Finally, the video....

Below is the link to the book trailer for Nocturne le vendredi, which came out November 2 in France. There will be an English version before the book comes out in the US next June. Ideally I will have  rerecorded the voice-over as I did a poor job the first time; this is all the more frustrating because Lane Davies, doing the voice of the psychopathic actor, gives a great performance.

The whole thing was edited by Jenna Marguerita, who also produced and co-directed the scenes with the actors, ably assisted by a group of students from the film department at Webster University. Thanks to them and to Jenna's company, Bitdepth Productions LLC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcnGPwYwQXA&feature=autoshare

(p.s.: Click the link above, not the pic below.)

The Cabinet of Dr. Sweeney, plus Bonus Ghost Sign

 A couple of years ago my filmmaker friend Mark W. Stone took me on a tour of the neighborhood where Dr. Francis Sweeney, almost certainly Cleveland's infamous Torso Killer, had his practice.

 Which building it was is impossible to say at this point, but these were the buildings that held those sorts of offices at that time.

 This one still houses some medical offices.

 On the right, a library converted into a chapel.....

 And here, windows both broken and boarded up.

And finally, a really nice Ghost Sign, in multiple languages (Czech?) advertising Mail Pouch tobacco.

The Temporary Sex-Change Conundrum, starring Colonel Charlie "Doughnuts" Duncan!

Another excerpt from my gifted protegé Troy Cutcross's sci-fi/espionage/erotic masterpiece, "The Conundrum Enigma: a Colonel Charlie 'Doughnuts' Duncan Sexy Thriller by Troy Cutcross." This is the end of chapter nine and the entirety of chapter ten. At this juncture "Doughnuts" learns from his superior officer (and jealous girlfriend) Tammi, that he's going in undercover in Pendarvis Correctional Penitentiary––in a very special disguise!

         “This prison—it’s in Russia?”

         “No—here in the US. But that works in our favor. You see––you’re going in undercover.”

         “Doughnuts” nodded. “I like it,” he proferred, imagining himself hitting prisoners on the head with a nightstick, like when he was a rookie spy on the streets of Des Moines, what seemed like a lifetime ago. “As a guard?” he asked, just to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood.

         “No,” she smiled. “As an inmate!”

         “I get it,” Charlie snarled. “It’s jealousy. You’re mad because you think I have more of a crush on Svetlana than on you, so you’re sending me into the general population of a penitentiary. How long do you think I’ll last in there, with a face like this?”

         She laughed, a laugh with a cruel sound in it that Duncan hadn’t heard before. It made his butthole clench a little. “It’s true, you’ve been called one of the handsomest men in the world. And guess what? Your back story is you’re halfway through one of those Swedish-type of sex-change operations!”

         “Wha-a-a?” Charlie exclaimed, so shocked he couldn’t even finish the simplest of one-syllable words.

         “That’s right. We want you to get the attention of the Cosmonaut right away, so you’ll be going in there with a surgically altered face and cleavage, to make you look like a pretty lady.”

         “That’s where I draw the line, lady! I won’t be part of your sick revenge scheme! In fact, I may even have to break up with you and resign from the agency and go back to Major League Baseball. You need to see a brain specialist and get to the bottom of your sick need to get revenge on me for a perfectly innocent space ride with a sexy spy whose advances I heroically resisted!”

         “It’s not my plan, ‘Doughnuts,’ it was Mad Dog’s.”

         “Wha-a-a-a?” Charlie said, again frustrated by his tendency to leave words unfinished when he was stupefied, or really surprised.

         “That’s right. He was killed right before he was going to tell you ‘Phase Three’ of the plan, which is if the Cosmonaut escapes you go into the prison undercover dressed as a lady so you can get close to him and kill him after finding out all about his operation.”

         Charlie thought about it. He was an extremely handsome fellow, and many people had told him he would make a beautiful lady. If it was Mad Dog’s idea, and in the best interests of the Agency and of the United States of America, who was he to say no?

         “Would they….” His voice got a little higher because of the fright, but he continued his query. “Would they cut off my little man?”

         “Your little man?”

         “My dinky.” Tammi still didn’t understand, because she had grown up in a house full of ladies with no father or brothers using vulgar “slang” terms for their male members such as “wiener” or “dinky.” “My penis,” he finally uttered, using the latin or medical term for the organ.

         “Of course not. And the boobs will come right off as soon as you terminate the mission. And your old face will be grafted back onto your skull using the same technology as when that lady the chimp tore the face off of that one time got her face back surgically.”

