back at the office

I shoulder the door open to the office. Pris is sitting in her chair as blank as a tobacco store Indian. I messed up, but good. She probably will screw the delivery boy to make herself feel better. It happens. I stumble to my inner office that says "Mike Reilly, Investigations" on the glass window and toe it open. She has piled my mail on the desk as usual.

I slide into my chair and slit the letters open with a switchblade I took off a punk a couple years back. It was so dull that letter opening was all it was good for. God knows what he planned on doing with it. Bills, bills, Knights of Columbus invitation to the next degree, etc, etc, etc.

I tossed to pile back on my desk and rubbed my temples. It was then that I saw the red envelope, already opened, in the stack. I slid it out and checked the address.

"Melanie Kaine
2210 Baxter Blvd
Boston Mass 93212"

I pulled her letter out and flipped it open. The faint scent of Sandalwood wafted in the air. It read:

"Dear Mr. Reilly,

   I don't know how to say this but certain channels of information have led me to you.  I have a very, very unique problem that you, your secretary, and your "partner" are uniquely qualified to deal with.  

I do hope you contact me at the provided number.

Respectfully,

Ms Melanie Kaine

P.S. If Mr. Y is reading this as well, my condolences.

I frowned and sat the letter down. "Make anything of it?" I asked. Yeziroth stirred, clearly annoyed. "No. I don't know her. Put your dick in her and I might recall." I chuckled. "You always say that." Still, she apparently knew about my current situation. I wrote down the number and called Pris in.

"What is it, Mike?" she asked from the doorway. She was wearing a white blouse that was doing its best to contain her ample breasts, gray pinskirt that hid none of the curves of her hips, dark pantyhose, and the most venomous face I've ever seen, perfectly framed in golden blonde hair and made completely ineffectual by her sultry lips and sparkling eyes. No matter what she did, Priscilla always looked as if she was about to rip your soul apart and you'd moan in exctasy because of it.

"Kaine case. What do we got?" I asked. She slid away to the file room. I felt sober, so I slid the bottom drawer open and got the bottle out. I had sweet vermouth and grenadine in there as well, but 11 AM is a bit early for a Manhattan. I nodded to it, and put it back.

Pris walked in the room and tossed the folder she picked up from Pat at the Globe on my desk and left. She was sore. I couldn't blame her. I'd be sore too if I was a Goddess and got turned down by a goblin. The file only had three clippings. "Millionaire Darius Kaine Convicted!" from the Globe, "Heiress Out of Control" with a picture of scorcher of woman spilling a martini and laughing, and the one that sent my lips sliding up my teeth into a sneer; "Murderous Millionaire Escapes! Police Baffled".

I read the articles in order. They didn't paint a pretty picture. Darius Kaine, French national, fled Europe at the outbreak of WWI. He landed here and set up shop, nearly penniless. Seems Mr. Kaine found a rather unlikely patron in Lorenzo Pazzi, the notoriously shrewd mafia underboss of Providence. Kaine was charged with assaulting an officer during a bootlegging raid, but never convicted. Kaine moved up in the ranks quickly, gaining a reputation for viciousness that he never shook. Three years later, Pazzi was dead from a stroke and for whatever reason, handed everything over to Kaine.

Naturally, the mafia didn't take to kindly to having 16 million dollars slip out of their hands. Kaine played it right. He didn't fight them, he joined them. He took a wife from the family, Franscesca Pazzi, and they had a daughter, Melanie. He kept a legit front as a night club owner after Prohibition was repealed, but scratch the skin and gangster leeked out.

Last year, his past caught up to him. He was convicted of killing six men with a Tommy gun in a 1928 gangfight when a pigeon made a plea bargain and fingered him. The photo of him showed him calm and smiling as he was led out of the courtroom. He was a smooth looking bastard with slick hair and an easy face.

Melanie grew up to be a girl who spills martinis and smile into pictures. Nothing to learn from her article other than she was scandalizing the town with "a stable of young hunks" as the gossip column said. Nothing in it but typical gossip column trash.

The last article was only three paragraphs long. Kaine escaped from custody without a fight. They were calling it the smoothest escape since Dillinger. I tossed the clippings back down and popped a Lucky into my mouth. None of that told me anything about why or how the dame knew about Yeziroth. I put my hat on, grabbed my coat, and went out.