A Fistful of Nothing

By Dan Glaser

The Great Depression never ate the country alive. WWII refuses to put out its raging fires. Every major city across fifty states has been blown sky-high by blitzing.

This is 1952, America.

The only choice the denizens of a war-torn Los Angeles have left is to plunge into the deep dark of the metro tunnels and make a new life in the ruins of the subway rails below—with elbow grease, neon, and blood. In the crumbling catacombs beneath Hollywood, an ex-private eye named Jim “Jimbo” Maynard scours the dead, dark underworld for payoff on a gamble gone wrong, but stumbles instead on a subterranean metropolis divided by vice, vendettas, mysteries, and murder plots. In order to hunt down the butchers of two seemingly unrelated corpses, Jim will come up against warring mob bosses, backstabbing bookies, mad inventors, tin titans, bootleg rum-running, corrupted coppers, and electromagnetic revolvers.

Welcome to The Hollywoodholes. Welcome to your chrome coffin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Glaser
• Release date: Mar 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310629822

Dan Glaser

DAN GLASER originally hails from Fargo, North Dakota, where he first crafted his affection for storytelling. Also an independent filmmaker, he cut his teeth on the feature-length crime thriller "Pinching Penny" (2011). The film can be found through Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, and many other venues. Glaser currently lives in Los Angeles, California, in a matchbox studio apartment near the L.A. River. It isn’t much of a river.

Book preview

BOOK ONE:

EIGHTY-SIX

CHAPTER ONE

THE KISS-OFF

The years-abandoned metro stop was a really shit spot for a scrap, Jim knew, swiping left/right at his chintzy clown excuse for a bookie. He knew the subway track was a really shit spot for a bird-dogging too, even before putting the heel on Bernie, hounding him for payoff on their last wager together—which was how they even got to trading one-twos at the Burbank station stop to begin with. The underground rails were a shit spot for everything involved in collecting on his share of yesterday’s winnings; he knew it before he’d heard that Bernie skipped, and he knew it now while he got Bernie’s glass knuckles scraped across his five o’clock at the vacant terminal. But then again, it was all more or less his own idiot fault, since he knew The Hollywoodholes were a really shit spot to flop in the first place.

Jim’s knowledge didn’t improve his aim any.

Bernie ducked his sloppy suckerpunch, and the fink-bookie bastard came back with a cuff of his own, one that landed. In a normal punch-up, Jim’s botched swing wouldn’t have queered matters much, not against Bernie—but tonight, something in the bookie’s returning fire was out-and-out hinky.

For a habitual pantywaist, the hopped-up shitkicker threw a nasty right hook into Jim’s side, and the alarming jab stung like salt and sweat as it slapped his gut. Jim’s long legs trampolined from the surprisingly solid crack and he stumbled back, awed by this unprecedented venom, and suddenly wary of the whole damn mess.

He’d thrown down dirty with Bernie a handful of times. Nothing overly profound, just a few backroom brawls over gambling debts—much like the one at hand—and once or twice a drunken row over gash; all of them mostly friendly and mostly for show. This time though, something was goddamned screwy.

Jim could tell the greasy fink was doped, and desperate sore besides, and for some reason seeping his wormy little feelings into those flaccid fists, turning them bottle-hard and all business. When a twin blow broke Jim’s reflection, kissing the same spot near his maltreated liver, he felt an old scar rip wide. His shirt darkened and slicked to his spare-tire belly as blood bubbled up from the resurrected wound.

Jim’s tortured torso was passingly familiar with the scrape-scab tango, decorated by more than its share of cruelty through thirty-odd years of playing white hat in a dirty town—even after Hollywoodland had socked and browbeaten him into the protective arms of cynicism in his early twentysomethings. But he’d earned this particular notch back when he was nearly boozing age, and nearly twice as lucky.

Even at the height of his idealism, Jim was never disillusioned enough to dream of stardom. Firstly, he never even had what other people might consider looks, let alone "good looks"—his eyes were too hard and his facial bones too sharp, with a voice that followed like glass on cement. He had a charcoal stare that could turn bullets, and a snarling sneer that could tame a jungle cat. Secondly, he grew up near Tinsel Town, and everyone knew that movie stars weren’t bred in Los Angeles; they just moved here.

