The back of Detective McLane’s bony fist hurtled into Sam Starks’ raw flesh like a mallet pounding Tuna Tartare. “Answer me!” menaced McLane as he battered Starks yet again. The detective sat down, his eyes piercing into the swollen, sunken eyes of Sam Starks. McLane bit his thumb nail for a second as if wondering how to butch up his next threat, then leaned forward and took a long drag on his cigarette. "You're going to rot in a jail cell for the rest of your miserable life…" McLane blew a potent combination of arid tobacco smoke, heartburn, and cynicism into Starks’ leathery face.

Starks just sat there; his head down, spats of blood dripping from his mouth.

“Fucking answer me you piece of shit!” McLane sent his coffee mug crashing into the table, sending shattered fragments of acrylic and steaming coffee against Starks’s blood stained tweed jacket. 

Starks shook his head and smiled.

“Why you little…” McLane leapt out of his chair and wrenched Starks’ necktie, forcing Starks’ face onto broken shards of coffee mug. The interrogation room door flung open and in marched another detective.

“Get a hold of yaself – Whadaya tryna do? Kill him before he even says a goddamn word?!”

“This dipshit’s jerkin’ us around, Lieutenant!” 

“Get out of my interrogation room and cool off before I have your ass for insubordination!” 

Like a good guard dog McLane obeyed his command and left the room. The commanding detective’s composure returned as if it never left. “Mr. Starks, my name is Lieutenant Foley. I apologize on behalf of Detective McLane, he gets emotional sometimes.”

"I can relate to that, Lieutenant,” Sam freed the shards of coffee mug from his cheek.

“Please, call me Foley. I hear that you have something that you want me to listen to?”

“Have you ever been in love, Foley?" 

“I should hope so.” Foley lifts up his hand revealing a wedding ring. “What does love have to do with any of this, Mr. Starks?

“Please, call me Sam.”

“Well, Sam, you’re facing a body amongst numerous other felony charges. If you don’t have anything good to tell me then I’m going to have to send McLane back in here.” 

"It all started two days ago with the toe-tagged Archie Valentine. You see, he came to see me in my office…”

"Sam Starks? Detective Sam Starks?" asked a rotund figure emerging hat in hand behind Sam's office door.

"That’s what it says on the door. Otherwise I’m going to have a talk with the folks who did the lettering” Sam joked, amusing only himself.

"Archie’s the name – Archie Valentine."

"How do you do Mr. Valentine?" asked Sam. Not that he cared; he was in a rush to leave his office and beat the traffic home.

"Not too well, Sam. Mind if I call you Sam?

“Call me whatever you like, Arch. Just don’t call me after I leave my office.” 

 “Ha, well, you see, I’m troubled that my wife – we’ve been married fifteen years – has been having an affair.”

Sensing this to be a long winded talk, Sam takes off his hat and jacket – revealing a Colt Single Action Army piece nestled against his ribcage – and reclines back in his chair putting his feet on the table. “Why would you suspect such a thing, Arch?” asks Sam as he lights up a cigarette.

 “She used to be such a good wife, and now she is completely not herself. We used to go to bed at the same time…and our sex life…”

“Take it to a therapist, Arch. Get to the point.”

“Oh, sorry… Well, you see, she no longer tells me where she’s going, who she’s going with, and she comes home at odd hours. And if I even dare ask where she is going, she flips out and makes it seem like I’m the bad guy! She doesn't even seem capable of feigning the slightest interest in me." 

"I see, that does sound serious. Though, not serious enough for me I'm afraid."

"Whatever do you mean?" spat Archie, no longer polite and growing agitated with Sam’s lack of empathy.

"I'm a P.I. – a private dick – I get my hands dirty with the kind of shit most other people wouldn’t muck around with. If you want your wife to start paying more attention to that big belly of yours, and the person that happens to be attached to it, then I suggest a marriage consultant. Otherwise, to be blunt – I'm not the one, chief." Sam stamps his cigarette out, raises up from his chair and begins to put on his coat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have dinner I must attend to.”

