Murder and Other Distractions

By Michael Estrin

If you’re wanted for murder, the last thing you should do is smoke a joint, eat a taco, and alienate potential alibis. Then again, Ethan is a terrible murder suspect, and perhaps a terrible person too.

Or, maybe it’s just been a lousy week for Ethan. There are layoffs at the office, poorly written death threats, and a vapid, but alluring coworker sending Ethan mixed signals. The f-buddy who loves to loathe him doesn’t understand that it’s over, and his philosophizing best friend is pretty sure that Ethan’s problem is merely the dreary momentum of the hipster ethos. Or, it could be that Ethan’s pot dealer is out of baggies once again.

But the cop who’s after him doesn’t buy any of that bullshit. Foul-mouthed and shady, Detective Boyd is damn good at his job. He’s certain Ethan murdered his ex—The Girl Who Got Away—along with her boyfriend. And the more Boyd hounds Ethan for a confession, the more Ethan comes to see the murders as his way out of the ennui consuming him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Estrin
• Release date: Dec 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458152336

Michael Estrin

Michael Estrin is the author of Not Safe for Work, book #1 of the Porn Valley mystery series. Michael based the series on his experience as a reporter at Porn Valley's second best trade publication, but unlike the hero from his novels, Michael never solved a murder, or dislocated his shoulder while covering a porn shoot.After porn, Michael went "legit," covering advertising, law, and technology for various mainstream publications that aren't blocked by workplace filtering software :) He also honed his comedy chops by studying at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles.Michael's short stories have appeared at Akashic and Out of the Gutter. His creative nonfiction has been published by Narratively, Vox, and Tablet. Like the ashes of a Viking warrior dispatched to Valhalla, Michael's journalism is scattered all over the Web. These days, he's a corporate ghostwriter. BOO!Murder and Other Distractions is Michael's first novel, and it's available for FREE!Ride/Share is a collection of micro stories Michael experienced while sitting in Los Angeles traffic and chatting with various Lyft drivers.Michael lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Christina, and their dog, Mortimer.To receive a weekly free short story that's guaranteed to make you laugh (or your money back!), please subscribe to Michael's newsletter at https://michaelestrin.substack.com.To learn more about Michael and to hear about upcoming projects, please visit www.slackernoir.com

Book preview

1 Inside Girl

A few hours from now an emotionally unstable woman will come over to my apartment. We will watch A Few Good Men because it’s one of those movies everyone has seen at least ten times. Somewhere between the sexual innuendo that goes nowhere and the truth, we will make out.

I will cum in her mouth once and then again in the condom—the protection a necessary part of our arrangement because, though our interludes occur with regularity, they are not indicative of a relationship. If polled, we would both insist that the sex means nothing. She means nothing to me, and I mean the same to her.

Twice I will try to put my cock in her ass. Twice I will be reminded that 1) she is saving that orifice for her husband and 2) I will never be him.

She will spend the night, but we will not cuddle or engage in any kind of pillow talk. I will sleep soundly, like a criminal who knows he’s been caught. She, I suspect, will stare up at my ceiling and wonder why she’s wasting her youth on me.

We will get up early, not wishing to prolong the post-coital experience. She will use my bathroom, but she will know better than to try and leave so much as a toothbrush behind.

Without a kiss, she will leave, and I will forget about her until the next time, when we will most certainly repeat our sad ritual.

It’s best not to dwell on these kinds of things, I tell myself as I finish up at the office. Inside Girl seems to like this arrangement about as well as I do, which is to say that we each harbor the exact same amount of antipathy and lust for each other.

Things I like about Inside Girl:

She looks me in the eye when she blows me.

She tastes like red starburst candy.

She shaves her pussy.

Things I don’t like about Inside Girl:

Everything not found on above list.

Inside Girl responds promptly to my texts and always delivers. She is like the Domino’s Pizza of fucking, which is to say that she is reliable, low-effort and thoroughly forgettable.

I think about this, and then I think about the half-eaten turkey sandwich on my desk. I have been a writer at Rubber Necker for three years, and I have gotten out of the office to eat lunch exactly twice.

Staring at a white flap of turkey clinging to a limp leaf of browning lettuce, I can’t help but think that my lunch options are the problem. Inside Girl, who I met at my friend Zeiger’s birthday party, is a decent option on a lousy menu.

Once when I was sick, I went to Whole Foods in the middle of the day to get some soup and a fistful of those homeopathic medicines that deliver unrivaled health, according to their ad copy, and absolutely nothing, according to the American Medical Association.

Whole Foods is one of those markets for the super wealthy who have somehow managed to buy back the health I suspect we all had slightly after the Industrial Revolution and slightly before the birth of a consumer-packed goods culture. The store’s aisles are practically littered with women who look like they just stepped out of a Neutrogena ad. They are tall and flawless with sweet smiles and radiant skin.

