by Mike Dennis
Eddie stood there on the balcony looking down, breathing fast. Felina ran to his side, gasping at the grim sight. She twined her arms around his waist.
They rushed back inside. Eddie dropped to the floor by Linda’s side, but her blank, upward stare told the story. He got a blanket off the couch to cover her nude body. He knelt by her in shock, as Felina pulled at his sleeve.
“Come on, Eddie,” she said. “Now. Someone’s called the cops already.”
He rose slowly, his eyes still fixed on the horror of his sister’s corpse. Felina continued tugging at him until he grabbed the trash bag.
The two of them ran down into the street. Eddie opened the front door of the van, heaving the bag inside. He was about to jump in himself, when Felina said, “Eddie, look.”
She motioned toward Val’s pickup, parked two spots up from the van.
“What of it?” he asked.
”The money, Eddie. Val’s share is in there. It’s gotta be.”
He hesitated for a second. The cops were no doubt on their way at this very moment, since Val’s gunshot could’ve been heard a mile away. They had to split.
But — if Val’s share was in the truck …
He ran up to the pickup. Through the window two canvas gym bags lay partially exposed on the floor of the passenger side, beneath a blanket. He pulled out his revolver and smashed the window with its heavy butt. Within seconds he hoisted the gym bags out of the truck and ran back to the van.
They climbed into the van, as he turned the key. It wouldn’t start up, so he turned it again. Sirens rang loud and fierce in the distance. They grew close, closer. He knew these weren’t fire engines.
He turned the key again, and again the engine only whirred.
Start, goddammit. Start.
Felina anxiously looked on, urging the engine to turn over.
Finally, there was ignition. As he slammed it into Drive and jerked the van out of the parking spot, they were rolling at last. Down one block to Rampart, a quick right, where they were swallowed up in traffic.
Felina tore into the gym bags. Bunches of banded money packets were stuffed inside.
“Bingo!” she shouted. “Eddie, we got it! We got the whole thing.”
Eddie guided the van up onto the westward Interstate, but the thrill of the money ricocheted off him. Another million dollars could never chase away the nightmare he’d just endured.
His sweating subsided, and his breathing lightened up a little, but … but Linda was still back there. Naked. And dead.
He choked, blinking back tears.
Finally, he spoke, “When we get out of town a little ways, we’ll stop and stash the rest of the money like we was gonna do.”
“Oh, Eddie,” Felina cried, “then, it’s Mexico. Mexico!”
43
Rain pelted the roof of the van, and turned the Interstate slick. The lights of Baton Rouge appeared in the distance. A gas station loomed at the first exit for the capital city.
“Let’s pull in here,” Eddie said. “We need gas. Sign back there said a rest area’s a couple of miles up the road. We’ll stop there and finish stashing the money.”
He edged the van up to the regular pump and filled it up. After paying, he came back to the passenger side window. He spoke to Felina in a raised voice over the heavy rain.
“I’ll be right back. I gotta take a leak.”
The tiny men’s room stank. The light bulb over the sink couldn’t’ve been more than twenty-five watts, if that. Rather than illuminate anything, it only threw a gray film over the walls and floor. Eddie could hardly see as he stepped into a puddle.
Just as he moved in front of the urinal and reached for his fly, the door opened.
Shit, why couldn’t he have locked the door? He hated being in these tiny shithouses with other guys. You never know what kinda —
The man entered. He came up close behind Eddie, casting his own wide shadow over the immediate area. The man’s long breaths tingled the back of Eddie’s neck, unnerving him. He steeled himself for some kind of queer proposition or something.
Finally, the man said in a hushed voice, “Lowell?”
Eddie spun around. In the half-light, he faced a stocky man, somewhere in his forties, with a crewcut perched above dead eyes. Eddie’d never seen him before.
Or, wait, had he?
“Who’re you?” he asked.
The man said in a soft voice, which Eddie recognized as carrying an East Texas accent, “Mr. Kilgore sends his greetings, and his apologies for the mix-up the other night.”
His arm moved swiftly in an underhand thrust, jamming the knife hard into Eddie’s stomach. With a quick upward push, the big blade sliced its way into his heart. Eddie was dead before his body hit the puddle of piss on the floor. The man wiped off the knife and left, climbing into the waiting iron-gray Jaguar outside.
44
“Where in Mexico will you be traveling to, señorita?” asked the uniformed immigration officer.
“Acapulco.”
Felina breathed the word as softly as the rain that tapped the van’s windshield there at the Brownsville/Matamoros border crossing.
The way she said it, well, it meant a lot more than the name of an unabashed tourist trap. It whispered her dreams of another world, of escape from bitter memories of a barefoot childhood, of life on the softer side.
It hinted of a place that would welcome her as a real woman, not as the overheated fantasy figure of her ragged past. It told of a beautiful future on white sun-drenched beaches against a silvery sea, where la tristeza, the sadness of life, existed only in the close, shimmering harmonies of the Mariachis. It spilled the secrets she never told, yielded the pleasures she never knew, promised the cloudless days that for her had existed only in rumor.
