Yesterday’s post was launched into the shimmering veil that is cyberspace never to be seen again. A dark interpretation might be that is a form of rejection, a cosmic intervention, an interlude to remind us all how fragile this tiny convention is. Or, it could’ve been a glitch. Mechanical breakdown. The Earl, an expert on these matters, wrote to say that frayed RSS feeds often lead to disaster. That’s why we use Lord Cornwallis Simple Syndication around here; our thoughts are shot out of a cannon.

Lots of visitors yesterday. Perhaps less is more. A hint of mystery may have attracted visitors who might otherwise have gone off in search of the Adrienne Barbeaux Archive. Most of the TV movies from the 80s are still around, cycling through syndication on those strange channels between ESPN and C-span. These epics could be launched into the abyss that swallowed my post. They may encounter one another in a separate dimension, form some sort of bond, and re-emerge all the better for it. Mutually improved. Let’s hope so.

I read the snippet of information about Evanovich last week. Stuff like that resonates with writers because while her success is obvious the struggle to launch her career occurred off stage. When her day arrived she was ready for it as a glance at the bestseller list confirms. A decade of struggle is going to weed some people out of the process, but there is no uniform experience in this business, no reliable template for the newcomer to follow. The here and now offers a deluge of information from bloggers such as Miss Snark although I have reservations about the value of devoting too much time on her site. The valid experience is the one that occurs in private between the writer and the agent or editor with work to read. Everything else is entertainment.

I don’t see how to avoid two things on the road to publication: reading what is published and writing your own stuff. That’s the part I can control, so that’s what I try to focus on. I try to write new stuff through to the end and put it away while I hack through another thicket of prose in another WIP. If this going to take me a decade, I’ll need more than the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I packed for the trip.

I opened up a novel I wrote a few years ago. It’s a crime novel called AN AZTEC IN CENTRAL PARK. There are two points of view, one from a criminal trying to protect his daughter, the other from a cop trying to protect an old friend, a priest bent on revenge. I’ve decided to bring the story up by revealing more plot in the beginning. I’ll let you know how it goes.

It sometimes happens that working on one project yields ideas for another. Thus proof reading THE WORKING DEAD got me going on another novel, THE NAMES which features some of the characters from WAYS TO DIE IN THE CONGO and has nothing to do the characters in THE WORKING DEAD. There is no doubt some mysterious affinity or connection between these two books although I’m not sure what it is. I have several drafts of THE NAMES and through some organic process better explored in TWELVE MONKEYS an actual story is emerging. Yes, if I bang on the keyboard long enough the characters take over and begin helping out rather than thwarting your reporter with conflcting goals and aims. That’s why I recommend hiring a ghost writer for those early drafts while you pose by the pool looking magisterial. Work on your tan.

The setup: Jessica Haight is on Zanzibar Island shooting a movie. After Jessica’s kidnapped and the film’s director murdered, her father, a man Jessica has never met, comes out of hiding to find her.

Here is a brief excerpt.

Bailiwick of Guernsey British Channel Islands

Tony Rhodes purchased a ceramic cookie jar in a shop called Cornet. The saleslady assured him he would be very pleased with the purchase. The jar depicted a mouse in farmer’s overalls wearing a yellow scarf. With a removable head the cookie jar had a capacity of some two quarts, she said, plenty of room for goodies.
“You must have grandchildren,” she said.

“Sweet tooth.”

After the grandchildren crack, Tony allowed her to wrap his treasure in the previous day’s edition of the Financial Times. He forked over five pounds, dumped the change into his pocket, and left the shop. The fat man’s barbershop was two minutes away, but Tony devoted fifteen minutes to evasion tactics, varying speed and direction every ninety seconds, backtracking past the Cornet clutching his mouse.

The cobble stone street was the width of a large alley. He entered the pub, ordering an ale and a plowman’s lunch. The landlord wiped the table down with a cloth before trundling off to fill the order. Tony took his package into the Gents and locked the door behind him.

After unwrapping the cookie jar, Tony lifted the mouse head free and glanced inside. He removed a bag of diamonds from his jacket pocket and dropped the bag into the cookie jar. Next he deposited a forged Canadian passport in the name of Henri Dumond of Trois Riviere, Quebec. Henri was okay for third world borders, but wouldn’t pass muster in Europe.

Someone rapped on the door. “Out in a sec,” Tony called. Footfalls sounded from the hall.