"Perhaps this will change your mind," Valentine reached into his pocket.

"Now just you hold on for a second, don't go..."

"Relax," interrupted Valentine, revealing a wad of cash in his stubby fingers. "Even marriage consultants don’t make dough like this."

"I like your style, Mr. Valentine. But I think I might have preferred you pulled your heat instead. Money can make a man do strange things."

"Indeed, Mr. Starks. So, it’s settled then, you'll take my case?"

"I dunno – you got yourself a mistrusted broad and enough dough to finance a small war; should I read in between the lines, Mr. Valentine?"

"You’ve got it all wrong, Sam. Follow her – that’s all I want. You do that for me and I’ll take care of it from there."

“You don’t say. Well, if I take the case I’m going to need this heart breakers photo.”

“Of course,” muttered Archie, fumbling though his Louis Vuitton coat pockets. 

“Here...”

Sam studied the picture. "She’s a real looker.”

“Yes, she is. So make sure you don’t get any funny ideas.”

“Comedy will be the last thing on my mind, Arch. What’s her name?” 

"Vera."

"Against my better judgment, I took the case," said Sam to Foley. "And that's where things started to get messy. I followed her just like Mr. Valentine handsomely paid me to do. My expectations of her were dashed from the moment I laid eyes on her. This was a girl who was different from other high society types. I realized right away why Valentine had dropped so much dough into my lap to take this case: she was beautiful; too beautiful. Nobody wants a prized catch like that slipping away from them. Certainly a woman with looks like hers - looks that could kill – had to deal with douchebags feeling her up at bars, on the street, and probably even in grocery stores for Christ’s sake. Arch must have been going crazy wondering how many ‘no’s Vera’s mouth could produce. 

“Where did you first see her in person at?” Foley asked.

“I watched over Archie’s house the next morning. I parked my Acura across the street from their home and holed up in there for a good while after Archie left for work…”

“Blue River” by Jack Teagarden eased through the speakers while Sam chain smoked and waited for Mrs. Valentine to leave the house. Light snow flurries fell, and the subsequent frost on Sam’s window helped to disguise his car, keeping suspicion low. About an hour later, Mrs. Valentine walked through the front door. Even bundled up in her Jax beanie, multicolored scarf, and wool pullover, Sam could tell just how beautiful she was. He glanced at the photo Archie had given him, and looked at the hipster woman leaving Archie’s home. “This photo must’ve been taken at prom...” Sam remarked. As she made her way down the steps onto the sidewalk, Sam eased out from his car and pursued. The snow fell even harder now, and in bigger flakes. “Good,” thought Sam. “The snow will make following her much easier.” 

Mrs. Valentine stopped at an intersection with a group of other pedestrians waiting for their turn to walk. Sam waited just one person adjacent to her. Vera had on earphones and tapped her foot to a rhythm that Sam thought could have been jazz. For an instant, everyone else disappeared and it felt as though only the two of them stood there: two strangers in the snow waiting to cross the street. The “walk” light turned green and Sam snapped back into reality. Leaving the intersection behind them, Sam and Vera crossed the street. Once across, Mrs. Valentine waved her hand and jumped up and down like a TK. Sam thought maybe she had seen somebody she knew. Then it dawned on him that she was waving down a taxi. “Dammit!” thought Sam. He had to act or risk losing her. With no other taxi’s in sight, Sam barged into the same cab Mrs. Valentine flagged down. 

“Umm, this cab is taken,” said Mrs. Valentine in the form of a question.

“We can share, if you don’t mind that is.”

“I do mind…but since you’re already in here I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Where to, ma’am?” asked the cabbie.

“Jeanie’s Diner, on 22nd street”

“What a coincidence, I’m going there too!” lied Sam.

“If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were following me, Mr.”

“And if I didn’t know any better I’d say I was too, Mrs…”

“Valentine – Vera Valentine.”