         “All right, then,” Charlie opined. “Let’s get this ‘show on the road.’”

CHAPTER TEN

        

         “Prisoner Number X-209907-J,” the warden bellowed. “You are hereby imprisoned in Pendarvis Maximum Federal Penitentiary for the Crimes of Armed Robbery, Mass Murder and Trafficking in Illegal Weapons such as Bombs and Ninja Swords. You will be here for ninety-nine years to life. Do you understand your sentence?”

         Colonel Charlie “Doughnuts” Duncan shrugged, an entirely different experience, he found, when lifting the shoulder also involved lifting a bra strap and a good five pounds of voluptuous bosom, in an effort to seem thuggish. “Whatever, screw,” he yawned, using prisoner slang for guard, even though technically the Warden wasn’t one of the guards.

         “I know a perfect place for you,” the warden sneered sadistically, which, Charlie thought, was probably the only way he ever shrugged. “In with the maximum security goons!”

         That was perfect, he thought. The Warden had no idea Charlie was a federal spy on an undercover mission, just in case he was “in cahoots” with Toborsky, which was prison slang for working with him on the sly. “Coolio,” Charlie said, trying to sound bored.

         “But maybe we can come to some sort of accommodation, or agreement.” The Warden came around the desk and sat on the arm of “Doughnut”’s chair and put an arm around his shoulder. “You’re very pretty, and I like your swell chest. If you’d like to stay in the Warden’s quarters, that could be arranged, along with a soft job in the prison library….”

         Just then he reached for one of Charlie’s brand-new bosoms, and with lightning reflexes the intrepid spy had grabbed the warden’s index finger and snapped it back until it broke with an unmistakeable sound of breaking!

         The Warden lay writhing, or wiggling, on the floor, and “Doughnuts” stood up.

         “Sorry, Warden Frenger, these boobs aren’t for playing with. I’ll be heading for Maximum Security now to take my chances with the goons.”

         He felt bad using his considerable martial arts skills on a wimpy guy like the Warden, but he knew that any sign of weakness on his part would be perceived as an invitation to touch his breasts without permission, and he didn’t intend to let that happen under any circumstances. These bosoms were for display only, and for Charlie’s own and only his own personal enjoyment!

         So when he first appeared with his knapsack and bedroll at the door of the Maximum Security wing, he looked around at all the chess-playing oafs in the rec room and wondered which of them would make a crack about his rack first. It was a good thing that it was a three-hundred pound guy with a broken nose and cauliflower ears like an old boxer who made a vulgar suggestion and invited “Doughnuts” to share his cell for what he clearly intended as “romantic” purposes! He also had a tattoo on his forehead of the bully character from the movie “Edward Scissorhands,” which just went to show what a big bully he was in the “yard,” or prison grounds.

         “Come and get me,” Charlie cooed seductively, and when the big ape stood up from his chess game Charlie kicked him in the face, cutting his nose with his spike heel. Then, when the goon went down, Charlie lifted him up with one hand and hurled him across the room so that everyone would know that even if Charlie was a beautiful lady on the outside, he was still a lethal killing machine!

         Everybody else went back to their chess games and Charlie strutted his way to his cell, which was about as comfortable as his barracks had been back in the army––which means not at all! He tossed his duffle bag in a manly way onto the cot and started filling the drawers of the armoire, or dresser. Top drawer was for wigs (because there had been no time to grow enough hair for lady-hairstyles), second for lingerie, third for makeup and perfume and bottom for shoes, which he had five pairs of, all high heeled. The dresses he hung from a waterpipe that ran the length of the cell and he wondered if he had overpacked, but then who knew how long this most unusual mission would last?

         A skinny little fellow approached his cell, carrying a flower. “A-hem,” he said, clearing his throat because you could tell he was nervous. “I see you’re new here.”

         “Yeah?” “Doughnuts” growled, forgetting to make his voice high like a lady’s, because unlike a real sex-change person he hadn’t had the hormone chemical treatments that would have grown real bosoms and raised his voice up and made him stop having to shave.

         “Sorry. It’s just that—well, I noticed you walking in and I thought, that must be someone with a sex-change, because why else would a…” He swallowed a big gulp of saliva because he was nervous. “A beautiful lady be assigned to a men’s prison?”

         This time Charlie remembered to raise his voice up high. “That’s correct, sir. I don’t like it one bit but here I am, little old me in here with all these brutish men, thinking of nothing but ways to fondle my breasts. I assume that’s why you’re here.”

