Chapter 1: It Ain’t Over (plus Trailer)

Diet Frisky.

The one-cal soda of a new breed of go-getting businessgirls steaming up the big window of Pumpin’ Jack’s gym, now open in the financial district among the shiny tall buildings and the creme-brulee burning smell of success. A chorus line of determined Olivia Newton-John leotards and imported name-brand hairspray, at PJ’s for an after-office bloodrush before home to switch shoulder pads and off out for an evening on the good shit: Moet et Chandon Bucks Fizz, Beaujolais Perrier spritzers, few toots of Bolivian flake to keep the batteries charged, dinner the price of a used Jeep and the size of a breathmint with a squirt of garlicky schmutz on a plate the size of a trashcan lid, then back to the penthouse for high-heeled disco-dancing on a precarious glass coffee table and smart-casual sex with some yuppie cash-flasher with a Louis Vuitton ego and a Walmart dick.

It was the same window that, back when the building was Murray’s department store, goggle-eyed kids would press up against it and covet the christmas toys and look out for the big fat drunk Santa that went nuts and shot up the place that one time. Now the fat Santa and candy had become buns of steel, high-flying attitudes and premium sugar-free cola (in cherry, regular, or new rhubarb). Time was moving on, people, you embrace it or you get left behind. You snooze, you lose. You’re the winner or you’re something’s dinner.

The weekend was coming. It was Friday night, May 18th 1984, and, if you kept pushing, kept sweating, kept your eyes open, and kept refreshed, anything really could happen in the city of Violet Palms. Particularly this weekend.

-

VIOLET PALMS

By Neil Jay Huxley

Chapter 1: It Ain’t Over

The gym had other windows. In a sales office a teenage boy was staring out of one of them. His badge said Scott Stevens - Member Assistant, and his face said Scott Stevens - Checked-Out-Miserable-Screw-This-Bullshit-Life-All-To-Hell.

He was sat next to a desk that wasn’t his, a fact clear from the name-toblerone saying Trip Jacks – Sales, and from the owner of that name, a pumped-up caffeinated preppy with a face only his mother wouldn’t punch and with a pink sweater tied over his shoulders like he’d made a shawl out of a murdered muppet. Trip was pacing fists balled like a sasquatch with the shits who was twelfth in line for the toilet.

He stopped pacing and pointed at Scott, whose head was present but his eyes were outside.

“I didn’t ask for you to be here, Scott.” Trip paused to think, “I asked for you not to be here, is what I asked for. There’s no U in team. No fuckin’ you in my motherfuckin’ team!”

Scott looked tired, like he’d been playing the same continuous video game for sixteen years that kept changing the rules and electrocuting him every time he won a point.

Trip continued, “See, my position is, I got lumped with, uh, you, because cos no-one here has the balls to invest in real talent.” He shook his head at the unfairness of life. “I asked for a fuckin’ sales team and all I get is ‘ask Scott to help’.”

He pulled a self-pitying face, like someone who’d been given a mop for Christmas.

“But look at ya. You’re not a fucking salesman.”, he said, clinging onto the word ‘salesman’ like it meant ‘Knight of the Realm’, or ‘Sexy Thong-Model Astronaut of the Decade’.

Trip adjusted the canvas belt on his chinos and looked out the window. “You gotta speculate to acc…limatise. To climb...the corporate ladder, man. I’m a fuckin’ captain of industry – I built myself from nothing...”

Scott mumbled at the window. “It’s your grandad’s company, your desk’s in a storage room.”

Trip leaned down to breath-smelling distance from Scott’s face and eyeballed him. “What did you say to me?”

Scott kept looking outside and mumbled again. “Nothing.” he said.

Trip stood up and ran his fingers through his crusted hair gel, causing a dandruff snowstorm on his dead muppet sweater. “I oughta kick your fuckin’ ass again, but I don’t want your cheap blood on my expensive shoes. See these? Smell the Armani.” He pronounced it Are-mainy, and did a clunky worse-than-white-belt karate kick an inch from Scott’s face.

There was the faint sound of a ripped pants-crotch.

Trip adjusted his pants and did his pointing thing again, emphasising syllables. “I. Am going. Fucking. Places. I oughta send you a fuckin’ bill for just talkin’ to ya, but you’re too poor to pay it, anyway.” He smirked at this reminder of his superiority, “I got a plan, yeah, and I’m not gonna let you fuck it up for me. You need to get your own fuckin’ plan.”

Scott still looked outside, watching traffic. The lights changed at the intersection and the cars flowed on, off to wherever they were going for the weekend, to happy homes, adventures, swanky restaurants, lake houses, whatever.

Among the flow was a truck and, lights on green, it didn’t need to slow down, turning a smooth right at an easy speed. The picture on the side of the trailer showed a man in a deckchair, tie loosened, drinking a cold, refreshing beer. With him were dancing bikini babes, a sweet boombox and a palm tree. In big letters, BRUSTSCHLÄGER in a German font, and a couple of Brusts will set you free in an American one.

“That’d be good” Scott mumbled. Trip didn’t hear him as he was still posturing and ranting while fonzy-ing his hair in a mirror.

Then the beer truck jerked. And it wobbled. It swerved an elderlywoman walking a poodle and lost control. The cab jackknifed, the trailer pushing it sideways, tires scraping a black line the wrong way across the road. It was headed right in the direction of the gym.

