Mr. Scary Smart: Part Five

May 18, 2009 

A Joe Downing Mystery

Nota Bene: Thank You to Patrick Sperry, of  the Conservative Libertarian Outpost, for his expertise and advice on nomenclature concerning firearms.

The following is fiction:
 

(caution: extraordinarily strong language)        

 
 

 
 

Part Five: Sweden, Here We Come! or, We Got Waxed  in Vegas!

Me and Johansen got into a fight with some guys practically as soon as we got to Las Vegas. We had just barely checked-in to the brand-new Hotel Cosa Nostra and Casino on the strip. Really nice. It was about 6pm, still Christmas of course, and we had come back down from our rooms and were kicking back in their lizard lounge with a quick beer and burger. We planned to trowl every casino they had, in search of Chelsea. Anyway, a leather-jacketed biker didn’t like the looks of Johansen, who happened to be wearing preppy, cream-colored slacks, reddish penny loafers, and a white, collegiate-looking, long-sleeve dress shirt. His features seemed especially sharp and his hair especially blonde under the soft lighting cascading down from recessed fixtures in the black ceiling. The man accidently on purpose bumped Johansen as the latter held his glass of beer at the bar, and a little beer splashed innocently on the back of the man’s hand as he leaned forward to give his own order.  

 

“What the fuck?!!!” the man demanded of Johansen, and stood back in utter amazement, palms up, arms out in consternation. He turned briefly to plead to the jury, a couple of other bikers at a nearby table, who smiled at him, obviously his companions. As he turned his back momentarily, we could see clearly the rockers on the back of his jacket. The top one proclaimed: Round Hedz, the bottom one: Hayward. So they were from northern California. They weren’t Angels, though. Not that high in rank. Small fiefdom, these guys. Two skulls with wings hectored and glared at each other in the no man’s land between the rockers.  

 

“Can’t you see someone’s standing here, ding-dong?” The biker looked steadily at Johansen.  

 

“I…..I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t see you. I apologize.” Johansen nodded nervously, but pleasantly, and moved over some.  

 

“You apologize?! What about my cut?! It’s got your damn beer all over it, man! Look at this!” He appealed once again to the jury of his peers. I got the feeling the view of the back of his jacket was for our benefit. Maybe we hadn’t caught it all in one go.  

 

“I…..I said I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”  

 

“You assure me?” He leaned forward gravely. “You assure me of what? That you wouldn’t screw a skanky-ass whore to save your mama’s life?” The gigling from the backround, which had started as an ambient drone, now could not hold its banks, and spilled out and over into laughter, like the Nile river during its busy time.  

 

“It won’t happen again, sir, I’m sorry,” Johansen stammered, and then concluded, “I don’t know what else to say.”  

 

“Hey, do I look down and out to you?” the biker queried angrily.  

 

“…..no…..” said Johansen defensively, a little nonplussed now.    

 

“Yeah? Well, I know all about guys like you. Guys that would never serve their country.” Johansen, in spite of feeling fear, scoffed a little at this last claim, whereupon the man grabbed that collegiate-looking shirt he was wearing, and shoved him hard, off the bar stool. I tried to pry the two apart, but the man reared back quick and decked Johansen. He then swung at me and missed. I shoved him in turn with both hands hard in the chest, pushing him back a bit.  

 

“Enough, dude!! Get away from us!!” I shouted. He rushed at me to grab my neck, and I grabbed his, too. We reeled and whirled like two drunks locked in battle, locked in stalemate, squeezing each other’s necks for all we were worth, eyes bugging out at each other. Around and around we spun, wordlessly. Finally my foot caught in one of the legs of a barstool, and I lost my balance and fell to the side, hitting my head on the runner of the bar. I ended up on the floor. Drunk with laughter, the others surrounded us. I got up, furious. I commenced raining blows down on the guy’s forearms as he covered up his face against my onslaught. I tried to put more and more height in my punches, to sneak them in from above, over his defenses. He felt it, and adjusted his battlements accordingly. I kept hitting his arms, I kept hitting nothing more than bone. An iron forearm closed anonymously around my neck from behind, and a knee crashed a few times into the small of my back. A fist exploded on the back of my neck, and I think I got one more kick in the rear. I leaned over the bar, dazed. The blows stopped. A voice said, “C’mon, Bob, leave ‘em alone. Let’s go. C’mon…..”  

 

************************************************

 

Back upstairs, as we were licking our wounds, my cell rang. It was Larry Vaughan of the Gorge P.D. He spoke in a friendly, jovial way.

