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EXCERPT 20, FLY IN THE MILK

Last excerpt from Chapter 3 of Fly in the Milk, ebook available wherever books are sold online:

Then Ethyl came careening through the door with a jug of Canadian Club and three glasses, her bleached blond, straw-like hair falling in her face and the straps of her green dress slipping down off her shoulders. She set the booze and glasses on the desktop and flounced back to the couch.

Ted stared at her, half sneering, then lifted a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket, shook one out and placed it on his lower lip. “I s’pose I’ll go make the rounds,” he said, his eyes flickering darkly. “You gonna empty the machines tonight, Jimmy?”

“Like I always do.”

“Well, yeah then, enjoy your drink and I’ll be back before the next gas is passed.” He flicked open a war surplus lighter; lit his fag and exited in a cloud of blue smoke.

Except for the two assholes, it’s a pretty slick operation, Johnny thought to himself. Low overhead, a percentage of the gambling and Jimmy owns the machines, supplies the booze and takes a chunk out of the till. But what about the whores? Much money to be made off whores. Something he’d have to look into. Maybe he and Lambert could work some kind of lend-lease deal.

Gloria and Ethyl were on the couch looking at television, engaged in an amphetamine-fueled conversation. Lambert was in a chair at the desk, his bad leg stretched out, and Johnny, unable to stay seated for any length of time, paced around the room, talking a blue streak and gesturing animatedly with his slightly swollen hands.

Whereas the broads yakked about actors and Hollywood and the contents of their purses, Beam and Lambert were speaking rapidly and in depth about percentages, availability of product and volume discounts, as well as security, bribery and the law.

Twenty minutes passed before Ted returned with a canvas bank bag in his hand and a pained look on his face. Lambert took the bag and looked inside. “You got the invoices on the liquor handy, Ted? I forgot to bring my book out tonight. I also need a bag for the coins from the machines. Forgot that, too.”

“Got your key, for fuck sake?”

“Got that.”

Ted said, “Top drawer, James, everything’s in there: bags, invoices, rubbers—whatever the fuck you need.”

Lambert ignored Ted’s strutting and checked the liquor receipts while Johnny finished the last of his drink. Gloria stood up from the couch just as the national anthem began to blare from the television, tinny and out of sync with the words running across the bottom of the screen.

“See ya next week, Ted, be good now,” Lambert said, slipping on his suede leather jacket. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” grinning like a decaying jackal.

Ted smiled back, his lips peeled back to reveal yellowed canine incisors. “Don’t know what the fuck that would be, Jimmy, you sick son of a bitch.”

“You see the way I get treated, Johnny?” Lambert said, his eyes flashing. “Save these two ungrateful punks from a life of poverty and sex with animals, and see how I get treated. I got half a mind to sell this place to you, Champ, if you want it.” He side-glanced Johnny then back to Ted.

Stuck there inside his stupid grin and filled with the desire to punch somebody smaller than himself, Ted could only stand stiffly, stunned look on his sagging, hang-dog face, while his Adam’s apple bounced up and down like a frog on a hotplate.

Lambert grabbed the Canadian Club from the desk, snickered, and made his way out, not looking at Gooder. Gloria and a smiling Johnny Beam nodded their good byes and followed close behind.

Some sucker is gonna pay for this goddamn shit, Ted Gooder thought, as he watched the door close behind them. Jimmy comes out and embarrasses me in front of Ethyl and now she’s sitting there thinking I’m a stooge. Fuckin’ asshole brings a stinking nigger with him who puts his juju lips on the goddamn booze bottle.

Trying to save some face and always one to look at saving a buck, Ted came up with an idea. He could give that bottle to Ethyl and get back on her good side. She wouldn’t know the nigger had lipped it. Maybe he could salvage something out of this lousy night, anyway….

While Jimmy cleaned out the pinball machines and the jukebox, Johnny and Gloria retreated to the car, got the engine running and the heater going. Johnny had thought it best to leave the building before any trouble started, having correctly assessed the mood of the crowd as just a very short step above a lynch mob. Discretion triumphed over valor despite the pounding speed in his head and the feeling of invincibility it gave him. Funny thing though, sitting out in the car in the empty black woods, he wished he had Jimmy’s gun.

His paranoia evaporated when Gloria brushed her hand across his thigh and brought her mouth close to his ear. “It sure would be an honor to touch the chest of a champion prize fighter,” she cooed, sliding her curvaceous ass a little closer. “I’ve always wanted to feel the muscles of a fighter, you know. They must be really, really hard.”

Well it wasn’t long before his chest wasn’t the only thing that was hard and Johnny was sliding his bruised hand up along Gloria’s thighs, all the way to the moneymaker. In response to this bold move, she moaned and leaned in for more. Their tongues intertwined while Johnny kept one eye on the door of the house. After a steamy few minutes, Johnny finally had to push her off, sensing something.

