The Aviation Cocktail

By Jim Hart

The second in Jim Hart’s Harry Parker mystery series finds our Brooklyn P.I. investigating the death of a prominent industrialist whose body is discovered in the bed of his sleeping wife. Set in 1947 this noir suspense filled whodunit holds you attention as Harry rambles over the streets of Brooklyn. The baffling circumstances of the murder becomes entwined with another enigma facing Harry. The patter and pace of the plot keeps the reader engaged so much that you’ll feel as if you’re with Harry and his cronies. As Harry slowly unravels the murder much is reveled leading our hero to unexpected heights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Hart
• Release date: Feb 3, 2019

Jim Hart

Jim Hart was raised in Brooklyn where he still resides with his wife. He began his working life as a drummer in rock and blues bands before beginning a thirty-year career in the New York City Sanitation Department. During which time he worked his way through the ranks to serve in such positions as the Deputy Director of Public Affairs and Director of Correspondence for the Sanitation Police. Proving inspiration can come from the strangest places. He retired from the Department to pursue his love for writing. Besides Jim’s First Poetry collection: "Ramblings Of A One-Eyed Garbage Man," he has published a noir detective novel set in 1947 Brooklyn, NY: “A Tom Collins To Go.” His poems have been published in over 60 journals and reviews throughout the world. His work has appeared in the United States, Ireland, England, Austria, India, Scotland, Wales, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa and on the Web.One of his poems has been made into a poster by Phantom Billstickers and appeared in Myanmar (formally Burma) and in Thailand. Jim has been the featured poet at Barnes & Noble, The Brooklyn Public Library, BookMark Bards, Boulevard Bards and at The Inspired Word Poetry Series. Jim has also co-written two songs for the 2015 Peter Stevens Band cd “Change My World.”

Book preview

The Aviation Cocktail

by

Jim Hart

Cover Art by Chris Hart

Author Photograph by Chris Hart

Back Cover Photo by Jim Hart

Copyright 2018 by Jim Hart

SmashWords Edition

* * * *

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

* * * *

The Author would like to thank Michael R. Valentino and

Bill Rednour for their editorial assistance.

* * * *

This One Is Dedicated To…

JoJo, Skinny, Head, Rat, Eddie Tarzan, Stretch

Jocko, Billy Rules, Carmel, AlDente, Rocky

And For all those who for one reason

or another didn’t make it – Off the block.

* * * *

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Books by Author

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

Back to Top

* * * *

BOOKS BY JIM HART

NOVELS

(The Harry Parker Mystery Series)

A Tom Collins To Go

The Aviation Cocktail

POETRY

Ramblings of A One-Eyed Garbage Man

A Handful of Smoke

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* * * *

Chapter 1

I breezed into the Blue Dolphin Bar and Grill on Kings Highway and Coney Island Avenue in the Flatbush section of my beloved Brooklyn. The Dolphin was one of those basement bistros with tables in dark corners and couples usually coupled with other people’s mates, the men and women wearing their hats pulled down low giving you downward looking profiles as you passed quickly by. Avoiding eye contact was a well-practiced art form in joints like these.

The police blotter both from my days on the force and my many times being dragged in since my unceremonious departure, has me listed as forty-five years old, six-foot-two and two hundred and ten pounds. On some days, like this one for instance, I felt a lot shorter and older. The blotter will go on to tell you that I am a private investigator licensed by the State of New York and that I have no distinguishing marks; police blotters, of course, know nothing of the emotional scars left by cheating ex-wives.

My lovely, miserable, cheating ex-wife Thelma had left me for my younger, ex-partner Steve Taylor. To this day I can only picture a trapeze and a trampoline every time I hear Thelma’s more sexually aggressive words replay in my mind.

Hey, Harry Parker, ain’t seen you in a coupp’la weeks now, where you been keepin’ yourself, pal? Bill the bartender inquired, missing my business more than my company. He knows me well. Hell, half the bartenders in Brooklyn know me well. I drink too much, but that’s a trait that ain’t about to change at this late stage in life. Besides, nobody seems to mind all that much, as long as I keep paying for the breakage.

Bill brought me a double bourbon as I grabbed a seat in my favorite booth. I usually start with a double and play progressive drinking from there. There were a few people sitting around, even at this early hour, but they were all minding their own business. All except one. She was looking right at me. Christ, she could be my mother and she was giving me that come on over and pick me up look, so pathetic it wasn’t funny. She was all grey and false teeth looking and had more chin than any three dames could use. Her hair had a lousy red dye job that had it looking the same color as a tablecloth in an Italian restaurant; it may have even been checkered for all I’d cared to note.

