Cowtown

Copyright © 2000 by Jim Silvania.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

DISCLAIMER

CHAPTER 1

According to the statistics forwarded by the National Weather Service, the average temperature for a mid-November day in Cowtown was supposed to be 42 degrees. Somewhere in that 30-day November period, the National Weather Service also predicted that five inches of precipitation was to fall upon Cowtown’s streets. But as Michael Genovese, private detective, struggled to awaken on this cold, gray, wet November morning he began to hear, again, what was sounding like rain beating against the bedroom windows of his unkempt apartment. He was fast becoming a non-believer in the National Weather Service and its predictions. Like its forecast, the National Weather Service appeared to be all wet. Cowtown this November was far exceeding its normal average precipitation.

As Michael lay alone, as usual, in his semi-warm bed trying to muster a few more moments of sleep, he pondered the possibility that the rain he was hearing was just a dream. It had to be a dream. It couldn’t be raining again he thought, unless last night’s booze was still playing tricks on him. But the continuing rain pounding against his bedroom windows provided proof beyond a reasonable doubt, even for a cynical old vice cop, that rain was once again falling upon the bustling metropolis of Cowtown and no doubt into the life of Michael Genovese, PI.

Previous non-scientific research had taught Michael that most living organisms, with maybe the exception of a few specific species of duck, hate leaving a cozy, warm bed on a cold, rainy day to venture out into the real world. Cold, rainy days, for most animals especially human male animals were meant to be shared with a member of the opposite sex snuggling in a warm, dry bed making mad, passionate love.

The tin roofs of olden days were the great protectors from Mother Nature’s elements and renowned for their ability to produce a melodic tone from the pounding rhythm of the falling rain. Progress had long replaced the romantic tin roof with asbestos shingles. Never were asbestos shingles ever to drive a songwriters desire for a romantic hit or become known for an ability to soothe a broken heart. Progress, it appeared, had once again bitten Michael in the ass. For if Michael or any other male of his time desired to snuggle on a cold, rainy day with a member of the opposite, they had to insert a sound-effects tape or CD into a boom box for their romantic sounds of rain. Progress had killed the tin roofs. The din of the rain beating against the glass of Michael’s bedroom windowpane did not quite cut it. Besides, on this cold, rainy November day there was no member of the opposite sex to share Michael’s bed and share the sounds of the non- rhythmic din of the ever-falling rain.

No living creature and least of all not him, a hung over private eye, should have to arise from a semi-warm bed to venture outside into the elements of a cold, wet November day to attend, of all things, a funeral. It was a violation of his constitutional rights. It was cruel and unusual punishment. If the rain and the cold weren’t bad enough, Michael had awakened that afternoon with one of his worst hangovers. The sounds of the rain now pounding even harder against his windows and its accompanying thunder did little to ease the pain in his throbbing head.

In a vain attempt to fight his worsening hangover and hide from the beckoning world, Michael placed a pillow over his head and pulled what covers he could find up over the pillow. His effort proved fruitless. His attempts to enjoy what little warmth the bed had left were doomed to failure. Neither his pillow nor his dreams could provide a suitable substitute for a real, live, warm-blooded female. He was left with no choice but to let his bare feet hit the cold floor.

Funerals should be restricted to warm, sunny July days, he thought, as he dressed and searched for a large scarlet-and-gray golf umbrella he had secretly appropriated from one of his past clients. The idea that a cadaver had to be buried in three days was for the birds. If you’re dead, you’re dead. Why couldn’t they just keep the cadaver on ice until the outside elements presented themselves for a more respectable funeral? This was bullshit, having to attend a funeral on a day like today. Dead people had no respect for the living.

As Michael continued his search for the missing umbrella, he recalled the rich client who had unknowingly supplied the now misplaced object. It had been raining that day also and there were those five or six umbrellas in an old antique brass milk can just sitting there next to the door. Rationalizing further that whatever fee he was charging the client for his services it was not enough if he had to get wet, Michael helped himself to the big, scarlet-and-gray one. The rich son of a bitch would never miss it, or so he thought.

One might have surmised as Michael Genovese, ace detective, crawled around on all fours on his bedroom floor, that anyone much less a trained professional investigator could have located that large umbrella, especially when the missing item was in his own apartment. But no, it seemed again that this rainy November day would be no different for Michael Genovese.