Tony removed his tweed jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He unfastened a bracelet on his left wrist, gold encrusted with sapphires before taking off a Rolex Oyster Perpetual. He strapped on a Casio watch with a plastic band, slipped the Rolex and the bracelet into the cookie jar. He paused for a moment. He really liked the Rolex—a gift from a deposed African dictator. Tony removed a second Rolex from his right wrist, a lady’s Oyster Perpetual.

The knock on the door was more insistent.

“Yeah, just a sec.”

Tony hesitated before dropping the Frozen Rope codebook into the cookie jar. On page forty-one of the book the names were written in plain text. He jotted the date on the upper right margin, closed the book, and placed it inside the ceramic mouse. Tony replaced the head, put on his jacket, rewrapped the cookie jar and left the bathroom.

A pleasant looking woman ushered her son forward. “All right, Jeremy, best hurry.”

Tony ate his lunch, drinking the ale, his eyes on the pub’s front door. He wondered if Sammy Moyer had gotten the message that Brazzaville was too hot in June. Tony wanted Sammy to run, but he hadn’t gotten the confirmation telex at the Bank of Lyon.

Sammy had provided a list of names, broken loose from network intercepts, vetted by no one other than Sammy. The list was the sort of raw intelligence that analysts would study for weeks, but the information frightened Tony and his immediate visceral response was belief. Some fool in Hollywood had written a screenplay based on real events, Tony’s personal history developed for the silver screen.

Another fool had greenlighted the project and hired Tony’s daughter to star. Only a handful of people knew of his brief marriage three decades earlier, let alone that the union had produced a child. In his line of work secrecy was vital and he’d taken steps to protect their identities. Now her name was on a list of potential targets, and he was fucked if he knew how that might have come to pass.

Tony paid his bill, picked his up his cookie jar and headed for the door.

Zanzibar Island, Indian Ocean

1300 GMT

Jessica Haight leaned over the railing of her balcony. The four star hotel in Zanzibar’s Stone Town sat on the beach facing the Indian Ocean. Her one bedroom suite faced the hotel pool and bar rather the ocean so when the urge struck her, she stood on tiptoes to catch a glimpse of the unfamiliar ocean.

Shooting had all but wrapped on the northern part of Zanzibar Island. Gus, the director, and one of the writers had flown to Mombasa that morning for a meeting with the executive producer. Jessica was under contract for another two weeks, and her agent had emailed that a commercial for French television might be in the cards. The French were arriving from Dar es Salaam on the afternoon ferry and were anxious to talk.

I went back to page one of The Working Dead to tighten, and eliminate some characters to bring the story up. Part of the plot involves a decree of nationalization by the government of a country that I chose at random, or so it seemed back when I plotted this out. That it’s Venezuela seems like I’m piling on the Pat Robertson bandwagon, poking Hugo Chavez in the ribs with the Big Stick of downhome diplomacy, but that isn’t why I chose Venezuela. A long time ago I had a minor work involvement with the Guri Dam down there, wherein Henry, then my boss, informed me that he was flying to Caracas ( Henry had a very large office with windows and we sat in a huge bullpen. He was an Ivy League fellow who wore garters on his socks and he’d ask people to come in to see him using me as the interlocuter. Henry once asked me to send Peter in, and when I told him he was on his way, Henry said, “On his way? On his way where?” For months Henry believed that Peter had gone somewhere, probably Venezuela, and he would scold me, reminding that he asked me to “handle” Venezuela, not Peter.)

That’s why I chose Venezuela.

We had a guy from Brazil in our unit, so he handled Brazil. Sometimes we’d all be laughing in the bullpen when an executive would appear demanding to know who handled Venezuela. That was me. They’d point to me. Even on the subway, or reading the paper I was handling Venezuela. A guy in the next row was from Buenos Aires so he handled Argentina, while a lady from Honduras handled that. I had the Guri Dam and that was in Venezuela. I had the Itaipu Dam on the Parana River between Brazil and Paraguay, and then the Bandama River dam which I think is in the Ivory Coast. The guy in front of me had studied Spanish at a university in Italy and spoke fluent Russian. Every third phone call to our company was from his ex-wife, and it fell to me to make excuses why he couldn’t come to the phone. Around this time Henry came to believe there was someone living in his office.
Whenever something went wrong Henry would ask me to explain it to him: why doesn’t geothermal power work? It works in Iceland, I said. Henry was surprised and asked me to handle Iceland, maybe do a write up so he could present his findings to The Board. Generally though, these sessions ended on a down note. He once asked for a list of countries shaded pink in the Rand McNally World Atlas. Poor little Iceland was pink. So was Peru. Venezuela was green. The Amazon was purple, the world was flat. We got paid every two weeks. We handled things.

