Smith's Monthly #7 Read online

  SMITH’S MONTHLY ISSUE #7

  All Contents copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and interior design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © by Evenaners/Dreamstime.com

  “Introduction: The Origin of Yet Another Novel” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith

  “A Desert Shot” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover illustration by Sculpies/Dreamstime.com

  “A Bubble for a Minute” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Philcold/Dreamstime.com

  The Life and Times of Buffalo Jimmy copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Designwest/Dreamstime.com

  “God’s Aren’t Funny” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Ponomarencko/Dreamstime.com

  The Adventures of Hawk copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover photo by Wisconsinart/Dreamstime.com

  “Waiting for the Coin to Drop” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Andrey Bourdioukov/Dreamstime.com

  The Slots of Saturn: A Poker Boy novel copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, cover design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, cover art by Agsandrew/Dreamstime.com

  Poems: “Times Window” and “My Farts Cry” copyright © 2014 Dean Wesley Smith, header design copyright © 2014 WMG Publishing, header illustration by Mariagrazia Orlandini/Dreamstime.com

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in the fiction in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Introduction: The Origin of Yet Another Novel

  A Desert Shot: A Poker Boy Story

  A Bubble for a Minute

  Time’s Window

  The Life and Times of Buffalo Jimmy: Chapters 19-21

  Gods Aren’t Funny: A Poker Boy Story

  The Adventures of Hawk: Chapters 19-21

  Waiting for the Coin to Drop

  The Slots of Saturn: A Poker Boy Novel

  Full Table of Contents

  Smith’s Monthly

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Introduction

  THE ORIGIN OF YET ANOTHER NOVEL

  LAST MONTH I WROTE about how I came up with the novel Kill Game.

  This month the novel The Slots of Saturn in this issue has an even stranger story. And that’s going some.

  Back about 14 or so years ago I came up with a character by the name of Poker Boy. Poker Boy started in a Christmas challenge with professional writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

  She and I both liked to write four or five short stories in six days, go down to a local copy shop and make fifty copies and give the little numbered and signed chapbooks to our friends for Christmas.

  We had fun and entertained our friends with Christmas stories. And then we often sold the stories to major markets. In fact, the Christmas challenge the year before I sold a story out of the little chapbook to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The year I started Poker Boy, I wrote four stories from his point of view, all focused around Christmas Eve, which was the topic of the chapbook challenge that year.

  I liked the character of Poker Boy so much when I was finished, I kept writing more and more of his stories, selling them to various anthologies. Then a year or so later, on a lark, I wrote a Poker Boy novel called The Slots of Saturn.

  In the old days of publishing, I had an agent and she didn’t much like the idea of a humorous superhero by the name of Poker Boy. She convinced me to write a novel called Dead Money instead. (Part of that history is in last month’s introduction.)

  On my own, I think I sent Poker Boy out to a few editors and then soon forgot about the novel as I have a wont to do at times. I tend to always look forward with my writing, so things that are done I tend to forget or ignore.

  But along the way I let a few people read the novel, once in a workshop here at the coast. The novel had some issues that a few people pointed out, but they overall liked it. And honestly, so did I. I just didn’t want to spend the time to go over it again. I had new things to write.

  So into the drawer it went where it was forgotten.

  And now, years later, along comes this magazine you hold in your hands or are reading on your device.

  Over the years, Kris and others who read the book and who like Poker Boy have been after me to get The Slots of Saturn into print, so I decided last month to just take a stab at getting the book under control. It had characters and other aspects of Poker Boy that in thirty-plus short stories I had changed.

  Plus The Slots of Saturn is the origin story for the team around Poker Boy. I wanted to make that story right.

  But as I was thinking of going into the book, I was given an assignment to write a twenty thousand word story for the Fiction River anthology series. So I decided to write the sequel to The Slots of Saturn as a twenty-thousand word story. But to do that, I needed to put the novel back in my head.

  So over a period of six days or so, I worked my way through the novel, updating the Poker Boy information and cutting the novel from 80,000 words to the 55,000 words. Then I wrote the sequel to The Slots of Saturn for Fiction River. That story is called “They’re Back!”

  So the novel in this issue was fourteen years in the making. And, of course, I had to add in a brand new Poker Boy story in this issue as well to lead off.

  So when someone asks me how long it took me to write The Slots of Saturn I can honestly say fourteen years. I just won’t tell them I wrote fifty or so other novels in that time as well.

  I think the secret is safe with us, don’t you?

  I hope you enjoy the first Poker Boy novel. I’m fairly certain it won’t be the last.

  Dean Wesley Smith

  March 8, 2014,

  Lincoln City, Oregon

  Poker Boy and his boss, Stan the God of Poker, find themselves, without warning, in the desert staring at a very dead golfer. Only problem: No golf course within miles.

