I’m making a new page for this project. I’ve been working on some new political pieces, but frankly, I had to take a writing job that pays peanuts, and I have been swamped. In any case, I showed this to James Sallis, who really liked it. No on else has seen it. James put me in touch with his London publisher, but they did not bite. It’s just short a crime novel, not overly ambitious, but I think it’s a really good read, and very funny. I am going to serialize it here. It’s about a couple of dope dealers, one criminal, one a doctor. They get into a mess of trouble and end up having to sort out some nasty business in the desert amidst a group of fantastic outcasts. I’d like to have something like this pre-published and ready to use as a movie pitch.
After three months of working as a book reviewer, and seeing what gets published, I decided to take another shot with several completed works.
CHAPTER 1
Eddie couldn’t believe it had come to this.
A guy named Randy opened the door and he looked exactly what guys named Randy are supposed to look like.
Guys named Randy have mullets, or long, stringy black or red hair. They’re skinny and muscular and they have neck tattoos.
Guys named Randy get sent to juvenile hall for the first time when they’re eleven for an offense involving animal abuse of some kind.
All Randies have been in county jail exactly twice – once for beating up their girlfriends and once again for possession of PCP.
Guys named Randy cook meth in the desert…
These were some of Eddie’s prejudices concerning guys named Randy who lived out on the edges of civilization, and this Randy did not disappoint.
“Hey,” said Eddie. “Is Caleb around?”
The cigarette in Randy’s mouth had burned all the way down to the cork, but he was still smoking it. Little wisps of gray fumes drifted out of his nostrils as he answered:
“You Eddie?”
“I’m Eddie,” he said. “This is my friend Mike.”
Randy turned around and motioned with his hand for them to follow. They walked through a living room that was thoroughly bare except for a disassembled PlayStation sitting in the corner on the hardwood floor — a remnant of some amphetamine-induced spurt of ambition that ended up going nowhere. They took the stairs down to the basement, a bunker with concrete walls that helped fight off the stubborn onslaught of heat. Caleb was right to have moved his hub of operations down there. It was definitely cooler. And quite dark. The only illumination for the entire basement came from the muted light of a little lamp in the corner. The rays were struggling to push their way through one of those cheap, tie-dyed, faux-Indian sheets that desperate hipsters and vegan Rastafarians use to camouflage their insolvency. Caleb had draped it over the lampshade simply to amp up the whole seedy, doper vibe he had working.
Caleb himself was seated in a disintegrating, old, beige loveseat. Across from him in a pair of folding chairs sat Maple and Merle. There was a coffee table separating the trio, piled high with drug paraphernalia, books on the occult, and ashtrays with mountainfuls of cigarette butts. The only other piece of furniture in the basement was an ornate, antique, Japanese folding screen with mother-of-pearl inlay. The smell of cigarette smoke and cat piss was stifling.
“Eddie…” squeaked Caleb, in one long extended, floating syllable.
Caleb rose to his feet. He was wearing nothing but a red and blue kimono that he had draped over himself like a bathrobe. It opened up onto a pair of grimy, white jockey shorts which sagged around his bony waistline. His skinny legs were punctuated by a pair of dirty feet with soiled, overgrown toenails, and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of those dark sunglasses with tiny, round lenses, like sleeper spectacles that the proprietor of a Shanghai opium den might have worn circa 1920.
“And who is your traveling companion?” added Caleb, elegantly.
“This is Mike,” said Eddie, “the guy I spoke to you about.”
“The physician!” remarked Caleb. “Nee hao ma…”
Caleb put his arm around the doctor and escorted him over to the Japanese folding screen. In a matter of seconds, the two were embroiled in an animated discussion about the little room divider – all in Mandarin.
Eddie sat down on the love seat and opened the little mini-fridge that Caleb had placed to the side like an end table. There was usually beer inside, but today Eddie found only the remnants of some cheap, peach-flavored box wine and half of a rotting zucchini. He stared across the coffee table at the dead eyes of Maple and Merle, a middle-aged married couple who had recently split only to reunite after finding out that living independently was financially beyond their means. Maple and Merle were but two of a much larger troupe of desert freaks that had gravitated towards Caleb’s orbit since his exodus from Los Angeles. An eccentric among eccentrics, Caleb had always stood out, even in this Xanadu of misfits where he now held court.
