Die and You Die Alone

By Peter Martin Larney

Bart Drake has recently returned from the Korean War and is anxious to make his mark in New York City. When his brother-in-law turns up dead and his sister is nearly murdered, Drake is determined to find the culprits, and is thrust into a world of common criminals, mobsters, beautiful women and the top night spots in town. After narrowly avoiding death several times, Drake discovers that the answers are more surprising than he would have ever imagined!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Martin Larney
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463392577

Book preview

Die and You Die Alone

Peter Martin Larney

Die and you Die Alone is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Written in New York in the 1950’s. 

Transcribed from the original manuscript by his grandchildren, Brett and Andrea Larney in 2011.

Cover design by Andrea and Peter Larney.

Contact the author’s son via email at [e-mail]

Chapter One

She weighed about one-hundred twenty pounds and at least forty pounds of that was breast. She walked toward me slowly, tantalizingly, her fingers unbuttoning her blouse. Every muscle in her body seemed to be alive. I know damn well mine were. She slid the blouse off the top of her shoulders and wiggled until it fell to the floor. All that wiggling made her bare breasts shake and bounce and I know if I were any closer I would be slapped silly. I was damn near a stark, raving maniac already. She kicked off her high heels and her hands went to her side as she fumbled with the zipper of her skirt. I felt beads of sweat roll down my forehead and dribble into my eyes. I blinked rapidly to erase the cloudiness. I didn’t want to miss a bit of this performance. She was unzipped now and was wiggling like hell again as the skirt slid around her curved hips and fell to her feet. She stepped out of it and stood there, beautifully naked, her dark, smooth skin gleaming in the light from the lamp.

She stepped closer now, close enough for me to hear her quick breathing. She moved faster, now that she was finished with the preliminaries, she was ready for the main bout. Her arms encircled my neck and her warm, soft body pressed tightly against mine. She was kissing me on the cheek, the neck, and the shoulders. Her tongue flicked rapidly in and out of my ear, as her hands moved searchingly over my damp, bare body.

My brain was pounding against the top of my skull and my insides were as hot as a five-alarm blaze. Her torso was gyrating like a Hawaiian welcoming committee. I moved back about an inch and felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my back. I grimaced and moved closer against that spiraling sex-bomb.

Alright, sweetheart, that’s enough. It was a man’s voice and it damn near shocked me. I had almost forgotten he was in the room. Almost, but not quite.

Under normal circumstances, with a beautiful, nude woman with me in her bedroom, I wouldn’t have an audience. And, under normal circumstances, I would have had her on the bed long before this. But I was certainly not under normal circumstances. For one thing, this beautiful dish who had just raised hell with my nervous system was married. And for another, the tall, thin guy standing next to her was her husband. And to top it off, the three of us were naked as newly sheared sheep.

But things weren’t as cozy as they sound. Oh, they were having a swell time, a real ball. I never saw two people enjoying themselves as much as these two were right now. But I was having a lousy time. So lousy, in fact that I wished I was someplace else, anyplace else. This was a lovely bedroom, handsomely decorated in French furniture; chairs, sofa, dresser, desk, and an enormous window which opened on to a balcony. It was very impressive, like a chapter from out of the past, and the pinnacle of it all was the Louis XIV bed. It was so massive they must have knocked a wall out to get it in here. The only thing wrong with this whole picture was that I was tied to this goddamned bed with a sword ready to stick me in the back if I moved and inch.

The man spoke again. Sit down and rest sweetheart.

Must I, honey? I was just beginning to enjoy it. She smiled at me when she said it.

I said sit down. He snapped.

She pushed her mouth out like a five-year-old kid, then wiggled over and plopped down in an overstuffed chair. Every time she moved she wiggled, and that wasn’t helping my blood pressure, not after what she just put me through.

I looked back at the man who was now standing two feet away from me. He had a twisted grin on his face and I got the idea that the fun was just about over. He’d toyed with me long enough. Now he was ready for the kill.

Are you prepared to tell me what I want to know?

Go to hell. I spat.

He jerked his head back and roared with laughter. I didn’t see one damn thing that was funny about this whole situation but there he was laughing to beat the band. His body rocked with glee and the noise of his laughter bounced and vibrated off the walls. Jeez, I wish I could enjoy this half as much. He stopped as abruptly as he had started and his eyes narrowed as he looked back at me.

That’s your final answer, It wasn’t a question, it was a statement and if I wanted to answer him I never got the chance.

He whirled on his heels, walked over to the heap of clothes the girl had discarded, stooped and picked them up. He headed for his bedroom, never stopping to look back.

I wonder what he was cooking up now. I thought back over the past two days and whatever he had in store couldn’t have been anything more than what I’d been through. I’d been shot at, beat to a pulp, damn near tossed in jail, stabbed and just now almost raped by a nymphomaniac. There wasn’t much more that could happen to me. There wasn’t much left he could do except kill me. But how wrong I was, and maybe I would have been better off if he had killed me.

I looked over at ‘sweetheart’ sitting in the overstuffed chair with one leg dangling over the arm. It wasn’t a very lady-like pose, especially for a lady with no clothes on, but it didn’t seem to faze her. She was watching me with a half-smile on her lips and hot, hungry eyes. She wasn’t looking at my face. She was staring at my body, and I knew if her husband hadn’t been here I would have been raped. She moved her leg back over the arm of the chair and rose to her feet. She moved her hands over her sides and down her hips as her breasts rose and fell rapidly. Don’t tell me I was going to go through this again. I couldn’t stand much more of it.

She was walking toward me, her body slithering like a snake. God, honey, have mercy. Then she was kissing me, rubbing me, crushing me until I heard my heart pounding in my chest.

