The Shakedown Shuffle: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 3)

by Richard Levesque

  She nodded at this and seemed to think it over for a moment.

  “Very well. I need to trust somebody.”

  “May I ask…” I started and then hesitated. “I mean, if confidentiality is your concern, don’t the movie studios have security people on payroll? Someone you’d have to trust because you’d have a little…influence over them?” When I saw her raise an eyebrow at this, I quickly added, “Not that I don’t want to work with you, of course, or that there’s anything to worry about with seeking my services. I just thought that…maybe you’d already have access to similar services where it might be more convenient, where you could keep it in house, so to speak.”

  She nodded at this. “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Strait. In most circumstances, you’d be right. In my situation, though, I have my reasons for keeping this matter separate from my professional dealings.”

  “I understand,” I said. Then, making a show of holding up the pencil, I said, “Where should we start?”

  She pulled at the cigarette again, the seriousness with which she sucked smoke into her lungs suggesting to me that she was looking for a little courage in the action. If I’d been the type to keep a bottle of brandy in the office, I was pretty sure she’d already have accepted a slug or two. Tobacco being all she had to go with, though, she let fly with another sharp exhale and then started talking.

  “I’ll start by saying I don’t like men and I’m not ashamed of it. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Strait. I’m sure you and most other men are perfectly fine people. That’s not what I mean to imply. Suffice it to say that my onscreen romances with men are…well…acting. You see?”

  “I get the picture,” I said.

  “For about two years now, I’ve been in a relationship with a woman from the wardrobe department at Paragon Pictures. Her name is Jeanie Palmer.”

  She watched as I wrote this down.

  “Or, I should say we were in a relationship. It ended a few weeks ago. And I should add that it ended badly.”

  “Do you mind if I ask why it ended? At whose instigation?”

  “I broke it off with Jeanie. I…I’d grown bored with her, to be honest. It just wasn’t the same anymore. And I’m sorry to say I wasn’t as diplomatic as I could have been in letting her know. It was a pretty nasty scene, and that was the end.”

  I nodded and made a note on the tablet but did not comment. My job was not to offer advice to the lovelorn or to validate this woman’s choice to end things with her lover. At this point, my job was just to get the facts.

  “Yesterday—just before I made the appointment to come see you—I received this in the mail.”

  She opened the expensive purse that had been resting on her lap and pulled an envelope from it, passing it over to me with a look of disgust on her face, like she had just found a dead mouse in her bag and was asking me to dispose of it.

  I saw the envelope had been delivered to a Hollywood address, which I assumed was Leonora’s home. There was no return address. Inside was a single folded sheet of paper, an unsigned typed note. I read it quickly.

  “To Leonora Rigsby:

  “You do not know me, but I know all about you. I have in my possession a single reel 8 mm film that tells me ALL about you. It’s not the kind of thing they show at the Egyptian, but it’s something the world will see soon enough if you aren’t willing to give me a cash payment of $10,000. Place the money in an overnight case on the curb outside your home at 11:30 pm on the 17th of this month. An hour later, you may retrieve the case and find most of the film inside. If the police are called or I am harassed in any way during this transaction, you should be aware that I will retain the last two minutes of the film, which I will post to you in the mail as soon as I have secured the payment from you, unmolested. After that, you will never hear from me again.”

  I laid the letter on my desktop and looked at the woman across from me, certain that I was keeping my expression neutral. Leonora met my eyes not with the cold steel glare that I had been expecting but rather with tears rimming her lower lids. She wanted to appear strong and defiant, but I could see that the letter and all it entailed had broken down her defenses; the woman must have had a difficult time since receiving the blackmail demand.

  Distraught enough to end it all? I wondered.

  Doubtful. I reminded myself not for the first time that things I glimpsed in other worlds were not exactly linked to this one, that a murderer on the other side might be a mild-mannered shoe salesman in this world, someone who’d never been pushed into the desperation that his counterpart knew.

  During our conversation, I’d become convinced that this version of Leonora was not going to kill herself, at least not anytime soon. The tears weren’t any sign that she’d reached the end of her tether. She was fed up, yes, but not ready to snuff her own candle.

  Ignoring the tears, I asked, “Am I correct in assuming that you suspect Miss Palmer is behind this letter?”

  “Yes,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. There was a little crack in her voice, and she wiped delicately at the tears with the corner of a handkerchief pulled from her purse, taking care not to smudge her make-up.

  “And would it also be correct to assume that there is such a film? And that Miss Palmer might, indeed, have possession of it?”

  A longer hesitation, and she nodded. “Yes. To both.” Her voice did not crack now. Instead, bitterness and anger had crept in.

  “All right,” I said, setting my pencil down. “The answer to my next question might seem completely obvious to you, but I need to ask it just for purposes of clarification. What, exactly, would you like me to do in the face of this attempt to extort money from you?”

  “I want you to put a stop to it. I want you to get the movie back. I want her to leave me alone. For good.”

  With a slight nod, I said, “Okay. I can work on getting the movie back. If I confront her directly, she’ll just deny she has it. Or maybe she’ll claim it was stolen from her and that she’s out of it.”

  “That would be a lie.”

