CHAPTER 28 - GUM SHOE

Mallory’s jaw was square cut. Bloodshot eyes of garnet grey were outlined in deep creases. Her hair salt and pepper grey. Mallory looked older and more worn than her 20 hard years on the had force warranted. She sat hunched over, nursing a drink in the gin joint known as Gigot’s. Her still beautiful red pouty lips occasionally trembled. Trebled from anger and exhaustion. She wanted to be alone. A double shot of grappa was in one hand, and yesterdays racing from in the other. An ashtray of dead smokes still sent up a tiny column of grey smoke. She stared blankly at the grease stained and worn linoleum bar top. She glanced up to the right as a group of off duty rent a cops threw open the doors of yelled out Gigot’s name. The rent a cops paused to stomp their muddy ice encrusted boots on Gigot’s dirty floor. Fresh snow, clean virgin snow, fell from their shoulders and caps onto the floor where it quickly melted and joined the filth and slime.

Mallory Sauternau was now a private dic. A gum shoe for hire, sleuth, bird dog, fink. She had heard them all and she didn’t care. She turned her head to the left. A large jar of pickled pig’s feet stared back. In the jar’s reflection she saw the tiny scar on her cheek, the only real blemish to her once beautiful face. A face still lovely, but a face that had hardened and had seen too much for too long.

At the far end of the bar sat two unattached women eating peanuts and nursing flat beers. Mallory could smell the cheap oil of oli and stale peanut odor from her end of the bar. Working girls Mallory knew. Dopy and Stupid, Gigot called them. Mallory called them the twins. The twins rented a small flat above the dive and Mallory knew they paid the rent on time, or gave Gigot favors when times were tough. Mallory reached for her cigarette case. The gold plating had worn thin revealing pot metal beneath. A retirement present from the station house. Retirement the called it. But they all knew the truth. In the ‘Goodword’ case the deeply corrupt politicians didn’t want the truth. They didn’t want the seamy greasy underside of avatar charity exposed. Mallory paid the price.

The cheap engraving had worn away as fast as the 4 mil 14 carat gold plating. She didn’t need to try to make it out. She knew what it had said. ‘Presented to Detective Mallory Saternau on her retirement after 20 years of service. From the Boys at the 19th.’ Some service thought Mallory. When the chief presented the gift to her, he turned his back and walked away. ‘Yeh, 20 years of service,’ she thought. ‘Yeh 20 years.’

Mallory flipped open the case. The case was empty, and in the still intact plating on the interior she could see that her mascara was smeared and her best asset her, long curling lashes, had lost their luster.

“Dam,” she muttered.

“What you say Boss?” It was Gigot with a dirty rag in his hand. He was wiping the bar. He was always wiping the bar. Gigot called everyone Boss. Except the two working girls.

“Outta Cigs,” Mallory said.

Gigot turned and yelled to the Twins “Hey, get some Galois over her.”

Dopy or Stupid got up and sashayed to the blinking Cigarette machine. She was displaying her wares to the rent a cops who where drinking heavily. With each drink the girls looked better and better. The sound of a few coins rattling down a metal shoot combined with the loud false laughter of the rent a cops and formed the only sound in the bar. Thank god its quiet thought Mallory. She liked the quiet. The dull sameness and dense quiet was Gigots only real attraction. She heard a screechy pull and a light thud as the cigs fell into the bin at the bottom of the rusting machine.

Mallory reached for her purse which lay on her once fashionable but now careworn light olive trenchcoat. The trenchcoat hung loosely on the stool where Sam had sat. And would still be sitting but for Goodword. How long had it been thought Mallory. Two years, three? Well nothing can bring him back, so why think about it she thought. But her denial never really worked. Every time she walked into Gigot’s she expected to see his tall form and quick smile. I really need to find another gin joint she thought. She always thought about another bar this time of night, but then again …

A blue pack of cigs came sliding across the bar. Mallory reached into her purse and pulled out a five. She shoved it in the direction from which the cigs had come. “Keep the change Sugar,” she said. Mallory knew that the girls were a bit short this month. She also kinda liked them. They were hard working and occasionally of real help in closing a case. Cheating usually, sometimes paternity, almost always divorce. Mallory hated divorce cases, but it paid the bills and kept the lights on in her tiny two room office and flat in the Dowdily Building across the street from The Times.

Mallory was going to have to move soon. The Dowdily Building had seen better times and the lack of maintenance had finally caught up with its crumbling foundation, frozen pipes, and laughable ‘steam heat.’ They had condemned it, years ago. Still it stood, but the slow exit of paying occupants spelled its doom. Mallory was one of the few who stayed. It was cheap. It was comfortable. Everyone in Capital City knew where to find her office, and she knew how to find her way home from Gigots after a night of drinking until she was almost blind.

The rent a cops were getting boisterous and loud. Another coin, probably a washer, clattered down a shoot and some music started. The twins were dancing with a fat greasy rent a cop, and some looser in a dirty tweed suit. The suit coat was one size too large, and the trousers were about an inch or two too short. Goodword thought Mallory. Goodword, my ass, she thought. She heard the rattle of hail on the thin metal roof of Gigots. She recognized the tune, a tune she had once liked before she met Sam. Now she hated it.
“Louder!’, shouted the fat rent a cop. “Louder.” The tune was ‘This Can’t Be Love.’ Appropriate thought Mallory, real appropriate.

The telephone, next to the only working toilet at the end of the bar, started to ring. A loud, raspy ring of copper on brass. The telephone was a proper telephone thought Mallory. Attached to the wall, and black, and with a round dial – a rotary they called it. A real phone.

Gigot, dirty rag in had picked up the phone. “Gigots,” he said. “Yeah,… really… Mallory?” Gigot looked at Mallory.

Mallory shook her head ‘No.’

“She’s not in yet,” Gigot said into the phone loud enough to be heard above the growing din of the dancing rent a cops and the giggling come-ons of the twins. The twins were laughing loud and soon they would be going upstairs with their new best friends. Then it might be quiet again thought Mallory.

“Yup,…” said Gigot.

Gigot was hard of hearing and didn’t like the phone. But he seemed to be listening carefully with a look of surprise on his face. Something’s up thought Mallory, something big. Perhaps the Governor had been caught with that Paris girl. There had been rumors. Gigot hung up the phone and came back to the bar. He pulled out a bottle of Bacardi and a tall smudgy glass. He poured himself a drink. Closing his eyes he took a deep gulp. Malloy could see his adams apple move across his three day stubble.

“Trouble,” said Gigot. Mallory hated that word. The only one she hated more was ‘dead.’

“There’s been a robbery at the Museo,” Gigot said. He paused and took another gulp. “Stole them jewels, a kings ransom.” He looked at Mallory in the eye, something he rarely did. “Some girl and that old king guy are nearly dead.” He said.

Mallory thought. Who cares.

“They want you Mallory,” said Gigot. “They want you now.”