God erased the last of my known enemies today. I stood at the edge of the dark slash cut by a mindless digging machine to a depth of six feet, and rolled a handful of the clay like soil on my palm. Waiting for the rote preacher to signal with his mumbled words the act of finality that even he seemed to question the validity of, temptation made me want to cast the dirt prematurely, turn away, and leave.

Slowly, I lifted my head and looked at him. He reacted as if the slight movement might’ve been an awaited sign. His pale, age-thinned eyelids lowered briefly over his, equally lifeless blue eyes. Curtly, he nodded, hurriedly spoke the final sentence, and waved his hand over the corpse, fingers poised on eternity’s promise of resurrection.

Halle-fucking-lujah and be done with it, I thought grimly. Resurrection my ass. If it exists, neither of us deserves the reward after the life we’ve lived.

A feeling of relief washed through me as the wet cloying black earth I tossed thumped the polished steel casket with resounding note of completion. After vigorously brushing dirt off my palm with the edge of the plastic card that held prayers I knew I would never recite, I strolled to the preacher.

We stood alone, he an old friend from my days in the military, had come to the secluded location each time I had buried one of them, my enemies that is. I stopped counting the numbers years ago since it seemed two new ones appeared for each one that I executed.

“Thank you, Charles,” I said with as much enthusiasm as possible, which proved to be very little. The air was cold and wet. A normal state for the world I owned, a weather condition I relished in my role as a recluse.

His thin lips parted into a lackluster smile. “I do hope this is the last of them. The voyage has become rather taxing at my age.” He did not speak my name.

Neither of us knew who if anyone, watched, if the Joint Worlds Confederacy’s agents had been able to follow us or find the location of my cemetery and therefore my home.

Some might call it a planetoid. It orbits a moon, which in turn orbits a gas giant that circles a star twice the size of Earth’s sun. The entire circus orbited within the biosphere habitable but desperately isolated.

I wanted to reassure Charles, but knew better than to try. My profession created enemies. Although none of the poor souls really knew me, or why I performed the acts I so enjoyed. For me it was societal cleansing, to the Joint Worlds Confederacy’s lower government, it was illegal. Yet, they often looked the other way when one of their enemies disappeared.

In the end, honestly prevailed and I answered truthfully. “For now, Charles. I think they are beginning to understand my message, however I will not relent until they all comply.”

“You are the only person who does this work now.” He released my hand, turned and began walking away. His robe swished the uncut yellow prickly lawn, sparkling dew as it scattered behind his passage. But he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Do be careful. I may not agree with your tactics or reasoning, but I do not want to lose a dear friend. You might be the last one of us alive.”

My nod was all the response he would receive. Once given, I studied his gait as he left me in the valley of the dead. Even after sixty-eight years, Charles moved like a man thirty years younger. The enhancement I had convinced him to accept gave him the same gifts it had me.

His personal flyer rose into the cloudy sky as I watched. Looking into the valley, the unspoiled view was like a feast. Nothing created by humanity marred its surface. Not even a single headstone. The men and women buried there were lost to history. No one knew how or why they disappeared. Despite weeks or even months of searching, none had been found, nor would they be.

Not even Charles knew their names for he did not see their faces, or hear me speak their titles. Although he would recognize each individual as would anyone living these day in the realms of the Joint Worlds Confederacy.

Once I coerced them to join me they and their history were erased.

That was my story, not a record of accomplishments, not an attempt to make amends for what I did, not an apology to anyone for anything. I used the name Henry le Noir, but it was fictitious. For if you heard my birth name, you would know of me too. As you would know of those who occupied my unmarked Potter’s Field.

Copyright 2018 Gabriel F W Koch All Rights Reserved

I wondered for the snow last night, Solstice Eve, and considered that it might not arrive before the colt was born. For days, my heart had filled with sadness and loss, and somehow the idea of a white Solstice encouraged me believe everything would, after that, be fine. It had been a year, this millennial cusp, when more friends passed on than I recalled having.

The sun set faster as it always does during the year’s final season, when night seems to embrace the Earth as if never planning to release it again and the past morning feels like a distant memory. Then one by one, the stars twinkled through a pale layer of night-shadowed clouds that reminded me of my breath on cold winter air earlier in that day.

