Gumshoe Gorilla (14 page)

I jotted down the relevant facts in a quick e-mail and zapped it off to Jen, then checked my own messages. The usual collection of junk-mail, plus a note from my mechanic. Apparently, the part that my car had ordered had arrived and I should come in and have it installed. Soon. Something in my car's transmission was about to go.

I looked at the bill. Ouch. I guess it is convenient to have a car that can order its own repairs. Now, if I could just program it to check my bank balance first, and only break down when I can afford it.

After that I checked the e-mail boxes for a couple of the cover identities that I use from time to time. I'm not into undercover work the way that Jen is, but it's nice to have an alias or two to fall back on in a pinch. Which means that I need to do a little maintenance on them every once in a while. Cruise the web using their account, make an online purchase or two, download a video. Just to make sure that if someone runs a check on the account, they won't get back a blank report. Nothing spells "fake" like a person with no history.

Usually, my covers' mailboxes don't accumulate anything but generic spam, but lately some really interesting stuff had been turning up for the "Patrick McPherson" account. Jen had borrowed that identity a couple of weeks ago for one of her own cases. (Don't ask. Although I will say that she looked surprisingly convincing with the red side burns and goatee.) I don't know what the heck she'd done with that identity, but ever since then old Patrick has been getting some really unusual e-mail. This time around there was a sales pitch for a video of mating cats, an indecent proposal from a prison inmate in North Carolina, and a subscription offer for a necrophiliac porn site.

Note to self: get the full story from Jen on that one.

I finished going through the fake accounts and checked the time. It was a bit after midnight. I had to be up in less than six hours. I brushed my teeth, stripped down to my boxers, and crawled into bed. But I wasn't feeling tired yet. So I told Sherwin to turn on the TV and play an old episode of
Gumshoe Gorilla.

I hadn't watched the show in years. But I used to love it as a kid. It had been created after that remake of
Planet of the Apes
bombed in a major way, leaving the studio with a ton of leftover monkey makeup. It turns out that while everybody loves monkeys, nobody wanted to watch a movie about fascist monkeys in outer space.

I just wish I could have been at the meeting when somebody suggested the idea for the series.

"Hey, PI shows are in this year. Apes are in. So why not a PI show about an ape?"

I believe this is what Hollywood types call "high concept".

The premise of the show was that some scientist had genetically engineered an ape to give it human intelligence because... well, because the guy was a scientist and they do that sort of thing. The problem was, he hadn't thought about what would happen to the gorilla afterwards. I mean, with human intelligence it couldn't very well go back to swinging around a cage at the zoo with the other gorillas. And, of course, it could never fit in with human society. The only knowledge it had of human behavior came from the lab technicians. That, and watching old movies with the late night security guard, who happened to be a big Humphrey Bogart fan.

So one day this gorilla decides to leave the lab, take on the name "Monk Malone", move to LA, and open a detective agency. He even managed to get an office and a smart aleck receptionist named Shirley. And he went out every week on a new case, trying to understand this race that he would never belong to, trying to make a place for himself in a world that had no place for him.

I think that's what really hooked me as a kid. That whole "stranger in a strange land" thing. I was too young to realize that I was gay. But I could already sense that I was different. That I was never gonna fit into the straight-laced Baptist mold that everyone around me had been pressed from. Lord knows there were enough times when I felt like an alien, like the only one of my kind on this planet.

I watched the episode through to the end, and then finally started to drift off to sleep. I was just starting to doze when I heard someone jimmying the lock on my front door.

I slipped out of bed. I felt around on the floor for my jeans, but I couldn't find them in the dark. Darn it. My taser was still in the pocket.

I thought about turning on the lights, but I didn't want to lose the element of surprise. So I reached under my bed and fumbled around for something solid that I could use as a weapon. My fingers closed on what felt like a beer bottle. Good enough. I grabbed it and headed for the front door. I got there just as my mystery guest finally got the hang of the lock.

I pressed myself up against the wall. The door swung open, slowly. I waited, ready to give my visitor a good crack on the skull. And then...

And then a Cherokee warrior walked in carrying a stack of hat boxes.

This again. I flipped on the lights.

"Laughing Bear."

My stalker turned around.

"Oh, hey Drew! Sorry, didn't mean to wake you up."

He glanced at my raised hand.

"Expecting trouble?"

I followed his gaze. Apparently, I had been about to club him with a plastic bottle of Pepto Bismol.

"Commando Training," I explained. "I know five different ways to kill a man with one of these."

He laughed. A quiet chuckle. But somewhere down inside it I heard the "woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" of a cartoon tiger. I was letting myself get too low on sleep.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you to knock?" I asked.

