United We Fall

By Sean Patrick Reardon

Terry's head did the shimmy shake when the ammonium carbonate assaulted his nostrils, eyes rolling around like Ray Charles without his shades on, trying to focus on the two light bulbs above his head as they normalized into one.

He wasn't sure what made him piss his boxers first; seeing his dead Siamese cat hanging by its neck from the unfinished attic's rafters, or the guy in the Santa suit wearing the Scream mask looking down at him.

Saint Nick's face dripped blood from the forehead, somehow staying inside the mask, while Terry's heart used up a months worth of its lifetime beats in the fifteen seconds it took him to realize…this isn't a dream. Last thing Terry remembered; some asshole plowing into the rear end of his Jeep as he waited at a red light. Two guys getting out, wanting to make a deal, keep it off the books.

***

Terry knew this would be the last United Investments Christmas party he'd be attending as he approached the CEO, ready to ask him for a minute alone to discuss the deal he was about to offer. The terms were simple. Lawrence Tannenbaum III would give him one million in cash, or United, and Fuckstick Larry, would be the poster children for the first market timing scandal in the industry.

Terry's wife, Nicole, following Tammy Wynette's instructions, had encouraged him, even helped him rehearse his approach, Taxi Driver style. 'Carpe Diem', she told him.

Now, he was in the zone, downing the last of his sixth Kamikaze, putting a hand on Larry's shoulder and getting a "who the fuck are you?" glare in return.

Terry put out his hand. Larry shook it, wondering who the drunken shithead was trying to commit occupational suicide.

"Terry O'Brien, I work in the technology services department. Is it true you have a butler who brings you special toilet paper when you hit the can?"

"I think you ought to-"

"Shut the fuck up. We need to talk Lar…now."

Terry guided him over to a corner in the Hyatt ballroom, the band playing "Mele Kalikimaka", while Terry brought him up to speed on the call recordings he'd listened to that put him on the trail. How he'd copied them, but hadn't included them with all the other recordings the compliance auditors had requested as part of the annual true up mandate.

Larry saying, "It's not what you think it is, you got it all wrong." Terry telling him, "Don’t fuck with me asshole. It's exactly what I know it is. My wife's a trader with Pacific, dickhead, knows a lot more than me about such things. Says you're fucked if gets out."

Terry let him savor it, started whistling "Yankee Doodle", knowing Larry was intimately familiar with the Whistleblower Protection Act. The rat bastard act is what Larry had called it on the recordings.

Larry scanned the room, trying to see how many prying eyes on were on him, telling Terry to be in his office at nine tomorrow morning to make the arrangements. He mustered up an aw-shucks face, started playing twenty questions. "Where does your wife stand on all this? Can she be trusted? It's just the two of you, correct?"

"She's on board." Terry grinned, patted him on the arm." No worries there Lar. Just take care of your end, everyone's happy. Now how about you buy my drink to celebrate, seal the deal."

"My pleasure Terry, but I really have to use the restroom." He smiled, looked around the room, his hand making a visor over his eyes like a sailor staring at the horizon. "Where the hell is Jeeves?" Larry winked, told Terry to meet him over at the bar.

Terry laughed as he watched Larry walk away, thinking about the poor bastard on fourteen that Uncle Lar shit-canned for cooking microwave popcorn in the break room, stinking out the floor right before the Trustees meeting.

***

Larry tried to remember the last time he used a payphone as the front desk lady broke the twenty for him, four quarters along with the small bills. He lifted the handset thinking, fifty-cents for the first minute, Jesus, fucking inflation. Buddy can you spare a half buck?

***

Terry gave the valet a ten, got behind the wheel of the Grand Cherokee and called the wife, told her the latest. Nicole, talking dirty, telling him to step on it, she'll be waiting with a special reward for him.

***

Terry, nice and cozy, three miles from home after an hour on the road, listened to Sinatra sing about fancy ties and granny's pies, waiting for the red light to change. He saw the headlights in his rearview right before the impact, thinking they were getting a little too close for comfort, some brakes would be nice.

***

Psycho Santa held out the CD case, the gun barrel resting on the slack-jawed, lipless mouth of the mask, letting Terry know it was not the time for talking, or moving. Terry shivered on the plywood floor, his frozen breath vapors disappearing when Santa unscrewed the light bulb. Santa put the disc in the side pocket of the red suit, pulled a flashlight from his boot and pointed it toward the right side of the attic. Terry heard it click on and his eyes followed the light beam that ended on Nicole's naked body, dangling at the end of a yellow nylon rope.

***

Santa looked up at Terry, telling him, "You've been a naughty boy. It's a damn shame how depression sets in for some people during the holidays. Fucks up their mind, makes them do irrational things to themselves…and others."

Terry, pleading, getting nowhere, watched as the black leather boot kicked the chair out from under his feet.

***

Sean Patrick Reardon is from Boston, Mass and is the author of the crime thriller Mindjacker.

His stories have been featured in Killers,Thrillers 'n' Chillers and A Twist of Noir.

