No, no, NOT the one with Sebastian Cabot! The OTHER one!

Once upon a time (1988), I created and wrote a comic for DC called Checkmate!. which ran for about 33 issues, and was recently revived by DC for another 30 issue run, playing a major role in whatever mishagas the DC Universe recently through. But way back when, I apparently had the bright idea to do a Checkmate! novel and even went so far to write a couple of chapters. I don't remember doing this, but then, I have so many bright ideas, who can keep track? The date in the story itself is 1990, so I'm assuming that's around when I wrote it. Here's the first chapter (heavily influenced, I notice, by Adam Hall's style in his Quiller novels...highly recommended!):

Checkmate (c) DC Comic

Everything else (c) Paul Kupperberg

Chapter One

New York City.  September 5, 1990.  1:36 A.M.

Twisted metal.  Safety glass popcorned from impact, little diamonds littering the pavement, glistening in the lamplight.  Acrid gasoline stench.  Hissing steam from mangled engines.  The cemetery stillness of night.

And the dead.  Innocent and guilty alike.

Time’s still speeding, senses heightened by adrenelin.  Heart pounding, blood pounding, head pounding.

          

This is the worst moment, when it’s over.  Slumped against a wall, skin itching, the whole being surprised to be alive.  It takes the conscious mind a while to catch up with the environment, adjust to the cessation of danger.  And fear.  That was a big part of it, the motivating factor in survival.  Fear of death, or worse, of pain.

          

The other players in this game were lucky.  They weren’t going to have to deal with pain.  I was luckier, because neither was I and I was still around to appreciate the fact. 

          

And wonder who the hell wanted me dead. 

          

Wrong question.  My line of work is all about people wanting to kill me, for one reason or another.  The right one would be, who wanted to kill me at this particular moment in time?  I haven’t been active for almost two months and I’d been in New York for less than an hour, my flight having just landed at Newark Airport.  Even in this city the odds of having a car full of heavilly armed individuals trying to blast you and your taxi to bits in the heart of Manhattan inside of sixty minutes are astronomical.  So either I’d won some bizarre sweepstakes, or somebody is real unhappy me with.

         

 I wasn’t being presumptuous assuming I was the target of the attack.  The only other warm body in the vicinity during the incident had been the cab driver, one Mohammad Hardeji according to the hack license on the dashboard.  He took the first hit when the black sedan had pulled abreast of us on Houston Street, splattering his head like an overripe melon in mid-complaint about those sorry bastards at the Taxi and Limousine Commission.  I was doing what I’ve done with verbose taxi drivers the world over, tuning him out with thoughts of the nice, soft bed awaiting me uptown at the Plaza Hotel.

         

 I guess two months out of the saddle blunts the edge, dulling the instincts that you rely on to keep you alive while a mission’s running.  I didn’t do more than glance at the Buick as it came alongside the cab before settling back in my seat and closing my eyes, wishing Mohammad would shut up.

        

Something exploded.  Glass shattered.  Mohammad screamed, a high pitched cry of terror and pain cut short by the disintegration of the top of his head, his hands reflexively jerking the wheel to the left.  I didn’t get it right away, sitting up ready to deliver a few well chosen words about his driving skills.  That’s when the flying glass and bits of human tissue flew into my face and the reality of what was happening hit me.

        

I didn’t know what or why, and it wouldn’t have made a damned bit of difference if I had.  The cab was careening out of control, bumping up over the curb while automatic weapon fire chewed up its side, and me without a weapon handy.  They didn’t let you carry artillery onboard airplanes these days.  Damned stupid regulation as far as the good guys go, at least from my current vantage point.  But who the hell thought I’d need one for the cab ride between airport and hotel?

        

The Buick was speeding past us, guns trailing heavy fire out its windows.  Forget them!  The emergency, any emergency, was composed of moments, fragile slivers of time, each holding their own danger.  The worst mistake you can make is not taking them in order, one at a time.  Start thinking ahead and the control is lost.  Concentrate on the instant.

          

The instant: Mohammad was slumped over the wheel, a dead man steering us straight towards a brick wall.  I didn’t know if I was going to survive the bullets, but I wanted the chance to try and that meant I had to get out of the cab in one piece.  I was over the back of the front seat before I even knew what I was doing, shoving aside what was left of Mohammad, grabbing the wheel, fumbling to find the brake pedal with my foot.  I felt it under my shoe and squashed it down to the floorboards.  The brakes caught with a tortured squeal, but we were going too fast, the brakes locking and the cab sliding without any appreciable slowing.  I spun the wheel hard, feeling the automobile about to tip over before slamming into a wall broadside with spine jarring impact.

         

 The instant: The Buick was skidding around in the middle of the street, coming back around for another straffing run at the cab.

        

The instant: I slapped the gear shift into reverse and jammed down on the gas, gunning the car back onto the street, then into drive.  The Buick was coming for me, so I went to them.  They wouldn’t expect that.  The victim is always supposed to turn and run in the face of overwhelming firepower, right?  The Buick’s driver tried to swerve, but there wasn’t time or space.  I stayed with the cab just long enough to make sure of that before I yanked open the door and rolled out onto the pavement, still rolling as I heard the metallic scream of the head on collision.

          

The instant: I was on my feet, adrenelin filling my ears with a dull roar.  I’d taken the initiative; the trick was to keep it, not let my adversaries regain their balance.  Don’t do a single damned thing they might expect.  Drive straight at them.  Charge into their guns.  Take away the security they derive from superior numbers and heavy firepower.  Make them wonder just what the hell kind of suicidal maniac they were dealing with. 

         

 The instant: An unsteady figure in a dark suit dragging himself out of the crumpled sedan’s window on the driver’s side, steam hissing from the mangled front ends.  I was on him, charging out of the obscuring cloud of steam before he was halfway through the window.  He had his gunhand outside the car, leveraged against the door panel to help pull himself out.  He saw me and started to bring up his weapon, a Steyr A.U.G. autoloader, but I slammed my foot into his wrist, pinning his arm against the door and jamming my elbow down into his throat.  If he made a sound, I didn’t hear it over the rush in my ears and the escaping steam.  The Steyr dropped from dead fingers as he slumped in the window frame.

          

The doors on the passenger side of the Buick hadn’t been jammed shut by the collision and they flew open as I stooped to retrieve the fallen weapon.  Timing is everything, because as I bent, the two other occupants of the car opened fire over the sedan’s roof, bullets ripping the air over my head. 

         

 But the score had just evened up.

          

My hand closed around the weapon, my arm swept up, finger tightening on the trigger to unload what was left in the magazine through the window at their exposed bellies.

          

A dotted red line chewed its way across the face of a white shirt framed in the window, just above his belt, smashing him backwards and out of sight.

          

Two down, one to go.

          

The Steyr was empty, a useless hunk of metal and plastic that I disgarded.  The last man was on the far side of the Buick, crouched down below the level of the window, out of range.  He had a clean shot at my ankles and feet under the car; he could cover me coming around either end of the wreckage.  That left me with the option of going over the top.

         

 I took it, heaving myself up on to the roof, sliding on my stomach across the polished surface.

          

He heard me scrambling over the roof and was rising as I came for him.  He was too smart to expose himself, pointing the gun over the edge to fire blind at me.  I grabbed the barrel as he squeezed the trigger, jerking the weapon to the sky and throwing my full weight over the side and tumbling to the street, landing on top of him without letting loose of the chattering weapon.  I felt something in his arm snap as we hit the pavement in a tangle of thrashing arms and legs.  He howled but I didn’t care.  I wanted the son of a bitch to hurt, let him know he’d messed with the wrong man, prepare him for even more pain if he he had any thought of giving me a hard time when I got around to asking him why I’d been targeted.

          

He wasn’t ready to hang it up just yet, even flying on one wing.  He kicked out at my face.  I caught his ankle in the V of my crossed wrists, yanking up and twisting in the same movement, another bone giving way.  I leaned forward and dropped down to one knee, cushioning myself from injury on the hard pavement with the soft tissue of his groin.  His whole body heaved up, almost doubling over from the mind numbing agony of having my entire weight crushing down into his most delicate spot.

