Dark Oath: A Mike Angel Mystery

By David H Fears

Dark Oath, #18 in the Mike Angel PI Series. Drawn to follow a mysterious blonde with a more than ample backside, Mike falls into a case chasing a stolen relic of ancient Hawaiian King Kamehameha the First, reputed to bestow long life to the age of 130. After his Korean buddy is murdered in a downtown Portland alley by one of the several elements after the artifact, Mike feels obligated to forge on, thwarted by repeated female traps, one involving abduction by the Chinese Triad gang. Set in 1977 in Portland, and the Hawaiian Islands aided by the famous prosecutor Charles F. Marsland, Mike helps a brother-sister team, whose late father uncovered the relic. Adult language and situations: sex, violence, violent sex and sexy violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David H Fears
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370718399

David H Fears

David was known by the handle “professor” as a boy (no doubt the thick black spectacles, Buddy Holly style), and has had a lifetime interest in Mark Twain. He has also written nearly one hundred short stories with about sixteen published, and is working on the 14th Mike Angel PI Mystery novel.Fears is a pretty handy name for horror stories, but he also has written mainstream nostalgic, literary, some fantasy/magical realism, as well as the PI novels. For the past decade he has devoted his full time to producing Mark Twain Day By Day, a four-volume annotated chronology in the life of Samuel L. Clemens. Two volumes are now available, and have been called, “The Ultimate Mark Twain Reference” by top Twain scholars. His aim for these books is “to provide a reference and starting-off place for the Twain scholar, as well as a readable book for the masses,” one that provides many “tastes” of Twain and perspective into his complex and fascinating life. He understands this is a work that will never be “finished” — in fact, he claims that no piece of writing is ever finished, only abandoned after a time. As a historian, David enjoys mixing historical aspects in his fiction.David recently taught literature and writing at DeVry University in Portland, his third college stint. His former lives enjoyed some success in real estate and computer business, sandwiched between undergraduate studies in the early 70s and his masters degree in education and composition, awarded in 2004.He was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and has lived in New England, Southern California and Nevada. David is youthful looking and is the father of three girls, the grandfather of four and the great-grandfather of two; he’s written, “It all shows what you can do if you fool around when you’re very young.” David’s a card. How many of us think humor has a place in mystery tales or history tomes? He claims his calico cat Sophie helps him edit his stories while lying across his arm when he is composing, and sinking her claws in with any poorly drawn sentence. As a writer, a humorist, a cat lover and father of girls, he relates well to Clemens. Writing hardboiled PI novels is his way of saying "NUTS!" to politically correct fiction.UPDATE: Beloved Calico Sophie died on Apr 24, 2016 at 13 & 1/2 years. She is sorely missed.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I remember the first moment Colette Palms crossed my path in August, 1977 in Portland. Little did I know she would ignite memories of my first fumbling love back in Newark, when I was a skinny sixteen year old kid mixed up by it all.

Her buttocks moved under a black silk dress, whispering she’d be good in bed. I followed her out of some screaming instinct, the same sort that lost Samson’s locks to Delilah. The nasty little brain in my boxers made a dark oath to get a closer look.

The dress painted tight across that enticing real estate. Underneath that wonderful material, muscles worked slow and inviting that spoke directly to my insides. I saw weight there. And control. Things I love in a woman’s body. No panty line. I was hypnotized. So much so that I followed her from the taxi where she’d emerged up six blocks into the Standard Insurance building, where my wife Molly ran her brother-in-law’s office.

She owned long blonde curls that made rhythm with her backside. Every now and then I caught her scent, like Chanel only better. Even though I was as enthralled as a teen visiting his first prostitute, there was another emotion, unexplainable yet as vivid as the one in my loins: dread. A black thread in golden tapestry, that itching, warning ripple of dread. I’d never laid eyes on her so why the cold chill that swept up my back? Was it simply a warning that by following her I’d lose control? Or, something more deadly I couldn’t control. Yeah, I was a tossed salad with bitter lima beans mixed in. Then came the ripple of flame down my long jaw scar, a prize I’d won in deadly battle with my father’s killer. The scar sometimes went off with heat or prickles when danger was near.

