The Zinc Zoo: P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery Series, #5

By Ed Lynskey

Older and wiser, P.I. Frank Johnson, in his fifth outing, has moved to the Washington, D.C. suburbs where he lives with his fiancé Dreema Atkins. Times are lean. No new P.I. cases have rolled Frank's way since his return from Ankara, Turkey. His old boss, the flamboyant and wealthy attorney Robert Gatlin is marrying Frank's last client, Lois Mercedes, and Frank has his reasons for giving Lois a wide berth. Finally, a missing person case comes up when Zani Huang hires Frank to search for her husband Bao. Frank begins his investigation, but things get sticky when he discovers Zani's landlord, Kasper Peres, with a fatal slug in his chest. Then Zani vanishes and with her Frank's alibi when the police decide to charge him for Peres' murder. So, Frank takes it on the lam with his old bounty hunter pal Gerald Peyton to get some answers real fast. They run up against more dead bodies, and a ruthless gang of bank robbers desperate to find a hidden cache of money. Catastrophic changes rock Frank's world before he can reach any sort of a resolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ed Lynskey
• Release date: Jul 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223974109

Book preview

THE ZINC ZOO

A P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery

By Ed Lynskey

LICENSE STATEMENT

Copyright © 2014 by Ed Lynskey and ECL Press. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Front cover credit: Image courtesy of freerangestock.com and Chance Agrella under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

THE ZINC ZOO began as an eponymous short story appearing in Nuvein Magazine Online (El Monte, CA) in 2004. Grateful thanks are extended to the good folks there.

Other Books By Ed Lynskey

Private Investigator Frank Johnson Series

Out of Town a Few Days (short story collection)

Pelham Fell Here

The Dirt-Brown Derby

The Blue Cheer

Troglodytes

After the Big Noise

Alma and Isabel Trumbo Mystery Series

Quiet Anchorage

The Cashmere Shroud

The Ladybug Song

Private Investigator Sharon Knowles

A Clear Path to Cross (short story collection)

Other Novels

Lake Charles

The Quetzal Motel

Ask the Dice

Blood Diamonds

Topaz Moon

Outside the Wire

Skin in the Game

Other Short Story Collection

Smoking on Mount Rushmore

Author’s Note

P.I. Frank Johnson and I have been together for a good while. Frank made his debut appearance as the short story New Sheriff in Town in the old Plots With Guns Ezine in September 2001. After the Big Noise makes number six of his novels plus the one short story collection. Seven books is a creditable run. The late James Crumley blurbed Frank’s debut novel Pelham Fell Here. The Blue Cheer picked up a starred review in Booklist. It earned favorable reviews in the large newspapers like San Diego Union-Tribune and Halifax Herald Chronicle. He’s still going strong. So, kick back, read on, and enjoy his latest hardboiled caper.

Chapter 1

So you’re still boycotting Gatlin’s wedding? Gerald had moved on to a new topic over our cell phone link.

What I said still goes.

Frank, no offense, but for a PI, sometimes you ain’t got a fucking clue.

Say what?

What does Dreema have to say on it?

Nothing much.

Bullshit.

Okay, she says I’ll be in tow.

He chuckled in his gruff way. Then I’ll see you there, I expect. Now did you fix things with the IRS?

It’s all settled, yeah.

How did you swing that?

Simple. I’ve got a CPA in my corner.

Damn. Is she that good?

That and more, Gerald.

Does she stay busy?

Of course she’s busy. She’s a CPA. Why?

Well, I like to leave my options available, too. Is she taking any new clients?

I can ask her if you’re in a financial bind.

Just keep her in mind in case I ever am.

Okay, but fair warning: she’s a professional who does everything aboveboard.

These days I only fly on the straight and narrow.

Uh-huh.

I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week’s job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I’d been called worse.

You got in any new work? I asked him.

Nibbles. Give it a day or two. I’ll be in touch.

I know Dreema is pulling long hours.

You take special care of her, Frank.

Yeah okay, and I just might tag along with her.

Just be at Gatlin’s nuptials. Later, dawg.

Snapping shut the cell phone, I shook my head. Gerald. One night right after my cousin Cody Chapman died, Gerald had come by the doublewide trailer, his two 1.75 liters of So/Co in paper sacks. There was a played-out quarry behind the trailer park where I lived. We picked our way down the quarry’s switchbacks, reached the bottom, and took our favorite pair of sitting rocks. All night we sat there, talked, and sipped. All right, I talked; he just listened. He lent a sympathetic ear, see? At daybreak, he lumbered off to work, and I had plenty of coffee before I left to plan Cody’s funeral.

