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  Allergies, Jimmy thought to say, aversion to violent death.

  “When did this happen?” Jimmy asked.

  “I can’t say. The call came in a few hours ago. The medical examiner is on his way. We’ll know more after he takes a look. Do you feel up to a few questions?”

  “Give me a moment,” Jimmy said. “I need some air. Can we talk outside?”

  “Sure. We’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  Jimmy walked back down and out of the building. He passed Sutton and the other uniform at the door. They had nothing to say. He walked twenty feet from the entrance, leaned against the building and lit a cigarette.

  Jesus Christ, Lenny, what the fuck was it about?

  Jimmy was crushing the cigarette under his shoe a few minutes later as the two detectives approached him.

  “Go ahead, ask,” Jimmy said before either could speak.

  The older of the two took charge. The other detective took notes.

  “When was the last time you saw your partner?”

  “Monday evening, a week ago today. I left town early Tuesday morning, got back in late last night.”

  “Did you speak with Mr. Archer while you were gone?”

  “No. I imagined Lenny could stay out of trouble for six days.”

  “Do you have any idea about why this happened?”

  “None.”

  “Whoever it was seemed to be searching for something.”

  “No idea,” said Jimmy.

  “A case you were working on? Something particularly sensitive or dangerous?”

  “Nothing I was involved in,” Jimmy said. “Nothing Lenny told me anything about.”

  “Did you usually work separate cases?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “So, you can’t really help us on this.”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I learn anything.”

  “Mr. Pigeon, it would be much better for all concerned if you left this to us.”

  Not much better for Lenny.

  “I didn’t get your names,” Jimmy said. “I thought I knew all of the Santa Monica homicide detectives.”

  “I’m Detective Raft and my partner is Detective Tully. We’re LASD,” said Raft, handing Jimmy a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department business card.

  “Oh?” said Jimmy.

  “We were handy,” Raft said. “Can you tell us anything about Mr. Archer’s next-of-kin?”

  “He had none,” said Jimmy.

  “Here’s the ME,” said Tully. “I’ll take him up.”

  Tully started toward the Ford that had pulled up in front of the building. An ambulance turned onto Fourth Street. Tully led the Santa Monica Medical Examiner into the building. Solomon Meyers, a familiar face.

  “When can I get back into the office?” Jimmy asked.

  “Hopefully by early this evening. Is there somewhere I can reach you before then?” Raft asked.

  “I’m not sure where I’ll be. You have my card. You can reach me at the office number, hopefully by early this evening. Can I go now?”

  “Sure,” said Raft. “I think that’s all for the time being. You have my card, if there’s anything we can do.”

  “Thanks, I’ll let you know,” Jimmy said and he quietly walked away.

  Raft returned to the office. The medical examiner was studying the corpse, the ambulance drivers were waiting for the ME to release the body, the crime scene investigators were dusting, collecting, shooting photographs. Detective Raft called Detective Tully out into the hall.

  “Do you think Pigeon knows anything?” asked Tully.

  “I don’t believe so,” said Raft. “Archer and Richards both said no. But Pigeon is a snoop and from what I hear a very good one. And he has a poor fucking attitude. We’ll need to keep a close eye on him.”

  “Do you think they’ve found Richards yet?”

  “I’m sure they have,” Raft said. “I imagine that’s why the Santa Monica PD was too busy to take this one.”

  Pigeon spent the remainder of the day alone. He sat for hours at the Santa Monica Pier, watching the ocean. He dropped into a few bars along Third Street, nursing more than one drink in each saloon. A toast to Lenny Archer. At a table in the rear of Murphy’s Saloon four men in military uniform, all in their late sixties or early seventies, sang patriotic songs and tipped drinks in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the allied invasion of Normandy. It was too much celebration for Jimmy to handle. He left the bar and treated himself to a steak dinner before returning to his office.

  Someone had tried valiantly to scrub the floor, most likely the building superintendent, but a large faint stain remained. The strong scent of bleach had taken the place of the hideous smell of fresh blood. The office was still in shambles. He knew he would need to call someone in to pick up, to fix the glass pane on the door, maybe drop an area rug down. He knew he wasn’t up to it himself.

