The Unlucky Man Read Free

pretty limited dealings so I guess I held no malice against them. I just hoped Corg kept his cool - I didn’t really know where we stood right now, but I did know there was a fast cooling body topping our car.
    With something like a guilty start I realised my right hand was streaked with a dead man’s blood. As I tried unsuccessfully to wipe it away on my sodden trousers, another thought occurred to me.
    “Corg," I said once more, tentatively, "You don’t have anything in the car right?"
    He gave me a look that clearly asked what I took him for which dissolved into a quick smile.
    "Never in the company car my man," he said.
    "Good."
    "Probably," he added. I chose to take that as a joke.
     
    Eventually the raincoat got into the front seat of the car and introduced himself as Detective Andrew Cotter. "Andy," he added afterwards with a small tired smile. He looked washed out, like all the luster was gone out of him - too long on the job, nicotine teeth and fingers, deep set crow’s feet running erratic spider-webs around his eyes, hair more grey salt than its original black pepper and in need of a cut and a comb. I’d have put money that he only had a week left until retirement. He had one of those moustaches that only law enforcement types can pull off but the effect was lessened by at least two days worth of dark stubble crowding his cheeks and chin.
    “Alright," he said, brushing droplets of rain from his hair, checking notes from a pad. "John Hesker. Alexander Corgen. So what happened here, exactly?"
    We shrugged in unison. Then Corg said, "Dude fell on our car."
    Cotter nodded. "Right, I got that actually." He sounded too tired to rise to Corg’s deliberately aggressive tone. Pulling a pack of red label cigarettes from his pocket, he proceeded to tap the pack with his index finger.
    "Witnesses said he came over the fire escape? That right?"
    "Sure," I said, nodding. He waited a moment, and it struck me his mind was more on his cigarettes as much as anything we might volunteer. There was something a little twitchy in the tapping. This guy was a real nicotine fiend.
    To my surprise, his indifference irritated me. "There was a guy," I said. It piqued his interest for definite, even warranted a faint raise of a dark eyebrow, but on the whole didn’t get the reaction I felt it deserved.
    "A guy?"
    "Sure," I said again, annoyed at how I sounded, about how little I had to offer. "A guy. On the fire escape. Guessing put a bullet through your friend on our car."
    "Can you describe him?" Cotter asked, clearly without much hope that I could. He flipped open the pack and slid clear a smoke. He had his eyes on me in the mirror though.
    "No," I said with guilty pang. "He had odd eyes. I saw that but, you know, too much rain, too little time."
    Cotter nodded. "Odd eyes," he echoed. It was getting to be a habit of his, easier than thinking of his own sentences I guess.
    "Yes."
    "Great." He nodded again but didn’t seem surprised or disappointed or even particularly interested. His every word, every action seemed to say, "I’m just a guy doing a job; we’re going through the motions that is all."
    "You two work at…?"
    "Last Rights Funeral Services," I answered.
    "To respect and inter," Corg added before resuming his stony silence. I shot him a glance, but he was staring out the window once more, eyes locked moodily on the deteriorating weather. If Cotter noticed, or thought this outburst odd, he didn’t give it away.
    The questions carried on for some time, each less helpful than the last, and pretty soon any use we could offer was clearly exhausted. By then there didn’t seem much else to say. Cotter’s money said the shooter was a professional hitter and had made himself good and lost in the maze of back streets and alleys and cellars that were the labyrinthine backbone of our fair city.
    "Right," the detective said at last, bouncing the unlit cigarette off his knuckles, seemingly oblivious to Corg’s blank hostility, my