Total Sarcasm

by Dan Ames

  She picked up the key, turned it inside the back door lock, and stepped inside.

  Breaking and entering, yes. But she’d come to visit her client, smelled smoke, and thought someone might be inside. Yeah, maybe she would set something on fire just to make her story better.

  Smoke would certainly smell better than the current aroma assailing her nostrils.

  The smell of death was unmistakable. Every time she passed by Aunt Alice’s laundry hamper she was reminded of this.

  The back door led directly into a kitchen. Vinyl floor, laminate counter peeling in places, and kitchen cabinets painted white but wearing years of grease that had turned them a faint yellow.

  Mary walked quickly through the kitchen into the living room, where she found her client in no position to pay the final balance of her bill.

  Elyse Ramirez was face down on a horrible, dark-green carpet, featuring a large semicircle of blood. Her knees were beneath her, arms at her side, in the class of pose the newspapers loved to refer to as execution-style.

  Mary patted the woman’s pockets, looking for a cell phone, anything. But there was nothing: no purse, no keys, no sign the woman had been here with anything of a personal nature.

  The question for Mary was, to whom did the house belong? She highly doubted it was Elyse’s, so who had managed to lure her here?

  Mary had a bad feeling, the kind that zaps you like a static shock. Or the kind of cattle prod she had sometimes imagined using on Jake.

  The jolt pushed Mary into action. She raced through the rest of the house, finding no signs of human life. Empty closets, empty rooms, no sign of a telephone anywhere.

  On her way back through the kitchen, Mary spotted a small section of kitchen counter that was lower than the rest. Probably a desk, where people could sit and pay bills. She opened the drawer, but it was empty. Mary was about to shut it when she caught a quick flash of color. She pulled the drawer all the way out and found a card stuck in the back crack of the drawer, wedged deeply into the space.

  Mary pulled it out.

  Sol Landscaping Company.

  She put it into her purse, backed out of the house, and got into her car.

  Next stop: a pay phone and an anonymous tip for LAPD’s finest.

  20

  Twenty

  Mary made the call to LAPD, using her Bea Arthur voice. Not very sexy really. Kind of like a bull dyke with a cold and a killer hangover. She told the dispatcher she’d heard a scream and a gunshot. Mary gave them the address too and then hung up before they could ask any more questions.

  Sol Landscaping.

  Mary looked at the card again. It was decent quality, but not super slick, like the kind produced by a huge landscaping conglomerate. The card had a little bit more of a mom-and-pop-type-operation impression to it.

  She debated about just calling the number on the card. But according to the address, it was only a ten-minute drive.

  Mary gunned the Accord, anxious to put some distance between herself and her former client.

  The sight of a dead body always unsettled her. Sure, Mary could function, think straight (like making sure she didn’t leave any fingerprints anywhere in the house) but there was always a delayed reaction.

  Elyse Ramirez, even if that had not been her real name, had been a beautiful woman. Vital, with intelligence and poise. She had struck Mary as the kind of woman who had plenty of plans and the means to make them come true.

  But not anymore.

  It took Mary less than ten minutes to find the address attributed to Sol Landscaping without a problem. It was down a side street off Wilshire, then down another long dirt alley that opened up to reveal an industrial yard with a few sheds, open grounds featuring piles of dirt, gravel, and what looked like trashed landscaping materials.

  Mary parked in front of an aluminum-clad building that was more of a shack.

  She went to the front door but found it locked. Through the door’s dust-covered window, she could see a makeshift office with two steel folding chairs, a printer, and a coffeemaker tipped on its side.

  The sound of a high-pitched motor coming to life sounded to Mary like it was coming from behind the building. She thumbed the auto-lock on her car then walked around the aluminum shack.

  “Can I help you?” a man’s voice said.

  Mary turned to see a short, stocky, Hispanic man in green coveralls, tan boots, and a black baseball cap. He had a weedwhacker in his hand. There was a gas can and a small bottle of oil on the picnic table next to him.

