David Glick

Classmates:  This is a highly fictionalized version of a true story that was related by Dave Mihalick on the blog two years ago.  You may notice places you know, and some of the characters will have the same names as some of you.  This was not done to offend anyone, but is an attempt to lighten to a small degree what is a very dark tale.  Due to it’s length, it will be posted in two segments.

 

 

DAVID GLICK, PRIVATE DICK

The Case of the Missing Momma

 

Chapters one and two

 

     The fluorescents flickered out and the Rockies/Dodgers game went dead on my radio with Holliday at the plate and two on base.  I had rarely noticed the dull roar from the air conditioner before but now that it was off the room seemed very quiet.  It was a sizzling July day and within thirty minutes it was nearly as hot in my office as it was in the steel mill across the river on the other side of town.  It’s an old building, built long before they started sealing office windows to keep jumpers in and flies out.  I thought maybe I could get a little breeze if I opened them but no go.  There were probably twenty coats of paint on the frames.  When I was on the force in Seattle I remember a guy once rented a room in a downtown hotel and asked for the 15^th floor.  His neighbor heard this loud banging and hotel security found the guy trying to bust out the window with a desk chair so he could take a dive.  They make those windows strong just for that reason.  Security grabbed him and called the cops and the officers got him over to the hospital where he was admitted as a head case, but the docs let him go a few hours later when he promised not to do it again.  So he went to the supermarket, bought a can of Liquid Drano and drank all he could until his throat started smoking.  That did the trick for him.  I don’t get it.  What’s the big deal?  You buy a cheap piece, you stick the barrel in your mouth, bang.  It’s done.

     I stuck it out in the office for another fifteen but then I decided to walk two blocks to Vito’s Bar & Grill to see if Vito still had AC.  What the hell, it’s not like I had anything else to do except read the sports page and wait for the phone to ring, which it hadn’t for four days anyway.  When the police commissioner in Seattle fired my ass for laying low that gob of phlegm Romero, I had to figure out some way to make a living, and being a cop was all I knew.  I didn’t blame the boss man for deep-sixing me though.  The shit storm that ensued after I put Romero down left him no selection.  Every do-gooder and Hispanic activist in the city camped outside his office door so what was he going to do?   Yeah, I shot the pocket of pus in the back, but so what?  He had a record from here to tomorrow and he had pistol-whipped a teller during a bank robbery and winged a cop who tried to stop him.  Two days later I saw Romero speeding in his Camaro on the south side of town and he took off when I tried to pull him over.  When I finally got him stopped he got out and started running.  How was I to know he wasn’t armed?  I figured he had a piece in every pocket.  You know what police officers say, you can be a great cop, treat everybody decent, save lives and win a lot of commendations, but shoot one lousy minority… Don’t get me wrong, I got nothing against any group.  As far as I’m concerned, if you commit a crime I don’t care if your name is John, Juan or Deon,  I’m coming after you.  At least I was coming after you, before I got canned from the only job I ever wanted.  Anyway, that’s past me now.  I needed twenty years to get my pension and I only had eighteen.  I’d been a police detective for eight of those twenty so I figured I would open a private investigator office and the bucks would roll in like snowballs on a slope.  Trouble was, in Seattle there were four pages of PI’s in the yellows, and I knew from experience that most of them weren’t making it.  My rep in that town was shot anyway.  So I went down to the library, found the telephone directories and started going through them to see how many private dicks there were in different cities in the west.  Somebody told me it’s a lot easier if you use the internet, but I don’t know anything about computers and don’t want to know.  So I got the phone books and started looking.  No way was I moving back east, and I didn’t want to live in California, either.  Trouble was, every place I looked at was just like Seattle.  PI’s, lawyers and bail bondsmen, one for every ten residents. Finally I checked out this burg, Pueblo in Colorado, and there were only three listings for PI’s.  I called the three of them and pretended I was a client to figure out do they know their business.  One is already disconnected, the other two are make-believe.  These guys couldn’t find their dicks if they had eight hands.  So nine months later here I am, not qualified for food stamps but damn close.  But I have made some good contacts with lawyers and cops who are sending a few customers my way.  Mostly women who suspect their husbands are banging their secretaries or somebody else’s secretaries.  Not my favorite type of work but it pays the rent.  And the rent is pretty cheap is this so-called city.  I have two rooms in what used to be the downtown Post Office, converted to office space, one room for me and one for the secretary I hope to hire some day.  And no, I won’t be banging her.  You don’t get your sex where you work, I learned that lesson my first year on the force.  Olga, who worked in the property room.  Yeah, she caused me some headaches, but it was great while it lasted.

