by Rob Brunet
“Mom was right about the fire,” he said. “Works like she said it would.”
He stopped paddling and watched the plane dip its wings in a wave before turning back. When it disappeared behind the island, he shot Judy a puzzled look which became a frown when the gunfire erupted again, clearer this time, and more of it.
He listened as the sound of the plane receded and then started back again. The wind and waves had nearly pushed them onto the rocky shoreline while he’d been distracted. He took up the paddle to move them to deeper water. Explosions, one after the other, echoed around the lake. Danny leaned into the waves and shouted at Judy to paddle with him.
He never saw Perko until the soaking wet Libido lunged at him from his perch on a boulder just beyond the island’s southernmost point. In his right hand, the crazed biker clutched a broken liquor bottle whose jagged bottom slashed Danny’s arm. He tumbled backward into shallow water. Going under, Danny heard Judy shriek.
He jumped up and faced Perko. The biker teetered toward him, swinging the bottle like a windmill, around and around again. Danny reached out the paddle on the down-swing and Perko’s own momentum plunged him into the lake. Danny was surprised at how strong the man became once his head was under water. The guy let go of the bottle and bear-hugged both of Danny’s legs, wrapping his arms behind his knees and landing him ass-first in the lake. Danny tried to pry the larger man off with his legs but the cold sapped his own strength quickly and he felt himself slip under and breathe a lungful of icy Kawartha Klear. Perko clawed his way up his body, snarling like a dog.
“You punk piece of shit fuckhead farmer. Think I’d let you get away?” Danny felt Perko’s shouts as much as heard them. The biker coughed and spat and shouted all at once. His fingers found Danny’s throat and the two men tumbled together under the water, onto the jagged bottom. Danny choked and tasted blood. Then he felt himself drift weightlessly as he heard Judy scream from what seemed miles away.
His heels bounced along the rocks, waves splashing over his face. His lungs hammered water back up his throat. The sting inside his head brought on by the ice cold water coursing through his sinuses finally jarred Danny into a stunned reaction. He rolled to one side and felt his arm scrape a ridge of zebra mussels, slicing a hundred cuts. His hands and knees found bottom together and he pushed his back up out of the water, waiting for Perko’s next attack.
The attack never came.
Instead, when Danny turned to face the biker, he saw Terry Miner, an oar clutched in both hands like a baseball bat, swinging while he shouted at a retreating Perko. The biker had blood streaming from his forehead and he kept collapsing into the water as he stumbled for the shore.
Judy held a paddle above her head like an ax, her arms shaking. “Leave him alone!” she screamed. She stepped toward Perko. “I’ll kill you myself!”
The wind pushed the overturned canoe further from shore. Danny waded toward it and when the water reached his waist, he buried his face in the lake and swam for it as hard as he could. It was no more than forty strokes but by the time he reached it, it was all Danny could do to grasp hold and keep his chin above water so he could breathe. Following Terry and Judy’s shouts, he kicked his legs and guided the vessel back toward shallow water.
The other two waded out to meet him. They tipped the canoe to drain the water, and struggled to lift Danny aboard. Before crumpling to the bottom, he peered over the edge and saw Perko stomping in anger, both arms waving in the air, but never coming further than knee-deep before retreating toward the safety of dry land.
It took only a couple of minutes for Terry and Judy to paddle the canoe with Danny in it over to the seaplane where it had landed during the fight with Perko.
Two stern-faced men with short black hair and leathery faces grabbed Danny under the armpits and hauled him onto the plane, clutching the duffel bag. He started to tell them who he was but they cut him off.
“You’re with Big Fucker,” one said, settling into the pilot’s chair. “Where’s he at?”
“We left him at the cove,” said Danny. “The cops are there. Bikers, too.”
The other man snorted, “I wouldn’t worry about those bikers.”
Danny sighed. “I need to get out of here.”
“Something to do with that bag you’re hugging?”
He held it tighter.
“Relax, kid,” said the pilot, “we know all about your treasure. It may be a little light, actually. Placed a couple of big bets for you at roulette. Lost, I’m afraid.”
“Think of it as ‘Indian Tax,’” added the navigator.
“What happens now?” Danny asked.
“Figure maybe we can drop you in the States, northern New York, get you on your way.”
“How the hell are you guys gonna get me across the border?”
“We fly in Indian airspace,” the pilot answered.
“I didn’t even know that existed,” said Danny.
“Neither do the authorities, White Man.”
Clutching Wort to her chest, Judy climbed into the plane and said, “I’m coming with you.”
Danny pressed her against him, her arms curved across his back. His right arm was burning where the zebra mussels had scraped him. Bits and pieces of shell stuck in and under his skin. He knew he’d have better luck pulling the glass out of his other arm where Perko had jabbed him with the bottle.
To Judy, he said, “This is my road. You get caught with me, you’re going to jail. You don’t need that.”
Terry looked up at them from the canoe, holding it against the plane’s pontoon.
