Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold Read online

  Acclaim for the Hard Case Crime Debut of CHRISTA FAUST!

  “Money Shot is a stunner, careening along with a wild, propulsive energy and a deliciously incendiary spirit. Laced with bravado and loaded up with knockabout charm, Christa Faust’s Hard Case debut is the literary equivalent of a gasoline cocktail.”

  —Megan Abbott

  “I was sucked into the tight, juicy Money Shot, from the ripping car trunk start to the hard-pumping climax. This novel is so convincing that you want to believe Faust has been an oversexed, naked killing machine, at least once.”

  —Vicki Hendricks

  “Money Shot is smart, stylish, insightful, fast-paced pulp fiction with razor sharp humor and a kick-ass heroine. Christa Faust is a super crime writer.”

  —Jason Starr

  “Money Shot makes most crime novels seem about as exciting as the missionary position on a Tuesday night. The results are stunning.”

  —Duane Swierczynski

  “Wonderfully lurid, with attitude to spare and a genuine affection for the best of hardboiled traditions. Christa Faust is THE business.”

  —Maxim Jakubowski

  “Christa Faust writes like she means it. Money Shot is dark, tough, stylish, full of invention and builds to one hell of a climax.”

  —Allan Guthrie

  “Christa Faust proves she can run with the big boys with this gritty thriller set in the darkest places of the porn industry. I loved it!”

  —McKenna Jordan, Murder By the Book

  “Never has an avenging Angel been sexier. Money Shot leaves you spent and wanting more.”

  —Louis Boxer, founder of NoirCon

  We had been driving through dusty Mexican nothing for so long, I would have gotten white-line fever if there had been any lines on the rutted dirt road. When we passed a dead car, it seemed way more exciting than it should have. A sad cluster of cement-block houses seemed like a bustling town. After the sun went down, I started to see pairs of bright, reflective eyes watching from the scrub brush on the sides of the road.

  Then finally lights in the distance. Strobes in gaudy headache colors and way too much neon, like an impossible fever dream after the sensory deprivation of the dark desert. Our destination turned out to be this weird lost fragment of Vegas imprisoned behind barbed wire. A maximum security Señor Frog’s.

  A razorwire fence ran all the way around the place with a sliding gate standing open. The front of the long, narrow building was all molded to look like rock, with fake plastic orchids sticking out at random intervals and several small waterfalls spilling into scummy plastic basins full of greenish American pennies. A big throbbing red sign read CLUB OASIS and flickering neon women shifted their glowing hips robotically from side to side.

  “Is this a strip club?” I asked, frowning at the bored-looking guy with body armor and an AK47 who waved us into the fenced parking area.

  “It’s an anything-you-can-afford club,” Hank replied...

  Some Other Hard Case Crime Books You Will Enjoy:

  MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust

  ZERO COOL by John Lange

  SHOOTING STAR/SPIDERWEB by Robert Bloch

  THE MURDERER VINE by Shepard Rifkin

  SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY

  by Donald E. Westlake

  NO HOUSE LIMIT by Steve Fisher

  BABY MOLL by John Farris

  THE MAX by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  GUN WORK by David J. Schow

  FIFTY-TO-ONE by Charles Ardai

  KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

  THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny

  THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake

  HOUSE DICK by E. Howard Hunt

  CASINO MOON by Peter Blauner

  FAKE I.D. by Jason Starr

  PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker

  STOP THIS MAN! by Peter Rabe

  LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood

  HONEY IN HIS MOUTH by Lester Dent

  THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES by Jonny Porkpie

  THE VALLEY OF FEAR by A.C. Doyle

  MEMORY by Donald E. Westlake

  NOBODY’S ANGEL by Jack Clark

  MURDER IS MY BUSINESS by Brett Halliday

  GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block

  QUARRY’S EX by Max Allan Collins

  THE CONSUMMATA

  by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

  CHOKE HOLD

  by Christa Faust

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-104)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: October 2011

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London SE1 0UP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know that it is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2011 by Christa Faust

  Cover painting copyright © 2011 by Glen Orbik

  Author photo by Jim Ferreira

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

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

  Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-285-7

  E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-405-9

  Cover design by Cooley Design Lab

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  For Chris Nowinski. Keep fighting.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I couldn’t have written this book without a good corner. Special thanks to Charles DeVos, Keenan Lewis, Paul Booe, Matt F’n Wallace, David Ferguson, Eddie Muller, Jimmie Romero, Mark Hardiman, Martyn Waites, Gokor Chivichyan, Gene LeBell, Allan “Pimp Daddy” Guthrie and Charles Ardai, the world’s best literary cutman.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  1.

