Dead Nobles

By clifford roberts

Dead Nobles is the story of Tam-o’-shanter, an unmarried police detective in Lower Manhattan. His investigative expertise is put to the test when a killer, a regular Jack the Ripper, begins butchering people caught up in the vortex of the city’s nightlife.

Faced with stopping him at all cost, Tam, was one of the city’s finest detectives and known to keep his ear to the ground.

• Language: English
• Publisher: clifford roberts
• Release date: Sep 5, 2009
• ISBN: 9781310333040

clifford roberts

Clifford Roberts started writing in the Army, submitting poems and short stories to Reader’s Digest and other magazines. He later attended Farmingdale University, Bluefield State College, and USI Computer School. Shortly, he joined Newsday as a manager. He later became a Real Estate Investor and home restoration specialist. He now writes full time and play piano for R&R.

Book preview

Chapter 1

After 9:00 pm, a call came in to Tam-o’-shanter, while in route, indicating someone stabbed over on 85th Street and 3rd Avenue.

Switching on the siren and heading there, narrow lines materialized on the detective’s forehead. His mind whirled back to a couple of hours earlier. At a greasy spoon in an area known as doctor’s row—for mostly a specific kind of enterprise or occupancy, in that very same vicinity, two lone odd men sat.

At the outset, around 7:30 twilight’s hungry jaw champs fine. For Tam, dressed in a day-glo orange shirt, an awful sunset would not fix an awful day.

Wel-diddly-welcome, guy. Any-old-how, don’t knock the food—it’s free, said Shackle Havisham, honest in nothing, dressed in his 97 per cent merino wool, 3 per cent cashmere whistle- and-flute, and wiry and fit, chuckling, and then glancing out through the window of the coffee shop at his car parked at curbside loaded with extras. He spooned some soup into his mouth, taking his time to lick the spoon completely.

On the serious side, and not the brightest man in the world, I am aware that the reports of my good to great dearth are greatly exaggerated. Spite of financial difficulties, I’m rubbing along. I certainly don’t possess a great pile of boodle or ducats, okay?

Considering the man to be a picaro—a rogue with wicked ways, Tam said to the precious scoundrel, "I got ya. Mr. Havisham who always seemed very disloyal. La-dee-freakin’-da.

You might pay one hundred dollars for your shoes, but I’m the one that’d have to pay for your flip-flops. So whatcha gotta tell me Mr. Silly Spoon? Looking at the man’s face, a frowsy smell of stale beer and stale smoke flared his nostrils. This character Shackle’s hobby getting on people’s nerves—especially his—and very good at it, swearing all heart, but by his proboscis, all nose.

First off, I love your sense of humor. Secondly, this cat ain’t seen nuthin but shit on a stick most of my life, said Shackle, scratching the grotesque whelk on his cheek, and with a curt refusal to comment on what Tam-o’-shanter wanted to hear.

Look, I am about halfway through. I have milestoned my life. Frustration ages people. What you are asking me to do; I have but two words to say to your request—impossible. Okay, okay, I got ya. Just kidding, the very type that relished the behind-the-scenes glimpses of the world in which dirty-sorted little details unravel a tangled web of lies, deception and murder.

Keep on coming with it, Tam said, "but don’t try to shit me. You know my short patience for dealing with liars. You don’t want me to say to you the next time I see you that you are full of it. Besides, my best mutt might have got run over. I’m crazy bout my four legged beasts.

You don’t want me to go that route with complete graphic details. I go to pieces. The way I figure it, is let a snake loose in the classroom, the fun begins. Might be a full moon out tonight too. Crazy things might take place if that should happen, telling a lie so Shackle wouldn’t welsh on him.

Let me take a brief moment to explain. As a rule, I don’t do that to people I know, Shackle said, as piercing eyes glittered beneath a great beetling brow, his words spilling from bee-stung lips. "I will admit I’m no plaster saint, without human failings. You get my drift and know where I’m coming from. Keep in mind that life is about the ongoing struggle between those who have and those who want to have what the others have. Those are what are commonly known as the have-nots.

"As poor victims, they see themselves trying to get for themselves what is rightfully theirs. However, when the have-nots become haves, they continue to see themselves as victims of the hordes barking with prolonged noises for what is justly theirs, and they have neither the spirit nor the surety to take pleasure in what they have acquired.

Having said all that, like always, I won’t jive you. I’m talking about a mountain of a schizo guy like you and—

Tam got a page. Hold that thought Shackle. Let me get this call. After responding to the caller, he said to Shackle, Hold that thought, I’m needed somewhere else. Meet me back here in about two hours.

