by Arlette Lees
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BLOOD BAYOU
BRUISED
TROUBLE IN GUNNAR
CASH
AGAINST ALL ODDS
LAST CHANCE IN GUNNAR
ANGEL DOLL
FAMILY MYTHOLOGY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY ARLETTE LEES
COLD BULLETS AND HOT BABES
DARK CRIME STORIES
ARLETTE LEES
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 by Arlette Lees
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
To The Memory of My Grandmother,
Mae E. Lees,
Who taught us the love of books;
And to
My teacher and friend,
Hannah Folsom,
Who said I’d write one.
INTRODUCTION
When arrogant smart-ass Jeeter Tate ventures into Louisiana’s BLOOD BAYOU, he finds more trouble than he bargained for in the steamy underaged Cajun girl, Suzette, and her wild, certifiable brother Pierre.
BRUISED introduces Joey McFeeny, a city cop on medical leave, and his brothers, Pug the gangster and Mick the parish priest. But, will they step over the line in seeking justice in the disappearance of their missing sister?
TROUBLE IN GUNNAR presents us with two brave youngsters trying to survive the powers of evil after their widowed father rushes into marriage with a strange woman with a mysterious past.
CASH is a seasoned grifter who preys on innocent and unsuspecting women like sweet golden-haired Carly and the darkly alluring Greta. But lounge lizard Cash might be in for a surprise or two.
Until beautiful Frances Bulger became pregnant and was expelled from parochial school, she had been known as Irish Rose in her blue collar neighborhood. After watching Frances grow fatter and more apathetic with each passing year, her daughter Rosemary, AGAINST ALL ODDS, is determined to go down a different road.
Our youthful protagonists in LAST CHANCE IN GUNNAR struggles to survive the abusive and neglectful parents who are supposed to be watching out for them. They fight, not only for their dignity as human beings, but against the dark shadow of their past.
If you are a fan of classic pulp fiction, ANGEL DOLL was written for you. Jaded alcoholic ex-cop Jack Dunning and the delicate, sensuous, dime-a-dance girl, Angel, seek salvation in one another’s embrace, willing to give love one last chance on the mean, Depression-era streeets of Little Ireland.
Our journey concludes with the poignant poem, FAMILY MYTHOLOGY, about a boy’s devotion to his violent and emotionally complex Uncle Mick.
—Arlette Lees
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted (with minor editing, updating, and textual modifications) by permission of the author:
“Blood Bayou” was originally published in Hardboiled #41, January 2010, and also in Whodunit?: The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories, edited by Robert Reginald, Borgo Press, 2011. Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Arlette Lees.
“Bruised” was originally published in Hardboiled #37, March 2008. Copyright © 2008, 2011 by Arlette Lees.
“Trouble in Gunnar” was originally published in Deadly Dames, Bold Venture Press, 2009. Copyright © 2009, 2011 by Arlette Lees.
“Cash” was originally published in Hardboiled #35, Spring 2006. Copyright © 2006, 2011 by Arlette Lees.
“Family Mythology” was originally published in Hardboiled #35, Spring 2006. Copyright © 2006, 2011 by Arlette Lees.
“Against All Odds,” “Last Chance in Gunnar,” and “Angel Doll” are published here for the first time. Copyright © 2011 by Arlette Lees.
BLOOD BAYOU
Jeeter Tate hit the ground running—well, he might as well have been running considering the condition of his old Ford pickup. With a burp and a backfire he headed out of Bakersfield in a cloud of dust, his radiator boiling over on the long stretches of desert between California and Texas.
Jeeter was born in Texas and so was Charleen. Her five burley brothers were still there, fighting dogs, selling white lightning, biting the heads off chickens to freak out neighbors who wandered too close to the property line. Jeet had no way of explaining Charleen’s absence, so he limped the truck across the state line into Louisiana’s alligator country.
