The Education of a Bookworm

 
 

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Saturday

August 7, 2010

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Tony Downing’s

fiction blog presents:

 

A Joe Downing Mystery Story

 

 
 

The Education

of a

Bookworm

 
 

the following is fiction:

One Saturday morning I was coming out my apartment building, on my way to the grocery store (or something similarly scintillating). I didn’t have a case at the time, so I was pretty relaxed. Anyway, as I walked over to the curb to the Corvette, a guy I had never seen before lifted his head up from under the hood of his car. This car was parked at the curb, and was an old gray wreck of a thing, pretty hopeless looking, and it had been on the street in the same spot for days. It seemed like a 1970′s model, long and wide and low and confident. Primer spots all over it. I had concluded earlier that it’d been abandoned and would be picked up eventually by the powers that be.

The guy was tall and scruffy, wearing gray Dickies workpants, a dingy white tank top, and old sneakers of some sort that I didn’t really notice. He was about late-twenties in age, pushing thirty. As he lifted his head up to look at me, he bumped his head painfully against the inner surface of the open hood of the car, but smiled self-deprecatingly and rubbed the place on his scalp where the impact had been. He continued to look at me and smile amiably.

To be sure, his look was somewhat imploring. He appeared as if he was in a jam concerning the car, and needed somebody to pinch hit a little bit. I was just like a deer in the headlights, just kinda staring neutrally at him. He was inclined forward from the waist, over the engine, as he lifted his chin at me in both greeting and wordless supplication. I was annoyed at the interruption, but there was still an aura about him, he was a true vortex: he was a real homie, and I was just a whiteboy. I could prove my street cred to myself by talking with him.

He waited patiently, still looking, as I stood there deciding. The neighborhood was quiet right now, no activity whatsoever. No cars roared by, only inches from you, as they would tonight when we started flying. The luxurious trees hung over the sidewalk a bit here and there, what few of them there were. The ancient asphalt of the narrow lane was pretty maxed-out by now from neglect, practically white where it had once been sable black. The temperature even now promised it would be a hellish scorcher of an afternoon, even now at about 9am. 

Well, I knew that he had chosen me exactly because I was a whiteboy in search of confirmation. He knew that about me. He wouldn’t have bothered with anyone else. Others would have been too confident in themselves to respond. But I liked adventure, on the other hand, you know, that part about curiosity killing the cat, and I had become accustomed to it, not to say addicted, through my business as a private sleuth. I pondered on the spot. The air was still as could be, sorta encouraging me to say yes. No sound or breeze stirred the hot waves of heat beginning to rise up from the street surface. Nothing told me not to do it except common sense. Lacking that in spades, I walked over to him to see what was up.

 
 

…..to be continued….

 
 

 
 

  

Don’t Ask a Sinner about God

     
 

Thursday

June 24, 2010

     
 

A Joe Downing Mystery

the following is fiction:

     
 

Don’t Ask a Sinner about God

     
 

Part One:

That morning I was coming out of my apartment building down the steps into the street. I had taken a job recently at Hal’s 24/7 Burger Teepee as a dishwasher to help with paying the bills, and I was on my way to Rancho Verde for that purpose. It was 5:30am and autumn, so it wasn’t very light out yet. As I crossed the quiet, sleepy, residential street in Gorge over to my car parked at the curb, two men on 10-speed bicycles happened to be tooling by together. I had never seen them before in six-years-plus in this neighborhood. Well, sirs, how do you do, on your way to work, too? Or just leaving it? I noticed that one of them had one hand on the handlebars of a riderless second bike he was steering awkwardly, so there were three bikes in all.

As I passed in front of them, about 30 feet away, the man with the second bike in tow bore down on me hard as I looked over at him and crossed. He was trying to run me down, distract me, so I wouldn’t look at or remember his face. He clearly pumped-up his pedaling and ramped-up his speed so as to make me scatter, fast. It worked. I scooted out of the way spontaneously, as the complement of three bikes and two men whizzed by. They traveled at a good clip now after the more leisurely pace of before. I looked after them, astonished. All this took place without a word in the heavy predawn silence and gloom. All I heard was the gears of the bikes and the hum of the tires.

     
 

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A few minutes later, at work, I clocked-in at the computer and got to work on the dishes. The bright lights were pleasant. Not many customers yet. The waitresses cleared the dishes and scraped them off into a trash can, then put them in tubs for me. Not rocket science. I carried the heavy tubs to my sink ten steps away. First I had to spray them off, put them in rows in a little cubicle dishwasher up on the counter level, and then close the door and activate the dishwasher magic. The latter took about ten seconds. Lots of time for reflection. So, who were those fuckers? Were they stealing that bike? If so, did I know the kid who was victim? Homie-on-homie crime always held a fascination for me as a whiteboy, somehow, as if maybe they just do it to anybody, and not necessarily just to me. I leaned over my dishes with a bowed back.

I had a troubled conscience. I had done nothing. All I had done was save my own skin, and that at considerable cost to my pride. I kept going over the incident obsessively in my mind, employing different alternative scenarios as to what I could have done different. The one I kept coming back to was the one where I just stopped in my tracks in the middle of the street and let them do their worst. What would they have done? Run into me? Probably not – they would’ve tumbled, too. I could’ve pushed them if they had chosen that. They most likely would have taken some evasive action and cursed me. Maybe they would have stopped, maybe not. What would I have done at that crisis point? It’s all a moot point now…..

“Joe, angel, could you get change for me at the pay station? I’m sorry to bother you.” My dark ruminations were abruptly cut short by a most agreeable blonde intruder. It was Brandi. I’m not sure if she was in a relationship or not, but lucky guy, if so. She was, of course, one of the waitresses, and she had a bunch of 20′s in her hands that it was my job to turn into 1′s, 5′s, and 10′s. Would that I could turn them into Benjamins, though, and take her away to the sunny islands of paradise somewhere with no ill-mannered customers or dirty dishes. But she’ll probably end up with some heart-of-ice asshole who voted for the Brave New World. I’ll get left in the lurch, the way I’m going.

“Sure, Brandi,” I gushed, my heart hammering nervously against my chest. I reached out with shaking hands to receive the proffered bills. She smiled so benevolently at me she seemed the wisest soul in the universe, and her calm demeanor touched me. Her blonde hair was pulled back for work, revealing her face fully. So different from the man who wanted to run me down. I think the women who don’t have pretensions to greatness are sweeter and more significant. I just happen to like them better. They’re more like me.

“Thanks, Joe,” she whispered.

“No problem, Brandi,” I replied awkwardly. I proceeded then to the little shop, still on the same lot, which took care of the gas payments. Both the restaurant and gas station were owned by the same dumb lazy codger. The most difficult thing he did all day was waddle into the restaurant from the office to get his next meal. I had a slip of paper with Brandi’s instructions for the cashier (when he got around to it, that is). While I was waiting, I poked around the potato chips and stuff. On the counter over to the side, the cashier guy had left a crossword puzzle still a’building from the Los Angeles Times newspaper. 23 Down, kids: a six letter word, beginning with “C,” for an actor whose first name was: “Noel.” Could it be: “Coward?” Shit! The universe is after me! It knows! I returned to the restaurant and gave Brandi the change, no Benjamins.

     
 

…..to be continued…..