Catalog

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Untitled</title> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"/> <style> /* ePub CSS */ h1 {padding-top: 15%;} .indent {text-indent: 5%;} .center {text-align: center;} .right {text-align: right;} .margin {margin: 0 5%;} .margin-indent {margin: 0 5%; text-indent: 5%;} .bigmargin {margin: 0 5% 0 10%;} .bigmargin-indent {margin: 0 5% 0 10%; text-indent: 5%;} .hugemargin {margin: 0 5% 0 15%;} .hugemargin-indent {margin: 0 5% 0 15%; text-indent: 5%;} img {max-width: 94%;} body {margin: 0 3%; text-align: justify;} .spacer {padding-bottom: 1em;} </style> </head> <body> <h1 class="center" id="c4">LAST CALL</h1> <div class="spacer"></div> <h2 class="center sigil_not_in_toc"><i>December 1943</i></h2> <div class="spacer"></div> <div>Private First Class John Rondello closed the door behind him and turned to face the barroom. As he stamped snow from his shoes, he allowed his eyes to scan the smoky dimness before him. The place was small for a soldiers’ bar, barely forty feet across with the actual bar running down the side to Rondello’s right. To his left, scattered indifferently, were eight small, round tables, and he was relieved to see that only two were occupied. The room’s flooring consisted of worn, wooden planks under a sprinkling of pale yellow sawdust, the bare grey walls scarred with sporadic spottings of water damage. An oddly pleasant odor of beer, whiskey and cigarettes wafted in the warm air. A scrawny Douglas fir stood in a corner, its needles already drying, growing brittle against red and green Christmas lights.</div> <div class="indent">Ten G.I.s stood at the bar, scattered and clumped in small groups along its length, a few looking up from their drinks or conversations as Rondello entered. Two hookers sat at the far end, one sipping without pleasure at a flat looking beer, the other engaged in tee-hee chit-chat with a red-faced soldier of about nineteen.</div> <div class="indent">More than an hour to kill in this dive, thought Rondello.</div> <div class="indent">Moving toward one of the empty tables at the rear, he slipped the overseas cap from his head, unbuttoned his green uniform overcoat and tucked the folded cap into his belt. He could feel the appraising eyes of the beer sipping hooker as he crossed the room. Rondello imagined she liked what she saw. He kept his eyes purposely from her and sat at a table with his back to the bar facing a small, snow encrusted window which looked out to the Wrightstown Bus Depot directly across Main Street. He glanced at his Timex. Ten forty. The bus to New York City was due in from Philadelphia after midnight. He sighed and gazed into his watery reflection in the darkened window glass.</div> <div class="indent">At twenty-three, Rondello was the oldest man in his platoon. His sergeant was only twenty-two, although in many ways he seemed much older. The rest of the guys were eighteen and nineteen with a sprinkling of twenty-year-olds. Rondello had been drafted late, and he knew exactly who to thank for that. Or blame.</div> <div class="indent">Good old Willie Cosentino, Rondello thought. Willie the Widow Maker. There hadn’t been much Willie couldn’t get done even before the war, but once the conflict produced depression-busting paychecks for everyone and a thriving black market, Willie had grown godlike within the old Brooklyn neighborhood known as Red Hook.</div> <div class="indent">It was Willie who had arranged Rondello’s gig at the Alimony Prison, a popular Manhattan night club. Sure, he deserved the spot, but hell, there were lots of guys deserving of that job; it was Willie himself who spoke to the owner, an ex-prize fighter and bootlegger who had founded the Alimony Prison as a speakeasy many years earlier and then taken it legit once prohibition was repealed. When Willie spoke, people tended to listen. Willie the Widow Maker had grown up on President Street, just off Fourth Avenue, with another kid everyone called “Allie Boy.” The grapevine wise guys never tired of relating how it had been Willie who suggested a more fitting nickname for a tough kid like Alphonse Capone: “Scarface.”</div> <div class="indent">“‘Allie Boy’ sounds like one of them new peanut butters they’re selling,” Willie reportedly told Capone.</div> <div class="indent">Now Rondello smiled at the legend. He had never particularly liked Willie, but had always been pragmatic; if a guy wanted to amount to anything on Red Hook’s mean streets, working for Willie was the best way to do it. And if a guy dreamed of being a big-time singer like Sinatra, he needed someone to grease the wheels a little. Hell, thought Rondello, his Alimony Prison performance was reviewed by <i>The</i> <i>Times</i> just last year, <i>The</i> <i>New York Times</i>, for Pete’s sake. “Promising young crooner,” they said. “Dark, sensual good looks,” the guy had written. Johnny Rondello was a big hit.</div> <div class="indent">Rondello had been living on Sixteenth Street in Manhattan at the time, just a few blocks from the Alimony Prison’s Greenwich Village location. He was booked there for a long-term engagement. And then came the telephone call from Brooklyn.</div> <div class="indent">“Hey, Johnny, how ya doing?” Willie had said. “You with any a’ that high class Manhattan tail at the moment?”</div> <div class="indent">Rondello laughed. “No, Willie, not right at the moment. What’s up?”</div> <div class="indent">“I need you to go take care of sumthin’,” Willie said casually. “Nothin’ heavy, just the usual.”</div> <div class="indent">Rondello had stiffened. He’d been hoping these little instances of “taking care” of something were finally behind him. How long, he wondered, would he be in Willie’s unrelenting debt?</div> <div class="indent">“What’s that?” he asked, forcing a mirroring casualness into his tone.</div> <div class="indent">“Matty the Milkman. He’s inta me for almost two c’s, and he’s been duckin’ me. Time he gets a little message.”</div> <div class="indent">“What kinda message?”</div> <div class="indent">Willie’s chuckle came through the line. “Relax, kid, I know you’re lightweight. Just go and see ‘im, that’s all. Smack ‘im around a little. Warn him next time it won’t be <i>you</i> comin’.”</div> <div class="indent">“Sure, Willie. I can put a little scare into him. He still live over on Dean Street?”</div> <div class="indent">“Yeah. He leaves for work at two-thirty in the morning. That’d be the best time to catch him. Give ‘im the whole day drivin’ around in that milk wagon a’ his to think about the position he’s in.”</div> <div class="indent">“Consider it done, Willie. Anything else ya need?”</div> <div class="indent">“Well, kid, I got some bad news. My guy at the draft board called. Seems he’s lost his nerve; he thinks the FBI is hidin’ under his friggin’ bed. Says he can’t keep misplacin’ your draft call up notice. He read about ya in the newspaper, the whata-ya-call-it…”</div> <div class="indent">“<i>The Times</i>?” Rondello suggested.</div> <div class="indent">“Yeah, yeah, <i>The</i> <i>Times</i>. He says pretty soon somebody’s gonna start wonderin’ why a gettin’ famous guy like you ain’t humpin’ around shootin’ at foreigners like the other losers. So we gotta get you fixed.”</div> <div class="indent">“Fixed?”</div> <div class="indent">“Yeah, fixed. By some doctor up on the Grand Concourse, up in the Bronx.”</div> <div class="indent">Rondello shook his head and frowned. “Willie, what do you mean, ‘fixed’? I ain’t a Cocker Spaniel, for Pete’s sake.”</div> <div class="indent">For a moment there was silence on the line. Then Willie laughed. “Oh, I get it. No, Johnny, relax. It’s your ear, just your ear.”</div> <div class="indent">“You wanna cut my ear off?”</div> <div class="indent">“No, but now that you mention it, I did cut a guy’s ear off once. With one of my old man’s barber razors.”</div> <div class="indent">“Willie,” Rondello said, his stomach knotting a bit, “What’s this about <i>my</i> ear?”</div> <div class="indent">“The doc owes Jimmy Buttons, a friend of mine. Jimmy says no problem, he’ll just squeeze him a little and he’ll help us out on this.”</div> <div class="indent">“On what, Willie? What are we doing here?”</div> <div class="indent">“Well, you go see this doctor, he’s a’ ear doctor, and he pokes a hole through your eardrum. Then you go for your draft interview. You tell them at the board, you say, ‘Hey, it’s about time you guys called me. I been waitin’. Where are those Nazis, I’m gonna kill them all.’ Then they say, ‘What a nice boy this one is. Set up his physical.’ You go for the physical, they find the punctured eardrum and bingo! Four-friggin’-eff. It’s back to the Alimony Prison and all them Manhattan Protestant broads you been bangin’, thanks to your buddy, Willie.”</div> <div class="indent">Rondello didn’t like the sound of this. “And what am I? Deaf then? A deaf singer? I have to know tone, I have to know pitch, I have to—”</div> <div class="indent">“Oh, pipe down,” Willie said. “Listen, kid, you ain’t gonna be deaf. Is Sinatra deaf? Can he tone and pitch and whatever the hell? He got the same condition, he’s four-eff just like you gonna be.”</div> <div class="indent">Rondello felt himself relax. “Sinatra? Sinatra’s got a punctured eardrum?”</div> <div class="indent">“Damn right. Probably got it the same way you gonna get yours.”</div> <div class="indent">And so Willie would make the arrangements. Rondello would be 4-F and skip this war. Sorry, folks, too busy. Maybe next time.</div> <div class="indent">“One more thing,” Willie said, “you been a little out of touch with the neighborhood lately. You should get to Brooklyn more often. The guys are startin’ to mumble about it.” Rondello thought about “the guys”—the dreamless, imagination-less pool shooters and card players, boozers and bums and skirt chasers, chain-smoking Luckies and greasing back their hair.</div> <div class="indent">“Yeah, sure, Willie, as soon as I get some time. Maybe next week sometime if I can—”</div> <div class="indent">Willie’s voice cracked like a pistol shot through the phone. “No,” he said. “No, kid, not maybe. And not next week. You get here in a day or two, and you do the right thing, act like ya supposed to act, like a man. Don’t get fancy on me, Johnny, don’t play with me.”</div> <div class="indent">Rondello paled. “Yeah, sure, Willie, tomorrow’s good. Tomorrow night’s good, after the late show, tell the guys. I’ll see ‘em down at the hangout, okay? Then after that, I’ll walk over to Dean Street and see Matty the Milkman.”</div> <div class="indent">Willie sounded placated. “Okay.” He paused. “One more thing. I guess you should hear this from me.”</div> <div class="indent">Rondello frowned into the phone. “What?”</div> <div class="indent">Willie’s voice softened. “Your friend. Your friend Bobby. He ain’t coming home, kid. I’m sorry. I just heard about it this morning.” Rondello could feel his head begin to swim. Bobby Arena, his childhood best friend from the neighborhood. Bobby, like Rondello himself, had been a little different, a little smarter, maybe, than the other kids. In their special friendship, Bobby had once confided his deepest, darkest secret: Bobby liked poetry. He liked to read it. He even liked to write it.