Short Stories Book 5

By Steve Stroble

Collection of short stories:
"The Fixer" -- Vacation to Mount Rushmore is ruined by protestors

"If It's Thursday, It Must Be Jordan" -- Son tries to convince ex-pat parents to move back to America

"Earth, This Is Mars Base 3" -- A case of space psychosis upends Mars Base 3

"The Case of the Lost Child" -- P. I. Bobbi Heck takes on a case as a favor to a crush of hers from high school days

This is Book 5 in the Short Stories Series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Stroble
• Release date: Oct 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005870416

Steve Stroble

Steve Stroble grew up as a military brat, which took him from South Dakota to South Carolina to Germany to Ohio to Southern California to Alabama to the Philippines to Northern California. Drafted into the Army, he returned to Germany.His stories classified as historical fiction often weave historical events, people, and data into them.His science fiction stories try to present feasible even if not yet known technology.His dystopian and futuristic stories feature ordinary heroes and heroines placed into extraordinary situations and ordinary villains who drain the life out of others' souls (their minds, wills, and emotions) by any means available.

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Short Stories Book 5

Steve Stroble

Short Stories Book 5, copyright © 2020 Stroble Family Trust. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. All people, places, events, and situations are the product of the writer’s imagination. Any resemblance of them to actual persons, living or dead, places, events, and situations is purely coincidental.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

Lyrics for If Thou but Trust in God to Guide Thee, Public Domain.

Table of Contents

The Fixer

If It’s Thursday, This Must Be Jordan (Part One)

Earth, This Is Mars Base 3

The Case of the Lost Child

Acknowledgments

The Fixer

You can’t be serious.

I’m as serious as a heart attack, which is what you’re probably going to have if you don’t relax. Calm down and don’t take it so hard.

The favorite candidate for a vacant U.S. House of Representatives seat shuffled through the compromising photos and written allegations, all of them true, against him. So far, his political career had been stellar, a series of unbroken successes. Four years on the city council, then five years spent as a county supervisor, followed by another seven years in the state legislature. Next stop – Washington D.C.

Then this young punk had shown up unannounced.

The candidate ran his fingers through his perfectly trimmed, blow-dried shiny brown hair, a habit he reserved for whenever he became nervous. His hazel eyes grew darker as he smoldered with anger.

Who put you up to this blackmail?

That is immaterial, answered the unwelcome guest. "Who knows? Who cares? The real question for you is will you call off your campaign or will you play the martyr and go down in flames? You and I both know how no one loves a loser. So cut your losses while you still can."

Faces of the other three candidates running against him in the primary election next month flashed through the aspiring national politician’s mind, followed by the obstacle he hated and suspected most of all, his rival from the opposing party. He considered any one of them to be ambitious enough to stoop to this sort of dirty trick. His anger reached its tipping point.

Get out of here! He shook his fist as he jumped up from his comfortable chair parked beneath an oversized desk. Two long steps and he leaned until the fist danced inches from his tormentor’s serene face.

I ought to… his shaking fist cocked backward, waiting to propel into nose, mouth, eye, any target would do.

But you won’t.

The younger man stood and smirked.

"Belting me would be assault and battery because I would press charges, which would end your career here in the legislature. Look, you can still continue being a state senator. Just pull the plug on your campaign to become a congressman and none of this will ever become public knowledge. Capiche?"

Wade Radcliff swept the incriminating evidence into his tan leather briefcase, spun on his heels, and exited the office without saying goodbye.

As Wade hurried to the dark green Toyota two-door compact he had driven for almost 130,000 miles, he phoned a media contact, who he knew was ambitious enough to carry out his backup plan. That was all any of these players he dealt with for a living were – mere parts of his grand schemes. No use in considering any of them as flesh and blood people. If Wade caved into such sentimentality, simple tasks became complicated. Besides, putting anyone else’s needs ahead of his cost too much of everything: time, money, and energy – in that order.

His contact met him forty minutes later at a nondescript coffee bistro, one of the many imitations of the chain whose green and white logo still seemed omnipresent, even after hitting its peak.

Aren’t you ordering anything? Wade asked as the reporter he had used once before slid into the chair opposite his. I thought all hotshot journalist types have caffeine and or alcohol running through your veins so you can be the first to get the story.

No time. You know that my profession is 24/7, nonstop. What do you have for me? I hope it’s better than what you gave me before.

