Got about two days or less before the sale ends.
Tomato Can is a retro-pulp novella in the gritty style of hardboiled noir from the 1950s, which is when, in fact, it is set. It takes place in the hometown of the Brown Bomber: Detroit, Michigan.
Unlike many boxing pulps (and retro-pulps), this one is technically accurate…though it is packed full of slinging leather.
We usually post something to commemorate D-Day. Might do that a bit later.
The sneak preview of False Flag continues.
(THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM A WORK OF FICTION. THE USE OF THE N-WORD BY CHARACTERS IN THE WORK DOES NOT MEAN THE AUTHOR TALKS OR THINKS THAT WAY.)
3
Y MINUS 20
SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA
Trooper Jason Macmillan, 29 and fit with a full head of brown hair under his Smokey-the-Bear hat, turned his halogens on bright, then adjusted his side spot onto the little Chevy S-10 pulled over in front of him. After the make was run on the vehicle’s owner and radioed back to Macmillan, he got out of his cruiser and approached the S-10’s passenger window.
He turned on his big Maglite and shined it through the rear window into the cab. He didn’t see anything incriminating inside.
But that was kind of the point: he couldn’t see everything inside.
The driver rolled his window down. Already squinting from the bright light of the cruiser’s headlights and side spot in his mirrors, Joe Tasper was now completely blinded when Trooper Macmillan fixed the Maglite’s beam directly in his eyes.
“Driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance,” Macmillan said. “And please turn your engine off, sir.”
“I’ve got battery problems,” Tasper said. “If I shut it down, I’ll need a jump to get going again.”
“Do me a favor and shut it down,” Macmillan ordered. “Then please comply with my request, sir.”
Tasper turned off the ignition, dug out his wallet and leaned over to open his glove box. Macmillan rested one hand on his holstered sidearm. He’d never had to pull his gun in the line of duty, but could never tell when the opportunity would arise. Tasper handed over his papers and Macmillan took them, relaxing just a bit.
“The reason I pulled you over is that your windows are illegally tinted,” Macmillan said.
“I just bought the truck today,” Tasper replied. “I was on my way to get a new battery for it. I can take the tinting off Monday after work. You’ll give me a jump when you’re done, right?”
“You sit tight here,” Macmillan said, waving the license, insurance card and registration form. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“The store is gonna be closed in a half hour,” Tasper said. “I have to get there quick to get the new battery.”
Macmillan ignored him and returned to the comfort of his patrol car. He called in the additional info, but Tasper’s record was clean, except for normal traffic citations, and his story checked out about buying the pickup that day.
Macmillan took his time filling out the ticket. When he went back to the suspect’s vehicle, he asked to see the bill of sale, then looked it over. He questioned the suspect about why someone in northwest Texas had driven so far to buy a truck in Louisiana, but failed to trip him up or get him to admit anything. Macmillan added a seatbelt violation to the citation and got the suspect to sign. The suspect asked again about getting a jump start, but Macmillan ignored him and returned to his patrol car.
Normally he waited for the suspect to drive away first, but knowing Joe Tasper wouldn’t be able to start his vehicle now, MacMillan drove away without waiting. He decided to come back this way at the end of his shift and see if the S-10 was still sitting here. Who knew? Maybe it would be abandoned and he could schedule it for impound.
It turned out to be Trooper McMillan’s lucky night. A county mounty called for backup on a resisting arrest code. MacMillan floored the accelerator, flipping on his light beacon, and got the Crown Victoria rolling down the fast lane at 120. The incident site was only a few miles away. He would get some stick time tonight.
MaQuon Lutrell was pulled over for a “no turn on red” violation. The sheriff’s deputy asked to search his car. MaQuon had a bag of weed under the passenger seat and didn’t want to go back to jail. He heard people say that cops couldn’t search a vehicle without either a search warrant or the driver’s consent, so he didn’t give his consent. The deputy asked what he was hiding and the conversation soon turned into an argument.
When the deputy ordered him to get out of the car, MaQuon feared it might get ugly. And it did.
The scenario ended with the deputy and an increasing number of arriving cops beating on him with police batons. One of the arriving cops was a young State Trooper.
The beating took place in a well-lit area on a street connecting residential and industrial areas. Across the street, hiding behind a cluster of bushes, was a group of preadolescent boys. They were friends from school who got together to hang out one last time since Mrs. Thatcher was moving tomorrow and would be taking her son, Arden, with her to Texas.
