JAKE ISTENHEGYI, THE ACCIDENTAL DETECTIVE in:
A CHICK, A DICK AND A WITCH WALK INTO A BARN…
By Nikki Nelson-Hicks
Copyright © 2014 Nikki Nelson-Hicks
I’m screwed.
What did my partner tell me over a million times? “Never let yourself get trapped, kid, always, always, ALWAYS have a way out!”
And, yet, here I am, in a dirty shed, sitting on my ass, pressed up against a wooden crate with my feet holding shut the only thing between me and the clucking, scratching, screaming horde outside.
So, this is me, Janos ‘Jake’ Istenhegyi, and this is how it all ends. I escaped the clutches of the Nationalist Socialist Party to die in a dirt shack in the ass end of a crazy voodoo queen’s farm, covered in shit and blood, beaten by chickens.
It’s a hell of a way to spend a birthday.
***
One day earlier….
I felt a kick and then heard a gruff voice swear, “What the hell are you doing under my desk, Jake?”
Standing over me was Barrington “Bear” Gunn, tenant and partner in this erstwhile private detective business.
Grunting, I pulled myself out. I was a little guy but it was still hell on my five foot eight inch frame to fit underneath a desk. I could feel each of my vertebrae click back into place as I struggled to stand upright. Bear was admiring the profile his fedora and trench coat cut in his shadow against the wall. Each pop and crack of my back simply fueled my frustration. “What do you think? Scraping off the chunks of your chewing gum!”
He snorted as he sat down in the leather captain’s chair and leaned backwards until the springs squealed. He was a large man, six foot four and lived up to his nickname. He had a square jaw that his face sort of rested on. His brown eyes always looked half- cocked and thick blonde hair that he slicked back with Lucky Tiger pomade so that it looked like a rooster’s comb. A WWI vet turned gumshoe, he fashioned himself after the detectives he kept in the library behind his desk. Doyle and Dashiell Hammett. Holmes and Spade. He devoured every issue of Black Mask and Dime Detective magazine as soon I got them in the shop.
It was how we became friends. I own The Odyssey Shop, a book and antiquities shop on the ground floor. My father, Jozsef Istenhegyi, inherited the whole shebang, business and building, from my Uncle Andor five years ago. My father gave it to me as a ticket out when the Nationalist Socialist Party started creeping into Hungary in 1930. I live on the second floor and rent the third floor to Barrington Gunn Private Investigations. I say ‘rent’ in the loosest of business terms; Bear pays me in apprenticeship in the ways of the private investigator. Not that it’s anything I really desired to become professionally. The dirty, foggy streets of London or a smoke filled speakeasy were Bear’s idea of a playground, not mine. I preferred a clean library and a pleasant, well-stocked café.
“You know,” I continued arguing, “Your nasty gum habit doesn’t just muck up the furniture… MY furniture, might I remind you, but it’s also a damn health hazard!”
Bear grinned and tossed his fedora on the desk. “Settle down, Bela.”
“I don’t sound….oh, never mind.” I regret the day we went to that double creature feature with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Ever since, Bear never missed a chance to make fun of my accent. I gave up, tossed the scraper aside and sat in the chair next to the desk. “So, where have you been?”
He tapped a small box. “Getting clients, buddy-boy. This was waiting for me at the post office.”
He pulled off the brown wrapping and tossed it aside. I picked it up and read it. “Idaho? Who do you know in Idaho?”
He shook his head and opened the box. Inside was a white envelope attached to a typewritten letter and several handwritten ones. He fanned them and a strong smell of roses filled the air.
“Love letters?” I asked.
He shrugged, tossed the pile of letters on the desk, and opened the envelope. A cascade of five and ten dollar bills flowed out.
I picked up the money and counted. “There’s a hundred dollars here, Bear. What do they want you to do? Kill somebody?” I thought for a second on how much I really knew about my friend. “We don’t kill people, do we?”