Judy dropped her arm from Danny’s back and turned him toward her, shaking his shoulders. “You think I’m in this for kicks? Been helping you without knowing the risks? That gang isn’t going to roll over and forget about you or me.”
Danny stared into her eyes, marveling. She was the first person to ever look back quite that way.
“Ernie was pretty much the only guy who remotely cared whether I even got up in the morning,” she said, “and I told you from the start, I was in this for him. Now, you think you’re going to leave me here while you go looking for your mother on some beach somewhere?”
“You’d run with me?” Danny asked her.
She kissed him and nodded.
The pilot started the plane’s engine. It sputtered and died. He tried again, producing a whining sound that made him frown at the navigator.
“We got issues,” he said.
The navigator stepped out onto the right side pontoon and clambered around to the front of the plane. Danny watched as he ran his hand along the engine cover.
“Shot all to hell and leaking big time,” he said. “Lucky we landed when we did.”
Terry said, “Whatever you two decide, make it quick. I’d kinda like to get a move on. Christmas on the island with Perko ain’t my idea of fun.”
Danny looked at Judy, took the red bag with him, and descended into the canoe. He reached up to help Judy follow him.
He said, “Terry, ol’-buddy-ol’-pal. Think maybe you could find us a boat?”
Thirty-Four
Perko had scrambled up and over the island, finding his way to one of the trails that led to the Indian fire pit where he spent the night sleeping fitfully.
Now, morning, he stood on a granite ledge that gave him a clear view of the lake to the north, east, and south. His breath fogged around him. It smelled like it might snow. The cold air blown in from the north had settled on the trees, fringing everything with a dusting of frost that would have been spectacularly beautiful under different circumstances, even to the black-hearted biker.
He scanned the shoreline for any sign of life, but apart from two docks pulled high awaiting winter, this end of the lake was uninhabited, bordering as it did the Great Horned Owl First Nations Reserve.
To the northeast, in the morning water still as glass, he saw a small black dot with gentle ripples fanning out to either side. It seemed to take forever to appro
ach the island, and Perko eventually realized it was neither an otter nor a muskrat. No, the only animal with a noggin that size was a bear. And, clearly, this bear knew where it was headed.
Author’s Note
The Kawarthas are a place not unlike most of rural Ontario, rugged in spots, genteel in others, rich in character throughout. You don’t carve society out of rocks and trees in a couple hundred years of hard winters and mind-blowing summers without creating a few wackos along the way. I imagine the same can be said of dirt roads and bush wherever they be found. While I’ve done my best to capture the essence of the land, readers who know the Kawarthas will quickly see I have fabricated a little geography, bastardized some more, and retained a few parts intact. Thing is, if I’d left the map real, a few decent folk—and it is they who dominate the landscape, after all—could get mistaken for nut jobs. And a couple of these latter might get found.
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Acknowledgments
I didn’t spend a decade crafting my debut novel without leaning on my friends along the way. I’d love to thank them all in print, but then my publisher would ask me to cut another 1,000 words or so.
Special thanks are due Les Edgerton, Chip MacGregor, Eric and Christy Campbell, and Elsa Franklin for believing in my work. And to Todd Robinson for being the first editor to pay cold hard cash for my fiction.
Thank you to Owen Laukkanen, DJ MacIntosh, Jill Edmondson, Melodie Campbell, Robert Rotenberg, and so many other accomplished Canadian crime fiction authors who gave feedback, answered boneheaded questions, and kept me plugging.
Tanis Mallow, how can I thank you enough?
And thanks to Dominique Racanelli, Dave Power, Laura Di Cesare, Mike and Saira Fitzgerald, Rosemarie, Bruce Saunders, Curtis and Rheo Brunet—all of whom slogged through a succession of drafts I dared call penultimate when clearly they were nothing of the kind.
I did my best to learn from the Imperial Literary Society (Dan Dowhal, Randal Heide, Brian Jantzi, Edward Lee, and Rob Crabtree), the Second Cup crew (Selena Cristo-Williams, Kristin Crawford, and Monica Pacheco), the Old Nick gang (Jann Everard, Kim Murray, and Scott Mathison), and a raft of other writers met under the auspices of the inimitably cranky—and hilarious—Cordelia Strube.
STINKING RICH simply would not exist were it not for the most meaningful, constant, daily dose of support from my wife Maria and our two children who grew up watching their old man write this thing: Alexandra and Jaeger.
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About the Author
Rob Brunet is the author of short stories appearing in Thuglit, Crimespree, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Noir Nation, Shotgun Honey, and Out of the Gutter. He loves the bush, the beach, and bonfires. He lives in Toronto with his wife, son, and daughter.
