Catching Water in a Net Read online

  CATCHING WATER IN A NET

  A Jake Diamond Mystery

  J.L. Abramo

  Copyright © 2001 by J.L. Abramo

  Second eBook Edition: February 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Catching Water in a Net

  About the Author

  Other Titles from Down & Out Books

  Preview from Resurrection Mall, the third Penns River crime novel by Dana King

  Preview from Crossed Bones, the second Tommy & Shayna crime caper by S.W. Lauden

  Preview from A Negro and an Ofay by Danny Gardner

  For my mother,

  who didn’t need to be an artist

  to understand

  Dead Pigeon

  When it comes to Private Investigation,

  nine times out of ten

  the client is your worst enemy.

  — Jimmy Pigeon

  One

  The phone on my desk rang so unexpectedly that I nearly spilled the Mylanta onto my only unstained necktie.

  It was my trusty assistant calling from her sentry post out front.

  Darlene Roman was different from most office receptionists in that the words do you have an appointment were not in her vocabulary.

  Darlene greeted anyone who walked through our door as if it were our very first client, or might be our last.

  “Yes, Darlene.”

  I tried not to slur the words, just in case Darlene was using the speakerphone.

  “There’s a woman here to see you.”

  I’d figured we had a guest. The place was small. Usually when Darlene wanted me she just hollered.

  “Count to twenty Darlene, and send her in,” I said, determining that we were on a secure line.

  “Is that one, two, or one Mississippi, two Mississippi?”

  I quickly assessed the condition of the desk.

  “Make it one Montgomery, Alabama, two Montgomery, Alabama.”

  I tossed the bottle of Mylanta into the top drawer along with the plastic ashtray, remembering for a change to extinguish the burning cigarette. I opened a few dummy file folders and spread them across the desktop. No reason why everyone had to know how slow business had been lately. I buried my face in the top folder, which incidentally held an unfriendly reminder from my ex-wife’s attorney regarding past due alimony payments.

  The date on the letter was from the last millennium.

  The home of Diamond Investigation was a two-room affair above Molinari’s Salumeria on Columbus Avenue. The leasing agent had described it as an Office Suite. The man was imaginative if nothing else.

  Darlene’s reception area was off the hallway entrance and my cubbyhole was directly behind hers, facing the street.

  The elevator never worked, except as a homeless refuge occasionally.

  The air, even at three stories above the avenue, always held a hint of provolone and Genoa salami.

  “Mr. Diamond,” my visitor said, walking through the door connecting the two small rooms.

  Her voice could have broken glass. I felt a twinge in one of my molars. I slowly looked up from the folder and the woman standing there could hardly be described in words. But I gave it a stab. She looked like a traced picture of herself.

  She was plain as a cake donut.

  “Can I help you, Miss…?”

  “Mrs. Mrs. Harding.”

  “Have a seat, Mrs. Harding.”

  “You can call me Evelyn.”

  “Sure, why not. Have a seat Evelyn.”

  She looked down at the only other chair in the room and stood immobile. I jumped up and apologized as I moved the stack of folded boxer shorts from the offered seat. Darlene did a little laundry for me once in a while.

  She sat tentatively and I returned to my own resting-place, tossing the underwear into the bottom desk drawer, on top of my only clean shirt.

  “So, Evelyn. How can I help you?”

  “It’s my husband.”

  If I had ten cents for every time I’ve heard that phrase I could have all three ties dry cleaned.

  “I can’t find him,” she added.

  “I assure you, Mrs. Harding, he’s not here.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a joke I use to relax new clients.”

  “It doesn’t work.”

  “I can see that. How long has your husband been missing, Evelyn?”

  “Since Saturday evening.”

  “That would be four days.”

  “I can see now why you came so highly recommended.”

  Evelyn Harding was as personable as an Office Depot catalog.

  “Who did recommend me, Mrs. Harding?” I asked, turning the other cheek.

  “Grace Shipley.”

  My response was not subtle. It resembled a knee jerk from the neck up. I pulled open the top desk drawer and took a long pull from the bottle of antacid. I had been so certain that I would never hear that name again, I couldn’t be sure that I had actually heard it.

  “Come again?”

  “Grace Shipley.”

  It sounded pretty convincing the second time around.

  “Could I ask you how you know Ms. Shipley?”

  “Mr. Diamond, I came here to talk about my husband.”

  “Of course you did, Evelyn,” I said. I think my voice may have cracked. “Have you thought about going to the police?”

  “Finding my husband is already of interest to the Los Angeles Police Department, Mr. Diamond. I was hoping that you could help me locate him before they do.”

