What was this, kindergarten?
“Harry,” Levitz said, “got a dime.”
Harry Vinson plunged his hand into his pocket and produced the coin.
“Now, since Johnny here wrote the last big piece for us, I’m gonna let him call it. What’s it gonna be, Johnny?”
“Heads,” Johnny called out.
Harry flipped the dime in the air, catching it between his open palms. He uncovered and called out, “Tails.”
The grin on Gordon’s face could’ve lit up the marquee at the Metropolitan movie house. “I’ll take…”
“Not so fast, Gordie,” Levitz said, using the nickname Gordon didn’t particularly like. “You only get the right to choose the slip of paper. Left hand or right hand.”
Again, Gordon thought, is this kindergarten? He wanted the story of the dead artist. Marie Gardner, his mother, taught art in school and was part of the committee that helped found and open Houston’s Museum of Fine Art. Gordon knew he could make William Silber’s obit shine.
Being right handed, Gordon’s natural tendency was to pick right. But he had been under Levitz’s black cloud for a few weeks. Sure, Gordon had successfully bartered his silence for the new desk and promotion, something Levitz had agreed to under pressure. But the editor didn’t like his hand being forced and had rewarded Gordon with lesser stories. The last high-profile story Gordon got still only landed on page two. To date, the only page-one story Gordon had was the fake story he had written.
“Left,” Gordon said.
“Good choice,” Levitz said. “You get the crazy man.”
Gordon’s pained sigh brought chuckles from the guys around him.
“Johnny, you get Silber,” Levitz said. “Alright, boys, let’s make some ink.”
As the throng started to disperse, Gordon moved against the stream toward Levitz. “Wait, boss,” Gordon said, “I’m better for the artist profile. I know more than Johnny does.”
Johnny, who remained in place as the reporters and photographers moved past him, just watched.
“Don’t care,” Levitz said, turning to Barbara and motioning her to follow him. He threw the two pieces of paper in the trash can and sequestered himself in his office.
She gave Gordon a sympathetic look. “Sorry, sweetie.” She straightened her skirt and joined Levitz, closing his door.
Gordon shook his head, catching a glimpse of Johnny’s grin. Now his was the marque bright one. He turned and sauntered away.
Looking down, Gordon caught a glimpse of the pieces of paper Levitz had just thrown away. Frowning, he fished them both out of the trash. He looked at each of them.
Both pieces of paper were blank.
ALL CHICKENS MUST DIE: A Benjamin Wade Mystery
Benjamin Wade Returns!
May 1940, the last days of the Great Depression, and private investigator Benjamin Wade isn’t exactly rolling in the dough. He doesn’t even have a secretary. So he’s in the unenviable position of taking any client that walks in his office.
Elmer Smith, a local farmer, has a problem: all of his chickens are scheduled for slaughter. He’s desperate to save his livelihood. He got a court injunction to slow the process, but time is running out.
Instead of laughing Smith out the door, Wade suppresses his pride to take the case. It seems like a simple, straight-forward paycheck. He zeroes in on a central question: What really happened the night police chased someone through Smith’s farm? Wade isn’t the only one asking that question, but he could be the only one who might die for it.
Excerpt:
Chapter One
Do you know how embarrassing it is to be a private eye without a secretary? It means that every potential client sees you sitting in the outer office, typing your own reports and notes, and not in your main office with your feet on the desk, whiling away a hot summer’s day looking at the Houston skyline. It would also have meant that clients such as Elmer Smith and his chicken problems would have been turned away and I never would have learned that a secret society existed here in Houston that had, as its one rule, the obligation to avenge any wrong done to any member, real or imagined.
Why I didn’t just type my reports in my own office, I’ll never know. I think, honestly, I wanted to convey the impression that I did, indeed, have a secretary. I didn’t have one—yet—but I was actively looking for one. I had placed a classified ad in all the local papers and I had been interviewing many of the candidates over a few weeks. I found the decision to be extraordinarily difficult. I wanted the perfect combination of beauty and ability. To date, that type of woman hadn’t walked in my door.
