“It was the other side. I was on the other side. He was over here.” Pointed to the driver’s window.
“That’s okay. It’ll be good enough.” Directed her knees into the car, went around the back to stand next to the passenger window. “What do you think?”
Vicki looked over, then away. “I don’t know. Close to the same maybe.” Doc started for the rear of the car and she said, “He had a belt buckle.”
Doc returned to his spot by the window. Whatever might prime her memory. “Do you remember anything about the buckle? A design? Words?”
She shook her head. “It was too dark and I wasn’t really looking. It surprised me seeing someone there at all. It shined in the light, the only reason I noticed it.”
“Anything else about him stick in your mind? Anything at all.”
Doc saw her start to drift. “Just the shiny buckle and his hand come up. You know, like he had a piece of paper with an address on it and wanted to ask if we knew where it was. He said something to Doug and Doug said no and I saw his hand come up past the buckle and something else shiny and I looked…it was a gun.”
Doc’s voice soft, hoping she’d answer the question as if she’d continued on her own. “The gun was shiny?”
“Mmm-hmmm, shinier than the belt buckle. Had a round thing in the middle.”
“Was the gun big or little?”
“Big. Oh, Jesus, I never saw a gun that big before…and…and…”
Doc hustled around to the other side, put his hands on her arms before hysteria set in. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I don’t need to know anything else.” Slid her legs out of the car, took her hands in his. “Shhh, that’s all I need right now.”
“No, it’s his hand. The hand with the g-gun. It’s coming up and I can see the long part pointing into the car and—and—” Tears sheeting down her cheeks, voice on the edge.
“Shhh, it’s okay.”
“It’s his hand. The hand. On his hand. There’s a-a—tattoo on his hand. It’s the Steelers emblem, with the stars. Oh my God!” Vicki wailed and Doc wondered Where’s the fucking ambulance and she said, “It’s the guy from the blackjack table!”
“The dealer?”
“No, the guy from the blackjack table. With the ugly tattoo. Doug talked to him all night, made fun of it. He’s the guy that shot him!”
Click here to learn more about Ten-Seven by Dana King.
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Here is a preview from Lizzie’s Lullaby, a crime novel by Lono Waiwaiole.
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Prologue
“Don’t people fall asleep when they’re ready to?” Lizzie asked while she looked up at her father from beneath the comforter Grams had given her a couple of birthdays ago.
“Maybe,” Wiley said, “but when they’re seven they try to fall asleep when their daddy says it’s late.”
“Late for what?”
“Late for this conversation. Lights out, kid!”
“Lights don’t have a thing to do with it. I’ll be just as awake in the dark as I am right now.”
“Yeah, but you won’t be able to read as well.”
“Daddy, I have this book memorized. When do I get something more my speed?”
“Maybe tomorrow. If.”
“If what?”
“If you get to sleep soon enough to qualify.”
“How soon is that?”
“Now, you knucklehead.”
“What is that, actually?”
“What is what?”
“A knucklehead.”
“I have no idea, now that you mention it.”
“I thought you teach English. Isn’t that an English word?”
“Lizzie,” Wiley said with a sigh. “You are absolutely exhausting sometimes.”
“Sounds like you’re the one needs to get to sleep, not me.”
“An astute observation, young lady. But I’m not the only one.”
“Astute?”
“What’s your best guess?”
“Has to be positive,” she said with a grin and a toss of her head. “Otherwise, it couldn’t be applied to something I said.”
“I can apply a lot of terms to the things you say, me being an English teacher and all. But yeah, you’re on the right track.”
“So, a good observation, then. But it has to be more than that, or you’d just say good. I’m gonna go with ‘very sharp observation.’”
“Well done. Now settle down before I’m forced to take desperate measures.”
“Oh, exciting! Whatever could they be?”
“Good night, Lizzie,” Wiley said before he leaned down and kissed her softly on the tip of her nose.
“That tickles.”
“If it tickled, you’d be laughing right now.”
“I show no weakness. I’m laughing on the inside where you can’t see it.”
“Good night, Lizzie.”
“Fine,” she said with a long sigh of her own. “If you’re not gonna be any more fun than this, I might as well go to sleep.”
Wiley tucked the comforter around her, turned off the lamp next to the bed and headed for the bedroom door, but Lizzie interceded before he got all the way there. “Daddy?” she said.
“What now?”
“Not another Dr. Seuss. I am so over those!”
“I know adults who still enjoy Dr. Seuss.”
“That’s not my fault. I want a book with chapters in it this time.”
“Maybe. It all depends.”
“On what?”
“On when my favorite knucklehead actually goes to sleep,” he said through a smile Lizzie could plainly see from her bed even in the dim light spilling into the room from the hallway.
“Good night, Daddy,” she said, and she was smiling to herself while she said it.
