SERIOUSLY...?: A Lou Fleener Thriller

by Duane Lindsay

  “Questionable?” Says Cassidy. “We’re talking Nazis here, Monk. I think questionable is a little tame.”

  “Would you prefer odious? Perhaps atrocious?”

  “Mostly I’m wondering about dangerous.”

  “Ah; you’re worried about Lou. Cassidy, let me reassure you. I can say with complete certainty that Lou is in no danger whatsoever today.”

  Turns out he’s wrong about that.

  Which they find out when the get home at five-forty. Monk is determined to keep regular work hours—nine-to-five—despite having no reason to. The result is a forty minute drive that covers exactly twenty blocks of barely moving rush hour traffic.

  Cassidy’s nerves are frazzled and her hair is limp and disheveled from the humidity and her habit of tugging on it when she’s stressed.

  “Maybe we should have taken the train,” she suggests, more than once, as they inch forward on Lake Shore Drive. “Left Lou the car.” She’s thinking they should have named the damn road Lake Shore Sit when the car in front of them moves over and they gain a free twenty feet. Almost enough to let in a breeze. With the heat and the traffic Monk won’t let her turn on the air conditioner, saying, “The car will overheat if we do,” and she’s thinking irritably, “Better it than us.” when he—finally!—takes the exit and they’re free.

  They’re still arguing car vs. train vs. non-standard hours as they climb the thirteen concrete steps to the upper level. It’s still bright out—the sun won’t stop its assault until nine tonight—and the temperature isn’t going to come down until midnight and Cassidy pauses at the door and yells, “Lou?”

  Nothing. No response. The apartment is as quiet as the waiting room in Hell’s own library and she walks from room to room wondering where he is and she’s just starting to think, office, when she hears a thud on the floor.

  Ah; Lou. She goes out, goes down, wishing there was an inside stair since this is going to be an icy nightmare come winter, which lasts, she recalls, until May. She goes in—it’s dark down here; why hasn’t he turned on the lights?—and sees him at his desk.

  With his foot bare and swollen and propped on the desk and she says, “Lou?” and “Oh Christ; what happened?” She’s a bit shocked because she’s never seen him hurt before, even when he was attacked by a half-dozen very large men. She runs to him and accidently hits his foot with her hand as she goes by and Lou sits up very suddenly.

  “Nnnnnnn,” he says in a tiny strangled voice, like a mouse on helium.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” She’s gone down on one knee—screw the nylons—and is touching his face, searching for signs of injury. He’s got a couple of bruises but doesn’t seem hurt, except his foot, and it does, a lot.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “A Nazi, Cass. One very large Nazi.”

  6 - Yes, But the Client is Missing…

  “Huge,” says Lou, upstairs on the sofa that looked pretty good back in the immense living room with the floor to ceiling window overlooking the street just three blocks from the Pacific ocean. Here, it’s just looking big. “The guy’s a mountain wearing pants.”

  Cassidy helped him limp upstairs and settled him on it, fluffing pillows around him as if it was his body hurting, not his foot, before racing up to tell Monk to hurry down.

  “He beat you? How interesting.” Monk’s seated himself on the middle section of the sofa—it would take the offensive line of the Chicago Bears to fill in the rest—and he’s watching Lou closely.

  “He didn’t beat me,” Lou protests. “I got this, sure,” he points to his ankle, now encased in a bag of frozen peas that Cassidy wrapped in a towel. He smiles at her in appreciation. “But the other guy—did I mention he’s really big?—he’s a lot worse off. He’ll probably have a headache until Christmas.”

  “Even so, Lou; I’m surprised. How many times have you been injured in a fight?”

  “Well, if you count that time with Duke Braddock’s guys…once.”

  “And now one man, even one as large as you say, does this to you.” Monk seems to retreat into himself as he runs ideas through his brain. He’s always been deeply into analysis and not so much in the real world when he gets something lodged in his head.

  “Yeah; the other thing though, was the room. It was so small. Monk, he lives in one of those little places where the living room’s the size of steamer trunk and you have to step out of the bedroom to turn around. I didn’t have the space to move.”

