Dark Lake: A Mike Angel Mystery

By David H Fears

The 2nd in the Mike Angel Mystery series of complex, historical, erotic novels is a thriller full of interesting characters and plenty of serious conflicts. Set in Chicago and New Orleans in 1961. 32 yr old Mike is determined to get answers and stop for no one, especially after the woman he loves gets involved in the plot. The reader will like Mike’s tough, fearless attitude, as well as his humor and sarcasm that add a spark of great amusement through the story.
Mike’s older sidekick Rick Anthony adds a lot to help decipher small clues and gather information that Mike would not have access to himself. All this helps to bring the story together in a fascinating way.
Right away Mike and Rick are thrown into a serious conflict with the burning building and the girl hanging from a rope. This sets Mike on the track to find the answers and resolving the problems. With each step of the way, things keep getting worse. This makes for a compelling plotline. Ultimately, Molly is thrown into the fray and things get pretty rough, but Mike manages to get past all the obstacles, save his woman, and point his finger at the ringleader in the last scene. The reader can’t help but be satisfied.
The characters are strong with personality traits, motivations, and appropriate backgrounds for the roles they play. There is a lot of good dialogue, often confrontational in nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David H Fears
• Release date: Jan 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9780971486874

David H Fears

David was known by the handle “professor” as a boy (no doubt the thick black spectacles, Buddy Holly style), and has had a lifetime interest in Mark Twain. He has also written nearly one hundred short stories with about sixteen published, and is working on the 14th Mike Angel PI Mystery novel.Fears is a pretty handy name for horror stories, but he also has written mainstream nostalgic, literary, some fantasy/magical realism, as well as the PI novels. For the past decade he has devoted his full time to producing Mark Twain Day By Day, a four-volume annotated chronology in the life of Samuel L. Clemens. Two volumes are now available, and have been called, “The Ultimate Mark Twain Reference” by top Twain scholars. His aim for these books is “to provide a reference and starting-off place for the Twain scholar, as well as a readable book for the masses,” one that provides many “tastes” of Twain and perspective into his complex and fascinating life. He understands this is a work that will never be “finished” — in fact, he claims that no piece of writing is ever finished, only abandoned after a time. As a historian, David enjoys mixing historical aspects in his fiction.David recently taught literature and writing at DeVry University in Portland, his third college stint. His former lives enjoyed some success in real estate and computer business, sandwiched between undergraduate studies in the early 70s and his masters degree in education and composition, awarded in 2004.He was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and has lived in New England, Southern California and Nevada. David is youthful looking and is the father of three girls, the grandfather of four and the great-grandfather of two; he’s written, “It all shows what you can do if you fool around when you’re very young.” David’s a card. How many of us think humor has a place in mystery tales or history tomes? He claims his calico cat Sophie helps him edit his stories while lying across his arm when he is composing, and sinking her claws in with any poorly drawn sentence. As a writer, a humorist, a cat lover and father of girls, he relates well to Clemens. Writing hardboiled PI novels is his way of saying "NUTS!" to politically correct fiction.UPDATE: Beloved Calico Sophie died on Apr 24, 2016 at 13 & 1/2 years. She is sorely missed.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The biggest shock of my young investigative career literally crashed in front of my eyes one warm moonless September night in 1961, in Cicero, a Chicago suburb.

I was lounging on the patio of my bungalow with my late father’s best friend, Rick Anthony, who’d been coaxing me out of a hermit’s disposition to partner up for insurance fraud and criminal investigation. Rick, retired NYC cop, knew the crime end — and all my buttons to push — and I knew insurance rackets, schemes and swindles. The more we sponged Jack Daniels and talked shop the more my objections shrunk until a partnership seemed downright inevitable.

We were nearly out of booze when the scar I’d earned chasing down Dad’s killers went off like a Pearl Harbor attack was imminent. Dad often warned me of dangers through prickly heat in the scar that ran down my jaw like a dirty snake. Other times I actually heard his voice — although only in my head, which made me think I was going off the deep end.

I jerked upright just as a dark Caddy spun out from two-story apartments across the street. We craned to see, our view obscured by trees.

