Babes, Booze and Bullets

[Chickstick]

 

 

A good cop in a bad town, John Ross must battle both the criminals and rampant corruption in Central City to save himself, his fiance and the city's legion of prostitutes from the Axeman, a crazed psychopath butchering any hooker he comes across.

 

Babes, Booze and Bullets is the first of a planned trilogy of stories detailing the seedy side of life in an American metropolis. Won't you come along for the ride?

 

CHARACTERS

John Ross: A good cop in a bad town, Ross struggles to save his city from the crime and corruption that has devoured it.

 

Gwen West: Ross' fiance, Gwen works nights at a seedy strip joint, a secret she and Ross keep from the rest of the world.

 

Bob O'Leary: The corrupt partner of John Ross, O'Leary is worse than the criminals he works against.

 

George Gacy: Ross' best friend in the force and one of the few good cops in the city. Has feelings for Gwen, but she hates the sight of him.

 

Henry Halliwell: Ross' superior, and a good cop. Nearing retirement, Halliwell wants his career to end on a high- by capturing the Axeman.

 

Kat Graham: A young woman from Ross' past, Kat returns to his life after eight years, leading to Ross needing to choose between the two women he's loved most.

 

Natasha Land: A whore working in the city's red light district, known as Sparkle Heights, who becomes a close ally and informant to John Ross.

 

CHAPTERS

One: The Girl

Two: O'Leary

Three: Gacy

Four: Suttcliffe Boulevard

Five: Kat Graham

Six: Temptation

Seven: Sex

Eight: Photographs

Nine: Gwen's Tale

Ten: Natasha

Elevn: Information

Twelve: The Docks

Thirteen: The Freeman House

Fourteen: The Trunk

Fifteen: Vince

 

Edited April 25, 2008 by Chickstick

[Chickstick]

One: The Girl

 

I hate my job. I hate my city. I’ve devoted my life to it, and it spits back into my face. From the highest skyscraper to the deepest sewer, everything I have ever done in my adult life I have done to help Central City and the scum that are its inhabitants. I’ve given my all. And they keep screwing me over.

 

I cough. Phlegm works it’s way up through my throat and into my mouth. I spit it out with a grunt. It’s the cigarettes. They’re killing me. Thirty-eight years old and already my lungs are jet black, covered in tar. I’m a dead man walking. I was running after a rapist a few nights ago and I almost collapsed with the breathing difficulties I’ve been having.

 

It starts to rain. Typical. The first night I’m on a stakeout for over a year and we get the first rain of the summer. The drizzle heightens the humidity. Every little movement seems to envelope me in ever more uncomfortable hot air.

 

I look up. There’s a billboard in front of me, advertising some new Hollywood blockbuster or other. Like anyone in this city will have the spare cash to go see that over hyped waste of two hours. Next to it is a pretty little whitewashed building. Smoke rises from the chimney. It looks like its owners wouldn’t hurt a fly. But this is Central City, the armpit of America, where the cops are just as bad as the criminals.

 

The door to this little house opens, and a pretty young girl, about fifteen or so, with far too much make-up on, walks out. She’s been crying. Her mascara is running in streams down her pale face, making me feel sorry for her even though I know what she’s been getting up to at nights when her businessman father’s asleep.

 

She closes the door shut behind her, making as little noise as possible. She tugs at her skirt, what little of it there is. She reaches into the small silver handbag she carries with her and pulls out a mobile phone. She starts to dial.

 

She moves down the street, straight past the small alley I’m hiding in. She doesn’t see me. Breathing a sigh of relief, I emerge from the darkness, following her. She almost turns around and my heart skips a beat. She shrugs to herself and continues walking. Thankfully.

 

Her voice breaks the silence, speaking to some unknown friend. I hear her say something about being at her boyfriend’s house, and a hurried goodbye. She puts her phone away. I think she starts to laugh, but I eventually realise she’s sobbing.

 

A distant siren wails somewhere in the sprawling urban wasteland. The girl I’m tailing looks up to the sky and mouths something. I’m wondering what it was when the black car screeches around the corner.

 

What happens next takes even me by surprise. The car has tinted windows. They know their stuff. They pull the brakes as soon as they reach the girl, and a window goes down. I see a gloved hand reach out. The hand is holding an Uzi. They pull the trigger.

 

The girl screams. Too late. Her body jerks sharply as round after round is shot into her young body. Blood sprays everywhere. Some of it even hits me, twenty yards away and under cover behind a parked van. I peer round the van and see the car disappearing into the night.

 

I run to the girl, now lying spread-eagled in the street. There’s nothing I can do for her now. She’s more dead than alive. Her eyes are bloodshot. Crimson pours out of her chest. She tries to say something but she can’t. The light in her eyes flickers out. I close her eyes and say a prayer for her. I still remember it, even though I haven’t been to church since my mother’s funeral.

