Hard Case Crime: The Max Read online

  The Critics Love KEN BRUEN and JASON STARR!

  “Two of the crime fiction world’s brightest talents, Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, join forces for one of the year’s most darkly satisfying and electric noir novels... This is one of the top guilty pleasures of the year.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “This tense, witty, cold-blooded noir... reads seamlessly — and mercilessly... Funny [and] vividly fresh.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Adventurous crime-fiction fans who like their literary escapism totally unrestrained will find this brazenly violent and downright vulgar novel... as filthy as it is fun.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “A full-tilt, rocking homage to noir novels of the 1950s... Hard Case’s latest release is smart, trashy fun.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Fasten your seat belts, and enjoy the bumpy ride of double- and triple-crosses, blackmail, and murder. If Quentin Tarantino is looking for another movie project, this novel with its mix of shocking violence and black comedy would be the perfect candidate. Highly recommended as a terrific summer read.”

  —Library Journal, starred review

  “Two of the century’s best thriller writers have joined forces to bring a postmodern twist to the black heart of noir fiction. Grade: A.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “A really black comedy... I pretty much laughed my ass off.”

  —Sarah Weinman

  “Really good... very violent and very funny.”

  —Jenny Davidson

  “Crosses and double-crosses, miscalculations and blunders, and plenty of dead bodies... For those who like the bungling-criminal genre, this is good fun.”

  —Booklist

  “A fearsome and wondrous mix of vile characters [in] a caper novel worthy of Westlake or Leonard... exquisitely conceived and flawlessly written.”

  —Book Reporter

  “The prose reads like a dream. Fast paced and bursting with energy... Hard Case Crime have released some of the best new novels of the past few years. They’ve given us some amazing reprints of classic crime. But this book... has just upped the ante once more.”

  —Crime Scene

  When they brought Angela to the prison in Lesbos her first thought was, Jaysus, this place lives up to its name. The holding cell held eight other women. Most of them were in micro-minis, skimpy tube tops, a couple even in bikinis. Most were talking in Greek, and a couple of blondes were talking in some other language, maybe Swedish.

  Angela went up to one of the blondes, asked, “So is this a prison or a nightclub?”

  Thought she was making a joke, but the blonde said, “Both. There was a raid at Niko’s last night. Heroin or something. But we have nothing to do with it.”

  She sounded a little too defensive. Angela glanced down, noticed the track marks on her skinny arms.

  “So what did they charge you with?”

  “We do not know. They told us nothing.”

  “What about you?” the other blonde asked. “What did you do?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Angela said. “I was just having a drink, minding my own business, and next thing I knew two cops were taking me away.”

  The officers who’d arrested Angela hadn’t notified her of any charges. But, of course, Angela knew why she was being taken away. She didn’t know if they’d found some evidence that could hang her or if she was just a suspect by default. Not that it mattered. She’d heard enough stories over the years about the Greek justice system. It was your classic, old-world, eye-for-an-eye, guilty-until-proven-innocent mentality. She figured she’d never be formally charged with anything. She’d be handed over to Georgios’ relatives and quietly killed.

  “Do any of the guards here speak English?” Angela asked.

  “There was a young guy here last night maybe nineteen years old. He was hitting on all the women. He told one girl, if she give him blowjob she can get out.”

  Angela thought, Bingo...

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  LUCKY AT CARDS by Lawrence Block

  ROBBIE’S WIFE by Russell Hill

  THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN by Gil Brewer

  THE WOUNDED AND THE SLAIN by David Goodis

  BLACKMAILER by George Axelrod

  SONGS OF INNOCENCE by Richard Aleas

  FRIGHT by Cornell Woolrich

  KILL NOW, PAY LATER by Robert Terrall

  SLIDE by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  DEAD STREET by Mickey Spillane

  DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins

  A DIET OF TREACLE by Lawrence Block

  MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust

  ZERO COOL by John Lange

  SHOOTING STAR/SPIDERWEB by Robert Bloch

  THE MURDERER VINE by Shepard Rifkin

  SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY by Donald E. Westlake

  NO HOUSE LIMIT by Steve Fisher

  BABY MOLL by John Farris

  The MAX

  by Ken Bruen

  and Jason Starr

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-047)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: September 2008

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London

  SE1 0UP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  Copyright © 2008 by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  Cover painting copyright © 2008 by Glen Orbik

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-371-7

  E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-395-3

  Cover design by Cooley Design Lab

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  For Jerry Rodriguez, Megan Abbott and Alison Gaylin Madison Rules

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  One

  “I had no worries about someone fucking me. I was no white bread white boy. If someone said something wrong, my challenge would be quick and if the apology was less than swift, I would attack forthwith.”

  EDWARD BUNKER, Education of a Felon: A Memoir

  “Gonna have yer sweet white ass later.”

