Red Herrings Can't Swim E-Book

Doug Lamoreux

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A drowned man. A sinister circus. And murder... murder... murder.

Nod Blake, the cynical, wise-cracking private eye, is back. He's an aging throwback to a bygone era of detecting on the mean streets; a dinosaur of a private eye who never got the memo that he was extinct. And thanks to his over-eager secretary, he's been dumped in the midst of murder most foul.

From beyond the grave, victims are begging Blake to solve their murders. In the real world, he's flummoxed by vandals, threats to his life, wildly raucous suspects and a homicide detective happy to pin killings on him.

Red Herrings Can't Swim in an all-new murder mystery with a sly sense of humor, set in 1979 Chicago where a maniacal killer running loose under the Big Top on Navy Pier... is the good news.

Contains grim murder and outrageous laughs, peppered with adult themes and language.

Leseprobe

Red Herrings Can't Swim

A Nod Blake Mystery

Doug Lamoreux

Copyright (C) 2017 Doug Lamoreux

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Cover Mint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For Jenny

Chapter One

Imagine, if you will, an all-but washed-up private detective chasing a pharmacy technician down a hallway of the Chicago-Loop Memorial Hospital as fast as either of us could run. He was wearing a white lab coat and a look of panic. I was bare-assed for all the world to see. Yeah, I'm the private dick. And, okay, truth be told, I was not completely nude. I was wearing one of those flimsy cotton gowns, pastel blue with an aesthetically pleasing print of tiny tigers, tied in a bow at the back of the neck with a split all the way down and my butt hanging out, running like hell after him. Yeah, we were a sight.

Like I said, I'm a detective. Call it a personality flaw, but I have a hard time minding my own business. Because of that I was wandering the hospital. And because of that, I found the hospital employee in a partially tiled, partially plumbed bathroom on the 'Closed for Renovations' tenth floor, with his sleeve hoisted and a rubber band tied round his bicep, shooting up with narcotics.

He'd just finished giving himself the joy juice when I stuck my head in the room and asked, “Is that in your job description?” He yanked the needle out painting the wall with a spurt of blood. Then, waving the syringe like a modern-day musketeer, came at me in the doorway.

I tripped over my own feet backing up. He did a rabbit over top of me and the chase was on. It continued down the north stairwell, out and across the eighth floor, where ten minutes earlier I'd seen him swipe the drug from a hospital crash cart. There was one on every patient floor in case of cardiac arrest or other emergencies. We continued into the south stairs, down and out again onto seven, past room 708, my temporary residence. No, I was not officially working. I was a patient. But, like I said, a nosy patient. Where were we? Yeah, headed back to the north stairwell. He grabbed the knob on the fire door to the stairs at the same time I tackled him. That was a mistake.

It was also when the fun really started. The pair of us went through the door, onto the floor, and down that flight of stairs like crap through a goose. We bounced off the steps and each other for half the distance and, if you know anything about me at all, sisters and brothers, you will not be surprised to hear I smacked my head along the way. He screamed, I screamed, and the universe had a laugh at our expense. Somehow, halfway down, I wound up on top and rode him to the landing like a five-year-old riding the sidewalk quarter pony outside of the local Venture.

So there I was, a has-been private eye in my nightie, sitting on top of a hopped-up pharmacy tech on a stairwell landing in a major Chicago hospital. He was screaming, calling me names at the top of his lungs, and struggling with muscles fueled by a high-octane mixture of adrenaline and a yet-to-be-determined stimulant. I was wondering if the situation could be any more ridiculous.

I'll never learn. Because that's when he burst through the sixth floor fire door, shouting, “What's goin' on here?”

By he, of course, I mean Detective Lieutenant Frank Wenders of the Chicago Police Department, a living and breathing reason for taxpayer outrage. A couple of years short of retirement, but expired and rotten nevertheless, Wenders gave policing a bad name and, assuming there was life on other planets, wasn't doing the universal opinion of man a favor either. My questions just then included: Where did he come from? And what was the tub of lard doing there on the hospital stairs?

“Blake!” he yelled. “What the hell?” The echo repeated his question up and down the stairwell.

I should probably point out that he was yelling at me. My name is Nod Blake, former cop and current decrepit detective. Everyone who knows me knows I go by 'Blake' alone. With a first name like that, who wouldn't? It was a curse cast on me by evil parents. The old man got his ages ago. My mother, on the other hand, looks both ways before she crosses the street. One day I'll have my revenge. But I digress. Wenders was demanding information.

“I'm making a citizen's arrest,” I told him. “What about you? Homicide has nothing better to do?”

“Homicide has all kinds of better things to do, wise guy,” Wenders barked. “Mason started bawlin' his ass off in the Squad Room, so I brought him in.”

I'd had a feeling something was missing and that was it; his ever-present partner, Detective Dave Mason, wasn't present. So rare was it for one to be seen without the other that Wenders looked like a shark without his parasite feeder. Together the pair were a sore on my backside that wouldn't heal. Anyway, the lieutenant was still explaining, “They're doin' an emergency surgery. Gonna remove Mason's appendix.”

I made a few comments that occurred to me.

