CORRUPTION, TREASON, AND MURDER
Washington, 1958: Intrepid newshound Allan Jones is chasing the scoop of his life â a political assassination plot by a sinister cabal known as JANUS. Unable to trust the authorities, Jones and his colleagues at The Washington Street have mere days to unravel JANUSâs secrets.
A GHOSTLY PROTECTOR
Enter The Whisper, a mysterious vigilante who saves Jonesâs life before throwing him further into danger. Using futuristic devices to walk through walls and turn invisible, the Whisper can go anywhere and inform on anyone. Nevertheless, Jones never knows when he can count on the Whisperâs assistance, or whose side the Whisper is on.
A DEADLY RACE AGAINST TIME
As the clock runs out, Jones finds himself homeless, penniless, and on the run from the police, the NSA, and the FBI. While JANUS and the Whisper do battle using impossible weapons of tomorrow, Jones must somehow uncover a conspiracy, prevent a murder, and survive long enough to let the truth be known.
CORRUPTION, TREASON, AND MURDER
Washington, 1958: Intrepid newshound Allan Jones is chasing the scoop of his life â a political assassination plot by a sinister cabal known as JANUS. Unable to trust the authorities, Jones and his colleagues at The Washington Street have mere days to unravel JANUSâs secrets.
A GHOSTLY PROTECTOR
Enter The Whisper, a mysterious vigilante who saves Jonesâs life before throwing him further into danger. Using futuristic devices to walk through walls and turn invisible, the Whisper can go anywhere and inform on anyone. Nevertheless, Jones never knows when he can count on the Whisperâs assistance, or whose side the Whisper is on.
A DEADLY RACE AGAINST TIME
As the clock runs out, Jones finds himself homeless, penniless, and on the run from the police, the NSA, and the FBI. While JANUS and the Whisper do battle using impossible weapons of tomorrow, Jones must somehow uncover a conspiracy, prevent a murder, and survive long enough to let the truth be known.
Getting shot ain't like the movies.
The way Hollywood does it thereâs a bang, then some guy in a bloodless shirt grabs his chest and falls over. Back in Korea, if you were lucky, all you heard was a pop in the distance that told you the enemy had missed.
What I heard on that wretched October night while weaving my eight-year-old Packard through the fog was the crash of my rearview flying off, the smash of my window caving in, and the puck of a dime-sized hole appearing two inches to the right of my reflection in the windscreen.
âSon of a bitch,â said the invisible man in the passenger seat. His voice was like static on the radio. That didnât bug me as much as the fact that my eyes told me no one was there.
âTake a right. Donât slow down.â
A staccato rhythm like popcorn announced the bullets peppering my trunk. I gripped the wheel, just waiting for all that lead to blow out my tires or the back of my skull.
Somewhere ahead was U.S. 29 and the Key Bridge over the Potomac. I had it in my head that if I could just get across, like Ichabod Crane, this nightmare would fade like a hangover.
Another poke hole knocked through the windshield. Fault lines spidered outward, the whole pane about to shatter like my mind was going to if one more damn thing made this night any crazier.
Thatâs right. Speeding through the dark at who knows how many miles per hour, with one headlight and zero visibility, bullets flying around my head, an invisible passenger barking orders, and part of me goes: âOh look, a metaphor!â
âYou missed the turn.â
I didnât even see the turn, and I goddamn told him.
âEnough of this crap. Cover your ears.â
âWith what?â
My throat burned as if Iâd been screaming, then thunder erupted from inside the car. For the span of a film shutter, flashes illuminated the space beside me.
I glimpsed a white jacket, white hat, no face. My companion had turned around, his back against the glove compartment, to empty a handgun the size of a phone book at our assailants. Tires squealed behind us and my passenger disappeared.
âIs that it?â I said. âDid you get âem?â
âHoly shit, slow down.â
I could barely hear through the ringing.
âWhat do you mean slow down?â
The biggest tanker truck Iâd ever seen filled the beam of my headlight, lunging toward us at sixty, seventy, eighty miles per hour. A black glove yanked the steering wheel out of my hands, and I screamed for real as the world whipped around in a blur of pavement and fog.
*
Okay, let me back up.
