Detective Mike Coen

The Detective

Mike could see the body lying in the ditch from where he stood on the grassy verge of the road. The police has stopped the traffic from passing and had set up a diversion so they could leave him to do his work. A cold winters night on the lonely stretch of road, way out in the sparsely populated area of Long Islands north shore called Cold Spring Harbour.

One of the officers approached Mike “hey Mike, looks like it could be a hit and run, or maybe a goon deposit from here”. Just make sure you keep your boys at a distance until I’ve had a look, ok”, Mike said back to him. “Ok” the officer said, “Will do”. Another officer approached them and shouted to his colleagues to get some light on the body and to cordon off the area. Mike turned around and had a look at the road first, telling one of the officers to check for any tire tracks on the verge a for hundred metres both sides of the road, just in case.

He took in the whole area at a glance, to his expert eye and his almost photographic memory, things all merged into one single moment in time. It was as if he could recall a place by visual memory in an instant, a crime scene like this one would be forever stuck in his mind. Every intricate detail of the forest at the bottom of the hill before him, what kind of trees and how leafy the branches where, how thick the tree trunks, how old or young the saplings. With daisies and wildflowers growing in the shorter grass around the roads edge, some fallen braches from the trees after the storm the night before.

“You never know when something you see or find ends up helping to break the case” He would say to himself out loud. He spoke to himself all the time and never took any notice of other peoples reactions when he did. “What was that Mike” people would say to him, “Nothing” Mike would say back, “Just talking to myself, part of the job” He would reply. It made for a surreal almost Twilight Zone effect when other officers and detectives would see him talking to dead bodies as if they were still alive. But they got used to it, after all, his reputation as a great detective was well respected by everyone on the force. Anyway, back to the moment in question.

He would take a mental picture of the crime scene first, then a few snaps from his crime scene camera. Breathing in the fresh country air of this more remote part of the island.

Even the sounds the road nearby made with the swish, swish of the odd car passing or the heavier sound of larger vibrating trucks with the splashing of water raising up from the wet road below. It had recently been raining and the bright glimmer of reflective light made the road seem like a black mirror, reflecting the world around it with a kaleidoscope of colours bouncing off the road from the headlights and tail lights of passing vehicles and the police lights by the crime scene.

“Beautiful place to die” Mike thought to himself” He didn’t vocalise every thought that passed through his head, after all he wasn’t mad, at least he thought so any way.

The red and white lights of the cars, the dull glowing orange of the street lights and later on the police spotlights set up for him to survey the scene and to help the team he had set up to hold the investigation into the murder they where about to investigate. “Ill just take a few snaps of this awesome light show” he thought to himself. He liked to keep an artistic edge to his work, it was a sort of hobby for him, as morbid as that sounds to some people. Never the dead bodies, just the scene of officers running around, paramedics and their flashing ambulance light shows, light reflections and sometimes he felt that the soul of the murder victim was caught in his pictures somehow.

Once and a while he could swear that their spirits showed up in his prints like ghosts posing for a picture. Although this phenomenon he absolutely kept to himself. Paranormal or not, he needed to keep his respected reputation as a professional detective, not as an artist with his head in the clouds.

He had been working as a detective for the police force for over twenty years. Retiring early after receiving an award for his achievements, but found retirement boring and dull, much like his wife, he used to joke with his friends. He loved her dearly.

The police chief was a good friend of Mikes father who was also a detective with the city, so when mike decided to retire early, the chief offered him a post as hired detective for his private practice. The chief even pushed Mikes licence through all the red tape at city hall mostly because his reputation and ability made him an enormous asset to the police force. They couldn’t afford to lose him.

All those years together fighting an illegal secretive war in Indonesia in a country called Laos, Mikes dad and the chief were working for the CIA as soldiers in a war that no one back in America was meant to know about. Both sworn to secrecy along with their fellow brother in arms, the future lord mayor of New York City, these secrete soldiers helped make money for the CIA by smuggling heroin out of the country to be sold onto the mob back in the USA. Millions of dollars profit, leading to billions of dollars in profit, in their eyes to help combat Communism.

It eventually lead to the causes of the Vietnam war, which was the next country over. But more about that later.

“I wont get too close”, mike thought to himself as he surveyed the scene of the killing. He pulled out his tape recorder, which he mostly used to hide his habit of speaking his thoughts out loud and it was useful for remembering certain points involving body position and memos for future use.”All I can see from here is the head of what looks like a middle aged man of around forty years old and what looks like his shoulder sticking up from the wet glistening and soggy grass the rest of his body is buried under” He said, as he turned the body of the bloodied corpse over so he could see the face of what turned out later to be a Long Island Gallery owner called Clive Waters.

