Return To LA

Chapter 1

                     It was cold. Bitterly cold, He drew his trench coat up tighter around him. The wind blew the flaps of the tail up around his waist, letting in more cold and rain.

Deep inside his right coat pocket, he gripped his revolver. Finally reaching the street corner. He stood under the streetlight. The light rain reflecting in the the light as it continued to assault his already cold wet body. Through the haze of the dark fog, and rain he saw her.She seemed to appear out of the darkness from nowhere. The fedora she work kept much of the rain from her head. The leather coat, seemed to repel the rain effortlessly. Her hand came out of her pocket. At first he didn't recognize the object in her hand. Just as she leveled it at him, the street light glinted off the barrel.

At that second, the lady in red leather said something . But he never heard it. He fired his revolver through his coat. The muzzle blast of the .38 special tearing through his coat pocket and into the rain and eventually into her was deafening. The gun bucked in his hand, the confined quarters of his pocket made it hard to control recoil

The shock of the last few seconds deadened him for a minute. She seemed to fall in slow motion. The semiautomatic pistol which she had pointed at him fell clattering to the pavement. Landing in a puddle of rain. She collapsed next to it. The brown fedora landing next to her red hair.

He stood looking down at the lady on the pavement. It could have just as easily been him laying there. Her little .25 auto was just as deadly as his Colt Detective Special, .38 special. Only he'd been just a hair faster then she was.

"You know her?"

"No." was the terse reply.

They stood watching the crime scene officers go over the area. Private Detective James St.James gave his statement to his friend and police detective, Robert Clay.

The two of them had been friends and colleagues for many years. Over the years they had helped each other solve many cases. This was the first time James St.James had had to kill a woman. One of the officers brought the pistol to them. Handling it carefully.

"It's a Colt, .25 Looks to be a old 1908 model, I haven't seen one of theses in a long time,"

James had long ago given his revolver to the detectives, and now had a empty pocket with a hole in it. The powder burns around the hole on the pocket showed where the bullet had exited his gun. The inside of his pocket was also burned, due to the blast from the cylinder gap, when it went off. Fortunately he'd been holding the gun away from his body.

"All right get out of here James. Meet me downtown in the morning, and we'll go over it again. By then we may know who she was."

As he turned to go, something seemed familiar. Just as they placed her fedora, on the gurney with he to take her away he paused.

"May I?" he asked, The detective nodded. James picked up the fedora, and looked at it closely. He was sure He'd seen it somewhere before.

"I know this hat. I've seen it somewhere before." He commented to the detective.

How he could recognize a hat he had no idea, but it was now four o'clock in the morning. He needed sleep. he said his goodbyes to Robert, and several of the uniforms he knew. His car was a block away. Walking back to his old pre war Ford, he let his mind go blank. The drive back to his apartment was quiet.

A year ago he returned to LA . LA was a different place than when he left . Crime and corruption and violence was an everyday fact of life. It was well-known that Most of the police was on the take from any number of politicians and crime bosses. A honest cop was rare.