“Yeah, yeah,” Wenders said. “Like usual, Blake, you're talkin' but not sayin' anything.”

“What would you like me to say?”

“Nothing. I'd like 'em to do surgery on you; remove your voice box. But then you'd just become a pest in sign language.”

To show he was right, I offered him the one hand gesture I knew.

He ignored it and went on. “Since you still got your voice, and under the circumstances, I need a few details as to why you're in a hospital stairwell rubbin' your balls on a doctor? I'm Homicide, and I'm not convinced you're murderin' the guy, but it looks a little crime-ish around the edges. Not to mention weird. Want to fill me in? – You shut up a minute!”

That last wasn't for me; it was for the hospital employee beneath me. I forgot to mention, during my short conversation with Wenders, the lab tech had been screaming like a trapped animal the whole time.

“He isn't a doctor,” I explained to the curious lieutenant. “He's a pharmacy technician.”

Wenders shook his head in mock sadness. “And your mother wanted you to marry a doctor.”

“Could you leave my mother out of this?”

“Sure, I got nothin' against the poor put-upon old biddy. So, Blake, sparing me whatever details are so ugly they're gonna put me off my supper, what are you doin' here? On top of that pharmacy guy? And why are you doin' it in a dress?”

There was no way on God's green earth I was going to tell Wenders why I was a patient in that hospital. I told him once, not long ago, that I'd suffered a head injury and confessed the whack had done something to my attic. I'd also told him that, on occasion, I now got random psychic flashes of one sort or another. Yes, faithful reader, I'm as serious as a heart attack. I'll make it more plain to you when I get the chance. But the point then was, I'd tried to explain my condition to Wenders before and he hadn't bought a word of it. There was no point trying again. There was certainly nothing to be gained by telling him I was there, as a patient, for the express purpose of having my injured brain scanned. Why give the guy ammo?

“Why are you here?” Wenders shouted again.

“Hemorrhoids,” I said. “I've got hemorrhoids.”

“That's a coincidence,” the lieutenant said. “Everyone you meet winds up with the same trouble. That said,” he went on, smacking his lips, “I was kinda askin' about this situation here on the stairs.”

“Oh, that.” I took a breath and gave him a shorter version of the story I've just told you. I explained the theft, the illegal drug use, and was midway through the hallway chase, when the stairwell door opened again and the night shift's supervising nurse stormed the scene. And, because I couldn't buy a pinch of luck with a pot of gold, she had to be Nurse Ratched's uglier, meaner sister. She demanded to know what was happening on her stairs.

I raised my voice (the pharmacy tech was shouting again). “You've been losing narcotics from the cardiac crash carts on every floor?”

“Who are you?” she roared. “How did you know that? Nobody knows that.”

“I'll take that as a yes,” I told her. “Here's your thief. He just hit the cart on the eighth floor, took the drug to the vacant tenth floor, and shot up in one of the rooms on the west wing.” The tech squawked louder and I leaned on his head. “Shut up!” Back to the hospital warden and the fat cop. “You'll find a fresh needle track inside his left elbow. You'll find his leavings in the bathroom of room 1020.”

Up until that point, faithful readers, it went as I've told it. From then on, it should have gone like this: a quick arrest on several counts for the guy in the lab coat and a pat on the back for me for making the world a better place. Only it didn't.

Because the stupefied supervisor refused to accept the idea that anyone could know something the hospital administrators were keeping quiet. Meaning nobody could know drugs had been vanishing from the floors. Neither would her mind accept the notion an employee under her supervision was responsible. In consequence, she stood there, shaking her head like a ceramic dashboard dog, wishing we would all just vanish.

And the prize package beneath my prize package kept screaming, and the stairwell walls kept echoing, “Get off me!”

I couldn't arrest him. First off, I'm not a cop anymore; I haven't been for ages. Secondly, ah, forget secondly… This is not a police procedural and you don't want to hear it. It isn't a political thriller either, and the workings of a modern-day hospital (this was 1979, after all) and the decisions made by their nursing supervisors were almost entirely political. So I'll cut it short and tell you the pharmacy tech, whose name incidentally was Leon Darvish, did not go to jail. He went to the administrative offices, where he was showered with tsk-tsk noises of disappointment, and given a lecture on the hospital's need for a spotless reputation in the community. Then he was quietly let go, much like a precious undersized trout is returned to the stream. You see, an arrest for drug theft (let alone use) on duty would have shown a bad light on the healthcare facility. They didn't even slap Darvish's wrist. They didn't want him to go away angry, with things to say and trouble to cause, they just wanted him to go away.

And what, you may ask, of your law-abiding narrator? Me, sisters and brothers, they accused of causing a disruption to patients and staff. I was invited to find a new neurologist. And I was instructed, in no uncertain terms, to get dressed and get out of their hospital.

Chapter Two

“If you're ready… Take the hands of those seated on either side of you. And remember, no matter what happens, do not break the circle.”

I'd heard a variation of that line in every Vincent Price movie I'd ever seen. No doubt you have too. And you've seen the set-up; the dark foyer, the inner doorway covered in hanging beads, the darker room beyond surrounded by heavy blood red curtains, the round table (that should have been adorned with a crystal ball but, sadly, was not), the gullible nitwits seated in a circle. I was less than proud, I have to confess, being among the latter. But there I was sitting in at a séance.

