TROUBLE HAS DARK HAIR (A Jack Rogers Case)

Jack Rogers stared at himself in the mirror.  He pressed his fingers against the deep lines beneath his eyes and pulled the skin back.  “There,” he said, to his reflection.  “There you are.” 

He ran his hand through his hair. Recent years had given him a widows peak. Streaks of gray invaded his temples like an angry mob.  His eyes fell to the blue security guard outfit. A size too small.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” His reflection stared back at him with cold, ambivalent eyes. 

Jack turned on the faucet and splashed his face with cold water. His face sagged with disappointment. The water hadn't helped. He took his flask from his back pocket, poured a long shot into his mouth, and swallowed. 

He let the whiskey settle. The warmth of liquor's resolve.“Time to go to work, Jackie boy.”

The San Pedro harbor was cold and wet. The midnight moon hung dirty in a blue sky smeared with black clouds.  Jack walked his assigned route, making his way through rows upon rows of metal storage containers piled along the dock.  He started working for P.M.S. security a week ago to pay the rent on his office, and already the monotony of the job had begun to crawl up his spine like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

It was a lonely, mind numbing job. Nothing happened on the docks. He rarely saw another person, other than his supervisor at the beginning and end of his late night to early morning shift. 

Twelve hours with nothing to do except walk around and feel lonely.

Jack came to the end of a row and looked out past the barges docked along the pier into the deep, velvety blackness of the Pacific. Like the inside of a coffin.  Jack made sure it was clear and took another drink from his flask.

“At least the rent will get paid,” he said.  “Maybe.”

Jack slid the flask into his pocket and started back on his route. Turning a corner, heading back to his checkpoint, he saw a flash of movement in the darkness.  Someone dashing between the rows of containers.  

Instinctively, Jack reached for a gun that wasn’t there.  His hand fell instead to the flashlight he had been issued.  He drew the flashlight and made his way down to the end of a narrow tunnel.  Carefully, he unclipped the radio from his belt as he peered around the corner.  Nothing. It was all clear. He followed a path through a maze of storage containers, feeling like a mouse in one of those science experiments.  He heard voices and stopped.

“This is Jack Rogers,” he said quietly into the radio receiver.  He wasn’t sure what to follow that up with, so he kept moving, closing in on the sound of voices.  One sounded foreign.  Arabic, maybe. 

“What is it, Rogers,” a voice crackled back over the radio.

Jack ignored the radio and stepped around the corner.  Two men stood in the ally.  A white kid, and an Arab.  The Arab was being held at gunpoint by the kid.  A shot went off and the Arab went down, his face skewered with pain.

“Check in, Rogers,” Jack’s radio crackled again.

The kid with the gun turned and faced Jack.  From the look in the kid’s eyes, Jack knew he was next.  He stepped behind the container just as the kid fired off a shot.  The bullet clanged off the steel containers like a pinball. Jack went to the pavement, hoping he wouldn’t catch his death from a ricochet.

Slowly, he crawled to the edge and peered around the corner.  The kid was rummaging through the Arab’s body. He came up with something Jack couldn’t see.  The kid walked towards Jack, the pistol held out to his side.  A voice crackled over the radio.

“Check in, Rogers."

A shadow passed over him. Jack looked up. The kid stood above him. His face was young and pock marked beneath a mane of red hair. 

The kid cracked a smile. He aimed the business end of his pistol at Jack.

“You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, aren’t you mister?” The kid crouched down close to Jack. “I bet when you woke up this morning, you didn’t think it was going to be your last day, did you?”

“If I did,” said Jack “I would have called in sick.” 

The kid let out air that might have been a laugh.

“If you’re going to do it, then do it.”   

The kid narrowed his eyes on Jack.  The radio crackled again, an angry voice coming through.

“Check in, Rogers.”

The kid picked up the radio, stood up, and tossed it out into the darkness. He looked down at Jack’s prone form and slipped the pistol into the back of his pants, shaking his head.  “I’m not in the business of shooting drunks. If I ever see you again, I'll consider expanding my operations. Get me?”

Jack nodded.  “I get you.”

“Good,” said the kid. 

He stepped over Jack and walked slowly down the dark passageway between shipping containers, whistling a tune Jack couldn’t quite place.

Jack sat in the security office watching the flashing blue and red lights of the ambulance and police cars through the window. His shift supervisor was talking to a detective.  They both kept looking back at Jack. From the looks on their faces, Jack could guess what they were saying.

He took another swig from his almost empty flask and hid it away. Tired of waiting, he got up and walked out the office door, trying to remember how to get back to his car.

His supervisor called out to him, “Wait a second, Rogers.”

Jack stopped without turning around.  His shoulders slumped.  He wanted to put this place behind him.  He heard footsteps and turned around.  His supervisor and the detective came up to him.

            “I have a few more questions for you, Rogers,” said the detective. 

            “I told you everything I know,” said Jack.  “I just want to go home and crawl onto the couch I sleep on and pass out. Can I do that?”

            “There’s one thing I don’t get, Rogers,” the detective said.  Jack thought he had the thin lips of a child molester and took an instant dislike to the man. 

            “What’s that, Detective Shanko?” Jack said.  “It is Shanko right?  Like Stanko, but with an h?”

            The detective’s thin lips disappeared behind a grimace.  “Why is it this kid you describe gunned down a man in cold blood, and then let a witness walk away clean?”

            Jack huffed.  “My lucky day, I guess.”

            Detective Shanko’s eyes narrowed on Jack.  He said, “I know who you are, Jack Rogers.  Everyone in the L.A.P.D. knows about you. How you got thrown off the force. You give good cops a bad name, Rogers. And you stink. This whole scene stinks. And if I find out your working some case that went bad, I’ll have your P.I. license nailed to your coffin.”

            “Good luck,” said Jack.  “I lost that thing a month ago when I couldn’t pay the dues.  Glad to see a murder case is in the hands of a first-rate detective.”

            Shanko jabbed a finger in Jack’s chest. “You just remember what I said, Rogers.  I catch wind you’re working an angle, and you’re going down. Now, get off my scene. I have police work to do.  Something you wouldn’t know anything about.”

            Shanko turned and walked back towards the body, where a uniformed officer was putting up a line of police tape.

            Jack watched the detective until his supervisor said, “He’s right about one thing." Jack turned to the man and waited for him to expound, though he knew what was coming.  “You stink, Rogers.  You smell like booze. Get off my pier and don’t ever come back. Your fired.”

            Two days later, Jack found himself in a bar in West Hollywood named Mister Jumbo’s.  It was a gay bar with a clown motif.  The sign outside is what drew Jack in. The face of a clown wearing a smile like he had something to hide. It was something Jack could relate to.  He was hiding from the world, and Mister Jumbo’s dark interior and gaudy circus atmosphere gave him the perfect place to do it. 

            Jesus, the bartender, was leaned over the bar reluctantly listening to Jack hum a tune he was trying to remember, when his eyes shot up towards the door.  Jack caught it and turned on his stool to see what had grabbed Jesus’s attention.

            In the doorway, looking around at the half naked men dancing on the bar tables like a kid lost at the carnival, stood an olive-skinned woman with hair the color of midnight.  The black dress she wore showed off her figure without showing to much of it off, and as her eyes fell on Jack, her face became smooth and confident. Her dark misty eyes appraised him as she made her way across the bar, and in his perpetual drunken state of confusion, he didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or pleased at her assessment.

            She said, “Mr. Jack Rogers?” Her voice was husky, like a life-time smoker’s, and she spoke with a thick accent.

            Jack stumbled a, “Yeah?” and his eyes fell to her slender hands, expecting to see an envelope, and her next words to be, “You’ve been served.”

            Instead, she said, “You are a hard man to find, Mr. Rogers.”

            He looked into her smoky eyes, and cracked a smile.  “Only for the bill collectors, sweetheart.  If that isn’t you, then you’ve found me.  If it is you, take a hike.  I’m all cashed out.”

            The woman tilted her head like a puppy.  She shook her head, her long black hair swishing against her shoulders, and said, “I am not a bill collector, Mr. Rogers.  My name is Lolita Elmasry.  My brother was Momat Elmasry.”

            She stopped and waited as if the name might mean something to Jack.  It didn’t.  Jack took the last sip of his drink.

            She went on, “He was murdered two nights ago in San Pedro.  You were a witness to his murder.”

            Jack’s drink turned sour in his mouth and he forced a swallow.  He set the glass down on the bar.

            He turned to the bartender, who was staring at Lolita Elmasry like she was a work of art, and said, “Another, Jesus.  And one of the lady.”

            Without looking away from Lolita Elmasry, Jesus said, “You’re tapped out, Jack.”

            “I’ll pay,” Lolita Elmasry said, and took a seat at the bar.

            Jesus nodded and set up their drinks.  Jack smiled and appraised Lolita Elmasry as she watched the bartender pour whisky sours.

            “I’m sorry about your brother,” Jack said.  “I never met the man, but I’m sure he didn’t deserve to die in an ally way on the pier.”

            “No,” Lolita said.  Her eyes stared straight ahead until Jesus got the message and made his way down the bar to see to his other patrons.  Lolita turned to Jack and went on.  “He didn’t, but it was not unexpected.”

            “No?”

            “No.”  She looked down into her whisky sour intently, as if seeing her fortune written in its depths.  Abruptly, she looked up into Jack’s eyes.  “They tell me you are a detective. A private eyes?”

            “Private eye,” Jack corrected.  “And I was.  Business has been slow lately.”

            “If I pay you, can you find my brother’s killer?”

            “It’s possible,” Jack said, and took a sip of his drink.  “I do have a witness after all.”  He set his glass down.  “It’s going to cost you though.”

            “I can pay you,” Lolita said, “but only after you have found the killer, and what he took from my brother.”

            Jack shook his head.  “I’m sorry, Miss Elmasry, but that’s not how it works.  See, I take a deposit.  Legally, that makes you my client.  It involves all kinds of legal mumbo jumbo, but essentially it protects me from the law.”

            “You don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t have money now.  I spent everything I had coming here from Egypt. I’ll have money when I get back what my brother’s killer took from him.”

            “What did he take?”

            Lolita Elmasry looked left then right, making sure no one was within ear shot.  She leaned closer to Jack and whispered in her husky voice, “A map.”

            “A map?”

            “Yes.  A map.  A map made by our grandfather when he came to this country fifty years ago.”  Lolita reached into her purse and drew out a long black cigarillo.  She placed it between her lips and struck fire to a lighter.

            Jesus appeared out of the ether, and said, “You can’t smoke in here.”

            Lolita stared at him like she no longer understood English.

            “Come on,” Jack said, shifting his head to point the way.  “Let’s go outside.”

            They took their drinks out back where tables were set up and small crowds lingered smoking together like volcanic islands. They took a table and Jack bummed one of Lolita’s thin cigarillos. He lit the smoke and motioned with his hand for her to continue.

            “As I was saying,” she went on, “my grandfather came to this country fifty years ago.  He brought with him something special, Mr. Rogers. A treasure he and his partner found. The Cleopatra’s Idol. Have you heard of it?”

Jack shook his head and said, “No, but I’m no scholar, Miss Elmasry.”

 “My grandfather and his partner were excavators, Mister Rogers. They were part of a team searching the tombs of the ancients.”

            She turned away, dragged on the cigarillo, exhaled, then turned back.

            “Well, my grandfather’s partner, Ahmir Azzar, betrayed him.  Or was going to.  My grandfather discovered his plot and hid the Idol. He drew a map to its hiding place and fled back to Egypt.  He always planned to come back and reclaim the treasure.”

            “Why didn’t he?” asked Jack.

            Lolita shrugged.  “Life happens, Mr. Rogers.  Things get in the way.  My father, too, had planned to come after my grandfather died.”

            “But he never made it.”

            “No.  He never made it.  He died of a heart attack when me and my brother were children. Now, my brother has been murdered and the map has been taken.  Someone knew he was coming and what he was carrying with him.”

            She took another drag and crushed the cigarillo out prematurely.  “If you help me, Mr. Rogers, I will be more than able to pay you what you want. What is important for me, is to finally claim Cleopatra’s Idol for my grandfather and my father.”  Her eyes fell to the smoking butt in the ashtray.  “And now,” she said, “for my brother.”

