Loki pulled a signature sheet and a pen off his clipboard and pushed all three through the gap. “Here you go. Just sign on the bottom there and you’ll be good to go, sir.”
Hands grabbed at the bundle and a few seconds later shoved the paper and pen back out. Loki grinned. “Thank you muchly, sir.” With that he strolled away.
One of the givens of humanity was that if you offered them a piece of paper and placed a social context around it, they would just sign instead of reading it. It worked ninety percent of the time. Having bought Stone about thirty seconds of distraction, Loki felt he had done as much as he could to hand the boy his own Fate, so he strode out of the building. By the time the door had swung shut Loki had vanished.
***
Ian Stone
Ian gripped his digital recorder tightly, staring down at the blood on his shirt. The other customers in the pharmacy stared at him as he sat trying to ignore the pain while he waited on his OxyContin prescription to fill.
He knew that he had been stupid earlier, and was paying the price for it, but there hadn’t been a lot of options. Shifting his foot as he dug in his pocket drew out a grunt of pain. He pulled out his recorder and hit “resume file,” talking to himself in the pharmacy waiting room, recording his day …
***
The thug’s fist slammed into my jaw as I opened the door to my office. Heck of a hello, I know. Even rolling with the punch, I felt one of my molars shatter and cut the inside of my left cheek. That type of hit … it’s like getting smacked in the face by Superman wielding a city bus sized baseball bat. Doesn’t matter how little the guy is. And what happens when you get clocked in the face hard enough to split a tooth? You get your lights put out, that’s what. My vision started to swim and darkness pushed at the edges of everything I could see. Say goodnight, Gracie.
And my world went black.
Goodnight, Gracie.
***
I resurfaced into the waking world with a splitting headache. Ye gods, what fun. My vision started to sharpen up a bit, until I could see my office around me. Very nice. The place was trashed and I was cuffed to a chair. This was promising to be a very fun day. I looked up into the eyes of the thug looming over me. When he saw my eyes open the thug grinned and spit his toothpick into my face.
I looked up to him and smiled coyly. “So, why the hell are you here?” I looked around at my trashed office. “Are you the new cleaning service?”
“Shaddup!” he snarled and fed me another knuckle sandwich. Tasty.
This time my shattered tooth cut me badly enough that I had to spit out the blood or choke on it. I looked back up at him, working my jaw and trying to stretch some of the soreness out of it. The guy was wiry as hell, maybe six feet tall, and wearing a wide collared blue silk shirt with the top half of the buttons undone. He looked like he was right out of a 1970s cop show.
He was rubbing his knuckles, trying to massage some of the pain out of them. It doesn’t matter how strong or experienced you are, if you shatter a guy’s tooth with a hit, you’re taking some damage to your fist. His lips pulled up into a sneer. “You’re not so tough now are you, huh, Mr. Private Dick?”
Tilting my head up until I could look him in the eyes, I grinned and let the blood spill out of my mouth. Well, I say spill, but it was more like I was drooling. Despite the cut cheek, I was still in pretty good shape.
And I love a good straight line. So, with blood dribbling down my chin, I delivered the punch line. “Thanks, pal. You just saved me the seven hundred bucks that getting a root canal was gonna cost me. I’ve got a bad one on the other side, too, think you could get that one next?”
He grabbed my throat and leaned in really close. “Mr. Clever, you think you’re so tough, I’m going to make you scream.”
I flashed him a winning smile. Never in my life did I think I’d actually get to quote my favorite movie. In my most earnest voice, I said, “Is that all you want? Just play some Rap music.”
With a snarl he smashed his heel down onto the arch of my left foot. I felt something break, but didn’t let it show. If you can’t take the pain, get out of the beating.
Time to pause for a second while I explain why a broken foot was worth it; just to get to deliver one tough guy line.
