Surf City Acid Drop:Three

I leaned against the back wall of Benno’s place and sipped my Negro Modelo, disappointed that he didn’t stock Pacificos. The ice-filled tub of brown stubbies with the gold tops that glittered like they were winking at me eased my melancholy. It was a usual Benno affair – men in cream suits, and turistas in bad bermudas mingled about downing shots of Tequila and sucking limes. Benno wanted me there as a presence. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t have to step into a situation if needed. In the semi-dark, spirits flowed as quick as the money did, and tempers could flare.

At a party a couple of months back, I needed to escort a rancher who flew down from Wyoming. He’d taken a swing at Benno. I guess he didn’t like the terms offered, not that I ever knew the details of the deals, nor did I want to. I grabbed him by the collar of his Oakland Raider jersey, a boneheaded thing to wear to a Benno event, (and c’mon, the Raiders?), and dragged his cowboy-ass out the back door. He was as lousy a puncher as my bathroom pal, Steve – more brawn than anything like aim. I gave him a couple hard and fast in the kidneys and hit a pressure point on his neck. If anything, I was neat and tidy.

Tonight, the stereo played some Southern Cal rock, a couple of thick guys in cheap suits shot eight-ball on Benno’s slate table. Benno talked to a trio in the corner of the bar. I wasn’t sure where this bunch came from. He had a couple of folders out, aerial photographs of a green land with a snaky river across lush terrain. I wondered if Benno was developing the land, and equally I wondered if he actually owned it. I reminded myself it wasn’t my business. I just cracked another Modelo and gave one of the group a tough guy look that I’d perfected. My expression lay somewhere between confident and bored, and it usually did the trick – unless someone got a bit too much Cuervo in them and figured I was just the right guy to challenge to a pissing contest. I hated that. It used to happen when I worked the gym in Montreal, hired to spar with the next great hopeful. Back there it wasn’t Tequila that made them swing hard, but if I landed one too many on the chin, my opponent kinda lost their composure. We were supposed to be just sparring, but I’d put more than a couple down that way. Still, the old guys that ran the gym never saw me as someone they’d put in the ring. I was too undisciplined, or that was what they told me. That and the fact that I’d never train.

At Benno’s, I had to play it down the middle, even give a smile once in a while. Not a, hey you’re a jackass for believing any of this bullshit and you deserve to lose your money kinda smile – but more of a, hey stud, you got it all happening, you’re the shit sort of grin.

Benno folded up his folders and took the trio through a door to a backroom. I knew he held a lot of his “special” meetings in this room. The decor was a few notches up, and included a fully stocked mahogany bar. Before he went in, Benno had turned and gave me a nod, a signal to park myself outside the door. He’d never told me if I was to prevent anyone from coming in or leaving. Again, I was supposed to be a presence. I didn’t really care, it put a few bucks in my pocket. I’d already planned on heading out to Melaque in the morning. I needed some quiet time and a place where I didn’t rely on beer ice to keep the swelling down. 

Voices rose and fell in the room. The cue ball broke another rack.

“You know where I could find a glass of white wine? I can’t stand Tequila.”

She was thin, but had just the right amount of s-curves in her pale peach sundress and sandals.

“Not a country known for its vintages. Better to drink the beer than the water.”

She reached out and took my beer, tilted it back, and drained half of it. She handed it to me without wiping her mouth.

“I don’t really like beer.”

“I can see that.”

Her blonde hair tumbled down in cornrows, a bead of sweat hung on her neck like she was an iced pitcher.

“You’re not interested in the developments?” I asked.

“A bit too shady for me. I’ll let the hubby swing his dick over that.”

I glanced at her ringless fingers. She caught it.

“Hubby for the week,” she said. “Appearances and all.”

“Oh.”

That was the best reply I could come up with. This one had danger tape and barb-wire wrapped around all 109 pounds of her and her damn near see-through peachy dress.

“You work for him?” she asked.

“Good guess.”

