Welcome to my new story. This one is a mystery in the tradition of Raymond Chandler. I hope you'll like it. It's shorter than the last efforts, so we'll be sticking to one chapter a week. Drop me a line if you want. I'd be happy to hear from you!
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Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik
1
The Client, Bea Arlott
"Mister Lawrence Edwards." The tall, honey blonde girl said as a question.
I gritted my teeth at the sound of my full first name. I hated that name. "Law Edwards." I growled to correct the girl.
My growl earned me a glare from Walt. He had a good glare despite his round, boyish face. His wide set, pale blue eyes blazed at me like pools of acid while his ripe mouth drew down in a disapproving frown. I'd seen that look enough times to know what it meant. I also knew that he wouldn't act on his glare, not yet anyway. His temper had a long fuse. I knew I could burn it down a bit farther before he spoke and much farther before he acted.
Walt was the tenant of the second-floor apartment in the building that housed my one-man detective agency. It was his fault I was even awake. He'd seen the girl through the plate glass of my tiny, storefront office. She'd been waiting while I slept off a session of binge drinking in my apartment that was behind the partition wall. Walt had come to her rescue. He made sure the girl wasn't in immediate danger and rapped on my apartment door until I woke.
He'd entered my apartment, harangued me into action, then returned to my office to keep the girl company while I cleaned up and dressed. Less than thirty minutes later, I was seated in my swivel chair and dressed in a rumpled suit from the floor. I smoked a stale cigar that I'd gotten from a drawer in my desk. I used the cigar smoke to settle my crawling, knotted stomach and to keep the green taste of bile out of my mouth. It wasn't working.
Walt had remained with the girl out of some Galahad style chivalry, like he needed to protect her from my sneering. Maybe he was right. Even if he was, I didn't appreciate his presence. I didn't like people gawking around when I was trying to conduct business. I supposed it didn't matter. I didn't figure the blonde would be business for long, so I didn't bother to ask Walt to leave. Even if I had, I doubted he would have complied. If he didn't do as I asked, his noncompliance would have led to an argument, and I was in no mood to argue with anyone. I was too hungover for that.
I was glad that the girl didn't seem like the emotional type. I don't have much use for women, and I usually deal with of a crying woman about as well as I would deal with a barking dog. I don't know how to make them stop and I'm very annoyed until they do.
The girl was talking again. I tried to focus my throbbing head on what she was saying. "My name is Bea Arlott. I was told a few things about you. I'd like to ask you about them before I tell you why I'm here. May I?"
I sprawled back in my swivel chair to show my contempt for the girl's question and puffed some smoke into the air. "Sure," I answered, "I haven't played twenty questions in years."
Bea Arlott adjusted herself in the chair. She leaned back and crossed her legs. The skirt of her blue-print, short sleeve, belted dress got pinched between them and flustered her for a second. She freed the trapped material with an angry yank, then re-crossed her legs, and scowled at me like I was a huckster who'd tried to sell her bruised fruit. "I heard you were a good detective. What makes you a good detective?"
I couldn't believe that was the question she'd opened with. I wished Walt would have left me asleep. The nightmare I'd been sleeping through was better than the nightmare I'd woken up into. I answered the question flippantly because that was the only way I knew to answer a question like that. "No inhibitions."
Bea's already-sour expression soured a little more. She shook her hatless head at me. The rapid motion did nothing to disarrange the wave in her long hair. I guessed she'd worked hard to put that wave into her hair and there it was going to stay. I surprised myself when I realized that Bea was a striking woman. Maybe not traditionally attractive with her height and slim femininity, but she was striking. I set that thought aside because the girl seemed to be readying herself to get angry with me.
Walt leapt to Bea's aid. His deep voice cut through the sparring match that Bea and I seemed to be locked in. "LAW!" He scolded me with my own name. "She came here for help, not rudeness." Walt had shaken his head in an unintentional mimic of Bea's action. His shake had disarranged his brown hair out of its brushed-straight-back style. He felt the loose hairs on his smooth forehead and combed them back with his fingers.
