That's My Baby by Patricia Abbott

THAT’S MY BABY - PATRICIA ABBOTT

Lulu Stephanides, Manager of Flo’s Escapades on Eight Mile Road hired the Club’s top headliner when Johnny LeCroix walked through the door one October day. She’d taken over hiring the acts a few months earlier when her boss, Bill Steves, began a 3-5 year stint at Jackson for bribing city officials.

It was quickly apparent Lulu was better at spotting talent than Steves had been, and the weekend crowds more than doubled. Although most of the acts centered on erotic dancing, Lulu liked to vary the bill with magicians, singers, and standup comedians. Of course, no one appearing at Flo’s Escapades would pull double duty at a PTA fundraiser. That was a given for joints on Eight Mile.

Johnny LeCroix arrived at Flo’s well on the road to femaledom—a girl except for the final chop. A pushup bra displayed his best features, which he fingered self-consciously like a man does a new beard. Luckily Johnny’s wide shoulders helped him to carry it off. Someone needed to tell him though that the extreme hip swivel wasn’t necessary and lowering his voice an octave would make him less conspicuous.

Lulu looked him over, wondering why trannies all believed the essence of a woman lay in things like manicures and mascara. This Johnny, soon to be Joan, had every superficial attribute in place, but you only had to look at his jaw to know his sex. No woman ever had a set of teeth like his. And although his hands were small for a man, they lacked delicacy. His determination to highlight his expensive manicure (blue nails; glittery tips) by waving his mitts around only made things worse.

He saw the disinterest on her face and jumped in saying, “Look, my act ain’t really about the sex thing. That’s just my circumstances at the moment. I was born in a suitcase, you know.”

Lulu wondered just how his jaw had fit into one but waved him on.

“I think the saying goes, ‘I was born in a trunk,” Lulu said, stepping back as one of the blue balls he had removed from his case escaped. “And there’s no trick in juggling two balls, my friend. It’s torches and hatchets nowadays. Last week a fellow dressed like SpongeBob claimed he could juggle grenades. I declined an audition, of course.”

She was turning her back on Johnny when he added. “Wait, Miss, you haven’t even seen me feed the dog yet. You won’t want to miss that. It’s the grand finale.”

If Lulu remembered correctly “feeding the dog” was an old yoyo stunt. “Come back when you have something new to show me,” she said.  But before she reached the lobby door, a shrieking yip cut through the room as Johnny removed a black and white Chihuahua from his satchel.

“This is Baby,” he shouted over the barking. “Everyone loves my Baby.” Baby confirmed the sentiment by barking all the louder.

“Look, this ain’t Letterman, Johnny,” Lulu said. “We don’t put stupid pet tricks on our stage. Why don’t you come by tonight and get the lay of the land?”

But her exit had already slowed to a crawl.

Lulu liked dogs. Even yippers like Baby. Her disdain for human beings was turned on its head when she looked into a canine’s face. She’d never owned one though. First her parents, then her ex- husband claimed allergies. And although there was no reason not to have one now, a nightclub seemed like a poor place for a pet to spend its days and she was at the club fifteen hours a day, six days a week. A dog this size, in particular, would really be underfoot. She shook off this thought and looked away.

“I can dress her up if you want,” Johnny said, pulling a frilly doll dress from his bag, “but most people like to see Baby in action. Her legs go like little pistons. Wait till you see.” He grabbed Baby’s legs to demonstrate, and the yipping began again.

Feigning ennui, Lulu waved him back onto center stage and sank back into her chaise. Johnny was an eyeful all right, but it was Baby who grabbed her attention.

The act turned out to be pure gold, and within days people flooded the Club to see Johnny feed the dog. There wasn’t much fanfare—just the two of them bathed in a cool blue light with Johnny starting off by singing some dip-shitty song about Mexican moons and senoritas.  He considered himself an excellent singer, though most would disagree. But since it set the mood for what came next, she let it stand. He had an old record player from the fifties to play his background music—claiming it added more visual interest than a tape player would. Baby seemed mesmerized by the song and at various points would add her own soulful accompaniment. Which was a scream. And that might have been enough but…

When the last note faded, when their two voices died out, when Johnny had carefully lifted the needle off the album—the dog grabbed the elasticized neck of Johnny’s blouse, yanked it down, and proceeded to suckle Johnny’s left breast with such fervor her entire body shook like a bolt of electricity was passing through it. And, as promised, her legs pumped like mad. But the right breast turned out to be the brass ring of the act because once anchored there, Baby cooed with content for a few seconds and promptly fell asleep. The ending brought a roar of approval every night. Johnny, cradling Baby, took a final bow and then tucked Baby back into the bassinet on stage.

“I pepper the nipples with a little Ambien,” he explained to Lulu.  “The vet okayed it,” he added when he saw her face. “He prescribes it for hyper dogs like Baby all the time. I’ve used it myself more than once.”

“I gotta admit,” Lulu told Johnny, “it’s the best damned act on Eight Mile Road.” She gave him a raise after that first night and every month after. No one ever got tired of watching Johnny feed the dog. Especially Lulu.

She encouraged Johnny to hang around too, even leaving Baby with her when he had errands to run. Baby was a show biz dog and was content to spend her days listening with Lulu to the singers, standups and strippers trying out for the club. Since Johnny’s appearance, they were getting top-bill entertainers begging for a week rather than the typical night or two between more important gigs.  Flo’s Escapade had become a destination.

“Doc says it’s time for the chop,” Johnny told her a few months later. “So I guess I’ll be moving on. Once I’m all woman, I won’t be doing dumb-ass routines like this one. I got bigger plans. I’m thinking Vegas or New York. I’ve been taking dancing lessons, a little acting too.”

Johnny looked like he meant it and Lulu nodded mechanically.

“But I’ll have to keep the dog,” she told him as he turned to go. “You won’t need her cramping your style as you work your way up to the big time.” Ha, she thought to herself. “I’ll find another tranny to feed her. Shouldn’t take long.” She eyed him speculatively. “You newbie girls are like mold on a showerhead lately.”

