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carlyinromeTITLE: The Wrong Man
RATING: R, language
FANDOM: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
CHARACTERS: Harry Lockhart, Perry van Shrike
SUMMARY: Harry pretends to be Perry to take a case. For some reason, this does not go smoothly.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written for jackycomelately for the 2012
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yuletide. Set post-film.THANKS: To my intrepid beta reader,
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formanymiles. You are the wind beneath my wings. Or something less gay. IDK.Chapter One: The Dame
You know what they don’t tell you in the movies? Getting shot requires a shit ton of physical therapy. Like, a lot. In the movies, it’s always like, get shot, dramatic music, brief montage of hospital recovery, 100% better. False. I mean, I got shot in the chest and I still had to do all these dumb exercises. I mean, it’s your chest. If you move your chest muscles, do you notice? I couldn’t even do it on purpose before this fucking therapy. And Perry. Perry was unconscious a long fucking time, and so not only did he have the whole getting shot thing to get over, he had to get better from all this nerve damage caused by being out so long. He was on that fucking cane for forever, and it was a long time before his right side wasn’t weak. (Part of his therapy for the right side weakness involved him squeezing things in his right hand. I told him to imagine it was a cock in his fist; that seemed to cheer him up a little. Though his therapist asked me not to come back after that.)
Anyway, remember Perry telling me to drop the whole Johnny Gossamer mystery shit before I got him killed? Well, neither did I, until Perry started reminding me of it on, like, a daily basis. So yeah, I felt a little guilty, after kind of getting him shot and all. Which is why I started helping him around the office. Okay, that and he offered me a place to stay after the hospital kicked me out, and he was the only one, since apparently Harmony only like likes me when we’re in mortal danger. Go figure.
I was only supposed to do clerical stuff, like filing and answering the phone—no touching of the guns, Perry was very specific and loud about that. One time, I was just looking at the gun cabinet, not even touching it, and Perry actually thumped me over the head with a rolled up newspaper, like I was the fucking dog or something. Unbelievable. He’s so fucking high-strung, when he gets in these tizzies I expect him to snap and roll up like a window blind. I’d make a what’s up his ass joke, but with the gay thing and all, it’d be too easy.
Anyway, Perry’s a work through the pain guy if there ever was one, so as soon as they let him out of the hospital, he was seeing clients again. Which meant that I was working through my pain, doing Perry’s busy work. Not that I could complain much, since Perry paid my hospital bills when they sent the bill collectors after me. And of all the things he bitches about, and bitching at me is his favorite pastime, that never comes up. So maybe a little collating is the least I can do.
Like I said, Perry only trusted me to the office side of things, so it was a while before we actually worked a case together. And of course it was all my fault.
So Perry was at the physical therapist doing his pretend dick squeezes one afternoon, when this woman comes into the office. I don’t want to be a pig or anything, but Whoa. Man. Legs forever, and a great pair of . . . earrings. These huge diamond things, all shiny and sparkly and just making my fingers itch. But I promised Perry I wouldn’t steal anymore shit, it’s my New Years resolution and everything. I was dialing in to check the voicemail, or at least I thought I was; I was at the menu when Miss Thing came in, so I kind of messed it up. Gee, I’m stopping my description of this seriously gorgeous woman to comment on my ineptitude on the phone. Do you think that’ll come back?
“Mr. van Shrike, my name is Marguerite Day and I need your help.”
And God, if the way she looked wasn’t enough, she had this accent, I can’t even describe it. Just silky and gorgeous and going right to my dick. So I was having a little trouble concentrating, which may explain what happened next. (Though when I suggested that to Perry, he just smacked me upside the head and grumbled “idiot” under his breath.)
I slowly brought the receiver down from my face. “I—well—I’m not—Mr. van Shrike is . . . um, me. At your service.”
Chapter Two: The Case
So I hung up the phone, and Miss Day sat in the chair on the other side of Perry’s desk. And she crossed her legs, right, and I thought for a second there was going to be a Basic Instinct moment—shut up, like it never crossed your mind—but instead her dress just slid up her thigh a little more, which was fine by me.
“Do you mind if I smoke, Mr. van Shrike?”
I tried to sit in Perry’s chair all casual like, but it’s on rollers, and I guess my butt missed the chair a little, so instead we both kind of just rolled across the floor, me half-bent over.
