LA Modern Noir: Chapter 8a Wilson

Link to previous Chapter 7f

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Chapter 8a - 1,708 words

‘You know how lucky you are he didn’t press charges?’

The law company the Union had set him up with had their offices in a block(tower?) on Olive Street. The office they were in gave a view up the valley towards Glendale, miles of housing and roads stretching out. They were high enough up that you couldn’t really see individual vehicles on the streets, nor folks on the sidewalk, though the tinted glass had a lot to do with that.

Wilson had been listening to the attorney lay out the terms of his dismissal. He rubbed his knuckles and imagined he could feel the roughness of the skin where he’d grazed them on Xavier’s protective vest, and his face.

‘If he’d done that, and you can bet his attorney was encouraging him to do so, then you’d have been lucky to walk away with your pension. This is a good deal, and they want it signed. Please tell me you’ve understood everything.’

Wilson said, ‘Yes, yes, I understand. Just let me sign it.’ The pen was a rollerball, and the paper high quality. It was like signing the dream he’d been living for months.

The attorney said, ‘That’ll go over to them today. You’ll be out of this by the end of the month.’

‘Thanks.’ They shook hands and Wilson was walked to the elevator, there was another handshake, and then he was headed down to the street.

The high heat of summer had dulled down to a cooler fall and Wilson zipped his jacket up as he stepped on to the street. He looked at his phone and figured there was another forty or fifty minutes left on the parking. He could have put the car in the Law firms parking lot but they probably wouldn’t have been happy with him parking up for the two hours he was sitting his Private Investigator exam.

The Bureau of Security and Investigative Services was based all the way up in Sacramento but took offices in LA to run the P.I. exams. That saved a nearly eight-hundred-mile round trip. It’d been the chat with Dave that gave him the idea to take the P.I. route.

Not that it came to him right away.

There was a coffee shop on the corner and he wanted something to wash away the taste of lawyers office. It wasn’t that the coffee and pastry he’d had up there was bad, or that the deal wasn’t the best that he could have hoped for, just being up there and looking down on everything left a bad taste in his mouth.

‘Triple Shot Full Cream for Wilson.’

The call of the Barista brought him out of his reverie enough to take the coffee and, as he turned, a seat near the window opened up. He slid into it and pushed the used cups to the other edge of the table.

He’d get the exam results in a week or two, but that was a formality. He’d used the same trick he’d been taught for taking multiple-choice tests in high-school. Read the exam straight through, then go and answer the questions he knew the answer to without having to look at the answers provided, the ones which came to mind straight off. That was always good for thirty-to-forty percent. The next pass it was time to look at questions where he needed to look at the list of answers, and tick off those which he knew. By now he was about halfway through the time available but left with the maybe twenty-five percent of questions which were giving him trouble. No one got a hundred percent, well, maybe there were some people, but how many geniuses were working as Private Investigators? He’d breezed the parts on investigation and regulations, but liability had been an issue. Fifteen years of being in the LAPD had eroded any memory of what being liable meant. Still, he was confident he’d passed and passed well.

The phone chirped and Wilson looked to see the ten-minute warning for his parking time. He finished the coffee and headed out.

Now all he had to do was drum up some work. Maybe he’d catch the cannibal killer dropping off parts of another victim and claim the reward that was there, but not made massively public.

The reality was he’d be tracking people who needed served subpoenas or who owed enough debt for the creditor to find them and not just write it off and put it against the debtor’s credit file.

The little nagging doubt that he should have chosen to do something completely different pushed its way to the front of his head. Unfortunately, there was nothing else he knew. Becoming a cop had been accidental, a work of spite from losing his basketball scholarship. Now he was stumbling into private investigator work and-

‘Mr Wilson.’ A man standing by a (large car) took a step forward.

Wilson turned. ‘Yes?’

The man opened the car door. He said, ‘Mr Albarn would like a few minutes of your time.’

Wilson couldn’t help but look into the car interior and there sat Harry Albarn.

Harry held his hand toward, palm up, and waved his fingers back and forth, indicating for Wilson to get in. He said, ‘I’ve got a job to help get your new venture underway.’

‘I’m not licenced yet. So, no thanks.’

