Rem and the Big Case

Part 2. The Big Case

My city was once filled with flourishing elegant night clubs flanked by gangsters in white bowler caps and Tommy guns. Illegal fight clubs where the stakes are as high as the death rates. Crack addicted whores who kiss at you as you drive by keeping a weary eye on the pimp at the other side of the street. When you find a body, the probable cause is almost always a nine iron, and the perp is almost always the fella's wife recently turned ex-wife. Let me be frank here, it is a dirty, scummy city where all alleys are back alleys, where always it rains, and I swear I haven't seen the sun in months, maybe even years. This is L.A. Disgusting as it is, this is where I used to call call home, and back then, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Guy like me, I flourished on violence as much as I tried and stamp it out. Want to hear something funny, I swear that if I didn't have a badge I would've been on the other side of the law, laundering money, shooting scoundrels in the back, rigging fights and selling drugs, anything for quick and dirty buck. Frickin' hilarious. But somehow I ended up on the Lords side of the law, the good side, the side where we stop the murdering bastards by doin' a little bit of murdering our selves. All the while we gotta convince ourselves that what we do keeps the city just a little more clean. Squeaky frickin' clean.

Meanwhile, I earned a special place among law enforcement. I ain't gotta answer to nobody because I have the distinct honor of havin' such a upstanding personality. Angel or no, I get results, and there weren't nobody, cop nor crook, who can argue with that. I get results. Maybe that's why they called me “Dick”, because I was the best investigator this side of the Pacific. Or maybe it was something better, maybe they called me “Dick” because I was such a nice guy. In any case, Dick was a name I wore with honor, and the way I figured it, it was a name I'd wear all they way till I took my first wrong step and wound up tossed into the ocean with a missing ear. You can call me Detective Graven Holdsetter.

It was recently that I began to notice something was amiss, something eerie and unsettling. But I'll get to that later. As Mary Poppin's once said, “Ya gotta start at the beginning lest ya get lost, Capish?” So where exactly is the beginning of this grisly tale? Funny thing, I know the beginning exactly, set in stone, no question about it, which has got me to thinking real hard as of late.

I had just closed a case where some broad didn't like the look of her fella's skull, so she did a little remodeling, caved it in with a nine iron. We caught up with her at the train station tryin' to flee L.A. Ain't nobody can flee L.A. Ain't nobody. I slapped the cuffs on her silken wrists, was surprised just how soft they were. “We got you honey,” I said as I rolled a cigarette. “A real shame too.”

“Why is that Dick,” she said to me, a tear welling up in her eye. “What's the shame about it?”

“It's just,” I took a drag from my smoke. “I never knew that somebody with hands so soft could commit murder. The shame is, those soft hands of yours are about to do some real hard time sugar. Don't let the delousing get you down honey.”

“What could I have done?” She screamed, the tears falling like pearls to shatter against the pavement. “What could I have done?”

“This is L.A. Doll,” I said as I turned my back on her and began walking away. “There's nothing you could've done.” Part of my heart ached for this dame, those soft eyes, ruby lips, a real blonde bomb shell. Yeah well, it's those bomb shells you gotta keep an eye on.

Case closed. One and done. Close the books and the rest is water under the bridge.

Yeah, that was the very beginning. How do I know? Pretty damn simple, there weren't nothin' ever before it. I've stood here in this alley for as long as I can figure, thought about it long and hard, did some real noodle work on it, and for my life I can't think of anything before that day. It's a tough prospect, coming to grips with your sudden materialization into this grimy world, something I hadn't thought of til now. But now, now its all I can think about.