Word of Mouth by Stephen Rogers- written version
Posted by Reader at 2/8/2008 2:58 PM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Jewish guns prison Trombone Lesbian Black missing person Private Eye loot
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Jewish guns prison Trombone Lesbian Black missing person Private Eye loot
WORD OF MOUTH
I was the only black lesbian private investigator this side of
the river. Or if they preferred, I was the only Jewish good-ol'-
boy private investigator this side of the river. Or if they
preferred, I was the only four-foot Navaho private investigator
this side of the river.
Whatever made potential clients comfortable and more likely to
hire me, that's what I was.
I had three sets of letterheads, and I was good at voices. I
conducted all of my client meetings over the telephone, and I
didn't plan to start adding video. While I couldn't be sure, I
may have been the only charge-card accepting private investigator
this side of the river.
While I might lie more than most people, I was good at my job.
My clients were word of mouth, and they knew before they hired me
that I produced. I didn't embarrass them by asking them to visit
an office in the dingy part of town, or meet me in some coffee
shop where they might be seen by a next door neighbor. I
provided a low-impact, low-profile service.
Except for some secrets that they would rather not have known,
people were satisfied with my results. So why was I the only
private investigator this side of the river who had a dead body
in the trunk?
Trust me, I didn't kill him. I never even saw him before, or my
name wasn't Sista Steele, Beau Weinstein, and Big Red.
Granted, if I was able to make my clients happy, that meant that
I was probably making someone else unhappy. Private
investigators didn't specialize in win-win situations.
Which of me was someone trying to frame? How had the person
learned the investigator's identity, and then come to the
conclusion that they needed to leave a body here in my car? Had
they at least killed someone they wanted dead anyway?
I slammed the trunk and checked to make sure that no one was
peeking through the tiny windows in my garage door. This was the
first time my business had reached out to touch my real life, and
I didn't like my feeling of vulnerability. Perhaps I had lost
some edge by hiding behind aliases for this long.
On the other hand, maybe I should hire one of my personalities to
discover whose body was fitted around my spare tire. Since I
never saw my clients, this could have been one of the paid-in-
full-ers. I just hoped he told three friends about me before he
was killed.
I checked the garage door but it was secure. The door to the
back yard was a different story however, the killer and the
victim entering through this door after punching out the lock.
Getting out my keys, I opened the trunk again to search the
victim for identification, trying to ignore the blood that was
pooling under the knife wound. There had to be a tie between us
or the frame wouldn't make sense.
In the nearest pocket I found a small slip of paper: INSPECTED
BY NUMBER SEVEN. "A clue." I laughed and checked the rear
pocket, surprised to find his wallet.
There was no money, no charge cards, no ATM card, no folded blank
check. So much for this being an easy money case.
The wallet also contained an expired driver's license for James
Cabernet, and the face in the picture was a slightly younger,
slightly less pale, slightly more surprised version of the dead
man's face.
While I had successfully named the corpse, there weren't any
bells ringing. Unless I was mistaken, I'd never had a James
Cabernet as either a client or a subject. True, the license
might be as new as the pants, but I couldn't even recall a case
that might have sent someone scurrying for a new identity.
I closed the trunk again, glad at least that Kowalski had called
this morning asking to borrow my portable polygraph machine.
After rooting unsuccessfully through the basement, I had come out
to the garage to see if I had left the piece of equipment in the
car. If I hadn't gone to look for the polygraph machine, I might
have been driving around with James Cabernet in the trunk for
days, or at least until someone made an anonymous call to the
police to close the frame.
Thinking the name again sent a tiny bell tinkling. I had known a
Cabernet: Pat, my roommate at college. Pat had had a brother,
and "James" didn't seem like a wrong name. I suddenly remembered
telling the brother that I while I was studying law enforcement,
I was going to become a private investigator.
College for me had consisted of one semester, and after leaving I
hadn't kept in touch with Pat, never mind James whom I had met
only that once. Could James have really remembered me after all
these years, sought me out because of something I had said to him
when I was nineteen?
