Black Eye

By Tony Masero

Phil Black left the cruel Pacific battlefields looking to find some chill-time after the war. Then came a knock and a beautiful girl with a lost husband to find. Things get a lot more complicated after that. He calls on an old Marine buddy, Gunny LaForge, to follow a violent path from San Francisco’s foggy streets to the steaming jungles of Peron’s Argentina. Always ready with a quick wisecrack, fast action and straight-shooting are their only guarantees of survival in a noir thriller involving Manchu treasure and a Nazi mass murderer who will not accept defeat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bold Venture Press
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463683217

Tony Masero

It’s not such a big step from pictures to writing.And that’s how it started out for me. I’ve illustrated more Western book covers than I care to mention and been doing it for a long time. No hardship, I hasten to add, I love the genre and have since a kid, although originally I made my name painting the cover art for other people, now at least, I manage to create covers for my own books.A long-term closet writer, only comparatively recently, with a family grown and the availability of self-publishing have I managed to be able to write and get my stories out there.As I did when illustrating, research counts a lot and has inspired many of my Westerns and Thrillers to have a basis in historical fact or at least weave their tale around the seeds of factual content.Having such a visual background, mostly it’s a matter of describing the pictures I see in my head and translating them to the written page. I guess that’s why one of my early four-star reviewers described the book like a ‘Western movie, fast paced and full of action.’I enjoy writing them; I hope folks enjoy reading the results.

Book preview

BLACK EYE

Tony Masero

Bold Venture Press

Revised Edition Copyright © 2019 Tony Masero.

All rights reserved.

Bold Venture Press edition July 2020

Available in print and eBook editions

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events except for historical fact are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real person, places, or events is coincidental.

Contents

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Black Eye

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

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

About the author

About the publisher

For the best little apples in the orchard; Gina, Sonny and Ricci, and as always, for the apple of my eye, Diana.

Phil Black left the cruel Pacific battlefields looking to find some chill-time after the war. Then came a knock and a beautiful girl with a lost husband to find. Things get a lot more complicated after that.

He calls on an old Marine buddy, Gunny LaForge, to follow a violent path from San Francisco’s foggy streets to the steaming jungles of Peron’s Argentina. Always ready with a quick wisecrack, fast action and straight-shooting are their only guarantees of survival in a noir thriller involving Manchu treasure and a Nazi mass murderer who will not accept defeat.

Black Eye

Chapter 1

How did I get in this game?

Well, as you’re asking, I’ll tell you.

It all comes from helping people. Yes, believe me that’s what I do. I help people. At least I try. But I know just what you’ll be thinking right now.

You’ll say, ‘Some kinda Good Samaritan, huh? Helping people! Like it’s a mission or something. What a load of baloney!’ Yep, I can hear you saying it. Sorry to disappoint you but in my case it just happens to be true.

Mind you, things didn’t start out like that....

I came out of the Big One more or less in one piece back in ’45. It left me with a hard heart and some unique skills. Hardly the kind of skills you’d find necessary in peacetime. Saw a lot of things over there that no human being should be a part of.

So, you may ask, what do you do about that? D’you fret on it some and find yourself going down a dark tunnel of drink and discontent or, do you find yourself another angle. Open another door.

I was lucky that way. Well, in the end I was.

Sounds like I planned it all, doesn’t it? But I never did. No sir. It just came down the line that way and I did no more than follow the thread.

How did it happen? A lady is how, a neighbor, she comes to me.

That’s where it all really started....

I was located in San Francisco by then, South of Market to be precise. The place was no bigger than my ten-year-old Chrysler, but there was running water and a phone. No palace, but all I could afford on my army severance pay.

Anyway, I was just laying back. Taking it easy. Loafing around most days reading the paper, smoking and looking out of the window. Not even thinking really. Occasionally I’d hang out at Costello’s, prop the bar and nurse a brew just waiting to see what the world would bring. I was bored, I guess. After a couple of years amongst the palm trees waiting to see if a banzai-crazy Nip would pop out of the bushes, that kind of gives you an edge and mine was running down slow.

Couldn’t say I was strung out, not anything like that. Came close a few times, I have to admit. Close to getting that thousand-yard stare they talk about. But no, I made it through okay in the end. Even got a medal to prove it. That wasn’t the only piece of metal I earned either, still have a slug of shrapnel lodged somewhere in my leg. Pains me on cold wet days and I get to limp a little.

But back to this lady.

Mrs. Lebowski. She was a married woman, so her ring told me, maybe mid-twenties. Auburn hair under a neat little pillbox hat and veil. Tallish and slender. A real looker but her sad eyes gave her some years. Now, nobody knocked on my door back then, except the landlord, and that was only when the rent was due. So I was kind of surprised when I heard her give a little tap.

Help you, ma’am? I said, opening the door.

You are Mr. Black? she asked it softly, with a hint of foreign accent.

I nodded because that’s me alright. Philip Black, Phil to my friends and plain bad news to everybody else. What can I do for you?

You were a Marine soldier in the war, no?

Like about half a million other guys.

But you served in the Pacific?

I was beginning to wonder where this was going and I have to admit a mite edgy with all the personal details so I got a little abrupt with the lady.

Look, sister. What’s this about?

I would like to ask you something about your unit. It is important. Please, may I come in?

I looked her up and down. I was curious I guess and I thought what the hell, you don’t turn a good-looking dame like her away, do you? So I pushed the door wide.

Sure, why not?’ I said. There’s just about enough room in this dump for the two of us. So make yourself to home."

Thank you, she said, squeezing past me. I got a whiff of her perfume then. It wasn’t cheap stuff. I knew a bit about perfume from my time overseas and this was the real McCoy. Coeur de l’Amour if my nose buds didn’t deceive me. Now you’re going to ask me how I know so much about perfume, a guy like me, well that’s a whole other story. Best put it this way; you don’t buy that juice over the counter at a nickel and dime store.

