Frank Driver, Private Eye

My heart sank. Our honeypot trap hadn’t worked, and Mrs. Walker was going to go to jail. Not only was I not going to get my bonus, but I probably wasn’t going to get paid, either. Not even for the expenses. Did I mention no bonus?

Now I had to explain to him what we were doing, what the plan was. I needed to get him out of there before –

Murphy let out a wail as loud as a freight train, and threw himself into the air. Instinctively I tried to pivot out of the way, but my trousers were still open around my thighs. Tammi thought quickly and pushed against me as hard as she could, sending us both sprawling in opposite directions.

The large cop sailed between us, his bear hug failing to close upon me but still catching me with his huge arm. In my unbalanced state, I twisted and fell against the couch and bounced. I landed in a heap, the arm that I had been using to hold up my trousers now pinned underneath me.

Murph lumbered to his feet and whipped around to face me, then Tammi. His face was a mask of rage and pain. Bloodshot eyes swept back and forth between us. Finally, he squared up with Tammi.

“You bitch,” he snarled, his voice barely a croaking whisper. His Irish brogue was stronger than usual, adding to the menace.

Then, suddenly, his face winced. It was as if the profanity harmed him as much as a physical punch. “How could you?” he cried. “I was going to help you. Take you away from all this.” He gestured around the room.

But something about his words – where had I heard those words before?

I never said I was a smart man. You’d think that being a private detective would require a certain… awareness. Generally speaking, I don’t have any excuse for my inability to put two-and-two together.

All I can say is that when I looked at Murphy, all I could see was my Army buddy. I was completely blinded, and didn’t even know it.

“It’s not like that, Murph,” I said, getting to my feet and adjusting my belt. “We were just -”

“I saw what you were doing!” he yelled, head whipping to face me. “I saw you!”

He turned and took a step towards me. I held up my hands to hold him off and get him to listen, dropping trou once again. To the side, Tammi caught my eye. The look on her face was one of pure panic. Eyes wide. She was trying to tell me something with her look. What was it?

A dawning realization was sprouting from a seed to a full forest in the background of my mind, but still hadn’t made it to my mental hammock.

“She was going to be safe,” he continued, stalking forward in heavy steps. “But you had to do this. You had to keep her doing this. You did this!”

“Murphy,” I pleaded. “What are you talk-”

He twisted his hand, revealing the worst possible object I could have imagined. My heart jumped into my throat.

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized what Tammi had been trying to warn me about. I was no longer trying to calm down my friend. I looked from his hand to his face and back again, and I knew nothing made sense.

Murphy was holding the garrote.

Just like that, the post-orgasmic fog lifted like a magician pulling back the curtains. Pieces fell into place in sickening thuds. My eyes flicked from the piece of wire in his hand to his face and back again.

It was like two different scenes. A collage of two separate magazines combined into one disjoined image. One was a killer. The other was my Army buddy. Part of my mouse brain knew they were one and the same. Part of it knew that they couldn’t be.

As distraught as I was, it was nothing compared to the look on Murph’s face. He looked bewildered and confused. He just stared at me, as if he were trying to recognize me.

The small wooden dowel handle of the makeshift garrote was barely visible in his clenched fist. The piano wire dangled and seemed to breathe along with him, making it look alive and predatory. Hungry. It needed to feed.

His other hand opened and closed repeatedly. Having once held flowers in an expression of love, now it squeezed and released without a sense of purpose.

“Not you,” he said, looking straight at me. It was an accusation that bore through me like a spear. “Not. You!”

Suddenly he raised that hand and pushed the heel of his palm against his temple, squeezing his eyes shut tight. He puffed out huge breaths. He was trying to remember where he was.

“I couldn’t save them,” he whispered. I almost didn’t hear him, but the words boomed in my skull like a thunderclap.

Couldn’t save them… couldn’t save them… couldn’t save them.

I’d seen that look before. Two years ago. I now knew where Murph was, and it wasn’t with Tammi and me. It wasn’t here and now.

At that moment, Murph was back in Cabanatuan as I found him during the raid. Over a hundred pounds lighter. A malnutritioned skeleton entree with a side of anorexia as garnish.

Chaos and hell. The entire POW camp was in pandemonium. My platoon raced through the camp to prevent the Japanese from slaughtering all the POWs.

