BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled 2 Read online

  BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled 2

  Edited by

  David Cranmer and Scott D. Parker

  Copyright © 2013 by BEAT to a PULP

  All stories copyrighted by their respective authors. Previously published material is noted with the date it originally appeared in print or online.

  Copyright © 1953

  Charles Boeckman. "Tough Cop." Standard Magazines, Inc.

  Copyright © 2009

  Robert J. Randisi. "Shut Up and Kill Me." BEAT to a PULP webzine, December.

  Copyright © 2010

  Paul S. Powers. "The Killing on Sutter Street." BEAT to a PULP webzine, January.

  Kieran Shea. "The Takedown Heart." BEAT to a PULP webzine, November.

  Copyright © 2011

  Jedidiah Ayres. "Down, Down, Down, Burns, Burns, Burns." BEAT to a PULP webzine, May.

  David Cranmer. "The Wicked." Pulp Modern.

  Copyright © 2012

  Tom Roberts. "Hard Time." BEAT to a PULP webzine, June.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except where permitted by law.

  The stories herein are works of fiction. All of the characters, places, and events portrayed in this collection are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover image from iStock (www.istockphoto.com); Design by dMix.

  PO Box 173

  Freeville, New York 13068

  CONTENTS

  The Takedown Heart

  Kieran Shea

  The Loveliest Tail

  Wayne D. Dundee

  The Killing on Sutter Street

  Paul S. Powers

  Down, Down, Down, Burns, Burns, Burns

  Jedidiah Ayres

  Split the Take

  Eric Beetner

  Vicious Day

  Matthew C. Funk

  Hard Time

  Tom Roberts

  The Wicked

  Edward A. Grainger

  Double Your Pleasure

  BV Lawson

  Ghost Story

  Jay Stringer

  It's Coming

  Jen Conley

  Tough Cop

  Charles Boeckman

  Shut Up and Kill Me

  Robert J. Randisi

  Other BTAP Titles

  Connect with BEAT to a PULP

  THE TAKEDOWN HEART

  A Charlie Byrne Grind

  Kieran Shea

  I leaned my back against a wall in Dodge Lee's windowless, claustrophobic gym office and considered the funky air-conditioned odors—inexpensive vanilla air freshener, staph-inducing mildew, old rubber, and dried sweat. Behind Dodge's brown, shaved skull, a large crop of dusty, colored ribbons dangled from a shelf crammed with old martial arts trophies. Lots of faded photographs of bare-chested and uniformed fighters in discount frames. Two shallow craters the size of fists caved in the far expanse of wall.

  Years ago, when I was first starting out as an investigator, Dodge taught me a few things about taking care of myself, a dirty little bag of tricks of sorts. I had a notion that mastering a few moves might come in handy someday if I was stupid enough to get on the wrong side of trouble. Other than a few minor scuffles, I'd been lucky. I never really had to call on the tactics and moves I learned from Dodge, but I will say this. After eight weeks of suffering under his hard case Thai-African-American tutelage, I pretty much steer clear from those with any serious mat time.

  I hadn't seen Dodge in a handful of years, and I wondered with the plummeting economy just how well his little gym was doing. Just on the outskirts of Atlantic City, D-Lee Fight & Fitness was located in a dumpy little strip mall next to an abandoned mattress wholesaler on Route 322. I arrived a few minutes after 10 a.m. on a balmy Tuesday in June and business seemed fair. A dozen odd patrons of varying ages working out: two chicken-sticked twentysomethings benching heavy iron in the pit, a few guys sparring on the mats, and a chunky dude with a beavertail haircut kicking a heavy bag. Human condensation streaked the "D-Lee Fight & Fitness" letters in the front window.

  Dodge himself looked puffy and tired behind his desk. I hardly recognized him at first and he noticed my hesitating concern. He complained about a herniated disc in his back and brushed aside my troubled look. Dodge called me because he wanted to talk about a dude named Diego Guzman.

