Setup on Front Street (18 page)
After
thirty years as a professional musician (piano), Mike Dennis left Key West and
moved to Las Vegas to become a professional poker player. In November 2010, his
noir novel,
The Take
, was released by
L&L Dreamspell. It's a story of human desperation set in Houston and New
Orleans.
His
next book,
Setup On Front Street
, is
the first in a series of Key West noir novels.
The series, called
Key West Nocturnes
, will lift the veil
on that town and reveal it as a true noir city, on a par with Los Angeles, New
Orleans, or Miami.
The
second novel in the series,
The Ghosts Of
Havana
, is now available as is the third book,
Man-Slaughter
. The fourth,
The
Guns Of Miami,
will be coming in 2013.
In
February, 2011, his collection of noir short stories,
Bloodstains On The Wall
was released. In addition, Mike has had
short stories published in A Twist Of Noir, Mysterical e, Slow Trains, Powder
Burn Flash, and the 2009 Wizards Of Words Anthology.
January,
2012 saw the debut of
Temptation Town
,
a novelette, and the first installment in the new Jack Barnett / Las Vegas
Series. The second entry,
Hard Cash
,
also a novelette, is now available. The third book, a full novel called
The Downtown Deal
, is also currently
available.
In
addition, Mike has an experimental rockabilly novel,
Cadillac's Comin'
, a hard tale of the early days of rock &
roll.
In
late 2010, Mike moved back to Key West, where he enjoys year-round island
living with his wife Yleana, whom he married on a warm December night in 2012
on the rooftop of an apartment building in Havana, Cuba.
Thanks
for reading this novel. If you’d like to hear from me regarding upcoming
releases, as well as an occasional giveaway, please let me know and I’ll
include you in my mailing list. NO SPAM!!!!
Contact
me at
[email protected]
Please
leave a
review on Amazon
.
DENNIS
The Key West Nocturnes Series
THE GUNS OF MIAMI
(coming soon)
Available in digital and paperback
The Jack Barnett/Las Vegas Series
Available in digital and paperback
Three
stories from the dark side
Available in digital and paperback
A novel
of human desperation
Available in digital and paperback
A rock
& roll novel
Available in digital only
A Las
Vegas noir short story
Available in digital only
A short
story of broken dreams
Available in digital only
EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW FROM
THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA
The second book in the Key West
Nocturnes series
by Mike Dennis
NOW
AVAILABLE
THE GHOSTS OF HAVANA
© Mike Dennis, 2011
1
BLAINE’S
voice on the other end of the phone
sounded urgent, out of breath.
"Robbie,
it's me. Listen. She's dead."
My knees
buckled. I had to sit down.
"Dead?
Dead?"
I spoke
the words, but I only heard a pathetic squeak, as though it were someone else's
cartoonish babble coming off the TV. Like it was all made up.
Blaine
caught his breath. "We got there at ten of eleven, right on time. The
joint was crowded, just like you said. We slipped back to her dressing
room."
He
sparked a cigarette. I knew he needed it. As a matter of fact, I was going to
need one myself here pretty quick.
"Go
on, already. What happened?"
"Shit,
man! We went back there and she … she …" He swallowed, then dialed his
voice way down. "Her throat was cut, Robbie. Damn near took her head
off."
My
stomach tightened into a hard knot.
Was I really hearing this?
Perching
my cellphone between my ear and my shoulder, I grabbed at the fresh pack of
cigarettes on the table. Made a couple of awkward stabs at opening it, but my
trembling hands wouldn't let me tear off the thin cellophane strip. After a few
fumbling seconds, I just ripped the damn thing wide open. The little white
sticks flew all over the floor.
I reached
down for one by my shoe, made an attempt at dusting it off, and fired it up.
Then I
said, "Where's my money?"
"It
wasn't there. We looked as best we could."
"What
the fuck do you mean by that?"
"Carlos
wanted to leave right away, but I pulled him back. The stuff from her purse was
scattered around on the floor, and we didn't see the money, so we split out the
back door. We had to get out of there!"
"So
you left without the money?"
"Man,
we couldn't linger. She was lyin' there dead! She hadn't been found yet. There
was blood all over the fuckin' place. We damn sure didn't want anybody walkin'
in on us."
"Who
did it? Was it Victor?"
"Hell,
I don't know, man. But they're gonna think we did it for sure. I mean, people
saw us. The bartender, one of the musicians backstage. They can ID us!"
A quick
shot of nicotine, then: "All right, all right, calm down. Nobody's gonna
ID you. Just lay low for a day or two till I sort this out." I swiped a
finger across the phone, ending the call.
A
suffocating stillness drew down over my living room, making it hard to catch a
full breath. For a second there, it felt as if there were no hands on the
clock. Like the whole world fell silent, flicking all the sound off, waiting
for something.
