Hypergraphia

The voice on the telephone was sharp and insistent, but Trace couldn’t hear what the man was saying because he was still half asleep and was holding the receiver upside down. He suddenly recalled a Chandler novel that started this way, a sleepy-eyed Phillip Marlowe receiving an early morning phone call from a stranger. And [...]

All Things Must Pass

Trace missed the toilet. He jerked the soiled gray sweatpants down around his ankles but before he could make contact with the cold porcelain bowl his aggrieved stomach opened up and spilled the murky contents of his bowels all over the white linoleum floor of the hotel bathroom.
It was three o’clock in the morning. [...]

Bogart Sleeps Here: A Trace Novella (Chapter Seven)

“Is Nasser Reid still alive?” Trace asked the white-bearded bartender. He had to shout to be heard over Lisa’s dulcet blues crooning on the stage twenty feet from the horseshoe-shaped bar. “He used to own this place, you know.”
“Still alive, far as I heard.” The bartender nodded his bald head in beat with the [...]

Bogart Sleeps Here: A Trace Novella (Chapter Six)

“Did you know that Nasser Reid used to own The Blue Orchid?” Trace asked Lisa over his cell phone.
He was mired in slow-moving southbound traffic on the 405. The section connecting the 405 between Route 90 and the Santa Monica Freeway had been a nightmarish mess for months while Cal Trans embarked on a [...]

Bogart Sleeps Here: A Trace Novella (Chapter Five)

Trace wasn’t scheduled to meet Marcel in Long Beach until three o’clock. He wasn’t in the mood to start work on the treatment for “Stalag Dracula” yet so he avoided driving toward home when he steered the Packard out of the Warner Brothers lot. He made a left onto Olive and drove a few yards [...]

Bogart Sleeps Here: A Trace Novella (Chapter Four)

Dan Knight’s Hollywood bungalow is as dark and spartan as a monk’s cell. The tightly-shuttered Venetian blinds refuse to allow any ration of morning sunshine to invade the room. There is a simple mattress on the floor for bedding. Upturned cardboard boxes for night stands.
Dan lays on his side on the mattress, both hands [...]