Harm's Way

By Alan Annand

Lee Harms, investigator-for-hire, is on the cusp of an on-and-off-again love affair with confidante and astrologer Celeste when fate serves up a witch’s brew of trouble.

Start with a broth of sexual intrigue, toss in a troubled redhead, stir in two kilos of cocaine, dissolve a few pages from a psychiatrist’s notebook, and bring to a boil the fury of a crime family whose son dies in a midnight bacchanal. Money ignites the fire under this cauldron, but sex, violence and the darker forces of human nature keep it bubbling.

Political hopeful Dr Reynolds has already paid $50K to suppress a videotape of his daughter Liz in a lesbian porn flick; now there’s a second blackmail demand for $250K and promise of worse revelations to come. He wants her found and put on the next plane to England where she’ll go into rehab and put her life back together before she ruins his.

As Harms learns, she’s been living quite a life already – shoplifting, drug abuse, pornography, and maybe even prostitution. Everywhere he looks, he encounters the human archetypes of moral depravity, and every one of them warns him to drop the case before it gets too hot for him to handle. As dangerous as it gets, Harms must rely on his own wits to out-maneuver crack-crazed thugs, libidinous porn stars, and a deranged young woman with a troubled past. But when criminals kidnap his own ten-year-old daughter, he plunges into their underworld to rescue her from harm’s way.

(80,500 words)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan Annand
• Release date: Sep 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9780986920677

Alan Annand

ALAN ANNAND is a writer of crime fiction, offering an intriguing blend of mystery, suspense, thriller and occult genres. When he’s not dreaming up ingenious ways to kill people and thrill readers, he occasionally finds therapy in writing humor, short stories and faux book reviews.Before becoming a full-time writer and astrologer, he worked as a technical writer for the railway industry, a corporate writer for private and public sectors, a human resources manager and an underground surveyor.Currently, he divides his time between writing in the AM, astrology in the PM, and meditation on the OM. For those who care, he’s an Aries with a dash of Scorpio.ALAN ANNAND:- Writer of mystery suspense novels, and astrology books- Astrologer/palmist, trained in Western/Vedic astrology.- Amateur musician, agent provocateur and infomaniac.Websites:- Writing: www.sextile.com- Astrology: www.navamsa.comFiction available at online retailers:- Al-Quebeca (police procedural mystery thriller)- Antenna Syndrome (hard-boiled sci-fi mystery thriller)- Felonious Monk (New Age Noir mystery thriller #2)- Harm’s Way (hard-boiled mystery thriller)- Hide in Plain Sight (psychological mystery suspense)- Scorpio Rising (New Age Noir mystery thriller #1)- Soma County (New Age Noir mystery thriller #3)- Specimen and Other Stories (short fiction)Non-fiction available at online retailers:- The Draconic Bowl (western astrology reference)- Kala Sarpa (Vedic astrology reference)- Mutual Reception (western astrology reference)- Parivartana Yoga (Vedic astrology reference)- Stellar Astrology Vol.1 (essays in Vedic astrology)- Stellar Astrology Vol.2 (essays in Vedic astrology)Education:- BA, English Lit- BSc, Math & Physics- Diploma, British Faculty of Astrological Studies- Diploma, American College of Vedic Astrology

Book preview

Chapter 1

Lee Harms was making love when his home phone rang. The phone had a high fluty tone, like a snake charmer’s pipe, but the woman above him appeared not to hear it. Her eyes were closed as she circled slowly above him, her breasts swaying in tandem, a pair of moons in heavenly orbit. Platinum blonde hair hung straight and luminous, a mane of optical fiber framing an oval face. Her body, tanned and taut, was a strange land over which his fingertips stumbled, eager to explore.

He glanced at the bedside phone and saw a number he didn’t recognize. Maybe a client. At the moment, he didn’t really care. In a moment it didn’t matter. As voice-mail took care of the call, he raised his head and kissed the temptation of her nipples. With parted lips, her tongue beckoned to him like a hooded cobra. The telegraph of her hips was a clear message. Ain’t no voodoo like you do. She raked her fingers lightly across his chest, scratching him with lacquered nails. As her thighs gripped him with serpentine urgency, she squeezed and tugged him toward her impending orgasm.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply from his diaphragm. Sandalwood and pheromones wreathed the air, arousing the thousand tiny Shivas of his soul. All of the pleasure centers in his body were coming on in sequence, like suburban streetlights as dusk paraded across a sprawling city. Descending into the whirlpool of their passion, he repeated to himself the mantra that guided the masters of the East, that delayed his climax for what seemed a delirious hour.

Nam myoho renge kyo.

Nam myoho renge kyo.