  “Still, you seem to be slowing down as you get older.”

  “Older? Monk; I’m only 38.”

  “Thirty-eight is old for an athlete, Lou. Football players, which are the closest analog to you and your abilities, are often retired in their early thirties, sometimes younger. Boxers get injured earlier. Any of the more physical sports…”

  “Yeah, I get it. I’m over the hill.”

  “I’m not saying that, Lou; but I do think you should consider relying less on your talent and more on avoiding these confrontations.”

  “I did avoid confrontation. I waited until he went to work before I broke into his house.”

  “I’m thinking, that maybe the best course is not to break in in the first place. Use a little discretion.”

  Cassidy makes a sound that sounds like a snort, and apologizes, though she’s smiling a lot when she does. “Discretion, right. Lou’s famous for that.”

  “Ha-ha. Go ahead and laugh. But it’s not funny.”

  “No it isn’t,” Monk says ominously.

  “Two weeks,” says the doctor. “That’s how long I want you to stay off of that ankle.”

  The doctor is a pale, thin young man who hardly looks old enough to go to Med school, no less be an actual physician. Lou, reminded of Monk’s comments about getting old, tries not to see the kid as being too young to vote or buy cigarettes, but as a professional, like himself. He doesn’t succeed.

  “What about that kid?” he complains to Cassidy as she takes the wheel of the Bel-Air. Like most cars on the road in 1960, it’s a three speed stick shift on the column and Lou, with his ankle wrapped and still aching, can’t use a clutch. “He can’t be more than thirteen years old. Probably still has acne.”

  “You want to stop complaining, dear?” Cassidy says, very sweetly. She remembers nursing Lou back to health after a savage beating by Duke Braddock’s men, back when he was just a guy who danced well and looked not good enough to seriously consider. Time and familiarity, as well several attempts kill them, had brought them together and she found she was in love with him.

  Now here he is, freshly replanted in Chicago, injured again and whining about it. Cassidy has grown as a person from her early incarnation as the girl most likely to covet your wallet, but exposure to griping still makes her think about life without men in it.

  Especially, at this moment, this one.

  So she drives, and he settles into an awkward silence and she thinks about whether she’s being fair, since she was the one who insisted he take the old lady’s case and got him beat up by a Nazi, so maybe it’s a little bit her fault.

  She says, turning onto the diagonal Lincoln Avenue, a deathtrap for cars driven by people from Rawlins, Wyoming where the entire city had only eleven streets and four traffic lights, “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For being rude about you complaining.”

  “Oh.” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “I didn’t notice you being rude.”

  Which annoys Cassidy even more than the complaining.

  Two weeks go by slowly, but they do go by, eventually. Lou’s up and around on a crutch and Cassidy escapes to Monk’s office. She’s stayed home to help him, an act appreciated by neither one; Lou because he didn’t like being waited on and Cassidy because she wasn’t appreciated for waiting on him.

  Lou spends his second week going from the disabled list to the annoyed at being immobile list but exercise and persistence makes things better and he’s back at the doc
tor getting the bandages removed.

  “Try not to do anything excessive,” says the doctor. This new one is geriatric and Lou gets the feeling he served in the Civil War. Sitting on the cold examining table he’s wondering what doctors do between the ages of twelve and ninety. They certainly don’t seem to work here.

  To celebrate his freedom, Lou and Cassidy and Monk go out to a local bar, order drinks and steaks and later, when a local Cowboy band starts playing, Lou takes her out on the floor and shows off his new dance steps.

  Cassidy’s in love all over again. It was Lou’s surprising ability to dance that caught her attention when they first met and she’s reveling in the stares of the crowd as he sweeps her up high and dips her down low around the small dance floor. Lou’s at his best in the larger ballrooms where he has room to really show her off. She’s flushed with excitement and feeling good when he glides her to a table.

  “How about you, Monk? Do you see anybody you like?”

  He looks around the room. There are a dozen unescorted ladies in various cowgirl outfits, some being chatted up by hopeful men, some drinking together in groups at the tables, a few standing alone at the bar.

  “No,” says Monk. “I’m not in the mood.”