The real reason is that I had him reacting emotionally. I was keeping him off balance, and the main reason he was delivering this beat down was to get into my head and warn me off of something. And I was winning. Now for the second, really cheesy reason. I hesitate to admit this but …
The thing about being a private eye is that you have to know how to take advantage of your timing. No matter how much you work on cultivating that “no nonsense”, “tougher than nails”, “dumb looking but smart on the inside”, “hard boiled gumshoe” lifestyle, the simple truth is that ninety-nine percent of the work you land is boring as all get out.
Skip traces, reading court records, checking websites, occasionally finding lost pets, and sneaking through bushes with a camera is most of what a P.I. does, like we talked about earlier. The majority of the work comes from one of three places–lawyers, courtrooms, and suburban wives with too much money and too little to do, who fill their hours with unfounded suspicions. A good P.I. is fast with a computer, since their usual day is just sitting at a desk scanning files.
Which is why when you wake up to find yourself handcuffed to a chair in your own office, with a thug putting more shots into you than a sadistic E.R. doctor gives out during flu season, you have to thank your lucky stars and make the most of it. Which I did.
So now we’re gonna play out the next few seconds nice and slow, just so you can appreciate the finer details. As Mr. Oh-So-Clever-Repartee’s fist came rocketing towards my face, aimed at that same tooth, I braced both of my ankles against the chair legs and twisted my left wrist as hard as I could; which made my thumb collapse against my palm.
My first case ever was to find a lost German Shepherd. When I did find the dog, he attacked me and all but ripped my left thumb off. It never healed quit right, and I’ve been able to do interesting and occasionally useful party tricks with it since then. For some reason I can’t fathom, the left side of my body tends to get a lot more torn up than the right side.
My hand slid out of the cuffs, only taking a little skin with it, right as my own personal thug straight from the set of Miami Vice dropped an a-bomb on my face—finally ripping my left cheek open. Hello battle scar.
I let the force of the blow carry me, pulling up with my ankles and whipping around, letting the inertia help me pivot the chair on one leg. I grabbed the back of the chair with my right hand, releasing the pressure with my ankles and just slumping forward. Ever play tetherball as a kid? The ball goes low on one side, then rockets high on the other side. That’s what me and the chair did. I went low, the chair went high, with all that spinning force behind it.
I’m not even sure if I have the stomach to describe what it did to his face. A lot of blood went flying over me. K.O.’d goon, zero, private detectives, one. Go team me!
I slowly pushed myself up, using the corner of my desk to help me, and carefully tested my weight on my broken foot. Not comfy, but it’d get me around for the time being. I’ll admit I wobbled a bit until the world stopped spinning, and then limped over to the downed thug. I reached down, grabbed him by the shirt and hauled the dead weight over to the radiator. I grabbed my cuffs and secured both of his wrists behind his head.
Slapping him a couple times I grinned and said “Hey, Thugs R Us. Miami Vice stopped casting twenty years ago.” Nada. Yeah, he was out cold.
So instead of pushing his primitive ape brain and trying to get info out of him, I limped back to the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed the local police station.
A tinny sounding female voice answered after just a couple rings. “District six dispatch.”
I sighed and did my best to enunciate around all the damage to my mouth. “Hi. Can you patch me through to Sergeant Haskins, please?
Tell him it’s Ian Stone with a pretty big emergency.”
There were a couple of clicks from the phone and the operator’s voice came back. “He’s at his desk right now. I’ll put you right through, Mr. Stone.”
“Thanks.” I replied. Hey, hard-boiled gumshoe or no it always pays to be polite to your local law enforcement. You never know when you might want them to return the favor and be polite to you, after all.
“You’re welcome, Mr. Stone.” The line got quiet and I started hearing that background clicking again.
I only had to wait about twenty seconds or so before a gruff voice came across the line. “Haskins here. What’s the matter, Stone?”
I smiled, or tried to. Haskins had spent so much time behind that desk since his promotion that even on his home line he had started answer the same way. “Hey, Sarge. Got a little problem here at my office. I just had a goon who’s dressed straight from the’70s bust into my office, taser me, cuff me to a chair, and then vent a lifetime of frustration at being born in the wrong decade all over my face. And Haskins, the hell of it is, I’ve never met the guy before and he wouldn’t tell me why he was here.”
