An Improbable Cause

 “Just like they said. A wiseass.”

Silence is my pal. I say more nothing.

Anxiety lines around his eyes belie his reputation. I take his stare, tweak an eyebrow and twinkle a smile. He vents venomous air through tightened teeth, shrugs and looks away.

He’s called me a wiseass. Now, I call Jack Bugley a hard-ass. Silently. So he can’t hear.

Jack-Bugley is an over-hyphenated stereo-type, a well-connected, self-centered, power-hungry, nouveau-riche, entrepreneur-criminal Type-A with spotless-hands and a filthy-soul.

He’s sitting in the downtown lockup. One of us is pleased. Both of us are shocked.

“So” he grunts and takes my eyes in his. I retrieve them. Not the eyes, Jack. They’re hard to replace and I hate shopping.

He switches tack and flashes a Pan-Am smile about as genuine as a pedophilic priest’s vocation.

“So” I echo and smile with my eyes. I’m happy and relaxed. Jack Bugley has nothing on me. Other than having me horribly maimed or brutally murdered, he can’t touch me. And, we both know it.

His sham smile segues into a sullen scowl. He chins at the chair opposite and barks a command “Sit.”

I stay standing. We wiseasses think better on our feet. We run better on them too. Also, we don’t take too kindly to barked commands from hard men we despise and we definitely don’t take a seat if it will imply a lawyer/client relationship.

I am a lawyer and he is a client. Just not mine. Not now. Not ever.

My disobedience discommodes him. Slowly, his shoulders slump. He is a man teetering on the edge.

I can relate. I too am on the edge, on the edge of skipping out of here. I raise the other eyebrow. I like to show my superciliary versatility every chance I get. It’s an eyebrow-raising weakness of mine.

“Wiseass” he repeats in case I’ve missed what “they” told him about me.

He shrugs again. For a guy who does it a lot, he’s a lousy shrugger. I shrug him one of my own, to show him how it’s really done. The lesson escapes him. I mentally charge him for it anyway. Time, they’d taught me in law school, is money.

Jack is a man who’s sailed stormy seas all his life and has finally fallen overboard. He’s hit a reef he’s shelled out fortunes to steer clear of. He’s out of his depth. An idea occurs and, hating myself for having anything to do with this creep, I toss him a lifeline to give it time to develop “So?”

Like a Willie Nelson concert from the cheap seats, his voice switches from badass tenor to gravelly bass as he inches his story forward and croons “Yesterday.” He coughs without meaning to and it visibly hurts. He painfully swallows saliva or bile or whatever he lubricates his malevolent tongue with.

“Yesterday” he repeats but this time the pitch is alto. The guy’s got range. He coughs, intentionally, to clear an intrinsic whine. Perhaps his diaper’s been too tightly tied during those important formative years.

Yet another “Yesterday” and I get it. I’m quick like that. He’s trying to tell me something about yesterday.

He doesn’t like that one either and goes for another take “Yesterday.”

If he doesn’t get a move on, he’ll be talking about today. I nod encouragement, letting him know that I hang on his every yesterday. He takes it as a slight and I’m glad.

My mind escapes to thoughts of sweet revenge.

I recapture it and force myself to tune in to what he’s saying. He’s saying another “Yesterday...” I suppress a groan but he surpasses himself and all his yesterdays “…the cops arrested me.”

Some people consider me dumb. I test their thinking. We’re in jail. I’m not under arrest. Dum-de-dum!

He says, deadpan and resolute “You’re going to defend me.”

Throughout the dance of my life I’ve heard a lot of short sentences but none has ever thrown me as completely as this one. It puts the disco into discombobulated. For the first time in my twenty years as a defense lawyer I ask an accused that unaskable question “Why?”

Jack looks at me like I’m a moron “Why what?”

My why is too restrictive. I do something I’ve been planning to do for years. I branch out “Why me? You’ve got more lawyers than sense.”

His lawyer/sense equation trends toward equilibrium as he bitterly explains “Their job is to keep me out of jail. And, where am I now?”

He’s got a point. I buy time to put some wheels under my idea “What are they charging you with?”

“Statutory.” He doesn’t need to complete the phrase.

I look at him more carefully and I see. Jack’s really scared. He’s spent the night in a place where his reputation, reach and riches count for zilch. His silk shirt sports scarlet spots. On his throat black/blue bruises bear brutal witness. Every swallow recalls last night’s hell. The experience has thrown him so far out of his comfort zone that he wants to hire…Me!

Normally, Jack wouldn’t wipe his shoes on someone like me. Jack’s is a gilded world of luxury cars, yachts and mansions, young wives, younger hookers, fine food and finer wines. And, crucially, no jails.

Ordinarily. Now, he’s washed ashore on my patch and he doesn’t like it one little bit.

I’m not crazy about it either.

***

I am a Velcro man in a Teflon world.

If the Buddha was right I must have done something real bad in a previous incarnation to have been saddled with the heavy burden of a conscience in this one.

I’ve tried to hide it.

I’ve tried to hide from it.

I’ve tried to beat it to death.

I’ve tried to secretly slip it into the pockets of passing pedestrians.

I’ve driven it out to the boonies in the dead of night and symbolically abandoned it. But, like Lassie, it always finds its way home.

***

The mainstream media and their wealthy backers depict my clients as the dregs of society. Except they’re not. Mostly, they’re ordinary people with extraordinary problems. Venal politicians, crooked big-time real-estate developers like Jack Bugley and psychotically greedy Wall Street gamblers disgust me infinitely more.

Sure, my clients are addicts and grifters, dippers and hookers but they’re real. They’re honest in ways that only the powerless can be. They’re not good, not good-for-nothings.

Someone has to steer them through a system rigged by, and for, the powerful. That someone is me. This is why I became not just a lawyer, but the type of lawyer I am.

I’ve never turned down a plea for help.

I intend to turn Jack down.

***

I decide. I park the idea as an unworkable delusion. I’ll price myself out of this predicament. I name a sum I couldn’t earn in three good years and he nods immediate uncalculated assent. I gulp, panic and add “And half again for expenses.”

He nods again and says tamely, like the broken man he has temporarily become, “Ok, half today when you bail me out, the rest on acquittal.”

I swear silently. I’ve underestimated how rich and how scared Jack is. In naming my fee, I’ve taken the case.

Dazed by my stupidity and sudden wealth I walk to the door.

A menacing command triggers a landmine of recognition “Talk to Rudy.”

I ask the door “Who’s Rudy?” The door’s dumber than me. Jack answers for it “My driver, you fool. He was with me yesterday.”

Resigned, I nod without turning.

I push the thought of the enormous fee to the back of my mind where it sits heavy as a stone the way the lasagna in Uncle Sal’s diner sits in my stomach every time I eat it.

Jack’s right. I am a fool. I know Uncle Sal’s lasagna will get me every time, but my taste buds are in my wallet. If it’s cheap, it’s tasty.

Taking a case for Hard Jack Bugley is a bad idea, but he’s right. I have accepted it. As of now I am his lawyer with all that that entails.

It’s time to go. Hating him and annoyed with myself I pummel the door and call the guard.

After purgative gulps of fresh air I call Jack’s secretary and charm the directions to Rudyville from her.

An hour later Jack and I go see the judge.

***

Bail was invented by the rich for the rich.

Jack was out before I could say, and why would I bother, “Let justice prevail”.

He could’ve been out the night before except the shock of his arrest had been too great. He hadn’t been thinking straight. His first night in the slammer has convinced him that it has to be his last. Panicking for the first time in his loathsome life he’s dumped his retinue of straitlaced legal office jocks in favor of a street fighter who specializes in defending the indefensible.