“Hey, I got a big surgery coming up—you know what I mean.  I can’t go through it without that little dog in my corner rooting for me.” Johnny shook his head. “She’s all I got.”

“You’re not even planning to use her in the act, right? That’s what you said.”

He shook his head. “I’m planning on a classier act. But who says Baby can’t be a regular mutt. She’s earned her retirement.”

Lulu watched them perform for the last time a few nights later, weeping surreptitiously from her chaise. She hadn’t even had the heads-up to advertise the final show and the crowd was only fair on a Tuesday. She wasn’t that eager to alert their patrons of Baby’s goodbye.

Later that night, Lulu followed Johnny home to his flat. She trudged up the stairs and knocked softly on his door, shooting him in the neck the second he opened the door. The gun was the one kept in the Club’s wall safe. She hadn’t been sure it would fire.

As Lulu bundled the yipping dog into the satchel and prepared to leave, she reminded Johnny’s cooling body, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”

Interlude Stories: Patricia Abbott

SHAME - PATRICIA ABBOTT

I watch Guy sleep beside me. Misery, rage, fear flood his face—like waves rushing over sand. Muted shades tint him once the guardedness he wears by day disappears.

His eyelids flutter. I gaze at the rise and fall of his chest. His foot, always the left —the one nearest me—twitches. Rustling beneath the starched sheets he insists on tucking too tight, he sighs. Now he’s turned onto his right side. It feels deliberate—this casting me aside.

No longer hypnotized by the himness of him, I slip the gun under the bed. Metaphorically, of course. The mutual shame, which binds us as tightly as lust or habit might, brings it to mind.

Guy and my sister, Shelley: the two of them that should’ve been together these years. Perhaps what they had would’ve soured by now as so often happens.

For years—seventeen of them—it was my sister Shelley and me. Side by side on her bed—our feet making toe marks on her pink wall, reading the same books, liking the same movies, music. Other girls spilled over us at school, at the pool, but never made much of a claim. Boys, even less. Less than a year separated us. She claimed she waited for me, impatient for her other half.

“I was always looking for someone.”

“You can’t remember that,” our mother said, back to us at the sink.

“I bet she can,” I said.

I liked the idea of Shelley grieving for the sister who hadn’t yet been born. Me. It felt perfect.

Our mother shook her head, finding our closeness cloying. Smiling our secret smile, we turned our faces away.

And then, there was Guy Hansen.

Or Guy Handsome behind his back. I was bewildered at how Shelley had snagged him. Shelley who’d never had a date. The one who’d waited for me hadn’t let on she’d also waited for him.

But suddenly, Guy was standing at our door. I yanked it open expecting a salesman, a Jehovah Witness, Uncle Ted.

“Shannon, right?” he said, flashing his smile.

I was speechless. She’d told him about me, but not me about him—which seemed like a betrayal, treachery. That he deserved more consideration than me. That he was privy to a deeper level of confidence. My halcyon days were at an end.

“Thanks, Shannon,” Shelley said, sidling past me, my gaping mouth. When I still didn’t move, she whispered, “I’ll take it from here.”

I’d never heard that tone before. Dismissed, I sidled off like the rodent I’d suddenly become.

And she did exactly that— took it from there—moved from being captain of the lacrosse team and president of the French Club—to dating the best catch in school. Had she taken a book out from the library telling her what to do? Listened to some talk show offering tips?

Guy was off-limits for discussion.

“So what did you and Guy do last night?”

“Nothing special.” She was fidgeting. “Do you want go in on a present for Mom for Mother’s Day? Maybe a new recording of St. Matthew’s Passion?”

So we weren’t to share Guy. I was filled with rage. Rage that Shelley was lost to me, that she made off with the school’s best offering, that she hadn’t shared her feelings.

When we lay on her bed talking about whether we’d do it with TV stars like Buffy’s Angel or Dawson Leery, she never let on her choice was Guy Hansen. If she’d confided her interest in him, things might have gone differently. If we’d shared her heart’s desire like a sweater, CDs, her deepest secrets, I might have understood.

I can’t explain why I expected Shelley to want to spend all her time with me. Why it never occurred to me that I wasn’t enough for her. That we wouldn’t go hand in hand through life. I needed preparation for such a thing—a warning.

Funny thing was, Guy and Shelley didn’t do the things—or more precisely the thing—I expected. The thing we talked about doing with Jason Priestly or James Franco.

But I knew something she didn’t know. While she read Middlemarch, I read Mom’s Harlequin romances. Knew boys wanted more than a chaste kiss at 11:30 P.M. when they were seventeen years old. That was where I’d have my in.

“The fireworks on the river are tomorrow night,” I said.

We went every year, taking a quilt our grandmother had made, a cooler with pink lemonade, lemon square cookies.

“Guy has a friend with a boat.” Shelley couldn’t even look at me. I waited for an invitation to join them that never came.

Gradually, and I don’t think I consciously planned it, I began to talk to Guy when he was waiting for Shelley, when he called and she was out.

“Oh, hi, Guy. Shelley’s working right now. Did you like What About Bob? Shelley told me you both did.” This was a patent lie. I only knew they’d seen it because I found the ticket stub in her jeans.

“Oh, yeah! Man, Bill Murray was a knockout.”

My early sullenness with Guy gave way to chattiness. He seemed relieved to have made a friend in the enemy camp where my parents treated him with wariness at best. Once my sister changed her college plans to coincide with his, there was outright hostility.

“I can’t believe you’re throwing yourself away on a nothing like him,” my father told her, looking at her for the longest time in years. “You could go to school anywhere and instead...”

My idea to get Shelley back was this: I’d put Guy in a compromising position and then threaten to expose him for what he was if he didn’t leave Shelley alone. I never doubted I could do this—that I could make Guy accept sexual favors from his girlfriend’s sister. I could detect his weaknesses and was prepared to exploit them. My father was right; she deserved better and I would provide it.

“Guy?” I was calling him from a 7-Eleven two towns away. It was a night when Shelley was babysitting and out of the picture.

“Shannon?” he said. “Hi. What’s up?”

