They Call Me Stench: Case 2

By Lawrence L. Warren

Case 2, 1944, January. It's hard times in America, the world is that war. 'Stench' returns to search for a seventeen year old runaway Nebraska farm girl who has come to Hollywood to be a movie star. The young beauty arrived with a sackful of world class troubles. Someone wants her dead and will stop at nothing to protect their sinister secret. Unwittingly, she's involved in a Nazi plot in the midst of America that will mean the end of freedom for every man, woman and child in the United States. The caper has been set in motion and is far too radical for the P.I. to thwart single-handed. With the sexy young starlet's help he must convinces the F.B.I. that the scheme is for real and not an elaborate Hollywood publicity stunt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483572109

Book preview

20

Chapter 1

They call me Stench. Not for any particular reason other than the fact that my name is Stenchcomb. Peter Stenchcomb. For the last two years I’ve been a Private Investigator in Los Angeles, California. The ten years prior to that I was a copper with the L. A. Police Department and had made Detective. It’s January 1944 and if you’re an able bodied man between the age of 18 and 45 you’re in uniform somewhere in the world fighting the little yellow nippers or the krauts. I’m 30 but have a bum left arm thanks to a rookie patrolman who shoots first and asks questions later. I get a small monthly police pension that pays my office rent and YMCA membership and dues. The office also serves as my temporary apartment. I’m comfortable here and make no attempt to find other accommodations and the building’s owner, Mr. Blumenthal, doesn’t enforce the lease restrictions against it. I hope he lives for another eighty years. The office has its own water closet and is on the top floor of a three story walk up located on Wilshire Boulevard, mid-town L. A.

When I’m not out working a case or at my desk you can find me downstairs at Sam’s Paradise Lounge on my favorite barstool or in the corner booth at Flo’s Empire Diner. Both will extend me credit when the investigation business is slow, which hasn’t been a problem recently. My fee is ten bucks a day plus ten more for expenses, cash in advance, it’s printed on the back of my business cards and I make no exception to the rule. I’m an honest P. I. and do the job I’m hired to do, the best I can. There are times when I’m up to my kiester in alligators but, like a three-legged cat, somehow I always land on my feet. As a licensed investigator I carry a gat that I have never had a call to use, not that I wouldn’t, I’m a pretty good shot, I just have never been pressed to that point. My current companion is a Smith & Wesson .38 Special snub nose revolver, kicks like a mule and when you’re hit by it you stay down. A concealed weapon permit in the State of California requires an annual renewal which means a trip to the police firing range, filing an application and paying a five-dollar fee. It’s a nuisance but it’s the law and I’m not prepared to spent a year behind bars to ignore it. I have some time on my hands while waiting for a client’s check from Nebraska to clear the bank, another couple of days I’m being told. So, today’s a good day to show my handsome face downtown at the L.A.P.D. Central Bureau. I was assigned there a few years ago when I was on the force and know my way around. The firing range is in the basement of the building and my chum, Detective Henry Welsh’s desk is upstairs in the squad bullpen. He’s always glad to see me and chew the fat. My ex-girlfriend, Miss Amy Todd, also works there in the records room. We were once sweet on each other but she’s not always happy to see me and her feelings run hot and cold. Mostly cold these days. We went out together for a few hours last week for the first time since our split over a year ago. After a few drinks we stopped by my office for a bit so I could take care of some urgent business. While I was busy elsewhere she found some photographs of me with another dame and stormed off in a tither, we haven’t seen each other since.

At the firing range I needed to shoot fifty rounds at a target thirty feet away and hit it at least half the time, then take the target and five dollars to the records room and fill out the form. I hit the target forty-seven times, that was the easy part. Going to the records room and seeing Amy Todd, that was the touchy part. I knew that I was in for a lambasting the next time we met. Amy has never been timid about showing her displeasure with me.

I stopped at Henry’s desk for some friendly chat before venturing into the lioness’s den.

Stench! Hi-de-ho buddy, how’s the shoulder doin’?

I held up my left hand and made the A-OK sign with my thumb and forefinger. My latest accomplishment using my left hand. My left hand and arm look normal but are too weak to hold a mug of coffee for more than a few seconds before dropping it. On the other hand, my left shoulder looks like hell where the bullet hit me and I will never regain full use of it. I’m working on it Henry, a little at a time. Have time for a couple of beers?

I’d like to Stench, but I’m behind on the paper work and only have a few more hours before it needs to be upstairs. How about next time you’re here?

Yeah, okay Henry. By the way, hear anything further about that San Pedro factory arson a few weeks back? I’d like to know if the Feds have any up-dates.

Nothing new, the suspects are in the clink awaiting trial so our investigation is closed. We’re just waiting for a guilty verdict to put the case in the dead file. Another win for law and order.

Thanks Henry, I’ll get out of your hair and let you finish those reports. See ya later.

I was relieved to hear that the law considered the case solved and closed.

