Back in May I released a short story I was rather proud of, starring a character I enjoyed writing. Recently I completed a second short story starring this character that is longer and hopefully just as fun. I will be trying something new and releasing it in seven segments starting today. This is the fifth segment. This was a labor of love and I am delighted to share it with you. Please enjoy the next Dale Ulysses Monroe adventure.

Pushing The Envelope
From the Case Files of Dale Ulysses Monroe, P.I.
Published with assistance from
John J Skrip and associates

August 9th, 2017

When I woke up, I thought I was dead. It seemed I had made it home the night before, but rather than lie down in my actual bed, I had stumbled in, written “Marcus = smiley face” on my suspect list, and fallen asleep on the kitchen floor. At some point after that, I had urinated. Profusely. 

I sighed loudly and winced. I threw paper towels on the ground and poured half a bottle of disinfectant over the scene of the crime before crawling into the shower. Eventually, Kenneth arrived to find me moaning incoherently in my bed.

He shouted something aggressive and demanding.

I tried to yell back but my mouth refused to make such noises. I tried to glare but it only made the pain worse. Instead, I threw a pillow at him and hissed. “No more cases. No more leads. I’m done.”

He sighed and walked away. He came back with two cups of coffee and handed one to me.

“I thought you were done drinking during cases?” He sipped his own.

I grabbed mine with both hands and stared at it with profound wonder and fascination. “I was undercover, Kenneth. I had to. The Brigade was a dead end. Nothing there but sad boring men and one nice drinking buddy.”

“Get up, bud. You can’t abandon this one yet.” He produced a can of Febreze from thin air and sprayed vigorously. 

“Why not?”

“There’s an FBI agent in the living room.”

Kenneth left the room. I pulled on my nicest suit and stumbled haphazardly into my office. There was a tall lanky gentleman with dark skin and a cleanly cropped buzz cut wedged inside my armchair. He wore a large suit and an aggressive facial expression. He stood to greet me and I shook his hand. He asked if he could smoke a cigarette. I said sure, and sat down at my desk. 

“How can I help you, sir?” I asked.

He sat down and exhaled a puff of smoke. “My name is agent Harold Finnegan, of the FBI. My team and I have been investigating a gentleman I believe you’re working for currently, by the name of Alexander Matack.”

“If I’m working for him, why do you think I’d be willing to help you with whatever it is I’m investigating?”

“We’ve looked into your background, your past cases, and I’ve gotten a pretty clear idea of who you are. Also my agents have been tailing you and we have audio recordings of you grumbling about how much you hate Matack.” He pulled at a loose piece of fluff in the arm of the chair.

“Okay. I’m not exactly some high profile Jonathan, can’t see why the FBI would want me.”

“An old school friend of mine, Harriet Wemley, was a former client of yours. She vouched for you personally.” 

“Right, yeah. Her sister was kidnapped.”

“Me, I’m not convinced. The way Harriet told it, you almost fumbled the whole thing. I don’t want to rely on some two-bit hole in the wall PI. But it seems Matack trusts you enough, so here I am.” He stared at me, hard.

“Alright. Can we stop playing the cryptic game and talk about what’s happening? Or are you going to sit here and insult me?”

“I have a witness. She found evidence a couple years ago, hard evidence, that Matack was embezzling money from his investors, fudging the numbers so he could use small businesses to fund massive offshore accounts. He deleted her files and scared her to silence. Now we believe he’s planning on one last hurrah.”

“And why can’t she testify against him?”

“I can’t say.”

“Splendid.”

“Hundreds of customers have already pre-ordered their bikes, and when all that money clears on Sunday he’s going to cut and run. Now, because we don’t have access to his offshore accounts and we don’t have our own hard evidence, we need to nail him on attempted murder before it’s too late. And right now you are in a perfect position to catch him off guard and get him to confess. I don’t like it, sure, but I need your help.” 

I paused and took everything in. “So this rich insane man hired me, an innocent civilian with wonderful hair, under false pretenses. And you want to use me to catch this irrational psycho who could do literally anything?” 

I flicked at the peeling corner on my desk while Kenneth brought out a third cup of coffee for Finnegan. 

I stared at my hands. “Well, it sounds like a great plan to me. Do you have time to drink your coffee, or do you need to rush off to convince a birthday clown to confront a suicide bomber? I could not give less of a shit biscuit whether some prick is making money off idiots. I do it every day.”

Kenneth spoke up. “It’s not about that though, boss.”

“Isn’t it, Kenneth? I see no reason to endanger myself here. If Finnegan here is on the up and up and this is all true, all I’ve learned is that there is no blackmailer and I can now terminate my business with Matack. You got anything to add, Mr. FBI, beyond second hand smoke?”