  Cassidy says, “What about her?” She points to an attractive brunette leaning her elbows backward on the bar, stretching the material on the front of her red cowgirl shirt. “She’s cute.”

  “I said I’m not interested,” Monk says sharply. He gets up suddenly and the chair falls backwards. “I’m going to take a bus home. You can have the car.” Without waiting for a reply he turns and vanishes in the crowd.

  “The hell?” says Cassidy. “What’s his problem?”

  Lou, looking after him, says, “It’s Corrie’s birthday.” Corrie is his eight year old daughter, taken by his ex-wife in an extremely bitter divorce. She left four years ago and Monk hasn’t seen her since. His cards and letters go unanswered. Only the monthly alimony checks let him know his ex exists. In all those four years Monk hasn’t recovered.

  “Oh, shit,” says Cassidy. “I forgot. Dammit, Lou; you should have said something.”

  “I kind of forgot myself.”

  Later, at night in bed, lights off and only a low glow from the streetlights, she says, “Lou? We’re okay, right?”

  Their heartbeats are slowing and there’s the faint sound of the elevated training rumbling in the night. “We’re good, Babe. We’re very good.”

  Later still, just before his eyes close he hears her whisper, “Poor Monk,” and he falls asleep.

  “You gotta go back,” says Cassidy.

  “I agree,” says Monk. They’re gathered in Cassidy’s kitchen on a Tuesday morning before Monk and Cassidy go downtown. It’s become a routine to come here and eat together, omelets for Monk, toast and yogurt for Cassidy, sugared cereal for Lou. Coffee all around.

  “It’s been two weeks,” says Cassidy. “She’s got to be wondering what happened to you.”

  “She could call,” Lou says. He pauses with a spoonful of cereal that can’t possibly be good for humans. The box has a toy scuba diver though and Lou’s easily amused. “Or come back here. She knows where I work.”

  “Yes, but…” There’s been a lot of ‘yes, buts’ since this conversation started. Lou doesn’t want to go back, partly because he’s a little embarrassed about being beaten. He has no desire to face Erich again and he can’t see how he’d miss him if he went back to Mrs. Podalack’s place.

  “Lou,” says Cassidy, in that voice that says he’s going, he just hasn’t admitted it yet. “That poor old woman…”

  “Ok, fine.”

  “Probably sitting by the window, looking out, wondering where you are…”

  “I said fine.”

  “Her hero,” says Cassidy, leaning in and smiling brightly. “Her Galahad, on a white horse, come to save her from the evil dragon.” Cassidy’s been reading romantic history paperbacks she gets at the spinner rack in the Illinois Central depot under the downtown library.

  Monk chimes in, “I don’t think dragons can be evil. They’re just lizards after all, and mythological, as well.”

  “If they’re mythological,” says Cassidy, “They can feel whatever I want them to feel.”

  “Well, in theory that’s correct. However, in real world applications, your desires on any given subject can’t affect the reality of those situations. Or dragons, in this instance.”

  “Monk,” Cassidy says. “Your eyes are brown, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, they are. But you know that.”

  “Do you know why they’re brown, Monk?”

  “Certainly. There’s a dominant and regressive gene pair…”

  “It’s because you’re full of shit, Mr. Monkton.” Cassidy grins at him. “All the way to your eyeballs.”

  She turns back to Lou who says, “I’m going.”

  Driving though, this time. Lou’s had enough of public transportation, even one as efficient as Chicago’s Transit Authority.

  It turns out that the CTA really is more efficient as Lou gets caught in a rush hour as he heads west on North Avenue along with fifty thousand other stop and go commuters.

  He parks across the street from her house and takes a few minutes to watch the neighbor place before getting out. Both houses are as quiet as expected on a Tuesday morning but he crosses the street feeling like he’s being watched by a thousand eyes.

  He looks for a sign of the drapes being pulled, a sure indicator that Mrs. Podalack is spying, but the house remains still and silent. The front door is mahogany with an etched glass window. Lou rings the doorbell and hears the flat rasp of a bell inside. He waits, presses it again, waits again. He leans against the glass and shades his eyes with cupped hands, trying to see inside.

