Free Fiction: Runaway Bride Part Two (A Lenny Parker Serial) by Jochem Vandersteen

Last episode Lenny Parker, roadie / PI was hired to find out why a young woman (Jill) left a young man (Tommy) without any good explanation...

TWO

Lenny figured the best place to start was Tina Tristam’s. He debated with himself if he should ring the bell or be a bit more covert in his actions. He decided it would be wise to be covert first. He could always ring the bell after that. So he sat in his Dodge Ram, playing the new Iron Maiden record and watching Tina’s house. She lived in an apartment building in a nice area of San Diego, all white stucco and potted plants on the balconies.

A Honda drove up the parking lot. A chubby brunette left it after it got parked. She fit the description Tommy had given Lenny of Tina. Lenny watched her walk to the apartment building. She was wearing one of those power suits and was curvy enough to still look feminine in them.

He figured he could get out of the Dodge and ask her some questions. He also figured she wouldn’t want to talk to an overweight PI with arms full of tattoos. If Jill didn’t want to talk to Tommy her friend probably wanted to keep her mouth shut about anything she knew as well. Besides, the Iron Maiden record was really good.

Tina disappeared into the building. Lenny waited, putting on the Iron Maiden cd a second time when it was done. Another car appeared on the parking lot. An Audi, a preppy looking young man exiting it.

More waiting, the Iron Maiden record being replaced by the new Lamb of God album. A few more people arrived, a few more left. And then things got interesting.

The car that parked then was very different from the Audi, Honda and other run of the mill cars that had been arriving the last few hours. This was an honest to gosh Cadillac. It was red, had some fuzzy dice in the window if you can imagine that.

Out stepped a huge black guy in a leather jacket. It reminded Lenny of the one Samuel Jackson wore in Shaft. He loved that movie. The guy was wearing a ton of rings and bling around  his neck. He was wearing shades while it was already in the evening. Yeah, this guy stood out.

The guy glanced at Lenny’s car. Lenny ducked and banged his head on the steering wheel. The claxon honked. The black guy was startled, but when he saw Lenny rubbing the painful spot on his forehead he chuckled. He shook his head and walked towards the apartment building.

Lenny wondered what he should do now? This guy made him. Well, made him… Noticed him. He didn’t really seem to have him identified as a private investigator.  Maybe he should just get rid of the car. He’d been taught by his mentor, Old Man Jackson, that people focused on the car, not the people behind the wheel. Except when you were a good looking woman. All rules changed then. Lenny was neither good looking nor a woman.

Lenny drove off and parked the car a street down the road. He got out, carrying the latest copy of Metal Hammer and walked to the parking lot of the apartment. He leaned against a tree, pretending to read the magazine while he in fact kept a keen eye on the building.

He stood there for about ten minutes when the black guy and a pretty young woman left the building. He almost yelped out when he realized the woman was in fact Jill. She wore white shorts, a pink tank-top and stiletto heels. She was even better looking in person than on the picture Tommy had shown him with her long, smooth, milky white legs, small but firm bosom. He’d found her already! He was even better at this than he thought. Maybe he could do this fulltime, ditch his roadie job. He’d probably miss the life on the road, though. Hanging out with the bands, seeing the sights. Of course he could do without the hangovers, aching back and lousy motel beds.

Then he understood this might have been only the easy part of the job. He found her, but he still had no clue why Jill left Tommy. Unless of course she left him because she had a new lover, namely the big black dude. They didn’t look like much of a couple though. He had an arm around her, but they weren’t strolling like lovers. It was more like he was dragging her along.

The black guy opened the door of the Cadillac, seemed to shove Jill inside and slammed the door. He got in as well. They drove off.

Lenny ran to his Dodge. He made it halfway until he had to stop for a second, wheezing, hands on his knees, throat burning. He didn’t work out as much as he used to. And used to was a few times a year. In January, the first few days after his usual new year’s resolution. He just wasn’t built to run.

He watched the Caddie disappear from view. He made up for his lack of stamina with his razor-sharp mind though. He’d memorized the license plate of the Cadillac. He was going to find out who owned it soon enough.

See, he was pretty good at this job.

