Dark Fiction by Casper Vidor

I had just finished the Carlton
case and I needed a drink bad—beautiful women with a death wish tend to do that
to me. I stopped by Sam Klute’s bar and
picked up a bottle of courage and something for lunch–another bottle. Sam’s a good guy, but his bar is a little too
far out of the way for me. I really only
stop by like I do because his daughter and his wife both have the hots for me,
but I would never do anything; like I said, Sam’s a good guy.

 

Today was especially hard because I had just had to turn my
back on the single most beautiful woman I had ever clapped eyes on while John
Law carted her of in the wagon. I had my
heart dead set on wrapping my arms around those downy shoulders and planting
one of a million kisses on her, but again I was about as unlucky in love as any
guy can be. When I walked into Sam’s I
had a feeling I should just turn around and leave, I figured it was guilt
talking because I had made a promise to myself just that morning that I was going
to give up the sauce and here I was not five hours later knee deep in failure,
I of course ignored my intuition as usual. The bar was empty and silent, except for Nina Simone pouring out of the
juke. 

 

I stumbled along toward the office in the back where I
figured I’d find Sam doing inventory. I
had trouble keeping myself from window shopping the hooch at the back of the
bar, but I had finished off my last bottle that morning so I wasn’t that far
gone—yet.

 

The shiny bar looked like polished ebony in the dim light
leaking through the high narrow stained glass windows that Lee Anne had made
Sam buy for her. As I rounded the end of
the bar I propped my dog on the brass rail and whistled.

 

“Hey, Sam!” I said. There was no reply and being this close to all that liquor was making me
awful thirsty—the impatient kind of thirsty. I whistled again and pounded on the bar, but I got nothing. Either Sam had gone into the ice cream business
and wasn’t interested in selling to the likes of me anymore or he was out back
dumping the trash. I leaned around the
bar and peered through the darkness into the long hall that leads from the bar
to the back room where Sam kept his safe. The door was ajar, and I couldn’t be too sure but I thought I saw the
longest, loveliest pair of legs on earth; and I recognized them, I ought to I
had watched them carry Lee Anne away from me enough times. 

 

“Hey!” I said once more. “Lee Anne!” She wasn’t asleep
because I could see her legs moving. Now,
I was in dire need of a drink but I wasn’t in bad enough shape that I was going
to do something stupid like walk back there and barge in, but at the same time
I was starting to get another little twinge of intuition. I followed my nose down the hall, making sure
not to kick a can over or otherwise startle her. The closer I got to Sam’s office the easier
it was to see those gams. I was just
about a foot away from the door when I heard a sort of muffled moan, and then I
spotted thick rope knotted around her ankles. I slid my back against the wall and reached for my gun–I knew it
wouldn’t be there, I remember dropping it and thinking that I was going to have
to get a new one and bill my next client for it–but old habits die hard. I searched the mottled darkness for
something, anything, to use as a shank. I put my hand on something sticky it turned out to be a baseball
bat. I clamped my hand around the bat
hard and in a few steps I was throwing my shoulder into the door and diving in
the narrow room.

 

The room was a shambles; it looked like somebody had turned
it upside down. Everything on every
shelf was lying topsy-turvy scattered across the floor in piles. The safe door was hanging from one hinge, and
the safe was empty. I slammed the door
back just to make sure that there was no trigger planted there looking to cap
anyone who stepped wrong, and then I took a gander at Lee Anne. 

 

Her eye was a little dark in one corner, I could tell it
would be a real shiner by morning, and there was a little blood at the corner
of her lip. My throat tightened I had to
fight myself to keep from dashing out right then looking for whatever cad had
done this. I fished my German Eye knife
out of my pocket and set to work on the ropes. She was walleyed; she kept talking crazy. It took me a few minutes to slice through the
ropes at her ankles and those that held her wrists to the arm of Sam’s office
chair. When she was free I grabbed her
up and carried her into the bar. 

 

“Come on doll.” I said as I shook her. I tossed some ice into a glass and showered
it with something warm and brown. I
lingered a little over the amber liquid; after all, this it what I had come
for, but she moaned and the sound yanked my out of my stupor. “Here doll,” I said as I lifted her head and
pour the drink down her shapely throat. She coughed and sputtered like a new recruit on his first night of
furlough, and then she sat straight up. She saw me and dove into my arms and started to bawl. 

 

“Oh Burt!” she cried. “They took him…they came and took him.”

 

Today was no day to stop drinking.