Didn't private investigators advertise wherever he was from?
Maybe it was time for me to move to a greener pasture.
I went back into the house to think about my next step, and who I
might be able to bill this to. At the very least I was going to
have to redo the inside of my trunk.
Maybe Pat hadn't seen James since college either, and would pay
me to find him. "I ran your brother through some databases, and
then I opened my trunk and there he was."
I walked into my living room to see a large tattoo sitting on the
couch. The tattoo stood, the movement allowing me to pick out
some basic shapes: a head, two arms, two legs, a knife.
My Glock was in the other room, and the living tattoo was too
close for me back out of the room. "The police aren't going to
have to work the identification kit too hard for my neighbors to
describe you."
He stopped in front of me and smiled. After all the body art, I
expected his teeth to be anything but pearly white. "I want to
hire you."
If this what my average client looked like, there was no way that
I was ever going to add video to my telephone. I might even get
out of the business. "I'd rather you show me a retainer than a
knife."
"I'm a bit short on cash right now. That's why I need your
help."
"Have a seat and tell me about it."
"You sit first."
I made myself comfortable and tried to ignore the six-inch blade
in his hand. The smart move seemed to be listening until I had a
chance to turn the tables on him. "What's your name?"
"They call me Trombone."
"Why?" I couldn't imagine a connection between the art work and
a wind instrument.
"I don't know."
"Maybe that's what you want me to investigate?"
"I'm just out of the pen. Me and Jimmy were there on armed
robbery. The cops never caught Nicholas, and he has the loot. I
want you to find him."
"Why me?"
"Jimmy knew about you, and our lawyer tracked you down. I want
you to find Nicholas. You can keep ten percent of what Nicholas
has left. It's been seven years."
Wondering whether I was making a mistake letting on that I had
seen his handiwork in my trunk, I asked why Jimmy was in the
garage instead of sitting on the couch talking about old times.
"He wanted fifty percent."
That made sense. "I thought ten percent was more than sufficient
myself. So tell me Trombone, what makes you think that Nicholas
still has the money? You said it was seven years ago? That's a
long time."
"The plan was, if Jimmy and I got caught, Nicholas was going to
save our money for us."
I nodded rather than laugh out loud. "Why did you leave Jimmy in
my trunk?"
Trombone shrugged. "I didn't know where we were going until we
got here. You were his friend."
"I met him exactly once."
"That's why I figured I could ice him without making you too
upset. I want you to find Nicholas."
There was a growing sense that Trombone was a few notes short of
a octave. "Do you have a last name for Nicholas?"
"I think Nicholas is his last name."
"Well then, do you have a first name for him?"
"No. Unless Nicholas is his first name."
I told myself to count to ten but stopped at three. "You want me
to find someone whose first or last name is Nicholas. Do you
know where or when he was born? Do you know about his family,
other business acquaintances?" I stood and began pacing, seeing
this as a opportunity to take control. "Did he go to school
somewhere, serve time, or at least get arrested? Do you have his
social security number, a sample of his DNA?"
"I, uh, no."
I shook my head. "Listen to me Trombone. The chances of me
finding Nicholas are so small that you'd be better off hiring me
to find you a new gang."
"Could you do that?" I was walking around the room so fast that
I thought he might get whiplash trying to follow me.
"Trombone. Have you ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath?" I
slowed long enough to take a heavy framed photograph of my
parents off the wall.
"Not that I know."
"It's what I had to take to become a private investigator.
Section 2, Paragraph 3. Do you know what it says?" I stopped in
front of him, glad to see that he had apparently forgotten that
he was holding a knife.
"What?"
I swung the frame at his head and knocked him out cold. "It says
don't be an idiot. You, my friend, are an idiot."
After tying him up, I dragged him out to my car and dumped him on
the floor of the back seat, covering him up with an old blanket.
He was lucky there wasn't enough room in the trunk, or I might
have put him in there for messing up my personal life.
