40 Nickels Read online

  40 NICKELS

  A Carnegie Fitch Mystery Fiasco

  R. Daniel Lester

  PRAISE FOR 40 NICKELS

  “Action packed from the first sentence, R. Daniel Lester offers readers a briskly paced down-and-out detective yarn, cleverly composed and executed at a machine gun clip. A twisted look at the lengths desperation stretches its victims and the bizarre attempts one man makes to stay one step ahead of his runaway case. Full of kooky phantasmagoric imagery and the blackest diner coffee this side of three a.m. 40 Nickels is worth every penny.” —J.D. Graves, Editor-in-Chief, Econoclash Revue

  “You’re guaranteed to walk into the fight heavy with your knuckles wrapped around 40 Nickels. Fitch is a hard-up dick on a long, strange trip, whose mistress is chaos. Lester’s tale takes you right into the back alleys of post-war Vancouver, where you might end up chasing The Sacred Glow, and just when you think you got lucky, daddio, you end up on your back, with a new set of choppers.” —Scotch Rutherford, Managing Editor, Switchblade

  “The thing about R. Daniel Lester’s writing is it’s boiling just under the surface. You ride along through his stories, enjoying how he has all the right things in all the right amounts. But where you can’t see it, tension is rising. Fangs are being bared. It’s boiling. And when it gets to the surface, he’s got you where his talent wants you when it hits.” —Ryan Sayles, author of the Richard Dean Buckner thrillers

  Copyright © 2019 by R. Daniel Lester

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Shotgun Honey

  an imprint of Down & Out Books

  P.O. Box 75272

  Charleston, WV 25375

  ShotgunHoney.com

  Down & Out Books

  3959 Van Dyke Road, Suite 265

  Lutz, FL 33558

  DownAndOutBooks.com

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by Bad Fido

  Visit the Shotgun Honey website to find more fiction with a kick!

  Visit the Down & Out Books website to sign up for our monthly newsletter and we’ll deliver the latest news on our upcoming titles, sale books, Down & Out authors on the net, and more!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  40 Nickels

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  Preview from The Honorary Jersey Girl by Albert Tucher

  Preview from Crossing the Chicken by J.L. Abramo

  Preview from The Dead Beat Scroll by Mark Coggins

  This book is dedicated to the void that I battled with until the last word was written. Well played. I’ll be seeing you again soon, no doubt.

  Before: Toronto, Ontario, 1956

  1

  The punch knocked the wind out of me good, a fist right in the breadbasket. I coughed. I wheezed. I sucked air that wasn’t there. Then I coughed some more. It was half real and half comedy bit, a little show for the barflies to give me time to recover. Plan my next move. Running away very fast was probably my best option, considering the big oaf didn’t seem bothered at all by the barstool I’d cracked over his back. But he was well into a full-on drunk with no signs of stopping until he crossed the finish line so that may have had something to do with it.

  Booze logic. The body forgets to feel pain.

  I didn’t have the luxury because I was practically sober. Spent my last dime on a glass of beer at the Wheat Sheaf Tavern, corner of King and Bathurst, one I was planning to nurse for a good long while. That is, until the large fella something degrading about my hat. And then I said something about his mother and voices were raised and that’s when I hit him with the barstool. Best to end a fight before it begins being a personal credo. But it only seemed to rile him up more. I blamed the barstool—lousy, cheap manufacturing. Broke like kindling surrendering in front of a fire.

  He towered over me. “So, you got somethin’ you wanna say or do you want a knuckle sandwich for lunch?” When I didn’t respond right away, his work boot nudged me in the ribs.

  “Okay,” I said, “I shouldn’t have compared your mother to a bottom feeding sucker fish. I don’t even know the woman, I’m sure she’s lovely.”

  “Hmm. Apology accepted. Now, you wanna get up or lie on the floor some more?”

  I mulled it over. “I suppose I could give upright a shot.”

