One
I’ve had thirty-two years playing the game of life, with half of that time actually spent living, and the rest spent bouncing between existing, and surviving. Very important distinctions between those three. And believe you me, my life is about as much like the Milton-Bradley version as an orange is to a computer. There is decidedly less cash, no kids, a piece of junk car, and no mansion in the hills. Life for me has been more like a videogame. Set on nightmare difficulty. And I’ve been playing with both my arms tied behind my back, so I have to mash the buttons with my face. But amazingly, no matter how much dogshit I get into, I somehow manage to turn it into diamonds. Flawed, scratched, imperfect blood diamonds, but diamonds never the less. I pulled over to the side of the road, exited my tiny car and stood in marvel in front of the monolithic Stonegate Apartment Condominiums. The damn thing took up about 5 blocks. I punched in the gate code, went inside, and took a deep breath of the effluvia of wealth, status, and people who were definitely ahead of me in Life.
Building One had five hundred units, the smallest and least expensive of which was four times my monthly rent and had living rooms bigger than my entire apartment. I went up the stairs and took quite a bit of amusement in the prodigious piles of pigeon shit all over the patios of the third floor penthouses. Birds don’t distinguish between things like social or economic status, or a patio furniture set that costs more than most cars. They let fly where and when they please. I take comfort in the fact that while these lucky stiffs might have no trouble paying the astronomical rent, as evidenced by countless collections of underutilized detritus of the wealth littering the outside of every unit I could see, the birds don’t shit on my patio. That’s probably because I don’t have a patio, but really, that’s neither here nor there.
I ducked under the police tape and walked up to unit 302. A burly officer put his hand up and said something into his collar radio. A sharp crackle retorted, and he waved me through. I went inside, and stood ten feet from Detective Gabriel Mariana. The epitome of the tall, dark and handsome archetype. As I always did, I swallowed the involuntary rage, followed by my pride, and then suppressed the all-consuming need to pick up the nearest blunt object and smash him in the face. Emotions properly contained, I simply scowled at him. My eye went as always to the scar under his left eye, and a small deformity on his right hand. Some crazy bastard had blocked a Mariana right cross with a freezer door, then cracked his orbital bone with a five pack of foster farms chicken legs. Fifty bucks says you can’t guess who that crazy bastard was.
He knew I was remembering that moment, as he flexed and cracked his right hand, and his left eye gave the slightest hint of a wince. The scar was only a tiny line above his cheek. Say what you will about city employment, the health care is second to none. It was the only flaw on his face. He looked strikingly like a younger, taller Eric Estrada. I loathed his perfectly quaffed hair, his thousand dollar suit, and million dollar smile. My hair looks like a duck’s ass in the back, and mad scientist in the front. And that’s if I bothered to try and do anything with it. The mullet has nothing on me. I was wearing a pair of jeans with a hole on the right knee that I have had for about 15 years, and a John Lennon T-Shirt, the one of him with the I Heart NY shirt. I had a green british army jacket that was too big for me over it, and barely clinging to life on my feet were a good ol’ pair of chucks endorsed by the catholic church, and sponsored by duct tape.
The loathing was not a one way street. He hated me right back, and just as intensely. He appraised my disheveled appearance, and smiled like he was the cat who drug me in. Which was an appropriate enough simile, I certainly wasn’t here on a social call. His smile was so bright, looking directly at it gave me a little spot in my vision like when someone snaps a flash and you aren’t ready for it. And toothy, damn it was toothy. I didn’t know a mouth could have so many teeth. Pianos have nothing on him. I knew how to push his buttons though, and I indulged in some simple adolescent aspersions to bring that smile down a few gigawatts. I extended my hand, and walked towards him. “Detective Marinara, so good to see you again,” I grinned. My jibe had just the effect I was looking for. The spot in my vision cleared as he reattached his lower jaw and his face returned to it’s normal chiseled stone. He put on an air of professionalism and a hand on my shoulder. “Toe the line Archer, you are becoming persona non grata around here, and that doesn’t work for me, or our agreement, ” he said through his teeth while holding the remnants of his smile. “Persona non grata, what a wonderful phrase! Persona Non Grata, ain’t no passing craze!” I sang and danced a little, and got slapped by a withering scowl from the detective. Apparently not a fan of the Lion King. Ok, so maybe I have a little too much fun at his expense sometimes, but hey, I have to take my fun where I get it and especially while at his expense. No worries for the rest of my days would be entirely too much to hope for, at any rate.
I plastered a solemn look on my face and said “Well Trench, I just don’t know how I can live with myself knowing you don’t want me around anymore! I liked to call him Trench, because his last name is where the similarities end to the deepest place on the planet. Trench was as deep as a half filled kiddie pool.. His grip tightened on my shoulder. “This is serious business Archer, so get godamn serious.” The last three words were barely hissed under his breath. I shrugged his arm off me. “Fine by me. Let’s just get this over with. What did you call me out here for? Being that this is clearly a crime scene, I’m guessing you won’t be having me find supoena dodgers and then not pay me and take all the credit? Oh, and just in case you forgot, our “agreement” edges dangerously close to blackmail.”
