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.”