Scrambled Hard-Boiled

by E.R. White, Jr.

I presented Randall a bill for twenty-five grand the next day. He paid it off without blinking an eye. When Ernie got back from Vegas, he got pissed. He felt I should have charged $30,000. Once Ernie had calmed down, he did admit I had handled a difficult situation pretty well and just attributed my undercharging to inexperience.

  A few weeks went by after the Randall affair. Ernie had come back from Vegas with his hemorrhoids inflamed—what in the hell had he been doing with those whores?—and despite his claims of using over a pint a Preparation-H a day, they really were giving him a problem. Ernie constantly pissed and moaned about them in the office and would routinely stand-up, reach around, shove his hand up his ass crack and pinch them to get some relief from the itching. Now, I can understand a man wanting to scratch his rectum on occasion, but most of us would do it in private. Not Ernie. He’d pinch his ‘roids anytime, anywhere, and usually groan in relief when he nailed one just right. After he’d done this in front of a couple of clients, and they had sort of gagged in disgust, both Ernie and I agreed that I would do most of the customer interviews, at least until he got his hemorrhoid problem under control.

  Things went smoothly like this for a while and Twillfigger Investigations was making more money than ever before thanks to Ernie’s connections and my charm. Then one day, we got a call from a Mr. Sanford H. Milton, Attorney-at-Law.

  I remember it was a Wednesday morning when the call came in. Ernie answered the phone and after a two or three-minute conversation, he hung up the phone and called for me to come into his office. I walked in and saw Ernie had the special gleam in his eye that he only gets when there’s a lot of money to be made.

  “Jay, my boy, do you know who that was on the phone?” he chortled. “That was Sandy Milton, the biggest, most expensive divorce lawyer in the state, and he wants to hire us for a job.”

  “So what, a job is a job, and we have standard rates that we use anyway.”

  “Damn it, haven’t you learned anything since you've been here?” he groaned. “First, our standard rates just went up. This guy represents the crème-de-la crème, and he charges accordingly. Believe me, a divorce is a divorce, and the only real difference between Milton and some other divorce attorney is the rates Milton charges. I he can charge an arm and a leg, so can we.”

  “Second, we can pad the shit out of our expense account and no one—and I mean no one—will raise an eyebrow over it. We’re talking fights over estates in the millions here, so a piss-ant little charge here and there is of no consequence.”

  I slowly nodded my head, as if in agreement but Ernie just stared at me.

  “You still don’t get it do you. Listen, when word gets out that we’re working for Milton—and buddy, it will if I have anything to say about it—our business will double. Lawyers are like lemmings. They follow the leader, and the leader is the lawyer who charges the most. Right now, that’s Sandy Milton.”

  “Have you ever done any work for him in the past?”

  “Naw—he knows who I am, but I guess he figured that I wasn’t the right sort of guy for the clientele he catered to.”

  “Well, why the change of heart?”

  “My guess he heard about me taking you as a junior partner, and probably heard you looked more presentable than me—Hell, you know that I do my best work in the background, I ain’t afraid to admit that. That’s one reason I picked you, you put on a good front.”

  “Yeah, yeah, right, but did he give any other reasons or any information as to what he wants us for?”

  “He just said that this job called for someone who could get the job done, and money was no object. We set up an appointment with him and his client at his office for this afternoon, around half past four.”

  Money was no object!? These words from a lawyer? Immediately, a warm glow of suspicion began to grow in the back of my head, but Ernie’s greed was contagious and got the better of me.

  We both agreed that it would be best that I alone go to the meeting. Ernie was still grabbing his ass at random periods, and considering the type of clients that Milton had, we didn’t want to take a chance on offending their sensibilities. The rest of the day was taken up in routine activities, and around three o’clock I began to clean myself up and get presentable to meet the lawyer and his client.

  I got in my car and drove to Milton’s office, arriving there a few minutes before 4:30. Located on a quiet street, if it wasn’t for the modest and tasteful lawyer’s shingle sign on the sculptured front lawn, you would have thought it was a residence instead of a law office.

  It was an old, two-story Victorian turn of the century affair that had been fully restored to its original grandeur. With its immaculate white siding, coupled with green shutters and roof, it dripped wealth and influence. I remember to this day the wave of envy that hit me when I saw it.