Twitter @RRBrunet
http://www.robbrunet.com/
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Other Titles from Down and Out Books
See DownAndOutBooks.com for complete list
By Anonymous-9
Bite Harder (TP only)
By J.L. Abramo
Catching Water in a Net
Clutching at Straws
Counting to Infinity
Gravesend
Chasing Charlie Chan
Circling the Runway (*)
By Trey R. Barker
2,000 Miles to Open Road
Road Gig: A Novella
Exit Blood
Death is Not Forever (*)
By Richard Barre
The Innocents
Bearing Secrets
Christmas Stories
The Ghosts of Morning
Blackheart Highway
Burning Moon
Echo Bay
Lost
By Rob Brunet
Stinking Rich
By Milton T. Burton
Texas Noir
By Reed Farrel Coleman
The Brooklyn Rules
By Tom Crowley
Viper’s Tail
Murder in the Slaughterhouse
By Frank De Blase
Pine Box for a Pin-Up
Busted Valentines and Other Dark Delights
The Cougar’s Kiss (*)
By Les Edgerton
The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping
By A.C. Frieden
Tranquility Denied
The Serpent’s Game
By Jack Getze
Big Numbers
Big Money
Big Mojo
By Keith Gilman
Bad Habits
By Terry Holland
An Ice Cold Paradise
Chicago Shiver
By Darrel James, Linda O. Johsonton & Tammy Kaehler (editors)
Last Exit to Murder
By David Housewright & Renée Valois
The Devil and the Diva
By David Housewright
Finders Keepers
Full House
By Jon Jordan
Interrogations
By Jon & Ruth Jordan (editors)
Murder and Mayhem in Muskego
By Bill Moody
Czechmate: The Spy Who Played Jazz
The Man in Red Square
Solo Hand
The Death of a Tenor Man
The Sound of the Trumpet
Bird Lives!
By Gary Phillips
The Perpetrators
Scoundrels: Tales of Greed, Murder and Financial Crimes (editor)
Treacherous: Griffters, Ruffians and Killers
By Gary Phillips, Tony Chavira, Manoel Magalhaes
Beat L.A. (Graphic Novel)
By Robert J. Randisi
Upon My Soul
Souls of the Dead
Envy the Dead (*)
By Lono Waiwaiole
Wiley's Lament
Wiley's Shuffle
Wiley's Refrain
Dark Paradise
By Vincent Zandri
Moonlight Weeps
(*) Coming soon
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Here’s a sample from Les Edgerton’s The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping.
2003
A STREETCAR NOT NAMED DESIRE
The first glitch came up right away. In fine-tuning the kidnap plan, in which Tommy explained we’d go in dressed in three-piece suits like insurance salesmen in case any neighbors were up and about and noticed two guys dressed like shrimpers at this guy’s house early in the morning. Well, I didn’t have a three-piece suit and not even a two-piece suit, and upon further researching my memory, didn’t even have a sports coat and after quizzing Tommy, discovered he didn’t have one either. I figured we’d just go in like we were dressed, but Tommy wouldn’t have none’a that.
“Jeez Louise, Pete. We can’t do that. This is a big-money community where this guy lives. In-ground swimming pools, that gives you any idea. We show up looking like we usually dress, there’s gonna be some dame across the street calling the cops for the two guys look like a home-invasion team.”
Turns out he had a plan to get us a few bucks to get suits with. It was a strange-enough idea I thought it could work. I guess you had to be there when he was laying it down. Sounded righteous enough then... I mean, the guy was an Indian...
An hour later, Tommy and me are sitting on the St. Charles streetcar, at the stop by the zoo down by Club 4141, watching people get on in the front. The last two on are a young tourist couple in matching yellow Bermuda shorts.
“Cool,” Tommy said. “Tourists. They’ll have cash.” He took a drag from his cigarette. He was sitting directly under the “No Smoking” sign, but held it outside the window.
I didn’t disagree. There were maybe fifteen people on board, not counting us and the motorman. This was looking better and better. Might get as much as a couple of thousand out of this crew. Get us suits somewhere else than the bargain bins of the Men’s Wearhouse.
“See that?” Tommy said. I followed his eyes which were locked on the buxom female member of the tourist couple. She was a
looker.
“Yeah? So?”
“So this.” He brought his forearm up, pretending to take a bite out of it.
“You wish,” I said, grinning.
“Yeah, well I got something her boyfriend ain’t.”
I laughed out loud. “Right, Tommy. Ugliness. But I think she’s maybe one of those weirdos goes for brains and looks. At least one of those.”
Tommy turned and gave me a look. “I’m talking technique here,” he said. “I got this technique.”
“Technique?”
“Technique.”
“What... you got a cute way of gettin’ on and off?”
“Naw, man,” he said, shaking his head like he can’t believe how dumb I am. “That’s like a big dick. Everybody’s got that.”
I snickered. “I don’t recall you was so blessed in the big wang department, Tommy.”
“Yeah, well I was cold that time. We just got out of the lake, for crissake. See, Pete, being a champion at sex is like being good at basketball. You got to be able to go strong to the hole.”
There was a young gal behind us who I could see was trying to ignore what Tommy was saying. She squirmed in her seat and studied the scenery out the window, them mansions sliding by.