NVDT RANDOM – The Gobbledygook Series

I would’ve written it myself but (insert litany of justifications here)

I was going to give AI a walk since I feel it’s all hype and no “intelligence”, merely rapid computing based on large data sets. But as I am a cross curriculum person, I couldn’t help noticing some similarities in snake oil sales pitches from the writing and music sides. If you’re into something else don’t worry, they’re out there for almost any creative endeavor from cooking to taxidermy. Their basic pitch goes something like this-

Wouldn’t you like to swing on my star

Carry contracts and trophies home in a jar

Be better off than you are

Or would you rather be a dud?

Because without the product being pitched you are surely destined to be a failure. A dud. With a capital D.

Joseph Michael claims his AI driven approach to retentive use of Scrivener, or idea gathering, or getting “AI” to suggest a plot based on an uploaded graphic will solve all your writing problems. How? Because you aren’t writing anymore!

The music biz is fraught with these same types. The most flagrant offender is Unison Audio. From “AI” driven products like Drum Monkey (I’m not sure if that’s racist or not) to software plugins and drag and drop “proven successful” chord progressions all guaranteed to make anything you crank out a chart-topping success.

Here’s an aside, and what prompted this in the first place. I used to follow a guy who wrote well, and I enjoyed some of his stuff. Not all of it’s for me, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is he worked at it. Not long ago he posted that he used his AI assistant to write a song for him so that he had some lyrics that “wouldn’t step on anyone’s toes” when he published them in his latest WIP. Meaning something “original” that wouldn’t bring down the wrath of a published, copyright holding song owner. Was he too lazy? Was it a hassle to do his job as a writer and write? Is pushing your creativity to get better at your craft obsolete? Seriously. How hard can it be to write a knock off song?

Those questions shouldn’t be asked if you’ve chosen to write. Writing is writing. Like painting is painting, dancing is dancing, cake decorating is cake decorating and playing an instrument is, well, playing an instrument. You might get a product like Chat GPT or Drum Monkey to cop a groove for you, but if it’s real, it’s yours. Good, bad or indifferent. I use this example; you pay $200+ for a good seat at a concert and a computer sits center stage because (insert artist and type of event) decided it was too much trouble and phoned it in. Or, and this is eerily possible, there was no artist used or hurt in the material’s creation at all.

What this all comes down to, for me, is if you can’t imagine it, it’s going to be obvious, regardless.

I did synthesizer/electronic instrument clinics going back forty-plus years. I made a habit of keeping things simple. By that I mean keep it fun. I gave the people with the plastic pocket liners who cared about AD/DA resolution, knob to data linearity, laddering, processing delay, buffering blah blah blah all their time at the end. For everyone else, Hey, if I can do this, anybody can. Which was true, but only to a point. There were always those unhappy people in the crowd who spent money because of the demos like Joseph and Unison (and me) and got less than satisfactory results. The problem was almost always down to that empty distance between tools and desire, and output. Invariably they had no skill, or maybe they were brilliant technically but had zero familiarity with assembling an arrangement. The line I had for those people, and it wasn’t very supportive but I delivered it with as much empathy as possible – “I can teach you how to use the hardware (or software.) I can’t teach you how a song goes.”

Sadly, we have reached a point with certain artistic endeavors where skill, conceptual understanding and craftsmanship don’t matter.

I still believe the difference will be obvious on some level because all the gimmicks in the world won’t help if you don’t have a creative thought, or understand the basic process of constructing a (insert result of craftsmanship).

Some will say, “Sure, but so-and-so has a research assistant.” I’m not talking about research, I’m talking about abdicating our responsibilities as creators. “Alexa, give me the names of the most popular cars in 1982 and who won the Superbowl the same year” is no different than Googling. Asking ChatGPT or similar to write you a song, or dropping a chord set into a DAW or asking DallE to paint you a picture you can blow up and print is not creating.

Further on the author who wouldn’t/couldn’t write his own song, I quit on him because I couldn’t help wondering what else he can’t be bothered to write?

I wonder if he ever asked himself where do songs come from? The people who do it best say the song is out there, it’s our job to hear it. The same with writing. The story is there, waiting. Michelangelo said that the statue was already in the block of stone waiting to come out. Why would you hand off that gift of creating from the muse for expediency?

Any answer to that question besides “you wouldn’t” is bullshit.

We should learn to do what we’re doing, get better at it. Because, as I read in a book blurb from the same Story Empire group as this no name author, no amount of “AI” checking your work will weed-whack redundancies in your content. Will it tell you in a report that you used a word repeatedly? Yes. Will it stop you from elliptically repeating the same content or notify you of poor paragraph architecture? No.

As I publish this, I see where a gaggle of musicians are looking for legislative protection from AI that is cloning their voices and styles. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? Not where $ is concerned. I can hear the robots now – “So sue me.” In pick your movie star’s voice.

Come on, people. Write and perform your own stuff. No copycat ever added anything to the creative lexicon and let’s face it, “AI” only knows what’s been done. Let’s do our own homework and stop calling data manipulation intelligent. Because it ain’t.

NVDT RANDOM – The Gobbledygook Series

Sense and Sentences – If he could only play with himself…

I run these occasionally as they stack up, and I’ve been unfortunate enough to encounter a few forums, blogs and tried some books lately where not only was spellcheck off the table, the old adage of “your brain will fix it” became a superhuman feat. I used that word, feat, in much the same way and had a kid ask me, like I hadn’t finished the sentence, “So? Who did Amazing feat?” Because their only exposure to that word is as an abbreviation for “featuring” on song credits. The other prompt came from an author writing, “Have we been so inundated with bad material that my perspective is off?”

Yes. Super Human Intuitive Thinking, or S.H.I.T (see*below) is a prerequisite to reading, listening to or watching shit.

Police Arrest Naked Man With Concealed Weapon. MSNBC.com The news is arguably some of the worst sentence structure out there. We are bombarded with sentences where “…police shot the suspect in the parking lot. He’s in critical condition at the hospital but is expected to recover.” I’m not sure what part of the body the parking lot is, and how often being shot there is fatal, nor do I want to guess where the naked man kept his concealed weapon, but add that to the countless misspellings and misplaced or dangling modifiers in the crawl and you have major market local news.