“Uh, sure,” I said. “Go nuts.”
She arched an eyebrow as she slipped a cigarette between her perfect porn star lips.
“You are not what I was expecting, Mr. van Shrike,” she said.
“You know what, call me Perry,” I said. “Or Per. Or Per-Bear. I love that.”
Then I tried to put my feet up on Perry’s desk, suave, you know, and that made the rollers on Perry’s stupid chair go crazy again, wheeling me back several feet away from the desk. I inched back, holding onto the chair like it was going to buck me off, which, fuck me, it probably wanted to. This chair was obviously loyal to Perry, and didn’t appreciate me impersonating him. Well, fuck you, chair! You’re inanimate, and people put their butts on you.
“Why don’t you tell me about your case?” I said, once I’d finally wrangled the chair back to the desk. I picked up a pad of paper and one of Perry’s ridiculously pricey gold pens. Detectives take notes; I knew shit.
“It’s a little embarrassing,” she said, “and sad.” Her face was veiled with slightly blue cigarette smoke, her lips puckering around the filter, and between that and her insane accent, my pants were constricting a little. I tried to look busy taking notes, so I didn’t come off as some kind of drooling manchild with an inappropriate boner.
“I’ve lost my husband,” she continued.
I looked up from my notes, which thus far were her name, “embarrassing and sad,” and a unicorn wearing roller skates. “Like, in a shopping mall? How do you lose your husband?”
“We had become—how do you say?—strange to one another.”
It wasn’t until I’d written “strange” on my notes that I realized what she meant.
“Estranged,” I said.
“Yes, this. We were living apart for some time, trying for reconciliation—I thought maybe some space, and talking to the marriage therapist, but then one day he didn’t show up for our counseling appointment. And I call him, nothing. I go by his house, he isn’t there for weeks. His things are still there, but he is gone.”
At this point, Perry would have suggested the client call the police, but Perry wasn’t here, and solving a missing person’s case sounded awesome. That would get me off clerical duty for sure. It was almost enough to bolster my mood after learning Miss Legs had a husband she probably wasn’t keen to fool around on. Oh well. Can’t win ’em all.
“So you want me to find him,” I said.
She nodded, and leaned forward, providing a generous view of her—earrings. Damn, I bet they were two carats apiece. And okay, in hindsight, maybe I should have been paying more attention to what she was talking about, instead of looking down her dress and getting all wistful over her jewelry, but I’m not perfect, okay?
“I can pay you beautifully for this.”
“Handsomely,” I said. And then, because I’d always kind of wanted to, or at least I had ever since I started working for Perry, “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m on the case.”
Chapter Three: Easy Does It
So, I know I’ve kind of been harping on the point, but Perry has not been a big supporter of the teaching Harry to detective initiative. So I didn’t really know how to go about running a background check on this ex-Mr. Hottie, or anything like that.
What I did know how to do was steal shit.
So Mrs. Day stands to leave, right, and she does this lingering, slightly-inappropriate goodbye in which she gently clasps me to her ample, amazing, John Mayer Your Body is a Wonderland-style bosom. During which, I actually had the clarity of mind—how, I don’t know, but be proud, people—to stick my fingers into her purse—get your minds out of the gutter—and liberate her wallet.
Once she left, I shook everything out of Mrs. Day’s wallet, spreading it all over the top of Perry’s desk, which I’m not supposed to be seated at, strictly speaking. But fuck him and his irrational hang-ups; I was solving crime! Anyway, I’ve always thought it was kind of a hindrance, you know, Perry having to be all lawful. He was always going through people’s trash to find out info about them; how much easier would it be if he could just pickpocket them?
I squinted at the stuff spread over the desk, trying to do some Beautiful Mind shit. Nothing came. I huffed, and thought about stopping while I was ahead and going to get some tacos. No! No, I was going to solve some shit. I picked up a piece of evidence from the wallet—a receipt from a place called Easy Does It. My keen detective’s eye noted the address on the bottom of the receipt. In the business, we call this a lead.
So I went to Easy Does It, which turned out to be a dive bar in Silver Lake. Three drinks and my detectiving was getting kind of loose, but I still hadn’t turned up any clues.
At last call, I stumbled out into the street, which was blurrier than I remembered it. I fumbled a cigarette out of my pocket and brought it to my lips. Just as I was leaning over my lighter, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. Something wonderful. Something 36”-24”-36”.