         

 Had I been thinking rather than merely reacting to the outside stimuli of attack, I probably would have admired the guy’s tenacity.  Wrist and ankle broken, balls squashed under my almost 200 pounds, he wasn’t giving up.  With his good hand he’d been groping for his fallen gun and found it, smashing it with everything he had left in him into the side of my head.  I went over, tiny stars of light exploding in front of my eyes.  I wasn’t feeling any pain from the blow, that would come later, but for now there was just the sensation of warm wetness oozing down my cheek from the gash in my forehead.  I was bleeding red.

          

Seeing red.

          

So I took him. 

         

 The heel of my shoe found his nose and mashed it into his face, jamming the stiff cartilage up through his sinus cavitity and into the soft mass of his brain.  His mind was dead several seconds before his body got the message and stopped twitching.

        

I was gasping for breath, shaking my head like a wet dog to clear the blood from my eyes, staggering to my feet.  The adrenelin was still pumping, but with the danger over, I didn’t have any way to burn it off.  I just had to wait for the glands to stop manufacturing it, for the uncontrollable shaking and stimulation of every nerve ending to die down.  Only then would it be truly over as far as my body was concerned.  But considering the alternate scenario, I could wait it out.  Gladly.

          

And that’s where I found myself now, propped against a wall, wondering why I’d just gone through this madness.  I didn’t have anything even remotely close to an answer, and I wasn’t about to get one from the trio of corpses with which I’d littered the Manhattan streets.  Maybe they’re carrying something that could point me in the right direction.  A long shot; they were professionals and pros don’t carry identification.  The best I could possibly hope for was to get a Scenes Investigative Team out here to do their usual fine tooth combing of the bodies and car. 

         

 Except for the thin, distant wail of sirens. 

         

 Far away, but getting closer, and fast.  There had been enough shooting to attract an army of cops.  From the sound of things, they’d be here in a matter of moments, which left me with two choices.

         

 I can wait for them like a good little citizen and spend the rest of the night in a New York police precinct, trying to explain what just went on without blowing my cover.  Local law enforcement agencies don’t usually take kindly to shoot ‘em ups in their streets, especially when they’re between members of a government intelligence agency and a car load of assassins.  Something about the feds in any capacity sets their collective teeth on edge in some strange territorial imperative.

          

Good luck on that score.

          

Or I could leave this mess for them to clean up and figure out on their own while I reported in to the nearest safehouse, getting what little information I had to people who could do something with it.  My superiors would handle the N.Y.P.D.  They won’t like being shut out of a triple homicide on their own turf, but things are tough all over.

        

I’m gone before the first patrol car screeches to a stop beside my handiwork.

Off We Go, Into The Wild Blue Yonder

It occurred to me one day, about four or five years, that a kiddie-version of the Tom Clancy formula might work. It might...just hasn't yet, but here's the first chapter of what I came up with:

R.A.P.I.D. FORCE

© Paul Kupperberg

Chapter One
Wiesbaden, Germany

Airman Sean Jordan was on a night time training exercise in the densely wooded forest between Wiesbaden and Frankfurt when his new orders came through. Loaded down with almost fifty pounds of protective gear and equipment, the 18-year old E2 was about to lunge from the HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter as part of the advance squad sent in to survey and establish a forward area refueling point (FARP) for his group. The chopper had been on the ground twenty-five seconds already, its rotors slicing the cool night air, ready to take to the sky again at a moment’s notice, while the first five men had unloaded, scrambling themselves and their equipment to cover. Sean was the last man out, his M-16 locked and loaded while his eyes swept the LZ on the lookout for bad guys.

The goal was to have the chopper back in the air inside of 45 seconds. Sean intended to be out the door and waving it away in less than that. Every second the massive black machine was motionless on the ground was another opportunity to attract enemy fire. And even though the worst that could happen in a training exercise like this one was to be “killed” by the laser-sight on an opponent’s weapon triggering a sensor on the helicopter or his bulletproof Kevlar combat vest, the blond airman did not like to lose.

Losing meant failure and the fact that Sean Jordan was merely a passenger on the Hawk instead of her pilot meant he had failed enough already.

“We’re clear,” crackled the voice of one of his teammates’s in his helmet’s radio headset.

“Roger that,” Sean replied and took a step toward the hatch before a hand clamped down on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

“Not so fast, airman,” Senior Master Sergeant Rasmussen said. Though the sergeant was right behind him in the chopper, it would have been impossible to hear the older man over the thunderous noise of its beating rotors without the radio headsets they all wore to communicate in the field.

The internal countdown in Sean’s head told him they had been on the ground for going on forty seconds. “What, master sergeant?” he snapped, impatient to be on the ground to his own time-table.

“New orders, airman,” the craggy-faced black man said. “You got a plane to catch back at the base.”

The young Air Force enlisted man was confused. “But we’re in the middle of an exercise, master sergeant.”

“You’re not, not anymore,” Rasmussen smiled. “Dispatch just radioed. Your packet’s come through. You got your transfer, kid.” Then, to the chopper pilot, he said, “Take her up.”

Airman Sean Jordan watched the dark ground fall quickly away from him through the hatch in stunned disbelief.

Over his helmet radio, Sean one of the men he was leaving behind at the LZ asked, “Where you off to, dude?”

As the big machine surged forward at over 150 miles per hour, Airman Sean Jordan stepped back from the crash of air sweeping by the Hawk’s hatch and smiled. “The big show, bud,” he laughed. “See you guys around!”

Wiesbaden Air Force Base, Wiesbaden, Germany

Sean had just twenty minutes to race back to his billet, shower, jump into a clean basic daily uniform (BDU), pack his gear, and hitch a ride back to the flight line.

“We got you deadheading on a Herc leaving at 02300 for Wheeler-Sack, flying light,” the 2nd lieutenant who had met Sean at the chopper pad with the airman’s orders had told him. “You’ll fly commercial the rest of the way to Nellis, reporting no later than 0900 day after, local.” Sean had saluted as he mentally translated the lieutenant’s air force jargon into English: he would be riding an empty C-130 Hercules cargo plane that was returning empty to the States. It was leaving at 11:30 that night for Wheeler-Sack Air Force Base, Fort Drum, in Watertown, New York. From there, Sean would fly a commercial airliner to Los Vegas, Nevada, where he was to report to his new duty at Nellis Air Force Base by 9:00 A.M., local time, the day after tomorrow.

Sean couldn’t believe his luck. The young airman had joined the Air Force with every intention of becoming a pilot. He had assumed that he had a lock on flight training—he was already a flyer, having taken lessons starting when he was 14-years old, soloing in single-engine craft since he was 16. His father and brother were both active duty U.S.A.F. pilots, his grandfather a retired three-star general and Korean War ace. If anyone had ever been born to fly, it was Sean Jordan.

Except, it turned out, he wasn’t, at least not for the Air Force.

While he had the family history, the reflexes, and the skill, what he didn’t have were the eyes for the job. A routine eye exam during his physical work-up for flight training revealed that Sean suffered from a mild form of something called “night blindness.” The docs explained that his vision, though 20/20 in daylight and under well-lighted conditions at night, was inadequate in blackout conditions, like those he would experience on night combat missions. His eyes just didn’t adjust quickly enough or well enough to the dark for it to be safe for him to fly.

What good was it to be in the Air Force if you couldn’t fly? With his grandfather, father, and brother all decorated combat pilots, he felt like the Air Force was the family business, a proud and elite firm that he wanted, desperately, to join. But while those who came before him were the executives, the guys on the frontlines who made the business tick, he wasn’t qualified for anything more than a job as the janitor, part of the ground crew that cleaned up after the men who did the real work. Heartbroken by this turn of events, Sean had considered running out his enlistment and giving up on a military career. But his grandfather had sat him down and set him straight: flying may have seemed to Sean like the one and only glamour job in the Air Force, but there were more ways to serve heroically and with distinction than from the pilot’s seat of a fighter.

“Matter of fact,” his grandfather had chuckled, “compared to the fellows on the ground, the pilot’s got it pretty easy, flying over where most of the shooting’s taking place.”

Sean knew that wasn’t so. Pilots were constantly at risk from anti-aircraft fire, from surface-to-air-missiles, and attack by other aircraft. But he got the message, especially when grandpop started telling him stories about the Air Force special forces units, the men the pilots ferried in to hot zones to engage in ground combat or handle missions that couldn’t be dealt with from the air.