I followed her anyway. You might ask why a 46 year old happily married father of a toddler would follow a woman he’d never seen before. Most want predictable lives. All the minions, soldiers and half-ambitious sorts want predictable lives built on routine: You get up in the morning and go to work, put in your years, get the gold watch and collect a pension. Perpetual care at Holy Mother Cemetery and you’re all snug and set. I’ve never been like that, for more reasons than I have time to list.

I came out of Korea with an edge, needing a life with an edge. Selling cars or Fuller Brushes door to door didn’t feed that edge. In that brush gig I discovered a lot of housewives bought simply to get me inside, to brush me with their need. I signed up for the civil service and got a gun and a badge and sore feet. Crooked cops couldn’t touch Dad so they set me up with what was supposed to be a drug bust. The package was full of Uncle Sam green, newly minted. When I opened it a flashbulb went off and it was either resign or be shitcanned. That was about the time Dad got his gold watch and set out to become the next Sherlock Holmes in his own gumshoe gig. After he solved a murder case and ate a bullet in a Newark alley, I took up his torch. Twenty some years later here I was, tailing the best tail I’d ever seen.

So why did I shadow the blonde? I need possibilities, someone to rescue, mysteries to solve. I need gangsters and hooligans to send up the river, arsonists to burn, seductive babes lipping danger, lying in wait. I need edge and have ever since Korea. That’s the tune I dance to: danger, prickles hair standing on end. So I followed her into the building, lurking while she bought a newspaper and a coffee all the while letting the magic of her rear end talk. It was a language I knew well.

I kept shadowing her into the elevator, noting she pushed the button for the fifth floor, one higher than Molly’s office. Others crowded in, pushing us to the back wall. The jammed car pushed her wonderful backside against my growing interest, one I hadn’t realized. She must have felt my hard-on because she glanced mischievously over her shoulder, winked, and shifted her hips against me, twice. It was my first erection in an elevator. Everything going up. Either I was the luckiest man alive or she was the world’s biggest prick tease.

I stood stunned while she got off on the sixth floor, one full of attorneys and not much else. She turned left. I drank in one last eyeful of that rear end riding on shapely legs. I braced again against the dread, mysterious prophecy of future pain. Maybe it was my way of bemoaning her escape, my cowardice to follow her on the fifth floor, hand her my business card and compliment her on the best backside I’d seen since puberty and that nasty teen back in Newark who opened my eyes to all things sex and seduction.

I reined in those urges, rode down to the street feeling like a stupid kid who’d been caught masturbating in the boys’ room.

Driving home I couldn’t erase the picture of that undulating ass, the way I’d felt against its dark side, its carnal spell. Yeah I’m a horndog all right, but at least I pulled away in time to save sanity. I avoided dangerous intersections of animal need, and desire to stay faithful to Molly. Family men shouldn’t go around stalking parts of female anatomy, no matter how breathtaking, which was the right word for that ass.

I told myself it was because I was drifting between careers — wanting to continue as an investigator or keeping Molly happy by continuing refabbing houses. Every other day I’d change my mind about which avenue to pursue. Molly listened patiently but made it clear she didn’t want me to dive into any more dangerous cases, that she’d suffered enough worry, that because I was a father to three year old Markie, I had to think of him, of us as a family, and not take on occupations where slugs fly past. She was sweet about it. Sweet and reasonable. She pointed to the pile of dough I’d hauled renovating dumps in our neighborhood. But I didn’t care so much about dough. I never have.

I don’t mind a little danger. I haven’t since I started following my late father’s footsteps, first as a New York patrolman when he was a NYPD detective, then after he was murdered on his first gumshoe case, hanging my shingle with aims to create an elite bunch of operatives.

Years brought cases big and small. There’d been a lot of dames strewn along the way, with honorable and evil intent, heavenly and nasty. My heart as well as my dick had been yanked around year after year, sometimes on cases with national import, like invading the Desert Inn penthouse of Howard Hughes to recover a porno film for a client, or chasing down one of the only men to have escaped from Alcatraz, or snooping after the infamous never-found hijacker, D.B. Cooper, who I came face to face with. Fate kept throwing sultry, desirable babes in my path, not to mention pure ones in trouble. Trouble was, they all tempted me in different ways, ways rarely easy to escape from.