Caleb walked over and sat down next to Eddie while Dr. Mike closed the circle with a folding chair that Randy had dragged over for him before mysteriously disappearing upstairs.
“I don’t think you guys have met Maple and Merle,” said Caleb.
There was a round of handshakes and hellos, during which time Caleb turned around and plopped an Ute Lemper CD into the boombox that sat teetering above the loveseat. The Kurt Weill songbook.
“Maple,” said Eddie. “Wow. Is that really your given name?”
“Yeah,” giggled Maple, nervously. “I mean, it used to be part of my stage name, Maple Glaze. From when I used to dance, you know? But Maple is real. I was born Maple Dallas Henderson. Now I’m Maple Dewitt. Merle’s last name is Dewitt.”
“Maple is no garden variety stripper, Eddie,” intervened Caleb. “She’s a burlesque artist. She’s worked with Dita Von Tease.”
“You don’t say…” remarked Eddie, before his mind meandered off elsewhere.
Merle looked at his wife’s dull, brown eyes and stringy, dirty, hippie-chick hair. He really wished she would take better care of herself.
Maple felt exactly the same way about him.
Merle grabbed the bong and powered through the last of the weed.
“That’s that,” he gasped, sucking in the last bit of smoke.
Merle and Maple had come to see if Caleb could score them some more weed. They were potheads, but Maple’s frantic speech and Merle’s generally tweaked demeanor had made it obvious to Eddie they had taken at least a couple hits of Caleb’s meth.
“Listen, kids,” continued Caleb. “Eddie and I have some business to attend to, some of which involves procuring cannabis for the two of you. While we’re out, why don’t you get Dr. Mike here to help you with that letter to the county?”
“Letter?” echoed the somewhat baffled physician.
Maple looked at Merle and Merle looked at the doctor.
“We gotta write a letter to the animal control,” said Merle. “Maple had to come and get me out of jail in Modesto, and she forgot to feed our hens. We got this little chicken coop thing out back, for organic eggs, you know? She locked ‘em up in there with no feed. They started picking and clawing at each other, and the whole lot, like thirteen hens, all died from infection and starvation. It stank up the whole neighborhood and they had to send an officer over. Neighbors got all pissed off. Now county says we gotta pay this big fine for animal endangerment and operating a poultry farm without any permit.”
Mike looked over at Eddie and then back at the couple.
“Jesus Christ…” he mumbled. “How long were you gone?”
“Two weeks,” said Maple.
“What happened?” asked Mike.
“We got to partying with this girl we met at the El Torito,” said Maple. “She was staying with a dentist who had some kinda ranch outside of town. Had a bunch of nitrous oxide and cable tv. Swimming pool…”
She laughed, and this made Merle laugh, too.
“Guess we lost track of time,” she giggled.
The doctor looked back over at Caleb and Eddie.
“Maybe I should just come with you two?”
Caleb walked over and put his arm around the doctor’s shoulder.
“Mike,” he explained calmly. “These two lovebirds are the victims of an especially impoverished public school education. Hell, Merle’s dyslexic. We just need a couple of short paragraphs. A mea culpa, you know? Due to circumstances beyond our control… etc…”
Dr. Mike’s befuddled face became a silent, desperate plea. He was begging Eddie not to abandon him to the whims of these two illiterate Mojave Bedouins.
“We don’t write too good,” said Maple. “Caleb said you would know how to phrase stuff. Professional.”
Eddie stood up and moved towards the stairs.
“We’ll be back in two shakes,” he said to Mike. “Just sit tight.”
****************************************************************************************
Eddie and Caleb walked upstairs and out into the heat and the dust and the oppressive afternoon sun of the desert. Randy had just finished tightening the lug nuts on the rear wheel of a decrepit old dune buggy that Caleb had tucked away in a corrugated iron shed. After his third DUI, it had become his only means of transportation.
“We’re going to have to cut across the desert,” said Caleb. “I can’t drive on public thoroughfares.”
Caleb pulled a leather flight cap and a pair of goggles out of the satchel that he had slung around his shoulder.
“Anyway, it’s safer,” he continued. “Considering the cargo you’re hauling.”
Randy, shirtless and greasy, was walking back towards the house.
“You’re good to go,” he mumbled as he passed them by.
