Jailbird Detective

by Helen Jacey

  ‘So what’s your specialty?’

  ‘Missing persons, blackmail, extortion.’

  She flashed a glance that verged on respectful. ‘That’ll pay,’ she grunted.

  I stood alone in the empty suite. I badly needed a desk. More than anything, I would need an assistant to sit in the front office, type up reports, or pretend to, and pacify emotional clients. I knew just the person.

  ‘Your assistant! Oh, my God. You mean you’re really saving me from this hellhole? You will not regret this, Boss.’ Barney’s eyes gleamed with amazement.

  ‘Can you start in a month?’

  ‘And how!’ Any minute he’d be jumping on the counter and spinning his cane. Then I remembered his wooden leg.

  I needed a month to sort out things with the Spark Trust. Tatiana’s trust fund would bankroll the office, mine and Barney’s salary and everything that goes along with running a P.I. business. I didn’t want to take liberties with the account. I owed Tatiana Spark big-time. The job of tracing Sophia felt like a poisoned chalice, albeit one I couldn’t avoid.

  ‘Oh, it might get a little…hairy at times. Goes with the territory. But not too often, I hope.’

  I would never know what happened to Lena. Sometimes my heart leapt when I glimpsed a certain shade of blonde. In time, that reaction would pass. Lena and I had saved each other’s lives. Jailbird loyalty.

  We had no choice but to trust each other.

  74

  ‘How’s business?’

  Lauder strolled into my back office, looking groomed and rather dashing in a snazzy gray suit.

  The last time I’d seen him he had just escaped from death’s door. Now, Lauder’s normally pale skin had a touch of gold about it and he actually looked healthy. The fiancée had no doubt taken him off somewhere nice to heal properly in the sun. Up close, his eyes were more turquoise than ever; cold and glittery like a millionaire’s swimming pool – like Martell’s, Lyle’s and all the others I got to admire in the gossip magazines lying around the lobby these days.

  ‘Going well, if you’ve got a case for me.’

  Lauder smirked and looked around my office. It consisted of a desk, a lamp and a telephone. I didn’t even have a chair to offer him. I slept on a sofa in the interconnecting room but luckily, the door was now closed.

  The one item of decoration was the chess piece; the black queen. She sat on my desk. For me she was Rhonda, and I wouldn’t forget her.

  He said, ‘You busy now? Could you come someplace?’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Yeah. I want to show you something.’

  ‘So long as we’re not going on any jolly jaunts to the desert, guess I’m fine.’ I joked. It was a little awkward. The etiquette between an ex-con and her ex-handler was unknown to both of us. We would have to make it up as we went along.

  Lauder gave me a withering look. ‘No. Even better. The city morgue.’

  My heart did a very different kind of leap. ‘Rhonda?’

  ‘No. Somebody else.’ He wasn’t going to tell me before he was ready. One thing I did know was, with Randall Lauder, persistence got you nowhere.

  We drove towards Downtown. Lauder explained a family had been walking the dog near Echo Park Lake. The dog had run for a ball in a shrubbery, the kid had followed. The kid had discovered a dead body. It hadn’t been announced yet, but it was a cop. As we entered the parking lot of the city morgue, Lauder instructed me not to ask any questions inside.

  The skull was shot through, close-range impact. A boiled egg with the top sliced off. The skin was like gray putty.

  In death, Jim Fraser still looked like a mean piece of work. But like all corpses, the stillness lent him an innocent air. Perhaps death returned us to our unsullied selves. Purified us, so our bodies could return to the soil without taking the poison of our lives with them. I wondered if anyone loved him, and would mourn his death.

  I looked away, shivering inwardly. For all its clinical efficiency, the morgue filled me with dread. I wanted to get out.

  Why here? He could have told me all this in the office.

  Lauder thanked the mortician who pushed Jim Fraser’s body back in the chiller.

  In the parking lot, I gulped the fresh air. Lauder offered me a cigarette. ‘You okay?’

  ‘One less enemy’s always good news.’ Was that what this trip was really about? To tell me today I was a little safer? I doubted it. He pressed his lighter and I leant forward to catch the flame. I avoided his eyes, which I knew were studying my face.