“As in Mrs. Archie Valentine?”

“Yes, and yet again my husband’s reputation precedes me. And you are?”

“My name?

“Jack…Jack Teagarden.”

Vera’s eyebrow raised and a slight smirk expanded on her face. “Jack Teagarden, huh?” mocked Vera. 

“What? Don’t think it suits me?” 

“Oh no, I just know someone with a reputation that precedes yours as well” Vera removed her earphones and placed one in Sam’s ear: 

“Oh, let me linger by your shore, and let me dream forever more, Blue River”

“That’s Jack Teagarden. Now, tell me who you are.” 

Without hesitating Sam replied, “I’m Jack, babe.”

Sam and Vera got out at Jeanie’s Diner on 22nd street and sat in the last booth on the left. 

“This is fate. I was destined to meet you,” said Vera, eyes on Sam and swirling the sugar around in her coffee more than necessary.

“What makes you think that?” asked Sam, sipping his coffee, his eyes never leaving Vera’s. She was most definitely not the girl he would have pictured as the wife of a wealthy fat slob like Valentine, thought Sam. She looked…ordinary. Like a diamond in the rough. She was down to earth, and a maybe even a smudge of crazy seeing as how she nonchalantly sipped coffee with a stranger who wouldn’t even tell her his real name. 

“My Sherpa. 

“Your...Sherpa?” said Sam rather confused at the prospect.

“Yeah – I do a lot of mountain climbing, and my Sherpa also gives me spiritual advice. He told me I would meet someone with a rare quality. And when you came up with that phony name as I was listening to the actual Jack Teagarden, I just knew that that was the rare quality he was talking about – a cultivated taste for the same obscure music I like.” 

“That is pretty rare I guess,” said Sam.

The two of them sipped their coffee in silence for the next few minutes, occasionally making eye contact and smiling.

“Let’s go back to my place and listen to some records, Jack.”

“Would you like anything to drink, Sam?” asked Vera while setting her purse down on the indigo table next to a book on art nouveau.  

Sam probed around the living room, feeling himself slipping into the life of Archie – the man who hired him to find out if Vera were cheating, not to be the one she cheats with. “Give me something hard.” Sam squirmed around in his seat. He calmed his mind by thinking presently. Archie’s home was much more refined than Sam would have given him credit for. Sure, he knew that Archie was a high roller, but by his out of shape appearance he didn’t think Archie would have such fine living sensibilities. It must have been Vera’s doing, thought Sam. The living room was arranged in contemporary fashion with warm colors, while overhead fluorescent lights complimented the room’s architecture. As Sam sat down on the beige leather sectional, he felt the imprint of what could only have been Archie’s. “Make it a double,” shouted Sam to the Vera, now in the bar area. Chlorine infiltrated Sam’s nose from atrium outside of the living room housing a swimming pool. “You and Archie live quite the wonderful life,” Sam said to Vera while she handed him his drink.

“Are you happy with him?”

Vera sighed again. “What’s happiness, Jack?”

“If you’re unhappy then why not just divorce him – take half?” 

“I don’t care about money.” Vera set her empty glass on the table, slid her bare feet across Sam’s lap, and put a cigarette to her deep red lips. “Got a light?” 

Sam reached into his tweed coat pocket, produced a zippo, and lit Vera’s cigarette. 

“And besides, even if I did care about money I can’t take half because he made me sign a prenup. He’d have to…” Vera hesitated.

“Have to what?”

“Die.”

Sam ran his fingers through Vera’s soft brown hair; the length of which reached past her breasts and nearly sat on her lap. Vera stared intently into Sam’s eyes for about three seconds, though it felt like an eternity to Sam. Before he knew it his tongue was pressed against Vera’s. Sam stopped himself from going any further. “This isn’t right, Vera. I’ve been lying to you.”

Vera’s ears pricked up and her gaze deepened. 

“My real name…It’s Sam Starks.”

“Sam Starks? As in private detective Sam Starks?”

“That’s right.”

