Smith's Monthly #16 Read online

  The Kid looked stunned. “Wow, do I have a lot to learn.”

  “Give it time,” I said, heading toward the front door of the casino.

  A moment later the guy who had tried to get a read on me came out of the front door and turned to the left toward one of the parking lots. When he got there, he climbed into an old Ford that looked like it had seen its better days.

  Then he just sat behind the wheel as if he had no place to go.

  More than likely, if my sense of him was right, he didn’t.

  The Kid and I stood off to one side near a truck so we could watch him and not be seen. I had on my black leather coat and hat that was my superhero uniform, but I could still feel the cold wind. The Kid was in a short-sleeved golf shirt and he was shaking already.

  “You might want to learn to always wear a jacket of some sort in a poker room,” I said. “Both for sitting under air-conditioning and for this job.”

  “I’ll remember that,” he said, his teeth almost chattering.

  “Where you from?” I asked.

  “Southern California,” he said.

  “You want to go back in for your coat?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll make it.”

  At that moment the guy in the car moved. But he didn’t go to turn on his car. Instead, he reached over to his glove box and opened it and pulled out what looked to be a pistol of some type.

  “Shit, he’s going to off himself,” The Kid said, starting to run at the car.

  I jumped us out of time again, then called for The Kid to hold on. He stopped and waited for me.

  “I really need to learn how to do that,” he said.

  Then he followed me over to the car as I opened the car door, took the gun from the guy’s hand, unloaded the clip, made sure there was no round anywhere in the gun, then put the gun back in the guy’s hand, closed the door and indicated that The Kid should follow me away from the car.

  “You were sure right about the guy,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “Just reading people,” I said.

  We got back to where we had been and I let us go back into the flow of time. The wind again hit us hard and The Kid shivered.

  “Follow my lead completely,” I said and he nodded as we started back toward the guy’s car.

  He didn’t see us coming. He just kept staring at the gun in his hands until I knocked on the window and startled him.

  He tried to hide the gun by dropping it on the floor before he opened the car door and stepped out into the cold.

  “Yeah,” he said. “So you two really are together.”

  “Not really,” I said. “In fact, we just met tonight at the table, but we were both worried about you.”

  “You are the only people on the planet who are,” he said, the sarcasm clear in his voice. “Thanks.”

  He was in even worse shape than I thought.

  I turned on what I call my “empathy-power” and directed it at the guy. And also the power I call “tell-me-the-truth.” With both of those powers directed at the poor guy, he had no choice but to tell me what was going on like I was a trusted counselor he had poured his heart out to for years.

  “So how bad is it?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

  “No job, my wife left me six months ago, I’m homeless, and you took the last of my money. I don’t even have gas money to get off this stupid mountain and back to Portland. That’s how bad.”

  “That’s bad,” I said, nodding.

  Beside me The Kid nodded, but said nothing.

  “So what did you do for a living?” I asked.

  He laughed. “What every other unemployed person around this area did. I worked construction. Actually, I had my own construction business, had a dozen guys working for me, building some of the best custom homes in Oregon. Bobby C. Davis Construction.”

  He said the name of his business with pride and I suddenly had a great idea to help this guy not put the barrel of that gun in his mouth.

  I laughed. “Great meeting you,” I said and extended my hand. “I’m Gary Barnes.”

  Gary Barnes was one of my fake names I used in the real world when I had to. Actually, everyone around this casino called me Gary and my doublewide trailer a couple miles away was under that name as well.

  The kid stepped forward to shake the guy’s hand. “I’m Roger Stevens,” he said.

  I had a hunch that was a made-up name by The Kid as well.

  “Bob Davis,” the guy said, now even more puzzled.

  I kept the empathy power turned on high and focused at him and then also turned on my “trust-me” power. This poor guy was putty in my hands, especially in his depressed condition. Luckily, I only used my powers for good.

  “I actually looked for your business a few months back,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was a poker player. Lying was part of our job description. “I’ve been wanting to build a custom home on some property I have near here, a big, beautiful custom home, and your firm was recommended to me a number of times.”

  “Really?” he asked, smiling. Then his mood turned again. “See how quality work turns out?” He pointed at the old car he was driving. “I sold my rig and most of my tools to get living money and money to pay my child support. I hoped to win enough tonight to make next month’s payment and get a little apartment. That went well as you know.”

  “How old are your children?” The Kid asked, expertly moving the subject from the guy’s loss to something better.

  The guy seemed to melt at the mention of them. “Six and eight,” he said.

  “I think they would rather have their father than money,” I said.

  He shrugged, but I could tell he wasn’t so sure.

  FOUR

  “Tell you what, Bob,” I said. “How about you go to work for me and my girlfriend and build us the house of our dreams?” I sure hoped Patty had some idea of what would make a good custom home. I didn’t.

  He looked at me and then smiled, but shook his head. “I don’t have the tools or even a truck or a place to stay.”

