by Chris Bauer
“Your call, bud. A lot to talk about, but one thing’s not negotiable. There’s no chance I’m breaking the news to Grace. You’re on your own there.”
First leg, she splurged on a business class ticket for her nine p.m. flight. Eight hours of pampering and rest ahead of her. She kept on her sunglasses, leaned back, and melted into the seat that turned into a bed. The doctors in the hospital, or probably the nurses, had undone her cornrows, needing to scrub her head before she went into surgery, where they’d determined there’d been no harm to her internal organs, liver, the intestines, stomach, only muscle damage. The incision made by the Yakuza doctor had been the only damage. She’d lost a lot of blood, but every organ that should have been in there was still in there. Twenty-four hours later, she bolted from the hospital.
She had incision tenderness and pain, and had been prescribed meds for it. Non-narcotic, per her request. Fading into dreamland…
Wally Lanakai. Her mob patron, her cheerleader, her lovesick suitor. He’d gotten her sober. He’d kept her that way, made her think that way. She’d always have him to thank for that. But unless she was willing to sacrifice everything, her independence, morals, and freedom, she could never be with him. Her only choice was to return to anonymity. To allow the news of the demise of one Kaipo Mawpaw to be gruesome, sensational, and final. To let him think he’d lost her forever, and in so doing, break his heart.
And to have her wonder if another person would ever love her that much again.
Join the Reader List
Never miss a new release! Sign up to receive exclusive updates from author Chris Bauer.
Join today at ChrisBauerAuthor.com
2 STREET
Philo Trout's clandestine, Navy SEAL past isn’t coming back to haunt him...it’s coming back to kill him.
A mob war takes center stage in Philadelphia.
Someone is killing the city’s beloved Mummers string band performers—singularly and in bunches.
A few of Philo's friends are Mummers...or were, before they were slaughtered.
And it looks like Philo is next on the hit list.
2 Street
Turn the page to read a sample ----->
2 STREET: Chapter 1
Frank Tisha had two more stops to make tonight. Hands in his pockets, he leaned into the wind-whipped snow caking onto his knee-length cashmere coat as he pushed up Snyder Avenue in South Philly. He entered the corridor beneath the concrete overpass, escaping the blizzard for a moment. The Delaware Expressway rumbled above him: Interstate 95, stretching north and south, but visibility was shitty because of the storm. Hatless, even in this weather, that’s how Frank rolled, so the snowflakes defrosted in his ears and pooled there until the overflow ran down his neck, under his shirt. He brushed off his eyebrows and shook his upturned collar almost clean, stomping his feet as he walked almost a city block, the corridor a respite from the snow. The roar of trucks and other traffic still pounded the salt-treated highway overhead, the echo only slightly lessened by the storm.
Frank blew into his hands for the full minute it took to walk the darkness between Water and Front streets, emerging at the traffic light. One fifteen a.m. give or take. Little car traffic at street level in the blizzard. Foot traffic was nonexistent, would stay that way until bartenders served their last-call drinks then shoved drunk patrons out the door into this god-forsaken, wintry white night.
A nervous pat of his coat’s breast pockets. He felt the edge of the notepad inside. In bad weather he knew to keep the paper in zip-locked plastic. Its blue-lined pages and his scribbles on them were in soft No. 2 pencil lead, and they would smear if they got wet.
“Smart zebras don’t change their spots,” he mumbled, coughed once, then wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
He’d heard that somewhere, or something like it, used it as a pep talk for himself. Maybe he’d fractured it a bit, but he’d kept it to heart a full eight years now, ever since he’d retired from the Teamsters front office and began working for Dizzy and the family. Collections work. Transportation for high end escorts. Old school illegal numbers rackets; bets on horse and dog racing results, taken from blue-collar city folks with some high rollers layered in, all recorded with a nubby pencil in rice paper notepads, and the product of miles of shoe leather, day and night. This record-keeping method had worked fine for numbers runners spanning multiple decades, and it worked fine for Frank Tisha during the current one.
Frank owned a cell phone but he didn’t trust using it for this business. He’d burned each two-buck notepad after it filled up. If someone ever dropped a dime on him and sent the cops to his house, he could toss the one he was using in the bucket of water he kept next to his bed, and the water would dissolve the rice paper. But putting that shit on his phone, taking pictures of the bets, then texting them to his handler—in his mind, the internet let all that evidence float out there in the clouds forever, where the Feds and local constabularies could find it. Old school was best.
One more block past Front Street, Danny Boy’s corner saloon loomed, its green and white shamrock lights blazing its marquee at the intersection, lighting up the night.
A woman leaned over a second-floor railing of a covered balcony, opposite side of the street, a pair of French doors open behind her. Her cigarette glowed through the curtain of falling snow. He could hear the low music the open doors offered—saxophones, trumpets, banjos, plus a juke box, all of it edging into the wee hours. It was less than a month to New Year’s day, when peppy tunes from Philly’s string bands would overtake the city’s downtown streets.
He watched her watching him as he approached the corner. The carriage wall lamps below her lit up large black letters painted under the balcony, across the width of two stucco rowhomes. “Downtowners,” the letters boasted, a social club for an entry in the parade’s string band division.