Behind me, my grandfather’s handcrafted sleigh sat where it had been parked after I repaired it, adding new leather to the harness, replacing a split board in the yoke, polishing the runners with wax and the brass with oils. We rarely use it now, but its upkeep seems important, a continuity with the past. The barn, now a looming dark shadow amongst the trees, housed our animals, the horses that would pull the sleigh, the chickens, pigs, and cows.

Listening carefully, I heard a horse neigh, chickens clucking, welcoming nightfall, knowing their day’s work completed. I looked up, leaned slightly to see directly overhead.

A light went on in our small house. Just a candle’s flicker, a wavering illumination beckoning me to return to the warmth of the hearth, the embrace of her arms as she waited for me. I studied her silhouette in the window for a moment, then looked distantly into the forest that surrounded the land I call my own.

The years had been good here, although I’d piled up six decades faster than drifting snow.

The horse neighed again, drawing me to wonder if she too felt the loss such a quick passage of time brings. I smiled wryly knowing it could not, but wishing that it did so I could finally share the pain of regret after all these long years.

But do I myself understand it even now when I feel so certain I do? I questioned myself.

Yes, I knew, or thought I did. Do we ever really know anything? Did something really happen to make Solstice Eve so terribly important to so many people? And if not, is that as important as is how this night makes most of us feel and act regardless?

If only it would snow, I thought, then being a doubtful irascible, old man wouldn’t be half as bad. Snow would bury the lethargic decline of life, everything would be all right, and I just know it.

I looked at the sky again. Thin lines of clouds wavered past the face of the waning moon, as its radiance danced across the limbs of trees undulating, swaying to a stronger breeze. A chilled zephyr that pressed against my exposed flesh, my face and hands, those parts of me that wore the age I carry, the character that defines who I have become, molded by myself, I suppose but more by circumstances and the outside influences of others.

I wish it would snow, I mused, that might freeze these thoughts, and when spring arrives to renew life one more time thaw my fears and send them to the ocean with the snow-melt.

The back door of the house opened. I heard it but did not turn. Out the corner of my eye, I peered and saw her as she watched me with, I imagined, the same questions in her mind, or ones so similar that they might be mine. Will this be our last Solstice?

That’s my fear revealed at last and if so, do I understand its, meaning its purpose well enough to accept what I’ll have lost?

I let my eyes travel away, and heard the door snick shut as if she too knew I was not ready to return and get warm.

The mare neighed softly, alerting all that her time was drawing near, as she moved closer, I knew, to the edge of the stall like she does at night. I watched once and saw that she and her stallion seemed to like to nuzzle some before sleep arrived.

Turning to the barn, I decided I’d like to see that one more time too, but did not move except from the waist up.

The breeze pushed itself into a light wind that carried the odors of autumn’s end. The snow did not fall, but the clouds charged my heart when they thickened briefly and blotted out the stars overhead, shivered the moon’s pale light enough to obscure the trees and the roof line of the barn.

I felt something new in the air. “Would it be enough? Am I ready this time? Will I miss it again, as I have so many times before? Is the wonderment in my heart real? Will it suffice if this is our last Solstice?”

I was not sure, but I needed to find out. The days leading me to this moment had been fraught with doubt, and worry.

A drop of rain fell on my hand. My heart knew before I realized it wasn’t rain. The breeze that had started several minutes ago, or perhaps an hour or more, swirled something that was halfway between rain and snow. I wanted to cheer, shout don’t let me down!

I smiled and turned my face up, studied the clouds and heard the horse neigh, a sound more restless.

“She knows,” I told the moisture collecting on my brow, dripping from my cheek. “She knows.”

The rear door of the house opened briefly. I heard it, saw the flicker of candlelight dance across the thin coating of snow clinging precariously to each blade of grass like tiny cattails, or Solstice candles carried by the multitudes that once, a very long time ago, marched across the lands to rejoice the celebration.

Footsteps shushed through the wet lawn, and a moment later the irregular circle of radiance from the candle reached out to wrap its illusion of warmth around first my feet then up the length of my bent body to illuminate my face.

I was happy, but I couldn’t smile. I smelled the wood smoke in her hair, the light scent of lilies from her soap.

“It’s time,” she said speaking softly a whispered tenderness, the same tone I heard the first time she told me she loved me.

Her hand settled dove-like on my arm, and I nodded, and turned to the barn.

“Yes,” I replied after some hesitation.

