Love Me or Kill Me (The Cable Denning Mystery Series Book 2)

by James P. Alsphert

  “Hiya, babe. She just became a proud mother,” I laughed.

  “What?” she asked in a perplexed tone.

  “A young boy came meandering into my office today—the kid had been abandoned. I was stuck with him so I took him to Edie’s smoky den where he proceeded to fall asleep in the hallway. Well, she took a shine to him and wanted to take him home and care for him before she went to the authorities.”

  Misty nodded her head in a knowing way. “That’s just like Edie. She always wanted children. A boy, you say? Hmmm…I think that’s a good thing for her, Cable, maybe even healing for her.”

  “That’s kind of how I saw it.”

  “So? What did she have to say?”

  “You didn’t tell me she sang with her heart and soul. Her rendition of something called Marée Basse La Mer made me cry, along with everyone else in the damn joint.”

  “Oh, yes…that song is her life signature. I’m glad you heard her. No one I ever listened to has even a finger-full of the emotion she’s capable of.”

  “I’ll second that. Anyway, she’s convinced I’m not good for you. That you might get pregnant in a careless moment with me or that someday I might leave you—"

  “—will you? And if I carried your child? Would you still leave me when the next woman lures you back into your old life style?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t answer that, doll. Who can? Can you?”

  “No, I guess. For all I know, someone else could walk into the club and sweep me off my feet. Maybe someone who isn’t as carefree with his life on the edge of danger all the time might come along. I don’t know if I could live with that terrible sense of danger hanging around us all the time.”

  “Well, you’d better make up your mind pronto, kid. Time’s a ticking away for both of us.”

  She looked into my eyes and kissed my nose. “My womanhood is still panting for you, Mister—so I guess that’s a ‘yes.’ What can I lose except you and my heart?”

  I laughed. “Now you’re being realistic. Good…that’s life on the other side of the eight-to-six grind of nothingness and boredom.”

  “I have that song I want to sing for you. Are you ready?”

  “You bet. I’m a sucker for your songs, babe, you know that.”

  She left me and went back up to the bandstand. She began singing a haunting version of That’s My Desire and confirmed in my heart and mind—not to mention my crotch—she really wanted me, that she was willing to live on the edge of life and death, breathe in the danger and uncertainty that plagued my professional life. “To spend one night with you, in our old rendezvous, and reminisce with you, that’s my desire…” That was all I needed to feel my manhood surge inside my pants and realize this beautiful babe was singing the song exclusively for me.

  When she finished, again an enthusiastic audience told this beautiful young woman how much they appreciated her and how she spoke for so many of their erotic dreams and longings. Misty Sheridan was the true Troubadour of Romantic Love. She came up to me and I embraced her. “Damn, babe, you got a mattress on the floor back there?” I joked.

  “No, but you can have me the minute we get home.” She kissed my lips. “Maybe I won’t even take my clothes off first…you’ll have to unzip me, Cable, then undress me stitch by stitch.”

  That comment brought a wave of you-know-what throughout my body and I must have flushed a couple of shades of passionate red. “So when can we go?”

  “Now,” she said.

  We walked out of the club into a balmy Santa Monica night. We were heading for the street car stop when all of a sudden three goons stepped out of the shadows and before I could react with my .38, they rushed us at gunpoint into a nearby alley. Quickly they confiscated my gun and tossed me up against a wall, one of them holding Misty with his hand over her mouth. But she kicked the idiot in the shin and broke away. “Run, Misty—back into the club, fast!” I yelled. She dashed away, the mug limping after her. One of the hoodlums was the Asian who had done the talking before they escorted me to the headquarters of the Oculus. The second ape stood about six-six and must’ve weighed three hundred pounds, and he sported a nasty grin with a couple of silver teeth on the upper bridge. He also possessed a couple of serious brass knuckles and smiled as he approached me. “This is a serious message from Mr. Gor, and he told me to say to you, that he regrets he cannot do it personally.”