  The greeting Max Fisher got from his towering black cellmate, Rufus.

  Ma
x thought, Whoa, hold the phones, there’s gotta be some mistake. Was he in the right place? Where was the... I.P. treatment? Where was Martha Fucking Stewart? Where were those bastards from Enron? How come there wasn’t a goddamn tennis court in sight? Yeah, Max knew Attica wasn’t Club Fed, but he didn’t expect this. He thought a big-time player like himself would get the, you know, special treatment but, Jesus, not this kind of special treatment. He thought he’d work on his backhand, get some stock tips, learn how to crochet, maybe start working out, lose some of the extra forty pounds he’d been lugging around. Maybe the guard took him to the wrong part of the prison. Didn’t prisons have neighborhoods just like cities? Max was supposed to be on the Upper East Side, but by accident they’d brought him to the goddamn South Bronx.

  Max clutched the bars, said to the guard, a young black guy, “Hey, come back here, yo.” Yeah, Max spoke hip-hop, one of his many talents. The guard didn’t stop and Max shouted, “Hey, asshole, I think there’s been a little fucking screw-up around here!” Yeah, let the fuck know who was boss, like the time he was dining at Le Cirque and the maitre d’ sat him at a table with a dirty tablecloth. Max let that motherfucker have it all right.

  The guard, walking away, laughed, said, “Naw, I think there’s gonna be a big screw up, Fisher. Inside yo’ ass.”

  His laughter echoed in the corridor until a gate slammed. That’s when it finally hit Max — he was fucked. Up till that point he’d been living the high life, in every sense of the word, blitzed from morning till night. He’d once been a highly successful businessman, then he’d had his nagging wife murdered by a psycho mick and things had gone south faster than you could shout bust. But rising if not from the ashes exactly, he’d re-invented himself as a dope dealer, and not only that, a goddamn Scarface. It didn’t last very long, though. He enlisted Kyle, a young hick from way down south, and to say the kid got, um, screwed is to put it very politely.

  Throughout his more than colorful career, Max had been haunted, okay plagued, by an Irish-Greek woman named Angela, AKA heat on heels. She twice fucked up his life and twice walked clean away. He blamed her for his current situation as he blamed her for all his fucking misfortunes. And yet, fuckit, he still got a hard-on when he thought about her. But, Jeez, a hard-on was one thing he did not wanna see right now, in this cage with Rufus.

  Scared shitless, Max looked up to God, or at least toward the fucking ceiling, and asked, “Why me?” Yeah, he’d been found guilty of dealing and the judge had thrown the book at him, calling him a, what the fuck was the term? Oh, yeah, “a scourge of our society.” But Max didn’t think the judge had really, like, meant it. During the trial, etcetera, Max had been so out of it on dope, he’d thought he was some kind of rock star, waving to the crowds, and he expected to be found innocent. Yeah, they were some seriously good drugs. Finally out of the haze of the drugs, the booze gone from his system, Max realized he was actually going to the freaking slammer. He screamed at his lawyer, “Get me out of this, I don’t care what it costs!”

  His lawyer had actually smiled, the bollix smiled! Yeah, bollix — Max’s speech was littered with Irish-isms from all the mad deranged micks he’d encountered the past couple of years.

  The lawyer had said, “Maxie, you’re broke. You’ve got like zilch, nada.”

  Max got the picture, but...Maxie? The fuck was with that? Dios Mio. See, he still had his flair for languages, even spoke spic after his time dealing dope to a crew of Columbanos.

  His lawyer had said to him, “Keep your head down.”

  He’d be keeping his head down all right, on Rufus, it seemed. He’d heard they ran a train through new fish and this was not a train you wanted to board, as it involved lots of guys and your ass.

  The reality of the situation had sunk in when the verdict came down but, as he so often did, he’d managed to look at the bright side. Hey, what could you say, he was a positive thinker, an optimistic dude. Maybe this was a reflection of his spiritual training. Yeah, he was a Buddhist, knew how to get into himself, and knew how to not let the negativity of the physical world affect him. He’d asked himself, as he often did during times when his life went to shit, What would Gandhi do in a situation like this? He wouldn’t be panicking, that was for damn sure. He’d be getting off on it, acting like, Yeah, a harsh jail sentence, it was a bump in the road, they can beat me up but they can’t keep me down.

  Like that.

  So he’d kept on smoking rock — yeah, he was hooked, so the fuck what? — right up until the day he was due to report to prison, thinking how bad could it be at Attica anyway? Hell, Pacino’d wanted to go there, right? The... A.X. — that was his dealing name — was a big-time criminal and every famous crime guy had to take a few falls. Look at Dillinger, look at Sutton, look at Capone. It was just part of what you signed up for when you wanted to be the Kingpin, the Big Boss.