The falling snow thickened, coated everything with a, sugar whiteness as if now in a hurry, as if it too knew time ran out.

Our mare Sparks neighed again, and as I pushed open the barn door; she whinnied a welcome. We walked carefully through the straw covering, until we stood at the entrance to her stall. She was struggling gallantly and her newborn was beginning to show. I stood to the side and wrapped my arms around her muzzle — careful to avoid pressuring her spiraled horn so sensitive after the fall growth — stroking the long soft face with my gnarled hands and knew without knowing why, that everything, for me, was about to change forever. I inhaled the smell of her hair sweat the wet straw underfoot.

She quieted. Then her body convulsed again, and again. With a deep-throated sound almost like a human groan, the colt was born.

I released the mare’s head and Sparks turned to the little spotted horse and began licking its face, clearing its nose and mouth as we pulled away the sac. I saw it draw its first independent breath and felt an old man’s tear roll down my cheek, and my wife’s arm encircle my waist. The little one had the horn, tiny now but in several years, it would reach a length of several feet. He was the first one born to us in two generations, a sign of promise and hope for the future.

We stood still, holding each other, watched life unfold, and marveled at our good fortune, that we were here to participate, here to witness the promised gift of life renewed, the breath of God passed onto yet another generation. We walked outside.

The snow was a curtain, the sleigh, the house and forest obscured. A chill that started somewhere deep inside, rolled slowly up my spine and along both arms until it tingled my fingertips. I imagined I could look across the gulf of ten thousand years, felt a peace I never knew as it filled me and made me want to cry out in joy.

With my arm around her waist, I squeezed her, my wife I’d known for so long but never long enough. We returned, bedded the mare and her newborn, covered both, with blankets, and hay. Then we waded through the fresh snow.

I thought, perhaps this is not the last Solstice after all. Maybe there are still enough souls listening to carry the hope of the season.

Then I listened to the snow’s blanketing stillness, in the far distant mountains to bells from McIan’s Tower greeting The Solstice God’s arrival.

Finally, the New Year held promise.

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch all rights reserved

Noir writers wrote with a detachment most of the world felt during the years after World War 2 when a sullen hush washed across battered nations numbed by the task of recovery. Many of those writers were themselves combat veterans, and, I suspect, used writing as a means of recuperation from what we now understand as PTSD. It was as if they pictured their story plots, like men standing in the shadows of alleys while out on Main Street life progressed through the struggles writers used to convey their protagonist’s adventures but did not necessarily partake in.

Although, I believe noir fiction began under the ink stained fingers of John Carroll Daley while he wrote for the Dime Detective Magazine in the 1930s. His protagonist Race Williams was as brutal as life in the Great Depression, used violence to uphold the law as he, Race Williams, interpreted it. Readers enthralled by Daley’s writing, let each story’s darkness shed the light of hope into lives lived hand to mouth, which helped create the genre.

Mickey Spillane, who I was fortunate to spend time with during the last years of his life, as a young boy read Daley’s stories and later used what he’d learned when he walked Mike Hammer off the pages of comic books and into one of the most successful mysteries ever written, I, The Jury.

While I was a young boy, I read Mickey’s books. The pacing, tension and almost machine gun style of writing turned the pages for me. I believe that noir fiction is similar to modern Jazz as introduced in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a free form style of writing, which at times drags the reader along, coddles the senses with imagery, and at other times jerks him up in his chair as if daring him to relax and read. The characters are in your face people, with each other, and a film of tension dangles between them like spider web filament.

When I created Marlowe Black and his illegitimate son Michael Hacker McKaybees, I wanted the tension between them to navigate plots. Marlowe Black whose pregnant fiancée was murdered in the early 1950s (the plot for Marlowe Black mystery) refused to ever again consider marriage. He avoided intimate relationships, staying around until emotions grew thick, and he began glancing over his shoulder should his new love face the retribution his first one had due to the nature of his profession.

When the woman who would become McKaybees mother, announced her pregnancy, Marlowe immediately decided that he would not be seen with his new son therefore giving the boy the opportunity to live. Marlowe knew he had dragged some of his enemies through the previous decades and felt their hypothetical hot deadly breaths on the back of his neck.

Now, in the twenty-first century, Marlowe, although a man nearing eighty, continues to work as a PI. He had kept an eye on his son, and provided for him and his mother. He felt pride as the boy grew into a man, but stayed away.

