The Bean Sidhe

By Ernest L Canning

Percy thought he had it all figured out; good education, good job, good wife, work hard, play by the rules. But he discovered very late in life that not everyone has read the same rule book. Tired, angry, and bitter, Percy, for the first time in his life, decides he wants to kill someone. Revenge for someone he barely knew. Percy quickly learns that murder isn't as easy as it looks, and keeping the whole mess secret even harder. A funny, gritty look at killing your fellow man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Dec 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228869993

Ernest L Canning

Ernie was raised on a dairy farm in the Muskoka region of Ontario, Canada. A compulsive maker of things his whole life, Ernie was lucky enough to have a couple of his pieces included in the folk art display at the 1986 World's Fair held in Vancouver, Canada, and had the folk art book, From the Heart, published the same year. Those pieces still reside at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, QC. When allergies prevented him from continuing in one art form, his busy mind pushed into another. The Bean Sidhe was the result.

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Copyright © 2021 by Ernest L Canning

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-7000-5 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-7001-2 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-6999-3 (eBook)

I would like to thank my son, and fellow author, Ryan L Canning, for his encouragement and hard work, putting this whole project together, without him this would never have come to fruition, also the infinite patience and unbelievable endurance of Deirdre Madden, editor at large, and lastly Dee Cocks who had to put up with the ravings of a lunatic, thanks all.

The keys for apartment 507 still hung in the lock, the door not fully closed. She had watched him go in. He looked like hell. Lou must have tried to drown the little turd.

She turned to study the wet footprints leading back to the elevator. Did he have only one shoe on? Like Grandpappy Hughes would have said, the wee lad looks like he’s bin rid hard and put away wet.

The building was starting to look its age. Built in the early sixties, it still wore its inaugural colours and trappings. The carpet was worn in the center, the plastics and fabrics were yellowed and faded. Decades of meal preparation and continuous occupancy had left the place smelling like a cross between a donair shop and a cat house.

Leaning closer to the door, she heard a shower running somewhere in the apartment.

She had tried to warn this Percy fellow that Lou Bonas was not the kind of guy to be messing about with; on the upside, the little bugger was still among the living.

What kind of a horse’s ass wears a fucking Tilley hat when they’re trying to follow someone?

The woman pushed the door open wider and stepped into the apartment. To her left was a long narrow living room. Someone liked Danish modern. The big leather Lazy Boy didn’t fit, but then again, no one had asked her for decorating tips.

The dining room was at the far end of this same room. The furniture there was pushed into the corner, and drop cloths covered the floor. Here too, the Danes were favoured, lots of teak.

The kitchen was small, and directly in front of her. In this room, chrome was king. Her mother had a set just like this, right down to the grey flecks in the arborite. The place had all the warmth of a cheap motel; no colour, no extra anything. This guy was no neat freak, dirty dishes, pizza boxes and empty bottles were everywhere.

Half way down the hall, steam billowed out of a doorway on the left. An open door at the far end of the hall revealed a bedroom, and she could see a closed door nearest the kitchen she could only assume was another bedroom, or possibly a home office. There were no curtains on the windows, allowing the street lights to fill the room with a golden glow.

She dared to move further into the apartment. She crept closer to the open bathroom door. This Percy fellow was kneeling in the bathtub, fully clothed, hot water cascading over him. He appeared to be praying, as well he should. Percy Augustus Willoughby had had a very bad night, that was evidently true. She watched a second longer, and then crept back to the living room sofa.

She sat there studying her surroundings. Nothing in the apartment gave her a clue as to who this man was. Was he being paid to follow Bonas? He sure as hell wasn’t a cop. Was he nothing more than some freak that got his kicks by annoying dangerous people until he got his ass kicked?

She caught herself shaking.

Her gaze fell upon the bottle sitting on the coffee table directly in front of her. The label declared it to be something called cinnamon whiskey. The bottle was half full. She unscrewed the top, and took a long pull. The fire went directly to her sphincter. Recovery was slow. She couldn’t believe the little man presently busy praying in the bathroom couldn’t hear her gasping for air.

She replaced the cap and studied the bottle’s label. What the hell is cinnamon whiskey anyway? Whoever this little prick is, he is definitely tougher than he looks.

Movement in the bathroom shook her out of her revelry. She would have to unravel the mysteries of the distilling business another day.

She quickly tiptoed to the front door, throwing the apartment keys into a glass ashtray sitting on the hall table as she passed. She quietly closed the door. She stood in the hall for a short time more. She had no idea what had just happened or what it meant. She guessed that she was back to square one, deal with the Lou problem first, and try to figure out what this little dope was up to later.

The little guy had shown up on the scene just a week ago, it seemed longer.

***

Tuesdays at the Black Stag were usually pretty quiet, but Georgina knew Lou and his cronies would be there. She had been past the place dozens of times, but was never curious enough about what lay behind the heavy oaken door to actually walk in. The building was all black, with brass fittings on the door. The marquee was brass, as was the stag’s head in profile. The sign said simply Black Stag. The place had the look of a private club rather than a neighbourhood bar. The Black Stag didn’t do bright lights or loud music, no sandwich boards outside announcing happy hour, no menus enshrined under glass. The one bow to entertainment was the big screen television in the larger of the two public rooms. The sound was adequate if you were interested, but not imposing if you weren’t.

The Black Stag was not a large place. Georgina figured that the only reason Lou and his buddies drank here was because it was an easy stagger home. The only reason Georgina had ventured in was to research Lou’s daily routine, to try to identify problems before they occurred. Killing folks is a complicated business.

