Tribulations of the Shortcut Man Read online

  “This is an assured and diverting performance, with an ending that should impress even the most seasoned fan of hard-boiled detective stories.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Shortcut Man is a glorious read: powerful, clever, suspenseful, and filled with enough dark humor and shady characters to satisfy the most rabid noir fan, and convert those who aren’t already.”

  —Associated Press

  “Shortcut Man joins the wisecracking, bone-breaking tradition of California noir stretching from Chandler to Hammett to Robert Crais’s latest Elvis Cole novel. . . . A gripping read.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “I was hooked on his quirky characters and original plot turns. By the spectacularly unexpected conclusion, I was floored. Now I can hardly wait for the second installment. . . . Mr. Sturges’s writing is flip and hip, influenced by a line of predecessors from Raymond Chandler to Elmore Leonard, but the unconventional writer adds a sassy cynicism of his own.”

  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “A rollicking new LA crime novel . . . A well-paced and suspenseful damn good read, full of deft observations, honest sentiment, and screwball touches that would make his father proud.”

  —Los Angeles Review of Books

  From the writer described as “a worthy successor to Chandler” (Michael Connelly), the follow-up to Shortcut Man, featuring Dick Henry, is a rousing tale of sin and salvation in the City of Angels.

  Dick Henry is the Shortcut Man, assisting people with their sticky situations in the belief that the shortest answer to many problems may not always be legal. In Tribulations of the Shortcut Man he reluctantly provides assistance to an old girlfriend, pole dancer Pussy Grace.

  After Pussy’s boyfriend, rich and famous developer and septuagenarian Art Lewis, has inexplicably cut off communication with her, Dick and Puss enter Lewis’s mansion disguised as gas company employees to investigate. Everything quickly goes to hell. Dick and Puss flee, leaving the very dead Art Lewis behind. Dick anticipates arrest until news breaks the next morning: Art Lewis has just gotten married and is now enjoying his honeymoon. Realizing a conspiracy is afoot, Dick must navigate his way through the underbelly of Los Angeles and a motley crew of miscreants in pursuit of justice.

  “Filled with enough dark humor and shady characters to satisfy the most rabid noir fan” (Associated Press), p. g. sturges’s Shortcut Man series is hard-boiled crime at its best.

  p. g. sturges was born in Hollywood, California. Punctuated by fitful intervals of school, he has subsequently occupied himself as a submarine sailor, a Christmas tree farmer, a dimension and optical metrologist, a writer, and a musician.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

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  COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

  ALSO BY P. G. STURGES

  Shortcut Man

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by P. G. Sturges

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  First Scribner hardcover edition February 2012

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  ISBN 978-1-4391-9421-8 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4391-9423-2 (eBook)

  Dedicated to:

  Mac, Kelly, Taka, Thomas, Sam, and Kian

  A Note from the Author

  It is not the author’s intention to amend, emend, reduce, ameliorate, or redress any wrongs, misfortunes, tragedies, or perditious conditions known to exist in this world or the next. You will depart the premises no wiser than you arrived. However, it is hoped you will be entertained in the meantime.

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  Contents

  Part One: Goodbye to All That

  Chapter 1: White Fools with Dreadlocks

  Chapter 2: Billy Hitler

  Chapter 3: Classical Dance

  Chapter 4: Kostabi #5

  Chapter 5: A Judge, a Doctor, a Priest

  Chapter 6: What Latrell Said

  Chapter 7: Dennis Donnelly, Etta James

  Chapter 8: Vices and Spices

  Chapter 9: A Library Stinker

  Chapter 10: Nedra Scott

  Chapter 11: A Proposal of Marriage

  Chapter 12: Art and Justice

  Chapter 13: Pussy Grace

  Chapter 14: Goodbye to All That

  Chapter 15: Nothing Wrong with Him

  Chapter 16: Sisters

  Chapter 17: Opportunity Rings

  Chapter 18: Spontaneous Combustion

  Part Two: Bambi Service

  Chapter 19: The Tale of Hi-Beam

  Chapter 20: Honeymoon on Ice

  Chapter 21: A Peach, a Plum, an Eggplant

  Chapter 22: Anger Management

  Chapter 23: Violet Brown

  Chapter 24: You Like Animals?

  Chapter 25: Recriminations

  Chapter 26: A Visit to Myron Ealing

  Chapter 27: Indian Dinner Theater

  Chapter 28: Truths Laid Bare

  Chapter 29: You Pay Him

  Chapter 30: Rutland Returns

  Chapter 31: A Man of Value

  Chapter 32: The Diseased, the Demented, and the Damned

  Chapter 33: La Casa de Fantasma

  Chapter 34: Infarction

  Chapter 35: Did You Know Mr. Lewis?

