Adam Duke PI: The
By Chris Van der Linde
Intuition Press. Copyright 2003 by Intuition Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission from Intuition Press. Reviewers may quote passages for publication.
~~~ Chapter One ~~~
“Shit!”
he said out loud as the bullet hit the brickwork above his head, stinging his
face and eyes with mortar and dust before ricocheting off down the darkened
alley behind him.
“I don’t believe this! Some fucker is
shooting at me!!” he said, not so loud this time, as another bullet hit the
corner of the building he had dived behind after the first shot.
He dropped to his knees and slipped down the alley and around the corner
of another building, hoping to blend into the shadows and, at the same time,
make a smaller target for the bastard out there who was trying to kill him.
The noise of the shots was almost deafening as they echoed in the
darkness. He looked up at the buildings around him briefly wondering if someone
might help him or at least call the police, but he saw lights being turned off
and heard windows being slammed shut, their noise almost as frightening as the
sounds of the gunfire.
Obviously seriously fucking concerned citizens, he cursed to himself as
another bullet searched for him in the gloom.
Ok, he thought as he rummaged through his coat and pant pockets, what
have I got to get me out of this?
His search revealed a stick of gum, a condom which had been in his pocket
so long that the print had worn off the packaging, some loose change, his
wallet and a Swiss Army knife.
Great, he thought. If he gets close enough I can fuck him to death
without fear of a sexually transmitted infection or if I find a bicycle I can
fix it and escape.
He looked around the alley.
Why is it that in all the movies there is always an iron bar lying
around somewhere but when it comes to real life there’s fuck all?
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps slowly and
quietly making their way down the alley from the street.
He frantically looked around for an escape route but saw that it was a
blind alley. The only way out was the direction that the footsteps were coming
from.
Looks like there is nothing else for it, he reasoned, he would have to
give it a go.
He looked down at the knife and figured that, out of all the
attachments, the fish-scaling blade would be the best. It might not kill but at
least it would give the prick a nasty scar to remember him by.
He flattened himself against the wall as he heard the steps getting
closer and gripped the knife ready to thrust for the throat when his assailant
rounded the corner.
His heart was racing.
He knew he didn’t have much of a chance against a gun but if he was
going to die in this piss stinking alley then it was going to be with a fight.
He saw the faint shadow of a person grow on the alley floor as they
approached the corner where he was hiding.
All of his nerves were on edge and he was almost humming with tension as
the figure rounded the corner where he stood.
He sprang from the wall and his arm was a vicious blur as it arced
unerringly towards its target, but in a fraction of an instant he realised that the person before him was no assailant.
His mind raced as it took in the ragged clothes and the ravaged,
toothless face of a drunkard.
He willed his arm to stop but it seemed to be on its own mission. He
only succeeded in limiting its arc enough for it to slice through the collar of
the drunk’s shirt and scratch across his neck, drawing a fine bead of blood and
leaving in its wake an intricate necklace of minute red pearls.
Then four things happened in the same instant. The drunk screamed, an
odd high-pitched squeal, and dropped his bottle of wine, which hit the pavement
at exactly the same time as his bowels loosened and Adam Duke raced out of the
alley into the night with the sound of sirens echoing from somewhere in the
distance.
~~~~~~~~~~
Duke stood in the darkness across the road from his apartment, which was
located above his office in one of the less salubrious sections of town, and
watched the unlit windows as a light drizzle fell.
He pulled the collar of his leather jacket up around his ears, quietly
stamped his feet to keep warm and thought about a cigarette.
He hadn’t smoked for years but, then again, he hadn’t been shot at for
years either. He dismissed the idea as the drizzle suddenly turned into a cold
rain and he warily crossed the street to his apartment building.
Duke cautiously climbed the stairs and entered his ramshackle apartment
half expecting his assailant to leap out from behind a door or one of the
threadbare curtains that barely covered the grimy windows of his flat.
He quickly and efficiently searched the three rooms that comprised his
home and once he was sure that no-one was inside, he set about trying to find
out if anyone had been there in his absence.
He checked the windows for signs of entry, looked to see if any of the
threads he placed across the doorjamb had been broken and examined the phone
and the few light fittings for signs of bugs.
