Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Just One Night, a crime story

I wrote earlier about the crime stories that I did when I was a teenager. I read some and one of them seemed good enough. I'll try to translate it and post here as a sort of serial. Here's the first installment. I edited it a bit and took out the most puerile elements. But you'll have to remember that I was 13 at the time. (I took the joke straight out of the web.)

Just One Night, part 1

”Please, turn it off. I don’t feel like listening to some Mozart or whatever”, Jack Lee Brougher said to a young woman who was witting on a sofa.
She was Suzie Terrell. Suzie was 23, very good-looking and nicely shaped blonde. She made a nasty laughing sound and said: ”It’s Bach, not Mozart. And try to show some respect to the great masters.”
”I have respect only for B.B. King. And besides that, Hersey might catch you any minute, if that thing is still on for another second.”
”What do you mean?”
”It makes me bored.”
Jack Lee Brougher was a security man of the Flanagan hotel. He was 26, tall, but not very muscular, and quite handsome. He had dark hair and wore blue jeans, a white shirt and a black tie. In his holster there was a Luger in account of Rodger Hersey, the criminal mastermind. Brougher guarded Suzie Terrell, because Hersey had just got out of jail and Suzie was the one to turn him in three years ago.
”Please”, Brougher said again.
”Alright. But only if you don’t change it to some B.B. King.”
”Alright”, Brougher said. After Bach had faded, he got up and turned on the radio. ”It’s no B.B. King. I don’t know what it is”, he said, when he found the blues station. Brougher grinned and lit a cigarette. Suzie Terrell didn’t look too pleased with him.
Moose Vincent came into the room. He was a tough one, with over six and ten, 110 kilos and bulging muscles. He had his hair up in a ducktail and he had black spitters and a black leather jacket on.
Brougher smiled when he saw Moose Vincent tap his fingers to the rhythm of Jerry Lee Lewis, who had begun to play on the radio. Brougher crushed his cigarette in the tray and said: ”Miss Terrell looks bored. Why don’t we do something funny. You could dance.”
Moose grinned and started to jump into the rhythm. It looked stupid as hell, but Suzie Terrell just sighed.
Moose stopped jumping and said: ”Camaro has a good joke or two.”
Camaro Cunningham was the hotel’s third security man, a tall and skinny man.
”Well, get him here quick”, Brougher said. Moose left the room. Brougher humphed and asked Suzie Terrell: ”What’s the matter with you?”
”This waiting. And the three of you, damn it! Why don’t you hell leave me alone?”
”Don’t you understand that you have to be guarded?”
When the woman didn’t say a word, Brougher shrugged, got up, turned off the radio and went to the living room shutting the door behind him. He lit another cigarette and picked up a paperback copy of Gores’s Hammett from the small desk. Moose came back with Camaro.
”Sorry”, Brougher said. ”Miss Terrell wants to be alone.”
”Damn shame”, Moose said. ”Just when Camaro had a good one.”
Brougher knew that Camaro’s jokes were always too long. He put the book away and waited. Camaro started: ”There’s this girl, Katie. She hears that her granddaddy has died and she goes straight to her grandparents’ house to visit her 95-year-old grandmother. This girl, Katie asks how her grandfather had died and her grandmother says that he had a heart attack while they were fucking away on Sunday morning.” Camaro started to giggle.
Brougher asked: ”Is this long?”
Camaro didn’t pay any attention to him and went on, still giggling: ”Katie tells her grandmother that two people who are hundred years old and fucking are asking for trouble.”
Sure, Brougher said to himself.”Oh no, my dear”, Camaro said implicating the whining tone of the granny. ”Many years ago, when we realized how old we were, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would start toring. It was the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even. Just in on the Ding and out on the Dong.” Now Camaro made a pause. ”Granny wipes away a tear, and says that he’d still be alive if it wasn’t for the ice cream truck.”
Camaro and Moose started to laugh and pound their feet with their hands. Brougher grinned and when the two men had stopped he said: ”Let’s order some food.”

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