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  Redhead

  a novella by

  Jason McIntyre

  Published by The Farthest Reaches

  Copyright © 2017 Jason McIntyre

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Fiction titles by Jason McIntyre

  On The Gathering Storm

  Thalo Blue

  Walkout

  Mercy and the Cat

  Black Light of Day: A Collection

  Nights Gone By: A Collection

  The Night Walk Men: A Novella

  The Devil’s Right Hand: A Night Walk Men Novel

  Corinthian: A Night Walk Men Story

  Kro: A Night Walk Men Story

  Dovetail Cove titles by Jason McIntyre

  1. Deathbed (Dovetail Cove, 1971)

  2. Bled (Dovetail Cove, 1972)

  3. Fled (Dovetail Cove, 1973)

  4. Redhead (Dovetail Cove, 1974)

  5. Zed (Dovetail Cove, 1975)

  6. Unwed (Dovetail Cove, 1976)

  7. Shed (Dovetail Cove, 1977)

  8. Dread (Dovetail Cove, 1978)

  9. Instead (Dovetail Cove, 1979)

  - 10. [COMING SOON] (Dovetail Cove, 1980) -

  Learn more about the author and his work at:

  www.theFarthestReaches.com

  Dovetail Cove

  September 6, 1974

  Part I

  Denny

  “There is all of the difference in the world

  between paying and being paid.”

  —Herman Melville

  1.

  My name is Frances Margaret Banks and I’ve killed two men, one a yellow bastard...and the other a good man. A strong man. A man who shouldn’t have died.

  Do I feel guilt about that?

  About the one, yes.

  But not about the other. Most certainly not. And I hope he rots in hell.

  2.

  At this late hour of things, as I’m giving this account of how I got to here, I figure there’s no point in lying. I’m going to lay it out. The whole truth and nothing but.

  And in that spirit, I’ll start with the yellow bastard. Me, a call girl born to a call girl, grown up but still young enough to be stupid about her body...and her money. I didn’t even have a savings account until I met him. His name was Denny Munn and everyone I knew called him ‘Dirty Denny’ behind his back. Never to his face. He’d a struck you for such a transgression, I’m sure of it. And he hit me, by God. Hit me good, back in a hot July night of, oh, must have been ’65 or ’66. Can’t remember which.

  And, no, the walloping I took didn’t blur my memory. It’s just time, simple, plain and true. Time takes the details and washes them out to sea just like the sand on Neckline Beach, north of town.

  I can’t remember which July it was, and it makes no difference. You’ll see why. I aim to tell the truth, but not the details that don’t matter one whit. That one doesn’t. The deal is, Dirty Denny hit me. The deal is, he also paid me heaps to be his company-maker and to make whatever painful thing it was eating at his brain go clean away in the deep, dark parts of the night.

  And that’s what I was good at. That’s what I was there for. I was a prostitute. Guess I still am. Maybe it’s like those drinkers you hear about. Once they get a taste, they’re a drinker their whole lives. It’s a disease they live with, every waking or sleeping minute—no matter whether they touch a drop of it to their tongues another solitary time in their whole existence.

  So that’s me. Even though I haven’t turned a trick (least not for money) in a few years at least, I’m still a prostitute. And during Dirty Denny’s tenure in my bed, that’s just exactly what I was. There were other men, plenty, but I kept them sort of...well...secret from Dirty Denny. He must have known. But he pretended not to.

  I guess all Johns are like that, though, aren’t they? During their time with their gal, he’s the only man in her universe. And a good girl (like I was) who takes her job seriously (like I did) makes him feel that way each and every time. I do that to oil the hinges on the wallets, so they get lighter and there’s no guilt around it. And, next time that man is in port, he knows he’ll feel like the only man in the universe, yet again. Each time, those hinges get greasier and greasier.

  3.

  Dirty Denny Munn, I say it again, he was a yellow bastard. He was the ugliest coward I ever knew (and I knew some serious ones). And when I say ugly, I don’t mean in looks. He was fine. His peter was average (maybe a little smaller; after a while you don’t pay much attention to those inside the bell curve, but only to those that sit on either extreme of the average).

  Fine enough looking gent. Losing his hair like a lot of men his age, and a lot of belly fat. He had a chubby wallet, too, one with trick hinges. It would open wide and generous but then it would snap shut for illogical reasons. He didn’t like your outfit one night. He thought you’d lingered at Johnny’s bar tap too long while you were waiting on your chardonnay that Denny’d paid for. Whatever it was, Ol’ Dirty Denny was fickle with his attention and his dollars.

  Nonetheless, during the four or five years he was my regular, I did open a bank account at Island Savings. It was a kids’ account—the Little Dippers’, they called it. I got that one because I read the rules and, though there was a minimum age (8), there was no maximum age to open one of those. It paid better interest (by a quarter per cent) and it compounded daily instead of monthly like the adult accounts. The banker gent, he just laughed and let me do it. I got no respect from the upper crust in Dovetail Cove. For stuff like this, it was fine with me because it actually helped me. Let them laugh. I didn’t care. I bit my tongue, smiled, and took my passbook with the little fish on the cover. I paid into my Little Dippers’ account, not regularly, but at odd intervals and usually when I had a fairly large chunk in even bills. Four hundred, not three hundred, eighty-six. Or maybe I had eight-hundred and seventeen in-pocket after a week of greased wallet hinges. But in that event, I’d make the deposit slip out as eight hundred, even, and keep back the seventeen as ‘walking around money’.

