ALL DUE RESPECT: ISSUE 1
All Due Respect is a
Full Dark City Press publication
Copyright © 2013, Full Dark City Press
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The All Due Respect Crew
Editor: Chris Rhatigan
Associate Editor: Mike Monson
Publisher: Full Dark City Press
Cover Artist: Eric Beetner
Formatting: JW Manus
ALL DUE RESPECT
ISSUE NO. 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Fiction
A Dying Art
by Chris F. Holm
Good Dogs
by Todd Robinson
Amanda Will Be Fine
by Renee Asher Pickup
The Bucket List
by Paul D. Brazill
Private Practice
by Travis Richardson
The Church of the Sad Sisters
by Mike Miner
Chicken: A Wellesport Story
by Walter Conley
Non-fiction
Interview with Chris F. Holm
by Steve Weddle
Chris F. Holm’s Collector Series
reviewed by Elizabeth A. White
Country Hardball, by Steve Weddle
reviewed by Chris Rhatigan
The Hard Case Corner
Fake ID, by Jason Starr
reviewed by Mike Monson
Money Shot, by Christa Faust
reviewed by Mike Monson
Grifter’s Game, by Lawrence Block
reviewed by Chris Rhatigan
The Cocktail Waitress, by James M. Cain
reviewed by Chris Rhatigan
FICTION
A DYING ART
CHRIS F. HOLM
THE BELL ABOVE THE shop door jingled as Anton Russo shuffled across the threshold and stepped inside. It was tarnished and dulled with age, a relic from another time—not unlike the establishment in which it hung, Russo thought, or his rumpled, threadbare double-breasted suit. And not unlike himself.
“Mr. Russo!” called the stooped old man in barber’s whites carving a flattop into the head of a jockish kid of maybe seventeen. As the door swung shut, the old man killed the clippers’ hum in deference. At the mention of Russo’s name, the kid’s shoulders tensed beneath his cutting cape, and his eyes went wide. “So nice to see you. In for a trim?”
It wasn’t nice to see him, Russo knew. Though at five-six, two-fifty he was far from physically intimidating, his short, squat frame wasn’t one most wished to see darkening their doors. Anton Russo was a killer of men—by order more often than not these days, not that it mattered to his victims. The police knew it. The media knew it. Hell, given his reaction, even the mound of buzz-cut-dusted baby fat beneath the cutting cape knew it.
Russo didn’t mind that they knew—in fact, he luxuriated in the squeamishness his reputation elicited from those around him. It kept them from stepping out of line. As did the unfortunate fates of the poor souls who dared to cross him. Their remains were invariably found within days of their transgression, burned to a cinder—sometimes after hours of brutal torture or a gunshot each to head and heart, but in many cases while they were still alive. And somewhere nearby, the police would find the victim’s index finger—severed, but otherwise unharmed. It was Russo’s signature. He wanted his victims ID’d. Wanted smiling pictures plucked from their families’ scrapbooks splashed across the front page of the newspaper, right beside photos of the flame-licked sewers, Dumpsters, and skid row alleys in which their charred flesh had been discovered. How else would his other would-be enemies learn?
Russo patted his hair and affected a wounded expression. “You telling me there’s something wrong with my hair?” The aged barber looked aghast. “I’m just fucking with you, Sal—but all I need today’s a shave.”
Sal smiled then, eyes watery with relief. “Of course, Mr. Russo. Please have a seat. Lucas will be right with you.”
Russo frowned. “Lucas? What happened to Vincent?”
“You didn’t hear? His heart.”
“No. When?”
“Two, three weeks?”
“Is he…”
“No. He pulled through—barely. Been in Pine View ever since, hooked up to more machines than I could put a name to.”
Christ. Too many guys in Russo’s circles were dropping from shit like that these days. Used to be if someone he knew wound up in the hospital, it was because he got shot or shanked or flipped a stolen car. Now it was all cancer and bum tickers. He longed for the days when the threat of death was sexier. “Damn shame,” he said. “Finest hands I’ve ever seen. You think he’s ever coming back?”
