Two in the Head

by Eric Beetner

  I crushed the cig under my boot and went inside.

  ‘Take a seat.’ He cleared a plastic chair of a pile of mouldering Auto Traders and pointed downward.

  I dusted the base of the chair with my hand and sat. He was rubbing his palms together as he stood before me.

  ‘Coffee…er, tea?’ he said.

  Declined. My shots weren’t up to date, so thought it best. ‘Can you get to the point?’

  ‘Of course, yes.’ His fat arse slid onto the desk, dislodging a lava flow of windscreen sale stickers. He was clearly nervous, perhaps even a little perturbed. I found myself glancing at the door but wondering all the while when my car was going on the ramp.

  ‘Okay. Okay. So, it’s like this Mr—’

  ‘Gus,’ I cut in.

  ‘Yes, Gus. I’ve lost something.’

  Your mind, perhaps? I held schtum, he still had all the cards after all.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I looked around…’

  ‘But couldn’t find it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Was going to be pissed if it was a set of car keys after this build up.

  He went on. ‘A friend of mine, well, I asked him what to do. And he said, what you need is someone who does this kind of thing, y’know, professionally.’

  ‘A professional finder?’

  ‘A detective.’ He almost whispered the word, like it was too politically incorrect to utter.

  ‘And so you priced them up and thought, fuck that! Which is where my name came in.’

  ‘Oh, no. No, no.’ He slid off the desk, his lardy arse still wobbling as he shuffled nearer to me. ‘You’ve got me all wrong. It’s not that kind of thing I’m looking for, not a…’ he weighed hands in the air, like he was trying to juggle water, ‘it’s more of a, you might say, unconventional loss. Yes, that’s it, not through the proper channels, so to speak.’

  I was getting the picture, even if he was drawing it for me in crayons.

  ‘Let me get this straight. You lost something and you need to find it, so a friend gave you my name as someone who might help.’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded. There was a twitch above his eye and a line of moisture forming on his upper lip that caught my attention.

  ‘Now, if I’m picking you up right, this loss of yours wouldn’t be anything a reputable firm would even be remotely interested in finding.’

  He kept quiet, only wetting his dry lips with a grey tongue.

  ‘And so you come to me, as a man well-known for sticking his face in the fan.’ I paused, my lungs still seemed to call for tobacco, so I sparked up again. ‘Which makes me think this loss of yours would be far from above board, possibly verging on the illegal, am I right?’

  ‘I don’t think illegal is the correct term.’ He flustered, running the back of his hand over his mouth as he gazed out the dirty window at the contents of his dodgy car lot. ‘But I would be keen to avoid entanglements with the law, that is fair to say.’

  I drew on my tab, the small room was filling with smoke. He fidgeted before me and then retreated behind his desk to withdraw a battered, oily fingerprinted cheque-book from the drawer.

  ‘I could pay you, Mr D—’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What? Are you turning down good money?’

  ‘Turning down this job of yours.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No buts, bud.’ I uncrossed my legs and leaned forward, the plastic chair let out a loud creak. ‘You see, I might not be the best detective in the world, or even Leith for that matter, but I think I have just about enough savvy to suss when someone is feeding me a line. And right now, I’d say you were full of more bullshit than a farmer’s foreskin.’

  Beer-gut recoiled. Stupefaction replacing every other hint of an expression on his face. There was a moment, a millisecond or so, when I thought I might be prepared to go to the mat with him over his proposition, perhaps even tease the proper facts from him, but it passed. Truth was, I couldn’t summon the interest to give a shit about what was really going on inside his mind—my guess was a gerbil on a treadmill was turning the cogs.

  The cheque-book was raised again, like a limp white flag he hoped would come to his rescue. ‘I could pay you. I could pay you a decent sum.’

  It got my goat to think of him offering me a cheque when I knew he was holding a wedge as thick as War and Peace, Parts I & II, in his pocket. I got up and opened the door. ‘Thanks for the offer, but, as tempting as you make your bullshit sound, I’ve moved on from this kind of thing.’

