Bet Your Own Man

By C. J. Henderson

Twenty hard-hitting tales of war, lust, revenge, hate and madness -- spanning the genres of fantasy, mystery, horror and science fiction. Inside this volume, you will find ordinary men and women in extraordinary circumstances, forced to make life's hardest choices. Also, white-knuckled action with appearances by private eye Jack Hagee and supernatural detective Teddy London. This anthology also includes a "Rick Rambler / Time Patrol" mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: May 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311216274

C. J. Henderson

CJ Henderson (1951-2014) was the creator of the Jack Hagee hardboiled PI series, the Piers Knight supernatural investigator series, and many more. Author of some seventy books, as well as hundreds and hundreds of short stories and comics, and thousands of non-fiction pieces, this prolific writer was known for action, adventure, comedy, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and for being able to assemble the best BLT this side of the Pecos. In addition to Jack Hagee, P.I., and supernatural investigator Teddy London, C.J. handled much of the work for Moonstone Books' highly successful Kolchak: The Night Stalker franchise. For more info on this truly wonderful fellow, or to read more of his fiction, hop over to www.cjhenderson.com.

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Bet Your Own Man

C.J. Henderson

Hardboiled tales of truth and pain

Edited by Jack Dolphin

Published by Bold Venture Press

www.boldventurepress.com

Cover art: Erica Henderson

Bet Your Own Man by C.J. Henderson

All stories in this eBook Copyright by 2014 C.J. Henderson. All Rights Reserved.

By arrangement with the Estate of C.J. Henderson. All Rights Reserved.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher and copyright holder. All persons, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, please purchase your own copy.

Table of Contents

Foreword

The First Thing We Do

Til You Die

999 Down

The Solid Men

On All the Snow Around

The Longest Pleasure

The Piper’s Tune

Pop Goes the Weasel

Bet Your Own Man

They Were the Wind

Misery and Pity

Gratitude

The Best Meal

The Din

The Laughing Man

Sacrifice

No Stronger Shield

Nine Dragons

The Horror

The Door

Afterword

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

Connect with Bold Venture Press

Foreword

Hardboiled might have started out as a term to describe an egg cooked until its innards become solidified, but somewhere around the beginning of the American Century, it took root in the vernacular of the working poor and the criminal classes as an adjective useful in describing an exceptionally tough individual—the type of guy who wouldn’t crack open and spill, no matter where you hit him.

Fiction took a turn for the hardboiled in the early 1920’s, fostered by disgust at the bloody horrors of the Great War and the self-righteous stupidity of Prohibition. Interestingly enough, both kinds of fiction underwent the change at about the same time. By both kinds I mean literary fiction—the stuff that is felt to have values above and beyond simply entertaining the reader—and pulp or genre fiction—the stuff that’s supposed to be just for fun. As with any definitions foisted upon us by people with agendas, the accuracy of those divisions is marginal at best.

Any number of genre works have considerable value beyond that of entertainment and there is no shortage of literary fiction that has no value at all. In addition, a fair amount of what is now considered classic literature began its life as popular entertainment, back when quality and mass appeal weren’t looked upon as mutually exclusive; Charles Dickens and Jack London providing a handy pair of excellent examples. Can the day be all that far ahead when 20th Century authors like Hammett, Chandler and Cain are discussed alongside Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos and Fitzgerald without the need to precede their appearance with an apologetic explanation?

It began as a stripped-down way of telling stories: cutting descriptions to the bone, banishing flowery or emotional writing in favor of dispassionate reportage, and hewing to a harsh, cynical worldview. Hardboiled writing was characterized by a willingness to use the tools at hand, including an especially brutal brand of violence, to achieve its ends. It spoke in the vernacular of the people, the sound of the streets, the idiomatic and vulgar slang of hoboes, grifters and carny hucksters, cop-speak, the soldier’s lexicon, and prison patois—a direct and unapologetic language bristling with vitality. It was pugnacious talk that assaulted the reader with the forthright nature of the American spirit and revealed blunt truths about the rotten underbelly of society. It shunned artifice, compromise and sentiment while championing direct action, clear thinking and a cold-blooded verbal efficiency, talking to its readers in a language that they themselves imagined they spoke.