Now that literature’s most eligible is marrying Kid Rock we can wonder why some books and some authors get buzz and some don’t. Pamela Anderson got plenty of attention for her first novel Star, but where’s the second book? The Updike trajectory is wobbling for Pam although I think I read somewhere Robbie Benson has written a novel, which brings up three questions I cannot answer: who is he? why don’t I know who he is? why has he written a novel? Am I as out of it as the umpiring crew at Yankee Stadium? Do I think that Jorge Posada is fast?

Dan Judson is one of the writers who probably does his own work. That’s not a knock on Pam and her ghost writer because I’m in favor of ambition by proxy and if I could, I’d leave the writing to someone else. I’d be poolside even if it is one of those Flintstones plastic pools which, if inflated properly, create an ambience of wealth and mystique. Add a few mixed drinks and a ghost writer and you’re in Hollywood. Write a few notes in the margin of your screenplay…boy, that’s exhausting.

THE DARKEST PLACE is one those books that deserves attention. This reporter will be interviewing Daniel Judson next week and reviewing his novel. In the meanwhile I’ve been contacted by that agent I mentioned a few weeks ago and am revising THE WORKING DEAD. She made a great point in her letter than all the minor characters have names; they don’t need names. I’m excited by her response to the work, and thus you won’t see me poolside with Pina Coladas or Fred and Wilma for that matter. I don’t know if Robbie Benson has an inflatable pool or if Pam is going to produce that sequel, but I’m down for this, my friends.

Here is a short story featuring two of the minor characters from Flamingo Dawn. If Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern robbed a bowling alley…

When Things Were Good

Man it was white outside. It snowed all morning, even down in the city. Electric Bob kept the dial on the all news station. News, weather, traffic, regular as a heart beat. He squirmed on the unfamiliar driver’s seat; the upholstery was thread bare, worn to the color of week old mud.

The van he’d stolen was a panel truck with a kidney shaped swimming pool on the side. A fish was painted over the pool though Bob couldn’t recall a single time when he’d seen a fish in a swimming pool. He thought about it and decided it might be some kind of artistic thing. Donna took yoga and art appreciation. She’d dragged him to a museum to see some paintings. He remembered a painting of some babe with a really nice rack. It was from the Renaissance. Art was pretty cool in a boring sort of way

Bob wasn’t supposed to use the cell phone for personal calls, but he was tempted to call Donna and ask her what she thought about the fish. The scales were kind of shiny. The surface of the pool was rippled. Yeah, it was probably art.

Electric Bob stopped for a light and watched a cop roll through the intersection to hang a left. Bob scratched his cheek with his middle finger extended before he realized the windows were all steamed up and the cop couldn’t see him. Bob rolled the window down but the cop was gone.

A kid in a minivan gave Bob the finger.

Bob scratched his cheek. The kid stuck out his tongue as the light changed, so Bob had no time to retaliate.

Four inches had come down and the wind whipped the powder into swirls. His to do list was taped on the dash; steal a truck, drive to the diner, wait for the call. Bob drove over the Central Bridge, caught a glimpse of the river and shuddered. Ice had scaled the riverbank; he’d fallen in once during the middle of winter. After Bob was rescued, the old man had broken his cheekbone with a ringing right cross.

The diner was dead ahead. Bob pulled into the parking lot and found a space beneath a gnarly old tree. Its branches were bare like something out of a ghost story or a haunted house. He banged the fender on a concrete block hidden by the snow. Bob put the transmission into park and killed the engine.

Webly called on the cell phone and told Bob to hang tight. The job was about to unfold. Bob took his DMV pencil from his shirt pocket and drew lines through ‘drive to the diner’ and ‘wait for the call.’

Donna wanted to drive every time they went anywhere; it was embarrassing because Donna was short and couldn’t see where she was going even when they used the phone book, the fat one, not the skinny one.

Donna was a better driver than he was though. He had other gifts.

Bob could hotwire anything because of his special relationship with electricity. You could pump direct current through Bob’s fingertips and it didn’t bother him. It hurt like hell, yeah, but it wouldn’t kill him the way it might a normal person. Up in Elmira Bob had expired, he remembered that word, like food in the supermarket. He’d been electrocuted, expired, revived, put back in population. All because a grinder he’d been using short-circuited and a million volts of electricity had passed through him. The guards had escorted him to the infirmary. From the gurney Bob noted that he could see through his eyelids and there was a continuous hum in one ear. It was a glimpse into the next world accompanied by the nasal drone of the chaplain. Bob’s lawyer argued that since the State of New York had declared Bob dead, his debt to society had been paid. A judge agreed and Bob was released. It was funny as hell, and some guys tried faking it after Bob’s release. One of them died, so he was done with time served.

