The Gumshoe Diaries (24 page)

Pity that I will not have time to toy with
her, but under the circumstances a quick silencing will suffice. It
will just allow me to be on my way home to
Nah Trang
that
much sooner. Those Russian fools Mei Li had involved us with had
spoiled everything with their reactionary tactics.
Bollocks
then
, what can one expect from peasants? I had taken years to
groom my protégé for this life. We could have been royalty in the
midst of an endless supply of Yankee dollars, all courtesy the
aging dilatants obsessed with holding on to their youth by defiling
the youth we brokered for them in their ridiculous attempt to cheat
death. I will need to think of a new game while on hiatus.

--

LVMPD…Tuesday, Feb 24, 2009…10:30pm

--

I was relieved when Rebecca answered her cell
phone on the first ring. A small part of me had prepared myself for
another gory scene ala room 3023 at the Union Plaza. She listened
to us carefully explain what was happening and what we wanted her
to do. The tricky thing about volunteers is that they can always
say no. Rebecca Tran was a brand new shield but from what I had
seen so far she was no coward. If she gave her word she kept it,
she new the meaning of loyalty and she embraced it. That’s a rare
quality these days in a society pampered to believe that when the
going gets tough, the smart girls get the hell out of Dodge. It was
another reason I was learning to admire the young lady. I already
envied her future husband, lucky fella.

“Okay, I think I get what you want me to do,
but how will I know which way to go,” she asked.

“I’ve got a building schematic right in front
of me Becca,” Wally explained.

“Look, there is only one way to get to you
from where he started, and if we hurry we can put you in the way
before he gets that far, you got it?”

“Yeah, what do I do first?”

“Strip down to your skivvies and dowse
yourself with something slick, lotion or oil. What have you got in
your purse,” asked Wally?

“I don’t know, let me look,” Becca replied
reaching for her handbag.

“All I have is some Oil of Olay, will that
do?”

“Maybe, if there’s enough of it. Get
undressed and ask Dr. Looney to rub you down,” Wally
instructed.

“Don’t talk; just listen while Judy gets you
nice and shiny.”

“Okay.”

“I said DON’T talk! Once you get up into the
air shaft I want you to make yourself as small as possible, flat as
a sheet of paper. Have your weapon cocked and ready to fire. Take
long slow breathes and make NO SOUND. Listen carefully for him,
he’ll be moving stealthily but he’s not expecting you up there, he
doesn’t think we’re that clever. Are you oiled and ready now?”

“Becca, you can answer that question,” said
Wally snickering. Humor in tense situations almost always breeds
courage.

“Okay, yeah I’m ready but I’m feeling pretty
exposed here,” she giggled.

“Alright sweetheart, last instructions, and
by the way, at the inquiry afterward I never spoke these words.
Once you’re in position and when you’ve waited as long as you can
stand it, remember, the closer he is the better, the darkness is
your friend, I want you to empty your weapon. He’ll be as flat as
you are so aim low. That’s it, God’s speed Rebecca Tran, call me
when the dickhead is dead,” Wally said snapping his cell phone
shut.

“Now we wait,” he said to Iggie and me.

“Like hell we do, let’s beat it on over there
and help Becca out,” I said moving toward the locked door.

Wally blocked my path, putting up both hands.
“Wait, okay just wait a second. We don’t want to spook this guy. We
have a real chance to end this. I don’t know about you, but I don’t
want to continue chasing a phantom. He’s in the trap, we know that.
Let him go for the cheese and get a face full of lead from
Detective Tran. Come on Whitey, you know I’m right.”

“SHIT,” I hissed, sliding down the wall and
taking a seat beside Iggie.

“That’s better, it’ll be over in a couple of
minutes,” Wally said, holding his cell phone at the ready for
Becca’s call.

