Blood Business: Crime Stories From This World And Beyond
By Chris Holm
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Two books, one anthology.
The grift. The scam. The double-cross. Blackmail and burglary; murder and larceny. Blood Business tracks the underbelly of human nature as it drags itself through the muck of our lesser angels in twenty-seven crime stories set in this world... and beyond.
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Blood Business - Chris Holm
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are products of the authors’ imaginations and/or are used fictitiously.
BLOOD BUSINESS
CRIME STORIES FROM THIS WORLD AND BEYOND
Copyright © 2017 by Hex Publishers, LLC.
All rights reserved.
All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors, and used here with their permission. An extension of this copyright page can be found on the Acknowledgments page.
Edited by Mario Acevedo and Joshua Viola
Copyedits by Jennifer Melzer
Cover illustrations by Aaron Lovett
Cover design by Kirk DouPonce
Typesets and formatting by Angie Hodapp
A Hex Publishers Book
Published & Distributed by Hex Publishers, LLC
PO BOX 298
Erie, CO 80516
www.HexPublishers.com
No portion of this book may be reproduced without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.
Cover art copyright © by Hex Publishers.
Print ISBN-10: 0-9986667-9-3
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-9986667-9-2
Ebook ISBN-10: 0-9986667-8-5
Ebook ISBN-13: 978-0-9986667-8-5
Foreword
Gary Phillips
Writers of the hard-pressed and the twisted know that behind the veneer of normalcy—where trimmed lawns are bordered by white picket fences and the sweet old widow living in the corner house once again wins the church bake sale with her treasured apple-pie recipe—can lie dark and troubled psyches. Didn’t those uptight Jamestown pilgrims resort to cannibalism when the food ran out? Piety took a back seat to survival. Given a particular circumstance, aren’t any one of us capable of the unimaginable?
Good ole’ neighbor Sam secretly lusts for his bowling buddy’s wife and one day decides to satisfy his unhealthy desire. Through the cold process of reptilian brain logic, the supposedly meek conclude murder is the only option to accomplish a goal. Or worse, murder is carried out as cavalierly as deciding between sprinkles or candy crunches atop a frozen yogurt treat.
Bad business…blood business, baby.
The nature of our engagements and interactions can be a tricky thing. For each heartbeat of altruism, greed is the selfish counter tempo. For each measure to provide comfort when a confidence is shared, there’s the flip side of knowing certain information must never come to light—that money can be extorted to ensure such secrets remains unspoken. The mark is drawn into the con, duping themselves because they itch for something more. They need to feed their hunger and inexorably they fool themselves into believing what they desire is within reach—if only they had the guts to act.
The stories in this enthralling anthology offer a step through the funhouse mirror and into our rubbery distortion. On the other side we see beyond the image and are fascinated by what is reflected. Within these pages you’ll find stories that portray the excesses of those who dare to embrace what’s inside that mirror to those fleeing to put as much distance as they can from what’s been revealed. But Blood Business lets us know escaping our fate is not in the cards. The hand has been dealt and you might just have to wager your life before the night is out.
In these pages there are tales about lowlifes and hustlers, scammers and short cutters...and even a jammed up faerie or two—the sort of individuals who don’t populate the environs of everyday society. They operate at the edges, pretending a humdrum existence, but just below the surface they seethe with appetites they can’t quite name, that keep them awake past closing time—ready to go on the prowl after their entitled spoils. Or what if the tables were turned, and one of these malefactors was cheated by a bolder thief? There’s no righting that wrong through polite means. Hell, maybe it’s not about justice, but about getting even and settling scores.
Blood Business is the sticky stuff that flows into the abscesses, the voids where theses characters’ souls should be. It’s a gurgling and coagulating entity that slowly, irrevocably poisons your body and plays havoc on your sanity. This contamination courses through you, quivering in your veins that you are due, and too bad if some chump gets in your way. There’s a pulsing along your inner arm and you watch as this clump creeps under your skin like a diseased rat squeezing through a sewer pipe.
Blood Business is the thrill you’ve been jonesing to inject. Roll up your sleeves and get ready to take the hit. You’ll find the darkness addicting.