  "He's a tough kid, Charlie," Dodge said. "Best grappling middleweight that's been around this dump for a while now. One hundred percent Guatemalan, a born fighter. Has a wrester's speed and the learning curve? Shit, he's like a goddamn mirror. Show him some obscure release just once and the son of a bitch executes it better than anybody on their best day. He actually listens to you when you give him instruction. You have any idea how rare that is? Most kids these days are borderline retarded and that's before they get their brains beat in."

  I shuffled a thumb toward the front of the gym.

  "Is Diego out there now?"

  Dodge plucked up a ballpoint pen and clicked it rapid fire. "Yeah. He's sparring on the ringed mats by the door. You probably passed him on your way in so I'll introduce you when we're through back here. Anyway, with the MMA and some luck, Diego could actually make a little bread for himself."

  "Are you managing him?"

  "Nah."

  "Why not?"

  "It doesn't work that way now. Kids breaking in nowadays do their own managing at least until they get up to a level where someone with sponsorship juice takes notice. Anyway, who has the time to nurture and coach somebody who might not pan out? I've a small business to run here, you know how friggin' hard that is?"

  I did indeed.

  Dodge said, "Man, I swear if I had a dollar for every dope that came in here asking for management. Don't get me wrong, I love the spike in business with all this Tapout nonsense, but please ... you should see some of the pups who wander in here thinkin' this is some kind of charity gladiator school. People have seen too many movies."

  I scratched the back of my head. I could hear the big, beavertail-haired kid on the bag out front grunting hard and the lonely clank of settled iron.

  "So why exactly am I here, Dodge?"

  Dodge's lips pulsed. I knew Dodge appreciated my directness, but I wasn't being direct so much as I wanted to move things along and snag myself a falafel sandwich from the Lebanese joint across the highway. Dodge tossed his ballpoint pen onto his blotter.

  "It's about a girl," Dodge said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "My niece. Janae."

  "Your niece? I thought this was about this Diego kid. What about your niece, Dodge?"

  Dodge took a moment and then rubbed his fingertips into his baggy eyes in an effort to clear away some unseen mental aggravation. "I was against those two getting together in the first place but ...." Dodge stopped rubbing his eyeballs and waved a hand. "Janae has been dating Diego and messin' with the boy's fight mojo. Screwing him all kinds of up, you know, that crazy Latin blood of his."

  "Fill in the blanks for me."

  "Short of it is Diego thinks Janae is stepping out on him. It's all he ever seems to talk about. The boy is, like, obsessed. Like I said, he has that crazy Latin blood."

  "Tell him to break it off."

  "Obviously you're not Guatemalan."

  "No, but that's what I'd tell him, I mean, if it's messing with his future."

  "Yeah sure, you do that, and I'll stand by and watch as he caves in your skull like a milk carton. His temper issues are insane, Charlie. Here, let me tell you a story. Before he and Janae got together, Diego was all hot and heavy with this other girl, this smoking hot bartend
er chick from down in Wildwood. Anyway, word is some mofo twice Diego's size and a fighter to boot made a pass at this former hottie girlfriend and Diego thrashed the guy into a small coma. No witnesses, so no assault charges, but that's the word."

  "Some word."

  "Fuckin'-a right that's some word."

  "So is Janae?"

  "What? Cheating on the boy? D'hell if I know."

  "Have you asked her?"

  "No."

  "But she's your niece."

  "I don't talk to Janae all that much. Not at all to be honest. Not in a while anyway. Her mother—my sister—she kinda hates my guts because of something I said to her a while back and I think she's brainwashed her kids against me. Nice, huh? My own sister, a regular humanitarian. Quite the bitch."

  "But back to Diego, so he thinks your niece Janae is stepping out on him, this means what to you exactly?"

  Dodge waved his arms above his head. "He's distracted from training that's what. Normally I wouldn't give damn, But, like I said before, Diego has potential, an honest-to-God shot at going all the way. This amateur card he has coming up could mean big things for the kid, man. Big things. I'd hate to see him screw it all up or get hurt because he's worried and distracted about something that ain't even real."