Back in the apartment, Murph lifted his nose in the air and sniffed. Suddenly I could smell it too. A strong scent of cooking meat. A sickeningly acrid barbecue of human flesh. The Japanese had forced many POWs into a work tunnel, doused them in kerosene, and lit the match. Others were lined up to face the firing squad. No prisoners were to be rescued alive.

Screaming. Yelling. But mostly, the screaming.

Murph had been one of the lucky ones. One of the prisoners taken to be shot in the back of the head. Instead of turning around as he had been ordered, he had fought back. Despite a nasty pistol whip that gave him a severe concussion, he had clawed his way at the guard. Despite being weak and starved, he had managed to grab ahold of the guard’s leather holster strap.

A scuffle. Murphy found himself behind the guard. The shoulder holster got caught, wrapped around the sadistic guard’s neck. Whether by instinct or training, Murphy grasped the leather between his fists and pulled with all his emaciated weight. Knee into the back. Leverage.

The guard couldn’t shake him off, and eventually lost too much oxygen and blacked out. Unsure that the guard wasn’t just playing possum, Murph continued pulling on the holster strap until the guard’s neck broke with a soft crack.

Murph stood up, and looked at the dead guard and his fallen comrades. Unsure of what to do with himself, he began to pace in a circle among the bodies. The remnants of the guard’s leather holster strap dangled from his fingers.

That’s how I had found him. I had raced around the corner to find Murph staggering among the corpses, a shirtless, walking cadaver with the heel of his palm pressed against his temple.

He had no idea that another Japanese guard was screaming at him. I had just enough time to see the guard raise his rifle bayonet and prepare to charge.

On reflex, I raised my rifle and shot the guard in the head. He dropped like a stone, his rifle falling harmlessly on top of the other man that Murph had killed. Murph never flinched. He had to be told, later, that he was within a split second of being shot.

He looked up at me and blinked. Through his mental fog, he recognized my uniform. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut before opening them again.

I took off my helmet and let him look at my face.

“Round eyes,” he said in wonder. “Round eyes!”

He took a step towards me, but then looked around. Pain and anguish brought him back to his reality, and then his eyes went wide in horror.

“I couldn’t save them,” he said to me in a pleading voice. He gestured at the corpses of the murdered POWs, trying to get me to understand. The guilt was overwhelming, the pain was tearing him apart. He had accepted the blame for not being able to prevent their deaths, and was now trying to get me to understand.

“I couldn’t save them,” he repeated, his voice low and quavering.

“I know,” I said, trying to reassure him while still trying to prevent us from getting killed by the Japs’ scorched-earth policy. Chaos surrounded us, bullets were flying, fire and smoke filling our nostrils.

Even so, it was a phrase he couldn’t stop himself from uttering like a mantra as we cleared out the camp and the POWs were rescued.

Now, in the apartment, Murph repeated the phrase over and over. Couldn’t save them… couldn’t save them.

I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid that if I moved, Murphy’s fragile emotional state would crack. I held my breath.

“I know,” I said, hoping to get a calming response like when we were back in the POW camp together.

“Couldn’t save them,” he muttered. Suddenly he froze, and opened his eyes. My heartbeat quickened. His shoulders relaxed a bit, and I found a glitter of hope.

His eyes changed, more focused on the here and now. He turned his gaze to me. For a split second, I saw him recognize me as the man who took him from the camp. His eyes looked clear and, for the first time, calm.

That’s when Tammi pounced.

“No!” I shouted, reaching out my hand in a vain attempt to stop her.

She shrieked and jumped on Murphy’s back. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and her hands came around the front of his face and started clawing at his eyes.

It was the worst thing that Tammi could have done.

Tammi had no way of knowing that she had just thrust Murphy back into the jungle, back to the day where he had been captured. In its infinite wisdom, the Army had decided that medics would march in the back of the column. Unarmed.

Once the Japanese figured this out, they would wait in the trees until the column passed and then fall upon the poor medics and tear them to shreds. The logic was to first take out the men who could save the remainder of the platoon when injured. In effect, it became open season on Army medics.

Murphy had been a medic.

