THUGLIT Issue Seventeen Read online

  THUGLIT

  Issue Seventeen

  Edited by Todd Robinson

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in the works are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  THUGLIT: Issue Seventeen

  ISBN-13:978-1511970471

  ISBN-10:1511970472

  Stories by the authors: ©Lane Kareska, ©Terrence McCauley, ©Galal Chater, ©Justin Porter, ©Steve Bailey, ©Dave Reddall, ©Eddie McNamara, ©Matt Andrew

  Published by THUGLIT Publishing.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the Author(s).

  Table of Contents

  A Message from Big Daddy Thug

  A Box of Horses by Steve Bailey

  A Hundred and Twenty Bucks by Matt Andrew

  Jasmine and Gunpowder by Justin Porter

  Cassandra and Abigail by Galal Chater

  Big Hard Squall by Lane Kareska

  Not a Sailor's Girl by Eddie McNamara

  Power Play by Dave Reddall

  El Cambalache by Terrence McCauley

  Author Bios

  A Message from Big Daddy Thug

  Welcome back, Thugleteers!

  It's 4 a.m. I have to upload this in about ten hours for your dirty little mitts to peruse.

  Seriously. That's how close to the wire we cut this shit. Don't believe me? I just left the after-party for the Edgars, hosted by Otto Penzler, a few hours ago.

  James Ellroy told me to call him "Dog."

  I'm sleep-deprived, but it's been a weird jazzy night.

  All that said, I'm going to use this space to give my shout-out and love to Jon and Ruth Jordan over at CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE, who received the prestigious Raven Award tonight.

  Jon and Ruth are two of the kindest and most generous people in the business, and have been ardent supporters of this lil' old magazine since day one as a webzine nearly ten years ago.

  But even more than that, they've assembled a crew over at their mag, some of the best people we've met, period. Jeremy Lynch, Jennifer Jordan, Erica Ruth Neubauer, and Dan & Kate Malmon.

  The Jordans have done more than assemble a magazine at Castle Crimespree, they've assembled a family.

  Love you guys to death and we couldn't be prouder or think of more deserving recipients for the award.

  This issue and the next glass of whiskey we raise at the Thugcave are dedicated to you.

  IN THIS ISSUE OF THUGLIT:

  A horse is a horse, of course.

  One last drink for the road.

  Don't mess with a squall.

  Boombalattie no more.

  Money in the pocket, blood on the hands.

  Twisted sister.

  Revenge is a dish best served old.

  Mamaaaaa, just kiiiiled a maaaaan! (My apologies to Queen)

  SEE YOU IN 60, FUCKOS!!!

  Todd Robinson (Big Daddy Thug) 4/30/2015

  A Box of Horses

  by Steve Bailey

  Some rich yuppie owned Mitchell's condo now—the high-end TV and Apple gizmos showed the wealth; all the soulless chrome and glass showed it was a guy.

  Rich homes, weirdly, were always the ones with no ready cash lying around—but she never took gadgets. Too much work to unload and, no sir, she wasn't no thief.

  She was an explorer, a secret digger inside peoples' hidden places.

  Didn't seem right. Old Mitchell's condo had stayed unchanged since his return from 'Nam 'til the day he'd died. She was twenty-four, so almost twice her lifetime.

  Some rich prick just up and buys it—the old man gone and his place changed out of recognition. Like every atom of Mitchell that ever existed just disappeared.

  That's what annoyed her—not the loss of the money and the things she'd taken. Even though in the early days, finding her feet in the city, the old guy's condo had been her best honey pot.

  Mitchell himself hadn't suffered none. He'd got something from their deal too; leering with impotent hunger at her as she cleaned the condo or ran his errands in the little cut-off jeans and skimpy vest top she always wore at his place.

  Cheapest home help in town, even with the stuff she took. Best eyeful too—for some clients, at least. Dianne changed how she styled herself depending on whose home she worked in.

  Different folks want different things; she'd gotten good at working out what that was so she could get the things she wanted out of them.

  In Mitchell's case, it wasn't just the things she'd taken. She realized now that what she really missed was the vibe.

  The condo without Mitchell felt like…like a man with no soul lived here.

  She slipped inside the refurbished bedroom. Big, expensive divan under soft cotton sheets. She'd always been dirt poor but knew the look and texture of money. Even so, the room seemed lifeless; she just couldn't picture some guy in here banging young secretaries or wealthy cougars.

  At the bedside—the first photo.

  Girl about her age—oriental Asian. Thailand? Vietnam? Gook of some kind but real pretty, smiling underneath a palm tree.

  Had a young girl with her, her face less open and warm—sad and serious with big dark eyes. About eight, Dianne guessed, holding a toy horse and looking at the picture-taker like she'd figured out all the right answers at all the wrong times.

  Dianne smiled, sad and bitter, as she looked at them. Took most girls a few more years to get that kind of look in their eye, but she could relate.

  Were they the guy's family?

  Little Ella-Mae had said he wasn't an Asian.

