[Chauncey Means 01.0] A Hard Place

by Sean Lynch

  “Don’t even go there, buddy,” I told him. “You weren’t thinking about your family at the Pai Gow table, or when you were balls deep in Sue the pole dancer.”

  Matt reached across the table and punched me in the mouth. I wasn’t expecting it so I wasn’t able to slip it. Matt’s looping roundhouse was thrown from a sitting position, and without much leverage, but still stung and drew blood. Matt lurched to a standing position, knocking over his chair. Both his hands were fists and his chest was heaving.

  The restaurant had gone quiet; all eyes were on us. I pulled out my handkerchief and began to dab at my split lip. It’s rude to bloody the house napkins.

  “Done yet?” I asked Matt. “If not, there might be a few customers out back who didn’t see you act like a complete ass. Maybe if you clobber me with a chair you’ll get their attention, too.”

  Matt looked around. His eyes cooled and his shoulders slumped.

  “Sit down,” I said. “Order some soup.”

  He picked up his overturned chair and sat down. The restaurant resumed its normal cacophony of dining activity, and soon we were again merely another pair of guys eating lunch in a crowded noodle house.

  “Sorry, Chance,” Matt said almost inaudibly. “You shouldn’t have said-”

  “-the truth?” I finished for him. His eyes flared then subsided.

  “I said I was sorry,” Matt said.

  “And you will be, if you ever take a swing at me again.”

  “So where were we?” Matt said, exhaling deeply and motioning for the waitress.

  “You were about to tell me how your department’s Internal Affairs Division figures into this mess.”

  “The evidence I got rid of? It was from a federal case the Secret Service was working with OPD on. Some kind of money-laundering deal, I think. One of the banks in Chinatown. Not surprisingly, the case fell apart after the evidence vanished. Since then, the Secret Service guys have been crawling all over the department. They’ve got an audit going on down in the Property and Evidence Section.”

  “Can they implicate you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Not internally, anyway. I covered my tracks pretty well.”

  “And if Suzy’s friend the Samaritan were to drop a dime?”

  “I’d be cooked. Dismissal from the department, and a nice long prison term to go along with it.”

  My lip was still bleeding. The waitress came over to take our order and I asked for some ice water to tamp the swelling. She waved her hand and another waitress appeared with two glasses of ice water. Matt ordered Westlake soup. I didn’t have any appetite.

  Around the ice on my lip, I asked, “So why tell me your tragic tale?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said. “Had to tell somebody. It’s been eating me up this past couple of weeks. I guess I needed someone to know my side of the story if it all comes down around my ears. Get it on record. You’re about the only person I could trust.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “You are lucky, Chance. You’re your own man. Autonomous, they call it. You got no family, no mortgage, no car payment; nothing. There’s nothing anybody can use against you. You owe nobody, and nobody owes you.” Matt ran his pudgy hand through his comb-over. The knuckles on his small right fist were skinned. “I’m envious as hell.”

  “That makes me a bum. Not exactly someone to bare your soul to.”

  “You’re wrong,” Matt said. “You’re the ideal confessor. You’re honest, and you can’t be bought, bribed, threatened, or pushed. And that Midwestern stubborn streak runs through your veins like heroin through a hop-head. Nobody’s going to get you to do anything you don’t want to do. You won’t rat me out.”

  The waitress returned with Matt’s soup. He gave it the same foul glare he’d given his tea.

  “You got something for me?” I asked after the silence got awkward.

  Matt reached in his pocket and extracted a computer flash drive. He tossed it on the table.

  “It contains everything. The report, crime scene photos, autopsy; the works. There’s not a lot, Chance, but it’s all we’ve got.” He looked up from his tea. “I’d tell you to make sure nobody knows where you got it, but you know that already.”

  I stood up and pocketed the mini data storage device, along with my bloodied handkerchief. My lip had mostly stopped bleeding. I put a five-dollar bill on the table to cover my tea and the ice water. Autonomous, that’s me.

  “So long, Matt.”

