Gumshoe Rock

by Rob Leininger

  “The Toad. My goodness.”

  I smiled at what my grandmother might’ve said. My mother would’ve said, “The Toad? Does he eat flies?” in which case I would’ve had to say, “That’s the working theory. We had a few flies in the place, but no one ever saw a fly in his office.”

  But I didn’t go into any of that.

  Instead, I spread my hands. “So, we done here?”

  “I think so,” Eve said. “But if you would stay for a while, Mike? We need to talk. It won’t take long.”

  “Of course.”

  Eve motioned me over to her desk. In a low voice she asked how much she owed me. I named a figure and she wrote out a check, handed it to me.

  Lucy and I left. We were two steps out the door when Mike stuck his head out and said, “Could we meet someplace, Mort? In, say, half an hour, forty minutes?”

  “Snack bar at the bowling alley?” We were at that end of town. Noise in a bowling alley would mask conversation, which might be a good idea.

  He smiled. Tried to, anyway, managed to work up a modest half-grimace. “I’ll be there.”

  About to leave, I hesitated, so he did too. For a few seconds I wondered if I ought to tell him about his sixteen-year-old kid hanging out with dope-buying Dooley, eight or nine years older than her. And apartment 307. It wasn’t my business, but I was a father too. And Mike might become a client, depending on what Ma had to say about that.

  Better to wait, I finally decided. If Volker became a client, I might be more or less obligated to give him that information since I got it in connection with the case, such as it was at the time. So I gently punched his shoulder, said, “Hang tough,” and enhanced that buddie-bump with a “buck-up” smile.

  “Sure.” He ducked back inside.

  “What was that?” Lucy asked.

  “Just wondered if I ought to tattle on Kimmi, otherwise known as Precious.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Tough call, huh?”

  “Little bit. I’ll have to think about it.”

  Lucy’s Mustang was at the curb. Duct tape on the roof was starting to get a bit rough. We either had to redo it, or … I said, “Tomorrow’s Friday. How about we get this thing in for a new top?” I waved Eve’s check on which the ink wasn’t yet dry. “I’m buying, since the person who dropped Soranden’s skull in there probably thought it was my set of wheels.”

  Lucy gave me a good female hug. “A very nice gesture, but that check is at least half Ma’s.”

  “True. But I’m still buying.”

  “In case you didn’t know, I can pretty much afford it.”

  “You make it hard to be chivalrous, girlie.”

  “Okay, then. You pay. I’ll try to think of some way to make it up to you.”

  “You do that. Surprise me.”

  “I might do that. So, bowling alley? Maybe we could get in a game or two before Mike shows up.”

  “Doubt it. My thumb’s still acting up from the last time you kicked my ass in there. Don’t think I can hold a ball, kiddo.”

  “Uh-huh. Lamest excuse ever.”

  * * *

  Mike showed up at six twenty-five. Lucy and I were nursing a paper plate of French fries. Well, she was nursing, I was scarfing.

  “I really shouldn’t stay long,” Mike said. “But, now, after seeing Evelyn, what do you think about my hiring you to try to get back some of that money?”

  “Odds are you’d be wasting even more money,” I said.

  “You think there’s no hope?”

  “Not much.”

  His face fell. “I was hoping you had an in with the IRS.” He shook his head. “Aw, jeez, I don’t mean like that. This has been a lousy week. I’m not thinking clearly. What I was hoping is that you have some idea what Soranden might have done with the money since he was with the IRS.”

  “The IRS doesn’t have a designated blackmail fund, Mike. Though that might be in the works as a secondary self-serve pension for employees.”

  He almost smiled. “So, no hope, you think?”

  “Not much,” I said again.

  “But … any? I mean, if the IRS comes back at me like you said they could, I sure could use that money.”

  “Best guess—less than ten percent that I can track it down and get any part of it. There’s no telling how much he might’ve already spent, or how.”

  “Still …” He gave me a hopeful look. “You’ve got a hell of a track record.”

  “Finding missing people. Who, by the way, end up dead. Can’t say I’m a whiz at finding money, though I tracked down truck-loads when I was with the IRS.”

