The Shamus Sampler II

by Nick Quantrill

  “So you know I checked in last night?”

  “It says so on the record, sir.”

  “I see.” But actually, I was flying blind.

  I went up to the room half-hoping to see Dottie, but fully expecting it to be empty. It was. I checked the closet. No clothes, no luggage, no sign of any life at all.

  It dawned on me I should probably get checked out by a doctor, especially since my crotch was starting to itch, on top of the mental blackout. But my growling stomach demanded immediate attention. My brain could wait. Anyway I'd already given my cock's indiscriminate desires top priority and look where it had lead both of us: Nowheresville. Our natural habitat.

  Fortunately there was some cash in my wallet, enough for a cab across town. I craved some Chicago pizza. I grabbed the newspaper off the bedside table for some reading matter, told the rat at the desk to call me a taxi, then headed over to Gino's East, the one inside the Loop, since from there I could hop a train over to my favorite local bar, Miller's Pub, across from the Art Institute. Funny I could remember that joint, but not how I got here this time. I also remembered the best Chicago-style pizza I'd ever had was at Zachary's. Back in Oakland. But that was a little beyond my cab fare budget at the moment.

  I voraciously devoured an entire medium-sized deep dish cheese-and-spinach pizza which would no doubt plug up my bowels for days, but I always had trouble taking a shit when I was out of town anyway. Also sleeping. But I didn't have time for that, anyway. Yet I did have time for two ass-kicking Gibsons at Miller's, which is where I was, idly looking over the Tribune I'd brought with me, when I finally noticed a small item on the bottom of page five: Local Waitress Missing; Police Hunt for Private Eye Suspect.

  Gin dribbling down my chin, I quickly read the rest of the short article, which I hadn't even noticed before. This was printed and distributed while I was actually with Dottie that very morning, so obviously it was a set-up. Not many details, but enough to ruin my day: my name, Dottie's name, and her picture. I was listed as “a person of interest” since I was last seen with her at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge.

  By this time I was four or five sheets to the wind, and the wind was blowing pretty hard as I staggered outside, hailed another taxi, and headed right back to the hotel – where the cops were waiting to pick me up. That ratty desk clerk had dropped the dime on me.

  Oh, and they'd found Dottie. Floating nude and dead in Lake Michigan.

  ***

  Sitting handcuffed in the backseat of the black-and-white on the way to the nearby precinct for questioning, it hit me that I was in my forties and still alone. Sure, I got my share of pussy, but I never really connected with another human being the way I did with my cat.

  Though they couldn't charge me with anything yet, the fact that I couldn't provide any details that countered the overwhelmingly incriminating evidence meant they had sufficient cause to hold me. Plus I was too plastered to make my own case with any sort of rational coherence. I drunkenly insisted I'd been framed – doped then duped, a randomly selected patsy transported from the Coast, the perfect fall guy since I was a transient out-of-towner. True, I had no homicides on my record, but enough shady activity committed in “the line of duty,” dating back the past fifteen or so years, that a jury wouldn't have a lot of trouble believing I was capable of suddenly snapping. Anyway, this is what the two assholes interrogating me believed, and I was in no condition to argue.

  The coroner was conducting initial tests on Dottie's corpse as we chatted. They took some blood samples from me. Her dead body had been pumped full of semen, most likely mine, but the question remained whether she'd been raped, her corpse had been violated, or I just happened to be the innocent sap who gave her a farewell fuck for the Long Road. The DNA results would take a while to come back in. Meantime, I had free room and board, courtesy of the City. Broke as usual, I made the most of it and looked on the bright side of a dark situation. It was all I could afford.

  ***

  Dottie's death was ruled a suicide by both the coroner, who found no evidence of physical abuse, and the homicide detective, a fairly nice guy named Phil, who'd been assigned to the case. A reliable witness jogging by had actually seen her strip then wade into the water on the North Side, as if in a trance. This testimony was corroborated by a few other bystanders who had read about her in the paper. Back in her little studio apartment the cops found a note which provided the final missing piece. In her own affirmed handwriting, Dottie had written: One last fling, then the pain is over. Whether she meant fling as in an affair or a fling in the lake – or both – no longer mattered. She was gone.