  Dianne had spent weeks carefully questioning Ella-Mae (never Sarah, her mother) who lived in the apartment above. Finding out if Mitchell's condo (to which she'd retained her keys) was sold yet, then whether the little girl had seen the new owner.

  Ella-Mae said she and her mom had seen the new guy a few times. Once he'd held a door for them on account of Sarah's wheelchair—or maybe he was just a real gent.

  He'd patted Ella-Mae's head and said, "Aren't you a sweetheart, helping Mom. Bet Daddy's real proud."

  Dianne didn't know if Sarah or Ella-Mae had told him it was just them two (plus sometimes the cheap, hourly help of 'Dianne's Helping Hands') against the world.

  Ella-Mae was only nine, but said the guy was 'hot.' Dianne wondered if she'd heard her mom say it, but knew Sarah spoke careful round the little girl. She didn't even think 'hot' was a word that Sarah would've used. She'd figured Sarah as uptight and kind of frigid even before her M.S started kicking in.

  Dianne didn't play slutty white trash round Sarah the way she had round Mitchell. For her, she was all demure Louisiana southern belle; dressing conservative and making a point to always call her "ma'am," even though Sarah could only have been ten years or so older than herself.

  Dianne looked back at the photo.

  The Asian chick and the kid in the picture were mom and daughter, you could tell, but Dianne didn't think they were his family. Though not many guys displayed framed photos of easy fucks they'd had in Indochina.

  No guy she'd ever known kept pictures of a woman—not her brothers, Virgil and Tyrell.

  None of the guys she'd ever done it with wanted to keep her picture.

  At least none of the guys she'd done it with by her own choice...


  She remembered Prosser and his boys had photographed her on that hot afternoon. She'd been too beat up and wigged out on Tyrell's downers to much care—but even then, part of her had known that the laughing, hard-eyed men were taking pictures, photos kept as trophies of what they'd done to her.

  Dianne scowled, then carried on searching the bedroom.

  She found the box in the wardrobe, hidden under the guy's tailored suits and handmade shoes.

  She only saw the edge at first, but when she pulled it out, it took her breath away.

  An ornate metal cube—scuffed and old but somehow, she knew, it had always been used for this.

  A small twinge of excitement fluttered in her chest, like it always did with the good discoveries. She knew she was touching something connected—a thing connected to a secret past and to somebody's wants.

  Not like all the rich new crap put there for show that now filled the condo. No sir.

  It wasn't the box that took her breath but the contents.

  Toy horses, exquisitely carved. From the same set, but each one so different. Their faces painted; nostrils flaring with teeth bared and eyes wide—in pleasure maybe, or terror more likely. All crammed inside the lidless metal box like they were sinking and climbing on each others' backs, desperate to escape.

  But they never would.

  She had more calls to make. She left the condo. Sarah and Ella-Mae were on the storey above. They were the only ones who'd know for sure she shouldn't be there but she still took care not to be seen by anyone else.

  She drove out to Pear Ridge and walked the working couple's dogs for an hour, careful only to take the weekly sixty dollars they'd left. The couple both worked but had nothing extra, so they were bread and butter—straight-up work; not a honey pot.

  Two further calls then finished off her day cleaning the filthy home in Griffing Park of the acid-mouthed bitch who was too fat to leave the house. Dianne meekly listened to her hollering and abuse, but only for the sake of all the extras she always managed to take. Triple-A Honey Pot.

  Then more domestics for the paralyzed guy in Lakeview—impotent like Mitchell but young and handsome except for his injuries. Dianne thought it was a shame and always dressed real special for him; kind of a maid outfit altered some—short, short skirt and low-cut top. He'd always say, "I put a little extra in there, Sugar," when he gave her the money.

  Afterwards she went back to her high-rise overlooking the water, fixed a jay, and watched the freight ships and oil tankers roll on by as she smoked.

  All day, in fact all month, had been hellish humid. The boiling air held promise of a violent storm that'd been teasing for weeks, but nothing yet.

  She got slowly, dreamily stoned; distracting herself from river traffic and the heat by looking through her box of money, credit cards and trinkets. Half the money was the remains of what she'd ripped off from Virgil and Tyrell before she'd scrammed out. The rest had gone to buying her cheap car, her cheap mobile and getting the first flyers for 'Dianne's Helping Hands' printed.

  She figured they owed her a down payment on a new life.

  The rest of the cash she'd earned or stolen from other clients. Some of the trinkets were silver or gold, but most weren't—she never took these things to sell. The credit cards had been taken carefully and only from clients who she knew had multiple visitors regularly to the house.

  She always saw the taking of a card as sealing off a honey pot because invariably the work dried up soon after, though no one had outright accused her of theft yet. There was an old man in Sabine Pass who bought the cards for cash, but oftentimes she'd keep them—just to spend evenings like this looking at all the names.

  The names were of folks she'd helped. People who she knew inside out from reading their diaries or their mail or finding their stash of whatever vice afflicted them.