  We puffed away in silence. After a while Lauder spoke. ‘Anything strike you about the body?’

  ‘Other than his head’s been blown off, like Slim Caziel’s? Didn’t need me here to tell you that.’

  ‘It happened some days ago. Maybe we’ll get a lead. Maybe not. Like I said, those two probably rubbed enough people up the wrong way.’

  ‘You think it’s the same killer?’

  ‘Could be.’ Elusive as ever.

  We slowly walked towards his car. I wondered if Reba T. was behind it. Caziel had plenty of dirt on her and she could easily have found out Jim Fraser worked with him. Tying up loose ends, using a henchman or two.

  ‘They’ll be cold cases, won’t they? Caziel and Fraser?’

  Lauder looked at me, stopping by the passenger door. ‘Murder Squad is throwing everything at it.’ His voice sounded flat.

  Had my blackmail of Fraser led to his demise somehow? I was still very sketchy on how exactly Arnold Moss had been released and what Fraser had come up with to tell his bosses. I had suggested to Fraser, more like instructed him, to say an informant had hinted that Moss was framed. Fraser would have had to name a real person to the Murder Squad, and get a plausible statement out of him. Surely just saying a C.I. had tipped him off wouldn’t have been enough grounds to release Moss?

  ‘Think it’s anything to do with Arnold Moss?’ I said, weakly. Lauder glanced at me. If he knew I was behind it, and I was certain he did, he would know I could be more than curious.

  I suddenly felt queasy. I didn’t want to finish my cigarette, stubbing it out on the ground. Lauder held the passenger door open for me. I slipped in, wishing we could be straight, put it all out in the open.

  Lauder got in, beside me. ‘Turns out Fraser had a C.I. who squealed, said a real nasty guy was Stan’s real killer. A mobster. Stan had busted one of the guy’s gambling rackets. The mobster framed Moss, an easy target. But guess the latest twist? The mobster’s dead. Mown down by a rival mob days before. A stack of witnesses, too. Took place in some Italian restaurant.’

  The shooting Beatty had mentioned to me. Now I could see Fraser had been very smart, using a known public showdown to conceal his lies. After my threat, he must have cooked the story up with one of his real C.I.s. Probably paid him, or gave him no choice. Now wouldn’t it make the real C.I. a target, to badmouth a dead boss?

  But Luigi’s was an eerie co-incidence. If there were circles within circles, I was lost.

  The bottom line was that Moss had got justice, at the expense of an informant’s safety. Lauder must have read my mind.

  ‘The C.I. is safe in witness protection. Solid enough information for the DA to release Arnold Moss. The mobster can’t be charged with murder, he’s already dead. Now Murder Squad like the same crew for putting Jim Fraser down. Treating it like a series of slaps in Vice Squad’s face.’

  What he seemed to be saying was, we got it covered.

  He started the engine. ‘Oh, yeah. Something else. The weapon that was used to kill Fraser was probably a rifle, older type, with a close-range hit like that.’ Lauder put the car into reverse, his cigarette dangling from his mouth. ‘Know anybody with a rifle?’

  75

  There was a chill in the air. Autumn was finally on its way.

  I stood outside Thelma’s house.

  The curtains and nets were gone, and the place was dark. No milk deliveries. I peered in through a window. The front parlor was empty.


  She had moved out.

  I rapped on the door and waited. Pointless. I turned to leave, noticing a sack of garbage that the pigeons had been pecking at.

  ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’

  I spun around. A man and his dog stood on the sidewalk by the front gate. I said, ‘I’m looking for Thelma, the old lady who used to live here?’

  ‘Thelma? Don’t know any Thelma. You mean Gladys? She just sold up.’

  ‘Gladys?’ My mouth fell open. Gladys? Wasn’t Rhonda’s granny called Gladys?

  Yes. Yes, she was.

  ‘Is Gladys about eighty? Skinny, bakes peanut cookies for kids?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.

  ‘That’s Gladys,’ the man smiled, affectionately.

  ‘This place is sold?’ I pointed to the house.

