The Continuing Adventures of the Gumshoe

It's been a while since I started this story, so here's a link to the first entry. So, yeah, I guess I'm serious about doing this. Enjoy.

It’s easy to know when your client is lying. You know the signs, even if you haven’t been in the business for a couple years (which I have). There’s the fidgeting, the sweating, the looking away. The classics. You see, when people come to PI’s they either come because they expect us to be completely without ethics or completely stupid. So they tell you lies and expect you to buy them or not to care. And letting them think one or the other is good business.
So, when Mr. Flettering told me his story, I assumed he was lying. Asking questions afterwards is only so I can figure out which lie he’s telling and if it’s gonna get me in trouble. With Flettering, I figured his lie was either his wife was divorcing him and he wanted information on who she’d left him for (though, given what he’d told me about their relationship this wasn’t likely), or she wasn’t his wife at all and she had dumped him and he wanted to get her back. So, maybe he was a stalker. Which wasn’t good. Either way, this seemed like a find and photograph sort of a thing—the kind of thing that makes PI’s everywhere seem like slimeballs. Slimeballs with bills to pay, sure, but still slimeballs.
So, as I sat in the Camino, I thought about what the best way to do this was. Finding her wouldn’t be hard. Flettering‘d had given me a couple places to check and if his story was as dubious as I thought it was, then he knew she was at one of them. So, all I had to do was figure out if this could wait another night or if I should start tonight. Seemed to me if she was gone, she’d be gone tomorrow too. Of course, as I turned the key and heard my old shitbox spring loudly and suddenly awake, groaning and rasping with strength and weakness all in the same huge rumbles, I changed my mind and slipped the car into gear heading for the first address he’d given me. It wasn’t the first time this car had cost me, but I was gonna have to be lucky to be around for it to cost me again.
But that’s getting ahead of myself.
I arrived at the address around 9:30 pm, which, for those of you not in the know, is prime time for this sort of salacious goings-on. Sitting in the Camino, I looked at the dingy building. A two-story place that was divided into flats. A broken-up sidewalk and the burned-out streetlights. It was easy to see that this was a part of town the city didn’t care about. Of course the chewed-up yard and smashed-out glass of the basement windows made it easy to see the owner didn’t care that much either.
And this is where ICI’s wife was hanging out? Something was definitely wrong. And, being that I’m not a bright enough person to walk away from a situation when it feels this wrong, I decided to get out of my car and investigate.
As soon as I stepped out of the car and slammed the heavy car door behind me I noticed it. The quiet. The stillness that emanates from the scene of something wrong. It’s like the crickets won’t sing around it and the wind knows better than to blow through it, and on some primal level the people nearby know better than to disturb the sour eeriness of something as awful as what must be happening somewhere nearby. Or I’m just a little melodramatic. That’s what I was hoping for anyway.
I walked up the sidewalk and the stoop and tried to peak in the first story windows, but it was too dark to make out anything inside. I was looking at the name on the buzzers, taking note of them, when I heard the sirens. They bled into the silence slowly and I could tell they weren’t far away.
I sat down on the stoop, pulled out a stick of Big Red and started chewing. Didn’t take them long, maybe two minutes (Big Red still had its flavor), but when they got here I could tell they meant business.
Swarms of uniforms jumped out of siren-swinging cars dappling the neighborhood in what had to be a familiar red and blue. The officers had guns drawn and ran straight for the building, screaming. “Hands up.” “Stay where you are.”
I raised my hands coolly, knowing better than to do anything except what they wanted. I learned a long time ago that when the foot soldiers are this wound up, it was better to go along with them and wait for a better moment to make sense of things. They escorted me to the back of one of the cruisers and told me to wait. Which I did. For about 30 minutes or so. But when she got there I wished I’d waited longer.
“[gumshoe], what are you doing here?”
“Client stuff. I’d share if I could, but—“ I shrugged, “you know.”
“Uh-huh.” It was the same noise I’d heard her make to hundreds of criminals. It was her way. She’d stare at you, give you the ‘Uh-huh’ and give you as much rope as it took to wrap around your neck and then she’d pull tight. She was the best and I knew she was the best because I used to be in the box with her working off her bad cop. I was, if you can believe it, her good cop counterpart. But that was a long time ago, and the only thing this meant to me now was that I was smart enough to know this was a moment that required quiet. She stared at me for a couple minutes before, “Tell me what you feel comfortable with and then I’ll decide if I’m running you down town or just having you beaten on the sidewalk here.”
“Edna, I’ve always admired your colorful way of doing things.”
“Uh-huh. Talk.”
“Not much to say. I was talking to a client earlier tonight. Wanted me to find his wife. She’d runoff without leaving a note. You know the story. He gave me this address and I came to check it out. I peaked in the first floor window, but couldn’t see anything. Was looking at the buzzers when I heard the sirens and decided to take a seat and see if you all were going my way.”
“So, you were skulking around looking for a way in?”
“Edna—“
“Detective Muldoon, [gumshoe].”
“First time you’ve pulled that since I was a rookie.” She was quiet. That’s the thing about being someone’s old partner, you know how to quiet them. “Well, Detective Muldoon, I’m astonished by your accusations. Skulking? I’m hardly the type.”
“That cute smart-mouth act of your may still charm those ‘ladies’ you hang out with—“
“It doesn’t.”
“Why am I not surprised? Look, [gumshoe], you know I’ll give you a straight shot if you’re straight with me. And you also know I’ll rip your tits off and shove them down your throat if I think you’re lying to me about anything. So, let’s do this the easy way, huh?”
“Edna—Detective Muldoon, I’m honestly telling you everything except my client’s name and most of the rest of the lie he told me.”
“Uh-huh. Tell me about what you heard and saw when you got here.”
“I didn’t see anything odd. It felt odd though. It was one of those too quiet moments your read about, but never really think you’ll happen across.”
“You’ve happened across those in the past, if I remember.” That’s the thing about someone being your old partner, they know how to quiet you. “So, it was quiet? Anything else?”
“Nothing.”
“You still listening to that crappy soft-rock bullshit?”
“What?” The police-non-sequitor. They get you off-balance, looking at the right hand and then the crush your skull with what’s in the left.
“Phill Collins? Meatloaf? That kind of shit?”
“What? No. I’m all about the new soft-rock bullshit. Coldplay. Nickleback. That kind of shitty bullshit.”
“Uh-huh. And if I get a warrant, check out your apartment and your CD collection?”
“Well, you won’t find any fucking Nickleback, that’s for sure.”
“Uh-huh. So to recap, you just happened to be here skulking around as the police responded to an anonymous call about some screaming and gunshots in this building, but you heard nothing, saw nothing, and didn’t do anything but look in the window?”
“I heard no screaming.” I was hearing it in my mind right now though. Something wasn’t right about all of this.