  If not strange enough, the self-proclaimed “Worlds Greatest Detective” joins them to ask for help solving the crime.

  As far as Poker Boy feels, how golfers dress constitutes the only crime. But the body smells and the detective could annoy a cactus, so something needs to be done.

  A DESERT SHOT

  A Poker Boy Story

  ONE

  STRANGELY ENOUGH, as a superhero, I seldom see a body. It happens, sure, but rarely. If someone gets to the body state, I figured I failed in my Poker Boy superhero duties.

  The body on the hard desert dirt in front of me hadn’t been anyone I had known. The body had been out in the hot sun long enough that it had started to get ripe-smelling. I had a hunch the ripe odor would turn real sour real quick if this guy didn’t get moved out of the sun sooner rather than later.

  The body had on a light tan golf shirt, golf shoes, matching tan golf slacks, and a tan golf glove. The tan sort of washed out his already really white skin. Not a good choice of color for his last day on the planet.

  Of course, I had on my black leather jacket and black fedora-like hat standing in the hot desert sun, so I wasn’t one to give fashion advice.

  From what I could figure, the dead guy had been about forty with a slight gut and about forty extra pounds. No telling what killed him. No blood stained t
he bland clothing in any place I could see.

  And I sure wasn’t touching the body to move it. That would be up to the police.

  However, I did find it odd that there wasn’t a golf course within ten miles of this spot to the north of Las Vegas. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything near this spot but sagebrush and rocks and more than likely a large herd of rattlesnakes. Or bunch of rattlesnakes, or group, or whatever a mass of nasty, mean, and deadly snakes are called.

  About a mile to the east, I could hear faint freeway noise of trucks and cars with no mufflers, but otherwise the desert blanketed the dead guy with silence and a lot of heat.

  Way too much heat for a leather jacket.

  Stan, the God of Poker, had brought me to this spot next to this dead guy with the balding head and blank, dead stare in dark eyes. So I turned to Stan who stood there in his dark slacks, tan button-down sweater, and loafers and asked the most logical question I could think to ask after being surprised by teleporting from a comfortable diner booth in my office to a spot next to a body.

  “Think maybe we should call the police?”

  Stan took us out of time, which had the effect of cutting off the freeway sounds and wind that was keeping the guy’s ripening smell away. He motioned that I should follow him and we moved about fifty steps away from the bland dead guy, staying inside the time bubble the entire time.

  “Thank you,” I said. “So what are we doing here? And who’s the dead guy?”

  “Not a clue,” Stan said. “And I honestly don’t know why we’re here.”

  Now that made me turn my attention from the now distant dead body and look directly at my boss, the God of Poker.

  He shrugged, actually looking puzzled.

  “So you didn’t pluck me from that hamburger and vanilla shake in my office?”

  “I did not,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Now I’m worried,” I said.

  “Yeah,” my boss said, agreeing.

  “Stop fretting,” a voice said from behind us. “I brought you here.”

  Stan and I both spun around to look down at a short man in dark brown golf slacks, a white golf shirt, a golf hat with a Dunes logo on it, and a brown golf glove. His face was almost round and clearly he had spent far, far too much time in the sun without enough sunscreen. I could barely see his green eyes through the bright red folds of skin on his cheeks that threatened to crawl up and cover his bushy eyebrows at any moment.

  I glanced at Stan who had dropped all pretenses of a poker face and was looking as puzzled as I felt. The guy clearly had a lot of magic since he had walked right into the time bubble Stan had around us.

  “Laverne,” Stan said. “A little help?”

  Lady Luck herself appeared next to Stan facing the little golfer.

  She frowned.

  I can say clearly as a poker player that when Lady Luck frowns, bad things happen.

  She glanced over at the body lying on the hard ground of the desert, then back at Stan and me.

  The little golfer bowed slightly to her, the smile on his face making the sunburn seem brighter. With the smile, his eyes sunk farther into the rolls of red flesh.

  “Work with him,” she said to Stan, shaking her head. “He obviously needs your help. You too, Poker Boy. Shouldn’t take too long.”

  She looked at me and I nodded, damn near the only thing a sane person could do when commanded to do something by Lady Luck herself.

  Then she vanished.

  “I love her,” the little golfer said, smiling at me. “Don’t you just love her? A little brisk at times, but still a real charmer. Don’t you think?”

  I said nothing. There wasn’t enough money on the planet to get me to say a word about Lady Luck.

  “So who are you and what do you want?” Stan asked, his voice cold and low.

  The little golfer smiled and bowed slightly, tipping his golf hat just a slight touch. “I’m Benny Douglas, the world’s greatest detective, at your service.”

  I had no idea who he was. Not clue one. Or what area he was a god in.

  But Stan seemed to know him and he sighed and nodded. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “I hope like the sweet smell of a dozen roses for a beautiful woman on a first date,” Benny said.