</div> <div class="indent">Bobby had flushed red when he told Rondello. “You think maybe I’m like some kind of sissy, Johnny?” he had whispered, his eyes welling with tears.</div> <div class="indent">“Bobby’s… <i>dead</i>?” Rondello asked.</div> <div class="indent">“Yeah, kid. I’m sorry. But he should never have gone and joined up. He got all pissed off after Pearl Harbor, remember? He took it real personal—like those Japs had bombed the Brooklyn Bridge.”</div> <div class="indent">“How? Where?”</div> <div class="indent">“How-where what?”</div> <div class="indent">“How’d he die? Where’d he die? What happened?”</div> <div class="indent">“Oh. I think he got shot. A place called Tarawa, some island somewheres. Too bad, the kid was okay. And I gotta give ‘im this much. He was tough. Hard as nails.”</div> <div class="indent">“Yeah, a tough guy,” Rondello said dully.</div> <div class="indent">“‘Arena the Cleaner,’ the terror of Guadalcanal. Every Jap mother’s nightmare. Whata ya gonna do? Nobody gets outta here alive. I’ll see ya, kid.” Willie hung up.</div> <div class="indent">Two nights later Rondello found himself standing in the second floor walk-up foyer of a battered Dean Street tenement. He dropped his cigarette butt, crushed it out against the black-and-white tiled floor, and he waited.</div> <div class="indent">Matty the Milkman was forty-two years old. He lived alone in a three-room apartment. Each morning, he woke at one-thirty a.m. and fixed a breakfast of farina, jellied toast, and black coffee. He then donned his white uniform and walked two blocks to the BMT subway on Fourth Avenue. He rode to the sprawling dairy in Long Island City where he would load his milk truck with thick, heavy bottles of cold milk, cream, orange juice, and cardboard boxes of butter. By mid-morning his day’s work was done, freeing him to return to the neighborhood and purchase a racing form. By seven p.m. Matty would retire for six hours of sleep before repeating the same daily routine.</div> <div class="indent">As Rondello waited, he found himself pondering the pointlessness of such an existence. It was why, he supposed, Matty took his scant earnings and wagered them on horses and baseball or anything offered by the local bookie, an associate of Willie the Widow Maker. Anything, Rondello supposed, to provide some excitement would be preferable to doing nothing. A sad choice made by a sad, lonely man.</div> <div class="indent">At precisely two-thirty, Rondello saw the apartment door swing open. The foyer where he stood was ten-by-ten-foot square, a steep staircase to the left. An anemic twenty-five-watt bulb was affixed to a far wall, Rondello positioned away from it in shadow. He watched as Matty locked his door and turned toward the stairs.</div> <div class="indent">Rondello stepped forward. He wore a dark trench coat and a black Fedora pulled low on his brow. His hands were jammed into the coat pockets, his shoulders hunched. He had done this before. He knew how to stage it.</div> <div class="indent">“Hey, Matty,” he said, lightly touching the man’s shoulder, a slight snarl to his voice. “You got a minute?”</div> <div class="indent">Matty, deeply startled, gave a gasp and turned toward the voice. Rondello stepped closer, manufacturing an evil smile. Matty took a quick step back in fear.</div> <div class="indent">Rondello sneered. “Willie says hello,” he snarled, then lashed out a backhanded slap, catching Matty hard across his right cheek.</div> <div class="indent">And that was it. John Rondello, aspiring radio star, headliner at Manhattan’s swinging Alimony Prison—now a murderer.</div> <div class="indent">Matty the Milkman fell backward from the top of the stairwell. Halfway down the steps, his neck broke. When his tumbling body finally slammed onto the tile entryway floor, his skull split with a sickening, wet sounding thud. Dead because John Rondello needed to keep Willie the Widow Maker happy; appease him in order to ensure the continued success of his own career.</div> <div class="indent">Rondello, initially frozen in terror, had finally fled. A death occurring during the commission of a felony is legally classified “felony murder.” It carries the same penalty as first degree murder: life imprisonment or death by electric chair; in mob-related cases the latter usually being the punishment of choice.</div> <div class="indent">When Rondello told him what had occurred, Willie was displeased but not particularly concerned. “Stuff happens, kid,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just write off Matty’s debt and set you up with an alibi. If the cops ever figure this for somethin’ more than an accident, which I doubt will ever happen, you’ll have three witnesses ready to say you were with them. Forget about this.”</div> <div class="indent">Now, sitting in the New Jersey bar, Rondello lit a cigarette and tried to force thoughts of Matty the Milkman from his mind. Instead, he thought of Bobby Arena. Poor, pale, skinny Bobby. Sometimes Rondello believed it was Bobby’s secret love of poetry that had propelled him to the Marine Corp recruiting office that December day two years earlier. Bobby Arena, “Arena the Cleaner,” the street guys nicknamed him after Guadalcanal. Bobby had used a flame thrower on the Canal, moving under fire from rat-hole to rat-hole, burning to death the pitiful, half-starved Japanese kids who huddled down in those holes, chained to their machine guns. Bobby had sprayed the liquid fire into the holes then listened for screams. He cleaned them out alright, scores of them, and thus the nickname “Arena the Cleaner,” for the gentle, quiet boy who proved to himself and everyone else that he was no sissy.</div> <div class="indent">Rondello shook his head to clear it of the haunting ghosts and ordered beer from the slight, pimply-faced waitress who had suddenly materialized next to his table. He watched her shuffle away.</div> <div class="indent"><i>And I’m no different</i>, thought Rondello. What am <i>I </i>trying to prove? Here I sit dressed in this costume waiting to catch a bus from Fort Dix to New York City for thirty days’ Christmas leave. And then what? Europe for sure. Rondello had heard the rumors. He had sized up the situation. The Wehrmacht was collapsing. The Russians were already kicking them back to Germany. An allied invasion was imminent, the glory-seeking generals had figured out a surefire way of getting themselves into the history books. Invade Europe, probably from England and probably soon<i>. God almighty why didn’t I just have my damn eardrum punctured?</i> he thought. <i>What was </i>I<i> trying to prove?</i> His thoughts slipped back to Willie Cosentino’s reaction when he told him he hadn’t gone through with the procedure. While Rondello attempted to explain that which he couldn’t fully understand himself and most likely never would, he had seen the fury ablaze within Willie’s muddy brown eyes.</div> <div class="indent">“You didn’t do it?!” Willie had screamed. “You stupid moron, you didn’t do it!”</div> <div class="indent">“Willie, I… I couldn’t. Everybody else is going. I gotta go, too. I don’t know why exactly, maybe for Bobby, I don’t know. It’s just bad luck that I’m draft age in nineteen forty-three and there’s a war going on. I <i>gotta</i> go.”</div> <div class="indent">Willie reached out a stub-fingered hand covered with coarse black curly hair. He took hold of Rondello’s shirt front.</div> <div class="indent">“You stupid sucker!” he hissed, his eyes slit and his breath sour and foul. “You just don’t get it. You think they won’t have a war for slum kids to fight in 1953? 1963? 1973? Didja check out Ford’s profits last year? Kaiser’s? General Electric’s? They found their answer, kid, same as we found ours. <i>Our</i> future is dope: heroin. It’s the new bootleg, the future gambling and prostitution, ‘cause that’ll all get legalized someday. But never heroin. That’s <i>our </i>future, and we’re gonna eat up and spit out dead a whole bunch of slum kids with that dope. And Ford and them others, they do the same thing with the same slum kids. War, Johnny, that’s <i>their</i> answer, that’s their future. War.” He pushed Rondello away from him. “Go fight for them, kid. Go get killed. But believe me, if you survive it, you can forget about singin’ in <i>this </i>town. You wanna kiss up to the citizens, kid, you go ahead. But I’ll see you dead before you ever get a job in this town again. You’ll be finished. Now beat it.”</div> <div class="indent">“Listen, Willie,” Rondello pleaded, “this war, it’s the defining event of my lifetime. Of my whole generation. Twenty years from now, what am I going to say, what do I tell people? Bobby went and died—what do I tell people <i>I</i> did?”</div> <div class="indent">Willie shook his head. “You ain’t no different from the politicians who started this mess, Johnny. You’re just looking for a place in history, and you’re too damn stupid to see that it don’t make a rat’s ass bit a difference to nobody what you do.”</div> <div class="indent">“But Willie…”</div> <div class="indent">“No!” he hissed. “No. Save it. I had big hopes for you, kid. You’re with me or against me. You do this, if you go, you’re against me. End of story.”</div> <div class="indent">Rondello leaned his head back and brought both hands to his forehead. He slowly massaged his brow before lowering his eyes back to Willie’s stone chiseled face.</div> <div class="indent">“Why, Willie? Why does it have to be like that?”</div> <div class="indent">Willie sighed. “You really don’t know, do you?”</div> <div class="indent">“No. I don’t.”</div> <div class="indent">“Because, kid, you were gonna make me legit. You were gonna be a star, a big star. On the radio. All the best joints, gigs with the real big-timers—Dorsey, Miller, all a’ them. You were gonna go places I could never go, meet people I could never meet. That’s why I helped you, that’s why I used up favors and promised out favors, leaned on people. You were gonna make it real big, kid, and it would be because a’ me. And then someday maybe I’d live in some big house out on Long Island somewheres, and all my neighbors would have their noses up in the air every time they seen me. But then I’d call on you, Johnny Rondello, the big star, and you’d be right there for me. Maybe sing at my daughter’s wedding even. And all them people, all them white bread bastards, they’d all know I was <i>somebody. </i>They’d know I was somebody <i>big</i>! Somebody they would have to respect.”</div> <div class="indent">“Willie, please…”</div> <div class="indent">“No, kid, that’s it. Beat it. You was selling shoes when you came to me for a break, and I set you up in Sally’s club in Flatbush. Remember? You was sellin’ shoes. And if them krauts don’t kill ya first, which I hope they do, then that’s how you’re gonna die—selling shoes.”