Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Warren Zevon

By Down & Out Books

From classics like “Werewolves of London,” “Excitable Boy,” and “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” to lesser-known gems across a career spanning nearly four decades, the songs of Warren Zevon are rich with crime and intrigue and suspense—guns and gunners, assassins and drug dealers, a supernatural serial killer, and a heap of hapless losers along the way too.

In Lawyers, Guns, and Money, fifteen fantastic writers—avid fans of Zevon’s genius—offer fresh spins on his discography with tales that span the mystery genre: caper, espionage, noir, paranormal, private eye, and more.

With new stories by Gray Basnight, William Boyle, Dana Cameron, Libby Cudmore, Hilary Davidson, Steve Liskow, Nick Mamatas, Paul D. Marks, matthew quinn martin, Josh Pachter, Charles Salzberg, Laura Ellen Scott, Alex Segura, Kevin Burton Smith, and Brian Thornton, Zevon’s wry lyrics and unforgettable characters serve as the inspiration for dark crimes and dirty deeds – just the way he liked them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Release date: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005741747

Book preview

LAWYERS, GUNS, AND MONEY

Crime Fiction Inspired by the

Songs of Warren Zevon

Libby Cudmore and Art Taylor, Editors

Collection Copyright © 2022 by Libby Cudmore and Art Taylor

Individual Story Copyrights © 2022 by Respective Authors

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover design by Zach McCain

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lawyers, Guns, and Money

Introduction

Art Taylor

Introduction

Libby Cudmore

Desperados Under the Eaves

(Take Two)

Paul D. Marks

Full Automatic

(Inspired by Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner)

Steve Liskow

Excitable Boy

Charles Salzberg

Werewolves of London

Dana Cameron

Crawling Distance

(Inspired by Lawyers, Guns, and Money)

Laura Ellen Scott

Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School

Brian Thornton

Bill Lee

(Things to Do in Vermont When You’re Dead)

Kevin Burton Smith

Charlie’s Medicine

Libby Cudmore

Looking For The Next Best Thing

Hilary Davidson

Detox Mansion

Nick Mamatas

Bad Karma

Gray Basnight

Run Straight Down

Matthew Quinn Martin

Something Bad Happened to a Clown

William Boyle

My Shit’s Fucked Up

Josh Pachter

Keep Me In Your Heart

Alex Segura

About the Contributors

Preview from Bad Guy Lawyer by Chuck Marten

Preview from Canary in the Coal Mine by Charles Salzberg

Preview from The Damned Lovely by Adam Frost

To Paul D. Marks,

fine writer, fine friend,

gone too soon

Introduction

Art Taylor

Several factors led me, a couple of years ago, to propose to Down & Out Books the anthology you’re now reading.

At the time, two anthologies by Joe Clifford stood out as models for this kind of collection: Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Based on the Songs of Bruce Springsteen (2017) and Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash (2017). And while other such anthologies have come along since then—many of the recent ones edited by Josh Pachter, a contributor here—it was Joe’s work that started me thinking.

A second inspiration was Paul Nelson and Kevin Avery’s book It’s All One Case: The Illustrated Ross Macdonald Archives, which included information about Macdonald’s friendship with Warren Zevon and about Zevon’s having dedicated his 1980 album Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School to Ken Millar (Macdonald’s real name). Despite being a fan of both men’s work, I hadn’t known of this direct connection between Zevon and the world of crime fiction.

Finally, of course, was that fandom itself. I hesitate to admit how much I have always loved Werewolves of London. It’s a novelty song in Zevon’s own estimation, and certainly he wrote many better ones, but Werewolves still delights me greatly no matter how many times I hear it, especially that single line, Little old lady got mutilated late last night—the swift cadence of it and the sound echoes, all the l’s and d’s and t’s.

A crime in that favorite line, of course—evidence of a crime spree even—and a master writer behind it.

Wouldn’t Zevon’s songs be great inspiration for other crime writers?