“Wonder if you could give me a ride home. Sort of got marooned out here...”

A ride home from that convenience store, a lift from the pool. Pretty soon we shared the easy rapport of friends. But I couldn’t see what Shelley saw in him. He was ordinary, dull.

Shelley was babysitting forty plus hours a week after losing her financial aid when she switched schools in early July.

“You’ll have to come up with some of this money yourself,” Dad had told her after looking at the first tuition bill.

And then one night—when I’d asked Guy for a ride home from a graduation party—I put my head in his lap and did the down and dirty deed, the one all boys want. At first, he protested, tried to push my head away, grabbed my hair. Muttered something about Shelley.

But, in seconds, he was grabbing my hair in another way, steering me.

“That’s never going to happen again,” he said when it was over, when he’d caught his breath. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”

Strangely, he didn’t blame me, probably believing that such an act could only be a male-generated idea. When I got into my mother’s car and turned the headlights on, his face captured in the light, was filled with revulsion. A look I’d come to know well.

But it did happen again—off and on all July. Neither of us talked about it, silence seemed to be the price he demanded. My plan to expose his lechery immediately went awry as I began to be more drawn to my own awfulness, to the sinister power I wielded. Had this attracted Shelley, too?

I don’t know what I hoped for—did I hope he’d dump Shelley for me—I doubt it. I wanted to puncture the balloon of happiness that floated above her head. Wanted to force him to tell her what he’d done. Confess and take full blame as I knew he would. But not yet.

Early August. I met him at a nice spot overlooking the valley. I climbed into his car and began my routine. Our routine. There was never any kissing and he never touched me more than he had to. Never any words of love—nothing but this amazingly mechanical act. I was disgusted with myself, considering ending it because it seemed like Guy couldn’t stop. I felt shame. I didn’t know much—if anything—about boys, but apparently this could not be turned down. Why didn’t Shelley give him what he needed? Or was it I who’d created the need? Would he have been content with what she had to offer had I not come along?

Suddenly, a face loomed up behind Guy’s head.

Shelley.

I pulled away but not before she caught sight of the look on Guy’s upturned face, his open jeans, my damp face rising. And then, she was gone.

“Guy,” I said, sitting up.

“What?” His voice sounded like my father’s did when he’d been drinking. Groggy, indistinct, hoarse.

“I just saw Shelley.” I was whispering—as if she might be lurking nearby instead of thousands of feet away by then.

“What?” he said, trying to make sense of it now. “Shelley? Where?”

“Just outside. Looking in at us.”

Guy groaned, got himself together, opened the door, and leaped out. “Shelley?”

I climbed out the other side. Shelley’s, or rather my father’s car, was parked behind us. I ran over and pulled the door open. Empty except for her purse on the seat.

Guy’s cries of “Shelley” grew faint as he moved farther away.

I rummaged in the glove box for a flashlight. When I came up with one, the battery was dead. How like my father, I thought despite myself. Throwing it aside, I ran back to Guy’s car, found another one that worked, shed its rather anemic light into the night, and walked carefully around.

I heard Guy shouting. And shouting again—louder this time. Was he shouting for me? Did I have any place in the drama I’d created? Reluctantly, I ran toward the sound—which had become, ominously, the sound of sobbing. My flashlight picked him up finally, standing next to an outcropping just before the trees turned into sloping woods.

“Did you find her?”

He nodded and tilted his head toward the falloff. I crept over and pointed my light. She lay at the bottom of the hill.

I started scrambling down the hill with Guy right behind me. He was trying to talk, but our heavy breathing obscured his words. It took several minutes and a lot of slipping and sliding to reach bottom. We were muddy and bruised by tree limbs by the time we reached bottom.

“Tried to grab her hand and she fell,” Guy finally said. “Dry ground just gave way, dropping into the air, and she fell with it.” He was sobbing.

We could see from the angle of her neck it was broken. Neither of us needed to touch her, but we both did anyway. Tried to breathe life back into her limp body. After several minutes, we both fell silent and still.

“What’re we going to do?” Guy asked. “Call the cops?”

I thought for a minute. “Can you imagine telling anyone the whole story? Telling my parents—the cops—our friends what we were doing? That I was giving you…a blow job?” I winced, but got it out. “How she found us and ran away? How you pushed her off the ledge? Accidentally—but still.”

He was crying again and I resisted the urge to join him. “I didn’t push her, Shannon. I was trying to make her stop running—so I could tell her. Explain it didn’t—”

“And how will that sound? That it didn’t mean anything?”

I was thinking as quickly as I could, trying to come up with an idea before he confessed everything. I’d lost my sister. Suddenly, holding onto Guy seemed important. Guy was all I had of hers.

“So what should we say then?”

His voice had gone quiet, submissive. I could feel him working his way back to the idea of telling the truth. Thinking it might just be simpler.

“Look. Maybe we weren’t here at all tonight—you and me. Maybe she found out about us—maybe that we were eloping— something like that, and killed herself. Drove up to a place you’d come to with her and jumped.”

“Eloping?” Guy said, looking at me with repulsion. “What—and then we didn’t do it after all? Elope?”

“No, we’d have to do it. It’d put us miles away from here.”

“You and me—get married?”

“We wouldn’t have to stay married, Guy. Just long enough to put them off.” But then it occurred to me, if not to poor Guy, that I was only seventeen. I couldn’t get married without my parents’ consent.

“Don’t we need a license?”

“Not in Vegas. You can get one on the spot. It’s only a couple hundred miles away.”

“Drive there right now?” He looked incredulous, but inch by inch he was buying the idea. He was a follower at heart and I was—something else.

“No, we’d have to go home first and get birth certificates. ID, that sort of thing.”

“Won’t your parents wonder where she is?”

“They won’t check. They never do.” And perhaps that’s why we were standing where we were.

So the plan was made. We made sure my father’s car could not be seen from the road, and drove home. He picked me up an hour later and we drove from Bakersfield to Las Vegas, got our license in the courthouse, and got married. Guy never noticed the name on the license read Shelley Witt. Never noticed he was officially married to the girl of his dreams and not her slutty sister. Not until months later.

