Lawrence Block's Blog, page 9

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #12—Jill D. Block

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Jill D. Block wrote a couple of promising stories in college, then went off to law school and got sidetracked for thirty years as very successful attorney representing lenders in corporate real estate transactions, which is almost as exciting and gratifying as it sounds. A couple of years ago she sold her first post-college short story to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and followed it up with stories in Dark City Lights, In Sunlight or in Shadow, Mystery Tribune Magazine, and Alive in Shape and Color.

Her first novel, The Truth About Parallel Lines, was published last year. It traces the lives of three high school best friends over thirty years, and one enthusiastic reader hailed Jill as “the long-lost bastard daughter of Rona Jaffe and Mary McCarthy.” 

Here’s a taste of her story for At Home in the Dark:

O, SWEAR NOT BY THE MOON by Jill D. Block

ACT 1

He Said…

Rich was sitting at his desk, and Chazz was sprawled across the beanbag chair. They each held a copy of the Ridgely Fells Report.

“Hey, who’s this one?” Rich asked. “She’s new, right?”

Chazz got up to see which picture Rich was looking at.

[image error]“Which one, her?  Maggie May Costello. Good God. Who would name their kid Maggie May?”

“It says she’s from New York City but doesn’t say what school she came from. Tenth grade.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right,” Chazz said, sitting back down. “I think I heard about her. She’s CeeCee’s daughter.”

“CeeCee Castile?” Rich turned in his chair. “You’re so full of shit.”

“I’m serious.  I heard she was coming here.”

“Oh, you heard?” Rich asked.

“What, you think you’re the only person who hears stuff?”

“So, who exactly did you hear from?”

Chazz dropped his copy of the Register on the floor and picked up his phone. “You know that girl with the red hair? The tennis player? You know the one I mean. She hangs out with those girls from San Diego.  Anyway, she told me. Her mother is on the board.”

“So you’re telling me that CeeCee’s daughter is a student at Ridgely Fells?”  Rich took another look at her picture. “Google it.”

[image error]“Okay,” Chazz said. “Hang on. God, what is with the shit WiFi in this building?  Okay.  Here it is. We’ve got CeeCee tour dates. CeeCee’s new album. CeeCee at the VMAs. Oh, here. This says she had a daughter in 2003, so she’d be 15.  That sounds right.  Right?”

“Big deal. That doesn’t mean – ”

“Ok, wait. What about this?”  Chazz read from his phone, “Quote, while CeeCee has never confirmed paternity, there have been persistent rumors of a brief affair with Rod Stewart during his marriage to Rachel Hunter, unquote. Uh, hello? Maggie May?”

“None of that proves that she’s CeeCee’s daughter,” Rich said, getting up.  “She’s in Turner. Let’s go meet her.”

She Said…

“That was so nice,” Maggie said. “Don’t you think? For them to come by like that?”

“Are you kidding?” Katie replied. “Yeah, it was nice. Seriously. Those guys are seniors. They have never even looked at me before, let alone spoken to me.”

“Oh, so that thing about them being from the Welcoming Committee…?”

“Umm, yeah. There’s no such thing. I think they just wanted to see you in person.”

“Really? That’s so … did I act like a total dork?”

“[image error]You were fine. A little shy, maybe. But people like that. Everyone’s just really –”

“That one guy, Rich? He’s really cute.”

“Oh, totally. He’s definitely in the top ten. I would have said he was out of reach, but apparently not.” Katie continued, “Chazz, though? Total jerk.”

“Yeah. But it’s like Rich thinks so too. Do you know what I mean? How he acts like he doesn’t even like him?”

“He probably doesn’t,” Katie said, getting up from her desk and sitting down on her bed. “My guess is that he just hangs out with him for the Blueblood cred.”

“What’s that?” Maggie asked.

“Okay, so here’s how it is.” Katie stretched out on her bed, her legs crossed at the ankle, her hands behind her head. “People here are either Misfits or Bluebloods. The Bluebloods are super rich, usually old money, mostly legacy, but also major corporate types. I mean, children of, obviously. But yeah, hedge funds, Fortune 500 companies, like that.”

“So, like you,” Maggie said.

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’m fourth generation.”

“Right.”

“And the Misfits are also mostly super rich, but it’s different. New money, or shady money. Plus there are the scholarship kids. Oh, and the fuck-ups. You know, like, the kids who got thrown out of other schools.”

“Oh, great,” Maggie said. “So I’m a Misfit?”

“You? Uhh, no. You’re Spawn. Third category: Superstar Spawn. There aren’t very many of you. We get maybe one a year, if we’re lucky. Maybe not even. There’s a girl here, Christina? You’ll meet her. Anyway, her father used to be a pro golfer. Like, big time. All the dads were super psyched for parent’s weekend last year, like he was going to be helping them with their swings or something. But that guy’s nothing like CeeCee.”

[image error]“Superstar Spawn. Okay. It could be worse.”

“Are you kidding? It’s the best!” Katie said, sitting up. “I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you as my roommate. Seriously. This is going to make my whole year.”

“I’m glad I could help. So umm, what makes Rich a Misfit?”

“Shady money. I don’t know this for sure, but I think his father is connected.” When she saw the look on Maggie’s face Katie continued. “Connected. As in, in the mafia.”

“Oh. Well, I just thought he was cute.”

“He totally is. Plus, it’s not like being a Misfit is even a bad thing. The Bluebloods are mostly pretty dull. Except for me, I mean. But seriously, the Misfits are definitely the coolest and the most popular.”

“Other than the Spawn?” Maggie asked.

“Right. The Spawn are on their own level. See? You get it. Come on, let’s go downstairs. I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

ACT 2

He Said…

Dad, I think I’m in trouble. He closed his eyes, repeating the words in his head, in sync with the on-hold music. I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble.

“What?” Emphasis on the T. It wasn’t a question. It was an order, a command, a countdown clock.

“Oh, hey Dad.  Hi.” Rich pictured him, hair combed back, double breasted suit, the knife-sharp edge of a white handkerchief just poking out of his breast pocket.

“What is it? She pulled me out of a meeting.” He was probably standing at his secretary’s desk, Rich imagined, using her phone, stretching the cord across her keyboard, invading her space, while she sat there pretending to be invisible, watching, listening.

“Yeah, I know. JoAnn told me —. I mean, I know you’re busy. I just —.”

“You just what?  Richie, I can’t do this right now.”

Shit, just say it.

“Okay. I umm. I think that I —.”

“Speak.”

“Okay, yeah,” Rich said. “I’m sorry to bother you. I think –.” The words he’d practiced were gone.

“You think. You think what? For Christ’s sake. Can you understand that I do not have time for this shit today?”

[image error]“I know. It’s just —.” Rich looked up, making sure that he was still alone in the room, that the door was still closed. “There’s this, uh, girl,” his voice lowering almost to a whisper.

“Jesus Christ. Call your mother.”

Wait. Don’t hang up. Please don’t hang up.

“I would, but I thought —.  It’s just that —. I didn’t want—.”

“Richie, I’ve got a conference room full of lawyers charging me by the goddamn tenth of an hour. I don’t have time for your girl problems.”

“Yeah, ok.  I know. I’m sorry. It’s not really—.”

“You’re eighteen years old. Whatever it is, deal with it.”

“I know. I’m trying, but I really don’t –. Dad, I don’t know what to do.”

“You’ve got ten seconds and I’m hanging up.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Say it. Just say it. “I umm, I think I raped a girl.”

“You think –? Jesus, fuck. Call Roland.” Click. The call was over…

#

O, SWEAR NOT BY THE MOON by Jill D. Block is one of 17 outstanding stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #11—Thomas Pluck

[image error]Thomas Pluck’s website tells us he’s slung hash, worked on the docks, and even swept the Guggenheim museum (but not as part of a clever heist). He hails from Nutley, New Jersey, we’re advised, home to criminal masterminds Martha Stewart and Richard Blake, but has so far evaded capture.  He’s a serious student of the martial arts, and a glance at his photo makes it clear he spends a lot of hours at the gym, raising and lowering heavy objects. When he’s not at the gym he’s apt to be on Twitter, sharing barbed comments and cat pictures

And damned if he doesn’t find time to write, and to good purpose. His work includes the Anthony-nominated crime thriller Bad Boy Boogie and the action-adventure novel Blade of Dishonor, and over fifty published short stories, 21 of which are collected in Life During Wartime.