   

“Hey, Joe! Detective Vaughan here of the P.D. How’s it going, man?”

   

“It’s going just absolutely fuckin’ peachy-keen!!! Whaddya think, Larry?!!!”

   

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s all this? Where’s the respect, Joe? Where’s the respect?”
 

“We just got rolled, Larry!! We’re shittin’ bricks over here! Some bikers from Hayward!”
 

“That sucks. The, uh, the Hedz, the Round Hedz?”

   

“Yeah.”

   

“Don’t worry about those boys, Joe, they’re just out for some fun.”

   

“Well, they just got plenty with us, that’s for damn freakin’ sure!…..man!”

   

“Get over it. Listen up — we informed the Vegas P.D. about this Chelsea Johansen gal you’re lookin’ for, and I told ‘em you were in town over their way. Go see ‘em. Check in. Also, this Jones is wanted for sex offenses in D.C. and in New York state. He likes the young ones. FBI is on it, too. This guy put an NYPD uniform in the hospital with a gut wound with a Glock. Almost died.”
 

“Great news, Larry. What would I do without you?…..any leads over your way?”
 

“Well, this Jones has also violated the Mann Act now, if they’re really in Vegas — transporting a minor across state lines. Chelsea’s mother says she’s heavy into computers — so is Jones. This guy is a real Houdini — squirms out of everything. Have you seen ‘em?”

    

“No, not yet. We’re gonna start looking now. We just got here.”

   

“Okay. Good. Keep me in the loop, Downing. Don’t drop the ball again. Mick is counting on you.” I made a face into the phone after hanging up, right there in the hotel room. Neither me nor Johansen was bleeding much, Johansen a little from the nostrils, so we just splashed our faces with a little water from the sink. He came back out into the room.

   

“God! Does that always happen? Is it always like that?” Johansen asked, aghast.

   

“Uh, well, it can be. But, no, we just got a little unlucky. I mean, sometimes, it happens.”

   

“That makes a lot of sense,” Johansen replied. “That’s the first time I’ve ever been hit. At least it’s the first time since that Joey Johnson did in fifth grade, or whatever it was. I guess I done-real-good,” he quipped.
 

“Look, those guys were pretty out-there. They’ve got some chip on their shoulder. Let’s shake it off, there’s no worries.”
 

“I was pathetic, Joe!” He glared at  me. “How am I gonna get my daughter back if I can’t even handle myself with a guy without a gun?” He shook his head in disgust at himself.
 

“You didn’t really do all that bad. You didn’t run out of the bar, you held your ground. You didn’t expect somebody to shove you off the stool, you just weren’t ready.”

   

“Well, I better get ready in a hurry. That was just the minor leagues.”

   

“Let’s get out there now. Get some fresh air. Look for Chelsea. We had a bad first inning, so what? Plenty of game left. And, speaking of guns, you take this little beauty: the Commish, if you will.” I handed him my other 22 LR Colt. He took it out of my hand slowly.

   

“I thought this was lost?” He looked at me, confused.

   

“I got two. Our trenchcoat boy has probably got the other. On the other hand, I’ll use this.” I showed him the 357 Sig a well-to-do client had given me long ago. Johansen appeared as if he felt unworthy so much as to touch it.

   

“Wow…..that’s a double Commish,” Johansen declared, smiling. “I’m glad I’m on your side” was written on his face. The incoming text alert sounded off just then on Johansen’s Blackberry. The text read:

   

Qe4 Qe5

BTW: DJ=Cap Pig   
 

“I guess he means me,” Johansen said. “I’m  a capitalist pig, you know. What’s this other stuff?” Johansen gestured towards the message.

   

“It looks like chess notation. I pointed at it. I guess the creep is saying he’s moving his Queen to the fourth rank of the King’s file.There’s two moves here, though. One for him, one for us.”

   

“What?”

   

“He’s giving us a clue where to find him. He’s playing chess with us.” I stared down at the citation. “He knows we’re in Vegas, since he’s the one who told us that he himself was here, and so now he’s telling us where in Vegas.” The notation implied a game in progress, which was appropriate enough, if you thought about it, since a Queen in chess has got pawns in front of her initially, and she can’t move, she can’t jump over people. The way has to be cleared for her first.

   

“But why would he move precisely the Queen?” I asked Johansen. He stared at me in disbelief. “What’s he mean by that?” I continued.