Vera darted up from her seat. “You don’t  like jazz, do you?” 

“Of course I do, that part was sincere. Like you said, maybe this was destiny.” Sam reaches for her shoulder.

“Don’t touch me! You’re a liar, just like the rest of ‘em!” Vera turned around and Sam could hear her weeping faintly. “My husband, did he put you up to this?” 

“I can’t put my client at risk, Vera, it’s not ethical.”

“But you can tell me that you’ve been hired to follow me? That’s ethical?” Vera stomped over to the front door and opened it. “I’d like you to leave, Mr. Starks.”

“…it was your husband,” confessed Sam. “He hired me to find out if you were cheating on him.”

"So Archie did hire you?" she asked, not sounding at all shocked. "How long have you been following me?" 

"Just a day. I only followed you for a second before I met you in the taxi,” Sam confessed.

“You’re an idiot, Jack, err, Sam - ugh! That’s not why Archie wanted me followed, you fool!”

“Why then?” asked Sam.

“Because he’s blackmailing me…”

“Blackmailing you? How?”

“He has photos of me. He must’ve been using you to keep tabs on me to see where I went and who I talked to. 

“I don’t understand. What’s the purpose of blackmailing your own wife?”

“I know things about him, and his company. Things that would put him away for a long time. You don’t get to the position he’s at in life by trusting people.”

“Do you know where he keeps these photos?” 

“He keeps them at home, but they are locked in the safe in his office.”

“I can get them for you.” 

Vera spun around. “You’d do that for me, Sam?”

“I feel just as duped as you do, Vera. And if there’s one thing that I don’t like, it’s being made a fool of.” 

Vera leads Sam up the winding staircase to Archie’s office. Sam tries to turn the knob but it is locked. “Give me a hair pin.” 

Vera did as Sam asked, and less than ten seconds later they were standing in Archie’s office. The entire room was surrounded by grass wall coverings, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and cabinet doors with stained glass windows and marble countertops. Vera almost immediately found the safe in question. “Here it is, Sam!” she exclaimed. 

Sam knelt down on the birch hardwood floor and took a look at the safe. 

“Can you open it?” asked Vera, seeming impatient.

“I don’t know…it’s a pretty sophisticated safe. It’s probably going to take a while.”

“Hurry up, Sam! We don’t have all night, Archie will be coming home in a few hours!”

“Alright, alright. Run out to my car – it’s the Acura parked across the street – and get me the black bag in the passenger seat.

  

“So, you’re telling me that Mrs. Valentine manipulated you into opening the safe to get “revealing photos” of her?” gathered detective Foley.

“Exactly. I didn’t even think to question her because I was taken aback by her and still pondering Archie’s deception in my head.” 

“That’s some heck of a story you got there, kid. What happened next?”

“After about two hours I managed to get the safe open. Inside it was just a large manila envelope containing what I thought were the pictures Vera was obsessing over. I didn’t second guess her, or even ask to look. I didn’t think she’d want me seeing those photos – whatever they were – either.” 

“Oh my god! Thank you, Sam!” Vera jumped up and squeezed Sam with all of her limbs. “You’re welcome, Vera. I should probably get going now before Archie comes home.”

“Nonsense; you’re not going anywhere, darling.” Vera began to undress the buttons of Sam’s shirt and pushed him on the bed.

Sam’s heart was pounding. “Maybe we should wait another time, Vera…” The reason and logic side of his brain shut down with the first kiss Vera planted on his lips. “Fuck it.” 

“Take off your pants,” ordered Vera. 

Sam did so without protest, and Vera excused herself to the bathroom.

“I’ll be right back, just have to freshen up.” Vera came back out of the bathroom thirteen minutes later wearing a black polka dot mesh corset with a satin bow and ruffled embellishments. Sam took immediate notice, and his cigarette fell from between his lips onto the carpet. Vera snuffed the cigarette out with the heel of her black Christian Louboutins and pushed Sam’s back onto the bed. She climbed on top of him and began to nibble on his ear.