  “This is Sol Landscaping?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, a slight accent to his voice.

  “Oh great, I’m looking for a good landscaper and you come highly recommended,” Mary said, “by my friend, Elyse Ramirez.”

  The man peeked at her from beneath his ball cap. His eyes were black, and there were dark smudges on his face.

  “Let me get the boss,” he said. He set the weedwhacker on the table and went into the building.

  Mary studied the back of the building. There was only one story, and next to the back door were several bright-red gas cans.

  The sound of wheels spinning and an engine roaring reached Mary’s ears. She ran back to the front of the building and saw a small, red Hyundai barrel onto the dirt alley, the baseball cap-wearing driver not even looking back at her.

  Let me get the boss, Mary thought. Yeah, at 100 mph.

  She dashed to her car, flung herself inside, and followed the Hyundai, now totally obscured by the cloud of dust.

  It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, driving way too fast with visibility about two feet in front of you. Mary thought of her high-school driver’s ed teacher: a notorious drunk who used to fall asleep during the students’ test drives.

  Even he would have disapproved of her decision to race forward at a ridiculously fast rate of speed, totally blind.

  She burst from the dust cloud and swerved onto LaBrea, throwing the car to the right side of the road. She nearly collided with a guy in an Audi convertible, who shot her the bird.

  Yeah, fuck you too, pal.

  Mary had no way of knowing if her fleeing landscaper had turned right onto LaBrea, but she figured it was a safe bet. Turning left would have required crossing traffic, and if he’d tried that, she probably would have heard the sound of metal on metal.

  As it was, she floored it and soon saw smoke at an intersection ahead.

  She reached it in seconds and immediately spotted the red Hyundai, now with a crumpled front end and the driver’s door open, hanging askew.

  Mary drove up onto the grass media, shut off her car, and walked to the Hyundai.

  It was empty.

  The driver of the other vehicle, a Nissan pickup truck, was on his cell phone. He looked at Mary, and he was visibly pissed.

  “Which way did he go?” Mary asked.

  The guy pointed to the right, into a small shopping center with a hardware store and a Trader Joe’s.

  “If you find him tell him he’s an asshole,” the truck owner said.

  “Happy to pass that along,” she said.

  Mary got back into her car, negotiated her way through the intersection, and turned into the mall’s parking lot.

  “Shit,” she said. The mall was simply a few storefronts, with a second set of stores behind the main entrance.

  She pulled into an empty space and thought about it. She got out, searched through all of the stores and the adjoining parking lots with no luck.

  She heard sirens probably on the way to the accident back at LaBrea.

  The jackass had gotten away.

  Mary imagined taking a weedwhacker to the pissant’s face.

  21

  Twenty-one

  Mary walked into her office to find a man with short, bleached-blond hair, an expensive suit, and the obvious bulge of a gun in a shoulder holster sitting in the client’s chair across from her desk. She often thought of how common it is for men with a bulge from their shoulder h
olster to lack a bulge in their crotch region.

  “Hello Ms. Cooper, I’m—“ the man started to say.

  “Breaking and entering?” Mary responded, cutting him off.

  She left the door open and had her cell phone in her hand.

  “Shall we call 911 together?” she said. “Or just put it on speaker?”

  He held his hands out in mock surrender.

  “Whoa, whoa, the door was unlocked, so I just took a seat. I swear,” he said. His voice was deep with a rough edge, and his teeth were a brilliant white, obviously capped.

  “So you break, you enter, and you lie,” Mary said. “I never leave a door unlocked. Try again.”

  Again with the hands.

  “Let me just explain why I’m here,” he said. Mary noted the diamond-encrusted Rolex on his wrist, the expensive suit, the well-coiffed hair. Not exactly the typical burglar/rapist.