That was all Sean needed to hear. Maybe he couldn’t be a pilot, but that didn’t mean the only jobs left for him were ground crew or maintenance. He asked his grandfather what the best and toughest Air Force combat special forces unit was and the old man answered without hesitation, “R.A.P.I.D. Force, airman. Reconnaissance Air Patrol and Immediate Deployment! There’s not a dirty job you can think of that those boys would back away from.”

Sean had his papers in for R.A.P.I.D. before the end of the next day and now, six months later, he had orders in hand and was on his way to join up with that very unit.

Sean showed his orders to the loadmaster at the tail ramp of the C-130 and hustled up into the belly of the massive aircraft. It was, he noted, one of the new C-130J-30s, almost 35 meters long by 3 meters high of cargo space with a nearly 40 meter wingspan supporting four Rolls-Royce AE2100DS turboprop engines that delivered 4,700 horsepower. This baby had it all, including an advanced two-pilot flight station with fully integrated digital avionics, color multifunctional liquid crystal displays and head-up displays, state-of-the-art navigation systems with global positioning system, fully integrated defensive systems, digital moving map display, and an enhanced cargo-handling system. Fully loaded she could carry about 75,000 kilograms, or 164,000 pounds of cargo at a speed of around 360 kilometers an hour. If her cargo were human beings, she was big enough to handle 128 combat troops or 92 paratroopers.

There wouldn’t be anything like that many aboard tonight, he noticed. A single pallet of seats had been bolted to the deck, offering seating for six, maximum. There was only one other man aboard, already buckled into his seat. He could only see the back of the man’s head, brown-haired flecked with silver, probably an officer, Sean guessed as he stowed his gear in the webbing along the side of the bulkhead.

The man must have heard Sean behind him and turned his head. He was an officer, and Sean didn’t need to see the man’s brass to know he was in the presence of one-star, a brigadier general. Sean snapped to attention and threw a salute.

“General,” he said smartly.

“Airman Jordan,” the general said with a smile as he returned the salute. “How are you, son?”

Sean stayed at attention and said, “I’m fine, dad. How are you?”

500 Words A Day, Part Deux

The Same Old Story, she is written, being read by several friends for consistency and suckishness (my wife’s already read it; not to keep you in suspense, she loved it). It’s also out to an agent of my acquaintance for consideration. I need to leave it alone for a little while longer, then go take it out again and look at the manuscript with a fresh eye. It may take a little while; I’ve been suffering from withdrawal symptoms ever since I finished it. I’d grown accustomed to spending my idle time thinking about the story and how to tell it, looking forward to getting back to Max, Mick, Shelly and the rest for the next 500 words.

I need something new to obsess over so I can cleanse my mental palate of the book I just finished. That would be Supertown, U.S.A., something that’s been around so long, I’m actually embarrassed it hasn’t been long, long done.

Our story so far: 14-year old Wally Crenshaw lives in Crumbly-by-the-Sea, New Jersey, a seaside town to which you can’t get from wherever you might happen to be. Wally wants nothing more than to become one of the superheroes that inhabit his world; he wears a costume under his clothes in case he ever runs into an opportunity to have a secret origin of his own. Charlie Harris, aka The Knave, a non-super-powered hero (a la Batman), has come to take up residence in Crumbly in the house his aunt left him, wanting nothing more than to forget about being a costumed hero—it hurt and he wasn’t very good at it—and he figured the best way to start is by disappearing into out-of-the-way Crumbly. But when he opens the door to his new home, his ex-comrade from the Justice Brigade, William W. Williams, Jr., the obsessive, half-crazy and dimwitted Mr. Justice is waiting there to drag him back to civilization and his responsibilities as a hero. Charlie tells him to go screw, leaving them at a stalemate. It being late in the day, Mr. Justice asks if he can spend the night. Meanwhile, Wally is positive something to do with superheroes is going on inside that house. He's just entirely wrong about what that something is…

SUPERTOWN, U.S.A.

© Paul Kupperberg

Charlie Harris stepped out onto the back porch of his late aunt’s house. Correction. Onto the back porch of his house. He owned it, free and clear. He put his coffee mug down on the railing, which promptly collapsed under the weight.

“Guess it needs a little work, though,” he murmured.

Well, what if it did? He was retired from the supers biz. Now he could be plain old Charlie Harris, free lance writer on the supers for the National Mask and other publications...and with a newly signed, fairly sweet contract for a series of books about those ex-colleagues remaining in the supers biz. He had all the time in the world to patch up the old place.

Even with Mr. Justice camped out on the sofa in the parlor, finishing up the last of half a dozen frozen dinners Charlie had picked up earlier along with a few other dining necessities from the grocery store on Main Street, Charlie was feeling strangely at peace. He thought it was strange because Charlie couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this way. As a kid, he was always butting heads with his father. As a grown up, he was constantly worried about somebody uncovering his secret identity, or about the next fight he was going to get into and hurt by. On top of that, there was the continual aggravation of trying to have a real life when you never knew what death-defying adventure you would have to take off on with the Brigade, usually in the middle of a date, or while he was supposed to be working. How tough was it to meet a magazine deadline when you were fighting mole men at the center of the Earth the day your article was due? It was a miracle he kept getting assignments — although, the inside scoops he got being (secretly!) a member of the supers community probably made up for his lack of punctuality.

But that was his old life. Gentleman writer, resident of quaint Crumbly-by-the-Sea, that was the new.

“Charlie!” Mr. Justice called from inside.

Charlie sighed and closed his eyes. “Yes, Willie?”

“Did you get anything for dessert?”

Tomorrow morning, he told himself. He’ll be gone in the morning...! And, out loud, he said, in a tone of voice usually reserved for conversations with six-year olds, “Who wants cupcakes and milk?”

Mr. Justice said, “Oh, boy!”

* * *

Wally Crenshaw, Benny Sachem, and Brenda Cunningham gathered at the north end of Kane Street, watching the dirty gray car parked down the street.

“See,” Wally said. “The Accelerator’s car is still here.”

“Wow,” Benny said with a snicker, “it’s the actual Acceleratormobile!”

Brenda poked Benny in the ribs with her elbow, “Cut it out, Benny. How do you know it’s not?”

Benny glanced at his girlfriend, then at Wally. “Am I the only one here who hasn’t gone, like, insane?”

“Probably,” Wally said. He took the folded wanted poster from the pocket of his shorts and held it out to Benny. “But all I want to do is see if the guy in this picture’s the same as the guy who belongs to that car.”

Benny opened the poster and looked at it. Brenda peeked over his shoulder. “New York license plates, gray car.”

“Two for two,” said Wally.

“Unless it just happens to be a gray car from New York,” said Benny.

“Work with us here, Benny,” Brenda said.

Wally started to walk down the quiet street. “Come on,” he whispered to his friends.

“Where?” Benny asked.

“That’s not working with us, Sachem,” Brenda said and yanked on Benny’s arm to get him moving.

“C’mon, Brenda,” Benny pleaded. “Don’t tell me you believe any of this stuff.”

Brenda shrugged and said, softly so Wally couldn’t hear, “No, I don’t. But Wally does. And if it’s important to him, then as his friends it’s important we believe with him. Okay?”

Benny nodded. “Okay. But I still get to make fun of him. If I don’t make fun of him, he’ll think I’m putting him on.”

Even as he walked a half dozen paces ahead of his friends, Wally was formulating a plan of action. They couldn’t just walk up and ring the doorbell. If it was the Accelerator and he was hiding out here in town, he might...well, accelerate them. They needed a distraction, something to draw whoever was in that house outside where Wally could get a good look at him. He wished he had some firecrackers on him. Setting off a string of firecrackers on the front porch would sure get him out in a hurry. Or a siren! Boy, a nice loud siren would sure do the trick.

“So, got a plan, Whiz Kid?” Brenda asked.

Wally shook his head. “Not unless you’ve got a siren in your pocket.”

Benny rolled his eyes. “Oh, brother,” he said, and ignored Brenda’s withering look.

“We just need to get a look at the guy,” Wally muttered.

The slow walking trio had come up alongside the dirt splattered gray car at the curb outside the old Wicker house. Brenda glanced at it, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “We could,” she said, slowly, “just knock on the door.”

“We could,” Wally said, his eyes practically bugging out of his head, “if we wanted to get all accelerated!”

