All Due Respect Issue #1

ALL DUE RESPECT: ISSUE 1

All Due Respect
is a
Full Dark City Press publication

Copyright © 2013, Full Dark City Press

All rights reserved. No part of this electronic book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by 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.

The All Due Respect Crew

Editor: Chris Rhatigan

Associate Editor: Mike Monson

Publisher: Full Dark City Press

Cover Artist: Eric Beetner

Formatting: JW Manus

All Due Respect
Issue No. 1

Table of Contents

Fiction

A Dying Art
by Chris F. Holm

Good Dogs
by Todd Robinson

Amanda Will Be Fine
by Renee Asher Pickup

The Bucket List
by Paul D. Brazill

Private Practice
by Travis Richardson

The Church of the Sad Sisters
by Mike Miner

Chicken: A Wellesport Story
by Walter Conley

Non-fiction

Interview with Chris F. Holm
by Steve Weddle

Chris F. Holm’s Collector Series
reviewed by Elizabeth A. White

Country Hardball
, by Steve Weddle
reviewed by Chris Rhatigan

The Hard Case Corner

Fake ID
, by Jason Starr
reviewed by Mike Monson

Money Shot
, by Christa Faust
reviewed by Mike Monson

Grifter’s Game
, by Lawrence Block
reviewed by Chris Rhatigan

The Cocktail Waitress,
by James M. Cain
reviewed by Chris Rhatigan

Fiction

A Dying Art

Chris F. Holm

T
HE BELL ABOVE THE
shop door jingled as Anton Russo shuffled across the threshold and stepped inside. It was tarnished and dulled with age, a relic from another time—not unlike the establishment in which it hung, Russo thought, or his rumpled, threadbare double-breasted suit. And not unlike himself.

“Mr. Russo!” called the stooped old man in barber’s whites carving a flattop into the head of a jockish kid of maybe seventeen. As the door swung shut, the old man killed the clippers’ hum in deference. At the mention of Russo’s name, the kid’s shoulders tensed beneath his cutting cape, and his eyes went wide. “So nice to see you. In for a trim?”

It wasn’t nice to see him, Russo knew. Though at five-six, two-fifty he was far from physically intimidating, his short, squat frame wasn’t one most wished to see darkening their doors. Anton Russo was a killer of men—by order more often than not these days, not that it mattered to his victims. The police knew it. The media knew it. Hell, given his reaction, even the mound of buzz-cut-dusted baby fat beneath the cutting cape knew it.

Russo didn’t mind that they knew—in fact, he luxuriated in the squeamishness his reputation elicited from those around him. It kept them from stepping out of line. As did the unfortunate fates of the poor souls who dared to cross him. Their remains were invariably found within days of their transgression, burned to a cinder—sometimes after hours of brutal torture or a gunshot each to head and heart, but in many cases while they were still alive. And somewhere nearby, the police would find the victim’s index finger—severed, but otherwise unharmed. It was Russo’s signature. He wanted his victims ID’d. Wanted smiling pictures plucked from their families’ scrapbooks splashed across the front page of the newspaper, right beside photos of the flame-licked sewers, Dumpsters, and skid row alleys in which their charred flesh had been discovered. How else would his other would-be enemies learn?

Russo patted his hair and affected a wounded expression. “You telling me there’s something wrong with my hair?” The aged barber looked aghast. “I’m just fucking with you, Sal—but all I need today’s a shave.”

Sal smiled then, eyes watery with relief. “Of course, Mr. Russo. Please have a seat. Lucas will be right with you.”

Russo frowned. “Lucas? What happened to Vincent?”

“You didn’t hear? His heart.”

“No. When?”

“Two, three weeks?”

“Is he…”

“No. He pulled through—barely. Been in Pine View ever since, hooked up to more machines than I could put a name to.”

Christ. Too many guys in Russo’s circles were dropping from shit like that these days. Used to be if someone he knew wound up in the hospital, it was because he got shot or shanked or flipped a stolen car. Now it was all cancer and bum tickers. He longed for the days when the threat of death was sexier. “Damn shame,” he said. “Finest hands I’ve ever seen. You think he’s ever coming back?”

Sal shook his head. “I doubt it—and the shape he’s in, you wouldn’t want him to. He shakes so bad these days you’d be lucky not to bleed out in the chair.” Then he remembered who he was talking to and colored, worried he’d crossed some kind of line. Russo noticed, and was pleased at Sal’s discomfort.

