"let's go out dancing! You put on your black dress, and I'll go shave my tongue. "
Author: mothergoddamn
Pairing/characters: Holmes/Watson. Also-everyone else. Seriously. Wiggins is in this.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Do not own, so do not sue.
Prompt: Written for this prompt.
Summary: John Watson walks into Sherlock Holmes' office with a simple enough case: find his missing wife Mary. But Holmes ought to know by now that nothing in Tinseltown is what it seems. Featuring Lestrade, Mycroft, The Irregulars, Moriarty, Irene Adler and many more under various shady guises. 1940's noir-style AU.
Looking for Mary-Chapter 1
Lining my coke on the compact mirror, I tried not to look into the image staring back, twisted and horrific in the tiny frame. Christ, I looked tired. I hoovered it up and rubbed my nostrils at the following sting. I needed a vacation but it wasn’t coming anytime soon. Not on my earnings. I hadn’t had a fresh case in weeks. God, I wanted out if this stinking town. LA had a way of burying you alive. It was a sea of whores, pimps and gangsters, wrapped up in the shine of Hollywood. Come to LA, kids. Everyone’s a star. By the end of the year you’ll be an addict selling your own flesh for the next hit. Ain’t that the American Dream?
I heard the footsteps in the corridor outside my office. Clients had gotten sparse so to hear the sound of an approach...well, I figured it was my landlord all fired up to get rid of me at last. I sat watching the glass pane of my door awaiting the shadow of the visitor. Not my landlord, no. step, shuffle, step, shuffle. I closed my eyes and tilted back in my chair, my feet up on my desk. The picture of professionalism.
“Mr Holmes?” A small prim voice asked, as the door arched open.
"What does it say on the door?” I replied, not bothering to open my eyes. I was sick of seeing the degenerates that doorway had to offer anyway. It was bad enough listening to their whining.
“Well, I...Sherlock Holmes-Private Detective.”
“Then I guess I am. Maybe you should be behind this desk.” I opened my eyes lazily, expecting to see the usual dirty, gambler type. All shifty eyes and backward glances. But I was surprised, and I’m not surprised often. He was handsome, pretty damn handsome in fact. Fair, pale with the sharpest blue eyes like a crisp day in June. A small neat moustache hung above a luscious pink mouth. Well, things were certainly looking up.
“Sit down, you’re making the place look untidy." He looked around my cluttered office with disdain, as if wondering how it could possibly be any worse. Putting his cane to one side he gingerly pulled the chair back, tensing as it scraped a sharp siren across the floor. Nervy type. What had caused that I wonder? “What do you want?” He seemed taken aback by my abrupt attitude but quickly smoothed his features over like an artist's blank canvas.
“My wife. I need you to find my wife. Her name is Mary.” He leaned across the desk and pressed a small photograph in my hand. I whistled in appreciation causing the man to frown in annoyance.
“She looks like that dame that Bogart’s screwing. Bacall or whatever. Oh, not that I’m saying he’s involved in any way.” I handed the picture back and pulled out my smokes, not bothering to offer him one. I couldn’t spare any and he didn’t look like he indulged anyway. Although he was clearly indulging in something if his wife had did a number. “So, your old lady’s left you?”
“She hasn’t left me! She’s missing! She’s been gone for a week now!”
“You tried the cops? This is more their area of expertise.”
“They think the same as you! That this is nothing more than a lover’s quarrel. Mary wouldn’t just walk out!” He pounded his knee in frustration, looking instantly shamed at his outburst of emotion.
“Was she seeing someone else?” I asked, already growing bored but enjoying the way those lips moved. Mary was clearly a rube.
“She would never! No...for goodness sake. It’s all you people think about!”
“Everything ticking nicely downstairs.” I indicated to his groin with my cigarette and smiled tightly, enjoying the blush that spread across his cheeks. “I see you got a hold back.” Christ, he was easy.
“Everything is fine,” he hissed through his teeth. “It’s nothing more than shrapnel injury from the war. Burma.”
“I’m so pleased for you. Listen, I ain’t got time for your case I’m afraid, Mr...?”
“Watson. But...”
“My dance card is currently full, and you look like you can’t afford my wares. No offense,” I said, noting the shabby cuffs of his trousers and the faded colour of his jacket. I was sick of clients writing me I-O-U's and he had it written all over him. Plus, Mary was probably in Mexico by now. And I didn't like to travel.
“I have payment,” he whispered.
“Watson? Tune me in and get my signal right, I don’t want the case.” I kicked my legs off the desk ready to show him the door but he reached across the desk and grabbed my wrist tightly.
“Please!” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a watch. “I have this, it was my brother’s.” Pressing it into my hand, he closed my fingers around it tightly. I looked up at him and felt a tug of something akin to pity at the pain in his eyes. “I have nowhere else to go, Mr Holmes,” he said in a small, desperate voice.
Maybe it was the coke running through my veins, or the fact that the damn watch could pay for this pad for a year, or that his eyes were a type of blue I hadn’t seen in a long time, or maybe it was that I could still feel the warmth of his skin on my hand. Whatever the reason, I took the damn case.