Tommy contributed  to two earlier anthologies of mine, Dark City Lights and Alive in Shape and Color. It’s my pleasure to have him  back with a story for At Home in the Dark, and to offer you an early taste of it…

 

THE CUCUZZA CURSE by Thomas Pluck

[image error]The flames danced in Vito Ferro’s rheumy eyes as the intense heat blistered the skin black. The brick beehive of the Neapolitan pizza oven at full fire was as hot as a crematorium, and cooked a pie to perfection in under seven minutes. This gave the crust a crispness on the teeth but left chew in the dough, and melted the sliced rounds of bone-white mozzarella without boiling the bright acidity out of the tomato sauce, like a steel oven would.

“Looks about done, right Uncle Veet?” His grandnephew Peter worked runnels into his soft knuckles with his thumbs, kneading invisible worry beads.

Peter was smart, a college boy—unlike Vito’s stronzo sons—but he chattered when outside of his element.

Vito snapped callused fingers, and Peter slid the wooden paddle, the pizza peel, beneath the pie and brought it to the work counter, where he cut it into uneven eighths with jerky, hesitant thrusts of the roller.

Vito studied the pie solemnly.

His family proudly called themselves Catholics, but their true religion was food. Pizza, in particular. Vito had made a covenant with the god of the oven paid for in toil. In the oven he had built with his own hands, a transfiguration occurred, turning a little flour and water topped with tomato sauce and cheese into a meal that made customers line down the block for hours, and his family lived like barons had in the old country.

Vito slapped Peter on the shoulder. “Bene. Mangia.”

The kid pulled off a slice and bit into it with pride. “It’s good!”

Vito remembered when he’d made his first pie back in Napoli, and felt a little twinge in his chest. He took a slice and noted the droop of the the triangle. The center was the hardest to get right. Too often they were soft and watery. He closed his eyes and chewed slow.

The burning began as a small pill of pain at the back of his throat, then blossomed into fiery agony, as if he’d eaten a spoonful of hot coals from the oven. He ran for the galvanized sink and drank from the faucet like a dog to quench the grease fire in his mouth. Sweat ran down his face and he collapsed to the floor.

#

[image error]He woke to Peter fanning him with an apron. When he could talk without agony, he dialed the phone. Hoping he would get no answer. Vito didn’t know what frightened him more—the curse or Aldo Quattrocchi, the mafiosi who’d lent him thirty thousand dollars to open the restaurant, even though he was of an age where he shouldn’t buy green bananas.

“Calm down,” The voice chilled his ear like he’d opened the deep freeze. “I’ll send the Gagootza.”

#

Stately, tanned Joey Cucuzza, resplendent in a tailored slate suit, pink shirt with its collar open to frame a red Italian horn pendant shaped like a dog dick, listened while the ancient pizza-man beseeched him.

Vito scratched his sunken, gray-haired chest through a sweat-soaked white undershirt.

“You burnt your tongue on a slice of pizza?” Joey fixed things for Aldo Quattrocchi, a captain in the broken family of northern Jersey crime. He had come directly from his no-work job at Port Newark, where he read the newspapers and day-traded when he wasn’t at the gym, out to lunch with the dock boss, or enjoying a nooner in the apartment he kept in Ironbound.

Or visiting Aldo’s Newark subjects, who expected protection for their payments of street tax.

“I explain.” Vito took a grayed rag from the pocket of his chinos and mopped his face.

Vito Ferro was a northern New Jersey institution, the first to make Neapolitan style pies, and had paid street tax on his first shop in Hoboken long before Joey and Aldo were born. Aldo could be sentimental when he wasn’t telling you to tack someone’s fingertips to a table with finishing nails.

He wouldn’t send Joey for that kind of job. They had apes for that. Joey was here because he knew people, and he knew people. Now touching forty, he had come up as a runner for an uncle who ran gay bars for the Jewish mob in Manhattan. He had a reputation as a reasonable if foppish good earner with an even temper, respected by men of violence and friendly enough to be a face with the citizens.

“Got any coffee?” Joey nodded toward the shiny pipeworks of the espresso machine.

“It’s not hooked up yet.” The nephew swallowed spit. College boy had locks of brown curls like a Greek shepherd, no ring, and a nice physique. Eyebrows tweezed, with intelligent eyes above a slack jaw. Hands too soft for labor.

Joey wondered how the kid wound up here.

“How exactly are you spending Mister Quattrocchi’s money?” They’d had the thirty grand for six weeks. You paid your first month on receipt, but they would be late for the next unless business picked up soon.

[image error]“I had the oven brought brick by brick from Napoli,” Peter said. “It’s the same one Uncle Veet used in his first pizzeria. It took me a week to find the place. They don’t speak the Italian I learned in school.”

Vito winced and sipped milk like he was nursing an ulcer.

Joey had visited Napoli to broker a deal with the Camorra for containers half-filled with fake Gucci handbags and half with young Slovenian women, and the mangled street Italian he’d learned growing up served him well. He’d also picked up a snobbery for classic Neapolitan pizza, and after Vito retired, no one else came close. His sons were clowns in comparison.

“They put up a wall around the oven, turned the place into some Irish pub.”

“My sons, they do this,” Vito sneered. “I retire, give them my business, and they do this to me. Disgraciata!” He drew into himself with shame, then curled back two fingers of his right hand and spat between the horns of pointer and pinky finger. “It is the mal occhio.”

The evil eye.

Joey touched the cornuto, the Italian horn at his throat.

His family was only three generations from the old country, where people were still killed over such things.

“I tell Aldo that, and he’s gonna say ‘Old Vito is pazzo,’ and you know what they do to mad dogs, Mister Vito.”

Vito spread the dollop of saliva into the black and white tiles with the sole of his black loafer. “I bite into the pizza from that oven, it burns me. Tell him, Pietro.”

Peter shrugged helplessly. “He looked like he was dying, Mister Cucuzza.”

Joey buffed manicured nails on his slacks. “Why don’t you make me a pie while you tell me the history of the world part one.”

Vito took a risen ball of dough from a tray in the refrigerator. The short old man was bent and his skin was crepe paper, but his forearms flexed as he tossed the dough. He made quick work of it, then sat to tell the story in the seven minutes of baking.

He wrung his apron in his hands. Embarrassed and afraid, sure of his fate.

Joey listened to the story, even though he’d read it in the newspaper. One son had sued the other over use of the name Original Vito’s Neapolitan Pizza. A reality show was pitched. It became a joke. Vito had enough, coming out of retirement to save his good name.

[image error]Except he didn’t have any money.

Like many who came over, Vito had no papers, never applied for a social security number. Everything legit was in his wife’s name, and when she succumbed to cancer, it went to their sons, Sal and Nunzio. When he retired, his boys took everything but the house he lived in, left him squeaking by on his wife’s social security check. No more new Cadillacs every year for Vito.

“Scumbari,” the old man said.

So he went to Aldo, who like most guys his age from Hoboken, loved Frank Sinatra, Fiore’s mozzarella, and Vito Ferro’s Neapolitan pizza.

Vito slid out the pie and cut it with quick swipes of the roller.

Joey folded a slice and took a bite. No fires of hell. Only fresh marinara, the tart milky taste of Fiore’s handmade mozzarella cheese, and Vito’s perfect crust. He grunted in appreciation.

“Have one, Mister Vito.”

Vito looked at the pie as if it were a rattlesnake coiled on the wooden pizza peel. “No, Giuseppe. I have the mal occhio on me. And it comes from my own sons.” He gripped his chest to remove the invisible knife from his heart.

Protection was protection. “We’ll help you, Mister Vito.”

#

THE CUCUZZA CURSE by Thomas Pluck is one of 17 solid stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #10—Joyce Carol Oates

[image error] It’s tempting to regard Joyce Carol Oates as a force of nature. She so consistently produces such an abundance of well wrought and richly imaginative fiction that one might picture her simply turning on a faucet and letting the words flow. But the fact of the matter is that Joyce gets so much accomplished because she devotes so much time and energy to it. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that she’s blessed to an astonishing degree with talent and imagination, but it’s hard work that gets it all on the page, and polishes it until it gleams.

I don’t believe there’s anything of Joyce’s I wouldn’t recommend. Among the story collections, the excellent Beautiful Days is on offer right now at a very attractive price. Among the novels, Hazards of Time Travel shows that its author has never stopped growing, or taking chances. And her memoir, A Widow’s Story, is heart-rendingly real and deeply affecting.

