THE BIG SWITCH -- Chap. 1
By Christopher Leeson
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
First a word of explanation as to why I’m starting this story instead of continuing with the new chapter of The Twilight of the Gods.
It is not that I don’t want to continue; the opposite is the case. But I’ve found myself very cramped for time. I have to get a mainstream novel that I’ve written and have sold on the basis of the rough draft up to professional hard-copy standards by the start of next June. It is a historical novel with a lot of research needed and that makes for slow polishing, especially since it's my intention to give the text ten edits before sending it out. The first polishing, done when I was trying to juggle my monthly contributions to both The Full TG Show and Big Closet at the same time -- along with every other commitment I was carrying -- resulted on three months passing before I could edit the historical novel even once.
To make more time for myself, I have completely withdrawn from my regular postings at Big Closet for the time being. However, I didn’t want to entirely drop out of making monthly contributions to The Full TG Show. But the work on Twilight each month has required at least four days to complete, and that is a lot of time to give away each month when I’m in such a rush.
So my next best option, as I see it, is to set aside Twilight temporarily and start an entirely different story, The Big Switch (and I think The Big Switch is one of my best, though some of my TFTGS readers might have seen older drafts of it elsewhere.) The draft of BS I'm doing now actually needs some additional polishing, but not nearly as much as a true rough draft would. The ongoing plan is now to put about a day of polishing in on Big Switch before putting up a chapter of Big Switch here at TFTGS each month. As usual, I will try to shoot for posting 8-12 edited pages per month.
When my novel work is done, I will want to get back to Twilight just as soon possible. I apologize, but it could be not that many will care about the change. In the several months that I have been posting Twilight so far, I haven’t gotten even one comment letting me know that anyone at out there is enjoying it. I hope that isn't true, but how can one tell, since there is not evidence to say that it isn't. If the situation changes, I am always open to persuasion.
And, hey, if anyone actually likes The Big Switch, let me know that, too. Support from readers always makes an author feel good about the work he is doing and it encourages him to do more.
So, now let’s get started on The Big Switch.
Chapter 1
The Narrative of D.C. Callahan
...I jumped over the bleeding stiff and dashed into the dining room. There I saw the French maid trying to get out through a French window, but didn't stop to think about that ironic detail.
I grabbed for her, but she dashed out of reach and tried to stuff something down under the lace of her uniform. "I see it, babe," I said. I cornered the gal and shoved my fingers down the V of her neckline. The fabric tore, but I kept digging under her petticoat until something fluttered out of it and down to the floor. I grabbed the oblong piece of paper.
When the maid tried to snatch it back, I slapped her across the face and pushed her into the corner. I held her there with one hand while I looked at what was written. It was a check made out to Miss Judit Hilmar and signed by 'Dirk Bracken.'
I knew the name; Bracken had been the real name of the comedy-star Dopey Sailor before his career got deep-sixed for sexual improprieties on screen and he'd come East a beaten man. The check was for five thousand smackers. 'Hell, if dusting pays that well,' I thought, 'I ought to change my line.' Anyway, Dopey wasn't even her employer; these palatial digs we were in belonged to a big shot politician named Mitch Turtleman -- who, by the way, must have been a lot older than the corpse in the foyer. In fact, he was probably a lot older than the foyer.
I said: "What's Bracken giving you all this moolah for?"
"It is mine! Mr. Sailor g-gave it to me last night," she stammered. Her accent sounded more Swedish than French.
I asked, "What did you have to do to get this much long bread from a creep like him?"
She didn’t want to answer; her shiny red lips had screwed down tight again. I'd have to channel my cave man fast if I was going to get anything out of this tough broad before the sun came up. So, I grabbed her shoulders and shook. That little white maid cap of hers became partially detached and hung at the side of her beautiful head by one hairpin.
I said: "Now look, Miss Judit Hilmar. If you don't want to get slapped till you're groggy, you'd better sing like a warbler. How would you like a good sock in the jaw for openers?"
"No – no!"
"Okay, then take the easy way out and make conversation. Why were you trying to sneak out through the window?"
“To get away from you!”
A likely story! I waited about two seconds for the babe to come clean, but she still wasn't unbuttoning. To let her know that I was a tough guy she shouldn't mess with, I ran my fingers over her shoulder, pretending that I was working myself up to punch the hell out of her. "It's dirty business to get mixed up with a pervert like Bracken," I said. "Or are you already involved?"
All of a sudden the Aryan cutie pressed herself up against me, throwing her slender arms around my neck.
I sighed. Dames are so predictable; they have all the same moves. The biggest weakness of the Weaker Sex is that they think that men aren’t able to keep their best part inside their pants. That kind of a mistake always makes it easy for a man to get what he wants out of a dame.