Advice from the Sheriff on how to talk to drugs about your kids. Local news from Greenbay, Wisconsin.

Misogyny is absolutely wrong – whether it’s a man against a woman, or a woman against a man. UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab

The full names of two Belarusian officials charged with aircraft piracy are not known. The article incorrectly identified them as Andrey Anatolievich Lnu and Fnu Lnu. FNU and LNU are acronyms for “first name unknown” and “last name unknown.” The Wall Street Journal

We, worthily Laminating our sins and wickedness. Lenten Church Bulletin A classic example of accepting spell correct without proofreading.

PAIN APPLE – Bakery sign at local grocery store I’m sure this was one of those French Bread moments where the Mexican lady who made the sign took her cue from the Pain Petite, Pain Campagne and Pain Aux Noix in the enclosed bins nearby. Even so, a quick Google would have given her pomme.

RANDOM THOUGHT – I answered yes to are we so inundated with slop we expect it. Where’s the fault? Is the educational system so poor we crank out kids with degrees in media and journalism who, when reading copy, will pronounce abbreviations like PKWY (‘Pikwee’ for parkway) and BLVD (‘Blivved’ for Boulevard), AVE (‘Ahvey’ for Avenue) FRWY (‘Fwee’ for freeway) and I-ST (‘Iced’ for Interstate)? Are academic, copy and fiction writers in such a hurry they can’t be bothered with proofing and weedeating their documents? It makes me wonder if ‘getting it out there’ is more important than making sense. On that note –

Bure is such a great talent, if only he could play with himself out there, it will really give the fans a show. Sports Commentator Tom Larscheid about hockey player Pavel Bure We know what the guy means…Or do we?

*Thanks to Galby 68 for remembering this memo.

A Beautiful Corpse – 26 – I Could Use A Live Round Exchange

Longwei led me past a small reception and waiting area, well appointed, the array of manicured greenery almost claustrophobic, reached through a dark doorway where something inside strobed red, hit the light switch in his office and made a bee-line to a long, four drawer lateral file cabinet. The voice mail alert on the desk phone perched on the corner of a leather-topped desk produced the red strobe light effect. I pushed the flashing button.

“It’s me,” Bren’s voice, two octaves above normal. “He blew up the goddam van! Did you hear me?” Screaming like he could have heard her in this office from the edge of China Town. “If you don’t kill him, I will. I have to find… Never mind, you can’t help. Just bring me a fucking car as soon as you get this. I’m at home. I need a car. CALL ME!”

I punched 7 to exit. “Easy guess is I’m ‘him’. Sorry about the van.”

“Really?”

“No. I don’t like being shot at or followed. It wasn’t personal.”

“Of course not, you’re a professional. China, last sixty days,” he handed me half a dozen file folders, pulled out his expensive desk chair and sat. “Tell me what you’re looking for and I might be able to help.”

After showing me how to read his impeccable paperwork, each transaction clipped together told a transaction’s complete story from requests to containerize to landing FOB.

“Your responsibility stops at the dock or the airport?”

“Most of the time. We’ll work with distributors on inland transport but only on sealed containers going to domestic distribution hubs.”

“Essentially lengthening the straight line from origin?”

“Exactly. But no broken loads or piss-ant one-offs on a King Air to Auntie Gwendolyn in Topeka.”

“Except for Bren.”

“As I said before. We crate boxes and if needed fabricate nonsense Bills of Lading for boxes she brings in and they get picked up here by no-name couriers. And, this is only conjecture, they go to the tarmac at a regional with enough runway for whatever’s carrying it. If it’s international, getting it out of the country and into wherever it’s going is up to her and her clients.”

“She ever ask you to find a list of second tier media distributors?”

“You mean second or third or thirtieth time out of the box movies for TV or the dollar double features?”

 “Video tapes,” I said. “By the box full.” Again, a no, repeating his not being in the domestic shipping business, and again citing the availability of companies who specialized in that service and there was no money in being a “hand off convenience.” Still batting zero on that hunch, I let it go.

With Longwei looking over my shoulder, it only took ten minutes to spot the fax number requesting specific routing and ground carrier instructions that required nothing of Longwei but the submission of customs paperwork. Other than a few expedited air shipments, nothing else looked survivable by humans except in the worst conditions.

“How does he get the people in?”

“I don’t know,” he tightened up. “And don’t want to.”

“Then we’re almost done. Thanks for these,” I closed the folder on what I suspected to be Dong Boi’s containers. “Call Bren. Tell her the cops came to your house tonight asking why two of your company vehicles have been firebombed this week and you told them you were being pressured by an unknown competitor. Turn it up by telling her it’s only a matter of time before they start asking questions about your house fire again and how you’re a terrible liar.”

“What about the car?”

“Tell her you’ll bring a car, but you’re tired of her losing them and you need to ride along. Don’t let her say no. If she pulls that little chrome gun say ‘I’m not moving, shoot me.’”

“She might.”

“Not a chance. You’re all she’s got right now with Dong Boi locked down. Work it in that you’re ready to help if she needs you to put something together for her in a hurry.”

“Put something together?”

“Just offer to help. Mid-morning tomorrow she’ll be running in circles. Wait for her to call.”

“Tonight?”

“Remember where she goes and everything she says.”

“Okay. Where should I drop you?” switching off the office lights.

“I can find my way. Call Bren before we go. In fact—”

“I know. Now would be good.”

***

I walked two blocks to a combo gas station taco stand, dropped a quarter in their pay phone. Toni’s phone rang twice before “Antoinette Vanolli, hostess of your pet’s five star oasis.”

“Is that true?”

“Fuck off, Meyers. Your pet’s a pain in my ass. Please tell me you’re not back in the babysitting business.”

“I’m not back in the babysitting business?”

“Then why do I still have Little Miss Fluffcake and her terminal case of diarrhea of the mouth locked in my kangaroo kennel?”