Isn’t that where Shackle hangs out? his sidekick Terry Vabontrain nicknamed Speedy’ voice broke into his thoughts, his eyes staring straight ahead.

Shackle lay sprawled out on the ground, killed in cold blood, with cold water thrown on his hopes, his lifeblood a river of red around his lifeless body. There was the look of fright and disappointment on his face, the eyes … with all their blaze of basilisk horror. His bloodless lips twisted.

That’s one canary we can’t count on singing anymore, he said. His sidekick handed him the police blotter—a book in which entries are made temporarily pending transfer to permanent record books—he started documenting the crime scene, in spidery handwriting, as was his duty, as detective work was his pigeon.

A policeman came over to them. Pardon me detectives, just wanted you to know that shortly before you arrived, a man, a leather-clad hoodlum bolted from the scene when we first showed up. When we caught him the wimp cried out, ‘Oh no! Please don’t hurt me. I’m keeping my nose clean?’ He didn’t want to be seen anywhere near here. He just got out on parole. I guess that’s about it. They thanked the officer and he walked off.

Chapter 2

Lying feet level to head, eyes closed, at rest, after a nightly night of activity and the daily grind and sleep, and the hypnagogic imagery in his mind, Tam-o’-shanter settled into a memorable sleep.

He awakens hours later, with a sudden start, and scratched his cleft chin, his subconscious mind abandoning the abysm from which nightmares crawl.

Always rising with the determined dawn, he likes to look at that dawn not just as the start of the day’s activities but also as having an almost timeless quality to it.

If only he didn’t hide so many secrets. His only real weapon—what he knows, and he knows a lot.

He has tasted the venison of the victory feast. His awareness guides him through a fascinating world with ease—that’s if a bullet in the knee, one in the gut, and two in the head is something a person could take with ease. So yes, he had bragging rights to being on the business end of a revolver. If his mood could be described in a phrase, that phrase was never say die.

Either way, he wouldn’t agree, because he is the one that had been blasted almost into oblivion.

He ended up lying there in the intensive care unit, tubes jammed all over him, running every which a way, like some crazy Sci-fi flick; his poor gray-haired mother pouring her eyes out at his bedside, while his miserable crippled dad wears a hole in the floor, pacing back and forth outside in the god awful stinking corridor.

Chapter 3

Tam sat up on the edge of the bed inside his pad on 23rd Street and 5th Avenue in Chelsea. It was an uninviting block, treeless and barren, lined with soot-colored walk-ups that cast heavy shadows for most of the day.

The old suite he had rented had been restyled with lowered ceilings and a pink-beige carpet, on top of slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work. Visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.

There was a new metal folding door to the bathroom, and a line of cream-colored appliances in the kitchen. An antique steel toaster with springs, which he had to bounce his toast on to make it go down. This often took four tries. A coffee splattered white coffee maker and an avocado-green electric can opener.

Firm as a rock and gripping the wooden instrument convulsively, Tam presses it close to his body, tinkling a tune, strumming on the guitar, with talons fat as sausages.

He paused—ending with a rich chord in a minor key—to down a triple latte from Starbucks, nowhere near to being stinko. Without moving his eyes, he said, Don’t play a lot of fancy guitar much anymore.

You still got it sweetheart, muckle-mouth the Tempter trotted out, a great and terrible beauty, sitting and waiting, waiting and sitting, the mind waiting in the mind, as she listened with both ears instead of one.

Her improbably imposing and statuesque stacked frame, made her look flirtatious and foxy. She was a blip—prized flesh—damned near perfect … maybe even flawless, guaranteed to bring most men all the way to attention, by all accounts, a hot woman, the new favor of the month, however, never in the time had her charms reached the level of pure natural magic.

As an afterthought, he said Thank you, but not the way I want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks, he fielded, answering adequately. Call me a misty-eyed dreamer. The biddies at PJ Retirement Home look forward to my guitar concerts even though I play the same two songs every month. Sometimes I volunteer at Child Care Serves, a residential home for children with special health care needs in chronic developmental and critical physical conditions. Some of the kids communicate by blinking, have frequent seizures, or unable to control their movements. I feel completely comfortable with these children. I even read stories to them. Even I get lonely. His sigh was a deep sigh. "If I live for a hundred years, I’ll never forget how utterly and terribly alone I felt after Fido died. I was so miserable that I thought I would die. Months and months went by, and it seemed that every little thing reminded me of him and made me wish things could be different. Whenever puppies in the pet store window distracted me, from the serious business of taking him for his walk, Fido snarled fiercely and pulled mightily at his leash yet he always forgave me instantly. Over the past few years he lost his hearing and his sight, but when he felt the leash click on his collar and smelled fresh air, he still tried to caper. He’s been dead for three months now. This morning I filled his water bowl all the way to the top—just the way he likes it— before I remembered. I don’t know whether I am ever going to get over his death. So you can see why I help the young ones."