Now, to see if I can set things right with Miss Amy Todd. At the records counter I didn’t give Amy the opportunity to tear into me about our last date. I just calmly said to her, Amy, I do not appreciate how you ran out on me last Tuesday night without hearing my explanation of the photos you found while snooping through my desk. Those pictures were taken during an investigation conducted by the F.B.I. that I was involved in. Without my selfless intervention, the villains would still be at large and who knows what harm would come to some innocent children. Amy, you owe me an apology!

Every word I said was true, maybe irrelevant and misleading but true.

Amy didn’t know what to say. She stammered, started to speak then stammered again. Then after a long silence she finally said, Stench, I don’t know. I saw those pictures of you and that other woman and it was plain to see what was going on. I got upset. I don’t know what to say!

Apology accepted! Let’s meet after work at Cupid’s and we’ll have a drink or two and forget the whole thing.

I.....I guess that’s okay then.

I left Central Bureau with my gun permit renewed and another crack at Miss Amy Todd. We used to meet often at Cupid’s Bar in the private candle lit booth near the back for wine and hugs. She had wanted a gold band on her finger, a mortgage and diapers hanging out on the clothesline. I wanted more wine and hugs and that’s what brought the end to Amy and Stench. We couldn’t agree on Just that one little thing so she dumped me to find a husband as if she was the only available pretty girl out there. With most young men away in uniform, the ratio was in favor of us remaining guys. One man for every four or five eligible dames. Why buy the cow when milk was free?

I had the whole afternoon to kill before my date with Amy so I drove back to my office to see if anything was shaking. As usual, I parked my car at Max’s Garage and walked the couple of blocks down Wilshire Boulevard to my top floor digs. Helen, the third floor telephone operator and my unofficial part-time receptionist, was on duty at her switchboard in the alcove directly across the hall from me. She was busy answering calls, making connections and keeping everything else that needed doing flowing smoothly. As I reached my door she held up an envelope and was waving it over her head to get my attention. I took the letter from her hand and whispered Thank you and went inside to my desk. It was the second letter within a week from the attorney in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. The first one had a $280.00 check that I’m waiting for the bank to clear before starting my search for Mary-Sue Boulgard, the 17-year-old runaway farm girl. I doubt that I will be so lucky as to get another check from him this soon. I just hope this isn’t bad news telling me the girl is back home and my services won’t be needed. No check, no bad news, just another flyer for the safe return of Mary-Sue with an increase in reward from $1,000.00 to $1,500.00 and a glossy photograph of the young beauty. She had runaway to Hollywood to be a motion picture star and had the looks and poise to make it. If any of the bus load of hopefuls that arrived in L.A. each day had a chance at stardom it was Mary-Sue. But people back in Scottsbluff wanted her returned home to marry the mayor’s son and settle down on a sugar beet farm and have a litter of little sugar beet farmers. Personally, I could see the girl’s point of view for fame and fortune over homesteading and sugar beets but she was a minor and I was being paid my fee. That is, if the Nebraska check ever cleared the bank. And the reward of $1,500.00 was serious money. I’d have to put together a game plan and start searching for her before the reward flyers were spread all over town and every out of work gumshoe was horning in. By 4:30, Amy’s quitting time, I was at Cupid’s Bar at our favorite candle lit booth from by gone days with two glasses of chilled white wine. I was hoping that Amy would be as receptive as she had been last week about the idea of the two of us going to her new apartment. Of course, that was before she found the racy pictures in my desk drawer. I think I’ll go to the hardware store and invest in a small office safe, it sure would make my life less complicated if I had one. I fished the gold cigarette case from my jacket pocket and smoked a Lucky Strike. Amy Todd arrived and sat down at the outside edge of the booth’s wrap-around cushion. She acted a bit standoffish and on guard. I smiled and offered her a glass of wine and told her how pretty she looked. That always worked to bring her around.

Stench, I’m still upset about those pictures I saw in your office.

I know Amy, but sometime I’m called upon to do things that have to be done. The P. I. profession is not always a bed a roses you know. The bad guys are crafty and ruthless and if you’re going to catch them you have get down in the mud and be just as crafty and ruthless. It’s a sticky business.

I’m sure that’s true but I can’t forget how you looked with her.

I ordered two more glasses of wine and tried to think of something to say that would ease her mind. You know how people are always saying I look like the movie actor John Garfield? Well, what if I was him and had to be lovey to those girls on screen every day. How’d you feel then?

That would be different, that’s what actors do. That’s their job Stench.

I don’t see how it’s any different. A kiss is a kiss.

Sure, but on the movie set there are lots of people standing there watching the action, they’re not hiding behind closed doors and keeping it a secret.

You mean it’s okay for some people to do it in public but not in private for others?

Yes, that’s what I mean. Actors aren’t real people they’re make believe. And Private Investigators shouldn’t pretend they are too.

Well Amy, I guess it’s just another one of those little things we don’t see eye to eye on. Let’s calm down and talk about something else before we get off on the wrong track again. Okay?

Talk about what?

"You know so much about the movie business, tell me, how would you