He later thought to himself as he was driving home that this guy must have family out there wondering eventually where he was. Perhaps they wouldn’t worry until he failed to connect to them for a much longer period of time, as was the usual way an unidentified body was identified when the family of the diseased contacted police or the F.B.I.

“Ah well”, Mike said to himself, “I better get down there and take some photographs”. Stopping along the way every few feet to take photographs of broken twigs, or possible foot prints and clues. “Get some lights down here guys, will yak” He shouted up at one of the officers up on the road. “Sure thing Mike” one of them shouted back at him.

When he eventually made it down to the body he slowly turned it over to reveal a young man in his late thirties wearing an army flight jacket and what appeared to be small white wild flowers in is hand. He donned his surgical gloves and prised open the murdered mans closed fist. There they were, little white wild flowers, thimbleweed there where called, with tiny yellow stamen. Mike later found out that they grow all over the city. They where all scrunched up in a ball, covered in the mans blood. Caked together like some kind of herbal meatball he thought. Maybe it was some kind of desperate last attempt to finger his killer or killers. But possibly was just a dead mans grip, holding onto some wild flowers he had picked moments before his life was brutally taken in cold blood on a cold winters night in New York. “Poor guy, doesn’t look like a mug or a goon, gruesome ends are a normal Saturday night for me though” Mike again said out loud to himself, standing over the bloody corpse of Mr Waters.

He took the flowers and carefully placed them into one of his plastic container bags for evidence and the guys in the C.S.I. lab back in the city. If he wanted them to check it out that is.

“One gun shot wound to the chest dead centre, with no exit wound, so the bullet would be easy to find.” He spoke into his recording device.

Checking the pockets of the jacket at first came up empty except for a small packet of pins, the kind used to pin notes on a notice board. They where so small in fact that the killers, having hastily emptied this poor mans pockets probably missed this item. He hoped it would lead to a possible connection as to who this man was eventually. Or it may lead to the reasons as to why he was murdered as inevitably it did in this case.

If they couldn’t id him back in the precinct these small clues can sometimes lead to the identification of the victim. On other occasions, they happen to be planted by the police or even the killers themselves to throw detectives like Mike of his scent path.

His father was a detective before him, a Thomas Coleman an immigrant into America from a place called Esker on the banks of the river Shannon in west Galway back in the old country of Ireland. From a long lineage of farmers, musicians, storytellers and soldiers on all both sides of every war that anyone could remember. His father used to say if it wasn’t for the Irish conscripts at Waterloo, Napoleon would have won that war. Also if it wasn’t for the Irish conscripts fighting for Napoleon, the French would have won that war. Same goes for the war of independence in America, you cant get two Irishmen pointing the barrels of a gun at each other without one missing the other and the odd officer getting hit from behind he would say.

The same goes for police work Mikes dad would say, you don’t know who’s behind you until their gun jams and you turn around.

In fact for both Mike and his dad Thomas, during their work in the force they had had guns pointed at their heads that had jammed at the most important moment, when the hammer drops. Click! Would be a sound that would lift the spirits and charge the body with adrenalin as high as any kung Fu master could, Mike would say. You hear a click and boyo you suddenly turn into Bruce lee, Waaaa! That gun is history as you kick it out of the hand of your would be assassin as swiftly as a horse kicks a rattlesnake. Wham! They are on the floor and you are on them like white on rice, no offence to the Chinese, its just a metaphor.

The reason for this little visit back to memories past was that Mike had found a weapon nearby the dead body of this young man lying on the grass. It was normal for Mike to find himself imagining scenarios as if he was the victim. Day dreaming about how he would defend himself with all his training in self defence.

He picked up the gun carefully and dusted it immediately for prints. The hammer was down and only one bullet had been used. It may have been that this young man was set up to be killed and as of yet, no one had any idea of the events that where about to take place in understanding the reasons why.

Mike at this stage had taken enough pictures from his crime scene camera, had bagged and tagged all evidence that he found in the mans clothing and around the crime scene.

He even took pictures of the scene the next day, after they had taken the body away, in the daylight hours sometimes clues and evidence that had been missed the night before would be found.

I this case, he could spot a farmhouse with some kind of large shed attached to the main house. It looked more like a factory than a farm shed, he would have to send over some of the officers from his precinct to check and see if anyone had heard anything the night of the murder.

As crime scenes go this was a very clean one, very little blood on the victim or on the ground around him. That meant that he was dumped there and the killing had happened somewhere else. In this case, although Mike didn’t know it at the time, the murder was executed at the 11th Street Basin on Hunters Point Long island in New York City.

The night before, our victim Clive Waters an art dealer from Brooklyn heights had been waiting for a drop. His business as a Gallery owner at 76 Vernon Boulevard-Jackson Avenue area Long island wasn’t doing so well and he had decided to start dealing in stolen paintings, usually brought into him by local hoodlums on occasion. On the occasion that they had recently acquired them the night before from some rich suburbanites whose homes had been robbed just for the benefit of yours truly.

