Tag: Fiction

Poodie James

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excerpt

This was bound to be about the Poodie James story. Sonny’s face
was reddening. That meant they had a problem, but Sonny ran the
newsroom. She would not jump in. She reached for the pile of budget
sheets on her desk and got back to work, envying the editor and
reporter wrestling with a story. My god, would the price of newsprint
ever stabilize? She sank into the pages of figures, enjoying the whir
and the rhythm as she cranked the handle of the adding machine.
“Got a minute?” Winifred looked up at Sonny standing in her
doorway, with Pease a step behind him. “Ned has something you
ought to know about.” She pushed the budget aside.
“Well, Ned,” she said after she had heard Pease’s story, “nice
work, I must say. Poor George Pearson, carrying that around all
these years. But we can’t go with it. Sonny is right, it’s hearsay. The
hobo, Clarkson, thinks he saw Torgerson that night. You say
Clarkson told you Torgerson denied it. This certainly could
explain the mayor’s hatred of Poodie James, but we need the other
man to confirm Pearson’s story. Even then, Torgerson may not
confess. Have you gone back to Pearson to try to get the name?”
“Yes. He’s terrified,” Pease said. He won’t tell me any more. I
think he has visions of prison. He probably doesn’t know the statute
of limitations on assault.“
“More likely he has visions of his reputation and his business
going to hell,” Sonny said. “And he has a point.”
“I don’t know any other way to find out who was with
Torgerson and Pearson that night,” Pease said.
Winifred straightened up and fixed her gaze on the middle distance.
“I think I might,” she said after a few seconds. She pulled a
scrap of paper from a desk drawer, reached for the telephone,
propped the handset on her shoulder, started dialing and shooed
the men out of her office. They watched from Sonny’s desk. After
she hung up, she waved them back in.
“Ned,” she said, “you’re about to meet your first madam.” She
gave him a look of appraisal. “I hope she’s your first.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562868

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

Swamped

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excerpt

“Have you heard anything?” Eteo asked him
“No, nothing so far,” Richard admitted.
“When did you call last?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I guess they must still be working on it.”
“I wouldn’t assume that. I don’t like this at all. Why don’t you
take a quick flight down there and check things out for yourself?”
“Go to Texas?” Richard’s voice sounded alarmed.
“Why not? It’s your money they’re spending.”
There was an uncomfortable silence at the other end of the line
before Richard said, hesitantly, “I’m actually not that fond of airplanes
and flying.”
“Okay, send one of your directors.”
“There must be another way,” Richard replied. “Let me call the
finder, the man who brought me this deal. I’ll talk to him.”
“All right, but let me know what you find out. Who is it anyway?
Do I know him?”
“It’s Walter Cooper.”
“I know Walter. I could talk to him. Yes, it might be better that
way. Leave it to me. I’ll call him and get back to you,” Eteo said and
put the phone down. He noticed he was breathing fast. It upset him.
Then he saw the big trades of Platinum stock, big chunks all
bought by Nomura. He smiled and relaxed. The market looked clean
even beyond the three-dollar mark. He had hit a good one, he knew,
and if Mario’s Nostra is agreed on by this group, he had better keep
as much stock as he could for his accounts and give lots of it to his
key people, the ones who did most of his business. Eteo had a large
number of accounts, but only about fifteen percent of them traded
often. Those were the clients he needed to reward when a good issue
came along. Mario’s Nostra Ventures was beginning to look like it
could be one of them.
Eteo started making a list of where the big chunks of Nostra
shares should go, starting with Yannis, Angelo, Spiro and his brother
Michael, Herbert, and then Eteo’s personal accounts, Ariana’s,
Logan’s, and Mitch’s. George and Peter, whom Eteo had used as directors
of his shell companies a couple of times, should also be there…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562976

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

In the Quiet After Slaughter

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excerpt

A widower, Dwayne Levine was the recipient of a disabled
worker’s pension. Those who had observed him flinging heavy
engine parts around his yard or stumbling home from the Kingsway
Pub most nights viewed with suspicion his claim of an irreparable
lower disc. Few car club members knew—as my pal O’Donnell did,
living across the alley from Ed’s garage—that Mr. Levine routinely
took the Dodge out after midnight. He also disappeared with it on
those occasions when a member was ill and the car at rest. He was
something of a philanthropist with the housewives, Mr. Levine was,
often loitering in the Shop Eazy parking lot offering free deliveries.
– Boys everywhere love two things, Dwayne Levine philosophized:
girls and cars. His sobs had been reduced to a snivel with a
second complimentary wedge of pie.
– If we had what these young fellas have today, he said, the war
never would have happened!
Back on patrol, Mahoney aired another possibility.
– I say the club’s a front for some kind of gangland activity.
Maybe one of us should go undercover. Whaddya think?
– Spit it all out, Mahoney! barked the senior policeman. The Huns
are scaling the walls!
– One of us — me, I guess — could pose as a potential buyer. I
could ask to see the vehicle up close. Maybe get inside the garage
without a search warrant.
The sergeant feared for the future knowing the likes of Mahoney
represented the next generation of law enforcement, although he
agreed the need for a search warrant was the most damaging invention
since the right to silence.
– People in this part of town, McManus reminded his young partner,
distrust strangers with crewcuts and the physique of a footballer.
Besides, he added, perhaps you hadn’t noticed? The Dodge
isn’t for sale!
McManus allowed himself a moment to despair.
– An Indian shaman said the Creator gave us two eyes, two ears
and one mouth, Mahoney. He reminds you of this so that you might
observe and listen twice as much as you talk.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562874