Me.

***

If only the good die young, Rudy will live forever.

He’s dark, slim, small, and bent. He wears his faded black leather jacket like an old threat. His tongue darts relentlessly along thin red lips but I have to stoop down to see.

Rudy is Jack’s driver not an alchemist yet his dead weasel eyes never leave his belt buckle as if he’s trying to stare it into gold. I don’t want his belt or his company, I want his recall. If he has any he’s mislaid it someplace like a single sock.

I’m unhappy. I don’t want Jack as a client. I don’t want to plead for him, anywhere anytime with anyone.

I incline to Rudy’s level. I explain that his boss has hired me and that I need to talk to him about yesterday. Unlike Jack, I say it right the first time but Rudy never lifts his head, never acknowledges my existence, just keeps wetting those eternally dry red lips of his and staring fixedly at his groin.

Rudy is a knife man. He likes to do it quiet and up close, as close as he ever gets to another human being. If birth is a lottery Rudy’s role in life was a sociological certainty. Brutalized by his family, bestialized by his environment and betrayed by his gnome-like physiognomy, it was a sure thing from the moment he’d spurted out of the womb onto a blood and urine-soaked bed sheet that he’d turn out the way he has. A dumb, mean outsider, full of hatred, his knife-hand quicker than his synapse.

I’ve known a hundred Rudys. I’ve defended them all and liked none of them. I’ve helped them walk free knowing one thing for certain. I’d see them again. It’s sustainable fishing. Catch. Release. Catch again.

They can’t resist the bait.

***

When a loner like Rudy connects with a man like Jack the bond is immutable and concrete. Jack is not just Rudy’s meal ticket. He is his raison d'être, his surrogate father, his mentor and sage.

True lawyers fake empathy. I talk to Rudy the way Jack does, with understanding, with kindness. I tell him that his boss is in a bind and needs his help. I assure him that he can tell me everything and anything since Jack is protected by attorney-client privilege.

He raises his head, reddens his lips and relents.

Rudy’s story is as short as he is.

I take notes.

What Rudy tells me turns my stomach. Jack will walk. No question.

My idea loses traction. Then, its wheels spin and grip on the grounds that Rudy is utterly loyal to Jack. He’s normally mute. But, he’s talking now.

My next question makes him edgy. I soothingly reassure him that I too am bound to Jack. Despite his misgivings his filial fidelity fosters a response.

I grill him some more.

I open my legal pad to a new page. Ten minutes later I’ve written down Rudy’s story in BLOCK CAPITALS. I tender a gold-colored pen. He recoils. I wiggle it playfully in front of him to show it means no harm.

He licks his lips and scribbles his name at the bottom of the page. His signature is that of a sixth grader’s and confirms my theory of arrested development.

I sign my name beside his. I clutch the pad tightly to my chest and walk away.

I am happy again.

***

That evening my part-time bookkeeper/full-time sister calls me in a flap.

Seeking thrills, or laughs, she’s played online banking roulette with my account.

With gleeful dread she tells me that the bank has made a terrible error, like that card in Monopoly only with many more trailing zeroes.

I tell her it’s Ok and to expect a similar deposit in the near future. When she pushes me to explain how I’ve earned so much money in one day, I tell her the truth.

I tell her I’ve sold my soul to a devil.

***

Next morning I take a call from a guy called Reilly who says he’s the head of Jack’s legal office. He tells me he’s cut short a skiing trip. I try not to be impressed. It’s easy.

He’s convening a case conference in an hour. He tells me where. I give him silence and he gets the impression that I’ll be there.

I’ve no intention of talking to Jack let alone his lawyers. I conduct my cases solo and, in defiance of the text books, without the distraction of a client’s recall.

I know what’s happened. Back in the bosom of the familiar Jack’s reengaged with his highly paid attorneys. For now, they’ve conceded my role.

Later on they’ll cut me out.

Or try to.

***

That afternoon I take a call from Jack.

He asks me why I’ve missed the conference with his legal team.

I ignore his question, ask one of my own. How many crummy criminal cases has his legion of legal legends successfully settled?

He has to think about it and I pounce.

I say “Exactly” and kill the call.

***

An hour later I catch a break.

Reilly calls me again. He makes no mention of my no-show. He tells me he will apply to the court to be listed as co-counsel.

This is a prelude to kicking me off the case. I cannot allow it. Overcoming my initial misgivings, I am now completely committed to this cause. Justice and my conscience demand that Jack and I have our day in court.

Crucially, I sense that this is Reilly’s idea, not Jack’s. I tell Reilly why it’s a cinch that Jack will walk at the arraignment. As he cogitates I assemble the killer lie, an IED concealed beneath the twisted trail of his self-esteem. I ask “Do you know why Jack hired me? I mean, his real reason?”

Reilly answers with the assurance of the confidant “Of course. Jack wasn’t himself. He couldn’t believe that the cops had actually arrested him. He had a rough night in jail. He was angry at my colleagues and…eh…me. He felt we had let him down.”

I force a frivolous laugh and ask, as if genuinely impressed by Jack’s creative talents, “Is that what Jack really told you?”

A hesitant affirmation and the IED detonates “Well, he’s lying. He hired me because he’s anxious to protect your reputation. He told me that you guys are too important to him to drag into criminal court. If I recall correctly, the word he used to describe this case was ‘crummy’.”

Reilly can be my co-author but never my co-counsel. I pause to let him finish my fairytale.

He does and says “Oh. Well, yes, I see. He has a point… Hmm.”

I gut and fillet his ego with “Personally, I’d be delighted. It would help my career enormously if we were co-counsels on this…”

The thought terrifies him. He backs off “Eh, well, no. I think Jack is right. Besides, from what you say, it will only take a few minutes to have this thrown out of court.”

I can’t laugh while biting my tongue. I mumble agreement.

He grunts decisively and says “Good” then adds “Oh, one more thing. Jack told me what you’re charging. Forget it. You’ve got all you’re going to get.”

For a few moments I act outraged, then say resignedly “I’ll need that in writing, signed by Jack. Have his secretary fax me the letter.”

I hang up.

I’m not surprised. Jack’s attorneys are paid to give him good advice and protect his wealth. They know I have tried it on but not why. They know my fee should be a fraction of what the shell-shocked Jack tamely agreed to in the lockup. His lawyers are at the top of their profession. They are the very best that greed can lure from the path of righteousness.

If I was in their shoes I’d do the same. Well, with one difference.

I’d have told me after the case had been thrown out.

***

Three days later I’m sitting beside Jack in a crowded courtroom at the pre-trial hearing.

So many journalists have shown up I figure their media mogul bosses have given other news the day off. I imagine the suffering a day without mention will cause to countless celebrities I couldn’t name under oath.

I’ve pushed for an expedited arraignment and the prosecutor has agreed since the case against Jack is a bust.

Like a proud mother goose Reilly sits beaming behind Jack in the front row of the public gallery. Around him sit half a dozen identically dressed goslings who could be mannequins or lawyers, or both.

Firmly back in his comfort zone, Jack ignores me. He reclines in his chair and Reilly leans forward across the bar holding muttered conversations about God knows what.

***

In their rush to pin something on Jack the cops have screwed up in the most fundamental way.

The girl won’t talk. Though little more than a child she’s already an experienced professional.

The evidence isn’t there. The swab tests were negative.

In any case none of this matters.