Bear ignored me as he chewed on his thumbnail. It was a nervous habit when he read. “Huh. Says here a fellow by the name of Isaac Stiegerson moved down here to New Orleans two months ago to hitch up with a lonely heart pen pal. His family hasn’t heard a word from him since. They want me to look in on it.”
“You mean us.”
“No, this is a solo job. Our lovebirds are shacking up in the backwoods. I know how you prefer the feel of concrete beneath your feet.”
It was true. The outer districts beyond the city of New Orleans in my mind were marked ‘here be dragons.’ There are things out there, where the roads end. Things that don’t respond to logic. Things that have no place in the world of civilization. All I have to do is feel the boyhood scars on the back of my neck to remind me.
Bear picked up his hat, folded the letter and put it in his coat pocket. “Time is wasting. I’d better get going.”
“Now? Don’t you want to read these letters? Get a better sense of what you are going up against?”
“I know all I need to know, Jake, I’ve done this a dozen times. Some dumbass farm boy gets himself a taste of Creole ass and now Daddy Warbucks wants his boy back home before some color gets added to the family bloodline. If you want to play librarian and stink up your hands with that cheap toiletwater, be my guest.” He opened the door. “By the way….can I take your car, Jake?”
“Kincsem?” Hungarian for ‘my precious’. She was a ’32 Phaeton, hunter green exterior and deep red interior. She carried me from New York down to Louisiana. She was my first love and a part of me. “Where is your hunk of metal?”
“Mine is in the shop.”
I tossed him my keys. “Don’t muck her up.”
Bear rolled his eyes. “I’ll bring her back tomorrow with a full tank of gas, okay? Oh! And that reminds me…” He rummaged in his coat pocket, pulled something out and tossed it over to me. It was a silver Zippo lighter with a buxom blonde on the cover. She was fighting the wind over her skirt- and losing. “Consider it an early birthday present.”
I could feel my blush darken. Dammit.
“Thanks.” I said, putting it in my pocket. “Maybe I’ll take up smoking.”
“You can start tomorrow. Twenty five is a good age to start. I have a big day planned for us, kid. First, breakfast of biscuits and gravy and thick, greasy slabs of fatty bacon at the Sun Coffee Shop, then a double feature of Cagney in G Men and Tracy in The Murder Man and a big fried chicken dinner over at Russo’s. To top it all off, I am setting you up with the sweetest skirt in town, Edie.”
“Edie? The girl at the dry cleaners? I can’t get her to give me the time of day!”
“She owes me a favor.” He clicked his tongue and winked. “You and me, Jake….we are going to burn this damn town down!”
He closed the door with a slam that rattled the door frame. That was Bear. His exits were just as loud as his entrances.
I scooped up the letters and took them downstairs to the store. I sat behind the counter and read them as the customers wandered in and out. Business was slow which was good since my mind was more in what lay in those letters than answering questions about second hand books.
I didn’t glean much except that they were love letters, very explicit ones in fact, from a Henrietta Harleux to someone she called her ‘Blond Stallion Beau’. Reading her responses to his letters was like hearing only one side of a conversation. Frustratin
g. If she came through with only half of the things she promised to do to young Mr. Stiegerson, he was one lucky son of a bitch.
My eyes were starting to cross as my father’s antique mantle clock, the one and only thing I will never part with, chimed six bells. Closing time. I locked up my store and went upstairs, my hands reeking of roses. That night I dreamt of beautiful Creole women whispering promises and deep, dark kisses.
God, I really did need a day off.
***
The next morning, I sat at the counter, sipping coffee. This is a coffee that one savors unlike the dregs that Bear chugs. I prefer a strong Turkish blend that a cousin in Szentendre sends me every Christmas. Bear calls it “a cup of plumber’s helper” and says it stinks up the shop like coal.
Americans have no appreciation for fine coffee.
The mantle clock chimed eight times.
No sign of Barrington Gunn. I guess breakfast was off so I opened the store. Maybe I could make a few dollars before we went to the movies.
My guts felt tight. And it wasn’t from the coffee.
The clock chimed twelve times. I closed the store.
