Chasing Charlie Chan - Special Edition: Includes Catching Water in a Net

by J. L. Abramo

  Lieutenant Lopez had come down hard on Sarah Landers the second go around. She learned that the woman had one child, a son who stood to inherit everything. Lopez told me that she scared the crap out of the woman with talk of obstruction of justice. Lopez warned Landers that if she tried reaching her son, who was now formally a suspect in a conspiracy to commit homicide, she risked imprisonment. Landers was told not to answer her home telephone.

  It was a colossal bluff, Lopez figuring Sarah Landers could not reach a lawyer before nine on a Saturday morning for consultation. The Lieutenant had a uniformed officer drive Landers to her home and stay outside the house; the BMW remained where it had been parked in the school lot.

  Lopez then called the son, reporting that a late model BMW had been discovered abandoned behind a school building. There was no sign of its owner, who had been identified by the vehicle registration as Sarah Landers. The woman could not be reached at her home address. The car would be held at the city auto impound until someone came to claim it.

  “Did he sound mildly concerned?’ I asked.

  “He gave it a good try, he asked if there was anything that he could do,” said Lopez. “I asked him to phone me as soon as he heard from his mother, and I said we would phone him if we heard anything. Got a pencil?”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  I jotted down the son’s number.

  “I’m at my office, Diamond. I’ll be hunched over my telephone waiting for your call.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself, Lieutenant” I said, and ended the connection.

  When the dial tone came back, I punched in the number that Lopez had given me. After three rings a man answered.

  “Time to settle up,” I said.

  “What the fuck happened, they didn’t find her body?”

  “They will, eventually, I took her for a little ride. Do you have the cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “Meet me in an hour. The Home Plate on Lombard, I’ll be at the counter. Don’t be fucking late.”

  “How will I know you?” he asked.

  I was very glad to hear that he had to ask.

  “I’ll wear a fucking carnation,” I said, “I’ll know you. Don’t make me fucking wait.”

  I hung up. I called Lopez.

  I sat at the counter of the Home Plate Diner drinking coffee and glancing out the front window waiting for Daniel Landers to arrive.

  Before long, a car pulled up and double-parked across the street. I watched as he climbed out from the passenger side, carrying a large brown envelope. A woman behind the wheel rolled down her window to say something to him as he started to cross. I recognized the driver; I had followed her from the dance studio to her car the night before.

  Landers walked in and I waved him over. He sat at the stool beside me. He placed the envelope on the countertop without looking at my eyes. I asked if he needed a receipt and he shuddered. He was about to get up when Lopez walked in. It was the first time I had seen her out of a business suit. She looked good.

  “Daniel Landers,” she said, slapping handcuffs on him in the blink of an eye, “you are under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy in an attempt to commit murder. You have the right to remain silent, I hope you do. You have the right to an attorney; I would not recommend using your mother’s attorney. If you cannot afford a lawyer, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “Lopez,” I said, as Landers stood frozen in disbelief, “there’s a gal in the Pontiac across the street who you may want to talk with.”

  Lopez took out her two-way radio and called Sergeant Johnson. She told him to pick up the woman in the Pontiac before we came out. I saw Johnson’s unmarked Ford pull up beside the other car less than a minute later.

  Dan Landers confessed the moment they got him over to Vallejo Street. He claimed that it was her idea, the girl in the Pontiac. He’d met her a few months earlier when he picked his mother up from the studio, one of Sarah Lander’s dance students. They began to see a lot of each other and before too long she was filling Dan’s head with visions of a rosy and financially secure future for the two of them.

  Daniel Lander’s had no idea who the hired gun was. He had dropped word here and there that he was looking for one and someone contacted him. Landers had deposited the first twenty-five thousand at a drop the previous Sunday night, a trash barrel at the corner of California and Van Ness. The only phone number Landers had was the number for my office, Daniel had apparently written it down incorrectly. Without the contract killer it would be a tough case to prosecute, but the experience would certainly discourage Landers from trying anything like it again and perhaps give his mother reason to reconsider the provisions of her last will and testament.

  And that was that.

  Or so I thought.

  Five days later, late Thursday night, I arrived at my apartment from a pinochle game at the Pacific Heights home of a fellow PI. As I pushed the key into the door lock, I felt what could only be the barrel of a handgun pressed up against the back of my head.

  “Don’t fucking turn around,” the voice said.

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “Word has it that you cost me twenty-five grand, Mr. Diamond, and that really fucking upsets me.”

  “It wasn’t my intention,” I said.

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Look at it this way; you made twenty-five thousand without having to kill an innocent woman.”

  “In my business, Diamond,” he said, “that is little consolation. If you ever try pulling something like that again, intended or not, you will find yourself at the top of my fucking list. Contract work is getting difficult to come by these days, and I won’t have someone pinching any of the few jobs that still trickle my way.”

  “Don’t worry, it was my first and last hit,” I said.

  I felt the gun barrel move away from my head.

  I finally found the courage to turn around.

  I found myself alone.