  “I agree. But you have to understand that I need to work within the boundaries of the law here. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather bring the police in on this?”

  “Positive. That way leads to scandal. I need to contain this.”

  I nodded and thought about it for a moment. “All right,” I said, tapping the pencil on the tablet. “I’ll start by approaching her directly, lean on her a little but strictly within the bounds of the law. I don’t believe in rough stuff. If that’s what you were hoping to hire me for, you’ve come to the wrong place. Are we clear on that?”

  She nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “If the direct approach doesn’t work, I’ll stake out your home and then follow her on the night of the seventeenth after she leaves with the money and, I assume, drops off your movie. Tail her back to her place and then strong arm her into giving up the last part of the reel.”

  “I thought you just said no rough stuff.”

  “And I meant it,” I said. “I won’t hurt her, but I can make her think I’m going to. Not all the actors are on your side of the camera, after all.”

  She smiled a bit at this, although it was almost a sneer.

  “Would you want me to secure the ten thousand dollars?” I asked.

  She gave this a moment’s thought and then said, “No. Let her have it. As long as you get the full movie.”

  “All right,” I said, making a note on the tablet. Then I looked back at her and said, “I don’t mean for this to sound indelicate, but in order for me to know she’s given me the right film, I probably need to know what’s on it.”

  Leonora raised an eyebrow. “It’s me. And Jeanie. You can guess what we’re doing in the film. It was made for personal use, never meant to be sold or viewed by anyone else. A friend from the studio who’s…sympathetic brought in the camera, did the shooting and then processed the film when it was done. Completely trustworthy, in case you’re wondering.”

 
“I wasn’t, actually. But now that you mention it, I should probably have this friend’s name. Just in case.”

  “In case it’s not Jeanie blackmailing me?”

  “That’s right.”

  She shook her head. “Impossible. I don’t want you bringing anyone else into this mess.”

  I raised an eyebrow at this. “I have to say that I can’t recommend that course of action,” I said. Then, shrugging and thinking again of the red ink on the agency’s books, I added, “But you’re the boss.”

  Leonora didn’t respond directly. “The whole thing was a terrible mistake. Meant as a little novelty, nothing more. I think we only watched it once. A lot of trouble to go to for not much payoff. And now this.” She nodded at the letter on the desk and took another drag on the cigarette before reaching forward to snuff it out.

  “Did you know Miss Palmer took the film when she left?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “But I didn’t exactly watch her go. The whole break-up was a pretty nasty affair, as I said. When we’d finished yelling, I locked myself in my room and waited there until she was gone. She could have taken anything during that time. I just assumed she wouldn’t have the nerve.”

  I let that hang in the air for a moment and then said, “All right. Is there anything significant about the seventeenth of this month? It’s a Wednesday night. Any reason you can think of that she would have chosen that night instead of any other?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing significant that I can think of. I think…I think that’s the night the trashcans are put out for collection in my neighborhood. Maybe she thought the trashcans would give her something to hide behind? I can’t think of why else she’d pick that night.”

  I shrugged at this, pondering her theory. It didn’t really click for me, but it didn’t stink either. After taking a moment to write a few more notes, I tapped my pencil on the blackmail note.

  “May I keep this for now?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Of course. If I never see it again, it’s fine by me.”

  “All right,” I said. “The only thing that remains is to fill out a bit of paperwork, an agreement between the two of us, and to settle on the cost. “

  She nodded. “I assume I’m paying you whether you succeed or fail?”

  “At getting the film back? Yes, I’m afraid so. I need to be compensated for my time.”

  “That’s fine. There’s a bonus in it for you if you get the whole movie.”

  “Not necessary, but…”

  “But you won’t say no.”

  “You’ve got me there,” I said.

  Considering the financial straits I was in, the thought of a bonus from the highly paid actress in front of me struck me as a very nice thing. I had come full circle now, glad to have her for a client despite the vision I’d had of her suicide. For a moment, I allowed a bit of second-guessing; what if I’d been wrong about her neck? What if she wasn’t the dead woman? In that little moment, I felt like a day that had started off oddly might turn itself around and work out all right.

  It was still early, of course. There was plenty more time for things to go wrong.

  When I moved to offer Leonora the fountain pen I kept on the desktop, she shook her head and pulled a fancy little job out of her purse. It looked like a fountain pen but about twice the thickness of a normal one; it had a cap on its end, and when she pulled it off, I said, “That’s different.”

  She raised an eyebrow and smiled. Turning the pen to admire it, she said, “The latest thing. Apparently, it’s got a little cartridge full of ink inside so you can change colors just by changing cartridges. It’s pressurized somehow to keep the ink from coming out all at once and there’s another little gas cartridge of some kind that keeps everything equalized.” She shrugged. “I don’t really understand it, but I like the way it writes.” Then, with a tittering little laugh, she added, “What will they think of next?”

  I nodded. Mechanical women, I could have said. Flying cars, portable telephones… Part of me wanted to get a better look at the pen so I could tell Guillermo a bit more about it. If it worked as well as Leonora had suggested with a gas cartridge regulating the ink, I wondered how a little bit of Chavezium would improve it. I reserved comment, though, leaning forward instead to point and say, “Name, address and phone. Then initial next to the daily rate and expenses sections and the other boxes down the line. I’ll have my secretary write up the particulars of what you’re hiring me to do and we’ll put it all together under one more signature before you’re done.”

