#jack flint

It was my first time getting shot and it was just as bad as I had imagined.

The doctors told me later on that I was lucky he was using an old service-pistol with the right kind of slug, because they said hollow-points make a bigger mess, but all I knew at the time was that it smarted like a bitch and made a big hole in my arm.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I was looking at a repeat performance in the near future, so I started shooting right back at him. I got the guy next to him, but that was close enough to spook him.

Having established that we were both armed, we each found something heavy to dive behind and the ass-hole found his voice.

"Hey Flint, I think you must'a hurt yourself on my bullet."

I wanted to return the favour, but something told me I should probably see to the hole first. If nothing else, blood-stains are hard to wash out of a good shirt. I looked down, but it was no good; the shirt was a lost cause. Once I'd accepted that, I got to making the hole big enough so I could pull the whole sleeve off. Its life as a white shirt was over, but my wardrobe suddenly had an opening for a bandage and I always thought that even the hopeless deserved a second chance. Must have been a sense of kinship I was feeling. That or I was just getting light-headed from the pain and the blood.

"Forget about it, it's nothing really. Just a scratch..."

"Well, if you want, I can take a look."

Ass-hole...

It occurred to me that his voice seemed a little clearer, so I leant out to one side and saw he'd poked his head out to heckle. I would have been upset, but it just made it easier to give him a little lead of my own. This one took off part of his ear, they think. I mean, it's all just scraped together from the available evidence, but it all fits.

In any case, he got his head down and started cursing a blue streak. Pretty sure I know what comes next, I pulled my own head out of the firing line and not before time; his last remaining lackey put a bullet in the wall behind me that I am sure was meant for me.

"You're dead, Flint! You hear me? Dead!"

After his smart-ass remarks, the sound was music to my ears. Okay, a dangerous man had just said he would kill me, but that's almost validation in my line of work. I'm a PI, in case I forgot to mention that. I'm not used to getting shot, no matter what that hack Chandler has to say about the profession. Mostly, it's a quiet job where I interview witnesses that some attorney is too important to speak to or confirm statements for insurance companies, but my ex-wie had helped raise me to the big leagues a couple of months back.

Right now, I was not rating my chances of getting out alive, but some part of me was living the dream. I was getting shot at, so I must be doing it right at last. Only... Nobody was shooting...

There are some things you expect from a small-time gangster, like bullets and threats, and then there are those moments which catch you by surprise. This was the second kind of moment.

Over the top of the barricade I was starting to work out was a planter of some kind, complete with plants, came a large egg-shaped chunk of metal. I'd picked it up before I really worked out what it was and already tossed it back over when the word 'grenade' found its way into my brain. I pressed myself against the clay pot and waited for the explosion.

If I had failed to realise how much getting shot would hurt, that was nothing to being in the same room as a grenade. One moment I was waiting for a bang and the next... Well, I woke up thinking I was in the middle of a three-bells hangover.

The thug was probably the red smear against one wall, having taken one for his boss. His boss was just lying there with the dumbest expression on his face as I slapped a pair of cuffs on him and waited for the boys in blue.

She didn't blink when I told her my day-rate, just laid a stack of bills on the table and asked me to find her answers. Before I knew it, she was gone; all she left behind was a curl of cigarette smoke and a stiff who felt fifteen years younger.

_____

I never forgot my trade; even twenty years as a divorce-photographer can't erase instincts picked up on the force and honed in the wrong parts of town. The back-streets of New York were suddenly slick with the tears of angels mourning a summer gone too soon, the shadows dark and the lights blinding.

It was 3am and I was sitting in a seedy joint I half-remembered from the old days when I felt a pair of hands caress my shoulders with all the affection of a paving slab dropped from a third story window. The sensation was not unfamiliar and I turned to a face like the side of a mountain.

“The boss says he'll see you now.”

I'd never seen the guy before, so I couldn't say who he worked for, but when four-hundred pounds of muscle tells you you got an appointment...

“Hey,” I said when those massive hands started checking my pockets. I'm not Oscar Wilde, I admit.

