Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  FOUR

  “I’m a lawyer, Nob, not a crook.”

  “Like there’s some big fucking difference.”

  “That’s a bit cynical, don’t you think?”

  “The case is twenty years old, Angel. The client is dead. No one cares about the ethics.”

  We step up to the window, and I order for both of us.

  “Your turn,” I tell Angel.

  “You’re the one wants the favor. You pay for lunch.” He gives me that smug Jack Angel smile, and I think this guy looks pretty good for his age. He’s got to be sixty, but his teeth are sparkling white. I used to think it was the contrast against his black-coffee skin, but he told me he had them lasered. Must have cost him a grand or two. And his blue pin-striped Hugo Boss suit probably cost more than my car. But he’s still gaming me for a four-dollar dog.

  “I haven’t seen any favor yet.” But I reach for my wallet anyway. I pass a couple Hamiltons through the window.

  “Well, I don’t work at Benchley Nugent anymore, so I don’t have access to any files, even if I was willing to show them to you.”

  “I don’t care about files. I’m getting her probate docs from the county.”

  “So what do you want?” He grabs a couple napkins to blot the sweat off his brow. The city may be ten degrees cooler than the Valley, but it’s still ninety-five.

  “A couple weeks before she got popped, she kicked Hubby out of the house,” I say. “You gotta figure she’d want to, maybe, I don’t know…modify her will?”

  “I don’t do wills.”

  “Just introduce me to the lawyer who did, okay? He sees I’m a friend of a former colleague, maybe he’ll deign to talk to me.” I take my change and step aside so the next person can order.

  “If I’m not willing to tell you anything, why should he? Besides, they’ve got three hundred lawyers, most of whom came since I left. I probably don’t even know the guy.”

  “You were both there at the same time. Name’s Gary Cogswell.”

  Angel couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d swung a chicken into his face. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I guess that means you know him.”

  “You don’t know who Gary Cogswell is?”

  “Just tell me.”

  Angel grabs another napkin and runs it up his forehead and over his thick mat of silver curls, as if his sweat were some sort of wet-look gel. To my surprise, it seems to work. If I tried something like that, it would turn my dirty-blond hair into a grease mop.

  “Don’t you read the papers? He’s Vlad Bakatin’s consigliere.”

  Now the chicken hits me. “Vlad the Impaler?”

  “What other Russian has a consigliere?”

  “That’s some gig.”

  “Not exactly a career path they taught us at Harvard.”

  “He went to law school with you?”

  “Oh yeah. Me and Cogs go way back. We were summer associates together at Benchley Nugent; then after law school they hired us both. The pay was fantastic and the paralegals smokin’. So what if it was tax law?”

  “I take it he didn’t like it as much as you did.”

  “He liked the paras all right, but that was about it. I remember one time, he got drunk and nibbled on the earlobe of the head of HR. She filed a complaint.”

  “That why he left the firm?”

  Angel laughs. “God no. They buried that one.”

  “Then why?”

  “I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, Nob, but some people find estate planning boring. Cogs was going apeshit. He was a star fucker. He wanted glamour.”

  “Russian gangsters are glamorous?”

  “He was an adrenaline junkie.”

  The counterman hands us our dogs. I look around. No tables. We find a place to lean against the stand, hovering near two women who are just finishing up—a middle-aged matron in an Ann Taylor dress with her hair sprayed into a helmet shape and her biker daughter sporting a Harley jeans vest and a crew cut.

  “I remember the day he got the idea,” Angel continues. “I mean, he could get pretty wild after a half dozen Cuervo Bulldogs. I watched him dive off a fourth-story balcony once, into a swimming pool. Almost made it, too, except for one foot. He still limps pretty bad from that one. But this one afternoon he was stone sober. Completely insane, but sober. He says he’s thinking about asking Bakatin for a job. I say, ‘The man murders people, Cogs.’ He says, ‘You know he doesn’t murder people, Angel.’ I say, ‘Let’s not get technical. He orders people to murder people.’ He says, ‘Who says? USA Today? I haven’t seen him get convicted of anything.’ I say, ‘Don’t be a moron. We both know what he does for a living.’ But he has his mind made up.”

