Page 128 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Soaked to the Bone

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I sighed. Nick was a mess. He had come on to me in the early days
of my association with Troglo Films and G. Felton Fish. Despite his
superficial glamour, warning bells went off in my head immediately.
The guy did not ring true. He had the glitzy lifestyle, the car and the
hairdo and the names to drop, but under it all he was scared. What
makes anyone tick? Some dominant trait drags the others along, the
measure of their dead weight determining to some extent how fast
and how far a person will go. Nick was going full speed to nowhere. I
suspected a certain white powder fueled his reckless run for power
and glory, but he was suave enough to hide it and I soon learned his
self-destructivenes was not atypical in this town, nothing to make
him stand out in his lonely crowd. Tapped into the network of
parasitic informants and petty criminals associated with the lower
echelon of show-biz types, Ms. Gramercy could easily have the goods
on young Mr. Krotz. But I suspected something beyond drugs. It
would be a simple matter to dispose of illicit substances when the
police were certain to come calling. Why take the chance of running
for the border?
“I presume you are not talking about cocaine, Lieutenant.” I was
serious and somber, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit superior in my
knowledge.
“Correct. The Swiss bank accounts mean embezzlement or
blackmail. Which do you think is the case—or know for a certainty?”
So she was barely a half-step behind me, and that not for long.
Then I realized how bad it looked for me. This was almost an
unanswerable question, like, ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’
“I didn’t know he was squirreling it away off-shore, honestly. I’m
no accessory to any of his shenanigans. He never confided in me or
asked me to look the other way. I suspect it is both embezzlement
and blackmail. Nick could never get an extra dime out of Troglo;
their controller is as tight as a frog’s behind. Turn in an expense
report without adequate backup documentation and it gets bounced.
No, it had to be that G.F. was putting one over on them so large that
they didn’t see it—but Nick did, and started bleeding him as the price
of silence. Can I prove it? No. It probably has to do with Chip off the
Block, the feature Fish was developing for Troglo. Foreigners have

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