The Black Rose (Joe Dylan Crime Noir, #4) Read online

  THE

  BLACK

  ROSE

  James A. Newman

  Copyright James A. Newman

  Published by Spanking Pulp Press

  2014

  ISBN 13 – 978-1500226626

  ISBN 10 - 1500226629

  Copyright – James A. Newman

  1 3 4 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  This first electronic edition published by Spanking Pulp Press. www.spankingpulppress.com

  Quotes may be used for the purpose of reviews.

  This is a work of fiction set in a fictional world. No characters or places in this book are intended to have any resemblance to any person living or dead or any place.

  JOE DYLAN

  CRIME NOIR BOOK #4

  The series:

  Bangkok Express #1

  Red Night Zone #2

  The White Flamingo #3

  The Black Rose #4

  Fun City Punch #5

  To grab a free book and learn more about the author and the series click the graphic below.

  www.spankingpulppress.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Black Rose (Joe Dylan Crime Noir, #4)

  THE MILK BAR

  Bill Morgan | International Ghost Hunter | Tel 07959 896578 www.spiritworld.org

  JOE DYLAN | INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

  FORTY

  M. Taylor

  PART TWO

  Bill Morgan | International Ghost Hunter | Tel 07959 896578 www.spiritworld.org

  Suicide is such a wonderful bird of flight, soaring, looking on down those who chose looking for profit. Not to. The jump, the pill, nobody there to pull you back. Plenty there to profit.

  M. Taylor.

  www.spankingpulppress.com

  Neptune in Leather | Nightmares and Dreams

  Sign up for James Newman's Mailing List

  WORDS on the JOE DYLAN series.

  "JAMES NEWMAN writes with a flamethrower. He's terrifically gifted, enormously energetic, and in THE WHITE FLAMINGO he builds up, layer by layer, like lacquer, the everyday reality of FUN CITY with such intensity that he creates a nightmare town so terrible that even the advent of a modern-day Jack the Ripper can only make it a tiny bit worse. Newman has serious talent, devoted (in this case, anyway) almost entirely to the noir side of life in a city that has more than its share of noir."

  - Edgar nominee Timothy Hallinan

  “TAKE THE Matrix red pill and then follow his detective into a world of conman, cheaters, schemers, wanderers, and the lost who scramble over women, money, and status. Newman translates their voices, failures, nightmares, and movements. He covers their community and transcript their stories into prose that matches the tempo of their hatred and madness.”

  - Christopher G. Moore, Shamus prize winner and author of the Vincent Calvino series.

  "HARD-BOILED pulp fiction pumped up to the max. A lethal cocktail of graphic violence, booze, drugs and sex. It’s bright lights and dark shadows and it’s certainly not for the fainthearted."

  - Paul Brazill - crime noir author.

  “NEWMAN JOINS more established writers such as Christopher G. Moore and John Burdett in an exploration of the garish netherworld of private eyes, prostitutes, pimps, gangsters, cops and dirty tricks.” -Tom Vater, crime writer and publisher with Crime Wave Press.

  “IN THE 1950's Raymond Chandler gave pulp readers Philip Marlowe. JAMES NEWMAN gives us a private investigator for our generation, Joe Dylan.”

  - Ish Galvan author of Splatter Island.

  PRETEND THAT WE’RE DEAD

  now

  IT’S DIFFICULT to say how one situation leads to another.

  Just try to follow me through this thing.

  And if you can’t – it weren’t meant for you.

  Deal?

  No deal?

  Screw it.

  What do I care?

  Go drink your orange juice and hit the gym...

  This thing happens with or without you.

  Never liked U2.

