The Pavilion

By Larry Flewin

The war has long since ended, the nightmare of bombs, bullets and blood a rapidly fading memory. Tony Ford is newly arrived home, after seven years lost in a wilderness called shellshock. A whole new world of jazz bands, flappers, and prohibition is there to greet him when he steps off the train. No marching bands no cheering crowds just the hustle and bustle of a world that has moved on and left him behind.
Fate and an old trench buddy, Paul Walker, rescue this lost soul and drag him onto a new battlefield, life. Ford finds his feet as his pal’s mechanic and together they form a team that is unbeatable. Wins coming easily and they become the team to beat. Until Paul is killed in an accident on race day.
Like any good PI he follows the money until he finds himself in the line of fire. Seems that somebody doesn’t like nosy PI’s snooping around and makes it his business to end Fords efforts, and Ford.
A game of cat and mouse across an entire city turns deadly as Ford seeks justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Flewin
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780995816947

Larry Flewin

Larry Flewin lives and writes in Winnipeg, Canada. His love of writing runs the gamut from children’s books to mystery and western short fiction. He has many online publishing credits and several full-length novels. Larry is passionate about his craft and is never far from a pen; plots are where you find them. He is active in his community, works for a local food bank and is a long-time member of the Freelancers writing group.

Book preview

The Pavilion

A Tony Ford Crime Novel

by

Larry Flewin

Copyright 2019

ISBN: 978-0-9958169-3-0

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,

characters, places, and incidents are

either a product of the author’s imagination

or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance

to actual events, locales, or persons,

living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any

electronic or mechanical means, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information

storage and retrieval system, without the

express written consent of the publisher,

except where permitted by law.

Edited by Janet Brown. Cover Design by Karen Flewin

Published in Canada.

Dedicated to the Freelancers.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER ONE

Dawn was a paler shade of grey, a long thin streak across the horizon that rose with a deathly slowness. It didn’t brighten the day or lighten the mood as any other dawn might have but simply showed that you were still alive. Alive in a sea of inky black mud divided by long winding stretches of slop filled trenches. No life existed beyond the lip of those muddy troughs and none but the brave ventured out past them.

To do so was to invite six kinds of hell that would force you down deeper into that godawful muck. A hundred yards separated us from them, three hundred feet across which no thing and no one dared even lift his head. The hum of lead bees was constant, death your silent companion.

Not a day went by when we didn’t think ourselves fools for rushing into what was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. And so it had been, for all of five minutes. We’d been at this now for two years, two lousy, stinking, soul-crushing years. We were the last of a platoon of eager beavers that had trudged to the front midway through this fracas. Even then we thought were going to miss out.

What’re you doing, I groused. You’re not thinking of running, are you? My trench buddy Paulie had been acting real nervous for the last couple hours and I didn’t like it. Walking around like he was being followed, fingering his rifle like it might run away on him. Dammit! All I wanted to do was eat the last of my hardtack in peace and try to get some sleep. No chance of that now, not with this doofus about to do something stupid.

Nah I ain’t that dumb Tone, just wanna get some chow like they got in A Company. They got hot chow, real hot chow, I seen it, traded a guy a deck of smokes for a couple spoonsful. Tasted real good! I woke up in a hurry.

What the hell were you doing back there? We’re not supposed to rotate out for another three weeks! Sarge finds out we’ll never get outta here!

Yeah I know but he didn’t see me I swear. I got a sniff of beef stew when I went back for ammo and went to take a looksee. Man was that good! I’m going back for more, you should come with me, and bring a deck of smokes. Trust me they ain’t coming tonight and I’m real hungry.

Weren’t we all? The supply line was no great shakes it had been that way for a couple of months. All we were getting was whatever they could throw on top of the shells they were hauling up for the guns. The gun boys had been popping off at the Jerries for a month and for what, not a peep from over there.

What makes you think they’re gonna share with us. We’re D company remember, D for dumbass. Be lucky if they give us a spoon to lick.

No no it’s nothing like that, I got pally with some Sarge who’s trading grub and shine for smokes. He’ll take all the smokes we got and give us all we can eat. So c’mon, whadda ya say.

So, what was I gonna say, hot chow was all we ever dreamed of around here. Hot chow, dry feet and a moments peace was all any of us really wanted. And I had smokes, god did I have smokes, Lucky Strikes, piles of them. That’s all they could get to us, hardtack, bully beef and smokes. You couldn’t eat smokes.

Okay, I sighed, hunger outrunning fear. We get caught it’s your ass not mine. I done enough time digging latrines. Your idea you dig.