He roared in a rage, whirling his free arm straight up through Tammi’s grip. Throwing his hips into a violent twist, Tammi couldn’t hang on. Murphy’s arm came back down around her waist, taking her in a one-armed bear hug.

With a bend of his knee and another thrust of his hips, he whipped Tammi around him like one of those fancy Lindy Hop moves she liked so much. He sent Tammi flying across the room as if she weighed no more than a ham sandwich. She hit the wall wrong, knocking the wind out of her. She crumpled to the ground, eyes wide as she tried to breathe.

Paying her no more attention, he took a step towards me. There was no more clarity or calm in his eyes. I was the enemy.

Suddenly aware that I still hadn’t straightened up my trousers, I scrambled to get away. He kicked the coffee table and the solid wood slammed into my leg, keeping me off balance. He was stalking me. I needed to get away from his bayonet, I mean garrote.

Bayonet. My mind split in two. Part of me knew what was happening, but powerless to stop it. It knew it was my turn. Violence. Life-or-Death. Seconds away from extreme, possibly fatal pain. Maybe watching him triggered my own battle fatigue. Maybe it was there all along.

I knew that I was losing my grip and completely unable to reason my way through it. I wanted to scream at my impotence, even as my fight-or-flight adrenaline rush swept over me like a flash flood.

God, no, not me too.

Suddenly I wasn’t in the apartment any more. I was in the Philippine jungle, crawling on all fours. The Japanese infantryman was coming for me, his bayonetted rifle jabbing the underbrush twice with each step. He swept from side to side, hoping to catch a part of me as I scrambled away from him.

The noise filled my ears. Gunfire. The cracking of the tree trunks as artillery fire shredded them into splinters. I was separated from the platoon. I was a goner. He was going to find me, and slice me open with that razor-sharp steel.

Smells of smoke and the telltale copper scent of too much blood staining the jungle floor. My mind raced. I needed to get to my service revolver. I reached for it, felt the comfortable grip in my palm. My finger slipped through the guard in its comfortable position. The Japanese soldier raised his rifle to strike. He shouted something that I couldn’t understand.

The Japanese Gunsō – a Sergeant – embraced the kind of fanaticism every Allied soldier had come to expect. I was sub-human, an insect to be exterminated under his Imperial boot. Not worthy in the glorious Empire of his making.

There is a moment when you see a man’s eyes who has every intent and desire to kill you. It’s a moment of simplicity and clarity that is almost refreshing. No confusion. No ambiguity. No uncertainty.

There is also no time for conscious thought. You act, or do not act. If you have any survival instinct at all, that’s when it kicks in. You don’t get to decide. Something inside of you has to do it on your behalf. In that millisecond.

In an instant, the jungle dissipated. The apartment rushed into the foreground. I blinked, unsure about where I was or what had happened. I was so shocked by the sudden change in environment that I froze like a deer caught in headlights.

In place of the Gunsō stood Murphy. He stood still for a moment, staring at me. I thought perhaps he recognized me, finally. There was a sadness to his expression that tore at me, then a confusion, then a brief recognition.

Then he started to topple.

I rolled to the side and managed to avoid his lifeless body collapsing on top of me. Barely.

The next few moments were a blur. I had never heard the gunfire. I never felt the trigger squeeze. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but Murphy had an additional hole in his head that hadn’t been there before, and I was the one holding the pistol.

I sat up and touched my fingertips to my cheeks and found them wet. I didn’t even realize I was crying. A crazy thought ran through my head. You wouldn’t cry, would you, Frank?

Dammit.

Epilogue

She was good. She was very good. She knew how to ride me like a banshee. Her words, not mine.

Mrs. Walker had gone straight to work when she arrived. She never looked to see if I was alone in the office. In fact it probably wouldn’t have made a difference one way or the other. Underneath that picture-perfect, classy dame exterior was an absolute beast. Her confidence obviously extended to her sexual appetite as well.

I felt myself slipping in and out of her velvety sheath, and I couldn’t help but compare the feeling to Trixie’s rear canal. If I were being strictly honest with myself, there actually was no comparison at all. The taboo had a lot to do with it, to be sure, but I almost wished I had experienced Mrs. Walker before Trixie. That way I wouldn’t feel as guilty about being as spoiled as I was by Trixie’s forbidden tunnel.

