Over in the Beware of this Woman! thread in Great Debates, Billdo had a great line that I just can’t get out of the empty space between my ears. I think it is a great opening line for a book. It sounds like a Sam Spade Monologe, too me.
Take it away…
I’m not sure whether he was your A-No.1 over-the-top extreme lord high poo-bah-of-the-assholes type asshole, or he was one of your more average garden-variety assholes, but he obviously was an asshole of some sort.
" I need help Mr. Spade, I’m in trouble deep"
Yeah, he was in trouble alright. A private dick doesn’t raech my age in one piece without learning to spot an in-trouble A-No.1 over-the-top-extreme lord-high poo-bah of the assholes type asshole in a crowd, even if it is a crowd full of your more average garden-variety assholes.
“It’ll cost ya’. A fin now, and a fin a week plus expenses…”
“Thats mighty expensive.”
Just my luck I thought. A cheap in-trouble A-No.1 over-the-top extreme lord high poo-bah-of-the-assholes type asshole (cheaper than you average garden-variety cheap assholes).
“Those are my rates. You want my help, you pay my price.”
He got a look on his face. I’d seen that look before on the faces of countless A-No.1 over-the-top extreme lord high poo-bah-of-the-assholes type assholes, and on your more average garden-variety assholes, so I still didn’t have him pegged.
“I’ll pay. But stay away from the dames while your on my dime.”
He obviously knew me.
He says he’d been to a dame dick before me. Says she came highly recommended.
“Feh. The problem with 'dis dame is, she drink coffee. She gotta pee. Youse men, you can pee in a jelly jar! She gotta finda joint wit a clean john! Such is the problem wit surveillance!”
Asshole, I thought. “Don’t change the subject.”
I lit a smoke and reclined in my chair. He lingered a bit and then sat down across the desk from me. He knew who was running this show.
“Now,” I continued. “Exactly what sort of trouble are we talking about here?”
He didn’t look at me. I could see his palms sweating. “The worst kind, mister,” he croaked. “Murder.”
“Murder, eh. May I ask who’s murder?”
“Mine if you don’t help me. Someones after me…”
I looked deep into his cold grey in-trouble over-the-top extreme lord high poo-bah-of-the-assholes type dead grey asshole eyes. They were greyer and deader then any of the many garden-variety dead grey asshole eyes I’d seen recently, and I knew he was serious.
“I’m listening.” I said…
As he opened his mouth to tell me, I saw a bit of red on his shirt that started to expand. There was also the noise of glass breaking. I sat there and realized that this guy wasn’t going to be giving me any answers ever. I ran to the door to see who might have shot my client. But all I heard was the sound of someone running away.
I drew a deep drag on my fag and exhaled slowly, the wisps of smoke making patterns against the water stained walls of my basement office.
“Murder.” I repeated slowly.
He nodded, his voice an apparent fatality as well. His eyes shifted back and forth, and I could tell he was in a bind.
A big bind.
“Okay. I’ll take you on.” I said finally. He released his breath in a sudden rush and I rewarded him with one of my rare half-smiles.
Author’s Note: My response was to DooWahDiddy’s post.
EDITOR!! WE NEED AN EDITOR!!
Leave it in my inbox; I’ll get back to you in six to eight weeks. Don’t call.
Uke
Well, if someone is running away, what else is there left for a red-blooded all-american boy to do but chase him? I pounded down the fire stairwell (closer than the main staircase), but when I reached the lobby, it was empty except for Rupert sleeping as usual behind the newsstand, and a lady trying to wake him up for a pack of Chesterfields.
She seemed a little out of breath, so I approached her on the off chance. “Hello Miss”, I said, trying to sound threatening, “did you someone just run down the stairs?”
Her big brown eyes and dimples did their best to soften me up. “No, I just walked in the front!” She was wearing brown lipstick, so I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I wasn’t going to let her go that easily, either.
Who ever it was that killed my almost client was boxed in. There was only one door into the building he went into and I wasn’t going to run no fool’s errand running up and down the twelve flights of stairs in that rat trap. I ain’t no stupid dick.
I put two bits for the pack of Lucky Strikes on the counter of the newstand for Rupert and took a position leaning against the lamp post on the corner, biding my time. Waiting for someone suspicious to come out. I wouldn’t know what he looked like, but I would be able to smell his fear. Fear of being caught.
McTavish walked by, whistling a nameless tune, twirling his night stick with absentmindedness expertise. As we shared a fag, I told him about my almost client and how he might want to get a crew over to my office to clean things up a bit before they started to stink.
Who ever it was that killed my almost client was boxed in. There was only one door into the building he went into and I wasn’t going to run no fool’s errand running up and down the twelve flights of stairs in that rat trap. I ain’t no stupid dick.
I put two bits for the pack of Lucky Strikes on the counter of the newstand for Rupert and took a position leaning against the lamp post on the corner, biding my time. Waiting for someone suspicious to come out. I wouldn’t know what he looked like, but I would be able to smell his fear. Fear of being caught.
McTavish walked by, whistling a nameless tune, twirling his night stick with absentmindedness expertise. As we shared a fag, I told him about my almost client and how he might want to get a crew over to my office to clean things up a bit before they started to stink.
