SERIOUSLY...?: A Lou Fleener Thriller

by Duane Lindsay

  So, why’s she feeling like this?

  Well; she’s bored, hard as that is to believe. After she and Monk and Lou took down the Chicago mobs last year, sending one of the major ones to prison and getting two others dead, they’d all come here to the promised land with a lot of stolen money. A lot of stolen money.

  Enough money that they’d never have to work again, money. And that’s the problem, thinks Cassidy as the instructor says, “Hold that pose,” and everybody holds their poses, breathing regularly, feeling peace; god damn it.

  The problem with money, too much of, is that if you have it, you don’t need a job. And without a job you have to find things to fill in the hours you’d normally be at a job. Of course, the problem with a job is that they expect you to be at it, pretty much all the time.

  So is there a balance? If there is, Cassidy hasn’t found it. She opened her own small shop selling high fashion clothes. The venture lasted less than six months as she found out there’s a lot of work involved in having your own store. So Cassidy’s on Clark (street) didn’t last too long and various other hobbies, interests, whims, all fell by the wayside in short order. They were; cooking classes, riding lessons—English, because, raised in Rawlins, Wyoming where the only other activity than rodeo is more rodeo, Western saddles are pretty much standard—and now yoga.

  What is wrong with me? She’s thinking. I live in a beautiful home, I have a devoted husband and his best friend who hangs around just often enough to provide comic relief, and more money than I’d ever thought I’d have. She recalls her days in the steno pool at a buck-twenty and hour and compares it to her bank balance, a number with two commas.

  She remembers her old checkbook. Sometimes there was only a single digit before the period. And never a comma.

  I live in a state that’s supposed to be paradise.

  And there, she realizes, is the issue. It never changes here. There’s no weather, no seasons, no winter to make looking forward to spring so delicious. It’s all warm and sunny and sunny and sunny…

  The instructor slaps her hands to together and twenty women unlimber from impossible positions, chatting and making plans and all Cassidy can do is slowly unwind, drift to the showers and dress for In-N-Out.

  Which isn’t at all like dressing for success, but it’ll do.

  Lou’s got a job to go to. Or an office to go to, which should be the same thing but really isn’t.

  The office is a two room flat above a pharmacy on the corner of a back street in LA proper, a place that has all the atmosphere of a cardboard box. It’s got two small windows that open instead of air conditioning. They look down over the intersection or at an alley, depending on the room. It has a toilet down the hall, dull tan paint that might have been white once, maybe during the Harding administration. It’s got a desk and a lamp and a new Remington typewriter, big and bulky enough to anchor one of the Navy’s flattops and still write a letter.

  What doesn’t it have? Clients.

  Since coming here last year, Lou’s tried to get known. He’s attended police meetings. Handed out cards by the hundreds, even placed an ad in the Yellow Pages. But the cops have heard of his reputation and don’t need “another damn hotshot PI messing things up,” and the local private eyes don’t want competition so there’s no referrals of even friendly people to talk to.

  He sits in the office and reads lurid paperbacks about hard-boiled privates with beautiful untrustworthy dames as clients. Sometimes he visits Monk in the used bookstore he bought. Together they talk about the good old days, which Lou finds both embarrassing and depressing.

  Lou is not, by nature, a depressed guy, but this endless vacation is getting on his nerves.

  “I want to go home,” he says to the empty room. Chicago is home, where the heart is and the White Sox play at Comisky Park and the Cubs play at Wrigley Field and it snows in the winter just like it’s supposed to every other place but here.

  They had their problems with the mob last year but Lou’s not concerned. Duke Braddock, the head bad guy of the north side, is in prison, and will be for eternity. Cermak, the Surgeon, is dead, blown up by Tony Scolio, himself killed many times by the FBI shooting most of their bullets into him.

  That leaves only Rufus Black, the large volatile leader of the Negro gangs on the south side. Lou and Rufus have had several meeting in the past, none friendly, but the mob boss has offered peace, in the form of, “I won’t kill you, Fleener. Not right now.”