  “So you’ve got … techniques.”

  I thought about that. “The IRS had ways,” I said slowly, thinking that Ma had ways too. Illegal ways. The IRS had the same ways, but they were legal because Internal Revenue makes up its own laws, which makes them legal by definition—sort of a reverse Catch-22 deal with taxpayers on the losing end.

  Speaking of things beyond the law, IRS thugs Renner and Bledsoe wandered in and took seats nearby. Perfect. If I pointed them out to Volker, he would’ve had a coronary.

  Lucy got up and had a word with them. Don’t know what she said, but their eyes jittered and they moved to a table farther away. She came back, sat down smiling to herself.

  “I’d sure like you to try,” Mike said, staring at the guys Lucy chased off. He looked at me. “At least it’s worth a try. Uh, I suppose you’d need some sort of a retainer.”

  “How about a little pro bono?” Lucy said to me.

  “Not right now, kiddo,” I said, patting my stomach. “Those fries pretty much did the trick.”

  She slugged my shoulder, then rubbed it to take the hurt out. She looked at Mike. “We have a—shall we say, sort of a client who should remain nameless, but who is, shall we say, interested in roughly the same sort of thing as you.”

  “Nicely put, Ms. Circumlocution,” I told her.

  “Well, it’s not as if this person wants to see their name on the front page of the New York Times, Mort. So, maybe we could keep Mike in mind while we stumble along with that other thing.”

  “Stumble. Ain’t that the truth? Which Ma said we weren’t going to do, if you remember.”

  “Except you haven’t yet used your powers of persuasion on her, which I’ve heard are legion. If you remember.”

  “Forgot about that.”

  “I’d sure appreciate anything you could do,” Mike said, eyes pinballing between us. “I don’t know what this other thing is, but, hell, if … if you could at least keep me in mind.”

  Lucy hugged my arm, looked at Mike. “Mort’s shy about his sleuthing powers, they’re so incredible. He doesn’t like to brag because it’s like having a superpower, so I’ll brag for him. He’s … sort of not too awful at investigating stuff.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Well, you’re not.”

  Mike smiled. “You two are something else.” He stood up and shook my hand. “If it turns out that you need a retainer, I’ll try to come up with it.”

  “Pro bono,” Lucy said firmly.

  * * *

  “Incredible sleuthing powers,” I said as Mike went out the door. “You should expand on that theme.”

  “That was like advertising.”

  “Advertising is all about lying without lying. Or bald-faced, sociopathic lying without flinching. Spinning a layered web of deceit around an ordinary stinky pile of horse pucky.”

  “Yup. Advertising is all of that.”

  “Okay, great. What would you like to do now that doesn’t involve bowling or me trying to touch my toes?”

  “Let’s go home. I have an idea.”

  “Yowzer.”

  I got up, waved to Renner and Bledsoe, got a little stink-eye from Bledsoe, took Lucy by the arm, and we went outside.

  * * *

  But the “yowser” notwithstanding, all we did at home was change into going-out duds, me in brown slacks, loafers, white shirt and a sports coat, Lucy i
n a yowser two-piece black outfit, short skirt, short top with tummy showing, black lipstick, black eye shadow, gold hoop earrings.

  “Ho-ly smoke, woman!”

  She spun. “Like it?”

  “Not on my daughter, no.” And it reminded me of Mira, but I didn’t tell her that.

  “It’s not on your daughter, Daddy.”

  Daddy. Last time she called me that we took the Luxor in Vegas for over fifty thousand dollars.

  “Is that décolletage or cleavage?” I asked.

  “Cleavage here. Décolletage in France and maybe Quebec. And, uh, hot tits in San Bernardino or Bakersfield.”

  “Gotcha. What’s on your mind, Sugar Plum?”

  “A suite. One with a Jacuzzi. And a great big bed, like a third of an acre.”

  “Free?”

  “Probably not. But I might win enough to pay for one, you never know. Who’s driving?”

  “I’ll Uber, you keep your legs together. That skirt looks too short for you to get out of the car without … without …”

  “Don’t say it. And, you need to put on your white wig and those amber-tinted glasses. And some kind of old fogey hat.”