‘From what I hear, it’s a formality. And you don’t even need a licence for what I need done.’

‘In which case, I’m really not interested.’ Wilson stepped back and collided with the man who initially called out to him.

‘Mr Albarn wants you to get in the car,’ the man said.

Something firm jammed into Wilsons back, about level with where someone holding a gun at waist level would jab it as a threat.

Wilson climbed into the car. He said, ‘I offer a free consultation for cases, or at least I will. But in this instance, there’s an important caveat. If I get a ticket or towed for going over my parking time, you’re paying it.’

The door shut behind Wilson with a solid ‘thunk’ that suggested the extra weight of armoured protection. Gangland drive-by shootings weren’t common in LA, and definitely rare at the levels Harry Albarn had reached. But the paranoia of knowing there are folks who’d happily see you dead, instead of just wondering if there are, maybe made the extra expense worthwhile.

The car eased into the traffic and soon they were heading along (street). The absence of exterior vehicle noise spoke to a high level of insulation and strengthened Wilson’s suspicion of extensive armour.

Harry said, ‘Oh, we’ll not worry to much about a parking fine. I want you to find someone for me.’

‘Like I said, I don’t have my P.I. licence yet, But I can give you the name of a couple and at least one of them specialises in missing persons.’

‘Don’t try me Wilson. It’d be a tragedy if your P.I. career took the same path as your basketball one. What, you think I don’t know who you are? When word started filtering in that there was a cop who seemed really focused on me and my people, I took some interest in you. How long do you think it took to find out you were the snotty punk who thought they could be a white night and steal one of my girls? You know that storage unit you have, not the one with all your crap in, the other one, with the big corkboard and the pins and shit? I’ve seen it. Stood in front of it and imagined you standing there like Charlie Kelly explaining his theories in that meme, only Charlie has someone to explain them to. You’re just a lonely schmuck with an unhealthy obsession.’

Wilson felt his skin contract, like his body was trying to shrink in on itself. Rationally he knew it was his blood pooling in his organs, a response to the shock he’d just had. The fear that there was no need to worry about a parking ticket because he’d be dead by the end of this ride fluttered round his head.

‘Good,’ Harry said. ‘It looks like you’ve got the shape of things. You know, Xavier wants me to have you killed. I think he feels there’s a double disrespect to him and his machismo, and to me as his boss.’

‘Xavier’s a disgrace.’

‘Yet it’s you who’s been fired and are lucky to leave with your pension intact. It could have been a whole lot worse.’

‘Are you suggesting you protected me?’

‘You rate yourself too highly. I had no interest what happened to you. But then I heard you were taking your P.I. licence, and now I have this issue with someone who’s gone missing. And you’re going to find him. Tell me, what are you planning on charging?’

‘I’m going to start on five hundred a day. Move it up as I get the experience.’

‘You’re selling yourself short already. Even a basically competent P.I. gets nearer a thousand. So I’m going to start you at a thousand a day, but you itemise every damned expense, and they are included in the thousand.’ He reached into his jacket and took out a slim stack of dollar bills. ‘That’s the first three thousand, That gets you through Sunday, and I expect you to work the weekend. Monday (name of driver) will come and collect you so you can give me your initial report. Ah, that looks like the parking lot you’re in. (Driver) will give you the envelope with the details in.’

The door lock clunked and Wilson pushed it open, easing himself onto the sidewalk. (driver) had got out and come round the car. He held an envelope out, a heavy manila one which looked to have a decent amount of information stuffed into it.

As Wilson looked in the top of the envelope (driver) got back in the car, and it moved away. Wilson watched it drive up the street. When it turned into (name of street), he went into the parking lot to his own car, lifted the parking ticket from under the wiper, and drove home.

Chapter Break

I wrote this post about a story where I had a first chapter written. I'm trying to push on and finish a first draft in 2024.

If you'd like to be tagged in for future chapters, let me know.

Thanks

Stuart

Link to collated chapters HERE

Link to the short story which is the seed for this is HERE

Any LA based or knowledgable folks who want to pitch in on local things I get wrong, please do. I've never been and there's only so much I can learn on the internet.

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words by stuartcturnbull pic by igorelick on Pixabay