Allan Leverone

Spoiler alert! The following is a long writing post, including a chapter from one of my novels. If that sort of thing doesn't interest you, don't waste your time, just continue scrolling!

If you're familiar with my work, you're probably aware I haven't written anything new in the last couple of years. I couldn't honestly tell you whether this sabbatical is going to last forever or whether I'll start working on something new tomorrow.

I just don't know, and that's the truth.

But a couple of months ago I was blessed with an opportunity to make most of my novels available on audiobook, thanks to a beta program being developed at Amazon. I was asked to participate and I gratefully accepted.

In order to do so, I've had to go through each of my novels one by one, listening to them and editing them to fit the limitations of Amazon's AI voice system prior to audiobook publication. This has given me the chance to really dig into stuff I've written over the course of the last eighteen years, most of which I haven't even looked at since finishing the writing/editing/publishing process.

In looking back, I'm pretty proud of those damned books.

I've always tried to write stuff with lots of action - throw obstacles into my protagonists' way and see how - or even if - they're able to deal with those obstacles. But no novel can consist of only action. You need "quiet times," in which to break up the action and flesh out the characters and their motivations.

And I've started to come to the conclusion those "quiet times" include some of the work of which I'm most proud. So I'm going to include a representative sample - Chapter 17 of my Jack Sheridan Pulp Thriller titled DEATH PERCEPTION.

I'm providing no background, but I think (if anyone has even made it this far, lol) you'll be able to figure out pretty quickly what's happening.

Ch. 17

Janousz Bejko took a bite of cannoli and shook his head. He met Jack’s eyes with a look of confusion. “My knowledge of your language is improving, but I am afraid I must have misunderstood you.”

The two men were seated at Jack’s tiny kitchen table, discussing the upcoming operation and Janousz’s role in it. They had eaten grilled steaks and baked potato, and were now drinking coffee and working their way through the remainder of the North End desserts Mr. Stanton had provided.

Jack smiled. “I think you probably understood my words correctly.”

“Then I do not understand your reasoning.”

Mr. Stanton had told Jack that in addition to being highly skilled and ruthless in the ex*****on of those skills, Janousz Bejko was smart as a whip and extremely intuitive. He was proving it now.

Jack took a sip of coffee and said, “Walk me through it. Tell me what you’re having a problem with.”

“I understand there is a group of murderers you need to eliminate.”

“Correct.”

“And that group of murderers is using as their headquarters a building that is difficult to access.”

“Very difficult.”

“Alright then. I do not understand why your plan does not consist of the two of us making a simultaneous assault on the front and the rear of the building. I do not understand why you would allow yourself to be captured by this group of criminals, and why I must wait twenty minutes after your capture to then make an assault on the building. It seems to me that this plan increases the risk to both of us, but most especially to you.”

Bejko shook his head and took another bite of cannoli. He was clearly mystified. “It seems to me this plan increases the risk by a lot. Why would you do that?”

Jack took a moment before answering. Janousz’s question was a good one. It was one he had asked himself multiple times, going back to before he’d even contacted Mr. Stanton for help.

“I took on this job,” he said, speaking slowly, “as a favor to an old man who is suffering. The man’s son disappeared months ago. He was kidnapped by this gang of thugs and there has not been a trace of him seen since.”

“He is dead,” Bejko said simply.

“Yes. He is most certainly dead.”

“You still have not answered my question.”

“I don’t want to simply avenge the death of the old man’s son. I want to know what happened to him.”

“Why?”

It was a one-word question.

One syllable.

Three letters.

There were few simpler words in the English language, and few more complicated ones.

“I’m not sure,” Jack admitted. “At first I told myself it’s because I want to be able to provide the old man with details, but if what was done to his son is as brutal as I fear, I could never share the information. It would probably kill him.”

“So again, why?” Bejko spread his hands in confusion.

“I just need to know,” Jack said. “For myself. I need to know.”

Janousz cocked his head to the side. “I have worked with many assassins over the course of my career. I have only been working inside the United States for a few months and so have little experience here.”

“You come very highly recommended,” Jack said.

Bejko nodded. “Thank you. But I wanted to make a point.”

“And that is?”

“Many of the men and women I have worked with in the past were the equal of anyone you could find operating inside the United States at any price. They were highly skilled and deadly. And out of all those people, I have never worked with anyone who looked at the world the way you seem to.”

Jack grinned. “Thanks. I think.”

“Knowing what happened to the man we are working to avenge does nothing for you, and yet you are willing to put yourself at significant risk in order to gather that information.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jack said. “It does do something for me.”

“What could it possibly do for you?”

“It helps me understand. I need to understand.”

