A New Obsession
5:33PM on May 30, 2008
The story was on page three. A man found dead in a studio apartment did not capture the reading publics attention in the same way that the comings and goings on Broadway did but it caught the eye of one James Dunbar of Sefton and Dunbar private investigations. After all he had been at that tiny apartment a week ago checking out the deceased on behalf of a most extraordinary young woman.
She had arrived at his office early, jet black hair framing her alabaster face and ruby lips she exhibited none of the usual characteristics of his customary clientele. Calm and self-assured rather than weepy victim. She had been aware of the effect her remarkable beauty had on him as it undoubtedly did on all men but rather than play the coquette she was all business. They had reached an agreement quickly and the next day he rather than tracking down another deadbeat gambler or cheating husband he had been at the office of this peeping salesman.
The case wrapped in a day and a half nothing remarkable, that was until now that the man from the 5th floor had been found with a hole in his eye. He crossed to the file cabinet the wrinkles in his linen suit smoothing as he stood. The file provided no insight that his memory had not. A salesman of no particular distinction at a company that employed 17 other such unremarkable men. No wife, no kids or girlfriend. No relatives in the city living or dead. No debts, no enemies, no vices other than the apparent habit of obsessively watching this particular woman. And there in lies the rub he thought, this guy was not on anyone’s radar last week and now he was dead lying in a pool of his own clotted blood.
Going back to the desk he lit a lucky strike and retraced his steps in the case. He decided against tossing the file and instead removed all references to the client subbing one of the collection companies that paid the bulk of his overhead and went back to the skip trace that had occupied most of his morning. An hour later he called his partner and gave him the address of the deadbeat and the amount Sefton was to beat out of him. Almost as an afterthought he ended with “watch your back the cops may be around later.” before hanging up.
The cops showed up an hour later proving that he had not covered his tracks as well as he should have. Once again a beautiful woman had caused him to be a bit careless. The question now was what penalty would he be paying. Last time it had been his dignity but this felt like a much more expensive lesson in the making.
The flatfoot watched him dig through a pile to find the file and made notes as he read off the contents of the recently doctored file. The man had that dull Irish looks of the 3rd generation copper. He would dutifully fill in all the boxes but never connect the dots and for that Dunbar was thankful. The boys downtown cared nothing about this case and it would find its way to the unsolved case file sooner rather than later.
When Sefton came into the office with a pile of crumpled bills he passed off his earlier warning as bad corned beef making him jumpy not wanting to involve the big man in his descent into idiocy. Idiocy it was he thought to himself as he was walking down the block to the woman’s building as darkness fell.
Had he caught the obsession from the salesman or had the woman infected him in the office? The question nagged at him and in the end as he waited for her to return from work he decided it did not matter. All that mattered was the curve of those breasts and the legs that seemed to have been molded by the hands of Michael Angelo himself. The way a hint of smile had played at her lips despite the dank office and discomforting circumstances of their meeting. Those haunting green eyes that looked into the depths of his thoughts with a casual ease that disarmed him completely.
She appeared at the corner derailing that train and sending him on a more perilous ride. She did not have the look of a killer. Black silk swayed about round hips and danced over firm calves and rational decisions were not possible in the presence of those lips that drew smoke casually from a long black holder as she walked. Just the same he knew that she had done it. This diminutive beauty had coolly assessed the risk, found it unacceptable and eliminated it without hesitation. This made her even more irresistible to the dour man in the linen suit spending the twilight in the shadows of a stairwell on an unremarkable block of an unremarkable part of the worlds most remarkable city.
|