Finnegan stared at me coldly. “I have to take a call”, he said, and he left the apartment.

I turned to Kenneth. “Is he coming back, or are we meant to wait for him to finish the ‘you can do better’ speech?”

Kenneth shook his head at me and left to use the restroom. I sat and sulked. After a few minutes my phone began to ring. It was an unidentified number.

“Hello?”

“Is this Dale?” It was a woman’s voice.

“Who may I ask is speaking?”

“That doesn’t matter. I have a hypothetical for you. Imagine, if you will, that you were a person of Canadian descent, living illegally in the United States, and married a man, a stupid man, a man who seemed nice at first and then proved to be a complete ass. And this man started taking money from his incompetent business partners and customers. So when you were able to, you divorced the hell out of him and used your position as partner at your law firm to nail his ass to the wall.”

“Pause for a second? This is a lot of imagining and I have a headache.” There was an exasperated pause. “Okay, I’m nailing his ass. What next?”

She sighed. “Dale, he discredited me. He spread rumors that I’d been sleeping with the head of my firm to get my job. He told people our marriage was a green card sham and he’d taken pity on me. And then he had his bodyguard run me off the road. Are you with me?”

“I’m confused, are we talking about me or you? I thought this was a hypothetical.”

“Are you a- I’m sorry, I’m genuinely confused. Do you not know what I’m talking about or are you purposefully being a dick?”

I took a beat. Sometimes I needed someone to rein me in, and I was the only one there. “My apologies, it’s mostly the latter. So in this hypothetical scenario, I’d imagine I’m the decidedly not deceased wife of this psycho, and am currently under something that rhymes with fitness deflection. Yes? And I’m taking a massive risk by calling the smart-ass on the other end, so he should really shut up and listen to me?”

“I don’t know that you needed to say quite so much to get there. But yes. Congrats. You’ve won the hypothetical game. So yes, imagine how dangerous it is to have this conversation. Imagine how much hypothetical you must have sacrificed over the last few years. And how much you’d like to not be stuck in the middle of nowhere, with everyone you know and love believing you’re dead dead dead.” Not-dead Abigail punctuated her sentence by clearing her throat, and dropped an invisible microphone on my selfish preconceptions.

I stood up and looked out my window. I thought about hypothetical me and how terrible her life was, and how much of an inconsiderate dirtbag that detective would be if he told me to buzz off. He could do this, I thought. He would have to do this. It was time for him to confront his rich asshole of a boss.

“I think it’s safe to say that hypothetical me doesn’t need to worry anymore. She’s been dead long enough, and her ex will get what he deserves. Non-hypothetical me appreciates the call. I was being an idiot.”

“I agree, but now I’m lost. We’ve said hypothetical way too many times. Are you going to help me or not? I can’t even tell if you know who you’re talking to or not, I knew I should have been less cryptic. I’m-”

“No, I get it. You can count on me. Don’t worry.”

“Okay, good. Thank you, Dale. Sincerely.”

“Yep. Either I’ll fail terribly and die, or both the hypothetical version of me and the literal version of you will be back to their old lives in no time. No matter which happens, this is definitely the best scenario for both of us, and I’m not shitting myself at all.”

I hung up before I could change my mind and sat back down. Seconds later, there was a knock at the door and Kenneth let Finnegan back in.

“No need to make him another coffee, Kenneth. He knows he got what he wanted.”

Finnegan smiled a thin, ominous smile. “Thank you for changing your mind.” He crossed the room and shook my hand.

“If I’d had all the details, I might not have said no. What do you need to tell me before you leave so I can go throw up?”

He gave me a strange look and continued.

“In two days you’re gonna reach out to him, tell him you’ve got a lead, but you don’t quite know what to do with it yet. On Saturday you call and say you’ll meet him at the start of the race. You get there, you tell him you think it’s an inside job, bring up financial irregularities, see what he says. We want him caught off guard.”

“Thank you, Finnegan, but getting confessions out of idiots is part of my job. I can handle that part. Just get in there once he starts squawking.”

“I once saw him talk a cat burglar into telling him her social security number.” Kenneth sat down at his barrel.

“I didn’t need it, I just thought it was funny.”

Finnegan narrowed his eyes. “This is a big deal, Monroe. There’s a lot at stake. Don’t fuck it up.” He gave another paranoid glance to either side. “Race starts Sunday at 7:00 AM. I want to see you at 2:00 AM to prep. We’ll call you.” He walked back out the door with a jaunty arrogance.

I sat at my desk and fiddled with my pens. After a few minutes, Kenneth spoke up.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Fucking terrified, Kenneth. Let’s go to that diner down the block, I’d really like an omelet right now.”

To Be Continued…