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 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.

A Twist Of Noir 304 - Todd W. Bush

THE BACKSEAT VIRGIN PART 2: A SOUTH FLORIDA NOIR STORY - TODD W. BUSH

’Cause living is good, and dying... not as good. It’s something I heard once and it certainly applies to this situation.

I had two options: the first was to believe the word of a known, and admitted, heroin user who was also a street whore and who lived off her lies; the second involved me taking the side of a psychopathic hitman who knew his business and was good at it. The former was noble, to be sure, because it allowed me to help someone who was in trouble and had lost a friend. The latter, however, gave me a guarantee on my life for at least at the foreseeable future. See what I mean about living and dying?

I liked Lauren, I really did. But she wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy person I’d met this year, or in my life for that matter. If she was right and Sam ‘The Tourist’ Calvante had murdered her friend Jessica, then poking my nose into it might put me next on the list. If Lauren was to be believed, then Jessica was the infamous ‘Backseat Virgin,’ and she’d been raped repeatedly, shot, and then her body mutilated and dismembered before being stuffed into the trunk of a car.

Calvante was an enforcer for the Vasciano family, who had control over the second biggest crime empire in South Florida. His legend preceded him because he didn’t just kill for his boss, he killed in extremely brutal ways.

What was done to the Virgin was certainly well within his element. But then again, this was South Florida, and people died every day, some of them in horrendous ways, some just from the odd elevator or faulty motorized wheelchair accident. Just because Calvante was a sick bastard, doesn’t mean he killed the Virgin anymore than it meant I did it because I frequented some of the bars in the area where she was found.

And just in case you were wondering, I didn’t do it.

I was preparing for a lazy morning at home before the first weekend of college football started. I had a hundred on Florida State; they were giving 24 to some school from Idaho or Montana, and even though their defense sucked last year, I was counting on them scoring in bunches. But then I made a big mistake: I checked my work voice mail.

“He-e-e-y there, PI Guy, it’s, um... it’s Lauren! So, yeah... like you gave me your card and stuff... ain’t that so like... like professional and stuff? I mean, I never got nobody’s card before, least not anybody who gave it to me cause he wanted to... I mean, I found a couple in between the seats of cars and shit. You know, Jess taught me that shit. Damn, I miss her, man. Jess Mulholland... that sexy ass blonde hair with the roots, them brown eyes, those nice tits and that ass... holy fuck was she hot. Anyway, PI Guy, call me sometime and let’s get together. I might even give ya a freebie, you know, ’cause I kinda thought you was hot, too.”

She left her number then seemed to try three times to hang up before she finally got it. Apparently she had called from a home phone; I didn’t think anyone under thirty-five had a home phone anymore. I didn’t know what to do with the message, so I just saved it and went back to my relaxing morning.

Only my brain wasn’t cooperating.

Seven hours later and Lauren’s message was still playing in my head. And it wasn’t because of the offer of a free romp in her bed. I might pick lousy girlfriends, but I wasn’t about to get into a heroin addict’s sack, free or not. I thought maybe dinner at my favorite place would help clear my head. So I headed to a sports bar that only locals knew about or ever went to, and even called to put down another hundred on the Ohio State-Texas game later that night. Had to do something to make up for what I’d lost that day on FSU. Effing kicker blew an extra point and the ’Noles won by 23.

The place was empty except for a couple of barflies flirting up the manager. A waitress named Wilma took my order of hot, wet wings and ice cold beer, and I was left alone with my thoughts again. Unfortunately, not for long.

The front door opened and three very large, very angry-looking men approached my table with none other than Vinnie Vasciano.

He didn’t look healthy. His skin was pasty white, and I thought I could see the veins in his face. Dark circles sat under his eyes and the whites were now a bright shade of red. Vinnie G had clearly been doing some thinking about our conversation. He sat down without asking and his goons took seats at other tables, creating a tight little circle for us to talk in. Wilma started out of the kitchen with my wings in one hand and my beer in the other. She showed she had no sense or bigger balls than most men as she split the enforcer ring and laid my order down on the table. I was glad, too; my mouth had gone drier than a desert.

I sipped my beer and asked Vinnie what I could do for him.

“I thought about our conversation yesterday, Mr. Price. I know you and Carmine are friends from school up north, and I know he encouraged you to come to me with your information. It couldn’t have been easy for you, and I commend your bravery and gumption.”

I nodded my thanks, only because I had no idea what to say. He filled the silence with a smile.

“You may eat if you wish while we speak.”

I wondered if it was protocol to offer a Mafia don a hot wing if he was sitting at your table.

“Mr. Price, I want to employ you for a job.”

