How I Got the Job as a Private Eye

Los Angeles, 1969

When my buddy, who had gone to work for a private detective agency, went on and on about how much fun it was, and how, if I got a job there, we could open our own shop down the line?

It didn’t take much to convince me. I was working at a metals-jobber, selling extrusion and bar and plate over the phone, or filling in for fork-lift drivers or dispatchers who missed work. Not  exciting. Not like being a Los Angeles private investigator! Just like Marlowe and Jim Rockford!

So I went into the agency and applied for the job.

The guy in charge of the agency turned me down.

I was married, with a baby, and the work was tricky. He didn’t think I should quit a good job and then maybe they’d have to fire me a week or two on because I didn’t have the knack for it.

Wait! If my buddy could do it, I could do it!

Sorry.

That was that, right?

Maybe not. 

I decided that I would show them I did have the knack to do it. I would, on my day off, go to the head of the agency’s house and set up a surveillance on him, follow him around, and then write a report and send it to him. 

That would show him, by gawd!

There were some problems. I knew the supervisor’s name, but there was no listing for him in the phone book. My buddy working there didn’t know — apparently over the years, the boss had been the target of people he’d investigated, so his phone and address were kept need-to-know.

Well, I decided, it was probably in his secretary’s Roledex, hey? I’d just go to the agency one night after hours, pick the lock, find the address, and I was in business, right? I had lock-picks, hey?

So I did. Got in -- no alarm fortunately -- found the information, in-and-out, presto!

Went to the guy’s house, and having followed my buddy’s advice to call the local police and tell them I was an op doing a surveillance, working for the agency, so as not to get rousted, parked down the block in my VW early on a Saturday morning.

Guy came out, fetched the paper. His kids played ball in the front yard. An hour or so, guy pulled his car out of the garage and took off. 

I lost him before he got out the neighborhood. 

He returned, watered his lawn, went back inside, and I left that afternoon.

Went home, wrote a report, using the operative-language my buddy gave me -- words like "subject" and "appeared to be" and his description and license plate and all --  and mailed it in.

A week went by. No response. What was going on? Could they not see I had the knack?

So, I went back to the office of a late evening, entered the premises as I had before, and went through the supervisor’s desk. Found my letter, with a note from the supervisor to the head of the camera-operatives. What do you think of this guy? 

The answer on the note was, Sounds great!

So, I wrote on the note, Sounds great to me, too! and left. 

Few days later, I got a letter from the supervisor: He pointed out some things:

First, his wife was the secretary to the local police chief, and when I called in to report I was setting up a surveillance, her boss called her into his office. Did you know one of your husband’s ops is running a surveillance in your neighborhood?

Huh. No.

So she called her husband, and thus he knew I was gonna be there before I *got* there.

How was I to know his wife worked for the local police? What kind of coincidence was that? Who would believe it?!

He thought my description was inaccurate as to his height and weight, and that he looked like Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Furthermore, I lost him three blocks from his house, and my skills were not impressive. However, my unmitigated gall, calling the local police and pretending I was one of his ops? To watch him? Well, I got credit for balls, and attitude, and that was more important than skill — I could learn skills.

Then he asked, How did you find me? I take pains to keep that on the downlow.

Well, I said, I picked the lock on the office door and got your address from your secretary’s Rolodex.

There was a long pause. Decades, Eons.

My heart sank.

Listen, we don’t do stuff like that, that’s TV and movie crap, we are legal and above board. You want to work here, you forget that kind of crap right now, understand?

Yessir.

He allowed that I should come in and start training in a couple weeks.

And then, when I hung up the phone? I realized that I had written something I thought funny on the note he had exchanged with another operative, and that he would know, if he read it, that I had broken into the office a second time, and I’d be screwed.

So, the only thing I could think of? Why, I needed to break into the office a third time and get that note!

Which I did. By then, I could open the door faster than if I had a key.

Did not mention this last part to my new boss, started working there a couple weeks later, and for the rest of the time I was in L.A. had a job that was waay more interesting than working the phones at the metals warehouse ...

Enforcers - Sneak-peek

Chapter 1

New Orleans

Coburn said, “Face, or send?”

Flint shrugged. “You’re the boss, old man.”

Coburn shook his head. He was three hundred and eighty-five to Flint’s mere two hundred years, so, relatively-speaking, that was true enough.

He pulled a quarter from his pocket. “Call it.”

“Tails. And let it hit the lawn.”

“You don’t trust me, lad?” He grinned.

“I’ve see you do sleights.”

He thumbed the quarter into the air. It spun, fell, hit the trimmed-short St. Augustine grass, bounced.

“Tails it is.”

“I’ll send. I can lie in the shade. Plus I know the delivery system better.”

The boy did like his new toy, also true. 

Colburn pulled his pocket watch from his shorts, opened the cover, and looked at it. “I’ll get set up at the park bench, he should be out in a few minutes.”

“You know, I bet they make a portable sun-dial you could carry.”