Until the day when an old army buddy’s son a New York City cop, was brutally murdered and he and Michael were considered prime suspects. Then all the rules changed, and Marlowe Black knew it was time to educate his son about dealing with criminals the old way, using fists and guns. Shoot first and ask questions should one of the, enemy be lucky, or unlucky enough to remain standing.

This then is the plot for the first Michael McKaybees novel And Come Day’s End to be published this year by Outskirts Press.

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch All Rights Reserved

When it’s time to focus on pacing.

For me when I’m locked into a story, I must stop periodically and reread what’s been written. Normally, I do this daily. Write a few pages, and the next morning while having breakfast or coffee, read the previous day’s work. This does at least two things.

One: I can edit, add or delete. Two: I can fill in or flesh out, whichever terms suits places where I rushed when writing because some thoughts demand to be written quickly. Three: I also start writing what comes next. I do this on paper with a pen or pencil. For me the words seem pulled out by the physical act of handwriting them.

* * *

You’re staring at the water ring on the coaster when you hear the waitress returning. You don’t want to seem too interested, so you act like you don’t know it’s her.

She sits across from you. You look up and realize she has beautiful blue eyes, that she’s again studying you as if she feels uncertain of your intentions. Her long wavy blonde hair is loose around her shoulders.

You smile. “I was thinking we might try the diner around on fifth and forty-third.”

“She seems to relax some and nods. “I’ve been there once or twice and the food was good. Music too if you might want to dance.”

You know dancing is not your favorite activity, but the ladies enjoy it so you agree. “Sounds like a nice night.” You stand and extend you hand. When she accepts your invitation, you help her to her feet. Her hand feels warm and right as you hold it.

When she steps alongside, you hold out your arm and feel her hand move around your elbow. Briefly, she leans her head against your shoulder, which gets you wondering if she’s more interested than she led you to believe earlier in the evening.

As you reach the table were the mob boys sat, you slow slightly, carefully give the table a once over. Nothing remains to show you who sat at the table, but you grow weary as you near the exit to the street.

A quick look tells you it’s nearly midnight and you think maybe the diner is closed.

Just as you reach it the front door swings inward. A young couple, bundled up against the cold outside, hugging each other the way youngsters do, laugh at a joke only they might understand and press their way inside.

Their opening the door gives you a look outside where you spot a car parked across the street with the motor running judging by the exhaust coming from the tailpipe. The driver pulls on his cigarette. The glowing ember illuminates his face enough so you identify him as the thug who accompanied the bastard you knocked around.

Carefully, so you don’t frighten your date, you reach under your suit coat and slip the .45 out. With your thumb, you flip the safety off.

As you step outside, the car’s door opens. The spent cigarette hits the pavement sending out sparks in a small burst of orange. The driver stares at you with his right hand in his jacket pocket. You can hear the rumble of his car’s engine.

You step in front of your companion to shield her and let the driver see your .45. His head goes back as he grins to let you know he’s not afraid.

Knowing hesitation would prove deadly, you lift the .45 higher and walk around the corner of the building into an alley you hope leads to the next street. You don’t want a gunfight while you’re with new lady friend.

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch All Rights Reserved

Building tension, and a possible love interest too.

Noir mysteries need a mystery of course, and the possibility for a relationship, a short time relationship. The protagonist, whether he is a cop or a private detective, can never commit to anything permanent. Part of the mystery must delve into his damaged personality. What makes him who he is? Why does he react the way he reacts? Why doesn’t he or she just settle down and raise a family?

* * *

Carefully, you turn in the chair then stand keeping you back to him. As you rise, you lift your elbow fast, and hard, hitting the end of his nose, which gives off a satisfying crack, blood runs down into his mouth. As your arm drops to your side, you grab his wrist and twist until you feel the bones grinding, hear his gasp in pain. The gun that a moment earlier threatened to end your life, drops to the floor.

Suddenly the piano stops, the dame singing is as silent as everyone else in the tavern. Without acknowledging the quiet or what caused it, you release him, sit, collect the gun off the floor, and drop it into the pocket of your suit coat.

The gunman groans, holding one hand covering his broken nose and the other hanging uselessly by his side.

“You just made things worse wise guy.” His voice sounds muffled as if he spoke through pain as well as a smashed nose, a mouthful of blood.

