stop it. I decide I need more of a challenge and head to electronics. The electronics section of any department store is the most difficult to steal from. I’m not looking to grab a Blu-Ray player or anything like that, but CDs and DVDs are a bitch to carry out because of all the security markers retailers stuff in the packaging.

I do the same as I did in the pharmacy aisle; the little shit working the service desk has his head buried up his ass and texting a mile a minute. I head to housewares and start getting a little daring. I start stuffing everything I pick up into my pockets—spatulas, bargain basement cutlery sets. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and stood face-to-face with a middle-aged man with thinning sandy blond hair and glasses. His high forehead was a geodesic map of sharp blackheads. He wore the requisite blue vest and an enormous smiley face name tag pinned to his chest.

It reads:

HI MY NAME IS STUART!

“Sir, can I see what’s in your pockets?” Old Stuart’s voice is a squeak, full of fear and regret. I give him an eyeful of my ten thousand dollars worth of veneers and say:

“Sure, buddy.”

I worm my right hand past my wallet and keys and palm my stiletto. My movements are smooth and practiced; I pop the six inches of Mexican steel and press the point into his flabby stomach. I’ve never been caught shoplifting, but I’ve rehearsed this exact scenario dozens of times in front of the bathroom mirror. I don’t sink the blade into Stuart’s stomach; all I do is press the tip past the layers of cloth and prick the skin of his soft belly. My smile feels like it’s tearing in half as I watch his bottom lip quiver, a silvery line of drool making its way down his weak chin.

“How do you like what I got in my pocket, Stu?” I ask. “This is what you wanted to see, right?”

He’s starting to cry. Not big shuttering, beg for his life gasps, but only a trickle, a tear or two clustering in his eye boogers.

“Answer me, Stu. This is what you wanted to see?”

He nods his head, slack-jawed and weak.

I stared down at my hand, it is steady, but Stu... Stu’s a quivering bowl of Jell-o. He’s shaking so bad that he’s managed to nick up his stomach; a patch of blood is seeping through his shirt.

“Here’s what’s your gonna do, Stu. You’re gonna stand here and count to 120 and then back to zero again. Do you understand?”

He gives me another palsied nod.

I snap the blade back into the hilt, turn and I notice Stu’s standing in a syrupy miniature lake of piss. I think about saying something pithy like, ‘Clean up on aisle 16’ or some such shit. Instead, I head back to the entrance.

BIO: Keith Rawson is a little known pulp writer who lives in the alkaline desert wastelands of southern Arizona with his wife and very energetic three-year-old daughter. His stories have appeared in such publications as Plots with Guns, Pulp Pusher, CrimeWav.com, Bad Things, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, Beat to a Pulp and many others. You can find him most nights dicking around on either Twitter or Facebook, or stroking his already over-inflated ego at his blog Bloody Knuckles, Callused Fingertips.

A Twist Of Noir 312 - Todd W. Bush

THE BACKSEAT VIRGIN PART 3: A SOUTH FLORIDA NOIR STORY - TODD W. BUSH

I had a friend in the Miami PD named Jose Garcia. We had met placing illegal bets in an illegal bookie’s living room on a Saturday afternoon three years ago. We didn’t say a word in that room, but later that night, when one of my clients wound up murdered by her husband, Garcia was the detective who pulled the case. A friendship based on shared secrets was born, and as far as we were concerned those are the foundations that make for lasting relationships.

Peppy, as he was known by his friends and co-workers alike, had also worked the Virgin case. He’d worked it for months after the department shuttled the whole thing off to the ‘Open/Unsolved’ wasteland where cases were forgotten by everyone but the family involved and the detective who was still obsessed. Peppy never let this one die, and I knew he’d want to be in on this.

I called him as soon as I found out who she was.

“Peppy, you ever get an ID on the Virgin?”

He got quiet, like a dark cloud had just passed in front of his brain and whatever was about to come out wasn’t going to be nice. “Why you bringing up that shit, Price?”

“It’s come up with something I’m working on.”

“Bullshit. You don’t call and bring up ghosts like this just because it’s on the edge of some fucking divorce shit or a cheating man-whore. You don’t call up just to find out the dirt, bro. Only reason you bring up shit like this is you got something for me. So spill, Price.”

“Awful direct today, Peppy.”

“Fucking A. It ain’t the fucking day.”

“Listen, I might be able to get you an ID if you don’t got one yet.”

“How?”

“I gotta get something to compare it with, but I think I might have a name for you.”

He was quiet for a few seconds, and I could tell he was working things over in his mind. “You bring it in today, you got it? I know you got something else, and you better bring that in, too. Got it?”

I told him I did and left to go to Lauren’s apartment. It was located in one of the shittiest parts of Fort Lauderdale, where white guys like me didn’t go unless they were well-armed, idiotic or both. Her door was opened by a walking advertisement for steroids. His black skin was pulled taut by muscles on top of muscles, and his head was shaved and waxed to a dull shine.

“Fuck you want, cracker?”

Usually, if you show fear, you get killed. So I tried my best to return whatever aggression I was receiving. “I’m looking for Lauren.”

“Fuck you want that cunt for?”

From behind him, I could hear movement and then a voice. “Oscar? Who is it?” Lauren came bounding up and peered between Oscar’s arm and chest. Her eye was black and her cheek was sporting a large bruise that fit the size of Oscar’s fist fairly well.

I looked up at him and he sneered at me, like I was supposed to be admiring his handiwork.

