6 April 2010

Challenge: Use either “smiling assassin” or “the Blues” to craft a story.

The Smiling Assassin Sings the Blues

It was Wednesday when all hell broke lose. I remember it was Wednesday because I had ordered in pizza while I watched the basketball game on Tuesday night. Well, I watch a lot of basketball and always order in pizza, but it was definitely Wednesday.

I was reading the morning paper at my desk, just starting to sip down my second cup of joe, when all the phones in the squad room started jangling. At the same moment, the tvs, which play constantly in the glass enclosed cubes of the high rank officers, who look out onto the rows of detective’s desks , switched to live coverage.

The room exploded with the sound of voices all talking at once, and tvs turned up competing with the voices. My TV switched to a live camera shot from a news helicopter hovering over the City Building. People were running out of the building. Police cars were arriving. My phone rang just then. I continued to watch while I heard myself ordered to get my homicide squad over there immediately. The mayor had just been killed.

As I hung up, the camera on the copter zoomed in on a man in a raincoat and broad brimmed hat, as he left from a side door of that large old pile of stone building that has been our public offices for 80 years. He reached out with his left hand and opened the back door of a large black car which had been standing at the curb.

As he stooped to enter, he had to turn his head to keep from knocking off his hat, and, just for a second, he was looking almost directly into the camera. I caught a glimpse of a tanned, narrow, chiseled face and a broad flash of perfect teeth. And then he was in, and the car pulled away. and the camera switched back to shots of police in riot gear, pounding up the broad steps of the main entrance.. I thought about that face and those perfect teeth as my men hustled into the Black and White police car, and with lights flashing and siren screaming, we drove the 10 minutes to the mayor’s office in 8. When I arrived at the scene, eyewitnesses described the cool of a beautiful dark haired woman, who had walked up to the mayor in the corridor outside his office, flashing a broad smile and a hello. She reached out her right hand to shake his. In her left, was a gun. It spat out two, silenced bullets over his outstretched arm, dead center into his chest. In the melee that ensued following his collapse to the floor, the woman disappeared, along with her smile.

Later that day, back at headquarters, I began trying to put together the pieces about the attractive, left handed, gun moll who got away, and I was getting nowhere. I continued to be nagged by the memory of the man in the hat I had seen on the chopper video of the morning. He had reached for the car door with his left hand. And they both did have “perfect teeth”. But it was clearly a man I had seen in the video. Not the drop dead gorgeous, dark haired woman described by the witnesses.

With no other ideas coming to mind, I phoned the TV station to have them download us a copy of the video from the helicopter footage from the morning. It came quickly over the internet and we timed out all the sequences with what we had learned from the crime scene. The helicopter had arrived overhead within 2 minutes of the shooting as they were already downtown, reporting on the morning rush hour traffic congestion, with their usual hysteria, as if beaming direct from Armageddon. The man got into the limo outside the building, one minute into the chopper video, or about 3 minutes after the murder.

Black Limos sit idling outside of the city building all the time. Some head honcho is always coming in complaining to the mayor, or asking for a favor, or both. No one thinks anything of seeing a well dressed man, leave the building by one of the many side doors, step into a limo and leave. However, with no other leads obvious at the moment, I had a detective run the license plate number of the limo which could be seen in the video as it pulled away.

Sergeant Jenkens put his enormous head through my slightly ajar office door.“Lieutenant. We have a make on the limo. It’s registered to Chameleon Entertainment. They run a night club by that name which brings in big name performers.”

Three of us were in a black, unmarked Ford Crown Victoria cop car that pulled up late that night outside the Chameleon Club, stopping in the limo waiting zone. As we got out, several of the limo guys began to squawk at me for being in their restricted, VIP parking lane. Sergeant Jenkens’ omni presence behind me, quickly had them silent and back in their cars.

A neon lit, former warehouse had been transformed into the “Chameleon Club”, a performing arts center, bar and “meet” market. A dressed up crowd of clean looking men, and long-legged-ladies in full make up, stood casually along the rope line, awaiting recognition and admittance to the club by the doorkeeper, a very large, very African, American.

I walked directly up to him and flashed my badge. “I have an invitation from the management. Its called a “search warrant”.

His narrow dark eyes, set in the shaved, round head which emerged from his muscular neck and shoulders, registered nothing. It was like looking into the finger holes of a bowling ball. Whatever thought process he used, whether my badge or warrant, or the looming Sergeant Jenkens, the man calculated his position to be best served with graciousness and swept us in and up to the Maitre D. I showed my warrant and asked to see the owner. While waiting, the three of us were seated at a back table.