            Jack took a slow drag from the cigarillo and washed the acrid taste from his mouth with a swish from his whisky sour.  She had barely touched her own drink.

            “Tell me something, Miss Elmasry.”

            She looked up from her revelry. There was a softness in her eyes now that hadn’t been there before. Jack wasn’t sure if she was trying to play him, or if walking down memory lane had stirred up some emotions.

            “How did you find me here?”

            “It was not hard,” she said. “The police man, a Detective Shanko – “

            Jack interrupted, “Stanko. Yeah, go on.”

            “He told me where to find your office. He said if you were not there, then to check the bars in the area. And so, I did.”

            Jack grunted.  “So, you did. You’re so good at finding people, what do you need me for?”

             “I don’t know this place, Mr. Rogers.  I don’t know the people.  I need someone who does.  They said the man who killed Assad is a local man. I think I will need a local man to find him and get my map back.”

            Jack sipped his drink until there was nothing left to sip.  He set the glass down. “I’m still going to need a deposit, Miss Elmasry.  That’s just the way it works.”  Jack shrugged.  “It’s like you said, soon as you get the map and the treasure back, you’ll be rolling in it.  Cough up a little now and enjoy your rewards later.”

            Slowly, Lolita Emasry drew her pocket book onto the table and opened it, so Jack couldn’t see what was inside.  After digging through it, she revealed a hundred-dollar bill and held it out to Jack.

            “Please,” she said, “it’s all I have for now.”

            Jack looked at the fresh hundred-dollar bill for a moment, and then took it.  He folded it and slipped it inside his jacket pocket.

            “All right, Miss Elmasry,” Jack said. “You’ve hired yourself a detective.”

            They exchanged phone numbers and after Jack said, “I’ll be in touch,” Lolita Elmasry left Mister Jumbo’s.  Jack broke the crisp hundred-dollar bill at the bar and drank half of it in two hours.  When the bar closed, he decided to go to work.

            When the clock reads two A.M. in most towns, it means bedtime and softly spoken I love yous.  The L.A. police station was wide awake and if you spoke softly, no one would listen.  The line at the booking counter could have stretched down the block.  Jack took off his hat and gave the soon to be incarcerated a smile and bow as he stepped up to the officer’s desk.

            “I’m here to see Detective Moon,” said Jack.

            The officer gave Jack an annoyed look. “You see I’m busy, don’t you, Rogers?”

            Jack turned back to the line of drunks and street workers, then back to the officer.

            “Well, sir, if you buzz me on in, it will alleviate this small instance of discomfort, and you can return to the imperative work you have before you.”

            The officer’s lips folded in on themselves.  “Have a seat, Rogers.  I’ll let the detective know you’re here.”

            Jack took a seat against the wall next to a man wearing a skirt no wider than a headband and a top made from even less fabric.  The man turned to Jack, crying, and said, “The whole world hates me. Why does the world hate me?”

            “I don’t know, sweetheart,” Jack answered.  “The world hates everybody.  You live through it or you don’t.”

            The man’s face became a distorted mask of confusion and sorrow.  He looked at Jack and cried, “Why do you hate me?”

            “Don’t take it personal, honey,” Jack said, wishing he had chosen one of the few other vacant chairs.  “I hate everybody.”

            Jack saw the door to the inner police station open.  Dan Moon stuck his head into the lobby and said, “Jack,” and motioned for Jack to follow him.

            Jack stood up, looked down at the man handcuffed to the bench, and said, “Good luck with all that.”

            Detective Dan Moon led Jack down a wide hallway towards the detective’s office.  Dan was a few inches shorter than Jack, and as Jack followed a few steps behind the detective, he had a view of the detective’s thinning bald spot in the center of his head.

            “Jesus, Dan,” said Jack, “this job is aging you.”

            Dan Moon stopped and turned around so suddenly, Jack ran into him.  He pushed Jack off and said, “You’re one to talk, Rogers.” His tired third-shift eyes ran up and down Jack’s body.  “Look at you.  You look like you haven’t showered or changed clothes in a week. And you stink, Jack. Like stale whisky. I smelled you coming a day ago.”

            Dan turned around and started for his office.

            “Geeze, Dan,” said Jack.  “It’s good to see you too.”

            Jack started after Dan.  Without turning around, Dan said, “I figured you’d be showing up here.  I’ve had a detective breathing down my neck about you, Jack.”

            “Stanko?”

            They entered Dan’s office.  Dan fell into a swivel chair behind his desk like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. He sighed and looked up at Jack.

            “Detective Shanko. Yes.  Seems your part of a murder investigation.”

            Jack waved it away and sat down.  “I’m just a witness.  An unreliable one at that, seeing as how I was drunk at the time.”

            “When aren’t you drunk, Jack? You’re drunk right now.”

            Jack smiled and spread his hands out with a shrug.

            “I heard you lost your P.I. card,” said Dan.

            Jack clasped his hands in his lap and settled into the chair. “It’s just a formality. I forgot to pay my dues.”

            “Well, then I hope you’re not here working a case,” said Dan.  “I get enough heat from you as it is. They find out I’m helping an unlicensed P.I., it’ll be my ass.”

            “You worry too much, Dan. Maybe I just stopped in to say hello.”

            Dan said, “Yeah, right.  What are you really here for?”

            “All right, Dan, you got me. But I’m not here working a case.  I thought I’d help out Stanko by searching through the mugshot books for the kid who killed Elmasry. I heard he was a local. Means he’s probably been pinched before.”

            “That’s your story?” said Dan Moon. “You thought I’d buy that? When was the last time you wanted to help the L.A.P.D.?”

            “Probably about six years ago,” said Jack.  “Right before they took my badge.”

            “Yeah,” said Dan.

            Jack leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.  “Listen, Dan.  That kid about took my head off with a bullet.  You think I don’t want to see him locked up? Just because I gave Stanko a hard time, doesn’t mean I want to look over my shoulder the rest of my life waiting for the kid to get rid of a witness.”  He leaned back in the chair. “Come on. Let me see the books. I’ll be a good boy.  Promise.”

            Dan shook his head. His eyes refused to look at Jack.  “What am I going to do with you, Jack?”

            “Help me out, Dan. Just this once, for old time’s sake.”

            “Yeah, right.  Just this once.  That’s what you always say.”

            “Please, Dan.  I’m asking as a friend.”

            They sat staring at each other for a moment. Dan’s face was a statue with no emotion.  Finally, he released a breath and said, “Fine, Jack. But this is the last time.  And if I find out you are working a case, I’ll toss you in the can myself.”

            Jack smiled. 

            Dan Moon stashed Jack in an empty office off a little used corridor and brought him several stacks of mugshot books. Dan said, “I’m going home, Jack.  My shifts over. If you need anything, call someone else.”

            “Sure, Dan. I appreciate this, I really do.”

            “Yeah, well, just try not to stink the place up to much, will ya?”

            “I’ll try, Dan, but I can’t make any promises.”

            Dan Moon left Jack alone and he began to scan through the books. After an hour his eyes grew tired and his whisky flask grew empty, but Jack persisted.  He wouldn’t admit it, even to himself, but it felt good to be in the station again, pouring through the mugshot books.  It was as if something had been missing in his life and he found a little bit of it again working a case.  It was the kind of work Jack Rogers was meant to do, and deep down, he knew it.  They had taken it away from him, but he could never fully let it go.

            His eyes stopped on a pock marked face.  Jack recognized the smirk on the kid’s face.  It was like he was saying, “Got you” to the world.

            The name next to the photo was Floyd Oliver. Charges were assault, robbery, and extortion. There was a list of known associates next to the mugshot. Jack skimmed them.  One stood out from Jack’s police days.  Layne Shepard.  Known gangster and racketeer.  A transplant from Chicago who now called Los Angeles his home.

            Jack ran a hand through his hair.  He had broken out in a sweat without realizing it.  Was Layne Shepard involved?  Jack figured he had to be. The kid knew Elmasry had a map. It was the only thing taken.  Elmasry was set up, and there was no way the punk kid was resourceful enough, or had the imagination, to go after a treasure map. 

            No, Jack, thought.  The kid doesn’t know what he got himself into, but he’s about to find out.  The address listed in Oliver’s file was probably bunk, but it was a place to start.  119 El Centro.  Jack laughed.  He knew the address.  It was the old Lincoln Hotel in Downtown. A place not fit for the cockroaches and rats that called it home. 

            At four A.M. Jack parked his Buick at the curb outside the Lincoln.  The streets of downtown were empty except for a couple of homeless people who had nowhere to go and nothing to do.  Jack made his way past them and into the warmly lit lobby of the Lincoln Hotel. He took a quick look around and took some comfort in the fact the place hadn’t changed a bit since he had made his home there. The lobby smelled faintly of insecticide and ammonia.  A row of faded and torn chairs were lined against the wall next to the out of service elevator, and an old man sat snoring behind the reception counter with a black and white television blaring about the many uses of the military grade sunglasses now available for the first time to the public.

            Jack stepped up to the counter, paused a moment to give the old man a chance to wake up on his own, then slammed his hand down on the bell.  The old man didn’t react, other than an slight change in his snoring.  Jack reached over the counter to the log book and picked it up.  He quickly thumbed through its yellowed pages until he came to a familiar name. Oliver Shepard.  The kid was using his employer’s last name.  Jack wondered for a moment if that was significant, then stored the thought away for future contemplation. He set the log book down and took the stairs up to the fifth floor.

            Jack didn’t bother knocking.  He figured at this hour, either the kid was home, or he wasn’t.  He reared a foot back and kicked at the door. It sprang open like cardboard.   In the darkness, a shadowy figure sprang from the single bed in the room.  Jack lunged across the small space.  He put one hand against the kid’s thin wrist, and with the other he formed a fist and planted it in the kid’s belly. 

            The kid made a huffing sound as the air was knocked out him and strength evaporated from his body.  Jack heard the thud of a pistol hit the ground.  He gave the kid a back hand, then used his grip on the kid’s limp wrist to toss him back on the bed.

            The kid attempted to sit up, but Jack put a stop to it with a punch to the face that sent him back to a prone position. Jack found the pistol in the darkness of the room. As he stood up, the kid began the usual talk of those who think they’re tougher than they are when they find themselves caught off guard by someone who knows exactly how tough they need to be.

            “You know who I am, you thieving bastard?” said the kid. “You steal from me, you steal from Layne Shepard, and that’s your life!”

            “Shut up, kid.  Turn the light on if you want to see someone who doesn’t give a damn.”

            The kid reached over and turned on the bedside lamp.  Jack cracked a smile when he saw the look of recognition in the kid’s eyes.

            “That’s right,” said Jack. 

            The kid said, “I should have killed you on the dock,” in as mean a voice as he could muster at gunpoint.

            “You should have,” said Jack, “but you didn’t. Now, the tables have turned, and you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”

            “I’m not telling you jack.”

            Jack turned the pistol in his hand. “We’ll see about that,” he said.  He ejected the cylinder and let shells fall to the floor one by one.  “See, we’re going to play a little game to see how tough you really are. It’s a game I like to call please, Jack, don’t hurt ‘em.”

            Jack snapped the cylinder back in place made it spin so the kid could hear the clear metal sound of possible death.

            “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” the kid said, his voice a little less forceful as his eyes fell to the gun in Jack’s hand.

            “I know exactly who I’m messing with,” said Jack. “I’m messing with a kid who jumped in the pool with the big boys and found himself in the deep end with no arm floaties.”

            Jack leveled the pistol at the kid’s face.  He squeezed the trigger.  The kid trembled with the metal click of the empty round.

            “That’s one,” said Jack.  “We’re going to keep playing the odds until you tell me what I want to know.”

            The kid’s face was pale, his bottom lip sucked in.  “What?”

            “Just one thing,” Jack said.  “I want to know what you did with the map.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            Jack squeezed off another dry click. The kid jumped.  He was sweating.

            Jack said, “That’s two.  Your odds are getting slimmer, kid.”

            “You don’t know who you’re messing with!”

            “You said that already. If you’re going to repeat yourself, this game is going to have a messy ending.”

            Jack squeezed off another dry round. “Stop!” said the kid.  He pulled his back up against the wall. White knuckles showed through his fists as he gripped the blanket.

            “I’ll stop when you tell me what I want to know. Where’s the map?”