The boys laughed and joked among themselves, watching the black grown-up getting the crap beat out of him. Arden bragged that he would be a cop one day himself, and get paid to beat up niggers.
Chapter 2 from False Flag.
(Read Prologue and Chapter 1 here.)
2
Y MINUS TWO
BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Jake McCallum hadn’t had many visitors since he’d been in the hospital. A few guys from Security Solutions, International, including the president of the private military company, dropped by. Ingrid–a field surgeon and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, checked in regularly. But his closest friend in SSI, Leon Campbell, was stateside. And after the first few days there was little break from the bedridden monotony in the cool, white room.
At six-foot-eight and with a massive, carefully-sculpted musculature, it was agonizing for Mac to lay here and feel himself atrophy. His arm was broken and his knee recovering from surgery. In a civilian context he would have been released to recover at home; but here he was treated like a wounded soldier because it wouldn’t be safe for him in-country in his vulnerable condition.
A black man, who was not Leon, appeared in the doorway and rapped his knuckles on the jamb. He was a little shorter than Leon, and huskier. “What’s up, my brotha?” the man greeted.
Mac noted his business formal attire, despite the environment. His shoes were in the latest style. The creases in his pants were razor-sharp, and his jacket was tailored to his V-shaped torso. With perfectly trimmed mustache and goatee, he looked like a model for the cover of Jet or something. Mac had rubbed elbows with plenty of Agency guys over here. Agency guys usually dressed business/casual Nobody except politicians dressed sharper than that.
From his bed, Mac chinned an acknowledgment of the visitor, who then entered with a very subtle three-legged swagger.
“DeAngelo Jeffries,” the man said, extending his hand. Mac wrapped his own huge paw (the one he could still use) around the offered hand and pumped it once.
“I’m in town for a while, checking things out,” Jeffries said. “Guy I’m with was assigned to debrief your girlfriend—tall Swedish blonde—so I thought I’d come by and holla at ya.”
“Debriefing” meant Jeffries was working for the Agency in some capacity. McCallum had wondered if his trip to Indonesia would get their attention.
“Nurse said they had to do some work on your knee,” Jeffries said, sliding the chair over to seat himself at bedside.
“Yeah,” Mac said. “I can get around on crutches for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to put weight on it before much longer.”
“Knee injuries are no joke, man,” Jeffries said. “I had to have mine scoped a few years back. It’s like the most critical joint in your body. Has to withstand the most abuse.”
“Hurt it playin’ ball?” Mac asked, slipping into a ‘hood accent without conscious thought.
“Yeah, you know it,” Jeffries said. “But nothin’ like yours. Speakin’ of ball, I know you had to play somewhere, with your height.”
Mac shrugged massive shoulders. “High school. A little college, before I went in the Army. So if somebody’s debriefing Ingrid, that means you’re here to debrief me.”
Jeffries shrugged this time. “Naw, man–nothin’ official. Wouldn’t do that here, anyway. But rumors go ’round, and I’m supposed to ask you some questions. That’s all.”
“What you wanna know?”
“You know: routine stuff. Like were you injured here or somewhere else?”
“On vacation,” Mac said, technically telling the truth.
“Where’d you go?” Jeffries asked, in a friendly, conversational, none-too-concerned tone of voice.
“Indonesia,” Mac replied, wondering how much Ingrid was telling this guy’s partner. She didn’t know everything, but she knew enough to raise some eyebrows in certain circles where a smart person never wanted to cause eyebrows to be raised. “My first time over there.”
“SOCOM never sent you over there, huh?” Jeffries asked, surprised.
So Jeffries had read Mac’s dossier.
“Not me,” Mac said. “They always had me focused on the Middle East. Taught me Arabic; oriented me on Islam; all that.”
Jeffries nodded. “I guess it makes sense you got a Private Military Company over here. Ain’t too many brothas got that kinda’ juice at War, Incorporated.”
“I’m only vice president,” Mac said.
Jeffries chuckled. “Looks to me like you do all the work at SSI, while the president just handles the administrative end.”
Mac shrugged again. “Nigga behind the trigga. You know.”
Jeffries shook his head, sadly. “We come all this way. Even got a brotha into the White House. But the white man still has the white collar.”
“Even in a war zone,” Mac agreed, chuckling himself, relieved that Jeffries didn’t seem to be hungry for details about his “vacation.”
