The Case of the Dangerous Curves

Chapters 1-5

Chapter 1

The case started out like any other case, with a not-so-friendly call from the collections department at my bank. Actually, the case started with a tall, leggy blonde with a face for business and a body for sin walking into my office in a swirl of cigar smoke. The cigar smoke was mine, but the swirl was definitely hers. The necessity that forced me into taking the case was provided by my friendly neighborhood bank.

"Hello, Mr. Rony? This is Mr. Ur at the 26th Street branch of Federal Savings and Loan. You deposited a sizable check from a Mr. Ignatius Pruitt Freely and we regret to inform you that the check is being returned for insufficient funds."

"Not as much as I regret it," I mumbled back around the butt of a Churchill cigar. "I.P. assured me that the check was good and you're people checked it out before I deposited it. How could it have bounced?" I sat down behind my desk and swiveled my ancient chair so I could prop my feet up on the desk. "How's the loan sharking business, Bruce?"

Bruce Ur was the branch manager of my local bank and I didn't understand exactly how he managed to attain that position. He had started out moonlighting as a local bar bouncer and enforcer for one of the local crime bosses and had gone legit before anything happened that could be proven in open court. I suspected that he still had his fingers in several pies of less than savory enterprises, but every audit of his bank had produced clean books. I could hear him bristling at the suggestion of illegal activities as he took several deep breaths to calm himself down.

"How do you propose to make up the shortfall in your account, Mr. Rony?" he enquired through clenched teeth.

"We could go double or nothing on the Knicks game," I suggested, blowing a long cloud of smoke into the receiver.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Bruce breathed into the phone. "I work for a respectable bank and we are discussing bank business."

"Of course we are! I deposited a check that I was assured was good, not only by the payer, but by your bank. You are now claiming a shortfall and want me to be responsible for that amount. I owe your boss twenty large and am proposing another wager of double or nothing on the Knicks game. They're currently ten to one underdogs, so if they win, not only will that cancel out my debt to your boss, but it will fulfill my obligation to the bank and should leave me with enough ducats in my account to keep me in bourbon and cigars for the next six months. And as a bonus, I won't have to work at all during that time, so I can work on my tan instead. I hear Jamaica is lovely this time of year."

"My boss is the Federal Savings and Loan. We don't engage in taking bets or loan sharking, as you call it". Bruce was just short of shouting at me and I imagined his tie was straining at its limits as his thick neck swelled with the efforts of keeping himself calm. I puffed on my cigar and debated whether I should push him a little farther. If there was a way for him to reach through the phone and strangle me, this would provide the proof.

"Tut, tut, my good man. I shall be happy to make up the money lost by your institution for approving a fraudulent check, even though you assured me that it was good," I smiled. I poured a double shot of bourbon and downed it, slamming the glass on the desk. "Twenty grand on the Knicks, double or nothing, plus the ten to one odds. I'll even throw in spread, just to make it interesting." I could hear Bruce panting on the other end of the phone. "I'll call back after the game to collect my winnings," I laughed and hung up on him.

I realized the danger of hanging up so abruptly on someone who was easily six foot seven and weighed three hundred and twenty pounds, all of it muscle. Adding in his legendary anger, high tolerance to pain and the focus required to calmly hunt down and flush out deadbeats like me who refused to pay their debt and played a dangerous game of cat and mouse, I knew it would only serve to kick his psychopathic, sadistic tendencies into overdrive. I made a personal bet with myself with five to one odds, that my ending wouldn't be as pleasant as dying in my sleep or in the middle of an intense orgasm.