In the early days, hardboiled characters ran the gamut — they could be crooks or cops, soldiers or sailors, newspaper reporters or city editors, construction workers or telephone linemen, boxers, dock wallopers or union organizers, calculating opportunists or footloose adventurers. One author even penned a series about a hardboiled truant officer! Some rich guys could turn out to be hardboiled, although they generally had to prove it while most of their poorer colleagues could have it taken on faith. However, as the century played out, hardboiled became increasingly associated with the private eye character, introduced by Carroll John Daly, refined by Hammett, Chandler and Ross MacDonald but epitomized by the ever more ruthless characters created by guys like Spillane, Marlowe, Avallone and the Kanes. As the rough-edged private eye gave way to the equally ruthless, but considerably more sophisticated secret agent, hardboiled (as a literary term) began to disappear from regular usage. Trenchcoats were out and tuxedos were in, until the later 60’s brought about the birth of the Bogart cult, revitalizing the public’s affection for classic tough guy behavior. This, in turn, led to a fictional resurgence in the 1970’s, as the private eye genre was brought up to date by supplementing the traditional white male shamuses with any number of tough minority, female or, in a small but popular subset, physically challenged private eyes. In the end, it was Wayne Dundee’s small press magazine Hardboiled that brought the term itself back as it championed a new breed of tough storytelling which continues to maintain a limited but dedicated fan base to the present day.

Some of C.J. Henderson’s earliest hardboiled stories appeared in that seminal magazine; in fact, it carried the introduction of his own hardboiled private eye, Jack Hagee. But right from the start, Henderson felt constrained by the notion that hardboiled meant exclusively urban crime stories and private eye yarns. His first effort to wriggle out of that straitjacket led him to place Hagee in a series of stories that embraced a variety of genres — from old-fashioned pulp adventures to horror to tales of wilderness survival. Hagee managed to weather all these tales but it was Henderson’s unease at having Hagee’s realistic universe cross paths with the supernatural that eventually led him to create a second detective character, Teddy London, a New York gumshoe who starts out on New York’s mean streets but ends up patrolling the vast Dreamplane of Lovecraftian Mythos and nameless shambling horrors.

Moving beyond the detective was inevitable and Henderson has since unleashed a torrent of tales featuring a wide range of protagonists and settings that apply the hardboiled ethic to everything from historical fiction to comedy, sword and sorcery to war stories, sports yarns to folk tales. Long contending that hardboiled is an attitude not a genre, he has proven his point many times over and herein are 20 pieces of fiction to back that assertion. Believing that fictioneers can be roughly divided into three categories — the H.P. Lovecrafts, the Clark Ashton Smiths, and the Robert E. Howards, Henderson self-identifies as a Howard, a guy who believes you can overcome almost anything if you’re just willing to fight and who, if losing is inevitable, would rather go down swinging.

Henderson’s philosophy is simple — do the right thing. Stand up for what you believe and never shy away from a challenge. Hell, along with all its various messengers, is far tougher on the weak-willed, the appeasers, the mealy-mouthed anglers and shifty conniving weasels of this world. Men and women of strength and character may suffer terrible privations, but emerge far better off for their efforts if only in the currency of self-worth.

This collection could have been called The Best of C.J. Henderson, but there isn’t enough room to do that idea justice. There is simply too much excellent stuff in his canon. But it seemed as though the best of the stories that put a hardboiled philosophy front and center could be achieved. Ultimately, there wasn’t enough room to accommodate all those tales, either. Still, you hold this volume now, so after a great deal of inner turmoil, the choices were made and, as editor, I must live with the results. I’m still a trifle saddened by those tales I had to leave behind, but I take hope in the thought that enjoying these stories will encourage you to seek out more of C.J.’s work.