You don’t respond or even acknowledge him. Instead you lift your glass drain it and hold it up. “How about a refill?”

The waitress, Susan Pamela Johnson, you remember, smiles, but her eyes show something else, like she’s wary, not quite certain if approaching you is the best idea.

“Come on, doll, you don’t want to see an old friend die of thirst, do you?” You smile your New York’s finest grin. It’s a bit lopsided and doesn’t really reach your eyes, but you know the ladies go for it.

She shakes her head, smiles as if she’s unable to not, returns, and collects your glass. “Not on your life,” she says and walks to the bar.

Now, you turn to the piano player. “I’d like to hear that last song again.” You get up, dig a dollar from your pocket and stuff it in the glass on top of the piano.

Susan returns with a fresh cold beer, the head of foam runs down the side in a narrow stream. She wipes the frosted mug and places it before you. As she does, her eyes lift and seems to examine yours. You watch them moving slightly, and smile wide so she sees your pleasure.

Her face is about a foot from yours when she whispers, “I’m off in about an hour if you’d care to buy a girl a drink.”  She places her hand on the back of yours, squeezes lightly, and then straightens, starts to turn away.

“I’ll be right here waiting,” you tell her and watch her walk away.

To be continued

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch All Rights Reserved

One nearly perfect example of setting the mood can be seen in the movie “Somewhere in Time” with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. While the movie is dated, the technique is wonderful and what any writer of historical fiction needs to apply to their story from beginning to end.  You cannot have your protagonist using anything, seeing or saying anything “out of time.” Many modern words and phrases were not used in earlier times.

Do your research. Immerse yourself put objects from the time where you see them, listen to the music, read magazines, and books printed then. Try to understand their world, their concerns, their daily lives.

After that word from our sponsor now, back to our story.

Outside flashes of lightning backlight the window’s signs. It steals a second of your attention, and you turn away from the men by the jukebox when you hear the waitress approaching. Your hand drops from the .38. You allow your suit coat to cover it as you look up, smile, and say, “Don’t I know you?”

She places your glass of beer, with a two-inch foam head on a cardboard Reingold coaster, a glass bowl filled with peanuts on the center of the table before answering. “You know that’s a pretty weak line.”

You smile and nod. “You must hear it a dozen times a night.” The beer tastes just right, nice, and cold as it slides down your throat.

“Not from a guy like you.” Her smile seems to warm as she examines your face. She nods slowly. “Yeah, I think so.”

Now you’re wondering what she is agreeing to, so wait to give her a chance to tell you.

“I think we went to school together, but then you disappeared right?”

You point at the empty chair. “Why don’t you sit for a second or two if the boss will let you.”

She looks over at the bar, and then shrugs, sits and reaches for a peanut, cracks the shell using both hands.

“What happened to you back then?” she asks without looking up.

“Dropped out to enlist, fighting seemed more important to me.”

“You look like you made it through okay.” She leaves the cracked peanut shell in the bowl, lifts a second one.

“I got lucky.” You wish you had not started talking about the war.

The sound of a chair scrapping the floor from across the room seems louder than the piano as the player begins “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” One of the women standing near the piano starts singing with a million dollar voice.

A quick glance at the two men you hoped to avoid shows you one walking in your direction. He doesn’t act as if he sees you, passes by heading to the restrooms.

The waitress, you see when you turn back to her, looks confused as if your sudden lack of interest causes her concern.

What is her name?

“Sorry,” you tell her. “I’m too easily distracted tonight, been a tough day.”

“What do you do these days?” She sounds like she thinks your answer might be important to her.

“I’m a private cop,” you start to explain and stop abruptly when you feel the barrel of a gun pressed hard into the middle of your back.

The waitress’s eyes widen. She looks over your head and nods as if she received a silent message. “Stop by again next time you’re in our neighborhood.” She leaves before you can respond.

“Let’s go pal,” the guy behind you speaks close to your ear. His beer and cigar breath, combs you neck. “We need to speak with you outside.”

To be continued

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch All Rights Reserved

Walking a darkened city street, peeling back today step by step, hearing rainfall as the sky darkens once the sun drops below the uneven skyline. It’s not heavy rain, but a light shower lifting odors of passing life off the sidewalk, the strip of grass between sidewalk and street with small maple trees planted in it every hundred feet. Their leaves are beginning to turn September dark greens into October golden.

