Dread of Night

By Russell H. Greenan

All Cora Moran and her private detective friend, Mick Schreiner, want to do is steal $300,000 from a phenomenally lucky horseplayer, but soon they're caught up in shocking events way, way beyond their control. Daemonax casts its shadow and America unravels. While the Feds grope in the dark Schreiner and Moran keep an eye on their own bright futures. Until – that is - it gets too bright.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russell H. Greenan
• Release date: Mar 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9780956386038

Russell H. Greenan

Russell H. Greenan is an American author with an established readership in the U.S.A. and Europe, particularly France. His first book IT HAPPENED IN BOSTON? was reprinted in 2003 in the U.S.A. as a 20th Century Rediscovery by Modern Library, and most recently in 2010 by Diogenes in Switzerland. His fourth book THE SECRET LIFE OF ALGERNON PENDLETON was made into a motion picture titled The Secret Life of Algernon in 1997 starring John Cullum and Carrie-Anne Moss. His other books published in English are NIGHTMARE, QUEEN OF AMERICA, HEART OF GOLD, THE BRIC-A-BRAC MAN, KEEPERS and CAN OF WORMS. DOOMSNIGHT and GLAMOURDOOM are both published in France.

Book preview

"Fans of It Happened in Boston? and other Greenan novels (and of such dark comedies as Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust) will not be disappointed. Dread of Night is a great satire, following America's 21st century terrorist paranoias to their logical, nightmarish ends."

-Brad Richard, www.amazon.com

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Dread of night

a comedy of terrors

by

Russell H. Greenan

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PUBLISHED BY:

Daemonax Books at Smashwords

Dread of Night

Copyright © 2009 by Russell H. Greenan

This book is available in print from http://www.blurb.com with ISBN: 978-0-9563860-0-7

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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1

Real nice setup you have here, Mickey Schreiner commented, gazing at the backyard’s flowers and shrubs, the gnomes, the rickety old shed, the bird house on its pole.

With crimson-tipped fingers Cora Moran touched her bobbed auburn hair, each tress of which clung snugly to her well-formed head. Yeah, like being down the Cape.  Those big trees give me shade and privacy, she replied.  Should’ve seen my rhododendrons a couple months ago.  Spectacular.

A thirty-year old woman she had a good complexion, a voluptuous mouth, prominent cheek bones and ice-blue eyes that she fixed on Schreiner.

His not having shaved didn’t bother Cora.  A stubbled jaw only added to his masculine charm.  Slouching in the deck chair with the horizontal rays of the sun turning his sandy hair into a golden crown, he might have been some story-book king taking his ease, she thought. Ten years earlier both of them had belonged to a group of wild young pleasure-seekers in North Cambridge, but those days were long gone.  Now Mickey was a private detective.  They had not seen each other for ages, till the previous week when Cora went to his office and engaged him to follow Conrad.

That old Chevy camper - brings back fond memories.  Everybody’s home away from home, he said, glancing at a van parked near the bolted doors in the high fence. Does it still run?

Runs fine.  Let’s get back to business.  He always bets to win and seldom loses.  Never fools with doubles, exactas or trifectas.  Why?  Because big scores mean you have to fill out tax forms - or pay a flunky to cash in for you.  Three grand a program, I figure he clears on those bets.  In the last six months  Delmar must’ve raked in three hundred thousand dollars.

Hiring a guy to collect your winnings is illegal.

Everything’s illegal, but stooging is a hard charge to prove.

Schreiner continued to look around the yard.  That a real well? he asked.

No, just a wishing well.  I’ve got indoor plumbing like everybody else.  She let her eyes play on the windlass, the bucket and the pots of geraniums, marigolds and other flowers that circled the base of the well’s fieldstone wall. Used to work before the war, Uncle Pat said.  He and I were good pals - drinking pals - but I never expected him to will this place to me. He left my sister money.  She already has a house.  In Providence.  Lives there with her kid.  Myrna divorced Al Shayne.  Remember him?

Yeah. Al got killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, I heard.  With the Guard.

A couple of years later.  Cora gave him a sly glance. Do you and Daphne ever get together?

She remarried.

So what?  Ex-husbands sometimes look up ex-wives.  And you were insane about that woman.