Living in Los Angeles, you’d think you’d see more of these women out and about. But the truth is that it’s easier to find a crack whore, an alcoholic assistant or a party girl who lives on sugary cereal and cocaine. All of these women are thoroughly fuckable in their own ways to a certain type of man at a certain time, but ubiquity is not an attractive trait. Whole Foods women somehow seem like the ideal, if only because they are rare, and in my time I’ve only dated one.

Inside Girl is not a Whole Foods woman. There is nothing beautiful about her, yet all of my friends agree that she is hot. And there are times, like right now for instance, that I’d rather fuck a hot woman I loathe than an ugly woman I love.

This is something I shouldn’t dwell on because 1) it’s depressing and 2) I have a deadline.

I am reminded of my deadline by my editor, a waifish redhead named Helen who sends me an instant message even though her office is less than four yards from the bullpen, where I sit with the rest of the staff. I am not behind on my story. I have exactly seventeen minutes before I need to file, and I am only one hundred words short. From experience, I know this means I have four more minutes to contemplate my sex life, three minutes to bang out a conclusion and ten minutes to give yet another mindless feature a quickie glance before pressing Send.

And so I use the four minutes I have left to debate the merits of cleaning my apartment. Inside Girl knows me well enough to know that my apartment is neither clean nor disgusting. For a single guy, I am probably on the clean side of things, which is to say that there are no dishes in the sink and all the dirty clothes are in the hamper. But there is a thin layer of dust that clings to everything except my TV, and the toilet is permanently stained with a brownish yellow hue.

If I clean, Inside Girl will notice. When we talk, and that is not often, it is usually a probing line of inquiry about my suitability for a more serious relationship. What I can’t figure out is why we continue to have this same conversation after a year of doing the exact same thing. It’s as if she wants to prove to herself that I could be the one, but somehow she already knows that I am not. This makes me wonder if she is a masochist. And that makes me wonder if the fact that I equate sex with her to eating Domino’s Pizza somehow means that I’m a masochist.

I dwell on this thought and realize that I have somehow forgotten a key fact for my article. This problem occurs to me with twelve minutes to go, which means that I am more or less screwed because I don’t know how many Americans use TiVo, a fact that will give the article the air of authenticity that separates it from a blog entry. In the Internet age, it’s very important to elevate yourself from the blogosphere. At least, it’s very important if you are a writer like me, who plies his trade at a publication that is always downsizing to justify the bottom-line. Bloggers are unpaid hacks who sit around in their pajamas crafting bile-filled posts about topics that don’t matter; staff writers are under-paid hacks who hammer out meaningless copy their bosses hope bloggers will rip to shreds because such a free-for-all can (sometimes) be a traffic gold mine, which (in theory) should translate into real money.

The number of TiVo subscribers is one of those details that a blogger would likely miss, and it’s an important detail because I am writing a story about how a straight man in New York destroyed his TiVo box because it started suggesting gay-oriented content for him to watch. Apparently, an overload of shows from channels like Bravo and Logo—as opposed to ESPN and Spike—sent this luddite into a rage. Or, at least that’s what I was able to gather from some assorted Internet rumors and Facebook posts I found in one of his friend’s news feeds. Helen, my boss, considered this a hot story when I pitched it at our morning meeting. But without including how many people actually use TiVo, Helen will want to know why this story is important to our readers. "Where’s the it could happen to someone you know hook?" she’ll ask. But the strange thing is that virtually any number will do. The number need only 1) seem sizeable and 2) be accurate, or at the very least be attributable to a reputable third party source, which gives it the feeling of accuracy, even if the information is in fact dead wrong.

I have already spoken with a PR girl from TiVo, a VP of programming for Logo, the gay network that aired the content which prompted the destruction of the TiVo box, and the luddite in question, although he refused to be quoted for the article and hung up on me shortly after I introduced myself. I should have asked the PR girl from TiVo how many people subscribe to the service, but I was distracted by the fact that she had a (310) area code. This always distracts me because (310) is a Los Angeles area code, and PR girls are notorious sluts. I don’t mean to disparage the entire profession, but one cannot discount the fact that most reporters are men and most PR people, who are charged with selling all manner of crap, are women. Consider the gender divide between the two professions and it’s not hard to fuck up the math. This crude calculus has also been confirmed to me by Ann, Zeiger’s publicist girlfriend, who once confessed that the profession ought to be called pubic relations. But that was before Zeiger and Ann got serious about each other, life, and a house in LA’s coveted Westside. So I doubt Ann would stick to that story now.

The TiVo PR girl didn’t seem particularly cute on the phone, but the local area code did cause me to tune out for a few critical moments as I fantasized about the idea of us meeting for drinks, me picking up the tab on my imaginary expense account and her fucking me silly to write a crap story I was going to write anyway. This isn’t a bad fantasy if the voice on the other end of the phone 1) belongs to a semi-hot girl and 2) is smart enough not to talk business for more than five minutes.

I’ve never fucked a PR girl, and so this fantasy—one I often hear about from other writers—occupies at least one third of my work hours.

I call her, but she doesn’t pick up.

I have nine minutes to go.

Fortunately, there is Google. A quick search yields a few recent articles on TiVo, and thankfully some other journalist bothered to ask the question that escaped my mind, perhaps because his PR contact wasn’t local.

