Bad Luck City - Matt Phillips

by Near To The Knuckle

  Copyright © 2016 by Matt Phillips

  Published by Close To The Bone

  All rights reserved.

  Digital Formatting and cover design by Craig Douglas

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. The stories may not be reprinted without permission. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the authors’ work.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintended.

  Matt Phillips

  Matt Phillips lives in San Diego and was born in Palm Springs, California. He was raised in the Coachella Valley and nearby Mojave High Desert. He has worked as a busboy, pool attendant, waiter, bartender, restaurant manager, film festival administrator, and reporter. His other noir novellas are Redbone and Mesa Boys. More info at www.mattphillipswriter.com.

  Acknowledgement

  Many thanks go to my wife, Lesley, for her many stories and for encouraging me to write (and read) every single day. Also thanks to my good buddy, Jeremy, who is never afraid to tell me when a story needs more work. Thanks to the talented team at Near to the Knuckle for publishing great work by the best crime writers working today (and for publishing this one!). And, lastly, thanks to Chris Black who published my first book… He read and gave feedback on an early version of this and he was right on the money—it wasn't ready. Well, now it is…

  “Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. Give voice to the voiceless.”

  —from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics

  “If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have no kinda luck/ If it wasn't for real bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all.”

  —Albert King, Born Under a Bad Sign

  Friday

  Chapter One

  Again, I couldn’t sleep.

  On the nightstand, my cellphone flashed the time: 3:18 on Friday morning, August thirteenth. I sat up and shoved the sweat–stained sheets to my waist. My studio apartment was dark; red neon light filtered through the window and shaded the far wall, next to the television. The red light emanated from Ringo’s Pawn Shop which, I figured, paid one hell of an electric bill. But I had to admit the sign added some atmosphere to my street. And to my apartment. I didn’t bother decorating. It’s hard to find the point in making something pretty if you’re the only one who sees it. As for my insomnia: It wasn’t the dream—not this time, but I knew if it wasn’t the dream, then it must be something.

  Nerves, maybe.

  ***

  3:37 in the morning and I was already dressed for work: A brindle blazer too short in the sleeves, wrinkled button–down shirt and a loose–knotted, skinny pink tie. My favorite. The girls in the newsroom said it looked like a snake’s tongue. I blinked at myself in the Volvo’s rearview mirror. My cheeks and chin were dark with growth and the undersides of my eyes looked bruised. I patted my face with both hands and tried a smile. The night before, I’d left my car parked a few blocks east, near the dive bar where I ended the work day. I’d walked home, at what time I couldn’t remember, but midnight seemed likely.

  I’d lived in this neighborhood most of my life.

  First, as a kid, I lived with my dad. Everybody knew my dad; the pimps, the bartenders, the working girls, the bookies. And the cops, too. Funny, nineteen years later and I knew all the same people. Well, people who were playing the same people. Different names and faces, but their positions were all the same. I pulled my eyes from my reflection and stared at the street. It was lined with low–rise apartment buildings. They all had nice names like “Sunnyvale Homes,” and “Hot Springs Apartments,” but the truth was a little less shiny—these apartments housed your average casino workers and day laborers. And more than a few of these places were prostitution dens. I knew that and so did everybody else, but it was easier not to think or do anything about it.

  Status quo, as they say.

  I slipped my key into the Volvo’s ignition and turned it; the engine started with an audible thump and then settled into an irregular rhythm. If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well go for a drive before work. I pulled into the empty street and steered toward the nearest freeway entrance.

