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EXCERPT 15, FLY IN THE MILK

Johnny Beam wanders from the ring to the swamp as Chapter 3 begins in Fly in the Milk, ebook available wherever ebooks are sold:

Johnny chuckled softly to himself and squinted out the windshield as fog collected on the edges of the glass. He pointed the Olds in the direction of the Bayside Bar and tried to imagine his parents together in this town. It was hard to do.

He was on Banks Avenue, near the viaduct over the railroad tracks, thinking how nothing seemed historical about Bay City, just old. How the past seemed to disappear like last winter’s snow, and once it was gone, nobody thought about it much.

Except maybe if you were drunk and blasted on pain pills.

At 12:20 he swung into the gravel parking lot of the Bayside and was jolted by the sight of two gigantic Great Lakes ships towering in the gloom at the back of the lot. Two brown monsters looming dry-docked, waiting for the ice to go out. Waiting for winter’s grip to loosen, just like everyone else.

He picked up a few stares when he came through the red door into the dim, smoky bar. He didn’t give a damn. To his left was a stage, four skinny white kids with ducktail haircuts, white shirts and stovepipe jeans playing electric guitars and slouching through a love song about a “Little Ragged Dolly.” A few couples slow-danced. Stage lights changed color from red to blue to yellow.

Two meatheads at the bar made a point of staring as he strode confidently and impassively past them. But nobody was about to say anything to the beefy, well-dressed black man with the Band-Aid above his eye and cigar stub clenched between his teeth.

He approached the barman and smiled at the slender guy with the standard ducktail haircut. The tender pointed towards the back of the room.  “Mr. Lambert said you should go on back, Mr. Beam. Just go on back to the hallway there and hang a right.”

“Thanks,” Johnny said, as the kid moved down the bar toward a teetering, rouge-cheeked lush with a pink scarf wrapped around her frizzy, thinning red hair.

Beam walked towards the back of the room, squinted through the smoke and the dim lights at the pool table. He saw faces that looked vaguely familiar. He turned down a hallway of cracked brown linoleum. The smell of stale beer was in the air. Red and white shards of light from a cracked Exit sign strafed the walls. He knocked on the scarred and scuffed wooden door that said Office in gold letters.

“Come on!” Lambert hollered from behind the door.

Beam turned and pushed on the doorknob.

Jimmy was sitting in a wheeled leather chair, wearing sharply creased tan slacks and a tan western-style shirt, brown cowboy boots stretched out alongside a cluttered oak desk. Against the far wall, Gloria was sprawled out on a green, three-cushion couch, drink in one hand and Salem burning in the other, breasts damn near falling out of her dress. Her mouth wriggled into a big smile when Johnny sat down in front of the desk and grinned at her devilishly.

“Glad to see you could make it over, Johnny.  Or should I call you Champ?” Lambert said.  “Glad you came over, my friend.” He lifted out a green bottle of Cutty Sark from a bottom desk drawer. “Here, pour yourself a drink.

“Gloria, get Johnny a glass, honey. And then get me that plastic bag from the file cabinet.”

Gloria lifted herself from the couch, smoothed down her red dress and shook her body like she was trying to get all her parts back into place. She couldn’t quite manage it, tripped on her high heels and went stumbling and giggling across the room.

“So, Johnny, my friend,” Lambert said, lighting a Lucky Strike, sucking in smoke and slapping his Zippo down on the desktop. “Tell me about these booze bargains that you were referring to earlier. Tell me how you and I are going to rake in the big dough.”

“I’ve got some real solid plans, Jimmy, real solid. These are some things I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I thought I’d check with you first—I’m going to do it anyway—but having you along will sweeten the pot for both of us, I can guarantee that.”

“Go on Johnny, you’ve got my ear.” Lambert said, flicking his ash into an amber, circular glass ashtray on the cluttered desktop. “Exactly how can you save me a ton of moolah on booze?”

“No offense to Gloria,” Johnny said, bowing his head as she approached. “But I’d prefer to treat this as private business between you and me, Jimmy.”

Smirking, Gloria placed a thick short glass in front of Beam and then tossed a small rolled-up paper sack onto the desktop.