The two men fell silent and Jack assumed the subject was now closed. They ate their cannoli and sipped their coffee in companionable silence.

When Janousz spoke, his words surprised Jack. “You come very highly recommended to me as well.”

“Thank you,” Jack said. “But where would you possibly have gotten any information on me?”

The hitter smiled. “You might be surprised. Secrecy is critical in our profession, but information is sometimes available if you know where to look. I know where to look.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. He’d lived his entire adult life inside a shroud of secrecy—or so he thought—and it was more than a little unsettling to discover this man, whom he’d never met or even heard of until just a couple of days ago, had been able to gather intel on him. It was always possible Bejko was blowing smoke, but Jack couldn’t imagine what he would have to gain by doing so.

Across the table, Bejko grinned. It was an impish look, and it radically transformed the face of a man Jack had already discovered was typically drawn and quiet. “I apologize if my words have disturbed you,” he said. “That was not my intention.”

“I just prefer people know less about me than more.”

“As do I, my friend.”

The kitchen fell silent again, and after a moment Jack’s curiosity got the best of him. “What was your intention?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said your intention was not to disturb me with what you said. What was your intention?”

The smile returned to Janousz Bejko’s face. “I merely wished to make an observation, and that was the prelude to my observation.”

“Okay. And what might your observation be?”

“That you do not strike me as a man who possesses the personality typical of a professional assassin.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I long ago learned not to feel.”

“Not to feel what?”

“Anything. I learned not to feel or to question. An assignment to me is exactly that: an assignment. Nothing less but certainly nothing more. I put everything I have into completing that assignment successfully and then move on to the next one. But you…”

“Yes?”

“I believe that you feel too much. It is dangerous to feel too much in our profession, Mr. Sheridan.”

Jack didn’t know how to respond. It was a good point. It was one he’d considered at length over the past several years.

It was also one he couldn’t bring himself to dispute.

Facebook informs me I had 5 popular posts on my author page in 2023.

Huh.

Seems high to me. 😂

I’m not much for celebrating my birthday, but for everyone who took the time to wish me a good day yesterday I just want to say thanks so much! You’re awesome and I love you…

I found out Les Edgerton died last week. I almost wrote “passed away;”in fact I actually did write that before changing it.

If you’re in any way familiar with Les’s work in the crime fiction genre, or with the man himself, I think you’ll agree “passed away” is not something he would have written, said, or wanted said about him. He was as straightforward as they come. He didn’t pass away last week, he died last week.

Les was one of those larger than life characters that the literary world spawns every now and then, and while I never met him in person - I’m the epitome of the shut-in hermit writer dude - I got to know him reasonably well. He was as passionate about writing, and telling the unvarnished truth about life as he saw it through fiction, as just about anyone I’ve ever met.

I wrote a specific scene in my novella, OKLAHOMA NOCTURNE, in homage to a traumatic moment in Les’s life he once told me about, and it was super important to me to get his opinion on how the scene turned out. Did I do it justice? Should I have written it differently?

But I had only just asked him to blurb CHASING CHINA WHITE and I felt weird asking him to read another of my books when he’d almost literally just finished one. He wasn’t put on this earth to pimp my work, he had his own to worry about.

I never asked him.

Now I never can.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this, other than to say I was lucky to know Les. He made me a better writer for sure, and maybe arguably even a better person.

Blue skies, Les. Hopefully they have a decent hotel bar wherever you are.

The heat and humidity wasn’t quite enough, so Sue Leverone and I took a trip to the DMV today, where the weirdest thing happened. Some old guy got his picture put onto my new license…😅

Happy Father's Day and welcome to the final edition of Short Story Saturday, coming to you a day late as seems to have become customary.

One thing pretty much every writer can agree upon is how difficult is is to find and retain readers. Yes, readers. I've always believed movie stars have "fans." Writers have "readers."

Anyway, one of my earliest and most loyal readers was a lady named Mary Roark. Over the years, Mary read many, if not most, of my books and was always generous with her compliments afterward, even when I felt they may not have been entirely deserved.

I found out Mary Roark passed away Friday in hospice care. I never met her in person but knew her to be sweet, gentle and kind, and the world is a little worse off for her passing.

Mary, wherever you are today, I hope it's at least a little better place than the one you moved on from Friday. "Piscataqua River" is dedicated to you.

"Piscataqua River"

Charlie Felder’s accountant was the only person waiting for him when he walked out of Cedar Junction Correctional Institution a free man.

No family. No friends. Just Mort Rabinowitz.

Charlie placed a heavy cardboard box on the Chrysler’s back seat and joined Mort in front. Looked Rabinowitz up and down. Said, “You’ve gotten old.”

