Also, she had big tits.
“Is this Mr. Sekongo’s office?”
It was a voice that started at the base of your spine and took its time to crawl all the way up until it was in your head like a chorus of angels playing 12-bar blues on the tenor sax.
“What it says on the door,” I said, gesturing the hand not reaching for the Beretta M9A4 in my desk towards the faded letters on the cracked glass.
Samatar Sekongo, Private Investigator.
“And are you Mr. Sekongo?”
Her voice seemed to just melt its way into my ears, like she was dribbling warm honey from the point of a stiletto blade pricking my throat.
“I can be anyone you want, dollface.”
I sat up straighter. But under the desk, I thumbed off the safety catch.
“Anyone I want? And suppose I want a man who’s not afraid to get down low in the dirt and the grime and the blood, and find the rotten core at the beating heart of this terrible, awful, wonderful city. A man who’s got just enough lead in his chamber and bourbon in his glass for one last damned case. A man who’ll stand with me before the altar of God, and help me tear it all down.”
I left the pistol resting on my left thigh and reached for a new cigarette. The match wouldn’t strike the first time, nor the second, and before the third, I found her leaning across the desk, flame sprouting from her hand. A monogrammed lighter. WO. A rotting corpse of a first husband, or a second one too blinded by those cheekbones that could cut glass to notice her sketching up the dimensions for a headstone, maybe. Her perfume smelled like whiskey and chaos and spice and dismay. The cigarette sparked orange and her face flickered in the reflected bloom of its low glow.
“A man like that would want to be paid first.”
The manilla envelope hit the desk with a heavy whack, cushioned by a stack of red-letter demands for payment and overdue bill notifications. I caught a glimpse of rumpled greens inside: not Libesian dollars, but real currency, NS$. I grabbed it up and rifled the bills with the tips of nicotine-stained fingers: there was enough inside to settle up the last six months’ of unpaid rent, write off the alimony to my third ex-wife, cover my poker debts at the Gala and the Grand Plaza, and enough left over for a prime rib, medium rare, a fifth off the top shelf, and a roll with some young thing who’d make me forget all about the bullet in my hip, at least for a night.
“Samatar Sekongo. At your service.”
I extended a hand, and she shook it. Her skin was smooth as kid gloves made from a young goat that’s been hand reared on soft cheese and strawberries, and as my fingers grazed her wrist, I could feel her pulse, so low and steady and calm. Icy mountain spring water in those fine blue veins.
“You can call me… Ms. Fortune.”
“Fortune, huh? Is that a good fortune, or a bad fortune?”
I picked a quarter off the desk, one of the big old silver ones, from before independence. Some white king’s face on one side. No monetary value now, of course. Purely sentimental. My thumb sent it spinning high in the air, and she followed its arc with some dark, dangerous eyes of hers, plucking it before it could come down and tell my fortune. Her hand remained closed tight around it.
“I guess we’ll find out, Mr. Sekongo.”
I took a drag on the cigarette, and decided we’d all be more comfortable with the safety catch back on the pistol. I took it out from under the desk and settled it on the desk. She didn’t even flinch.
“You can call me Sam, dollface.”
To be continued… in… Sam Sekongo and the Case of Missing KPBs!
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