She said: "Please Mr. Detective -- I shall do anything you ask, if only you will keep me out of this! I am not afraid for myself. I -- I have a brother who is in this country illegally."
"Why illegally?"
She looked like she'd just bitten into a sour lemon. "It is hard for Europeans to get work permits in the U-S of A."
I unclenched my fist. That much was true; truth has a tranquilizing effect on me, so I backed off and let her babble on.
"If my name comes up, the police will question me and look into my family. They might find out about my brother and deport him. You do not know what life in Sweden is like!"
I doubted Stockholm could be worse than Washington, D.C. And I also doubted that an immigration service like ours would deport even a Typhoid Mary, much less a handsome Swedish boy. Even so, I pretended to sympathize. "I wouldn’t send a junkyard dog into a hellhole like Sweden, but the law is the law. The deal is this: If you help me crack this case, maybe I can do something for you."
Instead of continuing the begging act, she looked at me, funny-like. "If you do not force me to do things I do not want to," she said, "I can do for you things that I would very like to much to do."
"Tell me about it. I know what you foreign dolls have for sale. How about a free sample?"
Her hands were on me in two shakes; warm, soft curves were snuggling up against me. She was offering me a pair of luscious lips.
Well, nobody ever said that Nick Baxter wasn't human. I leaned down and gave her a load of osculation. I don't know what vintage she was, but the taste of her mouth started my blood racing so fast that entering it in the Kentucky Derby would have made me a cool million. . . .
#
I sat back from the CRT and reached for my cup of java. "Well, Martin, how does it sound to you?"
My partner Dewitt leaned forward and planted his elbows on his desktop. "That's a damned hot scene, D.C! Are you trying to give your readers a hard-on?"
"Yeah! So you like the story, right?"
He cocked his head to one side. "I like it fine, but don't you think it's kind of old-fashioned? Everything you write sounds like it comes out of the 1930's, but you're not doing period fiction. And like I've said before, not even tough guys talk that way anymore."
"I still talk that way!"
"Yeah, but you didn't grow up with Heather Has Two Mommies. You said you learned to read from reprints of Black Mask."
"Hmmp!" I grunted. That wasn't the kind of praise that an aspiring novelist wants to hear. Dewitt was only my junior partner, but since I'd asked for his opinion, I didn't have much choice but to take it on the jaw. "Okay, so I know a few words that have more than four letters in them. What about the plot? Does it grab you?"
"Is it realistic? You're a detective, D.C. Have you ever roughed up even one chick on a real job? I've never had to."
"Me neither," I admitted reluctantly, "not since I left Sears. But I might get lucky. I'm not forty yet, after all."
"And isn't it corny to bring a French maid into the plot?"
"She's Swedish."
"A Swedish French maid, then. My point still stands." Dewitt shook his head. "Tell any American woman who isn't already a hooker that she has to dress like a French maid and she'll be suing you for harassment. Besides, you can't get a white person to do housemaid work anymore, not for any kind of money."
"Not even if she's illegal? If her brother's illegal, maybe she is, too."
"I don't know about that. But Swedes go to decent schools and I can't imagine a smart Euro babe not being able to find something more lucrative. And the international businesses want to hire illegals, since they can give them lower wages than an American would work for. The politicians like illegals, too, because they keep Americans unemployed and in need of government handouts."
"Some women like dressing up as French maids," I argued. "Maybe she's kinky. I could make her really kinky."
His brows knitted. "That's going the cheap thrill route."
"What's wrong with cheap thrills, Martin? It's only escapism! Most of the schmucks who read P.I. novels probably think that every money bags has a bevy of cute little French maids chasing after his cigar butts!"
"Schmucks? Are you calling yourself a schmuck, D.C? You read more of that stuff than anybody I know."
"I've been called worse things than a schmuck," I said with a shrug.
"Like 'late with the rent'?'"
"Don't remind me," I grumbled.
Dewitt pushed himself to his feet and shuffled to the window air conditioner. "We might as well get some use out of this AC before the electric company shuts off our current. This heat wave is making me wish for winter."
"Me too; cold weather makes it more comfortable to wear my trench coat," I said, practicing my dry chuckle. “On the other hand, it's a lot of fun strolling around colleges campuses looking at the what the young ladies wearing to keep cool.”
"D.C., we can't go on like we have been without some real dough. All the other agencies are digging up dirt for the Administration. Maybe we should climb on board the gravy train, too."
"You mean sell out? Serve the Cause of Evil? Trade in our honor for a pot of mulligan?"
Martin shook his head. "I don't like getting my hands dirty either, but business bites and your stories aren't selling. If we don't get enough income to defray the outgo, we'll be coming to work one of these days and finding the front door padlocked."
To get him off this gloomy kick, I decided to try a mea culpa. "It's my fault. I ruined our reputation by being too honest. On the other hand, even if things go crash and we have to climb in through our office window, we'll still have our dignity."