That didn’t stop other types of women from waltzing in and looking for a job. This was May 1940 and the effects of the Depression still permeated the economy. It made me feel a little bad when I had to turn away a few applicants because they were not quite the type I was looking for. If you had put a gun to my head, I’d have admitted that the way a woman looked was pretty important. I’m running a small business and the first thing clients see is the secretary. She needs to be a knockout.
Martha Weber was sitting in the interview chair when Mr. Smith rang the front bell. I’d faced men with guns, but for some reason, that day I didn’t want to face a potential client without a secretary.
“You want to make five bucks?” I said.
Martha looked at me with wariness. “What do I have to do?”
“Pretend to be my secretary.”
She frowned. “So, I have the job?”
“No, but I’d like you to pretend to be my secretary for that potential client out there.”
“Why don’t I have the job?”
I winced. That was an argument best discussed among other men. Only they could understand the importance of an attractive secretary for private-eye business. Martha had the typing skills in spades. But her looks were on the homely side. She looked like she belonged in a school or public library, not at the receptionist/typist for a private investigator firm.
“I have a few other applicants, and I need to give them a chance, you know?”
“I’m a great typist. I can even do some field work, if you need it. Did I tell you I’m pretty good with a gun?” She said the last with a bit more emphasis than was necessary.
The doorbell rang again. Work wasn’t flowing as I would have liked. I was in a dire position of having to take almost everything that came through the door. I desperately didn’t want any potential clients to leave.
I gave her a double take. “Double my offer. Ten dollars.”
Martha looked at me sidelong. “You really got it?”
Sure, I just won’t get any gas for a week. “I’ll get the client to make a down payment.”
“You’d better.” She rose from her chair. “I’ll be right back, Mr. Wade.” She winked at me and sashayed out of my office. Seeing her from behind, I had second thoughts about doing this. What if she blew it?
Through the closed door, I heard soft murmuring then Martha’s shape through the frosted glass door. Didn’t every private eye have doors with frosted glass?
The door cracked and Martha stuck her head in. “Mr. Wade, there are two gentlemen here to see you.”
Two gentlemen? I rarely got pairs of potential clients. “Please send them in…” I paused and my eyes raced across my desk until I found her file. “Miss Weber.”
She narrowed her eyes. I shrugged. I cinched up my tie and sat up straighter in my chair.
The first man who walked in I didn’t recognize. He wore, of all things, denim overalls. The hat he held in his hands looked nicer than his entire wardrobe, his pressed shirt notwithstanding. I pegged him for a farmer and quickly dreaded needing to take any job to pay the rent. I wasn’t up for some sort of cow theft.
The second man, on the other hand, I knew. Burt Haldeman was a lawyer, a shyster if you ask me. He was the kind of man who used his size and bulk to get his way when his words failed him. Half the time, that’s what happened. His tie only reached halfwa
y down his gut. Not flattering, but his looks were enough to land a semi-slob like me in Life magazine.
I stood and came around my desk, extending my hand to the lawyer. “Burt, how you doing? What brings you in my door?”
“Good to see you again, Wade,” Haldeman said. “I see you landed on your feet after that little incident.”
I cleared my throat. “Sure did.” I pivoted and introduced myself to the farmer.
He took my hand, his leathery, hard skin felt like some sort of moving beef jerky. “Elmer Smith.” He was looking around, clearly out of his element.
“Please, gentlemen, have a seat.” I indicated the two chairs opposite my desk. To Martha, I said, “Thank you, Miss Weber. That will be all.” She rubbed her thumb and index finger together in the universal sign of money.
With their backs to her, Haldeman and Smith were unable to see Martha. I smiled and nodded once, then gestured her out.
I sat and leaned my elbows on the desk. “What brings you into my office?”
“Chickens,” Smith said.
I looked to Haldeman for confirmation. He nodded in assent.
“Chickens,” I said. “I can’t say I’ve ever had a case involving chickens.”