I spoke earlier of the two kinds of fiction. Doubtless, these works would be classified as genre pieces, pulp entertainments, as much for the markets where they appeared as for the decisive actions taken by their protagonists or the simple fact that they have plots. Literary fiction, for the most part, seems to have devolved into a fiction of ennui, marinated in self-doubt and served with a side of momentary, bittersweet revelation. Actually acting on any lessons learned appears to be against the rules. But while Henderson’s earliest efforts were characterized by a ragged pulp-like drive, he has long since transcended that limitation. In a just world, there are any number of tales to his credit that deserve a more realistic evaluation, giving him the opportunity to stand where he belongs, shoulder to shoulder with the truly gifted storytellers of our times. Maybe that’s the sort of judgment best left to history. Here’s hoping the people who make those choices, somewhere down the line, have the sense, the taste and the courage to banish modish thinking and smug dogma from their decisions.

I was given the opportunity to edit this collection for a reason. Some time ago, I penned an introduction to the online edition of C.J.’s Jack Hagee collection, entitled What You Pay For He evidently thought enough of it (or so blanched at the effort of getting someone to replace it) that he asked me to revise it for a subsequent print edition. After a guest stint at a convention, he told me of the reaction of one of his fans, who professed to enjoy the stories very much. This fan, however, was mightily offended by my introduction. C.J. confessed to me that he was so astonished by the vehemence of this fan’s reaction, that he neglected to ask how or why the intro had caused such consternation. But based on the theory that any reaction is preferable to none, he suggested I take on this collection as editor. I can only hope I’ve done as potent a job this time, as it is my intention to offend, but only those pale wraiths who insist on promoting a fiction of apology and abasement, a thin soup of shrill mea culpas, internal kvetching and dreary heartsick shame. This is hardboiled territory you’ve signed on to explore, no place for the faint of heart or the weak of resolve.

Welcome aboard, me hearties.

Enjoy the adventure.

The First Thing We Do

A Jack Hagee mystery

In the interest of setting a tone right at the outset, here’s a tale that couples hard-bitten professionalism and harsh violence with raucous, tasteless humor and a vivid example of the kind of philosophy Henderson brandishes — sometimes like a rapier, sometimes like a blackjack, but always with the moral certainty of the righteous man.

Okay—I got another one. How do you get a lawyer out of a tree? asked Carmine Cecolini.

Easy, replied Hubert. Just c cut the rope.

Everyone laughed. It’d been the same way for the past two days. Actually, as far as New York City was concerned, it had been the same way for a lot longer. In the words of the police, for at least the past three months, a serial killer had been running around the city doing, in the words of the late night talk hosts, a valuable public service by killing lawyers.

It had taken our different law enforcement agencies a while to notice any pattern because, as they put it, there was a great deal of randomness connected with the killer. He had no immediately recognizable M.O. or style. Even by that morning he had still left no signature ear markings. Every time he’d struck, he’d managed to vary enough of his technique so that there was little to point to him—except, of course, for the fact that he kept killing only lawyers.

I’ll g-give you one, answered Hubert. A nervous woman goes to the health clinic. She asks the doctor, ‘Doc, can I get pregnant from anal intercourse?’ and the doctor tells her—

Sure you can, lady, interrupted Peter Wei. Where’d you think lawyers come from?

This time we all laughed except Hubert, who’s never been one for having his punchlines trampled. As he began a running commentary on the various animals and farm machines he theorized might make up Peter’s ancestry, Carmine turned the wheel of his VW bus, pulling it over to the curb several blocks up from the Jacob Javitz convention center. Taking his cue, Popeye, a homeless black saxophone player I throw a lot of the secondary slots from the outdoor recon work that comes my way, jacked open the side door, saying,

Yeah, dat’s it—make da nigga walk. Dat’s da way.

Ignoring the banter, I asked, You got your clip on?

Raising his hand to his collar, Popeye bent his lapel back, displaying the mike hidden beneath it. Yeah, he told me, getting serious for a moment. I’m hot. You wanta check in on da hour?

Every hour, please, answered Maurice, our electronics coordinator. On the hour. It is a simple request, made in simple language, in the desperate hope you do not panic our poor Mr. Hagee with thoughts that you are laying dead in the street, simply because you have forgotten how to tell time… yet again.

