I have a stab at improving this starting piece every now and then, a project that started about a year or so ago, and I find myself rewriting the start over and over because I’m not satisfied with the characterization.

It’s not so much the storyline, as it is in trying to create sympathy for the character, and not find him as dull as ditchwater.  He’s improving with age.  As writers, we tend to create colourful characters and shy away from those who are dull and boring, because after all, as a reader, you want to become something or someone who is far from ordinary.  Well, Graham is starting out ordinary, but he will be anything but by the time I write those words ‘The End’.

I promise.

I am the master of my own destiny.

My father had drummed that into me, as well as my older brother and younger sister, over and over, until it became a mantra.

For them.

I could not say I didn’t have the same advantages afforded to them, afforded to me.  I did.

But somewhere lost in the translation, someone forgot to tell me that it was only advice, not an order, and mistaking it for the latter, I struck out on my own path.

And for the next ten years, it was a long and winding path that led me to this point in time, in a small room that held nothing to tell me where I came from, or who I really was.

My parents were very wealthy with an Upper Westside Apartment in Manhattan and a holiday house in Martha’s Vineyard, my sister had a successful medical career and married a most eligible bachelor, as expected, and my brother, he was a politician.

I’d not seen any of them in at least five years, and they hadn’t called me.

You see, I was the black sheep of the family.  I dropped out of college when it all became too much, and drifted.  Seasonal labourer, farmhand, factory worker, add job man, and night watchman. 

At least now I had a uniform, and a gun, and looked like I’d made something of myself.

It was hard to say why, just before I was about to head out of the factory to end my shift, that those thoughts about them came into my mind.   They might be gone, but I guess I would never forget about them.  I wondered briefly if any of them thought about me.

It was 3 a.m. and it was like standing on the exact epicentre of the South Pole.  I’d just stepped from the factory warehouse into the car park.

The car was covered in snow.  The weather was clear now, but I could feel more snow was coming.  A white Christmas?  That’s all I needed.  I hoped I remembered to put the antifreeze in my radiator this time.

As I approached my car, the light went on inside an SUV parked next to my car.  The door opened and what looked to be a woman was getting out of the car.

“Graham?”

It was a voice I was familiar with, though I hadn’t heard it for a long time.

I looked again and was shocked to see my ultra-successful sister, Penelope.  She was leaning against the front fender, and from what I could see, didn’t look too well.

How on earth did she find me, after all the years that had passed?  Perhaps that sparked my un-conciliatory question, “What do you want?”

I could see the surprise and then hurt in her expression.  Perhaps I had been a little harsh.  Whatever she felt, it passed, and she said, “Help.”

My help?  Help with what? I was the last person who could help her, or anyone for that matter, with anything.   But curiosity got the better of me.  “Why?”

“I think my husband is trying to kill me.”

Then, with that said, she slid down the side of the car, and I could see, in the arc lamps lighting the car park, a trail of blood.

My first thought, she needed the help of a doctor, not a stupid brother, then a second thought, call 911, which I did, and hoped like hell they got here in time.

And, yes, there was a third thought that crossed my mind.  Whether or not I would be blamed for this event.

© Charles Heath 2022

It could have been anywhere in the world, she thought, but it wasn’t.  It was in a city where if anything were to go wrong…

She sighed and came away from the window and looked around the room.  It was quite large and expensively furnished.  It was one of several she had been visiting in the last three months.

Quite elegant too, as the hotel had its origins dating back to before the revolution in 1917.  At least, currently, there would not be a team of KGB agents somewhere in the basement monitoring everything that happened in the room.

There was no such thing as the KGB anymore, though there was an FSB, but such organisations were of no interest to her.

She was here to meet with Vladimir.

She smiled to herself when she thought of him, such an interesting man whose command of English was as good as her command of Russian, though she had not told him of that ability.

All her knew of her was that she was American, worked in the Embassy as a clerk, nothing important, who life both at work and at home was boring.  Not that she had blurted that out the first tie she met, or even the second.

That first time, at a function in the Embassy, was a chance meeting, a catching of his eye as he looked around the room, looking, as he had told her later, for someone who might not be as boring as the function itself.

