D.O.A.: A Love Story Between a Man and a Ghost.

By Eric Trujillo

Revenge is a dish best served… STEAMING HOT!!!
After being beaten, clubbed, and stomped almost to death by two fag-bashing, jack-booted brothers on the darkened streets of Atchafalaya City, Louisiana, gourmet chef, Kenneth James Cunningham, wants revenge.
But being dead, there’s nothing he can do about catching his killers so, two weeks after his death, he revives whole, solid, very human, and sexy as hell, in a most unusual vehicle, to solicit help in capturing the murderers.
Kenny, as he prefers to be called, has many restrictions: he cannot leave the floor on which he died, he cannot read people’s minds, fly about, or walk through walls like ghosts do in movies, TV, or books; and he is invisible to everyone but his would-be rescuer, Jeremy Mallory, but he can provide crucial information that can lead to the capture of the dastardly brothers.
He gets huffy if he’s called a ghost and downright pissed if he’s called a “friendly ghost,” preferring the term, “disembodied spirit.”
To occupy his time and “show his appreciation,” Kenny whips up gourmet fare for Jeremy on a nightly basis and, true to the old axiom, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” they fall in love despite knowing that their affair is doomed to be short-lived.
When Miz Xochipapálotl (“Xochi” for short) Zamorawitz, Atchafalaya City’s only homicide detective, doesn’t appear to be doing anything to catch the killers, Jeremy steps in to do the job, which is greatly facilitated when the killers come hunting for him!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669847175

Eric Trujillo

Septuagenarian Eric Trujillo was born in South Louisiana and educated in both Louisiana and Mexico City. He speaks English and Spanish fluently, and can 'maneuver' in three other languages. He worked for the State of Illinois in various investigative positions for thirty years before returning to Louisiana, where he currently lives with his two standard poodles, Bella and Leo. He is the father of Jared, now an attorney in New York City. This is his first novel.

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D.O.A.

A Love Story Between A Man

And A Ghost.

Eric Trujillo

Copyright © 2022 by Eric Trujillo.

All rights reserved. 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 copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/22/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgement

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

Epilogue

About the Author

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Me, Myself, and I, and to the right hand of G-d, that has kept me on the Straight (but definitely not CIS) and Narrow Path.

It is also dedicated to the three people I love most, my parents, now deceased, and my son, Jared.

What a life!

Acknowledgement

I have a very weird brain. Everything I am, I owe to it, so I dedicate this book to my brain.

D.O.A. is the result of my brain’s nocturnal perambulations, as are my two previous novels and probably any I have yet to write.

My brain goes where I probably would never go, unrestrained by time, space, morality, temerity, or inhibition. It is completely uninhibited and there, it does its best work.

I sometimes feel guilty for not releasing it from time to time and letting it race through time and space, history, and future events, as it so desperately needs.

I keep it locked up inside my head during my waking hours but it needs its freedom just as a Thoroughbred stallion needs to run free, or a trained falcon needs to fly unfettered.

The first night the idea of D.O.A. percolated up from whichever spring my ideas come from, I wrote it down and waited a few days while the novella was hatching.

I sincerely doubt I would ever have come up with the idea of having Kenny’s soul jump into a solid wood coffee table if I were consciously cogitating on it.

That was my brain’s idea; pure nocturnal perambulation.

I have to admit that I came up with some of the story like the Logan brothers, their old harridan aunt, the woman reporter, Anne Crabtree, the bartender, and Kenny’s brother, Bucky, but the key stuff was left to an unbridled cerebrum, of which I am very proud and to which I am grateful, and over which I have very little control.

I came up with the detective, what she looked like, and her taciturn character, but her name irrupted into my dreams whenever I got stuck.

Her name was only going to be Xochitl, Xochi, for short, but one night, my weird brain said, Go all the way! And, I did! And Detective Xochipapálotl Zamorawitz was born.

My brain! What would I do without it?

Santé!

Chapter One

For whatever reason, I couldn’t sleep that night. I’m usually a sound sleeper. Regular as clockwork. I go to bed at 10 and rise at 6 for a run.

I think the problem was that I’d dozed off watching the 6 o’clock news and woke up at 10. Four hours of deep REM sleep. Now, my body was wide awake and itching to do something—but what was there to do at two AM besides watch infomercials on TV? I think not!

Two AM, the hour of nightmares and bad people!

In this lousy town, everything is closed by 10 except the bars. They hang on until midnight. The decent ones, anyway.

I’d just missed Last Call at the dive bars, most of which are on the outskirts of town. They close at 2, not that I’d go to any of them anyway!

So I stood looking out of my living room window watching the street lights of my unlovely little city. They stretched out in a neat grid pattern for about a mile or two before hitting the Atchafalaya swamp.

I had almost spaced out—hypnotized by the blinking of the red lights atop the twin bridges that that crossed the Shemida River two blocks away. They reminded me of twin hump-backed camels made of rusting steel when sudden activity on the street below caught my eye. I moved to the terrace off my living room where I had a better view of the street.

I live in the fifth floor penthouse of the town’s only high-rise, an Art Deco masterpiece that had started life as an upscale department store but transformed into a fleabag hotel when the oil business went bust. It was later purchased by an enterprising chap and repurposed into lovely, large condominium units.

Two men were beating and kicking a third man. From this height, it was impossible to see faces, only forms and activities. What I could see was one figure rolled into a ball, trying to protect his vital parts from the repeated kicks and stomps of the other two men. I yelled down, I’ve called the cops! They’re on their way! Then I grabbed my emergency whistle and blew it for all I was worth. I then grabbed my cell phone, called 911, and reported the incident.

The two assailants looked up. I ducked behind the parapet wall before they could zone in on the source of the voice. I don’t need that kind of trouble.

Sometimes you stick out your neck trying to help someone and your head gets chopped off.

The police station is just two blocks away, across the town square and to the right.

I yelled down again, They’re on their way!

The two assailants jumped into a noisy old, pickup and drove off, leaving the third man sprawled and bleeding on the sidewalk below me. Before he fled, however, the driver stood over the man lying on his side on the sidewalk, and pumped two bullets into him. I heard the resounding POPs that sounded like firecrackers and I saw the angry fire as the bullets left the pistol’s muzzle in rapid succession.

The police, the paramedics, and an ambulance should be here any minute, I thought, but the injured man didn’t move.

When nine minutes had passed and no police, fire, or paramedics had showed up, and the man still hadn’t moved, I kicked into my house shoes and slipped into my bathrobe, took the elevator down to the lobby, and out onto the street. The man was still sprawled on his side under the street lamp between our building and our parking lot next door.

He was a young man. Probably in his early-to mid-20’s. He had dark hair, a sparse beard, and was bleeding from the face and head. I was relieved to see that he was breathing. I pocketed my keys, knelt, and nudged him with my left hand. He didn’t respond.

He wore a thin white shirt—not a dress shirt, but more like the kind Hawaiians wear. The kind designed to remain untucked. It was torn at the shoulder and raised up around his midriff, bearing scuff marks and bruises from the boots that had kicked and stomped him almost to death. I could neither see nor feel where the bullets entered his body.

He also wore jeans, white crew socks, and black and white Nikes. The left one was still on his foot. I didn’t see the right