The cops have had a long-time hard-on for Jack. They’ve tried to get him on any of a dozen charges. He’s too careful and his lawyers are too good. The same team of cops has shadowed him for so long Jack writes their salaries off against his taxes.

Jack plays with their heads. That’s what’s caused this mess. He’s pushed the guys who follow him 24/7 too far. A couple of his goons delivered a laxative-laden lunch to their surveillance van. After the cops cleaned up they swore to get Jack any way they could. They have literally, and for a second time, dropped themselves in the doodoo.

Knowing that Jack likes his girls young and, at the insistence of his lawyers, legal, the cops pressured the escort agency into supplying a minor. They’d followed as Rudy, as he often did, drove Jack to an apartment Jack owns downtown.

The cops gave Jack what they assumed to be enough time to make the beast with two backs then stormed past Rudy into the room.

Jack spent the hour or so after entering the apartment waiting for the Viagra to kick in and making some calls. Sure, when the cops burst in Jack and the young lady were naked but they hadn’t done anything. More coitus impedo than coitus interruptus.

The cops have persisted with this farce in a feeble effort to embarrass Jack socially. They had no warrant and no probable cause for entering the apartment. If there had been evidence of coitus they could never have used it. Fruit of the poison tree and all that.

I know it.

They know it.

And Jack, who is back to his typical arrogant self, knows it.

Ironically, their attempt to embarrass Jack is backfiring. In Jack’s world being caught partying with a young woman is cool. It’s proof he still has it. His current wife is an ex-escort girl and won’t complain since the latest one could easily become her replacement.

In a few years.

When she’s old enough.

***

I’ve forgotten more law than I know. I don’t use it. I don’t need to. I operate in the legal gutter where knowledge of the law is less important than an ability to tell a good story, put a witness at ease and charm a juror or twelve. Oh, and a willingness to let a judge win a few dollars at a poker game.

Though this defense is as straightforward as they come I’ve prepared more carefully for it than I have for any previous case. I’ve spent the last two nights poring over law books I’d last read while popping my acne.

Nothing is too much for me, the conscientious lawyer.

Justice must be served.

***

I’ve come to believe that the unit of measurement of proof in a legal case is the ‘jot’.

At the judge’s signal, I rise to speak. I drip derision like a faulty faucet “Your honor, this case should never have been allowed to get this far.”

The prosecutor’s mouth falls open as he reluctantly levitates from his seat to defend the fine reputation of the police department. I flap an outstretched palm that says “don’t bother”.

Deploying a harsh staccato sure to annoy any other judge I add “There is simply no evidence that my client…” I almost gag but press on “…engaged in an illegal act with anyone, let alone a minor, on the day in question.”

Beside me, Jack beams. This is why he’s hired me, the sewer rat. This is my sordid realm. The highbrow Reilly and Jack’s other corporate lawyers with their expensive suits and real gold pens would never talk like this in court. That’s their purpose. To never be here.

Not only will I get him off, I will be Jack’s proxy. I will badmouth the cops in court the way he would love to but can’t because he had the good sense not to go to law school.

Jack is right and he is wrong.

I continue “Though they have never adduced a jot of supporting proof, the police have long held the view that my client, Jack Bugley, is a criminal. For many years they have tried to entrap him. This charge is merely their latest feeble attempt.”

The judge interrupts to tell me to get on with it.

I get on with it “I ask the court for three things. Firstly, to dismiss this charge since the police entered my client’s apartment without a warrant.”

The judge has a lunch date. I know. It’s with me. He eagerly assents “So ordered. Charge dismissed.”

I cringe as Jack pumps the air in victory.

With gentle impatience the judge prompts “Well, counselor, what’s the second thing?”

To Jack’s supreme satisfaction I vibe vicarious victimhood “Secondly, I insist that the court order the police to cease their intimidatory surveillance.”

I can insist all I want. I know this is outside the judge’s remit but I’m determined that the cops’ hounding of Jack will cease, and soon.

The judge shoots me a look of fatherly annoyance and says “Counselor, you know that has nothing to do with this court. What’s the third thing?”

My legal pad sits in front of me on the otherwise bare table. I pick it up. I ask for permission to approach the bench. When it is granted I stride forward. Since the case is over the prosecutor does not match me.

I place the pad in which I have inserted Jack’s faxed letter in front of the judge. I slide the letter to one side. I retake my original spot. I carefully follow the judge’s eyes. He is, I know from my many past dealings with him, a fast reader. When I see his eyebrows head north I know he has seen my fee. The poker antes will go up.

I silently implore him to move his eyes to the right, to my legal pad. He does so. For a few tense moments I watch his eyes furiously absorb what I have written there in well-formed capital letters. It takes him a moment to decipher the childish scrawl at the bottom of the page.

This judge and I are not just frequent sparring partners, we are close friends. We often play poker together. His poker face has a fatal flaw that makes me feel like a fraud when I pretend not to notice it. When he has a strong hand he gets excited and invariably strokes the bridge of his nose. It is his tell.

Now, when I see his finger caress his nose, I know it is time.  I say “As you can see, the letter is addressed to me from my client.”

A buzz bees through the court.

I push on “In it he states that he is reneging on our agreement regarding my fee.”

Reilly jumps to his feet and says “Objection! Mr. Bugley is protected by attorney-client privilege.” Since he is not listed as counsel in this case the judge ignores him but he looks at me and, as if we have rehearsed, which we have not, gives me my cue “Mr. Reilly has a point. You are bound by attorney-client privilege.”

This is what I have researched in those long forgotten law books. Thinking of Uncle Sal’s lasagna, I say “Attorney/client privilege may be waived when a lawyer’s interests are threatened by his client’s actions. I have an interest in eating well. Since my client seeks to unilaterally reduce the agreed fee, he and I are in dispute and privilege no longer applies.”

I know this is one of a few ways that privilege can be waived but I have my reasons for choosing it.

I ignore the bristling Jack and Reilly’s hissed threats of disbarment. I am on something I am not use to - solid legal ground. I wait for the judge to play his part. He is, I know, a very bright guy. He could apply to sit in another court. He could dazzle the Court TV cameras with those excessively whitened teeth of his. He could sit in judgment of Wall Street’s economic war criminals.

But he does not.

As well as sharing a fondness for poker and a belief that court should sometimes be fun, we share some other things.

Like me, he has a conscience.

Like me, he believes, genuinely and passionately, in the importance of a fair and just legal system for all.

Like me, he understands that poverty and its attendant horrors are a life sentence not a lifestyle choice.

Like me, he despises the abuses of the wealthy and the powerful.

Like me, he would not fit in anywhere other than in this sewer we joyfully inhabit.

Finally, he stifles a grin and says “I agree counselor.” He looks at Jack but addresses another person “Bailiff, take the defendant into custody.”

The full courtroom is stunned into an empty silence. Then, pandemonium breaks out. The judge allows it run free for several moments before rapping his gavel once but loudly. He raises his voice and says “I am issuing an arrest warrant for Jack Bugley on a charge of conspiracy to murder…” though he is already very familiar with it, he glances at my legal pad as if needing to confirm the victim’s name “…Howell Sutton. Take him down now.”

Demonstrating an impressive lung capacity doubtless developed on Aspen’s slopes, a seething Reilly is on his feet loudly lecturing the judge that he can only issue an arrest warrant on foot of a signed and sworn affidavit showing probable cause that a crime has been committed.

The judge waits while a bewildered Jack is handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom to the holding cells downstairs. He carefully extracts the page from my legal pad. He stands and holds the page triumphantly aloft and responds to Reilly with wicked playfulness “You mean, a sworn and signed affidavit like this one?”