  “As if I have a bunch of old fogey hats lying around.”

  “As if you don’t.”

  The white wig had longish hair. This July, the top quarter inch of my right ear had been blown off by a .38-caliber bullet. All my wigs were long enough now to cover that identifying mark.

  We went to the Grand Sierra Resort. They were big. They had suites and looked as if they could afford to cough up enough dough to cover the cost of a good one near the top floor.

  They ought to check birthdays at the door. Lucy was born when four planets were lined up, not including Mars. That had a warping effect on her personal universe, and/or the universe at large. As she told me earlier that year, if you take the “k” out of Lucky, what’s left? Lucy.

  She slipped me five bills, hundred dollars each. “You need to give ’em to me when I ask for them,” she said.

  “Where’d you get these?”

  “Gotta keep a little seed money lying around.”

  “Seed money. Right. I knew that.”

  Roulette was her game. One look at her and they wanted to see some ID. She had a fake ID that said she was twenty-three and her name was Britany Taggart. First I’d heard of it.

  “I don’t want to use my real name,” she whispered. “And twenty-three fits the outfit better.”

  “Yes, it does. How many IDs you got?”

  “Three. One legit. Two others. Now hush.”

  Three?

  She settled in at a high-roller roulette table where two other people were playing—a woman in her fifties with diamonds here and there, a guy in his forties in old jeans and a T-shirt. And a Rolex. And a show-off two-carat diamond pinky ring. All I had was a Target Timex. Oh, and Lucy, so in the bigger scheme of things, I was the clear winner.

  Lucy looked up at me. “Sugar-baby needs a hit, Daddy.” Then she tittered like a girl I once knew in the seventh grade.

  Great. Sugar-baby? No way. I couldn’t call her that.

  The other players and the girl running the wheel stared at Sugar, then at me as I got five hundreds out of my wallet.

  “Go get ’em, Sugar Plum.”

  She popped out of her chair and thumped me on the chest. “You know I don’t win when you call me that.”

  “I take it back.”

  “You better. Right now.”

  She glared at me, hands on a baby-doll flare of truly great hips. “Say it,” she said. “Sugar-baby.”

  “Sugar-baby,” said the girl-whipped old guy.

  “Okay, then.” The glare lingered, then faded.

  Sugar-baby sat down, got five chips, hundred dollars each. The ball was in play, whirling one way around the outside track, wheel spinning the other way, and Sugar put a chip on red and said, “Black, black, black,” and the ball clattered, stopped, and the girl said, “Two, black,” and Sugar stared at the table. “Did I say black?” She let out that high-pitched birdlike titter and said, “Oopsie-doodle. I put a chip on red, didn’t I? Well … poop.”

  The chip went away. Sugar looked at the table, then put a chip on number two, black, same number that had just come up. “Doublesies, Daddy.” Titter.

  “Yup,” said Daddy.

  The girl sent the ball rolling, wheel turning, and Sugar said, “Doublesies, doublesies,” and the guy in the pinky ring raised his eyebrows at me and I raised my eyebrows at him, and the ball clattered and, “Two, black,” the girl said.

  “Lookie, Daddy. I got the double-di-do.”

  Jesus.

  “Mighty fine, Sugar-baby.”

  The girl set thirty-five chips in front of Sugar, who stashed all but one in a sparkly black purse then popped out of her chair like a gymnast. “Let’s go spend it, Daddy!” She handed the chip to the girl running the table. “For you, since you’ve been so sweet,” Lucy said, then she tittered.

  “Uh, thanks,” the girl said as we walked away.

  And that’s how Lucy paid for the suite. Which, I found out later, wasn’t necessary, but it was a beautiful demonstration of how little I knew about my girl.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MORE BUBBLE BATH. So, of course, Hammer and Spade were off in a corner, snorting at all that unmanly sudsy iridescence.

  But let them. I was in the tub with Lucy, not them. Bunch of sour-grape wannabes.