TO BE CONTINUED

Q & A with Corey Lynn Fayman

Corey Lynn Fayman writes a cool series featuring PI Rolly Waters. The fact he's a guitar-player makes this particular blogger / rock reporter very excited. I asked him a set of questions, just in time for his newest book, Desert City Diva.

Q: What makes Rolly Waters different from other hardboiled  characters?
I like to call Rolly a cozy hero in a noir world. He’s not the tough guy protagonist that usually defines hardboiled mysteries. He’s over forty, overweight, and he doesn’t own a gun. His only advantage in a fight is his weight and I doubt he could throw a decent punch. Also, he lives next door to his mother.
The situations he finds himself in end up more noir, though. He meets nasty people and has to deal with some horrific crimes. He is tough as nails on the inside, though, and won’t give up on a client. It’s part of his promise to himself that he’ll see a job through. In that way he is a lot like a more hardboiled character.

Q: How did you come up with the character?  And does he owe his name to Muddy Waters?
Nice catch there. Rolly does owe his last name to Muddy Waters. Most of the character names I come up with are combinations of musically-related names. His first name, Rolly, is short for Roland. Within the world of the books, the backstory on his first name is that his mother had been reading “Song of Roland” when he was born and saddled her first born with that noble moniker. It got changed to the nickname of Rolly in high school. I got the Roland name from Roland Instruments, a company that’s been making electronic instruments for years, including one of the original and most well-known drum machines, the TR-808.
As far as where Rolly came from, I’m not quite sure anymore. I had an idea for a musical play that would include a private eye narrator who was also a guitar player. The play never got very far, but the idea for that character morphed into Rolly Waters.

Q: What are your thoughts on the whole eBook revolution?
I’m all for disruptive technologies and I think eBooks have revolutionized the publishing business in ways no one fully understands yet. It’s always good to threaten the dinosaurs, which in this case are the major publishing houses and chain bookstores. Ebooks have made publishing available to anyone who’s interested in writing a book. There’s basically zero cost. In the late 90s and early 2000s I worked for a company called MP3.com, which made the distribution of music available to anyone. The record companies were so resistant to it then, but they’ve had to go along now. It can’t be stopped. The same thing’s happening with publishing companies.
That said, I find more and more these days that I like the tactile feel of a book and most of the books I read now are in hardback or paperback form. But I still read things on my Kindle, especially when I travel.

Q: What's next for you and your characters?
I’m working on the fourth Rolly Waters mystery now. The working title is “Ballast Point Breakdown”. Rolly has been traveling pretty far afield in San Diego County in the last two books, so I’m bring him back, closer to home. This case takes place in and around San Diego Bay. The U.S. Navy’s ocean mammal training program was based in San Diego for many years and if you hung around the bay you would occasionally see a training session in process, with scub divers and sea lions or dolphins. I’m building the book around that.

Q: What do you do when you're not writing?
I read a lot, because that’s what writers have to do. You learn a lot from great writers, but also from average ones. I’m still a big music fan, so I’m always listening for something new and interesting. My wife and I moved to the Little Italy section of downtown San Diego a few years ago. Aside from the all the great restaurants, it’s fun just to walk around the city these days. There’s a lot going on, much more than when I was growing up here.

Q: Any special reason why your main protagonist is a musician? Are you a big music lover?
I’m a big music fan. In my teenage years I was mostly interested in blues-based rock, but I like almost everything. Except Smooth Jazz. It’s literally painful for me to listen to that stuff. That and all this American Idol power ballad schtick.
I played piano and keyboards for many years in various bands and I wrote a fair amount of songs, as well. Basically, I got to watch and study guitar players for many years from behind my keyboards. That’s probably why I made Rolly a guitar player rather than a keyboard player like myself. Guitar players tend to have more dramatic personalities, especially rock and blues players.

Q: How do you promote your work?
I have some background in web design and such, so I developed my own web site using Wordpress. I’ve developed a mailing list over the years, as well. At first it was just friend and acquaintances, anybody who knew me and wouldn’t automatically delete the email. I’ve been adding to the list over the last couple of years with people who come to signings, sign up for giveaways, and people I meet at conferences. If you give me your business card, you will be on my list.
I have a Facebook business page in addition to my personal page. I’m playing around with Facebook advertising, as well. I like the way you can focus it on very specific audiences like “People who read mysteries in Southern California.” I have a Twitter account, although I’m not a very dedicated Tweeter.
For other promotion work, I found a publicist in San Diego, Paula Margulies, who’s great about tailoring her efforts to your budget. She’s been a great help getting me into bookstore signings, speaking engagements and more traditional media.

