Anthony Carrick Hardboiled Murder Mysteries: Box Set (Books 1 - 3)

by Jason Blacker

  I waited a long time. I was on my second beer by the time the steak came. Seems to me, the bigger the price, the longer the wait for the food. The steak was big and served on its own plate. The potato had it's own plate and the asparagus also sat all alone.

  No fancy sauces, the only flavor enhancements for the steak the waiter assured me were its own natural juices and proprietary house rub. I looked at it and it looked good. I dug in and tasted it. It wasn't the best steak I'd ever had in my life but it would have been in the top hundred. That's a feat, I've eaten a lot of steak.

  Still the pretentiousness of the patrons was nauseating and almost ruined my meal. I'm a simple guy. I come in for a meal, not a world tour of gastronomic excess. I like one meal. Seldom appetizers and dessert. Sometimes I'll have a coffee. But this place was making me feel uncomfortable. I figured a coffee could wait until after the crime scene. I got my check and looked at it.

  After all was said and done I managed to crack three figures. I put Benjamin down on the table. Looked to me like he was frowning. Poor Richard wasn't happy at the expense. I figured he'd rather I go to bed hungry than rise the next morning in debt. Thing is, this was on Sonia. To shut him up I gave him the company of a couple of Honest Abes. They could philosophize about it all night long. I was trying to work for a living.

  I kept the receipt and decided to walk to The Glovebox. It wasn't far and I wanted to see if the cops had spied anyone coming in to open it up. I had my doubts, but I wanted confirmation. It wasn't far. A fifteen minute walk took me there, through the darkening sky pregnant with bulbous clouds that threatened rain but were full of hot air.

  The Glovebox is a small thin business that goes down deep. It's on one level, but I quickly found out it has a basement. It's not really a storage place. The biggest lockers are about three feet wide by four feet tall. The smallest the size of a mailbox.

  I looked around for a while. The place had steady business, mostly tourists coming in and out fetching backpacks and luggage on wheels. In the far corner, underneath two dull black eyes of cameras was the counter with a Goth girl chewing bubble gum and leaning over a magazine.

  I walked up to her. There were no cops hanging around inside or even outside. Maybe there was in the basement but I didn't think so. The Goth girl looked up at me and rolled her pink bubblegum around on a pink tongue that I could see bracketed between purple painted lips.

  "I'm looking for Officer Philip Marlowe," I said. "He was here earlier."

  "You his boss?" she asked, chewing her gum like cud.

  "I am," I said.

  She looked down at her magazine and turned a page.

  "He left a couple of hours ago," she said, not looking at me.

  She went to turn the page of her magazine again. I put my hand on it and the page tore a little.

  "Hey," she said, looking at me with a frown on her face. She stopped chewing her gum.

  "Listen, darling," I said. "We're investigating a murder, and the guy who rented that locker from you might have something to do with it. Now I want you to take me to that locker so I can go and have a look. Otherwise I'm gonna get a warrant and shut this place down while I look inside every locker. I'll bring drug sniffing dogs and if I find just a whiff of anything this place will be closed down for good. How do you think that'll look to your boss?"

  I gave her a hard stare. I might have been Mount Rushmore for all she knew. Her eyelids fluttered.

  "Geez, mister, you don't have to be such a hard ass," she said.

  "It's detective," I said to her.

  "I can't leave my desk," she said, "but the guy's locker is in the basement. Zero zero seven. But there's nothing to see. It's already been broken into."

  I nodded at her and walked past her counter to the back of the room where stairs wound down into the basement of this place. Zero zero seven was towards the front of The Glovebox. It was in a bank of similar sized lockers, all about two feet square that went two feet deep. These lockers had locks that required a key. Zero zero seven didn't require a key anymore. Looked to me like somebody had taken a crowbar to the locker and opened it up that way. The edge of it by the lock was bent in.

  I opened the locker and saw that it was empty. I turned around and looked back down towards the stairs. There were no cameras in this part of the building. The light was stingy too, and other than the lockers there was nothing of note in the room.