I leaned forward through the screaming protest of the unlubricated works of my swivel chair and rested my elbows on the desk. "Look," I said and pointed my cigar, first at Walt, and then at the girl, "this is what I do, what I've always done. I was a beat cop from the time I got out of the army in 1919 until 1927. I was a police detective from 1927 to 1935. In 1935 I left the force and opened this office."
I directed a rhetorical question at the girl to make a point. "Am I any good? That's a matter of opinion. Someone told you I was. You either believe that person or you don't. I'm not interviewing for the job of detective. I already am one. Now, you either need help or you don't, and either I will help you or I won't. Cut the crap and get to the point."
Walt glared at me over my response to the girl's question, but she seemed oddly satisfied. "That's a good answer," she said, "except I heard you were fired from the police because you're a faggot."
Bea's use of the rude word left me at a loss. I gave her a mental `point' because she was right. I was what she said I was, and so was Walt for that matter. That didn't mean I liked the word she'd used. In fact, I hated that word.
If Bea Arlott had been a man, I would have swept the tear-off calendar, the candlestick telephone, and the birdbath-sized Bakelite ashtray from my desk and gone over the top swinging. If she had been an older woman, a typical, hard, South Philadelphia bitch, I might have done the same thing. With Bea, because of her youth and the fact that she'd said the word with no anger behind it, I didn't know what to do. The way she'd said, because you're a faggot,' she might have said, because you're wearing brown.'
Since I didn't know what to do, I stared at the young woman. Walt did the same thing. The girl grew uncomfortable from our combined scrutiny. "Did I say something wrong?" She asked with a concerned glance to both me and Walt. "The man who told me to come here said that's what you were."
I drew on my cigar and blew the smoke out to the side while I considered my response. I decided that Bea probably didn't understand the slur she'd leveled at me. I tried to explain why I'd reacted the way I had. "By definition, I am what you say, but the word you used is like calling a WOP a Guinea."
Bea cocked her head in confusion. Her reaction told me that my explanation had brought her no enlightenment. Walt added his two cents. "Law!" He scolded me. The exasperation that invaded his voice told me that he didn't appreciate the words I'd chosen to illustrate my point.
Walt slid forward in his chair to make eye contact with Bea. He had another stab at explaining what I couldn't. "What Mister Edwards is trying to say, by using one slur for an Italian person to describe another slur for an Italian person, is the word you used is an unpleasant word. It's probably the worst word you could have used."
Bea's smooth face and her fine, strong features colored an even shade of pink as she shrank in her chair. "I'm sorry. I didn't know the word was hateful. That's the word the man used and the word my father used for my brother. I don't know any others."
Bea's explanation soothed my angry feelings toward her. She's not prejudiced, just na•ve.' I realized. I took up the explanation. "Miss Arlott, queer' is the acceptable slang, though recently I've heard people use the word gay' to mean the same thing. I'd even take Nancy' or Mary' if said politely. If you want to use dictionary English, you would say that I am a homosexual.' Terminology aside, why does it matter?"
"My brother, he's the same as you...ho-mo-sex-ual." Bea formed the word slowly like a child sounding it out. "My father disowned Preston, that's his name, Preston Arlott, and now he's missing. He's been writing a letter a week, Preston has, not my father, to tell me how he's managing. He sent them to general delivery so my father wouldn't know. They always came to the post office on Thursday. This passed Thursday, there was no letter. On Friday, there was no letter. This morning, a letter I wrote to him came back marked `unable to forward.' Something is wrong."
I dismissed Bea's worries through a smokey exhale. "A few days doesn't mean he's missing."
She raised a hand with her palm toward me in the universal gesture for `shut up.' "I have already done what I know to do. When my letter came back in the morning mail, I took the train here and called at the rooming house he lives...lived in. They said he moved out last Sunday and left no forwarding address.
