Under a Killing Moon

UAKM — CHAPTER THREE

Things were hopping at the Post-Nuclear (pronounced Nucular) café. The dinner seemed to be particularly popular with truckers and migrant workers. A lone waitress with orange hair the size of an award-winning state fair pumpkin bustled feverishly about the teeming horde of Brownsville’s finest.

A single laminated page, burned and stained like the toilet tank cover in a bar restroom, sat in front of me. An index card paper-clipped to the menu proclaimed the special of the day to be beef pot pie and waldorf salad, with cherries jubilee for dessert. After brief consideration, I discarded the special as a viable option. It sounded good in theory, but pot pies are a lot like used vehicles and dames — no matter how good they look, it’s what’s under the hood that counts.

I reached for the unopened pack of Lucky Strikes I’d bought approximately ninety seconds after touching down in Brownsville. As I ran through the menu, I packed the fresh set of smokes against the heel of my hand. Seven times — no more, no less.

This was the first step in a complex, yet satisfying ritual known only to those who indulge in the world’s second or third most dangerous habit. Pinching the starter tab, I pulled gently and unsealed the pack with all the care and anticipation of removing a bra.

Next came the stripping of the foil, and finally, the extraction. It was as close as I would ever get to organized religion.

I tapped the cigarette on the tabletop, then moistened three quarters of an inch on the packed end with my tongue. With my left hand, I placed the cigarette between my lips, just left of center. My right hand approached, bearing the fire. My hands cupped around the Zippo as its flame touched the tip of the Lucky Strike. I drew in deeply and slowly and heard the pleasant crackling of toasted tobacco. My eyes closed, and I leaned back, wanting to savor indefinitely this sensation of reuniting with my one true love.

In the midst of the rapture, I felt a distinctly pink presence close by. I opened my eyes and saw that the orange-headed waitress had arrived. My head still resting on the back of the vinyl booth seat, I glanced at her name: LaDonna. LaDonna looked down at me indulgently, her foot tapping at about 6000 RPM and a brown cigarette dangling from her lip like an exhaust pipe. I tossed her a disarming smile and sat up, my attention returning to the menu.

There were so many choices, and LaDonna was like a ticking bomb. If I didn’t order soon, possibly within seconds, she was likely to detonate, which would likely hurl her away from my booth and into a refilling condition-shuttling frenzy. God knew when she’d be back to take my order. I had to think quickly, yet my sense of self-preservation told me I had to be careful. Chicken-fried steak was out. So was the goulash. The meat hash intrigued me, but I passed. Finally, my eyes came across the grilled cheese sandwich. How dangerous could a grilled cheese sandwich be?

“I’ll have the grilled cheese sandwich.”

LaDonna scribbled furiously. “One grilled cheese. White, wheat, light rye, dark rye, pumpernickel, or pita?”

I wasn’t sure how heavy I should go. I still had a long flight home. “White, please.”

“American, Swiss, Muenster, cheddar, Brie, Colby, of longhorn?”

“How about a nice medium cheddar? Something in the four-to six-month range.”

“Coffee?”

“A gallon, please. Make it extra thick.”

LaDonna nodded and returned in the direction of the counter. She was good. In the thirty feet between my booth and the kitchen, she lit two cigarettes, dropped off three bills, told a joke, laughed at two others, all without missing a step. As I watched her work, I noticed with some shock how shapely her legs were. Of course, they were doing miraculous things with nylons these days, but those gams looked authentic. They were certainly her most attractive feature. The area between her hips and shoulders could’ve belonged to a Texas A&M middle linebacker, and the beehive towering above her head made the distance from the nape of her neck to her hair net measure a full third of her total height.

After a brisk, lingo-filled exchange with a dazed-looking short order cook, LaDonna set off on another lap around the diner. She was fun to watch. I finished my first Lucky Strike and was about to help myself to a second when LaDonna swung by and thrust a full cup of coffee at me like a relay baton. Without spilling a drop, she slid the cup onto the table and continued on without breaking stride.

If only the coffee had been as enjoyable and full-bodied as the service. At least it was hot — and I’d had worse. As I blew steam across the top of the chipped mug, I couldn’t help but yearn for an oversized serving of Louie Lamintz’s Armageddon blend. It was a truly magical beverage. I could drink a fifth of bourbon and still do origami, but after three cups of the Brew & Stew house blend I’d catch a buzz. Louie said the secret ingredient was love, but I wasn’t so sure.

A thumping sound and the tinkle of broken glass caught my ear. I looked over toward the counter and saw a heavy-set man face-planted onto the bar. A rail-thin older man behind the counter was scurrying to mop up spilled beer as the patrons reacted with amusement, empathy, and/or disgust. The sight made me think shamefully of my own recent behavior, which would have been just as embarrassing if I’d had the money to drink in public.