The woman smashed headfirst through a second floor window — a fifteen-foot drop. Whip-slapped hard against the apartment and yanked up short by a rope around her ankles, she hung flailing, wrists tied, while a fireball erupted above her.

At times of total shock I often think silly things, stupid things: the exit was a very definite method for ending a relationship.

Belted with the shock I thought, God, she’s about my age — whoever trussed her up with a ticking firebomb didn’t want her to celebrate any more birthdays. Then I lurched from my seat and ran toward the flames.

Rick was twenty-five years my senior but right behind when I made the ground below her. I tried to spring up to a ledge but couldn’t reach it.

A ladder would have been peachy. Run back and get one, she’d be fried.

The intense heat already was reddening her feet, legs.

Rick bent and motioned me to jump on his back. He was still a sturdy six-two and about 220, so I scrambled my five-ten and 185 as high as I could climb, but even on tiptoe her hands were a foot away. The rope around her ankles led up through the window. Her eyes were open, staring down through me passively as if she were in a coma. She must’ve been stunned by the slam against the side of the apartment after hopping across the floor for a nosedive.

Thick smoke swirled around us. I choked. The wall next to my face began to blister.

Rick could see I was coming up short and yelled for me to climb to his shoulders, but when I did, he nearly folded.

Sirens wailed off in the distance. By the time they arrived it’d be too late.

For a moment I was overwhelmed, and almost fell. I yelled at the girl to hold her breath. Her eyes fluttered shut; she was beyond hearing anyone.

It looked like I’d have to jump down to save myself.

Then the rope slipped some and with some last measure of consciousness, her hands wrapped around mine.

That’s when the wind shifted. My lungs gulped some clean air.

I pulled myself to her waist.

The rope around her ankles — too high to reach with my pocketknife. Flames popped, ripped, buckling the siding around us. I had one chance: climb up her body to reach the rope. If I fell I’d break my neck or hers. I hollered to Rick what I was going to try. I don’t think he heard above the roaring flames.

The knife clamped in my teeth, I sprung up against her, grabbed her knees, felt her body stretch against her bonds, and wrapped my legs around her waist. The rope was burning at the top and I hoped it would break from our combined weight, but couldn’t dangle there and be broiled until it did.

My arms ached. Up, up another few inches.

I hacked weakly at the bonds, wishing my knife were a machete.

I cursed.

More swirling smoke, heat. Dark spots danced before my eyes; blast furnace roared above my head.

Korea again, pulling a buddy from the flames.

The knife chewed half way through the rope just before it snapped. Rick had thrown wicker yard chairs under us to break our fall. It wouldn’t be the last time he’d save my carcass.

Luckily, the girl wound up on top of me. I don’t think she could have taken another blow. We lay there stunned while Rick pulled us away from the burning building. She raised her head above mine and blinked and coughed. I rolled her into Rick’s arms and we lifted her away from danger, placing her on the lawn. Her eyes were a dead woman’s. We cut the remaining ropes, but she lay passively staring up beyond us.

A small crowd gathered. Fire trucks still hadn’t arrived. No sirens anymore. The inferno was beyond control now, anyway.

Rick lifted the girl and hauled her across the street and into the house, while I limped after them.

She peered up through matted black hair and said over Rick’s shoulder, Please. I can walk.

With all the excitement, I hadn’t checked her out. It was good to know that for a few moments I hadn’t thought of sex. I thought of it now, again, a reflex. Such things take practice and I’d had some, even at age 32. She was stunning, dark, an exotic touch about her.

Rick laid her on his cot in the middle of the living room and stood with concern over her, pressing a cold washcloth on her forehead.

I squeezed her limp hand, strangely cold. We like carrying toasted girls. Rick here’s a first aid fanatic, studied to be a doctor.

I rifled a first aid kit and Rick ordered me to get some wet towels. He stopped the bleeding, examined her for burns.

You’re very lucky that Mike can shinny up a girl. Other than a nasty cut on your forearm, blisters here and there, skin off your ankles, you didn’t get mauled too badly. You’re singed, but safe.

She gaped at us like we were ugly wallpaper. It was a long drop inside those dark eyes, as if life had been removed, replaced with ashes. It wasn’t shock; I’d seen that many times. This was some strange resignation, death expected, though we’d deprived her of the big exit, as if it didn’t matter that she’d survived. But no suicide could have been trussed like she’d been.

