The Black Car Business Volume 1

By Lawrence Kelter

The “black car” has appeared both conspicuously and inconspicuously throughout the annals of fiction—its presence both mysterious and menacing, its appearance enough to pause your heart.

It’s the sedan just within sight that seems to be mimicking your speed and movements as you walk down the dark deserted street late at night. As the hairs rise on the back of your neck you wonder, Who is behind the wheel and what is the driver’s intent? It’s The Black Car Business and its presence means your life is about to abruptly change. You try to assure yourself there’s nothing wrong, but your pace quickens nonetheless, and soon you’re running, desperate for that narrow sliver between two buildings to slip through, the one too narrow for the black car to pass through.

It’s that car parked just down the block that sends chills down your spine and keeps you awake throughout the night.

It’s the sanctuary you race toward when you’re being chased, only to explode when you turn the key.

It’s the one that skids off the icy mountain overpass and plunges into the cavernous grotto.

It’s where Clemenza garrotes Carlo just as he’s about to be driven to the airport.

It’s The Black Car Business.

Turn the pages as ten masters of the noir art befuddle and frighten you with their stories. We promise a read you’re sure to enjoy.

Contributors: Eric Beetner, J. Carson Black, Cheryl Bradshaw, Diane Capri, Jeffery Hess, Lawrence Kelter, Dana King, Allan Leverone, Simon Wood, and Vincent Zandri.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Release date: May 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370209101

Lawrence Kelter

I never expected to be a writer. In fact, I was voted the student least likely to visit a library. (Don’t believe it? Feel free to check my high school yearbook.) Well, times change I suppose, and I have now authored several novels including the internationally best-selling Stephanie Chalice Thriller Series. Early in my writing career, I received support from none other than best-selling novelist, Nelson DeMille, who reviewed my work and actually put pencil to paper to assist in the editing of the first book. DeMille has been a true inspiration to me and has also given me some tough love. Way before he ever said, “Lawrence Kelter is an exciting new novelist, who reminds me of an early Robert Ludlum,” he told me, “Kid, your work needs editing, but that’s a hell of a lot better than not having talent. Keep it up!” I’ve lived in the Metro New York area most of my life and rely primarily on locales in Manhattan and Long Island for my stories’ settings. I try very hard to make each novel quickly paced and crammed full of twists, turns, and laughs. Enjoy! LK

Book preview

The Road Out of Town

Eric Beetner

The engine was still on, the lights still burned. The low rumble of a V8 in idle made a bed of sound for the blowing leaves and faint crickets in the night air. The car sat on the grass, nose pressed against a tree, a wide black stain on the landscape like an open hole you wouldn’t want to venture close to. Behind the wheel the man was dead.

Casey pedaled his bike in lazy zig zags across the road. Bored. All his friends asleep on a school night. He needed more, some sort of adrenalin. He made a game of moving through the pools of light casting down from the street lamps—breathing in only when the light touched him, then holding the breath in shadow, balancing his speed to the next pool of light with the need to pedal faster to reach it and the extra oxygen required.

He grew tired of the game before his lungs gave out. His small town spread out around him. Blinking lights on the radio towers topping the hills on each side, and him in the middle, in a sinkhole. A place he knew he might never get out of. A city made of quicksand. He was desperate for something to happen in his life.

Then he saw the car.

Casey eased his bicycle off the sidewalk. He put his wheels in the deep tire ruts cut into the damp grass and traced the path the car took when it went off the road.

As he approached the trunk, a curl of steam rose from the exhaust pipe. The brake lights were lit red and it gave the steam an eerie glow and cast shadows of the swirling leaves across the ground. Casey tightened his hoodie against the breeze. He took it slow, anticipating some bloody body, a casualty. Something he wouldn’t be able to un-see.

The car was black. Long. Older. The trunk looked as if it could hold a month’s worth of luggage. The four doors were long along the body like the folded wings of an insect. He lifted his feet from the pedals and toed the bike past the passenger side. No bodies there, only a steamed-up window keeping him from looking inside.