   

“What Queen?” he snapped. “What are you talking about, Joe?”

   

“Somebody’s the Queen, David. The Queen has moved. Both of them, actually. I assume the other Queen in the text message is ours.” I gestured. “What does he mean? Chelsea, maybe? Is Chelsea the first Queen?” Johansen looked away, then warmed to the task.

   

“Yeah! She is! She is the Queen! She’s moving away from the King, out onto the board! She hates him! She hates his guts!” I glanced around for a chessboard, to no avail. But I glimpsed the bathroom floor. It had small square white tiles, about an inch long on each of the four sides. Dozens and dozens of white squares, a red one every eighth one: perfect. Chessboards are 8×8. Four red squares marked the four corners of our chessboard. I took a napkin that was lying around and tore a few pieces off. We then used the tiles as a chessboard.

   

“Okay, let’s say this is the back row, or ‘rank,’ as they call it. That first rank is represented by the number 1. And let’s say this piece of napkin is the Queen — she starts here, in the fourth column over from the left, or the fourth file, as they call it.”

   

“I don’t know any of this really, I don’t play chess,” Johansen said.

   

“Well, let’s just go with it. So —  the first Queen in the notation on the Blackberry has moved out to the fourth rank, that is, the fourth square out on the board. But she’s on the King’s file, though, on the King’s path, so to speak. That’s the ”e” in the text message, the fifth file over, since “e” is the fifth letter of the alphabet. In other words, she’s moved over to the right one file.” I put a bit of paper out on the fourth rank of the “board,” in the “e” file, to represent her.

   

“So she’s right in line with the King now.” Johansen said.

   

“Yeah, she’s paving the way for him, if he wanted to come out.”

   

“She’s protecting him? No, no…..”

   

“That’s what he’s saying, at least!”

   

“All that? Really?”

   

“Now, the second Queen is ours, I’m assuming, and she’s in the same file as his Queen, one rank away. They’re staring at each other in the middle of the board. Staring each other down.”

   

“Why so far out on the board? Why not keep her closer in?” Johansen asked.

   

“She’s in the middle of the board, that’s right. She’s got more control of the entire board from out there. Maybe the board represents Las Vegas, and the middle of the board represents the middle of town. It’s where you have more power, if you pull it off.”

   

“Could be. He’s saying he’s coming out with her to the center of town, and that we should meet him for a showdown there? And that she has taken his side, since she’s supposedly paving the way for his entrance?”

   

“We’re gonna find out. What’s the center of town?” I asked.

   

“The strip, I would say, Las Vegas Boulevard.”

   

“Okay. At what casino, then, it’s gotta be a casino, I would think.”

   

“Mandalay Bay.” Johansen suggested.

   

“Maybe. Keep going.”

   

“The Egypt one?”
 

“Luxor? Yeah, it’s possible. What else is there?” I persisted in driving him.

   

“The Flamingo…..or the MGM Grand.”

   

“That’s it!!! That’s gotta be it! The MGM Grand! Jones wouldn’t have it any other way than that! He believes himself to be some sort of new type of man, someone who avoids the pitfalls of the past, but he really has a deep desire for tradition. Let’s try the Grand first!”
 

**************************************************

    

Bright, dazzling lights of every imaginable kind twinkled and blinked and went on and off in an incessant display of hue and color. The lights followed one another in mathematical patterns, like dominoes in some elaborate scheme to trick the eyes into an admission of inferiority. Beautiful, gorgeous, absolutely sexy women strolled heedless in the finest, most elegant, most exciting clothes ever designed for the purpose of enslaving men in female pulchritude. It was working pretty well. Music escaped like fugitives from open doorways. Fountains splashed away in reponse. Wandering eyes and glances were the rule, and the two of us were no exception to it, in spite of the task we faced. We tooled towards the MGM Grand in Johansen’s Mercedes.

   

“This place is something else,” Johansen said.

   

“It is definitely a piece of work,” I agreed. We pulled in and parked and started walking. Past hordes of the faithful we walked. Suddenly, Johansen stopped, and he stared straight ahead. He was open-mouthed in astonishment. His face became a canvas written with anguish. The incredulity made him slack-jawed, the vivid evidence before his eyes made his heart break. He stood motionless, gazing, gazing. He looked unblinking, steadily, obsessively, into a picture so very familiar and yet so very unknown, so unanticipated. It was the logical conclusion of a nightmare. He couldn’t look away.

