Scott’s mouth opened and twitched without a single sound. His confused leers between his co-worker and recent lover in said co-worker’s jeep left him unaware of where to even start. “What… what the hell’s going on here?” Scott asked. “Son,” Bill started, “you’ve gotta stay calm.” “What’s happening?” “Listen, you don’t want to alert your little lady inside, alright.” “Bill?” “Tell her you’ve gotta step out real quick and h...

Day five was here, but three pounds of unsold product remained. Since the incidents in Mark’s apartment and after, barely any conversation occurred between step-daughter and step-father. Enough to indicate she needed to make drop-offs or to nightclubs for networking purposes, but that was it. Otherwise, Frankie’s frustrations with online gaming or Bill berating television and movie protagonists were the only words spoken....

The hinges holding their hideout’s door rattled as it flew open and rebounded. She stormed in, threw down two black gym bags filled with cash and kept it moving. “Ginger. Ginger!” her partner strolling behind with three more bags exclaimed. “What! What is it Mac?” “Talk to me. Come on,” Mac carried his bags to a chipped edge wooden table and rested them on the laminated surface. “What is there to talk about Mac?” she spun...

Detective Erica Vargas wore her gender like a uniform. She looked at the younger woman across the table. The faint gulp told as much as the perky yellow sweater with bright greek letters. Vargas's favorite tell was the makeup marred from a night in a cell. Detective Vargas judged the younger woman exhausted, in over her head, desperate, and tired. "Sarah?" Detective Vargas said. "You've had quite a night haven't you?" The...

 A work assignment had pulled Sai into going to a country that was starting to prosper but riddled with crime. The country that Sai was in led the world in murder rates and was a hotbed for all kinds of debauchery. Not trusting the drivers, Sai drove his own car which had malfunctioned in the middle of a road covered by forests. Hours had passed, the cellphone was not getting any reception, and so Sai decided to head into...

Wheels. I'm as choosy about wheels as women these days. Wasn't always that way. While I can drive pretty much anything with an engine, I've found I only truly enjoy that thunder beneath the hood. The rush when pedal meets floor, beating through every bone in my body. Something only the raw horsepower of a V8 delivers. And if it's a dependable American hunk with a short shift ratio and high-quality tires, all the better. M...

The fact of the matter was that Lenny was gone forever and there was no chance of him ever fucking a deal up again. I knew that and Ramon knew it and a handful of our handlers back east knew it, but most of the connected guys around town had no idea of who he was and how bad he had fucked up.I knew that I had better get off my ass and get up to Hollywood and talk turkey to the Hollywood madam about the circumstances of Le...

The whole rental business of the pleasure boats was in its own way a scam for the owners to get access to the guests' personal details. That allowed their customers to win the free chips for gambling that might send them to the tables in an unscheduled side trip to test the benign nature of lady luck. More often than not, they were hooked for the duration or until the money ran out, whichever came first in the fast-changi...

 My initial reaction to the newly assigned duties was a sense of disappointment. I had imagined being supervisor to a bevy of beautiful broads all begging me to service them after the curtain went down. Actually, it was a stroke of good luck that I was selected to be in charge of all the maritime activities sponsored by the casino. It helped me to focus more on the job and less on the available pussy surrounding me with t...

I suspected that Ramon knew how guilty I felt at throwing poor Lenny under the bus, but in the scheme of things, I don’t see how I had any other alternative. The big boys back on the East Coast were pissed off, the Russians were pissed off, and to make matters worse, the casino owners in Vegas were pissed off because Lenny was turning a spotlight on their less than legal activities behind the scenes.He had offended the va...

Our transition from Hollywood back to Sin City was smooth enough that it didn’t make any late edition headline or boring obituary entry in California, or in any rudderless rag back in Nevada. In these dangerous days of gangland warfare, no news was good news wherever we parked our asses when the Sun was doing a Houdini on the Pacific horizon.Ramon was heartbroken about splitting with his pretty-lipped Lesbian neighbor lad...

The scuttlebutt from the casino owner crowd was that henceforward Lenny Mazurka was no longer welcome inside the city limits of Las Vegas, Reno and even the more sedate Lake Tahoe gambling establishments. There was a sense of finality about the edict, despite the fact it was entirely verbal and not attributable to any single party. It was sort of like trying to trace back the original source of the Ten Commandments.Lenny...

I was a long way from the roach-infested tenement back in the Big Apple, sitting on my thirty-something ass in an always open waffle house just off the Las Vegas Strip. I was looking for the lo-cal blueberry syrup because my selection of well-pressed trousers was getting a mite tight around the waistline and I was starting to feel sluggish and slow in the early morning hours.Of course, nobody that lived in Vegas, includin...

I probably shouldn’t be writing anything out in public about my former best friend, Lenny Mazurka, but now that he is dead and buried, I can only say, What’s the problem?Lenny and I go way back.Back before his womanizing became a national scandal and images of his schlong were posted on billboards and sides of city buses like some sort of heretical endorsement of a hedonistic lifestyle. I had a good laugh right after the...

Until now, I'd never needed to watch my own house for signs of someone trying to kill me. How things change in the space of a few hours. I stared hard through the windshield, eyes watering between blinks, keeping low in the luxurious Recaros. My normally blood red Mustang glowed muddy orange beneath the sodium-vapor hue of a street lamp. A few hundred feet ahead of me, the suburban box I soon wouldn't be calling home stoo...