Flash and Bang

by J. Alan Hartman

  “Y’know,” Kelly squinted against the curling smoke, “I ’member you. Used to come in Rose’s on Belmont four, five years ago. Chicken-fried steak well, side of horseradish, extra catsup.”

  “Huh, well I’ll be. How’d you do that?”

  “I always remember regulars.”

  “Well, I haven’t had a good chicken-fried steak since you left. Isn’t that something.” Ransom added some more shading to his sketch. “Say, Kelly, what’s the best movie you’ve seen in the last two years?”

  “Mr. Roberts, hands down. Saw it four times at the Tower. Y’know, you remind me of Henry Fonda in that movie—all lean, soft-spoken, but strong on duty.”

  “Well, thanks.” He chuckled. “Never been thought of as a movie star before. ’Preciate it.”

  Kelly cackled.

  Definitely a Walter Brennan with tattoos.

  Ransom let Kelly smoke in silence then said, “You get six picks for a quarter on the jukebox. If somebody were to put several quarters in and hit H-16 for each selection, you’d get pretty much what we’re getting now. That right? ”

  Kelly agreed.

  “I gotta ask you, what’s with those quarters on the floor being red?” “Them’s the ones we salt the juke with to get the customers in the mood. We paint ’em with nail polish. When Ernie comes every week to work on the juke, he pulls out all the reds and returns ’em to us. Then he divvies the rest, gives half to the diner and keeps the other half.”

  “And Ernie was here today?”

  “Yep, late. ’Bout four thirty. Truck broke down.”

  “Had many people played it since then?

  “Nope, it being Tuesday and all. Friday’d be a different story.”

  “What do you think happened here?” Ransom asked.

  “Dunno. Maybe some bum come in off the street. Nah, no bum would’ve left all them quarters there—or the register take.”

  Ransom agreed.

  “Maybe an old boyfriend. Parked on the street and sneaked in the exit. No, I’da still heard the car, ’less he parked maybe a half block away or more.”

  Kelly looks worried, Ransom thought. Should be. If I believe him, and damned if I don’t, then no one could have come into the diner and killed Barbara. “You sure you didn’t hear another car come or leave?”

  “No sir. Wisht I had. Couldn’t have missed something like that. I listen all the time. There’s just no way. It’s important to my job.”

  As if on cue, both men became alert with the sound of a couple of cars pulling into the front lot. Each car only opened one door. Ransom sighed and closed his sketchbook. “Might be the doc. We’d better go in.”

  Frank let the swinging service door bump his back as he stopped suddenly. Something’s different. “Officer Collins,” he called.

  “Right here,” said Collins, exiting the men’s room in the hall. “Detective Greely said he’d keep everyone out ’til I was done,” he indicated the bathroom. “Got that information you wanted and figured out a timetable for you.”

  Ransom nodded and pulled out his sketchbook. A quick comparison showed that a hat from a booth coat rack was missing. He called to Kelly to follow him over to the booth. “You remember this order?” he gestured to the plate.

  “Sure do. My last one, Mr. No Mayo and Double Pickles. Looks like he wasn’t hungry.”

  “He a regular for sure?”

  “Every night, same thing. Don’t come for my cookin’. Got a crush on Barbara. My God she was a witch. I’d watch her play guys like this for suckers, always getting little presents from them for a smile. No present, she’d turn on the frost. Even got one guy to spring for a fancy vacuum with all sorts of attachments. Poor slobs. She just toyed with ’em for kicks.” He shook his head. “Gave women a bad name.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Just a suit, like you. Always dressed like he was going to church or court. Big guy.”

  “He have a hat?”

  “Said he was a suit, ’course he had a hat.”

  “Right, right.”