“Because it’s tall enough for a human and you are nothing if not the epitome of humane?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere. You have a plan for Fluffcake yet?”

“Why, you expecting kangaroos?”

“Meyers, so help me…”

“According to Burke, she had $127 in her purse, so she’s got cab fare.”

“How does that help me?”

“Take her about halfway down the hill to someplace with a pay phone. Tell her how sorry you feel for her and what an asshole I am, open the door and let her out.”

“I’d sooner put the world out of any future misery and shoot the bitch than tell her I feel sorry for her.”

“This is Hollywood, Toni. Smiles and Lies.”

“Fine. I’ll smile like the village idiot when I tell her what an asshole you are.”

“Won’t that be a stretch?”

“Please. On the way down, the lights behind me will be Burke?”

“Unless they shoot at you.”

“Excellent. After your bullshit and an afternoon of Little Miss Fluffcake, I could use a live round exchange.”

NVDT – Another (Sorta) Book Review and Random Thoughts on

Well…That Was Awkward by Megan Montgomery

I don’t read romance novels. I need to do a better job of reading covers. However, if I had read the entire cover (in my defense it was a thumbnail on Amazon) I would have missed a well-written book loaded with multi-faceted emotions, attitude, clever dialogue and situations and likeable, not vanilla characters who showed up knowing their lines without author assistance.

Why did I send it to my Kindle? I’m a cover guy. As you can see, it’s one of those recently ubiquitous cover and font styles—But—girl with tattoos, pier, big dog, and the title. There I was reading it and liking the anti-establishment weightlifting grumpy tattooed female protagonist with a mom and dad wanted a son name (Emerson), her dog and her environment. Ms. Montgomery does a good job of moving you in, That, and a real treat for me, people and personalities emerge instead of being back story narrated into existence.

The whole sex part of a romance novel waited until well into the book and (for me) the brushed nipples and detectible erections were easily skipped. Because they weren’t the focus of the book. This is a real book. You know, drop the sex gimmick and you still have a story. Full of the emotional roller-coastering a self-described social outcast goes through with the handsome, buff, can’t be a fighter pilot anymore Deuteragonist, her quirky small town ‘family’, plus a little mystery, a brother with a past, who’s that woman? Why are you still here? And others. As for the ’family’ Ms. Montgmery populates this book with believable characters that don’t take up too much space. Like a great plate of Mexican food. Here’s the two things that make up the middle of the plate surrounded, but not overwhelmed, by a cast of (sometimes weird) garnishes.

Further, the author makes a point of calling out the trope in dialogue between the characters! No author pointing it out. Listen to this, the characters do it. Without going book review, I’ll simply say Emerson’s truck breaks down, with John in it with her, ostensibly to help move some large furniture, and while stranded, they discuss the 1934 Clark Gable/Claudette Colbert classic It Happened One Night. Obviously not the original ‘I like you but I don’t’ vehicle, but there it is.

Could I have done without the occasional (blessedly short) glistening hard bodies workouts and some lightweight, not overindulgent sex? Yes. But why this book hasn’t been lightly sanitized for Hallmark or taken as-is on Netflix/Freevee et al. is a real waste.

Truth told? There are parts of this book, the protag’s emotions, frustrations, behaviors, I wish I’d written (or published) first. I could readily identify my potty mouth female coming of age saga protagonist. Only Ms. Montgomery did it in way less space. How? Because she gets the hell out of the way and puts this book squarely where it belongs. On the characters’ shoulders. This was a fun read I might have missed, and one instance anyway, where a modern Indie romance is way more than adverbs and erogenous zones.

All you need to know from the blurb – Emerson and John meet on the boardwalk as the moonlight dances off the Chesapeake Bay. She thinks he’s gorgeous and comes down with a case of instalove. He thinks she’s a panhandler and gives her five dollars.

**I discovered after reading Well…That Was Awkward and writing this review that the book won several well deserved Indie awards. So it wasn’t just me.

A Beautiful Corpse – 25 – Now Would Be Good

Burke handed me a micro cassette, leaned on the Subaru, folded his arms. “Wang have anything useful?”

“He’s an honest man in a hornets’ nest of thieves, pushers, slave traders and pimps.”

“And I’m the Easter Bunny.” He lowered an arm, tapped the Subaru. “Whoever’s tailing you is on this car like stink on shit.”

“That where our guest came from?”

“The tail drove a butterscotch Chevy G20 delivery van. Same woman from the boathouse phoned in the guest from the dress shop two doors down.”

“Dress shop?” I checked out the storefront. “You read Chinese?”

“You don’t have to be a genius to see racks of dresses through the window and the stream of women going in and out.”

“Just checking.” I patted my jacket where I’d pocketed the tape. “How about Mrs. Dubrev? She tell a decent story?”

“If everything that’s happened to the ‘poor little ol’ me’ narcissistic brat is everyone else’s fault, yeah.”

“But everything, fault or no fault, seems to line up?”

“From what you’ve told me.” He made a minor production of holding his hand above his eyes and scanning the area. “I don’t see my car anywhere.”

“The surfer has it. Get Huntley to take you wherever you need to go, leave word. I’ll take the Subaru back to the Greek and trade it for something you can drive.”

“You’ll never shake the tail that way, and the Greek won’t appreciate you dragging in strays.”

“I’ll end up behind them at some point, make sure they have car trouble.”

“This will be easier,” he handed me a one-inch square by half-inch thick piece of black plastic; slightly larger than the red button centered in the square. “The button’s stiff on purpose. Remember what I said about the Toyota.”

***

While the van sat at a stoplight and the two occupants argued, I reached up from a squat, turned the van’s passenger side wing mirror down, slid up with my back to the side of the van, tapped on the passenger side window. The argument stopped. The passenger cranked the window down; I rolled left, stuck my Browning in Bren’s face. “I don’t like to shoot people for being nuisances, but I could make an exception for you.” I recognized the driver as vomit man from the boathouse, white-knuckling the steering wheel and frozen as a statue. Bren’s rage apparent but contained. “Clear the intersection, turn right down the next alley. From the time you turn, you have one minute to park between the two green dumpsters about thirty yards in, get out, and run.”