  One last detail: my finger prints were all over the joint. That also didn't matter now. They just figured I had been her choice for a last hurrah. The cops laughed at the notion, right in my face, but I didn't let it get to me. In any case, I was released as soon as the eyewitness accounts were confirmed. I was back on the mean streets. But I had some questions of my own that still needed answers.

  I headed back to the Green Mill. Ironically, the Journeymen were still singing “500 Miles” on the juke, as if in a continuous loop. The hazy, surreal memory of Dottie was already haunting me.

  “Manhattan,” I said to the bartender. Different dude than when I was with Dottie just before she disappeared, ostensibly to go drown herself. He was a young guy, in his twenties, probably a musician, but definitely not a generic hipster. He immediately came across as authentic, confident, and friendly. His name was Tim.

  “You sure?” he said to me with a curious smile.

  “Uh...yea? Why not?”

  “I'd think after the other night you'd want to dry out for a while.”

  “Other night? What other night? I didn't see you last time I was here.”

  “That must mean you've been back since, then.”

  “Since when?”

  “You really don't remember?” He grinned without condescension, just genuine surprise. “Wow, you guys really were wasted, huh?”

  “'Guys'?” I said. “What other guy? Who was with me?”

  “Figure of speech,” he said. “Actually, it was a girl. A woman, really. Friend of mine.”

  “Dottie?”

  “Yea. At least you remember her name, dude!”

  “Yea...you haven't heard, I take it.”

  “Heard what?”

  I figured news of Dottie's death hadn't even made the news yet. Maybe it never would. In the scheme of things, she was nobody, just another poor, nearly anonymous stiff in the morgue. Her few friends would find out soon enough. I decided not to be the bearer of bad news. “Never mind. So tell me – what's your name again?”

  “Tim.”

  “Tim. Tell me...what did you know about our friend Dottie?”

  “Well...what exactly do you need to know?”

  “Little things. What she liked, what she didn't like, stuff like that.”

  “Can't you just ask her yourself?”

  “Well...I'm leaving town soon, doubt I'll ever see her again. Didn't get her number. You know how it is.” I winked.

  “No I don't,” he said, making me feel slimy.

  “Well, anyway...I liked her, but didn't want to get too attached since I'm just passing through town, dig?”

  “Yea, that figures.”

  “What figures?”

  “Dottie was always attracted to that type.”

  “What type you mean, exactly?” I tried maintaining a pleasantly clueless expression.

  “You know...the 'just passing through' type. She even had a kid with one. Dude from California. She was just out there visiting him, too.”

  “Who?”

  “Her kid. Lives somewhere near San Francisco? Burlingame, I think. With his dad. Dude makes a lot of bread, works with computers or something. A consultant, I think she told me.”

  “Yea? She didn't mention either to me. How'd they meet?”

  “At the coffee shop where she worked until recently. Not too far from here.”


  “Recently?”

  “Yea, she got canned after like ten years, kept showing up late for work, which really wasn't like her. She was always a bit of a lush, but she started drinking a lot more recently. She didn't even tell 'em first that she was going out to California, so they fired her. She came here straight from work and told me all about it. It was really a shame. She'd been going downhill for a while, but I thought she'd cleaned up her act since she started going to, y'know, AA meetings and all. Then she showed up here with you that night, smashed out of her mind, I assumed because she was so upset she'd lost her job, and I guessed things didn't go so well on her trip. Man, she was totally out of it. And so were you, frankly. I finally had to cut you both off. You really don't remember?” I shook my head, and he continued: “Y'know, actually, I heard cops were asking around here the next day, but not during my shift. Her landlord was worried about her, or something, since she didn't come home that night to feed her cat, which also wasn't like her. I guess she was with you the whole time.” He eyed me with some polite suspicion. “I hope everything is okay now?”

