She took a long drag on the cigarette and turned when she heard the fire-exit door open behind her.
“Your third break tonight, doll. You think I pay you to come out here and smoke?” Roman came forward, thumbing open the button on his suit jacket.
“The boys needed some cooling-down time. So did I.”
“The boys are our customers. We don’t want them cooled down. We want them hotted up.”
“So why don’t you take your clothes off and dance for them, Roman, if you want to make them happy so bad? Maybe you’d like it when they grabbed your ass.”
He was within touching distance now, and he laid a meaty palm against her cheek, patting gently. “The mouth on you,” he said quietly. “I don’t let anybody talk to me like that.”
Dolores let out a stream of smoke out of the corner of her mouth. She didn’t bother to cover her breasts, and he didn’t bother to look at them. It was nothing for either of them, just the product they sold to keep the dollars coming in.
The door opened again. The man who staggered through it was Roman’s size—six foot plus—but thinner and younger and much less sober. He put up one arm to steady himself against the brick wall of the club.
“Where’d you go to,” he said, his words slurred and thick. “You’re s’posed to…to…dance.” This boy was no more than twenty, and Dolores’s bare breasts were not nothing to him. He stared fixedly at them as he spoke.
“You see, doll?” Roman said, and swatted her on the rear. “Your public awaits.”
She took another drag on her cigarette, thought seriously about quitting, but not for long. The end of the month was just two days away, and with it would come an envelope, a neat white envelope with nothing written on the outside, slipped under her door by her landlord. The envelope would contain a request for eleven hundred forty-three dollars and eighty cents, her rent for this month and last, plus interest. She didn’t have it, and she wouldn’t have it if she danced here two more nights. But she’d be closer to having it than if she didn’t.
She looked up at Roman looming over her, a leer spread across his swarthy face, and then over at the boy by the door, the fly of his jeans unbuttoned, the bulge beneath straining at the fabric. One day. One day she’d do more than quit. She thought about the outfit she was wearing: the paint and headdress of a warrior. For an instant she imagined herself astride a palomino, gun barrel in hand, like the Indian brave whose costume she wore. She imagined chasing these two men down on the open desert plains, riding hard behind them till they dropped to their knees and begged, exhausted, for her mercy.
Or, hell, forget the horse and war paint. The modern equivalent would do fine: a semiautomatic pistol in the front seat of her Pontiac. She pictured herself having a smoke and waiting for them to show their faces at the door. Then, one, two—a bullet for each.
One day. But first she had rent to pay.
“All right, big boy,” she said, dropping her cigarette in the dirt and grinding it beneath her bare heel. She pressed her palm to the crotch of the boy’s jeans as she passed. “Let’s give you what you came to see.”
Charles Ardai has received the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the Shamus Award for his crime fiction, as well as recognition as founder and editor of the Hard Case Crime line of novels, whose authors have included Stephen King, Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, and Donald E. Westlake. He is also a writer and consulting producer on the TV series Haven.
FORTUNE
* * *
* * *
Erik Arneson
“You always smell like french fries, Putter. I can’t take it anymore.”
“Give me a few minutes, Nat. I’ll shower.”
“It doesn’t matter if you shower, baby. It’s in your pores or something. When you get out of the shower, you smell like Axe-scented french fries. Not an improvement.”
“I’ll scrub, I’ll do, I’ll…what do they call it…I’ll…exfornicate.”
A grin from Natalie. “Exfoliate. Look, I love you. I just can’t stand the odor right now. Take a few days off, you’ll smell great again. Call me.”
With that, she was gone.
Putter’s buddy Eli had come up with the idea to steal barrels of used cooking oil from restaurants. And Putter had to admit it was good money despite the fact it made him stink and he didn’t understand why people wanted to buy the stuff. Something about biodiesel fuel. Eli said even jets can use it. Crazy shit.
But if the side effect was not getting any from his girl? No money was worth that.
Although…it was nearly eleven o’clock on Sunday night, and in rural Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, that meant the restaurants were all closed. Maybe one last big score before he found a no-stink way to earn some cash.
Putter grabbed his cell and dialed. “Eli? Hey, it’s me…”
It turned out to be a great night, a dozen barrels from seven restaurants—all full and all with oil clean enough to earn serious cash. Probably a couple thousand bucks total.
“Fortune’s just a day away,” Eli said as they lifted the final barrel into the plain white box truck, a beast of a vehicle that he originally bought for what turned out to be a remarkably unsuccessful attempt at a legitimate moving business.
With his battery-powered lantern, Putter climbed into the back where his job was to make sure none of the barrels tipped over. Eli lowered the door but left it unlatched, always did, so Putter wouldn’t spaz.
Minutes later Putter heard what sounded like a police siren. Eli pulled the truck to a stop on the side of the road.
Slamming his fist on the metal wall behind Eli’s head, Putter yelled, “What the hell? That a cop?”
Eli yelled back, “Don’t panic! I’ll handle this.”
Putter panicked.
He had done time once, just a few months but long enough to know he couldn’t handle going back.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered. “Shit.”
He turned off the lantern and tried not to make any noise.
