Gumshoe for Two

by Rob Leininger

  Inside and out, the house was a jewel. An aura of money hung in the air, oozing out of the walls. Not millions, but it was clear that these old gals weren’t hurting.

  Ma plopped down on a couch with a flowery design, looked at me, and patted the place next to her. “Right here, darlin’. Sit.”

  Darlin’ sat. Jeri smiled and took an overstuffed chair, facing Ma and me across a glass-topped coffee table held up by porcelain cherubs. Okay, that bordered on hideous.

  Ma patted my knee with a pudgy hand that resembled a ham. She looked at Jeri. “Okay, hon, what’s up? Been a while since I’ve seen you. Not since the hospital.” She turned to me. “And you, big guy. Person’d never know you took a sword in the chest. You look pretty fit.”

  “He is,” Jeri said. All she’d had was a mild concussion, so her stay in the hospital back in August wasn’t as long as mine. Mine had involved bedpans and unmentionable procedures.

  “Yeah?” Ma said, distracted from her initial question.

  “Very.”

  “Well, that sounds good, since you two’re gettin’ hitched.”

  “Real good,” I said, injecting myself into the flow, which got me another pat on the knee.

  “So,” Ma said to Jeri. “What’s goin’ on? You got somethin’ needs special handling?”

  “I think so. We’re hitting a dead end on a vehicle. All we’ve got is a description: green Mercedes SUV, new. A G550. Owners and addresses aren’t anything we recognize.”

  “At least it isn’t a goddamn white Chevy sedan two to five years old. Then you’d be down shit creek.”

  “Isn’t that up shit creek?” I asked, stepping in it.

  Ma looked at me. “Up shit creek, you could float back. Down shit creek without a paddle, you’re hosed. Never understood that ‘up shit creek’ crapola.”

  Pit bull.

  “So what you’re wantin’ is deep background on the owners,” Ma said, facing Jeri again. “See if anything useful turns up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ma looked up at me. “It’s not strictly kosher, digging around like that without a court order, which we’d never get.”

  “Yup. Got that.”

  “Not strictly kosher—meaning, it’s frickin’ illegal, boyo.”

  “Yup. Makin’ my Boy Scout ears flame red.”

  Ma guffawed, then turned to Jeri. “It’d help if I had an idea what names would’ve rung a bell with you, if it ain’t the owners.”

  Jeri nodded at me. “Mort? You’re up.”

  I looked at Ma. The top of her head came to about my chin. “Names that’d ring a bell, huh? I’ve got a good one for you.”

  “Yeah? Shoot.”

  “Harold J. Reinhart.”

  Silence like we were swaddled in London fog for ten seconds. Then, “Well, hell, that’s a good one all right.”

  She fished in a pocket, came up with a pack of Camels and a Zippo. She lit up as neatly as a Marine, blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

  Camels. Holiday’s brand when she was fake smoking in a bar. Ma wasn’t faking, though. Her voice had a little gritty rasp to it.

  “Dicey,” she said. “Reinhart. Could set off alarm bells if I went diving in that pool without a raincoat on.”

  An impressive mix of metaphors for sure.

  “It’s one of the names you might run across,” Jeri said. “There are others. People around Reinhart.” She got a sheet of paper out of her purse and handed it to Ma—names she’d pulled off the DMV site. Registered owners of the kind of SUV we were after.

  Ma looked it over for half a minute. “These are names you got that you never heard of before, that right?”

  Jeri nodded. “So what we need are names associated with these that we might recognize.”

  “Associated.” Ma stared at the paper. “People around Reinhart. Relatives, business partners, political backers, maybe spouses and maiden names of those people, favorite singers, like that?”

  “Probably not favorite singers,” I said.

  “Settle down, hon.” She patted my knee again.

  “I only say things like that because I like it when you pat my knee, Ma.”

  Ma brayed laughter, hard enough to make her cough. “Don’t do that, darlin’. I’m not as tough as I look.”

  Right. She was a two-dollar steak in a Hell’s Angel roadhouse.

  “Glad you two’re having fun,” Jeri said. She blew me a kiss from six feet away.

