By the Balls

by Jim Pascoe

  Smoke came up from the first floor. The temperature rose steadily. I looked down, shaking my head. “None of this makes any sense. I’m leaving with or without you, but I could use your help.”

  Weisnecki coughed. He put the handcuffs back into his pocket. “All right. Let’s go.”

  You see, tough guys try to break down a door by throwing themselves into it, leading with the shoulder. In my experience, all that’s going to do is give you a sore shoulder. I’ve busted down more than a few doors in my day, and I’ve always had the best results with a well-placed kick, right at the lock. Sometimes it takes a few hits, but most doors can’t stand up to that kind of punishment. This door’s construction gave more fight than I’d hoped it would, but after a repeated assault from both of us, the lock popped, and we raced down to the first floor.

  I put my hand against the door at the bottom of the stairs. Hot, and that meant danger. But I didn’t see how I had a choice. We were either going to die in this building or we were going to make it out alive. I pulled the door open, wincing against the blast of heat that roared into the stairwell.

  The first floor was nothing but flame. We had a long run ahead of us. I glanced over at Weisnecki. He was looking at me, scared. Hell, I was scared too. But I’d done this before. It was up to me to get us out. “Follow me. Stay close.”

  Weisnecki nodded. I nodded back, and moved out into the inferno. We dodged and danced our way through the flames, making good progress toward the door. We were almost clear when I heard Weisnecki’s strangled cry. I looked back in time to see him falling, landing in a pile of flaming debris.

  I ran back to him. Blood streamed from a gash on the side of his head. I grabbed him under his arms and started dragging.

  He gasped. His eyes rolled up and back.

  His weight slowed me down. My skin itched. I could feel it getting pink. I pulled the two of us across the threshold, but the fire chased us out of the building, trying to follow us into the alley. Fire snaked along Weisnecki’s body, smoldering on his cheap suit.

  I struggled to get out of my jacket. I jumped on top of him, padding the flames out with my coat. He started coughing, singed but alive.

  I dragged him further into the alley, away from the building. I slumped down onto the cracked blacktop next to him and watched the flames twist and dance along the warehouse’s bleak façade, the low wail of approaching sirens howling in the distance.

  “Mark, I didn’t take that money.”

  Weisnecki leaned back on his elbows, pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, put one between his lips. He didn’t light it.

  “Yeah, okay,” he grunted. “So who did?”

  * * *

  Getting a car wasn’t easy. I had to call in my op Mike Manetti, who had a spare key to my Galaxie 500. I’d worked with Mike at the Always Reddy Detective Agency, and he never disappointed me with his displays of sloppiness, impatience, ignorance, and general obtuseness. I thought having my own shingle would rid me of him, but his low salary worked well with my start-up bank account. Plus, I was determined to make a detective out of him.

  Weisnecki insisted that we proceed alone. My original suggestion had us reuniting with Duke Wellington, who, in addition to being my paying client, was going to be none to happy to be cut out of the action. Going after Small-Tooth Kelley without police backup was a fool’s game, especially with the condition we were in.

  “Ben, I’m not going to lie to you: enough of my boys at the station are in the pocket; so, for something like this, I don’t know who to turn to.”

  “That include DW?”

  “No, of course not. That guy is straight as a razor. A little too straight. I’m thinking we might have to do things a little off the book if we want to set things right. I don’t want to be the one to get his hands dirty.”

  “And you don’t mind about my hands.”

  “I don’t.”

  My amped-up adrenaline helped convince me of Mark’s barn-burner plan. So when Manetti arrived with my ride, I kicked him to the curb and left him in a cloud of dirt and exhaust. He could walk back. He was young.

  * * *

  Small-Tooth Kelley’s hideout sat sandwiched between a used tire shop and a Mexican seafood restaurant. The pink stucco storefront had bars on the windows and door. Hand-painted near the entrance in clashing red paint were the words: Paca Party Rents & Sells.

  The front looked less than hospitable. We wandered around the back, a small alley framed by landscaped weeds and wildflowers. From behind this overgrowth, we spied a delivery truck pulling into the back loading dock.

