Book Bundle: Loyal and True - Passerby

By Terry R Barca

To celebrate the upcoming release of Book 3 in this series of anthologies (Red Wheelbarrow), I am offering this box set of Book 1 (Loyal and True) and Book 2 (Passerby) at a greatly reduced price; a 38% discount.
77 stories and a total of 57,000 words.
All stories are perfect for reading on trains, trams and buses, as well as when sitting under a tree or in front of an open fire.
This is a world inhabited by private detectives, avenging wives, lonely dreamers, policemen and ordinary citizens who happen to be passing by.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terry R Barca
• Release date: Nov 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310346088

Terry R Barca

I’m an author who lives and works in the Dandenong Ranges, on the eastern edge of Melbourne Australia.I take one day at a time but occasionally I’m attacked by several days at once.My amazing wife and I have lived in The Hills for forty-three years.My favourite colour is green and so is my favourite car.I started my working life as a Primary School Teacher in the early 1970s.Since then I have been a stained glass craftsman, furniture restorer, restorer of Player Pianos and music rolls, author (twenty one books so far, seventeen audiobooks, another on the way), photographer, basketball trading card manufacturer, basketball coach, basketball player, basketball referee, part-time shop assistant, newspaper columnist, homeschool dad, husband, father, grandfather, and a few other bits and pieces, and not in this order.I’m fascinated by people, but I prefer the company of dogs.I’m not frightened of dying, but sometimes life scares the hell out of me.I think that birds are cool but I don’t believe that they spend any time thinking about me, even though I give them lots of stale bread, and the occasional pizza crust........ ungrateful bastards!

Book preview

Also by Terry R Barca.

FICTION.

The Long Weekend.

Passerby [book 2 in the anthology series]

NON FICTION.

SCHOOME: An Adventure in Homeschooling.

Contents

Also by Terry R Barca.

Rosie’s Diner.

Loyal and True.

The Robin and the Red Thread.

The Scarlett Stiletto.

Knuckles.

Almost.

Life Under The Sun.

Win The Prize; Lose Your Life.

Cornelius Turvaville

Gratitude Knows Not.

Numbers.

Corretta Dobles

Smiler McNulty Parked On The Lawn.

Blackwing.

Feed My Cat.

Anesthetist.

Dr Doug.

Step Into The Light.

Bluestocking.

Chauncey Giannone: The Best Defence.

Death Of A Scoundrel.

Friday: Sam and Scarlett.

The Farm.

The Granddaughter and the Wall.

No Trespassers Violators…………… something.

Carol and William: No Vacancy Tonight.

Scarlett’s Scones and Sam’s Scar.

Cafe.

Billy Gest: Hope and a Drive Shaft.

On Probation.

Together.

Slow Children.

Pumpkin Soup.

The Museum Guard.

Chilly.

Standing On Top Of The World.

Sid Leffew: Long Forgotten.

Everette Guardado: The Coming of Sound.

It Always Rains on Sunday.

The Woman Who Invented Deja Vu.

Derrick in the 1930s

Watching, Waiting, Wondering.

When A Seagull Needs Coffee.

The Devil Went Down To Brunswick Street.

The Devil Went Down To George(a).

17 mm

Georgette, Harriette and the Dragon Stones.

Alice Marble and the Locked Box.

Shag Pile Carpet.

Everyone Loves Pasta.

Chadwick and Veronica: Remembering

Gratitude Knows Not The Passage Of Time.

‘for toys and small offenses’

Second Opinion.

Henri Le Clerk

Simon Colantro

Indirect

Let’s Eat Granddad.

The Day I Met Chester.

Epilogue

About the Author

Rosie’s Diner.

There has not been a Rosie at ‘Rosie’s’, for a very long time.

Legend has it that the original Rosie started the place during the Civil War but that has been hard to verify.

I’ve spoken to a few old timers and they reckon that there has been a Rosie's on this site since at least the 1920s. Council records were destroyed in the fires back in ’68 so all we have to go on is local knowledge and say so.

No one is more local and more knowledgeable than Jake.

There used to be two Jakes and it got kind of confusing when one of them would pop up in a conversation, but these days there is only one since the other Jake stepped in front of that sixteen wheeler that was on it’s way up the Hume Highway.

The driver said that Jake looked right at him and said something in the split second before the tyre screaming truck bore down on him.

We’ve all speculated as to what it was that the other Jake said in that mortal moment. The truck driver thought it looked like Forgive me, but Josie, who owns Rosie’s, said she thought it was probably, Get that fucking truck out of my way. We pointed out that that was way too many words to utter in such a tense moment but she just said that it sounded like the other Jake, so that’s probably what he said.

I thought he most likely said, Fuck me, which seemed like a reasonable thing to say under the circumstances.

Jake said he thought that he was just trying to clear his throat in preparation for a long conversation with St Peter.

At this enlightenment a silence descended on the diner.

Jake really was wise and local.