  The ladies stand up and we grab the table.

  “So he makes me drive him over to some kind of social club on South Fairfax. Says he read in Time magazine that Bakatin operated out of there.” Angel bites into his jalapeño dog and drips about a pint of chili into his cardboard tray.

  “I say, ‘What are you going to do? Hand Vlad a résumé?’”

  Angel takes a sip of his Yoohoo. A drop of the chocolate drink dribbles down his chin and he has to wipe it with the back of his hand to protect his tie.

  “I tell him, ‘You want to rub shoulders with criminals? Be a defense attorney. You’re too short to be a consigliere.’ But he wants to be Robert Duvall in The Godfather. How tall is Duvall, anyway? You know, sometimes they make short actors stand on boxes so you never know.”

  He scoops up some chili with his fingers and plops it on top of his jalapeño dog before taking another bite.

  “You don’t just walk up to a capo and ask for a job application,” I say. “Guys get killed for less.” I bite into my dog and the natural casing makes that satisfying snap.

  “He’d already done Bakatin’s estate at Benchley Nugent, so he had a leg up on the guy’s financial situation. Maybe he leveraged that.”

  “Mobsters have tax attorneys?”

  “The smart ones do, at least since Capone got nailed by the IRS.”

  Angel’s head starts to sweat from the jalapeños. He wipes his forehead with his napkin and unknowingly smears mustard on his brow. I don’t say anything.

  “You got a number for Cogswell?”

  “No way I’m giving it to you.”

  “Come on, Angel. I bought you lunch.”

  “Kiss my black ass. The guy’s mobbed up.”

  “I’m not going to ask him about his day job. This story’s yesterday’s news.”

  “You want to meet him? Find Bakatin’s social club, and you’ll find Cogs. He’ll be the smallest guy there. The one with the limp.”

  FIVE

  I have a fake Eames lounge chair in my office. I know it’s fake because the real ones don’t recline and mine does. Another clue is the three-grand price difference. I’m in it, fast asleep, when Mel traipses in and throws open the curtains. Daylight hammers me awake.

  “Working late or up early?” she says.

  I have a vague recollection of slipping out of bed and sneaking back to work around two a.m. The last thing I remember was Runt chewing on the sofa but he’s gone now, so I assume Gloria left early to take him home before work. The back of the sofa looks like someone blasted it with a shotgun. The upholstery is shredded and stuffing is strewn everywhere. Runt’s job is complete. I’ll deal with it later.

  “Up early,” I mumble, trying to shake off the sleep. “Finally finished the Enquirer piece a couple hours ago.”

  I groan and stretch, and Lana’s file slides off my lap, spreading papers all over the floor.

  “Smooth,” says Melody.

  She makes no move to pick anything up, so I drag myself out of the chair and start collecting the scattered file.

  Melody watches me grunt every time I bend over. “You really had a thing for this chick singer, didn’t you?”

  “Lana Strain wasn’t just some chick singer. She was God. And then she got shot. It was like
Elvis’s death all over again, except this time I was already born. A whole generation facing mortality for the first time at exactly the same moment. This story could tap all of that. It could be huge.”

  “It’s old.”

  “So’s the Bible, but the older it gets, the better it sells. If I can find something new to make this story sing, it could kick-start my career.”

  She looks at me like a doctor trying to figure the odds on a tough diagnosis. “Your mother called today, didn’t she. Whenever you start talking about improving your lot in life, I know she’s been pulling your chain.”

  “This could turn into a movie deal, okay? I could make some real money for a change. Pay Holly off. Buy my car a new clutch. Give you a raise.”

  Melody coughs up a laugh. “I’m not holding my breath.”

  I stoop to grab a few pages and feel my back start to tighten. I try to stretch it out by arching backward as far as I can. At least an inch.

  Melody bends over backward, somehow contorting herself to operate the mouse behind her head like a sideshow freak.