Sal shook his head. “I doubt it—and the shape he’s in, you wouldn’t want him to. He shakes so bad these days you’d be lucky not to bleed out in the chair.” Then he remembered who he was talking to and colored, worried he’d crossed some kind of line. Russo noticed, and was pleased at Sal’s discomfort.
He was less pleased with the Vincent situation. The man had been gifted with a straight razor. A crack practitioner of a dying art. Used to be, he’d give you a shave so clean, you’d walk out of Sal’s shop a few sins lighter than you came in. Not enough to square Russo’s books, mind, but he’d sleep easier for a night or two, at least. Plus, his wife liked how baby-smooth his cheeks would be afterward. Almost as much as his mistresses did.
When Lucas ducked past the curtain that separated the shop from its small back room, Russo’s mood darkened further. He’d naturally assumed Vincent’s replacement would be a somber man of regal carriage and ancient vintage—as set apart from modern times as the barber pole that spun red and white out front. But this Lucas—Russo was sure he was Lucas because Vincent aside, Sal had never had any other employees—couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. His hair was greased into an improbable pompadour, so high it bordered on caricature. His sideburns were long and flared. A loop of stainless steel pierced one nostril, and he wore black rivets in his ears wide enough to pass a quarter through. The sleeves of his white barber’s coat were rolled up, revealing garish tattoos from his knuckles on up. Some were crisp and bold, traditional but professionally done—primary colors bordered in black. Some—like the STAY TRUE across his knuckles, and the swallow on his neck—were the shaky blue-gray of prison ink.
If Lucas noted Russo’s disdain, he didn’t let it show. He was smiling as he swept into the room surrounded by a cloud of cigarette-scented evening air, the cool damp of the alley behind the shop clinging to him like a fog.
“Mr. Russo,” he said with deference, but no trace of the fear Sal’s greeting carried. “Welcome. Can I offer you a Sambuca?”
“Come again?”
“It is your drink of choice, isn’t it?”
Sal, across the room, saw Russo’s suspicion writ large across his features, and tittered nervously over the buzz of his renewed clipping. “He doesn’t mean any offense, Mr. Russo—he offers a drink to all his clients. Says a proper barber shop should be a ge
ntleman’s respite from the world—and that a shave should be a vacation.”
“Is that right.” Russo said, unconvinced. “You research all your clients’ favorite drinks?”
“No,” Lucas admitted. “I mostly stock Scotch. But you’re hardly an average client, Mr. Russo—and your predilections are well documented. It seemed like good business to buy a bottle just for you.”
“You ask me, it’s better business to stay the hell out of mine,” Russo said. “Where’d you find this kid, Sal?”
“Same way anybody hires anybody,” Sal replied. “I put out an ad, and Lucas here answered. But you wouldn’t believe the recommendations he’s got. Remember Ben Meyers? Used to come in all the time, and then just stopped? Turns out, he defected from Vince to Lucas here.”
That’s funny, Russo thought—I assumed Ben stopped coming in on account of that Federal indictment. He hadn’t shown his face—clean-shaven or otherwise—around town in months. But Ben’s pop and Russo’s did business since before Russo was born, so if Ben vouched for this kid, he couldn’t be all bad.
“All right, hotshot, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Lucas led Russo to a barber’s chair—black leather piped with white at the edges, with brass fixtures and padded head- and footrests—and tucked a towel into Russo’s collar. He reclined the chair such that Russo’s head lay against the headrest, and he was staring at the yellowed ceiling tiles. Another towel—this one damp and steaming—was placed under Russo’s chin, and wrapped around his head until only his nose and hair showed. The moist heat relaxed the muscles of his face, a cascade that trickled downward to his neck and shoulders. He let out a sigh as the day’s tension drained away, his irritation at this brash young upstart momentarily forgotten. Maybe there’s something to be said for a fresh approach, he thought. He found himself wishing he’d accepted Lucas’ offer of a drink.