In beginning to gather contributors, I took (mostly) a particular approach. Instead of reaching out to writers I admired and trying to gauge interest in Zevon’s work, I tried instead to search out writers who’d already expressed that interest on their own.

Laura Ellen Scott, a friend, had talked about Zevon before, for example, and her storytelling style seemed a good fit—would she be interested?

William Boyle mentioned Zevon in several places, including a great article on screwball noir for Criminal Element that I happened to be reading—which led me to cold-call email him.

Out of the blue one day, Kevin Burton Smith tweeted a question about why there wasn’t an anthology inspired by Zevon—which prompted an immediate direct-message recruitment.

Along the way, I discovered that I wasn’t the first to have this idea—an anthology had been loosely in the works already—and that trail led me to Libby Cudmore whose writings on crime, crime fiction, and music I already admired and who quickly partnered with me as co-editors and brought several more contributors aboard.

In other cases, I reached out to friends whose work I admired because I thought they’d be good fits. Dana Cameron is a terrific short-story writer, whether she’s writing colonial noir, modern espionage, or the world of the Fangborn. It was the latter that led me to ask her about Werewolves of London, but readers here get two worlds in one with a tale of espionage and the supernatural that gestures deftly toward the source material.

And my good friend Paul D. Marks has often written blog posts about music—a passion twinned alongside his love of movies—and he melds both subjects in his story here, set in the world of filmmaking.

Paul passed away in early 2021, as many readers may know, and I’m sorry he didn’t get to see his fine story here in print. Despite early momentum and quick work by so many of the contributors and by Libby, too, as co-editor, this project languished for too long on my DropBox—embarrassingly so. (Many reasons for that, but to borrow a Zevon title, no need to be Poor Poor Pitiful Me here!)

I’m grateful to the contributors for their work and their patience and to Libby for keeping us pushing ahead. I’m glad that this anthology is now out in the world, and I hope readers will not only enjoy the stories here but also go back and give a listen to the songs that inspired them.

Back to TOC

Introduction

Libby Cudmore

Warren Zevon did all the work for us.

We could have just as easily done an anthology of westerns inspired by Zevon (Frank and Jesse James, Bullet for Ramona) or comedy (Gorilla, You’re a Desperado, Bad Karma). But Zevon continued to return to assassins and punks and drug dealers and unfortunate saps just caught in a cycle of bad luck and worse choices, so it just seemed natural to put together an anthology of crime fiction inspired by his music.

The stories in this collection aren’t just long-form retellings of his songs. Frank and Jesse James or Excitable Boy or Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner are already brutal little slices of flash fiction; nothing we could add would make them any better. Rather, the authors took the characters and settings and themes and used them as a springboard into their own gritty worlds. A scorned writer in Hilary Davidson’s Looking for the Next Best Thing. A world-weary orderly in Nick Mamatas’s Detox Mansion. A human-hybrid harvester scavenging the wasteland in mMatthew Quinn Martin’s Run Straight Down. Zevon was the muse; the authors, the vessels.

And how better to celebrate an author who himself was a prolific reader of mysteries and crime? Carl Hiaasen co-wrote a song with him, for Christ’s sake. In 2018, his ex-wife, Crystal, herself the author of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, auctioned off the thousands of novels in his collection—stacks of mysteries by Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, and others, to raise money for the Brookview Community Center in West Barnet, Vermont. The man knew his noir.

The stories in this collection are homages to a man who, like so many of his characters, never got his full due in his lifetime. So, as the man once said, turn those speakers up full blast, play it all night long.

Back to TOC

Desperados Under the Eaves

(Take Two)

Paul D. Marks

The Long-Haired Man grabs the Red Apple cigarette pack. Taps one out. Flicks a match on it. The tip glows crimson. He inhales, looks back at his posse. They wait for his signal.

He exhales a plume of gray smoke. Reminds them, The square sleeps in the back bedroom.

They nod. The four of them, the Long-Haired leader, two young women, and another young man also with long hair, dirty bell-bottoms and hippie beads, stealthfully tread their way along the dirt path to the house, kicking up dust from crunching gravel. Open the door, creaking on its hinges. They file in, close the door behind them.