Nam myoho renge kyo.

Nam myoho renge kyo.

Afterward, as the sun went down, they lay naked on the bed. Outside the windows, where birds often crackled in the trees, it was quiet. The ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, whirling round a cirrus of remaining incense. Harms raised himself on elbow and reached for a glass on the bedside table. A faint crescent of lipstick smeared the rim. A watery inch of Scotch puddled the bottom. He leaned over the edge of the bed and raised the bottle from the floor. He uncapped it, poured a golden inch, and passed it to her. She took a sip and returned it. Tugging his shirt from the corner of the headboard, he took cigarettes from his shirt pocket and offered her one.

She shook her head. I don’t smoke.

Do you mind? he asked, solicitous even though it was his own bed.

Now that you ask, she said, I’d prefer you didn’t.

He tossed the cigarettes onto the night table. He hadn’t known her long enough to know she didn’t smoke. He knew only that she was a 29-year-old Pisces never-been-married veterinarian’s assistant with an apartment in Côte-Saint-Luc – a New Age waif with a third-world consciousness, second-hand car, and a first-class sense of fun. Her name was Jojo Blanchette and, if she preferred he didn’t smoke in bed beside her, he was going to humor her for the time being at least. He owed her that and more.

Chapter 2

How’d this happen? she’d asked as she slipped the hypodermic into Eric’s left leg. The big black cat lay on his side, tail twitching, eyes rolling nervously. Around one haunch was a blood-stained gauze bandage Harms had applied in haste.

Doberman, he said. I was working on my car. Eric was lying on the steps taking the sun. Next thing I know, I heard him scream. I looked over and saw this Doberman shaking him like a rat.

You’re lucky he lived.

He fought for his life. Last I saw of the Doberman, he was headed for an eyes-ears-nose-and-throat specialist.

Speaking of specialists, she said, this might cost as much as a thousand dollars. X-ray, surgery, antibiotics. Is that okay?

Sure. Why do you ask?

Some people, when they hear the estimate, prefer putting the pet to sleep.

Eric’s not that kind of pet.

That’s nice.

She stroked the cat gently, waiting for him to succumb to the effects of the anesthetic. Harms noticed she wore no ring on her left hand.

Where do you live? she asked.

Here in N-D-G. NDG was short for Notre-Dame-de-Grâces, one of the more attractive boroughs of Montreal – mostly two-story brick houses on tree-lined streets with a 50/50 mix of English and French residents enjoying the steady gentrification of their neighborhoods.

Nice area.

I like it. Harms didn’t want to spoil the illusion by telling her exactly what part of NDG he lived in. What about you?

Côte-Saint-Luc. Out near Cavendish Mall.

Harms thought about it. A largely Jewish population out there, many of them hovering around retirement age, demographically an odd fit for her...

Eric heaved a sigh and closed his eyes. Gently, she unwrapped the bandage and dropped it into a wastebasket. The wound beneath was jaggedly ugly, a visual mess that brought a taste of blood to Harms’s mouth.

You should wait outside, she said.

Harms left the examination room and returned to the waiting room. He searched the magazine rack and found a few copies of People to browse. On the wall opposite was a poster – the Illustrated Cat – which he found vaguely disturbing, exposing as it did the little organs so vulnerable to canine caprice.

Half an hour later, the door to the examination room opened and she summoned him back in. A whiff of disinfectant greeted him. Eric lay on the table, his flanks animated with shallow breath. Except for the narrow swath of shaved flesh on his leg and the serrated line of stitches that ran up the middle of it, Eric looked almost normal.

Is he going to be all right?

I’ve closed the lacerations in his leg, which should heal simply enough, and I took X-rays. The vet will look at those tomorrow to see whether he has any broken bones, and whether he’s suffered any hernia.

Hernia?

When a large dog seizes a cat, the canine teeth penetrate one, two, or three layers of muscle. She demonstrated with a pencil thrust between her closed fingers. When the teeth are withdrawn, the next layer of muscle below, or perhaps an intestinal wall, protrudes up through the rupture. Even if the skin isn’t broken, the pouch of flesh that protrudes like this is extremely painful.

What then?

We make an incision over each hernia, push the pouch of muscle or intestinal wall back down to its proper level, and close it with sutures.

Sounds painful.

He’ll be under anesthetic. Tonight we put him on intravenous steroids and antibiotics. That’ll deal with the shock. After a day or two, the vet’ll operate to repair any hernia. Then let him rest for a day and see if he eats. If all goes well, we’ll deal with any broken bones.

So he’s going to be here, what – three days or more?

Four or five.

Harms stroked the cat’s head. Eric didn’t move a whisker. Harms looked at her. You finished with him now?

