Scrambled Hard-Boiled
By E. R. White, Jr.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real people or incidents are purely coincidental
Copyright © 2011 by E. R. White, Jr.
All rights reserved worldwide.
For Gina, Emmett and Henry
Chapter 1
I owe my current success to a combination of blackmail, murder and buggery, not necessarily in that order.
It was September of 1975, and I’d been out of the Navy for about six months. I hadn’t been much of a success in the military…hell let’s be honest. I’d been a goddamn disaster and was lucky to have gotten out without a court-martial for conduct unbecoming of an officer, endangering a vessel and a couple of other offenses—which, I assure you, was only the tip of the iceberg. After my somewhat hasty resignation of my Lieutenant’s commission, I found myself with about 300 bucks in my wallet, a BA in History from Western Carolina College, and absolutely no marketable skills whatsoever.
I had wound up in Eagentown, a small town about an hour’s drive from Charlotte, North Carolina, where my Uncle Lester and Aunt Sarah let me stay in a spare bedroom. I briefly considered becoming a high school history teacher, but even at the then tender young age of twenty-seven, I knew enough about human nature—mine especially—to realize that parents would object to their sixteen-year-old daughters banging their World History teacher, even if he was a distinguished veteran, albeit an amoral bastard, like myself.
The local economy was going to hell in a hand basket back then, but Uncle Lester made a few calls and got me a part-time job at the “Budge’s” drive-through package store, so I could make a few bucks to live on until I sorted things out. It was a minimum wage only job, but the beer was free, and I managed to get laid a few times after work by some of the women I'd sold booze to.
The owner of the store, Wayne Budge, was a WWII vet who always wore khaki pants, black loafers and a white cotton t-shirt that stretched tightly over his ponderous beer belly. Occasionally, the front of the shirt would slip out of his pants, and the world would be treated to the sight of Budge’s navel, an unimaginably deep crater that was covered with dank, sweaty, matted hair and, I swear to God, had some blue fungus growing out of it.
I knew if I stayed in town, that someday my navel would look like that.
I started reading regularly the help-wanted ads that were posted in the newspapers, but most were for either unskilled labor or sales. I figured I already had both those areas mastered working at Budge’s, so I looked for something different. After a month or so of sporadic hunting through the want ads at night, my salvation came in the form of an ad seeking a “Detective Apprentice” from Twillfigger Investigations, Inc. I can remember the words almost verbatim to this day.
“WANTED: Detective Apprentice: Individual with sharp analytical mind, willing to master the exciting field of private investigations. Military experience a plus. Contact Twillfigger Investigations, Inc, Rm 309, Tyron Building, 1309 East Jackson Ave, Charlotte. No longhairs need apply.”
I got a close-cropped haircut, bought a fifteen dollar suit from the local thrift shop and took off to Charlotte in Uncle Leroy’s ’71 Maverick the next day.
I had no idea where East Jackson Avenue was, so I stopped at a filling station on the northern outskirts of Charlotte for directions. Soon afterwards, I located the Tyron Building downtown, parked the Maverick and walked through the revolving doors into the lobby. It was around one o’clock on a September Monday afternoon.
The Tyron Building was a four-story, brick structure that had been built in the fifties and was beginning to show its age. The lobby was painted an institutional green, and the floors were composed of worn but clean, speckled gray-white tile. You could see the occasional ripple and crack in the floor, a testament to its age and use. There was a gray, metal desk to my left that I supposed acted as a reception area in better days. No one was manning it.
It was still warm in early September, and the air was muggy and stale. There was no air conditioning in the lobby. A large ceiling fan about twenty feet above me tried to make a difference in the temperature, but was failing miserably. A stairwell entry lay directly ahead of me and there was an elevator to my right.
Posted next to the elevator was a listing of office occupants on the various floors. Among denizens of this building were two chiropractors, a dentist, an insurance salesman, a smattering of lawyers and my destination, Twillfigger Investigations, Inc, located on the third floor.
