Plastic Accounts

The CD spun in the stereo system, and the re-mastered voice of Muddy Waters’s “Young Fashioned Ways” crackled into life. The jumping, eclectic piano tenor tune was tempered by the classic deep bass singing of the original Blues king. “Oh, yes!” thought Constable Joe Hero, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel of his dark green caddy, “this is living!” Hot air spouted and spluttered from the air conditioning, blowing thick gales against his forehead, steaming up the car windows, but he kept on driving, closing his eyes to the rhythm and bobbing his head. His vision, while obscured, didn’t feel impaired, and he lit a cigarette, tossing the empty packet into the back seat and accidentally setting off a smoke grenade he’d confiscated from a man named Chekhov. Taking his eyes off of the road he fumbled in the glove compartment for the course of a minute, finally finding the item he was looking for. He used the soiled, dirty, oily rag retrieved to brush the steam from the windscreen: “Ah, that’s better”, he shouted to himself inside his narrow, cheap economy car with a distinctly faulty production, over the throbbing vocals of the legend. With a small, greasy hole cut in the fog, he spied that the world outside was a wet insanity, devoid of any landmarks, and pitch black.1

“This is ridiculous” he thought, “I can’t keep driving in these ludicrous conditions. I’d better speed up to get home quicker”, and promptly squashed the accelerator beneath his heavy steel-toed boot. The car’s engine purred like a giant mechanical cat, tamed and caged, but wild at heart, which it wasn’t, but sounded like it was (but, in a way, it was, even though it wasn’t). He growled back. The car sped down the drowning highway like a car speeding down a wet highway - two waves on either side of the capsule washing away the darkness in a blaze of white water and two concentrated beams of light, which is a metaphor for the headlights. Suddenly, out of the blue-black night’s ink cradle, a figure of a small child was standing in the middle of the road, beckoning towards him – he threw a nicotine-powered kick at the brake pedal, screaming, his veins bulging, as well as his eyes, meaning that they were also bulging, not screaming. The child was a girl, no more than seven, covered in filth and white as a sheet. Skidding out of control, he applied the handbrake, the back wheels locking up and sending him careening in a fish tail into the traffic barrier. The boot crumpled like a crumpled boot, plastic indicators flying shattered, bumper bar sailing into the night, rubber screeching and melting into the bitumen; the momentum was too much. The car pushed through the metal ring like a speeding, out-of-control car crashing through a flimsy barrier, and the bottom of the crushed vehicle slipped down the hillside, dragging the rest of the Corvette with it.2

The car was upside down and soaked when Hero came to: he was hanging upside down in his seat belt’s harness, the rest of his beloved vehicle, Tracy, lay in waste – a spray of safety glass was all that remained of the windshield. A thick trickle of blood poured from a deep cut in his forehead, pooling on the buckled roof; the other seats twisted mockeries made of tore fabric and plastic. “What the hell was that kid doing there?” He unbuckled his seatbelt, regretting the action immediately, as he slammed headfirst down into the roof. Pulling his cell phone off of his belt he dialed 911, the emergency services needed to be here. In the meantime, he had to find the girl and make sure that she was okay. He scrambled his muddy way back onto the road away from the slick devastation on the hillside, the phone was ringing, and he waited for a response. As he got up onto the summit of the hill, Tracy exploded. “Darn it! Darn it all! Like a hole-filled sock!” He roared in a very masculine fashion, then picked himself off the ground and lit a cigarette from a piece of flaming debris lying discarded on the road and puffed it nonchalantly, and other ways that mean cool. The phone clicked:3

“Hello?” Asked the female voice at the other end,4

“Police,” Replied Hero,5

“Okay,”6

“Thanks,”7

“Police,”8

“Hello,”9

“Hello,”10

“Emergency?”11

“Yes,”12

“Car,”13

“Okay,”14

“Also,”15

“Hmm?”16

“Explosion!”17

“Oh,”18

“Girl,”19

“Interesting,”20

“Alright,”21

“Weather?”22

“Moist,”23

“Disappointing,”24

“Goodbye,”25

“Later.”26

The phone went dead. He cupped his raw hands in front of his mouth and called out for the girl, with no response. He kneeled down in the rain and roared again, defiant, the rain falling down onto him. He would have... Revengeance. 27

Michael looked up from his reading of the paper, which lay flat on the dirty desk, lined and creased. He puffed the cheap cigarette whilst he looked Renaldo in his quirky eyes, taking in his broadly smiling and pocked face. He picked up the sheet and passed it over the tabletop to the author:28