  Chapter 36: Bella da Costa Greene

  Chapter 37: Ed Huff

  Chapter 38: Fame

  Chapter 39: Side by Side

  Chapter 40: Encopresis

  Chapter 41: The Second Mrs. Glidden

  Chapter 42: Big Red Lollipop

  Chapter 43: Bambi Service

  Chapter 44: Erin Secures Her Due

  Part Three: Public Property

  Chapter 45: Sometimes the Bad Guys Win

  Chapter 46: Operation Lazarus

  Chapter 47: A Hit Before She Split

  Chapter 48: A Gray Kitten with One Eye

  Chapter 49: Public Property

  Chapter 50: Kostabi #3

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  Goodbye to All That

  CHAPTER ONE

  White Fools with Dreadlocks

  Loman London believed the labors of others should profit Loman London. I had been summoned to disabuse him, again, of this
quaint notion.

  A soft Los Angeles morning sun gentled my shoulders as I made a left turn in my ’69 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible from Ocean Avenue to Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

  Kiyoko was on my mind. My on-and-off girlfriend, Kiyoko was a Buddhist who hadn’t yet come to appreciate my line of work. Last night, to the accompaniment of Japanese imprecations, she’d thrown me out of her house. It didn’t help that I’d laughed at her insults. I couldn’t help it. I understood only a few words of Japanese. Forku, porku, steaku, elephanto. Americanized additions to the language. Not the words she had chosen from the other side of the kitchen island. So I laughed, hoping to bluff my way through; a sitcom, a new take on the Odd Couple.

  Exiled. One arm stiffly pointing in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, she summed up her aggravations in one word: barbarian.

  Up ahead on the left was my morning’s destination, a modern, two-story, yellow stucco building with purposely protruding I-beams. It housed the Peach Cat & Dog Hospital and heralded the gentrification of funky Venice. I parked in back and got out.

  The thing was this: Kiyoko believed all human suffering sprang from the denial of death. That denial took the form of greed, anger, and foolishness. And I agreed. Hell, I couldn’t agree more. But before everybody wised up there’d be problems here and there. That’s my line. My name’s Dick Henry. They call me the Shortcut Man.

  Clark Peach, wringing his hands, met me at the back door. Clark was five foot seven, weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, peered at the world through delicate gold-rimmed spectacles. He was one of the premier veterinarians in Los Angeles, according to a magazine that evaluated stuff like that. Ferocious, intractable beasts became docile in his presence. I’d seen that. But people? People were a different kind of beast.

  “Thanks for coming, Dick.”

  I liked him a lot. He’d actually done something useful with his life. “You the man, Dr. Peach,” I slanged. “Whazzup?”

  Of course, I had a good idea what was up.

  Dr. Peach kicked an invisible piece of dirt on the floor, then looked up. “Uh, he’s, uh, he’s back.”

  I nodded. Dr. Peach was at the butt end of a low-level extortion scam perpetrated by Loman London.

  I’d told London to go away early last week. “I didn’t see him on my way in, Doc.”

  Dr. Peach checked his watch. “He’ll be here anytime now.”

  “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  The doctor shrugged, with a tinge of embarrassment. “I, uh, I thought maybe I could talk to him myself.”

  Hence my vocation.

  Doc Peach beckoned to me to follow him. He walked into his office, looked out through the blinds. He turned to me, nodded.

  I took a look for myself.

  Loman London was a fiftyish wastrel whose contributions to society had not yet added up to a popcorn fart. Two hundred seventy or so pounds were apportioned over his large frame with a hefty surplus accumulating at the waistline. Matted dreadlocks depended thickly to his shoulders. His skin was rough and permanently reddened. Treelike legs, in shorts, interfaced the pavement through a pair of huaraches.

  Loman’s scam was a simple one. He would set up his rolling incense cart in front of a likely business and wait to be paid to go somewhere else. In the meantime he would frighten the little blue-haired old ladies bringing their little blue poodles in for a checkup.

  I turned to the doc. “I guess Mr. London has a learning disability. I’ll go out and have a talk with him.”

  But first I retrieved an accelerant from the Caddy’s trunk. I walked around the building. Tendrils of pungent smoke rose from the incense stand into the morning air. I actually liked the smell. Rastaman greeted me in friendly fashion.

  “Salutations, mon. What’s your pleasure? Sandalwood or Pondicherry Pine?” Loman spoke in a pseudo-Jamaican patois.

  I stared at him for a second. Beneath his sunny innocence was a surly streak. “I thought we discussed this, pal. You were going to exhibit elsewhere.”

  “And I did, mon. That was last week. This is this week.”

  The “mon” shit irritated me all over again. Loman the lump hadn’t been within a thousand miles of Jamaica. Though I was sure he’d smoked ten thousand spliffs. On someone else’s dime.

  “Doctor Peach isn’t going to pay you again. He asks that you move on.”

  There I was. The soul of reason. Even though I had just begun to feel that peculiar tingling in my fists.

  Rastaman shrugged. “And I have entertained his request, mon. Dr. Peach a good mon. But I have found a home for my business. This is a free country, mon.”

  “The doctor patiently asks you to move on.”

  Rastaman shrugged with a hint of brusqueness. “I have found a home for my business, mon.”