“Nancy,” Frank called to her, a street full of parked cars blanketed with snow between them, a greeting suffixed with a hand wave. He got after his coat collar, shaking off the snow again, pulling it closed around his neck.
“Otherway,” Nancy said, addressing him by his street nickname. “Stay warm, honey.”
She exhaled a plume of smoke, their greetings deadened by the curtain of snow that made them each no more than silhouettes to the other. A ritual for them, three, maybe four nights a week, unless he’d stop to chat with her. Too cold to do that tonight. No time for him to chat at the bars, either, whenever he got there. He wanted to get home.
At the end of the block, after a hard pull at a carved wooden door, Frank entered Danny Boy’s Pub on the street’s other side. This time of night the drunks might be passed out and draped over the bar or on the floor, or were maybe two to three deep in the booths. But tonight, Danny Boy’s was dead. Chalk it up to the snow day.
“Line one up for me, Oakie, will you, please,” Frank said to the bartender.
Early thirties and clean-shaven, Oakie was a bright-eyed kid even at one twenty-five a.m. His white face and blond hair reminded Frank of his primary care doctor, a mick; not an Italian bone in his body.
“You bet, Mr. Otherway.” Oakie slapped a shot glass onto the mahogany bar, tipped some Dewar’s into it.
Sometimes Frank, sometimes “Otherway,” sometimes simply “O.” But at home, all the time, he was Frankie to his wife. All of it worked.
“I don’t see Michael,” Frank said.
“There,” Oakie said, chin-pointing at the far end of the paneled taproom, at a two-person booth with one beefy occupant only. Frank barely turned his head, the booth already within his peripheral vision. In this respect, and in this respect only, Frank “Otherway” Tisha’s lazy eye was his superpower.
Frank downed the shot, headed back to the booth and sat across from Michael, sixties, cherry cheeks and no neck. The bar’s teetotaling owner, and Oakie’s uncle. Majorly overweight, Michael fed his ruddy face with leftover jalapeno poppers, overwhelming his mouth like a hoarding chipmunk.
<
br /> “Want some?” he asked Frank, chewing through the question.
Frank waved him off. “No sleep if I eat shit like that this late. Gotta finish up, head home, do some Christmas shopping tomorrow. Whaddaya got for me tonight, Michael?”
“The snow put a dent in it, Frank. Here.”
One sheet of paper, fourteen one-word names on it, fourteen three-digit numbers alongside them, fourteen dollar amounts, all the info handwritten. Frank took out his notepad and rewrote the entire list, left Michael to dispose of his piece of paper. No money changed hands.
“Settlement day tomorrow, Michael. You ready?”
“I will be. We had a good week, no accounting for tonight, but we’re good.”
“You did at that. Good to hear you’re flush. After you get the call and the drive-by tomorrow, maybe I can stop by and do a few of those poppers with you? Around dinner? Maybe I bring Teresa?”
“You and the wife? Sure, Frank.”
“Good.”
Frank left Danny Boy’s, trudged up 2 Street, no one else ahead of him on foot, the snow falling serenely in big flakes now, the high wind and blizzard conditions easing off. Last stop for the night was another taproom, two blocks up, one block over. A check of his watch; five minutes to two. He’d get there late, but a knock on the door would get him inside. Rowhome after rowhome, the houses were all narrow, all two stories, all with front stoops, the street a conga line of parked cars against the curbs, all quietly getting snowed in. Some TVs were on upstairs and down, but most people were tucked into their beds, their lights out, weathering the early December storm.
At the street corner, a black, boxy, armored truck.
A cash in transit vehicle, or CIT. The only truck on the residential street, and it was idling next to a snow-covered fire hydrant. Headlights and parking lights were off, the truck’s cab dark. Out of place at this hour, in the middle of the night, and so out of place as a big, boxy, solid commercial vehicle on so narrow a street as 2nd Street, for any time of day or night. Frank crossed to the other sidewalk before he got to the end of the block, to keep his distance from it. He reached the corner, made a left, stayed his course.
He heard the armored truck’s engine rev and the transmission shift. It pulled away from the curb, headlights still off, made the left turn, and dieseled up the street behind him.
It was officially, completely out of place now: the street was one way, and the truck was moving in the wrong direction.
Frank mumbled a what-the-fuck and glanced over his shoulder, kept walking, maintaining a separation.
No approaching traffic. The truck bucked once like the clutch had been popped, lurched forward and drove past him a few lengths, was now in second gear. The back doors suddenly swept open, banging against the exterior rear walls. Nothing visible inside, the interior unlit as it rumbled farther up the street. One second, two seconds, three seconds passed, then the truck stopped and the bodies slid out.
Two dead black men in uniform hit the white-covered blacktop, their uniforms black also, their heads leaking from massive wounds, shot at close range. Shotgun shells to the face. The snow under their heads turned red before Frank’s eyes, reminding him of cherry snow cones at the circus. Gloved hands reached from inside the truck for the door handles, pulled them shut, the doors not quite catching, the truck’s engine revving once, twice, and when the CIT lurched forward in first gear again, one of the doors flipped back open. A canvas satchel dropped out, yellow-white with brown handles, the size of a gym bag. Easy to miss in the snow, so much of it swirling in the air. The truck stopped short and held its position, the bag behind it, its brake lights piercing the dark.