Beyond the fence a motorcycle roared by.  The noise faded swiftly, leaving emptiness in the air until a breath of wind set the leaves of the trees to whispering.

One day I saw her on Bromfield Street - by accident.  About a year ago.  Daphne didn’t see me.  I was in a cab. She lives on Beacon Hill, a townhouse.  Now and then I phone her.

While her hubby’s out to work, huh?  Pitiful, she said, shifting her trim body in the deck chair.

Don’t be bitchy, Cora.  You ever see Tommy Murdoch?

After we broke up, he moved to Springfield.  End of story.  She shook a cigarette from a pack of Camels.  Why the hell did I marry that man?  Tommy was stupid, unfeeling, stubborn, arrogant, boring, untrustworthy, small-minded, cheap, selfish and fat.  Worst two years of my life.

But he had money, didn’t he?

Nowhere near as much as I calculated, Mickey.

And a girl told me once that Murdoch was great in bed, a real Don Juan.

She lied.  Women say things like that for ulterior reasons.  Cora put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it.  Tommy only thought he was Don Juan.  Actually he was more like Speedy Gonzales.

Schreiner laughed, drank scotch and gazed absently across the yard.  He said, I know a mafia guy who has cousins in Sicily.  Once when he visited them they were digging a cesspool and uncovered an ancient well, and since water is scarce in Sicily they decided to get it working again.  At the bottom a laborer found a bronze box full of treasure - silver coins, gold rings, bracelets, necklaces.

Yeah?  Maybe I should dig around in this one, Cora remarked skeptically.

Another relative, a professor who lived in Palermo, saw the stuff and said it was Carthaginian.

Carthaginian?  What were Catholic monks doing with jewelry?

You’re thinking of something else.  The Carthaginians weren’t monks.  They were an important civilization before Christ.  Hannibal was a Carthaginian.  You know Hannibal, don’t you?

Oh sure.  Old buddies, Cora quipped, How did this treasure wind up in a well?

Twenty-five-hundred years ago a farmer threw it there for safe-keeping - in a time of war, probably.  But he never lived to get it back.  Schreiner wrinkled his brow.  Angelo, my friend, said the professor brought the things to Zurich, Switzerland, and sold them to an antique dealer for forty thousand dollars.

Forty grand for old junk like that?  Don’t believe anything you hear or half of what you see.

Angelo was in downtown Manhattan on 9/11.  The cops found him dead in the street.  Got hit by debris, I guess.

Tough break, Cora said, jiggling ice in her glass.  Mick, let’s talk about us.  Recently I had drinks with Conrad.  He got smashed - couldn’t find his ass with both hands - so I went home with him, figuring he’d black out and I’d be able to look around.  But instead the big ape took a shower, cleared his head and became amorous.  Tried to tear my clothes off.  I had to whack him with a shoe and run for it.

Well, that’s how guys are.  Something to do with glands, the detective commented, grinning a hard grin that revealed fine white teeth.

Listen, listen.  Before the wrestling match he sent me out for another jug of Bushmill, and I asked him for his house keys because he was going to be in the bathroom.  Cora paused and drew on her Camel.  A hardware store on Newbury Street duped them for me.

Schreiner raised his eyebrows.  You’re a real schemer. Ever find out where this character comes from? he asked, helping himself to more of the Duggan scotch.

Who cares?  I only got intrigued when I kept noticing him at the payout window.  Degenerate railbirds like Conrad sometimes hit hot streaks.  Or maybe he’s figured a way to beat the races.  Uses his pocket calculator a lot.  Be nice to have a dependable system.  Even if it only won 51 percent of the time,   I’d still be wearing rubies for buttons.  You should see the roll he carries.  Big around as that bottle there.  When there’s no meet he bets the simulcast tracks.  Cora uncrossed her bare legs and arranged her sandaled feet together on the grass.  Last spring I stood behind him and stole his pick - Ebony Bolt, an in-and-outer I never would’ve played on my own.  And that jady nag copped the race - beat the favorite by a length.  I won sixty-seven dollars.  But Delmar’s cagey.  Gave me the fish-eye afterwards.  I’m scared to clip him a second time.  She sighed.  You tagged the guy for a week.  Did he ever visit a bank?