Wham bam thank you mam, up the gutter pipe in through an open window or a masterfully cut glass pane and swipe, swipe, swipe go the families heirlooms.

In this case it was a painting by local artist called George Bellows who had come to New York in 1904 to study art, stayed here and set up his own art Gallery depicting New York City scenes as his theme. This painting he was tonight to sell on to his buyers was a boxing match scene called Dempsey and Firpo painted in 1924.

A lucrative market for nationally famous painters had sprung up in the 70s when the Mafia realised that the police weren’t too worried about the non international art theft trade. A good Bellows painting could sell on the black market for up to a hundred thousand dollars or more. Only the mafia hoods didn’t know that, if they did, Clive would have been whacked a long time ago.

Clive would turf out ten thousand to his hoodlums and thieves, pocketing the rest for himself. Not a bad profit for a few freezing hours waiting in the cold winters chill on the docklands of Hunters Point, the east side of the island, nearest to the river.

He had built up a small collection of local artists whose work was worth a lot to his clients. Just last week he had sold on another Bellows called “cliff dwellers” depicting a busy New York scene of locals sitting out in the sunlight of a hot balmy city summers day, children playing in the street and washing hanging out between the apartments on both sides of the street. What the buyers didn’t know was that he had sold them a forged copy of the original, he had other plans for the real painting. He would sell it back to the people it had been stolen from in the first place, unbeknownst to the mafia or the buyers of his forged copy.

Clive felt like he was doing the underworld a favour educating them as to the austerity of art, the need to represent their beloved city in a manner that advertised it to the world just as it was, rough and ready but with a wonderfully colourful heart. An indomitable heart, a collection of neighbourhoods with a people as tough as any seasoned veteran and a wit to match any hardened soul.

“I’m doing a good deed here for my city, taking from the rich and giving back to the uneducated mobsters who bought his artworks” he would say to himself. Knowing that these albeit forged masterpieces of American life would end up on the inside of illegal gambling joints or to private collectors on the black market gave him a feeling of being one step away from Sinatra. Sadly he ended up one step away from Jimmy Hoffa instead.

Ce la vie, ce cera cera, that’s the way the cookie crumbled, its lights out, time for the big dipper, end of the road, the fat lady has left the building, kick the bucket, its grim and its over, pay the ferry-man goodbye cruel world. Not what he had in mind for his retirement fund and for what? just for making a few extra dollars on the side, well a few hundred thousand dollars more like.

Chapter Two

Mike the detective had had some experience with his private clients whose homes had been robbed by villains through the years. When it came to stolen art he usually went out on the street and contacted his usual grass on the ground, his local snitch, informant, fink, canary, tattletales and weasels. The criminal underground has a lot of mouths to feed and when some get ignored they need sustenance from somewhere, the police informant could get a reduced sentence for exchanging information or on the side make a little hard cash from detectives like Mike.

It didn’t take Mike long before he had found something of interest under the fingernails of the murder victim in question, Mr Clive Waters. There where small flecks of white paint, oil paint as the guys down in the lab had found out. They had it carbon dated to circa 1900s or so.

The white flowers Clive was holding in his clenched fist, Mike had found flowers of the same kind down by the 11th street basin after getting tipped off about some dodgy dealings being held down there in the shadows of the night. Of course Clive’s car had also been found in the car park right across from where these little white flowers where growing. After forensics took some samples of the recently washed concrete ground, Clive’s D.N.A. was also scrubbed off the dirt left unwashed.

He guessed that the victim had been connected to the art world as soon as this information had been delivered to him from the crime lab. Well at least it was some kind of lead, t may lead somewhere, it may lead nowhere. The first place he had to look was his snitch on the street to see if any jobs where going down locally, little did he know that this job was going to lead up to the tower of power where even his life was in danger of being snuffed out if he didn’t play his cards right.

You see the underground word of black racketeering wasn’t beyond the reach or interest of local politicians and even within the police force itself. Big money attracts powerful people, for Mike being connected to the most powerful people in the city it was vital that local media never got wind of certain secrets. If local journalists hear any rumours of illicit activities by politicians e.t.c. it was a dangerous can of worms that they could pour all over the floor of the N.Y.C. Criminal Court. Our intrepid Irish American detective from the Bronx did his best protect his associates and their circle of friends.

You see the night of the murder, Clive Waters found himself in a quandary over the painting he had recently forged. Unbeknown to him at the time the lord mayor of New York Billy Selmer (Name changed) was an avid collector of stolen art, especially of local artists from the early 19th Century.

The Lord Mayor was also in with the local mafia god father having sequestered his services in the past to both help get him elected and also to utilise the mafia bosses concrete company to both build his private home and also his new investment down town. A tenement block for the homeless, funded of course by local tax support and donations from big time charity funding organisations for the rich and powerful.

