Looking for Walter Newhouse Chapter Four

Turned out I wasn’t too far out of town, and once I’d got my bearings, it didn’t take long for me to stagger back to my place. All I wanted right then was to get out of my clothes, soak in a hot bath while I popped some painkillers, and then bed.

I had no idea who those goons were and why they had decided to kick the living shit out of me, but it looked like I had some breathing space, at least for a little while, anyway. And if I kept my wits about me, maybe I would be ready for them the next time.

Now, you might not realise this, but knockout artists like me, we don’t get paid much. There’s no union I can join to help negotiate a better pay rate, hell there isn’t even a pay rate, and asking for more money would just guarantee I didn’t get the job. That’s why I took some work with the Mob, and that’s why I was living in a shitty little room in a house with the Wicked Witch of the West as my landlady.

The old witch was waiting up for me when I got back. She had a cigarette permanently stuck to her bottom lip and a rancid looking hole in the dip between her collarbones. Apparently, it was something called a rodent ulcer, but would she go and have it removed? Would she hell. Said the day she went into hospital, we’d never see her again.

We could only hope.

‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said, that cigarette bobbing up and down as she spoke and scattering ash over the threadbare carpet in the hall.

‘Yeah?’ I cocked an eyebrow. ‘Who?’

‘How should I know? I’m not your bleeding receptionist, am I?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘It’s my new aftershave,’ I said. ‘Eau de merde.’

The old witch looked at me like she didn’t recognise me all of a sudden, before turning and crab walking into her living room and slamming the door shut behind her.

I have that effect on people sometimes. Especially when I try being clever, speaking French and such like.

I took the stairs up to my room as quietly as the creaky steps would allow. The door was closed, but I could smell cigarette smoke. If this was a film, I would have had a gun in my hand by now, but real life tends to work out different. All I had was a crumpled suit smelling of vomit, and a killer headache.

I pushed the door open.