Once he was satisfied that his apartment hadn’t experienced any
unwelcome guests he locked the windows and deadlocked the front door.
Satisfied that he was as safe as his flat allowed, he walked into his
bedroom. He quietly moved his bed to one side, threw the suitcases and junk
that had accumulated under his bed aside and rolled up the imitation antique
mat to reveal a small floor safe embedded into the concrete floor.
Duke spun through the combination, opened the safe and sat back looking
at its contents for a moment.
The small safe contained only a few items. There were some shares that
he had bought as a young man in a company that has ceased to exist many years
ago, but he had held onto the certificates for two reasons.
For one, he irrationally thought that the company might somehow
resurrect itself and he would be worth millions, and secondly, he liked the
look of the certificates. They possessed a beautiful and elegant artwork that
at least made him think that they were worth something, even though he knew
they weren’t.
The safe also contained the dried out shell of a cockroach.
How the hell had that got in there? Duke wondered, as he gently picked
it up by one of its legs and examined it closely. Apparently these little
fuckers were the only things that would come through a nuclear holocaust
unscathed he had read somewhere.
Well this one wouldn’t, but far be it for him to disturb the dead he
thought, as he carefully placed it back in its final resting-place.
The last thing in the safe was a bulky item wrapped in a ragged, old
t-shirt. He pulled it out and unrolled the cloth to reveal a Walther PPK pistol
in a well worn but well oiled shoulder holster and two boxes of ammunition.
Duke pulled the gun from the holster in a smooth practiced action and
the weapon gleamed dully in the diffuse light of his bedroom as he turned it
over in his hands.
The Walther was an old firearm by today’s standards but it was foolproof
and accurate and had saved him a number of times throughout his life.
He leaned back against the bed-head studying the gun and thinking that
he didn’t like to use lethal weapons at all, but some asshole was out there
trying to do him terminal harm and he was not about to let it happen without a
fight.
Some prick had just picked a fight that he was going to lose, Duke
thought grimly as he handled the gun.
He absently checked and loaded the Walther and remembered how he had
hoped that he would never have to carry it again. He had almost thrown it away
a number of times but something had stopped him and tonight he was glad he had
kept it for a rainy day, so to speak.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adam Duke was a private investigator.
He was not a successful private investigator.
He had been a successful soldier and he had been a successful police
officer, but he had never really settled well into either job.
He had joined the army as a very young man for the big boy’s toys. Guns,
tanks, grenades and playing at war were fun for a while.
He had seen some covert action in places where his army was never
supposed to have been and had been involved in one or two black ops, something
he was not proud of and never talked about.
Duke had always questioned but never understood the politics of his
government when they sent him to some country to be an adviser one year and
sent him back to oust the party he has helped the next.
He tired of it all after two five year stints which saw him promoted to
the rank of major and thought that being a cop might be a more meaningful
career.
The toys were slightly different: guns, handcuffs and power over the
powerless, but when his division was hit by a graft investigation he decided it
was time to leave.
Duke didn’t condone graft, although the way he looked at it, it was just
the scumbags paying the scumbags in uniform and as long as no innocent parties
were involved it wasn’t really his concern.
Except that he knew he didn’t want to be placed in a life and death
situation with the kind of cops who take a bribe. The longer he worked with
bent cops the harder he found it to put his trust and ultimately his life in
the hands of people who were patently untrustworthy.
The Commission of Enquiry into corruption scored a few minions and made
them scapegoats but he knew that the Enquiry had not really scratched the
surface, and when they came to him to go State’s evidence, he resigned.
He wasn’t about to be a dead hero when he knew that the Enquiry would
really change nothing. Greed is the same whether you peddle drugs on the
street, work addicted girls in brothels or skim it off the top for not busting
society’s parasites. As long as cops and criminals have contact, there will
always be corruption.
He quit the police service and decided to go into the private
investigation business. So far his investigating had been predominantly limited
to hunting down a few runaways and spying on unfaithful spouses who were
seeking some minor escape from the dreariness of their lives by having affairs
with other equally mundane and disillusioned souls.
If he put the reality of trying to earn a living aside, he saw that he
was living something of a fantasy. Some Marlowesque
private dick kind of life where he lived in the seedy part of town, had a run-down apartment over his decrepit office and
waited for the big case that would make his name.
