Grimm Tales

by John Kenyon

  I’ve been walkin’ these streets so long

  Singin’ the same old song

  I know every crack in these dirty sidewalks of Broadway

  Where hustle’s the name of the game

  And nice guys get washed away like the snow and the rain

  There’s been a load of compromisin’

  On the road to my horizon

  But I’m gonna be where the lights are shinin’ on me

  The keener of the temptatious twins from Miami, Pammy, seemed to be following everywhere his eyes were eyeballing. He noticed she’d noticed his notice of the ship’s layout, but had she seen the way that gawdy red chandelier’s pendants dangled? Something about the sheen was akilter, he’d bet his bottom GW. His eighty-watt smile shot out, the better to distract her roaming eyes. Focusing his hocusing, he came to realize her earbuds were attuned to iTunes instead of his tunes, thus blocking his penchant to mesmerize.

  The no account debauched crowd went down for the count to an eight-count of the Sweet Harmony Harmonica’s drowsy bluesy rendition of “Goodnight, Irene.” Last goodtimes gal standing was Pammy from Miami, ironically not sorry to see the party she’d been part of now over and out. “If you snooze, you lose,” she whispered, as Big Daddy and his preponderance of pretty playmates drifted down a lazy river.

  Piper arched his left brow.

  Pammy motioned her exquisitely tapered right index finger. Fetchingly so.

  “You just going to stand there looking gorgeous and beckon, or is there destination to your reckon?”

  “You going to follow me or just whistle Dixie with that dinky mouth harp?”

  Lady had a point. Size mattered. He was behind her sashay all the way. All the way to the captain’s quarters, where the swanky skirt showed she had predilection to her direction and was still several steps ahead. Pammy tiptoed with no teetering to her teal Jimmy Choos, pulling from an upper teak cabinet a creased sheaf of bundled papers, with a paper-clipped news clipping along for the ride.

  Waving provocatively both the papers and her stance, “This what you came aboard looking for?”

  “Could be. Why do you wonder?”

  “Was wondering what’s in it for me.”

  “You anglin’?”

  “Y’know, wise guy, I used to be Snow White, but I drifted, and drifting along, running this show how Big Daddy wanted it to go, got irksome in its day. So let’s just say I’m bored and I’m the kind of gal who likes action. Matter o’ fact, I’d like a bigger piece of some bigger action. Do you hold that attraction…Big Boy? And—fifty/fifty, that’ll do nice to even the score I cipher you’re in for.”

  Piper couldn’t hold back his amused grin. “Nice Mae West to your zest, and—sixty/forty, if, and that’s a big IF, your presentation yields something good, then, kid—then you’re in.”

  “IF’s a pretty big word for two little letters. Nevertheless, I indeed have what you need to succeed so no negotiations necessary, Mr. Piper. Y’all Jake with that?”

  “As Jake as the day my mother named me. All right, Ms. perplexing Pammy from Miami, you’ve got style, you’ve got wit, now let’s see you make the split worth both our whiles.”

  Pammy smiled, the kind of smile that stokes kindling in the gut to flame a slow burn. She was sure selling the sizzle for her stake. She got right down to business, though, spreading the papers flat on the marble charts table. “Just twain us, says here, this ship belongs lock, stock and barrels to one Samuel Marx, signed over by his grandparents Clem and Clementine Marx. Ship’s then duly registered and notarized in the great state of Texas as the Samuel Clems, and was charted for a coastal cruise. Big Daddy was the crook to hook up this ship with a river casino cartel in Baton Rouge.”

  Piper followed her line-by-line finger pointings steadily. Her delivery was no nonsense, not so her perfume. That fair Windsong was wafting his mind to following sees.