He expected the front end to be caved in, the engine smoking and the headlights cracked, but instead the car rested against a tall alder tree with only the slightest hint of a bend in the front bumper.

Casey looked around the quiet street. Nobody else. No other cars. Nobody looking for this one.

He came to the driver’s door and looked in the open window. In the seat was a man, his head back and at an angle like he’d fallen asleep. His mouth was slack, eyes shut. One hand rested in his lap, the palm coated in blood. Casey saw it then, the dark stain on his shirt. The hand must have fallen away from his belly when the car stopped. When the man stopped.

Casey watched and held his own breath, tiny puffs of steam stopping for a moment. He saw no rise or fall to the man’s chest. No steam from his open mouth. No movement behind the eyelids.

The crash hadn’t killed him, whatever caused the blood on his shirt had. You couldn’t even call it a crash. The car seemed parked here by a sloppy valet. Casey drew the scenario in his head. The driver died and the car rolled off the road and came to a gentle stop against the tree. His foot was still on the brake. Probably what kept him from hitting the tree harder.

Casey looked around the inside of the car. Nobody else. Just a bag on the seat next to him.

He loved the idea of finding something secret. Something dangerous. He’d wanted something like this in his life. Nothing interesting had happened to him for seventeen lonely years. Not like in books, or on TV. Nothing exciting ever happened to him. Now this.

He looked around again. Nobody. Boring neighbors asleep in their beds. Middle aged parents given up on ever finding or seeing something like this. Something that quickened the pulse.

He climbed off the bike.

His feet crunched through dead leaves. He walked around the front of the car again, feeling heat come off the hood. He pulled at the passenger door handle. Open. He bent inside, pulled the zipper on the bag. Money. Rows and rows of money. His pulse changed gears again, beating fast enough for both of them—him and the dead man.

He thrilled in the electric current of his secret. To keep it secret, nobody else could know. No police. No parents. This was his. It belonged to him.

Casey opened the driver’s door and the body slumped halfway out, held in place by a lap belt—the kind before laws made shoulder harnesses required. The steering wheel was made of wood. The same wood surrounded the displays on the dashboard.

Casey leaned over the body, unclipped the belt, and let the body tumble out. He had to kick at the dead man’s feet to get them over the edge of the doorframe, then he dragged the body by the ankles away a few feet. He went to open the back door and discovered it opened the wrong way, oddly. With both doors open there was a wide gap with only a short post between the seats.

He pushed his bicycle into the backseat and climbed in behind the wheel. He eased the car back along the ruts and watched the headlights sweep over the dead man. Casey pulled away and drove his secret home.

He stopped a block from the house, got out his bike and rode home. Mom never woke up, never asked where he was until after midnight. His secret was safe. It wasn’t until he took off his pants to get into bed that he noticed the bloodstains the dead man left behind on the driver’s seat.

They found the body.

Where?

Dumped on the side of the road.

The bag?

Nothing. No car either.

So who has it?

You got me.

Damn it.

You said it.

Casey skipped school the next day. His driver’s license was over a month old and he’d spent under an hour behind the wheel. Mom always had her car with her at one of her two jobs. His three best friends were still fifteen. Nobody was getting a car for their birthday around here.

In the light he studied the car. A Lincoln Continental. He looked it up on his phone and learned about the doors—suicide doors they were called.

It was almost too big for him. Muscling the car around turns took both hands. But he drove with a wide grin on his face the whole time, a thick towel doubled up on the seat to protect his pants against any blood not yet dry. He drove nowhere and everywhere. All too quickly he ran out of gas. He’d taken a twenty out of Mom’s purse two nights ago and he used all of it to get the tank to three quarters full. While he pumped he noticed the way others admired the car. He got a nod from an older man stepping out of a Mercedes four door.

He drove it down to a quarter tank again before taking it back and parking a block away from home. He lifted his bike from the backseat and pedaled to his own driveway. Mom not home, and wouldn’t be for hours. He sat on the couch and ate cereal, watching TV. Thinking of his big black car.