--
“Do you really think this place is appropriate,” Watson asked, cursing a cautionary look around bar. He was right too. Jake’s Place was a complete dive. Full of scuzzballs and cheap dames. In short, my kind of place.
“Why don’t you loosen that neck tie and relax?” I beckoned Jake himself over with a curt nod. “I’ll have a whiskey. Neat. He’s buying.” I sat down at the stool and proceeded to grab a selection of nuts, offering him one of my several. He went green and shook his head, he’d clearly read the reviews. “So, this wife you misplaced. That was pretty careless.”
“I really wish you’d stop treating this like a cheap parlour game, Mr Holmes.” He shot me a glare as he ordered the same and clamoured up beside me, his lame leg taking away his natural grace for a moment. “She’s been missing since last Thursday. Since dinner.” He paused and licked his bottom lip as he recalled, I watched the pink tip moisten and then disappear in fascination. “She, Mary that is, works for the LA Heart. The newspaper. Well, she got a message from them...”
“She’s a journalist? You let your wife bring in the bread? Well, aren’t you the modern man.”
He waved my comment away with a mild look of irritation. “She’s been working on a story. Something big but she wouldn’t say what. Mary’s like that. She knows I worry.” He stopped and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, squeezing tightly as a pained expression washed over his face. “Anyway, she got this message, a tip off. And she arranged to meet the source. She hasn't been seen since.”
I frowned, jangling the peanuts in my hand. “So, your Girl Friday doesn’t show up after a planned meet with an unknown rat and the law think it’s a lovers tiff? Who did you speak to at the station?”
“Some fellow by the name of Lestrade. He told me to go home. She’d turn up when she ran out of store credit.” That sounded like the Ferret all right.
“Let me guess. Your gal, she worked on the criminal headlines, right? The mob and all that jazz?”
“Yeah, how did you...”
“Because Lestrade is as dirty as they come.” I popped one of the sour nuts in my mouth, the salty taste making me grimace. “And you can bet your bottom dollar, which no doubt you’re on by the look of those shoes, that he is involved in this. Whatever this is.”
“You don’t think...the police? Really?” He whistled through his teeth, his expression almost endearingly surprised. How the hell did one keep their innocence in this town?
“Money makes the world go round, Watson,” I smiled and tipped him my glass. “And the ride can make you sick.”
“Please, call me John.”
“Okay.”
“And may I call you Sherlock?”
“Christ, no!” I laughed, downing my drink. “Same again, Watson?”
"What? Oh, yes. Yes. Okay."
“Let’s move this into a booth, more private that way.” I swung my legs round and pushed myself off the stool, kicking him in the shin as I did so. He scowled, waited for my apology, accepted one wasn’t coming and grudgingly followed me. “Jake, start a tab,” I called over my shoulder. I allowed him to walk ahead of me, with the sole purpose of checking out his rear. No doubt if he caught me he’d be full of indignant rage. He might even curse. I snorted quietly at the thought and he turned to me, his eyebrows raised in query. I shook my head to indicate it was nothing, seating myself in one of the more remote booths. “Right, so your Mary? She’s got her nose the ground and smells something foul. She gets close, but how close did she get? Think back. Did she ever let anything slip about the case?”
“No, it’s like I told you. Mary never talked about her work.” He shrugged and looked annoyed at himself. As well he should be, he wasn’t exactly making my life easy.
“She must have said something! What the hell did you talk about otherwise?”
“Lots of things, Holmes. There’s more to life to work.”
“Ah, ya sure right.” I smiled as Jake placed down the glasses. “Keep them coming.”
“Is ya friend’s tab as worthless as yours?” Jake said, looking over Watson distrustfully.
“Go climb up your thumb, you dummy. Can’t you see this is a war hero? He’s got a cane and everything.” Jake, a 4F flat foot, looked suitably shamed. Muttering something crude, possibly about my blessed mother he returned to the bar. “Try to limp extra hard when we leave,” I told Watson when Jake was out of ear shot.
“Wait, there was something! I heard her on the phone. She was meeting up with a contact? I think her name was Irene?”
“Irene what? Irene Smith? Jones? Irene Dunne?”
“Just Irene! I wasn’t exactly expecting something like this to happen was I? What if I can’t find her, Holmes? What if she’s gone for good?” He gripped his hair tightly and kneaded his fingers through it. Nothing worse than seeing a guy dizzy over a dame. Or more boring.
“Oh, you’ll find another one I’m sure. Face like yours. You mind if I drink this? You’re going awful slow.” He pulled his drink out of my reach and stared at me in horror.
“What is the matter with you? My wife is missing! She could be dead for all I know!”
“Do you think we should order something to eat?” I said, picking up the menu. He snatched it out my hand so fast I felt the paper slit my skin. “By all means, you go first.”
“I don’t understand you! How can you be so nonchalant about this?"
“Okay,” I sighed. “How about you tell me what you’re not telling me?” I leant forward, crossing my fingers and resting my chin upon them. “Why weren’t you and your gal talking?”
