Detective Fiction

by William Wells

  I am not homophobic, but it all did seem rather gay. Had I been reborn as Little Lord Fauntleroy?

  I swung out of bed, padded in my boxer shorts over to the window, and looked out at manicured English gardens and a lawn that ran down to a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. Marisa had instructed me that location was the most important thing in real estate. This was surely the mother of all locations.

  I yawned and stretched again, clearing my head, went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. As I waited for it to warm up, I looked into the mirror and mentally recited my new identity:

  My name is Frank Chance, playboy extraordinaire. I have every material possession a person could want. My father made his fortune as a currency trader in New York and I’ve been doing my best to deplete it all my life. I’m a bachelor. Both of my parents are deceased. I am staying here in my aunt’s house while looking for a place to buy in Naples . . .

  I paused, gave myself a wink in the mirror, and added: And I’m a hunka hunka burnin’ love.

  That last wasn’t a part of the undercover identity that Marisa and I cooked up. But when you have the opportunity to reinvent yourself, why not go whole hog? Jack Stoney, eat your heart out.

  It was my idea that my undercover name be Frank Chance. As any true-blue Chicago Cubs fan knows, he was the Hall-of-Fame first baseman for the 1908 team, the last to win a World Series, and also part of the famous Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double-play combination.

  Maybe, with proper instruction from my new aunt on how to behave like a swell, and wearing my new uncle’s wardrobe, I could actually pull this off.

  Undercover cops pose as criminals trying to entrap the bad guys. I’d done that a few times myself. But I liked it this way much better, even if I was more at home among the criminal element of the City of Chicago than I’d be in the rarefied world of Naples high society I was about to enter.

  I tested the shower water, stepped in, and sang a few bars of Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild” as I soaped up. In the marines, we called our morning routine the three S’s: Shave, shower, and shit. When Claire and I were living together before we got married, I said that to her one morning, explaining the meaning. I thought she’d find it to be clever. She didn’t. She reminded me that I was no longer a marine and I should leave that sort of lingo behind if I wanted our relationship to continue until breakfast.

  My shower finished, I dried myself with a thick, white terry cloth towel and entered a large walk-in closet that looked more like a ritzy men’s clothing store than one person’s wardrobe. There were racks of soft tropical wool suits; rows of more formal business and evening clothing; shoes for every occasion; and shelves containing stack upon stack of shirts in every hue of the rainbow.

  Fortunately, my “uncle” and I were close enough to the same size that I could wear his haberdashery. I brought my own underwear, socks, toothbrush, and running shoes.

  I stood before the casual section and selected a navy blue silk shirt, pleated white linen slacks, and black leather Gucci loafers, which I slipped on without socks. My uncle and I even had the same shoe size, twelve; by the look of the leather soles, this pair had never been worn.

  I knew from investigating cases in the wealthy neighborhoods of Chicago that gentlemen of the highest social classes did not wear socks with this sort of casual outfit. In that regard, they were no different than the vagrants panhandling on the streets of the city, except that the dandies had no open sores on their ankles.

  I’d once arrested a man for murdering his wife’s lover. When I cuffed him on the porch of his Gold Coast row house, I noticed that he was wearing shoes without socks, a detail I found odd because it was February. A slave to fashion. I wondered if that guy would wear socks with his prison-issue sneakers at Stateville.

  I admired myself in a full-length mirror. I’d cleaned up nicely, if I had to say so myself, which I did, because no one else was there. Good-bye Jack Starkey, retired homicide detective and bar owner; hello Frank Chance, trust-fund bon vivant.

  I undid one more button on my shirt to show some chest hair, looked in the mirror, and then rebuttoned it. Frank Chance was a socialite, not a pimp. I was ready to begin my first full day of what might have been the most unusual undercover assignment ever.

  It was time to head downstairs to join my aunt for breakfast.

  8.

  UNCLE REGGIE AND AUNT ASHLEY

  The mayor and the police chief were initially upset that I’d shared the details of my assignment with Marisa, but there are special rules for beautiful women, and this particular beautiful woman also had a good idea for solving the case.