She lit a cigarette, blew a smoke ring into the air, and then shook her head. Are you playing tonight? With that guitar playing, she knew he was not grossing much. She was about to tell him so, when she weakened at the last second and felt pity. She knew if she said to him he’d never learn, he would say he would when he’s ready.

His winged thought dissipated, as he ceased pestering the instrument.

Chapter 4

Taking the cigarette from the Tempter, Tam took a drag, and then blew almost an identical ring up into the air in the room. Where?

He had the wild stag’s foot. She adored watching him dance at the club, displaying grace and speed as well as daring. You know.

Oh, you talking about Poppa John’s, Tam replied, his twang sounding like future Yankee head Hal Steinbrenner eating cat fish and chicken wings at Brother Jimmy’s on Second Avenue. After all, he actually knew her well. He knew the type of person that would set you right, if you let her but have the handsel of your ear.

Where else did you think I meant? she asked him, paying him no mind. Affording him a beguiling smile, she let her finger trail a path around his ear and slowly down his side and around to his groin, as he listened— staring at her.

Tam said, If everything goes okay, I will. I hope that answers your question.

Deceptively delicious, she whipped off her glasses and he tumbled down into her eyes. She wore contacts, her big beautiful baby blues stared back at him like two carefree fruitful flowers blooming out of season, as You mean if Cathy is there, don’t you lover? Although her tone sounded aggressive, she exhibited an ivory grin.

Cool it, he replied, not wanting to go there. Sudden a little birdie in his brain whispered: Haven’t you heard, you can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think. As to Poppa John’s, sometimes the place is bad for me. But what the heck, should I drink myself to death, at least I can go with the feeling that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. All because of that lousy tube of meat, he wanted to hump every skirt he saw. His take on it, when the boobs jiggle, the wood rises. And that’s no lie, I tell ya," he said, continuing to prose on about her feminine beauty, positioning his muscular body on top of her, his dangle angle invading her abyssal zone and stimulating her moan zone.

Sexing it up with her—still hot, still sticky. Your lack of inhibition captures my imagination; I end up a wiser person thanks to you.

Whatever, she said. Then she mouthed in an exciting and inviting tone, I like that dope. Your sweet words I mean.

His face ablaze with excitement, and though he is insanely clever, she is no slouch herself. She moaned pleasingly, encouraging him with her soft hands. Most women say I’m guilty of assault with intent to thrill, he said in a soft voice, a galaxy of longings within his loins. The way I look at it, life doesn’t wave as it’s speeding by, therefore, it’s better to grab on fast and hold on tight.

He then touches her all over, each place, vividly evoking endless pleasure, as she perches on the rim of paradise, gently massaging his fab abs, her thin sinuous fingers then guides his stem into her.

. . . um, wow, she uttered, moaning aloud. I love your sweaty hands. She acted as if she cared less that she was his fool of desire, or destined to a slice of circumstances and love on the run, as his johnson’s deep loving hurt so sweetly.

He had a sudden pang at the thought that he might be straddling her for the last time.

He finished and then got up and switched on his old turntable. He flipped through a pile of LP’s and settled on the Four Season’s Big Girl’s don’t cry. He started to snap his fingers to the beat the instant the music started playing, whispering as he ducked in the shower.

Chapter 5

Deep in thought and absent much of mind, Tam reflected on his first bedding the Tempter. She had said to him, I remember the first time we met, we had a great time: splashed through bogs, ate like hogs, slept like logs, and then you danced my legs off. The day will come when the dancer in me will escape by shedding its hard skin, and my real legs will leave on the bed the withered scales rendering them immobile.

That’ll be the day, she said. Enough of the nostalgia bull, he said, Why don’t we walk the snake.

The snake? she snorted. More like a worm, I’ll bet. He shouted, It’s a freaking python, You don’t believe me, eh? He unzipped his pants. All I want to do is to dip Cecil in the hot grease. I know I’m high-sexed. It’s right up there with Darth Vader’s libido. Her jaw dropped, seeing no bullions on his balls and no warts on his wank. Woops! Incredible. Lady analysts got a sudden wide on for him. Come on … I’m rotten-ripe, soft to wet a wick, she said, as his wick sheathed itself in her naturally, going for the whole hog. Not exactly what I had in mind, but I’ll take it, he said.