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897971

Water in the Wilderness

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excerpt

Tyne held her breath, partly from anxiety, partly to avoid breathing in the stale, musty odour coupled with an even stronger smell of cigarette smoke than she had detected in the lobby.
“Here it is,” Arthur said suddenly with a slight tug on her arm, “room 312.” He rapped lightly on the door and waited. When there was no response, he raised his hand and rapped louder and longer.
They heard the creak of bed springs followed by a low groan. Arthur rapped again. A muffled voice from inside the room rasped, “Whatdaya want? Go away.”
“Corky Conrad,” Arthur boomed, “is that you?”
The answer was drowned out by several doors along the corridor opening simultaneously. Tyne swung around to see three grizzled heads peering out. A woman from the room across the hall pulled a threadbare dressing gown around her and whined, “Why don’t you shut up? It’s enough to wake the dead. Whatchadoin’ here, anyway? It’s the middle of the night, and you won’t get any response from old Corky for hours yet.”
Arthur ignored her and banged on the door again. “Come on, Corky, open up. There’s someone here to see you.”
From inside the room they heard a shuffling sound accompanied by angry muttering. “Can’t ya even wait till a man gets his pants on? All right, I’m comin’, I’m coming.”
Tyne felt weak in the knees. She longed to lean against the wall for support, but one glance at the greasy, peeling paint changed her mind. She wanted to yell at Corky to hurry up; she could stand the suspense no longer.
Finally, the door opened a crack, and Tyne saw an unshaven face with bloodshot eyes below rumpled graying hair. Corky Conrad had deteriorated even since she saw him in December. Holding tight to the door with one hand and the waist of his pants with the other, he glared at Arthur, then squinted hard at Tyne.
“Wha … Tyne? What’re ya doing here?”
Tyne started to answer but Arthur took her arm and propelled her through the door. “We’d like to come in if you don’t mind.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562884

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676319X

Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

“Just close your eyes and think of something else,” he told her.
Paul’s a good buddy, she thought, and he stuck with me through all of the Michael years. She realized she was already thinking of Michael in the past tense and wondered if that was a sign of healing. The last time she had been on a plane she and Michael had flown to California for their first wedding anniversary. That had been just one year ago.
As instructed, she shut out the sight of the storm clouds and retreated into her thoughts. She wondered for about the fifth time why Paul had not been selected to assist Chopyk in leading this Soviet Union trip. It meant prestige and academic advancement. Paul was at least as well educated as she was with all the same qualifications: experience as a teaching assistant and going for his Ph.D. Besides, he was a man and the department favoured men in positions of authority. The graduate women often got no farther up the tenure track than lecturer. Jennifer was a loose cannon; she knew that was her reputation around the department. She was not one to toe the party line—or to sleep with the chairman to improve her grades.
Could it be, as her women’s lib friend had told her, it was because she would accept less money for the job? Just the cost of the trip and a small daily stipend—that was all she was receiving. Paul would have held out for a real salary, she thought uncomfortably. But she had to take this trip. It was ridiculous to think she could continue as a University of Vancouver graduate student in Russian Literature without actual exposure to the Russia of today—the Soviet Union. The department had been trying to organize this language immersion tour, a first for any Canadian university, for years. It was time to damn the expense and go.
This plan had seemed pretty clear until a warm day in May when the departmental chairman, Dr. Hoefert, summoned her to a meeting at Professor Chopyk’s office, and he had hinted to her on the phone that he might have some good news regarding the language tour. It turned out that she had been summoned not so much to Chopyk’s office as to his adjacent waiting room. She spent three quarters of an hour glued to a sticky orange vinyl chair, feeling her hair frizzing wildly in the humidity of the overheated building, one foot bobbing in time to the tapping of the secretary’s typewriter.
Occasionally, Chopyk and Hoefert had glanced through the glass panel as if to determine that she was still there. At first she mentally railed at professors who expected papers to be turned in on time but couldn’t be bothered being punctual for appointments…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

