No Requiem for the Tin Man: Lou Tanner, P.I., #2

Lady Shamus,

Damn right that’s me.  Gumshoe in high heels.

The Setup

Don’t ever count on a client falling into your lap.  Getting business takes a lot of time, a lot of advertising know-how, and a hell of a lot of glad-handing.  You will be kissing babies, accept that fact.  Clients simply don’t bust into your office begging for help.

~Lou Tanner, P.I., 1935.

I should never listen to my own advice.

Crazy Guy busted in my door, clutching a ripped-up bundle in his arms, and bled all over my floor.

I yelled.

Marley screamed.

Not My Cat, resident feline squatter, puffed up his black tail and hissed like a Halloween demon while knocking over a vase of flowers as he sprinted for safety.

One smart cat.

Two shocked dames.

Crazy Guy shrieked at us, They’re coming!  Sweet Jesus, you gotta’ hide ... hide before they get ya’!  They’re coming an’ no one can stop them!

Them?  Who is coming?

My first thoughts went immediately to the offensive parade goose-stepping its way down Market Street outside.  American Nazis?  There’s an oxymoron full of oxy-Morons.

Normally, I love a parade.  Not this parade.

Seconds before Crazy Guy started decorating my office in red, Marley and I were watching the spectacle below from the window of the empty office across the hall from my own.  Drums, horns, slogans, all shaking the window glass in their frames.  Every hooligan or ne'er-do-well with a gripe and a home-made uniform had shown up for this one.

Disgusted, we sauntered back to our own sanctuary to twist the cap off a bottle and send off the workweek with a two-finger salute.

Crazy Guy rudely interrupted our early evening reveling.  He looked like hell.  Not too tall but boney.  Rail-thin arms clinging to a pile of newspapers.  No hat but plenty of ripening blue bruises on his face.  He’d taken a beating and his red-rimmed, wide eyes told me how terrified he was that more was coming.

Had one of those jack-booted goons chased this poor guy up to my office and would come bashing in after him?  What had this wretched man done to warrant being busted up like he was?

I’ve got a loaded gun for such emergencies and I’m only happy to use it.  This poor mook needed all the help he could get.

Have I ever mentioned I’m a sap?

A real, honest-to-God push-over.

Yeah, me, Lou Tanner, lady P.I. and occasional volunteer rube.

Thankfully, after two minutes, no one followed after Crazy Guy.

The obnoxious parade stayed down on the main thoroughfare, focusing its ire on the various immigrants and new arrivals, and other so-called subhumans they love to hate, waving their flags and handing out fliers to the confused or intrigued people lining the sidewalks.  Mostly lists of who or who not to vote for.

Ah, election season in San Francisco.  Nothing brings out violent opinions quite the same way at any other time.  For all their issues and candidate promoting, the only thing I figured the marchers managed to do was hold up traffic.

As long as they kept their flapdoodle-con game down there, it wasn’t my problem.  My problem was currently staining my landlord’s hardwood floors.  My problem was not getting kicked out of this office.

I opened my trap to question Crazy Guy when he grabbed me by the lapels and yanked me off my heeled oxfords.  In seconds we were flailing around like turtles on our shellbacks, sprawled out on the reception room floor.  His bundle, looking more ragged than his shirt hem, clunked on the floor and skidded away.

He reeked to high heaven — I smelled like Outers Gun Oil.

He wore rags — I wore my best togs.

Had he waited two more minutes, I would have been wearing Eau d’Old Forester Brand Bourbon, a favorite, and the epicurical aromatics of leftover sweet and sour Sam Wo noodles.

Just my luck: the guy has crappy timing.

He clutched me by the shoulders as I sat up.  Spittle landed on my blouse while he shrieked on and on, never once blinking during his tirade.  That is never a good sign.  I generally don’t work with crazy.  Crazy has a reputation for being untrustworthy or unreliable.  Both, usually.  Crazy is also renowned for not paying its bills.  I need my bills paid in full.  Right now, that last part about paying was too urgent for me to ignore.

You ... have to hide!  They’re coming!

Who?  Mister, who’s coming?  People from that parade down there?  Did they do this to —

I can’t tell you.  I shouldn’t tell you.  Maybe I’m supposed to tell you.  I can’t remember.  Please ... get out of this city.  Now while you still can!

