Taco Noir

by Steven Gomez

  “And the show begins,” I sighed.

  “Exactly! And once they get a bit of the song and dance, voila! They’re hooked! Repeat customers!”

  “And the song and dance is…?” I asked. I barely saw him so much as twitch as the lights in the parlor went out. I felt a breeze blow through the room, and I heard music in the distance. An eerie light filled the celling, and a brass trombone appeared to be floating over our table. Our table rose and tilted, even though both of Miguel’s hands rested on the top. After a moment of this, the lights came back on, and all appeared as it was before.

  “Not bad,” I said, honestly impressed with the display. “Can you pull a rabbit from your hat as well?”

  “That stuff’s for suckers,” he told me, the pride brimming over in his voice. “I’m strictly first class all the way.”

  I held a hand up to cut him off before whatever he was selling started to run downhill. “You can count me out of this racket,” I told Miguel. “I’m strictly legit.”

  “You got it all wrong,” Miguel said, shaking his head. “I’m in love.”

  We retired to the kitchen, bringing the bottle of booze with us to keep the conversation well-lubricated, and Miguel told me about the apple of his felonious eye. Young Kate Worthington came from old-school money and spent her life behind the gilded walls of privilege. She had been raised by nannies and shipped off to boarding school when she was old enough to start being inconvenient. Now of age and coming into her fortune, young Kate was a beautiful young thing with all the world experience of a hot house orchid.

  Miguel had first laid eyes on the young debutante when he was running a scam on the partners in Daddy Worthington’s law firm. He found his way to becoming the pet sooth-sayer for the senior partner, but while young Miss Worthington was on a break from college, Miguel met her and fell head over heels.

  “It’s that old story,” Miguel said, sipping his whiskey as we watched the chickens scratch in the yard. “I took one look, and it was like the rest of the world didn’t exist.” He put down his glass and turned towards me, away from the chicken infestation outside.

  “I’m a changed man,” he said. “I want to marry Kate and she wants to marry me. I bought this house out here so that we could settle down and raise a few kids.”

  “And you outfitted your new home with fake ghosts and rising tables because…?”

  “It’s my old life!” he said, throwing his arm towards the front parlor. “I would give it all up today if we could get married.”

  “As far as I can tell, neither one of you is a child. Why don’t you just tell the old man to stuff it, marry little Miss Ivy League, and raise a brood of ill-mannered chickens?”

  “Because Jasper Worthington has me under his thumb,” he said. “It ain’t a stretch to say that I’ve made some mistakes in my life. I’ve got a prison record, I’m on parole, and old Jasper could get me sent back up the river with a single phone call.

  “And he hasn’t done so yet because…?”

  “Because Kate and I have kept our love a secret,” he said. Myself, I didn’t think that people spoke that way anymore, but here we were. “We’ve lived our lives in the shadows, afraid of what her old man could do. You gotta help me.”

  “And how can I possibly help you?” I asked. A memory flashed through my head, when I was overseas and my unit found itself smack in the middle of a mine field. The feeling was very similar to how I felt right now.

  “I need to get something on the Worthington family,” he said. “I need some insurance so that Kate and I can start our lives.”

  I left Miguel in the front yard, standing among his evil little birds. I promised him that I would at least look into the Worthingtons, and I received a few more pecks and scratches from Miguel’s nasty chickens for my trouble. “I can’t pay you much,” Miguel told me as I closed the gate on the picket fence behind me, “but I’ll make you a batch of my mom’s beef stew when you’re done.” I told him where he could stick the beef stew and went to work.

  I did some light digging on the Worthington family and found that they had indeed battened down their family hatches. What the world at large knew about them was what was printed in the society pages. Daddy Warbucks Worthington was a pillar in the community. Mrs. Worthington took the silver spoon out of her mouth on weekends and used it in a soup kitchen on the East Side. If they had any skeletons in their closet, the closet was padlocked, boarded, and guarded by pit-bulls. Kate, on the other hand, was what we in the trade referred to as colorful.