  I’d arranged for her to meet with them in the mayor’s office so she could explain her plan. When the meeting was concluded, Mayor Beaumont thanked Marisa for her input, told her that her undercover idea was “brilliant,” and said that he hoped she’d continue to advise us as the investigation moved forward. Chief Hansen nodded in agreement as he looked at Marisa’s legs. Maybe she should have been a cop and me a realtor.

  MAYOR BEAUMONT and his wife were friends of my fake aunt, Lady Ashley Howe. She was the widow of Australian press lord Sir Reginald Howe, who died five years earlier when his private jet disappeared on a flight from Sydney to Hong Kong, never to be found. He owned a chain of tabloid newspapers in England, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Queen Elizabeth knighted him in the same ceremony in which Elton John received his title.

  Lady Ashley was an American whom Sir Reginald met when she was nineteen. She was standing on a revolving platform beside a Lincoln Continental at the Detroit Auto Show, the mayor told me. Sir Reginald was a car collector, there to view the new models. Sir Reggie obviously found one he liked, and it wasn’t the new Lincoln Continental.

  Beaumont said that, after her husband’s death, Lady Ashley—everyone called her “Ash,” he noted—put their homes in Australia, Tuscany, Saint Moritz, and Cannes, and their apartment in Paris, up for sale and moved permanently to the Naples house.

  After the meeting with Marisa, Beaumont approached Ash with the idea about me posing as her nephew. He told her that my undercover assignment was confidential, so he couldn’t share the details with her except to say that I was a retired Chicago detective helping the city with an important and sensitive investigation. Her role would be to help me meet people in her social circle.

  Ash told him she’d be thrilled to take part in the investigation, whatever it was about. She would not only introduce me into Naples society, she said, she would also tutor me on how to behave in her world. She thought I needed that because, I assumed, there was no book titled Social Skills For Dummies.

  Marisa warned me not to get too friendly with any of the “society sluts” that I would be meeting. “Cougars,” she also called them, “on the prowl for a handsome rich guy, with an emphasis on the rich.”

  I assured her that she had nothing to worry about because these women would spit me out like a bad oyster when they discovered my true identity. She punched me hard on the arm because that apparently wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear.

  I walked down the curved marble staircase from the second floor, resisting the urge to slide down the wide banister, and caught a view of the Gulf of Mexico, framed by palm and banyan trees through large Palladian windows.

  Hanging on a wall at the bottom of the staircase was a painting of a small green footbridge going over a pond with flowering purple bushes behind it. I knew that it wasn’t the Michigan Avenue Bridge over the Chicago River because it was too small, and the water didn’t look polluted. A brass plaque on the bottom of the ornate wooden frame ID’d the painting as The Japanese Bridge at Giverny by Claude Monet.

  The only artwork I owned was a watercolor of Wrigley Field by a Chicago artist, Paul Ashack, which my ex-wife, Claire, gave me as a birthday present one year. Even though it’s an original, I suspected that this Monet fellow’s painting was worth more to an art collector, even if not to me.

  My painting hung above my b
ed on the Phoenix and was one of the things Claire didn’t want in our divorce settlement. She also didn’t want my softball bats, my Chicago PD marksmanship trophies, my bass lures, or my extensive collection of beer bottle openers. Freud admitted that he didn’t know what women wanted. Me neither. Some of those beer can openers are collectors’ items.

  We’re sure not in Wrigleyville anymore, Toto, I thought as I walked through the french doors leading out to the backyard.

  I found Ash seated at a round, glass-topped, wrought iron table reading the National Tattler, one of Sir Reginald’s newspapers. A big bold page-one headline revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was secretly gay. Apparently the Tattler had scooped the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Pravda, and 60 Minutes on that one.

  Beaumont introduced me to Ash the previous night over dinner at a fancy French restaurant called Provence. I was still dressed as Jack Starkey then. The other diners likely assumed I was Ash’s driver or bodyguard, especially when I told the waiter to hold the black truffle sauce on my filet mignon and bring ketchup. Which I meant, and which he did. I guess the chef whipped up the ketchup from scratch because it didn’t taste like Heinz, but I made do. I knew that I’d have to improve my table manners when posing as Frank Chance.

