The Mike Murphy Files and Other Stories

by Christopher Bunn

  “You thieving witch!” I yelled, bouncing up out my chair. By the time I ran down the stairs, she was gone. The streets were filled with the usual clutter of people hurrying to wherever it is they hurry, but there was no sign of her sleek brown head.

  I trudged back upstairs and spent a frustrating hour reading through the file. Mostly just a bunch of ladies who had gotten their hair done during the day and then gone home to chomp on various people such as their husbands, assorted neighbors, and random strangers. The chomping occurred mainly at night, accompanied by a lot of drooling and staggering around.

  I leaned back in my chair and considered. Not much of it made sense. I thought hard. My eyes glazed over. My stomach rumbled. I tried not to think about lobster stew and sea bass dumplings. I investigated my wallet and found three bucks. Enough for a Polish at Fat Joe’s Lunch Cart. I trudged downstairs and out into the sunlight.

  “Gimme a Polish with the fixings,” I said, slapping my three bucks on top of the counter.

  “One Polish, coming up,” said Fat Joe. He split a sourdough roll, plucked a sausage out of the hot water vat, squirted on mustard and ketchup, and shoveled on chopped onion, peppers, a pickle spear, and half an avocado. It looked good.

  “Sauerkraut,” I said.

  He piled a couple pounds on and handed the thing over. I took a bite. It was good.

  “Got any news for me?”

  “Wing Ling’s Happy Joy Beauty Shoppe,” he whispered, leaning over the condiments. “Wing does a lot of permanents. You should go there. Ask him about a permanent.”

  “I don’t do permanents.”

  “I wasn’t recommending you go get a permanent. I was merely suggesting you have a word with Wing. About permanents, if you know what I mean.” Fat Joe glanced around nervously at this point. The sidewalk was crowded with the usual rush of lunch pedestrians, but no one was paying us any attention. “Permanents are fascinating,” whispered Fat Joe.

  “No, they aren’t,” I said, irritated with his odd preoccupation. “They use highly toxic chemicals and they pretty much always involve large amounts of ladies congregated in one place, both of which I disapprove of, unless the chemical is whisky and the ladies are attractive.”

  “Permanents are fascinating,” he repeated stubbornly, being the fat head that he is. “Keep that in mind.” He tapped his forehead and winked. “In mind,” he repeated slowly. He mouthed the words again and winked some more.

  That was all the sense I could get out of Fat Joe, which wasn’t much. I walked away, polishing off the Polish. As I said, it was good. I didn’t have much else to do, so I headed down 32nd to Harkins Avenue. Wing Ling’s Happy Joy Beauty Shoppe was on the corner there. I figured I might as well stop by. Fat Joe never made much sense, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a chat with Wing.

  The door chimed as I walked through. The air smelled like burning tires, but it was empty except for Wing sitting in a chair. Some guy was singing a Frank Sinatra tune in Chinese on the radio. Wing popped out of the chair like a jack-in-the-box. He’s a little guy, short and bald with thick glasses. He says he’s genuine Chinese, but I figure he’s genuine Norwegian too, particularly with his blue eyes and his last name being Gustafson.

  “Ah-so, honored customer Mister Murphy,” he said, bowing. “You want haircut?”

  “You do permanents, Wing?” I said.

  “You want permanent?” he said, looking goggle-eyed behind his glasses.

  “Not exactly.”

  “You want, I do. Quick-quick. No problem. Thirty-dollar special for honored customer Mister Murphy.”

  “Maybe another time, Wing. I just wanna know about permanents, you savvy?”

  He looked confused. “Permanents for hair, Mister Murphy. You put special chemical on head, special rub, then special heat. Very nice. You look like young man. All the ladies say, oh see, there that special Mister Murphy man. He so handsome! I wonder where he get his permanent? And then you tell them, at Wing Ling’s Happy Joy Beauty Shoppe. You tell them, go to Wing Ling’s Happy Joy Beauty Shoppe! Go now!”

  “I don’t think that’s gonna happen, Wing.”

  “But you must!” he shouted. “You must tell them!”

  “Why?”

  “I need customer! All my customer gone!”

