Death to Archie Lemons

  Death to Archie Lemons!

  A Novel

  By

  Grant Fieldgrove

  Copyright © 2014

  ManChops Inc.

  All rights reserved

  Come to Me

  Lyrics by Johnny Rzeznik / Gregg Wattenberg for Warner Bros. Music

  ISBN-13: 978-1499550160

  Published by ManChops Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over or does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright 2014 by Grant Fieldgrove / ManChops Inc.

  Cover Design by Eric Duhart

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  First edition: July 2014

  A portion of this book, like Stroke of Genius before it, is based on an actual case by real-life private eye Ken Brennan. My gratitude to him, and others like him, is enormous, for without the non-fictional detectives, there would be no Sam Spades or Phillip Marlows…and especially no Archie Lemons’!

  For my family

  It's a hell of a thing writing your own will. I mean, I know this is something most people will do sometime in their lives, but still...hell of a thing.

  Just in case I haven't quite been reminded of my own mortality enough, let me fill out this piece of paper to figure out who gets all my shit when it finally goes down.

  What a treat.

  But, unfortunately, it is something I feel I need to do and need to do quickly. It seems every year there is a new face of Death peering at me from the bushes. When my dad died, every ache or pain from my neck to my torso, no matter how minor, was a heart attack. After Marianne, every time I turned the key and let myself into the house, there was going to be someone there waiting to shoot me in the face. And every time an attractive client walks into my office it's...well, you get the idea.

  Be surrounded by as much death as I am and you'll always have a clock tic-tic-ticking away in the recesses of your brain, playing musical chairs with your life. Where it'll stop, no one knows.

  Like I said...hell of a thing.

  1

  Karen Neumann was sitting in the passenger’s seat of a GMC truck she co-signed on as it made its way down Gosford Avenue towards White Lane. She tugged nervously on the bottom of her dress, trying desperately to cover her knees with it. It was eerily dark out, a moonless night, and Karen leaned forward ever-so-slightly, hoping to suppress the sick feeling she had deep in her gut. She knew she shouldn't be out here but she was a sucker. Always going along with what other people wanted. Always trying to make people happy when she had no good reason to.

  Matt Decker, the man behind the wheel, also known as Karen's ex-roommate, sorta-friend and sometimes fuck buddy, had pulled up to a red light and turned to look at her: an icy, blank stare that caused tiny pin pricks to surge through her arms.

  What the hell am I doing here, Karen thought, over and over. It didn't make any sense and she was livid with herself for once again, being talked into something she wasn't very keen on. Matt had told her there was a nice sofa, just sitting in the alley behind the shopping center. He told her it looked like it was just dropped off there today and is in great shape. He told her they could go pick it up when no one was around and he'd help her move it into their rented house. Her rented house, now.

  When Matt moved out he had taken most of the furniture with him. All Karen had left was a bed, an end table, a few kitchen chairs and a beanbag chair that was not nearly as comfortable as it was when she was a child. So, unfortunately, the thought of a sofa, regardless of where it came from, was a little too good to pass up.

  She could kick herself.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.

  "Like what?" Matt replied in a monotone strain that did nothing to comfort her.

  "Forget it," she said, still fumbling with the seam of her Hollister sun dress.

  They drove along silently for what seemed like hours, but, in reality, was probably less than five minutes. The truck turned into the shopping center and circled around all the stores before pulling into the alley. He flipped on his high-beams as the truck lurched slowly to a stop behind the supermarket. The headlights casted a spotlight on the brick wall that served as the rear of the store but everything else was pitch black. Karen squinted, trying to adjust her eyes.

  "I don't see a sofa," she said softly, the rumble in her belly seeming loud enough to cause an echo in the still night.

  "It's pushed in the back. I pushed it back there so nobody would see it. Ya know, out of view from anyone driving down the alley."

  Karen stepped out of the truck and quietly closed the door.

  "It's back there," Matt said. "Trust me."

  Karen kept her distance, keeping the truck separating her from Matt. Behind her was a chain-link fence which served as a barrier to a vacant lot. Right now, everything on the other side just looked like a giant sea of blackness. Matt turned to look at her again. "Well?"

  Well what, she thought? She squinted her eyes again and noticed that Matt was not actually looking at her. He was looking to the right of her, at the fence. Was that well intended for me, she quickly asked herself before her hands began to tremble. Someone was back there. She knew it.

  She reached for the door handle to let herself back in, but it wouldn't budge. Matt had hit the lock button on his remote.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  "I'm not going to load it myself," Matt said, his face covered in the darkness as if wearing a faceless mask.

  Karen was freezing despite it being the dead of summer. She felt paralyzed. Half of her kept expecting someone to jump out from behind her. Tear her clothes off and maybe just shoot her in the head. Matt had owned a gun, she knew this, but the only thing she couldn't figure out is why. Why is she feeling like this? Why would anyone want to kill her?

