Detective Fiction Read online

  Bill’s other novels have titles like Stoney’s Revenge, Stoney’s Honor, Stoney’s Day Off, and Stoney’s Killshot. He makes my alter ego larger than life. Jack Stoney is taller (six two to my even six); braver (he won the Silver Star as a captain in the marines and three Chicago PD citations for above-and-beyond, while all I got as a marine lieutenant were the usual sharpshooter’s and good conduct medals, plus a Purple Heart, and no police departmental citations because, I believe, the powers-that-be didn’t want to endorse my maverick behavior); and meaner (Stoney believes in vigilante justice, not trusting the screwed-up legal system to keep the bad guys off the streets, while I only did that sort of thing as a last resort). Stoney is a detective lieutenant; I was a detective sergeant.

  Stoney is a handsome devil with a thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair; muscular; with piercing green eyes; and a killer smile that melts the hearts and dissolves the resistance of the ladies who cross his path. Here, again, Bill has enhanced the real me, although I’ve always had a date for the prom.

  Stoney likes his women fast and loose, a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of guy. He once said, “After an hour in the sack with that leggy blonde, I wished I had two johnsons for double the fun.” I’d never say anything like that, although, I’ll admit, the concept is rather intriguing.

  It is widely reported that readership of books is way down because of the blizzard of electronic sensory inputs people get via their TVs, smartphones, tablets, computers, and now smart watches. But, according to Bill, there is clearly a large appetite among those who do still read books, either in paper or e-book form, for hard-boiled crime fiction, and he plays into that with his novels. All of them have been best sellers.

  My relationship with Jack Stoney brought me a measure of fame in my hometown. That caused me a lot of razzing down at the station house and in the cop bars, and it didn’t exactly endear me to the top brass in the department. I guess that Detective Stoney’s behavior reminded them what a pain in the butt I could be.

  I keep a stock of the Jack Stoney books in The Drunken Parrot and give away copies autographed by both the author and me to any patron who asks—I consider this to be a marketing tool for the bar—and to some who don’t, especially if they are female and pretty. Pick-up line: “Hi, do you like detective fiction?” Actually, that was before I met my current lady friend. Now I just thank the fans and buy them a drink.

  Bill visits periodically to check on his investment in the bar and to fish. Business is good because of our generous pours, the best hot wings and sliders on the beach, authentic Chicago-style hot dogs (a Vienna Beef tube steak on a poppy-seed bun dressed with mustard, onion, tomato slices, a dill pickle spear, bright green relish, celery salt, and sport peppers), and a happy hour that runs from our ten a.m. opening until last call, which is whenever I feel like locking up.

  The previous owner of The Drunken Parrot had a parrot named Hector who liked to stroll up and down the bar, dipping his beak into customers’ beer glasses and then staggering and doing a very good imitation of a burp. Hector said things like, “What’s a dumpy broad like you doing in a classy joint like this?” to the female patrons, and “You’ve been over-served, bucko” to the men. He could also sing the opening lines of “Danny Boy.”

  In Hector’s honor, I keep a framed eight by ten of him on the wall. When I bought the bar three years ago, Hector was not included, although I would have been happy to have him stay on. But his owner purchased a motor home and set off to see the country, with the bird riding shotgun. Maybe the guy will write a book: Travels With Hector.

  I thought of changing the bar’s name to The Baby Doll Polka Lounge South. The Baby Doll is my favorite Chicago bar, and also Jack Stoney’s. Leon, the owner, wouldn’t have minded, but I knew that my customers wouldn’t catch the reference, and Hector had created a certain amount of equity in the existing name.

  You might wonder if it is a good idea for a recovering alcoholic to own a bar. Maybe not, but I make it work. My drink of choice these days is Berghoff root beer, a custom brew made by the famous old German restaurant of that name in the Windy City. My beverage distributor brings it in. If I ever get tempted to revert to Gentleman Jack, I have only to look at the faces of the hard-core drinkers who shamble into the bar, and the urge goes away. I do what I can to help these poor souls with advice, which they usually don’t want, and coffee and a hot meal, which they usually do.