  A large metal roll-up door on the dock slowly yawned open. Out walked Buck Bixel. The baggy fabric of his oversized suit flapped loudly in the evening wind. He handed the driver—a grubby immigrant with a mean, grubby face—a bunch of cash. The driver weaseled away saying something about going to get some fish tacos.

  A loud rumble echoed in the alley as Bixel threw open the truck’s back. Weisnecki and I crept over. With our heads close to the big tires, we could see Bixel’s feet as he began to unload the cargo.

  I waited until he was walking away from the truck. I came up behind him and kicked at the back of his left knee as hard as I could. He dropped the large box he was carrying. I heard the crunch of broken glass under the howl of pain. While he was low, I wrapped an arm around his neck, put his head in a half-nelson. I squeezed real good. Even with the blown knee, he tried to toss me. Weisnecki came up around him and started the punching bag routine on his flabby abs.

  “Go to sleep, big boy,” I whispered in his ear. With the fight gone from him, Bixel succumbed to my sleep hold. He collapsed in my arms, so I dropped him, let him fall to the ground hard.

  “That’s quite the stash of party supplies,” Weisnecki said as he delivered a parting kick to Bixel’s midsection. I looked in the back of the truck. True enough, it was filled with new TVs, state-of-the-art stereos, and other hi-fi equipment. All hot.

  We climbed the few stairs to the loading ramp. To the right was a long hallway. Next to that, a single door labeled: Mail Room.

  I put an ear to the thin wood, heard Zef Ehrenreich’s distinctive whine. I knocked.

  “Yeah? It’s open,” Zef called out from behind the door.

  Weisnecki smiled, knocked again.

  “Bixie, ya overgrown galloop, it ain’t locked or nothin’!”

  We took a step back, waited for the door to open. When it did, I pistol-whipped Ehrenreich’s cranium, sending his tiny bowler hat spinning to the ground.

  Inside, the small room reeked of cheap tobacco, but held nothing of importance. No sense ransacking the sea of papers on the fold-out card table. We had a bigger fish to catch.

  Back to the hallway. It narrowed down as we slowly made our way into the building. At the end it switched left for an even longer stretch. This throughway was filled with piñatas and streamers and half-inflated balloons. Up above, the giant cartoon characters swung from the ceiling, a gallows’ party; below, the floor, junked up with yesterday’s confetti. It gave the passage a dark, claustrophobic feel, despite all the bright, happy colors. Even more noticeable, the air stank of the heavy smell of balloon rubber.

  Mark and I stepped slowly past a series of doors. I checked the ones on the left; he, the right. Each one filled the air with more tension. Listen at the door, turn the knob, listen again, toss the door open. One after another, jammed up with stacks of chairs and folded tables, but otherwise empty. As we went on, the hallway filled with more and more party stuff, so much so that it was hard to tell whether the end of the hall turned left or right.

  A hollow metallic clang sounded out behind me. I swung around to look at Weisnecki. He’d bumped into a group of compressed air canisters. That set off some kind of clown automaton, its garish tinny recording echoed out: HEE-HAR-HAR! HEE-HAR-HAR!

  Weisnecki’s hands were on his knees. Seems the fight and the fire had knocked him down more notches than he was willing to admit. I shook my head at him.
This was no time to have to rely on a grounded wingman.

  “Gun up and man up,” I said. “Let’s get this job done.”

  Instead of a smart-aleck response, I was greeted with the shriek of a banshee. Out of the jungle of streamers jumped a topless vixen. She landed square on Weisnecki’s back and wrapped her fingers around his throat.

  “Party crashers! Party crashers!” she screamed with abandon. I couldn’t tell if she was a professional or a lost soul hopped up on headbangers on the wrong way to a good time. What I knew for certain: she only wore purple ruffled panties and hot-pink nail polish—nothing else. And she had a voice box like a she-devil.

  Weisnecki choked out a plea for help. He dropped his gun. As she throttled the police officer, her bazoomas bounced aggressively up and down, a Tweedledee/Tweedledum dance that would have hypnotized a lesser man. I was no lesser man. I holstered my gun and pounded at her back, the back of a strong monkey.

