Taco Noir (13 page)

              “I saw the gun,” she said, cutting right to the heart of the matter. “Are you a cop?”

              “I’m a private detective,” I told her. “I was asked to look in and make sure that no one is disgracing the family name.”

              “Who would do that?” she slurred, throwing her arms open and scaring off her neighbors with a lit cigarette. Despite the law of gravity, the delicate flower wobbled in her bar stool but stayed upright. “The only thing that could make this night better was if you wouldn’t let me drink by myself.” I looked at the sea of men waiting to take my seat as soon as I vacated it, and thought she wasn’t a woman destined to be alone for long.

              As if by magic, a champagne flute appeared on the table in front of me, and young Kate filled it for me, emptying the bottle in the process. Without looking she dropped the bottle behind her, where it landed on a pile of its dead confederates. Kate took a drag of her cigarette, and motioned to a waiter at the same time. From somewhere under the table I felt a hand grip my thigh.

              I hoped it was Kate, but no matter who it was, it wasn’t good.

              “I’m here on behalf of a friend,” I told Kate, prying her fingers from my leg. “He’s concerned that you might be getting yourself into trouble.”  If this was the woman that Miguel had fallen in love with, it was he who was looking for trouble.

              “So you’re sorta like Cyrano Dewatsis?” she said, draining her glass to make room for the limited amount of bubbly that wasn’t already inside her.

              “Er, yeah, exactly like that,” I said. Something wasn’t adding up. The woman across the table from me, the one with the wooden leg, didn’t jibe with the innocent kid that Miguel described to me. Miguel just wasn’t that naive. I sipped my champagne as she gulped hers, asked a few more questions, and listened to the musical stylings of one of the Dorsey brothers.

              Kate Worthington told me her life’s story, a story mostly punctuated with men. As she went into detail about her years abroad, I lost count of the loves of her life, but that was probably my fault. I only had ten fingers.

              “I’m sure it’s been a full and rich journey,” I told young Kate, “But where does Miguel come in?”

              “Who?” Kate asked, her eyelids beginning to sag.

              “Miguel Ramirez,” I told the young drunk. “Tall, dark and weighs about one fifty nothing?” The alcohol haze continued to cloud her eyes. She still had no idea what I was talking about.

              “Dark hair, dark eyes, and equally dark heart?” I asked. “He knows all, tells all? Has a way with a crystal ball?” I still saw no recollection. “Your boyfriend?”

              “Oh, Kandu!” she said with a squeal. “He’s absolutely yummy!” Her appearance took a conspiratorial look, and for the briefest of moments, she might have passed for sober.

              “He’s my spiritual advisor,” she slurred. “I don’t make a move without him.”

              “So you’re not his girlfriend?” I asked.

              “Girlfriend?” she said with a gasp that expelled a small cloud of champagne. “For God’s sake, the man is a fortune teller! I wouldn’t date a fortune teller any more than I would…”

“A private eye?” I suggested.

“Exactly!” replied Kate. “It would be like dating the town drunk!” I looked down to see that Kate had drained her latest flute of bubbly. I decided to let the town drunk crack pass.

“Besides,” she said, motioning for the river of champagne to flow once again. “Daddy would cut me off if I were to take up with someone so …”

“Interesting?” I suggested.

“Pedestrian,” she said.

              “Perish the thought,” I said, rising from the table. My chair hadn’t even cooled before another able young body filled it. I gave a wave to Kate, but she was too busy drinking in her next companion.

I left the Pretty Kitty Night Club and grabbed a cab. Here in the well-lit, well-monied streets of uptown, cabs were easy to get. When I told the cabbie where I wanted to go, he seemed disappointed. Once he got to the suburbs, there were no more fares to be had. While the cabbie drove, I had time to sit back and add up what Katie and Miguel had told me. The math didn’t work, but I had time, the road, and a tight-lipped cabbie in my favor, so by the time I got to Miguel’s house I was able to fudge the equations.