I now palmed my sweaty forehead. Monday at ten and the mercury had spiked into the low 90s. Thinking, I still sat. For the past month, my life had been swept up in a cyclone of crazy events. First I’d tracked down Lois Mercedes’ husband, Sylvester, with a slug in his heart at the bottom of a pit. She’d killed him, and I knew it. The Ankara cops also knew it. The evidence ran too thin to arrest her. Instead her Turkish flunky took the rap, and, disgusted, I boarded a jetliner for home.

During my stay in Turkey, my ex-boss Robert Gatlin—yeah, the flamboyant, rich attorney you see plastered all over the media news—had fallen in love with my moneyed client. He proposed, and Lois accepted. Their nuptials were this Saturday. We’d received their engraved invitation, and Dreema Atkins, my better and smarter half, had RSVP’d we’d occupy a pew. I’d pick an appendectomy done with chopsticks over attending a damn wedding, especially this one.

Dreema, also a Pelham native, was a Virginia Tech alumnus who’d aided me with the science on my past detective cases. Then the love bug bit us. For the past month, we’d camped in a 1970s suburb just off Braddock Road in northern Virginia. We hadn’t marched down the aisle. Yet. Gatlin’s ceremony was like our rehearsal, and that left me a bit nervy. I’d tried marriage once. Paying a hit man to take care of my cheating ex showed how much I’d lost it. I thanked my stars Gerald had intervened. Friends do that.

My present worry was I hadn’t taken a new case since my return from Turkey. Gatlin used to toss me the hot potatoes that his clients brought him, but we’d severed ties over Lois. That hurt. I needed to stay busy. Gerald was a bounty hunter extraordinaire —his epithet, not mine. We’d teamed up on a dozen bail snatches and split the recovery fee. But I could only endure so much of him. He used a kamikaze approach to life while I was more laid back. On the plus side, I’d earned enough to make the IRS happy and back off. So today I didn’t take my meals through a bean chute and don jailhouse orange.

I’d hoped to stay in Pelham. But right before I flew off to Turkey, Dreema and I had agreed to a trial run at cohabitation. Off the bat, she rejected my solution of her moving from Richmond to Pelham again. We’d discussed it.

I left there once, and I didn’t look back, she said. My return is out of the question.

I peeked into my near empty mug. The dark brown flecks of the coffee grounds swirled as if I was also circling the drain. It was Sunday morning. The previous night I’d booked down I-95 from Pelham. We lounged in our PJs at the kitchenette table. Her three-room flat was a block off the VCU campus, Richmond’s flagship university. Her state forensic job entailed cutting up the corpses carried in from the crime scenes. Did she dream of the cadavers? She’d admitted she grew a little finicky only over tweezing out the maggots and beetles feasting in the decayed flesh.

She glanced up from under her bangs. Can’t you stay in Richmond?

Could I?

Years ago as an Army MP sergeant, I’d bunked at a modest hotel in Ankara for months. But Ankara back then had felt sane while Richmond left me edgy. I knew why. Earlier in the year, Bea, one of Dreema’s girlfriends, had tended an unfussy bar called The Brass Knuckles on the next street over. Bea had issued the last call and, after closing up, tallied the Saturday receipts before she set the burglar alarm. As always, she headed off on foot to her nearby flat. Crêpe Soles was stealthy enough, so she didn’t catch his footsteps stalking her.

After putting in a fourteen-hour shift, she’d tumbled into bed still wearing her barkeep clothes. Crêpe Soles—a squatty man with bedpan breath and nutria teeth under the ski mask, she later told the Richmond PD—had jimmied open her balcony door (no Charlie bar). Then he came in and crawled under the sheet with her. She jolted awake to face her worst nightmare in the flesh.

Later, Dreema skipped over telling me the next part, but filling in the blanks wasn’t that hard. Soon after, Bea left Richmond for her parent’s house in Danville’s suburbs. Dreema had driven the pale-faced Bea who didn’t speak on the entire trip. I made a wish for Crêpe Soles to tangle with Gerald Peyton in a dark alley one night.

Earth to Frank...I asked what’s so terrible about living here? We can rent a bigger flat. I’d like to stay this close to work, but it’s not a deal breaker.

Bea didn’t fare so well living here.