“What’s the job?” I asked, in between bites on a drummy.

“Find out if Sam Calvante killed the woman known as The Backseat Virgin.”

I put down the bone in my hand and took a big gulp of my beer. It was cold, and the alcohol made the heat from the wings scorch my taste buds even more. Just like I liked it.

“I’m not interested in finding out who killed her, Mr. Vasciano. I got that information from a less than reliable source—”

“I thought it was a client who came to you with this information.” Sharp, this guy. Guess that’s why he’d run a mob family for over two decades without being killed.

“She was a client, but a... special one.”

“So she wasn’t a paying one. I understand.”

No, but she did offer me free sex. But I didn’t think that was relevant to the conversation.

Vasciano adjusted in his seat and came up with an envelope. I looked at it as it lay on the table next to my beer. He looked at it, too, like there was some divine answer in it and he was trying to see through the paper to read it. Finally, he looked up at me, the bloodshot eyes were determined and relentless.

“Mr. Price, there is a check in this envelope for $62,500 dollars. Find out if Calvante killed the girl, then report back to me. If you should find out that he did not do it and then learn the name of the person who did, you may take that information to the police. However, if you find out that Calvante did in fact kill this woman, you will not approach the authorities. That information will be communicated only to myself or a member of my organization. Is that understood?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. “If you complete this job, you will receive another check for the same amount.” Without another word, the four of them got up and walked out the door, leaving me alone with nine blazing hot chicken wings, a rapidly warming beer and a check for more than I’d ever made in my life.

Did I care who murdered the Virgin? Hell no. Did I want to be anywhere near Sam Calvante? An even bigger hell no. But would I do those things for money? Fuck yes.

Her name, according to Lauren, was Jessica Mulholland. She was a bottle-blonde with brown eyes and apparently a nice body. And if the first conversation I’d had with Lauren was true, then she was also a kinky street whore who had banged the wrong guy. And now she was going to be my job. Gotta love my life.

I called a contact with the Motor Vehicles department, but no Jessica Mulholland in her age range had ever had a driver’s license in the state of Florida. I struck out again with the sheriff’s office, which meant she’d never been arrested. So she was a lucky street walker. Or maybe she had just started and her turn in the clink hadn’t come yet.

Lauren had been arrested only once, I found out from the same source at the SO. Her name was Lauren Baker, and she was 23 years old. I was in my office, contemplating how to find Jessica when I saw the blinking light on my phone. Lauren’s message was still saved on my system. My brain was running through her message again and her offer. She wasn’t bad looking, that was for sure. And I knew that she’d done some porn, so you knew she was at least pretty good at what she...

I sat straight up in my seat and dialed a number from memory. Carmine ‘CT’ Trubone wasn’t my only friend from my school days back in the New York area that lived on the shady side of society in South Florida. The call was answered on the second ring, like he’d been waiting for me.

“Detective Lee Price, what in the hell do you want?” A cigarette was in the guy’s mouth making every word only come halfway out.

“Hey, Shooter, I need a favor.” ‘Shooter’ was Greg Shubert, the owner, operator, lead director, and chief male star of Shu-Fly Productions, one of the hundreds of porn companies that had sprung up in the area over the last decade. Shooter had walked a balancing act between reputable businessman and a casting couch sleaze ball; he was also a virtual encyclopedia of the women who were in the industry in South Florida.

“No problem, Price. Hey, you get that latest flick I sent you?”

“Yeah, I did, thanks. Always good to see your mind at work, Shooter.”

“What can I say, Price? I know great ’tang and great talent when I see it.”

“Listen, you remember a girl by the name of Lauren Baker? Early twenties, brunette, might been in the biz a couple years ago then got out.”

He hummed as he thought, and I could hear him clicking a pen in his hand.

“Was she thin, thick, what?”

“Midwestern girl, curvy.”

“Oh, shit yeah! I did a shoot with her once, uh... I think it was the ‘Welcome’ series. Wasn’t very into it, though, so we dropped her. A real good cooch, but a dead fish on camera.” He was talking about his most popular line of movies: ‘Welcome to South Beach, Now Fuck!’ He’d sent me a couple of them as a Christmas gift one time. That Shooter, what a friend.

“In fact, Price, she was right up your alley. Even had a nice landing strip just like you like ’em.”

Having your fetishes quoted back to you tends to make you cringe. No difference in my case. But I had someone else to ask him about.

“What about Jessica Mulholland?”

“Describe her.”

“Bottle-blonde, nice body, brown eyes.”

“Hold on, let me look. That Mulholland like the road in LA?” I told him it was and listened as he tapped on his computer. Less than ten seconds went by before he laughed. “You’re two for two, Price. I worked with her, too. Why you need to know? Got a party coming?”

