Lennie, Guido and Me

By D. W. Drake

Laughter, suspense and three gutsy old men who don’t mind breaking a few rules.

Matt Cole, a glib-talking former private investigator becomes suspicious of some late night deliveries to his retirement home. He recruits two of his buddies at the home and together they do a little investigating. Their snooping inadvertently places them in grave danger.

Lennie Pelton, who is a former Korean War fighter pilot suffering from white-knuckle flashbacks to his combat service, and Matt’s best buddy at the home, reluctantly assists him in his shenanigans. Also helping Matt is Guido Porcello, a retired mafia wise-guy and reject from the witness protection program.

Together, these three oldsters blunder from one hilarious situation to another, some involving the police, the FBI, the Los Angeles Times and the L A. County Health Department. Along the way, they succeed in getting a Chinese triad, a mob hit-man, and several of the home’s staff and other retirees on their trail angry enough to kill them, or at least do them great bodily harm.

Though Matt and his buddies’ predicament is serious, the humor they display will have you belly laughing and wishing for more. In addition, the story is not only funny but gripping, all the way through to the heart-warming conclusion.

Lennie, Guido and Me, A great read!

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. W. Drake
• Release date: Jun 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463500477

D. W. Drake

I have been a United States Marine, gold miner and superior court bailiff. The bulk of my working life, however, I served as a police officer, police sergeant, detective and S.W.A.T. team leader in the Los Angeles, California area. Because of this experience I have seen just about everything people can do to one another, good and bad, in the seamy, often hidden side of the human condition. I taught myself to write by composing crime and investigative reports in serious criminal cases, where vague or imprecise language would provide an opening for a sharp defense attorney. I enjoy writing Detective Mystery Novels that include a bit of humor with a generous sprinkling of sarcasm. My other passion is to write historical fiction dealing with World War Two. My hobbies are oil painting, fine furniture woodworking and leather crafting. However, my greatest joys are my two grandchildren. I live with Nancy, my wife of forty-eight years, in La Quinta, California.

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LENNIE, GUIDO AND ME

A lighthearted MATT COLE Mystery

D. W. Drake

Savanat Press

Copyright © 2019 by D. W. Drake

Savanat Press

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved under International and Pan- American Copyright Conventions

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Author’s Photo by Jane Chouteau

Book edited by Carol O’Donnell

Visit author’s website: www.savanatpress.com

This book is also available in Print and Audio at most online retailers

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR’S NOTE

CHAPTER ONE

October 10, 2012

Wednesday

7:02 A.M.

The harsh clatter of a dropped food tray striking the tiled floor in the hallway outside my room caused me to open one bleary eye, which in itself was a small victory. When you’re ninety-five years old, you have no way of knowing when you drop off to sleep each night whether the next sight you’ll see are the familiar confines of your bedroom or the rictus grin on the Angel of Death’s skull like face as he prods you with his bloody scythe toward the gaping maw of the bottomless pit. As I opened the other eye the ceiling above my bed swung around sickeningly for a second and then came into focus. It was one of those ceilings that featured perforated panels suspended on a frame from the concrete above with wire. It was a cheap way to hide all the pipes and ducts and rat droppings. As it did every morning, a particular panel caught my eye. Dirty water from a migratory leak had stained the panel surface with an almost perfect image of Jimmie Carter’s face, grin and all.

Good morning Mr. President, I croaked.

I ran my old tongue over my few remaining teeth. My mouth tasted foul and sour with whiskey and cigarette residue. In fact, a better description of the state of my mouth would be fowl, It tasted like a flock of drunken, Marlboro addicted chickens were roosting in there and crapping all over my tongue. Running my right palm over my bald, splotchy head, I sighed. The copious brown wavy hair of my youth was but a distant memory. But every now and then an adventurous hair would take it upon itself to sprout and grow half an inch, only to dive back inside the follicle in horror after glimpsing a denuded, wrinkled and wrecked landscape that resembled Detroit after being run by the Democrats for sixty years. I had to piss really bad so I swung my spindly left leg, with its knobby knee and its ugly scar, over the side of the bed and at the same time gripped the stainless steel lattice attached to the inboard side of the bed and levered myself up into a sitting position. The ounce or two of blood in my old noggin promptly drained away causing dizziness and my head to fall back onto the pillow.