The rescue, so close to death, struck home to my shaking knees. I sat down next to her.

This part won’t feel good, Rick said.

I held her hand while Rick laid a neat row of stitches to close the gash in her arm. She stared right through me, didn’t squeeze my hand, flinch or make a sound. Even with the harrowing rescue, her ebony hair still parted evenly down one side, hung like parentheses framing her vacant expression.

The fire trucks came then and she sat up, wobbly.

Easy, I said. You’ve been through a lot. My useful friend will fix a spot in the bedroom for you to rest. He fills in as maid too.

I left her in Rick’s hands and crossed the street to watch the men battle the fire. The entire second floor was engulfed, the townhouse apartments a total loss. The firemen managed to keep the blaze from spreading, but it took a multi-alarm effort. Someone in the crowd said that the apartments were being remodeled and were vacant except for a caretaker, who they pointed out huddled, coughing next to the pump engine. The old timer had taken in smoke, and they bundled him up for the ride to the hospital. I heard the codger say between hacks that he’d been asleep, hadn’t heard anything before the firebomb.

Neighbors stood nearby, yapping about the black Caddy peeling away right before the explosion, but strangely, no one asked about the girl or mentioned our rescue. I doubt if they’d seen our barbeque drama.

When I got back to the house, Rick sipped iced tea with something darker mixed in.

He lifted the glass at me. In my explorations under the sink for cleaning products — quite a strange place to keep rum.

My filing system. How’s the female? Get anything out of her?

Rick killed the last of his drink. She asked if she could stay until morning then dropped off to slumberland right after you left. He frowned at his ice cubes. The one time I’m alone with one of Angel’s saved lollipops, she’s too traumatized to be much fun.

***

Rick came west after retiring from New York City’s Twenty-third precinct, lieutenant’s pension enough to keep him well as a permanent fisherman in Lauderdale or some equally laid back spot. But Rick wasn’t ready for a rocking chair, even though he was a damned good fisherman. The hunt of bad guys was in his blood. I set him up a cot in the living room of my six hundred square foot cottage that was so small you could gesture and slap three people in the face. I called it Mike Angel’s El Rancho Roacho.

Rick had stuck around the week before the firebombing, playing shrink to me, prying out my disillusionment, feelings of being washed up at 32. A crippling depression of love and hate and anger, still percolated from the first major case of my career, the only one that hadn’t bored me silly.

I’d slogged through six years of fraud, divorce cases when I got snagged on a woman who turned my world upside down — Nika. She was that delicate flower a guy dreams about, one I’d failed to save from a ruthless mob. I didn’t have enough time with her to investigate all the love angles, but the riptide of her charm was undeniable. Had I been in love? The question tormented me. Whether I was or wasn’t, I’d lost something immeasurable. Molly Bennett, my most important support system and office whiz, lost even more — her father died while I busted up the gang downstate in Mattoon. So, I’d moped for months in my yellow bungalow where the walls inched closer by the day. Then Rick came west.

Rick’s arrival gave me someone to confide in, an activity for me like yanking a filthy rope out of my insides that broke every few feet. We sat and drank and talked and listened to the crickets waxing and waning every night for two weeks. Rick was the best of company because he knew what to ask and when to shut up, how to wait for me to get the words out. Maybe that’s because Rick knew me as a kid, served on the force with my old man, and even though he saw all my weakness, he was loyal, a strong friend.

Molly came around the week after her father’s funeral, coaxed me into driving all the way down to New Orleans to spend a week hanging out together. She saw I was twisted up over Nika, and maybe she thought listening would distract her from her own grief. We kept our little rules about no touching during office hours, and while we’d enjoyed growing flirtation, there was a wall between us now higher than the monstrosity those commies were erecting in that poor fractured city of Berlin. We took adjoining rooms in the French Quarter, strolled the river wall, drank hurricanes at Pat’s, hunkered on Bourbon Street curbs, even wasted days on streetcar safaris to the Garden District. Most of what we said to each other was like talking to ourselves.

