The Day Job

By Charles Moore

Politics is always dirty. Sometimes dirtier than other times. And, once in a while politics can get deadly.

Franc Donahue gets a case shoved his way. He doesn’t really have much choice. It pays the bills. It stinks but a fellow has got to eat and buy bullets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Moore
• Release date: Aug 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476334271

Charles Moore

Charles Moore is an art historian, writer, and curator based in New York and the author of The Black Market: A Guide to Art Collecting and The Brilliance of the Color Black Through the Eyes of Art Collectors. Moore received his master's degree from Harvard University and currently is a third-year doctoral student at Columbia University Teachers College, researching the life and career of abstract painter Ed Clark.

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Charles F. Moore

Published by Charles F. Moore at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Charles F. Moore

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to events, places, and persons is unintentional. I enthusiastically thank Dianne Hannan, Nina Smelser, Cate Strain, and Bob Kottage for their invaluable encouragement. As I begin work on each new story, I recognize more that each venture is an accumulation of events and efforts. It makes me wonder what might have happened if life had taken a different turn. It almost seems to unnecessary to remind readers that all errors are mine.

Style Notes:

I decided I wanted to make the distinction when people speak when they use Miss or Missus. It’s not an attempt at anything sinister other than my own clumsy way of speaking at times. When I write Ms. pronounce it Miz. When I write Mrs. pronounce it Missus. The narrator should be consistent. A given speaker may be inconsistent. I don’t know if this is a local thing or not. My generation was brought up with that transition from Mrs. to Ms. My tired, old, brain tries to do the right thing but sometimes what feels right might not settle well with all readers. The presumption of the use of Ms. for all speakers, by writers is, I believe, incorrect.

I use VA once in a while. People tend to read this as Virginia as though I am writing, apparently, in the short hand of postal codes. It’s the initials for the Veteran’s Administration particularly understood to mean the Veteran’s Administration Mountain Home Facility here in Johnson City. I use a variety of initials not separated by periods. For example: US, DC and DA. People speak in initials all the time but putting it down on paper so that you read it the way a person would speak it (and being consistent), is another matter.

Chapter One

Walter Benjamin Truman (US Navy, Retired.), sometimes called WB by his friends, Walt by most people, had a good life, a good wife (deceased), still has some good kids. He was comfortable. Sometimes alone. Never lonely. (He liked the neighbor lady that liked him.) Easy smiles. Tallish. Straight standing. Firm build. Bifocals. Completely grey headed. Square face. Drank good coffee.

Walter Truman didn’t ordinarily have to get up in the night. He could sleep straight through most nights. The doctor had changed his medications for his slowly climbing blood pressure. That shouldn’t have caused him to get up and want to go. And maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was the thought about his medications that caused him to waken. When he had to go, he went. No problems.

Walt Truman liked this winter. He didn’t like those winters when it never got cold. He just liked the chill once in a while. Reminded him of his childhood. How the snow was always deeper when he was young. Despite his kids’ astonishment, he spent much of his time at home barefooted. He told them it was his tough feet but it really was that he had warm feet and it felt good to have the cool tile or the fabric of the carpet or the occasional chunk of cereal tickle his soles. Someplace he’d read that was good for his balance.

But that night, while he was up, he shuffled to the kitchen sink to get a refill, so to speak. His kitchen window looked out towards the street. It was snowing, he saw. He liked having the end apartment because he had this extra, south-facing window which was more than the other apartments had. Number One, he reckoned, since it was also on the end, the building made a right-angle turn at apartment Number Four, their end window would have faced east. Morning sun. A good thing.

At night, the street lights afforded Walter Truman a night light in the kitchen. If it was too much he just lowered the venetian blind. It wasn’t that he disliked dark places, he just sometimes didn’t need all that light, either. The street light across the way was the only one the summer trees didn’t block. Those popping sounds? Was that a transformer breaking? His power was still on. He peered out the window at the snow. All there was to see right now was a car. Just sitting there. Getting snowed on. The wipers running. The motor on. Lights off. A little trail of vapor out the exhaust pipe. The window on this side was down? A dark square instead of light shining off of the glass? What was that noise?

The window did not roll up as the car pulled away, skidding, in a hurry, from the curbing. What was that all about? At three o’clock in the morning? Walter Truman padded quietly, he knew where all his furniture was, to the front window. He sometimes kept his drapes slightly open to let sunshine in. Tonight, he’d closed them. Bending, curious, for no reason, he parted the drapes.

On the sidewalk that lead from the apex of the building to the city’s sidewalk, lay a body. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The body slowly seemed to be melting. Splaying itself onto the concrete. The person looked like they were dying.

Chapter Two

The snow had stopped by the time Franc Donahue got up in the morning. The drive downtown wasn’t bad. He’d seen worse snow storms. And colder weather, although for January this was another strange one. The southeast had enjoyed sixty degrees on New Year’s Day and now, ten days later, this morning was starting out at seven degrees above zero. The city had been out with the plows and salts since sometime in the middle of the morning. He was lucky, he would tell you, that the administrative assistant for public works lived on his block and that seem to guarantee his street getting plowed first. Of course, he forgot to add her husband also owned a four-by-four and the old man was fearless about being first on the road to get her to work as if snow was nothing more than a personal challenge.

