Blood, Guts, & Whiskey Read online

  Knockout Raves For

  TODD ROBINSON

  Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll

  “These stories will leave you wincing, smiling and wanting a

  shower and all the while you’ll be begging for more.”

  —Buzz Bin

  “Here’s proof that the short story isn’t just alive and

  well, but kicking ... you right in the balls.”

  —Rod Lott, Bookgasm.com

  “Be prepared to be shattered, shell-shocked and bruised, as

  Thuglit’s emissaries write wrongs that are very, very right.”

  —Sarah Weinman

  Hardcore Hardboiled

  “So good, it’s almost dangerous.”

  —CrimeSpree

  “So hard-boiled, the shell is still on.”

  —bn.com

  “Solid ... will appeal to those with a taste for explicit violence.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A showcase of new and exciting talent.”

  —Charlie Stella, author of Shakedown

  “You have to look hard to find two consecutive pages that don’t deal with sex or violence, but why would you want to?”

  —Otto Penzler

  Also by Todd Robinson

  Hardcore Hardboiled

  Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  blood, guts, & whiskey

  EDITED BY TODD ROBINSON

  INTRODUCTION BY MAX ALLAN COLLINS

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Also by

  Title Page

  Introduction

  A Message from Big Daddy Thug

  Red Hair and Black Leather

  The Return of Inspiration

  Cut

  Pick’s Place

  These Two Guys ...

  Community Property

  News about Yourself

  Trauma Dyke

  ’Demption Road

  Mr. Universe

  Green Gables

  Death of a Rat

  The Last Dance

  The Cost of Doing Business

  Son of So Many Tears

  Faith-Based Initiative

  Mahogany and Monogamy

  Who Do I Have to Kill to Get a Little Respect Up in Here?

  Bad Move

  You’re Gonna Get Yours

  Fool in Search of a Country Song

  Mercy First, First Mercy

  Overclocked

  Care of the Circumcised Penis

  About the Authors

  Raise Your Glasses ...

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Max Allan Collins

  What we tend to call noir fiction today—and used to label “tough guy” or “hardboiled” (a World War I term)—seemed to blossom into full bloodred with such novels as Red Harvest (1929) by Dashiell Hammett, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by James M. Cain, and The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler. But these landmark novels only represented the first book-length work from those three writers, who had developed their criminal craft in the short-fiction form.

  More than that, the debut novels of both Hammett and Chandler represented recycling of short fiction originally published in pulp magazines. That a prestigious publisher like Knopf would endorse novels with such questionable pulpwood roots may seem unlikely, and one wonders if this new, natively American kind of crime story would have risen to critical praise, best-seller status, and Hollywood heights, had the editors at Knopf not been blessed with great taste and considerable foresight.

  Both Hammett and his celebrated disciple Chandler were regular contributors to the famous pulp magazine Black Mask, and Cain honed his style at such “slicks” as The American Mercury, Esquire, and Redbook. Cain’s prototype for his style of crime fiction, “Pastorale,” appeared in influential journalist H. L. Mencken’s The American Mercury—Mencken also instigated Black Mask as a vehicle to underwrite more overtly literary endeavors. With the notable exception of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first published short story (“Babes in the Woods”), it’s doubtful Mencken’s other short-story magazine, The Smart Set, ever spawned anything as lasting (in the literary sense or otherwise) as the work of Hammett and Chandler in Black Mask did.

  The late 1920s—and the several decades that followed—were a time when the short story flourished. The short story was the TV of its day; half-hour programs dominated on radio and TV for many decades, indicating the degree to which short-form prose set the standard and form. Many films bragged in their credits of a screenplay’s source being a Collier’s Weekly, Saturday Evening Post, or Liberty short story (or serial).

  These weekly magazines were mainstream entertainment, at least as popular as novels and probably rivaled movies. In the world of crime and mystery fiction, many of the most famous characters in the genre—Charlie Chan, Perry Mason, even Sam Spade—turned up in slick magazines, as a precursor to episodic television.

  Cain, who currently suffers an undeserved diminished standing, was in the 1930s and ’40s usually taken more seriously by literary critics than “mystery writers” Hammett and Chandler, though Cain, with his sexual content, was certainly the most controversial. Cain’s preferred form was the short story, or the novella. The Postman Always Rings Twice was a notably slim volume, and Cain’s second most-famous work, Double Indemnity (1935), was a long magazine story that did not appear in hardcover as a solo work (it first reached hardcover as one of the three novellas collected in Three of a Kind in 1943).

  Cain was not alone among major names in crime fiction who preferred the short story. The hardboiled sensation of the 1950s, Mickey Spillane, during his approximately decade-long layoff between Mike Hammer novels (Kiss Me, Deadly, 1952, to The Girl Hunters, 1961), published one or two long short stories a year in such low-end men’s publications as Saga and Cavalier. Why Spillane—then a writer as popular as Stephen King and with a character as famous as Harry Potter—chose to write short fiction is partly explained by his own preference for a shorter form. He explained that he felt the novella was the “perfect” length for a crime novel, and fans of ’50s and ’60s paperback publisher Gold Medal Books (and now Hard Case Crime) might agree.