She strolled around with an abstracted air for a while as she took in my well-appointed abode. Not so as you could stroll around much, more like a quick two-step around the folding chair and the dinette table. It gave me a moment though; time to check out her trim figure and shapely gams under that tight-fitting number in black. I liked what I saw.

You want to sit? I asked.

Thank you. She eased herself gracefully into my only chair. I propped up the sink and shucked out a Lucky. I offered her one and she took it with a nod of thanks. She had that habit of enfolding your hand in hers whilst she took the light. Smooth hands with red painted nails, the kind that never entertained the notion of washing dishes.

So? I asked.

I am Mrs. Linda Lebowski, she began, with a tight little smile of introduction. You may remember my husband, Raymond? Raymond Lebowski.

Lebowski? Lebowski? I searched my memory. Hell, there’d been so many. Lebowiz. Leintell. Lutz. I did a mental roll call of all the ghosts still hanging around my brain from Iwo Jima and before. Leibanski. Laimond. Then I had him.

Little guy. Maybe yay high? I laid a hand against my breastbone. I guess I’m a mite tall anyways, but this fellow was real short. Had a squished nose?

Yes, she nodded, a glimmer of light coming into her dull eyes. They were gray I noticed. A cool gray, like pale stone but now there was a spark of life in them. That is my Raymond. He boxed, you know. That explains the.... She waved a delicate hand in front of her own nose, which was a lot sweeter than her husband’s.

Then it fell into place. Sure. ‘Lil’ Ray Lebowski. A real scrapper. The fastest footwork I ever saw in the ring. Sharp as a razor and twice as lethal, with a punch that a bantam had no right to own. Took the Division Championship for his weight I recalled.

I thought your husband went MIA on Iwo.

MIA? she asked with a bemused look.

Embarrassed I stared down at my feet; those acronyms can hide a world of hurt. He went missing, you know?

Ah, she breathed a long sigh of understanding. Yes, Missing In Action. That is what the War Department told me. I have a telegram from them. She took a moment to hunt through her purse. A small shiny black patent leather thing with a gold chain which held all that stuff that women seem to find hard to leave at home. She pulled out a crumpled envelope and held it towards me.

It’s okay, I said waving it aside. I’ve seen them before. They never tell you enough.

She breathed cigarette smoke in a pillar from her lips and tucked the envelope away again. But he was not missing. He came back to me. But now he is gone again and I don’t know where.

You mean he upped and left you?

No, no, she waved a hand in dismissal and smoke weaved a following line from her cigarette. "It’s not like that. He’s not ‘left’ in that way. Something has happened, I think. Maybe something bad."

Sorry to hear that.

I wondered.... she faltered, looking up at me from under long lashes. I wondered if you might be able to find him for me.

Me? Hey lady! I’m sorry for your trouble really I am but I’m not your guy. I don’t do that sort of thing. I’m just a regular Joe, what you need is a specialist. A private investigator or something.

But you were his comrade. Fellow soldiers, no? Her accent was showing now, as she got more excited. Do not the Marines watch out for each other? I have heard this from Raymond. He was very exact about it. You see, Mister Black, you knew my Raymond. It will be easier for you to find him.

I took a second. It was true we had a code. Semper Fi and all that. I shrugged and handed her a tin pickle lid I used as an ashtray from off the drainer. Look here, Mrs. Lebowski....

Please, it is Linda, she offered this with a little smile as she crushed out the cigarette butt. There was a shy coyness about her, a certain lack of confidence. It’s that kind of helpless attitude that needles its way into your heart if you’re a standup guy. I knew what she was doing, trouble is, I never could resist that kind of heartbreak in a gal.

Sure, I knew Ray, I said. But not well. He was just one of the other fellows. I watched him box a few times, is all.

She looked sideways then, out of the window and her eyes seemed to lose focus as if she was looking into a distance way off and yet seeing nothing.

I will tell you how it was with Raymond. We are both Jewish you see. My father was a wealthy exporter in Germany before the war, he saw the way things were going under the Nazis and with his connections he managed to send me away. Here to California. He stayed there for the business and my mother stayed too, she would not leave him. In the end all of my family were lost to me. My mother, father, uncles, aunts and cousins. All of them into the ovens. She turned back to look at me then, an angry gleam burning in her eyes. All of them, she repeated bitterly. I was alone here. No one believed that the Germans could do such things then. That no human being could be so cruel to another. Women, children. It was unbelievable. But I knew it in my heart. Somehow I knew they were gone. I cannot explain it, I just knew.

We all did now. Ever since the Allies moved into Dachau and Auschwitz. Into that whole chain of nasty death factories that the krauts built across Europe. We’d seen the newsreels with the piles of starved dead bulldozed like cordwood into pits for mass burial. Hell of a thing. I’ve watched battle hardened soldiers weep openly alongside me in the cinema as we saw that stuff.

It was Raymond who saved me from my despair, she went on. He came to my rescue. She smiled briefly at the fond memory. A girlfriend who lived in the same house as me. She could see how sad I was and took me along to a serviceman’s dance. To try and cheer me up. And that is where we met. We were married before he shipped out. It was all very quick and there was little time for us but I was happy again. He can be a very funny man you know. He made me laugh for the first time since I had left Germany.

As she told me her story I was trying to recall all I could about Lil Lebowski. I knew he was a good boxer and went missing on Iwo Jima but could remember nothing more than that. A lot of it involved things I was trying to forget anyway. But I did remember he had a close buddy. His corner-man in the ring. He was always there at every fight. But the hell of it was I couldn’t