“No, can you e-mail me over a pic or two of both of them?”

“Will do. This about a case?”

“Something like that. Listen, since they worked with you, can you also put their contact info in the e-mail?”

“Sure, not for sure it’s good or not, but I’ll put it in there. You know these girls, Price. If they don’t get big or get dirty, they go away.” He had no idea how dead on right he was. I thanked him and hung up. The e-mail was in my inbox within five minutes. Shooter hadn’t just sent me pictures of Lauren and Jessica; he’d sent me a zip file containing their model pics and one scene from a movie of his for each of them.

I opened Lauren’s picture first. Everything about her had changed, even the eyes. It was the same girl who’d been in my office, but drugs and life on the street had taken their toll. In the pictures, she was incredibly attractive. Then I looked at Jessica Mulholland. If anything, she was even better looking than Lauren. And the intensity in her eyes showed even in the pictures. I didn’t want to see the videos, but I opened them nonetheless. Shooter was right: you could see that Lauren didn’t want to be doing porn.

It showed in her face, and I saw why Shooter had dropped her. Jessica, on the other hand, was an absolute tiger. No matter how hard or forceful her partner got with her, she pushed him for more. Where Lauren had done only the basics in her scene, Jessica’s contained every possible position and kink that Shooter’s company allowed in that series.

I closed the file out and put my head in my hands. I had one more call to make and I hoped it wasn’t going to work out. Anyone who had an apartment had a phone number. I called a friend who worked at the phone company and asked if a Lauren Baker or Jessica Mulholland had ever had a phone number in the area. She said that two years prior they had both had the same number, listed as an apartment in the middle of east Broward County and that another female, a Denise Coughlin, had that number at the same time as well. I sighed, thanked her and put the phone down.

Everything Lauren had said was turning out to be true. Jess was aggressive and open-minded. They had both been into porn, then gotten out around the same time. They shared an apartment with a girl named Denise. This meant that Denise, Lauren and Jessica had more than likely gone on calls together as escorts, and that Denise and Lauren had probably gone on the fateful call together that had lead to the gruesome murder. It also meant that Jessica Mulholland was almost certainly The Backseat Virgin.

And the worst part of all, it meant that I had to confront maybe the most dangerous man in South Florida: Sam Calvante, a man with a secret life that he would kill to keep that way.

To Be Continued...

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 301 - Todd W. Bush

THE BACKSEAT VIRGIN, PART 1: A SOUTH FLORIDA NOIR STORY - TODD W. BUSH


She was called ‘The Backseat Virgin’ even though she was found in the trunk of a car, and probably wasn’t a virgin. Who is anymore? The press loved the label, and ran with it as they so often do in these cases. They’d been writing about it for well over a year and a half when it came to my door just off Flagler and 2nd. I certainly didn’t go looking for it, but find me it did.

I’m a PI, but contrary to what you might read in the pulps, we don’t solve murders. Want to find out if your wife is banging her tennis pro? I’m your guy. Need info on your husband and whether he’s getting his pubes groomed by a fruit down on South Beach? I can handle it. Lost kids stuck in the seedy side of the porn boom, lost money from a relative who flew south from Ontario and never came back, and even the occasional lost dog... those I’ll do. And don’t knock the pet thing, I once made a cool five Gs off some Palm Beach widow who couldn’t find her prize Pomeranian. The bikinis she always greeted me in at her mansion were enough of a payment, but I took the money anyway.

The Virgin was an unidentified girl who’d been found by some of the non-existent homeless in Sunny Isles north of the more famous celebrity-sighting hotspots. Our local mayors, in preparation for the big upcoming football game, decided that we went from a major homeless problem to not a single bum this side of Orlando. Amazing how that happens, huh? So these make-believe characters stumbled on an abandoned Mercedes E Class near the beach. Figuring that it might make a nice bed, they broke in, but the car smelled worse than they did. So they made an anonymous phone call and an hour later the police found her.

She was cut into between five and ten pieces depending on what paper you believed, and had been raped numerous times before being killed. Thankfully, the murderer shot her before the dismemberment, or at least that’s what the papers said. She probably wasn’t, but when and if her family was found, you didn’t want them thinking she had suffered. That always bothered me. She was raped in every hole she had for hours, but that isn’t painful at all. Just so long as she didn’t suffer.

The police tried in vain to find an ID, but she wasn’t clothed, and her purse wasn’t in the trunk or the car with her. She was a white blonde in her twenties, but there were thousands of those in the missing person files. Her prints didn’t match up, nor did her dental records. A reporter from the Palm Beach Post put a bare-bones article in his paper, mistakenly saying she was found in the car’s backseat. The ones out of Fort Lauderdale and Miami got it right, but the name stuck. She became The Backseat Virgin.