  One minute I’m negotiating a deal... Negotiating? Nah – sealing the transaction. What deal? Three kilos of MDMA. They call it powder but it’s more like a rock. Well, three rocks, tic, tac tock.... Rocks the size of breeze blocks. The type of gear that you only need a tiny pinch of, bomb it in a rizla paper, swallow it, smoke it, eat it or shove it up your Harris and let the good times roll. Makes you wonder how long you’ve known the person sitting next to you. You tell that same geezer you love them like your own; you don’t love them; you met twelve minutes ago in the urinals then you nip into the coke cubicles for a swift livener and you can’t help notice back at the urinal that his Johnson was shorter than your grandmother’s thimble. You know, the one with the engraving of George the Fifth? But, hear me out. This is why the banking system broke down and we both know it. I mean, I don’t even have a grandmother let alone a grandmother with a thimble.

  The world’s full of money-hungry monsters in pinstripe suits and birds in tanning salons...

  ....and the rest are just trying to get there.

  But this?

  This was my shot at the big time.

  We’re talking good merchandise here. E for grown-ups. Made in a basement of a coffee shop in Amsterdam where track-suited chavs smoke spliff and consider semi-skilled employment. Drug running mules (mugs for the most part), but for every shipment that makes it over you’re looking at a nice little tickle... Shipped over on a speed boat this gear is gold. What all the clubbers want to get their dirty little mitts on.

  Ya kna wha ’m sayin?

  Maybe not as memorable as the Adam and Eve’s back in the nineties but a notch up on Dennis the Menace and the speckled doves. The client wants the pure chemical; the MDMA.

  Good gear, top shelf.

  Set up the meet at this disused railway archway, an old mechanics shop, dilapidated and abandoned like your drunken uncle, the one who talks to himself while watching the tube and cracking open can after can of super strength lager complaining about the advertisement breaks and how they disturb the flow of ‘is favorite show... Cigarette burning down in the ashtray oblivious to its semi-comatose once owner; unaware of himself, dying, dead, gone, dusted...

  This warehouse like something out of Reservoir Dogs, – waiting for the man, not Lou, this mush is named Edward Case. Known to his close friends as Ed. Never liked the Case much, but he is, to his credit, knowing of the street and knocks out retail. That’s not all Ed Case knocks out. Good in a scrap, carries around a tube of superglue for use in emergencies. Draw a line across the open wound real precise like and closes the skin together, real slow, tasty, you should see it. Wait for it to stick. Well Ed gets stuck to a lot of things. Cigarettes, booze, day-time shows. Sure. Takes to MDMA like a priest to a choir boy before tickling the cherub’s fragile ego. That’s his role; to test the gear, make sure it’s the real deal and then set up the retail chains. Met him back at the site so it should be like we’re brothers, but brothers drift apart.

  Kna wha I’m sayin?

  Geezer arrives with the merchandize and lays it on an old workman’s bench like a bag of groceries on a supermarket till. He’s a moody bastard but, like traffic wardens, most dealers are. Paranoia comes with the territory. Walking the street looking out for the vulnerable. Eyes furtive surveying the perimeter for an upset client, unsupported mother, rival gang member. Un
wraps it from a few layers of newspaper and there it is.

  Three huge amber colored rocks.

  Beautiful.

  Ed Case arrives.

  E’s the tester.

  Ed’s boat race (face) a wondrous battlefield of conflicts and wars, some won, most lost, many abandoned like a half a donner kebab in a drunken alley somewhere south of Bermondsy. Skinny as a whippet, nine and a half stone wet, dangerous when cornered or when the wrong word be spoketh by a sharp-suited fag with more lettuce than sense. Ed’s eyes on the finish line no interest in the scenic route. He nods hello to me and the dealer and sizes up the gear, chips off some and wraps it in rizla paper, swallows, face like a gargoyle, wait, wait, wait. Time takes forever. Twenty minutes. I chat with the dealer about football; we support different teams, well, they wear the same colors and perform well on the stands.

  Him: Chelsea.

  Me: Millwall.

  Both swung punches at different parks many moons ago but the game is the same for us now.

  Then it happens.

  Ed’s eyes light up like a pinball machine and we know we’ve hit the jackpot. Edward is starting to touch the walls, his long tongue pointing outward like an acid struck gecko on a psychedelic lampshade.