Even without the sexual comparison, though, I couldn’t really focus my attention on her. To be fair to Mrs. Walker, she was probably the best normal lay of my life. Any other time, it would have been an experience to put down in history books. She knew that she was in a very unique class all by herself. A fantasy come to life.

In this case, it wouldn’t have mattered if she had come down from heaven with a halo. My mind was distracted. This beautiful woman riding me, her jet black hair flowing down across her shoulders, yet I was somewhere else. I brushed some of it out of the way so that I could see her face. It was an absent-minded gesture, one that I did automatically. Routine.

I dropped my hand to her breast and took a nipple between my fingers. I squeezed. She gripped me even tighter and squealed. I couldn’t tell whether or not she enjoyed it, or if it was just for show. Then she slammed her ass down on me and I knew for sure.

My mind was elsewhere. Still thinking about the moments of the previous day. This was my payment, my bonus. This is what I had been looking forward to, or so I had thought.

I couldn’t tell whether or not she wanted me or whether she wanted to fulfill some sort of perverse fantasy.

Screw the working-class private dick. Yeah, the puns just write themselves.

Either way, I didn’t care. My body responded even if my mind did not. I thought about how she looked, how she was above mere mortals. Her curves belonged in a pinup magazine or on the nose of a B-17. I watched her, almost as if I was outside of my own body. She took me in farther, deeper, with more power, more insistence,

“Give it to me,” she said, her voice nearly breathless with urgency. “I need it.”

I raised my hips off of my desk, pushing into her body with concerted thrusts. I glanced around my office. Now having a very strange sense of impropriety. It was a feeling that wasn’t there when we started. I had swept off all the materials off my desk and we had gotten straight to business.

She had laid me down across the desk. Unzipped me, took me out, rolled her tongue around me for a little while. Got me nice and hard. Then she climbed onboard. Now she was begging for my release.

I didn’t feel it.

My mind wandered. I thought about how Tammi had been bent over this very desk, not two days before. I remembered about how I had just sat there, nonchalantly pouring whiskey into glasses. Tammi, who got a thrill out of being caught. I imagined being caught by Tammi.

Turnabout’s fair play, after all.

A twinge from between my legs and my mind was brought back to the present. As my nether regions started to respond to her administration. It was beyond my control. The pressure. The buildup. The rush.

The explosion.

When I filled her up, she screeched. A note of triumph. Her raven black hair thrown in an arc. A violent gesture. Her pretty face illuminated against the sole light in the office. Still looked like a goddess.

As she thrust her breasts in my face, I emptied myself into her. Once, twice, three times. I felt the junction between us growing wetter. I didn’t know how much of it was me, or how much of it was her.

She stopped suddenly, breathing heavy. She placed her hands upon my chest and pushed, using my rib cage as leverage to disengage. She pulled free slowly, without looking at me.

She crawled off of me, wavered a little, and then off of the desk. She adjusted her panties, pulled up her pantyhose. Somehow she had managed to not get a run in them. Like I said – classy.

Not once did she look at me. This was payment for services rendered. I corrected myself: a bonus for services rendered.

Dammit.

She looked at me, giving me an opportunity to gaze at her magnificent bosom one last time, and then started fastening her bra. I had a momentary sadness as she put away those beautiful breasts with those gorgeous nipples, knowing that I would never see them ever again.

I regretted not being able to take advantage of the opportunity better, but hoped I could remember enough of it for later. Yeah, probably not.

“Where were you?” she asked, adjusting her dress. Then she clarified, “Just now.”

I looked at her quizzically.

She smiled sardonically. “Well, you definitely weren’t with me,” she said, making her final adjustments. She didn’t sound irritated, just curious. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had a man finish without ever leaving the starting gate.”

I swung my legs off the desk, then pulled up my briefs and trousers as I slid to the floor. “Rough couple of days,” I said.

She nodded, and then pulled her purse closer. She opened it, and handed me an envelope. A very thick envelope.

“Mr. Driver,” she said, clasping the purse closed and taking on a more formal demeanor. Thirty seconds ago she had been naked and on top of me. At the moment I found it difficult to remember any of the details. Now I really regretted not paying closer attention. “I have been most satisfied with your performance. You handled my… case… extraordinarily well.”