This information would prove to be very valuable in saving our beloved detective Mikes life. If he were to undertake an investigation into a murder and not be able to hide certain involved parties from the press, he would be the next John Doe in the city morgue with a bullet in his chest. This Mike was sure he didn’t want to have to experience in any of his cases, that was why he was adamant that he be left in peace until his investigations were complete. It was also the reason why he worked alone, it was also the reason why he was still alive. An inherent Coleman ability, survival.

Life isn’t easy being a cop in New York, once and a while officers get mowed down accidentally or shot n the head by some random shooter on crack or heroin. Who knows why? Usually that same officers partner who rigged the accidental death, being on the pay role of the mob or in the service of the rich and powerful. Sometimes a knock would come on the door and certain officers would get a late night visitor with news or hints on the importance of his or her families health and well being. Or a midnight phone call with a request to support certain people in the disposal of their trusted and loyal brothers or sisters of the law.

“Corruption breeds more corruption” Mikes father used to say. “If you make sure that nobody knows that you know what you’re not supposed to know, you will survive.” He would say.

So far, nobody knows anything about what Mike knows about any crime he has ever worked on, unless he wants them to.

When this case pans out and vital clues lead in a direction that may cause death or injury to himself or his loved ones, he talks to the chief. Sometimes the evidence disappears and know one is the wiser. The chief looks out for Mike and Mike looks our for the chief, that’s the way it has always been. Its kill or be killed sometimes in the city, call it what you will, the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, the quick and the dead.

This case with Mr. Waters just happened to be just this kind of scenario, only Mike didn’t know it yet. His special deal with the police chief guaranteed that all the evidence was at Mikes disposal and only he could get to see it. Forensics didn’t have any clues as to what case went where or what evidence was connected to any case. It sounded wrong and it was illegal, but to save a life sometimes you have to break the rules.

But we will return to this topic later or as the story progresses. Now back to the night of the murder.

Clive the stolen art dealer, art forger and gallery owner was waiting for his usual drop meet out the back of the Lic Bar close to the waters edge. The sound of soft jazz music floated up through the crisp clear fresh air of the late evening winter breeze flowing in off the river at a high tide. Clive took in a deep breath “Ah” he said, “I hope this drop goes well, no reason why it shouldn’t” he thought to himself.

“I should get at least sixty thousand for this piece, as long as these goons don’t drop it on the way over” he thought. Clive usually would park his car around the other side of the 11th Street Basin so he could escape if needs be onto 45th Avenue by running across the back of the basin and nipping past some trees where he could either go for his car or cheese it out to the right and take any number of exits to evade any possible police bust or wise guy wacking him if they ever found out he was selling forgeries off to the mob or whomever and then selling the originals of paintings back to the recently robbed owners. Well most of the time it was back to where they had been nicked from, sometimes not.

The original owners would usually have insurance, so Clive realised that if he copied a painting then sold it back to the owners, once he was sure they would pay without any police involvement. They got their painting back, they got a ton of money from their insurance companies. He even offered to paint over any returned paintings to allow for easier storage from any prying insurance detectives. To be wiped of with water at a later date and reveal the original beneath. Like I mentioned earlier Clive would usually make a forgery and sell it back to the owners, keeping the original for himself. He had his technique down to a tee, even used paint from the correct era the painting was made in, scraping paint off the real paintings and mixing it in with the paint used in the forgeries. The owners already had the real paperwork in the safes at home, so knowbody was the wiser. Well, usually, until one of his newly robbed buyers tried to sell their forged copy to a local hoodlum in a mob owned restaurant on 129 Mulberry Street. The seller, a rich lawyer from Albany had bought back the painting from Clive six weeks before and claimed his insurance money also. Being afraid of getting caught out, he wanted to try to sell it to the mob, hoping they would hold in some safe-house far away from prying eyes.

Or if the painting was found by the insurance detectives, they would assume it was stolen by the mob and stay away for their health’s sake. One way or the other, it was lights out time for Clive when the local mob boss had two copies of the same painting that his goons had paid Clive twenty thousand dollars for, two weeks after the original was stolen.

He was the real wise guy, making from all sides, life was good to him in these days of his shadowy criminal activities. How would he ever get caught, who would suspect an art gallery dealer of theft? He never stored the stolen art at his gallery or at his home. It was stored safely in a small boat house very close to where he met up with the goodfellas. Clive was sure they would never figure out that he was forging the originals. If they did, he would just play dumb and be as surprised as them, or so this was his master plan anyway. It didn’t work out that way though sadly, like all great plans, fate got in the way. Along with Mr. Nine millimetre.

Mike knew well about how thieves made money on their money. In fact he had hired other detectives in the past to tail the people who had been robbed, just in case their priceless jewels or art was being sold back to them once they received the insurance on their most prized possessions.