“Thirty-to-life,” Mort grunted as he pulled away from the prison. “Long time.”

“You could’a came to visit.”

“I was busy watching your money.”

“Fair enough.”

Mort rubbed the side of his nose. It was a tic Charlie remembered from three decades ago. “Everybody thought you’d roll on Rossi, get out early.”

“Not how I operate,” Charlie said.

“The boss appreciated it.”

“I can tell from the welcoming party.”

Mort looked across the front seat, his eyes rheumy. He shrugged. “Everybody’s gone now, Charlie. There’s a whole new group running things. It ain’t like it used to be.”

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter anyway.”

Mort nodded and said, “So, where am I taking you?”

“Your office. We’ve got business to discuss.”

***

Being thirteen years retired, Mort no longer had an actual office, so they conducted their business in the basement of Mort’s raised ranch in Belmont. It was fine by Charlie. After thirty years inside, he was a hell of a lot more comfortable surrounded by damp concrete walls than he would have been sitting on an overstuffed couch in Mort’s living room.

“How much is there?” Charlie asked.

“Almost three-quarters of a mil.”

Charlie whistled. He’d known the proceeds would be significant, and in fact had guessed quite accurately at the rough figure before his release. Still, hearing Mort say the amount out loud made it somehow…real.

Charlie had been convicted in 1988 for the murder of a Boston cop, a crime he committed while in the process of executing the head of a rival mob outfit. All of his accounts were frozen when he was found guilty, which pi**ed off Charlie’s pregnant wife almost as much as his incarceration. Her bitterness became even more pronounced when those funds were eventually awarded to the dead cop’s family.

But there’d been one more account, a secret one the authorities never found. Nobody besides Mort Rabinowitz knew about it. Not the Rossi crime family. Not Charlie’s wife. Not anybody.

“The funds are liquid?” Charlie knew the answer but had to ask.

“Of course. You want me to cut a check now?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “For ten grand. In your name.”

Mort rubbed his nose and hesitated as though he didn’t understand. “I don’t understand, “ he said.

“Anybody else would have taken my cash and disappeared. Anybody. Far as I’m concerned, ten large is an underpayment. Take it. Unless you want more.”

“Thanks, Charlie. Ten’s plenty. What about the rest? You want it now?”

Charlie sat for a moment, thinking. Then he wrote a name and address on a slip of paper. “All of it goes to this woman,” he said, sliding the note in front of the old mob accountant. “Tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. And it has to look like it came from my wife.”

“But Charlie, she’s been dead since the year after you got sent up.”

“I remember,” Charlie said drily. “Make it look like it came from a thirty-year trust or something. Can you do that?”

“Of course,” Mort said. “But I still don’t understand.”

“You still don’t have to.”

***

Charlie sat across the street from Shelly Lambert’s house, watching his daughter through the living room window. He’d never even seen a picture of Shelly, but it was definitely her. She looked exactly like her mother.

After the car accident that killed Melissa—gangland revenge for Charlie’s hit—the newborn had been raised by Melissa’s sister. She despised Charlie and fully honored Melissa’s policy of cutting the convicted murderer out of his child’s life.

That was fine with Charlie. It was no more or less than he deserved.

He reached into his cardboard box and pulled out a sealed envelope. Sliced it open and gazed at the contents before returning it to the box. Then he repeated his actions. Over and over.

Every week since his arrest, Charlie had written a letter, first to Melissa and then, after his wife’s death, to Shelly.

All had been returned unopened.

Not thrown away.

Returned. Every last one.

Thirty years. One thousand five hundred sixty letters, minus the two still in transit.

Shelly was almost thirty now. Full-grown, with a child of her own that Charlie had also never seen. She would get her money tomorrow. She would think it was from her dead mother, so she would accept it. She would be okay.

Charlie dropped the Chrysler into gear and drove away.

***

He’d grown up in Kittery, Maine, in the shadow of the Piscataqua River Bridge. As a kid he’d lobstered with his father, boating under the bridge to the open Atlantic every day.

At eighteen he decided he knew a faster and easier way to make money. His father had never spoken to him again.

Now he sat on the top of the bridge, at the apex. The state line. Maine on one side. New Hampshire on the other.

Charlie had researched the bridge in the pen, so he knew the exact height he currently sat above the water, rolling dark and silent far below: one hundred-thirty-five feet. He’d learned also that it would take almost exactly three seconds for an object to fall that distance through space.

Three seconds of total freedom. Freedom his release from Cedar Junction hadn’t come close to providing.

Charlie left the keys dangling in the Chrysler’s ignition and stepped onto the pavement. The staties would come along any second now and find the car, and eventually it would be returned to Mort.