              I let myself into the yard, where the hen lay in wait. She attacked my shins in earnest, but this time I wasn’t in the mood. I already had a few bandages on my calves from our earlier meeting and this time I was ready for little Lulu. I took care of the pugnacious bird and rang Miguel’s doorbell.

              “Ah, my friend, come in,” said Miguel, bowing and bidding me welcome with a wave of his hand. I sat down at the same round table that the spirits levitated earlier. Miguel turned his back and dug the booze bottle and glasses out of his hidey-hole and poured us a couple of drinks. We clinked our glasses together once again and drank.

              “I have awaited your return with bated breath. So what were you able to find out about my beloved?”

“I found out that Kate can drink any sailor in the fleet under the table, she has absolutely no sense of sarcasm, and that her fiancé is a no good, lying, piece of….”

“Easy, there gumshoe,” said Miguel, holding up his hands in defense. “I can hear you, after all.”

“Maybe, but you aren’t her boyfriend.” I said, tossing back the last of the booze. “She doesn’t even have one.”

“What makes you say that, hombre?”

“Because I have a brain in my head and occasionally I use it.”

Miguel had been running the Kandu scam in town for a while, but there was only so much info a false fakir could divine using luck, charm, or cheap booze, and in the mystical world of the here-after, inside information was the coin of the realm. He had used his skill to find out what he could about his mark, hook them on his fortune-telling grift, and then reel them into his parlor. Once there, Dear Uncle Whatziz would speak to the mark through Miguel, and the spirits would instruct the bereaved to start writing checks. When the information stopped, Kandu would skip town.

Miguel had run his scam for a while now, making it tick with clockwork precision. He was on the verge of blowing town when he met Kate Worthington and her all-star trust fund. She was too good to pass up, but he had already been running the Kandu grift thin and had to blow before his past caught up to him. In order to do this and reel in Kate, he needed to dig up everything he could on her in a jiffy. That was where I came in.

“And I’m not giving you anything,” I told the smarmy conman.

“Beg your pardon?” asked Miguel, pausing in mid-pour.

“I’m not going to let you get one over on this kid,” I said, taking the shot glass and downing what was there before the grifter had a chance to pour it back in the bottle. “I’m not going to help you run your scam on the Worthington girl so that you can wad up a towel on your head and milk her for her fortune.”

“It is called a turban, you cut-rate gumshoe,” Miguel hissed at me. He quickly grabbed the shot glass from my hand and tossed it to the floor, shattering it into pieces. “And Kate Worthington is no saint! When did you become a boy scout?”

“Not a boy scout,” I told him. “I just feel for the little moron. I would rather see her throw away her fortune the old fashioned way than see you scam it out from under her.”

“Fine,” said Miguel, smoothing his jacket and opening his door for me. I turned and walked through his yard. He followed me out. “Just remember we used to be friends. That’s over!”

I turned quickly and fixed Miguel hard in the eye. He stepped back, half expecting me to paste him one.

“That’s hardly the Kandu attitude,” I said, tipping my hat and stepping through the gate. I locked it behind me and walked down the street. Behind me I could hear Miguel calling for Lulu.

It seemed that his fortunes, as well as his hen, had escaped him.

GRIFTER’S TACOS DE POLLO

2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken thighs, diced

1/3 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons tequila

2 cloves garlic (minced)

1 small minced onion

1 tablespoon paprika

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons cilantro

Corn tortillas

1 cup Queso Blanco, shredded

• Put the first nine ingredients in a bowl and park it overnight in the icebox. The next day pull the bowl out and let it rest until it reaches room temperature, about ten minutes.
  

• Heat a skillet over medium heat and spread out the chicken in the skillet, stirring well and heating until well cooked.
  

• Spoon the chicken over a couple of warm tortillas, top with the shredded cheese, and enjoy them in a peaceful, hen-free environment.
  

THE CASE OF THE HIGH STAKES

Where a young detective is both seasoned and tenderized

I closed my office door behind me carefully and turned off the lights as I made my way to my desk as best I could. I put down the package I had gotten on my way over and tore open the butcher’s paper and twine that bound it. Inside was one of the leanest, trimmest, well-marbled prime cuts of beef that had ever graced Milton’s Butcher Shop around the corner. I gazed at it briefly in awe before I leaned my head backwards and slapped the steak on my swelling, discolored eye.