  I pulled into the small parking lot located across the street and parked my car. I saw a maroon E-type Jaguar parked in the space reserved for Mr. Milton. A few other cars were in spaces reserved for Milton’s partners and employees. The only other car not parked in a reserved space was a sky-blue late model Mercedes which I assumed, correctly, belonged to my prospective client. There’s nothing like seeing a Mercedes to whet the old avarice appetite.

  I walked across the street towards the office, climbed up the three steps to the veranda that wrapped around the house and entered through the front door. A dour looking secretary in her mid-fifties, who identified herself as Miss Saunders, greeted me. I handed her my business card and told her I had an appointment with Mr. Milton. She glanced at the card, sniffed and told me to have a seat in the waiting room, and she’d inform Mr. Milton of my arrival.

  I sat in the waiting room for about ten minutes, alternating between staring at the walls and ceiling. I heard a buzzer in Miss Saunders’ office and a few seconds later, she walked out and announced Mr. Milton would see me now. I thanked her and followed her down the hall, where she escorted me into Milton’s large, tastefully decorated office.

  The first thing that came to mind when I saw Sanford H. Milton was the word ‘crisp’. Everything about him was crisp. His shirt collar, the cuffs on his sleeves, the razor crease in his dark-blue pinstripe suit, even his perfectly groomed, salt and pepper hair, all had this aura of crisp perfection about them. His face was pleasant and ordinary, the perfect lawyer face. It exuded a sense of dependability and trust that clients and juries found reassuring. If there was ever a man who was a natural-born lawyer, at least in the looks department, Sandy Milton was it.

  I hated the bastard the second I laid eyes on him.

  He was standing behind his desk, talking with our client, who was seated in one of two overstuffed leather chairs in front of the desk. Milton introduced her as Mrs. Tamara Whippy. I took one look at her and felt the temperature in the room drop a couple of degrees.

  She was drop-dead gorgeous. She was tall, a few inches under six feet, with a thin, elegant build. She was a natural blonde and had flawless, alabaster skin. Her hair was short and expertly coiffed. She was wearing a dark blue, conservative Christian Dior suit with a string of pearls as her only jewelry. Her skirt came down to her knees, showing off a pair of perfectly formed calves. Patrician in bearing, the only bit of passion in her manner was hinted in her footwear...a pair of blue-black Italian spiked high heels.

  The thing that hit me hardest about her was her eyes. They were ice blue and one look into them told me that I was dealing with one mean, cold bitch.

  While Milton was introducing us, she fixed me with a look that said it all…“Look, I am better than you. It has nothing to do with intelligence, education, looks or ethics. It’s all in the genes, asshole. I was born with them, and you weren’t and there’s nothing, nothing that you can do to alter this situation. I’m your better, period.”

  She said it with a just a glance, and I felt it clear through to my bones.

  Hopefully hiding my discomfort, I said, “Pleased to meet you Mrs. Whippy.”

  I sat down i
n the other chair without being asked and looked expectantly at Sandy Milton, who started to speak.

  “First of all, let me say I was a little surprised to hear that Mr. Twillfigger had sent you instead of himself to discuss this matter—I take it that you’re a fully qualified professional detective? Pardon me for asking, but—but this is a special situation that requires the utmost perseverance and skill.”

  “I’m a fully licensed and qualified Detective, and a former Naval Officer, battle tested I might add,” I replied. “I have Mr. Twillfigger’s full confidence and am now a partner in his agency. Rest assured, if you hire me, you hire the whole firm.”

  Hemorrhoids and all, I said to myself.

  This seemed to satisfy Milton. As for Mrs. Whippy, she just stared at a wall as she sat there, not willing to deign my existence. She was starting to piss me off.

  “Are you familiar with the Whippy family, Mr. Dafoe?”

  I shook my head no, but the name did sound vaguely familiar.

  “Surely you have heard their stores that go by that same name?”

  Now I remembered; the Whippy’s Bull. Whippy’s was a supermarket chain in the southeast. Their logo was a big black bull with a ring through its nose wearing a butcher’s apron and brandishing a whip.

  We’ll Whip the Competition’s Prices! had been their slogan for years, and there was hardly a town from North Carolina to Florida that wasn’t near a Whippy’s. It was a family-owned business and a damn successful one at that. If Mrs. Whippy was going after a slice of that pie, then Ernie was right, we were going to make some big bucks here.

  My interest piqued, I said, “Of course, you just had to jog my memory, please continue.”