He sweeps out of the room to issue an arrest warrant for Rudy.

I’m less a sweeper, more a strider. I retrieve my legal pad and Jack’s letter and stride through the confusion and out of the room. In the hallway I call my sister/bookkeeper. I break her heart and make her day. I tell her to transfer Jack’s money, every last cent, from my account to Howell Sutton’s wife’s account. She already has the details.

I hang up.

***

I loved Howell Sutton. Until now he was the unavenged victim of society’s tolerance of greed.

Howell was everything that Jack is not. He was honest and hard working, loyal and loving.

He left a heartbroken widow and two beautiful children. He wasn’t rich but that wasn’t his fault. He ran a gas station coveted for its location until a voracious real-estate tycoon sent a knife-wielding nutcase to take it and everything else away from him.

To Jack, Howell was insignificant, a nobody. He had him killed, extorted his property then forgot everything about him. Even his name.

I intercept Reilly as he exits the courtroom at the head of his cohort of clones. I hold his furious glare as I tell him “Go ahead, try and have me disbarred. Make sure you get my name right.”

I spell it out for him “That’s B-e-n S-u-t-t-o-n, Attorney-at-law.”

As I push through the crowd and go to meet my friend the judge I wipe away a tear and a phrase from law school plays in my mind “Grief is the price we pay for love. Justice is its meager balm.”

God bless you my brother. I hope that, at last, you can rest in peace.

Opening chapters from "The Ishii Legacy"

Chapter 1

Captain Zhao and a grim-faced Japanese man of about forty hovered in the doorway of Lin’s office.

Zhao loudly cleared his throat and said “Inspector Lin, I’d like to introduce you to Captain Chikuma Ota of the Tokyo police department.”

Lin raised his head slightly and peered over the laptop PC.

Without wishing to be rude to the captain’s new friend an unsmiling and disinterested Lin said a brief “Hello”, lowered his head and resumed reading Guo’s case notes.

To Lin’s dismay, instead of leaving Zhao stepped fully into Lin’s small office. He said in a firm voice intended to get Lin’s full attention “Captain Ota has recently arrived in Guangzhou. We have a request from the highest levels to provide him with every assistance.”

Groaning inwardly Lin raised his head again. His eyes found Zhao’s. He decoded Zhao’s meaning in them “This guy has been foisted onto me and I am foisting him onto you.”

Lin’s raised left eyebrow asked the unvoiced question “Why me?”

Zhao’s curled lip answered it “Because you speak Japanese.”

Lin’s compressed mouth silently defied “So what, I’m in the middle of an important case. I’m preparing for trial. Why would I be interested in babysitting some Japanese cop?”

Zhao’s hard glare said “Because I’m your boss and I’m telling you to.”

Lin’s defeated look said “Ok. You have a point.”

Then his right eyebrow asked a question “What’s this all about?”

Having won the silent battle of wills Zhao was now anxious to leave the field before Lin found a way to win the war. He said with barely contained relief “Captain Ota will explain why he is here.”

Zhao checked his watch, something Lin knew was an affectation. The man knew what time it was to the millisecond without needing to look at any timepiece.

Zhao addressed himself to Ota “Captain, I’ve got to go. I’ll leave you in Inspector Lin’s most capable hands.” He skipped gleefully out of the room and Lin reluctantly waved a hand for Ota to take the only other chair in the room.

In Japanese Lin asked Ota “Do you speak Chinese?” Ota shook his head and replied in poorly accented Putonghua “Zhi yi dian dian.” Only a little.

Lin’s Japanese was rusty. He did not use it much. He used it now to explain this to the Japanese police officer. Ota nodded and said that that was fine; he did not intend to be a drag on Lin’s precious time.

Ota declined Lin’s half-hearted offer of tea but accepted the proffered chair. Lin closed the document he had been reading, pushed down the screen of his new department-issued laptop and looked neutrally and levelly at Ota.

In Tokyo-Japanese Ota said slowly “I am here looking for a Japanese citizen, Riku Yamada. He is missing. He left Japan two days ago. He flew here to Guangzhou from Tokyo via Shanghai.”

Lin fought to keep his lack of interest from showing. He investigated serious crimes - murders and racketeering mostly. Missing person cases were beneath him. His new captain, Zhao, had only involved him because his personnel file said he spoke Japanese. Lin knew that the thorough Zhao had read his file because he had never told, would never have told, his new boss that he spoke the language.

It was true. He did speak Japanese. Reluctantly more than fluently.

Lin held out a hand. Ota was confused for a moment then reached into his briefcase and extracted a sheet of paper. It was in Japanese and contained details on the man Ota was looking for.

Lin told Ota to wait. He left his office and read the document as he walked down the hall to the squad room. He saw his sergeant, Guo, standing at the water dispenser talking to another detective. Guo saw Lin approaching and immediately hurried back to his desk rudely leaving the other man’s sentence hanging in mid-air. Normally, Chinese people did not do rude.

Not for nothing did the other detectives call Guo Lin’s lapdog. Behind Guo’s back.

Lin and Guo both arrived at Guo’s desk at the same moment. Lin told Guo he needed him to locate a Japanese visitor. Guo sat down at his desk and pulled his PC’s keyboard toward him. From the sheet of paper Lin read out the missing man’s name and passport number. Guo clicked on a program icon and, when the program’s search form appeared, typed in the man’s passport number. He got a hit straightaway.

“He’s checked into the Garden Hotel. He’s been there since yesterday.”

Lin smiled with relief and thanked Guo. Pleased at how easy it had been to track down the supposedly missing man he turned to leave but stopped. He turned back toward Guo and bluntly told him that he had omitted some important details from his case notes. He told him to complete his notes before leaving for the evening. Finally he told Guo he was going to go to the Garden Hotel and then head home. He would see him in the morning.

Guo nodded and said with a half smile “Unless someone dies suddenly of course.”

Guo chuckled. Lin did not. This said it all about both men.

Lin returned to his office. He told Ota he had located the man he was looking for and that they could go and talk to him now. Ota said that would not be necessary. He explained said he did not want to put Lin out and would talk to Yamada on his own.

Lin looked carefully at Ota. The Japanese man was a little shorter than him, well built, fit and trim and, cocky. No, Lin checked himself, not cocky. More than cocky. The man’s demeanour was superior, almost imperial. He was obviously used to getting his own way.

That was Ok with Lin.

Lin was used to getting his own way too.

Lin did not argue the point. He did not need to. This was Lin’s city. Ota had no rights here.

He told Ota they were leaving now, together.

Chapter 2

Lin parked in the car park at the rear of the Garden Hotel in downtown Guangzhou. As he cut the engine he noticed one of the detectives from his unit sitting hunched low in the front seat of an unmarked police car two rows away. A Hong Kong crime-lord was in town, Lin surmised.

Lin got out of his car, waited for Ota to do likewise, locked the car and strode toward his fellow detective’s vehicle. The man was nodding off. As Lin walked alongside he slapped a palm against the driver’s door window. The detective jerked upright in his seat. He laughed when he recognized who had hit his car then felt embarrassed that his surveillance had been made so easily. He cursed Lin quietly.

Lin marched confidently into the hotel through a rear door with Ota alongside rushing to keep up. Lin walked through the shopping arcade and into the hotel’s enormous gorgeously decorated lobby.

He stopped suddenly as a bitter memory engulfed him.

He had not been here for several months. That last time had been one of the saddest and most difficult occasions of his life. Ota noticed. Lin noticed Ota noticing and shook himself. As if Ota was somehow to blame for how Lin felt he brusquely told the Japanese man to stay where he was.