Nah, Schreiner admitted. Just bar-rooms, restaurants and once to that apartment on Hemenway Street.

To see a woman, I guess - for his glandular problem.  Conrad followed the same routine the three times I watched him.  Avoids banks because of the IRS.  These days the feds take an interest in sudden wealth.  Cora’s glacial blue eyes lingered on Schreiner’s handsome face.  So think about it, Mickey.  Three hundred thousand is a lot of hay to stuff in a mattress.

He added water to his scotch.  And breaking-and-entering is a felony.

Since when did you become impervious to easy money?  We split it down the middle.  How much motivation do you need?  Besides, it’s not B-and-E.  You have keys.  Plus big-shot friends in the State House and down in Washington.  Like the ones I saw you with in the newspaper pictures and on TV.  They’d never let you take a fall.

Says who, Cora?  That time I got busted, most of my tight friends became total strangers.

Undeterred by the detective’s reluctance she described the brownstone house and Conrad’s apartment, and reminded him that the horse-player lived there alone and spent almost every day at the Downs.  The only other tenants are an old lady on the ground floor, she said, and the working couple upstairs.

A cloud masked the sun, casting lambent shadows on the backyard grass.  For a few moments the two people sat in perfect silence, until a crow cawed stridently from the top of the ancient elm tree that formed a dense canopy above their heads.  Carthusians.  They’re the Catholic monks - not Carthaginians, Schreiner said, pleased to have remembered.  Weird what sticks in your mind, isn’t it?  He grinned at her and sprawled back in the deck chair. Last year a bartender on a cruise ship told me that you can see stars in the daytime from the bottom of a well.

Have to be a pretty deep one, Cora said, her painted mouth forming a sensual curve.