The door of my room swung open and in walked a smirking Josef Stalin, the evil dictator of the Soviet Union, accompanied by two goons from his notorious NKVD secret police. Now this wasn’t the real Josef Stalin, of course. That son of a bitch had rightfully long since been processed through the bowels of eager proletarian worms and was now indistinguishable from the rest of the holy soil of Mother Russia. No, this was one of old Uncle Joe Stalin’s modern wannabes. The name tag on her rather severe business suit announced that she was Heather Johnson, Director of Operations of Bayview Serene Retirement Residence.

Ms. Johnson didn’t look like a Heather. When you think of the name Heather, besides English bushes, it conjures up an image of some thirty-eight-year-old airhead blonde perpetual student at UCLA who spends her days saving the whales or six toed lizards nobody has ever heard of and demonstrating against every perceived outrage committed by the officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, before returning home each night to her daddy’s gated community guarded by a platoon of men with shotguns and bazookas.

Ms. Johnson wasn’t like that at all. About forty, she was tall for a woman and stocky. Not the fat kind of stocky but the muscular kind. Her large almond shaped eyes and café au lait colored complexion indicated Asian, combined with black or brown ancestry. Right now I could see she was angry, those almond eyes flashing with displeasure. I didn’t think too much of this. Ms. Johnson was always pissed off. I guess it came with the territory of running a holding pen for rich old white people waiting to die.

Mr. Cole, we have a problem and need to come to an understanding, she said with her cold totalitarian eyes boring into mine and her nostrils flared wide.

By this time my wheezing old heart had pumped the few ounces or so of blood remaining in my body back up into my brain, so I was able to sit up and face her with my spindly legs dangling over the side of the bed. I reached over on the night table and retrieved my glasses and put them on, then dug my dental bridges out of a water glass with two fingers and popped them into my mouth. My morning ritual done, I thrust out my jaw.

We have a problem Comrade Stalin? (In our frequent interactions I usually likened her to Hitler, Stalin, or Mao because it never failed to annoy the shit out of her and cause a pleasant shade of puce to spread up her cheeks.) You may have a problem but I don’t have a care in the world. I’m a feeble, decrepit old man just killing time and waiting to go to my just reward. I receive such top notch care here. In fact, just yesterday I was telling my friend Lennie that I’m in the finest place you could ask to be warehoused and wait for the Grim Reaper to show up and snatch my soul away. What problem could I possibly have?

Ms. Johnson turned to the two NKVD goons. They were actually her orderlies. They were two large Hispanic men, one tall and one short, wearing hospital scrubs. One was named Juan and the other Carlos. I want to talk to Mr. Cole in private. Would you please excuse us? she asked, the dismissal uttered in a phony polite voice. Carlos, the tall one, shrugged and turned immediately to leave the room. He obviously didn’t give a shit. Juan, on the other hand, looked at Ms. Johnson with an offended look before reluctantly turning away. He considered himself someone important to the running of the joint and not what he was, just muscle to keep the old folks intimidated and in line. My room door swooshed shut after them.

Mr. Cole, said Ms. Johnson, enunciating each word carefully and precisely. I know you have been sneaking liquor and cigarettes into Bayview. This room smells like a Louisiana pool hall. I don’t know how you’re doing it but rest assured I will find out.

Look, I replied in the best reasonable voice I could manage, being hungover and all, I’m a very old man and for all I know the Angel of Death could be in his death mobile tooling down the Santa Monica freeway right now, on his way over here just chomping at the bit to snatch me away to perdition. What’s the harm if I sneak a little nip and smoke a few measly cigarettes? I’ve been here a long time and your predecessor, Mrs. Perkins, was kind enough to look the other way when it came to my harmless human failings. She knew how to live and let live.

Mrs. Perkins looked the other way a little too much in a lot of areas. She ran a messy disorganized organization; one I am determined to put in order. Rules are rules and you must obey them or I will bring a boatload of trouble down on your head. She emphasized must in her diatribe.

Like every dictator and tyrant from King Nebuchadnezzar to Vladimir Putin, Johnson had a compulsion to make everybody else do what she said and, of course, it started to piss me off.

I hope you’re enjoying yourself, browbeating a helpless, feeble old man coming to the end of his golden years.

Feeble my foot. I’ll bet that if the North Koreans ever nuke Los Angeles, the only creatures left alive in the rubble will be you and the cockroaches. Knowing you so well Mr. Cole, I imagine you will con said cockroaches into bringing you booze and cigarettes. But rest assured, sir, you have stirred the wrong hornet’s nest. I’ve a good mind to call your son and have another conference.