So he figured the runner-up was to play at the things he saw in the flickers. He made like cops and robbers one summer, tried tap dancing the next—a splintered ankle taught him his grace went about as far as his pecker. But Jim hadn’t gotten too mopey about that dead-hoofer disaster, however, leastwise not for long. He always had the Merrie Melodies cartoons to look forward to, them his favorite reels by a mile. He even vowed he’d grow up to be Bugs Bunny one day. Turned out he was the duck instead.

Even back before he started boozing with the best of them, Jim was never quite sharp enough to grow up a copper, and he knew it. He definitely wasn’t subordinate enough. Eventually he settled on private dick instead, where he wouldn’t have to be either. But what Jim didn’t have in both brains or beauty, he was double-graced with in something else, something better even, he thought, since it was trait you couldn’t nail down or wreck up.

Since his stubby feet could carry him from his auntie’s shack on Wilshire and La Brea and onto the boiling tar of the sunburnt street outside, what then ruled his life on the neon-kissed block—and what now damned his life in the dead dark of The Holes—was his uncanny dumb luck.

He was running with Maddox Leonard back when he got this particular scar: the meanest one, the fated one, and the first of many. Jim played cop to Maddie’s robber, then later bodyguard to his big shot. Thinking back, Jim wasn’t really sure how he’d tolerated Maddie’s bad streak for so long. Even as a vagrant ten-year old pinching dimestore candies from shop windows, his Welsh-American playmate had always shown an affinity for the vaguely criminal. On Jim’s twentieth birthday, he found himself illegally sipping spirits early on Maddie’s dime—and just that once, he finally considered the dichotomy: white hat Jim and black hat Maddox.

It was right then that Jim shook his head free from the flickers for good, and realized you couldn’t make out a man’s mind by the cloth that covered it. Even supposing you could, there were really only two options left—gray or brown—and after all, he chose dick, not badge, and there was a difference in the end.

Jim probably would have wondered about it with anyone else, how things played out with Maddox always ending up the king of some other kid’s castle. But one didn’t wonder these things with Maddie. As the ruffian tot grew into a felonious teen, the welshie’s taste for things thuggish ballooned big—and yet his magnetism grew alongside it too, tits to toes, which made for more than a few strange sights; shit straight out of vaudeville, that would have you on your ass if only it were funny. Maddox appeared to waltz his way through police bang-ups with nothing more than a shrug and a wink, and no crime they could fix him with seemed to stay stuck.

He was nicknamed The Mad Dog by his peers, and That Scrappy Shitbird by the cops. By most parents, too. Jim just called him Maddie, like most of The Mad Dog’s closer pals. Nobody called Jim much of anything—no one really cared, not before his scar; although Maddie had christened him Jimbo back when they’d been snot-faced brats together. While the label certainly wouldn’t win any prizes for most cunning moniker, it fit well enough, and Jim wore it with a bashful sense of pride, like a pageant queen toting a newly-minted tiara.

How Jim first came to know he was a lucky so-and-so was in the fall of ‘43, when a mottled hobo sloshed newly-pilfered booze on Maddie’s newly-purloined jacket. When the dripping Mad Dog barked and snarled, the stinking drifter pulled a stiletto and flicked it forward. Jim moved to tackle Maddox out of the switchblade’s path, shifting himself between his best friend and the lunging gutterpup to do so. His luck wasn’t in missing the knife stroke, however; the blade bit mean and drank deep of his blood, even after Maddie took the time to punch the piss bum clean out.

The luck was that it didn’t dig his grave.

Waking up in a nearby trauma care center to nurses squawking Español, he didn’t need to understand Spanish or wait for the clipped Inglés translation bound to follow. He grasped it instantly—that Dame Fortune and he were formally joined; knew each other in the way the Bible meant—and furthermore, he accepted that he would have to use this hussy, and hard, if he was going to live good in this world at all.

Subsequently, the event received a nice bit of printed press. Not enough to make an album of or anything, as the war was on already and they were saving paper like it didn’t grow on trees, but it had gotten enough ink for Jim to collect a few notable clippings from a few noteworthy trades. The Mad Dog had grown into quite the public figure by that point—a mobster chieftain without the bum title—and saving his life had become a story worth the mention.