There was a sharp intake of breath over the line. “Jesus, Ian. You okay? Uniforms or paramedics there yet?”
Blood dripped onto the mouthpiece of the phone and, sighing, I wiped it off on my shirt as I peeked out the window from behind my blinds and looked down at the street below my office. “Yeah, I’m fine. Look, I can’t waste time. I have to figure out why this guy was on me. So, I called you first. I want to dodge the ambulances and the reports till I get a good grip on this.”
Haskins grunted and I carefully watched the street. “Alrighty. I’ll grab a black and white and be there in five to ten, tops. Can you wait that long?”
“Not sure.” I replied. “I think I have his partner sitting in the street down here. Looks like a two thousand and two silver Lincoln Town Car. You better come unmarked so we don’t spook him.”
“Already on the way. Hold tight, Ian.” The line went dead.
Down to business. Limping over to my medical kit, I cleaned up a bit, trying to go as quickly as possible without further injuring myself. I glanced at the clock. Two minutes down.
Again, I pushed my broken foot. I knew I had to move fast, no way Haskins would let me out of his sight when he saw the condition I was in. I got down on my knees in front of the K.O.’d goon and emptied his pockets. While there I looked a little more carefully at his hands and the way he was dressed. On a hunch, I cleaned the blood off his hands and studied them more carefully.
Dumping the payload from his pockets onto my desk, I gratefully collapsed into my leather chair. Here is another tip about being a private eye. Invest in a damned good chair. Besides the fact that you are gonna spend a lot of time in it doing the mundane jobs, you gotta be sure to have a good chair for just such situations as this. I mean, beat to bloody hell with broken bones.…Would you want a chair that didn’t have all the goodies and about six inches of expensive padding?
Four minutes down. I spread out the contents of his pockets and took stock. One set of brass knuckles. Which was odd, because this guy had calluses all over his knuckles, and brassies leaves the marks on your fingers instead. So, fact one. He enjoys his work. Wallet. Almost five hundred in cash, one driver’s license, season pass to the football games at Invesco Field, and an injury report on the local teams.
I glanced at the license and groaned. I hate it when stereotypes are right. His name was Antonio Guido Pazzuchi. Well crap.
I grabbed the cash and looked at the last pieces of pocket junk. Hey, don’t look at me like that. I might have been cuffed to a chair, but he had engaged my services by my reckoning, and five hundred is one day plus limited medical expenses. So, a paperclip, a pack of gum, three cents, and a patch of matches. Pay dirt. The matchbook had a large V.D. on the over flap, over a picture of a coiled snake. Same logo that was in the window of the Viper’s Den. So, logic states that these two were staff from the Viper’s Den. Which meant I had a big old bone to pick with the club.
I heard a commotion downstairs and outside. That’d be Haskins, grabbing scumbag number two. Almost out of time. I pocketed the matches and mulled it over in my head. This was more than just a “stay away” response. The guy hadn’t said anything about the club, and he laid right into me.
I swear to god, it clicked right as Haskins walked into my office, roughly pushing the other guy in front of him. The guy couldn’t keep his balance with his hands cuffed behind his back, and fell forward onto his knees. He looked pissed but was keeping his lips firmly sealed. Same slicked back hair and mid-eighties bad guy look as the guy I had laid out, too.
Haskins took in the scene, ran a hand through his graying hair, and started to speak. “Ian, holy …”
“Wait,” I interrupted and held up a finger. I sighed and looked at the kneeling goon. “How come your boss didn’t warn me off? What happened to that kid? He die in the club?”
The guy looked from me to Haskins then at his partner, out cold and cuffed to a radiator, and decided communication was probably his best route. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that as bloody and torn up as I was I must have looked like an axe murderer at that moment. “Uh, look. I ain’t saying nothing.”