  I walked out. The portacabin rocked on its pins as he bolted, fatboy-fashion, behind me. ‘What about my…loss?’ He stayed in the doorway, a spit of rain had started to fall.

  ‘Looks like more on the way…rain I mean.’

  ‘But, Gus, can you come back and talk. At least hear me out. Please.’

  I gazed at the sky, black clouds rumbling in signalled a heavier downpour—it’d be falling in stair-rods in no time. ‘When can I come back for the Golf? The sooner being the better.’

  ‘Tomorrow. I’ll have it ready for you then if you like. Will we say about noon?’

  A cold easterly bit, I looked about, confident a courtesy car wasn’t going to be an option. ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘It’ll be ready, I promise.’ He stuck out his hand, I thought at first it was to shake but he grabbed my sleeve and patted my arm. ‘Just have a think about my offer, will you do that, please?’

  I didn’t like to see a man pleading, so I just left him hanging there, a dick in the wind, so to speak. I dowped the red-top and put the collar up on my Crombie as I headed into the smirry rain. The brisk wind was chasing empty take-away boxes down Fort Street and onto Ferry Road. I was pissed off at the walk ahead to my Easter Road flat but at least my car was coming back to me, hopefully minus the slug’s trail.

  Click here to learn more about Wrecked by Tony Black.

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  Here is a preview from Suicide Squeeze, the second Diamond mystery by TG Wolff.

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  Much To Do About Nothing

  Today was a good day to die. I should know—I picked it. Of all the days in all the years, this was the one when everything would come full circle and I would see my husband again.

  If you believe in that sort of thing.

  Which it turns out…I do.

  My name is Diamond, and I’m a list maker. If it makes me a nerd, well, it’s not the worst I’ve been called. For all you list makers out there, I did the impossible. I finished my list.

  Sound like I’m bragging? I’m not.

  Do you know what a list maker does when the list is finished?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  There was no point to me anymore.

  There were no details left to do. The house was clean, garbage taken out. My accounts were settled, and the letter turning over my shell company was easy to find. Donations were made of everything extra I had. I was done.

  In my bedroom, I sat on my bed and took off my boots. Spring was edging toward summer in this not-so-trendy part of Washington D.C., but the hardwood floors were cold on my feet. My wedding picture sat on my nightstand. The silver-plated frame was a wedding gift. I don’t remember from whom. The face I loved to wake up to smiled out at me. I touched his cheek, remembering how his whiskers scratched, missing the way he buried his face into my neck just to make me squeal.

  I picked up my gun.

  The three of us went into the bathroom and climbed into the tub.

  This time, death would be simple. It was just me and a bullet. Diamond and lead.

  The man who would find me, Ian Black, knew how to take care of a body. The plot where my husband was buried had a “hers” side. There was a coffin in it and a body that wasn’t mine. A necessary part of burying my past life. Now, I wished
I had figured out a way to get into my coffin. I wanted to be buried next to Gavriil Rubchinsky. I knew it didn’t matter where my body was. Six feet deep, bottom of the river, burned to ash, it was all the same. I was going to meet him where bodies didn’t matter.

  Still, it would have been nice.

  A bullet for my heart. Broken as it was, it would still bleed. Hence the tub and my uncomfortable position over the drain. The classic is the headshot, which is fine if you don’t give a shit about whoever is going to be cleaning the mess. I had a seventeen-year-old kid squatting across the hall. Andrew Dixon. I didn’t want him to see me like that.

  I touched my husband’s face, feeling his warmth instead of the cold glass. “I hope you put a good word in for me.” My voice broke. “I’ll need—”

  The back-gate buzzer sounded like a National Weather Service warning. I jumped, smacking my head on the spigot. Fuckin’ A, that hurt. The buzzer sounded again, and I fumbled Gavriil’s picture. He fell out of the tub and landed with a smash on the white hexagon tiles.

