With the Dead in a Dead City
JPYoung
1975
Montpelier
‘Mister Pettigrew, you must think me rather silly for loving the autumn so much...’
‘No, Philip. Everyone has a fascination for death, and autumn is death. The leaves at their end…some turn brilliant colours and go out in a blaze of glory; others turn brown and drop off to oblivion...just like people...’
Phil Danté’s road to his current autumnal location was a long one that began many, many years ago in his Australian childhood. His family viewed The Trouble with Harry where a charming and eccentric collection of characters were bothered by a corpse. He fell in love with Alfred Hitchcock, who gave him a macabre, the sophisticated word for ‘sick’, sense of humour, Bernard Herrmann’s music and Technicolor autumn; Tasmanians called it the ‘Changing of the Fagus’. His family indulged him by visiting the Blue Mountains and the Southern Highlands in the Australian autumn, the nearest thing to Vermont.
His second fascination was the American holiday of Halloween that he first saw at a revival showing of Meet Me in St. Louis. Again, there were eccentric characters doing eccentric things in a Technicolor autumn. He vowed one day to live through a North American Halloween and a White Christmas.
His opportunity came about after he finished work in Guatemala. As the Americans had no need of any foreign military trainers or platoon sergeants, he found employment with the work he did in England, private investigation. Like war, the job suited him as it was all common sense.
As a child, he fantasised about having Alfred Hitchcock for an uncle with the pair walking through autumnal landscapes making macabre jokes. He found his substitute with the amazing Mr. Pettigrew who had the witty sense of morbid humour and appearance of ‘Hitch’. He headed a very small private detective agency in the capital of Vermont, a state that had once been an independent republic.
As Pettigrew served in the US Army Small Ships Section in Sydney and New Guinea during the War, he was quite taken with Phil’s background. He confirmed Phil’s English private investigation expertise by contacting his former Aegis Confidential Enquiry Service; both organisations formed a bond over their Mr. Danté. In contrast to the two ACES directors who were an ex-police detective and a retired soldier, Professor Pettigrew taught criminology.
He never asked Phil if he had work rights in the USA, for he was pleased with Phil’s surveillance, interviewing and report writing skills. The time passed…the autumn, that had seemed to have come overnight, was going.
‘How would you like to continue your love of autumn in work elsewhere? I can recommend you to someone near Chicago. Their autumn will be starting, then it will soon be time for your White Christmas…’
Chicagoland
Chicago was like Sydney; a Central Business District called ‘the Loop’ with a variety of separate cities no outsiders knew of.
Phil hadn’t picked up any sense of death in Vermont, but he did in Chicagoland soon after arrival. Occurring in front of his eyes was the death of an entire community and a way of life. Not a quick death, like the result of contacts in South Vietnam or Guatemala, but slow, lingering inevitable, terminal death.
The traditional downtown where his new employer had his office and where he found accommodation in a seedy flat was dying due to new shopping malls. Though there was an efficient public transportation system, Americans wanted to drive their precious cars to free mall parking lots, for their automobiles were the only autonomy in their life. Their car was their sanctuary between their demanding boss and spouse that they couldn’t control. They started the ignition, moved the gears, turned the wheel, stepped on the accelerator or the brake and listened to the music they wanted to hear on their ego trips. They shared their car with who they invited, or they had time to themselves. An American’s car was his castle.
The second cause of death was the traditional factories closing to either move Down South where there were no unions, or to different countries where the locals were paid a pittance and relevant authorities were economically paid off for not complying with health, safety and environmental regulations required in the USA. As a bonus, they boasted that they were developing Third World nations.
The former workers found employment far from home, and the downtown areas filled with weird people. The traditional businesses and stores closed, then quickly deteriorated, bringing more weirdos. Phil recalled paintings of layabouts in the Dark Ages sitting around columnated Roman ruins.
He had never seen so many mentally ill people; they advertised their presence with loud voices, songs of gibberish and placards in dyslexic English. They smelled as if they started off every day with a urine bath for the benefit of the deaf and blind.
