“How are you feeling, Step?”
Smith sits near an old couch, the arm of which cradles Step’s head, all wrapped up in a towel with ice dripping from it.
“Give me a drink…”
“I think that’s the last thing that you need, Mister.”
“Don’t think, Smith. Don’t think.”
On a coffee table flanking the couch lies a crooked stack of files, some with large black-and-white photos peeping out of them.
“How long have you known Losser?”
“How long have you been jacking off?”
“Long enough to know the difference between ‘hard-on’ and ‘hard-up…’ Let’s play a game.”
“I don’t like games. Where’s the old man.”
“He’s out – William.”
“Huh?”
“William. William Lee, law school graduate, Rutgers. Class of ‘89. You’re left-handed, aren’t you, Willy?”
“Maybe – but if you don’t get me that drink, I’m gonna show you a right hand – right across the chops…”
“Ok, ok. Take it easy fella.”
Smith gets up from the stick-legged chair and moves behind the couch, reappearing before the couch-bound Step with a highball.
“Here you go, William.”
“Will you cut that out, damn it?”
“So let’s start from the beginning. William Lee, or let’s just say W.L., a dropout lawyer who showed up in Kyiv in the mid-1990s.”
“Nineteen ninety-five, to be exact, fuck face.”
“Ok, 1995, left-handed, born on the seventh of the month, and sporting some serious – shall we say – literary ambitions…”
“Well, well, well…” Step applauds, now from an almost sitting position. “Ace detective, on the job. Good boy from the Midwest makes good. Johnny-come-lately but John-come-good. Where are you going with all this, Smith? What’s your game anyway? The pay sucks, and there ain’t a lot of beautiful broads in this line of work – what are you driving at?”
“Welsh Losser.”
“Now hold on. You heard me and Mack. Losser isn’t interesting to anyone…”
“But you’re not just anyone, are you, Step? You’re a left-handed, writer wannabe, born on the seventh of the month with the initials W.L. and…
“Where are you getting all this from…?
“From there,” Smith points to the crooked stack of files on the coffee table flanking the old couch that Step now sits up on. A gleaming watch on a fat wrist can just be seen on a photo that sticks out of one of the files in the stack.
“And you think all that miscellaneous garbage constitutes a case? You’re green, boy – GREEEEN!”
“Case? What case? Are you trying to tell me that you give two fucks about Davies’s Viagra game? Let that withered-up shitkicker sell it to his heart’s content. Come on Jack, this isn’t about hard-ons for hard cash. It’s about getting at the truth.”
“I’m out of here,” says Step, getting up while pulling on his pants in a single seamless motion… but then stops in mid-movement and makes a face that says: Did I just hear something?
“What’s the matter, Step? Have I rattled you? Sorry to have dug into your files, but we’re all working as a team, remember? Anyway, I had to have something to do while I oversaw you’re drunken slumber. Interesting read indeed. I’ve heard of the hunter obsessing with the hunted, but I’ve never known the two to share so many pages of biography. W.L. equals Welsh Losser, doesn’t it, Jack…?”
“Did you hear something?”
“Getting delusional, are we? Or just trying to throw me off the trail? If you want to know the truth, I’m primarily interested in The Ferret. Call me a fanatic, but I think everything starts and ends with that deformity in fur. How can I find out the truth until I uncover that lie? And that lie is on the run – no thanks to you and Mack engineering his courtroom escape…”
“Listen,” Step says; now he stands tall and right in Smith’s face. “I heard something, damn it, and don’t like what I heard…”
“I’ll bet…”
“You’ll bet nothing cuz you’ve got nothing to bet with. You don’t know the whole story, Smith.” Now Step smiles confidently for some reason but still kind of listens for something. “Do svidaniya, farm boy. I’m going down to the Lemon for a steak.”
Moments after Step leaves the flat, a rustling is heard from the kitchen, like someone rubbing his hands between his legs to wipe off some grease that’s just splashed on them.
“Not bad… farm boy,” says The Half Guinea as he slinks out of the food room in a garish bath robe and slippers.
“No, it’s all bad, and getting worse. How is this going to look in The Commix? I come into a team of ‘detectives’, for lack of a better word, and within an episode or two, I find myself working with a drunk whose biography looks like a mirror image of one of the guys we’re investigating. What the hell is going on here?”
“Take it easy, farm boy,” The Half Guinea says, showing his V-shaped teeth.
“Stop calling me that. I’m from Detroit.”
“No kidding. I like that place – lots of hot Negro chicks.” The Half Guinea raises the tip of his tongue to touch the upper left incisor.
“Where has he gone, anyway?”
“You heard him. He’s gone down to the Greasy Lemon for a steak. I like that place, too… You won’t find Losser in there, Smith. Not while I’m writing this material.”
“You’re not writing anything – you’re a character just like me and everyone else. You have no more control over the script than The Ferret does.”
“I don’t want to control anything – just influence it with my presence, be it in the byline or as one of the many talking heads.”
“But you don’t have a byline – not that I’ve seen. What gives?”
“I’m the opposite number of The Hunched Cornish, who pissed on Kate Mustard live on TV. I’m an immigrant from another series. Don’t ask so many questions, Smith. You’ll see, just wait…”
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, June 10, 2013