  Thanks, Chance.”

  “What for?”

  “For not kicking my ass after I hit you,” Matt said. “And for listening.”

  “Don’t make a habit of it,” I told him. “And watch your six.”

  Matt returned his gaze to his tea. “Yeah. Good luck on your dead whore caper,” he said without inflection. “Let me know if it comes to anything.”

  It was supposed to be Matt’s dead whore caper.

  I walked away, tasting blood.

  Chapter 7

  When I drove down the dirt road to my house, the first thing I noticed was my landlord’s Jeep Wrangler parked in the driveway. For most people their landlord at the door would be an unwelcome sight. Fortunately, I have the coolest landlord on the planet. Seeing his car at my home was a pleasant and unexpected surprise, especially after a day spent meeting the grieving grandparent of a murdered little girl and getting smacked in the mouth by a former colleague.

  The second thing I noticed, once I parked my truck, was that my front door was ajar. I went inside to find Russ Dijkstra in my kitchen.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” Russ said over his shoulder as I entered. “The door was unlocked.” He was busy doing something culinary. Warren Zevon’s Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner was playing on the sound system.

  “Actually,” I said, “I remember locking the door and setting the alarm when I left this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, “I guess you did. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You own the property.”

  “You’re right,” he grinned. “I forgot. Fuck you, Chance. Get out of my house.”

  Dr. Russell Dijkstra certainly did own the house I lived in. He also owned two urology clinics, one in Walnut Creek and the other in Pleasanton, and a splendid home in Alamo. Also a fair number of rental properties in both Contra Costa and Alameda Counties.

  I’d met Russ through my brother Chris. Like my brother, most of Russ’s family still resided back in Iowa. Chris and Russ were close pals before Russ moved his practice to Northern California.

  Russ Dijkstra wasn’t your typical urologist. He was in his late forties, which put him a little over ten years’ my senior. He was built like Fred Flintstone, including the cowlick, and had a longshoreman’s vocabulary, which undoubtedly handicapped his bedside manner. Russ had married young, started a family, and paid his way through medical school with a full-time gig as a welder at a construction machinery manufacturing plant back in Iowa. His kids were now all grown up and out of the house, and he spent what time he could get away from his practice fishing, hunting, and hanging out with me. A better guy to drink and talk guns with there never was.

  Russ charged me next-to-nothing to rent my three-bedroom man-cave. The fact that it was in unincorporated Alameda County, sits on several hundred acres of ranchland, and is more than a mile from the nearest neighbor meant we could shoot whenever we wanted without the hassle of going to a public firing range. Shooting ranges were to be avoided. Nothing spoils your aim like having the shooter in the lane next to you covered in gang tattoos while sighting in his Tech-9.

  As part of my informal rental contract, Russ kept a large gun-safe in the spare bedroom; hence the high-end alarm system. Russ occasionally buys things like golf clubs, fishing gear, ammunition, and guns that he doesn’t want his wife to know about, and by keeping his toys at my place he sustains marital harmony. Ignorance is bliss.

  “Couldn’t take any more malfunctioning prostates today,” Russ said. “I had to get out of th
e office. I apologize for coming by unannounced.”

  “Are you kidding? After the day I’ve had you’re just what the doctor ordered.” We shook hands. “Beer’s in the fridge,” I told him.

  He raised a glass of coffee-colored liquid. “Way ahead of you,” he said.

  Russ’s preferred beverage was diet root beer and vodka. ‘Crack cocaine for rednecks,’ he called it. Sure enough, when I opened my refrigerator, there was a two-liter bottle of A&W diet root beer chilling alongside my beer collection. I selected a Boddingtons; it felt like that kind of a day. I saw a bundle wrapped in butcher-paper next to my battalion of beers. “Iowa corn fed beef,” Russ commented when he saw me poking at it. “You haven’t had lunch yet, have you?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I was robbed of my appetite.”

  “So you were,” Russ said, noticing my distended lip. “Been kissing transvestites again?”