Scott looked at Trip, who was clearly unaware of anything but his own reflection.

The truck skidded closer, Scott watched the driver desperately pulling on the wheel, somehow getting the cab in line with the trailer. But it careered on, bumping up onto the sidewalk, out of view. For just a second.

BAM!

The wall shattered as the truck crashed through it, right where Trip was. The grill hit him like a giant’s sledgehammer and he went straight down. The truck slowed as it carved through the ceiling. It stopped dead, the falling bricks bouncing off the hood, mostly onto Trip. He screamed. A lot. He was writhing in pain on the floor. Wailing in agony.

From the slashed tarp on the side, cans fell, rolling, bouncing everywhere. Hundreds of them, like the jackpot on a beer fruit machine. One landed on the desk and rolled slowly to a stop in front of Scott. He sat motionless and perplexed. Then he looked at the beer.

But his attention was distracted by a loud crack in a nearby wall, which immediately collapsed in one lump, crashing to the floor, some of it onto Trip, whose receding whimpers of pain turned back into a howl as the dust kicked up around him. Through the dust, through the space left by the wall, was a changing room, and in that changing room one naked middle-aged man was drying his nutsack with a flannel. He looked as confused as Scott.

The door of the truck swung open and the driver fell out, dropping twisted-legged onto the rubble. The radio was up loud in the cab, and Celebrate by Kool and the Gang flooded the room. The driver, concussed, stumbled over the hundreds of cans everywhere, and climbed out through the truckhole in the wall.

Scott, watching the scene — soundtracked by Kool and the Gang, the agonised screams of Trip Jacks, and nutsack-drying guy yelling ‘what the fuck?’ — picked up the beer. He cracked it open, making a refreshing kuh-shhhh sound, and took a tentative sip. He nodded approvingly. And took another.

-

Out in the street, the concussed delivery driver, stumbling out of the truck-sized hole in the wall, his blood pressure clearly shooting up like a thermometer, looking enraged enough to knock out George Foreman, yelled and gesticulated at an oil-slick black ‘81 Cadillac with a smashed taillight that was speeding away down the boulevard…

“You motherfuckers I’llfuckingkillyoubastardslookatwha... ”

...and out of sight.

***

…That was Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson with ‘To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before’. Y’know there’s a version of that song where they actually list all the girls. It’s a day and a half long and it’s available on seven-yard single — You’re listening to KVLT Violet Palms, the station with more pop hits than the guy that mugged my grandpa. We’re comin’ up to seven pm, and, wherever you are in VP, whether you’re out in the last hour or so of sunshine or hunkered down in a dingey hole like me, we’ll get through it together, through to nine o’clock every weekday, it’s Drivetime with me Kenny Heron. We’ll be back with Robert Palmer and Some Guys Have All the Luck, after this ad break.

--

The Francis Helio Company are proud to announce that we have completed purchase of the bankrupt Valentine’s department store in Big Berry Mall. We even bought the inventory! To celebrate the re-opening of this historic Violet Palms landmark after six months of closure, all items from the old store will be half-off over the coming weekend, even the restaurant! Why not try our blue cheese turkey lasagna and authentic Mexican flan?

From fur coats to synthesizers, from toothpicks to canoes, we have everything you need, and everything you want, at Valentine’s Department Store. Open from 9am Saturday. (Parking validated with purchases only. Canoes not guaranteed to float. The terms ‘everything’ and ‘turkey’ used in a general sense and are not to be taken literally.)

***

The driver of the black Cadillac turned up Robert Palmer, pumped the accelerator and squeezed the car between a station wagon and a phone booth so tight you’d think Vaseline was involved.

“Your car corners like a herd o’ heifers.” she said, dragging the wheel, screeching the thing almost side-on into a dumpster-scattered alleyway.

She pushed her scuffed high-heel on the gas, inertia pressing her to the seat, the back-end thumping a wheeled dumpster and sending the thing barreling up the alley.

Up ahead on a step, a lounging Chinese chef, sneaky smoke in one hand, generous hip flask in the other, looked up at the sight of the oncoming dumpster heading at a crazy speed in his direction. He flung himself out of the way, cigarette and flask thrown skyward. The somersaulting ash and booze collided in mid-air, ignited, and landed in the speeding dumpster. The Cadillac buzzed past.

To the whoof!ing sound of suddenly flaming rum-soaked trash, the Cadillac burst from the alley and swung left onto a main street, followed by the runaway rolling dumpster fire, which hit a hydrant and threw flaming cardboard, split trash bags and used oriental grease in one great wall of Chinese flames across the road.

Bursting through the flames came a white ‘76 Ford Pinto.

“There he is” said the Cadillac driver, rolling the wheel round with one hand while fishing in a sequinned handbag with the other. The handbag didn’t match the shoes she was wearing, or the ballgown, or the leather of her gun holster. She pulled out a stick of Juicy Devil Cinnamon Gum and waved it like a polaroid.

The Pinto clearly had its foot all the way down, but it was all over the place, swinging on and off the sidewalk. This guy was no seasoned getaway driver. He was, however, apparently unfucked about pedestrians, tourists, restaurant valet-parkers, barflies, hookers and all the other Friday night moving targets frantically jumping out the way.

The Cadillac kept to the road and made up some space. The driver, her eyes front, locked on the target, unpapered then unfoiled the gum with the hand that wasn’t holding the car on the asphalt. Up front, the Pinto barrelled through a stop sign.