  “Excellent,” she said and bent over the document, fancy pen in hand.

  “We’ll leave out the bit about the bonus if you don’t mind. Just keep that between you and me.”

  “Of course,” she said without looking up as I rose from my chair and went to the door.

  I was expecting to find Peggy alone in the outer office, my next appointment having been rescheduled. Normally, Carmelita would have shepherded Leonora through the rest of the process with Peggy and I would have seen the next client while Carmelita and Peggy managed things with Leonora in the outer office.

  When I passed into the outer office, though, I didn’t find what I’d been expecting—Peggy perched at her typewriter and waiting for me to finish up with the new client. Instead, I found my secretary and, sitting across from her, the client who should have been rescheduled. I was instantly annoyed, and the look of irritation I saw on Peggy’s face made it worse.

  Carson Mulvaney was a writer, a hack. He was a cut-rate ink slinger who got paid half a cent a word for cranking out crap stories about murder and mayhem, sensational slop that kept readers with less than stimulating lives turning the pages. He was around forty, a middle-aged man in a young man’s town who slicked his hair back and kept his pencil thin mustache perfectly shaped above his smarmy smile. Annoying though he was, the man was still a paying client—only not the kind I really wanted, and I’d had to make allowances for his brash personality and sense of entitlement. At least, I made allowances when it was just me he was bothering. Now that he’d set his sights on Peggy, it was a different story. He sat across from her, his hat in his hands, leaning forward in his cheap suit and smacking his chewing gum; the sight of him there when I’d clearly wanted him pushed back to later in the morning made me want to tear up the contract we’d signed more than a month ago and show him none too politely to the stairs.

  When Mulvaney saw me come through the door, he stopped mid-schmooze, his car salesman smile lighting up for my benefit.

  “Strait!” he said. “So, you are here.” He tilted his head, looking past me and into my office before I had a chance to close the door behind me, clearly trying to size up the person sitting inside who’d been made more of a priority than he was. I could tell he caught a glimpse of Leonora, as his eyes lit up even more at the sight of her, but I doubted he could tell who she was since she still had her back to the door and hadn’t turned her head to watch me leave.

  I pulled the door closed with a thud and said, “I thought we had re-scheduled Mr. Mulvaney, Peggy.”

  Before my secretary could answer, Mulvaney spoke. “She tried, Strait. But you’re not the only one who’s a busy guy. I chose to ignore the request to come in later. I see now that I made the right call.”

  “No, Mulvaney. You didn’t. I’m busy at the moment.” I didn’t care if he caught the irritation in my voice. Glancing at my wristwatch, I said, “What do you say you come back in half an hour? Or else maybe we just cancel altogether.”

  “I’m on a deadline, Strait,” he said, his tone still salesman pleasant as though the bad news he was giving me was the most obvious thing in the world, as though only an idiot wouldn’t be able to see that things had to go Mulvaney’s way. “We don’t want to talk breach of contract, do we, Strait? I mean…if I have to start all over again with a different private detective, it’s going to throw off my whole project.”

  I put up a hand to stop him. “Fine,” I said. “Fine, f
ine.” Then I looked at Peggy and said, “Can you handle things with my other client while I take Mr. Mulvaney elsewhere?”

  Before Peggy could answer, Mulvaney said, “Elsewhere? What is this? I don’t rate the office? Not fancy enough of a client for you?”

  “The contract we signed doesn’t stipulate where we meet, does it? Just that we meet. There’s a coffee shop on the corner.”

  Had things gone the way I had originally planned this morning, I would have had Carmelita escort Leonora into the lobby while I ushered Carson Mulvaney inside. Now that I’d seen him leering at Leonora, though, I wanted no part of exposing the woman in my office to the writer any more than she already had been.

  I could see that Mulvaney wanted to protest further but then must have thought better of it, as he said nothing. Turning to Peggy again, I said, “Can you please explain to my other client that I was unavoidably taken out of the office? If she has any questions, let her know I can be reached by phone in—”

  Peggy had been making eye contact with me as I spoke, her expression just south of a smirk as she watched me go through the motions of attempting to sound professional. But then the phone rang, and her eyes darted away from mine for a moment. Glancing back at me to see what I wanted her to do, she caught my nod and answered the phone.

  “Jed Strait, private investigations,” she chimed. “How may I help you?”

  She nodded, the receiver to her ear, and after a moment, she said, “Thank you. One moment please.”

  Pulling the phone away, she gave me a sympathetic look that silently said, “Sorry, Jed. When it rains, it pours.” Then, out loud, she said, “It’s for you, Jed. Mr. Garcia.”

  Guillermo, I thought and a feeling of dread overcame me, a chill running up my neck and over my scalp. The old man wouldn’t be calling me if everything had gone as planned with Carmelita, I knew, so his calling meant something had gone wrong.

  Ignoring Mulvaney, I reached for the phone and said, “Is everything all right?”