  Here, Wing danced about in rage, doing some kind of footwork that could’ve been either some kind of Chinese cultural dance or maybe one of those Norwegian folk dances they do in honor of the sardine harvest.

  “Where’d they go?” I asked, feeling like I might be on to something.

  “They all gone!” he sobbed. “All gone to Style By Flavia. Style By Flavia!”

  I left him weeping among the shampoo bottles. I’ve always been uncomfortable around overly emotional people of Chinese-Norwegian extraction. Besides, it was time to pay a visit to Flavia of Style By Flavia.

  It was overcast and starting to drizzle down by the time I reached Style By Flavia. A big pink neon sign shone above the shop window. I pushed the door open and walked inside. It was as crowded as a church potluck. The place was full of ladies, ranging in age from what looked like the Paleolithic era on up. Rows of vinyl chairs lined the walls, each with one of those Plexiglas cone-shaped hood things. All the chairs were occupied and the waiting area was standing room only. Attendants in matching black outfits floated back and forth, scissors in hand, looking exotic and blasé.

  One of the blasé attendants drifted up to me.

  “Welcome to Style By Flavia,” she said in monotone, looking at me like I was a smear of dried mayonnaise. “May I help you?”

  “Is Flavia around?”

  “Ms. Badawi is not available,” she said coldly. “She is never available.”

  I’m a patient guy, so I showed her my private investigator’s license. It’s an impressive card, embossed with a gold stamp from the city, the police chief’s signature, and a nice photo of me scowling at the photographer. She wasn’t impressed.

  “Ms. Badawi is not available.”

  “Look, you anorexic stalk of celery, I’m not—”

  “I am Flavia.” The voice came from behind me. It was one of those foreign voices that sounds like a cross between expensive silk and, well, another piece of silk that was even more expensive than the first piece of silk. I turned around. Standing there was a tall, curvy slice of genuine woman poured into some sort of satin number barely up to the containment job. She wore an enormous pearl necklace that gleamed like the despairing dreams of a thousand oysters. Now, my girlfriend Maura is one fine looker, but this woman was—well, I’d better leave it at that in case Maura ever reads this.

  “I am Flavia,” she repeated. “Who wants me?”

  “Well, er,” I said, snatching my hat off my head, before realizing I wasn't wearing one, “my name’s Mike Murphy. Private investigator. If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Mister Murphy,” she said slowly, as if tasting the sound of my name. “My time is precious. Exceedingly precious. Perhaps I will answer your questions, perhaps I will not. Perhaps I will simply have Hassan escort you out.”

  Hassan was standing behind her. I’m not sure why I hadn’t noticed him before. He was the biggest, ugliest, hairiest guy I’d ever seen in my life. He had hair everywhere, sprouting off the backs of his hands, springing off his face in a thick black beard, protruding from his collar. He had a bunch of bananas in his hand and he ate them, one by one, skin and all, staring at me all the while with his beady black eyes. I had a bad feeling about him.

  “I don’t mean to bother you, ma’am,” I said. “I’d just like to ask about permanents."

  She stared at me. “Permanents?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Permanents.”

  That’s right about when Hassan stepped forward. He was fast. Much faster than me. One massive hand whipped out, grabbed me by the throat, and yanked me off my feet. He dragged me backward, right out the front door. Through a haze of red, I could see Flavia standing there, h
ands on her hips. Even in a place as crowded as that, no one said a word or came to my aid. I suppose they were more concerned about not losing their place in the queue or messing up their hair.

  Hassan tossed me out onto the sidewalk. Rain streamed down. He didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything either. I couldn’t have. It was all I could do just to breathe and reinflate my lungs. He just stood there, chomping on his damn bananas. After a minute he went back inside. I lay on the wet sidewalk for a while. The concrete actually felt pretty good against my face.

  I made it back to my apartment feeling sorry for myself. There was nothing in the fridge except a beer, some of those individually wrapped cheese slices, and a take-out carton of egg foo yung. I piled the cheese on top of the egg foo yung and put it all in the microwave. I drank the beer and considered my day while the microwave hummed. It had been a bad day. My girlfriend was mad at me. I had lost four hundred bucks. A guy named Hassan had beaten me up in front of a room full of women.