  Ma closed her eyes and thought for a while. “Okay, so I come up with names associated with registered owners of these SUVs. We’re lookin’ for a connection to Reinhart—either Reinhart himself or someone around him who’s associated with someone around one of these SUV owners, that about right?”

  “That’s it,” Jeri said. “Mort?”

  “If I could figure out what she said, yeah.”

  Ma looked off into space for a while. “Not gonna be easy,” she said at last. “We’ll need background from both sides—Reinhart’s and SUV owners. Have to look deep, too. Reinhart’s wife, children, campaign manager, publicity agent, possible running mates, which I don’t think have been put out there yet. Not sure who’d want to run with that meathead anyway.” She looked at me. “Who else, boyo?”

  “Pat my knee, Ma.”

  She did.

  “You two’re a laugh a minute,” Jeri said, but she couldn’t help smiling.

  “Jayson Wexel,” I said. “Harry’s so-called chief of staff, who—imagine this—was either an accidental death not long ago, or a not-so-accidental murder. Found in his house, which had burned to the ground.”

  “Talk about a big goddamn bell clangin’ away,” Ma said. “I’d put him on a list right up there with Reinhart himself.”

  “Right,” I said. “There’s a lot going on. Whoever chopped off Reinhart’s hand didn’t like him much, so we need to look into his enemies, too. Whose toes did he step on on the way up? Wexel’s been with him a long time so he might’ve been involved in that toe-stepping thing. Who is Reinhart running against? And he’s got a trophy wife, so there’s probably a non-trophy wife out there who might be nursing a grudge. A guy like Reinhart probably has a crooked lawyer lying around, too, maybe a few girlfriends lurking in the wings.”

  “Christ, all that’ll make a long freakin’ list,” Ma said. “Not easy to get at, either. Especially secret girlfriends.”

  “What about the lawyers of all those people?” Jeri asked.

  “Lawyers?”

  “Privileged conversations allow them to conceal unethical behavior. You might want to look into the lawyers of people close to Reinhart, political insiders, close friends—”

  “Je-sus,” Ma said. “What you want is a phone book. Bet you don’t know any of those people, which means I’ll have to round up their names. That’ll be a job and a half in itself. One other thing . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  Ma patted my knee. “Reinhart’s hand was sent to you, darlin’.”

  I looked at Jeri. Jeri looked at me. Silence for half a minute. Then Jeri said, “Mort was nationally famous not long ago.”

  “Still am,” I offered humbly.

  “What I mean, Mort, is you were well known when that hand was shipped. Because of what we did this summer.”

  Interesting that we were talking about shipping Reinhart’s hand around like it was something from Hickory Farms. We never did anything like that in the IRS.

  “Guess you’ll have to look into people close to me, too,” I said to Ma. “Like Jeri over there. She looks pretty tough. You should find out if she owns a chainsaw.”

  Jeri hit me in the face with a pillow then said, “Mort and I will handle the Reinhart-Wexel side of things—public records stuff, try to identify people close to them, as many as we can.”

  Ma nodded. “I’ll have to dig way down in that list when you’re done.” She took a drag and blew a plume of blue smoke skyward. “I’ll work on these”—she held up the sheet of SUV owners Jeri had given her. “
Who knows? We might get lucky and get an early hit on the two lists.”

  I patted Ma’s knee. “That’s the spirit, kiddo.”

  She laughed, coughed, then leaned toward an ash tray on the coffee table and stubbed out her cigarette. “Piece a cake,” she said. “Whole thing shouldn’t take more’n two months.”

  “Two months—?”

  “Kiddin’, greenhorn. Take it easy.” She patted my knee one last time then gave it a squeeze.

  “Greenhorn?” I whispered to Jeri as we were going down the steps to the front yard. Early afternoon sunshine filtered through elms that were starting to think about shucking their leaves.

  “Don’t take it personally. To her, I’m still a greenhorn. She’s really good, Mort. I mean, really good. There’s no way we could do this without her.”

  “She didn’t teach you her best tricks? The quasi-legal stuff ?”

  “Nope. She said it would just get me into trouble. Said it was best if I kept things on the up and up for the first ten or fifteen years. Told me if I discovered my own tricks, I’d have a better idea how to cover my tracks.”

