The Gumshoe Diaries (23 page)

****

(“I hear a very gentle sound Very near yet very far
Very soft yeah very clear Come today come today…”)…The
Doors…1967

Chapter Thirty-two

LVMPD…Evidence Room…Tuesday, Feb 24,
2009…9:00pm

The computer lab had been a colossal waste of
my time. Apparently this precinct could not afford competent help?
Rather shocking in a city of this size. However, Las Vegas was not
exactly a metropolis, not by any standard. It was in fact an over
grown amusement park for the adult sycophant population of the
United States of America
. Still, given the obscene amount of
capital that is generated here, fleecing millions of easily
entertained rubes out of their hard earned cash with false hope for
their shallow dreams, one might have hoped for a better showing by
the City Fathers and Civil Leadership,
no
? Perhaps not,
after all why should one spend large sums preventing crimes when
one is busy committing crimes? Par for the course I suppose for the
New Age Empire, sadly headed for the same fate as the old Romans,
extinction by proxy, courtesy their cancerous addiction to self
absorption.
America
, I have no pity for her, not after what
she did to my home, my beautiful country. Fuck them all, what do I
care? They are upon what I feed now!

Ah, here we are; the fabled evidence room. I
have often wondered what one of these looked like. I must admit,
over the years, during my frequent stays in this hunting ground, I
have fallen under the spell of the quaint television dramas
depicting detectives working crime scenes or profiling serial
killers. What rubbish these writers droll out with appalling
regularity! They merely sensationalize the gore of so many
murderous acts, concentrating mainly on who, what, and when, while
they skim over the
why
, which is by far the most fascinating
aspect. Then again, this is America after all, the Mecca for
instant gratification. The attention span of the average viewer is
limited by how much nonsense they can endure at the hand of network
sponsors. There really isn’t time enough in sixty minutes to
challenge the mind with puzzle solving; cash is king in this
country. Actually that’s unfair, my apologies to the reader, this
is true around the globe;
the root of all evil
and all that rot. Forgive my self centered pontificating, as I am
as guilty of that addiction as any of you.

The door was unlocked and I walked in
encountering a not so impressive room. It was what one might
expect, a narrow three by twelve foot swatch of floor space
separating the door and a chest high wooden counter topped by a
caged barricade which looked like chicken wire on steroids. The
officer behind the cage was equally unimpressive, a short dour
looking gentleman (I’m being kind, he was no gentleman) with small
thin lips topped with a wispy graying mustache. He wore a cheap
pair of black horned rimmed spectacles and was busy writing on
something when I walked in. It turned out to be a crossword he was
concentrating on.

“What do ya need Mac,” he asked without
looking up at me.

How rude! It was all I could do to suppress
my instant dislike for the man and keep myself from putting a small
caliber round through one of the spectacle lenses. Instead, I
gently placed my hands, palm s down, on the top of the counter and
smiled. I waited for him to look up and acknowledge me before I
spoke; I required that much common courtesy from this
beastly
bloke
. The blaggard finally looked up and pulled his reading
specs down slightly, giving me the once over.

“You
speakie
English,” he asked
impatiently in a condescending monotone?

I felt the bile rise from my stomach to my
esophagus and I swallowed the saliva my mouth produced in
anticipation of the imminent irritation. There wasn’t time to deal
with this one right now and I took a deep breath through my nose
before I replied, feeling my nostrils flare as I took in the
soothing oxygen and held it in my lungs for a three count.

“Excuse me for interrupting your work
Officer, but Detective Price sent me down here for a catalog item
from the case he’s working on,” I said with a convincing smile
masking the rage behind my eyes.

“Hey, you speak English just like a
Limey
,” he replied sitting up all of a sudden and taking
notice of me. He got up from the stool that he was seated on and
removed his spectacles, giving me a closer look.

“I thought you was Chinese or something,” he
said with a big grin. I must have looked annoyed and I could see by
his facial expression that he noticed it straight away.

“Hey, I didn’t mean no disrespect or nothin,
you just surprised me is all,” the officer said with a believable
amount of sincerity. He had no idea that he might have just saved
his own life, and I smiled at him to put him at ease. I needed his
help right now and didn’t want to be delayed further.