The next step was discovering where Jimmy and Trombone had done
time, and then backtrack to the crime that had sent them there.
From that point, I should be able to start getting a lead on
Nicholas.
While Nicholas certainly didn't still have the money Trombone was
after, he would probably be more than willing to pay for
information on his ex-partners if I pitched it correctly.
Maybe they had tried to hire me, and in doing so had mentioned
that they had also hired some hitmen. That should get Nicholas's
attention.
The only fly in the ointment was Trombone. If I let him go, he
could screw up the whole deal. I didn't see how I could keep him
here under wraps while I was searching for Nicholas, and there
was no way that I was taking him along on the jaunt.
Killing wasn't my style, and I didn't see how I could scare
Trombone enough to ensure that he wouldn't eventually backslide
into stupidity and somehow muck things up for me.
Going into the house, I went into the kitchen and picked up the
telephone.
"Kowalski Detective Agency."
"A small plane registered to a Panamanian company carrying
American and German tourists crashes in the Suez Canal at a spot
equidistant from Egypt and Jordan. The plane is brought to the
surface by a British salvage company which was hired by a Greek
shipping tycoon. Where are the survivors buried?"
"I'll have to interview a lot of people to discover the truth.
Did you find your polygraph machine?"
"No, and I looked everywhere. Are you sure you didn't borrow it
already and forget to return it?"
"I think that the machine was originally mine in the first place,
and you were the borrower who never returned it. Keep searching
though, the machine may be in the last place you look."
"The last place I looked was my trunk, and I found a dead body
there instead." When I was trying to get my license, I had
worked for Kowalski for the experience. We went way back, and
trusted each other as much as two people could.
"Anybody you know?"
"Someone from my past."
"You have a past?"
"Very funny. In my living room was the guy who put the body in
my trunk. Currently, he's unconscious in the back seat."
"Aren't you glad you didn't buy one of those little sports cars
the last time you were looking for a new vehicle? I don't think
they have enough storage for a bag of groceries, forget about two
bodies. Have you called the police yet?"
"I'm weighing the wisdom of that."
"It doesn't sound like they would charge you with anything."
"No, and I couldn't charge them either. I've got time invested
in this, and I'll at least have the expense of cleaning my car.
The police aren't going to pay me for the trouble I've saved
them."
"Money isn't everything."
"I think I heard that somewhere. Explain then why greed is the
motivation for the two bodies in my garage, one of which is
leaking blood from a big knife wound."
"Money's not everything, but it's a heck lot more than nothing?"
"That's pretty good."
"Tell you what, why don't I come over and take a look around, see
if I can't find that polygraph machine. I was always a better
detective than you."
"In your dreams. But, whatever floats your boat. Just make sure
that you realize that I'm not giving you one of my bodies."
"If I need to, I'll dig up my own."
Hanging up the telephone, I went back out into the garage to
discover the back door of the car open, the blanket on the floor,
the rope on the seat, and Trombone nowhere in sight. I opened
the trunk to make sure that Jimmy hadn't also disappeared. One
for two wasn't bad.
Reaching in under a hole in the carpeting, I pulled out the Colt
.32 that I kept there for emergencies and stuffed it into my
pocket. The location wouldn't produce any quick draw, but then
that wasn't my strength.
Closing the trunk, I wondered whether Trombone had disappeared
from my life or snuck back into the house. One thing was
certain, as soon as I could get to the hardware store, I was
improving the security of the door that lead from the garage to
the back yard and the one that lead from the back yard into my
kitchen.
If Trombone had fled, that meant that I needed to find Nicholas
pronto before Trombone did. While I wasn't sure that Trombone
could find his back pocket, he might interest another private
investigation who smelled an opportunity to make a quick buck.
Going back into my house, I found another stranger staring at me
over a weapon, this time a Glock. While the end result was the
same, I hoped that I wasn't going to get shot with my own gun.
"You're not that real estate agent who was pressuring me to sell,
are you?"
