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TAPE

by
C. M. Albrecht

“Tape…holds the universe together.”
…Oprah

Chapter 1

Shorty

A white prison van pulled up before the small bus station and its sole passenger, clutching a clear plastic bag of clothing, stepped carefully down onto the sidewalk.
The driver, a middle-aged red-faced man who had never missed a meal in his life, smiled grimly and moved his gum to one side of his mouth.
“Be smart, Shorty,” he said in a deep tired voice. “Get in there a buy yourself a one-way ticket out of here and don’t ever come back.” But, he silently added without a change in his expression, you will.
Shorty—Jesse Thompson—smiled just as grimly. “Don’t worry. I’m all through with that. I’ve been saved by the grace of Jesus and this time I’m really starting a new life.”
The driver nodded and popped his gum as he stepped on the gas. The van pulled away leaving Shorty standing on the sun-drenched sidewalk with two hundred dollars ‘gate money’ in his pocket, and all his worldly belongings in the clear plastic bag.
He looked over at the hardware store across the street, up at the clear sky above his head and then took his first real breath of freedom. Even in the van, he was still part of the prison system, but now…his mouth twisted in a sort of smile. He scratched the bald spot on top of his head and headed into the tiny station.
Inside he sat at the lunch counter and ordered a cup of coffee. He just sat for a minute. Although he wasn’t hungry, he enjoyed the smells of bacon and other odors coming from the kitchen, and he even smelled the faint perfume the waitress wore. It had been a long time since he smelled the nearness of a woman.
Shorty figured the waitress had already made him for a parolee, even though he had his sleeves rolled down to cover his mostly prison-made ‘sleeves’, the tattoos he had picked up over the years. The waitress probably saw a lot of ex-cons come through this coffee shop; Shorty knew they all had a look about them.
He pulled a paper napkin from a metal holder and spread it on the Formica countertop. He pulled a stub of a pencil from his denim jacket pocket. He began writing on the paper napkin. He labored over the spelling as well as the difficulty of writing on such fragile paper, but after a few moments with an occasional pause to sip the hot coffee, he had his list. It wasn’t very long.
1. Get a room.
2. Get Gorman
3. Get Wilson
4. Get a job and go straight.
Shorty studied his list while he sipped his coffee. Finally he smiled grimly, showing yellowed teeth. He held the napkin firmly down and underlined Gorman and Wilson. His lip curled. He sipped more coffee and studied the napkin with satisfaction. He nodded. He folded the napkin and dabbed his lips with it and shoved the napkin into his side pocket and went out into the lobby and bought a bus ticket to Sacramento.

