You Can Only Die Twice

 

 

My name is Johnny Casino. I'm a retired P.I. with a past. I just hope it doesn't catch up with me. Before I went legit, I ran numbers in Jersey for Big Louie Vitelli and then fronted a bookie joint in Miami for Big Eddie Fontaine. But at the ripe old age of twenty-four, Little Johnny beat a hasty retreat to L.A. when somebody slipped the cops a hot tip and all of a sudden I became the fall guy for the mob.
I opened my first detective office off Sunset a year later. For fifteen years I got paid to poke around in other people's garbage. I was getting used to the smell. But thanks to a grateful client, I retired at the slightly riper age of thirty-nine.

The rich old gal who hired me wanted to know if her third husband was fooling around. He was. She changed her will, which he didn't like. She shot him five times, which he probably didn't like, either, then killed herself. I was her sole beneficiary.

A year in court with some disgruntled and disinherited relatives left me with a handsome nest egg, her big house located just north of Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Angeles, and a cabin in the mountains. I rented the fancy house to a fading movie star and moved to the piney woods above L.A. to get away from it all. For the last three years I've been sitting on my butt clipping coupons.

But when people get to a certain age, they change. We spend the first half of our lives trying to live, and the last half preparing to die. I had obviously reached that second stage. I was watching the birds and reading the obituaries.
It was an early Saturday morning in April and not all the snow had melted. I was relaxing on my rear deck. It had an uninterrupted view of the lake except for the high-rise pines that blocked part of the panorama. A Canvasback duck plopped onto the water near the bank and paddled into the mist while a flock of Canadian geese flew north sounding like a New York street riot. There must have been a million of 'em. Sometimes you couldn't see the sky for all the birds.

I hadn't seen any Mallards so far, but it was early in the year. Their green head and white collar were easy to spot. It reminded me of the parish priest back in Jersey. Funny, I'd lived in the woods long enough to tell the difference between the Mallard's honk and the old Canvasback's squawk even on a cloudy day. I don't know where I learned so much about ducks. When I lived in Jersey, duck was a verb.

I was listening to the distant flapping of wings and the lonesome cries across the lake when I read of Porter Dugan's demise in the Logjam Gazette. I stood up so fast I knocked over my glass of orange juice and vodka. I grabbed the cordless phone on the large redwood table and began punching in the familiar number before I noticed its "battery low" LED flashing. Damn high-tech piece of crap. I hurled it into the trees. It wouldn't be alone. There were three others in there somewhere along with an obstinate microwave.

I read the obit again. I couldn't believe it. Porter and I had dinner together on Wednesday. What the hell happened?

That's when I noticed it. The date. It said Porter died Tuesday. That was a neat trick.

I went into the living room to telephone on a more conventional device. This one had an answering machine with a tape recorder built into it. The one in the master bedroom had call waiting and call forwarding for people who didn't know if they were coming or going. I used speed dial and called Porter's house.

I don't know what I expected. The paper must have gotten the day wrong. They probably meant Thursday. That begins with a "T." Marge at the paper couldn't spell "beans," much less Thursday.
After waiting through three rings and a chorus of click, click boogie, Porter's answering machine was telling me in his deep, crusty voice to leave a message.

"Put down the phone, Johnny," said the same crusty voice behind me.

I turned around and saw my old friend. Porter Dugan hadn't died on Thursday, either.

"Porter, what's this all about?"

"They're trying to kill me, Johnny. They're trying to kill me… again."