  She walked around her desk and plopped into her desk chair, then snatched a bottle of Point Beer from the little fridge under her desk. She didn’t offer her uninvited guest a beverage.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “My name is Derek Jarvis,” he said, his voice now smooth and cultured. He had left in just a hint of a rasp to let you know if things got uncomfortable, he could change his demeanor to match.

  “I work private security for various people around LA, including celebrities,” he said.

  Mary took a pull from her beer, glanced down at her desk. There was a Victoria’s Secret catalog sitting there in all its black-lace glory. Good Lord. She needed to have magazines like Soldiers of Fortune and Hair Trigger Shooters Illustrated. They would do a better job of setting the tone for her guests, both the invited and uninvited kind.

  “Am I boring you, Ms. Cooper?” Jarvis said.

  “I’m not paying enough attention to actually be bored,” Mary said, visibly stifling a yawn.

  Damn, she loved this beer. Had it imported all the way from northern Wisconsin. It was expensive but well worth it.

  Mary could drink to that.

  “Then I’ll be as brief as possible,” Jarvis said.

  “Better late than never.”

  “You’ve been investigating the disappearance of a girl named Nina Ramirez.”

  Mary put the beer on her desk and looked at Mr. Derek Jarvis.

  “Ah, now I see I have your attention,” he said.

  “Yeah, but it’s not a good kind of attention,” Mary said. “It’s like when you notice one too many carpenter ants, so you go ahead and destroy them all.”

  Jarvis nodded in complete, totally false agreement.

  “My client is also interested in locating Nina Ramirez,” he said.

  “And who is this client?”

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge my employer’s identity.”

  “The good news is you are at full liberty to leave my office,” Mary said. She tipped the bottle toward the door. “Please exercise that freedom, pronto.”

  Mary drained the rest of her beer in one long pull.

  “I was hoping we could cooperate on the investigation,” Jarvis said. “My involvement could benefit you in more ways than one.”

  This time, he flashed a smile that truly made Mary cringe.

  She thought about his offer for a nanosecond, at the most. The guy didn’t know shit. And he certainly didn’t know that Mary’s client was now deceased. Unless that was what had prompted his visit.

  In any event, she knew that if this guy wasn’t even willing to say what his client’s name was, he certainly wasn’t going to give her any other kind of information.

  He was fishing. Plain and simple.

  “I believe sharing is overrated,” Mary said. “Both personally and professionally. Just ask my exes.”

  The man reached inside his suit jacket, and for just a moment, Mary considered going for her .45. When Jarvis pulled out a checkbook, she was glad she hadn’t shot him.

  “We are willing to pay for your cooperation,” he said.

  Mary spent more than a nanosecond on this one. A blank check always intrigued her. They were so beautiful. Works of art, in fact, just waiting for her signature.

  But the mere thought of linking herself to this guy, Derek Jarvis, gave her a bad feeling. Like sticking your hand in the garbage disposal, with that feeling that it could suddenly turn on and your hand would resemble a pulled-pork sandwich.

  Mary put her empty beer bottle in the recycling bin and stood.

  “As much as I appreciate the offer,” she said. “I’m going to have to pass. I’m a lone wolf. An alpha female, as it were. I work alone. Teammates slow me down. There’s no ‘we’ in Mary. I think you get the idea.”

  Jarvis put his checkbook back into his pocket, and once again Mary had the inkling that she wouldn’t be all that surprised if the hand came back out with a gun.

  But no. The hand reappeared, with only five very nicely manicured fingernails attached.

  “Maybe we’ll cross paths again, when you’re a bit more open-minded,” he said.

  “I’m very close-minded,” Mary said. “I dislike most people, and the few I do like, I certainly don’t trust one single bit. So don’t get your hopes up.”

  Jarvis walked out the door, and Mary shut it after him. Turned the deadbolt.

  She plopped back into her office chair, grabbed another beer, twisted off the cap, and sat back. Mary took another long drink of beer, then wondered: how the hell had that slick ratface gotten in here?

