Detective comedy 3: Getting the job

Jane produced a small Hello Kitty purse from her jacket and started searching it, frantically. Some blue tac fell out, then a tube of glittery lip gloss, five loyalty cards, a cluster of used toothpicks, quarter of a donut… it felt like some kind of unhygienic magic trick was being played out. She finally produced a sticky-looking USB drive with an old Gummi Bear attached to it. “I- I have proof of aliens!” she blurted.

“Proof?” Fliss repeated, looking at the drive with an expression of disgust. My guess was that she was starting to regret not leaving Jane Doe for me to deal with. “What kind of proof, exactly?”

More agitated shuffling and hand twitching, an impatient pause and, finally, an exasperated cry. “IT’SAFREAKINGALIENOKAY!!!” she yelled. “Look at the disc. Investigate… whatever it is you people do… deal. Just get it out of my life, okay?”

“Out of your life? Whatever is on this drive has… affected you in some way?”

Jane crumpled into her seat, deflated, her shoulders shaking. She sniffed, went to wipe her nose, found she couldn’t with the mask on, and took it off with an air of defeat. The face we saw did not match the rest of her youthful appearance; it was the face of someone easily in their 90s. Either that or her head had spent most of its time in a solarium.

“Affected? You m-might say that,” she sobbed, bitterly. “Last week I looked normal. Now, I look like my N-nan. All the details are on that drive. M-make the thing that did this to me fix it, okay?”

Mr D’Angelo leaned back, his hands folded in his lap and his feet crossed over each other. His sneakers were white like tic tacs. I didn’t get the impression this was a guy who liked to walk. “I want you to look into something for me,” he said.

“Look into something?” I drawled. I was trying to sound laid back, but I just sounded drunk. “Looking is my middle name. What something should I look into?” I said, like an idiot.

He looked me up and down, like he was having second thoughts, then sighed and pulled a gold phone from his pocket, tapped it twice, showed me the screen. It was playing video of last week’s bingo game, a grainy close-up on the numbered balls spinning around in the tumbler. “I need you to look into something for me,” he said again, slowly, like I was a bit of a baby. “You need to be discrete. But tough. You need to be willing to get to the bottom of this thing, even if it means taking a few punches.”  

“A few punches where?”

The big man cocked his ear towards the TV room. He listened carefully, sitting very still. Obviously it was important to him that anyone within earshot was watching Pacific Palisades. Or he wanted to know if Jordan had woken from her coma.

“Could be the kidneys, could be the face,” he said simply. “But that’s beside the point. I want you to find out if this is on the level. Do it without getting noticed. Tell me what you find. Can you handle that?”