  Back to TOC

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  J. L. ABRAMO was born in the oceanside paradise of Brooklyn, New York on Raymond Chandler’s 59th birthday. Abramo received a BA in Sociology and Education from City College of the City University of New York and an MA in Social Psychology from the University of Cincinnati. He has been a long-time educator, a producer and director of theatre, and an actor on stage and in film; with a number of television credits including roles on Homicide: Life on the Street and Law and Order. Abramo’s first novel, Catching Water in a Net, was recipient of the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Award for Best First Private Eye Novel, and was followed by two additional Jake Diamond mysteries, Clutching at Straws and Counting to Infinity. A stand-alone thriller, Gravesend, was recently published by Down and Out Books; and a fourth novel in the Jake Diamond series is in the works. Abramo is a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild, Private Eye Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers.

  For more information please visit:

  http://www.jlabramo.com/

  https://www.facebook.com/jlabramo

  Back to TOC

  A sample from the second JAKE DIAMOND novel, CLUTCHING AT STRAWS.

  One

  Lefty Wright slipped the rusty blade of his trusty paint scraper between the frame and sill of the kitchen window and finessed the latch open. He slowly raised the window, squeezed through, and shimmied like an alligator across the sink. When his palms reached the linoleum he went into a perfect handstand, which he would have held longer if not for the sore rib. He gracefully and silently tumbled into an upright position. Once inside the house he stood motionless for a full minute, infinitely patient, listening.

  Lefty had found the two bundles of cash exactly where he had been promised they would be. Five thousand dollars in twenties and fifties under a flat stone on the ground below the window. A down payment. He had stuffed the cash into his inside coat pockets before entering the house.

  Known as a top-notc
h second-story man by his peers, and a two-time loser by the courts, Lefty had been relegated to ground-floor entries since falling from a dry-rotted cedar balcony a few weeks earlier. He favored his right side as he moved quietly through the kitchen and into the dining area. Always the pragmatist, he decided to go directly up to the bedroom, knowing that was where he would find what he’d come for. He could quickly inventory the street-level rooms on his way out.

  Lefty had been watching the place on and off since Saturday morning, noting the stuffed mailbox and the newspapers on the lawn. He hadn’t seen a light come on or go off in the residence, and nothing seemed changed when he arrived now, just before ten on Sunday night. He had planned to arrive earlier but consoled himself with the fact that the tree-lined street was deserted at this hour. He had been assured that the sole occupant of the large home was not due back until late Monday evening. Lefty Wright was not one to be overconfident, but he couldn’t help feeling that the odds that he was alone in the house were very good.

  He pulled out his penlight, slid the tiny beam toward his feet, and moved slowly toward the carpeted staircase. Halfway up the stairs, he stopped and stood motionless again, listening.

  After a silent count to sixty he continued up, a broad smile occupying the entire lower half of his face.

  For the next thirty minutes, the house would belong to Lefty Wright.

  At the landing, Lefty slipped off his Doc Martens and introduced his thick wool socks to the plush wool carpet. The bedroom door was open and he slipped into the room. The painting was directly ahead of him on the wall above the chest of drawers, where he had been told it would be.

  The painting, an original by one of the lesser French impressionists, was fairly valuable itself. But artwork was nearly impossible to fence, and Lefty Wright was more interested in what he expected to find behind the painting.

  He removed the painting, leaned it against the foot of the dresser, and looked at the safe. There was nothing safe about it. He had cracked tougher boxes when he was eighteen. He placed his ear close to the tumbler and began rotating the dial.

  Twenty seconds later he was in.

  The safe was unusually bare. A pair of diamond-studded monogrammed cuff links and a small collection of coins, neither of which interested Lefty. A heavy, nondescript gold chain and a Smith and Wesson chrome-plated .38-caliber snub-nose revolver, which he couldn’t resist. They went into the right front pocket of his coat. And the gray metal document box.

  He removed the metal box and placed it lightly on the top of the chest of drawers. It was legal sized and approximately nine inches deep. He pushed the small latch and the box popped open. He quickly went through the papers and found the nine-by-twelve-inch envelope he had been told to look for. He laid the envelope on the dresser top, closed the metal box, and returned it to the safe.

  Lefty had been instructed to leave the envelope on top of the dresser, for which he would earn himself an additional ten thousand dollars. As he reached down to his feet to pick up the painting, he made up his mind to improvise, in the event that he would be compelled to bargain for the balance of his payment.

  He pushed the safe door closed, but did not spin the dial to lock it.

  Lefty pulled out his Swiss Army knife and removed two of the staples that held the paper backing to the wooden picture frame. He lifted the envelope off the dresser and slid it between the backing of the painting and the canvas. Then he rehung the painting.

  As he was about to leave the room he caught sight of the Rolex lying on the floor at the opposite side of the bed.

  Lefty had a weakness for fine timepieces.

  He crossed to the far side of the bed, and his foot struck an object on the floor. He glanced down to his feet and gasped.

  Suddenly there were beacons of light streaming into the room from the street, accompanied by a harsh siren. Lefty had stumbled upon the head of a man whose contiguous anatomy lay under the large bed, and the instantaneous commotion from below had Lefty believing for a wild moment that the head had been rigged to some bizarre sort of silent burglar alarm.