  “None of that’s a problem,” I said, laughing. “I need someone with your skill. I’ve got a doublewide close to here that I’m not using that you can live in for free, and I’ll fund you for a new truck and tools. Besides that, I’ll put you on a regular salary for as long as it takes to build the house. And from what Patty and I want, that might take some time. All custom.”

  We all three stood there in the cold wind as he stared at me, again trying to get a read on me.

  Luckily, this time it didn’t take as long as at the poker table.

  “Are you for real?” he asked. “You can’t really be scamming me. I’ve got nothing more anyone could take.”

  “I’m not kidding,” I said. “I was hoping to hire someone with your skill to build me a house here and from the looks of your situation, I can get you cheaper than you used to charge. A good deal for me.”

  With that he laughed. “Yeah, a bunch cheaper, to be honest.”

  “Do we have a deal?” I asked, extending my hand. “You come to work for me and build me the best damn place you can. And maybe by the time you’re done, the economy will have turned a little and you can ramp your business back up. Or come down to Vegas and help me build a house there after you’re done here.”

  He hesitated for only a moment, looking me right in the eyes, and then he nodded and shook my hand, smiling. “We have a deal. Thanks. You need to know you just saved my life.”

  “Actually,” I said, waving off his thank you. “You just saved me from moving away from a place I love. But we have to make one more agreement.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, looking suddenly worried.

  “You won’t come in here while you work for me to do anything but have dinner. You’re a fine poker player, but you need to play for the right reasons.”

  “Deal,” he said, smiling. “And after we get the house done, maybe you can give me some lessons.”

  “That I can
do,” I said, smiling.

  I handed him a few hundred dollars and pointed at the gas station and grocery across the highway. “This is an advance. I’m going to go cash out my chips. You need to get some gas and some food to stock a fridge for later and breakfast. There’s not a damn thing in that doublewide. Meet me back here in twenty minutes.”

  “Got it, boss,” he said, smiling, the look of desperation now completely gone from his eyes, replaced with a glimmer of hope.

  Halfway back across the cold parking lot, The Kid finally broke his silence. “That felt great helping him like that. Is that what it’s like being a superhero?”

  “Sometimes, yeah, it is. On the good nights.”

  We walked a little ways in silence again before he asked the next question.

  “You really wanted to build a house up here?”

  I laughed. “I hadn’t actually thought of it until tonight. But I own some nice land on hills around here as well as my doublewide. And Patty, my girlfriend, won’t stay up here with me because my place is so shabby. So I might as well build a house with her help so she’ll come up here at times.”

  “You like it here that much?” The Kid asked as we got close to the front doors.

  “I do,” I said.

  “So you saved a man’s life and helped yourself at the same time. You are good. Both at poker and at life.”

  “Is there much difference?” I asked, repeating a phrase that Stan once said to me when I was starting out.

  “Not when you play them both the way you do,” The Kid said, holding the front door of the Casino open for me.

  And that was one of the nicest things anyone had said to me in a long time. I was going to like this kid.

  Sent to investigate the sudden appearance of the statue of a naked woman in a park, Pilgrim Hugh must first decide if placing a statue without permission constitutes a crime?

  And why the statue of the naked woman lost all her personal parts? Are those missing personal parts the answer to the origin of the statue?

  Another strange Pilgrim Hugh Incident.

  MISS SMALLWOOD’S GOODIES

  A Pilgrim Hugh Incident

  ONE

  Pilgrim Hugh stared at the lifelike statue of the naked and blue woman.

  Actually, she wasn’t completely naked. She wore a large cowboy hat and carried a large revolver in her right hand pointed upward. Her finger was on the trigger like she was about to blow a hole in the rim of her hat.

  The last days of summer were just starting to fade, but the temperature for the Portland, Oregon, area still seemed too high at eighty-five. The statue stood in a park in a suburban town of Portland called Hillsboro. The Chief of Police of Hillsboro had called Pilgrim to figure out where the statue had come from. The statue seemed to have just appeared late last night and a couple mothers of small children had complained this morning.

  Hillsboro, it seemed, wasn’t used to getting statues donated to their parks in the middle of the night.

  Over the last few years as a freelance private detective and lawyer, Pilgrim had gotten some strange calls, and this was another of the strange ones, of that there was no doubt.

  After he’d gotten out of law school, he had tried to work in corporate law. He had managed two years, the exact same amount of time his first marriage lasted. Basically he had become bored with both.

  Then his grandmother on his long-dead mother’s side, a woman he barely knew, died and left him more money than even he could imagine or try to spend.

  Two months after being divorced and out of work he had become free to do what he wanted.

  His choice, as any young person might do, was a year of drinking and traveling around the world. Somewhere in the alcoholic haze, there was another even shorter marriage.

  Eventually he went back to school to become a private detective, figuring that wouldn’t be as boring as the law practice was.

