Thursday's Truffle is...Short Fiction!

Today's "truffle" is actually about 37 pages long.  Due to the length, only the first three pages are shared here, with a link to follow at the end for those itching to read the rest of the story.  (It's a free download on Kindle and Nook.)  The protagonist is Art Hardin, a tough middle-aged gumshoe chosen one of the "Top 100 Private Eyes" by Mystery Scene magazine in January 2007.  The contributor, Robert E. Bailey, is an award-winning novelist who was diagnosed with glioblastoma in August 2011.  Read more about Bob following this excerpt.

Edit:  Sad to say, none of the online outlets would permit the publisher to offer this for free, as was the original intent.  So it's available for less than a dollar... .99 cents.  Sorry!  Hopefully this can be rectified in the near future.

The Small Matter of Ten Large

            I have my own string theory: With age the strings that bind memories together fall slack and faces and places pay a toll to the passage of time.  My son Ben and I hit Greektown, in Detroit, for a coney dog.  We found the place largely bulldozed, with a casino dropped onto the rubble—black jack and slot machines, but not one coney dog in a place that should have had a bronze statue of tube steak on a bun, with chili. 

            A walk around the neighborhood revealed that a street or two of the turn-of-the-century, four-story, brick tenements remained.   Store fronts that had been small groceries, hardware stores, and lunch counters had surrendered to the onslaught of theme bars and snooty restaurants.   Detroit Police Headquarters still stood on Beaubien, but the grey facade now crumbled, and the entrance seemed too narrow and the stone stairs too few.

Even when my son asked—whatever he read from my face--I didn't tell him.  I don't have a good excuse.  He's a damn fine detective and older now than I was when this little porch seemed a much grander stage.  Some things you just don't tell the people you care about.  

It'd be a dumb-shit thing to do today, but back then—on what I remembered as a wider porch with more steps--ten grand would get you two new Chevys, a new Caddy, or a drop-top Deuce and a Quarter with change for a trip to Florida.   Knowing that, I still have to wonder, y'know? What if you knew where you were going to get it and you just didn't go there?  Then what?

Like the day Ian Campbell got his.  That day, the subject of my morning surveillance job got up to acting a little hinky, so I let him go at a traffic light and hit the Lafayette Coney Island for an early lunch—couple of coney dogs and a big plate of fries. That was my plan.   Mickey dah Cousin was already there and he had run into his bookie. Definitely not his plan.

                                                            #

            I walk in and Mickey is sitting on a stool at the counter next to Vinney Slick—Vincent
Maurice Schlichenmeyer--sideways, like he just stopped by and he ain't staying.  Vinney's eating apple pie, little bites.   Tarzan--Fredric Masono, Vinney's muscle--is standing behind Mickey, wearing a pink floral shirt with two yards of collar and cuff squirting out of a coral polyester leisure suit.   Tarzan--who got his nickname because he was big enough to maim an elephant with a stick--wore his black Italian hair permed into a bulbous afro, and his face relaxed into a bored smirk--a vulture waiting for his lunch to exhale, one last time.  

Vinney says, "You owe me ten large last week.  You fuck!"  He takes another bite and shakes his fork at Mickey.  "This week, you owe me eleven."

            Mickey shrugs, shows Vinney his empty palms, and makes that big lap-dog Irish face.  "I was out of town last week," he says.

            "The phone was working when you laid the bet," says Vinney.   "Ten large?   You fuck!"  He takes the fork in his fist and stabs the pie like he's trying to pin it to the counter.  The plate shatters on the floor behind the counter and apple pie is everywhere.  Now he's shaking the fork at Mickey and it's all bent to shit.  He says, "You think I'm a fish?  You trying to gut me like a fish?"

            "I--I had a tip."

            "You thought the fix was in?"  

Alex, the owner, is wiping up and gives Vinney a fresh piece of pie—cherry--and apologizes he's out of apple.

            Mickey's lips are moving but no words are coming out, and when he can't think of any, he's staring at his hands, which he's rubbing together, and squeaks out, "Well, yeah."

            "The fix is in and you're gonna fuck me?"

            "Well, you're gonna lay it off, right?" said Mickey.

            "Yeah, I laid it off.  Such a dumb-shit bet--it only cost a grand.  And let me tell you something, you mick maggot..." Vinney looks at the cherry pie and says to Alex, "The fuck is this?"   Alex apologizes again but Vinney isn't listening because he's shaking the bent fork at Mickey again and saying, "It wasn't such a dumb-shit bet I wouldn't have taken the action.  But I took the action and I paid, last week.  I paid because I'm a stand-up guy.   Unlike you, you fuck!"

            Mickey's looking like a puppy worked over with the sports section and says, "It wasn't a chump bet.  The Pistons won."

            "They didn't make the spread," says Vinney.  "So for you, it's the same as they didn't win."

            "Three days," says Mickey.  "Three days, I make it good.  All eleven."

            "You ain't got three seconds," says Vinney.

            Right there events take an ugly turn at the Lafayette Coney Island and I'm wondering that thing about knowing where you were going to get it and being smart enough not to go there.   Ten minutes later I'm in Detroit Police Headquarters and thinking the same thing, but not mentioning it to Cal because he's not looking like he wants to discuss philosophy.

*Click here for the rest of the story!

Novelist Robert E. Bailey is the 1998 recipient of the Josiah W. Bancroft award for his first novel, Private Heat, featuring PI Art Hardin.  The novel went on to become a finalist for the PWA Best First Novel at the 2003 Shamus Awards.  Bob went on to pen Dying Embers, a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award, and Dead Bang, nominated for a Library of Virginia award.  Glioblastoma temporarily stole his ability to read and write, but Bob has battled back enough ground to resume work on his fourth novel, Deja Noir, and his first screenplay, For Love and Money.  You can find all of the Art Hardin mysteries here.  Visit Bob on the web at robertebaileyauthor.com, or look him up on Facebook.


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