Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Praise for J.B. Kohl and Eric Beetner’s first Collaboration
One Too Many Blows to the Head
“One Too Many Blows to the Head feels like a long-lost pulp you find in a favorite bookstore. A delicious mix of classic hardboiled grit and the heart-heavy world of film noir, it's a one-sitting read that sends you back to a lost time of fight halls, Chicago boys and last chances.”
˗Megan Abbott, author of Bury Me Deep and Queenpin
“A powerful tale of vengeance, rife with pounding action and colorful, complex characters. One Too Many Blows to the Head is a first round knock-out!”
˗Stephen Jay Schwartz, L.A. Times bestselling author of Boulevard and Beat
“The writing is crisp, the characters finely drawn. Ray's motivation to avenge his brother's death, murder really, may seem to be simple, but in actuality is deeply complex. One Too Many Blows To the Head is quite remarkable in how it takes a relatively simple story and develops an intricate, compelling tale of two men on a mission to identify who killed Rex Ward . . . but also on a search for their own.”
˗Mysterious Reviews
“Here’s one that dredges up all the blood and spit and sweat and money of the fight game, and wraps it around a tough noir storyline full of revenge and dark secrets. Kohl and Beetner get it exactly right.”
˗Steve Brewer, author of Cutthroat
“Razor sharp debut from noir partnership Beetner and Kohl. From its first savage punch, the dark world of organized crime and boxing grips and refuses to let you go. Highly recommended.”
˗Nick Quantrill, author of Broken Dreams
Praise for J.B. Kohl and Eric Beetner’s first Collaboration
One Too Many Blows to the Head
“One Too Many Blows to the Head is a novel set in the fight world of Kansas City 1939 and it’s everything you love about classic film noir only bound and printed.”
˗Hardboiled Wonderland
“The prose is hardboiled and lean, and there’s plenty of violence. There's a surprise or two along the way, and you'll want to know what happens to Fokoli and Ray. They're deeply flawed, but Beetner and Kohl keep them human, which is quite an accomplishment when you consider the circumstances.”
˗Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes series
“If you like your books quick and brutal, you’ll dig this one.”
˗Steve Weddle, Do Some Damage Blog/Needle Magazine
“The co-authors turned out a pulp tale that is the love-child of Dave Zeltserman’s out-of-prison trilogy mated with Richard Stark’s The Hunter.”
˗The Drowning Machine blog
“It is pure pleasure. The expression ‘a page turner’ is pretty much overused used but One Too Many Blows to the Head is just that. It flows beautifully and is full of great lines that I really wish I’d written. One Too Many Blows to the Head is knockout, of course.”
˗Paul D. Brazill, The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime
“Like a good bout in the ring, it is relentless, full of tension, and it never lets up.” (best reads of 2009 selection)
˗Cormac Brown
Borrowed Trouble
Copyright 2010 by
J.B. Kohl
and
Eric Beetner
At Smashwords
Dagger Books
Published by Second Wind Publishing
Kernersville, North Carolina
Dagger Books
Second Wind Publishing, LLC
931-B South Main Street, # 145
Kernersville, NC 27284
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and events are either a product of the author’s imagination, fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, locale or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2010 by J.B. Kohl and Eric Beetner
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any format.
First Dagger Books edition published 2010.
Dagger Books, Running Angel, and all production design are trademarks of Second Wind Publishing, used under license.
For information regarding bulk purchases of this book, digital purchase and special discounts, please contact the publisher at www.SecondWindPublishing.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-935171-58-4
From Eric: To my grandfather, Ray, who served as inspiration and to my father who has inspired me in so many other ways.
From J.B.: To my son, Nathan, who knows what it is to create, to be challenged, to struggle, and to succeed. I love you.
1
Ray Ward
Kansas City. Spring, 1941
I hadn’t used my fists much since then. Since the night my brother died, and the days after. I guess I should say I hadn’t used my fists in anger. My fists get a good workout down in the basement of my house in Rex’s old training setup. I attack the heavy bag, pound out a rhythm on the speed-bag to make Count Basie jealous. I jump rope, lift weights. I shadow box.
Futile, really, shadow boxing. Still it’s what I feel like my life’s become. You stand in front of a cinder block wall dodging and ducking, swinging in the air at an opponent who matches your every move, who knows your strengths and weaknesses.
Pointless, fighting yourself.
But, that’s what I do down there in the damp concrete gym. I beat myself up. I spar and joust with the past and the man I thought I was, trying to understand how I could have gone so off the rails.
I’ve been over it a thousand times and I have no regrets. I keep going as much for Rex as for me, living a life he might have wanted but never got the chance to live. I forgave myself a long time ago, but that shadow is still there.
Since that week, those troubles, I’ve been a model citizen. That’s what made that day walking home from the grocery store such a shock. I caught a glimpse of the stranger I saw in the mirror two years ago.
I don’t get out much. I don’t talk to many people. I stay in the house and work out, I read, I go to the movies now and then which is good because you can sit alone and not interact with anyone and nobody thinks you’re odd. On my block I’ve become the weirdo my nine-year-old self would have loved to ding-dong-ditch and throw rocks at his window.
Coming home from the market that day I was just minding my own, a single bag of groceries in my arms. The usual staples. I’d been living on a small rotation of about five meals I know how to cook.
