Dead Clown Blues

by R. Daniel Lester

  Yet she cared enough to try. Damn. It irked me and comforted me all at once.

  Every once in a while the phone in the rooming house hallway rang and there was no one on the other end of the line. But there was the sound of a Champagne bottle being popped and a kissing sound. Sent chills down my spine every time. I took it as greeting and warning combined.

  When the investigation into the tragic accident at the circus concluded and no charges were laid, Adora sold the family business to an American event company and bought a downtown Vancouver supper club with the proceeds. I read about it in the newspaper. She was the city’s latest gossip page golden child, photogenic, well-connected both above and below the legal waterline and quick on her feet with the one-liners.

  Cleveland Moyer disappeared, apparently not being seen anywhere since the day after I was released from the hospital. The cops didn’t seem to care. Said it was a free country and what was I doing poking around, anyway? They said he probably ran off to join the circus and laughed and ate more donuts.

  I cruised by Moyer’s house one afternoon, in the tow truck, getting the feel for how it handled, but there weren’t any real answers there. Only an overgrown lawn and a month’s worth of newspapers stacked at the door. Funny, though. Brand new Cadillac like that and he leaves it outside of his garage, with the window rolled down and the door slightly ajar. Must’ve left in a hurry. Sure. And maybe the trail of blood drops that started in the Cadillac and ended down the driveway, at the curb, was only because he cut himself shaving.

  Just another maybe.

  At night now, I count them like sheep.

  But I don’t recommend this. Maybes only keep you awake. Maybes jump around in your head. And they’re slippery. And you can’t grab them. But if they do come close, be careful. Maybes have sharp teeth and a wicked bite. And once a maybe gets hold of you it never lets go.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to all the readers who ever encouraged me to keep going and to all the writers who made me say I’ll never be able to write so well. Challenge accepted.

  Thanks to Ron Earl Phillips, publisher of Shotgun Honey, and to Eric Campbell and Lance Wright at Down & Out Books. It’s an honour being part of the family.

  Thanks to Andrea for all the German directness and support over the years. Couldn’t have done it without you.

  And thanks to Tilda for all the giggles. It’s the best sound in the world.

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  As a keen apprentice in the story trade, R. Daniel Lester has consumed a lot of coffee (a mandatory requirement according to the manual), written himself into and out of countless corners, added many words to blank pages, self-published three books (including the novel Die, Famous!), and made tens of dollars along the way.

  His work has also appeared in print and online in such places as Adbusters, Geist, Shotgun Honey, Bareknuckles Pulp, The Flash Fiction Offensive, Broken Pencil, Pulp Literature and The Lascaux Prize Anthology.

  He currently lives in Toronto, Canada, with his spouse and daughter.

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  BOOKS BY R. DANIEL LESTER

  The Carnegie Fitch Mystery Fiasco Series

  Dead Clown Blues

  40 Nickels

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  Here is a preview from Polo’s Long Shot, a Nick Polo mystery by Jerry Kennealy.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  Chapter 1

  George Rigsdale hated me. Well, maybe hated is too strong a word, but despised might not be strong enough. Rigsdale was the in-house investigator for Feveral & Lenahan, one of the largest full-service law firms in San Francisco. They represented many of the major insurance carriers in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and handled everything from dog bite cases to litigation involving major airplane crashes, mergers, and acquisitions, as well as insurance and banking transactions for their clients. They also handled criminal matters, mostly of the type where the feds go after a bank or stock brokerage firm.

  I was called in when Rigsdale and his staff of seven computer geeks couldn’t get the job done.

  I did feel a little sympathy for the guy. He had to go strictly by the book in his investigations—F&L did not want him doing anything illegal that might get them sued—while I, an independent contractor, could commit the types of misdemeanors and occasional felonies needed to get results.

  Rigsdale was on the short side. He had a triangular-shaped face, wheat-colored hair, with a silver-dollar size bald spot at the back. He had a precisely trimmed mustache pasted under a ski-slope shaped nose. His eyes were pale gray, and whenever I spoke to him I focused on his eyes for a second or two and then moved up to his eyebrows. Rigsdale would adjust, tilting his head back to maintain eye-to-eye contact, and then I’d raise my focus again, and he’d follow suit. My objective was to have him tilt so far back that he’d fall backwards and land on his butt.

  We were in his office, which was located on the seventeenth floor of the Steuart Tower Building. The floor-to-ceiling window had a view of the skyscraper across the street. The offices that overlooked the bay, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge were occupied by the company attorneys.

  It was a good-sized room with a walnut-topped black metal desk, a black leather chair, a matching couch, and a table holding three computers, two printers, and several wireless routers, their monitors of red lights silently winking and blinking.

  One wall featured a watercolor landscape with angry, foam-tipped waves crashing into a peppermill shaped lighthouse. A brass-printed tag the size of a bar of motel soap at the bottom of the frame identified the artist as Laura Feveral.