"We're going to talk, you and I, about two old friends of mine
that are coming to see you, or perhaps they've already been
here."
"Jimmy and Trombone? That makes you Nicholas."
Nicholas laughed. "I guess that lawyer was money well spent. He
said that you would be worth talking to."
Nodding, I added, "I have a daily rate, a weekly rate, and we can
come up with arrangement if the case takes longer. I'm the only
private investigator this side of the river who accepts plastic."
Nicholas used the gun to motion me to the front door. "We're
going to go somewhere and have a little talk about my friends.
We can discuss money after I see what you have to offer."
As I reached for the knob, the doorbell rang. I turned to
Nicholas to see what he wanted me to do, and saw Trombone running
from the kitchen towards Nicholas with his knife in the air.
Nicholas must have seen something in my face, because he turned
and shot Trombone in the head. Trombone fell back on top of my
glass table as I flung the front door open with one hand while
trying to pull the Colt out of my pocket with the other.
Nicholas spun at the sound of the door banging into the wall, and
was then further distracted by Kowalski screaming my name.
Finally disentangling the gun from my pocket, I shot Nicholas
twice in the chest.
Taking a deep breath, I marched over to Nicholas and moved the
Glock out of his reach. "I'm all right, and it's safe to come
in."
Kowalski entered and closed the front door. "I thought you said
that one of these guys was dead in your trunk? I think your
diagnosis was a bit premature Doctor."
"The dead one is still in the trunk. Trombone here, the guy
lying on top of the wreckage of my coffee table, is the one who
killed him. The one I shot, Nicholas is the new addition to the
cast. He'll be remembered for taking out my lamp on the way
down."
Kowalski laughed. "You mean there are three bodies now?"
"And no one left to bill." I sighed as I surveyed the damage.
"This case is a total washout. Look, they're bleeding all over
my carpet."
"Where were the survivors buried indeed?"
"I suppose I might as well call the police now."
After a short moment of silence, Kowalski smiled. "About your
rug, I heard about this cleaning company that can do wonders with
bloodstains. I understand that their rates are very reasonable."
My reply need not be repeated.
I was the only black lesbian private investigator this side of
the river. Or if they preferred, I was the only Jewish good-ol'-
boy private investigator this side of the river. Or if they
preferred, I was the only four-foot Navaho private investigator
this side of the river.
Whatever made potential clients comfortable and more likely to
hire me, that's what I was.
I had three sets of letterheads, and I was good at voices. I
conducted all of my client meetings over the telephone, and I
didn't plan to start adding video. While I couldn't be sure, I
may have been the only charge-card accepting private investigator
this side of the river.
While I might lie more than most people, I was good at my job.
My clients were word of mouth, and they knew before they hired me
that I produced. I didn't embarrass them by asking them to visit
an office in the dingy part of town, or meet me in some coffee
shop where they might be seen by a next door neighbor. I
provided a low-impact, low-profile service.
Except for some secrets that they would rather not have known,
people were satisfied with my results. So why was I the only
private investigator this side of the river who had a dead body
in the trunk?
Trust me, I didn't kill him. I never even saw him before, or my
name wasn't Sista Steele, Beau Weinstein, and Big Red.
Granted, if I was able to make my clients happy, that meant that
I was probably making someone else unhappy. Private
investigators didn't specialize in win-win situations.
Which of me was someone trying to frame? How had the person
learned the investigator's identity, and then come to the
conclusion that they needed to leave a body here in my car? Had
they at least killed someone they wanted dead anyway?
I slammed the trunk and checked to make sure that no one was
peeking through the tiny windows in my garage door. This was the
first time my business had reached out to touch my real life, and
I didn't like my feeling of vulnerability. Perhaps I had lost
some edge by hiding behind aliases for this long.
On the other hand, maybe I should hire one of my personalities to
discover whose body was fitted around my spare tire. Since I
never saw my clients, this could have been one of the paid-in-
full-ers. I just hoped he told three friends about me before he
was killed.