"I telephoned the company that employs him. I wanted to go in person, but the security there is too strict to allow visitors. Preston works for Consolidated Hulls and Ship Building at the Navy Yard. They said he hadn't reported for work all last week and didn't call.
"My brother needs the money too badly to abandon a good job and I'm the only family he has left. He wouldn't move without letting me know. I don't understand why he is the way he is, why he would choose that life, but he's still my brother and I love him. I need help. Will you help me?"
I almost stopped to address the error of Bea's `why he would choose that life' comment, but it didn't seem worth it. "Have you talked to the police?" I asked instead.
Bea nodded a single, crisp nod in response to my question. "Yes, I went to the police first. I spoke to a kind old man who said there was very little chance of them finding him. They're too shorthanded because of the war. He said my brother wasn't a priority." Bea paused as she said that, and some little emotion crept into her voice. "I know what he meant when he said it, but it hurt, Mister Edwards. My brother is a priority to me."
The emotion I heard from Bea before she stifled it was enough to tell me she loved her brother and was genuinely worried. I was glad she was worried, that made her a good sister. It did not make her a good client. "Why me?" I asked to stall my decision over taking the case. "Where did you hear about me?"
Bea clutched at the bag in her lap. It was blue to match her dress and was a modest size bag. Bea didn't carry a giant satchel that some women did. "The kind old man in the missing persons department told me about you. He walked me out of the station, and when we were outside, he told me you were my best chance. His name was Marshall and he looked like a statuette of Santa Clause that used to belong to my mother."
I knew the man she meant. Herbert Marshall was the chief of detectives during my tenure on the force. He was too old to still be on the detective's squad, but the war meant they were shorthanded as Bea said. I'd heard they moved Marshall to a desk job and kept him on `for the duration.' It sounded like that desk job was in missing persons. He was a good cop and had nothing to do with my being fired.
Marshall never cared what I was or wasn't. He only cared that I did my job. I was still surprised he recommended me, and the Santa Clause reference was a scream. I'd personally seen that `kind old man' beat a rapist to death with his bare fists, then calmly call the meat wagon like he was ordering lunch. I respected him, but he was no more Santa Clause than I was the Tooth Fairy.
I asked Bea if she could explain why Marshall had recommended me. "Do you know why he said that?" She nodded again, more enthusiastically this time. "He said because you were a fag...uhm...homosexual, you would understand my brother better than someone who wasn't." Bea shook her head at the fact that she'd almost used the word I hated. She corrected herself. "I'm sorry, Mister Marshall used the other word. I'll try to remember."
`He's probably the only one I'd take it from.' I thought. "What else did he say?"
Bea paused long enough to scratch a knuckle on her left hand. "He said something I didn't understand. He said to tell you, if you take the case, he'll misplace Preston's missing person file. What does that mean?"
I could hear Marshall saying it. He would have brought her outside, arms linked very gallantly, turned to face her, and with her small hands in his huge paws, he would have whispered this promise of breaking the law in her favor. Marshall was a sucker for a pretty face. I explained the promise to Bea. "I'm not allowed to work on active police cases. Marshall is offering to take the police file off the active list so I can work with a free hand."
Bea Arlott slid forward, almost out of her chair. "So, you'll do it? You'll find Preston for me?"
I shook my head and studied my cigar. I drew on it again, puffed the smoke out across the desk, and knocked some ash into the full tray. "No, I don't think I will." I said through the smoke. "Actually, I don't think I can. He could be anywhere. With the way the country is shaken up, I could make a career out of finding your brother and still fail. Besides, I already have a case that demands my full attention."
Bea slouched back with obvious disappointment.
Walt came to the rescue again. "The least you could do is hear her out."
It was two against one. I still wasn't willing to argue with Walt, but I was willing to waste a little time. I had half a cigar left and my stomach hadn't settled down enough to eat. It felt like a leg with a charley horse. If Bea's story was the right length, I could finish my smoke and show her the door on my way to the corner diner for breakfast. I rocked back in my chair again and waved permission for Bea to tell her tale.