I recognized the couple walking parallel to me on the sidewalk across the street. Around my neighborhood I try not to be seen, but I can see; and this marriage was not the happiest on the block. He was big. Victor was his name. Greek, I think. The kind of guy who intimidates a woman because he can. It came easy to him. Probably learned it from his father.
I didn’t know her name which seemed in line with her station in life. Be quiet, sit down, make me dinner, have more babies.
The raised tone of Victor’s voice was as familiar to the refrain of the neighborhood as the McTaggart’s dog, so hearing him shouting didn’t even make my head turn. It was the punch.
All my life I’ve heard the sound of men hitting men so much that I can tell you the pitch of a sock to the jaw versus a blow to the gut with a blindfold on. I can tell you if the guy doing the hitting is a righty or a lefty. I can tell you if any bones broke or if it was a knockout just by the music of a fist on flesh.
Head down, grocery bag firmly held, I can tell you it was a shot to her cheekbone thrown with a sweeping right fist. It was no slap to gain her attention, no stomach punch to prove a point. This was a strike with all four knuckles meant to do her harm.
I stopped in my tracks. I turned and heard the distant sound of the McTaggart’s dog reel off fifteen barks in a row like a Tommy gun.
She knelt in front of him holding her cheek. Victor loomed over her with his fist cocked back again as if she might actually stand up or try to fight back. His breath came out raspy, ragged from the yelling. They stood like that, frozen, as if they were waiting for a referee to finish counting to ten.
I’m not one to mess in other people’s business. I’m even less of one to help a stranger. I guess I do have some sense of justice and even a loner like me has his limits. This was a time when to ignore it, to not do something . . . well, it might as well have been my fist that cracked her cheek.
I kept hold of the grocery bag as I crossed the street, I don’t know why. I barely felt its weight. My workouts had been intense and long and my body was never in better shape, even during my brief career in the ring. Sparring with Rex used to keep me fit but now that I had taken over his training regimen, and then some, I became taut and solid as an archer’s bow. I would have fought middleweight and if my heavy bag could speak it would tell you that I can bring the hurt.
Victor didn’t notice me crossing. He had that tunnel vision inexperienced fighters get. I was right up next to him by the time he turned. I broke him out of some sort of trance and when he saw me he relaxed his fist and shook it out. I could see his knuckles were thick and calloused, damaged the way a nose looks after being broken for the fifth time. I don’t know what he did for a living but I want to believe it was the job that gave him those hardened mushrooms and not overuse on her face.
She still didn’t make a sound, scared silent and knowing the consequences if she cried.
He waited for me to speak. I didn’t. I set down the grocery bag and quickly told myself, Don’t, but my muscles kept on moving. I reached out a hand to her and lifted her up by the arm. She didn’t want to stand so I forced her.
Victor was staring daggers at me by then but I didn’t care about him or his meat paws. With the same hand I lifted his wife I coiled a fist and brought it around into his gut. It was a lot of gut and he sucked wind for a moment but didn’t crumple the way his wife did.
Knocking him off guard gave me enough time to square up, set my feet, bring my hands up and reach back with my right, getting just enough space between me and him to push my body forward. I followed through from my shoulder down the arm to the fist and sent a shot straight and solid with the full force of my body pivoting toward him. It landed on his jaw.
Punching a man on the cheek is a fool’s game. You’re much more likely to break your hand than his face. Come to think of it, that could be a good reason for his knuckles to look the way they did. Bad technique in too many bar fights. You hit him in the jaw and there’s room there to give so as your punch follows through, if you threw a good one that is, it can do some real damage.
Hitting another human felt different from the sand-filled bags in my basement. A primitive spot deep in my brain thought it felt very good.
I recoiled the arm and stood ready to throw another, or to dodge whatever was coming my way. I didn’t need to. He doubled over and spit two teeth to the sidewalk before following them down. He landed hard on his forehead and that started to bleed, quickly joining the flow from his mouth in a tiny creek watering the weeds in the cement cracks.
Her hand fell away from her cheek. A slight smile crept over her. I’d probably just sentenced her to another beating behind closed doors but she seemed to think it was worth it.
She spoke quietly to me. “Thank you, mister. Why did you . . .? Never mind. Just thank—”
I was already crossing the street. I didn’t do it for her. I shouldn’t have done it at all. It was upsetting to remember a part of me that was capable of such violence existed inside. I hated to see it roar back to life; a bear roused from hibernation.
Like I said, I guess I have some notion of justice.
It’s crazy to think, but that was the same day I got the package.
I got home and iced my hand even though it didn’t hurt much. I replayed the sound in my head; the connection, the cracking of teeth, the unhinging of jawbone, the air expelling from lungs. All textbook. Enough to make you want to step back into the ring.
I’d been making my living off three fighters I owned a piece of. With the money from Rex’s life insurance and his share of our purse money from his fight days, all of which went to me in his will, I laid low and didn’t come out of my hole for six months after the funeral. When I did I figured the money would run out sooner or later, even if I lived like a hermit. I lurked in the fight halls and found some boys I liked the look of. I could make more money off them if I put myself back in the corner and became a full-fledged manager but I like being a silent partner. The boys do okay and none of them have ever met me.
So aside from some sore knuckles and an angry Greek neighbor I had everything well under control in my small life, shadows and all.
Then the package came.
It was in a box wrapped with twine and the return address had no name, just a street I didn’t know and a city: Hollywood, California. Inside I found a reel of 8mm film and an envelope with my name scrawled on it. I opened it and read a letter than was rambling, scared and asking for help. It was signed, YOUR SISTER, AUDREY.
