Ricochet by Woody Strassner

Los Angeles, 1965.

   Dale knew the job was fucked from the moment he pried open the file cabinet. Breaking into the two-story office bungalow off Santa Monica had been easy enough. He sapped the overnight guard, relieved him of his keys, and waltzed right in. 
     He left the old bull snoozing in his chair. In Dale’s experience, the older the bulls got, the less trouble they wanted. This area of Hollywood was mostly deserted at night anyway. But Dale could never be too careful. Five years in Folsom after a job went sideways taught him that.
     It also gave Dale a sixth sense of when a job was about to jump the rails. And right now, as Dale’s penlight washed across the contents of the pried open file cabinet, that internal klaxon was blaring like a five-alarm fire. 

     They approached Dale at The Dirty Bird three days earlier. The Dirty Bird was a dive bar down at the end of Culver Boulevard in a gritty little beach area known as Playa del Rey. It was the kind of place where a man could hole up and never be found. It was also the closest thing Dale had to an office.
     There were two of them, square as the day is long, which meant they stuck out like sore thumbs in the dive.
     Dale was nursing his third beer of the morning, wondering how the hell he was going to make rent that month and pay for his daughter’s doctor bill, when they sat down next to him. 
     “You Ricochet?” one of them asked.
     Dale stared into his beer. That was a nickname he picked up in Folsom after bouncing a mouthy punk off a cell block wall. 
     “Who’s asking?” he replied.
     “Got a job for you.”
     Dale was a safecracker. A second-story man. One of the few professional burglars left in Los Angeles with a code. Dale was in it for the money. Nothing else. And he had one rule–no one ever got hurt.
     But Dale had told himself that after his last stint he was done. That he was going straight. Folsom made him come to terms with the fact that his line of work had a shelf life. That no matter how tough a man was, it would gnaw him up and spit him out. Deep freeze him for fifteen to twenty. Or worse, put him in the ground for good. 
     Dale didn’t want to go out that way. He owed his little girl that much at least. It was an epiphany that made Dale feel something he hadn’t in years. Happiness. But happiness didn’t get an ex-con a job on the straight and the bills didn’t pay themselves. 
     So Dale looked the two squares in the eye and said the words he’d regret for the rest of his life.
     “What do you need done?”

     Henry Townsend was not the kind of man Dale would ever knowingly fuck with. Townsend parlayed a modest Ohio manufacturing business into an empire that spanned industries. He was as powerful and connected as they come. He owned a mansion on a ten-acre lot in the Pacific Palisades that was bigger than Dale’s hometown. Townsend was a kingmaker in a town full of heavyweights. Rumor was, he was harder than half the yard at Folsom. And he wasn’t afraid to fight dirty.
     Yet here Dale was, standing in Townsend’s private office, his penlight washing down on a single file in the file cabinet he had just pried open. And Dale knew he was fucked. 
     The Two Squares told him they were digging up dirt on a business rival to take him out. They lied. Because the classified documents stamped in faded red ink across the jacket of the file meant this was heavier than any weight Dale had ever lifted. 
     This was the kind of weight that got men killed.
     And as Dale stared at it, wondering how he was going to dig himself out of this hole, he knew in his bones there were only two ways it could go.

   The Two Squares waited for Dale in an idling sedan. The driver held a Browning Hi-Power out of view.
     “Think he knows?” the Passenger asked.
   “Men like Dale Barnes exist for one reason,” the Driver replied. “They’re means to an end. Nothing more. I doubt he’s even aware enough to know that.” The Driver scoffed. “It’s like asking if a gnat knows it’s about to be swatted.”
     The Passenger chewed on that as he peered back out his window. “Here he comes.”
    The Two Squares watched Dale exit the building and hurry towards them, holding the file. They were distracted by the slight smile on his face. Which meant they didn’t see the .38 coming up in Dale’s other hand.
     It was only after, when Dale rifled through their pockets, that he found their badges.

     Dale rocketed away into the night after dumping the Feds’ bodies, a single question burning a hole in his head. Who threw the fix on him?
     Dale had a pretty good idea. Even thinking about the man made something terrible rise in Dale’s chest. A rage that threatened to incinerate him. Dale told Sonny Palmisano that he was hanging it up. That he wanted to do something different with his life. 
     Now Dale was barreling towards some unknown future because Sonny had other ideas. Dale’s headlights sliced through the night, navigating the windy road over the hill towards Sonny’s hideout in Burbank. He knew any hope he had for a quiet existence with his little girl was as dead and gone as those two he dumped in the Hollywood reservoir. Because he could never go straight again. 
     Well, Sonny was about to meet a man who’d broken his one rule. Dale would figure out the rest afterwards. 
     But that was the life Dale chose, ricocheting between happiness and despair. 

​About the author:

Woody Strassner is a screenwriter based in Los Angeles. Most recently, he was on the writing staff of the hit crime procedural STUMPTOWN for ABC Studios, where he co-wrote two episodes. Currently, Woody is writing a crime audiodrama for Echoverse, as well as co-writing a feature script. He’s a graduate of UCLA and is represented by UTA.