God, how he wished he’d never hooked up with Charleen, but like all the other high school guys he’d salivated at the sight of her juicy little bod. She was the cutest girl on the cheerleading squad with her fluffy blonde curls and bouncy boobs.
She’d fallen for him too, like a ton of bricks, just like the other hot babes that ran their fingers through his jet black shag of hair and gazed into his paler than pale blue eyes. Charleen said they were the color of moonlight reflected through a Coke bottle. Now, how many dudes had eyes this color? One in a thousand? Hell no, Jeeter knew he was one in a million.
When he started dating Charleen his cousin Huey told him there was no way she could get knocked up if they did it standing up. That method of family planning failed right off the bat and Huey laughed his fool head off even after Jeeter blackened his eye.
Three years married and there were already two squalling rugrats on the scene. He hadn’t known babies were capable of such heroic vocalization. He’d morphed from devil-may-care Romeo to a trained monkey on a short leash.
Charleen had managed to keep her trim figure and good looks while his were slipping faster than a clown on a banana peel, especially after he lost his two front teeth in a bar fight over a redheaded waitress. She might have had the decency to mention that her husband harbored unrealistic expectations regarding her fidelity.
“If you’d stay home where you belong these things wouldn’t happen,” said Charleen, rocking baby Skeezix in her arms. What a know-it-all! Next she’d be filing for divorce, asking for alimony and child support. First, she’d have to prove those brats were really his.
As if things weren’t bad enough, he lost his job at the auto repair shop. He’d taken Mayor Stapleton’s Lincoln for a joy ride when it came in for a lube. Except for the ding in the passenger side door and a rear flat tire, he’d returned it in pristine condition.
When Charleen took the last five bucks he’d earmarked for a pack of smokes and bought lotto tickets he’d had it. He broke into the repair shop after midnight and treated himself to some well-deserved severance pay. Even then, there was hardly enough cash to make it worth his while.
Almost out of money, he’d pulled into a clapboard grocery store on the edge of a mosquito-infested swamp. It wasn’t where he’d intended to end up, but his map was in shreds and he’d lost the main road about an hour back. He thumped a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a bag of chitlins on the counter.
“Hey, Pierre,” said the old witch behind the cash register. “I thought you never came off the bayou.” What a ding-bat! “Looks like you had a rough night, mon.”
He caught his reflection in the plastic donut case, a face thorny with stubble, hair as dirty as a mechanic’s rag.
“Ya, one hell of a night,” he said. The old crone looked like a voodoo queen in her Mardi Gras beads and towering head wrap. He’d seen fewer wrinkles on mummies. He told her to take off her mask, that Halloween was over. She pointed an arthritic finger in his direction and mumbo-jumbo’d a death curse that made him roar with laughter as he walked out the door.
What a weird backwater dump!<
br />
As he walked to his truck a mail carrier pulled into the lot.
“Hey, Pierre!” he called, with a friendly wave. Jeeter looked behind him but no one was there. What the hell? Back in California they called strangers dude or bro and laid on a high five. In Texas it was bubba or cowboy delivered with a playful punch to the shoulder. Pierre had to be a Louisiana thing.
The carrier shoved a passel of mail in Jeeter’s hand. “You’ve saved me a trip up Bayou Sang,” he said. “Give my regards to old man Devereaux.” He jumped back in his truck and was gone, leaving Jeeter standing there with his mouth open.
Bayou Sang? Jeeter got a D in French, but he was no dummy. He knew that sang meant blood. Blood Bayou?
He speculated on the contents of the envelopes. Some were addressed to Rémy Devereaux and a few to Pierre Marquet, Rt. 3, Bayou Sang. He could rip them open for the hell of it, check for cash, then scatter the letters along the roadside.
He’d been running on empty for about seven miles or so. He tapped the odometer but it had crapped out on him. He pulled into the first station he came to even though it looked like a throwback to the 1930s with its rusty pumps and a sign that hung from one hinge. The bony attendant shuffled out in baggy overalls, pumped his gas and cleaned the bugs off the windshield. He looked as if he’d blown in from the Dust Bowl.
