I’m trudging along a dirty Chicago sidewalk on a morning in late November. The air is crisp and the wind is brisk. I’ve got the collar of my trench coat pulled up and the brim of my fedora pulled down. Two years ago I was a G.I., swapping gunfire with Nazis. Now I’m self-employed, swapping lies with fellow veterans. I did my part to defeat fascism and make the world safe for democracy. Now I’m trying to defeat boredom and make the world unsafe for nasty Americans with dirty secrets. But it’s not working out the way I planned. I’ve been drinking too often and shaving too seldom, and this morning I look like hell and feel the same way. I’m coming in an hour late, and I’ve yet to have my morning coffee.
I enter my building and head up the stairs toward my third-floor office. The elevator doesn’t work half the time, so I don’t even bother to check it any more. Besides, I need the exercise. I have a new girl Friday who only works on Monday. Her name is Lisa. She answers the phone, maintains my files, keeps the office clean, and makes coffee. I hope it’s ready.
On the door just ahead, I can make out my name and title: Sledge Maul, private investigator. I turn the knob and enter.
“Good morning, Mr. Maul,” chirps Lisa. “The coffee’s made and the morning paper is on your desk.”
“Thank you Lisa,” I mutter. I’m ready for that coffee, but I’m still too bleary-eyed for the paper. I take off my hat and coat and hang them on the rack, I cross the room and slouch into the chair behind my army-surplus metal desk. Lisa pours my coffee as I light a cigarette, and she sets the mug on my desk just as the phone rings. I tell her I’m not in, just take a message. I take a swallow of coffee, and it’s hot, but damn, it’s good. I think Lisa’s going to be a keeper. Her aunt Wilma is my regular secretary, but she’s sixty and wants to retire, but wants to do it gradually. She talked me into hiring Lisa, and Lisa is replacing Wilma on Mondays now, but once she learns the ropes, she’ll replace her aunt altogether. This is a second job for Lisa. She’s working Tuesday through Friday at Guff Enterprises.
I haven’t brushed my teeth this morning, and the coffee leaves an acid taste in my mouth. I get up and go into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. I really do need a shave. I open the medicine cabinet and withdraw my razor and toothbrush and from another cabinet my favorite mouthwash which happens to be bourbon. Twenty minutes later, I’m back at my desk, clean shaven and ready to display my pearly whites to whoever should come through the door. I’m hoping it’s a new client, and if I had my druthers it would be one who is rich, generous, and desperate. It’s easier to sell one’s services to a desperate prospect.
The phone rings again, and Lisa picks it up. “Maul Investigations,” she says. “No, Mr. Maul isn’t in but should be here shortly. May I take a message? Yes, I’ll hold for Mr. Guff.” Seconds pass and when Lisa speaks again it is in a voice not her own; she apparently has skills I didn’t know about. I light another cigarette. Seconds later she hangs up and smiles sweetly. “That was Mr. Ross Guff, my other employer. I had to disguise my voice because he doesn’t know I’m working here. I had told him I need Mondays off to take an ailing relative to the hospital for her weekly therapy. Anyway, he says you have conducted investigations for him before, and he needs you again. He said to tell you to be in his office by ten-thirty sharp, or he’s going to give the job to somebody else. What a jerk!”
“Well, it’s ten now, so I’d better get going. Hold the fort down and lock up if I’m not back by five.” I don my hat and coat and go down to hail a cab. Inside the taxi, I think about what Lisa said, and I concur with her assessment. Not only is Ross Guff a jerk, but the man has more audacity than incoming ordnance and less charm than a wormy turd. If you don’t know what incoming is, you’ve never had to dive into a foxhole. I’d rather have almost anybody for a client than Ross. I don’t mind spying on his competition, but I won’t sabotage their vehicles or production facilities. Like a judge in a black robe, I know what justice is, and I provide it cheaper and quicker, but justice is like beauty; it’s in the eye of the beholder, and I see things from my own perspective. I’m a big man, six foot two and 220 pounds, and I’ve knocked a few heads in my time, but I’d generally prefer to finesse a situation rather than rely on muscle.
My taxi approaches the Guff building, and I tell the cabbie to drive around back. It’s closer to Guff’s office. There’s a security guard at the rear entrance, but he knows me and I walk straight in. My watch says ten-thirty. I make it to Ross’s office in less than two minutes, and his receptionist, Shirley Freeman, waves me in. “He’s waiting for you, Mr. Maul.”
I enter the office of the executive-in chief, and it’s exactly as I saw it last time, a big room with a hardwood parquet floor, a large desk near the back of the room, and behind the desk, a single chair occupied by the big cheese himself. The only carpet in the room is a four-foot-square nondescript rug centered directly before the desk.