  I nodded. “As far as I know,” I lied.

  Oddly, it was all starting to come back to me. I hadn't been drugged as part of some nefarious conspiracy after all. I wasn't set up by the estranged California father of Dottie's love child to murder her back in Chicago. Somehow I'd hooked up with her, we went on an epic bender, and I actually came home with her. All the way home. I vaguely recalled a snippet of conversation. “Your place or mine?” she had asked. I guess I chose hers.

  Then the cerebral damn broke, and almost everything flooded back in one wild whoosh.

  Her ex was actually a client of mine. Richard Something. Wealthy Silicon Valley type. He had hired me to find his missing kid. Following a late night tip from an underground informant, I did find the kid – at the airport. With Dottie. I immediately called Richard from San Francisco International and he came right over and picked up the kid. Dottie was left a hysterical mess. I felt guilty for my part in her misery, and wanted to console her. We went to the airport bar and started drinking...

  It had all been an alcoholic blackout. For both of us.

  I'd encountered these sorts of incidents before, during the course of several investigations, but never actually experienced one until now. One type of blackout is called “en bloc,” wherein the inebriated party can't recall any events within the perimeters of a certain adversely affected time period, even when prompted via hypnosis. The other type was called “fragmentary,” which is probably what I was suffering from, since bits and pieces of the recent past were beginning to resurface in my murky mind. The cops probably fingered me because we were fellow passengers on the same flight, and I was the last person seen with her in public.

  Was I really that much of a drinker, though? I knew I'd been depressed lately, more so than usual, since I was worried about Doc's medical condition, and he was my best friend. I was also losing sleep over my rapidly advancing age. As well as mounting debts, no alternate career prospects, and the aching lack of a life companion with whom to share my woes. My loneliness was literally killing me.

  Though I couldn't lucidly recall every single moment leading up to the Green Mill, my fingerprints at her pad must've meant we went to her place first, directly from the airport, then she must've gone to work, and I guess I had gone with her, probably expecting a free meal, since bottom feeding was my style. Obviously she was in no condition to wait tables, so they gave her walking papers, which led us both back here. Not sure why we went to a nearby hotel instead of back to her place, except for the convenience of proximity. Plus, like Tim pointed out, we were both stoned beyond reason. We probably just stumbled down the block, tumbled into bed, and then woke up a day or so later virtual strangers, the booze having worn off by then.

  Funny thing was, even sober, we actually liked each other. I guess she didn't like me quite enough to cancel her final plans, though.

  While I had been sitting there contemplating all this, Tim had been mixing my Manhattan, which he set down in front of me with a customary if cautionary smile.

  “Here's to Dottie,” I said.

  “Cheers,” he said, still blissfully oblivious to her permanent absence from the planet.

  I stared at my Manhattan for a long time without taking a sip. Then I decided to order a different drink.

  Sinatra went from singing “Chicago” to “My Kind of Town” on the juke while I slurped my heavily creamed coffee. Fate is my pimp, but God was my DJ. Perfect exit music. I had to get out of there fast before “500 Miles” returned via inevitable rotation. I gulped it down. The caffeine rush gave my battered system just the jolt it needed. I got up, nodded at Tim, and left some bills on the counter.

  As I left the Green Mill to hail a cab for the airport, I kept scratching my itchy crotch as discreetly as possible. At least Dottie had left me something to remember her by besides that damn song, which played in my head all the way home.