Or maybe
I just went deaf for a minute. I didn't know.
After a short, difficult drag on my cigarette, I walked
over to the window. The winter night hung heavy over Key West, with thick
clouds promising more unseasonable cold. A hard wind sliced through the coconut
palms out in front of my house, twisting their soft fronds into stiff, angry
silhouettes.
A few blocks distant, the downtown lights of Duval Street
barely glowed above tin rooftops. You can bet the night action would tail off
once the ambulance and black-and-whites arrived. They'd cordon off the whole
damn street in front of the Havana Club.
Then all you'd have would be a shitload of confused
partygoers running for their cars, the deadly calm of a silent cash register in
their wake.
Nothing like bloody murder to ruin a night's business.
A draft
slithered through the thin window pane, calling a damp chill into the room, the
kind of chill that eats right through you if you're not ready for it. Gnaws at
you, hacks away at you, laughs at you, gets right inside your head if you let
it. Outsiders are always shocked when these brief little cold snaps sweep down
on us, driving the temperature down into the fifties, but those of us who were
born and raised here, we get it.
And we're
ready.
I wasn't
ready for what happened tonight, though, and Olivia damn sure wasn't ready for
it either.
I
scrolled through my cellphone directory for Elena's number. Crushing out my
cigarette, I punched it up and within moments, she answered. I switched to
Spanish.
"Elena,
it's Robbie."
"
Hola, Rob
—"
"Get
hold of yourself. I mean it.
Tengo una
mala noticia
." A brief pause, giving her a second. "Olivia's
dead."
I'd never
had to make this kind of call before. I wasn't prepared for the deathlike gasp
crawling through the phone line. She struggled for words, anything.
Instead,
I spoke, deciding to leave out the details of the butchery of her sister.
"She
was murdered tonight. Down at the club."
Finally,
the strangled words came out. "Mur– murd– Robbie,
quién … por qué
… wh —"
"I
wish I knew, baby. But I
will
find
out. That's a solemn promise. And when I do …"
"
¿D-Dónde está ahora?
"
"She's
still in the dressing room at the club. Don't you go down there, though. It
won't do any good. The place is probably crawling with cops by now. Lab guys.
Everybody."
She spoke
through a tear-drenched voice. "Was … was it Victor?"
"Maybe.
I'm gonna find out."
She
sobbed long and loud, just like I knew she would. I let her have her cry.
Eventually,
though, her voice returned, and when it did, it came from the dirtiest part of
her insides, where there were thoughts that she dared not even think.
Where her
most vile fantasies resided.
Where we
all go on rare occasions like this one.
As she
cursed Victor, her voice spat out like mucus mixed with snot and shitwater,
lowdown, foul, dripping with venom. I could practically smell it on my end of
the phone.
"Yes,
Robbie, find out. Find out and cut his fucking balls off! Will you do
that?"
"I'll
take care of it, honey. You have my word on it."
2
THE
drive downtown only took a couple
of minutes, and just like I thought, the ambulance odd-angled itself to the
curb outside the Havana Club. Cop cars everywhere, parked helter-skelter,
choking off the entire street, drowning the storefront lights in an annoying wash
of twirling red and blue flashers.
A crowd
milled around in front, craning their necks for a peek inside. Over their
steady murmur, I could hear speculation on what had happened.
'Murder'
was the word I heard most.
Blue-uniformed
cops all over the damn place, standing around, holding back the crowd, running
in and out of the club. They were ringing the immediate area with yellow tape
when I got out of my car.
I stole a
glimpse through the window. No customers left inside.
Then I
heard, "Hey, there's the owner." from somewhere near the rear of the
crowd. It was a kid who used to work for me a year or so back. "Hey,
Robbie. What happened, man? They said someone got killed in there."
Right
away, about half a dozen people standing near this kid peeled off from the main
crowd and rushed over to me. They surrounded me in about two seconds, peppering
me with all kinds of questions and shit, but I couldn't deal with it right
then. I mumbled something about not really knowing the story, then made my way
through them to the door. There was tape across it.
"Robbie."
The voice rose behind me.
I turned
to see Ortega talking with a fellow cop, while jotting something down into a
small notebook.
He
stopped writing, then pushed back the drape of his leather coat a little,
showing his badge dangling around his neck. I glimpsed his piece buckled into a
well-oiled shoulder rig.
I had
gone to high school with him. He'd been on the force nearly thirty years, the
first twenty of which he was a real asshole. You know, running around playing
at being a cop, just like he'd seen on TV. He had all the tough talk down.
But it
eventually cost him. One night, when he was playing big man in the bad part of
town, he took a bullet and he almost didn't recover. It mellowed him out
considerably.
Sometime
after that, he made lieutenant, and now, even though you don't want to be alone
with him in an interrogation room, he bordered on being okay.
