On The Edge

by Daniel Cleaver

  “I don’t know the artist’s name, but it has to be the beagles’ playing cards.” The art-goers chuckled at this. “Oh, and the one where the dogs play pool. A classic, they’re smoking cigarettes and everything.”

  “Yes, very funny, I’m sure,” he said, humoring me. “What do you really want?”

  “I’m returning your iPhone.” I showed him it. “This is yours, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s mine. I’ve been looking for it everywhere.”

  “I found it.” Well, stole it from his pocket at Bruce Matherson’s but I was hardly going to tell him that.

  “Thank you, it’s my lifeline, I’m lost without it.”

  “Uhuh!” I held it up high out of his reach, like teasing a child. “Now, is this cellphone yours?” The crowd got larger. They enjoyed watching him squirm. He wasn’t as popular as he thought. “I ask that because in an attempt to discover the owner of the iPhone we found these emails.”

  “I said it’s mine. Hand it over!” he snapped.

  “Listen to this email, ‘I can’t wait for her and to put my cook in her. Huh? That ain’t right. Is that a typo?” I showed the iPhone to a nearby matronly-looking woman. “What does that say?” I asked her.

  “I think it’s meant to say, ‘cock.’”

  “Yah, that’d make more sense.”

  “Stop that. Give it here. Now!”

  “Wow. Here’s another one. ‘She’s gorgeous, but does she have a younger sister?’” The crowd gasped collectively.

  “It’s not what it seems. She’s a Russian orphan I’m sponsoring.” The crowd appeared satisfied with this explanation. “Give me my phone. You can’t do this. Those messages are private.”

  “Yah, I can. The law is on my side on this one – for once.” I smirked at him. “Oh look, here’s an attachment he sent to the ten-year-old orphan. It’s a photograph. What is that?” I showed the screen to the matron, who paled. I said, “It looks like a penis only smaller. Is that why you molest children because you can’t satisfy a woman with this?” I said, tapping the screen.

  Eglin got in close and whispered, “Not here. Meet me at my home.”

  416 Baroda Drive, Holmby Hills, CA 90077 – 19:05.

  Marcus Eglin slunk away from the gallery through the service entrance. I waited a few minutes, then left, and went to the address he gave me. It wasn’t too far away up in the Holmby Hills. If I thought his art was overpriced it was nothing compared to his home. It was a nice spread, sure, but he would’ve paid quadruple the cost because it was in the Hills. I drove through the gateway and went around to the side entrance as directed. I pulled my Glock in case he tried anything funny and held it down by my leg. I entered the hallway and found his study on the left as he instructed. I half-thought he may have taken his own miserable life, but no, he thought he could talk his way out of it. This should be good.

  “So, what’s this evidence you have?” he asked, wading right in.

  “I have the proof on your phone.”

  “That’s it?!” he said astounded.

  “That’s plenty.”

  “I’ll get that made inadmissible in a flash. Please tell me you have more.”

  “Nope.”

  “I thought you said you had loads of evidence.”

  “Well, yah, I was kinda hoping you’d roll over with the phone evidence,” I said with a shrug.

  He stared at me incredulously and then made a decision. “Okay, look, I don’t want you sniffing around embarrassing me in front of my friends. Now I could do this officially and go to your superiors, but let’s keep this simple. How much do you want?”

  “I ain’t for sale.”

  “Sure, you are, all cops are, we just have to find your price. Now, you might act all noble, but there’ll be a figure out there for you to accept, to make this all go away. Come on, Detective, name your price.”

  “I told ya, I ain’t for sale. All I want is the Hangman’s name or address.”

  “See you do have a price, just not monetary. You can be bought. Don’t feel bad, this is what I do, day in, day out. But alas, I do not know the Hangman, or his secret lair. So, this has all been a waste of time.” He smiled and lit a big, fat cigar and blew a plume of smoke at me. He was acting cocky, feeling safe in his own environment. “Join me?” He rattled the cigar box at me.

  I shook my head and took out my cigarettes and lit one using his silver Zippo lighter and absent-mindedly put it in my pocket. “How did ya deliver the girls to him?”

  “What girls?”

