Jokers Wild

Book 18: The Harry Starke Novels

by Blair Howard

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Private Investigators; Traditional Mysteries; secrets; poker; mystery thriller; Harry Starke; cold blooded murder; Private Eye; P I; Poker Game

Synopsis

A deadly game of poker.
A man with secrets.
A cold-blooded killer.

The poker game had not yet begun but we found him at the table, shot three times in the chest.

My name’s Harry Starke. I’m an ex-cop turned private investigator. It was the week before Christmas. My friend was dead. I looked down at his body and I made him a promise. I promised to find his killer and break his arms no matter what it took. Bad idea. Everyone knows you don’t make promises like that, not even to the dead.

Harry Starke and Kate Gazzara together again in a deadly game of cat and mouse to catch a crafty killer. But there's also a rat in play.

If you love a good mystery, a rollicking story with endless twists and turns you won’t see coming, Jokers Wild is for you.

Jokers Wild is a gripping mind-bending crime story you won’t be able to put down. Be one of the first to read it. Scroll up and preorder your copy today.

Release date: October 25, 2022

Publisher: Blair Howard Books

Print pages: 246

Sample

Chapter 1

Monday Evening 9pm

It was snowing. Actually snowing in Chattanooga, in December. It had come a couple of months too early and I knew it wouldn’t last, and yet, it felt like something of a Christmas miracle.

I love living here in Tennessee because of the outdoors and the sunshine. Plenty of places to run, swim, golf and even fish, though fishing’s not my bag. To be honest, I’d rather watch paint dry. No, except for the few short months of winter, the temperature’s comfortable enough for T-shirts the year round. But snow in December? Now that was a big deal. Snow at Christmas? It hadn’t happened in my lifetime, and I was pretty sure it wouldn’t happen this time.

It was Monday, December 16, and I was at something of a loss. Construction on our office was finally complete, but it had been a royal pain in the… neck. And, with a full caseload and the holidays just around the corner, I hadn’t been able to relax, nor had I been able to enjoy as much personal time as I would have liked to.

I was at home on Lookout Mountain. It was just after nine. Jade was tucked into bed while Amanda, Maria, and Rose had been busy most of the evening making tamales. Maria insisted tamales are a popular Latino food for Christmas parties. So that evening they did the prep work and planned to steam them in the morning.

I have to admit the kitchen smelled amazing, but it was also overflowing with plates, ingredients, and all three of their personalities as Maria taught them how to make the perfect tamale.

Me? I couldn’t handle it. I had to get out of the house, which is why I found myself wandering the city that night, trying to clear my head. I would have gone to my father’s house, but he was out of town, which is why Rose was with us. Now, you know I love female company, always have, but four? In one house? Come on! And so I was out on my own, walking the streets as I used to back in the good old days; something I hadn’t done in many a long year.

It was inevitable then that I should end up on the Walnut Street Bridge on a night much the same as the one some five years ago when I watched a young woman throw herself to her death.

I’ll never forget it. It was just after midnight. The wind was blowing. The ironwork singing. The snow blowing in off the river; small flakes flying fast, horizontal. I remember leaning over the parapet, staring down into the darkness… And I remember the lights from the aquarium and the Market Street Bridge sparkled on the surface of the water.

And, quite suddenly, there she was in the wind and snow, running, frightened, her heels clicking on the pavement, looking back over her shoulder as if she was being chased. I remember that she tripped and almost fell. I took a couple of steps toward her, but as soon as she saw me, she stopped, turned first one way then the other, looking desperately around, then she turned, ran to the rail, and…

I shouted for her to stop, then ran to her… But I was too late. She climbed over the rail and then she… jumped. She just… jumped. Bad… bad memories.

And there I was again: same bridge, same spot, same conditions—almost—cold, lonely, reliving the past… reliving a painful memory.

But that was five years ago. There had been many more such moments since then, and it was becoming more and more difficult to step away from the job. I couldn’t forget Tabitha Willard any more than I could forget the rest of the victims—and villains—I’d dealt with over the years since I quit the police force back in ’08.

So yes, my life has changed since then; drastically, some might say.

I was always wealthy, even when I was a cop, but now I’m a successful private investigator… an ex-cop with a brand new, classy office in downtown Chattanooga, a large client list—including the DA and just about every lawyer and judge in town, and even more in the big cities beyond: Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham—and a family with a beautiful home on Lookout Mountain overlooking the city and the Tennessee River.

