The Case of the Running Bag - Chapter 1

Since I know many are in shelter in place, I thought I would provide the first book in the Jonas Watcher Detective Mystery Series. This is the second edition of the book. Hopefully I have caught all my errors from the first. I will put up a chapter at a time in a serialized form.

Chapter 1

On The Dock By The Bay

I was just waking up. I could hear midnight being chimed in the distance. I was cold, wet, and coming down from the DTs. I looked up and could see the underneath of a wharf above me. What the hell was I doing passed out on a dock? I decided to quit drinking, cold turkey.
The irony of the phrase leaped into my head. I needed a drink. I just couldn't get a drink. Now I remembered; I got kicked out of the bar because I had no money. I got arrested on a D and D,
and then twenty-four hours later I got tossed out of the drunk tank.

I don't remember much after that. Now I was lying down somewhere under a wharf, under a pier, waking up to the undulating motion of a floating dock and the stench of seawater and decaying vegetation. I was not the least bit happy.

When I sat up, I found I was at the water's edge and it was lapping up at the rotting wooden excuse for a dock I must have landed on. I knew I had fallen because I was bruised and sore all over. I didn't seem to have any broken bones, so I hadn't been in a fight. No one had tossed me down here, I had managed to stumble here all on my own. I moved to climb up the ladder
onto the pier to get my bearings.

When I straightened up, I discovered I was entangled in some kind of a net. I cursed my luck,
trying to shake it loose as I climbed the ladder. Suddenly something from above hit me square in the chest and knocked me away from the ladder and the pier toward the water. I looked up as I was falling and I could see the shadow of whoever threw whatever hit me.

I yelled for help and I hit the water.

I went down under the surface of the water. Whatever hit me was pretty heavy, and it and I were all tangled up in the net. That cursed net was either going to drown me or save my life. It was attached to the dock and it kept me and the dingus from being pulled down further into the water. I could see some light through the water and decided that way was up. I should have let go of the dingus, but I hung on to it. I don't know why.

I tried to focus on the light from the pier as I looked up through the water. The net had stopped
pulling down, and though I was entangled, it was taut where it was attached to the dock. I used it to pull myself back to the surface.
When I broke through the water, I took several deep breaths of air. The light from the pier wavered through the mist, I heard a machine start up. A secondary light appeared, moved around above, and then disappeared. I climbed out of the water onto the dock. The dingus, which I now realized was a large bag, hung from the dock, entangled in the net. I was soaked, and I began to shiver from the cold.

I pulled the bag up onto the dock. I was shaking so badly, I couldn't open the latches on the bag.
I sat down with my back against the ladder and tried the latches again. Finally, I was able to open them. There were a couple of weights in the bag. I pulled the weights out and tossed them into the water.
I rummaged around in the bag, examining the contents a little more. There were a man's clothes: a suit, shoes, and underwear. Also a train ticket, a notebook, a passport without a picture, some other odds and ends, and an old Navy Colt forty-four.

S**t!

I wondered why someone would throw the bag into the bay; clearly to get rid of it, but why? The
gun? I shook my head even more than it was shaking already. The inside of the bag was made of some kind of rubbery material, watertight. I checked the suit size. It was a tad big for me, but it was dry, and I wasn't.

I started to strip off my clothes. It must have been a comical sight as I shivered while stripping. I used what I wasn't going to wear to dry off. Then I started putting on the dry clothes. I wasn't one for t-shirts, but I was cold. I finished dressing and suddenly realized how good it felt to be dry again.

I climbed up the ladder with the bag and found a bench to sit on. I looked around, the wharf was deserted.
I took a deep breath and explored the bag some more. There was something familiar about it. Not this particular bag, but I had seen others like it.

I found what I was looking for at the bottom of the bag. If you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't have found it, a hidden pocket. This one was well hidden. I expected the pocket to come up empty, I was wrong.
There were some keys, a business card with an address, and fifty double sawbucks--a grand. This bag sure didn't belong to whoever threw it over; nobody throws away a grand. It was a running bag.
I had seen them before. In another life, I was an MP in the Army. Men who were not quite straight would keep a hidden bag for a quick getaway, and that's what this was. Whoever it belonged to wasn't going to come looking for it. My guess was he had already made his
final journey. I wondered if his body was floating somewhere else in the bay.

I took out the Colt and weighed it in my hand. I brought my arm back, getting ready to heave it into the bay, but stopped. The gun was going to be bad news, probably used to kill somebody; tossing it into the bay was the smart thing to do. It was the one thing in the bag that could bring me trouble. I lowered my arm and looked at the gun, this time concentrating on how it felt in my hand. What the hell? It might be leverage if I needed some. I decided to keep it, and I put it back into the bag.