Introduction
Mario Acevedo
Noir.
Doomed losers. Outsiders. Underdogs. Sinners beyond redemption.
Why should we care about them?
Because these characters allow us to indulge in the forbidden. To wade through the corruption that teems beneath our humdrum existence. We get to part the curtains of decency and reward ourselves with an eyeful of the taboo.
For we love the voyeuristic thrill that noir provides.
Noir is dark fiction. Noir is nihilism. Despair. Menace. Violence. The grotesque. Ruin.
In the hands of a dilettante, the results are cliché. But in the hands of a master, such tropes are both the tools and the medium to craft twisted tales of moral decay.
Noir has its roots in the mystery novel. The detective’s search for justice forces him into the underworld of deceit and malfeasance, and this sin stains him. We see in Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, for example, a flawed hero whose nobility is illuminated because he stands in contrast to the darker souls he has to pry the truth out of. The hero becomes the anti-hero, but in spite of his defects, he manages to do the right thing.
Then Jim Thompson tossed aside the pretense of a hero trying to do good by society’s standards. As the protagonist’s world crumbles around him or her, we see them make one bad decision after another on the path to inevitable disaster.
Noir’s protagonists creep, lurch, stumble toward self-destruction. Noir is a window into the heart of villainy. The knife is put in our hands so we can spatter ourselves with the victim’s blood. We eavesdrop on the protagonist’s perverted thoughts, feel their pain as they wrestle with their dilemmas, and yet goad them on to plunge down the wrong fork in the road.
We revel in this because every one of us—no matter how well-adjusted, how gregarious, how cheerfully we greet the world—is trapped within our own minds. No one really understands us. Secret longings and desires percolate into a brew of macabre and obscene what-ifs? We know how easily life can tip the scales, dragging us out of comfort and security and into desperation. We muse about weighing our moral anchor to see how far we can drift beyond the safe haven of propriety and virtue. Give us the Ten Commandments, and we’ll smash the tablets and trade the fragments for drugs and sex.
We secretly want to wallow in vice and promiscuity.
We want to lie...to steal...to kill?
In Blood Business, we open that door.
Our stories run the gamut of noir. You’ll find the unreliable narrator, the delusional criminal, the traitorous partner-in-crime, the smarmy businessman undone by greed, the adulterous husband whose treachery snares him in a dangerous double-cross. A one-time hoodlum is forced to confront his criminal past and thus trips into the web of lies spun by his former homies. A woman’s quest for atonement and a righteous life circles back to the abyss of tortured memories. A vignette of stupid criminals careens between the horrific and the humorous, confirming that catastrophe and comedy are flipsides of the same dramatic coin.
But that wasn’t enough. We broadened the mix by including stories with a paranormal twist. The supernatural allows us to up the stakes. To make the phantasms of our imagination into monsters of flesh and blood. We make bargains with otherworldy forces, knowing these deals always backfire. To show that even when offered the chance to fly with angels, people prefer to consort with demons.
Such then, is noir. Enjoy then, the company of our doomed losers.
Doubling Down on Death: Two Fatal Features
Edward Bryant
I.
Sunset at the Oasis
Vaulted and stark, blued steel only now beginning to soften with the approach of twilight. The few wisps of cloud start to glow the precise crimson of arterial spray.
Graeff hunches down in the blind and hefts the thirty-aught. He sights for practice on a dry clot of hardpan. He touches the trigger delicately with less than a hair’s weight of pressure. Imagines the sharp report and the hard kick against his shoulder.
Dusk is nearing. The prey takes its own sweet time out there.
He knows they might come down to the water at any time, day or night. But by and large, they all heed the water’s call at sunset. It is a reality he counts on. It is a reality that has filled his trophy basement with a lifetime of sharp memories.
Graeff samples the perfectly still air. It smells like heat, tinged with dust. The desert winds will rise with the onset of darkness. But for now, even the beginning twilight shadows seem too dense, too thick to breathe into his lungs.
Good. His prey will be less wary; far too eager to reach the fresh water that is all too rare in this forsaken back-forty of wilderness.