  I opened my shirt and lifted my tee. “I ain’t wearing a wire if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “If you agree that whatever I reveal in here tonight is inadmissible, then I’ll talk freely, but after that I’ll need you to leave me alone. What’s that going to take?”

  “The Hangman’s taken my girl; I’ve got a few hours to find her. The gloves are off. I’m not a cop today, I’ll do whatever it takes to find her.” I raised my Glock and pointed it at him.

  He smiled smugly and I saw the filth pour from his orifices: this man was pure evil. Even accounting for him being a lawyer, this was one of the worst visions I’d ever seen. Maggots crawled from his eyes and nostrils, and roaches from his mouth as he spoke. His perma-tan turned to wrinkled, crepe-like, aged, spotted skin. He was scum, yet here he was grinning at me, completely at ease, even though I had my gun pointing at him.

  “You can shoot me, Detective, but you’re forgetting that my home is covered by CCTV, I have a panic button connected to the police station and I pressed it about four minutes ago, so they should be here in a few minutes.” He blew more cigar smoke at me and said, “I think that’s what they call game, set and match.”

  I mimicked his smug grin and said, “Yah, that would be true if I hadn’t disabled both before I entered, along with your phone line.”

  He picked it up to check. “What sort of cop knows how to do these things?”

  “A good one. With friends in low places.” I took a drag of my cigarette and said, “I told ya, I’m desperate.”

  “Sorry, can’t help. I wish I could, but the truth is, I just don’t know. We’d dump the girls once they’d passed their expiry dates. We’d get one of our minions to dump the girls at the side of the canyon and he’d do whatever, and that was the arrangement for three years, never had a comeback and we were grateful for it. It was a clean operation and we didn’t care who he was, as long as he disposed of the goods and there was no connection to us.”

  “Goods?!” I sighed deeply. “You’re talking about human beings.”

  “Spare me your high moral code, Detective. I’m telling you what I know. We’d leave a message on a disposable cellphone telling him where and when and that was it.”

  The callousness of the disposal had the ring of truth. Another dead end. I gazed around the walls of the room, taking in the awards and photos of Marcus with minor celebrities and then at the portrait of a smiling young blond with twin girls. “Who are they?”

  “My wife and kids.”

  “You’re married!?”

  “Why is that such a surprise?”

  “You’ve got children, don’t that bother ya?”

  “They won’t be wandering the streets like whores. I can assure you of that.”

  “How old are the girls?”

  He puffed on his cigar. “I haven’t molested them if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Yet ya molest other people’s children.”

  “My girls are four years old. How dare you? What do you think I am?”

  His indignant reaction made me choke. What a warped human being. “I know what ya are, but it’s only a matter of time. When they’re older.”

  “What if I do, I’m their father.”

  “It ain’t right.”

  “Who’s going to know?”

  “I do.”

  “You can’t police the whole world, Detective.”

  I put the Glock back in the holster on my belt an
d sighed.

  “You can’t win this one, Detective. Stay where you belong – down in Venice with the pimps and the muggers, and carry on making your name now and again capturing a serial killer but stay out of the Hills – we’re way out of your league.” He smiled and reached behind him and opened the safe. “Take some money; it’ll ease your conscience and make ya feel better. There’s about fifty thousand there, used notes – untraceable.”

  He could see I was unmoved. “I haven’t got time for all these fun and games. I know you got a price, I haven’t got time to find out, so here’s the deal.” He opened a second hidden safe within the safe and took out an envelope. “In this envelope is one hundred thousand in untraceable bearer bonds. They’re good practically anywhere in the world much better than cash: the beauty is you can post them on ahead to your destination, no problem with Customs or currency controls. Can you even imagine what fifty thousand bucks will buy you in, say, somewhere like Costa Rica, can you?”

  He must have thought by my expression that I was agreeable. He stood and put his hands behind his back. “You’d better tie me up, to make it look like a proper robbery.”

  I didn’t move. Sheldon asked, “What are you doing? Why aren’t you arresting him?”

  “Not so fast,” I said inwardly. “I’m still thinking about the fifty thousand bucks.”

