The Red Menace #3 Read online

  RED IS THE NEW GOLD

  There's more than meets the eye when inmates riot in a West Coast maximum security prison. What could transform men into wild beasts? Turns out the dead prisoners are guinea pigs in a larger scheme, and Washington sends in the only two men who can deal with the sinister plot.

  Patrick "Podge" Becket and Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright trace a trail of bodies to a crazy California cult whose demented leader welcomes all who seek truth. But enlightenment costs, mainly in the form of cold, hard cash into the bank account of failed writer and self-proclaimed High Star Admiral R. Gunn Hallifax.

  Hallifax's tall tales of out-of-this-world enemies have the gullible lining up in droves to join his church, and his disciples become an earthly army for their leader's terrestrial aims. There's nothing otherworldly about murder and mayhem. It's up to the Red Menace and Dr. Wainwright to discover just what the cult has to do with the head honcho of a down-on-its-luck perfume company, a Russian hit squad, a sexy Hollywood superstar, and a threat to all America.

  No matter what the stars have to say about it, here on Earth all the players quickly learn that even in the Golden State blood runs Red. Just like everywhere else.

  Red the Riot Act

  The Red Menace #3

  James Mullaney

  Bold Venture Press

  Copyright / Credits

  “THE RED MENACE” TM & © James Mullaney. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover by Mark Maddox

  Editor: Donna Courtois

  James Mullaney Books, December 2021

  Available in paperback from Bold Venture Press

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior express written consent of the publisher and the copyright holder.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  RED THE RIOT ACT

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  A Note from Jim

  About the author

  Other books by James Mullaney

  For Lynn, because she asked. And for all the old Victory gang.

  We were young once. What happened?

  Red the Riot Act

  1

  He just wanted to make everybody smell nice and to charge a scandalously high price to be of assistance. Where was the crime in that?

  Well, apparently it was simply everywhere, according to the lawyers. It seemed every aspect of this venture crossed the line into illegality, both national and international. So his solution was simple and elegant. He simply and elegantly stopped listening to the fuddy-duddy lawyers.

  Not that he ever really listened to lawyers very much. They were all such drab little men who obviously thought that off-the-rack was haute couture. So what if Leslie Petit was breaking a few teensy-weensy international laws? He was going to make history, the world would be a better-smelling place, and he’d make a fortune in the bargain. In the end the bottom line was all that truly mattered.

  But why was it history had to begin somewhere so godawful hot?

  “Sweetums, do you have to step in every gopher hole? I mean, really, can’t we just watch our little Watusi step? Gawd.”

  Another misstep from his bearers and Petit was nearly pitched through the mosquito netting and out into the mud. He would have thought it was deliberate, but for the fact that none of the natives spoke English so none knew that he had been insulting them ever since they’d hoisted him onto their shoulders back at the beach.

  The natives were not, in fact, Watusis. That was a completely different hellhole in another awful part of the sticky, smelly world. Petit actually didn’t know what sort of people they were. Just members of some vile little headhunter tribe on some forgotten island in the barely-charted waters somewhere east of the Philippines.

  The men had dark skin and vaguely Polynesian features. One looked a little like a young man with whom Leslie Petit had once had a deliciously scandalous affair. That other young man had worked at a sinfully upscale boutique in Manhattan. The one who was holding up the back of Petit’s litter wore a bone through his nose and a loin cloth, which Leslie Petit was convinced had been stitched from human skin. Maybe the two boys were related. If the one who seemed to be going out of his way to step in every hole on the island could speak English, Leslie would have asked him.

  Leslie felt a peculiar itch at his ankle and tugged up the leg of his silk trousers.

  “Oh, gawd, oh, gawd!”

  The creature was two inches long with some kind of sucker mouth. Leslie tugged it off and threw it through the mosquito netting, in the process letting in an equally large flying insect. Another series of frantic “oh, gawds” ended with a swatted bug on the belly of his expensive silk pajama top.

  The locals didn’t seem to care that Leslie was wearing his pajamas. He had packed normal clothes for the trip, of course, but this hell on Earth did not allow for fine fabrics to breathe. Leslie had nearly died — died — in his suit and cravat. And anyway, when one’s entire wardrobe consists of a flap of dried human skin over one’s privates with an accenting necklace of yellow human teeth, it was likely one wouldn’t know if the outfit that Leslie Herbert Petit chose to wear into the jungle wasn’t all the rage in Milan.

  The two natives carted him on their shoulders for two miles, and once they reached their destination Leslie was simply exhausted from the trip. He permitted them to put him down in the shade of a cluster of palm trees.

  “Hallo, Mister Petit! Welcome, welcome! Great to see ya, mate.”

  The fat man had a broad smile and an Australian accent. He was sweating up a storm in his tan short pants and matching short-sleeve shirt, and the capillaries that made his ruddy cheeks look like a map of miniature red rivers seemed to have sprouted dozens of brand new estuaries since the last time Petit had seen him.