“I don’t like it, Ray.” He said, hacking a little in the gloomy, smoked out room.29

The smile instantly faded off the kid’s face, and he could tell he’d offended him, even if he didn’t want to show it.30

“What don’t you like about it?” He responded, holding the cheap recycled paper to his chest like a burn, “Is it too noir? I tried to make it a little Noir for the detective buffs. What about the ending to the chapter? It’s abrupt, isn’t it? I went for that angle, but I can rewri-“31

“No,” Mike cut him off, waving his hand, “It’s not that, it’s just, I don’t read a lot of books or nothing. Maybe it is good, I can’t say, but, I think you should think about writing about something else. Detective work ain’t as exciting as you think it is, and I don’t know where you got this little girl stuff from, neither, I was just drunk.” He added, shrugging. The apartment sweltered in the mid day heat, the inner city streets didn’t permit open windows, though, so they stayed shut.32

Ray Renaldo was the local downtown fish wrapper. He added nothing in particular to his newspaper usually, just editing the stories about the Catholic Church fare, or an award-winning collection of stamps from the Heikmyers, an elderly Jewish couple from down the road. Mike could tell he was itching for action, fresh out of journalism school, or where ever they teach that, or wanted to write fiction in his spare time, but he wasn’t going to give him false hopes. Being a gumshoe in a big city full of nothing wasn’t as fun as it sounded, which isn’t fun at all; most of his jobs were following cheating spouses, working with the police to solve the very occasional murder, so most of his time was spent sitting around in his broke apartment, or snapping photos from his broke car, with his broke camera, for probably the rest of his broke life. 33

“I think you’re just being modest, Mike.” Ray said, his grin returning, crossed eyes leveling with Mike’s. “Anyway, I’ve gotta head off – I said I was meeting Isabelle down at the docks and I’ve gotta get there early if I want to pick the table. I’ll see you later.” 34

Mike grunted and tapped off ash. The door closed behind Ray with a clunky click, and he was alone again. The mould of the curtains could cast strange patterns when the sun hit them right, and the quiet of the one room apartment could let reflection set in, between stamping on roaches, and watching crappy day time TV.35

The phone rang.36

The blood had been dry for a while, so the kill wasn’t recent, but the spray gave the impression of lingering violence, and the smell of grease and fat did nothing to help the atmosphere of death. A body had been found, hunched in a locker in a fast food restaurant, seemingly slain while it was inside of the thing, or at least, that’s what all the signs pointed to. Mike took a pen out of his pocket and used the end like a pointer, folding down the crease of fabric that overlapped the owner’s name tag, which read “Eugene”; the cheap plastic was a little melted, but still legible. His uniform was stained with blood, but given the condition, you could be fooled into believing it was ketchup. Almost. The stare of the dead gave it away, the hole in the back of the neck was just too deep, on further inspection, the skin was too cold, the veins too blue, the position too hunkered.37

“What do we know about Eugene?” Asked Mike.38

“He works here, this is his locker. No body’s seen him for about a week, so they all figured he’d thrown it in, and not bothered to call up. They tried his home number, but only his answering machine, and then, when they tried to clean out his locker…” The on scene policeman explained, trailing off.39

Eugene was around six-one with a light tan and brown hair. He had a pendant around his neck that said “Penny”, inscribed on what looked like brushed steel, and a couple of tattoos. He couldn’t have been over twenty one.40

“Who’s Penny?” He asked.41

“Still working on that one. Forensics and photos have been over him already, we’re just waiting on the ambulance to arrive to move him. Should be okay to touch.” The Sergeant answered, with a resentful mutter. Mike straightened up, brushed himself down and turned to the Sergeant.42

“What do you need me for? Looks like an average murder.” Mike asked, cocking a bushy eyebrow underneath the brim of his baseball cap. The Sergeant shrugged:43

“So far as we can tell, it is, but we’re understaffed in the investigative area. McQueen got suspended, so we’re caught short-handed with this one. Any ideas, yet?” He prompted, probably trying to change the subject – the Sergeant and he had never seen quite eye-to-eye about his consultation roles, and he was unlikely to want Mike to know he was needed.44

“I’ll need more time, interviews, forensics, the usual, but I think it was just a one-off. No passion in this one, just desperation. Unskilled, clumsy fear.” Mike said, shrugging off the first thing that came to mind.45