Detective Steven Rush-San Francisco P. D. (1)

*Detective Steven Rush-


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Lenadrwilson   Follow
May 26  
Detective Steven Rush-San Francisco P. D.
Detective Steven Rush-
San Francisco P.D.*

(The 'Beat' Assassin)

    1955 is only three months old and I'm already swamped with unsolved cases. I pick up an older case from the stack on my desk and start to thumb through the pages, looking for anything I might of missed before.

    My service jacket tells me I'm Detective Sergeant, Second Class, Steven Rush. My friends call me Steve. My girl calls me Stevie. Mugs I've put behind bars have a gaggle of not so flattering handles to hang on me.

      I'm  assigned to Central Station. I've worked the Homicide Division for the last year. I hang my fedora here on the third floor where I can look out over the city I love. The ugly  building  is planted right in the middle of a section of town they call 'Little Italy.'

    The building is nothing to decorate a postcard with. It's a gray, six-story box, located at 766, Vallejo Street. It's an unattractive architectural structure, but I call it home.

    I spy my Lieutenant, marching down between two rows a of desks in the squad room, making eye contact with yours-truly.

    Frank Mosely is a hulk of a bureaucrat, sporting a flat top and a cheap blue suit. His shoes are always spit-shined and his demeanor makes Joe Friday look like a communist.

    He tosses a thin manilla folder on my cluttered desk. "Here's a preliminary report for you to start on, Rush!" he barks. "Someone just shot and killed the boyfriend of high-ranking  big shot in the Beat movement. Allen Ginsburg was walking with him and another hotshot leader and Ginsburg caught a slug in his forearm. It just nicked him, so he's O.K...Take a rookie detective with you and show him the ropes."

    Alright, Lou," I said, opening the folder, finding only one page with the address for the cafe,  names of the three guys  who were leaving it and several witnesses.

    I threw my keys to my  unmarked car across the isle to a young shaved-tail eager beaver named Johnny Malone. "You're driving, kid… Time to split this scene!"

      Once in the underground parking lot, I see the 54 tortoise and white Ford coupe, with black walls and moon hubcaps that scream 'Cop Car.'

    On the road, I read the sheet. "Head for North Beach. The site of the shooting is in front of the 'Vesuvio Cafe at 255 Columbus Ave. Do you know the joint?"

    "Yeah, Sarge," the kid answered.  "That's a hangout for the Beat, crowd. A lot of people in sandals drink Expresso and liquor…….mostly liquor. It's really a bar that used to be a restaurant before it was converted in 1948 to a Beat generation watering hole. I had a bohemian girlfriend who was raised in that neighborhood. We had a lot of dates there."

      I look over in surprise. 'Been there a couple of times, myself. I like the jazz when there's someone there blowing on sax."

  "I wonder why the call themselves the Beat generation?" asked my new partner.

    "From what I hear," I began, "It's taken from a jazz term, 'On the beat,' meaning in the groove or being with it. The anti- everything  movement was started by writers hanging out with jazz performers. That's why they experiment with everything from morphine to bennies to L.S.D. We'll be bumping gums with Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac; two big wigs in the movement. It was Kerouac's boyfriend who ate lead and croaked on the scene."

    "I was wondering, Sarge," the kid said, after  a few minutes of silence on our way down Broadway. "Were you in Korea?....I ask because I spent a couple of years there before I went into the academy."

    "No way," I grunted. "I got my belly full of war when I jockeyed a Hellcat fighter in the South Pacific. I helped cripple a couple of Jap carriers in the Battle of Midway. After dodging and shooting down Zeros in the sky for way all day, I lost my taste for war."

      I look over to Malone.  "We had to fight that war or be enslaved by the Nazis…..Korea was another kettle of fish, kid.  North Korea  was no threat to America. We had no right to be there killing folks  in the middle of someone else's civil war."

    "Here we are, Sarge," the fresh-faced rookie said, pulling over to the curb.
 
    "Follow my lead, kid," I said, climbing out of the bucket. "Try not to get in my way if you can help it!"














This is the first chapter of a new Novella Noir, set in the backdrop of real 1955 San Francisco and the world of the Beat generation. The story is fiction. The historical setting is real.
, © May 26, Leonard Wilson   novella • noir   
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Likes: Lianonsidhe

Lianonsidhe - Wow! Great story! You've really got to finish this. Reads just like any good detective story. Thank you for sharing.

Lianonsidhe  InspiredMay 26   x rate: , ,    skip

Lenadrwilson - I can't thank you enough for the encouraging words, my new friend. It's hard to judge your own work. You mJe me want to flesh out the story. In my noirs writes, I M inspired by all the noir movies from the forties and fifties. My characters are fictitious, but the historical backdrop is as accurate as I can make it. That's my schtick
Once again... Thank you for the kind words. I'll try not to disappoint you..May 27   x  edit
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