I got to know her from a girl who was definitely not a virgin. Lauren would never be cast as the ‘hooker with a heart of gold’ in some lame crime drama, but she was the real thing. Mousy hair, thin as a fence post and so jacked up on crack when she nearly fell through my door, I thought I was going to have a dead body on my hands. I did, just not Lauren’s.

She told me her name and started to elaborate on her situation, words coming out slurred and slow, like she’d spent too much time watching movies and knew that’s the way she was supposed to talk.

I caught her before she split her head on the faux marble floor of my office reception area. Wouldn’t have mattered to my other clients if she did; I hadn’t had any since the $5,000 Pomeranian lady in the thong bikinis.

“Whoa there, lady... lie down and let’s get you comfortable.”

She’d dropped wadded up twenties on the white floor, along with a condom wrapper and a roll of mints. Typical fare for a street walker. After settling her on a couch I keep for clients, I looked out the door to make sure no one was with her, then closed it. An accountant from Harvard was next door in my building. No need getting the blue bloods in a tizzy because of an unconscious hooker.

An hour later, she was awake, drinking from one of my cone-shaped water cups and chattering like a chipmunk.

“Thanks for the water, I really needed it. It’s fucking hot out there today,” she said. Her accent put her hometown somewhere in the farmlands of the Plains.

“It should be; it’s August.”

“I know, right? You’d think I’d be used to it, since I’m from here and all.” Her first lie of what I assumed was many more to come.

“What exactly are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’m an actress and a model, or at least trying to be. Got a few roles in the last few weeks with a small... um... a small theater in town.”

Translation: I wanted to get into modeling, but got sucked into porn. It was common theme with the girls who wound up on the street in South Florida. “No, I meant what are you doing in my office?”

“Oh, sorry, not sure what you meant there. Sometimes my mind just gets a little frazzled. Ever had that happen to you? I get thinking about one thing, and it wants me thinking about another. Never can tell what kind of path it’s going to lead me on from one day or minute to the next—”

“Lauren?”

“Sorry, I did it again, huh? Anyway, I wanted to find someone who could help me with something I found out from my last... um...”

“John. They’re called ‘johns,’ Lauren.”

The brief flash in her eyes went the typical route. From fear, to paranoia, to shame, to a steely resolve that could only be earned in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car, not knowing what got you to that place, but knowing it was the only thing keeping you and your kids fed.

“You judging me, asshole?”

“Not at all. I just wanted to know why you’re sitting in a private investigator’s office.”

She took a couple of seconds to measure her response and my trustworthiness. Finally convinced, she let it spill. And it was a pile of shit I couldn’t even come close to cleaning up.

Lauren had indeed come down to South Florida from the Plains. Kansas, to be exact. After hearing too many Dorothy and Toto jokes, she magically became a Florida native. Rejections led to a lack of money, and the fall of the job market led to porn. She wasn’t ugly; in fact, she used to be pretty and at one time had a Midwesterner’s curvy body, so she attracted several shoots. But taking direction while her privates were exposed for the entire world to see, and being treated like an underpaid hooker wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, so she decided to try the real thing.

But a rotten agency owner took her money and sent her on her way to homelessness. I thought about correcting her, telling her that South Florida didn’t have people on the streets without a roof over their heads, that it was just an illusion, but it wasn’t the time for my brand of humor. Two months later, she was living in a shithole apartment with two other girls who were also street walkers. Denise from a small town in Georgia and Jessica from New York City. The three became each others’ bodyguards, going out to work together, and always having the other two’s cell phones on speed dial. In their business, you can’t just call the cops if some guy wants some beat down with his go down.

“Anyway, this was about a year or two ago. Jessica and Denise went on a call together. One of them had a regular who used to call once a month or so and get two of us to go play with him. I went a couple of times.” She visibly shuddered when she said it.

“You okay? Need some more water?”

That got a smile. “I’d prefer a shot.”

I obliged her with a cone-shaped pull of the Jim Bean in my fridge, then urged her to go on.

“So Jess and Dee went that night and never came back. Both of them had the problem, you know?” A discreet motion to her arm where a less-worldly soul might have seen acne was all it took. I’d been right, but got the drug wrong. Heroin; son of a bitch. “So I didn’t much worry until they’d been gone for a week.”

“What happened after a week?”

“By then, I’d found a couple other girls to split the room with, and we weren’t real close you know? I mean, we were friends, but...”