  Ransom sat directly behind Mr. Double Pickles’ booth and looked around. This would pretty much be Pickles’ line of sight. He noticed he had a good view of the short hallway leading to the restrooms, and didn’t like what he was thinking of next. Of how the patrol car’s engine was still hot enough to ping and give off heat, but that Greely’s car hood had been cool when he caught his papers on it. And that Kelly swore no cars had left the lot after he went outside for his smoke. He thought about how someone wearing a suit would have had his arms protected from Barbara’s nails in her struggles and how it would take a tall, husky man to throttle her, a man who had been cruelly played. “Don’t Be Cruel,” indeed. Then he remembered the wind in Greely’s hair and how a fedora had gone missing while Collins was taking a leak. He pulled in a deep, sharp breath and sent Kelly to the kitchen and Collins outside to summon the young detective.

  Greely stuck his head in the doorway. “Sir, I think I’d better stay out here. More press just drove up.”

  “Oh, I think the men can handle it. Come on in, I need you here. Take a look at the record that’s playing, but don’t touch the juke box. Now, doesn’t it look a little warped and that’s why it keeps playing over and over?” Greely did as he was told. “Can’t really tell, but yeah, I think it’s warped.”

  “You don’t think it’s because someone fed maybe three, four quarters to the machine and rigged that song? Someone who’d got a rude awakening tonight when his dream girl made out with a street punk practically in front of him? Most men couldn’t take that without going crazy. I figure we’ll be able to lift his prints from H-16 and those red quarters when we get Ernie back here to open the money box. No—don’t move. Officer Collins, cuffs please. Kelly, come on out. This your Mr. No Mayo, Double Pickles?” Greely tried to jerk away, but Collins had got the cuffs on. Kelly identified him positively.

  Tears flowed down Greely’s face. It wasn’t pretty. No, Greely was no leading man like Gregory Peck, but he wasn’t a villain either. The man’s whole body grieved. More like that great character actor, Victor McLaglan, who grabbed your heart and made you weep with him. It was just a damned shame. “Take it easy, son,” Ransom said. “Tell us about it. It’ll go easier on you.”

  *

  Hours later with the police work done, the diner’s owner came to lock up. Out front in the parking lot Ransom gave Kelly the sketch he did of him in the alley.

  “You do this while we was talkin’?”

  “Yep. Hobby of mine.”

  “It’s a damned good one. Would you, y’know, sign it or somthin’?”

  “I’d be pleased to.” He wrote an inscription to Louis Kelly and signed the picture.

  “Say, Frank, this is really nice of you. Tell you what. Come on down anytime, I’ll fix you a chicken-fried well with horseradish on the side and extra catsup. Bring the wife and kids.”

  “Done. I’ll look forward to it.” He shook hands with the cook and couldn’t help saying in his best Bogie voice, “‘Louie, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’”

  “Ha! Casablanca. Best dammed movie ever made. See ya around, cop.”

  Detective Frank Ransom walked across the lot to his car just as the diner’s lights turned off, leaving only the noisy neon to guard against the night.

  Fade to black and cut.

  A Simple Job

  Andrew MacRae

  Years ago, the guy who taught me the tricks of the detective trade had a sign over his desk. “There’s No Such Thing as a Simple Job.” He’d point to it, usually when I explained how simple a new job was going to be.

  My new client said her name was Brigid Morgan. She looked like a Brigid Morgan. She had a freckled face and red hair tied back in a bouncy ponytail, and I was as certain as any stranger could be that the color was natural. Her outfit was an attempt at schoolmarm strict, but the starched white blouse and long skirt failed to keep secret her curves.

  Green
eyes flashed from behind wire-framed glasses. “Do I meet your approval?”

  Busted.

  “Sorry, occupational hazard. We’re trained to observe and sometimes…”

  “Sometimes you get distracted?” A playful smile flirted on her lips.

  She had a sense of humor, nice in a client.

  Her story was straight, simple and familiar. Someone was blackmailing her, and she wasn’t coy giving the details. “Fifteen years ago I allowed myself to be photographed. I was eighteen, broke, and newly arrived in the city.” Though her voice was cool and calm, her fingers never stopped twining. “I had honestly managed to forget about it, until…” She fumbled in her purse and brought out a small cardboard envelope, and passed it to me.

