Free The Gumshoe Diaries by Nicholas Stanton Page B

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lancing near the Inglewood Forum or table dancing at The Body
Shoppe on Sunset. Whaaaaa , I’m actually nauseating myself!
Okay back to the case.
    I had decided I needed a good meal and took
myself and the facts Judy Looney shared with me to The Pantry on
9 th and Figueroa where camped out at the counter and
mulled it all over. If it had been closer to 5 o’clock than noon I
would be doing this at Casey’s with a proper pint Guinness and a
Jameson chaser, but it wasn’t so here I sat. I’ve been coming here
three to four times a week since I started with the LAPD back in
the 1970s. Actually my father had been a regular as well, ever
since they moved into the corner slot in 1950. Before that I think
my grandpa frequented the original diner which had been up the
street from the current location. That old man was a pancake
junkie, God love him. You could always find him there on any Sunday
morning. Comfort food was his religion and The Pantry was his
cathedral.
    Okay, enough with the history lessons.
Something Judy said was bothering me. It wasn’t any of the physical
characteristics that she speculated on, let’s face it they could
have fit at least a hundred profiles on the job in LA. There are
what, nine or ten thousand sworn officers to choose from after all.
Nope, it was the brown mustard comment that was rattling around my
melon. Brown mustard, really, who eats brown mustard these
days? You’d have to be a mustard consœur to willingly spread
that stuff on your baloney sandwich. I hate that stuff and I’m
pretty sure I’m not alone on that. So why was this bothering me? I
had already connected the easy dots; clearly this cop had spent a
fair amount of time at Jai and Lu’s popular deli. That was a no
brainer. There should have been an obvious trail here.
    Sure Jai was acting strangely and what was he
doing meeting clandestinely with a uniformed officer in this town
anyway? It couldn’t be sexual, that much I was more than sure of.
I’d know the two little homos for better than twenty years and
their relationship was rock solid, no doubt whatsoever! Whatever
his reasons were I was fairly certain that I would have to ferret
it out of the unknown cop, whoever it was. Confronting Jai while Lu
was so deeply depressed would be unfair, at least for right now.
Jai and I were heading toward a “come to Jesus meeting” but
it could wait a while. I was getting a headache and ordered a
meatloaf sandwich to go. I would finish this session back at my
flat.
    --
    Alexandria Hotel, Los Angeles…Wednesday, Feb
18, 2009…3pm
    --
    It was time to update my KKK notes, what I
knew, what I thought I knew, and what I wanted to know. I poured
the Guinness from the fridge into my official English pint and set
down at my window desk to eat my meal while I racked my brain.
Opening up my tattered spiral stenographers note pad I flipped back
several pages to where I had stored my original KKK thoughts.
Ignoring the doodle art I started updating my notes:
    --
    What do I know?
    1. Sally November was still dead
    2. Jai Lai, the little flamer knows way more
than he is letting on
    3. Somebody in the LAPD was closer to this
than they probably should be
    4. I’ll need details from Sally’s autopsy
sooner than later
    5. I’m going to owe Judy Looney big time
    --
    What do I think I know?
    1. SN and Jai Lai had been in touch from day
one of her arrival
    2. SN’s death was no surprise for Jai
    3. SN may have been more than an alias (still
working on that angle)
    4. SN had been murdered elsewhere and brought
back to her apartment
    5. SN was in the wrong place at the wrong
time, she wasn’t meant to die
    --
    What do I want to know?
    1. What was the exact time of death
    2. What was the actual cause of death
    3. What was in the toxicology report
    4. What was Jai’s relationship to Mei Li
Teng
    5. What was Oscar Celaya keeping under his
hat (that hump is always in the know)
    --
    My head was pounding and I gobbled a couple
of extra strength