The Painted Gun

by Bradley Spinelli

  Hold on, Crane, this is reality and you’re no shamus. Get a grip and quit thinking like any of this has anything to do with you. Wrong place, wrong time. Lucky you got out before the cops started sniffing.

  * * *

  When I came in the phone was already ringing. I let it ring, thinking the voice mail would get it, before I remembered that I discontinued that service. The phone was still ringing, ten rings and counting; had to be McCaffrey. Better play this one like a private dick—close to the vest.

  “Hello?”

  “Itchy! Glad I caught ya!” McCaffrey, of course, doing his faux-cheery bit.

  “Just getting in.”

  “I don’t have another number for you, Itchy. You still don’t have a cell phone?”

  “Never needed one.”

  “Well, I didn’t hear from you this morning. Does that mean you got my check?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Hasn’t cleared yet, though. Jury’s still out on you.”

  “It’ll clear, it’ll clear. So, how’s it going up there? You all right?”

  He sounded fishy, fishier than usual. “Yeah, it’s all right.”

  Pause the size of Yosemite.

  “Find out anything so far?”

  “Nothing to speak of. You got anything else for me or what?”

  “Wish I did, pal.”

  “Well, as much as I’d love to chat with you, McCaffrey, I have an assignment to work on.”

  I hung up on him. Then I poured myself a drink. Dead bodies and all, seemed like the right thing to do.

  I flipped idly through my mail as I sipped. Unpaid bills, disconnection notices, the usual drivel. Then, a robin’s egg–blue envelope, lettered evenly bottom to top: Don’t open this in your house. It was written over and over again, forming a pattern, the words disappearing when seen from arm’s length, my printed name and address clearly legible over the top. It was addressed to me in even, simple, slightly effeminate cursive handwriting, no girlie curlicues or rounded dots, postmarked from San Francisco two days earlier. I took a stiff pull of my drink. The whole racket was beginning to give me the creeps.

  I put on a sweater, grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes and the blue letter. I walked up my street and around the corner and up to Sign Hill Park. If you’ve ever driven from SFO International Airport to San Francisco proper, you’ve seen the big hill off the 101 emblazoned with the words, SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, THE INDUSTRIAL CITY. It’s a block from my house, and kids go up with flattened cardboard boxes and slide down the letters—the hill is steep, and the letters are sixty feet high. South San Francisco was incorporated in 1908, and even the town’s name reflected the industrial plans of its founders. G.G. Swift, who had picked out the territory for stockyards and a cattle market, wanted the site’s name to parallel that of his Western Meat Company’s plants in South Chicago and South Omaha. Bethlehem Steel and Fuller Paint came to South San Francisco, and the two world wars brought a hefty, if short-lived shipbuilding industry. The sign is now, like many great landmarks, a bit of an anachronism.

  I went over to the I in Industrial and copped a squat. The lights of the airport were visible off in the distance, as were the blinking beacons from planes coming in for a landing as a slow fog crept in from Half Moon Bay. I shook my head, called myself a fool, and took the crinkled blue envelope out of my pocket.

  I slit it open with a finger and took out a single page and unfolded it. Same handwriting.

  David:

  Somehow I fell in love with you. Your phone is tapped. Be careful. Don’t tell anyone about this letter—burn it.

  Love,

  Ashley.

  I cursed myself, calling the entire affair a fat load of hokum even as I took out my Zippo and lit the page, holding the envelope to the flame and letting it catch, holding it up against the view of the bay and the airport and the speeding red tracers of the 101, thinking, Ashley, my ass. My fingers got singed and I dropped the ashes and stomped it all out on the I.

  Ashley’s in love with me? This crazy girl that I’ve never met? The girl who’s gone missing and McCaffrey hired me to find? The girl who’s—somehow, someway—painting me? My phones are tapped? Am I supposed to take any of this seriously? Is she in some kind of trouble? And the hell with her, am I in some kind of trouble? What the hell did McCaffrey get me into? And what does any of this have to do with me?