  ‘Uh-huh. Wrecking crew coming next. I’m last to go, end of block. Gonna be a whole row of apartments here. How about that? City’s changing too fast for my liking. You just missed her. Gone to Union Station. You a relative?’

  I shook my head. ‘Just an old friend.’

  I like stations. News-sellers, candy stalls, tobacconists, flower shops, lost and found, they are tiny cities in themselves; the buzz, the excitement, the air filled with hope for endless possibilities; new ventures, sad goodbyes, and hidden escapes.

  The end of the line for some, a place of rebirth for others.

  Waterloo Station had made it possible for me and Union Station was doing the same for Rhonda and her grandma Gladys.

  They were disappearing into thin air.

  Staring at Rhonda was like watching my own past unfold. I stood a fair distance away, observing her through the crowds. She was sitting alone in a wheelchair. Her head was bowed slightly, her hands were resting on a small purse on her lap. She’d been pushed to one side, just like those soldiers had been at Waterloo, but I knew very well she hadn’t been forgotten. Her hat had a veil, and underneath that, she wore gold-rimmed spectacles. A woven blanket covered her. Was it a disguise?

  She and her granny had gotten away with it. They had played me. Perfectly.

  Commuters came and went. Wait! Now Gladys approached, briskly walking through the station, tickets in her gloved hands. She looked the picture of health, with a mink around her neck and a jaunty hat. She was making her way back to Rhonda. I watched as she protectively patted Rhonda’s hat and rearranged the veil. Then she leaned down and squeezed Rhonda’s hand.

  I stepped back, shielded by the side of the newsstand, a safe vantage point. Then my stomach flipped.

  A fur-clad apparition, heading straight at me. Joyce! She was making for the stand, so I shot back around the side, and looked away. I heard Joyce’s imperious tones asking for a Chronicle. I didn’t move, counting the seconds. Surely she’d have bought the damn thing by now.

  ‘What a pleasant surprise, Miss Slate.’ Joyce’s dark gray eyes drilled into mine.

  I turned, eyeballing her back. ‘A big day for surprises. I just found out Rhonda’s safe and well, that she has a granny who poses as a neighbor, and they’re leaving town. You’re here to see them off, I presume?’

  Joyce raised her brows. ‘Isn’t it just wonderful news? Sorry I didn’t get a chance to call your office and put you in the picture. Crazy busy as ever. Anyhow, I must dash. Good to see you.’

  ‘Wait. I have a few questions.’

  ‘Why? Case closed, surely. So long.’

  She wasn’t just going to leave me standing. My arm shot out and grabbed her arm. She shook it off as fast. I hissed, ‘Rhonda knew Shimmer had met with Caziel, didn’t she? She knew he was behind the murder.’ It was a long shot, but one worth taking. Gladys had a rifle. Rhonda wanted justice.

  Joyce deadpanned, stepping back. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about, Miss Slate. Always such a fanciful imagination. I really must go, their train’s about to leave.’

  Her furs undulated like a furry caterpillar. I called out after her. ‘Guess you can handle a rifle no problem, right?’

  Joyce spun around, her eyes flashing. She charged back, like a bull. Then she stared me down, weighing it up.

  ‘I gotta hand it to you. You’re smart. And persistent as hell. Let me tell you this, and then we are done. You’re looking at it the wrong way round. Elmore Caziel was a very nasty piece of work. How did Rhonda know? Because on the day, she went with Shimmer to the Flamayon! She sat in the lot. She waited. She got worried when things took longer than they should. Shimmer had said it was an in-out affair. Rhonda went to the bungalow and looked right in through the window. She saw Shimmer, obviously drugged, and that creep snapping away with his camera. And guess what. She sees him see her. So she drives away fast as she can, because she could be next. She was in mortal danger. We had to get her out before those bastards killed her as well.’

  I stared at her. I stammered, ‘Caziel and Jim Fraser?’

