Crime, Thrillers & Mystery / Lex Talionis (Analysis)
Lex Talionis
by Ian Campbell
Lenny Kovakis arose from the dead one Friday morning with a mother of a headache. He sat up and massaged his temples, but the pain stayed lodged stubbornly in front of his left ear. What did he drink last night? Where the hell was he? He looked around the boring beige room with its boring furniture and a painting of a cottage by the sea and thought Hotel? He shrugged and drew the thin blanket back. He must’ve really tied one on last night: this was the first time he’d seen himself in pajamas in years.
It took a long moment of stretching to get the energy to slide his legs around and off the bed. When he tried to stand up, his knees buckled and he had to hang onto the bed to keep from falling. The headache came flowing forth and he lurched again as he squinted at the clock beside the bed. He kept squinting and cocking his head back and forth, but he still couldn’t make out the glowing red numbers. Great. Now on top of all this, he was going to have to get glasses.
It took him forever to find his clothes, all neatly folded in a drawer, the last place he looked. His wallet was there, but no keys, and the watch he’d had since he left the Company was nowhere to be found. On top of the wallet was a white business card; he couldn’t make out the words but he knew a cop’s card when he saw one. His head hurt so bad he couldn’t even care much about the watch, so he changed into his clothes and left the room.
Outside in the corridor, the place looked a lot less like any decent hotel he’d ever stayed in. Not enough carpet, too much cleaning fluid smell. The lights were too bright; they made his head hurt even worse. He saw what had to be the door to the stairwell and went through it and down the stairs. On the way out the door to the street, he realized he was holding up the waistband of his slacks while he was walking. He had to start eating better, maybe lay off the booze and dope for awhile, spend some time with Jill and get her to cook some of that hippie food for him, put some meat on his bones.
Once outside, he did a double-take. Spring must’ve decided to show up overnight. Guess they weren’t lying about that global warming thing. And this sure as shit wasn’t Ponce de Leon: this was a clean, straight street with new buildings, living trees and not a takeout carton or a crack pipe in sight. He tried to look around for street signs or landmarks, but everything around him screamed suburbia and every time he tried to read anything the headache got worse. He had notebooks at home that would make sense of everything.
He flagged a cab out of nowhere and climbed in. “Where the fuck am I?” he asked the driver, some Mexican or Arab kid.
“Polk an’… Waddell.”
“No, I mean what fuckin’ town?”
“Marietta.”
“Jesus. Take me downtown.”
“This is downtown.”
“Downtown Atlanta, champ.”
“You got fifty bucks? Chomp?”
Lenny flipped through the bills in his wallet. He still couldn’t read the damn numbers, but he could recognize Ben Franklin’s know-it-all mug on one of the bills. He handed it to the cabbie. “Keep it all. Just get me home.”
The driver got lost for awhile back behind Virginia-Highland but so did everyone else. It was why Lenny liked the neighborhood. He spent most of the ride trying to hold the card up at different angles, but trying to read the cop’s name just kept making his head pound. He knew he had a client ran an eyeglass shop, but he couldn’t think of the guy’s damn name even though he recognized the shop when they drove by it on North Highland. Colored fella, paid real regular. Darnell? Tyrell? Man, his head hurt.
When they got to his place, he told the kid to wait and walked up the path to the entrance to his apartment on the lower floor of the old Victorian. He looked under the rosebush for the fake rock and took the key from inside it, but the key wouldn’t fit in the lock. The fuck? He popped the glass with his elbow and unbolted the door.
His knees buckled again when he saw that his place was completely empty. It was clean, repainted, new carpet, new appliances in the kitchen. He wondered if whoever took the old stove found the twenty large he stashed behind the broken broiler. A quick tour of the place he’d lived in since… shit, since Madonna still really was a virgin showed that no trace of him was left other than a faint smell of cigarettes that no amount of paint or new carpet was gonna get rid of. The money in the toilet tank was gone with the old toilet, but a quick trip out to the cab to get the kid’s tire iron allowed him to liberate the satchel of cash from behind the electrical box.
But the notebooks were nowhere to be found. He was kinda starting to panic.
He went back out to the cab. “Kid, you gotta phone?”
“For you, chomp? Sure.”