  In those days, I rented a room on Beacon above the Lowballs Pub. It used to be called the Beacon Street Bar but went by Lowballs since Johnny bought it. It’s still a shitty place, let’s be real, but Johnny liked having me there. I believe he thought me a decent business woman (as time went on; not in the beginning, but I got most of my green out of my system before we knew each other). I think young Johnny thought of me as a ‘feature’. Just one more thing, along with the colour TV, the cablevision, the dart board and the black felt on the pool table for husbands and sailors to come inland as far as his pub for their boredom and spare change. Sure, he did drink specials and had takeout menus from the Highliner but everyone also knew that it’s where you waited on a date with Fanny Mae. That’s me. I had a good reputation. I was, as they say, the best.

  And only the best was good enough for Ol’ Dirty Denny Munn.

  4.

  He watched me from his favourite table near the back of the pub. I went to the bar at the front to get another Tom Collins for him and a chardonnay for me. I knew Johnny watered them down for me. And if the buyer was a client of mine and not anywhere near the taps, he’d secretly mix me a little 7Up and cherry juice instead of the chardonnay. He’d save on the booze and still charge my john for it. We had another arrangement too, one that saw Johnny take another piece of the pie. But this was just one of our little side bits to the
deal. Johnny knew I hated being hungover and I functioned better in guiding my men towards their conclusions with a sober head while theirs was usually touched by the influence of alcohol.

  On the way back with the drinks, I spilled mine when Walter Parson reached out to smack my ass on the way by. He was on a bender with Rod Davies and some of his buddies. Away from their wives and girlfriends for the evening and watching some baseball game on Johnny’s big colour TV. They all laughed when the Cherry and Seven went down the front of my deep-cut crew neck. I’m sure I let out a satisfying shriek at the blast of icy cold on my tits.

  “Soaked those big boobies real good!” Rod howled, jabbing Walter who laughed until his face went the colour of new beets. I supped the spilled drink from my knuckles and wrist, checked the damage, and hunched at the wet shirt trying to cling across my tits.

  “Turn off the brights for oncoming traffic, darlin’!” Walter called after me as I trod off wordless…and the group of them broke into another peal of laughter.

  When I got to our table, Denny’s face was nearly the same shade as Walt’s. He eyed me, then looked over to where Parson and his rag tag was starting to settle down and move their bleary attention back to the television set. Over at the bar, Johnny stood at the ready but I gave him an open palm and a look that said, I got this. He stood down, for the moment.

  Denny—who’d had a half dozen of his signature drinks by now—took a deep breath, swallowed his latest round in three gulps and stood. I was sure he’d head back the seven or eight paces to the Parson table and start in on them. He’d ask if it was okay that he, Denny, go on down to the Parson home and smack Dana Parson’s bottom while she was bending over to check on the pot roast. And Parson, who was a lot taller than Denny, would stand and look down on Dirty Denny to ask him just what he meant by that, being purposefully obtuse, sharp despite the booze in him. It would go back and forth a few rounds and then Denny would slug Walter Parson.

  Depending on the temperature of the whole room, it could trod into pandemonium, but I doubted it would on that night, and lo and behold, it didn’t even come close.

  Instead of rolling his sleeves up on the man who transgressed against his woman, Denny turned and headed for the back rooms of the bar. I followed, since that was the way to the back stairs that led up to my room. I had fresh sheets on the bed, though it didn’t matter. Denny’d be sweating out his rum on everything in a half hour. It was fine, he’d paid handsomely up front and bought me dinner on this night. Can’t remember what night it was but it must have been a weekend—a Saturday or a Friday—since the place had a nearly full house. Either that, or it was on account of the ball game. Thinking back, I can’t rightly remember what night of the week it was. They all blurred together for a stretch of years there. When you’re banging for your breakfast, lunch and supper and all you have is a couple thousand in a Little Dippers’ Island Savings account, you just move from one dick to the next. Tonight it was Denny’s (again) and I don’t know that it matters what night of the week it was. That’s one of the lost details I meant before.

  But you’d think I’d remember this one. You’d think I’d remember what night of the week it was that my life—and the fate of Dirty Denny Munn—changed for good.

  5.

  For a while, I thought we wouldn’t get started. I don’t give refunds—as a matter of personal policy—but I’d had a few instances where Denny had gotten too drunk to carry through. Did I mention his half-dozen Tom Collins had been doubles?

  I figured he’d stay steaming mad about Walt’s hand on my ass when it was clearly Munn’s night to own the flesh—every square inch—of Fanny Mae Banks, DC’s most famous Lady of the Night.