  I squeezed the sides and let a folded sheet of paper slip from inside, then used a pen and straightened paperclip to unfold and hold the paper open. There were a few lines of text and a color image, a scan of an old-school 35mm print. While decidedly pornographic, the lighting and framing demonstrated that the photographer had considerable skill. Nor was there doubt that it was indeed my client in the photo, or that her hair was naturally red.

  I let the lower half of the paper fold back over the picture, leaving only the message. It was short and not very sweet:

  This photo and others will be mailed to your board of directors unless you meet my demands.

  They wanted twenty-five thousand dollars every three months, delivered in eCoins, a new online banking system used by computer gamers, and fast becoming a preferred method to launder money. There wouldn’t be much chance of tracking the payments once they entered the eCoin servers.

  Twenty-five grand was a lot of money, but I guessed anyone with a board of directors wasn’t worried on that score. Her name rang a bell. “Aren’t you the new CEO of Goober, the search engine?”

  Ms. Morgan nodded, but kept her lips tight. My client was a fast-rising, young star of high-tech. By all reports, as technically savvy as she was good looking, she was fast shaking up the nerd boy world.

  “Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to find the person blackmailing me.”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult. Ten to one it’s the original photographer, or someone who has his files. The real question is, if and when I find him, what happens next?”

  “Simple. I turn him over to the authorities.” The lady was cool.

  “Won’t that cause the very thing you want to avoid? Those pictures may not leak to the press, but the news of them will.”

  “That will happen no matter what I do. That’s something I’ve already accepted. Instead of asking the police for help, I will turn the bastard over to the D.A. for prosecution. The board might squirm, but the newspapers will love it. I’ll be the woman victim who fought back.”

  Did I mention she was cool?

  I brought out my notebook. “Let’s get down what you know. Do you remember the photographer’s name, or the name of his studio?”

  “His name was Rich, if that’s any help. He was tall, thin, maybe in his forties, wore wireframe glasses. He seemed professional. I mean, he didn’t try to do anything, you know?”

  I knew.

  “Do you remember where the shoot took place? The date?

  The next quarter-hour was spent with me asking questions and receiving little in return.

  “I told you, I buried every memory of it. I don’t want to remember.” Brigid’s voice was close to breaking and her brilliant green eyes awash with tears. A humming noise came from her purse and she brought out a cell phone. “I have to go.” She tried, but couldn’t keep relief out of her voice.

  I figured I had enough to start, so after she gave me a check, I let her go do whatever the CEO of a large corporation does these days.

  *

  Knowledge of the city is important in my business. I recognized the brand printed on the mailer and knew it was sold exclusively at FedUps stores, having sent a few myself. I also knew the postal code on the envelope and knew there was a FedUps store close to that post office. I took the N-Tamar tram down to Sunset and then hiked three blocks to the corner of Nineteenth and Carlson where a sleek FedUps store pitched its glare at a scruffy little post office across the street.

  I went inside and waited until the sales clerk finished a sale and his customer left. It was time to let him know I was no customer.

  “Good afternoon. What can I do for you?” Paul, according to his nametag, was somewhere in the neighborhood of forty, paunchy, pale skin, red face, wisps of thin blond hair carefully arranged, a clip-on tie askew.

  I let his question hang in the air until concern started to slip into his eyes, and then showed him the mailer, obscuring my client’s name and address. I pointed to a rack of others identical to it on the counter and pitched my voice lower, with what I hoped was a tone of authority tinged with a touch of menace. “I want you to think carefully, Paul. Two days ago someone came in and bought one of these.”

  “Mister, we sell lots of those every day. How can you expect me to remember selling one?”

  I ignored what he said and kept speaking in the same, insistent tone. “This person bought the mailer, walked over to that counter, and wrote an address on it. He put a sheet of paper into it.” I removed a paper from my jacket, folded it, and stuffed it in the envelope and mimed sealing it.

  Paul nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”

  “And after he left, you watched him cross the street to mail it at the post office, instead of here.”