  “There’s plenty out there about Lana Strain and Billy Kidd,” she says, “but I’m having trouble finding much on the other band members. You have a real name for Boom-Boom Laphroig?”

  “No. I searched for her but only found band references. And she’s not on Facebook, at least not under that name. But there’s a reference to her in a Brothers of Libation fan group. Someone named Kate Dreyfus apparently went to Beverly High with Boom-Boom. I put in a friend request.”

  She clicks a bookmark for a site called LanaLives.com.

  “I did find something else that might interest you. You being a dirty old man and all.”

  “I’m not that old.”

  She hits the back button twice, and I watch Lana Strain begin ever so slowly to coalesce on the screen in crappy resolution. Lana’s hairline comes into focus, then her eyes, her nostrils, her luscious mouth. My eyes lock on her lips—naturally plush, long before collagen injections. Then the process freezes up just below her neck. Fiber-optic demons. “What is this? DSL?”

  After another twenty seconds in dog years, the image of Lana Strain finally comes into unpixelated view. It’s a candid photo that looks like an outtake from the shoot that produced my old swimming pool poster. She’s lying naked on her back on the concrete deck against the backdrop of the turquoise water. I remember lusting after those breasts in my teens, tracing them with my finger on her CD covers, studying their vivid curves as they molded her tank tops into adolescent fantasies.

  Even with Lana supine, their resistance to the flattening force of gravity is impressive. And silicone-free. My eyes are drawn to the sparkle of sunlight reflecting off a bead of sweat on her belly.

  Melody busts me with a smirk. “What is it with men and tits? You want a magnifying glass?” Her sarcasm could eat through steel, but I’m immune. Her opinions of movies interest me; her opinions of me don’t.

  “Spare me the lecture. If she had a dick, I’d stare at that, too.”

  Melody stands and drops into the splits, just because she can. In her other life, she’s a dancer.

  An animated title scrolls from left to right: “Fun with Dick and Jane Productions Presents Cybersex with Lana Strain!”

  I stare dumbfounded as Lana sits up, live as she ever was, not much older than she was twenty years ago, black hair flowing, green eyes witching, looking finger-lickin’ good in a dental-floss bikini.

  “Hi,” she says in that unmistakable smoke-tortured, whiskey-strained, honky-tonk, sex-drenched voice. “I’m Lana Strain and I’ve come back from the dead, streaming live just to get you off.”

  I hear Melody chortle at me, but I can’t take my eyes off the screen long enough to send her a decent glare.

  The dead chick continues, “You can call me toll-free, or just type your pleasure on your keyboard, and I’ll do anything you want, right here, right now. No fantasy is too filthy for me because I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m already dead. For just four ninety-five a minute, you can have the time of your life, if not mine.”

  She reaches behind her neck to untie her bikini strap.

  “How do they do that?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” Melody says as she unbends herself. “The second coming?”

  I ignore the pun as Lana starts playing with her top, enticing me with the promise of exposing her breasts. As she approaches the point of revelation, the video teaser ends. Her image just stares at me, animation suspended, poised for my money. In a way I’m glad. There’s something decidedly unsavory about being baited by a corpse. On the other hand, it’s so perversely absurd that I can’t resist. I sit down and hit Enter.

  “Remind me to call Wired magazine,” I say. “Maybe I can talk Frank into a piece on this.”

  “Sure, Nob.” As if I’m rationalizing, which I probably am.

  A little window comes up with a revolving logo. Something loads, and there’s Lana, frozen in time, waiting for me to click on a button marked “Cum On In.”

  After swearing that I’m eighteen and that viewing pornographic material is legal in my state, I come on in. The next screen asks me to download some free software. At ninety-five cents a minute or twenty-four ninety-five a month, I guess they can afford to give it away.

  I’m no technowiz, but I know how to point and click, so I do. I agree to a lengthy list of terms that I don’t bother to read, probably signing away my privacy, my identity, my car, and my firstborn, but at least the video conferencing software installs itself without crashing my system.