If we back up a second I can explain. No, not so that it makes sense. How could it make any sense? But so you see how I got there. Then again, if you know anything about my work and life, you already have a good guess how I got there. In a word, Lisa Solomon. My secretary had an absolute knack for getting me into situations where I didn't want to be.

You may or may not know that Lisa, in her overzealous desire to someday be a detective, recently involved me in a series of murders… I'll spare you a rehash of the details. Suffice to say during that case, while chasing the bad guys, I managed to hit – and hurt – my head… repeatedly. And, as any good friend and confidant would, after we'd pulled my fat out of the fire and put the case to bed, Lisa insisted I go to the hospital. There was real concern, owing to the bizarre symptoms I was experiencing, I had done permanent damage to myself above the neck. What were the symptoms?

Pain, obviously, and swelling of my noggin, tingling nerves, heat flashes, vision problems and, oh yes, hallucinations of visitations, communications, and commiserations with the dead. Huh, you ask? Well you might. But, yes, the dead, specifically the victims in that last murder case had come to me in random psychic flashes and asked for my help in catching their killer. I know. Get a net, right? I was ready for the rubber room; I don't dispute it. I may be crazy. But that was what had happened. In fact, it was worse. I had not only been talked to by the victims, I had relived their violent deaths. Scout's honor. Somehow, and I haven't the slightest notion how, the injuries to my head allowed me, strike that, forced me to repeatedly see – and to feel – their murders. I literally experienced being killed, in a wide variety of ways, over and over again.

After the dust cleared and the killers in that particular case were removed from polite society, and knowing my new and frightening 'condition' would certainly impact our relationship from then on, I sat Lisa down. I had a chat with her about what was happening inside my bruised noggin. I explained, as best I could with my limited knowledge, what I saw and heard when these psychic attacks came. I told her of the pain in the back of my head, the heat flashes, the blinding colored lights in my eyes. Then I went into the weird parts.

I explained as best I could that my physical surroundings actually changed. My location, regardless of my location, suddenly became the scene of a crime. I was instantly, and painfully, there with the victim. At first, I merely saw them being killed. In later flashes, the victims turned and spoke to me, personally, in the midst of their murders. There was no indication, I could see, that any of the dead heard my replies. But they spoke to me. In later flashes, the experience became more grueling as I began to take the place of the victims. On those psychic trips, I experienced their murders. You can say I dreamed it. But, if I did, they were nightmares repeated over again, one murder after another. I could go on, but why would I? It's too idiotic and unbelievable to believe. So you're either going with what I'm telling you on faith or you've already hollered 'Bull', and have abandoned the idea as fictional crap. Have it your way. For those still with me, no, outside of the brain injuries, I had no explanation for these hallucinations or any idea what brought them on. At times, it seemed the visions were initiated by my touching someone or something, but not always, and no particular person or thing when it did. As I said, they seemed to come at random. And, if you're wondering, the answer is yes, they sucked. Being murdered is no fun at all.

Lisa took in my explanation with wide eyes, made wider by her big round glasses, and a few silent nods (which, for her, was a phenomenally restrained response). I don't know what I'd hoped to gain by telling her what had been happening. I do know what I feared I might lose in spilling the beans. But she was my secretary, and friend, and I thought she ought to know. In the end, she asked a few questions I couldn't answer and we decided to keep on keeping on detecting. We both still needed to eat, after all. The subject of my malfunctioning noggin was filed away.

At least I thought so. Then I found out differently. You see, once I'd dumped the load on Lisa – and this I should have expected – she wanted to help. To that end she soon began needling me, resurrecting the discussion often, with out of the blue questions like, “Did you experience precognition when you were a kid?”

To which I would reply something like, “Outside of sensing the approach of a butt whipping, not that I know.”

Or repeatedly asking, “Did your parents have psychic visions?”

To which I'd answer some variation of, “My father could see his future with my mother. As evidenced by the good sense he showed in dying early to avoid it. My mother has no psychic ability. But she is superstitious. She sacrifices chickens to conjure winning Bingo numbers. It never works because she can't hold off drinking the rum before the end of the ceremony. Does that count?”

I agree, I wasn't being helpful. But we weren't going to solve the 'Mystery of Blake's Head Thing' by talking about it. And Lisa was getting on my nerves. She continued to nag and finally dragged me into the hospital to get my busted bean seen to. The plan was simple, scans, x-rays, and a brainstorming session with accredited members of the physicians' neurological community. You saw the hash I made of that. But, if my hospital visit sounded like disastrous fun, you haven't heard anything yet.

After another week of sawing on my last nerve, Lisa forced me into the lair of what she called an “expert at talking to the dead.” And so we've come full circle. She'd hauled my cookies to the salon of a spiritual medium in search of a séance.

