Tales of River City Read online

  TALES OF RIVER CITY:

  A Four Collection Bundle

  Frank Zafiro

  Tales of River City: A Four Collection Bundle

  Frank Zafiro

  Copyright 2011 Frank Scalise

  Cover Design by Matt Rose

  Cover Design for Dead Even by Andrew Corder. Cover Photography by Matt Rose.

  Cover Design for No Good Deed and The Cleaner by Jonathan Scinto

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, places, establishments, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Introduction to Tales of River City

  Tales of River City: A Four Collection Bundle is, as the title implies, a four volume collection of River City tales gathered all together and bundled into one tome.

  I’ve included all three River City short story collections (Dead Even, No Good Deed and The Cleaner) which have all been published previously as separate collections.

  Then I added another fourteen stories (actually, thirteen and a poem) of bonus material at the end of it all, just to make it more worthwhile. Some of those stories are River City. A few are not, but all were written by me (either as Frank Zafiro or Frank Scalise).

  So enjoy your trip through the River City universe of short fiction, as almost all of it that is currently available is collected here all in one place. There will always be more stories and novels, of course...

  Frank

  June 2011

  DEAD EVEN

  Frank Zafiro

  Copyright 2010 by Frank Scalise

  To my Nana,

  who has always been there with love and good cheer.

  Foreword to DEAD EVEN

  I've put together this anthology under the assumption that you’ve read some or all of my River City novels and are familiar with many of the characters on these pages. If not, you’re experiencing this collection in the opposite way I expected. But that may also be a wonderful way to discover these characters.

  Some, like Katie MacLeod, often have central roles in the novels. Others, like Paul Hiero, just a cameo. Still others, like Dominic Bracco, have only appeared in shorts and haven’t made their way into the longer works just yet.

  These are the stories and characters that don’t make it into novels for one reason or another. Despite its much fuller form, the novel has to be focused as tightly as a short story. And in these stories, characters are crying out for stage time or taking interesting side trips that will probably never be explored in a River City novel.

  They are grouped here by character, so that their interwoven nature is apparent. They are also chronological within each character’s experience, though some of these events take place far ahead of where the River City series of novels is currently exploring. (You’ll want to check those out, too, I’m hoping. It’s worth the trip. I promise.) Most of these stories are previously published (if you’re interested in that, a full accounting is available in the Notes section of this book), while a couple are new.

  All of them have a special, if smaller, room in my heart where all our children go.

  As long as we’re talking here, I’d like to thank a few people:

  Russ Davis at Gray Dog Press (Jen, too) for being the home of River City.

  Andrew Corder, for the final edit of Dead Even.

  Jill Maser, editor extraordinaire. Thanks for taking a shot at each of these and making them good enough to find publication…and then taking one final hit at them.

  Each of the publishers and editors who originally accepted these stories for publication. You’ve helped me reach out and put more readers in touch with River City.

  My wife, Kristi, for her constant and unequivocal support.

  Frank Zafiro

  Katie MacLeod

  “Last Day in Paradise” was the first story I ever wrote in the first person with a female narrator. I thought it might be strange or difficult, but I didn’t find it to be either. Perhaps knowing the character of Katie MacLeod as well as I do helped. Or maybe gender identification as a writer isn’t as rigid as I’d feared.

  Both of the Christmas stories highlight a period of Katie’s life as it exists around the time of their publication—a full twelve years after the events in Under a Raging Moon, the first novel she appears in. It should be clear to the reader that around 2005, Katie becomes a detective…and that even as late as 2007, she’s still dealing with some of the “mother” issues that are revealed in Beneath a Weeping Sky.

  I have a confession to make. I love Katie. She’s my absolute favorite character. You can tell my wife—she already knows. She loves her, too, as a matter of fact. Katie MacLeod rocks.

  It wasn’t always so. When I first wrote Under a Raging Moon, I think Stefan Kopriva was my favorite character. And though he took center stage for the first two books (and will again somewhere down the road in a book I’ve already written called Waist Deep), Katie always had an important support role. Her star rose as Kopriva’s fell. Chisolm runs a distant second to Katie as my favorite. His steadiness and his guilt are two things that I keep coming back to in the River City series. Chisolm is also the only character that is (albeit loosely) based upon a real police officer, so he holds a special place in my heart.

  But Katie…well, she is just my favorite. Even though she takes a back seat in the fourth book, And Every Man Has to Die (due March 2011 from Gray Dog Press), she will be front and center for the fifth one, tentatively titled Place of Wrath and Tears. Why? Because she is so real to me. She has grit, but experiences fear. She suffers doubt, but overcomes. In those ways, to me at least, she is perhaps the most universal of all of the characters in River City…and believe me, all of these characters are very much alive to me.

  Last Day in Paradise

  “Spread your legs three feet apart.” I wrinkled my nose at the rancid body odor that rose from his grimy clothing.