Thing is, I don’t have a sister.
2
Dean Fokoli
There’s a street in Kansas City, just back of 13th; the cops call it Screamer’s Row. It’s the sort of place a guy can go to scalp a ticket, make a bet, get a date, score some dope, or finish a deal. It’s the kind of place that fills up quick at sundown and, when the sirens cry, clears out twice as fast. It’s a place where the money’s dirty, the drinks are stiff, and the dames are loose.
When I was a cop it was never my beat. I dealt with nobodies who were somebodies—guys who liked to grease my palm with freshly laundered money. Not that there weren’t crooked cops on Screamer’s Row trying to cram their fists into the till. It’s just that the losers on the Row liked dealing with bad guys who didn’t pretend to be something else in the light of day. There would never be much of a partnership between the riffraff and the swayback cops here. That’s just the way of things.
But as a private dick? Yeah, a guy on Screamer’s Row could eke out something like a living that was almost honest, if a guy was so inclined. I knew how to find people. I knew how to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open. And I knew how to make a guy talk—even when he didn’t want to.
At first I went to the Row because I wanted to disappear. If I wasn’t me anymore then maybe Laura had never existed . . . had never been betrayed . . . hadn’t died alone. I got a room, the kind with a beat-up desk and a fold out bed, and I hung out a shingle. DEAN FOKOLI, PRIVATE INVESTIGA-TIONS. The cops left me and my corner alone most of the time. Screamer’s Row boasted a murder a night so they had their hands full. Besides, I worked hard to keep my nose clean.
Guys from the street came to my office with money in hand and asked me to do things. Spy on a dame, take some pictures, follow a money trail. It was easy stuff. And legal.
But sometimes a man can be driven to do things he swore he’d never do again.
Let me put it this way: In a city where people are nothing but blank faces you’d think it would be easy to disappear. Turns out it’s not.
It was a Wednesday when I opened my door to a headache, and I can’t say it’s entirely gone even now, two days later.
Bob White was my ex-partner, or I was his. I’m not sure how one was supposed to word it. I’d showed him the ropes and now he wanted to hang me. “Dean Fokoli. Well, well, well.” He said it like we were in a movie . . . like I was some fugitive in hiding he’d managed to track down through ingenuity. Asshole. He sauntered past me and sat on the edge of my desk, one leg propped up, hands folded on his thigh, hat perched on his head like he thought he was somebody big now.
“That’s what it says on the shingle,” I said. “Right out in the open.”
He had the grace to blush. Bob White may have been more seasoned now, may have lost some weight and stiffened his spine, but I couldn’t see him as anything other than the rookie he was when we worked together. “Sure does,” he said. “How’s things going?”
“What do you want, Bob?” I shoved him off the edge of the desk and lit a cigarette before sinking into my chair. I didn’t have chairs for clients. Chairs facilitate comfort, encourage conversation, invite civility. Nobody but me sat down in my office. Nobody.
Bob strolled around and touched things on the one and only shelf I had in the room: nail clippers, razor, watch, a picture of me and Laura. “I got promoted,” he said, looking over his shoulder at me. He put the picture down an inch too far to the left. I pretended it didn’t bother me. “I’m reviewing unsolved crimes.”
“Congratulations.” I put my feet up on the desk.
He strolled my direction again and stood looking down at me. Bob had gotten smug in the last year. “The Ward Case.”
A thousand memories fell like rain. Ray Ward, free man, murderer. He wasn’t the reason I walked away from my job, but he was one of the many, many reasons I could end up in jail. Letting Ray go was one of the rightest things I’d done in my sorry life, but it made me guilty of a few things. Aiding and abetting, obstruction of justice—things that could get me sentenced to a few years or better.
I took a deep drag on the cigarette and studied the fleshy face of my ex-partner. A year ago I had figured Bob for a softy, the sort of guy who’d let me go for old time’s sake. Who says teaching a guy to keep his balls in his sack where they belong is a smart thing?
“What about Ward?” I asked, blowing a plume of smoke into the air.
Bob rocked back on his heels. “I think we can prove it all real soon. We know he killed all those guys.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t, Dean.” His face changed then. It had a tendency to do that when he was thinking about whether or not to say something. I’d learned to read him easily enough when I was showing him how to be a good cop—something I never was—and when Bob’s face got like this he had something to get off his chest.
I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t my job to teach him how to handle himself anymore. He was on his own. I waited him out, watched him fidget, and felt a little amused by the whole thing.
“Look, Dean,” he said, making like he wanted to sit on the edge of my desk again. My cocked eyebrow warned him off. “I’m here as a courtesy. I’m going to be checking things out because of this new job. They’re cleaning things up in the department and—” He shook his head. “I gotta tell you, your name keeps coming up, especially with regard to the Ward case.”
I took another drag of my cigarette and met his gaze. He didn’t shrink under it like he used to. “I’ve got nothing to hide.” The phrase tasted bitter and the fact that Bob obviously knew it was a lie didn’t make it any better.
After he left I smoked another cigarette and thought about Ray Ward.
I’d kept tabs on the kid since last year, wanting to make sure he kept his nose clean. Mostly he hid out in his house and didn’t come out for much at all. I wondered if I could get him to leave town, to make himself scarce. I laughed out loud. Here was the great and honest Dean Fokoli ready to help a criminal escape justice . . . again. I was shitting all over that new leaf I’d turned over, but there was no help for it.
