THE CASE OF THE VANISHED VALISE
By Thomas Shess-- My name is Hank Calder, I'm a private investigator. My first job with Art Garcia Investigations was to tail the mistress of a big-time San Francisco politico turned billionaire and report her comings and goings. His wife wanted to know who she was up against.
"One more thing," Garcia said as I stepped out of his Chinatown office. “Client says if you get a clean shot, take her out—and the fallout can’t land on her or her husband.”
“Do I have to? Hits aren’t my specialty.”
"I was kidding," Art chuckled. “Follow her and report back every Monday morning.”
“How long is this going to take?”
“You haven’t worked in six months. Do what you’re told and be thankful. I’ll let you know.”
Art handed me a manila envelope the size of a slab of bacon, fat with C-notes. Inside were two wallet-size photographs of the woman, plus a few words scratched across the back of Art’s business card: Her address is a phony.
"Where do I start?"
"Is now too soon?"
"San Francisco is a big city. Any idea where to start looking?"
“Start at Powell's Saloon in North Beach. John Wald owns it, and he keeps a census of all the comings and goings in that part of town.”
***
Wald, a burly retired firefighter with a walrus moustache, was one of those barkeeps who dried his glassware by hand. He never stopped doing that while I was there.
He was friendly enough. "Who's asking?"
"Employment background," I said. "I'm not the law."
"I know nothing."
"Art Garcia said you might help me."
"All I know about her is she rented a room from a couple of ex-cops that I won't let into my bar and she landed a cocktail gig at the Fairbanks Hotel up the street at the top of Nob Hill. Are you new in town?"
"Yep. I go where the action is."
"Art is solid and not someone you'd cross."
"I won't, but thanks for the tip."
Wald offered, "The Fairbanks is down the block from the Fairmont. Why two big-time hotels named themselves that beats me."
Of course, the Paymo driverless cab I hired pulled up to the wrong hotel. "I said the Fairbanks Hotel. It's down the block."
Red and green lights on the dashboard blinked until I heard a tinny voice: "Recalculating."
The Fairbanks is a stately 20-story Arts & Crafts design built after the great San Francisco earthquake. The Fairmont is the Fairmont, a classical design and about as exciting as a tombstone. Why I'm suddenly an architectural critic is probably because the horseless carriage didn't apologize for taking me to the wrong place. I had to take it out on someone or something.
A red, green and gold-uniformed doorman stepped up to the taxi. "Thanks, maybe you can help me," I said.
He smiled. "Concierge is on the left side of the lobby. I park cars and open doors."
"And wear green pants to work," I added.
Inside the lobby, the elderly concierge looked like Saint Peter manning the entry booth to Heaven. I moved over to the bar instead. I didn't want to ask Pete the wrong questions.
I played it straight. Showed my ID as a PI and gave him my new line: "I'm doing an employment background check."
He shook his head. Negative.
I flashed another of Art Garcia's fifty-dollar bills. I swore I heard the machinery in the barkeep's brain utter: Recalculating.
I said, "her name is Annee Kinder. I was told she worked cocktails recently.
"Wow, yeah, I hated to see her go. She was starting to build up regulars. Great when you split the tips with the waitresses."
"Wow, Do you know where she went?"
"I had the bellboys walk her home when she was here. Around the corner. The place is a residence hotel called the Argonaut. She was nice to me and I didn't want to see her mugged."
I walked east on California and took the Powell cable car downhill to somewhere around Sutter Street. It seems Annee Kinder wasn't hiding from anyone; she was on the Argo's list as a current tenant.
I could have hung out inside the Argonaut's lobby, but I was hungry. I ordered a brisket-and-fries sandwich with a sour pickle and sat at a deuce in front of the deli across from my tail's hotel.
What I like about Frisco is there seems to be a mom-and-pop grocer or a deli on every street corner. This one was the best. But that scared me. I didn't want things to go too smoothly right off the bat.
Sure enough, my lucky streak held. I saw a great-looking woman stepping out of a Yellow Cab in front of the Argonaut with a brown leather valise in one hand and enough leg showing to make a man forgive every promise he had made to stop being a dick to women.