He smiled widely. Deal! Soon as Sarge heads over to E company we go. And so we did, two half-starved mud-soaked trenchies grateful for a helmut full of hot steamy heaven. We stayed until it was too dark to see, knowing full well that we were in for it the second we got back.

We got back all right, just in time to get it in the neck.

They were known by any number of names, Black Maria, Jack Johnson, the Flying Pig, enemy shells that made each waking moment a joy, if living in hell could be called that. My personal favourite was Jack, a 17-inch shell that whistled a happy tune as he whizzed overhead on his way to send someone towards the light.

The rising shriek of his approach drove every thought from your mind except for one. Run. Where to didn’t matter, just not here. Half a heartbeat of silence greeted his arrival in the mud followed by a bang loud enough to wake the dead. Six square yards of France would erupt like a volcano, burying the living alongside the dead.

All you could do was hold your rifle tight, pray to whatever god was listening and hunker down in the deepest hole you could find. We all knew that shells never hit the same shell hole twice so if you could find a fresh one, you’d be okay. Don’t know if that was true or not but I never met anyone willing to talk about it. You had to believe or that would jinx it for next time.

They were all waiting for us on our return from a night’s peace and a full belly. Jack and his pals just couldn’t wait for us to get back to say hello. We scampered the last few yards through a hailstorm of shrapnel and smoke. Sarge, or anyone else for that matter, was nowhere to be seen.

My pal Paul Walker and I joined up in ’16, two young knuckleheads from the south side of town looking for fun and adventure. Thick as thieves us two, the terrors of Victoria Public School. Spent more time getting the strap than getting any smarts which pissed off Paul’s old man no end. He had ambitions for his boy, copper, lawyer, something in uniform he could be proud of. Paul didn’t see it that way, the world was calling, and he wanted to see some of it.

As for me, it was just me and my Gran. Never did know much about my folks, just that they were gone, and I had Gran’s high standards to live up to. Anthony Ford, you sit up straight young man, don’t talk with your mouth full and be sure you say your prayers tonight. No wonder Grampa drank his pension to death. Staying with them was better than getting placed by the child welfare authorities. I got to eat good, wear clean clothes, learn to smoke, things other kids could only dream of.

The very second Paulie and I turned eighteen we raced each other to the nearest recruiting depot to join up and see some of that world. We ended up a long way from home in a country where it rained forever and the sun never showed its face. We were two scared trench rats eating, sleeping and fighting in a mud-filled nightmare, not caring what day it was so long as we got to see the next one.

I got it Tony I got it! Paul yelled in my ear. He landed with a smack in the mud beside me, coating my cold beans with a thin layer of France.

Ah geez Paulie, that’s my dinner, what’s wrong with you, I groused. Dipped two fingers into the can and scooped out a mouthful of molasses and mud. He babbled loudly while I ate up.

We’re getting outta here! he crowed. I got us orders, the two of us, we gotta go to headquarters PDQ!

Headquarters, what do those idiots want now! Ain’t it enough we’re holding off the whole German army, now we gotta go and hold their hands too? Nothing doing I’m staying.

Paul was too excited to listen. He waved a sodden piece of paper under my nose. Orders, Tone, I got us orders, we’re getting out of this rat hole back to the rear. We get hot chow, socks, beds, whatever we want.

I put the can down carefully in the mud, looked him straight in the eye.

What the hell you talking about, we aren’t due to rotate out for three more weeks. How come they’re being so nice to us?

Trucks.

Trucks?

Yeah.

Seems HQ was suddenly hungry for truck drivers and mechanics. Supplies and ammo were slow to arrive, and it was only getting worse. A steady diet of cold beans and hardtack wasn’t exactly boosting morale. All we had to do was build ‘em and drive ‘em and we’d get three squares a day and a nice dry tent to sleep in. So what if we didn’t know motor mechanics from nothing, Paul saw it as our ticket out of hell.

We strapped on our packs, hopefully for the last time, shouldered our rifles and weaved our way along the duckboards to a cross trench. Sarge spotted us from halfway down the next trench, asked us where the hell we thought we were going and yelled at us to get back to our hole. We gave him the finger and scrambled to the rear as fast as we could.

HQ couldn’t have been happier to see us if we were Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. They cleaned us up, fed us, and racked us in the only dry tent in France. The one-armed second Looey in charge told us assembly was normally a rear area job, but somehow a dozen flatcars of trucks in crates had ended up on a siding in our area. They were desperate to get them on the road but anybody with a wrench in his blood was long since dead. It was left up to volunteers like me and Paul to slap them together and get them moving.