  Her grip stayed locked like a vise. Pro or no, this girl was on something, something other than Detective Mark Weisnecki. He stumbled back, and I stepped away so that he could slam her once, twice, three times against the cracking drywall.

  I was going to pull my gun, when I figured out how to best this bombshell. Honey instead of vinegar, they say. I was neither proud nor embarrassed when I reached up alongside her bare rib cage, found her armpit, and tickled her for all it was worth.

  She flinched on command, retracted her left arm enough for me to grab it and spin it up around her back. More screaming. This time, real pain.

  I heard a door slam behind us. I swore loud and hard. This go-girl was a full-stop setup. Small-Tooth Kelley was going to waltz right out of here.

  “Heave-ho, man!” I yelled at Mark, as I twisted the girl’s wrist with all I had. He bucked his bronco best. This crazy lady backflipped off him and landed, motionless, in a belly flop right on the floor. Ouch.

  Weisnecki was still gasping for air when I pulled him by the collar. “Come on! We’re losing him.”

  “You ain’t losing nothing, Drake. Except your life! You owe me!”

  I knew the rat that went with that cheese. His small-tooth grin spread wide on his narrow face. He held a Thompson submachine gun.

  Both Weisnecki and I raised our hands in the air. He had dropped his gun and I had holstered mine in the girl fight. That dame had done us good.

  “And you, Weisnecki! I thought you were going to be a smart cop and let me run the show.” Kelley bounced the barrel of the gun between Weisnecki’s chest and mine.

  “Listen to me, Kelley,” Weisnecki said slowly. “There’s a line. Everyone in this city knows it. Lots of people like to dance up close to it, peer over the edge.” He lowered his hands.

  “What kinda nonsense you goin’ on about?”

  Weisnecki ignored him. “You’re going to kill us? Kill me? You’re going to shoot a cop with an assault weapon?” He started walking forward.

  “Hold it right there, copper!” Small-Tooth Kelley started to quiver ever so slightly.

  Weisnecki continued: “If I’m dead, I won’t be the one who gets you. But believe me, brother, someone’s coming for you. And he’s going to bring you down, down, down . . .” He stopped talking and stopping walking. The three of us stood there. A triangle of silence.

  I saw what Weisnecki’s plan was, and I slowly moved toward the opposite edge of the hallway, trying to keep my eyes on Small-Tooth so I wouldn’t give anything away. He wasn’t even looking at me, he was too heated up on Weisnecki’s hype.

  “I don’t like all this talk. I’m a man of action!” I could hear the doubt in Small-Tooth’s voice. Especially when he was cut off by a tinny sound behind him.

  HEE-HAR-HAR! HEE-HAR-HAR!

  The gangster froze, uncertain whether to look back or keep his aim on us. His hesitation would be his downfall. I had learned long ago that it’s the small things that matter, that determine what kind of man you are.

  BLAM. A single shot sounded out. Kelley’s small teeth would grin no more. His lifeless body thumped to the ground. Behind him stood Duke Wellington.

  “You took your goddamn good time getting in that shot, partner,” Weisnecki said as he stumbled down the hallway.

  The big detective raced right up to his partner and wasted no time reading him the riot act: “Hail Mary, Mother of God, give me patience with this man! You disappear without one word, then still expect me to come racing in to save your scrawny hide at the very last second?” DW built his rant to a crescendo. “In what plane of reality are you existin’ in which you are criticizin’ me for this here rescue? If it wasn’t for that Manetti yoohoo tippin’ me off on you and lone wolf’s crazy-man plan, you’d be a flesh bag fulla bullets.”

  The two cops began to bicker. I thought about butting in to tell DW how much he owed me, but better to toss him an invoice in the mail. Some things never change.

  I made my way out toward my car. The Testacy City sun sat low in the sky, casting a burnt-orange glow all around. Twilight always got me thinking about the end of things. Silhouette heroes riding off into the horizon. Masked adventurers with capes billowing in the wind. Some stories end the way you want them to, and a bunch of others don’t. There are stories that don’t end at all, not really. These are the stories you have to walk out of, force the hand of fate, look that old girl right in the kisser and say good night, sweetheart.