“Not really.” She took a moment to relieve me of my beer and the rest of its contents. “I know you didn’t come with my bunch. And you’re not a local by the way you dress. But you move like someone that’s pretty comfortable here. I’d say you been here a while, long enough to know better, and long enough to be trusted by the likes of our host.”

“Elementary.”

“Come again?”

“Your power of observance.”

“Oh, like in the books. I don’t do books.” The bead of sweat hung on and was joined by another that had slid down her tanned neck.

“No, I guessed that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her lips made a razor thin line across her too-much in the sun complexion.

“Nothing, I—”

A huge crash came from the room behind me. I spun toward the guys at the pool table, grabbed a cue from one of them, and rapped on the closed door where Benno and his new buddies were.

“What’s up, Benno?”

“Stay the fuck out!”

The accent was mid-western, a slight twang. I considered my response for three whole seconds. Then I kicked the door in. The guy standing next to it caught a good rap in the head when the door flew open. A low swing with the cue took his legs out, and I clubbed him another one on the way down.

The guy in the middle of the room lunged for me.

“Son-of-a—”

The end of the cue took the wind out of the last bit of sentence, and Mr. Mid-Western went to his knees. I rapped him another one across the back of his head and he hit the tile.

I brought the cue around, and over my head, a bit of a samurai flourish I’d worked on after a weekend of Kurosawa movies. I stopped it about a half-inch from the guy holding Benno by his nicely pressed Brooks Bros. shirt. I tapped his head, just lightly.

“Hey Luke. Go slow.”

That was when I noticed the Glock pointed at Benno’s stomach.

“Put the stick down or I put your buddy down.”

***

That ends the free preview of Surf City Acid Drop - please visit Amazon to pick up a copy of the novel in paperback form (and eventually, Kindle)

Thanks for reading. 

Why Luke? Why Now?

So who is this Luke Fischer guy?

I found myself in-between novels - and agentless. Sounds like the start of cheesy book.

Ok - I'll offer some full disclosure here, as a writer I have often felt: always the bridesmaid never the bride, or maybe Cinderella in the ashes might fit too. My work has been well-received by a lot of people - even strangers! Sure, I love when friends and family read my stuff but I always feel they are just being nice (note: just quit it. I prefer the straight goods. Always.) But people I've never even met seem to like my stuff - go figure.

So, I had an agent, he was amazing in getting my first novel in front of some of the top editors - this included Neil Gaiman's editor at William Morrow. I need to pause and let that sentence soak in for a bit. 

Of course, the story goes that while lots of editors loved the book, and said great things about the writing, well... you can guess what was said. In the meantime, I continued to write short fiction, published some, wrote another novel, gathered some rejections, and blah, blah, blah, do what writers do. (My daughter has this saying: you do you.)

Maybe in another post, I'll go into the agent saga - suffice to say that over the years I've been lucky to have a fair amount of agent interest. My first agent, sadly, died this past Feb. He was no longer repping me - we parted very congenially, when we both realized I wasn't writing the books he thought he could sell. As well, it looked like I was going to get representation from someone in my home and native land for my second novel.

In the perpetual wait mode, I kept asking the eternal writer question: why do I write? 

This question (which I am still trying to answer) led to: what do I want to write? Now, I had been writing literary fiction (a lot of my short stories, and my second novel), crime-fiction, with a dose of slipstream (which back in the day we called Magic Realism) (see: Correction Line.) One day, or maybe night, I can't recall, I thought, why not write a novel that felt like those great neo-noir movies from the 70's that I love so much.

I'd always danced a bit around the straight ahead detective novel - even though there were a few that I didn't just love, but they influenced my work in peripheral ways (see: The Last Good Kiss by Crumley, and The Bottoms by Joe Lansdale - or any of his Hap and Leonard books - soon to be a TV series). Still, why didn't I just write one of those? Straight up.

So I gave it a shot, sorta half-thinking, I'll probably run out of steam and go back to writing my man vs. the human condition stuff (is that a summary of lit fiction? Maybe.) But as I wrote, I really really dug what I was writing - and this guy, this detective who really didn't want to be a detective, he started really coming off the page. I hate that writer cliche, and I hate that I just wrote it - but damned if it isn't true sometimes.