A new Bob, Electric Bob, with no sheet and no longer behind bars had emerged. Donna called it metamorphosis; something to do with Greeks and insects and maybe incense, he wasn’t sure. His near death experience left him hearing impaired. He applied for a handicapped-parking sticker. The town rejected his application even though he told them that people climbed into Bob’s car sometimes and said the radio was too loud. During the proceedings someone had knocked over a chair in the back of the room and Bob had jumped. The town council was full of tricks like that.

Bob wasn’t allowed to change the station in Donna’s car or his mother’s. Those were some of the things that pissed him off. A stolen vehicle, like this one, was a gray area.

It was too cold without the heater on. Bob keyed the ignition and adjusted himself in the driver’s seat; there wasn’t a lever to make the seat move, so he lifted his knees, banged one on the steering wheel, cursed and hit his elbow. All he wanted to do was get comfortable, and now pain was shooting from his funny bone to his wrist, his legs cramped and his skull began to vibrate. The vibration was a legitimate part of his disability lawsuit. His lawyer, “The Don,” had an office up in Troy and had filmed Bob during one of his episodes. Some insurance lawyer had laughed his ass off right in The Don’s office. Donna kicked the guy and had to be restrained.

The coolest part was The Don’s answering machine. When you called, the message was, “this is The Don. If you’re a client, press one. If you want to be a client, press two; if you’re a bill collector, don’t press your luck.”

Even Marvin had to admit that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

The cell phone rang again. It was the lookout, Webly Dent. Bob was relieved that he hadn’t used the phone for personal use and missed Webly’s call.

Webly recited an address and hung up. It was time to roll.

Bob eased the pool truck out of the space and spun a little on the black ice. He dodged a family near the diner’s entrance. The father glared at Bob as he fishtailed toward the invisible driveway and swung back into traffic.

Webly had sneezed twice during their brief conversation. Bob sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his glove. Marvin had schooled him on forensic science; once the cops found the pool truck, a team of scientists would be called in to search for Bob’s DNA. If they found any, he’d be arrested and airlifted to SUNY at Albany for involuntary tests. After that, the army would take over and make him stand near a nuclear explosion to see what affect it would have. Bob would be especially interesting because of his immunity to electrical current. He’d be sent overseas to interrogate prisoners.

The cell phone rang.

“Where are you?”

“Mom?”

“I need milk. Two percent. I want a loaf of bread, but don’t let them slice it. Hurry up, it’s snowing.”

“Mom?”

Shit. Bob set the phone down on the console. He’d given Donna the confidential cell phone number and she’d coughed it up to his mother. The other possibility was the FBI. They had female agents trained to imitate people; a cellmate had told him about it.

Wait, what had she said?

Shit.

Bob found the address Webly had given him, a bowling alley off the parkway. He followed a county plow that blew three tons of snow all over him and just missed a chained up import. He drove around back to the service area and parked next to a loading dock.

The bowling alley had a lounge and a snack bar. Bob couldn’t bowl because he had exceptional knuckles. They were really large and people stared at them.

Somebody pounded on the rear door of the truck.

Bob climbed out, slipped and straightened up. A man in a dark coat stared at Bob. He was from the city, you could tell by his attitude and the fact he didn’t wear a hat.

The guy who’d banged on the door gestured for Bob to unlock it. It was hard to get the key in, but Bob managed. Vapor poured out of the guy’s mouth and nose and when the door was open he brushed Bob aside and had a gander inside.

“All right,” he said.

The building had a rear entrance and two guys emerged carrying a long box wrapped in a blanket. They shoved the box into the truck and nodded to Bob.

One of those guys was Marvin.

Bob closed the door and locked it. The vapor guy counted out five hundred dollar bills, folded them and shoved them into Bob’s mitten. “Lake Toyuga. You know it?”

“Yeah.”

“Put the package in the lake. Capiche?”

“Two percent milk,” Bob blurted.

“You put the package in the lake.”

“I was making a mental note,” Bob said.

“Don’t make notes. You got a fish on your truck.”

“I know.”

“What’s it mean?”

“It makes you want to swim maybe.”

The vapor guy smiled. “Perfect.”

Bob drove away, watching the men in the truck’s big mirror. Despite the weather they remained by the loading dock. Vapor man was talking to the fellow in the dark coat, gesturing for emphasis. As soon as he was out of sight Bob found a spot and parked the truck.