            The kid stared up at Jack, his lips held tight in a thin line.  Jack pulled the hammer back on the pistol.

            “Alright!” yelled the kid. “Put the gun down and I’ll tell you.”

            “You’ll tell me anyway,” said Jack.

            The kid glared.

            Jack extended his arm.  “I figure you might have one more shot before this thing goes boom.”

            “Layne Shepard,” the kid said in a low voice, as if whispering meant he wasn’t a rat. “He has the map.” The kid tried on a smile that didn’t fit his face anymore.  “Try playing this game with him and see who wins.”

            It was the answer Jack had expected but it came with more questions. Questions that were above the kid’s paygrade.   

            “One more question,” Jack said, his arm extended with the pistol.

            “You said one question,” the kid protested.

            “I lied,” said Jack. “Where can I find Layne Shepard?”

            The kid smiled wide, showing his yellowed teeth. “Don’t worry about that,” he said.  “When he hears about this, he’ll find you.”

            Jack sighed.  “Don’t make me ask again, kid. I’d hate to leave what brains you have smeared on the wall behind you. Just answer the question.”

            “He’s got a house in Beverly Hills,” said the kid.  “It’s not hard to find.”

            “All right,” Jack said, lowing the pistol.  “You did good, kid, but if you plan on having a career as a tough guy, you need to watch a few more Charlie Bronson movies.”

            Jack raised the pistol and squeezed off several dry rounds.  The kid tensed on the bed, his eyes closed, and his mouth drawn back to reveal rodent-like teeth.  At the sound of Jack’s laugh, the kid opened his eyes and found himself alive.

            “It’s empty,” explained Jack.  He slipped the pistol in his jacket pocket.  “I’ll hold on to this. You can keep the bullets.”

            “You son of a bitch.”

            “Shh,” Jack said, holding a finger to his lips.  “Don’t tell anybody.”

            Jack turned and left, leaving the kid laying on the bed, cursing, as Jack made his way down the hall. He walked out onto the early morning street.  He shrugged, and breathed in the urine scented air of downtown L.A. 

            Jack climbed into the Buick.  His eyes suddenly felt as heavy as dumbbells. He realized he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror and saw a shadow covered man smiling in the backseat.

            “Hello, Jack Rogers.”

            Jack made a move to turn around.  The man stuck the cold steel of a pistol barrel to the back of Jack’s head and said, “Don’t. Just start the car and drive.”

            “All right,” Jack said, and started up the car. “Mind telling me where we’re going?”

            The man in the backseat shifted into the light. Jack saw a pale angular face with a sharp nose and thin lips.  The blond curls on his head made him look like a pretty boy, but his eyes called him out as an abusive ex-boyfriend.

            “We’re going to see my client. Get on the five and exit when I tell you.”

            “Okey-dokey,” said Jack, and pulled out onto Olive Street.

            They passed through several read lights without saying anything.  Jack pulled onto the 5 ramp and accelerated. He merged into the early morning traffic, and said, as calmly as he could with a gun pressed to his head, “So, you’re after the map, too.”

            The man in the back seat shrugged.  “Let’s just say my employer is interested in it.”

            “Who’s you’re employer?”

            “That’s confidential information, Rogers.  If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

            “Well,” said Jack. “We don’t want that. I’ll just wait and see for myself.”

            The man laughed. “I heard you were a smart one.”

            “Yeah,” said Jack.  “I’m smart all right.  Just not smart enough to check the backseat before I get in a car.”

            “You got to be careful now days, Rogers.  Lots of weirdos and crazies out there.”

            “You’re telling me.”

            Jack weaved the Buick past a long line of cars exiting the interstate. 

            “Slow down,” the man in the backseat said.  “We’re getting close.”

            “Sure,” Jack said, and pressed the gas further down. The Buick’s long body weaved with speed and the man in the backseat shifted his pistol barrel against the skin of Jack’s neck.

            “I said slow down, Rogers.”

            Jack’s eyes narrowed on the man’s reflection in the rearview.  “Shoot me if you need to, buddy, but we’re going ninety miles an hour.  You want to take a chance of a faceplant throw the windshield, go ahead and pull the trigger.”

            “Damn you, Rogers.”

            Jack floored it.  He pulled in and out of lines of stopped traffic, coming close enough several times to earn honks and curses from other drivers.

            “You want me to slow down, start talking. I’ll take this car straight into the concrete divider. I don’t give a damn.”

            Jack chanced a quick look off the road to the reflection of the man in the backseat.  The man’s smirk was gone. A worry line creased his forehead.

            “Now,” said Jack, swerving in time to miss a line of road construction barrels.  “Who sent you.”

            “Settle down, Rogers,” said the man.  “I’ll tell you what you want to know. It’s no secret. I was just having a little fun with you.”

            The Buick sailed past a road crew worker holding a ‘slow’ sign. The crewman’s curses were lost on the wind.

            “Spill it,” said Jack.

            “A man named Azzar.  He hired me to find you and bring you to him. That’s all. Now slow this bucket down before I decide to take a chance on letting a bullet do it for me.”

            Jack slowed the car. There was wall of early morning traffic ahead, and he didn’t see a way around it.

            “Keep talking,” said Jack, “or you won’t need to waste a bullet.”    

            “He’s got a deal for you.  That’s all I know. The gun was my idea. I thought it would be a kick to get the drop on a fellow P.I.”

            Jack brought the Buick to a stop inches from the car in front of him. The Buick’s overheated engine smoked from beneath the hood and the smell of burnt transmission fluid infiltrated the interior.

            “You thought it would be a kick to hold a gun on me?” Jack turned around to face the man in the backseat. “Who the hell are you?”

            The man smiled.  It made him look like the devil in some old black and white movie Jack had seen.  One where the devil is a pretty boy trying to get a sap to sign on the dotted line.

            “Shy Neighbors is my name. I run a P.I. firm out of Beverly Hills. We’re in the same line, Rogers.” Neighbors held the pistol up so Jack could see, then slipped it into a shoulder holster he wore beneath his suit jacket. “No harm no foul, Rogers. I was just giving you the business is all.” His smile faded, and he said, “Now, turn this hunk of junk around. You’ll want to see Azzar. Like I said, he’s got a deal for you.”

            Jack turned back around to face the traffic scene ahead of him.  “That’s all you had to say, Neighbors.” He looked one last time in the rearview. “Next time you pull a gun on me, will be the last time.”

            Neighbors smiled. “I’m sure it will be, Rogers.  I’m sure it will be.”

            Neighbors directed Jack to an office building in Century City, just past the border of Beverly Hills.  He pulled into a parking garage and left the Buick smoldering in a almost empty section. Jack followed Neighbors inside, into an elevator, and up to the top floor.

            Inside the elevator the two P.I.’s shot each other with looks that could kill lesser men.

            Neighbors said, “Jesus, Rogers. You stink. What the hell happened to you anyway? You were supposed to be one of the best.”

              “Let’s see how good you smell after two days of no sleep and as many guns pointed at you,” said Jack.

            The door chimed and opened, revealing a large office suite.  They stepped out of the elevator, towards the center of the room, where a dark-skinned man with receding salt and pepper hair, wearing a suit that cost more money than Jack had ever seen, sat behind a desk with his back to a window with a beautiful view of the city.  He was flanked by two men in suits almost as nice as their boss’s, but a paygrade lower. Seated in a chair to the side was Lolita Elmasry.  Jack nodded a hello to her and her dark eyes fell to her hands clasped in her lap.

            “Mister Rogers,” said the man behind the desk. His mouth opened into a wide smile, revealing sparkling white veneers. “So glad of you to join us.”

            Jack pulled the kid’s pistol from his jacket pocket. He whipped around and smashed the pistol against Neighbors’ face, and reached into the P.I.’s jacket, relieving Neighbors’ of his piece. Then he spun around, shifting to put Neighbors between him and the two body guards who were reaching for their own weapons.

            “Uh-uh,” said Jack, “unless you want to see who’s the fastest in town, tell your boys drop ‘em.”

            The dark-skinned man’s smile vanished.  He raised a hand and the two body guards lowered their arms away from their coats.   

            “There’s no need of this, Mister Rogers,” said the dark-skinned man. “I assure you.”

            “Yeah,” said Jack, “that’s why you sent Magnum here to fetch me at gunpoint.”

            Neighbors nursed his bruised face with a gentle hand and shot daggers at Jack.

            “Move over there were I can see you, Neighbors,” Jack said, motioning with Neighbors’ own gun.  “And we can all have a nice friendly chat.”

            Neighbors moved slowly towards the center of the room.  “You’ll regret that, Rogers.”

            “Yeah,” said Jack.  “I’ll put it on the list.  Right above the discount boxers I bought at the swap meet and just below my last trip to Tijuana. Now, move.”

            Jack glanced at Lolita Elmasry.  “You okay, Miss Elmasry?”

            Her eyes widened. A shadow of worry darkened her olive skin. Her hands shifted from her lap to the arms of the chair, as if she didn’t know whether to run or stay put.

            “I’m okay, Mister Rogers.  They didn’t hurt me.”

            Jack nodded.  “Good,” he said, then turned his attention on the man behind the desk. “All right, Mister Azzar. Start talking. And make it good.  I’m getting sleepy and my trigger finger’s getting itchy.”

            Azzar shook his head.  “There’s no need for this, Mister Rogers. We all want the same thing here.”

            “Yeah?” said Jack. “Enlighten me.”

            “The map, Mister Rogers,” Azzar smiled again, revealing bleached veneers. “We all want the map.”

            “Well, I don’t have it,” said Jack.  “Your boy here should have waited a couple of hours and maybe I could have gotten it.”

            Azzar’s eyes shifted beneath tufts of eyebrow hair.  “This is true?”

            Neighbors shrugged.  “You said bring him here.  I brought him.”

            Azzar looked back at Jack.  “You know where the map is?”

            “I might,” said Jack.  “But I don’t work for you.” He motioned with his head to Lolita Elmasry. “I work for lady.”

            “Of course,” said Azzar.  “Miss Elmasry and I have come to an understanding. We both want the same thing.”

            “Let me guess,” said Jack.  “You’re the partner who swindled her grandfather.”

            Azzar shook his head. “Swindle is a strong word, Mister Rogers.  And what happened in the past should be left there. As they say, today is a new day.  Let us put the bad ones behind us and enjoy the good times ahead.” 

            “I read that in a fortune cookie once,” said Jack.  “I didn’t buy it then, either.”

            Azzar stood up from his chair.  “You are trying my patience, Mister Rogers.  I am extending an olive branch. We can all share in the rewards of the map.  Is that not fair?”

            “Something tells me you don’t like to play fair, Azzar. That’s why you have two meat sacks behind you waiting to shoot me as soon as I turn my back.”

            Azzar raised a hand and pointed at Lolita Elmasry. “Your benefactor has already agreed to a deal, Mister Rogers. Surely, you would not go against her wishes.”

            Neighbors spoke up.  “Does she know you lost your license, Rogers?” He turned to Lolita, who, if the news had come as a shock, she did well hiding it. “That’s why he was working some two-bit job as a security guard, Miss Elmasry. He’s a washup who can’t kick the booze.”

            “Shut up before I belt you again, Neighbors,” said Jack. He turned back to Azzar and said, “She’s my client all right, and what she says goes.  But she’s not going to say it in front of you and your goons.  Me and Miss Elmasry are going for a drive. If she wants to deal with you, she’ll give you a call.  Let’s go, Miss Elmasry.”

            Lolita Elmasry looked from Jack to Azzar.  “It would seem our meeting is at an end, Mister Azzar.” She stood up from the chair, tall and statuesque, her jet-black hair shimmering in the office light, and walked towards the elevator. 

            Jack covered the room with the two pistols, waiting for someone to make a move. Azzar seethed behind a façade of cool collectiveness. The elevator door chimed, and Jack smiled.

            “I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure, gentlemen,” Jack said, backing towards the elevator, “but I only lie when I give a damn.”

            “You’ll regret this, Rogers,” Azzar said.

            “Yeah,” said Jack.  He backed into the elevator. “That’s what I keep hearing. Hit the garage button, sweetheart.”

            Lolita Elmasry hit the button with a polished nail and the doors slid closed.  Jack let out a long sigh and slipped the pistols into his jacket pockets.  His hands were shaking and a cold sweat dripped down his back.