Officer Bill Evans approached the driver’s side door. “License and registration, please.”
“Of course, Officer. I have them right here.” Evans could tell the driver was struggling to keep his voice calm.
“What’s in the back of the truck?”
“It’s…it’s empty.” The driver handed him the documents.
“Stay here,” Evans said.
Walking back to his patrol car, Evans knew he had one for the chief county detective. Apparently some yahoos had been stealing used cooking oil from restaurants. Local police departments had been notified earlier in the week to look out for an unmarked delivery truck, probably smelling like french fries. This truck reeked.
A rhythmic noise from inside the truck caught Evans’s attention. He pounded on the backdoor, yelling, “Police! Who’s there?”
Sudden silence. Putter realized he had been oblivious to his own foot tap-tap-tapping on the floor. His body tensed. “Shit,” he whispered.
The cop banged on the door again.
“I’m opening this door! Whoever’s inside, I want to see your hands in the air!”
Putter said to himself, “I can’t go back. I can’t…”
He knew he had to run for it, at least give himself a chance to escape. He crouched in the dark, ready to sprint.
As soon as the door started rolling up, Putter ran forward. His knee hit one barrel, and then he lost his balance and slammed headfirst into another. Dizzy, he fell to the floor as the second barrel tipped over, spilling fifty-five gallons of used cooking oil all over him.
“Ah, fuck me,” Putter said, losing consciousness. “I’m never getting laid again.”
THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN SHOTGUN HONEY.
Erik Arneson lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Elizabeth. His stories have appeared in Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, and the charity anthology Off the Record 2: At the Movies, in addition to the websites Shotgun Honey, Near to the Knuckle
, and Out of the Gutter. He blogs at ErikArneson.com and tweets @erikarneson.
ONE PERSON’S CLUTTER
* * *
* * *
Albert Ashforth
Detective Steve Stewart watched Eric Swanson’s reaction closely as the morgue attendant silently drew back the sheet covering Peg Falkner’s lifeless body. Swanson went pale, nodded, and then turned away. Sometimes people asked to ID a murder victim keel over. In Stewart’s experience those are often your murderers, and all that remains is to nail down a confession.
But Swanson, though shaken, remained upright. After he’d signed the form, Stewart offered to drive him back to One Person’s Clutter, Swanson’s downtown memorabilia shop.
“Peg and I’d decided to marry,” Swanson said as he unlocked the rear door. Inside, he ran his fingers through his thinning blond hair. He was a gangly six-one, not a bad-looking guy.
When he saw Stewart frowning at the magazines and comics piled all over the shop’s back room, he smiled. “Comics, pulp magazines. When they’re old, they can be worth very big bucks, hundreds of thousands sometimes.”
Peg Falkner’s body had been discovered the previous evening in a quiet suburb. She’d been walking her dog when she was attacked for no discernible reason by a thug who’d throttled her with a pair of pantyhose.
“Your fiancée was very attractive—”
Stewart was interrupted in midsentence by the jingle of the shop’s bell, which caused Swanson to leap to his feet. “I’m expecting someone, an important collector.”
The collector, a heavyset guy who’d arrived in a limo that he’d double-parked, was shouting loudly about “the detectives” as Stewart was about to leave.
Stewart turned. “I’m a detective. What’s the beef?”
“No beef!” the man said impatiently. “Something else!”
Standing behind the counter, Swanson pointed his finger toward his head, indicating this collector was slightly balmy.
“Also I want actions! Actions!” the man announced. “Now!”
Leaving Swanson to his eccentric collector, Stewart decided to visit the small engineering firm where Peg had worked.
“She was a conscientious employee and a dutiful daughter,” her boss said. “After her father died, she moved back with her mother. But then her mother died just two months ago.”
A colleague said Peg had recently broken up with her boyfriend, but she hadn’t known the guy’s name.
It was already dark when Stewart parked his car down the block from Peg Falkner’s home, a nicely maintained split-level.
As he approached, Stewart saw a man sitting in the cab of a battered Dodge pickup truck parked in the shadows. He flashed his badge and told the guy to climb out and take the position.
“You got a permit for this?” Stewart asked as he removed a 9 mm Beretta from the guy’s pocket.
“My name’s Marcus Desmond. And yeah, I have a permit.” Desmond was beetle-browed, broad-shouldered, and was wearing a black leather jacket and a baseball cap turned backward. “The woman who lived in that house there, with the yellow tape in front?”
“What about her?”
“She was murdered yesterday. She was a…friend.”
“Do tell.” More likely, Stewart thought, this was a murderer returning to the scene and maybe intending to knock off a witness who’d seen too much.
The way Stewart now figured, Peg gave this Desmond the gate after she’d met Swanson. Desmond didn’t have Swanson’s looks or style—and, quite likely, any means of support.
Stewart thought the sight of a picture of Peg or even a familiar article of clothing might trigger an emotional meltdown or possibly a confession. “Let’s go inside,” he said.
After a tour of the first floor, Desmond said, “She wanted to sell the house, but she had to get rid of the junk in the basement first. Her father was a clutterbug, someone who could never throw anything away.”
