The New Gig

                It was a typical Saturday night in the Ruby Room. Cigar smoke hung thick in the air over the tables while Scarlet did what she does best on stage. She was a looker, for sure. The flowing red dress and big crimson lips alone could melt any man into a puddle, but what really did it was her voice. The dolly had pipes like you wouldn’t believe. 5 minutes with her on stage and every eye and ear in the joint was fixed on her, except for a pair of each glued on to a greaser walking towards my table.

                He pulled a chair back and sat down like he owned the place. He didn’t fit in at all with the Ruby Room crowd and I could tell he felt out of place. “You Ace?” he asked while unrolling the pack of smokes from his sleeve. “Might be. Depends on who’s asking.” He lit a smoke with his zippo, snapped it closed and put his elbow up on the table while he took a long drag. “Well, might be I have something for you. A job.” I always tried to keep a low profile, a private dick in this city can get called on by the wrong kind of guy and the next thing you know, ten years in the can. “You interested?”

                I was down on my luck. My last job left me busted. I got burned by a fast talker in a double breasted suit. I’ve always been a good judge of character and this guy seemed like he had an 18 karat heart, but when I woke up under a street light with blood coming out of my nose, I realized I was wrong.

                I couldn’t play it cool anymore, I needed the cash. “Yeah, I’m interested. What’s the job?” He slid an envelope across the table towards me, stood up and left. I didn’t bother calling after him. I knew he knew as much about the job as I did. Bosses tend to keep guys like him on a need to know type of arrangement and by the looks of him, he wasn’t bright enough to know much anyway.

                I opened the envelope and pulled out the contents just as Scarlet was wrapping up her performance to a standing ovation. All that was inside was a picture of an average looking woman in a dress. I flipped the picture over to find an address, time, phone number and instructions scribbled on the back. “She’ll be there. Follow her and call the number when she gets where she’s going.”

                Simple enough. We didn’t talk money, but I was ready to take whatever I could get. I dropped some cash on the table for the tab and walked out. I stood on the curb and waved for a taxi back to my place. I was beat.

                A few days later, I headed downtown to the address on the picture with a spyglass in my pocket and a .38 tucked into the waistband of my slacks. There was a construction yard for a new high rise across the street where I found a good spot to hide while I waited for my girl. A few hours passed before she walked out the front door and hopped into the back of a car. I stood up to put my spyglass away and felt a loud crack on the back of my head, then everything went black.

                I came to just a few feet away from where I was spying on the girl, bound and gagged. 5 or 6 gangster types in suites were 10 feet or so away smoking and talking while a few guys in overalls were shoveling something out of a wheelbarrow. I groaned and one of the gangsters noticed. They all walked towards where I was laying, tossing their cigarettes away. The one in front knelt down by me and said “What are you doing, spying on the boss’s lady?” He removed the gag from my mouth and I knew it was time to spill the beans. I could tell now that the guys in overalls were shoveling concrete into a hole for the foundation of the new high rise and I had no intentions of becoming a permanent part of the city skyline.

                “Some greaseball in the Ruby Room gave me an envelope with the lady’s picture in it and told me to follow her. There’s a number on the picture, it’s in my pocket. That’s all I know, honest!” I felt like a dirtbag for ratting out my employer but a guy’s got to do what he has to. He pulled the picture out of my pocket, glanced at the back, smiled, folded the picture up and put it in his pocket. “That nosebleed Skaggs put his home number on the picture.” All of the gangsters started laughing. “We’ll put him in right next to this one.” One of the other gangsters said, pointing at me.

                A siren blared and cop cars surrounded the construction site. All of the gangsters scattered. A couple of the cops walked over to me. “Hey, O’Malley! This guy pissed all over himself!” one of the fat ones yelled. All of the cops laughed. One of them grabbed a megaphone and yelled into it. “Hey, Frank, you gotta see this! Joey’s boys made this guy piss his pants!” The one I assumed was Frank walked towards the megaphone guy escorting a gangster in cuffs. “Flip him over, did he shit himself too?” He asked to a chorus of laughter.

                The cops rounded up all of the gangsters. The guys in overalls were card carrying union guys working on the high rise, they couldn’t prove they were up to anything. I sat in an interrogation room reeking of urine for hours on end, answering questions. They knew I didn’t have anything for them, they just enjoyed kicking me around. I could hear them outside laughing every time they left the room.

                I lowered another basket of fries into the hot oil and adjusted my paper hat. “Wow, so that’s how it happened?” Billy asked, stifling a laugh. “You got it.” I said. “That’s why I’m at the drive in. I’m a really crummy detective.”