“I don’t know what you’ve heard,” Jeffries said, suddenly serious. “But there’s a new development here. Al Qaeda is reorganizing; working on changing their name.”
Mac knew “former” Al Qaeda cells were instrumental in a lot of regional mischief. And white people were making entirely too big a deal that American tax dollars were buying weapons which found their way into the hands of the late Osama Bin Laden’s jihadists. The issue was much more complex than who was behind the 9/11 attacks and whether the new regime in Syria would be more hostile to the US than the old one was. Now, evidently, the jihadists were getting ready to topple the precarious post-Saddam regime here in Iraq, too.
“The withdrawal is a done deal,” Jeffries said. “The day is coming when you won’t have the Army or Marines here to back you up.”
“I go to the briefings,” Mac said.
“You ever consider working domestically?”
“In the States?” Mac nodded. “I tried to get on a SWAT team after I left the Army. Wound up a contractor instead.”
Jeffries shook his head, frowning. “I ain’t sayin’ you wouldn’t be good at it, but SWAT—that’s local stuff. The Man wants to keep us local and small scale, but we need to get in where the power is, on the federal level.”
“You mean like what you’re doing?” Mac asked.
Jeffries nodded. “I’m at the federal level. I got my finger on the pulse; feel me? And if bad stuff goes down, I’m in a position to do somethin’. Look at the whole Eric Garner thing…did you follow that?”
Mac shook his head slowly. “Yeah. Man, that jury…”
“That jury was just the start, man. You know I can’t talk about everything, but trust me, my brotha: it’s gonna get real ugly before too long. The man sees us movin’ up, now, and he don’t like it. I mean, we even got one of ours into the White House. White House. White. It’s their house, the way they see it. And they’re frothin’ at the mouth to make make sure us uppity Negroes don’t ever get up there again. There’s gonna be a backlash sooner or later, and you can kinda’ see it happening already.”
Mac considered his white friends. Some of them were just consumed with hate for Obama. They could rattle off facts and statistics to justify it, but what was the real reason? Then there were loose cannons like Josh Rennenkampf, who Mac was sure must be a closet Neo-Nazi.
“You got too much talent to waste on a SWAT team,” Jeffries went on, laughing derisively. “Or to waste bein’ a contractor.” He swept his hand in an arc–not to indicate the room they occupied or even the whole hospital, but the volatile country surrounding it, along with the chaos and military/political quagmire it represented.
“I dunno,” Mac said. “Contracting has been a good fit for me.”
“Well you might wanna think it over, my brotha. I might be able to hook you up, you ever decide to give it a try.”
“I appreciate it, man,” Mac said.
Jeffries stood from his chair. “Tell you what: I’m not gonna pry into your personal business about the vacation right now. You’re in the hospital, on pain meds. I’m just gonna say you fell asleep before you told me much. You get with Ingrid, find out what she said, then you can get your stories straight. Then we can finish debriefing. Sound good to you?”
Mac nodded, dumbly. When they shook hands again, it was in the familiar street method passed down and constantly revised by young men ever since the Vietnam era.
After Jeffries left the room, Ingrid came to visit him. She was a tall, well-proportioned, attractive Scandinavian woman, with a lab coat on over a nice casual blouse and pants. She asked how he was doing, and if he’d been questioned.
“Yeah. And he’s not done, either. What did you tell them?”
Ingrid shrugged. “What I know, which wasn’t much. I was on the boat when all of you went ashore. But I did see the one firefight.”
Mac groaned. Why did she have to mention that?
Well, he guessed the Agency probably knew about it already, anyway. “What did they seem most interested in?”
“Who all was there,” she said. “They knew about Tommy Scarred Wolf and his brother. And about you. They wanted other names, but I couldn’t remember them. I just gave physical descriptions.”
“Alright. If they come back to ask if you remember anything else, say no.”
They chatted for a bit, then she kissed him and left.
Mac pondered the whole strange encounter with Jeffries. The agent had saved Mac a whole lot of hassle, not asking questions there probably weren’t any safe answers for. In fact, if somebody really wanted to be a jerk, they could classify Mac as a suspected accomplice in the murder Tommy and Vince were framed for back in Medan, Indonesia.
Something bothered Mac about how easy Jeffries had made it for him. On the other hand, he was grateful to finally find an ally who saw things how they really were in this white man’s world. The negative possibilities surrounding Jeffries’ behavior paled in comparison.