And then the door sprung open and I jerked my head up with a start. She moved from me slowly, never turning, still watching me.

Nothing happened for about ten seconds. It seemed like an eternity. She still moved slowly away, her eyes fixed on my body.

Then, with a quick movement, before I realized what had happened, she was in the room.

She was beautiful. How else would you describe her? Golden blond hair that nestled on her shoulders, a voluptuous body with proportions similar to ‘sweetheart’s; full, large breasts, slim, tapered waist, curving sharply into wide, flowing hips. So similar to her, in fact, she had on her clothes. If it wasn’t for the blond hair, they could pass for sisters.

And I’ll be damned if she wasn’t going through the same routine. Walking toward me, unbuttoning her blouse, only this one had on a bra. But it just didn’t look right. She didn’t take off the bra, but let her hands slide to her skirt and unzipped it. She hesitated a moment, then let the skirt fall to the floor. If I hadn’t been tied to the bed, I would have fallen to the floor.

This beautiful, sensual, voluptuous, blonde was a man. A goddamn man. And then it hit me right between the eyes. All the little bits of information I had picked up these past two days made sense. It was as if I had a jigsaw puzzle in my head and I had just shaken it the right way for all the pieces fall in the right place. There was just one thing left to do, one thing more to wind up. But I had to get out of here first. I had to think of a way out of this. But how could I think with this goddamned queer kissing me on the cheek, the neck, the chest. If I only were free, if I had just one foot free, I’d kick him so hard he’d lose all interest in any form of sex. He kissed me on the naval and I screamed.

Alright you son-of-a-bitch, I’ll tell you!

Chapter Two

I looked up from the paper I was reading and smiled. We were at One-Hundred Twenty-Fifth Street and I knew in about 5 minutes we’d be pulling into Grand Central Station. I didn’t have to look at a sign to tell me where I was. I knew this station. I had dreamed many hours away living this exact moment. This was an elevated platform and it always gave me the feeling that I was riding the BMT or IRT instead of the New York New Haven and Hartford railroad.

This was the feeling I had lived for the past few years, the feeling of looking at the 125th Street station, the feeling that I was free, that I was once again Mr. Bart Drake, civilian, not Sgt. Bart Drake, U.S.A. I was once again a carefree fun-loving bachelor, ready and willing to dive into that enormous sea of young, beautiful, carefree women that inhabited New York. No more barking orders, no more taking orders, standing inspections and the rest of the chicken that goes with military life. All I wanted was a little apartment, a nice paying job, and someone beautiful and loving to come home to every night, as long as it was someone different every night. I wasn’t ready for marriage. I said I’d wait until 1960 to marry, and this was only the fall of 1953. I was twenty-six now, and I figured by the time I was thirty-two or three I will have had my fling, and be ready to settle down. Hell, I’d been away for three years and had a lot of catching up to do. And I meant to start catching up tonight.

It was dark now as we went into the tunnel, and a few people began to mill about, getting their belongings in order. We’d be pulling into the station in a few minutes and, as was typical of New Yorkers, whether native or not, everyone was ready for the big scramble.

There was an excitement about New York, an electricity, a compulsion, that made people rush from place to place whether you were in a hurry or not. People rushed in and out, back and forth, to and fro like a community of ants that just had their hill overturned with a pitchfork. It was something you couldn’t explain. Even visitors, after a few hours in the city, caught the fever. It was like a contagious disease, it hit everyone. I’m a native New Yorker and I’m no exception, but sometimes I think that people hustle and scurry about just to get where they are going so they can get out of the crowd. But not me, not today.

Today I was a tourist. I was going to mope along, gaze at the sights, look at the faces of pedestrians, and even wait for the green light. This way my day of liberation, it was the happiest day I might ever see again, and I was going to enjoy it to the hilt. Let them maul me, trample me, stomp me to ribbons. I would just look at their unsmiling faces and laugh. Today I was a tourist.

The train jerked to a stop, and I came back to reality. We were in the station, and droves of rushing people filed past my window. The race was on. I rose from my seat, put on my coat and hat and slung the duffel bag over my shoulder. I cursed under my breath as it thudded against the side of my head. Then I smiled, realizing this would be the last time I’d have to haul this thing around.

I walked up the ramp and out into the station. I glanced at the clock and saw it was only 7:10 a.m..... The station was still comparatively empty at this time of morning. I spied a phone booth and headed toward it, then decided against it and headed toward the shuttle. I’ll just walk in and surprise them.

I took the shuttle over to Times Square, changed for the IRT 7th Avenue Line and rode one stop to Penn Station. I got off at the lower level and dumped the duffel bag down in front of the Long Island Railroad Information Booth. The clerk looked up from some papers as I asked him the next train to Merrick. He told me it was 75 58 and I noted I still had almost a half-hour to kill.

Would you mind keeping an eye on this duffel bag for a few minutes? I asked.

Sure. Nobody will bother it. I’ll watch it.

Thanks. I said and headed for a bar I saw down the passage.

It was closed. I went to a phone booth and leafed through a Nassau County directory until I found what I wanted. ‘Mr. James Thompson, 19 McKinley Drive, Merrick, Long Island.’ I copied the address on a slip of paper and went back to the Information Booth. The duffel bag was still there and I picked it up, thanked the clerk, and went to the ticket counter. I bought a one way ticket to Merrick that cost me $1.26 and went over to track 16. The clock told me I still had twenty minutes to wait, and the gate was closed.  The Gateman looked at me, then the duffel bag and opened the gate for me to pass through. He closed it again as I went through and I went down the stairs and boarded the train. I found a seat, and settled back and