Two women were already there, in the parlor, when we arrived. The older of the pair was a fleshy, snooty but well-turned out, version of every middle-aged woman that had ever run a shopping cart up my unsuspecting keister. Though the attitude suggested this one had money. No doubt Jeeves or Josette did her shopping for her. She wore a bright orange suit-thing and a matching pill box hat. Neither the flowers pinned below her shoulder nor the pearl baubles around her neck went with the outfit, and the assembled whole returned the favor by refusing to go with her blue hair. The other, a thirty-something brunette giving (or getting) security with a slim-fingered grip on the old hag's arm, was a decidedly sleek looking model, gliding naturally and comfortably from kitten to cougar. The elements comprising her facial features were perfectly measured. Her eyelids, unencumbered by make-up, were lowered in what looked to be an attempt at demure. But they failed. At twice the size necessary for seeing, the eyes knew they were ideal for being seen. (I had an odd feeling I recognized her, but couldn't come up with a name.) What I did know was – if she played her cards right – she could end up as my newest reason for staring sleeplessly at the bedroom ceiling.

The medium, stretching credulity by wearing a turban, and making it worse by calling himself Master Criswell, was no master when it came to scheduling. He'd penciled in both of our appointments for the same time. As the ladies arrived first, and were apparently socially something to write home about, Criswell asked if Lisa and I would mind waiting.

The suggestion didn't appeal to me. I had no clue how long it would take him to do his thing, make his pitch, hook the ladies and reel them in. But I knew I didn't want to wait hours for my chomp at the lure. I strongly suggested Lisa and I go. I may even have suggested the evening was “hog wash” and, if I did, probably too loudly. The old lady was annoyed and the medium appalled. The good looker, on the other hand, seemed mildly amused. She, the good looker that is, suggested we have a session together; one big happy group of strangers talking with the dear departed. 'Mother' baulked at the idea, but 'Daughter Dear' insisted. Resigned, the swami made a sweeping gesture toward the chairs around the table. I wasn't up on my séance etiquette but, as we took our places, Criswell appeared okay with our remaining strangers as he made no effort to introduce anyone.

Mother took the opposite side of the table as far from me as she could get. She wanted, it seemed, to speak with her late son and didn't want me getting in the way. Daughter Dear, who was in actuality daughter-in-law dear, would talk with her late husband if and when Mother surrendered the phone. She took the seat to my right with less enthusiasm than one might expect of a true believer. Lisa pushed her big glasses up on her nose, plunked herself down on my left – between me and Mother – and pushed her glasses up again.

As he lowered the lights, Criswell gave a little speech about those that had crossed over and his special connection to them. It was all I could do not to laugh. I had a few special connections to the dead myself and had half a mind to ask him if he'd like to trade. The guy looked like a magician in a Muscular Dystrophy backyard carnival. The turban was bad enough but, from neck to floor, he also wore a dark blue silk robe decorated with random hieroglyphics sewn in gold thread. They weren't crescent moons and stars but they should have been. If I had to guess, I'd imagine the nearest he'd ever gotten to the orient was the middle east of Chicago, Hyde Park maybe. Still, the show went on. He lit a couple of candles and reminded us, particularly me (though I may have been taking it too personally), of the seriousness of our endeavor. He took his seat between the old biddy and my new heart throb. He stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, gyrated a bit, did some heavy breathing, then sang a little a cappella ditty in a language that was news to me to get himself in the mood.

It was all a bit goofy but, I admit, I wasn't shocked by any of it. Lisa had given me a heads-up. She warned me Criswell would have his own way of conducting his voodoo, that he might have to sing, or chant, or play records, or dance; that he would have to go through some mumbo jumbo in order to contact his go between to the other side. To hear the voices of the dead, she said, he needed to enter their plain. It seemed like a lot of work to me. All I had to do was slam my head on something hard.

But my babbling is taking you away from the moment. Criswell apparently found the zone because, suddenly, he was speaking in some other guy's voice. I couldn't place it exactly but it reminded me of nothing so much as a villain from Johnny Quest.

Then all kinds of odd happenings began to take place. The candles somehow snuffed themselves out and the room fell into darkness. Out of nowhere a trumpet blared which, truth be told, I didn't care for a bit. The swami threw his head back, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, with his spine as straight as an arrow. A light flared, from where I wasn't sure, illuminating a green mist swirling above and behind his head. The Quest villain vanished as, suddenly, Criswell was muttering in what sounded like a Brooklyn accent. I sighed and bit my tongue not to groan.

Then, as reported, in what seemed his own voice, the medium said, “If you're ready… Take the hands of those seated on either side of you. And remember, no matter what happens, do not break the circle.”

Lisa excitedly reached out. I took her hand and got a chill. There was nothing mystic in that, my secretary's hands were always cold. Then I grasped the invitingly warm hand of the lady beside me. Instantly, and without warning, I felt as if I'd been cracked on the back of my head with a hammer.

No, I wasn't assaulted; at least not from without. I was experiencing another of the flashes I'd first encountered on my last case. Apparently, they were with me to stay. I should have told you, that's how the psychic visions came – with a vicious blow. I'd never mentioned it to anyone but, privately, I'd begun to think of it as being 'thunderstruck'. I'd never had the experience, but couldn't help but think that's what it was like to be struck by lightning in a thunderstorm. The nape of my neck was burning. A kaleidoscope of colors exploded behind my eyes. My chair vanished and I was falling through the dark. As I fell, I strained to see anything in the pitch blackness.

