Dark Alley

Dark Alley
By: James Dubeau

My 45
Weighs heavy
In my hand
Against my soul
As I step
With trepidation
Down the dark alley
Eyes dart across
Every shadow
Every hiding place
For that scumbag to lurk
A trashcan crashes
I wheel to face
The daemon I chased
From the darkness emerged
A stray cat
Then from behind me
A handgun exploded
Cordite reached my nostrils
Above rotten garbage
I fell to my knee
My 45 clattered
Against the pavement
Impotent
Against that vagabond
Against my killer
Sprinting from the alley

Murdered Mister

Murdered Mister
By: James Dubeau

I picked up the pistol from where it sat next to the poor sucker that lay at my feet. His blood turned a deep brown as it hardened in the rug. Gunpowder wafted from the barrel of the .45, this gun had been fired recently. It had to be the murder weapon. The girl was right; someone was after her secret caller.

I contacted the girl before calling the police. She was heartbroken; sobbing tears rang out over the phone. Her young heart would rebound. They always do.

“What happened?” She choked out between sobs.

“Shot, .45 to the gut,” I calmly replied. Her sobs doubled, but the bluntness was necessary. “Did he have any enemies?” I repeated the question that I had asked her earlier this afternoon in my office.

“Yes… No… I don’t know.”

“Give me a straight answer!” I growled. “Did he or did he not have any enemies? The police are on their way and I can just as easily send them in your direction. They would be more than happy to pull you in for questioning, if you would rather do it that way.”

“He… He told me she left him.” It was all the girl could do to control the sobbing enough to squeeze out a satisfying reply. “That bitch wanted nothing to do with him anymore.”

“I’m coming to see you. Don’t go anywhere,” I rattled off, slamming down the phone before she could reply. There was something that she was not telling me. Something that I will have to pry out of her in person.

R & D Inquiries - Part 1

Robert adjusted his glasses as he worked the jumble from the morning newspaper. Newspaper cryptography puzzles were not nearly as challenging as the posted difficulty ratings led him to believe. It was only a few moments of talking the letters out loud before the answers flowed from his pen onto the newspaper page.

“Can you be quiet over there?” Dan asked from his desk across the cramped office. “You know I can’t think while you ramble on.” Dan took a nail kit out of his desk drawer and went to work on his fingernails. A sudden lack of business had kept the pair low on funds and he had to cut back on his manicure appointments.

A sudden rap on the frosted glass office door startled the pair. It took them a moment to realize that someone was at their door, a prospective client perhaps. Coming to his senses, Robert shouted for the person to come into the office. Slowly the door opened and a long shapely leg stepped through, followed by the rest of the shapely body.

“What can we do for you, miss?” Dan said, smiling as he stood to greet the stranger. Robert’s interest in the woman dwindled as Dan greeted her, the jumble was far more interesting and his partner was always the best in securing their jobs.

The woman held a handkerchief to her nose as tears streamed down her cheek. Between sobs she was able to choke out a reply. “Annetta, my name is Annetta. Tilly has been kidnapped. My precious little Tilly. I can not live without her.”

“Please calm down Annetta,” Dan put his arm around the woman, trying to comfort her. “Who exactly is Tilly? Did you report this to the police?”

The woman’s sobbing slowed as Dan comforted her. “They said that Tilly was too low of a priority for them. They said that there were real crimes to solve, not just some stupid little dognapping.” Dan comforted her and coaxed the rest of the story from the woman. “Tilly is my prized corgi, a show dog of the highest caliber. She has won many dog shows, and she is my pride and joy. Now that she is gone, I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Its ok, you came to the right place. We will find Tilly for you.”

“Thank you. I was afraid you would be like those dreadful police.” A small smile cracked across her face as the sobbing stopped.

“Can you work us up a contract?” Dan asked of his partner. Robert’s fingers clacked on the keyboard as Dan continued sooth the woman. “Why do you think Tilly was dognapped? She could have just run away.”

“Oh no, not my Tilly. She would never do that. Not just before a dog show. I think she loves them more than I do. If I were to guess, I would say that Aaron dognapped Tilly. It would be the only way his Ein would have a chance of winning the Annual dog show.” Conviction rang out in Annetta’s voice as she spoke about Aaron.

“This Aaron sound like a good place to start.” Dan said, a smile shot across his face. The only thing that could be possibly better than a beautiful woman in the office was the prospect for an easy job.

“I agree,” Robert said as he joined the pair across the office, a contract was in his hand. “Could you please sign here?”

Jack Chance Case Files - Part 5: H.F.F.

I had woken up to blinding light pouring in through the blinds. It was still early, too early, but work had to be done. Somewhere between a hot shower and an even hotter cup of coffee I grabbed the phonebook and started paging through it. Between the Humane Hunters Association and the Hummel Hut was Humboldt’s Freight Forwarding. I copied down the address and went to pay them a visit.

