"Bacon" is up at A Twist of Noir

First, everyone needs to recognize and acknowledge, the editorial and personal greatness of Christopher Grant! He has assembled the largest flash fiction challenge ever undertaken by a single person. We're talking over a hundred stories! Mr. Grant invited virtually every author that has been published on A Twist of Noir to submit a story. The idea was in addition to the usual ATON fare, he would post stories that were to be between 600 to 700 words.

It's not enough to compile over a hundred tales, proof them and check the word count, but to devote that amount of time takes outstanding dedication. The results have been astounding to say the least, with a great yarns from both professionals and amateurs.

I can't do a teaser for the story, because it would pretty much just give it away. Well, without further adieu, here's "Bacon."

Best Of: "Hot Ice And Cold Blood"

A couple of projects loom over the horizon and I have more plugs to give out than a dozen Hair Club For Men franchises put together. In the meantime, the following story should tie you over. "Hot Ice And Cold Blood" appeared at the original Powder Flash Burn blog. A lot of us owe our writing and our readership to Aldo Calcagno, so I ask that you visit the Original PFB, the New PFB and Darkest Before The Dawn.

Right after you do that, pop back over here and click the paragraph below to read some more Neo-Noir-

"Who was that idiot who said “the meek shall inherit the Earth?” And really, who would want the moldy crumbs that would be left over, after everyone else had taken their fill?"

Image from http://www.artquotes.net/masters/hirst/diamond-skull.jpg

Best Of: "Retribution"

This was originally titled "Mingo Zamora's Revenge," which is probably why is was initially rejected without comment. Then it was changed to "Mingo's Revenge" and then the light bulb above me head smacked me above the hairline and said "moron, change the title."

I wrote this as being in the Tenderloin (District) of San Francisco, then I changed it over to Chicago, for a Black Lizard contest that I never bothered to enter. At any rate, the story's name became "Revenge In Room 208," and then it became "Retribution." Geoff Eighinger was gracious enough to accept this story and to publish it in the premier issue of "Crooked Magazine."

This features the character with no name but known simply as "The Heist Man." No, I'm not being lazy, just purposefully obscure as I understand Donald E. Westlake did the same for one of his characters. Here is "Retribution"


“You’re a misogynist.”

I didn’t need to open my eyes to confirm that she was glaring at me; I felt her eyes boring into me, minutes ago. Since she got the better of our carnal give-and-take, I thought she’d sleep off the remaining time we had left together. This was spoiling my fun…I didn’t want her hating me too soon.

I rolled over and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she pulled back and skirted away from me on the bed as far as she could without falling off. I shrugged and mumbled, “that’s a good piece of fiction. You should be writing about robberies, instead of planning or participating in them.”

She leaned into me with a smile and said, “you can change the subject, but you can’t change the fact that you hate women.”

Not all women, just one in particular.

“What gave you that odd idea?” I whispered. I took her right hand and gently nibbled on it, because her hands were as close to a weakness as she seemed to have. She enjoyed that for all of ten seconds, until that tangent she was on resurfaced in her conscious.

“All of those things that you said last night-“

“You seemed to pretty much enjoy them.”

“Those are not the things that a man with even an ounce of respect for women would say.”

To one woman in particular, yeah, he would, and I did.

“Those words were spontaneous. They were of the moment, in the moment and you didn’t say ‘no’ or tell me to stop. You didn’t push me away, quite the contrary.”

She smiled at me without a hint of happiness. I imagined that her smile was like a dolphin’s sonar except it wasn’t echoes that were to bounce back to her, but my thoughts. Those words weren’t “spontaneous” at all and they weren’t meant to be.

Those very same words were said to her in Spanish instead of my grunting and gasping English, or so a man told me a few months ago.

Two months ago in a motel room much like this one, she laid in bed with Domingo Zamora, a man that was almost the polar opposite of me, yet Domingo and I had something in common. I apprenticed under him and he taught me almost all of what I know now. I chauffeured for a friend of his and that friend said that I was both a good driver and trustworthy. So I eventually became Domingo’s go-to driver when he would hit jewel couriers, and after a few years I became the number one man in his crew.

He was double-crossed in a hotel room much like this one, by this very woman, and she couldn’t just be content with keeping the entire haul for herself. She killed him in a particularly gruesome and painful manner that no one deserved, much less Domingo.

The lights from a plane taking off from Midway Airport shot through the curtains and lit her smile. That too-bright smile was fading into a snarl and I had to throw her off the trail, because she was adding things up a little too fast.

“You’ve got me wrong. I love women and everything about them. What I do hate is the way some men have tainted them. Rare is the woman that hasn’t been wronged or tarnished by some screwed-up asshole that couldn’t get a date in high school, and he spends the rest of his life taking it out on every woman that can’t quite see past his lies.”