            “Thank you, Mister Rogers,” Lolita said, turning to him. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come when you did.”

            “Don’t sweat it,” said Jack.  “I didn’t exactly have much choice in the matter.” Jack turned to her, to see her eyes, and asked, “Is it true what he said in there?  You’re ready to cut a deal?”

            Lolita turned away, her eyes going up to the digital readout counting the floors.

            “I only said what I had to say.  They had guns to my head, Mister Rogers.  What could I do?”

            Jack said, “Yeah,” and the doors chimed open.  “Come on,” he said, “I’m over here.”

            They climbed into Jack’s Buick and pulled out onto Sepulveda Boulevard.  Jack watched the rearview for the tail he expected to find.          

            “What are we going to do now?” asked Lolita.

            “First,” he said, “I’m going to take us somewhere safe.  Then I’m going to lay down and sleep for about ten hours or so.”  Jack pulled up the ramp onto the interstate.  “After that, and maybe a meal, I’m going to go and get your precious map.”

            “You know where it is?”

            “I do,” he said. Jack shrugged. “I know who has it, anyway.” He felt his mouth going dry and needed a drink.

            “Who has the map?”

            Jack was about to answer but stopped himself.  He turned to her and smiled.  “If I told you that, you wouldn’t need me anymore, would you sweetheart?”

            Lolita tried to conceal her agitation with the hurt look on her sultry face.  Jack saw through it and turned back to the road.  Before she could say anything else, Jack said, “Where are you staying?”

            Lolita shifted in the car seat to face the road.  “At the Beaumont,” she said, and added, “but we can’t go there.  Azzar knows about it. That’s where he found me.”

            “Don’t worry about Azzar, honey,” said Jack.  “He wants the map as bad as you do.  He won’t let anything happen to us until he gets his hands on it.”

 

            “You sign me on for a measly hundred bucks, and you’re staying in a place like this.”  He picked a swan shaped towel off the bed. “If I hadn’t already known I was a fool to begin with, I sure do now.”

            Lolita Elmasry walked across the hotel room towards the window on the other side of the bed and drew the curtains.  The diminished light did nothing to conceal her dark beauty.  Jack dropped the towel and let his eyes linger on his client. She turned to him, and if his gaze bothered her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she said, “Would you like a drink?”

            “Does a bear piss in the woods?”

            Lolita cocked her head slightly.  She looked like a puppy who had yet to learn how the world works. 

            “It means yes, I want a drink,” said Jack.

            Lolita went to the bar and fixed them both a drink.  Jack sat down on the bed.  Sudden lethargy weighed down his shoulders.  Lolita handed him a glass.  “I hope vodka is okay.”

            “It’ll do,” said Jack.

            She sat down next to him, close enough so Jack could feel her bare arms gently brush against his jacket.

            “Don’t be mad at me, Jack,” said Lolita.  “A hundred dollars is really all I had to give you.  This room, my travels, all of it is being paid for by investors in Egypt.  They know nothing about my brother’s murder or me hiring you.  If they found out the map had been stolen, they would panic and back out of the deal.  If that happens --,”

            “You lose everything,” Jack finished for her.  He tossed back his drink and finished it, too.

            Jack stood up, set his glass on the table, and went back to the bed and laid down with his head against the pillow. It felt good to stretch out.  He tried to remember the last time he had slept in a real bed and gave up. 

            “That’s the first time you’ve called me Jack,” he said to Lolita, who lingered at the foot of the bed.

            “Yes,” she said, her voice dark and husky. “How did you like it?”

            Jack closed his eyes.  “I liked it just fine, honey,” he said. 

            He felt Lolita’s weight shift off the bed and heard her footsteps against the hotel room carpet.  He felt her presence above him and smelled her strange scented perfume.  Like wilted flowers.  Jack opened his eyes and Lolita was unbuttoning her blouse.

            “I’m glad you liked it, Jack,” Lolita said.  “Now, I want you to make me scream it.”

            Jack did what he could, but when she finally screamed his name, it felt forced.  Like a lazy actress in low-budget horror movie.  Jack took his remorse to sleep with him.

            He woke up four hours later and Lolita was gone. He checked the bathroom and the kitchenette, but there was no sign of her.  He found his clothes scattered about the room and got dressed. His jacket, he noticed, was considerably lighter than when he took it off.  He searched the pockets and found them empty.  Lolita Elmasry had disappeared, and so had his confiscated pistols.

Jack went to the bar and made himself a drink.  He took the bottle of vodka with him and sat in a chair beside a table and stared at the rumpled blankets on the bed as he tossed back shot after shot, trying to regain his equilibrium.  Lolita Elmasry was working a game on him, he knew.  He just didn’t know what the game was, or if he wanted to keep playing.

            The hotel room door opened, and Lolita Elmasry entered.  She had changed out of the dress she had been wearing and into a tight white blouse and slim jeans with the cuffs rolled up.  The outfit gave her the appearance of looking younger than Jack suspected her of being, and at same time gave her an aura of aloofness that made Jack uneasy.  She carried a sack of groceries in her arms and had her purse slung over her shoulders.

            Her eyes fell on Jack as she shut the door and carried the bag towards the kitchenette.

            “You’re awake,” she said, offering Jack a slight smile.

            “And you’re observant,” he answered, watching her, wondering where she stashed the pistols.

            She set the bag of groceries down and turned to Jack.  “Is there something wrong?” she said. “You said you were hungry. I couldn’t sleep, so I went out to get breakfast for us.”

            “You took my pistols with you.”

            Jack slurred when he said ‘pistols’ so badly, even he noticed it.  Lolita raised her eyebrows at him.  Her dark eyes fell to the almost empty bottle of vodka on the table next to him.

            “I did,” she said. “I’ve had enough pistols pointed at me, Mister Rogers. I hardly know you. I wasn’t going to take the chance on you aiming them at me when I returned.”

            Jack got up from the chair and said, “You knew me pretty good a couple of hours ago.”

            Lolita’s face turned hard and darkened a shade. She crossed her arms and stared Jack down like he was a bad dog and she was the angry master.

            “Yes,” she said.  “You can learn a lot about a man by the way he makes love.”

            “And what did you learn?”

            “I learned you are lazy and give up too easily.”

            “We all have our bad days, baby.”

            “Yes. This is true.” Lolita moved back a step. The room seemed to grow smaller. “You seem to have many of them.”

            Jack reached out and took her by the arms.  He pulled her close enough to feel her breath on his face.  Lolita turned away, cringing, but did not pull free of his grasp.

            “I’m on the up slope, baby,” said Jack. He closed in and kissed Lolita’s full lips.  He felt her pull away, but held her closer, until she submitted to his urgency.  He felt her arms reach around his waist and pushed her away, breaking the spell he had cast on her.

            “I think you are a crazy man, Mister Rogers.”

            Jack shrugged.  He stepped past her to the counter in the kitchenette where her purse lay.  “You wouldn’t be the first,” he said.  He reached for the purse.

            Lolita said, “What are you doing?”

            “Taking my guns back.  You’re not the only one who’s tired of having guns pulled on them.”

            He found the pistols inside her purse.  He put Shy Neighbors’ pistol in his jacket pocket and handed Lolita the kid’s piece.  “You can hold on to that,” he said, “if it makes you feel better.”

            She held the gun down to her side. “It’s empty,” she said. “I checked.”

            Jack shrugged and sat back down in the chair.  “Like I said, if it makes you feel better. If it doesn’t, you can hand it back.”

            She weighed the pistol in her hand, looked at it, and said, “I’ll keep it.”

            Jack watched her put the pistol back in her purse. He said, “What are you making for breakfast?”

            “Eggs and toast and coffee.”

            “Sounds yummy.,” said Jack.  He picked up the dwindling bottle of vodka and poured a drink.  “Make it quick,” he said. “I’ve got an appointment with a gangster.”

Two hours later they were sitting in Jack’s Buick across the street from Deano’s, an Italian restaurant on Beverly Boulevard.

            “How do you know this man will show up here?” Lolita asked.  They had been sitting at a meter for twenty minutes and it was about to expire.  Jack kept looking at it and the restaurant, hoping the man would show before he had to plunk in more money.

            “He always eats lunch here,” said Jack. “These gangsters are creatures of habit.  It’s what usually lands them in the clink or in the morgue.”

            “How do you know he has the map?”

            “I don’t,” Jack admitted.  “But he knows where it is.  It was his boy that killed your brother.  Someone tipped him off about it or hired him for the job.  I figure it was your pal Azzar.”

            Jack turned to Lolita to read her reaction, but her face was solid. She was either innocent, or one of the best unknown actresses in Hollywood. He shrugged and turned back to the restaurant.

            “If Azzar did hire him,” Jack went on, “then Shepard either kept the map for himself, or raised the price on it. Maybe Azzar figures I’ll get it back and he’ll just take it from me.”  He turned to Lolita and said, “Or from you.”

              Lolita’s eyes narrowed on Jack and she said, “He’ll never take if from me. He betrayed my grandfather and had my brother killed. The only thing he will ever get from me is a bullet.”

            Jack looked her over for a moment. Any doubts he had about Lolita Elmasry’s sincerity dissipated from the coldness in her dark eyes. She had a look he recognized and had seen many times. The look of pure determination, to get whatever she wanted, by any means necessary.  No matter how beautiful she is, Jack reminded himself, she’s a viper, and doesn’t trust anyone.

            “That’s him,” Jack said, nodding to a jet-black Cadillac pulling up to the valet.  “Layne Shephard.”           

            Jack and Lolita watched the gangster climb out the backseat, a thug bodyguard on either side of him.  Shephard was a slender man on the short side, with dyed black hair that reflected the mid-day’s sun like fresh asphalt.  He wore a light sharkskin suit tailored to make him look broader in the chest than he was, and shoes made of some other kind of skin.  Probably human, thought Jack. 

            Shephard led his bodyguards into the restaurant. Jack turned to Lolita and said, “Wait here,” and opened the door.

            “I want to come with you,” she protested.

            “No,” said Jack.  “I don’t need any distractions. This guy’s a cold-blooded killer who’ll leave my body in the trash out back if I’m not careful. Stay here.”

            He got out and shut the car door before she could respond and crossed the street.

            Deano’s was an open room restaurant with booths lined against the windows and tables scattered in the center of the room.  Jack saw Layne Shepard seated at a booth in the back, with his two bodyguards standing vigil on either side of him.

            “Can I help you?” said a tuxedo dressed greeter as Jack entered.  The greeter was young and pretty, with slicked back hair.  Jack figured he was a part time actor, full time asshole.  

            Jack shook his head, said,  “No, thanks,” and walked through the restaurant to Shepard’s table. 

            The gangster handed the menu back to a waiter, said “Thank you, Charlie,” then his eyes fell on Jack standing before him.  Layne Shepard had quick nervous eyes and read Jack instantly. The two body guards were quick to move a step between Jack and Shepard.

            “It’s okay, boys,” said Jack, “I’m not here to hurt anybody. Just want to have a talk with your boss.”

            “Unless you have an appointment,” said one of the bodyguards, “beat it.”

            Jack looked past the bodyguards at Layne Shepard.  “I think he’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

            The waiter returned carrying a tray with a cup of coffee.  He set it on the table and retreated like a weary kitty cat.

            “It’s okay, boys,” said Layne Shepard. He picked up his cup of coffee, blew the steam, and took a sip.  He was a man who was always in control or liked to think he was.  “Let the man talk.”

            Jack stepped past the barricade of muscle and sat down in a chair across from Shepard.

            Shepard set his cup down and said with a cold, acid voice, “I didn’t say you could sit down.”

            “Sometimes you have to take the initiative,” said Jack. “You know who I am?”

            Shepard’s eyes flicked over Jack.  “Should I?”

            “Depends,” said Jack.

            “On what?”

            “Whether or not you care if your son goes down for murder or not.”

            Shepard let out a breath of a laugh. “You must have the wrong table, mister.  I don’t have a son.”

            “Yes, you do,” said Jack.  “He might not be legitimate, but he’s your boy all right. Even has your beady little eyes.”

            “I don’t think I like you,” said Shepard.

            “That’s fine,” said Jack. “I get that a lot.  But if you like your boy and don’t want to see him take a long voyage up the river, you’ll listen to what I have to say.”

            “Who the hell are you?”

