Sam Eagle P.I.

Samuel Erchinski took his retirement early. He had enough of the shootings, the rapes and robberies. When he handed his badge to the Captain, he let it be known that it was now going to be the easy life. He had bought an old run down house in downtown L.A. It needed a load of nails and screws and a gallon of paint. He still kept his apartment in the big smoke and this little house was going to be his art studio. Sam had a yen to paint.

Sam's dearly beloved other half stayed in the apartment taking the visitors and the grandkids. She was happy there, five foot three, silver haired and floral dresses. Each working day Sam said goodbye to Mrs Erchinski and headed for his retreat. Eventually Sam had the old house ship shape. He bought an easel a set of paints and brushes and sat down in the room that looked out in the back garden. This was the life he thought, but as hard as he would try, the LAPD kept creeping into his thoughts. Once a cop always a cop was as the saying goes.

Sam in a snap decision, put down his paint brush, took off his painters smock and headed for the City. At the Mayor's office he paid for his Private Investigators Licence, bought himself an automatic pistol and headed for home. Cops and Robbers was in his blood. At home Mrs Erchinski accepted his decision philosophically after all she had married a cop and anyway she missed all the stories Sam had to tell about life in the city.

The following day, Sam went to his place downtown. It was sparsely furnished, but it did have a desk in a front room. Sam sat behind his desk. I'm no Michelangelo, he thought, but I can at least bust crooks. Sam decided that his paints and brush had some use after all. He started to paint 'Sam E―' and he thought, 'Nah, Erchinski,' won't bring them in, but 'Sam Eagle Private Investigator,' He had a sign professionally painted just off the street to catch the passing trade.

Two weeks had gone by, not one customer. There were a couple of nosey parkers coming in and asking for directions and looking around. Mrs Erchinski rang a few times to his new phone asking him how he was and how were the sandwiches that she had packed for his lunch. Soon Sam fell to napping at his desk and he excused himself, by saying to himself 'This is what guys do when they are nearly sixty.' He didn't worry too much as his Police pension kept him and Mrs Erchinski going.

It was getting late one evening, Sam was thinking of going home, when a guy flitted into his office. Sam woke with a jerk like you do when you are dozing and a guy creeps in on you.

'Sam Eagle is that you?' said the stranger in smart well pressed black suit, white shirt and a red bow tie. Sam snapped into consciousness.

'At your service,' declared Sam.

'My name is Albert Coburn. I want you to investigate a murder. It happened ten years ago, here in my house. That's why this old house stayed empty and never sold.' The stranger's eyes pierced into Sam's brown eyes as he spoke. One thing his old police friends had drubbed into Sam when they had heard of his career change, 'Never forget your fee ask for it first, the questions come later.' So all Sam could think of at that time was, 'Two hundred down and fifty an hour,' and that was what he said.

The stranger Albert Coburn smiled and said, 'You will find all that you need under the second step going down into the kitchen. But find the killer and you will know you will have been handsomely paid.' It was a whispery needy voice.

'Get the money first,' the voices kept hammering into his head. 'Ok,' said Sam as he got up and walked around his desk.. 'I'll take the job.' He couldn't knock back his first job. He stepped out in the corridor and walked down to the kitchen. 'Funny he thought, I never really noticed that step, it is not much of a step down. He turned around to speak to the first client for 'Sam Eagle P.I. but the imperious man had gone. Sam called out, but it was only his voice that replied in the echo coming from the empty rooms.

Sam went out to his car in the driveway and retrieved a tyre lever. 'Damn it, I'll carry it through, he muttered. He prised open the step, pulled away the planks and his eyes nearly fell out. The notes were in bundles, all ten dollars bills, rows and rows of them. 'My house my money,' he thought, finders keepers.' Then Sam remembered that old Albert Coburn had told him where to find it all. As he piled the notes on the floor, he saw something else that made him catch his breath and a cold shiver run down his spine. There on the base plank, lay a neatly folded well pressed black suit, next to it a pressed white shirt and a red bow tie. Sam didn't believe in spooks. everything had a reason and could be explained. Practical Sam Eagle stuffed the notes in his attaché case ten thousand in total. He put back the step just as it had been leaving the suit, shirt and bow tie for later investigation.

Sam phoned home and told Mrs Erchinski the good news. He then grabbed his coat and hat. Locked up the house, threw his case into the back of his Chevy and drove home. It was enough to stomach for one day. That night, the events of the day kept him from sleeping. He would have to ask his pals back at the LSPD for some help. The file for the old murder investigation would have to be found and examined. He kept turning things over, what murder was it that old Coburn was talking about anyway. Had Coburn's wife been murdered, a relative or friend. Sam rolled over and eventually slept a troubled sleep, but he was happy it was just like the old days in the job.