He handed the card to the kid. “This guy’s a cop. Call him and find out where he is, then take me there so I can talk to him.”
“I think this a lady’s name. Lady cop.”
“Whatever.”
Detective Diana Siddall was hunched in front of her computer, doing her best to erase anything of interest from her draft report on the investigation into the fatal shooting of a tranny streetwalker known to the world only as Biggie Bunny. She heard her name in the distance and perked up her head while reflexively saving the file. Her eyes widened and she stood up from her chair, alarmed. She got hold of herself an instant later and looked the old man in the eye and smiled. “Mr. Kovakis? Uh, welcome… back?”
“Call me Lenny.” He hesitated, then stuck his hand out for a shake.
She shook. “But you’re… well, dead.”
He stood there and held onto her hand for a moment. He felt warm, living, maybe a little frail. After a moment, he smiled. “Huh. That explains a lot. How long I been dead?”
“Maybe two weeks?” She let go of his hand, took out her Blackberry, tapped a few times. “You got hit by that Lincoln on February 4, and they took you off life support and brought you to the hospice two weeks ago.”
“That was what that place was? What’s today, honey?”
“March 12.” Young and healthy, Lenny Kovakis would have been a real hunk. She could imagine him in one of those wide-lapeled white suits, singing along to “Hotel California,” each arm around a lady with lots of fluffy hair.
“Damn. So what the hell happened to me? You said something about Lincoln?”
“A Lincoln, Mr. Kovakis. Driven by a rich old drunk white lady on her way to Mary Mac’s Tea Room. She was in such an all-fired hurry to get herself a plate of good home cookin’ that she ran the light on Ponce and Myrtle and carried you through the window and into the restaurant. Right after church on a Sunday. She’s lucky you were the only one who died. Only you… didn’t.”
“Mary Mac’s? Aw, man. They still in business?”
“They only had to miss one Sunday. Once they moved you to the hospice, Traffic sent it over here to Homicide for review. We noticed that the lady’s son had some prior contact with you, borrowed some money to cover gambling debts back in oh-two?
“I’m having a lot of trouble rememberin’ stuff right now.”
“My partner and I came up to the hospice, but the doctor said there was no hope.”
“So you left your card, which is why I’m here. I went back to my place, but it was totally cleaned out. I guess they wanted to rent it out ‘cos I was dead.”
“Sure. Your sister was taking care of it. I left the card for her, really.”
“Jill. That’s it. She’d know where the notebooks are.”
“Notebooks?”
“Yeah. Who owes me what, and when, and how much?”
“Back to work so soon?”
“I gotta get them notebooks.”
“Well, you can use my phone to call your sister if you want.”
He shrugged, embarrassed. “I can’t remember the number.”
“No problem: I’ve got it in here.”
Before Diana could start tapping again, they were both interrupted by a great bear of a man in an enormous trench coat. Mustapha Alawi’s usual pirate’s grin seemed brighter now that he had trimmed his full black beard. “Dee, we gotta figure out what we’re gonna tell Curtis about the OT we’re gonna need for—“He looked down, clearly at a loss, then pointed at Lenny. “You’re dead.”
“What they keep tellin’ me, Inspector. How ya doin? This little lady’s your partner? Man, that’s a sweet deal.”
“I’m… I’m good.” He looked at Diana for clarification.
“He woke up in the hospice this morning.”
“Hunh,” said Mustapha. “What’s that like, bein’ dead?”
“I don’t remember nothing.”
“Not even, like, a white light?”
“Just a huge damn headache.”
“Go figure.” He sat down. “US Attorney’s gonna wet her pants now that you’re back.”
“Why’s that?”
“’Cos you’re the only one can make the link between that fucker Senator Farnsworth and the cash he paid to off his wife.”
Lenny tried to put this together and got a wave of pain and nausea for his troubles. “Like I told your partner here, I got trouble remembering things. It’s all in my notebooks, though.”
Diana turned her desk phone to face him. “He was going to call his sister, see if she had his stuff.” As Lenny picked up the receiver, she said, “It’s four-oh-four—“
Lenny put his hands to his temples. “Damn!”
Mustapha bent down. “You wanna glass of water or something, Len?”
