21 Tales Read online

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by Dave Zeltserman

  Danny Smith

  My Bogusly Autobiographical ‘Life in Writer’s Hell’ Stories

  More Than A Scam

  Flies

  She Stole My Fortune!

  The Weird

  Closing Time

  Dave Stevens, I Presume?

  View From The Mirador

  Almost Human

  One Terrific Apartment

  The Hardboiled

  A Long Time to Die

  Money Run

  Man Friday

  The Dover Affair

  Forever and Ever

  The Manny Vassey Stories

  Triple Cross

  Next Time

  Nothing But Jerks

  The Brutal

  The Plan

  A Rage Issue

  Adrenaline

  Nine-Ball Lessons

  About the author

  21 Tales of Dark Suspense

  by Dave Zeltserman

  Digital Edition Copyright ©2011 by Dave Zeltserman

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First eBook Edition: 2011

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, companies, institutions, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.davezeltserman.com

  Zeltserman, Dave

  21 Tales by Dave Zeltserman

  Cover design by Kenney Mencher

  Published in the United States of America

  “Danny Smith” © 2010

  “More Than a Scam” © 2002, originally appeared on the web-zine, Mysterical-E

  “Flies” © 2006, originally appeared on the web-zine, Hardluck Stories

  “She Stole My Fortune!” © 2010

  “Closing Time” © 2006, originally appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, July/August

  “Dave Stevens, I Presume?” © 2007, originally appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March

  “View From The Mirador” © 2007, originally appeared in Futures Magazine

  “Almost Human” © 2003, originally appeared in Futures Magazine

  “One Terrific Apartment” © 2010

  “A Long Time to Die” © 1992, originally appeared in New Mystery Magazine, issue #2

  “Money Run” © 2005, originally appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November

  “Man Friday” © 2010

  “The Dover Affair” © 2003, originally appeared on the web-zine, Thrilling Detective

  “Forever and Ever” © 2004, originally appeared in Hot Blood #12, Strange Bedfellows

  “Triple Cross” © 2003, originally appeared on the web-zine, Orchard Press Mysteries

  “Next Time” © 1996, originally appeared in Hardboiled, issue #22

  “Nothing But Jerks” © 2008, originally appeared on the web-zine, Pulp Pusher

  “The Plan” © 2003, originally appeared on the web-zine, Hardluck Stories

  “A Rage Issue” © 2007, originally appeared on the web-zine, Thuglit

  “Adrenaline” © 2007, originally appeared in Out of the Gutter, issue #2

  “Nine-Ball Lessons” © 2007, originally appeared in Bullet, #7

  Praise for 21 TALES

  "Inventively depraved" --New York Magazine

  "Dave Zeltserman is one of the crime genre's most accomplished, radical, and innovative talents. His command of style and personal dark vision of the world are framed in the short form to reach out and shake the reader by the throat. I only wish that 21 Tales had been 51 Tales or 101 Tales. We need more of his edgy stories to rattle the field." --Tom Piccirilli, author of Shadow Season

  "In a relatively short period of time Dave Zeltserman has established himself as the most relevant author of dark crime fiction working today. As usual, Dave doesn't pull any punches, and his 21 Tales is inventive, nasty, pulpy fun." --Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep

  "Deadpan and more ruthless than ever, Zeltserman pulls off one clever shocker after another in classic pulp style. Not for the faint-hearted!" --Vicki Hendricks, author of Cruel Poetry

  "Zeltserman's twisty-tailed gems drag you deep into pulpland, bitch slap you dizzy, and leave you begging for more." --Roger Smith, author of Mixed Blood

  "Dave Zeltserman's stories demonstrate that he's as masterful with the short story as he is with the novel--the same stunning level of craft and the same lacerating vision. This is an important collection." --Ed Gorman, author of Ticket to Ride

  "Dave Zeltserman’s 21 Stories has enough twists and turns and plot reversals to give O’Henry whiplash. Readers should expect the unexpected. Zeltserman delivers some dark and disturbing fun in these stories."-Lynn Kostoff, author of Late Rain

  "21 Tales is a lethal Molotov cocktail that won’t give you a hangover but could give nightmares." Pulp Metal Magazine

  "I’ve become a big fan of Dave Zeltserman for one simple reason: The man can write. 21 Tales, a collection of his short stories, surely will satisfy the most die-hard fan, while also giving bite-size tastes to the unconverted. It’s broken down into five sections that range from the semi-autobiographical to the brutal, but are dark tales of noir." Bruce Grossman, Bookgasm

  Praise for other books by Dave Zeltserman

  "Zeltserman is the author of increasingly accomplished crime novels, distinguished by spare and crisp prose, believable dialogue, imaginative plot twists and tightly wound characters who don't wear out their welcome."

  —Newsday

  "Superb mix of humor and horror...Zeltserman orchestrates events perfectly...Readers will keep turning pages to see how the ambiguous plot resolves."

