A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery
by Mike Servante
i
—Ever work for a private investigator before?
—I can’t honestly say that I have.
—But you’ve had experience working in an office, answering phones, typing?
—It’s all there in the resume.
—Yes, of course. So why don’t you tell me in your own words.
—I was a receptionist for a law firm, Stag, Stagger,& Staggered. I answered phones, took messages, routed calls, sorted mail and put it in the appropriate mailboxes. And did some light typing. The legal secs did the important stuff.
—Just a minute, did you just say legal sex?
—No, no, legal secretaries, that’s what they were called, legal secs, legal secretaries.
—Alright, go on.
—The firm had an investigator on retainer, but I never saw him. Only his mail.
—Only his mail what?
“His mail, envelopes, packages, legal briefs, that sort of thing.”
—I see, mail, briefs, packages.
—But that was a while back. I haven’t been in an office environment since I got married.
—You’re married?
—Was. Widow.
—Oh, I’m sorry. My condol. . . .
—It was several years ago.
—Yes.
—And I’ve had to rejoin the workforce.
—Your husband, uh, Mr. Pansy?
—Corrigan, Jake Corrigan. Pansy is my maiden name.
—Ok. Mind if I call you Saundra? Or Sandy?
—If it comes with a pay check, I’m ok with that, though I’m not particularly fond of Sandy.
—Pay check, right, good you brought that up. If you were to accept this assignment I can only use you parttime, three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, eight till noon, I will pay you for your time each week on Friday. I hope those are enough hours for you. Maybe once business picks up we can add more time.
—That’s fine. Like I said I’m rejoining the workforce after years of being a housewife. I’d like to take it slow. Plus I get Jake’s pension.
—Oh, yes, pension, that’s good. What did your husband do?
—He was a cop.
—Really? That’s very interesting, a cop?
—He never talked to me about the job. Said he didn’t want to depress me.
—I see. That was thoughtful.
—I have a question. Do I call you Don or Mr. Coyote?
—Boss is fine.
I’m a good judge of character. She was in her late forties, going gray pixie cut that went with the pixie face, dangling silver earrings, intense blue eyes, mascara thick eyelashes, not so subtle green shadowed and precisely drawn eyebrows. Her lipstick was a synthetic shade of orange and probably applied with a palette knife.
What choice did I have? The only other applicant was a high school girl who had arrived with her mother who wisely stayed in the car. She’d snapped her gum while looking around the small office, bewildered, pointed to the typewriter, and asked, “What’s that?”
This woman in the colorful summer dress and gold brocade shrug appeared evasive and reluctant when I asked about her experience. Anyone can write a resume, I wanted to get the depth of her understanding by how she used her words and if she was familiar with the nomenclature.
She brought up sex almost immediately. I don’t want to say that I have that effect on women, but I am not uninitiated in the ways of the world. When I questioned her bringing it up, she covered skillfully and made it out to be a misunderstanding on my part. I don’t make those kinds of mistakes. And as if to further tease, she brought up male briefs and packages. I wasn’t born yesterday. Packages, that was just blatant.
Next she tried the pity angle. Widow. What was I supposed to say? How did he die? And she coldly brushed off my expression of sympathy. I could tell she was desperate to get the job, her repeated emphasis on the need to return to the workforce, but maybe at her age it’s a challenge, and she’s desperate.
I guess that’s something I’ve never known, I come from money. My grandfather was a jeweler, from the Ukraine, one of three Koyoskozko brothers who were headed to Alaska during the gold rush to claim their fortune. Grandpa jumped ship in San Francisco, tired of puking his guts at every swell of a wave. He apprenticed to a jeweler, a fellow countryman, and learned the business. With the ’06 quake, the business was destroyed. Like many made homeless by the catastrophe, he headed north, following the circumference of San Pablo Bay until he reached the wet lands on the northwest side of the bay once owned by General Vallejo. There on a river that drained into the bay sat a relatively untouched settlement known as Petaluma. He took it to be an Indian name. He was successful, changed his own name to something easier to pronounce, Coyote, though at the time he didn’t realize its import as a mythical figure in the lore of his adopted country. Eventually he had jewelry outlets in every major burg in the valley. My father inherited the business and became even more prosperous by investing in real estate. When he died I inherited millions. He’d eased out of the jewelry business a while ago although I had worked for him as a courier when I was going to the University in San Francisco. I often carried satchels of very valuable jewels in the trunk of my Impala as if they were nothing more than a bag full of old tennis togs. I had a permit to carry, then, and still do.
That woman is wily, I’ll give her that. When I politely asked if I could address her by her first name she immediately turned it into an offer of a job.
I don’t know who he thought he was, thinning red hair, tall and gangly with quite a beak, too. He dressed conservatively for this neck of the woods, slacks, open collar shirt. I’ll admit I was desperate. After Jake’s passing, I had to keep up the house payments and that meant cutting corners on other necessities. Besides, being housebound as a homemaker for a couple dozen years, I was ready to re-experience life as a single woman.
