Getting Lucky

               Written by: Bob Sanchez

Synopsis:  When beautiful Bonita Esquivez hires P.I. Clay Webster to find her husband, Lucky, Clay expects an easy missing-person case. But when Bonita bites a poison bonbon, more than a quick buck is at stake. Who is Lucky, anyway? Could Clay’s client possibly be lying to him?

Clay Webster knows pain, having lost his wife, his son, and his police career. But his wit is his weapon, and humor is his first line of defense against life’s assaults. His search for Lucky centers primarily on Lowell, Massachusetts, where he tries to save a drowning teenager in a canal and looks for links between Lucky and A Touch of Love, the new porn shop in town. Meanwhile, Senator Swinburne rails against the city’s perceived moral decay, personified partly by ex-cops such as Clay Webster. Perhaps Chantal Ladoute, Clay’s old friend the ex-nun, will be his moral gyroscope as he navigates an increasingly dangerous course.


                                                                     Chapter One

Take one Lowell cop, slightly ripe. Shred a 28-year career and a 30-year marriage. Toss in a P.I. license and
a dump of an office. Add a sense of humor, a dash of decency, and a taste for Beethoven. Sear with the loss of a son. Drain off the self-pity, and set it aside. Add salt to taste, and garnish with small paychecks.

One Clay Webster, comin’ up.

The phone kept ringing as I ran up the stairs. Those Yellow Pages were great. My ad wasn’t even in print yet,
and one of Lowell’s troubled souls had found me anyway. I dropped an armload and fumbled to find the key my son Jerry had given me. My first caller certainly showed patience.

I pushed open the door to my new office and froze at the sight of a rat the size of a linebacker. I chucked the
Boston White Pages at him, and he took off in a brown blur toward his own private exit in the corner.

In the middle of the desk, the phone stopped ringing.

Rats.

This office was in no shape for clients to see anyway. “I got this place for you, Dad,”Jerry had told me. “First
month’s free hey, after all you’ve done for me, it’s the least”

The least, he had that right. In the late ’90s, my son the slumlord owned a dozen properties here in Lowell,
Massachusetts, and I certainly wished his paying customers better than this. But who was I to complain? My first six months in business had been slow, and five thousand in savings wasn’t going to take me far. A guy could spend a buck to eat macaroni out of a can, or he could spend it on a Megabucks ticket for a $2 million jackpot. But I’ll win Megabucks when the next ice age comes to Lowell. Macaroni is now.

At least the office came furnished. The vintage 1960 desk had a gray plastic top and steel sides. Behind the desk sat the only chair, a swivel type upholstered in green plastic with duct tape running diagonally across the seat. The walls had dark stains from a leaky roof, and three of the ceiling tiles lay on the floor. Underneath my feet, the commercial carpet showed years of ground-in dirt. Overall, the place smelled like stale droppings and dead cigars, as though the rats hung out here for late-night poker games.

I left the door and window open for a little air and made a mental note for my next trip to the store: broom,
dustpan, rat poison. Better get a bottle of Mister Clean too, the biggest they have. Custodial help wasn’t a line item in my budget, and whipping this dump into respectable shape for Monday would take me well into the night. Given my immediate business outlook, I’d have time to patch every last crack in the plaster walls. I walked down the hallway looking for an extra chair or two, picked the lock to the store room, and found a dozen chairs like the one I already had. I took the best two and attached Dymo labels to the back that
said:

Property of Clay Webster, P.I.

Out front in the parking lot, the autumn wind slapped fast-food cartons against trees and sand against my face. My office sat above Robby’s Auto, which sold parts stripped from the automotive graveyard that lay behind the building. Just as Robby’s is built on the ruins of cars, Webster Investigations is built on the ruins of lives. “Former Lowell police officer benefits from personal tragedy details at eleven.” When Channel 7 runs a promo like that, it’s been a slow news day.

I carried more furnishings in a cardboard box stored in the trunk of my old Dodge: a typewriter, every stationery item I could think of from paper clips to a date book Molly had given me, a bottle of generic aspirin, a half package of Tums I’d opened after Thanksgiving dinner, a cassette player, and a coffee pot, all tools of the trade for my new career. There were also a half dozen classical music tapes. For the moment, my Smith & Wesson .38 Special stayed in the sock drawer in my apartmentlately, I didn’t trust myself with it. I tossed my brown bomber jacket on the desk. To me it was my Joe Louis jacket, named for the Brown Bomber himself.

It was Sunday morning on the long Thanksgiving weekend. On Thursday I’d watched the annual high school football rivalry between Lowell and Lawrence, then went to Jerry’s place for turkey pot pie and a nasty case of heartburn. As a joke, he also gave me a cap pistol. It wasn’t the height of tact, given the way my police career ended. But when your family falls apart, you forgive the little slights so you don’t lose the one
person you think still loves you.