</div> <div class="indent">The waitress’ reappearance pulled Rondello from his memories. She set the bottle of Pabst down in front of him.</div> <div class="indent">“Twenty-five cents,” she said.</div> <div class="indent">He dropped a dollar on her tray. “And bring me a double shot of J & B, too,” he said, realizing a sudden need for harsh liquor in this throat.</div> <div class="indent">After she had come and gone a second time, Rondello drank the scotch quickly, washing it down with the cold beer. There had been a time when he avoided hard liquor, fearful of its ravishing effect on his vocal cords, but those days were long gone.</div> <div class="indent">Now his fear was of the future, a steeped, utter fear, and it was a new experience for him. His future had always seemed so bright, so promising, and now it loomed black and bleak before him. He had been so very much afraid lately. It was hard for him to sleep even after long, grueling days of Advanced Infantry Training. The nights would enhance his terror, and it would creep across him with an icy liquidity, stirring loosely in his bowels, knotting the muscles of his jaw.</div> <div class="indent">Because he knew what was coming. His imagination had often been cruel to him growing up as he had on the streets of Brooklyn, and now that imagination stabbed at him without mercy. In the senses of his mind, he heard the combat, smelled it, even tasted it. He was just too imaginative for the infantry. It was that simple.</div> <div class="indent">He sipped at his beer and thoughts of Bobby Arena returned to him. They had grown up together, sharing a magical secret bond of imagination. They dreamed their dreams together, each one separate, different, yet so alike and so sweet. Bobby with his dreams of poetry, Rondello with his dreams of singing, performing, becoming a star on the radio. And now Bobby lay rotting, buried raw and bloody in some distant volcanic ash of a grave, his poetry silent, dead forever on his decaying, maggot-ridden lips.</div> <div class="indent">The other kids had no idea about the poetry—not Jake or Zoot or Little Danny. Bobby’s eyes had often twinkled with their secret as he and Rondello moved into their teens, cocky and swaggering, exploring the girls, testing the waters…</div> <div class="indent">Rondello shook the memories from his head and drained his beer. He called to the waitress and sat blank eyed as she brought the second round. He lifted the scotch to his mouth. “For you, Bobby,” he said, and knocked the liquor back into his throat.</div> <div class="indent">And now it was his own dream which lay dead and gone. Even if he did come away from the war undamaged, which he seriously doubted, there’d be Willie to deal with. Willie the Widow Maker did not make idle threats; he did not change his mind. He had the means to make good his threat to Rondello. If Willie got on the phone to Manhattan, Rondello would be through in New York. Not one club, not the Copacabana, not the Latin Quarter, certainly not the Alimony Prison would touch him with a ten foot pole. Not if Willie said no. Not if they wanted their linens cleaned, their waiters at work, their liquor delivered. No, Johnny Rondello was finished in New York, even if he managed to survive long enough for it to matter. And if he dared re-locate to Chicago or Los Angeles or anywhere, the ultimate threat still existed: Matty the Milkman and that horrible tenement staircase.</div> <div class="indent">Rondello’s thoughts then turned to his last show at the club. A scout from NBC had been there watching, listening, assessing him. The guy had come away impressed.</div> <div class="indent">“Call me,” he had said. “When you get out of the service, call me. I really like your style.” Rondello smiled a bitter smile and drank his beer dry. Would the guy still like his style when some bent-nose walked into his office and asked for a special “favor” for “the boys”? When a police detective came in voicing allegations and alluding to murder? No, style wouldn’t be enough then. There were plenty of guys with style, and they would come with no strings attached.</div> <div class="indent">He called for yet another round and glanced again at his Timex. It was just after eleven, and he was drinking much too fast. He shrugged away the thought. So what? Maybe he’d manage to get some sleep on the bus ride if he were drunk enough.</div> <div class="indent">He was just finishing off another scotch when the shadow fell across his table. He looked up to his right and saw her standing there. It was the hooker from the bar, the beer sipper. She smiled at him.</div> <div class="indent">“Hiya, Johnny,” she said. He frowned. They always call a guy Johnny, these bimbos. An unfortunate coincidence in his case.</div> <div class="indent">“I’m not interested, sister, beat it,” he said, reaching for his beer and dropping his eyes from her.</div> <div class="indent">She didn’t move. Rondello let five seconds pass then looked back at her face. He saw that she was about his age, slightly younger. She had short, strawberry-blond hair that was almost natural and high cheek bones. Her nose was small and cute, and she had nice green eyes. It came as a surprise to him that she was pretty. He blinked the surprise away.</div> <div class="indent">“Look, honey,” he said in low, cold tones. He wanted to hurt her, drive her away, make her leave him to his scotch and beer and dead friends and dead dreams.</div> <div class="indent">“Look,” he repeated, his eyes hard, “it ain’t my problem you’re all dressed up with no one to screw, okay? Just leave me alone. There’s fifteen other guys in here for you to impress. You don’t need me.”</div> <div class="indent">He could see hurt come into her face and waited for her anger. He had dealt with pushy whores before, ever since he was seventeen and just starting to work the bars and clubs. He knew the routine. He figured now she would curse him and call him queer and then buzz off. But the hurt remained. There was no anger in her eyes. He frowned. What the hell…?</div> <div class="indent">“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked in a tiny voice, a girl’s voice. “I thought maybe you just didn’t see me when you first came in, but that’s not it. You <i>really</i> don’t remember.” Rondello slid his chair back and looked at her hard. His memory stared back at him blankly as he scanned her features, her mannerisms. She stood still before him almost like a child, clutching her purse against her stomach, eyes wide.</div> <div class="indent">“Look, sister, let’s not waste each other’s time,” he said, using a softer tone than before. “If this is some kind of hustle, let me tell you, you ain’t in my league. You’re a small-town kid playing dress-up, okay? So if it’s a hustle, you better just forget about it.”</div> <div class="indent">The girl looked at him, and he could see a slight defiance come into her face. He felt a sudden deepening of his sadness and wondered why and tried to push it away. He knew he was already drunk.</div> <div class="indent">“I’ll go, Johnny,” she said, and this time he realized she knew his name, he wasn’t just another john to her. “If that’s what you want. But you should remember. You said you would.” She seemed to brace herself then, throwing back her shoulders. “And anyway, I don’t care if you forgot. I almost forgot, too. I woulda forgot except for, ‘I’ll Never Smile Again.’ Except for that, I woulda forgot, too.” She began to turn from him.</div> <div class="indent">He reached out a hand, grabbing her arm.</div> <div class="indent">“Wait,” he said. “Wait a minute. What, ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’? What does that mean?”</div> <div class="indent">She turned to face him again. He could tell that although she was trying not to, she began to smile at him.</div> <div class="indent">“You sang it for me, Johnny,” she said softly. “You sang ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’ just for <i>me</i>.”</div> <div class="indent">His face remained blank while his thoughts swirled behind his eyes. If he had a nickel for every broad he had sung to…</div> <div class="indent">The girl slipped her arm from his light grasp.</div> <div class="indent">“I’ll ne-<i>ver</i> smile a-gain until I smile at you.” She sang slowly and off-key in low tones as he watched and listened. He found himself beginning to remember.</div> <div class="indent">He stood up slowly. “I’ll never laugh a-gain—what good would it do?” he crooned in a barely audible voice.</div> <div class="indent">“You’re… Linda, right?” he said. She slapped lightly at his chest. “Lucy,” she said. “Not Linda, Lucy.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.</div> <div class="indent">“Well, hell,” he said, pulling out a chair for her, “don’t get mad. At least I had the right letter of the alphabet.”</div> <div class="indent">Lucy laughed and sat down. “I’ll bet that’s better than you usually do,” she said happily.</div> <div class="indent">Johnny sat and looked across the table at her. Lucy was smiling serenely. It was as though nothing unpleasant had just occurred between them. She appeared totally pleased, completely at peace with being there with him. Rondello called for the waitress, and while Lucy ordered beer, he took the opportunity to remember her more fully.</div> <div class="indent">Although he couldn’t quite place the face, and indeed the woman across from him could very well be a complete stranger, he had at least recalled the particular event. It had been about two months earlier, while he was in Basic Training. His company had received a twenty-four-hour pass for high performance on the rifle range, and Rondello, like most of the others, headed for this small town nestled just beside the sprawling Fort Dix.</div> <div class="indent">He remembered drinking quite a lot, something he rarely did. It seemed to him now, thinking back, that he had been trying to drink away his need for a woman. By that point he had been confined to one or another Army post for a long time and was thoroughly sick of unrelenting male companionship. In retrospect, he found his logic questionable; he wondered if it was, in fact, even possible to drink away the need for a woman. It certainly seemed unlikely at best, counterproductive at worst.</div> <div class="indent">And so he had found a woman, and they had a pretty good time in whatever bar they were in. He felt fairly certain that it hadn’t been this bar, the one they were in now, but he couldn’t be sure. They wound up in a room somewhere, and he vaguely recalled some discussion about price and nature of services. Now he fought to push away the blanketing dark fog on his memory.</div> <div class="indent">“Lucy,” he said as he watched her sip at a fresh beer, “I’m a little shaky on the details, you know, about that night, but I do remember I had a good time.”