  “Whatever,” Stan said.

  Oh, wow, Stan didn’t much like this guy and was not bothering to hide the fact.

  “So what do you need us for?” I asked.

  “To help me solve poor Dan’s murder, of course,” Benny said, indicating the body that wasn’t decaying or smelling at the moment because Stan was holding us in a time bubble outside of the flow of time.

  I decided right then that I didn’t much like this short little golfer who called himself a detective. So I figured a really, really stupid question might just get under his skin a little.

  “So who killed Dan?” I asked, expecting him to give me nothing more than a dirty look.

  Benny actually sighed at my seemingly stupid question. “Sadly, I think I might have. But I need you both to help me prove that I didn’t. And find out what really killed him.”

  I stared at the short detective. That was not at all the answer I had expected.

  TWO

  “TIME TO CALL THE POLICE,” I said, turning to my boss. “Let them figure it out.”

  “Almost starting to agree with you,” Stan said, staring at Benny.

  Around us the silence in the time bubble seemed to almost match the look of the empty desert.

  Benny held up his hands for us to stop. “Look, let me explain what happened and we can go from there, all right? I trust you two, heard you’ve helped a lot of people, figured you could help me some on this. And remember Laverne told you to help me and don’t you both work for that fine lady?”

  I stood there, saying nothing. I wanted to say, “Asking for help would have been nice.” But I said nothing instead.

  Stan did the same.

  After a moment Benny caught the clue and started talking even faster than before, which I was surprised was possible.

  “Me and Dan there were on the third hole and we were partnered up in a match against Goldenburg and his assistant Tammy. She’s a sweet one, that Tammy, fills out those golf shorts real nice if you get my drift, and can hit a driver farther than the rest of us without even messing up her long brown hair.”

  “Are you talking about Goldenburg, the God of Magic and Illusion?” Stan asked.

  Benny nodded like his chin was on a spring on his chest and some kid had ahold of the string and was pulling it. “Sure, who else?”

  Stan just stared at Benny.

  I decided to just keep quiet and ask who Goldenburg was when I really needed to know.

  “So which team was winning?” Stan asked.

  “We were,” Benny said. “Two up and about to take the third hole as well. Goldenburg can’t hit an iron to save his life, and Tammy, bless those tight shorts, can’t putt, but it sure is fun to watch her try, if you get my drift.”

  “The bet?” Stan asked.

  “We win,” Benny said, “Tammy works for me for a month trying to get a hundred years of paperwork in my office filed,” Benny said. “You know how it goes, a fella gets behind and then there’s never enough time to get all the basic stuff done and besides, watching Tammy around the office for a month sure couldn’t hurt a guy, if you get my drift.”

  I bit my lip to not say anything. I bit it hard. Patty Ledgerwood, my girlfriend and sidekick says I look cute when I do that. But cute or not, at least it kept me from spouting out something that would derail Stan’s questions.

  “If you lose?” Stan asked.

  “I wash dishes in Dan’s restaurant down off The Strip for a month to help pay for a month’s worth of dinners Goldenburg and Tammy were going to eat there.”

  Benny shook his head and looked over at Dan’s body. “We weren’t going to lose, no way. Until this.”

  “So how did you kill your own golfing partner?” I
asked.

  Benny just shook his head. “He missed his second shot on the third hole and I might have made some comment about him being a dead weight or something like that and when I got done putting my club back in my bag he was gone.”

  “And then what happened?” Stan asked

  Benny shrugged. “We looked for him all over, but after five minutes Goldenburg said we had looked long enough and the rules of golf said we had to move on.”

  “Pretty sure that rule applies to lost golf balls, not partners,” Stan said.

  I again kept my mouth shut since I knew nothing at all about golf. It wouldn’t have surprised me, though, to know that there was a rule that you could only look for a lost partner for five minutes before moving on. Golf seemed that odd to me.

  “I told them to keep going and I would search for Dan,” Benny said. “I traced him here and that’s when I got you two because, honestly, I didn’t know what to think and all this seems just odd to me, being a detective and all, but I sure can’t trust my own gut on this one.”

  “So what’s your gut telling you?” I asked Benny.

  “That this is some sort of Goldenburg trick on me to get free dinners for a month at Dan’s place and I wouldn’t be surprised that even with Dan dead, Goldenburg will still collect after he wins.”

  Suddenly something that had been dinging in the back of my mind sort of dinged again, only slightly louder, like a timer on a microwave going off.

  “What did Dan get if you two won?”

  Benny looked at me and opened his mouth and then shut it. The little golfer detective was speechless for the first time since he pulled us to this body.

  Stan laughed. “Seems like Dan only won with you washing dishes for a month.”

  “So you saying him dying is a trick to get me to wash dishes at his place? I mean, not a very logical plan for a long-term business model.”