Frank Ryan Mysteries #5

The young police captain was silent. He actually didn’t look so young any longer. Not as clean. He brushed his straight strawberry blonde hair from off his wrinkled forehead. Frank never saw those wrinkles before. He’d have recalled them. Etched deep and vulgar on his fresh skin.

Frank left.

He found himself at the end of a quiet bar in an unfamiliar neck of the woods. He found, also, three empty shot glasses before him and a third filled one being raised to his dry lips by a hand that looked strangely like his own. It was a thick, short hand. More palm than fingers and strongly inflexible. The glass looked ridiculously small in the hairy knuckled meathook. He downed it. Pain seered its way through his right side and came to rest near his core in a dull throb.

It was just how he remembered his hand. Although this hand had a liver spot between its thumb and forefinger. The years do pass.

He’d been to clinics to see doctors. Clinics that were less humane in their design and staff than were the veteraniarian offices he brought Shel to for shots and to be told to brush his teeth. He barely fucking brushed his own.

Never trust a man with a perfect set of teeth. Frank’s dad told him through ill fitting dentures. He rarely thought of his dad now. He’d last year reached an age his father had failed to meet. He thought of her, though. In this heavy with quiet bar. As he ordered another.

Little illnesses were ruled out and the smart money was being laid on cancer. So Frank quit going to the damned clinics. If drink killed him, so be it. If drink was good enough to kill her, it was more than good enough to do him in.

He hadn’t prayed. Not so much as a “Fucking Christ” passed his yellowed and chipped teeth on the way to meeting his maker. Captain Roger Tompkins and his creased brow, his sunken eyes. They were a blue green, bright and clear…just not right then. Frank played it over in his mind. The serpent-shaped dagger, his lack of prayer, the gunshot.

He had to shoot.

There was no time for a warning. Captain Roger Tompkins saved his life, and he dares question. Just like when the good lord saved his life, and he dared question. The pain was leaving his gut. He pushed the bar away from himself, or himself from the bar. Stood.

A surprised Frank Ryan hid from Candy as she walked by the bar; arm in arm with a man so black as to out spade a rural night. He was fairly certain she hadn’t seen him. Although Frank was a hard man to miss. Unless you were a serpent-shaped dagger. Or a painted whore.

Her.

Not Candy. He’d hash that out when the time came. Her. She that he had loved so, and finally murdered. The court system often is forced to forgive a man what he won’t forgive himself.

They destroyed each other so beautifully. The fucking. The fighting. The love. The hate. The crash. The night was dark; as nights are prone to be—and wet. As she was prone to be. He drove through the slick reflections with one hand’s fingers up her moist cunt. They had just closed down another bar in another unfamiliar spot.

The semi T-boned her side of the rust pot Buick. Her light went out like the undramatic hanging up of a cell phone. No cradle to slam a receiver down upon. His phone rang in his jacket pocket. He was a rotary phone, was Frank.

“Marty?”

“Kid. Get here.”

Frank Ryan hit up a donut shop for its cheap coffee and pointed the mission’s van to the dog track.

The scene was cleaned up now. Jesus stayed with Shelbourne the Miller, retired race hound  extraordinaire. He looked at the dog’s eyes and listened to their story. He only worried a bit as to why Candy hadn’t answered their phone. She was red again. Drenched in it. Drenched in what they both knew he needed. Whether they liked it or not. The dog whined for sleep.

Jesus’s mind went to Candy’s creamy tits. Their heft. Warmth. Her hips. Pussy.

She slipped out of her red dress without taking off her red heels and it fell around her like a murder scene. Ebony’s cock was enormous. She took it with ease and he feared being swallowed whole in a cheap motel room in an unfamiliar side of town. She milked more cum out of him than he knew he had; redressed and left. His spunk rolling down her leg from her asshole and cunt, as she stepped up into the bus toward home.

