Almost Love

By Steven Jon Halasz

What happens when love doesn't quite attain the ideal? You have "almost love", and maybe sometimes that's good enough.Ten short stories written over a 15 year period. "Almost Love", channels Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene; "Skunk Runs Away", written after reading 13 Moons by Charles Frazier; "The Best Night of My Life", very loosely autobiographical high school prom story; "The Woman Who Came to Dinner", a young woman meets her future husband; "Letter to Prosecutor", inspired by the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005; "The Lonely Princess", a classic tale elaborately retold; "Tunnel of Love", first love never dies; "Soul Kitchen", asks the question, do you ever really know who you're married to; "The Breakup", Priya Koothrappali has a bad week; "Lil Darlin", a West Texas romance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Jon Halasz
• Release date: Feb 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310635878

Steven Jon Halasz

Steven Jon Halasz was born in 1948, grew up in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and attended Mayfield High School, Hiram College, and Case Western Reserve University Law School. He has worked as an attorney and a computer software developer and has made various attempts at writing both fiction and non-fiction off and on since the age of sixteen. He has a delightful sister, a brilliant son, a lovely daughter-in-law and two precocious grandchildren. He currently lives in Portugal with his darling wife Elena.He has loved and been loved in return.

Book preview

Almost Love

Copyright 2000-2022 Steven Jon Halasz

Published by Steven Jon Halasz at Smashwords

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Almost Love

Skunk Runs Away

The Best Night of My Life

The Woman Who Came to Dinner

Letter to Prosecutor

The Lonely Princess

Tunnel of Love

Soul Kitchen

The Breakup

Lil Darlin

About the Author

Connect with Steven Jon Halasz

Acknowledgments

To those I have loved or who have loved me.

Almost Love

It’s busy at the station first thing in the morning. Cops, lawyers, victims and perps are buzzing in and out of the beehive. A short stack of papers stares at me from my desk. On top, a yellow notice titled Charlotte-Mecklinburg Police Department Motor Fuel Emergency Over-Budget Notice. It’s been a busy month for the old Mustang. Under that, an ad for a Hyundai Elantra. Under that, a subpoena addressed to myself, Detective Robert Montgomery, to appear on August 14, which is today, in the trial of Cary Rimes, a citizen of Charlotte, North Carolina on trial for the capital murder of Wayne Lugs, a young Charlotte police officer and a personal friend who was brutally and senselessly murdered last year by one of Rimes’ thugs.

Going straight to Hell, observes the chief, standing at my back and reading over my shoulder.

I don’t believe in it, Henry.

You will, when the time comes. When will you accept Jesus as your lord and savior? It’s not too late for you, not yet anyway.

Timing is everything.

He walks away, practicing his slow, meaningful North Carolina shake of the head. I actually prefer other people to be religious. They’re so much easier to get along with than atheists, so long as they don’t make you wallow in it yourself.

Cary Rimes was a gangster, or anyway such of that cockroach as you find here in the Hornet’s Nest—the nickname given to Charlotte by the English General Cornwallis while skirmishing with the city’s ill-tempered American revolutionaries. After CMPD helped bust a Hezbollah terrorist ring in 2002 that smuggled cigarettes from North Carolina, where cigarette taxes are low, to states in the north where they are high, Rimes took over that business. At least he’s not a terrorist but he’s the next thing to it. He killed a good cop, a friend. Wayne Lugs made us look good. Whatever cops are in reality, Wayne seemed to put the lie to it. We loved him and sometimes didn’t love him, but mostly we loved him. He was squeaky clean.

The crime itself was freaky. We had been trying to get to Rimes for years but he was hermetically sealed. Then one day Wayne makes a routine traffic stop on Fatty The Pipe Fondo, Rimes’ enforcer, and the guy, he must have been on something, goes berserk and whips Wayne’s face into ground beef with an eight inch piece of rebar, then knifes him in the throat.

Fatty is very much at home in prison, but lethal injection, he wasn’t for that. He’s Catholic and he’s sure about where he’s going after and wants to put it off as long as possible, North Carolina prisons these days being a far sight better than the tortures of the damned. So he sang like, well, he sang like a canary. He was on his way to do some enforcing for Rimes, some Russian who didn’t pay for his cigarettes and needed a facial. It’s just like when you have a traffic accident when you’re on company business and your company has to pay the damages, the same thing goes for crimes committed while on your employer’s business. He was doing a job for Rimes and amateur cosmetic rearrangement was part of the job description. Rimes was just as guilty as Fondo and Rimes was the guy we most wanted to shoot up with a chemical cocktail.

That’s how we do it here now, lethal injection. It seems too nice for these guys. I was there when we executed David Lawson in the gas chamber in 1994. He screamed I’m human! while slowly suffocating in a state of utter panic for a full five minutes. I thought it really made a statement and I wish they had let it be shown on Phil Donahue like they wanted to, but it was too much for the nice people of North Carolina and that was the end of the gas chamber. They just don’t understand. If they were cops and saw their friends shot down, they would relish it as much as we do.