I threw the newspaper in front of my face for protection. She coughed. I turned the page. She coughed again. It was the kind of cough that tries to buy attention. I peeked around the page. She was short about a quarter’s worth on a thirty-cent attention meter. She tried her cough again, a little louder. I felt like I had to put down the paper or risk everybody in the joint accusing me of exposing them to something I was sure none of them wanted to be exposed to. I took another, closer look at her mug and was sure I didn’t want any of what she was coughing up either. I decided to risk the wrath of the populace. My Daily Mirror was reporting that the British had done something in India yesterday that had people pretty upset, but then the British were always doing something that had people pretty upset, so that could hardly qualify as news. They say, The sun never sets on the British Empire. I think that’s only because God doesn’t trust the English in the dark.

Downing the shot in one quick motion somehow got me thinking of Steve and how he and I had been partners in the moderately successful Parlor Detective Agency. The name was strictly a compromise. Neither of us had profited from the partnership being dissolved. It was just one of those inexplicable things. Together, clients came to us. Separately, neither of us drew as much attention as the beam of a cat burglar’s flashlight, although I had been doing a lot better than Steve, if about one case a month could be considered a lot by anybody’s standards. Steve was out of the picture now, done in, as it were, as a direct result of my last case.

I had met Steve after I had gotten myself thrown off the New York City Police force a few years ago, for hitting a superior officer. Steve had just been asked to resign from the Pinkerton’s for a somewhat similar case of minor insubordination. With our comparable way of dealing with supposed superiors and both having been classified 4F, it seemed only natural that we become partners. The fact that our taste in women would also run in the same direction was a prospect that I hadn’t seen coming.

Another cough brought my attention back to the Mirror I’d thrown up for protection. The top of the front page read Friday, February 21, 1947. I realized that the day had begun calm enough with me sitting in what I laughingly referred to as my office, which is about half of the back storeroom of Syd’s Candy Store. Syd’s is on the corner of Smith and Sackett Streets, also in Brooklyn, but more toward the waterfront in the Red Hook section than from where I now sat.

Syd and his wife Sarah owned and ran the place and for eight bucks a month rented me space behind the store. The deal had originally called for me to get the entire storeroom. I had needed a cheap place after the partnership with Steve fell apart. But as Syd got more and more shipments of candy, in an ever-increasing desire to get The One that would bring all the kids in after school, my share of the room had shrunk. No gripes though, it’s a perfect relationship, Syd never mentions raising the rent and I never mention Milky Ways or Tootsie Rolls infringing on my turf.

There are two phone booths in the front right-hand corner as you walk into Syd’s. Sarah had taken the call on the phone in the booth on the right; the one I used for my business calls. The number was in the book, Harry Parker, Discrete Investigations RedHook5-3669. Simple and to the point. The woman, Sarah said, is a pretty blonde. She loved to try to guess from a phone voice what a person looked like. Whenever the call was from a woman only minor details would change. She may be a blonde, a brunette, or a red head, but according to Sarah she was always beautiful, pretty or sensuous and most assuredly young. Sarah, of course, was always wrong.

Now as I sat waiting in the Dolphin to see how far wrong Sarah had steered me this time, I wondered what could be so important to someone to have to meet this early in the day. I’m a night crawler myself. The harsh sunlight hit me in the face when the bar door opened, and as my one good eye was trying to adjust, I could hear the unmistakable whisper of nylon clad legs heading toward me. It was a sound that always got my attention and one of those small, personal reasons that added to the joy of the war being over. As the door closed and my eyes retreated to normal barroom shadowiness, size and focus I could see a gorgeous young babe in a soft red dress and long blonde tresses approaching my booth. She had the kind of walk they don’t teach in any finishing school or college, but I’d be willing to bet there wasn’t a professor, male or female, who wouldn’t give it an A+. I hoped with everything in my loins that Sarah had finally gotten one right.

Mr. Parker? She breathed desert heat across my cold February mug. Her lip rouge was all deep red and liquidy and looked like the boys at the firehouse had been putting in long hours with soft chemises and creamy wax and the engine hadn’t been called out on business in weeks. Oh, thank you Sarah for picking the perfect moment for phone voice identification correctness.

Mrs. Averson. Please, sit down. I waved my magic wand of a hand over the empty red cushioned bench opposite me as if I was a genie granting her deepest, you-may-sit-with-Harry-Parker wish.

She even sat beautifully. All bouncy and erect.

She was bouncy, I was erect.

May I get you something? I was already motioning Bill to semi alertness.

An Aviation Cocktail, she answered in a pleasurable tone.

Bill had arrived just in time to hear her order and give me a quizzical look.

I responded with a shrug.