THE FLAGELLANT by Joyce Carol Oates

[image error]Not guilty he’d pleaded. For it was so. Not guilty in his soul.

In fact at the pre-trial hearing he’d stood mute. His (young, inexperienced) lawyer had entered the plea for him in a voice sharp like knives rattling in a drawer—My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.

Kiss my ass Your Honor— he’d have liked to say.

Later, the plea was changed to guilty. His lawyer explained the deal, he’d shrugged O.K.

Not that he was guilty in his own eyes for he knew what had transpired, as no one else did. But Jesus knew his heart and knew that as a man and a father he’d been shamed.

#

At the crossing-over time when daylight ends and dusk begins they approach their Daddy and dare to touch his arm.

He shudders, the child-fingers are hot coals against bare skin.

Hides his face from their terrible eyes. On their small shoulders angel’s wings have sprouted sickle-shaped and the feathers of these wings are coarse and of the hue of metal.

Holy Saturday is the day of penitence. Self-discipline is the strategy. He’d promised himself. On his knees he begins his discipline: rod, bare skin.

(Can’t see the welts on his back. Awkwardly twists his arm behind his back, tries to feel where the rod has struck. Fingering the shallow wounds. Feeling the blood. Fingers slick with blood.)

[image error](Not so much pain. Numbness. He’s disappointed. It has been like this—almost a year. His tongue has become swollen and numb, his heart is shrunken like a wizened prune. What is left of his soul hangs in filthy strips like a torn towel.)

#

Lifer. He has become a lifer.

But lifer does not mean life. He has learned.

#

Shaping the word to himself. Lifer!

—twenty-five years to life. Which meant—(it has been explained to him more than once)—not that he was sentenced to life in prison but rather that, depending upon his record in the prison, he might be paroled after serving just twenty-five years.

Incomprehensible to him as twenty-five hundred years might be. For he could think only in terms of days, weeks. Enough effort to get through a single day, and through a single night.

But it was told to him, good behavior might result in early parole.

Though (it was also told to him) it is not likely that a lifer would be paroled after his first several appeals to the parole board.

Where would he go, anyway? Back home, they know him and he couldn’t bear their knowledge of him, their eyes of disgust and dismay. Anywhere else, no one would know him, he would be lost.

Even his family. His. And hers, scattered through Beechum County.

Who you went to high school with, follows you through your life. You need them, and they need you. Even if you are shamed in their eyes. It is you.

[image error]Problem was, remorse.

Judge’s eyes on him. Courtroom hushed. Waiting.

What the young lawyer tried to explain to him before sentencing–If you show remorse, Earle. If you seem to regret what you have done…

But he had not done anything!—had not made any decision.

She had been the one. Yet, she remained untouched.

#

Weeks in his (freezing, stinking) cell in men’s detention. Segregated unit.

Glancing up nervous as a cat hearing someone approach. Or believed he was hearing someone approach. Thought came to him like heat lightning in the sky—They are coming to let me out. It was a mistake, no one was hurt.

Or, thought came to him that he was in the other prison now. State prison. On Death Row. And when they came for him, it was to inject liquid fire into his veins.

You know that you are shit. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That’s you.

No one came. No one let him out, and no one came to execute him.

He didn’t lack remorse but he didn’t exude a remorseful air.

A man doesn’t cringe. A man doesn’t get down onto his knees. A man doesn’t crawl.

His statement for the judge he’d written carefully on a sheet of white paper provided him by his lawyer.

I am sorry for my roll in what became of my children Lucas & Ester. I am sorry that I was temted to anger against the woman who is ther

mother for it was this anger she has caused that drove me to that place. I am sorry for that, the woman was ever BORN.

Pissed him that the smart-ass lawyer wanted to correct his spelling. Roll was meant to be role. Ester was meant to be Esther.

The rest of his statement, the lawyer would not accept and refused to pass on to the judge. As if he had the right.

Took back the paper and crumpled it in his hand. Fuck this!

Anything they could do to you, to break you down, humiliate you, they would. Orange jumpsuit like a clown. Leg-shackles like some animal. Sneering at you, so ignorant you don’t know how to spell your own daughter’s name.

Sure, he feels remorse. Wishing to hell he could feel remorse for a whole lot more he’d like to have done when he’d had his freedom. Before he was stopped.

#

[image error]Covered in welts. Bleeding.

A good feeling. Washed in the blood of the Lamb.

He believes in Jesus not in God. Doesn’t give a damn for God.

Pretty sure God doesn’t give a damn for him.

When he thinks of God it’s the old statue in front of the courthouse. Blind eyes in the frowning face, uplifted sword, mounted on a horse above the walkway. Had to laugh, the General had white bird crap all over him, hat, shoulders. Even the sword.

Why is bird crap white?—he’d asked the wise-ass lawyer who’d stared at him.

Just is. Some things just are.

But when he thinks of Jesus he thinks of a man like himself.

Accusations made against him. Enemies rising against him.

Welts, wounds. Slick swaths of blood.

Striking his back with the rod. Awkward but he can manage. Out of contraband metal, his rod.

It is (maybe) not a “rod” to look at. Your eye seeing what it is would not see “rod.”

Yet, pain is inflicted. Such pain, his face contorts in (silent) anguish, agony.

As in the woman’s sinewy-snaky body, in the grip of the woman’s powerful arms, legs, thighs he’d suffered death, how many times.

Like drowning. Unable to lift his head, lift his mouth out of the black muck to breathe. Sucking him into her. Like sand collapsing, sinking beneath his feet into a water hole and dark water rising to drown him.

The woman’s fault from the start when he’d first seen her. Not knowing who she was. Insolent eyes, curve of the body, like a Venus fly trap and him the helpless fly: trapped.

#

Plenty of time in his cell to think and to reconsider. Mistakes he’d made, following the woman who’d been with another man the night he saw her. And her looking at him, allowing him to look at her.

[image error]Sex she baited him with. The bait was sex. He hadn’t known (then). He has (since) learned.

He’d thought the sex-power was his. Resided in him. Not in the woman but in him as in the past with younger girls, high-school-age girls but with her, he’d been mistaken.

And paying for that mistake ever since.

To be looked at with such disgust. To be sneered-at. That was a punishment in itself but not the kind of punishment that cleansed.

In segregation at the state prison as he’d been at county detention because he’d been designated a special category of inmate because children were involved and this would be known. Because there was no way to keep the charges against him not-known. Because once you are arrested, your life is not your own.

Surrounded by “segregated” inmates like himself. Not all of them white but yes, mostly white.

Yet nothing like himself….

#

THE FLAGELLANT by Joyce Carol Oates is one of 17 remarkable new stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #9—Jim Fusilli

[image error]“I went east to Greenwich and turned south on familiar cobblestone, heading toward the silver Twin Towers, their crowns hidden in low-lying clouds.”

That’s the last sentence of the penultimate chapter of Closing Time, Jim Fusilli’s debut as a novelist, and it resonates rather differently now than it did when he wrote it. The book was published on September 10, 2001, with strong early reviews in the trades and enthusiastic blurbs from Harlan Coben, Thomas Perry, S. J. Rozan, Nevada Barr, and Robert B. Parker.. The very next day, those towers came down.

Not the best possible time to publish a book, and the world found other matters of more pressing interest than the publication of Closing Time.

Nevertheless, he persisted…

Jim’s been a generous contributor to two of my earlier anthologies, Manhattan Noir and Dark City Lights. His story for At Home in the Dark is particularly noteworthy in light of his experience with Closing Time, as it takes place on a significant evening sixty years earlier. It’s not a very long story, but it packs a punch.

Here’s a taste of it:

 

THE EVE OF INFAMY by Jim Fusilli

[image error]The judge gave Billy Malone a choice: an 18-month stretch in a state prison, or the Army. Malone saw the offer as the light of good fortune. His play was drying up and his sinewy, green-eyed charm only went so far. He was thinking he needed a change.

It was coming up on 1941 and the marks had gotten wise. No one in the Bronx, Brooklyn or Manhattan would sit at a poker table with him, so he was reduced to taking down half-wit tourists. On top of that, the precinct cops were aware of his violent record as a juvenile so they were keeping a hard eye on him. They pounced when Billy Malone shattered the jaw of an auto-parts salesman from Akron who accused him of marking the deck with a thumbnail.

“Army,” Billy Malone told Judge Steigel in open court.