  Lucy glided over like a seal and more or less stretched out on top of me. Buoyed by water, she weighed about five pounds. Then she started in with the kissing. Man, I hate that. But to keep her happy, I returned it, French style. She’d lost the black lipstick and the vampire eye shadow, looked like a high school cheerleader again, a junior, which gave me the willies.

  “How is this getting us closer to whoever killed Soranden or where the money went?” I asked when we came up for air.

  “Shut up. And by the way, that tickles.”

  “What?”

  “This.”

  “Oh.”

  * * *

  “You should touch your toes,” she said.

  “Would if I could.”

  “Could if you’d keep trying.”

  So I gave it a shot, managed to get my fingertips a little over halfway between knees and ankles. “Don’t laugh,” I said. “And, look, my legs are straight.”

  “Keep at it.”

  This was “stretchie” time, which was more or less a sequel to the Spanish Inquisition when folks were torn limb from limb. Twice a day, morning and evening, Lucy demonstrated what it was like to have been born without a backbone. At the moment she was standing on her hands in the middle of the room in black silk panties that were about half thong. Her back was bent almost double and she had both feet on top of her head, breasts stretched as tight as snare drums.

  “I’ll probably have to work up to that,” I told her.

  “Good luck.”

  Then she lowered her feet even further, put them flat on the floor by her hands, then slowly stood up. This was like a slow-motion front flip, which was technically impossible if you were human. Then she did it nine more times, all in perfect control. Then she did it backward, hands over her head, bent backward at the waist until her hands were on the floor behind her, then her legs went up, one at a time, until she was in another handstand, then her feet continued over until they were on the floor again, two inches behind her hands, then she stood up. This was like a slow-motion backflip. Again, not humanly possible. Then nine more times, always in control.

  I got my fingertips down another half inch, which hurt.

  “Don’t bounce,” Lucy said. “Bouncing can pull something loose.”

  “Like a backbone,” I agreed. “It might come flying out and bust a lamp.”

  “Probably not an entire backbone.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  Then, of course, basic splits—side to side, then front and back. Lucy, not me. She held each for
thirty seconds, alternated them, did that for another six or eight minutes.

  “That’s gotta hurt like a son of a bitch,” I said.

  “Doesn’t. It feels wonderful.” She stood up. “There’s one more thing that feels wonderful that we haven’t done yet.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. I’ll need you for this part.”

  Oh, great. More work. But I try to be a good sport when it comes to things like this, so I went along with it.

  * * *

  Later, looking up at a dark ceiling, I gave more thought to everything associated with Soranden, including me, since it was likely Soranden’s skull was dropped in what had been mistaken for my car. Lucy was asleep, tucked in beside me with an arm across my chest as usual, but it generally takes me a while to let the day wind down. Especially after … Lucy.

  About Soranden, we didn’t know much, though it’s likely we were ahead of the FBI with that blackmail thing. But IRS Commissioner Willie Munson didn’t have any idea Soranden had blackmailed anyone, so other than counting on my supposed luck, I didn’t know how he thought I could stay ahead of the FBI or solve that crime if they couldn’t.

  Soranden’s skull had been dropped into Lucy’s car, and I was with Lucy. Supposedly that tied me into it, or her, but I still had the feeling it was due to my being in the news so much this past year, starting with my first three hours as a private eye when I found Mayor Sjorgen’s head in the trunk of my ex-wife’s Mercedes. Which was entirely bogus if we were talking about competence. All levity and feigned hubris aside, I wasn’t a gumshoe, I was a patsy for the gods. I was Joe Blow who could walk through a forty-acre park in the dark and step on the one and only pile of dogshit in all that acreage.

  Lucy was lucky. So was I, but in a different way. I preferred hers. Mine had put me on the national scene, in the national consciousness. That may have made me a kind of convenient dumping ground. Wonder what to do with an awkward body or body part? No problem. Just leave it with Mortimer Angel. And how do you locate this guy, Angel? Why, just watch the news. There’s his house. It’s on Washington Street, half a mile west of downtown. You can’t miss it. Then once you’ve dumped that body or body part, you can catch the circus on Channel Four at eleven, narrated by Ginger Haley who is one foxy lady. Invite your friends over for buffalo wings and beer.