 

The first daylight appears over the horizon, and I promise to both myself and the dead girl that I will find her killer and make the bastard pay.

 

Edited March 16, 2008 by Chickstick

[Vercetti21]

Awesome start to what looks like to be a promising story.

 

I just hope you'll be be able to balance this with AOD. Anyways, I'll be following along on this.

[TubbyJ]

Nice first chapter, waitin' for the next. I'll be following this one.

[Vercetti21]

I also meant to say, nice chapter lengths. Not too long, but not too short, and just enough description that it doesn't take away from the story. In the future, I'm going to try to do the same, as I kinda screwed that up with VLV.

[TubbyJ]

I also meant to say, nice chapter lengths. Not too long, but not too short, and just enough description that it doesn't take away from the story. In the future, I'm going to try to do the same, as I kinda screwed that up with VLV.

I wouldn't say so at all, I loved the fact that chapters were longer in VLV.

[silviodante]

Very nice story Chickstick, I liked how much description you used within the passages. This sounds to be a very promising story just like The Angel of Death. One question though: Is The Angel of Death a part of the trilogy?

 

@Vercetti21: I agree with TubbyJ on how your chapters are good long. They may take a good bit of time to read, but It reminds me of chapters within a book/novel.

Edited January 18, 2008 by silviodante

[Love.Life]

This is amazing

 

reminds me a bit off Bruce Willises story in Sin City

[Oxidizer]

F*ck! That was incredible. By far your best work to date, I'll definitely be checking back for updates!

 

Incredible.

[Chickstick]

Wow! I wasn't expecting anywhere near this amount of replies to just the first chapter! Thank you all for your kind words.

 

And no, The Angel Of Death is not part of the BBB trilogy- it has it's own strict continuity, and is set in the "real world", while this story is of course set in it's own fictional city.

Edited January 18, 2008 by Chickstick

[Chickstick]

Two: O'Leary

 

Thirty minutes pass, and O’Leary turns up, late as usual. He’s been my partner for over ten years, and we’ve hated each other for all of that time. I hate him because he’s the reason my city has gone to sh*t. He deals drugs to kids, has about five call girls on the go at once, accepts bribes like it was part of his job description. He hates me because I’m practically the only honest cop in town.

 

O’Leary pulls his fat ass out of the car and swaggers over to me. He’s been drinking on the job again. I haven’t seen him sober in two years or more. He finally reaches me, and stares me straight in the eye. I smell the brandy on his breath. I try not to gag.

 

“Well, well, well, Rossy boy!” he laughs, knowing full well I hate that nickname. “What’s been going on here then?”

I resist the temptation to send my fist flying into his yellow teeth and reply, “Considering a girl has just been murdered, don’t you think it’ll have something to do with that?”

He smirks.

“Why were you here, Ross? Did you kill her?”

“Jesus, O’Leary. I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake.”

“So am I,” is his reply, “and I’ve killed plenty of people. Just last week I whacked a little old lady who jaywalked in front of me!”

He laughs, a horrible nasal laugh. His idea of a joke always makes me wonder whether he’s right in the head.

 

He stops laughing and walks over to the corpse. He examines her for a few moments before coming back over to me. He mumbles something about leaving and goes back to his car. He drives away, leaving me hoping he’ll crash it.

 

The guys from the morgue are down the street, setting up the ambulance ready to take the cold mass of flesh and bones to the incinerator. Nobody bothers burying murder victims in this town anymore. There’s too many of them.

 

I walk over to the body and cast my eyes over it for the tenth time. She was really more of a young woman than a girl. A quick search of her handbag revealed a packet of condoms, sunglasses and a small bag of cocaine, street value about $300. No ID.

 

I walk over to the morgue guys and ask them when they’re taking the body. Two minutes is the answer. I lean back against the ambulance and reach for my cigarettes. I light one and let the smoke drift out of my mouth into the warm air. It’s almost suffocating now, it’s so humid.

 

The morgue guys take the body and I’m left alone on the street. I wonder whether I should pay a visit to the little white house, and decide I don’t want to go in there alone. So, instead, I go home to my dingy apartment and wait for Gwen to come home from her night job.

 

It’s almost noon by the time she comes in. I don’t realise it. I’m asleep; the first time I’ve had some shut-eye in over two days. She sits next to me on the couch and kisses my stubble. I stir a little and say something in my sleep, what it is I don’t know.

 

I wake three hours later to the smell of bacon. I wander into the kitchen to see Gwen frying it in the nude. She hears me come, turns and smiles.

“Afternoon, John. About time you got up. Want some breakfast?”

I nod. My mouth is so dry I feel like my tongue will burn up if I attempt to speak.