Mrs. Day. She was bent over, fooling with the strap of her heel, near a nondescript looking warehouse I hadn’t even noticed on my way into the bar. She fixed her shoe, and then disappeared into the warehouse.
I checked my watch. It was, like, three AM. What was she doing walking the streets at this hour?
I decided to follow her.
For those of you lame brains who spend the movie picking everything apart and trying to figure out what happens next, you probably already know—that was a terrible idea.
Chapter Four: Introducing Harry Lockhart
So I snuck into the warehouse, by way of the door Mrs. Day had left open. (Not that I couldn’t have picked the lock, but hey, that was a freebie.) Inside the warehouse I was expecting boxes and maybe some assembly lines and shit, but it was more like my dad’s garage, with a long tool bench along one wall, tools neatly laid out on the top.
Well, except my dad’s garage isn’t full of lots and lots of guns, and what appeared to be a guy tied to a chair getting tortured by two guys with bulldog necks.
Shit. Shit! This was definitely not good; should I call the cops? No, the cops were never a good idea. Maybe I should bust in, guns blazing, and save the guy? Except I’d forgotten to bring a gun. Shit! I knew. I would just sneak out the way I came, and then call Perry to come fix everything. Perry was good at this sort of shit.
Unfortunately, my sneaking wasn’t as sneaky as I had hoped, probably due to the lack of cover in the stupid garage warehouse. And this is when the torturer guys caught onto me, and before I knew it, I was being dragged back by the collar of my jacket, and people were babbling in some foreign language, and Mrs. Day appeared suddenly and said, silkily and with no shock in her voice at all, “Mr. van Shrike.”
“That’s—that’s right!” I said, struggling against the guy holding onto my collar. “I’m Perry van Shrike, private eye, and I am making a—a citizen’s arrest! Yeah! All of you! I don’t know what you’ve got going on here, but it looks unsavory as shit, so you’re all—you’re all coming with me.”
The three of them exchanged looks; I think even the guy getting tortured looked a little bitch, please.
“We will,” one of the bulldog necks said, thickly accented, “not be taking you up on your offer.”
“Mr. van Shrike,” Mrs. Day said sweetly, “I am sorry things have to end this way.”
I flailed wildly, trying to break free. One of the bulldog necks pulled a gun, and I flinched.
“Hey!” someone bellowed, like a steamship foghorn, and I opened my eyes. Perry, the real Perry, was standing with a gun trained on the bulldog neck, looking all sleek and sharky and badass. I wanted to cheer, but bulldog neck still had a hold of me.
Mrs. Day took a step toward Perry. “And who are you?”
“I’m Harry Lockhart,” Perry said. “General fuckup and life ruiner.”
She shrugged. “Shoot him.”
I ducked as Perry and the bulldog neck shot at the same time. I felt something whizzing over my head, and saw Perry fall. The last thing I saw was the butt of a gun descending toward my face. Then everything went black.
Chapter Five: Caged!
I woke up in an empty room, four white walls and a door and nothing else, except Perry, leaning against the wall and holding his injured arm.
I stood up, moved toward him.
“Perry, you’re alive!”
“No thanks to you,” he growled.
“How did you find me?”
Perry ground his teeth, an act I’ve previously only seen performed by cartoon wolves. “You still haven’t learned to use the phone system properly. You recorded your whole I’m Perry conversation, and then you left clues festooned about my desk. Idiot.”
Oh, yeah, right. That.
“Did you notice,” Perry growled, clutching his shoulder, “that you have managed to get me shot again?”
I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m not the kind of guy who does things like carry a handkerchief. But Perry is! So I kind of started to dig through his pockets to find his, but he obviously didn’t understand that we needed something to stop the bleeding, something like a handkerchief, which I know he has one of. I was helping. But all he did was shoulder check me—with the good, non-bloody shoulder—into the wall, which then kind of vibrated, which surprised me, what with it being made of metal and all. Flimsier than it looks, I guess.
Which is when I got my next brilliant idea.
“Perry!” I said, running to the far end of the room, “we can just bust our way out of here!”
I took a running start—like, really fast. And then I tried to do that jump-kick thing I’ve seen in like every Jet Li movie, where they break down the door by flying through the air like a dart, and your foot is the pointy part of the dart. Long story short, I apparently do not have ninja skills, or the room was not as flimsy as I had imagined, because the door vibrated, and my body vibrated, and everything went kind of black for a second, and the next thing I know, Perry’s slapping me in the face.