Tonight's Episode: Murder-In-Law

By Eric Beetner

Times are tough, friends. As I’m sure you’ve heard, desperate times call for desperate measures. So you know where I’m comin’ from, my father-in-law is an asshole of the highest order. So there you got the lay of the land.

He’s never liked me and I never liked him. Fact that I love his daughter doesn’t mean shit under the shadow that I knocked her up before we got married. He’s looked down on me like shit on the bottom of his shoes ever since.

Needless to say, but I will, holidays at his house are no picnic. We don’t exactly sit around singing carols and roasting chestnuts. More like we grit our teeth while humming murder ballads in our heads and he busts my nuts all weekend long.

This year, though, I arrived with a plan. My wife, Janine, decided five minutes into the damn door to announce I’d lost my job. He looked at me like a Klansman seeing a black man sleeping in his bed. I swear I could hear his sphincter cinching up.

Janine’s Mom is no Miss Manners either. She makes no show of hiding her contempt for me but I rarely feel like she’s going to wallop me like I do with Janine’s Dad. Jesus Christ, one time I had to go chop firewood with him, I swear he was picturing my throat every time he brought that axe down on a chunk of wood. I thought he was gonna throw a disc in his back he was swinging so hard. No, Doris is more of a quiet shake of the head and walk away kind of passive-aggressive type. Something I see a little too much of in Janine, but I’m never allowed to say.

There was that one time carving the turkey when Doris had a slight slip of the knife and I nearly lost three fingers. That came right on the heels of a spirited discussion of Sarah Palin’s qualifications to become president. I’m on the retarded monkey could do a better job side of the fence. They still think she can see Russia from her porch.

Like I said, though, this time I had a plan.

Bob, that’s his name, although I know for a fact he’d prefer if I called him sir. Neither one of us wants me to call him Dad. He’d feel more comfortable if I asked to see his dick. Anyway, Bob has no real money to speak of. Nothing worth stealing anyway. But I figured out a way to have the old Father-in-law help us out in our time of need.

See, Janine told me about his stash in the attic. World War II Nazi memorabilia. Tons of the stuff. Oh, did I not mention he’s a raging anti-semite? Yeah, a real charmer, Bob.

Janine told me about his Dad’s old footlocker full of flags, plates, arm bands, a bayonet, a helmet, some telegrams with codes and stuff on them. The big ticket item is a copy of Mein Kampf signed by Adolf himself. All junk his Dad brought back from Berlin. All junk Bob hasn’t looked at in years. Seems even Doris knows the etiquette of displaying your swastika covered knickknacks for guests to see.

That shit goes for big bucks to collectors. Other sick bastards who probably think Hitler had some good ideas. And if Bob hasn’t seen it since Reagan was president (the best one ever if you ask Bob) then he won’t miss it.

So, fuck it, I’ll take it. Sell it off and keep his daughter with a roof over her head. How could he argue with that?

The plan was simple enough, wait until everyone fell asleep and go up into the attic and get it. I figure I could take a few items down each night and by the end of the torturously long weekend, I’d have a cache worth a few grand at least. I already made space in the back of the SUV so Janine wouldn’t notice we’d taken on extra cargo. And really, wouldn’t you want your Dad to get rid of his Nazi stuff?

Nights one and two went off without a hitch. I grabbed the book, a flag, a Hitler youth knife. I’d barely made a dent in that old foot locker. Night three was Christmas Eve. What’s a little racket in the attic? Fun for the kids, right? “Hear that noise? It’s just Santa. Why does Santa have a Nazi flag and a luger? Ummm . . .”

I loaded my arms with another haul, doing the math in my head of how much this crap would net me, and when I turned – there was Bob.

He must have been watching me climb off the little ladder that pulls down from the ceiling. He stood patiently as I raised it as slowly as I could. No matter what I did those damn springs still groaned like a porn actress.

Bob held a shotgun out in front of him. I knew he owned it and I half expected to see it come out on my wedding day.

We stood in silence. I couldn’t help smiling when I noticed a twig of mistletoe hanging over the doorway in which he stood. I knew he wouldn’t kiss me, unless it was one of those Godfather, “I know it was you, Fredo” kind of kisses.

I tried to come up with a plan but instead I saw his mind whirling twice as fast. We had some sort of weird mind meld and I swear I could read his thoughts. He was thinking how he would explain that he heard a noise, thought it was a prowler looking to steal some gifts on Christmas Eve and he shot first before seeing who it was.

My Father-in-law was running the odds of getting away with my murder.

I swallowed hard, listened to the wind outside and waited for him to decide.

***

Eric Beetner is the co-author (with JB Kohl) of One Too Many Blows To The Head and the upcoming sequel Borrowed Trouble (available in Feb 2011). His award-winning short stories have been featured in the anthologiesDiscount Noir and Murder in the Wind and in Needle magazine, Crimefactory, A Twist of Noir, Thuglit, Thrillers Killers n' Chillers, Darkest Before Dawn, Pulp Pusher and many others. More info at ericbeener.blogspot.com

Christmas Carole

By Allan Leverone

My brother slouched across an overstuffed easy chair in his sparsely decorated office, looking downcast. He wore loose-fitting jeans with holes in the knees and an “I Hate Peyton Manning” T-shirt, and if not for his rapidly thinning hair could have passed for some college kid, rather than a priest in charge of a good-sized Boston diocese.

