Revenge is a Redhead

By Phil Beloin Jr.

Rich Brown is out of cash and luck when he finds stripper Cherry Pop. Like so many before him, Rich falls for the redhead, but all he can afford is a quick peep show.

But soon Rich has bigger problems than lack of love and money when he stumbles into a homeless shelter that’s really a front for a bunch of shady dealings. He crosses paths with Cherry Pop again, and to survive the night, the duo have claw their way out of all kinds of mayhem.

Trashy, funny, and filled with pure pulp action, Revenge is a Redhead is the ideal way to kill time before you die.

• Language: English
• Publisher: All Due Respect Books
• Release date: Jun 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463091128

Book preview

REVENGE IS A REDHEAD

Phil Beloin Jr.

Copyright © 2014 by Phil Beloin Jr.

First Down & Out Books Edition June 2018

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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an imprint of Down & Out Books

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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 and Rebecca Monson

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Revenge is a Redhead

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by the Author

The Down & Out Books Publishing Family Library of Titles

Preview from The Devil at Your Door by Eric Beetner

Preview from Second Story Man by Charles Salzberg

Preview from Suburban Dick by CS DeWildt

For Dell Smith

You see some that are real skanky, man, not worth a dollar for nothing, but the redhead up there had something the others didn’t. Her skin was popping with freckles, the legs stretching long and hard and that chest was mocking Sir Isaac. She meandered over to where I was lounging. Don’t know why she took so long. The only other fella in there was an old dude who looked like my grandpa right before his ticker blew.

Hi ya, sailor. She grinned.

I wasn’t no sailor. I was just one of the millions of jobless losers still struggling after the Big Banks, Wall Street, and the paid-off politicians conspired in greed. The fucking idiots. What good would all that money do if the United States collapsed? A lot of fools—like my dad—wanted to lay sole blame on our current, inept President, but, shit, I had a conscious and an unshakeable memory.

Hey, you, I said.

She squatted on them beatific legs, did stuff to herself with her hands that I wished my hands were doing, all the while, staring into my eyes. Hers were like emerald isles, something I ain’t ever seen on nobody.

Name’s Cherry, she said.

Uh-uh.

Cherry Pop.

Had I known I would have ordered one instead of a beer.

You got one right here. Right now.

You’re too damn hot to be shaking it in here, Cherry, I said.

Just trying to get by, she said, with what I’m good at.

Her hands alone were making me implode as she pinched and rubbed and explored, a fingernail sliding through her tweaked red hair, slow like she had an itch, couldn’t quite find the culprit.

Buy me a drink after my set, she said.

Screw the drink, I said. Let’s just get out of here, you and me.

Oh, you’re naughty, she said.

Not the word I was thinking of.

How ’bout just a little taste of this? Her legs inched apart. A lap dance for seventy-five in the VIP rooms in back.

I’d be surprised if I had seventy-cents left, lady.

She licked those lips. Then I better move on.

She grabbed my last crinkled bill, there for her.

See ya around, sailor, she said.

Watching her crawl toward that geezer, I saw myself in one of the mirrors set up all around the stage. I didn’t much care for what I saw coming back at me—dirty hair, scruff that wouldn’t grow out to a beard, a worn stare staring into a worn stare.

Cherry didn’t give that oldie a heart attack, just a mini stroke. Or two. I was nursing my draft, sixteen ounces of piss warm piss bad brew. I wasn’t lying to that redhead when I said I didn’t have much left. The change in my pocket wouldn’t even get me a rubber from the bathroom vending machine.

Pathetic, Rich.

Yeah, that’s me. Rich. A lazy shit for nothing, living off the welfare of others. Well, that was what my dad called me right before he ejected my ass over the scrawny porch and into the frozen patch of dead front yard. He was a cop and enjoyed roughing up driftwood like me. I had been too tired to fight with him anyway, too tired looking for jobs that didn’t exist.

I didn’t have nothin’ but the hoodie on my back, a few bills in my pocket, and the Olds, which leaked precious fluids, but still ran somehow. I backed away from home with a half tank of fuel to take me somewhere else.

Didn’t go far, a titty bar protruding into the street a few blocks down, the UPSIDE CLUB. Never had stopped in. Today seemed like a prime time.

And there I was, slouched on my stool, an hour or so later, when a heavy paw pressed down on my shoulder.

You buyin’ another?

A hole like this didn’t spring for half-dressed waitresses taking whiskey sour orders. I turned my head, got reacquainted with the bouncer. He had checked my ID when I came in. I had been twenty-one for a month now. This dude was pure Angus badass, came with a growling goatee. And if that wasn’t friendly enough, he had shaved until his cranium showed and glowed.

I didn’t give a damn what he looked like. His hand didn’t belong on my shoulder. I carried a switchblade, deep down in my pocket. I pictured jamming it in his throat—see how tough you look with a tracheotomy mutherfucker.

I said… Angus went on.

I moved my shoulder so his hand would fall away.

I heard you, dude. Get your hand off me.

You got a problem, buddy?

Don’t have to grab me, I said. That’s all.

We ain’t running no free peep show. Buy something or I splatter your ass all over the floor.

Cherry had left the spotlight anyhow. Some skinny crack junkie had taken her place, marionetting about the stage like a decaying skeleton.

I chugged the swill in the bottom of my glass and left, the bouncer’s eyes never leaving me.

The motor in my Olds was clicking like a bomb had been shoved under the hood by terrorists. The sun was turning down for the night, leaving behind a colorless city resorting to its baser instincts. Was that a muffler backfiring or a gunshot? Were those juvies shuffling across the street looking to score, or mug some outcast like me? And what about the happy couple complete with twin tots screaming at each other?

Bliss. Harmony. Peace and goodness.

Get the Olds going Rich. Time to hit a shelter.

I travelled across the city, the Olds’ heater puking oily tepid air into my face. The streetlights that weren’t shot out lit up a neighborhood six feet under in filth. I didn’t bother looking at my dad’s row house. He wasn’t dirty enough to afford anything better. Lights would be on, he’d be chowing a frozen dinner in front of the tube before heading off to the night shift. Mom was long gone. Another man. Another life. Blame dad. Blame me. I don’t give a damn. She just ain’t here.

Further through the mire, I turned into this vacant lot next to a brick building that had once been a two-story department store before the whims of capitalism turned it into a homeless shelter. Some windows were cracked, others boarded up. The sign above the door proclaimed Jesus Christ as Our This That and Some Other Thing. There was a line out front as if the Son himself had finally come on back from the right hand of his Pa. Talk about a lazy fuck—two thousand years to get off his ass.

No choice but to join the crowd.

They got good grub, the hobo in front of me said.

He smelled of rotgut and