“Sorry. Bad habit of letting my mouth run away with me. These shows and the parties after, you know…I can say almost anything and they think it’s funny instead of rude. It’s one of the perks of being in character. They expect it.”
“Speaking of parties…why are you dressed for one early on a Monday morning?”
He stage-coughed as if embarrassed and showing it. “Had a gig last night, at Lookout. Things got late, a little out of hand, and one of the ladies…you know.”
“She was open-minded.”
“Yeah. I didn’t make it home yet. My car got stolen.”
“And you like to shock people so you put that outfit back on.”
“Just a little, sure. It’s the showman in me.” He chuckled.
“So why are you here, Frank? Why didn’t you report the car to the cops?”
“Because of this.” Sighing, he took out his phone and punched up something, and then laid it on the desk in front of me. It was one of those new ones with a full-color screen that could display digital pictures.
“Ew. Is there actually a case here or do you get your jollies walking into random P.I. offices and showing people your porn?” I couldn’t call the photo anything else.
“So you get the picture? Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hands as I stood with mounting irritation to throw him out. “It’s blackmail, all right? Here’s the text that came with it.”
Send $1000 in cash every week or the pictures go viral, it read, and listed a box address in Chicago.
“So…pardon me,” I said, “but with the lifestyle you’re living anyway, how can this hurt you? Might even get you more business. They say all publicity is good publicity.”
“Look, Cal…can I call you Cal?” His dimples appeared and I saw how a certain segment of the female nighttime drag-queen-show-viewing populace would find him attractive. “I have to keep my day job and my side job separate.”
“I should think so. I can’t figure out why you’re engaging in all this risky behavior.”
“What, you’ve never taken risks for fun?”
He had me there. I guess I could understand his thrillseeking, even if his kinds of thrills weren’t mine. I nodded in sympathy. “All right. I get it. Go on.”
“This picture was taken last night and when I left the hotel around five a.m. my car was gone. When I went back to her room the woman in the picture had checked out. I killed time with breakfast at the hotel, looked you up and here I am.”
“Okay, Frank,” I said around another bite of pastry, “what’s your day job that this would be worth fifty Gs a year to keep quiet? You a priest or something?”
“No, special education teacher out in Granger’s Ford.”
That stopped me in my tracks. I mean, technically he hadn’t done anything wrong, or at least not illegal, though there might be come kind of morals or community standard clause in his contract, but I got it. Perfectly rational, live-and-let-live adults turn into slavering, out-for-blood Puritans when they sense a risk to their kids. “That’s in the Sierra foothills across the valley, right? Small town?”
“Very small, at least in mind. I’d lose my job and probably never work again this side of the Mississippi, but I love my kids. I really make a difference. Even if I found the guy who has these pics and got a lawyer and an injunction, he could ruin me overnight. It would take years suing him to recoup the costs.”
“Look, Frank…my best advice to you is to get out ahead of the story. Go to the school board and come clean right now. Make it perfectly clear everything you do is consensual and doesn’t involve underage girls or anything illegal.”
“The drugs?”
“I wouldn’t mention that. It’s the only real weak spot in your defense. But the drag and the sex…if you’re up front and explain it to them, and maybe do a similar, less detailed mea culpa at a town meeting, you’ll get through this. Especially if you get a lawyer and show you’ll fight.”
“No way. My job is everything.”
“Should have thought about that before you got in too deep.”
“I didn’t come here for you to judge me,” Frank said angrily.
“Sorry. I still think you should fight through it.”
“No. This all has to go away.”
I sighed, my best advice defeated. “Okay. Why do you think it is a he? I mean, that is a woman’s derriere, right? She had to be complicit.”
“You’re right. Could easily be a woman, though the one I was with didn’t seem the type.”
“The smart ones never do. Are there more pictures? No, don’t show me.”
“Yeah,” Frank replied. “A couple more of the, uh, encounter, and some of me on stage that night.”