I batted him away, fighting with flapping hands. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Trying to wake you up,” he hissed. “You’ve been unconscious for five minutes.”
Well, fuck, that can’t be good for my brain. I sat up; the world spun around me. When it finally settled, Perry was crouching before me, looking really, really pissed off.
“We’re going to die,” he said with the same kind of haughty, know-it-all plainness with which he says most things. Harry, you made the coffee wrong again—We do not put metal in the microwave—You are not allowed to touch the guns—and Harry, we are going to die, all in the same tone of voice. “And over the stupidest shit. I hope you’re proud of yourself, detective.”
I hope you’re proud of yourself is some shit my mother used to say to me every time I fucked up; it hit a nerve. I got all up in Perry’s face—in hindsight, probably not a good idea—and poked him in the chest with my index finger.
“You know what, maybe if you’d actually taught me something about detective work, instead of just making me copy and collate and make your damn coffee, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
And Perry—I swear to God—gave me the evilest look I’ve ever seen, and then he grabbed me by the throat with his good arm. He stood up, raising me up with him, so he had me by the throat and my toes weren’t even scraping the floor, and the edge of my vision started going fuzzy.
“Listen, motherfucker,” he growled, “this mess? It’s one-hundred-and-fifty-fucking percent your fault. And if we survive—by which I mean, if I can get us out of here alive—it will only be because you stopped fucking up for ten seconds and actually listened to me, instead of moaning like a petulant child. Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded the best I could, with Perry’s fingers wrapped around my throat. He let go—suddenly, with no warning—and I crumpled to the ground.
“Now,” Perry said, straightening his lapels, “this is a storage room; there’s no permanent ceiling. I’m going to lift you up, and you’re going to push up the ceiling, climb through the crawlspace, and get out of here. Then you’re going to call the police—”
“Perry, I don’t think we need to involve the police—”
“You’re going to call the police and have them come get me and arrest all the people with guns.”
And that’s what we did.
Epilogue: Some Damn Day
“Hey, you know what would be fun? Going to the hospital!”
Perry just gave me a look. But it was kind of a soft look, so I did as he asked, and got the first aid kit out from under the bathroom sink. But I didn’t give it to him; I kept it in my hot little hands.
“Okay, but you’re not fixing yourself up. You’re not Dirty Harry.”
And maybe it was because he was so tired, or maybe it’s because, sometimes, Perry’s actually kind of fond of me, but he nodded.
I helped Perry take his jacket off, and I helped him take his coat off. They were both ruined, shot through and stained with Perry’s blood. He was pissed about that, I’m sure; his shirts cost more than my education, and I don’t even want to think about how much the jackets run. But the thing that really got me is, Perry winced as the fabric pulled away from the wound, like he was just a person, like he hadn’t just saved us both. Like he wasn’t fucking Superman.
I know I give Perry a lot of crap, but really, he’s kind of amazing. No wonder I wanted to be him for a day.
I got the peroxide out and started dabbing at Perry’s shoulder. His shoulder was washed with blood, and the bullet hole was way too real looking for me, and I may have gagged a little. But subtly. I hope.
“Shouldn’t we, like, remove the bullet?” I asked.
Perry gave me a poisonous look. “Yes, at the top of my list is you fumbling inside my open wound with your dirty little fingers.”
“Geez, sorry. Just trying to keep you from amputation.”
“Just patch me up, okay? I’ll see a doctor in the morning.”
I pawed through the first aid kit until I found some gauze pads. I held one to the divot in Perry’s shoulder, and then started the search for tape.
A gentle touch—Perry’s fingers threading through my hair.
“Harry,” he sighed. “You get into some shit, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know. Call it talent?”
“Jesus. Some talent.”
I found the tape, and started strapping the gauze to Perry’s shoulder. His fingers slid from my hair.
“Not too tight, huh?” he said, and I eased up. I kept my eyes on the task at hand.
“Some damn day, huh?” Perry asked, finally. I looked up, and he was almost smiling.
“Yeah. Some damn day.”