She said, Oh, be quiet. You are Gods gift to women, and you know it. Don’t let that go to your head. Since fifteen, men had wanted the Tempter. Far from a wallflower to warming another man’s bed, she lives by trading, living for, living on, living off … many men. Her philosophy is money talks, even when someone marching to a different beat spends it. She falls apart and put back together again worse than Humpty Dumpty.

She hailed from a whistle stop down in the backcountry where old buckets answers for sinks. Though not proud of the type of work she is doing, she is happy to have enough finances to keep her from starving. Ten years Tam’s junior, she owed him her life.

It happened over a year ago. A brain-scrambled john, crazy enough to be in a squirrel tank, tried to treat her as if she was his doormat by copulating with her without paying.

In Dutch, she tried to get away from him but he grabbed her by the throat and stabbed her once in the chest, missing her lung by half of an inch. Useless. In a blue funk, and a brown study, every bit fearful of losing her life. Lucky for her Tam-o’-shanter had stopped by her flat. Hearing the commotion, and losing always putting him out of joint and not suffering fools gladly, he kicked in the door. So relieved to see him, she turned on the waterworks, her eyes flooding with tears.

The rescue had almost turned sour. She had to plead with Tam to stop hitting the john. He was beating him to a pulp. The man with not only lumps and bumps, but also a bruised ego, managed to escape, fleeing from the flat, terrified. Tam then rushed her to the hospital, not leaving her bedside side until she recovered. While nine nice nurses nursed nicely from room to room, she lay in bed attired in a Cahoolin.

She was so relieved that he had come to her rescue and told him so. He put to death her suspicions kindly killing her fears as well exorcising and slaying the demons one by one.

Never had a man displayed such courage and conviction for her. The business she was in nobody cares a damn about any woman dealing in it—not, until now.

Preposterous as it may sound, and her knowing he’d not stink on her, if told to tell to jump off a tall building—no problem. Despite her instincts telling her that if she’d follow this far up shit creek, it’s a long way back, she’d die and go to hell for him if that was his desire.

She knew she could not have him to herself, imaging every eye of every john were his. She was excess baggage full of darkness and despair. She never saw him need no one. Beyond her dreams … out of her reach, he was. Just standing next to him was daunting. When in his company, some things she stretched, but mainly she told the truth, not half lies, or as to some erudite taste, terminological inexactitudes. She knew he did not want an albatross round his neck. She knew her Decalogue of remissible sins differed from his Ten Commandments of life. For one thing, with bad behavior and no moral values, and her amatory adventures, being faithful—not in her genes. You could say the hand—not stacked in her favor. The question was would she stick to it until she was a stiff’un.

Shortly, and the tumble over and both having reached the sum of human happiness, she kissed him and left.

Tam wiped a sweat-covered face with an equally sweaty forearm.

He got an urgent call.

Chapter 6

With his car stripper within the compass of the notorious tub of grease or tenderloin districts of the city, Tam-o’-shanter, strapped—armed—arrived at the scene of a stiff and stark, on a quiet street, the road jogging to the right, well into the dumping ground.

Lighting is poor in the back lane of the city, a seminary of vice and crime.

Now, Valentine’s Day, cupid, love, roses, flowers, and hearts, a breeze jostles a cross-shaped wind chime hung on the open front door, the tingling breaking the quiet. A cat’s cradle of red tape cordoned off the crime scene.

Dressed in civilian clothes, Tam waded into the task presenting his tin to a police officer. Now part of the scene, he went inside. The black room took him like a cave. Will someone turn on the damn lights, he based.

The lights were switched on revealing living quarters of undelight.

His eyes observed a pair of toy night-vision goggles, a plastic bottle, a hockey puck, a dirty handkerchief, a crumpled note and an unhinged door. The fickle finger of fate caused something wicked to come this way, he said to Speedy, his pard. Stamped an honest cop, she stood next to him. Her son Carl, a medical technician worked in Los Angeles. He looked at the decease’s deathly pallor. She looked every bit done to a turn. Tam said, "There’s no question, ifs and buts about it. What we have here looks to be a good thing gone badly to this Vic.

Before this case is over, with a little luck, we would hope to have a significant amount of evidence. This character deserves every label that we put on him. Anyone capable of doing something horrible to someone nice should be punished. Though not showing the white rabbit scut to us for the moment, I’ll bet when we nab the sucker—and who no doubt is a stranger to the truth and would swallow the bible…and we sweat him, and grill him on the stand, his two bookended yellow page lawyers, will claim someone else did it to stitch him up. They say revenge is bliss.