  _______________________

  During the fifteen years since Ugly Town first released By the Balls, we have been very fortunate to get to know—and even work with—a great group of writers, editors, and artists. So instead of asking for simple blurbs from today’s biggest names, we sent out a request for a contribution of any kind to this select group of raconteurs, and in return received quite an outpouring of stories, memories, hype, and new love—all very humbling.

  If our introduction to this collection tells the secret history of how and why we did what we did, then this afterword is the war record of the result: what it was like on the street, at the stores, and in the bars during the heyday of UglyTown.

  Mark Haskell Smith

  Author of Heart of Dankness, Baked, and Salty

  I first laid eyes on the UglyTown boys at some forgotten book event at a now-defunct bookstore. They were slouching by the door, looking like some kind of Weimar Republic punk rock cabaret act—the Sex Pistols drawn by David Mazzucchelli. They rocked cheap suits and cheaper beer. Fassbender looked like a pit boss from Reno and smelled like Aqua Velva. Pascoe had dyed his hair the color of a ChemLawn golf course. They were troublemakers, pulp fiction maniacs who published cool-looking books by cool writers no one had heard of. (I was instantly desperate to be published by them.) They were writers too. They’d written a book called By the Balls that wasn’t even about testicles or scrotums or anything that you’d normally associate with that title and crime fiction. It was a detective novel about bowling and they didn’t give a fuck what you thought about it. The world needs more people like them.

  Gregg Hurwitz

  Author of twelve novels including The Survivor

  The UglyBoys rolled into a dreary gray landscape jacked up on style and color and flare, steampunk rockstars with Underwoods. I remember those early books—not just how they looked, but how they felt, slick enough for slicksters and packed wall-to-wall with badass. I keep ’em on my shelves when they’re not busy leaping off.

  James A. Owen

  Author of Drawing Out the Dragons: A Meditation on Art, Destiny, and the Power of Choice

  UglyTown was, and remains, one of the best examples I know of the perfect execution of a specific creative vision. For a couple of passionate, driven, ambitious guys like Jim and Tom to jump headfirst into a publishing venture designed around their own unique interests took, well, balls. Publishing books that could not be categorized—and if they could be were basically pulp crime noir, and thus difficult to market—took guts. And doing it well, producing works that were sparely elegant, beautifully direct, and
absolutely true to their original intent . . . Well. That’s simply brilliant.

  Mark Coggins

  Author of the August Riordan Series and the memoir Prom Night and Other Man-Made Disasters

  Welcome to Testacy City: diamond of the desert. Only UglyTown boys Jim Pascoe and Tom Fassbender could have created the town and the private eye in it: cigar-smoking, Kant-reading, bourbon-drinking, Galaxie 500-driving Benjamin Drake.

  With their ear for snappy dialogue, ability to conjure arch characters like ball bearing bigwig Jack Walker, and their well-developed neo-noir sensibilities—reflected in everything from the plot built around a murder in a bowling alley, to the design and illustration of the first edition, to the fashion sense they displayed at book signings—they made By the Balls a pulp fiction classic in the Black Mask tradition.

  Denise Hamilton

  Author of Damage Control, five novels in the Eve Diamond series, and editor of Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics

  I met Jim and Tom at a Bouchercon World Mystery convention eleven years ago and immediately gravitated toward these snappy dressers with the punky demeanor and old-school noir aesthetic. Oh, and the green hair. Jim was sporting a kelly-green mop that month. Tom wore a skinny tie. When they told me they were indie publishers and the name of their outfit was UglyTown, well, I was hooked. I also knew a good yarn when I heard it, so I promptly wrote their story up for the Los Angeles Times.

  In doing so, I also read three or four of their books, marveling at the retro-pulpy covers, the humor, intelligence, and design chops that went into making books like By the Balls and Five Shots and a Funeral artifacts at every level. And it hit me that UglyTown was filling an important publishing niche, both for authors and the reading public. They were bringing out edgy, noiry guttersnipe crime fiction that the big publishers, with their more conservative, establishment tastes, would probably have run away from screaming because they Just Didn’t Get It.