After a few minutes, Lucas unwrapped the towel and massaged some sort of conditioner into Russo’s coarse stubble. It smelled of tea tree and peppermint. When Lucas finished, he applied another hot towel, and began honing his blade. Back and forth he dragged it across the leather strop that hung from a hook on the wall beside his station, each practiced stroke like the gentle rasp of fine sandpaper across smooth wood. Russo found its metronomic regularity hypnotic.
Again the towel was removed. Russo realized that, at some point, Sal’s clippers had stopped buzzing in the background—and when he looked around, he saw that he and Lucas were alone. He must have dozed off for a minute. Lucas wiped the excess conditioner from Russo’s face, and then applied hot shaving cream from a lacquered bowl with a matching badger brush. His efficiency of movement and attention to detail put Vincent’s technique to shame.
“I gotta ask,” said Russo, “where’s a kid your age pick up a skill like this?”
Lucas hesitated a moment before answering. “Prison,” he said, thumbing the blade of his straight razor to check its edge.
If the kid was worried that’d spook me, thought Russo, he’s got me wrong—research or no. I knew he’d taken a fall the second I saw his ink; least he had the balls to tell me the truth.
“They let inmates play with straight razors now?”
“No,” Lucas said, the ghost of a smile playing across his face. “Just clippers—and even then, it took a couple years of good behavior before they let me. But that’s where I learned the trade. Led me to a gig sweeping floors at a salon when I made parole. Eventually, I convinced them I was good for more than that. Place closed down a few years after, thanks to the economic downturn—but at least I left with a marketable skill. Spent a couple years doing house calls for select clients, and then decided I wanted something a little more regular. That’s when I spotted Sal’s ad. Now here I am.”
The truth was a bit more complicated than that. Lucas’ story was factual as far as it went, but it wasn’t the whole picture. Truth was, Lucas couldn’t give a shit about working normal hours—he could make more on his own than he was ever going to under Sal’s roof. He responded to Sal’s ad because he knew Anton Russo was one of Sal’s regulars. He knew because the FBI agents who’d forced him to turn stoolie on his last client told him.
Lucas still felt shitty about ratting out Ben Meyers. Sure, Meyers was as mobbed up as they come, but he’d been decent to Lucas, taking a chance on him when few would on account of his rap sheet, and—once Lucas proved his worth—recommending him to enough of his friends that Lucas could make a comfortable living more-or-less aboveboard for a change.
It was the more-or-less that did him in. He ran his house-call service strictly under the table. Seemed to Lucas a minor infraction until the Feds came knocking. Agents Redfield and Lange—standard G-men both, with their dark suits, cheap shaves, and boring what-counterculture haircuts. He came home to find them sitting on his couch one day, his parole officer looking stern and disappointed in the armchair beside.
They told him it didn’t look too good for a kid who got put away for burglary to have a bank account full of unreported earnings, or that he’d failed to tell his parole officer the salon he’d supposedly been working these past three years had closed. They rattled off a litany of charges from parole violation to tax evasion, and once they’d laid it on good and thick, they gave him an out: help them build a case against Ben Meyers, and they’d overlook his lapses in judgment.
So he did. Turned out, it was easy. Meyers trusted Lucas. Talked freely around him. Gave him free run of his home. Lucas helped the Feds gain access to Meyers’s email. Supplied them with the number to his burner-phone du jour. Reported names and dates for anyone who came to visit while he was there. Proved his worth so thoroughly, it guaranteed the Feds would keep their hooks in him for good—and left Lucas wishing he’d been wise enough to negotiate some kind of exit strategy once his services had been duly rendered.