  So there’s nothing to keep from going home, except maybe Monk, who seems content.

  And Cassidy. She seems very happy here. And Lou loves her and wants her to be happy.

  Goddamn it.

  Monk loves LA. Always good looking, in a Hollywood sort of way, he now fits in with a crowd filled with beautiful people. His awkwardness around people isn’t a distraction any more since almost everyone in Hollywood is equally awkward. People who want to be actors don’t flock to California because they’re smart or socially adept; they come here to be noticed.

  So Monk can walk the beaches or sit in the cafes without attracting the stares he gets back home. It’s a nice feeling.

  So he’s in a particularly good mood after an uneventful breakfast. No one stared, no waitress put her phone number on his bill and while walking to his small bookstore off the main street, he saw at least a dozen people—men and women—better looking than he is.

  It also puts the bounce in his step that last night’s poker game was the most profitable ever. Not so much for the cards themselves, though Monk is certain he could beat Salvatore Leon any day. The man bets rashly, practically announces his cards with a series of tells, and has no concept of odds. So when Salvatore made a medium sized bet into a large pot, Monk knew he had a pat hand. But the sweat and the scratching of a wart told Monk that Salvatore wasn’t confident. So Monk placed his cards on the table and stared at his opponent with apparent calm, raised and waited for Salvatore to self-destruct.

  Simple psychology.

  Then the fight afterward when Salvatore’s goons attacked Lou; that was pure profit. In fact, by Monk’s calculations, which he’s doing in his head as he walks the three blocks from the Beachcomber Café to his bookstore, they’ve made more from betting on Lou than from the games themselves.

  It’s not that they need the money. The take from the Chicago gangs was enough to let all three of them live well for the rest of their lives and Monk’s investment strategy offered a hell of an increase. No; it’s the thrill of the games for Monk and the easing of boredom for Lou.

  Monk gets to his door and keys the lock. He steps in and ducks to pick up yesterday’s mail and fifty bullets smash through the door into the space his body just left. Glass shatters, papers fly as books are shredded and the noise of several machine guns is deafening.

  Monk curls into a ball on the floor, arms around his head as if he could ward off bullets. As suddenly as it started it ends. The guns stop firing and tires squeal and two cars careen from the curb into the bright morning sunshine. Somewhere a woman screams.

  Slowly Monk gets to his feet and brushes glass from his suit. He’s possibly the only person in Venice Beach wearing a suit and tie, though usually without the jacket for the heat. He looks at the damage.

  Which is extensive. The bookstore is totally destroyed. The books Monk’s collected, from estate sales and auctions and buying from other stores, are little more than confetti; the shelves are splintered and falling. As he watches, one shelf, containing heavy volumes of histories and biographies, gives up and collapses. Dust and paper fluff into the air.

  Monk hears the sirens of the police cars. He walks a few feet inside and picks up what remains of a first edition signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The paper is shredded and the cover falls away, leaving the title page and the signature: To my friend Dion Monkton—Harper Lee.

  He feels like crying.

  2- We Gotta Get Out of this Place

  The police say, “Who?”

  Mon
k says, “Salvatore Leon,” and explains about the card game.

  Some detectives arrive with the same, “Who’d do this?” and the crime scene gathers technicians and police tape and crowd control cops and a guy with a big box camera and a guy with a bloodhound who sits by the car on a leash looking sad. The dog, not the guy.

  The lead detective asks questions, writing things in a little spiral bound notepad. He says, “Salvatore Leon, you say. You beat him at cards?” His tone suggests that, as a reason to shoot up a bookstore, this is a good one. He’s everybody’s idea of a police detective, from the rumpled white shirt and thin blue tie, to the veins in the nose that say he likes his liquor. He’s smoking—everybody’s smoking—and he drops the butts on the floor and steps on them.

  “Well; and Lou beat his guys, kind of a lot.” Monk thinks the cigarettes could cause a fire with all this torn up paper, but lets it go; how much more damage can a fire do?

  “Lou?” says the detective. “Fleener?”

  “Um; yeah.” Says Monk, surprised. “You know him?”