Lin approached a receptionist at the front desk, showed her his ID and asked her to page the head of hotel security. The man arrived within a few minutes. During his wait Lin carefully studied Ota who stood twenty metres away apparently engrossed in the details of the amazing frieze on the foyer’s wall behind the reception desks. The man projected an air of outward calm but Lin saw through it. He saw subtle tell-tale signs that Ota was agitated and anxious. Lin wondered again why Ota would describe a man who had left Tokyo only two days previously as missing. Two days was a very short period in which to declare a person officially missing though long enough for Ota to catch a flight and follow his man, Yamada, here.

Lin took in every detail about Ota. The Japanese policeman’s face displayed an intelligent awareness that matched his regal bearing. The twist to his lower lip also revealed that he would have been much happier to have come here alone.

Lin flashed his badge and told the security man that he and his colleague - he chinned toward where Ota was standing - were anxious to talk to one of the hotel’s guests. Lin told him that the guest might not share this anxiousness and that a key card for his room might help persuade him. Lin gave the chief Yamada’s name. The security chief asked the receptionist for Yamada’s room number and got her to make a duplicate electronic key card.

Ota joined them as they made their way to the lift.

Yamada’s room number was 1017. They reached it and Lin knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, more loudly. Ota stepped near to Lin and hissed that this was not a problem, he would wait for Yamada to return, alone. Lin smiled a mirthless smile and told Ota that he could not display any less courtesy to Ota in his city than he knew Ota would extend to Lin if Lin was visiting Tokyo in search of a missing Chinese citizen.

Lin thumped on the door once more. When Ota again tried to convince Lin to leave, Lin lost his cool. He told Ota that he was not interested in a missing person case. He was, first and foremost, a homicide cop. But, since, as a Tokyo cop, Ota had no, he repeated, no, rights in China, Lin had a duty to help him.

He did not add that, besides, Captain Zhao had told him to.

He took the key card from the security chief and opened the lock. Lin pushed the door open and bright late afternoon sunlight flooded out of the room, temporarily blinding them. Lin entered with Ota following. The security chief remained outside.

The bed was made but the crumpled duvet was evidence that it had recently been lain on. To the right of the bed a mirrored wardrobe door was half open and Lin could see clothes hanging inside. Yamada might be out but he would be back. Lin looked around the rest of the room. Nothing seemed amiss. Then, on an instinct, Lin stepped around to the side of the bed and his breath caught.

Yamada lay face up on the floor space between the bed and the wardrobe. The corpse sported two gaping wounds clearly visible at the neck and chest. They were recent. The once pure-white Garden Hotel bathrobe was a sodden red rug trapped underneath the body. The robe’s open front revealed the massive chest wound. The neck wound was gratuitous overkill. His violent death had carved a last look of excruciating pain onto Yamada’s face.

Lin sighed.

Ota came up from behind, looked around Lin and saw the body lying on the floor. He emitted a strangled cry and sat down on the end of the bed.

Lin said brutally “Get off that. This is a crime scene. Get out of the room.”

Ota silently obeyed. Lin thumbed his cell phone open and called it in. He snapped the phone shut irritably. His plans for this evening were as dead as the man on the floor in front of him.

Lin had told Ota he was not interested in missing people.

Dead people were a different matter.

Lin was very interested in dead people.

Chapter 3

Lin’s patience was wearing thin. Ota was lying but he was not very good at it.

Lin had sequestered the guest room next to Yamada’s and was standing over Ota, questioning him. Little of what Ota said made sense.

“Captain Ota” a frustrated Lin said in rapidly returning Japanese “I need answers, honest answers. Let’s go through this one more time. Who was Yamada?”

Ota’s tone was irritated defiance “I’ve already told you. He was a recently retired accountant with Toyota. He worked in their finance department in Tokyo.”

Lin made a note in his notebook. He believed this, but little else the Japanese man said.

“Why was he here in Guangzhou?”

“I don’t know.”

Lin was brutally direct “I don’t believe you. Why would you come to Guangzhou looking for this man, if you did not also know why he had come here?”

Ota lowered his head, shook it and did not answer.

“Why did you describe him as missing when he left Tokyo only two days ago?”

Now, Ota made a mistake. He changed his story.

Lin knew this was because the man had had some time to think and he thought that this second version was more believable than the first one.

It might have been. If it had been the first one.

Ota said “Mr. Yamada’s wife is related, distantly, to Tokyo’s commissioner of police.”

He made another mistake. He embellished this second story.

“I didn’t tell you earlier because I didn’t want you to think that our police force is open to…civilian influence.”

Lin checked a laugh. He could conceive of nothing less likely than the imperious Ota’s concern at what a Chinese cop he had just met thought about the ethical standards of Tokyo’s far away police force. He said nothing and Ota dug the hole deeper  “She convinced him that her husband had had a mental breakdown and that someone needed to find him immediately and bring him home before he hurt himself. The commissioner ordered me to come here and take Yamada back to Tokyo.”

Lin’s anger rose. It was a terrible effort at a lie. If his wife had had concerns about Yamada’s safety she had been proved correct but the danger had not been from within. The body next door had not been self-harmed. Yamada had been brutally murdered. And why would a man allegedly suffering a mental breakdown choose to leave his home and fly thousands of miles to a strange city, Lin’s city? Why would he, anyone, do such a thing?

His voice dripping with sarcasm, Lin said “So, the Tokyo commissioner of police was so concerned about a distant relation’s non-specific fear for her husband’s mental well-being that he sent no less a person than a captain of detectives to China to personally track Yamada down.”

Ota’s only response was to sit silently immobile.

Lin shot out questions but gave Ota no chance to answer any of them. He did not need any answers. He was letting Ota know that he did not believe a single word of Ota’s feeble tale.

“Why did you rush here?

Did your commissioner read Yamada’s mind?

Had he somehow known that Yamada had only a couple of days to live?

Let’s see, what is it about our wonderful city that compelled Yamada to choose Guangzhou as the venue for the last act of his life?

Why here?

What are GZ’s specific attractions for the would-be suicide?

Let’s see, em…he could climb the Citic tower and jump off or…” Lin leaned over the Japanese man, Ota looked away, Lin’s voice dripped vitriol “…stab himself in the chest and throat before carefully hiding the knife afterwards.”

Ota pushed his chest out and looked squarely up at Lin “Be scornful if you must Inspector. I am telling you the truth.” Lin held the other man’s stare until Ota once more dropped his eyes to the floor.

Lin blew out his cheeks in exasperation. He went to the door, opened it, took a couple of paces into the corridor and bellowed loudly for Guo. Guo arrived from next door at a run and followed Lin into the room. They walked over to where Captain Ota sat with his head still lowered to the floor. Lin held out a hand, he growled at Ota “Give me your passport.”

Ota’s head snapped up, his mouth fell open and he stammered “My…my…passport.” He quickly regained control and demanded “What do you want it for?”

In no mood for further games Lin replied harshly “Give me your passport now or I will have Sergeant Guo take it from you forcibly. Do not underestimate my sergeant. His muscles only look like fat.”

Behind Lin, Guo’s face displayed uncertainty. Had Lin’s remark been a compliment about his physique or not?

Lin had said it.

Guo’s face fell.

Not.

Glowering at Lin Ota angrily and reluctantly retrieved his passport from a jacket pocket. Lin whipped it out of his hand. He signalled Guo over to the door. In rapid Putonghua he told him “We can’t play too rough with this guy. He’s a senior cop from Tokyo. I will tell him we are holding his passport to prevent him from leaving the country. I will say that we are treating him as an accessory to murder. Of course we can’t do that but he’s not telling me everything he knows and I need to shake him up a bit. Here, take this from me. Act surprised. Make sure he sees how shocked you are and then leave.”