  As a successful businessman, Max knew that you always had to stay one step ahead of the competition, so to bone up for jail, Max had stocked up on books and DVDs. He’d been given a surveillance bracelet and couldn’t leave his apartment, so what the fuck else was he gonna do? He hadn’t read anything other than the Wall Street Journal since he was in goddamn high school and, let’s face it, he didn’t read the Journal, he just liked to hold it up and stare at it intensely for show, to make people think he was one serious dude who knew his shit. But now he’d started reading for real. The first book: Animal Factory. Edward Bunker, now there was one tough mo’ fo’. Then he checked out Genet’s prison journals till he shouted, “Hold the goddamn phones, this guy is, like, a pillow biter?” The fuck with that. But Stone City by Mitchell Smith, yeah, he liked the hero in that, felt he might take that road himself. Same deal with Green River Rising, Tim Willocks; an innocent guy, caught in a prison riot and, against all the odds, coming out on top. Max could see himself, with true cojones, and of course, total modesty, saving captured hostages, offing the really serious psychos and leading the saved out of the burning prison with CNN capturing it all on live TV.

  There was also G.M. Ford’s novel where Frank Corso had to go into the joint and go up against the meanest muthahs this side of the Mississippi. And, of course, the one by that Keith Ablow dude. Yeah, all the Grey Goose he’d been drinking had put Max at the center of all these novels and somewhere in there he’d realized, prison was part of his karma, just one more step in the whole, ok, let’s not be shy, messianic road of Max Fisher.

  He’d watched Ed Norton in The 25th Hour and man, he’d wept buckets. They were like spiritual brothers. But fuck, he wasn’t letting anyone beat the shit out of his face, no way Jose. The... A.X. knew his face was his real ace. The Birdman Of Alcatraz? Didn’t get it. Never once occurred to him he might be, um, sharing. Max had been El Hombre, had like over thirty people working for him — okay, only three, including his chef and live-in ho, but who’s counting? — and he’d tell his employees not brashly, “Let’s get one thing straight. The boss distributes, but share, uh–uh, that don’t happen.” Feeling like Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross.

  When he’d finished all this reading, he’d been flushed with elation. Whoever played Max in the movie, he’d be a shoo-in for an Oscar. Slam dunk. And, fuck, these books didn’t look like they were so hard to write. You could probably just hire some schmuck to write them for you. Isn’t that what that guy Patterson did? But it wouldn’t be James Patterson “with” Max Fisher — no way that asshole was getting top bill — it would be Fisher with fucking Patterson.

  Finally Max had had just forty-eight hours left to, like, get his shit together, put his affairs in order and, fuck, get ready to spend the next half of his life behind bars. Behind bars. The... A.X. caged? Another book Max had read: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. He got halfway through that one before he realized it wasn’t a fucking prison novel.

  Max had been renting his penthouse — and he was behind on the rent — no problem there — when you go away, go away owing. He had the phone cut off and all the utilities, bu
t arranged that they be shut down the day he went to the slammer, so he could have his last forty-eight hours in comfort. He was drinking, not like he used to, but putting it away, Grey Goose, a decent brand, Max still had his taste and sensibility. He was also doing some rock, to keep the party balanced. Probably in the nick, as the Brits called it, he’d have a hard time scoring coke or even crack and he’d have to make do with that homemade hooch they brewed from potatoes. Or, get this, he might attend A.A. in the joint, run those meetings on a proper business footing, give them a little of the Max Fisher class. He tried to imagine himself in the actual joint, saw himself sitting on the floor like some suffering monk. Hell, maybe they’d start calling him The... O.N.K. Yeah, spending his days in quiet meditation, giving out little pearls of Zen, nuggets of compassionate wisdom to the other inmates. Maybe he’d shave his head, look more spiritual. Fuck, why hadn’t he thought of that sooner? Thanks, rock.

  On the morning of his last full day of freedom, while taking a morning dump, he stared at his mono-grammed towels. He hated to leave them behind but maybe the new tenants, they’d realize they were literally being given a slice of infamy. His reflection, drug induced, showed the eyes of a real caring man, sad but, like, knowing. His face had changed, even he could see that. It was an almost Thomas Merton look, if he could remember who the fuck Merton was. He remembered reading something about Merton living in a sparse cell, writing his seven-story some-shit-or-other. Wasn’t he a monk who’d been, like, hotwired in Bangkok? The fuck was he doing there and messing round with electric fires, wasn’t it, like, hot enough there?

  Max took out the electric razor, raised it, the buzz of it making him jump. Fuck, how loud was the freaking thing? But, nope, couldn’t do it. He looked at that gorgeous hair — actually just some thin gray strands surrounding a widening bald spot, but the rock was now seriously lying to him.