Man of Steel Maynard was the first handle slapped to him, and by The Mad Dog himself. Maddie liked Action Comics plenty, and hadn’t ever been considered overly clever—just powerful. Probably why he took such a shine to Superman.

They had a third thing in common too, The Mad Dog and The Last Son of Krypton: the welshie brat, much like Jim, grew up a stray. Although unlike Kal-El, neither of their parents parted ways in some lavish act of love or heroism or whatever; Jim’s took a powder sometime in his early infancy, and Maddie’s were gunned down in some nutso gangland beef with the owner of their favorite restaurant. And unlike Clark Kent, both their foster parents sucked dick.

Of course, Maddie eventually got himself rousted. They caged him partway on a boozing charge, being that he sold swill to a twist too young to imbibe, and partway on a hooking rap, being that she paid him back with cooze—which it turned out was illegal at any age.

His best friend and boss suddenly shipped off, Jim was left lonely, sure, but free to play his luck any which way he wanted. And although he never saw Maddox Leonard after that, left to his own pursuits he saw The Dame quite a bit. She gave it up too, and often, never giving him much of a dry spell between sweeps on both cards and craps. He almost never won the ponies, but that was old news, even in the glory days of his service to The Mad Dog. They could do anything else though, he and The Dame.

And goddamn it, they did.

But it was 1952 now, and he was on a losing streak as bad as he’d ever had, and worse, besides. He hadn’t even gotten a little footsie from Her in over a year, all of which troubled him in a way that was primal and terrible and ate up his blood at night.

However, thinking on his past gained Jim no insight, only lost him his footing, and the ex-pantywaist bookie’s next right cross clobbered him off of the platform and onto the clammy rails below. Jim flopped onto the abandoned train tracks with a clang that throbbed along the considerable breadth of the long empty tunnels. Bernie stayed glued to him solid, leaping down after the fallen flatfoot. After an awkward drop and a goofy gallop, the next bash came from the fink’s muddy footwear, which relocated the rails’ metal hum to the inside of Jim’s dumb head.

He would have thought about fighting back, if only he could stop waxing fondly about The Dame like a jackass. He would have thought about how moving underground to duck the fighting topside hadn’t really improved his recent misfortune any, if only he could stop the buzzing in his skull from swilling around what was left of his brains. He would have thought about anything, really—if only the few fragments bold enough to escape the fuzzy fog upstairs weren’t drowned out by Bernie’s squeaky half-yelp tirade.

Think I’m a sucker, huh?! The fink landed several vicious kicks to Jim’s ribs, red-faced and wailing as he did it. "Think I’m just some chump? Some sap, like all them other saps you’re used t-to muscling around when they ain’t d-d-doing you no favors no more?" Kick. Huh?! Kick. That it?! Kick. "You think I’m like some jerk or something?!"

Kick, kick, kick.

Propping himself up on both elbows in a showcase of stubbornness, Jim allowed himself a single slow wheeze. Y’know...never said as much, Bernie boy. But you’re starting to give me ideas.

Face newly reddened, Bernie reeled back to wallop his prone victim again. Jim caught the flying foot, however, tossing it and Bernie off-balance. The bookie crumpled to the ground, his stupid striped derby cap doing airborne pirouettes as it flew free. Another stiff chime sounded off in response as Bernie’s skeletal frame struck steel.

Having successfully toppled his opponent, Jim took a moment to chuckle wryly, suck in a sharp breath from the resulting sting, right himself, and stand. Brushing railway dust off his torn and timeworn trousers, he picked up his own discarded snap-brim hat, pulling it low to frame his stony stare.

Jim wobbled haltingly toward the prostrate bookie, who moaned out like some sort of dying goat.

You lousy fuck...

Jim clicked his tongue in reproach. Aw, don’t be like that, Bernie. You’re such a perfect idiot when you talk.

You got no right working me over, you lousy f—

Jim returned the heeling in spades, kicking a few of Bernie’s teeth in with a sharp crack from his dusty wingtip. What’d I just say about talking? You want another toe in the choppers, you keep on going—otherwise give me my money and you can hoof it. I’m not rubbing noses with you for the pleasure of your company.

Bernie’s fumbling hands got intimate with his recently exposed gums, howling through fingers wet and scarlet. "Holy hell, my d-damn t-t-teeth..."

