The Shakedown Shuffle: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 3)

by Richard Levesque

“Si, si,” came his answer right away. Relief flooded over me, and I immediately wished I hadn’t been so impulsive with the phone. If everything truly was all right, the call could have waited until I had some privacy. There was nothing for it now, however. “Carmelita woke up just fine,” he went on.

  I nodded and said, “Then…”

  “Why am I calling?”

  “Yes.”

  Guillermo chuckled and said, “Something else happened. I thought it would be better if I kept her with me today.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to say, I think. I’ll explain when you come get her today. At the shop, yes?

  “Fine,” I said. “I don’t know what time.”

  “That’s okay,” I heard Guillermo say, but I was momentarily distracted. The door to my office opened and Leonora walked out, the signed contract in her hand.

  “I thought you’d forgotten about me,” she said and then, seeing that I was on the phone, she stopped midstride to size up the room, her eyes darting from me to Peggy to Carson Mulvaney.

  And, of course, I saw Mulvaney make her as well, the light of recognition in his eyes. It may just have been my imagination, but I thought I saw something in his expression, his gears turning as he pondered whether there was a way to flip this chance meeting, turning it somehow to his advantage.

  Remembering that I still had Guillermo on the line, I said, “I need to go. Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “Oh, yes. All fine, lobo. I just wanted you to know Carmelita wouldn’t be at your office like we said before.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Guillermo.”

  I hung up and turned to Peggy. Attempting to do a little damage control, I said, “Would you be kind enough to take Miss Rigsby back into my office and finish up with her?”

  “Of course,” Peggy said, starting to stand.

  It was too late, of course.

  Mulvaney was already on his feet, his hat discarded on the chair he’d been sitting on. He approached Leonora with a hand extended in greeting before Peggy or I could block his advance.

  “Carson Mulvaney,” he said with a slight bow of his head as Leonora did the automatic thing and took his hand—regardless of whether she’d wanted to or not.

  “Leonora Rigsby,” she said.

  “Yes, I know,” Mulvaney said, his smile wide but not the star struck smile I’d seen on movie fans more than once since arriving in Los Angeles. No, it was the same salesman’s smile I’d seen before. And Mulvaney was selling himself. “I’m a writer,” he added. “Maybe you’ve read some of my work.”

  She shook her head with a polite smile and withdrew her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I—”

  “The Hellbound Harlot,” Mulvaney said. “A Corpse for the Taking. There are a few others, some stories in magazines maybe. Corpse is actually under consideration for a movie treatment over at—”

  I’d had enough. “Thank you, Mr. Mulvaney,” I said, “but my client here is very busy. As are you, unless you’ve changed your mind about the urgency of our meeting.”

  Mulvaney took a moment to turn his head toward me, as though he’d forgotten I was in the room and now recalled that I needed to be dealt with, if only reluctantly. The smile turned to stone.

  I ignored his expression and said, “Peggy?”

  “Yes, Jed.”

  She was around the desk in a heartbeat and shepherded Leonora through the door into my office before Mulvaney had a chance to renew his sales pitch.

  As the door closed, he said, “Not fair, Strait. You and that little secretary have me outnumbered.”

  I pondered correcting him, informing him that there was nothing little about Peggy. My secretary was average in stature, certainly not little, but that wasn’t how he’d meant it. It had been a slight, intended to elevate himself by denigrating someone else. And, I decided, it was an offense I could opt to let slide—as least this time, as Peggy hadn’t heard it. Based on my previous experiences with Mulvaney, I knew there would be other battles, other days when I could tell him what I thought of him.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  Mulvaney stared for a moment, probably pondering another retort. Then, apparently thinking better of it, he turned and grabbed his hat. We left the office, my mind bouncing between the new case I’d just taken with Leonora, the question of how many more of these sessions I’d need to endure with Mulvaney, and whatever developments had occurred with Carmelita that had prompted Guillermo to keep her with him for the day. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. That feeling I’d had—that the day might not end up going so badly after all—had gone back down the hole it had poked its head out of. I wished I could follow it.