Only after it was all over, after Shelley’s body had been found, investigated, mourned, buried, did he home to me in our horrible little apartment over the drugstore and say, “I guess we can file for a divorce some time soon.”

It was then that I showed him the illegal marriage certificate, threatening to tell the whole story. “How you used me for an alibi after you and Shelley had a fight. How maybe you pushed her off the ledge. How you made me marry you.”

I could see a million ways he could rid himself of me, refute this sad story, but he couldn’t think of one. It was then I realized my father had been right about Guy. That there wasn’t much behind that smile.

“So you mean we’re just going to go ahead?” he asked me, probably measuring my neck against his hands. “Stick it out?”

“For now,” I said.

I’d gotten used to him and his ways. And, eventually, he to mine.

And so I watch him night after night. Waiting for the day he grows tired of it all. For the day he sends me to join my sister. Or joins her himself. Either one will do. I just can’t live with the shame. Not forever at least.
 
BIO: Patricia Abbott has published more than fifty stories in literary and crime fiction outlets. Check out more from Patti at Pattinase.

A Twist Of Noir 688 - Patricia Abbott

WILLIS DUMPHREY AND CARLA BATISTA STABBED IN AN EARLY MORNING HOLDUP - PATRICIA ABBOTT

The only convenient— no, make that the only possible time—for them to have sex was before eight A.M. And to top it off, they had to do it on a narrow cot in the boss’s office. It took Carla back to her high school days when she made love on her mother’s double bed when Mom was at the Chrysler Plant on Jefferson. Travis kept the cot for similar purposes if that was Vera Wang perfume in the fiber. If their wages were any indication, Travis was too cheap to spring for a room.

Travis Gallagher, former ballplayer and now businessman, never came in much before nine, and most days didn’t show up at all. He was about to run for City Council or so the Metro paper said. He never confided in his bartender and cook. Sometimes she worried the scent of their mornings would seep into the room and trip them up, but at some point in the past, it’d become part of it.

The two of them were supposed to come in before nine to set things up. The bar attracted an early lunch crowd—people from downtown offices, the courts, or the stadiums if there was a game. The waitresses and dish-washer started work at ten when things picked up, giving the lovers a nice chunk of time. Carla and Willis finished their shift at six and went home to their spouses. But there was this first—this magic—and almost every day.

It was not a love affair exactly or if it was she was kidding herself. It felt more two lonely horny people taking comfort in each other. Too bad it had to be at this hour, though at some point, it began to seem right. When one of them took a vacation or got sick, the other one grew antsy. Making love with her sixty-year old husband at night twice a month—that’s what seemed odd now. That’s what seemed cheesy or stale.

“You’re going to invite Sweetie in here while I’m gone, aren’t you?” Carla asked, curled up in Willis’ arms. Sweetie was a waitress who’d just turned 22. Willis laughed. They were dressed now but couldn’t quite say goodbye. They had a few minutes. She was going to Lapeer for a few days to help her daughter out with her new baby. It’d be her first grandchild if the kid ever got itself born. Trixie was a week late and showing no signs of an imminent birth and going bonkers waiting. Of course, there was no husband on the scene to calm her down. The lunatic father had hit the road long ago.

Willis was about to say something funny—she could tell from the smile that was beginning to form on his lips—when the door to the office swung open and two men wearing masks pushed into the room, obviously startled to find the two of them. Carla started to scream but then thought better of it. The larger man shrugged and without saying a word, yanked the cord from a lamp, motioned for them to get up, and herded them toward the cold storage unit down the hallway. They could hear the other man rifling the safe as they moved in single file down the hallway. Once inside the storage room, the man inadvertently rubbed up against Willis and his mask slipped down. They saw it was Travis and glanced at each other in shock.

“Too bad,” he said. Just those two words. Looking indecisive for a second or two, he shrugged, pulled a knife from his pocket, and quickly stabbed Willis in the chest and stomach. Willis slid to the floor as blood spurted. His eyes went blank in seconds.

“Travis,” Carla started to say. “You don’t...” She could see terror in his eyes, but also heartlessness. The coldness shut her mouth.

“Money for a campaign’s hard to come by.”

His arm rose over his head as it came down hard into her breast. His ballplayer days were behind him, she thought as she died, but he still had some power in those arms.

BIO: Patricia Abbott has published more than fifty stories in literary and crime fiction outlets. Check out more from Patti at Pattinase.

A Twist Of Noir 615 - Patti Abbott

PORTRAITS OF DETROIT: RAMIR OBABIE - PATRICIA ABBOTT

Ramir watched his father die in ’93, swearing he’d never touch the stuff. Not drugs, nor drink. The smell in Daddy’s room was enough to put him off. Daddy never got past Nam, talked about it for the next twenty-five years, dreamed about napalm, Agent Orange, rounds quickly jammed into a gun, jungle stuff. Hot sweaty nightmares, bone-chilling ones, waking everyone up with his moaning, yelling, thrashing. A bed board pounding the wall didn’t mean sex in the Obabie household. Daddy went to a Vet’s group once or twice, but no one down there encouraged his return. Tyrone was too damned angry for anyone to deal with. Except his wife—and not always her.

The three kids could hear Mama soothing Daddy in a sing-songy voice on those nights. “Gonna be alright, Baby. Gonna be alright.”

It wasn’t all right, though. Tyrone Obabie, who’d picked up the habit during his 1969 tour, cashed out because he couldn’t remember how much heroin he’d already put in his veins.

“Would’ve killed a horse,” the White Coat in the ER said.

“Maybe he wanted it that way,” Ramir’s older sister told White Coat in the corridor in her sassiest voice. She never was any good at dealing with men like him.

“Thirty years of drug use—should’ve done him in years ago.”

Ramir’s older sister had no quick comeback for that. White Coat turned his back on the Obabies.

“Your Daddy wasn’t meant to be a solider.” The children turned to look at Mama. Mama had never said a bad word about Ty, even if she was pretty much used-up by then. Was anyone meant for war, Ramir wanted to ask.