It was a celebration, honouring one of the Embassy officials on his service in Moscow, and the fact he was returning home after 10 years.  She had been there one, and still hadn’t met all the staff.

They had talked, Vladimir knew a great deal about England, having been stationed there for a year or two, and had politely asked questions about where she lived, her family, and of course what her role was, all questions she fended off with an air of disinterested interest.

It fascinated him, as she knew it would, a sort of mental sparring as one would do with swords, if this was a fencing match.

They had said they might or might not meet again when the party was over, but she suspected there would be another opportunity.  She knew the signs of a man who was interested in her, and Vladimir was interested.

The second time came in the form of an invitation to an art gallery, and a viewing of the works of a prominent Russian artist, an invitation she politely declined.  After all, invitations issued to Embassy staff held all sorts of connotations, or so she was told by the Security officer when she told him.

Then, it went quiet for a month.  There was a party at the American embassy and along with several other staff members, she was invited.  She had not expected to meet Vladimir, but it was a pleasant surprise when she saw him, on the other side of the room, talking to several military men.

A pleasant afternoon ensued.

And it was no surprise that they kept running into each other at the various events on the diplomatic schedule.

By the fifth meeting, they were like old friends.  She had broached the subject of being involved in a plutonic relationship with him with the head of security at the embassy.  Normally for a member of her rank it would not be allowed, but in this instance it was.

She did not work in any sensitive areas, and, as the security officer had said, she might just happen upon something that might be useful.  In that regard, she was to keep her eyes and ears open, and file a report each time she met him.

After that discussion she got the impression her superiors considered Vladimir more than just a casual visitor on the diplomatic circuit.  She also formed the impression the he might consider her an ‘asset’, a word that had been used at the meeting with security and the ambassador.

It was where the word ‘spy’ popped into her head and sent a tingle down her spine.  She was not a spy, but the thought of it, well, it would be fascinating to see what happened.

A Russian friend.  That’s what she would call him.

And over time, that relationship blossomed, until, after a visit to the ballet, late and snowing, he invited her to his apartment not far from the ballet venue.  It was like treading on thin ice, but after champagne and an introduction to caviar, she felt like a giddy schoolgirl.

Even so, she had made him promise that he remain on his best behaviour.  It could have been very easy to fall under the spell of a perfect evening, but he promised, showed her to a separate bedroom, and after a brief kiss, their first, she did not see him until the next morning.

So, it began.

It was an interesting report she filed after that encounter, one where she had expected to be reprimanded.

She wasn’t.

It wasn’t until six weeks had passed when he asked her if she would like to take a trip to the country.  It would involve staying in a hotel, that they would have separate rooms.  When she reported the invitation, no objection was raised, only a caution; keep her wits about her.

Perhaps, she had thought, they were looking forward to a more extensive report.  After all, her reports on the places, and the people, and the conversations she overheard, were no doubt entertaining reading for some.

But this visit was where the nature of the relationship changed, and it was one that she did not immediately report.  She had realised at some point before the weekend away, that she had feelings for him, and it was not that he was pushing her in that direction or manipulating her in any way.

It was just one of those moments where, after a grand dinner, a lot of champagne, and delightful company, things happen.  Standing at the door to her room, a lingering kiss, not intentional on her part, and it just happened.

And for not one moment did she believe she had been compromised, but for some reason she had not reported that subtle change in the relationship to the powers that be, and so far, no one had any inkling.

She took off her coat and placed it carefully of the back of one of the ornate chairs in the room.  She stopped for a moment to look at a framed photograph on the wall, one representing Red Square.

Then, after a minute or two, she went to the mini bar and took out the bottle of champagne that had been left there for them, a treat arranged by Vladimir for each encounter.

There were two champagne flutes set aside on the bar, next to a bowl of fruit.  She picked up the apple and thought how Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden, and the temptation.

Later perhaps, after…

She smiled at the thought and put the apple back.

A glance at her watch told her it was time for his arrival.  It was if anything, the one trait she didn’t like, and that was his punctuality.  A glance at the clock on the room wall was a minute slow.

The doorbell to the room rang, right on the appointed time.