  Do the things you’ve done in the past add up to the person you are now? Or are you endlessly reinvented by the choices you make for the future? I used to think I knew the answer to t
hose questions. Now, I’m not so sure.

  I was cutting a slice of lemon meringue pie and watching the door out of the corner of my eye when my past walked into the forgotten desert diner where I’d been waiting tables.

  “Angel?”

  No one had called me by that name in ages, but when I heard that familiar, sand-blasted South Side voice, I’ll admit I felt a tiny fishhook tug in my heart. I used to love hearing that voice say my name. Then I hated it. Right now, I didn’t know how to feel about it.

  The last time I saw Thick Vic Ventura, it wasn’t pretty. Neither was he. Twenty years of crank had cooked him down to bones and ashes. That was nearly two years ago, in another lifetime. I don’t know what the hell I was expecting to see when I turned to face that voice, but what I did see grabbed hold of the hook with both hands and twisted.

  I saw the ghost of the old Thick Vic. What little was left of his hair had gone steely gray, chopped short by an unskilled hand. His face looked ten hard years older than it should have but the young Vic was still there in his eyes. The same Vic I’d fallen for, back when we both believed that nothing really bad could ever happen to either one of us. Standing there by the register with his hands in his pockets, he looked clean and earnest. He’d put fifteen healthy pounds on his lanky frame and his skin looked warm and pink, like it actually had red, living blood running underneath. His dark eyes looked calm and sane and more than a little melancholy. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. I had no fucking idea what to say to him.

  “Hey, Vic,” I eventually said, for lack of anything better.

  For a long, uncomfortable moment, neither of us spoke. I looked down at the cheap yellow filling leaking from the slice of pie on the plate in my hand. Vic looked everywhere but at me. He was the one who spoke first.

  “I heard...well...” He paused, pulled his hands out of his pockets, looked down at them and then put them back in. “I heard a lot of crazy rumors about...what happened.”

  That line of conversation went nowhere fast. What was I supposed to say? Well, Vic, I was raped, shot and left for dead so I hunted down the bastards who did it and killed them in cold blood. That sort of thing doesn’t exactly make for nice casual catch-up chat.

  “You look good,” I said. At first I just said it because I needed to say something, but once it was out, I realized that I meant it.

  He shrugged and cocked his head with a self- deprecating smirk that was vintage Thick Vic.

  “Yeah well,” he said. “I’m not trying to kill myself with a needle anymore. I’ve been sober for a year and two months. This time I think it’s really gonna take.”

  I thought maybe I should say something like congratu- lations, but wasn’t sure, so I said, “How did you find me?” instead.

  “I didn’t.” Vic looked over at the corner booth and then down at his hands. “See that kid sitting over there.”

  I looked over at the kid Vic was talking about. He was barely eighteen. Broken nose but still way too handsome for his own good. Intense hazel eyes and dark hair buzzed down to the scarred scalp. Lean, athletic build under an expensive white t-shirt printed with trendy rococo designs, silver skulls and wings. His long, sinewy arms were already sleeved in unimaginative tattoos. There was a red and black motorcycle jacket slung over the back of the booth and a brain-bucket style helmet on the table beside him. He was trying a little too hard and wore bad-ass like a brand new pair of boots that hadn’t quite broken in yet. He’d ordered nothing but black coffee and flirted with me every time I came around to fill his cup. Told me he was waiting for someone, but not a girl because I was all the woman he’d ever need. Cocky, like some hot young gun who thinks he doesn’t need Viagra for his first scene. But underneath the bad-ass and the heavy handed Lothario charm, I got the feeling that he was anxious about something.

  “What about him?” I asked.

  Vic wiped his dry lips with the pad of his thumb and swallowed hard.

  “That’s my kid,” he said.

  “Your kid?” I frowned.

  Vic nodded, smile fading.

  “I’ve never met him.” He wiped his thumb across his lips again. “I mean, at the time I knew that Skye was knocked up, but she told me she was gonna get rid of it.”

  “Skye?” I asked. “You mean Skye Blue?”

  Vic shook his head. “Skye West.”

  “Natural blonde, kind of a hippychick amateur look? Shot mostly for Metropolis but wouldn’t do girl/girl?”

  “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “No shit,” I said, looking back at the kid in the corner booth.

  Now that Vic had mentioned it, the kid did bear more than a passing resemblance. He was a few inches shorter, a little prettier and much more muscular than his beanpole father but the crooked, charming smile and that cocky, big dick swagger should have been a dead giveaway.

  “I found out about him five years ago,” Vic said. “But at the time I was too strung out to care. My life is different, now, so...” Again, that familiar self-deprecating smirk. “I got no idea what to say to him.”