I heard it before I saw it. Water! I heard the tumultuous splashing of water that, if it really existed, was as dark as my surroundings. Slowly I made out ripples on a surface far below. But a surface of what? A pool? A lake? A sea? I had no clue. The splashing went on.

Then I heard a great painful gasp. I saw, and could just begin to make out, a familiar shape beneath me. I was still falling through black space, so it must have been beneath me. The bust of a man. No, not a bust, but a live man from the shoulders up. A man sunk nearly to his chin and bobbing in black water. He didn't have a face, not that I could make out. But he must have had a mouth because I could hear him choking, gurgling, spitting mouthfuls of water and foam, trying desperately to catch a breath. He groaned. He cried in pain. But words seemed beyond him. Then he jerked violently and went still.

There followed a pause, pregnant with silence, damp, and cold. My world as I tumbled downward was blackness, the man in the water, and nothing more. Then he jerked awake, or back to life, or back to motion, slapping the surface and kicking in the water. Still he had no face but, finally, he had words as pained and helpless as they were. He screamed, “Help!” Which seemed in order considering his circumstances. Then, weakly, he began to beg, “Help… me! Down… here…”

There was no strength in his voice. The poor guy was drowning. I didn't know who he was, where he was, or how he'd gotten there. But there could be no doubt. The man was drowning. Mind you, all this time I'd been falling through the dark, tumbling toward him. Then I splashed down.

My altered reality was altered again. The first part of the hallucination had been startling. This new change was terrifying. I was suddenly on the edge of consciousness. My head was splitting, in the back as always on these psychic journeys but, now, on the left side of my forehead too. An all new stabbing pain. I was in the black cold water myself. I gagged. I choked. I sputtered and coughed. The drowning man was gone. I had taken his place. And, sisters and brothers, I was drowning.

Then my surroundings changed again. I was still in the dark (though not as dark) but the silence had gone. A horn blared; the blast of a trumpet loud enough to raise the dead. It took a second to recognize it as the same horn we'd all heard at the start of the séance. This was not, however, the fleeting greeting from one of Criswell's dear departed as before. Nor was it a diverting little blast of sound to hide the hiss of a green mist released into the room by a charlatan (a thought that had, I confess, occurred to the cynic in me). The trumpet blare this time was continuous and ear-splitting.

I realized the thunderstrike vision had passed. I was back in the real world. The blaring trumpet was genuine and, as usual, I was to blame. When the psychic attack had come I had fallen out of my chair. Now, as I came back to reality, I found that I'd landed underneath Criswell's table. I had a hold on the solitary center pedestal and was sitting at the medium's feet. Make that the bogus medium.

That wasn't a cynical accusation and it wasn't a guess. I was sitting – painfully – on a panel of foot operated switches wired into the floor. These, obviously, controlled the supposed 'evidences' of contact with those that had passed over. For example, the ghostly blaring trumpet. One of the switches was goosing me sharply and, I realized, it was me blowing the trumpet with my rear end. It was a hustle, the whole séance; one big plastic banana, phony pony show. A second switch, no doubt, snuffed the candles on command. A third, it seemed likely, flooded the ceiling in green light. A fourth, I would bet, sent a cloud of mist swirling above our heads. Disoriented as I was, I moved to kill the horn and rescue my tender derriere. In doing so, I pressed another switch that unleashed what was apparently meant to be a chorus of crying 'dead' children. You can imagine how many friends I was making.

Above the table, the old lady screamed in outraged horror, “Why… I never!”

I agreed. With a face full of her fat ankles it was a first for me too.

The cougar said something, I'm not sure what or to whom. Then Lisa appeared. She dropped to the floor beside me, grabbed me by the arm, and was trying to pull me to my feet. She was a girl of action and it was a nice thought but, in reality, not a good plan. I couldn't stand. I was still under the table.

“Get off!” The medium shouted, kicking me in the back. “Get off me!”

Long story short. The old lady left the place in tears with her pill box hat askew on her blue hair. I felt bad about that. Her daughter-in-law slinked sinuously out after her wearing the same amused look as earlier in the evening, only more so. I felt worse about that. Criswell, his turban unwinding, stood in the entrance – now the site of hasty exits – begging his disheartened customers to come back. It looked to be no use. They appeared to have sworn off his services for good.

The phony medium's plea to Lisa and I was shorter. “Get out,” he cried. “Get out. Get out!”

Chapter Three

You're probably wondering if either of those two stories had a point. They did. I'll get to it later. You may be wondering if I'm ever going to put this show on the road. I will right now.

I've mentioned the injuries I suffered on my last case but, until now, haven't said anything about the case itself. Suffice to say it led me through a series of murders of the members of Chicago's famous Temple of Majesty church with a killer leaving cryptic Bible verses like bread crumbs to follow. The whole thing might have been easier to solve if I'd stayed up on my scripture over the years but, like most everything else in my life, it had gotten away from me. That case, though closed, was apparently not completely behind me. It obviously still bugged me because, as I'm telling this, another verse I haven't revisited since childhood springs to mind. If your right hand offends you, cut it off.