  Over dinner, I could tell that Ash was excited about her role in the drama that was about to begin. She confessed to being a bit bored with her life in Naples, especially with her husband gone, and said that it would be “a hoot to scam the swells,” even if she didn’t know why we were doing it.

  She was—I will avoid being condescending to a fine lady by adding “still”—a very attractive woman. At dinner, she wore her long blonde hair in a single braid down the middle of her back. Her hourglass figure was draped in a low-cut, red satin dress. She had green eyes, and the smooth skin of a much younger woman.

  When I told her she looked much too young to be my aunt, she said it was all thanks to plastic surgery, a personal trainer who “works me like a rented mule,” and “the miracle of Botox.”

  “When you get to be my age, sweetie, nature is not your friend,” she said. “It needs all the help it can get.”

  When I approached the table, Ash looked up from her paper, smiled, winked, and said, “Well, well, the frog has been transformed into a handsome prince.”

  “Croak, croak,” I replied, and sat down.

  “Let’s have some breakfast while we chat,” she said.

  She picked up a small crystal bell and shook it. A man appeared from the doorway to the kitchen pushing a brass cart like the ones hotels use for room service. He was somewhere in his sixties, with thinning hair and a pencil mustache. He was wearing a starched white jacket and neatly pressed black pants. The butler, I presumed. I wondered if his name was Jeeves.

  “Thank you, Martin,” Ash said. “We’ll serve ourselves.”

  When Martin had gone back into the house, Ash said, “I asked Suzette, she’s my cook, to make sourdough french toast topped with cinnamon sugar and plantains sautéed in butter and brandy, strong espresso to kick-start your motor, freshly squeezed OJ from trees on my property, side dishes of thick smoked bacon and grilled chorizo sausages, banana nut muffins, and a bowl of fresh fruit. I hope that’s okay.”

  Okay? I began to salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs—and also like my Uncle Lou at family dinners. “That sounds great,” I said. “I usually make do with drip coffee, OJ straight from the carton, and a Pop-Tart.”

  She served me generous portions of everything as I watched a gecko stroll along the marble balustrade surrounding the patio. As I tucked into my breakfast, Ash regarded me with a serious look. I noticed that she’d put only fruit and a bran muffin on her plate.

  “Is this assignment dangerous?” she asked.

  I got the feeling that maybe she hoped it was. “No, I don’t think so,” I told her. “And certainly not for you.”

  She smiled. “I have absolutely no doubt that Detective Jack Stoney will crack the case.”

  That surprised me. “So you know Bill Stevens’s books?”

  “Oh yes. I’ve read every one. I was amazed when Charlie told me they’re based on you. I have a celebrity in my home! Too bad I can’t tell anybody.”

  She picked up a ripe strawberry and took a bite. “Say, do you think that what’s-his-face, the author, would ever base one of his characters on me?”

  “I’ll introduce you to Bill Stevens the next time he’s in town,” I told her. “And I’ll suggest that to him.”

  “Goody,” she said as she finished the strawberry. “And ask him to make me younger. I really turned heads three or four presidential administrations ago!”

  “You still do, but I don’t see why he wouldn’t make you any age you want, Ash,” I said. “After all, he improved upon the real me.”

  She leaned across the table and pinched my cheek. “Oh, hon, I’m sure you do fine just as you are.”

  Martin appeared to clear the breakfast dishes. This was my first meal served by a butler. I wondered how I’d ever done without one.

  When he’d gone back into the house, Ash said, “Reggie brought him over some years ago from Boodle’s, one of his London gentlemen’s clubs. He’s a dear. Suzette’s from Strasbourg. Reggie hired her from his favorite restaurant, I forget the name, because she made such wonderful pâté de foie gras, which he ate with nearly every meal, including breakfast. That stuff goes straight to your arteries but, as it turned out, Reggie didn’t have to worry about heart disease.”