         “Gosh, no, ma’am, I have no desire to be the consort of such a lovely lady, because my life would be in constant danger and I’d always be looking over my shoulder, worried about some tough lug stabbing me with a ‘shiv,’ which is prison slang for a homemade knife, in hopes of winning your love away. No, I just had a question.”

         “All right. What’s your question?” Charlie asked.

         The little fellow was sweating something awful. “Did they cut your little man off?”

BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT! More "Conundrum Enigma!"

More literary genius from my protegé, Troy Cutcross. Troy has generously given me permission to publish Chapter Four in its entirety! Previously, "Doughnuts's" boss at the spy agency had been assassinated by a Russian known as "The Cosmonaut." At the end of Chapter Three, Charlie arrived at the International Space Station only to find its entire crew dead, including his old friend Major Jacques LaVie.
And now.....
 

THE CONUNDRUM ENIGMA: A Charlie "Doughnuts" Duncan Sexy Thriller

by Troy Cutcross

CHAPTER FOUR

        

         Attached by a Laurel and Hardy-shaped magnet to the door of the crew refrigerator––reminding him of the nickname those jerks back at the agency had for Tammi––was a note.

       SORRY ABOUT ALL YOUR DEAD FRIENDS

       ––THE COSMONAUT

         He was a fiend, And now he had a head start to Europa! Who even knew what his plan was when he got there? A lesser man would have given up. But Colonel Charlie “Doughnuts” Duncan was not that lesser man.

         The first order of business after fixing himself a nutritious snack of Tang and Space Food Sticks was to get rid of the astronauts’ corpses. This was because the heavier the ship was the more fuel it used, even though they were in zero gravity, and if they weren’t alive, they were just “dead weight.” “Doughnuts” suddenly realized that the phrase he had just used was full of terrible irony of the sort that made him known as a great wit. This time his wit was tragic and not funny, he reflected.

         Standard protocol, or operating procedure, for removing cadavers, or dead bodies, from the International Space Station called for Duncan to wait until the Station passed over the dead astronaut’s home country and then shoving the former space hero out the hatch so that he or she would burn up in the atmosphere over his or her homeland. It so happened that just as he finished the last of his Tang he was passing over France.

         “So long, Jacques,” he said as he dragged Major LaVie by his boots across the floor to the trash expulsion hatch. “You were anything but trash, in my opinion––from now on I’m going to call this the ‘trash and heroes expulsion hatch’!” He was sniffling a little as he shot his old friend into space and toward the earth, and he didn’t even have to pretend it was allergies since there was no one to see him. Or so he thought.

         Next was a Captain Swierczinski, who came from Poland, which as near as Charlie could tell they would be passing over pretty soon. Not for the first time he wondered why the Poles, about whom jokes used to be told called Polack jokes which were anything but funny if you were one, used so many consonants in their names. Since he didn’t know the Captain he didn’t say anything, just stuck him into the hatch and blew it. There were two crew members from China, so he shot them down together, hoping that in life they’d been friends and that he wasn’t just making an assumption to save himself some time. Then there was a Korean Colonel, but since “Doughnuts” didn’t know for sure whether he was from North or South Korea he did his best to aim him toward the Demilitarized Zone between the two divided halves of the nation as a gesture toward international peace. As he watched the colonel burst into flames in contact with the earth’s atmosphere Charlie couldn’t help smiling at memories of the TV show M*A*S*H, which was set in Korea and always made him chuckle, even when there was a serious element as there often was in its best episodes, like the last one, “Goodbye Forever Amen.”

         Next there was a Lieutenant Nummelin, and since he didn’t know what kind of name that was he dropped him over the Pacific. There was only one astronaut body left, that of a beautiful woman. When he looked at her nametag he was surprised by two things: One, she was Russian, and he’d already passed over Russia! He cursed the fact that he’d have to wait until the Station got all the way over to that side of the world before he could relax and do his zero gravity exercises, which he would perform by turning off the artificial gravity. The second thing that surprised him was the size of her bosoms, which were quite large by western standards. Almost without thinking he put his hand on the left one, which is when he got his third surprise: she let out a loud gasp and slapped him in the face!

         “You’re alive,” he deduced.

         She squinted as though she were trying to place his face. “And you’re Charlie ‘Doughnuts’ Duncan!” she exclaimed, surprising Charlie, because he had no idea how she knew that.

         “How did you…” he began, intending to ask how she knew his face.