  “Nothing that glamorous. I had lunch with an old friend,” I explained. “As you can see, he was really glad to see me.” I poured beer into a pint glass, basking in the sedimentary churn. Few things are as visually serene as watching a Boddingtons settling into a proper pint glass.

  “A friend, huh? How do your enemies greet you? With a chainsaw?”

  “Being a private investigator exposes one to a very exclusive clientele,” I said loftily.

  “That’s the thrilling life of private dick for you,” Russ said. “Clandestine meetings, mysterious women, and danger lurking around every corner. Maybe you should be wearing a trench coat, a fedora, and a shoulder holster.”

  “More like a crash helmet and mouth guard.”

  I raised my glass. Russ did the same. “To the army, the navy, and the battles they have won,” I started.

  “To the red white and blue; colors that never run,” Russ finished. We drank.

  “Hand me the meat, will you?” He’d been making some kind of marinade on my kitchen counter, and I obliged him by handing over the paper-wrapped parcel from the fridge.

  “Speaking of mysterious women,” he said, as he opened the paper. “You still seeing that brunette? The personal trainer?”

  “It didn’t work out.”

  “Didn’t work out? Are you nuts? She was smoking hot.”

  “First date,” I said, “she charmed me.”

  “The second date?”

  “She wore me out.”

  “You’re a lucky son-of-a-bitch. That gal was built like Raquel Welch,” Russ said. “What happened on the third date?”

  “She started picking out baby names.”

  “Eeek,” Russ said.

  “My sentiments exactly. That’s why there wasn’t a fourth date.”

  “Well played, Good Sir,” Russ complimented me. “Savor your freedom while you have it, Chance,” he said. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “You’re the second person today to tell me how lucky I am. The first one hit me.”

  Russ unwrapped the meat and we ‘oohed’ and ‘awed’ over it. Two rib eye steaks; each one the size of a dinner plate and twice as thick as the cylinder on my Smith & Wesson. They were marbled to perfection, with just the right amount of fat. He gingerly set them in a pan and began to add the marinade.

  “That sauce smells like bourbon,” I said.

  “It should. I used about half of your Jim Beam to make it.”

  “You godless bastard.”

  “I tried to call you,” Russ said, “to let you know I was coming over, but I guess you weren’t in. I forgot you’re a Neanderthal and don’t have a cell phone.” The message light blinking on my answering machine validated him.

  “A cell phone is nothing but an electronic leash,” I said.

  “Don’t I know it. But I got a reprieve; Lori flew back to Iowa for the week to see her folks,” Russ said, “and I figured you could use a decent meal. I may not be a gorgeous personal trainer with a fantastic body, but if you play your cards right, and ply me with enough alcohol, you might get lucky anyway.”

  “As alluring as the offer of sex with you is,” I said, “I’ll have to pass. I was just getting my appetite back.” He laughed.

  “So our love must go unrequited?” he said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Let’s get outside and fire up the grill,” Russ commanded. I obeyed. I always obey the cook when it’s red meat on the barbeque. He carried the pan of beef; I carried the drinks.

  “I’m glad you came over,” I said as I opened the door leading from the kitchen to the rear patio. Russ had a gas grill installed out back, and set the pan on a shelf adjacent to it. I handed him his drink. We tinked glasses again.

  There was a chill in the air, and it was overcast, but rain wasn’t impending. Russ lit the grill and I pulled up a couple of chairs.

  “You working on anything right now?” Russ asked after we sat down.

  “Yeah. Going on safari.”

  “Safari? What are you hunting?”

  “Shooter who gunned down a fifteen-year-old hooker named Marisol Hernandez,” I said.

  “Where?” Russ asked.

  “Oakland.”

  “That’s big game hunting all right,” Russ said. “Who’s paying the tab for this expedition?”

  “My friend Greg Vole.” I said.

  “The lawyer who defended you against those murder charges a couple of years back?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “That’s him.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” Russ said. He sipped root beer and vodka.

  “You know my motto,” I grinned. “Safety third.”