The old woman knew that Caitlin and Michael had started sleeping together again sometime after the night that Caitlin had not come home, and Padraig had been beaten up in the church. Even if Caitlin had not told Mother Ross the full story of that night, the old woman would have known without any doubt everything that had happened.
Poor Caitlin. There’ll be fingers counting soon and they won’t make it to nine. Respectability holds us all to ransom. And we have to pay something in the end. The dearer we regard respectability, the higher we have to pay. I got off lightly, I suppose. But I can recognise respectability for the blackguard it is. And yet I too paid a price in the end.
Mother Ross sat down on the iron bed. One of the brass knobs shook, fell off with a thud on the floor and rolled under the bed.
“You can stay there,” she said.
She rubbed the finger of her left hand where her ring used to be. It had been her mother’s wedding ring, then her own, and yesterday she had taken it off and given it to Michael. Today Michael would use it to bond the two lives, the two bodies, the two souls, of Caitlin and himself.
And Caitlin. Sick and straining with the baby already unfurling inside her like a sticky little bud in spring. Wearing her white gown like the thorn tree on the hillside. The white gown she had stitched herself in the evenings by the fireside.
Mother Ross heard Caitlin climb slowly up the stairs and go into her room to prepare herself for the wedding. The motor-car would call in a couple of hours: Liam Devlin’s newest Ford. Michael had been proud to hire it for the afternoon to drive his bride to church. Liam was proud to drive it. Half the village would line the road, not just to admire Caitlin, but to marvel at the new miracle of the machine age: Liam Devlin’s Model T Ford. Soon every man in the village would want one, and Liam’s ambition was to open a garage on the Lisnaglass road to sell new motor cars, the petrol that made them go, and all the spare parts that likely would be needed after miles of bumpy travel on the rough and muddy roads of the country hereabouts.
Caitlin left the door of her room open, and Mother Ross could hear her sobbing. So rarely did Caitlin weep that it moved Mother Ross all the more when she did. Like hearing a man cry. Mother Ross sighed a sigh that pulled her heart up with it into her throat. She swallowed it painfully and wanted to cry herself from the agony she felt.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Fury of the Wind

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excerpt

…and Sarah did not complain. The old house had no insulation,
and the wind found its way in through walls that, in other seasons,
appeared sturdy enough. It was not unusual for them to awaken in
the morning with the flannelette sheet and blankets, where their
breath had dampened the material, frozen against their chins. Each
night Sarah moved the house plants – geraniums and begonias
that Ben said his mother had lovingly tended – to the centre of the
kitchen table where she covered them with a light cloth. She did the
same with the pitchers of milk and cream, carrying them from the
pantry to the kitchen where the cookstove would provide enough
warmth until the early morning hours to keep them from freezing.
The weeks passed slowly. No one came to the house, and Sarah
was unable to ride Flicka or drive the old pickup truck to the Mc-
Neill farm. She spent the days sewing new curtains and knitting
socks and mitts from the wool she had bought on her last trip to
Nimkus in late October. She wrote endless letters to Margaret and
Elizabeth in Ontario, and waited impatiently for the mail that Ben
brought home from his infrequent trips to town with the team and
sleigh.
For the most part they lived by their own resources on the provisions
they had in the house. But Sarah looked forward to the vegetable
garden she planned to plant in the spring. She had searched
out Mrs. Fielding’s canning jars so that she could preserve everything
she could get her hands on through the summer months.
These plans and activities helped to pass the long days and the
even longer evenings. But she missed the companionship of others,
especially Penny. What would she give to be able to sit down to a
cup of tea in Penny’s cheerful kitchen? And how she longed to see
little David who, when she had last seen him, was beginning to take
a few faltering steps around the furniture. By now he would be running
all over the house.
She thought of David when she read Margaret’s latest letter. It
was four pages of the delights of motherhood, along with every
detail of her new daughter’s first two months of life. As she read,
Sarah felt a familiar ache deep inside her where she had been sure
that, by now, new life would be growing. Why wasn’t it? Could there
be something wrong with her? Ben never spoke of a family and,
although she had once casually mentioned that he needed a son to…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073530

