The Discount Detectives

By Ben Unglesbee

​​​​Part crime caper, part screwball comedy and part political satire, The Discount Detectives is a quirky spin on the detective novel.

Ted Shackelford isn’t your typical literary detective. He's neither super-tough like Philip Marlow nor super-smart like Sherlock Holmes. He's a screw-up, a bungler. But he’s trying his hardest.

After being laid off from his job as a department store security guard, Ted stumbles into a job as a private investigator at the obscure Discount Investigations Agency. He's hired by chief investigator Ray Loveburn, who has a sketchy past, few scruples and far more confidence than common sense.

Soon after joining the agency, Ted is assigned to the Space Inc. case, and from there on his life is taken over by alter egos, shady characters, complicated financial schemes, rich wannabe astronauts, leering politicians, angry Tea Partiers and a vagabond prophet of economic doom. Run by industrial tycoon and libertarian politico O.P. Boa, Space Inc. has grand aspirations but there is little evidence that it is actually building a rocket. Despite a series of disguises and fake identities, Ted and Ray get nowhere on the case. Meanwhile, Ted is also trying to find clues about a mysterious financial bet placed against the U.S. government's credit standing, made urgent by a showdown in Congress over the country's budget. Soon Ted is thrust into a role he doesn't feel at all equipped for: Trying to save a world suddenly on the brink of economic collapse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Books
• Release date: Oct 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370064991

Book preview

Chapter One

The day before Ray Loveburn hired me at the agency he chuckled thoughtfully as he told me my background check had come back blemish-free.

It's a good thing I'm the one doing the hiring, he said. I doubt I'd pass a background check myself.

It's never so easy to tell what's in Ray's mind when he says things like that. For all the animation on his face—the teeter-tottering eyebrows, the lolling tongue, the many different fractions of smiles—he remained fundamentally inscrutable to me. Although in this case, I would come to suspect that his background indeed had some blemishes and boils on it.

Because Ray can be so inscrutable, when I interviewed I had little hope of making it through the hiring process. I had no experience in private detection, though I called myself a detective on my résumé. For most of my adult life I had worked as undercover security for the department store Wort & Co., where I sussed out teenage return scammers and electronics thieves. I was not exactly Sherlock Holmes, and Ray's not exactly a dummy. He saw through my over-applied résumé gloss.

Detective, eh? They had a lot of murders at Wort & Co.?

Well, store detective. I was more there to prevent inventory theft and investigate it when it happened.

What was the biggest case you cracked?

I plundered my memory for a moment before I said: There was a cartel of teenage girls who had acquired a security tag remover. They stole more than two thousand dollars of clothes in less than a week, mostly in name-brand dresses that they piled on under their winter coats.

Hmm, Ray said, not taking his eyes off my résumé. Who are your influences?

You mean, like my mother and father and high school teachers?

"Who influenced you as an investigator? Was it the old Scotland Yard detectives? Hoover's FBI? Who made you want to do this work?"

If I had to answer that—

You do. No need to talk in the subjunctive.

I guess I'd say Sherlock Holmes and Phillip Marlowe.

They're not real... But who knows, maybe that's a good thing. You're ambitious. Real life isn't good enough for you. I'm the same way. Have you ever tried gaining weight?

I'm sorry?

I'm not asking you to gain weight for the position—that would be illegal. It would just be nice to have a fat, bald, surly detective around here. That's what people expect.

I guess I've always been a little underweight, was all I could offer as a response.

We sat across from each other at an aluminum desk with a fake-wood top. Ray glanced skyward, looking for wisdom in the dotted, flaky ceiling boards, and maybe also trying to hide his disappointment over my physique. He looked a couple years older than me. His short, perfect, synthetic-looking hair gleamed like blondish boron under the fluorescent office lights.

At that point I had pretty much given up on the interview. My answers were nothing more than the sad truth.

You did the Wort & Co. job for 15 years? Ray asked

Yep.

You didn't get bored? You didn't have other ambitions?

I was working on a four-year degree, if that counts as ambition.

What happened?

I got stuck on the public-speaking requirement.

Fear of public humiliation?

No, I just had nothing to say. I spent hours trying to think of a speech and got nowhere. I hoped the words would just come out of my mouth. They didn't, and I had to drop the class, twice. And then Wort axed the tuition reimbursement program.

