Jillian Chantal

The Tuesday Tale prompt this week for the group is business. I am still working on my thriller story set in New York.

Check out the other tales here. 

Later that evening I sat in one of my old haunts. A dingy bar off Eighth Avenue with an adult video store on one side and a strip joint on the other. Not the typical cop bar for sure. The street was s throw-back to the days before the city was cleaned up and supposedly made safe for mom, dad and the kiddoes from the Midwest to visit. Never mind the truth was that this place is still deadly. The danger is just lurking deeper into the alleys than it did in the 1970s and ‘80s.

This bar hadn’t changed in the time I’d been gone. Hell, I think the red cracked seats in the booths were here when Lincoln was president. I sipped my beer as I watched two men playing pool. One of them clearly hustling the other. No one was that dense about the game.

Eventually, the waitress brought me the greasy burger I’d ordered. With added jalapeños, thank you. It smelled like onions and garlic. Just how I wanted to spend the rest of the night. Reeking. But it would be worth it. Such a great sandwich.

In the moment my mouth watered as I put the burger to my lips, a hand clapped me on the shoulder. “As I live and breathe. Kevin Vickrey. With a grizzly bear beard. The lieutenant didn’t lie.”

“Not a grizzly. A black bear. Remember, I’ve been in the Appalachians.” I put my burger back on the plate and grinned at my old buddy. “How’ve you been, Marcus?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Black—not Grizzly—Bear.” He slid into the seat opposite me. “Why didn’t you call when you got to the city?”

“I didn’t want the complication.”

“Your friends are complications now?” Marcus raised his eyebrows at the same time he signaled to the waitress to bring him a burger like mine.

“That’s not what I meant. I’m here on business and want to get in and out as quickly as I can.”

“Business? What kind?”

I shook my head. Unsure if I wanted an officer involved. He would most likely feel an obligation to tell what I was doing to someone up the food chain.

“Prefer to keep it under wraps?” Marcus nodded. “I get that but I’d like to help if I can. Can I at least know what kind of business you’re doing?”

“Just a favor for a friend. A guy I met on the trail.”

He leaned forward. “How was that? The Trail, I mean.” He laughed. “I confess, we all took bets you’d be back almost before you got your tent pitched. Seemed a weird thing for a city boy to do. Hike the whole Appalachian Trail.”

This week, the word for Tuesday Tales is box. I am still in the new story with no name. The hero is looking for a missing child and he has one lead. A man named Charlie.  This is a part of the scene where the hero is in Chinatown to meet Charlie.

Be sure to check out the other tales here.  

After a car ride and another subway trip—this one thankfully uneventful—I made my way down the dirty street near the smelly fish market and toward Chinatown. When I was a police officer, I avoided this area of town. Not because I was afraid but because I got annoyed at all the store owners hawking their wares. Trying to lure people inside to the back rooms to buy fake merchandise. You’d think they’d leave a man alone about handbags but they didn’t. If I’d bought a handbag for every girlfriend/wife/lover they thought I had, I’d either be broke, exhausted or have some type of venereal disease.

I strode with purpose, eyes forward, trying to get through the gauntlet and to the back of one of those very places I’d tried so hard to avoid.

Eventually, I arrived at the right address, took a deep breath and went inside.

Milling around, pretending to look at the items for sale, I hoped my contact would come along soon before I had to buy some silly cat waving its paw. Why were there so many of those things? What was the attraction?

In what seemed like an hour—God, how I hate to shop—but was more like ten minutes, a tiny woman came to stand beside me. “You here to see Charlie?”

I nodded.

“Then come.” She pivoted on her toes and made her way down the crowded aisle as if it were a slalom ski slope and she was taking the gates like an Olympic champion.

I staggered behind her, knocking into several displays. Praying this wasn’t a you break you buy place, I tried to settle everything back into place as I went.

Eventually we reached the rear of the shop. The woman opened a heavy-looking metal door and ushered me in. “Charlie come in minute.”

She left me there. I glanced around at my surroundings. The room was dim, lit only by what looked to be a forty watt bulb. There were a number of metal shelves covering two walls, floor to ceiling. They had stacks and stacks of boxes on them. Probably filled with those cats.

The thing that caused me consternation was the two massive hooks in the ceiling and the drainage hole in the concrete floor. I’d seen too many horrors in my time not to imagine the most sordid things happening in that room.

None of the cardboard boxes were on the floor so if anyone was tortured here and their blood washed away down the drain, those souvenirs wouldn’t get ruined at all.

This week we have a picture prompt and are limited to 300 words. There were a number of choices of photos and since my new story is based in New York City, I chose that one. So far, this story has no name but it’s a contemporary thriller- or I hope it will be.  LOL

Check out the other tales here. See what pic they chose and how they wrote around it.

It’s funny how smells can send you right back to childhood. When the girl with dreads walked past me on the subway, the Hawaiian Tropic coconut oil she had glistening on her skin sent me right back to the beach I grew up on. Memories of girls, surf and sand flooded over me. Right there in New York City, I was instantly transported. Way too skinny again—although I’d always thought I was pretty buff as a teen—and with surfer dude hair past my shoulders, I could almost feel the stickiness of the salt water on my skin.

Closing my eyes and leaning my head against the solid glass window pane, I let my mind drift into those memories. In the moment right before I dozed off, a female voice called loudly through the car, “Hate to break it to you but this is a shakedown. Everyone sit still. It’ll only be a moment while I divest you of your jewelry and cash.”

Oh no, she did not. Good lord, was I never to have one second of peace?

“Sir, I’d advise you not to pull that emergency cord. You see this gun?” The woman went on.

Letting out a deep sigh, I opened my eyes. The girl with the dreads—all eighty-five pounds of her—stood there with a .44 magnum bigger than her head in her right hand. In her left, she carried a pillowcase. She shook it in front of the woman closest to me. “Put your gold and your wallet in here.”

“All my jewelry is costume,” the woman dressed too nicely for the subway said.

The pillowcase reminded me of another childhood memory. Halloween candy collection in momma’s best linens. Did this chick who probably had zero Rastafarian beliefs think this was her own personal trick or treat? She’d get a trick for sure as soon as she turned her back on me.