I pressed the "up" button on the elevator and the elevator door immediately slid open. I stepped in, pressed three on the control panel headed for the third floor.
The elevator stopped, and I exited out. I was in a poorly lit hallway, decorated in the same motif as the lobby. The ceiling was about ten feet high, and a window with no curtains was situated on my right, down at the end of the hall. I looked to my left and saw a large door with the words Twillfigger Investigations emblazoned on it. I tried the doorknob, found it to be unlocked, and entered into the office.
I walked into a rather barren visitor room. Inside was an old black leather couch, a couple of straight back, wooden chairs and a cheap, round coffee table made of soft pine that had been stained dark brown. A two-year-old copy of Field and Stream, a few Time magazines and some personnel forms lay stacked on it. A large metal stand ashtray, with a few butts in it, was placed next to the couch. The walls were bare of any adornment.
A young man, about my age, sat on the couch, dressed in a brown suit with white shirt and blue tie. His hair had been freshly barbered, and he had a black briefcase on his lap. He was staring at me.
I looked to my left and saw a closed door. Directly ahead of me was another door, but it had a piece of yellow legal paper taped to it. There was a note on the paper. I stepped forward to read it.
“Out—be back around 1:30. If job seeker, fill out forms on table.” The day’s date was scrawled across the bottom of it.
I sighed, sat down on one of the wooden chairs, grabbed a form and filled it out. The guy on the couch continued to stare at me for a moment, then stuck out his hand and introduced himself as Larson Gallagher. He was a bit more slender and a few inches shorter than me.
I shook his hand, said my name was Jay Dafoe, sat back and continued to write.
“I guess you're here for the job?,” he queried.
“Yeah.”
“So am I—I have been here since eleven, waiting for him.”
I merely nodded and continued to fill out the form. I didn’t want to be rude to the guy, but let’s face it, I didn’t know him from Adam, and we were competitors for the same job.
“I did a stint in the Coast Guard,” he blurted out after a few more minutes, “and then I got out and got a degree, in Criminal Justice. I wanted to join the Highway Patrol, took the test and everything, but—I guess they aren’t hiring right now.”
He looked at me expectantly, but I just looked at him and then shifted my gaze back to the form. After a while, he reached over and took a magazine from the table and began to leaf through it, every now and then, peering over the top of it to sneak a look at me. I finished filling out the form and counted the minutes till 1:30.
At about 1:35, the elevator outside the waiting room came to life and opened up on our floor. A pair of heavy steps made its way to the entrance door. The door opened and in limped Mr. Ernie Twillfigger, master detective.
The first thing that hit me about Ernie was the aura of rancid sweat about him. His face was slick with it, and you could see that his shirt was soaked with perspiration. In the years that followed, I would see Ernie in a number of situations, and unless we were in an a
ir-conditioned room, Ernie was sweating, even in the dead of winter. Mind you, he never really stunk unless he’d indulged in a heavy bout of Italian food the previous day. Then he’d have the faint smell of garlic oozing out of him for the next twenty-four hours or so. The smell was no worse than sitting near a pizza parlor bathroom if the truth be told.
He was about five feet, four inches tall and weighed between 220 to 250 pounds. He would never tell me his actual weight, the only vanity I was ever able to attribute to the man. He walked with a limp, because as I found out later, he had an artificial leg below the left knee. It had been amputated some twenty-five years earlier.
After I’d gotten to know Ernie a bit better, I asked him what had happened. He mumbled something about “losing it in Korea while in the Army," and left me with the impression that he’d lost it in the war. It was later, around 1985 I think, that I ran into someone who had served with Ernie in the Army, and he told me the truth. Ernie had lost it right after he’d gotten out of boot camp in 1950. He was in an off-limits whorehouse in Fayetteville, NC when the MPs raided it. Ernie had gotten away from the MPs by jumping out a window and running away. Unfortunately, he didn’t look where he was going and got hit by a pick-up truck as he ran across a street. His leg was crushed, and infection set in while he was in the base hospital. He lost the leg, got a medical discharge and disability checks for life. A good deal according to Ernie.