Someone spotted the car.

Where?

Gas station.

They tail him?

Yeah.

Then let’s go.

They don’t know who’s got it. Said a kid was driving. It’s parked and they got eyes on it.

A kid?

Yeah.

Huh.

Yeah.

Casey knew he had to go to school today. He biked past the car, his eyes lingering like it was one of the girls he had a crush on. But this was no kid. This car was an adult. A grown up, big black woman, not a girl.

He also knew he couldn’t keep her. He’d checked online and found a short article about the body. Few details and no mention of the money or the car, but he knew someone could still be looking for her. He named her Connie, short for Continental. Suitable for a woman of her stature.

The buzz still ran through his veins when he saw her and he knew when he got behind her wheel again it would be ten times better, but he also knew like everything else it would wear off. Boredom would settle over him as inevitable as night descending at the end of the day.

He turned his gaze away from her and pedaled on to school, never noticing the two men in the Nissan with the tinted windows at the end of the block.

I thought it might be him.

Yeah, way he was eye-fucking that car.

She’s a beauty.

I guess, if you go for that kind.

What, you don’t?

Nah. My dream cars are all two seaters. Italian, mostly.

Well, yeah, who the hell wouldn’t want a Ferrari or a Lambo?

I know I would.

I wouldn’t say no to that thing, though.

When this is over, you can keep it.

Deal.

Casey didn’t want to give it up just yet. And he had a plan to pay for gas.

Ten bucks a ride.

What? Fuck you.

Miller was still three months from getting his license. They’d been talking about it since they were twelve. The freedom it meant, the adventures they would go on beyond the hills boxing them in.

Okay, five.

I don’t get it, your mom gave it to you?

No, Casey said. It’s my uncle’s. He’s letting us borrow it while he’s out of town. He’s a real car guy. He has five cars. Drives a different one every day of the week. The lies fell out of his mouth easily.

He’d need seven cars to do that.

I mean he doesn’t ever drive the same car twice in a row.

Oh.

So you want a ride or what?

Miller hesitated. Five bucks was still a chunk of change. He’d have to skip lunches for the rest of the week. Better that than ask his dad for more. The old man would probably belt him just for asking.

Where are we gonna go?

Anywhere. Just like we always talked about.

Memories of those late-night basement rec room conversations stirred Miller’s nostalgia and he reached for his wallet. The thin nylon billfold held nothing more than a five-dollar bill, two singles, an old fortune from a fortune cookie, and a scrap of paper with his locker combination on it.

Here, he said handing over the five. Let’s ride.

Hey, hey, hey.

Quit slapping me.

Check it out.

Two kids?

Maybe they’re stealing it.

No, he’s got keys.

Okay. Follow him.

Casey was getting the feel of the car. He took a corner faster than he should. The soft shocks dipped low and tilted Miller into the door with a thud. Casey watched him, waiting for a smile, but none came.

Isn’t this fun, man?

I guess so.

You guess so? We’ve been waiting for something like this to happen. Beats sitting around my basement doing nothing.

Yeah, I guess. Wish I could drive though.

Casey eased off the gas. You wanna?

Miller looked at him with eyebrows raised high. Really?

Sure. Why not? You went through driver’s ed, right?

Casey pulled over. Anything to make his friend feel the same rush he felt. Finally, Miller had a smile on his face.

They’re pulling over.

I can see that.

What do you wanna do?

Fuck it, let’s nab ’em.

Casey leaned in the open window, pointing out where the gear shifter was, the turn signal. Acting like an expert.

It’s got a lot of power so take it easy.

Maybe we should start off in a parking lot or something, Miller said.

You scared?

Miller shrank in the seat a little. No. Get in. Let’s go.

Casey thought maybe he’d show him the money next. When they got tired of this one, they could buy a whole new car.

He stood straight and made a move to pass around the massive front hood and get in the passenger seat. A voice called from behind him.

Hey, kid.