That morning I was in my editorâs office at The Washington Street, and he wasnât buying what I had to sell. George Farnsworth had a paunch that pulled his shirt out of his trousers and a face like a peeled potato, but his rolled-up sleeves showed massive forearms that could break an upstart reporter in half.
âFor crying out loud, Allan,â he said, âI asked for a story on the Transportation Commission, not this tabloid crap.â
âCrap?â I leaned across his desk to grab my pages back. âIâve got evidence of congressional ethics violations. If half of these reports of payouts to Crawthorn are true, it could tip the election next month.â
âOne.â Farnsworth rose from his chair and pointed at me. âYou donât have evidence, you have hearsay. That may have been good enough for that L.A. scandal rag you used to hack for, but it wonât cut it in this town. Not unless your name is McCarthy.â
I winced at the mention of my former job, which Iâd done my best to put behind me. As far as my fellow reporters knew, all I had on my resume was some freelance work and a tour of duty writing for Stars and Stripes.
âTwo,â Farnsworth said, âit wonât do squat to the election. Crawthornâs a ten-year incumbent, and his opponent is an anti-segregationist on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon Line. Youâd have to catch him in flagrante delicto with an underage prostitute to put a dent in his campaign, and youâd need photographs to back it up. Besides, his constituents donât read our magazine.â
âSo what, weâre going to keep this under wraps?â My eyes were on those giant ham hocks he had for fists, but I plowed ahead anyway. âI thought it was our job to let people know the truth.â
âSweet baby Jesus.â Farnsworth paled like a kid at a horror show. âHow⌠Seriously? Here, sit down.â
He shoved me into a chair, pulled an unlabeled bottle from a shelf, and poured something brown into a short, dirty glass. I thought he was fixing himself a drink, but instead he handed it to me.
âUh, no thanks,â I said.
âDrink or youâre fired.â
I poured the tumbler down my throat, then gasped as a grenade went off in my head. Once Iâd stopped coughing, Farnsworth sat on the edge of his desk and held an issue of the Street to my face. He opened it to the inside back cover, where a model in a two-piece swimsuit leaned against a red convertible.
âYou want to know what our job is? Selling cars.â He flipped to another page. âPerfume.â And another. âToaster ovens. You and me are salesmen for toaster ovens.
âThatâs what keeps the lights on. Magazines, newspapers, itâs all to trick people into looking at advertising. News, editorials, thatâs a carny act. Itâs the mermaid, the bearded lady. Itâs what gets Mr. Public to look in our direction so that we can make the sale. But youâve got to give Mr. Public what he wants, or else heâll look somewhere else.
âNow at this moment, our readers donât give two shits about some corrupt Southern congressman, but they do care about whether the trolley lines are going to extend to their shiny new subdivisions. So youâre going to take all these notes on Crawthorn and plant them in the bottom of your filing drawer. Then youâre going to sit your ass down and give me three thousand words on the Transportation Commissionâs expansion plans by four oâclock. Agreed?â
I sighed. âYes, but â â
âThat was rhetorical. Get out.â
I slunk from his office like a whipped schoolboy. Tim Leslie, the magazineâs star photographer, leaned against the wall with an idiot grin.
âIâm in the market for a toaster oven,â he said. âGot any hot tips?â
âShut up.â
âLeslie?â roared Farnsworth. âWhere are those glamour shots I asked for?â
âRight here, Georgie. See you âround, Jones.â
I trudged to the newsroom, where my desk and tedium awaited. Half a dozen other hacks typed on their assignments, but the rest were out chasing stories, attending press conferences, or having their first drinks of the day at the dives that greased the cityâs wheels. Hereâs a statistic: the District of Columbia has more bars per capita than any other metropolitan area in the country. God Bless America.
A bubblegum pop stopped me short of my typewriter.
âGave you a chewing out, did he?â
Roxy Brandt ran the office switchboard from a desk twice the size of mine. I knew that underneath it was a stack of journalism textbooks that sheâd read when the boss wasnât looking.
âChrist,â I said, walking over to her. âDid he broadcast it over the intercom?â
Roxy tapped a plug on her board.
âThereâs a short in his phone so his receiver never turns off. I can hear everything that goes on in there.â
That gave me pause.
âDoes Farnsworth know?â
âNot unless you tell him, cutie.â
Her tone was playful, but her eyes reminded me of a sniper Iâd interviewed back in the war. I mimed closing a zipper over my lips.