Jesus Guadalupe Guerrero was home now and visited his sleeping children. The pink room, then the blue. Safe. He had finally convinced himself they were safe. He clicked off the TV and sat with his rosary. He prayed to the Virgin while having a hard on for a whore. He wondered when either might return.

Marty Murphy called for Frank Ryan from the stalls. Frank gingerly walked that way. The night track had a certain romance that he wanted, needed, to take in.

“Marty?” He called into the shadows.

“Right here, kid.”

A swinging lightbulb came to life. It lit all the way down the cop issued barrel that pointed to between Frank’s eyes. The lines etched deep and vulgar on young skin, swayed in and out of the light beyond the gun. The eyes set back in the head by a million fucking miles.

“Frank.” Said Captain Roger Tompkins softly. Almost gentlemanly. His finger moving from guard to trigger…

Frank Ryan Mysteries #4

et metuant eum omnes fines terrae.
and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.

Frank held the piece of paper all the way home. The car ride was easy. It was safe. Physically, anyway. A 65mph cocoon. Tompkins drove it well. Smoothly. They did not speak. Frank stroked his filling in beard. Ran his hand over his smooth, liver-spotted dome. He thought many thoughts.

The rosary slid through Jesus’s fingers in rote and rapid motion. His lips moved something like furiously, no sound escaped them. It wasn’t like Candy to be gone so long. To not have left a note. The kids needed dinner so the oldest ones were instructed on which cans to open, which pots to use, which plates to fill.

Jesus thought of calling Frank but thought better of it.

Frank sat up in his bed with his size 13 plain black well-worn shoes on his feet, on the floor. Hands on his knees. He never did buy the struggle. The tug of war between good and evil. He just saw some men as being stronger. What’s right is never unclear. It’s just that the path of righteousness is rocky and difficult. So we make apologies. We confuse ourselves and others. Denial. Soon we’re doing wrong and patting our backs on freshly paved easy stretches of land.

The devil has an easy gig.

Candy was not familiar with this side of town. Before knocking on the heavily barred glass door of the tiny storefront, she rearranged her tits. Applied another coat of lipstick. Rubbed her moist lips together. Red. Red was her dress were her four inch stilettos were her long fingernails tiny toenails, red. Red were the tips of her hard nipples, she was certain. The door was answered in a slow swinging open. She jiggled through the doorway.

Roger Tompkins was not a godly man, per say. Therefore, he surely didn’t believe in no devil. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? First you must believe in God, then his adversary. It’s all reactionary thought. Fear not however, dear true believer—for you see, Satan is doomed from the start. Although so are you if you follow him…

He thought for a second as to how a Satan, or evil first/God second church might act. He thought it might be better, good as the reaction, but couldn’t stick with the process long enough to know why. His phone was silent. His pad empty. No leads and none coming. And only the devil to blame thus far.

The black shirt felt heavier in Jesus’s hand. It was the same rayon shirt as the loud colored paisley one, his usual look. Same fabric, cut, obscure label. He threw it on. He needed the weight. To tether himself. He knew, though, that one could be so grounded as to be buried. He knew this first hand. It was the only first-hand thing in his second-hand existence. The kids had done the after dinner dishes and were now in front of the television. With the instruction to be in bed by eight, Jesus left and walked toward the mission.

Frank was straightening out the folding chairs that acted as pews in the further back rows. The seven o’clock service was over and he enjoyed tidying up afterward. There was a new cross hung over the altar and it would take some time, he thought as he eyed it, for it to be okay. Frank hated change. Especially change not in his control. Or the illusion of his control. Crapshoot. Eight dogs running to the wire. Chaos. Chaos and death. He turned toward where the body of the sharp faced detective was found.

“Amigo!” Jesus tried to make his voice strong.

“Amigo.” Frank did not try.

Jesus fell in line with Frank, straightening chairs and then they were done.

“He killed in a church.” Jesus said.

“Maybe.” Frank said. “Or left a dead body in a church.”

“The policio found nothing?”

“Nada.”

“Fuck them.”