On the other hand, Julie was not smiling. She was brushing her long blonde hair when Wiley entered their room, sitting cross-legged on the bed with the blankets bunched around her waist. There was nothing bunched around anything further north, and Wiley had to admit that the view this provided was flawless.
You’re a beautiful woman, he thought. That is not the problem.
“Mission accomplished?” she said.
“Not likely. And it is entirely your fault.”
“I think the general consensus suggests otherwise, Wiley. It took both of us to make her.”
“Fuck the scientific community. I’m not smart enough to be related to that knucklehead.”
“You’re plenty smart enough,” Julie said as she placed her brush on the nightstand next to the bed and raised the blankets high enough to cover her breasts. “Your native intelligence is not the problem.”
“What problem is that?” Wiley asked, even though he knew the answer just as well as she did.
“Please don’t do that,” she said as she turned away from him under the blankets.
“Don’t do what?”
“Act like you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about,” she said, and then she didn’t say another word until after the alarm on the nightstand rang at seven the next morning.
“Let’s talk about the challenges that make patience so necessary, Your Highness,” Satin said into the phone. And that ultimately make your purchase so expensive, she added to herself. “You need someone capable of amusing you for several years—and you aren’t easily amused, are you?”
“I guess you would know, all things considered,” the prince said.
“Yes, I would, wouldn’t I?”
“Still, I have to wonder if you are seeking what I want as diligently as possible, considering how long the wait has been this time.”
“If you’re willing to settle for something less than what you really want, you don’t need to wait a minute longer. Finding a random girl is easy, and you certainly don’t need someone like me to do it.”
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if
I were willing to settle, would we?”
“I wouldn’t think so. But you seem to be forgetting that finding the girl is partly a function of good fortune. Someone capable of truly meeting your requirements is difficult to find no matter how diligent the search. So far, we haven’t been that lucky.”
“That is one of my concerns. Perhaps I need a more fortunate representative.”
“We both know I’m not the only person involved in this endeavor, and my hat is off to anyone who finds your new daughter before I do.”
“I’m dispatching McLemore to observe your efforts first-hand. You should see him soon.”
“McLemore can’t move the needle, you know.”
“Perhaps he can provide me with reassurance, though, that everything possible is being done.”
“It’s not a problem,” Satin said, which was not perfectly true. “I usually enjoy McLemore’s little visits.”
“Here’s hoping this one improves your luck, Irina,” the prince said, and then the phone went dead in her hand. She lowered it to the table next to her, rankled slightly by the sound of her given name and even more by the reference to her long personal history with this particular man.
The irritation failed to stick, though, easily surpassed by the pleasant truth the call underscored—the longer it took to find the right girl, the more that girl was worth. If men weren’t the wonderful fools they are, she said to herself as she reviewed the call in her mind, whatever would we poor women do?
When the Bough Breaks
Leon climbed aboard a Greyhound in St. Louis, Missouri and got off two days later in Portland, Oregon. He had known where he was going, but not much else. The biggest question was how to live once he got there after the ten grand in his bag ran out, a process he knew would be complicated by two facts he was trying to leave behind: his four years and change in the Missouri state pen and the three members of a St. Louis crime family he had shot to death on his way out of town.
He chewed on the question of survival both awake and asleep until the bus rolled into the Portland depot. It was about eight in the morning on a weekday, so cars were steadily streaming into town from the east. He hoisted his bag and walked his six feet and three inches of lean muscle in the opposite direction, and he didn’t stop until he was sitting in the food court at the Lloyd Center in front of scrambled eggs and a cup of the coffee someone had once argued in court that McDonald’s served too hot to handle.
He was pretty sure McDonald’s had lost that suit, so he gave the cup a wide berth until the eggs were gone and he had decided where he was going next. As soon as Meier & Frank opened, he bought new briefs and socks, a set of Nike sweats, a thin T-shirt and a pair of Jordan’s—all the exact same shade of gray. This conformity of color was a tribute to the dude in the John R. Tunis books from the 1940s who only dressed in one color at a time, a practice that Leon was determined to emulate.
Then he walked north and west for about twenty minutes to the house where he had lived a lifetime ago with the guy who had told him about Tunis in general and the dude in particular. It was a solid two-story Craftsman on a street of similar houses once owned primarily by Portland’s more prosperous blacks, although the ownership demographics were becoming younger and whiter every year.
He rang the bell and waited for an old woman just over five feet tall with a set of eyes that could cut or heal depending on her inclination at the time, and that is exactly who opened the door.
She looked at Leon like she couldn’t believe her eyes at first, and then she erupted. “Praise the Lord, chile!” she said as she wrapped her arms around him and burrowed into his chest. “Thank you, sweet Jesus!”
It very likely took someone at that level to make a miracle of this magnitude actually happen, Leon thought as he hugged her back, but he didn’t say it where she could hear it because he knew she didn’t treat her religion cavalierly and frowned on anyone who did.