“I took one to the head, didn’t I? My vision’s all fucked up when it comes to lookin’ at close-up stuff. I guess I’m gonna need glasses.
“You went through Mary Mac’s headfirst,” said Diana. “Doctors said it was a miracle you weren’t DOA on the spot.” She reached for the phone and punched in the numbers.
“Always had a hard head. That was my nickname in the Marines, Rockhead.”
Mustapha nodded. “Served you well last month.”
“Only it wasn’t on account of anything like that. You see, I was doin’ business even back then, lending guys money so they could buy a ring and bring their lady back to the States with’em. Engagement rings, you know? So it was legit. Or at least—Jill? Jill, baby. How ya doin?”
The voice on the other end was worried, almost panicky. “This is the police? Please tell me you’ve found him.”
Lenny laughed, relief flooding through him and pushing back the headache. “Nah, babe: I found them. You couldna waited til I was in the ground to clean out my place?”
A long pause. “Lenny?”
“Looks like I came back from the dead. The hell you move me out to the burbs to die? You know I never go outside the damn Perimeter.”
“You’re… alive? They said you had no chance of waking up. Holy crap, Lenny. But where’s Christopher?”
“No fucking clue. Haven’t seen anyone, ‘cept these two cops, helping me out. Ain’t he teaching today? Software shit, or whatever?”
“I haven’t seen him in three days and I’ve called everyone: Georgia Tech, his landlord, a couple of his friends—I can’t believe you’re alive.”
“Believe me, the headache I got, I almost wish I was still dead. Wait, so Christopher’s missing?”
“He didn’t teach his classes on Wednesday and they haven’t seen him today!”
“He’s a kid, Jill: he’s probably shacked up with some babe or something.” Lenny covered the phone. “My nephew’s gone missing. My sister ain’t the panicky type, neither. You want maybe to give me a lift over to Lake Claire, talk to her, and I can get my notebooks back?”
Diana smiled uncomfortably. “We’re Major Crimes, not Missing Persons.”
“You want me to testify or whatever, I’m gonna need them notebooks.”
Mutsapha shrugged. “Up to you. I gotta be in court in forty-five.”
Diana picked up her purse and jacket. “Who needs lunch, anyway?”
Lenny’s sister lived in a frame bungalow that was classic Lake Claire, with wooden siding freshly painted in ultramarine, trimmed in faded orange and vermillion, the mailbox dolled up to look like a black cat. Jill embraced her brother, then stepped forward. She was much younger than Diana would have guessed, probably less than ten years older than Diana’s own thirty-seven, but lived-in, warm, with a patina of worry overlaying multiple laugh lines. “Hi, Detective. I’m sure you think I’m being a hysterical mother, but Christopher is really not the type to miss his courses.”
“I’m not judging you, Mrs—“
“Kovakis. I never changed it.”
In the background, Diana could see Lenny browsing one of the many bookcases in the living room, a look of helpless frustration on his face. “Mrs. Kovakis. But if he really is missing, we’re going to have to call in other detectives.”
“Dammit!” said Lenny. “The hell is wrong with me?”
Both women entered the room. “What’s wrong?” asked Jill.
“What I’m sayin’.” He looked over at Diana. “It ain’t my eyes are fucked up: I can see the pictures on the covers of these books just fine. It’s my reading that don’t work. I can see that there’s letters, but they don’t make no sense to me. And not like they’re Russian letters or whatever. It’s like I can’t even really see what they are.”
“What’re you talking about, Lenny?” Jill turned back to Diana. “So what do I have to do to get someone looking for Christopher?”
“Once he’s been gone 48 hours, I’ll make some calls.”
Lenny gestured at the row of books at eye level. “See, I know some of these books are mine. But it’s only ‘cos I recognize the shape and color of the book or the picture on the cover. I can’t read the words, even when I know what book it is.
“Well, Mr. Kovakis, I’m sure the doctors will want to take a look at you.”
“I got out of the hospital once; I ain’t going back.” He pulled a big, thick hardcover of Invisible Man from the shelf. “This one’s about the col—the black fella figures out nobody can see him. But I only know that ‘cos it feels right. I can’t read the title.” He fluffed the pages. “And I sure as shit can’t read what’s inside.”
“Hunh,” said Jill. She touched Diana’s shoulder. “It was already 48 hours, this morning.”