  “And you refuse to listen to reason.” I was giving bad Bob Marley a last chance. I imagined the I-Three’s shaking their heads in unison behind him. Of course, London wasn’t appreciating his opportunity.

  “I refuse to be intimidated, if that’s what you mean, mon.” He folded his thick arms over his thick chest. His friendliness had evaporated.

  His chin was calling to my knuckles, but, thinking of Kiyoko, I hung on a little longer. “I guess you don’t recognize the former light-heavyweight champion of the Thirteenth Naval District.”

  “Should I be worried, mon?”

  It was the “mon” that did it. I stepped around his wares, planted my left foot, launched a right uppercut. The karma missile caught him on the point of the chin and set him, with a thud, flatly on his ass, knocking the wind out of him.

  I reached into my back pocket for the can of Ronsonol Lighter Fluid and soaked down the entire incense stand.

  Rastaman had not yet regained his feet. He shook his head as if to clear it.

  Having survived some righteous shots both in and out of the ring, I knew what he was experiencing. He was hearing a great swarm of bees, though he could not see them.

  I indicated his stand. “You ever get your schnoz into what these things smell like when they’re all burning at once?”

  I patted down my pockets with a theatrical flair. Had I really forgotten my lighter?

  Awareness slowly crept into Rastaman’s face. He looked at his incense stand, then the yellow Ronsonol can.

  “Does anyone have a match around here?” I laid my request before the universe.

  Rastaman held up a belaying hand.

  But the universe saw fit to reply.

  “I got a match, brother.”

  My heart warmed. I turned and there was Rojas, right on schedule. “Enrique Montalvo Rojas! As I live and breathe!”

  Artfully chapeaued in black porkpie, Enrique Rojas was a badass Eastsider. An old colleague with a supremely checkered past, he had romanced heroin, done a stretch at San Quentin, and had found a cat’s-eye worth a million dollars in Sri Lanka that currently supported an orphanage or two. He bore a passionate love for Eric Dolphy and Thelonius Monk.

  Rojas eyed the stand. “Should I light it on fire?”

  I smiled. “Please.”

  From the sidewalk Rastaman waved his hand. “Whoa, now. That’s my entire stock, there, man.” Man, not mon.

  I indicated Rojas. “This is Señor Rojas. Señor Rojas loves to beat the shit out of white fools with dreadlocks. Especially ones trying to shake down veterinarians in Venice. Have I made myself clear?”

  Rastaman now grasped the full breadth of his misapprehension. “I get it, man. Real clear. Don’t burn my shit. I got places to go. Please.”

  Rojas lit a match. “Shall we give the dude another chance?”

  “Please,” begged Loman the lump.

  I feigned consideration.

  “One more chance?” queried Rojas again, appearing for a second to be a nice guy.

  “Uhhh . . .” I watched London hang on my every word. “. . . uhh, nah.” I shook my head. “Light him up.”

  “Okay,” said Rojas, bubbling with good cheer.
He tossed the match onto the stand and it went up in a huge whoosh of flame and wave of heat.

  “Thank you, Señor Rojas.” I bowed low.

  “Thank you, Señor Henry.” Rojas bowed in return.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Billy Hitler

  After a ride north and some quick stir-fry at Hoy’s Wok, I rolled over to World Book & News at Hollywood and Cahuenga. Jack Hathaway did a five-day ten-to-six and took messages for me. Jack was a Navy veteran in his seventies, a cheerful man with a ready smile and a pirate squint. The failings of humanity, from Genghis Khan to Billy Hitler, never clouded his fundamental optimism for long.

  Khan had skewered a million sobbing virgins. Hitler, a clumsy shoplifter of Jack’s acquaintance, self-appellated in the style of Sid Vicious, sold 213 copies of his CD, worldwide, and had gone on to OD in the men’s room of the Pig ’n Whistle on Hollywood Boulevard.

  Informed of Hitler’s demise, Jack had shaken his head. “They allow that? At the Pig ’n Whistle? And that rat still owed me money.” Then he shrugged. “But whatcha gonna do? We have to go on.”

  I agreed. Like other misfortunes outside the direct sphere of my concern, I met the news of young Hitler’s passing with great resolve. Hitler’s previous handle had been Sparky Wire. And the Rubber Gloves. But amphetamines had disagreed with his spleen. The Gloves slowly disintegrated without him.

  I put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “You said I had some messages.”

  Jack grinned. “I think I got a gig for you.” He reached into his pocket, put a card in my hand. “Take a look at this.”

  Judge Harry Glidden

  Superior Court

  I seemed to recognize the name. “Have I heard of this guy?”

  “Everybody has, Dick. That’s Hangin’ Harry.”

  Hangin’ Harry Glidden. The real judge who’d done some TV then married a cable-channel lady chef. Or whatever she was. “What’d he want?”

  Jack shook his head. “Wouldn’t tell me nothin’, of course. Wanted you.” Then Jack remembered something else. “And there’s been a kid coming by.”