“What...I don’t follow?”
“Keeping you in the dark or not, something would have slipped. J. Edgar Hoover himself probably isn’t as tight lipped as you’re making your woman sound. Then there are your clothes.”
“What about my clothes?” He murmured looking down at himself in confusion.
“Your wife’s a journalist, so there’s some money coming in. Working the big cases you say. That thirty buck suit? Could walk itself round this room. You’ve hired me to help and I’m the cheapest two bit guy in town. Plus you’re paying my fees with your dead brother’s watch...”
“I never said my brother was...”
“Dead? Of course he is. Otherwise you stole it, and you don’t look the type, kid. It’s an heirloom piece; you usually only get those things by someone else biting a bullet. Anyway, we were talking about you. You haven’t been home for a long time, have you?” He looked as if I had struck him, sinking back in the chair, looking small and defeated.
“No. Not for a month,” he admitted.
“She threw you out? You dipping your wick elsewhere?”
“Something like that, yes.” He had grown pale now and was staring hard at the table, willing himself away but knowing he had no choice but to stay.
“Which was it? Something like it or actually it?”
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter,” his voice was edged with a slight hysteria.
I stared hard but he refused to meet my gaze. “Listen, mister, this could be important to the case. I ain’t going to judge you. I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you were banging every dame in every clip joint in town, I don’t care if you were putting it to your mother in law I just need...”
“A man.” That shut me up. He broke his fascination with the table and looked into my face, almost asking me to go back on my word and judge him. “I was having an affair with another man.”
"Oh," I said. "So, you are one of the boys?"
"If you want to put it that way." I admired the way that he held my stare despite the slight tremor in his hand, his nail tapping gently at the table like a forgotten branch against a window pane. "Is that going to be a problem for you?"
"Not for me," I retrieved my Luckies from my jacket and smiled sickly. "But I imagine it was for your good lady wife?"
"It was, yes," he admitted reluctantly, casting his eyes downward.
"Dames can be so unreasonable about things like that." I lit my cigarrette and observed him through a cloud of smoke. Well, this was a turn up for the books. I wondered momentarily what it be like to have this Watson on his knees, nose buried in my groin, the buzz above his lip mingling with my pubic hair, fair upon dark, smooth against rough. It was an idle fancy, I had learned long ago that pretty baubles were for looking and not for soiling with my filthy prints. Besides, mixing business with pleasure never worked. Not in this job, not in this town. "So, she finds out you're slipping it to a hombre. Kicks you out with just a cheap suit to your name. Then what? Where do you go?"
"I went...I'm staying at the London Hotel. Do you know it?" He looked confused that I had let him off so easy, confused but relieved.
"Know it? Christ. It's the sea to the gulls."
"What?"
"You only go there to die, kid" I dipped ash into the dregs of my whiskey and sighed. What the hell? It wouldn't kill me to be a Samaritan for once. "You can stay with me. Until this is resolved. Rent free of course. Don't be expecting the Grand Hotel. It's a rat hole, they should be paying me to stay there."
"I couldn't impose on you..."
"And yet you will." We fell into a silence after that. Sipping our poisons and slipping away into our imaginations. I wagered that in his he saw the horrified face of his wife, finding out the man who had vowed to love her was a lying, no good sodomite and in mine? Same movie, different stars. X rated ending.
"How did you become a detective, Holmes?" He asked, pulling me from a particularly depraved thought.
"Hmm? Oh, it was the only thing available for my talents. That or crime. I'm an ex cop. Vice department. They drilled me out." I waved my hand at him to indicate it wasn't the most exciting of tales but he motioned for me to go on. "I had a partner. Green kid, you know? Name of Gregson. Wasn't much in the brains department but mad keen to learn. Anyway, we find out that this heel we've been watching is swimming with bigger fish. Catch him we get the shark, ya see? So we set up a sting and everything is going great, we've got a collar! I can feel it in my bones!" I sat up, the memory soaring through me like it was happening as I spoke. "But I was wrong, we had become the prey. Someone in the department had sung and instead of walking into a sure deal we walked into an ambush, six blues dead. And Gregson."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Holmes." He reached his hand out to cover mine in comfort. Misunderstanding my surpised expression he pulled it back as if my skin burned. "Sorry," he muttered.
"Right. Right." I took a deep drag and tried not to think too deeply about that brief contact. "Well, I was the only one that got out. As you can see. The petty heel we had been trailing went down for it, but the man we were we really after got away. I..." Hell, why was I telling him all this? Maybe because it been too long since someone had gave a shit to listen. "I went off the rails a bit. I didn't play it smart, I went after this guy with everthing I had, which wasn't a lot. Got to be where I was tying every case file on my desk to the bastard, connected or not. The department got sore at me. Told me to let it die." Die like Gregson. "And when I wouldn't they canned me. Which, my dear Watson, is how I came to be this magnificent fellow you see before you." I lit up another smoke and closed my eyes. Seeing Gregson, as I did every night, bleeding out and choking on his own breath. All that innocence flowing from his wounds into the cracks of the pavement. No goddamn way to die.
