October | 2014 | THRILLS, KILLS 'n' CHAOS

Monthly Archives: October 2014

October 18, 2014 · 12:46 pm

Nice Jewish Boy by Paul Greenberg

I seemed to have found a niche, I thought, as I worked the lobby of the Marriot. The affair in the ballroom was the Bat Mitzvah of Ms. Jennifer Sandler of Springfield, Massachusetts. It didn’t take long to spot a mark walking towards the bar.

5’3, jet-black hair, curvy. A tiny black dress with a string of pearls around her neck, a yellow and white Bvlgari snake watch, crawling up her right wrist, estimated value, about twenty grand, rings, but no wedding ring. Too bad.

When I got to the bar she was ordering a Tanquery and tonic. I ordered myself a JB on the rocks. “Jewish Booze,” she commented. “Drink up, it’s open bar.” She gave me the big eye, admiring my Brooks Brothers suit, navy with blue and white bead stripe, white shirt, tie and shoes, hesitating ever so briefly on my 18K yellow President Rolex with the diamond dial. I could see the calculator in her brain working, estimating its value. About twelve grand, by the way. Now I knew what I was up against.

She tossed back her drink and headed in the direction of the rest rooms, looking over her shoulder to make sure that I was following her. Her foot was holding the door to the ladies room open when I got there, so I went it.

“Lock it,” she said. I did as I was told. She was against the wall pulling up her dress and moving her panties aside.

“Fuck me,” she said. So I unzipped and banged her against the tile walls.

After we were done, she told me her name was Molly Gold, and asked me mine. “Bill Stein,” I said, as I washed up at the sink.

I watched her as she fumbled in her handbag, pulling out a barrette at the same time separating a box cutter from the rest of the crap in there. Looking in the mirror, she pulled her hair into a bun while I moved in back of her and kissed her neck. She pushed her ass against me.

“Come on. I’ll introduce you. My friends will be so glad that I found a nice Jewish boy.”

“There’s only one problem,” I whispered into her ear. “I’m not nice.” I tightened my arms around her neck and twisted sharply to the left. There was that sickening snap. Her head slumped. Then done. Christ, I thought. I hate when women pigeonhole me.

I dropped her like a hot knish, grabbing the pearl necklace, the Bvlgari and the rings. I looked in her handbag and picked out the box cutter. Primitive, but effective, I thought and tossed it in the direction of the toilet.

I peeked outside the door. The party was in full swing in the main ballroom. I took off for the exit in the opposite direction.

When I got to my BMW, I consulted the local newspapers that I had purchased that morning. I could still make the 4:00 pm in Holyoke. After that I could hop on Route 391 to Interstate 91, work Connecticut and then straight into Bergen County.

It was late March and spring was in the air. A beautiful time for a wedding, I thought.

Paul Greenberg’s crime fiction can be read at Out of the Gutter, All Due Respect and Shotgun Honey. He lives in Beverly, Massachusetts with his wife Sandy and two sons. http://pgreenbergcrime.wordpress.com/

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October 15, 2014 · 7:38 pm

One Fingertip by Peter DiChellis

Hey. You ever hear about me? I’m a murder victim. A dead man. I’m a murderer too. What else am I? A wealthy liar and a brazen thief. All that.

Want to know what happened? I can’t spill everything. Because you might whisper my wicked secret to your best friend or yap about it on Facebook or goddamn tweet it or something. And I can’t let you do that. I will share a tiny morsel of my story, though. Just one sweet taste. And only for you.

I used to work in the money-cleaning business. Drug dealers in the Brooklyn mob paid me to turn their dope money legitimate. Make it untraceable. I had a business partner, a former Bahamian banker who lived uptown. Then one day he told me he decided to hold onto some of the money we’d cleaned. Said he needed time to think.

But here’s the thing. In the money-cleaning business nobody needs time to think. You just need to move the fucking merchandise and keep your mouth shut. So when people hold onto money and say they need time to think, I get nervous. And that’s why I did what had to be done.

The cops got an anonymous call about a suspicious odor coming from my apartment. I used an old pay phone in another state to make the call. Wiped my prints from the coins first. Wore gloves. Told the cops the putrid smell in the apartment must be a couple of dead rats who should have known better. That’s why the stink reached all the way to another area code, I said.

I didn’t leave much evidence in the apartment. My blood-smeared bathtub, of course, scarred with deep cuts in the sides and on the bottom. From the ax and the meat cleaver. Some of the blood was mine, but most was my business partner’s. All the bone chips and specks of soft tissue were his. I also left behind half a pack of heavy-duty trash bags, with no prints. I didn’t need to use the whole pack because my business partner wasn’t an especially large man.

And in the bathtub drain, I laid the tip of one of my fingers, hacked off at the top joint. Soon enough, some CSI genius used that one fingertip, the only body part they’ll ever find, to identify me as one of the victims, not the killer. By now you probably guessed the cops had my prints on file, so my fingertip made it easy for them to ID me. I’ll bet you figured out I kept the cleaned dope money, too, though the cops don’t know anything about that.

Maybe I told you too much already, but let me tell you one more thing. Just so we have a clear understanding between us. Next time you’re out somewhere, in a bar or coffee shop or anywhere really, maybe you’ll see a man with one fingertip missing. It might be me. Don’t stare. And don’t reach for your phone. When people stare and reach for a phone, I get nervous. And then I do whatever has to be done.

You understand, right?

Peter DiChellis writes short mystery and suspense fiction. His sinister tales appear at Over My Dead Body!, Shotgun Honey, YELLOW MAMA, and other popular online ezines, and in the mystery anthologies The Shamus Sampler (Volumes I and II) andPlan B Volume III. Peter is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. For more, visit his site Murder and Fries athttp://murderandfries.wordpress.com/