Popeye looked over the seat dividing the two of us, ignoring Maurice as he asked, Yo’ sure yo’ needs dis nigga… rights?

I am not a black man, said the normally effeminate Maurice in a loud and angry voice. I am a Jamaican.

Yeah, I sighed, wondering where some people get their opinions from. We need him.

Then, giving Carmine a nod to take off, I ignored the rest of the conversation around me, looking at my watch to see if we were still on schedule. I had to. A job as easy as the one we were on—as choked full of money as it was for all of us—I didn’t want to blow.

It’d all started when some police statistician in one of the department’s forensics units had finally noticed an unusually high percentage of deaths involving lawyers within the city limits. Feeding the evidence from the thirty some homicides into his computer, he came up with enough cross matches to show a pattern. Someone out in the city was murdering lawyers. He was an equal opportunity killer, as well—entertainment attorneys, labor arbitrators, family practice or personal injury or criminal defense attorneys, corporate attorneys, whatever—as long as they were a law school graduate, somebody out there was interested in them.

Of course, the news turned the city upside down. Serial killers always do. Since the second case that could be attributed to our latest media curiosity had been one of dismemberment, the press dubbed him The Bar in the headline: ANOTHER LAWYER DISMEMBERED BY THE BAR.

And, as always, it stuck. Despite the fact he was killing people in cold blood with axes, guns, and clubs, with ice picks and knives or by any other means he could think of, the joke stuck. One older man was thrown off the roof of his company’s building. A young woman was made to drink liquefied lye. Anther woman had been battered to death, one hundred and fifteen bones in her body broken—one at a time—with a block of marble, another choked to death with a length of barbed wire. Still, the cute comedy name stuck—and for only one reason.

Whoever the Bar was, he was a vicious murderer, one whom under any other circumstances would have held the city in a nightmare panic. But this time, since the nightmare was reserved for lawyers, the kindly citizens of New York were practically dancing in the streets.

Come on, complained Hubert. Somebody m must have a new one. Give.

What do you have if you’ve got a lawyer buried up to his neck in the sand? tried Peter.

Not enough sand, answered Hu. Try again.

How do you know when a lawyer’s lying to you?

When you can see his lips moving. Try again.

How do you save a drowning law—

Take your fuckin’ foot off his head. Hubert sat forward, then threw himself back, bouncing off the seat. Slapping his knees with frustration, he growled, Shit. We can’t have t-told every goddamned lawyer joke in the world already. Can we?

Beginning to look that way, Hu, I answered.

Ahhhh, what would you know?

I was happy to let Hubert fume while I oversaw the placement of the rest of our people. My name is Jack Hagee. I run a small investigations agency. Normally I’m a bit hesitant to make light of tragedy to alleviate despair. I’m not one for making jokes about disasters. But this time I’d gotten my share of laughs out of the legal profession’s latest woe—just like everyone else in town. Despite my annoyance at the killer’s randomness and the fact he needed no criteria other than a legal shingle hanging outside the victim’s door, like my seven million immediate neighbors, I really wasn’t equipped to see the thinning of the legal ranks as much of a disaster.

Nobody likes lawyers—not those they attack nor those they represent, not the people who trained them, not the people who sleep with them, not their mothers or fathers ... not even themselves. At one time, of course, there seemed to be a reason for them. Once upon a time they were a useful profession, no better or worse than any other, each member judged as an individual. But that was a long once-upon-a-time ago. Now, thanks to the easy cash to be made by the simple trick of turning neighbor against neighbor, cousin against cousin, mothers against fathers against children, et cetera, they’ve multiplied like any other dangerous carnivore introduced into a virgin killing field. And, bound by their pack ethos not to turn on one another, they roam the land thirsty for blood, sucking it out of anything they find not protected from them by either a bar certificate or an already empty bank account.

By and large they’re an easy group to despise. Arrogant beyond the point of even doctors, bred to feed on suspicion, to create paranoia, they are a useless type of thing—callous and indifferent, monstrous in their appetites and devoid of honor. Because of their ceaseless efforts on behalf of the public, we now live in a country where doctors will deny their title rather than risk treating someone dying in the street ... where city governments give away millions in blackmail payments to hobos rather than go to court and test their right to do what they want with their own buildings ... where insurance rates have spiraled out of control so badly that most towns can’t even afford to take the chance of having a fireworks show on the Fourth of July.