A dog’s barking filled the air, stifled by the cushion of space. With an exchanged glance, Jesus and Frank were off toward Shel Jesus in front and a surprisingly swift Frank in the not very rear.

et metuant eum omnes fines terrae.
and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.

Marty Murphy played the words on a loop in his old skull. He knew everyone was asking two questions. Why was he alive and who was responsible for the other murders. He knew the answer to the first. As for the second: the dead body placed out in an odd contortion at the end of the second turn of the track, he thought might yield more answers. He thought he’d call Frank first, then the cop kid…whatever the fuck his name was. The evening’s race card was cancelled on account of murder, he had plenty of time.

It had been forever since Marty had seen Latin handwritten in that particular scrawl. It served to answer that first question, though.

They didn’t kill him because they couldn’t.

Shelbourne the Miller, long ago winner of many a derby and adder to of Frank Ryan’s billfold reared up his near elderly frame and glowed his eyes. He showed the few teeth he had left. Rose his hackles. To Frank, he’d always looked Egyptian. Ancient and thinly curved. Eerie. Mysterious. The cloaked figure raised a dagger toward him and fell away. Frank had forgotten his lead filled cane, but remembered his handy .22.

Jesus was past them and to their left. He encountered the other three men. Robed in black as well, somehow less ornately. They were unarmed but for one holding a chalice. Jesus took out the first two but the chalice holder had mad eyes. Mad eyes and a wonderful straight right that stood up the small Mexican and a roundhouse left that laid him out.

The chalice rolled toward Frank. He eyed it. Felt a stabbing fire in his left side. He was making his way to help Jesus with the chalice holder, when the .22’d ring leader gathered himself and his damned serpent curved dagger.

Frank shot the chalice monk dead between the mad eyes. Shel knocked the dagger monk backward. Frank whirled with a shot. Missed. Fuck. He saw the dagger come toward him in an oddly slow motion.

He did not pray.

There was a bang. A bigger bang than a .22 and the cloaked figure and the serpent shaped dagger fell away.

Captain Roger Tompkins holstered his gun and said “Stop. Or I’ll shoot.”

 

 

Frank Ryan Mysteries #3

Holy water. Jesus strongly and quite nervously recommended holy water. He and Frank spent the good part of a couple of hours cleaning up the blood splatters. Straight ammonia did the trick and also left them both a bit reeling in the claustrophobic room.

Dios se presenta, sus enemigos se dispersan y los que le odian huyen delante de él. Como es lanzado el humo, por lo que están impulsadas; como se derrite la cera ante el fuego, así perecerán los impíos delante de Dios. Chanted Jesus under his breath.

Psalm 67, thought Frank. One he recited often, but not recently. Decades ago, as a different man in a different life…at the close of it. As she lay in the hospital clinging to life. Tubes and gadgets and beeps and the hurried cold movements of nurses.  A man might find his innocence in the court of law to be no salve for the burning in his own conscience.

It was a Catholic hospital. The priest walked into the small sanctuary and toward the restroom. Ran tap water into a small, chincy chalice and spoke rapid words well under his breath. Latin? Then left with his holy water. At first it seemed ridiculous to Frank. Later, it would prove pivotal in his becoming a man of god.

He now did the same and Jesus sighed so deeply as it was applied to the corners of the room, that Frank thought he saw his spider plant perk up a bit. Holy water. Frank had to admit he felt somewhat relieved himself. Shel lay down with his legs poured out ahead of himself and let loose a calm breath. His eyes eased. His head sank slowly.

“Your Mr. Murphy?” Asked Jesus.

“He’s okay. Tompkins sent word out there and some local cops showed up.” Frank continued, “Marty was tied up in the shitter, a little ruffled but mostly pissed.”

“What the fuck was the point of that?”

“To send me a message. To tell me no one is safe, I suppose. That he is in charge.”

“Are we? Safe?”

“We are all destined for Hell, Jesus.”

