= Velvet Clinch
  A Conner Samson story
  by Victor Gischler


I was in the bushes outside Tad Hanson's fancy bay-front home when the cell phone rang. I fumbled to answer before the racket had the dogs on me. I didn't know for sure there were dogs, but with my luck....

I thought I'd set the thing on vibrate, but it wasn't my phone and I wasn't good with all the buttons yet. I'd taken the phone off a pimp named Cooper Stone whom everyone called Dr. Coop. He'd probably cancel the service when he got out of the hospital, but until then I could make free calls.

I flipped open the phone Captain Kirk style and said, "Flick's Bar & Grill, Flick speaking." This was a lie. I wasn't Flick. I was, in fact, Conner Samson, private investigator. But it was Billy Noonan on the other end of the line and he knew it was really me, so it was okay.

"Conner," said Billy. "I'm outside Hanson's office. He ain't budged. It's been like an hour."

"Keep watching." I hung up. I fiddled with the buttons again and was pretty sure this time I had it on vibrate.

Strange. His secretary was long gone. I know because I followed her from the office to Hanson's house, where she'd let herself in with a key.

But if Hanson was pronging his secretary, why would he do something as stupid as have the affair at his house? And why would he send curvy Gloria on ahead and keep her waiting for an hour? Maybe the wife had been wrong.

In my head, I replayed the conversation I'd had with Mrs. Hanson just two days before.

* * *

"You come with high marks, Mr. Samson," said Myrna Hanson. "A friend of mine used you for a divorce. Do you remember that business with the dentist and the theater student?"

"I remember." I paced her living room, let her do the talking.

She leaned back in her chair, folded her hands over her knees, her tennis outfit showing muscled legs and tan. Myrna Hanson was doing just fine for forty-one, but some men will go on the hunt no matter what's waiting at home. She told me as much and said she strongly suspected her husband's secretary Gloria.

"Why her?" I asked.

"Isn't it always the secretary?"

"Not always."

Myrna shrugged. "It's little things, I guess. The way she's so familiar with him. They do a lot of work here at the house, and I don't like her. She's just a little too at home."

"Anything else?"

"I found one of her cigarettes, a Virginia Slim, in an ashtray yesterday. I casually asked Tad if she'd been over working, and he said she hadn't."

"It might've been old. You said she spent time here."

"Maybe. But then I'd need to fire my cleaning woman. She's in every morning."

I told her what I charged and said I needed two days' pay in advance. She wrote me a check and said she'd expect to hear from me soon. I looked at the check, shuffled awkwardly.

She raised an eyebrow. "Did I fill it out wrong?"

"No." I folded the check, stashed it in my shirt pocket. "I just need to know what kind of report you want. Do you just want me to tell you if he's cheating? Or do you want...details?"

"For what I'm paying, I should think I'd get the whole story."

I nodded. "Sure. If that's what you want. But once I start looking, I usually find things. Not always nice things. I've been doing this a while, Mrs. Hanson. It can get ugly."

"I'm a big girl."

She took a picture off the end table, showed it to me. "And I have my reasons."

Here it came. People loved to explain themselves. They never thought just the money was enough for a guy like me, and it was always the same old routine. First a list of grievances, then the justification for hiring a gumshoe.

I took the picture, looked at it. I was always willing to play this scene by the numbers if it made the client feel better.

A teenage girl, junior version of the mother, less tan but softer around the eyes. "My daughter Veronica. She's fifteen in this picture, but it's been at least three years. I keep meaning to have us all sit for a family portrait." She replaced the photo. "First, I want to know if Tad's going to be in that portrait. If it's as ugly as you say, then good. More ammunition for the lawyers."

Sure, it was all for the sake of the daughter. You're a fine, upstanding parent, Mrs. Hanson. She'd probably take the picture to the divorce hearing, give the same speech.

"I'll be in touch, Mrs. Hanson."

* * *

I kept to the bushes, skirting around to the other side of the Hanson house. I crouched in the dark, waited, listened. Still nothing.

I checked the camera.

Unlike a lot of movie private eyes, I did a lot more work with the Pentax 35mm than I did with a pistol. Somewhere in the back of my bedroom closet I kept an old Webley which I took out and waved around every now and then when I needed to look tough. But I was far more likely to shoot my own foot than anything else, so I didn't usually carry the thing.

The camera was ready to go. Nothing to do but sit tight.

Three windows down a light came on. I tried to picture the interior of the house and thought maybe it was a bedroom, though I couldn't imagine what Gloria could be doing in there by herself. She had the run of the place--Myrna had gone to her sister's in Mobile for the weekend to make things easy--but I hadn't expected this.

I scooted toward the window slow and quiet, a low crouch, duck-walking my way along. When I got below the window I stopped, listened. A low murmur. Maybe somebody talking, or maybe the television.