After finally marrying Molly and moving from Chicago to Portland in ‘65, those kinds of cases and babes still fell in my lap, if less often. The electricity in the elevator felt inevitable, a pull of secret needs in some way. And with it that damned dread — what did it mean? So, it bothered me, kept bothering me all the way home. And I knew that I hadn’t seen the last of the elevator woman, though I didn’t even know her name then.

Driving into the driveway, I saw Molly’s ’57 Chevy parked in the garage. Maybe she’d come home for lunch expecting a quickie? Dreamer. Though our sex life since the baby wasn’t as frequent, she still had a hot pilot light for me and I still worshipped every inch of her, the smartest, bravest, curviest dame that ever threw her shoes under my bed. I hoped she wasn’t ill.

I bounded up the porch stairs and into the front door, hollering like Desi Arnaz: Honey! I’m home!

She was on the phone but turned and blew me a kiss. She had a low cut navy blouse on with a gray pencil skirt. Her eyes flashed delight to see me. I was still a bit aroused from my elevator moments, so walked up to her and unzipped. She frowned and pushed me away, covered the speaker and whispered, It’s Vernon, he’s had another heart attack. Put that thing away!

I zipped up and fetched a stubby of Oly beer from the fridge and sprawled on the couch admiring the way her skirt fit. Discussions of Molly’s brother, the good Doctor Vernon, with or without heart problems, were enough to dampen any Romeo urges.

Molly hung up the phone and came over to straddle my lap. He’ll be okay. Another by-pass. His wife says he never slows down. Do you?

She stopped any answer I might have given by laying a wet kiss on me.

My dick answered the sexy straddle. I said: Horny?

One track Mike, ain’t you?

Well, it’s a good track.

With us it is. Markie’s at pre-school. Big test in Play-Doh.

Lucky us. Do we have time?

Maybe. How’d your lunch go with retired chief MacNamara?

Awkward. Seems we’re both looking for action that’s not there.

Before I give you your action, you had a message from your part-time gig at gumshoe headquarters.

Richard the Lionhearted — what’d he want?

Rick don’t-call-me-Richard Anthony had been my partner for a decade, since my Chicago days. At 70, but till sharp in all things Sherlock and Shakespeare, his time was now monopolized by young Cathy Hawthorne Anthony, his child-bride of 29 mostly sheltered years. She was taking fertility drugs and doing everything but standing on her head during intercourse to get knocked up. She even suggested I help her out with that but there was no way I’d betray Rick, even if he agreed. Rick was sublimely neutral in her efforts but from his lips I gathered her bedroom preference might only gestate a seven-pound tongue, if anything. 70 year old sleuths should be so lucky.

Yeah. A female slid a card under the office door with contact information and a need for some answers about her sister. Colette Palms. Know the name?

No. But I hope she’s ugly. I’ve had enough close scrapes with what Rick calls a succubus.

***

Molly went back to work a couple hours later, while I drifted off to slumberland revisiting a certain elevator scene, complete with steam heat. In my dream the woman did more than rub me. She turned and unzipped me and started telling my dick’s fortune, something that could only happen in a dream, a frightening one that woke me up.

I washed up, dressed and hit the office before five. No more cards under the door, but the one Rick found was in the middle of my desk: Colette Palms, Benson Hotel, Room 902. A rather vague reference to me knowing her sister, unnamed and without context. The way dames change names through marriage makes it tough to track them down. I didn’t recall anyone named Palms. Or Colette for that matter, a rather fancy French handle. Well, Confucius say "Man who sit with mouth open seldom have roast duck fly in." Mostly, what flew into my mouth, or in this case, my office, was always raw you might say.

Again the feeling of dread surfaced. I hesitated, deciding whether to trash the card or bite. She had, after all, come all the way from downtown to my Westmoreland office to see me about some matter. The least I could do was call her and say no if I didn’t like the setup. I didn’t have to think of her ass or picture it after all. I had ass on the brain.

I got out the phone book and looked up the Benson Hotel, then dialed and asked for Miss Palms. I assumed she was a Miss, though that very assumption had dunked my carcass in hot water more than once.

The young female voice that answered knew things, a smoky Lauren Bacall voice I could listen to for hours and not be bored. She could read the phone book and I’d be rapt. That’s one of Rick’s words, rapt. He suffers from taking too many graduate courses while working graveyard with the New York cops. Molly says we’ll never need to buy Britannica’s with Rick around.

Thank you for returning my call. I was disappointed to find you out.

