On The Pad

by R.T. Lawton

About the Author: R.T. Lawton is a retired federal law enforcement agent, past member of the Mystery Writers of America board of directors, a 2022 Edgar Award winner for Best Short Story and has over 160 short stories in various anthologies and other publications, to include 50 sold to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and five to Mystery Magazine. He currently has nine short story collections in paperback and e-format on Amazon.

Excerpt

I was sitting up to the bar batting the breeze with the friendly bartender, but mostly I was waiting for this doll I had a date with to show up. Yesterday afternoon during a chance meeting in a corner drugstore, she let it slip that she had always wanted to come to this particular speakeasy, but she didn’t want to hang out here all by her lonesome self. As good-looking as she was, I was more than happy to volunteer my services.

At this point, however, she was running more than twenty minutes late which meant her status in my mind was gradually dropping. I didn’t appreciate feeling like a chump who got stood up, so I’d give her ten more minutes and then I was walking, didn’t make any difference how good-looking she was.

Glancing around the inside of the place once more, I didn’t see anyone I knew. That was a good thing. To the best of my knowledge, this speakeasy I was nursing my drink in was independently owned, otherwise, as a vice detective I wouldn’t be sitting here. It was on my mind that some of the city’s mobbed-up bootleggers might consider this as a good opportunity to try getting their hooks into me if I was drinking in one of their speaks. But, in the end, it didn’t make any difference, cuz this is where they came for me anyway.

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