Chaos Tales: Aluk Chula, PI: The Internment Case
Here is my first foray into noir, which was not as dark or grim as I had been planning. But maybe there is hope for me yet...
As you can tell above, Dante is excited to see Anna’s slice of noir story this week. Crokell? Well, Crokers is pretty laid back and relaxed. He is a Newfie after all.
In true, A. Kristina Casasent style, the story ended up being from both of us, because I (Anna) tend to make things too long and basically started a novel… Enjoy.
Tales of Aluk Chula, PI: The Internment Case
The sign outside the vacant lot hung at an angle, slamming with the beat of the wind. The rusting sign had more holes than letters and looked like it should have crumbled at a touch. Only three letters remained legible in faded black stencil, REN. The names and numbers of whom to call were long faded. Behind the lot, I could make out the remnants of barbwire, half ripped up ditches, and another newer, crisper sign for a Japanese internment camp.
I took a slow breath and let it out. My nose burned with the smell of burning tires, old oil, and older cigarettes. I glanced over at my companion, my face as blank as I could make it, although anger boiled right below the surface. Who did he think I was, that this hovel would be the best place for my new business? I had served my country for the last 5 years.
Words simmered in my minded but never made it to my lips. Instead, I inspected the potbellied weasel of a man before me. He was fat, paler than turned milk and had the fleshly smell of someone who sat too long in the summer heat.
I spoke patiently, making sure to use his first name, as was my right as his potential customer. “Robert.” But I saw the flick of discontent in his gray eyes, which put a sparkle into my dark ones.
He turned back towards me, his hand drifting to the front pocket of his jacket for a cigar. He lifted an eyebrow at me in invitation.
I shook my head but didn’t object. Fresh tobacco would be a treat to smell right now.
He tapped the cigar against his hand, letting it settle before jabbing it with a wedge before taking out a silver lighter. “As you can see, this place needs a little work.”
“Just a little,” my voice was flat.
He smirked. “It’s a bargain. After all, Sergeant Williams said you were down on your luck and in need of work. Even if you wouldn’t work for him.”
He gave a hoarse guffaw and glanced at my weather-beaten hat, my tanned skin, and black hair that made me stand out against his unhealthily fair complexion. “Besides, for someone like you, it should suit.”
I felt a flare of anger, but knew better than to act, after all. I had been… mustered out after punching a superior officer for a similar insult. I had learned. At least, I hoped I had. I took a breath and muttered under it, counting slowly to ten in my birth tongue. “Achuffa, Tuklo…”
“Bless you, Alec.”
I flinched at the mispronunciation of my name. I started to correct him but stopped. Being a civilian again was hard. In any case, the weight of annoyance was something I should be used to. After all, what did he know? I could tell he was one of those who had stayed at home. His sagging belly and his limp chin gave him away. He would neither care nor know that me and mine had saved his sorry ass multiple times over the last few years. Yet, here I was, spat back into his world, and it chafed.
It might bite me in the arse, but I had my pride. “Well, if you don’t have something that suits me, I guess I will just have to take my business elsewhere.”
“Hey, now. Don’t be so hasty. You haven’t even looked around yet.”
I started to tell him I had seen enough - he could shove it - when a roar tore through the air.
I turned away from Robert and saw a wave of black smoke walking from around the corner. The source of the lazy roar of an out of tune engine came into view. The pickup sputtered black smoke. Evidently, Sergeant Williams had decided that I needed a kick in my ass to encourage me to accept an assignment with him.
I sighed and waited for the old pickup to reach me. It was old and oddly held more than Sergeant James Williams. Two pretty girls sat there. They were fragile looking with light tan skin and slanted eyes. Their black hair was deep as the darkest ocean. And their eyes - their eyes held a sadness that even turned my stomach. An unanswerable plea.
I blinked and waited for the truck to shut off.
Sergeant Williams jumped out for my head towards nodding his head towards me and giving me a smirk of a smile. “Hey, Aluk. How are you doing? I have some clients for you.”
I sighed.
“Sergeant Williams, I haven’t even started. Plus, I’m not a mechanic.”
