The Death Business (A Noah Milano Novella)

by Jochem Vandersteen

  Praise for Noah Milano and Jochem Vandersteen:

  "J. Vandersteen takes us back to the glory days of pulp fiction. And I mean the genre, NOT the movie. His Noah Milano character rings completely true as a tough, lone-wolf private eye." Jeremiah Healy, author of TURNABOUT and THE ONLY GOOD LAWYER.

  "The difference is mainly in the character of Noah Milano himself, a man struggling both internally and externally to break free from his "Family" ties and to walk his own path toward what he deems Right and Just. This is good stuff. Read and enjoy." Wayne D. Dundee, author of the Joe Hannibal series.

  "Noah Milano is all too human, which makes him more appealing." Les Roberts, author of the Milan Jacovich series.

  ''Terrific stuff.'' Lori G. Armstrong, author of Snowblind.

  ''Noah Milano walks in the footsteps of the great P.I.'s, but leaves his own tracks.'' Robert J. Randisi, founder of PWA and The Shamus Award.

  Jochem's deep and abiding love for classic pulp fiction comes through on every page, and his stories continue the time-honored tradition of the hardboiled American PI." Sean Chercover, author of Trigger City.

  ''The writing is fresh and vivid and lively, paying homage to the past while standing squarely in the present." James W. Hall, author of Silencer.

  ''Great pop sensibility with a nod to the classic L.A. PIs.'' David Levien, author 13 Million Dollar Pop.

  The Death Business

  A Noah Milano Novella

  Copyright 2013 Jochem Vandersteen

  Edited by Sean Benjamin Dexter

  Cover design by Keith Dixon

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  The Death Business

  ONE

  My best friend’s business is death. Minnie is a stunningly beautiful girl, tanned, curvy with chocolate colored eyes, silk hair and full lips. She’s also incredibly brainy and works at the Medical Examiner’s office.

  We were having an ice cream at a stand at the Hollywood’s Farmers’ Market. She was wearing a shirt that said “Bazinga” and shorts. Most of the men that passed us ogled at her long, tan legs. I couldn’t blame them. I was wearing jeans and a Slayer T-shirt. Nobody ogled me. I couldn’t blame them either.

  “How is business?” Minnie asked me.

  “Slow as usual,” I had to admit. Since I broke off all ties to my mobster father honoring my dying mother’s request, I’d been trying to make an honest living as a security specialist. Unfortunately I had a hard time competing with the bigger firms.

  Minnie smiled. Mischief in her eyes. “Good, that means I won’t have to feel guilty asking you for help.”

  “You never have to feel guilty about that. Always happy to help you out. I can’t count the times you’ve helped me.” It was true. Not only had she helped me out with her forensic knowledge in my investigations and patched me up after getting stabbed or shot, she’d also helped me recover from my mother’s death.

  “That’s sweet!”

  “Are you talking about your ice cream or me?”

  She laughed. “Both.”

  “So, tell me. What can I help you with?”

  “Have I ever told you about my old friend Carol Dickinson?”

  “Your old roommate when you were in college, right?”

  Minnie nodded. “We didn’t speak to each other much the last few years, but we used to be pretty close in the past. She died.”

  “Sorry to hear about that, Minnie.”

  “Yeah… What’s making it worse is she died of an overdose of heroin. She was found in a toilet stall of a Hollywood club called Peaches, needle in her arm.”

  “That’s a terrible way to go. Did you know she was using?”

  “That’s the thing… I’m pretty sure she wasn’t. I didn’t work on her because I knew her too well. My colleague, Tom Washington decided no foul play was involved. Just your average junkie shooting too much garbage in her arm.” She looked disgusted.

  “You don’t buy that?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m sure she was too smart to use drugs.”

  I shrugged. “Lots of smart people use drugs.”

  “There’s more. The needle was sticking in her left arm, and she was left-handed. That doesn’t make sense.”

  I had to admit that intrigued me. “Sounds odd. Not impossible though. Or maybe someone else helped her shoot up. It’s not uncommon.”

  “It just doesn’t add up. She had a great life as an entertainment journalist, was a rising star in the field.”

  “Maybe she had trouble handling the pressure?”

  Wrinkles appeared between her eyebrows. I knew that meant she was getting pissed off. She was one of those women that really was better looking when she angry. “Dammit, Noah! You sound like Tom. Why won’t you believe me?”

  I held up the hand that wasn’t holding ice cream in a defensive manner. “Easy, Mouse. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. I’m sorry.” She took a big lick of her ice cream. Hopefully it would cool her down some.

  “What did the cops say?”

  “There wasn’t really any evidence of a homicide. They usually go with what the Medical Examiner tells them.”

  “And now you want me to investigate this?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “You do know that homicide investigations aren’t exactly my specialty. I’m more of a thug-for-hire. Bodyguarding, some security advice and background checks,” I reminded her.

  “Come on, this is me you’re talking to! How many murders did you solve the last ten years? I know it’s officially not your specialty but you end up solving a lot of them. If anyone can dig deep enough to find out what really happened to Carol, it’s you.”