“I understand you are something of a card sharp,” said the judge who, to Billy Malone, looked like a walrus. “Wherever you go, let it be known.”

“Yes, your honor,” said Billy Malone, a man of few words. He had gotten what he wanted. Why agitate? He figured the Army would give him a free shot at the wide, wide world, a place littered with rubes.

#

Malone was stationed in Fort Irwin, out in the California desert, north of Barstow and about 150 miles from the nightlife in L.A. He figured his luck had run out, the sandstorms stinging his face, his throat parched from first call until he collapsed in his bunk. A 20-mile run under the scorching sun was a punishment far worse than prison back east.

He heard Los Angeles calling. After a while, he thought he’d go AWOL and lose himself in the big city. Slinging rocks or scrubbing a latrine, he dreamed of a place he’d seen only in the movies: the clubs, the broads, the action, all accompanied by palm trees and orange groves and the cool breeze off the Pacific. He heard the pounding of foamy waves, the seagulls’ caw. Fuck this, he thought, broiling in the sun, his blond hair trimmed to bristle. I’m gone.

[image error]Then his unit learned they were shipping out to Oahu.

Suddenly, Billy Malone took to Army life.  What the fuck.  Do what the screaming sergeant tells you to.  Hump, dive, crawl, climb.  Shoot, stab.  A piece of cake in a climate out of Eden. Free room and board.  Lie on the bunk and read the magazines as the scent of ginger and hibiscus wafted into the barracks. Listen to the wind humming through the trees.

On and off the base, the poker action was pitiable.  It was theft.  He had to bite his cheek to tamp down a smirk.  He hung back but within months he’d cleaned out every man in the barracks including a corporal Malone sized up as weak.  Next game, Malone threw him cards and the petty prick went to his rack up $600.  A three-day pass ensued.

#

The club was less than two miles from the base.  The first night, Malone in his floral shirt ran through a December downpour and played the Filipino card sharks straight. He managed to leave up a sawbuck and a half, more than enough for a taxi back to bed.  Next night, he won $440, when a rubber trader from Guam dealt him a third jack on the night’s last hand.

The hatcheck girl took him home. Her name was Lailani.  They spend the next day together too.  She knew a secret cove.  Someone had been there before:  melted candles, discarded rum bottles.  She lit the wicks and tossed the empties.  Afterwards, she walked naked toward the sunlight at the cove’s edge.  She returned with a small onyx pipe and a ball of hashish.  He waved her off.  He had plans, he told her.  He was about to play for real dough.

She nodded discretely when Malone came back to the club. A man sat near him at bar.  A conversation began, the man careful not to come on strong.  Malone knew what he was up to, this Hawaiian glad hand, this bullfrog-looking fuck.  Malone flashed [image error]his bankroll to pay for his drink.  The man said no, on the house, and invited him to a private room.  Bigger stakes.  Saturday night brings in the chumps, he confided.

By midnight, Malone was at the table with a businessman from China; two GIs in blousy civilian clothes, one from Texas, the other was a skinny guy from the Deep South; and a Hawaiian, bloated, full of himself.  The GIs counted their money before they anteed up.  The Hawaiian, who hassled the hapless help, threw down bills like he owned a mint.  Deep South beamed goofy when he won and Hawaiian stared at him with disdain.  Malone looked ahead:  he’d sit by while Hawaiian slow-played Deep South into poverty.  The frog-faced brush had set up the GIs and the Chinaman.

Malone figured he’d been set up too.  He had wondered why the rubber trader from Guam threw him the third jack last night, but now he knew.  He was there to fatten the pot.

Soon the Chinaman was drained and Texas went in search of a back-alley blowjob.  Eight hands in, the Hawaiian showed strong with two kings, but Deep South, who was dealing, raised and re-raised.  The Hawaiian called with a boat – kings over sevens.  Deep South had four nines.  He giggled as he raked in $1,700.  The Hawaiian sat stunned, his mouth flapped open…

 

THE EVE OF INFAMY BY Jim Fusilli is one of 17 stellar stories in At Home in the Dark.

Kahawa, please. Black, no sugar.

Okay, I give up. What’s that header supposed to mean?

It means I couldn’t think of a title. The one thing I have to do today is get this newsletter out, and the first step toward that end is to come up with a header, and I couldn’t do it.

Um…

So I thought, as I often do, of my late friend Donald Westlake. In 1981 he published a novel set in Uganda, in which a team of criminals steal an entire train full of coffee. He called it Kahawa, and when people asked him what it meant—

Which I suspect was rather often.

I wouldn’t be surprised. When they asked, he told them it was a Swahili word that means “We couldn’t think of a title.”

But it actually means…

Coffee, obviously. It was one of his stronger novels, but it didn’t sell terribly well. I don’t think the title helped. It may not help this newsletter either, but at least I’m writing the damn thing.

And you figure that’s good, huh?

Well, I’ve got stuff to report. For the past week I’ve been composing blog posts, each featuring a 1000-word preview of one of the stories in At Home in the Dark,along with author photos and book covers. So far I’ve provided samples of stories by Elaine Kagan, Wallace Stroby, Ed Park, Laura Benedict, Joe Lansdale, Noreen Ayres, and Joe Hill. 

Is that Joe Hill on the bike?

It is. I think I told you Netflix is developing “Faun,” the novelette he wrote for At Home in the Dark, and the excerpt I posted is getting a lot of attention. The blog posts go out by email to blog subscribers, and I’ve spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. But I don’t want to leave out all of y’all who just get the newsletter, so, well, here you go.

You’re just trying to get us to buy the book.

If so, I have to say it’s working. Preorders have been brisk. Now there’s no urgency in preordering an ebook, as one of the nice things about them is the publisher never runs out of stock. But what an ebook preorder can do is lock in the price—which in this case may well go up a buck or two after publication.

As for the Subterranean Press signed-and-numbered limited, it’s the only hardcover edition the book will ever have, and the bad news is that it’s been fully subscribed. Subterranean’s out of stock, and won’t be reprinting.

So what’s the good news?

Even though the publisher’s shelves are bare, Amazon seems to have enough copies coming their way so that they’re not only continuing to accept preorders but have dropped their price from $50 to $42.03.

 $42.03? How’d they set that price?

I have absolutely no idea. According to their product page, you can click on a coupon that’ll cut the price an additional $2.58, and I don’t have a clue where that number came from, either. Or how many copies they’ve got, or how long they’ll be offering them at that price.

[image error]Speaking of signed-and-numbered limited editions, I see Subterranean’s been shipping A Time to Scatter Stones to the people who managed to preorder it.

Yes, there was a  delay at the printers. I’ve been hearing from people who have finally received their copies, and they all seem happy—with the beautifully produced book, and with Matthew Scudder and his latest adventure.

The book’s been getting good reviews, and moving at a good clip. The out-of-print hardcover trade edition is still available at a good price from Amazon, as is the paperback. The ebook if on offer at Thalia Apple Kobo Nook…and, duh, Amazon.

I’m sure you’re happy Matt’s getting such a warm reception at such an advanced age.

[image error]I am—and I’m similarly pleased with the reception a much younger Matt’s been getting. Some months ago he made his graphic novel debut, brilliantly adapted by John K. Snyder III, and people are still saying nice things about the book. In the current edition of Mystery Scene Magazine, nine critics picked their favorite reads of 2018. Two of them, Kevin Burton Smith and Hank Wagner, bothshortlisted the Eight Million Ways to Die graphic novel. Click hereto see what they had to say.

And that about does it for this installment, and—

Last time you wrapped things up with a batch of links. Different books of yours you felt weren’t getting as much love as they deserved.

You liked that? I could probably come up with a few more. Here you go:

Random Walk  The Liar’s Companion  A Week as Andrea Benstock  Catch and Release  Ariel   

And that’s going to have to be enough. Be well, stay out of drafts, and enjoy the spring—if it ever gets here. Meanwhile, read something!

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #8—Hilary Davidson

[image error]After a solid apprenticeship as a travel writer and journalist, Hilary Davidson has emerged as an accomplished fictioneer, winning awards for her novels (The Damage Done) and short stories (The Black Widow Club) . She was born in Canada, and when our paths crossed in 2011 at a very enjoyable  mystery conference in Quebec City, she’d already been a New Yorker for a decade. Her newest novel, One Small Sacrifice, has a full complement of raves well in advance of publication; Harlan Coben calls it her best work yet, and Megan Abbott says: “Twisty, absorbing, and deeply humane, it’s a thriller you won’t want to miss.”