Some employers might frown on that failure. It shows a lack of confidence. But I don't want talkers. I need an inquisitive mind around here. What was your major?

History.

Why not criminal justice?

I wanted a broad education. Besides, I don't think the university offered it.

What's your favorite historical epoch?

The Great Depression.

Dark. Good. I've been told I'm irrationally optimistic. I could use a counterweight.

He let my résumé slide off his hand onto his desk, and then he eyed me squarely.

Let's say you're interviewing some corporate thug about the dummy companies they use to launder money, and he or she pulls a gun on you. What's your next move?

This happens to you?

It's happening right now. You better figure out what you're going to do.

I braced and searched his hands for a gun, but soon realized he wasn't being literal. Am I in kicking distance?

Ray snorted. You think your foot is faster than a bullet?

Maybe I distract him with eye contact and chitchat while my foot comes up and kicks away the gun.

I can't say I was answering seriously here. I was free-wheeling it, as Ray clearly was.

You think you got the eyes for that, do you? Ray asked. You think you're Johnny Depp, with untold mysteries hiding in your irises? You can't even hold eye contact with me right now. Bang. You're dead, pal. Now you're back alive. Same situation, but no way you're in kicking distance. I should have made that the case all along.

How about I cut you a deal? I'll give you a couple million dollars from an offshore account I have access to.

I'm listening.

One of my clients gave me his information so I could monitor it. He wanted to make sure his accountant wasn't ripping him off. I'll raid the account and give you 60 percent, if you don't shoot me.

You would do that to a client at the mere threat of physical harm? That's good to know.

No, it's a lie. To you. There's no client.

Ray flashed one of his few full smiles.

Very nice. Well, Mr. Shackleford, I must say you're an intriguing candidate. I'll be in touch.

He called the next afternoon to offer me the position.

For just the second time in my life, I was starting a new job.

Our office was housed in a strip mall that was brand new in early 2009. That's a little like opening a stock brokerage firm in January 1930. The mall had been mostly vacant for the length of its young life. At one end a would-be Macy's had been converted into a gym, with a nutrition supplement store next door, and occupying the other end was a cognitive therapy clinic for pets. Apparently, at least in the exterior suburb that was home to the mall, the demand for such a service existed. You don't necessarily have to be a Marxist to resent the fact that some upper middle-class schmuck's Boston terrier is better adapted to life's setbacks and more aware of its self-feeding negativity than you are.

Our office was somewhere not quite in the middle of the mall, with half a block of dark storefronts—ghostly in that way only vacant retail space can be—in between us and the gym. It was a desolate setting, a museum of the housing and financial crash that drivers could see from 131st Street. And yet, I liked the idea of working out of a storefront, where anyone could walk in off the street and purchase some justice, or at least hire us to get information admissible in a courtroom capable of providing justice.

When hiring me, Ray said the uniform consisted of black or tan slacks, a white Oxford, and a black or dark-blue tie. For some reason, that didn't apply to him. Ray himself dressed in suits made of what looked like soft exotic metals in blue and green and rust colors, and silky, bright shirts and ties. (Maybe he had thought to stipulate for fashion in his contract. But why? Why did either man, Ray or the agency's owner, think his own sense of fashion would lead to better crime fighting?) And so every day I showed up looking like a door-to-door Mormon while Ray sauntered around dressed like Jay Gatsby. Yet I complied, happily even. I showed up the first day fingering the cheap silk of my tie, trying to keep a goofy grin off my face. I felt so professional, so FBI.

At one time Ray owned the agency that now employed him. Back then it was a corporate information and intelligence wholesaler, whatever the hell that means. It sounds like corporate spying to my ear, but Ray never confirmed (or denied) this. All he told me was that he did a lot of international work and the company was hugely successful as far as small service-based firms go, but he ran into some hard economic weather and had been gouged by frivolous and unfounded lawsuits, as well as a couple of criminal suits in Malaysia and South Korea, which weren't as big a deal as they might sound, he assured me. He was innocent, but on principle he refused to defend himself in those countries and so avoided them altogether. Thank God, too. I needed a good reason to stay away from Malaysia. I couldn't seem to do it on my own, he told me and, as I soon realized was his way, offered me nothing by way of follow-up or explanation.

