Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Read online

  “My name’s Mary Cooper and I’m looking for a female comic, wears leather pants all the time.”

  “What, you got the hots for her?”

  Jesus, Mary thought. What was the deal with these old people? Do they just get nastier with age?

  “Absolutely,” Mary said. “Never met a woman I didn’t like. Until now.”

  “I’m Janet Venuta and you’re a smart ass. I like that. Now go to hell.” She reached for the fresh martini with greed in her eyes. “And thanks for the drink.”

  The old woman took a long, loud slurp from her martini.

  “Gosh,” Mary pointed out. “You just could not be any more likeable.”

  “True,” the woman said. “Bye bye now. Go away.”

  “The guy behind the bar said you know everyone in these clubs,” Mary said, ignoring her last directive. “And I’m sick and tired of going into these shitholes meeting the dregs of society. Yourself included. So do you know who the woman comic in the leather pants is? Or are you just going to sit there and drink the booze I bought you and be as absolutely nasty as you can be?”

  “Hmm. Are those my only two choices?”

  Mary paused to think about it. “Actually, no there is a third choice. But I’m not sure you want to know what that is.” Mary leaned in, let her coat open a little bit. Strong arming an old woman didn’t rank real high on her list of personal achievements. But sometimes, the end justifies the means, no matter how distasteful it can get.

  The old lady’s tired and bleary eyes took in the gun, then came back up to Mary’s face. “Tell you what,” the old woman said. “One more of these and I’ll tell you who she is. She’s very attractive. You’d love to get her in the sack, I’m sure,” she said.

  “My prayers have been answered,” Mary said and waved to the waitress. Moments later, another martini appeared in front of Ms. Venuta.

  “Her name is Claudine. Claudine Greeling. It almost rhymes. She’s cute, but not funny. Not funny at all. Her material is stuff Rita Rudner did ten, fifteen years ago. And did it better.”

  “Any idea where she might be tonight?”

  “What, am I the goddamned Comedy Club Flyer?”

  “You’ve been so helpful, Janet.”

  “Actually, I just saw her over at Schticky Fingers,” the woman said. “The club on 14th and Wyoming. Don’t know why I’m telling you. Maybe I just want you to get laid tonight. Improve your personality a little bit. Or maybe I’m hoping that you’ll go away.”

  “I could only hope to be the kind, giving person you so clearly are,” Mary said. “Does the Welcome Wagon know about you? Because you’re giving them a run for their money.”

  “Welcome Wagon, that’s good,” the old lady said. “Maybe you should quit your job and go into comedy. Lord knows the world doesn’t need another dumbass janitor. That’s what you are, right?” The old woman leaned toward Mary and whispered, “Your clothes give it away, dear.”

  “Goodbye Janet,” Mary said, getting up. “It’s been a real pleasure.”

  “Don’t forget to mop up before you leave!” the woman called out.

  Twenty-Eight

  Schticky Fingers was sticky all over. Mary felt like she was part of a joke: Lady walks into a bar and says, hey, I’m looking for a woman in leather pants.

  Luckily, Mary didn’t have to ask anyone about Claudine Greeling. Mary spotted her right off. She was on stage. Her leather pants were gold, her shirt black. She had chestnut brown hair piled on top of her head. A pretty face and a knockout body. At least the fat heckler had good taste.

  Mary got a beer and walked to the back of the seating area.

  Despite the fair amount of people in the club and the haze of cigarette smoke, she spotted him right off.

  A baseball cap, a big body stuffed into a small wooden chair. He had a bowl of chips in front of him and a bottle of beer. The suit looked odd on him, a black monstrosity that covered his enormous girth like a circus tent. And the baseball cap on top of his head seemed wildly out of place.

  There was no point in approaching him now, Mary thought. He was probably in the middle of a fantasy starring himself and Claudine. No doubt involving the leather pants.

  Mary found a table and sat down. This Claudine Greeling was going on about stupid boyfriends. Well, she could relate to that. She’d had more than her fair share. Like the guy who thought missile silos were actually disguised as real farm silos.

