Cobra Clutch

by Devlin, A. J. ;

“Visiting the stench trench? Slipping it in the pink velvet sausage wallet? Pounding some poontang?”

  “Jesus Christ, Melvin. Can’t you just say he was screwing around?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  I sighed and closed the folder. “Why did Stormy come to you in the first place?” I asked.

  Melvin interlaced his fingers and slid them behind his head. “I assume she heard that I happen to specialize in these types of domestic scenarios,” he said proudly.

  “You know, with the way you get off on this sleazy shit, I think Stormy should have charged you.”

  “Whatever, Ounstead. Like you even know the first thing about surveillance. Maybe if you actually had an investigator’s licence I’d consider your point of view. Until then I need your opinion like I need a diamond-studded dildo up my ass.”

  I opened the folder and flipped through the photos again. There was something about them that was bothering me. Somehow Johnny looked different in the pictures, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  “So you think Stormy murdered Johnny and that these pictures are the reason why?” I asked.

  “Duh!” snapped Melvin. “What the fuck did you think she was gonna do with them? Post them on Facebook?”

  I didn’t like it one bit, but Melvin was right. These snapshots rocketed Stormy to the top of the motive list. And when you factored in her behaviour at her apartment and the lying, Stormy was quickly emerging as the prime suspect in Johnny’s murder.

  “How did Stormy react when she saw the pictures?”

  “Bitch was ice cold, man. Didn’t say a word. She just paid me on the spot and left.”

  “How’d she pay?”

  “Cash.”

  I looked at the pictures again and then I saw it — the intangible element that I couldn’t put my finger on before. In every photo with the waifish redhead Johnny was either smiling or laughing. That’s why he looked so different. He was happy. The last time I had seen him like that was in Baton Rouge after our match had stolen the show.

  “Have you spoken to her since then?” I asked.

  “Nope. But after hearing about her boyfriend getting whacked, I tried like hell to get a hold of her.”

  “How did you find out about that so fast, by the way?”

  “None of your fucking business. Just because I gave you that file doesn’t mean I’m going to give up all of my connections.”

  I let it go but kept pressing Melvin. “Why did you call Stormy when you found out?”

  “Cuz I wanted her to keep my name out of the inevitable shitstorm that’s coming her way,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “So you were just worried about covering your own ass.”

  “You’re goddamn right I was. You think I want the cops to have another reason to harass the shit out of me?”

  Melvin had a point. With his criminal defense lawyer background and unscrupulous reputation as an investigator, he was as about as popular with the cops as an ex-con who calls 911 at two in the morning because McDonald’s has run out of Chicken McNuggets.

  I held up one of the pictures. “You see this guy here, Melvin? He was my friend.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “But what my clients do with the information I provide after they leave my office is out of my hands. I’m not some goddamn cowboy like your old man and I don’t make a habit of getting mixed up in my clients’ business. I’m just a regular Joe providing a simple service. That’s it, that’s all.”

  “What about the redhead?” I asked.

  “What about her?”

  “You get a name?”

  “Nope. But I got a couple of clear pictures of the plates on her Acura so she should be easy enough for you to track down.”

  “I’m taking this with me,” I announced as I stood up and slipped the folder under my arm.

  “Fine,” aquiesced Melvin. “But if you talk to the cops, just leave my name out of it, okay?”

  “I can’t make any promises.”

  “What the fuck, man? I gave you what you wanted.”

  I walked past a mural of a scantily clad lady astronaut hoisting a Gatling gun while standing in a crater on the moon. I shook my head, opened the door to leave the office, and answered Melvin without looking back.

  “Melvin, if I got exactly what I wanted, that stripper would have lit your hair on fire instead of her nipples.”

  THIRTEEN

  After my encounter with Melvin I headed over to Tonix nightclub to work my scheduled shift. Tonix was located in the pedestrian-friendly entertainment district of Granville Street, nestled in between several other popular clubs and social spots. As per my routine, I left my truck at The Emerald Shillelagh and walked several blocks southwest until I was weaving my way through a lively crowd filled with the usual yuppies, hipsters, busking guitarists, and street vendors. Numerous oversized neon signs bathed the stretch of street in front Tonix in a rainbow of psychedelic light, and the chilly air was thick with the smell of roasted nuts and alcohol. By the time I reached the club I had counted four homeless people camped out in the cold but only stopped to give a handful of loonies to a frail bearded man who was sitting cross-legged next to his equally malnourished dog.

  The door was quiet for a Friday, and the only trouble I had was with some dumbass kid who tried to pass himself off as a VFD in order to receive the “firefighters courtesy” so he could bypass the lineup. The kid lipped me off and peacocked for the crowd after I tossed him, but all it took was a quick one-handed shove to his sternum to send him stumbling backwards and on his way without another word.

  Since it ended up being a slow night I was able to cut out early. I was jonesing for a banana milkshake something fierce, but the closest Dairy Queen was in a food fair in the Pacific Centre shopping mall, which had been closed for hours. I settled for some banana sugar crepes at a European café instead, but even with a generous slathering of syrup it did little to curb my craving. I made it back to The Emerald Shillelagh in time for last call. Most of the patrons had cleared out for the night except for some film school geeks and a couple of tired-looking cougars who looked like they needed some chamomile tea and calcium supplements more than another round.