I just have to put him to bed and set him up with an IV.

What are you doing later?

What do you mean?

When you get off work, I’d like to buy you dinner. To thank you.

You don’t need to do that. It’s my job. I love animals.

Then you’ll love having dinner with me. He extended his hand. My name’s Lee Harms, by the way.

Chapter 3

Jojo lay with an arm over his chest, one foot moving caressingly up and down his calf. She studied Harms in the bedroom dusk. He had dark curly hair, cut short on the sides. Beneath his mustache, his lips were softer than any man’s she could remember. Hair curled across his chest, narrowing in a thick line to his belly where it spread again in a delta across his pelvis. His chest and stomach muscles were firm but not overly developed, a guy who was fit but not obsessed with physical culture. He was about thirty-five, she guessed, one of those lucky ones with a metabolism that kept him lean and looking younger than his years.

Facts were, Harms was thirty-nine. He was blood type A positive, six feet tall, 160 pounds, and an Aries.

Harms lifted his head, glanced at the clock, and turned on his side to face Jojo. She was slim, with perky breasts and merely decorative pubic hair. A mild sense of guilt tainted his appreciation of her. She was a little too young for him. Divorced, and with the big Four-Oh just around the next bend, he knew he ought to be settled down with a woman closer to his own age. At this early stage, he hadn’t yet made up his mind whether he ought to see her again, or, in Eric’s interest, beyond a week.

I’m going to have bruises on my bottom, she murmured. You’re a bit of a brute, aren’t you?

You lived to talk about it.

She pressed her cheek against his and whispered. At the same time, I feel your tenderness. It’s rare to be with a man like you.

Rare, tender... You make me sound like a good steak.

She picked up her pillow and pressed it over his face. Can’t you take a compliment without turning it into a wisecrack? She got up and went to the bathroom. Through the open door, he watched her bend over the tub to turn on the faucets.

You want brutal? he called after her. Come back next weekend for the Saturnalia. With her out of range of his secondary smoke, he plucked his cigarettes from the night table and lit one. Leaning against the headboard, he blew smoke at the ceiling, where the fan swirled it around. The phone rang again. This time he answered it.

Mister Harms? An older man’s voice, very thick, perhaps a little drunk.

Yes.

My name is Reynolds – Dr. Walter Reynolds. You don’t know me, but you were recommended by a mutual acquaintance. Skip McDougall.

Yes, I know Skip. Lakeshore Marina.

He said you recovered some property for him last year.

That’s right.

I’d like you to recover something for me.

What? Harms looked at the clock and made a mental note of the time. 9:03 P.M.

I’d rather not talk on the phone. Could we meet tonight?

Harms watched Jojo as she climbed into the bathtub. What about tomorrow?

It’s urgent.

Where do you live?

Westmount. Twenty-three Upper Bellevue.

High on the mountain, Harms thought, mentally doubling his rates. I could meet you within the hour.

I’ll be waiting.

Harms hung up and went to the bathroom. Jojo was lying full length in the tub, some pink parts rising from the soap bubbles.

Want to join me? she asked.

Just for a minute. He climbed into the tub with her. I have to go out for a while.

She spread her legs, making room as he settled into the hot water, then closed them around his waist. What is it – happy hour at your favorite bar?

I have to meet a client. He stroked his fingers across her knees.

Are you really a private detective?

Investigator. But it isn’t as glamorous as you see on TV. I spend a lot of time on matrimonial evidence, insurance cases – that sort of thing.

You meet interesting people?

Not unless you like the hard-nosed, tight-fisted variety.

Is it ever dangerous?

Death from boredom is a constant threat.

I can’t imagine you being bored. She picked up the soap and lathered him, perhaps a little too enthusiastically for what it was meant to pass for. What time did you say you’d meet your client?

Soon.

What time is it now?

Sooner.

She kept on lathering. He placed his hands on hers and gently stilled her movements. She withdrew her hands and rested them on his knees. I’m feeling rejected, she said.

We just finished making out half an hour ago. He leaned forward to kiss her. I’m almost forty. Gimme a break, he laughed.

You want me to leave?

No. I’ve got a bunch of movies on DVD, microwave popcorn in the cupboard, and beer in the fridge. Curl up in bed and I’ll be back in an hour or so.

Alone?

No. I’ll bring some friends. You can show off your bruises and we’ll have a real party.

I mean me. Here? Alone for hours?

You have someone waiting for you at your place?

Show me how your microwave works.

