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  The Big Hello

  a Jimmy “Soldier” Riley Noir Novel

  by Michael Lister

  Books by Michael Lister

  (John Jordan Novels)

  Power in the Blood

  Blood of the Lamb

  Flesh and Blood

  The Body and the Blood

  Blood Sacrifice

  Rivers to Blood

  (Short Story Collections)

  North Florida Noir

  Florida Heat Wave

  Delta Blues

  Another Quiet Night in Desperation

  (Remington James novels)

  Double Exposure

  Separation Anxiety

  (Merrick McKnight novels)

  Thunder Beach

  A Certain Retribution

  (Jimmy “Soldier” Riley novels)

  The Big Goodbye

  The Big Beyond

  The Big Hello

  (Sam Michaels and Daniel Davis Series)

  Burnt Offerings

  Separation Anxiety

  Copyright © 2014 by Michael Lister

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to people or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Inquiries should be addressed to:

  Pulpwood Press

  P.O. Box 35038

  Panama City, FL 32412

  Lister, Michael.

  The Big Hello / Michael

  Lister.

  –—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1888146-41-7 (hardback)

  ISBN: 978-1-888146-42-4 (trade paperback)

  For Jason Hedden

  collaborator, friend, brother

  Thank you

  Dawn, Jill, Adam, Travis,

  Aaron, Jason, Allen

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Night was falling fast.

  Clip and I were driving east toward Tallahassee, the final flare of fading sunburst burning out behind the pines lining the horizon behind us.

  The descending darkness blanketing the earth seemed to be settling in, as if for a long black night––the kind where bad people operate with impunity, and in which bad things happen. Dark deeds that, like death, can’t be undone.

  Though one-armed and injured, I was driving––and not just because Clip couldn’t see for shit at night with his one eye, but because he didn’t want to be mistaken for my chauffeur.

  We were searching for Lauren Lewis––something I had been doing my entire life.

  Earlier in the day, weak, weary, and without sleep, we had stood alongside Henry Folsom, the best cop I knew and my old boss, over an open wound in the earth that was supposed to be Lauren’s grave.

  Headstone and hard dirt removed, coffin raised to reveal she wasn’t inside.

  Now, once again, I was in search of her, bumbling around in the dark trying to find her.

  Her bent banker husband’s final words still haunted me, echoing like the demented taunts of a madman in the claustrophobic chamber that was my mind.

  Spoken the moment after I slit his throat, his life spilling out of him onto the floor, he had harshly whispered with the voice of death, “ … was going to tell you just … before you … died. Guess … will be before … I do … Lauren’s alive … I had her declared … DOA … took her far … far away … got her … best care possible … nursed her back … Wanted you … both to know … I knew … wanted you to suffer … to be tortured and … die horrible deaths … she will. No one knows who she is … you will … never find … her. I mean … never. You … helped kill her … again … you just … killed the only person … on the planet … who knows … who and … where … she––

  As if knowing what I was thinking, Clip said, “Just ’cause Harry say she alive don’t mean she is.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He had his eye patch off and the mangled scar of socket was jarring.

  “Just ’cause she not the one in that box don’t mean she not in some box somewhere,” he continued. “Know you ain’t wantin’ to hear it. Hell, I ain’t wantin’ to be sayin’ it, but …”

  He was right and I knew it.

  I glanced over at him, at the narrow boniness inside the too loose suit.

  “Then why you keep sayin’ it?” I asked.

  “’Cause you needs to hear it,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “You gots to prepare for––”

  “Already lost her twice. That hasn’t prepared me. There is no preparing. Nothing I can do. Nothing in this world could make it any less unbearable if I find out … if she’s really … There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “What if you never know for sure?” he said.

  “Won’t stop ’til I do.”

  We fell silent a moment––something I was grateful for.

  The rural road was flat and straight and desolate, our solitary car the only vehicle, its half headlights made even fainter by the fog.

  Thanks to Henry Folsom, we not only had a full tank of gas, but ration tickets to spare.

  To conserve rubber for the war effort, I was supposed to be keeping it under thirty-five. I was doing nearly double that.

  I thought of Lauren, of just how much I loved her, wanted her, needed her, of how I had to find her, of how I couldn’t think of anything else.

  Since the death of my dad when I was a kid, the only time I had felt safe, connected, and truly happy was when I had been with Lauren––and I had never, not in my entire life, felt as loved or in love, as possessing or possessed.

  “Nothing matters but finding her,” I said. “Nothing. What-ifs don’t matter. Whether Harry was telling the truth doesn’t matter. Nothing. Can’t do anything to change whether I’m gonna find her dead or alive. All I can do is find her. Won’t stop until I do and I’ll do anything I have to.”