The two bodies were supposed to be left there, but the canvas bag…
The armored truck lingered. The driver or someone else inside was making a decision.
Headlights approached from the opposite direction, a block, block and a half away, visibility sketchy. The idling truck held fast. Frank, on the sidewalk, was halfway between the bodies and the bag, the CIT a few lengths farther up the street.
Frank wasn’t armed, and he could barely feel his hands, or his face, or his feet, some because of the cold, some because of the tension.
The truck lurched forward, gunned its engine, its spinning tires dredging up a spray of snow like a dog burying its business in the backyard, further covering the bag. The truck was leaving.
Frank kicked at the drift between the parked cars and entered the street. He reached the middle, stood behind the bag, interested in it and the retreating truck both, not the bodies behind him. The CIT ground through its gears toward the corner, alighting snowflakes melting on the bag’s off-white, stenciled canvas that bore one word only, Dominion, in blocked, blue letters—the same stenciling as on the rear panel of the truck. The transmission reengaged, pushing the truck up the street until it reached the corner and stopped, its brake lights engaged. The rear doors opened again.
Another body fell out. This time it was joined by someone interested in its placement in the snow.
Frank shielded his eyes from darting snowflakes to see a guy in a camo jumpsuit, ski mask and gloves, watched him turn the body over, the victim’s shoes now toes up. The interested party reached back into the truck, swept his arm side to side along the floor until he found what he was after. A banjo.
Through squinty eyes Frank watched the man lay the banjo upside down on the victim and place the hands over the banjo neck. The camo guy admired his work then hopped back into the rear of the truck and pounded an inside wall. The armored truck went into drive, turned the next corner and was gone. Approaching car headlights crept forward, illuminating the snow-covered street, the parked cars, and the twinkling Christmas wreaths and lights on rowhome doors and wrapped around railings and light posts. A scene from a Hallmark card, the South Philadelphia Collection, all except for the bodies in the street. The car stopped, bathing the body with the banjo in its headlights.
“Christ,” Frank said, the nighttime scene ahead of him bright as a shopping mall parking lot. He suffixed taking the Lord’s name in vain with another what-the-fuck: the body was headless.
The car suddenly slammed into reverse and backed all the way up the street to the prior intersection, found first gear, and disappeared onto another side street.
Frank reached the headless body, stood over it. A husky male in gym pants, with a heavy winter coat and Air Jordans. His dark, meaty hands and arms had been folded over the banjo neck, to hold it in place. The banjo’s head reached above the man’s shoulders, covering the space where his own head should have been. Its tan, stretched cover bore a crude frowny face drawn in black marker.
Frank hustled back between the cars, out of the middle of the street, and returned to the sidewalk. He punched numbers into his phone, quickly retracing his steps.
The man Frank called picked up. “This better be good, asshole.”
“Sorry, Diz, something happened—”
“Otherway? That you? It’s fucking two a.m., O. I was about to bust a nut with the old lady. And what am I’m hearing on your end? A siren?”
“Yeah. Siren, ambulance, cops, I don’t know what, but something’s on the way.” Frank breathed hard, finally stopped his stride, peering through the fog his breath was making, now focusing on the dead armored car guards in the street. “You’re never gonna believe what just went down—”
Three bodies, two of them for sure black males, the third maybe black, maybe not, with meaty hands and a banjo where his head used to be. Dizzy Pungitore heard Frank Tisha describe all of it, the armored car, the guys in camo jumpsuits, the cross streets, 2 Street and Mifflin. Five minutes ago, ten minutes tops…
But no mention of the canvas bag Frank had kicked under a parked car. He had a good idea what was in that bag, and a better idea of what he was going to do with it.
2 Street
ChrisBauerAuthor.com
BINGE KILLER
**National Indie Excellence Award Finalist**
> A FEMALE BOUNTY HUNTER TRACKS A SERIAL KILLER TO A RURAL MOUNTAIN TOWN
A town with its own dark secret…
After serial killer Randall Burton is diagnosed with a terminal disease, he decides to jump bail and go out in a blaze of glory.
One woman stands in his way.
Her name is Counsel Fungo, and she’s an exceptionally talented bounty hunter, if a little eccentric. Officially, her two canine companions are therapy dogs. But she considers them partners. Counsel will do anything to stop criminals from preying on the vulnerable, and she’s intent on stopping Randall Burton.
Randall’s trail leads to sleepy Rancor, Pennsylvania.
Named one of the “Safest Towns in America,” it’s a quiet town tucked away in the Poconos. Its citizens are mostly widowers, bowlers, and bingo players.
But there’s a reason no one in Rancor has reported a major crime in the past 50 years.
Click here to purchase Binge Killer now
Turn the page to read a sample ----->
Thanks for Reading
Find your next adventure in Binge Killer. Be sure to check out the following excerpt.
But first, I’d like to ask you to join My Newsletter. Just enter your preferred email to receive my updates.