The Original Alibi (Matt Kile) by David Bishop

crime rate. After my pardon the state lacked adequate legal grounds to deny me a PI license, but given my conviction for shooting someone, they were able to deny me a license to carry a weapon. My lawyers are still fighting that. They expect to eventually win the point that a pardoned man has full rights, including obtaining a gun permit. Still, for now, I decided I’d hang onto Quirt Brown’s gun for a few days.
    “I’ll hang onto this for now,” I told him, “but one day fairly soon you’ll find it in your mailbox.”
    I must have brought back memories for Quirt. Halfway down the stairs I heard the sound of him engaging the deadbolt.

Chapter 7
    At eleven-thirty that afternoon, Axel had walked four blocks toward downtown Long Beach. In the next block, just around the corner, he would arrive at Mackie’s. He lunched there most days along with a handful of the city’s oldest ex-cons. Men now retired from their life’s work. Mackie’s had also become a popular lunch spot with the area’s white collar workers so he required his former jail pals to meet a certain dress and behavior code. The rules began with no drunk or loud behavior and no planning the kind of jobs that led to them all meeting in the first place. Mackie’s served great food, with soft Sinatra and Steve Tyrell in the background mixed in with Linda Ronstadt and Mackie’s personal favorite, Julie London. Sure, his music was dated, but so was Mackie. It happens when guys like him and Axel spend decades up the river, as Mackie called prison. They came out wanting their now world to be as much as possible like their then world.
    The booths were well padded and the walls coated in hunter green wallpaper with cherry wood wainscoting. An assortment of sports pictures hung around the perimeter along with sexy women dressed in cherry wood frames. The lights were low, but not so much that you couldn’t read the menu or see the lovely ladies that waited tables and brought drinks wearing outfits that made you think of Hooters. It was all in good taste. A place you’d take the girl you were going to bring home to meet mother, assuming mother was reasonably hip, as they used to say.
    As Axel turned the corner, a block from Mackie’s, Axel was approached by one of the street’s younger women who worked the world’s oldest racket. “Hey Mister, want something different for lunch?”
    Axel walked over to the blonde who he sized up as having less crust on her than the other young woman standing beside her. She was taller than five feet, but not by much, and had the smile of an angel wearing too much eye makeup and swap-meet perfume. Axel shushed away the other girl standing near her. “I want two hours of your time, young lady. What’ll it cost me?”
    “Two hundred … How about one-fifty,” she said a moment later, negotiating against herself.
    “Anything I want?” Axel said. “No hassle. I’m the boss for my two hours.”
    “Whatever you say, mister.”
    “Forget the one-fifty, I’ll give you the two hundred, but if you resist whatever I want, the deal is off. Agreed?”
    She looked at Axel. “You’re the boss.”
    “Okay. What’s your name?”
    “They call me Lacey ‘cause I wear lots of lacey stuff.”
    “I didn’t ask what they called you. I asked your name. I thought we agreed I was the boss? Now are we ready to start this relationship or end it? It’s your call. Makes me no never mind either way.”
    “My name’s Hildegard. My family calls me Hillie.”
    “Come with me, Hillie. I’m Axel.” They walked until they were outside Mackie’s where he pulled open the door and pointed his head in a way that said, go in. She did. He followed. Mackie looked up from behind the bar and waved. Several others along the bar and three guys at a far table raised a hand or nodded a head. A few also mumbled something Axel couldn’t quite hear.
    “Sit down, Hillie.” She turned to face Axel with a confused look on her face. “Here’s where