Still, no Bear. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Missing breakfast, sure, I can see that. Bear was never a guy who got much done before noon but to miss a double feature with Cagney and Tracy? No. That was not the Barrington Gunn I knew.
I shook my new Zippo lighter. I could hear the slosh of lighter fluid within the silver case. I flicked open the lid and thumbed the flint wheel, sparking a blue flame. I snuffed out the flame and then nervously flipped the lid open and shut, cruelly bisecting the beautiful blonde on the cover as I reread Harleaux’s letters.
Flip, click. Flip, click. Flip, click.
Where the hell was he? Closer to my heart, where the hell was my car?
My mind went to dark places. What if this was more than just a case of a lovesick farm boy?
I remember reading in one of Bear’s lurid crime magazines about a woman in Indiana, back at the turn of the century, the Pig Lady, who lured men to her pig farm with the promise of marriage only to poison them for their money. She racked up a tally of over two dozen victims. Was she ever caught? How did that story end? I couldn’t remember. Was it even true?
Flip, click. Flip, click. Flip, click.
I pocketed the lighter and tore the address off one of the envelopes.
Dammit.
This was no way to spend a birthday.
***
There’s a current, hotly contested theory that life began in a hot swampy place, some a sort of primordial stew. Those people who disagree with this idea should visit the backwoods of Louisiana and rethink their position. The ground here goes from solid dirt to a soupy mess in a footstep. The air is thick with a mossy, clotty smell that makes breathing difficult. Each gulp of air feels like drowning. There are buzzing, clicking sounds that come from deep within and high above, they echo so loud inside my head that I felt dizzy and steady myself against a tree. On the other hand, that could be dehydration setting in. I wiped the sweat from my brow with my handkerchief and asked myself for the hundredth time, why would anyone in their right mind leave the comforts of New Orleans for this swampy hell? Or even Idaho? It was a mystery to me.
Still, this hellish place is nothing like the cold, green forests of Hungary and, for that much, I am thankful. I have enough memories from childhood visit to the old gypsy woman’s house to plague me for a lifetime.
I followed a road around a bend where a white chicken came out of the brush and greeted me. I followed it until I came to a clear patch of land and a small farm.
Her bungalow was set in a clearing in the back of the woods. Copper wind chimes hung from the eaves and made sharp tinkling noises in the breeze. Honeysuckle vines crawled up the walls. The sweet smell mingled in with the jasmine planted around the doorstop. Further back beyond the house there was a tool shed and a large barn. Chickens roamed the property, freely, ignoring the wooden fence that marked off the property.
I barely got off a second knock before the door opened. At first glance of the lady of the house, I had a quick understanding why a man would endure the swamp. I took off my hat and gave her my most endearing smile.
“Miss Harleaux? My name is Jake Istenhegyi. I’m an associate of Mr. Barrington Gunn. May I have a moment of your time?”
She nodded and waved me indoors.
Her cottage in the swamp was a comfortable place, well lived in, soothing. The walls were dotted with framed photographs of young men and women, several in graduation cap and gowns. On the mantle, there were two photographs. One of a man outside a law firm. The other of a young, beautiful woman. Beside the frames were four white candles, each well used. I could tell by the wick they were lit recently. Postcards depicting saints leaned against each candle.
The lady of the house sat across from me in a matching overstuffed chair, her long legs tucked demurely underneath her. Her long hair back was pulled in a loose bun, a few strands escaped to frame her face. She wore a simple cornflower blue housedress but there was definitely nothing simple about the woman underneath.
One look at Henrietta Harleaux told me everything I needed to know. It was no mystery as to why a man would leave the corn fed girls of Idaho to hunker down in the swamp. She was glorious. Mocha brown skin, wavy black hair with pale green and golden flecked eyes. She was impossible. No farmer’s daughter could compete no matter how much land her daddy had to barter.
She read my business card. “Mr. Jake Isten…” her voice trailed off.
“Istenhegy. Ishsten-hedgey.”
“Not from around here, then?”