</div> <div class="indent">She smiled around her glass. “So did I, Johnny,” she said.</div> <div class="indent">Johnny had heard enough tactful chatter from pros to smile at her answer. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll just bet. But what I want to know, if you don’t mind me askin’ is, well… did I <i>pay</i> you?”</div> <div class="indent">Lucy laughed. “Well, we weren’t exactly on a date, you know. I <i>was </i>working.”</div> <div class="indent">“Oh,” he said. The information disturbed him. He had only paid for sex once. He was sixteen and he and Bobby had gotten themselves hooked up with two older guys from the neighborhood. He remembered the stark tenement on Pacific Street and the haggard, bleached-out old whore that had taken the four of them. He shuddered. Damn shame he hadn’t been blind drunk <i>that </i>night.</div> <div class="indent">“Oh,” he repeated and drank more scotch.</div> <div class="indent">Lucy looked across at him. Her eyes were twinkling. “You really don’t remember much about it, do you?”</div> <div class="indent">He shrugged. “I do remember singing to you. ‘I’ll Never Smile Again,’ one of my big numbers.”</div> <div class="indent">Lucy giggled. “Oh, I shouldn’t even tell you, you’re so silly. But I will anyway.”</div> <div class="indent">Johnny cocked his head to one side. He could never remember a hooker using the word ‘silly’ before, and it had an innocently appealing ring to it. He suddenly began to worry. <i>How lonely am I? </i>he thought.</div> <div class="indent">“Tell me what?”</div> <div class="indent">“Well, you did pay me. Three dollars.” She shook her hair and brushed a strand from her forehead. “And then I paid you. Three dollars.”</div> <div class="indent">“What?” he asked, his brows arching.</div> <div class="indent">Lucy laughed. “It was <i>your</i> idea. You said, ‘I’ll pay you for sex, and you pay me for a song. You’re a pro, I’m a pro.’” She began to giggle. “Then you said, ‘Tit for tat, tit for tat,’ and got all hysterical laughing. You were so <i>silly.</i>”</div> <div class="indent">He shook his head. “Remind me never to switch to a comedy routine.”</div> <div class="indent">Lucy was still giggling. It seemed the more they talked, the more animated her features became, the prettier she seemed to become.</div> <div class="indent">“You were really nice,” she said. “A real gentleman. At first I was a little scared, you know. When we went into the room, you led me right to the bed and made me sit down. Your hair was all messed up, and you kept muttering about something and then you would laugh. I knew you were from the city, from New York, and some of you guys from <i>New York</i>! Well, I could tell you some stories, believe me. But you turned out to be nice. Really swell. But so <i>silly</i>!”</div> <div class="indent">“Yeah, that’s me, nice guy all the way.” He looked at her. “But don’t you get scared lots of times? I mean, with some of these guys?” he jerked his head towards the bar and the sullen, hunched shouldered group of G.I.s. “Some of these guys are really animals, especially these rebel rouser characters from Ole Miss’ or wherever.”</div> <div class="indent">Lucy shook her head. “The worst are you New York guys. Believe me, I could tell you some stories.”</div> <div class="indent">They sat and drank for a while. Johnny could feel a strange conflict developing within himself as he grew more drunk. There was such an easy lack of tension between them; it was so comfortable to sit in silence with her that he ironically found himself beginning to tense up. He didn’t <i>want </i>comfortable silence; it seemed dangerously intimate to him. What he wanted was slick conversation and false bravado, the phoniness he usually brought to his always transient female relationships. It was what kept him free and in charge and out of danger. Yet, he found himself enjoying this. His thoughts suddenly returned to Bobby. He and Bobby had spent much time together in comfortable silence. Sometimes, when they were kids, they would hop on the Third Avenue trolley and ride up to Shore Road and the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge. They would climb down the ridge to the edge of the Narrows and sit with their backs against huge rocks and gaze across the flat water to Staten Island. Sometimes they would smoke two-for-a-penny cigarettes, and Bobby would read silently from his battered book of Whitman poetry. When was the last time he had thought about Walt Whitman? It seemed very long ago.</div> <div class="indent">Now he sat and drank for a while longer before leaning slightly forward across the table toward Lucy. He felt the sudden rush of the beer and scotch envelop him. <i>Damn</i>, he thought, <i>I’m scared and very drunk and lonely and sitting with a whore that could be somebody sweet. Careful, careful, don’t talk, don’t speak.</i></div> <div class="indent">But he did. He seemed to be observing himself from somewhere off in the corner beside the sad Christmas tree. He imagined Bobby there in the corner with him, amused. “Go ahead, Johnny,” Bobby whispered to him, “go ahead, Buddy, open up. Open up. It won’t <i>kill</i> you.”</div> <div class="indent">“Lucy,” he said softly, his eyes pleading. “Lucy, I’m scared. Really scared.”</div> <div class="indent">Lucy saw the change come over him. She put her glass down. Her face grew serious, yet, at the same time remained oddly soft. “I think maybe you’re pretty drunk, Johnny,” she said into his sad brown eyes.</div> <div class="indent">“Yeah, okay, I know, I’m drunk. But I am scared, Lucy, scared real bad.”</div> <div class="indent">She reached out a hand and gently touched his cheek. “I know, baby, I know. All you guys are scared. It’ll be okay. The war can end soon, real soon, maybe even before you get there.”</div> <div class="indent">He shook his head. “Not without an invasion, Lucy. They won’t let it end without that. It’s what they want, a big, flashy invasion for the newsreels and the history books. These guys, these presidents and generals and premiers and kings, they don’t live for their <i>lives</i>—they live for history, for some scatterbrained idea of immortality. They don’t care about people’s dreams, your dreams, Bobby’s dreams, my dreams. They just care about history, <i>their</i> place in history, nothing else.” Through the banging now suddenly sounding in his head, Johnny could hear an echoing of his words, an echoing of Willie the Widow Maker’s words.</div> <div class="indent">Lucy didn’t know who Bobby was, but she knew about dreams. She had her own dreams once, and they hadn’t included whoring in some run-down bar in New Jersey.</div> <div class="indent">She couldn’t think of anything to say that would be comforting and still carry truthfulness. It occurred to her that truth rarely held comfort for anyone anyway; certainly not for her. So she remained silent, taking his hand and rubbing it gently between her own.</div> <div class="indent">Johnny raised squinted eyes to meet hers. “Lucy,” he said softly. “Do you believe in fate? Some intervention from God or the universe or something—some force that evens up the score? Do you think there’s an ultimate justice to everything, like we all get what’s coming to us?”</div> <div class="indent">She pondered it, instinctively aware of, without fully understanding, the deep need in him, the sudden importance of her opinion.</div> <div class="indent">“I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “But—from what I’ve seen so far in life—I’d have to guess, no. No—there is no ultimate justice.” She found herself tensing, her throat seeming to close on itself. “No justice at all.”</div> <div class="indent">He gave a slight head shake. “I’m not so sure about that. I think, maybe… I’m gonna get what’s comin’ to me.”</div> <div class="indent">“You’ll be okay, Johnny, you’re not going to get killed.”</div> <div class="indent">He looked deeper into her eyes. “Killed?” he asked as if the thought had never occurred to him. “Killed? It’s okay if I get killed, Lucy. If I get killed, the show’s over, that’s it, goodnight Irene. I can get killed, that’d be okay; I’m not leaving anything behind. But there’s worse things than that, things I’m <i>really</i> scared of. What if they blow my legs off or shoot my arms off? What if they burn me up, Lucy? I saw a guy back in the neighborhood, some kid I never liked, he’d been a tank gunner. They cooked him in that tank like a roast pepper. He came back lookin’ like a monster. He had no eyelids, Lucy, no eyelids! He had to wear special glasses that made him look like a giant house fly.”</div> <div class="indent">Lucy felt her eyes tearing up. “I know, Johnny, I know,” she said. “It’ll be alright, you’ll be alright.”</div> <div class="indent">He sat back in his chair. Johnny could feel his heart racing. He looked quickly at his watch. It was nearly time to go across to the depot, catch that bus, get out of here. Get back to the neighborhood, maybe go see Willie. Yeah, he thought, that was it. Go see Willie. Tell Willie that he made a mistake, what a fool he had been not to listen. Get me out of this, Willie, please get me out of this! All I wanna do is sing, that’s all, I got nothing against the krauts, the Japs, or those Italian clowns! Just let me stay home and sing. The bartender suddenly cleared his throat harshly. “Okay, folks, drink up, drink ‘em up. Last call, this is it, last call. Closin’ time is midnight, and this here is the last call.”</div> <div class="indent">Johnny looked at Lucy with panic in his eyes. She forced a smile across to him.</div> <div class="indent">“It’ll be okay, Johnny. You’ll see, it’ll be okay.”</div> <div class="indent">He shook his head. “No,” he said. “It won’t. I’m not afraid to die, Lucy, ‘cause I’m already dead. My <i>dream</i> is dead. All I got left are my arms and my legs and my eyes, but no dream. Just like Bobby has no dream left. It’s over, Lucy.”</div> <div class="indent">Lucy felt a flutter of fear and pity in her heart and believed he was right, sensed somehow he knew what was coming. Her eyes over-brimmed with moisture as she leaned across the table and squeezed his trembling hands.</div> <div class="indent">“It’ll be okay. You’ll have your dreams, Johnny. It’ll be okay.”</div> <div class="indent">But cool, hip, smooth-talking Johnny Rondello knew better. It wouldn’t be okay. Maybe it had never been okay.</div> <div class="indent">He pulled his hand away from Lucy’s and drained his beer glass. As he set it down with trembling fingers, he could feel tears running freely down his cheeks.</div> <div class="indent">Lucy stood and moved to his side. She took hold of his arm and helped him to his feet. He was unsteady, very drunk.</div> <div class="indent">“Come on, Johnny,” she said gently. “It’s last call. Let’s get out of here.”</div> <div class="indent">She took a final look around the barroom.</div> <div class="indent">“It’s last call,” she repeated.</div> <div class="spacer"></div> </body> </html>