In person, she was a brunette, curls falling to her shoulders. Tall, lean and angular, she had been assembled with the kind of care Detroit once reserved for its expensive models. The black seams of her stockings ran straight enough to settle a property dispute. She exited the cab, looked once up Nob Hill and once behind her, then crossed into the Argo as though she owned the sidewalk and was considering buying the building.
I crossed Powell.
Thirty seconds after she disappeared through the revolving door, two men in gray suits scrambled out of another cab. They did not pay the driver. They did not look at the rain. They charged into the Argo with the urgent stride of men who had misplaced something valuable and preferred shooting anybody who got in the way.
I swallowed the last of my coffee, left a tip and jaywalked behind a cable car clanging its way up the hill.
The cabbie that dropped her off nearly clipped me. I slapped the fender hard and yelled through the closed driver’s window. “Watch it, pal. Drive like that and you’ll lose your medallion.”
There was no one inside the cab to flip me off.
***
There was also no one inside the no-star hotel except the desk clerk. He was young, pale and trying hard to look as though he had not spent his youth playing video games. He also looked as though being held by the lapels was part of the hotel’s service, because that was exactly what was happening. “Woman,” the taller gray suit said. “Dark hair. Brown valise.”
The clerk swallowed. “Room two-fourteen.”
The gray suit let go of him.
***
The suits beat me to the mezzanine. I could tell because they used a shoulder instead of a key. The door to Room 214 hung by one brass hinge. As I got closer, I heard a woman scream. I reached the doorway in time to see both thugs trying to clamp handcuffs on her. She was not going quietly. Their faces were striped with scratches from the lioness’s claws. The slimmer suit had enough. “One more scratch and you lose your teeth.”
She head-butted Beefy, confusing him for a moment.
I yelled something brave, like, “Hey, hey, hey!”
The suits stopped.
She did not. She tore loose from them and ran straight at me. “Help me! They’re trying to kill me!”
I stepped aside and watched her race into the hallway as fast as five-inch heels could carry her. I did not have long to notice, but I did see her snatch her valise as she roared by me.
The suits might have gotten past me, too, if they had asked nicely. Instead, one shouted, “Asshole, get out of the way.”
“Who the hell are you?” I asked. “You don't call someone a name before asking him for a favor." Of all the names I had been called, asshole was not a favorite.
“She’s getting away,” the second suit shouted. I stood my ground, and the three of us began a poor man’s tango. “You’re impeding an official investigation.”
“Show me something that says official.”
I do not remember passing out, but my jaw gave me a fair idea of what had happened. When I came around, I was on the carpet with my hands cuffed behind me. Each gray suit had pulled up a chair to watch.
"dBehave," he shook my shoulders.
I nodded.
The slim one undid the cuffs.
The other was built like a linebacker. He spoke first. “Hotel security?”
“ No.”
“Good.” His fist landed in my stomach.
“Local police?”
It took me a while to catch enough breath to say no. His second punch landed in my stomach.
“Then you should’ve stayed out of the doorway, pal.”
I did not answer.
He punched me back to the carpet. While I was down there, Beefy shoved his wallet ID into my face. “You impeded an FBI arrest.”
I glanced around the room in case they had caught up and dragged her back.
“Where is she going?” one of them asked me. “And why did you show up?”
“I saw two thugs attacking a woman in her bedroom. She didn’t look or sound happy about it. I thought I'd help her out.”
“We saw a nosy fellow getting in our way. Who the hell are you?”
“I was selling her insurance. I had an appointment.”
That answer made him dislike me more. Nobody likes insurance until the building is already burning. His partner came out of the bathroom. “Nothing.”
Beef Jerky folded an AMTRAK train schedule showing pictures of the new Tijuana station and tossed it into the wastebasket. Mr. Nice Guy focused on me. They sat me in a desk chair.
“One more time: who are you? Why did you show up when you did?”
"I clam up when bozos punch me around."
"Then we’re just getting started," Beefy said.
I did not answer.
Mr. Nice Guy asked politely, “Do you know Amy Connell?”
“Fuck you.”
