Miami Duck

By John Rhall

He's smart, he's cool, he's still at school. Jason Crane is a second year law student at Miami University with a part-time job as a private detective. Jason's first case sees him investigating an environmental group who seem to be holding a wealthy young woman in their spell. Jason's job seems simple enough at first...find out if the group is after her money or not. Jason is soon in over his head.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Rhall
• Release date: Jun 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311971708

Book preview

Chapter 1

‘Crane Investigation Services’ is located in what passes for Chinatown in Miami. Miami’s so called Chinatown is scattered along the corridor of 167th to 163rd Street. It sure isn’t the sort of Chinatown you’ll find in Frisco or New York. Some Chinese trading stores along with a bunch of very good places to eat and that is about it. Oh, but the good city movers and shakers often spoke of doing something about that, usually around city election time, then they seemed to forget about it, along with most of the other promises they felt inclined to make in order to pull in the sucker vote.

The Crane office sits at the corner of the top floor of a three storied building that has been saved from much needed demolition by some joker from the heritage council...one who obviously got about with the aid of a white cane and a guide dog. It was a place, my uncle once remarked, where struggling businesses came to die; sort of like an elephant’s graveyard for failed dreams. Uncle Ray, who owned Crane Investigations and employed me part time, remarked that he had lost count of the hopeful under-cashed entrepreneurs who had come and gone in quick succession over the fifteen years he’d been around. He’d survived a few eviction notices himself.

The entrance lobby of our building had seen better days, about when Alaska still belonged to Russia. The iron-caged lift worked when it felt like it which wasn’t often, and those who worked in the building had given up complaining to our landlord, a gentleman of Chinese extraction who prides himself on being both caretaker and rent collector and is noted for excelling at neither.

I caught him just as he was removing the strip of card, embossed with Ray’s business details, from the brass indicator of tenants on the wall beside the broken light switch. I took it out of his hand and slid it back into the frame.

‘Reports of his death are greatly exaggerated Mister Chin.’

‘I thought you all move Master Crane.’

‘Why would we do that?’

‘Because you don’t pay the rent,’ he said.

‘Sarcasm Mister Chin. What would Confucius say?’

‘He also would tell you to pay the rent.’

Chin flicked his comb-over back into place and gave me an earnest look.

‘I’ll tell the office of your concerns,’ I said. I gave him a sincere look in return.

My look went nowhere.

‘Already two months behind,’ he reminded me.

I shrugged a good-natured shrug.

‘I’ll tell them,’ I said. I moved to the stairs. ‘Just look upon it as having good tenants who pay eventually.’

‘I don’t need the aggravation.’ He flung the words after me with a follow-up. ‘Many people want to move here...nice big rooms.’

‘Nice big cockroaches in them too,’ I said.

I began climbing the three flights to our office. I had a feeling the elevator was still broken because a guy in a boiler suit was inside the elevator bashing at something with a wrench and using profanities as punctuation. He seemed to have a lot of complaints about old elevators and novel ways of swearing. Chin was getting something repaired. I wondered if he was going soft.

I noted that some idiot had tagged the stairwell wall with what was probably the worst drawing of a duck I had ever seen, in fact, if the so-called artist hadn’t added the word quack above the drawing most people would have trouble identifying it. Also another idiot, or the same idiot, had dropped In-N-Out food wrappers and a cup of what was once probably been frozen yoghurt over most of the second landing. I myself have never been into scrawling stuff on walls, though I did once carve my initials inside a heart on a big old tree outside my junior school. Melanie, my girlfriend, and one and only true love at the time, added her initials inside the heart and we simultaneously spat on the ground to seal our pledges that we would love each other till the end of time and nobody else. We were both about eleven years old at the time. I wonder where she is today.

Chapter 2

Anita, our secretary and office administrator and whatever other title she dreamed up for herself during moments of intense boredom, looked up and waved at me over the top of a dog-eared copy of Flare magazine as I entered the office. I noted the magazine, which was a Canadian publication by the way, was featuring Punk hair styles on this month’s cover. Anita was very into punk at the moment, maybe she was secretly Canadian as well, however, whether being a secret Canadian has anything to do with it or not when Anita gets into something like a new look she absorbs it into her body like osmosis. Anita reminds me of that girl in the N.C.I.S television drama, the one who dresses like a Goth and does the forensic work. If I squint a little she could be a dead ringer in fact. Anita is very pretty and very weird all at the same time, and sometimes a little scary. I am careful never to tell her any of these thoughts of mine.

‘That’s the worst drawing of a duck I’ve ever seen,’ I said.

‘Where?’ Anita asked.

‘In the stairwell,’ I said.

‘Wasn’t there this morning,’ she said.

‘This area is so run down we don’t even have decent graffiti,’ I said.

‘My, aren’t we moody,’ she said.

I looked out the window, past the grime.

‘No,’ I said defensively, ‘just observant.’

Anita went ‘Hah.’ As only Anita can.

I continued my observation of the street below. Alert for anything that may bare a passing resemblance to interesting.

Nothing was.

I began to wonder if there was life on earth, let alone other planets.

‘The landlord wants money,’ I said.

‘He doing that removing the name tag thing again?’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s a crafty devil,’ she said. ‘He watches for you coming then puts on the poor landlord act. He only spends it on cards, which he is hopeless at. I’ll catch up with him later.’

‘You said you wanted me in here Anita, got some reports to write up?’ I said.