            “The name’s Rogers. Jack Rogers. I’m a P.I. who can put your son away for murder. And you know what? If you hired him, or had him do it, you better hope he doesn’t try to make a deal, because if he does, you’ll be on a little dingy following right behind him.  Only, you’ll be gone a lot longer than he will.”

            Layne Shepard’s face flushed a deep red and one of his dark eyebrows twitched closer to his hairline. 

            “I’ve decided,” he said, “I don’t like you.”

            Jack shrugged.  “I’ve got the murder weapon, Shepard. And a witness who was there on the night your son killed Elmasry.” Jack shook his head and offered Shepard a conciliatory smile. “Your son’s not very good as a tough.  Maybe you should find him something a little less demanding in your business. A house cleaner, maybe.”

            “You’re a smartass, aren’t you, Rogers?”

            “Sometimes,” said Jack.  “Sometimes, I’m just an ass.”

            “Let me ask you something,” said Layne Shepard.  “Where’s a low-life P.I. like you get off thinking he can come in here, talking to me like this? You think you’re a tough guy? I can have you cut up and fed to the fishes with a snap of my finger, and for some reason, just looking at you, I don’t think anyone would even care.”

            “My lawyer would care, Mister Shepard,” said Jack.

            “Your lawyer.”

            Jack smiled. “That’s right. My lawyer. You know, those men you pay to keep you out of prison, so you can go around extorting money and bootlegging liquor or whatever it is you slime-ball gangsters like to do.  My lawyer.”

            The waiter returned and set a plate of pasta on the table in front of Shepard.

            “Will your guest be having lunch with us today, Mister Shepard?”

            Shepard looked at the waiter hard enough to make him flinch and said, “No, god damnit.  Get the hell out of here.”

            The waiter retreated, and Jack went on, “You see, I’ve sent my lawyer a package containing the murder weapon and a letter telling him all about that night at the docks when your son murdered Elmasry. I even told him the motive behind it.  To get the map.”

            Jack paused to let Shepard process what he was saying. The gangster’s eyes narrowed, and he clenched the table cloth with his fist. Jack said, “If he doesn’t hear from me, he’s to open the package and put it in the right hands at the local precinct.”

            Shepard collected himself.  He leaned back in his chair.  The only outward appearance of his mood was the undulation of his nostrils. 

            “All right, Rogers.  You want something.  What is it?”

            “I want the map, Shepard. It’s not yours. It doesn’t belong to you.  I want to return it to its rightful owner. That’s it.”

            “That’s it,” said Shepard.  “I give you this map you think I have, and you give me your little package.”

            “I know you have the map, Shepard. Your boy confirmed it.”  Jack shrugged and said, “Besides, Shepard, you think Azzar’s just going to let you get away with it?   He’s got way more resources than you do.  Believe me, keeping it will be more problems for you than it’s worth. A man like that doesn’t take kindly to being ripped off and extorted.”

            Shepard’s mouth became a thin line. “And you think I do.”

            “Doesn’t matter what I think,” said Jack.  “I’m just telling you how it is and how it’s going to be. Your world is going to get a lot more complicated.”

            A Dean Martin song rose in the silence between the two men, both eyeing each other, searching for weakness.

            Shepard said, “What’s to stop me from having Lonny and Charles here drag you out back and beat the ever-loving Jesus out of you?”

            “I told you,” answered Jack, “a life sentence.”

            “If that doesn’t stop you,” a familiar voice said from behind Jack, “this will.”

            Layne Shepard’s eyes went wide and his two body guards went for their pieces, pulling matching forty-fives from shoulder-holsters.  Jack broke into a sweat and his blood ran cold.  A woman screamed.  Jack turned around and saw Lolita Elmasry standing behind him with the pistol he had given her aimed towards Shepard. She looked calm as dime-store mannequin wielding the pistol in the middle of the restaurant. As if she had done it a hundred times before.

            Jack turned back to Shepard and shifted his hands beneath the table.  “Tell your boys to drop ‘em,” he said, “or I’ll blow you in half.”

            Shepard’s eyes flicked from Lolita to Jack.  Shepard’s thin mouth curved into a smile.

            “You’re making a big mistake here, Rogers,” said Shepard.

            “Probably,” agreed Jack.  “Now tell them.”

            Shepard stared at Jack with cold murderous eyes.  Jack bit his tongue, his hand was empty beneath the table. Time was running out. Either the cops would show up, or Shepard would call his bluff and have his boys blow him and Lolita away where they stood.

            “Drop your guns, boys,” Shepard said.  His voice was calm and even, like he didn’t have a worry in the world.  It made Jack nervous.

            The body guards didn’t move. They kept their pistols trained on Lolita.

            “I don’t think they heard you,” said Jack.  “Tell them to put them on the table.”

            Lolita stepped closer towards the table, her pistol steady on Shepard’s face. “Do it,” she said.

            Shepard looked up towards Lolita. He let his eyes linger over her well-shaped body like he was appraising a new car. He didn’t seem worried about the pistol in her hands at all. His smile widened.

            “Honey,” he said, “we could make a lot of money together.  Why don’t you put that gun down so we can talk about it?”

            The clock was ticking, and Shepard was stalling.  Jack had to make a move. He planted his palms against the bottom of the table and thrust it upward with all his strength.  No one saw it coming.  Jack left his chair and threw himself at one bodyguard. He wrapped his fingers around the man’s wrist and smashed it against the wall as he drove his knee into the bodyguard’s crotch. The pistol dropped to the floor and the bodyguard bent over.  Jack drove his fist into the man’s head and he went down. 

            He turned in time to see the other bodyguard swing his pistol toward him. Jack bobbed, and the pistol went off.  He lunged for the bodyguard and wrapped both hands around the man’s gun arm.  Jack turned and twisted, bending the man’s arm all wrong, and pulled down as hard as he could.  He felt something snap and the man screamed. Jack drove an elbow into the man’s gut, took his head into his hands, and slammed it against the wall.

            Jack’s struggle with the bodyguards only took a moment, but it was long enough for Layne Shepard to recover. He stood, coffee and pasta stains on his nice expensive suit, with a pistol pointed at Jack.

            “You’re good,” Shepard said, “but not good enough.”

            “I don’t have to be,” Jack said, breathing heavily. It was his turn to smile. 

            Lolita put her pistol to the back of Shepard’s head.  The gangster’s body went rigid at the touch of cold steel against his skin.

            Jack reached for the pistol and took it by the barrel, wrenching it free from Shepard’s grasp.

            “All right, come on,” he said, and pushed Shepard by the arm towards the door. He took a quick look around the restaurant.  The people at the tables and the waiters and work staff had frozen in place, as if they had been watching the most riveting episode of their favorite reality show.

Jack heard the sirens as they stepped out onto the sidewalk on Beverly.  He saw the blue and reds as they crossed the street towards his Buick.

            “You’re going to regret this, Rogers,” Shepard said. “You and your broad.”

            “Yeah,” Jack said, “I’ve heard that so many times now, it’s lost all meaning. Get in.”

            Jack forced Shepard into the Buick’s backseat. Sirens blared. He felt the hair on his neck rise. Lolita climbed into the passenger seat. Jack gave another look to the restaurant.  One of Shepard’s bodyguards was outside, pistol in hand. Jack ducked as he fired wildly from across the street. Bullets wined. People screamed. A car crashed. Jack slid into the driver seat and slammed the door.  The driver side window shattered, and he felt a bullet wiz past him. Lolita screamed.  Jack started the car as blue and red lights reflected in the rearview mirror.  In the backseat, Layne Shepard laughed sadistically.

            Bullets plunked into the side of the Buick as Jack started the engine and slammed his foot on the gas.  He pulled out, not caring about oncoming traffic, and sped down Beverly Boulevard.  He took the first right, then cut across traffic and cat-fished into the first left to throw off any pursuers.  He turned the Buick down a residential street and slowed to crawl, checking his mirrors for cops and took another left. He didn’t breathe until he saw they were clear.

            Shepard laughed.  He said, “You think you’re safe, Rogers? You’re never going to be safe again.”

            “Good,” said Jack, plotting his next move, “I like to live dangerously.”

            “Your smartass won’t be living much longer,” Shepard answered.

            “Longer than you will if you don’t take us to the map,” said Jack.

            “You’re a fool and so is your broad.”

            Lolita Elamsry reached into the backseat with the pistol and whacked Shepard in the face with it. He erupted in a scream and put his hands to his face to staunch the river of blood flowing from his nose.

            “Oh, you’re going to pay for that,” Shepard cried.

            “Shut up,” Lolita said, turning back around in her seat.

            Jack gave her a sideways glance and looked at Shepard in his rearview.  The look in the gangster’s eyes told Jack all he needed to know.  They were in so deep it would take an excavation crew to get them out.

            He stopped at a red light on Sunset Boulevard. “You want out of this, Shepard,” said Jack, “take us to the map. That’s all we want. You can get you and your boy out of it if you just hand it over.”

            Shepard took a handkerchief out his suit pocket and put it to his busted nose. “Where’d you learn to negotiate, Rogers?  Guantanamo?” The gangster took the handkerchief away and looked at the bloodstains. “I’m not making a deal with you, Rogers, or your broad. You want the map, you’re going to have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.”

            The light turned green and Jack pulled out onto Sunset.  They had to get somewhere. The A.P.B. was out on them by now. He cruised into West Hollywood, his eyes searching for options that weren’t there.  “All right,” said Jack, “you won’t hand it over, that’s just what we’ll do.”

            “What do mean?” Shepard said. Lolita looked at him and Jack felt the same question seeping out of her almond shaped eyes.

            “If you won’t deal with us, maybe your successor will,” said Jack. “There’s always someone ready to take up the reigns when one of you wise guys get yourself bumped off. We’ll just deliver your cold dead body to the next chump in charge. See if they don’t hand over the map.”

            “Makes you think anyone else knows where the map is, Rogers?”

            Jack’s eyes narrowed on the gangster’s reflection in the rearview.  “Someone knows,” said Jack. “Someone always knows.” Jack made a left on Robertson and let Shepard mull it over for a second.

            “What do you say, Shepard?” Jack said.

            “What do I say?” Shepard mocked.  “This is what I have to say!”

            Shepard’s hand struck out across the seat like a snake and grabbed hold of Lolita’s hair. She screamed as Shepard pulled her head back as hard as he could. Jack swerved, sideswiping a car parked along the curb.

            “You don’t know who you’re messing with!” Shepard yelled, laughing an insane cackle.

            “Son of a --,” Jack cursed and fought to maintain control of the car as Lolita was pulled halfway over the car seat.

            “You think you can extort me!” Shepard went on in a madman’s rant. “Kidnap me! Oh, you messed up. You messed up real bad.”

            Lolita flailed wildly. She gripped Jack’s arm for an anchor to stop herself from being dragged into the backseat. Her nails dug into Jack’s skin and he lost control of the wheel. The Buick swerved. Jack slammed his foot on the break. Tires squealed, and the rear end of the long car fishtailed. Jack overcorrected, jumped the curb, and the car slammed to a stop against a fire hydrant. Everyone was thrown forward and back again. An explosion of water shot up from the hydrant and came crashing against the windshield and hood of the car.

            Jack shook his head and gathered what sense he could. Lolita was on the floorboard, her hair a tangled and bloody mess. Jack turned to the backseat to check on Shepard.  He was met with a fist to his face. Pain and blackness clouded his vision.  Another fist caught him in the head, and then another.  Jack struggled as Shepard climbed across the seat, pummeling him with fists.  Shepard launched an elbow into Jack’s face and popped open the Buick’s driver side door. The gangster fell out of the car on his hands and knees. Jack was dazed. He watched Shepard climb to his feet and turn around to face him, a deadly smile stretched across the face of the madman.

            “Oh, you’re going to pay,” said Shepard. “You and your --,”

            A car sailed down the residential street, going fifty in a twenty-five, and cut Shepard’s promise short. Jack watched, stunned, as Shepard’s body collided with the front end of Prius. He went over the hood, rolled across the windshield, took to the air, and fell to the pavement. The Prius didn’t even slow down.

            Jack got out of Buick, watched as the Prius disappeared a few blocks away, and made a mental note of the license plate. He looked down at the crumpled body of the gangster.  Shepard’s arms and legs were bent all wrong.  Jack felt for a pulse. He found a subtle sign of life in the gangster’s neck and didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed.