Lambert emerged from the house a few seconds later, looked around warily and searched the darkness. Seeing no danger, he got in behind the wheel and threw the coin bag on the backseat floor. Johnny liked the musical chink the coins made when the bag hit the carpet. Sweet music indeed.

“Well, gang,” Lambert said, “Only two more stops to go.”

(End of Chapter 3)

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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EXCERPT 13, FLY IN THE MILK

A tough fight, pain pills and the blur of streetlights take Johnny Beam on a trip down memory lane in Chapter 2 of Fly in the Milk, ebook available wherever ebooks are sold:

Hell of a place to be born in, Johnny thought. It was after midnight and he was rolling by the High Times Saloon and the Heartbreak Hotel. Wanting to stall a little longer, he decided to cruise over by the viaduct and see if he could find the apartment building that he and his mother had lived in.

He didn’t remember his old man, only the stories. 

It was said that Clarence Walker Brown knew all the right places and all the right faces. He was a gambler, a bon vivant and the keeper of a few professional ladies: a Negro making a buck in the very cold, very white North. One may wonder what a black man was doing in northern Wisconsin in 1927. Clarence often pondered that question himself.

He had learned the various scams in and around Chicago from his daddy and his uncle. They had worked the dock and warehouse districts with their women and their cards and their dice. Success eventually had bought them a small club out near the truck stops and the mills. All was fine until prohibition hit and Al Capone and his boys appeared on the scene with a strong interest in corn liquor and the connected rackets.

Then came the fires and the shootings.

Escaping on the run, Clarence had ridden the railroad north, hoping to find a place where the ready cash might flow without the loss of his precious blood. Booming Bay City was the end of the railroad line and the beginning of a new life for him, as well as several other Negroes that had traversed the trail of the tracks.

As always in boomtowns, with the flow of cash and commerce comes the flow of vice. With vice, comes corruption. Bay City had it all. And it was so damn cold the competition was sparse.

The cold equalized things. In the long winters, the main concern was warmth. Everyone is on the same page when it’s ten below zero. Few like to fight when they’re shivering.

Post-1920, as the aftershock from a racially motivated lynching in Zenith reverberated through the region; racism in the Twin Ports became mostly a verbal thing. The Scandinavians and the Bohunks gradually learned how to live with the “coloreds,” generally allowed them to fill a niche.

One Bay City sporting house featured black ladies exclusively, for servicing a strictly white clientele, and most of the other houses featured at least one black prostitute. A black piano player was a fixture on the speakeasy circuit in the infamous North End, and some superb Negro jazz combos occasionally arrived to play all-night gigs. The black gamblers were allowed to ply their trade without interference as long as they played it straight and paid their bills.

Shortly after arriving in town, Clarence had stumbled into a real sweet deal, the good fortune of which reaffirmed his lifelong belief and reliance on luck and circumstance. It had gotten him this far, after all. The circumstances coming into play here being the shortage of healthy “sporting ladies” in Bay City, and the luck, being the three young prostitutes who accompanied Clarence on his journey from Chicago.

Destiny came into play when the foursome chose to make their first stop at the Douglas Hotel. After a round of introductions in which the ladies strutted their stuff and made their nicest, Clarence and the hotel proprietor quickly struck up a deal. In exchange for a small rental fee, the occasional free lay for the proprietor, and a cut of the take, Clarence was allowed to run his ladies out of the upstairs of the Douglas Tavern, currently languishing in disuse next door, and host dice and card games in the backroom.

The local cops pretty much kept their eyes turned away as long as their pockets were lined. On occasion, when the mood struck them or too many ministers had complained to the chief, the boys in blue would bust a card game and scrape a big pot into their coats or maybe make a few nominal arrests of known prostitutes.

In an effort to keep the raids at a minimum, the gamblers often sent turkeys to the police station at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and many on the force were known to fight the winter’s chill with a bit of local moonshine, free of charge.

Clarence didn’t like giving money to cops; it went against his upbringing. As far as he could see it, the only difference between the cops in Bay City and those in Chicago was that up North they were dumber and cheaper to bribe. They were, however, just as brutal. Nevertheless, he marched along with the band, kept his mouth shut and greased the right palms when necessary.

Things went pretty well on the edge of civilization. He wasn’t exactly getting rich, but he had enough to eat and drink and smoke and gamble, put warm clothes on his back and coal in the stove during the six months of winter. He was extremely popular with the ladies, both black and white, and was considered a prized catch among the working girls.

For a time Clarence enjoyed relatively easy living in Bay City, even doing some fishing and playing a little golf in the all-too-brief summers. By 1929, his stable of women had grown to ten and his gaming salon was the most popular in town, attracting many influential and wealthy patrons.

Then the Great Depression hit the country like a razor blade rainstorm.

(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

Read Full Post »