An Angel With Rented Hair

Crime Fiction by Frank Sonderborg

It was mid-afternoon, so I thought I had the bar to myself.

The Sang Real Bar had a reputation, and form.

I could still see the bullet holes from a recent gangland execution.

The thick sticky blood had seeped deep into the carpet fibers, and no amount of pink vanish cleaner would ever get it out. Adding yet another stain to the legend of the Sang Real.

Sheila my favorite South African brunette was stacking glasses.

She had an odd way of ending sentences.

“I’ll have a beer and a cheeseburger with chips,” I’d say.

And she’d add, “A beer, cheeseburger with chips? Well done!”

Like somehow, I’d just won the Nigerian 419 email scam lottery.

Well, I was not feeling at all, well done, right now.

The Jukebox was playing my favorite Aslan tune, “This Is.”

A band that should have been bigger than U2.

I was sitting in my usual booth, chugging a diet coke, when she slid into the seat opposite.

Having a peroxide Marilyn Monroe lookalike sitting opposite me, was a schlock to an already overloaded schlocked system.

I clung on to my coke bottle, like Mallory must have done with his Gin and Sherpa, as he staggered to the top of Everest.

My lungs working hard on the most efficient way to utilise the stream of second-hand oxygen I was inhaling.

Vertigo was a new word that had just come crashing into my vocabulary.

I looked at her through my shot eyes. While my hands searched for the ripcord, on my imaginary parachute.

She looked cool and serene and hot.

“Mr Lingo, Mr Griff Lingo, I hear you’re a Private Dick.” 

She made it sound like something secret, something unclean, something hard and unsavoury sliding into a doped under-aged female hooker.

After another night hiding in refuse bins, and then drowning in Sour Mash, to kill the stink of chronic failure, yes, I did feel like an unsavoury cheap sliding kind of Dick.

I recovered enough of my dignity to say, “Yea, I’m a PI.”

“Oh!” She answered, then, “I saw that Movie.”

“Movie? I replied, my brain still running on schlock mode.

“Yea, Life of Pi.”

“Of course, one of Philip Marlowe’s better Movies.”

The attempt at flippant humour was blown away in a blond moment.

She continued to look at me in a steamy dreamy kind of way.

“There was a kid and a Tiger, in a boat.”

She then looked at me as if expecting me to complete the circle.

Then she continued, “It’s a wonder he never ate him.”

“Ate who,” I asked, “The Tiger?”

“No stupid,” she said, “The Kid.

“Maybe he wasn’t into pies.”

“Who’s talking about pies,” she hit back in an aggrieved voice.

I could see, she didn’t do Griff humour.

“Let’s start again, my name is Griffin Lingo. I’m a registered Private Investigator. Called for short a PI.”

Then she laughed. “PI, Pi, Pies, now I get it. That’s kinda funny.”

And then she smiled, and I was lost.

She was beautiful as only a Marilyn Monroe lookalike could ever be. She even had a black beauty spot.

“Has anyone ever said you look like Marilyn Monroe?”

“Marilyn who?”

Right then I knew I was in deep Hollywood guano.

“Marilyn Monroe. She was a glamorous actress back in the day.”

“Was she any relation to Marilyn Brando?”

“Yea, I believe he was her Godfather.”

I started again.

“Your hair. It’s beautiful.”

She preceded to take it off to reveal her gleaming bald scalp.

“Do you want to touch it? I think it’s my best feature.”

I was a bit startled, as I didn’t know whether it was the hair, or the bald head she was inferring to.

At this point totally lost, I was staring into her deep breasts.

Drifting back to her deep smoky blue eyes. Back down to those enormous milky inviting clefts.

Then back again to her lustrous bewitching eyes.

I stabilized at the classic female Lagrangian point.

A magical equalizing gravity spot between breasts and eyes.

I was not going to disagree. Her body was all her best feature.

The beauty spot was removable as well, it seemed.

Her hair in place we continued.

“Well,” I said, much shaken and extremely stirred.

“How can I assist, Miss?” Finally getting around to asking her name.

“It’s Freddie.”

“Miss Freddie?” I asked, still in the throes of puppy love.

“No! Its Anna, Freddie was my husband.”

“Was?” Now I was getting that concerned, “Where the hell have all the bees gone,” buzzing in the back of my throat.

“I was doing some ironing, as Maria the Spanish help, had the day off.

When he came in all angry and started mouthing off.”

“Mouthing off?”

“You know, saying stuff, verbal abuse stuff. And then he started with the hand to hand.”

“Hand to hand? Just exactly what was he doing and saying.”

“He was slapping me around and accusing me of shagging the hired help. Tony and Al.”

The buzzing had switched to small police alarm bells, that where now going off at regular intervals in my head.

