LAdies' Night

By Naomi Hirahara

From Valley Girls to Valley of the Dolls, the L.A. Woman has captured our imagination and redefined the fairer sex. CJ Parker is our lifeguard, Lucy Arnaz our studio executive, Angelyne our reality star, and the Black Dahlia our murder victim. L.A. neighborhoods have spawned the Beverly Hills housewife, the Hollywood starlet, the Van Nuys dominatrix, the Santa Monica Surf Betty and the Manson girls, to name a few.

LADIES' NIGHT, an anthology by Sisters in Crime Los Angeles, includes stories by Julie G. Beers, Julie Brayton, Sarah M. Chen, Arthur Coburn, L.H. Dillman, Bengte Evenson, Cyndra Gernet, Andrew Jetarski, Micheal Kelly, Susan Kosar-Beery, Jude McGee, Gigi Pandian and Wendall Thomas.

The anthology is edited by Naomi Hirahara, Kate Thornton and Jeri Westerson. Award winning L.A. crime novelist Denise Hamilton wrote the introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370026722

Book preview

LADIES’ NIGHT

Edited by

Naomi Hirahara,

Kate Thornton and

Jeri Westerson

Copyright 2015 by Los Angeles Chapter of Sisters in Crime

First Edition June 2015

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by JT Lindroos

Cover photo by Simon Peckham

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Denise Hamilton

TOXIC, In the Year Twenty-One Twelve

Susan Kosar-Beery

Canyon Ladies

Sarah M. Chen

Backswing

Arthur Coburn

Tempest in a Teapot

Gigi Pandian

Ida & Aggie

Julie G. Beers

Phyllis Barlow, P.I.

Bengte Evenson

Murder at the Castle Theater

Julie Brayton

One Decent Shot

Andrew Jetarski

Good Grief

Cyndra Gernet

Thicker Than Water

L.H. Dillman

Loser Friend

Wendall Thomas

The Artist Must Die

Jude McGee

Flight Risk

Micheal Kelly

Contributor Biographies

Other Books Available from Down and Out Books

A preview of JB Kohl and Eric Beetner’s Over Their Heads

A preview of J.L. Abramo’s Circling the Runway

A preview of Robert J. Randisi’s Souls of the Dead

LAdies’ Night Introduction

For the crime fiction community, Southern California is the land of eternal opportunity and a natural landscape so perfect it might have been dreamed up by Hollywood set designers. Step right up folks, we’ve got the blinding sunlight, the darkest shadows, the rampaging forest fires, the sugar white sands concealing treacherous rip tides and the gritty locals and the beautiful newcomers desperate to reinvent themselves in paradise. (And woe to those who get in their way).

The voices in this collection will terrify and thrill you, often on the same page. The vividly evoked characters and landscapes are as diverse as the land itself, from Susan Kosar-Beery’s apocalyptic world of rogue biolabs, burned out suburban malls and L.A. cartels to Sarah M. Chen’s surf noir Canyon Ladies, which has more twists and turns than Mulholland Drive.

More than any other genre, crime fiction exploits the shadowy gulf between illusion and reality and Arthur Coburn’s Backswing, a gripping tale of psychological suspense, keeps the reader guessing until the very end. The characters in this collection are spurned wives, professional magicians, suburban moms with dark secrets and jaded party girls. The locations span the city, from dive bars, chic clubs, golf courses, cliffside precipices and beachfront villas.

What they share are driving plots, twisted characters and a hurt love for this City of Angels. The snappy dialogue of Andrew Jetarski’s One Decent Shot, set in Hollywood’s Golden Age, will draw you in with its gangsters, ingenues and femme fatales but it’s a more primal secret that will haunt you once you’re done reading. Ditto for L. H. Dillman’s Thicker Than Water, a sly unfolding of a murder told through the vantage point of the wealthy family’s maid as she moves from room to room, cleaning.

Each story between these covers shines with its own fiendish talent and light. So Shiver. Thrill. And most of all—enjoy.

—Denise Hamilton, award winning L.A. crime novelist and editor of the Edgar Award-winning short story anthology Los Angeles Noir

Back to TOC

Toxic: In the Year Twenty-One Twelve

Susan Kosar-Beery

Times are changing, my boss, Gloria Viper, said. The ripple effect is everywhere, and my bones tell me it’s happening too fast.

You and your bones, I said. Change is cool. I’m jazzed the ugly times are behind us.

But are they really? she asked.