He was less pleased with the Vincent situation. The man had been gifted with a straight razor. A crack practitioner of a dying art. Used to be, he’d give you a shave so clean, you’d walk out of Sal’s shop a few sins lighter than you came in. Not enough to square Russo’s books, mind, but he’d sleep easier for a night or two, at least. Plus, his wife liked how baby-smooth his cheeks would be afterward. Almost as much as his mistresses did.

When Lucas ducked past the curtain that separated the shop from its small back room, Russo’s mood darkened further. He’d naturally assumed Vincent’s replacement would be a somber man of regal carriage and ancient vintage—as set apart from modern times as the barber pole that spun red and white out front. But this Lucas—Russo was sure he was Lucas because Vincent aside, Sal had never had any other employees—couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. His hair was greased into an improbable pompadour, so high it bordered on caricature. His sideburns were long and flared. A loop of stainless steel pierced one nostril, and he wore black rivets in his ears wide enough to pass a quarter through. The sleeves of his white barber’s coat were rolled up, revealing garish tattoos from his knuckles on up. Some were crisp and bold, traditional but professionally done—primary colors bordered in black. Some—like the
STAY TRUE
across his knuckles, and the swallow on his neck—were the shaky blue-gray of prison ink.

If Lucas noted Russo’s disdain, he didn’t let it show. He was smiling as he swept into the room surrounded by a cloud of cigarette-scented evening air, the cool damp of the alley behind the shop clinging to him like a fog.

“Mr. Russo,” he said with deference, but no trace of the fear Sal’s greeting carried. “Welcome. Can I offer you a Sambuca?”

“Come again?”

“It is your drink of choice, isn’t it?”

Sal, across the room, saw Russo’s suspicion writ large across his features, and tittered nervously over the buzz of his renewed clipping. “He doesn’t mean any offense, Mr. Russo—he offers a drink to all his clients. Says a proper barber shop should be a gentleman’s respite from the world—and that a shave should be a vacation.”

“Is that right.” Russo said, unconvinced. “You research all your clients’ favorite drinks?”

“No,” Lucas admitted. “I mostly stock Scotch. But you’re hardly an average client, Mr. Russo—and your predilections are well documented. It seemed like good business to buy a bottle just for you.”

“You ask me, it’s better business to stay the hell out of mine,” Russo said. “Where’d you find this kid, Sal?”

“Same way anybody hires anybody,” Sal replied. “I put out an ad, and Lucas here answered. But you wouldn’t believe the recommendations he’s got. Remember Ben Meyers? Used to come in all the time, and then just stopped? Turns out, he defected from Vince to Lucas here.”

That’s funny, Russo thought—I assumed Ben stopped coming in on account of that Federal indictment. He hadn’t shown his face—clean-shaven or otherwise—around town in months. But Ben’s pop and Russo’s did business since before Russo was born, so if Ben vouched for this kid, he couldn’t be all bad.

“All right, hotshot, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Lucas led Russo to a barber’s chair—black leather piped with white at the edges, with brass fixtures and padded head- and footrests—and tucked a towel into Russo’s collar. He reclined the chair such that Russo’s head lay against the headrest, and he was staring at the yellowed ceiling tiles. Another towel—this one damp and steaming—was placed under Russo’s chin, and wrapped around his head until only his nose and hair showed. The moist heat relaxed the muscles of his face, a cascade that trickled downward to his neck and shoulders. He let out a sigh as the day’s tension drained away, his irritation at this brash young upstart momentarily forgotten. Maybe there’s something to be said for a fresh approach, he thought. He found himself wishing he’d accepted Lucas’ offer of a drink.

After a few minutes, Lucas unwrapped the towel and massaged some sort of conditioner into Russo’s coarse stubble. It smelled of tea tree and peppermint. When Lucas finished, he applied another hot towel, and began honing his blade. Back and forth he dragged it across the leather strop that hung from a hook on the wall beside his station, each practiced stroke like the gentle rasp of fine sandpaper across smooth wood. Russo found its metronomic regularity hypnotic.

Again the towel was removed. Russo realized that, at some point, Sal’s clippers had stopped buzzing in the background—and when he looked around, he saw that he and Lucas were alone. He must have dozed off for a minute. Lucas wiped the excess conditioner from Russo’s face, and then applied hot shaving cream from a lacquered bowl with a matching badger brush. His efficiency of movement and attention to detail put Vincent’s technique to shame.