Flipping Out
Flipping Out
Marshall Karp
First published in Great Britain
in 2009 by
Allison & Busby Limited
13 Charlotte Mews
London WIT 4EJ
Copyright © 2009 by MESA FILMS,
INC.
The moral right of the author has
been asserted.
All characters and events in this
publication,
other than those clearly in the
public domain,
are fictitious and any
resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, is purely
coincidental
.
This book is sold subject to the
conditions that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be
lent, resold, hired out or
otherwise circulated without the
publisher's prior
written consent in any form of
binding or cover other than
that in which it is published and
without a similar condition
being imposed upon the subsequent
purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this
book is available from
the British Library.
First published in 2009 by
Minotaur Books,
an imprint of St Martins Press,
New York.
An
award-winning former advertising executive,
Marshall Karp
is a playwright, a screenwriter,
and has written and produced numerous TV shows. Having paid his dues in
Hollywood, he began killing the people he used to work with. His first novel,
The Rabbit Factory,
set in a Disneyesque studio, introduces LAPD
Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs. In
Bloodthirsty,
they returned when some of the
most powerful and hated men in show business turn up dead. Marshall is at work
on the further adventures of Lomax & Biggs deep in the woods of New York's
Hudson Valley, where he subsists on nuts, berries, and reader feedback. If
you'd like to be a character in Marshall's next book, visit his site at
www.lomaxandbiggs.com
.
The link that lets you enter the contest isn't that easy to find, but then, you
like a good mystery, don't you?
For Jason Wood and the bodies
to
come.
And for my wife, the one they
call Saint Emily.
Table of Contents
There
were five detectives at our Sunday debriefing.
That's
what we call them - debriefings, because no cop is dumb enough to tell his wife
or girlfriend that he'd rather spend his day off hanging out with his buddies
than taking her to the mall to pick out curtain fabric.
We
were on Reggie Drabyak's fishing boat, so technically this was an LAPD naval
debriefing.
It
started at dawn when Reggie, who works vice, and Charlie Knoll from burglary
set sail to spend the day in the hot sun trying to catch the same stuff I'd
rather pick up at an air-conditioned supermarket for eight bucks a pound.
They
docked in the Marina at beer-thirty, and my partner, Terry Biggs and I joined
them. An hour later, Tony Dominguez, who works gangs, showed up with a
five-foot hero from Santoro's.
He
unwrapped it, and I took in the intoxicating aroma of soppresatta, Genoa
salami, provolone, and a half dozen other processed animal products that make
men's hearts beat faster, burn through the night, and occasionally seize up.
Tony
cut the hoagie into five pieces. 'Here Biggs, you get a foot,' he said, handing
the first one to Terry. 'Enjoy it, because when the cards are dealt, you sure
as hell won't be getting a hand.'
Ultimately
that's what these debriefings are all about - the poker.
Terry
played recklessly, raising when more cautious players would call, and calling
when saner players would fold. By the end of the night he was ahead, but Tony
still had a shot at a comeback. The stakes were doubled for the last deal, and
no matter how much Terry raised, Tony stayed with him.
On
the final raise, it was just the two of them, and Tony peeled back his hole card
and took another look.
Terry
picked up an empty beer bottle, held it close to his face, and talked into it,
using the soft, mellow whisper of a professional golf announcer. 'We're on the
eighteenth green here at Augusta. Dominguez, who hasn't played well all day, is
taking one more desperate look at his down card. This is the biggest pot of the
night, folks - over fifty bucks - and from where I'm sitting, this one belongs
to Terry Biggs.'
'You're
bluffing,' Tony said.
'Dominguez
looks rattled,' Terry said into the Heineken microphone. 'This game of high-low
takes balls of steel, and Biggs has two that we know of. Maybe more. With an
ace, three, four, five showing, he could have declared low and easily gone home
with half the pot. But he went for the high
and
the low, the whole enchilada.
Sadly, for Dominguez, the only enchilada he'll be getting tonight is the cold
one left in the fridge by his lovely wife, Marisol.'