  Fort Myers Beach is one of those Florida, girls-gone-wild, spring-break kind of towns. For years, three pals I’ve known since we all went to Saint Leo’s Academy, a Jesuit high school in Chicago, and I would head down here for vacations. We’d rent a boat from Salty Sam’s Marina and troll the backwaters of Estero Bay for snook, redfish, sheepshead, and ocean perch. Sometimes we’d head north to Boca Grande Pass in pursuit of tarpon. At night we’d hit the bars along Estero Boulevard, including The Drunken Parrot, trolling for women above the age of consent, or at least those who had IDs saying they were (not that we’d ever intentionally buy a drink for a minor).

  The Drunken Parrot occupies a ramshackle, single-story building with weathered, white-wooden siding and a green tin roof. It is located right on the sand, with a big back deck, a straw-roofed, tiki-hut bar, and beach volleyball nets. On weekends during spring break, we have wet tee-shirt contests. A thousand pardons for any antifeminism involved, but the girls are volunteers and it’s good for business. One time, a beefy Iowa State right guard entered, and he won by unanimous acclaim from the customers, proving that our contest is not sexist. Inside, there is a long, curved mahogany bar with a brass rail, college and pro sports team memorabilia on the walls, a small stage where blues and jazz musicians play weekend nights, and a serviceable kitchen presided over by a veteran short-order cook. I make certain that the restrooms are always spotless, as if ready for a Marine Corps inspection.

  One night while drinking at The Drunken Parrot with my Chicago buddies, I gave my detective’s business card to the retired navy chief petty officer who owned the establishment and told him to call me if he ever wanted to sell. Dreaming that cop dream, you understand. It was mostly the alcohol talking. By the next morning, I’d forgotten all about it.

  But the owner did call me. I was in my Wrigleyville duplex at the time, recovering from that third gunshot wound. I took a .380-caliber round in the right shoulder, through and through, that limited my range of motion so badly that the department’s physician said I was unfit for duty—not the first time I’d been told that by the brass, but this time it was for a purely physical reason.

  The perp was a guy wearing a ski mask who ran out of a credit union on La Salle Street in the West Loop and bumped right the hell into me, surprising us both. He took early retirement from the armed robbery game when he shot me and I reciprocated with three rounds from my Smith & Wesson Distinguished Combat .357 Magnum—the same gun Bill Stevens puts in the hand of Jack Stoney—dropping him to the pavement like a marionette with its strings cut.

  I am dating a lovely woman named Marisa Fernandez de Lopez. Her father came to Miami from Cuba as a boy via the Mariel boatlift. Her mother was Venezuelan. She is about ten years my junior; I don’t know much about women, what man does, but I do know enough to not ask their ages.

  Marisa is drop-dead gorgeous, with lustrous, shoulder-length black hair, flashing dark eyes, and a killer bod, which she maintains by running marathons and practicing power yoga. She owns a small real estate agency in Fort Myers Beach and does very well because waterfront property values are astronomically high. I don’t know what she sees in me, and I’m not inclined to ask in case it would make her wonder about the same question.

  Marisa has never read any of the Jack Stoney novels. She prefers literary fiction, books like The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman, which she just finished, and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which she is reading. “Why would I read about a fictional detective when I have the real deal?” she once told me. Can’t argue with that logic.

  Other than editi
ng Bill’s books, I don’t read detective fiction either. Busman’s holiday. The books on my shelves are mostly non-fiction: Homicide: 100 Years of Murder in America by Gini Graham Scott; Bartending For Dummies by Ray Foley; Shooter’s Bible Guide to Firearms Assembly, Disassembly, and Cleaning by Robert A. Sadowski; City of Big Shoulders: A History of Chicago by Robert G. Spinney; and The Confessions of Saint Augustine by the Saint himself (a Saint Leo’s textbook I saved for some reason). And of course Semper Fi: The Definitive Illustrated History Of The U.S. Marines.

  My home is a forty-six-foot Voyager houseboat named Phoenix. Generally, I despise cutesy names for boats like Dad’s Dream, Lazy Dayz, Nauti Girl, and She Got The House, all of which I’ve seen. In that same unfortunate category are pretentious designer names some parents give their children. But Phoenix seems appropriate for my new home. I hope, with this new life of mine, to rise from the ashes of my earlier years, like the bird of Greek mythology.

