Tom Piccirilli - Fuckin Lie Down Already

Fuckin' Lie Down Already

Fuckin' Lie Down Already

By Tom Piccirilli

Smashwords Edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press

Copyright 2010 by Tom Piccirilli & Macabre Ink Digital Publications

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MORE FROM TOM PICCIRILLI & CROSSROAD PRESS

SHORT RIDE TO NOWHERE

Jenks and Hale aren't friends, partners, or even next door neighbors anymore. Not since they each lost their jobs and had their homes foreclosed. Not since they lost their wives and kids and whatever stability they'd fought for in the world. Adrift on the streets of New York, Jenks' dark path seems to parallel Hale's step by step.

After Hale is found nearly dead beside the corpse of a nine-year-old girl, and soon after commits suicide in a mental hospital, Jenks decides to find out just what the hell happened. What happened to Hale and the girl, what happened to the wayward American Dream, and what happened to his youth and forfeited hopes.

Because whatever happens to Hale happens to Jenks just a few months later.

Introduction for Fuckin Lie Down Already by Jack OConnell

Lost, in a Crown Vic, on the Road to St. Lucys

Fuckin Introduce the Story Already

Ive only met Piccirilli in the flesh on one occasion, which well get to and deal with in a minute. We were introduced, digitally, by Don Eduardo Gorman, head of the Cedar Rapids combine and much-loved padrone to a whole pack of upstart noir scribes, all of us dreaming about the good old days when Dick Carroll would cut you a check on the strength of a sample chapter and an outline full of automats and small town banks and a dark haired woman who held your doom somewhere beneath her gauzy babydoll.

Within the first couple of e-mails, I knew that Pic and I were long lost tribesmen. My first clue was his easy comprehension of mildly obscure pop references. We were raised on the same gutter cuisine had mooned over the same forgotten songs, movies, TV shows and, of course, most of all, books. The guy couldnt be stumped. Id close out a missive with some throwaway query regarding the whereabouts of Zooey Hall. Picd retort Hes still on Bomano, pining for Tiffany Bolling. Id sign off with a line from an obscure Thin Lizzy tune; hed counter with one from Sweet. Id recount the joys of finding my first Silverberg paperback in a spin rack at the corner Rexall; hed reminisce about his initial encounter with a Matheson or Philip K. Dick collection. Stuff like that.

So a few years back, we both end up in Los Angeles at the same time and conspire to get together for dinner. He was meeting people about a possible film deal I cant recall which book was under option. (And at this point I want to publicly confer to Pic the right to add footnotes to correct the historical record.) I was there for much less romantic and profitable reasons, on which I will not dwell beyond mentioning that they involved attorneys and depositions and the kind of bad blood that can turn the marrow forever septic.

I was bunking at the airport Hilton, honestly, swear to God, under an assumed name. Not to worry all this was a while ago and much of this particular hash has been settled. Pic and I arranged to meet and he picked me up in a rented navy blue Crown Victoria, a cushy tank for off-duty cops and old-time leg-breakers, which, I know, is often one in the same. I was impressed and as I hopped into shotgun position and extended a hand to shake, I felt an easy camaraderie, as if wed known each other since Sharon Stone was a virgin.

For two guys who belonged to the Church of the Gold Medal Paperback, there was little question as to where wed dine that night. Pic jumped onto the 405 headed north and made his way, like a native, to 6667 Hollywood Boulevard and the Musso & Frank Grill.

Now, for the average tourist, Musso & Frank is a shrine that glows with the light of old Hollywood. Chaplain and Bogart and Douglas Fairbanks all hung out there. For the tourist with a literary bent, this is where Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Dorothy Parker all got hammered when in the city of angels. For the hardboiled junkie, this is, according to legend, where Raymond Chandler scribbled bits of The Big Sleep. But for two shmucks whod give a year off the back-end of their lives for a mint copy of Black Wings Has My Angel, this old-time chop house was only the place where Jim Thompson spent many a long and boozy afternoon brooding over lost children, lost fathers, lost opportunities.

We settled ourselves into one of those red leather booths and made introductory small talk as we studied our menus and wondered silently if our particular table was where Thompson allegedly, allegedly had been screwed badly on the South of Heaven film deal by a slick young actor-turned-producer.

A side note: I once heard a writer-friend tell of attending a reading by a revered novelist. Throughout the event, the revered novelist sipped at a glass of water and, upon finishing the reading, left the glass on the podium, where, when the crowd thinned out, the writer claimed the glass and swilled the remaining fluid. This friend told me: I knew there was nothing in the water that made him a great writer, but I figured, just in case

I am not too proud to admit that, in this same spirit, I ordered the zucchini Florentine that night at Musso & Frank. In fact, I dont much like zucchini, but I had read, in Robert Politos wonderful biography of the writer, that Thompson often would select the zucchini Florentine when dining at M&F, and so, when the waiter arrived, thats what I requested. Along with a bourbon. Which did and did not have much to do with Thompson. Piccirilli ordered a sirloin and what sounded like a nice Cabernet. And it was only after the waiter had left that Pic reminded me: Thompson also favored the pot roast special.

Anyway, at some point early in what proved to be a long evening, our discussion of Thompson segued into a discussion of David Goodis. Goodis is, I learned that night, Pics favorite noir scribe. Whether or not Goodis ever dined at Musso & Frank, I dont know. I cant even determine if Goodis ever met Thompson. Because, unfortunately, there doesnt seem to be a lot known or at least written about the novelist from Philadelphia. Pic and I had both been through Jim Sallis fine essay a dozen times or more. But in the end, our sense of the man derived from the haunted, anguished vibe that emanated from his books. As if, in simply holding Down There or Nightfall in your hands, you got a tactile education in the many agonizing ways that ones life can detonate in an instant.

What I recall Pic saying about Goodis that night was, He goes to his dark places more often and more honestly than anybody else, I think. He was fucked up worse than the other GM writers which is why I love him.

That comment told me a lot about Piccirilli as both writer and man. It said that he knew where stories come from and that he understood what was at stake every time he cobbled words into myth. And it said that he realized the depths of the connections that can be made between writer and reader.