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  Also by Bud Connell

  The multi-award winning thriller

  Peak Experience: A Novel

  The thriller Peak Experience will rivet you spellbound as a financial monstrosity and the tentacles of international subterfuge become as plausible as the lead stories in today’s headline news. This award-winning novel is available on Amazon’s Kindle and all electronic devices using a Kindle App. The printed book may be obtained at Amazon.com, TowerBooks.com, Books.Google.com, BarnesandNoble.com and from other online retailers worldwide.

  Excerpts from Reviews

  Taut, tantalizing and terrifying!

  –Susan B. Stroh, California, USA

  This is a thriller that delivers. Enjoy!

  –Ann Becker, Wisconsin, USA

  It was everything I look for in a book.

  –Tallahassee Lassie, Florida, USA

  A riveting tale of intrigue and big corporate corruption.

  –Don Logay, California, USA

  Once you start, you can’t put it down!

  –Booklover, Ontario, Canada

  ARC Publishers, and the ARC symbol

  are service marks of ARC Publishers

  www.ARCpublishers.com

  This novel is a work of fiction. Characters, names, incidents, dialogue and plot are products of the author’s imagination and are used entirely fictitiously. Any resemblance, whatsoever, to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Permission to use short excerpts in any review is hereby granted; however, reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part, in any form, by any means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author: [email protected]

  Cover design by Bill Young Productions • Houston

  TPB – Trade Paperback Edition

  ISBN-13: 978-0615593708

  ISBN-10: 0615593704

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62112-222-7

  Copyright © 2012 by Bud Connell

  All Rights Reserved

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my friends and acquaintances in the radio and music businesses for contributing aspects of an offbeat backdrop for this hapless comedy-adventure and love story; and thanks, too, to other friends in Los Angeles and Miami for their input and guidance.

  A special acknowledgment to Jim MacKrell, a guy with great story sense who provided motivation for the initial segment in the Joe Oaks saga, and a tip of the hat to Bill Young and Brian Love for their outstanding graphics and cover art.

  My thanks, too, to my son John for his words of encouragement, and to my sisters Vicki Speck and Susie Brown (authors of Going Hog Wild with Country Cooking, one of the most useful little cookbooks on the planet) for their frequent query, “When will the first Joe Oaks story be finished?”

  Here is Number One; and there are eleven more in the pipeline.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter

  1 – Still Dressed Up in Fur?

  2 – Hotcha for the Babe Auction

  3 – Don’t You Wanna Hear the Hits?

  4 – My Florida Shell Game

  5 – That Makes Us Two of a Kind

  6 – If It’s In the Groove…

  7 – I Love Your Rocks

  8 – A Pat of Butter on a Hot Corndog

  9 – Joe Oaks, the Promo King

  10 – Why Don’t You Rub It Off?

  11 – Playing It Just for Him

  12 – My Beans on the Floor

  13 – A Deeep, Deeep Metalico

  14 – Meathawk Over a Mouse

  15 – A Tender New Bush

  16 – My Smoky Little Princess

  17 – In My Guru Sort of Way

  18 – Looking at the Long, Long Green

  19 – It Just Keeps Getting Deeper

  20 – Since I Provide Good Shit

  21 – Spearing Foo-Foo Dust

  22 – He Licked Her Palm, No Kidding

  23 – No More Favors, Joe (S-H-Mouse)

  24 – You Gotta Love a Girl Like Katya

  25 – Early Returns & Blinky Eyes

  26 – A Lot of Incognito

  27 – One Fine Beaver

  28 – New Zippers to Lower

  29 – A Bird Dog Over a Pork Chop

  30 – Overheating Body Parts

  31 – In a Family Way

  32 – Does It Smell Smoky in Here?

  33 – Future Dismemberment & Gooey Death

  34 – Sweet-talkin’ Sugarcoated Candyman

  35 – Gimme the Jersey ‘Wha’?

  36 – Crapola, I’ve Got a Partner

  37 – Sleeping With Cousins, No-No!