  Jimmy went over to Lenny Archer’s desk and opened the top drawer. In the top center drawer of each of their desks sat a small ceramic change bowl filled with coins and paper clips. Imbedded into the bottom of each bowl was a remote switch, a small button which started the tape machine that recorded sound through a microphone hidden in the ceiling light fixture. The tape recorder was hidden in the wall behind a metal vent cover. Jimmy emptied the bowl in Lenny’s drawer.

  The record button was depressed.

  Jimmy went over to his own desk for a screwdriver. He detached the metal grill and he pulled out the machine. He carried it back to his desk and rewound the tape. He lit a cigarette and pressed the play button.

  Pigeon could not identify the voices but he could tell there had been two men in the office with Lenny. The dialogue was audible, as were the background noises. The first gunshot followed by a close second. The awful sounds of the beating Lenny had taken. The brutal interrogation, a name mentioned more than once. Richards.

  Ed Richards.

  Something to go on.

  They had found what they came looking for; Lenny had been of no use to them.

  And then the final fatal gunshot.

  Pigeon replaced the tape recorder and switched on the small portable TV hoping to catch the late local news. He pulled the pint of bourbon from his desk and drank from the bottle. Jimmy caught the lead story, a Santa Monica author and journalist found shot to death in his beach house. The place had been ransacked. The Santa Monica police suspected a robbery turned felony homicide.

  The name of the victim was Edward Richards.

  Jimmy turned off the TV, slipped the bottle into his jacket pocket and left the office. He stopped at the front entrance to check the mail. He unlocked the box and found two bills and a postcard. The card had been addressed to Jimmy at his sister’s place in South Carolina, but the street address had been transcribed incorrectly and the postcard was stamped Return to Sender. On the front of the card was a photo of the Santa Monica City Hall Building and on the back side of the card was an eight word message to Pigeon.

  Chasing Charlie Chan.

  Wish you were here.

  Lenny.

  Back to TOC

  Here’s a sample from Jack Getze’s Big Money.

  PROLOGUE

  The lady’s two-story house ranks as ancient, so it’s no surprise the pine floorboards creak. But do I detect a certain rhythm...as in footsteps? Hope I didn’t make too much noise going through her dirty laundry.

  I lean back on the blood red living room sofa and hold my breath to listen. A grandfather clock tick-tocks in the foyer. The oil-burning basement heater pops and rumbles. And yes, there...bare or stocking feet pad quickly toward me down the hall. My heart rate ratchets up to match the hurried footfalls.

  I stuff the DVD under my laptop and work hard to put on my three-o’clock-in-the-morning, full-boat Austin Carr grin. Not exactly a simple trick. And definitely not sincere. I mean, how am I supposed to be calm and forthright when this DVD suggests last night’s love interest may not be the innocent beauty I imagined?
In truth, the lady headed this way could be a killer.

  Clever of me to wake her up.

  I don’t mention her name because...well, gentlemen do not identify their secret lovers, not even by pet handles. And seeing her march out of the murky hall into the living area’s yellowish lamplight strongly suggests the need for a new nickname anyway.

  I gasp. Oh, my. And oops. Oh, my because she’s wearing nothing but white athletic socks. And oops because she’s using both hands and all ten red-nailed fingers to grasp a pump-action, single-barrel shotgun.

  “You found the DVD, didn’t you?” Ms. Shotgun says.

  “DVD?” If it wasn’t for rhyming consonants, I’d be pretty much speechless. My gaze is tightly focused on her bare breasts and that shotgun in the same close-up. Visually and emotionally, it’s a lot to absorb.

  “I know you found it,” she says. “Wrapped in my black beach dress.”

  My lips move without sound. I suppose my throat might be choked with fear, but I’d rather think I’m distracted by the long curve of Ms. Shotgun’s hip, the loose weight of her breasts swinging below the carved gun stock.

  Watch me get a boner.

  “I just checked the bathroom,” Ms. Shotgun says. “You rifled the hamper, found the black dress. I know you have my DVD.”