Nice Guy motioned to his friend. “After you.” Beefy used the back of his hand to slap me hard across the face. On the backswing, he flattened my ear. For one bright instant, I felt extreme pain, and I heard myself say, “Is that your best shot?”
It wasn't, but the next one was. Fist to the chin. Then I felt nothing. Lights out, again.
***
When I came to, I was still in Room 214. The gray suits were gabbing in the kitchenette nook over food from the deli across the street. I opened one eye. They were eating out of white paper bags. A third bag sat neatly sealed beside a soda in a lidded cup, a straw poking through the top. The ice cubes had frosted the outside of the cup.
If that cup was for me, I decided, maybe I would talk. First I had to accept that waking up might earn me another beating.
Gary Toledo—Mr. Nice Guy—saw me stir. He nudged Dave Dayton, his partner said they were from the FBI bureau in Salt Lake City. “We got more questions for you.”
I kept my eyes closed. Breathing face down on the carpet had become a serious problem. “Fuck you,” I said, my bad breath rolling across the rug. That made me sit up. No telling who had walked on that fake Oriental.
“Got some questions for you, Hank.”
They had obviously run a check on me, probably while lifting my Timex and the envelope of cash.
I laughed with them and immediately regretted it. The more I laughed, the more my ribs howled along with me. At least one rib was cracked. Maybe two.
Beefy looked at Toledo. “Wanna I punch him around some more?”
“Nah. We’ll use a more basic form of questioning. He talks, we feed him. Take the deal, Hank. You already paid for the brisket on rye.”
I must have said, “What do you want to know?” a little too fast, because they both laughed.
I laughed with them and immediately regretted it. The more I laughed my ribs howled along with me. At least one rib was cracked. Maybe two.
“We’ll ask again. Do you know Amy Connell?”
“No. I got hired out of L.A. This isn’t home. I know Art Garcia. That’s about it. He gave me the job.”
"And the job entails?" Nice Guy asked.
Beefy was about to take a step toward me.
“I'm supposed to tail Annee Kinder. I found out where she worked. Checked there, and they said she lives here in the hotel.”
“You worked with Art at ICE?”
“Yeah. Central America, mainly.”
“We like Art. You, not so much,” Beefy said.
Nice Guy rubbed his chin. “We're looking for Amy Connell, and you're looking for Annee Kinder. Maybe we're chasing the same...” He paused.
Beefy finished the line for him: “Broad.”
“Something like that.” Nice Guy said.
I tasted blood in my mouth. “Look, guys, all I have to do is find out about her—who she is and why she's screwing with my client's husband. Anything else, and she's all yours.”
“We're bounty hunters. Not FBI.”
“I thought I saw those badges at Toyco.”
“Sorry about the rough stuff,” Toledo said. “I thought you were a stooge.”
“I’d like my watch and the rest of the money you borrowed.”
“Got a lot of cash there, pal,” Beefy said.
Toledo motioned, and his partner brought him the envelope. I looked inside, put on my watch and glanced at the cash. I was not going to count it, but if it came up three sandwiches short, I was not going to gripe.
“Art pays well. Always has,” I said, mostly to make them jealous.
Toledo said, “Any idea where she is? Hoping you can save us some time.”
“Do any of the pictures you lifted off me look a lot like Amy Connell?” I asked.
Toledo said, “Different hair, but when the day is done, I think we’re chasing the same woman.”
I took a bite of brisket, smacked my swollen lips and asked, “What did your Amy do?”
Beefy answered. “Convicted of first-degree manslaughter. Driving drunk, way over the limit, she caused a crash that killed her sister, Ann Connell. On the way to sentencing, she took off. Her father is Emmet Connell, Republican senator from Utah. Her disappearance has taken its toll on the family, to say it nicely. They want her in jail where she'll be safe.”
Beefy laughed.
Nice Guy looked at his friend and frowned.
Beefy stopped laughing.
“She didn’t look like her pictures today,” I said.
“She looked like a working girl, for sure,” Beefy said with a grin.
Toledo asked, “How hard are you going to look for her?”
“I was told to keep looking until I’m called off the case.”
“We’ve got a week, then it’s back to Salt Lake.” Toledo flipped me a business card. “Forget the knuckles, and I promise to copy you on everything we get about Amy Connell. Deal?”