  "Who's Diego fighting?"

  Dodge snorted a chuckle. "Oh, you'll totally love this. An Irish prick just like you. Dan Mooney from Allentown, Pennsyltucky."

  "Mooney any good?"

  "Sure. A southpaw. A bit older than Diego and quick on his takedowns and submissions, but Diego can beat him if he's focused."

  "So, what do you want from me?"

  What Dodge needed was pretty simple. Dodge had an idea that if I could just tail Janae for a few days and make sure she wasn't two-timing his boy, Diego would nut up and buckle down for his fight. It was a reasonable request. Works that way sometimes, and I'd done it plenty of times before. People get a notion in their head and all they need is an outsider to hold their hand and tell them their stupid dreams are still intact.

  I told Dodge my methods might involve a little more than just following Janae and he didn't seem to care. Anyway, we worked out a deal—my weekly rate at a discount so long as Dodge threw in an old weight bench and bag he had lying around to cover the balance.

  Before I left, Dodge took me out on the floor and introduced me to Diego. The Guatemalan and another bubble-armed Latino were clamped together in a cinch, and a few other patrons had gathered to watch.

  Diego snapped free of the cinch and threw a pumping jab. The other fighter tucked his arms up, and his defense blinded him from the powerful cross Diego unleashed from the left. The cross sucked the air from his opponent's lungs and he staggered for a moment, bending forward toward Diego who saw the opening and launched a knee into the guy's face. Even with protective pads, the impact looked and sounded all the way unpleasant. His opponent recovered with a staggering bob and a halfhearted right. Diego dropped under the punch to seize the back of his opponent's legs, executing a brutal takedown that I felt in the soles of my hiking boots thirty feet away. The whole thing happened in seconds with the decelerated horror one associates with car accidents. Diego wailed punches until his opponent finally tapped out.

  Diego sprang to his feet, sniffed fiercely, and wiped a wet forearm across his brow. He lifted his chin at me.

  "¿Eras un policía?"

  I glanced at Dodge then back at Diego.

  "Who? Me? No. No way."

  Diego snatched up and took a long, squeezed drink from a taped up water bottle sleeved in a wooden caddy on the floor. He dropped the bottle back into the caddy and mumbled some Spanish to his sparring partner who had finally gotten to his feet. The two laughed a bit and shared a secret joke. Diego then asked, "Dodge say you train here with him a long time ago, yo."

  "That's true."

  Diego and his sparring partner couldn't hide their mocking grins.

  "Fight much?" Diego asked.

  Dodge stifled a snigger. I gave Dodge a look.

  "Not if I can help it," I said.

  * * *

  The picture Dodge Lee gave me of his niece didn't really do the young woman justice. The truth was Janae was a walking heart attack—a long sweep of brown hair, trim curves, and sharp wide eyes that you noticed before she even looked your way. Twenty-one and generously shelved. When I finally saw her in person, I immediately could understand Diego's intense pangs of jealousy.

  Janae worked the sales counter at the Louis Vuitton boutique at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino on the south end of A.C., and tailing her to and from work was an easy, but fairly tedious, affair. Fortunately for me, straight across from the boutique there was a Starbucks outlet with stools at a wide window. A laptop provided decent cover.

  After a couple of days tracking Janae's routines and observing her at work, I picked my way into her efficiency one morning after she rolled out for the Trop. Took me under an hour to cruise her computer, poke around in the frilly thongs, and pass a handheld scanner over her bills. I found nothing incriminating outright save for a little stash of mossy green chronic in a tin in her nightstand.

  I sat on the bed, sighed, and pinched off a hit's worth of the tacky dope for myself. I dropped the bud of weed in my shirt pocket and slid her stash back in the drawer. Couldn't blame the girl. We all need a good night's sleep.

  After a few days I was feeling pretty stoked that I had nothing to share with Dodge and Diego. Boring as hell, sure, but it was a nice feeling just the same, sharing some good news with a client for a change.