  “Anything, huh?”

  “Those aren’t just words,” I said.

  “I know you,” he said. “I know they’s shit you won’t do.”

  “Not this time. Not when––”

  “You’a beat up a bitch?”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head. “You wouldn’t even slap hell outta one and you talkin’ ’bout beatin’ a bitch up.”

  “There’s nothing I won’t do.”

  “They’s plenty you won’t do,” he said. “And that what worries me. What always worry me with you.”

  “Clip, I’m telling you––”


  “You tellin’ me what? That you’a cut a bitch? Sucker punch a stiff? Back-shoot a bastard? Kill a kid? Shee-it. They’s plenty you won’t do. Don’t tell me they ain’t.”

  I didn’t respond.

  Beyond the windows on both sides, silent trees streaked by like black lines on black paper, so impressionistic as to seem imaginative.

  “Ain’t sayin’ it wrong. Hell, it part of why I even associate with your white ass. But don’t say it ain’t so. Knowing what you’a do and not do the difference between––”

  “There a point to all this?”

  “Not everybody cut out for every kind of work.”

  “You think I’m not up for this?”

  “Think you needs to be clear on what you up for and what you ain’t.”

  “I’m clear,” I said.

  “So shut the hell up, Clip,” he said, smiling, his large bright white teeth seeming to light up the car. “Be seen and not heard like some docile house nigger.”

  “Something like that, yeah,” I said with a small smile of my own.

  “I can do that,” he said.

  “The hell you can.”

  He smiled again. Even bigger this time.

  When Clip smiled with genuine amusement he looked like a mischievous young boy. Charming. Irrepressible. Full of himself.

  We were both in bad shape, having run afoul of a Nazi nurse named Christa, a serial sex killer named Flaxon De Grasse, and various members of their twisted little surrealism society, and the moment of levity, the chance to smile, and the slight release of tension, was welcome and briefly buoying.

  Maybe Clip was right. Maybe my moral code was a liability in looking for Lauren. Maybe I wasn’t up for what would inevitably have to be done. I certainly wasn’t physically.

  I was useless enough without my right arm, but to also be injured, to be so completely depleted and thoroughly spent, to be banged up and bruised, to have an abdominal wound from getting gut shot actually seeping through the bandages at the moment, meant I couldn’t look out for myself let alone save Lauren, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop, could do nothing but what I was doing. No matter how many moral, emotional, and physical limitations I had to do it with.

  “I’ve got to do this,” I said.

  “I know,” he said, “and not just ’cause you done tol’ me a few hundred times.”

  “Wasn’t finished.”

  “Beg pardon. Please proceed.”

  “I’ve got to, but you don’t. I know you think you owe me, but you don’t. Never did.”

  “You think I tryin’ to square the Dixon thing?”

  A year or so back, when I was still part of PCPD, a couple of cops got the goods on Clip––something they’d been trying to do for a while. Wasn’t much to it––some stolen merchandise Clip had little or nothing to do with––but that didn’t matter. The two cops, Whitfield and Dixon, were just looking for a way in and they found it. Stolen merchandise was just their invite. Word was Clip had been sleeping with Dixon’s wife. And I could tell by the way they were working the case they had no intention of taking it to trial. What they did intend was to tuck Clip in all nice and cozy to sleep the big sleep––probably making it look like he was killed trying to escape.

  I had intervened and stopped them, and Clip had acted like he owed me ever since.

  “The thought had occurred to me, yeah,” I said.

  “Well, I ain’t. Least not the way you think.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “I always be thinkin’ you smarter than what you really is.”

  I laughed. “You’re not the first to make that mistake.”

  We fell silent a moment.

  In the dim spill of our half headlights, deer could be seen grazing the cold, damp grass on the soft shoulder of the road, their heads raising up, alerting on the light and noise as the car passed by.

  I waited but he didn’t say anything.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “You gonna spill or what?”

  “No,” he said. “No sir, I is not. But I will tell you two things. One––I don’t owe you shit. Two––I’m all in on this thing. Ask me about it again and I’a shoot your ass.”

  I nodded, not mentioning that was three things.

  “Don’t think my black ass don’t know that was three things,” he said.

  “You not gonna answer me that, then tell me this.”

  He slid his hand inside his coat toward the Walther holstered there.

  “Don’t shoot,” I said. “It’s a different subject.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You never told me.”

  “What?”

  “Were you giving little Clip to Dixon’s little Mrs.?”