  “Here you go, mate. And just so you know, I busted me arse on this one,” said Declan. He slid a pint of Guinness and a clear-front duo-tang folder across the bar top, in that order. I savoured the first sip of my frothy treat before diving into the folder like a teenage boy with a nudie mag.

  As per my request, the duo-tang contained the basic background check information for Bert Grasby, including provincial, medical, and housing records, as well as a previous employment screening. Although there was nothing particularly noteworthy relating to his property ownership or vital statistics, Grasby’s work experience was colourful. His varied employment history included stints as a used-car salesman, travelling carny, failed porn-website manager, and just about everything in between. There were also records of him filing incorporation documents for X-Treme Canadian Champion Wrestling with the provincial government under the Business Corporations Act of British Columbia. Finally, while Grasby had taken out several substantial business loans in order to get XCCW off the ground, he had already paid off the majority of the debt over the three years the independent wrestling promotion had been operational.

  By the time I had finished skimming through the documents, the pub was nearly empty, I was on my third pint, and Declan had pulled up a stool next to me with a Guinness of his own.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  I took a sip and closed the folder. “Not much, aside from the fact that the guy paid off his business loans awfully fast.”

  “The fella is pretty savvy then?”

  “In a way. Grasby’s clearly got something going on the side because there’s no way
the profits from an indy wrestling league could get him out of that much debt in such a short amount of time.”

  “So what? You think he makes the extra cabbage by boosting pets?”

  “I doubt it. He’s into something. I’m thinking it might be drugs as he mentioned something about a supplier when he pulled a gun on me.”

  “He bloody what?”

  “Did I forget to mention that?”

  “This bloke sounds like a gombeen man. It’s a shame you don’t have yourself a criminal records check. I’d wager it’d be a wee more telling.”

  “I’m following a more promising lead at the moment.” I updated Declan on my encounters with Stormy and Melvin.

  “You’re definitely onto something, mate. But if I were you I’d still follow up on this Grasby fella.”

  “I’ll talk to my pop as soon as he’s back from his conference, okay? Just lay off with the meddling.”

  “Me? Meddle?”

  “Oh, please. You’re worse than Dr. Phil with your pointed little remarks.”

  “Careful, boyo. You can say what you want about me self. But I’ll be goddamned if I’m just going to just sit here and let you insult Dr. Phil. The man’s a national treasure.”

  “He’s from Texas.”

  “Ah, sod off! You know what I mean.”

  “You really need to start doing more with your days other than nursing hangovers and watching talk shows.”

  “Aye, and you need to quit being such a stubborn bollocks and just ask your Da for help already.”

  “Touché.”

  We quietly nursed our pints for a few minutes. Finally, I broke the silence. “Hey, D?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I always figured you for an Oprah kind of guy.”

  “Janey Mack! Give me some credit, eh? I’ve been off o’her ever since she endorsed The Secret. Jaysus, what a load o’shite that book was. Three months o’positive thoughts about shagging hot trollops and all I got for me effort was one night in the sack with a shite-faced, chubby gal.”

  “I guess it’s safe to say you’re no longer a member of her book club?”

  “If I had me one o’those books I’d rip out the pages and use’em as toilet paper. Speaking o’which, I hear the loo calling me name.” Declan slid off his bar stool and sauntered off toward the restroom.

  “Have a good one,” I said. “I’m going to hit it.”

  “Toodle-oo, mate.”

  I killed my pint, tucked the folder under my arm, and spun around on my stool to find myself face to face with Billy Nickens, the uppity med-student turned gym rat.

  “What’s the deal, Jed?”

  “What deal?”

  “I left you, like, three messages. Don’t you want to lift with me anymore?”

  “Relax, bub. I’ve been working.”

  Billy tossed his bulky knapsack onto the bar and hopped onto the stool next to me. “Do you mean bouncing? Did something go down on Granville tonight?”

  I checked my watch. It was almost two in the morning. “Christ, kid, don’t you ever go home?”

  “I have an exam next week,” he said, nodding toward his overstuffed book bag.

  “You can’t study at home?”

  “I like it better here. So? Did you get to mess some guys up at the club or what?”

  I sighed. “No, Billy. Everything was fine.”

  “Yeah, they’d have to be crazy to start something with you.”

  I made my way toward the door, Billy nipping at my heels as I walked. “At least tell me when you’re hitting the gym again,” he begged. “I really need you to show me some new routines because I’ve seriously plateaued. I mean, I’m eating close to three thousand calories a day and I’m still not putting on any weight.”

  I stepped outside, the cold night air biting through the sleeves of my faded thermal shirt. I zipped up my North Face vest and rounded the block, sidestepping the rising steam that was escaping from a nearby manhole. “Look, kid, you need to get yourself a girlfriend or something. There’s a hell of a lot more to life than just pumping iron and drinking beer.”