Lou Manfredo

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Step into the gritty world of crime and consequence with award-winning author Lou Manfredo's first collection. "A Dozen Ways to Die" offers twelve meticulously crafted tales that span the breadth of American history and the depths of human nature. From the smoky speakeasies of Prohibition to the neon-lit streets of modern cities, Manfredo's stories peel back the layers of morality, justice, and the human condition. Meet a cast of unforgettable characters: hardboiled detectives, conflicted soldiers, cunning gangsters, and ordinary people facing extraordinary choices. Among the twelve stories in this collection, "The Alimony Prison" is a Prohibition-era tale of corruption and survival; "Last Call" is a poignant exploration of a World War II soldier's moral struggle; and "Soul Anatomy" is a contemporary story that delves into the complexities of police shootings and ethical dilemmas. Manfredo's prose crackles with authenticity, drawing on his extensive experience in law enforcement to paint vivid, realistic portraits of crime and its consequences. His unique blend of classic noir sensibilities and modern storytelling creates a collection that is both timeless and timely. "A Dozen Ways to Die" is more than just a collection of crime fiction – it's a journey through the darker corners of the American experience, where the lines between right and wrong blur, and every choice has a price. Perfect for fans of Raymond Chandler, Dennis Lehane, and anyone who appreciates finely crafted crime fiction that goes beyond the surface to explore the complexities of the human psyche.