“I’m telling ya,” he said dejectedly. “Sometimes life sucks. Christmas is coming up like your innards after a bender and we’ve got dozens of out-of-work families with young children who may not receive a single a present this year.”

“Thanks for the visual about the innards,” I answered, wondering for maybe the millionth time how we could actually be related. He was responsible, I was . . . not. He was movie star handsome and glib as a radio talk show host, and I was . . . not. He had gotten the calling to the priesthood after graduation and I had gotten the call from Jimmy “The Fist” Milligan to join his burgeoning organization. Weird.

I suppose it goes without saying we didn’t travel in the same circles, but Mikey might have been surprised to learn how many of his flock regularly partook of one of the most popular products Jimmy’s organization offered. It was an exclusive escort service, the biggest and best in the state, and I knew for a fact that more than one of Mikey’s most devout parishioners was also a loyal customer.

“Hang in there,” I told him, shrugging into my coat. “Things have a way of changing at a moment’s notice.”

“How can they possibly change?” he asked.

“I dunno. This is supposed to be the season of miracles, isn’t it?” I glanced back at him as I stepped out the rectory door and he was just staring off into space.

***

“You want me to do what?” Carole was our most popular escort and the organization’s single biggest moneymaker. She stared at me an unreadable expression as I explained the plight of the kids in my brother’s parish and how I thought we could help, eventually breaking into a dazzling smile when I finished. I had known she would go for it; Carole wasn’t just beautiful but she was also smart as a whip, with a sense of humor the size of the new Boston Garden.

“We’ll just have to be careful not to let Jimmy get wind of this,” I told her. “For one thing, he would demand a cut, and for another, well, he might see it as being bad for business.”

“Fine with me,” she shrugged. Her popularity made her bigger than Jimmy the Fist and she knew it. She could get away with things other girls might have found themselves floating face down in the Back Bay for.

***

The wind whipped off the ocean and straight across the city, scouring the grounds of the Public Gardens, forcing all but the hardiest of people indoors. Carole barely seemed to notice the freezing cold, striking a pose outside the Atlantic Insurance building like it was mid-July rather than mid-December. She was dressed in a red crushed-velvet Santa minidress complete with fluffy white cotton trim and matching red hat. I saw her every day but she still took my breath away.

We were positioned just outside the front entrance and as workers approached to begin their day she would begin vigorously ringing a brass bell, smiling at the marks, indicating the large basket set up under a sign reading, “Help Boston’s Homeless Children Get a Christmas Present!” It was remarkably effective, at least when directed at the male employees, and even though we had not received permission to be there, the security guards did nothing to interfere, preferring to stay inside the warm building and admire her curves.

“At this rate, we might get enough cash for your brother’s kids just by doing this,” she enthused. She was either flushed with success or the skin on her face was beginning to chap from the cold, I couldn’t be sure which.

“Probably,” I agreed, “but it’s too cold to stay out here that long and besides, here comes our target. This will be quicker and a lot more fun.”

A middle-aged man hurried between rows of cars, barreling toward the front entrance like an Olympic sprinter. He brushed past Carole, then froze in his tracks as she purred, “Hey, Harvey, what, no kiss?”

He did a double-take as the recognition dawned in his eyes and he glanced around to see if we were being observed. “C-Carole,” he said. “What the hell—I mean, why are you here?”

Harvey Singer was Atlantic’s CFO and a notoriously tight-fisted bastard. He was also one of Carole’s very best customers, “hiring” her several times a year for nearly a decade. He enjoyed getting rough with her, which was why I had picked him for this particular project. I cleared my throat. “Let me get right to the chase, Mr. Singer.”

He looked at me as if noticing a stain on his tie and I continued. “Saint Theresa’s Parish will receive an anonymous donation of $10,000 to benefit the homeless by three p.m., or Carole and I will pay a visit to your lovely wife and three kids before you leave your office tonight. You’ll lose everything. Your family will be gone by dinnertime. Any questions?”

He looked around bewilderedly. “Who the hell are you?” he finally asked in a whisper.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, and picked up the donation bucket and sign. Carole blew him a kiss as we walked away.

***

“You’re not going to believe this,” Mikey said as we shared a scotch. “An anonymous donation came in today. Care to guess how much?”

“Hmm,” I said, pretending to think. “Ten grand?”

He stared at me for a long time, a quizzical look on his face. “Do I want to know?”

“Probably not,” I answered, and winked. “Merry Christmas, Mikey.”

THE END

Allan Leverone is a three-time Derringer Award Finalist, as well as a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee whose short fiction has appeared in Needle: A Magazine of Noir, A Twist of Noir, Twisted Dreams, Shroud Magazine and many others. His debut thriller, FINAL VECTOR, will be released February 1 by Medallion Press. Learn more at www.allanleverone.com