The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Smiling Smuggler, Part 1 of 5

This week you’ll meet Mickey Malloy, a burnt out private detective who has been rotting in the gutters of Tampa, Florida, doing whatever he can to get by. When one gig takes him too far down the rabbit hole, he finds himself in a jam that only the masked man known as The Billy Club Bastard can iron out.

This story is featured in the anthology Bourbon, Bullets, Broads, and Bourbon, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, or as a DRM-free ePub.

Content Warnings: Violence, Mild Swearing, Alcohol Use, Tobacco Use

MONDAY MORNING, JUNE 23, 1941
MALLOY INVESTIGATIONS
YBOR CITY, TAMPA, FLORIDA

Mickey Malloy came to in his office chair. A knife-edged beam of morning light had slipped through his drooping blinds and struck his liquor bottle at the perfect angle to refract burnt gold straight into his cornea. He snatched the bottle up to drop it in the open bottom drawer of his desk but hesitated. A wet burp crawled its way up from his gut and bubbled out of his mouth. God, it tasted awful. Bourbon was the last thing he needed. He stowed the quart and slammed the drawer shut behind it.

The wreckage of an attempt to work was laid out before him. Of course, he had no idea where he started or where he'd quit. There were invoices to fill out, incidentals to bill, newspaper ads to submit, losing bolito tickets littering the floor like ticker tape, and a hangover that was rocking the inside of his skull like a marching band. His mouth was hot and sticky. He grabbed a dusty glass of stale water that was perched on the opposite edge of the desk and went at it. He'd poured half of it down his gullet before he noticed the dead fly in the bottom of the glass.

“Shit,” he grunted. His voice echoed in his head, setting off a chain reaction that clenched sore, bruised muscles, popped swollen joints, and reminded him that he wasn't some twenty year-old getting in scraps any more. No, now he was old, and he should've been minding his own business. Should've back then, too, but he'd needed some sense beat into him.

Mick shoved himself out of the chair and side-stepped around his desk, squeezed past the file cabinets, and tried to duck past the wardrobe and the incriminating stink emanating from within. The office was tight and cramped, even for a regular-sized person. For a gorilla like him, it was a goldfish bowl. Moving was a whole other ordeal, but he kept after it and made it to the door. It squealed as he opened it a crack.

His secretary, Marjorie Queen, was not two feet away, eyeballs deep in the morning paper. She sat like a kingfisher, scrunched over waiting for a fish. Her narrow eyes darted up and down the newsprint fast enough to jostle the ivory curls piled atop her head.

“Hey Marge,” he whispered.

“What?” she squawked. She spun her chair around, eliciting a pained whine from its wheels that jammed Mick in the temple like an ice pick. He winced, which only made her louder. “Good grief, Michael, you are ripe. You smell like a barnyard.”

“Thanks,” Mick groaned.

“When was the last time you showered?” she demanded.

“I had a long night,” he said.

“Aren't they all,” Marge chided.

“Get off my case,” Mick snapped.

“Well one of us needs to be on one,” she snapped back.

“I'm working on it,” he said. “Any messages?”

“Just a call from Captain Cross,” she reported.

“President Cross, now. And I'll call him later,” Mick told her.

“That's what I told him,” she said.

“Anything else?”

“Well, I have been wondering why the president of the police union calls you so often, you haven't been on the force in years.”

“An old drinking buddy. I meant anything for work, Marge?”

“Not a peep,” she said.

“Great. That my Post?”

“No, your subscription was cancelled. This is my Post, from the news stand, though I never would've spent my nickel if I knew they would print this kind of filth in it.”

She held up the front page for him to see. Above the fold, it looked the krauts had turned on the commies and had invaded Russia. Good. Maybe they'd kill each other off. That's not what had gotten Marge's goat, though. No, it was the local feature. The Billy Club Bastard.

Marge kept going:

“In Delaware we had to read the Tribune, but they had standards at least.”

Mick snatched the paper out of her hands and ducked back into his office like turtle pulling its head into its shell. The thin walls did little to muffle her objections.

He shimmied back between his beat-up furniture, pausing to shove the wardrobe door all the way closed. He took his seat and tried to ignore the smell.

All the activity got his knees to throbbing. The thin pages shook in his hands, he couldn't keep 'em steady these days, so he laid the paper flat on his desk and collapsed into his chair. It looked like the Post had taken to using a smaller font than normal. Again. He fumbled through his top drawer until he found his readers.