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padding-bottom: 1.4em; } p.alignment-block-content { text-indent: 0px; margin-top: 0em; } p.alignment-block-content-left { text-align: left; } p.alignment-block-content-center { text-align: center; } p.alignment-block-content-right { text-align: right; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="chapter-1" class="element element-bodymatter element-container-single element-type-chapter element-with-heading" role="doc-chapter" epub:type="chapter"> <div class="heading heading-container-single heading-size-full heading-format-full heading-alignment-flexible heading-without-image"> <div class="heading-contents"> <div class="title-subtitle-block title-block-title-is-element-number"> <div class="element-number-block"> </div> <div class="title-block"> <h1 class="element-title case-upper">ONE</h1> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text" id="chapter-1-text"> <h2 id="subhead-1" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">FINDING MY FOOTING</h2> <p class="first first-in-chapter first-full-width first-after-subhead"><span class="first-phrase">I grew</span> up about two miles from Possum Trot, a rural community in Western Kentucky. I was a shy, awkward kid who was not particularly good at sports, nor was I a good student. I was average at best. I didn’t have a lot of friends in school. I just tried to blend in. It was 1970 when I graduated from North Marshall High School. Most of us were just hanging out waiting to see if we would be drafted. My first job out of high school was as a riverboat deckhand. It was good money, but it wasn’t for me. In fact, the job was not the adventure I thought it would be. It wasn’t long before I decided I needed to do something else with my life just in case I wasn’t drafted. I enrolled in a community college where I had to really study and apply myself just to make average grades. I guess this was because I had not learned much in high school.</p> <p class="subsq">After two years in community college, I enrolled in Murray State University, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I attended one year of graduate school, but I was burned out. I was tired of being so poor and living on student loans. When I finally got my draft notice, I went for my physical and was turned down because I had flat feet.</p> <p class="subsq">Probably the biggest influence in my life was my practice of Karate while I was in college. I had a knack for it. I would practice every day for hours. I became obsessed. When I earned my black belt in Wado Ryu–style Karate, I started entering tournaments. One of my instructors was Sensei Vic Milner. I became an instructor and taught Karate at the university. I also taught in several local Dojos. I had won tournaments in the black belt division in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. I only lost two times, once in a full-contact event in Alabama and once in a “Battle of Champions.” Some of my students were guards and supervisors from KSP. I had a standing offer as a guard if I ever needed a job.</p> <p class="subsq">I graduated from college in the Jimmy Carter years while the economy was stalled. There were no jobs. Finally, I decided to give the prison a try. What did I have to lose? I didn’t have any other prospects for a job unless I wanted to go back on a riverboat or go back to graduate school. So I applied for the job and was hired as a correctional officer. I never looked back.</p> <h2 id="subhead-2" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">THE BELLY OF THE BEAST</h2> <p class="first first-after-subhead">My first day at KSP (Kentucky State Prison) was July 3, 1978. And I was nervous. As I rounded the curve and drove down the road from Pea Ridge, there it was, looming like a medieval fortress on the banks of Lake Barkley. The Castle on the Cumberland River. What had I gotten myself into? I could only imagine what convicted inmates might think when they see the Castle for the first time. The prison itself resembles something out of the Middle Ages, with its soaring walls, stone parapets, and heavily guarded watchtowers. An imposing place, with a reputation to match.</p> <p class="subsq">As I started up the crumbling steps to the main entrance, I heard a grumpy voice say, “HALT! State your business.” I stopped dead in my tracks. The command to halt sounded threatening—as if I might be shot if I didn’t obey.</p> <p class="subsq">I looked up and saw a middle-aged man peering down at me from the gun tower. I responded, “I am Philip Parker, and I am reporting to work.”</p> <p class="subsq">“Go ahead,” was all he said. I didn’t know what to think about this first encounter, but I knew I was about to enter a strange, new world.</p> <p class="subsq">As I approached the front gate, I stepped aside as several uniformed men with shotguns came running from the armory located at just off the top of the steps. Startled, I stepped aside and froze as they passed. I thought to myself, <i>What in the hell is this about?</i></p> <p class="subsq">I learned later that there had been a mass escape from Four Cell House. My very first day. Three inmates, Joe Craig, James Hatfield, and Charles Murphy, had cut through their cell bars and made their way down the short distance from the opening to the ground using bedsheets fashioned into a braided rope. As with every prison escape, their luck was fleeting; the men were apprehended a few days later. As first impressions go, this was a lot to take in for a new corrections officer.</p> <p class="subsq">I stood at the entrance, waiting to be ushered in. There was no control center at the time to automatically open prison doors. After the front gate officer keyed the lock, I crossed the threshold and entered the belly of the beast. One of the things I never quite became accustomed to after all my years in the Castle was the smell. The Castle has an odor unlike anything I have ever experienced: an ungodly combination of cigarette smoke, body odor, sewer gas, death, and history. It still smells that way to me. Some five decades later, I still notice that odor as I walk up to the prison gates. Half-jokingly, I always say it is the smell of the Castle Beast, the one that trolls the front entrance, taunting all those who sense its presence.</p> <p class="subsq">After filling out employment paperwork with two other new hires, we were told to go to the receiver’s basement to get our uniforms. I thought to myself, <i>What the hell is the receiver’s basement?</i> Turns out it was a warehouse in the basement of Five Cell House with an outside entrance. I learned my first lesson on the job: prison workers have their own language to describe the Castle’s twisty, cavernous interior. I knew we had to learn fast or we would not find our way around. KSP is enormous, with five large cell blocks that housed 1,200 inmates in 1978. In subsequent years, two new cell blocks were added, even as the overall population decreased to around 980, because inmates no longer shared cells.</p> <p class="subsq">With uniforms in hand, the new hires were directed to report to the hospital for a physical. The hospital, I later learned, was a state-licensed facility complete with infirmary beds, a surgical wing, a pharmacy, and an emergency room. But we had no idea how to get there. After wandering around the sprawling prison yard for what seemed like an eternity, one of the older guards took pity on us and pointed to where we had to go.</p> <p class="subsq">A man in a lab coat with a stethoscope led me into an exam room and asked some standard questions about my health. I filled out a medical history as he listened to my heart and lungs, took my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. I thought he was a doctor. Several weeks later, I saw him in the canteen line and realized the man I mistook for a doctor was actually a convict.</p> <h2 id="subhead-3" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">SOMETHING FISHY</h2> <p class="first first-after-subhead">A “fish” is a term used to describe a newly hired officer or a new inmate who just got off the bus. Why, I don’t know. It is just prison slang. The “fish tank” was a row of cells in One Cell House used to house inmates until they had been given an orientation and a list of the rules. They would also meet the Classification Committee to be assigned a job and a cell.</p> <p class="subsq">A fish <i>officer</i> is a new hire who has not attended the academy or learned the ropes. These rookie officers are basically useless and treated accordingly. You remained a fish officer until you became familiar with all the ins-and-outs of daily prison operations and earned a small degree of respect. You had to prove yourself, meaning you would not run from trouble and you would back up your fellow officers. You also had to follow orders to the letter.</p> <p class="subsq">I was hired in with two middle-aged female employees, Betty Blackwell and Rosy Mitchell. In the late 1970s, only a handful of females were hired as correctional officers. It was still a man’s world, but that was rapidly changing for the better. Nora Aldridge was the first female hired as a correctional officer sometime around 1976. Soon after, Judy Groves was hired and had already made sergeant by the time I came aboard. I try to imagine how they must have felt entering such a hostile, male-dominated environment, where danger and violence were the norm. These were courageous and brave women.</p> <p class="subsq">As the three of us made our way out to the receiver’s basement, we had to traverse a sidewalk just below Four Cell House then Five Cell House. Inmates could stand at the barred windows in the hallways of Five Cell House and look down at the walkway we were on, the cars in the parking lot, and the boat traffic on Lake Barkley. We were about to learn our next lesson.</p> <p class="subsq">Betty Blackwell, walking next to me on the winding sidewalk, was a middle-aged blond with an attractive figure, and Rosie Mitchell, a middle-aged person of color, strode alongside Betty as we made our way to the receiver’s basement. As we passed under Five Cell House, we could hear a whistle and catcall from somewhere above us on one of the four floors of Five Cell House. “Shake it, baby, shake it!” I was street smart and did not look toward the direction of the voice. Betty reflexively glanced up, however, and that same voice yelled, “Not you, Bitch. HIM.” I thought, <i>Oh my God, they are talking to me!</i> Another lesson for a fish guard.</p> <h2 id="subhead-4" class="section-title subhead keep-with-next paragraph-follows case-upper">TRAINING</h2> <p class="first first-after-subhead">Training consisted of a two-week academy at Eastern Kentucky University, the training center for all correctional officers and police officers in Kentucky. After the academy, we endured a week of firearms training at KSP, followed by on-the-job training. Before could be scheduled for the academy, I had to shadow more experienced officers. I was not allowed to work by myself until I graduated from the academy.</p> </div> </div> </body> </html>