  I didn’t either, so I said nothing.

  “Well...” Vic said.

  “You really had no idea I was here?” I asked. “Your kid just happened to pick this diner to meet you?”

  “Small fucking world, eh? Of all the gin joints in all the towns...” More silence, then, “I’d like to see you again, Angel.”

  And there it was. I had kinda seen it coming but it still caught me off guard. We weren’t exactly in love back in the day, but I suppose it was as close to love as a couple of callow, narcissistic twenty-somethings who fuck other people for a living can ever really be. Anyway it’s the closest I’ve ever been. Whatever you call the way I used to feel about Thick Vic, I was sure I’d buried all those feelings the day I kicked him to the curb. Right around the time that kid in the corner booth had been conceived.

  “Look,” Vic continued. “I know you got no reason to give me the time of day, not after the way I fucked everything up between us. But I just want a few minutes of your time, to make amends.”

  “Amends?” I looked over at the old guy at the counter, waiting for his pie. He was starting to look annoyed. “It’s ancient history, Vic.”

  “Indulge me, Angel,” Vic said. “It’s part of my recovery.”

  The old charm was pretty threadbare but it still made me smile despite myself.

  “Is a blow job for old time’s sake part of your recovery too?” I asked.

  He cracked a grin that took years off his weathered face.

  “Come on.” He put his hand to his heart, mock offended. “What kind of guy do you think I am?”

  “I know exactly what kind of guy you are,” I told him. “That’s the problem.”

  “Just a few minutes, Angel,” Vic said. “Please? The blow job is optional.”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes.

  “Go talk to your kid,” I told him. “I’m off at midnight, okay?”

  He looked back at the kid and his smile evaporated. The kid was drumming on the table and looking out the window.

  “Miss?” said the man waiting for pie, one gnarled finger in the air.

  “Go on, willya?” I said to Vic. “You’ll be fine.”

  I walked down to the end of the counter and set the pie in front of the old man, who scowled down at it as if it were the pie’s own fault that it had taken so long to arrive. I turned to grab the coffee, surreptitiously watching Vic as he made his way over to the corner booth. He stood there with his back to me, shoulders hunched and uncomfortable under his beat up leather jacket. He was saying something I couldn’t hear. The kid stood and offered his hand.

  As I poured coffee for the old guy, Vic looked down at the kid’s offered hand and then slowly reached out to take it. They exchanged an awkward handshake and then Vic let go and reached up to push back long hair fifteen years gone in a nervous gesture that was painfully familiar. The kid was looking up at Vic like he was Santa Claus and not really payin
g attention to the three jittery Mexican guys who walked right past the “Please Wait To Be Seated” sign. I was staring into the mouth of the coffee carafe and wondering if I might actually fuck Vic again after all when one of those Mexican guys made the choice for me. He pulled out a gun and shot Thick Vic in the back.

  2.

  For a moment after Vic was shot, nothing happened. Vic pulled an instant, boneless pratfall so goofy-looking that I almost believed he was just horsing around. The rest of us stood frozen in place like children caught up in a game of red-light/green-light. My ears were buzzing and my heartbeat seemed like the loudest sound in the room. The kid was wearing a substantial portion of the contents of Thick Vic’s abdomen, staring bug-eyed at the mess all over his expensive t-shirt. The Mexican guys were looking back and forth at each other. The shortest one all flushed and pissed off. The shooter with an indifferent whatever kind of expression like a teenage son about to be lectured for staying out too late. The tallest but obviously youngest of the trio looking queasy and ready to bolt. Finally, the shortest guy spoke up. When he spoke, I realized how young they really were. My high school Spanish was useless in deciphering the angry barrage of slang and profanity.

  The short, swearing kid was bleached blond and manic with a tough, wiry build that he flung around in hyper-exaggerated rap video gangster body language. He was clearly jacked up on something much stronger than diner coffee. The bored looking shooter was darker skinned and a little Asian around the eyes, an adolescent rash of pimples across his high cheekbones. He seemed the least trashed and the most dangerous. He shrugged and pointed his gun at Vic’s kid.

  The third Mexican started to say something. He was tall and awkward and looked like he still had several years to go before his first legal American lap dance. He was wired and terrified, eyes jumping and jittering like shiny beetles in their sockets.

  “Shut the fuck up, man,” the short guy snapped in unexpectedly perfect English, adding a second gun to the mix but not sure where to point it.

  Vic’s kid, who up until that moment had been standing there clenching his fists and slowly flushing deeper and deeper red until his face matched his gory shirt, let out a wordless howl and launched himself at the bored-looking shooter.