Hush, darlin’, people tell their kids, the town can’t do that anymore ... just watch the ones on TV. They’re just as good, aren’t they?

And, what most people don’t understand is how truly different lawyers are from everyone else. The first year of law school consists of nothing but studying case after case in which the person in the right—aka: the one deserving justice—loses in court. A thief break into an apartment through a window ... he hurts himself in the process and sues the building owner for negligence ... the criminal wins a five million dollar decision and the owner loses his building. A woman invests her funds in a lying snake’s personal corporation ... he folds it and steals her every last dime and his lawyer assures everyone that it’s legal. White cops kicking a black man into next week is caught in crystal clarity on video tape and their lawyers merely shrug and say, sure, why not?

New law students are force fed case after case designed to break down any resolve they might have had about doing the right thing. For in the eyes of the law—and those who dispense it—there is no right and wrong. There is no such thing as justice. There is only the law, and how one can use their own personal, ever shifting view of its interpretation to put car thieves and muggers, con artists and pimps, drug dealers, embezzlers, rapists, murderers, torturers, cannibals, and every other breed of vicious, lowlife scum who prey on the masses back on the streets... as long as it increases either the bank balance or prestige of some lawyer.

Santee Claus, an honest lawyer, the Tooth Fairy, an’ a old drunk all come through a door at the same time, said Grampy suddenly, breaking his customary silence. They all spot a twenty dollar bill at the same time. Which one of them gets it?

Grampy, a pal from my service days, normally works his street carnival act in Central Park. His partners, Kriss, Mark and Darin, are three of the biggest, fattest men I’ve ever known—one bigger than the next. Unbelievably, their act consists of the trio dancing while Grampy blows harmonica. As I’ve always said, television being what it is these days, people will pay to see just about anything.

What? Nobody knows this one?

Jeez it. A new one. W-Well, give out, Gramps. Who g-gets the twenty?

The old drunk. Hell, everyone knows there’s no such thing as Santee Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or an honest lawyer.

Everyone laughed again. Somewhere in the city, a man who hated lawyers more than the rest of us was killing them at the rate of two or three a week and all it did was make the rest of the city tell jokes. And, despite the new laws against lawyer bashing, nobody seemed to care—nobody. The news stories proved it more and more every day. Lawyers were attending court in sweat suits and baseball caps, dining at McDonalds instead of Gage & Tollner, and generally doing anything they could for once to be less conspicuous. So far, it hadn’t helped much.

One attorney came out to the street in the morning to find his name, apartment number, and occupation spray painted in four foot high letters across the front of his high rise. Literally hundreds of lawyers throughout the city had received death threats in the mail, on the phone, tied to rocks thrown through their windows—not so much from people pretending to be the killer but from those who wanted to make sure their targets knew that the killer was out there... somewhere... and that they hoped their victim would also be his. Attorneys had also become the brunt of a massive practical joke campaign—toy bombs mailed to them or left under their cars, death threats as gags on top of the ones motivated by hate.

But, it was the city’s cavalier mood toward what was happening that had gotten my agency its current sweet contract. Ten months earlier, the American Bar Association has rented the massive Javitz Center—a solid acre of ill-conceived glass walls and roofs once called by a former city mayor, that glass heap on the Hudson—for their Conference on Proposed Federal Court Fee Shifts. Aside from not wanting to look like cowards by canceling the whole shebang, they had paid too much for the conference center to back out once the news of The Bar hit the streets. So, to assure its membership they were doing everything possible to protect them, the big boys had decided to go for a ton of extra security. And, that meant us.

The Javitz Center has its own security people, of course. I’ve done freelance for them in my time and can vouch that a lot of them are top people. But, for Ernest Malloy, the national chair of the ABA’s subcommittee on civil procedure in the federal courts, that certainly was not good enough. In fact, it did not take much time in