It Takes a P.I. to Catch a P.I.

It was near midnight when the last light finally went out. I had parked my heap just beyond sight and staked out for my opportunity. If I knew anything about psychology, it was this: if you want to understand a bird, you've gotta walk a mile in his shoes. Seeing as I still didn't know our perp's brand, figured I'd fake it and try just walking as he did: on the night he stole the Fuschia Falcon!

Climbing the gate was a cinch, and without any guard dogs or night watchmen keeping an eye out, slinking across the grass was almost easier. Unfortunately, without the use of Franklin's flashlight, I was doing the cell-phone-as-a-light-source thing. I didn't even know I'd found the right window until I felt the warm interior air escaping through the broken window. I peered into the gloomy trophy room I'd been in earlier--it was empty; of people anyway, the furniture was still there. I searched the murky night for some way to shimmy in through the broken frame. Finally decided there was none, and hoisted myself in clumsily. I'd made it halfway through before losing my balance and crashing to the ground.

I was sure the noise had woken someone, there was an electric feeling in the air of something getting up. Cursing the lack of a partner, I hastily explored the room for anything I'd missed earlier. I re-checked the shelves and the upturned box on the floor. In the pale light of my phone, I noticed a smudge on it which I hadn't noticed earlier: it was the same brown as the wood, but in this light it didn't reflect. There was no way I could snap a photo of it, as my only camera was currently also my light source, but I could try one thing: I wiped a small part of it onto my finger and tasted it. Chocolate. I should have known.

The door burst open before I had a chance to try anything else, light flooding the room and obscuring the tasty evidence. It was the dame who'd hired me, standing in a half-open robe and, I'll say it, some really sexy lingerie.

"Turner? What the hell are you doing?" She asked, both frustrated and perplexed as she hastily closed her robe.

"Investigating." I said, with all of the confidence I could muster. "I'll, uh, have some answers for you in the morning. Can you bring some photos of your precious rock to JP Licks around 11? I may have something for you then."

Sept 1st Strikes Again

For those concerned, the Fuschia Falcon is not going by the wayside. There is hope yet, and after a daring break-in, er, recreation, I may have blown this case wide open. Or, I may just like saying that to seem like I know what's up. Either way, there's a small problem:
My case notes are somewhere in that pile...

The Peppermint Red Herring

After a quick tip from one of our readers last week, I did a little research on this bogus-sounding jewel, the Peppermint Rhinestone. Rumored to have disappeared from somewhere in JP over the last few weeks, this little rock is causing a bit of a problem for some of the other local dicks. Similar deal, but not from the deMontesque household--some folks from France or somewhere, Montagne or something.

Two gems taken in the same neighborhood in a short period of time. It's starting to sound a bit like there's a cat burglar prowling. I had heard something about one a little while back, maybe our gonif is back in town? Seems a little more likely than our Usual Suspects--pretty sure Busey and Glenn Beck are both away for now.

Not wanting to be late for a meet with Alice, I headed out to her place. "Best place to start is at the scene," I remember reading in a book once. Although I take that with a grain of salt, this was the same book that told me not everything comes out of a Pulp novel holds water. I say the best place to start is the end, but I guess the beginning will do in a pinch. I pulled into the driveway of the deMontesque house and locked my heap up. The place was far from a dump, and the inside looked even better. It was one of those places over by Pond Street, those really slick stacks of bricks with gardens in the fronts and fences made from something other than chain link between the neighbors. I flashed my ticket at the man who answered the door and stepped inside before he could protest--or even read it.

Alice appeared within a moment and told the man not to worry about me. He looked even more bewildered, but she whisked me toward the back of the house before he could string a question together. The room she lead me to had books scattered all over the floor and cabinet doors left open. There was an empty shelf, and a wooden box lay open, face down on the floor.

"This is where the Falcon was, I take it."

"Yes, until it was taken."

"Well, obviously. I'm guessing you have no idea who would want to do this."

"Yeah. No idea."

"Let me take a look around here."