  “Why don’t you spread yours, sweetie,” he cooed over his shoulder at me. His breath reeked of beer and vomit, coupled with a lifetime of poor dental hygiene.

  I applied some pressure on his wrist and he yelped. “Spread your legs,” I repeated.

  “Aw’right, aw’right,” he said and stepped out with his left foot. “Jesus, lady. I like a little pain when I’m with a woman, but—”

  “Do you have any weapons or sharp objects, anything that will poke me?” I recited, and immediately regretted it.

  He let out a chuckle. “I’ve got something that’ll poke ya.”

  “Do you have any weapons or needles on you?”

  He grinned, exposing his brown Chiclets in a leer. “It ain’t a needle, Officer Sweetie. It’s a great, big—”

  I tuned him out. Keeping the wristlock technique snug against the handcuffs, I put my boot behind his foot and started checking his pockets. He stank of cigarettes and stale body odor and his clothes were greasy. As much as I would have liked to rush through the search and be done with having any physical contact with the maggot, I had to take my time. Quick searches were poor searches.

  I removed his cigarettes from his torn flannel shirt pocket and tossed them onto the trunk of the patrol car.

  “Don’t lose those,” the suspect, Ernie Heiser, said. “Cigarettes cost a shitload nowadays.”r />
  “You can’t have them in jail,” I told him, checking under his collar.

  “I know, but they’ll keep them on my book for when I get out.”

  You won’t be getting out soon, I wanted to say, but I held my tongue. It wouldn’t be very professional, for one thing. For another, even though he was going to jail on a warrant for first-degree assault, for all I knew he would get out soon. The system is screwed up.

  I moved to his waistline, knowing what was coming.

  “Ooh, baby, aren’t ya even gonna ask me on a date first?”

  His waistline was clear and I felt his front jeans pocket.

  “Little to the left there, baby.”

  Nothing but keys in the right front pocket. I pulled them out and put them on the trunk next to the cigarettes. His rear pocket held his wallet. I set that next to the keys.

  “Bend over at the waist,” I instructed him.

  “I’d like to bend you over at the waist, sweetheart.” His voice had the low grumble of a leering threat.

  I didn’t reply. Instead, I slid his elbow between my back and my own elbow and pinned it there. Then I torqued his wrist with my hand.

  “Aw’right!” Heiser said and bent over.

  I bent with him, keeping control of his arm and checking the legs and pant cuffs of his grimy jeans, then his holey tennis shoes.

  “I’m getting haaaaaaarrrrrrrd,” he whispered at me.

  I should arrest you for assault based on your breath alone.

  “Up,” I said.

  Heiser stood and I shifted to his left side and searched. His front and rear pocket seemed empty. In the course of squeezing the front pocket before reaching inside, my small finger grazed his erection.

  He pretended to shiver. “Oooh, that’s it, baby. You know you want it.”

  My stomach churned, but I ignored him. The pocket was clear. “Bend over at the waist.”

  “I’ll stab myself in the stomach,” he complained.

  Hardly. I locked his elbow in and torqued his wrist again. He was obviously a slow learner.

  This time, Heiser grunted more than he yelped, but still bent over. “I’m about to coooooommmmme,” he whispered at me.

  And I’m about to puke.

  Once I searched his lower leg and shoe, I stood him up. “Lean into the car,” I told him.

  “You want me to hump your car first?”

  I tapped him behind the knee with my foot and nudged him forward at the same time. He fell forward into the patrol car, his face pressed up against the frame behind the rear door.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Stay against the car.” I held onto his elbow with my right hand and popped the door release with my left. When I glanced back at Heiser, he was thrusting his pelvis into the car.

  I shook my head in weary disgust.

  “Get in,” I told him, guiding him into the back seat. “Watch your head.”

  He sat down without any resistance, but kept his mouth running. “I’d like to watch you give me head. Just get your mouth down there and start—”

  I slammed the door shut, catching the tip of his nose with the door window. He yelled in pain and started cursing at me in earnest. I guess the honeymoon was over. I removed a tightly folded plastic baggie from my sap pocket and dropped his keys, cigarettes, and grimy wallet into it. The car door muffled Heiser’s screaming, but not enough for my taste. I stepped a few feet away from the car and waited on the sidewalk in front of the chain-link gate.

  Officer Glen Bates came out of the house about five minutes later. His walk appeared casual, but he covered ground quickly with his long stride. Despite the gray in his thinning hair and the slight paunch that pressed against his uniform shirt, the corded muscles of his forearms reminded me that he could toss bad guys with the best of them.

  A toothpick hung from the corner of his mouth. He removed it and tossed it into the street. “You get Mr. Personality squared away?”

  “Cuffed and stuffed.”

  “He give you any trouble?” Bates took a fresh toothpick from his breast pocket and slipped it into his mouth.

  “No,” I told him.

  Bates regarded me for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, we’re done here. His girlfriend won’t tell me anything.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Me, neither. Stupid bit—uh, woman.” Bates worked the toothpick to the opposite corner of his mouth. “Anyway, let’s move this guy to my car.”

