What’s In A Detective’s Purse
I’m not a real detective yet, so you’ll just know what’s in my purse.Kay Howard forgive me, one lipstick, fifties fuck-me red.(Which, if I have any sense I’ll leave home, it’s fricking hot out there, don’t want it to melt all over the secret microfilm...Keyser Sose’s business card, whatever). Quarters. A screw. The Perv’s eyes actually twinkle as he reads this, can you believe that? “What’s his name?” he asks, “If it’s a guy.”
“It’s not a guy,” I say, still trying to be patient. God knows why. Flyer about the Soltstice thing I missed. Feel bad about that, it was kind of a work thing. Fucking Dawes...taking over my life already.
“You know that’s better, right?” he continues, impervious to my lack of attention. You’d never know he’d been the go-to guy for John Does left to the elements.
“What’s better?”
”You screwing not-a-guy. Guys are disgusting. Who should know better? Would your girlfriend object to, uh, art photography?”
I reach in my purse, pull out the offending metal object. “This. It’s from my chair somewhere. Maybe if you’re good, you’ll get to give it Phillips head.”
He laughs. “I appreciate your wanting to fit in away from the Granola Tribe, but that was just sad, not dirty. And you’ll want a socket wrench for that...it’s one of those things from your footpedal.”
”Gee, thanks, Brian. Good catch.” My poor anemic wallet.(Had I misjudged him?)
“That’s okay...I always use the right tool.”(Not quite.)
Four unidentifed keys on a key ring attached to a spent 7.62mm NATO sniper rifle round casing.
And there's Richard, his entire history and where he is, right there. Nice. Gotcher "show" moment, right there.
You’d never know he’d been the go-to guy for John Does left to the elements.
And there's another one, except can I suggest change, for asthaetic purposes only? I read it as "does" the verb for a moment; maybe "for every John Doe left to the elements"?
Thank god for the Internet. I suddenly need to know what kind of ammunition would be used in a sniper rife--and what rifle snipers prefer--and there it is.
I am all about the internet and its resources. Thanks to Beverly Williams and Steve Venus of the Royal Engineers - both thanked in the acknowledgements to Cruel Sister - the "battered Jeep" and "heavy-weight lorries" in the prologue are now an Austin Tilley with a red-painted mudguard and a pair of Morris CWT 8's.
This is about a character in what I would call my WIP if it existed much outside my head:
"Ainsley's Purse"
It almost looks like a real Vuitton, but inspect the seams and you can tell it was $10 from a street vendor. Inside, the gummy pacifier she keeps thinking her daughter is still young enough to need nestles next to her passport, marked by previous escape attempts and carried in the hope of another, among a chaos of Stila cosmetics. Her pills, obtained with feigned complaints of back pain, are in a side-zipped pocket, alongside a silver iPod mini loaded with '80's pop. The wallet bristles with credit card receipts and phone numbers, but holds no money at all.