  Hand over the fifty thousand pounds in bundles of fifties inside a green weekend travel bag. The dealer geezer, a chav, about thirty with a ratty pony tail checks the cash with one of those pens you use to check dough and he grins satisfied.

  We light a spliff to seal the deal.

  And then Wham!

  I’m not talking George Michael here.

  Third party rocks the boat and shit – look at them. Three of them – big bastards spend their days in the gym and taking the kinda drugs that make your dick shrivel up faster than a gram of Lou Reed.

  R.I.P.

  “Hand over the merchandise and the cash, Jimmy!” one of the meatheads shouts and follows it up with a comment about maternal incest.

  “Screw you,” I replied.

  I realized originality was not my ace card as meathead number two pulled out a shooter.

  Pulled the trigger.

  Shit.

  Wham!

  Andrew fucking Ridgley.

  Crash!

  Shot in the leg. No-neck steroid injecting beef cake, mother and father issues and a baby daughter who licks out the mixing bowel while daddy knee caps dicks like me. Sawn off shot gun – thought they’d gone out of fashion.

  Obviously not.

  Hear another report – doesn’t hit the wall.

  Hits the chav with the pony-tail and the dealer hits the dirt and stews in his own stomach acid. “I’ve got three kids,” he shouts out.

  Last thing he says.

  The meathead fires another one in the dealer’s neck and its goodnight Vienna for the dealer with the little ones back at home.

  Shot in the leg, I go down. Stay down.

  Pretend I’m dead.

  L7 – You ever heard them?

  Slug hurts like buggery, drugs spilled.

  I hear the meatheads speaking.

  Basic instructions:

  Get the cash.

  Get the gear.

  Get the fuck out of Dodge.

  It takes everything I’ve got to keep still in the pool of claret that’s gushing from my thigh.

  No sign of Ed. Nutter has split the scene, probably set the fucking thing up.

  Slip out of conscious.

  Slip, slip, slide.

  Never did like Edward Case. Brother or no.

  FALL IN A RIVER

  then

  NOAH WATCHED the woman and the baby drowning from the edge of the canal.

  It was his place.

  The place where he often stopped to drink a can of Special Brew and watch the swans and the geese paddle by minding their own bird-brained business. The feverish compartments of Noah’s mind could be compared to a flock of starlings that took to the sky, twirling like bats, and then rested in dull suburban slums, rooftops, graveyards, the shed by the old canal. Wastelands behind the caravan site developed as the years fluttered by. Vegetable plots and fruit trees some unattended, some carefully maintained; what were once wastelands now bore food. Who owned them he did not know nor care, the local people were too afraid to interfere.

  Noah sometimes drank in the bird-watching hides of Sevenoaks , cider, super strength lager the flash of blue as a kingfisher, or blueflash as he called them, dove, a tiny silver fish in her bill. Not having studied ornithology nor being able to read, and being somewhat of a loner Noah made up his own names for the birds. So a Heron was a Man-on-stilts, a robin was a firechest, blackbird a night-ghost and so on.

  He envied the freedom of the water birds. Some migrated and others didn’t. This fascinated Noah – why some should travel thousands of miles, asleep on the wing, and others simply stuck to their roots. A few dullish mallards (grey-greens), coots (soots), and moorhens (red-mouthed soots), the odd Mandarin duck (regal-paddlers) bobbing up and down did little to quicken his heartbeat. This wasn’t the courtship ritual of the great crested grebes (lady-catchers.) Those male birds sank into the canal and resurfaced offering a string of weed for its potential mate. Nature was rarely romantic and often cruel. Noah poached them when times were hard, which they often were. Noah ate the roasted water fowl humming their given names as he did so. Noah had travelled.

  Gypsies do.

  The baby and the woman drowning.

  Should he do something?

  Not being able to swim was a certain disadvantage.

  Call for help?

  Gregos – non-gypsies didn’t help.