  As Mary listened to Claudine’s routine, she found herself chuckling. This woman was actually funny. That nasty talent agent didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. That’s probably why she was a talent scout stuck in these dives.

  “Hey, I haven’t seen you around here before.” Mary turned to see a man in a striped shirt, green sport coat, and denim jeans. He had on black shoes, thick black glasses, and his dark hair was thick with gel. He was slightly cross-eyed.

  “And you probably won’t again,” Mary said, taking a sip of her beer and not even looking at the guy.

  “Jeez, tough room,” he said.

  “Not tough enough, apparently,” Mary mumbled.

  “I’m a comedian here,” the guy said. He stuck out his hand. “Vince Killar. My friends call me Killer.”

  Mary ignored his hand. “Nice to meet you, Killer,” she said. “My friends call me Gonnie.”

  “Gonnie? What is that, Italian?”

  “No, it’s a nickname. It’s short for gonorrhea, which I’ve had for almost ten years. Really, really awful illness.” Mary pushed out the chair next to her. “Want to sit with me for a while there Killer?”

  “Um, I don’t know….Gonnie.”

  The annoying guy had moved around in front of Mary and now she couldn’t see the stage.

  “I might take a rain check,” he said. “But are you going to stay for my set? It’s hot, I guarantee you that.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Mary said. “But I actually have to go see my urologist for a pressure wash. You know, the thing they use to clean patio decks?”

  Mary leaned over to the side to get a look at the stage, but the comedian moved with her.

  “Well tell your friends about me…” Killer said.

  Mary abruptly stood up and saw that Claudine had left the stage and the big guy was gone, too.

  “Shit,” she said, then stood and pushed ‘Killer’ out of her way and hurried toward the stage. She immediately saw a short hallway to the office and dressing rooms, probably. There was also an exit door. She debated for just a moment. If the big guy had been following Miss Leather Pants around, he’d probably been barred from the dressing room. Mary hit the exit door and banged it open, then spilled out into an alley. The big guy was at the end, near a street.

  “Hey!” she shouted.

  The man turned, then immediately turned left and disappeared from view.

  “Shit,” Mary said. And then she started running. If I can’t catch this guy, I’m going to hang it up once and for all, she thought.

  Twenty-Nine

  The big man could move, Mary had to admit. Maybe he was in good shape from chasing down taco trucks. By the time she had gotten to the mouth of the alley and turned left, she barely caught sight of his freak ass baseball cap turning left on the next block up. Mary decided to turn left immediately and cut across the front lawn of an insurance company. She took a peek down an alley as she passed it, but she didn’t see the big guy. However, she saw a pedestrian, an Asian woman with a Crate & Barrel shopping bag looking back over her shoulder as if she’d just seen the ghost of Shelley Winters skateboarding down the street.

  By the time Mary hit the sidewalk and looked up toward the street ahead, Big Suit had hit the intersection and was turning right. He glanced over his shoulder and looked for her. Which was perfect, because by now she was right behind him and gaining.

  He ran forward but Mary closed the gap quickly. Christ, I hope he doesn’t have a cardiac before I get some information out of him, she thought.

  Mary’s breat
h started to come in gasps and she made a mental note to get back to her workouts.

  Another block went by and she was within ten feet of him. He looked back over his shoulder and Mary saw his face, a pale mess covered with a thick sheen of sweat.

  “Stop,” she yelled. But he lowered his head and bulled his way ahead. Mary unleashed a burst of speed and jumped onto his back and rode him to the ground.

  The .45 was in her hand and she put it in his face.

  “Hey Mr. Happy Feet, how you doing?” she said.

  The fat man gasped for air and now Mary really did worry that he would go into cardiac arrest. She felt his sweat seep into her shirt and a shiver ran down her back.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “Tell me what to do and I’ll follow your every command. Just like you did when I told you to stop,” Mary said through clenched teeth. This guy was a piece of work.