  I went back upstairs to see my Goth girl. She hadn't moved. She was still leaning on the counter and reading her magazine. I walked up to her.

  "Who busted the locker?" I asked.

  She shrugged and straightened up.

  "I dunno," she said. "We don't spy on our customers.” She said that like it was a compliment."

  "Do you check out your lockers to make sure none of them have been damaged?" I asked.

  She nodded.

  "At midnight and noon. Every twelve hours we have to check them. We charge our customers if they damage or deface the lockers."

  "So when was the first time you noticed that zero zero seven was broken into?"

  She moved to the side of her counter where a computer screen was located. She sat down and tapped onto a keyboard for a bit.

  "Charlene said she saw double oh seven was broken when she checked on Saturday at midnight. At noon it was still fine."

  She giggled.

  "What's so funny?"

  "I just realized the locker is double oh seven. You know, like that James Bond guy?"

  I nodded at her and smiled. It was a painful smile that had no reason to live so it died right there, limply, on my face.

  "Listen," I said. "I need to see your video footage from Saturday between noon and midnight. There might be more people at risk because of what was stolen from that locker."

  "I can get it for you," she said.

  I smiled at her. This time it had more staying power.

  "You're being very helpful," I replied. "I'll be sure to remember that."

  She liked that. She smiled at me. She tapped away at her keyboard with more vigor.

  "Here it is," she said. "I'm not supposed to do this, but you can come in here."

  She got up and opened the swinging door and lifted the counter for me to get into her small office space. She closed up the door after me and then sat back down on the chair.

  "Just use these arrows to go back and forth," she said. "If you want to stop just click here, and if you want to go super slow, just click here. You're lucky. We only keep the video for seventy-two hours. Tomorrow it'll get erased."

  "I live under a horseshoe," I said.

  She didn't get that.

  "Thanks," I offered. She got that one and then got up from the chair and went to help someone at the counter.

  "I wanna rent a locker for a couple of hours," he said.

  Goth girl started going on about their policy, how they need fifty dollars cash deposit if not paying by credit card and that it's cheaper to rent for a day. At that point I zoned out and started zooming through the video in front of me.

  The video was in black and white and not in high def. Goth girl had stopped it at eleven forty-seven on Saturday morning. I zoomed through for several minutes until at one fifty-six I saw someone leaving with what looked like a hard violin case. I froze the video. The person was wearing a dark hoody and they looked small and feminine. The hand was slender and delicate wrapped around the violin case's handle. There was a small bulge on the back of the head towards the top of the hoody.

  I had a feeling I knew who this was, but I couldn't be sure. I started scrolling back. This took a little longer. Several minutes went by before I found what I was looking for. At one fifty-two this same person came in wearing the hoody. Their hands were thrust into jean pockets and they kept their head down. You couldn't get a good look at the face, but I could see the nose. It was cute and shaped like a ski jump. It belonged to Christina Tedder. I was pretty sure of that. Along the side of her right leg inside the jeans you could just
make out what looked like it could have been a crowbar.

  Seemed to me like she'd stolen the violin. Did that mean she'd also popped Klee twice in the chest? I wasn't sure, but it seemed odd that if she had, she'd wait twenty four hours to collect her prize.

  I closed the program I was in. I didn't want anyone else taking a look by chance. I got up and walked over to Goth girl who had started back on her magazine.

  "Thanks," I said. "That was very helpful."

  "So you won't need to be closing us down?" she asked.

  I shook my head.

  "I've got another question for you though."

  "What's that?"

  "Did you see any big guys, I'm talking six feet and then some, come in while you've been here?"

  She shook her head.

  "No. I only started at one. But nobody like that's been in here."

  Not that you'd see them anyway, I thought, with your nose stuck in a magazine. I didn't feel like going through more video just on the off chance. If those two goons were here, they didn't know what they were looking for, or they came too late. I knew who took the violin. What I needed to know now was why.