“Jesus fuckin’ nutjob...” she chewed, open-mouthed.

Eyes scanning left and right, she followed in the Pinto’s slipstream. Horns blared in all directions, tires screeched. A voice next to her in the passenger seat squealed.

“Detective! Slow down! Jesus Christ!!”

The squealer squirmed, white knuckles clawing on the dash like he was falling off a cliff. His overdone Just For Men hair-dye seemed to be returning to gray in realtime. He had the look of a man who’d shit his tuxedo.

The driver stuck a second stick of gum in and chewed it cowgirl baccy-style. She didn’t look at him.

The Pinto had managed to get into some kind of a straight line and was building up speed. The Cadillac followed, weaving in and out of honking and hollering drivers. Another deathtrap-crossing flashed past, then the road without warning dropped to a downhill gradient somewhere between ski slope and cliff face. Neither car slowed, whether by driver’s choice or total surprise. The Pinto left the ground.

One second.

Then the road dropped out from beneath the Cadillac.

For a moment both cars were in flight. The driver gripped the wheel. The passenger squirmed and sweated and tooted a terrified fart.

The Pinto crushed back to the ground first, landed awkwardly on two side wheels, but it didn’t slow, carrying on downhill while flailing about like a broken compass.

Then the Cadillac thumped back to earth, a pained crunch of bending axle and escaping hubcaps. It swung into oncoming traffic, but the driver dragged it back again just in time.

The two cars and two newly-free hubcaps continued barrelling downhill, straight onto another intersection. One of the escaped hubcaps headed for a street corner occupied by a pair of breakdancers battling on a cardboard sheet. The dancers split in two as it whipped between them, then turned to watch it impale a parked bus.

On the other side of the road the second hubcap shot towards a bus stop, a poster on the side showing the face of the man in the passenger seat, all smiling eyes and sincere trust-me teeth, underneath the words VOTE MAYOR LESLIE SHWENK FOR RE-ELECTION.

The hubcap thwacked straight into the face and smashed his sincere smile to smithereens. Mayor Leslie Shwenk, the real one, looked horrified, and gingerly touched at his cheeks.

The Pinto ploughed through the intersection, clipping a Volkswagen but barely slowing down. The Cadillac accelerated through, another Vaseline manoeuvre, between a Porsche and an ice-cream truck, and followed the Pinto onto a freeway on-ramp. Traffic was busy and the driver was forced to slow down, a few cars behind.

Elton John came on the radio.

“Mr Mayor”, said the driver, strangling the wheel, “You do understand if he gets away he’s gonna keep on killing. More dead maids and busboys folded up in elevators, and orphaned sons of waitresses, couple more hookers with their faces blown clean off. Maybe he’ll kill someone important next and abraca-fuckin’-dabra there’s overtime and forensics don’t take six weeks unless you let the lab tech spend twenty minutes alone time with your stinky shoes. Didn’t you pledge to clean up the streets for your kids or some shit?”

She punched the horn like she was trying to get a confession out of it. “This is cleaning up the fuckin’ streets.”

“It’s us that’s gonna be cleaned off the streets if you don’t watch it! Watch that car!”

“And...” she chewed, “It weren’t me that ran that Brumeister truck off the road, it was him.”

As the driver swung from lane to lane, wedging into any space she could find, the Mayor started coughing. He squinted and waved his shaking hands.

“Is this a time to smoke?”

In the back seat behind the driver was a huge, stocky, mustachioed man. His face was a combination of fresh cuts and bruises, black eye, seven o’clock stubble and entirely smudged, inexpertly-applied women’s makeup mixing with the dry blood. He was wearing a string vest which showed his hairy boulder shoulders and a faded army tattoo. And he was enjoying a Cuban cigar.

“I’ve had a stressful day.” he growled.

The Mayor switched between the two of them like a dog watching a tennis match on fast forward.

“Stressful day? Fucking up your operation, is the day you two have had! You were supposed to catch that killer in the act, right! That’s what you were doing, huh?”

“Hey, that’s not fair. I got shot.”, sulked the man in the back seat, his voice getting gruffer with the smoke, “That’s not that dickhead’s usual MO. Well, it is, but I was prepared for close up combat y’know. He’s always, like this, point-blank in the chest. Likes to get blood on himself, the fruitcake. But the shots came from, who knows, outta the shadows.”

He pointed off somewhere beyond the mayor, who looked around, trying to figure whatever the hell this guy was pointing at.

The man continued “I had a vest under the dress. But one got me. Right in the noggin. I fell down these concrete stairs. It fuckin‘ hurt.”

The mayor looked out the window and grumbled under his breath, then whipped around in his seat and fully took in the man in the back. “The dress?! What dress? You stood in for the opera singer? You? For Holly Hollinswood!”

When the Mayor mentioned the opera singer’s name he seemed to sit up straighter, like the Queen of England had just walked in. He turned to the driver, “There was press at the opera house. You couldn’t have done it?”, and motioned to her general woman-ness.

“I got the bosoms but not the ass, Sir.” she replied.

The man in the back waved his cigar and whinced in pain when he moved. “Yeah, had to be me, in the dark of backstage we decided I got the silhouette, well, the closest to, and I can sing pretty loud. Those people are like beautiful big fat fog horns.”