The sounds of traffic lessen as evening progresses and your steps lead you away from the vibrant heart of entertainment. You seek solace where most would not look for it turning a corner when the white and colored neon, lights from a neighborhood tavern a block away grabs your attention.

Rain on the sidewalk fills cracks and holes, softening the sound of your leather-soled footsteps. The road is out of the way enough that traffic becomes infrequent, and when a car rolls by the tires hiss the water accumulating on the pavement as twists of smoke rumbles from the exhaust pipe beneath the rear metal chrome bumper.

Nearing the tavern, you hear the muffled sounds of voices, light laughter, in the background someone playing an upright piano, you discover as you press, your hand to the worn brass plate set chest high on left side of the door slowly opening it and entering.

The air feels warm, even inviting, which is when you realize that outside the temperature dropped with nightfall. You smell the smoke from cigarettes and cigars, beer and perfume and the people all around the room. Several of those sitting along the wood-topped bar, glance back to see who entered.

You reach up and touch the brim of your fedora, a greeting, everyone understands. Several of them nod, or smile a welcome.

You cross the room, noticing the scuffed oak flooring as you move to get closer to the musician. Several women stand to one side of the piano watching and listening as his fingers caress the ivories.

A black dial pay telephone hangs to the right of the piano where a small hallway leads back to the restrooms.

On the top of the piano sits a tumbler with a few silver coins, old dollar bills stuffed inside.

You glance around; spot an empty table and wave over the waitress after you hang your overcoat and hat on the brass hook mounted on the wall beside the table. You sit and realize how good it feels to be off your feet, with a crowd of people you don’t know but who make you feel at home.

The waitress looks like a girl you once knew, but now a dozen years older. Strands of her straw colored hair, held back in a ponytail slipped free, and she blows it away when it dangles before her light blue eyes. Her red lipstick needs refreshing red nail polish looks chipped. She wears a light green, bibbed dress that hangs below her knees with a lightly soiled yellow apron tied around her narrow waist.

She pulls her hips to the left when a guy at the bar reaches out to pat her butt. But her face lights with a grin as she shakes her head and says, “Watch where you try to put that hand of yours buster.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying, Pam,” he answers, grinning too and you find yourself feeling more comfortable than you suspected you might when you first entered.

“What can I get you?” the waitress asks, still smiling, when she stops alongside your table.

“I’ll have a Reingold on tap and some peanuts if you’ve got them,” you tell her and hand her a dollar.

“Be right back,” she says and you again wonder if she’s that girl you knew back in the old neighborhood before the war took you away.

Across the room, you see a new jukebox lights marching up over and down the neon panel-like mantel. A stack of small 78s, wait for a nickel to be inserted lifting and lowering the chosen disk beneath the metal arm with a needle to draw out the wailing voices and back up instrumentals.

Alongside the jukebox, you spot two older men. Neither seem, particularly interested in anything but each other. Because of the way, they lean forward; their creased foreheads and the silent but obviously angry words they pass back and forth you unbutton your suit jacket, and let your fingers caress the gnarled grip of the .38 sitting in a worn leather holster under your left arm. You know both men, hoped you might avoid them by coming to that particular neighborhood, and now wait with uncomfortable anticipation for them to see you and recognize you.

To be continued

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch All Rights Reserved

For me the dark nature of noir fiction fills some primordial need. Perhaps it is the simple idea that the information age, filled with digital platforms that take you wherever you desire nearly instantaneously allows too much fake and social media “light” into life. It seems to erase much of the mystery, the challenge until we are left with thrill seeking as a means of escaping the one-way street aspect of it.

Six decades ago, life was closer to true black and white in more ways than just photography. Nothing stood out more than the contrast between the rampant crimes that plagued large cities, and the simple lives of the new middle class struggling to forget, move beyond a brutal four-year war that claimed millions of lives in Europe and the Pacific.

As I’ve written in the past, some returning GIs never really came home. They lived their lives with the memories of battles raging in the background of their thoughts, the brutal deaths and injuries to GIs in combat. Some experienced unexpectedly walking up to Nazi death camps and seeing incomprehensible suffering, and civilian casualties everywhere. They managed to put on a good face, almost, no probably, faking a normal co-existence within society. Some had families. Some never tried.

Inside they still wanted, or needed to prove a point that good always overcomes evil. Yet, there was little they could do to make their case over the clatter of ordinary people living around them with that “live and let live attitude” we often seem to seek when we tire of wading through media sewerage.