     Vito’s Bar and Grill is a dive that some people in town say opened in 1933, as soon as prohibition ended.  Vito said it was opened before prohibition ended, that it was a speakeasy, and he ought to know because his grandpa, Vito the first, bought the joint in 1942.  It’s a little one-room bar, like a neighborhood place but downtown.  Vito calls it a bar and grill because that’s what the sign, in the original blue neon, has always said, but I haven’t seen a grill or him serving anything that came off one.  He has some jerky in a jar that looks like it has been on sitting on the bar since 1968 and a few bags of pretzels and potato chips.  That’s it.  Vito doesn’t do cocktails either.  Maybe a bourbon and seven or rum and coke.  This is a shot and beer joint with no big screens or any other screens.  The guys come here, they’re looking to have a couple jolts and some male conversation after work or on the weekend, get away from their wives and kids for a while.  They want to watch a game, the Broncos or the Rockies, they watch it at home.  Vito’s is for talking about sports, not seeing it on TV. The first time I went there, it’s in the afternoon and Vito, me and some well-dressed boozehound with both hands on his glass are the only ones there.  I’m shooting the breeze with Vito and all of a sudden Sinatra’s voice starts on the jukebox.  “All Or Nothing At All.”  The thing is, nobody had put any money in the slot.  I look over at Vito and he nods.  “Yeah.  Six, seven times a day it does that.  Always Sinatra, but different songs.”

     “Nobody pushes B-19 or whatever?”

     “Never.”

     He told me that some other weird things happen there.  Sometimes he puts the open sign in the window, next time he looks it’s turned around to closed.  Once he turned out the lights when he locked up and they came back on.  He did it four times, every time they come back on, and finally he just left.  Next day, the lights are off.  One night when he was busy he saw a guy in a cloth cap sitting at the bar smoking and staring at the beer he’s holding in his hand, but Vito never saw him come in and didn’t serve him.  Vito sees a pack of Luckies and a Ronson on the bar.  Next time he looks, the guy isn’t there anymore, there’s no beer glass and the ashtray is empty.  Stuff like that.  I don’t believe in it.  In my line of work, I know there’s a rational explanation for everything.  Vito says the joint was a mob hangout back in the day, maybe even some guys got whacked in there, and maybe they’re still hanging out.  I don’t buy it.

     The cool air in Vito’s place felt so good that I decided to stick around for a while.  I finished my first Pabst and had taken a couple swigs out of the second when the phone rang.  Vito answered, gave me the nod, and I went back behind the bar and picked it up.  It’s Perko, the shyster whose office is across the hall from mine. 

     “Jesus, Glick.  You finally get a client and you’re not here to talk to her.  You better head on back.  She looks like she has enough money to pay you and she’s a babe.”

     “Where is she?”

     “In my waiting room.  I’m going out there right now to ogle her.”

     “How’d you know I’m here?”

     “Where the hell else would you be?”

     “Did the power go back on?”

     “Yeah.  It’s cold as an embalming room in here.”

     I didn’t finish my brew.  I couldn’t take a chance on losing a client.  I took one big gulp, put a fin down for Vito, and headed out the door.  It may have been cool in Vito’s but it was still a furnace on the street. 