Humboldt’s Freight Forwarding was located in a nondescript warehouse down in what I refer to as the auto-mechanic district. Up and down the street were one man grease monkey shops. A domestic shop with a classic Chevy proudly displayed flanked the warehouse on the left and a foreign shop decorated with Volkswagen and BMW logos was on the right. Once inside I followed the signs and found the Humboldt’s warehouse space. A padlock was on the doors and no one was around.

I stuck my head in an open door that was down the hall and said, “I’m sorry, I’m lost, is there a restroom around here?” The blond behind the desk looked up from her paperwork, smiled, and said that there wasn’t a public restroom in the building. I mentioned that I had an appointment at Humboldt’s but no one had shown up yet. She told me that she almost never see’s anyone over there. That it was kind of spooky that a section of the warehouse was owned by a company but seemed to be never used.

It was very interesting that Robert went to work for a company that doesn’t seem to exist just before he ceased to exist. Very interesting indeed. This building is in a dire need of a stakeout. If anyone does work at Humboldt’s, it must be at night.

Jack Chance Case Files - Part 4: On The Lake

I gave Beth a call to see what she could shake loose about Robert Wallic but there was no answer at the office. The girl must still have been out on her errands. Thoughts from the morning rolled through my mind as I ate my eggs and sipped my coffee at the diner down on third. There wasn’t much to go on so far, but that was to be expected this early in the game. If it was any easier then any schmuck could do this job.

The afternoon was spent combing the streets of the neighborhood asking around if anyone had seen poor Robert. Every pawn shop and dive bar gave me the same response, they didn’t know no nothing much less recognize the face in the picture I swiped from his place. Leg work is the long boring part but it passes the time. It also gave me a chance to re-familiarize myself with the lay of the land. By dusk I had done my fair share of busy work and made my way to Mike’s on the Lake.

It was late enough that the dinner crowd was starting to thin but early enough that the regulars had yet to show. By passing the dining room I sat at the bar, ordered the fish fry, and listened in to the conversations that welled up around me. By the time I finished my meal I gathered that Julie was the usual weeknight bartender and that the billiards league was in the toilet.

Julie was a good bartender. She paid attention to the regulars, pouring heavy, and kept her eyes on the lowlife scum that wandered in. Chatting her up and tipping well got me an in or two. She remembered Robert, quite fondly actually. He usually sat at the bar with a notebook and wrote poetry all night. Every night that he was in he would buy her a drink and slipped her a poem with the tip. She saw their petty banter as a little game, a little back and fourth to pass the time until closing. He had stopped showing up a while back and she missed the entertainment.

“You asking about Robert?” A tall skinny guy asked me as Julie finished her story. I nodded and Julie went back to her business. “Robert’s a good kid. Doesn’t talk much, but he’s a good kid. It’s funny how he sits here night after night pretending to be a writer but you talk to him and he can’t tell a good story to save his life.”

I bought my new found friend a round and inquired as to what he meant. “Well,” he continued between sips, “take the last time I saw him for instance. We got to talking about my last trips to Vegas and New York. Clients were tripping over themselves to take me out to bars and strip clubs, trying to butter me up for their next purchase. Robert tried to compete. I’ll never forget the conversation. He tried to tell me that some smoking hot blonde was all over him and got him a new job. It was funny how he kept tripping over his words. He kept leaving out details and interrupting himself to try to put those details back in. it was a mess. I told him that if he wanted to snag that blonde he was talking about that he should work on his storytelling more than his poetry.”

I asked my new friend if he knew what the new job was, he said that it was Humboldt’s something or other. It was at least something to go on. I bought another round and listened in to his tales from Vegas and New York. Any further work would have to wait until morning.

Jack Chance Case Files - Part 3: First Impressions

I spent a few moments piecing together the few details that Joanne had given me. She had given me a lot of good information about who this Robert Wallic was but there was nothing that jumped out at me. I’ll have to start at the bottom and figure out the basics first. Before I headed out the door I left a note for Beth, my assistant, detailing the outline of the case and asking her to dig up the usual background check on Robert. She had taken advantage of business being slow and had the morning off to run a few errands.

The drive over to the north side of town was uneventful. Traffic only gets to be a pain heading out of town in the afternoons when the downtown business let out and the white collar workers flood out of the down town as fast as kids on the last day of school. I parked the jalopy around the corner and walked a block to Wallic’s place, a drab little bungalow. It could have been real cute with a fresh coat of paint, some landscaping, and a transplant to a neighborhood that wasn’t under the shadow of the surrounding factories.

A quick knock on the door confirmed that no one was home so I started to look for a spare key, unfortunately a key was no where to be found. I made my way around the house and used my lock picks at the rear door. It was only a few moments before I heard a click and the door creaked open.