Caleb walked into the shed and started the dune buggy. It sounded like fifteen lawnmowers running at the same time. As he backed the vehicle out of the little metal hut, the rear wheels spun into the earth and kicked up a swirling cloud of dust. He accelerated slowly and emerged from the vagueness like an avatar. Eddie beheld the spectacle with a weird sort of awe, realizing that he had no other choice but to follow this demented, speed-freak version of the Red Baron in a mad dash through the sinuous back roads of the California desert.
“Hey, Eddie…”
Caleb had removed his dentures, collapsing his mouth into nothing more than a black gash. It made it difficult for Eddie to understand him.
“Stay right up on my ass” he said. “And keep your windows rolled up because this thing kicks up a lot of sand.”
“What?” shouted Eddie.
“Just don’t lose me.”
“O.K.,” Eddie shouted back.
With the detective still slumbering in the back seat, Eddie got into the Pontiac and started it up. He followed Caleb, who maneuvered slowly around the shed and onto a dirt road behind the house. Once they were out of sight of the main highway, Caleb increased his speed. Eddie managed to stay right on his tail for a couple of miles, but then suddenly there was a big depression in the desert earth - a brusque five or six-foot drop off - and he plowed straight into a mound of sand. Caleb, in the dune buggy, had managed to jump the expanse of the little crevasse, and when Eddie had finally worked his way free with the Pontiac, the dune buggy was nearly a mile ahead of him, simply a spot of dust on the horizon. He crushed the accelerator pedal in a frenzied attempt to make up lost ground and finally caught up to Caleb about four or five miles down the road, just as the two of them were approaching what appeared to be some sort of abandoned dwelling.
Caleb pulled the dune buggy onto a vast dirt expanse that had probably been a front lawn at some point. He stepped out of the vehicle and removed his goggles. Eddie pulled up beside him and got out of the Pontiac.
“For fuck’s sake,” he shouted, “why didn’t you warn me about that goddamn canyon in the middle of the road?”
Caleb started laughing. He pulled his dentures out of his satchel and shoved them back into the black hole in the middle of his sandblasted face.
“I swear to God, Edward,” he said, almost choking on a combination of dust and his own laughter. “That wasn’t there the last time.”
“When was the last time?” asked Eddie.
“About six months ago,” said Caleb.
Eddie mumbled an indistinct curse under his breath and started moving towards the front door of the abandoned house.
“It’s locked,” said Caleb.
“We’ll come on,” said Eddie. “Let’s knock at the door.”
“It won’t do any good,” said Caleb. “I got a text from Eli just when you were pulling up. He’s gonna be a half hour late. We’ll just have to sit tight.”
Eddie walked back to the Pontiac and reached in through the driver’s side window. He pulled out a liter of lukewarm bottled water and then took a seat on top of the hood of the automobile. Caleb walked over and Eddie passed him the bottle.
“This is warm,” complained Caleb.
Eddie just stared at him.
“I’m sure glad you caught up with me,” said Caleb. “People wander off into that desert all the time, never to be seen again.”
“Yeah?
“Yeah,” said Caleb. “Last year I was five or six miles out in the dune buggy, way off road, and I ran into this Japanese teenager. No hat, no sunglasses, no water. Just stumbling around out there with nothing but a t-shirt on his back and a dead cell phone in his hand. Didn’t even speak enough English to tell me what had happened. I took him back to my place and he stayed for two weeks. He cooked Japanese food for everybody.”
“He back in Japan now?” asked Eddie. “Safe and sound thanks to you and your benevolent disposition?”
“I don’t know,” replied Caleb. “I woke up one morning and he was gone. Maybe he went off to finish whatever business he had out there in the desert.”
Eddie took a long drink of water.
“So what’s the story with Randy?” he asked. “Where in the name of Christ did you find that guy?”
“Gay bar in Barstow,” said Caleb.
“He’s gay?” asked Eddie.
“We have sex,” said Caleb. “But I think he’s straight. I know he’s fucked Maple a couple of times. Anyway, he was living on the street in Barstow. At the end of the night he asked if he could crash at my place, so I took him with me back to Hinkley. Been there for months now. Sort of my factotum.”
“Not a lot of common interests, I suppose,” remarked Eddie.