“So you can shoot us in the back?”

“Not my style.”

“The what is going to happen?”

“I have no idea,” I showed her the small button box resting in my palm. “But I can hardly wait to find out.”

***

I handed the Subaru’s keys to the Greek and, after a complete inspection of its exterior and interior, he offered a noncommittal “S’okay,” and patted the car’s roof like it was a pet. “Some guys, they drive through a car wash, so maybe I don’t know what they been doing.”

“Waste of time and money.”

“See? You know I’m gonna wash it. An underneath it, an all over with a air gun. I don’t want nothin’ on my cars can say they were at a beach, or a woods or a desert or where they got special gravel. No leave-behind shit, nowhere. A body turns up too soon, somebody thinks they sees one a my cars, the science guys come,” he thumped his greasy jumpsuit with a greasy fist. “Fuck them, eh? So, you need another car, take the Audi. I fixed oil leak yesterday.”

“Burke’s gonna drive this one for a few days.”

“Jesus, Joseph and Mother Mary,” he crossed himself. “I tell people, you know what I like about Meyers? He tells me shit I don’t wanna hear, but gotta. Like how somebody drives by braille is gonna drive one a my cars.” He studied the keys hanging in the converted medicine cabinet, picked a set. “The Datsun hatchback. Mr. Bumper Car bends it too bad, push it off a pier ‘cause if it don’t come home, I don’t care.”

“Second time today I’ve heard that about a car.”

“First one was…”

“A Vega wagon.”

“Vegas catch fire in my shop all the time. I let them burn out as a public service.” He handed me the Datsun’s keys. “Feel free to pass that along.”

***

Longwei opened his front door, flipped the light switch and nothing happened. He swore under his breath, walked to the first lamp he could find, tried the switch, nothing. “Goddam blackouts…”

I switched on the lamp by the chair I’d been in for twenty minutes. “You must not spend much time here,” I motioned to what might have been the most modern, austere leather sling and spindly chrome legged love seat I’d seen outside of a Euro Contemporary showroom. “Everything in here is as uncomfortable as it looks.”

“It reminds me of a department store.” He dropped slowly into one of the two slings, crossed one leg over the other at the knee. “It came this way. I bought a new mattress and replaced the carpet in the guest bedroom.”

“They give you a deal?”

“Not much. I needed somewhere furnished to live, in a hurry, and they needed to move back to the Netherlands one step ahead of the IRS. In a hurry.”

“Netherlands explains the furniture. What happened to your old place?”

“It burned to the ground.”

“I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark here and say that fire was the beginning of your association with Bren and Dong Boi.”

“I have nothing to do with Dong Boi.”

“You forward any crates of Chinese origin for Bren?”

“Everything I handle from China originates from there. My job is getting the cubic and weight and arranging transport.”

“That business pick up after Bren?”

“Some. I’d have to check. Shipping, forwarding, FOB is what we do, seasonal fluctuations are common.”

“The Chinese orders come in by fax or wire?”

“Fax. If they want to use Teletype, they can take it to someone else. Look, I run, or ran, a legitimate international logistics company until—”

“Bren started bringing you crates she didn’t explain, and you made up Bills of Lading to fit the weight and called the contents what?”

“Sometimes she told me what to enter. Other times I had to make up something that might fit the weight.” He allowed himself a short, light laugh. “Urinals, dildos, cosmetic prosthetics…Douche bags.”

“What’s a crate of douche bags weigh?”

“Depends on who and how many we’re talking about.”

“Dong Boi?”

“I told you. I have nothing to do with Dong Boi. He’s a Chinese politico of the worst order—”

“And he burned your house down.”

“That was Bren. She said next time I’d be inside with a hole in my head.”

“That’s why you do what she tells you? Play boss and tough guy for her like it’s your game? Why you’ll take the fall when all this shit goes south? Wake up, man. Bren’s not capable of anything like that by herself.” That’s when I thought he was going to cry. “I’d like to believe you, Longwei,” I gave that a dramatic pause. “But you need to help me out.”

“Whatever you need…” his face buried in his palms. “Anything…”

“I need the originating faxes for the last dozen Chinese containers, how you get Bren’s unspecified contents through customs on both ends and the address of your empty warehouse in Westlake.

“I don’t have an empty warehouse in Westlake. Or anywhere else. The other things are at the office. When do you—”

“Now would be good.” I stood, Browning in hand and another theory out the window. “You drive.”

A Beautiful Corpse – 24 – Don’t Light ‘Em

I blew the 750 limit. If it’s boring, shoot me.

I handed the Hilton cab whistler two bucks for doing nothing but looking sharp in his red and gold drum major coat and white shorts and getting out of my way so I could slide into the passenger side of Huntley’s Buick. “That shit right there is why I hate hotels,” pulling the door closed.

“Money for nothin’ but a white glove handshake and a smile,” he gave the drum major an obligatory thumbs up. “Hadn’t heard from you. Thought you were pissed or somethin’.” He wheeled the big Buick nimble as a downhill slalom skier around bellmen unloading suitcases onto luggage carts parked with no regard for traffic on the big brick-paver circle drive.

“Never. Had to see a few people about the dead Dubrevs.”

“Any luck?”

“Some.” I needed to work on how to break the truth to him without breaking his heart.

“Where we goin’?”

“You know Phuc Lóng.”

“Damn, Meyers. Skid Row, now China Town,” He checked the mirror, changed lanes to catch the 5 on ramp. “What happened to all the rich ladies with problems?”

“You can bet they’re up to something that’ll make the phone ring next week.”

“Is that a promise? ‘Cause I’d like to park somewhere I didn’t have to pay to keep the wheels on my car.”