  “Not know him. Know of him. Supposed to be some kind of hot-shot fighter. Thinks he’s a private-eye.”

  “He is a private-eye,” Monk corrects, feeling like he should defend his friend.

  “Not in LA,” says the cop. “We don’t need him here. We got enough tough guys think they can be private s because they’ve seen the Maltese Falcon and the Big Sleep a dozen times.” He shakes his head, annoyed. “Private-eyes, my aching butt.”

  He snaps his notebook closed and shoves it in his shirt pocket. “This place insured?”

  Monk shakes his head. “No.”

  The cop, stares, lights another smoke. “I guess Salvatore got his money’s worth, right? I’ll go see him, but I’m guessing he’s got a hundred or so of his closest friends all swearing he was at a bar-mitzvah in Cleveland this morning.”

  “Since you got no insurance, I don’t need to give you a copy of the report. I’ll fill you in if we find anything.” His voice says he’s not going to find anything.

  When he’s gone Monk walks around in the ruins of the store, touching a few things, remembering how it felt to get this book, to get an author to sign that book, how personal it all felt.

  But it’s gone now.

  Lou says, “They didn’t!” in a properly sympathetic tone. He does know that Monk loves old books and feels for the guy, really he does, although he doesn’t in the slightest understand. Lou’s comfortable with a newspaper or a racing form. The TV guide’s all the literature he needs.

  They’re in the kitchen of Lou and Cassidy’s big house on the beach. The sun pours down like it always does, striking the windows with a glare that hurts the eyes. They’re both wearing sunglasses.

  Lou says, “Monk? This is like a gang war all over again. Maybe we should consider moving.”

  Monk says, “Why? You’re not happy here?”

  “You know I’m not. I’ve been bored with this place since winter didn’t happen last year. Remember Christmas? We put up a tree and had a barbeque on the back deck. The temperature was ninety-seven. Santa showed up in board shorts.”

  Monk comes close to smiling at that image. He knows Lou doesn’t like the place and as he pours some black coffee sludge from the percolator he’s thinking, maybe we should go.

  He says, “There’s Cassidy to think of.”

  “I know,” says Lou.

  “She loves it here,” says Monk. “It’s where she’s always wanted to be.”

  “I know,” says Lou. He’s been battling this ever since he realized how much he wanted to leave.

  “She won’t go,” says Monk.

  “And I won’t go without her.”

  “I know,” says Monk.

  Monk tells the story again when Cassidy returns from the local farmers market, two bags filled with fresh corn and tomatoes that she puts away as Monk explains.

  “This is because of the fight?” She doesn’t disapprove, of the fighting or the gambling; boys are gonna be boys, she figures. And, rich as they are, she still loves the feel of all that cash slipping through her fingers as she fondles it. Cassidy’s a very tactile person.

  But shooting up a bookstore, with the intent of shooting the bookstore owner, seems a bit of an overreach. Plus, she knows that Lou in particular won’t let this go unanswered and, as good as he is fighting, he’s still one guy. And his skills aren’t much good against machine guns.

  “So,” she says, fearing the answer; knowing the answer. “What are you going to do?”

  Lou wants to say, “Let’s just leave; go back to Chicago,” and Monk’s waiting for him to say it, but instead he says, “I guess we’ll have to go up against Salvatore.”

  Cassidy says, “They got a lot of guys.”

  “Yes.”

  “And they got guns.”

  “They do got guns.”

  Cassidy pours herself a lemonade, made with fresh lemons she bought at the farmer’s market, and isn’t that a strange thing? Up until now, lemonade came from a frozen can you dumped in a pitcher and added water. Maybe some Scotch.

  “You’re going anyway, though.” It’s not a question. Boys will be boys.

  “Of course,” says Lou. “It’s not a problem, babe.”

  But it is, this time. These aren’t your basic punks that Lou can beat without running a sweat. These are professional crooks with guns and the desire to use them. It reminds her of their fight with the gangs in Chicago.

  “It is a problem, Lou. I don’t want you coming home dead.”