  A couple walking down the sidewalk stopped at the sight of Mary holding a gun on the guy. The woman pulled a cell phone out of her purse. Mary didn’t need the police right now.

  “Pedophile,” she said to them, nodding her head toward the big boy. “He would pretend to be a parade float to lure kids in. Trust me, he’s gonna have a lot of boyfriends in prison.”

  The woman slid her cell phone back into her purse and the couple kept walking. Mary didn’t even have to whip out her p.i. badge. Still, she would have to keep this quick.

  “Get up, Slim,” she said and pulled on the guy’s big arm. He heaved to his feet and Mary pulled him up against the wall. To the right was a picture window of a little art studio. A sculpture of a creature that seemed to be half dolphin and half woman looked down on them.

  Mary stood slightly behind the big man, putting the .45 directly against his spine, just below his neck. To the casual passerby, it looked like she had her arm around him. A couple. Not the world’s most attractive couple, but a couple nonetheless.

  “Brent Cooper,” Mary said. “Tell me what you know about his murder and I’ll buy you a box of Twinkies. Tell me everything, right away, and I’ll even throw in some Pop-Tarts.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Still heaving from the exertion, the big boy’s voice was high and girlish. Mary knew it would be.

  Mary pressed the muzzle of the .45 harder against his spine, although she couldn’t actually find any vertebrae beneath the Serta mattress-type padding. But she did the best she could do.

  “Nice try, Bones,” she said. “Are you a struggling actor? You do method, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Let me see your SAG card. Or don’t you have one yet? Because I have to tell you, that lie about not knowing anything, you didn’t pull it off very well. Do you need me to give you your motivation?”

  The man breathed in ragged gasps as an answer.

  “Listen Hambone,” Mary said. “Tell me what you know about Brent Cooper’s murder or you won’t make it to that big cardiac arrest you’re heading toward.”

  “I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about.”

  “The guy who got murdered behind the Leg Pull? The guy who ripped you to shreds in front of a whole bunch of people who can easily identify you? Ring any bells?”

  The big man sighed, his breath had slowed and he mopped his face with a forearm. The dark material of his suit came away slick with sweat. “Oh, that. Well, we had some words and I left. That’s it. End of story.”

  “You left? You didn’t wait for him outside? You didn’t cut him open because he’d ripped you to shreds?”

  “No! I don’t like violence. I don’t fight. I run. Or try to.”

  “But you’re fighting me now. Lying to me.”

  “Listen, I didn’t do anything.”

  “That’s not what people are saying at the Leg Pull. They’re saying you two had words and that…”

  “Who’s saying that?”

  “Everyone.”

  He suddenly looked worried and Mary saw an opening so she went full bore right through it.

  “They’ve told me. But they haven’t told the cops.”

  “You’re not a cop?”

  “You’re so perceptive. I love that.”

  “What are you?”

  “A concerned family member. And a strong believer in revenge. The cops are the least of your worries. I may just leave your brains all over Ocean Avenue. Sound good?”

  His eyes flashed wildly around, panic behind them.

  “Look at it this way, you can either tell me,” she said. “Or you’ve had your last In-N-Out burger.”

  He let out a long breath that smelled like onion rings. It doesn’t matter how big they are, Mary thought. They all break, eventually.

  “This guy said he was a friend of Brent Cooper’s,” the man said. “I’d never heard of this Cooper guy. I was there to see Claudine - did you see her? She’s great…” His eyes got all dreamy and Mary could see the beginning of another fantasy come into his brain.

  “Focus, Pudge. Focus.”

  “Anyway. This guy slipped me a fifty and said to heckle this Brent Cooper guy. So I did. That Cooper guy was an asshole. He just went crazy saying all kinds of nasty shit.”

  “What did the guy look like? The guy who told you to do this?”

  “He was an old guy, I don’t know. You’ve been in the club, it’s dark.”

  “We’ll come back to that. So he told you to heckle Brent, then what?”