   

I tried to see what he saw. I looked along his line of sight to get a glimpse of that same infinity, that same black hole of nothingness, that his tortured, thousand-yard-stare perceived, and climbed into. I was unable to catch on. It was just a random agglomeration of meandering humanity to me. But finally I suspected what he had seen immediately. Far away, through a thicket of mingling, walking people, two figures did not walk. Two figures leaned against a wall and against each other, flirting, laughing, touching. She, on the one hand, was maybe 5′5″, with bell-bottom jeans and a black leather jacket. She had short blonde hair, and was willowy, energetic, and lithe, a classic Scandanavian beauty. She wore Converse Chucks, and big hoop earrings bobbed about her neck. She carried two bags, both slung over her left shoulder. She was a teenager. It could only be Chelsea Johansen. The very picture of health and loveliness, she was caught in a moment of happiness. The man, on the other hand, was only a little taller, and wore a full-length black trenchcoat, black work shoes, a dark, felt-looking fedora, and black wraparound shades. As he turned his head about, looking at Chelsea, looking at people, one could see a gray ponytail tumbling onto his upper back. He was middle-aged. It was William Jones, none other.

   

His hands were in the pockets of the coat. A smile adorned his grizzled face, and he looked like the past president of the avante garde club. His clothes were somewhat dirty, and were so out of sync with the bright Hawaiian shirts and rayon fabrics of the mid-Westerners, that he elicited a naive look or two from some. He was the very picture of cynical self-absorption. I spoke to Johansen:

   

“All right. We’ve arrived. Let’s play our hand right, it’s Vegas, after all. Let’s approach calmly, so we don’t make them run. At a certain point, they’re gonna see us. Let’s not make them run. First objective: don’t make them run.”

   

“Okay,” he replied mechanically, earnestly.

   

“We’re gonna talk to them. Make them come on in, come home. The game’s over, it’s time to quit. If Jones runs, I’ll go after him, you stay with Chelsea. He’s wanted for everything in the book. You got Chelsea, I got Jones. Okay?”

   

“Yeah.”

   

“Don’t forget your little peacemaker, either…..he’ll make a mistake. He doesn’t like reality.” I looked over at Johansen. He nodded. We started up again, inexorably. First into the light, then into the dark, then back into light. We got ever closer, never wavering as we applied our sight to the vision. About 15 yards away, I saw Jones’ face suddenly go limp. He had seen us. He might not have expected us to pick up on his little chess game. He was clearly surprised. Perhaps they had thought to make merely a token appearance in the middle of the board, to confirm we were too stupid to show. He darted glances around, looking to flee, looking for avenues of escape. People were everywhere. He decided ultimately to hold his ground, have some fun. The joy of combat, that sort of thing. The smile returned to his face. He took his hands from his pockets, took off his fedora, revealing thinning hair, and then took something quickly from the lining of the hat. He grasped the thing, replaced the hat on his head, and put his hands back in his coat pockets.

   

About 5 steps away, 15 feet or so, we stopped our pacing in unison. I was diagonal from Chelsea, Johansen diagonal from Jones. The four of us faced off like chess pieces. Chelsea’s chin darted petulantly, defiantly, sensuously about as she saw her father. She had no reaction to give but that of a teenaged girl. Some Iowans, or whoever, were about to walk in between us and them, so I closed one step towards our quarry. The Iowans politely went around us, wondering what-the-heck. Two versions, two layers of reality swirled and intermingled. It was time to speak:

 

“All right, Jones. Time to quit. Queen to King four, or whatever. Chelsea, it’s time to go back to your family…..” Jones laughed some.

   

“Go die, Downing. Take your pig friend with you. Leave us alone or suffer the consequences.” He smirked all the while, brushing up against Chelsea, as if to grab her if she bolted. She evinced no inclination to do so. His hands rose a bit inside the pockets of the coat, as if getting something into proper alignment.

   

“You didn’t get your promotion at Microsoft, so now you’re taking it out on her?” I asked. He tilted his head back and laughed sadistically, bitterly, knowingly, but not taking his eyes off me or his hands out of his pockets.

   

“What a precious little freak you are, Joey Boy, I didn’t even want that chicken-shit job. Your capitalist pig friend here might want it, though. Just put your application through, accompanied with resume, to Human Resources. We’ll get back to you. Does that sound good, Davy?” Johansen finally managed to speak through the shock of realizing Chelsea had been acting for three weeks, had been lying to him for just as long. He spoke nevertheless in a tone of infinite affection for her:

  

“Chelsea…..honey, come home. Come home to your family. Come home with your father. We love you so much, darling, your mother is so worried she’s about to die of heartbreak. Chelsea, sweetheart, leave this man, and come home to us. Come home to where you belong. Please, Chelsea.” He started towards his daughter.