  “I won’t come home dead. I can’t come home dead. If I’m dead, you know…”

  “You know what I mean.” Cassidy’s angry now, a sure sign she’s worried. “I think we should just leave.”

  “What?”

  “What?” Echoes Monk.

  “I thought you loved it here,” says Lou. He’s gaping, a bit like a flounder. This one’s taken him totally by surprise.

  “I hate it here,” says Cassidy. “The yoga and the meditation and the sun and the sand and there’s no weather. It’s just not natural. But you love it here,” she says to Lou.

  “You kidding? I wanted to move back home before we even unpacked.”

  “Monk?” Cassidy turns to him. He’s got the cup of coffee sludge held near his mouth and his eyes are moving from one to the other. “Yesterday I would have said stay. Today my store’s a pile of paper waiting for a match, we got people with guns wanting to shoot us and there’s that little guy, wants to kick your ass, Lou.”

  “Ah; I ain’t worried about him.”

  “You should be.” He tells Cassidy, “You should have seen this. Closest Lou’s come to going down. This guy, couldn’t be more than five-six, a hundred-fifty pounds, he comes at Lou spinning and waving his arms like a lunatic. But he connected, didn’t he?”

  “Well,” says Lou, a bit reluctantly. “He was good.”

  “Good!” enthuses Monk, to Cassidy. “He knocked Lou on his ass.”

  “He what?” She’s never seen Lou lose a fight before. “He knocked you down?”

  Monk answers. “Yes, he did. He came out swinging like this.” Monk’s moving his hands in an intricate pattern, as if he could actually do something. “He jumps in the air and hits Lou in the chest with both feet—”

  “which hurt,” says Lou, to no sympathy whatsoever.

  “—And he lands like a feather as Lou goes ass over teakettle across the floor.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” says Lou.

  “Oh my God,” says Cassidy. “That settles it. I don’t mind the guns so much. But if they got a guy who can fight Lou, we’re getting out of here.”

  Cassidy’s got a lot of new clothes she amassed over the year in the shopping capital of America. Those are carefully packed and shipped ahead. The furniture and kitchen stuff goes in the big Worldwide Movers van, out there by a bunch of big guys in orange shirts.

  Monk makes deals with the landlord of the bookstore, mostly by writing a
large check, and they pack a few things in his ’59 Bel-Air. They hit the road at dawn, cross the mountains and make Las Vegas, Nevada before noon. The temperature is 110 degrees and the windows are down to let in breathable air.

  “Doesn’t this heap have air conditioning?” Cassidy complains as the mountains become desert.

  “It’s on,” says Monk, defending the car’s reputation. “It just can’t keep up with the heat.”

  “Let’s stop for the day. Go gambling. Get cool.”

  “But…” says Monk, amazed at the idea. “We’ve only been traveling for five hours.”

  “So?”

  “So…if we keep stopping, it’ll take us forever to get to Chicago.”

  “We’re in a hurry?” Cassidy asks.

  “Well, no.” Monk glances in the rear-view. Lou’s been quiet in the back reading a stack of comic books. He’s got his eyes glued to one called the Justice League of America.

  Monk says, “Lou? What do you say? Want to stop in Vegas?”

  “Sure, why not?” He holds up the comic. “I remember these guys from when I was a kid. ‘Cept they called themselves the Justice Society and they were different people.” He’s looking like a guy trying to figure out the depths of modern literature. “Hard to figure,” he says, getting back to reading.

  Cassidy mutters something about driving and Monk says, “What? You got a beef?”

  “No. It’s just; we could have flown to Chicago. We didn’t have to drive all the way.”

  “We drove out, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “So we’re driving back. Beside, gas is cheap—twenty-eight cents a gallon.” Monk does the mental math. “Two thousand miles…the car gets sixteen on the highway…that’s…a hundred-twenty-five gallons…time twenty-eight cents is…um…thirty-five dollars. Do you know what three plane tickets cost?”

  “No; and I don’t care. Monk, I’m hot. We’re rich. Why didn’t we fly?”