  “What kind of world is this coming to when a person can’t get fifteen minutes of peace and quiet!” I climbed out of the bathtub and shoved the narrow window as high as it would go. “What! What could possibly be important enough to lay on that buzzer like a whore on a broken mattress?”

  “I? What? I’m not a whore!” The blonde outside my gate clucked like a hen, then pushed the damn button again.

  “Bitch!” I elbowed the screen until it popped out, then shoved my gun hand out. “Do it again. I dare you.” The screen hit the pavement with a crash. Her hand reached for the damn buzzer. “What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for Diamond. Please tell me you’re not her.” My Interruption wore designer black pants and an elegant white shirt. Her hair was wild in the breeze, her face one I’d never seen before.

  “In the flesh. Doesn’t tell me what you want.”

  “I have a problem.” Her gaze swept around the parking lot.

  “Welcome to the club. Try Jack on the rocks.” I started to pull back.

  “I got a note,” she said hastily.

  “Good for you. I’m sure your mommy’s proud.”

  “He…he said you had to read it.”

  This was getting old. “Who?”

  “His name is O’Rourke.” Her voice drifted. “He wants to help.”

  “Then go lay on his doorbell.”

  There was bite in her voice this time. “He told me you could help me.”

  “He was wrong,” I said, showing teeth of my own. She tore open the letter. “Did you say that was addressed to me? You can’t open it. It’s against federal law!”

  “Arrest me.” She held the paper between both hands, her brows tightening. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  Don’t ask.

  Don’t ask.

  “What the fuck does it say?”

  “It’s an IOU from you to someone named Sam Irish. Good for, and I quote, ‘One favor you can call in anytime, except the hours of two a.m. to four a.m., anyplace, except Malta, the Yucatan Peninsula, and Gary, Indiana, for any reason, unless it’s stupid.’” She looked up at me. “It’s only seven, we’re in Washington, D.C., and it’s not stupid.”

  “Ha! Of course it is.” I waved the gun triumphantly, catching her in an ipso facto. “It’s all stupid!”

  “My husband’s been kidnapped,” she shouted, her voice breaking on the last word. “He’s been missing for two days. The police don’t believe me. They think he’s run off with a mistress.”

  I froze, my arm, head, and shoulder out the window. “Fucking Irish,” I muttered, looking to the sky. A crow circled overhead, swooping lower on each turn. “We’re not going to let him mess this up, are we?” A maniac robin appeared out of nowhere. The streak of orange raced between the buildings, banked right, hung left, and crapped on my gun hand. “Fucking karma.”

  “I’m not crazy, but I am desperate. He didn’t leave me. I know he didn’t. He…he wasn’t that kind of man.” Her mouth kept moving, her words turning to blah blah blah as my gaze drifted to my husband’s face smiling out through shattered glass.

  When the shaky video surfaced, showing Gavriil stumbling into the street, everyone I went to—the Italian police, the American consulate, my former employer—all of them looked at me with sympathy but without belief. I was desperate, and it made me a little crazy. I picked up his picture, stroked his arm. “I’m just going to listen, like I had wished someone had done when you died. Save my place in line. This shouldn’t take long.”

  “Diamond? Where are you? O’Rourke said you were the only one who could help me. You can’t ignore me. I’m not going away.” She laid on the damn doorbell again.

  “Need to electrify that. Make people pay for disturbing me.” In the small hallway, in the square connecting my back door, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, was a master control panel. One press of a button and the door she faced popped open.

  “Listening isn’t a promise to do anything else.” I went to meet My Interruption. The back door led to a hallway shared by my living space and my working quarters. It was twenty feet long, wide enough for one person and a stack of boxes. Natural light filtered in through the bulletproof glass in the reinforced steel door at the end. On the other side, cast iron stairs connected the back entrance to the apartments, winding to the ground four floors below. Heeled shoes began to climb.

  What was Irish doing sending this woman to me? I didn’t do for-hire work, and he knew it.