  I paused momentarily, considering the hypocrisy of my words when compared to my lifestyle. My self-reflection was cut short, however, the second my Spidey-sense started tingling over the sight of several large shadows being cast on the sidewalk in front of me. A moment later I spotted four thuggish-looking individuals angling toward us in my peripheral vision. I rolled up Grasby’s folder and tucked it into my waistband behind my back, then grabbed Billy by the scruff of his hoodie and pulled him to my other side, using my body as a buffer between him and the approaching men.

  “What the hell, Jed? That hurt.”

  “You want a ride home?”

  “For sure!”

  “Then shut up and stay close.”

  Billy nodded obediently as I kept my focus on the thugs. Their collective chatter became hushed as they crossed the street and the lack of loud, late night, drunken banter was all the confirmation I needed to know these guys weren’t coming my way to ask for a light.

  I dug my keys out of my pocket and jingled them. Assuming that I was nearing my vehicle, the thugs picked up their pace, just as I expected. They were about thirty feet away and closing ground fast. Billy saw them approaching and went rigid beside me. Although their faces remained cloaked in darkness, the streetlight behind the thugs cocooned them in a dim light that accentuated their bulky frames. I timed my next move carefully, waiting until they were a little over fifteen feet away. I spun my keys on my index finger, and then let them slip out of my grasp and down onto the curb beside me, as if by accident. I crouched to pick them up and hoped at least one of them would take the bait.

  “Get him!” a deep voice ordered.

  The group charged. As soon as the first thug’s knees appeared in my field of vision I rocketed upward with a jumping uppercut that would have made Little Mac of Nintendo’s Punch Out! proud. My fist drove hard into the attacker’s sternum and lifted him a good foot off the ground. I regained my balance just as two of his accomplices each grabbed me by a shoulder and rammed me backwards against the cement wall of Vancouver’s lone Church of Scientology building.

  I braced myself for impact and despite the force with which I slammed into the wall I was somehow able to prevent the wind from getting knocked out of me. I wasn’t sure if it was dumb luck, the fact that I tightened my core muscles, or that Xenu the galactic dictator himself reached down and protected me — all I knew was that I could still breathe and was better off than the thug I had nailed with the uppercut, since he was convulsing and vomiting in the gutter.

  I stole a glance at Billy and saw him getting worked over pretty good by a guy in a shiny leather jacket with perfectly mussed blonde-streaked hair. I tried to yell at the son-of-a-bitch to leave the kid alone, but before I could form the words the two thugs on either side of me started raining blows upon my midsection. For once I was actually thankful for the spare tire around my stomach as the extra layer of insulation helped me better absorb the hits.

  I targeted the thug on my left, clenched my hands into tightly balled fists, and boxed his ears as hard as I could. The guy stumbled backwards, giving me the opening I needed. I squared up to the thug on my right, but in doing so opened up my torso and made my solar plexus an even larger target. I took a couple of hard kidney shots that caused my sides to explode, but it wasn’t enough pain to stop me from dipping my head and thrusting forward with a ferocious head-butt. I felt a warm spray on my neck as the thug’s nose split open and splattered me with blood. He howled in pain, his hands instinctively covering his face in an attempt to stop the gushing.

  It was only then that I recognized my attacker as Dylan, Bert Grasby’s pro-wrestling prodigy and stretching partner who I had met the day before. Unfortunately, before
I had a chance to finish off the buff little bastard, the tanned thug with the douchebag hair cracked me on the back of the head with the blunt end of something hard and metal.

  “Fuck yeah, Julian!” I heard one of the thugs cry victoriously. “You got him!”

  Julian hit me again and I dropped to my knees faster than a victorious Björn Borg at Wimbledon and fought to stay conscious. I heard Julian and his pal barking back and forth with one another while my surroundings spun around me.

  “Lyle ain’t breathing, man!”

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  “His face is red as fuck!”

  “What do we do?”

  “Try raising his hands over his head!”

  Billy whimpered behind me. He was curled in the fetal position, sobbing quietly. Julian and the remaining thug I hadn’t taken out were hunched over their buddy Lyle, who was still wheezing heavily from my uppercut. Lyle continued to gurgle up puke, despite extending his hands over his head.

  “Fugg me! Fugg me!” Grasby’s buddy Dylan was hopping up and down on the sidewalk, freaked out by the volume of blood that was still pouring out of his crushed nose. “My fugging dose is fugged ub!” he screamed. “Id’s dodally fugged ub!”

  I tried to climb to my feet but before I could Julian connected with an ace roundhouse kick to my cheekbone that knocked me back on my ass. “I don’t think so, motherfucker,” he said.

  Julian slipped into a low front stance and bounced on the balls of his feet, eager for me to try something. I spat blood onto the street and dusted off my jeans, figuring that sitting on my butt was as good a place as any for the moment.

  Dylan squealed something unintelligible and started running in circles, dripping blood behind him. Julian snapped his fingers at the thug whose name I didn’t know and jerked his head toward Dylan. “Shut him the fuck up,” he ordered.

  The thug left Lyle mid-heave to tend to Dylan. Julian squatted in front of me. Shiny steel glinted in front of my face as he produced a butterfly knife in a flurry of clacking metal. He ended his impressive flipping showcase by levelling the six-inch blade with my eye.