If the specter of the feast before him at that very moment, he’d set his ten commandments in his face, punching him every bit silly, and then salt or trunk his file, despite his actions implying concealment of forged papers on his part. You’d not find tears on him for having beaten up a character—with ice water in his veins—that carried with him, like bad breath, the reek of the backstreets.

A cup of restraint kept him from putting his fist through a wall.

The delicious fragility of this travesty is something awful, said Speedy, her curiosity suffering.

Tam-o’-shanter thought a thought, but the thought he thought wasn’t the thought he thought he thought, as he then added, As they say, ‘anger suffers as grief withdraws.’

Yeah, but, to think some mischief-maker did a wet job on her right in her very own home. The idea of home is so depressing. It stays as it was left, shaped to the coziness of the last to go as if to win them back. That’s why I feel it’s times like this I prefer to be an undercover dentist, Speedy deadpanned, the awful sight making her insides feel akin to a lightning bolt zapped a turkey—and cooked it to a golden brown.

Having a mind as sharp as a quill, the guts of a burglar, nary a fear of being sacked … unassigned, Tam-o’-shanter chuckled, but quickly became earnest. No Cahoolin-come-lately handling cases involving murder, he was called in to make sense of the senseless. But how much does he know and can he still get the job done. Then with a convoy of urgency, he said, It’s crushing to think that ninety-nine point nine per cent of the population couldn’t give a monkey’s?

Another tall and thick, detective with a cold chilled heart—named Myron Chillingsworth, stood on the side. Until lately, constant deskwork had attrited the elbows of his jacket. His slick black wavy hair, if it wasn’t a carpet, had clearly enjoyed the attention of a skillful coiffeur.

Tam considered Chillingsworth to be of flat character, and said to him, Naturally, I try to be patient and understanding, but I think my silence has basically dyed me guilty in the news media.

With a blur of ego, Collingsworth shrugged. Despite having a cauliflower ear, his hearing was sharp. Never fear, and putting his coldness aside, he would on occasion use a sesquipedalian word or two making him sort of an outcast, a rather bore to his fellow officers.

Detective Chillingsworth responded to Tam-o’-shanter, his words came out slow as a molasses-coated ox trudging along in mud up to its belly, putting great store in them. Who knows … could be a case where a patient turned murderous … after having a near death experience. Such a pity … these days if you make the wrong move, you’re with your maker. He walked off to look at something else, his leg lightly bumping up against the couch, the autobahn of the living room.

Chapter 7

After appreciating Detective Chillingsworth having cast light on the situation, Tam said to him, Much obliged Sherlock. Careful where you step … gotta preserve the evidence.

Okey-dokey. So long as I don’t step on my weenie, said Chillingsworth, stalwart common sense and walking away. Like some of his fellow detectives, he felt that Tam-o’-shanter was a gentle man with pawky wit.

Before things would wind to a close, Tam would become so worked up over the case, he would bark a shin on his office desk, trying to work out the complicated life of a snark.

Tam then placed his full focus on the gory scene that was a pitcher of bitterness. His eyes laid witness to a murder of quality.

Sharon K***’ lay stiff and stark, copper covering her eyelids, her fingers painted in blood. The rosary round her neck bore red stains, crucifying Jesus all over again. The whole scene was loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.

She was found dead here in the bathtub, said Speedy, pointing to the decease, with a head wound that shed a protesting gob of blood. The same old story is: word has it that this happened just before the couple’s divorce settlement was finalized.

You don’t say, said Tam. Poor thing. From the looks of things, she was caught off guard. She didn’t have a prayer. Speedy nodded. Do you think this unnecessary brutal death could be ruled an accidental drowning? They both slipped on some plastic gloves.

Then from his unquiet mind came the words, It’s a little premature to make a definite call. He put his finger under the chin of the decease, looking at her intently as some keen-eyed TV detectives often do. From the looks of things, evidence suggests that someone, in a minute of failure, killed her and tried to make it look like an accident. The scene was a mad thing. This sort of thing is sure to be very sympathetic for law enforcement … I’m not out to do a hatch job. Hopefully this terrible misdeed won’t trumpet the news until we can gather more evidence.

Two letters were etched in blood on the bathroom door. There grew a crinkle of suspicion on his forehead, and he wondered what the hell DN meant.

She looked at the letters in complete confusion failing to understand. "You don’t suppose it could mean: Dead Now … Dead Neck … Dead News!