“Fine with me.” Then I checked the business card it might as well said Barnum and Bailey Circus. "This ain't FBI."
Nice Guy patted me on the shoulder. “You're sharp, Hank. We’re done here. And Hank Calder, last man out pays for the room.”
We all left at the same time.
***
The desk clerk saw us coming and bent down to tie his shoe, where he couldn't be seen.
Full of myself, I pulled a C-note from the envelope and slapped it on the counter hard enough to make him stand and look.
Beefy punched the man on the chin and grabbed the C-note for himself.
***
The Amtrak West Coaster left Oakland for L.A.’s Union Station at six-fifteen. From the train schedule I found in the hotel room trash can, someone had circled the departure in red.
I boarded at six and walked the aisles looking for Amy Connell, Annee Kinder or whatever name she happened to be wearing. I found her in the third coach. Next to the bar car. The seats faced each other across a narrow table. I slipped into the one opposite her.
She was reading the San Francisco Chronicle, and I figured she had not noticed me until she said, without lowering the paper, “Stop looking at my legs.”
“They’re gorgeous.”
She folded the newspaper and set it beside the brown valise. Then she smiled, and of course I melted.
But work is work. The West Coaster pulled out beneath a sky the color of a gun barrel. She swigged out of a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels. The valise sat beside her like a well-trained dog.
She stared straight into my eyes. “You followed me.”
“Not really. I live in L.A. My business is done here.”
She gave me a look that said she had heard better lies from worse men.
“I hear it’s raining in L.A.,” I said.
“I hear they have roofs there.”
That must have been a line between spies. If so, I didn’t get it. Instead, I said, “Let’s make a deal.”
She smiled without showing teeth. Up close, she was younger than I had guessed. Maybe twenty-eight. Maybe thirty-five. Women like her kept the truth in a separate handbag.
The slit in her dress climbed high enough to make modesty file a complaint. I stared without guilt. The damn table in the middle kept me from seeing the rest of her good stuff. What I could see looked silky, and little did I know the show was only beginning.
“People are looking for you—in case you didn't notice, those gray suits were trying to cuff me.”
“So what?” she said. “I'm here. They missed their chance.”
“I think we should keep out of sight. Do you have a roomette on the train?” I asked.
"Yes."
"Let's go there."
"Get lost I don't do tricks."
Instead, we moved to a small cabaret table in the bar area to be closer to the booze.
She ordered a double Jack neat.
I ordered Jack cheese and crackers with a Jack neat.
The West Coaster was still fairly new, but built from old plans, and probably was the last standard diesel train left on the line. Amtrak was phasing everything else into all-electric, bullet-speed rolling stock. The brochure I read at the bar backed my reasoning.
I introduced myself. We should have names.
She tossed me: “Millie Mayes.”
That's a horrible name, I thought. “Any relation to the famous ballplayer from a couple of centuries ago?”
She had never heard of Willie Mays. The joke died between us without a priest to say last rites to my sense of humor.
By then, my body had begun collecting payment for the pounding the gray suits had given me.
She noticed. Suddenly, she was feeling sorry for me.
“I got the last honeymoon compartment.”
Honeymoon made me laugh. My aching ribs shut me up. “Let's hide there. I don't want to be shot sitting next to you.”
“What happened to you? Your eyes are puffy."
“Occupational hazard.”
“Suit yourself.”
***
Then she changed her mind. “No. I take back the offer. A friend expects me to deliver this valise to another courier. Passing ships in the night. No sense making it hard for him to find me.”
I shook my head at her,“You don't get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“Someone is looking for you and quite possibly might kill you.”
She waved me off. “Go wait in compartment 2B if you want to stay out of the way.”
I took that as a big positive. My heart pounded at the thought that this California beauty might join me in bed for the rest of the ride.
Her mouth twitched to one side while she considered it. “Like I said, I’m expecting someone. Part of my job. I’ll be right back, if that’s still all right with you.” She handed me the key.
“Two-B,” I said.
“Don't drink all the booze out of the small refrigerator.”
“I promise.”