In the Quiet After Slaughter

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– I guess we better get going, I said. We don’t wanna miss our rendezvous.
Burt didn’t budge. Finally he said, Ain’t gonna be no rendezvous.
He loosened the flaps of his pack and spilled its contents.
River rock. I dumped mine — the same.
– What’s going on, Burt?
– Ain’t no satellite receiver, little brother. Those two buggered off
long ago. And look, he said, fingering the napkin map and peering
over the edge into the ravine. They were hoping we’d have ourselves
a little accident.
– But this cable! And the TV store!
Burt chuckled. The van was leased, he said. The TV store was
rented by the month.
I still wasn’t convinced.
– I was checking on my stash one night when I overheard the two
of them talking. It was all Swanson’s idea. He’s done this before.
Bud’s his stooge.
– And?
– I told the cops everything. Those two are probably in cuffs by
now.
Burt removed a nylon bag from his pack.
– Open it, he said.
It was stuffed with paper money, and plenty of it.
– Explain, Burt . . .
– While Bud was trying to find mine, I was looking for his. A couple
of times we almost bumped into each other. With a little help
from a friend, I found his first. All the share money, his cut of the TV
sales.
My brother separated the money into three piles and pointed to
the tallest. The bills were stacked like a column of Chinese characters.
– I figure we’d turn this in, he said. It belongs to Aunt Peggy and
the others. But this one—he stuffed the second pile into the pack—
is ours. After all, folks have their TVs.
– And the third?
– That’s for cousin Mark. A reward. He’s the one found a couple
of Bud’s chewed-up toothpicks down by the river and suggested we
start digging.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562874

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897971

In turbulent Times

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Six people crowded the car as it sleeked through the night, climbing into the mountains on winding, unlit roads. Nora sat in the back between Susan and Ian. Ian smelt her perfume, and it tantalised him. He pressed closer to her in the shadows. His left arm rested along the top of the seat. Nora, leaning her head back with a contented sigh, touched Ian’s arm and sat up straight again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘That’s all right. Lie back if you want to.’
‘No, I’m fine,’ she said disingenuously.
Clifford slowed the car almost to a stop, then swung it to the left down a steep, stony, track not much wider than the car, its headlights illuminating the constricting dry-stone walls. He eased the car round a corner into a grassy yard in front of a small, two-storeyed, white-washed, slate-roofed cottage.
‘Home from home,’ he said. ‘Country style.’
Clifford cut the car’s bright beams, plunging the passengers into pitch darkness. Then the interior lights came on as the Bentley doors opened. Ian took Nora’s hand and helped her out.
‘Thank you, kind sir.’ She bobbed him a little curtsey. Even in the gloom Ian caught her captivating smile.
The cottage was dark. Everyone stood in a huddle inside the door till Clifford located and lit an oil lamp. Then they moved into the room and looked around at the white-washed walls; the old, dark-toned, wooden table; the dresser; the chairs; the big, deep, well-used armchair beside the hearth. In the spacious fireplace a fire was already set. All it took was a dash of paraffin oil and a lighted match and the flames and sparks were leaping in a crackling frenzy into the large, blackened chimney. On the mantelpiece an old pendulum clock stood at rest between two creamy china dogs. On the dresser shelves an array of blue, willow-patterned plates and cups and large, stout mugs with blue rings gleamed in the light of the fire and the lamp. Fiona lit a second lamp.
‘This is just heavenly,’ Susan exclaimed in a high, excited voice. ‘John, wouldn’t you just love to live in a place like this?’

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562904

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763270

Straits and Turns

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FROZEN SALMON

…worst of all had occurred when a passenger couldn’t hold his or her
bowel and the cab would turn into a crapping space, which would
take two good hours of disinfecting and cleaning before one would
be allowed to take another fare. It happened to Costa once, when he not
only lost most of his shift, but he also had to do the cleaning, to boot.
The driver’s thoughts kept him busy as he travelled over the Granville
Street Bridge, and upon reaching Broadway, he turned to the right,
and after two miles of distance, he turned left on Blenheim Street, which
would take them to the reservation. He noticed that his customers were
half-asleep; yet the stench of their breathing forced him to open his
window to get some fresh air. Night had fallen when they arrived at the
Indian reservation community, although towards the west, there were
some bright gleams of the sunset that no one paid attention to. Such
romantic images weren’t important since his customers struggled as
they searched their pockets for the money to pay the fare.
“Where is your money?” the white man asked the Indian, who
pretended he didn’t follow his buddy’s question, and he started getting
out of the car.
“Where are you going?” the driver asked angrily, “Who’s paying
the fare? Eleven sixty…” he indicated to them, pointing at the meter.
They stared at each other. No word was spoken. No fart or any
other foul smell was detected. Then, the Indian showed his middle
finger, as if to say, you know what a man means when he raises his
middle finger to someone and now Costa was angry since the fare
turned into something dramatic. Nonetheless, he had not the slightest
inclination to forego his fare for these two assholes. Costa grabbed
the white man by the sleeve and yelled,
“Eleven dollars and sixty cents, or I call the cops.”
They both started searching their pockets again. No money was
found.
“I don’t have a dime…” the Indian said.
“I don’t…” the white guy said, “you knew I had nothing left, I
bought the last round, don’t you remember?” he said in a questioning
way, then he suggested, “Ask your wife for a twenty-dollar bill.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/4250839#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763866