            His hands went to the gangster’s pockets as he felt Lolita approaching from behind. He found something in the gangster’s inside jacket pocket and pulled it out.  A folded piece of paper. From the look of it, it was old. He stood up and looked at Lolita. Her eyes were glued to the paper he held. Jack carefully unfolded the paper along its worn seams.

            He smiled. He held a map in his hands.

            “There it is,” said Jack.

            Lolita didn’t smile, but she looked like she was about to. She reached for the map and Jack took it away.  He folded it along the seams and placed it in his breast pocket.

            “Uh-uh,” he said. “We got some settling up to do first.”

            Lolita was about to respond but Jack turned away.   

            “We have to go,” Lolita said in a flat, out of breath voice.  

            “No, sweetheart,” he said. “The trouble we’re in gets a lot deeper soon as we leave the scene of a crime. We’re going to stay here and face the music.”

“You can’t be serious,” said Lolita.

“Serious as a heart attack, baby,” said Jack.

Shepard moaned.  Jack looked down at the torn-up gangster’s body.

            “Don’t worry, buddy,” said Jack. “Help is on the way.”

            Lolita pulled her arm out of Jack’s grasp. “You’re a fool, Jack Rogers.”

            “I know it,” he said. “You can run along if you want to. But I’m staying here and so is the map.”

            Lolita Elmasry stood silent as a crowd of spectators slowly enclosed around them. Her face was a statue made of marble, solid and impenetrable.

            Jack said, “Good. Now, you forget you know English for about an hour and let me do the talking.”

            A moment later the police cruisers pulled up, followed shortly by an ambulance and an unmarked detective’s car. Jack cursed silently as Detective Shanko stepped onto the scene.

The detective’s beady eyes narrowed on Jack. Shanko stepped past him and stood over Shepard’s body, conversing with the paramedics. Jack stood waiting until the detective returned.

“What are you doing in Beverly Hills,” said Jack. “This isn’t your beat, Shanko.”

Shanko didn’t answer. His eyes shifted past Jack to Lolita, then back to Jack again.

“It’s none of your business where I go, Rogers,” Shanko said. “The fact is I was looking for you. Lucky for me you aren’t hard to find. Just follow the bodies.”

“He’s not dead,” said Jack. “Just a little worse for the wear.”

Shanko’s eyes went to Lolita again.  He said, “You’re not supposed to be working a case, Rogers. Your P.I. license has been pulled. You’re damn sure not supposed to be working my case.”

“Who says I’m working a case?”

“The fact you’re escorting Miss Elmasry here for one thing. The sister of my murder victim.”

“She’s not paying me,” said Jack. He smiled a crooked smile. “I’m just helping out a friend.”

“A friend.”

“That’s right. In fact, I’ve solved the case for you. Free of charge, seeing as how I don’t have a license.”

Jack reached into Lolita’s purse. He flashed her a quick smile with his back turned to Shanko. He turned back around to the detective, holding Floyd Oliver’s pistol out to the detective.

“That’s your murder weapon, Shanko,” Jack said. “Floyd Oliver is your man. I picked his face out of a mugshot book. Seems Shepard here is his illegitimate daddy. We just came down here to have a talk with the man. We took a ride and he tried to talk us out of informing on his bastard. Seems he’s a daddy who cares after all. Anyway, things got out of hand and he bailed out the door and got sideswiped by a hit and run. I’ve got the plates memorized if you’re interested.”

Shanko took the pistol out of Jack’s hand and looked at it casually, like it was a child’s toy. He shook his head and clicked his tongue.

“You got everything wrapped up nice and neat, don’t you, Rogers?”

“Happy birthday,” said Jack.

Shanko’s eyes became slits and his face reddened. Behind him, the paramedics were lifting Shepard onto a gurney.

“I don’t like you, Rogers,” Shanko said. “I should drag you into the station and put you in a hole you’ll never crawl out of.”

“You’re too late,” said Jack. “I’m already in a hole in can’t crawl out of. But if you’re interested in catching a killer, the kid’s set up at the Lincoln Hotel in downtown L.A. Or he was last time I checked. Why don’t you go harass him, Shanko. He’s young. Maybe he’ll be impressed.”

Shanko turned the pistol over in his hand and dropped it in his overcoat pocket.

“Don’t leave town, Rogers,” said Shanko. “I might want to haul you in a drunk and disorderly. Just for the hell of it.”

Jack watched his Buick get towed away and then used Lolita Elmasry’s phone to call a Lyft, putting in her hotel as their destination. The sight of his old car being hauled off pulled at Jack’s heartstrings. He had a feeling he’d never see the old girl again. For the last few years, the Buick had been there for him when no one else was there. He had slept in her backseat when he had nowhere else to go and spent hours and hours slunk down in the driver seat working cases. Now, like so many other things in Jack’s life, she was gone.

The Lyft pulled up and they hopped in the backseat.

“You did good back there,” said Jack.

“I didn’t do anything,” said Lolita with an edge to her voice Jack didn’t appreciate.

“Yeah,” said Jack, “and you did it wonderfully. Now, we’re going to talk about the map and what I’m getting for all my trouble.”

Lolita’s eyes shot to the back of the Lyft driver’s head.

“Don’t worry about him,” said Jack. “He gets paid to drive, not listen. Now, I’ve solved your brother’s murder and gotten your precious map back for you. All I’ve gotten out of this deal is a headache and my car totaled. Time to talk recompense if you want this map in your hands.”

“You’ve gotten a bit more than that,” said Lolita.

“Not to be cruel, honey, but I’ve had better. Also, I’m not a whore. That was a good time, but it don’t pay the rent.”

“Fine,” said Lolita. “When we get the Idol, you will receive a tenth of the profits. That is what I will offer you and nothing more.”

“A tenth of nothing is nothing,” said Jack. “How do I know there even is a treasure. This could all be some bull hockey your grandpa made up to impress his grandkids.”

Lolita turned her eyes sharply on Jack. She had a look he had seen in other women, seconds before they slapped him.

“My grandfather was not a liar,” she said. “And what about Azzar? You believe he would invest so much time and effort in acquiring the map if it were only a story?”

Jack turned away and watched out the window as the Lyft driver turned down a narrow ally way. “No,” said Jack. “Probably not.”

“You will get a tenth,” Lolita went on, “which is more than you deserve.”

“Hey, buddy,” Jack said to the driver, “where are you taking us? This isn’t the way to the Beaumont.”

“No, it isn’t,” said a familiar voice. Jack looked in the car’s rearview mirror and saw a face he recognized. The kid, Floyd Oliver, was behind the wheel, a grim smile stretched across his face. “For a detective,” Oliver said, “you sure aren’t very observant.”

“Oh, you bastard,” said Jack. He reached for the handle, but the doors were locked.

The car screeched to a halt. Jack reached for the pistol in his pocket. He was too late. The kid’s hand came over the seat, a forty-five a size to big for him slapped Jack in the face. His eyes closed from the sudden flash of pain, and when they opened again, he was staring into a barrel inches from his face.

“Oh, you bastard,” Jack said

“How’s it feel,” said the kid, “to get the drop pulled on you?”

Jack rubbed at his bruised and battered face. “It smarts,” he said, “just a little.”

Floyd Oliver shifted his aim to Lolita, and said, “Don’t you try anything, either, lady. I’ll splatter both of your brains across the backseat and not think twice. Now, hand over the map.”

“What makes you think we have it?” Jack asked.

“I’ve been watching smartass,” said the kid, shaking the pistol in Jack’s face. “I saw you take it off, Shepard.”

“You mean ‘daddy’, don’t you?”

Oliver placed the barrel of the forty-five against Jack’s forehead. “Make me ask again, Rogers.” The kid smiled and for the first time, Jack saw the family resemblance.

“Take it easy with that thing,” said Jack. He slowly raised his hand and pushed the barrel of the pistol to the side with his index finger. “We can talk about this, kid. No need to do anything rash.”

“Hand it over, Rogers!” screamed Oliver.

“Fine,” said Jack. He reached into his breast pocket and held the map out for Oliver.

“Don’t,” said Lolita.

“Don’t worry,” said Jack, slipping down into the backseat. He had a lopsided grin on his face. “It’s no use to the kid,” Jack added. “Unless he can read Arabic.”

Oliver turned around in his seat and unfolded the map. His eyes went wide at what he saw. Then he turned to Jack and brought the pistol back around and slapped him in the face with it.

Jack reeled, “Aw, you bastard.”

“Call me that again and I’ll pull the trigger on you, Rogers.”

“Sorry,” Jack said, rubbing his chin where the pistol hit him. “I forgot that was a sore spot for you.”

“All right,” said the kid. “I need her, but I don’t need you.” The kid smiled again.

“Yes, you do,” said Jack, wiping blood off his chin.

“Why is that?”

“Miss Elmasry is my client. Where she goes, I go.”

Oliver shifted the weight of the pistol in his hand. “Is that true…Miss Elmasry?”

Without skipping a beat, Lolita Elmasry said, “I’m sorry, Jack. Or relationship is at an end. I no longer require your services.”

Jack’s lopsided grin fell flat. He turned to Lolita and said, “Sure. You got what you wanted. You got me, the map, and even a few pawns out of the way. All for a hundred bucks.”

“My only concern is the map,” said Lolita Elmasry with a cold voice. “Please, understand.”

“Oh, I understand all right, baby.” He turned to Oliver. “Watch out for this one, kid. She’s a man eater. She’ll chew you up and spit you out.”

Oliver pressed the barrel against Jack’s forehead again, his cold slithery smile playing on his face. “I’ll be just fine, Rogers. Sayonara.”

“No,” said Lolita. “He lives. Or you can translate the map yourself.”

The kid’s smile faded. Jack could see indecision tormenting Oliver’s mind.

“All right, Rogers,” said Oliver, pulling the gun away. “Get out and get out quick. The next time I see you will be the last.”

“I hope so,” Jack said, opening the door.

“I hope you understand, Jack” said Lolita. “I’ve been after this treasure my entire life. I have to have it.”

“Sure,” said Jack. He got out of the car and leaned in to have a last word. “I’m just a lazy drunk who will never see anything through. You can’t have me weighing you down. Good luck, kid. You’re going to need it.”

Lolita opened her mouth to say something, but Jack slammed the door. He watched Floyd Oliver speed away. When they were gone Jack turned down the sidewalk to head back to West Hollywood. It wasn’t the first time a woman had let him down. He’d get over it. But it made the shakes trembling down his arms almost unbearable. He kept an eye out for a liquor store or bar, but he was deep in a residential neighborhood without a drop of alcohol in sight.

“It’s a long way to Broadway, Jack,” he said to himself. “Just put one foot in front of the other.”

 He turned a corner facing a steep hill that led up to Sunset Boulevard. Parked along the curb was a Prius with a large dent in it’s hood. Jack’s eyes flashed to the plate, confirming his instinct, then to the driver. He was only a little surprised to see Shy Neighbors sitting behind the wheel. Their eyes met. Shy give him a thin pretty boy smile, and Jack felt bile rise in the back of his throat.

Jack walked slowly up to the driver side window. The glass came down, and Shy Neighbors said, “Get in.”

Jack said, “I don’t take rides from murderers. Something I learned in grade school. Now, beat it, before I drop a dime and let the cops in on your little hideout here.”

“I’ve got a gun pointed at you, Rogers,” said Neighbors. “Unless you want it to go off, get in the car.”

Jack shrugged, walked around the front of the Prius, and climbed into the front passenger seat. Shy Neighbors wasn’t bluffing. He was holding a .357 Magnum on Jack. Jack shut the door, his eyes looking down at the shiny steel barrel of Neighbors’ hand-cannon. He looked up to meet the eyes of rogue P.I. and said, “I’m beginning to think this city has a real gun control problem.”

“Cars kill more people than guns, Rogers.”

“Sorry,” said Jack, “Shepard was alive when they carted him off in the meat wagon.”

Neighbors shrugged. He switched hands with the gun and started the Prius. “That’s to bad,” he said. “That scum deserved it.”

Neighbors pulled down the street, keeping one eye on Jack and one eye on the road.

“Don’t reckon it matters much to Azzar,” said Jack. “As long as Shepard is out of the race for the treasure, your boss should be happy.”