You know what they don’t tell you in the movies? Getting shot requires a shit ton of physical therapy. Like, a lot. In the movies, it’s always like, get shot, dramatic music, brief montage of hospital recovery, 100% better. False. I mean, I got shot in the chest and I still had to do all these dumb exercises. I mean, it’s your chest. If you move your chest muscles, do you notice? I couldn’t even do it on purpose before this fucking therapy. And Perry. Perry was unconscious a long fucking time, and so not only did he have the whole getting shot thing to get over, he had to get better from all this nerve damage caused by being out so long. He was on that fucking cane for forever, and it was a long time before his right side wasn’t weak. (Part of his therapy for the right side weakness involved him squeezing things in his right hand. I told him to imagine it was a cock in his fist; that seemed to cheer him up a little. Though his therapist asked me not to come back after that.)
Anyway, remember Perry telling me to drop the whole Johnny Gossamer mystery shit before I got him killed? Well, neither did I, until Perry started reminding me of it on, like, a daily basis. So yeah, I felt a little guilty, after kind of getting him shot and all. Which is why I started helping him around the office. Okay, that and he offered me a place to stay after the hospital kicked me out, and he was the only one, since apparently Harmony only like likes me when we’re in mortal danger. Go figure.
I was only supposed to do clerical stuff, like filing and answering the phone—no touching of the guns, Perry was very specific and loud about that. One time, I was just looking at the gun cabinet, not even touching it, and Perry actually thumped me over the head with a rolled up newspaper, like I was the fucking dog or something. Unbelievable. He’s so fucking high-strung, when he gets in these tizzies I expect him to snap and roll up like a window blind. I’d make a what’s up his ass joke, but with the gay thing and all, it’d be too easy.
Anyway, Perry’s a work through the pain guy if there ever was one, so as soon as they let him out of the hospital, he was seeing clients again. Which meant that I was working through my pain, doing Perry’s busy work. Not that I could complain much, since Perry paid my hospital bills when they sent the bill collectors after me. And of all the things he bitches about, and bitching at me is his favorite pastime, that never comes up. So maybe a little collating is the least I can do.
Like I said, Perry only trusted me to the office side of things, so it was a while before we actually worked a case together. And of course it was all my fault.
So Perry was at the physical therapist doing his pretend dick squeezes one afternoon, when this woman comes into the office. I don’t want to be a pig or anything, but Whoa. Man. Legs forever, and a great pair of . . . earrings. These huge diamond things, all shiny and sparkly and just making my fingers itch. But I promised Perry I wouldn’t steal anymore shit, it’s my New Years resolution and everything. I was dialing in to check the voicemail, or at least I thought I was; I was at the menu when Miss Thing came in, so I kind of messed it up. Gee, I’m stopping my description of this seriously gorgeous woman to comment on my ineptitude on the phone. Do you think that’ll come back?
“Mr. van Shrike, my name is Marguerite Day and I need your help.”
And God, if the way she looked wasn’t enough, she had this accent, I can’t even describe it. Just silky and gorgeous and going right to my dick. So I was having a little trouble concentrating, which may explain what happened next. (Though when I suggested that to Perry, he just smacked me upside the head and grumbled “idiot” under his breath.)
I slowly brought the receiver down from my face. “I—well—I’m not—Mr. van Shrike is . . . um, me. At your service.”
Chapter Two: The Case
So I hung up the phone, and Miss Day sat in the chair on the other side of Perry’s desk. And she crossed her legs, right, and I thought for a second there was going to be a Basic Instinct moment—shut up, like it never crossed your mind—but instead her dress just slid up her thigh a little more, which was fine by me.
“Do you mind if I smoke, Mr. van Shrike?”
I tried to sit in Perry’s chair all casual like, but it’s on rollers, and I guess my butt missed the chair a little, so instead we both kind of just rolled across the floor, me half-bent over.
“Uh, sure,” I said. “Go nuts.”
She arched an eyebrow as she slipped a cigarette between her perfect porn star lips.
“You are not what I was expecting, Mr. van Shrike,” she said.
“You know what, call me Perry,” I said. “Or Per. Or Per-Bear. I love that.”
Then I tried to put my feet up on Perry’s desk, suave, you know, and that made the rollers on Perry’s stupid chair go crazy again, wheeling me back several feet away from the desk. I inched back, holding onto the chair like it was going to buck me off, which, fuck me, it probably wanted to. This chair was obviously loyal to Perry, and didn’t appreciate me impersonating him. Well, fuck you, chair! You’re inanimate, and people put their butts on you.