Even law enforcement sixty years ago, on some levels, was rancid and corrupt. How could the average Joe make sense of it all?

Mickey Spillane slammed a book down on the counter titled “I, The Jury” and the answer became crystal-clear. Noir fiction, although not a creation during post-war times, was then reborn and gave that lonely misplaced GI in so many veterans a place to retreat and feel that yes, there was one guy out there who got the job done. Not to mention the dames who rolled off their seamed stockings to whet Mike Hammer’s appetite for more than a smoking gun barrel.

Cops loved and hated Hammer. When he walked into a bar, or a room filled with people, everyone reacted and few did so mildly.

Yet, here we are sixty years later and still the need for dark fiction lives and breathes the mystery of dead-end alleys, blood splattered rooms, and a body locked in the trunk of a car dumped in the harbor by local mobsters out to make a point.

There is no end to what writers create, vampires once feared, are now walking dead lovers without a beating heart.

For me, however, peeling back the decades exposing smoke-filled rooms, narrow corner taverns, and a killer who walked, the street without fearing local cops needed revisiting. For us today, it was a simpler time six decades ago, but for those living then, it was anything but simple.

When I began writing Marlowe Black mysteries, he ripped apart the Velcro hiding emotional ashes of the day’s events. His attitude, actions conveyed my angst. Sounds dramatic, yet so does spending yet another day in rush hour traffic sitting in a cubicle waiting for lunch knowing digital reality would never release its stranglehold on me. Soon face recognition ads will flash in every storefront as we walk down the street to board the subway, grab a bus.

Good god, I thought, rip back the freaking Velcro, please and step into a time when privacy meant respect and respect was honor and truth.

More to follow.

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch All Rights Reserved

An innocuous pile of pebbles on the corner of the wood slab kitchen table appeared placed randomly as if her son collected them and left them where he believed they would be safe.

Either that, she thought, or he just forgot he brought them inside.

No two looked alike, whether feldspar, quartz, sandstone, rounded or sharp edged fragments left behind by some cataclysmic event eons ago, she realized as she sat to examine them without touching any.

The temptation to sweep them up and toss them outside, or just arrange them differently so their being on her clean table might be less offensive had been the first powerful reaction she had when she entered the room moments earlier.

She knew she did not understand her son’s passion for collecting something so mundane. Perhaps once, she thought, when I was his age, I might have, or maybe I would’ve scorned the effort as something boys did that we girls wound not consider. After all, what purpose might they serve other than to bring dirt into a freshly cleaned house and on kitchen table too.

Yet, a strong feeling she could not define stayed her hand as she reached for the pebbles. Instead, she folded her arms across her breasts, frowned at her indecision, and then turned to look out the kitchen window where she had left a pair of freshly baked apple pies on the sill to cool while the aroma that wafted off them might be enjoyed by anyone nearby.

She stood and walked closer to the window.

Her son Peter, shirtless in blue shorts, and bare feet, knelt alongside the ancient maple tree about fifty feet from the kitchen door, with his back to her. The play of muscles across his narrow upper back and equally thin shoulders told her he was seriously engaged with whatever adventure his young mind concocted.

He won’t miss them, she finally decided with a warm smile of affection. Besides, it’s time for me to set the table for dinner.

When she turned to the table, she discovered the small pile of pebbles missing. Struggling to keep the scream she felt building deep in her throat from escaping, and causing panic, hers at least, she let her hand drop to her side like the wet wing of a bird caught in a tropical storm.

“Peter,” she called, but not loud enough for him to hear. She knew he’d remain outside until she called three or more times, so went to the door, opened it and found that her son’s actions displayed he had not heard as he continued digging in the dirt.

For a second, he reminded her of an angry little dog she had as a child. Snapper had a habit of trying to bit anyone he did not know. The dog finally tunneled under their fence and ran off. She never knew what happened to him, but had often suspected that her parents knew and did not want to tell her.

Now it’s my imagination running away, she scolded and went to the white enamel kitchen sink without glancing at the table. She collected a wet sponge that smelled faintly like lemons. She squeezed out the excess water and with serious determination strode the five steps to the table.

The pebbles remained missing, the surface clear like the rest of the tabletop until she began rubbing to clean it.

