Rabbit Shine

By Cliff Yeargin

Jake Eliam spent a lifetime in baseball, until a chance turn that led him into the Atlanta neighborhood known as ChickenBone, where he ended up a part time private investigator thanks to a timely meeting with the man everybody called Catfish, the owner of the legendary 3 Pigs BBQ. Now Catfish feeds him a case every now and then, and pulled pork sandwiches almost every day.

When the top big league prospect for the Atlanta Peaches is killed in a car accident, two weeks after being called up to the Majors, the city mourns a future star. But then someone sends the team a handwritten note suggesting it was no accident and the team’s All Star bad boy outfielder Billy Joe Weede was somehow involved.

With a background and contacts in the game, Jake Eliam is hired to find out the truth, or at least that is what it seems like at first. The investigation takes him from the streets of ChickenBone, to the Peaches locker room, and to the tiny town of Birdsong Georgia, where he discovers that finding out the truth is just as hard as hitting a 90 miles per hour fastball, and just as dangerous.

So in between his part time job making custom baseball bats in his well-worn shop in ChickenBone, Eliam teams up with Catfish and his neighbor, a young photographer to figure out what really happened.

Along the way he runs into a wealthy former member of Congress with a penchant for quoting scriptures, two rednecks named Tater and Booger, an ex-con hired killer who scrapes up dead chickens for a living, a tattooed stripper, a flop eared dog named Chance, and a former sheriff turned moonshiner.

Wading in amongst this crowd to find the truth sends Jake Eliam into extra innings and the final score includes greed, ambition, jealousy, regret, and murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cliff Yeargin
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301358175

Cliff Yeargin

ABOUT Cliff Yeargin I have spent my life as a ‘Storyteller’. The majority of that in a long career in Broadcast Journalism as a Writer/Producer/Photographer and Editor. But in Journalism business, facts keep getting in the way, so thus the move to fiction writing where I can make things up as I go. I spent the bulk of my broadcast career in sports, so the connection to the game of baseball is deep. A large portion of those years were in Baltimore, Maryland where I was lucky enough to cover Cal Ripken’s very first and very last game...and hundreds in between. I began my career in the mountains of western North Carolina, where I shot the only video of the first 3-point goal in the history of NCAA Basketball. This I am not making up. These days I have returned to my native Georgia where I work as an Editor/Producer for CNN, spending many hours in the middle of the night trapped in a small dark room...which might explain the urge to make up stories where your characters get to beat up on people.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

When you live by the railroad tracks in a section of town they call ChickenBone, you don’t get a lot of visitors, and that suited me just fine. The name goes back to 1920s when there was a poultry processing warehouse right next to train tracks and for years, they just scattered bones around the dirt streets, so much so that people said the streets were ‘paved’ with chicken bones. Old timers swear you could just kick at the dirt and uncover them everywhere. Some say they still find them from time to time. So far as I know, no tourist have ever come around wanting to dig up old chicken bones, so we pretty much were left alone smack dab in the middle of downtown Atlanta.

My place was on the edge of the freight yard, a two story brick building built long before the chicken plant, but still standing. I lived upstairs, did my so called ‘second job’ in the open space downstairs that used to be a machine shop for Carolina Western Railroad. It was hard to get to, even when you knew where you were going.

So to say the least, I was surprised to look up and see a man in an expensive suit standing in my open slide up door. I was even more surprised to see that in his right hand, he was carrying a tire tool.

You Jake Eliam? He asked, in voice weighed down by liquor.

Depends. I said

On what?

On what you plan on doing with that tire tool. I said, reaching over flipping the lathe off, spinning the lock and lifting out the unfinished 34-inch bat I was tooling.

He grunted, or maybe it was a snort. Couldn’t tell.

How did you find me? I asked.

Lawyer. He said.

Lawyer?

He’s got some GPS thing, locates people. He said.

A lawyer with a GPS.

Make a note: when the drunk guy with the tire tool leaves, do a little studying on how a lawyer can use some device to track you down.

He moved further into the shop and out of the late afternoon back light, and I was able to get a better look at him. It had been up over a 100 today, the air was still thick and his tailored suit was soaked with sweat, a silk tie hung loose at his neck. A tad under six feet, stocky, with mostly ‘gym’ muscles, but there was that tire tool to deal with.

You remember me? He moved in closer.

Yeah, I remember you. I said, How’s the wife?

He Flinched.

You ruined my marriage, and she’s taking me for all all I got.

You need to take it on down the road, Doc. Ain’t my problem.

Catfish was gonna owe me for this one. I didn’t usually take on cheating husband cases, but the lady being cheated on was the ex-third wife of one of his college buddies, so I agreed to take it on. The doc was a plastic surgeon stepping out with one of his patients. Didn’t take long. On the third night of tailing him, I took some pretty good pictures of the good doctor, wrapped around a tall blonde who was not the MRS. good doctor, and the case headed off toward the court system. That was about a year ago. I guess it had arrived.

He didn’t waste any time. He made a low sound, sort of like a gurgle, and took a wild swing at my head with the tire tool. I easily ducked it and while he was off balance decided to take him down. I rammed my right shoulder hard into his gut, the air wheezed out of him, and we went down in a pile of sawdust, the tire tool clanged loudly on the cement floor. Pain shot through my right shoulder, the nerve endings on fire. I flipped him over face down, and with my left hand, wrenched his arm up high enough to make him yelp. He floundered around like a fish on the bank, spitting sawdust, and cussing up a storm.