I threw the phone book at him, winging it off my desk and into his gut, and grabbed the book of matches, holding in front of his face. “A kid vanishes, you people dispose of the evidence and don’t call the cops. It’s almost like The Viper’s Den killed him. You piece of …”
Haskins grabbed my arm as I pulled back to sock him. He pushed me back roughly and stopped me from laying into him. “Calm down, Stone.”
I shook him off, but stomped away (well, limped away) from him back to my chair. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. Haskins took the two of them away, growling at the EMTs to patch me up but not take me to the hospital. I nodded my head in thanks to him. There was way too much left to do today to deal with a trip to the hospital. Going to the emergency room would burn at least five or six hours, and I needed to put some major footwork into finding Travis.
As it turns out, the two guys had warrants out for skipping on bail. Haskins was nice enough to inform me that I would be claiming a thousand dollar reward on each, walking away from the whole thing with twenty five hundred (remember that $500 from his wallet? Yeah you do.). Small potatoes though, considering that I would have at least four grand in medical bills when I was done with this. Sometimes being a P.I. is a dog’s life.
Haskins walked up to me, leaning against the back door of the ambulance, as the EMTs were finishing putting temporary bandages on me. “Stone. What all have you gotten yourself into?”
So I explained. Less than twelve hours into the case, and already I had a lot to tell him. Rick mused thoughtfully as I went over the details, stroking his graying moustache. Finally I wrapped up, and he huffed a breath out.
“Well, Ian. I can look into the disappearance for you, if you want. But there is something else that is bugging me about this.”
I raised an eyebrow at Haskins. “Hm. Well, yeah. I’d love it if you pulled the case file.”
“I’ll see what I can dig up.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Rick. Now what was the other thing that was bugging you?”
“Well. There was a murder up on Cap Hill, not too far from there. And it sounds similar to me. Tons of blood, things missing. I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but something about this is off. Something here should fit together, if I could see the pieces.”
I shrugged, and then winced as the shrug made several parts of my body hurt. “I know what you mean. Something has smelled off about this since I got the case, but I can’t piece it together yet either.”
Haskins pushed his bulk off the rear door of the ambulance. “Do what you have to do, Ian. I’m going to go take these guys to holding then start looking into some ideas I have about this.”
I grinned at him. “If you crack the case I still get the p
aycheck. I can see I’ve got you all-in on this one.”
He waved me off. “Very funny. I’ll call you if I figure anything out, and I expect you to do the same. Especially since this is an open investigation that I’m pulling favors for you on, okay?”
I nodded. “Of course. Talk to you soon, Rick.”
He left, taking the two thugs that had attacked me with him. They’d have a few hours sitting in a holding cell, then a van would take them over to central booking. I’d be able to pick up my rewards in a few days.
The EMT finished up and gave me a stern look. “I can’t guarantee that your bandages will last till tomorrow. You really should head into emergency and get a proper job done of patching you up, sir.”
I smiled. “I appreciate the concern, but I don’t have the time. Every hour I waste, well, bad things could happen to someone.” I stepped away from the ambulance—and almost fell on my face. A broken foot is nothing to lean on once the excitement’s all over, apparently.
The EMT packed up his kit. “I understand. So why don’t I take you on a ride to Dr. Meldore. He runs a private clinic not far from here, and he specializes in night time hours and the problems people have in association with them. ” He picked up his kit, staring at me for a moment, considering his words. “He treats a lot of off duty cops who get hurt picking up extra cash doing security and stuff.”
“Fastest signing hand in the West and a heart of gold, huh?” I laughed. “Point taken. Get me on my feet, chief. And just give me his address, I’ll take it from there.”
The EMT did as requested. I sighed and walked down the street towards my car. Time to go to the club, but first Dr. M and a handy prescription.…Just the thing to help me wreck all the wonderful healing I had received.
***
Travis Blake
Moonlight bounced through the alley, dingy and grey. Pure white bounced merrily amongst the clouds, sure, but by the time it hit street level rooftops, smog, trash, and the general clutter of human living had left its tarnish. Which suited Travis fine. Purity was for the mortals.
Hair of the Wolf Page 13