  With that the little Asian hit me hard in the stomach so many times that each time I bent over in pain, he slugged my gut again and sent my body reeling back into the brick wall I was pinned against. Then Mr. Tall and Ugly’s right hand came smashing into my face with those brass knuckles and I felt the flesh rip open on the left side of my face. I went down, the pavement coming up to meet me like a fast moving freight train. Then I was out.

  I woke up in Misty Sheridan’s bed. It was daylight and she sat beside me, dabbing an open wound on the side of my jaw. Everything on my body hurt. My stomach felt like I had done a thousand pushups on Mount Everest and my face was swollen. The brass knuckles had ripped open a three-inch cut on the left side of my face and I had a big bruise on my forehead where I’d hit the pavement full bore. “Poor darling….Cable…can you hear me?”

  I opened my eyes to a squint. “Yeah…where am I?”

  “You’re in my bed. Not exactly in the way I planned, but I’m here for you. I didn’t know what else to do. I realized calling the police wouldn’t be a good idea, so I had Mr. Garson and a dishwasher from the club help me bring you here.”

  “Thanks, kid. Sorry about…about the evening…it didn’t quite…turn out as—as we planned, did it?”

  She chuckled. “No, I had to take care of myself with a cold shower. But what about you, you poor dear…do I need to take you to a hospital?”

  “No…if I’ve got…no…no broken bones…then I’ll heal up…okay.”

  All that day Misty attended to me. Kept my wounds clean, helped me to the bathroom, fed me some chicken soup and sat with me whenever she could. By early evening I could speak a little better and we conversed. I knew she would have to try and understand the deep shit I was in with Gor and the Oculus. And after last night, maybe she’d decide she didn’t want to risk being around me. After all, the bastards had threatened her as well. Sometimes people die because of someone else, being at the wrong place at the wrong time…sounds a lot like my story. I was thankful it wasn’t Misty’s turn last night.

  “I need to tell you something,” I said when I was sufficiently recovered to speak with an even voice. My gut muscles still hurt when I talked, but at least my head was clearing a bit and the lump on the back of my head where the goon had slammed me up against the brick wall of the building in the alley was starting to go down. “A lot of people I’ve known are dead because of me, Misty. I don’t want you to be one of them. I’m telling you this so you can make your mind up…whether or not to be with me. Inadvertently, I got mixed up in this fouled up thing when I was about twenty-seven.”

  Misty sat on the bed with me and held onto my arm, putting it in her lap. “I like good stories, Cable. I have a feeling yours is going to be a hell of tale. So I’ll be quiet and you talk.”

  I patted her on her leg. “I was a cop then. My police patrol partner and buddy, Mario Angelo and I, got assigned to check up on some stiffs at the county morgue. They were gangsters, assassinated gang style in a takeover by a Mafia boss named Joe Dragna. One of the dead guys had a hollowed out place behind the back of his tongue—like something important used to be there. It turned out to be a golden capsule, encoded with how creation was created and even more important—why. It had been stolen from a place in another dimension and brought to our world to accommodate the greedy whim of a very nasty being who headed out an Order that basically ruled the world and called the shots in politics, banking, warfare and social education.”

  “Well, that pretty well covers all of it, doesn’t it?” Misty commented. “Now…Cable…all of this is true…you’re not just entertain
ing us because you’re convalescing…”

  “True to the best of my knowledge, doll. I even saw the damn thing, an object about the size of a walnut called the Fen de Fuqin. Anyway, through too many adventures to recount, I was instrumental in getting the capsule to a Chinese babe who was the overseer for it. She guarded it along with another multi-dimensional lad named Toggth, who I happen to be quite fond of. For the present we have kept this monstrous creature from getting a hold of the capsule. But he’s after me, because I possess the image and knowledge of the God of Our Fathers—another name for it—and wished to hell I didn’t.”

  “So why doesn’t he just extract the knowledge and kill you?”