"Dignity and two dollars will buy us one cup of coffee that we can share."
"Yeah, it’s true. You can’t even get coffee for a buck in Vegas ever since the good-guy gangsters moved out. With the crooked corporations running things now, a fellow goes broke before he can find the craps table.
Since we had no cases pending, I went back to pecking on my manuscript. I thought my opening paragraph was still too weak, and so performed an extemporaneous revision:
Pennsylvania Avenue runs from Rock Creek to the Anacostia River, through crack-infested 'hoods where even the flatfoots walk in pairs to stave off the Grim Reaper, and streetlights don’t work any better than the politicians do. After sunset, P.A. is a pitch-black cemetery full of prowling ghoul-shapes and skulking specters howling about Ukraine. Religious people say that God made Washington, D.C. to punish the sins of the world. But I think Hell burped it up when the devil was cleaning house and dumping the most mephitic sludge on the banks of the Potomac . . . .
The door creaked and our receptionist, Sheila Coffin, stepped in. She'd hardly ever bothered to knock and she didn't knock this time, either. That was funny, since I’d hired her because she had the best pair of knockers this side of Maryland. I was guessing that she had great gams, too, hidden under those skirts that never climbed above her knees.
Most gees go gaga over blondes, but for me it's always been brunettes with green eyes. That was another reason for hiring Sheila, instead of some middle-aged frump with nothing going for her except good secretarial skills. Oh, Sheila was a frump, too, but one can almost forgive frumpery if the girl has just turned nineteen and is built like a statue by Praxiteles.
As a human specimen, Sheila was great; it was as an office worker that she left a lot to be desired. Naturally she didn't care about the detective business, but what was harder to forgive was her total lack of fashion sense. In a microskirt, stilettos, fishnet hose, and a tight, fuzzy sweater she could have moved the Washington Monument with one bump and grind. Dressing for success could have gone a long way in making up for a multitude of office skills she didn't have. If Sheila had been keen on dressing the way a detective's secretary is supposed to dress, the firm would have been getting a lot more repeat business. The trouble was, that brainstorm was something that I couldn't suggest to a short-tempered third-wave feminist with the E.E.O's complaint number filed in her Rolodex.
"Yes, Miss Coffin?" I asked, trying to keep my glance above her tie-knot. In this demented town, lookism can send a man on a one way trip up the river.
"It's Ms Spielman again. She's –"
I knew exactly where Leigh Spielman was, since she had just stomped in our inner office like a she-buffalo. Leigh was another one of those hot-looking tessies. Unfortunately, they're the type that always looks at working stiffs like Martin and me as if we were the henchmen of Attila the Hun.
"Which one of you turned on that air conditioner?" Leigh Spielman demanded. That gray-eyed glare of hers was enough to turn a man's blood to ice water.
"Me!" admitted Dewitt, not sweating it. I've always admired the Pard's coolness in the face of danger or when squaring off with a geed-up dame. We don’t run into much danger, but geed-up dames are as common as mosquitoes down by the Potomac. In my book, Martin's steely nerves when faced by an angry female made him the kind of man I'd want to take with me into a dark alley.
"Listen, Dewitt," Spielman was saying, "I told you that your air conditioner scrambles my hard drive! Well, it's happened again."
"That's not possible, lady," I disagreed politely. "It doesn't hurt our hard drive, so how can it hurt yours?"
She wasn't listening. "I'll get a restraining order if I have to! I'll go for compensatory damages!"
"That won't help you, Ma'am," I said with a head-shake. "We're flat broke."
I smiled inwardly. That was the winning card in the P.I. game; with our rate of success we could thumb our noses at lawsuit threats.
"I already know that you two are bums, but I'll find some way to get back at you!" she warned.
Still trying to pour oil over troubled waters, I said, "Miss Spielman, you seem to be saying that Martin is scrambling your hard drive. If you stop and think about it, that could be the start of a beautiful relationship."
"Pigs!" she spat. "Are you going to turn off that air conditioner or not?"
"What's the point?" Martin piped up. "Your drive is already scrambled."
Leigh clenched her fists. "The gloves are off from now on, buster. One more incident like this and I'll make a career out of putting the pair of you out of business. Consider yourself on notice!"
Dewitt grinned wistfully. "One more utility bill and we'll be going out of business, anyway, neighbor. But I'll take the matter up with my partner at our next board meeting. Sheila, would you escort Ms Spielman through the front door?"
Sheila sent the intruder a sisterly smile. That was Sheila; she never got upset if someone dropped by to give her bosses a hard time. But Leigh ignored our secretary's heart-felt sympathy and stalked right past her.
Well, the new day had started out as a loser.
Unfortunately, the rest of this day was only going to get worse!
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2