We stood at the edge of a cliff. Below us lay the San Fernando Valley, sprawling for miles, a lesson in history. Once a thriving beehive of more than a million people. Then reduced to a burnt-out wasteland for a couple decades. Now, the comeback kid of communities in the New Renaissance. This was our beat. We worked security detail for Clean Sweep Assurance Corp, a private security firm under contract with the SoCal County Sheriff’s Department; SoCal being the first legitimate county seat to emerge here after years of bankruptcies and civic collapse. What was left of Los Angeles fell under their jurisdiction and our patrol.

Viper’s countenance darkened. Change is nothing but a big tease. You survive the Great Misery. You think you have an endless future. Then slam! You’re dead. And what’s your legacy? Nothing but debt and regret. She kicked a stray rock over the cliff’s edge with her black-booted foot. The force sent the small boulder tumbling down the eroded hillside, past abandoned homes, stirring up dust and flushing out a flock of doves from their stealth cover.

Fly, you stupid birds, she yelled. You’ll be someone’s lunch soon enough.

Within seconds, Viper’s prediction came true. A shotgun’s report echoed up the hillside and one of the doves plummeted to earth. Fresh food was still scarce these days, despite recent changes for the better. Even a lowly mourning dove offered protein to sustain a hungry body.

Screw it all, she said and walked away from the cliff.

I followed, perplexed. Viper could rant with the best of them, but usually after copious amounts of cheap liquor, and not on the job, and never about death. We were weary of that topic.

Where’s this coming from? I asked.

Viper stopped walking. She let out a sigh, life’s breath pouring through her full lips. She met my gaze. Goddammit, Kendall, I’m toxic. I have a couple weeks, maybe three.

Force of habit, I backed away. Covered my nose and mouth.

I’m not contagious, foolish girl. I’m dying.

Embarrassment flushed my cheeks. I could barely get out the next words. How? When?

She shook her head, indicating not here, not now, and leaned in for my ears only. I’ve been poisoned. Someone’s cooking up a new bio-weapon, and I’m the lucky lab rat.

It’s been three years since scientists found the cure for the retrovirus that decimated billions of the world population, a global catastrophe known as the Great Misery.

A mass inoculation effort, coordinated by the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, allowed most countries to lift their Mandatory Quarantines. That influenced the political powerbrokers to call for a Detente of Nations, putting a halt to the senseless wars that had added to the death toll over the past century. The world wasn’t at peace, but we were now in a pause. The human race needed to heal itself. This change gave us hope and the entrepreneurs time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructures. Time to remake a civilized society and create a New Renaissance.

For me, it’s been approximately fifty-seven days since I joined the security detail at Clean Sweep, as the youngest Sweeper Trainee, apprenticed to Gloria Viper. I’ve known her since I was seven, when a church orphanage placed me in her foster care. We lived in a sanctioned quarantine co-op in Glendale. Her two sisters and their families lived two floors up. Gloria became my surrogate mother, and my mentor.

Some people call me the lucky girl. I was born during the waning days of this Mess we created. Not so lucky, I think. Like many of my generation who survived the Great Misery, I’m without parents. War killed my dad, the soldier I never knew. The virus took my mom. My given name’s Kendall Mulholland. Nineteen, and not so lucky. I’m about to lose another mother, this time to murder.

Viper! Mulholland! The voice of authority called behind us. Off your asses. We got a breach at Ventura Heights.

We’ll talk later, Viper said, under her breath.

Overhead, the sun beat down as we turned to face Darian Kroll, the Watch Commander of this ridge-top outpost. Heat of the day was upon us, when creatures of all shapes and sizes sought refuge in any available shade. The time when we usually got the Sweeper call to drag some diseased bunker refugee out of whatever cool space they had trespassed. I felt guilty sometimes, but Viper would remind me, it’s my job. I was lucky to have the gig.

Maybe I should drive today, I suggested as we geared up for our call.

I’m not an invalid. Yet. She drove the compact solar-powered security vehicle. I road shotgun. Like always. Folded my six-foot three-inch frame into the narrow front seat. My bare head scraped the ceiling. God help me if I ever had to wear my bio-helmet. I hated these toy cars. Give me one of those old-school Humvees any day.

All my life my height’s been an issue. Teased as a child. Embarrassed as a teen. Viper taught me how to throw back the taunts. Made me tough. Today, my height is an asset. With my three-inch heeled boots, and monochrome uniform, I make an imposing figure when busting some trespassing slacker. Helps that I look older than my nineteen years. Been told I’m a natural beauty, too. All this scored major points with H.R. at Clean Sweep. They hired me and gave me a gun.