“Nope,” said Caleb, matter-of-factly. “But a few uncommon ones.”
Eddie and Caleb sat waiting atop the hood of the Pontiac for another twenty minutes. Eli pulled up just as they were finishing the last of the bottled water. He parked the car on the side of the house and walked over to greet Caleb and Eddie. He gave Caleb a big hug and shook Eddie’s hand.
“Been a long time,” he said to Eddie. “From what Caleb told me, it seems you’re halfway to being forever fucked.”
The last time Eddie had seen Eli was about five years ago in Los Angeles, when he was a skinny, bespectacled, hipster hillbilly playing steel guitar in a country and western band. He hadn’t changed one bit. Like Caleb, a certain number of unfortunate life choices resulted in him being deposited out here at the edges of civilization, living in an abandoned house on the outskirts of Hinkley.
“Well, I was hoping you could help me unfuck things just a little bit,” said Eddie.
“Caleb gave you the details, right?”
“Yeah,” said Eli. “Where’s the passenger?”
Eddie pointed to the Pontiac.
“Well, let’s get a move on,” said Eli.
The three of them piled into the front seat of the Pontiac and drove out past Eli’s house and into the desert. After about two or three minutes, they descended into a sort of valley filled with nothing but sagebrush and dirt. There was something that looked like a water treatment facility about two or three miles off and the horizon was dotted here and there with elfish little cement mounds about thirty inches high.
“Pull up next to one of those shafts,” instructed Eli.
They parked the Pontiac and stepped out into the desert.
“What are these things?” asked Caleb.
“Access shafts,” explained Eli. “There’s a pig farm outside Barstow. One of those mega-farms, you know? They pump hormones and shit into the pigs so that they bulk up real quick. They can bring a pig to slaughter in ninety days. Anyway, there’s lots of toxic waste, so the company that owns the farm bought up all this property. They pump the waste through that treatment center over there and into this huge reservoir that they carved into the earth. We’re on top of it right now.”
“What are the shafts for?” asked Eddie
“Inspectors,” said Eli. “The government is supposed to come out here once a year to measure toxicity levels, but I’ve never seen anyone actually do it. These things lead straight to an underground ocean of pig shit and artificial hormones and all sorts of caustic chemicals. Nobody wants to stick his nose into that.”
“Let’s get this guy out of the back seat,” said Caleb.
“That’s not him,” said Eddie. “The Serbian’s in the trunk.”
“Jesus Christ, Eddie…” murmured Eli.
“It’s complicated,” said Eddie.
Caleb and Eli looked at each other for a second, stunned.
“Alright,” said Caleb. “Let’s get this over with.”
Eddie popped the trunk open. Eli moved over to the shaft and used a crowbar to pry open the manhole cover on top. Caleb helped Eddie take the body out of the trunk. They dragged it over to the shaft.
“How do you know he won’t just hit dry ground?” asked Eddie. “He could end up just resting on a clump of dirt for some inspector to find.”
“Like I said,” answered Eli. “There are no inspectors. Anyway, I checked it out. You’ll definitely hear a plop when this fucker hits the soup.”
The three men shoved Terry’s lifeless corpse headfirst into the hole. As his body swan dived towards its final resting place, they could hear it bounce off the aluminum walls of the shaft like a fleshy pinball. There was a huge splash and then silence.
“Just like I told you,” said Eli.
*******************************************************************************************************
Solitude and contemplation were definitely not the best medicine for Dr. Tsu at this juncture, but the insane ramblings of Maple and Merle had driven him outside. He was leaning up against the front fender of Maple’s beat-up old Mazda, sweating and smoking while his mind ran through every possible tragic permutation looming on the dead horizon of the California desert. Eddie had been right about needing to keep him preoccupied, to keep his thoughts from drifting into the dark places. But the doctor, try as he may, couldn’t muster the discipline necessary for distraction. He tried for a moment to lose himself by staring absentmindedly into a cactus. That didn’t work. Then he tried focusing on the flight pattern of an enormous, menacing hawk that was circling above. But all he could think about was whether or not he had what it took to survive in prison should the shit end up hitting the fan. And he knew the answer.