  She had a point. I’d become a regular Jessica Fletcher. A Jessica Fletcher with a five-day beard. And of course lots of those homicides were solved by pissing people off enough that they tried to kill me more than actual intelligent investigating. “Maybe.”

  “Do it for me.” She pouted. I hate it when she pouts. I’d do anything for her when she pouted. I knew it, and so did she. Women don’t play fair.

  “Sure. Of course. Maybe we can have some coffee while you tell me more. There’s a great place a couple of blocks from here.”

  TWO

  We sat down with our beverages at the coffee house. I was having a double espresso, Minnie some Chai.

  “Tell me more about Carol. What kind of person was she?” I asked Minnie.

  “Pretty outgoing and friendly. She could be stubborn when she set her mind to do something. That caused some trouble sometimes back when we were sharing a place. For instance, she could be set on changing some of the interiors while I didn’t see the point of it. She’d badger me about it for days until I finally agreed with her.”

  “Any addictions? Alcohol, cigarettes?”

  Minnie shook her head vigorously. “Nope, none of the above. Not even chocolate. She took good care of her body.”

  “Did she have any specific trouble? Bad boyfriends, bad relationship with her family? Health problems?”

  “Not really. She dated two guys while we were in college. Wait, there’s one guy she talked about six months ago… A guy she dumped. He had trouble accepting their relationship ended.”

  “Sounds like a clue to me. Tell me more.”

  “I believe he was called Dirk or Derek. Yeah, Derek. Derek Pryce. He’s a freelance photographer she sometimes worked with. She fell in lust with him but found out pretty quick he was a major sle
aze ball misogynist. She broke it off after a week or three. He kept calling and e-mailing her telling her he was absolutely sure they were meant for each other and she made a big mistake by breaking off their relationship. She told him several times to get a life, but he was hard to persuade.”

  “So he was stalking her?”

  Minnie shrugged. “I guess you could call it that.”

  “Did she ever go to the cops about it?”

  “Don’t think so. She liked to take care of her own business. She wasn’t a coward. I don’t think she was afraid of him or anything.”

  “Did he ever get violent?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Still, it’s something to look into. Any other enemies you can think of?”

  “I guess she didn’t make too many friends among the celebrities of Hollywood. She had some scoops several stars weren’t too pleased with.”

  “I don’t keep up with gossip much. Enlighten me.”

  “She made it public that Danny Ketchum was doing it with call girls, ending his marriage with Mara Wayne for one.”

  “Ketchum? Next in line to Brad Pitt for being the number one Hollywood heartthrob?”

  “That’s right. And Mara Wayne, writer and director of this year’s favorite for the Oscar nominations.”

  “Guy like that, I can imagine it must be difficult to keep it in his pants. With all the groupies hanging around your door. Don’t understand why he went out of his way to pay for it.”

  “Maybe because he figured that would keep his extra-marital adventures a secret. Unfortunately, Carol was very good at exposing secrets.”

  I emptied my espresso. “Sounds like a quality that can get you killed.”

  “Do you really think somebody would kill to keep that sort of thing secret?” Minnie asked after another sip of Chai. She could make one cup last for hours.

  “People have been killing other people to keep stuff secret for as long as there have been humans. When secrets have a lot of money riding on them, it makes that possibility even greater.”

  “I guess so,” Minnie said. “So you think we might have to look for our killer among the Hollywood celebrities?”

  “I think that’s a possibility. We’d probably be best off not discounting anything yet. I was wondering, if somebody forced Carol to shoot the heroin, wouldn’t she have bruises or something?”

  “That does sound logical. Nothing was found, though. That’s one of the reasons they thought it was an accident, I guess. I was thinking somebody might have held a gun on her, keeping her from struggling and making it easy to inject the heroin into her arm.”

  I nodded. “That could work. I’d like a closer look at the forensic shit. I mean, you’re the expert about that kind of stuff, but it might help to have an outsider look at it. I might think of things the professionals haven’t thought of.”

  “Okay, good idea. I can e-mail you the files.”

  “Great. Getting back to the celebrity angle… Do you know if Carol was working on anything that could be particularly explosive?”

  “She didn’t really talk about her work all that much. Most of what I know about her work is what I read in the magazines.”

  “It might be interesting to take a look at her notes. Do you have a key to her place?”

  “No, we weren’t close enough for that anymore. Sorry.”

  I grinned. “No problem. You’ve know me long enough to know that keys aren’t really a necessity for me.”

  “I do. Feels a bit strange though, to have you breaking and entering my friend’s home.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t break anything.”

  THREE

  I had enough leads to follow, so we parted company and I drove over to Carol’s place. I figured it might be a good idea to get there fast. After all, if somebody really killed her to cover-up some dark secret, they might want to search her house, too. I wanted to be there before the killer.

  Carol had a nice little place in the Santa Monica Mountains. I parked my Dodge and walked to the door. Her house was pretty isolated, making it easy to pick the lock without anyone noticing. I had a damn fine lock pick gun and had the door cracked in under a minute. It was a family tradition.