My husband used to say I was a ditz, but what did he know, he was a lummox. Jake worked as a Napa PD patrol officer till he dropped dead at Swank’s Steakhouse in Santa Rosa. The red meat in his gut didn’t agree with the red meat of his heart. As someone from his family said at the wake, “He larded up.” Certainly no one on my side of the family would have said it, out loud, at any rate. And it was true that the slim handsome police cadet I married turned into a wide load, pot-bellied, booze swilling porker right before my eyes. The sorrier he felt for himself, the more pounds he put on, and the meaner he got. He was an accident that didn’t wait long to happen.
I’m from around here, born, bred, and schooled. My folks and their folks and their folks before them were pioneers in these parts, chicken ranching, sheep and cattle, apples and prunes, they did just about anything that had to do with growing or grazing. Of course Coyote Jewelers was known far and wide. My wedding ring came from their showroom in Sonoma, or as my dad used to call it, Sonombula because it was a sleepy little town back then, before it got overrun by grapevines and all the snobby money, snooty attitude, and high prices that followed. Growing grapes was suddenly an art when all it was really was just good farming. That’s my stock. I’m not afraid of honest work and I expect to be respected for doing it.
I knew enough to be on my guard, having worked as a waitress while I was taking secretarial courses at the local business school. Guys always bring sex up and then when you call them on it, they act all offended like and pretend that’s not what they meant. Happened at the office, too. And though I hadn’t expected it to come up in the job interview, there it was. Everyone knows a legal sec is short for legal secretary just as a para is short for paralegal. If I hadn’t got married I think I would have tried for paralegal, get the training and all.
In the meantime, I needed to get work and his acting like a jerk wasn’t making it easy. I wasn’t going to catch the drift? Mail, package, briefs. I come from a big family, brothers, cousins, uncles, all of them brain in the gutter. I’ve heard it all. And I wasn’t going to fall for it. If that’s what he thought, he had another think coming. Saundra Pansy was never a pushover whatever you thought of the name.
Guess he got the drift. Boss said I was to start Monday, eight sharp.
ii
—It’s not electric?
—Um no, but it’s authentic.
—It looks like it weighs a ton.
—It’s a 1939 Royal KMM with the patented Magic Margin system. See, if you hold down the right or left margin lever and slide the carriage to the desired location you ‘magically’ set the margin. It still has the original round glass-topped keys. I paid $5 for it at a flea market, and it still works as well as when it was new. I even ordered extra ribbons.
—Right. . . ribbons. That’s quite a museum piece.
—Oh, it is perfectly functional.
—And this lever?
—That’s the carriage return.”
—Ok, now I remember seeing a video of one being used when I was in business school. We practiced typing on electric typewriters.
—But you assured me you could type!
—Oh yeah, no problem, if it’s qwerty, I let my fingers do the walking, and I can do it blindfolded. I can also do Gregg but it’s been a while so I might be a little rusty.
—Greg?
—Yeah, you know, the shorthand guy.
—Shorthand?
—Transcription. Like I said, it’s been a while.
—Good, good, for now typing will be enough. And this is an elegant machine. You shouldn’t have any problem with it, freshly oiled and cleaned.
—You don’t have a computer?
—No I don’t believe in computers. But look, I even had some stationary printed.
—Stationary?
—I hired a graphics firm to design the letterhead and the logo. Don Coyote & Associates, Private Investigations. I think the howling coyote in the oval frame like that is quite well done.
—That looks like a wolf.
—No, no. I’ve been assured that it is, in fact, a coyote.
—Have you ever seen a coyote in the fur?
—I’ve seen pictures. Many pictures.
—Well, alrighty then, if that’s the case.
—Oh, no, no case yet, but I’m hoping in the near future to develop some leads, lure clients in need of investigative services.
—And in the meantime is there any correspondence you’d like me to write, calls you’d like me to make, appointments you want me to schedule, dictation? I’m ready to get down to business.
—Good, and I don’t know if I have to point this out, but that is what is called a rotary dial on the telephone. It’s a 1937 Stromberg Carlson, very rare.
—It works? I thought it was just part of the décor. Like the typewriter.
—It is in perfect working order, as functional as the day it rolled off the assembly line. It has the original bell. Wait till you hear it!
—I’ll assume it doesn’t take pictures.
—Of course not. The telephone is for the ear, not the eyes. This is not some Dick Tracy outfit with wrist radios and video phones. Don Coyote, Private Eye, is nothing if not authentic!
—Ok, you’re the boss. I’m ready to get to work. I just don’t want to waste your time and money sitting around not doing anything.
—Well, first of all you need to get familiar with the type of job you’ll be doing and probably the best way to do that is to begin by creating a catalog of the files and reference books in my office.
—Like a librarian?
—I have a collection of rare pulp fiction magazines and obscure post war crime fiction paperbacks. Oh, and my film noir library, private eye memorabilia, crime scene photos. I would recommend that you read a few of those novels to get a feel for the business. I’m thinking along the lines of Mike Hamm. . . .
—You’re going to pay me to read?
—Well, no, I see it as something you could take home and do. To bring you up to speed. A private eye’s secretary requires specialized knowledge.