“Judging from how long you’ve been doing this little job,” Haldeman said, “I’d have to agree with you. But, nonetheless, we are here on account of chickens.” He reached into his suit and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out, put it between his lips, and lit up. “Tell him, Elmer.”
The farmer cleared his throat. I got the impression he wasn’t used to speaking in public. “Well, you see, Mr. Wade, the agriculture man, the health inspector man, wants to condemn all my chickens and kill’em all.”
I waited for additional details. Smith, his mouth a thin line with almost no upper lip, sat there as if he had just spoken a fact, like the color of the sky or the humidity level in town that day. Turning to Haldeman, I raised my eyebrows. “Burt?”
Haldeman smiled. “It’s true. Mr. Smith’s entire brood of chickens has been declared unsanitary by the health inspector. They’re scheduled to be slaughtered in the next few days. I got Judge Briscoe to put a temporary injunction on the slaughter, but we’re running outta time.”
“I’m still not seeing where I come in.”
Smith frowned. “Ain’t it obvious? I need you to investigate that bastard inspector and figure out why he’s trying to kill my livelihood.”
TRIPLE ACTION WESTERN
Triple Action Western is an imprint of Quadrant Fiction Studio focusing on short stories and novellas of the Old West.
The Box Maker
Nominated for the 2016 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for Short Fiction.
Emory Duvall practices his simple carpentry trade, knows everyone in town, and stays out of trouble. But when a young gunslinger pulls iron on him and makes an unusual request, trouble lands in Duvall’s lap. Now, the carpenter must figure out how to avoid getting shot…and how many coffins he will have to make.
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
“I make boxes,” Emory Duvall said. His hands, held above his head, shook in his sleeves. The small, round glasses, having slid down his nose on account of the sweat pouring off his forehead, perched precariously. You got the impression a good strong wind might just come by and knock them off, landing in the sandy ground of Main Street.
“I know you make boxes,” the stranger said. He switched his gun to his left hand and wiped the palm of his right on his pants. “What I asked is do you make boxes you could put a man in?” He glanced around, looking to see if there were prying eyes spying on them. Seeing none, he gripped the pistol with his newly dried right hand and wiped his left.
Duvall gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down over the bandana wrapped around his neck. “I can build any size box you want, mister.” He scrunched his nose, trying to keep his lenses on his face. The movement caused whatever friction holding them on to fail. His glasses fell to the ground.
Squinting with the sudden blurriness of his sight, Duvall indicated the glasses. “May I?”
The stranger paused. The midday sun bore down on the pair. “Look, if I put away my iron, you gon’ to run or holler?”
For the first time since the stranger arrived at his shop, Duvall smiled. “Mister, I can’t run further than five feet without my spectacles.” He said the word ‘can’t’ by adding an extra ‘i’ in the middle. “But if you want me to build you a box of any size, I’m gonna need my glasses.”
The stranger narrowed his eyes. “No funny business, you hear?”
“Mister,” Duvall said, “I don’t even wear a gun.” He tilted his head down to indicate his waist. Other than a thick leather belt of tools dangling from his hips, there was no sign of a gun. His denim pants were stained dark with sweat. Even under the thatched awning of his cutting area just outside his shop, it was nearly a hundred degrees and getting hotter by the minute.
The stranger nodded and, when Duvall didn’t move, he said, “All right.” He took a step back, giving himself a better line of sight toward the heart of town. As Duvall crouched down and felt for his glasses, the man said, “Tell you what, box man. I’m a’gonna holster my piece, so’s we can talk, man to man. But don’t be fooled. I can draw faster’en anybody you know. You try anything, even a call for help, and that’s the last thing you’ll ever say.” With that, the stranger slid his Colt revolver back into the holster.