“Could you recognize your notebooks, Mr. Kovakis?” asked Diana.
“Sure. They all look the same.”
“Oh.” said Jill. “Red ones? Looked like sketchbooks? Christopher took those.”
“The hell for?”
“He said he wanted to try to know your story. Like, to write something about you, Lenny. He was really hit hard by what happened to you.”
He looked at Diana, clearly frightened. “We gotta go over to his place. By Tech. Over by that huge fuckin’ development they’re putting in. But first you gotta help me find a book. A little bigger than this one here. With like a spooky title.”
Diana called Keisha Lee in Missing Persons and laid out the facts of the case while Lenny and Jill went through the house. When they returned with another black hardcover, Diana said: “Mrs Kovakis, someone will be here to take your statement in about an hour.”
“Thank you.”
Lenny laid the book on the table and slit the thick spine through the word Cryptonomicon to reveal a set of carefully folded papers. He handed these to Jill. “I can’t read’em, but I know what they are: bearer bonds. Take’em.”
Jill unfolded the papers and studied them as she walked to a bureau. “What in the – Are you serious? Ten, twenty… eighty thousand?”She dug in a drawer for a key, which she tossed at her brother, who snatched it out of the air without moving the rest of his body.
“Whatever it says. There’s more in some other books, too. I’ll get it after we find Chris and get my notebooks.” He turned to Diana. “Let’s go. I’ll buy you lunch after.”
On the way across town, Lenny was silent for most of the drive. As they went past the university on Tenth Street, he relaxed and chuckled. “Write something about me. Like how much different people owe me. That’s all there is.”
“What, you don’t think a story about the glamorous life of a loan shark would be interesting? C’mon, I can see it now, the new HBO series about—“
“Sure. The shylock who can’t read. Bet they wouldn’t call it Shylock, though.”
They knocked on the door of Christopher’s small apartment in a student ghetto; after the second knock, Lenny let them in. The tiny one-bedroom looked as if a very small tornado had been given leave to touch everything but the walls. “The hell?” said Lenny.
Diana used one arm to block his path and the other to draw her sidearm. “Stay back, Mr. Kovakis.” But the apartment was empty of people living or dead. She called in the scene and phoned Keisha Lee again to give her a heads-up. Before the crime scene team arrived, Diana looked both ways before flagrantly violating protocol and entering the apartment once again. A long, careful look while touching as little as possible told her that the searchers were very thorough underneath their evident enthusiasm for their work, and that someone had been injured and had tended to a wound at the kitchen table. Whether this had been Christopher, one of the searchers or someone else was anyone’s guess at this point.
By the time she and Lenny got free of the crime scene, it was almost two. “I shoulda had them books burned.” said Lenny. “But I didn’t know I was gonna die.”
“I should really hand this case over to Detective Lee, Mr. Kovakis.”
“Whoever’s got them notebooks has what your DA needs.”
“And where do you propose we look?”
“Take me down to Ponce. I can pop in on a few clients. He figured out what was in the notebooks, he mighta tried to collect on some money.”
Diana considered this for a moment. “No. I’ll pop in on a few of your clients. You’ll stay in the car. If anyone finds out you’re not dead after all, they might come after you.”
Her first stop was a car detailing place on Ponce just past Argonne. The owner and sole employee nodded. “Came by yesterday. I didn’t figure I was ever gonna get through life not owin’ nothin’ to nobody.” He smiled. “He was nice, though. Comped me three weeks’ vig. Called it his new management discount or something.”
The second man looked like a beautiful Nubian princess in his wig shop and hair salon on Boulevard. “Sure. Nice young man. Maybe a little nervous, but like he said, it was his first day on the job. But I think he learned something new.” He pointed to his perfect cleavage. “I think he found out about something he ain’t never known about before, and now he wants it real bad.”
“Well, you’re very lovely.”
“Thank you, sugar. You find him, you tell him Darlene’s willing to teach him a few things.”