You’ll note that Hilary is shown here pretending to read a novel by Bruce DeSilva. You’ll note, too, that one Frank DeSilva is a principal character in Hilary’s story. I’m sure there’s no connection.

COLD COMFORT by Hilary Davidson

The artists at the Humphrey Funeral Home were miracle workers, but even they couldn’t piece Abby Killingsworth’s face back together. In life, she had a curious charisma that was immediately striking in spite of her flaws. It was powerful yet puzzling: her eyes were wide-set and her nose had a bump and her lips were so plump and ripe that they lent her a faintly cartoonish appearance. Yet, when observed together in their heart-shaped frame, a peculiar alchemy occurred that could render complete strangers mute.

Abby had been a great beauty in life. In death, she was a broken statue, mere fragments of cold marble. My own heart had cracked in sadness when I first laid eyes on her lifeless body. In the oasis of false comfort that was the Humphrey Funeral Home, with its piped-in violin music, I kept up my unperturbed façade by imagining that Abby was elsewhere.

“The casket will stay closed,” her mother announced. It was the day before Abby’s funeral, and we stood together in a viewing room at the Humphrey. It was preposterously grand, with a domed ceiling that spoke of aspirations to royal chapelhood. Janet Killingsworth had asked me to accompany her to provide moral support, since her husband had refused to leave the house since his daughter’s death. “I don’t want anyone seeing what that bastard did to her.” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Father, I didn’t mean to swear.”

“Please don’t worry about that.” I struggled to come up with something meaningful to say, anything that could blunt the pain. “Abby is at peace now, you must concentrate on that.”

“Oh, Father, I try to. But when I think of what that monster did to my baby…” Janet’s voice cracked. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she rested her head on my chest.

“Why would God take my baby?” Janet sobbed.

Of all the questions asked of me since I’d joined the priesthood, this was the most perplexing. I had no answers, only the same platitudes I’d heard since I was a boy growing up in County Cork. “All I can promise is that there is meaning in everything. It is invisible to us, so we must trust the Lord in all things.”

[image error]Janet inhaled sharply and shuddered. “There’s one other thing,” she said, pulling away. “I want you to perform an Absolution for Abby.”

I stared at her. Absolution had been removed from the Funeral Mass before I was born. I’d only performed it a handful of times, in unusual circumstances.

“My daughter may have been… involved with a man,” Janet said quietly.

“What?”

Janet read the shock in my face, and quickly added. “Abby was such a good girl, and I don’t know if it really counts as an affair, because she was separated from her husband, but…”

“Why would you suspect such a thing?”

Janet wiped her eyes. “Abby was pregnant.”

“What? Abby told you that?”

“No, Father. The police did. It came up in the autopsy.” She choked on that last word.

“The child might’ve been her husband’s,” I pointed out.

“No. Abby didn’t see Frank at all. She told me she didn’t.” Janet gazed at me. “What did Abby say to you?”

“It wasn’t anything she said outright,” I explained. “It was her attitude. Whenever I visited her in the past few weeks, she was in a much more forgiving frame of mind about Frank. She believed he was capable of change, I think.” I was silent for a moment. “I saw vases of daisies in her suite a couple of times. I suppose I simply assumed that they were from Frank. That was the flower they used at their wedding.”

“She seemed so happy, before she died,” Janet said softly. “Glowing. Almost as if she were in love. That wasn’t because of Frank. She didn’t love him anymore. A mother knows these things.”

“You haven’t said anything about this, have you?” I asked. “It’s not anyone’s business, but of course people might wonder…”

“No. I don’t want her good name ruined. There are people who might think what that bastard—her husband, I mean—did to her was justified.”

“No one would ever think that.”

“Some people are cruel, Father. Abby was a good girl, but she… she had her flaws.”

“We all do,” I told her, speaking softly but with a firmness I hoped would comfort her. “We are all flawed creatures, yet the Lord loves us nonetheless.”

#

The visitation started at three that afternoon. I stayed for the first two hours, offering comfort when I could. Abby had been an only child, but she had relatives on three continents, so her parents planned two days of visitation before her funeral to allow everyone to arrive in time. I left at five o’clock, stopping by my office at the church, as it was only six blocks from the funeral home. To my surprise, my secretary, Millie Tamliss, was still at her desk. She was seventy-two years old, with white hair and faded blue eyes. Her bones were only slightly larger than a sparrow’s, and she seemed to live on air. In the years since I’d come to the parish, I’d never observed her eating or drinking.

“Good evening, Father. How was it?”

“Very sad. So many people came by to pay their respects. No one can quite believe it.”

“I still can’t, myself. Poor girl. It’s heartbreaking.” She clicked open her black patent purse, extracted a tissue, and blew her nose. “Just so you know, Father, there’s something wrong with the phone line. It’s been ringing off the hook for the past hour, but no one’s there when I answer.”

“Technology. Never reliable when you need it to be.” I resisted the urge to glance at my watch. Mildred normally left the office by four, or four-thirty at the latest. Whoever was calling wasn’t expecting her to answer. “Thank you for staying so late. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I thought it would be best. On account of the gentleman.”

“What gentleman?”

“He’s in your office.”

I glanced at my door, which was closed all but an inch. My stomach churned slightly. Before I could ask her anything else, Mildred was up on her spindly legs. “I’m off to pay my respects to the Killingsworths,” she announced. “Good night, Father.”

“Good night,” I murmured, and turned to my office. It was six steps from Mildred’s desk. When I opened the door, I found a tall man in a suit studying my bookcase. His head swiveled in my direction. His thin face was narrowed to such a sharp point, it looked as if it had once been caught in a door.

“Good evening, Father Byrne,” he said. “I’m Detective Reed. We talked on the phone a couple times.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, recognizing his voice. “Have you brought Frank DeSilva into custody?”

Frank was Abby’s estranged husband, the man who went to the small hotel where Abby was renting a room and beat her to death. There had never been any doubt about who had murdered Abby. Frank was on camera entering the hotel, then departing with blood on his weathered hands and white shirt.

[image error]Reed shook his head. “He’s still in the wind. I need to ask you a few more questions.”

He was alone, which surprised me. I’d thought police officers did everything in pairs, like creatures bound for Noah’s Ark.

“Of course. Would you care for some tea?”

“No, thanks.

I sat at my desk, surreptitiously checking to see if anything had been moved. The screen of my computer was on, which meant he’d touched it, though it was stuck on the password screen. “How can I help you?” I asked.

Reed stayed on his feet. “We’re having trouble getting a bead on Frank DeSilva. His parents are dead, and he’s got no family in the area.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know his friends.”

“That’s okay. I’d like you to tell me about Abby’s relationship with her husband.”

“I’m the priest who married them.” I took a breath. “I’ve known Abby since I came to this parish seven years ago. She was a teenager then, fifteen or sixteen. Frank, I only met two years ago, when they became engaged and came to me for pre-marital counselling.” I stared at my hands. “I didn’t know that he was abusive towards her, not back then. I’m not even sure that he was abusive at that time. From what Abby told me, he started beating her after they came home from their honeymoon.” I frowned, remembering exactly what Abby had told me about it. “There was a sporting event on television, a rugby match or something like it. Frank wanted to watch it and Abby had promised they would have dinner with her parents. That was the first time he hit her.”

“Football,” the detective corrected me. “It was football.”

COLD COMFORT by Hilary Davidson is one of 17 outstanding stories in At Home in the Dark. I think it’s worth noting that Hilary tweeted the following just hours ago: “If you love an author’s work & want to support it, pre-order their book. It makes such a huge difference.” I’d say that applies in full measure to One Small Sacrifice (available right now at a remarkably low pre-order price)…and, come to think of it, to this game-changing anthology. 

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #7—Joe Hill

[image error] If you can’t get a hardcover copy of At Home in the Dark, blame Joe Hill. Pre-orders for the signed-and-numbered Subterranean Press limited edition were strong early on, but they exploded upon the announcement that Netflix had won a spirited bidding war and would be dramatizing Joe’s novelette,”Faun.”

Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman and Heart-Shaped Box. His second novel, Horns, was made into a feature film starring Daniel Radcliffe; his third, NOS4A2, is forthcoming as a TV series from AMC. His book of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, won the Bram Stoker Award and British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. His most recent work, Strange Weather, a collection of novellas, was published in the autumn of 2017. He earned the Eisner Award for Best Writer for his long-running comic book series, Locke & Key, featuring the eye-popping art of Gabriel Rodriguez. Look for that one as a Netflix show, too, in the not-too-distant future.