Roxy was young enough that no one asked why she wasnât married â the question was still âwhen.â Her short, red hair framed her cheeks in such a way that made some men want to bundle her off to an amusement park. Sheâd shot down advances from every bachelor in the office and a few of the married ones too. The scuttlebutt said that a copyboy got too fresh with her and ended up in a choke hold.
Iâd never asked her out myself. I was a little afraid to.
âOh well,â I said. âBack to the salt mine.â
âSay, Jones,â she said between smacks of her gum. âYou know anybody named Smithee?â
A chill ran over my scalp. I should have said no. I should have said no. But I didnât.
âWhoâs asking?â
âSome guy called and left a number. Didnât give his name. First he asked for âAllan Smitheeâ then told me to tell you to call him.â
Thatâs all I needed â some ghost from out west to crash my new life. There were several people I could think of who called me âSmithee,â but not one that I wanted in a room with the Washington press. On the spot, I formed a plan to track this bozo down and punt him off to greener pastures.
I shuffled toward my chair and asked Roxy to patch me through. The phone rang six times before anyone picked up.
âHello?â said a voice I didnât recognize.
âWhoâs this?â I said.
âYou first, asshole. You called me.â
I heard the clatter and clink of glass in the background, as if the man was in a restaurant or bar.
âThis is Allan Jones from The Washington Street.â
âSmithee!â he shouted, then hushed himself at once. When next he spoke, I heard palpable relief. âMy god, itâs good to hear you.â
âWho is this?â I asked again.
âHugo. Hugo Harvey.â
I relaxed. Hugo wasnât press. He was a lawyer, but in spite of that fact he wasnât on my list of people to avoid. He didnât sound like himself, though.
âHowâs it going?â I asked. âWhat are you doing in D.C.?â
âNothing much. On the lam from angry clients, you know?â
âIs everything okay?â
âOh sure. Everythingâs great.â It was a reflexive answer. I could hear the nerves behind it. âBut no, not really. Look, Iâve got some dirt I need off my chest. Thereâs no one in L.A. I can trust. Hell, thereâs no one anywhere I can trust except you.â
âSounds big. What is it?â
âA story. Bigger than that last piece I gave you. Bigger than anything youâve written before.â
I sat up, pen in hand. âIâm listening.â
âNot over the phone.â
âFine, Iâll come to you.â To hell with Farnsworth and his Transportation Commission.
âNot now, Iâm still on the move. Iâve got some things to see to first. Can I call you at the magazine around six?â
âSure,â I said. âHey Hugo, howâd you know where to find me? I didnât exactly leave a forwarding address.â
Hugo chuckled. âYou wouldnât believe it. Letâs just say an invisible little bird told me. See you later, Smithee.â
The line clicked. An invisible little bird? What the hell was I supposed to make of that?
Hugo Harvey was a âbluff artist,â a lawyer who specialized in keeping celebritiesâ indiscretions out of the paper. Heâd made money on the side trading gossip about any movie stars who werenât on his dance card. Hugo wasnât the most forthcoming of people, but heâd never been cryptic before.
âSo why does he call you Smithee?â yelled Roxy across the newsroom.
âGod damn it, that was a private conversation!â
âI didnât listen much, but a girl canât help being curious. âSpecially about Mr. âNo Pastâ Jones.â
I groaned and walked over to her desk. At least that way we could keep our voices down.
âItâs a Hollywood thing,â I said. âIf a director doesnât like what a studio does with his movie and doesnât even want his name on the thing, heâll put âDirected by Allan Smitheeâ in the credits instead.â
Roxy furrowed her brows. âSo youâre a movie director?â
âNo, but the editor I used to work for would rewrite my stories so far out of shape that I stopped using my byline.â
âAnd thatâs why your resumeâs so thin,â she said. âShame. I was hoping it was something romantic, like if you spent five years in a Turkish prison.â
I looked at her sideways.