Three years ago Ray sold out to Hank Horsely IV, an aging real estate developer. It's not totally clear to me why Horsely bought Ray out. When he did, he converted the firm to a private investigation unit devoted to due diligence work and fraud detection. He must have seen a need out there in the market. Why he didn't buy an accounting agency or another private investigation firm is beyond me. Then again, most all business transactions seem opaque to me.

When Horsely bought the firm there were five core people including Ray, but Horsely let everyone but Ray go after just six months. The decline of company mergers during the recession probably didn't help the market for due diligence. From time to time cases did trickle in, and, with each one, Horsely would tell Ray to pass. He wasn't interested. Said they were too small to pursue or veiled requests for spying. Yet Horsely held onto the company and kept Ray around on salary. After a few years passed without a single paying case, Horsely decided, just as inexplicably, it was time to expand. I became the first addition in the rebuilding phase.

I never saw Horsely. I didn't talk with him on the phone. When I started at the agency, he was just a name, and a reason, or one of the reasons, for some of the irregularities in the agency's operations. After a couple weeks of Ray attributing to Horsely esoteric company policies—e.g., the dress code, the directive to disclose office relationships (even though it was just Ray and me working there, and we were both conventional heterosexuals), limits on public drinking that were supposed to keep us from disclosing information on cases, of which we had none—I began to wonder if Horsely was a device made up by Ray to toy with or test me.

Then one morning about three weeks into the job, Horsely's assistant appeared out of a pickle-green Chevy Monte Carlo parked diagonally across two spaces in front of the office. (I wanted to begrudge her for it, but couldn't. God knows the rest of the public wasn't using those spaces.) A woman approaching ninety stepped out of the car, dressed in what looked like a flight stewardess's uniform circa 1948. When she entered the office, I heard the unearthly hum of our doorbell for the first time. It cooed out a dreamy tune meant to warm the purchasing instincts of shoppers for fancy candles or handcrafted soaps, or whatever sort of store was meant to go in where our office ended up.

Meredith! Ray called to her from his desk, with the affection of a child being picked up from school by a beloved aunt.

Mr. Loveburn, she said, a bit coolly I thought, though I figured she was just adhering to her own sense of professionalism, forged at some point in the late 1930s.

What have you got for us today?

A note from Mr. Horsely. He says it is of highest importance.

More work, Ray said, maybe with irony, maybe not. Well, good thing we have another body around. Meredith, this is Ted Shackelford, our recent hire.

Pleased to meet you, Mr. Shackelford. I've been with Mr. Horsely nearly since he started in business. I can tell you he is a good man to work for, and what he cares about above all is results. He has already heard so many great things about you from Ray. Which unit are you in?

Um, I said and looked at Ray. I was unaware our two-person agency had multiple units. Investigations?

He's our new fraud guy, Ray cut in. Shack has an incredible mind for sniffing out deceit.

This was pure balderdash. I get deceived all the time. I have a bad habit, especially in an aspiring detective, of giving people the benefit of the doubt. I was famously gullible in my family; my brother duped me regularly for sport. He once convinced me that I was the first human clone of record—of secret record, that is—conjured up in a lab in Boulder, Colorado. My dad went along with it, the monster. They only told me the truth after I started writing to scientists around the world who specialize in cloning to see if any of them were my creator.

Later I asked Ray about how he came to pick me for the fraud unit, and he admitted he made it up on the spot.

Meredith waved a manila envelope at Ray and me. It happens that I have your first case right here, Mr. Shackelford. Mr. Horsely said to stop everything you two are working on right now and make this your top priority.

After handing over the envelope to Ray and collecting a memo he produced that detailed his most recent efforts to track down a bogus tip fed by Horsley, Meredith left us to our own devices.

Once her giant car disappeared back into the ether beyond our storefront, Ray pulled a single white sheet from the envelope. From where I stood I could see the wobbly, red-etched letters from Horsely. Ray blew out the breath he had been holding while reading, puffing out his cheeks and making windy noises, the way children play with their own appendages and bodily systems when bored.

He returned the note to the envelope and handed it to me. That ought to get you initiated, he said and went to sit at his desk, unburdened.

