City of Dark Corners by Jon Talton (novels to read .txt) 📗

front, this forest is almost untouched in 1918. Until now. The poilus are urging us to retreat back to the trenches, but we move ahead, fixing bayonets. Our job is to protect the Marines’ flank.

The darkness is giving way to daylight, but you’d never know it from the trees and low fog. The scent of decomposing bodies is everywhere. You never get used to it. Our skirmish line moves two hundred yards when we run head-on into the Huns.

I fire my rifle, but the bullet slithers out slowly from the barrel and falls to the ground. Then the German is upon me, and I am unable to get my bayonet in a position to repel him. He’s fast, but I’m impossibly slow. My buddy brings him down with a bayonet but then his face disappears into a mist of blood and I am alone. Artillery starts falling while I tremble uncontrollably.

Next we’re in dugout fighting positions, night has returned. I’m lying amid skulls and goo with rats running across me. The rats and lice bite. Our company dog goes on point; he’s been trained not to bark or even growl. When he goes on point, an attack is coming. Victoria is here, kitted out like any infantryman. She’s maybe ten yards away in a shell hole. I call to her, move toward her on my belly, working my elbows and legs to stay low, but when I get there she’s gone.

Back in the line, we wait. The dog growls now, but the field is strangely quiet. No artillery barrage. What if mustard gas is coming? I can’t find my gas mask. I grip my rifle. The word is quietly passed: Fix bayonets! But stormtroopers are already inside our perimeter, black eyes beneath coal-scuttle helmets. Two of them are upon me, and my bayonet has disappeared. He had a German war dog with him ready to pounce. I know I’m going to die…

* * *

When I woke up, sweat covered my body. As I got my bearings, I thanked God I was in my apartment. When I had these nightmares and Victoria was with me, she said I started making an eerie sound. It was my screaming and shouting in the dream, barely making it into the real world. She woke me with difficulty. Shaking and calling my name was no good. She finally realized the way to bring me around was to push hard against my body, rocking me awake. She was afraid I might come out fighting, but I never did. She was my saving angel.

But she wasn’t in the bed tonight. The moon streamed in through the window, and I pulled up the covers as the sweat quickly evaporated in the low humidity of the Phoenix night. That was when I heard a sound that might be mistaken for rodents in the walls. But this was a nearly new building. Someone was picking the lock to my front door.

Wearing only pajama bottoms, I put my feet on the cold floor and slipped the heavy M1911 Colt semiautomatic from its holster and thumbed back the hammer. The sound of the lockpick tools became more distinct, and I heard the front-door lock’s tumblers begin to turn.

Deciding to stay in the bedroom, I made myself one with the wall beside the open door, holding the cold steel of the pistol against my face, arm crooked. The front door quietly opened, then shut. A heavy tread came inside and moved toward me. Then a silhouette was inside the bedroom, and I brought the M1911’s barrel down to the silhouette’s temple.

“Move and I’ll blow your brains all over the room.”

I stepped back and pivoted to face him, keeping the pistol aimed. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and smelled of expensive cigars.

“Back out into the living room, very slowly. Keep facing me.”

He did as told. Now the ambient light was enough to reveal my visitor.

Gus Greenbaum smirked at me.

“I must be losing my touch.”

“Sit down, gangster.”

“You need to show some respect, Detective Hammons. What if I have some well-armed associates waiting right outside the door?”

“Then they’re going to find their boss on the floor without a head, and I’m going to kill them, too. Respect is earned, and maybe I’m the only guy in Phoenix who doesn’t get excited by your presence, but you’ll have to live with it. Or not.”

Greenbaum muttered something and sat on the sofa. He started to turn on the floor lamp, but I stopped him. I had night vision and had recently been in hand-to-hand combat with German stormtroopers.

We sat in silence until he started to reach inside his coat.

“Ah, ah, ah.” My finger was on the trigger.

He froze. “May I smoke?”

“Why not? But reach very slowly.”

He carefully removed a cigar from his coat pocket and bit off the end.

“If you spit that on my carpet, I’ll shoot you.”

He let it fall in his palm, dropped it in the ashtray, then lit the cigar with a match, a long circular motion until the tip was red as a smelter. As if my dream had foreshadowed this moment, Greenbaum looked at me like a rottweiler assessing how easily he could rip out my throat.

“What brings you to my humble lodgings, Mr. Greenbaum?”

“Gus,” he instructed. “May I call you Gene?”

I didn’t see why not.

“You have me all wrong, Gene. Your pal Barry Goldwater has a very active imagination. In reality, I’m a businessman, serving a need with the latest technology. You and Barry may imagine that I’m taking over this town with a Chicago typewriter, but that’s silly. Phoenix has welcomed me with open arms. Goldwater and Rosenzweig have opened doors. I’m welcome at the chamber of commerce. This is a great place for my new service’s Southwest operations.” He tapped his finger and an inch of spent cigar embers dropped into the ashtray. “All my relationships are transactional, see? The power of money will outdo the power of a Tommy gun any day.”

“You’re a pretty good lock picker.”

He smiled. “An old