  I turned my back on him and Marcus snatched my Glock from its holster and pointed it at me. His grin was so wide I thought his head was going to split in half. “You should have shot me when you had your chance.” He waved the wad of one hundred-dollar bills in his hand. “You could have walked away with fifty thousand bucks. Instead, you’re going to be killed with your own gun. I’ll concoct a story saying you broke in. Everyone saw you harassing me at the gallery.”

  He smiled sadistically as he pulled the trigger . . .

  CHAPTER 39

  . . . onto an empty chamber.

  “Yah, that’d work if I hadn’t removed the bullets.”

  Marcus frantically pulled the trigger onto empty chambers. He screamed in anger and threw it at me and managed to miss even from that close distance. I whipped a second gun from its ankle holster down my boot and thrust it in his face. “Did ya see what I did there?” I took my Glock from the floor carefully. “I’ve got your prints on my weapon so now I can kill ya in self-defense. Cool, huh?”

  His face drained of color. “Think of my wife. Think of my girls.”

  “Yah, I am. I’m thinking of the lifetime of misery that I’m saving them from.”

  “Which do you think they’d prefer, a loving father, who may, or may not visit them in the night from time to time, or a father’s who’s . . .”

  He held his arms wide and I saw the evilness in his soul. I saw maggots weep from his tear ducts, earthworms wriggle from his nostrils, and cockroaches pour from the mouth that had told so many lies in court to get masses of people like him freedom, his skin wrinkled to his true age, mid-seventies, at least twenty years older, his teeth fell out and his wig receded to show a shiny, polished dome. And in that precise moment I realized that he was the worst of them all because without him and his clever words, twisting the law, none of them would have dared commit such outrageous crimes. He had given them a cloak of respectability for the pedophiles to hide behind.

  “Dead,” I said, finishing the sentence. I shot him between the eyes and his mouth stayed open, forming a perfect O. I’d shocked myself at how easy it was. I thought of the poor girls and the answer was simple. I took the cash to make it look like a robbery, especially since I’d disabled the alarms, and hotfooted it out of there.

  “That was sooo cool, man,” said Elvis.

  “Yah, easy without rules to tie me down,” I said.

  “This is the future.”

  “I’m gonna set up as a private detective.”

  Even Sherman agreed. “A gumshoe, now that would be something special!”

  Homicide Special Section, 100 W 1st St 5th, Los Angeles, CA 90012 – 20:00.

  Mainly as an alibi, I dropped into the precinct as it wasn’t too far away. As I entered the squad room, George McGinty called me over. “Look at this?”

  “What’s up?”

  “This schoolteacher.”

  “What teacher?” I said nonchalantly.

  He tapped his computer screen, opened at an LA news station breaking news. “Y’know, the one you were doing searches on the other day? He was found drowned earlier today in a freak accident.”

  “Come again?”

  “Early reports say he had broken fingers in one hand and then drowned, yet no one saw a thing. It says a class was scheduled with pupils, and parents had been there only moments earlier.”

  “Huh, that is odd,” I feigned as best I could. Maaan, the media had got the story fast. Bad news sure does travel fast but that’s the fiber-optic world in which we live.

  “Don’t you find that strange?” he persisted.

  “In what way?”

  “The computer shows you were tracing him only yesterday and then he winds up dead.”

  “Weird, huh?” I smirked to confuse him and I left him to it and went to fetch a cup of coffee. I had a feeling time was running out and my career was already circling the drain. I thought I’d been careful, but if George McGinty could put two and two together, perhaps I hadn’t. Maybe I was being paranoid. Even someone as pedestrian as George could stumble into a clue now and then. I took my coffee and went out into the courtyard for a smoke. George and Milo joined me. My cigarette lighter was out of fuel and I patted my pockets and found Marcus Eglin’s silver Zippo and fired one up. George shook a cigarette from his pack of lights. I reached over and lit it with my newly acquired Zippo, while Milo, a non-smoker, tapped away on his iPad tablet. “Oh no . . .” he gasped.

  “What is it?” George asked him.

  “Marcus Eglin’s dead.”

  “What!?”

  “They got that news story quick,” said Elvis.

  “How?” I faked interest while lighting another cigarette.