Mrs. Averson caught on, looked at Bill and said, Two ounces of gin, a half ounce of squeezed lemon juice, two teaspoons of maraschino liqueur, a quarter ounce of crème de Violette and a lemon twist – for garnish. She quoted the recipe with such ease it was obvious there were more than a few bartenders not familiar with the Aviation Cocktail.

Bill turned back to get her order without writing it down.

A stiff drink this early in the day, my kind of woman. Hell, with her looks she’d be my kind of woman if she were drinking torpedo juice from an army boot.

Bill placed her drink on a coaster in front of her and disappeared with the practiced stealth of a fifth-generation servant. She removed her gloves before reaching for her drink and her left hand displayed a wedding ring the size of a sugar cube that managed to sparkle even in this dim light.

I leaned back, waiting. This was always the awkward part of a case. The how do I start to tell him and just how much do I let him know, part that every client goes through, and that every client somehow feels are the only ones to go through. I’ve learned to play with match books, adjust my hat, or tattoo a tune on a table, waiting for them to build up the courage to let the first word, the one that gives way to the avalanche of words, come blurting on through.

It’s at times like these that I really appreciate Benny and Hope and all those guys who make a living spitting out words on the radio for a half an hour at a time only stopping for singing razor blade and toothpaste jingles or the scream of a damsel in distress.

Mr. Parker, her tubes were beginning to warm, I... I think I need another drink. Oh, well, and now a word from our sponsor.

I gave Bill a wave and waited as he brought another cocktail glass, and I looked at the bright red stain around the rim of the one she’d just finished and wondered if Max Factor had designed this particular shade with Mrs. Averson’s lips in mind.

Look, I decided a small verbal crowbar would be helpful, your friend’s in some kind of trouble, maybe her husband’s been takin’ too many business trips. Or he’s been spending too many late nights at the office, whatever, and you’d like to tell me about her, just to see what I think could be done to help, or something along those lines. Am I right? I offered my suggestions accompanied with my reassuring smile that I’d been using since my days as a beat cop on the force.

She smiled along with me and seemed to relax a bit. They usually do.

No, Mr. Parker, I don’t think you the fool.

Well, that’s refreshing.

A bigger smile, one that slightly brightened the room, then she turned all serious and second person on me.

Mr. Parker, what would you do if you killed someone… or might have killed someone? She had built a fire under a cigarette of her own and was blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth sending it off in a westerly direction almost, but not quite reaching Miss Italian Tablecloth Hair.

That depends, Mrs. Averson. I played along. It helps.

Depends on what, Mr. Parker? She inquired in an overcast threatening rain sounding voice.

Oh, if I’d been seen or not, for one thing, I threw out casually.

Oh, you weren’t, she responded in kind.

Am I sure?

Quite.

Then I’d go home and tell no one about it.

You must tell someone.

Why? Will the... deceased be missed that much?

Indeed. And he’s your husband... killed in your own bed. She had paused just long enough with the second half of her sentence to make me wonder what more there could possibly be.

I could see where there would be talk. I answered with no small amount of you surprised me with that one in my voice.

Oh, there would be much talk, I’m certain. Her face showed as much certainty as her words.

Then I suppose I’d wonder why I thought I only ‘might’ have killed him?

You were terribly drunk, she began while dabbing at the table between us with a nervous paper napkin, and you’d fought the night before, about another woman, and in the middle of the fight the liquor took effect and you must have passed out. But there was also something about your husband being sick, or saying he felt sick, you just can’t remember, and then you’d awaken next to him shot twice in his chest as he lay beside you back to back, but you had no memory of his dying. You’re not a bad person so you can’t believe you could have done such a thing, but you are a realist and can’t imagine sleeping through a murder and having no recollection of it, drunk or not. She spoke slowly with a degree of calmness to her voice that would have eluded me had the situations been reversed.

I’d say I was in some predicament. Have I reported this incident to the police yet, or have one of my ‘overly concerned’ neighbors done the dialing for me?

No. She dabbed some more at a now very dry table. And that’s another thing that bothers you. You live in an apartment and have seen a couple of your neighbors on your way out this morning and no one else seems to have heard anything either. Or, unbeknownst to you, your neighbors have magically been transformed into the Barrymore’s’ overnight and are now great actors, calmly asking how Ben, your husband, is feeling today.

Has he been ill?

Not a day in his life.

And do these neighbors usually ask how such a healthy man is feeling?

Yes, just their expression, I guess. Her face betrayed nothing else of what she guessed or knew.

Am I considering running? I probed with as much discretion as the question allowed.

Mr. Parker! I came to you to avoid that. Her voice rose in something only slightly less than anger.

Don’t ruffle your feathers, it had to be asked. But since you’re not considering it, I’d call the police.

I came to you to avoid that too.

