Dave Zeltserman: Fast Lane

That left him speechless. And there was quite a bit of truth in it, although you couldn’t really say he was dickless. A doctor was able to stitch it up for him, leaving it almost as good as new. But that’s an awful difficult thing to explain to your wife, why something like that needed to get stitched up. He just about begged me to feed Moira a story about it happening in the line of duty, and only God knows how I was able to do it with a straight face.

After a few seconds some color came back to his face. “I’ve spent almost twenty years working for you. Helping you build up clients and your business. And I did it because you promised you’d make me a partner.”

“No, sir. You’ve been working for me because it was the easy way out. I was able to offer you jobs without you having to go out and bust your own hump.” I could feel my temper slipping away. “How many other folks would let you charge five days for a two-day job? Maybe I should pay more attention to you boozing yourself up on my time. Maybe if you took a little responsibility for yourself and cleaned up your act and quit looking like a drunken slob, folks would consider hiring you. You look like a goddamned disgrace.”

And he did too. A good week’s worth of growth was planted on his face. And it would have taken a far greater detective than myself to figure out which had been cleaned last, his clothes or his hair. Which was just plain lazy, what with the little hair he had left.

He muttered something that sounded like ‘bass turd’, which was a funny thing to call somebody. I didn’t let it bother me since I couldn’t even begin to imagine what one of those would look like.

“Look,” I said. “When I was first starting out-”

“Yeah, I remember reading all about that and it’s something I’ve always wondered about. What exactly did happen?”

I’d had just about enough. Without really looking at him, I told him it had certainly been a pleasure and he could bet his check would be in the mail as soon as possible.

He gave me a screw-you-too look, walked as far as the door and stopped. A good while passed without him so much as moving, and then his shoulders collapsed. The sunlight drifting through the window cast his shadow on the opposite wall. With his head bowed and his shoulders slouched forward, it looked like the shadow of a man hanging by his neck.

He let out a low moan from deep in his gut. In a voice just above a whisper, he asked if we could try talking again.

I didn’t say anything. He sat back down and without looking at me, at least not exactly, he said, “I guess I lost my temper back there. I-things haven’t been going well for me.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know where my money goes. I guess with Moira and the boys, and all their expenses, it’s never enough. I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken about what I thought you promised me. This won’t happen again.”

He was looking as sick as can be. I took out the bottle of rye from my desk drawer and poured us both drinks. He took his in one gulp and I poured him a bigger one.

“These things happen,” I said. “I guess this must have been building up for some time now?”

He nodded in agreement.

“Moira’s been harping about it, hasn’t she? Getting you all worked up?”

“I-I-” he sputtered, looking awful uncomfortable. “I guess she’s been talking about it, but-”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “You should have a talk with her and explain how much I’ve really done for you.”

“I’ll talk with her, Johnny. I’m sorry and-”

“Don’t worry about it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s forgotten.”

I offered him my hand and he took it, being a good deal friendlier about it than when he first came in. He reeled off a few more apologies and I told him again not to worry about any of it. Before leaving, he stopped at the door and asked if I would call him as soon as any jobs came up and I assured him I would.

I settled down to work, chipping away at the mountain of phone messages that had piled up during my absence. After an hour or so I ended up with one definite job and four appointments. Tommy Burns was available for work so I started him on it, giving him the information he needed over the phone.

I had hesitated before calling Burns. I couldn’t help feeling a little troubled thinking about Max. We went back a long way, and I was even the godfather to one of his boys. We used to be friends; at least I think we were. But the last few years things had been getting out of hand. And I didn’t like the fact he was bitching to Rude about me.

Of course I had never promised to make him my partner. I might have joked about it once over a bottle of scotch, but he knew I wasn’t serious. I thought some more about Max and the aggravation he was causing me. After a while, I made a decision. From now on he was only going to get exactly what I owed him.

Nothing.

In Colorado a few years ago a car flew sixty feet through the air, crashed into a house and killed a woman sitting all alone by her sewing machine. It wasn’t the first car that had hit that particular house, but it was the first car that was airborne at the time.

The way the house was situated was partly to blame, being at the base of a steep hill, right where the road took a sharp ninety-degree turn. So it wasn’t that unusual for cars traveling down the hill to lose their brakes and go skidding into the front of the house. It happened about once a month and after a while the husband got sick of it and put some boulders out to protect his home and family.

What happened next, though, wasn’t what you would have expected. Sure enough, a car lost its brakes and skidded into those boulders. But instead of the boulders stopping the car, they acted as kind of a springboard, sending the car flying. You already know what happened next.

Now you may think it was just plain tragic, and it was, at least for the wife. And you probably would have thought so for the husband also. At least no one would have had any reason to think otherwise if he hadn’t bought an insurance policy on his wife three months earlier. A two and a half million dollar accidental death policy. You couldn’t blame his insurance company for being suspicious, and you sure as hell couldn’t blame them for hiring me to look into it.

I poked around for two weeks and came up with a hundred reasons that proved it wasn’t any accident. Number one: the husband was a mechanical engineer, and you would think he’d know how a car would act when it hit those boulders.

Number two were the boulders themselves. They were shaped like ramps, and were placed so that the lower edges faced the road. If you stood behind them you could see how a car would take off when it hit them.

Number three, he’d had a girlfriend for over a year before the accident. Reasons four through one hundred came from conversations with neighbors, relatives, and whoever else would talk with me. Before his wife’s death, he became obsessed that she use her sewing machine. There were fights about it, intimidation, and at times, he even locked her in the room. From what I was able to piece together, his obsession came about around the same time the boulders were put down. All those reasons, along with the insurance policy, were enough to know he had premeditated her death, but none of them were enough to do anything about it.

I ran out of ideas. I didn’t know what else to do but try putting a scare in him, letting him know I was onto him and that I was going to see him take the fall for his wife’s murder. When I confronted him, he admitted what he’d done, but he made it a big joke, gloating about it and leaving me with nothing. So there I was, knowing he killed his wife, and what was worse, he had me beat.