“Dougie does have a giant ass and a big mouth.” said the driver.

“Thank you, Jackie.” he replied.

For someone who had just been shot, apart from the whincing in pain, Dougie had a demeanor more closely to that of a grizzly bear who’d had a nice day at the beach, maybe had some delicious seafood and won a sandcastle competition.

“This deflected it”. He held up an old football helmet with horns taped to the sides and a long ladies’ wig falling out the inside. “Saved my life. Traffic cops should wear these.”

The Mayor looked at it with a mixture of horror and disdain. “Keep hold of that thing. If I survive this, that’s what you two are gonna be, if you’re lucky.”

The mayor turned to watch the Pinto, then turned back.

“You were hiding for the killer in the dark, why are you wearing woman’s makeup? ”

“I wanted to see what he’d look like”, said Jackie.

Up ahead, the Pinto pulled into the harbour district.Two lefts then a right, unsuccessfully trying to shake off the tail. It went into narrow roads and twisted through narrower back roads, scraping through a gap in a wire fence and into an alleyway. Then it broke hard.

The Cadillac pushed through the fence. Jackie braked. There was a crowd there. Punks. All leather and patches, weird colored-hair, chains hooked to everything, anything that could be studded was studded. They were milling outside a probably-not-legal nightclub in an old factory. Immediately the Pinto sped up again, playing ten-pin with the punks in its way.

“Shit.” said Jackie. She hit the horn and rolled down the window. “Outta the goddamn way!”

As she rolled, pushing through the crowd, the punks all stared back, except for one.

“Police!” Yelled Jackie, “Get out of the fucking ... hello, Commisioner?”

One member of the crowd clearly trying to look like he hadn’t noticed the car pushing through the crowd, a grey-haired man in a lot of leather, timidly nodded at Jackie then looked away.

As they slowly rolled past, Dougie, through the window, gave the commissioner a slightly bewildered salute and then a very impressed thumbs up.

The path now clear of people, Jackie slammed on the gas. The Pinto was out of view but it was kicking up dust.

She followed the dust around a corner. Another corner. Then another. The killer had put some distance between them but his driving sucked and he’d nigh-on wrecked the car by this point. Jackie popped a cinnamon bubble and followed.

“It was Brustshläger” said a voice in the back seat.

“What?” said Jackie.

“It was Brustshläger, it wasn’t Brumeister.”

Next to Dougie was an angular woman with business suit, business hair, business shoulder-pads and knees-together business posture. She had the air of someone that had tried dessert once and found it too frivolous. She appeared to be gripping onto the seat with her ass, and she was gritting her teeth so much that when she talked she sounded like a bad ventriloquist.

“Nah, Bush Lager’s got the sexy kangaroo” said Dougie.

“No, ya pervert, it was Brumeister, it had the German tuba logo thing.” said Jackie.

“Yer thinking of Flügelberg.” said Dougie, gripping the handle as the car one-eightied round a blind bend.

“Fuckin’ love that commercial.” said Jackie.

“Oh yeah.” said Dougie, and conducted with his cigar as they both sang. “Flugelberg, Flugelberg…”, bursting into an appalling Oktoberfest harmony, “Beer for all occaaaaasions...”.

The mayor exploded. “It doesn’t fucking matter! What fucking beer! It fucking was!” he shouted, inches from a panic attack. “Veronica, pull yourself together. First thing Monday I want these two reprimanded by their captain. Get their names.

Dougie leaned back, flicked his eyes at Jackie in the rearview mirror for a second,stretched and turned to Veronica.

“Well, there doing everything she can to save the city from the deranged B.O.T killer is Detective Jackie Dallas, an’ I’m Detective Douglas Franks, Homicide, VPPD West, badge number one-two-oh-five. Shoes size twelve, I don’t like pickles and I met Andy Warhol once in a malt shop in New Jersey. People call me Dougie Wonderland. Because I enjoy the nightlife and I’m a very good dancer. Sounds like Boogie Wonderland, y’see. Jackie, there, prefers a fistfight in a country bar.”

Veronica said nothing, looking so far out of her comfort zone she couldn’t see it with a telescope. Dougie leaned away and nodded, then leaned back in.

“She’s also the oldest.”

“Fuck you, Franks”, Jackie said into the rearview.

The big man smiled, took a drag on his robusto, leaned back towards Veronica and stage-whispered “She’s very sensitive about it.”

The Pinto ran out of corners to hide behind and floored down a long stretch of alleyways with the lights of a main road at the end. As Jackie followed, two overalled men carrying a huge framed painting appeared from the shadows. The Cadillac smashed through it.

“Tell me that wasn’t a Rembrant or something.” said the Mayor, by now as grey and sick as a stowaway hippo on a fishing boat.

The Cadillac sped out into the city, following the Pinto as it skimmed past a Ford van — to the sound of the driver cursing them in what sounded like French — into the streaking white lights of the Weston tunnel.

“It was…” started Veronica.

“It was dogs playing snooker” said a little British woman’s working-class voice way down in the corner of the back seat, in a tone quite unfussed by the high-octane action that was endangering everybody’s lives. “They were chucking it in the rubbish. No need for anyone to shit their knickers.”

A tiny old woman popped off some foam Walkman headphones and, not looking at anybody in particular, nonchalantly rolled a smoke.

The Cadillac followed the Pinto out the tunnel and back onto the freeway.