So there I was, back on the Walnut Street Bridge, trying to figure out exactly who and what I was, and remembering the past. Not just Tabitha, but Kate, Shady Tree, and my old friend Bob Ryan who was always there when I needed him, even when he wasn’t. That doesn’t make any sense, I know, not to you anyway. Now, after everything I’d seen, done, and experienced, I was still… I don’t know how to explain it. Let’s just say my head was a cauldron of boiling memories and I didn’t know how to turn off the heat.

What I did know, and what you know, was that I was suffering from a dose of the holiday blues. Don’t we all?

I gazed down into the water swirling around the bridge supports, shook my head, sighed and thought, Well, I’m out. I might as well go and have a drink.

I twirled my keys around on my finger, stepped away from the rail and walked the few yards back to my car.

After I slid into the driver’s seat and pushed the starter button, the engine fired… and so did the radio: Here Comes Santa Claus. I snapped it off. There was no point in switching to a different station; not at that time of year.

I settled on the Sorbonne, another one of my old… actually, not so old haunts. It was a drive of less than a quarter mile.

I turned onto Prospect Street, intending to enter Benny’s bar via the back door, to find the street jammed with police cars.

What the hell’s going on? I wondered.

I managed to find a spot some fifty yards or so away on the side of the street and parked my car. I was about to exit the vehicle when my phone rang.

I looked at the screen. It was Captain Kate Gazzara of the Chattanooga PD, my one-time partner… in more ways than one.

“Hey, Harry,” she said. “We have a situation at the Sorbonne. How soon can you get here?”

“Actually, I’m here,” I said. “I just parked. What’s going on?”

Kate didn’t sound as surprised as I thought she’d be. “I think you’d better come on in,” she replied.

I told her I’d be right there and ran across the street. Lucky timing, huh?

When I made it past the huddle of officers and entered through the steel door, I found Kate just inside, waiting for me with a woeful look on her face.

“I’m so sorry. I… I’m glad you’re here, Harry.”

I frowned. “Sorry? Why are you sorry?”

“It’s Benny… come on.”

I went cold all over. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

She grabbed my arm and led me down the hall to his office.

“Benny?” I asked. “What… what happened? Is he all right?”

Kate didn’t answer. And I knew. I knew, but my mind wouldn’t accept it. Why else would a homicide captain be at the scene?

“Does he need us to look into something?” I asked, still in denial.

We entered his office, Kate first. It looked no different than it always did. A mess.

Benny wasn’t at his desk.

“Kate, what the hell’s going on? Tell me why I’m here.”

“Did you know about his hidden room back there?” she asked.

“What? What room?”

She walked over to a file cabinet. It was usually set against the wall. It wasn’t. It had been moved, turned away from the wall to reveal a narrow opening.

“I know nothing about that, Kate. I must have been in this office a hundred times…”

My mind was racing. What the hell’s Benny up to? Is he doing something illegal? What’s in that room? Weapons? Drugs? Where the hell is he?

“Come on,” she said and grabbed my arm again, steering me toward the hole in the wall.

The room was small. Maybe twelve by twelve with a poker table set in the middle with seven chairs surrounding it.

The room was empty, the chairs vacant… except for one. Benny Hinkle was sitting at the table opposite the door, eyes wide, staring at us. And there were three gunshot wounds to his chest. My friend Benny was no more.

 

Chapter 2

Monday Evening 9:20pm

I couldn’t stop staring. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. My mind was telling me to, but my body refused to listen. I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. Benny was my friend. Who could have done this? To him?

Benny was… different. He was a businessman, but unlike any I’d ever met. He was… short and way overweight, bald, almost always unshaven. He owned the Sorbonne. He was a nocturnal creature, aided in his endeavors by his trusty sidekick, barkeep and business partner, Laura Davies. They were a match made in hell, but somehow, they made it work.

I’d known Benny a long time, as long as I could remember, from my early days on the force. Back in the day, he was an antagonistic little creep, but over the years we grew to be friends. And, even in the early days, he was my number one CI, confidential informant. He was my go-to guy. If he didn’t know it, he’d soon find out…

“Hawk and Robar are up front in the bar taking statements,” Kate said, interrupting my thoughts. “I already talked to Laura. The poor woman’s bawling her eyes out.” Kate shook her head.

“She know anything?” I asked.