The double-entendre was not lost on me. “I hope you will find your recompense to be equally satisfying,” she said.

I looked inside. I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “There’s more in here than we agreed upon,” I said. “Is this a retainer?”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Driver,” she replied. “You have exercised your services admirably. However, as much as I appreciate the work that you’ve done for me -” she took a beat, then looked at the desk, and then back at me – “I doubt I will ever require them again.”

I got the meaning immediately. I wasn’t in her league, and just in case I wasn’t smart enough to know I wasn’t in her league, she was letting me know. Explicitly. She had been slumming it.

Slowly, I nodded.

“Good,” she repeated herself. “I think this concludes our business.”

I shook my head. “Not quite,” I replied.

She cocked an eyebrow.

I held up a hand. “Your husband’s murderer was found, but the case is not yet closed,” I said. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but otherwise she showed no outward visible reaction.

“There’s one more thing for me to do,” I said. “After that, then the case will be closed.”

“In that case, Mr. Driver,” she said, her voice professional and final. “Do let me know the conclusion of your findings.” She placed considerable emphasis on the word, conclusion.

A half hour later, I was back at the street corner where everything had gone down. It was quiet. The foot traffic hadn’t really picked up for after-work pedestrians. Given the excitement of the previous day, it felt eerie.

I looked at my watch, and hoped that I was going to get my timing right. For once, I didn’t want to stand watch for hours on end while my target decided to change up the routine.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Across the street, the dilapidated door opened and Moleface stepped unsteadily onto the steps. As she staggered to her position on the corner, she looked around before leaning up against the lamppost.

I saw the car a moment later. Well, whaddya know – sometimes things just fall into your lap. I made my move in order to get to Moleface’s corner just as the car pulled up.

It was a big sedan, a black and white. Brand new. 1947 Ford Special. The police budget must have gotten a boost.

Focusing back on the present, I joined the two officers and detective that got out of the car.

“Miss?” the Detective started. She winced so hard I thought her face was going to swallow her nose. “Miss Gertrude Dunbar?”

Gertrude. Should’ve known.

“It’s Gigi, you pig!” she spat.

“We need you to come downtown,” the Detective said, ignoring her insult.

“For what?” she challenged. “I’ve gotta right to be standing on my own street corner.”

“We need to ask you some questions,” he continued.

“Anything you got to say, you can say it right here,” she said, planting her foot.

The Detective looked at me. “Okay, I’ll say it,” I said.

She looked at me as if she had just realized that I was there and had appeared out of nowhere. Despite having seen me and spoken to me – twice – it took her a good long moment before recognition set in.

“You’re the creep who banged that hooker yesterday,” she said, pointing at me. She looked at the cops as if she had just gotten her “gotcha” moment. “You should arrest him. For sol-iss-uh-tay-shun.”

She drew out the words in triumph. She rested her hand on her hip, confident that she had just tricked me into getting arrested.

Nobody moved. Confused and annoyed, she waved her hand in front of her face. “Well?” she said to the cops. “Well?”

I drew up to her, but my voice was low. Intense. Former Army Ranger discipline kicked in and prevented me from ripping her head off her shoulders. She stood her ground, but she was no longer feeling confident.

“You are going to prison,” I said. My voice was so low that the beat cops and detective had to take a couple steps closer just to hear. She looked around desperately as she felt closed in. “As an accomplice to several murders.”

That got her attention. “I didn’t do nuthin’!” she protested, looking from me to the other cops.

“You knew Murphy was unstable, suffering from battle fatigue,” I said, my eyes piercing so hard into hers that she couldn’t stand to look at me. “I don’t know how you two met, but somehow you knew that you could count on him to take out your competition.”

“Wait a minute,” one of the beat cops suddenly said, snapping his fingers and pointing at her. “I remember her! Murphy busted her ass and brought her to the precinct. She followed him around like a puppy dog for hours. Even when she was released she wouldn’t leave.”

That’s close to my patch, Murphy had said at the diner.

Suddenly I had the picture. Everything made sense. “You are one sick broad, you know that?”

The Detective looked at me, then to Moleface, and then back to me again. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

I answered him without looking away from the prostitute. “See, at first I couldn’t figure out why The Slicer-Dicer – I mean, Murphy – would keep coming back to the scene of the crime. It didn’t make any sense. Anyone with half a brain would stay clear of the place where he’d committed a murder, much less several.