   

“Get away from me, you asshole!!! You’re not my father!!! You little lying, chicken-shit motherfucker!!! Fuck off and leave me alone!!! I hate you!!!” The horror written just then on Johansen’s face is simply not describable in words. The Roman Empire wouldn’t have been enough. His face blanched, his shoulders slumped, his entire frame was about to buckle under the stress of so much at once. Everything he lived for had been taken from him in one moment. He stared blankly, not believing, not feeling, too numb to function. Jones laughed in triumph, an ill, sickly sound.

   

“You heard it, boys, now fuck off. Let’s do dinner sometime, Joe Baby, but get lost at the present time. Scram, asshole.” It was my turn now to cross the Rubicon. We weren’t gonna budge.

   

“You know, Kid Dropper, you’re gonna play one too many games of chess. Just quit now while there’s time. Give it up. The Bureau has got a file on you even fatter than you are. There’s nowhere to go. Give it up.” A dark rage seeped into Jones’ face from within at being called that name. It was as if he was suddenly possessed. A threatening, hideous aspect came over his features. His love of resentment was out in all its glory. People glanced over at the spectacle of a rabid, motley, sick dog. From behind his shades you could sense his yellow, sickening eyes. The colored lights of the square shone on the lenses of the shades, and his mouth formed into a grimace. The nightmare had developed further.

   

“Downing, pile of shit, that is, you’re gonna end up dead with a pick-axe sticking out of your head. And this guy here is gonna end up like that yapping dog. I’ll do the same thing to him. Leave me alone, idiot. Just refer to me as: ‘Above It All Demolition and Deconstruction.’ Better stay out of range, little boy…..asshole.” I responded thus, pawn takes pawn, so to speak:

   

“Did you know that, Chelsea? Your dog is dead. Spark is dead because of this guy. He killed him. He broke Spark’s spine with that club, or whatever it was. Your dog died trying to protect you from this thing. Did you know that? He broke Spark’s spine.”

   

“Who the fuck are you, creep? I don’t know you! Fuck off!” Johansen then said:

   

“Chelsea…..this man is evil. He killed Spark, and he’ll kill you, too, when he’s had enough…..do you remember, you got Spark when you were just twelve, Chelsea, remember all the fun we had, chasing each other around? Remember how Spark would pretend he was real mad, and pat his paws on the lawn? Remember how he loved to make us laugh? Remember how he loved our attention? This guy here killed Spark! For no reason! He’ll kill you, too! Chelsea–”

   

“That’s not true! It’s not true!!! Spark’s not dead, you piece of shit! He just pushed him out of the way! Spark is alive!” At this point, Jones had only one possible response to a situation no longer under his control. He slowly and steadily pulled my Colt out of his jacket and fired at my core, hitting me twice. The crowd scattered in panic, shrieking. A knife appeared in Jones’ other hand. I got out the Sig almost simultaneous and caught him in the shoulder, knocking him down, stumbling, and turning on his ankles. From the ground, propped up, he shot at Johansen and put two rounds into him, too. We both rocked back, reeling under the barrage of shots. Jones got up, grabbed Chelsea by the arm, and fled desperately through the terrified crowd, which parted in fear as they went through. It was just like the night before on the slope at the Johansen place: they had disappeared into the night. But Chelsea looked down at her father this time. She looked down at the man who had paid for that Versace bag and the gold jewelry, the haute couture hair-style, and even the Converse Chucks with the rainbow laces. The man who had brought a small puppy named Spark home to a twelve-year-old preteen girl. She looked down at her father, David William Johansen, and a look of dismay and regret came over her face.
 

Me and Johansen staggered off to avoid the cops, too weak to pursue Jones, trying to hold our blood in. We reached the Mercedes and finally the hotel, and snuck up to our rooms. Sorry, Vaughan, we never did check-in with the Vegas P.D. We had to get these plugs out, get sewn up, and then get out of town. We were gonna track Chelsea and Jones some more, after the next chess clue, for surely there would be one with this guy. His ego had to be burning right about now.

   

“How long is this gonna go on?” Johansen asked.

   

“Until somebody’s dead,” I replied.

   

…..to be continued…..

   

Tony Downing