I was sitting with Detective Hammer inside a donut shop on Glendale Avenue. Hammer seemed right at home in a donut shop, and I told him as much.
"Very funny, asshole," he said.
Hammer and I had been working missing cases together for the past few years, ever since I got into the business and had made finding missing children my specialty. Hammer was a lead detective at the LAPD Missing Persons Unit, and he was damned good at what he did. I happened to have a knack for it, too, and we made a good team.
We had also become friends, which is a rarity in the private business. Mostly, cops looked at us private dicks as irritants. Not to mention, I rarely, if ever, went out of my way to make friends, which was partly due to extreme shyness, and partly due to my desire to just be left the hell alone. The fewer the people who knew me, the fewer the people who could remind me about what a fuck-up I was.
Anyway, Detective Hammer and I were sitting in the far corner booth, which gave the detective a good view of the glass door, and the donut case behind me.
"How come I never get to watch the door?" I asked.
"Because you're not a real cop," he said.
"How do I know you're really watching?" I asked. "And not just planning your next donut?"
"Because I'm a highly trained detective in the LAPD. I can do both," he said. "So far, the coast is clear, and I'm thinking I'll have a maple bar next."
And he did just that. A moment later, he returned with said donut and a chocolate milk.
I said, "When you're done with that, there's cubes of sugar over there that you can snack on."
"Maybe," he said, and I wasn't entirely sure he was joking. "So which case are you working on?"
I told him about it, although I left out the part about Veronica being a vampire slayer. Which was probably for the best, since I wouldn't have been able to say it with a straight face, anyway.
Hammer nodded and took a bite of his donut. "The runaway who's been living with the old couple."
I nodded.
"We put this case on the back burner," he said. "We've got more important things to do than look for a runaway who ran away again."
"Or so it seems."
"She'll turn up alive and well, trust me. Probably out on some party boat in Havasu. She'll come back to the old folks when she's partied out." He finished his donut and sucked on his fingers. "Anyway, to put the old lady's mind at ease, I told her to go see you, since you've got nothing better to do."
"That, and I happen to be the best."
"Maybe, maybe not. There's a guy here in town who gives you a run for your money. An old guy. Looks a little like Elvis."
"Lucky bastard."
"Tell me about it. Anyway, he's pretty good, too. Maybe better than you."
"That's one thing I don't mind being second best at. Maybe he and I could touch bases sometime."
"Sure," said Hammer. "I'll give you his number. Then you and Elvis can solve crimes together - call yourselves Starsky and Hubba-Hubba."
"When you're done clowning around," I said, "maybe we can think about finding a missing girl. And I don't give a shit if you think she's just another runaway. Even so, runaways find themselves in more shit than anyone. She needs help, no matter."
"Fine. Quit busting my balls."
"Did you do any work on this case?"
"Enough to know that it looks like she skipped town."
"What else do you know?"
"That's it. I told grandma to put together as much information as possible on the girl and to give it to you."
"She did."
"Then you now have twice as much info as we've got."
We were quiet. As Hammer was about to bite into his maple bar, his bristly mustache sort of quivered in anticipation.
"When you eat," I said, "Your cop mustache quivers like a randy mouse."
"Does it do it in a sexy way or a creepy way?"
"A disgusting way."
"Probably why my old lady never sleeps with me." He wiped his mouth. "Did Gladys mention, um, anything else to you?"
"Maybe," I said.
"Something, you know, odd?"
"Maybe."
He said, "You ask me, she's off her rocker."
"Maybe."
"You got anything else to say other than maybe? And if you say maybe again, I'm going to go ape shit on you."
I grinned. "She might have mentioned something about the girl being into some weird goth shit."
"No, it wasn't weird goth shit," said Hammer. "And might have and maybe is the same fucking word, asshole."
I grinned again.
"What did she tell you?" I asked.
"That the girl was some sort of a vampire slasher."
"Slayer," I said. "Vampire slayer."
"Thank you for clearing that fucking up," said Hammer. "Now I can rest well tonight knowing I have it fucking straight."
"So what does your gut say about this case," I said. In this business, instincts were everything, and we often asked this question to each other.
Hammer, for the first time in quite a while, looked legitimately perplexed; his mustache even sagged a little. "I'll admit, it's weird enough that it's worth looking into, which is why I sent the old lady your way."
"That, and because I'm the best."
He ignored me and went on, ticking points off on his fingers as he spoke, "So, this girl Veronica shows up at the old lady's door one day, bleeding and hurt, but won't tell Gladys where she's from or how old she is, and warns the old lady not to call the cops or she's gone. The old folks are so desperate for excitement in their pathetic lives that they happily take on this degenerate."
"Way to look on the bright side," I said.
"There ain't no bright side to what I do," he said.
"I do it, too," I said.
"But not as good."
"Go on."
He said, "So they take this girl in, treat her as if she's their own for a few years. Meanwhile she disappears every now and then to hunt werewolves."
"Vampires."
"Whatever. Look, someone here is clearly nuts."
"Nuts or not, we have a missing girl, who's most likely a minor."
"I still say she's a runaway. A runaway of a runaway is low priority for a prestigious law enforcement agency like the LAPD."
"But not for me."
"Do I really need to answer that?" he said. "Anyway, since you get paid to do this shit, you're the lucky bastard who gets to look into it further."
"Yeah," I said. "Lucky me."