For some reason people drove from all over the place and parked really old really cool cars out the front of Rosie’s place just in case a famous photographer drove by, which seemed to happen quite a lot.

The food at Rosie’s is the kind you can’t get anymore. Basic food; hamburgers, chips, sausages, eggs, good coffee and the very best of all; pie.

Rosie’s sells eleven different types of pie, but the cherry pie will kill ya.

Not really kill you, I just mean that it tastes great.

No one knows where Rosie’s gets their pies. They never run out even if a bus load of hungry Hungarians turns up. They definitely don’t stockpile the pies because they are always fresh, so they must be made locally and the maker must be very obliging.

Jake surmised that the pies must be delivered in the middle of the night as none of us has ever seen a delivery during the day.

Rosie’s is closed between 2am and 6am. That means Josie gets about four hours sleep, which explains why she often falls asleep behind the counter.

Until we did the maths, we just thought she was narcoleptic.

Rosie’s is a second home to most of us. I’ve written all my novels while sitting at the booth on the end. Many of the regulars are characters in my books.

My dad bought me a little red Porsche back in the day. Josie lets me park it out front, she says it gives the place a bit of class, but frankly I think a lot of people come just to see her fall asleep behind the counter.

I eat way too much pie and I drink way too much coffee but I don’t care.

You have to die of something.

And too much pie has got to be better than staring at the driver of a roaring sixteen wheeler.

Loyal and True.

What I value most in my friends is loyalty.

David Mamet

There were four of us; as far back as I can remember.

Keevil and the O’Briens were older, but for some reason they let me tag along.

I guess I made ‘em laugh.

A sense of humour opens many doors.

We weren’t exactly model citizens, then or now, and we got into a few scrapes, but nothing heavy. I could run fast and this came in handy as I always seemed to be the last one to work out that things had gone pear-shaped.

I lost count of the number of times I heard run!.

This word was usually uttered by all three of the blokes who were supposed to be looking out for me.

They probably thought that it was obvious that the time to run had arrived and felt that it was unnecessary to say so, then one or all of them would notice that I was still standing there with my mouth open.

I still have dreams about being a kid and a voice from many yards away yelling ‘run’.

Considering they had several yards head start you would think that I would be the one who got nabbed.

Not so.

I could run, and usually not in a straight line. I worked out that adults were faster than I was, except for the fat ones, so it was only a matter of time before they caught up to me. Not running in a straight line was the key. If I suddenly changed direction often enough they gave up and went after someone else, someone less slippery.

I was usually carrying something we had nicked. Here, you hang on to it they will never suspect a little kid; and they didn’t until they did, which was usually not my fault.

Most of our ‘hasty retreats’ were caused by Keevil’s inability to hold his nerve. You would never know it to look at him now but back then he lacked a bit of ‘bottle’.

This sudden need to ‘head for the hills’ only increased my anxiety.

These days I wouldn’t associate myself with such unreliable accomplices, but I was a kid and the rules were different.

If a bunch of big kids wanted to have you around then you didn’t say no.

My other friends were way too frightened to get into any serious adventures.

They were afraid of getting hurt, afraid of what their parents would say and afraid of the police.

None of these fears were unreasonable, but it made for very boring friends and long school holidays.

As the years went by Keevil and the two O’Brien’s dropped out of school and went looking for work.

Keevil joined the railways as a clerk, W.T got a job in a shop on the High Street and Jimmy O’Brien got a job as a builder’s labourer. You’ve seen the photo of Jimmy, he’s huge, so lugging stuff around all day was easy for him.

I stayed at school and eventually went on to University.

I was the brains of the outfit.

Well, that sounds better than it actually is, what I mean to say is, ‘brains’ is what I bring to the gang, I’m not actually the ‘brains of the outfit’, William T. O’Brian is.

It was Billy who came up with the capers right from the start.

He knew that if we stood out the front of old man McKenzie’s house and threw stones on his roof it would give Jimmy time to scale his back fence and steal a bag of apples.

Billy even remembered to supply Jimmy with the bag.

Old man McKenzie had a big dog that guarded his orchard but Billy knew that the commotion would keep the big dog and his owner busy just long enough to pull off the caper.

We sold some of the apples and we ate the rest.

Best tasting apples you could possibly imagine.

As we got older the capers got bigger, usually to do with the Railways, courtesy of C.J., or building sites that Jimmy had been working on.

My job was to keep us all out of gaol.

I finished my law degree at Melbourne University. Finished second overall for the State of Victoria. The bloke who beat me into first place became a high court judge.

I always hated that bloke.

I got a position with Cohen, Cohen and Cohen, Melbourne’s top criminal law firm.

I became so successful that the firm offered me a partnership but my name didn’t make it onto the letterhead. I guess Cohen, Cohen, Cohen and Hipshein was just too long to fit on the door, but I didn’t care.

My day job, as successful as it was, was just a diversion. My real firm was O’Brien, Hipshein, Keevil and O’Brien.