He turned to see two men walking toward him. They wore suits with no ties, open collars exposed gold chains. One with slicked back hair smiled at him. His partner stayed quiet, hands in the pockets of his coat. He looked like maybe he didn’t know how to smile.

That your car?

Another admirer, thought Casey.

It’s my uncle’s.

Yeah? That right?

The two men reached him and studied the car. The stone-faced man examined the backseat, looking for something.

Yeah, Casey said. In fact, we gotta get it back to him now.

He started around the hood, but it was a long way to go.

Who’s your uncle?

Casey stopped. What?

What’s his name, your uncle? Tell him I’d like to buy the car from him.

It’s not for sale.

Everything’s for sale, kid. You’ll learn that.

The man’s grin never let up. Yellow, smoker’s teeth peered out from his parted lips.

We gotta go.

No you don’t.

Just like that they both had guns in their hands. This was more exciting than finding the car in the first place. Nothing ever happened like that around here and it definitely never happened like this.

Casey? Miller whimpered from the front seat.

Don’t worry about it.

Like a shadow descending on his face, the smile vanished from the slick-haired man.

Where’s the bag?

What bag?

Kid, you had your fun. Quit fucking around.

Casey’s pulse raced higher than when he cranked his bike pedals at top speed all the way home. He could feel his heart rattle against his ribs. His breath came shallow. It was terrifying, but somehow gave him a thrill he couldn’t deny.

Okay, okay.

Casey walked back to the driver’s door and opened it. He gave a short wave of his hand to Miller who started to climb out.

Where is it? the man insisted.

Right here, under the seat. If the money really was there, he’d have given it to him. Just let me keep the car. Take your money, but leave me Connie.

When both of Miller’s sneakers hit the street, Casey shoved him in the back.

Run, Miller. Run!

Casey launched himself at the slick-haired man. He folded his forearms in front of him like the bumper on a car and rammed the man in the chest. Miller took off, sprinting the way his track coach always wanted him to but he’d never before found the motivation.

The slick-haired man fell back into his partner. Casey kept moving forward. He brought a foot down on the slick-haired man’s face. The soft sole of his Converse All Star didn’t crack the man’s nose or anything, but stunned him long enough for Casey to bring a foot down on the stone-faced man’s chest and push the air from his lungs.

A gun skidded along the pavement, Casey wasn’t sure whose. He bent for it and brought it up. He took aim and fired at the other car’s tires. The gun was a revolver and in six shots, Casey managed to hit the left front tire once before clicking on an empty chamber. The car was all of ten feet away.

He pulled the trigger three times to no effect before he lowered the gun. A shot rang out and Casey thought he might have missed one somehow. The pain followed soon after.

He looked down at his stomach and saw a small burn hole in his shirt. Below him on the ground was the slick-haired man with a furious scowl on his face and the gun aimed up at Casey. He pulled the trigger again. Another arrow of pain shot through him. Casey stumbled back. He looked down at a second burn hole in his shirt and growing bloodstain by the first.

He tumbled back into the open door of the Continental. He sat down behind the wheel in a kind of controlled fall. Another shot fired and the glass in the driver door window exploded. Casey felt the shards nicking the skin on his face and arms, but he barely reacted. His belly had gone from hot pain to cold numbness.

The engine rumbled in idle. The two men outside grunted and swore as they tried to get to their feet. Casey reached up and pulled the gear lever down. The car rolled back in inches. He heard the two men shout instructions to get out of the way. Casey lifted his feet inside the car and brought them both down on the gas pedal. The Lincoln shot back, thudding off something soft before smashing into the front of their car. Casey’s feet slipped off the pedal.

His door still hung ajar and he could hear the painful warbling of one of the men. He reached over to pull the door shut and saw, in the moment his body turned sideways, that the stone-faced man was down in the street a few feet away, thrown clear of the car as the tail end had hit him. Blood dripped from his forehead.

Casey slammed the door and dropped the gearshift into drive. He sped away from the curb and heard one wild gunshot chasing after him, but it never hit.

