Missing Amanda

by Duane Lindsay

  She wonders, sitting in Half Lotus pose (Ardha Padmasana) why she’s thinking about this instead of following the slender instructor’s droning requests for inner peace. Cassidy’s pretty much not been at peace for six months now. She knows it and she’s beginning to think that even her husband, Lou, a man not known for his attention to details, is catching on.

  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 an 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 Comiskey 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 meetings 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 them 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.

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

  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, he 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. And 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.

  Hi all, I hope you enjoyed this first book in the lives and times of Lou and his friends. The sequel, SERIOUSLY? is now out and ready for your enjoyment. Check out the first chapters below.

  I’d be grateful for any comments and reviews you can post on Amazon. The reviews help me get promotion which helps a lot in the sales of the books.

  There’s also a glimpse at another new book, this one written by my longtime friend and co-writer Raymond Dean White. It’s called Tap Doubt.

  By the way, feel free to check out Ray’s work. If you’re a fan of apocalyptic books—and who isn’t? —his ‘The Dying Time’ and sequels are amazing fun books to read.

  You can find him at

  http://www.RaymondDeanWhite.com

  And me, of course, at:

  http://www.DuaneLindsay.com

  TAP DOUBT

  Raymond Dean White and Duane Lindsay

  Copyright 2015

  Chapter 1

  The Threat

  13 Years Ago

  Moscow Institute of Chemical Studies

  Maria Elena Zelanskaya swallowed bile as she stood before the five men seated in the cramped laboratory. Her heart raced like a thoroughbred in the homestretch as she watched them eyeing her, each a picture of boredom, interest, patience or doubt. That they were all large men and she barely reached 5’ 2 made her hands shake. That they were powerful members of the committee and soldiers had her near tears of self-doubt and worry.

  They could make her career if they liked her presentation.

  They could break her if they didn’t.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, almost stumbling on the word. Nothing about these five men conveyed gentleness or warmth or any kind of human feelings. They were killers, all of them, trained in the fields of Afghanistan, veterans of campaigns too horrible for a chemistry student like her to comprehend. They were timber wolves roaming the frozen steppes and she was a lone hare trapped between them, offering them a tempting meal.

  Maria Elena couldn’t feel more naked and exposed if she was one of the cheap slut dancing girls on display at the Western-style strip clubs that now flourished in Moscow—the result of the East/West clash insuring the worst of both cultures.

  She breathed deeply to calm herself and said, “There is a man in America named Nicholas Kuiper who owns a company called EnviroTech. This company is designed for one purpose: to clean up the most heavily polluted chemical waste sites in their country.”

  Several of them stirred at this idea, shaking their heads or rubbing thick calloused hands through full beards in amazement at the concept. Mother Russia was still hiding its own poisonous wastes, burying them like they did at Chernobyl, covering them up like a cat in a sand box.

  She rushed on. “This company has forty-three highly contaminated sites under contract with the American government in a project they call the Superfund.” She stumbled a bit on the uniquely western word, having no equivalent in Russian. “They devise methods for how to turn their dangerous waste into safe, pure water.”

  “So?” Ivan Petrovsky, a hard fat man in a gray coat and beaver hat, made his displeasure known—his body language clearly stating his desire to be somewhere else. “What does this misguided foolishness have to do with us?”

  “Let me explain. No, let me show you.” Maria stepped behind a laboratory table and pointed at a large glass bowl filled with a yellow/green liquid. “This compound is the exact equivalent, in chemical composition, to a small lake in Pennsylvania, that EnviroTech is charged with cleaning up.”

  Two men sat straighter in the student chairs, making them creak a sound like someone dying, far away, in anguish. Maria Elena rushed on, trying to shake the image from her brain. If they decided she was wasting their time, she might be the next poor soul to make that sound.

  She picked up a beaker filled with a sickly rust-colored liquid, the shade of a long abandoned Zil. “And this is a formula I tailored to blend specifically with the chemicals in that lake.”

  She paused. There was so much at stake. Her status as a student was in jeopardy due to the latest round of purges and decreasing funding of the university. She had to make them see.

  A voice spoke up and she saw Alexander Krakov, a red-bearded bear of a man sitting at ease in the too-small chair, his expression guarded. “How do you know the American chemistry?”

  “I...um...I asked for it. The Americans... I asked...”

  “You asked for it? What are you saying? Who did you ask?” Expressions turned hard against her and Maria Elena felt like crying in fear and frustration.