         “I recognized you from the pictures Major Jacques LaVie kept showing us all the time,” she said. “You are as handsome in person as in your photos, but that doesn’t mean you get to ‘cop a feel’ without permission!”

         “I’m very sorry. I thought you were dead.”

         “No harm done,” she said, and extended her hand. “Svetlana Skikorskova,” she said. “Where are my crewmates?”

         “All dead, I’m afraid.”

         “Murdered by that villain Toborsky! He’s a disgrace to the Cosmonaut program,” she spat.

         “I just got finished shooting them through the trash hatch toward their various native lands. I was going to do the same thing to you before I realized that you were alive.”

         “It’s a good thing you decided to get ‘fresh’ with my corpse, or I might have burned up alive! You don’t suppose…” She hesitated.

         “What?”

         “Nothing. I was just wondering if any of the others were just unconscious when you jettisoned, or shot, them out of the station.”

         “Doughnuts” thought about it really hard. No, he was pretty sure they’d all been dead, and he said so.

         “So,” she deduced. “Two questions: One, do you want a passenger on your trip to Europa, which Major LaVie told us all about?”

         “I guess I could use some company. Especially a pretty girl who speaks the Cosmonaut’s native ‘lingo,’ or language! Just in case we have to use his ship to get back and the controls are all marked in Russian, like in that one Star Trek movie whose number I can’t remember. Now what’s the second question?”

         She grabbed hold of her right bosom, the one Duncan hadn’t touched yet, and gave him a catlike smile of seduction. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Finally, the Weirdest Gift I Ever Received

Sorry for all the delays. I'd like to claim that I was busy but the fact is I've been too freaked out by the sinister vibes emitted by this anniversary gift from my wife to have much enthusiasm for taking the thing out of its box:



She told me I'd be creeped out by it. "I doubt it," I said. When I started unwrapping it, my first guess was that it was a piece of antique stereoscopic equipment. Then I thought: Welding goggles?



But no, the lens covers were perfectly opaque--metal painted black--and in any case the turrets held no glass. I was baffled, at least until my wife bade me read the card that came with it:



So that explains the sweat stains in the leather. How many men died wearing these, I wonder?

Cleveland

You'd think that with my unfortunate resemblance to Drew Carey (that guy is the bane of my fucking existence) I'd stay away from his hometown. But I can't. I love the town and its history, and I recently spent a very pleasant few days and nights there as a guest of Mark and Amy Stone and their delightful children, looking with Mark into a seventy-five year old cold case. Here are some of my new friends:

This is Flo Polillo, or rather a replica of her head in the Cleveland Police Museum. Actual head's whereabouts have been a subject of debate since 1935.

Above is s replica of Edward Andrassy's head. Actual head was found, but had been separated from Eddie's neck; said removal appeared to be the cause of his decease.

Here's Rose Wallace's plaster stand-in, modeled from a cast of her skull and based on photographs. Identification was tentative and based on dental work.

Finally, this is an actual death mask modeled from the head of a fellow known only as "The Tattooed Man." Can you think of a better name? Give it a try!

Here's Doc Stone himself, looking over Kingsbury Run, the flats associated with the murders. Mark directed the great documentary "The Fourteenth Victim" (available on Amazon), about the case. You should all order it and get creeped out good and solid.

And finally, my new friend Itchy. Itchy is resting in this picture.

"I Wouldn't Come Up Here and Lie to You."

In Wichita Kansas on the night of May 3, 1921, Mortz (Moritz?) Schmidt came home to his wife Mary Francis (Frances?) and threatened her several times with a gun. By 7:30 on the morning of the 4th he was dead, and within two hours his widow was making a statement to the Chief of Police, the Deputy County Attorney, a stenographer and, oddly, a Special Agent for the Rock Island Railroad: (Click to enlarge)

Prohibition was in force at the time, which may account for the fact that no mention is made of alcohol having been consumed, but Schmidt's behavior certainly seems alcohol-fueled.
The opening statement indicates that the couple lived at 417 E. Douglas, but her statement indicates that the address was 417 E. Dewey.


Ambrose Bierce said there are four kinds of murder: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy (a tip of the hat to Craig McDonald). This I would qualify as belonging to the last category. Almost ninety years on the story still feels very modern, thanks perhaps to the stenographer's accuracy in recording Mary Schmidt's distinctive phrasing. I'd love to know what happened to Mary after this. Does anyone know if Deputy County Attorney Sidney Foulston is any relation to recent Wichita DA Nora Foulston?