  The bench where he sat bore the impression where a brass plaque once proudly displayed the name of some good soul who had no doubt helped the community; a teacher, or a politician, or some ordinary Joe that had saved a woman and a baby drowning from a canal. The plaque had been removed by an opportunist toe-rag. Noah wasn’t a stranger to the odd liberation of salable metals, yet a name-plaque on a park bench. Whatever next? He wasn’t that bad a man. No he wasn’t the worse man in the world. It helped him to think about his comparative integrity: the nest of snakes inside his head recoiled from one another and simply stood, raised on their tails spitting venom, a strange version of peace yet the best the day had to offer. He wasn’t a bad man; for this day would be different.

  The day that would change his life.

  Across the canal, his one good eye had first caught the image of the rich woman, a woman who lived in one of the houseboats that the rich folk lived in, standing with the pram. She would never look at him, nor stare at his long greasy hair, dirty jeans. The shirt had seen its last wash six months back, she was a million miles away, yet, yards across the water, and she had held that baby in a pram, she smoked a cigarette and seemed to just stare off into the distance. What was she looking at, dreaming about, he couldn’t be sure, yet sensed it as something untouchable, intangible transgressions best left alone. It wasn’t him. He wasn’t there.

  She could not see him.

  Noah recognized her as a drinker – something about the way she held that pram, the way it loosened from her grip and rolled towards the canal, the pram, buggy, baby, fell into the water.

  Splash!

  The baby floated for some time and then sank. The mother made a sound like Noah had heard no other woman make – a deep gurgling animal sound that hit you deep inside; she stepped to the edge of the canal and jumped into the cold waters.

  Another splash.

  Noah watched her struggle and surface three or four times before she went under for a period of minutes. He finished his can of beer, draining the final contents, as the woman took her last lung full of water.

  Both full.

  Finished.

  He turned then felt something tugging on his jean leg, a small hand attached to a small arm, the baby had learned to swim; survival instinct, thought Noah. More of them should have it. The baby had chosen to live. What a remarkable day! He crouched down an
d looked at the boy. His cheeks were pink with the cold water; he had a long pronounced nose, almost like one of his Roman wandering kind. The boy smiled at him. He wore a blue shirt and a pair of baby GAP jeans, a silver necklace, a saint Christopher symbol bore an inscription.

  JIMMY

  “Well, Sar san Sastimos Jimmy, Chavo. Aren’t you one of the luckiest little mother-dies that ever fell inta the chicken soup, just wait till they cop a look at youse back at the camp. You’re a dew drop, a blessing, mother die; we’ll take care of youse like.”

  Noah picked up the baby and took the little one back to the settlement. The necklace he removed and pocketed with a view to a visit to the pawnshop.

  Neither he nor any of the other gypsies would read the story in the newspaper:

  The Tonbridge Chronicle – October 15th 1995

  Early on Tuesday morning a Mrs. Faith Taylor and her son Jimmy drowned in the Tonbridge canal. The pair were reported missing by the father and husband, a well renowned author and former psychiatrist who had written the famous Boy in the Window bestseller. Kent County police following a door to door investigation discovered that the mother and son were seen walking along the canal the morning of the fifth. Divers discovered the pram and Mrs. Taylor’s body but the search continues for the body of the child, aged six months, who may have, according to local wardens, washed further downstream. The search for the child’s body continues. “He may have slipped through one of the sewage grates,” a local park warden suggested..

  THE GIFT

  then

  THE FIRST word I learned to say was mush.

  It’s a gypsy term that meant something like face, or brother, or mother, everyone and everything was mush. Mush. Mush. Mush. Actually it meant Man but was used more broadly. Noah called me little mush. We lived in a smallish caravan filled with useless junk. I slept on a camp-bed with springs that tore through the thin mattress and bit into exposed areas of flesh. I finally solved the problem by lining the bed with cardboard.. I would go outside and walk amongst the other caravans, play in the scrapyard with the other mushes. Everything in that site was broken. Broken trucks and cars, broken bicycles, broken prams, broken toys. Hopes, dreams, aspirations. Like magpies the travelers collected what caught the eye with little thought of any practical use. All that glitters is gold to a gypsy. One day, playing in the dirt outside an old woman’s caravan she opened the door and asked me to come inside.