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  Chapter 2

  A Touch of Cold

  By Robert Thomas

  The sun streaks through the dirty pane as the new day finally starts. The light exposes the blue and white cigarette smoke hanging in the stale air. I rub my eyes as the light intrudes. The four walls are beginning to close in on me. I’ve been here too long.

  I reach for another ‘Lucky’, the pack lying in the glass tray on my desk within easy reach. I twirl it in my hand wondering if I really want another. What the hell, I thought. I swipe the match across the well-worn spot on my desk as the head flares to life and lights the end. The smoke slides into my mouth easily. I pull it down into my lungs and let it slip out through my nose. It feels good, my nose open again as my head cold had finally passed.

  I lean back, my old wooden chair creaking beneath me. The wooden slats dig into my button-down in the same place they always have. Twenty years I’ve spent sitting in this rickety old thing. I’m not sure why it never has crashed beneath my fat butt. As I lay my arms down, the leather armrests hit in just the right spot. That’s why I love this chair so much. I spin and look through the streaky grime on the glass and out into the new day. All I can see is the last two floors of the brick building across the street. That, and another gray sky in this crappy town. It doesn’t feel like the first day of spring in Chicago. Too cold.

  I blow another cloud into the room, the smoke lingering with nowhere to go. At least in the summer I can switch on an oscillating fan. I look at the old black one sitting off in the corner, the dust and cobwebs thick on its porcelain coating. I could get up and turn it on, but that would require effort, something I clearly don’t seem to have today.

  Perhaps a drink would make me feel better and soothe the scratch still lingering in my throat. A shot of bourbon at 7:42 in the morning. Nothing like the life of a single man; an old single man. Old at the age of forty-two it seems. I turn back around in my seat and lean forward, pulling the lower drawer straight out. I hear the bottle roll in the bottom and note a hollow tap of glass against the wood. I suppose most would keep files in this drawer but the only files I need have Beam written on the label. I sigh as I feel the weight of the bottle in my hand and as it clears the drawer my eye confirms what I suspect; nearly, but not quite empty. Just enough for a few good shots or a highball. That should do the trick. A highball wouldn’t burn so much.

  I shuffle through my drawers for a mixer; nothin’. I’m about to give up until I see a half-empty bottle of club soda sitting on the hulking bureau across my office. I roll another cloud into the air knowing the mix is what I really want. Without another thought I push my bulky frame off my chair and hear it roll into the wall. There’s been a lot of damage to that plaster over the years. I grab the soda after just a few quick steps. The bottle’s cool, just like the temperature in my office. As I straighten I can see down the dingy hallway all the way to the front doors.

  As I look around the corner I see Doris’ seat empty. Another thirty before she comes in, I imagine. She’s a sweetheart, that one. Too bad her husband is a mook. I’d sooner jump in front of a street car than loan him a dollar. Treats her like dirt. If times were different I’d show her the high life, and put his feet in a nice pair of cement shoes. I can smell her perfume from here. What I wouldn’t give to take that dame out for a spin.

  Looking around my sparse office I chuckle at the notion. I barely have two nickels to rub together and pay her a paltry sum to boot. They’d have a right nice place if that lug could hold a job. Imagine, in the middle of a world war the man can’t hold a job in the civilian world. Most guys are fightin’ and dyin’ half a world away and he’s living the easy life.

  The front door opens and the cold wind enters along with Doris, the flurries lingering a moment before she can get the door shut. She turns, stomping her feet on the rug to get winter’s crust off her shoes, her coat flapping as she begins to walk down the hall to shake off the snow, she smiles that big smile that melts my heart as her eyes lift to meet mine.

  “Morning. Didn’t expect to see you here this early.” I look away and down at the floor. Sometimes I think she can see my heart and into my soul. I must keep that door shut. “Coffee?”

  “You’re not making coffee with that soda bottle in your hand,” she says, shooting a knowing look my way.

  “Hey, a guy can change.” The smirk that washes across her face lifts my heart and I lay the club soda on the desk behind me. The new electric coffee pot is soon bubbling away and the smell fills our small office.