Bea got careless, but I’m careful.

Uh-huh. Can I find work? I’ve got no word-of-mouth or network in Richmond.

Does Mr. Gatlin know any criminal attorneys downtown?

I nodded as if I hadn’t already thought of that possibility. I suppose he might. Everybody, it seems, is either his friend or a friend of his friend.

Have you asked him?

My headshake was slight.

Well, buzz him while I wash up the breakfast dishes.

I doubt if he’s up this early.

He’s expecting your call. I arranged it.

Now why doesn’t hearing that surprise me?

Smiling, she used her speed dial and gave me her cell phone. Talk. She carted our dirty silverware and plates to the kitchenette’s sink around the corner. Watching her derrière, the exciting quiver I felt told me why I’d better hang my fedora here. Gatlin was also in the midst of his morning caffeine fix.

Dreema mentioned you might set up shop there, he said.

Are any Richmond shysters on your Rolodex?

"I contacted a half-dozen Richmond attorneys. You’re in luck. Three asked for a private detective’s services after hearing my glowing recommendation of you."

You’re making it hard for me not to move.

That’s the idea. Listen, Frank, this one is different. She’s a keeper. He let that part gel in me. Get your head screwed on straight and move to Richmond. You hate it living in Pelham.

I’m leaning that way. Gerald said he’d lend me a hand at loading the U-Haul.

Gatlin chuckled. He might be your compromise.

How’s that?

He’s relocating to northern Virginia.

I startled. Why?

He can’t make go of it in Pelham, so I suggested he survey the Fairfax-Annandale corridor. He did and likes his chances better there.

Yeah, I bet that’s why.

All right, let’s be practical. He’s just up the road if I need his assistance.

Could it be you’ve been lobbying him to also keep your PI nearby?

I’m always a smart lawyer first.

What’s your angle for the compromise?

Dreema and you disagree. She cottons to Richmond, but you can’t be weaned off Pelham. So I offer you a fair middle ground: relocate to northern Virginia. She transfers to the state morgue on Braddock Road, and you get to stay near your old beat.

The resentment heated in me, but my voice stayed even. Have you also scouted a house for us?

No, but I know several top-notch realtors.

This is well and good, but how do I sway Dreema? She’s got her heart set on Richmond.

You’ll finesse that part. I can’t do all of your work for you.

Have you suggested it to her?

Not a peep. Just pitch it as a compromise. She’s a sensible girl who like I said...

I know: she’s a keeper.

After I thumbed off Gatlin in mid-chuckle, I dropped a dime on Gerald and asked him about his future plans.

That’s my aim, he replied. Are you filling out change-of-address cards, too?

How could I? I just heard about Gatlin’s compromise.

Dreema will go for it.

Quite possibly.

It’s all good then. You don’t lose your clients. Her career isn’t hindered, and the big dog is always a cell phone call away from you.

You can’t have enough friends in low places.

            He ignored my sardonic tone. Talk to her when she’s in the sweet mood.

Sweet mood?

Do I have to draw you a damn picture?

I get you fine. Thanks for the advice, Dr. Love. I gotta go now.

Good luck, Stud. Later. 

***

 The cell phone in my hand trilled in the birdsong ring tone Dreema had downloaded for it. She spoke, her tired voice punchless.

I’ve still got a bunch of paperwork. Don’t hold dinner. Sorry.

Yeah okay, no sweat.

Did you talk to Gerald?

A white fib tempted me, but I resisted it. Tradition said we PIs had to live by our moral code. I just got off the horn with him.

He’s going to Mr. Gatlin’s wedding, isn’t he?

Gerald never misses a soirée with single ladies, danceable music, and free booze.

What did he say on your being a no-show?

It didn’t come up.

Frank...

All right, he told me ‘for a PI I didn’t have an effing clue.’

I won’t say I told you so.

Gatlin’s betrothed is a calculating, ruthless killer. Period.

Alleged killer and you’re the only one who alleges it.

Funny how Detective Abdullah in Ankara backs me up.

But he’s not invited to the wedding. You are. Better gut it up and go along to get along.

There’s a larger principle at stake here.

Paying work is also at stake as in you don’t have any.

Touché. I’ll mull it over, is how I capped our debate.

I hated it when she was right. Too much idle time had weighed on me. That sucking noise I kept hearing was my PI career going down the tubes. Life had fallen into a rut after I shed my favorite vices, gin and cigarettes. Rewatching the classic film noirs on DVD failed to divert me, and I’d skipped shaving until Dreema groused at me.