  She noticed his notice. She continued, a little softer this time, “Now this recent newspaper clipping caught the eye of Big Daddy the day we refueled our Chris-Craft coming up the Gulf. He’d sent Tammy in to town for provisions and a smattering of the local post gazettes. This captioned photo shows Mr. Marx with his arm ’round the waist of one Hannah Zambowser, rather jovial, toasting bubbly. It seems they were embarking upon a new partnership voyage which steered clear of the deal that was supposed to come down. The article mentions—here, see, in the fourth paragraph down, that Mr. Marx had returned fit and flush from a recent junket to South Africa. Big Daddy, you see, is as good at simple math as he is at complex power structures, so he put those two and two and two together last week, when one of his crew’s trawlers scooped a soggy Sammy from the sea on Saturday, saturated in a steel oil drum—”

  “Oils not well that ends well?” cut in Jake, between two low long Piper whistles. Thinking double time about double-dealers he swiftly tallied his own summary. “So then he bluffed hard-hearted Hannah with surmisal blackmail?”

  “Jackpot, Dick Tracy! But once I met her when we overtook the Clems, then took over the Clems, I didn’t figure that grim bitch too gone for too long. Big Daddy’s people pulled enough on her priors to scare her off awhile, while the painter signed off on the new christened bow name, but—well, call it woman’s intuition, she didn’t seem the type to be a bygone, closing curtains on a full disappearing act.”

  “They do this transacting alone? You remember?”

  “Got perfect recall here, Piper. Nope, she had with her a lurking grizzled fellow who kept just a shoulder’s length to her shadows, patting his head a lot. Then there was a scrawny scrappy squawky gal, plus a quieter dumpy dame who distinctly seemed the only one of the lot with a full faculty of wits about her. As they were being unceremoniously escorted down the gangplank, Hannah hepped up, swiveled around and shouted about a sudden sentimental attachment to that tawdry red chandelier I saw you gaping at and spurted back to the starboard side. Big Daddy bellowed they should get while their gettin’ was good, and Biff or maybe Jed held high a Glock .44 to echo his bellow the more. When the scrawny one screeched to see such a gun, the dish ran away from the goon. She latched on to Big Daddy’s arm with no conceivable charm, and it was the rounder one who pulled her off and quickened some sort of half-curtsy about how they’d be moseying off now and not causing any trouble since decisions made were plans best played.”

  “That’s how she said it?”

  “Exactly. My story, and I’m sticking to it. Though her eyes didn’t look beat. They fired glint. Lucky for that bunch my sister Tammy chose just that moment to approach Big Daddy squooshing a tube of Bain de Soleil, turning her other cheek for assistance. Those rats scurried their sinking hopes off this ship, but as I said, I expected someone to come back. So, you with them?”

  “Not exactly. But for the moment, I’m going to play this out nice and copacetic. Pick up the ransom, so to speak, and get outta Dodge.”

  “You mean Hamelin.”

  “More fun to say ‘Dodge.’”

  She smirked. He smiled.

  * * *

  The cheap beer mug shattered to cheap shards when the barkeep of Hamelin’s Hooligans turned back from the sink and saw the man at the bar who hadn’t been there at all a second ago.

  “Hello, George. My usual, and look sharp, man, watch your step there.” Piper turned left. Piper turned right. “The girls around?”

  As if on cue, Hannah Zambowser, jaded in a linen pants suit, still not looking at all bad for her age, bustled her signature grim gumption from the backroom, bellying it up to the bar. “I’ve heard about you, Piper. Seems my daughters inquired of a small assist in a tiny family matter. George, a glass of absinthe.”

  “It matter, that matter?”

  “No matter. What do you have for me?”

  “What you wanted. Thing is now, where’s what you have for me?” Something about the squirmy glint to her eye as she took that first sip into absinthe making his coffers grow fonder, told him this hard broad wasn’t going to play
easy. Something told him too late. Something hit him hard, something like what cheap clunky bar glasses are still good for.

  Pammy told him later it took three conks of those clunks from that lackey to knock him cold…two seconds for Hannah and George to search his jacket for the keys and title to the Whammy Zammy…and one sporty Maserati getaway car to zzzzzzzooooom the dastardly duo down to da docks. That’s where those bird-brained canaries were lying low when the local constabulary escorted Big Daddy’s parade to the paddy wagon. Charge floated before Judge Dan Yoob was grand river larceny.