“Happy as a codger in a bathhouse,” said Neighbors. Jack tried to read the P.I.’s face, but Neighbors showed no emotion. He looked like a cyborg driving the Prius.

“Mind telling me where we’re going?”

“Azzar wants to talk to you. That’s where we’re going. You can shut up and sit there and maybe this gun won’t accidently go off when we hit a bump.”

Jack settled into the seat. Reflexively, he patted his pockets, looking for the cigarettes he had given up.

“Mind stopping at a store?” he asked.

Neighbors gave him a sideways glance and left the request unanswered.

“You’re not holding a grudge because I made you look bad in front of your boss are you, Neighbors? This is a tough business, pal. If you can’t take having one pulled on you once in a while, you might want to rethink your career path.”

Neighbors laughed. “You’re one to talk, Rogers. You stink so bad, I can barely breath, and you lost the map and your client to a half literate street tough. Hell, you don’t even have a license anymore. Don’t sit there and pass judgement on me.”

Jack turned away and watched out the window. They were crossing into the Beverly Hills again.

“They’re looking for this car, you know. I gave them the plates.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Neighbors. “It’s a burner.” He turned off the road into an underground parking garage. “Besides,” he said, “we’re here.”

            “If you were going to kill me, you could have just run me down like you did Shepard.”

            “If I was going to kill you,” said Neighbors, “you’d already be dead.  Let’s go.”

            Neighbors parked the car and forced Jack out with deadly end of his Magnum. The two P.I.’s took an elevator up to the top floor of an office building. A maze of empty cubicles filled the room. Neighbors led Jack to an office in the back. Jack saw Azzar and his goons through the glass wall. Standing up, Jack noticed, Azzar didn’t look as big as he did when he saw him sitting behind a desk. He stood hunched over, with a polished cane for support, his eyes buried deep within the wrinkled flesh of his aging face.

            Jack stepped inside. Neighbors followed and closed the door behind them. Azzar’s two goons stood behind their boss, their hands itching to go for the guns Jack saw bulging beneath their suit jackets.

            “Mister Rogers,” Azzar said. “Good of you to join us.”

            “I didn’t have much choice,” said Jack. “Unless I wanted to end up like Shepard.”

            “Shepard was a bad man,” said Azzar. “He got less than he deserved.”

            “We’re all saints until heaven decides,” said Jack.

            Azzar inched closer, his feet shuffling against the carpet. “You believe yourself to be a smart man, Mister Rogers. You never lack for something to say, it seems. Tell me this. Where is my map?”

            “How should I know?”

            Azzar gave a subtle nod to his goons. They stepped forward, their faces empty of emotion. Jack took a step back and bumped into Neighbors. A goon lashed out with a fist and clipped Jack on the chin. Jack stumbled. Neighbors caught him and pushed him forward. The other goon launched a fist into Jack’s stomach. He lost his breath and his vision went black. He felt one of them grab him by the hair and then felt another fist connect to his face. He fell to the floor, coughing for air.

            “Please, Mister Rogers,” Azzar said. “I am not a violent man, but you give me little choice. That map belongs to me. Whatever story Lolita Elmasry may have told you, I can assure you was a concoction.”

            Jack looked up through tears of pain. “So, you didn’t rip off her grandfather, or have Shepard murder her brother to get your hands on it?”

            Jack didn’t see the kick, but he felt it. A swift strike to his ribcage, and he was out of breath again.

            Jack coughed a big gooey phlegm ball onto the carpet. He wiped his mouth clean with his sleeve.

            “Her grandfather, Omar Elmasry, was a partner of mine,” Azzar said. He had his back turned to Jack and was looking out the window onto the street below, as if he saw memories down there somewhere. “We were on our way to becoming the richest men in America. It was a dream we shared. The trouble with dreams, Mister Rogers, is that we wake up from them. They leave us empty. Nostalgic for something that never existed.

            “Together, we smuggled the treasure into the country. Cleopatra’s Idol, we called it. A treasure so rare and valuable, it would make us millionaires at a time when there were very few people who could call themselves such.”

            “Then Omar disappeared with our treasure, Mister Rogers. The item we had worked so hard to acquire and transport here. Do you realize what that did to me?”

            “Turned you into a vindictive old man, I’m guess,” said Jack.

            He was answered with another kick to the ribcage. He fell to the carpet and curled up. He felt his body quiver uncontrollably.

            “You are not wrong, Mister Rogers,” Azzar said, his voice calm, almost serene, as he stared out the window. “I have become a vindictive old man. But I am not a fool. It’s obvious to me Lolita Elmasry is much like her grandfather. She has left you behind on her flight for the treasure, has she not? The promises of wealth she made to you have vanished, Mister Rogers, and now you are left with nothing.

            “I became rich, Mister Rogers, even without the treasure. I was able to do this by determination and the ability to take advantage of what others over look. I will give you this chance, Mister Rogers. One last chance to save your pathetic life. If you can locate Lolita Elmasry and the map she has in her possession, I will spare your life. If not,” Azzar turned slowly around to face Jack, “then I have no need of you.”

            Jack sat up on the floor, casting a weary eye at the goons standing over him.

            “I can tell you where she is,” he said. “And I can do one better. I can lead you to the treasure. But I won’t.”

            The goons shifted their weight, readying for another strike, and Jack said, “If that bastard kicks me again, you’ll never see Lolita or that map again, and that’s the God’s truth.”

            Azzar nodded at the goons and they stepped back.

            “What is it you want, Mister Rogers? Besides your life.”

            “I want a piece of it,” said Jack. “Twenty percent.”

            Azzar smiled. “Ah. Twenty percent is rather high, don’t you think?”

            “Twenty percent, or you get nothing. When Lolita Elmasry gets the treasure in her hands, you’ll never see her or the Idol again. That’s my offer, Azzar. Take it or leave it.”

            Azzar stepped forward. “She has the map. How do you know where she is going?”

            Jack pulled himself off the floor. He noticed his pants were wet and warm. It wasn’t the first time he had pissed himself, and he figured it wouldn’t be the last.

            “Ah, Jesus, Rogers,” said Neighbors, “you pissed yourself.”

            “It could be worse,” said Jack. “Hand me your phone.”

            “What?” Neighbors protested.

            “Tell him to hand it over, Azzar. We’re losing time here.”

            Azzar nodded and Nieghbors reluctantly handed Jack his phone. “What are you doing?” asked Neighbors.

            “I used Lolita’s phone to call a Lyft. When I had it, I downloaded a GPS app incase she decided to take off on me. I’m downloading it now.” He looked up at Neighbors. “It’s fifty bucks. Hope you can afford it.”

            Neighbors reached for the phone.

            “Uh-uh,” said Jack, holding the phone away. “It’s my phone now. Anybody tries to take it from me, I smash it.” He looked at Azzar.

            Jack smiled and held Neighbor’s phone so Azzar could see the screen. He said, “And before you ask what’s to stop one of your lackies from plugging me in the back of the head, I’ve locked it with a code. Only one who gets to see the screen is me. Understand?”

            Jack smiled into Azzar’s cold gaze.

            “Perfectly,” said Azzar.

            “Then let’s go,” said Jack.   

            They rode the elevator back down to the garage. Azzar had an SUV and a driver waiting for them. That made at least four guns on Jack. Five, if he counted the old man. It was a sure bet Azzar had a piece stashed somewhere beneath his expensive suit.

            Azzar’s driver opened the front passenger door for him. The goons climbed in on one side and Neighbors held the back-passenger side door open for Jack and waited for him to climb in.

            Jack shook his head. He said, “I don’t ride bitch.”

            “I’m getting real tired of you, Rogers.”

            “Then it’s going to be a long ride.”

            “When this is over,” Neighbors said, “we’re going to settle a few things.”

            “When this is over,” said Jack, “Azzar won’t need either one of us. You might want to start thinking about that. Now get in, before your boss loses patience and leaves your ass here.”

            Neighbors climbed in and Jack squeezed in next to him. The driver pulled the SUV out to the street. Azzar said, “Which way, Mister Rogers. You are the navigator after all.”

            “First, we make a stop,” Jack said.

            He saw Azzar’s eyes narrow on him in the rearview mirror.

            “Don’t worry,” said Jack. “I just got to pick up a couple things.” He checked the GPS image on the phone. The little red dot that represented Lolita Elmasry was heading north, out of town. “We got time,” said Jack, “and it’s on the way.”

            “I think he’s stalling, Mister Azzar,” said Shy Neighbors.

            “Stalling for what?” said Jack. “So Lolita Elmasry can get the treasure and run off back to Egypt? She owes me, and I plan on collecting.”

            “Fine, Mister Rogers,” said Azzar, his voice a thin strand of restraint. “Where are we stopping?”

            “Bogie’s Liquor Store,” said Jack. “It’s up on Sunset and Vine.”

            “Jesus,” said Neighbors. “You really are a piece of work, you know that, Rogers?”

            “Yeah,” said Jack. “Your mother keeps telling me.”

            Neighbors struck like a snake, lightening quick, with fangs bared. The close quarters in the SUV kept the fist he hit Jack with from having its full force, but rocked Jack’s head back on his neck and stung his already battered face.

            “Say something about my mother again,” Shy Neighbors said, “and I’ll leave you buried in the sewer you climbed out of.”

            Jack shook his head clear of the pain. He tasted the blood dripping down his nose.

            “Reign in your dog, Azzar,” said Jack, “before someone puts him down.”

            “Enough!”Azzar shouted. “Mister Rogers, if you continue to be a nuisance I will be forced to find another means to acquire the treasure and let Mister Neighbors have his way with you. Now, which way do we go? No more stalling.”

            “I told you,” Jack said. “Sunset and Vine. Bogie’s Liquor Store.”

            Azzar turned back around in his seat and motioned for the driver to follow Jack’s instructions.

            Jack was hoping to get a moment alone, but Azzar had Neighbors and one of his goons follow him into Bogies. He bought a pint of Grandad and a bag of peanuts. “Breakfast of champions,” he said to Neighbors, who said nothing and only offered Jack a hateful glare.

            They went back to the SUV and Jack said, “Alright, get on the ten and go east until I say different.”

            Jack nursed his whisky and ate his peanuts one at a time. He checked the location on the phone every few minutes. An hour into the drive, he said, “Take the 105 North.”

            Neighbors watched over Jack’s shoulder every time he opened the screen. “Don’t worry,” said Jack. “It’s not roaming.”

            “Just don’t pull anything, Rogers,” said Neighbors.

            Jack let the comment go. He was tired and hurt all over from the beatings he had taken. By the time he finished his pint, the country had opened into the flat desert that surrounded L.A. and the late day sun lay behind them to the west, casting its golden rays into a blinding reflection in the rearview mirror that sought out Jack’s tired eyes like a laser beam.

            An hour of riding on the 105, Jack said, “Take the next exit.”

            The driver turned the SUV down a two-lane road that stretched across the desolate country like a thin black ribbon. They passed a few rundown trailers separated by ugly empty country where people dumped old couches and refuse. An hour after that they were in open desert where the wind was free to blow the sand into dunes that looked like yellow waves frozen in time.

            Jack checked the phone again. Lolita’s little red dot had stopped. “Take the side rode on the left up here,” Jack said. It was a little dirt road with no name. The SUV slowed to a crawl as it fought for traction on the loose sand. Everyone inside was quiet, as if they could feel the culmination of the journey coming to an end.

            “That’s the car,” said Neighbors. He was leaning forward between the two front seats. Floyd Oliver’s car was parked off the side of the road about a mile up. The SUV pulled up next to it and stopped.

            Azzar turned in his seat to face Jack and said, “Where are they, Mister Rogers?”

            Jack opened his door and slipped out of the SUV. The desert sun hit him almost as hard as Nieghbors’ fist. “Close,” he said. He saw footprints in the sand. Lolita Elmasry’s pointed shoes leading Oliver’s boots. Jack checked the phone. “We go on foot from here.”

            Jack started following the tracks, leaving the SUV behind as Azzar, Neighbors, and the goons climbed out to follow him. He checked the phone again. He exited the GPS app and sent a text, hoping the it would get through in the desolate land, where cell phone signals were thin as spider-webs.

            He slipped the phone in his pocket and walked faster, trying to put as much distance between Azzar and his gang as he could. The old man was falling behind, but Neighbors and the goons kept up. Jack searched the open country for Lolita and the kid, but the only evidence they even existed were their tracks in the sand.