  “So what’s the agenda for today?” I asked her.

  “We’re lunching at my country club so you can begin meeting people. And I’ve invited a few friends for a dinner tonight in your honor. Think of it as your debutante coming-out party.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “There is something you might enjoy right now, Jack. I assume you like cars from the Corvette you drove here.”

  “I do.”

  “Take a look in the garage. The keys are hanging in a box on the wall.”

  9.

  BOYS AND THEIR TOYS

  The garage, like the main house, was a tan stone Tudor-style structure with a black slate roof. The house was nearly the size of Windsor Castle, or so it seemed to me; the garage was slightly larger than the residence of the archbishop of Chicago on North State Parkway.

  I went in through an unlocked side door, found a light switch, flipped it on, and beheld a sight that made me glad I have a strong heart. Otherwise I might have needed a jolt from electric defibrillator paddles because there, on a floor made of large black-and-white tile squares, was parked Sir Reginald’s magnificent automobile collection.

  I’d seen a TV special about Jay Leno’s car and motorcycle collection. This one was smaller, but no less impressive in its quality and variety. Reggie probably had more vehicles at his other residences. Maybe Ash had them auctioned off or they were in storage.

  Boys and their toys.

  I walked around admiring the cars, stroking their fenders like you would a pet. There was a red Porsche Carrera GT, a silver Stutz Bearcat, a black 300SL Mercedes Gullwing Coupe, a black Rolls-Royce Corniche, a blue Shelby Cobra with a white racing stripe, a green MGB GT, a yellow Duesenberg with a leather steamer trunk attached to the back, a pink Cadillac convertible, and a white 1953 Corvette convertible, which was the first year Chevy made them. And more. I was completely dazzled.

  Framed posters from Formula One Grand Prix races around the world were hanging on the walls: Monaco, Germany, Spain, France, Japan, Italy, and the US, with signatures on them of famous drivers. There was a photograph of Sir Reginald in a driver’s suit, a broad smile on his face and a helmet in his left hand, standing beside a white Jaguar racing model.

  The late Sir Reggie was a handsome man, tall, with an angular face, dark hair, and an athletic build. His broad smile revealed a set of perfect teeth, uncommon in the British Empire of that era. He was standing ramrod straight and resembled a photo I’d seen of Lord Mountbatten.


  There, at the end of a row, was the car I knew I would drive that day. I found the keys in the cabinet, pressed a button on the wall to open the garage’s big double doors and eased myself into the cockpit of an ice blue Ferrari F149 California with its hard top off.

  Undercover detective work does have its moments.

  I put the key into the ignition and started the engine. It produced a low, guttural roar like that of an awakening jungle cat. I drove out onto the brick pavers of the courtyard and let the beast idle as I closed the garage doors. A breeze coming off the gulf had blown fragrant violet flowers from a lilac bush into the Ferrari’s cockpit. I brushed them off the driver’s seat, got in, and blinked from the dazzling rays of the tropical sun. I noticed a pair of tortoise-shell sunglasses on the dashboard. Maybe this was the last car Sir Reginald drove while here. Or ever.

  With a flip of the F1 paddle shifter, the car slipped into first gear and I roared off down palm-lined Gordon Drive, with the gentle, rolling waves of the gulf on my left and a row of palatial estate homes, equal to the grandeur of the Howe residence, on my right. I’d never driven a car with a paddle shifter, but I’m a motor head so I figured it out with a minimum of bucking and jerking.

  I punched on the radio and found an FM station playing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

  The moment was dead-solid perfect. A rarity in this life, so you have to enjoy such moments when they come your way. I fished my cell phone out of my pants pocket and called Marisa. She answered on the first ring.

  “How’s it going so far?” she asked.

  “Excellent. Got time to go for a ride in my new wheels?”

  “As long as it’s not a motorcycle. I’m nobody’s biker bitch.”

  I got a speeding ticket on my way to Fort Myers Beach, but I didn’t care. If you drove a car like that at the speed limit, you risked offending the ghost of Enzo Ferrari himself.