  I ate the egg foo yung. It was good, but there wasn’t enough of it to fill my stomach. I checked the fridge again, but it was still empty. That’s when I remembered the lobster stew with sea bass dumplings. I dialed Maura’s number.

  “Hello?” she said. She sounded kind of sleepy.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hello to you, too. It’s me.”

  “Me?”

  “Me, Mike!”

  “Me, Mike?”

  “Yeah,” I said, beginning to feel as if our conversation wasn’t measuring up to our usual witty repartee. “You know. Mike, your boyfriend.”

  “Boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, boyfriend. I think I might just drop by for a taste of that lobster stew with sea bass dumpling. You know, dinner.”

  “Dinner?” Her voice seemed to sharpen with interest. I hung up the phone and strode out the door.

  Conversations with Maura don’t always go well. That’s just part of the whole boyfriend-girlfriend setup. Take it from me, if you haven’t tested the waters yet with your particular spoonful of sugar. But there had been something odd about this conversation. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it. Her lack of enthusiasm? Her choice of words? Her vocal tone, oddly reminiscent of a flesh-eating zombie? No. None of those made any sense. I put the matter from my mind as I hurried through the city streets. Lobster stew with sea bass dumplings! Now that was something to think about.

  The moon was rising past the horizon of rooftops and utility wires by the time I got to Maura’s apartment. The door was unlocked. It was quiet and dark inside. It didn’t smell like lobster stew.

  “Hello?” I said. “It’s me.”

  “It’s me,” echoed a voice. Maura was standing in the kitchen doorway. She had some kind of new amazing hairdo.

  “You look great, babe,” I said. “Fantastic hair. Did you get a permanent?” I sat down in the easy chair and put my feet up. “How about getting me a beer? When’s the lobster stew going to be ready? I’m hungry.”

  “Hungry,” she echoed again.

  I heard her walk up behind me. There was an odd sort of shambling quality to her footsteps. Maybe she was tired. Then I could feel her fingers in my hair, poking and prodding. It felt good. Real good.

  “Ahh,” I said, starting to get drowsy. “That feels good.”

  She dug in a bit harder. I could feel her leaning over and sniffing at my hair.

  “I switched to a new shampoo,” I said sleepily. “Deepro’s Dandruff Dandelion. Smells nice, doesn’t it?”

  Maura mumbled something. She bit my scalp gently.

  “That feels great, babe. But not now. Maybe after the lobster stew.”

  She wandered away and I closed my eyes. Dimly, I could hear her rummaging around in the kitchen. Cutlery rattled on the counter. Good. I was getting real hungry. I was also getting a slight pain in my right hip. Maybe that was due to the fact that I was sitting on Maura’s purse. I pulled it out. I'm gentleman enough to not go through a lady's things, so I put it on the lamp stand next to the chair. But before I did that, I did a quick look-see through it to find my missing four hundred bucks. I found about a hundred and fifty bucks, which is a bit surprising, as I’ve known Maura to blow through money like a hammerhead shark swimming through a school of tuna. I also found a receipt for a permanent at Style By Flavia. Seventy-nine bucks.

  Seventy-nine bucks!

  Well, I had to admit that her new hairstyle was pretty smoking hot. I turned around to tell her that—women like compliments—and that’s when I noticed her careening toward me with a knife and fork. She had kind of a glazed look in her eye and she seemed to be drooling. Another man might not have noticed anything wrong, particularly a married man. But I’m a detective and I’m trained to notice the little details.

  “Hey!” I said. “You should never run with knives. Or forks, for that matter. You could hurt yourself.”

  The fork stabbed down into the upholstery, about an inch from my head. I was afraid she was going to hurt someone with that knife, so I wrestled her into the closet and locked the door. She thumped about and hollered in there, but I’ve learned over the years that you have to be firm with women. They respect that in a man. The closet door shuddered. Something that looked like fork tines rammed through the wood.

  I grabbed the Style By Flavia receipt and left. That place was really starting to bug me. I found a cab idling by the curb and jumped in. The cabbie looked a bit surprised. I told him to burn rubber for the Grove Street precinct. He was a little scrawny guy with a scraggly beard and a floppy hat. He seemed confused about the column shift, but he got the hang of it after I yelled some encouraging curse words at him. We tore through town, hitting green light after green light. Even though it was night, the streets were crowded and all the restaurants seemed to be hopping. We pulled up at the police station with a screech of brakes.