            He climbed a rising dune, shielded his eyes, and in the distance, within the shadow of broken boulders lining the horizon, he saw Lolita Elmasry and Floyd Oliver, searching for a buried treasure.

            Jack took a step towards them and was stopped by Neighbors’ voice.

            “Stop right there, Rogers,” said the P.I. Jack turned to find Neighbors aiming the .357 Magnum at him. “Looks like we don’t need you or your GPS anymore.”

            Jack chanced a glance past Neighbors. Azzar was half a mile back, his three goons escorting the old man across the desert plain. The sound of Neighbors cocking his pistol cut through the droning of the wind.

            “Better check with your client first, Neighbors,” said Jack, nodding towards Azzar. “He might not like it if you think for yourself.”

            Neighbors raised the pistol. “He’ll get over it.”

            “I wouldn’t be to sure,” said Jack, thinking fast. “Look at what he had you do to Shepard for wanting a little piece of the pie. Or what he did to Lolita’s brother. He had him killed for something his grandfather did. You telling me that’s the type of man who gets over things?”

            Neighbors’ eyes narrowed. Jack figured he was thinking of a rebuttal. Before one could come to him, Jack reached into his pocket and gripped the handle of the forty-five. Without taking it out, Jack said, “Lower that pea shooter, or we can gun each other down right now and let the cops sort it out. They’re on the way, by the way. I just sent them a message telling them where they can find a handful of killers and a rogue P.I.”

            “I’m not falling for that, Rogers.”

            “You forgot to search me for the pistol I took off you yesterday, you dumb son of a bitch. And I’m serious as a heart attack. You want to test me, keep holding that gun on me. I swear to God, we’ll go down shooting before that old man catches up to us. Now, hand it over.”

            Neighbors flinched. Jack reached out and took the Magnum by the barrel. For a quick moment, Jack thought he had made a mistake. Then Neighbors released his grip on the pistol. Jack took it, looking over Neighbors shoulder to see how far away Azzar was, then stuck the Magnum in the back of his pants.

            “That’s too much gun for you,” Neighbors said, “you’re liable to shoot yourself in the ass.”
            “That’s fine,” said Jack. “As long as its me that does it, and not some suave looking P.I. who thinks he got the drop on me.” Jack smiled. “Not bad for a burn out, am I?”

            “This isn’t over yet,” said Neighbors.

            “No,” Jack agreed. “But it’s wrapping up. Now, get moving.”
            Jack motioned for Neighbors to start walking towards the line of boulders. Lolita and Oliver were still digging around in the rocks, looking for the treasure.

            “You really have the cops coming?” Neighbors asked over shoulder.

            “I sure hope so,” said Jack.

            A hundred yards from the rocks Jack heard Floyd Oliver cussing. He had a winy shrill voice that was unmistakable. But it let Jack know they hadn’t found what they were looking for.

            Fifty yards away and Lolita Elmasry looked up and saw them approaching. Jack wasn’t sure what he expected her to do, but raising a pistol and firing at them wasn’t it. A bullet wined overhead and the two P.I.’s ducked into the sand and lay flat against the earth.   

            “Jesus,” said Neighbors. “I thought she was your client.”

            “Well,” said Jack. “She did fire me.”

            A series of shots came from behind them. They sounded like distant thunder in the wide -open space of the desert. Jack looked behind him without raising his head. Azzar’s goons had left the old man’s side and were sprinting, closing the distance between them. Azzar stood back, smart enough to stay out of pistol range.

            “Here come your boys,” said Jack. “Want to wager which one of our clients plugs us first?”

            Jack buried his face in the gritty sand as more shots whizzed through the air.

            “Give me a gun, Rogers,” Neighbors pleaded.

            “No can do,” said Jack. “You’re the only one I’m sure doesn’t have one.”

            “Come on, Rogers. You can’t do this to me.”

            “Stuff it,” said Jack. He reached behind him and fired into the air. The two goons ducked and slowed their sprint. “Go,” said Jack.

            Neighbors got to his feet and Jack followed him. He squeezed off two more rounds at the goons to keep them down and started in a run towards the rocks.

            Lolita and Oliver were crouched in the shadows of the boulders. Jack yelled, “Don’t shoot, Lolita! It’s me, Jack!” then turned and squeezed off one more round over the heads of his pursuers.

            The goons fired back. Bullets wined pasted them as they ran for all they had towards the

meager cover offered by the boulders.

            Ten yards away and Floyd Oliver stood up, raised his hand, and popped off a shot. Jack felt the bullet cut the air next to his face.     

            “Don’t come no closer!” yelled the kid.

            Shots came from behind them in rapid succession. Bullets crashed and zipped through the sand. The two P.I.’s closed the distance. The kid held his pistol straight out, only feet away from them now, the look on his face crying murder.

            Jack held his breath and waited for the shot to take his head off.

Pop!

The look on the kid’s face changed from pent up rage and fury to confusion and pain. He dropped the arm holding his pistol and turned to face Lolita Elmasry. A trail of smoke wafted from the barrel of a pistol she held in her hand. The kid groaned and fell face down into the rocks.

For a moment they all stood there in silence, processing what just occurred. Then more shots broke their revelry. Bullets slammed into the boulders and ricocheted across the desert. Neighbors dove for the kid’s pistol. Jack kicked it away with a quick foot, then smacked Neighbors in the head with his own gun. Neighbors fell, gripped his wounded head, and shot hateful eyes at Jack.

Jack leaned down and picked up the kid’s pistol. He cast an eye at the boy. In death, his youth was more apparent. He had lived a life in the shadow of a gangster father who never wanted him, only to die senselessly in the desert, trying to make that father proud.

Shots rang out, closer now, and Neighbors screamed. “I’m hit!” He held up his hand and blood shot out from where his thumb had been. “You sons of bitches!” he cursed.

“Come on,” Jack said.

They scrambled behind the boulders. Jack fired another shot, knowing he was almost out, and turned to Lolita. “Didn’t find it, did you?”

She shook her head, her dark hair falling in her face to cover one of her eyes. “No,” she said.

“I didn’t think you would,” said Jack. “Even with a map. It’s a big desert, Lolita. These sands shift all the time. After fifty years, that idol could be buried beneath fifty feet of dunes.”

“It’s here,” she said. “It has to be.”

Jack shrugged. He chanced a look over the rocks. One of the goons was aiming a pistol. The other one was missing.

“You see where he went?” Jack asked Neighbors.

Neighbors was busy binding his hand with his tie. “Go to hell,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I’m half way there already,” said Jack.

He heard the sand shift behind him and turned around with the pistol. The goon stood over them, holding his weapon like he had spent the weekend at the shooting range. Jack fired. The goon took it in the chest. The sound of his falling was masked by more shots fired from his partner. Jack raised up and brought the pistol with him. He squeezed the trigger and the pistol fired dry.

Jack dropped down and tossed the empty pistol at Neighbors. “Here,” he said as it landed next to the P.I. “You can have that one back.”

He drew the Magnum from his waist. The goon had shifted position and lay prone against the sand. Behind the goon, inching slowly across the desert, was Azzar. The driver was next to him, with the late day desert sun glinting off a rifle slung across his chest.

Jack shifted and lay with is back against the ground. He stared up at an empty blue sky. Lolita was next to him. He could smell her musky scent of fear as she watched the old man slowly coming closer.

Neighbors was looking for something in the sand at his feet.

Jack said, “If you’re looking for your thumb, you lost it over there.” He nodded at the other side of the rocky barrier.

Neighbors looked at him and said, “You’re a son of a bitch, Rogers.”

Jack rolled over to check on the old man’s progress. He was fifty yards away, just behind his goon.

“The cops are on the way, Azzar!” Jack shouted across the desert. “Give it up and go home, while you can. There’s no treasure here!”

Jack waited for a response. He saw Azzar speak to the goon. The driver raised his rifle. Jack ducked as a bullet pinged off the rocks in front of him and a thunderous shot echoed across the flat emptiness. Then the driver opened up with semi-automatic fire. Sand and stone erupted like geysers all around them as they ducked for the meager cover of the rocks.

Lolita screamed, and Neighbors cursed. Jack pulled his body in tight as he could as lead and stone flew all around them. After a long moment of deafening gunfire, the cacophony ended, and a strange silence floated across the land.

“All right,” said Jack. “All we have to do is wait for them to run out of bullets, then we’ll make our move.”

Lolita looked at him, her face a mixture of fear and desperation. “Are you serious?”

Jack shrugged. “We just need to hold them off until the cavalry gets here.”

Lolita’s almond shaped eyes looked away from Jack and stared out across the plain where Azzar and his men were taking aim.  “I can make a deal with him,” she said, her voice low and husky.

“You’re forgetting something,” said Jack. “You don’t have any leverage Lolita. You didn’t find the idol. And even if you did, Azzar’s been obsessed with it for fifty years. He doesn’t want the money, Lolita. He wants it.”

“He’s right,” Neighbors agreed. “Azzar never wanted the money. He just wants the idol.”

“Then I’ll give it to him,” said Lolita.

Before Jack could stop her, Lolita Elmasry raised her arm to signal Azzar. “I’m coming out!” she yelled towards the gunmen, and slowly got to her feet.

“Lolita,” said Jack, “don’t do this. The cops are on the way. We can hold out a little longer.”

Lolita’s shadow stretched across Jack, and as she stood above him she seemed seven feet tall. Her face was solid and determined, her back straight. She turned and looked down at Jack with piercing eyes that found a target somewhere in his damaged soul.

“I only test men when I think they are worth it, Mister Rogers,” she said, and before Jack could respond, she raised her arm and yelled across the desert, “I have the idol, Azzar! I’m coming out!”

“Lolita, don’t -,” pleaded Jack, but it was to late. Lolita started towards Azzar.

Jack and Neighbors watched Lolita’s lithe figure descend across the plain.

Jack stood up. Something inside him wouldn’t let Lolita make that walk alone. He raised the .357 in the air and followed Lolita. Heatwaves rose behind Azzar and his men like shimmering spirits fleeing the scene.

“Drop the gun, Mister Roger,” said Azzar.

Jack saw confidence in Azzar’s face. He wanted to slap the self-assurance right out of him. Jack let the Magnum fall to the ground and Azzar turned to Lolita, his deep-set eyes searching her for his prize.

“Where is the idol?” he demanded.

“Here,” answered Lolita. She reached behind her with a quickness Jack never expected and brandished her pistol at Azzar.

Instinctively, Jack reached for her, but it was to late. Her pistol popped off a shot. Azzar’s man popped off a shot. Jack fell to the ground for the Magnum. The goon with the rifle fired his way. Jack felt a bullet graze past him. He brought the Magnum up and fired. The rifle wielding goon fell back, gurgling blood, and toppled to the ground. Lolita and the other goon fired into each other point-blank and both fell. Azzar alone still stood, but Jack saw a red stain slowly spreading across his chest. Azzar raised a hand to his wound. He dabbed his hand in the warm blood flowing out of him and held his hand up to his face to inspect it.

Azzar looked at Jack, disbelief in his eyes, and said, “This is not how it’s supposed to end.”

Jack watched as the light faded from Azzar’s eyes, and then, as if the old man’s spirit was all that was holding his body up, he crumpled to the earth, dead.

Jack crawled to Lolita. He turned her over and pulled her into his lap. The bullet had taken her in the chest. There was a liquid sound to her breathing and blood leaked from her lips.

Vainly, Jack tried to cover her face with his shadow, to offer some comfort to her in her dying moments. She looked up at him, her dark face gone pale with death quickly approaching.

“I was wrong about you, Jack Rogers,” Lolita said, struggling to find breath.

“Hush,” Jack urged her. “Help will be here soon.”

“You are not lazy,” she said. “and you saw this through.”

By the time Shy Neighbors came walking up behind Jack, Lolita Elmasry was dead. Neighbors had nothing to say. He walked out across the desert, leaving Jack alone with five dead men and one dead woman to explain to the cops.

Shanko arrived like most cops. An hour late and full of pointless questions. Jack did the best he could to explain the events of the last few days. The one thing he left out, was how Lolita Elmasry had died in his arms. That was for him to remember. And he would, for the rest of his life.

                                                The End.