Well, I hate to be indelicate at a time like this, but along about tomorrow, at the latest, people in the building are going to start to notice that Ben is getting a bit... gamy. Then believe me Mrs. Averson, somebody is going to call the police. And the cops are going to be very inquisitive as to why you slept next to your dead husband, in a bed full of blood, for two nights in a row, without at least noticing that he had failed to change his jamies. I assume he was wearing pajamas. My eye took a slow look across the table and I realized that that may have been a large assumption on my part.

She put up her hand to stop me, her lips parting, about to say something.

"Please Mrs. Averson, if you are about to suggest what I think you are, don’t. It would be embarrassing for both of us. I would not, nor do I know anyone who, oh, how shall I put it, would dump the body."

She looked straight at me; the smile had run off her face with the quickness of a sure thing at Belmont.

You are good, Mr. Parker. You are very good. She complimented me through her disappointment.

No, Mrs. Averson, I have just been around long enough to have seen the advances of improprieties come my way before and have learned how to stem the tide of temptation with a quick dodge to the left.

Well, Mr. Parker, will you take my case in spite of my... indiscretion? Her last word hung between us for a beat or two.

On my terms, Mrs. Averson?

On your terms, she replied as her neck bowed in conciliation.

One last question, Mrs. Averson, were there any problems in your marriage?

You mean like something…sexual? She started off low and shrunk to a whisper.

I mean like anything that might make you wish your husband were dead! My voice was calm, my stare fixed on her face watching for her reaction.

We sat silently for a few very long minutes before she gave me a look I’d grown used to being married to Thelma. I took it as a capital NO! It had always meant that with Thelma and pretty much any woman I had ever known.

Then she either forgave me or realized she still needed me as she straightened out the monetary arrangements of my employment with the firm placement of two fifty-dollar bills on the table in front of me as the only answer to my question. I immediately began earning my fee by informing her of our opening strategy.

Not to look a gift retainer in the mouth Mrs. Averson but where did you hear about me?

From…a close friend you recently helped.

Although she didn’t mention any names, she had to be talking about J.E. Collins who would be the only client I had ever had who would travel in the same Brooklyn Heights circles as Mrs. Averson.

Okay, I said, well first we’ll go back to your apartment and from there you will call the cops."

If you insist. Her quiet look of acquiescence told me poker was not her game.

I do, I said settling back in the booth and asking her if she had come by car.

Yes. The dark brown 1946 Lincoln Zephyr Club Car parked just outside.

Good, then I’ll follow you in mine. I wanted to be able to leave her place before the cops arrived, but I wasn’t going to tell her that just yet.

I let her pay the tab, the first of the expenses. Then made double sure to note she got into the same car I had pegged as the Zephyr so I wouldn’t lose her in the mid-afternoon traffic. An embarrassment I had suffered on a case a while back causing my client to lose any confidence he may have had in me and also causing him to lose my number as fast as I had lost him. And I thought if I could lose anything the size of a ‘46 Lincoln Zephyr I should quit the PI gig for good.

She drove straight down Coney Island Avenue and before too long I realized we were indeed headed for Brooklyn Heights, the exclusive part of Brooklyn. I also realized that I was still living off the results of that recently completed case in The Heights.

T.M. Collins, a big-time stockbroker had been kidnapped and his daughter had been told by none other than Lieutenant Bernie Kaminsky to call me in. Bernie, it seems, had recommended me because of his rather strong belief in my ineptness. The joke had been on him when I was able to prove not only who had been behind T.M.’s kidnapping but who had committed four murders along the way. So, I’d gotten the old man back, only slightly damaged, and had managed to rid myself of one of my worst nemesis in the process.

One of those murdered had been Steve. I had gone to his funeral, so had Thelma and Steve’s mother. The three of us had stood in the cold, grey, rain listening to Monsignor Purick wax poetic over the coffin, each of us feeling guilty in our own way for knowing what a jerk Steve had been and wondering if the good Monsignor would have been able to find a kind word for Jack the Ripper. Maybe he would have lauded the precision of his surgical skills.

The only fly in the ointment that was T.M.’s case had been that Bernie’s minion, and an even more formidable antagonist, Sergeant Bill Riles, had somehow managed not only to avoid criminal charges and stay on the force, but had gotten himself promoted to Lieutenant of Homicide at the 83rd precinct as well. Having something on people of influence is the only explanation I could come up with. Anyway, in his present position he was, of course, free to continue to make my life miserable. He couldn’t quite pull my license, as he had threatened to do, after all, saving a Collins still counts for something in this town, but he did retain the personal bullyboy rights to my life.

Mrs. Averson was not quite in the same monetary league as the Collins clan, but she was still millions of leagues above my sea. The building was one of those new simple, stylishly modern affairs with