“Front and center,” shouts the fat man behind the desk, “and take that goddamn hat off. Were you raised in a barn?” His Majesty knows how to put the peasants in their place.
I approach the desk with hat in hand and stand in the center of the rug facing my host. He’s got half a donut in his right hand and the other half in his mouth. I wait patiently while he masticates his pastry. At last he swallows, takes a sip of something from a tumbler, dabs his lips with a napkin and speaks. “My time is valuable, so I’ll get right to it. I think my wife is having an affair, and I want to know the name and bedroom location of the sonofabitch she’s sleeping with, and I want that information damn quick so I can deal with the two of them. I leave the house at seven-thirty to come to my office, and I suspect that my wife leaves shortly after, and I expect you to be waiting in the shadows to follow her. Here’s a photo of my wife, and if you don’t know where we live, you can look it up. I’m not going to waste my time giving directions.” He slides the photo toward me.
I blanch as I stare at the photograph. I swallow hard and take a couple of seconds to regain my composure before I speak. “I already know who your wife has been having an affair with.”
Ross’s eyes widen in an expression of surprise and disbelief. “Well who is it, and how the hell do you know about it?”
“Not so fast, I want two hundred for the info, and I want it C.O.D. — cash on delivery.
“I know what C.O.D. is, you insolent bastard. But fat chance; what’s to keep you from disappearing with my money?
“We go back a couple of years, Ross. Have I ever taken money from you and not delivered what you asked for?”
“We are not so close that you may address my by my first name.” He reaches inside his suit coat, withdraws a billfold, and takes out two crisp hundred-dollar bills. He extends an arm and holding tightly, waves them before my face in tantalizing gestures. You want these babies or not?
“Not enough to kiss your ass to get them.”
“All right, already.” He pushes the money across the desk and I snatch it up.
Ross is on the edge of his seat. “Now who’s the bastard who’s been banging my wife and how do you know about it?” He glares demandingly.
I swallow hard again, look directly into his eyes, and reply in a soft voice. “It’s me, Ross; Gloria was lonely, and I was” – I almost say horny but catch myself – “I was sympathetic …but it’s over now, been over for more than a week”
He lunges forward and pushes a button on his desk. The floor gives way beneath me, and I gasp as I plunge through. I land on my feet atop a concrete floor. “Ouch,” I exclaim. I hear the hum of an electric motor and look up to see the trapdoor closing. A second later I’m in total darkness.
A very faint light comes on, and I find that I’m in a room about ten feet square. The source of the light is at the far end of a narrow stone corridor that leads out of the room. I feel around the floor for my hat, find it and put it on. I make my way down the corridor, my feet still smarting from the hard landing. A minute later, I find that the tunnel opens into a second room. As I enter, a sliding door closes behind me with a heavy thud. I turn around and see that the door is clad in boilerplate.
The room I now occupy is slightly larger than the one I first fell into, and it’s lit by a small incandescent bulb high up on the ceiling. The room contains a cot, a toilet, and a lavatory. I see another door leading into another corridor. This second door, however, is built of steel bars, much like one might see on a jail cell. I try the door, but it’s locked tight. I peer through the bars and try to see down the corridor, but this time there’s no light at the other end. I sit down on the cot and look at my options. I don’t see any. All I can do is make myself comfortable and wait.
I stretch out on the cot, close my eyes and try to remember something Wilma once mentioned. She had told me in the strictest of confidence that her niece had once informed her there was a dungeon below the Guff building, and that Mr. Guff used it on occasion to incarcerate a wayward employee who got caught stealing from the company or otherwise misbehaving. Lisa knew about the dungeon because one of her duties was to take the prisoner one plain baloney sandwich daily until Guff decided to bring him back up. To insure that no victim of solitary confinement or baloney sandwiches ever spoke to anyone inside or outside the company about the dungeon, Guff’s attorney, Morgan Fairland, would browbeat the prisoner, threatening him with heavy legal consequences if he ever spoke about his punishment to anyone. If not the fear of God, Morgan could put the fear of heavy legal consequences into the heart of the boldest employee. He would have the offender sign an “ironclad pledge”, and he would tell the “parolee” that he was henceforth bound by law under pain of serious legal consequences to comply faithfully with all stipulations and conditions above his signature.
