Strictly No(Ir)Where: A Novel

By Jim Van Loozen

Cameron Price is a disbarred attorney turned private investigator. Super attorney Harris Monahan calls upon his expertise when a woman goes missing. Maggie is Danny Freemans pregnant wife, and no one can be sure if shes been murdered or if shes run away. Thats because Danny and his wife havent always had the most stable of relationships.

Maggie herself has been suspected of some unscrupulous behavior. In the past, she ran away from former fianc Tommy Lewis to have an abortion. Lewis has gone so far as to claim visitation rights on Danny and Maggies child, so Price wouldnt be surprised if the man was somehow involved in the womans sudden disappearance.

James Patrick is Maggies brotheran overzealous cop who does nothing but slow down Prices search for the truth. Patrick blames Danny, who he assumes is having an affair. He even goes so far as to intimidate Price to make his story stick. Price, however, is not a man easily intimidated. He will find the truth at whatever cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491741245

Jim Van Loozen

Jim Van Loozen was a celebrated newspaper reporter and editor in Houston before moving to Washington, D.C., to work for the U.S. Postal Service headquarters in a number of positions. He has won numerous awards and honors for his writing and now resides in Florida with his wife Diane. His novel A Ghost of a Chance also has been published by iUniverse.

Book preview

1

LIKE A CAT OF ANY ILK, I AM AT MY BEST WHEN ON THE prowl hunting but also able to expend many hours at rest. That’s the way it works in the private eye racket.

It was a Tuesday, a slow day, and I was sitting in my office waiting for the phone to ring. That meant waiting for some work to come my way if I’m honest. Lately, I find myself in this predicament more often than I like. Not to worry really. I keep tight controls on my bank balance. I have enough money to sustain me for a year or maybe two lean ones if the economy stays in the crapper. I know that thousands of people are in much worse shape than I, but I like having a safety net in case I take another long fall.

I have a history of that long fall. I think the popular terminology for it is from the penthouse to the outhouse. To have bounced back at all is good fortune not to be taken lightly. Frankly, I’m lucky to be alive. I remind myself of that almost daily.

Nowadays, things are a lot different than they were during my time as a top shelf trial lawyer. Then my digs were opulent and peopled by secretaries, aides, associates, interns, junior partners and a couple of flirtatious pieces of eye candy in case a client needed to be romanced a little on the side.

During those turbulent days, I was a rock star. The firm’s advertisements burned up the airways as steadily as they burned up dollars. The money didn’t matter when I was flying high, but I was literally high too often. All the trappings of wealth, including my trophy wife, my mansion, my fancy cars, and my life in the fast lane are distant history now. Long gone. I laid myself as low as it gets, having drunk it, inhaled it or shot it up until there was nothing left to me but a pile of debts and a long stint in rehab.

My bad habits developed at first to cope with the pressures of high profile, high stakes cases. They continued even as the importance of my work lessened. In rehab, I was forced to face a deeper truth. The alcohol and drugs were about creating the rush I no longer felt while litigating. I was burned out. I was losing cases I should have won. I was a pathetic mess, going to trial unprepared because I had lost interest in anything but getting loaded. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if I was flying solo, but I was hurting my clients while destroying myself. Eventually the complaints became frequent enough that the State Bar intervened. To them, my transgressions were grave business. They dumped my career in a hole and shoveled the dirt over it. I was finished; my life as a barrister was over.

Well, good riddance if you ask me. Sometimes you have to hit bottom before you can bounce back up. I am on the rebound thanks to Harris Monahan. Life is better now. I’m better now.

Harris is the only person in the legal system who didn’t give up on me. He came to see me in rehab and laid out his vision of a future course for me to follow, including his expectations for my behavior. Harris’s Rules, he called them. Harris is a very persuasive man. I got straight and stayed clean and sober, the most difficult process I’d ever encountered. But I succeeded. Once drug free, I set out to prove that there is life after the life. With my background in law and a little help from Harris, including a nice cash advance, I didn’t drown.

I never understood his benevolence. I asked Harris just once, Why?

What are friends for? Harris replied. His answer with a question was dripping with irony if not outright sarcasm. I wondered if I would have done the same for him if our situations were reversed. After all, we had been competitors for top-dollar criminal law business and adversaries in several big ticket civil suits. When I was sober, I won those cases as often as not, but not quite as often as Harris. He won more than his share. We were a pair of heavyweight fighters at the top of our games, until I put myself down for the count.

Eventually, Harris absorbed what had been my business, so maybe he felt he owed me something. He didn’t, of course, any more than he was obligated to make room in his expanded firm for my best and most loyal associates and employees. That was good and profitable practice, so maybe there was method to his madness. I don’t know because he never fully explained his motivation. He just did it. And I never asked again.

After rehab, with Harris helping expedite the licensing process by pulling a few strings, I hung out a new shingle as a private investigator. Most often I investigate whatever Harris requires of me as well as small but well- paying stuff from bigwigs he influences. Things are never going to be what they once had been for me, of course, but that is a good thing.

At least I think it is.

In lawyer’s parlance, I settled.

The office of Cameron Price Investigations, as I named my new firm, is located in a converted gasoline station a block off the main drag in a section of town that is not quite seedy but will be one day. The office space is small as befits a one-horse operation, one desk’s worth of space and a couple of padded chairs. It bears the background odors of grease and new paint which have not yet been overcome by the rattling window air conditioner that hangs over the door and works well enough to cool my work space. I like that there is ample space for parking and that the two service bays survived as leased space for Eddie’s Garage, another reason I had money in the bank.

Harris offered me space in his expanded suite of offices, but I wouldn’t have been comfortable working in close proximity to my former staff. Besides, I needed an edge, and the tough guy detective operating out of Spartan accommodations fit the bill. If nothing else, having my own digs makes me feel less dependent on Harris’s good graces. After all, even a fallen man craves a sense of self-reliance, no matter how small.

On the wall where a door had once connected my office space and the garage, an alcove has been added. A pair of gray metal file cabinets with more empty drawers than full stand sentinel there. Atop the one on the left, a coffee maker works full time and adds subtly to the background aromas of the place.

In the top drawer of the other file cabinet, my cell phone at last began to jangle. I don’t like little jingles or purchased music tones, so unless it’s tuned to vibrate, the phone rings like something at least 40 years ancient and makes every call seem urgent. I walked around my desk and took the half dozen steps required to open the file drawer and retrieve the phone.

2

PRICE HERE.

Cam, it’s me, Harris Monahan’s slightly feigned Irish brogue lilted through the receiver. My posture straightened involuntarily. Harris not only helped me get straight, he is insistent that I stay clean and sober. That’s a condition of employment that requires no more to enforce than his authoritarian demeanor and my respect for him. Besides, I have no longings to descend again into the pit of Hell.

What’s up?

Press conference. I forget, do you have a television in that joint of yours?

No, I let Eddie watch it all day over in the garage. He keeps me up to speed on breaking news. He’s closed today. Something I’m missing?

Client’s appealing for information about his missing wife. We were live about an hour ago; now the highlights are being run every fifteen minutes. It’s the story of the day. What about the Internet?

"Sorry. Mine’s an old-fashioned cell. I don’t go the laptop route either, and a decent computer would likely get ripped off in this location. That’s why