Less than a year later, I had a novel. It was both the quickest I had ever written a novel, and maybe the most fun I'd ever had writing one. Ahh, so this is why I write.

Well, if you are a writer, you know what happened next. Lots of love and interest - but ultimately rejection. The main reason: no one reads noir anymore. Really? Why didn't someone tell me?

Flash forward another year or so (time blurs between books) - and I have another book out there. And I am in wait mode again (some significant interest... again). Waiting is hard. So fucking hard. And I think I hit a slump, not so much a writer's block, as a return to that eternal writer question. On my computer sat this full blown novel that I remembered as a helluva lot of fun. So much fun, that I'd love other people to read it and see if they liked it, and if they liked this guy who hung out in Mexico, drank beer, listened to Surf Rock and got hired to find people.

My blog, this blog, had been pretty dormant. I decided to kickstart my writer brain by releasing the novel in chapters - not truly serial fiction, as I wasn't writing it week by week (I've done that, and it is both fun and grueling. See: Bent Highway.) A friend on twitter said, you're not going to give the whole thing away... are you? For free?

In truth, yes I am. Why? Well, it probably lies in one of the answers to the question. I write to create, and I'd really like to share that creation. So yeah, writers write to be read. It's true.

I hope you have as much fun reading Surf City Acid Drop as I did writing it. Please drop me a comment, or a tweet, or a telegram, to let me know what you think. And trust me, I want the straight goods.

Lastly, releasing this novel did just what I wanted - it made me want to write another Luke Fischer novel - which I am doing right now.

Surf's up.

Surf City Acid Drop: Two

 

Barely twelve hours ago I thought I had everything sewn up. I found the guy. I just needed to bring him to justice - isn’t that what Perry Mason said, or maybe it was Jack Lord. As happened a bit too often, I had just regained consciousness.

The camera lens inside my head rotated and light flooded into my vision. I focused on a patch of wall that was the exact shade of a honeydew melon. The colour looked so perfect that I almost forgot about the .45 pointed at my forehead. 

“Wakey-wakey jackoff.”

I fast-tracked through my brain. I had dipped into a touristy joint that sold overpriced Chili Rellenoes to the polyester bermudas and flip-flop set. I recognized Mr. Charmer on the account of his glowing bald head and ugly-ass lizard tat. Two Pacificos and bowl of tostados later, I followed him into the bathroom and—

“Who are you supposed to be?” Charmer nudged an extra crease in my forehead.

“Fischer.”

I looked at the walls again. What a damn nice colour for a bano – more like south Florida than Mex.

“Fish for what?” Another nudge. “You were watching me at the bar. You some sorta perv? Is that some sort of homo term? Fisher? Following me into the john. I should rap you another one.”

The rest of my brain caught up with my vision. I connected being out cold with the growing pain at the back of my head.

“How ‘bout I do some of my own fishing wise-ass?”

He pulled out my wallet and riffled through it like he was about to do a magic trick.

“Humpf. So that’s your name. Well big-fuckin-whoop. You ain’t fishing this guy you son-of—”

I yanked hard on his dangling shoe lace that I’d grabbed while he flipped through my ID. It was enough to throw him off balance. I slammed my hand under his wrist and smashed the end of the .45 into his forehead. The way he handled the gun, I didn’t think the guy knew how to fire it anyway. I was up on my feet now and Charmer was off his.

“I hope you didn’t barter for this piece of junk. You bought it on the malecon, didn’t you?” I slammed my knee under his chin and kicked hard into his chest. His trailer-trash ass skidded across the floor. “Probably right next to the sand castles. And you call me a jackoff.”

The bathroom door flew open. In raced the overly bicepped guy that Mr. Charmer had been downing tequila with at the bar. He took a wild swing at my head. I easily moved under it, a quick feint and a duck, and then an uppercut into the basket. He face-planted, gasped on the floor like a trout on the beach. Charmer got up from his ass-over tea kettle posture and came at me hard.

I stopped him with his raised, and shitty, but now cocked, revolver.

“So, here’s the thing. I actually know how to fire these.”