  “I sent a letter to a friend in America.” An exchange student named Ron Driekman, she had met last summer when he was a tourist. A science student, his major was particle physics, they shared a love for the classroom and had written several times to each other, long letters from worlds so far apart.

  “My friend asked the American government about the chemical composition and they gave it to him...”

  Loud grumbling and sounds of disbelief flowed toward her. “They gave it to him? What nonsense is this?” Oleg Mechel, a skeletal old man with a reputation that made the others fade into insignificance—some say that he once worked directly for Stalin himself when he was young and hungry—snorted. The idea that someone could ask a government for anything and the government would simply hand over the information was so foreign to Russian experience that it sounded like a fairy tale. His derision made her hear that death-shriek again.

  But Alexander waved a paw of a hand, quieting them before they got too far out of control. “I want to hear this.”

  Maria Elena, grateful for his interest, played the rest of her presentation directly to Alexander, ignoring the crude remarks and guttural barking of the others. Animals, she thought. But such dangerous animals. They reminded her of the massive sea lions in the frozen north.

  She said, “Perhaps you should put on the masks in front of you.” Each man had a brightly colored plastic respirator. Gold, purple, red and blue, with green filters on the side, she had gotten them from her professor before staging this meeting.

  Holding the beaker clumsily in one hand she picked up a small cage with the other. In it several white mice raced back and forth, whiskers twitching, noses testing the air, sensing danger. She held the cage over the bowl for a full minute before setting it back on the table.

  “You see? The chemicals, which the Americans think are so deadly, are only a problem if they make direct contact with the skin. They cannot harm you through the air. However, ...”

  Gesturing like a Gypsy magician she held up the beaker for display. She could see their attention focus as she tipped the rusty brown liquid, letting it pour slowly into the bowl. The colors merged, swirled together in unholy patterns that reminded her of the cancerous cells she’d been forced to study in biology. Sick cells all of them, twisted and foul.

  She set down the empty beaker and grasped a long-handled spatula, using it to stir the mixture. With one hand she held a respirator to her own face. She picked up the cage and again held it above the bowl.

  This time the result amazed them. The mice began to thrash around in a frenzy, clawing at the cage in a desperate attempt to escape. They slowed, twitched and their bodies curled as the poison they were breathing overwhelmed their lungs. In seconds all of them were dead. Ventilation fans kicked in and removed the remaining gas.

  She had the men’s attention now. All of them sat upright, wide-eyed and incredulous.

  “A chemical weapon?” asked Oleg, her harshest critic. “You have made a chemical weapon?”

  “I have done much more than that,” said Maria Elena, her voice firm now that they’d seen her proof, her eyes glowing with triumph. “I
have created forty-three chemical weapons.”

  “Explain, please.” This from an intent Alexander Krakov.

  “Instead of this small bowl full,” she gestured, “each EnviroTech site contains millions of gallons of waste.

  “Imagine,” she told the group of feral men facing her, “what would happen if we captured those pumps that are cleaning these places and pumped in our own chemicals to convert each site into a small factory of death?”

  An uproar. Four voices each trying to out-bellow the others. A cacophony of discord and dissent struggling for dominance, all directed at the idea that Maria Elena had proposed.

  “Madness!” cried one. “How could it work?” demanded another. “Foolishness,” and “Insane,” and “The Americans would never allow us near these places. How would we deliver the poisons? It isn’t possible.”

  Finally, the verdict. “Belongs in an asylum,” said Oleg, followed by angry glares as four men gathered themselves and clumped from the room.

  Maria Elena felt her shaky scholarship crumble and die, just like the dead lumps of mice lying in the cage. Her eyes stung with tears of failure but when she wiped them away she was surprised to see one man remaining.

  Alexander Krakov sat watching her. On his face was an expression Maria Elena could only describe as wonder.

  Chapter 2

  Let the Battle Begin

  The punch flew straight and true into the jaw of Richard Blackwell and sent him flying. He landed on his immaculately tuxedoed backside, slid across the sidewalk and bumped off over the curb to lie limp and motionless in the gutter.

  A world-class blow, it started from somewhere way back there, a windmill sweep of the entire body, as classic and elegant as any comic book art, with legs akimbo and grace completely absent. It was Captain America draped in the flag smashing Hitler on the jaw.

  The punch was the small fist of every fourth-grader on every playground whose lunch money has been taken once too often by the sixth-grade bully. That it was thrown by a middle-aged out of shape chemist at a forty-five-year-old tycoon did nothing to lessen its importance or its poetry. It was a longing for justice and a scream of rebellion, summed up in one great surge of muscle and bone.