âYou think Turkish prisons are romantic? No wonder you donât have a boyfriend.â
âStill got my eyes open.â She smirked and nodded at my desk. âBetter get typing, movie boy. Those toaster ovens wonât sell themselves.â
*
Hugo didnât call at 6:00. I waited. I didnât start to worry until 7:00. My fellow writers had all come back from their press junkets, typed their stories, sent them to the copy editors, and gone home to their favorite bars. Roxy clocked out and let me take her place at the switchboard, with the injunction not to swear at anyone who called after hours. Farnsworth left at 8:00 and nodded at me as he passed through the newsroom. Iâd made his deadline, so whatever debt I owed the furtherance of American advertising was in the clear.
At 9:00, the phone rang for the eighth time since Roxy relinquished the board. The first call had been from a sweet old lady in Mt. Pleasant who wanted to complain about the âCommie Chineseâ students in her grandsonâs classroom. Three calls were hang-ups, one was from an upscale laundry service looking for ad space, and two were wrong numbers for Sonnyâs Late Nite Grill. The last caller tried to place an order for a steak even after I explained that heâd dialed a wrong number. When the phone rang again ten seconds later, I expected it to be the same asshole calling for potatoes au gratin.
âSmithee,â said the caller instead.
âHugo, where are you?â
âAcross the river at a bar near Arlington. Happy Jackâs. You know it?â
âNo, but I can find it. Whatâs going on?â
âIâll tell you when you get here. And Smithee⌠You got a gun?â
That shut me up.
âWhat?â I said at last. âNo, I donât have a gun. Hugo, what the hellâs going on?â
âGet a gun. Bring it. I gotta go.â
The line went dead. It didnât sound like a hang-up. I dug the phone book out from under Roxyâs desk and thumbed the pages to âHappy Jackâs Beer and Spirits.â I jotted down the address and dialed the number.
âHappy Jackâs,â a woman answered. I hung up and headed for my car. I didnât own a gun and wasnât about to stop at a pawn shop in the middle of the night.
Happy Jackâs sat a couple of blocks off of Lee Highway, past the Arlington suburb called Rosslyn. A fog had rolled off the Potomac, framing the streetlights in eerie halos. The barâs sign was nothing but a blur of neon lights until I came close enough to read through the haze. It looked like there was parking behind the building, but instead I drove to the end of the street, turned so my car was facing the highway, and parked on the edge of the curb. That decision probably saved my life.
I adjusted my hat and buried my hands in my pockets against the cold. Every other business on the street was closed, and it wasnât clear at night if they would open during the day. It felt awful quiet for a Friday. Where were the joyriding teenagers? Where was the laughter, the jukebox, or the crack of pool balls that should have been coming from the bar?
I heard a noise across the street to my left. A voice from the alley on my right whispered, âHey buddy, got a light?â
I stopped. No one was there.
âWho the fâ â
A weight slammed me to the ground just as I heard the unmistakable crack of a gun and the instant echo of a ricochet off the wall. I struggled against the weight that pressed me down, but when I looked over my shoulder all I saw was the streetlight.
âWhat the hell?â
âShut up.â The voice was no more substantial than the fog. âDown the alley. Keep low. Now.â
I scrambled into the dark. The alley was a maze of refuse. I banged a trash can with my knee and startled a cat. Whoever had the gun took two more shots, and a sliver of brick bounced off my coat. When I reached the empty lot behind the bar, I turned the corner and flattened myself against the wall.
âQuiet!â
âIâm trying.â And I was talking to myself. âWho are you? Where are you?â
âYou came to see a man named Hugo Harvey.â
âYeah, so?â Half my mind was too busy thinking about the gunman across the street to talk. The other half couldnât help itself.
âHarveyâs dead. Youâre about to be next.â
âIf thatâs a threat â â
âItâs a warning, sweetheart, and youâre welcome for saving your life. Now stay still. Iâll check if itâs clear.â
This was nuts. Was this how you started hearing voices in your head? It was five years too late for a Section 8 to do me any good. Then Hugoâs words came back: an âinvisible birdâ had told him where to find me. He was right. I wouldnât have believed him.
I glanced around the corner to look back down the alley. There, in the fog below the streetlamp, he appeared. White suit, white hat, black gloves. I didnât see a face. Scratch that â I didnât see a head. The hat was floating on air. The figure in white vanished, and a moment later the voice returned.