***

Phuc Lóng is a far cry from the converted 1920s gas stations, cinder block squares in parking lots and garishly lit strip center joints that provide most Angelinos with their too-lazy-to-cook Chinese takeout. It conveyed a deceptive sense of calm respectability, outfitted in the very best traditional Oriental colors, fabrics, furnishings, fixtures and ambience generating accessories down to Geisha garbed waitresses bowing stiffly for orders and silent young men in their black satin pajamas and pill box hats hustling drink trays and busing tables. A set designer’s dream. The only nods to anything Western being staff hairstyles and the piped in Jacuzzi jazz. I spotted Burke in a front corner booth, and the third-generation gangster Wei Lo at a table in the back, flanked by two large goons in black suits. His real name is Peter Wang, a lamentable Americanization imposed on him by traditional parents with no knowledge of American slang or the lifetime of verbal punishment they were inflicting on their son. Wei Lo, a joke nickname based on the response to “How’s Wang hangin’?” that stuck with him after college. I pulled a chair opposite him, kicked the bottom of the table, heard the hidey gun hit the floor.

“Don’t bother,” to the goon who bent to retrieve the gun. “You don’t need it and neither does Lo.”

“You sit, without invitation, Meyers.” Lo tapped his fingertips together. “But you are not…Entirely…Unexpected?”

“Do me a favor, Pete. Cut the cheap extra in a bad Chinese flick routine. This won’t take long if we can do without that and any gangster nonsense.”

“Ah, well. What do you want, Meyers, besides your sense of humor back?”

“Information.”

“You come to me because you are unpopular where you belong, or do you find our white pepper chicken in flaky pastry irresistible?”

“There’s that TV Chinaman bullshit again. Who has the corner on disposable Asian kids these days.”

“Trafficking is not something we embrace.” He leaned toward me, an arm on the table. “And when we find those so involved, we are less than kind.” He slid the edge of his hand across his throat.

“Dong Boi ring any bells?”

“Shit.” He sat back, threw his napkin on the table, waved away his bodyguards. “Follow me.” I stood, signaled behind my back to Burke, followed Lo through the bamboo-and-beads string curtain. He led me down a hall to the right, bypassing the kitchen, stayed in front of me, something I found unusual. After sixty feet of the claustrophobic hallway, he opened a door, let me through, pushed a piece of wood with his foot between the bottom of the steel door and the threshold. I waited while he fumbled in his ornate Chinese silk smoking jacket, lifted a pack of off brand ‘lite’ cigarettes, shook one loose and lit it. He tilted his head back, blew a cloud of smoke into the alley with an “Ahhhhhhh…”

I let him enjoy it, wondering how many people he let stand with him in the alley alone.

“You’ll forgive my sitting room,” his eyes following the smoke. “The walls have ears. This is crude, but safe.”

“Bugs in your own place?”

“Could be. Regardless, in this end of town it’s trouble to even mention Dong Boi’s name in public without ample praise.”

“Trouble to you?”

“Not personally. However, there are many too fearful of him that it is better not to discuss him where others may overhear and curry favor by forwarding the conversation.”

“Embellished, no doubt?”

“No doubt.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette. “The disposable youth you inquire about are Dong Boi’s doing. He brings them in by the container, not unlike his counterfeit designer label merchandise and fire hazard consumer electronics. They will do anything he asks as he holds their remaining mainland family over their heads. If they are foolish or care so little for their families they refuse him, he finds them work as crash dummies.”

“Kamikazes.”

“As you have seen and I have heard.” He flicked the butt into a dumpster. “Many of us disapprove but as a ‘diplomat at large’ he has deep roots.”

“Understood. His ego big enough to try and buy his way into the movie business?”

“If you mean did he give Marlon Dubrev nearly a million dollars, yes. But there was a recent setback,” he shook another cig loose. “Dubrev and his ‘wife’ are dead.”

“You weren’t a fan of the late Mrs. Dubrev?”

“I consider myself an enlightened man,” the cigarette pack disappeared into the folds of his robe.

“Aside from cigarettes and Geisha costumes?”

“I’m trying to quit. I buy the worst cigarettes I can find, but…” he frowned at the unlit cigarette between his fingers. “None of my employees are hookers, or are in danger of becoming hookers or untrained enforcers on motorcycles. I don’t believe in mistreating women or selling drugs or lording my position as an employer or person of influence over anyone. When my father died, I channeled all my efforts and his money into service franchises and real estate.”

“So speaking ill of the dead isn’t your style. If it was?”

“That girl Dubrev dug up could sell ice to Eskimos. Or…” A grin.

“Rice to a Chinaman?”

“Never have I seen a smoother hustler,” he said. “She ropes in men, of any age, even those who should know better and immediately they are eating shit out of her hand and calling it caviar. May she rest in peace. What else is on your mind?”

“A young woman named Chellaine who’s in way over her head. I heard she’s in Chinatown with guards on the door. Sounded like one of your setups.”

“True. Sadly, her misfortune is of her own design and she feels there is no end in sight.”

“How’d she end up with you?”

“Chellaine worked for me when she was in college. She came to me on Monday with a tale of motorcycle riding ninjas with machine guns, showed me a hole in her jacket made by a white man named Meyers who she said could shoot the left eye out of the Indian on a nickel, and a crazy white woman she’d been doing business with that I discovered works for Dong.”

“She mention a stash of very expensive, very hot merchandise?”

“Possibly.”

“You know where it is?”

“No. I am foolish enough to rescue damsels in distress, but not enough to take on their problems.”

“I need to talk to her. I have a way to get her off the hot seat and out of the crosshairs if she’ll play.”

“You’re not after the merchandise?”

“In a way. Chelle and I bring pressure from two sides, Dong Boi and Longwei go down. Dong’s crazy white woman is also Longwei’s crazy white woman. I can’t explain it better than that right now, but properly squeezed they all go down.”

“Conjecture.” He stuck the unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

“Intuition.”

“Very well. I’ll send a messenger with flowers. You will decipher the message. If someone has gotten to her guards, kill them and get her out. If I find out you’re lying about Chellaine and what she has hidden…”

“I feel the same way.”

“Then,” he bowed, swept his arm down the alley, “You will see yourself out?”

