The Deadly Dame

Inspired by my friend's new haircut

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You’re probably expecting me to say how once I met The Dame, that my two-bit life as a gumshoe; a profession I worked at both on the right side of the fence and the more daring and wilder side of illegality, my life was changed forever.

Admit it, you are, aren’t you?  Isn’t that how all the stories begins.  How the ordinary life of a resident is turned upside down when a stranger comes to town.  The pieces are shaken up and left to settle and all those other damn clichés?

Those folks that might think that, and I’ve known a few folks over the years, believe me.  But those folks never met The Dame.

The Deadly Dame.

Before I go on and tell you all about her, I want you to imagine something.  I want you to imagine my office as it was back then, set sometime between post WWI 1920s and pre WWII 1930s.  Times didn’t change much then; and since you’re probably imagining things as based upon fragments of old movies you might have seen late at night in the era of Television, it don’t do too much to be all that specific about dates.

I need you to imagine me, Nick Pacetti, as I was back then too.  The wrong side of 40, mostly unshaven and wearing the faded suit bought back when times were better.  When lots of things were better.  When I had a wife, and a family.  And lots of other things I’ll probably never get to tell you about.

But most of all, I need you to hear my gravelly, cigarette inflected voice narrating the story as you read.  If we’re going to tell a noir-ish story, and since it features the essential ingredient I mentioned above, you need to be involved in the language and the elements that genre uses.

So go back, and try and read the story from the top in my punch drunk from life, off-Bogart voice.  I’ll wait here, not doing so much ‘cept waiting anyways.

You’re back.  Swell.  Doesn’t the story now have a realer, more traveled flavour to it?  Course it does.

So I was a private detective.  I rented an office in Los Angeles just off the main strip back when the town bustled with players and hustlers.  Not that I ever did much of either.  I was what you’d call a watcher, the “eye” in private eye.  I would sit by my 4th floor window, leaning back on my chair; perhaps with a glass of scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other, just staring out of the window at the folks below. 

If I wasn’t working on a case (which was more and more often these days) I could kill afternoons, days sometimes, just staring.  It was during of these ever lengthening “episodes” that I first saw The Dame.

I don’t know how long she had been standing there, staring at me as I stared at folks from the window; but when she said “Mr Pacetti” in her firm and heavily scripted voice, something told me she had been silently sizing me up.  Maybe even judging me behind my back.

“Yes?” I replied, urgently setting back my glass on the table and swivelling my chair around to face her.  God damn, she had caught me unawares.

“Mr Nick Pacetti, the private eye” she said again.  And it was then I managed to take a good look at her.  And boy, what a look that was.

She was a dame, alright.  If I had suspected, even for a minute, how deadly she’d turn out to be.  Well, I guess I wouldn’t be telling this story for one.  For another, knowing then what I know now I’d have got the hell right out of there and joined a monastery.  But neither of those things would have happened anyways, because I saw her.

She was tall, above average height for a lady.  But it wasn’t her height, it was how she carried her height that mattered.  She was leaning slightly off centre in the frame of the doorway, with the door to my office wide open.  How she’d opened the door without alerting me, I’ll never know.  Maybe I’d drifted off to sleep with a little too much scotch and a little too less soda after lunch, but maybe not.  My first instinct was she was just that damn good at cat like silent movement.

Deadly powers, you might say.

If I had known.

She was wearing a full length dress, as all the ladies of the time would have worn, with a similar coat in matching style.  A hat placed at an elegant, not jaunty, angle.  Shoes, expensive but not the kind you see in show business.  Barely a suggestion of skin around the neckline, or ankle.  Not the sort of thing that would be all the rage decades later, but fashion and sexual permissiveness will do that for you.  Didn’t matter one jot to me though.  Even with the most delicate of outlines as her shoulders, arms, waist and thighs pressed against that dress, I can say upon my soul at the day of reckoning, she was the most desirable and beautiful woman I had ever seen.

And I had only just seen her.  I was yet to hear her speak more than a few words.

“Yes, I’m Nick Pacetti” I said, doing my utmost to retain something of control over the exchange.  Trying, at the least, to get my breathing at a level approaching normal.