With my lips, I moved up her hands and her arms to her slender shoulders. Her smile returned with just a touch of wariness. She was more concerned about her pleasure. She grabbed my head and we kissed. Ugh, her tongue running across my teeth seemed to me to be more of a brain probe than passion-related.

This heist came together by accident, and it had more to do with the right people vouching for each of us. Those of us that rob jewel couriers are a small and efficient group. We keep to ourselves. If Domingo mentioned me during their pillow talk, I believe that she would’ve done away with me right after the job. It’s happened to me before. I’ve been both lucky and smart in that during my first job that I was lead that my partner for that particular job didn’t kill me. For the second job? I figured everything out before a pair of brothers could double-cross me.

We pulled this job off without a hitch, and the energy seemed to carry over into us pulling off each other’s clothes yesterday afternoon. While she was in the shower, I planned out, texted a message and set everything up in just under two minutes. Now came the hardest part, breaking this off while the rest of my body told my mind that it was crazy for wanting to stop-

“Um, wait.”

The look on her face said that she’s never heard that one at this stage, before. I pretended to look through my pockets.

“I’m out of condoms. Do you have any?”

I already knew her answer before she said no, as I had checked.

“I’m going to get some.”

She grabbed my shoulder before I could get my boxers on and said “we could do other things.”

I smiled and said, “why do other things, when we can do the real thing? I’ll be right back.”

I put my clothes on and she pulled a gun out from under her pillow. She beckoned me over and she searched my pockets. She unzipped my pants and pulled them and my boxers down. She looked me over and bit her lip.

“Whoa, hold on! You’re not looking back there-“

“You didn’t have enough time to put anything back there,” she grinned, “but if you want me to look.”

“No.”

She looked down at my feet and grimaced. “Put your shoes and socks up here…slowly.”

I picked them up…gently and I put them down…just as gently, as if they were made of unstable nitro-glycerin. She searched them with the fingers of her free hand, while her eyes stayed on me.

“No jewels” I told her as she passed my shoes back to me. “I wouldn’t rip you off, I trust you.”

My last three words stung her like a slap to the face. I guessed that she never trusted anyone in her life, nor had she given anyone a good reason to trust her. I put the money that she pulled out back in my pocket and winked at her.

“I’m just going to the store on the corner; I’ll be back in a few.”

Just as I got to the door, she blurted “what makes you think that either I or the jewels will still be here when you get back?”

I nodded at her and, “like I said...I trust you,” came out of my mouth.

I winked at her again as I closed the door, and she had that vacant smile again with a single tear to accompany it. Was it a crocodile tear? Look, Domingo couldn’t read her and like I said, he taught me almost everything I know. You figure that he was on this Earth almost twice as long as I was, and when a fifty-seven-year-old veteran criminal gets played like a twelve-year-old that hasn’t done a minute in juvenile hall, you know that you are out of your league.

I feigned an elbow to the door and that was the signal. I went down the stairs and by the time I crossed the small parking lot, there they were, Begley and Boyle. Two cops that didn’t even trust themselves, let alone me. Yet I didn’t have to trust them at all, Cryptic did. He was a debt collector and he owned them, lock, stock and barrel, and no one was dumb enough to screw him over.

They were both police detectives and Begley used to be skinny, while Boyle was fat. They got tired of the obvious comparisons to Laurel and Hardy, so they both decided to lift weights. Begley got buffed up to ridiculous proportions while Boyle gave up after about a week’s worth of workouts. So now they were called “The Incredible Hulk and Hardy,” which didn’t have the same ring to it, though everyone called them that because it endlessly pissed them off.

I always had to work hard to hide that queasy feeling I got when I was around them. You should always be wary around thin-skinned people with guns and badges. I wiped my fingerprints off of the motel room key, handed it to Begley and walked past them.

Before they got too far, I said in a low voice “there are three rubbers that shouldn’t be in the garbage when all is said and done.”

Boyle hissed, “are you fucking kidding me?”

“What? I couldn’t have removed them without looking suspicious.”

“Well, I’m certainly not gonna-“

Begley shut Boyle up with a gesture and they went for the stairs. I chose this motel off of South Archer for a reason. The sound and lights from the Midway air traffic would help them out and they were going to need all the help that they could get.

I admired Begley. His eyes were on the curtains of the room, the whole time, and that was the kind of focus that would’ve made him an excellent stick-up man. I also figured it was just that that kind of focus was why, despite their shortcomings, those two assholes were still alive.

I pretended to go around the corner as they took the safeties off of their guns. I was as careful as I could’ve been with my fingerprints while I was in the room, and despite what the TV and movies tell you, it’s nearly impossible to find good latent prints in a motel room with so many travelers and maids going through it. I usually don’t like to stick around for anything, but I found myself lurking around the corner like a teen voyeur drunk on hormones.