  I walked down to the Schoolhouse Deli and bought a fifth of Old Crow. One way or another I was going to need it.

  5

  It must have been about three in the morning, as I was sleeping the joyous, dreamless sleep of the bourbon drunk, when I heard the three beeps. I once had an alarm system in my house, but the alarm company doesn’t come and rip it out when you can’t pay the bill, it just becomes a glorified smoke detector. Whenever a door opens in my house—the front door, or even the door to downstairs—the old alarm sounds three annoying beeps. I jumped out of bed and went to the closet for my gun, realizing that it wasn’t loaded. I must have been standing just behind the door to my room, because when it opened suddenly I caught it right in the side of the head.

  I barely had a chance to moan before a hand grabbed me and dragged me into the living room, sitting me down hard on the couch and attacking me with a piercing bright light. When my eyes adjusted I was looking at a face like a slab of meat.

  “You Itchy Crane?”

  “Not even sure you got the right guy?”

  I got a slap in the face for that.

  “Don’t get smart with me. I don’t like smart guys.”

  “What, they make you feel dumb?”

  I caught another slap for that, one that broke my drunk’s rude awakening and brightened me up enough to take an interest in the speaker.

  “You gonna cut out that smart lip?”

  I pondered the question, taking advantage of the opportunity to look at the five-foot, three-hundred-pound side of beef standing in my living room. I was thinking maybe I could take the bastard when a tall, cool character came drifting in from the kitchen, eating a salami sandwich and chewing it loudly. “Just cover him, Al, lemme do the talking.”

  Of course there would have to be two. Thugs always come in twos in the funny pages. I thought I’d say nothing for a change.

  “Nice digs you got here,” the cool one said. He was dark-haired but fair-skinned, with a high Irish forehead and chiseled features. He didn’t look dangerous from a physical standpoint, but the Colt in Al’s hand made me forget about trying to take either of them.

  “Glad you like the place,” I said, pressing my fingers to my temples to try to clear my mind of the buzzing sound from either the bourbon or Al’s fist, or both. “Why don’t you make yourself a sandwich or something—you know, make yourself at home.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  “Want me to slap him again?”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary.” The cool one had a voice like a lizard licking sandpaper. He slithered onto the other couch, stuffed the last of my salami in his mouth, and put his feet on my coffee table. “So, Itchy—can I call you Itchy?”

  “Why not.”

  “Right. Why not. I think we have the upper hand here. So, Itchy, you working this Ashley thing or aren’t ya?” He smacked his lips and licked a bit of mustard off a long, pointed index finger.

  “Naw, I can’t say I’m working it. Floundering is probably the better term.”

  “Ah. Witty.”

  “Yeah, real sense of humor this guy’s got,” Al said, waving the Colt in my general direction.

  “Al, why don’t you park your Samoan ass.”

  Samoan. Of course. Why not a Samoan?

  Al sat down heavily in one of my chairs, still within slapping distance.

  “See, this is the thing here, Itchy. We don’t want you working, floundering, investigating, nosing around, sniffing about, wishy-washing, dillydallying—you can invent your own word here, if you like. Let’s just say we don’t want you doing anything with this Ashley thing. We think w
e’re just fine without you.”

  “Fine by me,” I said, a little too quickly. “Feel like getting the hell out of my house now?”

  “Okay, Al, now you can slap him.”

  He did. It was less a slap than what you would call a full-on, closed-fist punch to the eyebrow. I failed to enjoy it.

  “I don’t want you to think I don’t like you,” the lizard was lisping when the stars cleared out of my eyes. “I mean, I like you quite a bit. You’ve got spunk. Panache. Je ne sais quoi. And I like your taste in cold cuts. So what I want, and when I say want, I don’t mean want so much as—what’s the word, Al?”

  “Order?”