  I try taking a deep breath. On tough stock and bond clients, this often works as a show of calm sincerity. “I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She racks a shell into the firing chamber.

  Maybe my pledge of innocence lacked conviction.

  I lift the laptop and offer her the DVD. My heart ticks to an even quicker time. My ego slips a notch. Time was, the full-boat Carr grin and a reasonable lie got me through bumpy spots with naked women.

  “Play it,” she says. “We’ll solve the murder together.”

  I slide the disk into the Mac and wonder if I’m really going to view what the Branchtown Sun calls the “MISSING HOTEL MURDER VIDEO.”

  The DVD’s first images show a thirtyish woman primping her hair before a gilded oval mirror.

  “Don’t you want to fast-forward?” Ms. Shotgun says. “Get right to the choking and burning?”

  On screen, the victim cracks open her hotel room door. My jaw drops as Ms. Shotgun’s digital image rushes inside, pushing right through the startled hotel guest and knocking her flat on the carpet.

  I turn from the laptop. “So it was you.”

  Ms. Shotgun raises the pump-action level with my nose.

  And I thought my future looked shitty last month.

  ONE

  One Month Earlier...

  The big thing about my pal Walter Osgood, Shore Securities’ biggest producer, he’s like a kid when it comes to his feelings. He just can’t hide them. So when I walk into Luis’s Mexican Grill, see Walter at the bar and notice his every other breath is a sigh, that he’s clutching his Grey Goose like a soldier headed for war, I know Walter’s worried about seeing me. He’s got news I’m not going to like.

  Great. A fitting end to a wonderful week. I’ve been taking it hard in the wallet, even harder in the shorts these past few days, ever since Monday morning’s appointment with the New York urologist.

  The name’s Austin Carr, by the way. Since my Series Seven stockbroker’s license is temporarily suspended, instead of Senior Financial Consultant, the slick expensive business cards in my wallet say I’m a Special Management Adviser to Shore Securities, Inc., Members of the American Association of Securities Dealers. In truth, I am really just a salesman—like Walter—and I work for myself. Straight commission.

  If we don’t sell, we don’t eat.

  I slide next to Walter at Luis’s horseshoe bar and touch the slick Gucci material covering my buddy’s shoulder. “What the heck’s bothering you?”

  Another sigh from Shore Securities’ number one producer of commission dollars. A bit girlish if you ask me. Maybe I’ve been living in Central New Jersey too long, but I find myself fighting an urge to smack him.

  A lot of us stockbrokers call ourselves investment counselors, or if we have a license to sell insurance, too, financial planners. We like to wear two thousand dollar suits, carry leather briefcases and think of ourselves as professionals, like doctors and lawyers. But really we’re more like car salesmen.

  “You worried about the business?” I say to Walter. “We’ll be okay without Mr. Vic. Carmela and I can take care of his accounts, keep the numbers coming.”

  Walter and I agreed to meet here after work, tune up before Mr. Vic’s Friday night dockside farewell party in Atlantic Highlands. Shore’s boss, Vic Bonacelli, Mr. Vic, sails with his family tomorrow for Tuscany. Only his daughter Carmela refused to go. She’s staying behind to help me run Shore.

  “Carmela’s like her old man,” I say. “Slick on the phone.”

  Walter shakes his head.

  I like to ruminate over the shortcomings of my profession with double margaritas and a positive setting: Luis’s Mexican Grill on Broad Street in Branchtown. The decor reminds me of home, the east side of Los Angeles, and Luis, the owner-slash-bartender, is mi amigo.

  “Shore’s a dead puppy without Vic,” Walter says. “You know it better than I do.”

  My jaw stiffens. “Whoa, Walter. Things aren’t that bad. A couple of lousy months.”

  “Shore’s toast,” he says.

  I lean forward, make him look directly at me. I need to see those expressive blue eyes. If Walter really believes Shore isn’t going to survive, then I can easily guess the nature of tonight’s bad news.

  “You’re leaving?” I say.

  Walter nods.

  Shit. “Today was your last day?”