 

I walk to the fridge and take out the carton of milk that’s been sitting in there for days. It’s sour as hell and tastes disgusting but I down it in one anyway. Gwen looks at me like I’m mad.

“I had a tough day at work.” I explain and slump down into a chair.

 

We eat the bacon in silence.

Edited March 16, 2008 by Chickstick

[Oxidizer]

This is excellent and one of my favorite stories right now. I'm intrigued and want more!

 

Keep it up.

[Coral_City]

Before I read the story, would I have to watch "Sin City" or any other movie to make this reading enjoyable to it's maximum?

 

Edit: This is a great story so far. I've caught up and it's quite good... detailed how it should be in the first person, that way you don't necessarily need to fumble through that much description. Good writing...umm...not really much I can say in terms of criticism. Just keep up the work

Edited January 19, 2008 by Coral_City

[Chickstick]

Before I read the story, would I have to watch "Sin City" or any other movie to make this reading enjoyable to it's maximum?

Sin City? What's that?

 

Obviously it was an influence, but there's no need to see it to make this more enjoyable.

[Vercetti21]

Never seen Sin City, but I love this. Great second chapter and I have the feeling this story is going to be epic!

[Land Of Confusion]

Very nice, I enjoyed it, you describe it very well and I felt as if I was right there.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are basing some of this on Sin City right? I mean, what with Clive Owen and Bruce Willis on the banner, and the type of discription and character you started with, I saw quite a bit of similarity.

[Chickstick]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are basing some of this on Sin City right? I mean, what with Clive Owen and Bruce Willis on the banner, and the type of discription and character you started with, I saw quite a bit of similarity.

The narrative style definetely is based on Sin City, simply because I liked it. It sounds a bit different, for want of a better word, than most narration.

[Oxidizer]

That's awesome and still quite original, considering most things are done in third person. I read a fanfic not long ago written in the exact same way yet wasn't based on Sin City and I regard that as one of the best, and this is definitely your best.

[Chickstick]

I read a fanfic not long ago written in the exact same way

What fanfic was that? I'd be interested in reading it, just to see how the style I'm using for this has been used by others.

[Chickstick]

Three: Gacy

 

Later, I’m back on duty, though this time at the station. There’s a meeting being held, and Halliwell, my boss, is going through all we know about the girl’s murder and the events in the little house.

 

I walk in on this gathering of cops a bit late. They all turn round and give me a dirty look. Bastards.

 

Halliwell continues from where he was, seeing as I know what was going on in the house. A few of the local drug dealers- real big shots- had been using some of the younger whores from Sparkle Heights, the red light district, as couriers. One of the hookers had come to us last week, and ratted them out.

 

Her body was found in the river a few days later. The force never carried out an investigation.

 

I was given the sh*tty job of watching the house. Probably so I would be preoccupied while the other cops did a deal with the pushers somewhere else.

 

I sit down and look around me. There are twenty men in the room, myself included, and they’re all as corrupt as hell. There’s only two good men apart from me- Halliwell, who’s approaching retirement anyway, and my good friend George Gacy, a small, mousy man in early middle age who’s renowned for being the toughest man in the division. Never judge a book by its cover, my late ma would always say, and she was right.

 

Halliwell tells us that the name of the girl was Donna Trent, fifteen, the daughter of a rich board member who had no idea she was doing a little whoring to supplement her $500 pocket money. She was pushing for the dealers (we don’t even know any names- or at least nobody’s told me any), and had been doing so for a year.

 

Halliwell doesn’t tell us where we got this information from, but money talks in Sparkle Heights, and some top brass will have bribed his whore mistress for it.

 

The meeting ends and I’m left alone with George, who’s standing over by the coffee machine, getting himself another doughnut, his eighth in the last hour. He eats like a horse for such a little man.

 

“Hey, John.” He greets me and offers me a pastry. I decline.

“George.” I reply.

“So you were at the scene last night when this whore was shot?” He says it as a question even though he knows I was.

I nod and force a half-hearted smile.

“Pretty sh*t.” A pause. “How’s Gwen?”

“She’s fine, fine. Doing well in her job, as well.”

 

George has always had a crush on Gwen, ever since I introduced them over five years ago, but she can’t stand him, saying he reminds her of a pervert who used to park outside her high school and watch the girls play volleyball.

 

“Oh, good. Good…” he trails off.

 

I don’t tell him Gwen’s “night job”, as we call it, isn’t as a DJ at a nightclub as I have told him in the past. I don’t want anyone knowing my fiancé is a stripper.

 

He leaves with a nod and leaves me in peace to mull over the case of the girl. I’m still thinking an hour later when the fax comes through.

 

It reads:

Rossy Boy,

23 Suttcliffe Blvd.

00:00. Come alone.

-O’Leary

 

I get up and walk out to my car.

