Brown Close to Evil

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62287-320-3
Verlag: First Edition Design Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 100 Seiten

Somebody’s been doing the world a favour and bumping off all the City’s top bankers. But did that same somebody kill Chrissie Barker? An aging Indiana Jones is hired by a preppy corporate lawyer to find her sister’s killer. They have a history these two: utter contempt can best describe her feelings towards him; animal lust his feelings towards her; a thorny relationship that endures right up until the dark and evil conclusion of this on again, off again, investigation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brown, Peter

Leseproben

CHAPTER 5
  “Jesus Christ, Jack, how many times I gotta tell you-more aperture. “Specially when your subjects bouncing ‘round all over the place like this.” “Didn’t know she was a sexual bunjee jumper, did I?” Al continued to shake his head in disgust. “Look, you know I’m not great with a camera, but you can see who he is an’ you can see who she is an’ you can see they’re not playing scrabble. Now that’s good enough for me, good enough for my client, and good enough for the divorce lawyers.” More head shaking. “What? C’mon, Al, don’t bust my chops here.” “When was your first time, Jack?” I didn’t reply. I wasn’t in the mood to play one of Al’s little games “She reminds me of Amelia Soarez, you know. You remember Amelia Soarez?” Now my interest was piqued. Who could forget Amelia Soarez? Greatly endowed by nature’s bounty an image of our voluptuous Brazilian school music teacher of yester-year flashed across my memory bank: Dark haired and big breasted, Amelia Soarez’s ample proportions spawned more schoolboy wet-dreams than Natalie Wood, Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch combined. “Christ, Jack. How could you forget Amelia Soarez?” “The Music teacher,” I said. Al laughed: “We made lots of music together, Jack. Had me back for extra lessons. Lots of extra lesson…” “And you still can’t play a note,” I said. “How come you never told me about this?” “I wanted to Jack. Believe me I wanted to. But you were such a little snitch in those days. I couldn’t take a chance.” “Snitch, hell. You just didn’t want me to have any private lessons, you selfish bastard.” Al laughed, quickly changing the subject: “Did I show you my latest invention?” It took me a while to figure out what the straw-like contraption was all about, but the little white miniature golf balls gave it away. “A bird’s nest?” “Fit the video cam in here, right….nail it to the tree….bingo you got yourself twenty four hour surveillance.” I could see cuckoos laying eggs in it….cats pawing away at it: “Great invention, Al.” ******* Swinging by the sports bar on the way home, I was still pissed off that Al hadn’t told me about Amelia Soarez all those years ago. “Dolores say when she’ll be back?” “You’re the one giving it to her, Jack. You tell me.” “Visiting her mother for a while. All she said.” “Yeah, well your favorite waitress don’t start work here again until next Friday.” Charlie Bird, manager of the City’s finest sports and dining establishment gave me a knowing smile: “Tired of beating your own meat, huh?” “You got a foul mouth, Charlie.” “Truth hurts, huh?” The truth was one of my female clients had allowed me to screw her, by way of a small thank you. Golden thighs and teeming breasts it had aroused the animal in me and I couldn’t wait for Dolores’s return. Sex mattered. Ever and always. Even to a middle-aged fart like me. “So what’ll it be tonight–Cardinals, or the Saints?” “Three losses in a row. Saints can’t lose this one.” “Whatever you say, Champ.” ******* The foul came in the dying seconds of the game. The Saints could still win. Marvelous Marvin was a great player, but under pressure…. well he could sometimes be a little ‘iffy’. I couldn’t watch. I didn’t need to-the groans said it all. At a little past one in the morning, I finally got home. An old 2 story Colonial it needed 2 pages of things doing to it when we’d first moved in; a list that probably now ran to well over 3 pages. Janet knew that I wasn’t a DIY, handyman, type of person when she married me, but probably thought I could be ‘trained up’. Maybe if I’d been a marriage councillor I’d show more interest in ‘fixing’ things, but I don’t fix marriages, instead I help break them up. So, what’s this got to do with not fixing the house? Nothing. Just a Freudian way of justifying my lack of enthusiasm for fixing things. Anyway, the more