Was it worth it?

thethemeis: Curiosity Killed the Cat

theauthoris: Deadbeat

This was an open and shut case. Every law officer in the city knew who'd done it. The problem was that she was untouchable, from all sides. Nearly every governor in the city had used her services. The mayor certainly had, that was no great secret. It seemed every mob boss had a soft spot for her, each having been tempted by unique charm at some point or other. And judging by his constant attempts to close down my investigation I wouldn't be surprised to find out that my boss has paid a visit to her penthouse. There was no hope of getting an arrest for this case, I knew that from the moment I entered the scene. But something about the whole scene just didn't sit right with me. For some reason I simply had to know why.

Before me lay the corpse of the notorious Mexican hit-man Carlos Lopez, widely known as "The Cat". He was almost barely recognisable without his characteristic wide mouth grin and gleaming eyes, but a shotgun blast to the face would do that to a guy. In the box next to his body lay the clothes in which he was found, a set of highly expensive linen pyjamas. It never seemed right to me to kill a guy in his sleep, but given the number of unaware victims this guy's dragged in to the hideout of some mobster or other I had hardly any sympathy.

The coroner had no more to tell me about the incident then I already knew. Killed instantly by a single shotgun blast to the face at around 2:30am after a brief struggle. Scratches from long fingernails, red varnish. Lipstick marks, pink. High volume of alcohol in his blood. No other narcotics. No other injuries or healing wounds. No other traces. It painted a pretty obvious picture, but how things escalated into murder was still a mystery. Any clues I wanted would have to be dragged out of people.

There was no great urgency in this case. Any hope we had of keeping this thing underground disappeared when some clumsy (or corrupt) porter dropped the body bag upon exciting the scene and let Mr. Lopez out of the bag. From then on all of the town knew enough of the details to cover any tracks. Any possible witnesses soon became quiet. The murder weapon was almost certainly long gone. If I was going to stand any chance of finding out what really happened that night I had to talk to the woman who had done it herself.

I took a while to track her down, but finally I managed to gain an audience with the woman at the centre of this whole drama. I was in some dingy motel on the edge of town with the most sought after stripper/prostitute/woman of leisure this rotten hell hole of a city had seen in years. I had to admit, even with my cynical view of these pond life I felt the need to take down myself she was strangely alluring. There was definitely something about her. It wasn't unusual for people in her profession to dismiss their background and hide their tracks, but she seemed to have absolutely no history. She was simply now know by the name she took as a stripper when she came to this town. The name which fit her so well it seemed natural to use it in general conversation.

"I'm delighted that you made the personal effort to find me detective," Curiosity purred in her always sexual sounding town. "But i'm afraid you really shouldn't have bothered. There is only one condition under which I can tell you the reasoning behind my actions that night. And it leaves you in a very similar position to The Cat."

Perhaps i'd seen too many spy films in which the villain reveals his plan only for the hero to escape and foil him later. Perhaps I hadn't fully believed she would carry out her threat. Or perhaps i'd just grown so damn sick of this rotting city and all the crooked characters within it that I was prepared to go. I was prepared to leave them behind just to know why someone who seemed, despite her sordid nature, above the evilness in this place, would drop herself down to the level of all the other scum. Perhaps then i'd have little else to go on for. Either way she revealed the entire scene to me and all its predictable and disappointing twist and turns. And then she put a bullet in my head.

Was it worth it?

Is anything?