Art that had been returned to the owners that was painted over would later be the hidden mystery of this murder case. Of course it was only when they where caught that people would panic thinking they would go to jail, so most paintings stayed painted over with some landscape theme for many years. Some stayed that way and are probably being bought and sold today as originals of some unknown artist for pennies. Even though they are all painted over forgeries.

When some people wanted to sell on their art, they too could use the black market, having all the correct paperwork, no one would expect a thing. Or they would just wash off the water colours and hang their painting back up on the wall, hoping the insurance company would never find out.

There had been a famous case where an artist had created forgeries and had them sold to galleries as originals. Only that forger wasn’t murdered and is still selling his forgeries, albeit legally today. His is a well documented case, unlike the countless other less famous stories that are out there, much like Clive Waters.

So back on the waters edge on this freezing cold December evening, Clive was waiting for his meet. Completely oblivious to the fact that it was his last night on Earth, he was smoking a Lucky Strike cigarette and checking the boundaries of the basin to make sure there where no cops around. The night was moist and foggy with a crisp clean fresh taste to the air around him. Thank God I’m all wrapped up and warm he thought to himself as he watched a family of swans shuffle across the basins blackness and tuck in behind one of the bushes growing out from the basin edge wagging their hind quarters like they do when they’re spooked. There was a gentle breeze blowing through the trees that grew around the basins edges, just along the walkways. He took a deep breath, then threw his finished cigarette on the ground and as he looked up he spotted the flashing lights of a Mercedes pulling up off Vernon Boulevard and was driving up to meet him in the darkness of the basins edge.

The only witnesses where some old unused large metal bins that where lying there all battered and worn. He could hear the sound of traffic swishing all around the back streets of the city and the low dull drone of the fog horns out on the foggy Hudson to his left. He loved his city and found poetry in its atmospheric declaration. A city with an enigmatic soul all to itself. Where even the concrete had a kind of soft aromatic memory of all the peoples lives that it surrounded and protected, kept warm and safe, was bought and sold, yet outlived all that bought and sold it. He had the heart of a poet did Clive Waters and this would be his epitaph to the city he loved so dearly, ironic that the painting he was about to be shot to death over was a forgery of another Bellows idyllic New York City urban scene that encompassed all that he held dear about its iconic status.

The car doors of the Mercedes opened and closed shut with a gentle click-thump, three men all dressed in long black overcoats exited the vehicle, one was carrying a duffle bag which Clive thought must have the painting he was about to buy from these wise guys for around two thousand dollars, selling it on for sixty thousand dollars back to the original owners he hoped once they had received their insurance money after being robbed.

“Hi guys”, Clive said jovially in his thick Bronx accent, “what’s the deal this fine winters evening, you got something special for me tonight or what?” The taller of the three men moved forwards ahead of the other two and straight up said “yes buddy, we’ve got something very special for you this evening” pulled out a gun and said “check this out” and pulled the trigger. Badda bing, badda boom, the bullet left the barrel in a thin stinking spit of flaming red gunpowder, engulfed in bright firecracker flames. Through the eyes of the goon that fired the killer shot it always looked like a firefly taking off at great speed, only visible to those close by the gun hammer side. Best view actually, regarding staying alive that is.

Bang! with one shot to the chest, Clive was down and out forever, much like his business would have been if he hadn’t had saved it via all his dealings with the mob and the insurance fraud scam he had set up with the victims of art theft.

The goon walked over to Clives dead spasming body, leaned over his head and said.

“Its a bitch being rich, when you’re dead.” Then he and the other three goons laughed out loud to themselves.

Moments before that, lying on the dirty concrete disused back space on that late winters evening Clive breathed his last breath looked up at the heavens and saw his life flash before his eyes. His mothers face appeared to him shrouded in bright luminous light, as if in a dream and she spoke softly “Its ok Clive, we love you”. All those years of hard work that he had put into his dream of having his own successful art gallery had been worth it.

Many happy customers bought the paintings he sold and he served his community also by holding workshops for the local kids groups and the underprivileged teens who needed an outlook for possible chances at grants for art school. Clive the saint they called, him. Clive Waters, regular Joe, keeping it real for the joy de vivre. Now a corpse on the hard good old concrete on a dark winters night in New York, Amen Clive, RIP good soldier, sayonara, peace for your angels, you will be sorely missed by all. Arrivederci old pal, catch you on the flip side.

Trying to make it as a struggling artist was just too hard regarding the clique involved with getting noticed by the media. It was art forgery or bust for him, the idea being that eventually he could afford to bribe the art critics to help him gain some attention by the media for his own work, someday.

He was just paying off debts in the meantime and saving money for bribing local art critics.