“It didn’t add up, until I had a hunch that there was something bringing him back, over and over again,” I continued. “Someone was calling him back.”

I continued on. I didn’t have the whole thing, but the pieces kept clicking as I talked. I had a flash of Felix the Cat laying down tracks in front of a train as it was going forward. A mad cat trying not to derail his runaway train.

“Little miss jealous here may have had a thing for Murphy, but Murphy had a ‘type.’ He wouldn’t give someone like her the time of day.” I looked her up and down, unable to hide my disdain.

More pieces clicked. “But Murphy had a savior complex. He felt he needed to save everyone. He would have tried to convince her to do the right thing and get out of hooking, for her own good.”

I glared at her. “So you introduced him to the new girls on your corner,” I continued, almost watching the scene unfold in my mind as if it were happening in real-time. “He would take them somewhere, and he would fall in love with them right then and there. He would think that he was saving them.

“And then the next day, he would come back for them. But they were with someone else. New clients. Clients that wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.”

In my head, I watched as he saw the new “loves” of his life with other men. Murphy’s face would register shock and anger, disappointment and betrayal. He would have felt cuckolded, even if the relationship were just in his own head. A fantasy made real enough through twisted reality defined by an inhumane prisoner-of-war camp.

I remembered him standing in the doorway with flowers for Tammi, and my heart broke on his behalf. I thought about him spending the day preparing to see her again. He would have thought about how she would like the flowers, truly believing that he could be her knight in shining armor and take her away from her life of vice.

But it all went wrong. He would take his time for his revenge and his punishment. His mind, bent and twisted from what had happened to him, could have seen the johns as some form of his camp torturers. More likely, they were evil men who would keep innocent, sweet girls trapped and tormented in their life of prostitution.

As for the girls, he may not have had or needed a complicated motivation. He had said as much when he burst into the room with Tammi and I. She had betrayed him. They all had betrayed him. They had hurt him, when all he had wanted to do was save them.

In any case, Murphy was a weapon and Moleface had pointed him in the direction of her competition.

“You would make sure that he knew about it. You would tell him all the details about what they looked like and, in the case of the hookers, where they lived.”

Her jaw set, and then protruded forward in a petulant, spiteful defiance. The drunken wheels were spinning.

“Oh yeah?” she challenged. “Where’s your proof?”

I reached into my pocket and took out the envelope of photographs. I handed them to the Detective, who started pulling them out.

“Remember when I said something was calling him?” I said, then looked her up and down. She nauseated me. “Well meet some thing.”

Her eyes went wide as she saw the snaps as he shuffled through them.

I gotta hand it to Marcus. The kid was a natural with a camera. The Detective rifled through photo after photo of a story that was indisputable. On a 30-photo roll of film, he had gotten thirty perfect photos. He had hidden in plain sight and, just like usual, had been practically invisible to nearly everyone.

He shot the pictures of me and Tammi and the corner, the jealous Moleface’s reaction in almost comical exaggerated expression. As Tammi and I made our way down the street, she unwittingly performed frustrated poses for the camera. Then, Moleface ran off to the nearest phone booth a block away. Marcus got shots of her on the phone, and then waiting just outside.

While I had been waiting for Slicer-Dicer to show up in the rented room, Moleface was waiting for Murphy. Murphy showed up, flowers in hand, and the photos show a change of expression as she explained what had happened.

Murphy had ran from Moleface towards the apartment, and Marcus had gotten a couple of shots of a very self-satisfied hooker. There was even one of her looking at her nails with a cat-ate-the-canary grin on her face.

Marcus – fast as he was – had raced after Murphy. He managed to keep pace with him (he had explicit instructions not to get close), and kept taking pictures. Murphy entered the building and raced up the stairs.

The last photo was a classic. The flowers were dropping, his hand releasing them to the floor. His jaw was open, stunned. His eyes were pained. I knew what he had been seeing at that moment, and was just glad that Marcus couldn’t.

I had seen the flowers hit the floor, but I hadn’t seen what Marcus’ masterful photography captured. In plain sight, clear as day, Murphy’s other hand was holding the garrote. In my shock and surprise at being caught, I had failed to notice that Murphy was already prepared to commit murder.

