Cold Bullets and Hot Babes: Dark Crime Stories (11 page)

Three
a.m
. back at The Rexford and Hank calls in the doc.

“Nobody on the second floor can sleep with all that moaning,” he says.

The doc shoots me in the hip with a needle the size of a rolling pin and the pain melts away like warm candle wax.

Alone in my room I down a shot of Jack Daniels and savor the mellow burn. I listen to the rain tick against the windowpane and watch the reflections of neon light ripple across the ceiling. I’ve had one hell of a welcome to my new town.

I light the last Lucky in the pack and think of Angel and how her pale velvet skin felt against mine. I think of her soft hair against my cheek and the intoxicating waves of rose perfume. One glorious night together and what do I have to show for it? A broken string of dime store pearls and an empty wallet. It’s not that funny, but I can’t help smiling.

“They say you can’t fall in love this fast,” said Angel Doll. Maybe not, but what we had was a damn good facsimile. She couldn’t take the place of Sandra...no one could...but, she was one hell of a quick fix for a lonely guy with a bum leg.

Angel Doll is getting off the train in downtown L.A. about now. She’ll be wearing a torn blue raincoat and one pink shoe. She’ll have enough money for a little food and a week or two in a hotel, provided it’s near the Greyhound Station and she doesn’t mind sharing the bathroom down the hall with washed up hookers and derelicts. Then again, with her angel face, she might nail a rich guy or a married businessman who can afford to keep a woman on the side. I wonder where she’ll be in a month or a year. I wonder if she will ever think of me.

My boyhood hero was my Uncle Mick,

who joined the Force and swung a mighty stick,

and slipped me smokes behind the backyard shed,

caught thieves and murderers and shot them dead,

to spare the honest citizens the pain,

or trials, acquittals, catching them again.

He gave us rascals all his pocket change,

and took us big shots to the shooting range.

Of course the barroom beer was free at night,

for cops who kept the city running right.

Hell’s meanest ‘mutha’ couldn’t make him blink,

but Irish music made him cry, I think.

He must have been the biggest, toughest one,

to chew them bullets when he ate that gun.

Arlette Lees
began her writing career several decades ago in the Confession Market and has since found a permanent home in pulp fiction.

She is a regular contributor to HARDBOILED magazine, edited by pulp fiction veteran, Gary Lovisi. One of her hair-raising tales appears in the anthology DEADLY DAMES from Bold Venture Press and a story with a real knock-out punch is included in the anthology BATTLING BOXING STORIES. BLOOD BAYOU, her twisted tale of passion and murder in the Louisiana swamp appears in WHODUNIT from WILDSIDE PRESS and takes another bow in these pages.

Arlette writes from northern California on a typewriter that is older than many of her readers. She is also an award-winning poet who is widely published both here and abroad.

“The Lees Sisters, Lonni and Arlette, are unique; these two gals write their own work in their own way, but they always deliver sharp, exciting, intense crime stories you can really sink your teeth into. You can’t go wrong with the stories in this book!”

Gary Lovisi,
Editor,
Hardboiled

“If I didn’t know the Lees Sisters were chicks, I would think they were hard-drinking, gun-toting vigilantes from Brooklyn. Genius, pure genius, runs in the Lees gene pool.”

Cindy Rosmus
, Editor,
Yellow Mama

Cold Bullets and Hot Babes: Dark Crime Stories