Bob grabbed the 9mm. semi he’d stashed under the driver’s seat, slapped in a magazine and put the gun in his belt. He climbed out of the truck, locked it and entered the bowling alley’s main entrance.

The place wasn’t very busy; maybe ten lanes were in use. The lounge, which was nothing more than a crummy bar, had one customer. Webly glanced over his shoulder as Bob went by. The bartender was reading a newspaper, his face buried in the sports section.

Bob walked through the bar; Webly palmed him a key. The bartender glanced up and Webly asked for another Genesee. The bartender leaned down to get the beer out of the fridge as Bob unlocked the door marked “private” and got his bearings. A cold draft filled the gray hallway; he followed a worn carpet until he opened a door marked “Deliveries.”

Cases of beer were stacked along one wall. A roll-up door stood open allowing a sharp breeze in. The storage room was about the size of a standard double car garage. The voices of the men in the parking lot drifted toward Bob.

Bob pulled his 9mm. and advanced toward the roll-up door. The guy in the dark coat-the hatless guy-saw Bob and scrunched his face into a scowl. Bob shot the guy in the forehead.

The vapor guy reached for something, cursing the heavy coat he wore, cursing Bob. Bob pumped three rounds center mass into the half-acre parka the clown was struggling to open. The man puffed a breath and keeled over.

“Bob,” a voice said.

Marvin grinned at him. “Come on, the money’s over here.”

Another body lay next to a case of light beer; the guy’s eyes were open. There were flecks of snow on his eyelashes.

“Hustle up,” Marvin said.

It took them five minutes to load the money into a trash bag. When they were finished, Bob slung the bag over his shoulder.

Marvin led them onto the loading dock, down the metal stairs to the parking lot.

Bob unlocked the pool service truck and tossed the bag into the back. Marvin settled into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

“How much?” Bob asked.

“Four hundred grand.”

They drove out of the shopping center. Marvin yanked Bob’s to do list from the dashboard and waved it at him. “This has got DNA all over it, man.”

When they reached the edge of town, Bob swung the truck behind a bar called Leo’s. Donna’s Camaro was right where he’d left it. Marvin handed Bob a bunch of money in a gym bag. “Here’s eighty large. Be careful for a while because the place we hit was connected. It’s not friends of ours or nothing, but take it easy for a month or so.”

“What about the guy in the box?”

Marvin glanced over his shoulder. “We’ll leave him for the cops.”

A dead body in a stolen truck. Bob grinned. “That’ll be funny.”

“No shit. Vibrate your head one time before we split up.”

“What? Right now?”

“Sure.”

Electric Bob focused and conjured up the mysterious flow of juice from deep inside his body. Marvin cackled and set his swastika teeth back into his mouth.

“You did good.”

On the way home it stopped snowing. Bob picked up a quart of milk at a corner store; he had to drive past the bowling alley on the way to the bakery. He had to go to the bakery because his mother wanted unsliced bread even though regular bread was widely available on store shelves, but it was all sliced.

The parking lot outside the bowling alley was awash in flashing red lights. Bob couldn’t see that much because the Camaro had a low roofline and the wind had kicked up, swirling the snow.

Once he’d made all of his purchases, Bob put the to do list in his mouth and began to chew. He washed down the DNA riddled list with some of the two percent milk. It was pasty and weird and his skull vibrated so he drank all of the milk and gagged.

He was almost home when it dawned on him that he’d finished the milk and had to get some more. Then he found out that the store was out of two percent, so he bought one percent. He was gonna catch hell when he got home. One percent wasn’t what his mother wanted and she’d complain until it was gone. At least he had the unsliced bread. And the eighty grand.

All in all, Bob thought, things weren’t so bad. The Camaro idled high as he waited for traffic on the main drag to clear. He gunned the car forward, cutting off some lame Toyota, ignoring the blare of the horn.

He’d gone about fifty feet when it happened.

He saw the pool truck heading eastbound toward the parkway. Bob almost put his sorry ass right through his own windshield. Pale and shaky he sat by the side of the road. Toyota woman shook her fist as she passed.

Bob conjured the image he’d seen; the truck had a kidney shaped pool and a fish with shiny gills.

Bob wondered if maybe he’d been killed back at the bowling alley and just didn’t know it. He’d seen a movie about dead guys who think they’re still alive. But he had the milk and the bread and Marvin had spoken to him.

He was driving Donna’s Camaro.