  38 – Begging Like a Beagle

  39 – Benny from New Jersey

  40 – Collecting “Bahd” Money

  41 – My Ass Into the Next Dimension

  42 – While Snapping at My Pastrami

  43 – Fast Talking & Twitchy

  44 – That’s Why They Call It a Bentley

  45 – Offloading & Bellman’s Hernia

  46 – No Conundrum Here

  47 – Give a Little, Get a Little

  48 – Footloose, Everybody Cut Footloose

  49 – Big Ass Stuff

  50 – Falling Down a Rabbit Hole

  51 – Scoring Brownie Points

  52 – A Forgotten Factoid

  53 – That’s What I Call Acing…

  54 – Face to Face, and Quick

  55 – Is That a Threat?

  56 – Locked Up for a Few Hundred

  57 – Career Ending News Story

  58 – A Big Launch After Dinner

  59 – My Paradise Surprise

  60 – Black Twenty-six Twice

  61 – Always Coming and Going

  62 – Good Ol’ Joe, Minnow on a Hook

  63 – Got His Gun Monkeys Looking

  64 – Bulletproof Bait

  65 – Want to Hear My Proposal?

  66 – Where the Bullets Went In

  67 – This Sumbitch Is Still Alive?

  68 – Rowdy Came In and Said Howdy

  69 – Just My Usual Brick

  70 – Waiting for the Next Disaster

  71 – Some Kind of Glop

  72 – It’s Just a Piece of Paper

  73 – She Just Hung Up

  74 – If I Had a Life Left

  75 – Right Over My Heart

  76 – Into Places I’d Never Been

  77 – I Just Couldn’t Help It

  78 – In Several Hundred Years

  79 – Share My Story?

  80 – Heavenly Chops

  About the Author

  1 – Still Dressed Up in Fur?

  I mounted the ornate barstool and ordered my usual high-ticket bourbon neat with an icy 7-back. Thirsty I was, and my tensed-up muscles needed a liquid massage after a bumpy ride in the Florida skies.

  “Yo, Joe. You drank it all last week.” Tylerfrank, my old buddy barkeep, stopped sliding glasses into the overhead rack, leaned down and stuck his face in my space. “I’ll have to buy more stock with you coming in town every week.”

  “Do it, pal. I can’t handle that cheap crap.”

  “Yer taste for good bourbon’s gonna bite a chunk outta yer credit card.”

  “It already has, Bartender. Hush up and pour second best.” Tylerfrank pulled a bottle from the booze rack and I felt the skin on my neck crawl. “Hey, that’s Tennessee hooch. Pick another one.”

  “You got it, Joe-buddy.” He chose a top shelf Kentucky medication that I hadn’t yet tried and poured a double shot. I gave it a whiff, sipped a taste and smacked over it while he chucked ice cubes in a glass and filled it with chaser.

  “It’ll do, but it’s not as good a
s my regular relaxer.”

  “Mr. Joe Oaks, you are a creature of habit.”

  I chuckled at Tylerfrank’s peek into my black soul. If he only knew how many habits I had, the ones I wrestled with, and the ones I’d beaten down, mostly bad.

  “Hey, that filly is coming in almost every day now.” Tylerfrank started slicing limes on a cutting board.

  “I can’t keep track of all the quiff I sniff. Who you talking about?”

  “The one I’ve seen you watchin’. She’s coming in almost every day.”

  “Well do tell Rodelle, you need a little biz in this boozehole. I can’t afford to pay all your frickin’ bills.” I thought for a moment. See, even Tylerfrank knows my bad habits, including the ones I try on the sly, like chickscoping. Hell, every guy does it. “Pour me another one. You talking about that good-looking rich blonde with the accent?”

  Tylerfrank nodded. “Non other.”

  “No kiddin’. Still dressed up in fur?”

  “Always. Like she’s going to a Hollywood movie star party. She even asked about you a few days ago. Called you a nice man.”

  “I said hi a few times, never really talked to her.”