Boyle crawled just under the window of Room 208 and Begley walked right past the door. He doubled back and slowly put the key in the door, and then four bullets tore through the wood from the inside. Boyle crawled forward and Begley quickly opened the door and blindly returned fire. He ducked low, peeked in and fired twice more, before he charged in. The lights went out or were shot out.

From my angle at the edge of the parking lot, I couldn’t tell what happened next, but I was amazed that a few pistols could hold that many rounds. The room looked almost like a disco gone amok; the flash from the gunfire was like a strobe effect. I decided to cut out at this point instead of waiting for the outcome. People would be looking out of their rooms and apartments right now and I didn’t want to become a “person of interest” if those two didn’t succeed.

The next eleven hours were excruciating. I couldn’t figure out if there was some kind of media blackout when the morning papers, the TV and the radio failed to mention anything about the shoot-out. I went across the Illinois-Indiana border to Gary to lay low, and finally on the five o’clock news, they said there was a shooting…with more details to come at six.

Finally at six, they mentioned two robbery detectives had stumbled onto a drug ring at a motel room and a shoot-out ensued. Begley was wounded and was in stable condition at the hospital. They didn’t mention Boyle by name, though apparently nothing happened to him other than the usual paid administrative leave pending an investigation of the shooting.

Of course you can guess that there were no drugs on me or her in the motel room. The agreement was that Begley and Boyle’s payment was to be the jewels, and they were to plant heroin in the precious stones’ place.

Finally, they talked about Claire Chambers, which I didn’t realize was her real name. She did a stint for attempted murder and another one for grand theft larceny. Domingo’s ghost could finally rest in peace, but I knew that I would now be haunted by a spirit that would be less forgiving than his and one that couldn’t be silenced by any other act of revenge, other than my death.

The End

Best Of: "When Gunpowder Gets In Your Eyes"

"The Best Of" gets redundant, by reviving the very post that I originally posted as the first "Best Of." What do you want? I'm on a mobius twist ever since I've seen the new "Star Trek."

It's not a Platter's tune, yet...

They said someday you'll find
All bullets are blind
Oh, when your heart's on fire
You must realize
Gunpowder gets in your eyes

Please check out "When Gunpowder Gets In Your Eyes."

Best Of: "Think Inside The Box"

The "Heist Man" cometh...that is, the third in the series of his stories. The third, "Retribution," was just published in Crooked Magazine, and the first was $8,400 A Carat.

Here is the second, "Think Inside The Box."

"Hot Ice And Cold Blood"

This story was originally published in Powder Burn Flash.


Who was that idiot who said “the meek shall inherit the Earth?” And really, who would want the moldy crumbs that would be left over, after everyone else had taken their fill?

Charlotte took enough crap off her parents to last three lifetimes, and she wasn’t meek. She was the good daughter, the patient daughter, the respectful daughter, and for what? The reading of the will was a slaughter.

Her widowed mother gave the entire estate to Krista, an older cousin she saw only at family reunions. Charlotte was so taken aback that her heart actually stopped for two beats. Her chest felt like a mule kicked it, and adding insult to injury, Charlotte swooned like some third-rate soap opera actress.

As far as Charlotte was concerned, that was it. This was to be the last public display of weakness on her part, because this near-stranger inheriting everything was the last straw. Even before she returned to full consciousness, Charlotte surveyed the room and she figured out half of her plan. As the executor of the will informed her that her mother wanted Charlotte to make her own way in life, Charlotte had her scheme all figured out.

How can you make your way in life when your parents never let you get a job and forced you to take care of them? How could they leave everything to an outsider who had already retired and had a house that’s paid for?

So Charlotte made the electrician that was working on the house believe that she would finally give into his advances, after turning this cretin down for several weeks. Then Charlotte had to look up her abusive ex-boyfriend, Elwood. Because he was the only man she knew who could steal, get a gun, or even kill if he had to.

But it turned out that all of Elwood’s bragging was just that, and Charlotte had seen water pistols that were scarier than the gun he scored. So the electrician altered the wiring like Charlotte asked, and half the house “accidentally” burned down before the firemen could save it.

As anticipated, Krista took the jewelry out of the safe and she was going to take them to the bank for safekeeping. But not as anticipated, the old woman hired two bodyguards.

Fuck it, time to make your own way in life, Charlotte. The old harpy screamed and both bodyguards whirled their heads around to her. Charlotte had a ski mask on and Elwood’s .25 pointed at Krista’s head, using her as a shield. The bodyguards couldn't get a clean shot.

“Put the guns down, or you'll both be unemployed in a split second with a big red blemish on your resumes!”

This part was easy enough, Charlotte found out that these idiots exercised every muscle except the one between their ears. They could’ve taken her, but they let drag her hostage all the way to the gardener’s 4X4 truck. They also pointed the cops in the wrong direction, as Charlotte made Krista detour the truck down a dirt back road.