I eyed the front door and knew I could oust him with a bit of effort ... except ...

I couldn’t do it.

Something in his voice told me not to write him off so easy.  Something in the terror forcing his bug-wide peepers to stare straight into my soul, appealing if not begging for relief I couldn’t deny him.  Something about the blood seeping from a nasty cut at his hairline, dripping down his battered doughboy cheeks, that only plucked at my heartstrings.

I’m a real sap alright.

He shrank into a tight human ball, trembling, fighting off some demon in his brain, while only one phrase came out of him.

"Tin Man."

Chapter One

My rules are generally simple:

Don’t fall in love, especially with a client,

Don’t trust the cops – they don’t trust you.

And the end will always justify the means.

~Lou Tanner, P.I., 1935, Letter to Female Pemberton Graduates

If only I followed my own rules and advice with any sense of commitment.  Translation?  First class sap.

Protégée and all-around amazing Girl Friday, Irish Marley O’Brien, who has a hell of a lot more going on under those bouncing blond curls than most mooks assume, returned a second later with water, soap, and tissues.  We couldn’t let him bleed out for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which was that my landlady only needed one more excuse, like stained carpets, to boot me out and replace me with a higher paying, tidier renter.  One who can pay the full bill next month, which I could not.

As we eased Crazy Guy up and over towards the couch, the shamus in me couldn’t help herself and I launched right in, interrogating the man while he was still conscious.  Who should we hide from?

I thoroughly expected him to talk about the uniformed men in the parade, stomping away down Market Street.  A couple of baseless ideas were flopping around between my brain cells, like maybe he cheesed off someone marching by and they bashed him on the noggin for the grins.  But maybe not.  If anyone from the parade had thrashed Crazy Guy, they hadn’t followed him up to the third floor.

Since he was heavier than expected, we accidentally dropped him on the couch.  As his coconut thumped against the wall, Marley and I both cringed in sympathetic apology.  Closing his eyes at last, though his lips kept moving in a conversation with parties unknown, Crazy Guy rocked his head back and forth, and he clutched desperately to remnants torn from that tattered package.  Where the hell had that thing gone to?

I looked around.  The package wasn’t where I thought it would be.  I thought about looking for it but Crazy Guy needed all the urgent attention we could give him.

Over and over, he repeated his warning.

’Tin Man?’ Marley asked, doing her best to pluck the remaining shredded newspaper out of his locked fingers.  To me, she asked, Slim?  What’s he talking about?

No idea.  The only ‘Tin Man’ I know of was in that kid’s book I read a while back.

She managed to get some of the clump from his right hand.  Aren’t they gonna’ make a motion picture of it?

Bet they make it a musical, I grumbled, thinking about having to crawl around under the furniture looking for his package and ruining my last pair of stockings.

The phone rang, causing us both to jump.  Crazy Guy didn’t notice.  Marley grabbed up the receiver and tucked it between her ear and shoulder, signaling to me to keep quiet.  Both hands snagged the notebook and pencil she kept handy out of habit.  Tanner Private Investigations.

I recognized the man speaking so loud on the other end he made Marley squint.

Oh!  Hello Agent Hayes, she cooed professionally.  Let me see if she’s in.  She looked to me for the answer to her question.

Timing.  Yeah, it really is everything.

Only my new chum, Agent Christopher Hayes of the War Department, would call at a time like this.

Today was all sorts of crappy and would be a terrible day to play the ponies or the lottery.

Politics.  Parades.  Crazy Guy.  Now the War Department’s calling?  All while waiting for the first paying client in over three months?  Yeah, that kinda’ luck is the sort of luck you take down to one of those Nevada casino cities if you want to die in debt.

I started to shake my head no — tell him I’m not here.

As if he could see us, Hayes responded.  Put her on the phone, O’Brien.  She’s there.  I know she’s there.  She can hear me too!

The folks in Poughkeepsie can hear you, Marley grimaced while I held back a giggle.

I waved for Marley to give me the phone.

You sure, Slim, she whispered.  With all this? her head cocked towards Crazy Guy.

I didn’t care who was listening.  Darling, quick, hand it over before a vein bursts in the G-man’s forehead and we're accused of killing a Federal employee.  You remember what sensitive, namby-pambies they are.

I heard that, the voice in the phone shouted.