—So I would be doing more than just typing and filing? That sound like I’d need specialized training. On company time.
—Are you going to answer that?
—Don Coyote & Associates, Private Investigations, how can I direct your call? One moment please. It’s for you.
I don’t know how to say this. My expectations might have been too unrealistic. She chews gum. Maybe she was nervous. I suspect that she is rather unqualified and I will eventually have to let her go. As my father used to quote my grandfather as saying, “The biggest problem in running a business is employees.” She is rather plain in a well-scrubbed sort of way. And maybe someone should have told her that colorful plastic jewelry was no longer as popular as it might have been, if ever, in the fifties, say. And even though she was made up to match the bangles and bracelets, she couldn’t hide her lack of refinement when I showed her to her desk.
That typewriter is a classic machine, indestructible, a workhorse. I couldn’t believe my luck. It was from an estate sale, everything had pretty much sold at auction except for a few odd items, like gooseneck lamps, and the old typewriter. One of the heirs was selling them at a flea market where, on occasion, I browse, looking for old magazines and paperbacks. A hand printed sign propped on the machine read BOAT ANCHOR? $5 or B/O. Finding a typewriter repair shop and restoring it was probably the hardest and most expensive part. Even the repairman had never encountered this old of a model, a 1939 Royal. His experience had been mainly on lightweight plastic chassis portables and dreadnaught electric office machines. He also repaired watches, something else experiencing technological displacement.
As soon as I questioned her competence she immediately brought the conversation around to sex. She said she was alright with quirky, and then something that she had done blindfolded with someone named Greg involving shorthand, whatever kinky fetish that was, but I could just imagine. I can only assume she was desperate. She kept saying that it had been a while. Then she brought up computers. And that’s a sore spot with me. I find them dehumanizing. Unfortunately I can become quite irrational when confronted with the issue. I deflected by showing the stationary I had printed but she wanted to make an argument about whether it was a wolf or a coyote depicted in the oval of the logo. I can see that she has a petty side.
I definitely got the feeling that she was in over her head. She was undoubtedly confused by the rotary dial on the telephone. She tried to laugh it off by making a joke. I have very little patience with mockery especially when it pertains to the degradation of values under assault from the techno sphere. I’ll admit it, I’m a technophobe.
And when I suggested that she educate herself for the role she would play as a secretary to a private investigation firm, she turned it into a labor negotiation. I was about to assert my prerogative as the employer when the phone rang. I’ll admit, she did answer the call quite professionally.
Hoo boy! I didn’t think I realized what I was getting into. That machine, a manual typewriter, was carpel tunnel syndrome waiting to happen. I thought he was kidding. Maybe a monitor would cleverly pop up from a hidden compartment on the mahogany desk. No such luck.
I had to remind him again that I was qualified as a secretary, I’d even included a copy of my diploma from Empire Business College with my resume. I found a clean copy that my crazy friend Lola Lamont hadn’t altered the heading of the certificate to Vampire Business College though in truth that’s what we all called it—they didn’t suck you blood, just your money. But from the look on his face, it might have been TMI, too much information.
Then he trots out this stationary with a heading like it was from a comic book. A picture of a coyote, he says, in a clunky oval frame. It was a wolf. I’ve seen coyotes numerous times. Even shot one on my uncle Brad’s sheep ranch over by Two Rock. I know what a coyote looks like. They’re vermin. But he’d seen pictures.
And speaking of pictures, he had to point out the antique telephone like I haven’t ever seen pictures on ones almost exactly like this one. My gran even had one on her bookshelf, used it as a bookend to hold up her collection of picture albums. He got a little touchy at my joke about taking pictures so I’m going to guess he had his funny bone surgically removed.
But I gotta hand it to the guy, his setup is right out of an old black and white movie which I can’t watch because without the color, there’s no meaning, and I lose interest real fast. The place is on Western just off the main drag in what used to be the original family jewelry store, a three story brick walk-up. The downstairs showroom is now an antique store so he doesn’t have to go far for his décor. His office is on the second floor, the door at the end of the hallway at the top of the stairs. It’s one of those old wooden doors with a frosted glass panel on the upper half and in gold lettering it says Don Coyote & Associates. I haven’t a clue who the associates are but I figure I’ll find out soon enough. Inside is a small reception area with a couple of old chairs up against the wall and across from the big mahogany desk where I’m supposed to work. There’s another door on which is written in the same gold lettering, Don Coyote, Private Investigator, and call me crazy, but I’m guessing that’s where the files and reference books are that he wants me to catalog. And read.
He has another think coming if he thought I was going to take work home. If I learned one thing from Jake Corrigan, it’s don’t take the job home. And the only thing I’m going to flip when I get there is the channels. Even McDonald’s pays you when they train you to flip burgers. I could see that that was going to be a bone of contention. If you want me to do a special job, train me. I’m a fast learner. I was about to let him know where I was coming from when the phone rang. It startled me at first. It was loud. And it was a real bell, not an electronic facsimile. I picked up the handset and immediately went into receptionist mode. It was a woman’s voice. She was sobbing, “Help me, oh please, Don Coyote.”
Dime Pulp 
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