She walked into the Iron Nail, stopped just inside the door and looked around like she was expecting to find someone waiting for her. Dressed for a day of shopping in stores that take American Express, she looked as out of place as a scoop of strawberry ice cream floating in a bowl of bean soup.

I was sitting at my usual position on the end stool. The only other guy in the place was Bill behind the bar. The regular collection of Iron Nail flies wouldn't come in until after quitting time at their places of daily drudgery.

She walked toward me. For a bad moment I wondered if she might be a client. I let go a double lung full of relief as she slid onto a stool two down from mine without looking again in my direction.

"Do you have wine coolers?" she asked Bill as she put a shoulder strap purse on the counter.

Bill found a wine cooler in the back of one of his refrigerators, opened it, and set it in front of her along with a glass. It was the first time I ever saw Bill serve a drink without collecting payment at the same time.

I took a long look while she sipped on her drink. It had to be natural red hair. The face was classic Nordic beauty. She wasn't model thin, but who likes skinny bimbos? This woman had a superstructure a man could admire.

She turned her head and caught me leering.

"I'm Cindy," she said. "What's your name?"

"Murdauch."

"What kind of Murdauch?"

"Just Murdauch, but I spell it a funny way."

I didn't give her one of my business cards which lists the end stool in the Iron Nail as my office address. Women like her who walk alone into places like the Iron Nail have always got problems I don't want to know about. They are into something too kinky for me to enjoy, or they want to get back at a guy who's cheating, or they are looking for some green beret type they can talk into beating up an abusive husband. It's always bad news for the sucker they recruit to do their bidding, so why advertise to one of them that I'm licensed by the City of Renton, Washington to run a business called "Murdauch Investigations"?

I became a private investigator to win a bet with Homer, one of the Iron Nail's regular flies. He was watching an old Magnum P.I. rerun on the boob tube above the bar when I cracked a joke about his TV private eye heros. When I told him any idiot could get a PI license, Homer angrily bet me five hundred bucks I couldn't get one.

I took the bet, then discovered that Washington State doesn't license private investigators. Anyone can legally claim to be one, but law enforcement authorities don't issue a license to prove it. However, the City of Renton will issue a business license to do any kind of business that isn't illegal. Also, in Washington State, anyone who doesn't have a criminal record can get a license to carry a concealed weapon. So I applied for both the business license and the permit to carry, got some cards printed up, and collected my winnings from Homer who still doesn't know he was suckered.

Since then, I write down private investigator whenever a bureaucrat demands I list an occupation on some government form. It gets me more respect than telling them I'm a professional bum, the career I've followed since the day I won a million dollar lottery prize. The down side is that the business license requires me to provide services to anyone who wants to hire me. As Homer keeps bragging to strangers about the PI he knows, every so often some fool comes looking for me to do some cheap detective work.

"Is Just Murdauch into helping ladies in distress?" she asked me, swinging on her stool as she asked the question so I could get a full frontal view of the merchandise.

"You don't looked distressed to me," I said, feeling the hit in the pit of my stomach telling me my first instincts about why she had walked into the Iron Nail were right.

"Then how about a business deal?"

"Why kind of business?"

"Transportation. I live in Bellevue. If you've got a car, I'll pay you forty bucks to take me home."

"What's wrong with the buses or a taxi?" I asked.

"I'd have to walk ten blocks and wait an hour to catch a bus. In case you haven't noticed, taxis don't cruise the streets in this part of town."

"How come you suddenly need a ride?" I asked.

"I just told a guy I never wanted to see him again," she answered. "I did it real dramatic, like in the movies. I jumped out of the car at a stop light and stalked off. I came in here 'cause I needed a drink. Now I need a ride."

All the time she's telling me this, she's letting the hemline creep up on her crossed legs like a promise that maybe the tip will be the best part of the deal she's offering.

"You always act so dramatic on the spur of the moment?" I asked her.

"When I do, that's when nice things happen to me. You going to take me home and find out if this is one of those times?"

What the hell, I thought as my hormone system overrode my brain cells. I was legally armed and she didn't know it, so what kind of risk was I taking.

"I got a car," I admitted. "Let's go."