A few hours later I found myself in the back of a Pawn Shop at the edge of the Row. Bars lined the windows and the front door and the owner wore hip holsters stuffed with revolvers. I laid down my money, picked up the phony badge he laid on the table and hoped I was doing the right thing. Funny thing about that—hoping you’re doing the right thing usually means you’re not. But a badge in these parts equaled muscle and muscle might be necessary to get Ray Ward to leave town.
3
Ray
I read the note three times. Most of it didn’t make sense to me. Beyond the desperate run-on nature of it, all the stuff about Pop and this girl, this Audrey, being my sister. It just didn’t sink.
And that film reel. What was that all about? I had nothing to watch it on. It just sat there in that bright yellow can. It was like getting a warning in a language you can’t understand.
The house was church quiet, like always, but I noticed it more than ever before. I was tempted to click on the radio just to have proof the world hadn’t stopped spinning.
My curtains closed out any light, as usual, but a gap where the two living room panels didn’t quite meet let in a shaft of bright midday sun. It caught dust motes that hung sad in the air. A moth cut a path through making swirling ripples in its wake.
I lifted the film can, turned it over, took out the reel of 8mm. I unspooled the first few feet and brought it over to the break in the curtains, held the thin strip up to the light. Tiny boxes showed the same picture over and over. Nothing seemed to change. A room with a bed in it. No people. There was an emptiness that gave me an uneasy feeling. I knew that room was no place I wanted to be.
I spun the reel and wound the film back up then set the can back down. I picked up the letter again, the paper crinkling in my hand. It looked as if it had been wadded up at one point and then smoothed out again. What she worried about was this: Girls had gone missing. Friends of hers. She was an actress, so she said. Some friends did a few films but not the type you’d see in a double feature.
Hell, I’d never even seen one. Girls stripping off their clothes for the camera. Sometimes a guy is involved. Intimate moments rendered on celluloid for the entertain-ment of lecherous men.
Starring my sister, apparently.
She made it clear that the movie she sent me didn’t star her. It didn’t exactly make me feel any better about who and what was on it.
She outlined, on page two of her three page handwritten rant, the details of Pop traveling out west on a tour back in 1921. He used to barnstorm around a lot in those days picking up fights all over the western states. Well, I guess he got lonely one of those nights and took up with Audrey’s Mom and nine months later . . .
She said she never met Pop but her Mom told her everything and used to keep clippings of the fights he won. Her Mom had passed away and apparently Audrey kept up the hobby.
When Rex died she knew about it. When Pop died she knew about it. Now I was her only living relative and her only hope. She seemed to be really afraid that something bad would happen to her. I could feel her fear coming off the page, in her words and in the way she wrote, like she was rushing to get it all out before someone busted in and found her scrawling. The way she barely stopped for punctuation as if it would take too long and she’d get found out. The letter was written in two different pens–one blue, one black–that gave the impression she had to ditch her first attempt in a hurry and pick it up again later. I had no reason to, but I believed her.
Pop was a son-of-a-bitch and that was reason enough to believe he had messed around on Mom. Audrey was frantic enough to believe she was in some kind of trouble, real or imagined, and if she went to the effort to track me down that was proof she had no one else to turn to.
Trouble was, neither did I. Last time I set out to help someone things didn’t go too well. Bodies started piling up. I managed to stay one foot ahead of the law but this is a town I know. Hollywood I don’t know from Singapore.
I try not to let myself think back to that time. It’s too damn easy to dwell. I can sit in the house and replay it in real-time and not even realize I’m doing it. It’s why I don’t need a film projector. I got a six-reelerplaying in my head at all times. It’s all I can do to keep the theater dark.
I thought about her request; to come out to Hollywood and help her and her friends. The more I considered her request, the more I knew I couldn’t do it alone.
I didn’t have a lot of options, but I had one.
4
Fokoli
I stood on the sidewalk across the street from Ray Ward’s house with the spring breeze sending my coat flapping around my legs. The neighborhood was full of sounds from crying babies and laughing children to barking dogs and scolding mothers. Doors opened and closed, cars passed, people interacted.
Ray’s house was shut up tight as a tomb. Not surprising since he’d been involved in at least five murders. A guy with that kind of history might be inclined to hide out. But I’d been through Ray’s actions over and over in my head—he was square as far as I was concerned. He’d killed guys, sure, but the guys he finished needed it. Ray Ward had taken care of business. I’d put away my share of bad guys when I carried a badge, but I’d done it with the help of dirty hands in my pockets. So who was the bad guy and who was the good guy?
Now I was here to try to reason with Ray Ward. By using a phony badge.
The folly of it all struck me then. He knew I had quit the force. The papers had covered my story from birth to professional death and they’d done it in Technicolor. Even now, two years later, Laura’s grave had more flowers on it than the Miss America float in Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. The poor, misunderstood wife, neglected by her husband, driven to drink herself to death. Notes to Laura piled up with the flowers. Every single one touching, every single one condemning me—every single one correct.
Funny how a guy can try to go straight and can’t find a goddamn straight road to walk along. There were offshoots in every direction. Forks in the road. Goddamn Robert Frost and his road less traveled. Stupid poet probably had soft hands and never worked a day in his life.
I shoved the badge in my pocket and thought maybe I’d just let Ray Ward be. When a man starts cursing poetry he’s in danger of losing his marbles.