Yeah - it would, wouldn’t it?  He sipped some of his scotch-and-water. Let me mull this over, okay?

~~~~~~~

2

That night seated in a booth in Tiny’s Heat Wave, Mick Schreiner covertly watched his subject drink ten shots of Irish whiskey at the oval bar.  A husky six-foot man who spoke to no-one, Delmar Conrad wore a baseball cap and an open tan poplin jacket.  From a thick neck two gold chains looped down on to his blue shirt, while a gold wrist-watch circled his wrist.  In the subdued glow of the lounge these baubles gleamed garishly.

At eleven-thirty the gambler left the Wave, walked unsteadily along Boylston for several blocks, veered onto Hereford Street, mounted the stoop of an old brownstone and vanished inside.  Schreiner, fifteen yards back, lingered in a doorway until a light brightened two first-floor windows.  Sauntering to his Opel Astra parked across from the building he crawled in, slumped on the seat and waited.  Twenty minutes later the lights were still burning.

Go to bed, Delmar, the conscientious private detective  muttered wearily. We both need the shuteye.

A gray Mercedes passed and double-parked near the Newbury Street corner, its engine idling.  No one got out.  Unconcerned - he assumed the driver was saying goodnight to his date - Schreiner gazed up again at the windows.  An instant later the light went off - but he stayed put until satisfied that Conrad was not coming down again.

Driving to an Allston liquor store, he bought a bottle of wine and six cans of Foster lager.  As he set the bag on the car’s front seat, the sight of a gray Mercedes in the parking lot driveway made him frown.  Suddenly a brawny figure stepped out of the shadows and punched him in the face.  The blow knocked Schreiner to the pavement.  Hoping to protect his vital organs from the kicks that quickly followed, he curled in a ball.

You’ve been tailing me.  Who are you, wise guy? Delmar Conrad asked in a harsh voice.

Go fuck yourself, he answered defiantly, and tried to wriggle under the Opel.

But a hand on his jacket collar dragged him back and he was given a second clout that almost unhinged his jaw.

Hard-nosed, huh?  Well, let’s go for a little ride.  Talk things over.

Through blurry eyes Schreiner could see that another man - he was of medium height and sported a thick grizzled moustache - had now joined Conrad.  Looks like police to me, this one said, speaking with a faint foreign accent.

What difference does it make?  Tape his yap shut, said Conrad in an undertone.  But an apartment house overlooked the parking lot and from a window of this building a woman howled, I saw what you did.  I saw it all.  Leave that poor man alone.  We don’t want no junky muggers in this neighborhood.  I just called 911.  You’ll get your’s.  Wait and see.

Goddam, the foreigner said.  More trouble.

Schreiner strove to rise to his knees.  Conrad promptly kicked him in the skull, generating variegated stars  that cascaded over his fuddled brain.  Grunting, he sprawled back onto the asphalt.

That car coming in here? he heard a distant voice growl.  Stall the guy.  Hell, it’s too...

Gradually these urgent words faded away and Schreiner’s mind floated off into an abyss of inky darkness, odd abstract forms and amorphous foreboding.

An interlude of silenced followed.  Eventually this was shattered by a shrill, stuttering siren, and a voice began yelling, Medical?  Medical?  Medical?

As the injured man returned from oblivion, he realized he was being moved.  They put him down; pain racked his body.  Through barely opened eyes he saw a swarthy youth in a white coat bending over him, and, from that hazy vision and the sound of the siren, concluded that he was in an ambulance.

What’d you say? Schreiner groaned.

You got medical?  A health plan or something?  Blue Cross?

Medical?

Yeah, yeah.  Insurance.  Fallon Community?  Harvard?  Prudential?  Healthsource?  Any kind of coverage at all, sir?  Have to dump you, otherwise, the attendant explained matter-of-factly.

Card in my wallet, he mumbled, anxious to get back to sleep.

Wallet?  I don’t think....  Hey, lookee here.  Perp never snatched it, the EMS man said, chuckling.  Had to leave in a hurry, I suppose.  All that physical labor for nothing.

At Mass General, where he was taken, a doctor with a Mephistophelian goatee tested his reflexes, shined a flashlight in his eyes and genially told him he had a concussion.  Schreiner felt strangely elated - glad to be still alive.  They gave him pills, disinfected his wounds and wrapped his head.  The other bed in the room was empty, and being ghostly white had a sinister appearance.

He dropped off into a deep slumber.

During the night the lights were switched on.  People talked and traipsed about.  Schreiner opened his eyes for a second, saw a white glare and closed them again.  A nurse asked him a few questions.  When he showed his relative alertness by answering them, she let him go back to sleep.

The next morning sunbeams pouring through the tall window awakened him.  His head ached and a metallic clanking sound nearby aggravated the anguish.  Memories of the hulking figure stepping out of the shadows - the blows, the kicks, the bouncy ride in the ambulance - floated loosely in his mind.

Somewhere in the room a querulous bass voice muttered, Don’t make sense, does it? You’re not supposed to get mad at a comedian.  Folks need to laugh - especially with all these terrorists around.  I didn’t do anything wrong. An army buddy of mine swore he was never wrong…except once he thought he was wrong, but he was mistaken.  Corporal Madison. Yessir.  In Frankfurt he steered me to an after-hours joint where the booze was so hard you had to screw it out of the bottle with a starched napkin.

Gingerly Schreiner shifted his sore body enough to see a black man in the other bed, his face framed by bandages but his eyes open and bright.