Ramir’s two sisters grew up to be school teachers—one teaching math in a community college. They married, even when nobody else was doing it. Had kids. Moved to Southfield—bought ranch houses with deep back lots that their husbands mowed on Saturdays. Put their father and his ranting and his drug use behind them. Helped their Mother out when she needed an extra twenty, a weekend away, a grandkid to hug.

Ramir—well nothing worked out the way he expected. Didn’t finish high school—even 11th grade—despite his sisters’ team-ragging him whenever they could. Him being the baby only got Ramir so far, and he was just a no-count drag on them eventually.

Mama—she finally tossed him out too— tired of finding his drug shit everywhere—scared of cars stopping outside the house late, sick of coming in from her job book-keeping at an auto parts supplier to find him unconscious on the sofa, weary of dialing 911, sitting by his hospital bed to see if he was gonna join his Daddy.

The only thing Ramir had going for him was his looks. Sometimes girls did tricks, then turned over the money. Not that he was a pimp. They did it without him asking—least most of the time. Put a ten or a twenty in his hand, stuck their hand down his pants. He put their hard-earned money in his nose or his vein. Had a girl out in Troy, white girl too, who earned a hundred dollars a pop. Fixed him up with a new dealer when his old one got sent to Wayne Country Correctional. Said this guy had some sweet stuff for him to try. Something new. Sheila, she was his favorite coochie all right. Took care of him good.

He did everything right, new needle, cleaned the vein, but that drug—that sweet stuff Sheila found—took him to another place, place he’d never been. Couldn’t move, couldn’t shout, couldn’t blink his eyes even. And eventually, he couldn’t breathe.

BIO: Patricia Abbott has published more than fifty stories in literary and crime fiction outlets. Check out more from Patti at Pattinase.

A Twist Of Noir 124 - Patricia Abbott

DE SFINX - PATRICIA ABBOTT

When Milowitz suggested placing red carnations in their lapels, Pappas vetoed it.

“I always tell our clients to wear a carnation.” Milowitz was using the same persuasive tone he'd used twenty-odd years earlier when urging Pappas to help put the pommel horse away after gym class. “The coach’ll cut you a little slack.” By June, the gesture was forgotten and Pappas, unable to climb the rope or make foul shots, got the predictable C.

“With those huge hands and feet, you ought to have some talent,” the teacher had said. “Try out for wrestling or football.” But he never did.

“Changed that much?” Pappas asked his friend, coming back to the present.

“You’ll never recognize me,” Milowitz insisted. “The zits dried up and I shot up in college. And you? Still wear your sideburns cropped like a Nazi? I have very little memory of you, Edward.”

Even over telephone lines, a palpable shadiness clung damply to Milowitz like late winter wool and Pappas found himself alternately repelled and drawn to him. “I was the kid standing in your shadow,” he said, but only after the call was finished.

Pappas had heard through the grapevine that Milowitz lived in Amsterdam. When he bumped into Milowitz’ sister, Meryl, at Trader Joe’s a few weeks back, she confirmed it, pushing the front wheels of her cart over his toes and nailing him to the spot. She’d heard through the same grapevine about him. A number of candlelit dinners and intense conversations followed, leading to his decision to visit Milowitz in Amsterdam.

On the plane, next to an elderly Indian woman gently burping turmeric, Pappas wondered if he’d actually be able to ingratiate himself with Milowitz again. They’d never been that close, he decided over Limerick, gently easing his dozing neighbor off the armrest.

At Schiphol Airport, Pappas spotted his friend at once. Neither flowers nor a sign were necessary.

“And how long were you and Hilary married?” Milowitz asked an hour later, his silk-socked foot shoving a platter of cheese across the coffee table.

“Heather. Her name was Healther. About four years.” The seventeenth century building where Milowitz lived overlooked the Amstel River, where an old tweed couch, commandeered by half a dozen seagulls wearing bits of white batting, made its unhurried way toward the North Sea. “Is Heather,” he corrected himself.

“So how did Meryl and you hook up? Bet she’s still playing the role of caretaker with my father.” Milowitz murmured something else, something sounding unsettlingly like cunt. Then he looked at his watch and jumped up, nearly knocking his beer over. “Doesn’t do to eat too late if we want the best choice in after-dinner fare.”

Pappas had, of course, heard about the Red Light District. As he hurried to keep up, he began to see intimations of local “business” although the boundaries were vague. Pimply youths with tattooed body parts rubbed up against families of tourists and panhandlers. The occasional police officer did little to alter the mood.

The canal reflected the lights above like gooey oils while Milowitz delivered a practiced patter, ending with, “So what’s it going to be old friend? How about the lady we just passed?” He put a proprietary arm across Pappas’ shoulder. “She’s gifted, you know. Has this trick she does with her index toe...”

An Asian woman writhed against the tinted glass, wearing only a red-braided leather thong and matching tasseled pasties. A spray of water drew a silent gasp from her mauve lips. Shivering, she bobbled precariously in six-inch heels.

Pappas was beginning to wonder if Milowitz had gone so far as to set something up when a man in a pinstriped suit arrived and made a quick arrangement with her pimp—a fellow so replete with tattoos that he seemed to be composed of ink. His cackling laugh brought a black woman outside. Leaning heavily on a carved cane and speaking a melodic language, she held the door open, her withered leg exposed by the streetlight. The window went dark. When Pappas showed no inclination toward such an arrangement, his friend said, “Purchasing the services of a professional in Amsterdam isn’t like paying for a Broad Street hooker, Ed.” Grabbing Pappas’ arm, he steered him down a narrow alley.

The next night they drove to Yab Yum.

Milowitz eased his Saab up to the canal side mansion, saying, “Thought you might prefer something a little tonier. Street whores, even ones who’ve been snaked with penicillin, aren’t for every taste.”

Pappas looked warily at the building. It boasted an elegant stone façade with marble trim. Delicate, almost lacy, iron railings bordered the black granite steps. The carved door was wide enough to allow six men entry at once. A well-dressed man with an attractive woman rounded the corner and mounted the steps, both flashing him lewd glances.

