Mr. Big Mouth

Things go from dark to darker to darkest quickly in this noir microfiction set in a mobster-frequented bar on the south shore of Long Island, New York in the late 1970s.

“We’re all people who know people,” he says. “Know what I’m sayin? When you’re around people who know people, ya gotta hold your tongue. That’s what I’m sayin. Me, I know how to hold my tongue. No one’s gonna find me face down in the parkin lot with a bullet in my head or floatin around in the marsh behind Kennedy Airport. No siree.”

"Mr. Big Mouth" is also available as part of the collection Easy Money & Other Stories and originally appeared in the literary journal Midnight Mind in 2003.