***
Tonight it was “Circlez,” the dance club with the absurd little round tables surrounding the dance floor. Carrie checked her purse one last time to be sure she had her supply of roofies placed squarely on top of her other necessities for easy access. She smiled sweetly at the bouncer, paid her cover charge and entered the club.
Everyone watched her, and why wouldn’t they? Dressed tonight in a form-fitting blue mini-dress, Carrie knew she had already been successful in attracting the attention of every man watching, which of course meant every man. As she purchased her club soda and slinked to her customary spot in the back of the club, she could hear bits and snatches of conversation. Nearly everyone was discussing the rash of disappearances—young men all over the city were vanishing, never to be seen again.
Carrie wasn’t worried about that, though. She felt totally safe. She sipped her drink and watched the crowd, hoping against hope that she might catch a glimpse of the face which haunted her dreams; the man who had done all those horrible things to her. She knew she would eventually find him. She had a score to settle.
Uncle Brick and Jimmy Kills
A few months after I started writing short fiction in earnest, my wife, who is an early reader of just about all of my work whether she wants to be or not, informed me that most of my stuff was just too damned dark. It didn’t surprise me; we’re a study in contrasts most of the time anyway—she’s an optimist and I’m . . . not. She looks on the bright side of things and I . . . don’t. She tries to see the good in even the worst people and I . . . well, you know. But I thought about it and realized she had a point. My fiction—especially my short fiction—does tend to be pretty bleak at times, and while I wouldn’t want it any other way, I took her words as sort of a challenge. Why couldn’t I write something a little more light-hearted while still remaining true to what I love—crime fiction? I gave it a shot and the result was one of my favorite characters—the eighty year old Boston PI, Brick Callahan. “Uncle Brick and Jimmy Kills” first appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Mysterical-E and I’m proud to say was a 2010 Derringer Award Finalist for Best Novelette.
“Retire!” roared my Uncle Brick. “Why in the hell would I want to retire?” Heads turned and restaurant patrons swiveled in their seats to see where the disturbance was coming from. It occurred to me that perhaps broaching a sensitive subject like suggesting my uncle sell his detective agency right in the middle of lunch at a high-end joint like The Old Man and the Seafood may not have been the smartest idea I ever had.
The thing you have to understand about my Uncle Brick is, his volume control is directly related to his excitement level, and right now, his excitement level was pretty darned high, what with my bumbling retirement suggestion and all. Oops. My bad. Oh well, I thought, in for a penny and all that, I have no choice now but to press on.
“Listen, Uncle Brick,” I continued. “I’m not trying to push you out the door or anything, but don’t you think you’ve earned the opportunity to relax? You’re on the north side of eighty now, and you should be spending your days enjoying yourself; you know, doing things you want to do, rather than things you have to do.”
I silently congratulated myself on my smooth recovery when Brick surprised me again. “Listen, Mister Smart-Ass College Boy, what makes you think I’m not already doing what I want to do when I come to work every day?”
My uncle is nothing if not relentless. The man makes a bulldog look like the world’s wimpiest canine. Sure, I went to college; graduated, too, but that was over twenty years ago! I’m 42 years old, for crying out loud, but you would think from listening to Uncle Brick that I had just entered the workforce yesterday.
“And don’t think for a second that I don’t realize what you’re really saying here.” Uh-oh. My finely tuned senses were telling me—once again, too late—that I had unwittingly wandered into more dangerous territory. “What you’re trying to say,” my uncle continued, “is that I only have a few years left” (A few years? I was thinking more like a few weeks. After all, the guy was eighty, for crying out loud!), “if not a few weeks,” (Wow, this guy was good) “so I had better enjoy the precious little time I have left, am I right?” His eyes locked on to mine.
Brick isn’t just my uncle’s name, it is also the perfect description for him. His body is thick and muscular, even at the age of eighty, and his head is square like, well, like a brick, with steel-gray buzz-cut hair sprouting from the top of his head. Think Broderick Crawford in “Highway Patrol,” only tougher and scarier.