Bob wasn’t dead. Somebody had stolen the pool service truck from behind Leo’s. They had a corpse in a box under a blanket and the radio was set to the all news all the time station. Maybe the guy even had a list taped to the dashboard leaving scientific evidence all over the place.

Excited now, Electric Bob pulled into traffic and whipped the Camaro around to follow the truck.

He reached for the radio knob to change Donna’s soft rock station. He wasn’t supposed to, but what the hell. A cop car blew past and Bob tried to give the cop the finger. The traffic had stopped in front of him.

He saw it all happening, his damp sneaker lingered too long on the gas.

Bob rear-ended the pool service truck. The door bucked open and the white box flew out and landed on the hood of his car; the crash was pretty loud even though Bob was hearing impaired and got gypped out of a parking sticker.

The dead guy flew out of his box, out of his blanket and kissed the windshield inches from Bob’s face. Hot steam gushed from under the hood of the Camaro.

When his skull finished vibrating, Bob heard the weather report. Milk dripped from the new carton of one percent. There’d be hell to pay.

He crawled across the bucket seats and pushed the passenger door open; the gym bag was zipped under his coat. Bob staggered across the gray white sidewalk, leaned over a railing and fell.

On the hill above the river Bob raced downward on a bellyful of money; he spread his arms as he gained momentum, remembering a sled he’d once owned. The old man had come home drunk and fallen over the sled. He’d woken Bob up with murder in his heart. Bob had knocked his father unconscious with an official NFL helmet lamp; those had been bad days, ambush days, days of sudden pain, broken teeth and screams.

Bob sailed over a picnic table camouflaged with snow. The old man had died in a car wreck, up on the Saw Mill. Marvin had puked at the funeral.

His knee struck a barbecue pit nobody used, altering Bob’s trajectory; as he turned in mid-flight, feeling the bounce of rigid air, he caught the oily scent of the river. The park was like a sheet of wedding cake under a hammerhead sky. With his back to the river, Bob came to earth amid the iced over pebbles and rocks.

There was no pain only a starlight display behind his eyes. The gym bag under his coat exhaled and Bob’s knuckles ached as the afternoon faded to gray.

When it was dark Bob crawled away. Cops shined their flashlights down the hillside.

One of them slipped. There was a curse and the wet sound of falling.

Bob lifted the 9mm. from his belt and threw it into the river. The gun made a plop and was gone in a gulp.

Bob’s hearing had been restored.

He wasn’t surprised; when things were good, power came to you, sought you out. If you cried on your knees when things were taken away, they left anyway. Life had left him once and returned, a little off kilter maybe, what with the vibrating skull, poor driving skills and the hum in his ear.

The hum was gone.

Bob waited under the bridge and listened to the river make its broad dark journey to the sea. Then he buried the money in a snow bank and began to climb back up the hill. Bob waved his arms at the first stupid cop he saw; he slipped and fell, climbed again.

It was Donna’s Camaro or Bob would’ve split. The cops would run the tags and start busting her balls about leaving the scene. That would suck.

A bunch of cops were waiting for him at the top of the hill. One asked to see his license and registration. They didn’t notice that he was giving them the finger behind his back.

Bob reached for his wallet. The dead guy no longer graced the hood of the Camaro.

A cop told him to hurry up.

Electric Bob chose the Vermont license with the photo of a middle-aged black woman. When they saw the license, the townie cops sneered. They forced him down and cuffed him; he lay on the sidewalk and watched milk drip from the Camaro’s open door. He could hear the river underneath the bridge and the distant wail of an ambulance.

The cops read Bob his rights and one of them stomped Bob’s fingers; a flare hissed on the roadway and the snow turned orange.

Bob pressed his chin against the cold concrete and smiled.

We were doing the manuscript shuffle yesterday. An editor asked to see a manuscript late last week, so Diane and I worked on revisions all weekend, her birthday weekend, before emailing the manuscript to Bert on Monday; he’s been reading a WIP of mine and said, “hey, check for semi-colon use. Your new stuff is full of them.”

Like wildebeasts fleeing lions semi-colons were everywhere, grazing on page one, lurking on page three, thundering across the veldt all the way to the climax. Obviously a deranged writer had cracked open the file and inserted dozens of compound sentences; yikes, there’s one now. Anyway to top things off Bert emailed a narrative synopsis he cranked out at five in the afternoon. If you love synopsis writing, and who doesn’t, you know what a gift that is. Bert leapt over the wall to snag that one, so hat tip to him.

For Diane

In the shadow of the first life

Through the dawn of the second

You are the circle

I stand within.

Light fills the sky

Your light, your sky,

I am the circle

You stand within.