Chapter 4

Harms climbed into his ‘07 Mustang and drove a block north on Clifton to Sherbrooke West, the main street that ran through Montreal’s west side. The GT model had a ruby-red glossy exterior, black leather seats, tinted windows, and deluxe sound system. Not to mention a 300 horsepower V8 engine. If you had to have a penis symbol, this was it.

Its owner had died in it one hot summer night last year and not been discovered until a day later. Despite a chemical scrub and detailing of the interior, the whiff of death had never completely vacated the premises. The insurance company had been unable to sell the car, so when a major salvage job paid off, Harms had taken the pink slip in barter. He’d hung little scented pine trees in each corner of the front window, but the result was disappointing – like finding a deer rotting gut-shot in high pines country. Lately he’d begun to burn incense in the ashtray. The car was pure musk in motion, but it worked, so what the hell.

Heading downtown on Sherbrooke, he ran a yellow light at Girouard, cut hard left through a gap in traffic and descended the access ramp to the Decarie Expressway, accelerating into sparse north-bound traffic. He was up to 75 mph within seconds before he had to ease off the gas in less than a mile and coast his way onto the exit ramp at Côte-Saint-Luc Road.

It was all very juvenile, of course, but gave him a brief rush that seemed to make it all worthwhile. And he wasn’t alone, he knew. Ever since Gilles Villeneuve, a home-grown Formula One driver, had won six Grand Prix races driving for Ferrari, half the grown men in Quebec morphed into speed demons as soon as their wheels hit an expressway. It made for interesting rush-hour traffic.

Every second Sunday Harms took the Mustang for a little run up north, into the mountains and back, just to keep it in shape. Good for about $50 in gas, or $200 in speed violations if he ever got caught. Mostly he just ran away. Harms had an abnormal fear of cars with twirling lights. Vivid childhood memories of his house burning down, the street filled with police cars and fire trucks. In case he ever had to convince a judge of his neurosis. Clemency, Your Honor, this man has associative pyrophobia.

Harms climbed Côte-Saint-Luc Road to its crest where it became The Boulevard. At regular intervals, the gated entrances of estates broke the trees. Here in the city’s best neighborhood the lots were large, the houses ranged well back from the road. Streetlights pooled the road in cones of light, through which whirled clouds of insects. It was moth season, and the mountain was exuding them in tens of thousands from the trees along its flanks. They floated and swirled in the streetlights, spiraling in holding patterns, gyring in love with a phosphorescent god.

Harms climbed higher up the mountain until he found Upper Bellevue. Brass numbers on a wall read 23. He pulled into an entrance in front of arched gates. A floodlight atop the arch came on briefly, holding the Mustang transfixed in white light for five seconds. The gates swung open.

He drove up a curved driveway, through grounds with trimmed bushes and rock gardens, to a two-and-a-half-story house with a mansard roof and dormer windows. There were large cedar trees at either end of the house and a wide bed of flowers beneath the picture window. A single car was parked in front of a two-car garage, a cream-white S400 2011 Mercedes. Wide steps led to a pillared entrance big enough to admit an elephant or two. Harms parked beside the Mercedes and got out.

The light over the front door was yellow. Beneath the light stood a big man, about 6’2", and pushing 200 pounds, his upper body stooped like someone who’d spent half of his life with head hunched over books, blueprints, or a dentist’s chair. His florid nose was mapped with veins. Under the yellow light, he looked like an escapee from Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