  Those heels were three floors below now. Blonde hair crested the black staircase. Blue eyes followed, her progress stopped as she scanned the landing above.

  “Are you coming up or what? I have things to do.”

  “Are you planning to use that gun?” she asked suspiciously.

  I looked down at the natural extension of my hand. “Nothing’s out of the question.”

  “How good are you with it? On a scale of one to ten?”

  A little smile grew despite my irritation. It was a good question. “I broke the scale. In or out?”

  My Interruption studied my face. “In.” Her heels clicked up the last of the stairs.

  When she was on the landing, I stepped into her path. “Hands out. Turn around.”

  “You’re patting me down?” She complied, muttering “ridiculous.” “You’re the one with the gun, you know.”

  Thorough is never ridiculous. “You got ten minutes.” I went through the door, letting her follow. Or not. Her choice. I’d hear her out, connect her to people, to the help no one gave me. Fifteen minutes, twenty tops, and we’d be nothing to each other but a memory. “Nine minutes, forty-five seconds.”

  “My husband disappeared from work two days ago.” She sat in the corner of the couch, knees together, fingers working the hem of her shirt. “He told his assistant he was going to lunch, then left alone, taking only his wallet and the book he was reading. When he didn’t come home, I started looking for him.”

  Worry was evidenced by the purple tint underwriting her blue eyes. She hadn’t been crying, not recently. Her eyes weren’t swollen or red; her nose wasn’t running or congested. No judgment there. Not everyone was a crier.

  “This man who sent you, O’Rourke, how did you meet him?”

  My Interruption rubbed the back of her neck. “The police, they are supposed to help, but no. I didn’t know how to find the kind of help I needed.” Her words had a subtle lilt. Something European perhaps? It was pleasant, slightly exotic, sounding as if every word was a secret. It added an unexpected twist to the cliché blonde hair, blue-eyed, buxom babe. “I found him on a message board. He met me at a café.”

  “When?”

  She looked at her watch. “Two hours ago.”

  I had no doubt My Interruption met Irish—how else would she have my marker and address? But, four days ago, Irish and I said goodbye. He’d gotten a new assignment and was leaving town. Hasta la vista. Bon voyage. S
ee ya when I see ya.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No. Nothing. What did—” A smoke alarm interrupted the interrogation. “Hold that thought.”

  I bought this building six months before I “died.” The front faced the busy main street. Six apartments on three floors. The back of the building had another set of six apartments looking over a parking lot to the cross street. All the apartments on the top floors were mine.

  The smoke alarm came from the front building, the sound growing as I descended the stairs. Second floor, parking-lot side, resided the worst cook in the 202 area code. I pounded on the heavy door. “MaryAnn, it’s Diamond.” Not waiting for an invitation, I entered the bypass code that was part of my security upgrade. The lock slid open. I burst in and sprinted through the living and dining room to the kitchen.

  “Stop that noise!” An irritated woman snapped a towel up at the blaring device.

  The alarm mounted seven feet above the floor did not comply. Nor should it have.

  “MaryAnn, your stove is on fire.”

  “Of course, it is,” she shouted over the noise. “I’m making blackened chicken just like those Cajun chefs.”

  MaryAnn was a cooking channel enthusiast. Two months ago, I had fire extinguishers installed in all the kitchens after a marathon of barbecue episodes had the fire department here three times in one day. I set the gun I still carried by the sink, far away from the fire, pulled the extinguisher from its cradle, and snuffed the flames heading for the wall. Next, I opened her back door and retrieved the ladder stored in her common hallway for just this reason.

  My eyeballs pulsed with the incessant noise. Hoping they wouldn’t start bleeding, I set the ladder up, climbed, and all but ripped the fucker off the wall.

  Silence was an ice cream cone after a late night at a rock concert.

  “I don’t know what happened.” MaryAnn held a small butane torch in hand. “I was blackening the chicken when that damn thing went off. I did everything right, and it looks like I made charcoal. How do they make it look so easy?”