Jesus thought of his wife’s large white tits, her soft thighs. “I should go, hombre.”

“Tell Candy I said ‘Hi.’”

Roger Tompkins sat at the counter of the greasy spoon and nursed a sugary coffee and stale Danish. The Murphy shit made no sense. Why were the two strangers killed, yet Murphy spared? Just then, Frank came up from behind, tapping him on the shoulder.

“Let’s go for a ride, pig.” He smiled.

“Where?”

“Sarasota… Marty.”

“My car?”

“Sure, I hate stopping at lights.”

Marty Murphy was around the block a hundred fucking times on horseback before it was even paved. He’d seen more in his inexplicably long life than most would see in a dozen go-arounds. He’d fought wars, survived the end more times than he could count, and had been threatened by an array of Gods, some of which whose names no longer rang a bell. This stuff, though, gave him ageda. He sipped from a short, fat glass of seltzer. This stuff, he thought, was no good. He wished to hell that he didn’t have to tell Frank. Frank was a good kid.

Jesus Guadalupe Guerrero practically ran up the stairs to his apartment. He always did. When he knew she was home. He was met with hot kisses, a warm cup of joe, and cold sandwich. She was all in red again…still. Her dress. Her shoes. Those lips ay ay ay…

“What did you do today?” He asked, if only to see her lips move their response.

“Cleaned, mostly.” Said the lips, full and red. “Went to Consuela’s, bought some more of those Marranitos you love.”

The Spanish words rolled off her tongue like mayonnaise from a spoon in a very cold kitchen. Which is to say they did not. He smiled. Her red framed cleavage somehow reached toward him. A child cried and as soon as Jesus realized it was one of his, which took a few long seconds, he was off to say hello to the brood.

Frank Ryan evaluated his body and its aches before hefting his carcass out of the car. He tightened up on the way over and felt like he might need to be air lifted out. He ignored Roger’s hand. Roger knew he would, but felt obligated to the awkward gesture. They made their way to the kennel. The hounds barked their welcome. Roger walked purposefully slow to allow himself a look at Frank. He was a big man with even bigger features and hands and feet than his size would deem proportional. The maple cane looked like a tooth pick and Roger knew that its lead guts were the only reason it didn’t snap. He was drenched in a faded black that brought to Roger’s mind an old wild west preacher soaked in booze; drenched in God’s favor—A lesser sinner in a sinful world. He saw that Frank’s eyes were elsewhere. They usually were.

As they approached, the figure of an old frail man sitting on a small boulder became clear. He was fumbling something in his hands. Odd, thought Frank. Marty usually had his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Almost like an apologetic boy. A babe in the cradle of our universe too long. A child of advanced age that had done everything wrong, as the Jim Fixx types died all around him.

Death. Fuck that fickle bony bitch, thought Frank. His eyes saw her. Not death. Her. His one love. Bleeding out in the car seat beside him. Gasping then gurgling out his name in something like a protective chant. The ambulance delivered paramedics and she was whisked off. Frank, too. He was sewn up and a cast was set on his right leg. She lingered on machines for days. They weren’t married and in those days, that left him no more rights than a stranger. The doctor came out on the third day to announce her death to Frank and the vending machine. Save but a sneaked glance through the crack of a hospital room door; Frank had the blood and the gurgling to remember her by.

“What do you know about the devil?” Asked Marty, never one to mince words. “What do you know about satan?”

“Too much.” Said Frank. “Too fucking much.” Even if the devil is simply the uncaring chaos of the universe he continued in his head.

He fumbled the piece of paper Marty handed him. It was a sheet torn from a legal pad. It explained everything in a single sentence. A sentence written in Latin. A sentence which Frank was quite familiar with. At its end was a crudely drawn pentagram. Drawn in blood.

Jesus was going to shit his pants.