Now that she had the entire take, and her mother by her side, it would all come true.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After thirty years as a professional musician (piano), Mike Dennis left Key West and moved to Las Vegas to become a professional poker player. He turned to writing when his first novel, The Take, was published in 2009.
His next book, Setup On Front Street, was the first of a set of noir novels called Key West Nocturnes. These books will lift the veil on Key West and reveal it as a true noir city, on a par with Los Angeles, New Orleans, or Miami. The Ghosts Of Havana is the second book in that set. The third, Man-Slaughter, is now available. The fourth, The Guns Of Miami, will be coming in late 2013.
In addition, Mike has begun the Jack Barnett / Las Vegas series, centering around a reluctant ex-private investigator in Sin City, USA. The first entry in that series, a novelette called Temptation Town, is now available, as is the second installment, Hard Cash, also a novelette. The third in the series, a full novel called The Downtown Deal, is now available.
Mike also has a collection of short stories, Bloodstains On The Wall. In addition, his stories have been published in A Twist Of Noir, Mysterical e, Powder Burn Flash, Slow Trains, and The Wizards Of Words 2009 Anthology.
Two individual short stories in the noir genre, Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Eyes and The Session, are now available on Amazon Kindle.
Mike has an experimental rockabilly novel, Cadillac’s Comin’, a hard tale of a one-hit wonder who recorded for Sun Records in the chaotic early days of rock & roll.
In late 2010, Mike moved back to Key West, where he enjoys year-round island living with his wife Yleana, whom he married on a warm December night in 2012 on the rooftop of an apartment building in Havana, Cuba.
Contact Mike at [email protected]
http://mikedennisnoir.com
Please leave a review on Amazon.
HERE IS AN EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW FROM
SETUP ON
FRONT STREET
The FIRST in the Key West Nocturnes series
by Mike Dennis
NOW AVAILABLE
SETUP ON FRONT STREET
© Mike Dennis, 2011
ONE
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March, 1991
I got back to Key West on the day Aldo Ray died.
This kid sitting next to me on the bus had one of those old transistor radios, and the news crackled out of it somewhere south of Miami. The big C got him, it said.
Ray was one of my favorite Hollywood tough guys. Like myself, he was powerfully built, with a harsh, scratchy voice, cutting a bearish figure on the big screen. But he had a well-hidden, squishy-soft center, which usually meant big trouble for the characters he portrayed.
As the Greyhound made its way down the Keys that morning, I gazed out at the hot, lazy island hamlets, thinking about Ray and about what I had to do.
And there could be no room for squishiness.
≈≈≈
We lumbered into the downtown Key West terminal. I stepped off the air-cooled bus into the steamy embrace of the thick humidity I remembered from long ago. I started sweating right away. As I took a full stretch, my bones creaked and cracked, and I frowned.
Three days on a bus gives you the creaky bones.
Three years in the joint gives you the frown.
The passengers stood around: an odds-and-ends collection of smelly backpackers, Jap tourists here on the cheap, plus a couple of scowling Miami jigs — low-grade street types draped in gold, probably down here to make a dope drop.
As soon as the driver pulled the bags out of the belly of the bus, I snatched mine and headed across the small parking lot for a little rooming house nearby on Angela Street. It wasn’t even a two-minute walk, but by the time I got there, splotches of sweat had stained the front and back of my guayabera.
Welcome home, pal.
Inside, I signed the register, then paid the deposit. I paused for just a moment, looking at my signature. "Don Roy Doyle," it read. That was the first time in a long time that I’d written my name for anything other than prison shit.
Before my frown dissolved at this liberating thought, I remembered what got me sent up in the first place.
The clerk pushed me the key. I headed upstairs with more than a little snap in my step. Slipping the key into the lock, I gave it a turn. Then I stepped back just a shade.
I cracked the door a couple of inches, but I didn’t push it all the way in. Instead, I closed it again, then reopened it. Opening my own door. With my own key. How long had it been?
The room was boiling. I flipped the AC on high, then peeled off my clothes. With nobody around.
By normal standards, I’m sure it was just an average-sized room, but compared to my Nevada cell, it seemed gigantic. It was a lot more space and a far better view than I’d been used to, and it was all mine.
Smiling, I turned the light on and off a few times, watching the bulb react to my switch-clicking. Then I moved to the center of the room where I stretched my arms out as far as they would go. I turned a couple of complete three-sixties without touching anything.
With those luxuries under my belt, I checked out the rack. It was huge, compared to the little slab I’d slept on for years. I hadn’t had my feet up in three days and sweet sleep was calling me.
I didn’t even pull back the covers.
≈≈≈
I came to at twilight. The humming AC cooled the room to perfection. I felt rested for the first time since I left Nevada. I took a long, warm shower in wonderful solitude, without worrying about anyone trying to fuck with me.
Afterward, I pulled a fresh guayabera and a clean pair of cotton pants out of my bag. I could wear what I wanted now, so I took my own sweet time getting dressed.
With my brushed-back hair still wet, I headed down the stairs, out into the warm night. Man, I felt great.
