Fast Lane

by Dave Zeltserman

  * * * * *

  The pounding in my ears had died down and the haze was all but gone. A glimpse of myself from a mirror behind the bar showed a hard smile frozen onto my face. I tried correcting it and a woman sitting a few bar stools away started laughing. I asked her what was so damned funny.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You must be having a real bad day. You’re spilling your drink all over yourself.”

  I looked down at my hand and she was right. There was a shot glass in it and some of the whiskey was trickling out onto the front of my jacket.

  “What’s the matter, your best friend just die or something?”

  I gave her a quick look, a real quick one because there wasn’t really much to look at. Nothing except a small redhead who had let herself get bloated from alcohol.

  “I just found out,” I remarked, “that I won’t qualify for this year’s Miss America contest. I guess you must have been told the same thing years ago.”

  I was sorry as soon as I said it. I guess I was still too rattled to think straight, but that was no reason to be mean to her. She turned away from me, facing straight ahead with her eyes as blank as stones and a hurt look playing on her mouth. I apologized and bought her a drink.

  She grudgingly accepted it. “Where have I seen you before?”

  “Probably in the Examiner.”

  “That’s it, must’ve been in the funny pages. You’re that talking dog who’s always getting dropped on his head. Arf arf.”

  “I can’t go anywhere without being recognized by my fans. You got a trick for an old dog?”

  “I know who you really are,” she said, slyly. “You’re Johnny Lane, the detective. You really think I’m that bad looking?”

  “Not at all,” I lied. “I was too wrapped up in some stuff to see straight. I should be struck dead for being so wrong.”

  “Well, in that case,” she said as she moved next to me. She held out her hand and introduced herself as Margo Halloran.

  I took her hand and it felt small and warm in mine. Holding it started giving me ideas.

  “I was really named Marge,” she continued, showing an easy smile. “But Margo sounds so much more exotic, don’t you think?”

  “Doesn’t even begin to do you justice.”

  She scrunched up her face and gave me a hard look, trying to decide if I was being insincere. I wasn’t, though. Not at all. I wasn’t trying to make up for before, either. Maybe it was the way she had held onto my hand a good deal longer than was decent. Or maybe after the day I had suffered I didn’t see how I could make it alone. Or maybe a vein had popped in my brain, leaving me witless. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t about to let her looks interfere with me.

  She made up her mind that I was just being sweet and her face melted back into an easy relaxed look. “So,” she said. “You find me sexy and desirable?”

  “Now, darling, how in the world could I possibly not?”

  “That was a pretty nasty crack you made before,” she said, her mouth hardening a little with spite. “What makes you think I like the way you look?”

  “How in the world could you possibly not?”

  She laughed. She didn’t want to, but couldn’t help herself. From below the bar, I reached over and started rubbing her leg. She froze for a moment and then her leg relaxed, and she put her hand on top of mine.

  “Well in that case,” she said, trying pretty badly to look shy, “you can buy me another drink.”

  I did just that. Actually it ended up being quite a few drinks. And it didn’t take much convincing on my part to get her to leave with me. Nothing more, really, than raising an eyebrow.

  I got my car and drove both of us back to my place. We didn’t say much during the ride, and I don’t think we said a word on getting there. We went straight to the bedroom and silently took our clothes off. And then we went at it. Half way through she fell asleep on me.

  I didn’t really appreciate that, but I didn’t let it stop me. When I finished I rolled off and looked down at her; oblivious to the world, with her mouth wide open and snoring like a sick dog. I couldn’t help feeling insulted. What I wanted to do was dump her out into the street in all her glory and let the rest of Colorado take a crack at her. But what I did was put my foot against her side and push until she toppled off the bed. I closed my eyes and eventually felt myself sliding into something cold.

  I woke the next morning feeling groggy and stiff. After a while I realized the low moan I was hearing wasn’t coming from me but from the floor on the other side of the bed. I remembered Margo. There was nothing else to do but wake her and get her on her way, so I leaned over and started shaking her. She opened her eyes and slowly sat up, rubbing her neck and grimacing.

  She asked how she ended up on the floor.

  I shrugged. “You must have tossed yourself over while you were sleeping.”

  “How did that happen? You have me bouncing off the walls or something?”

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  She made a face as if she were going to sneeze, and instead groaned. “Next time, be a little easier on me. I don’t think my neck could take that again.”

  She stood up, all stiff-legged and awkward, and collapsed backwards onto the bed. Rubbing her head with both hands she said, “It looks like it’s too late to be bashful. How was I?”

  “Like a doll.”

  She turned and gave me a puzzled look, but didn’t say anything. Maybe she picked up the sarcasm in my voice, but decided I was just talking goofy. Anyways, she collapsed back onto the bed and started with the moaning again.

  Right then I got my first really clear look at her. The haze and the booze must have screwed up my vision before because I was all wrong about her. There was a lot to look at. Maybe the light in the bar wasn’t flattering for her, or maybe she needed to dry out some from the alcohol, or maybe I was just too damned mad to see straight. Whatever it was, lying there looking at her stretched out on my bed, I could see she was certainly something.