  Most of the training was not like the books about private detectives he loved to read. In fact most of what he had done was learn how to track someone by computer and look up financial records.

  Finally, out of desperation to do something interesting, he set up his own combination law and private detective firm, hired a couple of talented associate lawyers to handle the really boring cases, and offered his services for free to the different city police departments around the Portland metropolitan area.

  Hugh and Associates now occupied three floors in a downtown Portland high-rise. He had started out rich from his grandmother and managed to get even richer by hiring the right people and taking the right cases over the last few years.

  Carrie, Pilgrim’s assistant, limo driver, and best friend, stood beside him, staring at the blue statue. Today Carrie had on a green University of Oregon sweatshirt (that didn’t hide her figure much at all) and a pair of white shorts that also hid little. Even in her late thirties, she could still have been modeling.

  Pilgrim was over six feet tall and Carrie usually seemed to tower over him because of tall heels. But today they were the same height since she had on a rare pair of tennis shoes that matched her outfit perfectly.

  Carrie was about to finish her last year of law school at the University of Oregon and join the legal side of Pilgrim’s firm. But until that day, she paid for her apartment and food and school by being his assistant and driver when she wasn’t in class.

  He was going to miss her when her last year of law school started back up later in the month. They were such a good team.

  The statue was anchored to what looked like a concrete slab and on the face of the slab was a name. “Miss Smallwood.”

  “Very lifelike,” Carrie said, moving around the statue.

  The blue statue did look very, very lifelike. No question there. Except the skin was perfectly smooth, the naked breasts had no nipples and were perfectly smooth, and the crotch of the statue looked like it came from a doll, also perfectly smooth with no attempt to make it lifelike in any way.

  The eyes were open, yet showed no detail.

  The entire thing felt creepy. Even in the bright sunlight and hot day.

  TWO

  The park that now held the Miss Smallwood statue was only one block wide and a block long, surrounded by a sidewalk. A few other sidewalks wound into the trees and to a new playground in the far corner. A very nice neighborhood park, very well maintained.

  The statue had been placed near the sidewalk facing an apartment complex across the street. In fact, it seemed to really be staring at that apartment building.

  Pilgrim looked over at it, following the direction of the statue’s look. The apartment looked to be a renovated old hotel of some sort. Stone and brick exterior, large windows. A nice place from the looks of it.

  Pilgrim moved over and stared at the large revolver in the statue’s hand. It looked real and from what he could tell the artist had depicted it with one shell missing.

  “Know anything about guns?” Pilgrim asked Carrie.

  “It’s a revolver,” Carrie said. “That’s about it.”

  Pilgrim laughed. “I knew that much.”

  “Frank from the estate planning part of your office is a gun nut,” Carrie said. “You want me to send him a picture?”

  “Might as well,” Pilgrim said. He doubted it would make any difference but it never hurt to get the details together.

  Carrie started back toward the limo that served as an office for them. Pilgrim had every possible modern device he could think of in that car, from high-speed computer connections to sophisticated camera and listening equipment.

  He moved closer and tapped the hard surface of the statue. It felt like a plastic resin of some sort.

  He moved around the statue, studying every tiny detail. Clearly the statue had been made by a mold. And then polished and finished with a clear, thick blue resin compound. The resin looked to be almost a quarter inch thick in some places.

  Fantastic work. Not a mark or seam anywhere.

  The statue was clearly
made from the mold of a real woman. Her legs were slightly too long for her final height, her hips just a touch too wide, and the right breast was slightly larger than the other.

  A perfect statue, no marks at all, yet not a perfect woman as the subject.

  Pilgrim stepped back and realized he was shivering slightly even with the heat of the day.

  This statue just flat gave him the creeps.

  He walked in a large circle around the statue, just trying to let his mind take in the details. It had been placed near the entrance to the park, between where a sidewalk split. But it hadn’t been placed looking directly at the walkway, but instead at a slight angle staring off at the nearby apartment across the street.

  With as perfect as this statue was done, why mess up the placement? Pilgrim would bet it wasn’t messed up. It was intentional.

  Carrie came back with the camera, snapped a couple of close-ups of the revolver in the statue’s hand and then sent the images from the camera back to the office.

  Then she put the camera down and picked up what looked like an iPad and aimed it at the statue.

  “Shit!” she said, staring at the device in her hands.

  “What?” Pilgrim asked, moving over toward her.

  She had turned her back on the statue and was clearly trying to catch her breath.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  She shook her head yes, then showed him the image on the device.

  “I wanted to see what the inside of the statue looked like,” she said.

  All Pilgrim could do was stare at the image on the device. No wonder the statue wasn’t perfect. It was an actual woman inside that resin.

  He could see every detail of her skeleton. Her insides had been cleaned out like they did with embalming. Metal bars ran up both legs. Another was up her spine and through her neck to hold her head.

  Pilgrim turned to look at the woman frozen like a statue. “Whoever did this cut off the woman’s nipples and smoothed over any sign.”