“He’s not going to accelerate some kid,” Brenda said. “Whatever that is,” and went skipping up the sidewalk and then turned up the front walk to 254 Kane Street.

“Brenda!” Wally hissed.

“Don’t!” Benny called.

Brenda ignored them both, pausing only briefly to look back and throw them a sweet smile just before she rapped her knuckles on the weather beaten front door. Wally and Benny, in a sudden fit of not knowing what to do with themselves, almost collided with one another three times before charging around to the street side of the gray car and ducking down in hiding just as the front door swung open.

Charlie Harris, the chocolate frosting from a cupcake on his face, looked at Brenda and smiled. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi, mister,” she said. “I saw your car out there and wanted to know if you wanted it washed. Only five dollars.”

Charlie glanced at the car, wondering why there were the tops of two heads bobbing around behind it. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “It’s not my car. Belongs to someone visiting me.”

“Does he want it washed?”

“I doubt it,” Charlie said. “Sorry. But, hey, you want a cupcake? I’ve got plenty.”

Brenda said, “I don’t think so, thank you. So, could you ask your friend?”

Charlie took a bite from his cupcake. “What’s your name?”

“Brenda,” she said, then quickly added, “My dad’s the sheriff.”

He smiled, and watched the two heads hiding behind Willie’s car as he said, “And a fine, dedicated lawman he is, I’m sure. My name’s Charlie Harris. I just moved to town.”

Brenda tried to peek around Charlie and catch a glimpse of his houseguest as she said, “Did your friend drive you here?”

“No,” Charlie said. “Well, look, it’s been nice meeting you. I’ll see you and your friends around, okay?”

“Sure,” she said, slowly, shifting her feet so she could get a better view inside the house. “So, welcome to Crumbly, I guess.”

Charlie made to close the door, but Brenda held her ground. She smiled sweetly and waved her fingers in farewell, but wouldn’t budge. Charlie was forced to close the door, gently, in her face. “Weird kids in this town,” he said with a sad shake of his head.

Hey, Sophie!

About a month ago, I ran an excerpt from Hey, Sophie!, a young adult novel I wrote for a client that will likely never see publication. Here's a bit more, taking place later in the story, with Sophie heading out into the bayou by herself to investigate the mysterious stranger who lives there:

HEY, SOPHIE!

© Stirred Water Studios

Chapter 8

Twenty minutes later, Sophie remembered why.

She would have sworn that she had taken the right channel, the one that led straight to the Dog Rock. She had followed the signs Juan had pointed out to her...well, at least she thought she had, but instead of the widening channel, the waterway began narrowing around her. Realizing she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way, Sophie spent several minutes trying to turn the small boat around in the tight waterway before she thought to just turn herself around and start paddling in the opposite direction.

Which brought her right back to where she started before she turned around: Lost!

Everywhere she looked looked exactly like everywhere else. Trees, gobs of hanging, mossy vines, water, rocks...nothing that even remotely resembled anything familiar. The air was hot, heavy and smelled like rotting cabbage. Creatures she couldn’t even imagine, and, frankly, didn’t want to, were shrieking and chattering away in the trees.

She was trying very hard not to panic. She may not know much but she knew panic was bad.

Something wet and heavy fell from an overhead branch and landed on the floor of the boat by her feet. She looked down.

It was a lizard.

Sophie shrieked.

So much for not panicking!

It was green and shiny, dotted with small brown spots and about eight inches long. And even though it was just sitting there at her feet looking up at her, its little tail swishing back and forth, its tiny tongue flicking in and out of its mouth, Sophie yanked her feet off the bottom of the boat. She held the paddle in her hands like a club, ready to fend off the little creature if it leapt for her throat.

“Scat!” she ordered.

As if understanding it was upsetting her, the lizard scurried back to the far end of the boat. It perched there, staring at her.

“Oh boy,” Sophie whispered. Now she was lost and under siege by a lizard. How much worse could it get?

Splash-thunk!

Sophie froze. She had heard that sound before, the last time she was out here. And didn’t you think she would have learned her lesson after that?

The sound was far away. Maybe it was something else, a branch falling from a tree into the water. A creature jumping in for a quick dip. A...

Splash-thunk!

...Flat-bottom boat being poled by T-John. Who was, of course, exactly who she came out here to find. But, funny, now that she’d found him, she suddenly wasn’t so anxious to confront him. Sophie looked around, trying to avoid the stare of the little lizard sitting opposite her in the boat. Now, she thought, that she’s in the middle of nowhere and the boogey man was getting closer and closer, this is when she starts believing Juan’s bayou lore. Okay, maybe T-John wasn’t some sort of immortal zombie or whatever, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be a psycho-swamp-killer with a normal lifespan. Coming out here was dumb. Dumber than dumb. Epically dumb.

Splash-thunk!

No doubt about it. The sound was getting closer, and Sophie could also make out the first bit of toneless whistling drifting across the water.

It was time for a plan and Sophie formulated one in an instant:

Run!

She settled for instinct and plain old guesswork, picking a direction and starting to paddle as fast as she could while making the minimum amount of noise. What was she thinking, anyway? How was she supposed to interview someone who couldn’t speak? She didn’t know sign language or even if T-John knew how to write out his answers. Dumb!

She didn’t for a minute believe she’d be able to outrun T-John, but she hoped she could at least find a nice, safe hiding place until he passed by. Just don’t think about anything but paddling, she told herself. Just shut up and move!

Desperation made for a good teacher. Sophie was soon handling the pirogue like a pro, taking turns and investigating side channels for a safe place to duck. For a while, the rhythmic splash-thunk and atonal whistling almost faded from hearing—but either T-John was deliberately tracking her or she just kept blundering into his path. It always seemed to catch up with her again.

Sophie started to swing around into a narrow channel, but a rat-tailed gray opossum surged in ahead of her and began swimming in an endless circle, blocking her way in. Maybe it was protecting its turf or whatever, but Sophie had no desire to pick a fight with something that looked a lot like a house-cat sized rat. She finally had to back up and take another direction. Well, what difference did it make? She didn’t know where she was going anyway.

She raised her paddle from the water and listened. Chirping, screeching birds. Jabbering, screeching animals. Chittering insects. Croaking reptiles and amphibians. Your basic nature. Not a swamp-psycho to be heard.

That was good. Sophie could use a few minutes to rest and gather her wits. Maybe figure something out.

But no such luck. She heard a nearby splash and looked around, the paddle held at the ready to defend herself. A short distance away, something furry and gray, about the size of a large house cat, swam through the water towards the boat. A long pink and white tail trailed behind it. Her first thought was that it was some sort of giant mutant rat, but as soon as it climbed from the water onto the top of an exposed tree stump, she recognized it as an opossum, which, from the looks of it, could have been the same one as before. Could it be following her? For all she knew, opossum was Latin for “giant stalker bayou water rat.” The opossum shook the water from its fur and began a staring contest with her.

Sophie swallowed hard and the heard another sound, a rustling from above.

“Oh, please, oh, please,” Sophie groaned. “Let it not be vampire bats!”

She glanced up, quickly, in case it was something she didn’t want to see. But this was just a pelican. Another pelican. Was there something about her that attracted these big, white sea birds? It stretched its wings and clicked its big, pointed yellow bill at her.

“You wouldn’t happen to know how I can get home, would you?” she asked it.

The pelican squawked in response.

Sophie sat in the boat and looked from the gecko to the opossum to the pelican. They looked back, nobody moving for several moments, giving Sophie a definite case of the fremeers all her own.

“So,” she said to them, “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you all here today.”

Splish!

Sophie froze.

Splish! Splish! Splish!

Something else was in the water.

Something. Big! Coming closer.

Sophie looked left. All clear. She swiveled her head to the right. Ditto.

Splish!

Behind her!

She didn’t want to look, but she knew she had to--if only to see what exactly it was that was going to be having her for a mid-day snack.

Slicing through the water like a torpedo about to sink a battleship she’d seen in old movies, Sophie saw the knobby-scaled back of an alligator speeding straight towards her. A white alligator! Juan said albino gators were good luck, but she wasn’t feeling so lucky as it closed on her faster than she could imagine, the massive, oblong head rising from the water, opening its jaws to display row after row of very long and very sharp teeth.