Who ever it was that killed my almost client was boxed in. There was only one door into the building he went into and I wasn’t going to run no fool’s errand running up and down the twelve flights of stairs in that rat trap. I ain’t no stupid dick.
I put two bits for the pack of Lucky Strikes on the counter of the newstand for Rupert and took a position leaning against the lamp post on the corner, biding my time. Waiting for someone suspicious to come out. I wouldn’t know what he looked like, but I would be able to smell his fear. Fear of being caught.
McTavish walked by, whistling a nameless tune, twirling his night stick with absentmindedness expertise. As we shared a fag, I told him about my almost client and how he might want to get a crew over to my office to clean things up a bit before they started to stink.
It started to rain, but I paid no attention to it. I couldn’t stop thinking about the dame with the brown lipstick.
I gave her a pack of Chesterfields. Rupert would never miss them. Then I gave her my card. the good one with my real number on it.
“Just in case you ever need help finding things.”
She tossed her hair. She was that kind of woman. She batted her eyes at me.
“What makes you think I’m the kind of woman who loses things. Or do you think I’ve lost someone?”
“A dame like you don’t lose people, you throw them away like day old salami sandwiches from Morrie’s deli. Someone els alwaus picks them up.”
A shocked expression flashed across her face. Then she broke like a cheap watch.
“Alright, you’ve got me. You’ve got me good. I’m in trouble. I think someones going to murder my boyfriend. He’s your A-No.1 over-the-top extreme lord high poo-bah-of-the-asshole stype asshole, but he loves me better than your more average garden-variety asshole. and believe me mister, I know assholes.”
What could I do. I kissed her.
Note–I swear Shirley Ujust’s last post wasn’t there when I wrote my last stuff. We do need an editor! Sorry about the break in continuity.
{casting his keen editorial eye over the preceding posts}
I like Shirley’s material a lot…she seems to have been influenced by Alain Robbe-Grillet more than by Dashiell Hammett…
Uke
Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry for the multi-posts. My computer locked up on me and naturally I kept hitting enter. After I crt/alt/del’ed to get out of the mess, I couldn’t get back into SDMB. It was a nightmare. I thought my brilliant paragraph was lost forever.
Thanks Ike. I’ve never read Grillet. But I did have a grilled cheese samich for lunch 
McTavish came out of the building, looking like a man who’s just lost his last cent at the dog track. “This ain’t april fool’s, and I don’t think you’re funny, Mike,” he said.
“Hell, you wouldn’t laugh at an all-day Buster Keaton movie marathon, but what’s your grief this time?”
“Well, that client of yours, that was supposed to be nice and dead in your office? He must have gotten up and walked away, because he only thing I saw up there was cheap furniture and an empty bottle of gin.”
I was going to make a crack about Jesus rising up from the dead, but then I remembered that McTavish went to church every Sunday with his shoes shined and a clean suit, and his sense of humour was even worse when it came to religion. So I laughed instead, and said “Sorry Pat, I must have been dreaming or something.” Pat gave me a dirty look, like a father sizing up his daughter’s first date. “I know you’re always trying to pull a fast one, Mike, but the chief is getting tired of your little shenanigans. I would be a little more careful if I were you.” “Say hi to the wife” I called out as he walked away, but he ignored me. There’s another guy who wouldn’t be sending me a birthday present.
Where could my ex-client have gone? He sure didn’t come out the front, and even Rupert wouldn’t have missed six pallbearers sneaking a corpse out the back. I decided to go back in and disturb Rupert’s beauty sleep anyway. He simpered at me over the pages of his girlie magazine. “Sorry Mr. Spade, I haven’t seen anyone in the lobby except McTavish and you, when you were taking to Betsy.” “Who’s Betsy?” “That girl that you were talking to, with the brown lipstick.” “You know her?” I asked, flipping him a dollar.
Rupert’s amnesia suddenly disappeared.
" Betsy. Yeah, she works over at the Top Hat in the review they got there. Sings like a bird, she does."
If I didn’t know better old Rupert had a thing for this Betsy. Any information he gave me would be rose colored, but at least it was honest. " What’s her story?"
The man shrugged his stooped shoulders, " The same as everyone else. Came from a good family, the upper East Side, from what I hear.Lost everything in the Crash. Her Pa left shortly after, and her Ma ended up in an asylum a couple years later. Betsy’s earns her keep singin’. It pays the bills for her and her three younger sisters."
Yeah, that’s the same ol,same ol that we’ve all been through. I stubbed out my smoke under my heel and asked one more question.The rain was starting to come down hard.
“Does she have a sweetheart?”
Rupert shook his head, " Not dat I know of, but Sweet Louie is keen on her, but she ain’t havin’ any part of it."
Turning to walk down to the place where Betsy worked, I thought about the Top Hat. Yeah, I knew the place. Smoky dark lighting, gin soaked patrons spilling their guts to any poor slob who’d have a listen and long-legged nightingales on the stage.
I knew it well. Hadn’t been there in awhile. I was giving myself a break from long legged nightingale’s.They had a way of making a man’s head swim while they grabbed at his wallet before he went under for the third time. Funny how what you try to stay away from keeps reeling you back in.