  He reached out a giant bear paw and helped pull me up. I stood, straightening up slowly to look him in the eye. No such luck. My gaze ended at his chin, even though I was no slouch in the height department. They built ‘em big where this one came from. And that was the problem with starting a fight when the other guy was sitting down—perspective.

  “You pack quite a wallop, fella,” I said, when the spots in front of my eyes stopped dancing jigs and disappeared.

  He nodded, smiled, and placed a tightly wrapped roll of nickels on the counter. “I had a little help.”

  “That’s nifty,” I said.

  “Always served me pretty well. Makes a point.”

  “That it does. Though I’m curious: you roll ‘em yourself or get ‘em from the bank already done?”

  “Oh, I roll ‘em myself. Figure it’s more meaningful that way.”

  “Sure, I can see that. You from around here?”

  “Nah. Passin’ through. Headed north to the Sudbury Basin, to work the mine.” So that explained all the beer. He was getting one last drunk in before tunneling to the Earth’s core to harvest its precious metals.

  “Probably for the best. Otherwise I don’t think there’d be enough barstools to go around. I’m Carnegie Fitch. But most people just call me Fitch.”

  “I’m Wendell.”

  We shook hands like proper gentlemen, despite our deficiencies of character.

  “Not such a pleasure to meet you, Wendell, but I suppose I had it coming. So, what do you mine up there, anyway?”

  “Nickel and copper, mostly.”

  “Wait a minute, you mine for nickel and carry a roll of nickels? Your commitment to character in this human play called ‘Life’ is worthy of admiration and praise. You’re a true artiste. So much that I’d like to offer you a beer for your efforts. Bartender, a drink for my new friend here.” I patted my pockets exaggeratedly. I could do some performance art, too. “But oh yeah, my wallet’s a graveyard until payday.” The bartender stopped pouring.

  Wendell laughed, a loud, hollow sound. “You’re a funny guy, Fitch. How ‘bout I buy you a beer?”

  The bartender finished pouring and placed the beer in front of me, shaking his head in distain. He had no flair for the dramatic, I suppose, no appreciation for the arts. Regardless, it was the fastest beer I ever drank. One big gulp. Wendell was impressed and even offered to spring for another. Every drunk loved a drinking buddy. This time around, I declined. I wanted out of there. I needed air. And, frankly, an escape route. So, I wished him good luck with the mine and said to make friends with a canary. The remark shot over his head even as tall as he was and all I got back for my razor-sharp wit was a blank stare. Fair enough. Brains and brawn didn’t necessarily have to travel on the same ticket.

  When the door to the tavern shut behind me, I didn’t exactly run but I didn’t dilly-dally either. I fast walked down Bathurst to the end of the block, crossed the street, hopped a fence and cut across a deserted lot where only the crabgrass and broken bottles lay, seeking the safety of a network of alleys and
back routes leading to the collection of tar paper shacks and hobo tents I called home sweet home. I climbed out the other side of the lot, stopped and put my back against the nearest wall, peering around the corner of the brick building. Nothing to see. So I seemed to be in the clear: no sign of an irate Wendell looking for the asshole that ripped him off for two bucks worth of nickels. Fat city.

  The nickels still felt warm from the palm of his sucker punch hand. I dropped the roll in my shirt pocket and began to whistle. No bird song, but as I’d recently graduated from forcing air between pursed lips only to get nothing but a “pfft” sound I enjoyed the few notes I was able to produce. I’d gone into the bar to drink away my last dimes and ended up making two bucks, even if it wasn’t completely on the up and up. But neither was slugging a guy in the gut with a roll of nickels.

  My “this day really turned itself around” feeling lasted about thirty seconds. Because that was when I heard it: the whistling. Not like my whistling, no, of course not. That wouldn’t do. Not for him. He could whistle like a cat could meow. And then there he was, casually leaning in the alcove of a warehouse doorway up the alley from me. Hopping down, still whistling, and approaching with a wolf-like gait, a predator’s lope. Only a sniff of prey. Not hunting, not yet. The whistling stopped. He smiled big.

