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Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Wheel of Sky
ISBN-10: 1983218987
Type: Fiction
Pages: 225
Copyright: Mar 6, 2015
ISBN-13: 9781983218989
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
A priceless relic has been stolen, and the main suspect is a Holy Man, a gone-mad tent preacher known as Jath. But private detective Jessup T. Biggs can't shake the feeling that someone is playing him for a fool.
In the heat of a blazing summer, Biggs, haunted by the breakup of his marriage and making friends with a whiskey bottle, descends into a world of fortune hunters, voodoo whodats, shady ladies and deadly prophecy. There, he uncovers a wide-reaching conspiracy and a series of shocking crimes. Crimes that threaten his very concept of reality.
Excerpt
Shotgun Dwarf
The horizon to the west brooded somber red as if angered by our approach. The shaped vibrations of life became more subdued. Sun-yellow faded into lavender. Shadows grew more shadows. A gray moonless dusk settled.
“I know a shelf of dry land where we can camp tonight,” said Spartak.
Another ten minutes and the boat's hull dragged onto a cattail-rimmed beach, the darkness racing toward us. Black willow and hackberry trees, ghostly in a rising mist, formed an uneven ring around a small clearing, sandy underfoot. We unloaded the boat. Soon a rough campsite sprouted up in the space, the tent for Alice, while the dwarf and I stretched a rope between two trees and pegged a tarp over it for our night’s shelter. The 45 pistol in its shoulder holster chaffed my skin. I took it off and hung it in the crook of a tree, along with the pith helmet.
Spartak started a fire, using chunks of tupelo he hacked from a stump with a hand ax. We spread a blanket on the ground and sat down. Over the blaze, he stuck a wire grill and put a frying pan on top. I had never felt more hungry. He opened a large can of pork and beans and poured the contents into the skillet, adding some broken up biscuits. As the mixture began to bubble and splatter into the flames, he stirred with a spoon so the food wouldn't stick. We held out metal plates. Spartak filled them from the pan. The steaming pork and beans and biscuits tasted wonderful.
After dinner, he poured cups of campfire coffee from a can of boiling water. The strong black brew was piping hot. I unfolded my legs in front of me. He spiked his caffeine with a generous dollop of vodka. I extended my cup.
“This'll put iron in your backbone and sulfur in your blood,” he said. My java received a gurgle of clear firewater.
Star flares wallpapered the sky. The fractured firelight, rising and falling, cast shadows amidst the trees. Fireflies bobbed and winked on the ink-filled air.
Spartak guzzled a big mouthful of high-octane coffee and peered over the rim of his cup. “Little girl, this the first time you been in the swamp?”
“My name is Alice,” she said, without looking at him.
“OK... is this your first time in the swamp Alice?”
“No, we have swamps down by Biloxi, but I've never been this far back in, just played around the edges with friends.”
“Well, why you want to be on this journey now? Is this your new boyfriend?” He inclined his misshapen skull at me.
Alice's face grew stormy in the campfire light. She sat her coffee cup down.
“You're not a very nice man, are you?”
A slight trickle of blood, almost black-colored in the half-light, edged down from her right nostril and onto her upper lip. She hadn't noticed it yet. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her.
“You have a nosebleed.”
“Oh!” she said, taking the square of cloth and wiping her nose. She reached into the rucksack at her feet, extracted a small bottle of pills, took one out and washed it down her throat with a swallow of coffee.
Spartak looked at her hard, and then looked at me harder. “She's sick, what the hell?!”
“Shut up, Spartak!” I said.
Alice sat up straight. “I'll be alright. The pills help.” She gazed into the fire, her eyes in the dark glowing like the eyes of a cat. “When I first began to get headaches, my mom told me coffee must be making me tense, so I stopped drinking coffee. Then the nosebleeds started. Daddy insisted I go in for a check-up. At first, the doctors couldn't figure it out. They said mononucleosis, or iron deficiency, or maybe a virus, until one day an x-ray showed the brain tumor. The hospital tried everything they knew, but it was as if there was a curse on our family and I was the one who had to pay. Jath is the only hope I have left. I know it must sound silly.”
Dreadful, gibbering silence crowded in on us. I could feel the earth turning on its axis.
Spartak, his head lowered a little, his deep-set eyes cowled in shadow, picked up a stick and made nonsense scratches in the sand as if he were a blind man. The fiery light emphasized the Slavic, moujik-like characteristics of his face, the uplifted cheekbones, the stubborn snub-nose. Powdered winged moths played peek-a-boo with the dancing campfire flames, colliding, escaping, sometimes flitting too close and collapsing straight down in a sudden heated hiss.
