DOGTOWN

Whitney Logan, attorney-at-law, is broke. So when Monica Fullbright shows up with a thousand dollar retainer wanting to locate her missing housemaid, an illegal immigrant named Carmen, Whitney takes the job. She may not like playing sleuth, but she can’t afford to be picky. Enlisting the aid of Lupe Ramos, a chicana prostitute who works the street below her office, she soon finds out that Monica is not all she seems. And when the two of them stumble on the housemaid’s dead body, they quickly find themselves on a fetid trail of Latin politics, drug smuggling and misguided allegiances.

Nothing is as it seems in Dogtown.

DOGTOWN

Mercedes Lambert

Introduction by Ken Bruen

Stark House Press • Eureka California

DOGTOWN

Published by Stark House Press 4720 Herron Road

Eureka, CA 95503, USA

[email protected]

Smashwords Edition

Exclusive trade distribution by SCB Distributors, Gardena, CA.

DOGTOWN

Originally published by Viking and Copyright 1991 by Mercedes Lambert

Reprinted by permission of the Author’s Estate.

“Break My Heart in Smithereens” Copyright 2007 by Ken Bruen

“Mercedes Lambert” Copyright 2007 by Lucas Crown

The publisher would like to thank Lucas Crown for his persistence and assistance in making this book happen.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictionally, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

First Stark House Press Edition: March 2008

Table of Contents

BREAK MY HEART IN SMITHEREENS

DOGTOWN

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINTEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MERCEDES LAMBERT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MERCEDES LAMBERT BIBLIOGRAPHY

BREAK MY HEART IN SMITHEREENS

The Work of Mercedes Lambert

by Ken Bruen

“I thought you had to be drunk to write, that’s what all my heroes did.”

Is there a more heartbreaking line ever uttered?

Douglas Ann Munson, aka Mercedes Lambert.

I weep for her, for the wondrous talent she never realized she had, for the lost potential, for the sheer waste of a vulnerable human soul.

Here was talent writ huge.

Dogtown and Soultown................... just pure brilliant noir classics.

Look at this.

From SOULTOWN, she is listening to the oldies. Earth Angel, Only the Lonely and then goes

I’d started to wear makeup, and there was a line of black mascara smudged under my eyes.

I swore as I used spit to wipe off the mascara. It would fucking figure I’d nod after waiting all this time.