It was the life. Girls either wound up one of two places: jail or in the morgue. So making life-long BFFs wasn’t on the agenda.

“Anyway, Dee came by about a month ago. Jess had been caught the next day with some H on her. Cops said she was a dealer, but that was bullshit. Dee just bought as much as she could, right? So she wouldn’t have to go back to that part of town too often.”

“And Jessica?”

A single tear slowly made its way through the caked-on makeup on her cheek. I caught myself staring at it as she talked. The room was getting smaller by the second.

“Dee said she stayed the night with the guy. On account that Jess was braver than she was... hell, she was braver than all of us.”

“Braver?”

“Yeah, she’d try more weird shit. You know, taking it in the butt, all that?”

“Ok.”

“Anyway, so Jess stayed with the guy and Dee looked her up when she got out. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody’s heard from her.” Her eyes were reaching out for a hope I couldn’t understand or give her.

I leaned in on my elbows, willing her to keep going.

“I mean... she was a blonde, you know? Like the Virgin?”

Oh, boy, I thought. “Look, Lauren... uh... I know why you didn’t go to the police and all, but the chances that your friend is this girl—”

“It’s her, Mr. Price. I’m telling you; it’s her!”

“Lauren, please, call me Lee. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s astronomical, really. The odds makers in Vegas wouldn’t even take it.”

I stood up and reached for one of my cards on my desk. She stood up, too, but all the fire had drained out of her face. I put the card in her hand and started to lead her to the door.

“I’ll look into it, and then give you a call.”

“You don’t have my number,” she said. The girl was bright, I’ll give her that.

“Right.” I ran back for another card and a pen. She wrote down a number on the back and slipped it into my shirt pocket. It was a move she’d practiced many times and she was damn good at it.

“The guy, the customer, aren’t you at least interested?”

“You know him by name?”

“Not by name, but by address. Just off Pines Bay, in Pinecrest.” Oh crap. Pinecrest meant one thing: money and a shitload of it. “The guy had a New York accent and every time I was there, he was getting calls from some guys named Jackie, Joey, and Benny.”

“Say those names again.” I didn’t want her to, hoping she’d made a mistake, but she repeated them. Separately, they were just names. Together they meant the Vasciano family, the second most powerful crime organization in South Florida. And they also meant trouble. Only two people in the family would talk to ‘Benny Baconator,’ Joey Trubone, and the boss’s son, Jackie Vasciano. One was the man himself, Vinnie G, which wasn’t possible because he lived on Hibiscus Island, and because I figured even a transplanted Kansan street walker would recognize Vinnie.

The other was just as bad. Salvatore ‘Sam the Tourist’ Calvante was the family’s enforcer and fix-it man. Problems didn’t just go away when he got involved; they disappeared. If he was the client that Jessica and Denise had visited that night, and if Jessica was the Virgin, then he was definitely willing and able to dismember a body. But, those were big coincidences and poking around in Vasciano family business wasn’t good for longevity, especially on the word of a heroin-junkie hooker.

I was about to hustle her out the door and forget the whole thing when she got one more word in. “Check the registration on the car... the plates.”

With that, she was out the door, on her way. I couldn’t stop myself.

“What about it?”

She stopped halfway down the hall and turned, batting her eyes. “The police never gave any info about the plates, remember?”

I didn’t, but I said I did.

“They were from New York. And the car was his wife’s before she got the Benz.” A quick wink and a shake of her narrow hips and she was gone.

*


I’d grown up in New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Midtown Manhattan. The original area run by the Vasciano family was within a good shot off a metal baseball bat from where I played as a kid. I knew some of the kids who’d grown up to work in the business, even though I’d gone on to be a cop with the Broward County Sheriffs in South Florida. I left as a 21-year old college drop-out with two and a half years of school, an associate’s degree, and a burning desire never to see New York again under my belt. And I turned all that into almost a decade of undistinguished work with the BSO. I took my knowledge, my ‘Police and Investigative Experience’ bullshit that was on my resume and ads in the phone book, and hung out my shingle.

One of the many things I maintained from my days in and around the city was a friendship with Carmine ‘Little Minnie’ Trubone. Joey Trubone was his cousin on his father’s side and the one who’d recruited him into the business side of the family. CT, as I’d always called him, didn’t mind that I’d become a cop, and had even tossed me some work in my days on the narc squad. The fact that the guys I took down because of the tips were from his boss’s competition didn’t matter to me. A collar is a collar in police work, doesn’t matter who it is.

CT was sitting on his porch smoking when I walked up. A love of cigarettes was one of the many things we’d shared as kids, and now was no different. I lit up and he offered me a beer from a cooler near his chair.