The last place was a hole-in-the wall liquor store on Glen Iris across from the giant white elephant of the old Sears building that had become APD’s eastern headquarters. The owner was a towering man of mixed race, who sneered at Diana when she came in and again when she mentioned Christopher. “Yeah, he was here. Punk. I told him Lenny was dead and I wasn’t paying him nothing. He tried to threaten me but I just laughed at him and sent him on his way.” Diana looked pointedly at the bruising on the man’s knuckles. The man shrugged. “I mighta tapped him once or twice. But he walked outta here on his own two feet. And he came back yesterday with muscle, that freak with the Mr. T mohawk, you know who I mean? We negotiated an agreement, is all I’m saying.”
Diana got back in the car. “You know a guy who looks like Mr. T? With the funny hair? Guy says your nephew’s using him as backup.”
“Oh, man. We gotta find Chris. That fucker’s crazy. I hired him a coupla times to back me up, but he’s one of them guys who’s in the business ‘cos he wants to shoot someone. Me, I just wanna remind’em there’s consequences to fallin’ behind on your debts.”
“His name?”
Lenny shook his head. “One of them rap names. Fresh Poodle or something.”
Five minutes in the monolith of the APD building across the street got Diana a name, Bad Penny, and a last known up near Buckhead. Once they turned onto Cheshire Bridge, with its alternating rows of antique stores and strip clubs, Lenny started laughing. “Hey, honey, can we stop at the Tattletale for a second?”
“You need a lap dance, Mr. Kovakis?”
“Hey, I just got back from the dead. Cut me a break. Nah, the manager there? He’s a client. Plus he knows half the rest of my clients. I bet we can figure out where Chris is from there.”
The manager went from African black to greyish white when he saw Lenny. “But you was dead! They had a service.”
“Was the booze any good?”
“Nah, it was crap. You on a mission from God or something, that’s why you came back?”
“I just woke up, is all. But me and this detective here are looking for my nephew? He got my book and he’s going around making collections.”
“Ain’t seen him. Nobody even called. You mean I’m still gonna have to keep paying? Damn.”
“You help me find him, I’ll do what I can.”
“Lemme make some calls.” He waved over to a trio of strippers sitting around a table in the nearly-deserted club. “Hey, girls! Look who’s back from the dead!” Lenny walked over toward the women, who squealed with joy and threw their arms around him. Lenny looked relaxed and happy since the first time Diana had seen him.
The manager punched some numbers into his phone, then looked up at Diana. “You want a drink or something?”
“I’m on duty.”
“How ‘bout something from the kitchen? We always happy to do a favor for law enforcement.”
“I really shouldn’t.” Her mouth watered.
“We got a prime rib sandwich, real good.”
“I really shouldn’t.”
Half an hour later, she was lazily dragging the last of the fries through a pool of ketchup, blissed out on starch, grease and salt, when the manager sat down next to her. “I got some people seen him, some who ain’t. Most of the ones what seen him today are downtown, Midtown, not this far out.”
She wiped her mouth with the napkin. “Thanks. Let me get Lenny and we’ll try to track him down.”
“Nah, give him a moment.” He pointed over Diana’s shoulder. “He just got back from the dead for reals.”
She craned her neck to look behind her and saw Lenny’s legs and feet poking out from underneath a pile of long hair and girl flesh. “Life is beautiful,” was all she could manage.
Her phone rang. She looked at the display and saw Mustapha’s name. She answered it. “Lenny is enjoying a lap dance right now.”
“I’m stuck in traffic. You find the kid?”
“Narrowed it down a little. How was court?”
“I caught up on my paperwork for an hour, then answered three questions. But you’re gonna have to hand Lenny over to some other babysitter: we got a triple over in Ansley Park.”
“Whoa. Not the usual neighborhood. Domestic?”
“Drive-by gunfight. I’m on my way there now.”
Diana called Keisha Lee and set up a rendezvous at the Midtown station, then walked over to the table where Lenny sat, exhausted, while a woman with platinum hair and breasts like soccer balls gently patted his shoulder. “Now I’m back,” he said.
“Mr. Kovakis, I’m going to have to work a homicide case. I’m going to take you back to Midtown and the Missing Persons detective is going to help you find your nephew.”
“But you and me, we’re a team.”
“I’m sorry.” She offered him a hand up.