  On Friday evening I sat on my couch, fired the pinch of Janae's bud in my one-hitter bat, and cued up Death Cab for Cutie's Plans on my Bose box. Then I gave Dodge a call.

  "Looks like your boy just needs to work on his trust issues, Dodge."

  Dodge was curt. "So, you didn't find out anything at all?"

  "Nothing that's openly suspicious, no."

  "You're positive?"

  "People can be careful, but I'm pretty sure."

  "But you've got a couple more days on her, right? I paid you for a full week, that was our deal, right?"

  "Technically, yeah," I said, "but just between you and me and my cat Chomsky here, I think Janae is clean. In fact, it's a ninety percent lock. Well, maybe not ninety. Eighty-five percent, give or take, is more conservative."

  "I want one hundred percent."

  "Like I said—"

  "I'm freakin' serious, Charlie. Keep checking. You've got to be sure you've looked under every single stone."

  "Am I what?"

  "What?"

  "Hey, man, I'm not stoned."

  "I said you got to be sure you've looked under every single stone. Not stoned."

  "Oh." Wow, that Janae scored some good shit.

  "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  I looked at my smoldering one hitter bat. "Ahh ... sorry."

  "Jesus, are you flaking out on me, Charlie?"

  "No."

  "God damn it, you always were a half-ass. I knew I shouldn't have hired you."

  "What? Hey, now—"

  "No, you hey now. I'm paying you good money, Charlie. I'm the freakin' client here, remember? You work for me and you do what I say. That's how this agreement works. God, do you treat the rest of your clients this way?"

  "Man, you need to relax. Get a massage or something."

  "Don't be cocky with me, you little prick," Dodge paused for few seconds to collect himself. "Ah, crap. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I haven't been getting much sleep these days and my back is killing me. Look, Diego told me Janae is going out with a couple of girlfriends tomorrow night after work for some happy hour thing."

  "So?"

  "So, Diego thinks she's meeting another guy. One of the girls who Janae said she was supposedly going to hang out with—get this—Diego knows for a fact that girlfriend is sick in bed with the stomach flu."

  "How does he know this?"

  Another fleeting pause. "He didn't tell m
e."

  "Fine," I said, "But after tomorrow, we need to renegotiate. I have other things coming down the pike, Dodge. I'd be happy to bill you as we go and all, but I really don't want to waste your money. My feeling right now is your niece is clean."

  "Just follow her."

  Dodge hung up.

  I tossed my cell phone down on the coffee table and hit mute on the Bose. Feeling a bit wobbly from my dope intake, I crossed the living room to my desk and picked up my portable scanner. I scribbled a reminder on a neon green Post-It note and stuck it on my computer's screen and placed the scanner next to the keyboard.

  Across the room, my three-legged, one-eyed cat, Chomsky, mashed a pillow on the couch with his good front paw and settled in for a snooze. With the dope kneading away the day's kinks and blues, a nice snooze sounded pretty good to me, too.

  Right after a big bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats.

  * * *

  As Dodge requested, I blew the following evening nursing seltzers with lime and tracking Janae around with her gaggle of decked-out, mini-skirted girlfriends. And what do you know? When the pack hit the Trump's Casbah Nightclub at 11:48 p.m., sweet little Janae hooked up.

  At first I thought maybe it was just, you know, club flirting but then the heavy grinds on the pumping dance floor and the deep kissing in the booth erased all notions of casual from my mind. Kind of gave myself a kick for assuming the girl was squeaky clean.

  Around 2:16 a.m., Janae and her dance buddy slipped off to a room upstairs at the hotel, and I tagged along. I played the sleepy drunk in the elevator exceptionally well, but those two were so into each other I might as well have been a roach squashed in the corner.

  On ten, we all got off. Janae and loverboy sauntered east and I stumbled west down the hall. Once they shut their door, I double backed, hung around, and put an ear to the door. Those two got right to it. Forgive me here, but baboons in heat have more decorum.