Infernal Dick

Chapter One

I sat at my battered desk with a celebratory fifth of scotch and contemplated the rest of my days. Having acquired the Jade Seal and having returned it to it’s rightful owner (for an outrageous sum, I won’t hesitate to add, even by my standards) and not to mention having solved the murder of Sandra Dempsey and having wreaked no small manner of vengeance against her aggressor, I didn’t really know what do with myself. The fifth of scotch seemed a good start.

The phone buzzed on my desk and against my better judgement I picked it up.

“Not now, Margie,” I told my always earnest secretary, who’d hated me ever since I slept with her at the building’s Christmas party two years ago, but had maintained a stoic professionalism ever since that I deeply admired.

It wasn’t Margie.

“Durante?” a bone-chilling voice inquired into the phone.

“Maybe,” I responded, sitting bolt upright in my chair, “who wants to know?”

“Just wanted to see if you were around…Sheldon.” Just like that the creepy bastard hangs up on me. How did he know my first name? Nobody knows my first name, I’d nearly forgotten it myself. The ridiculous name Sheldon was the first of many cruel gifts from the orphanage that raised me and once I figured out that no sane woman could ever scream “Oh Sheldon” in a peak of ecstasy I dropped it like a bad habit. My hands went quickly to my desk. I pulled out my revolver, ‘Ol’ Faithful,’ and checked her status. Loaded for bear and clean as a whistle, just as I was becoming with that fine Glenfiddich. I pounced on the phone again and called up Margie.

“Margie,” I said, “lock the front doors. We’re not taking any more visitors today.”

Now, I don’t scare easy, which is to say, not at all, but there was something about that voice that made me feel like closing up shop and driving to Winnipeg, drunk as a skunk, never to return.

“Certainly, Mr. Durante,” she responded cool as ever. She always called me Mr. Durante, ever since I nailed her. It was just Durante before. “Oh, wait a second, somebody’s coming in right now.”

“Do NOT, I repeat NOT let them in, Margie.” I just knew it would be the owner of that voice and wanted more than anything ever in my life not to meet him. Part of my mind said I was being irrational, that I’d lost my nerve on that last case, but the more significant part of my mind had to call bullshit. I never lost my nerve, especially on the last case. I was confident that the case of the Jade Seal was my crowning achievement, perhaps the best a private dick could ever hope to accomplish in a lifetime of wives cheating on husbands, lost children and work-place theft.

I heard voices, Margie’s scream andd the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. Something heavy like a body. I leapt to my feet with Ol’ Faithful in hand, the Glenfiddich in the other, up-ended and ready as a secondary weapon in the event that there was more than one attacker, ignoring the booze as it splashed down my shirt. The scream had been Margie’s, that much I was sure of, and though it was impossible that my last caller could have made it from a payphone on the street to my office in the amount of time that had elapsed since the call, I knew all the same that it was he who had invaded my outer sanctum. I just hoped she was okay, and I realized that in spite of all the broads I’d met and railed in my time, none of them had ever registered in my heart of hearts like Margie did. I always came back to her and she was always there, even if she did hate my guts. If she could just be okay this once I promised myself I’d make things better with her.

Regardless, whoever this asshole was, I meant to make him pay in full.

“Shelllllllldon,” the voice from the phone tittered, “are you there, Sheldon?”

I peered through a crack in the door and my heart went colder than the Hudson in January. Margie’s wrist and hand splayed out against the floor, her cherry red nail polish that she always wore providing a nice contrast with her dark chocolate ebony skin. I was filled with rage and prepared for a mad dash into the room, confident that ‘Ol’ Faithful’ would cut a path through whoever had laid out my secretary.

The move was perfect in its execution. I pushed the door open with my foot, and rolled in low, jumped and fired ‘Ol Faithful’ at the last second, in precisely the same manner I had laid out Old man Weatherington during the Seal case and by all rights Margie’s murderer should’ve been deader than Mozart. But the impossible had happened and ‘Ol Faithful’ had gone unreliable when I needed her most. She blew up in my face.

I laid there in shock, shrapnel embedded in my face and shoulder, watching as my intruder came towards me. He was not my typical visitor, not even when you take into consideration Santorelli’s goons who came by to teach me a trick or two and ended up leaving in a couple ‘a body-bags. This was no goon. He was a demon, a real devil-type demon, we’re talking horns, red skin, cloven hooves, the whole she-bang. This was too much. I was still trying to get over ‘Ol Faithful’s betrayal as this demon walked towards me and grabbed my chin in his hand.

“Ah Sheldon,” the demon purred, my chin burning against his touch, “a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Don’t call me Sheldon,” I responded through a thick gurgle in my throat, “asshole.” Was I dying?

“Now I want you to relax,” cooed the demon as if he cared, “this won’t hurt but a second.” With that he closed his hands upon my neck, and violently slashed a nail across my jugular. If I wasn’t dead before, I would be really soon.

“I want you to remember,” the demon said to me as he let me go and walked back towards the front door of my office, “office number 333. And I’ll see you soon.” With that he burst into flame and smoke and was gone, leaving me to gurgle, spurt and expire at my leisure.

Chapter One Ends