Traffic was heavy. Jackie braked hard as an oncoming motorcycle overtook on their side of the road. The old woman dropped her cigarette.

“Ah, shit!”, she said.

“Sorry, Babs” said Jackie,

“No worries, Jaqueline, sweetheart, you do your job.”

The traffic got thicker. The Pinto weaved and shoved and bullied through every available gap. It was playing bumper cars, and by the look of it, it was fifty-fifty whether this guy was gonna get away or the car was gonna fall to bits.

“It’s pool. Not snooker” said Veronica, looking like someone holding a live bee in her mouth. “It’s dogs playing pool. Can anybody do anything correctly?”

Babs leaned forward and spoke to the rest of the car. “What’s wrong with this one? Is it her first day on the force?”

“Nan, she’s the Mayor’s assistant.” said Dougie, lighting a match with his thumb, leaning over and lighting her roll-up.

Babs pulled a face like she’d ordered strawberries and got pickled onions. “Oh, that twat?”

“I’m the Mayor, thank you” said a voice from the front.

Jackie’s eyes were on B.O.T. disappearing and reappearing behind the waves of traffic. She pulled a third stick of Juicy Devil from her handbag and did the one-handed unwrap.

“Sorry you ended up part of this, Nan.” said Dougie.

“That’s alright, love, yer still my favourite grandson. The opera was a bit shit, if I’m honest. Thanks for the ticket though. Got me Black Sabbath to drown it out”, she waved the Walkman at everyone, “I snuck out for a cheeky cherry brandy and you lot come running out. I thought, thank fuck for that, it’s over, we must be off, so I got in here. What went wrong, anyway?”

Dougie talked with the cigar in his mouth. “We knew the B.O.T. killer was gonna be there to kill Holly Hollinswood, the opera singer, right? He was like her biggest fan, seen all her shows…”

“He was at all her shows?” said the Mayor.

“...but, we found out from Vice that she got busted trying to run to Tijuana with a shit ton of coke. I mean a legitimate shit ton. They go through her stuff, there’s letters, turns out she’s been cosying up to B.O.T. for months. Had him pop off a rival singer too...’

“The sick cunt”. Babs shook her head and tutted disapprovingly.

“...but they fell out,” said Dougie, “now he writes to her he’s gonna kill her. He doesn’t want anyone else to see the show, yada yada, so we knew when he’s gonna do it. He didn’t know that we know. So long story short, I wait in the wings as the decoy for him to creep up on me. We’re ready to get him, but then out of nowhere I get shot, which is not his style and...”

“And that’s the story of two detectives on their last day at work” said the Mayor.

“Have you ran his plates or whatever it is you do?” said Babs.

“There’s no radio in this car, Babs, it’s the Mayor’s.” said Jackie.

“It’s my car the killer’s driving.” Veronica said, thousand-yard staring out through the windshield.

“No wonder you’re in a bloody mood, love.” said Babs, patting Veronica on the knee, “Jaqueline, step on it. Get the fucker.”

A gap emerged between two towtrucks. Jackie stepped on it and pushed through, creating a clear view of the B.O.T. killer slaloming the pinto around the traffic.

Getting closer. One of B.O.T’s rear wheels was off-whack and there was smoke coming from somewhere, in fact from several somewheres, and he was clearly in trouble. He obviously knew this as he faked a left, then cut past a bus and pushed his way off the freeway exit. Jackie, by combination of punching the horn, yanking the parking brake and bouncing off a tour bus that may or may not have been Aerosmith - there was no time to have that debate - managed to catch that exit, two cars behind.

-

The sun was almost down, the horizon glowed streaks of pink and orange like someone was burning a million flamingos. Up ahead, B.O.T. seemed to be looking for somewhere to hide. The Pinto didn’t have long to live.

There’d been no left turn for a mile, due to the train track following the road. On that track, joining in the chase, was a freight train. Up ahead a sign read Loralei Train Yard, and B.O.T. swung into the yard entrance, through the gates. He threw the knackered Pinto across the track, scraping in front of the train.

Jackie followed and slammed on the brakes inches from the track. The train strobed past. It was long, too long, too fucking goddamn long. She revved, her eyes fixated on the spot where B.O.T. had been.

The last train car whipped past. Beyond it the buckled Pinto had hardly got anywhere, hobbling away across the dirt, zombie-like, minus a bumper and a side mirror and apparently all of its gas. Jackie and Dougie unholstered their guns and jumped out the car.

But Jackie froze and looked at the train. Dougie stopped and looked at her.

“Yeah, he’s on it.”

They both jumped back in the car and Jackie wheelspun straight onto the train tracks. There was nowhere else to drive, they were chicken-wired in on one side and a steep dirt bank on the other. She floored it in the direction of the escaping train, sleepers battering the Cadillac’s suspension to hell. She dragged the car onto the adjacent track, something underneath gave an almighty bang and, whatever it was that fell off, it didn’t stop them from catching up and just about levelling with the back end of the train. Just. The car needed to hold together.

But there was no sign of B.O.T. No sign of anyone. No one to flag down. No engine drivers with big hats. No serial killers. Just freight cars carrying freight.

Jackie high-heeled the brake. The car skidded, slid and bumped to a dead stop. The freight train carried on and left them behind.

“What’s up, partner?” said Dougie.

“You drive.” said Jackie, pulling the keys and jumping out the car.