His nose was a little more mashed and crooked than most folks', so the tiny glasses slipped off a couple times before they settled into the sweet spot. Finally satisfied, he began to read.

Billy Club Bastard Strikes Again: Local Youths Brutalized By Masked Maniac.

Mick snorted.

“Local youths my ass.”

Just last night, the article stated, a masked man over seven feet tall and weighing three hundred pounds attacked a men's social club under the cover of darkness. He appeared out of nowhere, moved silently, and worked ten men over with a billy club. It was the tenth reported attack in three years. The Post had come up with the name, but every paper used it now: the Billy Club Bastard.

Mick smirked. There wasn't anybody in Tampa over seven foot. When ten men got their ears boxed by one guy, they always exaggerated.

'Had to be some kind of monster,' they always said. 'No normal man could've done this.'

Mick chuckled about that, but calling the Bastard three hundred pounds was unnecessary.

The cops had taken the banged-up 'youths' to recuperate in a secure facility. Mick knew the men who'd gotten got. They weren't some scout troop, they were gang members, the Brook Street Boys. He was sure that they were in custody for their protection, not for the pounds of gear, the filed down pistols, and the cases of unstamped rum they always kept stacked.

Mick understood, sensation sold papers. A masked maniac attacking choirs boys made for a hell of an article. Too bad it was ninety-nine percent bullshit.

The article went on the list the men's names and injuries. Mick knew 'em all. Hanging out in the armpit of an already sweaty city familiarized one to scum.

Johnny Boon: broken nose, shattered collarbone.

“Couldn't've happed to a nicer guy,” Mick said.

Calvin Carter: a concussion with a split scalp that required eighteen stitches.

“Poor guy, got his clock cleaned.”

Bill French: shattered cheekbone, shattered jaw.

“Bet he didn't give the interview.”

Jerry Flowers: concussion with partial hearing loss, one detached retina, and a second degree burn to the cheek.

“Flowers? No wonder he went by Ratface.”

Caleb Green: broken wrist, dislocated shoulder.

“See if you go pawing after a dame any time soon.”

Mick read through the rest of the names. Local lowlifes, all of 'em, and if they were laid up and cuffed up they were all exactly where they were supposed to be. One name keep buzzing in his ear though, Bill French.

Mick knew Bill French. Bill French wouldn't spend time around Brook Street. Bill French was a stand-up guy. If someone needed something not strictly legal that could not be found in the great state of Florida, Bill French could get it to them in two days flat.

Mick was also sure that whoever they had laid up with a pulverized kisser could not be Bill French. He'd met Bill, done business with him. Whoever this person was, they thought using Bill's name might save them from a world of trouble.

It would not.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands over his face. He counted his scars, the ones across his nose, the ragged one on his forehead, his split eyebrows, lips, and chin, the cigar burn on his cheek, his cauliflower ears. He was still him. After everything, he was who he knew he was.

Sometimes, Mick knew, he got into a state. He couldn't control what he did. He couldn't feel anything. He ran through the events of last night. He had left himself, but he hadn't lost himself. He knew everything he'd done. He knew everything he hadn't done.

And he had not smashed in the face of Bill French.

SUNDAY NIGHT, JUNE 22, 1941
PELICAN DRY CLEANERS
YBOR CITY, TAMPA, FLORIDA

Wally Sanders watched the Brook Street Gang warily. They were staring at him, silent. He heard the client's car door shut, then his engine turned over and he, and the cargo, was gone.

“Guess I should head out, too,” Wally said sheepishly tapping the spot on his where watch should have been. He tucked his hands in his pockets and ambled on over toward the door. One of the leathery gangsters cut him off. Wally raised his hands and took a step back.

“Hey, fellas,” he stammered. “We're done here, right?”

Not a one of them spoke. The ladies hanging the dry cleaning never looked his direction. The hiss of steam presses was all he could hear.

“What's the deal, fellas?” he asked, chuckling nervously. He wished he'd brought an iron.

“Deal went down great,” the one in charge, with the narrow face and wispy whiskers, said. He bit the end of his cigar off and spit it at Wally's feet. “Thing is, we didn't have a deal with you, pal.”

“I brought the stuff didn't I?” Wally asked. He felt sweat beading on his forehead. He'd thought that once that weird ghoul had left he'd be home free.