Kate shook her head and said, “No. No one saw anything. She said one of the customers had approached her… Apparently the guy had gone to the restroom. She said he came rushing back and told her he’d heard gunshots coming from back along the hallway. She said that at first she didn’t take it seriously, but she did ask one of her staff members to go take a look. The girl came back, her face white and she was shaking. She couldn’t speak… well, she just said ‘Benny’ and pointed back down the hallway. Laura said she dropped what she was doing, literally, she dropped a glass she was cleaning and ran down here and found the hidden door and peeked inside and saw him.”

“Wow,” I said. I felt numb.

Together, we looked over the scene. There wasn’t much to see. A deck of cards, poker chips stacked neatly around the table. No money. No cigarette butts. Just Benny.

Clearly he was aware of and had been involved in a poker game and… the poor bastard had lost; big time. How long had it been going on? It was hard to tell, but it looked like a permanent setup to me. I stared at what was left of Benny for a long moment. It was difficult to see his body sitting there like that and not take it as some sort of message. What the hell had you gotten yourself into? 

The room was like a prison cell: concrete walls, no windows. The only light in the room was the overhead above the center of the poker table.

“No weapon,” I said thoughtfully.

“Yes, there is,” Kate said. “It’s on his desk. I don’t know if it’s the murder weapon, but I’m guessing it is.”

I nodded and she followed me out into Benny’s office. Sure enough, there among the clutter lay a government-issue Colt 1911 .45. Not one of those modern replicas. An original. It was old, probably made in the early 20s, and worth a tidy sum.

“Gloves?” I asked, holding out my hand.

She handed me a pair of purple latex gloves. I snapped them on, picked up a pen, slid it into the barrel, lifted the weapon to my nose, sniffed it, looked at Kate, nodded and carefully replaced it exactly as I’d found it, then stepped away from the desk.

“That’s it,” I said to Kate. “It’s been fired, probably less than a couple of hours ago. I’m certain you’ll get a ballistics match and, hopefully, some prints… If not, if the perp was wearing gloves, we have a premeditated murder on our hands.”

“Our hands?” she asked pointedly.

I ignored her.

“If that gun belonged to Benny,” I said, “someone must have known where to find it. Not only that, but they would also have had to have known about that room back there. That would be a small and select number of people: even I didn’t know about it.”

“Benny must have been part of the game—” Kate said before I interrupted her.

“He could have been,” I said. “But it looks to me as if the game hadn’t started, that Benny was setting it up… The shooter must have known about the secret space.”

“Laura said she didn’t even know about it,” Kate replied, “and she’s worked here… forever.”

“I wonder who the players were,” I said, scanning the table. The deck of cards was at the center of the table and chips were set at six of the seven places, but none in front of Benny. Hmm… Was he just the dealer, then? I wondered.

“The seal on the deck hasn’t been broken,” I said and looked at my watch. It was just after nine-thirty. “Too early, I guess. I wonder who they are… the players,” I said, more to myself than to Kate. “Anyone up front know?”

“No,” she replied. “As far as we know, none of the staff knew about this room. Most of them didn’t even know Benny played serious poker. He’d sometimes sit in on the games out in the bar, but this… No.”

I shook my head, staring through the opening into the secret room. “You’d think somebody would have seen something,” I said. “Six people… It makes no sense.”

“Not necessarily,” she replied. “Not if they came and went through the rear door on Prospect Street. I doubt you’ll find anything on his security system, either. It’s antiquated and rarely works.”

I shook my head, turned, re-entered the room and took another look at the body. It looked pathetic. I leaned in close. I was going to close his eyes but thought better of it. Doc Sheddon was on his way and would pitch a fit if anyone touched the body before he did.

I stood back and looked again at what was left of the man I’d known for so many years, and I felt… I don’t know… Sad? Yes, that, for sure. In life, there hadn’t been much to like about him. He was an obnoxious little… He wasn’t likable, but somehow he and I got along. I knew almost nothing about his personal life, though I figured he must have had a family somewhere, and that it was safe to assume they’d be devastated by his unfortunate demise. This would undoubtedly be their worst Christmas ever.

“Come on, come on, come on.” I heard a voice out in the hallway. “Out of my way. Let the mouse see the cheese.” It was Doc Sheddon.

I stepped out of the room as he stepped out of the hallway into the office.

“Kate,” he said. “And Harry. Why am I not surprised to see you here? He’s in there, I suppose.” He nodded at the opening. “Well, get out of the way. I don’t have all night. Things to do. Things to do. Let’s see what there is to see,” he said and, without waiting for an answer, stepped forward, hoisted his big black bag over the edge of Benny’s desk, and eased himself sideways through the opening into the visibly oppressive room.

