Harry Macy stood at the gate to where filght 717 direct from Los Angeles to Boston was supposed to land. As the first passengers began to disembark he slid off to the side, waiting for the one he wanted. He sized up everyone coming off the plane before grimacing at the force of habit. Eventually he saw him-he was hard to miss, tall dark and handesome would be the only fitting description and all the women on the plane seemed to have noticed that quite well.
"Harry!" The young man exclaimed when he saw his friend. "How are you! You're looking well."
"As well as an eighty year old grifter can look Mick. Or Remington. Or whatever the hell you call yourselves these days."
"Remington will do just fine mate."
"So you're a bigwig now. A fancy schmancy PI. A mover and shaker it looks like. You know how many california newspapers have at least three articles about you?" Steele grinned.
"Probably most of them."
"Right in one." They walked a ways until they reached the parking lot where Harry hailed them both a cab. He gave the cabbie an adress and leaned back, staring out the window.
"You're awfully quiet mate. Something wrong?"
"Try I'm out a quarter of a million and I'm in a town I have a particular dislike for." Steele gave him a questioning glance.
"I thought you grew up here?" The old man shrugged.
"I did."
"You always used to rave about it. The city, the-Red Sox are they? The clam chowder. And if I recall correctly, you most commonly raved about this little chineese place you used to visit every tuesday-"
"Dim Sung. I know. But hey, people change, and so do their tastes." The taxi pulled to a halt outside of a seedier looking area of Boston, and Harry quickly paid off the cabbie before leading Steele up the stairs.
They paused at one of the doors. "Just go in, and back me up on this. Look like a dectective, threaten to arrest him. Make it look like you have some real power, and tell him all will be good if I get my money." Steele nodded, and Harry knocked on the door, frowning when the first rap sent it inwards. "That's never a good sign." He said, peeking in the doorway. "Bart?" He called to an empty apartment.
They both cautiously entered, and looked around. Harry cautiously looked around the small kitchenette before he was alerted by Steele calling out from the bedroom. "Harry, I don't think you're going to be getting your money. Not from Bart here anyway." Harry cautiously trod over, careful not to touch anything that might tie him to the place. He found Steele crouched over Bart's body, standing just outside a pool of blood.
"My god. What happened?"
"It looks like someone had a grudge against Bart here and decided to shoot him for it."
"We should call the police. You should call the police."
"Why me?" Steele questioned turning around to look at the old man. "Don't tell me you're in trouble with the law again. Is that why you don't want to be here?"
"No, no, no, nothing of the sort." He replied, backing towards the door. "Not with the cops, no trouble with them, but I still would prefer to be far far away from a dead body when you call them. Tell you what, you mentioned Dim Sung, it's two blocks away, I'll meet you there in, oh, about half an hour?" With that the old man was out the door, leaving Steele alone to call the police.
He searched around the small apartment until he found the phone, picked it up, and dialed 911. If Harry's story checked out, there was nothing he needed to worry about, and he knew that he was clean, he had his plane ticket to prove it, he couldn't just leave a dead man lying there to rot.
His thoughts about what he was going to say were interrupted by a young man who looked like he should still be in high school barging in, flashing a badge. "Detective Woody Hoyt, Boston PD."
"R-" He started to say his name, but quickly changed it at the last second. "Richard Blaine." He said simply.
"You the one the called the cops?" Hoyt asked him, and he nodded. The young dectective walked into the bedroom where the body lay. "You touch him at all?"
"Only to see if he was still alive." Steele contemplated making a run for it. His instinct told him he should but smoething made him want to say-a sense of wanting to do the right thing for a poor man who wound up murdered.
Hoyt came back after checking the body. "How did you know the deceased?"
"We uh-" Steele searched for something to say. "Were buisness associates." He finally came up with after far too long of a pause for his liking.
"Well Mr. Blaine, we're going to need a contact number in case we need your help, maybe you saw something that could give us a hand."
"I just landed, I was just stopping by to see Bart to ask if he had any recommendations on hotels." He gestured to the overnight bag still in the doorway. "Tell you what, I'll call you as soon as I find a place to say. Or even better yet, you can suggest a hotel to me."
"Well, I stayed in the Mariott when I first came here, it's a nice place." He admitted.
"Great, that's where I'll be then, I'll give you a call as soon as I check in. What did you say your name was? Hoyt?"
"Woody Hoyt." the baby faced dectective said, handing him a card with his name and number.
Steele picked up his bag and beat a hasty retreat. He was interrupted however by almost running into two men. Steele glanced at them quickly, and immediately felt his hackles rise looking at one of them, and he saw the other man do the same. He stared into the young man's brown eyes.
They were about the same age, although the other man had a good three inches on Steele, and both had dark black hair, although Steele's carefully cropped coiffure was no match for the other man's limp almost greasy looking long mane, and there was something about him that put Steele on his guard-something that he recognized, that sent off a faint alarm in the back of his head. He knew this man from somwhere, but he couldn't think of where, and wherever it was, he knew that this man spelled trouble for him.
The other man, perhaps, surprised Steele even more than the first-not because he put Steele on his guard, but because he bared a striking resemblence to the man who had just hightailed it out of the apartment moments earlier. He flashed a badge to the officer at the door that read County Coroner and he had the sudden idea of just why his friend was so anxious to not be seen around any dead bodies.