  “Mr. Carnegie Fitch, old buddy, old pal, fate has seen fit to once again intertwine our paths,” he said, opening his arms like we were long lost friends. Only we were neither.

  “Hey, Janssen,” I said.

  Copernicus Janssen was his handle, the defrocked dentist from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He’d also, apparently, spent some time in Kingston because some of the Ontario guys called him the “Kingston Kook,” though not to his face. Back east, on the coast, story was he’d been chased out of town for being more interested getting blitzed on his own laughing gas supply, especially while patients were in the chair with their pie-holes hanging open. And he’d get his fingers all in their mouths and then begin one of his fiery longwinded rants about whatever was bothering him that day. The man could lay down the ol’ talky talk, no doubt. Plus, he could forge a hell of a scrip and knew the good drugs so a lot of my fellow drifters really liked to have him around. Bennies and devils never did it for me—I was more a caffeine and whisky kind of guy.

  Janssen got right up to me, like he was apt to do, a professional invader of personal spaces. A few hairs shorter than me, he looked up and grabbed me around the shoulders and kneaded the flesh with powerful fingers in what was probably supposed to be a comforting embrace. It wasn’t. Also jarring was his breath. Here we were, living on the edge, in the muck, and he had the nerve to have fresh breath. But it was disturbingly fresh, a cloying peppermint scent that practically seared the inside of my nostrils.

  “A splendid morning brings splendid company. Smell that beautiful air, my dear Fitch. Why, there’s a butterfly! Good day to you, too!” He removed his hands from my shoulders and crossed one over the other at the thumbs and mimicked a flying butterfly. Same with his breath, no matter how low down he got, and he’d been burrowing down into the soil for several years now, his fingernails were always in perfect condition. Not a hangnail or a dirty, unclipped pinky among them.

  “What do you want, Janssen?”

  “Want? What should I want, other than to take in this fine morning air, walk this fine Earth and pass the time with fine conversation?”

  Right. It was Janssen’s world and we were all the players, the saps, the dumb rubes to his slick carny. And “fine conversation” always meant “captive audience for my lengthy, spirited diatribe about the blah blah blah and did I tell you about the blah blah blah.” “Uh, no thanks,” I said. “Gotta go.”

  “Excellent, I understand completely. Places to go and people to see.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “But it is such a fine morning so why don’t I walk with you?” Janssen was determined not to take a hint. I shrugged and walked on. He kept pace. A few weeks back, he’d attached himself to me for a whole day, like a shadow in the desert sun and nowhere to find shade. “So exactly where are we going?”

  Bluff called, I had to produce. Think, Fitch, think. Okay, I knew how to scare him off. I put on my best serious face and said, “To look for a job.”

  He didn’t recoil in horror like I’d hoped. “Oh? I thought you’d already taken a position. Why, didn’t you storm out of camp a few days ago calling us all degenerate lowlifes and vowing to ‘start over,’ ‘get it right this time’ and ‘live a normal life?’”

  He had me there, I did. Every blue moon the shroud of have-a-career-get-a-bank-account-take-some-responsibility would settle over me and I’d comb the job ads for a suitable opening, vowing to clean up my act once and for all. And I had a gift of the gab when it suited me and could often talk myself up in an interview, enough to get the job anyway. Maintaining it was another thing altogether. Like this last job: office work, 9-5. Basically take paper from that place and move it there. Which was fine now-and-then but every day? And from now until retirement? No thanks.

  “I’m taking personal leave,” I said.

  “Their loss, I’m sure,” said Janssen with a knowing grin.

  “Undoubtedly,” I said, firing a knowing grin back. “But let’s stop agreeing, we might get wrinkles from all the smiling.”

  “Couldn’t agree more, good sir, couldn’t agree more.”