He climbed onto the iron railing. He knew he should be afraid but he wasn’t. He felt only anticipation.

When he pushed off the railing, he kept his eyes fixed on the moon-dappled Atlantic in the distance.

Three glorious seconds. Charlie was finally free.

Hi, and welcome to Short Story Saturday, coming to you this week on Monday because, well, I was too busy to get to it on Saturday and then I forgot yesterday. Sue me.

Does it feel to you like we live in an age where people's reality is malleable? Where so many people decide what they want to believe and then twist facts/circumstances like pretzels to fit their favored narrative?

Maybe it's just my perception. Anyway, "Blonde to Black" ran originally at Shotgun Honey. I hope you like it.

"Blonde to Black"

I never wanted to hurt anybody.

Never wanted to kill anybody, either.

But as the Stones reminded us a long time ago, you can’t always get what you want.

* * *

The girl was tall and blonde, and she rocked her miniskirt the way Michael Jackson once rocked that white glove. I eyed her when she walked into the bar and I couldn’t imagine how that damned skirt could get any shorter.

It took awhile to drag my eyes away from her because she looked so much like my sister it was eerie. When I finally could, my first instinct was to check the front door. There was no way in hell a chick as gorgeous as her could possibly be coming into a place like this alone.

But no one was with her.

She strolled wide-eyed through the place and headed for the pool tables in back, exuding s*x and innocence in equal measure. Everyone in the place watched her as she passed.

This wasn’t the kind of joint where suburban couples went to sip umbrella drinks and unwind after CrossFit. It was an old-fashioned tavern, populated mostly by blue-collar men and women serious about achieving and maintaining altered states of consciousness. That was exactly why I had chosen the place to celebrate the first night of freedom following my release, and exactly why I was so surprised to see the blonde there.

She couldn’t have been more out of place if she’d tried.

From my vantage point I could see her perfectly. I could see also that the entire bar was tracking her every move. When she bent over the pool table it was as if her ass was a magnet and their eyeballs were made of steel.

Ho**er, I thought. She had to be. She was in here drumming up business.

But that small-town innocence gave lie to the notion or her as a pro. I couldn’t shake the thought that she reminded me exactly of my sister, who’d been sweetness and light.

Until the night she was kidnapped and murdered at seventeen.

Anyway, it was only a matter of time before things got ugly with a girl like the blonde in a place like this. It almost seemed preordained.

By the time I’d downed my next drink three guys in work boots and oil-stained t-shirts were harassing her, getting into her personal space, leering and making comments I couldn’t hear but didn’t need to.

When one of them began rubbing her ass, leaning into the girl and trapping her between himself and the pool table, I’d had enough. I slammed my glass down with a thud and stalked across the room.

“Leave her alone,” I said.

“Or what?”

“Or somebody’s going to the hospital.”

That was when I saw the blade. The blonde squirmed away at the same time the dude who’d been fondling her ass reached into his pocket and pulled out the weapon. His hand flashed and the knife glittered in the muted light and I did the only thing I could.

I lifted the pool cue the girl had dropped onto the table and swung it at his head. Cliché? Maybe, but I connected solidly and the knife clattered to the floor as the cue-stick snapped in half.

The harasser dropped instantly in a shower of blood and skull-bone fragments.

By the time I looked up the blonde had vanished.

* * *

I appeared before a judge the next morning but the fix was in. Somehow the prosecutor got the entire goddamn bar to back his version of events:

That there was no knife.

The dude hadn’t harassed anyone.

And no blonde had ever entered the bar.

Not one single soul the cops interviewed would even admit to having seen the s*xy blonde in the short miniskirt. They laid it all on me. Their story was that I’d sat in the corner drinking all night, spouting nonsense about kidnappings and dead sisters and making someone pay.

The hearing was short and sweet and definitive.

Now I’m back in the psych ward after one day on the streets.

My sister’s killer still walks free.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever get out again.

Hi, and welcome to a rainy Short Story Saturday.

It's a tale as old as time. One spouse gets tired of the other and decides that since divorce won't work for one reason or another, the only logical solution is murder.

It happens all the time, as anyone who's ever watched or read any amount of true crime knows.

But what happens if the guy on the receiving end of the murder plot just...won't stay dead?

"Dead and Buried" originally appeared in 2010 at A Twist of Noir. I hope you like it.

Dead and Buried

The moon’s dirty gray light struggled to pe*****te the ground fog as it swirled and twisted, illuminating the forest weakly, like an old-time black-and-white television show. In an isolated clearing, a man knelt at the edge of a freshly-dug three-foot-deep hole, hands fastened behind his back with nylon cord.