  Little Kate was an only child, and her parents would only have dipped her baby shoes in bronze if they could dip them in gold first. If there was anything she was left wanting for as a child, I couldn’t find it. The parade of nannies, wet nurses, tutors, and baby sitters that made up most of Kate’s young life read like the cast of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. I could have asked Miguel to give me the rundown on young Kate’s life, but I wouldn’t trust him if he told me the correct color of smog.

  After calling in a favor or two at the DA’s office, I found that young Kate had never been convicted or arrested, but it wasn’t due to lack of trying. My contact, Mike McCarthy, remembered her name right off the top of his head, which was never a good sign. He told me that Kate Worthington spent both money and time like it was going out of style, and made a habit of paying no attention whatsoever to the rules that might slow her down. Everything from jaywalking to narcotics laws were bent or broken, and Kate’s father employed a junior partner in the firm just so he could clean up her nights on the town. It also looked as if the junior partner worked overtime. Miguel had described Kate Worthington with violins and rainbows, but the picture I had of her was hot jazz and bathtub hooch. And that meant there was more to this than met the eye.

  I changed gears by staking out Kate’s apartment. I waited for her to start her evening, and was a little surprised that her evening started around ten. As Kate sped off in a little convertible that was specially equipped to drive on the sidewalks, I hailed a cab to tail her. I had to hand over an extra C-note to the cabbie just so he could keep up. The cabbie, to his credit, managed to keep her taillights in sight, and we tailed her to the Pretty Kitty Night Club.

  The Kitty had a strict clientele policy that was intended to keep out mugs like me. It was the hallmark of a nice club, and I was sure that there was a photo of me hanging up in the coatroom, just in case. In most circumstances, I would have handed the chimp working the door a C-note and chalked it up to my client’s expenses. In this case, the expenses went to Miguel, and I was sure that payment would not be forthcoming. I was afraid that I might just have to dig into my own pocket to gain entrance, but then Lady Luck decided not to spit in my face for once and I caught a break.

  This particular door monkey was one Paulie the Pick, and even though he cut a fine figure as an impassable obstacle on the door, he owed me one from a few months earlier, when I provided him with an alibi for a stabbing in the East End. The big lug was losing money to me in a poker game, but when your nickname is “the Pick,” cops generally look to you first whenever they find a mug that is, shall we say, perforated.

  “Hey, shamus,” said Paulie as I approached the big lug. He grinned, showing off a selection of broken and missing teeth that reminded me that one didn’t get the position of working the door by hitting the books.

  “Hey yourself, handsome,” I said, stepping in front of the swells who were waiting in line for entrance to the Kitty. They were well-dressed society stiffs who made enough to wait in line, but not enough to get to the head of it. The couple I stepped in front of probably spent the last half-hour waiting in line before I cut them off, and they looked a little put-out. The guy started to protest to Paulie, but zipped it up pretty quickly when the Pick snapped open a switchblade and began to clean his nails.

  “So what can I do for a pal?” he asked as nonchalantly as a man picking his nails with a switchblade could.

  “I was hoping for an invite,” I told Pauli
e. “I’m trying to meet a better class of people.”

  “Well, they’re richer in there,” said Paulie, not bothering to look up, “but I wouldn’t call them better. Heck, I’ve seen kinder souls doing hard time.”

  “Still, I imagine it pays the bills,” I told Paulie, and he nodded, spiriting his switchblade away and cracking open the door for me to enter. From inside, jazz and cigarette smoke spilled out to the hopefuls waiting in line.

  “I imagine that’s what you’re doing here,” said Paulie. I nodded and said that I was working on a favor for another friend. If I still believed the story that Miguel handed me, then young Kate was as fragile as a lily in springtime. If she was a regular here, then Paulie would know.

  “I’m looking for a dame,” I told the Pick, flashing a photo I had dug up from the Society page.

  “So’s every other Romeo in this joint,” laughed Paulie. He took a look at the newspaper clipping I flashed and gave a long whistle. “Her?” Paulie shook his head. “You’re gonna have your hands full with this one, gumshoe.” Paulie had been around the block more times than an ice cream truck, and when a guy like the Pick whistled, it wasn’t because he forgot the lyrics.