Our journey together

Is full of beginnings

The days belong to us

The chill of night

Is kept outside

We are the circle

We stand within.

Fiction Saturday: Here’s the opening to The Working Dead.

Chapter One

Her house looked impressive from the street, set back far enough to allow a circular drive in a neighborhood where parking spaces were passed on from generation to generation. Along her street San Francisco mansions hunkered hither and yon, confident with bedrock below and washed sky above, temperate, sedate, and mute as to how family fortunes became limestone and fretwork.

Armand DiPino parked behind a gray Biarritz and climbed out of his car. A miniature of the Mannekin Pis watered a bed of hydrangeas; he patted the statue on the head; anyone who enjoyed outdoor peeing and gardening couldn’t be all bad.

Armand DiPino was admiring the French provincial architecture when he noticed the front door ajar. He checked the Caddy. It was empty, but the hood was still warm. Closer to the house low hanging wisteria obscured his view.

A trellis supported a trumpet vine whose vermilion blossoms contrasted with the faded violet of the wisteria. A stucco wall surrounded the garden, forming a buffer between the paving stones and the flat exterior of the house.

He climbed a three-step porch. The front door was black enamel with a gold knocker centered beneath a glass cutout; DiPino checked the lock. It hadn’t been tampered with, jimmied or forced, the mechanism the same burnished metal as the knocker.

“Emily?”

He didn’t yell. People left doors open for all sorts of reasons, the most common being they intended to go outside again. Maybe she’d stopped for groceries on the way home.

DiPino used the doorknocker, reluctant to barge in. The door moved as he knocked, exposing a foyer and a sliver of tiled entry; he called out again, with more volume, wondering if Emily was in the backyard. This was his first visit to her San Francisco house. When they dated she had lived in an apartment in Morningside Heights.

Glass shattered inside the house and he heard a muffled thump; DiPino pushed the door open, reaching for the weapon he no longer carried, his pulse skyrocketing. Another crash sounded like furniture being overturned. The foyer was deserted, as was the living room beyond; French doors led to a patio, visible through the sheers.

He went down a carpeted hallway calling her name. The kitchen to his left was dark; he paused at the bottom of an enclosed staircase. A single high-heeled shoe lay on the fourth step; a skirt on the step above. He hesitated; maybe all the noise was the frantic sounds of lovemaking.

Other thoughts passed on parade: he was in the wrong house, he was in the right house, but Emily wasn’t home; she was home, and entertaining a caller, having forgotten about their appointment. DiPino consulted the slip of paper he carried with her address and phone number. He was in the right house—a vase exploded on the hardwood floor at the top of the stairs.

DiPino ran up the stairs two at a time. On the second floor landing his shoes crunched porcelain shards. He looked left and then right. Emily stood at the end of the hallway, near the double-doored entrance of the master bedroom. She looked as though she’d been crying. She was partially dressed, her blouse torn open.

“Emily,” DiPino said.

Her eyes widened at the sight of him. She was about to say something when a man emerged from the bedroom; his belt was unbuckled and he was shirtless. He scowled when he saw DiPino; he spoke to Emily in Spanish before backhanding her with an open hand.

The force of the blow sent her stumbling. DiPino raced down the hall, slowing when the intruder produced a gun. DiPino helped her up while assessing the man behind the cannon. Emily pressed against DiPino, burying her head in his chest.

“Who the hell are you?” DiPino asked.

The gunman smirked, clicked his heels together and bowed slightly. “A family friend.”

He spoke English with a thick accent.

“Emily? Did this asshole rape you?”

“I have a weapon trained on you.”

Emily couldn’t bring herself to look at the man, but she whispered in DiPino’s ear to let it go. “It’s a misunderstanding,” she said.

“Yes, a misunderstanding,” the intruder said.

“Put the gun down,” DiPino said. “Then we can have a misunderstanding of our own.”

“I need the bathroom,” Emily said.

The man waved the gun. “Take her to the lavatory. If you call the police or make any complaint, I will know. My return visit won’t be this pleasant.”

This was not some housebreaking thug. The threat he delivered sounded stilted, but the guy had dead eyes, and the practiced look of someone accustomed to obedience.

“Take me to the bathroom,” she said.

“Emily,” DiPino said.

“I’m going to be sick.”

DiPino found a bathrobe on a hook behind the door; Emily shrugged into it and asked him to give her a moment. DiPino closed the door and glanced down the hallway; the intruder stepped out of the bedroom buttoning his shirt, the butt of his gun visible in the waistband of his pleated trousers.