  “Then I was supposed to act like I wanted to fight him and sort of nod toward the alley.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t go out there! I got scared and took off.”

  “Smart move.”

  “Look, I had nothing to do with all that. It was supposed to be a joke, I didn’t know the guy was going to get killed.”

  “Let’s go back to the old guy.”

  “Oh my God,” he said.

  Mary felt him jerk. “What?”

  “There he is.” Mary began to look across the street where the guy’s eyes were looking, but she never finished her scan.

  The fat man’s head snapped back against the brick wall and Mary felt a gush of warmth on her hand. Blood and brain matter poured from the back of his head. He slumped against her as another bullet hit him in the chest. Shards of brick bit into Mary’s neck as a bullet exploded next to her ear. She tried to push against the fat man but as his body sagged to the sidewalk, it took her with it. She found herself trapped beneath him, struggling to get free.

  She looked over his shoulder across the street. An old man in a turquoise blue windbreaker stood just behind a tree, his gun blocked from view. She saw him step to the right, saw the gun with the attached silencer.

  Mary held her arm up and over the big man, then fired a quick shot at the old guy across the street.

  Mary got one leg beneath her and pushed upward, heaved with all of her strength, and rolled the huge man over. She was able to squirm out from underneath him.

  Across the street, the old man’s gun spat again and glass from the art studio’s window showered down upon her. She had no choice. She got to her feet, crouched, and then dove over the art studio’s display shelf into the showroom itself. The dolphin woman sculpture exploded and pieces of metal, paper mache, and wire rained down on Mary’s back. The head and shoulders of the sculpture were still intact, so she took cover behind them and fired at the old man. She steadied her hand and reeled off shot after shot, emptying her entire clip in a matter of seconds.

  Mary’s ears rang and the smell of gunpowder assaulted her senses. She ducked back down and thumbed the magazine release, grabbed her spare from her coat pocket, slammed it in, then wiped her bloody hand off on a piece of curtain that had been shot off the window.

  Bullets exploded around her.

  Mary waited out the last of the explosions then rolled and popped up just over the display platform. The blue windbreaker caught her eye. He’d moved two trees over and was slapping anot
her clip into his gun.

  She let out a breath, and waited for him to step away from the tree.

  He did.

  Mary fired twice fast. The double tap.

  The man went down in a heap.

  Mary vaulted over the display platform and onto the sidewalk, nearly slipping on the concrete’s coating of glass and blood. She raced across the street, her gun held out in front of her just in case the old shooter was playing possum.

  But once she got to him, stood over him and looked at the blood gushing from his mouth, she knew it was no act.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  A weird sucking sound came from his chest and his mouth opened.

  “Aaauegh,” he said and then his eyes went still. Pink bubbles came out of his nose.

  “Huh, is that an Arabic name?” Mary said.

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  Mary reached into his coat pocket, nothing but more clips. Her hands shook slightly and her legs felt weak. Her breath was shallow and for a moment she thought she would faint.

  Mary searched him and found a slim wallet in his pocket. She flipped it open to his California driver’s license.

  Noah Baxter.

  She’d never heard of him.

  Thirty

  LAPD’s finest arrived and Mary surrendered her weapon and submitted to a search. They put her in the back of a squad car while the patrol cops wandered around, waiting for the detectives and crime scene technicians to show up.

  Mary sniffed. The car smelled vaguely of vomit. Maybe it was the cop’s cologne. Eau de regurgitation.

  Probably some drunk on his way to the tank had tossed his Chips Ahoys back here. The patrol cops were in charge of cleaning their own vehicles if something like that happened, Mary knew. This had obviously been cleaned by a man. Most guys she knew, the only way they could clean something was with a Swiffer.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the flash of some fish-belly white skin. Mary turned just as Jake and the Shark got out of their detective’s car.

  “Fun has officially arrived,” Mary said under her breath. She looked at the Shark and the way she assumed instant command of the scene. But God she was pale. The ME guys might mistake her for the corpse.