This is a full novel I'm putting out in multiple parts on Wattpad, ScribbleHub and other sites. You can purchase the full story as well at my Ko-fi store or Amazon.
Warren finds himself in the bed with a pretty, blonde woman who's quietly sleeping.
...
He skimmed through the paper, which revealed details about the Weyerhaeuser boy kidnapping. Also, some actress making a cross-country flight across the USA was in another article.
Warren paused when he noticed a Havana story concerning a jewelry heist and shootout with local police. The event occurred outside of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba a few weeks before.
The same hotel where his character stayed.
But the article only told him there was still no progress in the identity of the thieves. They made off with an undetermined number of rare jewels, which had recently arrived from Spain. According to the article, the police held suspects in custody. They identified them as Americans with gangster connections.
As he noisily refolded the paper to read the back pages, looking for the cruise departures, a boy came to the table where he placed a plate in front of Warren. His face fell as he ate the skimpy breakfast. He could barely describe it as edible. He drank a cup of boiling strong coffee, which helped mask the taste of nearly burned toast, heavily salted eggs, and greasy bacon. Baker hoped the food and the coffee would help ease his hangover. He guessed his meal wasn't much different from what the crew dealt with daily. But it was hardly the meal Warren expected for a person with his folding money to be eating.
Wouldn't his Baker character sail on a luxury liner?
The insight made him pause while wondering about his characters' past. He needed more info about Warren Baker as well.
Returning his attention to the paper, he eventually found a small tidbit of news about his ship. The Andes left on May 25th, the same morning as the paper came out. Interestingly, the ship's destination was Boston.
Consumed by his reading and thoughts, he briefly noticed a long, thin woman dressed in a yellow polka dot summer dress. She motioned to the small cabin boy by the entrance. The woman pointed to the table just across from Warren's. He momentarily felt her stare through her oval tortoise framed glasses before he returned to his paper.
The woman passed him, taking up a position at a table a few paces away. Her escort quickly moved to the bar, then carried back a chrome coffee pot along with a filled coffee cup for the lady. The boy refilled Warren's empty cup.
"Nothing," Warren said ruefully as he folded the paper and tossed it on the table.
A swirl of random thoughts suddenly tried to poke through his headache. Maybe his character of one of those rich socialites. If so, it might help him. Warren remembered those old movies from his childhood where rich people teamed up to solve mysteries because they were bored.
Then, he came back to reality. So far, his purgatory role was always the victim, never the hero.
That's my normal luck!
His mood soured again.
Drawing in a deep breath, Warren mulled over his present situation. His character had enough money to afford some luxury. It also gave him a spark of hope. The situation might be a benefit to him. Perhaps, this time, at least, he could piece together the direction of the story and its ending before it happened.
Warren's expression turned thoughtful as he watched the coffee steam rise from his cup. He recalled his mistakes over the last few days in his guise as a private eye. Spending days and nights chasing the mystery woman, he made a note that it was his longest time surviving before his death.
He used the movies he recalled, which showed Marlowe or Sam Spade's methods of piecing together the clues. While he lost, dying at the hands of the very woman he trailed, Warren took a bit of comfort in his ability to get to her. While he was the victim of a double cross, the man knew without a doubt, whoever ran these crazy film worlds did not play fair.
What's next?
Warren recognized he needed to act like a fat cat of the times. He hoped he would do better trying to mimic one of the upper-class characters from an old movie he watched. As he thought about it, it would be difficult enough to keep ahead of death while maintaining such fiction. Still, the questions about his character tugged at him again.
Why would someone with loads of money leave the gambling Mecca like Havana on such an old tramp steamer?
He looked down at the advertisement in the paper showing Pan Am flying their Clipper airplanes back to the US. That type of travel better fit a wealthy bachelor. Just in appearance, taking cheap tug carrying freight along the East coast showed Baker had something else going on.
Why not take a plane to get back sooner?
He pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to get his brain to remember all the history he was happy to forget about. The only recollection he had about Cuba was gambling. It was a top destination place for those with money, but that was all he knew. Besides, genuine history had little to do with the make-believe world of old scripts. Warren suspected his new world was just another low budget lost film which nobody would remember. He just hoped his story would take him all the way back to his home in Boston.
So far, Warren learned that more time gave him a greater opportunity to survive. For the moment, he could only hope all his fighting meant something. Hopefully, his path was not just another one-way street to death, but Warren could only dream. He was not even sure if it was God or the Devil who was laying out the twisted path of his afterlife. To paraphrase an 80s alternative song,
Whoever directed things must have a sick sense of humor.
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