Total Sarcasm

by Dan Ames

  “Nothing sadder than a dead baby,” he said.

  Chapter two

  “Shhh, here he is.” The director of the intervention, a psychologist named Dr. Paulette Blevins, turned to the assembled Coopers, seated on folding chairs hastily arranged into a semicircle. They were in a conference room of a chain hotel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica.

  “Who the hell set this up?” Kurt Cooper asked. “I’ve got an audition at noon.” He was a disheveled man well past middle-aged, wearing a Ralph’s supermarket shirt, 100% polyester, and jean shorts. He had on black socks and purple Crocs.

  “If you’re trying out for the part of a homeless pedophile, I think you nailed it,” Alice Cooper said. She was Kurt’s sister.

  “You should talk,” he responded. “Those jeans are so tight your stomach is pushing up against your chin.”

  “Come on you two,” Mary Cooper said. Mary was a private investigator in Los Angeles, and the niece of both Kurt and Alice. She had been raised by Alice after her parents were lost at sea when she was very young.

  “As much as you two could use some counseling, we’re here to help someone else,” Mary said. She turned to the psychologist. “And exactly who are we here to help?”

  The woman started to answer but just then the door to the conference room opened and Jason Cooper walked in. He was Kurt’s son, in his early twenties, tall, thin and stooped. He had an attractive face that was mostly hidden by long hair. The usual cloud of marijuana stench accompanied him into the room.

  “Looks like the party has arrived,” Mary said.

  “Do you know what the hell this is about?” Kurt asked his son. “I’ve got some new material I need to tweak before I slaughter them at the LaFFactory.”

  “Your material doesn’t need tweaking,” Alice pointed out. “It needs to be euthanized. For everyone’s sake.”

  “This is an intervention,” Jason said, interrupting Kurt and Alice. He sat down in the chair next to the shrink, with a look on his face of great solemnity. Or he was totally stoned, Mary couldn’t quite guess which.

  “You’re one to talk,” Kurt said to Alice, ignoring Jason’s announcement. “You look like a ball park hotdog just before it explodes.”

  Mary held up her hand.

  “Please, you two,” she said. “We’re here to help someone and I’d hate to get things off on the wrong foot by shooting one of you.”

  “Thank you,” the psychologist said, her voice wary. “Now, I assume you all have your prepared statements you’d like to share with Jason.”

  Mary looked at the psychologist, then at Jason, then back at the psychologist.

  “The intervention is for him?” Alice said, pointing at her nephew.

  The psychologist raised an eyebrow. “Yes, of course. You mean you aren’t prepared?”

  “I’m prepared to kick someone’s pathetic ass,” Kurt said.

  “Who set this up?” Mary said to Dr. Blevins. She had been dragged along by Alice, who had only said it was an important meeting about a family member’s health.

  “I did,” Jason said.

  “Good Christ,” Kurt muttered.

  “Unbelievable,” Alice said.

  “Oh my,” Dr. Blevins said. “This is a first.”

  “Are you telling me you scheduled your own intervention?” Mary said to Jason.

  He nodded. “It’s a cry for help.” On cue, a small tear formed in the corner of his eye.

  “For crying out loud, I’m outta here,” Kurt said. He got to his feet abruptly, then grabbed his lower back in pain. “Goddamn fruit crates!”

  “Dad,” Jason said to him. “Please.”

  Mary looked at the calendar on her cell phone. Her morning had suddenly cleared up.

  “I want to change direction in my life,” Jason said. “And I need the support of my family.”

  “Son, your life hasn’t had direction since you shot out of your mother’s cooker,” Kurt said.

  “What is it you’re trying to do?” Alice said. “Besides piss us all off.”

  “I want to cut down on my pot smoking and beer drinking, and become a professional surfer. Or a bodybuilder.”

  “Cut down?” Alice said as she got to her feet.

  Kurt hobbled from the room.

  Alice put her hand on Mary’s shoulder. “Why don’t you stay and talk to him? You know all about struggling careers.”

  Jason also stood. “They said this was going to be difficult; they were right.” His lower lip quivered.

  “Please, Jason,” Dr. Blevins said, but he ignored her and left the room.

  Mary looked at the doctor and shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.”

  She got to her feet, but was stopped short by Dr. Blevins.

  “Miss Cooper?” the psychologist said.

  Mary looked up from her phone.

  “Is it true you’re a private investigator?”

  “Sure is,” Mary said. “And I have no intention of cutting down on my drinking.”

  “Well, at least something good could come out of this unusual situation, then.”

  “Such as?” Mary said.

  “I might want to hire you,” the shrink said.

  Mary waited.

  “It’s one of my patients. He was murdered.”

  Chapter Three

  Mary took the seat next to Dr. Paulette Blevins. It was still warm from Jason’s sorry ass. She made a mental note to kick that ass the next time she saw it.

  Who scheduled their own intervention? Mary idly wondered if Jason had brought a little speech he’d prepared in which he talked about how much he loved himself. It wouldn’t have surprised her.

  “Well that was certainly interesting,” Dr. Blevins said.