From the kitchen alone it was obvious that a bachelor lived in the house. There were dirty dishes soaking in the sink and the only contents in the fridge was a case of beer and left over pizza. By the looks of the dishes and pizza it was a safe bet that Joanna was right and no one had been here in quite some time.

My search of the house was slow and deliberate, going through each drawer and closet with care. I made a mental catalog of each item that I found and put the seemingly unimportant pieces back while making a pile of interesting pieces in each room. Although thorough, my initial search of the house was fairly quick. The kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, and basement each gave up their own small pile of secrets.

Most of what I found added to the details of what Joanne had told me about Robert Wallic. Books and papers were piled everywhere. Robert fancied himself as some sort of a writer. Notes were scribbled on every piece of scratch paper and a few unfinished manuscripts lay about. A box of receipts showed that he spent a large portion of his evenings at Mike’s on the Lake. I knew the place, it was a tavern a few blocks away that was usually full of factory men no matter what time of day it was. The factories run around the clock and the guys are always looking for an after work brew and sometimes a brawl. It can be a rough place but the Friday night fish fry is decent enough to keep the common folk coming back.

I pocketed the spare key that I had found and left through the front door. The receipts that I had found were all time stamped in the evening. That would give me a few hours before I had to head out to Mike’s on the Lake to ask a few questions of the regulars. There were a few things that I wanted to check up on first so the delay would work out fine.

Jack Chance Case Files - Part 2: Open For Business

I gave the lazy-susan one more spin, but came up with the same results again. Cornflakes. “Cornflakes and beer,” I say to the fridge as I pull it open for a cold one. “Breakfast of champions, once again.” After pouring myself a bowl I flopped down behind my desk, put my feet up, and ate. It doesn’t taste the best but it’ll do in a pinch, and in a pinch was where I was. Between a rock and the proverbial hard place. It had been at least a month since I had a job where my income didn’t all go to bills.

A shadow moved across my office’s smoked glass door followed by a soft rapping. “Come in,” I said looking up from my bowl.

My spoon never made it back to my mouth, but my jaw decided to meet it half way. She was stunning, absolutely stunning. An image that any G.I. would kill for to grace the side of his aircraft. Big brown eyes peered out into the room, darting about with uncertainty. Mouse brown hair hanged below her shoulders, resting on a low cut beige short sleeve shirt. Black slacks ran the distance down her mile long legs. Her body was strong and athletic but with the curves and softness a good woman should have. She would have given Rosie the riveter a run for her money.

“I don’t know if I’m in the right place. My name is Joanne Stanley.” I smiled, introduced myself, motioned for her to sit, and reassured her that she was in the right place. She continued speaking but never once stopped glancing nervously around the office. “I usually can take care of my self, one has to when they live alone and work in a factory with nothing but men, but I need some help. A friend of mine has gone missing. It has been a few weeks now and I have not heard from him.”

“What is his name?” I asked.

“Robert Wallic.”

“What do you think happened? Could he just be on vacation?”

“I don’t think he would go on vacation without telling me about it. I usually watch his place when ever he leaves town, even for a weekend.”

“Do you think something bad happened to him? Was he involved with any illegal activities? Could there have been foul play?”

“I don’t know. I’m just so worried about him and I don’t know where to start looking. I don’t think he was wrapped up in any crime or drugs.”

I nodded and said that I would take the case. After going through my contract and payment arrangements I pulled out a note pad and asked her to tell me everything she knew about Robert. She talked about a wide variety of topics from how they met and became friends to what their plans were for the coming year. I interjected occasionally to brighten up some dark areas of the stories she told. By the time we were done I felt like I had already known Robert for ten years and had some decent leads to follow up. When she left I told her that I would keep in touch with any findings that would come up.

Jack Chance Case Files - Part 1: Eye Inside

A couple sat down on the edge of the bed. He was older; his silver hair glistened in the light. She was younger; her long blonde hair flowed past her shoulders. They held each other’s hands and gazed into each other’s eyes.

It seemed like eternity before one of them spoke, although it was only a few moments. As she spoke her left hand moved to pet the red comforter that was spread across the bed, it slid back and fourth. When he spoke her hand instantly stopped moving. A tear ran down her cheek and she rubbed it away.

She stood up and yelled at the man. Her hands clutched her chest, covering the cleavage that her slinky black dress had left exposed. He stood and approached her with his arms out stretched, as if to comfort her.

As he came near her she reached out and slapped him across the face. He staggered back in shock and rubbed his jaw, then he lunged forward and wrapped her up in his arms. She struggled but could not wiggle out of his grasp. His words calmed her and the struggling subsided. His grasp of her turned into an embrace as their lips met in a passionate kiss.