“That’ll be eighty bucks, Mr. Marquet.”
Eighty fuckin’ bucks! That brought him back to the twenty first century. After doling out the cash he only had ten bucks left from the heist. And there it was again, someone thinking he was this Pierre Marquet fellow.
He checked the map that was taped to the office window. The turn-off to Bayou Sang was only three miles up the road, not a town really, but a large swampy district. The mail would be a perfect excuse to pay this guy a visit. He could case the joint while he was there, maybe come back in the night and rip something off.
The dirt track that cut through the swamp was almost impassable. Trees blocked the sun creating perpetual twilight. Jeeter clanked over potholes, dodged razor-sharp cypress knees and slid in places where the swamp had swallowed the road.
Eight maybe ten miles down the road and he hadn’t seen one house, not even a shack, just an occasional pirogue gathering moss at the water’s edge. Strange animal sounds emanated from the shadows. The engine light went on. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, risking his tires, running out his gas. He was about to turn around when he came to a dented mailbox in front of a clearing. DEVERE had been slopped on the side with black paint before the artistic genius ran out of space.
He swung the truck into a large yard of swept dirt in front of an unpainted house of cypress boards. The back deck straddled the bayou on stilts and pecan and willow trees shaded the roof. He’d expected a third world hovel of some kind but this was actually pretty damn nice.
By the time he’d switched off the engine the truck was surrounded by a noisy pack of redbone hounds. A man at work in a tomato patch dropped his shovel and picked up a shotgun that was leaning against a shed. He strode over, his gnarled bare feet kicking up the dust. He gave the dogs a few casual kicks. They let out a yelp or two and crawled under the porch, disappointed at having missed the opportunity of tearing Jeeter limb from limb.
Jeeter opened the truck door, climbed out and extended his hand.
“I’m Jeeter Tate,” he said.
The moment they touched hands a jolt of electricity zapped across the synapse between them. They were a mirror image of one another right down to the black hair and paler than pale blue eyes. The noses were the same, the cheekbones, the planes of the forehead. The only difference Jeet could see was that the Cajun had managed to hang on to all of his teeth.
“Mon dieu!” said Pierre.
“Holy shit!” said Jeeter.
Pierre leaned into Jeeter’s face like an entomologist examining a bug under glass, judging the stranger to be a strikingly handsome replica of himself.
Jeeter slapped his knee and laughed. “I guess everyone does have an identical twin,” he said. “Looks like we’ve found ours.”
“Qui sont vous, mon ami?” said Pierre.
“Sorry, compadre, I don’t speak the lingo.” He reached inside his jacket and handed Pierre the mail. “There’s also some stuff here for a Mr. Devereaux.”
“Oui, poor Uncle Rémy.” The Cajun spoke English but it was obviously his second language. “He was visiting in New Orleans when Katrina hit. That was over a month ago and we haven’t heard a word.”
“Well, he’s probably a goner,” said Jeet.
Pierre yelled toward the house.
“Suzette, get out here.”
The woman who pushed through the screen door held a fluffy white dog under her arm. She had a doe-eyed angel face, her long wavy hair was like soft black smoke. She did a double take when she saw Jeeter.
“My God, Pierre, he could be your identical twin!” Her English was far better than her brothers like maybe she’d had some schooling. Third grade. Maybe fourth.
“Jeeter Tate, ma’am.” If he’d had a hat he would have tipped it. “Just call me Jeet,” he said. Oh baby, call me anything, call me a dog and I’ll lick your toes and work my way up.
“My sister,” said Pierre. Jeeter was praying he wouldn’t hear the ‘wife’ word.
Woo! Woo! Woo! Things were sure looking up for old Jeet.
He figured her age between fourteen and twenty. He was never very good when it came to guessing. Her simple cotton shift was sheer from too many washings and what didn’t show through the thin fabric was implied in the way it clung to every curve and crevice of her nubile body. She peeked at him through a lock of hair. Her look was sweet and smoldering.