Frank Ryan Mysteries #2

Candy vacuumed the threadbare rug in red stiletto heels and a low cut red dress with a bow that fell on her belly, accentuating her curves, her softness. She stopped to fix her lipstick, red, with the help of a painted fingernail, red. Each morning, she laid out her outfit at the foot of her broken down brass bed. Immediately this morning she realized red and a lot of it. The color of passion. She painted her nails and mouth as if she craved more of the color, as if she longed to be immersed in it. Drowned in it. Drowned in passion. Wet. She noticed her wetness as she wrapped the vacuum’s cord around its handle and placed it away. She was practically dripping.

She recalled Jesus, her husband, drenched in another shade. Black. When he was excommunicated, he mourned no less than if he’d lost a child. Her sex, the very thing which led to his excommunication, pulled him out of his depression. She was always open, waiting for him. She felt that way again. She was worried now. Worried, but still very wet. The chores were done and the kids were either napping or not yet home from school. She nestled into their bed and reached for the oversized dildo in her nightstand drawer. Its size, even for her, was a challenge. It was an industrial looking thing with no pretense of an attempt at looking like a real cock. It was smooth, impossibly wide, endlessly long, and black as darkest night. Her muscles loosened slowly to engulf it.

He went to unlock his door. It wasn’t locked. He never left it unlocked. He warily swung it open, his lead-loaded maple cane at the ready. The room was ransacked. Not a drawer left in place, pictures thrown off walls, table and desk upturned. His hot plate hung off the counter, suspended by a frayed cord. A chill ran through him. His hackles rose. He raced as fast as he could, fueled on his usual aspirin and Tiger Balm, to the sanctuary. The heart of the church. Of the Mission. He ran to it like a worried mother checking on her threatened child. Later, he’d be surprised by this reaction.

At first glance all seemed fine. Eerily so. It was reminiscent of the feeling he had at the bunk of the dead homeless man in the dorm the night before. The proverbial too quiet.

Then he saw it. The plain wooden cross hung upside down over the altar. Frank trembled as he reached to correct it. He turned it over to see how to rehang it. He then saw the intended message. On the back of the cross were the hand scrawled words, “Another dead. You find me.” He knew in a horrified blink that the detective with shrewd eyes and sharpened features of a cheese grater, was dead.

Two men dead in two days.

Frank spun on his heels as if commanded by some unseen drill sergeant and saw him there. Propped up unnaturally in a pew. His shirt and pants bathed in blood. His eyes heavenward and blank.

Two men dead in two days.

Both right under Frank’s nose.

The cross made a horrible sound that hung heavy in the air as it slammed into the wall. Breaking into the obvious two pieces upon impact.

“Frank.” Smiled Captain Tompkins nervously, a bit more than a bit agitated. “You hear anything I said? Where the fuck are you?”

Frank was holding his hamburger deluxe in one hand, its ketchup trailing off into his palm. In the other hand, rested the cold of a plastic tumbler of coke. He was not, however, eating or drinking. Where the fuck am I, he thought. Recognizing a good question when he heard it. “Two men dead in two days.” He blurted.

“Did you see any of the guys who tried to do you in?”

“Nope. I just swung.”

“Good thing you had Jesus on your side.”

“Sometimes I’d rather him be elsewhere.” Frank said before realizing they were referring to two different men named Jesus. Occasionally he longed to be a piece of shit. Uncaring and amoral. He was not. He blamed Jesus for that. Both of them.

“I gotta get back to the station. You okay, Frank?”

“I’ll live. Praise Jesus.” A smile chiseled its way back. With it came a sparkle to his clear blue eyes.

“I’ll have my boys look after the Mission tonight. Get rest.”

“Like a baby—“

“I know, I know. Pissing yourself and crying.” Tompkins tossed a twenty onto the counter. Frank waited for him to head out, then took it and replaced it with a ten. He was ten up. He took out his phone and dialed Marty.

“What’s good today, Marty?”

“Same as yesterday, young man. Two holes and a heartbeat.”

“They’ll name those poor dogs anything these days.”