Jackie stomped round to the trunk, unlocked it and flung it skyward.

Inside the trunk, in a twisted fetal position, sweating and dishevelled, in a crumpled viking dress with a dislodged horned helmet poking at her coccyx, was a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound opera singer.

“Out.” said Jackie, ungracefully lugging the opera singer out the trunk like a pissed-off airport baggage handler, shoving the horned helmet back on her head and perpwalking her in her one shoe around the Cadillac.

Dougie was out the car. Jackie pushed the singer into his vacated back seat, tossed him the keys and shoved her all the way in, like someone trying to get a duvet in a handbag. Dougie jumped in and quickly turned the ignition. You could just hear Veronica making a muffled sound like someone stuck underneath a pile of used motel mattresses.

“Holly Hollinswood?” said the Mayor, who would have taken his hat off if he was wearing one.

Dougie size-twelved the gas.

They sped off rumbling up the tracks toward the escaping freight train. Jackie wound the sunroof open.

“Stand up!” she yelled, grabbing Holly Hollinswood by the scruff of the neck and shovinh her horned head up through it.

Up out the sunroof, Jackie and Holly’s torsos squeezed through, the wind whipping at Jackie’s hair and Holly’s helmet. Dougie had the Cadillac just catching up with the freight train. There was still no sign of the killer.

“Fucking sing!” shouted Jackie.

“W..what?” said Holly.

Jackie pulled her gun out and stuck it against Holly’s helmet.

Do that glass-cracking shit now or I blow your brains out. I’ll do it, I’ll do all the fucking paperwork too.”

“S...sing what?”

“I dunno, your goddamn greatest hits.”, said Jackie, gun not moving from its target while she scanned the train up and down.

The bewildered opera singer began a stuttered aria.

“Get to the motherfucking chorus.” yelled Jackie.

Holly took a nervous breath, and did a long note, watching Jackie’s none- reaction. Then higher. Even higher. As she held it the metal on the Cadillac roof seemed to vibrate.

From two freight cars away, a man with a bleach blond side parting and a torn stockbroker suit popped his head out the freight train door. He looked shocked at the opera singer stuck out the sunroof of a Cadillac doing the highlights of Der Ring des Nibelungen.

“Jack! Four o’clock!” shouted Dougie from down below.

Jackie spun to four. “Got ya” she snarled and unloaded her gun at the man.

But immediately the Cadillac skidded. A crunching sound, it lurched and grinded along the tracks. Jackie and Holly whiplashed forward, Jackie’s arm swinging way off target, shots going everywhere but the serial killer. The car slowed to a dead stop.

And the freight train left them behind. A faint sound of a victorious, scoffing laugh disappearing in the distance.

Jackie, bent over the car roof, one hand on the windshield, let off a volley of shots. Almost too far to see, the man’s shoulder jerked and he fell back into the train.

The Cadillac made a rasping, whining sound.

Jackie righted herself and squeezed down past the chest of the opera singer and shouted into the car. “What the hell happened!?”

The Mayor’s hand, shaking, was clamped on the parking break. Dougie punched it off and tried starting the car. But it wouldn’t move.

“It’s shot to shit” he said.

Saying nothing, the Mayor opened the door and left the car. Jackie pushed past the lower half of Holly Hollinswood, whose buttocks had, by this point, enveloped most of Veronica, and followed through the passenger door.

Jackie caught up to the mayor and swung her gun up to his nose. “What the fuck was that!?”

Dougie ran round the car, “Hey, woah…”, he said, pushing the gun out the way. Then “But yeah, what the fuck was that?”

“You two were gonna get us killed.” said the Mayor, seeming to be mentally somewhere else.

Both Jackie and Dougie looked at him, like their brains were turning to spaghetti trying to process what had happened. Dougie looked at his partner and shook his head.

The mayor waved his arms around dismissively, showing the great-lake sweat stains on his tuxedo jacket. “We’re on a train track…going the wrong way…and there’s a god damn train coming!”

There was a horn. Another freight train dieseling towards them on the track they were arguing on. Jackie didn’t move.

“You let him get away.” She chewed up the words and spat them at the mayor.

“You shot him, didn’t you?” he said, over-dramatically waving his hands like a mime doing an Italian weatherman.

“Fuckin ’ winged.”

Jackie turned, spat, and offloaded the entire rest of her clip into the train track, ignoring the looming train.

Dougie moved closer.

“Partner...”

“He’s gone!” She yelled, “Off to kill again, who fuckin’ knows where.” She swayed like she had the world’s worst hangover. Like she was gonna vomit fire. She looked like sleep hadn’t been invented yet.

Dougie turned to Veronica, who by now had pulled herself from the Cadillac and was making a face like someone who’d been trapped in a musty tent full of garlic mushrooms.

“So where’s he gonna go next, Veronica?” Dougie said.

Veronica was now on a different planet to her comfort zone. She was stiffer than an eskimo’s ironing board. Dougie looked at her and didn’t blink.

“I don’t know what….” she said.

“Well, I know it was you that shot me. I know you thought I was dead, or you thought she was dead” Dougie pointed to Holly Hollinswood tumbling out of the car door. “And I saw you telling B.O.T. to run. Ipso facto you two are in cahoots.”

“We are not….”

“You’re in Cahootsville, population you and your fuckbuddy the murderer.”