“How goes it, Ash?” Carmine Trubone was one of the few people in the world who knew my given name was Ashley Price, and was nice enough to only call me Ash in private. It was the same reason I never called him Minnie.

“It goes. I need some help.”

“Well,” he said. “You coming to me for help? What, you doing contract work for the BSO now, looking for dealers?”

“Not exactly, CT. This one’s a little...” I couldn’t find the right word.

“You caught a tiger by the fucking balls, didn’t you?” CT always had a way with words.

I nodded. “And I have no effing clue what to do with ’im now that I got ’im.”

“What’s it involve?”

“A business associate of yours.”

“Management or a worker?”

“Management.”

“Upper?”

A nod was all he’d get in reply.

He blew smoke out of his nose and took a long swig off of a bottle of Brooklyn Lager. CT had his boys ship him down a couple dozen cases every few months. It was his favorite, and I had to admit, a favorite I missed from back home. He wasn’t about to ask for a name, and I wasn’t going to give him one.

“What’s it involve?”

“A girl.”

“Oh, come on, Ash,” he said. The cigarette sailed halfway across the parking lot and hit my windshield. I thought his aim was deliberate. “You know damn well we don’t give two shits who those guys are banging, unless it’s somebody’s wife, and even then he better be just as important and she better be pretty fucking hot.”

“It’s not who he’s banging. It’s who he banged...and maybe killed.”

That got his attention and he took another pull off the beer and lit another smoke. “You know the girl?”

“My client did.”

“You sure he did it?”

“No... not even sure he’s involved, except that he definitely did the banging,” I said.

“Then, let’s go inside and finish these beers.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were in his Range Rover on Biscayne Boulevard heading downtown. CT had the windows down, a cigarette in his hand and Bon Jovi blasting out of his speakers. And it wasn’t modern-day near-country Bon Jovi, either. It was mid-80’s big-hair Bon Jovi. From the ‘New Jersey’ album. CT was a walking, talking cry for the reinstatement of profiling.

“You gonna tell me who it is, Ash?” I could barely hear him over the guitar solo on ‘Bad Medicine,’ so I turned it down slightly. It was still too loud for anybody to hear us, but at least we could hear each other.

“You sure you want to know?”

“Yeah, might as well tell me.”

I hesitated and lit a smoke of my own. It gave me time to decide whether I wanted to put myself that much closer to death in a particularly nasty manner. He beat me to the punch.

“It’s Sam, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Shit.” He was right. Shit.

He drove two blocks on Biscayne in the middle of typical downtown Miami traffic in total silence, which meant I had nearly ten minutes to think of a way to go back in time and take the name back.

“Lee... this is bad, man.” I got worried. Way more than I’d been a minute before. CT didn’t call me Lee unless he was really serious or scared.

“How bad is it?”

“Like we both might get it bad.”

“Even with your last name?” I said.

“That don’t mean shit when it comes to Sam, man. The guy’s nuts. What’d you find out?”

I had already decided not to give away Lauren’s name or anything about her. I just told him the basics, without any names.

“Holy shit,” he said after I’d finished. “The Backseat Virgin? Fuck, man, we made jokes after it happened at the club that it sounded like something Sam would do. I never actually thought... Fuck!” He beat the heel of his hand on the steering wheel.

“What do I do, CT?”

“The only thing we can do, Ash.” He’d used ‘we’. I was starting to get back the trust I’d once had for CT when we were friends, chasing girls and causing havoc in our teens.

I threw my cigarette out the window onto Biscayne as we took a left on 18th. “What?”

“We’re gonna go see the man.” He pulled into a parking spot in front of the Doubletree Grand Hilton, where Tony Chan’s Water Club dominated the whole bottom floor. A dozen black Lincoln town cars were parked and waiting for their rich and powerful owners eating and drinking inside. But the only pearl white one with a driver built like an NFL linebacker leaning on the hood cleaning his Glock .40 belonged to the man. I said what I was thinking aloud, even though I didn’t need to. It just made the whole situation more real.

“We’re going to see Vinnie Vasciano.”

*

Vinnie Vasciano looked out the back window of Tony Chan’s Water Club and seemed to be disappointed with the tremendous view. It was like he wanted something more than the clear blue sky, the gentle waves lapping at the white sand of Sunny Isles beach. He pulled at his bushy eyebrows. I’d heard it was a habit that meant he was in deep thought. I hoped it wasn’t over how best to dispose of my body.

“You sure about this information, Mr. Price?” It was the first thing he’d said since I started retelling the story I’d learned from Lauren earlier than day in my office. The only sound he made, in between bites of sushi and sips of very expensive whiskey, was the occasional grunt or soft cough. I didn’t know if he was listening or not, but I didn’t dare ask. The man feared no one, not even his biggest competition in South Florida who had double the men Vinnie had.