Charlotte didn’t want to kill Krista, but she didn’t want her tipping the cops off as to which way she was going. Elwood’s gun wouldn’t fire, so Charlotte pushed Krista down a steep knoll.

“Give my regards to Jack and Jill, bitch.”

She got in the truck and finally took the stupid mask off, like no one would’ve guessed it was her. What the hell. She hated that town and there was now no home to go back to, anyway.

Elwood had recommended a fence named Joss in the city. Joss told her that he would give her only $20,000 for $780,000 worth of jewelry. What could she do, go to a pawn shop?

When she put them on the table, Joss didn’t even bother with the loupe that you see in the movies. He looked down and muttered, “you are screwed like an asthmatic with a two-pack-a-day habit.”

“What?”

“These are fake. They’re completely worthless.”

“But they were appraised a month ago at nearly $800,000.”Joss grabbed a rubber hammer and hit the jewels. They crumbled into powder and he shrugged with a scowl.

Charlotte made it 1,130 miles before she was captured.

A week later, Krista had two visitors at the hospital. The two bodyguards from the robbery were keeping her company. One of the bodyguards seized the visitors before they could give Krista a bouquet of roses and a box of candy.

“That’s okay, Junior, let them by. Elwood? Joss? My hospital bill is coming out of your cut of the insurance money.”


Note: This was originally written for "Flashing In The Gutters" way back in the day, but I could never get it below Tribe's maximum word count.

"Warmer"

Benton is a broker though the commodities that he deals with aren’t necessarily traded publicly. His specialties aren’t exactly illegal, yet they are rarely acquired through legal means. Most of the merchandise that he deals with, the public never sees, though some they do: the tabloid pictures and adult videos.

Some of these items were submitted by the owners in a misguided attempt to gain more publicity, but most were turned over by disgruntled employees and enemies of the former owners. So Benton is on the speed dial of many publicists and agents, or eventually they desperately seek his number out.

This arrangement also has created a lot of enemies for him; note the spray-painted “Fucking die, Bent-on, die!” on the side of his McMansion and the same phrase burned into his lawn, albeit misspelled.

Oh, shit, the alarm is off. Common sense would tell anyone to call 911, but Benton can’t risk the police because more than likely, someone is trying to steal their property back. Benton goes back to his Porsche for his gun. As he goes through the front door, he notices that the only lights on, are the ones not connected to the timers. The next thing he notices is a picture covered with rose petals.

Benton picks it up and sees a beautiful pair of immaculate female feet with toes painted bright pink and the words “follow the trail.” He tilts his head as he gazes at the trail of petals that go into the living room and beyond. Benton tucks his gun in his waist and follows the rose-covered road. The petals zigzag up the front stairs and they stop at the landing, right before a picture with shapely calves and the caption, “you are on your own, now.”

He decides to check the guest bedrooms first and he enters the closest one. There is a picture on the bed of a distended belly, bearing the caption: “you’re getting cold.” Benton checks the closet and under the bed to make sure that no one is there, then he goes to the next guest bedroom. He is greeted this time with a picture of a morbidly obese stomach with stretch marks and cellulite, and the caption: “colder still.”

There are no pictures in the guest bathrooms or linen closets. Benton creeps down the hall towards the master bedroom and in there, he shudders: on his bed, there’s a picture of decaying corpse and the caption “coldest yet.” He checks every hiding place in there and he goes down the back stairway.

In the den, Benton gets another shock because the painting that was hiding his safe and the safe’s door itself are wide open. He checks his safe and sees that it’s completely cleaned out, save for another picture and this one is of a slim woman barely covering her breasts with her right arm. This one’s caption reads “warmer.”

Benton is livid and he bites his hand to stifle a scream. He had over two million in bonds, valuable memory cards and photo negatives, as well as the master DVDs that hasn’t been turned over yet for production. The sound of his treadmill running in his exercise room gets his attention, but it doesn't lessen his rage as he runs in there. This time he has his gun out, though there is no one to aim it at. On his treadmill is a picture that seems to be a continuation of the last one. It is the same arm and breasts taken from further back, this time accompanied by slim hips and a thong that just barely covers the thinnest Isosceles of a Venus triangle. This caption read “warmer still.”

The quick whirl of his blender brings Benton into the kitchen and in his wide open freezer is another picture. This photo has the breasts bared and he's baffled because they look natural. This caption said “you’re getting hot” and he agrees, because he is about to blow a gasket.

“You’re red hot” says the woman behind Benton as she shoots him twice. He tries to place her face as he falls to the tiled floor, he guessed from the body in the pictures that she was one of those MTV celebutantes and now he is certain. She was on one of the DVDs, though he can’t remember if he has the sole copy.