I checked the garage door but it was secure. The door to the
back yard was a different story however, the killer and the
victim entering through this door after punching out the lock.
Getting out my keys, I opened the trunk again to search the
victim for identification, trying to ignore the blood that was
pooling under the knife wound. There had to be a tie between us
or the frame wouldn't make sense.
In the nearest pocket I found a small slip of paper: INSPECTED
BY NUMBER SEVEN. "A clue." I laughed and checked the rear
pocket, surprised to find his wallet.
There was no money, no charge cards, no ATM card, no folded blank
check. So much for this being an easy money case.
The wallet also contained an expired driver's license for James
Cabernet, and the face in the picture was a slightly younger,
slightly less pale, slightly more surprised version of the dead
man's face.
While I had successfully named the corpse, there weren't any
bells ringing. Unless I was mistaken, I'd never had a James
Cabernet as either a client or a subject. True, the license
might be as new as the pants, but I couldn't even recall a case
that might have sent someone scurrying for a new identity.
I closed the trunk again, glad at least that Kowalski had called
this morning asking to borrow my portable polygraph machine.
After rooting unsuccessfully through the basement, I had come out
to the garage to see if I had left the piece of equipment in the
car. If I hadn't gone to look for the polygraph machine, I might
have been driving around with James Cabernet in the trunk for
days, or at least until someone made an anonymous call to the
police to close the frame.
Thinking the name again sent a tiny bell tinkling. I had known a
Cabernet: Pat, my roommate at college. Pat had had a brother,
and "James" didn't seem like a wrong name. I suddenly remembered
telling the brother that I while I was studying law enforcement,
I was going to become a private investigator.
College for me had consisted of one semester, and after leaving I
hadn't kept in touch with Pat, never mind James whom I had met
only that once. Could James have really remembered me after all
these years, sought me out because of something I had said to him
when I was nineteen?
Didn't private investigators advertise wherever he was from?
Maybe it was time for me to move to a greener pasture.
I went back into the house to think about my next step, and who I
might be able to bill this to. At the very least I was going to
have to redo the inside of my trunk.
Maybe Pat hadn't seen James since college either, and would pay
me to find him. "I ran your brother through some databases, and
then I opened my trunk and there he was."
I walked into my living room to see a large tattoo sitting on the
couch. The tattoo stood, the movement allowing me to pick out
some basic shapes: a head, two arms, two legs, a knife.
My Glock was in the other room, and the living tattoo was too
close for me back out of the room. "The police aren't going to
have to work the identification kit too hard for my neighbors to
describe you."
He stopped in front of me and smiled. After all the body art, I
expected his teeth to be anything but pearly white. "I want to
hire you."
If this what my average client looked like, there was no way that
I was ever going to add video to my telephone. I might even get
out of the business. "I'd rather you show me a retainer than a
knife."
"I'm a bit short on cash right now. That's why I need your
help."
"Have a seat and tell me about it."
"You sit first."
I made myself comfortable and tried to ignore the six-inch blade
in his hand. The smart move seemed to be listening until I had a
chance to turn the tables on him. "What's your name?"
"They call me Trombone."
"Why?" I couldn't imagine a connection between the art work and
a wind instrument.
"I don't know."
"Maybe that's what you want me to investigate?"
"I'm just out of the pen. Me and Jimmy were there on armed
robbery. The cops never caught Nicholas, and he has the loot. I
want you to find him."
"Why me?"
"Jimmy knew about you, and our lawyer tracked you down. I want
you to find Nicholas. You can keep ten percent of what Nicholas
has left. It's been seven years."
Wondering whether I was making a mistake letting on that I had
seen his handiwork in my trunk, I asked why Jimmy was in the
garage instead of sitting on the couch talking about old times.
"He wanted fifty percent."
That made sense. "I thought ten percent was more than sufficient
myself. So tell me Trombone, what makes you think that Nicholas
still has the money? You said it was seven years ago? That's a
long time."