The wooden box was maybe a foot square, four inches deep. Using the end of a pen, I pulled part of it up and looked under: thing was completely empty. I looked around the room for a point of entry. The window had been shattered, and I stuck my head out through the gap. It was only a few feet to the rosebush below. Easy to get in or out. As I stepped back, my foot crunched some of the glass deeper into the carpet.

"Whoever it was came in here," I observed, "Wanted it to look like a robbery, but the real target was the stone."

The blonde grinned ear to ear. "I knew I'd picked the right guys."

Real men never blush, so I didn't. "Glad I didn't disappoint."

I kept looking around the room. "Odds are he wore gloves, so fingerprinting would be useless. Only prints we'd find are, I'm assuming, yours and the stiff by the door."

"My Husband, yes."

"No cleaners, maids or anything?"

"Nope. None."

"Lovers?" I offered.

"No! I'm faithful."

Stubbed my toe on something and muttered a curse under my breath. It had been the edge of a bookshelf, and my foot had set all of the tchotchkes wobbling. A drinking glass on one of the upper shelves tipped like it'd gone over the edge with the rams, and went over the edge, spilling out onto the carpet. Only what was weird about this was that instead of water or a shot of white, it was a half-eaten candy bar. The glass shattered, flecks of it stuck in the chocolate.

"What was that?" deMontesque asked.

"Not sure. Candy bar in a glass."

"Maybe it's a calling card?"

I said nothing, but it was possible. I would have to do some research before I could come back to her with it. I suggested she locked the door and not let anyone in until I came back. Otherwise, the place seemed to check out, and it didn't look like I was going to get anything else out of it. Clambered back into the flivver and drove back to the office--had to get some dark slacks on and haul ass to my undercover gig.

The Fuschia Falcon

Those of you still checking in from time to time may have noticed a slight lag in service. Not to make excuses, but this is 'cause Franklin and I have been making headway on that Undercover Case we vaguely referenced a little while ago. Now that the op is winding down, we can share a little: We called it the Mystery of the Missing Money, and we posed as a pair of birds on the nut and on the dole, trying to find paying gigs. Due to witness protection and other legal mumbo-jumbo, we can't give you any more detail than that.

However, back to the babe who came in while Franklin and I were wrapping up the Firebug Case: did I mention the gams on her? Quite a dame she was. We lead her into the office and made her comfortable with a cup of coffee. She asked if we knew who she was, and we admitted she had the bulge on us there.

"Alice deMontesque," she introduced herself with a slight drawl.

I asked how we could help her on such a fine day.

"There was a robbery at my home last night, and something of incredible value was taken."

Franklin chimed in, "Why didn't you go to the Flatfoots with it?"

"Let's just say that we like our privacy at home."

"And what was taken?" I added.

"The Fuschia Falcon, a rare diamond from Russia."

Franklin and I looked at each other for a moment.

Hopeful, the dame asked, "So you've heard of it?"

"Nope, not at all, ma'am." Franklin replied.

"What's so special about it?" I threw in, pretending to know about jewels.

"It's known for its perfect clarity and a slight pink imperfection. It's embedded in a bird-shaped pendant."

"Where was it when you lost it?" Franklin continued.

She seemed a little puzzled, "I didn't lose it, it was stolen from our house over by Jamaica Pond."

I copied down the address.

"So, why pick us of all the dicks you could ask?" was Franklin's final question.

"I saw your work on the Arson case and knew you were the guys to see."

We left her in the office and chinned outside for a minute. Franklin had one problem, he needed a couple of weeks for a test, getting a permit for his bean-shooter. We need the case, and we needed a win, so I agreed to go it alone. It put me behind the eight ball, but there were men who'd climb Everest naked for a dish like her; I just had to find a necklace.

Coming Clean

So, readers and Mahoneys alike, by now you will have probably deduced that the JP Firebug case has gone colder than a penguin's junk. We've heard nothing new and have had now big breakthroughs. After Franklin and I turned down our third new client, I had to come clean to him about just how much money the Arson case would be bringing in. I'll spare you the expletives of his reaction, but the spit-take was quite impressive. Note to self: always give bad news when someone is drinking coffee.