A loud scream pierces the silence. Another. Several seconds later, the two women and younger man come out of the house, followed by the Long-Haired Man. They’re all smiling, except for him.

The Long-Haired Man grins. Right on, he says, softly. Beatific smiles all around. His crew appreciates his approval.

Charlie would be proud, one of the women says, her eyes sparkling.

The Long-Haired Man taps another cigarette from the pack. Flicks a match on it. The tip doesn’t glow. A gust of wind snaps the match out. He grabs another. Won’t light.

Go with the flow, a voice shouts from the sidelines. "Stay in character, like Jack Nicholson did in Chinatown."

The Long-Haired Man looks up, straight into the camera—something you’re not supposed to do.

Cut, the director shouts.

Dalton, the Long-Haired Man out of character now, snags a script from a table, walks to the side, sits in a director’s chair with no name on it. Someday he wants his name on the chair. On the marquee. Above the title. This flick could be his big break. It’s a small part, but a pivotal one. Is it his fault the damn cigarette wouldn’t light in the wind? And what the hell’s the director talking about, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown? He looks it up on his phone. Apparently, Nicholson and Faye Dunaway were in a scene in a car. He tries to light a cigarette. The lighter won’t light. He plays off it instead of letting it kill the scene. Why couldn’t Dalton have done that?

Joselyn—one of the young women in his posse—approaches.

Hey, Jos.

Hey, Dalton, I think it went well.

Wish I could have done better with that cigarette bit.

That’s what retakes are for, Jos says. Isn’t it funny that your name is Dalton and one of the main characters in the movie is Rick Dalton?

Well, it’s my first name and his last.

But still, it’s some kind of sign. Fate.

Maybe. Maybe someday I’ll be playing one of the mains. He stands, squaring his hips, sweeping his hair off his face. You done for the day?

I have another scene, she says.

I’m done, Dalton says.

Dinner tonight?

She’s kind of cute in her hippie drag. Sure. He slaps the script closed. He can’t decide if he likes her or not. They’re friends, but does he want to be more than that? Time will tell.

Eight o’clock?

He nods. I know just the place. I’ll text you.

He heads for his car, looking around Corriganville Park, a couple of hours’ drive out of L.A. He walks past the main set, a recreation of an old movie ranch. Off to the side is the exterior façade of the house where he played his scene today. It’s not part of the main set, an old movie western town, and it wasn’t part of the ranch. But they built the home in the park near the ranch set to save money, even though the real thing was in Topanga Canyon near the beach.

Corriganville, he thinks. He’s looked it up. It used to be a thriving movie ranch itself. Now most of it’s been developed into housing, except for a couple hundred acres, which is the park. He laments that ticky-tacky houses fill up the spaces once roamed by Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and others that he grew up watching when he was left home alone. He loves Old Hollywood and black and white movies, unlike most of his millennial friends.

Instead of heading home, back to Hollywood and his apartment, he’s heading to another abandoned movie ranch up the road. Well, it’s not really a ranch anymore. Like Corriganville it’s more of a park today. But it has history—history that even Corriganville can’t match—history that can help him get into his part. Make it real. Make it bite. A place where history and movies morph into one.

This’s the real thing, he says, getting out of his car. He hasn’t been here before. He should have come sooner, before principal photography began. But he’s here now, and he has the park to himself.

This place’ll help me get into the role. See it. Feel it. Touch it. Live it. He’s euphoric. He bends down, picks up a handful of dirt, rubs it between his palms until it falls back to the ground, leaving only a dusty patina on his hands. He can feel the history seeping into him, his body absorbing it just by being here.

The park is typical SoCal scrub and chaparral, rolling hills. And nothing like it had been when it was a movie ranch. Not even like it was in the late sixties, when the Family stayed here. That’s why it had to be recreated at Corriganville a couple of miles away.

The movie sets that once lived here are gone. Nature’s taking back the land. There’s nothing left of the old days, only some bad memories.