  She and Matt had had some great times over the course of the sixteen months they had been roommates and whatever else. Yes, she had had to kick him out, but that was strictly a money issue and she gave him plenty of notice and even helped him make the move to his friend’s house. She had done nothing to deserve this and when she finally realized that, she calmed down a bit. Visions of the good times they had shared together quickly flashed through her mind and she was able to talk herself silently down from a panic attack, until the loud thud of Matt's hand slamming down on the hood of his truck re-awoken all her fears.

  "Come on!" he yelled, but to who?

  Was he talking to her or was he talking to someone hiding behind her. Karen tried to swallow but it felt as if a tennis ball was lodged in her throat. She couldn't make a sound. All she could do, trembling with fear, was walk around the front of the truck towards Matt.

  2

  It took me five full days to cry after finding my wife dead in our house. My emotions were so twisted into knots I wasn't even sure how to act. I've dealt with death before but this one felt different. My mom died when I was a baby and sadly, I guess I was quite apathetic towards it at the time. My dad's death, though...that one hit me hard. I hadn't been married very long but he was always around. My best friend. I'm still grieving over the loss of him. I cried for days and days, but that is a story for another time.

  I don't know why I reacted the way I did when I found Marian
ne. Maybe it was because she was stolen from me. Her death wasn't an accident. Her death wasn't health related. Someone had broken in to my house and killed her and my unborn daughter and took every hope and dream I'd ever had with them.

  I was enraged. I threw a fit. I trashed the nursery where she was killed. I punched the walls, I pulled down the shelves. I screamed like a madman. I hated everything. I hated everyone.

  I got plenty of sympathy cards but they meant nothing to me. The same old clichéd phrases, over and over again. And, they were from people who loved my father and loved my wife...not from people who actually gave a shit about me. People sent them because it made them feel better. Just once, I would have liked to have gotten a card that read: Hey, your dad died? FUCK THAT SHIT!

  That would have conveyed some sympathy.

  Instead, I kept just getting constant reminders that I was more alone now than ever.

  My hatred for everything blossomed.

  A heart attack is one thing.

  But murder?

  No one should ever have to deal with that, but that is the world we live in. Where someone can take something so precious from you so fucking easily and not even think twice about it.

  The world is a cruel, cruel mistress that will beat you up and crush your soul until you don't even want to continue on. Things will get worse before they get better, but, if you stick around long enough, and fight hard enough, you just might regain your footing and struggle past the heartache and pain, and maybe, just maybe, you will find happiness again. Sometimes, in the least likely of places.

  I found out who killed her. I also found out that they were sent to my house to kill me, but due to a mix up, my wife caught my bullet.

  Everyone involved in my wife's murder is dead. I wish I felt worse about it, but I don't. The man who did the actual shooting, well, I crushed his testicles and before the day was over, he was missing half his face. The woman who gave the order for my killing, I shoved a shard of dry ice through her eye and into her brain. The mastermind behind the whole ordeal, dead at the hands at my friend, Detective Robert Anderson.

  The nightmares afterwards would keep me awake. I had never killed anyone before. It wasn't like in the movies but nothing ever really is. I fought through them, and the guilt I carried over their deaths was replaced by the guilt I'd always felt over the deaths of the few people I actually had loved. Still love.

  I would rather carry the guilt of loved ones than of pieces of shit. It's how I coped.

  My family now comes to me in my dreams. Not a night goes by where we're not temporarily reunited. The sting I feel every morning when I realize they're still gone is a small price to pay for the visits.

  Sometimes, dreams are our reward for making it through another day.

  "You're him, aren't you?"

  Shit.

  "Yeah! Fuck yeah! You're totally him!"

  I ignore him and hope he goes away. He doesn't. They never do.

  "Yeah! I knew it! Nice!"

  The annoying little ass-noodle talking to me is...actually, I have no idea who he is. I have no idea who any of these assholes are these days, but they all sure know me. All I know is that he's a dude and he's already bothering me and I've only been here for about a minute and a half. A new record. He should win a prize and honestly, that prize should be my fist in his teeth. But, I'm told, that's not how you treat your fans. That's how you end up on TMZ and in tabloids and honestly, I'd rather lick the feet of a group of hippies than put up with that nonsense. So, instead I just smile and nod, confirming that I am, in fact, him.

  "I knew it! Here, sign this for me," he demands while shoving a notebook into my chest. No one has manners anymore. Everyone is just gimme, gimme, gimme and I'm damn near sick of it. I sign the stupid paper just as an easy escape plan. Fact of the matter is, it's hot out here. Too hot. And I will do anything I can to get past this crowd of slack-jawed looky-looers and into the house, where, judging by the size of the place, should be quite pleasantly temperature controlled.

  I hand the paper back to him and he takes it and disappears back into the crowd. No thank you, no nothing. I should be used to this by now, but I'm not. I turn back around and bump into another fan. A squat-looking little Mexican guy.

  "Here, sign this," he says, again pushing some form of paper into my hand. I've had enough. No please, no thank you, just demands, everywhere I go and from everyone I meet.