"He meant a lot to you, didn't he? The boy?" Everything. He had meant everything.
"Not a damn thing. I just don't like cop killers," I snapped gruffly and he blinked in surprise.
"The man that you gunning for? Who was it?" He asked, his voice cautious now.
"Moriarty. His name is Moriarty."
"Moriarty?" He hissed, looking around the bar. "The gangster? He was bigger than Capone!"
"Was?" I raised my brows.
"Well, he hasn't been heard from since '39. They said drowned, they said..."
"People flap their gums on all sorts of things, don't make 'em true." I gulped down the last drink and gestured for him to do the same. "Anyway, let's blow this popsicle stand. The smell is getting to me,." I said this last part loudly as Jake cleared our glasses, shooting me a loaded look. "Shake a lame leg, Watson."
Outside in the street I inhaled in the night sky, filling my lungs. "Nothing like California air, eh?" I said to my companion, lighting up. But he was staring past me at the run down cinema across the street. "Hey, dummy? Moon over Tyrone Power on your own time."
"No, it just triggered a memory. Irene? The woman I was telling you about?"
"Oh, you got something to make it even more vague?" I began walking briskly ahead of him, his impairment forgotten for a moment.
"Holmes, wait." He shuffled after me, his cane tapping smartly against the ground. "I remember something Mary said. On the phone. She said something about dailies. Isn't that what they do in the movies?"
"Jesus, it is Irene Dunne." I waited until he was alongside me. "I'll follow it up tomorrow. My brother may have something for us."
"Your brother?"
"Yeah, he owns the Club Diogenes on the other side of town. Sees every new gal that passes through. Especially the ones with star shaped eyes."
"Wait, the Diogenes? Isn't that a..."
"Clip joint? Yes."
"But it's full of..."
"Whores? That's right."
"And didn't you work in..."
"Vice? Right again. Long story." I didn't elaborate and he didn't press. Thank Christ for small favours. He'd had enough from me for one evening.
We walked in a strangely comfortable silence for ten minutes or so until we reached Baker Block. "This is me." I watched his reaction from the corner of my eye. No doubt a palace compared to London Hotel but how much a step down from his life with the elusive Mary? "Come along. And be quiet. My landlord is after my hide. Some bull about rent."
Entering 221B I shrugged off my coat to the floor and stretched my arms above my head. "Make yourself at home," I said around a yawn. His eyes took in my cluttered apartment in mounting horror. "I feel ya. There used to be a floor in this joint. Here's your cot." I shoved some files and folders from the couch and pounded a cushion, coughing at the rising dust.
"You live like this?" he asked, those baby blues wide in shock.
"What? You wanted a red carpet? A chocolate on your pillow? It's free isn't it?" He started as if to apologise but I held up my hand to stop him. "Get some sleep, daisy, we got a big day tomorrow." I went to the airing cupboard, dragging down a spare blanket and flinging it at him. "Don't get any ideas either. I sleep alone." I turned from him but not before catching his whitened blanch as he caught the cover.
Closing my bedroom door I pressed my forehead against it, my head filled with images of his slow undressing on the other side, flashes of pale, enticing skin filling every dark corner of my mind. Biting my lip painfully to distract myself, I made my way wearily to my bed, flopping down and staring up at my damp stained ceiling. Christ, I hated to sleep. Sleep brought nothing but pained images, guilt or lost treasures of the past. In my dreams I saw Gregson.
In my dreams I lost him all over again.
After awhile I fell into a sort of purgatory state that couldn't own the name of sleep. Drifting and seeking a darkness that rarely came my eyes snapped awake at the quiet snick. A door being opened cautiously and a following soft padding across the carpet. Watson.
Closing my eyes, I feigned sleep as the sheets were pulled gently from my body. Moving my hand slowly as not to alert him I gripped the Colt.45 beneath the pillow. The mattress dipped as he climbed beside me, his naked skin aligning against my own. His hand moved round to my naval, finger tips dusting over the hair as he pressed his wet, hot mouth to the crook of my neck.
"Holmes?" He whispered softly into my ear, pushing himself closer. I pulled the roscoe from its refuge and pressed it behind me. The cold metal kissing his good hip.
"To clarify, I'm not pleased to see you," I said low and dangerous. He darted backward and gave a tiny gasp in shock. Spinning on the bed I took aim. "Take a fast walk back where you came from, Watson." The moonlight from my window danced over his delicious, naked frame but I steeled my eyes to his.
"But I don't understand?" He spluttered at last. "I thought..."
"Lotta good that did ya. You feel the urge to think again you just let it breeze on past. Got me, daisy?" He nodded fearfully and I motioned to the door with the Colt. "Go," I mouthed and he didn't need to be told twice, escaping from the room as fast as his leg would allow.
I let out a gasp and dropped the gun to my side. Christ, what the hell was that? I was going to have to barricade the door, because if he tried that action again I wasn’t sure how long my resolve was going to hold out for.