"I've got to visit the ladies's room first," she whispered as she paid Bill for the drink. She slung the shoulder bag and marched toward the door to the cans. I went back to watching the game on the tube. There was a long fly ball to right, only I missed the catch because Bill's ancient TV set chose that moment to flicker and roll.

She came out after about the right amount of time for a squat and a hand wash, and we headed for the exit. I opened the door and let her go first, then caught up with her as we walked up the street toward where I had parked my rig.

The fully loaded Explorer I drive was my one extravagance before I realized that a million bucks spread over twenty years is only fifty thousand a year, which isn't all that much income after I pay the federal income tax, front my own medical insurance, and feed an investment program big enough sums to make sure I don't have to go to back to work when the lottery payments stop rolling in.

"You're not what I expected to find in that kind of bar," she told me as I pulled out into traffic and headed for the nearest access to I-405.

"What were you looking for?" I asked.

"I wasn't looking for anything because I didn't expect to find what I like."

"You saying this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship?"

"How about we settle for an interesting afternoon," she said, her husky voice tinkling with invitation.

"Can you pull into the Valley Mall?" she asked a few moments later. "I need to use a cash machine to get the forty bucks I'll owe you."

"I'll take a check," I told her.

"I'll still need some cash for tomorrow. It'll only take a moment."

I pulled into the mall parking area.

"I use First West," she said. "There's a branch around on the other side."

I found a parking spot near the bank's entrance. She left me sitting there while she headed for the ATM on the side of the building. I watched her fiddle with the machine for a while. Obviously angry, she stepped away from the machine and made hand gestures telling me the ATM had eaten her card. She turned around and marched into the bank to demand satisfaction. I turned off the ignition and went to work on the radio dial looking for a station broadcasting music instead of talk show.

The way the car was parked, I didn't see the guy come running up until he grabbed her just before she got back to the car. He was waving a gun in his right hand and carrying a canvas bank pouch in his left. He grabbed her around the waist with the hand holding the bank pouch and pointed the gun at her head as he pushed her toward the back door of my rig. She was wide eyed and terrified, as he shouted for her to open the door. He shoved her into the back seat and shouted at me, "Do what I say or your wife dies." The gunman slipped in beside her and slammed the door.

"Please don't kill me," she whimpered.

"Move this heap! Now!" the man shouted as he settled into the back seat, his gun pressed tightly against Cindy's head.

I started the engine, backed out of the spot, and pulled away.

"Do exactly what I say and you and your wife will both live," he snarled at me. "Take a right and head between those two buildings. When you reach the end of the street, put it in four wheel drive and take it cross country."

I had to jump a curb, drive through a flower bed, cross thirty feet of grass, plow through a line of bushes, and climb up a muddy hillside, but the rig handled it with no problem. Cindy was screaming in terror and both she and the guy holding her hostage were bouncing all over the back seat with the pistol waving in the air. At the end of the wild shortcut he'd ordered me to take, we flew through the air about five feet and landed on I-405 going East.

A half dozen cars scrambled out of our way or braked to screeching halts. I saw frightened faces and angry eyes behind other steering wheels, but I didn't hit anyone as I picked up speed and headed up the highway. I could see both Cindy and the bank robber in the rear view mirror.

She was crying hysterically. He was watching me with cold eyes and a grim smile while he held what looked like a .45 caliber automatic at Cindy's ear. The well stuffed bank pouch sat on Cindy's lap along with her purse.

"Pull off at the next exit," the man with the gun ordered. "Take the second right. Drive the speed limit. No more, no less."

A few more navigational orders and we were heading south on State 169 with none of the cars around us paying us any attention."

"Please don't let him kill me?" Cindy whimpered from the back seat.

"Shut-up bitch!" he told her. "Go two more lights, then turn left at the next street after that," he ordered me.

The last turn took us into a hilly subdivision filled with upper middle class houses hidden in the trees. It was one of those bedrooms communities where no one is ever home during the day time hours. There was no traffic on the streets as we wound up a shady hillside through a stand of old Douglas Firs.

"Park behind that car," he ordered. The only car parked on the street was about a hundred feet in front of me.