Excuse me Chairman Mao, but in order for a threat to be effective there has to be an element of fear or dread of dire consequences connected with it. You can talk to my sixty-year-old college professor son all you want, if you can get him to stop banging the pretty young coeds long enough to listen to you. What is he gonna do? Put me in an old people’s prison? He’s already done that, I said in my best Humphrey Bogart /Phillip Marlowe voice.

Oh it’s Chairman Mao now. I thought I was Comrade Stalin.

Yeah, I sometimes get the two of them mixed up. They were both megalomaniacal assholes who wanted to tell everyone in the world what to do, and between the two of them they managed to kill about a hundred million people. You on the other hand are just starting out in the tyrant business. I’m sure that before you decided to make my life miserable, you had to content yourself with kicking the family dog every day when you came home from work or forcibly declawing your cat with a pair of pliers. You know, I had planned to quietly die in my sleep next week, but now that you have come in here messing with me I’ve decided to live to a hundred and twenty just to make you and my son miserable.

She stared at me for a long moment, about as long as it normally takes a Republican Congressman to stuff a fat envelope from the Club for Growth in the breast pocket of his designer suit. Then Ms. Johnson burst out laughing, a hearty one from deep in her throat and mirth appeared in her Asian eyes. I couldn’t help myself, I started to laugh too. Maybe I had misjudged Heather Johnson. Maybe she wasn’t a world class dictator like Stalin at all but only a halfhearted, incompetent one like Hillary Clinton.

I still can’t let this slide. I will find out where you’re getting the contraband and if it is from an employee of Bayview, heaven help them. I have ordered a systematic search of the building and am going to interview some of your fellow patients, starting with your buddy Leonard Pelton. I have this peculiar notion that his room smells as bad as yours this morning, said Ms. Johnson as she headed out the door.

Shit! I said out loud to the empty room. I had to get to Lennie before she did. He was deathly afraid of the director and under interrogation would sing like Ella Fitzgerald.

Captain Straight: Why do you have to push the envelope Matt? Don’t you know that calling her Chairman Mao and Comrade Stalin is just going to make her more determined to catch you in the act? I think sticking to the old acting pitiful subterfuge would have been more effective.

The Brat: Bullshit. You were right to fire on her, sticking her nose into your business. Don’t give the bitch an inch.

Captain Straight: Who cares what you think. This is between Matt and I and not you.

The Brat: I have a right to speak my mind. You’re giving him bogus advice. You never prosper in life by being a pussy.

Alright, alright, both of you shut up and let me think, I said out loud. I should explain about the voices. During World War Two I was in the Marines and served on the island of Guadalcanal until a Japanese grenade explosion shattered my left leg and fractured my skull. When I woke up in the aid station after being evacuated, I heard voices in my head that have been with me ever since. They represent different aspects of my personality. Captain Straight speaks for my reasonable, analytical mind, while The Brat articulates my secret selfish side. For many years there had been a third voice, Little Matt, who represented my libido. I hadn’t heard a word from him for a very long time, which was a good thing. The son of a bitch got me into no end of trouble when he was around.

I had been an inmate at the Bayview Serene Retirement Residence for about five years. It was a modern building, the lobby all sleek glass and chrome with the urine smell barely detectable. The receptionist, nurses, nurse’s aides, and assorted other attendants were polite and helpful. In the bright and airy communal spaces, the residents were provided with television, books and games and Bayview offered all kinds of other fun activities including daily supervised field trips to the park, the zoo, or over to Forest Lawn to shop for caskets. (I made that last one up.)

The kitchen was all shiny stainless steel and was located next to the dayroom, which was the biggest space in the place and which was equipped with a flock of plastic topped tables and chairs. To get your food, you slid a tray along a stainless steel shelf and attendants would deposit your food onto the tray under a glass shield. Because half or more of Bayview’s residents were so old and feeble they were confined to their beds (my friend Lennie and I referred to them as the zombies), three times a day at every scheduled meal, an army of young, chattering Asian girls would suddenly erupt from the kitchen pushing stainless steel carts piled high with meals on trays for the bedridden. Because there were so many of them, the cart’s rumbling sounded like the German army armor must have sounded as they burst through the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge.

The whole design and décor of Bayview was designed to project a clean, modern and efficient air. And like most bright, shiny things, it was all a sham. Start with the name, there wasn’t a bay or any other body of water within viewing distance of the place. To see a bay from Bayview, you’d have to go up in a hot air balloon about twenty thousand feet to see Santa Monica Bay, thirty miles away. The beds were lumpy and hard. As for the field trips, they inevitably turned into short snatches of points of interest sandwiched between pee stops.

The kitchen was the