It only took ten minutes in the car for Lenny to start to fret and fidget. “Man, I’m worried about that Penny kid. Christopher, he’s smart as a whip, but maybe… too much of a college boy for my line of work. It’s my fault. I shoulda paid more attention, maybe coughed up some cash so he could live in a nicer place. Grad school ain’t cheap.”
Mustapha called again. “He in the car with you?”
“Sure. I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Nah, go to the trauma ward at Grady. The nephew’s in surgery.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, one of the officers punched in the plates of the two vehicles involved, and the one came back registered to the kid.”
Mustapha joined them after they’d been in the hospital waiting room for half an hour. “Lenny, man, I’m real sorry.”
“It’s all my fault.”
“What happened?” asked Diana.
“Two guys rolled up on them and shotgunned the kid. But they didn’t know about the late Bad Penny, who took’em both out but got one to the chest for his trouble.
Lenny started to weep. Diana patted him awkwardly.
Mustapha continued. “But the killers were even dumber, or at least overconfident. They had cell phones and you know who they was keeping in touch with all day?”
“Um…” began Diana.
“That fucker the senator,” said Lenny bitterly.
“His chief of staff,” said Mustapha. “It’s always the coverup that gets you, not the crime.”
“That don’t make me feel any better,” said Lenny. “The fuck am I gonna tell Jill?”
Diana spoke up. “Did you find any red hard-bound notebooks at the scene?”
“Nothing like that,” said Mustapha.
“So where are they?” asked Diana. They sat for a moment while Lenny wept.
Mustapha cleared his throat. “Hey Lenny, didn’t you say Chris is a professor at Tech?”
“Nah, he’s like a student teacher.”
“Right,” said Diana. “Which means he has an office.”
They made calls over to Georgia Tech while the surgeon came out and exchanged a few words with Lenny. Diana caught the doctor’s eye for a moment; he held his hand out flat and tilted it back and forth. Fifty/fifty? mouthed Diana. The doctor then spread both hands, fingers up. Only time would tell.
Lenny insisted they both come with him to see his nephew. Christopher was comatose, breathing on a respirator, swathed in bandages and tubes and wires. “They said he might come out of it,” said Lenny, clearly not believing it. “I did. So maybe there’s hope.” He seemed small again, shrunken, old.
He remained silent as they drove to Georgia Tech, where they met a nervous dean, a puzzled department chair, and a stoic security guard, who let them into the converted closet that served Christopher and two other graduate students as an office. On top of Christopher’s desk was a cardboard box with a dozen red notebooks in it. Diana picked up the box: once she could see all the way inside, she could see that it also held a dozen decks of cards, each in its own box with numbers from 1995 to 2006 scrawled on it.
Lenny sat down. “Gimme the book from last year.” Diana handed it to him and he opened it flat on the desk in front of him. “Aw, shit,” he said. “I forgot I can’t read. You’re gonna have to do it, sugar.”
He handed the book to Diana, who riffled through it. Each page had five colums of neatly-printed text, each column having five characters. But the characters were a random jumble of letters, digits and punctuation. A careful perusal of one page gave her no insight at all into what the text might mean. “Um, Lenny?” she said. “I can’t read this, either.”
“Don’t tell me you got hit on the head, too.” She watched as Mustapha rummaged in the box and pulled out the deck of cards marked 1998.
“No. It’s just random text.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s what you think. But it ain’t. You just gotta know how to decipher it.”
Mustapha took the cards from the box and riffled through them with his thumb. At the sound of this, Lenny whipped around and grabbed Mustapha’s wrist. “Don’t shuffle them fucking cards, Inspector. Don’t ever shuffle the cards.”
“Uh…” said Mustapha.
“Gimme the deck.” When he had the box in his hands, he said, “This the one from the same year?”
“No,” said Diana. She ruffled through the box. “Here you go.”
“Right.” Lenny took the cards from the deck and started fanning them with his thumb. After a moment, he started to weep again. “I can’t even read the fucking cards.”
Mustapha reached into the wastepaper basket and pulled out a handful of paper flakes made by a crosscut shredder. “I bet your nephew figured it out.”
“But he’s where I oughta be,” said Lenny mournfully.
Diana sat down next to him. “And you know how to do it.” She took the cards from him. “So tell me what I’m looking for.”
Lenny gazed into her eyes for what seemed like minutes. Then he smiled. “Yeah. You gotta have the alphabet first. You’re gonna have to write stuff down, too.”