Sophie gasped, clutching the sides of the boat in both hands, hypnotized by the sight of what looked like hundreds of teeth coming to crunch down on the fragile little pirogue. She really, really wanted to scream; but try as she might, Sophie couldn’t make a sound.

She could only stare, frozen in fear.

And those big jaws kept getting closer until they filled her vision, now close enough that Sophie could have reached out and touched its snout.

Which was when the gator stopped and, with a big smile and a wink said in a friendly, deep voice, “Hey, Sophie.”

Oooh! Super-Spooky, kids!

Back when my son was three or four years old, we were having breakfast at IHop with a friend and her daughter, Hannah, a couple of years older than Max. She was talking about their new house, an old 18th century farmhouse, saying that some of it was kind'a spooky, especially the "scare cases." What, I wanted to know was a "scare case"? Hannah looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "It's the thing you walk up and down on in the house."

Oh.

But I thought my mishearing of "stair cases" would still make a great title for a YA horror series, a la R.L. Stine. Here, the sample chapter:

SCARE CASES

© Paul Kupperberg

chapter one

As the footsteps came nearer, Hannah Weaver slowly, silently drew in a deep breath and held it. She knew she was well hidden, behind the dusty old maroon velvet drapes hung over the attic window, shielded by piles of boxes, trunks, and a century’s worth of accumulated possessions. All she had to do was stand absolutely still, totally quiet, and she would be okay.

No one would find her. Not this time.

She heard boxes being moved on the other side of the attic, followed by voices in low whispers directing the search.

Behind Hannah, a heavy rain beat against the glass of the floor to ceiling attic window. Though it was mid-morning, the sky outside was as dark as dusk with heavy storm clouds that flashed occasional bursts of lightning and blasts of thunder. The wind slapped thick, heavy rain drops against the window and the roof, but didn’t cover the sound of her pursuers’ footsteps on the attic’s wide, creaking floorboards.

They were getting closer!

Hannah squeezed shut her eyes. Don’t move!, she thought frantically, willing herself to stay rock steady. She would be fine, as long as she stayed calm...

...And didn’t sneeze.

But without warning or build up, that’s exactly what she did, as if the dust from her grandmother’s discarded velvet drapes had jumped up her nose. She let out an explosive sneeze. Which was followed by the sound of explosive laughter from the other side of the drapes.

“Not funny,” fourteen year old Hannah Weaver called out, sniffling.

“Hey, I’m the one with a sense of humor,” responded her brother, Max, in between laughs. “That was funny.”

“Funny,” said Deena Drake, laughing and nodding in agreement.

“Funny,” agreed her giggling twin sister, Dana Drake.

“I must concur,” said Knox Dorfman with a smile that was as close as the thirteen year old ever came to laughter.

Hannah whipped aside the drape, releasing a cloud of dust to swirl around her head. “I think I’ve just decided we’re too old to play hide-and-seek,” she sniffled with as much dignity as possible. Which was precisely none when the newly released dust started tickling her nose and set her off on a fresh fit of sneezing.

“By the way, bless you,” said Max. “And what else are we going to do on a day like today?” The brown haired, blue eyed thirteen year old flopped down in a rattan rocking chair with just enough seat left to hold him. Like everything in the dim and dusty attic, the rocker had been discarded by some previous generation of Weavers, stretching back over a hundred years to Hannah and Max’s great-great-grandfather, Josiah Weaver, who had built the roomy old Victorian house in the upstate New York town of Old Witchaven. Weavers had lived in the house at 1326 Smathers Lane ever since, parents passing it on to their children across three centuries and five generations.

Hannah searched the pockets of her jeans for a tissue. “You never would’ve found me if I hadn’t sneezed,” she said.

The tall, thin, blonde, freckled face Deena rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m so sure.”

“As if you haven’t been hiding in the same place since we were, like, six,” said Dana, finishing her twin’s sentence.

“No I don’t,” Hannah insisted, but Deena and Dana were right. Only this time, she had picked her same old hiding place because she was sure they would never think she would be lame enough to pick it again. Hannah and Max and their friends had grown up playing in and around this house, spending much of their time up here in the attic. It was, even after all these years, a fascinating place to explore, piled high with trunks and boxes holding every sort of treasure and junk from days gone by. Clothing from the 1880s could be found folded neatly in ancient steamer trunks bearing stickers from long defunct steamship lines and railroads, stacked next to cartons holding her father’s record collection from college, or the mildewing old comic books read by her grandfather when he had been a boy, or board games and children’s toys, from dented and chipped tin wind-up toys to plastic fast food restaurant premiums, that spanned the century.

A cluster of dressmaker’s dummies stood gathered in a corner, next to an old manually powered sewing machine and across from a collection of bicycles that looked as though they belonged in a museum. Old furniture, some plush and overstuffed, some wicker, others plain, unadorned wood or of varying styles that Hannah had glimpsed in old movies on television, was piled here and there, sometimes covered by sheets and old blankets, sometimes by nothing more than several decades of dust and cobwebs. A history of home electronics—from stately, hand-cranked Victrolas that looked like fancy furniture to early, bulky cabinet-style radios and televisions, through such “modern” devices as portable hi-fis and 8-track cassette players—could be assembled from the wide variety of models discarded here.

Bats and balls and fishing rods, golf clubs and croquet sets and rotting sleds and other sporting equipment—some for games none of them could figure out—was scattered everywhere. Dusty old paintings, portraits of severe looking men and delicate looking women, mingled with more modern abstract creations and framed family portraits of relatives long forgotten were stacked together against the walls. Three dried out and cracked leather saddles creaked from hooks driven into the roof beam, along with empty bird cages and flower hangers, watering cans, and old-time hand tools.

A ratty, moth-eaten moose head hung at an angle from a rusty nail. A collection of stuffed critters—raccoons and squirrels and annoyed looking owls and a single, sorry looking jack rabbit—that had belonged to a great-uncle and that always gave Hannah the creeps, was displayed in an old breakfront. Books were everywhere, turn of the century school books and modern-day bestsellers alike, shoved haphazardly in bookcases or in neatly tied bundles on the floor or atop furniture. There was something everywhere in the enormous attic, and always something else piled on top of it.

And there wasn’t an inch that Hannah, her brother and their friends hadn’t explored in their lifetime of rainy afternoons and snow days. The attic was a kid’s paradise, a combination playground and treasure trove of dress-up costumes, mysterious artifacts and entertainment. A dusty, decaying history of the Weavers in Old Witchaven that continued to be a safe, warm, comfortable refuge for the fifth generation of Weavers to occupy the great old house.

Max rocked slowly back and forth and yawned. “Well, there’s nothing as exciting as a rainy Sunday afternoon in Old Witchaven, is there?”

“Very little,” agreed Knox. “Although I’m told watching grass grow can also be quite stimulating.”

Hannah finished blowing her nose. “So, let’s do something. Anybody want to watch a video or something?”

“You get some new videos?” Dana asked.

Hannah shook her head.

“Then we’ve seen everything you’ve got, like, twice,” Deena sighed.

“Watch TV? Play a game? Listen to music?” Hannah suggested.

“No.”

“Lame.”

“Yawn!”

“Hit ourselves on the head with sticks?” Hannah said in exasperation, dropping to sit on the floor with her back against a warped oak wardrobe.

“Now there’s an idea,” Max said. “At least being unconscious would make the time pass faster.”

Max Weaver poked his toe under the latch of the oversized leather trunk he had been using as a footrest and it popped open.

“So you think of something,” Hannah huffed.

Max eased open the trunk with his sneaker. “I’m thinking,” he muttered.

“That would explain your look of pain,” Knox said. He glanced over at the trunk Max was fiddling with. “Find something?” he asked.

Max tilted his head, trying to get a better look at the contents of the trunk without having to move. “Doubt it,” he said. “Think this is all great-great-grandpa Josiah’s stuff. He had some cool vests in here, but.…” Max stopped suddenly. He narrowed his eyes and sat up, quickly yanking the trunk lid all the way open.

“What is it?” Hannah asked.

“Don’t know,” Max said slowly. “Looks like a book of some kind.”

“That’s funny,” Hannah said, as she stood up to join Max by the trunk. “I don’t remember any books in there.”