I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer (Hell, my ex-wife would tell you I don’t even belong in the drawer at all; she would say that butter knives could kick my sorry ass, sharpness-wise. That, however, is another story entirely), but I’m bright enough to know when it’s time to beat a hasty retreat, and I decided now was as good a time as any to raise the white flag with my uncle.
I lifted my hands, palms out, in front of my red face in the universal gesture that says, “Please stop schooling me in front of everyone, this is getting embarrassing.” My uncle swallowed the last of his lobster bisque with the smug look of a man who has just vanquished an unworthy foe without really even trying.
“Listen, Uncle Brick,” I said earnestly, trying to recover some tiny shred of dignity. “I’m worried about you; that’s all. Now that my dad’s dead and you’ve had to take over the agency all by yourself, it just seems like it might be too much. Hell, it would be a challenge for a younger man, never mind someone with as much, uh, life experience as you have.” I was in full retreat and beyond congratulating myself for anything by now, but I hoped that he might at least try to see my point.
All the other restaurant-goers had finally stopped staring and turned their attention back to their own meals. I hoped the conversation hadn’t looked as one-sided to them as it had felt to me, but I doubted it.
My uncle dabbed gently at the side of his mouth with a napkin and said, “I know you’re worried. Believe me, I’m well aware how much effort goes into running a detective agency, I’ve been doing it for darn near a half-century now. And since your dad got killed, it really has been a lot of work. But I’ll share a little secret with you: showing up at that office every day is what keeps me going. When you get to be my age, you need a pretty compelling reason to continue getting out of bed in the morning, and Callahan Investigations is mine.”
I sat back in my chair, amazed. Maybe it’s because I hadn’t seen my uncle in years, decades even, but the little speech he had just finished reflected a level of, shall we say, sensitivity that I wasn’t aware this rough, tough, bigger-than-life character was capable of. And I had to concede, if only to myself, that he did have a point. He certainly had a lot more experience at being a private detective than I did.
But I hadn’t come all the way back east just to provide free entertainment to a restaurant full of people. I had a proposition for Uncle Brick and I was damned well going to propose it. The entertainment thing was just a little bonus, I supposed.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, hoping what I was about to say didn’t set off another round of verbal butt-kicking. “You know I got divorced from Allison last year, and there’s not really anything keeping me in L.A. anymore, so I was thinking…”
Brick was looking at me with a funny little half-grin on his curiously expressive face, and he interrupted me, shaking his head and chuckling. “Sometimes you remind me so much of your old man it’s downright scary. So tell me, what were you thinking, junior?”
I took a deep breath and jumped into the pool with both feet. I figured the water was as warm as it was going to get. “I want to move here permanently and come to work with you. If you aren’t interested in retirement, then I’d like to take my dad’s place at the agency.” There, I had said it. I sat back and waited for Brick to return fire.
The waitress brought our check and my uncle sat perfectly still, saying nothing until I had picked it up. “You want to join me at the agency? What t
he hell do I need with a middle-aged accountant who has no experience in detective work? Or in any form of law enforcement, for that matter?”
I knew coming into this lunch meeting I would be asked that very question. I had given it a lot of thought and I still had no answer ready. In point of fact, I knew he was right. Why should he let me work for him? Why did I even want to? Why was he controlling the conversation when I was the one with the proposition? And how much should I leave for a tip, since he obviously wasn’t about to do it?
I had told myself on the airplane that I needed to keep an eye on the old guy so he didn’t get hurt. With my dad gone there was no one left to watch out for him. I could see now, though, that that was a load of bull. My uncle might be eighty years old, but he hadn’t lost a step, either physically or mentally. I should just pack my stuff and go home; Brick didn’t need me; that much was clear.