"Sure. But you never answer when I do."

"Some people might take that as a hint."

He smiled and glanced down at my underwear.

"Nice boxers."

I went back to my bedroom and pulled on my jeans. By the time I got back Laughing Bear was dumping another armload of boxes on my living room floor. I thought about pulling out the taser and shooting him, but that would only be a temporary solution. A .44 magnum would be a more permanent one, but I wasn't that desperate. Yet. He was an intruder, and I could legally shoot him. But my landlord gets upset if there's more than one gunfight a year in the building. And I'd already used up my quota for 2035.

"Where do you want me to put this stuff?" he asked.

"In the dumpster out back."

He laughed.

"No," I said. "I'm serious. I don't want it."

He laughed again. This time I caught a split second glimpse of a black and orange tail, twitching in the air.

Waking dreams. I really needed to get back to sleep.

Laughing Bear went out to get more boxes. I considered locking the door behind him, but he'd just jimmy it open again. I sat on the couch and waited for him. Just my luck. A hunky guy turns up in my apartment at 1 AM, and all he wants to do is play dress up.

He came back with a big steamer trunk. He put it down on the floor and pulled out a deerskin dress. It was covered in elaborate blue beadwork. Must have taken someone hundreds of hours to make.

"You want to try it on?" he asked.

I wanted to sock him in the jaw. But I repressed the urge. I should cut the guy a little slack. After all, the guy did save my life once.

I'd gotten myself into a real jam with the Christian Militia last year, and Laughing Bear had pulled me out of it. It's a long, complicated story involving an electric fence and some angry guys with guns and my partner's missing cat... well, like I said, it's a long story. But by the end of it Laughing Bear's wife was dead. She'd been some sort of holy drag queen. The Cherokee are into that kind of crazy shit. And I'd inherited all her stuff.

"Look, Laughing Bear, I'm really not into the whole dressing up like a woman thing. You need to find someone else to play this game with."

He just grinned and tried to hand me the dress.

"Come on Drew, she left it to you."

Figures. I finally get named in a will, and it's by someone with no bank account.

"Laughing Bear, try to listen to what I'm saying. First off, I don't wear women's clothing. Second, I don't have room for all this stuff. Third, even if by some miracle I decided that I wanted to play Pocahontas with you, the fact is that your dead wife was an anorexic little dwarf, and I would never be able to fit into that dress, anyway."

Laughing Bear looked thoughtful for a moment. Maybe I was finally getting through to him. Maybe he would finally take all this stuff away and leave me alone.

He reached into the trunk and got out a pair of blue beaded moccasins.

"Did I mention that it comes with matching shoes?"

I slammed my fists against the wall.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!"

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"YES!" I shouted. "YOU! YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY, CERTIFIABLY, INSANE!"

My upstairs neighbor started pounding on the ceiling for me to shut up, but I was past caring.

"YOU JUST DON'T GET IT, DO YOU? I HAVE TRIED TO BE NICE ABOUT THIS BUT..."

At this point, my phone rang, breaking my rhythm. I would have ignored it, but my phone isn't supposed to ring at this time of the night. Anything that comes in this late should go straight to my voicemail, unless it comes in with my priority code.

And only two people know that code.

I pulled the phone out of my pocket.

"What?" I spat into the receiver.

"Drew?" said the voice on the other end. It was Daniel. He sounded upset.

"What's wrong?"

"Um... I'm kinda in jail."

Make that very upset. He sounded like he was about to cry.

"Jail?" I asked.

It took me a few seconds to process that. Daniel in jail? Sure, he was a hustler, but he wasn't one of the streetwalkers who gets busted on a regular basis. Daniel worked for one of those discreet phone services that advertises in the back of magazines. They usually don't cause any trouble, so vice pretty much ignores them. Well, except for election years, when the mayor wants to rack up some easy busts so he can look tough on crime. But the agencies shut down to new clients during that season.

"Drew? Are you there?"

"Yeah."

I knew better than to ask why he was there. Phone calls from holding are recorded, and his explanation might incriminate him.

"Which facility are you in? Metro Detention?"

"Uh... I'm not sure."

"Just a second."

I checked the caller ID. The call was coming from Metro.

"Got it. Have they assigned you bail yet?"

"No. This was my first phone call."

"OK. Sit tight. I'm on the way. In the meantime, don't talk to anyone unless they give you my name. I mean it-- Not a word. No phone calls to friends. No idle chitchat with the other prisoners."

I paused.

"And no flirting with the guards either."