Most of the time his army pension saw him through the
sparse times. It was unusually generous for
someone of his former rank, but then, not a lot of the mainstream enlisted
personnel had been to the places and done the things he had.
Silence had a price and the government set that price. They didn’t want
any memoirs popping up out of the blue from disgruntled ex-military types so
they bought them off with a nice little superannuation plan that lasted until
they opened their mouths to the wrong people.
~~~~~~~~~~
Duke lay back on the bed, fully clothed. No sense in being caught with
your pants down he reasoned.
As he put the holster on the dresser beside his bed and the pistol under
his pillow, he wondered why he was now the target of someone’s deadly attention
and as he began to drift into an uneasy sleep he wondered whether it had
anything to do with Jade Huntington.
~~~~~~~~~~
The next morning Duke was up early. He ate a sparse breakfast and headed
downstairs in his running outfit to jog the few kilometres
to the gym where he worked out on a regular basis.
At the gym Duke did a gruelling hour and a
half workout before jogging a little less enthusiastically back to his
apartment.
He went into the bathroom, stripped of his sweaty gear and paused in
front of the mirror before entering the shower.
Duke looked at himself in the mirror.
He was about six feet tall, broad shoulders, looked fit and had a
rugged, if not handsome, face. He flexed his still pumped muscles in the
mirror, gave himself a mental eight and a half out of
ten and dived into the now steaming shower.
It never ceased to amaze him how
What a load of crap.
The reality is that you have to keep fit to be fit. As Duke lathered
himself up he wondered why he had suddenly become the target of someone intent
to do him serious bodily harm.
Who had he pissed off?
Why had he pissed them off?
What had he said or dug up to piss anyone off?
He figured that the only way he was going to find out the answers to
these questions was to retrace his steps last night to see if his renewed
presence pushed anyone into a similar action.
However, this time he would be ready for the unexpected.
As he dressed he looked
out the window of his apartment and noted that it was a beautiful, almost balmy
winter’s day which was perfect for wearing a sports coat, which was perfect for
hiding the Walther.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Duke’s first stop was his last stop of the previous night, just before
his surprise attack.
The Loin Cloth bar and strip joint.
The Loin Cloth was one of those sleazy strip joints which was open 24
hours a day, sold alcohol to anybody who paid the extortionist entry fee and
had skinny, drugged-out teenagers performing lacklustre
strip routines on a beer soaked stage.
For the right amount, and it wasn’t much, these same teenagers would
also turn tricks in one of the small, crappy backrooms of the club.
The owner, operator and pimp of this sad and debauched little operation was Dmetri the Greek.
Duke walked through the matt black front door to be hit by the smell of
stale beer and old tobacco smoke which had been circulating in the
air-conditioning for a few years too long.
As he turned to walk down towards the back office a fleshy hand pressed
itself against his chest followed by, “Where the fuck do you think you’re
going, shithead?”
Duke looked down at the hand, along the arm it was connected to and up
into the snarling face of Bull Olsen.
Olsen was missed named. He looked less like a bull than a pit bull
terrier. He was squat, solid but gradually turning to fat, had mean piggy eyes
and one look would tell a reasonable person that he was vicious and cruel
hearted.
Bull Olsen was one of those tough-guy thugs who got a genuine pleasure
out of hurting people. He waited for the drunks who frequented the bar to do
anything that would justify beating the crap out of them and then he would do
just that for the sheer enjoyment of it.
A lot of the time he instigated trouble simply to give himself an excuse
to assault and batter some drunken fool who should have gone home instead of
going to the Loin Cloth for watered down alcohol and cheap, meaningless sex.
“I’m here to see Dmetri,” Duke said as he
brushed Olsen’s hand away.
Olsen stepped in front of Duke with a sneer contorting his ugly face.
“You were here last night. What, are you in
love with Dmetri or something, you fucking queer?”
Olsen didn’t like Duke and the feeling was mutual. Some time ago Olsen
had attempted to create an excuse to try to beat the shit out of one of Duke’s
army friends when the both of them had been celebrating the friend’s promotion.
