The Fishwhacker Swindle?

Part two of no more than six in a thrilling new hardboiled noir serial.



I walked the rain-soaked streets through the city’s neon glare and as I walked I smoked and I flipped the spent butts into the puddles where they sizzled like little cancer fireflies.

I’d been working the city all day, paying visits and checking my networks. Nothing. I was heading for a dead-end bar downtown where my best stool pigeon was sure to be.

The dame’s name was Laughs, Sarah Laughs, though she didn’t seem to do much laughing around me. Few people do. She’d been married to McShae a little over six months. By the sound of it things had been going great, so when he hadn’t come home one evening a month earlier it had been a bolt out of the blue. He had no family he might have gone to, and she’d checked out his friends but they hadn’t seen him either. McShae sold wicker furniture for a living. That immediately got my suspicions up. The illegal wicker trade is worth a fortune. If he was messing around with that s—t then he was in more trouble than she realized. Assuming he was still alive at all.

I had to go looking for him because he was the only link I had to something very terrible that had happened to me ten years earlier. God alone knew where Ayres or Maroon or Barbudo were now, so crossing paths with McShae like this was like – I’m going to say something quite hard to swallow now, so if you’re a lady you might want to skip to the next paragraph, though if you’re a lady you shouldn’t really be reading this tale anyhow – it was like Providence offering to s—k your c—k for you.

I got to the bar, Bo Khaki, a little after midnight and threw the empty bottle of JD into the alleyway down the side. The doorman was getting ready to move aside for me but I hit him anyway because I needed the practise. Inside was the stink of booze and sweat and nixed hopes. Every loser and weirdo in town was there, it seemed: that crazy Irishman who had issues with toy dinosaurs was arm-wrestling the gal from Boston with the attitude (and coming off second best); that God-damn scientist guy was using some contraption he’d invented to try and look up the skirt of the Irish broad who did kick-boxing (as he’d soon find out); and that smart-a-- Brit expat from North Carolina was trying to impress the cute San Francisco broad who always comes across so innocent. He didn't see the razor she was holding behind her back.

Bo, the bar’s owner, had my triple JD – rocks, no water or soda – under my nose before I could say where's my God-damn JD. It’s a friendly enough place, Bo Khaki, though the waitresses all wear this horrible shiny slimy makeup which I haven’t figured out yet.

I lit a cigarette. My stoolie, SafeT, was perched next to me and he groaned when I tapped his lid. He’s nuts, like most of them in here; he thinks he’s a robot and wears this kind of dustbin. Back when I was a cop I’d used him very effectively and he’d kind of stayed on. Loyalty, perhaps, or else he was scared s—tless of me. Hell, I scare myself s--tless.

‘How’s tricks?’ I asked. I lit a cigarette, didn’t offer him one. He was drinking two-stroke engine oil, taking his artificial persona a little far, I thought.

‘Same old,’ he said, trying to sound metallic. I held out a photo between my first two fingers, keeping the other two folded over a twenty-dollar bill in my palm. He looked at it, shook his head rustily.

‘Name’s McShae. Scotch.’

‘Oh, okay,’ said SafeT and tried to get Bo’s attention. I sighed and clanged his lid shut, catching one of his ears. When he prised it open again I said, ‘I didn’t want a Scotch. He’s a Scotch. McShae.’

He muttered something and I ignored him and gave him some details. He took the photo and told me to give him a half hour. I sat and drank and smoked and tried to ignore the bitter howling wind within my soul.

SafeT was as good as his word – he wouldn’t dare not to be – and was back in under thirty minutes. He gave me back the photo and jerked a corroded thumb over his shoulder.

‘Guy back there. Refuses to talk to you but says he saw this McShae here, downtown, the night he disappeared. He was scared-looking, that’s how the guy remembered him, and he was alone. He was at the Wicker Universe store down on Charles Manson Avenue, knocking on the door, after hours, and someone opened up and he went in.’

Damn wicker. I knew it. I gave SafeT the twenty and, after a moment’s hesitation, fished out of my pocket a lube job voucher. I’m getting soft in my old age.


*

I reached the Wicker Universe in fifteen minutes and did a quick scout round the building to see if there were any lights to suggest a security guard. Nada. The triple locks on the front door were more complicated than I’d seen in a while and it took me a full ninety seconds to crack them. I eased the door open. The smell hit me first, that hazy, dangerous sweet aroma of newly woven wicker. I pressed a handkerchief against my mouth and nose. With my other hand I groped in my pocket for Pussy. I had a bad feeling about this.

When I felt I could trust myself not to be overcome by the smell I put the handkerchief away and found my flashlight. I flicked it on and saw a broken dark line stretching away across the lino floor. I bent closer.

Blood.

I followed the trail which became a smear and then, behind a dense-weave patio set (despite what I saw next I had to admire the craftsmanship), I found the man. He was lying face-up in a sticky pool which was brown in the torchlight but was obviously his lifeblood. He wasn’t McShae. In his wide-open eyes was a look of utter, cosmic horror.

I couldn’t figure out immediately how he had died but I could see right away that something had been done to him beforehand. Something very nasty indeed.

I lit a cigarette.



What has been done to the poor man? Has he:

a) been dogged senseless?
b) received a year’s subscription to Reader’s Digest for his birthday?
c) *** ** ******* *** in **** *aa** * *******?!

Or suggest something of your own. The best idea goes into the next instalment!