As the morning progressed it became only too apparent that the umbrella was not going to cooperate. It refused to appear yet another in a series of unsolved mysteries for the famed private detective, whose aching head was becoming unbearable. Michael wondered, as he continued his search, if there was any truth to the old wives’ tale that, alcohol kills brain cell. He was also becoming concerned about his upcoming funeral appearance. How would it look to the other attendees if he were the only one to show up without an umbrella? What would others think, him standing in the deluge, uncovered and getting soaked? His good cop image, of never getting wet, tired, hungry or horny would be shot to hell in a hand basket. Then there was all this talk about acid rain. All that acid rain hitting his uncovered head lately had to be the scientific reasoning behind his thinning hair and ever-increasing forehead. Maybe those environmental wackos might just be on to something. Maybe that damn acid rain was the reason why he was now required to wash ever-increasing amounts of forehead.

Meanwhile, in Old Port, a small river town just across the state line about 155 miles south of Michael’s Cowtown apartment, the day was having similar beginnings for Christy Taylor, who once was Michael’s paid informant and occasional sex partner.

The falling rain in Old Port conjured up no romantic feelings for Christy Taylor. She had no feelings about the sounds of rain pounding against her windows, nor did she have any thoughts of acid rain or attending Ted Crawford’s funeral. Christy’s first and only thoughts were the same continuous thoughts that controlled her every waking minute of every hour of every day. The only thoughts in Christy’s mind, or what was left of it, were her burning desire for her next hit of crack cocaine.

A few years before the advent of crack, it had been popular among yuppie cocaine users like Christy to forward the argument that cocaine was a non-addicting drug. Users, like Christy, would never admit to having a cocaine problem or an addiction. They could always quit, or so they claimed.

Christy’s non-addicting arguments, of course, predated her introduction to crack, which wasted no time becoming the controlling entity of Christy’s short but eventful life. She was now a full-fledged addict. The hooker had become hooked. Unlike Michael’s problem with alcohol and his related jokes about the stuff killing his brain cells, crack was truly devouring Christy’s intelligence and personality. She was intensely addicted to crack’s chemical pleasures and the effects it had on the brain’s release of endorphin. Even though Christy thought of herself as a true professional in the pleasure business, she knew deep within her soul that she could never offer in return anything similar to the pleasure that crack provided her. Crack controlled every aspect of Christy’s life. It had become her pimp, her friend, her lover, everything she ever wanted or needed. Her addiction to the drug was forcing her deeper and deeper into a way of life not befitting a person of her stature.

Prior to his demise, Ted Crawford had considered Christy Taylor a very attractive female. Their relationship had flowered upon their introduction by then undercover Cowtown Police Detective Michael Genovese. Michael had been responsible for Christy’s first encounter with the criminal-justice system and thus her subsequent introduction to Ted Crawford.

As luck would have it, on the day of Christ’s arrest for engaging in prostitution and possession of cocaine, Ted Crawford, WCXY-TV’s ace investigative reporter, was in Police Headquarters in search of the ultimate news story. Ted did not initially see the physical beauty. He only saw a story. Christy Taylor was his chance for the gold ring, the big time, a move to a major market. She was to be his story of a lifetime a short lifetime.

Christy’s arrest had come at an opportune time for Ted and WCXY-TV. It was ratings week for the local station, and each year, at this time, there seemed to be similar scheme forwarded by all the local news departments. They would investigate and broadcast any story related to vice and/or corruption. It was as if vice and corruption took the rest of the year off and surfaced only during ratings week. Ted, eager to forward his career, wanted this year to pursue a new angle on vice and sin in Cowtown, a perspective never before documented by WCXY-TV or any of its rivals. A new approach was needed one that would not only increase WCXY-TV’s ratings, but his paycheck as well. Ted wanted to become Cowtown’s, no, the state’s, no, the nation’s, most recognized investigative reporter. His plan was to document, via videotape, the concept that vice and corruption could not openly exist in Cowtown without the assistance or tolerance of the police and the local political community. He would use Christy Taylor to implement his plan to expose Cowtown’s corrupt politicians and law enforcement officials. With this plan of action not only would he enlighten WCXY-TV viewers and increase ratings, but also he might even get his name forwarded to the networks.