  “Call me Jake.”

  “Grace called you Jacob.”

  Grace had called me a lot of things.

  “Why are the police interested in locating your husband?” I plowed on.

  “They suspect that he killed his business partner.”

  “And why would they think that?”

  “My husband’s gun was found beside the body.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “But the murder weapon was found at the scene, and it belonged to your husband. Any theories about that?”

  “My husband kept the gun in his office. The victim was killed in the office adjacent to his. The police have little else to go on.”

  “And?”

  “They seem unwillingly to grant that almost anyone could have taken the weapon and killed my husband’s associate.”

  There you go, it could have been anyone. That should convince a jury.<
br />
  “If your husband is innocent, why is he dodging the authorities?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps he feels that no one will believe him, he’s always lacked persuasive ability. That’s why I need to find him. Before he gets himself hurt. Grace seems to think you can help.”

  Why me.

  “Why me?” I asked, “There are plenty of very competent investigators in Los Angeles. I could highly recommend a good friend of mine down there. Jimmy Pigeon.”

  “I came to you, Mr. Diamond, because my husband’s business partner was Jimmy Pigeon.”

  I managed to delay my reaction long enough to get the rough details from Evelyn Harding and then quickly sent her on her way, assuring her that I would stay in touch.

  She was barely through the door before the surprise and shock of Jimmy Pigeon’s death hit me like a sucker punch.

  I opened the top desk drawer and pulled out the ashtray and the bottle.

  This time it was the bottle of bourbon.

  Two

  After a few shots and a smoke I pulled myself together. At least enough to give what I had heard some attention.

  I went over the facts as Evelyn Harding had laid them out.

  The toughest fact being that I hadn’t heard about any of it before.

  Evelyn’s husband, Harry Harding, was a co-founder of Ex-Con.com. An Internet company that located felons released from prison. There appeared to be a potential clientele for that sort of information among those seeking retribution and those fearing it, from victims and families of victims on one hand, to arresting officers, prosecutors and jurists on the other.

  The co-co-founder was Jimmy Pigeon.

  The late Jimmy Pigeon.

  Shot to death with a gun belonging to Harry Harding.

  It was Jimmy who got me started in the business of Private Investigation.

  For a moment I wondered why Jimmy hadn’t brought me on board the dot com enterprise. In fact, he’d never mentioned it. I liked to think that Jimmy considered me a worthy collaborator.

  On second thought I figured that what Jimmy Pigeon needed was a financial backer, not another penniless gumshoe. Locating ex-cons would have been right up Jimmy’s alley. Harding must have been the money man.

  I finally realized that I was playing cat and mouse with the question that was really bothering me. If Jimmy was in danger, or in some kind of trouble, why hadn’t he come to me for help?

  Now Jimmy Pigeon was dead and Harry Harding was hiding from everyone, including his wife.

  In Harry Harding’s favor was the fact that there were more than a few unsavory characters who would not be broken hearted over Jimmy’s death. Jimmy Pigeon was good at his work, the kind of work that tended to create enemies.

  But Harding’s gun and his disappearance were top-notch credentials for a bona fide murder suspect.

  Unfortunately, I could think of no better way to get started than to pay a visit to Vinnie Stradivarius. When it came to Jimmy Pigeon, no one knew better than Vinnie.

  Vinnie was like a son to Jimmy, like the son Jimmy never had.

  Albeit the kind of son that would put any father to task.

  Vinnie was a handful; constantly getting into jams that took more than a little effort and creativity to pry the kid out of. For reasons of his own, which I could have been too selfish to understand, Jimmy had taken on the challenge.

  Part of Jimmy’s strategy was to try keeping Vinnie busy. To that end Jimmy often had Strings assist in his investigations; just enough to make the kid feel that he was being useful, but nothing that would totally blow a case. It gave Vinnie less time to get into mischief and gave Jimmy an excuse to throw the kid some rent money.

  I wondered who in the world was going to take on the thankless chore of Vinnie Stradivarius now that Jimmy was gone. I shuddered at the thought, so I immediately abandoned it.

  You are going to hear many different opinions about the type of person who chooses private investigation as a vocation. Believe all of them.

  Every PI will give you his or her rationale. Often without being asked.

  Here is mine.

  Jimmy Pigeon.

  I had never met anyone quite like Jimmy. His walk, his talk, his self-confidence and, above all, his honesty.

  In Jimmy Pigeon I finally saw what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’m reluctant to admit that I was nearly thirty-five when it happened. And that I’m still working on it.

  Nine to five was never in the cards for me. I had always imagined that movie actors had the ideal career. I tried it for a while myself, but kept being cast as a thug. And a supporting thug at that.