Damp earth crusted the knees of his blue jeans.

The man remained perfectly still, plainly acknowledging the hopelessness of his situation.

He knelt and waited.

The hole—the gravesite—had been constructed roughly six feet in length and three feet in width, matching the approximate dimensions of its prospective tenant. The earth that had been excavated to form this makeshift resting place was piled neatly at one end, conveniently located for its return from whence it came.

Standing behind the soon-to-be victim was a second man. He paced endlessly, agitated and nervous. He sucked on a cigarette. He held a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum Model 60 revolver in one hand and a shiny Easton aluminum baseball bat in the other.

The silvery reflection of the moon’s light off the baseball bat offered a jarring contrast to the monochromatic dimness in which the rest of the scene was cast.

The man with the dirt on his knees waited, warily eyeing his nervous captor as the man paced back and forth, back and forth. He was not anxious to hurry things along; quite the contrary. He was perfectly happy to let the other man deal with his inner demons for as long as necessary.

Every breath the man on his knees took was one more than he’d expected to get after being forced to the ground by the handgun barrel pressed to the back of his head.

Finally he spoke. “Why the baseball bat? Planning to sandwich a little batting practice between putting a bullet in my skull and moving in with my suddenly available wife?”

The man with the gun and the Easton stopped pacing for a moment. He almost seemed to have forgotten his victim was there.

He licked his lips nervously. “No bullets,” he said. “I’m going to do you with the bat instead.”

“I hope you don’t mind me asking the obvious question, but I have to know. Why?”

“Dude, I’m not stupid. A bullet lodged in your brain can be traced back to the gun it was fired from and used as evidence if your body is ever discovered. Not that it will be. The baseball bat, however, will be buried in a different location as soon as this is over and will never be found.”

The man kneeling at the edge of his own makeshift grave considered this information.

Then he nodded. “I can see you’ve given this a lot of thought—or Maura has—although from my perspective I have to tell you that a home run swing to the side of the head sounds much more painful than taking one in the hat from from that cannon you’re holding.”

“Sorry about that,” answered the man holding the weaponry. “I know it’s not ideal, but I have to do what’s best for me.”

“Of course. You do understand I’m going to make you pay for all this, right?”

A soft, high-pitched squeal erupted from somewhere in the back of the agitated man’s throat and he turned and raised his bat and swung from the heels, connecting with his victim’s head. A wet noise that sounded nothing like a bat hitting a ball exploded into the heavy night air and the man with the dirt on his knees tumbled slowly, almost but not quite gracefully, into the bottom of the shallow pit.

The assailant dropped his bat like it contained an explosive charge and puked into the grave, extinguishing his cigarette with the acidy yellow-green contents of his stomach.

He dropped to his knees and reached down and yanked his victim’s wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. He then produced a pocket knife and sliced the cord holding the dead man’s hands together, rose unsteadily to his feet, and staggered through the accusatory silence of the killing field back to his car.

Tossing the incriminating bat and length of cord into the back seat for later disposal, the man grabbed his shovel and steeled himself for one last trip into the forest, this time to cover his victim with dirt and hide the evidence of his treachery forever.

***

Maura Stapleton pulled her Mercedes into the driveway of the home she shared with Vince Gower, talking on her cell phone and driving much too fast. As usual. She slowed just enough to squeeze under the garage door, which was still rumbling up on its tracks, then screeched to a halt in the middle of the stall.

It had been ten long months since Vince completed their nasty business—at her insistence—and Maura had never been happier. Her marriage to Jim Stapleton had been a sham, at least from her perspective, and her perspective was the only one that had ever mattered.

She would have been free of Jim months earlier if Vince, with whom she’d been having an affair almost since the moment she’d said “I do” six years earlier, hadn’t been such a frigging wuss. Maura kept pounding into Vince’s thick skull the fact that the only way the two of them would ever be able to live together in a comfortable manner would be for Jim to disappear.

Permanently.

The sooner the better.

Eventually Vince had come to see things her way, as she’d known he would. Everyone always did, eventually.

Coming into the marriage, everything had been Jim’s. The business, the cars, the investments, everything. The house was much too big and ostentatious, according to him, but Maura loved it because it trumpeted to the world in no uncertain terms her hard-won status.

Divorcing Jim would never work, Maura had patiently explained to Vince, because then the prick would get to keep virtually all the STUFF, those goodies that she loved and which, to her astonishment, she had discovered Jim didn’t seem to care all that much about. She had foolishly agreed to a restrictive pre-nup before marrying Jim and then regretted it almost immediately.