But he can feel them. He can feel the memories, hear people talking, making love. Feel the vibe. It courses through him like an electric current. It’s here. They’re here. He’s here. Charlie Manson’s aura permeates this place. The history is here. Good or bad, it’s still history. Dalton is in a trance, imagining what the Spahn Ranch was like back in the day. What if he’d been around then? Would he have joined Manson’s Family? He doesn’t think so. He would have seen through them.

A scorpion crawls up his boot, snapping him back to the present. He lifts his leg, shakes it to the ground, brings his boot down hard on the ugly thing. The trance is broken.

Eight p.m. and the garish neon on Beverly Boulevard beckons the crowds to come eat and drink, and come they do, like moths to a light. Restless patrons spill out the door, waiting for a table. Jos and Dalton are two of them.

I don’t get this place, Jos says. It’s always crowded and it’s so tacky.

Tacky is its charm, he says. "People either love it or hate it. But everyone comes here sooner or later. It’s like Rick’s in Casablanca."

I know why you picked it—ties in with our film.

Directly ties in. It makes me feel like I’m living the movie, living the character. He looks around at the eclectic clientele. But I’ve been coming here for years, ever since I came to LA. Long before I knew its connection to the film’s story, but that does add just a little extra inspiration for my part. He drags his hand along the rough stucco of the building’s exterior, letting it insinuate itself into his palm like he did with the dirt at Spahn Ranch earlier in the day.

Their names are called. The host leads them to a table. Dalton trails behind Jos, watching her—the way she walks. The way she carries herself. She’s very attractive, but not striking enough to be a leading lady. He wonders what he feels about her. He likes her. They’re compatible. He wants to know her better. Maybe even have a relationship. Maybe? They’re seated. The waitress asks if they want drinks.

I’ll have a salty margarita.

I’ll have the same, extra salt, Jos says.

The waitress nods, heads off.

You really dig into your parts, Jos says. Her eyes are green and wide and looking at him. She seems like she’s into him. He likes her. He likes spending time with her. But he’s driven. He has one goal: to be a star—a household name. Does he have time for a relationship?

I haven’t had that many parts to get into, but I’m hoping this one changes that. Even though it’s small, it’s visible.

The waitress brings their drinks.

Here’s to our success. Jos picks up her glass, holds it out for him to clink. You were destined to be in this movie.

All I ever wanted was to come to LA. Be in movies. Be famous. He touches his glass to hers, sips his margarita. The salt from the rim stings his chapped lips.

Famous? Everyone wants to be famous these days. I just want to be a good actor. She chases her margarita with some nervous nibbling on chips. So, what’s your motivation? What’re you willing to do to achieve it?

Anything. You just gotta be persistent.

There’s persistence and then there’s putting food on the table. My day job doesn’t like when I take time off to do a shoot.

Fuck the day job. He empties his glass and signals the waitress for another.

I wish, Jos says, a slight tremor of anxiety in her voice. Sharon Tate got famous. Sometimes you gotta be careful what you wish for.

She’s not ambitious like him. She has a good agent, who sends her out. She’s pretty, but she looks like every other wannabe actress out there. Still, she has something that casting directors like. And she has something that he likes.

When everyone knows you, you get better parts, he says. How’d your last scene go today?

Good as it could. I don’t think I’m ever gonna be a star, though. I don’t even know if I can make a living as an actor. Jos is looking at him now, uncomfortably long. What does she see? You should be playing Manson. You look more like him than the guy that is. You’ve got the intensity in the eyes. The whole set of your face.

Damn right, but he won’t say it to her. Not now. Not yet. As one of his followers, my part’s actually bigger than his. I just hope it gets noticed. He sips his margarita, now savoring the burn of the salt. Looks around. This is the place, huh?

What?

The real place. Where Sharon Tate ate her last meal. He leans toward her.

She tries to maintain their space, leans back slightly. I heard she loved it here.

Sitting here, I can feel her presence, Dalton says reverentially.

I feel like we’re living it, living the movie.