Holding the receiver almost to my ear, I put on my sweetest voice.  "Good afternoon Agent Hayes.  What can I not do for you?"

Hilarious Tanner.  You’ve gotten less cordial by the week.  So, don't talk, just answer my questions.

You haven’t asked any.  And I can’t answer without talk —

You gonna’ shut up long enough for me to ask?

What a schmuck.  Why that would be too easy Agent Hayes.

For a moment, silence.

I sighed loudly into the receiver.  I suppose it was better than laughing at him.  Look, it’s been a hell of a day and if I’m coming off as sarcastic it’s because —

You ever meet a Joe named Augustin Gruber?

This time I gave him a long pause to ponder all while signaling to Marley to eavesdrop on the line.  To cover the sharp click on the line when she picked up, I sneezed and apologized.  Sorry about that.  A case of the snuffles.  What was your question again?  I truly want to be cooperative.

Sometimes you make me crazy, Tanner.

Only sometimes?

Is Marley on the line now?

Marley shrugged.  The ploy hadn’t worked.  I shouldn’t expect every trick to work on Hayes.

Of course .  What are phone extensions for?

"Fine.  Both of you listen up!  If someone asks you if you’ve ever met or even overheard the name of Augustin Gruber, the answer is ‘no.’  Com-pre-hen-dee?"

Was that his idea of Spanish or Italian?  Who?

Perfect answer.  You don’t know him, you don’t know his family, and —

Crazy Guy groaned, shouted about us being in danger, then fell silent again.

Tanner, what the hell was that?

Damn it.  With both our phone receivers picking up noise from the same room, of course Hayes heard Crazy Guy.  Oh well, with G-man Hayes, it was safer to use the truth.  Or at least some version of it.  I didn’t trust him with everything.

"A client.  A potential client ... I think ... if he ever sobers up."

Marley glanced my way and mouthed the words, Nice cover.

You lying to me, Tanner?

Agent Hayes, I’m affronted —

What’s your client’s name?

He hasn’t told us.  Again, the truth.  Mostly.  Although at the moment, I was certain Crazy Guy’s real name started with a A.

What does he want?

He hasn’t given us that yet either.  In and out of conversational condition at the moment.  But ... should you like, I can always provide you full details, in a report I will submit, in three copies, initialed and signed ...  Then I went for the gut punch, "Of course that’s after you supply a copy of the warrant.  I hope getting a warrant won’t put you into too much hot water with a judge, since it is Friday afternoon, and, well you recall how much judges love to be pestered at the start of the weekends ..."

The line was silent again.  I pictured Agent Christopher Hayes clutching the bridge of his nose, as if pressure would help with the migraine I was giving him.

Agent Hayes?

Shut up.  Just, shut it.

Hey now!  There’s no call for that.

Tanner, for the love of God, I’m not kidding.  Listen up!  You have never seen or met Gruber.  Never!

I haven’t known Hayes all that long, but even I picked up that something was quite seriously amiss.  Something far more awful than he was admitting.  Guess he didn’t trust me much more than I trusted him.

I put my hand above my lips and the receiver, protecting my words from unsanctified ears in the walls for all I knew.  Then I suppose I shouldn’t ask about the ‘Tin Man’ my potential, yet unnamed client was yelling about several minutes ago?

There was a longer, heavier pause and I got the distinct feeling that this bad day was going from weird-but-funny to deadly-and-serious in a heartbeat.

Tanner.  That’s not funny.  Hang up.  Today never happened.

Ah hell.  I never should have gone to church last Sunday, let alone gotten out of bed this week.  The hypocrisy had thrown the universe out of whack.

Wait a minute.

Why did he call me in the first place?  In a city of six hundred fifty thousand people, why did he believe Augustin Gruber would interact with me?  Now, wait a damn minute —

Kit Hayes, explain yourself!  You know there’s a man who busted down my door.  You know who the man is or you wouldn’t have called me.  Are you staking out my office again?  You remember how things went the last time you did that.  God, why does Hayes do this to me?  Better question: why do I let him?

There?  At your office?  That was the guy shouting ...  You’re not pulling my leg?  He’s there ... I thought he might have called you or ... oh Christ.  I’m coming over.

Bring bourbon, Marley barked at him before hanging up her extension.

Tanner, Hayes started to growl.