I wasn't surprised when he decided to take an interest in my gun. I tried telling him I had formed an attachment to my piece, that it had sentimental value, but he just stared at me like I was talking a foreign language. Not chosen for his sense of humour, I realised.

Out the back door and into an alleyway. It was the old days again...

“You know,” a voice said from behind. “I have always been a collector of notable firearms.”

“Yeah, well I can't say I know much about that...”

“You sure? 'Cause I once ran into a PI whose .38 I always wanted to see again.”

The voice started to make sense.

“I still have a souvenir from the last time we met, you see, and I wanted to return the favour.”

“That's okay,” I assured him. “You should let it go; I'm pretty sure you came out ahead anyway.”

Twenty years ago, we'd traded lead. Three of his for one of mine, but who's keeping score?

“Jack... You know I can't do that....”

“No, I guess not.” 

As Jack watched her walk through his door, he knew she was going to be trouble. She was the kind of woman he used to dream of, the whole package, but he had learned his lesson. He didn't even wait to hear what she had to say...

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn't toss you back out that door.”

She just kept walking, taking the seat across his desk and lighting a cigarette like she owned the place.

“Don't you wanna hear me out first?” she asked, knowing that he couldn't resist.

Anyone else and the private eye would have jumped as the chance. It had been too long since his last case and she was the kind to pay in cold hard cash. He should know.

“Lemme guess... Your husband likes to spend long hours in the office and you think he's fooling around with his secretary, you think maybe you might get some proof so you don't feel so bad about cheating on him with the gardener...”

“You're an asshole, Jack Flint...” she said, showing the first hint of an emotion that wasn't amusement.

“I am what I am...”

“You're the most stubborn asshole I know; that's the only reason I'm here.”

“You still didn't answer my question...”

“You think I'd marry a man I didn't trust?”

“It wouldn't be the first time...”

Just for a moment, Jack thought he'd gone too far...

“Not twice...” she replied finally.

It was probably a trick of the light, but he would have sworn he saw a tear run down her perfect cheek. He never could stay mad at her long.

“You know my fees.”

“No special rates for an old friend?”

“What can I say? It's been a hard year...”

* * * * *

The streets were slick with rain when Jack left his office, like all the buildings in New York were weeping over the summer gone too soon, and Jack pulled up the collar of his coat to keep the chill September air out. He had wanted to run, to hide, to tell her where to go, but she was paying him and that was enough for him.

Out on a pier, Jack just stood and waited. It wasn't long before he saw a nondescript brown file drop onto the wall in front of him.

“Jack... You sure you know what you're doing?”

“No, but that never stopped me before. Not with her...”

“It's your call, but I thought you had more sense.”

Jack listened to the footsteps as they disappeared into the distance.

“Yeah... So did I...”

The file was everything he expected; vague leads that the NYPD hadn't even bothered chasing up, witnesses who sang the same song they always did whether they knew anything or not... Jack just decided to do what he always did, start at the bottom and dig down until he hit the truth.

* * * * *

It was a week before he found the man he was after, drugged and unconscious with a gag and blindfold just for good measure. Jack nearly walked straight out again, but he realised he owed it to the guy to take him home, no matter what the story.

“So, you gonna tell your wife what's going on, or should I?” Jack asked.

They were sitting drinking coffee in a quiet little place out of the way. The way Jack saw it, he might as well get the poor stiff's version before he went explaining what he had seen to his wife.

“What can I say to her?”

“I don't know...” Jack admitted, “I guess the truth wouldn't be too smart.”

There wasn't much you could say, not after everything that had happened. Instead, they laughed. Jack couldn't say who started it, but they both knew it was that or admit to themselves what they saw.

“I'll give you a ride home.” Jack offered, figuring he owed him that much.

It was a quiet trip, up past the respectable places and out where there were still more trees that streets named after them. Neither man felt the need to talk, neither of them knew what to say. When they got to the end, they parted with a handshake and Jack sat in the car and waited.

Jack sat there while his ex-wife came out of her house, he waited quietly as she ran to the man who had stolen her from him. Maybe he should have felt something, said something, but he couldn't say what. All he knew how to do was sit there at the end of the case, so he sat and he watched.