“Hey. Hey. Don’t knock my truck. It’s better than you are, old man.”
“Sergeant, I’m a private eye. What do those little ones need with me?”
“They’re missing their father and brother or something. I wasn’t paying too much attention. After all, everyone like them is missing somebody at this point.”
I looked the girls over again. One was thinner than her companion, a little shorter with dark eyes that seemed just a trifle lighter. The other one had a bold face. One of those doll-like faces that made a man turn and stare regardless of his ethnicity, regardless of who he was or who she was. She grabbed onto you and pulled you in.
But both sets of eyes held looked some of us former servicemen recognized all too readily.
I was no longer surprised Sergeant Williams had bent over backwards find the second girl some help. After all, what warm blooded man wouldn’t bow to that goddess. Her companion wore some sort of brown suit that made her look like a mouse.
I turned my eyes to the more beautiful one and gave her a nice smile. She smiled back, and it was enough to make my head spin.
Her voice was that smoky silk that would wrap most men around her fingers. “So, you like what you see?”
Sergeant Williams indicated the girl who had spoken. “This is Keiko. The other is Chiyo. I didn’t catch their last name. Started with an S. I think they’re siblings or something.”
I asked the question I learned from their eyes. “Who are you looking for?”
Mouse girl was unexpectedly the one that responded. “Sir, my father and brother, we were split up in the camps. Now, we’re trying to find them.”
The other girl patted her companion on the side. “ We need them back. You know how it is.”
She gave me that sly smile that made me think twice about what she was saying, as if she had more thoughts than she spoke.
I didn’t really need an office to take a case, did I? “Look, Sergeant Williams, I’ll take the case, but you better find me a better place. I ain’t paying for a smelly, rundown shack.”
Ignoring the other two men, I addressed the two Japanese women. “As for you ladies, how about we go get some better acquainted, and fill me in? I will need a full history after all.”
And that was how I took my first case and met a group of people I was better off not knowing. Even if one of them did become my wife, but that’s another story.
It didn’t take me long to track down her father. After all, there weren’t that many men in the US whose names were Minoru and Kenichi Santo. And there’s also only so many places they had packed up and held the local Japanese during the War.
They were in one of the few places that still kept the Japanese locked behind gates with rolling barbed wire all around. Having locals spotting for Japanese bombers will do that. There’d been more than one blast that had changed the world.
I wasn’t sure I should’ve accepted, but this was my first client. And those eyes. They were bewitching.
Pondering it over, I entered the internment center to meet another sergeant. He wasn’t someone who knew me from Dewey, but Sergeant Williams had put us in touch. And David Johnson met me with his nice clean, shiny beaver boots. And a leer that told me he’d judged me and would have kicked me out on my ass if he hadn’t owed someone else a ton of money.
That was the root of all of it. Who owed whom their lives? Or cash. Or in this guy’s case, who owed whom a murderer? I guess we all couldn’t be a mob boss’s son. Some of us were dirt-farmer Choctaws.
So, he stood there, watching me while I found the ones I was looking for, father and son. They looked a little pale when they saw someone like me approaching. After all, I still had more than a bit of the military left in me. My walk was strong. My head was high. And if my boots were scuffed, they were tough.
“Those two are coming with me. I’ve got enough here for them.”
I counted out a few bills and passed them over.
David counted and tucked the cash away faster than I could and gave a short laugh. “Sure, take ‘em with you. They’re half scrawny as it is.”
On the way back, I noticed something odd. The two of them, they’d cast me a look or two, and then they’d speak to each other.
I was a code talker and had picked up a few words of Japanese here and there. I realized there was more going on than I knew. I’d have more than Sergeant Williams on my case if I actually let these two scum free.
They were spies. Plan as day, and less than friendly, even with the war winding down.
But I wasn’t sure what to do. I had two Japanese spies sitting behind me in the car. Either of them probably would have throttled me if they could. But the war was over. I’d been discharged. And it didn’t seem right that I should just put a bullet through them and leave them by the side of the road. Besides, I promised Keiko. And what were a few morals with a girl just looking at was better than a kiss.