Molly was pretty broken up inside. Her dad died after a short illness, still a young man. The baby in her family, Molly was pampered by her tough dad. Now she couldn’t tell me the time without tears welling up.

The last night in the Crescent City, I perched on my balcony bathed in soupy Gulf humidity and counted tourists strolling up the gaslight-lined streets. Better tourists than sheep. I’d given Molly her space the last couple of days, and didn’t expect to see her until checkout time the next morning. We kept the adjoining door locked except when we shared room service at breakfast. Even sad, Molly glowed in the morning. Early and late were the best times of Molly’s day. At night her amber eyes sparkled with possibilities.

After two years as a personal secretary for an insurance magnate who she worshipped, Molly had moved to Chicago at her sister’s invitation after her boss was murdered. I met Moll while solving the murder, and luckily, my work on the case led me to Chicago as well, where I hired her to help me set up for a fresh start. Or should I say she hired me, because I was pretty low over losing Nika about then. Well, the new start was only a few days old when I followed the clues to Mattoon and broke the case open. Molly and I spent most of those first days together at Sam’s, a bar down the block from my now dormant office. After Nika died, I tried to keep going, but the pain grew faster than my bar bill at Sam’s. My heart wasn’t into working. Something about everyone looking ugly, nothing mattering any more. A sewer of self-pity. I felt washed up as an investigator at 32.

When Molly and I hit New Orleans, we shared a drink in the hotel lounge. I tried to reach inside Moll and let her know that her dad would live on in her memory, that she was tough, as tough as any young woman I’d ever met, and that she’d be all right. I tried, but was no good at it. We were like two drowning souls, clawing at ourselves, neither of us able to save the other.

The first couple of days in New Orleans, she hardly spoke, but I had hopes the trip would pull her out of it. When she did talk, the words kept bringing her back around to the painful memories and guilt that stood between us like a sullen bear. Losing a father is a heavier weight than losing a lover, and I saw through Molly’s pain that mine wasn’t so important. She’d always been a sunbeam, but you only have one father, and like they say about buses, there’s another romance along in a few minutes, that is, if you’re crazy enough to squat on the curb waiting for Cupid Express to flatten you.

So, I listened, patted her knee now and then, and carried an extra handkerchief. Molly kept saying how she hadn’t been a good daughter, beating herself up for leaving home, only returning from New York when her sister sent the SOS. I pointed out that at least she got her goodbyes, thinking all the while that losing mine with Nika was what rankled most. But I couldn’t confess all I’d felt with Nika, not without hurting Molly more.

Shortly before midnight I heard the adjoining door open and turned to see Molly carrying a bottle of Johnny Walker Black with two glasses. She floated in a black, thin peignoir. Her message was clear enough, but didn’t seem to quite fit our moods. Even with flirtation, we’d built up a level of trust and support that hadn’t included the bedroom. I managed to get enough of Molly’s truth serum inside of me to blurt out this critical obstacle, that sex might make things worse for both of us, though I knew I couldn’t resist the peignoir forever.

We huddled on the balcony and argued over where her intentions lie, what my intentions had ever been, and passed the truth around like a beach ball at a formal dinner that kept splashing into the lobster bisque. Talk eventually worked, or at least the Johnny Walker worked. In the last hour before we went inside, the main chords of my discontent wove into some sort of acceptance. Moll was propping me up to save herself, and I no longer wanted to question things.

Stepping back from the doorway into the dim room, Molly let the peignoir slide down her torso to her arms; My debate swung between scolding her and scooping her up. She led me to the bed and reclined against a pile of pillows, rocking those wonderful legs at me, lilac perfume pulling me closer. When she snapped off the bedside lamp, stretched and sighed with streetlamp glow framing her treasures, I knew talk was worthless. Wanting her became so easy.

I slid close. She made small purring sounds, half desire, half release. Still, I held back just a tad, struggling with the illogic that I liked her too much for sex. But my body ignored my mind: currents of two rivers joined, our bodies fit and moved together in a way that was beyond what I’d imagined. I touched, erased a small part of Molly’s pain, but my own flooded out in such a way that I couldn’t separate the two. Later I understood we ditched an ocean of hurt in that room, and broken the ice in such a way that we could never go back. Sex can do that. Sometimes only sex can do that.