“None taken, I’m sure,” I said.

“I’m not Chinese by the way. Actually, I’m
from Saigon originally, but was raised in Great Britain,” I
explained, not exactly sure why I had shared that bit of personal
history with him, it was uncharacteristically impulsive of me? I
would have to reconsider this bloke’s fate now.

“No foolin? I was in Vietnam in 71’,
was
you
,” he asked attempting to make small talk? It was a
conversation I didn’t want to have.

“I was a child in 1971, my family left after
the fall of Saigon in 75’ and we ended up in London with
relatives,” I answered. I felt more comfortable speaking with him
about myself now, it was cathartic somehow. Not that it mattered
what he heard anymore anyway, I was speaking to a dead man now.

“Is that right, that’s terrific,” he said in
a jolly tone of voice. Apparently I had made a friend, how sad; I
almost felt a twinge of regret.

“Yes, well if you don’t mind I really must be
getting back to Detective Price.”

“Oh yeah, sorry, what was it he wanted
again?”

“He said it would be in a small envelope with
some kind of electronics inside.”

“Was it from the Caesar’s Palace shooting
earlier today?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

The officer walked back to a desk behind him
and sat down to access the computer system. He sat there mumbling
for a couple of minutes then returned to the counter. He held up a
finger and gestured for me to wait, reading the question that was
on my face. He put on his specs back on and leafed through some
sort of log book I reckoned. Ten seconds later he tapped his finger
on a page and brought the book to where I stood waiting. He turned
it so that I could read it through the cage wire.

“See right here, Detective Sgt. Price checked
that item out at 7 o’clock this evening. We was still changing
shifts when he came down so I wasn’t here. Looks like an Officer
Ngyuen signed it out for him. Hey, he’s one of you guys ain’t he,”
related the ill fated evidence room Officer, grinning for the last
time in his miserable life.

“So it seems, thank you for your kindness,” I
replied, firing twice with the silenced Glock 19 that I had
extracted from the uncomfortable holster around my waist while he
spoke.

Two subsonic rounds entered the cheeky
bloke’s brain through his left eye. He slumped to the floor with a
queer expression on his face, one of disbelief. I felt the twinge
again, I was tiring of this adventure, and it was time for closure,
perhaps a little vacation.
Nha Trang
would be nice this time
of year. I do so enjoy the beaches and the mud baths. Yes, it is
time for a short rest; I grow weary of the hunt. If fortune shines
on me tonight, I will find all of my ducks swimming in the same
barrel, inside this very building.

****

(“But it’s alright why don’t you tell me again How
you’ll still be there when the heartache ends…”)…Rob
Thomas…2005

Chapter Thirty-three

LVMPD…Tuesday, Feb 24, 2009…9:45pm

The clanging alarms blaring through the halls
didn’t bother me as much as all the squelching chatter from the
two-way radio phones that everybody seemed to be yammering into.
Something very bad had happened somewhere in the building and we
were going on lock down. Since they weren’t evacuating the place
that meant there was a manhunt underway and likely whoever they
were looking for was armed and dangerous. From what I could hear
from the chatter as well the brief conversation Wally had with an
unknown caller, there had been a shooting on site and an Officer
was down. Pretty gutsy move by whomever the shooter was given the
firepower around here! I wanted to get back to the Interrogation
Room and make sure that Judy was alright but we weren’t going
anywhere for the moment. Wally was just ahead of me talking with a
uniformed Officer. They were yelling into each other’s ears trying
to make themselves heard over the noise. Wally nodded, patted the
uniform on the shoulder and turned to make his way back to where
Iggie and I were waiting.

“Okay, here’s the thing. Somebody popped a
uniform down in the evidence room. It was professionally done, neat
and quiet, no muss no fuss. You can’t get to that room without
credentials and a badge. It’s not like the old days when all you
had to do was turn the knob,” Wally explained, his eyes darting
around like a super ball in a concrete bunker.

He was giving everything and everyone one the
once over. That could only mean we were dealing with a wolf in
sheep’s clothing. That worried me and I was determined now to get
back to Judy and Becca sooner than later. If the perp was disguised
as a cop he or she had the run of the place. It also meant that
Iggie and I couldn’t run around like we owned the place either,
there were too many nervous triggers all around us, and a wrong
move could prove fatal.