“I’m here to talk to you, there’s something you need to do for me.  Naturally I’ll pay you for whatever time and expenses are incurred”.  She spoke quickly, but she didn’t gabble.  Her voice had en easy pace to it; if it was rehearsed, it didn’t seem like a performance.  It didn’t feel like I was being played.

“Of course.  Well Miss, what should I call you…?” I began.  In taking in her entrance I hadn’t completely forgotten my experience.  No wedding ring.

“I could give you a pseudonym, but I won’t.  Just call me Ms” she shot back.

“Can I get you a drink?”.  I only had scotch and soda, so my menu was limited but it was the courteous thing to do.

“No thank you”.  There was poise and precision in that voice, and her body language.  And her body.

“Alright.  Won’t you sit down at least?”.  If our verbal exchange were a Boxing match, I’d be on the ropes right now looking to hang on to the stronger opponent.

“Thank you” she replied, and drew the chair sitting opposite before lowering herself to my height with nary a sound emitted.  The steel behind her soft, mannered voice was unmistakeable, if you knew where to look.  I wanted to know everything about her.

“Before I go on, I need to tell you my daily rate and expenses” I said.  This felt like more familiar terrain this time.  Sure, she taken me aback at first, but sitting opposite me in the client’s chair, I could run through my introductory talk and regain the upper hand.

“The rates and expenses will not be a problem Mr Pacetti” she immediately replied.  “The bill will be paid in full.  Fortunately for both of us, I am a very wealthy woman”.  For a fraction of a second I thought I almost saw a smile.  A recognition, even an admittance that she was dominating the conversation.  But it only lasted barely a moment, if that.  She was far too clever to be smug, or over-confident.  That much I already knew.

“My favourite kind of client!” I said, and laughed slightly awkwardly.  I was hoping she would join me in breaking the tension, but she didn’t.  The Dame kept on looking at me with her focused gaze.  She was feeding off the tension, using it, for her sustenance.

“So, what is it you need me to do” I tried again.  This time I did see something in her expression change.  She leaned back ever so slightly on the chair and began to speak.

“I have a list here of men I want you to find for me” she said, holding a piece of paper that she had just produced from inside her elegant coat. “Twelve men in fact”.

“Twelve men?” I started.  “You realise Miss, I mean Ms, it can take weeks and weeks, if not months just to find one single individual.  People can make it very difficult indeed to be tracked down and identified if they don’t want to.  I hope you’re as wealthy as you say you are”.

It was good to finish off with that line, “as wealthy as you say you are”.  It was a good line, I was proud of it.  I’d used it before, and would use it again, but on this occasion it was a punch from a cut up fighter on the ropes against a worthy opponent.  She definitely had the advantage of the early rounds, jabbing and sparring, but I’d landed a big blow.  12 men indeed, I wouldn’t have to work for 3 years after this job!

“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble locating these men” she replied, after what seemed like an age compared to her previous responses, but was probably only a few seconds.  I later realised she used the time to enjoy the satisfaction I couldn’t help displaying on my face, before proceeding with her attack.

“Why not?”.

“Because” and here she paused, and removed a cigarette from a previously unnoticed case, and put it to her lips.  I rushed to find a light for her, but she already had one and was lit by the time I found my matches.

“First of all”, she said, exhaling smoke in a manner of assured experience, “if you unfold the paper there, you’ll see the names of each men listed there, and the addresses where they are currently located.  I know you’re about to say that current locations don’t mean a hill of beans compared to flesh and blood, so don’t”.

I had my mouth halfway open to say just that, so I closed it.

“Second of all, and most importantly, is that these men, all twelve, are already dead”.

I had never been a boxer, but I can scarcely believe a knockout punch from Jack Johnson could floor me quite so seriously as that last remark.  Far from fighting back with one facile remark, she had just allowed me to my feet so she could deliver another supremely executed right hook.

“But, but” I stumbled, feeling in more need of another scotch than I had ever felt before in my life, “how do you know this?”.

Facile remarks, stupid questions.  Either I was having a bad day, or a bad day compared to my opponent, or that my opponent was making me swing and miss like a chump.  I suspected the third option.  Of course she knew, she was about to tell me.

“Four of them took their own lives, a combination of asphyxiation from hanging morphine overdose.  A further three were poisoned.  Two were killed from the blunt force trauma of a shovel striking them around the side of the head.  Which leaves three.  Two died from wounds caused by knife injuries, and the final one was strangled after a long and violent struggle with an intruder”.

