One Horse Open Slay Read online

  Dashiell Hammett meets Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town

  "Hello, you've reached Banyon Investigations...."

  Crag Banyon is just your run-of-the-mill P.I. He's got a secretary who loves to hate and hates to love him. His worst enemy in the world is on the local force and relishes the thought of seeing Banyon behind bars. And he's got a knack for attracting all the crazies to his small downtown office above the fish market. So when an elf shows up on a stolen reindeer and hints of foul play at the North Pole, Banyon takes the whole thing in stride, refuses to take the case, and heads off to his favorite saloon. But when the elf turns up dead the next morning, the cops make their least favorite private eye the fall guy.

  A hunted man, Banyon lams it to the Arctic Circle to clear his name. He quickly finds that Santa's workshop is a lot more dangerous than even a plucky P.I. with a ready quip and a five-alarm hangover can handle. Between fighting for his life and fending off the advances of a hot-to-trot Mrs. Claus, Banyon uncovers a conspiracy that goes far past December 25. If he can just ring in the New Year without a bullet in his brain, it'll all be just another day's work for Crag Banyon, P.I.

  "....he's an SOB, but he's cheap. How may I direct your call?"

  What readers are saying about One Horse Open Slay, A Crag Banyon Mystery

  "A fun romp...Mullaney continues his winning streak." --J. Buckley

  "A quick and fun read." --Tractor45

  "Crag Banyon is a perfectly pessimistic PI...a truly fun read." --Melissa

  One Horse Open Slay

  A Crag Banyon Mystery

  By

  James Mullaney

  Copyright © 2011 by James Mullaney

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from James Mullaney.

  Cover art © 2011 Micah Birchfield All Rights Reserved

  Micah's Web Site:gentlemanbeggar.wordpress.com

  Editing and formatting by Donna Courtois and Dale Barkman

  Email Dale: [email protected]

  To Micah Birchfield, who made the art.

  And to Mrs. Reddy, who made me write it.

  Note from Jim:

  If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and family about One Horse Open Slay. Positive reviews on the Web will help get the word out as well; not to mention that a good review will almost certainly get you on Santa's "nice" list. Thanks. -- Jim Mullaney

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 1

  The legend on the door read Banyon Investigations.

  The translucent glass on which the simple black words were painted had just started going grimy, and an industrious insect was in the process of constructing a thick cocoon in the corner up near the transom. Still, the building’s elderly janitor knew he’d never have to worry about cleaning the glass in that particular door. In an average year, the third floor office was broken into at least seven times and the burglars almost always chose the door. And since only Nancy Drews picked locks, that meant shattering the window, which obviated the need for old Gus to haul a sponge and a plastic suds bucket up the rear stairs to my offices. In case you haven’t sussed it yet, I’m Banyon.

  That December day the window was slightly dirty but intact, the bug was hard at work with long hairy legs popping occasionally from gaps in its nest, and there was a note stuck to the wooden doorframe, held in place with a cute little pink pushpin. I tore the scrap of paper down and left the pin stuck to the wood.

  “Banyon, you’re a bastard,” it began. So far I couldn’t argue.

  In full, the note read,

  She’d written the penultimate word out of habit then tried to erase it. But ink doesn’t erase very well, and I can’t afford office luxuries like Wite-Out or spare note paper. As it was, she’d borrowed the paper from the dentist down the hall. “From the desk of Myron Wasserbaum, D.D.S.” printed at the top was the big clue there, but don’t be all that impressed. After all, I’m in the business. Doris had furiously scratched out Wasserbaum’s name, tearing the paper in the process. The “love” was faint but still visible, succinctly summarizing the entire uncomplicated story of our relationship.

  Sure, Doris was an occasionally capable assistant who put up with a lot. Sometimes she was a standup gal who had saved my sorry hide. And maybe in another universe we might have made it. But not in this one; not with that mother of hers. She shouldn’t have mentioned she was staying with mommy dearest. It sure wasn’t incentive for me to rustle up back pay. I mean, to never hear that nagging, screeching old bat’s voice again. The perfect gift, and with Christmas just a couple days away.

  I think I was probably grinning as I crumpled the paper. “I can drink to that,” I announced to the empty hallway.

  Turns out the hall wasn’t as empty as I thought.

  “That’s very naughty of you. It’s only ten-thirty in the morning.”

  He had been there all along, sitting in a plastic kiddie chair Wasserbaum used for his younger patients. The D.D.S. insisted on storing the fire hazard out in the hallway, sticking it in the corner behind a drooping potted plant and the overflowing ashtray.

  His little feet wiggled and rang. Jingle bells. When he hopped down to the floor, the bells got crazy jingly on the curled-up toes of his shoes and on the dangling peak of his hat.

  He wore a pair of red trousers hiked up practically to his armpits, and a green jacket with flowing tails. A huge green bowtie drooped over his chest and one large red button was visible on his white shirt. His socks came up to his knees and were striped red and white like the very large candy cane he held in one sticky hand. “Only naughty little boys drink before noon, Mr. Banyon,” he said, aiming the candy cane at my chin.