  “Best thing I’ve seen invented in years,” I say as I turn the corner back into her small space. I nearly drop my cup as I see her bent over at the waist showing those long gams. The hot java slips into my mouth and I feel the warmth in my chest. “No more tin pots on a stove.” I turn around quickly, not wanting to stare. “I’ll be in my office.”

  The morning drags on with nothing new. Even the news in the paper is the same old thing. Stories about the war in Europe where they don’t really tell you anything take up the first five pages. The next two about the Pacific. Again, heavily censored. Even the big city of Chicago is quiet.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out to lunch, doll.” I spin and give a weak smile. “Pick you up anything?”

  “No. I’ll only be here another couple of hours.”

  “Not stayin’ the whole day?”

  “No. I have a doctor’s visit, remember?”

  She looks down at her desk and I can see her shy side, and it is beautiful. I’m fairly certain the rabbit is going to die for this visit. Pity.

  My lunch takes longer than I expect as O’Malley’s is open early. My favorite bar stool near the heater leans just to the right, which is good because when I drink, I lean to the left. It’s a perfect balance. As I swing the front door open those long legs are coming down the hall at me. I smile and she smiles back.

  “I’ll be in at the usual time tomorrow.” She rests her hand on my arm to steady me, leans in and gives me a gentle peck on the cheek. “Try and stay out of trouble till then, please?” Her smile warms me more than the bourbon I have waiting back in my desk drawer. “Need help back to your desk?”

  I nod politely and smile as her hand brushes my shoulder. She’s out the door quickly, her red hair disappearing behind the frosted glass. The hallway light is barely enough to reflect off the paint. The shallow globes above haven’t been cleaned in years. I stagger toward my door at the end of the hall and stop, looking at the glass framed into the dark oak door. I can barely read the words etched into its surface, but I don’t need to. I know what it says. Twenty years of my name scratched into that door and what do I have to show for it? Nothing. Bobby Hale, Private Investigator, schlep!

  I awake as a bright moon beams through my grimy window adding its light to my dim office. I look down and see my Luckies staring back at me. The craving hits and hits hard. Alcohol goes hand in hand with smokes. It’s a funny thing. One feeds off the other. It’s a vicious circle. I rub my eyes with my fists then reach down and tap a slim out and it quickly finds my lips. The moon’s light now brightens the pale smoke as its brother did twelve hours ago. My throat is still raw from the whiskey at O’Malley’s. I guess a hair of the dog is what’s needed.

  I hear a low thud, the sort of sound one notices when all else is quiet. Its vibration carries down the hall and into my office. I know that noise; the bottom of the front door sticking against the floor as it opens. That’s not something I normally hear this late at night.

  The thought of a smooth shot of bourbon quickly slips from my mind. I lean back in my chair scanning for the holster taped beneath the right side of the desk. It’s empty, my .38 nowhere to be found. I blink and am immediately as sober as I’ve been all day. I squirm as an uneasiness settles over me. This doesn’t feel right. I rifle through the drawers, pulling them in and out as fast as I can. It’s gotta’ be here somewhere. Nothin’. The blue haze of smoke parts as my door c
reaks open slowly and I hear the telltale sound of a gun’s hammer locking in place.

  “Good evening, Mr. Hale.” I look up at the sound of the voice, its owner silhouetted against the dull light of the hallway. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Do I know you?” I lean back in my chair hearing the spring squeak. It does little to mask my heart pounding in my chest. I can feel the beads of sweat building on my forehead.

  “You should, Mr. Hale. You should.” The tall figure slips in closing the door halfway behind him.

  “Can’t say that I do.” I lean back in the chair trying to seem relaxed. “I do recognize your friend there. Colt, I believe is his name.”

  “Very funny Mr. Hale. You always had a keen sense of humor.”