I heard the whine, grabbed the edge of the steel door, swung it into Lo’s face, pulled my gun on the way to the ground. The bike swung into the alley, headlight bobbing. The rider squeezed off a few rounds that hit the door and the brick at waist height before losing control of the bike. It wobbled, slammed into the end of the dumpster, the rider flipped over the handlebars into the dumpster. I made it to the dumpster in three long strides, looked inside, and the reason for the rider’s loss of control became obvious as blood pooled over white trash bags.

Lo inspected the door and the wall, glanced down at his broken cigarette, tossed it away, fished out another one, his hand shaking. “I didn’t have anyone on this alley,” looking both directions.

“I did.”

“Good man, even if it is a sign of distrust.” He stuck the cigarette between his lips dead center, went fishing for his lighter.

“Buying shitty cigarettes won’t help you quit, Pete.”

“Yeah?” Too shaky to work the lighter. “You have a better idea?”

“Don’t light ‘em.” I took the lighter away and tossed it in the dumpster. “Do something about the trash for me?”

A Beautiful Corpse – 23 – At Least You’re Honest

I walked Trey out on the mezzanine, past the pool and the tourist noise to a planter full of the best artificial greenery money could buy. “It was Bren’s idea,” he said, checking the temperature of a metal bench, decided not to sit. “She came on to me, you know, at a Beach Savers rally the Dragons were at, but I could tell it was like an act, you know, but she had some decent herb, so I tuned in to her. I guess I kinda fucked up when I told her I worked on-call for the county coroner and she asked like a ton of questions about what happens after the cops clear the house, how long before relatives move in, are the alarms disabled, you know.”

“And you fucked up more when you told her about the porn?”

“I guess, but…Oh man,” another Eureka moment, “That’s how Addie and Dubrev all knew who I was because Bren’s inside on all this…Oh, man…”

“You thought you could see the squares coming and she got right up next to you.”

“Man…”

“Happens to the best of us sometimes. You know where Chelle is?”

“Yeah. But, you know, nobody can go there, where she’s at.”

“Because?”

“Chinatown, dude. She’s like underground, you know?”

“Really under the ground, or?”

“No, no. Like hiding out. Some Chinese dude, not the suit but another one, he has her in this like apartment with guards outside an shit, you know? She’s the only one who knows where the rest of the hooked gear stash is at.”

“The cops have the Airstream.”

“Dude, fuck that trailer fulla pop-outs. Chelle’s on top of the good shit an nobody else knows.”

“Besides Bren, who’s the everybody looking for her.”

“The Chinese gray suit, Flynn, some old flash Betty. The old Chinese gray suit, he’s the one wants the jade.”

“The Chinese shark have a name?”

“Yeah,” snickering. “I heard that’s how Woot cooked up the souvenir porn.”

“I’m waiting.”

“Dong Boi,” more snickering. “You know, like how perfect is that?”

“I’m sure it makes him a hit at parties. Where’d he come from?”

“China?”

“Goddammit, Trey.”

“Oh…Um, now that I think about it, you know, he’s like maybe the other half of Addie and Marlon’s money.” He dropped the lingering snicker. “You gotta understand, dude. I didn’t know nothing about none of that trip till when I heard it inside, you know. It was like Addie showed at some Nutsack Dragons gigs, Smaug and Drago like took her to the squat in ‘Monica, she answered a cattle call and was married to Dubrev in like a week.”

“You didn’t think that was any kind of off?”

“Man, it’s L.A., you know? She’s fine, he’s a ticket with a checkbook and a golden line. She drops by a Nutsakers’ gig right after, you know, says she’s in the movie business. I tell her I’ve like done focus pulling and boom work and, uh, some no-line walk-ons.”

“Then she told somebody who told somebody you could run a camera and get an on demand hard-on, Bren pulls some strings and there you are. Tell me this – Which came first, the burglaries or Dong Boi?”

“The burglaries, dude. Bren’s been ridin’ that wave for months, you know. Her and Flynn pickin’ and Chelle pullin’.”

I thought for a few, almost saw a picture and like every other time I thought I understood this mess, my brain’s Etch-a-Sketch flipped over and shook itself. “Okay,” I said, handing Trey the keys to Burke’s disposa ride. “You can have the Vega back when this is over. Right now head to the parking lot, find a shit brown Corolla with a blue hood. Take it wherever you’ve been that no one can find you. But,” I caught his shoulder, handed him a hundred bucks. “Check in with the surf shop every couple of hours for messages.”

“Whoa, dude. A Benji? For what?”

“Parking and some decent shoes for starters.”

“Cool.” He air kissed the bill. “Orange Connies comin’ up. Uh,” he paused, his expression blank. “It wouldn’t like, um, break my heart if the Vega got ripped, stripped and maybe even caught fire.”

***

“Where’s Trey?” Addie, once more in accusatory mode. “You can’t keep me here.”

“You’re right.”

“Huh?”

“Get dressed and ready to leave. You can stuff the robe in a wet swim suit bag and take it with you.” I handed Burke my keys. “Take the Subaru. Dump the camo for street clothes, go to Phuc Lóng, get a corner table where you can see Lo.”

“Chinatown? You sure?”

“No other way.”

“The dead bride?” He shot a thumb at Addie.

“I called Toni from the lobby.”

“Jesus. That’s another ‘are you sure’.”

“I gave her some leeway. Anything short of murder to make it tolerable.”

“Bishop?”

“Outside Phuc Lóng.”

“Sorry, but um,” Smaug, hesitant. “What about me?”

“You take a long bass solo in the band’s set?”

“The, uh, whole set is like a long group solo…With screaming.”

“At least you’re honest. When’s your next gig?”

“Friday.”

“It’s Wednesday,” I said, running the next two days through my head. “Stay here, stay off the phone except for room service, watch TV, be cool. Can you do that?”

“Least till I pinch myself and wake up.” He pulled a thick, pink fatty out of his shirt pocket, held it up.

“No thanks. Wait till we’re gone and take that out on the balcony. *Set off the sprinkler and you’re on your own.”

***

“That’s it?” Burke pulled the curtain back, stared down six floors to the hotel parking lot. “The kids in black aren’t ninjas,” letting the curtain close. “Killing kamikaze fodder because some asshole thinks they’re disposable leaves a bad taste.”

