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  This book is a blast! Wry, mysterious, and, most of all, telling in the ways of desire and deception, Shortcut Man is one hell of a debut. p. g. sturges has proved himself a worthy successor to Chandler.” —MICHAEL CONNELLY

  IN THE CITY OF ANGELS, not everyone plays by the rules. When people need a problem fixed fast, and discreetly, they call Dick henry. henry is known as a “shortcut man,” someone who believes that the shortest answer to many problems may not always be legal. as he cuts through the red tape for his clients, who range from an elderly woman ripped off by shady contractors to a landlord with a tenant many months behind on the rent, henry always gets the job done, no matter what the cost.

  In Shortcut Man, henry spends his days hunting down slimy con men and his nights seducing lynette, an intoxicating, long-legged vixen. But when henry gets an assignment from porn producer artie Benjamin, his life suddenly becomes much more complicated. Now henry must complete the job, avoid being killed, and somehow figure out what to do with lynette. filled with dark comedy, whip-smart writing, and a memorable cast of characters, Shortcut Man evokes Chandler and hammett—hard-boiled crime at its best—and is an exciting beginning to a crackling new series.

  “This book is a blast! Wry, mysterious, and, most of all, telling in the ways of desire and deception, Shortcut Man is one hell of a debut. p. g. sturges has proved himself a worthy successor to Chandler.” —MICHAEL CONNELLY

  This is an assured and diverting performance, with an ending that should impress even the most seasoned fan of hard-boiled detective stories.” —THE WASHINGTON POST

  p. g. sturges was born in hollywood, California. Punctuated by fitful intervals of school, he has subsequently occupied himself as a submarine sailor, a Christmas tree farmer, a dimensional and optical metrologist, a writer, and a musician.

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  Praise for Shortcut Man by p. g. sturges

  “This is an assured and diverting performance, with an ending that should impress even the most seasoned fan of hardboiled detective stories. You thought every twist ending in the noir bag had been taken out and used up, p.g. sturges seems to be saying as the book rushes toward its final page. Well, get a load of this.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Shortcut Man joins the wisecracking, bone-breaking tradition of California noir stretching from Chandler to Hammett to Robert Crais’s latest Elvis Cole novel. … A gripping read.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “I was hooked on his quirky characters and original plot turns. By the spectacularly unexpected conclusion, I was floored. Now I can hardly wait for the second installment. … Mr. Sturges’s writing is flip and hip, influenced by a line of predecessors from Raymond Chandler to Elmore Leonard, but the unconventional writer adds a sassy cynicism of his own.”

  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “Shortcut Man is a glorious read: powerful, clever, suspenseful, and filled with enough dark humor and shady characters to satisfy the most rabid noir fan, and convert those who aren’t already.”

  —Associated Press

  “I started laughing by page five. … Although Sturges stays within Raymond Chandler’s noir template, his PI Dick Henry and a caravan of sociopaths kept surprising me.”

  —The Kansas City Star

  “A rollicking new LA crime novel … A well-paced and suspenseful good read, full of deft observations, honest sentiment, and screwball touches that would make his father proud.”

  —Los Angeles Review of Books

  “A captivating and breezily confident debut novel… Sturges has positioned himself to join the ranks of the best comic crime novelists writing today.”

  —AARP The Magazine

  “p.g. sturges is, simply put, one of the cleverest and funniest new writers to grace the mystery genre in quite some time.”

  —Bookpage.com

  “More Southern California shortcutting, please, Mr. Sturges.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Also by p. g. sturges

  Tribulations of the Shortcut Man

  SCRIBNER

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

  Copyright © 2011 by p. g. sturges

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Scribner trade paperback edition December 2011

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010017583

  ISBN 978-1-4391-9417-1

  ISBN 978-1-4391-9419-5 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4391-9420-1 (ebook)

  To Gina, my late wife, who gave me the idea for this book.

  God bless thee.

  To Mac and Kelly, who believed in their father.

  To Sandy, my mother, who believed in her son.

  And loved him enormously.

  To Tom, my brother, on my side from day one.

  To my father, Preston, who inspires me every day,

  who gave me a ticket to the game.

  To the Nagles, to the Halls, who encouraged me in all things, always.

  To author and friend R. C. Matheson, who suggested I write.

  To author and friend Craig Spector, who suggested I write.

  To Andy Rigrod, Paul Pompian, Dan Cartwright,

  Rick Harper, Robert Barrere, Jason McKean, Diane Mullen,

  and Dr. Ronald Clarke, true friends and believers.