“Don’t be absurd” she said. She was jittery, vibrating. She lit a trembling cigarette.

But a handbag came out of nowhere and whacked her about the head.

“You shot my little Dougie?!” yelled Babs.

Veronica ducked and dropped the cigarette. She sidled away as Babs came whirling back for another blow.

“I’m not in cahoots with him.” said Veronica, dejectedly, dodging the onslaught.

“I’ll kick you in the fucking fanny…” said Babs. Dougie grabbed his grandmother and picked her up.

Veronica closed her eyes and swallowed, the look of a woman who’d lied about being a motorcycle daredevil and was now up a ramp on a rickety bike being introduced at the county fair in front of the Guinness book of records people and a flaming tankload of crocodiles.

“The killer is Marmaduke Shwenk. His son!”, she blurted, pointing to the Mayor, who was staring at where the train had been.

“What? No.” he said.

“Duke writes to his father,” she hyperventilated, “tells him about everything he does, all of it. He’s desperate to impress him. He’s completely totally insane.”

“That’s preposterous. I don’t have any letters.”

“Because I get to them first, Leslie. You don’t read your own mail, you can hardly wipe your own behind. Kept you out of it, didn’t I? Always do. I got to the theatre before he could get himself caught, the moron. I told him to run, but he wouldn’t. So I… I took his gun”

She pointed to Holly Hollinswood, “I shot her. I thought it was her. To get it over with and Duke could just run. Got rid of the only real witness. Always cleaning up…”

Dougie had let go of his grandmother, who got in a swift Veronica kick, losing her shoe, before he pulled her off again.

“I didn’t tell you to do any of that!” shouted the Mayor, looking dizzy, like he was going to pass out. An imminent horn filled the air.

“I didn’t do it for you! My career’s fff...fucked if this gets out. It’s bad enough the wide variety of hookers and the drugs and the kickbacks and the mobsters and everything I’ve walked in on and… but then I find out your son’s a fff...fucking serial killer! Huh? I don’t care what happens to you after the election. I’m just protecting my career.”

“This is all lies.” said the Mayor, strangely softly, “It’s a smear campaign, is what it is. You’ll never work in this town again.”

Jackie got in between them and faced the Mayor. “You saw him. On the train.”

Babs at this point had wandered off and was winding up to punch Holly Hollinswood. Dougie ran after her.

The train rumbled the tracks. The dirt shook. The horn was loud now. Insistent. Threatening. Seconds out.

The Mayor ignored Jackie and shouted over her shoulder “Well, Veronica, your career’s dead now anyway.”

Veronica turned to the oncoming train. “God, I’m so tired. If I’m going down I’m taking you with me.”

“I’ll fuckin’ help.” yelled Babs, one-two punching the air as Dougie carried her away from the train.

The air moved. The freight train’s lights were upon them. The driver's car thunderstormed past, hitting the Cadillac, crumpling it like yesterday’s snotrag and throwing it aside in a heap.

The force blew up a veil of dust and sand and stuff that got in everybody’s eyes.

-

The dust and sand and stuff settled. On the dirt bank, Dougie had his grandmother safe, held back like an angry spaniel. His partner was with them, shielding Babs from the kicked-up dirt. Veronica was inches from the track, a new Bride-of-Frankenstein hairdo from the wind and dust, but otherwise in one piece. The Mayor was further along, close to the track, dust-covered, standing there, arm out. He had a horned helmet in his hand.

“I tried to grab her”, he said.

“I tried to grab her, to help her”, he said.

Jackie reached for her gun. Dougie grabbed her arm.

“You’re outta bullets, Jack.”

On the other side of the fence the lights of two approaching cars shone through the chicken wire. Squad cars. They pulled up and a uniformed officer got out brandishing bolt cutters.

The Mayor wandered over and handed Jackie the horned helmet. “A tragedy. What a waste.”, he said, unsuccessfully trying to clean dirt off his suit.

As the officer ducked through the gap he’d made in the fence, the Mayor nodded at Jackie and Dougie, tightened his tie and attempted to smooth his hair.

“Such a waste.” he repeated.

“A tragedy.” said Veronica. The Mayor looked at her.

The Mayor climbed through the gap in the chicken wire, still trying unsuccessfully to straighten up his tux. He spoke briefly to an officer, who opened a door and ushered him into the back of a squad car. He left the door open.

The officer bent down into the car and nodded at something, then stood. “Ma’am?” he said.

Veronica, without saying anything further, climbed through the gap in the fence and got into the squad car. The door closed. After a very brief moment, it pulled away.

“Loyalty?” said Dougie.

“Something like that.” said Jackie.

Another squad car arrived. Uniformed officers began to mill around, speaking on radios, waving flashlights. Dougie pointed one to a nearby shape in the darkness that looked like an opera singer’s body.

“We’re off the case.” said Jackie, “That shithead’s gonna make sure o’ that.”

“Not necessarily.” said Dougie, shrugging, “We could get fired.”

The two of them stood, in the dirt, in the dark, looking at the lights of the city, saying nothing.

Until Jackie said “Got a next move, partner? ‘Cos I’m about outta fuckin’ gas, here.”

Dougie turned to her. “Food. There’s an Ollie’s across the street.”

“They do bourbon?”

“For an all-day breakfast place they have a surprisingly well stocked bar.” said Dougie, rubbing his head and suddenly remembering his injuries, “I could handle a whiskey and Frisky myself.’