  Leave it to Janssen to have to win on a word count, too. He repeated everything. Probably thought it was folksy and inspired trust. Personally, it made me want to throw up but every mark had a different threshold. Because, yes, as it turned out, I was to be the mark that morning, painted with a big bullseye and ripe for the targeting despite my defensive strategy.

  “Say, didn’t you use to sell encyclopedias while putting yourself through cavity college?” It irked Janssen like nothing else did if you didn’t wrap his former profession up in fancy cloths and place it on a golden altar and then bow down in front of it with the appropriate deference. So I made sure to do exactly that whenever possible.

  “Well, I learned a sight more than how to fill cavities, let me tell you, Mr. Fitch, but, yes, I did spend several years flogging my volumes of wordy wares, educating the masses to all the wonders the world has to share.”

  Jeez, a simple “yeah” was never enough for this guy. But I felt the position of the conversational sun changing. If I could get a tall building between it and me, get Janssen onto someone or something else, I might have a chance of losing my annoying shadow. A Janssen distracted was a Janssen disappeared.

  “Must’ve been tough,” I said.

  Janssen nodded. “There was many a day where my feet were worse for wear. The dogs were barking, as they say.”

  “Nah, for your mind.”

  He cocked his head and frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “There you were tryin’ to fund your way though rotten molar school amongst all them preppy rich kids and you had to bring a knife to a gun battle to survive.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Books, Janssen. Who reads anymore? It’s all about the almighty glow of the television screen. You show up at their house, what were most of them doin’? Watching TV, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Sure, maybe an average Joe buys a set of A-Zs to look important but does he actually read them, when the screen can tell him everything he needs to know? TV is the new religion, mark my words.”

  As we reached the end of the alley, I hope it’d mean we reached the end of the conversation. I got lucky. All of a sudden, Janssen had itchy feet, had to get going. He remembered he had irons in the fire and off he went, whistling a merry tune. Which was reason for me to whistle, too, and I gave my pathetic song a whirl before stopping mid-pfft. Wait a—

  No.

  No.

  It couldn’t be.

  I patted all my pockets.

  Oh, it be.

  Janssen, the rotten
scoundrel, had lifted my 40 nickels.

  Now: Vancouver, British Columbia, 1958

  2

  Two omelettes on order, four sunny side up eggs on the grill. Hashbrowns sizzling. Toast down. A short stack of pancakes on the griddle. Organized chaos was the only thing you could call the diner kitchen. It boggled the mind. The short order cook of the modern age was a wizard poet, an alchemist, a master of the dark arts harnessing strange forces to make magic. And sure, anyone could do it, fry an egg, flip a pancake, but the masters did it with style and panache. Greek Benny was no different. Like watching an orchestra conductor lead a symphony, except he wielded a spatula instead of a baton.

  “Fitch. Hey. Take a picture it’d last longer.”

  I looked up. Greek Benny, cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, t-shirt sleeves rolled up, gave me that stare.

  “Sorry, Benny, daydreamin’ again.”

  “And it’s payin’ off. Must be why you’re so successful. Any of this even yours?”

  “No,” I said. “Just watching an artist at work.”

  “You want two eggs scrambled, hashbrowns and a short stack on the side, you come to me. You want art go to a fancy museum.”

  And that’s what made the great ones so great—they didn’t know they were great and even if they did they didn’t rub it in your face every second. They simply let the ash fall from their cigarette so that it landed in the white of a frying sunny side up egg and then scraped off what they could and covered the rest with a grind of fresh black pepper. Class.

  A typical Wednesday in the diner. The usual crew of barflies soaking up the booze with grease, high school brats playing hooky and drinking milkshakes and me, drinking java at the counter. Glenda called it my office, ever since I’d given up the lease on my real one. And about the same amount of people visited me there, round about zero, so I felt right at home. Glenda warmed up my coffee with a splash of the new batch.