NICE AIN'T ENOUGH AND CUTE DON'T COUNT, A Psychic Eye Novel by E.J. Daniel
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Chapter One
A GRAVE ERROR?
In my business there aren't many occasions when the adjective 'nice' gets much usage. There aren't nice murderers or nice wife-beaters or nice child-molesters . I'm forty-five years old, and I'm tired. Tired of looking at the maggoty underbelly of humanity. Tired. Beat to shit. I'm a private investigator with no private life. I'd like to meet one nice person, if anyone still exists who meets that description.
I exposed the innards of my Subway sandwich and attacked it with my fighting knife. They never listen when I tell them, 'light on the mustard and mayo'. In life-threatening situations (which the mayo was not), it takes special courage, personal strength and commitment to deploy a knife because it doesn't have the distance and impersonality of projectiles. As a knife user, I needed to know a great deal about strike points, human anatomy, and human physiology in order to achieve the desired result in defending myself. It takes enormous skill and a strong stomach to proceed with a blade. I've never liked the sight of blood, but I've had to put that aversion away on more than a few occasions.
I heard someone enter my outer office. Shit. I shoulda locked the door. Even my lunch is plagued with intruders infringing on my digestion, trespassing on my feast, muscling into my moments of solitude. She ambled in without even bothering to knock. Nice. Very nice. Very, very nice.
Before I could intercept it, my tongue cobra'd out and sucked off a vagrant
glob of mustard which was lodged in my mustache. She squinted at me. I guess she didn't find my snake a turn-on. She sat down and allowed me to size her up. About five eleven (before sitting), blond hair (probably L'Oreal), and blue eyes turning greyish with age, which I judged to be about thirty. Anyway, less than thirty-five. Expensively underdressed. Make that understated. Nice, as I said. Evidence of money.
I still had the Subway between my jaws, so she introduced the topic. "I want you to find my husband," she said. Way cool for someone who'd misplaced her spouse.
"When did you lose him?" Another squint.
"Last night he didn't come home," she said. "He was due home at six. When it got to be five after six, I knew something was wrong."
Curious. Not much time had elapsed. A bit soon for her to think of her husband as 'missing'. That set off a silent alarm from my most distant trip wire."What time does he usually come home?" I took out a pad of paper and began to take notes.
"Six or six-o-one. He never varies. When it got to be ten after six, I called his office, the hospitals, the CHP, the Police, and the Sheriff."
"Did you file a Missing Person Report?"
"They won't do anything for at least forty-eight hours. I've already told you I
knew something was wrong by five after six."
What's wrong with this picture?" Can you think of any reason your husband might have not to come home yesterday at his usual time?"
"If I knew that, would I bother with a private dick?" She squinted at me with
unconcealed hostility. I let that sluice off like water off the proverbial duck. I've gotten waterproof, if not bulletproof after years in this game.
"Does your husband have any ailments?" I asked, pen poised.
"Unfortunately not. He's a very healthy fifty-two."
She squinted at me, and I could sense she was making a comparison. Okay, so I look a little rough. I'm trying to grow a beard and it's a little stubbly at the moment, but when it gets a little longer, it's gonna be 'killer'. That's what my secretary, Karma, says. She, also, left a package of For Men Only beard dye on my desk yesterday, wordlessly letting me know what I already could see: my beard was growing in white. (Karma's name is actually Carmen. From the wisdom of her sixty-seven-I-don't-take-shit-from-nobody-years, she told me that she changed it in the belief that my secretary should have a name like Karma to express compatibility with what she had observed were my demonstrated metaphysical talents.) "For an old fart, she said, "I am very 'new age'."
Back to business, I asked the nameless woman who had interrupted my
Subway, "Does your husband have any enemies?"
"Not that I know of. Except for me. I hate the sucking son-of-a-bitch."
Huh? Mixed messages. "Isn't divorce an option under those circumstances?" I asked, sounding like a wimped-out marriage counselor.