Stewart pointed the way downstairs.
In the basement, he saw Desmond hadn’t exaggerated. There were toys, clothing, tools, and furniture, all dating back to Peg’s father’s youth. The basement was so packed he had to turn sideways to move through it.
With a handkerchief over his face to keep from choking on the dust, Stewart thanked his lucky stars that his wife was a neatness freak.
“I was going to help her,” Desmond said.
“Help her how?”
“With my pickup truck. We planned to haul everything out to the city dump. Peg wanted a clean basement. She hated to come down here.”
Stewart shoved aside a metal bed in the front room. “What’s the sense of keeping this junk?”
Desmond shrugged. “Beats me.”
The really old stuff was located at the front of the cellar, and Stewart saw someone had been in there recently.
Whoever it was had pushed aside a Schwinn bicycle and a Flexible Flyer sled in order to get behind an old wooden chest where an ancient mattress was lying on top of some cardboard cartons.
Pushing aside the mattress, Stewart saw yellow newspapers and National Geographics from the 1930s.
And underneath the papers and magazines Stewart saw something else: the cartons contained hundreds of Depression-era comic books, all in seemingly fine condition.
What clinched it for Stewart was the sight of Batman on the cover of Detective Comics and Superman on the cover of Action Comics. Stewart remembered the collector in Swanson’s shop shouting about “detectives” and “actions”—and he was undoubtedly referring to these comics. Swanson had said comic books were valued at very big bucks.
The name of Swanson’s shop was One Person’s Clutter. Stewart recalled a TV show on which people brought in stuff like comic books from junk-filled basements and attics, and an expert had declared, “One person’s clutter is another’s bread and butter!”
“The stuff here is worth a damned fortune!” Stewart announced.
“You kiddin’ me?” Desmond said.
Swanson had already concealed the comics, which Peg didn’t know were valuable, beneath the mattress. But after their breakup, Swanson was desperate. He’d killed Peg, thinking he could later break into the empty house and retrieve the rare comic books.
By the next morning they had Swanson’s confession.
After serving in the army overseas, Albert Ashforth worked for two newspapers. He is the author of three books and numerous stories and articles. His recently published espionage thriller, The Rendition, was described by one reviewer as “smoothly written, fast moving and suspenseful.” He is a professor at SUNY and lives in New York City.
FIGHTIN’ MAN
* * *
* * *
N.J. Ayres
Orville Davis was a fightin’ man. He’d fight a bug off a bush, a crow from a tree, a shoeshine man for the finishing rag. He’d word-war with a woman pushing a stroller who merely wanted to cross the street in front of him.
Men, now, he’d fight for real—with fists, tire irons, or, once, a Maori club embedded with abalone shell, which still carried the rusty sheen of someone’s long-ago blood. The man he clobbered did not die, but the poor thing could be seen months afterward in any of the three taverns in town hoisting drinks with a hand that trembled of its own heartless accord.
Then one day when Orville Davis was holding a garage sale outside his home, the one with the roof fallen in on the back side, he had a vision. It came to him uninvited—cruelly, you might say—when a roof joist leapt out from its rightful place and aimed itself directly at a point behind Orville’s right ear while Orville was bent over, laying a flat of blue tarp on the muddy patch of lawn in order to display the boat gear he wanted to sell.
At least that’s what the neighbor on his south side said when police came to interview him. Cal Wilton told how he and Orville had been having a discussion over the rightful ownership of the push-type lawn mower rusting between his and Orville’s shed and which on this day Orville had sought three dollars for from a pa
sserby. The would-be buyer drove off without a thing after Cal caught a fist heaved by Orville, Orville being such a sour-tempered man. It was as if, Cal said, the heavens had enough of Orville’s antics and hurled a punch of hard wind through the neighborhood; just have a look at his own tree branches down and trash cans scattered. Cal believed Orville to be dead, the way his eyes showed fish-belly white in his head when he rolled his neighbor over.
But then Orville rose up with a dopey grin, looked beyond as if into a land of golden poppies gently nodding in the breeze, and said, “Love is the only answer.”
All this time his neighbor on the north side, Mrs. Miller, hastened around in her own yard, setting right articles rearranged by gusts. She observed Orville lift a hand to Cal for assistance in rising and saw Cal smack the hand away and then hustle off to his own back door, twice glancing back as if concerned that mean Orville would soon be on his trail.
“I was out again this morning to get my birdhouse, which I didn’t see got flung into my hedge,” Mrs. Miller said. “That’s when I spied Orville there in the rose bushes.” She told this to Officer Newton and his female partner Officer Nettle, two names starting with N on their badges about which she also made comment, to no reply.
“Did you disturb anything, touch the victim?” Officer Nettle asked.
“All them TV shows, no ma’am, you can be sure I did not. Except to roll his face out the dirt, which any kindhearted person would do.”
“Then you did touch the subject,” Officer Nettle said.
“Not with his hair like it is, greasy on a good day and way bad now. Alls I did was grab my glove off the top of my faucet over there and turn Orville’s face out of the fertilized soil. He was good about them roses, I’ll say that.”
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