The number is 11.9 million, and to stretch my copy I find myself writing, just under 12 million Americans subscribe to the TiVo service. I also add a unique detail that makes it look like I really researched this topic when I write, a Technorati search revealed that more than 7,000 people blog about their experience using TiVo.

I realize this fact means nothing. Most facts mean nothing, but it is the kind of touch that makes people think you’ve done your homework and that you actually care about the product you’re putting out. It’s the journalistic equivalent to cleaning your apartment before an emotionally unstable woman comes over.

I decide to include that nonsense fact but not to clean my apartment.

With less than a minute to go before my deadline, I press Send, transmitting my story across the Internet to Helen, who stands, hands on hips, four yards from my desk. I smile and tell her to check her inbox. And with that, Fuckable Coworker asks me what my plans are for the weekend.

My day is basically done because I can’t write another story in the twenty-six minutes that remain. But I am kind of stuck because leaving early is one of the worst offenses one can imagine at my office. I suspect that I could play a game of Russian roulette with my co-workers and HR would simply schedule a meeting to remind me that games of chance and firearms are forbidden by company policy. But if I were to leave early, I’m certain all hell would break loose, like when a monkey gets out of his cage and the rest of the zoo’s animals go fucking ballistic.

Fuckable Coworker, as her name suggests, is both thoroughly off limits and good fodder for a mind that would rather think about women than writing stories meant to entertain the droves of hipsters who populate the Web. We agree on nothing, flirt constantly and generally irritate the hell out of the rest of the staff as we debate the finer points of dating, pop culture or politics when we should be asking ourselves: "Would a hipster want to read this? Or, is this a good story for Rubber Necker?"

Because I have time to kill, I pick a fight with Fuckable Coworker, reasoning that a little verbal jousting will 1) get me through a long weekend without much good conversation and 2) serve as an excellent opportunity to undress her perfect yoga-body with my eyes.

I’m hanging out with Inside Girl tonight, I tell Fuckable Coworker. Then a phone call to my parents on Sunday. That’s all I have planned.

This is a pretty typical weekend for me, and it causes a real dilemma for Fuckable Coworker, who 1) does not approve of my refusal to call Inside Girl by her given name and 2) can’t help but gush at the idea of a grown man calling his parents on a weekly basis, even if the conversation is a rehash of the same talk they’ve been having for the last decade. I am a perpetual enigma to her because I seemingly possess the desirable quality of caring about friends and family and the loathsome quality of treating a fellow woman rather poorly, at least according to Fuckable Coworker’s peculiar standards.

Fuckable Coworker frowns, and I actually feel bad. When she frowns, I have the urge to tenderly kiss her rosy lips. But I will never tell her that. Our relationship will never get beyond the playground, where the idea is to pull the hair of the girl you most like.

We bicker, much to the chagrin of the rest of the Rubber Necker editorial staff, who would much rather kill the rest of the day working on their blogs, following assholes like Ashton Kutcher on Twitter, or watching mashups on YouTube.

Fuckable Coworker thinks that I’m leading Inside Girl on. I insist that Inside Girl is using me just as much as I’m using her—perhaps more. But because Fuckable Coworker did me the courtesy of wearing a tight shirt that exposes her perfectly kissable potbelly, I decide not to counterpunch. I don’t mention her lawyer boyfriend who spends his days defending the corrupt corporations of the world that she rails against at whatever irrelevant lefty political meeting she happens to be going to that week. I don’t imply that she’s somehow a hypocrite, sleeping with a guy who treats her to the expensive meals she insists are a necessary component of courtship, by profiting from the world’s inequalities she finds so despicable.

Instead, I smile as we talk about my shortcomings. My smile irks her. We could go on forever. But at 5:59 p.m., Helen emerges from her office, declares my gay TiVo article good, and says we can go.

I click the Windows Start button, telling my computer that I’m done for the day. As it switches to Hibernate for its evening slumber, my computer says goodnight by playing a short audio file of Vin Scully calling Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run shot.

Long fly ball to right field. Way back. She is gone!

Since then, there hasn’t been much to cheer about in Mudville.

The staff chatters about nothing at all as we walk to the parking lot.

I fight through thirty minutes of Los Angeles traffic, listening to one Cake song, which is all right, two White Stripes tunes that sound exactly the same, and a half-assed report on NPR about widespread police corruption. Here’s the takeaway: Don’t fuck with the law. I arrive home to my slightly dirty, one-bedroom Hollywood apartment.

I drink a beer, pay some bills and watch the Dodgers pre-game show while flipping through an Economist article about how Africa is doomed. Apparently the world is running out of food and the dark continent—as is its historical imperative—is serving as the vanguard for human catastrophe. As for the Dodgers, they pretty much suck, which according to their own historical imperative, means an inability to bring disparate talents to bear in a single, powerful pennant run. It’s the same old story, so I flip to the local news and catch the tail end of a low-speed chase somewhere in Inglewood, not far from where the Lakers used to hold court. One thing