"Stop, stop," said Sam. "I think heard something.”

"That's impossible, Archie shouldn’t get home for at least another hour," replied Vera. 

"Vera? Where the hell are you?" screams Archie, making his way up the twisting staircase.

“Oh shit, get in the closet!" orders Vera to Sam.

Sam gets in the closet and Vera puts her jeans and wool sweater on over her lingerie just as Archie walks into the room.

"Hey honey, what are you doing home so early?" Vera runs over to give Archie a kiss.

"Why don't you tell me what I'm doing home "so early"?" menaced Mr. Valentine as he grabbed Vera by her shoulders and violently pushed her back. 

"Baby what’s wrong?" Vera asked innocently. 

"Don’t “baby” me! I know everything that you’ve been up to, Vera! I've had my suspicions about you, but I never knew for sure. Until I got a message from the investigator I hired to follow you detailing how you were with a man… here...in our house just fifteen minutes ago!

“How the hell...” thought Sam, listening intently with his ear to the door.

“But baby...”

“But baby nothing!” barked Mr. Valentine, searching anxiously around the room.

“Is this his? Are these the pants of the guy you’ve been fucking behind my back?”

“Those are your pants darling, I remember buying --”

“Shut up! You think I don’t know what my own clothes look like?!” Archie pulls a gun from his coat and points it at Vera. 

“Okay, Archie. I have been having an affair. Why wouldn’t I?” Vera walks right up to Archie.

“Don’t test me babe, I’m not afraid to use this thing!” exclaimed Archie, hands nervously clutched onto the six shooter. In his hands they gun looked even bigger than he was standing there in his brown overcoat and green trousers.

“What are you going to do, Archie? Shoot me? Murder me? And then what? You think you can just waltz on out of here, case closed?

“Fuck you, Vera!” Archie reassured control of the gun with his left hand, sweat poured profusely down his face drenching his collar. “I don’t care if I get away with it!”

Archie closed his eyes and his muscles began to tense.

Sam was listening and watching from inside of the closet, and he recognized that moment right before the trigger is pulled. He had himself been in the position of both Archie and Vera before, and every single time it was his wits that got him out of it. This situation was no different. Sam burst out of the closet like the round from a pistol and flung himself onto Archie.

“Sam!” screamed Vera.

“Sam?!” yelled Mr. Valentine.

Sam had the business end of his Colt Single Action Army angled at Valentine’s balding head. “Sam...You son of a bitch! You set me up?!”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Valentine. But you better start making sense real quick!”

“What kind of detective are you, Starks?” probed Archie. I pay you thousands of dollars and you go sleep with my wife and try to kill me?”

“I didn’t sleep with your wife, and you also didn’t tell me you were blackmailing her.”

“Blackmail? I’m not blackmailing her!”

“Shoot him, Sam!” screaming Vera.

“You helped her into my safe didn’t you? Didn’t you?!”

“What’s he talking about, Vera?”

“He’s trying to save his own ass, Sam. Don’t be stupid! Shoot him before he shoots me!” 

“This was not supposed to go down like this!” said Sam.

“My ass it wasn’t,” said Archie, inching toward his gun on the floor.

“Don’t do it, Arch...” said Sam, assessing the situation.

“You lied to me about everything Sam… You stole my woman, and are pointing that peacemaker at me in my own home. You were honest about one thing, though...”

“What’s that?”

“You are a dick!”

Archie dashes for his gun and Sam puts a bullet in the back of his skull. Sam had seen a dead body plenty of time before, but Vera obviously hadn’t. “I’m going to be sick” shouted Vera running toward the trashcan. 

Sam stared at what was left of Archie while Vera puked her guts out in the trashcan opposite of the bed. “It’s been a long time since I killed somebody…but the feeling is always the same.” He sat on the bed overlooking Archie’s lifeless body and lit a cigarette. "What did he mean, ‘I set him up’?" questioned Sam softly to himself. 