  He nods again, then bumps his shoulder against mine. “You know how this shitty business is,” he says. “Two minutes after I’m gone, the back office is passing out my account records and my old best friends start calling my clients, tell them I have AIDS and I raped my twelve-year-old babysitter.”

  Luis’s Mexican Grill is Friday-night packed, loud and oblivious. Walter still has his voice set on whisper.

  “By leaving on Friday,” he says, “I’ve got a weekend to prepare my clients for your assault.”

  Except for math, science, history and geography, Walter’s no dummy. Guaranteed he’s been tenderizing his good clients about this move for weeks.

  “You’re an owner, Walter. You have a piece of Shore. Why would you throw that away after only a few bad months?”

  When he shakes his head this time, not a hair moves. Walter Osgood pays a hundred bucks per styling. “Shore has lost money every month since you and I bought in,” he says. “With Vic leaving town, this AASD investigation, Sunny and Doppler taking a walk, well...the red numbers can only get worse. I’m bailing.”

  Sunny was a complainer and Doppler spent his days distressed over potential bad weather. They’ve had a piss-poor attitude since Mr. Vic sold me, Carmela’s fiancée Tom Ragsdale and Walter half of Shore’s stock. Then business got worse and the American Association of Securities Dealers surprised us with an audit. The combination must have been too much Sunny and Doppler.

  “Are you worried about this AASD investigation?” I say. “Is that why you’re leaving?”

  “No,” Walter says. “I’m leaving because Jaffy Ritter Clark is handing me a check for four hundred fifty thousand dollars when I show up for work Monday. But if I were you, I’d worry what that AASD cutie might dig up on Shore Securities’ marketing practices. Remember that St. Louis bond default last year? Mr. Vic’s sales contest to pump it before the default?”

  I turn Walter’s shoulder, make him look at me again. “You’re leaving me and Vic pretty much dead in the water, Walter. Without your numbers, we are in trouble. Can’t you give it another six months?”

  Walter’s pale, blue eyes turn cold. “What’s going to change?”

  TWO

  It’s bad, bad news for my kids’ future that Walter Osgood is leaving Shore. Walter is our ace, having e
arned over nine hundred thousand in gross commissions last year. The firm is definitely going to teeter without Walter. And therefore so is my dream of building a college nest egg for Beth and Ryan.

  After promising Walter I’ll keep my mouth shut until Monday, hugging him goodbye, I ignore the urge to self-medicate right there at Luis’s Mexican Grill and drive instead to Mr. Vic’s party in Atlantic Highlands. I owe the boss at least an appearance. And with all Mr. Vic’s single cousins and nieces there drinking like fish, there’s a decent chance I’ll get lucky.

  Of course, it crosses my mind I’d be helping my own business interests if I tell Vic about Walter leaving, bring in the guys on Saturday to work Walter’s accounts. But it’s only a fleeting thought. Walter is a close friend.

  I park, walk straight inside the bayside restaurant bar and bubbly flow of the Bonacelli clan and Shore Securities employees. At the bar, I order another martini.

  A disk jockey’s thumping disco to an overflow dance floor. Half the dancers are women bobbing and weaving with other women. I’d like my odds of taking one to bed later if it wasn’t for the black storm clouds hurtling down from the north. Through long windows behind the bar, I watch lightning flash the sky over Manhattan, and I can’t help wondering how big a storm Walter leaving the firm will cause.

  The world engineers me a tempest.

  When I’ve sipped my overflow glass of gin and vermouth down to transportable levels, I join the crowd of familiar faces. Another Shore broker, Bobby Gee, and I admire the size of Mr. Vic’s family and the widespread Bonacelli characteristic of large breasts. Particularly among the women.

  Someone grabs my shoulder. It’s Vittorio “Mr. Vic” Bonacelli himself, sole founder of Shore Securities. Thanks to this winter’s deal that brought me, Carmela’s now-separated husband Rags and Walter into the fold as partners, Mr. Vic’s current ownership is down to forty-nine percent.

  But Mr. Vic is our beloved leader. He’d be the boss if that number was two percent.