Salvation came for the doctor in the form of a little cloud of dust rising from the desert behind the house. It was Eddie and Caleb, weaving their way back on the tiny dirt road. Caleb, in his dune buggy and World War I fighter pilot regalia, was the first to arrive. He had Eli next to him in the dune buggy, which momentarily disappeared into the shed. While the doctor waited for them to exit, Eddie rambled up in the Pontiac and parked right next to Mike.
“Is it done?” asked Mike.
“It’s done,” said Eddie, stepping out of the car.
Eli and Caleb sauntered over from the little iron hut.
“What are you going to do about him?” asked Eli, pointing to the comatose detective in the back seat of the Pontiac.
“I don’t know if he can take another dose of Haldol, Eddie,” said Mike. “Might be the end of him.”
“Well, that would solve that little problem,” laughed Caleb.
Eddie stared up at the sun and then over at the Pontiac.
“Let’s not make any hasty decisions,” he said. “I could use a drink.”
The four of them made their way down to Caleb’s basement. Randy, who had spent most of the last two hours smoking methamphetamine, was sitting in the corner with a cigarette dangling from his lips, texting away like a man possessed. He had set up a little portable television on a folding chair for Maple and Merle, who were sitting like a couple of zombies, fixated on an infomercial for some kind of calcium supplement. The smoke from Randy’s cigarette hovered over the derelict couple like a portal to another dimension, some obscure entity wondering whether anyone would even notice if it swallowed them up.
“I come bearing glad tidings,” said Caleb, tossing a bag of weed on the coffee table in front of Merle.
“And none too soon,” said Merle.
Merle started to pack the bong. Caleb sat down on the sofa between Maple and Merle, and Eddie and the doctor each pulled up a folding chair. Eli ran upstairs for beers, but he was taking a long time getting back.
“You should see the letter he dictated for us,” said Maple. “You write real good, Mike. If you ever stop doctorin’ you can fix yourself up as a writer in nothin’ flat.”
“He writes stuff for me all the time,” quipped Eddie.
Maple stared back at Eddie with a blank gaze, one of those looks that expresses both confusion and an utter lack of desire to ask for further clarification.
“Anyway,” she continued, “listen to this.”
She pulled her finger across her iPhone and started to recite the letter verbatim:
Dear Sirs –
The unfortunate nature of the events that transpired between March 2nd and March 17th was regrettably unavoidable and due principally to acute renal failure brought about by my husband’s ingestion of tainted blood pressure medication purchased in Tijuana. The medication provoked a severe case of rhabo-
“How do you say that again, Mike?” asked Maple.
“Rab-doe-mye-OL-uh-sis,” said Mike.
… a severe case of rhabdomyolysis. We were out of town on pressing business, and transporting him was simply out of the question. As a dutiful and devoted wife, I was obliged to remain by the side of my cruelly stricken beloved until the doctors released him from the hospital and finally gave their consent for him to travel. We offer our most humble apologies for the unpleasantness left behind for you and your fine team of animal control professionals, and it would be greatly appreciated if you could find it in your hearts to pardon us for this transgression, which was by no means an act of premeditation or malfeasance.
Yours,
Maple Dewitt
“Ain’t that something!” exclaimed Maple.
“My cruelly stricken beloved…?” gasped Eddie. “Don’t you think you’re laying it on a bit thick, Mike?”
“Nonsense, Edward,” said Caleb. “These small-town bureaucrats sit around hour after hour in drab little gray cubicles. A letter like that’ll be the high point of their day.”
“Sure it will,” agreed the doctor. “Eddie simply has no flair for the poetic.”
Eddie stared over at Randy, who abruptly stopped texting and raced upstairs. He came back thirty seconds later with a freshly lit cigarette, his thumbs still dancing across the surface of the phone.
“Eli said to tell you he had to split,” mumbled Randy.
Eddie looked over at Randy and then back at Maple.
“And what happens if they want proof?” asked Eddie.
“Voila!” exclaimed Merle, holding up one of Dr. Mike’s prescriptions.
“Looks like you’ve thought of everything,” said Eddie.
Randy ran back upstairs and came right back down with a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke.
“So where did you learn to speak Mandarin, Caleb?” inquired the doctor.
Merle passed Caleb the bong, but he politely declined.
“My father was a diplomat, Mike,” he answered. “During my childhood, I spent two years in Dalian and two years in Zhengzhou.”
“Zhengzhou?” said Mike, startled. “I was born in Henan!”