I looked up and he was staring at me, patiently waiting for an answer to his question. I squirmed in my chair, more uncomfortable than I wanted to admit. “I don’t honestly know, Uncle Brick. I had convinced myself that you needed me, but I think it just might be the opposite. I’ve been spinning my wheels since the divorce and I need to make a new start. I’d like to make it with you.”
He smiled. His next question caught me off guard. I was starting to get used to it. “You planning on picking up the check whenever we eat out?”
“I think I can handle that,” I said.
He reached across the table and shook my hand with one big, beefy paw. “Then you’re hired. For your first assignment, make sure you don’t stiff this cute little gal on the tip. I’d like to be able to eat here again sometime.”
Just like that, I was a private eye. Unlicensed, of course, but my uncle said we could take care of that some time in the future. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, given his age, but I didn’t worry too much about it, either.
***
I sat with my feet planted on my desk, leaning back in my chair and munching a tuna salad sandwich. It was becoming abundantly clear that when my uncle had said he was planning on eating at a classy place like The Old Man and the Seafood again, he didn’t mean in this lifetime.
It had been three days since I had been hired, and the closest we had gotten to a real meal in a sit-down restaurant was when we took a shortcut through the kitchen of some fancy-schmancy Italian joint on the way to Beekman’s Deli. I thought the manager might be a little perturbed to see us trooping through his kitchen, but he just waved hello to Brick as we passed on by. Everyone in the city seemed to know my uncle, at least by sight.
I was beginning to wonder why all private detectives didn’t weigh 350 pounds. All we did was eat. In my three days, not one single, solitary customer had entered the office, unless you counted the guy who dropped off our new telephone book or the scruffy-looking character who only came in because he was searching for “Layla,” a dubious-looking lady of indeterminate age who spent her days hanging around on the streetcorner by the entrance to Callahan Investigations but at that moment was on her lunch break.
When I mentioned my boredom to my uncle, he just smiled. “That’s the way it works, junior,” he said. “When it rains it pours, and when it snows it blows.” He must have seen the look of bewilderment on my face, because he took pity on me and told me, “Take my word for it, human nature being what it is, we’ll get business eventually. You can always count on people doing stuff to each other that requires our skills. Or at least my skills. In the meantime, how’s your crossword puzzle coming?”
It was Sudoku, but I didn’t bother correcting my uncle, and as it turned out I didn’t have time to answer his question anyway, because no sooner had he stopped talking than a beautiful, shapely brunette walked into Callahan Investigations. She was tall and slim, anywhere from late-twenties to early-forties—It was impossible to narrow it down any more than that—decked out in a form-fitting, knee-length maroon summer dress, and she walked in like she owned the building, which, for all I knew, maybe she did.
Also, she was crying. Tears ran down her face in great rivulets, twin streaks of dark eyeliner making her look like the worlds saddest but sexiest circus clown.
The woman’s grief didn’t stop her from sizing up the employment hierarchy, though. She took one look at me, still frozen in place with my feet on my desk, mouth half-open from surprise, and immediately turned to address Brick. My uncle, of course, was already on his feet, pulling out a chair and sweeping our visitor into it.
“I need to speak with Mr. Callahan,” she sniffled, swiping at her eyes with a tissue.
“Well then, you’ve come to the right place,” answered Uncle Brick. “This place is positively dripping with Callahans. In fact, until you entered, there was no one in here besides Callahans.”
She paused for just a beat, then continued, slowly getting her sobbing under control. “It’s my husband,” she said.
Brick nodded sympathetically. “It always is.”
“No, no, you don’t understand. He’s dead and I’m certain he was murdered.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Brick said, “but what makes you think he was murdered?”
“Because he knew he was in danger. He is . . .” the woman paused and sobbed again, dabbing at her dazzling eyes with a tissue and only serving to smear more eyeliner around them. “I’m sorry, he was an accountant, and he told me he had stumbled on to something he wasn’t supposed to see. I believe it was that something that got him killed.”
“You should go to the police, Ms . . .”
“Billingsley,” she answered. “Margaret Billingsley. Call me Maggie, everyone does.”
