Collected Short Stories (5)
Short stories that will keep you up all night.
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<h1 class="center" id="c4">LAST CALL</h1>
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<h2 class="center sigil_not_in_toc"><i>December 1943</i></h2>
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<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>
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Lou Manfredo
A Dozen Ways To Die
$17.95
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.
David Dean
Shadow Lane
$17.95
In Shadow Lane, prolific short story writer David Dean examines the lives of children who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances. Nominated for the Edgar, Derringer, and Barry awards, as well as twice winning Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s prestigious Readers Award, Dean shows his command of short fiction and his attention to the plight of children left to their own devices. Shadow Lane is a collection of eleven stories that will make you think twice about turning your back on a child.
An orphaned teenage girl living with her grandmother discovers something terrifying in the older woman’s past, and gains a new and terrible understanding of her own circumstances; a young boy trying to fill the emotional gap his father’s absence has left takes up stealing, but finds that some things are better left where they are; and a nine-year-old boy’s search for his missing friend turns murderous when he gets too close to the truth. These and other stories of children, both endangered and dangerous, fill the pages of this suspenseful collection.
David Dean
Her Terrible Beauty
$15.50
In this chilling collection, prolific short story writer David Dean turns his talents to tales of suspense and the supernatural. Nominated for Edgar, Derringer, and Barry Awards, as well as twice winning Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s prestigious Readers Award, Dean proves here that he’s no stranger to an even darker world than that of crime fiction. Her Terrible Beauty and Other Tales of Terror and the Supernatural offers a variety of stories that will amply demonstrate his talent for the terrifying.
A writer who decides to winter over at his family’s lake cottage discovers that an unsettling local legend contains much more than a kernel of truth, in war-torn Bosnia a company of Serbian soldiers happen upon a village like no other they have encountered… and wish they hadn’t, and a student of Edgar Allan Poe’s literature uncovers the real reason why three roses and a bottle of Cognac are left on his grave every January 19th.
Her Terrible Beauty and Other Tales of Terror and the Supernatural is the third volume in the collected short fiction of David Dean.
David Dean
The Wisdom of Serpents
$15.50
Collected within these pages you will find twelve masterful tales of ill-conceived notions and faulty assumptions from prolific Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine contributor David Dean.
A retired man with a mole-infested lawn decides a ferret is the obvious and nature-provided answer; an American prisoner in Mexico is offered a work-release program in which survival, not freedom, is the prize; and a travel agent discovers the consequences of blind love in Belize. These and other stories comprise the suspenseful tales that you will find within this collection. But remember—the wisdom of serpents is poison.
The Wisdom of Serpents and Other Stories of Tragic Misunderstandings is the second volume in the collected short fiction of David Dean, following Tomorrow’s Dead and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense.
Review of "The Mole" by Anne Van Doorn of the Netherlands:
BEST SHORT STORY OF THE WEEKSince 2016, I read a short story a day. My favorite read this week is “The Mole” by David Dean, published in his short-story collection The Wisdom of Serpents and Other Stories of Tragic Misunderstandings. Moles are making a mess of Stivac's garden and that annoys the elderly man enormously. A few days ago, his foot sank into a mole run, causing him to fall. To end this predicament, Stivac buys a ferret. He hopes the little carnivore will hunt down the moles. But the ferret is not interested in moles. The next day, Stivac finds the ferret dead, and the neighbor's cat is resting contentedly near him. Three days later, the neighbor's cat is found dead—poisoned. Over the years, David Dean has written stories about tragic misunderstandings and what they can lead to. "The Mole" is a fine example of what a writer can do with this appealing premise. In fact, all the characters have their own misconceptions, leading to a dramatic, tragic finale. A well thought out plot, masterfully executed.
David Dean
Tomorrow's Dead
$15.50
In this new collection, David Dean—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s longtime favorite author—brings you the Edgar Award nominated “Tomorrow’s Dead,” along with ten other short stories of crime and suspense. This master of short fiction has entertained readers for decades with his suspenseful stories, and for the first time ever you can read them back-to-back.
Tomorrow’s Dead and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense takes the reader through mysterious misdeeds that will bring you to the edge of your seat… or have you hiding under your covers. In these arresting short stories, David Dean’s characters find themselves in sticky, often illegal, situations that shift at every turn. From the chief of police being blamed for a series of murders to long lost siblings on quests for revenge, these stories will leave you wanting more. Luckily, the next Collection is on its way soon!