Jim took the liberty of ignoring him. Sure it’s a raw deal, but it’s the only one you’ve got. So start spitting money before you start spitting the other stuff.

Clearly already coughing up plenty of the aforementioned stuff, Bernie looked up at Jim; feeble, dumbstruck, and wounded in a number of senses. "I d-don’t owe you t-two fuckin’ d-d-dimes, ya hood. Not t-two fuckin’ d-d-dimes." Bernie’s stutter was wound up full swing, nourished by a two-parts opium and anger cocktail, and by two-parts panic.

The staccato stammering only made Jim ornery, and he produced a gun from the back of his trousers, dull and speckled with grit. The fink turned full pantywaist once more, his junkie eyeballs swollen with a dope-glazed dread.

Jim’s mouth curdled into a watery smile, but his eyes went straight savage. "Careful…you might make me laugh, telling jokes like that. Me, a hood? What’s that make you, the cops? And you don’t owe me two dimes, Bernie—you owe me much more. And this hunk of metal I got here might remind you just how much." He moved on the splayed grifter, pistol trained and hungry.

Bernie went from pantywaist to cat-by-the-tail in the matter of two steps. "What, we’re pulling heaters now? You d-didn’t see me pull no heater, Jimbo!"

Even Jim’s lips dropped the friendly façade, his brutish face stretched taut against those salient cheekbones like some kind of fleshy cellophane. No, you were pulling something different alright, and I don’t mean my leg. And you can call me Jim, besides. I only let my friends call me Jimbo.

Bernie guffawed like a choking pig, the belch of a laugh echoing down the length of the dank tunnel and sputtering out into obscurity. What friends you got?

"None, I guess; but only so no one calls me that. And we’re not talking about my friends, Bernie, we’re talking about the money you owe me—and no matter how many friends I have or haven’t got, the one outnumbers the other." He thumbed back the rod’s hammer with a soothing clack. Now where is it? My money, I mean. Not my friends. We established that hooey already.

Maybe Jim should have been alerted by the plodding footfalls thumping the rails at his back, as out of the nearby shadows lurched a monstrous figure—Bernie’s associate—six-feet of oversized muscle known simply as Teddy. Maybe Jim should have been alerted by the ample twinge in the track beneath his feet, or maybe even by the reek of spoiled breath on the nape of his neck as the beefy ape came bounding from behind to flatten him. But he was half-deaf from blood pumping in his ears and all electricity, live-wired by gun sweat in his palm. Before he could pin the motive behind the fink’s unseemly sneer, Teddy was plastered to him thick.

Jim folded without much trouble, trampled by what felt like two tons of hot shit collapsing in from both sides to smear him against the warped monorail lines for a second time. The .38 went off once, ricocheting somewhere off into darkness, the hot round a vicious pinball biting through the erstwhile undisturbed and dusky drab.

The bullet finally got buried somewhere in the crumpled orgy of a two-auto wreck-up; wagons that had fallen through a long-since sealed hole in the station roof. The dual carriages were so gnarled and eaten by burn marks that you couldn’t make out if they’d once been a pair of Packards or a couple of bull prowlers.

After that, it was all rumble, one that was unquestionably one-sided: the bird-brained behemoth squeezing his quarry into submission and David rabbit-punching Goliath in frantic reply. The revolver was ultimately wrested from Jim’s clutching fingers, and he was soundly rapped in the face for his trouble.

Blood spilling out of his surely broken nose and feeling junk-juiced himself from the pistol whip, Jim floundered along the red-speckled railway. While his battered hands clung desperately to the oily metal as a bolster against an advancing pain-blind blackout, Jim forced his lips to wrap around what he hoped would be words and not merely vomit. "Oh, we’re definitely not gonna be friends now, Bernie boy..."

Yeah, look at me, I’m crying. Bernie picked himself up off the rubble and patted a few clouds of powder from his moth-eaten suspenders, replacing the stupid derby on his spindly brow. "Although…you really should t-try making a few, Jimbo. Ain’t so bad, come t-times like these."

At the fink’s glance, Teddy pried Jim from his protective stranglehold on the sturdy steel and plopped him into a ragdoll slump. The brute plastered a giant mitt on each of the dizzied gumshoe’s buzzsaw cheekbones; whether to hold his new plaything upright or to ready a fatal snap should things go belly-up, Jim didn’t really care to speculate.