Mr. Harms? He offered his hand. It was hot and sticky, like the night itself. I’m Walter Reynolds. Come inside.

~~~

Harms followed him into a foyer the size of a small chapel. Overhead, a chandelier cast a dim light. A flight of marble stairs rose from the lobby to a landing where a three-foot-high icon of Venus stood in a niche, a tiny light over her head. Reynolds beckoned Harms into a study adjacent the foyer. It was lighted by a single lamp on a desk that took up a quarter of the room. The walls were paneled in dark lacquered wood. The floors were oak, the desk and filing cabinets mahogany. Harms felt as though he’d entered a coffin. A heavy red velvet curtain covered the window behind Reynolds’s chair. The place smelled faintly of pipe tobacco.

Reynolds moved behind the desk and opened a large wood-paneled cabinet. Cognac, or something else?

Cognac’s fine. Harms took a seat in one of the two brown leather armchairs facing the desk. As his hands settled on the armrests, he felt a thin patina of dust. The house was expensively furnished, but didn’t seem to be well maintained.

Here you go. Reynolds set a glass on the desk.

Thanks.

Reynolds lowered himself into his chair and placed his forearms on the desk. His hands cupped his drink. My daughter has disappeared.

Have you talked to the police?

I don’t want to involve them.

Why not?

It would compromise my privacy.

You’ll have to compromise it anyway by talking to me.

I understand that. But at the same time, I want to do it without involving the law. And I’ll pay the price for that privilege.

Harms shifted warily in his seat. What was that line from Bob Dylan? Money doesn’t talk, it swears. And right now it was calling him a poor sonofabitch, and it was right. Nonetheless, he said, I won’t knowingly break the law.

Reynolds waved his hand impatiently. Let me tell you about my situation and then you can decide whether you can help.

Let’s hear it.

Reynolds put another inch of Remy Martin into Harms’s glass, as if that would guarantee his continued presence. Harms took another sip. The cognac was that good, he was prepared to exercise a little patience.

My daughter is nineteen, said Reynolds. Very beautiful, but emotionally insecure. Her mother died when she was three years old, and I never remarried, so she never had the family life most people have. I gave a lot to my practice, and when her mother died, I probably immersed myself even further in order to forget. As she grew older, I tried to become more conscious of her needs. I gave her a car and an allowance. I gave her the opportunity for a quality education. I introduced her to the right people. I did everything I could for her...

So she ran away from home, said Harms, recognizing the story.

That’s true, but that’s not the issue right now.

When did she run away?

About nine months ago.

And you’re just deciding now to do something about it?

I did do something about it. Nine months ago.

What happened?

There’s not much to tell. One day I came home and she was gone. She’d taken some of her things and disappeared. I hired a private investigator. In a few days he’d found her, living with some guy in the student ghetto. So I brought her back home, offered to buy her a car, and she agreed to stay.

Just like that?

Plus an allowance, and a few other little things. Reynolds shrugged. You know kids these days. They need things.

So she’s been living at home ever since?

Up until three months ago.

What happened then?

Same as before. She disappeared. This time I was a little more patient, and waited a few weeks to see if she’d come back on her own. I figured, no allowance, she was going to run short and come back soon enough.

But she didn’t.

No. Reynolds frowned. "The week after she left, I received a DVD in the mail. It was a porn flick of... um... lesbian persuasion. With Elizabeth. The next day, I got a phone call from a woman. ‘Fifty thousand dollars in twenty-four hours or a copy goes to The Mirror,’ she told me. Reynolds looked at Harms. You know the paper?"

Harms nodded. The Mirror occupied that middle ground between a tabloid and a real newspaper. It was a free weekly with wide circulation, thanks in part to its editorial policy of butchering sacred cows in public, sometimes without the due diligence of fact-checking and source confirmation that hampered The Montreal Gazette, the city’s one and only English daily. Shock journalism. What seemed to work were tits and ass and drugs and murder and upper-class scandal. Combine two or three of these elements, shake and stir, and you had a pretty bitchy brew, and something akin to poison for anyone with a professional or social reputation to protect.

Do you have a reputation to protect?

What do you think? asked Reynolds, with just the right degree of restrained indignation.

"So you have a big house in Westmount. But just because you’re a doctor doesn’t mean you have to worry about your reputation. Even the best families have kids that go bad. Aside from the girl’s welfare, which is a legitimate concern, you may have nothing else to worry about."

I am a surgeon – said Dr. Reynolds, an oral surgeon on the Board of Governors at the Montreal General Hospital. I’ve done corrective surgery on the mouths of hockey stars, actors and people in the media. I am not just an ordinary doctor.

You’re afraid they’ll boot you off the board?

Reynolds deflated somewhat. There’s more to it than that. He took a long drink. My in-laws are very wealthy people. They live a few blocks up the mountain in a house that makes this place look like servants’ quarters. My father-in-law is the Member of Parliament for Westmount riding. I need only mention the name Donald Mackay and you know the kind of power I’m talking about.

Harms hated politics but he had to admit he recognized the name from TV and the newspapers. Mackay was a political kingpin in Canada, courted as solicitously in Toronto and New York as he was here in Montreal.

He’s going to retire next year, said Reynolds, and he’s promised to sponsor me in the next election. That’s why I have to avoid even a hint of scandal. If the media caught wind of it, my father-in-law would be obliged to withdraw his support, even if only for the sake of the party.

Harms swirled his drink a moment and took another sip. So, after you received the video, what did you do?

I put the same private investigator back on the job. He’d found her before, I figured he could find her again, get her back home. No matter what was on that video, I figured she’d been drugged or forced somehow, I don’t know what. The important thing was to get her out of harm’s way. Then with her safe, I could let the police handle the blackmail threat.

And did he find her?

He got close.

How close?

Close enough to get his kneecaps smashed. Reynolds shook his head. He called from the hospital to tell me he was dropping the case.

Then what happened?

Time was running out. I had to pay.

How?

"Small bills in a flight bag. The same