  At first, he lay on my bed in his boxers and socks, just staring at my trinkets and smoking a cigarette. But I distracted him. Hey, I’m good at what I do. I started with a gentle strip tease. Lucky for me, there was something amenable on my little pink radio when I clicked it on. It was Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun” and I tell you, Dirty Denny started to have joy and fun and seasons in the sun when I got down to my underthings. I was wearing the frilly stuff in peach that he liked so much. Despite his gallons of watered-down drinks, I could see him getting ready under his stripy boxers.

  So, we went at it. It was tame and it was boring. It was the same as it always was.

  It was in the afterglow, when I was laying with an inch between us, on account of the heat in the room, that he lit another cigarette and started on about Walter Parson.

  “You’d think that clown down there had been the one who forked over for you dinner and your comp’ny. You’d think he’s the one who’d paid to ring your bell. But it was me, darlin’, wasn’t it?”

  “Sure was,” I said to Denny absently. I lit my own cigarette and turned on the old mattress to reach for a tin ashtray I kept on the bedside with my various toys and lotions. I had a strict personal policy about no smoking in my room, but I’d learned not to try and enforce that one with Denny. He got touchy, you see. Over the slightest thing, even.

  “You’re not giving this its due attention,” he said to me flatly. I could read that tone. I knew it. I stopped and turned back to face him. He lay like a beached animal, his round belly flickering in the uneven glow of a half-dozen candles I had lit. I had opened the window and a breeze off the street was coming in. It had cooled considerably and helped with the smell in the room, but Denny was still freckled with sweat drops that turned to lines and ran from the mound of his belly and from the expanse of his forehead.

  I rubbed his shoulder. “I am,” I said with insistence. “I am giving this its due.”

  “No,” he said, dismissively. “You’re not.” And not looking at me, he took another drag and let it out. “But it’s fine. You need to let the world know, doll—That’s all. You need to let all of Dovetail know—”

  “Know what?” I said. It was the wrong thing to say. It was wrong to question Denny.

  “Know that you’re mine.”

  And, again, I said the wrong thing. I’d said it a time or two in the past and paid—both with dollars and with my hide. But never like this.

  I hitched myself up on my elbows and pulled my hair out of my face. “I’m yours for the night, Denny. That’s all.”

  The room seemed to explode. But I think it was only the suddenness in Denny himself blowing up. It was the mattress moving and shrieking on its springs. It was the hot flutter of my bedsheets, clean only an hour ago. I have this folding screen room divider with floral-print fabric stretched across it. That went flying. A lamp crashed and broke. The ashtray and all of its butts flew in the air and, finally, Denny’s heels hit the wood floor with a couple of loud thumps. “You damn well are MINE!” he hollered. His face was a shade or two darker than Walter Parson’s had been with his drinks and his laughter downstairs. I nearly fell out of the bed.

  Denny came at me with balled-up fists. Those are the last two things I remember seeing: the dark round shapes of his knuckles, blurring to darkest brown at the distance of my nose. I only had enough air in me to let out one squeal. I’m not sure how many times he hit me. But Doc Sawbones would tell me in a few days that he must have kept tenderizing me like meat well after I lost consciousness.

  My recollection is sparse. Again, I aim to tell the truth. At this point, there’s nothing worse that worrying you aren’t getting the all of it. But there are details that don’t matter much. I’ve said that too, I think. And the details here are the how’s and the why’s. How many stitches, how many incisions to let out the swelling and remove fluid. How many days, how many nights before my eyes could open back up enough to let me see my own bedroom, the sink and toilet over by the wall, and the blood stained floor beneath the bed.

  Why old Denny didn’t see a courtroom beyond the Cove’s own aging judge, why he didn’t do more than one night in jail and why none of the men rolled up their own sleeves to give him some kind of upstairs-back-room justice…These are questions, but not questions to be ask
ed. I knew the answer to that last one, I guess. And I guess I still do. I was a lady of the night. I was no better than the ice cream bar wrappers that the tourists left on the beach for Zeke the town retard to pick up with his poking stick. I was the gal who opened a Little Dippers’ savings account and only got a chuckle of mild amusement from the bank manager.

  Thing is, I got right in the head before my body got back to having sharp features. I got right in the body pretty soon after that—since he’d kept most of the damage above the neck. Dirty Denny got his name for a dozen reasons and one of them was his penchant for going at his hired ladies from behind. I was pretty—the prettiest one in DC, I’d venture—but he didn’t care to look at my face in the bedroom. When we got down to it, I always wondered if Dennis Munn pictured some other girl from long ago. Most of my clients did, and, even if they didn’t admit, I knew.

  I healed. I had enough in my Little Dippers’ account to make rent for the months I wasn’t able to work, even though Johnny didn’t call for rent even once in that stretch. He brought me food in those early days too. Changed my sheets on the blood-stained bed for me a bunch of times and made sure I was cared for. One other girl, might have been a friend of Johnny’s or another Company Girl came in and looked after me in the days after my beating.

  My looks came back. My broken nose was set well by the Doc and my missing teeth didn’t show unless I pulled my lips back to reveal them. But I had a tighter, leathery look now. In a weird way, I might have looked a bit like a movie star who’d had a touch of work done. You know that plastic-y look like, say Loni Anderson? I had a bit of that. And in the summer, when my hair went bleached from the sun, I looked even better. The irony.