  “Stay here!” I growled at the cabbie, tossing him a twenty. “I’ll be out in no time.”

  The Captain was in the operations room, poring over a pile of case reports. A box of half-eaten cold pepperoni pizza sat on the table next to him. I helped myself to two or three slices. He glared at me.

  “I’m not giving you a per diem for dinner if you’re gonna eat my pizza!” he snapped. “Have you got anything for me? Any leads?”

  “You ever had a permanent at Style By Flavia?”

  “What do you take me for, you idiot!” he yelled. “I don’t even wear deodorant!”

  “Any of those crazy women in your reports get their hair done at that place?”

  “Every one of ‘em. So what. Who cares. Why?”

  “I dunno. I’ve got a bad feeling about Style By Flavia. I think there’s some kind of tie-in between the permanents they do there and all the ladies running around the city snacking on people’s brains. That Flavia lady is something else. She’s got a thug working for her that would make a gorilla in the zoo look pretty. Wait. Wait a second!”

  The Captain stared at me.

  “Didn’t a gorilla go missing from the city zoo recently?”

  “Yeah,” said the Captain, “but what’s that got to do with the case?”

  But I was already out the door. It was time to give Style By Flavia another visit. I hopped into the cab and slammed the door.

  “Sixteenth and Lincoln, on the double!”

  We pulled into traffic, almost sideswiping a flower delivery truck. The truck driver leaned out and yelled some choice words in our direction, accompanied by primitive hand gestures.

  “Sorry, sorry,” mumbled the cabbie. “My apologies.” He was an unusual cabbie. Any cabbie worth his salt would have merely yelled back or rammed the offending vehicle. Still, I had more important things on my mind than deficient cabbies.

  The lights were out at Style By Flavia. The big pink neon sign over the door was dark.

  “Drive on by,” I said. The cab slid past down the block and parked under a dead streetlamp. I tossed another twent
y on the front seat.

  “I’ll be back,” I said. The cabbie sort of slid down in the seat and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

  I sauntered up the street, keeping an eye peeled for suspicious characters. The place was pretty quiet. Lights shone in a few apartment windows, but I was the only pedestrian on the block. I paused in front of the window of Style By Flavia, looking like an innocent passerby who might be interested in getting a permanent. It was dark inside and nothing moved. Moonlight fell on the rows of empty hairdresser chairs. In the back of the room, however, a thin line of light glowed underneath a door.

  I whipped out my handy lock-pick and fiddled with the lock. It opened, and I slipped inside. The place smelled of hair care products and something else. Maybe bananas. The smell made my nose twitch. I tiptoed across the room to the door in the back. I could hear a faint murmur of voices. I crept closer and pressed my ear to the door.

  “. . . zombies are a waste of time,” said the first voice. The voice sounded familiar, like two pieces of expensive silk rubbing together. It sounded like Flavia. “The process turns them into morons. They couldn’t find a hen in a henhouse.”

  A second voice rumbled in response. It was a deep, growling sort of voice. It sounded like it was talking a foreign language through a mouthful of food. I couldn’t understand it at all.

  “No,” replied Flavia’s voice. “I don’t think so. I’m tired of these whining women. I refuse to reimburse any of the permanents. Not a single dime. No, we’ll have to do it ourselves. Tomorrow night. It’s our best chance. What? What’s that? Shh!”

  I didn’t stay and listen to the rest of the conversation. I was already hightailing it for the front door. That’s the prudent thing to do after you sneeze when you’re eavesdropping. Behind me, I heard a crash and then the thump of very heavy feet. I banged through that front door like an Olympic sprinter. I would’ve taken the gold for the hundred meters, no sweat.

  “Start the car!” I yelled. The cabbie stuck his head out the window. “Start the car!” I looked back and saw a huge dark shape bounding down the sidewalk after me. The ground shook. The cab roared to life and lurched out into the street, accelerating away from me. I put on a burst of speed and dove for the door handle. I scrambled inside.