Casey checked the street ahead for Miller, but he was long gone. The heavy car was hard to wrestle as Casey felt his energy drain away by the second. He felt wetness in his pants and thought he’d pissed himself in the panic of the shooting. When he looked down he saw the front of his jeans soaked in blood instead of piss.

A stop sign blurred by out the window, too late for him to react to.

The truth was, he could have left the bag of money beside the body that night. The money meant little to him. It was the car. The promise of the car and the freedom it brought, that lifted him from the doldrums and for a moment—away from his life.

Behind the wheel he was another person. Now, as the endorphins flooded out of his body and away into the night, he doubted he’d ever feel a thrill like this again. It might have been the crash coming down from the adrenalin, dopamine, serotonin rush from being shot at, but a deep sadness washed over him.

This was as exciting as it might ever get. Seventeen years old and already at his high point.

The car slowed. Casey didn’t notice. A cool breeze blew in through the shattered window. He thought he might cry. He didn’t want to peak so early in life. He knew he’d be chasing this kind of high from now on, always on the other side of those hills like tsunami waves bearing down on him.

He could smell his own blood. A second wave hit him. He’d peaked, yes, but it wasn’t early in his life. It was the end. The sadness lifted like evaporating water. He was bleeding out, but he wouldn’t go without experiencing the thrill of his life. It made letting go so much easier. From here it was downhill, so why not go out on top?

His hands went slack on the wheel. The car rolled gently over the curb. The weight of the car dug the tires into the grass, leaving long trails as the car drifted down a short slope. Casey rocked on the soft shocks, like the Lincoln was lulling him to sleep. He rested a foot on the brake and the car coasted to a stop with the front bumper nosing an alder tree. The engine idled like a gentle snore. Casey felt his hand come away from his belly, coated in blood. He leaned back in the seat, mouth slack, mind calm. A thin smile rested on his face as his vision dimmed. He faded away to the sound of the humming engine content in the thought that he’d done all this town had to offer.

Whoever came around next, he thought before a coldness enveloped him, would only get the five dollars in his pocket and a bicycle in the backseat.

Back to TOC

The Doctor Is In

J. Carson Black

1

Arizona

Jessica Stark was driving back from a grocery run when she saw the car.

How could she miss it? A car like that immediately took her back to when she was five or six years old, the time her parents took her on a trip to Dallas to see Aunt Pat. And one of the things they did was go to Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy in 1963. It was a hazy memory, reinforced by what she’d learned in school, and now, of course, on Google.

After lugging in the groceries and putting them away, and Googling JFK’s car, Jessica took a look out the window.

Yep. It was an early sixties Lincoln Continental. Not only that, but it was black, like the car that had carried Kennedy to his death. The car was black and shiny and well-cared for—a mirror to the sky.

As she watched, a man left the house. The house belonged to Maribel Winter. Maribel Winter was getting up in years. She had to be in her early nineties now, and seldom had visitors, except for her son. But there was no mistaking this anachronism of a man: he had to be a doctor. An older man, too.

The kind who made house calls, way back in the day.

It was almost comic, or too fantastic to believe—the doctor wore a black suit and a black derby, and carried a black medical bag. Like the doctors you’d see on The Waltons reruns.

This was southern Arizona. It was hot as hell in July. If you had half a brain, you didn’t wear black clothing in July.

The doctor, or whatever he was, got into the car and pulled away from the curb. He drove toward the end of the cul de sac (where Jessica’s house was) and made a slow turnaround. In the middle of the turn, the car hesitated, and she could see his head turn, peering out the passenger side and checking out her house. Just a pale blob of flesh behind the window, features indistinguishable.

She stepped back. Could he see her? Did he think she was a nosy neighbor?

The car continued its slow turn around the cul de sac, and accelerated up the street before disappearing around the corner.

Jessica didn’t know her neighbor very well, but she was worried. The woman was in her nineties. And who did house calls these days?

But Jessica was the kind of person who minded her own business, so she went back to work on her latest painting.

It was close work today. A cornucopia filled