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    Running The Train...and Other Stories
    Running The Train...and Other Stories
    Running The Train...and Other Stories
    Ebook57 pages56 minutes

    Running The Train...and Other Stories

    By Costa Koutsoutis

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Meet P.I. and part-time bondsman Ben Miles. He's not the best investigator, or the toughest, or even the most competent. But somehow he manages to get the job done, even when he's in way over his head.

    And he gets in over his head quite a bit. Luckily he's got far-more competent friends, which in this business, are something that you need in spades. Ben's gonna need them, dealing with rogue bondsmen, the sex trade, the Midwestern Mafia, and more in this introduction to the character.

    "Running The Train...and Other Stories" is an all-new collection of the Ben Miles Stories "Mob," "Old Dogs," "Fireflies," "Cul de Sac," and "Running The Train."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCosta Koutsoutis
    Release dateAug 3, 2012
    ISBN9781476228563
    Running The Train...and Other Stories
    Author

    Costa Koutsoutis

    Constantine "Costa" Koutsoutis is a writer and cartoonist who lives and works in New York City. He spends his time cooking, drinking coffee, playing with the cat, and watching movies with his girlfriend. A writer since he was little, he's been doing fiction, nonfiction, comics (as writer and artist), essays, zines, blogs, "real" journalism, and even web content stuff since he was in college for others to read. Costa always enjoys hearing from readers, so reach out, say hi.

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      Book preview

      Running The Train...and Other Stories - Costa Koutsoutis

      RUNNING THE TRAIN…AND OTHER STORIES

      ~

      A Ben Miles mystery collection, Smashwords Edition

      By Costa Koutsoutis

      © copyright constantine koutsoutis 2012

      cover photo c/o the author

      T.O.C.

      Introduction

      Mob

      Old Dogs

      Fireflies

      Cul De Sac

      Running The Train

      I always wanted to be a writer.

      I know everyone always says that, but it’s true. I remember filling notebooks with diary entries, stories, character descriptions, terrible doodles and sketches of comic book and movie superhero characters I’d invented. In college I spent almost a year worldbuilding and writing my first serious forays into fiction, really awful stuff in hindsight. It’s lost to the world, in the ether of an anonymous online writing group/serialized subscription service. Good thing too, because it was mostly an amalgamation of everything I was consuming at the time with no filter. Ben Miles is, ironically enough, one of those types of creations, a filterless spawn from my unadulterated love of mystery, crime, detectives, and espionage. Before comic books, alternative literature, or anything, there were paperbacks, pulpy INDIANA JONES adaptations, John Sanford’s Lucas Davenport stories, Kinky Friedman, and the works of William Heffernan, who I was obsessed with as a teen.

      Anyway, I hope you like this collection of stories. I write this in transition at a kitchen table with plans for a move in the works. Writing keeps me sane, but also keeps me from packing funny enough, I’d rather be here hammering away like a caveman with a rock making a new tool.

      My parents always encouraged me to read, and I consider that the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten. This is dedicated to them.

      costa/columbus oh/july 201

      Mob.

      -

      Don’t look.

      Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. That’s the first rule, and the only rule that he could remember. Tailing someone is a weird science full of arcane rules built up over years of Ivy-League spies, cops, and shield-wielding detectives losing monumentally and being ten years’ worth of experience behind cons, PI’s, and any kid worth his salt whose ever walked to and from school.

      Ben focused on the hot dog he was eating, hot and slathered in everything, dripping hot onions onto his hand, eating as he walked. He almost tripped on his own feet sucking the onions off his wrist, not paying attention to tall, white, balding, two hundred pounds, in khakis and a green button-up shirt twenty feet ahead. Erratic through the mid-lunch crowd in midtown Manhattan, crossing the street with extra care to check that his briefcase was in his arms, wrapped up in a khaki coat matching his pants, a weird bundle that was attracting more attention that it deflected.

      Still, the mark was paranoid enough to keep looking backwards, at one point even having stopped suddenly, Ben bumping into him, Sorry floating from the PI’s lips as he floated on by, ducking into a storefront to let the other man pass him on the street before exiting what turned out to be a sex shop, down in the Village where he’d first started following the man, walking the whole way. At this point he didn’t even know what he was looking for, fumbling for the smartphone in his pocket as he finished the last of the hot dog, the balding man, sweat stains growing through his shirt, now walking faster, noticeably trying to get somewhere.

      Change of pace. The means two things, either he knows that he’s being followed and is an amateur about it, or something is about to happen and he’s showing, giving away massive physical tells. He hadn’t looked backwards in a while, and Ben broke the first rule, looking hard at him from behind, moving with purpose now to follow him through the tail-end of a lunch crowd. This was even stupider, giving yourself away in an ever-thinning and ever-disappearing cover of crowd, making your obvious movement the worst kind of giveaway.

      And then he’s gone. A turn and all of a sudden, the mark is gone, not there, and Ben’s obviously giving himself away, standing still on the sidewalk and looking around frantically. And then there, across the street, coming the opposite direction.

      Tall, white, balding, with a rumpled khaki suit jacket covering his green button-up shirt, two hundred pounds, matching khaki pants, walking smoothly, confident.

      His hands empty.

      Dialing from memory, Ben held the phone up. Come on, come on, pick up, he said into the dial tone, hearing one, two, three, four, five ringtones, nothing picking up. Shit. His client, the voice at the other end of the phone line with a name he can’t remember and an assurance of payment that a ping on the laptop told

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