âCanât go that way. Head behind the buildings. Hopefully we can circle around.â
âWhere are we going?â
âYour car, sweet cheeks.â
âMy car?â
Gunfire cut me off. Not a single shot, but a barrage from something that sounded like a machine gunâs older, meaner cousin. The noise tore through the brick and metal of the alley and I ran like hell. I turned into a different alley, three down from the one that was being shredded into confetti, and sprinted low to the cover of my car.
Down the street, gunfire that looked like lightning blasted across the road, tearing holes into Happy Jackâs and the building next door. Keeping my head down, I slowly opened the passenger door and crawled on my belly across to the driverâs seat. When I poked my head up behind the wheel, someone else closed the door behind me. Of course, there was nobody there.
âGo,â he said.
âThrough that?!â I said, looking at the barrage.
âGo!â
I revved the engine and floored it.
Stutter-stop images from the minutes that followed: That monster gun taking out my headlight and blowing the stuffing from my seat as it raked the side of my car. Twisting through the fog while looking for the highway. The headlights of another car in pursuit reflected in my mirror. My mirror flying off in a hail of gunfire. My rear window shot out, then pieces of my trunk. My invisible passenger firing back. A tanker truck appearing head-on right in front of me. My passenger grabbing the wheel and spinning us out of control. I screamed and slammed on the brake.
They say your life flashes before your eyes. All I saw was an obituary. Allan âSmitheeâ Jones, 1930-58. Grease stain on the highway. No family, no funeral. Donât bother sending flowers.
My Packard shrieked to a halt in the middle of the road. A Cadillac swerved around us and honked. Another car stopped about fifty yards away, its headlights beaming in my eyes. Light filled my car from behind as well. Theyâd boxed us in.
I heard my invisible friend reload.
âKeep your head down. Drive forward slowly, then floor it when you get past that car.â
âWhatever you say, chief.â My voice cracked like it hadnât since puberty.
I inched the car forward. A shot banged through the windshield and showered me in glass. If I hadnât been hunched, that wouldâve been my head. I crouched even lower, so I couldnât even see over the dash. I felt my companion tug on the wheel. Too more shots blew through the air. They were close. One tore through the roof while the other hit the engine. I heard a whistle from the radiator.
âSlowly,â my passenger said. âNow GO.â
I floored the gas and sat up. There was nothing ahead but open highway and just enough light for me to guess where the lanes were.
âTheyâre still behind us,â I said.
âI know. Iâm changing my frame of reference. Donât stop until you get to D.C., and it might be good to lay low for a while.â
âYouâre doing what?â
My passenger turned partly visible. Beneath his jacket was something like a bandolier with a series of dials. He twisted one, and then flew out the back of the car. Not out the window, mind you, but through the car itself, like a ghost passing through walls.
I looked over my shoulder and saw flashes of light inside the car behind me, followed by pops of distant violence. The vehicle swerved and tumbled into a ditch. I faced forward, wary of any more tankers, and rode the pedal all the way back to Washington.
The Whisper by Jared Millet is an addicting new noir mystery thriller with the right dash of sci-fi elements to make things extra interesting. I have always been a sucker for anything at all noir-eque whether it be in print or onscreen, so when I saw this on available to review via Reedsy Discovery I couldn't resist giving it a try. I'm very glad that I did too because this short and quick novel hit almost all the right notes in my book. It can be very tricky to come up with a unique new noir story while remaining true to the genre, but without it becoming too terribly corny in the long run. And like I said, Millet's new novel really works.
Right from the very beginning, I was hooked on his brand of story telling. It has all the classic hallmarks of the classic noir style. I'm glad I read the short excerpt available on Reedsy to just to prepare myself for what I'd be getting into in the novel. The snippet does a wonderful job at outlining it's overall potential. The plot twists and turns will keep you on the edge of your seat, the dialog, and the futuristic tech was a lot of fun to see. My only complaints are that I felt a little too disconnect from the cast than I would have preferred to and that at times it's a little all over the place as if it's trying to do a little too much. Regardless, these issues aren't nearly enough to dampen my enjoyment of the tale.
Overall, this is an enjoyable new novel that will go very fast and won't let you go. If you're a fan of classic Hollywood film noir plus Flash Gordon, The Shadow, and Back to the Future, then I have a feeling you'll enjoy The Whisper by Jared Millet quite a bit. I'm going to have to try more from this author in the future. Thanks again to Reedsy Discovery. Â