The Clean Car Company

by R.T. Lawton

About the Author: R.T. Lawton is a retired federal law enforcement agent, past member of the MWA Board of Directors and has over 140 published short stories in various anthologies and magazines, to include Mystery Weekly. He has sold 47 short stories to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and has six collections in paperback on Amazon.

Excerpt

Danny was sitting in a large booth in the back of a dimly lit bar where the light faded out long before it could reach the back door. Normally, this dark booth was used by cheating lovers who didn’t want to be recognized out on the town with someone other than who they were supposed to be with. But since it was still early in the day, Danny was the one occupying the dark cubicle so he and his partner in minor crimes could privately discuss remedies for their current lack of funds. Problem was, Jackson hadn’t shown up yet.

He glanced at his cheap digital watch for the tenth time and hoped his partner hadn’t run into some kind of trouble, like the law or even worse, loan sharks. It was on his mind to finish the dregs of his watered-down drink and leave this black hole of a place, Jackson be damned, when the dimness where he was sitting suddenly got a lot darker.

On the opposite side of the table, two bodies slid into his booth. Then, one slid in beside him. Danny was blocked in. With his eyes long used to the lack of lighting in this part of the bar, he recognized two of the guys now sitting in his booth as local hoods, small time criminals trying hard to reach up for greater fame in the city’s underworld. The third person was a kid in his teens. Him, he didn’t know at all.

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