"Not if you can't find him. But anyway, it's not even a remote possibility. He'd make sure I was penniless, and he'd take the kids away from me."
"He can't do that. Divorce courts look at the situation very carefully these days and try to be fair."
She looked at me with disbelief, "Where have you been? Them what has the dough, calls the tune."
Now that got my attention. I don't work for nothing. "How are you planning to pay my fee?" I asked, moving in a straight line to the bottom line.
"I do have a small checking account. Stanley always makes sure I have
about four thousand. Not enough to run away. But enough to make sure I look
nice."
Four thousand. I rapidly calculated how long and how intensive a search I
could make for Stanley on four grand. Not overly long or intense. Then there
was the guilt of taking all her money and leaving her and the kids (who knows
how many) destitute in a homeless shelter, if Stanley wasn't found. Moral
compunction demanded that I fill her in.
"In the P.I. biz," I said, "the money pays for the investigator's best efforts, which may or may not be the client's desired result. That is to say, there are no
guarantees I will find your husband. There are some people who disappear and
are never found." (I didn't mention Jimmy Hoffa.)
She seemed to nod in understanding. Good. I got over that hurdle.
"Does Stanley have insurance?" I probed.
"Of course. For the Jag, the Range Rover, the boat, the house, the business, but he didn't believe in life insurance. The bastard knew I'd be too tempted to slit his throat if I were his beneficiary."
"Yes, I see." Why did she want him back? I asked her that.
"Have I made a grave error? Don't you get it? At least if Stanley's alive, the
kids and I have a roof over our heads and food."
Blanche elaborated. As it turned out, the roof was a house, if it's still called
that when it's thirty thousand square feet in the toniest neighborhood. I guessed
their menu was take-out from some gourmet grocery. Make that delivery. I
couldn't see Blanche grocery shopping. That was her name: Blanche Vorace.
(Did I tell you she had pale skin?) Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Vorace. I'd heard that
somewhere. Blanche gave me a two thousand dollar retainer (half her assets, if I believed her sad story) and a kind of curriculum vitae of her husband. Blanche must be a Virgo, I thought. My Mother made lists like that. Well, not exactly like that. My Father never went missing, but you get the point.
I scanned Blanche's list. In my experience, such compilations are more often than not, incomplete. After a careful perusal, what ain't there, what's
conspicuously absent is often a clue. "I'm going to need a recent picture of your husband," I said.
"Oh. Of course." Blanche seemed to be thrown off-center by her failure to
have included the obvious.
"In the interest of being thorough, I'll have to ask some questions you might find offensive."
Blanche blanched a little. Good. She had something to hide. Secrets. As we all do.
"This isn't a judgment-call on your life, Mrs. Vorace. Be patient here. I have tough questions to ask you. If you want me to do a good job, and you want your money’s worth, you've gotta trust me." She relaxed a little and looked slightly less grim. Like AFTER the dentist gives you the novocaine."What exactly is your husband's business?"
"Imports and exports." (That was succinct.)
I tapped my pen, waiting for an elaboration which was sure to follow. It didn't. "Of?" (I could be equally breviloquent.)
Blanche shrugged. "I really don't know. It was his business. My business
was taking care of the house and kids."
"Are there any personal relationships that you or your husband have which
might have caused a problem in your marriage?" (How was that for tact?)
"I can only speak for myself. No." (I expected her to recoil at my query, but,
in fact, she was matter-of-fact.)
"Was Stanley having any financial problems?"
"I don't know."
"Would it be possible for me to review his income tax returns and business
files?"
Blanche seemed hesitant. "Is that really necessary? I mean, he might have
just taken the Range Rover for a drive up the coast. He'd be pissed off if I
allowed someone to paw through his business records. Can't you work with
what I've given you?" Blanche gestured to the list in front of me.
We'd reached a road-block. I wasn't just someone. I was the someone she'd hired to find her missing husband. The client giveth. The client taketh away.
"Tell you what, I'll go over what I have so far. If I need anything else, I'll call
you."