If the cool and matter of fact nature of the previous paragraph chills you, I would challenge you to hear it facing opposite the magnetic personality and ageless beauty of the Dame who delivered those words.  Delivered them with such grace and authority she could have been detailing the breakdown of an automobile into its component parts.  She wasn’t finished.

“I need you to attend those addresses on that paper, and contact the relevant Police departments.  There will be investigations to the find culprit, or culprits, naturally.  But these will be fruitless.  They will find no fingerprints, or evidence of any kind that can be used in a court of law, and eventually the police will close the case and mark it as unsolved”.

Another chilling statement, delivered with clarity and without hesitation.  It truly was a sight to behold.

“The only single element linking these 12 cases will be you, and your appearance on the crime scene on each occasion.  You will of course be held as a suspect by any officer unwilling to do the necessary police work.”  Now I started to panic, was she telling me this to set me up, to frame me?  Why would she tell me all this if not?

“But knowing about the location of the crimes does not make you the murderer, there will be nothing on you and eventually you will be free to leave.  Depending on your appetites for public recognition, you could use this knowledge in a number of different ways.  You might become something of a fortune teller, the local psychic the police turn to when all leads are dead.  Or you might use the spotlight to ensure a steady supply of private eye work.  You may even want the fame that could come along with knowing such a scandalous and no doubt intriguing story”.

My head was spinning, I was out on my feet.  If this had a referee he’d have stepped in and stopped the fight after too much cruel and unusual punishment.  So, summoning up what energy I had left, I spoke back.

“I just have two questions”.

“Did I kill those men, and why am I telling you about them?”  This time she really did smile, a wonderful joyful smile that lit up the room.  She was pleased to have pre-empted my admittedly obvious rejoinder, but more than that, she seemed relieved to have unburdened herself.

“Yes”.

“To the first question, I will not say.  It will ever remain something to wonder over, and everyone loves a mystery.  To the second, let me say that a private eye would be the best person to hear, if they can hear.

“Why”.  Single word sentences were all I could muster.

“Because men talk.  They talk to other men.  Word will spread of what happened here.  Perhaps legends will spring up around the events.  Of an avenging angel, and a woman to boot”.

“These, were avenging murders?”

“Oh yes”.  The smile re-appeared.  “The four that took their own lives, they were made to realise the reality of the sins they committed.  Terrible sins, against children, and ones they had no way of making amends.  The ones who were poisoned, they were violent men.  Violent toward their wives, and their children.  They were men hooked on control.  The administering of poison took that control and power away.  The ones with more violent ends were politicians and other authority figures.  Men who sent other men to wars for their own profit.  Men who had sent innocent and blameless law enforcement officers to their deaths to protect the interests of their private property.  Men who closed down shelters, refuges and orphanages to extract more value of their land to private investment.  But a rain came upon them”.

The Dame got up from her seat, still without making a sound.  It all happened in one fluid movement, and for just a split-second as she leant to crush out her cigarette I saw her dress tighten against her thigh and posterior, and I lost whatever sanity I had left.

“Goodbye Mr Pacetti” she said as she moved to the door.  Her voice had lost none of its power, or intensity, but it now returned to a more formal air.  “The answer is yes, I may see you again, one day.  And I told you because you’re a good man, beneath it all.  So go back to your wife and family, they miss you.”

“Goodbye” I said, with the last of my remaining muscle power standing to see a lady leave the room.

She closed the door herself, the only formally unladylike activity she carried out, or admitted to, while in my office.  After no more than ten seconds contemplation I raced around the desk and threw myself at the door handle.  But by the time my trembling hands had grasped it and made it turn, she was gone.  No trace of her was left.

I searched the corridors, the elevator, the adjoining offices, even the boy at the newsstand right outside the building.  But no one could tell me if they’d even seen a sight of her, or seen her go past.  It was just as if she had arrived, and vanished into thin air.

I began to think it was all a dream, a fantasy caused by too little exercise or too much sleep and sloth.  But when I returned to my office, her piece of paper was still there.

I returned to my seat, only instead of resuming to watch my people, I pulled out some paper from a drawer, found my pen, and began to write.

The Deadly Dame – Chapter 1.

Tightening the knife in her hand, The Dame moved towards the target of her mission of vengeance…