Thank god Marcus had seen it and had the good sense to run away. It pained me to think about how close he had gotten to being hurt. I’d have to have a talk with him about not pushing things, Soon.

Nevertheless, the sequence of photographs was plain as day. Moleface had pointed Murphy in our direction and pulled the trigger.

“Somewhere in your booze-hound mind,” I snarled, “You thought you could kill two birds with one stone – literally. You could get rid of your competition and at the same time punish those men who chose prettier girls than you.”

Moleface studied my face for a long moment, seething. She looked at the policemen, back at me, and then snarled, “Yeah? So what? They had it comin’. I told those bitches this here was my corner.”

I knew that she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box, but I didn’t expect a full confession on the spot.

The Detective took a second to focus, and then sighed. “Come on boys,” he said. “Let’s take her in.”

Moleface didn’t go quietly. She screamed and tried to claw and kick at the policemen as they dragged her to the car. She got so violent that they had to pick her up, causing her red wig to fall to the wet concrete.

“My wig! My wig!” she screamed, but the cops ignored her. Where the wig had been was very fine, very thin hair barely concealing her scalp. A strange thought about the power of wigs crossed my mind as I considered that she must have been even older than I first thought. I felt a rise of bile threaten to leap out of my throat, but I held it in.

The wig had fallen into the gutter. A saturated wet mop of cheap horse hair, it reeked as I pulled it out of the deep puddle. Ropes of filthy liquid dropped from the strands. I hauled back and threw it at her as hard as I could.

“My wi-!” The squish of the sopping wet wig was satisfying. Having it strike home into her open mouth was orgasmic glory. She sputtered and spat as the car door slammed shut.

A noise caught my attention from above. I looked up against the falling backdrop of rain to see a dozen, probably more, tenants looking out of their apartment windows.

Applauding.

“Your good deed of the day,” the Detective said, looking at the impromptu ovation.

I didn’t say anything. The moment felt surreal.

“We didn’t get properly introduced,” the Detective said. “The name’s Bartlesby. Reggie, to my friends.”

“Driver. Frank Driver.”

“Look, I… I know Murph was your friend,” he said after a moment. He paused, not knowing how to proceed. “I don’t know if you want it, but there was a reward for any information leading to the arrest of the Slicer-Dicer.”

I nodded, not looking at the Detective. I had known about that, but had forgotten. A lot had happened over the past two days.

“Why don’t you come down to the precinct sometime, and we can talk about it, eh?” he suggested diplomatically.

I nodded. He turned and returned to the police car with the screaming hooker inside. He stopped and turned as if to say something else, changed his mind, and then got in the car.

As it drove off, I thought about the reward. Five hundred dollars to kill the man I saved only two years ago. It seemed obscene.

I walked back to the office. It was a particularly long slog in the pouring rain, but I needed it. There was still something that I couldn’t get my head wrapped around. The Detective’s words rang in my ears, bringing me back to those unanswered questions.

Why had Murph given me the information at the diner? If he knew that I was investigating the case for Mrs. Walker, why had he listened to Moleface and risk everything?

It didn’t make sense to me. He knew I was on the case. Knew that I was going to be searching for him. And he helped me anyway. Why?

Obviously he had raced to Trixie’s apartment after we met at the diner. He needed to get rid of her before she could say or do anything. But I got there too quickly, I guess. But why did he show me her information in the first place? He could have sent me off on a wild-goose chase, but he didn’t. Why didn’t he misdirect me?

Despite the rain, I walked slower than usual. I needed to figure this out. Needed to.

I thought back to my conversation in the diner, searched for some clue. Something I might have missed. I replayed the discussion, thought about what we talked about.

My mind stuck on one thing. Only one thing.

“This puts me on the line.”

“You’ve been on the line before.”

The look on his face should have told me everything. I had missed it. I had been too focused on having offended him.

Had I not been wrapped in the case I would have seen it plain as day. I had thought that I had made a mistake, insulted him. I hadn’t intended to remind him of what happened in Cabanatuan, and had felt embarrassed because I had implied that he owed me. If I hadn’t been so concerned about offending him, I should have seen it.