  “You know the story on this dame?” I asked Paulie.

  “On ‘Good Time Katie?’” laughed Paulie. “Only that you can find her in her usual corner, holding court by draining her trust fund as fast as she can.” He threw a nod towards the bar. About a half dozen young men with their gears stuck in high surrounded a barstool. I could only guess that somewhere in the middle of the mass of young men was “Good Time Katie.” I patted Paulie on the back and made my way over to the sea of eager fellows. On my way through the crowded club, I drew more than a few stares that led me to think my tie might have clashed with my jacket. I got to the boys surrounding the good Miss Worthington, took a deep breath, and waded in.

  “Do you mind?” asked one of the young men as I jostled my way through the crowd. I smiled and opened my jacket, letting the young man lay eyes on the snub nose in my shoulder holster. The crowd thinned.

  “Well, do I know you?” slurred a kitten in a full length evening gown. She had raven hair, ruby lips, and the smell of gin was so thick on her breath I was surprised the wallpaper adhered to the walls.

  “Sure you do, kid,” I said, putting a heavy hand on the shoulder of her last remaining would-be suitor. The kid got the message and high-tailed it back to the bar. Kate fished around in her pocketbook and came up with a cigarette. She also managed to come up with a lighter but, after a few tries, the task of lighting it proved too much. I took the lighter and lit her cigarette for her. I find it’s the little things that help build trust.

  “I saw the gun,” she said, cutting right to the heart of the matter. “Are you a cop?”

  “I’m a private detective,” I told her. “I was asked to look in and make sure that no one is disgracing the family name.”

  “Who would do that?” she slurred, throwing her arms open and scaring off her neighbors with a lit cigarette. Despite the law of gravity, the delicate flower wobbled in her bar stool but stayed upright. “The only thing that could make this night better was if you wouldn’t let me drink by myself.” I looked at the sea of men waiting to take my seat as soon as I vacated it, and thought she wasn’t a woman destined to be alone for long.

  As if by magic, a champagne flute appeared on the table in front of me, and young Kate filled it for me, emptying the bottle in the process. Without looking she dropped the bottle behind her, where it landed on a pile of its dead confederates. Kate took a drag of her cigarette, and motioned to a waiter at the same time. From somewhere under the table I felt a hand grip my thigh.

  I hoped it was Kate, but no matter who it was, it wasn’t good.

  “I’m here on behalf of a friend,” I told Kate, prying her fingers from my leg. “He’s concerned that you might be getting yourself into trouble.” If this was the woman that Miguel had fallen in love with, it was he who was looking for trouble.

  “So you’re sorta like Cyrano Dewatsis?” she said, draining her glass to make room for the limited amount of bubbly that wasn’t already inside her.

  “Er, yeah, exactly like that,” I said. Something wasn’t adding up. The woman across the table from me, the one with the wooden leg, didn’t jibe with the innocent kid that Miguel described to me. Miguel just wasn’t that naive. I sipped my champagne as she gulped hers, asked a few more questions, and listened to the musical stylings of one of the Dorsey brothers.

  Kate Worthington told me her life’s story, a story mostly punctuated with men. As she went into detail about her years abroad, I lost count of the loves of her life, but that was probably my fault. I only had ten fingers.

  “I’m sure it’s been a full and rich journey,” I told young Kate, “But where does Miguel come in?”

  “Who?” Kate asked, her eyelids beginning to sag.

  “Miguel Ramirez,” I told the young drunk. “Tall, dark and weighs about one fifty nothing?” The alcohol haze continued to cloud her eyes. She still had no idea what I was talking about.

  “Dark hair, dark eyes, and equally dark heart?” I asked. “He knows all, tells all? Has a way with a crystal ball?” I still saw no recollection. “Your boyfriend?”

  “Oh, Kandu!” she said with a squeal. “He’s absolutely yummy!” Her appearance took a conspiratorial look, and for the briefest of moments, she might have passed for sober.