Jerry had said, “Why not go in and spruce up the office some? You know, Dad, customize it to your liking?” No
one would stop in on the holiday weekend, so I could tack my P.I. license on the wall, set up the coffee pot, and plan out my work for the next week, assuming any work needed planning. I plugged the cassette player into the wall, and Beethoven and I went to work.

The phone rang again. They say a good businessman picks up on the first ring, and I did.“Webster Investigations,” I said with practiced smoothness.

It was a kid, and I won’t repeat what he said. He was the same nitwit who’d jangled my bells at home every night for two weeks. I hung up; as first calls went, it was hardly auspicious.

“Slimeball,” I said.

“Excuse me, sir?” A woman stood at the doorway: she seemed about forty years old, with a black leather coat that reached past the tops of her black leather boots. She had high cheekbones, jet-black hair, and a skin tone that suggested a recent getaway to a secluded Caribbean cay. The curve of her coat implied that she wasn’t built like a sheet of plywood. This weekend marked the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season, and the woman probably wanted directions to the local branch of Saks Fifth Avenueas if Lowell had one. Still, my pulse quickened.

“I need a bomb,” I said. How else would I fix what ailed this dump?

“Insurance and a match, that’s all you need.” She turned and walked down the hall, leaving me embarrassed about the sight of the place. Thank God she wasn’t a potential client.

But she returned in a minute, meeting my grin with a flicker of a smile. “Everything’s closed,” I said. “I’m
just here to sandblast the office.”

She looked down at a slip of paper and said, “Do you know when Mister Clayton will be in?”From her accent, I
guessed that she was Puerto Rican.

“The name’s Clayton Webster, but I go by Clay.”

“Bonita Esquivez,”she said. We shook hands. Her grip was soft and warm, and I let go reluctantly. Her dark
brown eyes scanned the room, full of pity for the dump she surveyed.

“Handyman’s dream,”I said. “I’m getting it ready for opening on Monday.”

“Can’t you help me now? My husband is missing.”

I grabbed my jacket.“Then let’s get a cup of coffee,” I said. “There’s a donut shop two blocks down.”

A man never gets to make a first impression a second time, and somehow I’d survived her first impression of me. But my first impression of Bonita Esquivez was that she possessed a nervous elegance and a baby-blue Cadillac Eldorado with Dade County, Florida, plates.

We sat in her car in front of Dunkin’ Donuts drinking hot chocolate. Her overcoat betrayed a hint of cigarette
smoke, but the car smelled like expensive perfume and leather upholstery. I felt like a dog that had rolled in the dirt and made itself comfortable on his master’s leather couch. Bonita seemed not to notice.

“The black lieutenant at the station said maybe you can help,” she said. “My husband Lucky has been gone
since last night, and I am so worried about him.”She blinked, and tears began to seep past her mascara. Her earrings looked like hammered gold. She had long, elegant fingers with luscious-looking rings, and nails with crimson polish. “Please. Please help me.”

“Tell me when you last saw him,” I said.

“About eleven o’clock last night. We talked about going back to Boston. I was going shopping, and he wanted to see an old friend today.”

I scribbled notes. “Who’s the friend?”

“An old drinking buddy was all he told me.”

“Where are you folks staying?”

She took a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. “Downtown at the Mill City Grand.”

“Describe your husband for me,” I said, and she did. Lucky was my age, 55; five-eight and 170 pounds, brown hair and brown eyes, dark-complected face, tan slacks, a blue windbreaker. She rummaged in her purse and handed me a photo of him. He was sitting poolside, with palm trees in the background. Lucky wore a bathing suit, wrap-around shades pushed up to his forehead, and a chest full of hair. In his left hand he held a cigar; his grin said that life was good and the world belonged to him. No wonder, being married to a woman like Mrs. Esquivez.

“What do you think happened, Mrs. Esquivez?”

“Call me Bonita, please. I’m worried maybe he is hurt.”

“Why do you think he may be hurt, ma’am?” Maybe he just walked out of her life, but he’d left behind some nice wheels. “Could he have just”

“Left me? Lucky would never leave me.” These words sounded plausible but a little off, as though she could will
them to be true.

“You folks have any children?”

“I have a daughter by, um, a previous marriage. Carmela is on her own now.”

“That’s a nice name, Carmela. Where is she?”

“It doesn’t matter. Leave her out of this.”

“Out of what?”

“Nothing. I just don’t want to worry her.”

“If she’s in town, maybe she’s heard from him.”