  “Mrs. Whippy’s husband is Lawrence Whippy, Jr., who is currently a vice-president in the family business. His father, Lawrence, Sr., is still in charge overall, but is grooming his son to take over one day. My client and Mr. Whippy will have been married four years come next month and unfortunately, what started out as a promising union has deteriorated to a point that Mrs. Whippy now desires to terminate the marriage and salvage what she can out of the rest of her life. That is where you and I come in.”

  I nodded my head, mumbled a few platitudes about how difficult it is to get a marriage to work out in the pressure cooker of the modern world. Milton smiled benevolently at me as I said this, going through the kabuki dance that he, no doubt, had done a thousand times before. Mrs. Whippy just glanced at me and turned her head away without a modicum of acknowledgement.

  “Yes, things are difficult nowadays,” cooed Milton, “and I’m sure you see the need for Mrs. Whippy to protect herself financially.”

  Here it comes…

  Milton looked over to Mrs. Whippy.

  “Now Tamara, I know this is going to be painful to discuss, but if we want to get the full benefit of Mr. Dafoe’s services, we’re going to have to be brutally honest with him about the situation at hand.”

  She just stared at him for a second, reached in her pocketbook for a cigarette and waved her hand at him to proceed. I quickly grabbed my Zippo that I kept handy and offered her a light, but she just looked at it like it was a wet turd. She pulled her own lighter out and lit her cigarette. She snapped it closed and stuck it back in her pocketbook and turned away.

  The goddamned bitch.

  Milton smoothly went on, as if nothing had happened. I, on the other hand, felt the warning bells go off in my head. Something wasn’t right here. The lady, even if she was an “Ice Queen", was being awful nasty and not even attempting to act the part of the distraught mate.

  “As you no doubt realize, the Whippy family is wealthy, and when Tamara here announces her decision to end the marriage, the family will be able to muster formidable assets against her. She’ll be all alone against some of the most hard-nosed lawyers around. If she’s to have any chance to preserve what is rightfully hers, we must even the playing field, somewhat.”

  “I take it, that is where you’ll require my services as a private detective, correct?”

  “Correct! We’re in dire need of someone who can take the bull by the horns and prove that Mr. Whippy has been unfaithful.”

  I sat there for a moment and stroked my chin, as if deciding I wanted to undertake such a distasteful task. It was all part of the kabuki dance, but the forms had to be obeyed.

  “I understand your dilemma—and if I agree to take on this assignment, it is understood I’ll get complete cooperation from all involved, yes?”

  “Of course Jay—I can call you Jay?”

  “Of course —Sandy. Now let’s get down to brass tacks.” I turned to face Mrs. Whippy.

  “What information do you have that your husband is having a relationship with another woman, Mrs. Whippy?”

  She looked at me like I was caught raping her cat, and before she could speak Milton cut in.

  “We’re not sure whom he’s having a liaison with. We're not even positive it is just with one person. What we’re sure of is that Mr. Whippy started acting remote from Tamara here, starting a couple of years ago. In fact, they've been almost completely estranged for over the past year. You can understand how this might upset her. She’s sure there's another woman, or women, involved but doesn’t have any real proof. That’s why we need you.”

  “Fine, Sandy, Mr. Twillfigger and I will accept the assignment. Our fee is—”

  Milton interrupted me. “There’s one more thing that you need to know and agree to before you accept this job.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Because of the vast resources that the Whippy’s can array against us, we’re going to need an airtight case against Lawrence.”

  “I can assure you,” I said in my best professional voice, “any evidence we gather against Mr. Whippy will stand up in court. If we say we have proof he’s having an affair, we will have proof.”

  “Oh, I’m sure of that—but we feel we might need a little extra, just to be on the safe side.”

  Extra? I heard the warning bells start to ring again.

  “Can you be more specific?” I asked.

  “As I was saying, because of the resources the Whippy family can bring to bear, we will need an equalizer. We want you to get actual photographs of Mr. Whippy and his lover in bed together—caught in the act, so to say. We will make it worth your while, but we want that extra effort to get the proof we need. We really must insist on it, I’m afraid.”

  With that last statement, Milton just sort of looked at me expectantly. Mrs. Whippy was coolly gazing at me, with the smoke of her cigarette curling around her flawless face.

