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    Janus: Private Eyes
    Janus: Private Eyes
    Janus: Private Eyes
    Ebook153 pages2 hours

    Janus: Private Eyes

    By J.D. Blair

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    About this ebook

    This is a collection of stories about a bent and disgraced San Francisco narcotics detective who was wrongly drummed off the force by fellow detectives Janus fingered for taking mob payoffs. Janus ends up on the streets of San Francisco, becomes homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol. He has a run in with some toughs that brings him close to death and begins a turn around in his life. With the help of a former mentor Janus ultimately starts his own detective agency and takes on mob bosses and befriends a powerful political figure that more or less keeps Janus on a retainer. He becomes embroiled in cases of art theft, the murder of the son of a powerful San Francisco family and is nearly killed chasing a notorious Mexican drug lord.
    Janus is an old school detective fighting modern day crime. He is brash, witty and cunning. Is he dumb enough to enter the dark side? Of course he is.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateSep 7, 2016
    ISBN9781483580517
    Janus: Private Eyes

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      Book preview

      Janus - J.D. Blair

      Eyes

      CHAPTER ONE

      During the night, between trains, the station was silent except for echoes of coins hitting cold tiling and wine bottles clattering in the far corners of the empty station. My alcove was lined with my sleeping bag recycled from the black bitch Dewana. The bag smelled of her cheap perfume handed down by a doorman at the Emporium, payment for sexual favors given out in the alley. For a sample of Midnight Embrace she would do anything he asked. Last New Year’s Eve Dewana was killed when a train picked her off the platform, that’s what the police report says anyway. Some say she was pushed.

      Home is San Francisco and for a time I staked out my little niche in the station near the ATM machines where the light rail system spits out commuters every ten minutes and heat rises up from the tracks in stinking thermals. I belonged to the breed of unwashed homeless scratching out an existence around the city. My name is Janus Payette…J-A-N-U-S. My parents had a thing for Roman mythology; Janus was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings and that pretty much spells out my life.

      In a previous incarnation I was a detective working narcotics, which is about half a notch above being homeless. As a Narc you don’t have many friends and enemies are behind every door and my connection to the God of doors gave me no special license. Making a long sordid story short, some of my enemies wore badges like mine and when I blew the whistle on a partner taking payoff money from a mob boss the brass sided with my partner and I was shoved into the gutter. Since then I’ve been a drunk, a drifter and the guy on Powell Street holding the sign, Will Work For Food. It’s a pretty good fit.

      On a chilly July morning with sea breezes smelling of kelp being sucked into the tubes, I was lulled to sleep by the rhythmic pulse of the station when I was jerked awake. There was a knife at my throat and a hand that smelled like anchovies over my mouth. My head was covered with a pillowcase, someone grabbed me by my ankles and I was swinging upside down like a throttled Christmas turkey. At one in the morning it’s possible to hear trains arriving from a long distance, the squeal of the wheels is propelled through the tubes on a hot rush of air that precedes the cars as they enter. I heard a train approaching figuring it was about four minutes out. The pillowcase was ripped from my head and I was being dangled over the edge of the platform by a guy the size of a silverback gorilla with a sneer that could chill a tumbler of neat bourbon. He laughed as I squirmed. A blast of warm air struck me; there was the screech of wheels on track and lights from the arriving train reflected off the tunnel walls. The rancid smell of rubber and high voltage filled my nostrils and I knew in my battered lost soul that I would die that night.

      The ape dropped me and I glanced off the side of the platform and bounced onto the tracks. I squeezed myself into a crevice carved out of the track wall for electrical fittings and as the train sped past me the nose of the lead car brushed my pant leg. Ten cars raced by just inches from my face blew dust into my eyes and I licked fine grains of rubber and dirt from my lips. No thanks to the simian mugger who threw me over, the train to Daly City would be on time. After the last car passed I picked up a stopper from a perfume bottle lying next to the tracks and savored a whiff of Dewana and Midnight Embrace.

      I scrambled off the tracks and returned to my alcove. Everything was gone, the sleeping bag, my shoes, the cardboard box that held my collection of Grateful Dead posters, and a stack of Playboy magazines. I held the stopper to my nose and breathed in the aroma once more then headed off to explore my options on Market Street at 2:30 in the morning.