Corollary: Always make sure they are unarmed when you do.

Yelling from the safety of behind the bathroom door, I suggested that we put the case on the back burner until it heats up again. Ignoring the double-barreled cliche, I continued, "We'll take another case, and this one won't be pro-bono. We'll actually get paid, I promise." The blunt thumping on the door stopped, and after a few moments I tentatively opened it.

Franklin was standing and staying at the woman who had just opened the office door, hiding the broken table leg behind his back. Blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders to her back, her legs stretched from the floor to her hips, and she was wearing a silk red dress. For no readily apparent reason, a breeze tossed her hair sensuously about.

"You boys the detectives?" She asked.

I corrected her that we were Private Eyes, and that we were there to help. We lead her upstairs to the meeting area and offered her some coffee. I cracked open the Case Laptop to take notes.

Then I got distracted and wrote this blog post. I should probably actually discuss the case with her... More after the actual meeting.

too Good to be Realty

The moon hung overheard like a glowing pocket watch as Franklin and I pulled the car up to the docks. Through the fencing, we could make out the outline of a flivver, and we knew this is where our meat was hiding out. Quietly, we pulled the Scarlet Solver into a space and killed the engine. A cold pizza and cups of coffee were all that accompanied us on this chilly evening. Inside the complex, there was a small building, or maybe a retrofitted shipping container, with a light on, and this Franklin and I watched intently. Hours passed slowly, and soon even rounds "I Spy" became monotonous.

Suddenly, there was slight movement just beyond the chain link. A knowing look passed between us, the pair of dicks in the car; Franklin and I were off like a shot. This was our one chance to bring the guy down ourselves, after that he would either be in the wind or in the cooler. So, we ran. Franklin, being the smaller of us, took a ten fingered boost over the fence, just grazing a hand on the barbed wire on top before dropping down and letting me in. We both channeled every tiger we'd ever seen stalking in the zoo as we tried to surround him. The silence roared in my ears, accented by the blood pumping rhythmically. There was a creak, one of us had hit a door or a wall or something. We heard running, and followed suit. I lost Franklin somewhere in the shipyard, but continued alone, fueled only by adrenaline.

He hadn't seen us coming, and was completely unprepared. He was a little faster than I, but I proved myself more agile. Eventually I gained on him and with a final charging leap I landed on his back, taking him to the ground with me. I called out for Franklin as I wrestled him into a submission hold. At our most defining moment, he looked me square in the eyes and said: "BBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!"

Slowly, I became aware not only of sunlight, but of birds singing faintly in the background. I looked beside me at the bed I had fallen out of and the pillow I now knelt triumphantly upon. Muttering to myself, I reached a series of conclusions: either Franklin and I had better hurry up and put this guy away, or I had better stop eating hard-boiled eggs and drinking shine before bed. I also realized that we needed some more information to work on, and someone who could help us figure out this division in our theories was a professor Books Mahony knew of at the local Brainbank, some University named after a compass direction. I would e-mail him directly.

A Lead in a Haystack

Saturday June 20th. Turner and I took a bite out of the dusty combo meal of knowledge and eccentric vagrants that is the Boston Public Library. Little did we know that it would come with a super-sized portion of McInsight and a 32oz cup of divisiveness.

After some bumbling in the McKim building, we found the sparsely-occupied microfilm room. We would have been quicker in divining the microfilm machines, but our associate Books Mahoney was occupied with a serious heart wound. She's recovered, thankfully, and the mug behind it all is on his way to a few years in solitary (i.e. Maine).

I pored over frame after frame of local news coverage from 2005 while Turner took a leap into the Net. And though his web was world wide, the one I began to uncover was more tangled than last year's Christmas lights.

2005 saw the (supposedly accidental) burning of the First Baptist Church on Centre St, and in its wake a slew of real estate squabbles that threatened to cool the gooey warm sense of community JP basks in - or at least severely irritate a fat gaggle of residents and readers. Nearly every issue I scoped contained a letter to the editor concerning tenants' rights, land disputes, and snipes between community groups. Issues of race and class were embedded in these like a slug lodged in a stiff's brainbox.

