Hipster Death Rattle

by Richie Narvaez

  “I’m going to try ma’am.”

  “Promise me,” Janine Ashcroft said in a husky, sobbing voice. “Promise me you’ll find him.”

  “I promise,” Jarnac said, freeing her hand and seeing that her fingernails had dug in deep enough to leave indentations.

  It wasn’t the first time that he’d made a promise to a grieving family member that he knew he was going to have a hard time fulfilling.

  San Francisco

  Two black-and-whites were parked side-by-side, nearly rubbing fenders, their light bars turning the fog-slick street into a kaleidoscope of red and blue patterns.

  Homicide Inspector Paul Ellis nosed the unmarked car within inches of the patrol cars. His face was a mere silhouette in the dashboard lighting. He took a deep puff on his cigarette, opened the window an inch to let the smoke out, and then climbed stiffly out of the vehicle.

  Ellis was a thick-set man with hulking shoulders. He’d been an excellent athlete in his youth, making All-City in high school football and had excelled in water polo at U.C. Davis. Now he had a beer-barrel stomach that he claimed was “slipped muscle.” His stiff, bristly gray hair was in disarray and in need of a trim. He had watery blue eyes and a tobacco-stained mustache.

  Ellis stumbled briefly, and then regained his balance—his untied rubber-soled shoes making slapping noises as he made his way over to a line of day-glow yellow plastic crime tape that stretched from the street to a storefront with windows opaque from condensation.

  A young uniformed patrolman hurried over to Ellis. “The medical examiner hasn’t arrived yet. The body’s over here.”

  “Have we got a name?” Ellis asked, sizing up the patrolman: young, tall, clean-shaven, hat squared, badge polished. An eager beaver, like I used to be, Ellis thought.

  “Yes, sir. The bartender at the Casbar, there on the corner, knew him. Kurt Thorsen. He lives just a couple of blocks away.”

  The body was spread out between the front bumper of a metallic-gray shark-jawed Porsche and a gnarled tree trunk that had buckled the sidewalk.

  His head was resting on the curb—a frozen look of surprise on his features.

  “I think I know this guy,” Ellis said. “He was a construction engineer at the place where they found all of those Indian bones.” He turned to face the patrolman. “What’s your name?”

  “Chacones. Ken Chacones, Inspector. I took the promotion test for the Bureau. I’d sure like to work Homicide.”

  “Would you now?” Ellis asked, as he bent over the corpse. Thorsen had been right there when the bones turned up—a bunch of scrawny little buggers that were quickly identified as American Indians, and the remains of a single young woman who’d been shot in the head years ago according to the information that his partner Rick Jarnac had come up with. Jarnac was in Beverly Hills now, trying to make a positive ID.

  There was a pear-shaped blood stain on the front of Thorsen’s chest.

  “Knife job is my guess,” Officer Chacones said. “We had a similar case a few weeks ago down on Mission Street. Gang killing.”

  “Which gang?” Ellis asked.

  “Sureños. Punks. Pants hanging below the crack of their asses, flannel shirts, and no matter what kind of shoes they wear, the laces have to be blue.”

  Ellis scanned the area. There was a small island of onlookers, ten or twelve older white guys, hanging out behind the crime tape. Losers from the bar, he figured.

  “Did you check his pockets, Chacones?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well do it, now. Good training for you.” And it saved Ellis from kneeling down on that wet sidewalk.

  The officer squatted down and performed the search just like they had taught him to do at the academy.

  “Nothing, sir,” he said as he bounced back up to his feet. “Stripped clean. No watch or ring, either. Pockets all empty.”

  “Okay. We’ll wait for the medical examiner. What’s the bartender’s name?”

  “Herb.”

  “Tell Herb not to go anywhere until I talk to him.”

  Ellis made his way back to the unmarked car, dropped into the driver’s seat, breathing hard and grimacing.

  Fucking back, he said to himself as he struggled to pull his wallet out of his pants pocket. He searched for Henry Chung’s business card. Chung was the head honcho at Cinco, the outfit running the building project. Thorsen had barely said a word at the construction site, nor had his foreman, a big, ugly Mexican named Benny. Chung had been something else: jumpy, on edge, moving from one leg to another as if he was about to wet his pants.

  Chung had invited Ellis into his on-site office for a drink. Expensive single malt Scotch. Chung was worried that the find would shut down the job site for a long time—and made it plain that he’d be thankful for anything that Ellis could do to make sure that didn’t happen, and he would appreciate being updated on the investigation.

  So thankful that he’d invited Ellis to his house twice, the last time not more than eight hours earlier—a mansion on Jackson Street, complete with an indoor swimming pool. There’d been more Scotch, and Ellis had ended up in the shallow end of the pool with Tina, a Barbie-doll blonde, bobbing her beautiful head between his legs while Chung and his hot-looking whore Becky watched.

  The medical examiner’s wagon arrived as Ellis punched the number in his cell. Chung answered after the fourth ring.

  “Henry, I’ve got some bad news for you. One of your employees, Kurt Thorsen, who I spoke to briefly at your job site, was stabbed to death a couple of hours ago.”

  “My, God,” Chung said. “That’s awful. I hope you don’t…don’t think that it has anything to do with Cinco, Paul.”

  “No. Looks like a gang killing. Some punks nailed him on the street and took everything he had.”

  “Kurt was a valued employee. He’s going to be hard to replace. If there’s any consolation, it’s that Kurt wasn’t married, and had no children. He was devoted to his work. Tell me, the remains of the woman with the ankle bracelet, is there anything new on that investigation?”

  “I think we’ve got a positive ID. Someone who disappeared a long time ago. I talked it over with my boss. An old case like this isn’t worth wasting the manpower. We’ve got more work than we can handle now.”

  “Once again, I am most grateful. Could I see you again? Tomorrow? At my home. Say around noon. I have a proposition you may find of interest.”

  “You bet,” Ellis said, before breaking the connection. Maybe the cards were finally turning in his favor. Running into a rich guy like Chung, doing him a small favor, and now this—one of his employees murdered. A lucky break for him, not Thorsen. He could milk it along—more booze, more Tina. More of everything.

  Ellis’s back started to throb again as he struggled out of the car. The pain was getting worse every day. He’d found an attorney that thought he could wrangle a disability pension for him. Depending on what Chung’s proposition turned out to be, this could be his last case.

  He tapped the young patrolman on the shoulder.

  “What did you say the bartender’s name was, kid?”

  “Herb, sir. Do you want to speak to the medical technicians?”

  Ellis watched the two men in white coveralls examining Thorsen’s body. “No. You do that. I’ll talk to Herb.”

  Click here to learn more about Silent Remains by Jerry Kennealy.

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