The old file was thin and contained very little but what was there was intriguing. Coburn's wife had reported him missing two days after his absence was noticed. There was a brief description of Albert Coburn's very thin ascetic, a practitioner of yoga and a Bhudist. He and his wife regularly attended the L.A. Buddhist Temple. An examination of the Coburn home by the detectives, showed nothing in a sparsely furnished house. In the small garden at the back was a round patch of burnt soil of about a three feet diameter. Tests were done of the soil but they were inconclusive. Albert Coburn had vanished. Two years after the report Mrs Albert Coburn had died. There were no other family. The file had then been closed.

There were many unanswered questions raised in the file; had Coburn been killed and his body burnt at that spot of ground? Tests had shown that no accelerant had been used or other likely combustible material. The wife had been questioned at length. There was no suggestion of foul play. There was no motive. Inquiries at the Buddhist Temple proved fruitless. The trail was cold.

Albert Coburn's words that he wanted a murder at the house investigated were also curious. Whose murder was he talking about and where had Albert been these past ten years. Sam Eagle needed to see his client again. He waited in his downtown office for about ten days. He had hired experts to examine the ground. He had asked them to look for the remnants of a bullet, or some weapon. There was nothing. Sam had burnt $500 in expenses. He waited for Albert Coburn to return. He had a theory that if Coburn was there in spirit that day (a factor he didn't accept for a moment) then had Coburn committed suicide by dowsing himself with pure alcohol and set himself alight little or nothing would have remained. There was something that just didn't click.

Sam became fidgety. He had visited the Buddhist Temple himself and had noted down an inscription carried in a wall: 'To everyman is given the key to the gates of Heaven, the same key opens the gates of Hell.'

To pass some of those lonely days in his office Sam acquired a copy of the GITA the Indian Holy Book and the Buddhist Book of the Dead and he struggled to read them. In the early evening one day as Sam read he sensed a figure near the door, he looked up, it was Albert Coburn, black suit, white shirt and red bow tie. The man had a whimsical smile on his face.

Sam Eagle stretched out his hand in an automatic gesture of greeting. The reply from Coburn was an icy cold grip that sent a shiver through Sam's bones.

Sam asked, 'where have you been those past ten days?'

'Here with you,' was the reply.

'Then where were you in the past ten years?'

'In this house,' came the reply.

'Oh yer,' Sam almost snarled, he refused to accept there could be ghosts.

'And whose murder did you want me to investigate?' Sam felt the anger rise in his bones.

'Mine,' was said in the affirmative voice, Sam Eagle P.I. slumped back in his chair he knew he was beaten. The rays of the dying sunlight had shone through the figure of Albert Coburn and Sam had seen the door behind him. Albert Coburn the phantom remained standing and he spoke 'I need to know what happened and I see you know what could have happened to me. If I opened the gates to heaven and was judged by the Divine to be undeserving I would be sent to hell and damned forever. I could not take that risk.

It was an epiphany for Sam. A cold shudder went through his body, his mind accepted the existence of ghosts. A new theory ran through Sam's brain he tested it.

'You practiced yoga daily?'

'Yes,' came the reply, twelve hours a day.'

'You fasted?'

'Yes.'

'You gave away your worldly goods except such as was required for your wife's existence?'

'Yes,' replied.

'You believed you had almost attained Nirvana?'

Coburn's voice went down to an icy whisper. 'Yes, but it is a height of perfection of the spirit higher than the crest of Mt Everest. It is unattainable to the ordinary man.'

'Mr Coburn, I believe I have earned my fee. You are no ordinary man. You reached Nirvana, the perfection of spirit. Your brain accepted it and as you sat in your final position of yoga out there in your yard, you self immolated. You sacrificed yourself.'

'It is hard to believe,' whispered Coburn.

'It is, was your disbelief in yourself that anchored you to the earth.

The figure of Albert Coburn began to fade as with the setting sun.

'I believe, I believe,' were the last words of Albert Coburn. He vanished.

The case was wrapped up. It was one that he could never relate to anyone especially those guys in the LAPD. Sam Eagle P.I. picked up his little attaché case, and it was then he heard footsteps, they were of high heels. A woman dressed in the latest fashion middle aged, well powdered and rouged entered. 'Sam Eagle?' she said. 'Yes,' he motioned her to the lone chair.

'Sam Eagle, I need you to tail my husband Isaac Feinstein, he's out almost every night and says he is just playing cards.' Sam looked up at her to test her reaction, 'Two hundred down and fifty an hour and five hundred for my final report.

She smiled, 'money is no problem.' Sam sighed, in the midst of death there is life, he thought and life goes on. 'Yes Ma’am, just a few questions.'

© Copyright 2018 J C Trewin