  “It looks like her door’s open for business.” Tylerfrank popped a rag at the round ass of his cute little waitress. She flashed her middle finger over her shoulder and skittered under the bar gate with her contraband corkscrew.

  I took a long sip from the double shot glass and coughed, the warm medication seeping over my voice box and deep down into my gut.

  Usually I notice what’s going on around me, but that business about the rich chick was all new and welcome info.

  I decided to hang around and see if she showed, and I resolved to slow down on the intake so I’d be sober or at least coherent if she came in. Tylerfrank said she usually appeared shortly after five when the trio started—three aging Miami Beach musicians who stroll around carrying their instruments and operating like they’re playing to a frickin’ full house even when there’s only one or two lizards in the old hotel’s fragrant lounge.

  The Carousel, with its signature circular bar built like a merry-go-round, had been in the hotel since the beginning, so the story goes, and it smelled like it too. The Plage was one of the few hotels left from the early French Renaissance of the fifties, and it badly needed refurbing, but the room price was right.

  And before I forget, the name Plage is like ‘rouge’ but with an a, and it’s French for beach—the old Beach on the beach.

  About the girl, woman; Tylerfrank said he thought she was Polish and used to be a supermodel. Yeah, it made sense. Katya Cahoone. A Polish supermodel married to a rich Irishman who owned more shit than the Vatican, and she asked about me. Holy crap.

  2 – Hotcha for the Babe Auction

  I waited for the gilded elevator on the phony black marble floor with flecks of gold in it, and that’s when I saw her go into the lounge. She was a looker all right. Too short to be a long-term supermodel, but that’s all right with me. I like ‘em about an inch or two under my five-nine frame, and I do mean under it.

  Katya what’s-her-name out-looked the best of the two-hundred-dollar hookers I’d been picking up at the witching hour. Maybe if I played my hand right, I could save the two C-notes and have a quality piece of pound cake for tonight’s dessert.

  I took the elevator to my floor, unpacked and cleaned up, and noticed a little early gray showing through the black in my sideburns. So I got out the Just for Men and touched up. Might as well look like the young stud I am. I had to laugh at myself in the mirror, brushing forty and acting like a kid just out of school; but what the hell, I still could go all night with the right encouragement.

  I splashed on a little Cool Water and I smelled hotcha for the babe auction. Maybe this was my lucky night, a freebee, if she was still there.

  +++

  The elevator door opened and I whiffed the horses’ doovers that the hotel kitchen tossed into the lounge for the freeloading lizards. I’m one.

  Screw the hundred dollar Miami Beach dinners. The only place they ever appeared was on my expense account. A high-flying, well-respected music promo man was expected to entertain. But I didn’t. I didn’t buy the greedy jocks all night feasts, or all night anything else.

  Spiff, sniff and quiff, that’s what the greedy scuzzes want. I give them the money and the small consumables, but I save the carnal benefits for myself. They can damn well buy their own skin and dinners with the free cash I dole for playing that rap-crap called music. Whatever happened to Frank and Dean? I’d even settle for some Hall & Oates about now. Good grief, Hall & Oates.

  +++

  The place was jumping. There had to be two, maybe three people at the bar, and a couple of tables were occupied with Miami Beach fossils. Tylerfrank was already off and replaced by a pair of young bored-looking brunettes in tight pants and low cut blouses. That was okay with me.

  Katya, the goddess who asked about me, was nowhere in sight. So I ate a few hot wings and downed another double-shot as I looked around at the slim pickings. It was too early for the A-list to show up shopping for cash-paying Johns, or Joes in my case.

  Anyway, I was shot to hell from spending all day in a puddle jumper saving airfare from California.

  I went back upstairs, watched some shitty show about getting lost on some dumb frickin’ island that I’d forget about by midnight, and fell asleep in my shorts.

  In the middle of the night I woke, realizing the dream that jarred my eyes open was about her, Katya, the Eastern European supermodel crawling all over me. It felt good.

  I smiled in the dark.

  3 – Don’t You Wanna Hear the Hits?