“Are the bedroom shots all from the same angle? Like it was an automatic camera rather than someone taking them?”
Frank flipped through the pictures on the screen. “Yeah, looks like it.”
“Hmm. Still no confirmed accomplice.”
“What about the car?”
I scratched my head with both hands, trying to stimulate my brain through the hair follicles. “Yeah, that would argue for someone else. What kind of car?”
“Two-year-old Camry.”
“Ugh. The most stolen car in America. Could it be a coincidence?”
“I dunno. There aren’t that many choices for little people. It was modified for my size and there are affordable kits for only a limited number of models.”
“You sure it wasn’t towed?”
Frank shook his head wearily. “Don’t think so. It was on a side street in front of a meter, but the sign on it said you can park there free on weekends. I called a few of the nearest towing yards anyway, but no dice.”
I pushed over a pad of paper and a pen. “Write down everything about it – tag number, year, make, model, details of the short people kit, exact location you left it, anything else. And your phone number. Take my card. I’ll need two thousand up front as a retainer and it’s fifty an hour plus expenses.” My rates were flexible, depending on what I thought clients could afford. For a schoolteacher I’d charge less.
Distressed, he replied, “I can get five hundred from an ATM today. My bank is local to Granger’s Ford. No branches in the City.”
“Okay, get me the rest when you can. One more thing…why Chicago?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“None at all? Seems like an odd place to have the money sent. Are you from there? Got contacts there?”
“Nope.” Frank shook his head. “Born and raised in San Jose, got my degree from State…maybe it’s just a long way away and they don’t figure I’ll go there to check it out.”
“Maybe. Probably some kind of reposting drop anyway. If I have to fly out there it’s going to cost you.”
“Better than paying blackmail. As you said, a thousand a week is over fifty a year. I’d rather take out a loan and pay you.”
I grunted. “Good for both of us. Just remember, I’ll need more than five bills. I have a research assistant to pay and if I need muscle I have to lay out for them too. I’m assuming you want the pictures back and a guarantee they won’t be publicized, but I’m not sure that’s possible as they’re digital. I’ll do the best I can, but it will depend on what kind of leverage I can find on whoever did this. We can’t go to the cops right away, because eventually this will get on the police blotter and those are public records. Even if I manage to clean everything up, you don’t want official paperwork lurking in some file if you can help it, I’m thinking.”
Frank put his head in his hands. “Look, Miss Corwin, I’m just a guy in a bind here. I’ve never been involved with any criminal activity, never had anything like this happen. I have no idea what to do except trust you to fix the situation.”
Oh, boy. That hit me in a soft spot, the part of everyone who ever wanted to be a cop and help people get justice. I had an idea how violated he felt right now, wanting a professional to make it all better. Well, I guess that was how I
earned my living so I opened my mouth and did what I always do. I promised a little too much.
“Frank, you get me the cash and I’ll get you some answers. At least we’ll have something to hand to the police if it comes to that, or if I get lucky we might be able to make the situation go away.”
“Thanks, Cal. You’re a real lifesaver. Any chance you and me…”
“No,” I retorted automatically. “I make it a firm policy never to get involved with clients. You know, like with teachers and students,” I went on with sudden inspiration. “Ethics, and all that.”
“Oh, sure.” Frank blinked and swayed in the chair. “Hey, is there anywhere around I can get a room? Cheap, clean hotel or something?”
“You don’t want a ride back home? I’m going over to Granger’s Ford to poke around anyway.”
“No, I’m wiped out and I already called in sick. Just what I need, old Annie the snoop to look out her window and see me sneak into my own house after getting out of a gorgeous and desirable woman’s car on a weekday when I’m supposed to be already at home.”
“Give it a rest, Frank.”
Frank shrugged and smirked as if he knew that the compliment felt good to me no matter how cheesy. “If my car doesn’t turn up maybe you can run me out early tomorrow morning?”