  *****

  Will “the Thrill” Viharo is a freelance writer, pulp fiction author, B movie impresario and lounge lizard at large. His novels A Mermaid Drowns in the Midnight Lounge, Chumpy Walnut, Lavender Blonde, Down a Dark Alley, Freaks That Carry Your Luggage Up to the Room, It Came From Hangar 18 (with Scott Fulks), and the entire Vic Valentine, Private Eye series (including Love Stories Are too Violent For Me, Fate Is My Pimp, Romance Takes a Rain Check, I Lost My Heart in Hollywood, and Diary of a Dick) are now available. Actor Christian Slater is currently developing a film version of Love Stories Are Too Violent For Me. The original “Vic Valentine” cocktail is now being served exclusively at Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge in Alameda, CA. For more info swing by The Thrill's cyberpad at www.thrillville.net

  With Cunning Wickedness

  by

  Peter DiChellis

  I was delighted when Peter DiChellis submitted another story, having already appeared in the first Shamus Sampler. Here he serves up another solid, straightforward PI mystery involving stolen art.

  When I first got the case, I figured chasing down stolen art might lead to refined people with money and taste. It led to murder. The sinister tale began, like most of my cases, after my answering machine jarred me from a dreamy snooze on my couch.

  “Mysterious Private Investigations,” the perky recorded voice announced. “Our agents are in the field, please leave your name and contact information.”

  What the perky recorded voice calls “the field,” of course, is the couch I nap on, which I call “my office.” A man’s voice responded to the recording right away. He sounded like a phony, but with plenty of money. The second part of that equation interested me.

  “Mr. Wellington Cathcart calling,” he said. “I require your investigative services to recover three magnificent paintings, artistic creations of exceptional value, which were stolen from me with cunning wickedness.”

  Cunning wickedness? I recalled my last case, an alibi rundown for a jewelry heist. No problem, I decided. Cunning wickedness owes me one.

  *****

  I returned the call to get some basic background on the case and set up a meeting. Mr. Wellington Cathcart revealed that he lived in a creaking, two-hundred-year-old family mansion burdened with a patchy security system. A small gallery on the second floor displayed his substantial art collection. A thief simply leaned a ladder against the side of the house, entered through the gallery window, and made off with the three paintings while no one was home.

  “Nothing fancy about that,” I said.

  “Years ago,” Cathcart replied, “thieves used the same technique to steal a world famous painting from a splendid European gallery.”

  Cathcart also claimed he already knew who stole his three paintings, a former handyman his son had hired, and he knew how to find the man too.

  “Why do you suspect him?” I asked.

  The client explained that he’d fired the handyman a month ago, after learning of his prior criminal record. Additionally, the man had
repaired some eaves above the gallery window, so was adept at using a tall ladder, would have seen the gallery’s location, and could have noticed the window had no alarm wiring.

  “Call the cops,” I said.

  “I’ve done that, of course, but the local police provided little help. They have neither the interest nor the capability to investigate art theft. It isn’t the type of common street crime they train for, and they assume the insurance investigators will manage just fine.”

  “That’s it?”

  “The theft also has been entered into an FBI database, which will alert the proper authorities in the unlikely event someone attempts to sell the paintings in a legitimate transaction.”

  “And the insurance?”

  “The paintings are insured for their estimated value at auction, four million dollars.”

  I suggested we meet at Cathcart’s home so I could see the gallery, but he insisted we meet at his country club, where he said always “lunched” on Wednesdays. He agreed to bring photos and the police report, though he considered it a waste of time because, as he’d told me once, he already knew who stole the paintings and how to find him.

  *****

  The country club dining room was whisper quiet, a muted contrast of dark wood, rich burgundy carpets, and perfect white tablecloths. I guessed the impeccably groomed men and women “lunching” here could steal more in an hour with a pen than an ordinary thief could haul down a ladder in a year.

  Cathcart sat alone. A reedy man about fifty years old and graying, he flaunted a perfect haircut and thick eyebrows. I’d arrived five minutes early, but my client had started without me. He was eating something green that looked expensive. A waiter hovered, smiling at me. I told him I wouldn’t need a menu.

  “Black coffee and a turkey club with double bacon and double mayo,” I said.

  Cathcart peered at me as if about to instruct a five-year-old to stop wiping his nose on his shirtsleeve.