Donahue drove his econo-box for two reasons. It had the better tires. And, less glass to scrap. Plus, it was parked nearest the street. Plus, the van didn’t like to back up the slope of his driveway very well. (He’d learned that the hard way two years ago in another snowstorm.) But the plows had not gotten the downtown all that plowed. One inch of snow was not snow in some parts of the country but it was enough for his hometown of Madison, nestled on the western flank of the southern Appalachians, ridge and valley country, where Tennessee wedged between Virginia and North Carolina. Donahue had lived through winters without snow and the overnight lows never below twenty or twenty-five. Screwed up the plants and trees. Confused the daffodils and jonquil but the humans endured it quite nicely, thank you. Except for the usually hotter-than-average summer that followed. Then they seemed to forget the comfortable winter.

The private lot behind the Jefferson Building hadn’t been cleared yet. Donahue parked around the corner from the front of his building, trying to get within a foot of the curb except he couldn’t find the curb. Somebody had already salted the sidewalk, or at least, it looked to him, tried to salt this particular sidewalk, and he crunched his way through snow and ice and salt pellets to safety under the canopy at the front door of the Jefferson Building.

There were tracks in the snow leading to and from the canopy. Stylish boots with spike heels, waffle tread sneakers, aggressively treaded hiking boots. There were few students at the downtown campus today. School was in winter recess. Maybe a few student workers or maybe nursing students who attended school on a different schedule. Or maybe young men who simply found snow a good excuse to boot up and get out. The ski resorts in Boone would be busy this week. The few hardy souls out so far seemed to like to walk one behind the other. Keep that snow and salt off those stylish boots.

The gloominess of the morning, the sun should have been up by now, peeking over the other end of Main Street, gave his corner a black and white shading that meant the day was going to be long and dull.

Inside, the heat was on. That was good. Power had been on all night around Madison. They didn’t tend to get severe storms in January. Just comparatively lots of snow. The storms came at the beginning of Spring.

Jimmy Bogart was busy getting his papers unbundled and his cases stocked with smokes.

Morning, Franc, said Bogart. He had a bright blue toque on his bald head but it almost made his ears stick out farther than usual. His pale face, bulging eyes, big ears, looked no less deformed.

Morning, Jimmy, said Donahue. What’s new for today?

Dunno. Haven’t time to read my own newspapers. Bogart smiled. A lopsided smile. But a friendly grin that most people in Madison didn’t get to see.

Donahue bought one each of the three papers Bogart offered.

They bade each other to stay warm and Donahue turned towards the hair salon across the way from Bogart’s stand. There were already two women in getting styled. The TV was on. The lights bright. Everyone trying to be cheery at sunrise on a snowy, dark, cold morning.

Donahue smiled a greeting to the ladies (ignoring their momentary scan of him, his short hair slightly mussed, emerging wrinkles out from his flat mouth, square chin, his good but not great build) and turned his attention to the TV. The local reporter, alone too at the station, spoke of a murder this morning in Madison. Apparently the victim had been shot three times, out in their yard, at an address not far from downtown, as if any address was far from another in Madison, sometime very early in the morning. Madison PD was not releasing any information. Turning to the weather, the man said, Donahue turned to thinking if his friend Phil Dejardens had been called out at some unGodly early hour, on a cold morning, to investigate a homicide.

By the way, said Bogart, you have a visitor.

I do?

Male. Stinky. Worried.

I am always amazed at how you know these things.

Just ‘cause I got a handful of birth defects doesn’t mean I’m not conscious. Jeez, Franc. There was that loopy, slobbery grin again.

Thanks, said Donahue.

Worried, Franc. He’s worried.

It takes a worried man, right?

The Jefferson Building had a grand staircase up the middle of the building to a spacious landing. Offices, four suites, flanked either side of the staircase. It squeaked. Notoriously at times. It squeaked this morning. Maybe the wood floor foretold the weather just like an old woman’s hip.

Donahue’s visitor rose from the pew in front of the street window. Hand out, to greet him, the man was about Donahue’s height and heavier by a lot. Dressed casually. Five o’clock shadow at eight o’clock in the morning. Baggy eyes. He’d not slept for a few hours. His weight was showing in his jowls.

Mr. Donahue? he said. His voice was old South. Deep. Drawly.

Donahue nodded.

My name is Mason. William Mason. I need to talk to you, sir.

Donahue led Mr. William Mason through the office door, past the foyer, into the inner sanctum, ushered Mason to a seat, the red mate’s chair (the blue one being piled with folders), hung up his pea jacket, and made motions of starting the coffee.

What can I do for you, Mr. Mason?

Can I hire you? Are you on a case?

Yes. And, yes, but the case is winding up. We go to trial in a couple of weeks. So, I’m free at the moment. What do you need?

Have you heard the news this morning?

You mean the shooting that was on the TV?

The same. I haven’t heard. Did they pronounce a name of the victim?

Not that I heard? Just a minute ago. You have me very curious, Mr. Mason.

I want to hire to help with the investigation of that case.

Well, you can do that but the police will be all over this and probably have you a shooter in a day or two. Not much for me to do but stand around and get in the way.

Mason scratched his chin. Rubbed his tired eyes. Surveyed Donahue’s office. What little sunlight was peaking over the top the building next door was just barely touching the top of the windows behind Donahue. The room was warm but dark. Donahue seemed to sense this and turned on his desk lamp. When the office building was designed, someone decided to not have ceiling lights in any of the suites but rather to install scone lights, usually in pairs.

Maybe I should introduce myself better? I am on the campaign staff for Jule Carracter.

Donahue perked up at Carracter’s name. The man was running in the primary for Governor.