Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues

I’m deeply indebted to a number of people who helped me out with advice, guidance, inspiration, and an insider’s point of view of many things I was unfamiliar with. Here are just a few:

Roberta Rosser, C.M.A.,—better known as Bert—of Nashville’s T.E. Simpkins Forensic Science Center—better known as The Morgue—was tremendously helpful in explaining how autopsies are done, how coroners work, and the unique perspective one can’t help but gain in that line of work.

Lieutenant Tommy Jacobs, head of the Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County Police Department Homicide Division, gave me great insights into a homicide investigator’s work, how witnesses are interrogated, and a sense of the unusual mindset that police work calls for. He also lent me a copy of Dr. LeMoyne Snyder’s
Homicide Investigation
, which I’d advise against reading on a full stomach.

I know just enough about guns to get hurt by one. That’s why when I needed to know more about weapons, I went to Ed Mason, owner of Madison, Tennessee’s Gun Mart. He’s smart, helpful, and heavily armed. He knows his work. I’m grateful to him.

Jeff and Amy Morland, of DB Locators, Inc., in Nashville (I’ll let you guess what the
DB
stands for) gave me deep and wonderful insights into the business of skip tracing and the art of repo’ing. Writers make it up; these guys do it for real. In the midst of it all, Amy finds time to write. And well, at that.

As always, Jeris Bragan and Woody Eargle, two long-time attendees of my writing workshop at the Tennessee State Penitentiary, contributed more than I can explain here. Their support and friendship means a lot.

Carole Abel, my agent, mother-confessor, and confidante, has patiently and serenely seen me through the rough waters of publishing. In fact, she’s kept me in this business the last few years. The jury’s still out on whether this is a boon to humanity, but
I’m
grateful as hell.

Joe Blades, whose editorial guidance and friendship is a wonderful gift, continues to amaze me. It’s hard to get used to an editor who finds time to be a good friend as well as an inspired editor. I’m having a great time making the adjustment, though.

Jean Yarbrough, my mother-in-law, a voracious reader and super copy editor, was understanding enough (or foolish enough, depending on one’s perspective) to let her daughter marry a writer. She helped me a lot in preparing this manuscript. You’ll hear no mother-in-law jokes in this house.

My wife, Dr. Cathryn Yarbrough, insisted on editing this manuscript while awaiting treatment for mugging injuries in the Vanderbilt Hospital emergency room. Talk about grit. See why I married this woman? At the risk of repeating myself, all writers should fall in love with a psychologist. After that, they should marry one.

Finally, I’m grateful for all the things that make Nashville such a fascinating place to live. No kidding. It’s a writer’s gold mine.

All right, I’ll tell you. But you have to promise not to laugh, okay? I’m a private investigator. In Nashville, Tennessee.

Stop snickering.

No, I do not wear a trench coat, or a double-breasted suit, or a homburg. I don’t smoke cigarettes or drink straight Scotch out of the desk drawer in my office, and I don’t smack women around.

These days, they hit back. Hard.

Neither do I sing country music, nor write country music, nor even listen to country music. My tastes run to jazz, and I did not just fall off the turnip truck. I was born here, but I went to school in Boston, spent my junior year abroad in France, and wear shoes almost every day. I can lay on a country accent as thick as molasses on a frosty morning, if I have to. But I can also throw in enough Newport, Rhode Island, to make Tom Wicker sound like a hick.

I can hear you now:
But a private detective, in Nashville, Tennessee? Give me a break.…

Well, let me tell you, friend, we’ve got a million people in this city now. And any city that’ll elect as mayor a guy who plays harmonica on
Donahue
and explains how it’s okay for him to be engaged to his fourth wife while still married to his third, is a city that’s got character. I’ve been to some interesting and corrupt locales in my time: New Orleans, New York City, all of Texas. And believe me, they’ve got nothing on this place.

After all, how many cities elect a sheriff named Fate, a
man who winds up in a federal penitentiary for corruption and gets visits from his buddy Waylon Jennings? Speaking of sheriffs, I think this state holds the national record for the most ex-sheriffs now doing time behind bars.

Freaking Greek tragedy, that’s what it is. I love this city. It cracks me up.

So I’m a detective. I didn’t say I was a competent detective. I didn’t even say I’d been doing it very long. In fact, I just opened my office about two months ago, a couple of weeks after I got fired from the paper.

I was a newspaper reporter, and I like to think I was a good one. In fact, I was too good. The publisher of the newspaper had a brother who was a lobbyist, and he got involved with this group of
amusement
operators; you know, guys who run video game parlors and stuff like that. These operators—to coin a phrase—had a pretty strong lobby working to pass a law that allowed video poker machines to pay off. I mean, it’s not like pinball machines and video games hadn’t been paying off for years anyway. It’s just that these guys were trying to get it legal so they could stop paying protection money to the small-town cops.

Anyway, the publisher’s brother was handing out hundred dollar bills like business cards on Legislative Plaza. Most people knew that it was standard operating procedure on the Hill. But this guy started getting cocky, because his brother owned the local paper and they were all well-connected. Blatant as hell he was, so I wrote a story about his contributions that were papering the legislative halls in green.

I knew the city editor would never sanction the story, but I decided to throw it in the queue just to get a rise out of the desk. Only problem was, we had this new guy on the night staff. We’d hired him from Oklahoma, and he really didn’t know his way around yet. He released the story.

The exposé ran page one, below the fold.

Nobody was more surprised than I was. The early edition hit the newsstand, and the publisher hit the ceiling. Went completely ballistic. He had the story pulled and loose copies collected from the newsstands.

By noon, the story was gone and so was I.

So here I am, thirty-five years old, living from paycheck to paycheck, and with a name that’s, professionally speaking, Mud. But what the hell, I was getting bored anyway. I remembered reading somewhere that in this state the only prerequisite for a detective’s license is a background check. I had a hard time believing it was that slack, so I called a buddy in the D.A.’s office. He said the law was changing in January; after the first of the year, you’d actually have to have credentials to be licensed.

So with six weeks to spare, I rushed downtown, paid my $75.00, had my picture taken, passed a quick computer check, and became a private investigator.

I sunk the last of my meager savings into setting up an office down on Seventh Avenue, near Church Street, in a dumpy building nestled between a tiny restaurant and a three-story parking lot. I was on the top floor, one room only, with a dirty, greasy window that looked out on an alley strewn with broken bottles of Night Train and Wild Irish Rose. But it was only $200.00 a month, utilities included. Factor in a hundred bucks or so to get the phone started up, a couple hundred for stationery and business cards, and another hundred for an old wooden desk and a filing cabinet, and voilà: instant office.