Hope I’m not annoying you, he said. Been talking to myself, trying to solve a few of the eternal problems.  You religious?

Yeah, sure, the detective answered, surprised by the weakness of his voice. I’m a devout cynic.

Close enough.  Listen, these nuns visit Paris to see the sights and when it’s time to catch the plane home, one of them is late showing up.  At the last minute she comes running into the terminal, and says, ‘I’m not going back to the convent.  I’ve decided to stay here and become a prostitute.’  So the old Mother Superior screams, ‘You’re going to do what?’ And the nun says, ‘I’m going to become a prostitute.’  And the Mother Superior calms down and says, ‘O-o-oh, I thought you said a protestant.’

It took a second or two for the punch line to register on Schreiner‘s weary brain.  Not bad, he acknowledged, restraining a smile for fear it would hurt his jaw.

Told it to a priest at a wedding and he broke up. Told it in a club and a customer threw beer on me.  Ruined my lilac shantung jacket, the black man said. A lot of pursed lips in America lately.  Some people have been pursing their lips so hard and for so long they can’t open their mouths any more.  It’s true, man.  Have to be fed intravenously.  On a special drip of saccharine and holy water.  It’s getting impossible to do stand-up.  Jokes make fun of folks, see?  And kidding the public is now considered a crime against humanity.  ‘Course, they let you ridicule politicians, but that’s like making fun of clowns.  I mean, they’re comical already - right?  It’s why I’m lying here in bed with a busted conk and a profusion of contusions.

For ridiculing politicians?

No, no - for telling a harmless joke.  Guy thought I was insulting his woman.  What’s your name?

Mick Schreiner.

"I’m Reggie Flash.  My stage name.  Before that I was Ali Mustafa, and before that, Forest Akers.

But call me Slim.  That’s my everyday, walking-around name.

A nurse wandered in shaking two thermometers, and after both men had their temperature carefully recorded on clipboard charts, a food trolley was trundled through the door and they were served orange juice, scrambled eggs, buttered toast and tea.

Schreiner ate half the meal and hobbled out to the toilet.  In a mirror he surveyed his fat lip and other welts and bruises.  They looked bad, but when he urinated he didn’t see any blood. 

Conrad made me and phoned for help, he thought.  Soon as that Mercedes showed he doused the light, waited till I drove off, ran down and joined his crony.  Then they tagged along behind me.  But how did the bastard catch wise?  And here?  At the bar?  Walking home?  Not at the track.  Impossible.  And on the road I always kept at least two shield cars between us. 

A call to Cora gave him a chance to share his angst, but her sympathy did little to cheer him up.

Back in the room he found a plainclothesman questioning Slim.  Later the cop switched to Schreiner, who provided a sparse account of the attack that caused his injuries without mentioning that he recognized his attacker.  These vague details were taken down in a notebook. The cop thanked them and left.

Slim said, Even when I’m a victim I don’t feel right talking to the police.

Same here, Schreiner replied, trying to get comfortable. What was the joke?

What joke? 

The one the guy thought insulted his woman.

Oh, yeah.  I was jiving this pretty Brazilian chick, see?  ‘You look like you got a little African in you,’ I said. ‘That right?’  She shook her head and smiled, so I said, ‘No?  Well...would you like some?’  Always gets a big laugh.  But her boyfriend jumped up and blindsided me.  Three of his buddies joined the party - and when I was down, they gave me a lot of leather.  Doing comedy can be painful.

They discussed this and other human anomalies for an hour.  Then Slim left for the bathroom and Schreiner fell fast asleep. 

The goateed doctor woke him up before noon and told him he could go home. 

But take it easy. Concussion is unpredictable.  People die from head trauma, he declared cheerfully.  Don’t engage in anything strenuous for a while and leave the bandage on for two days.

Slim had to stay longer.  I’m fine.  Trouble is, not even the specialists can distinguish a stand up comic from a guy with serious brain damage, he said, his gauze-enclosed face dejected. 

Hailing a cab, Schreiner went to the Allston liquor store and retrieved his Opel.  The wine and beer were gone from the seat, so he purchased more and drove to his small Beacon Street apartment where he made and ate his lunch.  At three-thirty, after a nap, he removed the bandage from his head and watched soap operas on television.

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3

Cora Moran got off the creaky elevator at the sixth floor of the old Huntington Avenue building, and, high heels clicking on the tile, strode down the hall past an array of paneled doors bearing such legends as Regina’s Nails, Cut-Cost Car Insurance, Nate the Tailor, Madam Selena’s Prophecies, Hi-Glo Tanning Salon, Kenny the Body-Piercer, and Helfrick’s Passport Photo Shop.  The last in the righthand row was:

MICHAEL SCHREINER

SEARCH & RESEARCH

Without knocking she entered this office, and said, I never figured he’d rough you up.

The detective, seated behind his desk, treated her to a glare that was made more ferocious by the bruises on his forehead and bumps on his chin.

Guy’s got a kick like a mule, he said.

Your face isn’t too bad.

Yeah?  Well, my body is black, blue, red, purple, yellow.  I look like a bird-of-paradise.

Hard to imagine, Mickey.  Cora laughed lightly, then sat in the armchair, knees pressed together and long legs diagonal.  Have you told the cops?

"There was a dick at Mass General, but I didn’t give him Conrad’s name.  I only go to court if I’m paid or subpoenaed.  Who