Q: What other genres besides crime do you like?
I grew up loving Science Fiction, although I may have burned out when I was young since I don’t read much of it anymore.  I’m a big fan of William Gibson, who really combined the science fiction genre with the noir tradition. He is the father of cyberpunk. Other SciFi writers I’ve enjoyed are China Miéville and Neal Stephenson.

Q: In the last century we've seen new waves of PI writers, first influenced by Hammett, then Chandler, MacDonald, Parker, later Lehane. Who do you think will influence the coming generation?
I’m not sure I have an answer to that question. I’ve read some very good young authors, but none that were innovative enough to make me want to put them in that kind of company yet. So I’m not offering any names yet, but they may develop that way. It will be someone who has a feel for the changes technology will have on our lives, as well as understanding the traditions of the genre.

Q: Why do you write in this genre?
Many years ago, I got a B.A. in Creative Writing with a specialty in poetry from UCLA. I rarely wrote poetry after that, but it was helpful with my songwriting efforts. I came to the crime genre fairly late. Chandler, of course, made an impression, but the three writers who really made me want to work in the genre were Ross MacDonald, Elmore Leonard and John LeCarre. They all write deeply, and in very different ways, about character and morality and the delicate strands of experience that tie them together.
From a more technical point of view, writing mysteries forces you to work with plot. It’s essential that you plot well. That helps me focus and keeps me from running too far off track with my characters, settings and philosophical ruminations. I like that discipline. It’s a kind of navigational device that gives me a star to fix on.

Dog Gone (Dev Haskell) by Mike Faricy

Screwball PI Dev Haskell is back in already the 12th book in this popular series. Of course there's a lady getting him in trouble again. When Dev's latest girlfriend is out of town he is asked to watch her dog. Walking with this dog he meets a showdog even as well as its peculiar hippie owner. It turns out this owner is something of a social activist but her involvement with a big amount of weed gets her into a lot of trouble with some dangerous thugs.
Haskell tries to help her out, while bedding and offending the ladies, getting into trouble with cops, getting beaten up and sharing some BBQ chips with a dog.
There's a lot of laughs in these one, even more than usual in this series I guess. That's what you get when there's a damned funny couple of dogs in a book. Make no mistake though, Dev isn't above getting an AR-15 out of his car's trunk to take on the bad guys!
A fun book.

Free Fiction: Runaway Bride Part One (A Lenny Parker Serial) by Jochem Vandersteen

Lenny Parker, the roadie / PI, is back in action right here at my blog. Here's part one of a new story.

ONE

Lenny Parker was in the Thai restaurant that he used as his office, eating Mister Janpongs’s famous soup.

“Good to have you here again,” Mister Janpong said. “Long time ago, yes?”

“Yeah, I’ve been on tour for a few months with The Texas Sons. Cool band. Just returned yesterday in time to catch the Bad Citizen Corporation show tomorrow.”

“You are talking about music, yes?” Mister Janpong didn’t keep very up to date about the latest metal and punk music.

“Indeedy-do,” Lenny said. “Thanks for playing my answering service again when I was gone.”

“My pleasure. In fact, a client is on his way no,” Mister Janpong told me.

“What? No shit? You take good care of my side business!” Lenny Parker supplemented his income as a roadie working as a part-time private investigator.

“I think he is coming in right now,” Mister Janpong said, pointing at the door. Lenny knew the man was probably right. When you weren’t a regular, you had to be one of my clients or someone looking for directions. Janpong’s wasn’t the most popular place in San Diego.

The man coming in looked to be in his late twenties, white pants, experty creased, pullover and well-combed blond hair. Since Lenny and Janpong were the only other people in the room it was easy for him to assume I was the man he was looking for.

“Lenny Parker?” he said, hesitantly extending his hand.

“In the abundant flesh,” Lenny said and shook the hand with his chubby mitt.

“Oh. Okay. I figured you had to be but, eh…”

Lenny smiled. “I know, I don’t look like the prototype of a PI.” He was referring to his tattoos and Slayer T-shirt.