  “Care to meet mine?” I lean forward grabbing the near-empty bottle still on the desk from the morning. “Mr. Beam.” I hoist the bottle and shrug, setting it back down. I sure would hate to lose the last drink to this mook. “Care for a swig?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Suit yourself. I prefer to drink alone anyway.” I reach for the top drawer and immediately see the Colt raised a little higher in my direction. I nod, pulling the drawer out and setting it on the desk. “Just my favorite glass for two fingers.” I lift the glass out, placing it next to the bottle and slide the drawer back into its hole.

  “You don’t remember me? Really?”

  I hear the snide attitude in his remark as I shake my head no and he lowers his enforcer. My jitters remain but begin to subside at the thought of a shot sliding into my gut. I swirl the glass and watch my brown friend coat the sides. I peer over the edge and study his face. Something about him is familiar; something from the past.

  “You cost me a lot of money five years ago Mr. Hale.”

  “How’s that?” I lay the glass down on the desk without it kissing my lips. I’ve got to keep a level head as my options look to be few.

  “Do you remember a two-bit hood named Jacques Bourget?”

  “Name rings a bell. It’s been some time though.” My mind begins to race as I try to think of some way out of this. “Somewhere near the river he met his maker. Yes, from a bridge. A nasty fall.”

  “Yes, nasty indeed.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Jacques Bourget was my brother, Mr. Hale. And you killed him.”

  “I did what?” His words not only caught my attention, they almost sober me up. “I wasn’t anywhere near him.”

  “Perhaps not, but you killed him as sure as I’m gonna’ kill you here tonight.”

  “Just how did I kill your brother, seeing as I wasn’t even there?”

  “Your cop friend, Randy DeLarose knows. He was there. He killed my brother.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with me?”

  “You gave that weasel the goods on Jacques.” His voice gets angrier and he raises his colt again, pressing it toward me. “Jacques found a way into the bank on Canal Street. He worked for weeks burrowing to just beneath the floor.”

  “And as I remember he almost got away with it.”

  “He did get away with it Mr. Hale. He got away with over fifty-thousand dollars. It was perfect. Didn’t you ever wonder why he never made it to court, Mr. Hale? It was DeLarose what tossed him in the drink, right after Jacques gave up where he hid the money.”

  I look down the hall just as the door begins to open, the streetlight flooding into the building. I see a familiar shapely figure shake her coat and begin her sultry walk down the dim hallway. I feel the lump in my throat grow as Mr. Lucky here slides down beside the bureau and backs into the darkened corner. His eyes narrow as he lowers his voice.

  “Get rid of her or yours won’t be the only head with a hole in it tonight.”

  I begin to rise slowly but he waves me back down with the gun. I get the point. I gotta get her out of here. She stops just at the edge of the door and peaks in.

  “Still here, Bobby?”

  “Just cleaning up a few last minute details.” I clear my throat as I lean back in the chair. “What are you doing here? How’d the visit go?

  “I won’t know anything for a few days.” She sounds dejected, her tone not her normal self. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  I hear her rummaging around in the outer office. It is the longest minute of my entire life as my new friend just stands in the corner with his colt trained on my head. My insides still shaking I fire up another Lucky as another light blue cloud finds the moonlight.

  “Don’t stay too late, Bobby,” I hear her say as those long legs slide down the hallway. If I’m lucky I’ll see those gams again tomorrow. If not, well, I hope things don’t go that way.

  “Very good, Mr. Hale. There’s no need for three to die tonight.”

  “Three? Who’s the other unlucky stiff?”

  “Why, your good friend detective Delarose of course.” He steps back into the dim light showing his muscle. “Haven’t you wondered why I chose tonight to visit you?”

  “That had crossed my mind.”

  “You see, our good friend the detective met the fishes tonight and I have my money back. In a fitting tribute I tucked a single dollar into his pocket before he had his swim. I stashed the rest in my car and I’ll be leaving the city in a few minutes.”

  “Then why off me, pally? You’ve got what you always wanted.”

  “Just to end things on a proper note, Mr. Hale. I do like things tidy, you know.”