He stiffens and cocks his head. Graeff hears the sound of small rocks disturbed, two stones lightly clicking together. He carefully and slowly swivels to look up the slope.
No question; they are close. Graeff assumes there are more than one. There usually are. He hopes there aren’t too many. He doesn’t have all night to take trophies and bury the carcasses. Graeff has promised his wife he’ll get back to the city at a civilized hour.
More sounds, louder now. Graeff raises the 30.06 to his shoulder and steadies it carefully. He doesn’t need to work the bolt; the rifle has been ready for hours. The butt plate feels snug against his shoulder. He narrows his gaze into the eyepiece of the sight, delicately adjusts the crosshairs, replaces his hand on the polished wood beneath the barrel. This is the time when the rifle feels incredibly light, the beginning of the endorphin rush. Payment will be exacted later.
A head pokes carefully above the rise south of the water. Dark, lustrous eyes survey the oasis cautiously. Graeff holds his perfect Zen stillness. Another head. Good, a male and a female. Not a movement on Graeff’s part. Do not spook the prey. The male leading, his mate following, both pick their way down the trail toward the water.
They are so close now—and the air yet so perfectly still—Graeff knows he won’t need to lead either one. He certainly won’t need to use the scope. So he feels the heat in his groin rise up. Point and shoot, and that will be that. Just a matter of pulling the trigger all steady, gently, mercifully.
That’s what Graeff does. And so that is that—at first.
But then everything goes south all at once.
A chunk of the male’s skull bursts out with the first shot, blood spraying a thick mist into the air. He drops to the hard slope, limbs flailing.
His mate recoils instinctively before the second shot, sprawling in the dust with a cry, then scrambling back up the slope. Graeff works the bolt, following her with the muzzle, squeezes the trigger, somehow manages only to kick up dust behind her right heel.
Below her, the male reaches back weakly. Graeff hears the word —dios—
as the prey collapses, rolling down the slope as if in one final, mad effort to reach the plastic water tank the bleeding hearts from Tucson have placed here in the middle of Satan’s own desert anvil.
Make sure the male is dead, Graeff thinks, then track and finish the female. Two trophies minimum for today.
But then one more thing goes wrong.
In the excitement of the kill, he has not been paying enough attention to his surroundings.
Freeze! Game and Fish, son. Put down your weapon.
Graeff spins and looks directly into the setting sun-dazzle. When he starts to raise the aught-six, he knows instantly it’s a bad idea.
Too late.
Shit, he thinks.
—the muzzle flash—
The pain.
It all ends…
…until he opens his eyes again.
II.
A Family Letter
December 17
My Dear Friends and Family,
I know many of you expected that this year, of all years, we wouldn’t send you a holiday letter, what with the Donnie situation and all. But when I thought about it, I realized we hadn’t missed a holiday in more than thirty years of mailing out these darned things.
I hope you can understand why this is a time for us to take comfort in trying to keep as regular a routine as possible in all our lives. All of you are the people closest to us in our world and we love you. We have taken comfort in your support and your caring.
Over the past year, admittedly, we’ve discovered that not everyone has been as faithful as you. Some have drawn away from us, sometimes people we would never have expected that from. But we can’t argue. They’re doing what they have to do, just as we are doing the same.
I guess when it comes to love and loyalty and support, there’s no way to predict which course people will take when the chips are down. Our faith has helped us, of course, but most of our ability to go on getting up in the morning and living all day and then going to sleep and starting over the next day has been a continuing and ever-lasting gift from all of you. I’ll admit that I often cry myself to sleep and Jim sometimes drinks himself to sleep. When we do get to sleep, we’re usually close but not touching. I’m sorry if that’s too honest, but I think candor is probably the only way we’ll get through this.
Yes, I know I should mention Donnie somewhere here too, but that’s difficult. I’ll try, but I can make no guarantees. The thing is, when all is said and done, he is still our son, our only child.
You probably know that Jim lost his job at the realty company right after the final Supreme Court appeal. It was a good severance package, though, and that’s what we’ve been living on. We’ve cut back on expenses, but we’re doing okay. Some friends have helped us out and some have not. It’s always surprising. Almost no one from Jim’s office has kept in touch.