  Ralph Macafellow flipped up the mosquito netting and helped Leslie Petit to his feet, taking but an instant to note the American’s purple silk pajamas and Gucci boots.

  The Australian’s gaze was quickly drawn from the new arrival’s peculiar sartorial choices to a forlorn moan. The sound rose up behind Macafellow.

  “The gang’s all here, mate, just like I promised.”

  They were in a clearing. In addition to the two natives who had carted Petit out into the jungle, there were twenty more men. Most were natives, but three were with the Australian. Two of the white men held machine guns in their hands and seemed suited to jungle travel in their khakis, brim hats and bored expressions. The third white was dressed in similar garb, but on him it looked out of place. Like a general who had gotten his uniform switched with a green grocer’s at the cleaner’s and was having to make do.

  The third white’s attention was focused on a large black boulder. As Leslie watched, the boulder rose slightly and fell and another moan escaped into the jungle.

  “That’s the beast, I presume?” Leslie asked.

  Without waiting for an answer from Macafellow, he circled around what he now knew was not a boulder, and saw some large feet, a very big head and a pair of closed eyes. It looked much like a hippo one would see in a circus, if one was the type of individual who attended circuses. Leslie Petit absolutely did not go to the circus. Far, far too smelly, and the purview of the most dreadful of the hoi polloi. The closest he had ever gotten to a circus was a simply gorgeous young acrobat who had originally trained for the Russian ballet before defecting to the West. Leslie vowed to himself that if he got out of this awful, steaming swamp alive he’d look that delightful young man up.

  The hippopotamus was much smaller than those found in Africa, with black skin that was slightly reddish up close, the result of a dusting of coarse red hair all over its body. The animal stunk to high heaven and insects buzzed all around it, concentrating heavily on the yellow pus-like substance that oozed from its closed eyes. There was a vine rope around its neck to keep it from fleeing, but the precaution was not necessary. This was a creature ready for death. It wheezed like a dying coma patient.

  “I don’t know why I have to be here for this,” Petit said. “You could have just done this after this beastly creature died.”

  “I tried,” Macafellow said, “but they wouldn’t release it to me, mate. Savage bastards know I ain’t important. Only to my chief. You’re the one with the deep pockets, so you got elected, mate. Only way they’d let the transaction take place.”

  One of the natives detached from the rest of the crowd and came over to Petit as the
thin, pale American circled the wheezing hippo.

  Leslie reasoned that he was their leader. Where the rest were thin and wrapped around with threads of thick muscle, this native was flabby. His human skin loincloth was nearly hidden by his hanging belly. Around his thick neck he wore a necklace of what appeared to be dried human fingers. At the prominent center of the necklace and hanging down between the two halves of his sagging chest was a Pepsi-Cola can that had washed up on shore.

  The chief slapped his own chest, then did the same to Leslie’s. Fortunately, the Australian had anticipated the greeting and caught Leslie Petit as the shocked American fell backwards, setting Petit back to his expensive leather boots.

  The native chief looked at Petit, then raised both arms to the heavens and shouted something in a tongue Petit did not understand and hoped never to hear again. The fat native concluded by slapping a hard palm to the rump of the sickly hippo. The animal groaned. The chief fixed his steely gaze on Petit.

  “The gift, mate,” Ralph Macafellow said out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Oh, thank heavens. I thought he just put me on the menu.”

  Petit stepped carefully around fresh mud puddles and crushed flora, swatting away swarms of hungry insects as he walked. He removed a cardboard box from beneath the mosquito netting and returned with it to the chief.

  Petit removed a white and black plastic transistor radio which, when clicked on, played only static. He thought this might be a sticking point if the natives expected Elvis Presley, or whatever gyrating crooner the kids were listening to these days, but the chief seemed delighted by the static. He rolled the tuning button as he was instructed, and he grinned while the other natives backed away in suspicion.

  Next were some plastic novelty Halloween bones, brought at Macafellow’s urging and the sight of which captivated and delighted the chief. Finally was the thing that the Australian assured Petit would seal the deal. Out came a six-pack of Pepsi-Cola, and with the appearance of this great treasure all the natives gasped in awe.

  The chief compared the shiny red, white and blue labels to the faded one on his chest. The natives barked in low voices at one another. The chief held his case of Pepsi to his chest, waved a hand to the hippo and spoke to Petit.

  “Does he think I understand this mumbo-jumbo talk?” Petit complained to Macafellow. “Mumsie tried to get me to learn French by sending me to Paris one lovely teenage summer. I learned a great deal, just not the language.” To the chief he loudly shouted, “Speak you the English!”

  The chief was taken aback by the thin, pale man’s tone as well as by the pair of flapping hands that Petit dangled in his face as punctuation.

  “He says it ain’t all love,” the Aussie interjected. He had been squinting as he tried to make out the unfamiliar words the chief was intoning. “You need to beware of the…blood curse? Angry blood. Something like that, mate.”