Now, with Jim missing, she and Vince were already almost one year into the seven-year wait required by law before Jim would be declared legally dead and ownership of everything reverted to Maura.

Assuming Jim wasn’t found in the meantime.

Which he wouldn’t be.

Maura stepped out of her car and lifted the shopping bags out of the tiny back seat, struggling to carry her three purchases and not spill her large iced coffee. She loved shopping and considered it a travesty if she were forced to go more than a couple of days without buying at least one new outfit and of course some s*xy lingerie for Vince’s benefit.

He was everything she needed in a man: handsome, strong, great in the sack, not overly bright, and easy to control.

She stepped into the kitchen and took exactly two steps—elapsed time, maybe one second—before noticing something was very wrong.

By then it was too late.

Seated in the middle of the kitchen, secured to a heavy pine chair that was part of the six thousand dollar kitchen set she’d purchased to celebrate her husband’s disappearance, was Vince Gower.

He shook his head energetically but silently, any attempt at warning Maura muffled by a rag stuffed into his mouth and secured with twine wrapped tightly around the back of his skull. His wrists were tied behind him, his ankles lashed to the chair legs. Thick brown hair tumbled over his forehead, tangled and sweaty, obscuring his eyes.

Maura froze for the barest fraction of a second as her brain attempted to process this unexpected scenario. Then the gears re-engaged and she spun in a panicked attempt to reverse course, to flee the house via the garage, to exit the way she’d just entered.

She took half a step and ran squarely into the solid—and very much alive—Jim Stapleton.

Her shopping bags dropped to the floor, followed a split-second later by the iced coffee, splashing everywhere and destroying a brand-new, four hundred dollar Donna Karan dress.

Maura didn’t notice or care. Her entire universe consisted of the impassive face of her supposedly dead husband as he held her in a vice grip, staring down at her with hard gray eyes.

***

Jim couldn’t have planned it any better. Maura had walked through the door entirely preoccupied with herself, as usual. He had known she would get all the way into the kitchen before registering the sight of her bound and gagged boyfriend. In fact, he had half expected her to waltz right on past him and continue into the living room without noticing him at all.

He’d stationed himself behind the basement entrance when he heard the big garage door rumbling down on its tracks, having purposely placed Gower in as obvious a location as possible. Then he’d stepped behind her and simply waited for her to bolt.

Which she had done, right on cue.

Now he held her tightly by the forearms while her panicked eyes regarded him as though she were seeing a ghost, which, Jim supposed, in a way she was.

When it became clear Maura was unable to form an intelligible sentence, Jim spoke. “Hi honey, I’m home. Did you miss me?”

“You’re…you’re dead,” she gasped.

“Well, yes and no. There’s ‘dead’ and then there’s ‘not exactly.’ Care for an explanation?”

Maura Stapleton nodded in mute terror. Her eyes were enormous. She had not taken them off Jim since nearly running through him in her short-lived escape attempt.

Jim took his wife by the elbow and guided her gently to another kitchen chair, which he placed directly opposite Vince’s. Easing her into the seat, Jim fastened a long plastic zip tie around her right ankle, which he then lashed to the leg of the heavy wooden chair.

He did nothing to her hands. He wanted them free.

“So. Isn’t this cozy,” Jim said with a smile. He reached behind Vince’s head and pulled the twine securing the gag free.

The moment he did, words began tumbling out of the frantic man’s mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry,” spittle rolling down his chin as he faced his lover, now seated three feet away and staring at him with murder in her eyes.

“You fu***ng p***y. You told me you did it. You said he was dead.” Maura was whispering, the words measured and soft but clear as gunshots in the sudden tense stillness of the kitchen.

“He was, and then he wasn’t. I mean, I thought he was but he really wasn’t,” the distraught Vince Gower babbled, clearly more afraid of the petite blonde woman tied to a chair in front of him than he was of that woman’s husband, newly resurrected and holding a gun on them both.

Maura’s eyes bored holes into her lover’s, and then she shook her pretty head scornfully and turned to look at Jim. “I didn’t have any idea he was going to attack you last summer,” she purred. “I don’t blame you for being angry, but holding me against my will doesn’t make any sense. I had nothing to do with what happened to you.”

Vince Gower made a sound of incredulous disbelief, his jaw hanging half open. He began protesting but the words died in his mouth when Jim trained the Smith and Wesson on him. It was the very same weapon Gower had used to force Jim to his knees over an earthen grave less than one year ago.

“Little did I realize,” Jim said conversationally, the gun aimed at Vince but the words aimed at his wife, “when you said you needed a gun for self-defense, that it would get so much use. It certainly has been well worth the money I spent on it.”