  Rigsdale was usually a neat and trim dresser, but today his suit jacket was off, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his tie at half-mast, and his collar undone. He reminded me of one of those TV weathermen, the ones who sit behind a desk in an air-conditioned office with makeup people at the ready. When there was a really big storm they liked to do the roll-up-the-sleeves bit and have their hair in slight disarray, while interviewing a reporter who was actually out in the storm, holding onto a streetlight for dear life.

  “I may have an assignment for you, Polo.”

  He liked to pronounce my name as PowwLoww.

  “That’s Italian isn’t it?” he’d asked at our first meeting.

  “Sicilian,” I’d told him, causing his frown to deepen. George claimed to be a direct descendent of one of the families that came to America on the Mayflower. He hadn’t liked it at all when I’d pointed out that an Italian by the name of Christopher Columbus had beat the Mayflower by a couple of hundred years.

  “Who’s the attorney that asked for me?” I said. The only assignment Rigsdale would hand me would be sweeping the parking lot.

  He sank down into his chair and leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. “Mr. James Feveral.”

  Jim Feveral was the senior member of the firm, and a fan of mine. I had helped him out in several cases. He seemed to get a vicarious pleasure in having me run down difficult witnesses or serve subpoenas on people who reacted violently to those kinds of things.

  Rigsdale leaned back in his chair, sighed, then leaned forward and opened a drawer slowly, as if afraid of what was inside.

  He withdrew a thick manila envelope and placed it carefully in the middle of the desk.

  “We want you to locate someone.” He slid a grainy black and white photograph from the file, rested his index finger on the corner and slowly pushed it toward me. “This someone.”

  The man in the photo was tall, with a full head of dark curly hair. He had a trench coat draped over his shoulders like a cape and was glaring in the direction of the camera, as if he didn’t appreciate having his picture taken.

  He was leaning against the wall of an outdoor café, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other. It was impossible to know from t
he photo where it was taken, but the cobblestone street and table umbrellas had a European flair.

  “Who is he, George?” I asked casually, knowing that it irritated him to be called by his first name by those he considered underlings.

  “Al Lamas is the name he’s using. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are others.”

  “What’s Jim Feveral’s interest in him?”

  Rigsdale coughed into his fist and gave me what he must have considered a hard look. “Mister Feveral merely wants you to find the man. I’ll handle the rest.”

  I picked up the photograph. The café Lamas was standing in front of had a canvas awning, but the name wasn’t visible.

  “When and where was this taken?”

  Rigsdale stirred in his chair, as if to relieve an aching muscle. “Rome, Italy. Approximately six months ago.”

  “Who took the photo?”

  “What difference does it make?” Rigsdale said, his voice hoarse with anger. “We think Lamas is here—in the Bay Area.”

  “The more I know about him, the easier it will be for me to find him, George.”

  He responded by shoving the envelope across his desk. “Take it. There are more photos in there, along with some of my reports.” His voice softened. “There is some urgency. If you cannot devote full time to the case—”

  “I know. You’ll get someone else. What’s your interest in this Mr. Lamas?”

  “We believe he’s…taken something that doesn’t belong to him. The owner wants it back.”

  “What did he take?”

  Rigsdale chewed that over—literally, his teeth riding over his lips. “An object of art. A chauri, a flywhisk, with a carved ivory handle and yak’s tail brush.”

  “You’re kidding me, George.”

  He made a waving motion with his right hand. “It was allegedly used to keep the flies off some prince in India in the fifteenth century. There are a few photos of it in the envelope.”

  “I know that you and your staff have worked hard on this, covered all the data bases, ran him through social media, civil filings and motor vehicle records, and haven’t come up with anything, which means Lamas is going to be difficult to find. Why is he so important to Feveral? I have to know the details.”

  Rigsdale raised an eyebrow as he considered the request. “All right, but this is a very confidential situation, understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “Lloyd’s of London is the insurance carrier. Mr. Paul Bernier, a highly valued client of ours, is the owner of the chauri. We do a great deal of legal work for him. He’s a former international banker and has a home in Nicasio, over in Marin County, a penthouse apartment here in San Francisco, and a villa in France. He has many business interests, including wine. He owns more than a thousand acres of vineyards in prime Napa Valley and Sonoma County locations, as well as throughout France. And he is a volunteer curator at the city’s Asian Art Museum.”

  Rigsdale glanced over to see if I was properly impressed.

  “Until right now, I’ve never heard of the gentleman. Do we know what Al Lamas does for a living?”

  “He described himself to Gloria, Mr. Bernier’s adopted daughter, as being a stress-relief consultant.”

  Ah, consultant—one of those delusive words. You don’t have to be licensed to be a consultant. You could describe yourself as a brain surgeon consultant, but have no real knowledge of medicine or surgery—you’re just a consultant. Stress relief could mean anything from yoga, to massage, to drugs.

  “Is Gloria Bernier dealing with some kind of stress?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Does she have an idea as to where he lives, or where his office is located?”

  “She told me that they had a social relationship, however, she never visited his residence or office.”

  “Where’d she meet him?”

  “At a nightclub called Noche on Townsend Street. I’ve been there. No one at the club knew of Lamas.”