  Flicking through the cards brought all their faces back—the hot middle-aged mom who'd slept with her son's baseball coach, the young pastor's wife driving herself nuts about her secret termination, the schoolteacher who got off on wearing girls' panties.

  She found herself laughing, hysterical but not nasty, and it wasn't just the weed.

  It wasn't about the money—they were her people, all of them.

  She hadn't got close to anyone in her two years in Port Arthur.

  So this was her chance of knowing others. Like she always phrased it to herself—to be a secret digger inside peoples' hidden places.

  And no one knew about secrets better than Dianne.

  Folks could hear Louisiana in her voice and, if anyone asked, she'd say she was from Lafayette. In truth she'd only ever been to Lafayette once, but it was sure easier than saying she'd lived all her life in a tumbledown shack in Chackbay with two redneck criminal brothers as her only kin.

  Until she'd run.

  The day after they'd used her to pay their debt to Prosser.

  Lit out with their ten thousand dollars. Way she had it figured it was the least those assholes owed her.

  She'd paid their debt to Prosser with her blood, her pain, and with what she'd lost when she'd turned into… into who she was now.

  All she'd taken from them was money.

  She dreamed of Mitchell's condo—not Mitchell's anymore, of course, but a cold and shiny place owned by a faceless man with no soul.

  She slept fitfully with shadowy pictures of writhing horses in her mind.

  Bucking, fighting, clambering to get out, their mouths open with silent screams, their eyes wide in front of a terror only they could see.

  She met the new owner of Mitchell's condo the next day.

  Sarah and Ella-Mae were her last call.

  Dianne did two afternoons a week cleaning and running errands for Sarah. Then she'd stop working at three and fetch the little girl from school.

  She'd walk her back home to the apartment she'd made gleam, back to the home cooking she'd fixed and had waiting in the oven.

  Dressed like a mom in a fifties TV show, listening to Ella-Mae yammer with a smile fixed on her face.

  Dianne's smile wasn't all for show, she liked the little girl—her unguarded chatter and honest laughter. Her total belief in the character Dianne was pretending to be.

  That trust made it easy for Dianne to find things out. Most times, Ella-Mae started spilling without even being asked.

  The air was boiling again as they dragged their feet homewards.

  Ella-Mae said the man downstairs had been calling on her and Mom.

  Thinking back, Dianne recalled Sarah looking more made-up today. Today she'd been able to imagine the woman she must've been before she'd ended up in the chair. She just hadn't connected the change to any meaning and it annoyed the hell out of her. That was the kind of detail she'd normally notice and start figuring around.

  She decided right then no more jays midweek.

  Observing, understanding, playing the angles—all the things she needed to do to survive in her life—you couldn't do those things on a few stoned-out hours of sleep.

  When they got back to their apartment, the guy was there. Somehow Dianne had half-expected it.

  He was talking with Sarah.

  Dianne and Ella-Mae heard them laughing together when they came in.

  Ella-Mae ran to the guy and called out his name—she remembered this wasn't his first visit. Remembered Ella-Mae had called him 'hot.'

  He was lean and health-club fit, no jailhouse muscles like most of the men she'd known. Still, she knew most white-bread women or a gay man would agree that he was 'hot.'

  He had the body of a tennis player and looked like a guy off a Gillette ad or a daytime soap.

  Age could be anything from thirty to mid-forties, hard to tell.

  Sarah introduced them, saying to him, "And this here's Dianne. She's the girl I told you about. Dianne's nothing less than an angel, helps us out two afternoons a week."

  Dianne noticed that Sarah had more color in her face, not makeup, but a flush of excitement. />
  Her smile was genuine and she sat up in her chair.

  The MS was ruining her body, but you could still see she was once an impressive-looking woman.

  The man slid a quick gaze over Dianne.

  His eyes were bright blue. Dianne knew women would go crazy for those eyes—saw the way he was using them to flirt with Sarah.

  She knew he was working it.

  She more than anyone knew that seeming natural was the hardest act of all. If you could get it just right, you were halfway to getting anyone to do anything for you.

  Just be what they need you to be.

  He smiled and said, "It's nice to meet you, real nice. Any friend of the girls is a friend of mine."

  Accent from nowhere, or could be anywhere.

  Sarah, Ella-Mae, and the man went into the living room. Dianne stayed in the kitchen. She served up their dinner on the dining table and went in to tell them it was fixed.

  She heard Sarah laughing again. In truth, this was the most she'd heard her laugh in the whole time she'd known her.

  In the living room, they were sitting like a family group. Sarah looked up at her and Dianne caught the end of her saying, "…so good to have traveled. I saw a bit of Europe before I got ill. You're lucky to have seen the world."

  Dianne blurted, "Where in Asia did you go?" Then wished at once she could bite the words back in—erase them.

  What the hell had she been thinking?

  The man looked up, and this time he seemed to really see her for the first time. "I don't believe I mentioned any time in Asia," he said.