  That Black Mask and its imitators form the tide pool where the life of modern crime fiction began is surely beyond argument. Some key creators have not lasted, or have had their reputations fall—Carroll John Daly, the inventor of the private eye story (and a huge influence on Mickey Spillane), is a figure much mentioned but little read today. Daly’s Hammer-esque Race Williams set the form and standard for the private eye, but the writer’s rough pulp edges—and his inability to fashion a worthwhile book-length narrative—has left him important but passé. (Spillane himself told me, in a typically pungent fashion, that “Daly wrote great short stories—but he stunk as a novelist.”)

  Black Mask short story writer Erle Stanley Gardner became one of the most popular mystery novelists in the ’40s through the ’70s, and frequent Black Mask contributor Horace McCoy—probably the most criminally forgotten of the greats—fashioned several of the most effective crime novels of the twentieth century, including They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935) and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948). (McCoy’s work is the template for Jim Thompson, whose paperback originals were essentially novellas.)

  Not long after Black Mask faded away, Manhunt filled the hardboiled gap in the form of a digest-sized pulp with wonderful covers by the top paperback artists of the day—not surprisingly, the new magazine kicked off in 1953 with a four-issue Spillane serial. James
M. Cain appeared in Manhunt, and Richard S. Prather, Evan Hunter, and just about every significant mid-century name in tough crime fiction.

  During this period, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine emerged as markets for the hardboiled tale, while Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine instituted a “Black Mask” department (recently revived in those pages); and any number of crime-oriented digest-sized pulps came along, often bearing brand-name authors or their characters—Rex Stout, Ed McBain, Charlie Chan, the Saint, and even 77 Sunset Strip from TV (a series spawned in part by Esquire magazine short stories by Chandler imitator Roy Huggins, future father of Bret Maverick and Dr. Richard Kimble).

  By the late ’60s, however, the short story had become a marginalized form, and not just in mystery fiction. Now short fiction was the stuff of a few high-end publications, a handful of genre publications, and a smattering of small literary magazines. A writer could hit the lottery and get thousands from Playboy, or five cents a word from the handful of digests ... or a complimentary copy of a literary magazine.

  I started trying to write professionally in high school in the mid-’60s and it never occurred to me to try to market short stories—I went straight to novels. At the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, I kept writing novels, but soon learned the workshop format was kinder to short stories, and wrote a few. The literary crowd always understood that a writer goes to school in the shorter form. Still, my first sales were novels.

  Frankly, I didn’t even try to sell a short story until I was well-established—my first one was for an anthology around 1984, a good ten years into my career, and it was by request from an editor. In the ’80s and ’90s, the anthology market boomed and, thanks to Marty Greenberg, Ed Gorman, Bob Randisi, and a few others, guys like me got to write short stories by invitation. My wife Barb—the best native short story writer in my house—became a professional when those kind of invitations began rolling in regularly. Such anthologies are not gone, but they are an increasingly rare breed. Barb hasn’t written a short story in a couple years (really a sad thing, good as she is) and has been doing novels in collaboration with her longer-form-oriented husband.

  If the short story has never quite become a lost art or even an endangered species, it remains the place where crime fiction began, and has always been a breeding ground for new talent. Writers need on-the-job training, and short stories have always provided the major venue for that. With only Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock left in the digest pulp field, and original-material anthologies becoming less and less frequent, that venue begins to look all but nonexistent. After all, it’s not easy to sell to Queen and Hitchcock’s, and the anthologies are usually by invitation only, so how does that aid the next generation of crime writers?

  Understand I’m not incredibly anxious to encourage these talented SOB’s. Somebody the other day talked about me as one of the best crime writers of the ’80s, and I didn’t mind hearing that, except I wanted to raise my hand and say, “Hey! Asshole! I’m still here!”

  Anyway, a lot of these writers are breaking in on the Internet, and Thuglit.com has been, and continues to be, one of the best sites for contemporary tough fiction. Look back at the previous two volumes in this series and you’ll see names that have already achieved esteemed status and even stardom. This volume has a few of those as well (Tom Piccirilli, for example) but mostly these are names not as of yet the household variety.

  If history is any judge—whether we’re talking Hammett’s first story in Black Mask or pick-a-name-here in this Thuglit antho—that will change.

  What hasn’t changed is the desire of writers and readers to tell lean, mean stories that deal with the major conflicts of humankind—life and death, i.e., sex and violence—unflinchingly. In a form developed almost a century ago in the pulps and born again on the net, today’s brightest writers provide some of the darkest tales you’ve ever read.

