The Dangerous Days

I lit up a cigar and sucked deep

Stake-outs had a habit of grating on me. They were long, they were boring, and they damn near turned you insane. Not the kind of insanity that sends a man rampant with his sidearm. No, it was the kind that could only be found at the bottom of a glass. I’d known guys with double my resolve that ended up lost in the bottle. It was a killer. But then I guess it helped when you had nothing to live for.

I had fallen on hard times: up to my ears in alimony and only dead cases were passing my desk. I missed the old days, the sweet days: the dangerous days. Nobody bought into the tough guy-former cop routine anymore. They just tried to buy you out, meaning I was the only guy in New York who kept his nose clean. And even I fought dirty. A mean left hook left over from my boxing days was just itching to crack jaw.

The waitress asked if I wanted a refill and I had no choice but to say yes. The kid was a pretty little thing, barely out of high school; an innocent blonde with wide blue eyes, curves just filling out. I had to stop and tell myself, think pure thoughts, old man.

She’s probably here to pay off expensive college fees. If she’s lucky, she’ll make it through with only a bitter taste in her mouth. If not, well, let’s not go down that path. I imagined her self respect was somewhere in the gutter right now, along with the minds of the filth leering at her. That’s what this city does to the innocent, takes them in and chews them right back out.

And I was just waiting for the executive lounge to chew someone right out onto my lap. I could make out my guy through the filthy haze. Boy was he gonna get a grilling. The old one-two, turn him black and blue.

But before I got the chance to think about how I was really going to work on him, a shadow cast itself over me…

The Paradise Club

The air was rank inside the doorway of The Paradise Club; thick and stale with the drifting smoke of a hundred cigars. The wispy, spiralling trails drew my attention to the right, to the executive lounge, filled with tailored suits, self-inflated egos, and countless clear packets of snow white powder, swapping secretively between numerous hands like some street-grade magic trick.
I was two steps from the entrance when a mountain of a man appeared from nowhere, blocking my path and most of the light to boot. He stared expectantly at me, waiting on me to produce whatever it was that granted access to the Promised Land beyond.
With nothing to offer I took a final glance at his rigid poker face before turning tail and entering the general area of the club. The smoke and irony dispersed as the air began to, in my eyes at least, finally embody the name of the club; tinged with liquor and laced with perfume.
I walked to the bar, waited my turn, and ordered a brandy, neat.

Was it for show, a shallow attempt at cover? Or would I be back there in two minutes, shaky fingers clutching my empty, demanding a refill...?

I sat down at the nearest table, directly opposite the executive lounge.

And waited...

Cold neon...

I thought about that lethal construction of steel as the cold neon lights of the city night came at me through the haze of filthy water. They promised me girls and booze: the age-old pleasures of every man before me throughout the aeons of time. And yeah, I wanted them, I wanted them bad. God, it had been so long since…

Fortune would have it that I was a smart guy in a dumb city and knew that if I fell into the temptations that it offered, it was only going to throw up a whole host of other problems I didn’t want to be dealing with. Not now, not ever.

I had work to do.

There was a particular light I was searching for on this particular evening. It was one of the more colourful ones, in name and image. Yellow, blue and green tubes marked out the shape of a tropical island and palm tree; its name emblazoned in seedy red.

The Paradise Club.

There was no choice but to head on in…

Opening...

I was desperate to open with a simple phrase, something like 'a storm was brewing...'
It's punchy, straight to the point, and carries a host of metaphoric implications that could have screamed everything I wanted to let you know without telling you a damn thing.
Truth is, the storm got here before I did.
A raging torrent of icy rain hammered relentlessly against the cold New York City sidewalk; a downpour of such magnitude that it could have been the tears of the Gods themselves. Judging from the suffocating mass of murky, black cloud shrouding the night sky in grubby darkness, it had no intention of letting up any time soon.
It could rain all night, and come tomorrow this town would still be as filthy as sin.
As for me...? I'm the guy stopping tomorrow from being as filthy as sin's mangy dog.
My trench-coat was taking on water like a sinking ship; I could feel the additional weight dragging me down as I stalked through the night. Of course, the cold silver revolver nestled carefully inside my inner breast pocket couldn't be discounted...