Category: Behind Bars

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

Karen sat uneasy in the leaky rowboat, the kind that made promises it couldn’t keep, praying it would cough them up on Alcatraz’s rocks by midnight so Jonny could hunt down his missing ticker. The fog rolled in like a bad alibi. Boris fussed with the oars, pretending to check knots, but his eyes told the real story. He’d seen it a thousand times: the way men kept their distance from women like Karen because beauty that loud made cowards of them. And Karen—poor kid—never knew the damage she did just by breathing. She wanted one man and one man only. From the moment Jonny had sidled up, all trench coat and trouble, tapping her for island know-how she gained from her job as the top tour guide on The Rock, she’d been lost. Boris watched the familiar spell take hold and sighed. The boss had that effect. Always had.

Jonny felt it before he saw it—the stare, heavy as a loaded revolver—aimed squarely at his rock-hard glutes. Same story, different dame. He turned, tore his shirt open, and let the night see the hole Jesse the Knife had punched through him back on Alcatraz. “Don’t,” Jonny said, voice low and final. “Don’t fall for me. Not till I get my heart back from wherever that rat hid it on Alcatraz. All I’ve got is danger and bad decisions.” The oars dipped. The boat crawled. Karen said nothing. She just stole glances at the man shaped like regret and figured—quietly, stubbornly—that she could make do.

Witness from the Grave

You could have heard a pin drop when Madame Cherepakha took the stand. Jonny and Boris had seen her testify at many trials and she always had a strong impact on juries. Her showmanship was in top form as she took the crystal ball she had purchased at the Hollywood Magic Store, said a few “magic words” in her Native Russian that sounded to Jonny and Boris like pig latin, and a cloudy image in the glass of a figure wearing a trench coat fired a gun. “Ve do not hef such creetures in my country,” she said in a thick Bela Lugosi accent,  “but here you call it a…”

“A pug?” asked Big Tim’s attorney Atticus Finch. The psychic shook her head as a gasp came up through the spectators’ gallery and every member of the jury glared at Boris as if they were seeing him for the first time…and they were disgusted by what they saw. The twelve hicks from Van Nuys took one look at a conjuror’s trick from a novelty store and were ready to throw evidence from six months of detective work in the dumpster so that they could execute one of the great heroes of the city. Boris sat stiffly, his jowls slack, his eyes wide and wounded—not with fear, but with the kind of disbelief that comes when the world you saved starts sharpening the axe. Cherepakha’s magic show was finished, and Jonny and Boris would have to pull their own rabbit out of a hat…and now.