“Of course,” Jimmy said, dragging hard on his cigarette.  “Gloria, sweetheart, why don’t you go out front and flirt with the guys in the band for a while or something.  Maybe you can get one of them to take you home later. I’ve got to go out to the county tonight, and I know you don’t like it out there.”

“Maybe I want to go along tonight,” she whined, wiggled.

“We’ll talk about that later,” he said.

She flipped him the bird, rocked her hair back and bounced her ass in that tight wool dress out of the room, a slight pout holding on her rapidly aging visage.

The office door clicked shut.

“We’re alone now, Johnny.  Let’s hear the plan.”

“Coincidence, I guess, but it concerns your holdings in the county, Jimmy. All the booze you sell out there. It’s well known that you supply those places, and I know a guy who can cook stuff up so it’s better than the real thing. That means tax-free liquor. High-grade. Stuff would be perfect for your blind pigs, man. This stuff will flat out light up those farmer johns.”

“Moonshine, you say?”

“More correctly, corn whiskey.  My man says he can make whiskey as good as store-bought, color and everything, if he’s got the time to age it. If he ain’t got the time, he can use food coloring and flavoring.  If there’s a call for it, we can get you bathtub gin. My prices are going to be low, Jimmy. I’m talking so low, you’ll have to squat down to see’em.”

“How low, exactly?”

“Truth is, we’re not ready to price it, yet,” Johnny said, but the truth really was that he didn’t have any idea. “We have to make a batch first, to see what it’s gonna cost and how long it has to age and other considerations. A wet run so to speak.”  Johnny grinned.

Lambert was struck with the thought that Beam resembled Louie Armstrong—the big smile and the round face.

“Thing I’m getting at,” Johnny continued, “is that if the sample is to your satisfaction and you decide you want to order big for your clubs, I think I could price it even lower, say, if you were able to toss me a little advance bankroll, you know, in order to increase the size and scope of the operation.”

“And you’re sure this cook of yours knows his stuff?  I can’t be financing any garbage.”

“I’ve tasted the stuff, the guy makes it for himself in small batches. Hillbilly lives in a trailer in the woods outside of Zenith. Son of a bitch is a master. Stuff is smooth going down and sure enough puts the fire in your belly. Of course you’d get a sample before any commitments were expected.”

In reality, never a drop of Big Cat’s shine had touched Johnny’s lips. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

“Your word on it is good enough for me, Johnny.  If you say it’s kosher, then it is.  Tell you what, my friend. Why don’t you come out to the sticks with me tonight? We’ll talk business and party a little and get a grasp on what kind of volume I do. I’ll show you how it works in the boondocks.”  As he spoke, he lifted the paper bag off the desk, reached in and removed a rolled-up plastic bag. He let the baggie unfurl to reveal a snarl of white pills along the bottom, covered in a dusty white powder. “Why don’t you take a couple of these, Johnny, and come along for the ride tonight? You’ll like it. I’ll bring Gloria along and we’ll have a party.”

“I already took some pain pills tonight, Jimmy. I’m flying pretty high already. You know how it is after a fight, the adrenaline and all.”

“These are different than pain pills. These are bennies, my friend. Pep pills, goofballs, uppers. Benzedrine is what the doctors call it. Take all your troubles away and let you run a little longer, don’t ya know. You’ll feel like a new man with these, Johnny, that’s my guarantee.”  He tossed the bag and Beam caught it with a smooth motion.

“I’m going to be flying so high, Jimmy,” Johnny said, grinning like Louie Armstrong, his voice velvet smooth, as he reached into the bag and removed one of the small white tablets. He figured he’d go along with Lambert for the sake of business. Same thing as having lunch with a banker to get a business loan.

“Big man like you needs at least two, Champ.”

(To be continued)

T.K. O’Neill’s crime novel Fly in the Milk is available on ebook at online bookstores, including Barnes and Noble, ebookit, Google, iBookstore (Apple), Amazon, Sony Reader Store, Kobo (Borders) and Ingram Digital.

Fly in the Milk – $2.99 at https://amzn.to/2LbNJ8j

Dive Bartender: Sibling Rivalry – $2.99 ebook, $15.95 paperback at https://amzn.to/2Lp48GT

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