blemishes the old place sprouted, the more endearing I found it. At least we had something in common-the older I was getting the more blemishes I was sprouting myself: an enlarged prostate, erectile dysfunction, general grumpiness towards the world…the list went on. A light metal mail box-filled with what looked like a zillion bills–was a case in point. Kids had bent it over so many times it could barely stand anymore. I’d seen one made of titanium steel that fitted on the side of the house and could withstand an atomic blast. The house would be blown to smithereens, but all my bills would still be safe and secure. Maybe I would buy one when this light metal piece of crap finally gave up the ghost. Unlocking the front door I hit voice mail playback: “You have no new messages. You have no new messages.” Not even a call from a long-suffering and irate creditor demanding immediate payment. At the very least I thought there might be two calls. My friendly Bank Manager reminding me about the negative equity I was carrying on this place now that property prices had fallen through the floor thanks to these same friendly bastards blowing up the prices in the first place. “We don’t want to foreclose on you Mr Stanton. God knows we’ve got enough foreclosed properties on our hands, but you really do have to try and pay more off this loan.” Blacky, my bookie, telling me my credit had tapped out and he wanted to see some green was the second call I was surprised not to get. And as he hadn’t called I still must have some credit I reasoned, which was good to know. How else was I going to get my tab down if I couldn’t bet? I clicked on the CD player and headed for the drinks cabinet. “We’ll be together again” Armed with a half empty scotch bottle and bundle of mail I plonked myself down on the settee and poured myself a drink. “Don’t let temptation surround you” “Don’t let the blues make you bad” No-one could sing it like this blind woman. As my losing streak stretched into its fifteenth week I found myself playing this track a lot these days, but listening to Diane Schuur was as close as I ever came to giving it up and like a dog licking its own vomit I went back to it again and again, and lost again and again, bad luck sticking to me like some half dried piece of dog turd that I just couldn’t scrape off my shoe no matter how hard I tried. I closed my eyes and sighed. God, how empty the house seemed now that Millie and her mother were gone. The start of my bad luck. I couldn’t see them coming back either, but my luck had to change. Surely the winners would start flowing again. Soon. Please God, soon. I started going through the mail, only ABF’s–‘Absolutely Bloody Final’ demands for payment-meriting attention; the rest I scrunched up into small balls and tossed them across the room into the waste can. There we go–one more bulls-eye. If only Marvelous Marvin could hit baskets as well as I could hit the waste can I would be five hundred bucks better off. Hello, and what is this? In amongst all the dull brown windowed envelope jackets, something small and mauve and wonderful with my name and address clearly spelt out in Janet’s neat and careful handwriting. Lifting the envelope to my nose I inhaled. There it was. The unmistakable fragrance that had captured most of my waking and sleeping hours these past ten years: Calvin Klein’s ‘Escape’. Ten years–ten good years-before that same fragrance had soured into something quite different: The smell of infidelity It started with her clothes. She wore the usual dark skirt and white blouse; standard business attire, but the skirt became tighter than usual and she was wearing sling-back high heels. What she used to call fuck-me shoes. The kind she never wore to work. And often when she came home, she would head straight for the shower before coming out and saying hello to me and Millie. Infidelity was my business and I should have spotted it earlier. But would it have helped? Probably not. There was too much bad blood, not to mention Mr What’s His Name. Ah, well, once again I lifted the envelope to my nose trying to remember how good it used to be between us. But it was no use. Once you smelled it, the smell of infidelity never went away. This time I poured myself a stiff scotch, settled back on the settee, and slit open the letter. So what do we have here I wondered? Maybe a nice personal note, a newsy letter…… A bill. What the fuck. Some bill too. A Vet’s bill for $1000. No note of explanation. The phone rang and rang and rang before someone finally answered. It was...