              Earlier in the week I had taken the case of one Delores Melrose. Delores’ husband Earl owned the largest and most successful sporting goods shop in the city, creatively named Melrose Sports. According to Delores, Earl spent around fifty hours a week turning the once small mom-and-pop into a thriving purveyor of jump ropes and dumbbells. At least that was the story he was peddling to Delores.

              In reality, Earl was giving his cardio-pulmonary system a brisk workout with his young, blonde secretary. The secretary in question, one Eloise Johnson, had been employed at Melrose Sports for well over three months and, unless pictures did lie, was quite a specimen herself. Delores suspected that the buxom Miss Johnson, whom Earl appeared to replace every three months with an equally buxom Miss Johnson, was having a little bit of something with her husband Earl.

              Delores had given me a laundry list of Earl’s favorite hideaways, and the amount of detail she put into the list was staggering. So much detail that it caused me to question exactly how Delores had landed the big, muscular fish in the first place. Delores wasn’t paying me to speculate on her sporting pursuits, so I let them be and focused on her husband and Miss Johnson. Delores had laid out where he liked to eat, his favorite watering holes, and even the night clubs he might happen to frequent during the odd business trips. She gave me all the information the intrepid investigator might need to snap a few pictures of her husband and his secretary taking some informal dictation. Delores provided me with every bit of information on her husband that I might need to wrap up this case but one.

              She didn’t tell me that Earl had been a Golden Gloves Champ in his Navy days.

              The steak still felt cool on my eye, and I let out a long breath. After Earl had mopped up the floor with yours truly, his wife Delores had entered stage right and had it out with Miss Johnson, handing the young blonde her pink slip along with a handful of dyed roots in the way of severance.  Eloise saw the better part of valor and got out while the getting was good, leaving Earl and Delores to have it out while I spent some quality time giving the sidewalk close inspection. The pair fought like cats and dogs before quickly and rather passionately making up. They stepped over my prone body as they made their way home, arm in arm, sharing laughter and forgiveness.

              At least that’s how the beat cop who woke me up described the situation. From there I made it to the butcher’s shop, forked over a few bucks for medicinal steak, and made my way to my office. When I examined my eye in the mirror, I made a mental note to add the cost of the steak to my bill, and hope that it wasn’t Mr. Melrose opening the mail that day.

              I laid my aching head on my office couch and watched the shadows grow long. That’s the way it looked through my one good eye. After a while the aspirin kicked in and my head settled into a more manageable throbbing. I settled down into a long and well-deserved sleep.

              A knock on my door came, right on cue.

              “Go away,” I told the heavy knuckles. The words pounded in my head almost as much as the knocking.

              “I’m looking for a detective,” said a distinctly feminine voice. It was the kind of throaty, seductive voice that meant doom for guys like me, but usually the kind of doom they went to with a grin from ear to ear.

              “He’s retired,” I groaned. “He opened up a bar on the beach in Key West. The kind that serves drinks with those little umbrellas.” The kind of place where detectives do not get routinely punched in the face, I mumbled to myself. I heard the creak of the door and sighed. Guys who don’t lock the doors to their office when they lie down probably deserve to get punched in the face.

              “Are you all right?” asked the throaty voice.  I opened my one good eye to see a pair of very expensive pair of high heels. The heels were attached to a pair of legs that went on for as long as my good eye could see. The whole package was enough to make me sit up and take notice.

              “Couldn’t be better,” I said as I tossed the steak into the wrapper that sat on my desk and swept the whole package into my top drawer, right on top of my revolver. I stepped over to the guest side of my desk and pulled out a chair for the lady. She sat and I took my seat opposite her behind my desk. She was a red-headed knockout, wearing a tight baby-blue dress that did its level best to keep up with her. I asked her how I could help her and hoped that she took my staring to mean that I was a particularly observant sleuth.