“My name is Bernardus,” he said. “Colonel Lano Bernardus of the Venezuelan border police. I recognize you, detective.”

“We’ve never met.”

“Mutual friends. Don’t let Emily’s histrionics influence you. . I intend to leave. Are you going to prevent me with some foolish act of heroism?”

Colonel Bernardus smiled. “Well?”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“I travel under the protection of a diplomatic passport, detective. I’m sure you understand what that means.”

“It means nothing to me.”

“The Vienna Convention of 1961 prevents my arrest or detainment by a civil authority. Are you being obtuse or are you truly that ignorant?”

The bathroom door opened. “Let him go, Armand, please,” Emily said. “LB and I had business to discuss and things became heated.”

The colonel walked down the hall adjusting the drape of his Armani jacket. He stood nose to nose with DiPino, his hand on the grip of the gun. “Full immunity, detective. For any crime at all.”

Here is the excerpt:
Tubby Ingram hated being called the “Tubster” in that offhand way some people used. At his age and station in life resentment often sprang full-bodied from the slightest offense. The “Tubster” was a name someone his own age could use, but never would, an unspoken pact among the survivors; the young man disturbing the serenity of his office was too self-absorbed to sense Tubby’s umbrage.
“You on the phone?” Gennardo asked, pushing his lips into the bad boy pout that drove the women wild. It drove Tubby wild too, albeit in a different way. An odd recollection of his first wife provoked a bleak moment of homophobic inflection before Tubby conjured pouting lips of the feminine kind from deep in his memory. It worried him that his psyche had reached such a delicate state that fantasy and reality were each on the ropes waiting for somebody to count one of them out.It didn’t matter which prevailed, as long as one of them was around to do things like drive the car. A hard knock on the door preceded the arrival of Solly Face. “Tub?”

“Solly,” Tubby said. “Come on in.”

“Tub” was a form of the “Tubster,” but more of a peer thing, if an over boss scumbag could be considered a peer. The ritual was always the same. Solly liked to pretend he was dropping by. Tubby pretended he was surprised to see him. “Hey,” Tubby said. “What a surprise.”
Solly lingered near the door. He nodded to Gennardo. “Give us a minute, will ya?”

The young sculptor glanced at Tubby.

“Give us five,” Tubby said. “Smoke a cigarette.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Go bother Maria. She’s getting too much work done.”

Solly tousled Gennardo’s hair as he left the office. Then he gave Tubby a sick smile like he was a member of the Joint Chiefs and Tubby was some grease monkey. “Bother Maria, that’s a good one,” Solly said to Tubby. “What’s the matter with your door? Is it broke?”

Tubby hiked his shoulders. Solly Face wasn’t a big man. He was Jimmy Warden’s top guy and he was Tubby’s boss. Solly wore his favorite suit, a dove gray tropical weight, with a white shirt and a maroon tie. The man sported a ton of hair swept into a silver pompadour above a high forehead and a long sharp nose.

Solly had once tried to kill Tubby on a windy Saturday one November when they were both young and tough. It was on the Chelsea Pier and Solly had a tire iron. Tubby cold-cocked him with a chunk of concrete that God handed him for the occasion.

“It felt like it was stuck or something,” Solly said. His dark eyes narrowed and his silver eyebrows arched. Big door conspiracy here. Solly set a gym bag on Tubby’s desk.

“I’ll get it checked,” Tubby said. Solly never looked at him, even though by-gones were fucking by-gones. Tubby knew that under all the hair on Solly’s head was a jagged scar. It was a small joy, like seeing your face in a grammar school photo.Looks like Lord Font-Leroy has run amok.

Okay it’s Sunday and as promised the opening to Aztec, about seven hundred words, is posted herewith. I’ve put it under the ‘optional excerpt’ feature since it is an excerpt and reading it optional. I’ll be curious to see what this feature actually does; it is new to me since the upgrade on Friday.

SMP sent me the new Michael Koryta novel as well as Steve Hockingsmith’s Holmes on the Range. I think Ben Sevier is Steve’s editor and Peter Wolverton is Michael’s. It’s the first time since last winter SMP has sent me anything when I reviewed Ken  Bruen’s The Magdalen Martyrs one of my favorite books from 2005. Dope is up next though. I’ll post my review of that here and at Metaxu Cafe and maybe at The Untrained Eye on Publishers Marketplace.

Hat tip to Steve Clackson for linking his readers to this humble page. Steve, I’ll add you to the roster at PM while Google scientists and engineers work with Depew in the basement; the Romans have cut the feeds again. They are a nuisance.