“Why don’t you tell me about your case?” I said, once I’d finally wrangled the chair back to the desk. I picked up a pad of paper and one of Perry’s ridiculously pricey gold pens. Detectives take notes; I knew shit.
“It’s a little embarrassing,” she said, “and sad.” Her face was veiled with slightly blue cigarette smoke, her lips puckering around the filter, and between that and her insane accent, my pants were constricting a little. I tried to look busy taking notes, so I didn’t come off as some kind of drooling manchild with an inappropriate boner.
“I’ve lost my husband,” she continued.
I looked up from my notes, which thus far were her name, “embarrassing and sad,” and a unicorn wearing roller skates. “Like, in a shopping mall? How do you lose your husband?”
“We had become—how do you say?—strange to one another.”
It wasn’t until I’d written “strange” on my notes that I realized what she meant.
“Estranged,” I said.
“Yes, this. We were living apart for some time, trying for reconciliation—I thought maybe some space, and talking to the marriage therapist, but then one day he didn’t show up for our counseling appointment. And I call him, nothing. I go by his house, he isn’t there for weeks. His things are still there, but he is gone.”
At this point, Perry would have suggested the client call the police, but Perry wasn’t here, and solving a missing person’s case sounded awesome. That would get me off clerical duty for sure. It was almost enough to bolster my mood after learning Miss Legs had a husband she probably wasn’t keen to fool around on. Oh well. Can’t win ’em all.
“So you want me to find him,” I said.
She nodded, and leaned forward, providing a generous view of her—earrings. Damn, I bet they were two carats apiece. And okay, in hindsight, maybe I should have been paying more attention to what she was talking about, instead of looking down her dress and getting all wistful over her jewelry, but I’m not perfect, okay?
“I can pay you beautifully for this.”
“Handsomely,” I said. And then, because I’d always kind of wanted to, or at least I had ever since I started working for Perry, “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m on the case.”
Chapter Three: Easy Does It
So, I know I’ve kind of been harping on the point, but Perry has not been a big supporter of the teaching Harry to detective initiative. So I didn’t really know how to go about running a background check on this ex-Mr. Hottie, or anything like that.
What I did know how to do was steal shit.
So Mrs. Day stands to leave, right, and she does this lingering, slightly-inappropriate goodbye in which she gently clasps me to her ample, amazing, John Mayer Your Body is a Wonderland-style bosom. During which, I actually had the clarity of mind—how, I don’t know, but be proud, people—to stick my fingers into her purse—get your minds out of the gutter—and liberate her wallet.
Once she left, I shook everything out of Mrs. Day’s wallet, spreading it all over the top of Perry’s desk, which I’m not supposed to be seated at, strictly speaking. But fuck him and his irrational hang-ups; I was solving crime! Anyway, I’ve always thought it was kind of a hindrance, you know, Perry having to be all lawful. He was always going through people’s trash to find out info about them; how much easier would it be if he could just pickpocket them?
I squinted at the stuff spread over the desk, trying to do some Beautiful Mind shit. Nothing came. I huffed, and thought about stopping while I was ahead and going to get some tacos. No! No, I was going to solve some shit. I picked up a piece of evidence from the wallet—a receipt from a place called Easy Does It. My keen detective’s eye noted the address on the bottom of the receipt. In the business, we call this a lead.
So I went to Easy Does It, which turned out to be a dive bar in Silver Lake. Three drinks and my detectiving was getting kind of loose, but I still hadn’t turned up any clues.
At last call, I stumbled out into the street, which was blurrier than I remembered it. I fumbled a cigarette out of my pocket and brought it to my lips. Just as I was leaning over my lighter, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. Something wonderful. Something 36”-24”-36”.
Mrs. Day. She was bent over, fooling with the strap of her heel, near a nondescript looking warehouse I hadn’t even noticed on my way into the bar. She fixed her shoe, and then disappeared into the warehouse.
I checked my watch. It was, like, three AM. What was she doing walking the streets at this hour?
I decided to follow her.
For those of you lame brains who spend the movie picking everything apart and trying to figure out what happens next, you probably already know—that was a terrible idea.
Chapter Four: Introducing Harry Lockhart
So I snuck into the warehouse, by way of the door Mrs. Day had left open. (Not that I couldn’t have picked the lock, but hey, that was a freebie.) Inside the warehouse I was expecting boxes and maybe some assembly lines and shit, but it was more like my dad’s garage, with a long tool bench along one wall, tools neatly laid out on the top.