The non-lunatics were stranger still. None of them had paid employment; they were all on some sort of government pension that for many of them was merely a retainer. Crime was their occupation, as self-advertising was for the lunatics.
Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 words came to him,
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Interlocution
The agency Mr. Pettigrew recommended was Ace Clark Investigations.
As usual, he arrived not excessively early, wearing his traditional blue dress suit with maroon tie. An attractive highly intelligent middle-aged titian haired Liz was the secretary…or was she?
They got on splendidly, though she was imperceptibly interrogating him. His attempts to find out more about Chicago and her agency were politely ignored with her conversation going back to requesting him to tell her more about himself; for nothing makes a man talk more than an attractive woman feigning interest. Sadly for her, he wasn’t an egomaniac.
‘He’s running late this morning; I hope you don’t mind waiting…would you like tea?’
‘Thank you, black no sugar please. I’m having the time of my life, Liz.’
Without notice, their conversation switched into Spanish, then French and back to English as she queried him on investigation skills and procedurals.
Liz was conversing about his sister’s tennis exploits, something he hadn’t mentioned, when a gruff voice that had obviously been listening in came over the intercom,
‘Yuh can send the Limey in.’
‘Aussie…’, Phil sang an old tune, ‘Is he an Aussie, Lizzie, is he? Is he an Aussie, Lizzie eh?’
Both shook hands with a strong grip and eager eyes; then sat down.
‘Pettigrew tells me good things about yuh.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Clark. May I ask how you acquired the name “Ace”?’
‘It got me first in the Yellow Pages before Acme Investigations.’
‘They didn’t work out so well for Wile E. Coyote.’
Yuh gotta record?’
‘No, I don’t sing.’
‘Criminal record…’
‘Oh…no…is one required?’
‘Bet yuh had fun in school.’
‘Sometimes…but my teachers didn’t.’
‘Same here. In America, they’re only interested in yuh if yuh make ‘em laugh or rich…or they want somethin’ from yuh…’
If his previous employer resembled a droll Alfred Hitchcock Presents, his new employer mirrored Broderick Crawford in New York Confidential and Between Heaven and Hell. His office didn’t need his photographs, framed certificates and plaques; he had the look and feel of ex-cop, perhaps prematurely retired due to unproven allegations of corruption or brutality, or both. It gave him friends in both good and bad places that he needed to run a viable detective agency.
Like the other telepathic professionals he worked with in soldiering and investigation,
‘You’re wonderin’ how I got here and why I’m no longer a cop…’
Phil’s eyes bade him continue; Liz extracted his life history…
‘The rich and powerful…if they’re not bent, then they’re beholden to those who are, always have the most expensive legal beagles their money can buy. Why?...It’s not just to get them outta a jam in court, but two other reasons…to make what they wanna do legal, and to punish their enemies by having the courts go after ‘em…if you’re honest and not broke, you’re a dead man walkin’…’
He wanted Phil to locate a young female runaway.
‘What then? I’m not looking forward to an abduction charge.’
‘”Come on vacation, leave on probation”…You’re on the ball. All yuh gotta do is make her do a three-minute phone call, three-minutes minimum, to this number…then call me.’
‘Wilco.’
‘Ten four.’
He did sound like Broderick Crawford…
‘Is it OK if she rings Liz?’
‘Great idea, Phil. You packin’?’
‘I’ve just arrived; I’m not completely unpacked.’
Obviously listening, Liz came over the intercom,
‘”British and Americans are two people separated by a common language”…Churchill should’ve added Australians.’
Clark produced a .38 Colt Police Positive Special revolver in a leather holster with an ammunition pouch.
‘Is it legal for me to carry one of these?’
‘Do yuh wanna be judged by 12 or carried by six?’
‘Think I’ll really need this?’
The intercom spoke,
‘Phil, like John Paul Jones you’ll be sailing “In Harms’ Way”, maybe it’s better you have it on you and not need it instead of…’
He always listened more to words unspoken than spoken…
Phil stood as Liz entered with a tray containing a mug of coffee and two mugs of black tea.