I had been helping out my Uncle Ray for over a year now as a casual employee. My uncle figured that because I was studying law it would be appropriate if I contribute some of my learned skills to report writing, which was more than fair enough since he had been contributing to my welfare for some time. My parents were long gone, or, as Anita had once remarked in all honesty, ‘in that happy hunting ground in the sky’. I think she has a romantic view of the Native American Indian garnered from repeated viewings of late-night movies on cable.

‘No,’ Anita said, ‘I need a few hours off and there is no one else I trust to run the place.’

I said, ‘You mean there is no one else, period.’

That earned me a wink and a wrinkling of her nose.

I said, ‘Have you had another hair job?’

Anita put the magazine down and gave me a full view of her latest look...according to whatever style she had been attracted to in the fashion rags she literally devoured.

I gave a good impression of being impressed.

‘You look good Anita, very much the Dorothy Lamour kind of look. The red and yellow streaks in your hair set off the green eye-shadow a treat.’

I received a thousand volt grin of pleasure for that.

‘Ahh...you’re just saying that,’ she grinned.

I was, but I would never admit it.

Anita had never told me her age but I guessed she was under thirty. She was also entranced with the punk look for some reason. I think underneath all her makeup she was probably a very attractive woman; at least to other Punks or maybe even Goths who have a crush on her television look-alike.

‘You don’t think it’s a bit much?’ she said. Anita grabbed a small hand mirror and peered intently at her reflection looking for faults or hints of a ‘bit much’.

‘Not in this day and age,’ I said.

‘Good to know,’ she said. The mirror was put away with a flourish. ‘I’m out of here, got an urgent appointment.’

‘Medical?’ I asked.

‘Nails,’ she said. ‘Getting a new look with the enamel.’ She started gathering her things. ‘Hank is still out working on an insurance fraud case and Kathy is advising someone on home security installations so you are minding the shop Cochise.’

Anita was always very delicate about Indigenous relations and sensitive about my bloodline like Tony Soprano is sensitive toward a misbehaving underling who has stolen money from him.

‘Fine,’ I said.

Anita paused at the door for a moment.

‘There’s a guy coming to look at the air-con later cause it’s playing up, if you wonder why its making a clunking noise, and who’s Dorothy Lamour?’

‘Old television sitcom wonder girl,’ I lied.

‘The one where she comes out of a bottle on the beach with the astronaut?’ she said.

‘A bottle has something to do with it,’ I said.

‘Cool,’ she said.

Chapter 3

After Anita had gone I decided to get in some study for an end of year law exam that was looming. It was an open book exam on criminal procedure. I knew it was going to be tough because the lecturer was an asshole with serious delusions of grandeur. He was the kind of law lecturer who delighted in inventing cases that would never happen in real life. I think it’s fair to say that the average law lecturer is a pretentious prick a dozen times worse than any other prick of a lecturer in any other subject at any other university. Think I’m exaggerating? Just wait till you study law. Better still don’t. You’ll only end up with a debt that will take the next thirty years to pay back and everyone will dislike you including other lawyers, but most especially your clients who will try to stiff you for the bill you give them.

The office was quiet but a little stuffy with the asthmatic air conditioning unit. That was fixed an hour later by an elderly guy in coveralls with the stenciled name of ‘Happy Air-Con Miami -- We Show Up’ on the breast pocket. He grumped his way in and fiddled around with the unit before grumping his way out again muttering something about sending a bill later. I wondered if his firm also repaired elevators. The phone never rang, nobody came to the door, and I fell asleep a little before five o’clock when the words started to run together on the page of my textbook. I started to go into that twilight zone of neither being fully awake or fully asleep. My half dream was something about the differences between Canadians and Americans and it went along the lines of watching television; both Americans and Canadians watch American television but Americans don’t watch Canadian television and then there was a car flying in the air and something to do with fish and my eyes snapped open about ten minutes later when I felt there was something moving nearby. I got out of my chair and went through to the outer office. The door handle was being tried from outside. I moved quickly to the door, shot the bolt and wrenched it open. Anita stumbled into the room with an armful of packages.

‘Nice going Cochise,’ she said. ‘Why did you lock the door?’

‘Been a lot of office thefts lately,’ I said.

Anita looked around our threadbare three-room office with its ancient systems and peeling wall paint and let out a snort of derision.

‘Goodwill wouldn’t take our stuff, let alone some thief. Gees Cochise you are the careful one aren’t you?’

‘Are you now or have you ever been Canadian Anita,’ I said for no reason whatsoever.

‘What?’

‘Forget it, I was rambling,’ I said.’

‘Canadian...’ she mused. ‘That’s like an insult isn’t it?’

She examined her newly done nails for signs of damage and appeared relieved that they seemed in good order. I quickly changed the subject.

‘Nobody has called and the air is fixed,’ I said.

‘Then we can lock up and go home,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget to see how your uncle is doing.’

I said, ‘When are you going to pay him another visit?’

‘He just lies there and doesn’t say anything.’

‘He’s in a coma Anita. You don’t talk much when you are in a coma.’

‘Well, I can never think of anything to say,’ she said.

‘Read to him from a book.’

‘A book?’ she said, she gave it some thought. ‘Maybe I could read some of these new hair styling tips from the magazine.’

‘Yeah,’ I mumbled. ‘That’d wake him up.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, just musing,’ I said.

‘So out of my way and we’ll lock up,’ she said.

‘Why lock up if there’s nothing worth stealing?’ I teased.

Anita grinned. ‘People might take pity on us and dump stuff off that the Salvation Army wouldn’t take.’

We were about to leave when the phone rang.

Anita answered it in her usual professional way and listened for a moment making ‘uh huh’ noises. I started packing up my law books and when I looked up Anita was