"The plan was, if Jimmy and I got caught, Nicholas was going to
save our money for us."
I nodded rather than laugh out loud. "Why did you leave Jimmy in
my trunk?"
Trombone shrugged. "I didn't know where we were going until we
got here. You were his friend."
"I met him exactly once."
"That's why I figured I could ice him without making you too
upset. I want you to find Nicholas."
There was a growing sense that Trombone was a few notes short of
a octave. "Do you have a last name for Nicholas?"
"I think Nicholas is his last name."
"Well then, do you have a first name for him?"
"No. Unless Nicholas is his first name."
I told myself to count to ten but stopped at three. "You want me
to find someone whose first or last name is Nicholas. Do you
know where or when he was born? Do you know about his family,
other business acquaintances?" I stood and began pacing, seeing
this as a opportunity to take control. "Did he go to school
somewhere, serve time, or at least get arrested? Do you have his
social security number, a sample of his DNA?"
"I, uh, no."
I shook my head. "Listen to me Trombone. The chances of me
finding Nicholas are so small that you'd be better off hiring me
to find you a new gang."
"Could you do that?" I was walking around the room so fast that
I thought he might get whiplash trying to follow me.
"Trombone. Have you ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath?" I
slowed long enough to take a heavy framed photograph of my
parents off the wall.
"Not that I know."
"It's what I had to take to become a private investigator.
Section 2, Paragraph 3. Do you know what it says?" I stopped in
front of him, glad to see that he had apparently forgotten that
he was holding a knife.
"What?"
I swung the frame at his head and knocked him out cold. "It says
don't be an idiot. You, my friend, are an idiot."
After tying him up, I dragged him out to my car and dumped him on
the floor of the back seat, covering him up with an old blanket.
He was lucky there wasn't enough room in the trunk, or I might
have put him in there for messing up my personal life.
The next step was discovering where Jimmy and Trombone had done
time, and then backtrack to the crime that had sent them there.
From that point, I should be able to start getting a lead on
Nicholas.
While Nicholas certainly didn't still have the money Trombone was
after, he would probably be more than willing to pay for
information on his ex-partners if I pitched it correctly.
Maybe they had tried to hire me, and in doing so had mentioned
that they had also hired some hitmen. That should get Nicholas's
attention.
The only fly in the ointment was Trombone. If I let him go, he
could screw up the whole deal. I didn't see how I could keep him
here under wraps while I was searching for Nicholas, and there
was no way that I was taking him along on the jaunt.
Killing wasn't my style, and I didn't see how I could scare
Trombone enough to ensure that he wouldn't eventually backslide
into stupidity and somehow muck things up for me.
Going into the house, I went into the kitchen and picked up the
telephone.
"Kowalski Detective Agency."
"A small plane registered to a Panamanian company carrying
American and German tourists crashes in the Suez Canal at a spot
equidistant from Egypt and Jordan. The plane is brought to the
surface by a British salvage company which was hired by a Greek
shipping tycoon. Where are the survivors buried?"
"I'll have to interview a lot of people to discover the truth.
Did you find your polygraph machine?"
"No, and I looked everywhere. Are you sure you didn't borrow it
already and forget to return it?"
"I think that the machine was originally mine in the first place,
and you were the borrower who never returned it. Keep searching
though, the machine may be in the last place you look."
"The last place I looked was my trunk, and I found a dead body
there instead." When I was trying to get my license, I had
worked for Kowalski for the experience. We went way back, and
trusted each other as much as two people could.
"Anybody you know?"
"Someone from my past."
"You have a past?"
"Very funny. In my living room was the guy who put the body in
my trunk. Currently, he's unconscious in the back seat."
"Aren't you glad you didn't buy one of those little sports cars
the last time you were looking for a new vehicle? I don't think
they have enough storage for a bag of groceries, forget about two
bodies. Have you called the police yet?"
"I'm weighing the wisdom of that."
"It doesn't sound like they would charge you with anything."