  “I can transport him for you.”

  “Nah, dispatch sent me. You’re backup.”

  “I know, but I don’t mind. Aren’t you supposed to meet Gio and Ridgeway for coffee, anyway?”

  Bates nodded. “Yeah, but—”

  “Really, it’s okay. He’s already in my car. I’ll run him in and you guys go to coffee.”

  “MacLeod…”

  “What?”

  He switched the toothpick back. “I just don’t wanna be taking advantage of you on your last day in patrol, that’s all.”

  “Why should today be any different?” I asked him, and managed to keep a straight face.

  Bates blinked and his lips parted in surprise. The toothpick hung off his bottom lip. Then he broke into a grin. “Good one, girly. Ya got me.”

  “Who’s joking?” I said, but I couldn’t keep up the act and smiled back.

  Bates reached out to clap me on the shoulder, but hesitated. It ended up being a weak tap instead. “Well, thanks, then. See you later on.”

  I got back into my patrol car and tossed the baggie full of property onto the seat next to me.

  Heiser immediately started in. “Was that your boyfriend, bitch? Little old for you, isn’t he? Looked like your daddy to me.”

  How original.

  I tapped the touch-screen computer, noting that I was transporting a prisoner to jail.

  “Do you even have a boyfriend?” he continued. “What man would screw a stupid bitch like you?”

  Funny, you wanted to five minutes ago.

  I zeroed the odometer and dropped the car into gear.

  “You’re probably a lesbian, anyway, huh? A butch dyke, that’s what you are!” Heiser shouted.

  My girlfriend’s butch. I’m the lipstick lesbian. Get it straight.

  I figured him for a heavy metal fan, but there was always the chance he liked country music, too. So I opted for the Christian music station and twisted the balance knob to the rear. A joyous woman singing loudly about “God’s Forever Choir” flooded the back seat and Heiser tried to shout over the top of it.

  I drove to jail.

  The late summer air blew through the open car window. I had a feeling winter was coming early this year. The wind had a crisp bite to it, just enough to smell clean. It reminded me of changes, but then again, changes were on my mind anyway.

  At the jail, I pulled up to the sally port entrance and pushed the call button. I had to turn down God’s music so I could talk on the intercom and Heiser let me have it with a verbal barrage.

  “Goddamn dyke Jesus freak! Who the hell—”

  “Jail booking,” came the tinny voice of Jeff Recchi over the intercom.

  “—do you think you are? I oughta kick—”

  “City police, one prisoner,” I said directly into the intercom microphone.

  “—your worthless ass!”

  The intercom clicked. “A live one, it sounds like.”

  “Hey, up yours, too, you faggot!” Heiser screamed from the back seat.

  I smiled slightly. Mistake. Jail ain’t the street.

  The voice on the intercom didn’t answer, but a moment later, the secure garage door engaged. Heiser and I watched it roll slowly upward. He remained silent, as if the reality of the situation was finally sinking in for him. When the door was high enough, I nudged my car forward, pulled into the nearest slot, and turned off the engine.

  “Home again,” Heiser said, his voice somewhere between weary resignation and ironic humor. Or maybe I w
as projecting those traits onto him. Either way, it was better than his yelling.

  I got out of the car and secured my pistol in one of the lockboxes. Three jailers strolled out of the booking area and toward my car.

  “Hank said you had a live one,” the jail sergeant said.

  “I’ve had worse,” I answered, noticing Jeff Recchi in the threesome. Most of the day shift jailers were older men with wives and a case of burnout. The younger, nice-looking jailers worked graveyard, where their seniority put them and where most of the action seemed to be. Somehow Jeff managed to get on day shift, and I was glad for it. He was good-looking and had a nice smile. I figured he was about two conversations from asking me out and I was about three from asking him.

  “Didja rough him up, MacLeod?” Arnie, the third jailer, asked me. He looked like Bates, only five inches shorter, forty pounds heavier and minus the toothpick. He’d already asked me out, shortly after I came to day shift last year. He didn’t appreciate me asking him if his wife would be joining us for dinner.

  “Not a scratch,” I told him. Jeff flashed me a smile and I returned it.

  “Why’s he so jacked up then?” Arnie asked.

  “Life,” I said with a shrug. “The whole world is against him.”

  Jeff opened the front door and popped the release on the back door.

  “Who the hell are you?” Heiser asked him.

  “I,” Jeff said in perfectly calm tone, “am the quote faggot unquote you were yelling at a few moments ago.”

  Heiser eyed Jeff’s muscled frame. “Oh. Sorry, dude. That bitch hit me with the door, that’s all. And these cuffs are on too tight.”

  “Yeah, they’re not built for comfort, are they?” Jeff tipped me a wink. “Slide on out,” he directed Heiser.

  Heiser swung his legs out and leaned forward. Jeff took him by the arm and helped him out of the car.