We accelerated over the rough road that traversed the spine of the Santa Monica mountain range that separated the Valley from the Los Angeles basin.

Mulholland Drive.

Developers built this road nearly two hundred years ago. It’s my namesake. I was conceived in my mother’s motor trailer that squatted in the driveway of a burnt-out mansion that once housed some long forgotten celebrity. She loved the celebrity part. Believed I would grow up to be famous, too. As if the uniting of sperm and egg in a derelict driveway on Mulholland Drive could achieve that. But in hard times, people grab on to any fantasy that will keep them going. Such was my mother.

Bless her heart. She died when I was three. I never knew her real name, or mine.

Viper made a sharp right-hand turn that took us down the mountain towards the Valley. Time and wildfires had long destroyed any street signs, but the locals knew this road as Coldwater Canyon. We zoomed our way around hairpin turns and I peppered her with questions.

Who did this? How did it happen?

Can’t tell you who, but they shot me with a silenced tranq rifle. I never heard a thing. Woke up in an alley with a small pellet lodged in my neck. The source of the poison.

I don’t get it. Why poison you?

Can’t tell you that. It’s confidential.

Excuse me? You’re dying and you’re keeping secrets?

Don’t make this more difficult.

Okay, where did it happen?

Can’t tell you that either.

My frustration boiled over. What the hell can you tell me?

It’s nasty shit, Kendall. A mutated strain of genetically engineered bacterium from the twenty-first century.

Holy crap. Are you sure it’s fatal?

There’s no cure I know of.

The truth of her statement silenced us. We rounded a couple more curves before she continued, I called in a major favor, and had a tox screen done, in secret.

My mind raced. We need to take down whoever’s making this shit. Call in the new Sheriff’s Department.

Absolutely not! Viper took her eyes off the road to stare at me. There is no ‘we’ here. The toxin is my problem. Her eyes returned to the road ahead, but not before I saw glistening in them, tears that Gloria Viper would never allow to fall.

I couldn’t fathom how it must feel to know you’re toxic.

You’re scaring me, I confessed. What’s going on?

She weighed her response, reached across and we clasped hands. I took an undercover job. Surveillance of a rogue bio-lab rumored to be financed by one of the L.A. crime cartels.

Oh joy, I replied, making no effort to hide my sarcasm. The L.A. cartels. They’re a major laugh riot. What in hell possessed you?

I’ll never get rich working for CSA Incorporated, she said. And I have debts.

Yeah, so? The whole world’s in debt.

You’re so naïve, Kendall. The world is changing at light speed.

Yeah, so, I don’t need your lectures. What about this debt? That’s news to me.

Sorry for that. When we came out of Mandatory Quarantine, I bought into the whole Brave New Renaissance hype. You know the drill. Investment money resurfacing. Eco-boom on the horizon.

I did. Fast money and scam artists were quickly replacing the shakedowns and warlords of the past.

There’s a rising class of the new rich and I wanted in, she continued. I planned to launch my own private security firm. Figured the crime cartels were not about to go gently into that goodnight. I knew enough people with financial means who couldn’t afford the big firms, but could afford my rates.

"Sounds smart. What happened?’

She looked chagrined. I secured a loan, but my business partner ripped me off. He took the money and split town.

And you didn’t think to tell me?

You were off volunteering with the Red Cross on their inoculation effort. You were so excited to be out of quarantine. Helping others. I couldn’t burden you with my financial mess. She gripped the steering wheel, her knuckle veins popping. If I ever see that bastard, I’ll rip his balls offs with my bare hands.

Now Gloria Viper wasn’t the biggest or the tallest woman I knew. Blame it on her Asian/Latina DNA. Regardless, she worked out daily with free weights and combat training. This woman was one hundred and forty-five pounds of pure muscle and power. If anyone could rip the balls off a man, barehanded, I’d bet on Gloria Viper.

We reached Ventura Boulevard, a commercial thoroughfare, and ground zero for the Valley’s reconstruction. To be continued, she said. Duty calls.

Our duty call at Ventura Heights was a bust. The intruder was a dehydrated bunker refugee who was dead by the time we arrived. Her body lay, sprawled, in a corner of the underground parking area. The call said she suffered from the contagious new disease people nicknamed Bunker Malaise, a mutated strain of leprosy, but we didn’t see any evidence of body sores, or related pathogens.