      You never know which of life’s smack-downs will get you to turn the corner but that run-in marked a turning point for me and I decided it was more interesting to be alive than dead and I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t be taken advantage of again; pretty heady philosophy for a bent cop scraping the dregs out of life. I was going to take a stance because I was a human being and human beings shouldn’t prey on other human beings.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Charlie Lamply unlocked and pushed open the door to a one room flat along the Panhandle near Golden Gate Park and handed me the keys. Charlie was an ex-cop who in his retirement took up real estate. As a black cop it took him twice as long to make Lieutenant, but he did it. When I was kicked off the force and snorting the heavy stuff Charlie took me under his wing and got me into rehab. He still watched out for me and heard about my run-in with the bastard in the subway and brought me to the vacated flat on the edge of the Haight.

      It should give you enough room, kid.

      It’s perfect Charlie but how do I pay for it?

      Did I ask you to pay me? Just don’t go rappin’ about it on the street. There isn’t room here for any more and with the housing shortage in this town, word got out I was giving out freebies they’d have my ass. And, oh yeah, get a job.

      For the first time in months I had a real roof over my head and I would try to return the favor somehow.

      My new home was the front room on the second floor of a two story Victorian. A hooker named Penny, another of Charlie’s projects, took up the rest of the floor. A back bedroom was converted into a shared kitchen and there was a small bathroom down the hall past the stairs.

      I set up house and actually had furniture of sorts, some scarred up stuff dumped from a North Beach apartment and a lamp handed down by the guy at the mission. I had a ragged shag rug on the floor and a bay window that overlooked Oak Street. It was a far cry from the subway. I stretched out on the rug and listened to street sounds pulsate through the drafty windows, actual signs of life passing by the flat, none of the mechanical hiss, screech and rumble of the light rails. I put my ear to the floor. From the bottom apartment…a baby’s muffled cry, the clatter of dishes hitting a sink, the garbled prattle of television. I closed my eyes to the new melodies.

      I woke at two in the morning still enjoying my floor and my eyes keyed on the rusty light fixture swaying slightly in the drafts blowing through the aging flat. There was action on the street but none of the heavy stuff…no trolley clatter or bus traffic at that time of the morning. What woke me was a scratching at my door and I scrambled to my feet wondering who the hell knew I was there. I listened through the door but couldn’t hear anything but the scratching so I opened it slightly and in the dim lighting in the hall was a female figure, shaking and ready to fall she asked me for help. I opened the door wider and Penny fell into the room and I attempted to catch her but we both fell to the floor with her on top of me, she would have shattered her jaw for sure if I hadn’t broken her fall. I squirmed from under her and flicked on the light, she was out cold. Her face was bloodied; she had scratches on her shoulders and what looked like cigarette burns just above the top of her bra. Her halter-top was wrapped around her neck in a knot. Under better circumstances Penny was a beauty with pretty blue eyes and sandy brown hair streaked with blonde. She was a cut above the average as hookers go. I closed the door then opened it again just a crack to see if anyone was in the darkened hall. I took two steps, looked down the stairwell, then retreated to the room and locked the door.

      I put my head to Penny’s chest, her heartbeat was weak and thready; she was in shock. Whoever had done this really knew what they were doing. I grabbed a tee shirt from a cardboard box, soaked it in warm water and cleaned her face as best I could. Her eyes were almost swollen shut and there was dried blood in her right ear…maybe a busted eardrum.

      I cradled her head in my hand Jesus Penny. Come on sweetheart, talk to me.

      Her bloodied lips quivered and her head lifted slightly. Janus, he tried to kill me.

      That’s it Penny, talk to me honey, what happened, who did this?

      It was Tiger. I wasn’t talking’ back Janus. I wasn’t being a smart ass.

      Tiger Sampson was Penny’s pimp. I knew him and he wasn’t known on the street as a bad ass and supposedly played fair with his girls. Something or someone must have Tiger’s feet to the flames to make him take off on one of his girls.

      OK Penny OK, take it easy.

      I always been good to him. Why would he do this?

      Sweetheart I’m going to go get some help, I’ll lock the door. You rest and don’t try to move.

      I covered her with a blanket went out the back door and slipped into the darkness on Stanyan and made my way to the police substation at the edge of the park. The cop on the duty desk shot me a sneer as I approached the counter.

      I’m trying to get hold of Lieutenant Charlie Lamply.

      Lamply retired. He turned in his shield a year ago.

      I know that but it’s important I find him. It’s a personal thing. You know his home phone number?

      "Wait a second pal, who the hell are you? I can’t give out nobody’s number to anybody comes in off the

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