  A Note from the Author

  It is not the author’s intention to amend, emend, reduce, ameliorate, or redress any wrongs, misfortunes, tragedies, or perditious conditions known to exist in this world or the next. You will depart the premises no wiser than you arrived. However, it is hoped you will be entertained in the meantime.

  p.g.sturges

  Contents

  PART ONE:

  Two Sides to Every Story

  1. Tisdale Regrets

  2. The Inciting Incident

  3. Lynette

  4. Near Sundown

  5. Chuckie Gregory and A-1 Contractors

  6. No One Files on Dick Henry

  7. The Green Hat

  8. All the Things You Are

  9. You Know My Wife?

  10. And I Fell

  PART TWO:

  Coils of the Beast

  11. Water Hammer

  12. The Tale of Johnny Santo

  13. Marriage and Temptation

  14. Pussy

  15. Francie Must Die


  16. Jerry Shunk

  17. What Makes Us Human

  18. Ojai

  19. Subtlety and Patience

  20. A Photograph

  21. Pumpkin Pie

  22. Afternoon at the Fellatio Academy

  23. Arnuldo’s Tale

  24. Filthy Heat

  25. A Contract

  26. Soul Provider

  27. The Pharaoh’s Raft

  28. An Obituary

  29. A Perfect Harmony

  30. Flowers for a Dead Cuban

  31. Lips and Tongue

  32. Some Rest for the Wicked

  33. Patricia’s Dream

  34. Tom Salt Is Dead

  35. Incursion

  36. Jerry Plays His Cards

  37. A Star in His Own Movie

  38. Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

  39. The Inside Man

  PART THREE:

  The Business at Hand

  40. An Alibi Created

  41. The Lord Laughs at Us All

  42. A Sack of Beets

  43. Hammerfall

  44. Like a bowling Pin

  45. Peedner Remembers

  46. The Unfairness of Life

  47. Music Lessons Lost

  48. Franklin closes the Deal

  49. Arnuldo Goes Down to the Beach

  50. To Slay a Prince

  PART ONE

  Two Sides to Every Story

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tisdale Regrets

  Tisdale was a professional nonpayer of rent and I’d been sent to see about him. He lived in a court up off Hollywood Boulevard on Hobart.

  A professional nonpayer paid his deposit, his first and last, a few more months to establish his bona fides, then settled in for a spell of hard luck.

  It had come down to this, he would declare, choking a sob, his mother’s medicine or the rent.

  Just this once slid into twice and after a while his mother died again. By then the landlord knew he was in for a porking but too late. The nonpayer would claim hardship and file for bankruptcy. In like a tick, it could take two years and lots of money to get him out. Sometimes ten grand in legal fees alone. That’s when a heads-up landlord would call me.

  I’m Dick Henry. The Shortcut Man.

  Tisdale’s place was in the back, in the middle. The lawn on either side of the cracked concrete walk was weedy and unkempt. A few scraggly bushes surrounded one of those towering Hollywood palms whose image had lured millions to false paradise.

  Meanwhile, someone nearby was torturing a guitar Van Halen style, and when I got closer it was coming from Tisdale’s.

  I stepped up on the little porch. I knocked through the screen and waited. The guitar quieted, someone rumbled across the floor, and the door opened.

  I didn’t like him right off. Approaching three hundred doughy pounds and six feet tall, red rat eyes peered through long stringy hair. The face was fat and dirty, and gave evidence of recent rib eating. I smelled cheap marijuana.

  “Yeah?” said Rib Face.

  I waved. “I’m Dick Henry.” I tried to be pleasant.

  “Yeah?”

  “You Mr. Pissdale?”

  “It’s Tis-dale. With a T. And if you’re here about my guitar, you can split right now. ’Cause I don’t turn it down for nobody. I know my rights.”

  These guys always knew their rights. I felt a tingle in my fist.

  “Actually, I don’t give a shit about your guitar.” I was still trying to be pleasant. “I’m here about the rent.”

  The concept of rent took an appreciable amount of time to make its way through the circuits. Finally it arrived.

  “The rent? The rent? You should know better than to harass me here, fuckhead. I know my rights, Landers knows my rights, and you know my rights.”

  Tisdale ran his fingers back through his hair. “You don’t come to Landers’s freezy drafty leaky piece-of-shit house when I’ve declared bankruptcy.” His teeth were a yellowish green. “Now should I call my lawyer?”

  It was an option.

  But by this time the tingle in my fist had turned into a buzz and suddenly it was drawn, as if by a celestial karma vacuum, right through the fly-specked screen and directly into Tisdale’s nose. There was a satisfying crunch and down went Tisdale.

  I pulled the door open and went in. The sight of his own blood had weakened his resolve and reorganized his priorities. I grabbed him by the collar, helped him to his feet.

  “Your rights have come to an end, friend, and your obligations have begun.” I checked my watch. “You got twenty-five minutes to get everything you own out of this house.”

  Tisdale held up a cautionary hand, eyes watering. “My nose, man. You broke my fucking nose.”

  I checked my watch again. “Now you’ve got twenty-four minutes to get out.”