Duke and his friend were fairly pissed when Olsen confronted them for
rowdy behaviour in the bar. Olsen didn’t know Duke
very well and simply assumed that he and his friend were an easy target, but
when he started to manhandle Duke’s friend, Duke seemed to sober up very
quickly.
Something in the way that Duke had slowly drawn himself up to his full
height and subtly rearranged his body prickled at the back of Olsen’s mind and
his animal cunning told him that maybe he should be a little cautious in the
way he handled the situation. The two men were simply asked to leave, which was
a rare, if not unheard of, occurrence when it came to Bull Olsen.
Olsen had never quite gotten over that night. Although nothing had
happened and no words of anger had been exchanged, in his mind he felt that
Duke has somehow belittled him, or intimidated him or something and he had held
a grudge against him ever since.
Whenever he saw Duke he took every opportunity to insult and incite him
into a fight without actually hitting him first. So far Duke had avoided any
confrontation and this made Olsen more positive that he had been wrong to let
him walk out of the bar that night.
The only reason why he didn’t hammer on Duke was because his boss, Dmetri, seemed to like the little asshole, but he knew one
day he was going to beat the crap out of him and he looked forward to that day.
With a little luck, he snickered to himself,
maybe today was going to be that day.
On Duke’s part, he simply saw Olsen for what he was, a brutal, mindless
dolt whose life and psyche were so twisted that he only got joy from pain.
Duke generally avoided Olsen when he could or ignored his obvious
provocation because he also knew that one day there would be the inevitable
confrontation that would lead to violence and pain.
Duke looked into the angry, goading eyes of Olsen and a swell of anger
rose in his mind, but he checked it in an instant and stepped around Olsen
without a word and headed towards Dmetri’s office.
He had only taken a few steps when a hand grabbed him on his right upper
arm and he was swung around to face Olsen who shouted, “I asked you a question,
you little fucker!”
In one swift movement Duke reached his left hand up and grabbed the
little finger of Olsen’s right hand and peeled it back from his arm. He bent it
straight back until he heard a distinct snap which was quickly followed by a surprised
and loud yelp of pain from Olsen.
Still holding Olsen’s finger, Duke grabbed Olsen’s right thumb in his
right hand and spread the fingers as far apart as he could as Olsen howled in
pain and rage and grabbed for Duke’s face with his left hand.
Duke swiftly stepped to his left and swung Olsen’s arm around and up
into a high hammerlock behind his back. Olsen teetered on his toes trying to
easy the pain in his arm and shoulder blade when Duke gave him a mighty shove
forward and at the same time slipped his right foot across in front of Olsen’s
legs.
Bull Olsen crashed face first to the bare concrete floor of the bar,
grazing the side of his face and nose on the rough surface.
With a roar of blind rage he scrambled to his feet and swung around
about to charge at Duke.
Duke took aim, and like a pro footballer lining up the winning goal, he
drew back his right leg and let fly with a powerful kick to Olsen’s groin.
Touchdown! he thought as he felt his shoe
crunch into Bull’s nuts.
The kick to the groin sent an agonising pain
shooting up through both of Olsen’s kidneys to peak in his brain in a flurry of
tiny lights.
As he doubled over from the agony of the blow, a knee suddenly appeared
in front of his eyes and squashed his nose across his face as his head snapped
back from the impact.
Blood gushed from his nose and down both sides of his mouth as his knees
turned to jelly and he wobbled slightly trying to see through the pain
radiating from his balls and his head.
He shook his head once, then twice to clear his vision and just when he
thought that the room was about to come into view his vision blurred and he
felt the hair on his head being held tightly by someone or something.
As he raised his hand to free himself from the grip a fist crashed
squarely into the side of his jaw. He felt something break inside his head and
his mouth filled with shards of teeth as he fell heavily to the floor.
He could smell beer and piss and he heard what sounded like people
laughing a long way off in the distance but he couldn’t quite get his mind or
his eyes to focus.
After what seemed to be ages Olsen realised
that he was on the floor of the Loin Cloth. He pushed himself up onto his hands
and knees and paused there for a while waiting for the nausea and the pain to
subside.
Just as he slowly got to his feet Duke stepped in front of him.
Olsen instinctively raised his hands to feebly fend off another attack
as he scrambled away.
Duke stood calmly in front of him with his arms loosely by his sides.