The place where she’d seen the pile of pebbles earlier, began to disappear the way a smudge on glass does, slowly at first, resisting the effort to remove it until finally it dissolves and the glass is transparent again.

However, the tabletop was not transparent where the pile of pebbles sat. It looked more like a movie in a small round LCD that was more oval than round where the pile of pebbles had sat.

She leaned closer to examine what appeared to exist on the inside of her tabletop. She witnessed a parade of animals unlike any she could have conceived might live anywhere in her world.

Without encouragement, her forefinger, wet and soapy from the sponge, moved to prod the apparent opening.

She gasped, jerked her hand back before the action completed and felt her heart pounding against her ribs smelled fresh sweat as it beaded her upper lip. Her hands trembled as she clutched the edge of her flowered apron and walked to the back door stepping outside.

“Peter.” She called again but still not loud enough for him to hear. As she stepped off the bottom concrete step determined to go to him insist he listen she froze. Her breath hissed between her clenched teeth with the realization she suddenly did not want to look at his face or see exactly what his busy little arms and hands dug into.

His movements now reminded her of a frantic small dog racing to find a lost bone.

She thought of the tabletop the tableau playing beneath or inside it and shuddered hard enough her shoulders shook and felt the way she had the previous winter when caught outside in a mid-February ice storm. Then her body was too cold or too shocked to shiver.

Her heels tapped the flagstone sidewalk when she took several desperate steps backwards and then thudded against the first concrete step.

Yet instead of turning fleeing into the safety of her kitchen an act that felt like surrendering to a fear she could not define but that busily gnawed her resolve like timber worms drilling into the keel of an ancient wooden ship she stopped stood and stared.

She sat on the stoop to calm, herself and studied her fingers, as they worried the apron. The sunflower pattern had delighted her when she spied it in K-Mart but now seemed lifeless and pale when compared to what she witnessed inside the translucent patch in her table.

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch al rights reserved

(I enjoyed writing this partial but it ran out. So I submit it as is. It does always make me smile.)

I wanted to tell him how I, Marlowe Black, felt, but he was dead. Standing outside his small wood frame house, watching smoke and flames eating its structure, felt insufficient. Rage demands an outlet. The sonofabitch was an arsonist. He burned one hundred twenty-seven buildings, killed thirty-three innocents, and then lit himself doused with gasoline sitting on the fuel soaked sofa in his own home.

I listened to the sirens approaching, knowing their efforts would prove futile, their arrival too late. Their spiraling sounds echoed along the street bouncing off the walls of the buildings still standing. The noise reminded me of some day in the past, or maybe just a moment. Right then I was too damn mad to give a good Goddamn about the past.

Chasing him through the Bronx felt right even though I wondered why in hell I was dealing with a criminal in the one part of the city I least cared for. For the last year and a half, it seemed I spent more time there than in Brooklyn where I lived.

As he drove recklessly across the bridge tires squealing, he cut off three drivers. One of them spun out and nearly careened with the front bumper of my 49 Olds.

After slamming on the brakes, spinning a one eighty, I stopped and got out. The other driver was gone by then and I knew it was a setup. I’d lost more than five minutes and that was all the time the bastard needed to beat me to his death.

Stuffing the Colt 45 in its holster, I turned and watched New York Firemen arrive followed by two or three prowl cars. New York’s finest was a step ahead or two behind me on most days. This time, I was a mile ahead of the cops.

No one paid me any attention as I lit a Camel off my Zippo and strolled back to my car parked around the block.

Onlookers had gathered, now pushed back by the cops. I wanted to tell them to allow the spectacle to be observed, but maybe the dead bastard didn’t even deserve that much.

A glance over my shoulder told me the house was a total. Already, I could see the skeleton framework silhouetted by orange flames that licked across beams and studding. The stench of it wavered over the street, tainted with the smell of charred flesh

“Bastard,” I muttered, crushed the cigarette under my heel and left the scene with my hands in my pockets.

Once around the block, the cold November air ran down my back. I lifted up my collar, buttoned the overcoat, felt warm but not, thought about Stella and Stacey Morgan huddled together before a fireplace in a beach front cottage about seventy miles east of the city. I needed to feel the touch of gentle hands, the caress of a loving person, and faced another cold reality. I was alone and I had failed.

Yet the boy lived.

Copyright 2018 Gabriel FW Koch all rights reserved