  “You’ve told me about Gloria. Are there other children?”

  “A son, Andre, who was killed in Iraq in 2003.”

  “Army? Marine?”

  “No,” Rigsdale said wearily. “His death has nothing to do with the case, but if you must know, Andre Bernier was civilian, an art advisor for UNESCO, the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization, at their Paris office. He went to Iraq to help in finding their lost art treasures.”

  “What about a wife?”

  “Mr. Bernier is a widower. Twice. His first wife was born in India, where they lived for several years. She died many years ago. His second wife, Gloria’s mother, also passed away. If any word of this leaks out, Polo, you’ll never get another assignment from Feveral and Lenahan, I can promise you that.”

  “How does Lamas tie in with the missing flywhisk?”

  “He was…friendly with Gloria. She invited Lamas to the Nicasio residence while Mr. Bernier was away on a business trip. The chauri was kept in a buffet cabinet in the dining room. When Mr. Bernier returned, the chauri was gone. Now Lamas has disappeared.”

  “But there’s no proof that he actually took it, is there?”

  “No, but he’s the obvious suspect.”

  “How much was it insured for, George?”

  Rigsdale picked up a ballpoint pen and began popping the point in and out. “One million dollars.” He stabbed the pen into the manila envelope. “Don’t get any ideas of a finder’s fee, Polo. Your job is to locate Lamas. Nothing more.”

  Rigsdale was still smarting over a thirty-thousand-dollar finder’s fee I’d received for retrieving a stolen painting by renowned artist Cy Twombly. At a recent auction at Christie’s, one of his works went for sixty-nine-point-six million dollars. To the uneducated eye, mine included, some of his graffiti-like scribblings look like they could have been done by a child freewheeling with crayons.

  I had found the missing painting in a home belonging to a museum janitress, a hardworking Filipino lady who juggled three part-time jobs. She had taken it from a rack of artwork stored in the basement of the San Francisco Modern Museum of Modern Art.

  “I thought it was junk,” she’d told me. “That they were going to throw it away. I wanted to show it to my granddaughter. She could draw better that that.”

  I believed her, about why she took the Twombly, not her granddaughter’s drawing talents, so I’d simply returned the painting to the museum—with no questions asked.

  “There’s one more important item to discuss, Polo. The police have not been brought into this. Mr. Bernier wishes to have it handled discretely. Understood?”

  “So if Lamas has this flywhisk, you want to make a deal with him, right?”

  “That is not your concern. I’ve interviewed everyone who resides in the Bernier residence, and every worker and visitor that was there when the chauri went missing. The cook, Yves Dupree, took advantage of Mr. Bernier’s absence by taking a vacation, so he was gone when the theft took place. The property has a state of the art security system, so I do not believe a burglar could have gained entrance. Mr. Feveral insisted that I involve you, against my judgment.”

  He shoved the file across his desk so hard it nearly dropped in my lap.

  “I’ll going to need an advance, George. Five thousand dollars should work for now.”

  “Five thousand dollars!”

  It had taken me a while to understand the business world. Work cheap and you get a lot of work—lousy work. But if you charge a lot of money, and here’s the kicker, you’re really good at what you do—then you end up making a lot more money doing a lot less work.

  He dry-washed his hands, then picked up one of the phones on his desk and barked at his secretary. “Cut Mr. Polo a check for five thousand dollars.”

  “Satisfied?” he asked after he’d set the phone back on its cradle.

  Without waiting for an answer, he added, “And don’t bother Mr. Feveral. Report directly to me.”r />
  Poor George. Subtlety was not his strong suit. I picked up the file and then decided that it would be a good idea to head right to my bank.

  Chapter 2

  I had parked my car, a four-year-old beige Ford sedan, dubbed the Polomobile by a lady friend, in a red zone on Spear Street, and was happy to see that there wasn’t a parking ticket under the wipers.

  The city fathers have a plan to make San Francisco free of automobiles. They want us all using city buses, walking, biking, or riding skateboards as we go about our daily chores. To implement the plan they decided to make it difficult, and very expensive, for anyone driving a car.

  The United States Navy used to have a catchphrase: “If it’s not moving, paint it!”

  Our uncivil servants have updated that to if there’s an empty space, put in a parking meter with fees up to ten bucks an hour and then move on to the lucrative seventy-six-dollar fine for an expired meter.

  Even at those prices, you can seldom find an open space, which leaves red zones, bus stops, and in front of fire hydrants.

  The Ford is eternally dusty, has a whip antenna, twin spotlights, numerous dings, scratches, and a cracked windshield. It looks like an unmarked police car, even to a meter maid. The SFPD HOMICIDE sticker on the visor adds to the pretext, so I seldom get a ticket.

  I actually felt a little guilty about this until I noticed that when I couldn’t find an illegal parking spot it was because they were filled with cars belonging to the Mayor’s Office, the City’s Planning Department, the Environment Commission, the Ethics Commission, the Entertainment Commission, Public Works, and my favorite, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.