I awaken after a two-hour nap, and I get up to examine my quarters again. I’m thirsty and I’d like to take a bath. I look at the lavatory and see a washcloth folded neatly at the edge of the basin, but there is neither soap nor towel. The hot water doesn’t work, but the cold does. I let it run for a few seconds, then cup a hand under the stream and drink. Leaving the water running, I remove my clothes and toss them onto the cot. I wet the washcloth and bathe myself as best I can. I step to the center of the room and shiver until I’m air dried. I dress myself again and return to the cot. I place my shoes underneath and fold my trench coat to use as a pillow.
I try for an hour and a half, but I can’t get back to sleep. I put my shoes back on and walk around the room in circles for a good half hour. I return to the cot and plot a vengeance scenario, a series of maneuvers that should require little more than guts, wits, and luck. And eventually, I drop off to sleep, smiling like the cat that ate the canary and lay in wait to ambush the bulldog.
I awaken fully refreshed and hungry as a starving wolf pack. I look at my watch. It’s 8:37 and I know it’s Tuesday morning. I put my shoes on. It’s colder than it was last night, so I put on my trench coat and fedora. The coat is badly wrinkled, but it’s the only one I’ve got. A light in the corridor comes on. I hear footsteps. I step to the cell door as the footsteps draw near. I immediately recognize my visitor and she recognizes me.
Lisa lets go of the brown paper bag she carries in her right hand and it falls to the floor. She exclaims, “Mr. Maul! What are you doing here?”
“I fell through the ceiling; what are you doing here?
“She hesitates in obvious confusion for a moment before she speaks. “I was bringing a baloney sandwich to the new prisoner, but I didn’t know it was you.”
“Well now you do, Lisa. Hand me that sandwich; I haven’t eaten since day before yesterday. Have you got a key to this door?”
“Yes, but I’ll get fired if I let you out.”
“That’s okay; you’re working full time for me now.” She opens the door and I follow behind, eating my sandwich as she heads back up the corridor. She tells me how surprised she is to find me down here. She expected to find another salesman who had failed to meet his quota. She’s wearing slacks today, and I can’t take my eyes off her shapely derriere. It’s very compelling, but I’m now resolved to resist such compulsions considering what’s happened to me since my affair with Gloria. We reach the end of the corridor and there’s a flight of wooden steps leading up to … another trapdoor?
Lisa mounts the steps and when the door is directly overhead she pushes it open until it’s leaning securely against a wall above. There’s a short ladder on our landing, and she climbs out into the space above and says, “It’s safe. Come on up.”
I climb out into what looks like a closet for cleaning supplies. Some of the supplies are on shelves, and some are sitting in boxes just outside the closet. I follow Lisa out of the closet and into a small windowless office where there is a desk and some file cabinets. Lisa picks up a piece of battleship linoleum that’s leaning against the desk and takes it to the closet. She closes the trap door and works the linoleum into place atop it. The linoleum fits the closet floor precisely. She then pushes the boxes of supplies inside atop the linoleum. She smiles at me and says “Pretty clever, huh? You’d never guess my office closet is a portal to a dungeon.”
“Lisa sits down at her desk and invites me to pull up a chair. “Did you really mean it when you said I’m already working for you full time?” I reach into my shirt pocket, pull out the two C-notes, and hand them to Lisa.
“Yup, here’s a months pay in advance.” Her eyes widen as she takes the money and quickly deposits it in the purse on her desk. The calendar on the wall says November, 1947, and even though the depression is over, two hundred bucks is a lot of money.
“So what do we do now, Boss?”
“First, you tell me where Ross is presently, and what you expect to be doing over the next couple of hours.”
“Well, he’s probably in his office, getting ready to go out for a business brunch at ten. The janitor is off sick today, so Mr. Guff wants me to sweep and buff the hardwood floor in his office while he’s out.”
“Excellent! That makes my plan far less complicated, and it gives us about an hour to go over the steps before we spring into action.”
“I can’t wait to hear about it. I’ll lock the door.”
At nine-fifty we hear two pairs of footsteps coming down the hallway, one heavy and one light. Lisa says, “That would be Mr. Guff and his secretary, Shirley. You better duck into the closet just in case. I enter the closet squeezing my feet between the boxes and I close the door. I hear a brief knock, the sliding of the bolt by Lisa, the squeak of a door hinge, and the voice of Ross Guff. “You can get in there and buff my floor now, and I want quality results. You were supposed to do it yesterday. Oh, and oil the hinges on this door while you’re at it.”
“Yes, Sir, Mr. Guff, I’ll get right on it.”