“Well, there’s one here now,” Max said. And there was, laying atop the collection of century old clothing. It was large, easily twice the size of regular novel, covered in a rich, soft looking textured black leather, its spine finished in a thick, blood-red leather decorated with strange, abstract symbols engraved into the material and gilded in gold. It looked like no book they had ever seen and, despite the fact that it had been packed away with one hundred year old clothing, it looked brand new.

Knox peered over Max’s shoulder at the book. “It’s beautiful,” the skinny thirteen year old breathed as he stared at the volume through his thick glasses.

“Where’d it, like, come from?” Deena wondered out loud.

Hannah shook her head. “Beats me. I’ve never seen it before, have you, Max?”

“Nuh-uh,” he said. “I’d remember this.”

“Why?” Dana asked. “I mean, it’s just one of, like, a million books up here.”

“No it’s not,” Knox said. “This one’s...different.”

Dana made a clucking sound. “You are all so brain damaged,” she said in exasperation. She reached past her sister and friends and took hold of the book, lifting it from the trunk. “It is so just a book! I...,” the twin started to say, but then gasped and let it fall from her fingers to back atop great-grandpa Josiah’s clothes.

“What?” Dana demanded.

“I don’t know,” Deena said and shuddered, rubbing the hand that had touched the black book back and forth over her jeans as if trying to wipe away something disgusting. “It’s all cold and clammy.”

Hannah reached out a hesitant finger. She wasn’t usually freaked out by the things that bothered her girl friends. She wasn’t afraid of bugs or spiders and, while they weren’t her favorite things, she had never been grossed out by frogs and snakes either. She was the one who could always be counted on to climb the highest tree to free a trapped kite, or crawl into the darkest, mustiest smelling crawl space to retrieve a lost ball. As far as those things went, Hannah Weaver did not scare easily.

So why did this old book make her so uneasy?

Trying to ignore her fear, Hannah touched her finger to the leather cover. Deena was right. It felt cold and...something. It wasn’t wet, but it wasn’t dry, either. It felt almost...

“No,” Hannah said quickly and jerked her hand away. She swung the lid of the trunk closed with a loud thud that made the others jump.

“What?” Max asked. He wasn’t used to seeing his sister rattled.

“Nothing,” Hannah said, her voice tight. “Nothing. I’m bored, that’s all. Come one, let’s do something, okay?”

“Sure,” Max said and the others agreed with him.

“Downstairs!” Hannah added.

“Yeah,” said Deena. She glanced nervously at the trunk and shuddered again.

“Whatever,” Dana said, acting as though nothing was wrong, but hurrying to the stairs that lead down from the attic, followed by Deena and Knox. Hannah and Max were right behind them.

“What the heck was that all about?” Max whispered to his sister as they started down the stairs.

“I told you. Nothing,” she said. She slapped at the light switch on the stairway wall and behind them, the attic went dark. She didn’t know how to tell her brother that the book hadn’t felt like dried out old leather.

It had felt like a living thing!

But that was ridiculous. It was just a book. A creepy, nasty old book, but just a book. She wanted to forget she had even had the thought.

But for the rest of the day, every time the house shook under a peal of thunder, Hannah remembered how the book had made her feel.

And in the attic, in the shadows under the eaves, behind an old rattan trunk full of great-aunt Betsy’s clothes, the darkness chuckled.

Son of 500 Words A Day

The Same Old Story, a mystery novel set in 1951 and starring a pulp and comic book writer whose father was a famous NYPD homicide detective, is moving right along (here, here, here, here and here) at way better than 500 words a day. The way things worked out, I was able to devote several full days to the project and, as a result, I've just crossed the 50,000 word mark, almost 30,000 words since I began this on August 16.

Don't misunderstand: The Same Old Story is not about churning out a specific number of words to a schedule. They still have to be words I'm pleased with, or at least that I know I can work with to reshape and fix in the revision stage of the writing. If I wasn't happy with the quality of what I was writing, I wouldn't be producing the quantity I am. When something's not right, I can't go forward with the story until I've fixed whatever pothole it is I've run into. Anyway, I don't mean to get into the writing process; that's a whole other blog. Instead, some of the latest from the story, picking up after protagonist Max Wiser has taken a beating from two toughs asking tougher questions:

THE SAME OLD STORY

© Paul Kupperberg

Chapter 17/ DOCTOR NIGHT

I came to a couple of times, once with some old guy yelling in my face, again just as a couple of ambulance attendants were lifting me onto a stretcher, and then at various times during the mad dash to the hospital, catching incoherent snippets of conversation and weirdly drawn out sounds of wailing sirens and traffic. Fortunately, Saint Vincent’s was only a few blocks from where I had taken my beating, so I was on a table in the emergency room within ten minutes of being picked up.

The rest was a blur. I remember a nurse finding my wallet and saying she was going to call my next of kin. I was just conscious enough to stop her from calling my mother now, in the middle of the night, and get in touch with Uncle Mick instead. It seemed as though whole scenes shifted, like in a movie, with every blink of my eyes. All of a sudden I was gazing up at a giant glass eyeball, which I later realized was the X-ray machine taking pictures of my battered skull. Blink. I was in a white room. Not an operating room. The doctor and nurses aren’t wearing masks but they were gathered around me, doing things.

I was numb.

Blink. This time it was am operating room. A big plastic mask wielded by a man with a face that was a pair of black horn rims glasses surrounded by a green ball was looming over my face

Count backwards

so I did, fortilly-seven, ninety-two zillion

Blink. Uncle Mick’s big, goofy face was in front of me, his eyes black-ringed with worry and fatigue “How ya feelin’, kiddo?” and I croaked “Ma?” and he nodded. “She’s fine, lad. She’s downstairs getting’ a cuppa but she’s been here the whole time. Docs say”

Blink.

Someone was wiping a cool, damp cloth across my forehead. It felt good. I didn’t even bother opening my eyes. “You awake, Mr. Wiser?” a woman asked me and I made a positive sound but I think I was lying because

Blink.

I woke up with the sun in my eyes, a throbbing headache, and a belly that sent me into spasms of pain just from taking a deep breath.

Hospital bed. IV stand hooked to my arm, oxygen mask strapped to my face. A monitor that beeped along with my heart. A woman in white was by the window, her hands still on the drawstrings from opening the blinds that let in the sunlight that woke me up.

I blinked. I was awake. My swim in and out of consciousness was over. In spite of the pain, I was amazingly clear headed. I remembered every moment of the assault, from the first blow to the college students pretending to ignore the puke splattered alky in their path.

Where’s that bitch hid the money?

I remembered Tall asking the question. The beating beforehand was all just to soften me up for the question.

“Mr. Wiser?” the woman said. She was a nurse, of course, in white from head to toe and looking concerned and compassionate.

I nodded and tried to say yes but my throat was too dry to work.

“Don’t try to talk yet,” she said and bustled over to the bed, where she unhooked me from my oxygen mask and produced little chips of ice in a cup to moisten my mouth and throat from the nightstand.

“Suck on these for a few seconds,” she ordered. “You’ve been on oxygen for a while. It dries you out.”

As soon as I could work up enough spit to swallow I said, in a voice still rusty, “How am I?”

“You’re just fine. Dr. Young will be by in a little bit to explain everything. In the meantime, you just work on those ice chips and relax. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

Where’s that bitch hid the money?

Another “distraction”? I wasn’t even sure what money they were talking about: her split of the quarter of a million or Bob Konigsberg’s missing cash.

Who the hell was she hiding the money from and why did whoever they were think he knew enough about it to be worth beating up?

Dr. Young turned out to be the horn rim-wearing green beach ball, only without the green surgical cap and mask and the benefit of being semi-conscious, he was actually more of a wild-haired George S. Kaufman type with a long, horsy face and a toothy smile.

“Good morning. Max,” he said as he came into the room, trailing young men in white coats like a mama duck her duckling and speaking to the clipboard he was reading from. “You’re looking well this morning.”

“On paper, you mean?”

He glanced up from my medical chart and smiled. “And in person, as well.” He handed the clipboard to the nearest resident and said, “How are you feeling?”

“Depends. What day is it?”

He chuckled. “Saturday, 8:30 a.m. You’ve had a rather rough couple of days, but your prognosis is excellent.”

Dr. Young did a few tests, had me follow his finger with my eyes, squeeze his hands and various other things to prove my brain hadn’t been too badly scrambled.