She put the bottle down and walked over to the door.

A smile on her face, she opened the door.

It was not Vladimir.  It was her worst nightmare.

…

© Charles Heath 2020

50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.

They all start with –

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

And the story:

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.

Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication where he went.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”  available soon.

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

Boggs, Nadia, a run in with Alex

…

I hadn’t seen Boggs for days, and worse, the last time I did see him, we didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.

It was a long way to fall from when, what seemed less than a week, we were the best of friends.

It seemed his obsession with the treasure hunt had usurped any possibility of being civil, or any understanding that there might be more pressing matters in my life, like having to help support my mother.

Perhaps he didn’t realise the nature of my necessity to actually get a job and bring some money onto a household that was struggling just to exist.

For that matter, I had to wonder just how he and his mother managed to exist now that Rico was behind bars with little chance of escaping a prison sentence.  Oddly, I felt sorry for him, but I was beginning to believe that Alex and the Benderby’s were responsible for the archaeologist’s death and had used Rico’s boat to stitch him up.

As for Boggs, there was that lingering doubt in his mind that I had crossed to the dark side, associating myself with Nadia, a sworn enemy, and treasure hunting rival. 

It was a thought that crossed my mind too and could be argued that she was just using me as a means of getting to the treasure for her family given that she might assume that I stood a better chance of deducing where it was because Boggs had a head start on everyone else, and was still stumbling around in the dark.

That she was willing to help, by means that could have only been facilitated by her family didn’t go unnoticed, and I was a lot warier now of sharing everything I knew with her.  I was not that naive to believe she was interested in me for any other reason.

It didn’t really matter because whether I would share any or all information with her or anyone else was largely irrelevant.  I was inclined to believe it didn’t exist, or if it had, it was more likely that someone had found it long ago, and like the Cossatinos later on, promoted the myth for the purpose of exploiting people’s gullibility.

This was, I guess, one of those ‘between a rock and a hard place’ moments.

A sudden itch on the back of my neck made me turn around and look back in the direction of her room, and I noticed a flutter where the curtain was.  Had she been waiting to see if I had gone?

I hated the idea of being suspicious of people’s motives, but the name conjured up all manner of expectations, and I could only imagine what it was like to live with that.  Would she ever live a normal life, or even know what normal was.

Did any of us?

“Smidge.”

A voice that would strike terror into the heart of anyone like me.

Alex.  Loitering outside the vicinity of Nadia’s hotel.  Was he spying on her?

“Alex.” 

Beside him was one of his father’s henchmen and it didn’t look good.

“What are you doing here?”

Had he just arrived on his way to see her, or had he been lurking in the shadows?  My money was on the latter.  He had been the jealous boyfriend once, and it was hard to see him changing.

Truth or dare?  Truth.  “I was visiting Nadia.  But I wouldn’t start assuming it was for any reason other than for her to be questioning me about Boggs’s progress on his treasure hunt, which, by the way, is zero.  My guess is you are having more success.”

“Why would you think that?”

“The flash boat on the water, I suspect you’re trying to find a trail of coins from bay to beach in the hope of establishing where it came ashore.  I’m sure you have some fancy metal detection going on from the boat.  So, any success?”

“Why would I tell you?”

“Why wouldn’t you?  I’m sure telling Boggs is hardly going to make his investigation move along faster than it is.  What would help is the Captain’s logbook, and that I suspect was the archaeologist’s trump card, and he died before imparting its whereabouts.”

It was pure speculation on my part, but Alex always lacked a poker face, even back in school when he got into trouble.  His expression changed just slightly.  So, there was a logbook.

“Does your father know what you’re doing?”

“This had nothing to do with my father.”

“Perhaps I should tell him that, including your obsession with Nadia.”

Something I should have realized long ago, and just crystallized in my mind, though I was not sure why was the fact Benderby had become almost a regular visitor at our place.  If I thought about it, it explained why my mother had suddenly started taking more care in her appearance, and how it came to pass I could get a job in a place where very few could. 

Benderby had always had an interest in my mother, and suddenly I realized they had been to school together, and the words of my father spoken once in anger made sense.  He was not her first choice.  She may have been Benderby’s first choice back then, but I doubted his family would have sanctioned it.