Nobody that knows me would be surprised to hear that Lisa is my right hand. She's also my right arm, my brain and, when push comes to shove, most of my backbone. But after nagging me into that hospital stay, where bad things happened, then dragging me to that fraud of a medium, where worse things happened, my secretary was – just then – also a sizable pain in my rear end. I needed a break, time to scream at the cosmos, and told her in no uncertain terms to leave me alone. I tell you this so you'll understand my cloudy mood when, a few short hours later, Lisa called me and interrupted my quiet night. To put it bluntly my secretary was lucky I take that 'right hand' verse figuratively.

In the first minute of her call I had to stop and restart her twice. Lisa has a tendency to talk fast when she's excited and only gains speed as she goes. Whatever she was saying, it sounded like her apartment was on fire. But I was mistaken. When I finally slowed her to a speed I could decode, it turned out she wasn't at her apartment. She was at the city harbor.

When I asked why, she went as closed mouth as Cagney on death row. “I can't tell you on the phone,” was all she'd say. That and, “Just get down here!” What could I do? I went.

The harbor is on Chicago's south side, not far from the massive stockyards, but just inland from Lake Michigan itself. It connects to the lake through a short east-west channel.

I no more than pulled up and parked when I spotted Lisa sixty yards away, out on what would prove to be pier 23, doing jumping jacks to get my attention. I haven't described Lisa yet and, it occurs, I ought to for those that don't know her. Lisa Solomon is a tall brunette. It's not over-stating it to say she's brilliant, efficient, and gorgeous. But God has a sense of humor and, for kicks, gave her all the grace of a Bourbon Street wino. Before you can fully take in her long beautiful legs, she's likely to trip over them and fall on her prat. Watching Lisa hop around, as I approached, I was half expecting she'd topple into the drink. But the world is full of surprises and this time she stayed on her feet.

I had almost reached her when she pulled something from her pocket, took a bite out of it, then chewing like a mad cow stowed whatever it was away again. That was not a surprise. I saw Lisa once when she wasn't eating; once. How she stayed skinny remains one of the world's great mysteries. This may have been a cookie, in which case it was probably peanut butter. “You're not going to believe this,” she shouted, spitting chewed bits.

“What? What's so unbelievable you couldn't tell me over the phone but you can yell across a pier? While you're at it, why are you on a pier?”

“C'mere.” She grabbed my shoulder, leaned in, and whispered, “I came down to rent a boat.”

“At this time of night?”

“No! Hours ago.”

“Why? What do you need with a boat? What do you even know about boats?”

“I used to date a fishing guy.”

“A fishing guy?”

“You know. A guy who fishes.”

“A fisherman. You did? I didn't know that.”

“It didn't last long. He smelled like fish.”

I sighed. Then Lisa sighed, frustrated by my sigh. I could feel her pain. It was probably aggravating to have a boss that wanted information when there was so much to ramble on about.

“Sorry,” I said, seeing the situation for what it was. I settled into my gum shoes and grudgingly accepted the fact I was in for the long version. “Go ahead.”

Lisa smiled. “It's just that, after what happened to you at that séance, I thought I better come out here and take a look.”

I studied her earnest face, owl-like as usual behind her massive glasses, then did a quick study of the pier and harbor beyond. Nothing I saw gave me a clue. Like it or not, I was going to have to ask. “What at the séance led you to the harbor?”

“That thing that happened to you. You know, the head thing.”

“The head thing.” You, reader, are now up to date on the thunderstrikes, the interactive Extra Sensory movies (visions? hallucinations?) that randomly and painfully played in my head. “Yeah, the head thing. I got it. How does the harbor come into it?”

“The water.” She pointed helpfully off the pier.

“I know what water is. What has the water in the harbor got to do with the séance?”

“You almost drowned!” Lisa beamed. “I detected!”

I think I mentioned too that Lisa wanted to be a detective? Yeah. Like Noah scooped pet food, Lisa wanted to be a detective. She was going on, “I added two and two. At the séance, during your head thing, you almost drowned. Where else in Chicago, but the harbor, are you going to almost drowned?”

“The Chicago River,” I said. “Or in any of a hundred thousand swimming pools. In a bathtub. A whirlpool in the Bear's locker room.” Lisa frowned but I went on. “In Bill Veeck's tears after Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park. The fountain at Lincoln Park. A horse trough at the petting zoo. In your cups. In your toilet. A rain barrel.”

“All right.”

“A puddle. A teaspoon.”

“All right,” she hissed, angrily digging in her pocket. “I was playing a hunch.” She produced her comfort food again and took a vicious bite. I'd been way off. It was a Zagnut bar. “You play hunches all the time,” she whined, launching tiny peanut brittle and toasted coconut javelins my direction.

“It's part of my job to play sensible hunches. I'm a licensed private investigator. You are not.”

“Well, I'm going to be. Some day.”

“Until that fateful day could you just be my secretary?”

“What does that mean?”