“Look Wally, we gotta get back up to where
Judy is. I don’t know about you but I’m thinking whoever plugged
the Arab back at Cesar’s is here to do likewise for Judy and maybe
me and you as well,” I said hurriedly, hoping he would see things
my way.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing Roode,
we’re in a
helluva
a jam ain’t we,” he replied, rubbing his
chin while he chewed on what I had said.

“Yeah we are, so let’s freaking move out,” I
said, getting more agitated with every passing second.

“What do we know about this guy,” Iggie
asked, breaking the tension?

“Look who’s suddenly cop of the walk,” Wally
said turning his attention toward Iggie for the moment.

“Good question Detective Ingram. Actually we
do know a couple of things. Number one is he is male and in an LVPD
uniform. Number two is he’s short, almost too short to qualify to
wear said uniform. Number three, he’s Asian, we have some glimpses
of him from several surveillance cameras. No full on face shots,
he’s too smart for that, but we captured enough features to peg him
as Asian,” Wally said filling us in.

“So which way did he go,” I asked
impatiently?

“Don’t know, we lost him in the evidence
room,” Wally answered shrugging.

“Lost him, how can that happen, did the
cameras malfunction?”

“Look Whitey, I don’t know, it’s like he
vanished into thin air!”

The three of us just stared at one another
for what seemed like several minutes. We were having the same
flashback and formulating the same theory from a long ago memory.
Without saying a word we simultaneously looked above to the
ceiling. We had a three way epiphany and whispered our theory out
loud together.

“
TUNNEL RAT!”

“Has to be, how many of those little bastards
did we smoke outta their holes in the jungle,” Iggie blurted.

“Too many,” Wally said, shushing us with a
chubby finger pressed to his lips.

He motioned for us to follow him and he led
us into an empty room, closing and locking the door behind us.
Wally looked at the ceiling and then took a knee like a football
coach at practice. We followed his lead and huddled up with him. It
felt like old times in an era I had mercifully left buried in the
darkest recesses of my mind, I didn’t like the memories and the
ghosts that were being conjured and by the look on Iggie’s face,
neither did he.

“Alright girls; the evidence room is on the
ground floor so if we do have a rat in the vent system he has no
place to go but up. If Judy Looney is his target he’ll have clear
sailing and a head start. None of us can head him off; we’re all
too fat and too goddamn old. We need a volunteer, a tiny, petite,
pistol packing volunteer, any suggestions?” We said it together,
“BECCA…”

--

LVMPD…Tuesday, Feb 24, 2009…10:15pm

--

Slithering like a 120 snake was child’s play.
Father had taught me these skills as a boy. He’d send me on errands
from camp to camp up and down the Ashau Valley taking messages to
our glorious soldiers fighting the invaders of our homeland. My
father was a Colonel in the People’s Army, a very important man,
and he had been promised many things once the country was rid of
the American devils, and united again. But every one of those
promises was broken by Communist Leaders drunk with power after
Saigon fell in April of 1975. I was ten years old when we were
forced to flee like cowards. From that day forward I hated my
father for making us run, exiling us to a land where we could never
fit in. With every taunt or thrashing I took at every school I ever
attended or neighborhood I ever lived in, my hatred of him
increased. And one day I drew pleasure from the act of my first
kill, suffocating him on his sick bed in the quiet south London
suburb of Bromley.

The secret is in how one moves one’s body. It
isn’t necessary to crawl like a toddler, propelling one’s self
forward on hands and knees clumsily. No, one must make one’s self
small, like a snake and transfer all of one’s strength and power to
one’s hands and arms. Then it is merely a matter of doing a
flattened push up, only instead of pushing one’s body up, one pulls
one’s body forward a foot or two at a time. It is a slow process I
grant you, but it is sure and effective. The elbow leading to the
second floor was just ahead. When I reached it I would roll myself
onto my back and rest a minute or two before dragging my body into
the up shaft and onto the second floor where by my calculations the
interrogation room housing Dr. Looney would be a straight run of
about two hundred meters.