Now I didn’t know a crescent wrench from a bayonet, but Paul took to this like a duck to water. He was a south side smartass same as me up for any challenge, unwilling to admit defeat. Crowbar in hand we lined up the crates in some sort of order and began the daunting task of assembling the army’s latest brainchild, the 3-ton Mack truck.

She was an ugly piece of work, no wind screen, no doors and a hand crank starter that would give you a concussion if you even blinked. It was supposed to be a replacement for the mules that we’d been using to get stuff up to the front. Trouble with them was they weren’t bullet proof either and there wasn’t much kicking around for them to eat. Feed oats for mules was just as good for the men they were hauling it for. Not to mention dead mule stew.

Our reward for three weeks of cold grease and hot grub was to have the last two trucks assigned to us. The Looey pointed to a road that put us as close to the front as any trench might have and wished us luck, we’d need it. I didn’t know what was worse, dying in the mud and slop, or driving through it. Either way it was a crap shoot with very long odds and no take backs.

Dawn came up on another unnamed day, a cold damp misting the bulldog on the nose of the idling truck I sat in. I had a couple packs of Luckies to get me through the day, and a pint of Corporal Allen’s trench shine. It could kill a rat at ten paces, but it left you with a warm glow, all the breakfast I was going to get.

The trail we followed was a winding, muddy, five-mile crawl that numbed your ass and bored you to death. Day after day long lines of trucks rumbled back and forth, desperately trying to keep up with the demand for food, water and ammunition.

Like most days, the first run started quietly, just me and the mist and the taillights bouncing in front of me. There was nothing to see and nothing to do, just sit and drive and try to stay awake. Then unlike most days all hell broke loose.

Jack Johnson and his entire family of death suddenly zeroed in on the road ahead of us and blew it to bits. Guess the Jerries figured we weren’t having enough fun and decided to liven things up a little. The muck around us erupted in a hurricane of dirt, debris, and bones.

I was instantly awake, alert to what was coming and praying to god it would miss me. I put my head down, mashed the gas pedal to the floorboards, and got my bulldog up to ten miles an hour. We tore through drifting clouds of smoke, shrapnel and dirt that rattled off the hood. I gripped the steering wheel firmly, eyes tight to the road ahead and not on what was coming down all around me.

A half mile closer to safety and the guy in front of me vanished in a blinding flash. Ah jeez, Paulie's truck! It was Paulie got it! Damn! There was nothing I could do for him the shells were falling thick and fast and I was right in the middle of it.

That was enough for me. I bailed out, leaving my load of ammunition to slide off the road and into a shell hole and its dark pool of water. I curled up into a ball, slapped my palms over my ears and said my prayers. The shelling seemed to go on forever, a roaring, screaming, nightmare of explosions, smoke and fire.

Eventually it stopped and an unreal calm returned. The odd shell continued to land as I peered over the edge of my hidey hole but for the most part the storm had passed. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear one last relative coming my way, I guess Jack wasn’t done with me. Never saw where it landed, just heard the thunk as it smacked into the ground. Didn’t even have time to blink before it went off and everything went black.

Sunlight poured through a window, a bright beacon of joy lighting up my room

like a stage hall at intermission, despite my complete indifference. Today, like most days, my head really hurt, throbbing like it was about to explode, my heartbeat the fuse. I lay in bed staring up at the ceiling frozen by this overpowering ache, willing myself not to move in case I went off.

How long I lay there I don’t know but eventually my bladder told me I had to get up. I cursed silently, the one thing I could still do without passing out from the pain. As I slid off the side of my bed and onto my feet, my head began to spin and a red mist clouded my vision. I fell forward and went looking for the floor, clipping the corner of a small wheeled table with my face. I crashed onto the floor in an explosion of lunch tray, body, and blood.

I could hear footsteps running quickly towards me propelled by shouts of alarm. As I lay there, inhaling floor wax and dust balls, my head began to slow its drumbeat of death and return to normal. Everything else hurt like hell. Unseen hands grabbed me and hauled me upright like a six-foot sack of potatoes. They moved me carefully back to bed, making sure not to let go until I was flat on my back again.

Oh, you poor man, what were you thinking, purred a soft voice. You could have hurt yourself or worse. Lucky for you I happened by.

Gentle hands washed my face with ice cold water. The pain in my head was all but gone now, the relief I was feeling indescribable. A world I hadn’t seen or heard for some time slowly began to return. In those first