“Better than getting your dick blown off," he’d always say.
He was wearing a light-blue linen suit with a white and blue striped shirt and red, ultra-wide tie that day. It was the 70's remember. You could see the sweaty outline of his tank-top t-shirt underneath the shirt. His hair at the temples was dirty blonde, going gray, and he had a left-to-right comb over the top of his head. I guess he might have had some hair on top, but the comb-over hid it. A cigarette was dangling out of his mouth, and when he moved, you could tell he had a handgun slung under his armpit.
Ernie was an ugly bastard. Imagine how W. C. Fields would look like after a two-week binge in a Guatemala whorehouse, subsisting on nothing but pasta, vodka and crack cocaine, and you can get some idea about Ernie. He had a bulbous nose, with red and blue veins crisscrossing it. Rosacea had ravaged his cheeks and forehead, and for as long as I knew him, he always had a massive, pus-laden eruption occurring somewhere on his face.
His teeth were yellow from smoking over the years, and his lips were thick, veal colored pieces of meat, slapped against a wide mouth. His eyes were gray, and the whites were watery. His breath stank, especially after a meal, but Ernie knew this and always had breath mints with him.
He’d always pop a few in his mouth before meeting a client, saying that “shitty” breath would turn off a prospective customer faster than anything, even if you were dressed like Cary Grant. Ernie never mentioned anything about the effect that running, facial sores had on clients.
Before Ernie could say anything, young Larson jumped up, introduced himself and said he was there for the job interview. Ernie just sort of looked at him, and then motioned for him to enter his office. Larson opened the door and strode in. I could have sworn there was a smirk on his face. I guess Gallagher felt he’d gotten the upper hand on me by getting in to see Ernie first. Ernie followed him in, ripping down the paper sign he had taped to his door, and then slamming the door shut behind him.
I sat there for about five minutes and tried to listen to anything that occurred in the office. I heard sounds of conversation for a bit, nothing distinct, then I heard a great snarling laugh that immediately was followed by Larson swinging the door wide open, and with a sort of panicked look on his face (or was it disgust?) he rapidly strode out the waiting room, briefcase in hand, shutting the door behind him.
I never saw him again.
Puzzled, I turned back to wait for my turn. After about ten minutes, I heard the sound of a commode flushing and soon thereafter, Ernie walked out of his office. I could tell by looking at the wet splotch on his left pant leg that he'd had a slight mishap in the bathroom, but Ernie didn’t seem to mind or care. He merely pointed at me, jerked his thumb towards his office and turned around and went back in. I followed.
Ernie’s office was bare as the waiting room. A large oak desk and high back chair sat in front of a large window with Venetian blinds. Mounted in the window, not covered by the blinds was an air conditioner, humming at full blast. To my left was the door to a washroom and to my right a bank of metal file cabinets, with books on top. A couple of cheap padded chairs with armrests sat in front of the desk. The desk itself had a couple of phones, an ink blotter, ashtray full of cigarette butts and a few papers scattered about its top. Ernie had taken a seat in the chair behind the desk.
He snapped his fingers and pointed to the form I held in my hand. I gave it to him, and after a second, took a seat in one of the chairs. Ernie just stared at the form and grunted a few times as he read it. No words had been spoken.
After a minute, he tossed the form aside, reached in his pocket and got his cigarettes and his gunmetal Zippo lighter. He lit a fag and tossed the lighter on the desk. He put his shoes up on his desk and eyed me for a few seconds.
He took a drag off his smoke, eyed the red glowing tip for a moment and then asked me, just as casual as you please, his first question.
“Son, have you ever fucked a nigger woman?”
My indoctrination into the Twillfigger School of Scientific Detection had begun.
Chapter 2
Scrambled Hard-Boiled Page 1