  I got the morning out of the way in a hurry.

  At noon, I met with Master Judd, the music director, and Willie and Romina, the morning hip-hop team on the leading FMer. Earlier I had stripped off nine brand new Franklins from my wad and slipped three of ‘em into each of the jewel-cases containing this week’s target hit. And here I sat in the witness chair in Judd’s cluttered windowless office with stacks of shit all over the place; all looking disorganized and untouched for weeks and probably months. Willie and Romina sat to my right within reaching distance. I handed Judd the goods.

  Judd snapped the case closed when he saw the cash. Same routine every time. Same ol’, same ol’, same ol’ crap.

  “Don’t you want to hear the hits?” I asked.

  “Naw, man. You’re covered, that’s cool.” Judd passed two jewel cases to Willie and Romina who smiled and nodded, and he laid his, with the precision of a surgeon, in the middle of his top desk drawer, smiled at it, locked it in, stood up and said, “Let’s go to lunch.”

  “I can’t man.” I lied. “I’ve got three more stations to hit before five.” Bullshit. I followed him up out of my chair. I was done for the day.

  “You coming back next week?” Judd asked.

  “I doubt it. I don’t get another raft of hits until the first of the month.”

  “You call everything you promote a hit, don’t you?”

  “As long as it costs nine bills to get airplay.”

  “I read, man—I read your brand of music.”

  “It’s a good thing,” I warned.

  “Bye, Rachael Ray. We’ll wait right here for your next recipe. Just bring the ingredients.”

  “Funny, real funny, Judd. See you in a couple of weeks.” Jocks… all the same. Cross their greedy little palms with silver and they’ll jump through frickin’ fire hoops. Fail to show up with their car payment and they’ll conveniently forget every hit you ever gave ‘em.

  I smiled to the skinny black receptionist, waved myself out the second floor studios and took the steps down two at a time. I had to buy a new shirt and shoes before cocktail hour. I intended to look like GQ when the subject of last night’s dream date showed up in the flesh.

  Yeah, last night I about destroyed the pillows, practicing.

  +++

  Later, feeling all spiff
y, looking sharp and smelling good, I took my usual place at the bar. It was 4:45 and Tylerfrank poured me a double, which I committed to sip slowly while waiting for the attractive Mrs. Katya Cahoone to appear and carry me off to fantasyland.

  She didn’t show.

  4 – My Florida Shell Game

  “Well, kiss my ass, Sherlock.” I slammed down the phone, flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. No frickin’ California lawyer’s going to threaten me. New rule: never return a call to a frickin’ lawyer you don’t know.

  When I turned in my used-up car, the leasing company tried to convince me that I owed more than I agreed to pay when I signed the dotted line. To hell with the greedy bastards. The car was finished, and so was the contract. Besides, as little time as I was spending in LA, I might as well not have a seldom-used vehicle sitting in Southern California covered with desert dust and cinders from canyon fires.

  Sometimes I think ahead. I had already set up an account with a friendly little S & L in South Beach and called my California bank and told them to wire every last dollar. Later, I’d taken that money in a cashier’s check and moved it to a small South Miami bank. If the ambulance chaser wanted to attach my funds, he’d have to frickin’ find ‘em first.

  If I picked up a few more promo accounts, maybe I’d get that little black Mustang convertible I’d been admiring. I’d rent it in Miami and drive it back to LA over five or six days, and turn the whole thing into a road-trip vacation.

  I dunno though. Six days on the road alone––

  That’s when I thought of that sexy little East-European super model. I decided I wouldn’t be taking any mini-vacations until I’d satisfied my burning curiosity.

  5 – That Makes Us Two of a Kind

  Next, I had to go to South Beach and score some dope, some good buds and a little blow for this afternoon’s radio station. No cash, just good dope. The jocks at the leading alt-rocker didn’t want folding green, they just wanted to feel good when they played my clients’ records. Who could blame ‘em? If I had to listen to that shit thirty times a day, I’d want to be doped up, too.