That summer brought heat waves of all sorts. There was the natural phenomenon itself, which, as any reader of Romeo and Juliet knows, portends nothing good. Then there were the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council (JPNC) elections, which were fiercely contested. And, a week later, El Oriental de Cuba was firebombed. The more I read, the more I felt like a bachelor trying to figure out what had gone rotten in his fridge. My sniffer pointed at the fuzzy black mold gestating in last week's political leftovers.

Residents reported that El Oriental de Cuba was often the scene of debate over Cuban politics. They also mentioned that local suits in the public office held informal meetings there. While most denied that this could lead to such a despicable crime, there was further speculation on who the arsonist was actually trying to hit. Some said he was going for the tenants of the apartments above the shop - which is much more consistent with the pattern that would later emerge. Weeks later residents of a Paul Gore St apartment would submit a frustrated letter to the editor criticizing the JPNC. El Oriental is at the corner of Centre and Paul Gore; and JP Auto Body is just down the street. That has to mean something. The threads of a theory were there, but I didn't know how to crochet.

One thing I did know: though the M.O. was different, this was definitely the work of our bug. One man tried pursuing him after the fire at El Oriental started, and his description fits the surveillance from the Sigourney Street fires. But it was beginning to seem that he was just a puppet on a string held by a twisted group of puppeteers.

Further reading laid out yet more disputes over land and the elections. Reports of voter intimidation surfaced, coinciding with those from the '03 elections. There's not a clear connection (or else the case would be closed), but I was starting to think that somehow our shamuse was not operating solitarily on the revenge motive, and that there was some salt to the notion of this being the work of a gang of some sort. A gang potentially with friends in high places. And I'm not talking the Treefort Club, unless they own property or have their hands in electoral cookie jars.

Turner holds steadfast to the profile we've already developed - a solo flyer with a racial chip on his shoulder. I did read about a rash of arsons that occurred in the '70s and '80s, when our perp was still in his underoos. This follows the profile Turner researched, which suggests a prior influence from or fascination with fire setting. Still, I've got my hunches and he's got his. But perhaps it works better this way - with two different theories, we can keep each other sharp and steer clear of outright conspiracy over cold facts and observation.

We've got a lot of dots to connect and some sketches to color. Our time at the library also left us with a host of new contacts with whom we will be getting in touch. This thing's about as cold as a burning tire in July, so updates will be soon and maybe even regular.

Set a Course for Justice

It was good to see Franklin back from Hotlanta relatively unscorched, but we'd only run into each other on a few social occasions and the case was going cold as pizza left overnight. We needed to act fast, no matter how good a day-old pizza sounded. Hastily, we met to talk about where things stood and where to go next. It was an overcast but still nice day, and as the office wasn't covered in bees, we set up shop.

"When all leads seem dead, start at the beginning" is the kind of advice I'd expect a mentor to give me, if we'd actually be trained by one. So, we went back to the articles we looked at on Day One and the maps from Day, uh, Several. We knew we needed a snitch, someone who knew the area well and knew the cases better. We pulled a name from the local paper and vowed to at least shoot him an e-mail. If we got a slant of some of scenes, that might also work as some kind of a lead; failing that, there was always the library, the archives or the Buttons.

While looking through our old materials, we came across a mention of a Real Estate fire. This was news to me, Franklin was blank on it as well. We noted it down, but as the night air cooled we gathered our things to head into the Waiting room to finish; preferring to be hard-boiled, not frozen. Something caught Franklin's attention, and he demanded to see the Surveillance photos we pulled. Taking a closer look, there were a few things we saw:

• This cat looks like he's fairly tall, in shape although not the most athletic chump, fairly dark hair, and what looks like muttonchops.
  
• He had a duffel bag, in which he could easily keep a gas can and a few matchbooks, as well as the hat he pulled out by the fourth photo.
• Putting the gas can in the bag, and either carrying or stuffing the tire in his bag, he wouldn't need to show up in a boiler at all. This, fits the profile we came up with.
• He wasn't wearing anything thicker than a t-shirt. After some quick digging on the weather, we crabbed that the weather couldn't've been more than the 23 to 37 degree range--he must have been cold.