“Coming?” The woman had turned, her eyes glittering in the dusk. Pappas bounded up the steps in response, waiting with trepidation until a tuxedoed man opened the door.

Stalactite chandeliers lit red velvet walls in a room brimming with gold embellishments, plush carpets, heavily framed oil paintings, and glass nudes. A horned man suddenly stepped out from behind the splashing Venus Fountain. The women here didn’t look the type to beckon from storefronts; in fact, Pappas couldn’t separate the prostitutes from the guests. But could guests here be classified as normal women? He wasn’t sure.

The last heart-shaped seat at the bar and the requisite martini cost Pappas thirty dollars. Milowitz was at his elbow now, a drink already in hand, whispering, “Surely, you can find something to please you here.” Both men eyed a blonde making her way across the room. Her ice-blue gown swung open as she sank onto a stool, revealing a perfect thigh. Obviously, there’d be no thongs and pasties on display tonight, no sprays of water to spot the velvet or mar the mahogany. Yet the objective was much the same, wasn’t it?

“Am I expected to hand over a month’s salary to get out alive?”

“Depends on what you make in a month,” Milowitz said, casually fingering a red Chinese vase. “You’ll let me take care of tonight, won’t you? Or Nederlanders, that is?”

“Just what sort of job do you have?” Pappas fingered his half-empty glass nervously. He was once again the pimply schoolboy, learning the ropes.

“I bring people here—or to places like it. Didn’t know that?”

“Meryl told me you were in marketing. I imagined you hawking lager at backdoors.” He was momentarily impressed with his ability to come up with that word.

“I market Amsterdam,” Milowitz said, draining his glass. “Shall I summon a girl? It’s worth the price if only to see the suites upstairs. A room for every taste.” He looked at Pappas closely. “Or should I send for a boy? I know you mentioned a Heather but...”

Pappas shook his head. “No thanks. I guess I’m pretty traditional...”

“Paying for sex is a highly traditional activity, Ed. And this place—Yab Yum—has been here forever. I’m worried you’re going blame me later for not showing you a good time.” Sighing, he patted Pappas on the shoulder. “Who put you on to me anyway?”

There was a slightly scabrous tone to his voice. “I’d heard you were here through the usual grapevine.”

“And you just couldn’t stay away?”

“I needed a break. And who doesn’t want to see Amsterdam?”

“And yet you refuse to see its most famous sites. A break, huh?” Milowitz shook his head as they stepped outside, the warmer air slapping them moistly. “I’m starting to remember some things about you, Edward. Didn’t you bike out to the camp my parents sent me to in eighth grade? Turned up in the canteen and scared the shit out of me? My God, it was more than forty miles. You must have pedaled your heart out on that little Schwinn.”

“Raleigh. I did it on a dare,” Pappas flushed. His parents were called to come get him. The boys’ laughing faces popped up at the bunkhouse windows as he waited on the macadam drive.

“So you said at the time.”


Milowitz rented a bicycle for Pappas the next morning. Midway, Milowitz exchanged his ratty old bike for an expensive model at a roadside kiosk.

“Why don’t you just buy a new one?” Pappas asked, watching the elderly woman wheel the old one away.

“It’d be pinched before I broke it in. I keep this one out here for weekends.”

“Why so much theft in a welfare state?”

“The Dutch like to indulge in small acts of crime. Muggings, bike theft, pot, prostitution, graffiti.” He allowed Pappas to catch up. “They save the bigger stuff for the Eastern Europeans and Americans.”

They rode for nearly an hour, finally stopping in a remote part of a woods. The sounds of traffic or even civilization had been long left behind. Milowitz set his bike down and sank onto the ground. “Hotter than I thought.” He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

Pappas nodded. “But not as hot as New Jersey.”

“Well, what is? Hey, Ed, mob still running the state?”

Pappas laughed mirthlessly. “I wouldn’t know much about that.”

Milowitz grabbed a bottle of water from the saddlebag and took a long sip. He held it out to Pappas, who shook his head.

“Right. Hey, I gotta ask you something, Ed. Is this where I get whacked?” Milowitz folded the cloth and put it back inside his pocket. “That’s what you’re here for right. The old whack job.”

“Are you joking?”

“At first, I thought maybe you came here like the rest of them. Those good old boys from New Jersey. Here to sample Dutch wares,” Milowitz said, massaging his calves. “But last night put an end to that idea. Didn’t even flinch when I showed you Amsterdam’s finest.”

“I’m allergic to penicillin for one thing.”

“Pshaw, boy.” Milowitz stretched his arms. “I assume my father’s near death.”

“Meryl didn’t take me into her confidence.”

Milowitz started in on his thighs, massaging muscle after muscle. “But she did hire you to murder me? That much confidence was shared. Right?” When Pappas didn’t answer, he continued. “When I saw you at the airport you looked much like you did at camp. You came crashing into the canteen then looking like you’d won a race. We all just stood there in our tee shirts with Camp Walla Whatsit emblazoned across our chests waiting for an explanation. I’m still waiting.”

“Maybe we should start back.” Pappas prepared to rise. The bottle of water tipped over and ran uselessly into the damp earth.

They both watched it for a minute and then Milowitz pushed him down. “One of the difficult things about entering a foreign country is you can’t bring in a gun. So I’m assuming you plan to strangle me because I heard strangling is your specialty. I remembered the size of your hands before I remembered your face. Your most impressive characteristic. They even call you Sphinx, right? Sphinx means strangler in Greek, doesn’t it, Pappas?”

“Just because we’re from New Jersey...”

“Hear me out, Edward,” Milowitz interrupted. “Because I think you’ll be interested. If you live in Amsterdam, as I do, you have more resources for this sort of game. I, in fact, do have a gun—not registered—despite the tough laws.” He went over to his saddlebag and pulled out a sizeable piece.

Pappas had never liked guns. Especially when he had such a nice pair of mitts on him.

“Now if I pull this trigger, and the guy I dispatched last night to take care of things in New Jersey is successful, well, then I have myself a way out of this fucking pimping business, along with a huge house in New Jersey. I figure I’ll be sitting on $20 million or better.”