“That you did, that you did,” he said. He struck a match and puffed the stoagie to life. “But it was Bill French we contracted to do that. You ain't Bill.”

Somewhere amongst the glowering men around him, Wally heard the telltale flick of a switchblade.

“You ain't from around here, so let me give you a bit of advice: here in Tampa, we do things straight up. But we also believe in learning from your mistakes.”

“Yes, sir, I appreciate that,” Wally said.

“So I'm going to ask you one question, and I hope you'll answer with more honesty than you've displayed in the short time I've known you,” the boss said. His men had casually fanned out. They all had an angle on Wally.

“You bet,” Wally said. His eyes were darting side to side and his sweat was pouring. The back of the dry cleaner's was like a hot spring.

“Well here it is, then, Mister Not Bill French. Do you prefer fresh water or salt water?”

“What?” Wally asked. The gangster pointed past him and Wally turned around. There was a spool of rope and a stack of cinder blocks in the corner. Every instinct told him to bolt, but before his body could put that advice into practice, they were on him. Four men scooped him up, one on each arm, one on each leg.

The boss sauntered up as he tried to kick. He leaned in and asked:

“You prefer to be eaten by sharks, or do you want to be gator chow?”

Before Wally could answer, the heavy steel drainage grate in the floor burst upward. It clattered to the concrete floor two yards away. One of the cleaners screamed. A circular hole blacker than tar yawned open in the middle of the floor. The men holding Wally dropped him.

He should have run then.

“What the hell?” one of them asked.

“Sewer gas,” the boss sneered. Still, he didn't approach the pitch black hole. “Where are the flashlights?”

None of them had taken a step before every light in the building died at once. Everyone started talking, shambling around in shadow. Wally let his eyes adjust to the dim sliver of moonlight that cut between newspaper pages pasted over the windows.

Behind the thugs, he saw a shape rise out of the floor. It was blacker than the night and so tall it had to stoop to fit under the ceiling. It raised one long, wicked arm, then swept it across the closest gangsters. They cried out and fell, clutching arms bent the wrong way, and split heads with glistening ichor oozing out.

“It's him!” someone shouted. A pistol barked once, twice, three times, lighting up the room with each blast. The shape materialized into a man. He was huge and moved like a freight train. He ignored the shots and surged forward. The women screamed and ran for the door. He let them go.

A swing of his arm sent one man flying and crumpled another to the floor, his legs folded like tent poles. The lead gangster didn't stand a chance. He scrambled for some weapon, but the man pounced upon him in a rabid fury. The first swat mashed the cigar's red cherry into the gangster's cheek with a sizzle. The second sent his head dinging off the brick wall, his limp body dragging along behind it.

Then, it was only Wally and the man. Wally was hyperventilating. The man's voice sounded like a dump truck loosing a load of raw gravel.

“Don't run,” he grated.

“Please, sir, I shouldn't even be here,” Wally stammered.

“I believe it,” the man rumbled.

“Please, I needed the money, this is all I could do. I got a sister, a mother, a niece like a daughter to me. I got a kid on the way. I ain't even from here, sir.” Wally was unleashing every argument he had to avoid whatever this man wanted from him. “I can give you half the money, sir. I only did it to save a life. I don't even know these guys. I didn't look in the package.”

“Shut up,” the man said. He stepped up, towering over Wally. He stank of leather, blood, and rancid sewage.

Headlights tracked their way across the wall, then stopped. Spinning red lights sent color running around the room. It was at least two patrols cars. Car doors began slamming, three or four of them, but Wally was too busy yammering to count:

“You run, I won't tell 'em where you went. I'll cover for you. I swear. I can help you.”

The lights illuminated the man in black. His head and face were covered, and his body looked hulking and impenetrable. His right arm wasn't long, but that might have been preferable to what he was holding. Clutched in his gloved hand he carried a carved wooden club that was so thick, its head so brutal and angular, that it could have passed for a knight's mace.

“Half the money, pal,” Wally offered. “You can't turn that down. Six hundred dollars. I ain't even supposed to be here. No? Then I'll tell you what, I'll give those pigs out there half the money, that's a hell of a deal just to kick your - !”

The man whipped his club around faster than Wally could see. It collided with his face just under his cheek bone, hard enough to lift him off the ground. He tasted blood, and he was unconscious before he bounced off the wall.

---

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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.