“I know, but we’re about to visit a certifiable Chinese asshole—”

“So please don’t shoot the next one I see?”

“It might not be his fault.”

“If it is?”

“I might shoot him first.”

 

*This was a perfect hole for an adverbly dialog tag. The one that popped into my head was Elmore Leonard’s facetious “He admonished, sternly”. I laughed to and at myself and that’s why it’s empty.

A Beautiful Corpse – 22 – When You Say It That Way

“She’s crazy, dude” Surfer Trey stopped pacing to make the finger tracing a circle next to his head. “Totally deep dive whacko, man, and she fuckin’ hates your guts.”

“Lots of ‘she’ business in this mess.”

Surfer Trey continued to pace while Smaug sat hunched over in a dinette chair, hugging his knees to his chest. Adeline Dubrev, in a white, oversized Hilton terry-cloth robe, rubbed her wet hair with a matching oversized towel. I prompted, again. “She?”

“Bren, dude. Fucking Bren. It wasn’t supposed to get this deep, man.”

“You said that before about Mrs. Dubrev. Longwei’s not the man in charge?”

“Him? Fuck no, he’s, he’s,” hands up in exasperation, “I dunno, man. Some kind of, you know, a dude. A main dude that like knows people and does shit for Bren.”

“How does that work?”

“I, I dunno, man. He…fuck.” Trey, pacing again. “He’s like a boss. Of something, but she’s like his boss, somehow, but only part time.”

“Exactly how the hell does that work, Trey? How does a man who owns an international logistics company end up taking orders from a tree hugging burglar?”

“I’m tellin’ you, man, I don’t—”

“Thinking with his dick,” Addie stopped the hair massage. “The same way every man gets run over by a woman.”

“Yo!” Trey, stopped now, saying, “Pussy whipped.” Turning to me. “That’s how he is, dude. Whatever she says, man, he like jumps on it.”

“Are they a romantic unit, or is that guess work? Because I can’t see it.”

“Well, no, you know, they’re not, well…She’s kinda…”

“Androgenous?”

“No man, she’s not like religious or anything.”

I tried again with “Sexless?”

“I mean yeah, kinda. I dunno, if she does or not, you know, but if you mean is she like not really putting off any needs a hook-up vibe, or any kinda vibe besides bein’ all fuckin’ Boss Bitch Betty, then yeah.”

“And she wants me dead and out of the way because of the robberies or the porn?”

Addie, fully lit, to Trey, “What does she have to do with the cheesy porn? Doobie set that all up so Woot could make some pocket money.”

“Wait,” I held up my hand. “Who, or what, is ‘Woot’?”

“Langstaff Wootenhamse,” Addie, like we should all know. “Woot. He was a friend of Marlon’s from his old days. A camera man, or cinema-something. Forget Woot. I don’t know what any of you are talking about, or why I’m here.”

“A little help, Trey.”

“She means,” Trey dropped into a dinette chair. “The message you left for me? I thought it was Addie you were talking about, so that’s why I like turned up at the boathouse to get her out before you got there. Except inside there’s like Longwei an Addie was already tied up and then like outta nowhere so were me an Smaug and Longwei was sayin’, you know, just before you came in like how he hoped you had the girl with you, and how Bren wanted to kill you, but she’d have to wait if you didn’t, like, bring her with, you know, and there you were, no girl. That’s why the blacked-out dudes didn’t shoot you when you opened the door.”

“What girl was I supposed to have?”

“Chelle, Dude. Who else?”

“The art major and journeyman fence I met at the Airstream?”

“Yeah, her. Everyone’s lookin’ for her.”

“Not Addie?”

“I’m dead, remember. Or didn’t you hear?”

“Right. Nobody,” Trey bit his lip. “Well, nobody, uh…”

“Nobody in this racket is what you’re trying to tell me?”

“Yeah. Like Longwei is only in on the hooked gear part of Bren’s trip.”

“So,” Addie, accusatory, “I could’ve stayed in that boathouse until Marlon came for me. He was coming, you know,” confidence in her words waning. “It was just, taking him a, a little longer…”

“What was taking him longer?” The light bulb went off in my head. “Longer to get to the money?”

“Yes,” she sat on the arm of the couch, forlorn. “But,” brightening, “It won’t be much longer. He says the cops will get bored and clear the house, and then it’ll all be okay. He can get the money then and come get me. But now,” she clouded up, “now you messed that all up. The boathouse, everything. Who are you anyway that you had to stir up a shit storm for all of us?”

“Trying to keep your chauffer from going down for your sister’s murder, for one. What’s the take that’ll let you walk away from your sister and let a decent kid burn for it while you wait to plant a geezer husband so you can spend all of it?”

“When you say it that way it sounds awful, and it’s not like that at all.”

“It’s exactly like that. How much Addie? What’s the payoff?”

“A million.” Thinking now, the tip of her tongue out. “And a half. But we split it, Marlon and me, when we get to Hawaii. Well, he already spent some—”

“On the most totally crippled Sally Army dinosaur gear he could find,” Trey, trying to put what he was hearing together. “That’s, that’s like why Mads is dead, bro. And it was supposed to be you.”

“Me? Trey you’re crazy as shit. Doobie wouldn’t try to kill me. He couldn’t have pulled this off without me,” cinching her robe tighter. “And I’m not your bro, ‘bro’.”

“He might not be your bro, but he’s a long way from crazy. Look, little girl,” I said, honing in. “Seven hundred grand of the money you and Dubrev planned on using to jet off to greener pastures belongs to some very nasty people who want a return on their investment or a return of their investment. That’s the other reason I’m here. And if you think I’m a shit storm, you’d better hope to hell they don’t figure this without me.”

“What?”

I didn’t know if simple economics were over her head, or Dubrev had sold her a classic Hollywood song and dance and left out the part about investors who turn murderous when they get ripped off and how he’d already proven she was as disposable as the paper band wrapped around a stack of bills.

