Thin Boiled Blood
Jewel
Atkins didn’t know how the Pearlmutters killed her Aunt, but she wanted me to
figure it out. “Why me and not the cops?” I asked the sultry redhead sitting
across from me on that humid September San Diego night.
“I’ve
talked to the police. Chief Caldwell said bring him some evidence and gave me
your name as a guy to get it. Sure, I can sue, but money isn’t justice.”
I
should’ve known right then she was trouble. A fat payout is the best justice
there is. But, she’d put two-hundred dollars on the desk for the consult and my
rent was due. “The Mr. and Mrs. Doctors social darlings have a motive?”
Redheads don’t always look great in black, but
this one was wearing a black snood with a big white diamond brooch broadcasting
money. She lit up a long Chesterfield.
“My Aunt was a bitch, and she liked to talk.
Especially about another patient who died of natural causes and recognized the
Doctors from Berlin.”
“Berlin?”
I was there at eighteen, and saw the ruin and the Russians. I wasn’t letting go
of this case.
“The
Pearlmutters worked as researchers at the Beelitz sanitarium complex. State of
the art in the teens. Hitler recuperated from a war wound there.”
“And
this other patient…”
“Sadie
Reynolds. Fifth cousin of the tobacco Reynolds making the Grand Tour in 1909.
They thought she had TB, but it was just bad bronchitis. She told my Aunt.”
“If they know you know, too, you may be next
in line.”
“That’s
why I carry this.” She pulled a snub-nose .38 from her purse. “They’re not
going to experiment on me.”
***
My
first stop was Ol’ Man Rivers⸺alias John Robinson, who tended bar at the Loaded
Dice, an upscale cop club in the down and out Southeast Dago. He was a
listening kinda guy who made money on the side by talking. I paid him a Jackson
for a fifty-cent tap.
“The
word is there’s been an outbreak of death at St. Elizabeth’s hospital,’ Rivers
said.
“Old
age can be lethal.”
“Yeah,
so’s weak blood.”
That
threw me. How does blood get weak? “Maybe it’s the water.”
“You
need to talk to Pretty Willie.”
I
left a message with the OD at Navy Hospital, and waited in Pepper Grove in
Balboa Park, knowing Corpsman Willie would be there for some lunchtime action
with Al Fresco. “Tell me about weak blood, Willie.”
He
shrugged. I wasn’t leaving until he gave me the goods. “It’s called anemia. You
don’t want clots in your arteries, so you either drink a lot of wine or take a
blood thinner. But, too much and your blood turns to water and you die from
lack of oxygen.” He looked at his watch.
“It
takes while though, right? You don’t just keel over.”
“Sometimes.
You can bleed out inside⸺spontaneous hemorrhage in the brain or the heart.
Bingo! You’re dead.”
“Is
it…painful?”
“Hell
yeah! All that blood seeping out of the veins and the arteries, pouring into
the narrow space between the muscles and the skin?” He checked his watch again.
“I gotta go.”
“Where?
It ain’t like you’re tellin’ me State secrets.”
Willie
stood, reached in his pocket and pulled out a paper clip. “Take this to Parker
Hunt down at Shooters. Tell him Willie sent you.” He walked towards the leather
jacketed young man who’d just parked his motorcycle by the drinking fountain.
***
Shooters
was a vet’s hang-out at the foot of Broadway. Hunt was a legend who’d busted a
bunch of Commies out in Vegas. But what did he know about a paper clip and the
Pearlmutters? He gave me a wide smile and led me to the last booth.
“So,
Willie sent you. Well, you’d stumble on this sooner or later. Yeah, the
government brought over a lot of ex-Nazis to do scientific research. Some
helped us with the bomb. Maybe the Pearlmutters have medications they haven’t
helped us with.”
“The
question is, would the government let the Pearlmutters kill to protect their
identity until it gets the information they have?”
“Your goddamnnned right it would.”
The
afternoon pie and coffee crowd was straggling in. Hunt left to man the
register, and I watched the battered bodies of ex-soldiers who never hesitated
twelve years ago limp and drag themselves onto red vinyl stools and booth
benches.
***
Jewel
Atkins got a lot for her two-hundred dollars. I knew when I told her the truth
about the justice she’d never get from the law, she’d fork over five grand and
the .38 to buy it. What did I care if Ol’ Man Rivers, pretty Willie, and Parker
Hunt all knew I had motive, means and opportunity. We’re all veterans. Just
because a surrender was signed by a bunch of politicians didn’t mean we had to
stop killing Nazis.
Jewel
came again at night. Sleek and lovely, she turned off my desk lamp, and let the
moonlight caress her shadow as I served her a dink of gin and truth.
“You’d
kill them for me?” Jewel asked after our lips met in the darkness of my office,
my hands feeling the charms hidden by silk and chiffon.
“Your
goddamned right I would.”
A
man who doesn’t hesitate to answer a direct question tells you a lot. You know
he’s a man who’d do anything to help a lady in distress. Especially a lady like
Jewel, who made you weak and your blood boil.
“Then
take the money,” she whispered, her tongue tickling my ear. “Take the gun. Take
me.”
***
Yeah,
I knew she was trouble and murder is wrong. Maybe I even knew we’d be caught
and that five grand would go to some scuzbag lawyer for a plea bargain that
robbed me of my P.I. license. Maybe I knew Jewel would leave me⸺but, would I do
it again for justice for two old ladies who didn’t deserve to die? Your
goddamned right I would.
Jenean
McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, who taught Political Science
and Sociology. Her fiction, poetry, and photographs have been published in over
a hundred and eighty print and on-line journals. She won the Eastern Kentucky
English Department Award for Graduate Creative Non-fiction in 2011, and a
Silver Pen Award in 2015 for her noir short story: Red’s Not Your Color. Her
novels and collections can be found on Amazon and Lulu.com.
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Short Fiction