A Hooke and Marton
Confidential Investigation Story
The Lady in Grey
I still have several
first-draft chapters of a hard-boiled, Raymond Chandler inspired
mystery story that I and my friend, Dennis started in 1973, which
actually makes it six or seven years earlier than the Hybrid-worlder
or the Brigand Sea-Prince. No doubt I was working in the drill press
department of Allen Bradley at the time, though that fall I would
take a job with Bureau of Public Debt in Chicago for a while. It was
a long time ago. In any event, we both were fans of Raymond Chandler
and this story was an attempt to take Chandler’s sunny southern
California motif and mutate it into something, well, Milwaukee-ian
mostly just for laughs.
The
Lady in Grey
Chapter
1
It
was an October morning, 1947 and I needed a five-letter word for
‘tax’. I lay stretched out on the office’s worn couch working
the morning daily’s crossword puzzle. My partner, Chester Hook, sat
behind the desk with his hat still on and his feet resting on the
desktop reading some gaudy covered pulp magazine. Business as usual.
Every
once and a while I would hear the chair squeak as Hooke reached from
behind his detective magazine and fumble with a box of Smith Brothers
cough drops. He claimed he was addicted to them. He might be. The
desk was set diagonally to the corner with the bow windows
overlooking the Milwaukee River, on which was painted in gold
letters; “notraM bna ekooH, etavirP srotagitsevnI,” which read
from the outside, if any customers happened to be floating down the
river, “Hooke and Marton, Private Investigators.” To the left of
the desk was the hissing radiator and a bare stretch of flaking paint
to the other corner, where three filing cabinets stood against the
wall. They contained mostly half-finished crossword puzzles ripped
out of the morning paper, and Hook’s current collection of
second-hand detective magazines. Next to the filing cabinets was a
brownish washbowl and a small cupboard on which rested the hotplate
and coffee pot. A door opened to a small closet in the other wall by
the corner. In the center of the tile floor, roughly in front of the
desk stood the straight-backed chair for our clients. I lay on the
red and green couch along the wall opposite the filing cabinets, with
a battered end table supporting a cracked lamp with a Chinese pagoda
painted on it in gold and red. I looked at the Allen Bradley’s
calendar with three days crossed off, which was tacked up on the
wall over the filing cabinets. We were three days behind, as it was
the 6th.
We
said nothing for twenty minutes when I thought out loud, “Thirteen
down, a five letter word for ‘tax’.”
No
answer from the man reading the pulp with a skull singing into a
microphone on the cover.
I
sat up. Setting the paper down next to me, I announced, “I’ve got
the flu. I think I’ll take a couple fo aspirins.”
‘You
go a hangover,” Hooke mumbled.
“To
hell with the aspirins, I’ll have a cigarette instead.” I fished
one out from my shirt pocket and laying back, lit it with a match
from the table. I returned to the crossword puzzle. Eighteen across…
Some
time later I noticed the rare tap-click of high-heels coming down the
hallway. They stopped, as if reading the sign on the door down the
hall, and then started our way again. They stopped in front of our
door. There was a pause, followed by a light tap on the glass of our
door. From my position on the couch I could see beyond the open
doorway between the waiting room and our office, a slender shadow on
the frosted glass of the outer door.
“The
door’s open,” call out Hooke.
After
some hesitation, the door opened a little and the slim shadow slipped
through the narrow opening into our small waiting room. She was a
brunette, twenty-five, maybe thirty-ish, wearing a plain grey suit
over a white starched blouse. The jacket had wide lapels and a black
buttons down the front. On the right lapel was pinned a piece of
silver jewelry. She did not wear much makeup – she didn’t need
any. Shyly, she looked through the open doorway at Hooke, who had not
stirred. And cast a quick glance in my direction. Puzzled and
embarrassed, the lady in grey looked down at the small end table and
chair next to the door and bent her head enough o look at the old
Saturday Evening Post on the table. Then she shifted her attention to
the faded print of a guy and his dog hunting pheasants hanging on the
wall separating the waiting room from the office. She carefully
avoided looking into the office or at me.
