Have some minutes of fun with these thrilling stories. Each is fifteen hundred words or less and as down and dirty the Big Apple era that spawned them. All free for you..
The City Is Full Of Bodies by Greg Smith
New York City, 1972. The pool was rich. I had a box. My partner Jimmy Cavanaugh did too. I needed the money; he didn’t. By mid-October the count was one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five. It could happen.
I put the thought out of my head and answered the phone. Stu Magilla was calling in for a meeting. Partner Jimmy and I took the twenty-block run north to Germantown. At a fake hofbrau called The Rhineland on 88th and 2nd Avenue we saw him. He was a hulking goon with a long rap sheet.
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Pot City ’77 by Greg Smith
The mark would be in an assembly of dealers selling loosies on William and Stone Streets. He would be our first guy. Sitting in the unmarked unit and drinking bad coffee from cardboard cups, Mike argued Billy Martin should sit down Reggie Jackson for the late summer push for the pennant. I was con. Mr. October was due to heat it up. With the two way radio off, we killed time.
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From Champ To Chump by Greg Smith
Ozone Park, Queens NY, 1975, I kneeled on the punk’s head wishing a passerby to call it in. Off duty and out here to get laid; I didn’t have hand cuffs. My prisoner’s car, a rusty Cadillac, was nose in into the disputed parking space. The victim leaned against his truck; his eyes were glassy and his arm dangled impossibly with the hand facing outward. The hash marks on his face where the tire iron had struck swelled red.
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Slaughtered Kale by Greg Smith
Autumn, 1979. There are, in New York City, maybe two dozen of these and I’m thinking, they’re all bent. This one, on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village, is the third I’ve worked third since relocating from Ohio. It’s like all the others, wheatgrass and alfalfa in the front, herbal remedies on the side, a baked goods display and juicing station by checkout, and a locked room/office behind the pantry. The owner, Joey, likes me; I know my way around his stock.
After two months, and no excitement, I make up my mind to quit, That very night after locking up, two men manhandle me into the back of their car. They flash badges, NYPD, but I’m taking their word they’re the law. Maybe they’re after the day’s receipts in the bank drop pouch. We ride south and park in a desolate industrial area. I wrench the door handle but it stays locked.
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The New York Crimes 