Lethal injection might be just as bad or worse, except that the guy is paralyzed and can’t scream and you can’t see the panic, the writhing body and the horror on his face. I hope it’s that bad. I hope it’s the worst torture ever invented, and that Rimes screams and gags and suffocates silently to himself for five or ten or twenty minutes and suffers a thousand times what Fatty gave to Wayne Lugs.

I look up. Henry Fannel is out of sight but there’s a woman standing in front of my desk. She’s wearing a dark purplish silk dress and though she’s heavily made up, her skin is as white as only Southern women know how to make it. I think of blue blood poured over fresh snow. Long, straight, jet black hair gives her the vampire look but there’s a sad, peaceful expression that tells me she’s not here to suck my blood.

Can I help you?

I’m here about Cary. She has an Eastern European accent.

Cary Rimes.

Yes.

Sit down.

She ignores my order. I look at her with some intensity but it’s almost like she’s not looking at me though she’s not looking at anyone else either.

Please sit down, I repeat.

He’s not guilty.

He is. He’s very guilty. He’s about as guilty as it gets.

Not guilty of that, I mean.

The murder.

Yes.

There’s something cold about the woman. A woman in a silk dress, I want to think hot, but the woman is icy.

She notices the chair beside my desk for the first time and sits herself down like a frosty autumn leaf settling onto a mushroom cap.

I take out a pad and pen. What’s your name?

She thinks for a moment. I don’t trust people who have to think before giving their name.

Charlotte, she decides. Not much imagination, and not a name that goes with whatever accent she’s got.

Like the city.

What?

Like the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, where we are now.

She hesitates. Yes.

Charlotte what?

She thinks a bit more before replying, Lee. Charlotte Lee.

I write it, however improbable it may be. Do you have an ID?

She looks in her sequin purse but it’s empty. She rummages around for a few moments, then closes it, puzzled. I must have taken the wrong purse this morning. I’m sorry, I don’t have it.

Ms. Lee…

Fatty was insane, she announces. If Fatty was insane, Cary’s innocent, isn’t that right?

Yes, that’s right. Are you a lawyer? I ask her.

No, but I talked to one.

Fatty is not exactly what you call ‘well adjusted’, but he wasn’t legally insane. To be legally insane, you have to be, you know, ‘bye-bye’, ‘gone-gone’. I make a motion with my hand to indicate the mind taking a vacation.

He was, at the time.

Were you there?

She thinks some more and doesn’t reply. Can’t you do something? she asks. She seems tearful except there are no tears.

I’m doing everything I can to make sure that Cary Rimes receives everything the State of North Carolina is authorized and eager to provide him.

He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve to die. Not now, not like this.

The woman is getting to me. Gangster women disgust me. They give aid and comfort to the enemy when they should be giving it to decent people, like me, for example.

Yes he does deserve it. Here, let me show you why.

It’s not according to Hoyle, but I feel it’s my sacred duty to let the bimbos and bozos of the world know what their heroes are really like. I reach into the box sitting at my feet marked Rimes and pull out the 8x10 color glossy of Wayne Lugs taken at the scene. I hand it to her. She holds it for a moment and looks at it sadly, but it doesn’t have the effect I’m expecting.

I’m sorry about this, she says sincerely as she hands it back to me.

You’re sorry?

Yes.

Did you do it?

There’s no reply. She’s thinking again. I hate women who think.

What if I did? Would you believe me if I said I did?

No. How do you know Rimes?

She’s apparently not sure of that either. We were together.

How long?

Not long.

The sadness in her is deep, very deep. I think about someone I knew too many years ago who had that same sadness, the same dreamy, desperate eyes, someone from when I was 14 years old that I didn’t know I needed until she was somewhere else.

He helped me. I was working in a bar. It was very bad. I was using and it was like I was dead. He found me there and made me alive. He treated me like I, I don’t know, like I wasn’t dead.

He was a great humanitarian, I remark sarcastically, except for smashing people’s faces.

She sighs. He had a bad childhood. His father… Nobody’s perfect.

He is perfect. He’s a perfect scumbag. So you were there when it happened, when Lugs was killed, isn’t that right. Still no answer. If you saw what happened, you need to tell me.

I don’t know.

Don’t know if you were there or don’t know if you saw what happened?

I don’t know. I think I have amnesia.

If you saw what’s in this photograph, and you saw it happen, I don’t think you would forget it.

I don’t think you want to help me.

Fannel walks up and drops a one-inch case file on my desk. It’s not like him to interrupt an interview.

Pick up on this. Lawson is out for a week with appendicitis.

Chief! I plead, nodding my head towards the woman in the chair.

What? he asks. I look. She’s gone. I scan the crowded station but I can’t catch sight of her.

I was doing an interview, I tell him, but now thanks to you she’s run off.

Sorry, didn’t notice her.

Didn’t notice her? I bark. "A babe in a purple silk dress? Get