     I beat feet back to the office, sticking to the shady side of the street as much as possible.  By the time I got there I was mopping sweat off my face with my handkerchief.  The client was sitting on a plastic chair in Perko’s outer office and, just as he said he would, Perko was out there slobbering and talking to her.  And he had something to slobber about.  I introduced myself and she held out her hand for a shake.  It was small and cool, just like the rest of her.  We walked across the hall after I nodded a thanks to Perko.  I unlocked the office door with my name painted on the frosted glass and shepherded her past my empty receptionist’s desk, and closed the door after her in my inner office.  She sat down and I picked up a pen.

     “I didn’t catch your name,” I said, looking at her while she fiddled in her purse.  She hadn’t introduced herself  in Perko’s office.  Probably wanted to size me up first.

     “Katrina.  Like the hurricane.  Katrina McNair”

     There was a girl in high school, Sharon.  I  can’t come up with the last name.  When you talked to Sharon she always looked right into your eyes, like whatever it was you were saying, which usually wasn’t much, was the most important thing she would ever hear.  She was pretty, not a beauty, but she always had guys hanging around her, wanting to be with her.  This Katrina like the hurricane reminded me of Sharon.  She was looking at me like I could solve all her problems, whatever they were, and after that we would become the greatest lovers and the best of friends.  And already, I wanted that.  She wasn’t a Scottsdale trophy-wife type.  Her hair was blond but probably natural, certainly not platinum or anything close to it.  The eyes were as bright and blue as the blazing sky outside, and when you looked into them you started trying to remember the location of the nearest hotel.  She was dressed demurely in khaki shorts that ended just above her knees, a blue blouse, and a vest that matched the shorts.  A dark ring on her right hand.  I finally realized that she was waiting for me to say something.  The AC had chilled my sweaty face.  I felt a little weak.

     “OK Katrina.  Obviously you have some sort of trouble, since you came to see me.  Tell me what is going on.”

     “I want you to find my mother, if she’s still alive.”

     “Your birth mother?’

     “My only mother.”

     “When is the last time you saw her.”

     “In 1987.  I was eight.”

     “What’s her name?”

     “Laurina.  Laurina Cortese.”

     “You need to tell me the story even if it’s a long one.  I have time.”

     “You charge by the hour?”

     “Yes, but today’s session is on the house.”

     She gave me a long look.  I had the feeling that she had been wanting to tell this story for a while, but now that it was time to tell it she wasn’t sure she could.  Finally she started.

     “She just went away.  Or was taken away.  She and my dad were separated, he was in Boston, and all of us, my sister, my brother and me, I was the oldest, were living here with her and my grandparents.  One day she didn’t come home from work.  We never saw her or heard from her again.”

     “What did your grandparents do?”

     “They called the police.  They came and asked a lot of questions.  But Grandpa was always sure that they didn’t look too hard.”

     “Did she have a car?”

     “Yes.  An old Pontiac.  It went missing too.”

     “Who did your mother work for?”

     “A lawyer.  Mr. Arnold.  She was his secretary.  He said he didn’t know anything.  He said she left after work that day just like any other day.  But a few weeks later he disappeared too.  I know, it sounds suspicious, but my mom wouldn’t do that.  She wouldn’t leave us for a man without even telling us goodbye.  She loved us too much.  Besides, Mr. Arnold was 22 years older than she was.  After a month or so Grandpa hired a private detective, but right after that a letter came in the mail.  I didn’t know about it until a couple of years ago, just before Grandma died.  She gave it to me.  After the letter came, Grandpa fired the detective.”

     She took an envelope from her purse and handed it to me.  It felt like a soft rag, like a magazine in a doctor’s waiting room, like somebody had handled it a lot.  Postmarked Pueblo, July 19, 1987.  No return address.  The note inside was written on lined tablet paper that you can buy anywhere.  There was only one sentence.  “Stop looking for Laurina if you want to keep breathing.”

     I put the note back into the envelope and put it in a file folder and put the folder on my desk.

Katrina had been stoic up to now but I saw that her eyes had misted, and she quickly took out a Kleenex and dabbed at them.