“For starters, it means, stop forcing me to chase wild geese. Please! I have no clue what happened at that séance. Neither do you. I don't know what it had to do with water, except I saw a guy drowning. Then I was dropped into it and felt I was drowning. What I did not see, and what I fail to see now, is any connection to the city harbor.”

“Well, I did.”

“What? What connection? Why are you here? Why am I here?”

Lisa threw out her small but absolutely fine chest, lifted her proud chin, and poked her glasses up off the tip of her nose. “Because of what I have to show you in the boat.”

God, the night was never going to end. “What boat?”

“The boat I rented.” She turned giving me a view of the water, and of a twelve-foot aluminum craft with a small Johnson outboard to which I hadn't paid any attention, tied to the pier below our feet. She stretched her arm, twisted her supple wrist, and fanned her fingers like Carole Merrill offering a 'Let's Make a Deal' contestant a year's supply of grape Ne-Hi. Then she said (I kid you not), “Ta dah!”

The coat she should have been wearing was spread out across the bottom of the boat, from mid-ship to the bow, covering several inches of dirty shipped lake water and… something else. A pair of soggy boots protruded. It didn't take a genius to see they had people in them. My mouth fell open but nothing came out. What could I say? I stepped from the pier, down into the boat (soaking my own shoes and socks), and lifted Lisa's coat. What I saw ruined my whole day.

There wasn't much to him. He might have stood five-foot-four, back when he used to stand. He weighed maybe a hundred and twenty; a few pounds more with the weight of the water. He was soaked from crown to soles. His work boots were worn brown leather, with the frayed tops of once-white wool socks peeking out. He wore green bib coveralls over a gray button-down shirt, both worn. He wore a suit jacket, brown or tan, it was hard to tell as wet as it was, which seemed a bit odd over the work clothes. Soup and fish maybe? Had he been to an event or meeting it might have been healthier to skip? The coat's gray inside lining featured a tear from the left chest down to beneath the pocket. I guessed him at sixty but it was a guess. What I knew for certain was, he wasn't going to get any older. A sigh seemed in order and I produced one. Then, over my shoulder, I plaintively asked Lisa, “I don't suppose he came with the boat rental?”

“No. He was in the water. I pulled alongside and dragged him aboard.”

“Looks like you brought most of Lake Michigan with him.”

“I didn't have to go that far. He was actually,” she pointed, “right there in the mouth of the thingy.”

“The channel?”

She snapped her fingers and nodded. She tried to add something but I cut her off with a sharp, “Wait, don't say anything else. Cripes!”

Down the dock, passing through a pool of amber light cast by one of only three poles spanning the distance, headed our way, was a string bean of a male figure with a decided limp. The combination told me it was George Clay, the son of the old boat renter, and part-time boat renter himself. No doubt the one who'd provided Lisa's conveyance. I'd had dealings in one way or another with both Clay and his father. They were, after all, two ready sets of eyes when eyes were needed at the harbor. They rarely missed a thing and, therefore, came in handy to me on occasion. I wasn't surprised to see George headed our way.

“Time for you to go,” I told Lisa.

“Go where?”

“Home. Anywhere. Just get out of here.”

“But Blake…”

“But nothing. There's a dead body; it has to be reported. We can't answer the questions that will follow. There's no way they will believe you went looking for a drowned man on the spur of the moment and just happened to find one. And there is no way we are telling the Chicago police you were led here by my psychotic flashes. To put it bluntly, 'This is another fine mess, Ollie.' Wenders would love a chance to bury either one of us so deep in Joliet they'd have to bring us air in paper bags. I don't want you any more mixed up in it than you are. Now I've got to make up a lie about why I rented a boat. And how I found our friend here. And what I've done with him since. I can't do that with you buzzing in my ear.”

“Blake, I can help you.”

“Don't force me to say, You already have.” I stopped there, keeping it to myself that, once again, my secretary had helped me – right into the soup. Why say it? What would have been the point? I might as well start swimming. But there was no time to waste.

“George Clay is headed this way. Don't bother to look, just go, before he gets here. If I get thrown in the jug, I'll need you free to call lawyers, and Large, and God knows who else. Besides, if you don't get home safe, your mother will put out a hit on me.”

“What about your mother?”

“She'll take the contract. Go!”

Lisa didn't want to but, bless her heart, she went. George Clay arrived in time to see her fade into the shadows of the parking lot. “Hey, Blake. Was that your secretary? She rented a–” Then it dawned on him where I was standing. “Oh, yeah, there it is.” Then it dawned on him what lay at my feet. “Hey, Blake, is that a–”

“Yeah, George, it is.”

“Wow. Lisa caught her limit, huh?”

“No. She didn't. You haven't seen Lisa tonight. Got that, George? I rented the boat.”

“You rented the boat?”

“Right. I rented the boat. Do me a favor and make your paperwork say so.”

“There isn't any. I mean there is, but I… sorta…”

“See, George, we're on the same page. All you have to do is remember I rented the boat. Do that and I won't remember to tell your old man you're skimming customers by not logging the rentals.”

“You're a hard man, Blake.”

“John Wayne said it. It's a hard life.”

“Okay,” George agreed with no indication he appreciated the free philosophy. “Who is he? Your dead guy?”