Little did I know that saying that one little line probably saved Trixie’s life. Maybe mine, too.

What I had taken as offense was nothing of the kind. Without realizing it or intending to do so, I had reminded him that he owed me his life.

The realization of what happened struck me dumb. I actually stopped and stood stock still on the sidewalk, staring at the rain falling in front of me.

He wanted me to stop him. He wanted me to catch him trying to kill Trixie. When I fumbled my entrance into her apartment, he got cold feet and bolted. At the time, it didn’t make sense why he hadn’t been able to kill her in a split second with that razor-sharp wire. He actually wasn’t trying to kill her. He was holding her a hair’s breadth away from death so that I could do something about it.

Then everything really fell apart. He had picked up Tammi just like we had thought – the lonesome loser looking for love, and he had found it. Just like we planned.

But our plan had backfired. Moleface had told him that his new ‘girl’ was cheating on him. Talked him into a rage. Again. A switch had gone off in his fractured consciousness, and he had rushed over. Two sides fighting for control. One side with flowers. The other side with the garrote. He probably didn’t know which one would win out. Until…

I leaned against the wall of a nearby building. The cold wet brick felt slimy and cold under my palm. Just like my conscience.

… Until he saw me.

I felt gut-punched. The final pieces fell into place.

“Not you,” he had said.

He had expected Tammi to be with someone. Just not me. At that moment, he knew I couldn’t stop him, couldn’t save him again. He knew that he was completely on his own. The part of him that was broken, messed up from the war, it couldn’t cope. I’ll never know exactly what happened inside of that camp, but whatever it was broke his mind into more pieces than his broken bones.

I felt like I let him down.

I turned my head against the side of the building and lurched out my lunch. It didn’t make me feel any better.

Slowly, I started moving again. Everything felt numb. I could have had trenchfoot from all the rain and wouldn’t have felt a thing.

My shoes sloshed through another puddle as I crossed a side street. A distant thought occurred to me. Maybe I could finally buy some new shoes. Mrs. Walker’s payment certainly made that a possibility. Marcus could earn his keep after all.

Speaking of Marcus, I walked by his spot in the mouth of the alley. I wanted to greet the little guy. He wasn’t there. Good for him. Kid needed a break. For some reason that lifted my spirits a little.

The doorman held the door open for me and chirped, “Good evening, Mr. Driver.”

“Good evening, Billy,” I said. He beamed as I got his name right. Chalk up another small win.

My mood was mixed as I made my way to the office. I heard shuffling beyond it, but didn’t bother pulling out my .38. I opened the door to find a very flustered squid and Tammi, who was straightening her skirt.

“Your timing is impeccable, Frank,” she sighed. “We just got done.”

The sailor looked from her to me and back again. Unlike the previous guy, he wasn’t one for an audience. “I… I gotta get back to the ship.”

“You do that, sweetie,” Tammi called after him. She lit up a cigarette.

I went behind my desk, opened my favorite drawer and pulled out the whiskey and two glasses. I handed her a glass, and she held it out for me to fill it. She wouldn’t take it until I had poured practically half the damn bottle into it.

“Cheers,” she said, sitting down in the seat next to the desk and waving the glass in my general direction. Like mine, it faced the door. This suited me too, as I wasn’t really in the mood for a face-to-face.

After a time, I asked, “Tell me, what is it about sailors?”

She thought for a moment. Finally, without looking at me, she replied, “I like their uniforms.”

Worked for me.

She thought some more about her answer. “They’re always so white. And clean.” A beat. “They’re never dirty.”

There was something hanging in the air after that. I wasn’t one to press.

A knock on the door interrupted whatever thoughts I may have been having. “Come in!” Tammi and I both called at the same time. I looked at her, and shrugged.

“Mister Driver?” A pretty black woman about thirty peered meekly around the door.

I sat up straight. “Yes, that’s me, Mrs…”

She stepped into the room, her hands clasping her purse in front of her. She was anxious, nervous. She had on a pretty floral dress with a matching hat and clean, white gloves. She looked like she had just come from church. I opened a drawer to my desk and hid my whiskey glass inside. Tammi brought her arm behind her back and passed off her glass as well. I shut the drawer as quickly as I could without spilling the drinks, and then stood up.