"I
got a call about this, Lieutenant. What the hell happened?"
"It's
pretty bad, man. Somebody got your singer in her dressing room. Did an OJ on
her. All with more than fifty people drinking and carrying on just a few feet
away."
"Any
idea who did it?"
"Not
really. We're questioning everybody, though. Everybody who didn't go running
out the minute we walked in."
I pulled
out my cigarette pack, shook one partway out, and offered it to him. He waved
it off.
"Yeah,
well," I said, lighting one for myself, "somebody had to see
something."
I wasn't
kidding anyone. We both knew that nobody was going to admit to seeing anything.
The only ones left in there were my employees and the band, and they damn sure
weren't going to step in this shit.
Ortega
ran a hand through thick mud-brown hair, straightening his frame. He was only
average height, but like myself, very solidly built.
He closed
his notebook and returned it to his coat pocket. "This kind of thing
doesn't usually happen down here, you know. Too bad it had to happen in your
joint. It's gonna fuck up your whole weekend, probably."
Fuck up the whole weekend, he says.
Try the last two years, pal.
The trap
door opened on our local economy back then, and my ass fell right through it.
Fewer tourists, fewer planes landing at the airport, fewer weekend warriors
from Miami, fewer dollars in my pocket, not enough of every god-damned thing I
need to stay above the waterline.
Taxes go
up.
Cost of
liquor goes up.
Migraines
come for dinner and stay all fucking night.
Two years
of low numbers, two years of increasing thievery by my employees, two years of
eating shit, and no relief in sight.
The
weekend, he says.
I pointed
toward the front door. "Is she still in there?"
"Yeah.
Forensics is back there right now gathering evidence. The coroner's on his way.
Probably be another four or five hours before we clear out. My partner's
questioning your employees in the bar area."
"Okay
for me to go in?"
He looked
straight at me.
"Robbie?"
"Yeah."
"You
got any idea who did this?"
"How
the hell would I know?"
Ortega
shifted his weight to his right leg, his good one.
"Well,
she did work for you." His tone suggested she did something else, as well.
"That's
all she did, Lieutenant."
"Nothing
more? No … girlfriend-boyfriend kind of thing? Nothing on the side, hm?"
His black
eyebrows raised as far as they would go, which on his forehead wasn't too far.
My jaw
tightened. I spoke slowly, deliberately, so he would get the point.
"She
only worked for me."
"I
hear Victor might've had something to do with this."
"I
didn't hear about that."
His
eyebrows shot up again.
"But
you would tell me if you knew."
See, this
is one of the downsides of living your whole life in a small town. The cop
knows what happened, and he knows that I know. Pretty soon, it'll be in the
fucking paper.
"Yeah,
I'd tell you."
Sure I would. In your fucking
dreams.
"Okay,
okay. I had to ask, you understand."
"Now
can I go in?"
He
nodded. "James," he signaled to the uniform with the tape. "Let
Robbie in. He's the owner."
James
pulled the tape aside, and I went in.
The
customers were all gone, of course, and the lights were turned up full. White
and bright inside a saloon. Not pretty.
The
employees, which amounted to my night manager, bartender, two waitresses and
three musicians, gathered together on one side of the room. They sat at tables,
all of them impatient, all of them wanting out. Ortega's partner, a guy I knew
from around, but couldn't come up with his name, sat at a table on the far side
of the room, grilling one of the waitresses. He had his notebook in front of
him, scribbling stuff into it as she spoke.
I made my
way back to the dressing room.
Well, it started
out as a storage room, about eight-by-twelve. But since Olivia started singing
here six months ago, I made a half-assed attempt to convert it.
I'd
shoved a few boxes aside and put a makeup mirror with a table and chair against
one wall. A couple of light fixtures, a portable clothes rack, and bingo! A
dressing room. Hey, she brought in a lot of the better trade right away —
you know, whiskey drinkers and frozen drink people instead of beer guzzlers
— so I thought she deserved this little retreat.
I
couldn't get in. The forensics boys had just arrived, and they were poking
around everywhere, while the photographer snapped pictures.
Two
uniforms guarded the open door to the small room. As I neared them, I picked up
a hard, metallic odor. Kind of like sour armpits, only worse. I knew this
smell, and it wasn't armpits. It was blood.
I peeked
around one of them, catching a fast glimpse of the carnage: a thick, red river
soaked the floor around the entrance.
It was
her blood. Olivia's.
And less
than an hour ago, it gave her life, flowing through her body. Through her
so-easy-to-look-at body.
The sight
and smell of it unsettled me plenty. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the squeamish
type. I've seen a lot of bad things in my time, and I have to admit, I may have
even caused a few.
But this
… this got to me. All the way down to my core.
Because
even though I never would've done anything like this to her, I had a part in
it.