Blanche stood up indicating she, for one, was finished. I stood as well, to
escort her to the door in a gentlemanly fashion. My parting shot was, "Are there any people who know you or your husband or your kids who have inappropriately insinuated themselves in your life?"
"No." (Just no.)
One more shot, "Does your husband have any lawsuits pending?"
"No." (If she's so out of touch with his business, how could she be so sure?)
And another quick one as we reached the outside door, "Does Mr. Vorace
have a criminal record or are there any charges or investigations pending?" (I
was ready to duck.)
Blanche gave me that squint again and threw me a verbal punch, "My
husband is an upstanding member of the community."
I thought for a moment she was going to rip the case out of my hands,
but she simply left with her own parting shot, "Call me when you find the
bastard," as if I had everything I needed to know about Stanley Vorace. Not by
a long-shot. But then, I'm the P.I. I know what I need to know.
As I was studying the facts of Stanley's life as seen through his wife's filter
and her somewhat guarded replies to my questions, Karma returned from lunch.
She brought me a piece of hot-apple-crumb pie. As she unwrapped it, she said
she pre-cognited (her word, not mine) that I'd kill for this dessert. When I told
her about the woman who had slipped through the front office which she
(Karma) had left unlocked, she told me I was a dumb fuck. Everybody knew
who Stanley Vorace was. Last on Blanche's list, I saw that Stan was on the
board of the local art museum. I could've seen his name or his picture in the
society column if I didn't usually turn directly to the sports page. Furthermore,
his import-export business, Thalassic Marine, meant dick to me. (The closest I
come to imported goods is Pier 1.) On second thought, "Thalassic Marine" was
redundant. Stanley didn't strike me as a person who would be illiterate. Then
again, maybe he just liked the sound of it.
"Blanche and Stanley," Karma said and passed me a fork. She smirked,
"Streetcar Named Desire."
"Go burn some incense," I told her, "And check your shocks."
"Chakras," she corrected me and demonstrated the locations of same on her(fully-clothed) body. "So was there a Stella?"
I examined the list Blanche left and the answers I had extracted, "Not that I
can see." I had to assume, at this point, that the information was correct and
that Blanche actually did want her husband to be found even if he was a son-of-a-bitch. "Stanley's first wife was named Claire."
"Oh shit," Karma sighed. "I was visualizing Stanley standing at the foot of
the staircase like Brando yelling: 'Stella!'. What happened to Claire?"
"Old monkey." I said.
Karma wrinkled her six-decade-old forehead. "Old monkey?"
"Yep. Claire got to the dreaded forty and old Stanley told her to fuck off and
got himself a new monkey, as it were."
Connecting the dots, Karma said, "A monkey called Blanche...as it were."
"And Claire: A Streetcar Named Retired. So Stan married Blanche, had two
kids, and lived happily ever after until he evaporated yesterday evening."
Karma removed the plate and fork and posed in that inimitable way she has
when she's about to delve into her philosophy of life and share it with me. "I
wanna puke," she said. "Guy marries and has his first family which he totally
ignores and lets his wife raise while he pursues the important stuff like wealth
and power. Then one day he looks over at his wife and sees her buns have
sagged. Here he is, a lion of industry, with a spouse whose skin is losing it's
snap. He realizes this is a disaster, and if he could only get a younger
woman, he'd get his snap back (which he's surreptitiously checked in the
shower.) Then he finds the replacement before he dumps wife-number-one and
leaves her to raise the kids which he knows she's good at. Guilt-free, he marries
number two, has a second lot of kids and fawns all over them. Coochie-coo."
"Like you said, 'Puke'. However, be that as it may, we don't know what kind
of relationship Stanley had with Claire, if they had kids, or if anyone close
decided to send him to another level of unconsciousness."
"You think he's dead?" Karma gasped.
"My intuition hasn't kicked in yet. Give me a little time, here. Hold my calls." I stood up. "I'm getting a distinct message right at this moment. An urgent message. If anyone needs me, I'll be on the crapper."
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