Guff closes the door and proceeds down the hallway with his secretary. Lisa says something about the idiot knowing damn well she was off yesterday. A minute later we’re headed up the hallway to Guff’s office. Shirley has a key, and within seconds we’re inside the big office with the parquet floor. Behind a standing trifold partition with an oriental painting on it are two doors. One is the big cheese’s personal washroom, and the other a janitor’s closet from which Lisa hauls out the electric buffer and a broom. She drags them over near the big desk while I kick the little rug aside and scoot the desk forward toward the entrance door. When it’s past the trapdoor, I roll the executive chair back, and Lisa sweeps up the donut crumbs that are under it. We examine the trapdoor, which is now behind the desk and where the chair is going to be.
“Wow,” says Lisa, “even without the rug over it, it’s difficult to tell a door is there.”
She buffs the area where the desk and chair were while I examine the button on the desk. It’s on a black metal box that has no wires coming out of it. “Radio controlled,” I say. “Let’s try it out.” I push the button and we watch as the door falls open. We hear the hum of an electric motor as it closes again, and a click as the mechanisms resets. We place the chair over the trapdoor and place the rug in front of the desk. Lisa picks up the broom and sweeps while I follow behind swinging the big stainless-steel electric buffer from side to side until the floor gleams like a pond under a full moon. We finish up before Ross gets back, and I move the trifold partition a bit so I can see the desk through the closet keyhole. The plan is for Lisa to be buffing when Ross comes in, and minutes later she is when he does. He immediately starts screaming about his desk being moved. Lisa shuts the buffer off and says she had to sweep up the donut crumbs and asks him if he wants her to move it back. He sits down in his chair and tells her, “No, I’ll do it myself! Just get the hell out of my office.”
“She says, “Fine, I’ll get my broom and go.” It’s leaning against the desk and as she steps nearer as if to get it, she reaches over and pushes the button and the big cheese plummets through the floor screaming, swivel chair and all. I jump out of the closet, stride to the desk, pick up the phone, and call for a taxi. Inside the cab, I tell Lisa I’m in a hurry to get back and make some preparations for a visit from Fairland. “Ross won’t dare send the police, but he’ll send that slick-haired, fat-wallet lawyer of his over to threaten me with serious legal consequences.”
“You know Mr. Fairland?” asks Lisa.
“I know about him.” I divert the cab driver to an address not far from my office and Lisa asks me why and I tell her I have to enlist someone with the right equipment to help me set up my next trap. “Slick’s working on a new invention.” We’re back at the office by half past noon, toting burgers and fries and sodas. Lisa and Wilma chat excitedly while they eat, and I call some prospects who Wilma said came by while I was gone. At 4:15, Guff’s lawyer knocks and strides into the room.
“You are in serious trouble, Mr. Maul. I’m Morgan Fairland, Attorney at Law, and I’m here representing Mr. Ross Guff. I have an itemized bill of damages for the harm you’ve inflicted upon his person, property, and marriage and the compensation you must pay in order to avoid some very serious legal consequences. I will sit down with you and we’ll work out a schedule for payment.”
I raise a window blind as a signal to Slick. I open the window and look down. I turn to address Guff’s lawyer. “We’re three stories up, and if you’re not out of my office in five seconds, I’ll throw your pompous ass out the window.”
Fairland smirks and begins to giggle. The giggles turn into explosive laughter and it looks like he’ll soon be rolling on the floor. I place a hand on his left shoulder and spin him around. I grab him by the collar and the seat of the pants and rush him toward the window. His laughter becomes a scream as I heave him out into thin air. I turn to face the girls, and they’re both holding their hands over their faces and looking out between quivering fingers. In unison, they scream, “What have you done?”
“Come and see.” They approach the window hesitantly, and we all look down together. The lawyer is lying spread-eagled on a giant leather air bag which is steadily deflating. “He appears to have fainted. Slick, my retired stunt-man accomplice, gives me a thumbs-up, and he drags Fairland over to the wall and props him against it in a sitting position. I toss the lawyer’s briefcase down and Slick retrieves it and places it in Fairland’s lap. A cab soon arrives and Slick helps the wobbly-kneed man into it.
Back in my apartment after work, I pick up my phone and call Guff at home. “Hey Ross, Sledge here; I was about to give you some additional information when you sprang your little surprise on me. Gloria’s had a new lover for the past week. She goes for rough, dangerous men, but she thinks you’re a big pussy, not the tiger she yearns for. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t measure up either. She left me for Louie Fandango, and she’s shacked up with him at the Fairmont. If you intend to get them, you’d better watch your step; Louie’s killed more men right here in Chicago than I did in North Africa and Europe combined. He’s a trigger man for the mob. What’s that? You think I did something to your lawyer? He quit and says he’s going off to live in a Monastery? Imagine that.”