The cell phone vibrated in my pocket, and I almost leapt out of my skin. Billy checking in again. He'd have to wait. I wanted a look at what Gloria was doing.

I waited a few seconds to get my breathing back in order, then slowly lifted my head to peer through the gap in the curtains.

Gloria stood nude at the edge of the bed, pink skin flushed in the soft light, her midnight black hair loose and down to her shoulders, nipples hard and eager. The bone-headed male in me rose up hard, that strange hypnosis that overcomes men when they have a chance to look at a naked lady. I looked. Eyes wide and drinking her in.

A flash of movement on the bed and I pinballed my eyes to see. Another woman, just as naked.

I brought the camera up slow and focused, framing the one on the bed first. I zoomed, caught the face, the soft eyes. And my heart stopped.

It was Veronica, Myrna Hanson's little girl.

But not so little now. As Myrna had said, that picture was a few years old, and those years had counted for Veronica. She'd got herself a deep tan, bikini lines so white they almost glowed. Brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Those eyes still soft, but burning with an exciting new knowledge, lips parted with aching expectation.

Gloria moved over her on the bed, and I refocused the 35mm, ready to snap the story of two young lovers in stark black and white. I hesitated. I'd warned Myrna I might find things she wouldn't like, might not even understand. But even as I thought this, my hands were a blur--advance the film, focus, snap. My spine tingled with the greasy caress of guilt and pleasure. The phone vibrated again, and I ignored it.

Gloria turned, straddled Veronica's face, lowered her head at the other end. They fit together like a work of art, soft and warm in their velvet clinch, hands roaming lighter and more delicate than any man's.

My camera blazed. I'd shot almost the whole roll.

Something behind me. A voice:

"What the fuck!"

I turned, sucked in enough breath to utter a protest but never got it out.

Tad Hanson's fist came around hard, caught me like a hammer between the eyes. I sprawled backward into the bushes, the camera flying.  I shook my head, tried to stagger away.

Hanson grabbed me by the jacket, pulled me up. Another fist in my belly.

I pushed him away and fell backwards. He was on top of me. He had a fistful of my shirt, his other fist raised.

"Wait!"

He didn't. The fist came down across my upper lip. The salt taste of blood.

"Your daughter," I said. "Look, it's your daughter."

He stopped, looked back at the house.

"In the window." Go look, you blockhead. Just get off me.

He jumped up, went to the window. I followed.

They must've heard the fight. Veronica knelt on the bed, one hand clutching a sheet up to her neck. Gloria was hurriedly pulling on her clothes. Tad Hanson had missed the main feature, but what he saw was bad enough. He turned his eyes back on me, hurt, angry, confused.

I was panting hard. I wiped the blood off my lip with the back of my hand. "If you can keep from hitting me for two minutes," I said, "I can explain all this."

"Yes," he said, still staring through the window. "I think you'd better."

* * *

On my way home, I called Billy. "Go home. I'll pay you tomorrow."

"Why didn't you answer the phone?"

"I got busy," I said and hung up.

I stumbled into my apartment and collapsed in the ragged easy chair. I stuck a cigar in my mouth but couldn't find any matches. Tad Hanson's last request sat on my stomach like a stack of bad pancakes.

"Don't mention this to Myrna," he'd said. "She won't be able to handle it." He hesitated, then said. "You know, you try to raise a child, think you're doing a good job. And then--" He broke off, shaking his head.

I'd explained his wife had hired me to do a job.

"She wanted to know if I was cheating," Tad had said. "Tell her I wasn't. It's the truth."

And the check he'd handed me for a thousand dollars sealed the deal.

I held the camera in my hands, thought about the pictures waiting to be developed. Tad Hanson hadn't thought to ask me for the film. A lot of guys in my line of work would be hustling quick to turn them into hard cash.

For a fleeting second I thought about yanking the film out of the camera, exposing the pictures to harsh light like a knight in shining armor. But I didn't have the energy for it. I put the camera in the closet next to the Webley. Someday, I'd need to take pictures again. The film would come out, maybe even get developed.

Then we'd see what kind of man Conner Samson was.


VICTOR GISCHLER lives with his wife Jackie and HER two cats in Raleigh, North Carolina. His work has appeared in BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 1999, BLUE MURDER, PLOTS WITH GUNS (where he is a contributing editor and writes the column "Hardboiled Dixie"), COZY DETECTIVE, ALTERNATE HILARITIES, CRIMESTALKER CASEBOOK, THRILLING DETECTIVE and elsewhere.  THREE ON A LIGHT, a collection of short fiction, is forthcoming from Silverlake Publishing and GUN MONKEYS, a novel, is forthcoming from Uglytown.

Copyright (c) 2001 Victor Gischler