“Uh… Yeah.”

“I left my fedora at home,” Lenny joked. “Have a seat and let me know what I can do for you.”

“Sure,” the man said and sat down. “I’m Thomas Whitman. Tommy.”

“Nice to meet you, Tommy. Can Mister Janpong fetch you a drink? He stocks Singha beer. It’s really good.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Lenny took a sip of his own bottle of beer and said, “Go ahead…”

“Yeah… It’s like this… I had this thing going with this wonderful girl, Jill. We’ve been engaged for half a year now, had the wedding date set and all. Then she broke up with me a week ago. Just out of nowhere, without any real reason. We’d been already living together ever since our engagement but she just moved out.”

“What do you mean when you say no real reason. Did she give you the old it’s-me- not- you speech?”

“Not even that. She told me she thought it would be better if we didn’t see each other any more. She gave me a hug and a kiss and just started to pack her bags.”

“Sounds pretty weird. Sometimes they really seem to be from Mars, right?”

“I guess. It’s just that… It’s not like her, you know?”

“Not really. I don’t know her. But listen, I’m the last guy you should ask about relationship advice. I haven’t been in a relationship longer than half a year. I’m a private dick and a roadie, not a relationship counselor.”

“I know, I know. But you could maybe investigate why she left me, right?”

“Huh? Can’t you just ask her?”

“She isn’t picking up her phone or reacting to my e-mails. I don’t even know where she is.”

Lenny sighed. “All right. I’m a real romantic at heart, you know? Let me see what I can find out for you. I’m going to need some more information, though.”

“Sure, whatever you need.”

“I’m going to need a picture of her. Names and addresses of friends and family. Where she works, places she used to frequent. You know, bars, clubs, restaurants, shops.”

“Sure, sure. I’ve got her picure right here,” Tommy said and produced a polaroid from his pants. He put it on the table.

Lenny whistle through his teeth, reddening and apologizing immediately. Jill was beautiful. Milky white skin, auburn hair, incredible green eyes.

“It’s okay. I of all people appreciate how beautiful she is.”

“I can imagine you want her back.”

“It’s not just about looks. She’s really funny, warm and intelligent.”

“I’m sure. Well, that takes care of that. Now how about the rest. Her work?”

“She works at the reception desk of a hotel. But she hasn’t been at work all week. I checked.”

“Give me the address please,” Lenny said and Lenny asked Mister Janpong for a pen. He used a napkin to jot down the information Tommy gave him. Then  Lenny asked Tommy about Jill’s family members and friends.

“She always told me she didn’t have any family she was still in contact with. She’s from Ohio originally but couldn’t get along with them. It’s one of the reasons she moved to San Diego. She had a friend from work she sometimes had coffee with, though. Tina Tristam. I’m not sure about her address though.”

“That’s it? That sounds a bit weird? No friends, no family?”

“I guess she didn’t need much of those, the way our relationship was going. I guess my family and friends became hers.”

“Yeah, guess so then. Fine. Let me see what I can find out for you. I’m yours for 300 bucks day plus expenses. I will email you the contact.”

“Okay, fine. Do think you can find out why she left me?” Tommy asked eagerly.

Lenny shrugged. “Don’t know, buddy. But  I will sure as hell do my best.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Hap and Leonard (Hap & Leonard) by Joe R. Lansdale

Just in time for their move to TV here's one gem of a collection. It has all the hard to find short stories featuring Hap & Leonard, the most enjoyable mismatched pair of private eyes since Spenser and Hawk.
Hap, blue-collar everyman who happens to be an amazing shooter and his Vietnam veteran, black and gay friend Leonard are presented here in short stories of varying length. They range from novella's to short flashbacks, vignettes and interviews. All are as fun as they are dark, gritty and violent. Think a seventies action movie if made by Seth Rogen.
I was delighted to find the story Veil's Visit here, written by Joe Lansdale together with his friend Andrew Vachss (who I really respect), introducing us to a very cool fictional version of Vachss.
The Hap & Leonard series is always very enjoyable. While these stories might lack some of the substance of the novels they are highly entertaining and sometimes disturbing.
I hope the series and this anthology will draw a lot of people to this great characters.