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  Sam smiled. “They eat their young in Hollywood, baby.” He then gave her a kiss.

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  GARY PHILLIPS has published various crime fictions in prose and comics such as Violent Spring, the first such mystery set in post ’92 civil unrest L.A. and edited the Anthony Award-winning The Obama Inheritance that Fresh Air noted is “…a collection of 15 stories so sly, fresh and Bizarro World witty, they reaffirm the resiliency of the artistic imagination.” His latest includes co-writing a prose adaptation of the classic Batman vs. Joker graphic novel, The Killing Joke.

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  BOOKS BY GARY PHILLIPS

  The Perpetrators

  Three the Hard Way

  As Editor

  Treacherous: Grifters, Ruffians and Killers

  Scoundrels: Tales of Greed, Murder and Financial Crimes

  The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir

  As co-Author

  The Killing Joke

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  Here is a preview from Lost in Middle America by Colin Conway, A Grifter’s Song Season One Episode 5.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  Edith Baker sat on a metal stool and leaned into the hardwood bar, her elbows resting on the brass rail. Her weary eyes studied the empty shot glass and unused lime in front of her. Her hair, once carefully braided into cornrows, had become unwound in multiple places, giving her a wild appearance.

  She was drinking at the 2-8-4, a bar named after the steam locomotive of the same number first built at the Lima Locomotive Works. On the walls hung pictures of similar engines and small paraphernalia related to railroads.

  From a distance, Edith’s red dress appeared beautiful. Up close, it told a different story. It had frayed along the edges and was threadbare on the shoulders. A couple of small rips had been sewn together at different points in time.

  One scuffed shoe dangled from a toe while the other lay discarded on the floor.

  The bartender approached her. Without waiting for the question, Edith tapped the hardwood next to her empty shot glass. Edith didn’t like the bartender due to her nose ring and sleeve tattoos. She reminded Edith of those punks from high school—the ones who thought they were better than her just because of their self-loathing and angst over the entitlement that came from their skin tone. The stupidity of it all, Edith thought as the bartender walked away with her glass. All that self-hate wouldn’t get them anything better in this life.

  A red-haired woman climbed onto the stool next to her. Edith’s eyes slid over to the newcomer and quickly appraised her. Mini-skirt business suit, hundred-dollar haircut, unchipped nails. Probably shares her bed with one man. Working-class bitch, she thought. Her lip curled, and she looked forward as the bartender set a new shot of tequila down. The bartender hadn’t bothered to change out the glass or bring a new lime, but Edith didn’t care. She grabbed the shot, eyed the redhead once more, then tossed the drink back.

  “What can I get you, red?” the bartender asked the newcomer. Her fake smile was crooked at best, bordering on a grimace.

  “I’ll take an old-fashioned,” she said.

  The bartender’s smile faded, and she turned to the back bar.

  Edith studied the redhead before saying, “That’s an old man’s drink.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Edith shrugged.

  The redhead sniffed, dismissively. “I had a crappy day and you call it an old man’s drink. Classic.”

  Edith turned her body to face the woman, placed her elbow on the rail, and rested her chin in her hand.

  “What?” the redhead asked, clearly irritated by Edith’s interest in her.

  “Did a man hit you today?”

  “No.”

  “Did another man do things to you that you didn’t want him to do?”

  The woman stared at Edith.

  “Did yet another man take your money and tell you that you didn’t do enough for him? That you need to go out and work some more?”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Why you sorry? That was yesterday. Maybe today will be better. Maybe it won’t. Can’t worry ’bout it till it happens, right? Why was your day so shitty?”

  The woman stared down at her hands. “It sounds stupid now.”

  The bartender came by and put the old-fashioned on the hardwood. Without looking, Edith tapped the bar next to the empty shot glass and the bartender retreated, leaving them alone.

  “I didn’t mean nothing by what I said,” Edith said. “I shouldn’ta stepped all over your day. Ain’t nobody deserves that kind of treatment. It was rude.”

  The redhead nodded, her eyes still down.

  “I’m Edith,” she said, extending her hand.

  The woman took her hand and smiled. “I’m Carrie.”

  Edith turned back towards the bar and the two women sat quietly for a couple moments until Carrie said, “Edith. You don’t hear that name much anymore.”

  Edith smiled. “Nah, nah, you don’t. It’s an old woman’s name, for sure. I was named after my great-grandmother on my mother’s side.”

  “It’s nice.”

  Edith shrugged. “It’s okay. Don’t mean much, though, as I never knew the woman. Din’t really like my grandmother or my mom so I’m glad I wasn’t named after either of them.”

  Carrie laughed and took a big pull from her drink.

  Edith raised her eyebrows. “Damn.”

  “I told you it was rough.”

  Edith’s eyes ran up and down Carrie. “What’s a lady like you got to be concerned about? Gotta go home and put out for your man?”

  The smile faded from Carrie’s face.

  “Shit, I did it again, din’t I?”

  Carrie shook her head. “It’s okay. My husband’s gone. Been a couple years now. There isn’t anyone to go home to.”