The same thing’s happened with the people at the pre-school where I worked for such a long time. Sometimes I have occasion to go back to the front office, but I feel more and more like a complete stranger. Old colleagues don’t meet my eye, and so I do what I need to do and then leave.
Some of you, and I know you mean absolutely well, have suggested we seek professional help. Do you know, we tried that right after Donnie’s first trial. I think it helped a little. Jim disagrees. We haven’t gone back to the doctor in quite a long time. The drugs—they just didn’t work out. Forget that. Don’t tell Jim, but sometimes I go back to the pills the doctor prescribed, though they don’t even help me sleep. And sometimes when I drive now, I can’t keep my eyes off the big trucks in the opposite lane. And those high bridges off in the distance? I’m trying to drive a lot less. And you know how I used to love to drive.
Have I told all of you about our new cat? Forgive me if I’m repeating. We got a beautiful new boy from our neighbor. Well, actually the woman next door moved to the other side of town along with her kids and left the kitty behind. We hadn’t had a cat since Donnie was just a little boy and we had to stop having pets in the house.
So we adopted him. The cat was a young male, gray and sleek and handsome, a real charmer. And such a purr! We could never find quite the right name for him, so we called him Mouser or Killer or sometimes Jim would call him really vile things I cannot repeat in a holiday letter. You have to understand, he was a natural predator, though he always behaved perfectly at home. He used his litter box without fail when he wasn’t outside, and he would be graceful and completely loving when he would sleep in my lap.
But it didn’t take long before he exhibited the habit that Jim and I tried to understand, but finally couldn’t accept. The cat loved to hunt and would bring us mementoes. He would drag back, through the old doggie door in the kitchen, a trophy from the night’s journey. We would wake up in the morning and find souvenirs from the cat’s victims on the foot of our bed. A rabbit’s head, severed at the shoulder. Sometimes just a floppy ear. A disemboweled field mouse. A decapitated robin. Worst of all, once, a dead calico kitten. That was the hardest one for us.
Jim and I told each other that’s the way of cats. Isn’t it? We talked about it. We fought about it. Finally Jim put his boot down and issued an ultimatum.
I guess I’ll have to go along with his wishes. There’s no higher authority in our household. We’ve asked the vet to put our kitty to sleep.
We will both go along to witness his death. It will be so difficult, but that’s the least we can do. It’s the right thing. It’s the only thing.
I’ve talked again with Jim about all this, but I know there is no further appeal.
I pray that next Christmas I can pass along better news from us both.
With all our affection from the loving family we still are,
Ruth
Bone on Wood
Mark Stevens
Nine months in this town, sure, but his messages hadn’t changed.
He knew what he needed to do if he was going to whip the troops into shape.
He saw weakness. Weaknesses, in fact, were rampant. They festered. His work spilled out before him. He had a wistful notion that here, out on the eastern plains, things among civilians would be different.
But, no.
Betty Locke sat with a glass of white wine. He pictured the box in the refrigerator—a box of cheap stuff, complete with plastic spigot. He knew it was there. He didn’t have to look. He glanced at his phone: 4:10 p.m. Betty Locke tried to put herself together for his visit, but it hadn’t really worked.
She wanted his help.
She needed his help.
Odd to get a request for a house call, but so what?
He remained standing; a sign of urgency.
For the third time in three weeks, her son had been disciplined for bullying.
There’s nothing I can do,
she said. I need your help.
He wondered how much her hair coloring cost. Gray roots, ginger coif. A big-screen TV, on mute, played a show about buying mansions.
Expulsion is next,
she said. "If there’s another incident. It’s automatic. Can you talk to the principal?"
Betty Locke married a melon farmer, Alfredo Perez. They lived downtown in a white, clapboard, two-story house. The farm was north ten klicks, out in the country.
Is Francisco here?
he said.
She cocked her head to think. I don’t think so.
There was a problem right there: houses so big you don’t even know who is home. Of course, if you’re buzzed at this hour, what did it matter? He thought he heard rumbling upstairs.