Eddie stood up and started to say something, but was startled when Randy bolted back up the stairs for the third time in the last ninety seconds. Again, he came right back down, this time with a piece of the disassembled PlayStation.
Eddie stared over at him for a second and then looked back towards Caleb.
“Listen, this stroll down memory lane is heartwarming and all,” he said, “but we have business to attend to.”
“Don’t you want to see the horses?” asked Caleb. “We’ve got a new Palomino.”
“Palomino?” said Mike, a bit confused.
Eddie sat back down on the folding chair and sighed.
“You see, Mike,” he proceeded, “among his many other talents, Caleb also happens to be something of a cowboy.”
“You should go to the stables,” said Maple. “The Palomino’s a real looker. I’m gonna stay here and watch TV with Merle.”
Caleb looked over at Randy.
“What the hell are you doing over there?” he asked.
“Leave me alone,” said Randy, fidgeting with the PlayStation. “I got this sonofabitch figured out this time.”
Eddie and the doctor said their goodbyes and followed Caleb up the steps and out into the desert.
“Why don’t you drive, Eddie?” suggested Caleb. “I can walk back from the stables.”
“Why the hell not…” mumbled Eddie, defeated.
The three of them squeezed into the front seat of the Pontiac and started their short trek down the highway towards the stables. The fat man’s snoring was growing louder, punctuated by little scatological and hallucinatory verbal injections that suggested he was slowly on the path to regaining consciousness. Caleb turned around and poked him in the gut with his index finger.
“So what’s the story with this character?” he inquired.
“He’s a cop,” said Mike. “Been shadowing me.”
“No kidding?” said Caleb. “A flatfoot? Just what kind of monkey business have you been up to, doctor, that would land you smack in the middle of a Raymond Chandler novel?”
“Exactly the kind of business we’ve all been part and parcel of for the last couple of decades,” said Eddie, cynically.
“So what went wrong?” asked Caleb.
“You live in California long enough,” said Mike, “you’re bound to experience an earthquake.”
Caleb laughed and pointed over to his left, where there was a little dirt road that led to something that looked like a big white barn about a half a mile off in the distance. Eddie veered to the left and steered the Pontiac down the gravel path toward the stable. He parked in front of a massive, rectangular sliding door that someone had defaced with a litany of formulaic obscenities in green spray paint. He parked the car and the three of them exited.
“My home away from home,” said Caleb.
He walked over, inserted a key into a giant padlock, and slid open the massive door. A world of shadow opened up like an oasis, and Eddie and Mike were bathed in the odor of hay and manure and horsehair, which actually wasn’t unpleasant. There were about a dozen stalls in the stable. Caleb had Eddie and Mike follow him down to the last one on the left, where a copper-colored Palomino stood tall and fearless, all aglow like a newly minted penny, its coat barely able to contain the sinewy mass of muscle and bone that comprised its being. Eddie stared into its eyes and felt intimidated.
“Beautiful,” whispered Mike. “What’s his name?”
“Her name,” said Caleb. “Medea.”
“Why name a horse after a wreaker of havoc?” asked the doctor.
“That’s just the point, doctor,” said Caleb. “It reminds you that you’re in the business of constantly trying to control something that has the power to destroy you.”
Caleb knew that Eddie was uneasy around horses and decided to taunt him just a little bit.
“Take her for a spin?” he suggested.
“I’ll just watch you do your thing,” said Eddie, grinning.
Mike approached the stall and gave Medea a pat on the neck.
“Are these all yours?” asked Mike, pointing to the other horses.
“Not a one,” said Caleb. “I’m just the caretaker.”
Caleb walked over to the wall where a pair of chaps hung from a nail. He put them on and then slid his feet into some beat-up old cowboy boots. He was still wearing the kimono like a bathrobe, so he grabbed the excess material and tucked it into the top of his chaps. He saddled Medea, and Eddie and Mike followed him as he led the beast out into blinding sunlight. He mounted the horse and took off like a torpedo into the sand, weaving through the desert vegetation like a tubercular, degenerate version of Tom Mix. Eddie and Mike just stood there, mesmerized and bewildered as Caleb disappeared over the horizon, swallowed up by the monochrome palette of the desert.
Copyright Paul Knobloch ©2026