But you knew that, right?

Here’s a taste of the novelette. I’ve never read anything like it. And neither have you.

FAUN by Joe Hill

PART ONE: OUR SIDE OF THE DOOR

The first time Stockton spoke of the little door, Fallows was under a baobab tree, waiting on a lion.

“After this, if you’re still looking for something to get your pulse going, give Mr. Charn a call. Edwin Charn in Maine. He’ll show you the little door.” Stockton sipped whiskey and laughed softly. “Bring your checkbook.”

[image error]The baobab was old, nearly the size of a cottage, and had dry rot. The whole western face of the trunk was cored out. Hemingway Hunts had built the blind right into the ruin of the tree itself: a khaki tent, disguised by fans of tamarind. Inside were cots and a refrigerator with cold beer in it and a good wifi signal.

Stockton’s son, Peter, was asleep in one of the cots, his back to them. He’d celebrated his high school graduation by killing a black rhinoceros, only the day before. Peter had brought along his best friend from boarding school, Christian Swift, but Christian didn’t kill anything except time, sketching the animals.

Three slaughtered chickens hung upside down from the branch of a camel thorn, ten yards from the tent. A sticky puddle of blood pooled in the dust beneath. Fallows had an especially clear view of the birds on the night-vision monitors, where they looked like a mass of grotesque, bulging fruits.

The lion was taking his time finding the scent, but then he was elderly, a grandfather. He was the oldest cat Hemingway Hunts had on hand and the healthiest. Most of the other lions had canine distemper, were woozy and feverish, fur coming out in patches, flies at the corners of their eyes. The game master denied it, said they were fine, but Fallows could tell looking at them they were going down fast.

It had been a bad luck season on the preserve all around. It wasn’t just sick lions. Only a few days before, poachers had rammed a dune buggy through the fence along the northwestern perimeter, took down a hundred feet of chain-link. They roared around, looking for rhino – the horn was worth more by weight than diamonds – but were chased out by private security without killing anything. That was the good news. The bad news was that most of the elephants and some of the giraffe had wandered off through the breach. Hunts had been cancelled, money refunded. There had been shouting matches in the lobby and red-faced men throwing suitcases into the backs of hired Land Rovers.

Fallows, though, was not sorry he had come. He had, in years before, killed his rhino, his elephant, his leopard, and buffalo. He would get the last of the big five tonight. And in the meantime there had been good company – Stockton and his boys – and better whiskey, Yamazaki when he wanted it, Laphroaig when he didn’t.

Fallows had met Stockton and the boys only a week ago, on the night he arrived at Hosea Kutako International. The Stockton gang were fresh off a BA flight from Toronto. Fallows had flown private from Long Island in the Gulfstream. Fallows never bothered with public aircraft. He had an allergy to standing in line to take off his shoes, and he treated it with liberal applications of money. As they were all arriving in Windhoek at roughly the same time, the resort had sent a G-Class Mercedes to gather them up and bring them west across Namibia.

[image error]They had only been in the car for a few moments before Immanuel Stockton realized he was the very same Tip Fallows who operated the Fallows Fund, which held a heavy position in Stockton’s own pharmaceutical firm.

“Before I was a shareholder, I was a client,” Fallows explained. “I proudly served my nation by feeding myself into the woodchipper of a war I still don’t understand. I crawled away in shreds and stayed high on your narcotic wonders for close to five years. Personal experience suggested it would be a good investment. No one knows better than me how much a person will pay to escape this shitty world for a while.”

He was trying to sound wise, but Stockton gave him an odd, bright, fascinated look, and clapped him on the shoulder, and said, “I understand more than you might think. When it comes to the luxury goods – cigars, furs, whatever – nothing is worth more than an escape hatch.”

By the time they spilled out of the big Mercedes, four hours later, they were all in a jolly mood, and after check-in, they took the conversation to the bar. After that, Stockton and Fallows drank together almost every single night, while Peter and Christian horsed around in the pool. When the boy, Christian – he was eighteen, but still a boy to Fallows – asked if they could come with him to see him bag his cat, it never even crossed his mind to say no.

“The little door?” Fallows asked now. “The hell’s that? Private game reserve?”

“Yes,” Stockton nodded sleepily. The smell of Laphroaig exuded from his pores and his eyes were bloodshot. He had had a lot to drink. “It’s Mr. Charn’s private game reserve. Invitation only. But also, the little door is… a little door.” And he laughed again – almost giggled – very softly.

“Peter says its expensive,” said Christian Swift.

“Ten thousand dollars to look through the door. Ten thousand more to walk on the other side. Two hundred and thirty to hunt there, and you only get the one day. You can bring a trophy back, but it stays with Mr. Charn, at the farmhouse. Those are the rules. And if you don’t have your big five, don’t even bother sending him an email. Charn doesn’t have any patience for amateurs.”

“For a quarter a million dollars, you better be hunting unicorn,” Fallows said.

Stockton raised his eyebrows. “Close.”

was still staring at him when Christian touched his knee with the knuckles of one hand. “Mr. Fallows. Your cat is here.”

Christian was all alertness, down on one knee, close by the open flap, gently offering Fallows his big CZ 550. For a moment, Fallows had half-forgotten what he was doing there. The boy nodded at one of the night-vision monitors. The lion stared into the camera with radioactive green eyes as bright as new minted coins.

[image error]Fallows sank to one knee. The boy crouched beside him, their shoulders touching. They peered through the open flap. In the dark, the lion stood beneath the camel thorn. He had turned his great, magnificent head to look at the blind, with eyes that were intelligent and aloof and calmly forgiving. It was the gaze of a king bearing witness to an execution. His own, as the case happened to be.

Fallows had been closer to the old cat, just once, and at the time there had been a fence between the lion and him. He had studied the grandfather through the chicken wire, staring into those serene, golden eyes, and then told the game master he had chosen. Before he walked away, he made the lion a promise, which he now meant to keep.

Christian’s breath was shallow and excited, close to Fallows’ ear. “It’s like he knows. It’s like he’s ready.”

Fallows nodded, as if the boy had spoken some sacred truth, and gently squeezed the trigger.

At the rolling boom of the shot, Peter Stockton woke with a little scream, twisted in his tangle of sheets, and fell out of the cot…

FAUN by Joe Hill is one of 17 unforgettable stories in At Home in the Dark. The book’s only hardcover edition—signed and numbered—is sold out at Subterranean Press two months before it’s April publication date. You may be able to snag a copy here—while you’re pre-ordering the ebook…

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #6—N. J. Ayres

[image error] Noreen Ayres is an accomplished poet as well as an Edgar-nominated writer of crime fiction. She’s best known for her Smokey Brandon mysteries, now getting a well-deserved second life under the imprint of Brash Books. Of Smokey’s debut, A World the Color of Salt, the Kirkus reviewer had this to say: “Sounding like an uncensored outtake from vintage Hill Street Blues, this introduction to ex-stripper, ex-cop, Orange County forensic specialist Smokey Brandon is tough, hip, visceral, and lusty enough to make both Wambaugh and Spillane sit up and wince…A macho heroine, with a ragged love-life (a long-standing affair with her former boss; a one-nighter with a co-worker; etc.), a soured past, and an unpredictable future, plus authentic forensic nitty-gritty and autopsy protocol.”

You won’t find Smokey in “Favored to Death.” Or much in the way of forensics. What you will run into is a dark and uncompromising story that you won’t soon forget…

FAVORED TO DEATH

by N. J. Ayres

Jason and Alfie sat atop pilings not far from the Laguna Beach pier, the posts cut low enough a tall kid could sling a leg over and not lose grip on a can of beer. The friends sat silent for a moment and focused on the blinking red light of a plane taking its time to forge through a night of flourishing stars.

“Laguna is the greatest place in the world,” Jason said. He felt no need to look at Alfie when he said it.

But instead of Alfie saying Ditto, man, he answered from deep in his throat, “Laguna sucks.”

Jason thought he didn’t hear right. He checked the tin-stamped face turned sideways to him and saw it was seriously sour. “You’re crazy, man,” he said, spreading his arms, teetering a little. “This is paradise.”