  “Is that why it’s rough? You’re missing him? There’s plenty of men out there, baby, trust me. Most of them ain’t worth spit, though.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Carrie said. “It’s work.”

  “Work? What work do you do?”

  Carrie studied Edith for a moment, then observed the other patrons in the bar. She waited to speak until after the bartender placed Edith’s latest shot. Edith pushed it back from where it sat, waiting to imbibe.

  “I’m not supposed to talk about what I do.”

  Edith smiled, conspiratorially. “Honey, none of us are supposed to talk about what we do.”

  Carrie glanced around again, before leaning in toward Edith. “I’m a federal auditor. I audit banks.”

  Edith looked back over her shoulder and out the window. National Union sat on the corner—one of the few remaining branches of the once proud bank. Years ago, National Union had been scattered throughout western Ohio along with Indiana, Michigan, and Kentucky. It had been one of the largest names in regional banking. Now, there were only five branches left in total and just a single one in Lima to serve its thirty-eight thousand citizens and the neighboring communities. The building was a relic from the architectural past of the 1960s.

  “Is something happening there?”

  “There were rumors. That’s why we were called in.”

  “Rumors of what?” Edith asked, wrapping her fingers around the shot glass.

  Carrie shook her head.

  “What, girl? You can tell me. We’re friends.” Edith lifted the drink to her lips and kicked it back. She frowned from the taste before smiling at Carrie.

  “Irregularities in the books.”

  Edith looked away for a moment, thinking. When she turned back to Carrie, she asked, “Ain’t it all done by computers now? I mean, how can there be irregularities? I thought money would be safe as shit in a place like that.”

  Carrie shrugged and took another large sip of her drink. “T
here’s ways to fix numbers on anything. You just need to know your way around a system.”

  “Is that what you do? Computers?”

  “No. I read numbers. They all balance but they don’t make sense, get it?”

  “Sort of,” Edith said, spinning the empty shot glass on the bar. “If that’s what you do for a living, why was it a bad day?”

  “Because what I found, if it’s true, means shutting down not only this branch, but the others as well. I don’t want to put anyone out of work. This town has already had it bad enough. Also, it means anybody who has money in there is going to have to deal with the government to get it out.”

  “Damn,” Edith said and looked back to the bank.

  Carrie swallowed the last of her drink and waved at the bartender to bring her one more. Edith continued to study the bank. When the bartender asked Edith if she wanted another, she waved her hand over the empty glass.

  Carrie noticed the look on Edith’s face and whispered, “You can’t tell anyone what I just told you.”

  Edith turned back to the bar, lost in thought.

  “I’m sorry for telling you that stuff. I should have kept my mouth shut,” Carrie said. “Do you know somebody that works there?”

  Edith shook her head.

  “Is that where you bank? Do you have money there?”

  “Nah,” she said, “I keep my cash in my purse.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  Edith’s eyes shifted to Carrie. “My man keeps his treasures in there.”

  “Treasures?” Carrie said with a smile. “You mean his money?”

  Edith shook her head. “No, I mean his treasures.”

  Robert “Bigs” Elmore had pushed himself into the corner of the booth. His gin and tonic had grown warm, but he continued to hold it in his large hand.

  They were at The Blarney in downtown Toledo, Ohio.

  Sam squeezed a lime over his drink before dropping it into his vodka tonic. “You lured me to Toledo, Bigs, so what’s the story?”

  Bigs studied the man across from him. He’d known Sam for more than a decade, when they first crossed paths in Philadelphia. They knew each other only professionally when they were coming up—Bigs ran girls and Sam ran cons. For a fee, Bigs would provide the occasional skirt for Sam. He didn’t need to know what Sam was doing and Sam never thought to tell him. They had an expert relationship and it suited both men fine.

  “I didn’t think you’d get my message,” Bigs said. “It’s been floating out there in the whisper-stream for some time.”

  “I heard you were looking for me a few months ago. I didn’t believe it until I heard it a second time.”

  Bigs lifted his glass and finished the remaining warm drink. “It wasn’t like I could call you on Verizon. The street had to do its thing. I figured if you showed, you showed. If you didn’t, it wasn’t meant to be.”

  Whenever Sam was in The Cradle of Liberty and needed a reliable girl, he called Bigs. There were never extra questions. When that pro came back, she would tell Bigs how Sam would have her act out a part and that was it. Usually no sex was involved with Sam’s mark, and the pay was always solid—more than any john would ever be worth. Bigs liked the relationship and the girls loved working with Sam, especially when he needed them out of town. He treated them as professionals and never took advantage of them.

  Bigs lifted his hand and signaled the waitress for another round. “Where did you pick up the scent?”

  Sam ran his finger over the rim of his glass. “Cleveland,” he said.

  “So Porter told ya, huh?”

  Sam’s eyes settled on the big man.

  “Relax, son. I ain’t prying. Just talking shop.”

  Sam didn’t answer right away. In the brief silence, Bigs recalled how times changed and soon Sam had stopped calling him. The tale was he met himself a girl and took his con to the next level. Then they got greedy. Word on the street, which after a time becomes gospel, is that Sam tried to con the mob. He hadn’t been seen in Pennsylvania since.