  His eyes widened. “I don’t know how you did that, Mister. But you got it right. Well, except…”

  “Except?”

  “He bought the last one. I remember because I had to refill the display afterwards.” Paul described the man. Early to mid-sixties, he was tall, thin, wore wireframe glasses, kind of worn looking, if I knew what he meant. I did.

  “Pay by card?”

  “Yes.” He cast a furtive look around. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look him up.” He punched some keys on the computer and scrolled through a listing. “See, here it is.” He pronounced the customer’s name slowly as though tasting it for sin. “Rich Rosenthal. What’d he do? Something bad?”

  “That’s right.” I leaned over the counter and checked the display. The address was in a sketchy neighborhood not too far away.

  I headed for the door, but before I left I turned back. “And I’m going to catch him, thanks to you.”

  I left him with a look of accomplishment on his chubby face.

  *

  I sent Ms. Morgan a text message before leaving the parking lot, letting her know I had found Rich Rosenthal and had his address.

  Her reply came fast. “OMG fast!!! Txt 2me pls TY.”

  Kids these days. I sent her the info, and that was the end of a simple job. As a reward, I took myself to a showing of Gun Crazy at the Castro. Peggy Cummins. Now there was a woman who knew how to wear a sweater.

  An hour later, with whispered apologies and stepping on toes, I left the theater. I had ignored her first attempts to text and call me, but she was a client who would not be ignored.

  “Yes, Ms. Morgan?” I had to raise my voice. The Castro district at night was washed with neon, perfumed with uncollected garbage, and noisy with people out for a good time.

  “I want you to go with me.” This was a summons, not a request.

  “To the police?”

  “Yes. Where are you? I’ll pick you up.”

  She misinterpreted my slow consideration for hesitation. “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars.”

  That cured any hesitation on my part. For a quick grand I could neglect pretty Peggy. Besides, Gun Crazy was playing all week. I told Ms. Morgan where she could find me, and leaned against a streetlight at the corner of Sixteenth and Mission to wait. In retrospect, not a good idea, as I received a constant stream of offers of service from women, and more than a few men.

  A classic, powder-blue 1972 Triumph TR6, in no
t-so-classic condition, swerved to the curb. The passenger door popped open as it stopped.

  It was my client. “Get in,” she called.

  I lowered myself into the low-slung seat. The engine revved and we darted into traffic even as I tried without success to understand the seatbelt harness.

  “Don’t bother,” my client said as she downshifted and the little car growled around a corner. Her hair was down and tumbled over her shoulders. “That belt is tangled, doesn’t work. Haven’t got to fixing it yet.”

  “You’re restoring this?”

  “Yep. You should have seen it two years ago when I found it. It’s a lot of work, but I like working with my hands.”

  The gears protested as we took another corner. I noticed that the neighborhood had gotten sketchy.

  “I thought we were going to the police.”

  She shot me a quick glance. “Yeah, about that. I think maybe you were right.”

  “Me? About what?”

  “When you said the pictures could get leaked. I’d prefer not to let that happen.”

  We pulled up outside a rundown mid-century apartment building. Chiseled granite below the cornice proclaimed this was the Wickersham Place Apartments, and the address was Rich Rosenthal’s. Although the street was on level ground, Brigid ratcheted the parking brake hard and then cramped the front wheels against the curb. Life in a city of hills makes those actions automatic. Only then did she meet my stare.

  “I want you to help me cut a deal with him. I’m good at cutting deals. It’s what I do for a living.” She gestured at the street, lined with sad, rundown buildings. “I’m more used to board rooms and executive suites and can use your presence. I mean, you have a gun, don’t you?

  “A gun?”

  She formed a pistol with her fingers. “You know, bang, bang?”

  I flashed my coat. “Nope, no gun.”

  “Well, probably not needed.”

  I wondered if there was a trace of disappointment in her voice. “Let me go up first, scope things out, okay?” And maybe call the cops, I thought to myself.

  “What, and leave me alone on this street? No thank you.” She climbed out, her skirt granting me a generous view of shapely legs.