She almost fainted when she opened the door and there at the bar, directly in front of her, sat a familiar face. An old colleague from long ago, one Hank van der Dourin, not that Hank would remember her. She had been fresh out of the academy, he was nearing the end of his career of over thirty years, most of it as a detective. Hank van der Dourin was a legend on the force.

Hank had retired about four months after Georgina first started. His leaving was expected and planned for. What was surprising for everyone was that his long time partner of over six years, Alice Walker, had up and left too. Alice had been labelled as an up-and-comer, someone who was on her way to the top.

Where Hank was completely unflappable, rarely spoke, had an almost Zen quality to him, always the reasonable voice in the room, Alice, on the other hand, was more, what should we call it, in your face. They had made a very successful team.

While Georgina was stumbling around trying to make sense of why Hank van der Dourin was sitting at the bar in the Black Stag in the middle of the day, out of the kitchen strolls, you guessed it, Alice Walker, followed by an Asian gentleman, who Georgina was to learn later, went by the unlikely name of O’Leary Lee. Alice told Georgina to sit wherever it suited her, and brought her the drink she ordered. O’Leary Lee joined Hank at the bar.

It turned out that Hank and Alice owned the Black Stag, their only staff was O’Leary Lee, the cook. Mr. Lee ran the kitchen, Hank made sure the daily papers were given a proper scanning, Alice did the rest. Georgina would spend a lot of time at the Black Stag. What it lacked in conventional entertainment, it made up for in interesting characters and conversation. One of the interesting stories she had heard was how O’Leary Lee had become one of the crew.

A couple of summers before Hank had retired, he and Alice were called out to a gang dust up in a place called the Red Dragon, late one Friday night. It seems two rival gangs had chosen the same night and the same hour to partake of the all you can eat buffet. When the establishment ran out of frogs legs, all hell had broken loose.

By the time Hank and Alice had gotten there, the restaurant that five minutes before had been packed, was no longer packed. Anyone still able to get out of the place had done so. That left them four very dead people, one being a fat guy from Wisconsin who had picked a rather bad time to step out of the restroom, and three very injured to ship off to the hospital.

The only exception was O’Leary Lee, chef.

It seems Mr. Lee had stepped into the walk-in freezer to count the egg rolls. When he reemerged, the place was empty, except for, well you know. It took a while to sort the whole mess out, but when things were wrapped up, it was noticed that the buffet was still hot and aside from a clean through and through involving the chow mein, mostly unaffected by the evening’s fracas. The food was declared superior by all those in attendance.

Years later when the pair were looking for someone who knew how to cook, the first person Alice thought of was the Chinese guy with the odd name. O’Leary jumped at the chance. Things around the Red Dragon were getting worse. Lately he had spent more time counting egg rolls than he had cooking.

Georgina Hughes’ own career in law enforcement hadn’t gone quite so swimmingly. Perhaps if she had been older. That first and only summer had been unusually hot, and had been nonstop mayhem. Georgina couldn’t believe what people could do to themselves and others. By September the shakes had started, she couldn’t sleep, and then the drinking started.

They were called out to an area of low rent buildings, slum landlord stuff, just before midnight. The caretaker met them outside. The place had gone dark and very quiet, no one answered their knock.

According to the caretaker, a couple with a small child and one on the way were inside. The caretaker let them in. The tiny apartment had been ransacked. There was blood everywhere. The two cops avoided the one closed door for the time being. No one answered their calls.

Georgina found the woman in what is called a galley kitchen. She had been stomped into the space between the wall and the refrigerator.

She backed out into the main room to find her partner staring at what she first took to be some kind of weird wall hanging. It wasn’t. The tiny body had been thrown at the wall with such force that it had become embedded in the plaster.

That left one person missing and only one door unopened. It was Georgina who opened the door. The man was huddled in the corner beside the bed, his back to her. She couldn’t find the light switch. After repeated calls for him to show his hands, he finally realized that he was no longer alone. He didn’t get up, he just turned his head and smiled at her. He turned his face back into the corner, then his head exploded.

Georgina’s night wasn’t over. After a stop at the barracks for a shower and a change of clothes, they were back on the street, this time to a college football party that was getting out of hand.

The team was having a great year, the party was being held at the mayor’s house. Three dozen souls had been invited, ten times that were now present, and the mayor wanted them gone. Six cars full of cops showed up on scene. None of them had noticed that Georgina was drunk.

She was told to go to the third floor balcony, to shoo the kids down. When she got there, she was confronted by the team’s star player, very drunk and very naked. He informed Georgina that he wasn’t going anywhere, and that she wasn’t man enough to make him. He filled his mouth with beer and spit it on her.

Georgina promptly tossed his three hundred pound ass over the balcony rail. Witnesses said he cleared the rail by a good thirty centimeters. Oh don’t get excited, the fall didn’t ruin the young star’s career. Booze and gambling did that.

However, his season was pretty much fucked, as was the mayor’s Mercedes sedan parked below the balcony, and into which the young lad had landed, going right through the sunroof, and from which it took the fire department two hours to remove him.

Oh, one other thing, that football star happened to be the mayor’s son.

Georgina put her gun and badge in a brown envelope and left it on the watch commander’s desk before she left that morning. She never went back.

And that brings us to why Georgina Hughes was sitting outside the Black Stag in a van borrowed from the Justin and Son Plumbing Company, waiting for Lou Bonas to make his way home. She knew that Lou would leave sometime after twelve, and he’d be half in the bag. Lou tended to get belligerent and aggressive when he drank. Actually, Lou was never good company, but after about three drinks he became dangerous, something her late