  ***

  Editors will tell you that most great stories start with a major conflict, some kind of tension unresolved. I’d agree with that, but sometimes there’s a story that’s simmering, a narrative not quite ready to boil. That’s how I felt about my life. It kept wanting to start, kept feeling like it might be starting, but in the end I was 36–years–old and my story never got going. It was like, without understanding how, I’d buried the lead in the story of my life. That, I thought, was why the dream kept coming to me. And it was why, in a shitty time for the news business, I found myself as an aging entertainment reporter for a failing alternative weekly, a tabloid. Sure, it was Las Vegas and there was a lot to write about, but, like most things in Vegas, it was a lot that meant so little…

  ***

  The Volvo’s clock–radio read 4:19 by the time I exited the freeway a few miles outside the city and headed north toward a smattering of low desert hills. The sun crept along the horizon’s spine to the east, and a slow–moving swath of light advanced on Las Vegas. And on me.

  ***

  I checked the clock again before I shifted into park and set the emergency brake. 4:33 in the morning. A good three hours before I was expected in the newsroom—I’d be there early today, and maybe that would make Finnegan happy. Or maybe not. I climbed out of the car and adjusted my blazer. Though I didn’t like wearing the blazer in the heat, while reporting I often draped it over one arm so I’d look important. Surprising how a prop can turn a scene into reality. People believed what they saw without thinking about what was really there. Part of human nature. Count me guilty, too. Up here, a few hundred feet higher than the city, an infrequent wind lashed at my neck and I was glad to have the blazer. It wasn’t a cold wind, say, by midwest standards, but it made me shiver. I could smell sweet juniper in my one clear nostril—allergies—and the soft taste of creosote entered my mouth.

  So, why here? Well, I used to drive out to these foothills with my dad. We’d smoke cigarettes and stare at the city, a splotch of neon and flashy yellow in the dense black sea of desert. Las Vegas was smaller then. Hell, it felt smaller. I remembered a city drenched in the same neon light and smoke, but it was a city I knew like a good friend, a place that wasn’t growing and shifting like some kind of mutating cell. My dad always said Las Vegas was a symbol of possibility, but a symbol wasn’t real—it was like God, he said.

  Makes a good promise, but it’s all bullshit.

  This was before a beast called cancer caught my dad in the stomach. I was seventeen when he died: Old enough to understand what it meant to be cheated, and young enough to take it personal. My dad—and I still felt this way after years of hard thought—was a good man. I don’t mean that he did good things. He didn’t. Stretch Palmer was a common crook. A thief. A bookmaker. He was a jailbird and maybe, though I couldn’t be sure, a killer. But he was a good friend and, from what I remembered of him, a good father. That’s more than most men can say when they’re hacking up blood in a hospital bed.

  I kicked at the dirt with my faded black dress shoes and turned my eyes eastward. The city wavered in the distance. Neon pulsed along the casino rooftops, a visible heartbeat fading as the sun arched skyward. A lo
ng string of headlights burned out of the city, along the freeway. I pivoted and followed the line of cars until I saw the string of red tail lights, rats’ eyes fading over a sparse desert landscape. People come and go in Las Vegas, but not me.

  You’re a kid and you think nothing will ever change, but change is constant. It just happens so slow you can’t see it. One day you wake up and boyhood is a silly little dream. One day you wake up and you’re nothing like what you imagined. You’re a nobody in a place made of nothing.

  I rubbed my nose with the end of my pink tie and coughed into a cold palm. The desert wind stuffed me up, made it hard to breathe. I dug my hands into my blazer pockets, felt the jacket spread tight over my shoulders. Not much left to see out here. I turned and walked back to the Volvo, slid into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. The clock–radio flashed 5:42.

  I had time for breakfast before work.

  Chapter Two

  When I got to the office—a graffiti–laden building above a dry cleaner’s east of Las Vegas Boulevard—it was still empty. Inside, the office was a loose assortment of six desks covered with printed emails and press releases. An adjacent office housed two editors and an advertising guy—we ran a bare bones operation and depended too much on freelance stories; most were written by journalism students from UNLV. I sat at my desk and flipped on my computer. I knew Finnegan, the managing editor, would be in by nine, but I had until then to comb through emails and pitch him a gripping culture story.

  I needed to earn my pay.