  The colt rises before me in the dim light of a cold moonlit night. I stare down the barrel, shaking like never before as a peculiar thought crosses my mind. I have always been told you never hear the one that sends you to your maker. A click and a muffled pop echoes as the door explodes filling my lap with shards of frosted glass. My eyes wide with fright, my vision locked on, nothing.

  I blink, wondering if this is what heaven feels like. I feel a heightened chill across my skin when the pale light of the hallway filters into the blue, smoke-filled room as a small puddle grows between my legs. I see my heaven-sent angel through the haze standing before me, her hands wrapped around my .38. Her soft red hair leans into the office through the missing glass in the door staring at the bloody lump on the floor in front of my desk.

  “My, my, Bobby. Such nasty friends you have.” She saunters in and lowers her hands onto the glass-filled desk. “I’ll be leaving now, with the fifty-gees.” She lays the .38 on the desk and turns, “You coming?”

  The End

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  Chapter 3

  Clay

  By Russell Blake

  Curtis spit onto the red dirt as he watched the horizon for tell-tale dust clouds, allowing his eyes to wander to where he’d left his mark with saliva, the moisture already being sucked into the thirsty ground, hungry and demanding as it had always been, for as long as he’d been alive on it. It was a dirt that coated everything, became a part of a man, stained his fingernails and gritted between his teeth until at some point a body didn’t know where the dirt stopped and the person began. Dirt that was unforgiving, as were the denizens of this arid badland.

  His father had raised him to understand that he was of the dirt, and would return to it, and that his time walking on it was temporary, stolen from a cosmos that would allow him just enough to learn the harsh lessons it taught before it reclaimed him, just as it had taken everyone before him, and would take all who came after.

  A scorching wind blew across the plain as he squinted at the point where the sky became the earth, wavy and distorted from the never-ending heat that was his constant companion. They were coming. He knew it as surely as he knew the sound of his own breathing. It wasn’t a matter of if.

  Footsteps shuffled behind him, and a tentative voice, small in the vast expanse, tugged at his sanity.

  “You need to eat.”

  “Been eating all my life. Missing a few bites won’t hurt me much.”

  “I brough
t you some water.”

  “Thanks. I told you to get going, and take the boy with you. What are you still doing here?”

  “I…I don’t want to go.”

  “Plenty of folks don’t want to do what they have to.” Curtis sighed, watched the wet patch drying like a magic trick, right before his eyes. “It wasn’t a suggestion, Meg. You need to leave. Now. Pack up, and head south, to your sister’s place. It’ll be safe there. Go out the back way, by the well.”

  “Curtis–”

  “Time for talking’s done.”

  “You don’t have to do this. Come with us.”

  “Never been much good at turning tail, Meg,” he said, running a calloused hand over the two day growth that darkened his chin. “Go on. While there’s still time.”

  He felt fingers on his shoulders, as light as a butterfly flitting across his sun-bleached shirt, and then he heard her turn, felt her leaving as though something had sucked his soul out of him. But he didn’t look back. He couldn’t allow himself to. There were some things that made a man softer, better even, but those things had no place out here.

  Not today.

  When he’d first seen them, riding in too-tall trucks, arrogant exhausts matching their drunken whooping as they barreled past him, he’d been mending the fences so the dogs wouldn’t get out and cause trouble, or worse yet, get hit by the occasional rancher tearing down the nameless rutted dirt trail that led south, into a desert that offered nothing but suffering. His property stretched as far as he could see in both directions, and the road ran alongside it, tracing its boundary with mechanical precision. It had been there as long as he’d been alive, and as long as his father before him, and his father before that. The road. As permanent as anything in his world, as immutable and unchanging as the plain itself.

  A corroding rust-colored iron gate, padlocked on the exterior, sat sentry over the cow catcher rails he’d helped install twenty-five years ago, as a teenage boy full of strapping energy and furtive dreams. The war had taken both out of him, and when he’d returned, he’d come back a man, hard, too much in this world, come back to his home to bury the father who’d raised him when his mother had passed to her reward.