As she walks away, he mutters “the joke is on you; your fifteen minutes were up a long time ago.”


Patti Abbott and Aldo Calcagno asked writers to post stories in the spirit of Valentine's Day. According to The Rap Sheet, it had to be 750 words or less and I snuck it in at exactly that.

"The Post-Nuptial"

This story originally appeared at Powder Burn Flash Blog.


"The “City of Angels ?” They have all the letters right, but their order all wrong. It’s the “City of Angles.” As in everyone there has an angle, is hiding behind one or they will come at you from a funny angle. Because people down there just don’t deal with anyone straight on.

I don’t like coming down here; it’s way too bright and that’s just the light coming off of all of the bleached smiles. Don’t get me started on the sun. But I am here on business, on behalf of a fine piece of pleasure.

She’s battier than a cave full of guano, which is good for the bedroom and bad for everywhere else. Even when she comes up for the occasional recreational tryst, this gets to be too much. So I know all too well as to just why her husband wants to divorce her, since he has to deal with her every single day.

The problem, as far as she is concerned, is that she is a movie star who has amassed millions over the life of her career, and before they were married he was a boom-mike operator with bad shoulders. When she finally cuts him loose, he won’t be able to work for long and though I don’t know all of the details, the only thing that both of their lawyers can agree on is that he has a fairly good chance of overturning their prenuptial agreement.

My plan is pretty simple: I’ve already driven down here and stolen a car. I’ll kick it off with a squat-and-stop right in front of her husband’s car.

It’s six P.M. on an overcast December 15th and it’s nice and dark. He turns off of Franklin Boulevard and I follow. I pull ahead of him and I look for witnesses...that’s right, I look for witnesses.

If you ask them what happened next, they would tell you that he rear-ended me, even though I was the one that stopped short in front of him. They would tell you that a Mexican gang-banger got out and cursed at him in Spanish for being crazy and for hitting his car.

Then they would tell you that the Mexican shot the husband point-blank in the head...even though I am about as Mexican as Charlton Heston in “A Touch of Evil,” and that my clothes and car are authentic, only in the borrowed sense.

I drive off of Whitley Avenue, where I torch the car and the disguise. I get the rental car I drove down here out of the garage and I’m home free, because L.A.’s finest won’t be looking for “Joe Tourist” as the world’s best “accidental” post-nuptial agreement.

Just south of Lompoc , I have to get gas for the car and caffeine for myself, as we are both running on fumes...twenty hours on the road will do that to you. I nod at the cashier, a nice East Indian who that will go far, judging by all the books he studies in between transactions. Then, in my sleep-deprived stupor, I make a mistake...I pay for the sale with my credit card. If a detective gets lucky and makes it up to Pacifica, this will put a huge hole in my “all alone at my cabin up in Tahoe” alibi.

I space out until the cashier and a Highway Patrol officer waiting behind me, bring me back. I sign the receipt and thank the kid.

Three miles later and I hear the distinct horn of a police car. I mull pulling over for about thirty seconds, then the car flashes the red and blue lights, and I panic. I get the first shot off, but I should’ve just shot myself instead, as it’s real hard to hit anything with a patrol car spotlight in your face.

I slip in and out...

...I see the Highway Patrol officer who was at the gas station.

...I hear him tell another officer that the station cashier said I forgot my credit card, and that he just wanted to give it back to me. I take it back...that cashier won’t go far; he’ll make a bad American, because he’s too damn honest.

...I just hope they can’t connect me to her.

...Yes, I contradicted myself by what I’ve done, but I’ll still talk shit about “The City of Angles.” I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite and the most comforting fact to me as I depart this world, is that at least I won’t die in L.A.

Powder Burn Flash Has "Hot Ice And Cold Blood" Up

What are you doing here? Powder Burn Flash has "Hot Ice And Cold Blood" posted.

Guess Who's Posted to Powder Burn Flash Again?

That's right, this guy. "The Post-Nuptial" is in Powder Burn Flash! Thanks to Chris for reviving the "Touch of Evil" and to Aldo!

"When Gunpowder Gets In Your Eyes"

I saw him through the smoke, with something to as close as a smile that his grim face could‘ve ever managed. With all the bullets in the walls, ceiling, floor, flesh, and bone, I don’t know how I survived…or how he remain unscathed. There were six others in the room and I guessed that none of them were still alive, or they would’ve fired back at him by now. Or, maybe they were playing dead like me, hoping that he wouldn’t notice.

I was just here to play a friendly game of poker and get over on a couple of suckers…this was no way to celebrate my first natural royal flush. I had seen “Mr. Shit For Timing” before, but where? That’s right, he had been standing outside the last two poker games that I played, I couldn’t forget his grim face. He makes a gargoyle seem positively jovial in comparison.