  “Shee-it. Nothin’ little about either. Betty Dixon thick as hell––way I like ’em––and if they was anything small about big Clip her husband wouldn’t’a wanted to snuff out a nigger’s pilot light, would he? ’Sides, you don’t believe a brother, all you gots to do is aks your mom.”

  “Nice.”

  He smiled.

  Mention of Mom reminded me just how long it’d been since I’d spoken to her, and I felt a sharp pang of guilt, but it was short lived, quickly replaced with loss and longing, anger and frustration.

  “Much as I like talkin’ about thick white women and my big black Clip, how’s about you tell me the plan.”

  “Find her.”

  He nodded and smiled. “How we gonna do that?”

  “Not sure exactly.”

  “The hell we headed to Tallahassee for?” he said.

  I hadn’t realized I hadn’t told him, and it meant all the more that he was with me, that he was all in without even knowing what in was or where we were headed.

  “It’s the last place I know for sure she was,” I said.

  The night Lauren and I had left together, it was to get medical treatment at Johnston’s Sanatorium in Tallahassee. After passing out and crashing my car into the main entrance, I had spent two days in a coma and a few more days after that in a drug-induced stupor. When I came out of it, I was told Lauren had been dead on arrival.

  “If Harry took her from there and had her pronounced DOA, somebody had to help. Somebody knows something. We’re gonna persuade them to tell us what. While we do that, Folsom’s searching for De Grasse.”

  Flaxon De Grasse was a sadistic sex killer who drained all the blood from his bisected victims before displaying them in artistic poses and photographing them. Pale, white, bloodless bodies, black hair on heads and pubes, body parts arranged on a black satin backdrop––a demented surrealist artist creating with actual girls, all of whom, not coincidentally, resembled Lauren. He had yet to be apprehended, and not only did he pose a potential threat to Lauren, he might actually know where she was. He either had something to do with what had happened to her or was connected to those who did.

  “There’re a few other leads and probably several I haven’t thought of,” I said, “but these seem––”

  I stopped speaking when the patrol lights lit up the inside of our car like a night carnival and the inside of my head with an all too familiar dread.

  Chapter 2

  “Where’s the fire, fella?”

  The middle-aged man had taken his time walking the short distance from his car to ours, his ambling, awkward movements disjointed in the strobe of the flashing lights.

  He was square, flat, and tall, his sheriff’s deputy uniform looking like it had been fitted over a thin, wide pine board.

  We were idling on the side of Highway 20 next to a pasture, cows close enough to the fence to be seen in the revolving patrol lights and heard over the hum of the engines.

  Before I could respond he said, “License and registration, and keep your hands where I can see ’em. Oh, your hand I mean, soldier. Didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  As I slowly and awkwardly used my left to dig the wallet out of my coat pocket, he shon
e his flashlight beam around the car as best he could, searching the floorboards and backseat before letting it come to rest on Clip.

  “Whatta we have here?” he said.

  One look at Clip and he straightened up, dropping his hand down near the butt of his revolver and letting it hover there.

  “Let me aks you somethin’,” Clip said. “I’d’a been drivin’, you’d thought I’s his chauffeur, wouldn’t you?”

  “You sassin’ me, boy?”

  “No suh, not tonight. Tonight I is a seen and not heard house nigger.”

  The deputy looked confused, but covered it with anger.

  “What gives? You boys don’t look so good. Y’all got rods under them coats? You look like the sort that would.”

  Beneath the anger there was a butterfly flutter of nervousness. You could hear it in the subtle tremble at the edge of his voice.

  “Sir, I’m Jimmy Riley,” I said. “I used to be on the force. I’m a private detective working on an extremely important case. We’re in a hurry––”

  “No shit you’re in a hurry. I mean, hell, soldier, you know you’re supposed to keep it under thirty-five. A PI? What’s so hellfire important? Where you headed?”

  “Tallahassee. I don’t have time to explain. You can radio Panama City PD and talk to Henry Folsom. He’ll tell you. We’re on the level. I swear it.”

  “What’s his story, your chauffeur? I know he ain’t never been no cop. How’d he lose the eye?”

  “I training to be a private eye like him,” Clip said. “Nobody tol’ me you can have two.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said. “I should’ve told him.”

  “Huh? Oh. A couple of comedians,” the cop said. “That’s what y’all are. I get it. You’ve got time to be funny just not to answer my questions, that it?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “We’re so tired we’re loopy and we’re … We meant no harm. Please radio Henry Folsom so we can go.”

  “So you can go?” he said, his voice rising and filling with humorless amusement. “So what if he says you’re who you say you are? So what then? You think you can do what you want in our county ’cause a cop in Panama says you’re okay, pal?”

  “Then write me a ticket,” I said. “Just get on with it.”