I’m not going anywhere you or your War Department colleagues can’t follow, apparently.  I still remember the last time you surveilled me.  I remember your colleagues coming and going in my office as they pleased.  Not even a ‘hello, how are you,’ or ‘may I please.’  You got my office address, so hustle your muscular, tight ass over here.

Lillian Lucille Tanner! my name came through his gritted teeth.  All three of my names, too.

What?  Afraid a third party is listening in?  Some of your War Department buddies hanging out on the roof with listening devices?  I’d hate to ruin your golden reputation —

He hung up.

Serves you right if they are, I yelled at the dead line.

Want me to order Chinese?  Sam Wo’s is open and I can run over to Chinatown to pick it up.  We’ve collected a couple of extra mouths to feed.

No.  Stay put.  Lock the door and help me put Augustin’s feet up.  We’ll set him up comfortably.  Then shut off any unnecessary lights.

For a while, Marley stared at me.  In the fading remnants of the day, shadows crept across her face, stealing the sweet girlishness that usually peeked out from under Shirley Temple curls.  Her gray-blue eyes stayed locked on me, and I could read her feelings.  We’re hiding? she asked.

We’re laying low, I corrected with little devotion.

We’re hiding.

She nodded to me.  Lines deepened around her mouth as her lips turned down.  She knows serious when she sees it, especially in me.

I wasn’t even trying and I was dragging her into trouble.

Whoever invented the saying, you could hear a pin drop, never lived in a city.  My heartbeat thumped in my ears along with the electric horns of the driverless taxis, ‘Crawlers, outside.  Traffic was fighting its way past the echo of the parade and all the delays it left in its wake.

Crazy Guy clammed up when the walls trembled.  We knew what was happening.

If the shaking was uneven and choppy, it was a quake.

Rhythmic?  Pulsing?  Then it was another of the charms of modern San Francisco.

Not a quake.

Airship service.

Marley threw her hands in the air and walked back to her desk, grumbling.  At least Crazy Guy didn’t over react.  He tucked his hands tightly under his arms and closed his eyes, rocking back and forth to comfort himself.

Gray balloon envelope filled with combustible gas.  Twin-rotor engines.  Sparse but elegantly decorated gondola unaffordable to the average Jane and Joe American.  German Nazi flag flappin’ in our breeze.

Geez.  Couldn’t someone else provide cross-continental air service?  Did it have to be them?

The Five P.M. Zeppelin Service from Boston lumbered in overhead, shaking everything underneath it with its huge trans-continental engines.  The Zeppelin’s engines flared for its approach to the Montgomery Street Aero Station and my office did the shimmy again.  The building, blessedly built on rollers after the 1906 disaster, took the shaking in stride.

Downstairs, the familiar mix of human and mechanical life rolled on.  Trollies have a particular sound as their wheels glide down the rails of Market Street — clanging bells warning pedestrians and autos alike to make way.  Nightcrawlers are different.  There’s a rush of noise as they scrape along their track and beep with that electronic horn at anything that gets inside of five feet from their egg-shaped bodies.  After more than six months in this office, I could report the traffic better than the guy on the radio simply by listening.  This evening, I could tell most everyone was unhappy — the parade had held them up from getting to the bars after work.

After all the shaking had subsided, Not My Cat emerged from wherever it was he used to sneak in and out of the office.  He sauntered in like nothing was wrong, sat in the middle of the room to clean himself, and stopped to see if the blood was of interest.  I guess it wasn’t, he stretched out his back leg, revealing his left paw.  All his paw pads were black, like his fur, except one pink toepad he liked showing off.

Marley sat on her desk, facing me.  Was I officially supposed to overhear this guy getting all fussy over ‘Tin Man’ or Tin Men?

No.

And neither were you?

Nope.

Never heard of them?  Never heard of Mr. Gruber?

Those are our marching orders.

She slowly let her head bob up and down, while her mouth twisted into a doubtful smile.  For a couple of bright girls, we sure have a lot of boys determined we should play stupid.

And you’re surprised?

She shrugged.  Nah.  All the same, Slim, I’m getting’ mighty tired of it.

Yeah, Irish, me too.  Tin Man.  That didn’t sound so charming.  Oh, Marley?  Tuck your Derringer into your waist band.  Keep it loaded and handy.  I picked up my newly cleaned .38 and spun the chamber.  Why?  I liked the sound.  It sounded solid and confident, even if I didn’t.