  22

  Twenty-two

  Mary fired up her computer, logged onto bank account for Cooper Investigations, and checked the balance.

  She wouldn’t be buying Richard Branson’s private island just yet, but still, the total wasn’t too bad.

  She could afford to work a few more days on a case that appeared to have no financial incentive for her personally.

  Mary debated about opening another beer, then made the wise decision and twisted the cap off another one.

  She put her feet up on the desk and held the beer in both hands.

  Something was bothering her, other than the strange and abrupt appearance of Mr. Derek Jarvis.

  The murder of Elyse Ramirez weighed heavily on her. She often had a cavalier relationship with booze, but when she did feel the need for multiple drinks, there was usually something bothering her, even if it wasn’t obviously on the surface.

  But it wasn’t just the murder.

  Heck, Mary had seen all kinds of dead bodies. Including the ones that had been alive until she’d made them dead.

  No, this time it was the woman’s face. She had been such a beautiful woman. That beautiful skin, fine features. Mary raised her beer toward the ceiling.

  “Here’s to you, Elyse,” she said. “Or whatever your name was.”

  That face. What was it about that face?

  Mary drummed her fingernails along the side of the beer bottle.

  She thought of Nina’s face. Granted, it was only a photograph, and the images were from her Facebook page.

  But still . . .

  It occurred to Mary that Nina didn’t look all that much like Elyse.

  And then it her. What was bothering her.

  Elyse Ramirez might not be Nina’s mother.

  Which raised two entirely new questions in Mary’s mind.

  Who in the good goddamn was Elyse Ramirez?

  And if Elyse wasn’t really Nina’s mother, then who was?

  23

  Twenty-three

  Mary locked up her office and drove through the small downtown area of Venice. She noticed a black Chevy Tahoe behind her and something about it bothered her. Had she seen it before? Whoever was driving wasn’t tailgating her, but for some reason, she felt like the bastard was too close.

  When she was within two blocks of Alice’s house, the Tahoe turned off, and Mary figured she was imagining things. Paranoia.

  Add it to her list of mental issues.

  Mary got to Alice’s house, parked,
and rang the bell, but there was no answer. Mary had already seen Alice’s car in the driveway. She took out her key, unlocked the door, and went inside.

  The smell of body sweat and curry hit her nostrils, while the sound of rock music assailed her ears.

  A man walked out of the kitchen wearing a pink bathrobe. Sanji the yoga instructor appeared to have no other clothing on beneath the robe.

  A martini glass was in his hand.

  “Hello,” he said, a thick Indian accent giving his words a soft lilt.

  Mary tried to avert her eyes.

  “What kind of yoga involves martinis and nudity?” Mary said. “Doesn’t sound like Bikram.”

  Alice emerged from the kitchen. She had on a bathrobe and black stockings, with six-inch stiletto heels. She wobbled a bit coming from the kitchen.

  “How’s the escort service?” Mary said.

  “Business is booming! Or should I say ‘banging?’” Alice said with a big grin on her face. She reached out, lifted up the back of Sanji’s bathrobe, and slapped his bare ass. Mary could tell Alice had enjoyed more than one drink. And her face was flushed. Either from the curry or something else. Mary didn’t want to think about it.

  “We had a very good session today,” Sanji said. He giggled a little after he said it.

  “I definitely feel a lot more loose,” Alice said. She winked at Mary and slipped an arm around Sanji’s waist. “A lot more.”

  Mary closed her eyes and winced.

  “Please stop,” she said. “And where did you get those shoes? Your old KISS costume? Does Gene Simmons know you’re impersonating him?”

  Sanji walked into the living room and sat down on the couch. His robe popped open, and Mary tried to quickly look away.

  Too late.

  “Put your King Cobra away, Sanji,” Alice said. “You’re making Mary jealous.”

  Sanji pulled his robe closed. “I am sorry,” he said, taking a pull from his martini. He turned on the television. Mary saw that a pay-per-view porn movie was still playing.