Chapter 2
Pairing/characters: Holmes/Watson. Also-everyone else. Seriously. Wiggins is in this.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Do not own, so do not sue.
Prompt: Written for this prompt.
Summary: John Watson walks into Sherlock Holmes' office with a simple enough case: find his missing wife Mary. But Holmes ought to know by now that nothing in Tinseltown is what it seems. Featuring Lestrade, Mycroft, The Irregulars, Moriarty, Irene Adler and many more under various shady guises. 1940's noir-style AU.
Looking for Mary-Chapter 1
Lining my coke on the compact mirror, I tried not to look into the image staring back, twisted and horrific in the tiny frame. Christ, I looked tired. I hoovered it up and rubbed my nostrils at the following sting. I needed a vacation but it wasn’t coming anytime soon. Not on my earnings. I hadn’t had a fresh case in weeks. God, I wanted out if this stinking town. LA had a way of burying you alive. It was a sea of whores, pimps and gangsters, wrapped up in the shine of Hollywood. Come to LA, kids. Everyone’s a star. By the end of the year you’ll be an addict selling your own flesh for the next hit. Ain’t that the American Dream?
I heard the footsteps in the corridor outside my office. Clients had gotten sparse so to hear the sound of an approach...well, I figured it was my landlord all fired up to get rid of me at last. I sat watching the glass pane of my door awaiting the shadow of the visitor. Not my landlord, no. step, shuffle, step, shuffle. I closed my eyes and tilted back in my chair, my feet up on my desk. The picture of professionalism.
“Mr Holmes?” A small prim voice asked, as the door arched open.
"What does it say on the door?” I replied, not bothering to open my eyes. I was sick of seeing the degenerates that doorway had to offer anyway. It was bad enough listening to their whining.
“Well, I...Sherlock Holmes-Private Detective.”
“Then I guess I am. Maybe you should be behind this desk.” I opened my eyes lazily, expecting to see the usual dirty, gambler type. All shifty eyes and backward glances. But I was surprised, and I’m not surprised often. He was handsome, pretty damn handsome in fact. Fair, pale with the sharpest blue eyes like a crisp day in June. A small neat moustache hung above a luscious pink mouth. Well, things were certainly looking up.
“Sit down, you’re making the place look untidy." He looked around my cluttered office with disdain, as if wondering how it could possibly be any worse. Putting his cane to one side he gingerly pulled the chair back, tensing as it scraped a sharp siren across the floor. Nervy type. What had caused that I wonder? “What do you want?” He seemed taken aback by my abrupt attitude but quickly smoothed his features over like an artist's blank canvas.
“My wife. I need you to find my wife. Her name is Mary.” He leaned across the desk and pressed a small photograph in my hand. I whistled in appreciation causing the man to frown in annoyance.
“She looks like that dame that Bogart’s screwing. Bacall or whatever. Oh, not that I’m saying he’s involved in any way.” I handed the picture back and pulled out my smokes, not bothering to offer him one. I couldn’t spare any and he didn’t look like he indulged anyway. Although he was clearly indulging in something if his wife had did a number. “So, your old lady’s left you?”
“She hasn’t left me! She’s missing! She’s been gone for a week now!”
“You tried the cops? This is more their area of expertise.”
“They think the same as you! That this is nothing more than a lover’s quarrel. Mary wouldn’t just walk out!” He pounded his knee in frustration, looking instantly shamed at his outburst of emotion.
“Was she seeing someone else?” I asked, already growing bored but enjoying the way those lips moved. Mary was clearly a rube.
“She would never! No...for goodness sake. It’s all you people think about!”
“Everything ticking nicely downstairs.” I indicated to his groin with my cigarette and smiled tightly, enjoying the blush that spread across his cheeks. “I see you got a hold back.” Christ, he was easy.
“Everything is fine,” he hissed through his teeth. “It’s nothing more than shrapnel injury from the war. Burma.”
“I’m so pleased for you. Listen, I ain’t got time for your case I’m afraid, Mr...?”
“Watson. But...”
“My dance card is currently full, and you look like you can’t afford my wares. No offense,” I said, noting the shabby cuffs of his trousers and the faded colour of his jacket. I was sick of clients writing me I-O-U's and he had it written all over him. Plus, Mary was probably in Mexico by now. And I didn't like to travel.
“I have payment,” he whispered.
“Watson? Tune me in and get my signal right, I don’t want the case.” I kicked my legs off the desk ready to show him the door but he reached across the desk and grabbed my wrist tightly.
“Please!” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a watch. “I have this, it was my brother’s.” Pressing it into my hand, he closed my fingers around it tightly. I looked up at him and felt a tug of something akin to pity at the pain in his eyes. “I have nowhere else to go, Mr Holmes,” he said in a small, desperate voice.
Maybe it was the coke running through my veins, or the fact that the damn watch could pay for this pad for a year, or that his eyes were a type of blue I hadn’t seen in a long time, or maybe it was that I could still feel the warmth of his skin on my hand. Whatever the reason, I took the damn case.