  After all these years, my idea of hell was a big city newsroom. Oh, I loved it when I first came to Las Vegas. It was exciting to hear the constant buzz of phones, to watch the editors watch old school beat reporters peck at keyboards one letter at a time, to see my byline on A1—’Sim Palmer, Staff Reporter’— even if it was below the fold. But working for a daily was too damn straight for me—I hated all the policies and expensive suits in their pristine offices on the floors above us. I learned in the first year or so: Newspapers are advertising rackets, and that’s about it. The advertising executives are the big voice in journalism, and don’t let First Amendment romance tell you otherwise. I wasn’t a cynical reporter though; I believed in good, honest journalism. Got my start at a tiny, 4,000–circulation weekly in California’s high desert. I knew, once I turned eighteen, that I couldn’t follow in my dad’s footsteps. There was nobody to show me around, nobody I could trust to teach me the streets. I should have been a hustler; I should have looked at cops with cold–eyed hatred and a gun in my hand. What I did was go off to college and spend four years drinking cheap beer, reading Shakespeare, and memorizing Chaucer.

  Apologia my ass.

  I learned some things about myself. I didn’t fit in with all those college punks. I knew what it was to lose, how it felt to be alone. No father. No family. That put me outside most everything—it put me on the dark side, and it always would. After school, I took a steady diet of Steinbeck and Papa, turned myself into a newspaper reporter. My first job was that tiny weekly, and it was so small town it hurt. I covered traffic collisions and Little League championships, made a name for myself by running around town writing soft features about sweet old ladies and high school coaches. I won a few awards and made people smile. Next thing I knew, I got a call from an editor in Las Vegas. But, like I said before, the big city newsroom didn’t suit me.

  That’s why I decided to leave the daily and take a job at the Mid–City Caller, an alt–weekly with a penchant for sniffing out corruption and city council bullshit.

  It was a change for me.

  I worked the cop beat at first, but a year ago I got moved off that. Too many personal ties, they said. It was alright with me—that’s what I told myself. The cop beat was shitty hours anyhow.

  I didn’t find much in my email inbox, but a call to the tourism office got me a piece on a traveling circus coming to town. Kind of an odd thing to write about given that Las Vegas was an entertainment capital, but I looked at it like a service—maybe I could sell some tickets for the “Flying Aristotles and Friends.”

  Why the hell not?

  ***

  Early afternoon and another day was almost gone. I moved through it like a fish in a tank. What I wanted to do was get to the nearest bar and hold a cold glass of whiskey to my forehead. My circus story was halfway done, but the Aristotles, I found, didn’t answer their cellphone. After another call and a new voice message, I looked down at my keyboard and shook my head. So much for digging up a culture scoop.

  “You got my 750 words, Palmer?” It was Finnegan, the senior editor who hid inside his office all week. That is, until he needed a favor.

  Finnegan wasn’t a reporter—he never had been a reporter. He got hired to keep the Caller from sinking; Finnegan’s job was to sell more advertising. That meant we started to run ads for dirty strip clubs and ambulance chasing lawyers. As soon as Finnegan showed up, I got moved off cops and the Caller started making more money. Look at him, I thought, standing there with his designer bow tie and his tailored, button–down shirt. Look at him with his creepy mustache and slicked–down hair. I grunted and said, “Almost there, but I need to make a few more calls.”

  “For fuck’s sake. It’s not breaking news. We’re a weekly and we go to press tonight. All we need is a quote from the press release and few words that sound good. Lead it off nice and I’ll throw it next to the culture calendar. I have another story for you anyway.”

  I leaned back in my chair, scratched my chin. “A metro piece?” I asked. “Something I can spend some time on?”

  “Fuck no, Palmer. Of course not. You’re solid in culture now. You know that, don’t you? What I want is a soft feature on the guy who runs The Tokyo, that new joint off the strip. You know which one I mean?”