The Mafia goons that shot him that evening first emptied his pockets then wrapped him up in a huge sheet of plastic and placed him all curled up into the duffle bag. “That’s the last buck you’ll make off-of us” one of the goons said as they dragged the heavily laden duffle bag over to their car and up into the boot. With a loud thump, Clive’s cranium landed on the boot floor along with the rest of him. Blood clotting in the waxen layers of the duffle bag. Poor Clive, all dead and bloody matted hair, his mothers son, lies murdered by cold heartless imbeciles.

Chapter Three

There was an eerie silence surrounding that area of the basin that would sometimes be felt years later by anyone passing by that very spot where poor Clive was murdered in cold blood. Some believed that Clive’s ghost still haunted the unused space when some people heard his haunting voice echoing off the old concrete walls. Also his gallery was only a few streets away and had been turned into a cafe after his business was sold off in auction by his remaining family.

There too many people reported strange unexplained paranormal activity at 76 Vernon in the new cafe especially late at night, glasses falling from the shelves for no reason, coffee machines coming on all by themselves hours before the place was open for business or just after they had been switched off by the staff. The waitresses would say they didn’t feel like he was a bad presence, just they could feel the cold wind rush past them sometimes in the cellar.

As the mafia goons drove Clive out to the greener suburban area of Cold Spring harbour on the night of the killing They passed just a few hundreds yards away from John Lennon’s old home there, called Cannon Hill Mansion. A beautiful old style American house all watch towers and porches, wood and stone. Lennon had lived there for a while before buying a bigger penthouse in Manhattan.

Mr. Waters second last resting place beneath some trees where the mobsters threw his corpse.

A fitting end for one of New York’s greatest aesthetes of the city that never sleeps and all the other islands connected to it.

Now on his last journey, his late sojourn his final excursion into the wild blue yonder. Bumping and wobbling around in the boot of some goons Mercedes, his dead head jumping around the place like a pig carcass ready to be turned into Italian sausages in that black duffle bag. The blood had soaked into the material of the duffle bag and oozed out through the plastic wrapping just a little, enough to stain the carped lining of the Mercedes boot.

The driver pulled up along the edge of a grassy verge, the other two goons jumped out, took Clive’s dead body from the boot and threw it unceremoniously down into the ravine below. They weren’t too worried as to how long it took for his body to be found, as long as there was no evidence left behind at the scene of the crime or where his body was found, they were happy enough with that.

The one thing that fingered them later was the fact that just before Clive was shot to death he was playing with a few wild flowers that where growing around on of the trees back in the 11th street basin.

He had picked a few just for he aroma and decided to take some of them home with him later just to freshen the place up a little. When the goons arrived and shot him, his hand clenched into a fist and the little flower petals where hidden from view. The only pace the mafia goons forgot to check.

Also because he didn’t live too far away from the drop off point by the basin Mike, our intrepid detective found where Clive Waters car was parked on the north side of the basin, three days after the murder. Covered in pigeon droppings, leaves and plenty of clues connecting him to the forgery market stashed in the boot.

The cops received a phone call about Clive`s dead body after some local hunters came across it on their way home from stalking the local white-tailed deer population. After Mike had taken all the evidence found on the scene, including the contents of Clive’s car and art gallery storage unit into careful consideration and found no need to hide anything from the police chief, the investigation was under way.

Including the fact that the lord mayor had recently had his picture taken receiving one of the forged paintings that Clive had orchestrated. This in itself when uncovered led to a slightly tricky situation regarding the media and Mikes need to stay un-whacked by the local mob goons. Ending up like Clive, wasn’t what Mike had planned in any shape or form in his near or distant future. “Not in this lifetime” he would say to himself on many the occasion.

Once Mike had found Clive’s car after a tip off from his source on the street that there had been a shooting of a local gallery owner named Clive Waters. And having had the body identified down in the morgue by his grieving family, the investigation was well under way. Cut and dried really, compared to other investigations, just more colourful and clever on Clive’s part than most boring killings over nothing as spectacular as art forgery.

One thing led to another and swiftly the secretive actions of Mr. Waters where unravelled in a long line of underhanded dealing s with the local mob, that eventually led to the lord mayor himself. The only proof of the mayors involvement was the photograph of him in the New York Times holding one of the stolen paintings Clive had stashed in his boat house down by the 11th Street Basin. That would be easy enough to cover up, knowing that if he didn’t, it would mean his life would be snuffed out next.

The problem with the lord mayor was indeed a tricky one and once Mike began to investigate him, he had to keep it secret from the chief of police, until he could find a way to help the mayor escape any blame or involvement. The deeper he dug into the mayors secretive activity, the more danger Mike put himself in. Even though he was allowed to do so and given permission by the chief and the mayor. He was their protector, their guardian, their gatekeeper. But he also had to ensure that nobody found the secrets that he kept hidden. Otherwise, accident or not, no more Mike.