There was one thing about the profile that Franklin needed to hear a second time: These kinds of perps usually use matches which they leave behind, or lighters which they take with them. He considered this for a minute.
"It has to be the book." He said. I looked at him quizzically for a moment, so he continued. "If the guy is lighting the tires with a lighter, it would take longer--which isn't easy with a lighter." He was right, the more I thought about it. Lighters would force him to get close to the tire and hold a flame on the gas for a while; A matchbook, he could light the whole thing and toss it into the tire before dusting.

There was one small thing that caught my eye, not as much a lead as a hunch. Looking at the difference between the first three scene photos, and the last one, there is a slight change in our guy. He stands taller and has a slight air of pride. I don't feel like he's congratulating himself on a job well done, my hunch is he's stepping back to see his latest work of art unfold. Franklin says he could see the confidence, but I don't think you could quote either of us on that second part.

A few days later, I tried to contact our egg at the paper. He got back to me, saying he couldn't comment but suggested trying the paper's archive or the library. It seemed that all signs pointed towards Boston Public Library.

Hotlanta - Oddly Not an Arsonist Hideout

Franklin here, back from a brief stint in Atlanta. Turner and I are still hot on the trail of our perp, and will be providing an update later this week. Before that, a few words on my travels. In Hotlanta I was shacked up in the new drug and sex-slave trade capital of the country, Gwinnett County. Unfortunately, the only drug I saw was aspirin, and the only slaves were consumers. But, I was witness to more than a few crimes. Here's the skinny:

Crime #1
Date: May 16th
Scene: House party
Some unscrupulous vandal tossed his cookies mid-conversation. My quick reflexes allowed me to dodge the spray, but the tile floor was not so lucky. I had a motive tagged to the guy before he even made it to the bathroom: Papa Stalin Vodka.

Crime #2
Date: May 22nd
Scene: A Room as Dark as the Night is Long
I was watching the new Star Trek flick. No complaints there. What's the crime? Zoe Saldana's getaway sticks glommed my ticker.

Crimes #3 & #4
Date: May 28th
Scene: G-Braves Stadium
Reports on the quality of a local baseball team were substantiated. But the establishment has a long way to go in theft prevention: $8.00 for a chili-cheese dog looks like highway robbery to me. Got to see Tom Glavine pitch holes through Cleveland's team before he was to move up to the major league Braves. Few days later an informant contacted me. Turns out he got sacked not long after the game. In a town of raw deals, Glavine was just handed a plate of sushi.

Crime #5
Date: May 30th
Scene: A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
Dames and eggs, such is the state of our tattered union: we Bay-staters enjoy reliable public transportation, clean politicians, and a uniform distribution of wealth, while in a secluded dump south of ATL, the conditions are simply medieval. I saw mugs and dolls alike carrying 36-inch shivs in broad daylight. Janes walking about advertising their wares like they were on eBay. Folks riding on horses instead of boilers. And the chow was barbaric: giant turkey gams and slabs of meat on sticks were hot items. The brew was alright. Most appalling of all was the state-sanctioned murder: At the end of the day, the mayor of the joint oversaw a duel. A duel that ended in the Big One. I was among the helpless onlookers encouraged to choose between the two contenders. Most of the crowd's support went to a regular roundheels; my guy definitely had the bulge on him. Or so I thought. Real quick-like he took a shiv across the throat, and that was that. Disgusted, I took a bunk and turned my better side to the Dirty Dirty forever.

Now that I'm back, expect updates to be more regular. Thanks to Turner for flying solo at the desk for a while.

New Informant Network

Well, again there aren't a lot of developments on the case. Still have to get a meeting with Franklin in soon as we can get some booze together.

However, one somewhat exciting development is that we've tapped into a larger network of Boston-based informants. This will get us some more readers--and hopefully some more leads--as well as getting us closer to upcoming cases. Be sure to check them out using the banner to the right.

If you're checking us out for the first time, don't just stand there in the doorway like a palooka, say something. If you've been here before say something anyway.