‘Is this the brains as well as the gatekeeper of this outfit? No offence, Mr. Clark.’
‘Ace! None taken. Yuh spotted it straight off. Everybody needs someone ta make ‘em bettah, not anybody, only a certain somebody.’
‘I hope someday I’ll be as lucky as you two.’
‘Watch out, St. George…Someday you’ll rescue a damsel who’ll capture you!’
‘Then you’ll be in distress…but yuh wouldn’t have it any othah way!’
Liz related that she had worked as a legal secretary where she met Clark when he was a police detective; she kept him on the right side of the line. She’d previously been a librarian and a schoolteacher, the latter quality Phil recognised in her voice. She looked at Phil’s pistol,
‘When in Rome…’
‘I guess you get people who are scared of firearms?’
‘These ex-soldiers nevah say “gun”.’
‘Except for an M60.’
‘If yuh need one a them for streetsweepin’, I can get yuh one!’
Phil sang My Kind of Town.
‘Well, yuh can’t shoot ‘em like Vietnam! Yuh gotta drag their bodies inside your home so yuh can get off on self-defense!’
‘We’re more bothered by people who want a gun as soon as they enter the room. You’re the Goldilocks we’re looking for.’
Phil sipped his tea, Ace slurped his coffee, then spoke,
‘An Englishman comes tuh Chicaguh tuh visit his old American war buddy…The two of ‘em have a great week tahgethuh. At a restaurant on his last day before flyin’ back tuh London, the Englishman says, “In England everyone thinks Chicago is full of violence, Al Capone, and a killing on every corner. It’s not like that here is it?” “Naw, in Chicaguh yuh gotta few psychos that give Chicaguh a bad name, otherwise it’s the friendliest big city in the world.” They go back tuh their table and two tough guys are sittin’ in their chairs. “Hey! Those are our seats!” “They were your seats!” The Chicaguh guy pulls out his forty-five…’
He made the pistol sign, pointed at Phil’s and Liz’s foreheads and made shot noises.
‘”See? It’s psychos like THEM who give Chicaguh a bad name!”’
Phil joined their loud laughter. In Australia when you argued with someone and they couldn’t respond with logic, they would call you ‘cynical’, as if you were supposed to crawl on the floor like a dying insect and deny the fact. Instead, Phil asked them if wasn’t their view of the world rather dark and smelly from having their head up their arse? He hadn’t many friends…but he had two now.
‘No girl can resist Phil’s accent; everyone will open up to him out of curiosity…but Phil…please get some clear eyeglasses to soften your eyes…you look like a mortician craving his fix.’
‘I wanna jungle fightah, they’re always sensitive to their surroundin’s.’
‘Or else…Guerrilla My Dreams, I Love You…’, crooned Phil.
He’d report his progress to Liz who gave him business cards with only the number of one of the office’s telephones. No one would know he worked for Ace Clark Investigations, and Liz would know it was Phil’s clients ringing that number.
‘Duh they play Monopoly in Australia?’
‘Yes.’
Clark handed Phil a couple of his business cards.
‘Here’s your get outta jail free card, but don’t get intah too much trouble.’
Beat the Streets
He wondered why Mary Jo didn’t go to California with its better weather, but the nearest metropolis with Lake Michigan beaches would’ve been attractive and affordable to a dreaming small-town girl escaping her past.
Day after day he kept up his relentless searching, investigating, interviewing and reporting his findings and expenses to Liz.
He visited the young people’s hangouts Liz said a girl would go to socialise. The music was so loud he couldn’t hear himself think, for the goal was to deaden the brain.
As his target had no known friends in Chicago, he questioned staff of the cheap hotels near the terminal that she had taken a bus to from her country town.
He didn’t say who he worked for; best to let paranoids use their imaginations and assume the worst.
‘What’s in it for me?’
‘Money…but only if what you tell me checks out.’
‘How do I know yuh won’t stiff me?’