As it was, I’d spent most of the previous month locked in my office with a bottle of rot gut and a couple of Edith Piaf Cds. Sure, I knew I was better off without Sylvia — hell, I hadn’t entertained a single Christian thought about her or even remotely wished she’s come back the whole time — but the divorce had been a psychological root canal. The abscessed tooth had been removed at the expense of the entire jaw.

With my naïve and reckless idealism blown to bits all over my office floor, I’d done the only thing a hard-boiled PI could do under the circumstances: I picked up pieces, dropped them into a tumbler, and poured myself a double bourbon. From there, I went through the usual phases: disillusionment, resentment, anger, self-doubt, regret, rationalization, more anger, grief, a little more anger, and finally, black and thirsty angst.

Then, exhausted from my jog around the emotional gamut, I’d rapidly descended into an amnesiac stupor of self-pity and devil-may-care intoxication.

A door in the Post-Nuclear Café slammed shut, rousing me from my pondering, and I noticed LaDonna approaching, a plate of food in one hand and a toxic-looking coffeepot in the other. “Here you go, honey.”

LaDonna slid the plate in front of me and somehow topped off my mug at the exact same instant, without spilling a drop. I looked up into her overdone eyes. “You’re an amazing woman.”

For the first time since I’d seen her, LaDonna paused. Looking me straight in the eye without a hint of a smile, she raised an eyebrow.

“You couldn’t afford me, sugar.” With a wink, she turned and resumed her plate-spinning act. I understood why the place was packed.

When my smoke was finished, I turned my attention to the plate in front of me. The grilled cheese sandwich looked surprisingly appetizing, a light golden brown except for the crispy dark brown edges. I made a conservative estimate that half a stick of butter had been used to grease the griddle. Melting cheddar seeped out from all four sides.

Crunchy crinkle-cut fries formed a hot, salty halo around the sandwich. There was no parsley to discard, no orange slice to remove. This wasn’t cuisine — it was grub. Tasty food with no garnish required. I delicately lifted one half of the still-steaming grilled cheese and took a large bite out of the center. The smoldering cheddar was almost too hot to eat, almost. The mingling flavors of bread, butter, and cheese went to the very root of my soul and spoke to me. They said “Mmmm.”

After I’d finished half the sandwich and a handful of fries, my stomach (fresh off a five-day hunger strike) voted to light the post-prandial smoke and be done with it. My taste buds, despite active campaigning by the other senses, eventually had to concede, and I pushed the plate away. I was full and happy, a sensation I usually reserved for the Brew & Stew. I’d never had Louie’s grilled cheese sandwich, but it was now on my list of things to do.

Over a third cup of coffee, I glanced down at the backpack on the seat beside me.

Hopefully, this was a sign of things to come. My career had never been the stuff of legends. Hell, I’d lost count of how many part-time jobs I’d taken just so I could afford to be a gumshoe. My resume, if I ever had the inclination or funds to have one made up, would read like an unskilled-labor listing board at an unemployment office. I had a better chance of getting invited to speak at a NOW rally than getting my bio in the PI Who’s Who.

Still, it was the only thing I’d ever really wanted to do. Mom had her heart set on my being an optometrist. Of course, that was back when people still needed glasses and contact lenses, before they became ostentatious fashion accessories. My father had me pegged to follow in his footsteps and be a security guard. Maybe that was why I’d become a detective… some sort of subconscious Oedipal thing.

The problem started thirty-two years earlier. The babysitter let me stay up and watch the late, late show. Little did I know how lasting the impact of The Maltese Falcon would be. I didn’t understand the plot, and most of the patter went right over my five-year old head, but there was something about it that captivated me. Oh, I’d gone through the usual childhood phases — dinosaurs, Robin Hood, space travel — but the hard-boiled PI was a shtick I never grew out of. Fedoras, trench coats, cigarettes, and bourbon.

Scheming dames, shady chumps with names like Lefty and Rocko, and sinister characters with pencil-thin mustaches and foreign accents.

Now, here I was. Glimpses of the glamour were few and far between, but everyone has their own delusional fantasy. I selected a Lucky strike from the pack and rolled it gently between my fingers. I had the look. I had the aptitude. I even had the skills. All I really needed was some steady employment. And maybe a dame.

After this cup of coffee, I’d get back on the road. I was looking forward to getting the statuette into the countess’s hands. The retainer she’d given me was almost gone. When she paid me the rest of the finder’s fee, my first stop would be Louie’s place.

He’d been running me a tab for almost three months and hadn’t said a thing about settling up. Plus, it was Louie who’d been at least partially responsible for me getting this case in the first place. I’d been so busy drinking myself into oblivion that I’d let trivial matters slide — my vid-phone bill, for example. From what I could gather, Louie had tried to call me sometime during my month-long Festival of Blurred Vision and found out that my vid-phone had been disconnected. An anonymous payment was made to my account, and like it or not, I was back in business. Louie professed complete ignorance about the matter, but I knew. It was soon afterward that the countess had called.