“Not until recently, no. I emigrated from Budapest, Hungary five years ago to take over my uncle’s bookstore in Jackson Square.”
“A bookseller? But your card says that you are a private investigator.”
“Part time. I help out my friend, Barrington Gunn, when he needs me.”
“Ah, did you have a hard time getting here?” She served deep brown sweet tea into a tall glass.
“Thank you.” I took the glass and gulped it down. I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped the sweat that had pooled on the back of my neck. “The cab driver took me as far as the main road and then pointed. I found a dirt road that had car tracks and then I just followed my nose.”
“Your nose?”
“Actually, a chicken.”
“Oh, that would be Hester. She must’ve liked the look of you and brought you home.”
“Ha. Good to know I have luck with some ladies.”
“Oh, Monsieur Istenhegyi!” She clapped her hands over her mouth as she laughed. “I doubt someone with your good looks has any trouble in that area. I suspect there is a bit of gypsy in your blood, yes?”
“NO!” Harleaux’s eyes narrowed at my outburst. I took a deep breath and tried to will away the flush I could feel coloring my face. Damn my pale skin! “I am sorry. Please, forgive me, Mrs. Harleaux.”
“It is quite alright. I feel it is I who should ask to be pardoned. I had no idea it would cause you such upset.”
“It’s a long story.” I rubbed the scars on the back of my neck. A very long story from a different time. “Let’s get to why I am here. I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”
I told her my business there. “…so, any information you could give me would be a great help.”
“It is true.” She smoothed her dress, rolling her hands down her thighs. “I did have a visit from my friend, Isaac, but he is no longer here.” She shook her head. “It was puppy love, nothing else. He was not ready for marriage. He left weeks ago. I don’t know where.”
I motioned to the photographs on the mantle. “Seems you have quite a few suitors.”
“Oh, non, non!” Her laugh was like a girlish tickle from her throat. “Those are my sons.”
“Your sons?”
“And those are my daughters.”
I couldn’t keep the shock o
ff my face.
She smiled at my distress at the question I dare not ask a lady. She sat up straighter which merely increased the bounty of her form and brushed back her dark, lush hair. “Thank you, Mr. Istenhegyi, I am very blessed.”
“You should bottle up some of that blessing and take it to market, Mrs. Harleaux. You could make a fortune.”
It was her turn to blush. She bowed her head in gratitude.
I pushed the envelope. “I see a few college graduates in those photos. Expensive. How did you afford it…if you don’t mind me asking?” My manners forced me to tack that on at the last minute.
Her eyebrow arched and I thought for a moment she was going to escort me out the door. She cleared her throat and said, “It is a valid question even if rude, Monsieur Istenhegyi. I make my way through this world by selling eggs and chickens to local culinary connoisseurs. I feed them a special blend that gives their meat a special kick.”
“A secret ingredient?”
Her lips slid into a sly smile. “Generations old. In leaner times, I supply the locals with what I can to make ends meet.”
It was my turn to arch a brow.
“Moonshine, monsieur. Don’t be vulgar.” She made a tutting sound with her tongue. “Now, as for your friend, Mr. Gunn, I can’t be of any help.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry. He was never here.”
I sat back and grunted. “That is odd. So very, very odd. Bear, I mean, Mr. Gunn was quite specific as to where he was going.” I put the empty glass on the table beside me.
“Excuse moi!” She cried out, biting her lip. “Please. Use the coaster.”
“Oh, sorry. My grandmother would be ashamed of my manners.” Embarrassed, I moved my glass and in doing so, dropped my handkerchief. I bent down to retrieve it and then saw something on the underside of the table that made my heart drop.
A wad of gray chewing gum.
Flashes of the Pig Lady flashed through my mind.
I stood up and held my hand out the way my grandmother had taught me as the courtly way to address a lady. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Harleaux.”. She took it and I helped her to her feet. My tongue felt like a stick and I forced it to form words. “I apologize for taking up so much of your time. Thank you for the tea. I’ll see myself out.”
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