  Tisdale attended his nose with a grayish T-shirt that had been lying around. Now it was red. Soon it would be brown. “Hey,” he resumed, “you just can’t throw someone out on their ass. There’re laws.”

  In principle I agreed. In principle. “Yeah, there are laws, but they don’t apply to you anymore.” According to my preliminary investigation, his mother had died five times. Three times of cancer, twice of tuberculosis, once of intestinal blockage. Wait a second. That made six. And his father. A cerebral hemorrhage. And kidney failure.

  There was a knock at the door. I checked my watch. It should have been Rojas.

  It was.

  Rojas exuded menace like a whore exudes cheap perfume. Of medium height, stocky, tattooed, unsmiling, with eyes concealed by Wayfarers under a black leather porkpie hat, Rojas was a badass Eastsider. We shook hands and a hint of a grin played in and around his soul patch.

  I introduced the parties. “Enrique Rojas, meet Michael Tisdale, a.k.a. Mike Jones, Mike Smith, Mike Bush, and Mike Lane.”

  Tisdale searched Rojas’s face for mercy.

  “Buenas tardes, motherfucker,” said Rojas.

  Tisdale looked back at me. I hooked a thumb at friend Rojas. “Mr. Rojas is here to see that you don’t backslide on your promise to vacate the premises. Otherwise I’ve asked him to beat the piss out of you.”

  “My promise to vacate?”

  I checked my watch again. “You got twenty minutes.”

  “Hold on, man. I can’t get everything out in twenty minutes. Look at this place!”

  I shrugged. “Save what’s most important. The rest is going in the Dumpster.”

  “I’m going to call the police.”

  “Go right ahead. I bet you have lots of friends down there.”

  Tisdale’s only recourse was the practical. “I can’t move out of here in twenty minutes, dude. It can’t be done.”

  I looked at Rojas. “Mr. Tisdale says it can’t be done.”

  Rojas nodded, looked around. Then he walked over, grabbed the TV, lugged it, connecting wires and all, out the door and dumped it over the railing. In the house, various items crashed off shelves and slouched toward Bethlehem.

  “What’s next?” Rojas brushed his hands upon his return.

  “Start with the guitar.”

  Tisdale interceded with a shriek. “Please. Please.”

  Now you get the gist of how I saved Mr. Landers $7,500. And earned $2,500 for myself. I’m Dick Henry. The Shortcut Man.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Inciting Incident

  My career as a shortcut man began with an unremarkable incident when I was twenty-two years old. I was a submarine sailor stationed in Hawaii, at Pearl, living in the barracks.

  Returning to Pearl after a quick undersea jaunt around the islands to earn a few bigwig officers sea pay, I set off to see Nita. Nita was a full-figured Oklahoma girl, recently divorced from a soldier at Schofield. She was not going to be pretty later in life, but for the moment she glowed with the attractiveness and vivacity of any young creature. She worked nights at a coffee shop in Pearl City and was the object of my most tender feelings. Unrequited, of course.

  But Nit
a was not in the cards that night. My car had been rendered immobile; my gearshift with the T-grip had been detached and removed. Stolen. I looked at a hole in the floor.

  Angrily I marched over to Subase Security and reported the violation. Predictably, like minions of justice anywhere in the world, the night crew at security had no particular interest in justice and quickly deflected it by procedure. Did I have my social security number etched on the missing item?

  What? Etched on my gearshift? Are you kidding? No.

  No? Oh, well. Their hands were tied.

  In lieu of action, their action, I was informed that I could fill out three copies of a long, complicated report that would sit in a drawer till somebody said what the fuck is this and round-filed it.

  The next day, asking friends on other boats (submarines are called boats by those who sail on them) who might be a likely thief, I was told about Stevens. I looked into his car and there, bingo, installed, was my gearshift.

  Again I made the trek to Subase Security, this time to inform the day shift what I had discovered. The day shift looked a lot more intelligent than the night crew. The duty chief solemnly stroked his chin, looked up at the fan. I was filled with warm, precoital gratitude. Then he inquired if I had etched my social security number on the missing item.

  Down to my last legal card, I went to the captain of my boat, explained the problem. As the commander of an autonomous nuclear weapons platform, one of the most feared pillars of the free world, I had full confidence he might part the Red Sea. The captain stroked his chin, made his recommendation: go see Subase Security.

  The vote was in. It was me or nobody.

  I assessed myself in the mirror. I was tall and thin but strong. Steady blue eyes, wide-set, stared out from beneath red hair going brown. Freckles, the plague of my youth, were fading, though a few were still splashed across my nose, bridged and slightly crooked. When I smiled I revealed the full set of teeth God had given me, in their original, imperfect orientation. Altogether, it was not a face that launched a thousand ships. But it was not the face of a coward.