Brick handed Maggie Billingsley a glass of water he had hurriedly drawn while she was introducing herself. She accepted it gratefully and continued, “I’m sorry, I’m not being clear. I’ve talked to the police, but they are of the opinion Robert’s death was accidental. I don’t have any proof that he was even in any danger, all I have is what he told me, and the police are completely disregarding that. This is why I need to speak with Mr. Callahan.”
Brick smiled. “Like I said, you already are speaking to Mr. Callahan. Two Mr. Callahans, in fact.”
She shook her head. “No, I need to talk with the other Mr. Callahan. I believe his name was Dennis.”
My uncle and I shared a look. “I’m sorry, but Dennis Callahan is no longer with us,” Brick told her.”
“Well, what agency does he work for now? Robert told me he had given proof of his situation to Dennis Callahan of Callahan Investigations, and that if anything happened to him, I should go see Mr. Callahan immediately.”
My uncle knelt in front of the grieving woman and gently took her hand. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. Dennis Callahan is dead, Ms. Billingsley.”
The woman stared at Brick as comprehension dawned in her eyes. “Oh, my,” she said. “What do I do now?”
***
“I don’t get it,” I remarked. “Wouldn’t he have said something to you?” It was two hours since we had been visited by Maggie Billingsley. Brick and I had escorted the beautiful widow to her car after promising to find whatever it was her husband had entrusted to my father’s care.
“Not necessarily,” Brick answered. “He may not have had a chance to. I was out of town working on another case at the time. Then he went and got himself shot, and that was that.”
The only sound was a barely audible whoosh…whoosh…whoosh as the wood-tone ceiling fan gently circulated the air in the stuffy office. Brick was lost in his thoughts and I in mine.
“Well, where would he have hidden it?” I asked.
“That’s the question, isn’t it? We don’t even know what we’re looking for. A photograph or tape-recording would seem to be the most likely possibilities, but who can say for sure?”
My uncle chewed thoughtfully on the end of a pencil and I made a mental note to buy my own pencils. “It seems to me that we need to start by digging through Denny’s things and seeing
what turns up.” He looked at me through eyes narrowed with concern. “Do you think you can handle that, son?”
I was standing even before he had finished the question. “Let’s go,” I said.
***
My father and I were not particularly close—how could we be when I had lived three thousand miles away for the past ten years?—but I had been in town for two weeks now and I still hadn’t gotten around to going through his things. This would be the perfect opportunity, though. Brick and I were in search of a clue and I knew that was something Dad would have appreciated were he still residing on the north side of the grass.
After Dad had been killed my uncle moved all his belongings to a storage unit, one of those aluminum boxy-looking shed things that you rent by the month. He knew I would eventually get around to sorting through all the stuff and figured leasing one of those places would be cheaper than continuing to pay the rent on Dad’s empty apartment. Had he known I was going to come to Boston to stay I could have moved right into Dad’s old place, but I’m glad he didn’t. I think there would have been too many ghosts there for me to be comfortable anyway.
We rolled up to the storage unit in Brick’s silver Mercedes. Something had been eating at me the whole ride over and I decided now was as good a time as any to voice my concern. “Uh, what if Dad hid whatever it is we’re looking for in his old apartment and it’s still there?”
It sounded like a perfectly reasonable question to me, intelligent even, but Brick seemed to find it the funniest thing he had heard all day. “Well, sonny,” he told me, trying but failing to keep the laughter out of his voice, “that’s why they invented breaking and entering.”
It was a warm day and it felt brutally hot with the sun beating down on that big metal storage unit. The unrelenting sun quickly turned it into a giant oven. After two hours we had worked our way through roughly half of my dad’s belongings and all we had to show for it were two empty bottles of Gatorade and a purple bruise on my forehead that looked remarkably like Lake Huron. The bruise I earned when I stood up too quickly and lost a brief but violent conflict with a metal support beam on the inside of what I was beginning to think of as an oversized coffin.
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