  All would’ve flowed well for Frieda, Trudy, Hannah and George if not for the sudden appearance of the son of Sammy, summoned from an earlier swift Google search as fast as a driving Piper’s iPhone could app: R-i-g-h-t-f-u-l—O-w-n-e-r. Sonny, Sammy’s son, FYI’d the bamboozled Zambowzers with a G-man at his side. Cross currents considered, this was interstate trafficking after all, and Sonny had educated himself well, watching a lot of late-night movies growing up without his dad’s full attention.

  The story doesn’t end at the docks and Sammy sailing into the sunset of his heritage, which he did. Pammy had followed the instincts Jake gutted and—

  Here, let her tell it, her way—

  “Jake! Jake! Snap out of it, man. You’ll be hit with worse in your life once we start adventure trails. I promise you never a dull moment, you big lug. Come on, we should get outta Dodge, too.”

  Groggy, but with as big a dopey smirk as a not so big a dope can smile, Jake upped his sprawled ante to one elbow and one-fingered Pammy’s puss into the smooch of his angled grin. “I’ve been wanting to do that a long time, ma’am. And it’s Hamelin we want to get the hell out of, not Dodge.”

  “You were right. Dodge is more fun to say.” Slender arms reached ’round Piper’s pleased torso. “Here, let’s get you closer to vertical.”

  “So you can smooch me again?”

  “So I can look you in the eye when I tell you you were right about a lot of things.”

  “You planning on being around to tell me that a lot?”

  “No. This could be the only time with me having the wilier wits to be the brains of this operation. But—”

  “Wait. I have wits.”

  “Wile wins.”

  “Point taken.” He twirled one strand of one curl of the tangle making her shoulders all the more fascinating. There was a lot of fascinating going on, but something was pulsating at the edge of his subconscious. Maybe it was just the lump from the cheap beer mugs, but still, best to take a shot. “You said I was Mr. Right?”

  “I said you were right. That you thought they’d stiff you once you distinguished the diamonds with the red spray job in the dining room of the ship of fools.”

  “Didn’t take Professor Plum with a candlestick to see the light on that clue, baby.”

  “Geeeeez, who writes your material? So, I called in a favor, put a tail on you and made a side trip of my own to Hamelin’s hometown Home Depot. They have one, you know.”

  “It’s cheaper at Lowe’s.”

  “Don’t quibble, Jake. They match prices. Everyone knows that. But did you know how handy a multi-tool the Acme Master Screw-Drill is?”

  “That’s the name of a tool, or are you still glad to see me?”

  “Quit your wisecracking if you can for a moment, Jake. Of course it’s a name. Big lug men name tools. They stay up all night, I figure, matching words to best define power. Blow torch. Band saw. Socket wrench. Needle-nosed pliers.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got that toolbox. Now what are you hammering at?”

  “I didn’t hammer, I told you. I unscrewed. I drilled.”

  “This is a fine time to let me know you watch HGTV and know what to do about it.”

  Pammy packed a playful punch to the gut of the guy with the grin who had got her point all along.

  “You took down the chandelier. We scored the diamonds. And you drilled some holes to make the great escape on the Whammy Zammy not so shipshape. Waaaaait a minute—didn’t Sonny boy get there in time to push away that possibility?”

  “I got your text. Your spelling is atrocious, by the way, when you’re driving. There’s a law against that.”

  “Yeah, babe—we don’t wanta break no laws. C’mon, tell me what didn’t you do?”

  “I didn’t drill, baby, drill when it would’ve let an underdog good guy have a happy ending. I’m tough but I’m a sucker for happy endings.”

  “Yep, sweetheart. Me too. The moral of this tale is—Look what happens when you don’t pay the Piper.”

  She laughed.

  He pulled her closer.

  She nestled closer yet.

  He liked that.

  “One thing, though. You had the diamonds. The Zambowzers were iced. Why’d you come back for me?”

  “Easy. Mesmerization. I deduced you’d play all the right tunes at all the right times.”

  “Sweet Harmony always does. Let’s see where it takes us next, kid.”

  THE END

  (Or the beginning of a new beguine, if you know what I mean. Cue music.)