Back in his first story office on west 45th Street, 9th Avenue he was looking over all the evidence forensics had given him by permission of the police chief Monroe. The winter Sun was shining brightly outside right down the centre of 45th Street like a laser beam, straight down through the skyscrapers. It was close to the winter solstice and the whole City of New York acted as a kind of Neolithic stone circle for the sunlight in the early hours of sunrise. A magnificent spectacle for the natives who lived and worked on the island of Manhattan.

Relaxing in his swivel chair he supped on his mourning coffee, opened the blinds on the office windows a little to let the light cascade in and throw both shadows and light around the room. With a little classical music flowing from his radio on the windowsill and an Italian made cappuccino on his desk, all was well. He liked it this way, it made him relax and unwind. Also, he could peek out through the blinds to check out the locals and in case of unwelcome visitors, be ready for action if needs be. “There’s no school like the old school” Mike would say to himself, keeping your mentalist hat on is better than surveillance any day of the week. He could feel the presence of a malevolent personality a mile off. His psychic nose was the equivalent of a metaphorical bloodhound’s gift to scent prey. Mike scared the beJaysus out of his colleagues sometimes with his uncanny ability to predict the future or feel out villains and criminal’s hideaways or activities.

But Mike believed that all good cops have a second sense developed after years of living extraordinary lives. Seeking to reveal the hidden and concealed truth behind people’s eyes. It was poetry as far as he was concerned. Some people would just never learn, that what goes around, bites.

The lord mayor of New York was complicated man who, it turned out to be, was more deeply involved in the underground crime movement than he had earlier appeared.

Clive Waters wasn’t the only man who had found the wrong end of a mobster’s gun. It seemed that the snitches Mike had sequestered delivered to him stories about the lord mayors criminal past and present shenanigans working alongside of the heads of the mafia and embezzling a lot of money to boot.

The problem was that the lord mayor was also a good friend of the police chiefs. They were both veterans of the Vietnamese War which was fought between Nov 1st 1955 and April 30th 1975. 58,220 U.S. soldiers died and a further 1,626 are said to be missing in action. They were brothers in arms and nothing could or would come between them, not fire nor brimstone, not blood nor money, Heaven nor hell. As far as they were concerned, surviving life was enough and rules for the men in power just did not exist as long as their covert or underground activities were never found out.

They had plenty of time to figure out how to bring in some extra cash from Laos, a country laden with huge amounts of available profits to be made with the trading of opium. They found this out after their time served as soldiers in Vietnam ended in 1970. They were offered to join up with the C.I.A by a recruitment specialist who was looking for special soldiers who could be trusted to keep secrets, secrets they had already been keeping whilst in Vietnam. This hadn’t gone un noticed by the Smugglers working for the C.I.A operatives who had been waging a private war in Laos from 1961 to 1975.

They needed men who were known to be already trafficking on the black market within the army ranks. Opium use was legal in Laos in an area known as The Golden Triangle until 1971 although it was illegal to export it, which is what the C.I.A was doing perfectly freely until a magazine article was published by Rolling Stone Magazine in which they outed the trafficking of opium within an area called The Golden Triangle. There was even a movie made about it called “Air America” starring Mel Gibson.

The police chief and the lord mayor had been working together side by side in one of the most dangerous and exciting jungle areas in the world almost unscathed for about three years when they were again offered to work side by side with some of the agencies most trusted pilots for international drug runs to the U.S.A. out of Mexico and South America.

Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport was to be the drop point for their cocaine smuggling into the United States. To help fund the agency and helping the fight against Communism spreading in South America was the excuse. The much-needed cash earned from dealing cocaine could feed the C.I.A. in its secretive wars against Communism and no one would be the wiser. They even had connections with the future president Bill Clinton and Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council a powerful lieutenant who helped set up the covert operations in Arkansas where the airport was situated. A perfect out of the way place to work without ever drawing attention from anyone at any time.

Another movie starring Tom Cruise is in the making, working title is called “Mena”. Go Tom!

Ever since the police chief and the mayor retired from the C.I.A. and were helped into their new positions of power they would laugh and joke with each other as to how powerful they had become. It was unbelievable to them that two Joes from the states that started off as soldiers, ended up working with the C.I.A. and making so much money, help their own government traffic in opium and cocaine. Now working powerful jobs with the protection of legitimate government bodies alongside of the underworld of crime within that same government.

This was every criminals dream to be able to do what they wanted and never get caught. In their minds they weren’t even criminal, they were just two liberals doing what liberals do best, party in the name of freedom, liberty and equality. Equality to their bank balances and the millions of dollars in cash buried beneath their houses, among stolen art, which in the lord mayors stash of booty was mostly made up of forged paintings by yours truly Clive Waters, may his eternal soul rest in peace. He even had the painting that was in the New York Times front page that he received from Clive as a token of thanks when he visited his new lucrative premises down town, the retreat for the homeless I mentioned earlier.