Instead, he opened his mouth to crack wise, the actual wisdom of the reflex up for debate. Yeah, I can see that. He wagged his drooping head, gesturing to the gargantuan at his backside. Only how do you stand the smell?

It was Bernie’s turn to fake fraternity; he didn’t do so hot, his whole face bunching up with bile. Always so smart.

"My aunt would probably disagree with you on that point, God rest her. But hearing you say it—sounds kinda pretty. Maybe I’ll actually try it on someday, instead of stumbling into it by accident."

Any trace of forced nicety now forfeit, Bernie nodded at his leashed muscle. Maybe, ya souse.

Another sock on the chin knocked loose a few more senses, and for a moment Jim felt blind and deaf or maybe even dead all together. It was worse when a crescendo of stinging injury confirmed he wasn’t, and he plopped back to the pitiful fray at hand, with all its aching little bells and whistles.

The busted sadsack sputtered, warm liquid rolling down his face and running from his split lips. I’m not sure I like this anymore, Bernie. He pitched his lolling head again, this time indicating the anxious revolver that had found its way from Teddy over to Bernie’s squirming trigger finger. I think I’d rather take the gat…if we’re talking one right guy to another.

Ain’t none of us right guys, pally. Bernie thumbed the hammer back obligingly; but at the rusted click, his eyes tugged toward his thuggish partner and he promptly thought about the fun he could have instead, by proxy.

Jim mushed his lips together in an attempted grin, only managing a grotesque grimace which sluiced blood from this side to that. This, I’m learning fast.

Ah, joyous d-day. Lemme learn ya some more.

A third approval seemingly unnecessary, Teddy went to work on Jim full-time, until his giant punches turned from sharp smacks into something wetter. Dripping carnage from his puffy, welted face, Jim sagged in the gorilla’s great ham-hands; the glassy eyes on the dim goon pulled inquisitively toward his master. The fink gave a little nod. Jim was released, reduced to a pulpy sack of bones on the blood-slicked rail beneath.

Bulbous new abrasions sewed his blackened eyes to swollen slats, greatly reducing his sight, but Jim could still make out Bernie’s trembling steps as they merrily advanced. The sniggering pitter-patter had the dogged cluck of a mischievous metronome, nagging Jim with its faultlessly measured tick tock tick.

The bookie’s shrill voice followed his capering feet. Got nothing to say? Ain’t gonna be smart no more?

Not sure why you’re so convinced I ever was to begin with, pal. Jim coughed, spitting up bits of gum and gristle. Still recommend you find a friend ‘at smells like daisies though…this one’s gone sour.

A slight and contemptuous smirk edged its way across Bernie’s wormy lips, and he regarded Jim almost pitiably as he knelt down next to him, gat in hand. Them’s the d-darndest last words I ever heard, buddy...

Jim heard the hammer click. He scoffed. "Oh yeah, you hear a lot of them? And a buddy ain’t the same as a pal, Bernie, and come to think of it, you’re neither. I told you I ain’t got friends, friend—and I ain’t got ‘em for a reason. So either use the gun, or lose it, or give me my money. It all sounds tops to me, at this point. But make up your mind and do something, so’s I can finally quit hearing you flap your gums just ‘cause you like the sound of the breeze between your teeth."

It took Bernie more than a moment, but when the words broke through his muddled mind and the insult grabbed hold, it smarted. The fink fumed but good.

Jim’s sight slowly returning, he waited for the full brunt to bite, then snarled through sticky teeth. How’s them words suit you, Bernie? Better or worse?

Hopping mad, Bernie forgot the cannon in his clumsy hand, a carnal bashing the only appropriate instrument for his now-blistering fury. Without another quip or complaint, the drug-addled bookie brought his foot crashing down on Jim’s face.

Jim didn’t see anything then but nothing.

CHAPTER TWO

STIFFED

She stood before him, in the altogether, with the light of some daffy moon taking liberties with Her naked silhouette. Jim tried to call out to Her, but found that the cry broke off in his breadbasket. His throat, blood-drunk, refused to produce anything but a low and sludgy squawk—so She stood in plain view, nude against the night, neither coming to his aid nor fading into The Big Nothing of this hopped-up whatever-it-was.