Chapter 2

Brix Investigations

Isador (Izzy) Brix leaned back too quickly, forgetting as usual that the spring in the old office chair was nearly gone. He caught himself just in time and straightened with a clump. He leaned forward onto the scruffy student desk and leered at Veronica Carter, Vero as she was known among friends and family. In the light that filtered in through the one dirty window of the garage, he really took a good look at her. It was a look mixed with approval and something else.
Deathly pale, Vero kept her hair the blackest of black and very short except for the spike along the crown. Small rings in her ears and one nostril, black lipstick and thick arched eyebrows over improbably heavy lashes lent her what Izzy supposed was meant to be a dangerous and somewhat intriguing look. But he didn’t dislike it. Of course, he’d never give her the satisfaction of telling her so.
Always in black. A sleeveless black jersey accessorized the numerous colorful tattoos that covered her bare arms. A wide red patent leather belt with a heart shaped buckle, heavy black jeans and black combat boots complemented the overall look Vero evidently strived for.
“What I was getting at,” Izzy said in his reedy voice, like a teacher speaking to a slow student, “is that in any other kind of work, you have to take a lot of crap from your boss, from the customers, from just about everybody you come into contact with.” He held out his arms expressively. “Like who wants that? Now with a private eye it’s different. I know. That’s what I like about this work. I mean, a good private eye has to have attitude and that I got. I’m like that—” He snapped his fingers twice to get the right crisp pop, and went on:
“—you know, like Marlowe. Guy says, ‘I don’t like your attitude’. Does Philip Marlowe apologize? Does he say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that.’ Hell no. He says, ‘Yeah, I get that a lot’. Did Sam Spade ever say he’s sorry? Hell no. Not Sam Spade. Maybe the cops couldn’t stand him, but they respected him. They gave him his space.”
The garage fell silent. Only the buzzing of a fly and the occasional faint pop of Vero’s gum broke the stillness of the garage. Her eyes drifted languidly from Izzy to nothing at all in the general direction of the dusty beams that held up the roof.
Izzy moved again, unconsciously trying to lean back again but he caught himself in time. “What I’m getting at here, Vero, is that I’m independent. I call the shots. It’s my way or the highway. I don’t have to take crap from my client. Customer don’t like my attitude, I tell him don’t let the door hit his ass on the way out.”
During this little speech Vero’s dark eyes drifted back to Izzy without expression. Now she shifted her gum to the other side of her mouth. She held up fingers and began enumerating. “Okay, let’s just take a look at this picture: First of all, you don’t have any clients to tell you about your attitude, you little weasel. And second of all, don’t be practicing your pissy attitude on me or the door’ll be hitting your ass. This is my garage, remember. Well, my old man’s.” She sat on a torn vinyl couch that Izzy had found abandoned a few houses away in the alley. He had dragged it to the garage and placed it before the desk for clients. She sat with her legs crossed and one booted foot moved gently back and forth to the rhythm of her chewing. “You keep that shit up with me,” she added, “and you’ll be running your office out of your mother’s basement, like anybody would be dumb enough to go down there.”
“Geez, Vero, I wish you wouldn’t call me a weasel. Ferret now, that’s okay.” He cocked his head to one side. “A ferret’s kind of like a weasel I guess, but it’s okay, because that’s what gumshoes do; they ferret things out. And that’s my motto: client comes to me, I find out what they want to know and give them satisfaction. I—”
Vero snapped her gum. “Izzy! This just in: You ain’t ever had any clients to satisfy.” She tried counting on her fingers again. “Let’s see now. No. Nope. Not one. Not one client. And speaking of satisfy, you little weasel, you ain’t been so hot in that department lately either. And while I’m thinking about it, I think that long sleeve tee with a practically pink short sleeve tee over it looks pretty ridiculous, even for a weasel like you.”
“Oh, come on Vero. That’s getting personal. You’re just being grumpy.” Miffed, Izzy sat with a stiff face for a moment. Now it was his turn to look at the dusty rafters above their heads and slowly his attention drifted to the beautiful trench coat hanging from a nail on the unfinished wall of the garage. He had found it at St. Vincent de Paul’s for eight-fifty. Like new. And it was the real thing, too. Belt and everything. But even without the liner, it was way too warm to wear around Sacramento. Maybe next winter. And a hat. They had some neat black hats at the flea market for two or three bucks, but the ones he had tried were too large. It’s hard to look cocky with a hat resting down on your ears.
He sighed and looked back at Vero. “I got lots of things on my mind, Vero, and you’re not helping with that negatory altitude. Starting up a business ain’t as easy as it sounds.” He stood up and stretched, catching a glimpse of himself in a cracked mirror that hung on the unfinished wood of the garage wall. The faded red tee over the long sleeve gray tee looked cool to him. Like some guy he saw on television. I do look like an anoretic though, he thought. A hundred pounds and a few ounces or so…god, his face did remind him of a weasel. Sharp thin features, lean to the point of boniness, long pointed nose and kind of pointy ears without lobes. He was dark too. They claimed it was from the black Irish in him, whatever that was. He sighed and moved around the desk. He stopped by the couch.
“Hey, I don’t mean to say I’m not grateful to you and your old man for letting me use the garage for an office. Alls we got is that crappy carport.” He pushed a shopping cart to one side. The garage door showed about two feet of sunlight at the bottom.
Izzy bent and raised the door all the way open. “And you’re right,” he called over his shoulder, “I sure can’t use my basement for an office. That’s out. Ahh, let’s get out of here for a while.” He stuck two fingers into the hip pocket of his jeans and came up empty. “You got enough for a cup of coffee and a donut?”
“Maybe,” Vero admitted, “but I don’t want a donut. Is that all you ever think about eating; donuts?”
“Well, detectives eat lots of donuts damn it. It goes with the territory. It’s what we do. Get used to it.”
“I don’t have to get used to it,” she said, rising languidly from the couch. “I’m not one of your jerk-off clients that you don’t have any of anyway.”
“Come on Vero baby, you know I’m—we—we’re just getting started here. Rome wasn’t built all day. I see a bright future for us.”
“Stop whining,” Vero said in assent. “Come on. I’ll buy you your stupid donut.”

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 24.01.2011

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