A confused Guo did as he was told best he could.

In the corridor outside the room Guo shrugged and put the passport in a jacket pocket. Lin was going soft. Of course Lin could hold Ota as an accessory if he thought the man was holding back information about Yamada’s murder.

This was China. Lin was a cop. Lin could do whatever he wanted to.

Guo gave up wondering what Lin was up to and went back into room 1017 to supervise the technician’s processing of the scene.

In room 1016 Lin took a seat in front of Ota. In Japanese Lin told Ota what he had told Guo he would say. The man was a poor actor. Ota pretended to be outraged but his body language revealed his lack of concern. He had understood perfectly everything Lin had said to Guo.

Lin’s little charade with Guo had served its purpose. When they had first met Ota had said he understood Chinese yi dian dian - just a little. Ota was a liar. He lied about everything.

Lin tore a page from his notebook and wrote a short note on it. He took out a name card from his wallet, wrapped it in the note and handed them to Ota. Ota asked what they were for. Lin told him that Chinese law required foreigners to carry their passports with them at all times. If a cop or an immigration official asked to see Ota’s passport, he was to show them Lin’s note and business card instead.

Ota thanked him for his thoughtfulness but said he would rather have his passport back.

Lin smiled a small smile. Ota was not just a liar, he underestimated people. Until he started telling the truth Lin would indeed treat Ota as an accessory to Yamada’s murder.

Lin had no intention of giving Ota his passport back.

Not even if one of the Tokyo police commissioner’s relations begged him to.

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A Short Story extract from Queuing For Sex

A short story in homage to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and their creations, Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade.


Not a pastiche, definitely not a pastiche.


A piece of Dublin Noir

Homage

I am flat broke, hungry, friendless and about as happy as I’ve ever felt.

As I pass a pack of dogs cower before slinking up alleys to restore their pride tormenting whiskey-reeking bundles of rags that once were men, an old woman blesses herself before placing a cadaverous hand protectively across her mottled throat and a kid snivels in fear before burying his snot-nose into the soft furred hem of his mother’s winter coat.

I may be smiling.

I snaffle my reflection in the moral pub’s window and validate my hypothesis. My hairless head is a transparent moon inhabited by reflected patrons. Space pioneers drink Guinness!

I filter them out and search my face unencumbered. I see the damage inflicted. My eyes are yellowed specks at the bottom of mine shafts deep and dark as an old fairy-tale. My red-ribboned cheeks are Asian river deltas as seen from space. I trace my finger along the fresh scar that is the main trunk. It’s fitting right in, making friendly with its new neighbours. My lips are freshly swollen and curl up on one side, Elvis-like and unnatural. I’ll heal, Elvis only hurt. Courtesy of a surgical fist, my nose signals a permanent left.

I’ve looked better.

Maybe.

The glass echoes a movement to my right. A small guy, twenty-something, with a face that’s proof God works early Mondays, is mincing his way toward me. I step from the doorway and into his life. If he resents the intrusion he has the manners not to show it, much.

I peddle the truth. I tell him I’m hungry and dependent on the kindness of strangers happening by - small males preferred - to help me out.

He swallows something which might be his tongue and, as smart as he is ugly, reaches for his wallet and not for his pocket where worthless coins anxiously await new homes in bums’ greasy palms.

The guy’s more talented than Gerry Ford. He does two things at once, offers me a ten and a hopeful look.

I smile and he shrugs for trying. Hands twinkle like a street magician’s and the ten is a fifty.

I accept.

I palm the note and solemnly release him back into society.

Minutes later I step into Al’s steakhouse. There is not and never has been an Al. Starting out the cheapskate owner hired a sign-writer who charged by the letter. As with the sign, so with the food. I take a seat some bug-eyed guy who’s late for an appointment donates me, push his half-eaten meal to one side and sit and wait for service that is as slow in coming as a high-strung lady I’d banged years back. Quieter too.

Other than the décor, the staff and the menu the place hasn’t changed a bit. It feels like home. It’s quiet. The patrons do little other than sneak looks my way, as if trying to place me. I’m used to it. I ignore them.

As I wait, I think.

Of late I’ve let things slip. I know hustling strangers isn’t the smart way to seed a pension. I know I’ve got to get back into the game. I tell myself I need a case and a client, quick. I understand also that I need the action as much as the dough.

I think about me.

Right back to the beginning.

I discovered Chandler and Hammett my last year in school. I quit, devoted my life to them and the detectives they wrote about, Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. I wanted to be, I have become, them, both of them. Sam Marlowe. My name chose itself since Marlowe hadn’t liked his nancy-boy first name and I don’t like jazz. I model everything in my life on these, my heroes, which means among other things that my eel juice of choice is Bourbon, straight up. I only drink on special occasions. Whenever I have a bottle.

I’ve stripped back everything until my life is as sparse as the writers’ prose. I’ve studied their idioms and copied their accents the way I imagined them to be. I know their methods better than the detectives themselves. I have the advantage. They’d had to play it as it came, I have their body of work to study, imbibe, inhale and, if it were possible, inject. I know “The Books” well enough to read them with my fingerprints.

I am slipping.

I don’t have any of The Books with me. Not one.

Strange!

I tolerate the movie treatments but spurn their portrayals in favour of The Books the way a true believer trusts the bible and not some corrupted priest’s flawed interpretation. My life is homage to the two greatest detectives who ever lived. They did live. I know for a fact that Hammett and Chandler were their biographers and not their creators. How do I know? In the same way that true believers know Elvis is still alive - through unbending unbreakable faith. It’s the only rational explanation. Marlowe and Spade are too perfect and too real to only have lived in the imaginations of two dypsos.

I apologise.

I should not disrespect Hammett and Chandler like that.

Even if that is what they were.

I know that to be them I need to think and act like them. I don’t and can’t look like them. I know that, in any case, Chandler and Hammett had described them inaccurately to protect their true identities. It is the smart play, the deal I’d go for, if ever I chose a sidekick to be my Watson or my Boswell.

I don’t need to recreate. I don’t need to move to LA or back in time. I live in a Dublin that’s the spiritual heir to L.A. at the time of writing.

Dublin’s a conflation of Double Sin. Spade and Marlowe would have fitted right in.

Like thirties LA it too expands at the speed of money – fast. The city’s awash with easy cash endlessly emerging from the vacuous consciences of two-bit politicos. It is louche and loathsome. Its manners, like its endless new buildings, are high-risible. It is a dark hole sucking in goodness and dreams. It is a city so defiantly proud of its image that its streets are ornately paved with credit card slips entombed in vomit like insects in amber.

Its crime lords sport Armani while killing hope and, sometimes, each other. Its politicians and their police protectors here and now are as corrupt and allergic to truth as they were there and then. They are untouchable, hiding behind the inarguable defence of their own incompetence and societal greed. You get what you bribe for.

Marlowe’s Hollywood had real actors. In Dublin everyone’s acting a part someone else has written for them. They’re wannabes and wanna-anythings. Everyone’s living ‘The Life’ swapping their happi-ness for hype-ness with the smoothness of a crack mother selling her baby for a score. They sell their souls, build their stake and trade their smiles and their shamrocks for Cecil, Sin and Sex.  

Ten years of depravity have undone a thousand years of piety. Jesus is not risen here. The Pope’s visa’s been revoked. The law is the engine of change, money its fuel. Gambling, erotica and divorce are no longer denied. They are compulsory.