He gave me a deer in the headlights and wetness in the boxers look.

“Sit your ass back down and I’ll tell you what the what.” I pointed over at his friend. “And tell wheezy there that I’ve put down a lot bigger guys than him. You knocking my head against this pretty Mexican tile has put me a piss-poor mood.” 

I pivoted, backed up to the door and slid the metal bar into the notch.

“What do you want?” Charmer asked. “I have like, two hundred pesos on me. We’re not even worth robbing. Steve what do you got?”

“Uh-h-h.” 

“Save it. You sound like a leaky raft. This isn’t about money.” I kept an eye on the big one, in case he suddenly got upright.

“Then what?” Charmer asked.

“It’s about Beatrice.”

“You’re shitting me.”

A bang on the bathroom door. 

“Hey, what’s going on? This isn’t that kind of place!”

“No problemo, por favor. So sorry, Senor. Be out in a momento.”

“You’re Spanish sucks,” Steve said.

“Yeah, well my dead grandmother could throw a better punch than you. And who the hell did that tattoo?” I looked at Charmer. “I hope you were plastered when you got it.”

“Who is Beatrice?” Steve said, slowly standing. 

“Sit back down there, golden boy.” I waved the .45 in his direction.

“My ex.” Charmer spit a loogie against the melon wall.

“So who’s this guy?” Steve asked.

“One of the low life scum that—“ 

“Look, happy pals, we all got problems,” I started. “Charmer, you got an ugly-ass tattoo, and a wardrobe that’d make a gay decorator lose his lunch. Stevie there has the biceps of longshoremen, and the fighting ability of a nymph.”

“A what?”

“A nymph – like from the woods,” I said.

“I think you mean a centaur,” Charmer said.

My head throbbed. I rapped him across the head with the gun stock.

“Dammit. I know what I mean. Like I said, we got problems. Me, I have the shitty job of tracking deadbeats down for their ex-wives in Wisconsin.”

“You don’t look like you’re from Wisconsin,” Charmer said.

“Driving through. Stopped for cheese.” 

Another bang on the bathroom door. Someone asked something that I didn’t understand. Damn, I needed to take some classes.

Steve rattled off in Spanish and the guy left.

“Not bad,” I said. “Okay, listen up my new best friends. We can waltz out of here compadre style, maybe even have a cool one for the road. You will be buying. But then I need to take you, Mr. Bad Tat, to the PV airport, where we will enjoy a lovely flight back to Madison with complimentary peanuts. Or we could go a different way, and you can write some cheques for—”

The metal bar jangled and the door fell in. A guy with even bigger biceps than my fluent pal, Steve followed. I swung the .45 in his direction, hoping like hell I didn’t have to actually fire the rusted thing. Lucky me. The new musclehead had a great right hook. He clocked me before I could even say something clever.

I was back on the tile floor where I started. The honeydew melon started to fade. One of them, I guessed Steve, gave me a farewell boot. I heard some sirens and a bunch of swearing in Spanish. Those were words I knew. 

***

Next time in Surf City Acid Drop

I leaned against the back wall of Benno’s place and sipped my Negro Modelo, disappointed that he didn’t stock Pacificos. The ice-filled tub of brown stubbies with the gold tops that glittered like they were winking at me eased my melancholy. It was a usual Benno affair – men in cream suits, and turistas in bad bermudas mingled about downing shots of Tequila and sucking limes. Benno wanted me there as a presence. 

Go to Chapter Three 

Surf City Acid Drop: One

I cracked the first of a pair of Pacificos and guzzled half the icy brew in one pull. The last edge of a red dime dipped into the horizon. I pressed the tea towel bag against the back of my head – trying to cool it down, ease the swelling, extinguish the pain like the sun sinking into the cold Pacific. Damn, I missed my calling as a poet. Or a beer salesman.