I tried to adjust myself, gingerly, on the bed, grimacing from the effort. “What was, oh, jeez, what was the damage?”

“Oh, on the surface lots of cuts and bruises. A concussion, about a fifteen stitches all told to close up some gashes in your scalp and two broken ribs. On the more serious side, whoever did this did damage inside. I had to go in and sew up your spleen, which took care of that problem. As surgeries go, this one was relatively straight forward. After you’ve healed up, you shouldn’t have any problems from any of your wounds.”

500 Words A Day, Continued

Progress on The Same Old Story (here, here, here and here) continues at a steady pace, with the word count up to 45,000 or so. The Same Old Story is a mystery set in the early-1950s whose protagonist is a pulp and comic book writer. Part of the conceit of the novel is that chapters of the fictionalized version (starring his pulp character, NYPD homicide detective King Solomon, who is based on his father) of the mystery our hero, Max Wiser, is investigating are mixed in with the "real" story. Here's one of the "make believe" chapters:

A New KING SOLOMON Mystery!
“THE LAST SHUTTLE TO TIMES SQUARE” by Max Wiser

© Paul Kupperberg

The boss obviously didn’t believe in wasting his money on offices to impress visitors, or cockroaches for that matter. Apex Publications was about as bare bones as an operation got, walls painted institutional green, desks and chairs from an office surplus house and filing cabinets, none of whose drawers could any longer close properly. Dennis Arnold, president and publisher of Apex Publications, sat in his little ten foot by ten foor office with a single window overlooking the airshaft. He appeared to King Solomon to be a very practical man, the kind who went around shutting off lights and retrieving paperclips from the trash cans after everyone had gone home at night.

He also seemed fairly well shook by the death of Ray Koening.

“I bought Raymond’s very first stories, when he was just a kid, still in high school,” Arnold said, shaking his head and staring at his desktop as though the riot of papers and comic books spread across its surface held some secret, if only he could dig it out of the chaos.

“Would you say you were friends?” the King said.

“Friends, with Raymond?” Denny Arnold asked, almost surprised by the question. He smiled sadly. “I suppose as much as he was capable of having a friend, I would be it. He came to me for advise and help several times on a personal matter.”

“Would that have been his commitments to Stony Hill?”

The round little man shrugged and met the King’s eyes. “What difference does it make now? Does it have a bearing on the reason he’s dead? I thought he fell from a train.”

“So he did,” King Solomon said. “But the question remains, why did he fall? Mr. Koenig was not popular among his peers…”

Denny Arnold sat forward. “That’s nonsense. Sure, he was difficult to get along with, but everyone respected him.”

“I’ve spoken to a few of his fellow writers. The nicest thing any of them had to say was that he was always clean.”

“Well, there was some jealousy at work. Raymond rose very quickly to the top of his profession and I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about that attitude of his, like he believed he deserved special treatment. And maybe he did. He was a natural born storyteller, very original and prolific. Back when Apex first started publishing, he was writing most of our output. Eventually, he was offered work from other publishers at a higher rate of pay than we could afford to match and we lost his full-time services.”

“He had a check for seventy dollars from Apex in his wallet, dated two days before his death.”

The little publisher smiled. “Raymond was under an exclusive contract with Dynamic Comics, but he still wrote for me sometimes. For old time sake.”

“And extra cash?”

“I was just happy to have him writing for me,” he said with an innocent shrug.

“Why did he need the money, Mr. Arnold?”

“How should I know, detective? As I said, Raymond was very forthcoming about his personal life.”

“I understand he liked women,” the King said.

“So?” Shrug. “So do I?”

“Other than your wife.”

Arnold heaved a sigh into the air and shook his head. “No. Now Raymond, on the other hand...”

“Any woman who might have gotten him killed?”

The little man blinked in surprise. “Dear lord, I can’t imagine such a thing. I mean, doesn’t that only happen in movies or our comic books?”

“You’d be surprised, sir.”

“Well, no. He ran around with all sorts of women, but no one actually dangerous. Actresses, receptionists, secretaries, airline stewardesses. He liked gals who were easy on the eye,” Arnold said. “He may have made up stories about them, for his own reputation, but he stayed far away from trouble. “

“Was he seeing anyone you know about?”

Arnold paused. “Well...”

The King smiled. “It’s okay to tell me, Mr. Arnold. I’m the police.”

“I know, Inspector. I’m sorry...it’s just that I’d hate to involve an innocent party in something like this.”

“If they’re innocent, there’s no harm in your giving me the name.”

“Yes...well, one of our editors, a young woman named Sandra Daniels. I’ve heard rumors she and Raymond have been seeing one another recently. I don’t know how serious they were, but knowing him, I’d say not very.”

“What can you tell me about Miss Daniels?”

“Nothing much to tell. She’s in her early thirties, single, very friendly and efficient. I hired her about six years ago as an assistant and she was so good I fired the guy I had hired her to assist and gave her his job three years later.”

“Is Miss Daniels by any chance a redhead?”

“No, sir. She’s a blond.”

The King nodded. “Tell me, Mr. Arnold, do you think Mr. Koenig’s reputation was deserved? I’m getting the sense he was a bit of a talker.”

“He liked to talk tough,” Arnold said. “But talk was all he was. He was no hero.”

“Puffed himself up, did he?”

“I’ll say. He had more fight stories than Lardner but I’ll bet you can count on two fingers the number of times that guy threw a punch as an adult. And probably wound up on his back both times. You could tell. He was a flincher?”

King Solomon nodded.

“You know the type, right? Gives it away right from the get-go, flinches when you put out your hand to shake hello.” He stopped and chuckled at a thought. “Raymond had this scar on his right cheek, about three inches long. For years he’s been telling everyone who’ll listen that he got it in a duel with some Baron Von Humphf-humphf or other in Austria. Big duel, honor of a lady, the countryside at dawn, two men and their swords, the whole nine yards. You didn’t ask about it, he’d point it out somehow, ‘Whenever my dueling scar itches like this, I know it’s going to rain.’

“Anyway, he had this story of that duel, sounded like a scene from the Three Musketeers. He’s slashed, bleeding, first blood to the baron, but the sight of blood makes the blackguard overconfident and Raymond takes advantage and tags the guy in the shoulder, the guy concedes, Raymond’s the hero. The scar’s his badge of honor.”

The King smiled. “’Blackguard’?”

“What can I tell you, he talked that way. So, the whole world knows about his dueling scar. One day, I stop by his apartment to pick up some scripts on my way downtown, who opens the door but his mama, old lady Koenig herself! Raymond’s not home, but he left the scripts for me and Mrs. Koenig invites me in for a cup of coffee. She’s visiting for a few days, she lives in Ohio somewhere, Cincinnati? Cleveland? Anyway, she lives in Ohio now with Bob’s older sister, Ilsa, who’s apparently not in the best of health. So Mrs. Koenig is so happy to meet one of Raymond’s colleagues, Raymond this and Raymond that. Lovely woman. Anyway, over coffee and strudel, I make a passing reference to his dueling scar. Mrs. Koenig seemed to find it amusing when I called it that, although she was quick to point out that it wasn’t funny at the time. Seems as a boy in the Bronx, Raymond was pretending a discarded automobile radio antenna was a sword, slashing it around in front of the mirror when it whipped back into his face and cut his cheek. He was never, she added, terribly adept at physical activities, but he did excel at the cerebral.”

“She talk that way too?”

“Like mother, like son.”

The King drummed his fingers on his knee. The picture he was putting together of Raymond Koenig was not a pretty one, but nothing so ugly as to suggest a motive for murder.

“Tell me, sir,” he said, “were you the only publisher for whom Mr. Koenig was writing, in violation of his contract with Dynamic Comics?”

“Oh, I doubt it. Raymond was very, very prolific. He could bang out a six-pager over lunch. You want to have seen something amazing, watch him type! He had these long, slender fingers, like a piano player’s, and he made a typewriter sound like a machinegun. I once saw him type something on one of those new IBM electric typewriters...my hand to the Almighty, he typed so fast that the machine kept going for a full five seconds after he stopped, catching up with him. However many pages of story a week his contract called for, I’d bet Raymond could produce double it. He knew people all over town who were happy to buy from him and keep quiet about it. Not that it really mattered. Everybody knows everybody else’s business in comics anyway. It’s a small community, Inspector, and these guys are all yentas.”