At the time of her arrest, Christy had been prostituting herself for an outcall service doing business under the name of EME, short for Executive Models & Escorts. EME quickly developed a reputation in the community for catering to what some might consider an exclusive clientele C CEOs, doctors, lawyers and politicians but in reality anyone who could afford the $250-per-hour charge and pass an initial background inquiry. The mere thought of a male possessing the physical capability to last an hour with a woman of Christy’s renowned sexual prowess was to later reach beyond Michael and Ted’s realm of comprehension.

Christy’s cut of EME’s $250 hourly rate, plus an occasional additional tip from a generous john, placed her into a higher income bracket than Bert Kane, Cowtown’s chief of police. For a short while, Christy had the world, or at least a good portion of the male population of Cowtown, by the balls. Her bank account and stock portfolio were proof that, for some, crime truly pays.

While in high school, Christy was considered by the majority of her classmates to be a nerd. She was too tall, wore glasses and constantly had her nose buried in a book. None of the male students at Cowtown High wanted anything to do with a female who possessed an IQ higher than their own. The only exception was the athlete who needed the female with the higher IQ to help keep him eligible for some sort of athletic competition. Then the relationship was strictly business. Needless to say, Christy never went to the prom.

After graduating with honors, Christy attended Farm State University. She was barely into her freshman year when she found herself enrolled in a new and exciting informal and unsanctioned drug-education class conducted in the fringe community that had attached itself, like a parasite, to the Farm State campus. Her so-called course of study in the unsanctioned program soon led to her academic demise, subsequent loss of her scholarship and the total loss of desire to further her education.

Christy’s lover at the time was a so-called artist. So, in response to her own repressed desires and a little prodding by her artist lover, Christy soon found herself modeling in the buff at a local underground studio and art school. This new and revealing vocation came about more as a support mechanism for her newly acquired drug habits. A lack of clothing and an ever-increasing desire for cocaine were not the only thing new and revealing about Christy Taylor. Christy had physically blossomed since her high-school days into what Michael Genovese would later describe as, being built like a brick shit house.

Christy’s advancement from a nude art school model to the world’s oldest profession was not long in coming. To Christy’s way of thinking, why display your naked body in the cold to a few penniless art students when there are deeper pockets out there willing to fork over more than minimum wage to see the sights? Christy chose, as her vehicle to display her wares to a more generous clientele, an outcall service that donned the name of Executive Models & Escorts.

Prostitution services like Executive Model & Escorts have, in prior years, used different trade names and callings all in an effort to avoid getting run out of town by the local gendarmes or the Ladies’ Aid Society. Michael Genovese, as all vice cops have, often pondered the question that if prostitution were truly the world’s oldest profession, then why hadn’t it become legal or at least presented itself with a viable scam to avoid criminal prosecution and local community pressure.

CHAPTER 2

Cowtown was not much different from any other large Midwestern city that had regressed, although the politicians’ definition would differ, into a thriving metropolis. Even though it had gained in size, it had been fortunate enough to maintain its character and small town flavor. Other Americans formed their opinion based upon that character. If you were a nonresident, then you most likely viewed Cowtown residents as hicks and farmers, like a photograph from the past; a place where time stood still. But with a name like Cowtown was one to expect any different?

Like every other transitional city, the crime rate in Cowtown grew in relationship to its change. Crime had not passed it by. Yet gangs were not in vogue, and because Cowtown was the state’s capital, real organized crime, the Costa Nostra type had shied away, although during Prohibition the largest still ever raided was found in a Cowtown suburb. It contained at least $250,000 worth of equipment and had the capacity to turn out 5,000 gallons of 190-proof alcohol every 24 hours, which wholesaled for $2 a gallon and retailed for $2.50 a quart. But then no one ever said farmers didn’t like to drink or make a profit.

On occasion, one of the wise guys might drop by to collect a gambling debt or drop off some bribe money to a crooked politician, but for the most part it was a fast trip in and out of town. They didn’t live there. The closest thing to a made man in Cowtown had to be Fast Eddie Smith, proprietor of Caesar’s Spa. A health spa it wasn’t. A massage parlor it was. The vice cops had been trying to bust Fast Eddie for years but were slow learners. They still hadn’t caught on. Eddie, you see, had this habit of running credit checks via his laptop computer on each new prospective customer who attempted to gain entry into his establishment. The credit agency printout instantly forwarded to Eddie in response to his online inquiry would not only list basic credit information on each prospective customer, but also the individual’s employer. So if a vice cop was dumb enough to supply Eddie with his true given name then he got