     “Did you go to live with your father?”

     “He didn’t want us.  He sent money sometimes.  He died of a drug overdose a few years later.  Our grandparents raised us.”

     I told her what I charged and got the rest of the details.  She told me she worked as an administrator in a local hospital.  Her brother and sister lived in other states.  She gave me a picture of her mother, the same face as Katrina’s but harder, and gave me the rest of the information I needed to get started.  She also gave me a check for $500.  I thought she was going to leave but then she looked at me with those eyes again and dropped one last bomb.

     “There’s another thing.  I don’t put much store in it, but there was a rumor that it was the mafia that disappeared my mom.  She had nothing to do with anything illegal.  She didn’t run with any of those people.  What reason would they have to kill her?  But I thought I should let you know.”    Then she was gone, leaving behind only a scent of  perfume I knew from someplace, somebody.  I couldn’t place it.  Who had worn it?

     I went back to Vito’s to see if maybe he could fill me in on the mafia in Pueblo, but the after work crowd had come in and he was busy.  I waved at Vito and left, planning to return the next day.

 

*

 

     I decided to stop by Safeway to pick up a broiled chicken for dinner.  I was wrung out from  the heat and I didn’t want to go to a restaurant.  I parked the car next to a black pickup waxed so recently that I cold see a dull spot that the rag had passed over.  The windows were rolled up and the engine was running.  A guy in a sleeveless shirt was yelling something I couldn’t hear and shaking his fist at a woman in the passenger seat.  I walked into the store and decided to pick up a few other things since I was there.  I grabbed a Hungry Man from the frozen section, a sirloin marked down, a few bananas.  Some Ragu.  A few minutes later I came across the couple from the pickup in the potato chip aisle.  He was a couple inches shorter than my six foot and twenty pounds heavier than my one-eighty.  He wore a Harley Wings tattoo on his bicep and a bunch of other ones on his arms and back.  Greasy black hair.  He might have lifted weights sometime in the past but he was going a little soft now.  She was a bottle-blond with bruises on both sides of her face that were fading out, and a shiner that was almost gone.  She looked away when she noticed me watching.  It was the same shamed look my mom used to get after my stepfather had knocked her around, before I busted his kneecap with an aluminum bat when I was thirteen.  The dude was pointing out items for her to put into the cart, talking to her like she was mud on his soles.  A couple of aisles later I ran into them again.  He was giving her a ration of crap for putting something in the cart without his approval.  I cussed myself silently for what I was about to do but I made eye contact with the guy and motioned that I wanted to talk to him.  He told the woman to go on ahead.

     “I saw your unit outside,” I said to him. “ Nice looking wheels.  I can give you a helluva deal on some spinner hubs.”

     “Yeah?  How much?”

     “A hundred and a half for a set.”

     “Where they at?”

     “In my car behind the store.”

     He told the woman to wait for him at the checkout and he would be back.  We walked outside together.  He wanted to know where I got the merchandise.  I told him I was the Rocky Mountain distributor.  We were facing east on the south side of the building and the reflection from the sun, now lower in the sky, was hot against the yellow stucco wall of the store.  There was nobody back there.  It was too late in the day for deliveries.  There was nothing but some busted pallets.  When we got there I started looking around in confusion.

     “What’s up?” he asked.

     “My car!  I just left it here a few minutes ago and it’s gone!”

     He started laughing.  “Hey, that’s funny, man.  You’re trying to sell me some hubcaps you boosted and meantime somebody boosted your wheels.”