He led me onto the patio, and passed me a pair of nitrile gloves. He pulled back the door to the storage unit. The tenant of the unit was inside. I take back what I said earlier about lucky stiffs. This guy was definitely of the unlucky persuasion. Whatever luck he possessed had run out, and any shrewd boardroom skills he had accounted for naught. You don’t get any extra lives in the real world, and when someone cuts off your head, you don’t get asked if you want to continue. Someone else has made that choice for you. Game over.
My stomach churned like butter in Amish country, and it was a no-holds-barred battle between the count chocula and the banana I had for breakfast. I took a minute, regained my senses and sent calming impulses to my stomach. When things finally settled, I took another look at the gruesome display. It worse than a regular decapitation, even though I didn’t really have a point of reference for that, this being the first dismembered corpse I had ever seen. I say it was worse, because whoever had killed this poor shlub had turned him into a macabre piece of surreal art. It reminded me of an Escher painting, the one where you see a hand holding a crystal ball, and then you see Escher in the crystal ball. Except Escher’s head was still on his shoulders when he painted it. On a shelf on one side of the unit was one of his disembodied hands, holding a small mirror like the afore mentioned crystal ball. Propped up in a chair was the headless body, the bloody stump reflected perfectly in the mirror. Yeah, it looked exactly like a psychopathic rendition of that Escher painting. I enjoy surrealism as much as anybody, but this was just sick. “Well, I can tell you two things. One, I’m fairly certain we can rule out crime of passion, and two and that if we go into another unit and I see a melting clock, I’m getting the hell out of here,” I said, wincing through a couple of esophogeal spasms. Trench looked at me with a dumbfounded expression. “I’ll explain it to you later. Look, I know you snap your fingers, and I come running, but really, why the fuck am I here? I’m a process server, not your pet, and not a pet dick.” Damn, left myself wide open. “Come now Archer, i think we can agree that you’re a dick,” Trench said with a sneer. “This may be true, Marionette, but you know what I mean,” I said, hitting another of my favorite digs on his name. I had to knock him back down a couple of pegs. ”You’ve got a full crime scene team here. I give people court notices. I’m not a detective, and I’m not a criminologist. So once again I ask you, what the fuck am I doing here, besides admiring the handywork of some sick bastard while fighting to keep my breakfast from contaminating your crime scene?”
He sighed, and hit me with the punchline, hard. Stunned me, like a right hook to the temple. “I need your help.” I was flabbergasted. I would have been less surprised if he had started dancing and singing “When you’re a Jet.” Just what did he expect me to do? “Our budget is cut to pieces right now, and quite frankly, we have no clue what we’re dealing with. This is the first body we have found, so we can’t say it’s a serial killer, but there hasn’t been any thing like this in this town in 25 years. We don’t have an expert available to us., and as of right now we are not prepared to deal with this. The Captain wants to keep a lid on this as much as possible, and we need this thing solved. Elections are in 2 weeks, and the department can’t afford this kind of negative press. It’s all hands on deck here. Captain told us to call in every favor we have, and every bit of help we can get.” I guffawed at this, barely keeping myself from collapsing with laughter and making a bigger ass of myself. “So I’m the closest thing you have to an expert? HA! That’s rich!,” I said, wiping a tear from my eye. “If you were interested in my deductive skills and police work, maybe you shouldn’t have failed me on that driving test. Gabe, I find people who don’t want to be found and give them orders to appear in court. You want to catch a killer, go have dinner with Dr. Lecter.” Gabe reached into his suit and tossed me a thick envelope. “500 per day, plus expenses. You’ll be a consultant, under me. We’ll provide the suspects. I know you do some profiling, you study your target’s habits and behavior, who they associate with, where they like to go. Once you’ve got them down, you figure out a way to catch them off guard. You’re a real prick about it, and I don’t know why you take such satisfaction in it, but you get results. You get all the real pieces of work, the ones that no one else wants any where near, and you always find a way to get the job done. The last three you helped us with were big wins for our department. I may have gotten all the good press, but the Captain knows you set us up for those wins. There are three things I can count on you for, pissing me off, trying to knock my teeth in and finding your man. Well, that’s what I need right now.” I opened my mouth to retort, but he cut me off. “I also know that I can’t appeal to your sense of civic duty, so if you do this for me…,” he took a deep breath and sighed, “I’ll tell Angie that you and I, we’ve settled our differences, that we can get along okay. I’ll wear her down, impress her a little, and maybe I can get her to meet with you.”
Son of a bitch. He was too damn good. The man knew how to bargain. He stroked my ego, padded my wallet, and was going to turn his considerable suave towards helping me patch things up with Angie, knowing how it would kill him inside. He had released his grip on my short and curlies, and then opened up the vice, so i could go put my own nuts in it. We both knew I couldn’t tell him no. We both needed each other, and we both loathed that inescapable fact. We were finally on a level playing field. We both had bitter pills to choke down.
© 2011 Jeff Hurley
No comments:
Post a Comment