Duvall found his glasses and wiped the dust off of them with part of the bandana hanging around his neck. He replaced the lenses and got a better look at the stranger. Judging by stubble, Duvall guessed the man to be in his early twenties. The man’s face had scars that appeared to be self-inflicted while shaving. The young man’s clothes were road dusty and disheveled, sweat staining his arm pits, his stomach, and along the thigh where the holster rested. The hat atop the man’s head used to be sharper, cleaner, but had seen much better days. Judging by the way the hat rested on the man’s ears, Duvall thought the inner head band must’ve worn off.
Smiling at the stranger, Duvall said, “You got a name?”
Put off by Duvall’s informality, the man said, “Ain’t you scared a’me?”
“Mister, I make boxes, but I also make coffins. A man who makes coffins sees a lot of dead folk. Those dead people get dead any number of ways. Bullets and violence are only part of it. You startled me a few minutes ago, that’s all.”
He started patting his shirt to dry off his hands. The action caused the stranger to flinch and reach for his gun. Duvall stopped in mid wipe, his smile dropping. “I ain’t going to try anything. I just want you to know that.” Still, his hands shook and he gripped his shirt to try to hide that fact. “Now, again, you got a name?”
The man relaxed and stood straighter. “Murray.”
“Duvall. I’d shake your hand, but mine’s a bit dirty.”
Murray extended his hand. “Mine’s dirty, too.”
The two men shook hands, the sweat sliding between their palms.
“Now,” Duvall said, “you mentioned something about a box, a coffin I assume by your asking. Why do you need a coffin?”
Murray scrunched up his face. “Why do you think I need a coffin? I need to put a man in it.” He chewed his bottom lip with teeth that hadn’t seen a toothbrush in many a day.
Duvall chuckled a bit. “I know that, Mr. Murray. But I need to know who it’s for. You know, for the measurements and such.”
Glancing this way and that, his eyes staying an inordinate amount of time down toward the heart of town, Murray said, “It’s for me.”
The Agony of Love
John Hardwick loves his wife like a Shakespeare sonnet: full, complete, and without equal. Unfortunately, John now finds himself in the crucible of infidelity. He knows the other man’s name: Alton Raines, a professional gambler. John is a good man, not prone to violence, but the images in his mind’s eye—of his wife in Raines’s bed—puts murder in his
heart and a gun in his hand.
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
John Hardwick loved his wife Mary like a Shakespeare sonnet: full and complete and without equal. He would memorize the Bard’s sonnets as well as the poems of Byron, Blake, and Browning and recite them to her over dinner or in front of the fire in their little home. Their life was hard—he a farmer, she a farmer’s wife—but he loved it more and more each day. Even when the hardships of farm life took their toll on him physically, he still loved his beautiful Mary. When the farm life robbed her of her ability to bear children, he still loved her.
But even the surest of love could be tested in the crucible of infidelity. John Hardwick found himself in that crucible now as he stared across the saloon at Alton Raines, his head full of things that normally never entered his mind. Images of violence, hatred, and murder boiled his blood. He wondered how loud the shot would be if he stuck his pistol up against Raines’s body and pulled the trigger.
Still, he had to gather his courage. It had taken him over an hour of waiting, drinking, and watching to figure out which patron of the Oak Tree Saloon was Alton Raines . He had asked a couple of men if they knew the. They did, and had easily pointed him out.
Raines turned out to be the dandy sitting at the poker table. His dark hair, slicked back and coiffed perfectly. The mustache neatly trimmed. His suit, gray and adorned with a shimmery purple vest. The black tie formed a perfect knot over a pressed white shirt. Occasionally Raines would check the time on his shiny gold pocket watch. He presented himself in a suave manner, smiling at everyone in the room. Ladies would drape themselves across his shoulders.
All in all, the sight made John Hardwick’s stomach turn. It also brought a tear to his eye. He wasn’t much to look at. He knew that. Long days of sun and wind and hard work had aged him. He looked ten years older than his age of thirty. His eyes had developed permanent crow’s feet. His hands looked like an old man’s. And his shoulders sagged a bit, even when he wasn’t carrying heavy equipment or hay bales.
Ulterior Objectives: A Lillian Saxton Thriller Page 31