Bennie: John Devin, PI Short Story, #2

By Michael Kowal

A John Devin, PI Short Story… Devin is on a fresh case to recover money and bootleg booze belonging to Toots, the owner of Devin’s favorite LA speakeasy. The money and booze found, he gets a little more than he bargains for. A case within a case, that leads Devin to his new best friend, and the most foreign land in LA — Chinatown. 

If you like your detectives hard-boiled and with attitude, with a strong sense of right, and characters you want to spend time with, grab "Bennie", and the first novel in the John Devin, PI series, "Red Is For Blood." Then join Devin as he solves his way through the amazing 1930s - the most dangerous, glittering, low-life time in Los Angeles’ crime filled history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Kowal
• Release date: Aug 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536569179

Book preview

http://kowalkowal.com/free-story

Chapter 1

IT WAS 8:30AM by the time I arrived at the rooming house on Macy, right across the street from the Southern Pacific rail yards.

Coal-fire smoke billowed out of a black locomotive as it growled across the street, wrestling a line of scratched and dented and abused rail cars to the back of the yard. They looked like I felt.

The air was dead still as the smoke laid a blue haze over everything in the area. A little north east of downtown Los Angeles and already I was in another world. A low-class world of cheap rooming houses, broken businesses, and the ever-present heat of the city. LA, the desert next to the ocean.

Al Jolson sang at me from out of an upstairs window in the rooming house. I didn’t like the guy too much but he was all over the radio now so I couldn’t avoid him. Too sappy for me.

I shut the door of my Model A easy, not wanting to wake anyone. Not like it mattered on this side of the tracks; everybody’d be in bed after a night of booze that didn’t exist. Funny how that was. Nobody was supposed to have it during Prohibition but everybody got it somehow. My friend Toots kept me in the best stuff a guy wasn’t supposed to have. It’s nice having a friend with a speakeasy. But that’s also the reason I was out here in the morning. To pay a visit.

I got a tip the boys I was looking for were in a carriage house out back. Rumor was it was converted a while back to create an extra space to rent for the rooming house, but at a few dollar a month discount. On account of the smell.

Seventeen and the boys were having the time of their lives I guessed, away from home for the first time and on their own. They worked for Toots. Until last night. When they took some things from him.

Now I’m no muscle but I do know a little about finding things. And getting them back. It’s my line of work. I’m a PI.

The rooming house was two stories, rambling wood, and needed a paint job bad. The small porch out front was warped, the roof warped even more, and all the gray boards holding the place together showed the simple baked heat of the LA sun.

My gum shoes walked silent to the dirt drive at the side of the house. And there it was at the end of the drive, the carriage house, looking even worse than the regular house.

It was gray like the house but dead dried vines tangled up its sides and almost took