We were making a lot of money; only money was not the point, it was just a way of keeping score.

The photo shows the only time we were all brought in for questioning at the same time.

It was a ‘usual suspects’ round up.

A pointless exercise, but it kept the politicians happy.

It gave us a chance to catch up with some old contacts, and a few new capers were duly planned. It saved us a lot of time because we didn’t have to do the usual running around to plan upcoming jobs, with the usual precautions about being seen and being followed.

These precautions might have seemed unnecessary but it was important for staying out of gaol.

Victorian law had a ‘consorting’ provision, which meant that they could put you in prison just for being seen talking to a convicted criminal. It was an easy way for the cops to squeeze a ‘crim’ into talking about his associates; and it worked too.

The magistrates were onside and some stiff sentences were handed out to those who refused to ‘rat’.

The law had no effect on me as I’d never been convicted of anything. They had tried a few times but the charges were always dropped. You didn’t go after a top criminal barrister unless you had an airtight case. The legal profession looked after its own in the same way that the cops did.

You can see from the photograph that no one looks even a little bit worried. We all knew it was a wind up, but nevertheless I was worried.

This whole round-up didn’t make sense.

Cops are creatures of habit and this didn’t fit the usual pattern. Something was up, and I didn’t know what it was, and that made me nervous.

My job was to stay one step ahead and now I was in the dark. Not a good place to be if we were to survive.

Within six months I was the only one still alive.

Yet again I was left behind just as I was when we were kids, just as I was at school after they all left.

Left to fend for myself.

It was my job to see the trouble coming and I had failed badly.

The police were sick of being made fools of and a hard-core group decided to fight back. The bosses formed the ‘Armed Robbery Squad’ which turned out to be a euphemism for hit squad.

They went on a killing spree that lasted for eight years before a Royal Commission had them disbanded.

Only after Police headquarters was bombed did the politicians decide to act.

A few of the squad ended up in gaol but the rest simply retired.

My crew was never into armed robbery but that didn’t matter in the long run because a lot of the really dangerous crooks believed that someone was feeding the cops information, which was probably true and my mates got caught in the middle.

They shot Keevil dead in his driveway. We knew who did it but the cops didn’t care, so we decided to sort it out ourselves.

The resulting gun fight saw the O’Briens mortally wounded.

We had managed to wipe out the gang that killed our friend and at the end of it all I didn’t have a scratch on me.

My ears were ringing and I had a bullet hole in my hat and a lot of blood on my shoes, but that was it.

Last man standing.

This wasn’t the revenge I was hoping for, but it would have to do.

We could have let Keevil’s murder go by without doing anything about it and we may have survived but for us there wasn’t a choice.

It had been us against the world ever since we were kids and we were not going to abandon that now.

My friends paid a heavy price and I’m left to wonder how it might have been.

You probably think that we deserved what we got, that we were outside the law and that we should not have expected it to protect us; and you would be right.

We lived by our own rules and we achieved something that is precious and rare.

We were loyal and true, right to the end.

The Robin and the Red Thread.

I’m pretty sure it was a Friday.

At the very least it was late in the week.

I remember because I like Fridays, not just because it’s the day before the weekend, every day is pretty much the same to me; I don’t ‘do’ weekends.

I guess it started because my dad taught a sparrow to trust him.

It took months and months but eventually this most distrustful of birds would land on my dad’s hand and eat crumbs. I always marvelled at my father’s patience.

How many people do you know who could persuade a sparrow to trust him?

For months after my father died, the little bird would hang around outside the back door waiting for my dad to come out and feed him.

It broke my heart.

The little bird did not trust me, I wasn’t the right human but he would come quite close and I'd throw him crumbs.

I guess I wasn’t around often enough because gradually the bird came less and less until finally he didn’t come at all.

I had other things on my mind. My dad was dead, my mother was distraught, and I had a young family of my own to feed so I forgot about this brave little bird and went on to live my life.

Time flew by and my kids were grown and off building families of their own.

I had time on my hands and a mind that would not behave.

Spending time in the garden seemed like a good way to pass the time.

A garden is different when you are actually in it. Looking at it through a window gives you a certain idea but sitting on a chair surrounded by it, is something else.

Slowly, you start to melt into your surroundings. You hear things that you didn’t notice when you first sat down. The birds and the bees seem to forget that you are sitting there and get on with living their lives.

As the years have gone by I have noticed new species of birds in our yard as each new season rolls around but I have never seen a Robin, not until spring a few years ago.

My wife had been working on the back deck and there were threads left over from her project. A red thread had caught the Robin’s eye and he was working his way toward it while keeping one eye on me.

My fascination kept me very still as the Robin picked up the thread. He stopped for a moment, looked directly at me and flew away.

My guess was he was building a nest and needed the red thread to impress his mate.

Look what I got for you today dear, and right from under the nose of a human.

I imagined her being