--
“Do you really think this place is appropriate,” Watson asked, cursing a cautionary look around bar. He was right too. Jake’s Place was a complete dive. Full of scuzzballs and cheap dames. In short, my kind of place.
“Why don’t you loosen that neck tie and relax?” I beckoned Jake himself over with a curt nod. “I’ll have a whiskey. Neat. He’s buying.” I sat down at the stool and proceeded to grab a selection of nuts, offering him one of my several. He went green and shook his head, he’d clearly read the reviews. “So, this wife you misplaced. That was pretty careless.”
“I really wish you’d stop treating this like a cheap parlour game, Mr Holmes.” He shot me a glare as he ordered the same and clamoured up beside me, his lame leg taking away his natural grace for a moment. “She’s been missing since last Thursday. Since dinner.” He paused and licked his bottom lip as he recalled, I watched the pink tip moisten and then disappear in fascination. “She, Mary that is, works for the LA Heart. The newspaper. Well, she got a message from them...”
“She’s a journalist? You let your wife bring in the bread? Well, aren’t you the modern man.”
He waved my comment away with a mild look of irritation. “She’s been working on a story. Something big but she wouldn’t say what. Mary’s like that. She knows I worry.” He stopped and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, squeezing tightly as a pained expression washed over his face. “Anyway, she got this message, a tip off. And she arranged to meet the source. She hasn't been seen since.”
I frowned, jangling the peanuts in my hand. “So, your Girl Friday doesn’t show up after a planned meet with an unknown rat and the law think it’s a lovers tiff? Who did you speak to at the station?”
“Some fellow by the name of Lestrade. He told me to go home. She’d turn up when she ran out of store credit.” That sounded like the Ferret all right.
“Let me guess. Your gal, she worked on the criminal headlines, right? The mob and all that jazz?”
“Yeah, how did you...”
“Because Lestrade is as dirty as they come.” I popped one of the sour nuts in my mouth, the salty taste making me grimace. “And you can bet your bottom dollar, which no doubt you’re on by the look of those shoes, that he is involved in this. Whatever this is.”
“You don’t think...the police? Really?” He whistled through his teeth, his expression almost endearingly surprised. How the hell did one keep their innocence in this town?
“Money makes the world go round, Watson,” I smiled and tipped him my glass. “And the ride can make you sick.”
“Please, call me John.”
“Okay.”
“And may I call you Sherlock?”
“Christ, no!” I laughed, downing my drink. “Same again, Watson?”
"What? Oh, yes. Yes. Okay."
“Let’s move this into a booth, more private that way.” I swung my legs round and pushed myself off the stool, kicking him in the shin as I did so. He scowled, waited for my apology, accepted one wasn’t coming and grudgingly followed me. “Jake, start a tab,” I called over my shoulder. I allowed him to walk ahead of me, with the sole purpose of checking out his rear. No doubt if he caught me he’d be full of indignant rage. He might even curse. I snorted quietly at the thought and he turned to me, his eyebrows raised in query. I shook my head to indicate it was nothing, seating myself in one of the more remote booths. “Right, so your Mary? She’s got her nose the ground and smells something foul. She gets close, but how close did she get? Think back. Did she ever let anything slip about the case?”
“No, it’s like I told you. Mary never talked about her work.” He shrugged and looked annoyed at himself. As well he should be, he wasn’t exactly making my life easy.
“She must have said something! What the hell did you talk about otherwise?”
“Lots of things, Holmes. There’s more to life to work.”
“Ah, ya sure right.” I smiled as Jake placed down the glasses. “Keep them coming.”
“Is ya friend’s tab as worthless as yours?” Jake said, looking over Watson distrustfully.
“Go climb up your thumb, you dummy. Can’t you see this is a war hero? He’s got a cane and everything.” Jake, a 4F flat foot, looked suitably shamed. Muttering something crude, possibly about my blessed mother he returned to the bar. “Try to limp extra hard when we leave,” I told Watson when Jake was out of ear shot.
“Wait, there was something! I heard her on the phone. She was meeting up with a contact? I think her name was Irene?”
“Irene what? Irene Smith? Jones? Irene Dunne?”
“Just Irene! I wasn’t exactly expecting something like this to happen was I? What if I can’t find her, Holmes? What if she’s gone for good?” He gripped his hair tightly and kneaded his fingers through it. Nothing worse than seeing a guy dizzy over a dame. Or more boring.
“Oh, you’ll find another one I’m sure. Face like yours. You mind if I drink this? You’re going awful slow.” He pulled his drink out of my reach and stared at me in horror.
“What is the matter with you? My wife is missing! She could be dead for all I know!”
“Do you think we should order something to eat?” I said, picking up the menu. He snatched it out my hand so fast I felt the paper slit my skin. “By all means, you go first.”
“I don’t understand you! How can you be so nonchalant about this?"
“Okay,” I sighed. “How about you tell me what you’re not telling me?” I leant forward, crossing my fingers and resting my chin upon them. “Why weren’t you and your gal talking?”