The case was a godsend. After the Colonel’s visit, I’d decided it was time to crawl out of the gutter. Solitary agonizing and drinking to excess make for good film noir, but there’s no satisfaction in it without an audience. I’d put the bottle away and put myself in the capable caring hands of Mr. Coffee. The transfusion took several days to complete, but when it was over, I was grimly determined and sober, not to mention a little wired.

Despite good intentions, sobering up had its downside. Taking stock of my situation, I’d been stunned to find that my liquid assets amounted to less than three figures, with my net worth solidly in the red. To the best of my recollection, I owed two months’ rent, some unjustifiable alimony to Sylvia, the bar tab to Louie, and several IOUs to Digby, my bookie. I reminded myself to stop taking betting tips from my personal psychic.

When Countess Renier called and asked if I was available for a job, I was prepared to do anything up to and including scrubbing public urinals. Well, maybe not public urinals, but I was desperate. Luckily, the countess’s case turned out to be more than I could have hoped for.

The countess lived in an especially affluent section of the new city, where the mortgage payments were more than I’d paid for my speeder. I floated down Filmore until I found 2429. The place looked just like my dream house, only bigger. I landed my speeder, walked to the front door of the mansion, and rang the doorbell. After a short wait, the door was answered by a nattily dressed butler who looked like a tall Hume Cronyn and sounded like Katherine Hepburn after an all-night kegger.

He said I was expected and led me through a pitch dark entryway into a softly lit sitting room just slightly smaller than a regulation NBA court. Despite an ambient temperature ideally suited for growing cacti, there was a blazing inferno in a large fireplace on the far side of the room. The place was sparsely, though expensively, furnished. The butler cleared his throat, and I noticed a slight movement from a chair by the fire. An older woman sat in an overstuffed, high-back chair with a shawl around her shoulders and a blanket over her legs. She motioned for me to come closer. I removed my fedora, more for ventilation than good manners, and crossed the room. Behind me, the butler excused himself discreetly. I approached the old woman and extended my hand, which she took limply.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Murphy. I know you must be very busy this time of year.”

I had no idea what she meant by that. The PI business isn’t seasonal. But I nodded agreeably and smiled. “It’s my pleasure, Countess Renier.”

The countess released my hand and motioned for me to sit in a chair across from hers. A bead of sweat ran down the side of my face. I wiped it away as politely as possible. The countess tucked her hands under the blanket. “I hope this heat isn’t too oppressive for you. I’m afraid I need to maintain this temperature, otherwise my joints become quite painful.”

The countess gave me just enough time to nod before she continued. Her voice had been as feeble as her handshake, but it suddenly shifted into business mode.

“Your services have been recommended to me by a trusted friend, who prefers to remain anonymous. Suffice to say that your unique abilities are what I need right now.”

She didn’t waste any time. For an instant I thought about asking her who’d referred me, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t tell me. “Which of my unique abilities are you referring to?”

The countess didn’t smile. “I’m sure you have many unique abilities. The one I would hire you for is your knack for locating people and things. I understand that this knack has made you some friends — and more than a few enemies.”

I crossed my legs nonchalantly. “Well, wasn’t it Roy Rogers who used to say you can’t please all the people all the time?”

The old woman turned her gaze toward the fire. “It’s good to hear you say that, Mr.

Murphy, because this errand may make you unpopular with some people.”

I studied the countess’s face, trying to guess where this was headed. She stared impassively into the dancing flames, which threw shadows across her ancient profile.

“What exactly do you mean by unpopular?”

The countess pulled her eyes from the fire and looked back at me intently. “Let me give you some background information; then you can decide for yourself.”

I nodded as she pulled the shawl closer around her slumped shoulders.

“Some time ago, a family heirloom was stolen from this bungalow. I keep most of my valuables on my estate in Europe, but on this visit, I brought the item to show to a friend. I have made extensive inquiries trying to retrieve it, but have found out very little.”

Bungalow. That was rich.

“Pardon my ignorance, Countess, but I’m guessing that you have the resources — cash, I mean — to buy all the information you need. What makes you think I can help you?”

The old woman didn’t bat an eye. “I don’t, though you shouldn’t take that personally. I have others working for me on the same matter. My friend recommended you, and I’ve exhausted every option, without success. I’m afraid you’re something of a last resort.”

I wasn’t certain if I’d been insulted or not. “Referring to me as a last resort could double my fee.”

The countess sighed, as though the subject of money was distasteful. “I’d already planned on paying you much more than your usual fee. I’m a wealthy woman, Mr.