Well, except my dad’s garage isn’t full of lots and lots of guns, and what appeared to be a guy tied to a chair getting tortured by two guys with bulldog necks.
Shit. Shit! This was definitely not good; should I call the cops? No, the cops were never a good idea. Maybe I should bust in, guns blazing, and save the guy? Except I’d forgotten to bring a gun. Shit! I knew. I would just sneak out the way I came, and then call Perry to come fix everything. Perry was good at this sort of shit.
Unfortunately, my sneaking wasn’t as sneaky as I had hoped, probably due to the lack of cover in the stupid garage warehouse. And this is when the torturer guys caught onto me, and before I knew it, I was being dragged back by the collar of my jacket, and people were babbling in some foreign language, and Mrs. Day appeared suddenly and said, silkily and with no shock in her voice at all, “Mr. van Shrike.”
“That’s—that’s right!” I said, struggling against the guy holding onto my collar. “I’m Perry van Shrike, private eye, and I am making a—a citizen’s arrest! Yeah! All of you! I don’t know what you’ve got going on here, but it looks unsavory as shit, so you’re all—you’re all coming with me.”
The three of them exchanged looks; I think even the guy getting tortured looked a little bitch, please.
“We will,” one of the bulldog necks said, thickly accented, “not be taking you up on your offer.”
“Mr. van Shrike,” Mrs. Day said sweetly, “I am sorry things have to end this way.”
I flailed wildly, trying to break free. One of the bulldog necks pulled a gun, and I flinched.
“Hey!” someone bellowed, like a steamship foghorn, and I opened my eyes. Perry, the real Perry, was standing with a gun trained on the bulldog neck, looking all sleek and sharky and badass. I wanted to cheer, but bulldog neck still had a hold of me.
Mrs. Day took a step toward Perry. “And who are you?”
“I’m Harry Lockhart,” Perry said. “General fuckup and life ruiner.”
She shrugged. “Shoot him.”
I ducked as Perry and the bulldog neck shot at the same time. I felt something whizzing over my head, and saw Perry fall. The last thing I saw was the butt of a gun descending toward my face. Then everything went black.
Chapter Five: Caged!
I woke up in an empty room, four white walls and a door and nothing else, except Perry, leaning against the wall and holding his injured arm.
I stood up, moved toward him.
“Perry, you’re alive!”
“No thanks to you,” he growled.
“How did you find me?”
Perry ground his teeth, an act I’ve previously only seen performed by cartoon wolves. “You still haven’t learned to use the phone system properly. You recorded your whole I’m Perry conversation, and then you left clues festooned about my desk. Idiot.”
Oh, yeah, right. That.
“Did you notice,” Perry growled, clutching his shoulder, “that you have managed to get me shot again?”
I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m not the kind of guy who does things like carry a handkerchief. But Perry is! So I kind of started to dig through his pockets to find his, but he obviously didn’t understand that we needed something to stop the bleeding, something like a handkerchief, which I know he has one of. I was helping. But all he did was shoulder check me—with the good, non-bloody shoulder—into the wall, which then kind of vibrated, which surprised me, what with it being made of metal and all. Flimsier than it looks, I guess.
Which is when I got my next brilliant idea.
“Perry!” I said, running to the far end of the room, “we can just bust our way out of here!”
I took a running start—like, really fast. And then I tried to do that jump-kick thing I’ve seen in like every Jet Li movie, where they break down the door by flying through the air like a dart, and your foot is the pointy part of the dart. Long story short, I apparently do not have ninja skills, or the room was not as flimsy as I had imagined, because the door vibrated, and my body vibrated, and everything went kind of black for a second, and the next thing I know, Perry’s slapping me in the face.
I batted him away, fighting with flapping hands. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Trying to wake you up,” he hissed. “You’ve been unconscious for five minutes.”
Well, fuck, that can’t be good for my brain. I sat up; the world spun around me. When it finally settled, Perry was crouching before me, looking really, really pissed off.
“We’re going to die,” he said with the same kind of haughty, know-it-all plainness with which he says most things. Harry, you made the coffee wrong again—We do not put metal in the microwave—You are not allowed to touch the guns—and Harry, we are going to die, all in the same tone of voice. “And over the stupidest shit. I hope you’re proud of yourself, detective.”