  Nothing. No movement at all. He tries the handle but the door is locked. Lou, still fighting that eyes on him feeling, goes around to the side and down the shady narrow sidewalk between the building and Erich’s. He gets to a postage stamp back yard, this one filled with raised garden beds with vegetables overflowing them all. Green beans and cauliflower and red ripe tomatoes as big as baseballs. Flowers over to the left; red and yellow snapdragons, orange trumpet vines, blue tulips and pink roses blooming in every possible inch of space.

  For a moment he’s stunned by the sensory overload, both light and smell, but he goes to the back door and tries it. Also locked.

  She’s probably out shopping, maybe looking for another private eye since this one didn’t work out for her. He recalls the tiny woman, remembers her fierce blue eyes demanding his attention. Yeah, that’s probably it; she’s out looking for another champion.

  Except…he doesn’t believe it.

  Monk said, “Maybe you shouldn’t break into houses anymore.” Good advice but what harm can come from going in to check on an old woman? Maybe she’s fallen and can’t get up. Maybe she needs help.

  Screw maybe. Lou takes his lock pick set—the one he’d be arrested for owning—and opens the door in fifteen seconds. He’s not worried about those eye anymore; there’s so much vegetation here that a spy couldn’t see a body being removed. A grim image, that.

  “Hello?”

  He feels a bit foolish yelling, but he is breaking and entering so he tries again. “Mrs. Podalack? It’s Lou Fleener.” There’s no answer, no sound at all. Even the low chug of the Westinghouse refrigerator is absent. He steps into the tiny back porch, called a mudroom in the Midwest, expecting to find shoes, some yard clothes, maybe some mud. Someone has to be taking care of that garden; there should be something.

  Instead the room is as sterile as a morgue, another disturbing image that makes Lou shiver.

  He glides silently into the kitchen where she served him hot tea while watching through her curtains at the monster she suspects is living next door. Lou glances that way but doesn’t go to the window.

  The kitchen is as empty as the mud room. Her table and chairs are gone, no pictures on the wall, wit
h only dusty imprints where they hung. Lou opens the refrigerator and finds nothing. No food, no milk; it’s as if it’s been scrubbed.

  The living room is also empty. Her glowing oak furniture, the hundreds of framed pictures, the chairs and the lamps with their colored shades; all are gone. The house has been stripped. He checks the bedrooms and the bathroom and gets the same result. No one has been here for days, maybe weeks.

  Lou’s feeling a deepening sense of disaster. What happened to the old lady? There’s no chance she’d pack up and leave; none. So where is she?

  Lou goes back to the kitchen and pulls back the drapes.

  No one looks back at him.

  “She’s just gone,” says Lou, to Cassidy and Monk over hot dogs and chips and beer. They’re in the upper stands at Wrigley Field on Addison street, watching the Cubs lose to the Giants. Fourth inning and they’re down six-two. By agreement they’ve decide to avoid the White Sox, playing a double header at Comisky Park down on the south side. That territory belongs to Rufus Black and the negro gang boss keeps a box behind home plate. It’s possible he wouldn’t notice them if they snuck in and sat somewhere far away but Lou isn’t one for sneaking and he’s trying to obey Monk’s advice to avoid trouble.

  Rufus Black is definitely trouble. Three years ago he was the only gang leader who didn’t try to kill them outright, and that only because Monk made him a deal. They’d get rid of the other crime bosses and let Rufus take what he could in the chaos.

  Over two months on a hot summer when the Cubs and the Sox were fighting for a first place season, Lou, Monk and Cassidy, along with three other private eyes, had committed a no-holds-barred attack on every gang activity they heard of. They robbed mob card houses and casinos, bars, restaurants and numbers runners. At the end, they mobs were down three of the four existing bosses; only Rufus survived and, from all accounts, prospered.

  Still, best to leave sleeping dogs lie.

  “But why would she leave?” Cassidy likes the beer and the sunshine, tolerates the hot dogs (“Why don’t they don’t have real food at this joint?”) and is bored with baseball. It reminds her too much of the rodeos she grew up with in Wyoming, a bunch of guys outside doing dumb stuff.