In honor of Alf’s birthday, they’d met with friends for pizza and beer. Now it was just them, waxing on life, politics, what Francie Stevens was wearing, and whether they should quit their dumbass jobs or not.

“So I’m twenty-one,” Alfie said. “So what?”

“What, what?” Jason asked.

“What-what? You’re more torqued than I thought,” Alf said and snuffled once, kind of like a laugh but not a real one.

“Spit it out, doof. What’s eating you?”

“I expected … I don’t know what I expected. Something else.”

“We gave you a party, you ingrate.” Jason was still nineteen, but he’d pull twenty in six months. He raised his beer high to the chrome moon and shouted, “To turning one hundred and twenty-one, the both of us. Yah!”

As he said it, steel‑gray clouds overran the moon.

“Damn, Alf. Did you do that?”

“Hey. Special powers.”

Jason could hardly see his friend’s expression now, just the spectral glow of Alf’s sun-tipped hair and the ghost of a “Dave’s Waves” tee‑shirt he wore so often the letters were fading away.

Soon the menacing clouds slid away from the moon, leaving the globe pure as a porch light. It lit up stringers of foam rolling like blown toilet paper on somebody’s lawn. The motion made Jason realize he’d folded one too many pepperoni pieces down his gullet. “Dude, I’m sick,” he said. “I think I’m dyin’.”

He crumpled his can and tossed it into the sea, screw the whales. Well, not really, but in his mind an aluminum can was something a whale could poop out.

“Get it over with,” Alf said, scooping an arm forward as if ushering. He raised his beer to the moon. “A toast: To death. To death, I say. For some, a favor!”

[image error]Jason swiveled on his post away from Alf to hurl out all that nasty, three full rolls of the stomach and a couple half-heaves. He twisted away from the puke that was being tidied-up by curls of water, then jumped into the wet on the other side.

Alfie was already off his post and headed for the spot on the sand where they’d left their sandals. Alf’s were the expensive kind. He told Jason once what they cost. Jason tried to forget it right away, because the idea just bothered him. How can people spend so much on stuff you wear? But he kept his opinion to himself.

Some days he wondered how he and Alf could even be friends. They’d known each other since middle school. Alf’s family was almost-rich, to his family’s … ordinary. Jason’s parents left the state when he was seventeen but out of high school, to open a business in Oregon. Jason didn’t mind. He took a room with a cousin and paid hardly anything for rent. The cousins worked different schedules, so they never got in each other’s way.

Further: Alf’s athletic build to Jason’s flab. Alf was born cut and ready, but he wasn’t a jock, wasn’t a star at school. Something about him held people off except for Jason. A couple of times Alf announced to Jason and a group of kids that he was the type who’d hit the wall young, go out in a blaze. Ride a Harley to heaven, that kind of thing. One time he told Jason the way it would end: somebody would kill him. Drama, thy name is Alf. “Yeah,” Jason replied, “and it’ll be me.”

When Alf first met Jason’s mother she sang a little of “What’s It All About, Alfie?” For some dumb reason Jason had never heard the song before. Alf screwed up his face in pain. Afterward, he kept asking Jason and other people to call him Al, but they’d forget, including Jason.

Lately Alf had been losing his temper over small things, like going past a street they meant to turn on, or store clerks not paying attention to customers the way they should, or tourist families spread out on the sidewalk so a person had to step in the street to get by. He needed a good kick in the butt, Jason vowed, tomorrow maybe, soon as they both got sober.

#

All that.

Then, in only a little more than a week, Jason walked the cusp of the beach alone. He stopped at one point, gazed out over the waves, seeing yet not seeing the gliding gulls, the muted orange horizon, the sun as it burned into the bruised skin of ocean.

He whispered, “You sonofabitch, Alfie,” and took up a lonesome stone to sidearm it into the sea as far as he could. Then he crouched, sat on his heels, and bawled. For Alfred Burbank Lucian Langdon had taken his life, and in a particularly gruesome way.

#

Which is more wretched? To delete, cancel, erase your own life, or to be murdered? Wait. One plus one equals … killer. Suicide is murder, isn’t it? God help you if your family’s Catholic; no forgiveness there. Alf’s family wasn’t, but they did go to church sometimes.

Jason told himself he saw it coming.

Jason told himself no way did he see it coming.

[image error]He had watched Alfie’s moods over the years. Funny one day, pissed the next. Jason hearkened back to the first time he and Alf jerked off together. Alf was fourteen, he still twelve. The act took place in the lee of a big cut-in rock down the beach from Hotel Laguna.

The sky showed barely dark. Before walking there, they had set off a few firecrackers that were almost duds from moisture but good enough to sputter a bit. Three girls down the beach looked over. Alf made some wisecracks to Jason and got the giggles. He pointed at the dim figures of the girls picking up their beach things.

A couple of fireflies flicked around the boys, as if volunteering help with the show. Alf stepped backward and leaned against the rockface. He brought a hand to his groin and massaged himself, said to Jason, “Do this, buddy, mm-m,” and half-closed his eyes. “Hey, Jace. Do this.” He turned to the rockface, made more sounds, and finished.

When it was over, Jason was surprised: Was this what all the fuss is about? Is that all there is? This wasn’t a new sensation. He’d felt it before, since around age seven, but he’d never touched himself like Alfie was doing; he would just press down on his bed while on his stomach, and after he felt it he’d fall off to sleep. That evening on the beach he did laugh himself silly with Alf’s jokes and groans. And now, in recollection, he laughed again about it, before he sat on his heels, one finger drilled in the wet sand for balance, and cried like a toddler.

Damn that Alfie. Damn him to a hundred-and-twenty-one and way beyond, forevermore. I will never get that close to anyone ever again, Jason told himself…

FAVORED TO DEATH by N. J. Ayres is one of 17 outstanding stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #5—Joe R. Lansdale

In his advance review in Booklist, Wes Lukowsky gives special mention to “Joe R. Lansdale’s chilling ‘The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team,’ which depicts a high-school competition in which sport and butchery have joined hands.” And Publishers Weekly echoes the sentiment, calling Joe’s story “a dystopian tale of a new arena blood sport, in which even Joe Lansdale—famed for gonzo excess—holds back on gore and piles on implication.”

[image error]With his new Hap & Leonard novel, The Elephant of Surprise, waiting in the wings—it’s already hat-tricked its way to raves in PW, Booklist, and Kirkus—you know you want to read his latest story. Here’s a taste of it:

THE SENIOR GIRLS BAYONET DRILL TEAM by Joe R. Lansdale

The bus ride can be all right, if everyone talks and cuts up, sings the school fight song, and keeps a positive attitude. It keeps your mind off what’s to come. Oh, you don’t want to not think about it at all, or you won’t be ready, you won’t have your grit built up. You need that, but you can’t think about it all the time, or you start to worry too much.

You got to believe all the training and team preparation will carry you through, even if sometimes it doesn’t. I started in Junior High, so I’m an old pro now. This is my last year on the team, and my last event, and if I’m careful, and maybe a little lucky, I’ll graduate and move on. It’s all about the survivors.

I was thinking about Ronnie. She was full of life and energy and as good as any of us, but she’s not with us anymore. She got replaced by a new girl that isn’t fit to tie Ronnie’s war shoes, which her parents bronzed and keep in their living room on a table next to the ashes of Ronnie’s pet shiatzu. I saw the shoes there during the memorial. The dog had been there for at least three years before Ronnie died. It bit me once. Maybe that’s why it died. Poisoned. I remembered too that it slept a lot and snored in little stutters, like an old lawn mower starting.

Ronnie has a gold plaque on the wall back at the gym, alongside some others, and if you were to break that plaque apart, behind it you’d find a little slot, and in that slot is her bayonet and her ashes in an urn. I guess that’s something. Her name is on the plaque, of course. Her years on the team, and her death year is listed too.

There have been a lot of plaques put in the gym over the years, but it still feels special and sacred to see them. You kind of want to end up there when you’re feeling the passion, and the rest of the time that’s just what you don’t want.

[image error]Ronnie also has a nice photo of her in her uniform, holding her bayonet, over in Cumshaw hall, which is named after the girl they think was the greatest player of all, Margret Cumshaw. Cumshaw Hall is also known as the Hall of Fame.

To be in both spots is unique, so I guess Ronnie has that going for her, though it occurs to me more than now and again, that she hasn’t any idea that this is so. I’m not one that believes in the big stadium in the sky. I figure dead is dead, but because of that, I guess you got to look at the honor of it all and know it matters. Without that plaque, photo, ten years from now, who’s to know she existed at all?