There was plenty to do back on the Row. I went to my car and headed that direction, feeling like I could clean up a few cases, maybe bruise a few of my knuckles and clear my head. Then I’d shoot some pool and think over the Ray Ward situation. Maybe I’d do some investigating and see if Ray had family out of town or something, a place he could go to ride everything out. I didn’t know how deep Bob planned on digging, mainly because it felt like I didn’t know Bob all that well anymore. I’d taken my finger off the pulse of the precinct and it was going to be next to impossible to put it back without getting it shot off.
As I pulled onto my street and parked the car, Ray was slipping from my thoughts. I’d get to him, I told myself. Later.
I stopped in my office long enough to grab my camera and headed east on foot. Riley’s Gun Repair was a block from my office. Riley’d had some trouble with a bookie by the name of Len Kopetski who leased Riley’s back room for business. Since I wasn’t a cop anymore, and I had to make my living on the Row, I figured live and let live. I’d made a few bets in the back room once or twice. I even played a game of cards there now and then. But it seemed rent was slow in coming these days despite evidence of Mr. Kopetski’s ever-increasing financial security—diamond ring on his pinkie finger, new furs for his women, and a gold tooth to fill the gap in front of his mouth that had been his trademark for the last decade.
I’m not a brawny enough man to take on all of the thugs Kopetski kept by his side, so eviction by force wasn’t an option. Everyone knew Kopetski was scared of one thing—his father-in-law, Stan Gray.
Mr. Gray used to run book down at Riley’s but had moved on to bigger things uptown. He gave Kopetski the lease to the back room as a wedding present five years earlier.
Every good goon has a wife and two or three ladies on the side. It’s all acceptable. It’s all understood. But discre-tion is expected.
For example: you don’t buy all three of your girlfriends fur coats and forget to buy one for your wife, especially if your wife’s daddy has enough pull to get you fitted with cement shoes and dumped in the Mississippi.
Mrs. Kopetski found out about the coats from Riley and then she came to see me. She requested pictures of girls in coats coming and going from the back room. She didn’t care about the affairs. She planned to use the pictures as leverage to get her own coat. Let’s just say it wasn’t my usual request. But when a dame wants a fur coat . . .
She explained it to me like this: Mrs. Kopetski needed a coat, Riley needed his rent. They’d made a bargain to hire and pay me to catch Mr. Kopetski with his ladies in fur. The scheme would enrage Mr. Gray. Riley would use that anger to his advantage, saying that Mr. Kopetski owed him four months of rent. In the end, Mrs. Kopetski would get her fur coat, Riley would get his rent, and I would get enough in my pocket to keep me in groceries for another month. It was a walk in the park.
As I walked into the shop, Riley gave me a wave with one finger, the signal that Kopetski was in the back with one of his women. The routine was always the same—Kopetski would take bets for a couple of hours and play cards until the ponies ran. After, he’d leave through the back with a lady on his arm. I’d snap a few pictures of the woman in her coat. Piece of cake.
I headed back out the front door, moved into the alley, and ducked into a doorway. I lit a cigarette, hoping the smell of burning tobacco would be strong enough to cover the stench of rotting cabbage and dried urine. I had the camera loaded and ready so all I had to do was wait. There were no shadows in the alley, just the glare of sun on oil stains. Early afternoon. Almost race time.
Time passed. I measure hours in cigarettes, so by my calculation it was half past six. Kopetski was still inside.
When I saw the shadow I blew out a breath. I wasn’t too worried about being found. There were enough cigarette butts in the alley to make the twelve I’d smoked insignificant. I dropped the one I was working on now at my feet, crushing it with my heel and covering it with my shoe. Then I cracked my knuckles. I didn’t have time for some halfwit to try to mug me, not when I was waiting to finish a job. I set the camera on the ground. It was bulky and I didn’t want to drop it.
The shadow started whistling “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.” That’s when I figured out that the shadow wasn’t just a drunk looking for a place to sleep it off. I’d been here a long time. Odds were that somebody squealed. Either Mrs. Kopetski or Riley had developed a bad case of cold feet.
If I thought about it, I wasn’t really worried about Mrs. Kopetski. She had her father on her side. But Riley needed business and if he messed with Len Kopetski, chances were he’d regret it a good long time. I cursed Riley for a coward and stepped out of the doorway. The goon was tall and muscular. I didn’t recognize him. He stopped whistling when he saw me and finished his song by singing “Pop goes the weasel.”
I sighed and put up my fists. Pointless, really. He had eighty pounds on me. I got a good shot off and clipped him in the chin before he’d even pulled an arm back, but he just gave a sort of backward nod and smiled at me.
He pulled back and landed a punch in the middle of my face. “Mr. Kopetski would like you to go home now,” he said. But I didn’t really hear him. I tried to dodge to the side to avoid his fist, but he was fast for a man his size and I took the force of the blow on my cheek, feeling the skin tear. After a second lightning fast shot, I was down on the ground, smelling the piss from a hundred drunks up close and personal. I groaned.
“Mr. Kopetski wants you to leave and not come back.”
I was face down, feeling blood flow from my nose onto the crusted cement of the alley. I stared at the goon’s shoes. He walked to the side of the alley and returned. “Mr. Kopetski says he’ll make you a pair of shoes like this in your size if you bother him again.”
I looked up over my shoulder at the cinder block he held in his meaty paws. “Maybe you want to see it up close.” He dropped the block on my left hand.
