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by C.M. Albrecht

How many people does it take to write a best seller? How many of them will live to brag about it? In this dark novel of intrigue and deception the line between good guys and bad guys is blurred. Very blurred.

978-1-59438-913-6

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suspense/mystery/mainstream

Life's all about choices. Every time we turn around we have to make a choice. It's always choices. And most of the time we make bad ones. At least I do. I don't know why, but someway, somehow, I always make the wrong choice. It isn't because I don't know any better or lack sound advice. Time after time people--people who know--point out the error of my thinking and still by God, knowing that, and taking everything into account and admitting they're undoubtedly right, I still have to go and do it anyway. I sure made a bad choice when I started after Angie. Then again, it's almost like, maybe I didn't have a choice at all.

"So you knew that was a bad choice, Mr. Lemarsh? Or can I just call you Darcy?" Kirk's voice was low and confidential. A little bit hoarse. He wanted to be my friend. He wanted to help me. He was a big beefy guy with a paunch. His jowls were heavy and red as if he shaved too close, and he had kind of iron gray hair in a brush cut. His eyes were red and he looked tired--tired and discouraged. He wore a cheap short-sleeve shirt and a striped tie. Dark wet spots stained the armpits of the shirt. A year ago I wouldn't have noticed it was a cheap shirt, so I guess my short brush with fame and fortune taught me a couple of things. I just wish life could ever teach me something useful.

I rubbed my wrists where I'd been handcuffed. They were still tender. I took my writer's glasses out of my jacket pocket and held them in front of me. I guess I was figuring how to start. I looked at them. Big dark brown plastic frames with lightly tinted glass. I tapped them on the table a couple of times. I looked at them some more and laid them down.

The little room was painted thick cream enamel with a dark green trim around the window and the door. There was only the table and three metal chairs with green plastic seats. The big window faced me like a wide-screen television along the wall behind Kirk. I saw my dark reflection, a sad and lonely loser with unkempt hair. I could barely see my beautiful jacket reflected in the window; it was too dark. And I was back to needing a shave. I knew people could stand on the other side of the window and watch me and hear what we said. I figured they were videotaping me.

I'd been sitting there twenty minutes or so before this big guy came in. He told me his name was Sergeant Kirk and removed my cuffs. That was a nice friendly start. He had a way of putting me at ease. Not really at ease, but at least I didn't feel like he was going to pounce on me. For some stupid reason I almost laughed at his name. I had an urge to ask him if he got demoted. The only Kirk I knew had always been a captain. But I didn't. I didn't say anything at all about that.

"Yeah, Darcy's fine." That's all I said.

He placed a recorder on the table and pressed a button.

"Just start at the beginning and tell me in your own words, Darcy," he said. "The only way I can help you is for you to open up and tell me everything. It's still not too late to change your mind and have a lawyer present."

"No," I said. They'd already asked me two or three times if I wanted a lawyer. I didn't need a stupid lawyer, at least not right now. Like I said, I made some bad choices but at least I'm man enough to stand up and admit it. Considering my position, I didn't think a lawyer could do much for me. Besides, now I didn't have any money to be hiring lawyers.

But even today, looking back, I can't honestly say I would've done anything differently. Things just have a way of creeping up on a guy.

That's the way it was when I met Angela Berry. There was plenty of warning. I should've seen right away that she was one pencil short of a gross, maybe two. But when I say warning, I'm not sure I know exactly what I mean by that, because the choices I made later on and the way things happened…I could never have foreseen them. No way. Not in my wildest dreams.

***

Angie was I think twenty-five. Slender and lithe. She didn't have big boobs and all that, but there was a firm catlike quality about her that stirred me and made me feel immediately that she'd be a holy terror in bed. She had a fine nose and wide cheekbones with dark hollows underneath. She had wide-set almost colorless eyes, eyes like those arctic dogs; eyes that made me feel she couldn't be trusted. And they had kind of a daredevil faraway look in them so even while I was talking to her I had a gut feeling that she was off on some cutting edge adventure all by herself and only giving me half her attention. When she looked at me, I felt like she looked right through me, at something beyond.

Angie worked at The Owl, this little chili joint where I dropped in for a bowl of chili once in a while. She hadn't been there but a few days I guess, the first time I saw her. We didn't talk that time but the lazy way she let those icy eyes linger on me told me I wasn't the ugliest guy she'd ever seen. But I figured too that maybe she was just one of those gals who like to dazzle you with a look so you'll leave a nice tip but don't get your hopes up. She had dark straight brows and dark hair that frizzed a little, especially near the roots. She wore it cut short to reveal a long slender neck, a look I thought was pretty beautiful. I never was much of a ladies man, but after a couple of visits to The Owl, something about this gal gave me the idea that she might just like me at that, at least a little bit.