Dublin is the Capital of consumerism, corruption, crack, craziness and crime.

I love it.

My meal arrives. Steak rare, greens and a baked potato, coffee black.

The girl who serves it has confused craic and crack for the same lifestyle choice, her smile as heartfelt and genuine as a paedophilic priest’s vocation. She’s learned to her cost that the Irish are truly the friendliest of people, our friendly pushers the friendliest of all. She is thin, tall, thirtyish, Eastern European and so pale you can tell she’s snorted away her place in the sun. Her hair is long, brown and lank and as filthy as the frayed apron that adorns her threadbare body. Beneath the apron she wears an old and tattered pink woollen top and drab navy skirt that are the latest in back-alley-skip prêt-a-porter. She is the epitome of heroin chic. She is nervous, fidgety and craves her fix.

From her delicate hands my saucered cup crash lands onto the table like a poorly piloted UFO that’s shed half its load en-route. Head to the floor she follows the spilt coffee’s guiding trail back to the kitchen as if that were its purpose.

I’m not sure why but I’ve not been here for a while.

It is as good and as bad as I remember.

I finish my meal. The ghost girl brings the check. Either I haven’t paid much attention to prices lately or the sign needs repainting. I leave the fifty on the table. It’s not that she’s earned it or that I’m a big tipper, the suit I’m wearing is an avant-garde two-piece absent pockets. The girl misreads the gesture and flicks her eyes toward the storeroom out back as if she’s never earned this much money upright. I shake my head. It’s all yours babe. Her eyes plead insistent. She’s so desperate for a sugar daddy she’s considering me! A dame, especially this one, would cramp my style. I crack a smile and break her heart.

I stand and filch a look at my neighbour’s newspaper. Like the city, the papers have regressed to the style extant L.A. in the thirties.

The headline screams like a tortured blonde in a darkened mansion. “Madman Escapes. Police Issue Warning”. 

On instinct I grab the paper. The man seems to be choking on something he’s eaten. He waves his hands wildly and I take this as permission to tuck the paper under my arm. I walk out of Al’s.

I head for a small park nearby - a city centre oasis of green beloved of worthless old people with no say - that is some shyster developer’s bastard offspring’s trust fund. I sit on a bench and read. The headline is truly a throwback. There are no longer any madmen. They were all wiped out in the great political correctness plague that swept through in the eighties and now there are only psychotics, schizophrenics and bipolar manic depressives.

The article is less hysterical than the headline. The madman escaped custody this morning en-route to court to answer to a murder rap. Seems in the nuthouse he’d killed a warder/nurse who’d been using him for punch-bag practice. I touch my recent scar sympathetic. The mad bastard killed his two escorts with his bare hands, battering them to death with his fists and horribly disfiguring them in the process.

I bin the paper excited. I’ve taken cases like this. When I’d run low on money and clients I’d search for a case, something that offered an angle. I’d investigate on my own slate and tap whoever I could later. It’s a hard way to make an easy living but I am only doing my job, just following my vocation, just being Sam Marlowe.

Sam Spade and particularly Marlowe had integrity. I struggle every day to be worthy of their name. They weren’t just tough men who took a beating on one page and wisecracked through their pain on the next. They turned their pain to their advantage; used it as a ladder to scale the moral heights and laugh down at the bad guys. They only hit men, never women. They took their beatings like the ring champions they could have been in another life. They never backed off.

They did what they did not because they were heroes but because they were men. Good men. Honest men. Men who wouldn’t take a nickel unless they had earned it…or were starving.

They were men who drank so much not because they had to but because they understood that it was only by being down in the gutter that you can appreciate being up with the angels.

They did what needed doing in the interests of justice. They would have taken this case. I’d take this case. I’d worry about payment later.

I tune my mind fully into my case. From long experience I know that to catch this guy I’ll have to think like him. The cops are wasting their time and manpower watching everywhere a man could be and issuing pointless warnings to a strung-out self-obsessed uncaring populace.

Hell, the guy could be walking around in full view and no one would notice him!

I’ll take a different approach. Since it is news that he has escaped I reason there will be old reports on how he’d been caught, and for what.

I hit the local library thinking it’s a safe thing to do. I’ve done it before and it’s never hit back. Until today.

I like to read though mostly I stick with the Authors. One time I read Ellroy and ended up in hospital. The way he laid the words down on the page hurt me. His words were nails driven into my skull, from the inside. He’d surprised and impressed as well as terrified me since I knew that he’d had to write with second-hand words normally dulled in the recycling process. I’d pictured him sharpening them one by one before firing them, ratatatatat, onto the page.

I’d checked myself out when the Doc convinced me he wasn’t firing them at me.

More crack whore than Miss Maples, the librarian’s pornographic proof that the world grows ever weirder. The joint is jumping, quietly, and she’s the main event. Around her, erectile men sit awkward and uncomfortable or stand swapping feet trying to pretend they’re not holding a number to a gang bang. The guy at the front wears the widest smile, the guy at the end frowns resigned like he knows his turn will be messy but worth it. I blank her silent offer of a place in the queue.

The librarian likes a challenge even when the prize is me. She pops a button on her shirt and leans forward across the desk determined. I sense the presence of The Books on nearby shelves. She misreads my look of devotion and homes in for the kill. She runs her long curved tongue along slightly-parted blow-job lips. I ignore the gasps behind me and her beautiful exposed breasts, and, for the first time since puberty, a man looks her in the eye. I drop a line and haul my eyes out of their shafts. I stare a stare of humbling rejection and with the merest shake of my massive head let her know I’m shutting her game down. She catches the look in my eye damascene and sits bolt upright. In rapid lust-killing motions she puts on glasses and ties her hair quickly into a bun. She closes the buttons of her blouse mumbling a vow of chastity I know won’t last. Like the waitress in Al’s she’s hooked on her sport.  I’ve just moved her off her pitch for now.

I ask about using a PC. She shoots me a look of pure hate that tells me she thinks I’ll use it to dismantle her porn site and points to a vacant chair. I grunt to let her know that I’ll be back if she regresses.

I walk a gauntlet of hatred and jealous frustration and fold myself into a chair in front of a PC sat along a side wall. In minutes I’ve printed out a dozen articles about the madman’s original crime and, as I leave, I thank the student at the next PC for volunteering to pay the small printing charge I’ve clocked up. Seems the librarian doesn’t give everything away for free.

I go outside and find, to my relief, that the park is still a park and not yet a mall. I retake my bench and read the articles. There isn’t much to them. I like that. Keeping things simple is a key to success in my game. 

The guy had been caught after an extensive manhunt, not unlike the current one. He’d quickly let himself into a house and slowly butchered the occupant. No motive for the killing had been established or imagined. The madman had had no relationship with, had never met or talked to the victim before dispatching him to the great hereafter in small pieces as if he was only worth sending there by regular post and not bulk mail.

I shudder. At times the world can be, as The Books teach and my inner voice often reminds me, a very sick place. I read the details of the perp’s background but there is nothing germane beyond the coincidence that we share the same neighbourhood. I learnt early to ignore such coincidences; all too often they lead to a dead end.

I figure that this has not been a motiveless crime. Something has driven the madman to it. The police and the prosecution have been too quick to close the book and not fully unearth why. I reason that the cause must lie with the victim. I consign the victim’s name to memory and, binning the pages, return to the library.

The crack whore’s vow is holding, just. A tear forms in her eye as one by one her beaus slip away to check out the rumour that’s spreading that the slut in the job centre is back from the clinic. Cured.