She shook her head. “They don’t get along.”

“Who do you folks know in Lowell? Any friends here, any family?”

I studied her eyes, and she shifted her glance to a young couple walking into the donut shop, their heads bent against the wind. “His cousin Carlos said maybe Lucky would like to live up here.”

“Carlos Esquivez?”

“No, his last name is Chávez.”

“And what’s your opinion? Do you want to live here?”

She made a sour face. “It ain’t Rio, honey.”

And Rio wasn’t Lowell, but so what? She gave me Carlos’s address and then reached for her checkbook. “How much is your fee, Mister Webster?”

Her check pictured a fishing boat and a leaping swordfish. I read the phone number and the fancy Miami address, though 2301 Camellia could have been on skid row; when you live in an old mill city, all Miami addresses seem fancy. “Two hundred a day plus expenses. But I’m not comfortable with an out-of-state check.”

“I assume cash works.”She took a stack of bills from her purse and peeled off ten crisp hundreds, which barely
shrunk the pile. My heart raced; every private investigator should have clients like this. “When can you start?”

“Right now. When and where did you last see him?”

“I was in bed watching television, and he said he was going out for a nightcap. He went out and didn’t
come back.”

“He went to the hotel bar? Why did he wear his windbreaker just to go downstairs?”

“I didn’t think about that. I don’t know.”

Lucky could have gone to another bar if he knew the city. Nothing else was within walking distance, though, and he’d apparently left the car behind. “What do you and your husband do for a living?”

“He owns a mail-order business called Lucky’s, and I help him run it.” She paused for a moment. “We sell
clothes, jewelry, nice things.”

“And you have customers up here?”

“We have customers everywhere.”

“Is this your first time in Lowell?”

“This is my first time north of Miami.”

That sounded like a lie. She had jet-setter written all over her.

“How aboutis Lucky your husband’s nickname?”

“Luis, that’s his given name. He travels. I don’t always know where.”

“Forgive me for asking, but could Mister Esquivez have a girlfriend in the area?” Thinking maybe he knew the city well enough to lose Mrs. Esquivez. Maybe hoping to get lucky, or knowing he would.

She wiped the corner of her eye and shrugged. It looked like a “yes” to me.

The thousand dollars fit quite comfortably in my wallet. An alarm wailed in a dark recess of my brain like one
of those irritating car alarms set off by the wind or an innocent passerby. “You’d better be careful about flashing those bills,” I said. “This isn’t Miami, you know.”

She hesitated, then smiled. “That was a joke, wasn’t it?” She reached for a package of Kleenex in her purse and
exposed a chrome-plated pistol underneath. Her eyes met mine, and she must have caught my look of concern. “I have a carry permit,” she said. “Dade County.”

“That’s no good here. Why do you need a pistol?”

“You have to ask? It’s a dangerous world for a woman.” She seemed embarrassed at her oversight and promised to apply for a permit that afternoon. She dropped me off in Robby’s parking lot, and I hustled up the stairs to make phone calls and hook up the answering machine. Maybe she was right; a .32-caliber pistol made a fine deterrent to a potential rapist. At least I hoped so, but if the wacko grabbed the pistol away, then it became worse than nothing.

As I opened the door to my office, I heard a rustling in the box on my desk. What could have attracted a rat’s interest so quickly? I banged on the side of the box, and a rat scurried out with a Tums clenched between its teeth.

I threw the rest of the package at him. By the end of the day, he’d need them all.

The first thing to do was call Lucky’s cousin. Maybe the two had hooked up already and Lucky hadn’t bothered to phone his wife. No one answered. A check of Saints Memorial and Lowell General Hospitals turned up no sign of Lucky. My stack of phone books covered a pair of area codes, including Boston. No obvious links to Lucky or Bonita Esquivez leaped off the pages, not that I was surprised. I thought of calling my choice list of no-tell trysting places outside the city, then decided to see them in person. Let them see the Polaroid so they could say,“Oh yeah, that’s Mister Smith. Checked in with Mrs. Smith at seven, checked out at eight.”

When I called the Mill City Grand Hotel, my friend Elena Costanza told me that the bar opened at noon. I asked for the name and phone number of the bartender on duty last night. She asked me for a reason. I gave it and she graciously complied.

Ask nicely, explain reasonably, and get results quickly. Would this become a pattern?

Not likely.

Outside, the wind screamed and rattled my office window. I left it open for a while to draw out the sundry odors. Why did Lucky and Bonita Esquivez stay overnight in Lowell? No offense to my fair city, but the urban national park isn’t a big November draw. Maybe Lucky had skipped town and left no forwarding address, just like the city’s economy.

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