Together they made their way back to the bed. Their lips locked together as she struggled to remove his suit and he her dress. Soon they were lying entwined on the bed in a naked embrace.

In the next hotel room over I took a drag on my cigarette and gave a long exhale as the scene unfold before me on the TV screen. Some dame had wanted me to track down her husband and his nightly affairs. It wasn’t hard to track down where he went at night; it was always the same hotel every Wednesday night. All I had to do was pay off the desk clerk to give the guy the room next to the one I had rented. The rest was just setting up the camera in the ductwork and waiting. Come morning I’ll be handing the tape off to his wife along with a card for a divorce attorney buddy of mine.

To the untrained watcher, my job seems like a grizzly business. I get paid to snoop around in other people’s garbage and root out their darkest secrets. Tailing a husband that had been suspected by his wife to be an adulterer is pretty standard fair around these parts. The big cases that turn up in the movies are always a work of fiction. A drop-dead gorgeous dame that falls into a detective’s lap with a case full of murder and intrigue never happens.

I Need a Drink

She poured me a cup of hot java as I poured through the files that she had brought with her. Somehow she had gotten her hands on expense accounts and meeting notes from several large companies. The coffee cooled as I poured over every detail, letting it seep into my battered brain. After reading through every scrap of paper twice I finally looked up with a sigh.

“This is huge. Where did you get your mitts on this?”

“A girl’s gotta have a few secrets. You know what this means, right?”

I looked down at my cold cup of coffee. “Yeah, I need a drink.” It was time to get some work done.

Someone Smoked a Joint

Mike nudged the body with his shoe, “What do we got here boys?”

A young lieutenant, still fresh faced and out of the academy, read out of his note book. “Frank Ferriday, age 36, gunshot wound to the head. There was a Colt .45 in his hand when we got here. The boys downtown are already checking on its registration. No signs of a struggle or forced entry. Looks to be a suicide.”

Shaking his head in disbelief Mike asked, “When did you get the call?”

“At 8:35pm, about an hour ago. Mrs. Stablinsky reported hearing a gun shot. Sergeant Powell was on a beat a few blocks away from here, he’s reporting his statement now.”

“This was no suicide,” Mike said as he bent down to pick something up.

“Excuse me sir?”

“I know Frank; we shared a foxhole in the war. He would have givin his life to save mine and I would have done the same. Maybe he has hit some hard times., but he would never give in to drugs again. I helped him through rehab, dragged him kicking and screaming. Once he was clean he swore that he would never go back. Frank has never gone back on his word.”

Mike opened his hand to show the lieutenant a small roll of white paper that was burnt on one end. “Someone smoked a joint here. That someone killed Frank Ferriday. When I find out who that someone is they will wish that they never took up drugs. They will wish that they never met Frank. They will wish that Frank never met me. Even if it’s the last thing I ever do, I will get vengeance on Frank’s killer. My buddy’s killer.

Night Driving

What on earth possess you to repaint your old bedroom?” The grizzled man demanded as the black sedan screamed through the darkness.

“I don’t know… I always wanted my room to be blue…” The girl replied staring out of her window.

Jack took one last long drag off his smoke before flicking it out of the window. An exploding starburst was all that remained when the sparks hit the pavement. A starburst that quickly faded.

The car was silent. Jack calculated what their next move was. His mind took each piece of the jigsaw puzzle that was laid before him and tried to fit the pieces together. Each piece seemed to belong to a different puzzle.

Beth was staring up into the night sky. A look of bewildered awe on her face shone in her reflection off the car’s window. How could something like this happen to a girl like her? She was so innocent.

A twin pair of white orbs passed the sedan in the other lane, disappearing in a red glow of the tail lights in the rear view mirror.

Jack sighed then broke the silence. “I’m sorry for jumping down your throat. It’s just that I’m trying to figure out how to get you… us… out of this mess.”

The girl didn’t say anything and just kept starring out into the darkness. A single tear ran down her cheek; a tear, that to Jack, was a sign of gratitude. If nothing else he will get her out of this mess, or die trying.

Cornflakes

I gave the lazy-susan one more spin, but came up with the same results again. Cornflakes. “Cornflakes and beer,” I say to the fridge as I pull it open for a cold one. “Breakfast of champions, once again.”

After pouring myself a bowl I flopped down behind my desk. I put my feet up and ate. It doesn’t taste the best but it’ll do in a pinch, and in a pinch was where I was. Between a rock and the proverbial hard place. It had been at least a month since my last job and funds were getting slim again.

A shadow moved across my office’s smoked glass door followed by a soft rapping. “Come in,” I said looking up from my bowl.

My spoon never made it back to my mouth, but my jaw decided to meet it half way.
She was stunning, absolutely stunning. An image that any G.I. would kill for to grace the side of his aircraft.

“I don’t know if I’m in the right place…” she started.