  It was on a movie set, in fact, that I first met Jimmy Pigeon. He was there as Technical Advisor for a B thriller in which an over the hill PI, played by an over the hill actor who I won’t name, was searching for a Senator’s daughter held ransom by a group of thugs, one of whom looked a lot like me. Pigeon and I became fast friends and he inspired me to turn in my SAG card for an investigator’s license. I was at a point in my acting career where every suggestion sounded perfect. I left Hollywood for a desk in Jimmy’s Santa Monica office and learned the ropes. Once I had been given enough rope to hang myself I decided to head north to San Francisco to set up shop on my own.

  The move had two major advantages. It was four hundred miles further from Los Angeles and four hundred miles closer to Mom’s cooking.

  I also had Jimmy Pigeon to thank for the first client who walked into my small office above the Italian deli in North Beach. Sally French hired me to find her biological mother. Jimmy, who knew her adoptive father from his college days at Santa Barbara, had given her my name. I was able to locate her mother, who became my mother-in-law, though not for very long. I couldn’t blame Jimmy. He meant well.

  Now Evelyn Harding had hired me to find her husband, apparently in the hope that I could help establish that he wasn’t responsible for Jimmy Pigeon’s murder.

  Was anyone really interested in finding out who did kill Jimmy?

  I was.

  I owed Jimmy that much.

  I took one more hit of bourbon and went looking for Vinnie Stradivarius.

  Three

  Vinnie Stradivarius was known as Vinnie Strings by friend and foe alike, though not many made the connection. Vinnie had a favorite saying.

  “You know,” he would tell me or anyone who would listen, “I was born at exactly the right time in exactly the right place.”

  That was before he went to New York City on an errand for Jimmy Pigeon and passed an Off-Track Betting parlor.

  Vinnie Strings was fickle.

  “And these OTB joints are on every other corner Jake, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s just my rotten luck that I wasn’t born in Brooklyn.”

  It took a leap of faith to believe almost anything that Vinnie had to say. And when he was being factual, Vinnie rarely had anything to tell you that you didn’t already know. But listening to him carry on was sometimes amusing. In very small doses.

  I was hoping that Strings could surprise me with something that I didn’t know about for a change. Something about what Jimmy had been up to.

  Vinnie ran between San Francisco and Los Angeles helping Jimmy out with odd errands, most of which were hardly necessary. Vinnie had an apartment on Haight and Parker, a block off the park. When Strings was down in LA he crashed at Jimmy’s place. Jimmy Pigeon always found Vinnie most helpful when the kid was up here.

  Vinnie’s apartment was like something out of a Godard film, which wasn’t all that surprising since Breathless was his favorite flick. In place of a poster of Bogart, Strings had mounted a two by three-foot black and white of Belmondo on his living room wall. As you came into the room you felt as if you had just walked into a scene on television, sometime before the advent of color TV. Strings had ashtrays scattered everywhere, which he never emptied, though he didn’t smoke himself.

  Vinnie was the only person I had ever met who didn’t have a kitchen table.

  When Vin
nie wasn’t doing legwork for Jimmy Pigeon I could usually count on finding him at one of the local racetracks or at the Northern California answer to OTB. The place was situated in the basement of a house in the Mission District equipped with a satellite dish and three big screen TVs. It was called the Finnish Line after its owners, two tall blond brothers from Finland. Since I knew that Strings wasn’t doing any work for Jimmy anymore, ever, and I didn’t want to spend all day running from one pony track to another, I headed for the Mission.

  As I drove I was feeling bad about not keeping in closer touch with Jimmy Pigeon, about having to hear about his death from a stranger.

  Granted I avoided Los Angeles at every opportunity, but I could have used the telephone more often.

  Being very proficient at rationalization I would tell myself that the phone lines went both ways.

  On top of that, feeling bad wouldn’t get me anywhere.

  The baboon at the door must have recognized me because he let me in without the song and dance. Vinnie Strings was sitting in front of one of the giant TV screens with a fist full of twenties, yelling something about a glue factory. When he saw me he rushed over.

  “Jesus, Jake, did you hear what happened to Jimmy?”

  “An hour ago. Evelyn Harding dropped by my office.”

  “Harding. I always had a bad feeling about that guy.”

  It seemed as if Vinnie was a lot more informed than I was.

  It was a demoralizing thought.

  “You think Harding killed Jimmy?” I asked.

  “It looks that way; trouble is it’s too obvious.”

  “Oh?”

  “Harding figures to make a bundle with Jimmy out of the way.”