  “No, that’s much too harsh. Ah . . . what I . . . require—there we go—what I require is that you go back to bed, get up in the morning, put a steak on that eye of yours, go out to the store, and buy yourself some more of that nice salami. Maybe I’ll pop by next week for a sandwich and we can chat about the weather. Or the ’9ers. Or the price of fucking tea in China.” He stood up and leaned into me, his hot breath inches from my face. “But what we will NOT talk about is a little cunt named Ashley. Because SHE,” he flicked a finger at my eyebrow, which was already beginning to swell, “IS”—flick—“NOT”—flick—“YOUR”—flick—“PROBLEM.” He sat down. “We solid on this, Itchy?”

  “Sure as you got salami breath, buddy.”

  Al clocked me a slap across the head. It was half-assed for him, but it brought those constellations right back for me.

  “Let it go, Al. Our bright boy here has lots to think about.”

  I heard those three beeps again and the door shut. I opened my eyes. I heard an engine rev and jumped up, leaned over the back of the couch, parted the Venetians and saw brake lights on a beat-up old Datsun. I copped the license plate number and flopped down on the couch.

  Home sweet home, sweet solitude, just me and fifty old ladies screaming bloody murder inside my head.

  6

  I woke with my head pounding and venom in my veins. I was pissed. I was hired for an impossible job, I was making a damn good effort regardless, and yet I was being subjected to dead bodies and getting battered around and no one was telling me why. I wanted some answers, one way or another, even if I did decide to make the smart move and keep the twenty-five grand and get off the case.

  I considered cracking open every phone in the house to see if they really were tapped, but the line could be tapped at another junction. Anyway, if someone wanted to hear what I was saying, it made more sense to simply not be worth hearing. How long before someone else banged on my door in the middle of the night? Better to play it cool. Whether or not that hinky letter was really from Ashley, I needed to be careful.

  I hopped in the shower, careful not to catch my reflection in the mirror. The hot water stung my face and I held a cloth to my eye and bathed with one hand. I got out and went to the kitchen for ice and held it to my brow while I called my bank.

  McCaffrey’s check had cleared.

  I was so ecstatic I called the Starbucks at the truck stop and offered the pimply faced kid a twenty to deliver me a Venti Vanilla Latte and spent the next two hours working the phone, Ashley or no Ashley, banal call after banal call. I called Pac Bell, the electric company, the gas company, and the water company, and paid all my overdue balances. Then I called my maxed-out credit card companies and paid them all off too. I was in the black and it felt pretty good.

  But I was still pissed, so I went down to the range.

  Charlie was a little surprised to see me. “Back again so soon?”

  “I told you, it’s been a weird week.”

  She darted a look at my shiner. “What’s catching your eye today?” She grinned.

  “Cute. Lemme try that nine mil again.”

  “Thought you said it was too much like a toy.”

  “Yeah, but it’s starting to grow on me.”

  I popped off a few and my breathing leveled out. By the time I walked out and started Delores, I had made up my mind.

  * * *

  I went back to the Dalton Gallery; I had to take a look.

  There were a couple of cop cars parked outside, and the gallery had a sign out front saying that the show had ended early. Some cops were on their way out, but artists and buyers were milling in and out unmolested. I slipped in. Dalton’s office was roped off with bright yellow crime scene tape but his body was nowhere to be seen. Not that I would have seen it anyway. Dalton’s previously immaculate office was torn to pieces—the file cabinets were emptied and overturned, the desk was on its side, even the framed and glassed-in prints hanging on the wall were smashed. It looked like a hurricane had hit the tiny isolated spot, wreaked its havoc, and escaped out the window. Someone had come back; nothing had been askew when I found Dalton’s body other than the chair he’d been sitting in.

  I heard a familiar slimy voice down the hall and took a couple steps into the gallery. The lean lizard son of a bitch from the night before was smoothly arguing with a pale blond woman as he bent down over a canvas, slitting it off the stretcher bar with a penknife.

  “You can’t—you can’t!” she protested, and he answered her, as calm as can be, “I bought it, didn’t I? It’s mine. I can do what I want.” It was Ashley’s portrait of me. I ducked out before he caught sight of me.

  I was almost out the door when I saw something I’d missed before—a gallery guide of the current exhibition. I slipped it into my pocket.