Back at Frank’s room, Jesus began to look around. He had found small blood splatters, four of them, one in every corner of the room. He crossed himself in the remaining presence of evil. Shel whined. He needed to shit.

“Look, tell me what I should do with this ten I have. It’s found money. That’s lucky money.” Wise cracked Frank, feeling a bit looser.

There was silence. “Marty?”

“You find me.” Said the voice in a low whisper.

Frank Ryan Mysteries #1

Frank Ryan felt like the dumbest man alive. He was a broken down old fool. He felt the wood on his cane give until the vibration hit its lead core. The thug fell like a sack of potatoes. Then another thug’s skull was split. Then he felt the barrel of a gun in his back. Frank prayed, “Lord Jesus Christ…” And the gun fell away.

Jesus spoke to him. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Tonto?” He said in heavy Spanglish. Different Jesus—Jesus Guadalupe Guerrero. Frank knew he meant “Tonto” in the Mexican, not Lone Ranger sense. Frank was thankful just the same. Only he couldn’t use this as readily in his next sermon.

“Fuckin’ Frank called in another longshot!” Marty Murphy told the clouds or maybe the sky in general over the dog track. “Third 15-1 winner this week!” The dog was led off back to the kennel with an undeniable pep in its step. They always knew when they done good, thought Marty. He switched thoughts back to Frank Ryan, the lucky son of a bitch. Least he could do was get to the damned track more often.

Jesus led Frank back to the church van and they piled in. Frank turned it over and they pulled out into the dusk.

“They gonna follow us?” Jesus asked.

“I’m not even sure who they are.”

“You suck at this Frank.”

A smile etched its way into Frank’s greying stubble. Jesus knew better than that. He was just shaken up. With good reason. If he had appeared a second later, Frank would be surrounded by chalk right now. Or in a few minutes from now.

“I wish you wouldn’t freak me the hell out like that, Frank.” Jesus said as he crossed himself.

Captain Roger Tompkins sat behind his desk, staring, hands clasped at the phone. Two men were dead and there were no leads. Worse, the murderer had already singled out Frank. A good man. A man he considered a friend. A man who spent his life servicing the least privileged people of the area through his work at The Mission. The Phone rang. It was Frank. Roger could hear Jesus’s frantic Spanglish in the background.

“I was a dumbass, Captain Tompkins.” Roger could hear the twinkle in his eyes.

“Where you at, Frank?”

“Belmont. Just passed Third.”

“Headed here?”

“No. To our spot. Can you send an escort?”

Tompkins slammed down the receiver and jolted out the door, shouting instructions to the plain clothes as he ran by.

No one was following Frank regardless of Jesus’s paranoid spottings. The second piece of good news was that a hamburger deluxe with fries was only four fifty on special. Frank looked at Roger. If Frank had a son, he just knew, Roger would arrest him.

Jesus opted to drive the Mission’s van back there, instead of having a sit down with Frank and Los Tamarindos. He liked this Captain Tompkins enough…from a safe distance. Plus, he figured Frank hadn’t fed Shel before going off on his near ill-fated escapade.

The stairs leading up to Frank’s room were too narrow even for Jesus’s five foot three and three inch sized feet. Steep, too. Jesus looked for reasons to visit Frank’s room, truth be told. It reinforced his love of the man. A small bed. Desk. Table and chair. A hot plate and refrigerator in the corner. A sink. A toilet. A simple man. A simple man serving others. Just what Jesus was looking for after being excommunicated from the Catholic Church years ago.

The door was locked. Jesus, as the mission handyman (not to mention former resident) had the key. He let himself in as Shel barked a welcoming tone. The dog greeted him with the solemn knowing eyes of a hound and the graceful power of a sight hound—and also the limp of his advanced age. The greyhound’s eyes led Jesus’s gaze to the window. It was wide open, its thin and frayed blue gingham curtain blowing ominously. Someone had been here, thought Jesus.

Shelbourne the Miller’s knowing eyes told him he was right.