  She stared at me. ‘Same night, a cop comes around. Yes, a Detective Jim Fraser. To break the news that Shimmer is dead. He wants to take Rhonda away for questioning. We’d never have seen her again, and he’d have come up with some crock of shit excuse how she winded up dead. Luckily another cop’s already beaten him to it and warned Gladys. But guess what else? I’d already taken Rhonda away, to safety. You know who the other cop is.’

  I did. Lauder. That was the one visit Thelma/Gladys had told me about.

  ‘Fraser was scum. His fingers were deep in the pie of perversion. That cop sure wasn’t going to let it lie, and tracking down a girl having brain surgery wouldn’t take so long.’

  Caziel and Jim Fraser were hunting Rhonda down.

  Her or them.

  But who had pulled the trigger? Joyce or Gladys? I would never know. Only Joyce was strong enough to move a body as large as Jim Fraser’s and bury it in the undergrowth of Echo Park. They hadn’t killed for vengeance. These hits had been preventative, but did that make it right? In a perfect world, murderers Caziel and Fraser would have faced justice. But what kind of justice? A justice that turns a blind eye to the truth and is happy to pin any face to a crime?

  And I’d killed like that, too. In a room, above a pub, I’d shot a man in cold blood. An expensive lawyer could have argued self-defense but I knew the truth. I simply hadn’t let Billy’s killer live. Heat of the moment, vengeance, rage, and self-preservation compounded in one pull of the trigger. If I’d let him run, and then sat there for the police, it would have just led to a longer incarceration, and I wouldn’t be any safer from Mob retaliation inside. I was already on the run when Billy was shot, and no lawyer in the world could argue a way out of that. I’d already chosen my path, I had long been branded by society and maybe society was right. I’d been loyal to Billy, after all, a criminal who had few scruples.

  I became aware of Joyce’s face leaning into mine, her arms folded. ‘Then lil’ ol’ you comes sniffing around. That’s why Gladys pretended to be Thelma. Nobody knew Rhonda and Shimmer had family, and we needed it to stay that way.’

  Gladys had simply reeled me in, sending me off on a wild goose chase to track down Rhonda, with her cover story that she’d let her best friend down. She’d got me out of the way easily. ‘I don’t understand why you told me about Olive Harjo. Did you want me to snoop?’

  ‘Well, I figured it couldn’t hurt. We knew you were reporting back to ‘Thelma’. And it convinced me you cared about Rhonda. We had a good laugh when we figured out Gina had turned into Elvira Slate, the pain-in-the-butt snoop! Some gal.’

  ‘You knew Lauder was a good guy the whole time.’

  ‘Shimmer’s been informing on Reba T. for Lauder for years. But a cop’s a cop, I prefer to keep them all at arm’s length. Yes, she was annoyed he tracked her down after they left with the money. But she knew by sending you it was just a warning from him to get out of town fast. Turns out the one thing he didn’t know was that Caziel had approached her for a job.’

  ‘What about Shimmer’s body? Will she get a funeral?’

  ‘She did already
.’

  ‘Wait. Did her family claim the body?’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself. She’s resting in peace.’

  Was that why Thelma had been in black? Had Lauder played a part in the funeral, too?

  He mentioned the rifle to me. Did he know? Did he guess? Maybe he was content that his buddies in the Murder Squad were on their own wild goose chase hunting Fraser’s killers.

  Maybe that was the path of justice for Lauder.

  The perfect crime.

  Nobody suspects an eighty-year-old woman.

  Don’t judge a book by its cover.

  There was nothing left to say. Joyce shot me a cross between a smirk and a smile. ‘Now we’ve cleared all this up, why don’t you pay the club a visit some time?’

  Departure time. I was riveted to the spot, watching as the escape unfolded. Joyce suddenly embraced Gladys, and knelt down, kissing Rhonda’s cheek. Rhonda said something to her, and Joyce laughed.

  She watched them depart, waving for a while, as Gladys pushed Rhonda along the side of the train, accompanied by the porter wheeling the trolley of cases. Then she strode through the vast station towards the exit, every inch a woman, one who could aim a rifle and lug a body.

  A compassionate woman.

  Shimmer’s, Darlene’s and Frank’s deaths had been avenged.

  This felt like true justice.

  Nobody except me knew, and nobody else would.