Wade suppressed a giggle. These young mainstream media types all acted and talked the same, rough and tough, don’t give them any gruff or they’ll berate you until you feel like a creampuff. But it seemed like they would believe the worst about people who did not further their agenda. And verifying whatever their anonymous source had given them? Forget it. That sort of checking out a story before running with it had ended sometime shortly after the new millennium replaced the last one.

But if I waste time doing that, one of our competitors will beat us to the story or some such variation on that theme had been explained to Wade more times than he could remember.

Besides, this reporter was all business.

Everything about her reeked of her overwhelming need to impress. From her matching manicured painted fingernails, to hair straightened beyond repair and subtle traces of make-up hiding every perceived blemish, and dressed to impress in a pantsuit Wade estimated to have cost three, maybe even four hundred dollars. I guess she has to look pretty for the cameras, Wade thought.

His momentary introspection made her fidget.

Come on, come on. Let me have it. And it better be good.

Well, it seems that a certain someone who has been making headway in the upcoming election has a skeleton in his closet. I can give you the name of someone with a nasty grudge against him. He paused, unable to resist teasing her. That is, if I’m completely left out of it. In other words, I’m not your source, even if your boss asks you, okay?

The journalist rolled her eyes.

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Good. Wade scribbled on a coffee stained napkin and slid it across the small table. Here’s the name and number of the one who’s unhappy.

She snatched the napkin and read it. Then she dialed the phone number. Wade shrugged as he stood to take his half empty large cup of supposedly 100% freshly roasted and ground dark Columbian beans to the counter with free condiments to recharge it with anything sweet to deaden the bitter brew’s nasty and sour taste.

You’re welcome, he said with a sigh as the reporter gestured for him to be quiet.

Same old story.

If his target did not agree to whatever the one who paid Wade wanted, then he always fed the victim to the sharks, who would blast the embellished details in print or on the airwaves. Either way, someone’s reputation or, in the worst cases, life got destroyed. Once again, Wade convinced himself that he preferred for the target to cooperate and submit to his handler’s demands. If they didn’t…oh well.

I need a vacation, Wade Radcliff thought as he left the bistro.

* * *

Rapid City Regional Airport must be the smallest airport in the world, Wade thought as he claimed his alligator hide suitcase from the baggage claim area. Landing there had required him first to connect at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport after taking off from his home on the East Coast.

Since reading about people with terminal illnesses creating bucket lists of things to do before dying, Wade had crafted one of his own. Burned out by his unorthodox line of work, he had decided to start with Number 20 on the list. He planned to hit Number 1, Retire at age 40, within the next three years.

After ten hours of sleep at a packed motel located on the southern edge of Rapid City, South Dakota, Wade skipped breakfast and drove his rental car into the Black Hills. He was thirty-fourth in line at the entrance gate to Mount Rushmore, one of the eager tourists wanting to cram as much as possible into the almost sixteen-hour long days that June bestows on the Dakotas. By the time he parked, read his emails, and entered the monument’s visitor center, the parking lot had already filled halfway.

For some reason, everything about Mount Rushmore looked different from the other time he had visited it. Maybe it’s because I was only five years old way back then, Wade thought. Maybe it’s because Mom and Dad and my sister and brother were with me. Mom and Dad…

Remembering life before The Divorce always filled him with pain. Why did his siblings have to blame him for their parents splitting up and never once attempting to reconcile? Those two big snots had been just as much of a pain as he had. Probably worse. They were supposed to set an example for me because I was the youngest.

Wade’s musing ended as he finished his first meal of the day, three candy bars washed down by an energy drink. With sugar and caffeine energizing him, Wade sauntered outside into the already brilliant sunlight that served as an all-encompassing spotlight on the busts of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. Hoping to dredge up at least one memory of his last time here, he walked to the point closest to the base of the huge granite outcropping. But no memory surfaced.

Oh well, at least I can send this souvenir to Mom, Wade thought as he patted the postcard in his blue windbreaker’s pocket. After all, she’s the only real reason I bothered to come here. She’s the one who always had to engineer all of our vacations because Dad always wanted to either go hunting or fishing with his buddies instead. He turned toward the parking lot and his main destination for the day, Deadwood.

After twice watching the DVD series about the old West town made famous during the 1800s by the gold prospectors, prostitutes, business owners, gamblers, outlaws, and the overworked lawmen,