I was quick but not quick enough. I pulled my hand far enough out of the way to avoid major damage, but the block caught the tips of my index and middle fingers. I think I swore then, but I’m not sure. I pushed the block from my hand and got to my knees.
“I’m going to take your film now,” the goon said, picking up my camera and pulling out the roll. No pictures, thank God. He put it in his pocket and smiled at me before dropping the camera on the ground and crushing it under his massive shoe.
People steered clear of me as I made my way back to the office. From the feel of the blood dripping down my cheek and from my nose, I guess I couldn’t blame them. I got inside and poured myself a drink before attempting to clean up. I thought about pulling out the bed and taking a good long nap—but first I’d get good and drunk.
5
Ray
I hadn’t been back to the precinct since they interrogated me. I’d almost blown it then and brought the whole house of cards down around my ears. Now I was walking in of my own free will. I’ve had better ideas. I’ve had worse.
Detective Dean Fokoli was no longer with the department. I knew that. Headlines screamed it at me for a week after the mess. His indiscretions on the force eclipsed my trail of bodies by the time of the morning edition. Everyone loves a crooked cop story. It confirms their suspicions.
I’d learned enough about detective-ing from my brief experience to easily know that when trying to find someone the best place to start is the last place you know they were.
My explanation to the desk sergeant was muddy at best. He furrowed a brow at me and, annoyed, motioned for me to follow him. On his desk were two open files with mugshots in them doing a lousy job of hiding a crossword puzzle.
He led me to the homicide division. My old stomping ground.
I recognized the detective but couldn’t come up with his name. Lucky for me his brass nameplate was at a high sheen like he’d worn out a half dozen ties spit-shining it all day. Must have made him proud. Guess his daddy never said he loved him either.
When he looked up and saw me I thought he was going to shit a brick. He tried to cover his surprise but it was too late. I’d seen his opening move and I knew how to proceed in the next round.
Bob White, as the nameplate said, forced himself to relax into the world’s smoothest detective. His demeanor said he was a tough-as-nails, lady-killer, always-gets-his-man type. Too bad his gut and bald head were giving a different speech.
“Well, well. Mister Ward. Here to turn yourself in?” Bob went to put a foot up on his desk but nearly lost his balance in his chair and had to lurch forward to stay upright. He kept his feet planted after that.
I kept mine moving. Defense.
“Turn myself in for what?”
“As if you don’t know.” He smirked and reached for a cigarette.
“I’m looking for Dean Fokoli. I figured you might know where he is.”
Bob struck the match on his desktop and touched it to his cigarette tip. “Still hanging out with your old pal, are you?”
“If I was I wouldn’t need you to help me find him, would I?”
Bob hesitated with the lit match in the air. Flame crept lazily toward his finger as he contemplated throwing me in the basement holding cells for insulting an officer. Just before the flame reached his finger he shook it out.
“What do you want Fokoli for?”
“I loaned him a book. Wanted to get it back.”
I wasn’t making headway with my smug attitude but when a guy comes at you, the least you have to do is put up your dukes.
Bob chugged at his smoke as he swung out from behind his chair. The two other cops in the room ignored us. Bob stepped close to me and I held my ground. No way this doughboy was going to push me into the ropes.
“I just wonder what it is you two old pals are going to discuss,” White said.
“I told you.”
“What book did he borrow, exactly?” Bob exhaled pungent smoke in my face. I guess cheap tobacco is all you can afford on a cop’s salary.
“My Bible.” Even though My eyes burned I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of blinking.
“You know Ward, I’d ask for your fingerprints but I just remembered, we’ve got you on file. Y’know, just in case I need them to match up to any evidence sitting around in storage. Wasn’t that long ago when you were down here just making friends with our pal Fokoli.”
“Look detective, do you know where he is or not? I told you everything I knew back then and I forgot everything since so quit wasting my time and I’ll quit wasting yours.”
He stepped closer to me. If there was a ref there he would have broken up the clinch. “I haven’t forgotten.” Another puff of smoke and Bob White turned his back on me, his way of signaling he was done with our conversation. He marched back to his desk and refused to look up at me anymore.
“Fokoli’s gone private dick. Lift any rock down on Screamer’s Row and you should see him scurry.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all you’ll get from me. Am I supposed to make it easy on you? Don’t worry Ward. You’ll see me again soon. I’ve been reading up on you.” He tapped a file on his desk. “Yeah, you’ll see me again. And this time I’ll do what should have been done two years ago.”
“Thanks, detective.” I turned to leave.
“Be seeing you,” he called out like I was a good friend just leaving an afternoon of iced tea and conversation. His words stung with the sharpness of an ice pick.
6
Fokoli
The knock on my door set me on edge. And then I realized that Kopetski and his friends wouldn’t knock. They’d just come on in. I opened the door.
Ray Ward.
“I need your help,” he said, and held out a package—like he was a house guest bringing me a bottle of wine.
Funny, but I was almost relieved to see him. He stepped back a little when he saw my face but he got over it soon enough. I gestured for him to come inside.
I looked over the package and read the letter. A sister. Hollywood. Naughty movies.
It was clear enough. He wanted me to find her.
“Why?” I asked.
He met my eye which was something not too many people did nowadays. “Because you’re better at it than I am. It’s your job. Last time I . . .” his words trailed off.
I turned and moved deeper into the office. He had no choice but to follow. I sat down. He stood. I put the yellow film tin and the letter on the desk. He made no move to take them.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” I said.