I yanked him to his feet and marched him outside, looking for his car. Around the corner, next to the building there it was…a shiny black BMW with a license plate that read BOOBJOB. Nice. I shoved him up against the front and slammed his head hard down onto the hood. It made a thud…an expensive thud. I found his keys in a coat pocket, opened the door and tossed him in.

I’m gonna sue your ass... he said as he studied the red welt on his forehead in the rearview mirror.

Come back around here again, and you won’t drive out. I said, the anger just now staring to boil up along with the late day heat.

You threating me?

Yes.

I am going to sue you. He repeated.

You said that.

He fumbled for the ignition, the engine purred to life, and he slowly pulled away, fancy high performance tires crunching over long buried chicken bones.

I climbed the old metal stairs on the tracks side of my building, went in my place to clean up a bit. Grabbed two ice cold beers from the frig, then took the stairs on up to the roof, plopped down in one of the old metal lawn chairs I kept up there, and took in the view. A single diesel engine rattled and chugged westbound toward the freight yard. The sky was turning a dull orange, lights on over at the baseball stadium. Wasn’t gonna cool down much tonight. I opened one of beers and took a long drink. I placed the other one on my right shoulder to quiet the noise.

Damn. I said out loud.

The beer helped quiet the anger, but couldn’t wash away the bad taste left in my mouth by one thought… I was about to be sued by a titty doctor.

CHAPTER 2

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So just what the hell is the oblique? Catfish asked.

I think it’s a muscle in the rib cage. I said

You ever hurt your oblique when you played.

Everything hurt when I played. I said.

But not your oblique.

I don’t think so, I said, but then again the places I played, the trainer was also the bus driver, so he most likely knew more about fuel pumps than the oblique.

Catfish grinned. Shook his head and flopped the sports page, turning the page.

This kid is 23, makes bout 3 million a year, and NOW he’s gonna be out for three to four weeks during a pennant race with this oblique….whatever the hell it is.

Didn’t football beat you up pretty good? I asked.

Nah, slow and fat, he said, Can’t get hurt if you are slow and fat, on the line, all you do is grab hole of somebody and dance around…just like slow dancing, except with a sweaty partner.

We were sitting in the back booth of Catfish’s place having coffee. The 3 PIGS BBQ didn’t open for another few hours, so we had the place to ourselves right now. He had his office in the back, and he was always up and in by daylight, tinkering with the pot full of business stuff he was always cooking up. The only thing he didn’t cook was Barbeque…leaving all that to his manager Slick who was in the back, singing some old hymn and firing up the meat.

Heard you had a house call last night from a doctor. Catfish said.

I looked up from my coffee, surprised. How did you know about that.?

Ain’t much I don’t know bout.

And I’m not sure that’s bragging. It seemed that somehow, he always seemed to know things before others.

His lawyer called me. He said. Said you tuned him up pretty good.

Well you’re going to have find ME a lawyer, since it was your buddy that got me into this. I said.

You ain’t gonna need no lawyer.

I don’t know, that’s what lawyers do, especially rich ones with GPS things.

He ain’t gonna sue you. He said.

How do you know that for sure.? I asked.

Because, Catfish said, I know what stripper his lawyer sees every Wednesday night when his wife is at the Junior League.

Catfish took his mug and headed back to the kitchen for a refill, carrying his nearly 300 pounds with a limp to his right side. He liked to make jokes about how bad he was as a football player at the University of Georgia in the 70s, but pictures on the wall back in his office tell a different story. You don’t make ALL-SEC twice by being fat and slow, and best I could tell he was one knee injury away from an NFL career.

I didn’t know Catfish during his college days, but I wish I did, the stories he tells are quite entertaining, even the third or fourth time you hear them. But I have known him for near on ten years and I have never met anyone else quite like him. On the surface he liked playing the role of ex-jock who owned a barbeque joint here and one over near campus in Athens, and who liked to sit around, tell stories, bad jokes, talk sports. But back in his little cluttered office behind the kitchen Catfish ran a multi-layered hodge-podge of business deals that most likely made him pretty damn rich and one the state’s largest landowners, and landlords…including the building I lived in, among many more, but you weren’t going to find any of that written down anywhere, he worked hard to keep it all buried and off the books.

He was one of those odd guys that could sit down in the 3 Pigs with a bunch of guys from the power company and keep them laughing with some tale about fishing or hunting, then fifteen minutes later grab the phone and have the Governor pick up on the first ring. It was his connections that led to about ninety five percent of my business, and he was the sole reason I had stumbled into it. By far the smartest man I knew…he just didn’t want anybody else to know it.

Catfish came back out with a fresh pot of coffee for himself and a to-go cup for me. I stopped at the door and turned back to him.

Thanks for taking care of the lawyer for me. I said.

He waved me off and slid back in the booth.

Just what is it that you do that ticks folks off so much? He asked.

Ask questions, poke around, nothing much, I said with a shrug.

Well you do have a way about you that pisses people off. He said.

Could be I intimidate them with my superior detecting skills. I said.

Nah…that ain’t it. He said and went back to reading the sports page.

CHAPTER 3

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I know this firsthand. They will tease you, lure you, sweet talk you into thinking you have something special. Then they will turn right around in