‘If you’re good, I’ll come back again and again, and so will my high-spending friends. If I paid you first and your stuff didn’t check out, we’d come back again…once…we always pay what’s due…’
The clerk understood…
‘Think of us! We need receipts to claim tax deductions!’
‘It’s always death and taxes ain’t it?’
He visited morgues and hospitals, where no luck was good luck.
He visited certain establishments where he wanted ‘fresh meat’, again his target wasn’t there…yet.
The proprietors weren’t the friendliest or most trustworthy; he sensed that if he took his eyes off them, they’d kill and rob him for ‘chump change’.
Like his schoolboy heroes, ‘Nick’ in Tightrope and The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World, he wore his pistol behind his back.
It came in handy at one of the lowlife sanctuaries when two men approaching him were definitely not there to become his friends. They didn’t like strangers and hated people asking questions.
You’re nobody until somebody tries to kill you…
A jingle popped in his mind,
When you're in danger,
don’t be in doubt!
Kill them all!
Let God sort them out…
He faked a frightened expression until they were close enough...
Action speaks louder than words when you’re outnumbered, and nothing speaks louder than a large pistol in a small room.
A Braniff airline commercial said, ‘if you’ve got it, flaunt it’, however, a pistol was never something to flourish, because his audience would withdraw to later ambush and kill him then take his weapon.
Think fast, shoot first, laugh last wasn’t an option when you weren’t in an operational area or hadn’t a licence to kill.
Phil chose the middle-ground.
He instantly drew his pistol, thrusting the barrel in his first attacker’s solar plexus. The second man reached under his coat; Phil smashed the butt of his pistol between his eyes. He went to the ground, a blow to the head of the bent over man sent him down as well.
Everything he learned in life he learned from Mickey Spillane.
Phil kept the two men’s pistols and wallets to give to Liz for show-and-tell and to increase her information files on the bottom feeders.
Nighthawks
‘Phil, we’ve got a bite! Some older male telephoned your number saying if you want to find Mary Jo to meet him at…’
* * *
The evening sun cast its final light as he approached his rendezvous; the leaves glowed as if he was viewing the world through a gold filter. Dusk became disquietude…
The all-night diner resembled Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks he saw in the Chicago Art Institute. He had no idea who he was going to meet, but he was told to bring a single red rose that the seen-it-all waitress lent him a small vase for.
People came and left, only one man remained. It was the time of the rendezvous; he had to be his contact.
He was smiling from across the semi-circular counter nursing a cup of coffee as Phil was doing with his tea. Phil thought he’d initiate contact without being too obvious, for Maxwell Smart had taught him just as much as Mike Hammer.
‘Do people really live here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Cum Mortuis in Civitate Mortua…With the Dead in a Dead City.’
‘I haven’t spoken Latin since I was an altar boy.’
‘It abounds when I want to sound profound…Has it always been like this here?’
‘You’re a day late and a dollar short. Join me?’
His new acquaintance entranced him telling a variety of amusing stories of the glory days long before the factories closed, and the downtown area was vibrant with shoppers. Phil visualised the stories as if he had been transported to long ago and far away.
There was no question as to why Phil had a red rose and nothing about Mary Jo. Was he like an Oriental with all the time in the world to not speak directly, or was he ensuring that Phil came alone?
The man gave a thumbs up; a feminine voice purred,
‘I’ll take my sugar elsewhere.’
‘I think she’s talking to you.’
The waitress handed a takeaway coffee to the woman standing across the counter intensely looking at Phil. She was the nearest thing to an angel he ever saw; she simply glowed.
The way she dressed wasn't spectacular, the usual blue denim trousers and brown shoes with a Lapland style white reindeer patterned long sweater. Her blonde hair was in a long braid; sensible and tidy. Like an objet d'art, you just wanted to admire her. She seemed to know that without being immodest; and silently searched his mind and soul with her intense brown eyes.
After her penetrating eyes, glowing skin and confident posture, his eyes were drawn to her ring.
‘Does your husband know you’re out on the town?’