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review for The Caretaker of Lorne Field

  "Harrowing. Zeltserman colors it black with the best of them."

  —Kirkus Reviews

  "Crime writer Zeltserman has produced a nail-biter...The narrative is straightforward and gritty, reminiscent of works of Dashiell Hammett...gripping and actually 'horrifying,' this title is recommended for horror fans and readers who may relish unpleasant surprises."

  — Library Journal

  “There's a new name to add to the pantheon of the sons and daughters of Cain: Dave Zeltserman. His new novel, Small Crimes, is ingeniously twisted and imbued with a glossy coating of black humor… The plot of Small Crimes ricochets out from [its] claustrophobic opening, and it's a thing of sordid beauty.”

  —Maureen Corrigan for NPR’s Best Books of 2008

  "[Small Crimes] deserves comparison with the best of James Ellroy."

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  "A strong piece of work, lean and spare, but muscular where a noir novel should be."

  —The Boston Globe

  "Not only does the novel have clean, simple prose, ample suspense and twists, and a fast-paced plot--standard fare; it also offers brilliant psychological insight into tortured souls, and on a deeper level, it is a moralistic tale about how small crimes beget larger ones."

  —Bookmarks Magazine

  "This novel [Killer]is everything hard-boiled fiction should be - compact, direct and disciplined, and concerned with humans rather than stereotypes. It is also, for all its violent subject matter, a quietly told story, which makes its tension all the more intense"


  —Mat Coward, Morning Star

  Other Books by Dave Zeltserman

  Monster: A Novel of Frankenstein

  The Caretaker of Lorne Field

  A Killer’s Essence

  Small Crimes

  Pariah

  Killer

  Outsourced

  Bad Thoughts

  Fast Lane

  Blood Crimes

  Julius Katz Series

  Julius Katz Mysteries

  Julius Katz and Archie

  One Angry Julius & Other Stories

  The Hunted Series

  The Hunted

  The Dame

  For Judy

  Special thanks to Kenney Mencher for his brilliant painting which was used for the cover art.

  Look for the paperback edition of 21 Tales from New Pulp Press.

  These stories were written between 1992 and 2006. In the early nineties cell phones weren’t ubiquitous and we had VCRs instead of CD players, and it was tempting when putting this together to update some of my early stories to reflect these technology changes, but I resisted the temptation. I did use the opportunity to smooth out a few bumps here and there, but these changes were minor. Outside of Danny Smith, my shortest story, these stories are arranged in the following groups: my bogusly autobiographical ‘Life in Writer’s Hell’ stories, The Weird, The Hardboiled, The Manny Vassey stories, and The Brutal. One Terrific Apartment is fantasy, the rest of the stories in this collection are either crime, suspense or noir, and are populated by desperate criminals, con men, psychos, dangerous women and losers. There’s betrayal, deceit and treachery on these pages, and occasionally more enlightened behavior, such as self-sacrifice and courage. A few heroes emerge, not many, but a few.

  As a kid I used to read all of the Alfred Hitchcock paperback collections I could get my hands on. I loved the twists and surprise endings in the better stories of these, and I’ve always tried to write the same sort of stories I used to love so much as a kid: stories that are fun and exciting and with plenty of twists, as well as endings that catch the reader by surprise. What can I say, at my core I’m a pulp writer. I hope people enjoy these.

  Danny Smith

  This is my shortest story. A mere 247 words long. My goal was to write a story in under 250 words that not only had a full arc, but was a satisfying read. You can be the judge for whether or not I succeeded.

  I can’t get Danny Smith off my mind…

  He was a good-looking kid. Well-mannered, soft-spoken, just an overall good kid. Only twenty-four years old. Six months ago he hired me to find his birth parents. You see, he was adopted, had great parents, but he wanted to know his roots. There was something familiar looking about him, made me think I had seen him before. The reason for that was his birth dad turned out to be Sam Lombardo, top guy in the Boston Mob. It didn’t take me too long to find that out. It turns out Lombardo had a one-night fling with a dancer, never knew he had this other son. When I told him about Danny, he told me what he would do to me if this kid ever bothered him.

  That was six months ago.

  Two weeks ago I heard Lombardo was on his death bed, dying of congestive heart failure, and word was he was going down fast. His goons brought me to see him. Lombardo wanted to know about Danny. I thought he just wanted to make peace with his son before he died.

  A week ago Danny’s parents called me. They were frantic. Danny had disappeared. They had no idea where he was.

  Three days ago I heard through the grapevine that Lombardo had found a heart donor. A good match, too. Transplant looks like its going to be a success.