  "Don't discuss this with anyone," I said, as I got myself out from the counter I was in.

  "Even the boss?" she asked.

  "Especially the boss," I said. "We need to be focusing on this case. When it's all cleared up we'll let you know."

  I found it easy to lie to some people some of the time. Maybe it was my years as a cop. Whatever, it came naturally, like slipping on a comfy pair of loafers.

  I walked out into the night. I caught a tide of pedestrians and rode it back towards the Ritz and from there it wasn't far to the Bon Vivant Views. The scene of the crime.

  I marveled at how busy New York was. Not like LA. At least the Santa Monica area where I lived. Folks slept in LA. New York seemed filled with the walking dead. Insomniacs and zombies. It was the kind of place that would run me dry if I stayed too long. A man needs time for quiet reflection if he's going to build character, and solve crimes.

  I walked passed the Ritz and carried on towards Bon Vivant. The evening was warm enough and my slacks and shirt and hat were all I needed. I didn't have a permit to carry in New York and so I hadn't bought my gun. Not that I felt like I needed it. The crime scene had been cleared by now and I was just gonna nose around and see if anything spoke to me. Knowing New York as well as I did, which was not well, I didn't figure a guy like me would qualify for a carry permit. Though having met Sonia, I had the sense she might have managed it for me if I'd wanted it. I didn't want it and I hadn't thought of it so it was moot.

  The Bon Vivant Views is a high rise apartment building that had forty-four stories. Its limestone exterior gives it a clean and old look. The doorman opened the door for me. Seems these parts of New York I was spending most of my time in are catered to the old and handicapped. They open doors, push elevator buttons and maybe even dress you. I didn't need help with any of that.

  I approached the main concierge desk. A smartly dressed young man looked up at me and smiled with fake teeth. He was dressed in a black suit with a red tie. His hair was blond and straight and thin and parted to the right.

  "I'd like to take a look at the crime scene," I said.

  He looked around nervously hoping that nobody could hear us. There was nobody around to hear us.

  "Certainly, sir, can I get your name please?"

  I gave him my name. He smiled and nodded. Told me he was just going to call maintenance, and they'd show me up. I waited at the desk. He told me it would only be a few minutes, and it was.

  A big burly guy in blue work pants and a short blue work shirt walked towards me. "Hank" was embroidered on his shirt, just above his left chest. His forearms were as thick and hairy as a gorilla's. He wore a bushy mustache and his head carried a curly mess of brown hair. He looked like he could have been in a cheesy seventies porn flick, if he wasn't so ugly. He grunted at me. Might have been words but I wasn't sure.

  He went over to the main desk where the refined young blond man gave him a keycard. He walked towards a bank of elevators and I followed him. The elevator opened and swallowed us both. There was an elevator attendant standing in the elevator. He asked Hank where we were going. Hank told him the ninth floor. The elevator attendant put in a key and turned it. The elevator doors closed and he pushed the button that had a black nine on it.

  We took the elevator up in silence. Nobody talked to anyone. I didn't care. I didn't have much to say. The elevator doors opened on the ninth floor and I walked out after Hank. We turned right and a couple of doors down from the elevator on the left side was nine zero five. The carpet along the hall was beige and thick. It felt like I was walking along a soft forest floor. It had lots of give. Hank put in the keycard and opened the door. He stepped into the main foyer. I stepped in after him.

  "Do you need me?" he asked. His voice was gruff and throaty like he spoke from one of New York's sewers.

  I shook my head. Hank started to leave.

  "Just close the door when you're done. It'll lock itself."

  I turned and watched Hank leave. Then I took a few steps into the main hall of the apartment. There were closets on the right. Up ahead was the kitchen which I walked towards. The sink was first and then off to the right was the rest of the kitchen. It was a good size for the apartment. It was uncluttered. There was nothing on the fridge. No photographs or magnets. I opened it up. There were some beers inside and an opened bottle of white wine. Some wrinkled apples were in the crisper like the bald heads of old ladies. A couple of boxes of Chinese takeout stood on the shelves like white bricks. There was a bottle of milk but not much else worth mentioning. The freezer was half empty. But what was in it were a variety of frozen dinners, a loaf of sliced bread and two ice trays with ice. The one was half empty.