‘He’s watching us now…always…Smile while you still have all your teeth.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘It’s a portent…I never threaten…’
‘You promise…’
‘As I said, a portent…someday you’ll be too old to smile.’
‘I’ll always smile with you around…I’m Phil.’
‘The present tense of full?’
‘I’d never have enough of you, Miss…’
‘Charmiane.’
‘Princess Charming?’
‘Charmiane was Cleopatra’s handservant, Cleo sent her out for the snake.’
‘I’m sure you’ve a lovely asp. How’s Liz Taylor these days?’
She put a coin in the jukebox; Bobby Vee sang Devil or Angel as she glided towards him…
‘You’ve poise and grace all over the place…’
She didn't have to speak; her eyes told you that you were the only person in the world. He reckoned the look in her eyes and smile was a cat approaching a mouse.
She sat facing him.
‘Coffee, tea, or me?’, Phil smirked.
‘We’ll start with all three.’
‘Three’s a crowd, Phil’, the man at the counter paid and left.
They imbibed their caffeine as they stared into each other’s eyes,
‘Then there were two, Charmiane.’
‘Well done, few people pronounce it right…You’ve got an accent...English?’
‘Canadian’, he lied.
‘You don’t sound like a Mountie.’
‘You haven’t heard me sing.’
‘You’ll sing later…’
‘You’re Chicago born and bred?’
‘”Strong in the arm, weak in the head”; yes, but my mother was a war bride from Yorkshire.’
‘I’d say the reverse is true with you; you’re very bright.’
‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’, Charmiane sang as she smelled his rose, ‘now, why does a man come into a diner with a rose?’
‘I was going to propose…but I’ve been stood up.’
‘All good things come to those who wait…I’ll Mary Jo you…’
‘I do…where is she?’
‘Closer than you think, why do you want to see her?’
‘I want her to telephone someone and speak for three minutes, then telephone my boss to say she did.’
‘Who do you want her to telephone?’
‘She’ll know when I see her.’
‘What do you want her to say?’
‘Only what’s in her heart, what’s true, and it has to last three minutes.’
‘What’s in it for her?’
‘It’ll be her good deed for the day.’
‘What if she’s not a Boy Scout?’
‘Everyone should do a good deed for the day.’
‘What if she doesn’t want to talk on the telephone?’
‘Then she’ll tell them why she doesn’t, but she has to be truthful…’
‘Like a horse you lead to water, I can lead you to her…but she may not want to talk.’
‘Then all she has to do is say why.’
‘What’s in it for you?’
‘It’s my good deed for the day.’
‘You’re the man who finds the lost things?’
He modified a Beatles song,
‘Hey, Saint Jude…’
Charmiane’s eyes changed; was there a childhood memory flash?
‘What’s cookin’? St. Philip’s the patron saint of cooks and bakers.’
‘Which saint are you?’
‘I’m a Sister of Jophiel.’
‘He’s a saint?’
‘She’s an archangel.’
‘Sounds like you outrank me.’
Enticing him with her eyes, she slowly rose with her rose and nightmarishly sauntered backwards,
‘Phillow me, Foll.’
She turned; Phil followed her outside…had she an arch angle?
‘Stranger…stranger…who knows your fate?’
He recognised her song from Any Gun Can Play, a spaghetti western. Was it a signal?
‘Stranger…stranger…what is your name?’, Phil sang back.
She turned in surprise, he tensed as she reached in her handbag.
‘You drive, I’ll tell you where to go.’
She threw him a set of keys; he caught them with his left hand. There was a 1960 Ford Fairlane that like their neighbourhood had seen better days.
She just met him, and she wanted him to drive her car?
Phil decided to check the back seat; she ran to him.
‘Don’t do that!!!‘
Phil shoved her, she crashed to the street with a jiu-jitsu breakfall; her wig fell off revealing short auburn hair beneath it. Two of the keys protruded from his left fist as a makeshift knuckle-duster. Charmiane screamed as he drew his pistol. He opened the door with his left hand holding the keys, pointing his weapon with his right at the shape beneath the plaid blanket laying on the back seat floor.