  I can’t get Danny Smith off my mind…

  My Bogusly Autobiographical ‘Life in Writer’s Hell’ Stories

  ‘More Than a Scam’, ‘Flies’, and ‘She Stole my Fortune!’ represent my bogusly autobiographical stories—stories with just enough similarities with my own life to sound as if they could be autobiographical, and all dealing with a writer struggling to break in (these were written before Small Crimes was bought by Serpent’s Tail). But even with the bogusly autobiographical nature of these stories, they’re all completely fictional. Still, whenever one of these would come out, I’d get concerned calls from family and friends wanting to make sure my wife was okay. Trust me, she’s fine. Nothing to worry about.

  More Than A Scam

  The inspiration for this story were the ubiquitous Nigerian email scam letters I was receiving daily. At first I was planning to do the same as my story’s hero, namely record a correspondence with one of these scam artists, but instead I decided to go in another direction. More Than a Scam received honorable in the 2003 edition of Best American Mystery Stories.

  It really all started with the email I received. The message was marked “Urgent/Confidential” and was from one Celestine Okiti, who claimed to be a senior accountant with the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Finance. The gist of the email was that ten and a half million dollars was sitting in a Nigerian bank account and she was looking for a partner to pose as the next of kin of some dead foreign contractor so she could get the money out – and that my cut would be four and a half million dollars, minus expenses.

  Of course it was a scam. It was too silly to be anything else, and besides I had read about this years ago. The “pigeon” who went for his four and a half million cut would be asked to put up some money to show good faith and to cover the expenses. It was a pretty simple and childish scam, one that makes you wonder how anyone in the world could fall for it, but still, I was fascinated by that email. It got my mind spinning on different crime story scenarios.

  I guess I should tell you a little about myself so that this makes some sense. My name’s Dan Wilson. I’m thirty-eight, live in a suburb near Boston, been married ten years, and have a pretty boring job processing insurance claims. In order to keep my sanity I write crime stories in my spare time. Usually I write hard-boiled PI stories, sometimes crime caper stories. I’ve had limited success. I’ve sold a couple of stories to print magazines and have given away a fair number of them to online Internet magazines.

  I sat for a good two hours staring at Celestine Okiti’s message, playing out different story ideas in my mind. The one idea I kept coming back to was responding to her email message, pretending to be a pigeon, and then writing up the exchange of emails as a story. I didn’t do anything, though, at least not then. By the time I gave up it was one in the morning. I didn’t want to wake Cheryl so I slept in the guest room.

  The next morning as I sat drinking coffee my mind raced with different possible Nigerian bank scam stories. I didn’t notice Cheryl had come into the room until she sat across from me with her yogurt and newspaper. She seemed too absorbed with the newspaper – and I guess I was too deep into plotting my story – for us to say much to each other. After I finished my coffee I headed off to work.

  After three days of working out different scenarios in my mind, I decided on a plan of action. Instead of replying back to the email as a “pigeon”, I would instead create my own scam. I have written stories with a roguish conman named Pete Mitchel. For the hell of it I decided to use his identity. I created an email account for Pete and wrote an email back to Celestine Okiti, telling her how fortuitous it was that she had contacted me, that I worked in the office of a large construction company, and that a Nigerian national died on the job several months ago and seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars in death benefits were sitting there waiting for a next of kin. I told her that I was planning a trip to Nigeria to find someone who could pose as the dead man’s next of kin, but Celestine could save me the trouble. I further explained that I wasn’t greedy, that ten percent, or seventy-two thousand dollars, would be all I wanted.

  I sat in front of my computer for several hours with my email message typed out, trying to decide whether to send it. Of course, the scam letter they sent to me had been sent to thousands of other addresses, probably from a purchased email list. They’d have no idea whether or not an email was originally sent to a
Pete Mitchel, nor would they check. As I was trying to decide what to do with the email, Cheryl walked into the room and interrupted me. She told me it was late, that she had to get up early the next day, and asked if I’d be quiet when I went to bed. She looked tired, a little worn out. I told her not to worry, that I’d sleep in the guest room again. After she left, I stared at the email message for another thirty minutes, and then sent it.

  I didn’t get a response for several days. I must’ve checked my email a few hundred times before I found a reply from Celestine Okiti. She thanked me for the opportunity that I presented, but insisted that her opportunity was urgent and was far more lucrative. She wanted me to contact her right away so that I could reap my four and a half million dollars, minus expenses of course.

  I had already worked out in my mind what my next step would be if I heard back from Ms. Okiti. First, I used a travel web-site to book a flight to Nigeria for my fictitious Pete Mitchel. I then sent her back a reply stating that I knew her proposal to me was a scam, but that I considered it good fortune that she had contacted me when she did, possibly saving me from a trip to Nigeria that I wasn’t anxious to take. I told her, though, that time was running out for me to collect the insurance money and that I had booked a flight for the following week to Nigeria so that I could find a local who could pose as the dead man’s next of kin. I passed along all the flight information, and told her if she changed her mind she could let me know, but that time was running out.