All the smoke from the gunfire seems to be settling in my lungs, what the hell? I thought smoke can descend only so far. If only he could’ve waited another fifteen minutes, I would’ve thrown the next two hands after my flush and been done with this.

I have to keep my eyes blank and still…what is with all this smoke? Did someone fire a musket? That’s it, leave, you grim-faced dickhead. Go away. It doesn’t sound like he’s going over to the table, how could he pass up five large? No, he slid that tacky little table, he’s going for that odd-looking case in the corner. Oh, shit, I’m gonna-

“Cough-”

Thcat-tchat-tchat-tchat-tchat-tchat-tchat!

------

“All clear, Sargeant!”

“What happened here?”

“I guess someone started a poker game and then a war broke out.”

“Holy shit, we got one that’s still alive!”

-----

Great there’s the bright white light that I’ve heard so much about, I might as well move toward it I guess…okay, Saint Peter is a cop?

“Hey George, he’s up!”

“All right, give me some room, Sargeant.”

I guess I’m not done for, after all.

“No, no, look over here, please. Do you know who shot you? Can you give me a description?”

Oh, that’s not good-

“Get out of the way, he’s going into arrest!”

-----

One minor heart attack, several hours of surgery and one short, medically induced coma later, I’m in the hospital bed, giving the police sketch artist a description.The sketch artist turns to the Sergeant who is just coming into the room and gives him a look at the sketch.

“Are you sure, this is who shot you?”

“Me and everybody in the room, yeah. It was like he was bulletproof or something.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yeah…why?”

“He bears a striking resemblance to my captain.”

“...No, I guess my memory is tainted from all that I’ve been through. Forget about it.”

“No, if you say this is the guy-”

“I said, forget about it! I w-w-w-w-as blinded, all that gun smoke and powder, you know? Just forget about it.”

-----

The Sergeant didn’t forget about it and neither did I. But this was between the sketch artist and us, so none of us talked because I was still alive, playing poker. A year later, the captain got what was his, while he was trying to sell a jade statue to the very people that it turns out, were the original owners…or so I hear. Nothing’s for certain, unless you witness it yourself. I’m also guessing that very same jade statue was in the odd-looking case that was in the corner.

I still haven’t got a natural royal flush, though I’ve hit it with different wild cards. What the hell, which is better? The hand of a lifetime? Or your life?


Note: JJ's starter sentence was, "I saw her/him through the smoke…" This was my next to last Friday Flash Fiction piece. I turned into an attention junkie which is never good for a writer and I got mad because the feedback I was getting was from the same three people. In retrospect, as long at they are objective, that's a good thing.

"Think Inside The Box"

“Spare change, mister?” he asked me as he scratched himself all over.I looked him up and down once and smiled.

“Change that I can spare?…No.”

“Oh, c’mon, man, don’t be that way!”

That settled it, I wasn’t giving him anything. He did a poor job of concealing the scabs that his own nails had excavated, because he went too long between fixes. My experience from the fleabag hotels that I stayed in, told me that he had gone at least a couple of days in-between. I had to give him credit for doing as well as he did, in hiding his shakes.

He was about to touch me, when I let him know with a small look that such a gesture would result in a greater pain than the withdrawals he was experiencing. As he ducked aside, I saw the unmarked police car. Why don’t they just go ahead and put the insignia or decal on them, anyway,? As if anyone other than cabbies and police drive Crown Victorias.

I could tell which one of the twins they had nabbed because of the fear in his eyes, it was “Brock.” The other one’s name was “Rock,” that took real imagination on their parents part, there. I acted casual and went into a corner store, this wasn’t my first close shave, nor would it be my last. How can you get ahead in the criminal life, when the cops get radar after you pull a job?

With the sun’s glare in my favor, neither Brock nor the cops saw me as they drove off. I couldn’t go back upstairs or near the hotel, and risk that they didn’t have the room under surveillance. I bought a dumb trucker hat that said “save a horse, ride a cowboy” on it and pulled it over my brow.

On the way down the street, I gave the junkie a ten-dollar bill because he had unintentionally saved my ass. The ingrate ran off without saying “thank you." Three blocks away, I hailed a cab with the money I had left and prayed that there wasn’t an accurate sketch of me in every patrol car, yet.

I knew from the start that it was wrong to throw in with these amateurs, but then again, someone vouched for them. This was it, though, I was a solo act as soon as I recovered the stash. They screwed around and screwed up so many things, I was wondering if the twins bribed guys in the joint to chat them up as competent.

Rock was the brains, the backbone, the muscle, and the balls (more like BBs, the Napoleon-complex-affected little shit) of the crew. Brock seemed to me, to be nothing but a “yes-man" and he couldn‘t even get that right. He was one of those guys that believed the glass to be half-empty, and that the other half was always full of poison. “Cheers,” Brock.