The Dame was one hell of a cocktease, as ever, and although he’d once taken a shine to their fencing act—how She’d let him collect goose egg all night to get him good and riled, only to then take him in Her hand so he’d come through with the killing—unlike days past, he knew he couldn’t count on Her putting out for him tonight.

The quail would keep them crossed, and tight; even after the seedy, drawn-out jitter they’d danced this long, last year; even after he bought Her dinner, if he showed Her to a jazzland time, or really sweat for it. None of it mattered this time around, not since ‘51. All he could count on was Her, standing there, unmovable, an object not to be touched unless he became worthy of the touching. He didn’t know just what he’d done that had lost him Her favor. He only knew that he had to put it right, or lay down and stay licked as a man.

To that end, he decided dying might be counterproductive.

Not unlike the cracking open of a much-thumbed smut mag, Jim haltingly pried open his blood-caked blinders. He took an agonized cursory scan of the tracks with his unfocused eyes. First, pure tunnel vision sucked up his sight; throbbing orbs like massive fireflies. But slowly they fluttered away as he came to, his battered eyeballs fixing in on the scene around him, blearily focusing in on deep crane-arms of shadow and a great many winks of long metallic luster.

But no bookie, no muscle.

No gun either, but Jim was still a bit too punch-drunk to mope about his lost rod, especially while he still possessed the ability to mope at all. He thought to try and test if any other faculties knocked silly by his recent ham-hand hammering might be more readily available to him—anything at all to aid his fuzzy eyesight, like maybe his queasy motor skills. So he tested, his overworked and out-of-shape frame snapping and popping in crabby response.

Jim’s first attempt to push himself up resulted in a hacking fit, and a spray of red spittle shot from his mouth and wet the rail in front of him. He took a moment to quiet his lungs, then tried standing a second time. He did better. The act of piling back onto his rubber feet accomplished, Jim twisted to crack a few more frozen, kayoed joints.

He struggled, with limited success, to reassemble himself into a form more or less resembling a has-been dick who’d just had his ears pinned way the fuck back—though he more likely came off as one of those wax-molded sloths from the old tar pit exhibit. Jim wondered if that place still stood, swamp-stink and yellowed sabercat bones and all, or if it had been firebombed by now like most things else up top. He should’ve marveled instead at the heated rumpus made by his now ex-bookie over a common coin swap, or why Bernie went lamster in the number one. But Jim kind of felt like his head had just gone blooey—about twelve knocks before his lights got snuffed out—and plus, the whole thinking angle hadn’t really done him any favors in the last hour or so anyhow.

Jim squinted ahead, his sad tomato sight finally elbowing around the bust-up veins and pooled blood to restore itself to some semblance of its former glory. Beyond the

Reviews for A Fistful of Nothing

[jazzfeathers · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

‘Fistful of Nohtings’ is set in an incredibly noir, dieselpunk place. An alternative Los Angeles of 1950s, where WWII never ended, and actually came to the US and wrecked havoc on the city. Part of it sank into the ground and people found shelter in there, a maze of tunnels and cave-like places. Outdoors Los Angeles, constantly bombarded and at war, is no place for human beings.
Even if, someone could argue, the Hollywoodholes aren’t either.
In this place of darkness, the underworld has mostly taken over, and people live a half-life… sometimes literary, since many have parts of their body replaced with mechanisms.
I’ll be honest, the setting is extremely interesting.

So it’s a shame the story falls somewhat short of expectations. It is, at its core, a mystery and it rests in the hands of a disillusioned sleuth to solve it – as in good noir tradition.
But the mystery is convoluted, cryptic in many places and I could never follow it clearly. Things seem to happen to Jim (the main character) by mere chance all the time, it was hard for me to see a progression in the way they were presented. Some repeated themselves a bit too often (Jim is repeatedly beaten up and loses conscience, for example). I think that more focus on Jim’s actions and especially his reasons would have strengthened the structure of the story, which – on the other hand – doesn’t lack action. It’s a fast paced read.

Era lingo is very heavy, so although it does help creating the setting, sometimes it is too distracting.

Jim’s relationship with the Betty, the female main character, is very nice, instead. It never turns into a romance, but there is always a lot of tension between them, both sexual and emotional. And I liked this.