And now, it was showtime.
TWO
First stop, Sullivan’s.
Right in the heart of Duval Street, Key West’s main drag. It was still happening, still the Keys’ hottest Irish pub, packed with tourists and fancy-assed locals, slamming back the whiskey and cold brew as fast as it could be poured.
Not my kind of place, but so what.
People crammed the tables along the wall opposite the bar, wanting to feel the music coming from the high-energy piano player in the window. No Irish folk songs here, only hard-driving rock & roll. Dancers filled the aisle down the center.
The AC blew full bore, but it was no use in this crowd. Hairdos, which earlier in the evening had poofed up perfectly in the mirror at home, now hung limp over sweaty foreheads.
Almost buried in the racket, the continuous ringing of the cash register bled through. Nothing had changed in three years.
I shoved my way to the rear of the club where I spotted him in his usual seat in the far corner. There were a couple of others at the table with him, including a cooing brunette, not his wife, running long manicured fingers through his hair. She had his total attention, so he didn’t see me until I was right up on him.
"Hello, Sully," I said, disregarding the others.
It startled him.
I sat down without being invited while I waited for him to say something. Finally, he gathered himself.
"Don Roy! Well, son of a gun! When’d you get back?" He stuck out his hand.
I shook it, raising my voice to be heard above the music. "Fresh out. Just got in today."
My eyes scanned the room, taking in the frenzied activity.
"Looks like things have gone pretty well since I’ve been gone. Real well." His nod said they did.
Sully didn’t look like he’d changed any at all. He hadn’t added any weight to his slender frame, while his well-preserved boyish face showed dollar-green eyes, still cold and indifferent.
We looked at each other for a second. Then I said, "Let’s go upstairs for a minute." I picked up a napkin from the table and wiped sweat off my neck and forehead.
The piano player kicked off a Jerry Lee Lewis tune as Sully excused himself. We got up from the table, heading for the back steps to the office.
The office.
It was more like Sully’s tribute to himself. Quiet lighting and tasteful furniture were upstaged by dozens of photos on the walls. Tacky framed pictures of Sully with his arm around various VIPs reminded visitors of his respectability. Most were taken during his ten years in Key West, but a few offered glimmers into his New Orleans past.
There he is with rogue governor Edwin Edwards.
Here’s one with aging mobster Carlos Marcello.
Over here, he’s getting the bear hug from Al Hirt, while French Quarter emperor AJ Frechette looks on.
I had to admit, not bad for a tough New Orleans Irish Channel kid named Frankie Sullivan, who started from zero.
Now, according to this fancy-looking Chamber of Commerce certificate decorating the wall above his desk, his grifter days are behind him. The Chamber conveniently forgot to include in that certificate that he came here a few years ago on the lam, and now he’s Mister Francis X Sullivan, solid citizen and dispenser of good times to those who count here on this island at the end of the road.
He moved around behind the desk and sat in the big chair. Even though he was a little guy, he seemed to fill it up. I took the seat in front. The desk was big, too big, made of dark wood. Great Balls of Fire was only faintly audible from downstairs.
"So, you look good," he said uneasily. "You’ve slimmed down a little."
"Prison’ll do that."
"A little gray around the temples, too, huh?" He fingered his temples, saying, "Yeah, we’re getting to that age, you know. I’ll be forty-six next time. You and me, we’re about the same age, right?"
His hair was still brown all over, with glints of red reflecting in the office light.
"I just turned forty." I didn’t like saying that.
He reached into a desk drawer for a fresh pack of cigarettes. I could tell he was trying not to notice that I never took my eyes off him, off his every movement. He slowly stripped off the cellophane top, then shook a few partway out of the package and held it out toward me.
"No, thanks," I said
. "I quit right after I got locked up."
"You quit? Hey, way to go. I wish I could do it. Was it hard?"
"Cigarettes are like money in there. It’s like smoking dollar bills."
"Really?"
"No point to it. When I looked at it like that, it made quitting a lot easier."
He nodded and stuck one between his lips.
"Listen, boyo, I was real sorry to hear about your mom. She was a great lady."
I looked away. "At least she didn’t suffer much."
"Thank God. We should all be so lucky. Too bad it happened after you went away. She’s in heaven right now, I know."
He flicked his gold lighter. The flame licked the tip of the cigarette, then he pulled in the first drag, a deep inhale. He let out the smoke in a thin, gray curl toward the ceiling. For just a split second, I thought about having one, it looked so good.
I wanted to move on to something else. He picked up on it.
"Man, we just had the biggest St Paddy’s day ever. You shoulda been here. The town was mobbed with tourists and the Irish ambassador himself was here from Washington. Miami TV was here to cover it. BK was here — oh, did you know, he’s the mayor now after taking over from his daddy? Like, who didn’t see that coming, right? Anyway, all the local bigshots showed up."
He leaned back, drawing again on his cigarette. He blew a perfect smoke ring to celebrate this big event. He looked like he was finished with this story, but then he added, "We took in thirteen grand!"