“Touch me again and I am going to hurt you. Is that clear?” Duke said.
Olsen hesitated, he was having trouble speaking. His broken teeth were
cutting the side of his tongue and his nose was blocked up with drying and
congealed blood.
“Yeah,” he finally said.
Duke took a half step toward Olsen, “What?”
“ Yeth, Mr Duke,” Olsen said spreading his arms wide
in supplication.
Duke shook his head, turned on his heal and walked towards Dmetri’s office. It’s amazing what you have to do to get a
little respect from anyone these days he thought.
Actually, he knew he had probably
overdone it with Olsen but he was feeling a little stressed about the events of
last night. And anyway, he had been pretty good to put up with Olsen’s shit for
so long.
However, he was glad that Olsen went down so easily because, although he
despised him, he hadn’t wanted to do him any permanent harm.
Dmetri was
standing in the doorway to his office with a port-wine cigar smouldering in the corner of a wry smile.
“You’re full of surprises, “ he said, “Where
did you learn that Rambo shit, the army?”
Duke just shrugged as he sat down in the leather chair in front of Dmetri’s expansive desk and studied the slight bruising
beginning on the knuckles of his left hand.
Dmetri stood in
the doorway watching Olsen stagger into the men’s room holding a bloodied bar
towel to his mouth and nose and he looked thoughtfully at Duke as he walked to
his desk and sat down.
“Bull had that coming from someone, but I didn’t think it would be you,”
he said. “If you could do that anytime, why did you put up with his crap for so
long?”
Duke looked at him with a half serious smile, “Hey, you know I’m a
sensitive new age guy. Violence is for the Neanderthals and men who just can’t
talk about their problems.”
Dmetri laughed a
booming laugh and Duke cracked one of his rare smiles.
“Yeah,” Dmetri said as he threw the morning’s
newspaper across the desk to Duke, “Talk about violence, look
at this. Some psycho fucking vigilante is running around cutting up on drunks.”
Duke glanced at the article which gave an embellished version of events
the previous night from the drunk’s perspective. Apparently he had noticed
someone acting suspiciously in the alley and being an upstanding citizen, went to investigate.
The drunk confronted the person who then attacked him. He claimed that
he valiantly defended himself before the unknown assailant attacked him with a
knife and fled, leaving him to bleed to death in the alley.
There was no mention in the story of any shots being heard by the drunk
or anyone, for that matter.
Shitting yourself is a novel form of defence
Duke thought sardonically as Dmetri cleared his
throat noisily to gain Duke’s attention.
“Ok,
so it seems to me that you are unhappy about something, am I correct?” Dmetri asked, leaning forward, arms wide and palms pressed
down on the desk as if he were some regal personage about to bestow a royal favour.
“You could say that,” Duke said as he leaned back in the chair and
crossed his legs.
“A couple of minutes after I left here last night some bastard took a
few shots at me and I think they were playing for keeps,” he said, all the
while watching Dmetri’s face carefully.
“Shots, like gun shots you mean?” Dmetri
asked.
“Yeah, a lot like fucking gun shots,” Duke replied a little
sarcastically.
All of a sudden a light seemed to go on in Dmetri’s
head and it was revealed in his eyes.
“Hey, what the fuck are you trying to imply here?!’ he shouted. “I treat
you like a fucking son since I’ve known you, you come in here busting up my
employees and then you accuse me of trying to top you! You fucking piece of
shit! Get the fuck out of my office!! Get the fuck out of my life!!! ”
Dmetri then
launched into a long winded summary of all the things he had done for Duke, how
he had looked after him, treated him like one of the family and so on.
Duke watched Dmetri casually and closely. He
had known him for years now and had seen the same performance many times when Dmetri had screwed over some unfortunate business colleague
unlucky enough to trust his money and his dreams to Dmetri
Slavacopolous.
However this performance seemed a little different somehow. Duke had a
feeling that Dmetri was not involved in the attempt
on his life last night and decided that now was not the right time to question Dmetri’s friendship, or his patronage.
Being Dmetri’s friend did have its benefits.
“Dmetri!” he said and an undertone in his
voice stopped Dmetri mid-sentence. “I’m sorry to have
even considered doubting your friendship.”