My old seat is taken but my student friend celebrates my return by leaving his and hurries joyously out of the building. I sit down on his still warm seat. It’s a sensation I’ve always enjoyed - the vicarious warmth of another person without threat of alimony.

I invest the victim’s name into an internet search engine and receive the usual fixed rate return, ninety-nine percent junk and one percent gold dust. It is the dust that I gag on. I realise I’ve read this guy’s carcinogenic biog in the past but dumped it from memory before it became a malign tumour on my soul. As it had the first time, reading about his heresies makes me feel physically sick. I hurry out of the building dry retching in disgust.

My mouth in rictus with horror I lurch back to my park bench like a cripple test-walking a new pair of legs. As I reach it, a little old lady jumps up in horrified recollection of having left the stove on. I have the bench to myself. I silently thank her and stretch out to think.

                             

After a few minutes of panicked breathing I calm down enough to start to make sense of it all. I do what I always do. I ask myself The Question. What would Marlowe and Spade do?

I sit up and look round. The small park is empty except for the unlikely coalition of a couple of agitated people looking in my direction.

The student’s friendly with a cop.

I stand and leave through the gate opposite. I fume frustrated. I have no classic outs. There is no one to wise crack with, no bored cigarette girl to flirt with, no dead lady faking it in a lake, no little sister’s sister’s twisted motives to unravel.

There is just me.

Me, and Sam and Marlowe.

Me, Sam Marlowe.

I walk directionless, struggling to identify my move. Do I have one?

Spade and Marlowe sought justice, moral justice - not the law’s flawed version, not the equivocations of deceitful statutes or the skewed precedents of corrupted judges - but justice.

Moral justice, the biblical idea that a man must receive his just rewards.

They bypassed officialdom when it lacked the fervour needed to seek real justice or the moral purity required to recognise it. I must let them guide me. They have never failed me yet.

I walk slowly, sparring quietly with my inner voice as it works through the options with me. I, we, need more information.

My head clears and I stop to get my bearings. On instinct I have been walking in the direction of my house. I am about to step onto my street when my inner voice yells a warning. I press myself against the brick wall and sneak a look round the last corner.

Cops!

Outside my house!

I double back and use a nearby alley to get close enough to check them out without revealing myself. Snipers on nearby roofs. Three big lumps in one car. In another, four urbane types, detectives, armed I am sure. The three thick micks have been excused their uniforms for the day to join the manhunt.

This is serious.

I know they are waiting for me and not a neighbour as I have none. Sometimes the evidence is that easy to read.

I clench and unclench my fists in annoyance, surprised how much my knuckles hurt when I do so.

I take deep breaths and ask myself the obvious question. What do the cops want with me?

I go over the facts - what I learned in the library, the cops’ presence here, my personae and profession.

Hammett and Chandler.

Spade and Marlowe.

The original victim.

Of course. They’re here because of my known reverence for The Books and his blaspheming of them. I curse the writer afresh. The dumb cops have mistakenly linked me with him and, through him, to his murderer. I’ll have to lie low for a while, to work things through. Drop the case even. I’ll have to wait until they catch the madman and have him safely under lock and key. Or shoot him. Yeah, he’s killed one of their own, in the van, on the way to the hospital. They’ll shoot him out of hand like the rabid dog they think he is. If I ever start feeling sorry for people I’ll put him on my list. In memoriam.

The madman had gone mad but I understand, sympathise even, with why he’d flipped first time round. The victim had been a writer, a bad one. He’d made his bucks writing profane pastiches of God-like writers’ work. Lawrence Block, James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard, he’d ripped them all off but it was on back of The Books that he had committed his most unforgivable crime.

His last book had been published shortly before he died. It was reading a summary of it on the library PC that made me nauseous. He’d defiled the two greatest authors of the twentieth century - Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler - and the heroic men they wrote about. He’d committed a terrible crime, and crimes exact justice. The madman had given him his.

A summary of his noxious tome showed it to be the work of a mindless literary thug, his book as limp and revolting a desecration as a swastika spray painted across a Jew’s headstone. Set in forties’ L.A. he’d teamed Spade with Marlowe and sent them running up blind alleys they’d never have taken beaten unconscious and stapled to a truck.

His writing was a travesty of The Books. Chandler wrote better notes to his milkman. He no more knew how to write a sentence like them than I knew how to sweet-talk a nun into bed. He’d made them quit smoking. He’d had them utter weak puns in lieu of immortal wisecracks. The sick bastard had imputed homosexuality to Spade. He’d made them drink sherry. Sherry! In the final chapter he’d even married Marlowe off.

I’m thankful I hadn’t read the book. I’m thankful I hadn’t spotted it while browsing in my local bookstore standing in perfidious proximity to The Books. I’m thankful I hadn’t taken it home with me in stupefied disbelief to confirm how blasphemous it was. I’m thankful I hadn’t read it in horror-fuelled fury all the way through to its sacrilegious ending before ripping it to tiny pieces and flicking them one by one into my fire.

I dread to think what effect reading it would have had on my psyche. It’s likely that the madman too had been a devotee of The Books and it is only someone like me who can come close to understanding the awfulness of the writer’s crime and the insane act it had evoked.

If I had read it I too, like the poor madman, could have gone over the edge.

I am relieved.

I know I’ve dodged a bullet.

In the park my mind had wrestled with the central issues. Whose crime was the greater? The writer or the madman? How was justice to be served? I’m sure the writer has received his proper dues. The madman? All he’ll get is the law. What a sick and twisted world we live in.

As for why the madman had broken out. As for what had driven him to beat two poor payroll Joes to death with his fists, who knew?

My inner voice, in that gentle way it has, intercedes a thesis.

The guy’d been locked up in a nuthouse, likely drugged into permanent baleful submissiveness. Strange, evil and sudden things can happen there. Perhaps something had occurred; something that caused a reduction in his meds, like an appointment with a visiting doc that the screws couldn’t bring him to in his normal doped-up state.

Perhaps, in that window of lucidity, things he desired but was long denied assumed unbearable dimensions of importance. Perhaps he reverted to whoever he was before the writer’s book had unhinged him. Perhaps, as he transitioned back to his normal self, he had snapped, overwhelmed by his desire for something normal people take for granted, something as mundane and simple as, say, one of Al’s steaks.

I swish the thesis around in my brain like a sommelier sampling a wine. It looks right, it smells right and it tastes right.

My excitement mounts. I know I am on to something. Something that could break this case wide open. Something that might take the cops forever to figure out since they lack my unique insight into the victim’s crime and their prey’s mind.

I need this win. I need the publicity helping the cops to catch this man will bring. I need to see my name in headlines once more.

The queue of clients which has dried up drastically of late for reasons I cannot remember will be restored. Wan beautiful well-dressed women with anxious backward glances will once more engage me to put their wrongs to rights. Secretive fat men will once more offer me fortunes to find precious objects they have lost but never owned.

I’ve talked myself back into the game. This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. I am compelled to take it.

I step out of the alley in front of the two parked cars with my hands raised in the air to show I am on their side and call out in a strong voice “Don’t shoot. I’m here to help you.”

The passenger window of the detectives’ car had been up. They haven’t heard me. Now it slides electronically down. A gun-filled hand extends through it.

My inner voice, no, a strange one I’ve heard only once before, this morning, for a second and last time issues a command, strident and monosyllabic.

 “Run.”

 Extracted from"Queuing For Sex", available for download in (multiple) E-Book formats on Amazon, Apple's iBookstore and other online outlets.