  Lyric snippets: all as inspired, emanating from college indie station KCEA in Menlo Park “Rhinestone Cowboy” stanza by Larry Weiss and Scott English for goodtime Glen Campbell

  The Flying Trunk

  By Jack Bates

  When John originally posted the flash challenge, I stumbled upon an Aesop fable about a spoiled young prince whose behaviour costs him the love of his life. How perfect is that for a noir twist?

  “When his father died, the young man received a magic trunk that flew him to a magical land.”

  Aesop’s Fables

  Donny Markham lugged the old steamer trunk up the third and final flight of stairs of the renovated three-story walk-up. Like all of the other converted Victorians still standing along the Cass Corridor, there were no elevators. Not that there had ever been any plan to put one in. The tenants who now rented the flats were transient college students going to Wayne State University. Most had started off as commuters but by the time they hit twenty, they realized the myth of Detroit was far from the truth of Detroit. Yes, there were pockets where one didn’t go after dark or even after sunrise; but, on the whole, the city had more to offer than to fear.

  If only Donny’s dad had known this. The old man had closed his string of party shops along Woodward and Jefferson and moved all of his business north to the suburbs, along with every other white businessman in the epic flight of the seventies. In the end, his premature bailing on the city cost him, but not much. His empire of liquor shops went from ten to two. He switched to high-end wine for the one in southern Oakland County and to cheap booze in the one in Macomb County. His marketing strategy worked and while he didn’t die a wealthy man, he did die a well-off man, which meant Donny Markham, at twenty-two, was off to a considerable start over some of his college counterparts.

  The inheritance wouldn’t last forever; Donny knew that. He sold off the shops to separate owners who were now in a legal battle over who got to keep his family name over the door to their shop. Donny didn’t give two figs. He was taking his money and going back to school to get his teaching degree. He knew that Wayne made all School of Ed candidates do a semester of pre-student teaching in a Detroit city school. He was fine with that. He loved Detroit and wanted his admiration of the city to be shared by the students he would one day teach outside of it.

  The trunk was the only other thing Donny kept from his father’s estate. When he was a child, Donny used to keep his most important treasures inside the various drawers, cases, and secret compartments. His mother used to worry that he would somehow get locked inside it. The idea that he could accidentally get locked in was impossible. There were two loop and snap latches on either side of a large circular lock on a hinge that needed to be flipped into place. The trunk never frightened Donny the way it did his mother. He used to imagine the trunk was a portal to another world or a magical vehicle that would fly him to wondrous adventures,
carrying him far away from the dark world he lived in with his parents. His dad used his liquor stores like personal caches. His mom hated everything about how they made their money but enjoyed the company they kept. They argued incessantly. Sometimes, it became physical.

  Thunk.

  Every second step the base of the trunk fell against the bare wood step Donny pulled it on to. He wished the trunk had the power to fly now as he bent his back and pulled up one more time. No one had come out to complain about the noise. Sometimes he wondered if he had any real neighbors on the lower two floors. He heard noises coming from them but he never saw anyone.

  The move would have gone a lot better if Shelley had come along like she promised she would. At the last minute something else came up. He wasn’t pleased with this turn of events. His displeasure triggered thoughts of relationship insecurity. Shelley wasn’t shaping up to be much of a girlfriend. If she even was a girlfriend. Like the unseen people living below him, Donny wasn’t sure there was anything there.

  He had met her in a children’s literature class where she had stuck out like a diamond in a room full of coal. Long blonde hair that draped over her shoulders, narrow hips that skinny jeans clung to for life and large breasts she could barely keep contained: Shelley Lavinder just didn’t strike Donny as a candidate for being an elementary teacher in an inner city school. She should have been the foldout of a Playboy spread.

  Miss September.

  He called her that sometimes. She giggled and then made love to him like he was going off to war and she might not ever see him again. They made love a lot but he never felt the connection afterwards. She rolled away; she didn’t leave but she did roll off on her side. He had thought about breaking it off with her. He just couldn’t picture himself as her type of guy. He waited for her to scream it at him the way his mother had often screamed it at his father.

  A door opened below. Donny started to apologize to whichever of his neighbors for the noise he was making when he heard his name called out two flights down from where he stood.