“I have no reason to doubt my client, Mr. Vasciano.” That was a lie, and I hoped Vinnie didn’t pick up on it. I had every reason to lie. My client was a heroin junkie whose only real source of income was playing strangers’ fiddles in their cars behind dumpsters. A real pillar of truth and honesty that one was.

He wiped his mouth with the napkin, downed the last of the whiskey and nodded his head. His two bodyguards stood as well. Apparently my audience was over.

“Mr. Price, I know of your reputation in South Florida. You came down here about the same time as my family, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” For some reason, I felt like I was talking to a superior in the police department.

“You have an excellent record. Some of your cases have come to our attention. Nothing you’d notice, mind you, but rest assured that all matters were handled in a manner in which we were satisfied.”

“I’m happy I could be of service, sir.” I hoped my sarcasm didn’t piss him off. It normally got my ass in more trouble than I could handle.

“If this client of yours is correct, and Mr. Calvante is the one who is responsible for this horrible crime, then it is a matter that we’ll handle internally.”

It was like I was talking to a bureaucrat with a Fortune 500 company, not a man who’d ordered the death of dozens of people in the last ten years. My fear of Vincent Vasciano didn’t go away; on the contrary, it grew.

“Mr. Vasciano, I’m hoping that this information isn’t true. I wouldn’t want anything I did—”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Price. We won’t blame you personally. ‘Shoot the messenger’ isn’t an Italian phrase.” His laugh was like a baby’s rattle and bits of food splattered across the linen tablecloth.

I got up to leave, thankful I was leaving with everything attached and still in the right place. CT walked me out to his car and drove us back to his apartment. We didn’t talk until he’d punched the code to get through the gate at his complex.

“You know, Ash, something’s bothering me about that story of yours.”

I was taking a drag off my cigarette and nearly choked on the smoke. “Well, thank Christ you didn’t say anything back there when we were talking to Vinnie. I might not have walked out there with my balls.”

“Oh, it’s not anything too big. I still think Sam could be the guy. But, well, it’s two things really.”

“The first one is?”

“There’s no way in hell you’re going to listen to Vinnie and stay away from this. You may say you’re not the Marlowe-like private dick, walking the so-called mean streets and holding on to your humanity in one hand and a .38 in the other, but I know you. You’re not letting this thing go; you’ll follow it until you figure out what went down that day to that girl. Or at least until Vinnie threatens to actually cut your balls off. ”

I didn’t say anything to that. CT knew me before, and that wasn’t me now. I used to be so high and mighty, so full of the hunt of justice. But not now. Everyone wanted their local PI to be like the one they saw on TV, but I wanted to live more than I wanted justice. I had morals, but I didn’t let them get me killed.

“And the second, oh, brilliant Swami?”

“I’m sure Sam could have been into some kinky shit and all. But, hell, a threesome with two chicks ain’t that kinky anymore, pal. Everyone’s done that, you know?”

“Well...”

“Oh, man, Ash. I’ll set you up one day, buddy. Count on it. But that’s not what I was getting at. Sam has other... well... two chicks wouldn’t be what got him off.”

“What are you getting at, CT?”

“Sam’s gay, bro.”

To be continued...


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 260 - Todd W. Bush

BLUE NEON BITCH - TODD W. BUSH

The blue neon fit perfectly with the hot, driving rain. Summer in South Florida... home of sweat, showers, and sin.

Ruby’s wasn’t on the list of typical tourist traps they pushed in every rest stop from here to Orlando. In fact, about the only list you’d find this place on was the cops’ roll call of monthly raiding destinations. I stood under the eight-foot blinking bitch, trying in vain to keep from drowning in the midst of Joyce’s fury. Middle of hurricane season and this little floozy of a storm decides to spring up and drop a ton of water on us while barely moving a muscle. I’d lived here my whole life, so of course I didn’t own a single fucking overcoat. And an umbrella in a hurricane was about as stupid as trying to find a saint in a strip club.

And yet, here I was.

A door opened behind me and the dusty foyer looked better than my bed. The stench of stale beer, cigarettes and cheap perfume enveloped all who dared to enter these doors. To me, it just smelled like life.

The bouncer looked like part of the wall. Why all strip clubs made their hired male help wear all black was beyond me. Maybe so they could sneak up on anyone who got too close to the girls after having a few too many. But in Ruby’s wasn’t that the whole idea? His voice was too soft for his gargantuan frame. It tried to be dangerous, but fell just around creepy. Especially with his bald black head and the tufts of chest hair sprouting from his collar.