“Okay,” I said, trying a calmer approach. “Addie, why don’t you sit all the way down on the couch, relax, and tell Burke what you know. How it was supposed to work, everything,” I got an eye lock, “Everything, got me? The money, the porn, all of it. You do that and we’ll keep all of you alive and your games in play until the bad guys are happy, dead or in jail.” I turned, motioned Burke away from his position by the front door, mouthed “Record it.” Out loud I said, “Somebody order Smaug whatever he wants from room service. He’s paid a high price twice for a bystander. Trey? You and me, outside.”

NVDT Totally Random – Pooh, Poetry and Hums

I considered a few more book reviews for today. More positive than the last. Or something about writing, maybe, or spontaneous creativity vs the spreadsheet. On opening one of my favorite books I found the following and thought of the old line “With your eyes closed open any book, to any page, run your finger down the page, stop. Open your eyes.”

“But it isn’t easy,” said Pooh. “Because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.”

Leave it to a stuffed toy bear to remind us.

A Beautiful Corpse – 21 – Number Nine

I didn’t wait long for the pee-yellow Vega with peeling fake wood sides and a surfboard rack to pull up at the south end of the boathouse. Surfer Trey and Smaug the Metal Reggae bassist climbed out and the rear hatch flew up. Trey bent in, retrieved a brown paper grocery bag, Smaug emerged with a garment bag. They went around the south end of the boathouse and disappeared. Immediately someone covered head to toe in black and carrying an Uzi emerged from the Toyota, trotted to the north end of the boathouse.

“Downstream vehicle disabled,” Bishop said.

“Roger that,” Burke crackled. “Loose ninja’s mine.”

In less than two minutes a naked man, duct tape covering his mouth, wrists duct taped behind him, ran from the south end of the boathouse toward the white Toyota. Another black-clad figure, with another goddam Uzi, jumped from the Toyota seconds before a swoosh fireballed through the interior. The windshield blew out, knocked Dressed Ninja flat, stopped Naked Ninja in his tracks.

“Male and female on foot, five minutes.” Bishop sounded as if he were moving.

“Three unidentified inside plus target and guests,” Burke, voice low. “Meyers?”

“Going in,” I said, breaking out of my wooded cover. Dressed Ninja rolled to his feet, Bishop or Burke dropped him with a soundless shot before I had my gun out. I heard a small pop, turned to see Naked Ninja, headless, standing in the middle of the parking lot.

“I told him not to bite down,” Burke said.

“Language barrier,” Bishop, dry. “Interior targets acquired.”

I stepped through the open door on the south oceanside end of the boathouse. Halfway to the north end, six narrow boat slips away, a tall Asian man in a dark green jogging suit leaned against a support beam. Trey, Smaug and a disheveled Addie Dubrev, their wrists cable tied behind them, sat cross-legged on a narrow wooden pier between a pair of empty boat slips. The kids book-ended by a pair of unmasked, arms folded ninja clones, Uzi’s on slings.

“Mr. Meyers,” tall man, coming off the beam. “We have a problem.”

“You have a problem,” I crossed the space between us, raised the Browning. “And it will go away when Mrs. Dubrev and I walk out of here.”

The Uzi’s came up, Tall Man held up his hand, took a moment. “Her?” Genuine ‘why’ in his voice.

“I need her to prove a friend of mine didn’t kill her. Or her sister.”

“Interesting. Even if you weren’t outnumbered, you’ve killed and hidden the bodies of four of my men. And you are aware of a certain sensitive enterprise that makes you a liability.”

“I don’t care what else you’re up to. I need to find 700 hundred grand that belongs to Don Denaldo and show Mrs. Dubrev to Hollywood homicide. If I walk out of here with her, I won’t mention to Donnie I know who shot up his limo.”

“What?” Tall man, confused. The south door flew open, Bren and her sidekick stumbled in. “Where the hell have you been?”

“They had car trouble,” I said. “Not an easy walk barefoot?”

“Fuck you,” Bren lifted a foot, stuffed it in a high-heeled shoe, repeated the move with her other foot. “Why is he still alive?”

“Whose idea was it,” Tall Man, visibly angry, “to shoot up Denaldo’s fucking limousine?”

“What?”

“That’s what he said. You two not on the same page?”

“That was for him,” Bren, pointing at me. “To get him to back off. Nobody knew Denaldo would be in that parking garage.”

“All he wants is the girl,” Tall Man, again confused. “And I think he owes Denaldo seven hundred thousand dollars.”

“I don’t owe Denaldo a fucking dime,” I said. “He just wants to know where his money is and asked me to find it.”

“You’re an employee?”

“I’m a friend. Of a friend. A friend who knows he won’t have to count it when I bring it in.”

“Shit…” Tall Man ran his hand through his hair. “Shit fucking damn, Bren…I don’t need trouble from anyone carrying Denaldo’s weight.”

“Give him Bren,” I offered. “Tell him it was an accident.”

“You killed four of my men. I can’t let that go.”

“Six, if the two outside were yours.”

“Kill him,” she barked at the closest ninja. He raised his Uzi, one of the overhead transom windows shattered, Uzi Ninja jerked, fell backward into the water.

“Make that seven,” I said. “About being outnumbered—”

“You still are,” Bren screamed, reached for her purse. I dropped to one knee, shot, ripping the purse out of her hand. More glass broke, the second Ninja dropped into the water. I launched across a slip, stuck my Browning in Tall Man’s chest, kicked Trey in the thigh saying “Get outta here,” I pointed to the north door with my non gun hand. “Man in camo, do what he tells you.”

Tall Man recovered enough to try a spin and grab on my gun hand, a move that only works if you don’t know it’s coming. I let my right arm ride on his shove. The follow through carried him halfway around where I palmed him between the shoulder blades, drove his face into the beam. I glanced over my shoulder at Bren, squeezing her hand, yelling at her sidekick to pick up the gun that had fallen out of the purse and shoot me. He responded by kicking the gun into the water, holding up his hands, and vomiting on her.

“I told you,” turning back to Tall Man. “All I wanted was the girl. I have her. Now, are we done with each other?”

“Eight men,” he shook his head. “If I don’t agree?”

“You’re number nine.”