  Chapter Three

  “How often does that kind of thing happen?” Mulvaney said as we walked the half a block to the corner coffee shop.

  “What kind of thing?” I asked.

  “The actress. Rigsby.”

  “I’m not discussing my other clients with you, Mulvaney. That was one of our ground rules from the start, remember?”

  “I’m not asking you to discuss her specifically. Just her type.”

  “Look,” I said as we got to the shop and I opened the door, stepping inside first rather than holding the door for my client to go in ahead of me. “This whole…thing you’re doing. What’s it called again?”

  We sat across from each other in a booth, faded upholstery and sprung springs in the bench. Mulvaney tossed his hat on the tabletop and raised his hands before him, holding them out in a “now picture this” gesture as he said, “Another Day, Another Doll.”

  “Ridiculous title,” I said.

  “This is the book where I knock it out of the park,” he responded, his salesman’s self-assuredness rising to the fore again.

  I ignored the comment. “So, you’ve got this gumshoe character, and women just throw themselves at him. That the basic idea?”

  He shrugged. “There’s more to it than that, but yeah. I guess you could describe it that way. I mean, the dames come to him for help, right? Cheating spouses, blackmail, threats of one kind or another. But then he’s just so helpful, makes them feel so safe since he’s so good at what he does, that they just tumble.”

  “One after another.”

  “Exactly.” The smile lit up even more now that he saw I’d gotten the point.

  The waitress came and took our order. Coffee for both of us, and Mulvaney added a slice of apple pie.

  Echoing my earlier criticism, I said, “Ridiculous,” when she’d gone. I watched his face and took a little pleasure in the way his smile faded straight away.

  “Well, obviously it’s fiction,” he said.

  “Of the worst kind,” I said.

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand. You’re too close to the subject to see the artistic merits of bending the truth.”

  There was no point in this. “Why don’t we get down to what we’re here for?” I asked rather than continue the debate.

  But Mulvaney wasn’t ready to let it go. “Readers don’t want the truth, Strait. The truth is boring. If a private detective’s life really consists mostly of waiting around for things to happen, then no one’s going to want to read that. It’s too much like their real lives.”

  “Then why the hell are we doing this?” I asked as the waitress put two cups of coffee and a slice of pie in front of us. “What do you even need me for?”

  “Inspiration,” Mulvaney said around a bite of apples and crust.

  “Inspiration,” I repeated, disgust in my tone.

  This was our third session out of five we’d agreed to. At our first meeting, Mulvaney had laid out the basic plot of the detective novel he had in the works, so I already knew most of what he was telling me, but it still helped me make sense of it to hear it again. We’d spent the first two sessions talking about the basics, the procedures, the way a PI thinks when a case starts unfolding. He hadn’t asked me about women o
r about anything else specific to the plot of his harebrained novel. Now, it looked like he was ready to get down to it.

  “When a dame like that walks into your office,” he said. “And you’re in there just the two of you and she’s baring her soul about…whatever her problems are, you’ve got to be thinking you could make her if you tried.”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Not even a little?”

  “Not even a little.”

  “Other guys, though? Surely, it happens.”

  I shrugged. “Can’t speak for other guys, but, honestly anybody who’s trying to actually make it in this business doesn’t have time for that sort of thing. They’re looking to solve cases and get referrals. And the kind of referral you’re talking about doesn’t count.”

  Mulvaney shook his head. As though he hadn’t heard what I’d just said, he mused, “I’d love to talk to one of those women.”

  “The kind that don’t exist?”

  His salesman’s smile broadened. “Oh, they exist, Strait. You’re just looking in the wrong places.”

  “And you’ve been reading too much trashy literature. That, or you need to get yourself a girlfriend. You sound like a fella who’s so deprived his head’s gone screwy.”