  I bought Phoenix used—its original name was Takin’ It E-Z—with part of the proceeds from the sale of my Wrigleyville duplex. I keep it moored at Salty Sam’s. “Moored,” as in nailed to the dock. Phoenix is as seaworthy as The Drunken Parrot, I believe, an opinion I never mean to test.

  I met Marisa when I walked into her real estate office, located in a block of commercial buildings on Miramar Street, looking for a place to live. She asked me what my ideal residence would be. “A boat on a budget,” I told her. Her MLS listings pulled up Takin’ It E-Z, which was owned by a woman from Syracuse who’d gotten it in a divorce. According to my realtor, the woman was a “highly motivated” seller. I made an offer, it was accepted, and I moved out of a motel called The Neon Flamingo, my temporary quarters, and onto the boat.

  I had the amusing but unserious thought of getting a pet alligator, like Sonny Crocket had on his sailboat St. Vitus Dance in the old Miami Vice TV series, which I love. I decided instead on a cat. Actually, the cat decided on me. One morning, after I’d been in residence aboard Phoenix for about three months, I awakened in my bunk with the feeling that someone was staring at me. Someone was: a very large feline, calico, with the scars on his ears and face of a street fighter, a condition that we share. Maybe that’s why I took to him immediately.

  All I could think of to say to the cat was, “Welcome aboard.” He looked at me and meowed; maybe he was trying to tell me that he was the captain now, like that Somali pirate in the movie Captain Phillips.

  The cat didn’t seem inclined to go ashore anytime soon, so I went to the galley, opened a can of tuna and put it in a bowl on the deck for him. He took a few bites and then looked at me and meowed again, which I took to mean, “Not bad, but I prefer fresh.” I made a pot of coffee while he finished the tuna. Then he strolled into the stateroom, hopped onto the bed, curled up, and went to sleep. We’ve been together ever since.

  My aunt, who had six cats, had an embroidered pillow on her sofa that said, “Dogs have owners, cats have staff.” I soon found that to be correct. But it is a relationship that works for Joe and me. I named him after my brother. He apparently decided it was time to settle down with a permanent gig and, for some reason, picked my boat. Maybe he is prone to seasickness and liked the fact that the Phoenix was obviously never going to sea.

  3.

  THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT

  It was just after nine thirty on a balmy winter evening, the temperature in the midseventies in Fort Myers Beach, and three degrees with wind-driven snow in Chicago. One of the pleasures of moving to Florida from a northern climate is comparing the winter temperatures in your old and new hometowns, which I do regularly via an app on my cell phone. This is less fun during the summer months.

  Marisa and I were lying in bed aboard Phoenix, relaxing after a good dinner followed by some very passionate lovemaking. “Lovemaking” is a hopelessly old-fashioned term I know, but then, I’m a hopelessly old-fashioned kind of guy. I’m not criticizing casual sex, but I like Marisa very much and consider myself past the age for hooking up with any target of opportunity, as I tended to do in my youth.

  Marisa is an excellent cook. I’m great at ordering take-out and can put together a very tasty bowl of cereal. Bill Stevens makes Jack Stoney a gourmet chef. After a hard day of crime fighting, Stoney goes home to his Wrigleyville apartment and whips up some incredible meal for himself and his date from whatever is in his refrigerator.

  My fridge does not contain truffles, or leeks (whatever they are), or fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano, all of which Jack Stoney added to eggs for an omelet after he got home from a gunfight in the last novel. As I recall, he even baked some crusty bread, and had just the right wine on hand. I have an onion or two in the larder, plus a few cans of tuna and some dry cat food for Joe, a box of Frosted Flakes, a loaf of Wonder Bread, and a block Velveeta that has a longer shelf life than wood, plus a few other odds and ends in cans, jars, and boxes. As far as I’m concerned, use-by dates are for sissies. My wine cellar, aka a refrigerator shelf, consists of a six-pack of beer for guests and Berghoff root beer for me.

  But tonight, Marisa brought groceries and prepared a delicious ropa vieja (shredded flank steak in a tomato sauce), black beans, yellow rice, plantains, and fried yucca. Dessert was a caramel flan. She lives in a Key-West style pink stucco cottage on Mango Street with a professional-grade kitchen, where she really rocks.