  “I thought you gave up the heavy lifting when you quit the police force?” Russ said.

  “I thought so too.”

  “So why are you taking this case? If it’s a murder, why not let the cops handle it?”

  I rolled some beer around the cut on the inside of my lip before answering.

  “Because they can’t. Or won’t.”

  “Tracking a dude who shoots teenaged hookers in Oakland sounds precarious to me,” Russ said. “Even for a bad-ass like you.”

  I laughed. “This is from a guy who makes a living elbow deep in other men’s asses.”

  “I get very well paid,” Russ pointed out.

  “You’d have to,” I said. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get into urology anyway? Just naturally drawn to other men’s genitals?”

  Russ extended his middle finger at me. “Money,” he said. “Urology is one of the most lucrative areas of medical surgery.”

  “I thought plastic surgery was where the big money is?”

  “Nope,” Russ said. “People don’t have to get plastic surgery. My patients come to me because they have to.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “After residency, I watched a lot of my medical school classmates become general practitioners. Those poor fools worked their butts off in private practice fighting insurance companies and the government to get paid a living wage. Most of them could hardly keep their practices afloat. It’s why so many doctors leave the profession; in the age of Obamacare, there’s no real money in it anymore. Especially considering the mountain of debt most doctors pile up to get their degrees.” Russ drained his vodka-laced root beer and stood up.

  “But I figured out that when a guy can’t piss or fuck, he’s in hell. He’ll pay a schmuck like me whatever it takes to get his pee flowing or his dick hard again, whether he has medical insurance or not. A man with erectile dysfunction or urinary blockage will sell his children into slavery to get his dork operating correctly. And with me it’s cash up front. I don’t accept a lot of the government entitlement medical insurance programs. You can’t afford me, go to the county hospital and have the med students do the surgery on your plumbing. It’s your junk.”

  I got up to refresh our drinks. “That’s actually pretty shrewd,” I told him.

  “And you thought I only did it for the opportunity to fondle male genitalia,” Russ said.

  We went back ins
ide. I grabbed another Boddy’s and Russ re-tooled his vodka /root beer.

  “Now that you know what motivated my career choices, I’ll ask you the same question; why did you leave police work? I always wondered. You were a cop for ten years before you quit, right?”

  “Over fifteen years,” I corrected him.

  “That’s what I mean. You had a good gig. You were a homicide detective, a sergeant, and pretty good at it from what I heard. What made you abandon the security of government work before your pension kicked in? Especially in this economy. You could have been a lieutenant by now; maybe even chief someday.”

  I laughed at that thought. “Wasn’t much of a choice, really,” I said.

  “I’m not pushing any buttons asking this, am I? You can tell me to ‘fuck off’ if I’m out-of-line.”

  For all Russ’s gruff exterior, he’s an insightful and sensitive guy. I was lucky to call him my friend.

  “You’re not out-of-line,” I told him. “You make a valid point. Why would anyone in their right mind give up an economy-proof government paycheck in this day and age? Hell, I ask myself that question, sometimes.”

  We walked back outside to the patio, where Russ checked the grill. It was almost hot enough.

  “It’s none of my business,” Russ said, spreading aluminum foil over the heated grill. The foil cooks the meat evenly, and prevents the juices from being lost through the grate. When the steaks were three-quarters done, Russ would remove the foil and sear them on the bare grill. I’d seen him cook meat like that before.

  “Truth be told, there’s not really one reason I left law enforcement. Most folks think it was burnout, but that’s not quite true. By the time I quit being a cop, I’d been doing it long enough. The deployments had an impact, too.”

  “I figured they would. You did what, three combat tours?”

  “Four; two in Afghanistan, two in Iraq.”

  “Must have been tough duty.”

  “It had its moments.”

  “Was it hard, switching back and forth?” Russ asked. “It seems to me you were living in two worlds. Here in the states you were homicide cop, which is stressful enough, and then every other year you got deployed to a war zone. I imagine that could wear on a guy.”