My perch was a faded red naugahyde bar stool, one of a long row in the El Rayo Verde, named after that flash of green that people swear they see on the horizon right before the sun makes its final dip. I’d never seen it. Jimmy, an ex-cowboy and sometime Chippendale dancer from Bismark, knew what I needed when I came in with something that hurt. He called it the triple play. Two cold ones crammed in a bucket of ice and a tea towel. The beers exited the bucket, and the ice went in the cloth, which then got applied to the swollen part. Then the beer went in me – and exited a bit later in the bano. Beer, ice, bano – it was a helluva good system.

Jimmy was the perfect bartender for someone that wanted to sit on a stool and not have to say a damn word. The El Rayo had a decent stereo that hung above a row of tequila bottles that went from icy white to dark amber, all of them catching the fading light of a Mexican sunset. The Sandals twanged their way through Endless Summer, and I let that deep wet reverb wash over me like a breaking wave at sunset. Beer, ice, and damn fine tunes in a palapa, made everything seem about fifty percent better.

I popped the second Pacifico with the opener Jimmy left me when he gave me the bucket and its requisite companion, peanuts saltier than the dead sea with a bite of heat. Jimmy always doused them in Cholula before he served them.

The light had shifted to that gorgeous PV-purple, and cast the beachside bar in a warm Mexican glow. Jimmy strolled around like he always did at this time of night, lighting his green candles. He’d put the Sandals on repeat. Man, if I had any money I’d tip him.

Counting up the situation, it wasn’t so bad. Sure, I let Charmer and his bulked up playmates split first my head and then the scene. And yeah, I had to phone Mrs. Charmer, or I guess ex-Charmer, and tell her I might need a bit more time and cash, if she could spare it, to find the deadbeat. Beatrice was a beautiful woman that deserved a lot better. I wanted to do well by her. And if that meant caving in a certain lizard tatted head, well, I’d be happy to oblige. But that was for another day. I lifted two fingers and waved them at Jimmy.

“Add a J and C to that Mr. James.”

I’ll give him this, the guy knew how to enter a room, sharply pressed pink shirt and cream pants, a crease you could cut your hand on, topped off with a short brimmed white fedora with a band the exact shade of his shirt.

“I don’t want hear about anything that sounds like work, Benno.”

“Luke, my banged up friend. Jimmy’s gonna need to buy a whole new ice machine you keep coming in like that.”

I lifted the bag off, and set it next to the bucket, a trail of water dripped onto the clay tiles. The drinks came, Jimmy swapped my old bucket for a new one. He held the towel out for me, and I draped it over my neck. I pulled a Pacifico from its icy depths and popped it open. Benno’s squeezed the lime wedge into a J and C, his own slang for Jamaican Rum and Coke, and sipped at the edge.

“Did she have nice legs at least?”

“What do you want, Benno?”

“Just to see my good friend, and yes, offer a bit of work. How are things in your bank account? You too high on it to take some good honest work?”

Jimmy’s stereo came off repeat and went into a slow Hawaiian number.

“Is anything you do honest?”

“Ouch. No need to get nasty.” Benno gave that finger flip off the nose that he always did. “Small party, exclusive even, I need a bit of security at the door. Easy as that Mexican brew slips through you.”

It was true that Benno kept me in tacos and Pacificos. Lately, besides Mrs. Charmer back in Wisconsin, things had been pencil-thin. Last month, I had taken the long ride back up north, and thought I’d just keep driving, right to the arctic circle if it seemed right. But after talking with Beatrice at a local cheese and draft joint, damned if I didn’t find myself doing a u-turn on the I-90. It was cosmic luck, or the joke of the universe, when she told me that she thought her husband had headed to the place I’d left only a week before.

“Who’s the party for?” I asked.

“The usual.”

“That’s not a word that works for your parties. When is it?”

“Tomorrow night. Come around 9:00. People will start showing before ten.”

Benno sipped his J and C, and I finished my bucket, and considered going for the triple-triple. The ice on my head, and the lake of hops in my belly created a smooth wave of happiness. 

“So you’ll be there, right?”

Benno slipped me a folded paper with the address and instructions. I’d been there before, but he gave me the info out of habit.

“Shhh,” I said, and pocketed the paper without looking at it.