‘Come
in, Miss,” Hooke called out, again without looking up from the
detective pulp. I watched her make up her mind that this was
something she had to do and get over with. So, with a determined look
on her pale face, she walked into the inner office. I watched her as
she swayed, slightly, in – her large soft eyes gave her face a
girlish look and her pale complexion suggested that she had not be
out of doors too much. She glanced at me, again, and then at Hooke’s
feet on the desk.
‘Mr
Hook…?” she half said and half asked in a quiet voice looking in
Hooke’s direction.
“Please
be seated, Miss,” said Hook, still not looking up form the magazine
before him.
The
ends of her lips moved a little. Yes, she had guessed right. It
pleased her a little.
“I’m
Hooke,” he said, closing the magazine and laying it carefully on
the desk. Just as carefully, he slid his buster-browns off the desk
and with a squeak from the swivel chair, sat upright. Shaking his
head, he slowly sighed and said, “I never even suspected him...”
He looked up at her, “Sorry, Miss. You came in at the last page.
What can we do for you?” He didn’t sound particularly interested
in doing anything for her. A real go-getter, Hooke is.
She
sat down in the customer’s chair, tentatively, and carefully placed
the small square purse on her lap. “I was hoping you could help
me,” she said, dividing her attention between a speck of lint on
the cuff of her jacket and the tip of Hooke’s nose.
“Thirteen
down, five letter word for ‘tax’.” I was back at the crossword
puzzle and thinking out loud again. Out of the corner of my eye, I
could see her turn her head to look at me. Her puzzled look returned.
Everyone was silent.
“Ah,
Miss, just what sort of help?” asked Hooke after studying our
would-be client a bit. He even managed to sound slightly more
interested. He helped himself to a cough drop.
“Mr
Hook...” she looked at me, shyly.
“Uh,
he’s the other name on the door. My partner, Art Marton,” said my
partner with a generous sweep of his hand. “Feel free to talk in
front of him. He’s harmless when hung over.”
She
was liking this whole business even less from the expression on her
face. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t had to do this sort of thing
before. Hire a detective, I mean. But I need help and I’ve been to
three other agencies since yesterday and they all refused to handle
this matter.” She was looking at Hooke again.
Hooke
muttered a meaningless “Oh,” and taking a deep breath, added
“Just what is it you need help with?” he asked, sounding somewhat
impatient, but making the effort to lean forward and look more
concerned than all of us knew he was.
“I
need to find my brother.”
And
I’ll just add a little from Chapter 2
“Someone
sure wanted him dead,” Detective Barron said.
“Yeah,
we got that, else he wouldn’t be dead, right?” broke in
Lieutenant Hank Wood. “Okay, what have we got so far?”
“We
got one through the door, a spent case in the corridor, and three
more after the killer came in through the door. Three more spent
cartridges in the room. Guy answered the door with a .45 in his hand,
which bounced under the end table after he was shot,” Barron
replied mechanically. “No indication of who might have done it. The
room was searched, thoroughly, I might add.”
“No indication unless somebody hast told us everything, Said Wood,
looking over the three of us; Mary still seated in the chair with
Hooke and I standing on either side of her.
“You’ve
got all of it, Lieutenant. Everything we had to do with it,” Hooke
replied.
“Far
be it from us to withhold information from the police. It could be
our license,” I said, not trying to sound sarcastic, but it came
out that way. Must have been the booze. Or the homey atmosphere.
‘If
you did, withhold information, that is, it will be your license, you
can count on that,” Wood shot back, pointing a finger at me.
“Why,
Lieutenant, I don’t think you care for private detectives,” said
Hooke.
‘You
got it pal. Okey, Barron, ring up the coroner. It’s about time he
got in on the frolics.”
It
was clear he didn’t care for private detectives. What’s more, he
didn’t trust us. I gathered that he had talked tot he manager. And
our popularity rating with the manager wasn’t too good either.
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