I feel like we’re in a movie. I often feel like I’m in a movie. Dalton’s world revolves around the black and white movies, comedies, dramas, westerns, and film noir that he’d watched as a latchkey kid when his parents were out. He was always happiest when they were gone so he could lose himself in the reality of the old movies and forget about his real life.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between that and real life, she says, while studying his eyes.

Getting harder all the time, he says.

Jos laughs. But he’s serious.

Do you ever think we’re predestined to do what we do? Dalton says.

That would mean we don’t have free will.

I mean, what if it’s like we’re in a script and there’s no room for ad-libbing?

Well, if we are in a script, I want a rewrite. She sips her margarita. I want a different life—better than this one.

I just want another margarita, Dalton says, hoping to lighten things up.

You on call tomorrow?

Not till Thursday when we shoot the interiors of the Topanga home. Thought I might hit my acting class in the a.m.

Did you drive?

I took an Uber in case I drank too much, but I haven’t drunk enough. He finishes his second margarita.

You live in Hollywood, right? At least you don’t have to drive all the way to the valley. I can drop you on my way home. Then shoot up Highland to the freeway.

You wanna come by? He’s smiling now, shooting for warmth. It’s genuine, but he’s an actor and wonders if it looks phony anyway.

I would, but I have an early call. I can let you off at Hollywood and Highland. Can you get home from there?

Sure, I can walk down Hollywood Boulevard.

They hit Jos’s Civic, head off down Beverly Boulevard.

Don’t you live in the Princess Grace Apartments?

Dalton nods.

Isn’t that some kind of famous place?

Lots of movie stars and rock stars stayed there when it was the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel. It’s the same, just a different name.

Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel? I know that name.

"It’s in a Warren Zevon song, Desperados Under the Eaves."

I know that song—my dad used to play it. Didn’t Zevon stay there?

Yeah, until he had to ditch out one night for not paying his bill. And if this part doesn’t get me more parts, I might do the same. I’d never heard of Zevon. He was before my time, but when I heard he’d lived there, I looked him up. I dig old Hollywood, but I’m not into old rockers.

You like it there?

Better than sleeping on the street. Besides it gives me street cred. He puffs up, going for tough, going for cred.

Sleeping on the street would give you real street cred. She laughs.

Hollywood Boulevard’s coming up.

She pulls to the curb. He thanks her for the ride.

Well, just don’t step on any of the celluloid heroes, she says.

Dalton waves goodbye. As she drives up Highland, he starts walking east on Hollywood Boulevard. Neon rain starts falling. Not hard. The street becomes a mélange of blue, red, and green from neon signs, reflecting in the windows, on the asphalt and the sidewalk. It doesn’t stop the party on the Boulevard.

He heeds Jos’s advice and avoids stepping on the stars embedded in the sidewalk. Somehow that would be disrespectful and probably bad luck. Some day when he has a star here, he’d like it if people didn’t step on it, didn’t step on his name.

He walks past the wax museum and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Past the Museum of Broken Relationships—the perfect melding of form and function.

Continuing east, he passes the Vogue Theatre, which makes a cameo appearance in the movie he’s working on. Walks past Boardner’s, which definitely isn’t the same as it was in the old days, and Musso and Frank, which is closer to what it was in the Golden Age. They even shot a scene in the movie he’s working on at Musso. Ghosts of Charlie Chaplin, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler bounce out of Musso and echo in his head. But if you mention their names to the huddled masses on the street, most won’t know them. He has nothing but contempt for them—he comes from them. He comes from Oklahoma, like Brad Pitt. If you don’t want to get out of Oklahoma, you don’t have any drive. He came to Hollywood like everyone else—to be an actor. To be a star. But unlike everyone else he’s going to make it. He’s going to be famous.

He passes Princess Leia and Michael Jackson, Batman and Spiderman. He knows that for five or ten bucks, whatever the rate is these days, you can have your picture taken with them. But if you try to snap a picture of them and not pay, better hope your insurance is paid up—they’ll beat the crap out of you. He