Woo! Woo! Woo! thought Jeet. I’ve died and gone to heaven.
Pierre caught the intimate exchange and let out a full-throated whoop of laughter.
A couple hounds started scrabbling among the tomato plants. Pierre cursed in French and raised the shotgun.
“Don’t shoot!” yelled Jeet without thinking. The gun went off with a deafening bang that left his ears ringing. The shot whizzed over the dog’s heads as they bounded for the trees. Pierre laughed and gave him a good-natured slap on the back.
“Come, mon ami,” he said. “We have plenty of chicken and dirty rice on the stove.”
Jeeter would have eaten horse shit if it meant getting closer to Suzette. When they entered the house, Pierre set his shotgun inside the door. Jeeter wasn’t quite sure what he thought of the guy but he felt a lot safer once the Cajun’s finger was off the trigger.
They ate at a picnic table on the deck above the swamp. Free-range chickens picked at the cooked rice Suzette scattered on the boards. It was the first decent meal Jeeter had had in days. Afterward they relaxed in lounge chairs. Reeds and water lilies grew along the water’s edge. If it weren’t for the damn mosquitoes it would have been the Garden of Fuckin’ Eden. He could sure get used to a life like this. Charleen and the boys already seemed like a mistake from another lifetime.
Jeeter caught Suzette’s eye and moved his chair closer to hers. She lifted her knee and he watched her skirt flutter upward toward her hips. Her golden skin glowed in the ambient humidity and the pungent scent of arousal hung in the air. Pierre grew silent, smoked a dark cigarette that looked French or Turkish and looked on with a combination of wariness and amusement. Jeet wished he could read his mind but the French don’t let you know what they’re really thinking.
“What if your beau decided to drop in at this very moment?” he asked.
“Sheriff DuBois?” said Suzette. Jeeter’s stomach roiled. Sheriff’s carried guns. He didn’t like the sound of that. After all, meddling with another man’s woman was how he lost his teeth. “Until he pops the question I’m free to do as I please.” She smiled and looked at the stranger who wore her brother’s face, his hair, his pale blue eyes. There was something dangerous about him, territory as yet unexplored. She felt the visceral pull of consanguinity
, both forbidden and irresistible.
A pair of huge golden eyes broke the surface of the water at the edge of the deck and the spell was broken. Jeeter sat bolt upright.
“What the hell is that?”
Pierre looked at him as if he were from another planet.
“It’s just an alligator,” said Pierre. “Where you say you’re from?”
“California,” he said. As far as Pierre was concerned that was another planet.
“Just don’t dangle your feet in the water,” said Suzette. “They come for dinner scraps.” She might have let him in on that bit of information a little sooner.
Pierre tossed a handful of chicken bones into the water. A few more prehistoric reptiles swam over, snapping and churning the surface. Jeeter wasn’t half so relaxed anymore, a bit nauseous and weak in the knees. He walked to the truck and returned with the bottle of whiskey.
The moment he saw Suzette’s face he knew he’d made a big mistake. She gave him a frightened look but Pierre was already headed into the house for glasses. Jeeter gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed. She looked like she was going to cry.
“He’s crazier than a shithouse rat when he drinks,” she said. “Just one drink and he starts beating the crap out of me. Without Uncle Rémy here to protect me....” She let the thought hang. “You’d better hit the road before he starts in.”
When Pierre returned with the glasses the white dog began to tremble. “It’s all right, Bon-Bon,” she said, stroking his fur. Jeeter decided he’d seen enough of Bayou Sang, but how could he make a diplomatic exit without joining Pierre in at least one shot?
Before long Pierre had foregone the civility of glasses and drank straight from the bottle. First Jeet had run out half his gas getting here, now the Cajun was swilling down the last of his booze, stomping his feet, singing Jolie Blonde in French, the deck vibrating like a trampoline. The more he thundered on the boards the more alligators crashed the party.