“I’m not a morning kind of gal, Frank, but we’ll see.” I almost asked him why he couldn’t rent a car, and then remembered his stature and the special equipment he needed.
I gave him the address of the misnamed Five Star Hotel a few blocks away, told him to call Mickey if he needed any local help, and then steered him toward the nearest ATM.
Once he’d trudged out I went down to the lower level where my assistant made his abode. One side of the large room, the less disgusting side, sported a semicircular arrangement of screens and computer gear. The other held an old sofa and loveseat, a couple of chairs and a blizzard of junk food wrappers, empty soda bottles and cans and some pillows that clearly needed a Maytag introduction. Once every month or two I had to threaten to pull the graphics chips out of his computers – I mean, my computers, as I had bought them, after all – to get him to clean the place up.
Mickey squatted like a frog in a rolling office chair, shaggy and overweight. Yeah, he was a nerd’s nerd and had his foibles, but boy, could he find things out when he was motivated.
“Wazzup, boss?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the frenetic game action on the screen.
“I have a case, I think. Need you to start with this.” I handed him a sheet of paper with pertinent facts copied from Frank’s notes plus some I’d added. “See if that Camry has shown up anywhere – towing yards, police blotters, anything. Then a quick rundown on the client. Franklin Jackson, special-ed teacher out of Granger’s Ford. Try to find the physical location of this box address in Chicago. Let me know when you run out of dirt to dig in.”
Holding out his free left hand, Mickey kept mousing around the screen with the right, firing frantically at his pixilated enemies. I put the paper into his palm and left. No point in micromanaging him. He’d be useless until he finished his current quest or whatever it was, but after that he’d do good work as long as there was food, cash and coffee.
Something caught my eye out the window that faced the courtyard behind my office. A woman, tall, redheaded and slim, in slacks and a windbreaker, lit a cigarette near Molly. She seemed to glance my way before turning to stalk off between buildings. Something about the way she walked bothered me, like her feet hurt perhaps. Fairly sure I had never laid eyes on her, but still…
Short of chasing her down there wasn’t much I could do. It might mean nothing or she might be trying to work up the gumption to walk into my office with a case. It was Monday after all. For now, I had to get started on Frank and his minor problem.
And it was minor. Not to him, I was sure, but in comparison to a kidnapped girl, a murdered ex-cop or a bomb the situation was tame. Stuff like this happened every day when I was on the force. Usually the information got out no matter how hard you tried to lock it down. I’d given Frank the benefit of my wisdom, but like most blackmail victims, they didn’t want to listen. So, I’d have to try it his way.
As a cop I’d had my ways of taking care of things and of course the thin blue line still did. Policing was often a lot easier and more effective than law enforcement, and by that I meant that some things are better taken care of unofficially, off the books.
Now that I was even farther from those books, I could engage in my own version of policing now and again. A twisted arm, a payoff, a word in the right ear…when the goal was to suppress information, methods like these might work. If it came to law enforcement…well, at some point I could just dump it in the lap of SFPD and forget about it.
Closure? That was a luxury in this business.
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Books by D.D. VanDyke
D. D. VanDyke is the Mysteries pen name for fiction author David VanDyke.
California Corwin P.I. Mystery Series
Loose Ends
In a Bind
Slipknot
Off The Leash
More to come!
FREE in ebook format: Diamonds and Cole, Cole Sage Mystery #1.
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Books by David VanDyke
Plague Wars Series
The Eden Plague - FREE
Reaper’s Run
Skull’s Shadows
Eden’s Exodus
Apocalypse Austin - Summer 2015
The Demon Plagues
The Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Cyborg Strike
Comes The Destroyer
Stellar Conquest Series
The Plague Wars continues 100 years later!
First Conquest
Desolator
Tactics of Conquest
Conquest of Earth
Conquest and Empire
Star Force Series
Outcast
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Formatting by LiberWriter
Cover by Jun Ares
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Loose Ends: A California Corwin P. I. Mystery (California Corwin P. I. Mystery Series) Page 18