I gave the cabbie a fifty-cent tip and if looks could kill, he would have strung me like that Atlantic blue marlin that was hanging on that pole...surrounded by those guys taking pictures, only I’d be deader. Hell, I was twice as angry as he was, all of my spending money and everything I had, was back at the hotel. I climbed over the gate that they use to keep people out of the yacht berths and in a place like this, I knew someone had already called the cops. Finesse and stealth are for those who have the luxury of time.

I jumped on the boat that Brock was supposed to be working on and headed straight for the fish hold. It was wide open, with the fish and ice still there. But the jewels were gone. Suddenly I had a feeling the cops didn’t get radar at all…they were tipped and I figured that Rock set his own twin brother up. Brock wouldn’t sell his brother out right away and by the time they figured out which twin they had, Rock would have the kind of head start that have him already past Cuba.

I had to get my head together, but I had to get out of there first or they would nab me while I was doing my impression of Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

As I jogged down the pier, a beautiful woman pointed at my forehead. Did I say “woman?” She was more like a "girl." Twenty, tops.

Like Yogi Berra once said, “it’s like déjà vu all over again.” She reminded me of a younger version of the Columbian “cowgirl” that did me wrong three jobs ago, only I assumed that she was Cuban. Presumptuous of me, I know. But I always believed that every Latin in Miami was Cuban, until they told me otherwise. That way I wouldn’t say anything that could be misconstrued as even the faintest praise of Fidel Castro.

Getting back to the Columbian cowgirl, she double-crossed me out of a fortune and she got away. When I first saw the cops carting Brock off, I was doubting my own motivations on staying honest. As a matter of fact, since I did most of the work on the heist, I considered double-crossing Rock, but the little bastard beat me to it.

“I like your hat,” she said with a smile of perfect, blinding teeth, that said to me that her daddy was a dentist. That would explain why she could lounge on daddy’s yacht…or maybe the word “sugar” should go in front of “daddy.”

“I saw a guy who had the same hat, walking through here just five minutes ago.”

“Yeah, are you sure, sweetness?” I poured on the charm, though I had no intention of following through. If they look like they are “twenty,” they’re fifteen years old, and it’s four years in the pen, for the guy dumb enough to believe their fake IDs.

“Uh-huh, he was on the same boat as the one you were just on. He asked me where there was a Fed-Ex store around here…hey, where are you going?”

I had no time nor inclination to chit-chat. I knew that Rock was going to mail the jewels to whichever country he was going to sail to, so he could avoid any chances that they might be seized by a foreign coast guard, shore patrol, or customs.

At a liquor store, I shop-lifted the biggest sunglasses that I could find and ran out the door before the Haitian shop-keeper could make short work of me with a machete. As I jogged up to the Fed-Ex franchise, Rock was coming out. He didn’t see me and judging by his smile, he never would, because he was too busy counting the money in his head.

I gave him a minute, then I went in. The man behind the counter glared at me. Hell, I would’ve thought I was up to something too, if I had me as a customer. I asked him if a guy came in here with the same hat as I had on. He nodded and said nothing. I looked behind him and another man was sealing up a parcel.

I leaned over the counter and the man behind it folded his arms as if that was going to intimidate me at this point. I assumed that this was Rock’s package from the postage and the foreign zip code. I mean, “postal code” since it was destined for overseas. I leapt over the counter, grabbed the package and leapt back before either of them could react. By the time they were shouting useless threats at me, I was already by the door.

I had no intention of opening the package right there, I just had to have faith that I had snatched the correct one. I had no money, no tools to steal a car with, no change of clothes, and by then, there would be an all-points-bulletin in every police jurisdiction in Florida, with my picture on it. But I had almost a million dollars worth, retail, of jewels under my right arm…or I had a box with just cookies and a few dollars, that someone was sending back home to some poor Latin backwater.

Mira, either way, I liked those odds because maybe I double-crossed someone else, for a change.



Note: JJ wanted the sentence “…but the little creep beat me to it.” This is a continuation of the Heist Man's adventures from "$8,400 A Carat."

"$8,400 Per Carat"

She put on a tie-dyed western skirt and did the worst spin I've ever seen.

"What was that you just did? And you're not going to wear that thing, are you?"

"That was a pirouette and my impression of a whirling dervish," she said with still the slightest hint of a Colombian accent. If I didn't know she was Colombian, I would swear from her bronze skin and features, that she was from Brazil...

"Okay," I grinned. Then I mumbled, "more like a hurling side dish."

...because she reminded me of a risque poster I had when I was younger, of a Brazilian honey on a Rio beach with a thong on. Of course that was when American women were wearing granny panties and if you were extra lucky, you might see a bikini cut or something lacy...

"I'm a side dish that makes you sick now, eh? You were telling me...no, almost screaming to me how good it was last night."