  June 2009

  Muscatine, Iowa

  A Message from Big Daddy Thug

  Welcome one and all to the third Thuglit anthology. To those of you who already know who we are, welcome back. To those of you who are wondering what the hell a “Thuglit” is, we’re all about rainbows, puppy dogs, and whatever Celine Dion is up to. Would I lie? “Blood, Guts, and Whiskey” is the title of a Celine Dion song. Look it up. This book would make a great birthday present for your grandma, with stories to share for generations to come. Now stop reading this intro and just buy the thing. Trust me.

  Pssst.

  Are the newbies gone?

  Good.

  Suckers. I totally lied about the Celine Dion song.... Christ, I feel dirty just mentioning her name three times.

  For the rest of you, once again, we’ve tossed the terrible salad of the dark and deadly, the gruesome and the glam, the vicious and the violent. Much like a ... well, a terrible tossed salad (Editor’s Note: choose definition of “terrible tossed salad” for yourself.). We’ve got some rising stars, some new masters, and a never-before-seen story from a legend taken too soon.

  We’ve got badass bikers, ’roid-raging lunatics, double-dealing gangbangers, S&M psychos, and hellacious hitmen. We got blood, we got guts, we got whiskey (hence the title. Get it? We weren’t being coy, ya dipshit). And it just wouldn’t be a Thuglit anthology without at least one set of mutilated genitals, now would it?

  We await our National Book Award. Or Nobel. Whichever one comes with the best gift basket.

  Still waiting ...

  —TODD ROBINSON (BIG DADDY THUG)

  Red Hair and Black Leather

  Jordan Harper

  She had an ass like a heart turned upside down and cut in half—and that’s what we call foreshadowing, friend. But I didn’t know that at the time, of course. All I knew was that it was a slow Wednesday afternoon at the bar and in walks this gal, red hair pouring over her shoulders, wearing a wifebeater and black leather pants. And all of the sudden the Cards game on the teevee didn’t seem so interesting.

  “Nice place.” She pulled herself onto a stool in front of me, thumping a big leather purse onto the stool next to her. Strictly speaking, what she said was a lie. Jackie Blue’s isn’t much to look at—brick and linoleum, bars on the only window up front, old neon signs on the wall. But still it sounded like she meant it. She had a Southern lilt, not that twang that you get around here, and it made whatever she said sound like sunshine and kittens. Sexy kittens.

  “Thanks.”

  “It yours?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  “Well, I guess that makes you Jackie Blue, am I right?”

  “Well, I’m Jackie, anyway,” I said. I haven’t answered to Jackie Blue in a long time.

  “Jackie Blue ... isn’t that the name of a song?”

  “By the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, as a matter of fact. You find yourself in the Queen City of the Ozarks just now, if you didn’t know it.”

  She wrinkled her nose at that.

  “Is that where I am? I had wondered. I hope you don’t mind me saying, she doesn’t look much like a queen.”

  “Well, take a look ’round the rest of the Ozarks and get back to me on that. Springfield don’t look like much, but it beats the hell out of Rogersville or Monett.”

  She dropped a smile on me that peeled about twenty years off my old hide, which might have put me about even with her.

  “Jolene,” she said, and put out a freckled hand for me to take. It felt hot to the touch.

  “Well now, that’s the name of a song as well, right?”

  She groaned a little at this. I guessed she wasn’t a Dolly Parton fan.

  “What can I do you for, Jolene?”

  “I’ll take a Wild Turkey neat with a Dr Pepper back, if you please.”

  That is a drink order that makes a man sit up and take notice. I poured the liquor in a highball glass and filled a twin for myself. Owning a bar, you want to watch things like drinking in the day. But there’s exceptions for everything, and this was shapin
g into an exceptional day. She took a hard swallow of the Turkey. I could see it play havoc with the muscles in her throat but it never touched her face. I liked her even more.

  “So now, Jolene—seeing as how you don’t know where you are, maybe it’s a pointless question—but what brings you to town?”

  She smiled, but this time there was a little crack to it, like there was something that wasn’t a smile underneath. She put her hand on her purse like it was fitting to fly off, then dug in it for some of those skinny toothpick cigarettes that ladies sometimes smoke.

  “Jackie, I’ll tell you what it is. I’m in town for exactly two reasons. One’s to drink Wild Turkey. The other is to get laid.”

  I’ve had it every other way I can think of, but I’ve never had it served to me sizzling on a platter like that. There was something there in the back of the skull telling me that God made up his mind long ago that I’m not that lucky and the strings you can’t see usually turn to chains. But sometimes you got to jump just ’cause the chasm is there.

  Hell, what was I going to do, go back to watching the Cards?

  I topped my glass to the rim, then hers. Then I held up that near full bottle of Wild Turkey up between us and poured the whole thing into the sink.

  “Fresh out of Wild Turkey,” I told her.