  Her waist was thin enough to wrap my hands around, and brother, I would’ve needed more than that to get around her hips and chest. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying they didn’t look good on her. They looked damn good.

  It was funny, but the night before I would’ve sworn her face looked like a ball of putty, bloated and blotched. Well, I was wrong about that too. In the bright sunlight her face was maybe a little pale, but still as pretty as they come. A person couldn’t have been more wrong about anything.

  I started feeling a dryness in my mouth and an itching someplace else. I rolled over onto my side and started massaging her. All at once her body got stiff and tight, and she started with the excuses. Her head hurt too much, she was feeling sick, her hangover was killing her—you know the rest of them. She didn’t move away, though, and I didn’t let her excuses stop me. I kept it right up, hoping she’d give it to me before I had to take it from her. Sure enough, her body relaxed, and she melted into me.

  After we finished, we lay there with her all over me, whispering all sorts of crap into my ear. What else could I do but pretend to like it? If she knew what I was thinking, I don’t suppose she would have been whispering that stuff to me. Maybe some of the words, but not in the same context.

  She started playing with my hair, and well, my poppa taught me to be understanding with gals so all I could do was grit my teeth. I told her I had clients waiting at my office, and asked if it wasn’t about time for her to be heading home.

  “Oh,” she said, pouting. “I thought you were beginning to like me.” And she stopped playing with my hair, and started playing with something else. Well, what else could I do? As much of a chore as it was, we went at it again.

  When we finished, she gave me that nice easy smile of hers. “Mmm,” she said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Why don’t you go get me a nice big drink? Surprise me.”

  I got up and made her one, and made myself a bigger one. When I got back, she was bent over my phone with h
er backside facing the door. As she heard me, she turned her head and informed me she was writing down my phone number and giving me hers, just so we wouldn’t accidentally forget later. I wanted to go over and give her ass a nice accidental on-purpose kick, but as strong as the temptation was, I resisted it. On walking back to the bed, I did manage to give her a friendly slap. Judging from the way she jumped, I guess it was questionable as to how friendly it was.

  I gave her a drink, and she sat back down on the bed sipping it slowly. She rubbed her ass a little gingerly, but decided to give me the benefit of the doubt. She asked if I’d like to spend the day with her.

  “Now, honey, you know I would.”

  “Why don’t we, then?”

  “I already told you, I’ve got people waiting for me.”

  “You’re no fun.” She pouted. I swear she fluttered her eyelids at me as she went on, “I’ve had a crush on you for the longest time. I might be your biggest fan. Now that I’ve got you, I’m not about to let go.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “It sure is!” Her eyes blazed for a second. Then she caught herself and turned the cute stuff back on. She wiggled her ass closer to me until she was just about sitting on my lap. Then, playing with her fingers along my chest, she asked, “Why do you have to be so difficult? Haven’t I been nice to you?”

  It went on and on, and well, it was all pretty cute. All the blushing and eye fluttering and whispering. After a while I had enough. It took quite a bit of coaxing on my part to get her panties back on, and even more to get her out the door and into a cab. The whole thing tired me out. By the time she left, the only thing I wanted to do was crawl back into bed. And it was tempting. But with all the folks in this world that counted on me, it didn’t seem as if I could do anything else but drag myself off to work.

  Chapter 9

  What I had told Marge about having people waiting for me was the truth, and it was almost eleven before I got in, giving my nine o’clock and ten o’clock appointments plenty of time to stew. As soon as they saw me arrive, they tore into me. Nine O’Clock complained that I had a hell of a lot of nerve, and Ten O’Clock agreed, insisting that the least I could do was give them both discounts.

  It really was a lousy way to treat folks who might hire you, and I felt bad about it. I tried my best to calm them down, joking that they should pretend they’d been waiting to see a doctor. At least that way they could think of me as being early.

  Nine O’Clock interrupted me. “I don’t see anything funny about being inconsiderate.”

  “No,” I tried explaining. “I don’t think it’s fun—”

  “You’ve got a lot to learn about manners,” Ten O’Clock piped in.

  “Well,” I said. “I’m sorry—” I heard the door to my anteroom open and turned to see my eleven o’clock appointment, Tom Morton, walking in.

  “Excuse me,” I muttered under my breath, and I greeted Morton at the door and showed him to my office.

  That set off the fireworks. “I’ve been waiting two hours!” Nine O’Clock exploded, his face lit up with fury. “I demand you see me first!”

  “If you’d just be patient,” I said, “I’ll be right with you. This is an emergency—”

  “Go to hell!” He turned away from me. At the door, he warned me that the Better Business Bureau was going to hear about me. Then he damn near broke the glass in the door slamming it.

  Ten O’Clock was mulling things over, but I guess she just had a longer fuse. “I’m going to talk to my congressman about you,” she said as she got up to leave. “People with your attitude shouldn’t be allowed to do business!”

  It doesn’t do to have folks upset with you, but I couldn’t afford to keep Morton waiting. Morton was the attorney for Joel Ekleberg, and was looking for someone to carry out some investigative work for his client. I wanted the case and I wasn’t about to risk it for a couple of nickel and dime jobs.