Ray didn’t say anything at first. He just met my gaze, looking tense. It had taken a lot for him to come to me. After a minute he said, “Why?”
I told him about Bob, about the cold case files, about how they still wanted to pin it all on him, take him down and push me down right along with him. He nodded as I spoke, like it was something he already knew. “So you need to get out of town.”
He chewed on that for a minute. “And you?”
I shrugged. “I get to go on doing what I’m doing.” It tasted bad when I said it. What the hell was I doing? The sounds of the street rose then and it was like I was hearing it for the first time—the sirens, the yells, the traffic, the coarse music, the screaming babies from nearby flats. All of it deafening. I hated it. I hated everything about it. My busted up face hated it more.
“She’s my sister,” he said. “At least take a look at the film.”
“Have you watched it?”
He gave a short shake of his head, abrupt and serious and somewhat disgusted.
It occurred to me that he was here to trap me. Bob White and the D.A. approached Ray with a plea deal if he could prove that I had let him go. But Bob White wasn’t that smart and I didn’t figure Ray Ward for the sort of guy who would snitch. I kept my guard up but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in the case. Dealing with Nancy film makers was probably better than getting stomped on by Neanderthals in blind alleys.
I took the film from the can, unrolled about six inches and held it up to the light. Nothing but a bed. Not enough to say for sure the type of movie it was, but enough to suspect. I tried not to groan.
“I don’t have a projector,” I said, “but my guess is we don’t need it to tell us what’s on this film. Your sister, right?”
“No,” he said. “I think something bad, though.”
I massaged my aching head. “Shit.”
7
Ray
It took me about an hour to find a projector. I hadn’t thought of it until Fokoli really pressed, then I remembered Tommy Diggs, a boxing manager who was one of the only guys in town friendly to me back when Rex was in the ring. He liked to go over films of bouts with his boys and give them tips, none of which they ever used. He still had a small stable of kids out there slugging but none of them had gotten any smarter, just younger.
I called Fokoli to meet me over at Diggs’ office and politely asked Tommy to give us a half hour alone. I knew whatever was on that film reel wasn’t something I wanted being shown for an audience.
Fokoli showed up and I couldn’t help seeing him hesitate at the door like he knew if he crossed the threshold and sat down with me we would become some sort of partners. I knew it unsettled him but not any more than it did me.
“Well, Ward, let’s see what we’re dealing with,” he said.
He’d done a homemade patch job on his face and I resisted my desire to strip off the crooked gauze and tape and do it myself. Years of patching fat lips and swollen eyes for Rex made me an expert at small-time first aid. No other man worth his salt wants a grown man pulling a Florence Nightingale on him though. If he wanted help he’d ask.
The office was small, smelled of chewing tobacco from the half-filled spittoon in the corner. I sat in Diggs’s green leather chair under a cluster of framed pictures of young men in silk shorts striking poses with gloves on, hands and knees bent like they maybe had a shot to knock someone out. They didn’t. A glass jaw doesn’t show up in a photo.
Fokoli sat on a two-seater couch with dark stains from where a hundred sweat-soaked boxers sat before to watch film of their own humiliation in the ring.
I had Tommy give me a rundown of the machine before Dean got there so I had it threaded up and ready. A roll down screen was set up against the far wall. The room was dark enough for a movie show twenty-four hours a day so all I had to do was switch off a desk lamp and flip the switch on the projector.
The lamp shone a white square on the screen which flickered and filled with dirty frames of numbers counting down before going black and then fading up on the room I’d seen before. Fokoli and I both cleared our throats. The film had no sound; just the whir of sprockets and gears filled the room.
There was that bed, only now it was almost life-sized. It stayed empty too long. I shifted in my seat and the leather moaned. A girl showed up on screen, pushed into the frame and teetering on high heels, but the camera didn’t move.
She was young, probably eighteen, and attractive. Dark hair, pale skin and a lot of it. She wore only a bra, underpants and the kind of stockings with a thin black seam running up the back and fastened to a garter belt. When she regained her balance you could tell she was crying.
A man entered, the one who did the shoving. He was a heavyweight, easy. Six foot four or five and broad across the shoulders with a chest wide enough to show the movie on. He strained the seams on his T-shirt. His face was tan with wide, flat features like his face had been sculpted out of putty. He looked Hawaiian or Samoan, something like that. He finished the job of pushing the girl on the bed. As she fell he hooked the four fingers of his shoving hand into her drawers and pulled them away, leaving her naked backside exposed as she hit the bed.
He tossed the ripped garment away and undid his belt.
Fokoli and I squirmed.
His belt unhooked, he stripped off his shirt and then removed his pants revealing a part of his anatomy in scale with his upper body. The girl turned and looked over her shoulder, face to the camera showing mascara streaking her cheeks. She scrambled to get up into a crawl but he grabbed her waist with his massive hands and held her in place.
On her hands and knees, her tear-stained face to the wall, he took her violently.
The reel of film lasted less than five minutes, every second excruciating. He pounded into her with all his might. He lifted and moved her body at will as if she wasn’t even a person. When he was done he stood and left the way he entered leaving the girl to curl up, knees to her chest, finally giving in to her sobs. The tiny bed shook almost as violently with her bawling as it did when he . . .
The film ran out, the screen went white and we sat letting the film spool around and around slapping the loose tail of 8mm against the projector and ringing it like a bell. In my world, a bell is supposed to save you.
After a minute I switched off the projector.