  I closed the freezer and looked around. I had the feeling that Klee ate out most days and didn't do much entertaining in his apartment except for screwing the women that came by. The sink was empty and as parched as the desert. Didn't look like it had seen water for days. I opened the cupboards below the sink and garbage was half empty too. Everything about Klee's life seemed to me like it was half empty. What was in the garbage was empty takeout boxes and paper plates and plastic cutlery.

  I looked around in some of the other cupboards. Most of them were mostly empty. There were some glasses, mugs, plates and those sorts of things but nothing that interested me. I walked out of the kitchen and went around to the other side of the counter opposite the sink. There were two bar stools there that looked as if they hadn't moved since they'd been introduced to the place.

  I was now practically in the living room. In front of me was a large L-shaped sofa. It was facing towards the far wall where a large flat screen TV hung like a square of black night. On my right as I looked at it was a tall comfy leather chair. I walked around it and faced the sofa. That must have been the sofa he'd been shot in. I looked at it more closely. The left side of it, from my perspective, away from the corner of the L seemed more worn. I figured that's where he was seated when he was shot. There was an ottoman in front of that cushion too.

  I walked up to it and bent down over it. There was no blood, not telltale signs that any violence had occurred there. It obviously wasn't a through and through, and it looked like he hadn't bled much at all.

  The smell was still terrible in the place, most acutely in this living room. It smelled like someone had put shit and meat out in the hot sun to go putrid. I'd smelled it many times before and I never got used to it. The smell of death warmed up could gag a horse.

  I stepped away and took off my hat and brought it up to my nose. That helped a bit. I looked around but couldn't see any windows to open. In front of the sofa was a large rectangular glass coffee table that had the Friday Times on it. It also had a couple of men's magazines, and a cup of coffee that wasn't finished.

  I took a moment to think. What I was hoping to find was some evidenc
e that someone had swiped his key for the locker at The Glovebox. I didn't know where he'd keep it. If it was me, I'd keep it on me. I'd likely have the key in my wallet. But Cooper and Simms hadn't found it, or they would have told me about it and already have gone to The Glovebox before I'd spoken to them.

  That meant he kept it at his apartment. The most common places for something like that would be underwear drawers or in a book case or a drawer of his nightstand. I'm thinking he was paranoid because he thought he was being followed, and he was. So I reckon he'd hide the key somewhere he thought was safe. That meant it wouldn't be in plain sight.

  I had a suspicion it would be in his room somewhere. His room was off to my right as I still stood looking at the couch. I moved around it and then went towards the bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open and looked in. It was dark, so I turned on the light. To the left was the door to what was probably the closet. Just beyond that was a door to what most likely was the en suite. To my right was a large chest of drawers. I walked up to the chest of drawers and opened up the first drawer. It was filled with clean boxers and boxer briefs. I rifled through them but couldn't find anything that was interesting to me.

  I closed the drawer and as it clicked there seemed to be a similar click just after. Like it had echoed. My ears pricked up and the hair on the back of my neck stood to attention. I listened quietly. My hat was on the top of the chest of drawers.

  I had an eerie sense someone was in the room with me. I spun around fast bringing my fists up to my face. Just as I did, this tall concrete fella threw a hook that glanced off my wrists and smacked me upside the left temple. He was huge and his weight through that fist felt like a wrecking ball.

  I staggered along the front of the drawer. He was a brawler, though he didn't feel like a boxer. He had an unorthodox style that was probably a mix of all sorts of nasty arts. I sent a jab to feel for distance and it caught him on the cheek. He was in close. Closer than he needed to be. He had over half a foot of height on me, and probably fifty or more pounds on me.