‘Paws where I can see them!’
A frightened girl’s face came out of the blanket…it was Mary Jo.
‘Trick or treat’, was all Phil could manage.
He apologised all over the place.
Mission accomplished
The call was longer than three minutes.
Charmiane spoke first to Mary Jo’s parents. By the end of the conversation Mary Jo’s parents realised their daughter was a grown woman who had Charmiane helping to look after her. Mary Jo and her parents agreed they loved each other and would keep in touch. They concluded by introducing Phil. Charmiane said he was able to get Mary Jo to make the call that she and no one else could.
‘He’s a Canadian Boy Scout.’
‘Australian. I’m a runaway too, so maybe Mary Jo and I understand each other.’
Both Mary Jo and her mother asked if Phil had a kangaroo?
After the next telephone call, Charmiane hit it off with Liz and accepted her invitation to come to their office to fill her and her husband in on the Sisters of Jophiel.
The trio returned to the diner.
‘It’s too late for coffee; It’ll keep me awake.’
‘Let’s go wholesome, Mary Jo’, Phil smiled, ‘May we have cookies and milk?’
‘Sweetened with honey!’, Charmiane beamed.
‘I don’t have any cookies, but I’ve got a cinnamon apple pie fresh out of the oven’, laughed the waitress whose smile took ten years off her.
‘So, who are the Sisters of Jophiel?’
‘We’re a group on leave from our various orders working in plainclothes to look after runaways and teenagers having problems.’
‘That hair and ring! You’re an undercover nun???’
Charmiane winked.
‘I’m glad you didn’t know what I was thinking! Nuns changed since I was a boy…’
She reached inside her loose-leaf notebook and produced a wooden ruler that she loudly hit Phil across his hand with.
‘WOW-OWWW!!!!!’
He shook his painful hand, Mary Jo loudly laughed and Charmiane smiled sinisterly,
‘We haven’t changed that much...’
Halloween
Warned not to be late, Phil and Sister Mary Magdelene, AKA Charmiane, reported to Clark’s office in the afternoon.
She briefed the Clarks on the Sisters of Jophiel and their work with assisting runaways, their safety, and sometimes reconciliation with their families.
Charmiane explained that tonight she was taking Phil out to a pleasant old-fashioned suburb to view the trick or treating.
Broderick Crawford was now a teddy bear. He said the next night he and Liz were taking Phil to a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration and asked Charmiane if she would do them the honour of making a foursome? She enthusiastically consented!
Phil was paid his expenses and salary. Mary Jo’s parents had made a donation to the Sisters of Jophiel. There was no further assignment in Chicago for Phil, but the good news was that Clark had an associate in Toronto who could use him.
‘Well, I guess we’d better make tracks for trick or treating. Maybe you can don your old habits and I can wear my jungle fighter kit to score some treats?’
‘Don’t move, Phil!’, Liz smiled, ‘Your treat’s coming at three! Have another “cuppa”!’
The telephone rang,
‘Ace Clark…Yeah, he’s here…no, he didn’t embarrass me…he did a great job and brought us an angel!’
He put the call on speakerphone.
‘Hello?’
‘Philip?’
‘Mum???’
‘Yes, Philip!’
‘Ace tells us you’re a pretty good private eye!’
‘Thanks, Dad…’
‘I’m here too, Silly Philly!’
‘Jean!’
‘Et moi aussi, mon beau cher!’
‘Tatie!’
At Mr. Clark’s treat, the runaway’s telephone call lasted longer than three minutes…
FIN
Author Notes: I am the author of three Extra Dimensional/Ultraterrestial military science fiction novels MERCENARY EXOTIQUE, OPERATION CHUPACABRA and WORK IN OTHER WORLDS FROM YOUR OWN HOME! as well as two travel books THE MAN FROM WAUKEGAN and TWO AUSTRALIANS IN SCOTLAND (all from Lulu.com). I live happily ever after with my wonderful wife in paradise (coastal Kiama, NSW Australia).
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Australia • 68 years old