This gig, though, was a stroke of luck. Because while Lucas liked Meyers fine, he had a score to settle with Russo. Russo didn’t know that yet—nor did his asshole Fed handlers when they put Lucas onto him with the instruction to gain his confidence. Which was good, because they never would have put him onto Russo if they knew what he had in store. Lucas would be damned if he was going to cozy up to Russo just so they could arrest him on some piddling white-collar shit like they did with Meyers. It wasn’t nearly punishment enough for all he’d done.
Satisfied his blade was sharp enough, Lucas set the edge against the flat of Russo’s sideburn, and placed two fingers just above, in the man’s hair. He held the blade fast, and used his fingers to pull Russo’s flesh upward, resulting in a perfect horizontal line. A steady down-stroke, and Russo’s jaw line was swept clean of shaving cream and whiskers.
“So,” said Russo, “what’d you go in for?”
“B and E,” Lucas replied. “Possession of stolen property. I used to run with a crew of kids who’d creep houses together and take whatever we could find—food, pills, jewelry, electronics. There were three of us. We all came up through the foster system, and got all turned out at eighteen. We were on our own—no skills, no money, no nothing. So we made do, living in squats when times were lean, and pooling the dough we got from pulling jobs for furnished month-to-months when we were flush.”
“All for one and one for all, huh?”
“Something like that,” Lucas replied, finishing one cheek down to the jaw, and tilting Russo’s head so he could work on the other.
“When you took your fall, did your buddies get bagged, too?”
“No. The job I got busted on was one I scouted. For better or worse, I was always the man with the plan. The place belonged to family headed on vacation—I’d seen their car out front the day before all loaded up, so I knew their brownstone would be empty. But they had a security system, and I missed it. By the time I realized my mistake, the cops were out front. I figured it was up to me to make it right, so I walked out the front door hands-up, while my boys snuck out the back. I told the cops I was alone.”
“The other two got away clean?”
“Not exactly,” said Lucas as he moved on to Russo’s neck. “Mike’s serving fifteen years for a mugging gone wrong. Happened few months after I got caught. I can’t say I was surprised—he’d always been the hothead of the group. It was only a matter of time before he did something he couldn’t walk back. Without me there to yank his chain, he got reckless quick, and sloppy too.”
“Fifteen for a mugging’s kind of extreme. What happened?”
“He held a couple up at knifepoint. Wore a ski mask and everything, just like in the movies. Probably thought he was being clever. Anyways, the guy made a move on him, and Mike wound up burying his knife in the dude’s side. He split, but they wound up nailing him anyway because he left prints all over the handle, and blood all over the blade. Turns out when you attack somebody with a bladed weapon, you’re as likely to cut yourself as you are your victim. Did you know that? I sure as hell didn’t. Then again,” he said, wiping the shaving cream off the razor with his sleeve, “I guess I’ve always been more careful with a cutting edge than poor, stupid Mike. Point is, his knife hit one of the guy’s ribs going in. It stopped the blade, and Mike’s hand slipped. Saved the fellow’s life, and cut Mike’s fingers all to shit. The prosecutor said the wounds were textbook. The jury believed her. It took them all of fifteen minutes to put him away.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Like I said, with Mike it was always just a matter of time. Anybody who met him could see it. When he took his fall, I felt for him, but it didn’t hurt like losing Jamie did. Least Mike’s got a shot at a real life when he gets out.”
“What do you mean, losing Jamie? What happened to him?”
“Jamie was the baby of the group—in age and temperament. Kind of a space cadet, his head always in the clouds. He was a sensitive kid born into a world that didn’t give a shit about him. Me and Mike tried to look after him, but when we went away, he fell apart. He was already into the junk when I was arrested. Moved from chasing smoke to shooting shortly afterward. A year later, while I was inside, he bought a bad bundle on the street and died messy in an alley—one of ten dead junkies in a week. Papers said the stuff he took was more desomorphine than heroin. It’s cheaper and easier to acquire than the real thing, and made right, it packs a harder punch. Made wrong, it’s fucking battery acid. The shit my friend shot up was made wrong. It ate him from the inside out.”
All Due Respect Issue #1 Page 1