Now Maura began to speak, her eyes flashing, but she stopped just as quickly as Vince had when Jim swung the weapon her way.

“I’m going to keep the floor for awhile,” he said. “Anybody have a problem with that?”

No one answered and Jim nodded pleasantly. “I didn’t think so. Here’s the thing,” he continued, smiling down at his wife while his eyes glittered, gray and flinty and cold. “I had a long chat with Sexy Rexy here before you came home today and—”

“His name is Vince,” Maura interrupted, her mouth turned down in a pout. “You know that.”

“Of course it is. Sorry. Anyway, as I was saying, Sexy Rexy told me a story much different than yours while we were chatting. He says murdering me was all your idea, that you wanted the house and the cars and the business, and that you told him the only way to get it was to kill me and make sure I was never found. Is that about the size of it?”

Maura began protesting loudly, leaning forward in her chair and stabbing an accusing finger at Vince, who cowered away from her.

This time Jim silenced her by shoving the gun barrel under her chin.

“I believe him,” Jim whispered fiercely. “He had no reason to want me dead and he’s not bright enough to come up with that scheme on his own. He’s been banging you for years, I’ve known about it from the very beginning. So the thing is, nothing much was going to change for him whether I was alive or dead.”

He shoved the gun barrel harder against her throat until she began to gag. “You, on the other hand, had everything to gain. And you’re smart as a whip and cold as ice to boot.”

“You would never shoot me,” she said as Jim eased the pressure of the pistol off her throat. “You love me too much.” Her face was ashen but her voice was strong and steady and filled with conviction.

Jim smiled again. “You know, you’re right about that.” He pocketed the gun and sat in his own chair, spinning it around and straddling it with his chin resting on his arms, which were interlocked over the chair-back. “I’ve had plenty of time to mull over this whole messy situation and I came to the same conclusion months ago.”

“What the hell happened out in those woods anyway?” Maura asked Vince, again skewering him with her eyes.

“I hit him with everything I had,” he said quietly, voice shaking, “but when I returned from my car with the shovel to fill in the hole, he was gone. I didn’t realize he was still alive after I hit him. Somehow he crawled away in the ten minutes it took me to go to my car and back. I don’t know how he managed it, but he survived.”

“Obviously. And you didn’t think to tell me this?” Maura’s eyes blazed and her face flushed in anger, her play for sympathy from Jim forgotten. “It didn’t occur to you that the fact my husband was still alive and not lying at the bottom of a shallow grave was important enough to clue me in on? It slipped your mind, maybe?”

Vince seemed to shrink back into the chair. His fear of the tiny woman was palpable.

“I figured there was no way he could make it all the way out of the woods alive. We were miles from anywhere, so if he crawled a few hundred yards and then died, what difference would it make? I knew you’d be furious if you found out, and he was going to die either way, so why say anything?”

“Yes, what difference would it make?” Jim said dryly. “When I saw you swing the bat I had the presence of mind to snap my head to the side at the moment of impact, so although you still split my head open, I never lost consciousness. As soon as you went for your shovel I crawled out of the hole. I still don’t quite know how.”

He grinned wickedly. “Although I did have the presence of mind to grab the gun you’d left on the ground next to the gravesite.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “I was badly injured, suffering from a fractured skull and bleeding heavily, but I wrapped my t-shirt shirt around my head and staggered to my feet and began walking. I walked for what felt like an eternity and finally exited the forest on Route 42, where I got lucky for the second time that night. A couple of kids driving west on their way back to college picked me up.

“Thanks to the darkness and the fact they were drunk off their asses I was able to hide the extent of my injuries, although I did bleed pretty badly onto their back seat. I rode with them for hours before asking them to drop me off at a hospital somewhere off Interstate 90 in western New York State.

“They left me at an emergency room door. I had no identification, you made sure of that,” he said, glaring at Vince, “so I feigned amnesia. It wasn’t that difficult, I was badly injured and my temperature was so high by the time I stumbled into that hospital that I was hallucinating.

“But I forced myself to do it. I forced myself to do all of it. And do you know why?”

Maura and Vince looked at each other without speaking. Jim leaned forward until his face was inches from the man who’d clubbed him over the head in a desolate forest and left him to die.

“Come on, big guy,” Jim said slowly, enunciating each syllable in a voice that could cut glass. “You’re not even trying. Why do you suppose I would put myself through the agony of walking out of the forest and then suffering for seven hours in a car with a fractured skull, when I could have lain down and died any time I wanted? Why?”

Vince looked at him with terror in his eyes, while Maura observed the exchange with an air of detachment. She might as well have been watching a political debate on television.

