It started with a slip of paper. The slip looked like a grocery list, except that it had lots of numbers and strange math symbols scrawled on it instead of food. I took it from the dead man’s hand, which clutched it tightly in death. Obviously I had scared the killer away. He didn’t have the time to grab the slip. But he couldn’t be too far. The corpse was still oozing blood.
This abandoned factory was a common meeting place for gangland conferences. One of those had just occurred but with a deadly surprise this time. As a private eye, it’s my business to know when something’s not right. The dead guy was no thug or thief, that was for sure. Nice suit, academic looking and definitely mixed up in something he shouldn’t have been, but was. And he paid for it with his life. But why? That was the question bugging me. Max Frost. Just a small-time private investigator with a curious nature that usually gets me into trouble.
An old staircase creaked to my right. The killer was still here in the factory. Good for me, bad for him. I pulled out my .45 and moved slowly, staying in the shadows. The night was overcast and dark, and the night lights inside were about half burned out. Great place for a murder.
As I tracked the killer, I wonder why the dead guy was here and got killed for his trouble. I was here on a totally unrelated case, meeting with a reliable stoolie. Obviously he fled when the shooting started. Me, I wanted to know what was going on.
There was something about the dead guy. He looked vaguely familiar. But not from a police blotter photo. Maybe from the newspapers.
Then it hit me. He was that physicist guy all over the papers, Dr. Zatterling, I think his name was. He had something to do with a nuclear bomb arming device. A European refuge, he came to help America in the Cold War race. And now he was even colder.
So what did the piece of paper have to do with it? Was it why he was killed? And who would kill a guy for a crummy slip of paper?
Another creak upstairs then a deafening gunshot exploded near my ear. This guy wanted no witnesses left alive. I scurried out of sight from where I judged the shot came from.
Crouching behind a heavy piece of rusting machinery, I realized the killer probably wanted two things; my life and this slip of paper. That could work in my favor. “Hey buddy,†I called out, “if you want this slip of paper, stop shooting.†I waited.
“Very well. How do we work this then?†A hard voice with a trace of a foreign accent. Russian, I wagered.
“Come out into the light, let me see you,†I replied, knowing there was no chance of that, but if I could keep him talking, I could get a bead on his location.
“You step into the light first,†he said wryly.
“How about,†I stalled, “you tell me why you want this piece of paper so badly.â€
“You don’t know? You’re not CIA? Then who are you?â€
The puzzle came together for me then. Dr. Zatterling was being blackmailed. The Russians wanted his formula for the nuclear bomb arming device; most likely they were holding his family or relatives hostage behind the Iron Curtain. That was routine Soviet practice. Killing Zatterling prevented him from telling our military that the Russians had this information too, giving them a big edge in the arms race.
“You want the formula,†I took a gamble, “here, take it.†I lit a scrap of paper I found laying on the machinery and tossed it to the floor in the light.
The Russian swore and leaped over the stair railing, firing wildly at my general location. Rather, my previous location. With him now in the light, I only needed one, good shot.
I saw it and squeezed the trigger. He fell dead before he hit the concrete floor. With the slip of paper safely in my pocket, I walked outside to look for a telephone.
It ended with a dozen police and government cars rolling up to me, standing in front of the factory, as I finished my second cigarette.
Rod Drake lives and writes in Las Vegas, and wishes he was as cool as the heroes in his fiction. Check out Rod’s other stories on Six Sentences, Fictional Musings, MicroHorror, Flash Forward and AcmeShorts.
A nice little spy action thriller scene. The climax of a James Bond movie is packed nicely into a 1000 word piece of flash fiction. Nice effort by Rod Drake!