Diana took out a notebook. “Okay, so what’s the alphabet?”
“All them symbols on the page? There’s fifty-two of’em. You gotta have’em in the right order, though. You get a regular old PC, call up the symbol menu, it gives you a grid? Count backwards from… the last letter, what’s it’s name?”
“Z?”
“Is that the last one? Count backwards fifty-two symbols, that’s your alphabet. Each card is that many symbols.”
Mustapha woke up the PC on the desk next to him and started clicking.
“But how do I know which card is which symbol? What card to I start with?”
“Two of clubs,” said Mustapha. “Clubs, then diamonds, then hearts, then spades.”
“Yeah,” said Lenny. “But it’s more complicated than that. You gotta go through a whole bunch of steps first.”
Mustapha read off the symbols to Diana, from the apostrophe through some other punctuation, then the digits, then more punctuation, then the alphabet.
After reading the characters back to Mustapha, Diana showed Lenny the first card. “Four of diamonds,” she said. “So that’s card number… sixteen.” She flipped open the first page of the notebook. “So I add sixteen to each character, that way I get the right message?”
Lenny managed a smile. “It ain’t that simple. You gotta go through sixteen cards. Then you gotta cut the deck, then you gotta find… oh, man, what’s his name?”
“Whose name?”
“The other card, the one what don’t belong.” At Diana’s perplexed look, he grabbed for the cards. “You know, the wild card.”
“The Joker?” asked Mustapha.
“He ain’t one of the other three kinds of people, and he don’t have a suit?”
“Joker.”
“Than that’s him. Only there’s two of’em, and that’s real important. You see, that’s how you start switching the deck around. You gotta find the one that I drew something on, ‘cos otherwise they look the same.”
Diana took the cards back from him and thumbed through them. “This one? The one with the star on it?”
“Yeah.” He bumped her with his elbow and winked. “You see? We are a team.” Diana smiled so hard she felt her eyes well up with tears.
Two hours and ten thousand card cuts later, they had a fascinated department chair and a list of names. Four hours and a hundred phone calls later, Diana and Mustapha led the Senator through a media gauntlet with his overcoat over his head. Eight hours and a ream of paperwork later, Diana stopped by the hospital, where Lenny sat waiting for his nephew to wake from the dead.
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Reviews
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This is one of the best stories I’ve read on the sight so far. You have a real talent and not only could this be printed as a short story but I would like to see any novels you may have written. You have real talent and this story is very well written. I was hooked beginning to end.
Her are a few grammar things:
“Hey, girls! Look who’s back from the dead!” Lenny walked over toward the women, who squealed with joy and threw their arms around him. Lenny looked relaxed and happy since the first time Diana had seen him. The secong sentence should look like: Lenny looked relaxed and happy for the first time since Diana had seen him. (I got a little fuzzy but was he getting a blow job while she was eating?)
“But how do I know which card is which symbol? What card to I start with?” I think you mean to to be do in this sentence.
That’s all I saw. Good.
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Your idea for the story was creative; a loan shark with reading problems and cops who cooperate with him.
However, the fluidity of your story hits several bumps along the way. It seems the flawed fluidity caused me to reread the choppy sentences in the first two paragraphs on pages 3, 6, 12 & 15.
For example, page 3: “He knew he had a client ran an eyeglass shop, but he couldn’t think of the guy’s damn name even though he recognized the shop when they drove by it on North Highland.”
Perhaps, in my opinion, the sentence would read better if was written this way:
“He had client who owned an eyeglass shop…..”
Usually in short stories I find the characters are one dimensonal but I found myself routing for Lenny and hoping Diana, the dective would form a relationship.
Tighten up the fluidity in the two paragraphs on pages 3, 6, 12 & 15 and the story will be even better.
More Very well done, I was captivated throughout the story.
My most favorite line, ”...she was lazily dragging the last of the fries through a pool of ketchup, blissed out on starch, grease and salt…”. That was fantastic. I was right there with her enjoying her grease right alongside her.