When Clive’s murder had been documented by the media, the secret of his forgeries died with him. Mike would take care of that, no problem, he had had enough experience with people like Clive Waters to know how to cover up any loose ends trails, bad smells and odours left behind by Clive. Literally and rhetorically. Glad it’s only loose end trails instead of entrails.

As far as the media was concerned, the honest one anyway, Clive was a victim of a mugging, that’s why he was only shot once, to make it look legitimate. Mob whacking’s where usually laden with tell-tale signs like two in the back of the head or a flag pole stuck where the Sun don’t shine, whatever the usual suspects get up to on a rainy night in downtown mob country.

Mikes snitch in the street in this instance was a local cafe owner of a dingy almost completely bare establishment nicknamed The Wheeze. That’s what people called him, not because he had lung cancer but on account of his personality, him being a slime ball and a weasel. The Wheeze had been beaten up so many times, he almost got the reputation of being the cities toughest guy, only he couldn’t fight back very well, he was more of a punch bag or a doormat than anything else, but he got the job done, if the price for information was right. The only reason he stayed in business was because he let the winos in for coffee in the mornings. The stench coming from his kitchen had the fire department called constantly and people thought that he was cooking dogs and cats for his special soups. Of course, he would deny this by saying that it was rabbit or Hudson Haddock that he caught himself with an old shoe string and a twisted coat hanger.

On the evening in question, when Clive got whacked, The Wheeze was coincidentally hiding in the shadows of a tree by the 11th Street Basin with his usual whacked out grease bag girlfriend Loopie Lizzie. God bless her souls; the local prostitute population would say about her apparent multi personality complex and turrets syndrome. They saw everything from their position under the tree branches covered in bits of trash that had been blown up into the trees with the winter winds.

Mike had to fork out a couple of fifties for the info, but it was worth is when The Wheeze told him about Clive’s secret hideaway in one of the old boat houses at the west end of the basin. The wheeze couldn’t manage to break into the heavily fortified locked doors of the boathouse, but Mike had his ways with all of the paraphernalia at his disposal and entered into Clive Waters little cave of treasures.

Immediately he could see a notice board covered in little memos all pinned down with little pins, the same kind that he found on Clive’s body. This notice board was a map of all of the homes that had been robbed by the local goons, what painting had been bought be him, who he had sold them back to and which person had in fact bought back a painted over forgery. It was all there in front of him, hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of bought and sold transactions.

Even the info on the apparent forged painting given to the lord mayor. Mike began to think that this little cavern of treasures would have to be stricken off from the register of evidence if he was to keep his head, literally. He found the originals of every painting that Clive Waters had forged, all lying behind a hidden second wall secured by old wooden pegs and plastered over with posters of beautiful American calendar girls. “Hooey”! “Hot stuff”! he said to himself as he scraped off the miss July picture from the second wall plastering.

Many layers of paintings lying their side by side, all in a row.

Even the one the lord mayor had been given by Clive. Now this latest development needed to be handled with care. What was Mike supposed to do with all of these. Perhaps he should just come clean to the police chief and ask for advice on what to do, but the chief would probably tell him to burn them all and Mike knew just how valuable some of these paintings where, dollar wise and also wasn’t lost to their historical significance to the good people of New York City

Once Mike had figured out that Clive was forging stolen art and selling it back to the owners at great profit. He realised all he had to do was to give the paintings back, with possibly or without the knowledge of the owners. Having read Clive’s post-it’s with the information that he had sold back the forged paintings painted over with water colours to the recently robbed owners, what to do, what to do? “Hmmm” he hummed aloud, standing in the cold dark back chamber of Clive’s secret stash hideaway by the Hudson 11th Street Basin.

They had all received the insurance money for their grievance so wouldn’t want some other stranger to offer them the truth about their illegal activities. He decided to consider offering the whole collection to local museum after all, who would complain? If anyone complained that their stolen art was being shown publicly they would have to come and claim it and in the process, lose their insurance money.

In the end, he told the police chief about the originals and the scam produced by Mr Waters. All the info he thought safe to share, including the fake painting publicly given to the mayor.

The chief thought about it for a few days and decided to black mail the owners for their silence. Mike was no back hander, just like his dad before him, he was an honest cop and an honest detective, the only illegal things he ever did, was to never snitch on his crooked colleagues. He would gather information about them and keep it in a safe place. So that there would never be a bullet with his name on it waiting to enter the back of his unsuspecting cranium some dark winters night.

He had no qualms in letting the bent cops know, including the police chief, that whenever anything went down, Mike would now about it and keep it to himself. As long as he and his family were safe and sound and nothing bad ever happened to them. He never asked for favours and just wanted to be allowed to have the confidence of everyone on the force.