“What exactly, happened?”

“So, I was ironing, and he would not stop with the abuse. And the slapping.

I said Freddie, Stop with the abuse and the slapping. So, he stopped and sat down and turned on the TV.

And started watching football. I just snapped; I hate football.”

Then she gave me the look.

I swear I could hear distinctly a Cock crowing faraway in the distance, as I nodded and denied my beloved sport.

“Well, I went over to him, and then, Bam! Bam! Bam!”

“Oh!! I said, “Bam, you mean you hit him with the iron.”

“No, I shot him with the gun.”

I looked around quickly. Nobody was listening. The Sang Real Bar was empty of afternoon punters.

I felt very alone. Very exposed.

We had gone in one short hop from ironing shirts and jeans to, “The Killing.”

I thought, I don’t need this kind of shit.

“Well then Tony and Al came running in, so I smoked them as well.”

I thought, Smoked! Where had that popped up from?

“Your husband was who exactly?”

“Freddie Three Fingers Fingerton. He claimed he was some sort of gangster bigshot.”

I thought, Claimed? Oh! Shit. He was one of the biggest mobsters on the Basingstoke crime scene.

Smart Tony and Little Al where enforcers for the Fingers Mob.

Then she plonked the .38 special on the table.

This was a serious stopping machine. No need for target practice.

Just point and click.

Fingers would’ve been proud if he’d not developed a severe case of lead poisoning.

I instinctively grabbed it and put it away under the table.

“It’s Freddy’s, gave it to me as a wedding gift. The dumb Jerk.”

“Mrs Fingerton you must go to the police right now. You might get time off for good behaviour. Being abused and all that.”

 I thought, 3 dead stifferoos. She was going down for a long time.

An envelope had appeared on the table.

“Mr Lingo, there is £100K in large bills. I just need you to get rid of the bodies. Make them all go away.”

“Mrs Fingerton, I’m a PI, not a Tiger in some Hollywood love boat.

I work when I can get it, sneaking around back-alleys making notes, checking out, who’s humping who.

That, in a nutshell is what I get paid for. When I get paid. I’m not a gangland waste executive disposer of cold stiffs.

You’d need a Jimmy Hoffa Team of removal experts, to clear up this mess.”

“Was that a no then, Mr Lingo?”

“Yes,” I said, but my lips where whispering, “Show me the bodies.”

She got up to go, then leaned over and gave me the full, “Deep Throat Titanic Tongue Kiss.” I was sinking fast.

I responded, like the trained sexual deprived monkey, we men really are, at heart.

I was ready to fabricate, lie, even murder for another slice of that smooth silky action.

But I’d said no.

So, I was left with that golden after-burn of a distant exotic spice-tinged land, still lingering on my blood swollen lips.

Then she walked out of my life, and out of the Sang Real Bar.

Much later, still hugging my cola, I felt the cold shadow of injustice at my table. Smith & Jones, two of Baz’s finest.

“So how can I help the Basingstoke Constabulary this fine Saturday afternoon?”

“Griffin Lingo, you are charged with the murder of Philip Fingerton,

Anthony Knowles and Alex McGuire.

Anything you say will be taken down and used as evidence against you.”

I thought, stitched up like a kipper. 

The real Marilyn Monroe had an IQ higher than Einstein. So, the lookalike must be a paid-up member of the Mensa stitching up club.

Picked me out as an easy touch. Tongued me good and left me for dead meat.

Must have found me under the, Rent-A- Lee Harvey Oswald PI-Patsy section, of the local paper.

 Images of Marilyn in all her vulnerable innocence singing. “Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday Mr Jury Foreman. Happy Birthday to you.”

And me, shafted with a bag of green and a female equalizer weapon of the month.

 Oh! How the honest citizens would scream for justice.

Send him down. Get rid of this bad man. Throw the back-alley pimp into the lion’s den. Better still, put him in a boat with a hungry Tiger. As every red-blooded man on the Jury dreamed of humping her silly, right there on the court room floor.

The Judge would stare and recognise me as the man who had destroyed his swinger life.

The Solicitors would detest me for financing the lifestyle of their ex-wives.

I thought, never trust a swinging Judge.

Then again, never trust an Angel with rented hair.

I said, “Sit down boys.”

I then placed the Android recording device, I always carried, on the table, in front of them.

And said, “Have a listen to this.”

---

Bio: Frank Sonderborg was born in Dublin, Ireland, lives in the UK and does his best to write interesting stories. His stories have appeared in: Action: Pulse Pounding Tales 2:, Noir Nation 3: Noir Nation 5:, Pulp Modern JFK Issue #6, Pulp Alternative,  Shadows and Light:, Thrills, Kills ‘n’ Chaos:, ShotgunHoney, Twist and Twain

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