Too late. I didn't get up in time. A thin man in a brown suit blocked my exit. He wore rimless spectacles and carried a black briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. The arrangement made him look either very important or very frightened. He saw her and stopped.
She looked at him as though they had never met. He looked at her as though they had met too often. He tilted his head, summoning her.
“Your friend?” I asked.
“No.”
“Husband?”
“No.”
“Bookkeeper?” That was my final guess.
Her eyes came back to mine. “You ask too many questions.”
“That’s why I drink alone.”
She stood and picked up her valise.
“Where are you going?”
“To powder something.” She walked away, the valise brushing lightly against her stockinged calf.
I watched her hook arms with the milquetoast. Before they left the lounge, she glanced back. “Leave my booze alone,” she said.
A man should beware of a woman whose exit is more convincing than her entrance.
***
I am no expert, but when she returned, her clothes were wrinkled. I imagined a quickie in his compartment. Then I noticed her valise was gone, but she had brought back the thin man's black briefcase. Whatever business they had done, she had come back alone.
“Was that fun?” I asked.
She grinned. “I’m done. Had to do what I had to do.”
“Now what?”
“I get off at the next stop and go back to North Beach.”
“Where's your buddy?"
"Indisposed."
It took me longer than it should have, but I figured it out the valise had been a handoff. She had carried a brown valise to the milquetoast, and now she was carrying his black briefcase. I wasn't going to ask about contents. That was when I noticed something else. “How come you’re only wearing one stocking? I don’t mean to be rude or nosy, but this is going to be a long train ride, and I’m wondering.”
“I take it you’ve been staring at my legs again.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
She reached down, peeled off the remaining stocking and laid it on the table between us. "Enjoy the souvenir." Then she gave me a Dutch uncle warning. “Don’t mess this up, Hank Calder. You’re five feet from paradise. Don't talk.”
One of the first lessons a man learns is when to shut up. I followed her to 2-B with the souvenir stocking stuffed inside my blazer pocket. Swollen lips sealed. We enjoyed each other on the bottom bunk until she left me naked in the compartment in San Jose.
She took the black briefcase with her back to Frisco. She had everything God gives a twenty-something young woman, and she shared all her moving parts. I barely kept up, and about halfway through I stopped trying to impress her because I don’t think she was into older men.
I enjoyed my afterglow until, a few miles out of Santa Barbara, I noticed some unbelievable flatulence coming from the upper bunk. I used the step ladder to see for myself the source of that disgusting foul air.
The milquetoast visitor and I shared her pair of silk stockings, only his was post-mortem wrapped tightly around his neck. It made his eyes bulge and his tongue stick out. He was fully clothed, with her empty brown valise sitting on his chest.
I got off in Santa Barbara after hustling to wipe my prints from the compartment. Fortunately, most of them were on her.
I left Santa B on the first Greyhound bus going anywhere. Bless that old dog on wheels for not asking for ID.
I ended up in Fresno and made the switch to the high-speed train that took me back to L.A.
A couple of days later, I’m home catching a few rays in my garden and writing up my notes for Art Garcia about Annee Kinder. I was very pleased to learn the envelope he paid me with had four hundred grand inside for a couple of days on the job—minus whatever Ted’s Deli cost me.
I figure Annee knew the bounty hunters would look for her in San Fran. She no doubt burned a couple of bridges there and in L.A. after taking the courier down.
But she’s young, and what ever money she robbed from the courier can go a long way toward getting her fine self over to Europe.
One last note: the authorities didn’t find Milquetoast until the train unloaded in San Diego.
Annee, I decided, has a mean streak. She didn’t have to cuff the body to the bunk railing and leave some poor slob to cut it loose in a cloud of stink. I never want to run into her again.
That’s how I closed my report to Art Garcia.
***
[To be continued in tales found inside Cantina Psalms.
***
FOR MORE ROMANTIC NOIR STORIES:
BUY TOUGH LOVE and/or CANTINA PSALMS
WHEREVER ONLINE BOOKS ARE SOLD OR ORDER FROM: THOMASSHESS.COM.
ALSO, FREE SHORT STORIES ARE AVAILABLE (SAME WEBSITE).