  “Smart lady.”

  “You have no idea. Seeing her like that, in a housecoat with a beer in one hand, you’d never know, never even guess. Her going rate is a hundred fifty bucks an hour.”

  I stopped. “Christ, Jeri. We’ll be broke in four days.”

  She grabbed my arm, kept me going. “Maudie owes me for other stuff. Something I did for her two years ago when I was still training with her. This’s free, no charge. If I’d brought up her fee she would’ve given me the evil eye, turned me into a pillar of salt.”

  Other stuff. I wondered what it might have been, but Jeri said she didn’t want to talk about it. Ma could tell me if she wanted to. When we got back to Jeri’s we got right on that list-making. Well, there was a half-hour delay that ended with us in the shower—and a phone call just to make the day complete.

  “Whew,” Jeri said at one point, right before the shower. “I need to meet this Holiday person in person. See how she did that to you.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. Maybe not a good idea, but I keep thoughts like that to myself.

  “Without even touching you,” Jeri added.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jeri snuggled up against me. “How about tonight, Mort?”

  “How about tonight what?”

  “Meeting Sarah. Or Holiday, whatever. If she has time and wants to, that is.”

  “Television buddies, telephone buddies, bicycle buddies,” I said as a delaying tactic. Which worked for all of forty-five seconds.

  “Huh?”

  I gave her the history of that progression. She laughed and kissed me on the forehead. “Bicycle buddies. I like that. You should call her. Maybe we can see her tonight.”

  “Turns out, I don’t have her number.”

  “Turns out, I do.”

  “So you could call her.”

  “Do I sense a little reluctance there?”

  “Not at all, sweetheart. I was thinking of spending a week or so in Uruguay. Now’s a good time for me.”

  She gave that some thought. “I’ve only seen her on TV—after you found Reinhart’s hand. How is she really—in real life?”

  “Pneumatic comes to mind.”

  She looked at me with one eye. “That’s not a description I’ve heard before. How’s it work?”

  “I’m going to let you think about it.”

  After the shower when she was looking at herself naked in the mirror, she turned and looked at me. “As in, pumped-up kinda full?”

  I touched my finger to my nose.

  Jeri laughed. “Now I’ve really got to meet this girl.”

  Which she did.

  But first there was a lot of easy-to-find public record stuff to look up: Reinhart’s Wikipedia biography, press releases, news items. We got thirty-two names in half an hour. Then a lengthy grind on the computer during which I learned more than I wanted to know about databases, Google searches, and a few programs Jeri subscribed to that required an investigator’s license, not available to the general public. Before she started on those secondary sources, she handed me her cell phone, after she’d already proactively tapped the screen to call Holiday-Sarah.

  “Hello?” Sarah said.

  “It’s me, kiddo,” I said, giving Jeri the eye. She smiled sweetly at me then held her ear an inch from mine to listen in.

  “Everyone calls me kiddo,” Sarah said. “So who’s ‘me’?”

  “Nice try. You studying?”

  “Like a fiend. My brain’s getting full and I’m starting to see double. What’s goin’ on?”

  “Want to meet Jeri?”

  “Sure! When? Where?”

  Eager. I still didn’t know everything they’d talked about during that three-hour phone call a few days ago.

  Jeri took the phone from me. “Mort’s favorite bar, Sarah. That okay?” I kept my ear near the phone in case I needed to grab it and throw it against a wall.

  “Jeri! Wow, what a coincidence. I was just talking to Mort.”

  Jeri laughed. “I don’t know what happened. He was right here. Next thing, he was gone.”

  “He was like that in Gerlach, too. I’d, like, take off a shirt or something and he’d disappear.”

  Terrific. This was going just swell.

  Jeri nudged my ribs with an elbow. “We were going to go to the Green Room tonight, Sarah. Would you like to meet us there? Say, eight o’clock? Not too late?”

  “Sure, perfect. I’ll be there. My first class tomorrow isn’t until ten in the morning.”

  “Could you dress up?” Jeri said. “You know, like you do.”