“That’s your problem, being so young. No appreciation for the watchmaker’s art. I got this particular watch in the Soviet Union fifty, sixty, years ago. It’s a Moljinar—Lightning—mechanical, an eighteen-jeweled, swiped-from-the -Swiss movement. A propaganda piece, celebrating WWII, got the hammer and sickle over the red star, see? Cost me about twenty-bucks, don’t recall what that was in rubles. Cheap, well-made, still runs just fine.

“I have a Charles-Hubert pocket watch I picked in Paris a few years back. Seventeen jewels, cost ten times as much. The Russian piece is a better machine.”

“Cell phone keeps better time than either.”

“And McDonald’s hamburgers are cheaper and faster than the Port of Call’s. Which would you rather eat?”

“I like Mickey D’s burgers.”

“Proves my point—you have no taste, and little sense. Your advice is therefore worthless.”

Flint grinned. 

Coburn glanced at the sweltering park. He was not a fan of high heat and humidity, and New Orleans in August offered plenty of both. Had to be approaching body-temperature, and swimming to get there. He wore a straw fedora, a short-sleeved shirt, cargo shorts and running shoes, a costume that meant hiding a full-sized pistol was impossible. He had a compact SIG P238 .380 ACP in his right cargo pocket, which was effective-enough if needed, though that would be unlikely. He and Flint had worked together since 1947, almost eighty years, and the youngster was adept.

The park bench, at least, was in shade.

***

The Àrsaidh player calling himself George Kaplan, born in Boston in 1876, emerged from the municipal building and started across the park’s freshly-mowed lawn, heading toward where he had parked his car. The smell of the cut-grass was thick in the muggy air. It was a sunny day, but clouds were rolling in; distant thunder heralded the imminent arrival of a storm, so the park was, save for the two of them virtually empty. 

Only mad dogs and Englishmen would be out in the noon-day sun, both of which, he supposed, might properly refer to him …

Coburn took a deep breath and stood, moving from the shade of the oak tree probably as old as he was into the direct sunlight. The air temperature would be the same, of course, but he could feel the weight of the sun slap his hat and shoulders instantly.

Kaplan saw him approaching, and angled to his right so as not to intersect.

Coburn adjusted his path so they approached head-on.

Five meters away, Kaplan stopped. 

He was a tall, heavy-set man in an off-white suit, a pale blue shirt and darker blue tie. Nicely-polished caramel-colored leather shoes. No hat.

Must be cooking in that outfit.

“Mister Kaplan.”

“Do I know you?”

“We’ve never met, no.”

“You a player?”

“Not as such, no, but Àrsaidh, yes.”

Give him credit, he got it quickly.

“You’re an Enforcer.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I can explain.”

“That, sir, is why I am here.”

“It was self-defense.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I had no choice.”

“As I understand it, the woman was a foot shorter, seven stone lighter—a hundred pounds or so—and unarmed. No knife, no gun, nothing. And you felt threatened enough to shoot her three times?”

“She was crazy, psychotic. She came at me with murder in mind!”

“I see. While that might be possible, there is no evidence of such psychosis in her background—we checked—and even had there been? She had not the means to cause you serious harm. She was a barmaid with no training in any kind of fighting system. What did you think she was going to do? Crush your skull with her bare hands?”

“I didn’t know! You weren’t there, you didn’t see her face!”

“Oh, but I did see her face, in the morgue. What was left of it after three .45 ACP rounds hit it. And since the only way she could have possibly been a threat would have been to destroy your brain? 

“Killing civilians is not allowed, Mister Kaplan, save, as you have attempted to claim, in in self-defense, and in no manner was that justified. 

“Oh, and if you move your hand any closer to your waist, you will die where you stand immediately.”

“All right. What are we to do? Are you taking me in?”

“I am. ”

Coburn removed his fedora to smooth his damp hair.

Kaplan’s head exploded in a sleet of blood and bone and brain, as the sound of the .308 shot echoed over Coburn from a hundred and fifty meters distance.

He put his hat back on, turned, and walked away.

You don’t hear the one that kills you. 

***

Back at the oak tree, Flint had already disassembled the sniper rifle, a new purchase, custom-made in Germany last year by master gunsmith, Alcott Beller. It was a  folding, bolt-action, with a Zeiss V4 scope that kept zero after opening and closing, and was seriously accurate to three hunded meters. They used match-grade .308 copper-clad boattail bullets that Flint handloaded. Even with a suppressor it was loud, but they weren’t sticking around. Once folded, it was only eighteen inches long, and easily packed it into its case—which didn’t look like at all a rifle case, because it wasn’t, but instead an artist’s portfolio, done in a nice reddish-brown leather. New Orleans was a city with a lot of artists, and one saw such things frequently. 

Should anyone stop them? They had badges and IDs that were perfect replicas of assorted federal agencies, and contact information to back those up. Should a local police officer call the number on a proferred card? The answer would match the ID.

FBI. How may I direct your call?