     I turned to face him.  We were in perfect position.  He had this big grin and was standing with his legs spread, like a phony macho asshole.  I shrugged my shoulders in a “what are you going to do?” gesture and then I kicked him square in the gonads.  I kicked him so hard that I pulled a muscle in my calf.  He screamed and bent over almost double.  The logical thing was for me to lift my knee into his face and lay him out, but that would have resulted in a broken nose and a lot of blood, and I didn’t want to get it on my pants.  I had just bought them two weeks ago, $37 on sale at Dillards.  I walked around behind him, put my foot on his butt and shoved him down.  He was still holding his balls and he landed face first on the blacktop and took a couple of layers of skin off his nose and chin.  I went over to his side and rolled him on his back with my foot.  He was gasping like a caught carp and as I kneeled down I grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled his head up.  I slapped him four times backhand forehand backhand forehand and let loose of his shirt.  His head fell with a crack on the hard asphalt.  There was blood all over his face, his eyes were big as coat buttons, and he was scared shitless.

     “What you do me like that for?  You don’t even know me!”

     I grabbed him up by the shirt again and got right in his slimy face.  “Oh yeah, I know you, pal.  I know exactly who you are.  You’re a big bad dude who likes to beat up women.  They’re not too strong and they don’t fight back, right?”

     “You got the wrong guy!  I don’t beat up no women!”

     I backhanded him again.  “Don’t bullshit me, mouse turd.  I saw you with your woman inside.  I saw what you been doing to her.  But you’re not going to do it again, are you?”

     He looked like he was going to cry.  “No man, I won’t hit her again.  She had it coming and it was only that one time anyway.”

     Once again he got the back of my hand.  “I thought I just told you not to bullshit me.  Listen, you can of puke, I want you to know about me.  I’m a guy who knows people, you know what I mean?  I work with people who work downtown, people who hear things.  You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?  And I’m going to tell these people to keep an eye on you, and on your woman and on any other woman you take up with, and if they tell me you screwed up, I’m going to find you again, whether you’re here in Pueblo or wherever you are, and when I do find you, punk, I’m going to gut you like a trout.  I think you can tell I don’t mind doing stuff like I just did to you.  I like it.  So don’t let me hear anything about you, OK?  And another thing.  If you see me walking down the sidewalk, cross to the other side.  I don’t want to smell you again.”

     I got up and noticed some flecks of his blood on my pants. “Shit!”  I gave him a solid kick to the ribs, not strong enough to break them, just enough so he would have a final memory.  I left him there moaning and went back to the front of the store, limping and wiping the blood off my hands with my handkerchief.  The woman was standing just inside the door looking out.  She was a small woman with extremely large breasts and she was way overdue for her dye job. 

     “You better get the truck and drive it around to the back of the store.  Your friend had an accident.”

     “Is he hurt?”

     “Oh yeah, he’s hurt, but he doesn’t need to go to the doctor or ER.  He’s not that hurt.  Just take him home and wash him up and give him a couple of days.  He’ll be OK.  Tell him I talked to you.  Tell him I told you that if he beats you again I’ll find him, and next time he will have to go to the ER.  And lady, you don’t need to put up with that crap, not from him or any man.  You’re too good for that.”

     She gave me a long, scared look, and then she grabbed her cart with the bags in it and hurried off to the truck.  I waited until she drove to the back so she wouldn’t see my car, then I left.  I didn’t even get my chicken.  I drove over to Collette’s and ordered takeout rigatoni with extra sausage, then I headed home.  My leg was hurting, I had bruised hands and I had blood on my new pants.  After I put peroxide on the blood spots, ate dinner and took a shower, I put on some Diana Krall, Chris Botti and yes, Sinatra.  I sat in my good chair, put my feet up and thought about the case, about Katrina, and what had happened at Safeway.  I asked myself, why did I get involved in this?  Like the Texans say, over and over again, I didn’t have a dog in this fight.  Will what I did make any difference anyway, or will that puddle of slime just beat her up worse next time?  Won’t he blame her for the beating I gave him?  And that brought up another question.  Was it true what I told that rat’s ass lying there on the ground?  Do I like to hurt people?  Do I enjoy it?  Is that the real reason Romero is turning into a lump of mold six feet under in a Seattle boneyard?  In the dimness of a room lighted only by a single lamp, my old friend Jim Beam and I thought about it for a long, long time.

 

Jerry Miller