Nicely done, bravo. I would like to see the end not come to such a screeching halt. Maybe a bit more there, just to pacify those of us who didn’t want it to end? ;)
i was locked in from the first sentence… this is awesome! you need a publisher. great characters, dialogue, scenes, twists, turns… just awesome!
question: is lenny really dead? (not that it matters, believable either way)
one tiny little suggestion:
came (flowing) forth/stronger word here- pounding?
“Lex Talionis”, intriquing name for a short story. Lenny Kovakis is one hurting fella, not only one heck of a hangover but he was run over by a rich woman. Caught my attention as soon as I got through the first page. Good mystery thriller, great descriptions about how he`s feeling, how upset he gets because he doesn`t seem able to read. This reader was fascinated by how his sister and nephew became involved. Awesome how you have us wanting more. Thank you.
I love this story. I will keep it short and sweet. I wouldn’t change a thing. Lenny seems like a real smart ass and I love the way Diana visualized Lenny as an Eagle band memeber.(just my perception). The story flows wonderfully and sucks the reader in from the first paragraph. Hmmm! contructive critism huh? Space twice after a period when starting a new sentance. Thats all I could come up with to change. 10’s Bravo.
Beginning a story with “…arose from the dead…” in the first sentence is probably not a great idea. I mean, because this is the opening, the reader knows nothing else and thus, until they establish a clear idea in their head the character, voice, etc, everything reads pretty literally. Even in the following sentences, I wasn’t sure. Can the undead have headaches? I asked myself.
I’ve noticed that the narrative uses a lot of long sentences. In “He had to start…” there are so many commas that the sentence practically starts galloping. As a personal preference, I try to keep most sentences under 30 words. If they’re really long, break them up. Or use a semi-colon. It can be a great pet.
I really do like the opening premise. It’s a riff on the old “stranger in a strange land” theme. It’s fun to see the main character trying to figure out his surroundings as the reader attempts to do the same. I think the narrative does a good job of conveying the “WTF is going on here” feeling.
So he really did rise from the dead? Oh, this is getting confusing. I’m at the part where he’s talking to Diana and her partner. I’m wondering, “If he’s dead, how is it these people are able to interact with him?”
Ok, this is getting even more confusing to me from the time he leaves the police department to the time they arrive at Jill’s house. There’s so much going on here: The notebooks, Christopher’s disappearance, trying to figure out what’s happening with Len, the attorney general… It just seems like there’s way too much going on at once.
It’s also a bit discombobulating how the narrative jumps back and forth between what Diana’s thinking and what’s going through Len’s mind. We go into bits about her past, then the narrative is describing Len’s headache… I think this could be a lot better with more clarifying on the revision.
The dialogue is pretty strong. That seems like most shining aspect of this piece. It’s got a very gritty, street kind of appeal that reminds me of the noir detective genres of years passed. That’s very cool. There’s also a bunch of unique turns of phrases and cool observations in the narrative. Kudos there.
Overall it was good, but like I said, I had a really tough time trying to figure out what was going on. You’re obviously skilled as a writer in terms of description and dialogue, but I’d try to focus more on they way other people perceive this piece, not the way the author sees it in their own head. If you’ve got any questions feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment in the box below. Thanks for sharing.
-Curt
I was very excited by the way the premise was presented. Following Lenny makes it seem natural and fluid when you introduce the important elements of the story, and for the most part, that natural feel makes the story seem real. There seemed to be little bit of anachronistic dialogue, because you were very obviously in a completely modern setting… and not all the dialogue sounded modern. In general though, I really enjoyed it.
All and all this was a good read. I really enjoyed it.
The story flows well and for the most part very believable. The ending seemed like it was wrapped up rather quickly. I would have liked more details on the dirty senator and his arrest. Perhaps the shock and angry of being brought down…
“had a client ran” missing who.
“twenty large” he stashed twenty large what?
“She shook. “But you’re… well, dead.” This line doesn’t seem to fit here very well.
“coverup” cover-up
Wow I really like your style. You jump right in and even tho you give a basic description you dnt over do it which is always nice. I’ve never read any of your other work so I wouldn’t know about these being your usual characters. I do know that when you use charecters in new stories you should give a lil physical description early on to kinda remind yor core audience and so that new readers dnt feel left in the dark ya know? But id say your a very believable writer with a lot of talent and I would deff read on :) keep up the good work!!!
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