“I apologize,” he said, at last. “Strange things can happen in this part of the world, I don't claim to understand it. I'll get you there.”
“Thank you. All this medical awfulness has made me older inside than I want to be. Old Miss Bella, she’s a psychic, born that way cause her momma was struck by lightning, Miss Bella says she sees me in tall mountains, not around here that’s for sure, I don’t know, maybe heaven has mountains. I just want to live a normal teenage life, going to after-game dances and voting for the homecoming queen, how things used to be and... OH MY GOD!”
She jerked backward within her scream. One split second had held dark empty space and in the next instant they towered flame-etched before us. I recognized lanky one-armed man from the grocery store, his straw hat pushed back on a sweaty mug with eyes that bulged. A much shorter weasel-faced man stood in front resting a 30-30 lever action rifle over the bend of his arm, the barrel pointing at the ground, his wavy black hair pasted back with pomade, a spit curl hanging down from the top of his forehead.
“Hello neighbors,” Weasel-Man said, the words spilling from a mouth filled with broken teeth. “We saw your campfire and thought we'd stop by and give a friendly little welcome.”
I followed suit. “Glad you did. Sit down, we might have some grub left over and there's plenty of hot coffee.”
“No, no, thanks we can't stay long.”
Spartak's 12-gauge pump was propped against a rock a bullfrog's jump to his left. I could feel the compact hardness of the snub-nose .38 pistol in its ankle holster.
“I'll get you some java.” Spartak moved to stand up.
The barrel of Weasel-Man's rifle rose up an inch. Spartak eased back into a sitting position. My stomach muscles tightened and my breathing changed.
Nodding at me, One-Armed Man spoke in the voice of a full-grown idiot. “He'd da one flashin' all the money around.” A bulky revolver stuck out from the waistband of his denim trousers.
I should have been more careful in the general store, but a metal sign hanging above the cash register read, ‘No Checks.’ One-Armed Man had the IQ of an overripe turnip. Weasel-Man’s face brimmed with savage cunning. He was the pivot where all the action would revolve.
“She's real purty,” One-Armed Man spoke again.
“Shut up. We'll take care of her later.”
“I remember you from the store,” said Alice to One-Armed Man.
Oops, wrong thing to say. I had a notion these thugs had done this sort of caper before, going on the hunt, preying on the weakness of others.
“If you boys need spending money, I'll be glad to loan you a few bucks,” I said.
Weasel-Man spat out the words and his bony kisser scrunched up ugly. “Enough of this cat-and-mouse game.” The 30-30's barrel jerked upward and pointed at my chest. “We be takin' ALL your cash city dude!”
Pulling the pistol from his pants-top, One-Armed Man waved its blue steel around in our general direction.
“We don't want any trouble,” I said. “You can have the cash. It's in a money belt in the tent.”
“I’ll give you one in the gizzard if you're lying to me!” yelled Weasel-Man.
“No, I understand you guys mean business. The belt gets uncomfortable with all the greenbacks stuffed inside. I took it off before dinner.”
A pause while mind gears spun. “Go check it out,” Weasel-Man instructed his accomplice.
“OK, Billy.”
“Shut up, you moron!”
One-armed man shambled toward the tent. Alice began to cry softly, overcome with tension.
“There, there,” I consoled her, “when these reasonable men get what they want, they will leave us alone and everything will be alright.” Yeah, and I’m the pope.
At the tent's front, One-Armed Man looked back at us.
“It's underneath the sleeping bag,” I shouted. I glanced at Spartak. One-armed-man scrunched down on his hand and knees and crawled into the pup tent. A single mosquito droned.
A moment later, a voice whined from inside the canvas walls. “Ain't no money belt in here.”
“YOU STUPID ASSHOLE!!” Spartak screamed at Weasel-Man.
The 30-30 swung vicious to the left. I kicked the campfire hard, the sparks and burning embers showering Weasel-Man’s legs. Barrel-rolling on my side to the right, I jerked the snub-nosed pistol free from its ankle holster. A rifle round whizzed past my ear. All the time in the world was crammed and crowded into one tiny instant as he worked the lever real fast, sliding another cartridge into the firing chamber, his cheek held tight against the wooden stock, one eye closed, the other eye staring straight at me like he’d known me all his life. I blasted Weasel-Man square in the chest with a hollow point slug. The impact knocked him onto his back and the rifle fired up into the night sky.