I had a couple of bad years. The Sisters Fate were fickle bitches, and at this moment they seemed to be smiling on me, so I decided to take the ride for a while. I searched through the bag a little more. There was also a money belt in the hidden pocket. I put most of the money into it, but I kept a couple of hundred in my pocket for my immediate needs. I latched the bag and got up to leave the Wharf. I was suddenly hungry, so I went looking for the nearest all-night diner. I needed coffee and food. I wanted a scotch, but against character, I went for the food.

As I sat in the diner having coffee and food, I looked through the bag to see what else I could find. The card with an address was a business card. It said Discrete Inquiries, Inc. It was the business card of a shamus, but why was it hidden? A phone number, an address, no name. Discrete
Inquiries, indeed. I had the feeling that someone had got dead because of a discrete inquiry.
Then it hit me. Discrete was the wrong word. Discreet means quiet, or unobtrusive, on the QT.
Whoever made this card was either illiterate or had a curious sense of humor.

If I had any sense, I would lose the bag, keep the money, and live well at least for a while. Then it
occurred to me, whoever hit me with the bag had been waiting for me. I had been close to the top of the ladder, in a sense, I was at the most precarious position. He wasn’t throwing away the bag. he was throwing away my life. Killing me. But who? And why?

The address on the card was 891 Post, Suite 401, San Francisco. It was in a not-too-bad part of town. A couple of miles walk from the wharf.
The Sisters Fate never gave away anything without there being a price. Now I had money in my pocket, a full stomach, and a curious nature, particularly when someone just tried to kill me. My only question was when was the bill going to come due?

I looked at the card again, the irony hit me. I was about to make some
discrete inquiries of my own. Not on the QT, but separate ones unrelated to whatever else was going on. My life might just depend on the results that I found.

I decided to take a walk to the address on the card. Maybe I could get some answers. I could always lose the bag later. I paid my tab with a generous tip and left the diner. As I was walking towards Post, I could have sworn I heard women laughing in the background.

The outside door to 891 Post was locked. One of the keys on the ring from
the bag opened the door. I went into a lobby, which was deserted. Curiouser
and curiouser. It looked like it might be a small-business building. There was an elevator across from a reception desk, and down a short
hall was a door that said Stairs.
I took the stairs. I figured it would be better if I didn't run into anyone this late. Fewer people would be using the stairs. I climbed to the fourth floor. The hallway was empty. The building was eerily quiet. Another key on the ring opened the door to Suite 401, where Discrete Inquiries
were made.

I entered the suite. Suite, there was a laugh. The room was small, a couple of chairs for
clients, a sofa, a desk for the receptionist, a coat tree, a locked file cabinet, a phone, an intercom and dust on the desk. I figured there might not have been a receptionist for at least a week or so.
I shrugged, closed the door, and made sure it was locked.

I let myself into the inner office. This was better; a nice sofa next to the wall, and comfortable client chairs to one side of a power desk. Behind the desk was a deep brown wing-backed arm chair that was the focus of the room. Whoever sat there was in charge. The other furniture in the room consisted of a file cabinet and a coat tree with an tan trench coat and a brown fedora.

The top of the desk was neat; a clean blotter, a pen and pencil set monogrammed MP,
a candlestick phone, and the other end of the intercom. There were a couple of doors off to one side. One turned out to be a closet door, and the other led to a small bathroom with a sink and toilet. I suddenly had a yen for hot water on my face. I dropped the bag next to the desk and went into the bathroom. To my surprise, there was hot water. Afterward, I wiped my face with a towel and turned around to look at the office. The only light came in from the street through the window
with Discrete Inquiries, Inc. written backward.

My situation didn't make sense. I didn't think the running bag belonged to Mr. Discrete Inquiries. Why were his keys in it? I wondered if he knew who wasn’t coming back? Who was interested in killing me? The outer office was almost Spartan, but the inner office had comfort written all over it. This part of town was all right, but somehow this office just didn't fit.

Suddenly I was very tired. I really wanted a drink, but I knew that was the last thing I needed
right now. I went back out to the outer office door, put a chair under the knob and jammed it home. I went back into the inner office and took the Colt out of the bag. I checked to see if it was loaded. There were five cartridges in the cylinder.

I hadn't done anything wrong, but I was an uninvited guest and the Colt should provide sufficient persuasion for anyone taking exception to my presence. At least it should give me time to tell my side of things. I remember yawning and lying down on the sofa. I wondered what time it was.

Continued...

Chapter 2

Discrete Inquiries