When Molly met me in front of the hotel the next morning, she was different — still very young, but more at peace, seemingly older. And thankful. Her skin was browner than when we’d left Chicago. She’d eaten well on the trip, gained weight back she’d lost since the funeral. Her voice carried that lilting hope that drew me in when I first met her.

Driving back, she hummed with the radio, smiled comfort whenever I glanced over at her. Each smile reassured me that our time had been good medicine for each of us. We didn’t talk about love or sex or worry about what the night meant, and neither of us got nervous or sloppy about it. I joked about opening an office in New Orleans and commuting from Chicago. Molly laughed, the only time on the trip. It’s easy enough to make a devil laugh, just step out of line. But making an angel laugh is as sublime as a Chopin nocturne.

We were finally comfortable with each other. Normally, comfortable ties worry me, but with Molly it was natural. It didn’t bind.

As we neared Chicago, Molly slid close. She announced she’d take one more trip up to Canada with her sister, then be back in a few weeks to re-open the office. She said it like she was boosting me to be ready by then. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I wasn’t sure about going on as a private investigator. I’d see her when she got back, which is what I told her when she planted a lingering kiss at her door.

Molly, like so many other giving souls, took death hard, maybe because life had given her such a good start. Her father was a single parent who gave it his all. He’d done an Olympic gold job. Molly inherited his brand of tough, but this was the first time in her 23 years death smacked her on the jaw. She had to plant herself and swing back now, use the best of her dad’s lessons. She had to let a few of those stars in her eyes fall to earth. Molly’s of the world aren’t given to society’s rules as much as they’re led by their hearts. Call it instinct, call it juice, but it’s an internal, infallible compass. I never got much of that juice, but I enjoy being next to it. Maybe every kid has that pure compass at some point, but the darker side of life beats it out of most. If the world had more Molly’s, Eden might just return.

But there will always be snakes, too, as I rediscovered when Rick and I were startled out of our skins on the patio by the woman diving through the plate glass, followed by the blast. The biggest cases always uncover the biggest snakes. And Chicago does everything big.

Chapter 2

Rick was up early rattling around the kitchen making coffee and eggs. I woke up stiff like someone beat me with a board across the arms and shoulders, which could’ve been from last night’s exertions or the hard davenport I crashed on. I felt twenty years older until I splashed water in my face. Then I only felt nineteen years older. Last night’s intended victim was rousing herself when I sat down for coffee. She used the bathroom and followed me into the kitchen, leaned against the refrigerator and eyed us like she had forgotten who we were.

How many eggs and how do you like them? said Rick, twirling the spatula.

Four, over easy, came the contralto voice.

I pulled out a chair and poured her a coffee. What do we call you?

She looked at each of us, a bare scowl bending her thin eyebrows. Slumping in a chair across from me, she said, It doesn’t matter. Pick any name you like.

Rick dished out her eggs. He studied her with experienced cop eyes. I could see checklists clicking off in his head.

I’d rather call you what your mother did, if you don’t mind, I said.

I do mind. Her voice was flat, unemotional. She stared at her plate like it was a mirage.

In that case I like Jane, as in Tarzan. Rick here can be Cheetah since he likes to monkey around. Beware of older men frying eggs.

Lord, she mumbled into her eggs, I’ve been rescued by a couple of clowns.

As a kid I did want to run off and join the circus, Rick said, biting a strip of bacon. Being a clown would have been a great adventure. But then those were different times. Your generation — Mike’s and yours — would see that as square.

Which one of you cut me loose? Whoever I landed on wasn’t soft.

That would be your host and mine, Mike Angel, private investigator. Your humble cook is Rick Anthony. Please don’t call me Richard.

He looks too young to be a shamus.

He is. That’s why I’m tagging along, Missy.

She tried for a smile but it didn’t work. I should thank you both for last night. So, thank you.

A scrape with hot death created a monster appetite in Jane, who wolfed down her eggs and coffee, yet refused more.

Fire and police still milled around across the street. Every time a car door slammed, Jane looked toward the door, seemingly afraid.

You’re safe here, I said, using my father confessor voice. "There’s