We’d discussed adopting another tomcat—while on travel I used to call the feline boarding kennel and check up on my old one—from the SPCA, but nothing more came of it. Several years ago, I’d kept a pet ferret, Mr. Bojangles, I rescued from the neo-Nazis. One night he passed in his sleep, and the next dawn I found him coiled up on the toilet seat lid. My heart was crushed almost as much as when my parents had died. Pets do that to us. Oh yeah, I craved the work for more than to earn my keep.

I headed outdoors. The morning sun glared in my eyes as they slid down our suburban block. When I was in a cynical bent of mind like I was now, I saw it as a gray suburban block. Everything—the houses, cars, and yards—got tarred by the same drab brush. Gerald had ranted it was the zinc zoo where the pace turned frenetic as at the zoo, but the monotony was also as boring as gray zinc. He wasn’t talking smack, just drawing an analogy of the suburbanite’s lifestyle as we both came to regard it.

Chapter 2

My ragtop coupe I’d bought at a public car auction waited at the storm drain. Our neighborhood got its share of crime, and I took some precautions against car theft. I never washed the ragtop coupe. Dirty cars didn’t attract carjackers. Gat Magnum Is My Best Pal, its menacing bumper sticker advertised. A fake car alarm decal on the window urged the vandals to move on and hotwire my neighbor’s car.

At the end to our short driveway was the azalea bed. Sheep sorrel, plantain, and wiregrass had sprouted in it. But first I fetched the new Yellow Pages directory (I can feel your pain & urgency, read my PI ad I’d placed in it) some older kids had distributed, lugged it into the kitchen, and recycled the old book. Then I trudged back out to the azalea bed.

After squatting, I yanked up a clump of weeds, knocked the dirt off the roots, and gave the clump a flip. My peripheral vision noticed a lady on the sidewalk. The neighbors ventured out at all hours. I returned to tackling the weeds. At the doublewide, the rock-strewn Marscape for my yard stayed weed-free. In fact, nothing green survived in it, and I never touched a power mower. In small ways I missed my simpler Pelham life, but I also knew my return was impossible.

Mr. Johnson? My head canted to see the same lady. Are you Frank Johnson? she asked. Do I have the address right?

If she’d asked me at the trailer park, I’d just nod. But here, not so because I knew just two neighbors. The one across the way had sent a Fed out to interview me for his top security clearance. When the Fed asked me if my neighbor was gay, I lied, saying no. The last time I checked this was 2005, not 1955. Our other neighbor had put his split-level on the market, and we’d chatted once or twice. He moved, I believed he told me, to a golf retirement paradise in Tampa Bay. Golf bored me to tears.

Depends on who’s asking, I told her.

She smiled, a disarming if not sad smile. Sorry. My name is Zani Huang. A big problem has come up. Can you help me?

Releasing the fistful of weeds, I rose to my feet. This showed more intrigue than weeding the azaleas. My professional help?

Well. Her mouth pursed into an O. Are you the private detective?

That’s what I do, ma’am.

No ma’am. Just Zani is good.

Okay then, Zani. Yeah, from time to time I do PI jobs.

Relief smoothed the wrinkles to her frown. As she sought the right words, I measured her up. She wore her hair short almost like a man’s cut. She also filled out a crisp white, sleeveless blouse tucked into crimson Capri trousers. Sandals shod her feet, and mint green polish painted her toenails. All told, I gauged she could pay her bills. Oh, and she was a full-figured gal like Dreema. Rebenesque, as the art historians like to say, but I didn’t ogle Zani since Dreema was plenty of woman for me.

I’ll just say it. My husband Bao has gone missing.

Right off I had a mind to tell her, sorry, but I’d OD’d on searching for the lost souls. I had a mind to tell her husbands usually had their reasons to play Houdini. I had a mind to tell her she’d be better off to wait seven years and petition the courts to declare him legally dead. Working as a PI, you learned some hard truths.

Instead I asked her, What happened to him?

She switched back to frowning. He left for our ATM, and I haven’t seen him since then.

When did he leave?

Four days ago and I’m worried sick.

 That’s a long time. Did you talk to the police?

Police. Shit. She actually spat on the sidewalk.

Let’s talk. I gestured at the split-level, the last one on our block still half-wrapped in its original market aluminum siding, an avocado green.

She blinked at the split-level as if it’d appeared like a mirage. My