Finally Jim continued. “I put up with that pain and agony for one reason, and one reason only. When you had me on my knees, preparing to finish me off with a goddamn baseball bat, I told you something. I meant it then, and I mean it now. Do you remember what I said to you, Rexy?”

Vince was pushing against his chair-back with all his might, unable to move the heavy piece of furniture even an inch although not for a lack of effort. His head thrashed from side to side.

Jim couldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t remember what had been said that night or because he did. The silence lingered, Vince shaking his head but afraid to speak, Maura sitting quietly, clearly hoping Jim would expend his rage on her sap of a boyfriend and spare her.

When it became clear Vince either would not or could not answer, Jim spoke. “I told you that you were going to pay for what you were about to do to me, and tonight I’ve come to collect on that debt.”

Tears cut tracks down Vince Gower’s face, transforming it from handsome and proud into something sad and pathetic.

Jim stood and stretched his back, wincing as it cracked and snapped.

“Anyway,” he said, shifting his attention to his wife, who looked less than pleased with this turn of events, “let’s wrap this up, shall we? It’s getting late and it’s almost show time. But just to satisfy your curiosity about how I managed to come back from the dead, you should know I had been stashing money away for a long time after discovering your true nature. I guess to say ‘some money’ would not do justice to the amount. It was a lot of money, and easily accessed.

“I knew you would eventually figure out a way to take everything from me, and while I really don’t give a damn about all our stuff, I had no desire to live like a pauper when you were finished with me, either. So I slowly stashed plenty of cash where I could get at it easily—it’s not that hard to do when you have a friend or two in the right places—and after I recovered sufficiently in that New York hospital, I simply walked out the front door and disappeared.

“While I completed my recovery, I considered the question of what do do about you two. I finally made up my mind, so here I am.” He glanced between his two captives. Maura looked less sure of herself than she had a few minutes ago, but still not too terribly concerned.

Jim pulled the Smith and Wesson out from where he’d stashed it at the small of his back. He held it in his gloved hands.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said softly to Maura. “I could never shoot you. I actually still love you, God help me. So killing you is out of the question, but I’m sure you can agree that the situation as currently constituted is untenable. So you’re going to kill Sexy Rexy.”

“WHAT?”

“You heard me. You’re going to take this pistol and you’re going to shoot your lover in the head, and then you’re going to be arrested for murder and spend the rest of your greedy, grasping, manipulative life behind bars. Not the perfect solution, I’ll admit, but it’s the best I could come up with under the circumstances.”

Vince Gower’s tears were now mixing with snot, the whole mess running down his chin as he whimpered and sobbed.

Maria said, “You’re crazy. Why would the police think I killed Vince?”

“Well, let’s see,” he replied, checking off the reasons on his fingers. “YOUR pistol, the one registered to you and stored in this home, is used to murder YOUR boyfriend, who I suppose you could also say is stored in this home. YOUR fingerprints will be the only ones on the gun, and poor Vince’s blood will be on your hands, both literally and figuratively, as will gunshot residue. Sounds like an open-and-shut case for some lucky prosecutor.”

“I’ll tell them you did it, that you came back and killed Vince in a fit of jealousy and rage, and—”

Jim burst out laughing. “I don’t exist anymore, remember? In fact, if I had to bet, I’d say the police WILL begin looking for me again, all right. They’ll be searching for my body. They’ll figure since you murdered poor, pathetic Vince here, you probably offed me last year, too.”

Horror blossomed in Maura’s eyes as she considered his words. “You don’t have to do this,” she babbled. “We can kill him together, bury the body, I’ll say you were lost and had amnesia and you suddenly regained your memory and now we’re back together and—”

Jim leaned over and cocked the revolver. In one swift mouton he grabbed Maura’s hand and wrapped it around the butt of the weapon before forcing her finger through the trigger guard.

Vince screamed.

Jim guided Maura’s hand toward the target and together they pulled the trigger. The gun roared and Vince’s head exploded, splattering blood and bone and hair and gore all over the back wall of the kitchen.

Maura sat perfectly motionless, in shock, her beautiful face white but her hand steady, suddenly holding the weapon by herself.

Jim pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and sliced the zip tie securing his wife’s ankle to the chair leg.

He stuffed it into his pocket and stood.

Turned and walked toward the door.

He heard an audible CLICK and sighed, then turned to face Maura one last time. “The reason you can’t shoot me is that I made certain the gun contained only one bullet. It’s useless to you now, unless you need a paperweight. I’ll place an anonymous call to the authorities when I get a little ways down the road. Run if you want, but you won’t get far.”

Jim turned back to the door and placed his gloved hand on the k**b. Without looking back at his wife he said, “Good luck, kiddo. Have a nice life.”