From some way lower than Dougie, Babs spoke.

“That smarmy fucker on the train. I met him.”

She, too, was pondering the nighttime lights of the city of Violet Palms, and wasn’t addressing anyone in particular when she spoke.

“When?” said Dougie.

“At the opera house. I bummed a light from him in the parking lot. Snooty type. Up-his-own-arse, fnaah fnaah, you know the sort. But he was all jumpy, like. I thought he just done too much sherbert in the toilets. I didn’t know he was Jack the fuckin’ Ripper.”

Babs rummaged in her purse.

“I got this. Here.”

She gave Dougie a matchbook. It was laminated black and gold. Not your standard everyday matchbook. Embossed on it was CASCADES VIP.

“Next move.” said Dougie, handing it to Jackie.

“Next move.” she said.

Dougie pulled open the gap in the fence. Jackie and Babs ducked through. “Babs” said Jackie, “ I ever tell you you’re one in a million?”

“No bother, love.” Babs took her hand and patted it, “ I just seem to be in the right place at the right time sometimes.”

Babs watched Dougie push through the way-too-small-for-him gap in the fence, paused, and turned back to Jackie. “Is it tomorrow your mom gets out?”

“One problem at a time, please.” said Jackie, looking over the road.

Catching up, Dougie said “Nan, we’ll find a squad car and get you home.”.

“Home? It’s Friday night, my little Douglas. I’m gonna check out that club with all the punks in it. I love them weirdos.”

Dougie helped her into the back seat of a squad car and, as he watched it pull away, his grandmother was visible through the window, offering a flask of cherry brandy to the police officers in the front.

Jackie had already begun to jaywalk over the road, like a tired, thirsty moth transfixed by the lights of Ollie’s 24hr Breakfast Drive-Thru, just visible behind a gas station.

“You okay, partner?” said Dougie, catching up.

She gave the matchbook back to Dougie.

“One problem at a time.”

—

End of chapter 1. There now follows a trailer for Violet Palms.

***

VIOLET PALMS by Neil Jay Huxley.

This trailer is certified 18+, due to one ‘fuck’, a decent level of alcohol use, a reference to boobs, and a general tone of bad influence. Sensible people shouldn't even bother.

—

Violet Palms.

The Pink Pineapple. The city that hasn’t slept for weeks. The City of Rebel Spirits. The city of the all-day bourbon and waffles picker-upper.

A city of car chases, weird goings-on, corruption, adventures, product placement, vigilantes, a topless vegetarian café called Debbie Does Salads, and seven different-but-connected stories, each one an ‘80s movie pitch.

Those stories are:

Dallas and Wonderland: Buddy cops on the trail of a serial killer, a political cover-up, and a bank full of rabbits.

Deadbeat Dad: A teenage boy’s life is ‘improved’ by the return of his hard-partying roadie father. His dad hasn’t changed, other than being dead, and he has a new job as a trainee guardian angel.

Shadow Noir: A delusional vigilante in thrift store clothes - and with homemade gadgets such as tactical nachos and camouflage wallpaper - tries to bring justice to a city that doesn’t notice her.

EQ: An ex-con finds himself in an experimental, glitching robot body - with no idea where his real body's been taken.

The Night Crew: When their teacher is kidnapped, three kids find themselves lost in the city. As they try to rescue him, the kids cross paths with the other stories happening that night in Violet Palms.

Family Assets: The married heads of a crime family go through a bitter, violent divorce. They expect the family - and the whole underworld - to pick a side.

The Steal: A game show with the world’s biggest cash prize - staged by a TV station that can't afford it - attracts a hell of a lot of attention. Unfortunately, that attention comes from thieves, vengeful figures from the past, and crazy people with messages for the viewing public.

—

The Format:

Told in 25 chapters, with commercial breaks, and one post-credits scene, Violet Palms unfolds like a late-night channel surf through the American subconscious - where every thread is a story, every ad is a lie, and the city never stops humming.

—

Tone & Influence:

Imagine if Pulp Fiction knocked up Miami Vice, directed by a drunk Tex Avery, scored by Hall & Oates, and spliced together on a VHS tape over last week's Jeopardy and an episode of Magnum.

It’s The Simpsons’ “22 Short Films About Springfield” meets Magnolia, meets Lethal Weapon, meets Beetlejuice.

It's smart as it is dumb as it is fun.

—

Structure Highlights:

• Opens in media res with a car chase and a beer truck crashing into a gym.

• Each act ends with an unreliably-narrated, noir-ish interlude from the eighth story Find the Lady — building tension outside the main threads.

• Most major narratives converge at The Steal - a televised game show turned war zone.

• Final chapters reflect on fallout, identity, hope and connection.

• Post-credits montage gives us one last glimpse of life in VP.

—

Remember, that's Violet Palms by Neil Jay Huxley. Now being written on a pawn-shop electric typewriter with exposed wires in an abandoned bar down by the old VP city docks in 1984. Manuscript may include spilled whisky stains and tears from the author laughing at his own jokes.

—

This presentation is brought to you by Ollie’s 24hr Breakfast Drive-Thru.

Whether it's our triple-bacon biscuits, ham-spam-scramble, roast ‘n’ toast, the famous hash brown mountain, or our new pork-chop cheesecake, there's something for everyone at Ollie’s, whatever time you get up.

***