I keep irregular hours these days as a shamus. Trying to quit. Keeps the little woman happy. She has notions that thugs are out to plug me with lead every time I have to work late on a case.

My problem is nothing like that. I’d rather not discuss it on the phone, if you don’t mind. Could we meet somewhere? I’m afraid I don’t have transportation other than taxis in the city.

Your hotel has a very nice bar, Trader Vic’s Tiki room. I could meet you there.

I hate to ask you at this hour, perhaps tomorrow?

I knew Molly wouldn’t be home until eight or so, and in my mood I needed to focus on something beside attraction and dread. So I told her I’d meet her in an hour.

I said: How will I know you?

Oh, I’ve seen your picture in the paper from that Romanov jewel case last year, the one in Southern Oregon. I’ll know you.

I agreed and hung up trying to invent what Miss Palms looked like. Her voice said seduction, but that was my dick listening. He makes up stuff. I laugh out loud at his suggestions.

A change of clothes, splash of cologne, and I walked into Vic’s, ready to listen. I took a small booth on one side of the wall away from the bar where she couldn’t miss me.

A pixie dish with bustier that gave her chest a much needed lift quickety-quicked over and took my order for a bourbon, neat.

No flirting. All business, this pixie. Some females ooze out messages to be touched, some are wallpaper — look but no touch. This little one was drab wallpaper.

My antenna of sorts is always open to subliminals, as Rick calls subconscious signals females send, not realizing they’re sending them. It’s a fun game to play if a guy has little else to do, like chasing butterflies without a net.

She walked into the joint and spotted me at once. She had a model’s strut, as if on the catwalk focused on mega-buyers. I might have recognized the black silk dress she wore, but this one came with teal scarf and red pumps. My little brain still fantasized all things black silk.

When she took a chair across from me the first thing I noticed was her rapid breathing, as if she’d just finished a 400 yard run. Did I excite her? That would be too easy, too fast, even for me, even for a cheap novel where every female throws her naked body at the feet of the stalwart gumshoe. I enjoy reading a few of those, but prefer Sam Spade type tales where even a dish is a suspect and the hero hates being attracted. That’s real fiction.

She held out a slim group of fingers with her left hand, no rings, and said, I hope I’m not late, I couldn’t find my purse. Mike Angel, I’m Colette Palms.

The mislaid purse explained her breathing. I wanted it to be my fault but then I’m a hopeless romantic. Hopeless with a double dose of hope.

Until I caught a whiff of her cologne I would have sworn I’d never met her. Something about aromas touch a sensitive part of the brain bringing instant recollections of people and places even decades before, even though thoughts of such have been absent as long. Still I wasn’t certain who she was since department stores sell the same smelly water to an assortment of dames.

She had flawless porcelain white skin, very pale. If not for her liquid brown eyes, dark and intense, and her fiery red lipstick, her face would have been anemic. Her blonde hair had been combed straight, swept to one side of her face down to her shoulder. A tiny mole graced one cheek near her mouth. She looked all business.

Have we met, Miss Palms?

She put a smile on that would make a pope swoon. Not exactly. It wasn’t a meeting, more like a bumping into — earlier today, remember?

The elevator dame. There’s that dread again.

I must have had a monkey face because she burst out laughing. If I could blush I would have. I’ve never been able to learn that trick. I had one buddy growing up who could blush on demand and claimed it hauled in any female.

I tried to form words of apology but they stuck in my throat.

I recognized you when we got on the elevator, she said coyly, and would have said something then but…well…I didn’t wish to spoil our fun. I liked bumping into you.

I stared at her over my drink when Pixie brought hers, a vodka gimlet. Now Pixie wanted to flirt, seeing as how a luscious blonde babe was giving me the eye. Dames always want what a better looking dame has — from Rick’s bible on all things female.

Here’s to bumping, I said, stupidly, wanting it back instantly.

Yes, she said, her eyes glittering with imagination. You bump nice.

Chapter 2

After a pause so pregnant it might have delivered triplets, she said, Thank you for seeing me on short notice, so softly that only staring at her lips made the words intelligible from each other. Her cocoa eyes were both shy and bold, or so I made them out to be. My habits of seeing things in female eyes, still in working order.

She had teeth almost too white, but in her mid twenties, too young for dentures. She smiled timidly as if apprehensive