Excerpt: The Mobster and the Mermaid

"Morning, Roxy."

"Morning Mr Fenterman. Did you sleep here last night? Your office was kind of a mess so I tidied up a little. I hope that's OK." OK, so she wasn't much to talk about as a secretary, but the girl knew how to keep the place clean and orderly - more orderly than her filing system - so I guess she was worth keeping around just for that. I never really was one for cleaning or tidying up after myself. If it weren't for Roxy, this place would be knee high with refuse.

"That's fine, Roxy. Thank you. Remind me to look into getting some kind of pull out bed for the office. My chair's fine for sitting, but not so great for sleeping."

"Sure thing, Mr Fenterman." Her fingers tapped twice, slowly, on the typewriter. How was it even possible to type that slowly after nearly two years of practise? Listening to her typing out a letter or invoice sounded not so much like a typist but more like a drunk and extremely loud centipede with several wooden legs making its way across the room. Tap... tap tap tap...tap... tap tap. Maybe when I wasn't watching that was what she did - she filed cases and her nails while an insect with no regard for the Federal ban on alcohol set to on the typewriter. "Uh, Mr Fenterman?"

"Yes, Roxy?"

"Remember to look into getting a pull out bed. For the office." She smiled, as sweetly as she could manage, and tapped three more letters out onto the slightly yellow paper.

"Thanks, Roxy. What would I do without you?"

"Drown under a tsunami of garbage?"

"Tsunami?"

"I read it in the paper. It's like a big wave; you know, one of them tidal waves. I think they had one somewhere. It's French or something. The word, I mean. I don't think they have big waves like that in France. I mean, how can you grow wine if there's a big wave crashing down around your ears?" I will admit that I might have turned off and stopped listening by that point. Roxy's a great girl, really funny, but when she gets talking it's kind of like having a Chicago piano letting off next to your head: there's the rat-a-tat-tat-tat, but there's nothing you haven't heard before or would want to hear again.

At least she reads the papers, even if she doesn't really understand what she's reading; that's more than a lot of people do. Most people don't really seem to want to know what's going on in the world these days. With so much badness on their doorsteps, why should they care if the other side of the world's getting hit by tidal waves - we've got flooding of our own to worry about, and on top of that crime rates that have never been higher and pockets that have never been emptier and throats that have never been drier. And dead women being pulled out of the lake. Who needed more thing to worry about? Let the rest of the world worry about themselves. It's not my view, but it seems to be everyone else's.

Well, time to get to work.

"Oh, boss, there's a guy waiting in your office." See, like I said, something always does seem to come up.

"I've told you a hundred times before, Roxy, don't let anyone into my office when I'm not there. That's why we have a chair out here." It wasn't much of a chair, granted, but it was somewhere to wait until I was there or ready. I hate people being in my office; I always think they'll go snooping. It's not that I have anything particular to hide, other than maybe the bottle behind the criminal justice book and the Smith and Wesson in a locked drawer in the desk.

"I asked him to wait out here, honest, boss, but he was really insistent. I thought you probably wouldn't be too long. I think he's just sitting in there - I haven't heard any noises or nothing."

"Who is he?" There's insistent and there's rude; demanding to wait in a man's office when he isn't there is just rude. Whoever the guy was, apparently he was the sort of man who was used to getting his own way; in a town like Duluth, that meant you were either very rich or very tough. I hoped this guy was the former: I have a rational fear of tough guys I don't know.

"I never seen him, before. He's a little guy in a suit. Kinda looks like a small animal, only not the nice kind that you'd want as a pet. More like a rat, maybe. I didn't like him." So it wasn't just strangers she was letting into my office now: it was ratty strangers she didn't like the look of.

"Will I like him?"

"I dunno, boss; I don't think so. He seems pretty harmless, though; just sort of, I don't know, creepy." Tap tap tap on the typewriter, not fast enough to be a Tommy, more like someone getting trigger happy with a pistol, the crack of bullets, shooting out words on the page like a gangster signing his name on the wall.

"Thanks, Roxy. Do me a favour and make some coffee when you're done with the typing." If I was lucky I met get a cup in an hour or so - it all depended how long the expenses list on the invoice was.