Dmetri had been
in full flight and wasn’t quite done when Duke had interrupted him. He was
about to launch into another diatribe when Duke cut him off.
“Forgive me?” he said with a look
of contrition and sincerity on his face.
Dmetri’s ego swelled and his earlier good humor gradually began creeping back at
the sight of his friend’s repentance.
“That’s ok,” he said after a moment’s silence. He walked around his desk
and put a beefy arm around Duke’s shoulders, “I would have come looking for me
too,” he said and laughed.
Dmetri genuine
liked Duke for reasons he had not questioned, but if he had, he probably would
have thought that it was because Duke was not like him.
He would have thought that Duke had a certain naiveness, no maybe it was not naiveness,
it was a certain set of values or a view of the world that was anachronistic.
He believed in virtues and chivalry, honour and
honesty, faithfulness and loyalty.
It was rare to find one of these characteristics in people nowadays let
alone the whole box of dice in one person. Maybe that was the naive bit, Duke lived by these values and expected everyone else
to live by them as well.
The moment between them was interrupted by a knock on the office door.
“What?!” Dmetri barked.
The door to the office slowly opened and Olsen entered the room. His
face looked like some grotesquely painted jack-o-lantern, with both his eyes
already swelling shut and turning blue-black.
His nose was so badly broken it looked like it was facing sideways on
his face and when he opened his mouth to speak, two
front teeth were noticeably missing.
Olsen avoided looking in Duke’s direction as he spoke to his boss.
“I fink I haff ta go
ta da hosfpital,”
he managed to get past his swollen tongue and aching jaw.
“Good idea, you do that Bull,’ Dmetri replied.
“See you later.”
Bull Olsen shuffled out of the office and when the door closed both men
looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
“Ok,” Dmetri said, “Tell me what happened.”
Duke told him what little there was to tell about the shooting, omitting
of course to mention the aborted attack on the bum in the alley.
He hesitated only briefly before telling Dmetri
about his faint suspicion that it may have something to do with the
Duke watched Dmetri reach for another cigar
and carefully light it. His eyes were hooded by a deep brow and as the match
flared Duke saw a glint of something hard and dark in the eyes that looked past
the end of the glowing cigar directly into his own.
As Dmetri sat back to ponder upon what he had
been told, Duke did a little pondering himself.
He
thought about Dmetri, who often said that he had been
a poor Greek immigrant when he landed on these shores some twenty years ago,
but he spoke with almost no accent and the inflections on some words indicated
that he had lived in
He
certainly looked the part of the
stereotypical Greek with his solid build, olive complexion, loud taste in
clothes and heavy gold chains and bracelets.
When he was a cop and had first met Dmetri,
Duke had run a national check on him and then an Interpol check, both of which
had come up completely blank.
The up side of that was that he had no criminal record, but the more
disturbing downside was that no one by that name existed – anywhere. Duke had
not acted on his information as, in reality, there was nothing to act on, no crime had technically been committed.
He simply stored it away for future reference.
Dmetri,
international man of mystery Duke mused, and, as if he had been talking out
loud, Dmetri came out of his reverie and looked at
Duke with a quizzical expression on his face.
“My friend,” he said as he stubbed out the forgotten cigar in the
oversized ashtray in front of him, “I’ll ask a few of my other friends, speak
to a some people I know and get back to you with anything I find out, ok?”
“Fine,” Duke replied, “I would appreciate your help.”
“As always, I will be indebted to you if you can help me out,” Duke went
on.
“Here’s my new number.”
He passed Dmetri a thin, dog-eared business
card that had his name, business address, office and mobile phone numbers on
it.
“We’ll speak soon,” Dmetri said as Duke got up
to leave.
As he neared the doorway Dmetri said, “Hey,
Duke, until you hear from me go easy on the
“Ok,” Duke replied as he left the office, gently closing the door as he
went.
“You take care, Adam,” Dmetri almost whispered
to himself as he stared at Duke’s business card and slowly turned it between
his fingers.
As Duke walked through the bar he was surprised to hear a number patrons
cheering and whistling him, and a few locals even slapped him on the back and
congratulated him for finally giving Olsen what he deserved.
Ahh, me
public, Duke thought and smiled to himself as he
pushed through the doors out into the bright and crisp winter’s day.
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