  Serena was sitting on the curb, half a block away, crying her eyes out. I sat down next to her and she didn’t complain.

  “Serena,” I said cautiously, “how are you holding up?”

  She looked up at me with barren, tear-streaked, beautiful green eyes. “How did you—oh.” She recognized me. I was almost hoping she wouldn’t. “You were here yesterday.”

  “That’s right.” I let her soak that in for a minute. She seemed to be composing herself a bit. “What happened?”

  “They killed him!” This came out like projectile vomiting and preceded another torrent of tears and sobs. I put an arm across her shoulder and she melted into me, quaking and quivering.

  As she collected herself I tried another approach. “Serena, I know this is hard, but I need you to tell me what happened yesterday.”

  “Are you a cop?” Again, those brilliantly sheened green eyes. “I told the cops already.”

  “I’m not a cop. Just a friend of Mr. Dalton’s.”

  “I . . . my boyfriend was in town from Fresno, and I wanted to see him, just for five minutes, coz I haven’t seen him in a month and he just drove in and I wasn’t off work yet, so Mr. Dalton let me go.”

  “Right, I remember.”

  “But when I came back, this guy was locking the front door. He said Mr. Dalton had to leave, and he was locking up for him—he said he was a business associate. I—I didn’t think . . . I was just so happy to leave and see my boyfriend.”

  “What did this guy look like? Medium height, dark, sharkskin suit?”

  “Yeah. You saw him?”

  “Only for a minute. What else?”

  “That’s all. I just . . . It’s all my fault!” More waterworks, more holding the shivering bird.

  “It’s not your fault, Serena. You couldn’t have done anything. If you had stayed, you’d probably be dead too. It’s okay.” I held her a minute more and she seemed to calm down for good. “Is your boyfriend still in town?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Go see him. You’ll be fine. Want me to call you a cab?”

  “No . . . it’s close.”

  Something came to me. “You still have a job, right?”

  “Mr. Dalton’s sister is taking over. She said we’ll reopen in a week or so.”

  “That blond woman inside?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Thank you, Serena.” I handed her my card. “Listen, if you think of anything else, anything at all, please call me. Call me before you call the cops.”

  “Why?”


  “Because the cops won’t find the killer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they don’t know why he killed him.”

  “Do you?” Those green eyes hit me like an interrogation spotlight.

  “No. But I’m going to find out.”

  I figured Dalton’s sister would be easy to find and would manage to stay alive for a while. I didn’t want to wear out my welcome and risk running into Mr. Salami Eater. Just seeing that lizard slice my portrait off its frame made me angry all over again. I could have simply turned him in to the cops—he’d been in my house, he had to know something. But getting him picked up wouldn’t get me anywhere.

  * * *

  I had to find Ashley. Maybe McCaffrey had hired me to do his dirty laundry, but this was quickly becoming something else. I had to know why Ashley was painting me. I had to know who she was.

  I had to find Al.

  I walked over to Powell and Market, by the cable car stop, and hit a pay phone in the midst of swarming tourists to call my old friend Shelley at the San Mateo DMV.

  “David?” I could hear the smile creeping up the sides of her pouty lips. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me, Shelley.”

  “So when are we going out?”

  I’d been baiting Shelley ever since I first started asking her for favors. I think she knew it was never going to happen, but I had to keep up the charade. It was the silently agreed-upon game. “Next week. For sure. I’ll give you a call.”

  “I bet you will. Where you been? I haven’t heard from you in aaaages.” She dragged that last bit out. Someone sometime must have told her it was cute.

  “Oh, you know, here, there.”

  “Uh-huh. Hold on a minute.” She cupped a hand over the receiver and her voice came through a little muffled. “I am talking to a customer. Just a minute.” She cleared up again. “I’m back. What can I do for you, Mr. Crane?”

  I gave her Al’s license plate number and asked her to get me everything she could.

  “I’ll need a couple hours. Give me your cell phone number, I’ll call you back when I get it.”