“What...I don’t follow?”
“Keeping you in the dark or not, something would have slipped. J. Edgar Hoover himself probably isn’t as tight lipped as you’re making your woman sound. Then there are your clothes.”
“What about my clothes?” He murmured looking down at himself in confusion.
“Your wife’s a journalist, so there’s some money coming in. Working the big cases you say. That thirty buck suit? Could walk itself round this room. You’ve hired me to help and I’m the cheapest two bit guy in town. Plus you’re paying my fees with your dead brother’s watch...”
“I never said my brother was...”
“Dead? Of course he is. Otherwise you stole it, and you don’t look the type, kid. It’s an heirloom piece; you usually only get those things by someone else biting a bullet. Anyway, we were talking about you. You haven’t been home for a long time, have you?” He looked as if I had struck him, sinking back in the chair, looking small and defeated.
“No. Not for a month,” he admitted.
“She threw you out? You dipping your wick elsewhere?”
“Something like that, yes.” He had grown pale now and was staring hard at the table, willing himself away but knowing he had no choice but to stay.
“Which was it? Something like it or actually it?”
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter,” his voice was edged with a slight hysteria.
I stared hard but he refused to meet my gaze. “Listen, mister, this could be important to the case. I ain’t going to judge you. I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you were banging every dame in every clip joint in town, I don’t care if you were putting it to your mother in law I just need...”
“A man.” That shut me up. He broke his fascination with the table and looked into my face, almost asking me to go back on my word and judge him. “I was having an affair with another man.”
"Oh," I said. "So, you are one of the boys?"
"If you want to put it that way." I admired the way that he held my stare despite the slight tremor in his hand, his nail tapping gently at the table like a forgotten branch against a window pane. "Is that going to be a problem for you?"
"Not for me," I retrieved my Luckies from my jacket and smiled sickly. "But I imagine it was for your good lady wife?"
"It was, yes," he admitted reluctantly, casting his eyes downward.
"Dames can be so unreasonable about things like that." I lit my cigarrette and observed him through a cloud of smoke. Well, this was a turn up for the books. I wondered momentarily what it be like to have this Watson on his knees, nose buried in my groin, the buzz above his lip mingling with my pubic hair, fair upon dark, smooth against rough. It was an idle fancy, I had learned long ago that pretty baubles were for looking and not for soiling with my filthy prints. Besides, mixing business with pleasure never worked. Not in this job, not in this town. "So, she finds out you're slipping it to a hombre. Kicks you out with just a cheap suit to your name. Then what? Where do you go?"
"I went...I'm staying at the London Hotel. Do you know it?" He looked confused that I had let him off so easy, confused but relieved.
"Know it? Christ. It's the sea to the gulls."
"What?"
"You only go there to die, kid" I dipped ash into the dregs of my whiskey and sighed. What the hell? It wouldn't kill me to be a Samaritan for once. "You can stay with me. Until this is resolved. Rent free of course. Don't be expecting the Grand Hotel. It's a rat hole, they should be paying me to stay there."
"I couldn't impose on you..."
"And yet you will." We fell into a silence after that. Sipping our poisons and slipping away into our imaginations. I wagered that in his he saw the horrified face of his wife, finding out the man who had vowed to love her was a lying, no good sodomite and in mine? Same movie, different stars. X rated ending.
"How did you become a detective, Holmes?" He asked, pulling me from a particularly depraved thought.
"Hmm? Oh, it was the only thing available for my talents. That or crime. I'm an ex cop. Vice department. They drilled me out." I waved my hand at him to indicate it wasn't the most exciting of tales but he motioned for me to go on. "I had a partner. Green kid, you know? Name of Gregson. Wasn't much in the brains department but mad keen to learn. Anyway, we find out that this heel we've been watching is swimming with bigger fish. Catch him we get the shark, ya see? So we set up a sting and everything is going great, we've got a collar! I can feel it in my bones!" I sat up, the memory soaring through me like it was happening as I spoke. "But I was wrong, we had become the prey. Someone in the department had sung and instead of walking into a sure deal we walked into an ambush, six blues dead. And Gregson."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Holmes." He reached his hand out to cover mine in comfort. Misunderstanding my surpised expression he pulled it back as if my skin burned. "Sorry," he muttered.
"Right. Right." I took a deep drag and tried not to think too deeply about that brief contact. "Well, I was the only one that got out. As you can see. The petty heel we had been trailing went down for it, but the man we were we really after got away. I..." Hell, why was I telling him all this? Maybe because it been too long since someone had gave a shit to listen. "I went off the rails a bit. I didn't play it smart, I went after this guy with everthing I had, which wasn't a lot. Got to be where I was tying every case file on my desk to the bastard, connected or not. The department got sore at me. Told me to let it die." Die like Gregson. "And when I wouldn't they canned me. Which, my dear Watson, is how I came to be this magnificent fellow you see before you." I lit up another smoke and closed my eyes. Seeing Gregson, as I did every night, bleeding out and choking on his own breath. All that innocence flowing from his wounds into the cracks of the pavement. No goddamn way to die.