Philip W. Parker

Guard (Ebook) $4.99

Guard: A True Story of Duty, Sacrifice, and Leadership in Kentucky's Maximum Security Penitentiary Step Behind the Bars: Experience life inside “The Castle,” Kentucky State Penitentiary, through the eyes of a seasoned prison guard. Witness Unthinkable Events: From mass escapes and hostage crises to daily violence and racial tensions, every page delivers gripping, real-life drama. Relive Harrowing Moments: Discover chilling details, including a highway crime spree where two officers were shot, and the struggles of managing executions. Explore the Evolution of Justice: Learn how the penitentiary transformed from medieval punishments to modern-day practices, reflecting the changing face of the prison system. Gain Unique Insights: Understand the toll on those tasked with managing society’s most dangerous individuals, as well as the compassion and resilience required for the job. Perfect for True Crime and Memoir Fans: An unforgettable read for those captivated by real stories of duty, sacrifice, and leadership under extreme conditions. Dr. Norman Rose, professor of Sociology and Criminology at Kent State University, will be pairing Guard with his book, A Career in Corrections, for use with his students. When used together in a course, the books offer students the opportunity to read insightful perspectives of an instructor within the discipline and a correction officer within the field, providing them with a holistic and comprehensive understanding of work within the corrections system. https://titles.cognella.com/a-career-in-corrections-9798823310499

Mitchell R. Stevens

North to the Caliphate (Paperback) $15.95

Former Navy SEAL Jack Landis may have taken on more than he can handle. While investigating a relatively simple slaughter of animals in Iraq, what he finds is an empty field with large pools of blood surrounded by mysterious scorch marks. It doesn’t take him long to conclude that the scorches could have been made by extremely powerful laser weapons. The resources it would take to build and deploy weaponry like that far exceeds what the Iraqis could muster. So the question becomes, who fired these weapons?Back in Washington, CIA Deputy Director Richard North is outraged when he is passed over for the top job, a job that he had earned. Lou Pendleton is a buffoon and political lackey and won’t be hard to disgrace. But North quickly finds that Pendleton isn’t as easy to knock off the top spot as he had thought. When scandal doesn’t work, North turns to more extreme measures, putting the United States and thousands of lives in harm’s way.Pendleton asks Jack to take on the responsibility for tracking down North and stopping him. This leads Landis to Russia and the Middle East, where he must rely on his training, instincts, and a network of allies, some more reliable than others, to navigate the labyrinth of clues to stop North from precipitating World War III.

Kimberly Croft

Dear Prudence (Paperback) $15.95

As the campaign manager for Senator Alex Conrad, Prudence Romain must go to any lengths to hide her past. As Senator Conrad prepares for a presidential run, Prudence can’t fight her feelings for him any longer. Despite the difference in their ages, she is shocked when he confesses his love for her as well. But their simple love affair is made infinitely more complex—and dangerous—when their relationship is made public. The press, the opposing candidate, and even Senator Conrad’s ex want to destroy their relationship. Their love can withstand the pressure, but can his bid for the presidency survive the truth?

Dr. Ashley Baker

The Ashes of Us (Ebook) $4.99

Would you do the unthinkable for your child? Every parent believes they’d sacrifice anything for their children. The Ashes of Us dares readers to explore the true cost of that belief. When Addison McCall, a brilliant college student, is brutally assaulted, she turns to her father with a reprehensible request. She believes that ending her perpetrator’s life is the only way to find peace. Dr. David McCall, a respected clinical pathologist, possesses the means, medical knowledge, and skill to carry out her chilling plea. Driven by love, guilt, and a desperate need to protect his daughter, Dr. McCall steps into a moral abyss that could destroy his soul, and the very bond they share. In her gripping second novel, The Ashes of Us, Dr. Ashley Baker, PsyD (author and clinical psychologist), navigates themes of generational trauma, the power of paternal love, and the devastating price of seeking justice.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Untitled</title> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"/> <style> /* ePub CSS */ h1 {padding-top: 15%;} .indent {text-indent: 5%;} .center {text-align: center;} .right {text-align: right;} .margin {margin: 0 5%;} .margin-indent {margin: 0 5%; text-indent: 5%;} .bigmargin {margin: 0 5% 0 10%;} .bigmargin-indent {margin: 0 5% 0 10%; text-indent: 5%;} .hugemargin {margin: 0 5% 0 15%;} .hugemargin-indent {margin: 0 5% 0 15%; text-indent: 5%;} img {max-width: 94%;} body {margin: 0 3%; text-align: justify;} .spacer {padding-bottom: 1em;} </style> </head> <body> <h1 class="center" id="c1">PROLOGUE:<br/>Brookline, Massachusetts 1960</h1> <div class="spacer"></div> <div class="indent">“Mrs. Simon, can Billy come out and play?”</div> <div class="indent">Kathy and Lizzie Napolitano lived directly across the street from the Simon Family. Beautiful twin blondes, the girls were four years older than Billy, age five. But since there were no other young boys for him to play with in their neighborhood at that time, June Simon replied, “Sure, of course. Billy! Your little girlfriends are here!”</div> <div class="indent">The Brookline, Massachusetts, suburbia that housed the Simons, the Napolitanos, and dozens of other similar middle-class families living within a stone’s throw of Boston proper was an idyllic setting for young parents planning to start their families within range of several, top-notch elementary schools. With the region serving as a commuter’s mecca for teachers working at Boston’s myriad colleges and universities, the setting made for the ideal location for Jeremy and June Simon – science and art teachers, respectively, at Boston University – to raise their only child in peaceful surroundings.</div> <div class="indent">“Billy, stay close to Kathy and Lizzie, now, okay?” June advised. “Girls, be sure to keep an eye on him. And don’t run off too far from our street… no further than the corner, okay?”</div> <div class="indent">“Yes, Mrs. Simon, of course,” Lizzie responded.</div> <div class="indent">The three children proceeded down the steps in front of the Simon house, then began walking west on the sidewalk. Billy turned to wave. “Bye, Mommy!” he shouted. “I’ll see you soon!”</div> <div class="indent">Robbins Rexall was the popular drugstore at the corner of Adams Street and Poplar Place. Not only did the neighborhood adults get their prescriptions filled there, but the store also offered an aisle of small, rather inexpensive toys for the area’s kids. Lizzie, Kathy, and Billy made their way inside the store, browsed the toy aisle, then strolled along to the candy shelves. “Let’s take these!” Kathy whispered, grabbing three sticks of strawberry Turkish Taffy, then handing one each to her sister and Billy.</div> <div class="indent">“Hey you kids! I see what you’re doing!” shouted Scott Robbins, owner of Robbins Rexall, from behind the pharmacy counter. “Put those back immediately!”</div> <div class="indent">Thrilled but concurrently frightened to death, Kathy, Lizzie, and Billy quickly fled the store and ran outside. Turning around, Lizzie saw that Mr. Robbins was bringing up the rear. “Kathy, he’s coming!” she cried to her sister, now in a panic. Kathy, the craftiest of the lot, said, “Come on… follow me!”</div> <div class="indent">Kathy led the others outside to the enormous, three-story tall billboard sign that promoted Robbins Rexall. The trio scurried behind the public-facing side of the sign—entering the interior wooden lattice comprising the sign’s skeleton. “Up here! Hurry!” Kathy called to her cohorts as she began climbing the dozens of cross-beams that suspended the sign, moving at the speed of a Doberman Pincher chasing a squirrel. Lizzie and Kathy were world champion climbers—there wasn’t a fence, tree, or post anywhere in sight they hadn’t previously conquered with their mountaineering skills. And not wanting to be caught by the angry pharmacist, Lizzie and Billy began to climb the wooden beams on the opposite side of the billboard from where Kathy had perched.</div> <div class="indent">And thus, the entirety of the remainder of Billy’s life was decided in that moment.</div> <div class="indent">Now livid, Mr. Robbins scurried behind his own sign and looked up at the three thieves who’d just robbed him of 15 cents worth of Turkish Taffy. “You kids are in BIG trouble, do you understand me?” he shouted. “I know your parents, and believe me they’re going to be hearing about this!”</div> <div class="indent">Billy and Lizzie began trembling in fear, while Kathy simply scoffed. “Mr. Robbins, my mom says you always stare at her big boobies every time you see her! She calls you a ‘perv,’” the child shouted mockingly. Now mortified, Robbins slid his proverbial tail between his legs and silently slithered away from the scene. The kids laughed.</div> <div class="indent">“Kathy that was so cool!” Lizzie called to her sister. “That should take care of old man Robbins for a while.” The three kids were now comfortably situated nearly thirty feet off the ground, sitting on prominent sections of wood where the beams naturally presented logical seating.</div> <div class="indent">“I’m hungry. Can we eat this now?” Billy asked his co-conspirators, his stomach growling. “Sure, that’s a good idea,” Kathy responded.</div> <div class="indent">The children sat inside the billboard sign for a good ten minutes, chewing their taffies and rejoicing in their victory over the scary Mr. Robbins. After they finished eating, they sat in silence for a little while longer.</div> <div class="indent">“Hey, Billy. You wanna hear a secret?” called Kathy. “Okay,” the young lad responded innocently. Lizzie, however, had a quizzical look on her face.</div> <div class="indent">Kathy smiled broadly and blew a kiss in his direction. “I love you so, so much, Billy! You are SO cute! I’m gonna marry you one day and you’re gonna make babies inside my belly!”</div> <div class="indent">Startled, shocked, and embarrassed beyond measure, Billy began to slip from the static position he’d secured on the crossbeams. Realizing he was going to fall, he reached up to grab a lower beam with his right hand, but the pull of gravity quickly overcame him. His hand never made the connection.</div> <div class="indent">Kathy and Lizzie screamed while they watched their closest, dearest friend, delightful little Billy Simon, plummeting to the ground. His face looking skyward, Billy silently realized there was nothing his girlfriends could do now to save him.</div> <div class="indent">He hit the dirt with a loud, sickening thud.</div> <div class="indent">The girls quickly made their way back down to Earth, and simply stood over Billy’s now limp, lifeless body. Raised as strict Catholics, Kathy and Lizzie each kneeled beside their friend and began to pray. “Dear Sweet Baby Jesus, please help our friend Billy in his moment of darkness. Please don’t let him die. He’s our special little friend and we love him. Please bring him back to us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”</div> <div class="indent">The girls crossed themselves, stood, held hands, then slowly began to walk back home in silence.</div> <div class="spacer"></div> <div class="spacer"></div> <div class="spacer"></div> </body> </html>