Is he at school?
he said.
School gets out at three-thirty.
She looked down at her wine. He was here for a few minutes and then ran out again. I think. Sure you won’t join me? It’s nearly five.
There were no strict rules about it, but he knew the impression it would leave.
Your boy took a swing.
He let her chew on it. On the TV, the new mansion owners toasted with amber cocktails on a sun-splashed deck.
Just grazed the kid is what he told me,
she said. And Francisco’s eye is swollen. It takes two, you know.
When will he be home?
The thought of trying to talk to Francisco, frankly, repulsed him. Francisco wouldn’t listen. He was raised to ignore. He was raised to get his way. In other words, he wasn’t raised. He was born and waited upon. Francisco played left tackle. His thighs were as big around as a dinner plate. One time, he spotted Francisco downtown, a chocolate milkshake in one hand, caramel something in the other.
Francisco keeps his own schedule,
she said.
And Alfredo?
She paused, bobbed her head, squinted. Where he’s from, getting to high school is enough. Alfredo is so proud—all the football recruiters, you know. Of course Alfredo wants him to go to college.
He’s a junior.
They drive all the way out here. Three at the last game. One from Oklahoma. Hell, we may as well be Sooners down here. Corner of nowhere.
This is not nowhere.
Hadn’t they listened? He tried to boost them up, show them he believed that everywhere mattered, everyone mattered.
You’re new.
Sort of, it’s true.
He’d heard this argument. But I was in another town like this one. Across the border in Kansas and—
And what? He didn’t know what he was trying to say
She stared at him, eyebrows popped high.
There wasn’t that feeling of being overlooked,
he said. Small town, sure, but genuine dignity, appreciation.
Jobs?
Not much different than here. You know; a fair amount of struggling, really.
Good for them, then. Can you talk to Francisco?
They were longtime members and this was part of the bargain, his end of it. He had a free place to stay, even with the mice and the leaky roof over the spare bedroom.
He cleared his throat. Can you excuse me?
In the bathroom, he pissed like a young stallion; loud enough that she’d know his need was real. He made a big deal out of running the water in the sink when he was done. The mirror issued a meek squeak as he pulled it open.
Jackpot.
Oxy front and center. He helped himself to five. No, eight. And half a bottle of Aleve PM, a mini ammo dump of sleep in his palm. And then into his pocket. Oxy in the right, sleep in the left. They would help him take the edge off this cranky, windblown town.
He peeked in their bedroom, a few steps down the long hall. Wood floors squawked. Another giant flat-screen, bigger than the other. In this old house, it looked like the shiny, weird obelisk in that goofy sci-fi movie about the apes and the slow-singing computer. The bed was up as high as his waist. It was so high, Alfredo could stand on the floor while he went down on her. That is, if he wanted to. If Mexican melon farmers did those things. Maybe that’s why she drank. The down comforter was a beauty, but it wouldn’t fit in his pocket. He had yet to feel warm in the miserable quarters that came with his deal.
They stood at the door. He saw she must need to pluck to keep the eyebrows separate.
Of course, I’ll talk to him.
Thank you,
she said. He has to graduate. I mean, that scholarship. It’s everything.
*
She won’t tell me the truth.
Johnny DeMuir, the good soldier. The earnest one. The true believer. The straight and narrow wasn’t straight enough or narrow enough. He left tithes every week. Checks! $8.50, come hell or high harvest, each week. $8.50! How’d he come up with that?
But you’re sure?
he said.
I can see it in her eyes,
said DeMuir. Also, a friend saw her car at the Econo Lodge in La Junta. All afternoon.
Odd that he’d been asked on another home visit so soon after Becky Locke, but there it was. Nine months... maybe they were all growing comfortable. Well, not all. What did Johnny DeMuir want for his $8.50?
He tried to look as if he cared. Are you two getting along?
Johnny shook his head. Thick sideburns, bushy eyebrows, three days of whiskers or more over a dark complexion. He’d make a decent Fat Elvis. It’s been rough. Can’t say what it is. Grown apart, somehow.