“Are you out of your mind? The only place you’ll be sitting is in jail.”

“I think not, old friend. I’m betting no one except Meryl knows you’re here. I’d never have thought of getting rid of my sister if you hadn’t turned up.” His fingers flexed. “But I have a deal for you.”

“A deal?”

“It’s probably a sucker’s deal, but if you tell me why you came up to that camp in 1980, I’ll let you go.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I don’t particularly relish killing you. I could take off right now and you’d never find me. Was it some sort of teenage crush that brought you up there?”

Pappas shook his head. “You won’t like it.”

“Try me. What’ve you got to lose?”

He shrugged after a minute. “Some kid paid me twenty-five dollars to bike up there. I was supposed to catch up with you, and when the other kids were distracted, beat you up.” Pappas paused. “He had some grievance about you cheating him out of a Willie Mays baseball card. Or maybe it was Joe DiMaggio. It was a lamebrain scheme but I’d always been curious to see that camp you went to. That camp you bragged about every fall.”

Milowitz laughed hoarsely. “Then why didn’t you do just that? Beat me up.”

“I took too damn long getting there. It was hell riding those wet roads.”

“And you were a wee bit tubby if I remember. So you finally arrived and...”

“You were at the canteen eating candy with all the other rich kids. No way to do it then. Before I knew it, they had called my parents.” He could remember well the long drive home, the unanswered questions his parents had fired at him.

“A touching if pathetic story, Ed.” After a second or two, Milowitz pulled the trigger.

“Hey, you promised,” Pappas said, sinking to the ground, looking surprised, even though he really wasn’t.

“Sorry, Ed, but I don’t much like my odds in waiting for the next time you decide to come after me. No one could be that lucky a third time. I will always wonder how much Meryl offered you. I hope it was more than that chump in middle school.”

Milowitz pulled the trigger again and Ed was dead.

BIO: Patricia Abbott has published more than fifty stories in literary and crime fiction outlets. She won a Derringer last year for her story, "My Hero." She has stories in the Thuglit anthology "Sex, Thugs and Rock and Roll" (Todd Robinson, ed.) and "Between the Dark and the Daylight" (Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg, editors). Check out more from Patti at Pattinase.

A Twist Of Noir 070 - Patricia Abbott

ON PALADIN ROAD - PATRICIA ABBOTT

Donald Hauser has lived down the road from us since Eleanor and I moved here with our two boys. Our sub, on Paladin Road, was built after a local farmer, tired of turning over rocks instead of sod, sold his land to a developer. The houses are unpretentious ranches, set back a ways from the road. I've never regretted buying the place and Eleanor still refers to it as her dream house, though more for the setting than its undistinguished architecture.

Donald was already here. His three acres or so lay just beyond the parceled farmland and he couldn't be persuaded to sell. He built the house during the war when top quality building materials were scarce, and unlike our house, his sits close to the road. It snows up her, and he probably didn't want to dig himself out a dozen times each winter. Nor did he want to pour the concrete for a long driveway, or run the electrical, sewer and gas lines farther than was needed.

Donald and I became friends of sorts. I write books about antique guns and Donald collects them. Over the years, I’ve inspected many of his purchases and he’s seldom paid too much or been hoodwinked. There must be four-dozen firearms in the mahogany cases lining his front room. I wouldn't mind owning one or two myself, but I haven’t kept a gun in the house since the late seventies when Petey Burleson, a neighbor’s boy, shot his pigtailed sister with the rifle hanging over their fireplace. I had two kids of my own living here then.

Donald and I are both amateur woodworkers. Well, he may be a bit more than an amateur. His place may not be much to look at but it's lasted half a century. It's warm in the winter and tolerable in the summer. A ball will stay put where it’s set; doors stand open till you push them closed.

Donald’s eighty-five now. He's taken on the stiff, shuffling walk of those old enough to fear a fall, and he's grown forgetful. He doesn't change his clothing enough and doesn't always dress "appropriately" for the weather. Of course, eighty-five’s old by any reckoning.

Sixty-five is old, too and I can feel the changes. I grasp at names that would have leaped effortlessly from my tongue not long ago. Ideas are often lost amid the tidal wave of information flowing through my brain. It’s hard for me to look at Donald without seeing where my road leads.

A few years ago, Donald loaned me a few blades for a project. I don't like to borrow things, especially from Donald, who is particular about his tools. I don't care to lend tools either, but do so when asked, having decided long ago that people are more important than possessions.

It was a Sunday and the hardware store in town was closed. I woke up with a project in mind and couldn't wait to get started. I drove over to Donald's place where his wife led me out to his workshop. Years ago, Donald added a small building at the rear of his house and it was there that he did his carpentry. Though the building was modest, it boasted a collection of tools that rivaled any personal workshop. The steely gleam of sharpened tools, the bouquet composed of oils, wax and freshly cut wood, the familiar pitch of a blade making the first cuts into a good piece of Pennsylvania cherry, were intoxicating. Donald turned after a minute, sensing my presence in his chapel. He lowered his goggles as I explained my project, waiting impatiently while I made my selection. I was reminded of the elderly librarian in the mobile library of my youth who seemed determined to keep all her books away from my grimy fingers.

Donald stored his blades in heavily padded envelopes, each one as sharp as the day he bought it. That’s the way Donald did things, fastidious to a fault. Hurriedly, I slid the blades in and out of the envelopes until I had made my choice. Although he feigned disinterest, I was sure he could call out the manufacturer’s code on each one from across the room. I drove home, easily finishing the rough work that required Donald’s blades by dinnertime. I think it was a small pine cabinet for our good set of silverware.

Donald seemed distracted when I knocked on his door early that evening, but took the blades, nodding curtly at my thanks. He didn't ask about my project nor did he exchange a single pleasantry. The fate of his precious blades had probably gnawed at him all day.

A few days later, a hurricane blew up from the Carolinas. The early prediction was it would miss us in Connecticut, but Godfrey, a nasty storm, proved the prognosticators wrong. The electricity went off once the storm hit and several of our trees were felled.