Murphy. To give you an idea, the stolen artifact alone is worth more money than most men could earn in ten lifetimes.”

These jabs were putting me on the defensive. Keeping in mind my destitute circumstances, I tried to be pleasant. “Well just see about that when I win the Clearing House Sweepstakes.”

“How quaint.” The old woman didn’t seem amused. “Let’s not waste any more time. I need some work done, and I’ll pay you well for it.”

“In my experience, getting paid well is a relative term.”

The countess’s distaste was now fully apparent. “Is this the way you negotiate your fee for every job? I find it appalling.”

I shrugged. “I have any number of appalling traits… but I am a good PI.”

She looked at me appraisingly, her eyes squinting slightly. After a few moments, she turned her gaze back to the fire and spoke.

“If you prove to be as good as you think you are, I will pay you a thirty-thousand-dollar finder’s fee.”

Thirty thousand clams. Hmmm. That was a lot of seafood — a good bit more than I would have asked for. “Let me think about it… OK, I’ll do it.”

The countess nodded and turned toward me. “I thought you might. I’ll expect you to focus all your energies on this. The methods you use to retrieve the artifact are of no interest to me. But as more time elapses, the less likely it is that the item will be found.

For that reason I must require you to find it and return it to me within ten days. After that, the value of the artifact will decrease significantly, as will the finder’s fee.”

Ten days wasn’t much time, but this appeared to be a no-lose situation. I nodded to show that I was following along. The old woman narrowed her gaze. “I should also warn you against any thoughts of double-crossing me. The statuette is valuable to only an obscure handful of collectors. If you were to find it and try to sell it on your own, you would certainly fetch less than the fee I have offered.”

I’d never double-crossed a client, but the countess couldn’t know that, so I didn’t take offense. “I understand. Now, what exactly am I looking for?”

“The artifact is a statuette made from a rare crystalline substance. It is shaped somewhat in the form of a bird in flight. It is unmistakable and extremely rare — there is no other piece like it in the world. It has been in my family for countless generations and, as I said, it is extremely valuable. There are many collectors who would stop at nothing to own it. Whoever stole the statuette would likely have gone to the black market and offered it to the highest bidder.”

The countess produced a photograph from under her blanket and handed it to me. It was a poor-quality print, like a copy of a copy. She wasn’t giving me much of a head start.

“Is there anything else you can tell me? I could use a little more to go on. For starters, do you have any idea who stole it?”

The countess shook her head impatiently. “No, no. I’ve told you all I can. As I said, I don’t expect you to succeed in finding the statuette.”

That qualified as a double-dog dare in my book. I stood up, still holding my fedora, eager to get to work. “I’ll see what I can do. Pleasure to meet you, Countess.”

The old woman looked up at me, no expression on her face.

“I’d prefer that you not contact me until you have the statuette in your possession. I am not fond of receiving visitors under normal circumstances. But thank you for coming, Mr. Murphy. My valet will give you a retainer of one thousand dollars on your way out.

I assume that will be enough to get you started. Goodbye.”

I’d gone straight to work, looking up all my old connections in the seamy underbelly of the city. The countess had said that whoever had stolen the statuette would have gone to the black market. It sounded logical to me — the buying and selling of hot property was one of Old San Francisco’s leading enterprises. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the statuette had been heard of by even the low-grade parasites, who comprised most of my underworld contacts.

After spending three sleepless days and half of the M note, I met up with a small-time gangster named Franco Franco, who gave me a fair amount of information in exchange for a favor to be cashed in later. I wasn’t altogether comfortable with the arrangement, but I had twenty-nine thousand good reasons not to worry about it at the moment.

Franco passed along a name: Eddie Ching.

I asked around and found that most people experienced a strange form of amnesia when Ching’s name was mentioned. Luckily, there are plenty of cutthroats willing to do anything for money. Eventually, I got a lead and followed my nose to Mexico City.

Now here I was sitting pretty with the statuette in the bag and two days to spare.

“You all finished, honey?”

LaDonna had refilled the mug in my hand as stealthily as a pickpocket. My usual limit was three cups, but it would’ve been a shame to squander such stellar service. I took a sip as LaDonna removed my plate and silverware, then wiped down the table in one motion, leaving it as clean as it could ever hope to be. A bill lay damage-down in front of me with LaDonna’s loopy signature and a smiley face scrawled on it. I picked it up, pulled a twenty out of my wallet, and tucked them both under my mostly filled mug. I reached for my backpack and slid out of the booth. LaDonna smiled and waved busily as I pushed open the door and stepped out into the warm Brownsville night.

My speeder was still parked outside, which was good. I crossed the parking lot and beeped my alarm off. Gripping the door handle, I pulled up. Suddenly, a white flash blinded me as something smashed into the back of my head.