I knew what Audrey was afraid of now.
“I need a shower,” Fokoli said. I nodded agreement. “Well,” he continued. “Looks like we’re going to Hollywood.”
I thought about shaking his hand, welcoming aboard my new partner but handshakes and congratulations seemed inappropriate.
“I can’t pay you much. I doubt your regular rate, let alone extra charges for an out of town job.”
“No such thing as a regular rate in this business.”
“But you’ll help me?”
“I’ll help her, your sister. It’s you that owes me if I remember right.”
He had me over a barrel with that one. “I know I—”
“Keep your shirt tucked, I’m just ribbing you. It’s not a bad idea for me to leave town for a little while. You too, Ward. I mean it about the hard-on Bob White has for us both. And after what I just saw you couldn’t stop me going if you wanted to. We’ll work out the money.”
“Thanks, Fokoli.”
“Call me Dean.”
“Yeah, maybe so.”
He smiled at me and I returned that grin, the way two fellas do as they step away from each other, afraid to turn their backs.
* * *
I sprang for the train tickets aboard the Los Angeles Express on the Santa Fe line. We met at 10:00 a.m. the next day. I dressed for the outside world, donning my one tie and jacket, holding my one suitcase, Fokolihis. It seemed both of us had the kind of lives that were easy to shutter for awhile. I wonder if Fokoli was like me and had that suitcase packed all along, just in case.
The fact that we were avoiding our history together didn’t really sink in until we were sitting in our sleeper car in facing seats. It was easy to get caught up in the letter and the yellow film can and ignore our connection. Beyond that one interview down at the precinct and the night out at Pop’s house, we were strangers. I’d read about him in the papers in the weeks after. Fired from the force, allegations of corruption that he didn’t deny. A widower. Beyond that I might as well be sitting with the Emperor of China for all I knew about him.
I tugged at my necktie. Not my normal attire, but sweat-stained T-shirts and khaki pants aren’t fit for interstate travel. Best to try to look respectable, even if a blind man selling pencils could tell I was faking it.
“So . . .” I started off but let it die.
“Yep,” he added.
Neither of us was eager to start talking. We had that in common. We would get along fine sharing a mutual distaste for conversations about the past. This could work.
The train lurched forward with a blast of steam and started to gain speed. The noise drowned out any hope of a conversation and we both sighed relief.
I turned my thoughts to Audrey. All we had was the address on the package and a name. I didn’t know what she looked like, didn’t know what to do to help her once we got there. I was still in shock to learn she existed but I was growing more grateful I had some family left in the world, even a half sister.
Fokoli lit a cigarette. I must have grimaced because he looked at me after it was lit and asked, “Do you mind?”
“Actually . . . I don’t smoke and what with training and all I’m just not that used to it up close.”
He stubbed out his fresh smoke in the tiny flip-out ashtray under the window, trying not to look too annoyed. “Guess I can go out in between cars when I need a smoke. Or to the bar. Let me guess, you don’t condone alcohol either.”
“You do what you want. I just don’t imbibe myself. You know, with training . . .”
“Yeah, yeah with training. I get it. What say we get up and explore our new home for the next two days?”
He stood and I followed. We wound our way through a maze of tight corridors and between rushing cars. Each time we passed from one car to the next, the blast of noise, the wind, and the uneven footing made it feel like the whole train was ready to burst apart.
Watching the flat Kansas plain speed by outside made me miss the days of traveling to fights with Rex. We rode economy and never saw many sights along the way but to travel anywhere for a fight made you feel like you’d made the big time. I guess Pop felt the same way; sleeping with women along the route. Made me wonder how many other sisters I had out there I didn’t know about.
We reached the bar car. It was crowded, even at 10:30 in the morning. Fokoli stopped for his smoke and I went out to the space in-between the bar car and the next lounge car. I could see through the window it was more of a cigar and pipe crowd than the pack of Lucky’s Fokoli smoked.
I hung on tight to the chain, all that was keeping me from falling to the tracks below. I let the wind mess my hair. I watched the land move west.
I’d never been to California. The furthest west we’d ever gotten was Wichita. Most of our fights were up and down the Mississippi. I must admit I was looking forward to seeing Los Angeles. After I got Audrey squared away and out of trouble I was planning on sticking around a day or two to get a taste of Hollywood for myself.
I can’t say I’d been working hard the past two years but I still needed a break. If that was even in my nature. I figured I’d find out.
The Kansas landscape wears out its welcome pretty quick so my attention turned back to the coach car behind me. A fat man, smoking a stogie while reading a newspaper, sat taking up two seats. He pitched and rolled right along with the movement of the train and it was obvious a trip out to the coast was nothing new to a big shot like him.
A young boy with red hair and pants held up by suspenders wandered through the car. He looked like he was headed out to Hollywood for an audition to join Our Gang. Judging by the holes over his knees and the hungry look in his eye, he didn’t belong to any of the adults inside. They all ignored him but he was seeing everything they did.
A black porter in a white jacket and gloves brought a drink to the fat man. He set it down and the fat man dropped a dime on his silver tray without ever looking up from his newspaper.
The redhead moved in. I watched as the boy, all of eight or maybe nine years old, swept in on the porter’s wake and shot out a hand, quick as a bantamweight’s left jab, up under the newspaper and came back out with a shiny gold pocket watch. If I hadn’t been studying the boy’s every action I wouldn’t have seen the momentary glint of gold.