One-Armed Man crawled out of the tent surprisingly fast, a half-seen figure in the dim light. He came at us in a wash of adrenaline, running a bent over zigzag, popping off rounds from his revolver, his face a scream mask of exertion, gunfire echoes tossing from tree to tree. One shot ricocheted off a rock and another round blew a spurt of campfire ashes into the air. Alice was flat on her back, her hands over her eyes. I stayed crouched down low and squeezed off a couple more shots, but they were wide.
By now, Spartak had hold of the sawed-off shotgun. He didn't aim it much, just leveled its fire-breathing barrel to his hip and blew One-Armed Man straight to hell, bits of human spattering the night.
I checked Alice pronto. She was in shock, but hadn't been hit. The inside of my lip was bleeding where I had bit it. Spartak kicked the 30-30 rifle away from Weasel-Man's still hand. I bent down on one knee and inspected the bastard's pulse. On a scale of 1 to 10 he was quite deceased, that is to say, they don’t come any deader.
“Is he alive?” Alice's face appeared from above.
“He won't be bothering us anymore.” I holstered the .38 and stood up. “Not for a long time.”
Spartak and I dragged the bodies to the clearing's edge. An owl sat in a tree rubbernecking. A Mad-Hatter orange moon crept into the sky. I ransacked through Weasel-Man's pockets to find out whom we were dealing with. In his wallet, a driver’s license made out to Billy Dardenal reclined in a plastic window.
“We need to report this to the authorities,” I said.
“Not here,” said Spartak. “Wait till we get back to New Orleans. Half these bayou peckerwoods are related to each other, blood relatives who live and eat revenge, their brothers, sisters, cousins, fathers, uncles... the whole damn clan would be down our throats. The swamp will keep this secret long enough for us to take care of business.”
“Look what I found,” I said, flipping open a leather-covered inner wallet. A shiny gold colored Louisiana game warden's badge, very bona fide official looking, greeted our eyes.
“He must’ve stole that from someone,” said Spartak.
I rubbed my thumb over the smooth/jagged surface of the badge. “Perhaps wardens don't get paid much hereabouts and he was moonlighting for extra cash, either way, you're the new game warden.” I tossed the medallion to Spartak. “You've been sent to make sure there's no illegal poaching going on at Jath's compound. Alice and I are just hitching a ride. It will give us a legal shield to work under, they'll think twice about violating it.”
“I'm getting paid to guide you to Bones Island, not get involved in some kind of investigation and heist.”
“We'll be in and out of there within a day. If I can recover the drinking cup relic, I'll pay you a thousand dollar bonus.”
The dwarf pursed his lips together. A night bird screamed and fluttered up toward heaven. Into Spartak’s pants pocket the badge case slipped soundlessly.
Between moon-cast shadows we went to work like a couple gravediggers, blue hell, there was no ‘like’ to it, we were gravediggers, but not for long, inches below the earth’s surface the small collapsible shovel struck water and the hole filled up. Until morning could suggest a better option, we propped the two mortal shells against a black willow tree. Weasel-Man's blank eye-windows were stretched wide open as though he could see something amazing over the horizon. It almost appeared he was play-acting, but no, I doubt it. Rather upsets a man’s day, dying does. All their dead ancestors had to make room for them now, scoot in a little closer. Perhaps an ill-chosen shortcut on the road to Elysium had been their undoing, or maybe they were raised up wrong, the parents uneducated, unemployed, living in an aluminum trailer, STRUNG OUT ON HATE and too much TV. In a different environment they could have developed intellectually, grown into well-balanced young men speaking five languages and displaying a gift for the cello. It wasn't my duty to untie the what-ifs. Paths had been crossed and casualties tallied.
The mellow campfire mood shattered beyond repair, we retired for the evening. Alice disappeared into the tent. Spartak and I crawled under the tarp shelter. Five minutes later, the dwarf snored buzzsaw style. The darkness smelled of blood. I wrestled and tossed all night, my mind-light casting fitful dreams:
up in a cypress tree jesus is crucified not for humanity's sins but for its ignorance, crimson tears fill the swamp, darkman walks among the reeds drinking holy water, growing taller and taller, until an immense shadow stains the land, a wizard of oz munchkin pilots a stagecoach powered by great prehistoric monsters, as an adolescent girl sticks her windblown head out a coach window, to spy in the remoteness a mighty castle high on a hill, where fate and magic intermingle and become indistinguishable from reality
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