I followed him in, then stood back and watched as he went to work. Kate stepped in and stood on the other side of the opening.

It didn’t take him long. He checked Benny’s neck—though why he did that, I’ve no idea because the man was obviously dead—shook his head, muttered something unintelligible, then took a thermometer from his bag and shoved it into Benny’s liver.

He stood back, waited for a minute, then retrieved it, glanced at it, nodded, wiped it off, put it in a ziplock bag, sealed it and then returned it to his bag.

“There’s nothing more I can do in here,” he said. “Have them load him into the wagon as soon as the photographer’s finished with him, will you, Kate?”

She nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Doc said, “You want to know the time of death, I suppose? Between ninety minutes and two hours ago. Seven-thirty, give or take thirty minutes. The body’s still warm. Liver temperature is ninety-six-point-one. Rigor has barely begun. Very few signs of lividity. Two hours max. Cause of death? Pretty obvious, don’t you think? I’ll pinpoint it when I do the post tomorrow afternoon. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m off to better things.”

And with that, he closed his bag, grabbed it, eased himself back through the opening into Benny’s office and then disappeared into the hallway shouting over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow, Kate. Merry Christmas, Harry.”

“To unlock this room you need a key,” Kate said thoughtfully as she fiddled with the knob of the door into the secret room. “It looks like it can be locked from both sides.” Then she looked at me and said, “Harry, I know that look—”

“I want in on this, Kate,” I said, interrupting her.

She closed her eyes, shook her head, then opened them again and said, “As if I didn’t know.”

She looked over my shoulder at Benny’s mortal remains, frowned and clamped her lips together.

She locked eyes with me and said, “I’ll need to get clearance from the chief.”

“Clearance or not, I’m on it. Better with consent than without, though.”

She nodded.

I picked up a poker chip from the table and turned it over in my fingers, stared at it. The little room smelled… stale. A lack of windows will do that. Funny thing was, though, it was a whole lot cleaner and tidier than Benny’s office.

It was around that time that Mike Willis and his CS team arrived, but by then Kate and I were outside in the cold night air. The snow, sleet, whatever you want to call it, had quit, at least for the moment, for which I was thankful. I needed to get the stale smell of Benny’s little chamber of horrors out of my system.

So, together we stood there, silently for a moment, then I asked her, “Where’s your partner tonight?”

“Which one?” she replied smiling.

“Corbin. That’s his name, right?”

She nodded. “Sergeant Russell has the night off. I figured you’d be here so I didn’t bother to call him out.”

“How about your other partner?” I asked. “The big hairy one?”

“You mean Samson? He’s over there in my car.” She pointed.

“Let’s go say hello to him,” I said.

Samson, a hundred-pound plus long-haired German shepherd, was a new addition to Kate’s team. A rescue dog. Kate took him from a crime scene where he was guarding the body of his previous master. The two hit it off right away. He wasn’t—still isn’t—a canine officer, though he was made an honorary one after he saved Kate’s life a few weeks ago. He made friends with just about everyone at the PD, including the chief. He is, however, something of an anomaly. He’d obviously been trained by an expert. Totally obedient but will attack in an instant if he thinks Kate’s being threatened. I’d already met him a couple of times and a more lovable dog you couldn’t find. Appearances, though, are deceptive. Especially so where Samson’s concerned.

“Hello, fella,” I said as we approached Kate’s unmarked cruiser. The windows were cracked open a couple of inches and he was doing his best to greet me. His top lip was curled back showing his teeth. It was a look that would scare the frickin’ pants off you if you didn’t know better, which I did. I knew he was just smiling at me.

Kate slid into the driver’s seat and rolled down the rear window so he could stick his head out, and… he and I, we had a quiet moment. There was, is, something about the company of a good dog that will calm the soul, and I really did feel better after the moment.

The sleet was beginning again, so Kate rolled up the window to keep it out of the car and we returned to the rear entrance of the Sorbonne.

I may have mentioned it before, but I never really knew Benny, not in the truly personal sense. It was always a case of what you see is what you get, but I was learning more and more about Benny and his priorities, and I found it sad when I thought about how we never really find out about the real person until after they’ve died. All the secrets come floating to the top, like scum on a pond.

“Where’s Laura?” I asked Kate. “Has she gone home?”

“No, she’s still in the bar,” she replied. “No one’s gone home yet.”

“I think we need to talk to her.”

“Me too,” she said. “Let’s go.”