  “He’s my spiritual advisor,” she slurred. “I don’t make a move without him.”

  “So you’re not his girlfriend?” I asked.

  “Girlfriend?” she said with a gasp that expelled a small cloud of champagne. “For God’s sake, the man is a fortune teller! I wouldn’t date a fortune teller any more than I would…”

  “A private eye?” I suggested.

  “Exactly!” replied Kate. “It would be like dating the town drunk!” I looked down to see that Kate had drained her latest flute of bubbly. I decided to let the town drunk crack pass.

  “Besides,” she said, motioning for the river of champagne to flow once again. “Daddy would cut me off if I were to take up with someone so …”

  “Interesting?” I suggested.

  “Pedestrian,” she said.

  “Perish the thought,” I said, rising from the table. My chair hadn’t even cooled before another able young body filled it. I gave a wave to Kate, but she was too busy drinking in her next companion.

  I left the Pretty Kitty Night Club and grabbed a cab. Here in the well-lit, well-monied streets of uptown, cabs were easy to get. When I told the cabbie where I wanted to go, he seemed disappointed. Once he got to the suburbs, there were no more fares to be had. While the cabbie drove, I had time to sit back and add up what Katie and Miguel had told me. The math didn’t work, but I had time, the road, and a tight-lipped cabbie in my favor, so by the time I got to Miguel’s house I was able to fudge the equations.

  I let myself into the yard, where the hen lay in wait. She attacked my shins in earnest, but this time I wasn’t in the mood. I already had a few bandages on my calves from our earlier meeting and this time I was ready for little Lulu. I took care of the pugnacious bird and rang Miguel’s doorbell.

  “Ah, my friend, come in,” said Miguel, bowing and bidding me welcome with a wave of his hand. I sat down at the same round table that the spirits levitated earlier. Miguel turned his back and dug the booze bottle and glasses out of his hidey-hole and poured us a couple of drinks. We clinked our glasses together once again and drank.

  “I have awaited your return with bated breath. So what were you able to find out about my beloved?”

  “I found out that Kate can drink any sailor in the fleet under the table, she has absolutely no sense of sarcasm, and that her fiancé is a no good, lying, piece of….”

  “Easy, there gumshoe,” said Miguel, holding up his hands in defense. “I can hear you, after all.”

  “Maybe, but you aren’t her boyfriend.” I said, tossi
ng back the last of the booze. “She doesn’t even have one.”

  “What makes you say that, hombre?”

  “Because I have a brain in my head and occasionally I use it.”

  Miguel had been running the Kandu scam in town for a while, but there was only so much info a false fakir could divine using luck, charm, or cheap booze, and in the mystical world of the here-after, inside information was the coin of the realm. He had used his skill to find out what he could about his mark, hook them on his fortune-telling grift, and then reel them into his parlor. Once there, Dear Uncle Whatziz would speak to the mark through Miguel, and the spirits would instruct the bereaved to start writing checks. When the information stopped, Kandu would skip town.

  Miguel had run his scam for a while now, making it tick with clockwork precision. He was on the verge of blowing town when he met Kate Worthington and her all-star trust fund. She was too good to pass up, but he had already been running the Kandu grift thin and had to blow before his past caught up to him. In order to do this and reel in Kate, he needed to dig up everything he could on her in a jiffy. That was where I came in.

  “And I’m not giving you anything,” I told the smarmy conman.

  “Beg your pardon?” asked Miguel, pausing in mid-pour.

  “I’m not going to let you get one over on this kid,” I said, taking the shot glass and downing what was there before the grifter had a chance to pour it back in the bottle. “I’m not going to help you run your scam on the Worthington girl so that you can wad up a towel on your head and milk her for her fortune.”

  “It is called a turban, you cut-rate gumshoe,” Miguel hissed at me. He quickly grabbed the shot glass from my hand and tossed it to the floor, shattering it into pieces. “And Kate Worthington is no saint! When did you become a boy scout?”

  “Not a boy scout,” I told him. “I just feel for the little moron. I would rather see her throw away her fortune the old fashioned way than see you scam it out from under her.”