“I don't know. Why don't you hop down here and help me find out?”

George grimaced and threw up his hands. “Uh, uh. No, thanks. He's your corpse. You roll him.”

Big surprise, I was on my own.

But George still wanted to be helpful. “You want me to go call the cops?”

“Hang on a second. Let me see what I can see first.” I reached down, grabbed the drowned man by his soggy jacket, and instantly regretted touching him. I felt an explosion of heat and pain in my head. Yes, I'd been thunderstruck again. My brain was on fire. Colors flashed in my eyes. The old guy, the boat, George, and the harbor vanished.

Blackness. Nothingness.

Slowly my vision returned; images spinning in my mind like a badly edited montage in a 60's LSD documentary. I saw shadowy crowds of faceless people, walls of stretched canvas, tight ropes on angle, electric cables like snakes on the ground, and brightly colored neon lights above. A roof of red and yellow stripes hid the sky and masked the time of day, or night, in this new unreal reality of mine. I heard a din of human voices, calliope music, shouting and laughter. I heard the shake of ice, bells going off, garbled tones over a loud speaker. I smelled hot grease and, I swear, freshly popped popcorn. I was in the middle of some sort of carnival. Then, as suddenly as they'd blinked to life, the lights were gone.

I was swallowed by the blue of night. And there, in front of me, I saw a fish smoking a cigar. Laugh, kids, laugh. I don't make this stuff up. The visions hurt too much to joke about them. I merely report them. And I'm reporting I saw a gray cartoon fish. Maybe a dolphin? A tuna? What did I know about fish? I saw it through some kind of porthole in a circle of blue. It was smoking a black stogie, blowing smoke rings, and had a big No. 2 pencil tucked under its left fin. You're laughing. I wasn't. My head was splitting. And somebody was screaming.

The screaming wasn't helping my head a bit. This wasn't a scream of delight. It was pain. It was terror. Then, boom, the angle from which I was seeing everything changed. Suddenly Lisa's drowned man was there in front of me, looking the same but different; the drowned man before he'd gone for his swim in the harbor. He was the one screaming. He was upright, dry but with a forehead bathed in sweat, his face contorted by fear. Then he fell away into the darkness. I heard a brutal thump and a cry of pain. I heard a splash into water.

As quickly as these visions had come they were gone. I was back in George Clay's boat, leaning over the body of the drowned man, grabbing for the gunwale for balance, trying not to fall into the harbor. George was on the pier above staring down at me like I was nuts. For all I knew he was right.

“You okay, Blake?”

“Yeah,” I replied distantly, my mind on other things. George was a distraction. “Never better.”

My hallucination had prevented me giving the corpse a going over. There was nothing in the world I wanted to do less than touch him again, but what choice did I have? I hadn't discovered a thing about him. I still needed to know who he was and why he was dead. I took a deep breath and grabbed his jacket again. Nothing happened, nothing otherworldly I mean, and I exhaled in relief. Then I went through his pockets. Sadly, I got bupkis for the trouble. His suit coat came off the cheap rack. The tear in the lining was more than a tear; a piece was missing. He had no identification. Other than a wet wadded dollar bill in the right front pocket of the coveralls, he wasn't carrying a thing. I left the buck where it was in case he needed tip money to get across the river. Yeah, I'm all heart.

George was talking, had been for some time, and finally I gave him my attention. “Did you hear me, Blake? We got to call the cops, don't we?”

“Not we, George,” I said, stepping up and out of the boat. “You. Phone away.”

“You're not leaving me with this? You're not running out on me?”

“I am leaving. But I'm not running. I've got to find out who this guy is. I've got to find out why he's dead. And I've got to do that before the homicide dicks wrap him around my neck.”

“But if you just tell them that Lisa–”

“Lisa wasn't here. Got that, George? Lisa wasn't here and she didn't rent your boat. I rented the boat! Is that too much to ask? To keep my secretary out of this mess?”

“But I can't tell the cops all them lies.”

“It's only one lie, George. One! Just tell them I rented the boat!”

“Right. You rented the boat. And… you brought it back… with the body in it?”

“Yes, George. I brought it back, as is, and I left. You don't know nothing from nothing. You can even call me a name in front of the cops, if you like. That will put you in good with them.”

I couldn't blame George for being excited. I was a little excited myself. But Lisa had gotten herself in good and, now that I'd taken her place, I had to get me out. That meant tracking down the drowned man and the person or persons unknown who'd pushed him into the pool. All I had to go on was my 'carnival' hallucination. And a fish smoking a cigar. Either one, I was sure, had a ninety-nine percent chance of leading absolutely nowhere. It was daffy. But it was somewhere to start.

“You rented the boat.” George repeated aloud on his way to notify the police. “Whatever you say, Blake. You can count on me.”

Despite his fading promise, I once again had the feeling I had nobody and nothing to count on but the two idiots I usually hung with; me and myself. I left the pier with a plan consisting of little more than 'Be gone before the cops arrive'. The homicide boys, particularly Wenders, I knew, would flay me alive when they caught up with me. But that would be then.

I jumped into my Jaguar, drove out of the marina, and right into Lisa's homemade soup.