  “He would in a heartbeat, but Toggth and others healthfully extracted that knowledge from my memory cells. But it’s kind of on a timer and one day, not too long from now, it will come popping back into my brain. That’s when this creature who-would-be-God will want to dispatch me. It was his goons that hit us last night. But only as warning that they were playing for keeps.”

  “Lord Almighty, Cable. I wish you’d told me all of this—before I fell in love with you.”

  “That’s why I’m giving you an out now, Misty. Indirectly, they killed my fiancée Honey Combes in her prime—"

  “—the Honey Combes? She was your fiancée? God, Cable, I didn’t know. I loved her. I learned a lot just by listening to her records! No wonder you’re leery of singers—as I should be of you…”

  “Yep. And there are others who now lie six feet under because of me. I don’t want to get into that—just take my word for it.”

  “Poisonous, passionate bait—that’s what you are, huh?” Misty said in a light-hearted manner. But I knew deep inside she was running scared. And I didn’t blame her. She needed to hear the truth.

  “Something like that. So I want you to think it over, doll. If you can arrange to have me driven to my office tomorrow, I can be out of your hair and get on with earning a living, which I’ve still gotta do.”

  “Sure, I can get Eddy to drive you over in the morning. Are you sure you’re going to be well enough to get around?”

  “Well, I’ll stay in and out of bed for a few days—and nothing strenuous…Zelda can take care of a lot of the office stuff.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot about Zelda. That’s good. You’ll need someone. If I could get off from work, Cable, I’d really like it to be me.”

  “That’s okay, babe, you gotta make a living, too.”

  She held my hand and spoke softly to me. “It’s so strange. Just last night before we ran into those terrible men, I was feeling so much desire for you—that our lives would begin a new chapter and I knew that I would continue to fall in love with you more deeply, that you’d satisfy me as a woman—and I felt I could make you happy. Now it’s all topsy-turvy. Truthfully, I’m even a little frightened. What if there really is some kind of death-curse hanging around you?”

  “I’m the first to say it, baby. When I saw what they were going to do to you last night, I realized a pattern was repeating itself. I didn’t want you to become part of it. I would never want to risk you. I hope you know that, no matter how selfish or horny I was for you.”

  “Yes, I do know, Cable. And I love you for it. But what will we do? Here I am pushing thirty and maybe throwing away the most important man in my life.”

  “The story’s not over ‘til it’s over, Misty Sheridan. Let time heal a few things—including my body. And then let’s look at us again, okay?”

  She leaned over and kissed the undamaged cheek. “I don’t know how falling in love can be arrested mid-stream—I mean, right in the process. But here it is, and here we are, having second thoughts.”

  “It’s okay…that’s life sometimes. You look and long over the next hill until maybe if you’re lucky, someday you find him or her. And life is going to be fine and dandy with happy dreams and Christmas spent before a warm fire. And one day you wake up and it’s all gone. The person beside you is a stranger and that ache inside, that longing that kept you a restless, searching wretch returns because there’s still something missing.”

  “Oh, Cable…when you talk like that, I remember why I was hypnotized by your voice and style—and brilliant mind. How can someone so bright turn out to be just a private detective?”

  “Because being a private detective takes a lot of ‘bright’ and flexibility. I think my profession and I fit. Just like you and your singing fit, babe. Now all we need is for us to fit.”

  “Wouldn’t that be perfect? Funny, but when I hear you speak, I’m hearing someone familiar I know—but at the same time I’m feeling there’s a complete stranger in my bed…a man I was willing to give myself to.”

  “It’s known as history. You need a history with someone so you can build those vital, essential bridges, things two people share. I’ve seen it before…after six months of great sex, who would we be? What would we really have in common? And we’d have very separate careers.”

  “And I still don’t know if I can believe those fantastic things you were telling me about, like creatures who rule the world, other dimensions and all that stuff. If it’s true, and you’ve really lived those things, then nothing common—a common love, a common relationship, a common woman, a common life style—none of it could even compare to the incredible, out-of-this-world experiences you’ve had.”