  Now I knew why he called Ernie for this job. They wanted pictures of Whippy and his girlfriend doing it in bed, and they wanted them even if it meant someone breaking the law to get them. Taking pictures of Whippy and paramour together in public or even entering a motel wasn’t enough for them. Never mind it’d stand up in court, be they weren’t looking to go to court. They wanted to blackmail the Whippy family into a settlement, cause let’s face it, with resources that the Whippy’s could throw against them, there was a good chance Mrs. Whippy would come up way short in any settlement by a judge. They needed those pictures, bad, and they needed an unscrupulous detective to get those pictures for them.

  Don’t get me wrong, now. Any detective would take pictures of a couple in bed if given the opportunity to do it legally. Where most—not all, but most—draw the line on is trespassing on private property, commit breaking and entering on an estate or illegally invading the privacy of a wealthy person. If the person is poor or just plain run-of-the-mill middle class, it’s no big deal; any detective will do it without batting an eye. These people don’t have cash or the connections to do anything about it. A rich man, however, can strike back and make life hell for the private dick who breaks the law in order to make a fool of him. Milton knew that and that’s why he went slumming for Ernie. He needed a man who would do anything for a buck. Well, by God, I’ll show him, I thought. Admittedly, Milton wa
s spot-on when he hired Ernie and me, but by damn he was going to pay.

  “That complicates things—I’m not saying that it's impossible to do—but it does entail Ernie and I taking certain risks above and beyond what is usually required, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Of course we will pay extra for the service,” said Milton. “I was thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand.”

  I stared at him a second before answering.

  “I need to be able to speak with my partner, in private, to make sure he agrees with this, then we will discuss a final fee.”

  Milton nodded his head and led me to an adjacent office that had a phone.

  I called Ernie up and brought him up to speed on the situation.

  “Five grand is bullshit!” he cried. “The Whippys are one of the wealthiest families in the area. Ask for twenty K and settle for ten, minimum, plus hours and expenses.”

  “I got a better idea, Ernie. Let’s tie it to the amount she gets from the settlement. We’ll ask for ten grand, but settle for 7500 bucks, minimum, plus hours and expenses. Then insist on a thousand bucks more for every hundred grand she gets in settlement, up to a final fee of twenty thousand plus incidentals.”

  Ernie thought about it, and then agreed it sounded good, but he insisted that our lawyer was to write up the contract between Tamara Whippy and us—not Milton. That sounded wise to me.

  I went back to Milton’s office and outlined the plan. At first, Milton balked, but after a few minutes of haggling, where I reluctantly agreed to 7500 minimum, we came to an agreement. I then asked for any information they might have on Lawrence Whippy. With that request, Milton took a folder off his desk and handed it to me.

  It was as he was handing me the folder that I noticed it. On Milton’s coat lapel was a smudge of what looked like it was from some woman’s makeup. I knew it hadn’t been there before I left the room to talk with Ernie. I took a look at Tamara, but she was staring off into space. I noticed that the smudge was the same color as her makeup. I filed this fact for later use and turned my attention to the dossier on Lawrence Whippy.

  Lawrence “Larry” Clay Whippy, Jr.; Born: March 21, 1939 in Charlotte; Age: thirty-nine; Vice-President, Whippy’s Food, Inc.; Graduated: Yale University 1962; Hair, eyes: brown; Height five feet four inches, weight 200 pounds! I looked at this fact in disbelief, then took a look at the picture of the man and believed it. Larry Whippy was short, bald, bespectacled guy with a face not unlike that of a full moon.

  This was the small, harmless fat man whose life I’d agreed to ruin. I took a look at Tamara Whippy, who by then was looking at me view her husband’s portrait. I pointedly picked up her husband’s picture and pretended to examine it.

  “Yes, Mrs. Whippy,” I intoned, “I can see how difficult it must be for you to lose your husband, him being a Yale man and all.” She got red in the face, but said nothing.

  It was a cheap victory, but it made me feel better.

  After that, we quickly wrapped up business. I told Milton, that as soon as we had a signed agreement, Twillfigger investigations would get on the case. I made my goodbyes and walked out to my car.

  It was a little past six. I started my car and left. I quickly backtracked my way back to the office and parked a bit down the road. I was playing a hunch here, hoping to score some insurance in case our client and her lawyer proved troublesome.

  A few minutes later, Milton and Tamara left the office together and got into their cars and left in the same direction. I followed them for an hour. They wound up at a little out of the way lodge house on Lake Norman, where they parked their cars in the garage and went inside. After about an hour, the lights went off in the cabin. I didn’t bother to stay there any longer. I’d confirmed what I suspected, and had it all on film.

  Chapter 6