The place was packed. The crowd was rapt and noisy in their participation and appreciation with applause and comments and support for the performers on the small stage that thrust out into room. A 4 piece combo provided live accompaniment to the singers who revolved continuously, out onto the stage. All famous female singers of the past: Peggy Lee, Edith Piaf, Barbra Streisand, Rosemary Cluny – well the later Rosemary who got very fat and pitched paper towels in commercials on TV — but she could still sing good. They were all beautifully costumed and made up. All live, and alive, and all superbly played… by men. Sergeant Jenkens, that sweet, innocent giant, who is so useful to me in more dire situations, did not realize that the Chameleon Club featured transvestite performers for the gay and party crowd.

After a few minutes, to the right of the stage on which “Judy Garland” was singing“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, a door opened, framing in the light from the room behind, a woman, blond hair tumbling down onto bare shoulders and a body wearing a skin tight, short black dress. Just as my eyes saw her, the door shut, and she began swaying her way around and through the tables in the dimly lit room. Heads turned in a wave, following her through the crowd as she swiveled her way up to me.

“That is either a real woman or the best actor I have ever seen” I thought to myself.

“I’m Eva Allan, the owner of the Chameleon” she breathed out to me. “Is there a problem? Lieutenant…?

“Driscol, Ms. Allan. Jack Driscol” I had jumped to my feet with her arrival. In her stiletto pumps her emerald eyes stared straight into my 6 foot 2 stature. I mumbled my apologies for interrupting her evening and my appreciation for the performances that I had seen, but noted that I was there on business. She settled herself sidesaddle onto a chair at my motioned invitation.

“Ms. Allan, do you know where the limo registered to your enterprise was at 9:15 am this morning?”

Green eyes looked across at me through the flows of her shimmering blond hair. A small, bemused smile, lit her face. “Well, I am not in the habit of tracking its escapades when I am not using it. We keep it constantly busy bringing in performers for rehearsals and shows. Special clients are picked up. We also use it to run errands for the corporation. “

Eva Allan spoke with assuredness and without hesitation. Her graceful hands moved through the air in front of her, dancing to her words. “And actually I do know about where it was,” she volunteered. “It was one of those latter things, an errand. The Club’s operating license was due to expire today, and we had been getting hassles from the Mayor’s office about its renewal. You know, it is an election year, and the Mayor is running on an anti-gay, anti-good time, platform. I guess we made a good target for him to shoot at.”

After a moment, she added, quietly, “Oh, That is probably not an appropriate turn of phrase after the terrible event of this morning.” Eva shook her head in a short motion to refocus, golden hair swirling around her face.

“Anyway, our attorney called yesterday and said it was finally ready. It cost me a great deal of my hard earned money to resolve. So I sent the driver down to the City Building this morning, to pick it up.” She herself had been too busy to leave and had been at the club all morning, as many employees could testify. “And there is the new operating license, framed, over there on the wall. “

My eyes followed her long, red tipped, pointed finger at the end of her bare, lean,and perfectly toned arm, to the framed white certificate standing out starkly against the warmly paneled back-bar wall “I’d like to speak with the driver, if you please. “ I was floundering before her complete control. She was obviously very used to making most men become blithering idiots.

“He’s right over there, the bartender. During the day he is the driver. All my employees can, and do, perform multiple tasks,” she said with only the slightest hint of a leer. Not in her voice, but with her eyes.

Eva’s elegant arm motioned over the barman, a tall, blond hunk who I’m sure kept the ladies, and the men, coming back to the club. In looking up at him, I realized he might have been the driver, but he was not the dark visaged man in the hat who I watched get into the back seat of the limo. And he didn’t have the teeth.

As this was all processing through my mind, the final act of the set was announced. “Let’s have a nice round of applause for Billie Holliday, singing, Stormy Weather”!

I sat silent for a moment, watching the ersatz Billie slink onstage, long gown streaming behind, rich dark wig curling around a chiseled, narrow, café-creme-colored face that captured the beauty of the singer when young. The music began as the applause died out, and she/he Billie reached out for the microphone with a gloved hand, at the end of a hard, muscled, left arm, and smiled, showing perfect teeth.

And as the singing started, “Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky, Stormy Weather,” I relaxed. I knew I had found my killer woman and smiling man. Now all I had to do was prove that the smiling assassin sang the Blues.