Sometimes, though, the bus ride can be a pain in the ass, and not just because you might get your mind on what’s to come and not be able to lose your thoughts in talk and such, but as of late, we got to put up with Clarisse.

Clarisse thinks she’s something swell, but she’s not the only one with scars, and she’s not the only one who’s killed someone. And though she sometimes acts like it, she’s not the team captain. Not legitimately, anyway.

It’s gotten so it’s a chore to ride with her on the bus to a game. She never shuts up, and all she talks about is herself. She acts like we need a blow by blow of her achievements, like the rest of us weren’t there to perform as well. Like we didn’t see what she did.

She remembers her own deeds perfectly, but the rest of us, well, she finds it hard to remember where we were and what we did, and how there have been a few of us that haven’t come back. She scoots over the detail about how our teammate’s bodies, as is the rule of the game, become the property of the other team if we aren’t able to rescue them before the buzzer. You’d think she saved everyone, to hear her rattle on. She hasn’t. We haven’t.

[image error]We managed a save with Ronnie’s body, but we’ve lost a few. That’s tough to think about. The whole ritual when you lose a team member to the other side. The ceremony of the body being hooked up to a harness that the other team takes hold of so they can drag the body around the playing field three or four times, like it’s Hector being pulled about the walls of Troy by Achilles in his chariot. And then there’s the whole thing of the other team hacking up the body with bayonets when the dragging is done, having to stand there and watch and salute those bastards. That happens, the dead team mate still gets a plaque, but there’s nothing behind it but bricks.

When we end up dragging one of theirs and hacking on it, well, I enjoy that part immensely. I put my all into it and think of team mates we’ve lost. We yell their names as we pull and then hack.

Thing was, Clarisse’s bullshit wasn’t boosting me up, it was bringing me down, cause all I could think about were the dead comrades and how it could be me, and here it was my last game, and all I had to do was make it through this one and I was graduating and home free.

A number of us were in that position, on the edge of graduation. I think it made half the team solemn. Some of the girls don’t want it to end. Me, I can’t wait to get out. There’s a saying in the squad. First game. Last game. They’re the ones that are most likely to get you killed.

First time out you’re too full of piss and vinegar to be as cautious as you should be, last time out you’re overly cautious, and that could end up just as bad.

Clarisse thinks she’s immortal and can do no wrong, but sometimes you go left when you should go right, or the girl on the other team is stronger or swifter than you. Things can change in a heartbeat.

Clarisse, for all her skill, hasn’t learned that. For her, every day is Clarisse Day, even though that was just one special day of recognition she got some six months back. It was on account of her having a wonderful moment on the field, so wonderful she was honored with a parade and flowers and one of the boys from the bus repair pool; the usual ritual. Me, I have always played well, and I’m what they call dependable. But I’ve never had my own day, a parade, flowers, and a boy toy. I’ve never had that honor. That’s okay. I used to think about it, but now the only honor I want is to graduate and not embarrass my team in the process, try to make sure no one gets killed on my side of the field. Especially me.

We may be the state champions, but the position can change in one game…

The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team by Joe R. Lansdale is one of 17 outstanding and uncompromising stories in At Home in the Dark.

AT HOME IN THE DARK—Preview #4—Laura Benedict

[image error]Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say in a starred review of Laura Benedict’s new novel, The Stranger Inside: “Kimber’s complicated personality and unusual family life drive the ever-twisting, surprise-filled plot. Angry and jealous as a child and teenager, and now a cold, prickly adult, Kimber is the epitome of the unreliable narrator. Readers will enjoy vicarious chills in her company.”

In a review of At Home in the Dark, PW highlighted Laura’s story, pointing out that it “works a modern variant on Hansel and Gretel.” Here’s a taste of it:

This Strange Bargain by Laura Benedict

The children emerge from the misting rain on the right shoulder of the road, and I take my foot off the gas, trying to decide if I will stop. Inside the Buick it’s warm and dry and smells of cinnamon and chocolate, and the music is Satie, my favorite. I don’t want to share the pleasure of this moment with a couple of stringy brats who don’t have the sense to carry a flashlight or wear shoes with reflective bands on the heels. But this hesitation is only a game I play with myself. I’ll stop. I always do.

A boy and girl, I think, the girl much taller than the boy. Their hair shines platinum in the headlights. They hold hands, which might be touching to some. Sister and younger brother?

Slowing the car, I put the blinker on. I’ve always been conscientious. A rule follower.

The Buick idles, the Satie plays. I wait for them to reach me. Blondes. Always blondes. I wonder who decided that. I press the button to lower the passenger window.

But the children have abandoned the shoulder for the ostensible safety of the opposite side of the drainage ditch. The girl strides purposefully on. Stay away from us! might as well be blinking in lights above her. It’s the boy who is curious, and as the girl pulls him along, he stares, open-mouthed, at the car and me. His denim overalls are loose, the legs baggy and too short. He’s also barefoot, and the night is chilly, the grass wet. How miserable.

Turning down the Satie, I clear my throat before calling out, “Nice night for ducks!” I smile, assuming they can see me by the soft lighting of the Buick’s interior. “Do you need a ride?”

In response, the boy stalls and raises his hand in a tentative wave. Then he looks up at the girl, who jerks him forward.

Damn it. She’s going to play hard to get. I ride the brake, letting the car creep forward. The rain picks up.

“Where y’all headed? I hate to see you out in this nasty weather. Won’t you let me at least give you an umbrella?” The girl still won’t look at me. The boy is not so suspicious of middle-aged women in big cars, bless him. If he has a grandmother, I bet he misses her already. I bet she bakes him cookies and spoils him with presents. Though from the state of his clothing and his shaggy hair, I suspect that the presents—if there are any—are modest. She might even be a heroin addict, or a drunk who beats him. I lean as far as I can toward the passenger window to hold out a cheap folding umbrella.

The girl and I are both surprised when the boy jerks loose of her hand. She shouts as he hurtles down the bank, headed for my car.

“Braylee! Stop!” She sounds more annoyed than panicked. I put the car in PARK.

The sun-browned face that appears at my window wears a shy smile, revealing a gap where a front tooth should be. Excitement shines in his eyes, and his breath is quick and shallow. Braylee? Why do children’s names seem to get less dignified with each generation?

“Why hello, Braylee.” The words feel foreign in my mouth. I don’t want to know their names. “Here you go.”

After snatching the umbrella as though he’s afraid I’ll change my mind, he turns and jogs a few feet. But he stops and looks back.

“Thank you, ma’am.” He has an adorable lisp.

“You’re welcome!” I dislike adorable.

[image error]Turning his attention to the umbrella, he fumbles with the catch. Just as I’m about to offer my advice, the umbrella shoots open. He laughs, but the wind drops from nowhere and plucks the thin sound away. The umbrella is no match for the wind, and its dome fills in an instant, causing the boy to stagger sideways, out of my sight. Has it forced him into the dangerous road?

A curtain of rain crashes against the windshield, enveloping the Buick. Water pours into the passenger window before I can close it. When that’s done, I push open my door against the driving rain, and hold onto the car as I make my way to the boy, who lies motionless on the shoulder.

Why tonight? Why not a night filled with the songs of tree frogs, and the whinnying of contented horses in nearby pastures, under a bright moon.

The girl reaches him first, falling to her knees, her voice straining over the clamor of the rain. She flings a worn denim bag on the ground beside her. “You’re all right, you’re all right. It’s okay. I promise it’s okay!” Her hands flutter over the boy like moths uncertain where to land. Finally, she slips one hand behind his head and the other beneath his upper back. Rain streams down his face as she gently lifts him to her lap. I wait for him to open his eyes, or make some noise—a scream, or a rattling sigh. I doubt he’s mortally injured from such a simple fall, but I watch, just in case. That moment between life and death is so brief, so precious. When he finally opens his mouth, he sputters at the rain.

By some miracle the umbrella still rocks on its head only a few feet from us. I kneel at his side to hold it over the three of us, gravel pressing painfully into my skin.

When the girl pulls her hand from beneath his head, it’s smeared with blood, purple in the glow of the Buick’s taillights. My breath catches. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the blood’s sharp tang seems to linger in my nostrils until we get the boy into the car…

This Strange Bargain by Laura Benedict is one of 17 outstanding and uncompromising stories in At Home in the Dark.