--

LVMPD…Tuesday, Feb 24, 2009…11:00pm

--

Rebecca laid on her stomach in a prone ready
position, legs spread, the heels of her bare feet touching the
sides of the narrow shaft. Her arms were fully extended in front of
her and her weapon was cocked and ready to fire. She was too tense
to be scared. Her eyes had adjusted to the absence of light but she
still couldn’t see a thing. She felt her stomach cramping and she
worried about a growl or worse. Her eyes began to tear from the
strain of trying to see in the dark and she suddenly wondered what
if this guy has infrared goggles? If he did she was dead meat. She
could feel the cell phone tucked into the back of her panties and
couldn’t remember if she turned it off or not? Oh man, what if her
Mom called to say goodnight or something. It was too late to worry
about that anyway. Wait a second; did she hear something, maybe?
She slightly opened her mouth taking short, shallow breaths. Her
eyes were getting in her way and she closed them tightly to
heighten her other senses. She couldn’t remember where she read
about that but it made perfect sense right now.

She listened hard but heard no sound.
Suddenly alarms went off in her brain. There was no sound, but she
felt a slight tremor beneath her as if the building was moving. She
racked her brain processing possibilities and then realized the
obvious. The shaft was responding to the presence of a greater
weight, the intruder was near! Becca counted to five and then
emptied her gun.

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!

Her ears rang from the reverb off of the
walls of the small space and the spent shell casings burned her
flesh as they rolled around the shaft. She screamed and scooted
backward too quickly breaking a pinkie toe in the process. She
stifled a cry and bit the heel of her hand to transfer the pain. A
bloody hand suddenly reached out and grabbed her by her hair. The
grip was too strong for a dead man and she instantly recoiled in
fear. Becca retreated back to the hole in the ceiling dragging
whoever had hold of her along for the ride. A second later two
strong hands grabbed her by the ankles and pulled her the rest of
the way.

Wally pulled Rebecca down out of the air
shaft and handed her to Iggie and me.

“Holy shit, look what we got here,” he
shouted as Judy helped us wrap a blanket around our brave little
hero.

Detective Price pulled a bloody corpse from
the shaft like after birth. He let the body drop to the floor and
then climbed down from the table he was perched on while Iggie and
me walked over to take a gander at the body. Wally strolled our way
and turned the stiff onto its back with the heel of his boot.

“
Good God,”
I gasped
audibly when I saw his face, recognizing him instantly! It was Jai
Lai, a dead man for the second time. What the hell was going on
here I wondered? Wally saw my expression.

“You know him,” he asked?

“Yeah, I went to his funeral actually.”

“Nice trick, I wonder how Houdini here
managed that,” Wally said nonchalantly, completely nonplussed by
the gore.

“Judy, didn’t the coroner do an autopsy on
him,” I asked, looking back at her, puzzled? She walked over and
took a look.

“How would I know, I have nothing to do with
the County, I’m a school teacher for Christ sake,” she said.

“Why, aren’t you sure it’s him,” she
added.

“No, its Jai alright, I’ve known him for
years,” I replied puzzled.

“Well somebody fucked up downtown. Anyway, it
doesn’t matter much, he’s dead now,” observed Wally blandly.

“I guess not. We’ll sort all of that out once
we get Judy and the microchip back to LA,” I replied tiredly.

“You ready to go home Becca,” I asked the
rookie detective.

She was still shaking and I took that as a
yes. Judy took my hand and we walked over to comfort Detective Tran
together until the paramedics arrived. We definitely had a lot of
explaining to do to Oscar when we got back. The pieces were already
starting to fall into place for me as the shock began to wear off.
Jai and Sally November had been a team from the start. Somehow they
got mixed up with Russian gangsters; they call themselves the New
Russians. I’m guessing Sally was the key to that unholy marriage.
I’m also guessing she got ambitious and started working a blackmail
angle without telling Jai. I suppose if Hassan hadn’t killed her
Jai would have. The loneliest victim in all of this was poor Lu; he
didn’t deserve to be betrayed by either of the two people he loved
most in the world. I suspect that at the end of the day a lot of
people were going to regret our luck, Judy’s and mine, if you can
call it that. All I know is that Judy and I still weren’t out of
the woods, we had a date with some harsh reality and soon.