  For those of you who have been out of town or in a coma for the last six weeks, Joel Ekleberg is an investment banker currently being held for the strangulation murders of his wife and a female friend. What has made this such a whiz-bang deal in the papers is the gossip linking the late Mrs. Ekleberg to several state politicians. No matter how it resolves itself, it looks like quite a story, one the Examiner would be thankful to get.

  I joined Morton in the office. Morton’s a square-jawed, smug little bastard. His old man bought him a law partnership when he was thirty-five and that only made him all the more smug. He asked what the commotion was about.

  “Just giving some folks a lesson on American business.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “The little guy gets screwed every time.”

  He smirked at that, then took out a cigar, bit off the end and clamped it in his mouth. “If I hire you, you’re going to write this case up for your paper, right?” he asked, lighting the cigar with a solid gold lighter the shape of a Ferrari.

  “I’m planning to.”

  “You’ve got yourself a job, then.”

  For the next ten minutes he gave me a rundown of the facts and a list of what he wanted me to do. When he was done, I asked him what he thought.

  “About what?”

  “Did your client do it?”

  “I dunno, maybe.” He scowled. “How the hell am I supposed to know? Just make sure you get my name spelled right. And work my phone number in, okay?”

  We shook hands, and he reminded me again about getting his name spelled right. I made a mental note to forget the ‘t’ from his last name. Somehow it seemed more appropriate.

  I would have liked to have handled the Ekleberg case myself, but with all the problems dragging on me, that just didn’t seem possible. I made a few phone calls, found that Jimmy Tobbler was available, and hired him to handle it.

  With having skipped breakfast, my stomach was feeling as dried out as a prune pit. I was about to head out for some lunch when the phone rang.

  It was Mary, but it also wasn’t, if you get me. At least, it wasn’t the little gal who had idolized me before. She was all business, and talked to me as if we had never laid eyes on each other. She not only wanted to know my progress, but also wanted a written report on everything I had done and everything I was planning to do. My heart dropped when she asked for that. She had lost faith in me quicker than anyone could have reasonably expected.

  At this point, it would seem if I had any sense, I’d tell Mary about Rose, right? Well, there was only one small problem. And it wasn’t the way it would hit Rose. I mean, she was an adult and if she couldn’t accept the consequences of her actions that was just too bad. And Mary? I guess it would be a shame for her to feel badly towards me. I wouldn’t like it, but that still wouldn’t be any reason to be tripping all over myself. At least not if that was all there was to it. And of course it wasn’t.

  * * * * *

  Walt Murphy should’ve died the way I already explained. It should’ve happened that way because that’s how everyone believes it happened— my loyal readers, the police, the newspapers. Everyone, except maybe Rose. That version also makes a hell of a lot more sense than what really happened.

  It’s kind of funny, but I still don’t understand why I did what I did. At least not entirely. Then again, I don’t spend much time thinking about it. It doesn’t do me any good and it’s much better for me to think about it the other way.

  But the real way—Jesus! With that crazy bastard telling me how he knows his wife is cheating on him. And me sitting there wanting to puke my stomach out. I mean, the guy knows his wife is playing around and he doesn’t care. The son of a bitch just wants to make her stop. Thinking if I take pictures of her in the act he can use them to make her stop.

  Listening to him was just so damn funny, so damn sad. I wanted to laugh, to reach out and strike his stupid idiotic face. I tried not to do anything. I tried to sit there and smile and nod my head. But I couldn’t. Before I knew it, the sickness was taking me over, suffocating m
e in a red haze of fury. When the sickness does that, there’s really nothing to do but let it happen. I took my gun from the desk drawer and pointed it at him and waited and . . . .

  He did grab the gun away from me. That part was true; we fought over the gun. He was smaller than me and soft-looking and it didn’t look like I would have much trouble getting my gun back from him. I guess I knew a struggle wasn’t going to help him much, but it was sure going to help me.

  Who would have believed me if there wasn’t any evidence of a struggle? And the bruises he gave me really didn’t matter for anything except they helped convince the cops that the way I explained it was the way it had to have been, as crazy as it sounded, because nothing else made a damn bit of sense.

  At first the cops didn’t want to believe me. They kept asking questions, the same ones again and again. The one they were stuck on was why the coroner said that over an hour elapsed between the stomach and head wounds.

  It was a pretty good question. If the shots were fired while we were fighting over the gun both wounds would’ve happened at about the same time. There wasn’t much I could say except that a mistake must have been made.

  They didn’t like my answer. They’d probably still be grilling me if the coroner hadn’t admitted that there was a chance he was wrong. When there was this much blood, it can be difficult to narrow down exact times, he conceded. Murphy’s death could’ve happened the way I explained it.

  Real smart guy, but he should have stuck with his gut feelings. He was right, a hundred percent right. Although I don’t think that much time could have elapsed, no more than half an hour. At least I don’t think so.

  What I do know is when I shot him in the belly and he collapsed on the floor and started begging me for help, well it was all just so funny, so sad, so goddamn pointless that it made me start thinking of other things. I forgot he was there. That probably sounds nuts, a guy bleeding to death because I gutted him and then me forgetting all about him. But that’s what happened.