I wondered what Alex would have thought of that revelation.  Since his mother’s death, Benderby had started seeing more of her, and that had to add to Alex’s dislike of me.

“Not a good idea smidge.”

“Not a good idea to be calling me Smidge, Alex.”

A nod from Alex, the henchman took a step forward and grabbed my shirt, and then rammed into the wall.”

Alex laughed, and then suddenly went quiet.

Another voice joined the conversation.  “Tell your goon to let him go or I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear.”

Nadia.  Her tone scared me.

“You’re not that stupid,” Alex said in a tone that told me it scared the hell out of him too

“I’m a Cossatino, since when did stupidity rate a mention.  We’ve been doing stupid shit forever, and you’re about to join the party.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Actually Alex, I do.  It’ll get rid of one big problem I have with you, and it’ll get rid of a serial pest.  People will thank me.”

I could see her now, behind him, dressed in black, and my first thought, was she was a ninja.  I could see the knife at his throat, and she moved it slightly, and he jerked, drawing blood.

“Let him go,” Alex muttered.

The goon let go of my shirt and stepped back.

“Now go, Alex.  Don’t come back.  And don’t annoy Smidge again, or you’ll have me to deal with.”

He looked me up and down with a look of distaste.  “This isn’t over.”

Nadia gave him a shove and stepped between him and me.

“It is, Alex.  I know what you did to that chap you dumped on Rico’s boat.  You might not have killed him, but you’re ultimately responsible for his death, and I’m sure the sheriff would like to hear about it.  So, go away Alex, and be a good boy and we’ll all keep our little secrets.”

Angry yes, sullen answered resentful, equally so, but reluctantly agreeable.  “If you say so.”

A nod to his goon and they left.

There was something else hanging in the air, that statement about keeling little secrets.  He’d kept something over her, she had admitted as much to me, but the tables had been turned.  But what it was she had over him, it was more than just the archaeologist.

“What was that about?”  I had to ask.

“The Benderby’s have lots of secrets Sam, not just Alex.  I played a card and it paid off.  He won’t bother you again, not seriously anyway.”

“Should I be thanking you, or have I just been dragged down a rabbit hole?”

Perhaps I might have worked it better because she did save me from a certain beating.

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

Stating the obvious, there was no easy way out of that question.

“You said it yourself.  You’re a Cossatino.  I want to believe you, and strangely, given history, I like you perhaps more than I should.”

“Good boys and bad girls, it’s usually the other way around.  I wanted to hurt him, believe me, and I meant it when I said we do stupid shit, but I’m trying to be better than that.  I want to be better than that.  It’s why I need to get away from this place.”

“Then why do you just go?  For that matter, why did you come back?”

“Unfinished business.”  She took my hand in hers.  “And I like being with you.  You have a way of making me feel like I can change.”

“You are different.”

“Am I though?  I don’t feel like it right now.”

“Well, I am grateful you came along.”

“Good to be a help for once.  What’s our next adventure going to be?”

“A picnic in the hills.  I want to look at a few caves.”

“The one where Ormiston reportedly went missing?  You seem to be on a very macabre Odyssey.  What did the newspaper archives turn up?”

“An interesting coincidence.  I’ll let you know when I’m free next.”

“I’ll be waiting.”  She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips, then leaned back to look me in the eyes.

What I wanted then couldn’t be put into words.

Thank God she blinked.

I kissed her on the cheek, shook my head slightly, and said quietly, ” You will be the death of me.”

“Maybe,” she said softly, ” but you will die a very happy man.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.

See below for an excerpt from the book…

Coming soon!

An excerpt from the book:

When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.

Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.

It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.

Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.

But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.

His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.

At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.

For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.

Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.

Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.

Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.

It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.

It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.

Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.

Except, of course, when it came to Harry.

He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.

So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.

There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.

So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.

There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.

She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.

Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.

Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.

Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.

Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.

Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.

© Charles Heath 2019

It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.

John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.

So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?

That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.

What should have been a high turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point every thing goes to hell in a handbasket.

He suddenly realises his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.

The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.

…

Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

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