  "Hit the bricks, Little Ricky, I've got shit to do."

  "Man, you an asshole."

  "That's some fancy grammar you've got there, and speaking of assholes, I'm about to go blow some open. If you'd please step out of my way..."

  He gives me a fuck-you look but moves anyway. Lost another fan, I guess. How ever will I get sleep tonight?

  "Man, I've got to get used to this being famous thing," a voice from behind me says. I turn and see Elise making her way up through the crowd. What took her so long, I can't say. We both left the car at the same time. Perhaps she was mobbed by fans of her own. I have a feeling she would handle it a little better than me.

  "Yeah, that's why I wanted to be a writer. Become a famous writer and unless your name is Stephen King, no one gives a shit about you. Famous but anonymous, now that's the way for Archie Lemons."

  "Oh, you're such a Negative Nancy," she says, finally catching up with me. Our crowd is still gazing from us to the house, from us to the house. They can't seem to figure out what is more fascinating. "Besides, I've read some of your old articles and unless you wrote them in second grade, I wouldn't have held out much hope for making it a career."

  What a gal. "Yeah. Too bad." I roll my eyes at her, which would be my official motto if mottos didn't actually require words. They have to stitch something on that family crest and a pair of rolling eyes would look mighty ridiculous.

  "This is a bigger crowd than usual. What gives?"

  I shrug my shoulders and say, "Beats me. Seems like the whole neighborhood is out here. People love themselves a good murder. It'll be just like being transported into one of those terrible television shows."

  "C.S.I. Bakersfield. Sounds like a hit."

  "There already was a Bakersfield P.D. You remember that show?"

  Elise shakes her head and honestly, I can't remember much about it either aside from Gus Fring from Breaking Bad was the star. "Can we go inside? It's like a million degrees out here."

  "I'm following you. Anderson should already be in there."

  "Let's go then."

  "Like I said, I'm following you."

  We part through the Idiot Sea and make our way up the driveway and into the house.

  3

  Maybe I should back up a little bit since it's been a couple years since we've talked last. Bear with me, here.

  So, you remember that big Brad Jackson case over in Shell Beach that almost got us both killed, but didn't, then was supposed to become a made-for-television movie on some terrible cable channel, but it never worked out and they kept trying to screw us over with the script and the money? Well, yeah, needless to say, that never panned out. What did pan out, however, was a full-on, feature length, real-Hollywood movie of our adventure in Las Vegas two years ago with the poor schlub who got his dick quite literally handed to him and the life choked out of him with a belt.

  I guess some major player in the Hollywood douche-pool had caught wind of the story and decided to try and develop something from it. Well, tried and succeeded I should say. At first, I wasn't expecting much from it. I mean, if a story about bringing down a Hollywood star and revealing his secret gay life and murderous tendencies was left out in the cold to die, what chances did a story about a boring old rapist have?

  Apparently, for the first time ever, I was wrong about something because Stroke of Genius, a title I came up with, opened at number one at the box office back in March and went on to make one-hundred-and-three million dollars domestically so far with the international release still rolling out.

  Apparently, like I said
earlier, America loves a good murder, but when the murderer is also someone they love, a-la Brad Jackson, they tend to shrug off the crimes. However, unless your name is Kobe Bryant, nobody loves a rapist and people always cheer for their demise, which is why, I suppose, the movie was such a hit in the pre-summer blockbuster months.

  Bottom line is that we had a back-end story deal that was put in place long before the film went into production. As bigger and bigger names began to show interest, the budget ballooned, and with our deal still intact, regardless of everything that came after, Elise and I cleaned up. We got a couple of major Hollywood players to star in our little movie, even though I don't quite agree on the casting choice for my role. Sure, he has two Oscar nominations but he has the complete wrong body type. Sure, we're both on the bigger side, but he's a different kind of big. Trust me, people always point out the obvious differences as if talking about people's weight is now an acceptable topic of conversation, especially amongst someone you've just met. But I digress, as long as the checks clear, people can say what they want.

  The media frenzy that followed the movie was too much for me to handle. News reporters began shoving their stupid microphones all up in our grillz, with a z, asking us the same questions over and over. Elise seemed to eat it up and love the attention. I, however, just stood there, blank faced, looking like the I-Like-Turtles Boy in every interview I was so cruelly subjected to. Eventually the reporters started to notice this and began focusing all their attention on the attractive one in our duo, who also happened to be the one with the camera-friendly personality and non-crippling fear of exposure. Elise also has never let slip a few f-words during live telecasts, something that I, unfortunately, cannot say about myself.

  Elise handled everything like a boss, as usual, and in all fairness, the movie was pretty good. They really tried to capture our personalities and my amazing wit but in the end, it kinda, kinda, made me out to be an Inspector Gadget type, bumbling around the crime scene to Elise's Penny, secretly solving the crime and giving me the glory. Which, like I said, as long as the check clears, they could have cast Vin Diesel in my role and just showed him mumble and drool while Elise put everything together. It's all about the Benjamins, baby.