****

( “Nothing you confess can make me love you less I’ll
stand by you Won’t let nobody hurt you I’ll stand by you”…The
Pretenders)

Epilogue

Los Angeles
, California, June 7,
2009

They say that every poker player has a
‘tell’
an idiosyncrasy if you will, that gives away the hand
they’re playing. When I have a pat hand I inadvertently set my
cards down in front of me, always horizontal with relation to my
body and then lace my hands together, placing them under my nose to
cover the shit eating grin spreading across my face. It drives all
the players at the table to fold every time; which explains why I
never seem to win a decent pot in these games! Since I had
bupkis
for hole cards in this current hand of Texas Hold-em
I had folded in the first round of betting, earning the usual round
of catcalls and expletive ridden remarks about my family tree. I
looked around the table and suppressed a sigh so as not to invite
anymore slurs from the rank and file. There were too many faces
missing from our regular game. Too many friends,
family
really,
had been taken from us by that jack-hole Jai Lai. What
a clever bastard, may he rot in hell.

“You’re not going to get into Heaven with
that potty mouth Whitey,” whispered the voice in my head.

“Shut up, the big boss in the sky is probably
thinking the same thing,” I muttered softly so as not to draw any
attention to myself.

“Shame on you Whitey Roode, you’d better be
careful you know. He hears everything and He keeps a list,”
cautioned the voice.

“Right, just like Santa Clause,” I
chuckled.

“
Okay, it’s your ass
Whitey,”
the voice replied, capitulating to my bad
attitude.

“Can it Ronnie, if he’s really listening
that’ll be one demerit for you and
your potty mouth
,” I
snapped a little louder than I meant to.

“Who are you talking to Roode,” Wally asked
gruffly?

“Didn’t I tell you back in Vegas to see a
shrink about that trance shit?”

He did too
, I remember that day. It
was the day all of our lives changed. I still had trouble seeing
Wally Price as the new Oscar Celaya? But, as fate would have it,
acting
“Chief of Police Oscar Celaya”
had the pick of the
litter after he moved up the ladder, skipping over the rank of
Captain and going straight on to acting Chief, a feat only possible
when you have the Mayor over the proverbial barrel, which he did.
That little microchip was still opening doors for a lot of people,
some going out because of it and some getting in because of it. I’m
glad I never saw the whole list. And even more glad that Hassan
turned out to be a stand up sort of assassin, a hired gun with a
heart if you will, because he never did tell his Russian masters
about Judy and I, go figure?

People will surprise you, I guess you never
know, sometimes good people are sent down rocky paths in life for
reasons known only to the Big Boss in the clouds. As for the rest
of the crowd that were getting their just desserts,
well
, I
get no pleasure watching others suffer. I think I would rather buy
in to what the preachers quote,
to error is human, to forgive
Devine.
I suppose that you could say that the older I get, the
sappier I get, and I’ll plead guilty to that,
happily
.

“Did I hear you say Ronnie,” asked Judy as
she folded her hand, tossing her cards into the pot?

“I think it’s the corned beef he’s been
eating. I told him to stay outta the Jew’s deli; it’s gone down
hill without Lu. Why you go there anyway when me and Angelo always
got a table for you,
huh
,” Fat Johnny said, tossing in his
two cents as well as his crummy cards?

“Well I guess that just leaves you and me
Rebecca,” Iggie said gleefully as he drummed his fingers on his
hole cards. That was his
‘tell’
apparently he had pocket
aces!

“
Fabulous,”
Becca said sarcastically,
watching him drum his fingers for a nanosecond longer before
tossing her own cards into the pot.

“Take it Iggie, I hope you choke on it,” she
quipped, leaning back in her chair and taking a long drink from her
bottle of Chimay Blue, an upscale Belgian beer with 9% alcohol. The
girl kept surprising me. She could fit in with our crowd without
letting go of who she was. Meaning she could mix it up with the
best of us losers and still go home the class act that she is, a
true chameleon. That’ll come in handy in her job.

The whole table was eyeballing me while Iggie
raked in his winnings. They were waiting for an explanation. What
was I supposed tell them,
the truth
? Negative, as soon as
they heard me claim to be haunted by the spirit of my ex wife who
also happens to be an ex female, it’ll be off to Cedar’s Sinai
Psych Ward for good old Uncle Whitey! Nope, I think I’ll keep that
genie in the bottle for now. To be honest, I’m not sure I believe
it myself completely, she’s my first trans-sexual ghost. Wally was
giving me a tongue in cheek look and Judy looked like she was
getting misty so I needed to say something to throw the dogs off of
the scent.