Dirty Laundryman

By JH Gordon

At almost 40 Snubs Jackson had spent the last four as an errand boy. He was a bad gambler, lousy at cards. Over the last four years he’d lost millions at certain casinos in Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Tahoe, and Atlantic City. It was his job. The casinos laundered the revenues from mob businesses. The sums were in the huge to ballistic range and so were the risks

• Language: English
• Publisher: JH Gordon
• Release date: Mar 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301826124

JH Gordon

Who and what am I? I'm an American expat living in South America working on my next book. In addition to Fireclosure, "Joe Detective" is a seven book noir detective series with number eight coming soon. I ventured south for a number of good reasons not the least of which is a type of isolation that frees me from California distractions. South America renews me. Ancient culture struggling with the new is interesting since all the "new" is something out of 1950's America. My background ranges from the detective business to the business of business having been an entrepreneur most of my life in diverse businesses and lifestyles. Rock m'Roll to commerce to consulting to seminars. From real estate investment to a construction outfit. I've done too many things to list and it's hard to remember some. As such, I've seen the duality of morality in the way society wrestles with being civilized and comes up wanting. It may be that somehow, by writing things about criminality and simmering violence, I prevent myself from becoming one of my characters. (Leaving the evidence in writing as it were.) My love of the underdog and the realist comes out in my stories. I'm finally doing what I love best. I'm having new adventures every day and I get to be a story teller. I write for people who know a camp fire and their imaginations are better than 70 millimeter film even with Sound Around. I can only hope they forgive my errors in spelling and my sometimes stumbling expression. I think they do. In person I display the usual human frailties. I'm neither good nor completely bad. I value my liberty more than anything else, and a small eclectic group of friends. I love life and stress on it as little as possible. I'm of an age where I'm conscious of time running out. But I look forward to what comes next. As Joe Detective said, "Death is like a traffic accident, you'd love to stay and watch, but you're out of popcorn." I always make too much popcorn and I think that's what life is about. Stories I do fairly well, I'm told. But when it comes to writing a personal description I can only say my life is a decades old run-on sentence and you'd have to have been there to understand. Lucky for me, I've outlived the statute of limitations many times and more than a few of mine enemies. Thanks to my valuable friends... JH Gordon

Book preview

The Dirty Laundry Man

By

JH Gordon

Copyright 2012 by JH Gordon

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1

The ancient sedan bounced through chuckholes as it made a dust-cloud out of the narrow mountain road. Snubs gripped the wheel tightly keeping the speed down enough to steer clear of sliding off the cliff or scraping the rocky outcroppings into an avalanche. The canyon beckoned. Snubs ignored it.

Ernie Flats stiff-armed the dashboard from the victim seat and averted his eyes from the gaping maw on his right. With one arm clenched over the seatback and his sweating hand splayed out on the dash, he held on like a pre-panicked toboggan rider. His legs braced his feet tightly to the floorboard and his wide eyes darted alternately from the speedometer to the curves in the road ahead.

You know this road?

Intimately…

So you’ve been over it before...

Nope…

You ever been killed doing this?

Every time…

The car careened around another hairpin and fishtailed a bit. Ernie’s hand slid across the dash and his butt across the seat. The old rust-bucket was a pre-seatbelts 50s Plymouth that had no business playing sports car.

Snubs concentrated and applied the brakes just enough to make the next sharp curve.

What the hell is the hurry? Ernie yelled, You know they’re waiting or they’re not.

They’re waiting unless I miss my guess.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ernie's hand snake toward the .45 revolver in the pocket of Snubs' coat. Ernie was about to make his final mistake.

Chapter 2

At almost 40 Snubs Jackson had spent the last four as an errand boy. The job suited his lousy ability at cards. He was a bad gambler. Over the last four years, he’d lost millions at certain casinos in Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Tahoe, and Atlantic City. It was his job. The casinos were all very accommodating comping his rooms and meals. They’d even toss in a hooker if the mood struck but it never did. The rental cars and hotel rooms all began to look alike to him. But a job’s a job. And it suited his nature. Snubs Jackson had never liked being in one place and hated taking orders. That stemmed from too long a career in the military. He’d skated for years qualifying for schools and transferring through all the military had to offer except OCS and flight school. And although he could fly and held a civilian license, he didn’t like it much. And the thought of being responsible for lower ranks rankled his singular independent nature.

Finally, he wound up in the investigative unit of the MPs and then the spookier side of what was laughingly called Military Intelligence. He found everybody too serious and it annoyed him. Despite several rabbits he pulled out of the hidden brass hats, his superiors said he was unsuited to the job. To Snubs, that meant he was insubordinate and that he’d uncovered some favorite graft.