  I usually never felt guilty rummaging around other peoples’ homes. But the fact that it made Minnie uncomfortable for me to be here gave me a feeling I wasn’t too familiar with. I felt like a voyeur, a pervert. I didn’t feel any better when I discovered Carol’s drawer of sexy panties.

  Her home was all white and black, from the paint on the walls to the furniture. The walls were decorated with several of her magazine articles and some pictures of her with celebrities. DeNiro, Spears, Tarantino. There was even a picture of her with Metallica’s James Hetfield that made me a little jealous.

  Her bedroom didn’t offer any clues, besides the fact she liked expensive lingerie. The bathroom only told me she liked oil in her bath. The living room showed me she had a thing for romantic comedies on DVD, and she liked to read autobiographies.

  The room that interested me the most was her office. I went through the cabinet that was under her desk. I was looking for her notes. I didn’t find anything. Even stranger, there were no laptop or desktop in sight. For a journalist that sounded like an impossibility. There had to be DVDs or USB-drives then, right? I turned the place upside down but didn’t find anything.

  Somebody had been here before me. It was the only thing I could think of. That meant she probably was killed to keep someone’s secrets safe. Note that I said ‘probably’. It could be that someone was using her death as an opportunity to get rid of incriminating information. Another possibility was that Carol had become fearful and suspicious because of the explosive nature of the information she had. She could have hidden everything away herself before she died and taken the secret with her to her grave. It’s good to keep your options open. I was starting to sound like a real investigator.

  On her desk I did find an old fashioned paper address book. How nineties. I paged through it. It was like the directory to the stars or something. If I sold this baby on eBay I could retire early. Of course, I was an honest person now and I just took it with me. I wasn’t going to sell it, but it sure as hell gave me a place to start.

  There was a phone on her desk. It was a wireless portable that connected to a base station on the desk. I went through the address book of the phone and jotted down the numbers on a piece of paper I found on the desk. There was a digital list of last dialed numbers in the phone. I wrote those down as well. Then I wrote down the last numbers that called the phone.

  It was time to go. I’d been inside her place way too long already. I left, making sure nobody saw my get-away.

  I got in my car and drove off.

  At my office, I put the latest Rise Against album on my stereo and ate some take-out Chow Mein, washing it down with a bottle of Corona. While I ate, I went through the file Minnie had given me.

  When the food was in my stomach and the bottle of Corona was empty, I got a new bottle from the cooler and sat down behind my desk. I entered the numbers from Carol’s phone into a reverse directory database. Some numbers were unlisted. I scanned Carol’s address book and was able to match all but two of the numbers.

  When I was finished, I knew Carol had been called by her editor, an architect who lived in Burbank, a sitcom actor with a waning career, and the secretary of a talent agency. She’d called a handful of celebrities, a pizza place, and a local restaurant. She’d also been calling her ex, Derek Pryce. That sounded like a clue of some sort to me.

  I researched the celebrities a little on the internet but didn’t find anything too shocking. They were just people Carol had interviewed before when they had some record or movie to peddle.

  Evening had fallen. A nice time to go clubbing and visit the scene of the crime.

  FOUR

  The line at Peaches was long. Luckily, I knew the guy at the door, having worked security with him before.

  “N
oah, what brings you here?” he asked after closing the entrance behind a supermodel’s short skirted ass. Roddy was about six foot two, tattoos covered his arms and neck.

  “Hi, Roddy. I’m here on a case. The OD that was found in the toilet stall… I’m looking into her death.”

  “What’s there to investigate? She did too much drugs. It happens.”

  “There might be cause to doubt whether she injected the drugs herself. I’d like to take a look around, maybe ask some people if they were at the club that night.”

  “Boss won’t like you asking around about shit like that,” Roddy said.

  “He probably won’t. But I was hoping you’d let me to have a look at the security tapes.”

  Roddy laughed. “You got balls, Noah. Here I’m more or less telling you that you won’t be welcome here and you go asking me a favor like that.”

  “For old time’s sake? Like when I got that junkie teenage cheerleader’s fingernails away from your eyes just before you earned the nickname Popeye? Or the time we kicked those two bikers out, right through the window? Man, that was something, wasn’t it?”

  He chuckled. “Sure was. Something right out of a Steven Seagal flick that was.”

  “What do you say?”

  He sighed. “All right, come in. Try not to piss off people too much. When the place closes down we can have a look at the tape.”

  I bumped fists with him. “Cool. Thanks, man.”

  Inside the club I was almost blown away by the loud dance music. I was more of a metal man myself so it wasn’t my kind of stuff. The place was pretty packed, the young and gorgeous mingling with the old and famous. Bodies gyrating against each other, predators watching their prey from the bar while drinking Scotch.

  I started to mingle, showing a picture of Carol and asking people if they’d seen her. Along the way I picked up a Corona or two, just to keep my tongue from turning dry and to fit in.