"No, and I couldn't charge them either. I've got time invested
in this, and I'll at least have the expense of cleaning my car.
The police aren't going to pay me for the trouble I've saved
them."
"Money isn't everything."
"I think I heard that somewhere. Explain then why greed is the
motivation for the two bodies in my garage, one of which is
leaking blood from a big knife wound."
"Money's not everything, but it's a heck lot more than nothing?"
"That's pretty good."
"Tell you what, why don't I come over and take a look around, see
if I can't find that polygraph machine. I was always a better
detective than you."
"In your dreams. But, whatever floats your boat. Just make sure
that you realize that I'm not giving you one of my bodies."
"If I need to, I'll dig up my own."
Hanging up the telephone, I went back out into the garage to
discover the back door of the car open, the blanket on the floor,
the rope on the seat, and Trombone nowhere in sight. I opened
the trunk to make sure that Jimmy hadn't also disappeared. One
for two wasn't bad.
Reaching in under a hole in the carpeting, I pulled out the Colt
.32 that I kept there for emergencies and stuffed it into my
pocket. The location wouldn't produce any quick draw, but then
that wasn't my strength.
Closing the trunk, I wondered whether Trombone had disappeared
from my life or snuck back into the house. One thing was
certain, as soon as I could get to the hardware store, I was
improving the security of the door that lead from the garage to
the back yard and the one that lead from the back yard into my
kitchen.
If Trombone had fled, that meant that I needed to find Nicholas
pronto before Trombone did. While I wasn't sure that Trombone
could find his back pocket, he might interest another private
investigation who smelled an opportunity to make a quick buck.
Going back into my house, I found another stranger staring at me
over a weapon, this time a Glock. While the end result was the
same, I hoped that I wasn't going to get shot with my own gun.
"You're not that real estate agent who was pressuring me to sell,
are you?"
"We're going to talk, you and I, about two old friends of mine
that are coming to see you, or perhaps they've already been
here."
"Jimmy and Trombone? That makes you Nicholas."
Nicholas laughed. "I guess that lawyer was money well spent. He
said that you would be worth talking to."
Nodding, I added, "I have a daily rate, a weekly rate, and we can
come up with arrangement if the case takes longer. I'm the only
private investigator this side of the river who accepts plastic."
Nicholas used the gun to motion me to the front door. "We're
going to go somewhere and have a little talk about my friends.
We can discuss money after I see what you have to offer."
As I reached for the knob, the doorbell rang. I turned to
Nicholas to see what he wanted me to do, and saw Trombone running
from the kitchen towards Nicholas with his knife in the air.
Nicholas must have seen something in my face, because he turned
and shot Trombone in the head. Trombone fell back on top of my
glass table as I flung the front door open with one hand while
trying to pull the Colt out of my pocket with the other.
Nicholas spun at the sound of the door banging into the wall, and
was then further distracted by Kowalski screaming my name.
Finally disentangling the gun from my pocket, I shot Nicholas
twice in the chest.
Taking a deep breath, I marched over to Nicholas and moved the
Glock out of his reach. "I'm all right, and it's safe to come
in."
Kowalski entered and closed the front door. "I thought you said
that one of these guys was dead in your trunk? I think your
diagnosis was a bit premature Doctor."
"The dead one is still in the trunk. Trombone here, the guy
lying on top of the wreckage of my coffee table, is the one who
killed him. The one I shot, Nicholas is the new addition to the
cast. He'll be remembered for taking out my lamp on the way
down."
Kowalski laughed. "You mean there are three bodies now?"
"And no one left to bill." I sighed as I surveyed the damage.
"This case is a total washout. Look, they're bleeding all over
my carpet."
"Where were the survivors buried indeed?"
"I suppose I might as well call the police now."
After a short moment of silence, Kowalski smiled. "About your
rug, I heard about this cleaning company that can do wonders with
bloodstains. I understand that their rates are very reasonable."
My reply need not be repeated.
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