"He meant a lot to you, didn't he? The boy?" Everything. He had meant everything.
"Not a damn thing. I just don't like cop killers," I snapped gruffly and he blinked in surprise.
"The man that you gunning for? Who was it?" He asked, his voice cautious now.
"Moriarty. His name is Moriarty."
"Moriarty?" He hissed, looking around the bar. "The gangster? He was bigger than Capone!"
"Was?" I raised my brows.
"Well, he hasn't been heard from since '39. They said drowned, they said..."
"People flap their gums on all sorts of things, don't make 'em true." I gulped down the last drink and gestured for him to do the same. "Anyway, let's blow this popsicle stand. The smell is getting to me,." I said this last part loudly as Jake cleared our glasses, shooting me a loaded look. "Shake a lame leg, Watson."
Outside in the street I inhaled in the night sky, filling my lungs. "Nothing like California air, eh?" I said to my companion, lighting up. But he was staring past me at the run down cinema across the street. "Hey, dummy? Moon over Tyrone Power on your own time."
"No, it just triggered a memory. Irene? The woman I was telling you about?"
"Oh, you got something to make it even more vague?" I began walking briskly ahead of him, his impairment forgotten for a moment.
"Holmes, wait." He shuffled after me, his cane tapping smartly against the ground. "I remember something Mary said. On the phone. She said something about dailies. Isn't that what they do in the movies?"
"Jesus, it is Irene Dunne." I waited until he was alongside me. "I'll follow it up tomorrow. My brother may have something for us."
"Your brother?"
"Yeah, he owns the Club Diogenes on the other side of town. Sees every new gal that passes through. Especially the ones with star shaped eyes."
"Wait, the Diogenes? Isn't that a..."
"Clip joint? Yes."
"But it's full of..."
"Whores? That's right."
"And didn't you work in..."
"Vice? Right again. Long story." I didn't elaborate and he didn't press. Thank Christ for small favours. He'd had enough from me for one evening.
We walked in a strangely comfortable silence for ten minutes or so until we reached Baker Block. "This is me." I watched his reaction from the corner of my eye. No doubt a palace compared to London Hotel but how much a step down from his life with the elusive Mary? "Come along. And be quiet. My landlord is after my hide. Some bull about rent."
Entering 221B I shrugged off my coat to the floor and stretched my arms above my head. "Make yourself at home," I said around a yawn. His eyes took in my cluttered apartment in mounting horror. "I feel ya. There used to be a floor in this joint. Here's your cot." I shoved some files and folders from the couch and pounded a cushion, coughing at the rising dust.
"You live like this?" he asked, those baby blues wide in shock.
"What? You wanted a red carpet? A chocolate on your pillow? It's free isn't it?" He started as if to apologise but I held up my hand to stop him. "Get some sleep, daisy, we got a big day tomorrow." I went to the airing cupboard, dragging down a spare blanket and flinging it at him. "Don't get any ideas either. I sleep alone." I turned from him but not before catching his whitened blanch as he caught the cover.
Closing my bedroom door I pressed my forehead against it, my head filled with images of his slow undressing on the other side, flashes of pale, enticing skin filling every dark corner of my mind. Biting my lip painfully to distract myself, I made my way wearily to my bed, flopping down and staring up at my damp stained ceiling. Christ, I hated to sleep. Sleep brought nothing but pained images, guilt or lost treasures of the past. In my dreams I saw Gregson.
In my dreams I lost him all over again.
After awhile I fell into a sort of purgatory state that couldn't own the name of sleep. Drifting and seeking a darkness that rarely came my eyes snapped awake at the quiet snick. A door being opened cautiously and a following soft padding across the carpet. Watson.
Closing my eyes, I feigned sleep as the sheets were pulled gently from my body. Moving my hand slowly as not to alert him I gripped the Colt.45 beneath the pillow. The mattress dipped as he climbed beside me, his naked skin aligning against my own. His hand moved round to my naval, finger tips dusting over the hair as he pressed his wet, hot mouth to the crook of my neck.
"Holmes?" He whispered softly into my ear, pushing himself closer. I pulled the roscoe from its refuge and pressed it behind me. The cold metal kissing his good hip.
"To clarify, I'm not pleased to see you," I said low and dangerous. He darted backward and gave a tiny gasp in shock. Spinning on the bed I took aim. "Take a fast walk back where you came from, Watson." The moonlight from my window danced over his delicious, naked frame but I steeled my eyes to his.
"But I don't understand?" He spluttered at last. "I thought..."
"Lotta good that did ya. You feel the urge to think again you just let it breeze on past. Got me, daisy?" He nodded fearfully and I motioned to the door with the Colt. "Go," I mouthed and he didn't need to be told twice, escaping from the room as fast as his leg would allow.
I let out a gasp and dropped the gun to my side. Christ, what the hell was that? I was going to have to barricade the door, because if he tried that action again I wasn’t sure how long my resolve was going to hold out for.
Chapter 2