“Nice shot.” 

“Thanks. So, we are leaving this one?”

“One must do so now and again, mustn’t one?”

“Yes. The object lesson.”

“It’s about to rain. We should go.”

Satire

 

Dixie

 From long ago when I was trying to learn to be a good guitarist. My best piece on that instrument.

Dissonance

 Dissonance

The piano tuner ran through ascending chords, enjoying the resistance of the heavy ivory keys. His balding head was bent forward, his eyes closed as he listened. The notes rose to the darkened ceiling of the recital hall near Warsaw's Old Market Square, then dissipated like smoke.

They even seemed to smell like smoke, Maria thought.

Pipe tobacco, perhaps ... ?

The man turned and looked at her, one eyebrow raised.

She nodded. “Perfecto, Sebastian. As always.”

Sebastian smiled. He looked back at the instrument, took a clean handkerchief from his pocket, and lightly wiped the keyboard, from base keys to trebles, producing a soft, rising musical sigh. This piano could out-thunder Thor, its forte was indeed grand, but even as quiet as a mouse, it sounded superb. Ian’s personal tuner, who knew exactly how his boss wanted the instrument to sing, Sebastian always made it sound superb.

Of course, he had much with which to work. Any Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano could roar or whisper on command–nine feet, six inches long, the best woods, the finest craftsmanship, perfect German construction, they were top of the line. But this one? It was Ian’s baby, and it had extras that made it even more grande than grand. Nine sub-base notes to low C; ninety-seven keys, twelve hundred and fifty-five pounds of magic in wood, strings, ivory and ebony, it had cost more than a quarter of a million dollars, and Ian considered it cheap at that price. 

Ian did not fly second class.

It had his name inlaid in gold over the center of the keyboard; not so large as to be ostentatious, but big enough for him to see every time he sat down to play. So that an adoring fan using opera glasses could read it from the center of the hall: 

Ian Thomas Laurance. 

The lettering copied from his perfect, artistic handwriting. 

The Bösendorfer was Maria’s baby, too. She made sure it traveled in safety, fussed and worried over it, assured that it was packed so lovingly well that it would survive a fall from a tall building inside its shipping crate. And since it was insured for more than half a million dollars, the shippers never dropped it. They wouldn’t dare. 

Ian. The man who had hands bigger than Rachmaninov–huge, magic hands that could span almost two octaves. He could play things nobody else could, because nobody else could reach two notes so far apart. He had written especial music to showcase his skills, a concert only he could pull off. At the end of the third movement, there were two chords, impossible things, wildly dissonant, one under each hand, and nobody on a stage could hit them together except Ian. He could palm basketballs. 

And when he had put his hands on her ... ?

For the six months they shared a bed on the road, it had been a kind of magic. There she was, Maria Vasquez, a lowly travel manager who had come from the mean streets of Madrid. Little Maria, whose brother Pablito had been a bomb-maker for the Basques until he had blown himself and half a building up by accident. A woman who had never dared hoped to be with man like Ian. But–there she had been, Ian’s lover, sleeping each night next to the greatest pianist alive, perhaps the greatest who had ever lived, a man who loved this instrument more than he could ever love any woman. Sometimes, after sex, still covered in sweat and each other’s juices, he would talk about the piano as if it were a woman: How she sounded today; how her voice was; how her action under his fingers felt ...

Well. That was done. Over. 

She should have quit once he had ended it. She could have gotten another job easily, people on the concert scene knew her, knew how well she took care of Ian and his instruments, somebody would have jumped at the chance to hire her. She knew that. But–she had been weak. She kept hoping he would invite her back to his bed. She loved him. She thought he would see that, would respond to it.

She had been wrong.

She had shown up at his hotel room that evening as usual, and a naked woman had answered the door. A tall, redhead, maybe twenty-two or three, sleek, fit, smelling of musk. 

Ian had stood behind the woman, also naked, and grinning. 

Sorry, Maria, he had said. It’s time for me to learn a ... new piece ...

So fucking clever, Ian. Talented, rich, supremely self-confident. Nonchalantly sure that she wouldn’t quit. Life was his oyster, full of pearls, he was golden and invulnerable. He expected her to stay and reflect his glory–and she had stayed. 

After Sebastian packed up his kit and went to find a pub and have a beer, Maria sat alone in the hall, perched on the piano’s bench, and stroked the keyboard cover softly. She loved this piano, but not like Ian did.

She sighed, and stood. She had plenty of time. Pablito had, before he had died, taught her things a young Spanish woman did not ordinarily learn. About circuits and wires and detonators. 

Tonight, when Ian hit those two impossible chords, a circuit would be completed. Nobody else could do it, only Ian. 

It wouldn’t be a big explosion. Nobody would be hurt. Just enough forte to turn the inside of the Bösendorfer into a smoking ruin. It would die under his hands–he would kill it.

She wanted to be sure she found a place to stand where she could see his face. Where he could look up and see her face, and know.Yes, indeed. 

-30-