The purple had dipped into a enveloping indigo, Jimmy’s beacons of green light reflected off the rough and yellowed walls. An ocean breeze came up and swept through the place – it was like everyone sighed at once. I don’t know what Jimmy had on the stereo, I didn’t recognize it, or maybe the beer softened my memory, but it was the most perfect song for that time of night.

“Luke?”

Benno touched my shoulder in that way he did with people.

“Shhh.”

Across the bar, a woman undid the elastic from her ponytail, and shook down a yard of brunette tresses. In the dim light, I couldn’t quite tell, but she had to be around my age, beautifully matured, just the right amount of lines around her stunning eyes. How did I not see her before? I tilted my Pacifico in her direction and was gifted with a slight nod. Even that was perfect. All I needed was a nod. I had no intention of introducing myself. Besides the fact that I looked like something dragged behind a segunda bus, I didn’t want to ruin the moment of hearing the ocean wind mixed with a beautiful woman’s smile. I let it hang there, lit by Jimmy’s verde candles, and played against a soundtrack of Hawaiian steel guitar. Maybe Mexican folk songs would have fit better, but I’d always loved the sound of vibrating steel guitar.

“I’ll be there.” I said to Benno, but he’d already left, his drink barely touched. Damn, the guy was silent and smooth that way.

“Where else have I got to go?” I asked one of the candles.

Next time in Surf City Acid Drop...

Barely twelve hours ago I thought I had everything sewn up. I found the guy. I just needed to bring him to justice - isn’t that what Perry Mason said, or maybe it was Jack Lord. As happened a bit too often, I had just regained consciousness.

Go to Chapter Two

Back with a Neo-Noir Vengeance

Time to finally get this blog hopping again - here is the deal. A while back I wrote a novel with a 70's style detective, well, a reluctant detective as you will see, named Luke Fischer.

It seems like my work jumps around in the sometimes literary, sometimes, crime-fiction, maybe some slipstream (see Ethical Aspects of Animal Husbandry), and sometimes I don't know the hell what.

I have had some agent interest in my latest novel, more of a literary vibe to that one - but it seems like I always have agent interest, so that's not real new. I am not cynical - wait, maybe I am - but scoring an agent, and then a book deal is a long and arduous as fuck ride. I got one before (the great, late, Mickey Choate), and I hope to have one again. Time will tell.

But I digress. Which is sometimes what this blog is about: digression.

I had a helluva great time writing my Luke Fischer novel. He was based on the movies and books from an era I could never get enough of - the 70's. The gritty, rain-soaked and neon lit streets, the smoking, drinking, bedraggled anti-hero's, the sardonic humour, the great locations and the rogue's gallery of colourful characters. Think: Penn's Night Moves, Dirty Harry, Harper, Bullitt, Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, and for sure, Altman's Long Goodbye. The I haven't slept in days, but yes I'll take another shot of bourbon after I finish this cigarette and kick the knees out of this guy, sort of hero. How about Lee Marvin in Point Blank? You get the idea.

Writing-wise - pretty much everything James Crumley wrote (but especially. The Last Good Kiss.) Though, I need to throw a bone to Joe R. Lansdale as well. In fact, I got to Crumley through Lansdale. Anyway, read either of those guys and you will be happy.

I wanted to set the novel in somewhere, anywhere, but Canada - preferably somewhere hot and sweaty with lots of two-for-one drink specials, in otherwords, Mexico. And of course, if you read my work, you know I like the road. So, there is time spent in New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, and yes, maybe even Canada. What can I say, cut me, I bleed Maple Syrup.

The novel had a few working titles, but I think my fave was always Surf City Acid Drop. It just seemed to fit.

I am relaunching this blog to launch this novel - in serialized form. Every Sunday, right here at woofreakinhoo, you can read a chapter, and follow along with Mr. Luke Fischer. I plan on eventually making the book available on Amazon, but thought I'd start here. Another Fischer novel is in the works, so if you like him, there is more of him. I had a helluva lot of fun writing about him - more fun than you should have writing a novel. Hope you enjoy it half as much.

Crack a cold Pacifico, or the brew of your choice, and get ready for Surf City Acid Drop.