  Now the smile grew sly. “You don’t know the half of it, my friend. Old Carson Mulvaney doesn’t want for female companionship. I can tell you that for sure.”

  This was going nowhere. “Maybe you should be interviewing one of your lady friends instead of me, then. Or just concoct your own fantasy about what a detective’s life is like. Sounds to me like you’re pretty much already there.”

  He scoffed at this. “There’s got to be more. I mean, you must have had some cases where crazy things happened.”

  Let’s see, I thought as I took a swig of coffee. Chasing down a dead man who turns out to be four different versions of the same guy, all from alternate worlds. That’s pretty crazy. Mechanical women in flying pick-up trucks almost crashing into airships. Crazy too. Being woken up in the middle of the night by a Nazi scientist toting an electronic gun…

  “Honestly, Mulvaney, I don’t know where to start,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes. “If you can’t be serious about this, I don’t know what I’m paying you for.”

  “I am serious,” I said. “It’s a boring job. Seriously boring. I’m not going to discuss specific cases with you. I told you that from the start. Now, if it’s too boring or too routine, or I just can’t give you what you need, we can end our deal. This has been easy money, Mulvaney, which—to be honest—is why I agreed to it, but if it’s going to be so unpleasant for both of us, maybe we should just call it a day.”

  Using his fork to gather crust crumbs, he said, “Well…maybe we can make this the last session. Maybe there are other things I can pursue for inspiration. But, for now anyway, why don’t you tell me the rest of the boring parts.” Then, before I could start, he added, “And make sure you get in any special vocabulary or slang. I need this to be as realistic as possible.”

  I nodded, took another drink from my almost empty cup, and let out a long sigh. With a title like Another Day, Another Doll, I doubted the finished product was going to bear any resemblance to reality, and I reminded myself to make it clear when we were done that I didn’t want my name showing up anywhere in his book, no acknowledgements of any kind. Then, holding up my coffee cup for a refill, I said, “Okay…a client walks into the office…”

  Mulvaney pulled a tablet from his inner coat pocket and started to write, his expression closer to that of a student than a salesman. It made me feel good, like I’d finally put him in his place.

  * * * * *

  When we were finished, I went back to the office to make sure everything had wrapped up smoothly with Leonora. Peggy assured me that all was fine. I gave her the lowdown on Mulvaney, letting her know this would be the last billable hour for his file.

  She gave me a curious look when I said this, a bit of alarm creeping in as she raised an eyebrow. I knew that her mind’s eye was seeing those figures in red ink, the same ones I’d been imagining on and off all morning. Reluctant as I’d been to take on Mulvaney’s case-that-wasn’t-a-case, I’d done it for the money. For the last week, until Leonora Rigsby had walked in off the street, Carson Mulvaney had been the only source of income for my little business.

  With a sparse roster of clients, you’d think I’d have had no problem spacing them out so as not to have them stacked up in the lobby the way it had gone this morning. Mulvaney’s appointment had been standing for more than a week, which I’d known when Leonora had called with her inquiry. When I’d tried to schedule her for a later hour, she had balked, indicating that she would rather go elsewhere for a private detective than have to wait even half an hour longer to start someone working on her case. Sensing a paycheck on the verge of being in the wind, I’d put her in before Mulvaney, as she’d requested. At the time, I’d assumed Carmelita would be around to help me juggle clients, but it hadn’t worked out that way.

  “So, there weren’t any issues with Leonora after I left?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Peggy said. “She seemed a tiny bit put off that you were gone, but I explained that our other client was a bit of a handful, and she seemed to get it right away.”

  I nodded. “Good work. I didn’t like the way he came at her, but I guess it didn’t do any harm in the end.” Tipping my chin in the direction of my office door, I said, “I need to grab something and then I’ll head out. Got a few stops to make and I don’t know if I’ll be back before you’re done.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll just be sitting here willing the phone to ring.”