  I looked over at Misty with a lot of admiration in my eyes. “You know, babe, you just put your finger on it. Yeah, you’re right. Unless a woman was willing to love me and have great sex with me while she teetered on the edge of risk and danger—none of it would work. Thanks for that—you’re very astute.”

  “I still want you, old man, as beat up as you are—and as strange as you are. I can’t help that. I still think that is meant to be. But it’s a choice we both have to make—whether or not the risk of my safety is worth the wild, passionate love making I sense we’d have together.”

  “Ah, don’t forget the music. As I told your Edie, you are a born Troubadour, just as she is. That is your first allegiance. Who is in there?”

  “In where?”

  “In you. Once I went to hear the Robert Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor and when I listened to the music and how incredibly one man could write such power and depth and romantic feeling, I was taken up into it and carried away. But even more than that, that night I fell in love, not with some woman in the audience who happened to look great in a revealing gown, jewelry and with a flirtatious manner, but the elusive ideal. Someone you have loved all of your life but haven’t met yet. As I left the theatre that night, I asked myself the questions, ‘Who’s in there?’ Who is that soul I know so well and why is he buried so often behind a personality in a careless, violent world? Then I got it. The art and beauty Schumann brought through came from another place, another dimension. It wasn’t something his restless balls produced because of Clara, the wife he had the hots for, but he was a medium for something far more powerful and lasting. That piano concerto will endure because it is a vibration…a vibration of Will in the universe, expressing itself because it loves itself.”

  Misty was in tears. “I do love you, Cable. I’m in there somewhere. Don’t throw us away—quite yet. Please…give us some time…”

  I opened my literally aching arms to Misty Sheridan and she gently slid into them. “Sleep in my heart tonight, babe, will you?”

  The next day Eddy the waiter drove me to my office on Franklin and helped me upstairs. I must have been quite a sight, for when I came in, Zelda dropped everything on the floor. Her eyes widened to see my limp, beat up face with a couple of bandages and a stranger helping me to my bedroom. “Cable! What happened?” She helped Eddy and me by walking me into the bedroom and sitting me down on the bed. I thanked the kindly waiter and gave him a fiver for driving me.

  I explained to Zelda what had taken place the night before. She was alarmed and felt I needed to hide out pronto. But I assured her the goons wouldn’t be back for a while. At least n
ot until Cassiopeia returned and the knowledge of the Fen de Fuqin had been restored to me. Then I looked into her loving, concerned face. “I’m glad to be back, Zelda—and I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Zowie! When you came in I thought you’d died or something—I mean, you looked so bad. But if it’s just a bunch of bruises and things like that, I’ll make you some of Zelda’s super-duper plant broth. Some of it’s made from the plants I grow, like the aloe vera cactus and some other herbal plants.”

  I shuddered at the thought of it. “Sounds great to me—when do we start? I’m actually not too hungry, so don’t hurry.”

  “Gees, you were supposed to teach me the ropes of the business today. You know, the files and all that stuff? But I think it’s going to have to be Zelda’s day to wait on Cable.”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid it’ll have to wait a day or two.”

  “I’ll go home and make up some soup for you and bring it over later. Will you be okay until I get back—and what else can I bring you?”

  “You’re thoughtful, Zelda. Nothing…just bring my little plant pal back—that’ll be enough.”

  She left humming and I knew Zelda would be happy tending to me as I began the long, hard road to recovery.

  At some point I fell asleep and began to dream. I dreamed I was about eight or nine, maybe about Dickie Overton’s age, running through a field of tall, green grass. It was a perfect day and the blue of the sky gave you the feeling you could see all the way to forever up there. Then I came to a little brook going through the middle of the field. I stopped because I didn’t want to cross and get my shoes wet. On the other side of the stream I saw a little girl in a sky-blue dress with big yellow buttons down the front. “It’s me, Cable…come on over,” she said.

  I was puzzled. I didn’t know her, never saw her before in my life. “Do I know you? Maybe you got me mixed up with someone else.”