Chapter Two

It’s all well and good to be lucky.  But never forget:

Lady Luck can’t always be counted on ...

and,

Not all luck is good luck.

~Lou Tanner, P.I., 1935, Letter to Female Pemberton Graduates

Me and Marley waited, smokes in one hand, artillery in the other.  I waited on the unlikely but not improbable: a guy to rush in with guns blazing, like it happens in the pulp magazines I read.

This would have been the perfect time to tell Marley.  Only I didn’t.

I’m dead broke.

No pleasant way of saying that.

I came here to the City by the Bay to make my mark in the world and to earn enough scratch to keep me content.  My contentment now includes keeping my best friend and colleague employed.  Welp, things haven’t gone as planned.

So far I’ve chalked up a lotta’ debt and a lotta’ dead bodies, including a crooked cop about four months ago.

The Police don’t like me, never did, but now they despise me because I was involved in a cop killing.  They conveniently forget the crooked part in favor of the dead part.  Doesn’t matter how bad a cop is, to them he’s still a cop.

If you’re lucky, they only run you out of town.  If you’re not lucky ... well ... they make your life hell until they end it.

I’m not willing to test my luck.

Despite the events earlier this year, and the confusion over wo who pulled the fatal trigger plugging that crooked cop, I’ve been lucky that things haven’t gotten too far out of hand.

San Francisco still remains my town.  We two cling to each other like a pair of drowning lovers on the Titanic.  It’s beautiful and romantic but ends tragically every time because neither of us knows how to swim — metaphorically speaking.  Ah, San Francisco, my unnatural lover.  You’re one hell of a lot more satisfying than anyone else out there.  Safer too.

My town.  Lots of bills to prove I live here.  I’m going to die here too.

I’m the Lou Tanner, Private Investigator, printed on the lease and the business cards and painted across the frosted window panel on the front door.  This office suite was one I made an insanely lucky deal on.  And it was a miracle I wasn’t required to have a man co-sign for me.  Some folks were only too happy to have Lou signing everything without bothering to check who or what Lou was.  One of these days, somebody is going to notice Lou ain’t a Louis but a Lucille.  Lillian Lucille to be exact.

Good thing my needs, like my rules for living, are pretty simple: keep the damn lights on and pay my staff of one, in full, on time.

That’s why I’m impatient for a new case, one that pays some serious coin, as in twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses.  That’s standard pay for a Private Detective.  I’d sell my teeth for such a case.  I’ve already sold off a bunch of things I valued and I’m running out of junk other people want.  One good case was all I needed to make up for the last one that went bad.  That’s all I need.

I made my wish, and surprise-surprise, I got a call out of the blue.  Just like that.

A client!

Ever hear the adage, be careful what you wish for?.  I should have known better.  Turned out my would-be client came complete with the wrong kind of baggage: he works with some sort of politician.

Small and local, he assured me.  All the same, discretion is going to be extremely important despite lack national importance.  You know how the newspapers can be.  Won’t you give me a moment of your time?  I’ll be by, say, around four-ish this afternoon ... late, the caller said, a man, with a strong whisper that left me feeling like spiders had taken over my wardrobe.  I couldn’t pick out his accent, age, or any other tells beyond the obvious fact he didn’t want anyone else hearing him.

The whole time I was on the phone with the windfall client, my gut kept telling me to hang up.  Was it the politician himself who was indiscreet I asked?  No, he corrected, not exactly.  That suggested someone involved with the campaign, or close to the politician, but not the main man himself.

Either way, I couldn’t afford to ignore him.  I’m flat busted and I’m not sure how I’ll pay Marley this week.  That means I can’t be picky about the next job I accept.  In instances like this, moral and ethical get flexible definitions.  Besides, I’m not yet convinced I’d call my line of work entirely honest.

My mentor, Uncle Joe Parnaski, used to say that a lot.  After twenty years as a cop then another fifteen as a railroad case investigator?  Yeah, he knew what he was talking about.  Teenaged me soaked it up like a sponge, every word and trick of the trade.

The crowd lining up downstairs, along Market Street outside the Fox Theater, was dispersing.  Everyone loves a parade, right?  In broad daylight, one could only imagine who was available