  “Uh, are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’ll try to find something kinda like that so we won’t look too different. Well, I probably won’t be as pneumatic as you but I’ll do what I can.”

  Jesus H. Christ.

  “Pneumatic? That sounds like something Mort might say.”

  Sonofabitch.

  Jeri slid an arm around my waist, pulled me closer. “He did. He’s very impressionable.”

  “Um. That’s good, I guess.”

  “It has been, yeah. Since I got back.”

  Sarah laughed. “Good. I’m glad. I’ll see you at eight.”

  “Uh-huh. See you.” Jeri ended the call.

  “Remember who set this up,” I said. “Don’t blame me for how things turn out.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “Two gorgeous women, only one of me. What do you think?”

  I’m never right about that and I don’t know why. I think it’s because women are strange. In July, when Jeri met my ex, Dallas, I expected fireworks, carnage, cannon fire booming across the room. What I got was two hot broads discussing running shoes, 10K runs, exchanging recipes, and chuckling about the only guy in the room.

  So there was Holiday, already at the bar with a Tequila Sunrise in front of her, wearing silver high heels and a red dress so short and open in front that I felt my eyes bug out. My life flashed in front of my eyes when she slid off a barstool and came toward us, first time Jeri had ever laid eyes on her. Holiday had gone all out. Her dress plunged so low I could see a sapphire stud glittering in her navel.

  Then they hugged.

  Didn’t expect that.

  Je-sus, that was one cushioned, rubber-bumper hug—like they were best friends who hadn’t seen each other for five years. I saw O’Roarke’s face go slack at the sight.

  Jeri had gone to Victoria’s Secret that afternoon and left me in charge of the computer. She came back with a bag I wasn’t allowed to peek in. When we drove to the Golden Goose in her Porsche, she had a crocheted wrap over her shoulders and across her chest. Night chill, she said. She took it off as we entered the Green Room and suddenly she was in a black dress showing enough cleavage to cause a riot of her own. I’d never before seen her like that in public. Ten seconds later the two of them were hugging.

  I wanted in on that
.

  Didn’t happen.

  In fact, I was left out for thirty long seconds, an afterthought to the evening’s festivities. But slowly I understood it, which is how I understand things. I was the centerpiece. I was their connection. As such, I should have been important, but I was an afterthought.

  Eventually they got around to me. Jeri held my arm, looked at Holiday, and said, “Omigod, Mort. I didn’t realize how strong you were. I mean, how strong you had to be.”

  Yep, me plenty strong.

  “I mean,” Jeri said. “Just look at her.”

  Holiday piped up, “He’s a rock. Like Gibraltar.”

  “He must’ve been. You, uh, weren’t always dressed up even . . . even that much, were you?”

  Don’t answer, don’t answer, don’t—

  Holiday took Jeri’s hand and said, “Let’s go talk.” She started to lead Jeri away, then tossed me a look. “You should get a drink. We’ll be back after a while,” and Jeri said, “I could use a white wine, Mort.”

  Oh, yeah. This was goin’ just great.

  But Mike Hammer never had it this good. Oh sure, a stray dame or two crossed his path, but compared to me Mikey was a piker, an amateur. And Spade? Sammy was a nobody, not a blip on a radar screen.

  As directed, I delivered the wine then took a stool at the bar. O’Roarke sidled over with a grin on his mug so wide it must’ve hurt.

  “How’s it goin’, spitfire?”

  “You can’t tell?”

  “Nope. I don’t know if you’re a hog in shit or about to get your nuts handed to you. So . . . sarsaparilla or a Pete’s?”

  “Pete’s. And a shot of bourbon. The good stuff.”

  He shoved a shot glass and a bottle of Wicked Ale toward me then put his elbows on the bar. “You’re somethin’ else with pieces, pal. Amazing, really.”

  “Pieces?” I glanced at the girls, chatting animatedly at a table thirty feet away. “Don’t let those two hear you say that.”

  “Pieces of people, dude. Heads and hands. You’re on TV all the time. Wish I was that good at something.”

  “Oh. Those kind of pieces. It’s a gift.”

  He looked at Holiday and Jeri. “There’s your woman with a thousand-dollar-a-night hooker. Explain that, buckaroo.”