“You do that to her?”

“Fuck you care what I do with my own shit?” I might as well have asked him why he cut the sleeves off the sweatshirt he was wearing.

“She’s a friend of mine, that’s why. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take out your latent homosexual aggression on her face.”

Oscar took two steps out the door, his finger jabbing me in the chest.

“You calling me a faggot, you fucking pric—”

He didn’t finish. I grabbed the meat of his hand and turned it toward the sky, then bent his wrist back. Oscar dropped to his knees, but didn’t scream like most people did when I pulled that little martial arts self-defense move. I put more pressure on the joint, hearing the bones start to rub and creak in protest.

He looked at me with nothing but sheer fury in his eyes. I didn’t see the fist coming up toward me until it was too late, but I did manage to adjust at the last second and take the brunt of the blow on my inner thigh. It hurt like hell, and I let go of Oscar’s wrist. Lauren screamed for us to stop, but it wasn’t going to do any good.

Oscar stood up and started to charge me, but I threw a quick cut kick to the outside of his left leg. My shin slammed into his knee and he buckled to his knees again. I wasn’t going to give him time to recover this time. I grabbed him around the head and went to drive my knee into his face, but Oscar saw it coming and threw his weight straight back. I went ass over tea kettle and slammed my forehead into the concrete sidewalk. Oscar jumped on me just as I turned on my back. Now I was comfortable.

The last five years had been more and more violent in my life of work, so I’d decided to take a little training, specifically Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is mostly ground fighting. I had only gotten to a green belt so far, so I was praying that Oscar wasn’t a student as well. From his first move, it was plain that he wasn’t, but he did watch the UFC on TV.

He started to punch at my head, looking for a quick knockout blow. I reached up with my right arm to try and block his blows, then with my left, I pulled down on his head. This stopped the onslaught to my already bleeding face. I trapped his left hand and turned my hips, wrapping my right arm around his arm. It was called a kimora lock and it was designed not to simply put you in control of your opponent, but to end the fight... painfully. I cinched it in, throwing my weight back and pulling his arm up. All the pressure was on his shoulder and elbow, which were being turned about ninety degrees the wrong way. I rolled slightly to my left, increasing the pressure.

Oscar screamed a primal, animalistic sound from deep within. He wasn’t giving up and was trying his best to hit me with his other hand. I could have pulled steadily harder on him and forced him to give up like I’d done hundreds of times in my class, but I caught a glimpse of Lauren standing in her doorway and the damage done to her face. Oscar had called her his ‘shit’, meaning his property. It pissed me off and what I did next wasn’t the nicest thing I’d done in my life.

I jerked hard back toward my head and heard a sickening snap as Oscar’s arm was broken and his shoulder was pulled out of socket. He screamed again and I let go of his arm, then slammed my elbow on the back of his head. The screaming stopped.

I got up and touched my forehead. Blood was dripping down my face, but it wasn’t anything to be too concerned about. Lauren backed up into the apartment and tried to close the door, but I stopped her with my foot.

“I need something of Jessica’s, anything that might have her DNA on it. A hairbrush, toothbrush, something.”

“There’s... there’s... there’s nothing like that here.”

I pushed past her. “Well, I’m gonna look no matter what.”

The apartment was a two-bedroom with a small hallway connecting the two sleeping rooms with a combination kitchen/living room. I stormed back to the bathroom first and found only one hairbrush, but it had Lauren’s mousy brunette hair in it. I turned to go into the far bedroom, and when I opened the door, my breath caught in my throat.

It was a shrine. Pictures of Jessica Mulholland covered the walls. They were modeling pictures, photo shoots from porn magazines, and regular shots from her everyday life. The girl’s underwear was laid out on the bed and wrinkled like someone had just slept on them. I turned back to look at Lauren and saw her crying. “She was the best of us, the most... I don’t know... the most real.”

A hairbrush was lying on the vanity, along with make-up, jewelry and other personal items. The whole room looked like it was set up for Jessica’s imminent return. I felt like throwing up. I gave Lauren one more look and left the apartment.

Back in my car, I called Peppy Garcia. “Did you guys get the plates on the car the Virgin was found in?”

“Yeah, you get what I told you to get?”

“I got it for you, Peppy. Just answer the fucking question.”

“What’s got up your ass, Price?”

“I just broke a fucking giant’s arm and left a crazy girl to cry over her shrine to her former roommate, so I think I’ve got a right to be a little pissed off.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Answer the question, Peppy.”

“Yeah, we got the plates. Car was registered to a big shot, somebody we didn’t want to fuck with if we didn’t have to. Least that was the message I got from the brass. Why?”

“Was the big shot Sam Calvante?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “How the fuck did you know that?”

“I’m bringing you your ID, Peppy. But I’m also bringing you the other thing you wanted.”

“Son of a bitch, Price. You’re bringing me a big can of shit, aren’t you?”

I thought about what Lauren had told me, that Jessica had been at Calvante’s house that night, and that she had been found in his car. Then I thought about the shrine Lauren had kept for basically two years. That morning, I’d thought for sure that Sam Calvante was the killer and the thought scared the piss out of me. Now, I wasn’t so sure, and I was even more terrified than I had been.

“Yeah, Peppy. I’m bringing you in a big can. But maybe it’s time we all knew the truth.”

BIO: Todd W. Bush is the writer of the South Florida Noir series. He has been published at A Twist of Noir and Powder Burn Flash. He lives in South Florida with his family.