...her resemblance to the model on that poster kept her mentally a half a step ahead of me, but this was her gig, after all. She spun around again and I caught before we almost collided. I realized from the gleam awkwardness that the awkwardness in her spins was quite intentional.

"Why after so many months of telling me how pretty I am, would you find my unpretty now?"

"Yeah, well...you should lose the skirt. That tie-dye looks awful."

The skirt belonged to my American aunt, she said it was to 'let the squares know that her freak flag was unfurled and flying.' I don't quite know what that means, other than she wanted to feel free-spirited.

"It's the only western skirt I could find on such short notice. It's not important if you like it, what's important is that he'll like it," she murmured as she looked me at me with those beautiful green-flecked brown eyes. She curled my hair with fingers, sending a shiver right down to my toes.

He was the most important piece to the puzzle, a courier from Amsterdam carrying several dozen diamonds just under two carats apiece. At almost $8,400 per carat for each diamond, she could say and do whatever she wanted as long as she pointed him out to me. A courier who belonged to horse show jumping clubs and had a cowgirl fetish.

She used to be in a Colombian crew that hijacked diamonds, but now they're behind bars or scattered about in cemeteries in New York, California, and Brazil. Too much money involved for everyone not to double-cross each other and she came out broke, but relatively unscathed. She still had the intelligence resources as to where and when a gem courier would appear here and there.

Not to mention, she could travel within the horsey set without them realizing that she was literally the fox in the hen house.

A wig, false eyelashes that actually took away from her beauty, a western granny blouse, and couple that with that tie-dye thing, you had a Colombian hippy that escaped "The Big Valley." Or Barbara Mandrell gone altogether wrong, but she went right for "Mr. Courier," long enough for me to hit him with over 20,000 volts from my stun gun.

God, I hate the smell of singed flesh that wafts into my nostrils after. I swear it stays in my nose for at least three days, except it's stronger this time. And, I'm not on my way to my favorite island, that coincidentally doesn't share an extradition treaty with the United States. I've got the same urine-soaked pants as Mr. Courier, who still hasn't come too.

We're almost lying in identical positions on the ground, he's four feet away and he's the luckier of us two, because he has insurance against being being double-crossed.


Note: This is one of my favorite pieces. JJ wanted these words and phrases...

1) A Girl
2)A Whirl
3)A Curl
4)Something that unfurls
5)A Hurl

This is the first of the Heist Man's adventures. If this were a screenplay, he would simply be called "Narrator" and though I know his name, it is up to you to find out.

"Same Circus, Different Town"

I cannot and will not eat with him at a restaurant, so I go over to his house every Saturday for lunch.

“How are you?” he asks me through the newspaper. Even if he wasn’t reading it, he wouldn’t pay any attention to me. I’m a huge disappointment to him, I didn’t go into the family business nor did I show a predilection for settling matters with violence the way he and the three generations of our family did before me.

“Same shit, different day…Papa.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Same circus, different town.”

“Nnn-yeah.”

“Papa? How much goat, would a Croat boat, if a Croat could float some goats?”

“Yeah, you’re right champ. I would’ve done the same thing.”

I’d feign something about his mistress giving me a yet-to-be-discovered STD, but then he would actually have to pay attention to me and neither one of us want that. I’ll talk and he won’t listen, then he’ll babble on about his dealings and I won’t listen because I never, ever, want to know where the bodies are buried.

If the Feds ever did subpoena me I would just tell them the truth: I’ve always ignored him in the same way that a man that’s been married for fifty years, tunes his wife out.

“What are we having?”

“Pork in red gravy on top of penne. I‘ve just got to boil the water.”

I hate it when he snaps the paper like that. It’s not “gravy,” but “sauce.” It’s “sugo” in Italian but that word can translate as either “sauce” or as “gravy.” When I was ten and had dinner at the Irish kid’s next door, he said I was retarded because I called it “gravy.” “Gravy is brown, white or tan, you moron!”

I don’t know why he puts me through this every week, yet here we are. We are cat and dog, lion and hyena, Israel and Palestine, Giuliani and Gotti.

Vincent “The Chin” Gigante faked his loss of sanity, Papa never had any sanity to lose. I’ve always known this and I suspect that his associates have finally have figured this out, too. So that’s why I won’t eat with him in a restaurant, or sit with him in a barbershop or in traffic.

If he ever did listen to me, he would have found out that I’ve made twice the money that he ever has in one-tenth of the time, without having to hurt, maim or kill anyone. As the pen is mightier than the sword, a computer and a ledger will always get you more money than any gun ever will.

Maybe that’s something for him to consider, when all the red gravy has poured out of him on his way to being another obituary.



Note: Yes it's true, sugo can translate into either "sauce" or "gravy." Vice-versa? Sauce can be "sugo" or "salsa" in Italian.