Dan Harary

FIVE: A Novella (Ebook) $2.99

Looking for the Paperback? CLICK HERE Meet Billy Sorrows, the gifted young singer who makes women cry... An orphan living in 1860s London, Feival Vados, has been taken in by an ogre of a man after the young boy’s parents—famed Hungarian actors—perish in a mysterious fire. When ten-year-old Feival, nicknamed “Five,” is summoned to the deathbed of his charge, the heinous old man orders the young boy to become his sin-eater. What Five learns that day will change the course of his adult life, giving rise to a monstrous thirst that even his own death does not quench. One hundred years later, young Boston native Billy Simon, a music prodigy, makes his way into Manhattan, where he is soon discovered. Through the machinations of his legendary talent agent, Billy quickly becomes a pop music superstar. However, after Billy’s beloved girlfriend is brutally murdered by one of his female fans, he is devastated to his core. Billy’s overwhelming sorrow leads him to commit a series of brutal murders, mysteriously connecting him to the late Feival Vados in ways the gifted singer/songwriter could never possibly come to understand.

Dan Harary

After They Came (Ebook) $4.99

Looking for the Paperback? CLICK HERE Looking for the Audiobook? CLICK HERE Jonathan Tuckerman, a Los Angeles man down on his luck and truly alone in life, decides to mark his 70th birthday by drowning himself in the Pacific Ocean. Instead, he inadvertently becomes the world’s “Wonder Man” after a pair of extra-terrestrial visitors from the Pleiades interdimensional star system appear in a giant spacecraft, pluck him from the sea, and present him to the media and the world as their sole “Ambassador to Mankind.”Jonathan’s life is dramatically transformed for the better as he works closely with the magnificent Tall White aliens Jorthon and Kalyssa to solve man’s long-insurmountable problems.Jorthon and Kalyssa aren’t the only aliens visiting Earth, however. The Draconians, a long-hidden race of ancient—and sinister—extra-terrestrials, make their presence on Earth known, livid that Jonathan and the Tall Whites have received global accolades for their remarkable achievements. The Draconians and their heinous leader blame the Tall Whites—and God himself—for their miserable existence, as they decide to seek recognition, retribution, and revenge.After They Came takes the reader—indeed, the entire human race—on a wild ride through real UFO research and lore, global politics, climate change, religion, true love, a family reunion, and “the meaning of life itself,” all set against the backdrop of unprecedented extra-terrestrial intervention. The novel presents unlimited possibilities for achieving global peace and prosperity—dreams heretofore unattainable by man.After They Came is a story of loneliness reversed, despair erased, and one man’s wholly remarkable destiny fulfilled.

Right There in Black and White (Paperback)

Jim Christ

Right There in Black and White (Paperback) $17.95

A serene evening walk takes an ominous turn for Kendi Liston when he stumbles upon a lifeless woman in the shadows of his apartment building. Faced with a haunting choice—to help or to protect himself from inevitable suspicion—Kendi makes the fateful decision to report the discovery. But in a world where his identity often precedes him, this single act of integrity may cost him everything. As the investigation unfolds, Kendi becomes entangled in a web of prejudices, assumptions, and danger. Officers Regan and Crowe, both battling their own demons, approach the case with opposing philosophies that escalate tension and risk. Witness accounts and evidence intertwine in ways that challenge perceptions of guilt and innocence, leaving no character untouched by the consequences. This gripping narrative explores the weight of truth, the complexity of identity, and the silent battles fought in every interaction. With masterful pacing and profound emotional depth, Right There in Black and White immerses readers in a world where every choice matters and nothing is as simple as it seems.

Police Pranks, Jokes, and Other Stories Not Suitable for Children (Ebook)

Richard Buz Williams

Police Pranks, Jokes, and Other Stories Not Suitable for Children (Ebook) $6.99

In Police Pranks, Jokes, and Other Stories Not Suitable for Children, retired Long Beach (California) police officer Richard “Buz” Williams collects nearly one hundred anecdotes of pranks, gags, and other antics played by law enforcement officers on other law enforcement and on suspects. Spanning from the 1930s to the present, Police Pranks shares some of the funniest moments handed down from Williams family, including both grandfathers, his father, great uncle, and cousin (all Los Angeles PD officers), from his time in the Long Beach PD, and from stories collected from other parts of the law enforcement world. This collection of short stories is a perfect quick read for anyone interested in law enforcement or just a good laugh.

Billy The Liquor Guy

Under Too Long (Ebook) $4.99

In 2007, agents of the New York State Petroleum, Alcohol, and Tobacco Bureau (PATB) seized over half a million dollars in untaxed alcohol, drugs, and guns. This takedown, the largest in New York history, led to 87 arrests, the recovery of an unprecedented quantity of cocaine, crack, and marijuana, and captured the attention of law enforcement agencies all around the world. Under Too Long is the story of the PATB undercover team that led this investigation, as seen through the eyes of “Billy the Liquor Guy.” Billy’s twelve-year odyssey into the world of undercover operations led him to dine in the homes of the “bad guys, ” buy bombs from a man in Yonkers, travel to Tunisia to find an informant, and be hired as a hit man. But his undercover life took an enormous toll on Billy and his family, almost destroying them both. The only thing he could rely upon to get him through were his confidence, his sense of humor, and his team. This story combines true life investigation, graphic behind-the-scenes scenarios, and a personal tale about what happens psychologically to an agent when he’s undercover too long. Under too Long is available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook editions. Paperback, 5.5x8.5, 311 pages ISBN: 978-1-947521-17-9

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