  “Shot dead during a robbery, they stole fifty thousand dollars in cash from the safe and an expensive first edition 1933 antique Zippo worth twenty-five grand.” George let out a whistle as I quickly hid the lighter.

  “Oh, I don’t know what the world’s coming to.” He shook his head sadly. “First we had the suspicious hanging this morning down at the airport.”

  That was me, I thought.

  “The bizarre drowning of a schoolteacher.”

  Me again.

  “And now,” Milo said, reading from his iPad. “Look at this, an antique dealer in Hollywood was choked to death on an onyx dildo.”

  Definitely not me.

  Well, not directly. Maybe his associates didn’t like him blabbing. Things were escalating out of control; my career in the police was all but over and I was still no closer to finding Mia.

  “Onyx?” said Elvis and Sheldon in unison.

  The Dog & Duck Bar & Restaurant, 555 Pico Boulevard, CA 90410 – 21:00.

  As I parked up near to the pub, I saw the crappy green Impala draw up behind me. Snyder made no attempt to hide the fact that he was tailing me.

  “But onyx?” said Sheldon, still unable to grasp it.

  “I think you’re missing the point,” I said. “We must be getting closer.”

  “But we don’t know who the Hangman is. He never gave up a name.”

  “But they don’t know that. Somehow we must be heading in the right direction.” I strolled over to Snyder who flicked a cigarette butt at me. “Not going to arrest me for that,” he nodded to the butt, “are you, Detective? Or should I say soon-to-be ex-Detective, or hadn’t you heard?”

  I tried not to let him antagonize me and thought I might practice my people skills. I smiled good-humoredly at him. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but why don’t ya go screw yourself?”

  He and his sidekick chuckled, while he tried to light another cigarette. I leaned over and flicke
d the Zippo; he cupped my hand out of habit, as there was no wind. “Appreciate it,” he said. “Mine’s packed up.”

  “Keep it,” I said, pressing the stolen lighter into his hand.

  I entered the pub and was surprised to see Mary sitting at the bar with Perry, who was in the process of ordering drinks, then spotted me. “I’ll have two pints of lager and two whiskey chasers.” He looked to me. “Do yer want a drink?”

  “Yah, I’ll have the same.”

  Mary put on an old Four Tunes track on the jukebox. It was a cover of ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry.’ “Oh, this takes me back,” she said. “I met one of these guys, at a party –” She stopped suddenly.

  “What is it?” I asked, my interest piqued.

  “It was at a Bruce Matherson party and he was terribly upset at the antics going on. . .” She paused as she remembered. “He said he’d found Bruce slobbering all over his young sister whom he’d taken along with him. She was all wide-eyed and innocent. He said he’d given Bruce a right beating, knocked out his front teeth.”

  Good. I took a swig of my imported lager when a thought struck me. “He wears false teeth?”

  “He must do,” she said. “Why?”

  Perry knew that I was on to something, “You go and I’ll take care of Mary.” I shot him a look. “I meant I’ll show her a good time.” He looked at me strangely.

  Mary went back over to the jukebox, shimmying as she went.

  “Yer got a soft spot for the old girl, ain’t yer?” said Perry.

  “Well, yah. You remember me telling ya about someone who singled me out down at the soup kitchen, got me into a rehabilitation program?”

  He looked over at Mary. “That was her?” He regarded her with a newfound admiration.

  “I owe her everything.”

  “Does she remember?”

  “Nope. Not a flicker of recognition, but I reckon she helped so many that she couldn’t possibly remember them all.”

  “You go do what yer gotta do, I’ll look after her.”

  I thought about the false teeth angle. I swiftly finished my drinks and rushed from the pub. I drove like a maniac, pumping myself up. As I thought about making it official and getting a warrant for his dental work, but that would take days. I didn’t want to involve the others; someone in the squad was rotten to the core and it was prudent not to warn the Hangman or Bruce Matherson. Plus involving them would cause a massive time delay whilst they dithered over the best way to handle the situation, and if they went to the wrong judge we’d be stymied. I’ll do it alone; I always do my best when I work alone. I saw a gap in the traffic and floored it.