Vera was still spitting what was left of her innocence in the trashcan. 

“We have to get rid of this body,” said Sam, starting at Archie and running his gun through his own hair.

“I think that’s a matter for the police, dear.” 

"Are you crazy? Cheating wife with lover and dead husband on the floor? Not exactly a strong case presents itself on our behalf, Vera… He said I messaged him...Why would he think that I messaged him?"

"Because you did message him, Sam.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You messaged him while I was in the bathroom changing around. You told him to come over, that you had found me with another man.”

“If this is your idea of a joke then it’s not fucking funny.”

“Oh, yes you did, sweety,” coaxed Vera as she rubbed Sam’s blood red cheeks. “Right after you stalked me all day long, broke into my husband’s safe, and tried to rape me, you called my husband over to murder him in cold blood.”

Sam’s head began to pound with the echo of the gunshot that killed Archie Valentine. “This can’t be happening… I’ll call the police - they’ll believe me!” 

“Will they?”

 “Not a firm believer in “the truth always prevails are you?”

“I’m not when “the truth” is easily manipulated, Sam. You’re the one holding the tainted gun. The bullet in my husband’s head will match with your pistol. What do you think the police will do when they find out the tools that were used to break into his office were yours. Or that your fingerprints are all over the house? I’ve been planning this for a long time, Sam. I was going to kill Archie myself. I was going to poison his food, a slow but sure method. But the problem with that is all signs would lead to me, so when I found your card in his jacket pocket I knew I could use you to my advantage.” 

“Why’d you do it, Vera? You could have just left him!”

“I could’ve. But then I wouldn’t have gotten these,” Vera pulls out the contents of the manila envelope.

“Bearer bonds?” screamed Sam.

“Correction: a new life. With these bonds I have enough money to go wherever I want, do whatever I want, and be with whoever I want.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you get away with this…”

Sam’s sentence is cut short by the sound of police sirens getting closer down the street. 

“I called the cops, Sam. Right after you tried to rape me and killed my husband.” 

Sam nervously looks through the blinds to the army of squad cars below. “If I’m going down, so are you baby.”

“And what are you going to do with your ‘truth’? Tell them what? That you tried to fuck your client’s wife and the client conveniently ended up dead courtesy of a bullet from your gun? And then what are you going to tell them? More fairy tales about how it was me who sent the message for Archie to come over? It was sent from your phone, Sam. Wake up!”

“Sam Starks, come out with your hands over your head!” shouted the Police captain from the megaphone.

“Better do what they say, Sam.” 

“Fuck off…”

“If I scream they’ll breach this house in less than fifteen seconds, you don’t want that. Go on, surrender, Sam. You’ve been caught red-handed.”

“Have I?” said Sam.

“Don’t play that psychology bullshit on me; I’m the one holding the cards here!”

“Because you conned me into killing your husband and stealing millions of dollars’ worth of bearer bonds?” 

“Are you having a panic induced stupidity attack? That’s exactly why! Gosh, you strong shy types are all brawn, no brain after all.”

Sam reaches into his coat pocket and takes out his cell phone. 

“It’s too late for that, Sam!”

Sam smiles and turns the phone toward Vera: 

“I was going to kill Archie myself. I was going to poison his food, a slow but sure method. The problem with that is all signs would lead to me, so when I found your card in his jacket pocket I knew I could use you to my advantage.”

The smirk vanished from Vera’s face, replaced by a cynical crying/laughter. “Guess I underestimated you.” 

“Seems that way,” said Sam. “Only one thing left to do.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” said Vera as she grabbed Archie’s gun and put it to her head. 

“No!” screamed Sam, who darted toward Vera, slamming her into the end table and knocking her and the gun onto the floor. The police rushed into the room an instant later and threw Sam flat on his face. 

“Are you okay, ma’am?” asked detective McLane. 

Mrs. Valentine was completely silent. 

“We’re going to get you some help, and make sure that this sicko gets what’s coming to him.”