I didn't have to use my college education to figure out what came next. Every cop in the state would be looking for my rig by now. They wouldn't be looking for a light blue Chevy sedan. My bank robbing acquaintance wouldn't want to take any witnesses along for the ride in the Chevy. It was time to make my play or die, or, maybe do both.

When I won the bet with Homer, I picked up a second hand Charter Arms .380 automatic at a gun show as a prop to go with my new license to carry a concealed weapon. I intended to pack the pistol for only a couple of weeks to convince Homer I really had become a private eye. It's not much of a gun, but it's small, light, and easily hidden. By the end of the second week, I had discovered what every policemen knows, carrying iron is addictive. After a while, you feel naked and vulnerable when you don't feel it's weight, especially when you walk the streets in a city with a high crime rate. So I've kept carrying it ever since, stuck in my belt under my sport shirt in a cross draw mode.

As I pulled up behind the parked Chevy, I checked the rear view mirror again. He was still pointing the gun at Cindy's head, but his eyes were fixed on me.

I slowed to a stop, took my right hand off the wheel and started reaching for the key to turn off the ignition. Then I zigged with my wrist, dove my hand under my shirt and pulled the little automatic out. I swung the gun around to the right, twisting as I did so in order to aim at the bank robber in the back seat. It was an awkward move and I didn't do it as quickly as I planned it. By the time I had my pistol pointed at him, he had swung his big 45 to point at me. I had to take my foot off the brake to make the twist to take aim. The automatic transmission engaged and the rig jumped forward, ramming the rear end of the Chevy.

That saved my life as the jolt tossed him forward and forced him to miss his shot, the slug punching a neat hole through my front window. I was almost touching his face when I fired the double action shot through his nose.

For the first time since she'd been pushed into the back seat, the woman wasn't screaming or crying. I twisted further around to look at her and saw the surprise on her face twist into something else just before I shot her.

She took longer dying than the guy. I thought for a moment I was going to have to shoot her again as she stared at me, her eyes asking "why?". Her hand had been in her purse when I shot her, but she pulled it out before she died. Her dead fingers still clutched a short barrel .38 revolver.

When I walked into the Iron Nail the next evening, all the regular flies were there plus several other people I didn't recognize. The only empty stool was my office at the end of the bar.

"Did you have to shoot the skirt?" Bill asked as he put the glass of suds in front of me and collected my dollar. "What a waste of prime stuff."

"You saw Murdauch on the TV news," Homer interjected. "She was going to shoot him with that gun she carried in her purse."

"How did you know she was in on it too?" Harley Knowles asked.

"Beautiful women don't walk into the Iron Nail and invite someone as ugly as Murdauch to go home to Bellevue," Red Simpson suggested.

"I heard them talking," Bill said. "Her story sounded believable to me. I figured maybe Murdauch reminded her of her daddy, or something like that."

"So what clue gave her away?" Homer demanded.

"You know how Murphy's cellular phone always shakes the TV screen," I said, referring to the only Iron Nail fly who carried a cellular. "The same thing happened when she went into the can. I figure she was warning her partner she had the sucker hooked on the line."

"That's hindsight," Harley pointed out.

"It still made me suspicious," I told the crowd. "But when she walked out in front of me and turned left, I knew she had something planned more serious than a ride home to Bellevue."

"Left or right, what's the difference?" Homer asked.

"How did she know which way to walk to my rig unless she had been watching me when I parked it? The cops told me she and her boy friend used the MO of car-jacking a getaway rig in other states. I admit I didn't figure it out until I realized how well planned the escape route was. That kind of planning doesn't track with grabbing the first vehicle that comes along and taking a screaming woman hostage along for the ride. By the time we pulled up behind their get-away car, I was sure she had to be part of it. So I shot her too, before she could shoot me."

"How did you guess she had a gun hidden in her purse?" Harry Knowles asked.

"Once she had told her partner she was on her way with a four wheel rig, she had to show up," I explained. "So she had to be carrying something to keep me in line if I got suspicious."

"You're some detective," Homer said with awe.

"Don't tell anyone," I pleaded. "You're building me a reputation I don't want."

[NOTE: We have obtained permission from the author to republish this article on BuildFreedom.]

Copyright 1996--Mack Tanner. This original work may not be copied or distributed in any format without the specific consent of the author.

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