  The chief was quite adamant. He repeated the same grunts once more, pounded his chest several times, shook a fat fist at the hippo and bellowed at the sky in his resonant voice. Once his caveat emptor was issued, he and his tribe beat a hasty retreat into the bush lest the crazy whites change their minds.

  “He could have spared me his colorful native banter,” Petit said. “He’d already made the sale.” He flung into the bushes the empty box in which he’d hauled the chief’s treasures from America. A lingering native suddenly reappeared and snatched the box by one cardboard flap and, like a kid at Christmas happier with the box than the toy that came in it, vanished once more into the underbrush.

  “Wait!” Petit shouted. “My ride! That was one of my bearers! Come back!”

  But the swift footfalls of the native party faded away, replaced by the shrieks of native birds and the gurgle of a nearby stream. The hippo groaned once more.

  “Oh, let’s get this over with,” Petit demanded.

  The white man in the ill-fitting khaki clothes went to work. He ordered one of the armed men to shoot the hippo, and the creature was put out of its misery with three bullets to the forehead. The dissection was something Petit avoided by turning away, covering his mouth with a silk handkerchief and staring at the treetops.

  “This had better have the properties you claim,” he said.

  Ralph Macafellow stood beside Petit, arms crossed over his barrel chest as he watched the veterinarian slice up the expedition’s prize.

  “I saw it work a few times. First was back during the war. Backward crazies all over the world think they got love potions, mate, but none of them ain’t worth a handful of warm spit. But this stuff really worked. Drove women into a frenzy. Ancestors of old chiefie there traded it all over these islands. Problem is they killed every last hippo on the island to make the stuff. This poor bugger was the last one. The chief figured he’d only get a little more love potion from the last one, and what good was that to him? He’s old, so he figured he’d hold up us foreigners for something more valuable. Poor, dumb sod. What blighter in his right mind’d trade the chance to drive women wild for six cans of cola?” He suddenly realized to whom he was talking, and offered a sheepish shrug. “Present company excepted, of course, mate.”

  But the Australian, while loud and boorish and prone to speak before thinking, was dead wrong. Leslie Petit, CEO of Petit Perfumes, absolutely wanted to drive women wild. Men too, if this gunk worked and the boys in the lab could break the code.

  “You gotta wonder what he was talking about though,” Macafellow mused. “‘Angry blood.’ Wonder what he could have meant by that, 'specially since we’re talkin’ about a love potion.”

  “I’ve seen love turn to hate, then turn back to love again in an hour on pretty much every Saturday night of my adult life, darling,” Petit said. “Sometimes more than that, depending on what I’m drinking, popping or snorting.”

  “He didn’t say hate,” the Australian guide insisted. “He said anger. But big anger. He used a couple words that are like big and vast. So a big anger, like rage.”

  “An act for the tourists, that’s all. Have you ever tried buying a sari in a market in Zanzibar? These dirty little native salesmen are the same all over the world. Besides, if it works we’re going to dilute the hell out of the stuff. The only thing I want people to fall madly in love with is my latest product line.”

  Petit allowed a glance over his shoulder. The vet had his arms buried nearly to the elbows as he rooted around in the open wound he’d sliced into the hippo’s rear end. A moment of sweating triumph later and he extracted a brown blob the size of a coconut, which he quickly deposited into a steaming plastic container. He sealed the lid, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm, which did nothing but draw a thick streak of hippo blood across his pale, sweating skin, and handed the container over to Leslie Petit.

  The men with the guns flat-out refused to cart Petit out of the jungle. The Aussie and the vet tried to heft the litter, but they were worse than the natives as bearers. Petit finally decided that if he was ever going to get out, he’d have to walk.

  In two hours Leslie clomped back to the pristine white beach that encircled the island. He was covered in big, red welts from exotic bug bites and bloody stripes where branches scratched his delicate skin, but he had made it out alive with his prize.

  Ten minutes later he was on his waiting seaplane. Leslie was on a commercial plane an hour after that, and in two long days he was finally back home in civilization.

  The headquarters of Petit Perfumes, Incorporated was a gleaming glass building on ten acres of impeccably landscaped property at the fringe of Los Angeles County. The grounds were dreadfully expensive to maintain. Just the water that kept the grass and beds of pansies from withering away and dying cost Petit Perfumes a fortune.

  But, then, money had never been an object for Leslie Herbert Petit. Which was precisely why he had nearly gone out of business the previous year.

  Petit had never been particularly good at managing the money end of the business. Petit Perfumes had been started by his mother in the 1930s and, God love her, the Petit matriarch had handled all the grubby little fiduciary matters until her death five years before. Leslie Petit had no interest in sullying himself with the low work of accounting, and so it was that four years after he had assumed stewardship of the highly successful perfume company he found himself in a roomful of dreadful lawyers and even more dreadful accountants all telling him the same thing: his personal assets were all gone and his only source of income was about to go out of business.