Viper, pissed off, got up in the superintendent’s face. What the hell happened here?

The building super, a military wannabe with exposed biceps shrugged. Another Slag Hag who thinks they’re entitled to squat in our basement, use our facilities. He looked with distain at the poor dead soul. This bitch was harassing the tenants.

What did this ‘bitch’ do? Ask to fill her canteen? Viper held up the empty vessel, her body rigid with anger. This was not the first time we had witnessed callous behavior to refugees.

We’re not a public welfare house, he replied and rattled off a litany of code violations, and other regulatory bullshit.

Viper walked away, hands balled into fists, leaving me to radio in to HQ our report.

When are you getting that dead slag out of here? the super asked when I completed my call. She’s beginning to stink.

Silence that could split the atom.

Then Viper tackled him, landing a vicious punch to his face. They fought, hard, but she got the best of him. Threw him up against the wall, shouting in his face about his racist behavior before she finally backed off.

The day only got worse.

That ass of a super called CSA and filed a complaint. Viper was suspended on the spot. I was docked a day’s pay for not breaking it up. Like I could have done anything different. You don’t cross Viper when she’s coiled to strike.

I drove us straight to Rust & Bones. Viper road shotgun. The long shafts of afternoon sun knifed through the driver’s side window burning my face as I navigated north to our favorite outlaw bar in Sun Valley.

Why the hell did you have to pick a fight with that ignorant putz? You need this job.

No I don’t, she replied. They suspended me, not fired me. If I die during suspension, my family still gets my accrued benefits. She looked at me. Including you.

We drove in silence for a while—through miles of burnt-out neighborhoods. Ghostly chimneys and rusted skeletons of commercial high-rises thrust up like bizarre spikes. A dismal landscape in what was once a middle-class neighborhood.

People perished so quickly in the Great Misery, there weren’t enough of the living to bury the dead. They burned the bodies instead, in massive cremation pits, and the fires got out of control. Driven by Santa Ana winds and a drought condition, wild fires swept through huge swaths of the Valley, burning for days, weeks, marching acre by acre, over mountain ranges to the Pacific Ocean. This all happened before I was born, but I know people who were there. They’re old, and their weathered faces bear the horrors they witnessed. Like Hell had risen, someone’s grandmother told me.

We pulled up to the outlaw bar and parked.

Rust & Bones Free Bar—proprietor Russell I. Preston read the sign out front.

Free Bar was the common name for an outlaw bar—a drinking establishment that didn’t cotton to rules and regulations. They allowed most patrons in, as long as you didn’t stir up the shit and your currency or barter item was legit. Outlaw bars thrived during the lawless decades, but these havens for the good, bad and ugly are a dying breed. New establishments obeying the VVM (Vaccine Verification Mandate) pull in patrons who want a night out without fear of contagion.

Rust & Bones remains a free bar, with one caveat to satisfy their inoculated regulars—everyone must have their wrist scanned for the vaccine tattoo. Those without are seated in a back room, free to drink, but not to mingle. I still carry in my bio-mask and broad-spectrum Epi-pen. Cautious is as cautious does.

We sat in a secluded corner of the dark-paneled main bar, a vintage wine barrel as our makeshift table. The owner, Russell I. Preston, delivered the first round of drinks. As regulars, we called him Rusty Eye; the nickname a result of his excessive sampling of his home brews.

R.I.P. vodka, he announced. My premium batch. First round’s on the house, gals. If it tickles your fancy, I’ll sell you a bottle to go. Good price for good customers.

Sounded like Rusty Eye was feeling the pinch of the competition.

I’ll let you know, Viper replied and waved him off.

Rusty, gray and grizzled beyond his actual years, came from a long line of survivalists. His granddads, a paranoid pair of elders, had the foresight to build the best underground bunkers money could buy, stocked them with MREs, medical supplies, and enough comforts for the duration. They sprung for a pricey Home Shield Array that protected the ground above from nuclear and biological fallout. They even built a burial catacomb. People thought these elders were extreme, but Rusty’s family survived underground for half a century. Unlike the fate of other Bunker Broods where poor air filtration and sanitation led to disastrous results, including a resurgence of scurvy, leprosy and Bunker Malaise.

I scanned the bar—no scurvy lepers that I could see. Ironic somehow. Here I sat with someone toxic, her impending doom, like a newly pregnant woman, not showing yet. We clinked glasses and downed the R.I.P. Most tasty—unlike the local rotgut booze. Viper signaled Rusty for another round, and I knew a long night lay ahead.