“You Vaughn?”

I only nodded.

“He’s in the back.”

I wish I could say that I was confused about what ‘back’ he meant. The back store room where the extra black shirts were kept, the back kitchen where they tried to cook bar food, or the back booths where what passed for gangsters and kingpins tried to look important in a way that made them look fake. But I knew the back was really the back curtain area, where ‘stuff’ happened.

The girl behind the front counter, with the name of Julie and the body of a porn star, was all smiles as I passed straight into the main room. I tried to ignore the fact that she knew me by name. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed. I’d passed that bridge a long time ago and blown the son of bitch up as soon as I crossed it. It’s just that occasionally I felt that little something in my gut. Something that tells me just how far down the road I’d gone.

‘He’ was Jerry O’Shea. Currently residing in Private #2 with the ‘lovely and talented Jasmine’, as she was called by the fast-talking, coke-dealing DJ. I’d seen Jasmine and one out of two ain’t bad as far as the truth goes in a place like this. Jerry O’Shea had his lips curled in what looked like a cross between a snarl and a smile, and his hands furiously groping at rocks that could have knocked him out if their owner had decided to shake her bon-bon. His pants were around his ankles, as were his tightie-whiteys. Jerry O’Shea was having the time of his life. He was also a local city commissioner with a sparkling record of morals and values, whose real name was Juan Alvarado.

Black hair, eyes the color of polished coal, and skin like a tanning booth worshiper. Jerry Fucking O’Shea. What a moron.

He was also my responsibility. Pete, my boss, and because of the multitude of legal and illegal campaign donations he’d steered his way, Jerry/Juan’s boss too, had put me on watchdog duty. It wasn’t my first choice, but then again, dogs rarely got a choice what kind of job they got. All we needed was to get fed, get some water, a scratch behind the ear, and, in my case, be well paid. Loyalty was the reward Pete got. And I was about to fuck the whole thing up, thanks to this prick sitting in Private #2.

I’d been called before, but this time was different. My boss wanted Jerry to move from the city commission to some sort of county position. And Jerry’s wife was a real Latina. Fiery is too tame a word. And dead would be too easy a way of describing what she’d make him if she knew he was here with his manhood in Jasmine’s talent and his political future somewhere around his briefs. I had to get him out of here before someone that wasn’t on Pete’s payroll came in and saw him. The chances of that in Ruby’s on a weekday night were slim, but that ‘slim and none’ shit had ruined more lives than any vice my boss could ever make money off of.

Gargantuan Bouncer Man was behind me as I looked at the councilman bouncing the bimbo on his lap. I could have done this without his help, but then he’d be down a lovely and talented Jasmine. Not that I tried to mess up women often, but I didn’t have time. Not even Pete knew when the cops did their raids. I tried my best to convey this with just a look. Apparently, my eyes spoke whatever language his did because he laid a hairy black paw on Jasmine’s shoulder.

She turned, saw me, but barely even noticed I was there. Eight lines of coke and a dozen highballs a night will do that to you.

Jerry O’Shea, aka Juan Alvarado, turned his half snarl/half smile into a whole frown. I kicked at his pants, and he made a show of whining as he pulled them up. Looked like a five year old who’d just gotten his toy truck taken away. Jasmine made sure to take the whole stack of money laying on the counter in Private #2. She’d need it to pay for line number nine.

Pete would have me cut into nice edible pieces for his other dogs if I didn’t get Jerry out of here.

I’d been watching him for just over a month without incident. He’d banged more tail in that month than he’d seen in his lifetime, but all of it was done either at one of Pete’s apartments or on my couch in my apartment. Why the asshole thought he needed to sneak off to Ruby’s for a piece was beyond me. My drug of choice this time was Jack Daniels, and it nearly cost me my life. If I didn’t get Jerry into my car and back to my place soon, it might still.

The addiction that normally called and killed me was the same one that had latched onto my politician friend tonight. I didn’t let Julie the Counter Girl even get a chance to look up as I pushed Jerry out the door and into Joyce’s teeth. The rain water dripping off the roof was doing a tap dance on his head. He turned to me and gave me the same frown.

“Pete’s pissed, isn’t he?”

I nodded again. Pete didn’t really know about this little field trip. But if a fear of Pete kept this guy out of Ruby’s until after the election next month, I wasn’t going to correct him.

I pushed him again toward my car, and looked back over my shoulder. The eight-foot blue neon slut was winking at me. Yeah, I’d be back. She knew me.

BIO: Todd W. Bush is the writer of the South Florida Noir series. His website is Todd W. Bush. He lives in South Florida.