  Glenn Gould’s classic 1955 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations was playing on the Bose sound system I installed on the boat. It was Marisa’s CD. My musical tastes run heavily to classics like Led Zeppelin, The Ramones, Bob Seger, and The Dead, as well as the same Chicago bluesmen Jack Stoney likes: Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Freddy King, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Sonny Boy Williamson (father and son), and others. Last Christmas, Marisa gave me a box CD set titled Best Of Chicago Blues, bless her heart.

  I was feeling quite content. All was not right with this troubled world, but there, in bed with Marisa, my little corner of the planet was doing just fine.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked as she lay with her head on my chest and her hand exactly where I would have requested she put it if I needed to, which I didn’t.

  “I was just thinking about the Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds album,” I told her. “It was really Brian Wilson’s project after he quit touring with the band to focus on his composing . . .”

  “The relevance to the present moment being exactly what?”

  “It’s obvious. They used a harpsichord on Pet Sounds and Bach wrote the Goldberg Variations for the harpsichord.” That latter was something Marisa told me, and which, oddly, I remembered.

  Not content to quit when I was ahead, an attribute of my poker game, I added, “The Beach Boys also used bicycle bells and dog whistles on the album, which, in my view, provide a nice counterpoint to the main themes. I’m surprised Bach didn’t think of that.”

  Jack Starkey, world-class wise guy.

  My wise guyness was one item on the long list of personal attributes that annoyed my ex-wife. It was right up there with leaving the toilet seat up, burping during a meal (she didn’t buy the argument that this was considered a compliment to the cook in China, or maybe it was India, pointing out that we were dining in the United States), and not putting a coaster under my beer bottle (I was still in my drinking days then, which was one more thing on her list).

  Maybe Marisa was also making a mental list of my shortcomings. But if she was, she kept it to herself, bless her hot Latina soul.

  “Define the concept of counterpoint in musical composition,” she responded.

  She had me there, as she knew she would. Following the example of politicians when stumped, I simply changed the subject: “How about those Cubs? I need to remember to order tickets.”

  I’ve been a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan. Some people follow the White Sox. There is no accounting for (bad) taste.

  She follows soccer, where twenty-two players in shorts run around kicking a ball that hardly ever makes it into the goal. That is compared
to the intellectually stimulating, heart-stopping action of The Great American Pastime, where an entry is made in the record books on every play. You could look it up.

  “You’d think I’d have learned by now that I shouldn’t ask you what you’re thinking,” she said.

  I was trying to come up with a clever response to that when I heard the sound of someone stepping from the dock onto the Phoenix’s deck. I wasn’t expecting a visitor, so I instinctively reached for the .38 snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver, my backup piece from my days on the job, that I keep in my bedside cabinet.

  Joe was sleeping on a quilt on the floor as he did whenever Marisa occupied his place on the bed. I made the mistake of buying a cat bed for him once. He ignored it and I deposited it into a dumpster at the end of the dock.

  Marisa looked at me, said, “I cook, you repel boarders,” and pulled the sheet up to her chin.

  From outside the cabin, a voice shouted out: “United States Coast Guard! We know about the contraband Cuban cigars, and the underage girl in your bed!”

  “Bless him for that last,” Marisa said.

  It was Cubby Cullen’s voice. Clarence “Cubby” Cullen is the Fort Myers Beach police chief. He is short and stocky, with a silver crew cut and substantial beer belly. Think Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night. He is a former deputy chief of the Toledo Police Department who got bored in retirement. He applied for the Fort Myers Beach job when it opened up and was advertised in a Fraternal Order of Police newsletter.

  I went to the Fort Myers Beach police station to introduce myself to Cubby soon after I arrived from Chicago. This was a professional courtesy, one cop to another, and also to get an application for a Florida concealed carry weapons permit. Cubby was disappointed to learn that I didn’t drink, but that didn’t prevent us from becoming pals, trading war stories, and backwater fishing on his Smoker Craft skiff. That’s why I didn’t have to sweat the local ordinance regulating bar-closing time.