“Get yourself in here, Leon,” she said when she came up for air. She didn’t say “where you belong,” but he could hear it clearly in her voice. She stepped back from the doorway to give him room and he took it, just as he had the first time. He had been living in random locations during his previous stint in Portland while shooting hoops and going to school with her grandson Wiley, and she had put an end to that haphazard existence by inviting him to live with them instead.
“I should take you out behind the woodshed with a switch for not writing,” she said with a smile on her face and some unmistakable tears in her eyes.
“You don’t have a woodshed, Grams.”
“How would you know, long as you’ve been gone?”
“Doubt you have a switch, either.”
“Well, I have a stove and assorted fryin’ pans for sure. Let me make you some breakfast.”
“That would be great,” he said, in spite of the fact that he had recently eaten at the mall. Not only did that stop at McDonald’s fail to qualify as breakfast in the context of any discussion with Grams on the subject, but so did every other breakfast he had eaten since leaving that same living room seven years earlier.
“Does Wiley know you’re back?” Grams said as she watched Leon finish off the feast she had placed in front of him.
“Nobody knows but you, Grams.”
“He’ll want to see you sooner a lot more than later.”
Believe me, I feel the same way, he thought, but what he said was, “What’s he up to these days?”
“Did you know I’m a great-grandma?”
“That’s very common knowledge, Grams.”
“I mean officially.”
“No kidding?” he said in the face of this news. “I must have missed that memo.”
“He and Julie have the sweetest baby girl ever born.”
“When did that happen?”
“On the first Thanksgiving Day after they graduated from high school. Wait until you get a look at her, Leon.”
“So, Julie finally got her wish,” he said, recalling the girl who had been stuck on Wiley throughout high school in spite of the fact that Wiley was himself stuck on Ronetta and probably always would be.
“It may be a little more than she wished for,” Grams said softly. “I don’t think it would have happened if Lizzie hadn’t been on the way.”
Jeezus Christ, Leon thought, life is a fucking bitch sometimes. “Where are they?” he asked.
“Forest Grove,” she said, indicating a college town half an hour west of Portland.
“He went to Pacific?”
“He did.”
“I’m surprised.”
“That he went to college?”
“That he went somewhere that doesn’t offer athletic scholarships. We both know he was good enough to get a full ride.”
“That’s what he got at Pacific, in a way. Julie inherited a house out there that they’ve been living in ever since. It worked out just fine, all things considered.”
“And now?”
“He’s teaching English and coaching basketball in Gaston.”
“Gaston?”
“A little town out that way.”
“I’ll be damned,” Leon said while he compared Wiley’s record since high school to his own.
“I sincerely hope not, Leon,” Grams said. “I want both of us to end up at the same place when all this here is said and done.”
Unfortunately, Leon thought while he wrapped Grams up in another hug, I’ve already gone way too far in the wrong direction for that to happen.
Lizzie whirled through her grandmother’s front doorway like the proverbial dervish, her long blonde hair locked into a single braid that waved behind her as she entered. She screeched to a halt as soon as she saw Leon sitting alone on Grams’ living-room couch.
“You must be Lizzie,” Leon said after looking her over for a long moment or two.
“How do you know that?” she said in a voice that for some reason rolled out of her mouth much more quietly than he expected.
“Gra
ms told me all about you.”
“Grams doesn’t know all about me,” she said next, a comment that had him wondering if she was actually the age previously advertised.
“Maybe so,” Leon said eventually. “But she told me enough to recognize you immediately.”
“You must be Uncle Leon, then.”
“How do you know that?”
“My dad told me all about you.”
“Your dad doesn’t know all about me.”
“Maybe so, but he told me enough to recognize you immediately.”
Leon was forced to crack a smile at that point, so that’s what he did. “Are you really fifteen years old and just walking around in disguise?” he asked.
“Something like that, yeah. I’m what they call precocious.” Her voice went from quiet to silent at that point, but her captivating eyes kept him locked down until she decided to speak again.
“Is Grams in the kitchen?” she said.
“Of course.”
“Greatest great-grandma in the world, don’t you agree?” she said as she flew by him and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Without a doubt,” he said, but she was long gone by the time the words were out of his mouth. By then her mother had taken her place just inside the front door.
“What is?” Julie asked.
“I thought I was talking to your daughter when I said that,” Leon said as he rose from his seat and opened his arms in Julie’s direction. “But it looks like I can’t talk fast enough to keep up.”
“A lot of people have that problem,” she said. She walked into his arms and they embraced briefly. “It’s good to see you again, Leon.”
“Likewise,” he said, and then he watched as she followed in Lizzie’s footsteps until he was alone in the living room again.
He waited a moment or two more for Wiley to appear, but he walked outside when the moment or two bore no such fruit. Wiley was leaning against the side of an oldish four-door Ford sedan parked in the driveway, and he looked up when Leon cleared the doorway and broke into a grin.
“What’s so fuckin’ funny?” Leon asked.
Hipster Death Rattle Page 32