Sex?
Johnny looked sheepish. They never expected that word from his mouth.
Not much, not often. Brenda—
He took a breath, shook his head. You know.
Do you do things together?
he said. Fun things?
In this town?
said DeMuir.
See friends, play games? Bowl?
Her friends don’t like me. I think they’re part of the problem. According to her, I’m always wanting to plan for tomorrow. All they want to do is have a few drinks, plug the jukebox at Porky’s Parlor.
Do you get out there?
Already he was feeling discouraged about what reward he might find. Johnny’s house was spare like a monk’s. Loosen up?
Look, we got nothing in the bank. I mean, not enough to make you feel as if you can go fritter it away on beers and burritos. Not me.
Have you asked her?
About?
said DeMuir.
La Junta?
DeMuir sighed.
In the bathroom, he did his best impression of a racehorse pissing on fresh asphalt. The medicine cabinet was lame. Generics. Good Lord. Grocery store generics. He didn’t believe in them. Two twenties lay folded in half on the bureau in the bedroom, one went missing.
Make it $28.50.
What should I do?
said DeMuir.
Do you want to meet; the three of us? I mean, marriages hit their rocky patches and then one day the sun shines and you move on.
Hell, he wouldn’t be here if his ex could have shown a slight interest in plain vanilla sex. Twice a month was all. With the lights off. He couldn’t kiss her below the neck. She claimed it was all any man would need.
How the hell would she know? His ex fussed over the budget, too. Recorded every penny out and in. She’d like Johnny DeMuir.
"You mean confront her?"
Talk it out—in a safe environment.
She might walk.
He bet, when the time came for a good sob, Johnny was a blubberer. Probably thanked his wife for every roll in the hay. As if it was some great sacrifice. His wife was what, thirty? Thirty-two? And now banging a guy in La Junta?
She might anyway.
A small crucifix hung over the couch on the opposite wall. He bet his middle finger was longer than the crossbar. What good was it? Better to get it out, clear the air.
She thinks we’re normal.
He laughed. At least, he smiled and shook his head. Normal is an average of a lot of things.
*
She’s gay, I’m telling you.
Third house call in five days. Weird. But again, the thought came to him: Maybe they were taking to him.
She’s how old?
Last week.
Sheila Judd’s bloodshot eyes screamed fatigue. Worry. Turned twelve.
And what makes you think—
Oh please.
Judd cut him off. I know you’re fairly new, but I could never get her to wear a dress. I mean when she was three? No ballerina—no way, no how. And you know, her haircut. You’ve seen it.
Mrs. Judd kept her long hair straight. She sat pitched forward, as if her belly ached.
Not just a tomboy?
he said.
Angie doesn’t even notice guys. You can’t talk to her about ‘em. And look at this.
She handed him a paperback, The Gravity Between Us. Kirsten Zimmer. On the cover, two young girls in profile were seconds from a delicate kiss.
Found it in her backpack, dog-eared at the right spots.
Mrs. Judd shook her head. These days you never know what they’re doing. I heard some kids don’t think oral sex is sex, for crying out loud.
It could be exploration,
he said.
It could be it’s what she wants. And she’ll be miserable. Bullied right through high school. In this town? Are you kidding me?
He whizzed, flushed, washed up. Scrubbed like a surgeon. The medicine cabinet coughed up the mother lode—fucking Fentora, strong enough for gunshot wounds but dangerous shit, all sorts of respiratory implications, and fresh Vicodin, refilled within the week. He got hooked on Oxy during Enduring Freedom, tried Fentora twice.
Mind if I get myself a glass of water?
There’s filtered in the fridge,
she said. The big pitcher. Help yourself.
Want one?
he said.
Sure.
Water, hell. He wanted an iced-down whiskey to celebrate. Maybe the worn twenty on the counter by the sad bananas was his tip. It had that look, the way it was left there. All by its lonesome. He didn’t really have a fix on Sheila Judd. Up until this visit, she hadn’t really stood out. A wanna-be lesbian daughter made her, in a word, interesting.
Like the other two in this busy stretch, she