It also didn’t really pay anything.
One of them talked about having the number for a general or admiral. I didn’t think that they were quite as down on their luck as they wanted me to think. And the two girls, they were beautiful, but they sure spelled trouble. Trouble with a capital T.
I was still debating it when one of them pulled a garrote, trying to throw the wire over my throat.
Definitely not as down on their luck as expected. It was the younger one. I slammed the brakes on the car and sent him straight through the windshield. The older one slammed his head into the back of my seat. Something broke in it. Too bad I liked that car. I clonked both over the head, just to be sure, rubbing where my seatbelt had pounded into me. Most people didn’t use them, but I was only alive because I’d been belted into a plane that had a hole blown in it. So, any cars I bought had one, even if I installed it myself.
Seatbelts were also good for hogtying people.
As I checked the knots, I realized there was more than one way to get a buck or two from these two.
I put the two Japanese into the back of the car and made the two girls pay before they could talk to the men. At least now I knew how they could afford to pay.
Then the G-men came in.
The lowest ranked one, in a suit hardly nicer than mine, paid when his boss nodded.
Afterwards, Sergeant Williams said they needed a man like me out here. Still, I looked at the peeling paint, the bent, hingeless door hanging by its lock. I should take it, but I just couldn’t.
This place was nothing like the place that I wanted to stay.
But I sighed and pulled the rusting sign down, tossing it in the trash. I opened the door without hinges and walked into my new life.
Wherever the hell it took me.
Thanks for venturing into our chaos!
Chaos Writing Reflections
I had fun testing out noir. However, it was an odd test drive in the sense that I worked too much on the research, and I ended up having trouble executing it. This left me with a mind-numbing oddity and a realization about why I tend to write in the genres I do (fantasy and sci-fi). It is because when I try to write something “historical,” I could spend weeks, months, or even years researching it before I would ever put pen to paper, fingers to keys, or breath to recorder. Which, in turn, would leave me with no writing at all…
I have noticed I have a similar issue with scientific papers, but there we always have deadlines: for grants, from editors, or just to meet the next review cycle. Fiction writing isn’t like that. And unlike Tod, I don’t strap in, buckle up, and put words to a page whenever I have 15 minutes of breathing space (the man is a marvel). I need to take a long sip of my tea, let the shoals of my mind fall away, and lean into the chaotic winds of my thoughts and dreams, as reality becomes a misty illusion and a new world is born.
It is what I like best about writing. Yet, also what is hardest to control: the sound of characters in my mind, the reality of their hearts and dreams, and their challenges. And when I try to base them on something from the past, I almost flinch away from creating. It is something to work on for sure. I need to learn to balance a deference for history with the rhythm and rhyme needed to create a good story. Otherwise, all the words fall flat; no matter how accurate they are, they are tone-deaf and empty of heart and soul of the time.
Chaos Tip of the Week
You need a big dog and a small dog. That way, one of them will always be the right size for the canine piloted space ship you find in the your backyard.
I can hope, right?
Chaos Question of the Week
Do you prefer larger or smaller critters, and why?
~ Anna (and Tod)
Anthologies!
Black Cat Tales! What better time than Halloween to buy a black cat anthology? You can purchase Black Cat Tales Anthology on Amazon and other retailers https://www.amazon.com/Black-Cat-Tales-Anthology-Cats-ebook/dp/B0DXMXX5JP/ Black Cat Tales reach #1 for Horror Anthologies for both IngramSparks (the main distributor for bookstores) and Barnes & Noble! If it isn’t on your Halloween reading list, it should be.
If cars are more your style, consider Convoy of Chaos, an explosive Car Wars anthology from Three Ravens Publishing packed full of big rigs, wasteland raiders, and survival (or death) on the open road. It launched on October 3 and can be order on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQ2YKVB1. We are in great company with so many Alpha Mercs in the author line up (Quinn, Jesse Slater, T. M. Gray, David Bock, Richard Cartwright, Sam Robb, Bee M Kay, Douglas Goodall, Seth Taylor and us) as well as William Joseph Roberts from Three Ravens Publishing.