Read EIGHT LIES (About the Truth): A collection of short stories for Free Online Page A

who isn’t violent to begin with.
    In memory, Francine Hills’ words called out to me: “I’ve learned to accept the private humiliations…I refuse to stage a public performance of my anguish for your benefit…if you’re not man enough to save me from his cruelty…” Shit. He probably did beat her. And the sunglasses. Had she been hiding a bruise that makeup could not completely erase? Had I been too quick to dismiss her affectations as vanity?
    “You have no idea what you’ve done,” she’d said.
    I changed course and made it home relatively sober. There was a message waiting on my machine.
    “Ray Dudgeon. Dermott O’Connor calling. As you may have heard, I’m now representing Gordon Hills and I believe you could be of assistance to his defense. I realize we were on opposite sides of this thing until recently, but I know you’re a grownup and you understand how the game is played. Anyway I think our interests now coincide. Right now I’m sure if you think back, you’ll recall something Mrs. Hills may have said which would indicate that she was concerned about her husband’s psychological condition…”
    I stopped the machine and erased the message without listening to the rest.
    Yeah, I knew how the game was played.

Here’s another Ray Dudgeon story that takes place between the two novels.
    Readers of Big City Bad Blood may remember that when Ray was fired off the case, he enlisted the help of a sleazy gossip columnist named Delwood Crawley. They met at the Old Town Ale House and Crawley agreed to give Ray a couple paragraphs in his column in exchange for an I.O.U.—some investigative work, to be paid at a later date.
    After writing the book I often thought back to that scene and wondered: What kind of gossip story would a scumbag like Crawley need Ray’s help with?
    Here’s the answer. A sordid little case involving power and privilege and prostitution, social hypocrisy and the fuzzy line that separates the Good Guys from the Bad Guys.
    “Bread and Circuses” has never been published, aside from a little homemade chapbook that I gave away at bookstore signings on my first tour.

D ELWOOD CRAWLEY IS A two-bit hack. His gossip column, Chicago After Dark , dishes dirt on Chi-Town’s rich and famous. All titillation, all the time. No actual news value. Bread and circuses. Moldy bread and crooked carnies. That’s Delwood Crawley, all over.
    And I had become Delwood Crawley’s bitch.
    The previous January, I was working on a high profile case and I needed his help. And that’s all it takes with a guy like him. The case wasn’t going well and I’d just been fired and the guy who fired me was an expert at media manipulation. To get my side of the story out I needed a couple of ’graphs in Crawley’s column. He was happy to oblige, in exchange for some detective work. Barter, he called it. So we struck a deal and he did a fine job pimping me in his column and now, on a muggy Thursday in June, it was finally time to pay my debt. Time to get it over with.
    The Old Town Ale House is an honest bar that caters mostly to local news scribblers. I chose a table beneath a ceiling fan and drank cold beer and I was still too damn hot. Crawley arrived, sat across from me, and adjusted his bow tie. I signaled Davey, who came out from behind the stick and put a new beer in front of me and a double Johnnie Black in front of Crawley.
    “Three ice cubes,” Crawley said, staring at the drink like it had an insect in it. “You know that I take only two.” His English accent was designed to confer a social status higher than that which he’d enjoyed as a young man. The accent was particularly strong today. I’m sure he practices.
    “Bust me for it in your column,” said Davey. “I’m sure the world gives a shit.”
    “Cheeky bastard.” Crawley sipped his scotch. The extra ice cube didn’t kill him. He pulled a notepad from his briefcase, skimmed some pages, closed the notepad. “Tell me what you know