It also meant he was on his own a lot of the time and he spent much of it reining in petty crimes and capturing deserters. He finally had to take one too many orders from one too many stupid officers one too many times. He quit. The reenlistment bonus was too low an offer by about a million.

His next phase put him in the detective division of the LAPD, then San Diego, then Santa Monica. He finally figured out between utter incompetence, political pull, and laws designed to showcase the stupidity of cops, he was on the wrong side. Or at least on a side that was no better than the other one. Work had little appeal if it meant messing with his schedule which varied widely according to wanderlust and whim. He just didn’t like being in one place much. And being involved with other cops didn’t appeal either. He wasn’t the gung ho type. He moved on.

Four years ago found him cruising but barely into Las Vegas. The old beater he was driving had thrown a rod. He’d spent the better part of two hours in the desert sun waiting for the junker to cool down and then ten greasy minutes cranking the hardest to reach spark plug out from under the myriad of hoses and wires. With an open hole, there was no compression in the cylinder and the broken rod didn’t whack its way through the side of the motor block. Sputtering into the outskirts of town brought him to a seedy looking repair shop on one side of the road and a junk yard on the other. Granting a momentary reprieve to the old Dodge, he chose the repair shop.

The greasy mechanic spit a brown wad of something into the dust and closed the hood. He circled slowly around the car like a bored buzzard and said, you got two good tires there, what’ll you take for em’?

The death knell rang clear. The old Dodge gave her last gasp on the long trip across the street. The junk man gave him $62.50 without the two good tires and he got $22 bucks for those back at the garage and a lift into town.

It didn’t take long for Snubs to run the $84.50 into a room, a steak, several glasses of wine, and $220 bucks at a Black Jack table. It didn’t take long for morning to come and the balance was down to $9 bucks and the cleaning lady banging on his door. He nursed the situation and his head around the pool the rest of the morning.

Check out time is 2:00 PM sir, will there be anything else? The skinny young desk clerk stood prissily tapping his foot next to Snub’s lounge chair. He’d apparently come out of his air-conditioned office reluctantly as he sniffed out the practiced line.

What’d you have in mind?

Sir, unless you’re going to stay another night, we have to have your room.

The motel sign was visible behind the kid’s head and it was clearly marked Single $39.00. There was nothing promising about either of them.

No thanks, I’ll just take a quick shower and head out.

Well sir, if you aren’t out by three we have to charge you for another day. With a tight nod, he prissily turned back toward the office. Snubs wondered how anyone could swish in double knit pants and not create too much friction for a hot day. He made his way toward his last shower and an uncertain future. That didn’t bother him as much as the air conditioner in his room suddenly not working.

In the office, he dutifully turned in his key. The dollar change left over from the $40 he’d left last night was placed tightly to the clerk’s side of the counter. The pimply faced clerk hovered over it with a coy but hopeful sneer. Snubs picked it up and dropped all four quarters in the slot machine next to the door. The clerk’s disapproval was further amplified when Snubs hit a $40 jackpot. He tossed one of them to the clerk and stepped out into the blazing heat.

The sidewalk was empty and it was a choice of sweltering into a pool of sweat, taking a taxi to nowhere, or hoofing it to the nearest big casino. Snubs chose the hoof.

Five blocks in the blazing sun and he was soaked from head to toe. The Casino’s big electric doors whooshed open and hit him with a blast of freezing air. This can’t be good for ya, Snubs said to no one; then took one of the slots nearest the front door. The old wives tale about slots being rigged for better odds so passersby would see winners was momentarily true. Two bucks turned into another twenty. He was on a roll.

Snubs wandered around trying to look prosperous stalling in the cool air. Sooner or later, he’d have to try his luck at a table or waste his day in front of the dime slots. He kept looking around and checking his watch as if waiting for somebody, like a wife shopping or something. Nothing is more inhospitable than a desert unless it’s a casino in the desert when they know you’re broke or they know you’re lucky. Either way, Snubs was looking for a better deal.

The craps tables were empty so his attention turned to the three populated Black Jack tables and he chose as wisely as anyone unwise enough to slip into a seat.

As luck would have it, he won a bit and turned his fortune into $500. Then he ran it all the way up to $8 dollars on the turn of one card. He headed for the bar.

He’d left his meager suitcase at the desk containing his final twenty dollars. He sipped a white wine and contemplated that fortunes fate.

Taking the wine to a table, he sunk into the soft leather. The place was empty except for Snubs. The sounds in the casino were more muffled and he was feeling sleepy and hungry and the twenty was the last of it all.

He laughed because he didn’t even feel glum. Something always turns up, he said