  I nodded. “Sounds like something their public relations department can put together—no need to waste time on it. It’s a puff piece.” More and more, papers were running pieces sent directly by public relations departments or consultants. It cut down on man–hours and—I have to admit—the images and words weren’t bad. I mean, there was no real reporting there, no analysis or questions raised, but it made getting a paper out easier. And it often contained a big advertising buy for a later issue.

  We wacked them off, and they did the same for us.

  “Palmer, give me some credit, will you? This guy’s some kind of artist. He paints in some style or other, hangs the fuckers up in each room. Says he’s going to paint a picture for each room in the hotel. Got a release from their publicist today. Seems like the real deal—I think it’s a cover story. That should perk you up. I want the fucker by next week. The Tokyo is looking to buy some ad space before October and I need to make some friends over there.” Finnegan sniffed twice and then looked off toward the break room. A young female reporter in a red skirt entered for a cup of coffee. Without looking at me, Finnegan continued, “I emailed you all the details. I need a draft by Monday afternoon.”

  I pointed at my computer screen. “This is shit. I basically paraphrased the press release. I need to get ahold—“

  “Well, give me what you have. I want to put this to bed. It’s happy hour and I missed my lunch.” Finnegan looked back at me. His nose twitched and he shrugged. “It’s not worth much. I just need it is all.” Finnegan snapped his fingers and smiled. “Get it to me soon.” He drifted toward the break room, lifted his hands to smooth down his hair.

  I looked back to the story. It was shit.

  Forget about it, I told myself, no use worrying. I read over the first few words on the computer screen again and decided the calls didn’t matter, not one bit. It was a propaganda piece.

  Finnegan walked out of the break room with his arms around the young reporter. I watched as Finnegan led her to her desk, slid an office chair from a table and sat. The girl stared at him, lifted her eyebrows while Finnegan flapped his mouth.

  Sister, you better not learn any tricks from him.

  Shit, look
at yourself, I thought. I wrote entertainment blurbs. All this preppy shit about cover bands and half–assed comedians coming to town. My beat wasn’t exactly a Pulitzer waiting to happen.

  I opened a desk drawer and pulled out my silver flask. Happy hour did sound good, I had to admit that. I unscrewed the flask and lifted it to my lips; a trickle of vodka hit my tongue, but that was it. Provisions, I thought. I need some provisions. I slid the flask into the inside pocket of my blazer and printed Finnegan’s email from my inbox. I grabbed the email from the printer, high–stepped through the newsroom, jogged down the outdoor stairway, and sauntered toward my dusty Volvo.

  Chapter Three

  I parked on a side street near Aero Lounge, a bar a few blocks from the airport. It was my regular spot; it smelled like month–old dish water and fungus, but the ceiling was decorated with cartoonish jetliners painted in pastel—the place sat directly beneath the landing path—and they stocked enough whiskey for the apocalypse. On the whole, Aero Lounge was a stopover for nervous passengers, people who needed a stiff drink to get on a plane. I liked it because they showed baseball games during the season. No sound, just whatever game was televised on the screen above the bar. I gravitated toward the bar crowd’s transience, too. No regulars. It was just me and Jackie, the career bartender. Us and nine innings I could watch in a peace.

  But not on this night.

  As I entered, I noticed a stranger hunched into a corner booth. He wore a gray fedora pulled low across his eyes, a green bow tie above a silver vest, and there were crisp lines pressed into his shirt. In one hand, he cradled a short rocks glass. I knew his type from before my dad died. This stranger was, in a way, my father—they were in the same profession and I could smell it as I took my place at the bar. The stranger was a bruiser, I thought, someone who made his money hurting people. Or threatening to hurt people. Maybe he worked for a local bookie, or a casino boss, or a drug dealer. It didn’t matter, but I set my jaw and clenched my fists. I was on guard from the moment I saw him. I ordered my regular whiskey—George Dickel, two ice cubes—and just as the liquid touched the tip of my tongue, the well–dressed stranger slid onto the stool beside me. I ran my tongue across my bottom teeth and straightened.