Before looking at it, I asked: Ray, what did you tell Horsely about me? It sounds like he thinks I'm some sort of prodigy?

I said you're a promising detective with a long background. Clever. Persistent. Brilliant. Versatile. And that you've never left a case unsolved.

Wow. I had no idea you saw all that in me.

Ray gave me a nod, a quick one. I realized that as agency boss he had every incentive to talk up his new hire. 

So here's your big chance to prove yourself. The spotlight's on you.

The envelope suddenly felt like it weighed many pounds in my hand, pounds that made my mostly muscle-free arm feel tired. It felt like a sentence handed down by a judge. No use procrastinating. I unsheathed my fate from its envelope. Squinting at the scratchy, almost child-like lettering on a blank white page, I read:

A company called Space Inc., near Gardner—For real? Check it out, pls. Get GOOD info.

Bewildered, I stood before Ray's desk with the sheet. Impassive, Ray eyed something on his computer screen without acknowledging me. It occurred to me that Ray felt, with me now around, that these things were no longer his problem. Maybe I was the new grunt, and in a parallel universe a budding investigative genius, but he still had the responsibility to train me.

What do we generally do with these things? I'm not even sure I understand it.

Ray reached out for the memo. He gave it about three more seconds of his attention.

Did you look up the company?             

No, I haven't done anything yet. So I should look up the company?

That would be a good start. If it doesn't exist, that's an easy one to file.

A quick Google search produced a webpage for a company called Space Inc. with an address from Gardner, two suburbs to the south and a little to the west, a town on the outermost frontiers of our Midwestern metropolis, still sixty percent farmland. The webpage was copyrighted 2007 and told its audience that it was under construction, but to check back in 2008, which had long come and gone.

Washed in a blue that was the color of space on the patches worn by NASA astronauts, the page showed a rendering of a rocket heading for a sky spangled with stars. Aside from the note on site construction and the address, there was only one other piece of text, which read: At Space Inc. we're working to make human travel to space a perfectly ordinary occurrence, carried out regularly by civilian enterprises such as ours.

Even with its roughshod look and out-of-date-ness, the page managed to inspire, to those susceptible to being inspired.

Well? Ray asked from his desk.

It has a defunct-looking website. And a Gardner address.

Beautiful. Let's go have a look.

Ray wanted me to drive so he could keep his mind focused on the case. Very quickly I was becoming wary of our work dynamic, with Ray saving all the cerebral, and hence invisible, work for himself, and I left to run Google searches and drive him around.

We went in my diminutive, radioactive-apple green Geo. Ray's knees were nearly at his stomach due to the dispute between his tallness and the Geo's smallness. That is one of the few consolations to men of average height such as myself—a life of universal comfort in automobiles while watching the tall do human pretzel acts to fit.

Space Inc.'s headquarters was colossal. It was hard to believe such a large facility, devoted to such a grandiose undertaking as civilian space travel, could lurk around south of the metro and not be common knowledge. No wonder Horsely was suspicious. The facility consisted of two super-massive, warehouse-like buildings, essentially giant sheds with sky-blue aluminum siding. The third building mirrored the other two, but was a fraction of the square footage and a fourth of the height. A relatively tiny white sign in front of the door of the smallest building was all that identified the place. It gave the company's name in a sun-washed blue and, below it, a slogan: Launching dreams into space. Very high-minded stuff. It made me feel cynical as I wondered what sort of business I would start were I to pursue a dream, and then I struggled to think of any dreams I'd had recently.

So, the presumption is that they build rockets here, Ray said.

Looks doable. It's a big place.

Shall we go in and have a chat?

Okay.

Neither of us took action. Anxiety rose in me. My heart seemed to swing around in my chest like a tether ball wrapping furiously around a pole, tightening an invisible chord around my esophagus as it went.

Should we have a cover of some sort? I asked, disbelieving that the words came out of my mouth. I often went undercover as a detective at Wort & Co., but it always involved costume exclusively—no words and minimal pretense on my part. Again: Deception is not my strong point. My entire life I've been the tricked, the duped, the pranked, never the prankster. As a child, I couldn't even wait quietly for someone to sit on a whoopee cushion without giggling like a loon.

I hoped Ray would answer, No—that would be idiotic. Instead he asked blithely, Like what?

Hmm, I said,