When it was over, Eleanor was especially disheartened by the loss of a dogwood she had been nursing for years. I refrained from saying that a storm like Godfrey is nature's way of weeding out the weak. For the next few days, neighbors who rarely saw each other, came out of their houses to compare hurricane stories.

About a month later, I was in the post office when Donald stopped me. Naturally, we compared hurricane damage and he said that although his house suffered little injury, Godfrey had torn up his shed pretty badly. Some tools and a few nice pieces of wood he’d stashed away were lost or destroyed. When he finally turned to go, a hesitation in his step gave me the impression there was something more, but perhaps I only believe that in retrospect.

A year went by. I think he bought his Winchester during this period and called me over to see it. Then he phoned to ask if we would pick up his mail while he went with Nancy to see a specialist in Boston. She died a few months later and Donald settled into an even more hermetic existence.

Last fall, out of the blue, Donald stopped me outside the house and asked when I was planning to return his blades. It took me several seconds to recall the loan.

"Well, Donald, I returned them the same day I borrowed them. If I remember correctly, they were destroyed in a hurricane that fall."

Various emotions, fear among them, flitted across his face as he tried to remember. I wondered if Nancy's death precipitated some sort of cognitive dysfunction. But finally his face cleared and he grabbed my hand, pumping it vigorously.

"Of course, I remember, Martin. You’ll have to forgive an old man. You just don’t know…" his voice tailed off. Shielding my eyes from the bright autumn sun, I watched him turn and walk down Paladin Road. I put his lapse down to age and shaking my head, went into the house.

"It's a good thing you had the hurricane to anchor the memory," Eleanor said at lunch. "We should have him over to dinner."

I must have made a face because Eleanor laughed gently, saying, "Well, maybe I’ll take him over a cobbler." And I did mean to visit him . The road to hell is paved with meant instead of cement, my mother used to say.

Two weeks before Christmas. I was hanging a string of lights on the blue spruce when Donald came up behind me.

"When are you going to return those blades?" he demanded angrily, shaking the ladder a little.

I got down off the wobbling stepladder, nearly turning an ankle. "Now wait a minute, Donald. I returned those tools years ago. You lost them in that storm!"

He pulled back his arm a little, as if he were going to take a swing at me. If the situation hadn’t been so distressing, it’d have been comical to see a man of his age aching to throw a punch. Or a man of my age, worried about receiving one. But then his face cleared and he chuckled lightly. "Sorry, Martin. I guess my memory's not as good as it was." Insisting he sit down a minute, I went inside to get a glass of water. When I came back out, he was gone.

"Go after him," Eleanor called from the porch. "Could be a stroke."

"It's no stroke," I told her. "Damned near landed one on my chin though."

Eleanor shook her head, and shivering, closed the door.

This scene was eerily repeated in February, and then again in March. Each time, Donald was eventually persuaded his blades had been lost in Hurricane Godfrey. It was as if we were rehearsing a scene in a play and couldn’t get it right. I considered calling his daughter for help, but since I didn't know her, I did nothing.

Suddenly, the freakish encounters stopped, and when I saw Donald next, he waved pleasantly. I accepted the change gratefully. Still, I tried to steer clear of him. Once or twice, I dreamed about Donald grasping agitatedly at my arms or legs. In the dream, my limbs were easily removed and, in that peculiar landscape we travel in at night, I accepted their loss with equanimity. My conscious self was less sanguine, however, for I awoke shaking and tearful.

"What is it?" Eleanor asked, hugging me. But like many dreamers, I shook her off. Then I lay in the dark for hours, listening to Eleanor's faint snore.

I ran into Donald Hauser today in town. I was in the pharmacy, waiting for my order to be filled, and without thinking I stepped between him and the door.

Donald shook my hand, and I sensed reluctance in the grip. "Martin," he said. "How've you been?"

"Fine. And you?"

"Good. Good." He never once looked me in the eye.

"I've been meaning to ask," I said, "did you ever find those missing blades?"

His face collapsed, but he quickly recovered and mumbled something.

"What?"

"I said you would bring that up again. Thief!" He was nearly shouting and his face was the grimace that only the old can wear. He pushed by me, went through the door, and got into his truck. I looked around to see if anyone had heard him. The store was nearly empty, but a girl refilling the aisle with school supplies ducked her head. I was still standing there with my mouth open a moment later when the pharmacist motioned me that my prescription was ready. I could hardly hear his instructions with the beating of blood in my ear. Hauser’s harassment of me would have to stop. I was losing any respect I had earned in my years in this town.

I pulled up at Donald’s house a few minutes after him, but I could already hear the sound of his table saw. He was wearing goggles and ear protection and didn’t hear me. I looked up; there were the blades he’d been talking about hanging on the wall in front of him. The blades he had insisted I had. The beating in my ears moved into my head. He’d tortured me for years with an invented theft.

I backed out of the workshop quietly and went around to his front door, moving in almost a fugue state. The door was unlocked and I walked inside, headed for the one piece of furniture I was familiar with, breaking the glass on his guncase with an umbrella I found in the hallway. I loaded the Winchester and took it back into Donald’s workshop.

I hadn’t held a loaded gun in years; it felt good. The saw stopped suddenly and Donald turned around. I caught him with a bullet in the neck and then the chest. He dropped more quickly than his stiff knees should have allowed.

I pointed to the blades. "I don’t know why you’ve tortured me with those blades, but this is the end of it. My own wife is starting to look at me like I’m crazy. And now you tell the whole town your lie."

Donald looked up, a look of sadness on his face: such sadness. "It was Eleanor who returned them." I could hardly hear him so I moved closer. He put a hand to his neck, attempting to staunch the flow of blood. "She said you were getting forgetful." His eyes closed.

Forgetful? I put the rifle in my mouth and pulled the trigger.

BIO: Patricia Abbott has published more than fifty stories in literary and crime fiction outlets. She won a Derringer last year for her story, "My Hero." She has stories in the forthcoming "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" (Todd Robinson) and Between the Dark and the Daylight" (Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg). Check out more from Patti at Pattinase.