  Twenty minutes later Lefty Wright was handcuffed in the back-seat of a San Francisco Police Department cruiser on his way to the Vallejo Street Police Station.

  Two hours later Lefty Wright was booked for murder and locked behind bars.

  He had been stripped of his most prized article of outer clothing, a tan knee-length London Fog slicker, along with its contents, five thousand dollars in legal tender, a chrome-plated pistol, a gold chain, a dime store penlight, a Swiss Army knife, and a rusty paint scraper.

  His shoes had been left at the scene.

  Lefty’s adamant demands for a telephone call and a Pedro’s Burrito Supreme went unheeded. He eventually assumed as comfortable a body position on the jail cell mattress as possible. When he woke to discover that he had actually slept through the night, it was his sole pleasant surprise.

  After which he was rudely subjected to another interview session with two detectives, who differed only in theory from two detectives who had grilled him the night before and paid even less attention to his pleas of innocence. Then Lefty was at last allowed to make his constitutionally guaranteed phone call.

  He called me.

  Two

  Autumn in San Francisco.

  Late September, early October is my favorite time of the year in San Francisco. In terms of weather, September is the mildest month. Most of the tourists are gone and that is a great blessing. In July and August they’re as thick as Buddy Holly’s eyeglasses. The kids are back where they belong, the nine-week challenge of trying to find a single square inch of ground not infested by swarms of loud and reckless adolescents is finally over. Unless you’re insane enough to venture anywhere near a school. I can hardly imagine a better place to be in early fall.

  Though I admit, I’ll take Paris in the springtime.

  I had recently made it past my fortieth birthday fairly intact and I was possibly involved in a budding romance with my ex-wife. As I headed to the office on the first Monday in October, I was feeling pretty cozy.

  I remembered in the nick of time that Darlene wouldn’t be back at her post until the following morning.

  Darlene Roman is my right hand; I can barely tie my shoes without her. She runs the office. Her boyfriend is L. L. Bruno, a defensive lineman for the 49ers. Darlene had taken off to Colorado for the weekend to watch San Francisco lose to the Denver Broncos. She had decided to stay the extra night to help pump up Lawrence Lionel for the upcoming game against Oakland.

  I was fairly certain I could squeak through one day without her, but I wasn’t about to venture into an empty office with no coffee waiting. I stopped at Molinari’s Deli on Columbus Avenue for a couple of large cups to carry up. My office sat two flights above the deli, and on a warm day when the wind was just right I could identify the daily lunch special from my desk chair.

  “Buon giorno, Angelo,” I said, using one of the few acceptable Italian expressions I had learned from my grandfather, “let me have two large black coffees.”

  “How’s the elbow, Jake?”

  I had taken a hard line drive to the elbow while playing first base in a softball game the weekend before. The ball was caught on the fly off my elbow by the second baseman. I was credited with an assist.

  “It only hurts when I do this,” I said, lifting my arm over my head.

  “So, don’t do that,” Angelo said, trying to sound like Henny Youngman.

  He sounded more like Walter Brennan.

  “Did you hear about Judge Chancellor?” Angelo Verdi asked as he poured.

  “He take another bribe on a parking ticket case?” I asked.

  J. Andrew Chancellor was the most noted criminal courts’ justice in northern California, if not in the entire state.

  “He took a six-inch kitchen knife in the chest,” said Angelo.

  “I hope whoever stabbed him wasn’t aiming for the heart, since he doesn’t have one,” I said. “Is h
e going to live?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “The story is he had just arrived home from a weekend at his cabin near Mill Valley and bumped into a house thief. Can you believe that, the judge killed without premeditation? That’ll wind up in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”

  “They catch the thief?” I asked.

  “Right there in Chancellor’s bedroom. The Good Morning San Francisco news guy said that the perp was trying to stuff the judge’s body under the bed when the heat showed up.”

  “How did the cops get there so fast?” I asked. “They must have had a week’s notice.”

  “At least a week,” Angelo said. “Lucky break though. Their list of suspects would have been longer than their log of unsolved cases. You’re probably relieved that you won’t have to tell the police where you were last night.”

  “And how. I’d almost rather take the rap than admit that I took my mother to see a Sandra Bullock movie.”

  “What’s with the coffee, Jake, Darlene get stuck in Denver? I can’t believe that Chancellor bought it that way,” he went on. “It’s like a guy who just negotiated a minefield getting hit by a bus on the other side. I threw in a hard roll.”

  Angelo Verdi was a master of the non sequitur.

  “Darlene said she was staying the extra day to lick Bruno’s wounds. I’ve been trying not to picture it,” I said, grabbing the deli bag and heading for the door. “What do you think about the Giants and the Athletics in the World Series?”

  “I don’t know if I could handle the excitement,” Angelo Verdi said. “The last time they played each other, in the eighty-nine series, an earthquake postponed game three for ten days. I’m making sausage and peppers for lunch.”

  I was halfway down the hall from the stairwell to the office when I heard the phone begin to ring. I had taken to walking up the two flights to the office lately, partly because I understood the benefit to my cardiovascular system and mostly because the elevator had the knack of absorbing the odors of whoever slept in it the night before. For some indefensible reason I decided to try to catch the phone call.