I hope you’re proud of yourself is some shit my mother used to say to me every time I fucked up; it hit a nerve. I got all up in Perry’s face—in hindsight, probably not a good idea—and poked him in the chest with my index finger.
“You know what, maybe if you’d actually taught me something about detective work, instead of just making me copy and collate and make your damn coffee, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
And Perry—I swear to God—gave me the evilest look I’ve ever seen, and then he grabbed me by the throat with his good arm. He stood up, raising me up with him, so he had me by the throat and my toes weren’t even scraping the floor, and the edge of my vision started going fuzzy.
“Listen, motherfucker,” he growled, “this mess? It’s one-hundred-and-fifty-fucking percent your fault. And if we survive—by which I mean, if I can get us out of here alive—it will only be because you stopped fucking up for ten seconds and actually listened to me, instead of moaning like a petulant child. Do I make myself clear?”
I nodded the best I could, with Perry’s fingers wrapped around my throat. He let go—suddenly, with no warning—and I crumpled to the ground.
“Now,” Perry said, straightening his lapels, “this is a storage room; there’s no permanent ceiling. I’m going to lift you up, and you’re going to push up the ceiling, climb through the crawlspace, and get out of here. Then you’re going to call the police—”
“Perry, I don’t think we need to involve the police—”
“You’re going to call the police and have them come get me and arrest all the people with guns.”
And that’s what we did.
Epilogue: Some Damn Day
“Hey, you know what would be fun? Going to the hospital!”
Perry just gave me a look. But it was kind of a soft look, so I did as he asked, and got the first aid kit out from under the bathroom sink. But I didn’t give it to him; I kept it in my hot little hands.
“Okay, but you’re not fixing yourself up. You’re not Dirty Harry.”
And maybe it was because he was so tired, or maybe it’s because, sometimes, Perry’s actually kind of fond of me, but he nodded.
I helped Perry take his jacket off, and I helped him take his coat off. They were both ruined, shot through and stained with Perry’s blood. He was pissed about that, I’m sure; his shirts cost more than my education, and I don’t even want to think about how much the jackets run. But the thing that really got me is, Perry winced as the fabric pulled away from the wound, like he was just a person, like he hadn’t just saved us both. Like he wasn’t fucking Superman.
I know I give Perry a lot of crap, but really, he’s kind of amazing. No wonder I wanted to be him for a day.
I got the peroxide out and started dabbing at Perry’s shoulder. His shoulder was washed with blood, and the bullet hole was way too real looking for me, and I may have gagged a little. But subtly. I hope.
“Shouldn’t we, like, remove the bullet?” I asked.
Perry gave me a poisonous look. “Yes, at the top of my list is you fumbling inside my open wound with your dirty little fingers.”
“Geez, sorry. Just trying to keep you from amputation.”
“Just patch me up, okay? I’ll see a doctor in the morning.”
I pawed through the first aid kit until I found some gauze pads. I held one to the divot in Perry’s shoulder, and then started the search for tape.
A gentle touch—Perry’s fingers threading through my hair.
“Harry,” he sighed. “You get into some shit, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know. Call it talent?”
“Jesus. Some talent.”
I found the tape, and started strapping the gauze to Perry’s shoulder. His fingers slid from my hair.
“Not too tight, huh?” he said, and I eased up. I kept my eyes on the task at hand.
“Some damn day, huh?” Perry asked, finally. I looked up, and he was almost smiling.
“Yeah. Some damn day.”
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Date: 2013-01-01 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-03 03:31 am (UTC)Why thank you! I'm so glad you liked it!
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Date: 2013-01-03 06:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-04 12:09 am (UTC)"Would I mind?" I'd be honored!
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Date: 2013-01-05 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-01 04:33 pm (UTC)On DW: http://chemm80.dreamwidth.org/139724.html
On LJ: http://chemm80.livejournal.com/153235.html
On Ao3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/744405
P.S. I hope I didn't butcher Harry's voice too badly. :D
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Date: 2013-04-01 11:20 pm (UTC)This is fantastic. Amazing. Brilliant. You have a Harry voice, with inflections and things! And there's even art!
I'm having so many feelings right now, omg.
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Date: 2013-04-02 04:00 am (UTC)Isn't the art fantastic? My friend
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Date: 2013-05-04 07:35 am (UTC)