  Even though it was a conference room at a crappy hotel, Mary felt strange sitting next to a psychologist. Many of her friends and all of her family had strongly urged her to see a shrink at various times in her life, pointing out the many incidents that seemed to suggest serious mental issues on her part. Naturally, she had told them to go to hell. Then added a bunch of facial tics during the delivery to confuse them.

  “Yes, another sad chapter in the Cooper history,” Mary said.

  The doctor sighed. “Thank you for staying so I could talk to you about this issue. I’m sure you’re ready to have this morning come to an end.”

  “No problem at all,” Mary said. “Anything I can do to help the mental health industry in Los Angeles is important. After all, you’ve got your hands full in this town.”

  Dr. Blevins smiled at Mary. She was in her fifties, with short, stylish gray hair. A silver fox, Mary thought.

  “It’s about a former patient of mine,” Blevins said.

  “Isn’t all of that confidential?”

  “It is if they’re still alive.”

  Mary waited.

  “His name is Craig Locher. He was stabbed to death two nights ago. It was a sad, tragic end to a very fine man. A man not without problems, certainly. But with a lot of good qualities, too. He didn’t deserve to die that way; in fact, he shouldn’t have died at all. He had a lot going for him.”

  “Okay, I assume the police are looking into the case? It was a murder, correct?”

  “Yes, I believe they are looking into it. But their initial feedback seemed to indicate they were considering it a drug deal gone bad. Or a robbery involving drugs. And they are not correct in that assumption. Craig Locher was no drug dealer.”

  “Was he taking drugs of any kind?” Mary said.

  “I believe he was. But, again, they were not street drugs, I’m sure of that.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Mary said.

  “First, I have nothing against the police. They may turn out to do a very fine job of investigating this case. It just seemed that, initially, they were not interested in pursuing it very far. And I think there was more to it than drugs and robbery. Locher was a very interesting man, you see. A very talented, creative, intellig
ent man. Like I said, not without his flaws. But still, not the kind of man to be stabbed over a drug deal.”

  Mary weighed her response. “Can you tell me what you were treating him for?”

  The doctor sighed again. “Unfortunately, I can’t. However, I can tell you that he was a peaceful man for whom I had great respect. And frankly, I’ve led a very successful practice over the years. I’m single, with no children, and I can afford to hire a private investigator to make sure one of my former patients receives the proper investigation into his death.”

  “Can you tell me the general nature of his treatment?” Mary said. “It might help me focus my investigation.”

  “Here’s what I will tell you,” Blevins said. “Craig Locher was very, very fond of the opposite sex. Sometimes so much so that it was a detriment to his personal life. Sometimes, enough to qualify as a probable addiction.”

  Mary nodded, understanding the doctor’s point.

  “I see,” she said.

  “You should also know, and I assume you would have found this out anyway, that according to the police Mr. Locher’s body was found in some very unusual circumstances. I’d rather not go into those details now, especially as I have no way to verify anything. But the story I heard is that Mr. Locher was found wearing nothing but a diaper.”

  Mary had a million comments, but much to her surprise, kept them all to herself.

  “I’d like to hire you,” the psychologist said. “Now, are you interested in the case? Can you fit me into your schedule?”

  Mary’s active case list was currently comprised of only three other jobs, all of them fairly small and mundane.

  “I believe I can,” Mary said. She outlined her prices to Dr. Blevins.

  “How about I give you three weeks to nose around and see what you can come up with?” Blevins said. She scribbled out a check for fifty percent of the amount and handed it to Mary along with a folder.

  “When Jason arranged this, he told me you were a private investigator, so I came prepared,” Blevins said.

  Mary shook her head. “Let’s just hope Jason can get the help that he so needs and occasionally schedules for himself.”

  “When can you get started?” the psychologist said.

  “As soon as you tell me this intervention was a success and I’m free to go,” Mary said.

  Blevins nodded. “See you next time.”

  Mary walked out, happy to have a new case and a check in hand.

  Maybe she could get used to therapy after all.

  Chapter Four

  Mary drove straight to her office. It was in Venice on Main Street, in a building that shared a variety of other businesses including a recording studio, a toy reseller, and a doctor from South America with a mysterious specialty. Mary had no idea if he was a real doctor or if it was some sort of medical dodge, and it didn’t help that he spoke no English at all.

  In any event, she went into her office, a tidy three-room affair with a waiting area, a small bathroom, and her main office. There was also a storage closet that had been big enough to turn into a supply room. Her supplies consisted of several boxes of paper for her printer, and a shitload of beer.

  Her desk was a simple affair with one drawer, her desktop computer, and a laptop off to the side. The windows were big and looked out over the tops of the restaurants and shops that made up most of Venice’s main street.

  There was also a small refrigerator stocked with Point beer, her favorite from a small brewery in northern Wisconsin.

  Since she had wasted most of the morning already, Mary was determined to get something done. She fired up the desktop Mac and checked her calendar. One appointment in the afternoon to review a surveillance report on a male stripper who claimed he was being stalked by a five hundred pound beautician named Princess. Mary had subcontracted the job to an ex-cop she knew, only initially telling him that the job involved around-the-clock surveillance on a stripper.

