John Malloy (11) +*Getting it Together*+

John Mslloy. (11) ( Getting it Together,)
John Malloy*+ (11)
            (The Blackmailed Beauty)

              *Getting It Together*

  After the pow-wow at Bowers' hacienda, I dropped the luscious Lana off at my humble flop. Lana and I had already snatched some of her glad rags and dame survival equipment, like war paint, bloomers, smelly foo-foo and such.

  Then I motored downtown to pump the desk sargeant at Withers' precinct on the whereabouts of the blackmailing vice-cop's favorite watering hole. I told the gorilla, perched high on his elevated desk, I was a long-lost cousin, just in town for the day.

    The red-mugged sarge clued me about a tavern Withers used daily to relieve the stresses of tossing innocent citizens in the downtown crowbar hotel. The tavern was a dive, just around the corner from Flatfoot-Central called the 'Pit Stop.'

    Later, I was happily aiming Ol' Betsy in the direction of a second-rate pawn shop in San Bernadino.

I'd planned to do that tomorrow, but there was plenty of daylight still to burn, so I perservered.

    I was rolling with the top down, enjoying the springtime sparkle in the air. I was heading north-west on Muscoy, getting close to grenade- shot range of Riverside Avenue.


   My old B-52 radio-jockey during that "unpleasantness," as the limeys like to call the second world war was operating a shady pawn business on Riverside....and I needed his services.

    Joey hangs his pawnbroker's  shingle on a slightly-shady clip-joint called 'Easy Pawn.'That's where I hoped to cut a deal on a home flicker camera and wire recorder from a skinny little bundle of nerves, sporting the handle of Joey (the tic) Melcher.

    The little weasel got that tag from the crew on that bomber I was dodging flack on for a few fun years. The reason for the tag is obvious when you meet the twerp. The jitterbugging shrimp is bedeveled by a constant twitch in his left eyeball.
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  As I turned on Riverside, passing all the seedy shops and beer joints, I was mulling over the pitfalls of blackmailing a vice-cop.

    If my plan went caddywompus on me, there was a whole dirty L. A.  vice-squad waiting in the wings to either dust my buns or slam me in the cooler for the remainder of my flowering youth.

  I spotted Joey's place of mostly under-the-table business off to my left. It sits planted on the corners of Muscoy Avenue and Riverside.

  I  navigated a U-turn in the intersection and pulled up in front of the house of broken financial dreams. I take a gander at the five-foot by three rectangular window, with a red neon sign in it announcing 'Pawn Shop.'

    I killed the motor and climbed out. I started ankling over the littered sidewalk  After I'd strolled past the curved brick wall to the left of the smudged window, I stepped-up to the peeling red door.

    I took in a lungful and entered 'Pawn Hell!'

    Hovering against the far
wall of the claustrophobic and cluttered room was little Joey Melcher, perched  behind a cracked glass display case. He was wearing horn-rimmed, coke-bottle prescription cheaters perched on his shiny schnozzola. His quickly-vanishing wisp of brownish scalp grass was tangled on top of his shiny dome. It looked like a small tornado had passed over it.

    "Ace, me boy!, "he grinned his yellowed, gap-toothed grin. "What's the haps, Jack?...What's buzzin', cousin?"

    He  clunked the broken clock onto the glass counter-top. I figured he'd been trying to bring the busted timepiece back to life.

    He awkwardly jaunted around the trinket-filled display case and clamped my mitt like a sweaty vise. His breath was strong and reeking of old garlic and stale beer.

    After he favored me with a few energetic pumps, he dropped his clammy paw and peered up. His left peeper was twitching like a nervous cat behind those thick lenses.

  "I need some spy gear, Joey," I  said, wiping my wet palm on my trousers. "What have you got that ain't too hot in the way of a flicker camera and wire recorder?"

    He tried to look wounded. "You gave me a slam, Sam!," he protested. "I been legit for 'most six months, now! That rap for recievin' stolen merch taught me to stick to the straight and narrow, Daryl!... Honest!"

    "I'll take your word for it, Joey," I smiled. "Can you help a fellow vet, Chet?"

     He beamed me another snaggle- toothed grin."You're in luck, Chuck! Step right over here and I'll show ya the merch, Bert!"

  "That last rhyme time was a crime, Slime!," I grinned.

    The runt just shrugged his skinny shoulders from somewhere inside his oversized, burnt-orange zoot-suit. "Ya can't always hit on all eight, outta the gate, Mate!"

    "Show me  what you got, Joey," I said, peering over his shoulder.

    He spun on his axis and scurried off behind the counter, doing a vanishing act through the dark, curtained doorway to the back room.

    While he was out of my hair, I started browsing around among the assorted trash Joey was trying to peddle to any sucker he could hustle.

    "Take a look-see at this merch, Lurch!," Joey piped-up from behind. He came scurrying over with a camera and a wire recorder in his bony mitts. "Get a load of this shit, Brit!," he said, twitching around inside his orange polyester tent.

  "Give me the tour."

    Joey leaned over and dropped the recorder to the dusty cement floor, with a metallic racket. He held up the movie camera for me to examine. "I got the papers with this baby!," he beamed, pulling the crumpled owner's  manual from his breast pocket. He handed me the roughly eight-inch, brown camera, within extended lense in front. It felt like about three pounds.

    He brandished the paper in front of me and started rattling off info. "This honey is a  Bell & Howell, battery-operated, eight mill' home movie camera, complete with handsome leather case an' carryin' strap...BABY! I can let 'er go for twenty clams, Sam!"

    I'll give you fifteen!"

    He handed over the papers and grinned. "Done in one, son!" he grinned. "Now..take a good gander at this wire recorder!...You'll flip your lid, Sid!"

    Later, I wrapped-up both the electronic gadgets and headed for the door, thinking about in which motel to set-up in after Mona hooks our slimy fish.

    As I was exiting, I heard, "Keep outta that ditch, Mitch!... Look out for that witch, Fritz!"

      In the doorway, I called back,
"Take care of that itch, Snitch! Try not to twitch, Fitch! You'll never get rich,
you son of a bitch!"

    As the door was closing behind me, Joey yelled, "Ain't it the truth,
Slueth?"

As the door clicked closed, I heard...."Ain't it the Goddamn, ball-bustin' TRUTH?!"
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John is about to find out if he can blackmail a masochistic vice cop, without landing in Alcatraz. © 4 hours ago, Leonard Wilson   novella • noir