“Didn’t sound like Mr. Koenig was doing so bad for a man so unpopular.”

Denny Arnold shuffled through the papers on his desk. “He was a bit of a mad genius. People cut some slack for people like him.” When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “I think I’m actually gonna miss him. Who knew?”

Avast, Hardys!

In 2002, I heard the publishers of the Hardy Boy mysteries were open to pitches, so I wrote the following chapter (along with an outline for the rest of the story) and pitched. Timing, of course, is everything, and the editor I was pitching to left the publisher shortly thereafter. Her replacement came in with a group of her own writers, denying me my chance to write under the ‘Franklin W. Dixon’ pseudonym.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TREASURE HUNT KILLER

The Hardy Boys © Simon and Schuster Inc.
THE MYSTERY OF THE TREASURE HUNT KILLER © Paul Kupperberg

Chapter one/ The Hunt
Frank Hardy knew he was in trouble.

He could hear footsteps pounding the ground behind him in the woods, slowly but definitely gaining ground. Unlike Frank, whoever was on his tail didn’t keep tripping and stumbling in the dark over every rock and branch on the trail. His pursuer either knew these woods way better than did Frank, or had a flashlight whose dying batteries weren’t dimming it to uselessness.

Either way, Frank realized the situation wasn’t good.

Granted, he had grown up playing in these woods outside of Bayport and knew them about as well as any kid in town. But in daylight. Or walking, not racing blindly ahead on a moonless October night.

Being chased.

Don’t forget the being chased part, Frank reminded himself, then caught his foot in an exposed tree root. He windmilled his arms wildly to stay upright, but he could tell gravity was going to win. He flew forward and, with a muffled shout, hit the ground. His slowly dying flashlight spun from his hands and tumbled through the air before bouncing off a tree and finally winking out.

The footsteps drew closer. Frank snarled at his own clumsiness, working too quickly to free his foot.

Not good, he thought, not good at all!

The bobbing beam of a flashlight bounced off the surrounding trees. The snap and crackle of breaking sticks and autumn dry foliage under his pursuer’s feet grew louder. But Frank’s foot was wedged tight in the forked root and there was no way he was ever going to get free in time.

He was just going to have to face what was coming and take it like a man!

“Oh, man, that looks like it’s gotta hurt!” Joe Hardy, Frank’s younger brother, came jogging from the darkness between trees, slowing at the sight of Frank caught in the beam of his flashlight. “You okay?”

Frank grinned sheepishly. “I’m fine. I’m not hurt or anything. It’s just jammed in there pretty tight. Can you give me a hand?”

“Sure thing,” Joe said with a smile. He picked up his pace and ran past his startled brother. “On the way back.”

“Hey!” The dark haired Hardy called after Joe. “What ever happened to playing fair?”

Joe’s voice came back to him through the darkness, “To quote the master, ‘All’s fair in love and scavenger hunts.’ Later, bro.”

“Oh, sure,” Frank hollered after him into the woods. “Throw my own words back at me, why don’t you?”

The sound of Joe’s laughter, growing fainter and farther away, was all Frank heard.

Of course, Joe was right. Ever since entering Bayport High, Frank Hardy had established himself as the reigning king of the annual October scavenger hunt. For three years running, Frank and his team had easily won Hunt Night, usually with a comfortable lead. But last year, Joe’s team had made a strong second place showing. The only reason Frank had won was because of his secret weapon: Mrs. Beverly Owens.

Frank bent to the task of freeing his trapped foot, smiling. He had to hand it to the Bayport High teachers, whose list of items for the hunt was always truly inventive. But, Joe, like his brother, was a detective. The locating of hidden or unusual items was right up his alley.

And so, judging from the direction Joe was headed, was discovering the identity of Frank’s secret weapon.

Frank had thought he was, as usual, being way clever in safeguarding his secret. Some of the other teams liked to put someone on Frank’s tail and try to second-guess his destination. Keeping in contact by cell phone, these spies would send their teammates on end runs around Frank, hoping to beat him to the next item on the list.

Losing them was easy, ducking out of the car when it stopped for a red light or doubling back on his pursuers. And, frankly, most of his classmates didn’t know the first thing about tailing a suspect. Frank, on the other hand, had experience shadowing real bad guys.

As had Joe.

Oh, well, Frank thought. At least if he wasn’t going to win the scavenger hunt, the victory would stay in the family.

Frank wiggled his foot. Win or lose, he didn’t intend to stay out here all night. It took a few minutes, but he was finally able to slide his foot from his sneaker, which gave him just enough clearance to pull himself free. He retrieved his sneaker and, hopping on one foot, tugged it back on.

He checked his watch. Joe didn’t have that big a lead on him. And, Mrs. Owens wasn’t necessarily going to hand his kid brother whatever he wanted, at least not right off the bat. After all, it was Frank who had been coming on Hunt Night to her old mansion with its incredible store of artifacts, props, and gadgets in its endless rooms and cavernous attic and basement on the far side of these woods. He also visited with her whenever he could during the rest of the year. She was a lonely old woman, long ago widowed and, for reasons she never revealed, abandoned by her family. But Mrs. Owens was always cheerful and full of interesting stories about Bayport in the “olden days,” as she liked to call them.

And she loved scavenger hunts, revealing with some pride that her team had won the Bayport High hunt in 1929. She took positively childish delight in being Frank’s “secret weapon” in his string of victories.

His secret weapon.

Frank smiled and, moving as fast as he safely could, resumed his trek through the dark forest.

“Sorry, Joe,” he said out loud. “You may get to her first tonight, but Mrs. Owens is mine!”

* * *

Frank was huffing and puffing by the time he reached the edge of the woods. Without benefit of adequate light, the trip had taken twice as long as it should and had gotten him whipped across the face by more branches than he could count.

Still, he reminded himself, no pain, no gain. Fortunately, he wouldn’t have to walk back the way he came. His teammates—having made the circuit of town to gather whatever they could from their share of the list—should even now be waiting on Old Warwick Road for his call to pick him up when he was finished at Mrs. Owens’ house.

What were those items he needed again? He ran through the list in his mind, it being too dark to read the photocopied inventory he carried in his pocket.

A portrait of a sailor. A dressmaker’s dummy. A polo mallet and helmet. A top hat. A spittoon. A stethoscope. A theater ticket stub. An example of taxidermy. And half a dozen other items Frank was certain he had seen during previous visits to Mrs. Owens’ house. He knew from past experience that there were plenty of surprises buried in the dusty corners of that old house. He would phone Callie Shaw as soon as he reached Mrs. Owens’ place and find out what was still needed.

But, first things first.

Joe was a good ten minutes ahead of him. Mrs. Owens might have just sent him—sweetly and politely, Frank was sure—on his way. On the other hand, Frank knew his brother was capable of turning on the charm and might, just might, have talked his way into the treasure trove of scavenger hunt items. Not that he believed Mrs. Owens would betray their friendship. But he knew better than to underestimate his brother.

Frank came through the last of the trees, at the rear of Mrs. Owens property. The old house, a rambling blend of 19th Century architectural styles, topped with turrets and lined with terraces, was about one hundred yards from the woods. Frank would have to go to his right, to the kitchen entrance where Mrs. Owens always waited for him on Hunt Night with hot cocoa and oatmeal raison cookies to re-energize him before he continued on his way.

But as soon as he started across the lawn, Frank knew something was wrong. Every light in the huge old house was on, and, from around front, came the sound of too many voices and the static crackle of radios.

And, more ominously, red lights splashed a slow, regular beat across the front of the house and the surrounding property.

The scavenger hunt forgotten, Frank raced to the house. As soon as he rounded the front, his worst fears were realized. Dr. Merlis’ familiar blue vintage Mustang was pulled neatly into the parking area just off the crushed stone circular driveway. Next to the Mustang was Con Riley’s police cruiser, it’s roof light flashing red and white, alternating with the flashing lights of the ambulance pulled to a stop directly before the front door to the house.

Frank slowed to a walk as he came up alongside his brother on the driveway.

“Joe? What happened?”

Joe turned. One look at his face told Frank the whole story, even before he said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “Mrs. Owens is dead.”