  “Good thing I’m not little. No offense, tiny.”

  He couldn’t have been much more than three feet tall. He had a long nose, a chubby little belly and fat fingers thick with calluses. He wasn’t a department store midget hired for the season. This was a first for me. An honest to God elf.

  The elf hesitated, uncertain what to say next. I was used to it by now.

  Men, witches, mermaids, ghouls -- now elves -- they all had an image in their heads of what I was supposed to look like, and the middle-aged wreck standing before them never failed to shatter their preconceptions. The little guy with the bells on his toes who made the hallway outside my office reek of peppermint was no exception.

  In fairness, I’m not all that bad. Pushing fifty, with a slight pot belly and a crooked nose that’d been broken at least three times. But I can be a tough SOB when backed into a tight spot and you can still see the high school ball player buried just under the surface of a body gone only slightly soft. The nose had been broken three times, yeah, but I’d sent two of those guys to the hospital and the third to the morgue. I do okay.

  “Look, you here for a reason or you just looking for directions back to Santa’s workshop? Down the stairs, out the front door, turn left at the fish market and it’s about a million miles on your right. You can’t miss it.”

  I hadn’t expected the elf’s reaction. The ruddy red cheeks visibly paled, the large eyes grew wide as saucers and flooded with panic, and the little fellow took a frightened step back. I felt like I’d kicked a kindergartner in the crotch and stole his lunch money.

  “Hey, buddy, relax,” I said. “I get it. You don’t wanna go back. No one’s making you. Hell, hide out in Macy’s window until the whole Christmas season blows over. It’s no Yule off my log.”

  The elf’s jaw tightened and I could hear his pointy little teeth grinding. “No. I have to go back. I have to. The North Pole is…it’s just…you have no idea what’s going on up there, Mr. Banyon.”

  “Call me Crag. Tell you what. You can tell me all about it as I give my liver an excuse to sue for divorce.” I tried to usher him down the hall but his face grew fierce.

  “No,” he insisted, shaking his head so vigorously his tassel bell nearly snapped off. “No, we have to leave now. I’ve got a ride waiting downstairs.”

  “Whoa, pal. We aren’t going anywhere. And…hey, wait a sec. Is that your reindeer double parked out front?”

  “He’s Comet. I, um, borrowed him.”

  “Well he’s, um, got at least two tickets that I saw pinned to h
is antlers. On the plus side, he’s blocking in Wasserbaum’s Volt, so maybe you’re all right after all.”

  His little face brightened. “So you’ll come with me to the Pole?” he asked, great relief washing over his face. He clapped his little hands and grinned broadly.

  “No way, tiny. The only pole I’m seeing today is Ed Jaublowski . Runs the dingiest speakeasy on East 57th and he’s probably worried sick right about now ‘cause I’m over sixteen hours late for happy hour and he’s panicking I might be dead and wondering how he’s going to unload all those crates of watered down gin now they’ve closed the elementary school around the corner. So your options are you can come with, you can go over there and sit in the corner behind the potted poinsettia or… Hell, that’s all I can think of. I need a drink. You coming?”

  The elf hesitated but finally nodded. “You promise to hear me out?”

  “I’ll hear out as much as I can manage before I pass out. Best deal you’re gonna get out of me today. Okay with you?”

  I offered my hand. After a moment, he shook it. His hand was small but as tough as a rawhide strip. He could see I was surprised by the toughness of his thick skin.

  “They get that way just from making toys?” I asked. “Sheesh, old Saint Nick must crack the whip on you guys day and night up there.”

  The elf glanced around the hallway, the large jingle bell on the end of his hat ringing a morose little one-step for a solitary dancer. Satisfied that the walls didn’t have ears, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “I’ve got the lash marks to prove it.”

  He hustled down the hallway to the red exit sign, jingling all the way. He had to stand on tiptoes to open the door to the stairs. He nodded a little “you coming?” nod back to me before skipping into the darkness of the musty stairwell.

  Why me? I silently implored the crummy peeling ceiling paint. I wondered briefly if my brother in law Bernie’s offer to take me on at his florist shop was still good before I reluctantly followed the elf out the stairway door.

  Chapter 2

  Jaublowski’s place was called O’Hale’s after the original owner who had for the past thirty-seven years been fertilizing a six-by-four plot at Evergreen Cemetery. There had been two other owners before Jaublowski; all had tried to make a go of the bar after O’Hale had gone to his sweet Irish reward, but not one of them had a knack for the watering hole business. B-girls and bookmaking and probably a lot of stuff I didn’t want to know about was what had kept O’Hale’s Bar in business for seven decades.

  I’d let the elf give me a lift, which was a mistake. Comet had reins but no saddle and the closest I generally like to get to things with hoofs is at the deli or the track. Still, we made good time. Flying reindeer don’t stop for traffic reds. I had the elf park Comet out behind the bar and the animal seemed content to root around for half-eaten egg rolls inside the rusted garbage cans of Wu Fong’s Takeout Palace.

  Inside, O’Hale’s was gloomy and dank. The whole place reeked of beer, urine and failure. I’d proudly done my fair share to contribute to these three great pillars of ambiance in the ten years I’d been frequenting the fine establishment.