  So, that meant Mary had time to look into the psychologist’s dead-man-wearing-a-diaper case. Mary opened the folder Blevins had given her and scanned it quickly. There was very little information. His name, address, and insurance information. But no case notes, no list of medications. Mary assumed all of that was confidential and Blevins had not included it in the folder.

  She set that information aside and Googled ‘dead man in a diaper’ and the result was a flurry of pictures of grown men doing things no grown man ought to do. Role playing was apparently alive and well. She especially liked one where the guy put beer in his baby bottle. A method actor, apparently.

  Eventually, she found a small article in the online version of the Los Angeles Times.

  The article simply confirmed that a Craig Locher, aged 46, was found dead by police in what appeared to be a random killing. No one had been arrested. And the police would welcome any information on the case.

  Mary used one of her databases to look up Craig Locher’s address. She quickly found it on the map, a place out in Northeast Los Angeles. Mary jotted the address down on a small note, then checked the clock.

  She had enough time to call Homicide Detective Jacob Cornell and ask him out to dinner.

  While it was true that she could get most of the information she needed from other sources within the Los Angeles Police Department, she preferred Jake. One, because technically he was her boyfriend, even though she despised the word. They had some ups and downs over the past couple of years, but now the relationship seemed on solid ground. In other words, Mary thought, Jake was becoming better trained.

  And two, he was quite possibly the world’s sweetest man and rarely turned down a request for a favor.

  Mary would simply slip in a small request to bring what he knew about the murder of Craig Locher to dinner tonight and she would make it up to him.

  Even though Jacob Cornell was a solid detective, a vivid imagination wasn’t one of his qualities. But even Jake could picture what she might have in mind.

  Chapter Five

  “I ordered you a beer,” Jake said. He was a big guy, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He had sandy brown hair that was never perfect, but rarely messy. Jake stood when Mary approached the table and kissed her on the lips. She glanced at the table where two margaritas the size of punch bowls awaited them.

  “Margaritas?” Mary licked her lips. “I thought you tasted a tad saltier than normal.”

  “Hey, when in Juarez,” Jake said, sitting down and hoisting his enormous margarita. Mary sat opposite him and hoisted her own glass monstrosity.

  “Cheers,” she said.

  They had decided to meet at Mi Pueblo, a funky little Mexican restaurant halfway between Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. The food was fresh, cheap, and close enough to authentic for Mary.

  She looked across the small table at Jake. He had on a light blue shirt with a new red tie. He looked so All-American.

  “So what have you got for me?” Mary said. “Besides a wistfulness located in your pants.”

  “Let’s order first,” he said. Jake loved food and worked out like a madman to stay trim. Mary waited patiently while the waitress took their orders. A big burrito for Jake, soup for Mary. With a chicken al fresco taco on the side.

  “So here’s what I know,” Jake said. He took out his notebook and read to Mary. “Craig Locher. 46 years old. Worked at a marketing firm called IdeaGen, some kind of ad agency or something like that. Single, no kids, only thing on his record is a DUI about three years ago.”

  Mary took a drink from her margarita, watched a waiter clear the table behind them.

  “Get to the good stuff, Sugar Shorts,” she said.

  “Died from blood loss. One stab wound accounted for most of the damage, a few other superficial cuts, including a pacifier stapled to his chest.”

  “A pacifier? Like the things babies suck on?” Mary said.

  “Some people call them binkys.”

  “How the hell would you know that?”

  He shrugged his should
ers.

  “Who’s handling the case?” Mary said. “Where was he found?”

  “A new team, but I know them well enough to get the information I need.”

  Mary thought about that.

  “Also, the vic had on a diaper,” Jake said.

  “A real one? Like a Depends?”

  “Don’t know,” Jake answered. “But his butt cheeks looked like someone had smacked the hell out of them, too. Maybe with a belt or a riding crop.”

  “Maybe a little fetish play gone too far?” Mary said.

  Jake looked at her.

  “Maybe,” he finally said. “But to go from dressing up and spanking to stabbing with a knife is pretty rare. Plus, it looked like he was the one receiving the abuse. A lot of times in that kinky stuff it’s the submissive who blows a gasket and kills the person dominating them.”

  The server appeared with their food and placed it on the table. She took away their empty margarita glasses, and Mary nodded for another one.

  “You’ve put a lot of thought into that weird sex stuff,” Mary said to Jake. “Who knew you were so kinky?”

  Jake blushed, and Mary loved him all the more for it.

  “You’re so cute when your face turns red,” she said. “I can’t wait to get you home, take out my cattle whip, and do the same thing to your ass.”

  Chapter Six

  “You know, if we lived together, this would never have to happen,” Jake said, strolling into the kitchen in Mary’s condo wearing Mary’s pink bathrobe and a pair of gym shorts that were much too small and much too tight.

  The outfit looked kind of hot, until he pulled the robe closed and cinched it tight, making the bulging shorts impossible to see.

  “Not again,” Mary said and rolled her eyes. Jake brought up cohabitating every few weeks or so, but she wasn’t ready. She liked her own space too much. However, she was slowly warming to the idea but had no intention of sharing that sentiment with Jake just yet.