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I sat in my dark, musty office, smelling the thick air that reeked of stale sweat, booze, and old Marlboro 100’s. I tossed down the latest issue of _Private Dick Monthly_, already dog-eared and folded over to the point of abuse, and only a week and a half old. Damn I needed a client.
I leaned back in my chair and swiveled halfway around to stare disinterestedly out at the street, mostly hidden from view by the dusty Levelors on the window. I reached around and took a pencil from the beer-can-made-pencil-holder on my desk. Aiming, I flipped the #2 end over end toward the far wall. It failed to stick in the corkboard target, and clattered to the floor amidst a small pile of similarly thrown pencils, coming to rest on the Ticonderoga from ten minutes ago. Damn, I needed a client. My boredom was interrupted by a voice at the door.
“Two Diamonds?”
“’Beats a Spade,’ “ I finished without bothering to look around. Then I realized that the voice had been female. I turned in my chair to inspect the goods.
The woman standing in thew doorway gave me a blank stare, confirming my suspicions: definitely not a bridge player. In fact, I thought, probably not much of anything, other than a spender of her husband’s/lover’s/fiancé’s money, judging by the way this dame was dressed. Highly polished black pumps were linked to a tight red dress via a great pair of legs in seamed stockings. Hands encased in dainty black gloves clutched a clutch purse, and long blonde hair cascaded over a small sweater that must have been straining to cover her breasts, each one rivaling the cantaloupe I’d had for breakfast. I forced my eyes above the neckline and was awarded by gorgeous green eyes faking innocence.
Can’t be real, I thought. Too much of a cliché, private detective hired by mortal goddess, but what the hell. I’m not gonna complain. You got a beef, write the author; me, I’ll just sit back, light up, and enjoy.
I sat back and lit up a Marlboro, and tried not to stare too obviously.
“What can I do you for – um, do for you?” Last time I’d asked a dame that question the first way, she’d replied “twenty bucks an hour.”
Legs took up the chair I motioned to and lit up a small cigarette of her own. “I need some protection, Mr. Diamond.”
I managed to hide my smirk, but couldn’t stop my typically smartass response. “There’s a quiet drugstore just around the corner, if you mean condoms.” Sometimes I could just kill my mouth.
If that were possible.
She stared at me coldly, and continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Some Mafioso goons are worried that I’m going to reveal information my husband told me that could get them put away for life twice over.”
The Mafia. Damn. I leaned back in my chair and contemplated the ceiling tiles. No need to count the little black dots; I’d one that the day before. Two hundred fifty-seven dots per tile, four hundred twenty-eight tiles. There hadn’t been much business lately.
“Why aren’t you with your husband?”
She dabbed at her dry eyes with a handkerchief and managed an unconvincing sniffle. “He’s dead. He was waiting for me outside Saks yesterday in the limo, and was ‘accidentally’ killed by stray gunfire from a sudden street gang war.”
“You think it wasn’t an accident?”
“A couple _hundred_ stray gunshots. No other injuries.”
“Oh.”
“If I hadn’t been caught up color-coordinating those Gucci shoes, the necklace, and the three silk blouses that were on sale, I would have been killed too. I’d have had more holes in me than the dress of somebody who can’t afford mothballs,” she trembled.
I blinked. She’d lost be back in the footwear, but I didn’t want to admit it. Outside, a car’s horn sounded shrilly.
“So you see, Mr. Diamond,” she continued, “I need somebody to make sure I don’t get killed.”
She stopped suddenly, as a stray thought finally slammed home. “The sign says, ‘Two Diamonds.’ Where’s your partner?”
My imaginary partner, I thought. It made the business sound better. And gave me that nifty bridge pun. “He’s out on vacation,” I told her.
She nodded, then stopped, puzzled. “Where’s his desk?”
“He likes to take his work with him.”
She relaxed and smiled, reassured. I guess what she lacked in brain cells, she made up for in looks. And money. If that were so for me, I’m a Goddamned unrealized genius.
Back to the business at hand. “Why don’t you go to the cops? They’ll help you out, and you’ll be able to nail the Mob, too.”
She made a pout that would’ve made Marilyn shit on the spot. “I swore to my husband, may he rest in peace, that I wouldn’t go to the authorities.”
“Then why are you here?”
She looked at me as though I were a child. “ Because you’re not a cop –“
“The cops turned me down.”
“—you’re a dick,” she finished.
“That’s _why_ they turned me down. Okay, does the Mob know you’re still alive?”
“Of course they do. That’s why those guys are following me.”
I almost swallowed my cigarette, but managed to spit it out, instead. It slowly spun in a neat arc to land near the dame’s feet. “They’re following you? The Mob’s _following_ you?!”
I rocketed out of the chair, sending it rolling backward as I ran to the office door. It had been closed since she’d come in – about five minutes. Was that enough time? I tried to look through the glass, but couldn’t see a damn thing. Whoever thought up the idea of frosted glass should be shot. Twice.
I didn’t want to risk the handle, so I grimaced and drove my elbow through the glass. It shattered with painfully expensive ease – the glass, that is. I knocked the leftover shards out of the frame and looked through. If I’d still had my cigarette, I’d probably have swallowed it – there was enough plastic explosives outside to level this half of the hemisphere. A timer was chirping away merrily, and the hair trigger attached to the door handle was just waiting to be set off. The timer read twelve seconds. Then it said eleven. I decided not to wait for ten.
“Christ!” I grabbed the woman’s arm as she came over to see what I had been looking at, and propelled her toward the window. “Jump, you idiot!”
She gasped, and managed to look shocked, angry, and insulted all at once. “_What_ did you call me?”
“There’s a bomb! Jump NOW!”
“A bomb? Here? How?” She was looking around frantically to see it. Shit, I was surprised she had the brainpower to form complete sentences. Resorting to desperation, I grabbed her in a bear hug and ran toward the window.
She flailed about and squawked as I dove through the blinds and glass alike, praying that Joey still had the awning up over his liquor store. He did. The awning collapsed and we connected with the sidewalk hard, but it was better than being upstairs.
Much better: the remnants of my window disappeared in an eye-searing blast of bright orange heat, and were replaced by falling debris. I cursed and dove inside Joey’s, still holding the woman, as shards of glass and furniture cascaded onto the street and sidewalk.
Joey, who had been on his way to the door to see what was happening, made an Olympic-class swan dive behind the register.
“Holy shit! What the hell was that?!” he cried in his thick French accent.
I stood up painfully and watched a black sedan race away from the far curb. “That,” I winced, “was the last ten years of my life being destroyed, along with five years of my future to boot.” I turned to the dame, who was still whimpering and curled up in the fetal position, and said, “I’ll take the case, lady.”
She recovered quickly. “You will? Even after that?”
“Especially after that. Nobody does that to me and gets away with it. And besides, how else am I gonna pay for a new office?”
(End of Chapter 1…)
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