  “Is it supposed to be this dark?” asked my elf companion. His huge eyes were nearly squinted shut as he tried to make out the various shadows around the room.

  “Jaublowski turned the lights on once, but it woke the rats so he shut them back off. C’mon, tiny, I’ll buy you a beer and booster seat.”

  Ed Jaublowski was a barrel-chested, potbellied lummox with a bad combover who never, ever left his nest behind the bar. Used glasses stayed empty and ashtrays overflowed on dirty tables all around the joint until the girl came in at six. If the toilet overflowed, it flowed like the Ganges. The pool table could catch fire and Jaublowski wouldn’t budge from behind the bar. For all I knew he was nothing but torso, and all that existed of Ed Jaublowski ended at his dirty apron sash.

  On our way to the bar, I noted a couple of fairies flitting around a booth in the corner next to the cigarette machines. I remembered the good old days when no respectable tavern in town would serve their kind.

  Jaublowski caught the evil eye I shot toward the cancer vending machines and he was shaking his head firmly by the time I reached the bar.

  “Don’t say it, Jinx,” he warned with a halitosis sigh that would have peeled the finish off the bar had the last of the varnish not disappeared way back during Ike’s first term. “I ain’t one to turn away paying customers. I gotta make up for my supposed friends who haven’t paid their tabs in six months. Unless you got something for me.”

  “Does my undying love and admiration count?”

  “Dammit it to hell, Jinx, when are you gonna settle up?”

  The fairies obviously heard our conversation. They made a point of turning their backs and as they hovered over their pan of steaming nectar, they flapped their wings furiously in my direction. I read somewhere how fairies have to beat their wings more than fifty times a second just to stay in the air. If they kept it up, these two were going to launch themselves through the ceiling.

  Jaublowski noticed me frowning at the fairies and he shook his head as he dragged a filthy cloth over the dull and pitted surface of the bar.

  “I don’t like ’em any more than you do, Jinx,” he said, pitching his gruff voice low, “but what am I gonna do? You gotta keep up with the times or they’ll bury you. Your problem is you ain’t kept up like me. You’re a dinosaur.”

  “Nothing wrong with dinosaurs,” I confided to my small companion. “I’ve worked a couple of cases in Dinotown. Most of them haven’t evolved speech yet, so people think they’re dumb. But believe you me, tiny, they don’t miss a trick. And I’ve never had a dino welsh on a bill.”

  Jaublowski snorted. “Pinch me. I’m dreamin’ what that must be like.”

  “Just the usual, will you, Joe Blow? And beer my friend here.”

  I took my usual stool near the end of the bar. The elf scurried up the stool next to mine like Tenzing Norgay on a bender. Four seats down sat a figure in black nursing a thick plastic bag like it was mother’s milk.

  It’s always strange to see a vampire so late in the year. They’re cold-blooded creatures of the night and usually migrate south for the winter. Everyone knows Miami stinks like death and garlic from October to April, and it ain’t just from Italian snowbirds. This vamp had probably been too much of a weakling to do the whole bat transformation trick back in September and he looked way too broke for bus fare. Dracula Jr. was sickly and gray even for his kind, and it looked like his last meal came from the jugular of a bum in an alley whom he’d also mugged for his tatterdemalion wardrobe.

  As soon as I sat down the vampire lowered the plasma bag he’d been sucking on and flashed his fangs. The undead mostly just want to be left alone. I fished in my pocket and dropped a crucifix onto the bar. So did I.

  The vamp hissed and skulked off for the exit, swatting at the fairies as he passed their table.

  The huge candy cane the elf had been slurping on outside my office appeared in his tiny hands and he began sucking contemplatively on the end. It looked like he’d been nursing the thing for hours. The red and white stripes had blurred together and the blunt tip was sharpened like a dragon’s tooth. Still, he slurped.

  “That’s disgusting,” I insisted. I grabbed the candy cane, shoved it in the elf’s pocket and slid a half-empty bowl of peanuts in front of him. “When in Rome.”

  The elf was investigating the peanut bowl with a long, disapproving nose when Jaublowski delivered our drinks: beer for the elf, paint thinner for me. I tapped the glass and checked my watch. 10:57. Call me an old schoolmarm, but I don’t like to start my real heavy a.m. drinking until after eleven.

  “So what’s the story, morning glory?” I asked, sliding the gin reluctantly to one side for 181 long seconds.

  The elf didn’t subscribe to his own proscription about bad boys and booze before noon. He took the mug in both tiny hands, tipped it back and swallowed its contents in one massive gulp. Finished with his liquid courage, he put the mug back down and spun his stool in my direction so that the soles of his little curled shoes nearly touched my thigh. “I want to hire you,” he insisted. “There’s something funny going on at Santa’s workshop. Stop. Stop right there. I know what you’re going to say. Everybody thinks there’s always something funny going on up there. Ho-ho-ho, it’s all fun and games at old Saint Nick’s. That’s not what I mean, Mr. Banyon. There’s something very, very wrong. The last couple of months--”