I felt the rush of vodka warm my face. If it could only warm the chill in my soul.

Where do we go from here, Gloria? How can I help you?

Her brown eyes squinted. That’s easy. Be there are the end. Give me the shot.

Like everything else she controlled in life, Gloria Viper intended to control her death.

I agreed. Although, the thought of what I just committed to made me shiver. Not so easy to kill someone even at their own request. We lived in really fucked times.

I have another favor. Help satisfy my debt. There’s an Equivalency Note I need paid off. I don’t want any repercussions for my sisters or their kids.

I groaned. An EQN? Why in hell would you do that?

After the bastard ran out on me, how was I going to pay back the loan? I signed an Equivalency Note. Problem solved.

Obviously not, I thought. What a mess.

Equivalency Notes are an unregulated business, fueled by desperate people and opportunistic predators more than willing to cover a loan with no collateral. Sign an EQN and you’re obligated to repay in legitimate currency, or its equivalent—gold coins, precious gems, even real estate. The interest rates are shocking, and your obligation is in perpetuity until satisfied. You die, they’ll shake down any living relative or descendent. They’ll haunt you for centuries. They are true vermin.

Don’t panic, Viper said, reading my body language. I have a plan. She motioned to huddle up close. Do you know how many banks there were in Los Angeles County before everything collapsed? Hundreds, minimum. Most of them were destroyed during the great fires, but here’s the catch. A majority of the vaults and related infrastructure were fireproofed and located underground. Many of these still exist, untouched, buried in rubble.

I felt an unease creep through me as she continued. I acquired access to old street maps and building blueprints that survived. Not only do I know the location of one of these lost banks, I know how to get into it undetected, and I have the proper tools to open the vault.

Seriously? You’re going to break into a buried bank vault.

No, you are.

You’re crazy.

She ignored that. Not the main vault. That requires explosives. Fortunately, this branch installed their deposit boxes in a separate, caged room—a mini-vault. That, we can get open. There are hundreds of deposit boxes in there, probably still full.

My unease grew. You don’t know that.

Do the math. At the height of the Misery, people were dying by the thousands. Did every person with a deposit box have time to empty it? I’m betting no.

You want me to plunder deposit boxes. Take other people’s stuff.

Plunder’s rather harsh, don’t you think? After all this time, it’s safe to presume these people are dead and there will be no claims.

I guess. Her plan disturbed me. How do I open them? You have keys?

Of course not, but I have access to a Clean Sweep security tool developed to override the lock tumblers. They use it when there’s a descendent claim. I can show you how it works. You only need to empty those boxes with tangible assets—gold, gemstones, viable currency; anything equivalent to cash will satisfy the EQN. You could probably do this in one night.

I sat back, dismayed. You’re asking me to steal for you. I don’t want to do that. I’d rather bust the cartels that poisoned you.

That’s never going to happen. She grabbed my arm. Her nails dug into my flesh. You listen hard, Kendall. The cartels are vicious people you don’t ever want to mess with. Do not pursue it. She relaxed her grip, sat back. You want the truth. I screwed up. Blew my cover. Compromised the entire operation. They moved the bio-lab and the people who hired me are back to square one.

She gulped her second shot. Let the alcohol do its magic then said, This bank has been off the grid for decades. It’s in a Red Zone neighborhood.

I don’t know. What if there’s a descendant claim some day?

There will be no claims. Don’t you get it? No one is going to show up with a key. They’re all dead! Her voice rose a little too loud. The room hushed. A few people looked in our direction. Rusty hustled over with another round, smiling at the patrons. The moment passed.

If it’s in a Red Zone, how do you know it’s safe to enter?

Sweat beaded on Viper’s brow. She was stressed. From being toxic? Boozed up? Then she answered, I’ve been there.

In that instant, I understood, and my heart sank.

You’ve already been plundering the deposit boxes, haven’t you?

She shrugged, and looked away, uncomfortable. Maybe, yes. Okay, so I have. Those loan goons were on my case. I did what I had to do.

It’s still stealing.

Like you’ve never stolen anything before. she replied, angry.

What a low blow. Yes, I had stolen, out of necessity, as many people did to survive.

That was before. We’re in a New Age. We’re supposed to be better than that now.

Stop with the bleeding bull-crap. Everyone’s an outlaw. She grabbed my shot and chugged it. Slammed the