  I smiled at this. “You do that. We need all the help we can get.”

  As I headed toward the door, she said, “Is everything all right with Carmelita? You seemed a little bothered by that call from Guillermo.”

  “She’s fine,” I said. “Just ran out of juice during the night, so Guillermo topped her tank. But I guess something else came up in the process, so he kept her for the day. He didn’t sound bothered, so I guess we shouldn’t be either.”

  Peggy raised an eyebrow at this. “I’ll follow your lead on that one,” she said. “You’re the expert.”

  “Well…not really. Guillermo’s the expert. If anyone’s leading, it’s him.”

  “So, why isn’t his name on the door?”

  “It is,” I said. “It’s just a different door. Now…don’t you have something to type? Or a phone that’s waiting to be bent to your will?”

  She smiled at this. “Point taken.”

  I stepped into the office, looked around for a moment to make sure everything was in order, and then grabbed the blackmail letter from the desktop before turning to go.

  “Happy hunting,” Peggy said.

  “Thanks,” I returned. “But how do you know I’m hunting anything?”

  “I just do,” she said with a smirk. I let it go and headed out one more time.

  The breakfast I’d had hours earlier was long gone; the acidic coffee I’d swilled down with Mulvaney wasn’t sitting too comfortably in my gut. Getting lunch downtown would have been a smart move, saving wear and tear on my stomach, but I decided to wait and walked to the lot where I’d left my car instead. It wasn’t long before the tall buildings of downtown were behind me and the Hollywoodland sign was growing less distant as I approached the movie colony to the northwest of Los Angeles.

  I made my way straight to Darkness—or, more properly speaking, Let There Be Darkness, the brooding little nightclub where I’d been working at my second trade for the last two months, playing guitar for the burlesque acts and in between other performances by comics and whoever else the management took a liking to. The pay wasn’t great, and the clientele weren’t exactly music aficionados, so it wasn’t like my fretwork was highly appreciated on the nights I worked at the club. Regardless, there was a certain draw to the place, and it was neatly concentrated in the person of Sherise Pike
.

  Sherise was dark haired and tattooed, both lovely and a little dangerous. She was also all things to Darkness—owner, manager, visionary, chief booking agent, sometime bartender, and (this part rankled a bit, but what could I do?) nightly performer. Sherise kept her act pretty chaste, at least for a place like that, but I knew men well enough to recognize that the audience were seeing in their minds’ eyes far more skin than Sherise actually revealed. I was always quick to jump into a pretty raucous guitar number the second she got off the stage, my intention being to jar the semi-drunk letches in the audience out of their Sherise-induced reveries and plant them firmly back into a reality that was more about notes that screamed when you bent them and less about the tightly packaged curves that had just disappeared behind the club’s black curtains. It’s possible Sherise had picked up on this strategy and simply opted not to let me know that she knew, but I’d prefer to imagine she thought my musical choices following her act were just coincidentally lacking in any kind of sultry appeal—if she even noticed what I chose to play, that is. Regardless, if she knew, she never let on.

  It hadn’t taken me too long after I’d started playing at the club to make it known I was interested in more than keeping my strings in tune. Luckily for me, the attraction appeared to be mutual; soon enough, we were finding comfort in each other’s arms. And now, we were taking it to the next level.

  This is not to say that I was in the market for a ring or that I’d been limbering up so I could get down on one knee and then back up again.

  No, we were working on an act. In addition to being a sultry siren, Sherise could carry quite a tune. My voice was passable, its shortcomings masked by whatever skills I had on the guitar. When we sang and played together, though…it seemed like we had something.

  I won’t lie. The thought of getting Sherise on stage in clothes that weren’t going to come off appealed to me. I’d come to want her all to myself.

  And the music seemed like it might lead somewhere. I’d shifted my identity in more ways than I could count in coming to California. If the private detective business ended up failing, maybe music would work out.