The Owl wasn't a very big place. Deep and narrow and kind of gray. Back around the grill the gray had turned a sickly yellow from years of smoke and grease. A counter ran down the left side and a row of tables ran down the right side ending at the kitchen. By that a little hall led to the restrooms in the dark near all the garbage.

The Owl always smelled. Whether or not you consider that good depends on whether you like frying onions, the smell of bacon and beans and fishy grease wafting on the air. And if you sat too near the restrooms you smelled them too. The food smells didn't bother me but I usually didn't sit any closer to the restrooms than I had to.

About the third time I came in after Angie started there she was sitting at a table in the back, near the restrooms. Naturally I saw her immediately. She had her elbows on the table with a cup of coffee in front of her and an unlit cigarette held high to let the imaginary smoke drift away from those faraway eyes. If she saw me come in, she didn't let on. Even though her eyes were trained directly on me there was no sign that she was in this world. Her eyes were so colorless that it was always hard to tell. Mostly you only saw the little black pupils.

But for all that, I felt a strange sense of connection. Something about the way she'd looked at me before--maybe even a crazy feeling that somehow, someplace, we'd known each other before--maybe in another life. Who knows? Something more than just her looks pulled at me to wander on back and stop at her table. I didn't even notice the smells from the restrooms.

Now she acknowledged my presence with a faint smile.

"More chili?" she said. "Better check it if you get some."

"Check it?" I asked. I wondered where this was going. I'd already had something I thought was pretty clever to say to her. I was going to say, "Hey, do you come here often?" But that threw me off.

"Yeah," she said and nodded toward Jessie, the waitress behind the counter. Jessie had been there ever since I'd been coming in. A little taller and older than Angie she wore too much makeup and had about twenty pounds of jet-black hair piled high on top of her head. She had big soft boobs and ass all right, and a lot of the guys came in just to BS with Jessie. Her curves were too dumpy and exaggerated to do much for me. And the lazy way she moved her ass around--I could just imagine what a slob she must be at home. Not that my one room pad was anything to talk about. I hate it but every time I diss somebody a little voice reminds me that I'm not perfect either. I don't know why that is, especially in the light of everything that happened later, but I do believe I have a conscience.

"Yeah," Angie went on, "a customer pulled a two foot black hair out of his chili today and he's threatening to sue. Don't be surprised if Jessie's long gone by next week. I won't be sorry. She's been stealing tips from me."

"A two-foot hair?" That sounded pretty long even for Jessie, but I could believe it. Jessie always wore her hair pinned up, but more than once I'd seen long stringy black hairs working their way loose around her head. I remembered thinking once that if you pulled at it a moth might fly out. The thought of pulling a long black hair out of my chili kind of put me off. "I guess I'll just have coffee," I said. Then in a lower voice: "She's been stealing your tips?"

"Yeah, every time a customer leaves me a big tip, Jessie swipes some of it."

Some people are pretty greedy, I thought. I turned to go to the counter to order, but Angie reached across and touched my arm--it was like being zapped by electricity.

"Relax. I'll get it for you." She scraped her chair back and went around to the kitchen and behind the counter and poured me a cup of coffee. I liked the assured way she looked and carried herself. She looked like she was fully in charge and knew exactly what was going on. While I waited, I saw Jessie eye me and whisper something to Angie with a snicker. Angie smiled back. I guess she'd forgotten about her stolen tips already.

She came back with a mug of coffee and placed it in front of me. "You'd better talk fast," she said, sitting back down, "I've go to get back to work in a minute."

Talk fast? I'd had a hard time coming up with that line I didn't get to use. I didn't know what to say now. Like did she know what I wanted to say? I wasn't sure myself what I wanted to say to her. I just knew I wanted to be around her, to talk to her. Or I could've spent the evening not saying a thing, just so long as I could hang around her. She was like a magnet. One of those powerful magnets that grab and hold on tight without doing a thing.

I caught my breath and tried to look cool. "What do you want me to talk fast about?" I asked her.

She just looked at me, kind of sideways. "I thought maybe you were going to ask me out for something decent to drink after work."

I couldn't believe my ears. I'd always been a little awkward around women, and the few women who ever came onto me were the ones I didn't really want or need. I guess for a guy who didn't have much to offer I was kind of picky. But Angie? I gulped and tried to be cool.

"What time do you get off?" I asked.

She looked coolly through me and gave me that Mona Lisa smile. "Nine. Just wait outside on the corner." Suddenly her voice changed. She became very businesslike: "Got to go." She stood up without looking at me and picked up her mug and disappeared back into the kitchen area.

I sipped about half my coffee and stepped up to the counter. By then Angie had come around and I paid her for my coffee and mumbled something about seeing her at nine.

"I've got to go to the bathroom," I told Kirk. He got up and called for a uniformed officer to take me down the hall to the can. After that, the officer brought me back.

Kirk was very accommodating and asked if I wanted a Coke or some coffee or something and I said no, thanks, I was fine.

"Well, you just go ahead and tell me what happened next, Darcy.