  “Talking shop, okay. How’s business?”

  “Not bad, not bad. Got a little bit of this going. Doing a little bit of that. You know the hustle.”

  Shortly after Sam fled Philadelphia, Bigs himself got popped for promoting prostitution and had a pocket full of the white lady when he went down. At the time, there was no reason he should have been accosted and the drugs that were found in his pocket weren’t his. He had been smart and played the game like the master pimp who had taught him. Someone had set Bigs up and ramrodded him into the correctional system. It wasn’t his first time in prison, but it was the first time his claims of being innocent were truly valid.

  The waitress delivered fresh drinks to both men. Bigs cradled his in his hands. Sam left the new drink untouched as he hadn’t bothered to sip from the first one.

  “You look tired, Bigs, and don’t tell me it’s from the life. You don’t have a stable anymore, I know that much.”

  Sadness flashed through the big man’s eyes. “You did some homework.”

  “Some.”

  Bigs sighed. “Pimpin’s a young man’s game.”

  “You’re not even forty, yet.”

  “That’s ancient for a pimp. Besides, the game passed me by while I was in the hole.”

  While incarcerated at State Correctional Institution in Albion, his pack of whores had been picked clean. At first, Rosie, his best girl—his bottom bitch—came every week to tell him she was keeping the other girls in line. That lasted only a few weeks. Then each week after that she gave him bad news that one more girl had run into the arms of another pimp. He kept hearing the same name again and again—Lobo.

  When Rosie stopped coming, he lost hope. He even tried to take his own life.

  “What are you really doing now,” Sam asked, “besides a bit of this and a little bit of that?”

  Bigs shrugged. “I do some outreach for a community program, trying to keep kids off the streets. It barely pays the bills and it sure don’t get me no respect. They call me Robert out there. Nobody calls me Bigs anymore. I’m just soft, ol’ Robert Elmore. No trouble for anyone. No woman needs to be with me. No man is afraid to cross me.”

  He shook his head and sipped his drink.

  “You put the word out for me to come here,” Sam said. “It made its way through the street so enough people still respect your name. That doesn’t sound soft and it doesn’t sound like you’re out of the game.”

  Bigs looked away with a murmured, “Thanks.” Uncomfortable with the moment, Bigs glanced around the bar before letting his eyes settle back on Sam.

  “What is it you want, Bigs?”

  When he was in Albion, Bigs used the long days to clean up, both physically and mentally. It was during that time he figured out who had set him up. Once he realized what had happened, how it occurred and who had mastered his downfall, he only had one focus.

  “I want revenge,” Bigs said. “I want to make the motherfucker who took everything from me pay.”

  Sam smiled before lifting the glass to his lips. After he sipped his drink, he said, “Now, that’s something we can work with.”

  Click here to learn more about Lost in Middle America by Colin Conway.

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  Here is a preview from Main Bad Guy, the third and final entry in the Love & Bullets Hookup Series by Nick Kolakowski, published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  Twenty years ago…

  1.

  Fiona had been an honor student throughout school, a pigtailed brown-noser who aced every test and kept her hand raised in class until it went numb. “I want to win everything,” she always told her classmates, an attitude that would serve her well in adulthood—especially when she had to walk into rooms full of men with guns.

  Under diff
erent circumstances, she might have become a neurosurgeon or a business executive. Instead, she met August Leadbetter, the self-styled Che Guevara of her eighth-grade class, and the best kisser in her life until she met Bill. (Every school has a few of those revolutionaries, to balance out the brown-nosers.)

  August liked to leap on his desk and yell punk lyrics in class.

  August stood on the roof of his mother’s house on humid summer afternoons and tossed water balloons at the open sunroofs of passing cars, hoping to send a soaked and panicked driver off the road.

  August also pushed little red pills. And Fiona was the experimental type, if you pressured her hard enough.

  “Oh, come on,” August said one afternoon, unzipping his pin-studded backpack to reveal his stash, most of it stolen from his mom’s medicine cabinet. “It’ll be fun. The world goes into slow motion. It’s the only way to survive math class.”

  They stood behind the equipment shed at the far end of the football field, safe from prying eyes. Fiona extended a hand, fear prickling her belly—or maybe it was excitement. The pill in her palm seemed very large. She asked: “What if I overdose?”

  “You only overdose if you mix drugs,” August shot back. “Come on, it’ll relax you. Exams are making you all stressed out.”

  Figuring you only live once (carpe diem, as her Latin teacher always said), Fiona popped that little bundle of chemicals in her mouth and swallowed, her throat clicking…

  …and felt rain on her face.

  The smell of the ocean filled her skull.

  Opened her eyes—had she closed them?

  She saw gray sky, black pines. She lay on something rough and cold. A dim roar filled her ears: the blood in her veins, amplified to superhuman decibels by whatever the fuck August had given her. No, wrong: the sound came from outside of her. Holy crap, she thought. Where am I?