  I type in a user name and password. Duly registered, I give this random porn site my credit card number, despite the probability that they’ll sell it to every hacker in the Czech Republic, and I’m finally ready to meet the star. One more click, and the clock starts ticking on the transaction.

  A live-feed video window opens up, and there’s Lana, completely naked, bronco-riding a vertical vibrator the size of a Louisville Slugger. She looks like a woman-shaped popsicle.

  “Push the button,” Melody says. I feel uncomfortable watching this in front of her.

  I push the “Talk to Lana” button and get a banner that tells me my ninety-five cents a minute doesn’t include direct conversation with the fantastic phantasm, it just buys me a seat to watch her fulfill someone else’s fantasy. I’ve got no complaints. After all, it’s not every day I get to see a corpse do a three-sixty on a piano leg.

  But if I want to communicate my own fantasy, either on the phone or through my computer, I have to pony up another four ninety-five a minute. I punch the button to enter the direct-contact queue.

  “How the hell am I going to explain this on my expense report?”

  “Charge it to health insurance,” says Melody. “Sexual dysfunction treatment.”

  I ponder this as I wait. After another two minutes the caller before me achieves happiness and hangs up. It’s my turn. Everyone else is apparently being satisfied at the ninety-five-cent level.

  “Hi, I’m Lana,” she says in her Jack Daniels voice. “What’s your name?” She can talk to me, but I have to type my response.

  I punch in “Nob.”

  She laughs when she reads it.

  “What’s your fantasy, Nob? Or should I call you Big Nob?”

  “I just want to talk to you,” I write, correcting two typos along the way. At four ninety-five a minute, it finally strikes me why high school typing might have been a good idea.

  “What kind of talk, you naughty boy?”

  “Just talk.”

  “For another two ninety-five a minute, you can call me on the phone,” she says.

  “It’s not about sex,” I peck. “It’s about your murder.”

  “Sorry, honey. But this is a sex line.” To make her point she climbs off her vibrator, spreads her legs and, lacking a speculum, uses her fingers to simulate a gynecological exam.

  If this is supposed to arouse me, it isn’t working. Don’t get me wrong: I like a naked
woman as much as the next hetero guy. But I’m supposed to be working. I guess it’s ground-in ethics from my days on the force. It’s like the amputee thing, where you can still feel the limb after it’s gone. That’s my badge. Sometimes I can still feel it tucked over my waist, pushing against my thigh, plugging into my nervous system like a pacemaker, making my heart beat faster, pumping up my muscles. Then I wake up.

  “Want to see me deep-throat an English cucumber?” she asks.

  “For seven ninety a minute,” I type, “I should get to talk about whatever I want.”

  “Not on my server, asswipe.”

  “She knows your real name,” says Melody.

  Lana punches something on her keyboard, and my screen freezes. It strikes me as odd. Not that women and rejection haven’t gone hand in hand in my life, but I didn’t think it was supposed to happen when you’re paying for the companionship. I watch my screen, waiting for some sort of invoice, but instead it goes blue with white letters. The dreaded blue screen of death. I’m aglow in the luminescence of Windows irony: “Fatal error.”

  Melody smiles. “That went well.”

  “I don’t know what I expected,” I say. “What would some porn actress know about Lana’s murder anyway?”

  “I doubt she’s an actress,” says Mel. “She looks too much like Lana Strain. It must be some kind of CGI thing.”

  “But we were having a conversation. You think a porn site can afford the kind of special effects that can make a live actress look like somebody else in real time?”

  “They’ve got this newfangled thing called research, Nob. You ought to try it sometime.”

  I pull up Bing because I’ve heard that Google is kind of prudish when it comes to porn, and I don’t need a censor right how. “Cybersex with Lana Strain” pulls up more than three hundred thousand hits. I’m about to cry from overload when I notice a “Related Searches” list on the side of my screen: Celebrity lookalike porn.

  I click and there, in the listing, is “How do they recreate Lana Strain?”