Edited March 16, 2008 by Chickstick

[Oxidizer]

I love this! It's all dark and gritty and leaves me wanting more every time. And the size of the chapters is perfect - not too long, not too short.

[Vercetti21]

Cool. George seems like a pretty interesting character, and it looks like he's got some secrets. Shame about AOD, but this is good stuff too - keep it up.

[Chickstick]

Four: Suttcliffe Boulevard

 

By the time it gets to ten to midnight, I’m getting increasingly impatient for O’Leary to turn up. I start to wonder whether it’s a joke, a laugh at the expense of good old Rossy Boy. I decide that if it is, I’m going to pull his stained teeth out one by one and shove them up his ass.

 

A car pulls round the corner onto Suttcliffe Boulevard. It’s O’Leary, early for something, amazingly. He parks twenty metres or so away from my own car, and pulls himself out. He’s drunk.

 

I check the clock on the dashboard. 11:52.

 

He arrives at my door and knocks on the window, his face expressionless. I roll the tinted glass down and look at his face. He looks like hell. His eyes are sunken and bloodshot, his breath in my face even more rancid than usual.

 

“John, I’m s-so glad you came,” he says, calling me by my proper name for the first time in years.

I reply, “What did you want me for, Bob?”

He snorts, a terrible sound, and empties the content of his left nostril into my car.

“Sorry” he mumbles.

I wince and gingerly wipe the green mess off the seat where it had landed.

“I wanted to tell you about the drugs,” he continues, “and that girl that was shot.”

 

I’m all ears, and allow him to continue uninterrupted.

 

“I’ve been taking bribes off the pimp involved in it for the last two years. Long before the rest of us even knew about it. Course, as soon as he said he wanted to start using the teenage girls he had working for him as couriers, I pulled out. I never expected anyone to be killed.”

 

He breaks down and starts to sob.

 

“I loved Donna. Not in that way, John, don’t look at me like I’m a pile of dog sh*t. Like a daughter. She always liked me. And now she’s dead. And it was that f*cker who did it.”

“Who, Bob? Who?”

“Freeman. Carl Freeman.”

 

sh*t. I’ve had a couple of run-ins with Freeman before. A pervert with a fixation on whores, he lived with his mother until she died. He didn’t report her death for six months- probably so he had plenty of time to screw the corpse.

 

He doesn’t seem to me, though, like the kind of man who could organise something of this magnitude. Christ, he’s almost backward, and I’m pretty sure his family have a long history of inbreeding.

 

I turn to O’Leary and ask, “Why? Why would Freeman do something like this?”

“I don’t know,” is the reply I get, “he only pays me to keep quiet. I don’t know anything about the business side of things.”

 

I nod and mutter a quiet thanks to him. As much as I hate him, he obviously did hold Donna close to him, and nobody deserves to go through the trauma of having someone close to you killed in that way. I make a mental note to make a visit to Carl Freeman in the morning.

 

Back home, I’m just drifting off to sleep when I get the call from Halliwell that O’Leary’s killed himself. His landlady heard choking noises, apparently, and walked in to see him hanging from the ceiling. The old woman’s been taken to the hospital for shock. If she’s lucky, she’ll be discharged before she catches a hospital infection.

 

Two days, and two deaths. The girl, and now O’Leary. Both are connected to Carl Freeman.

 

I don’t go to sleep.

Edited March 16, 2008 by Chickstick

[longkissgoodnight]

Awesome story Chickstick - I will be here until the end!

[Chickstick]

Thanks a lot.

 

It's good to see I'm hopefully getting a few people who will follow this through to it's conclusion.

[Oxidizer]

Incredible as always.

 

I'm really liking how this one's shaping and it's kind of rawness. Not to mention the intriguing build-up of the elusive Carl Freeman character - I'm looking forward to seeing how this stuff plays out and what's happening regarding the deaths, O'Leary's kinda making me think was suspicious.

 

Wicked work!

[Chickstick]

what's happening regarding the deaths, O'Leary's kinda making me think was suspicious.

 

 

We'll just have to wait and see...

 

I just want to say, Oxi, and to Vercetti21 as well- thanks a lot for always commenting on my writing. It means a lot.

[Oxidizer]

Intriguing.

 

No need to thank us for your talent. I'm sure I speak for V21 when I say this is excellent, and therefore deserves much praise.

[Land Of Confusion]

Sorry for not commenting earlier when I read the chapter Chickstick, but I had to rush out quickly, anyway. It's nice to see the way Carl's strength is tested and wounded by shock and most recently betrayal, I love the style of narrative, it's nicely discriptive without being 'wordy'. Keep up the good work.

[Chickstick]

No worries, LOC.

 

Cheers for taking the time to come back and commenting- every reply is increasing my confidence with this story.